USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > A history of Grace Church in Providence, Rhode Island, 1829-1929 > Part 8
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and banks, are all complete, but God's temple, although it has been thirteen years in building, yet it is not finished."
At the meeting of the Corporation the next evening, Messrs. Anthony, Blodgett, Greene, Peirce, and Downes were appointed a committee to solicit subscriptions to the amount of $15,000 for the building of the parapet and steeple. New plans were secured from Messrs. R. and R. M. Upjohn, which the record states were "quite unlike the original" plans. As the Committee was able to raise only $13,000, it was felt necessary that these plans be modi- fied somewhat so that the church might soon be completed. Be- fore the end of 1860 this happy result was achieved. The spire appeared much as it does now, though the cross at the top was of a different design. The original architect's sketch shows a Celtic cross, but there is evidence that this sketch was not followed. It is said1 that "the cross was carved in one piece of red sandstone, with an arm three feet in length on a standard six feet high. In the corners where the arm crossed the standard were fleurs de lis." This cross was destroyed by lightning on July 18, 1908, and re- placed by the present one.
With the prospect near of completing the church by a beautiful and graceful spire, the Vestry welcomed a proposal to raise money for "a chime of bells and an illuminated clock." This money was to be raised by popular subscription largely outside Grace Church and particularly as a matter of civic pride. The leading spirit and first chairman of the committee was Henry A. Prescott, an energetic and devoted teacher in the Sunday School. A large general committee of twenty citizens, headed by Thomas A. Doyle, was formed early in March, 1860, to solicit subscriptions. The widespread response to this appeal to local feeling is evidenced by the inscriptions on the sixteen bells. Bells were given by the Physicians of Providence, Members of the Rhode Island Bar, the Attorney General, the Governor's Staff, the Providence Marine Company of Artillery, by the Choir, and the Sunday School. There was the Rectors' Bell, with the names of the five Rectors; the Bishops' Bell with the names of Henshaw and Clark; and others with the names of firms and individuals.2
According to the inscriptions certain funds were given on the condition that the chimes should be rung both morning and afternoon on Commencement Day, and once on the tenth of
1 See Evening Tribune, July 21, 1908.
2 These inscriptions are reproduced exactly in the list of memorials.
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September, the anniversary of Commodore Perry's victory at Lake Erie. The Vestry felt some embarrassment, it is said, when one of the donors impressively stipulated that the bells should be rung each year on his birthday, until it was learned that that birthday fell also on September 10th.
The aggregate weight of the sixteen bells is over sixteen thousand pounds, and the cost somewhat over $6,000. The tenor bell and two others were hung for round ringing, and the rest for chiming. Mr. Downes, who took great interest in the bells, said that they are of an unusual character in that they "are founded upon the proportion of the Spanish bell, being longer in the waist of the bell, resulting in giving the minor third in the harmonics, in dis- tinction from the major third then in common use." And Bishop Clark told Convention that the chime was "the largest and best in the Country."
The chimes were first rung on Easter Day, March 31, 1861, when an original composition was played on them by the organist, Lewis T. Downes.
There was special cause for jubilation in the chiming of that Easter morning for the beloved Rector had just declined a rather attractive and pressing call from Trinity Church, Newport. When this call came late in March the six vestrymen, aside from the Rector, held a special meeting at the home of Mr. Peirce at 18 George Street. They formally resolved that "We should be extremely sorry to lose our present Rector, believing that the interest of our church, both in its spiritual and temporal affairs, would be greatly damaged thereby;" and that "Personally we should be grieved at such a result, and, being of one mind, we with one voice strongly urge our Rector to decline the call." There- upon the Vestry in a body called on Bishop Clark at 34 George Street, only four doors away. "A free interchange of opinions was had and nothing definite was arranged."
Before Easter, however, the matter was settled, and the Vestry could say in the annual report, "Our hearts are gladdened by the decision of our Rector . . and we would respectfully call attention to the marked progress we have made under the Rector- ship of our worthy Bishop."
As the result of the building of the chapel, the erection of the tower and spire, the installing of the chimes and clock, and ex- tensive repairs both inside and out, Bishop Clark, in June, 1861, could report to Convention, meeting in Grace Church, "More than $30,000 have been raised and expended upon this noble edifice
RT. REV. THOMAS M. CLARK, D.D.
REV. D. OTIS KELLOGG, D.D.
REV. C. GEORGE CURRIE, D.D.
REV. CHARLES H. BABCOCK, D.D.
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during the last five years and we are left without the encumbrance of any debt."
The outbreak of the Civil War before the close of that Easter season brought new opportunities for usefulness to Grace Church and heavy responsibilities for its Rector, who by this time was looked upon as the chief pastor of City and State. The First Rhode Island Volunteers responded almost overnight to Lincoln's call on April 15th for 75,000 men "for three months only"; and on Saturday, the 20th, Bishop Clark addressed them as they marched through Providence to embark for the South. His intense interest is vividly exhibited in many places in his report to Convention in June. There he records among the events of this stirring week, "I confirmed one person, in the presence of a congregation gathered in my own house, on [Thursday] the 18th of April, who had ex- pected to come forward at the confirmation in Christ Church, Lonsdale, but having been suddenly summoned to go forth and aid in saving his country from the ravages of rebellion, he desired first to consecrate himself to the service of his Lord and Master, Jesus Christ." 1
The day after the sailing of the first troops being Sunday there was a special service in Grace Church.
"The chancel at Grace Church was draped with flags, and a beautiful silk banner decorated the pulpit, while the pews on either side of the middle aisle were filled with the reserves of the First Light Infantry, the Westerly Rifles, and the Woonsocket Guards. And every available space and even the sidewalks were crowded with people, all of whom joined heartily in singing 'My country 'tis of thee.'
"At the close of the service came the Bishop's address: 'Soldiers of Rhode Island, men and women of Rhode Island, you saw such a sight yesterday [the departure of the First Regiment, which he had already addressed] as your eye never rested on before. It was a day of darkness and of gloom, and yet it was a day of splendor and sublimity. It was a day which our children will remember as long as they live, and talk about to their children's children; and now I address another body of men equal in numbers, equal in position, equal in courage, equal in every element which goes to form the good citizen and good soldier, with those who have gone. My friends, most of you are very young, and you are called to take up your cross early in life. Remember in leaving us how
1 From Bishop's Address, Convention Journal, 1861.
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solemn is the trust we commit to you. All that is dear to us, all that is honorable is in your hands and yet, let me say to you, cherish no evil feeling against your foes. Be chiv- alrous as well as brave, kind to those who are defeated, tender in compassion to all to whom you can render any service, consistent with what is due allegiance to your flag.
*
"Soldiers, in the name of the citizens of this state, I now bid you farewell. God bless you and protect you! God bring you safely home to us again! But if it be otherwise ordered, if through sick- ness, or the violence of enemies, or any evil to which you may be exposed, you should never return, we will hallow your memory: we will cherish your name in our hearts, and we will provide for those you may leave to our care as brothers and as fathers. It is a solemn hour for us; such an hour as we never knew before. There is mingled, in this service, the notes of the dirge with the lofty pean of patriotism which God has infused into mankind. Now go forth and do your duty like men, like Christian men. Be always ready to die, and that you may be so ready, keep your hearts in a state of preparation, that if ever the trumpet sounds which calls you upward from the field of battle, and the angels come to bear your liberated souls away, you will be able to say, 'Lord, I am ready'." 1
In June, 1861, Bishop Clark went to Washington with the Second Rhode Island Regiment and lived for a week in their camp. On the return of the First Regiment after the disasters of Bull Run and Manassas Plain there was another great service in Grace Church, more sad and solemn than the one in April. Mrs. Sturte- vant describes the occasion thus: "Then again, the soldiers gathered in Grace Church, the service being held toward evening. The chancel, pulpit, and organ-loft were draped in black and upon tablets appeared the names of Slocum, the Colonel of the Second Rhode Island Regiment, who had been killed in action, and of Prescott, who was among the missing. Henry A. Prescott had been a devoted teacher in the Sunday School of Grace Church, where a tablet to his memory may still be found upon the wall of the new building. Upon the drapery in the chancel were these words: 'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.' Many of the families of the deceased were present, besides the field officers and staff of the First Regiment." 2
1 THOMAS MARCH CLARK by Mary Clark Sturtevant, pp. 83-84, Milwaukee, 1927.
2 THOMAS MARCH CLARK by Mary Clark Sturtevant, p. 87, Milwaukee, 1927.
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Bishop Clark was by this time a personage of national reputa- tion, owing in large part to his fame as a speaker. The Lyceum lecture, at its height in those decades, supplied a great opportunity for a really fine orator like the Rector of Grace Church to instruct and inspire audiences all over the country and to supplement in dignified fashion his very meagre salaries.1 No doubt there were many years when Bishop Clark earned more by his speaking and writing than he received from his professional work. A very popular lecture, imagining America in 1900 and called "The Next Fifty Years," was written by him in 1853. In a letter of 1863 he wrote that he was repeating that night his lecture "The Living Machine" for the one hundred and sixth time. He added whim- sically "Poor old machine." One lecture he is said to have de- livered three hundred and fifty times.
It is no wonder, then, that in the fall of 1861 the Rector of Grace Church was given a weighty national responsibility by being placed on the United States Sanitary Commission, to- gether with some ten other men of large renown and trained judgment. This position necessitated two or three visits to Washington each year. Of this Commission he wrote, "It was the most gigantic charity the world ever knew, the cash receipts being a little less than five millions of dollars, the estimated value of the supplies fifteen millions, and the expenditures of local branches more than two millions-in all about twenty-two millions."
Such responsibilities as these made the help of an assistant at Grace Church imperative. During the year previous, at his own expense, Dr. Clark had provided an assistant, probably the first to hold that position at Grace Church2 in any formal way, in the person of Rev. John Franklin Spaulding, later Bishop of Colorado. The Vestry in their report of Easter, 1861, refer to the value of having "a faithful and efficient assistant." By the fall of 1861 it seems that Mr. Spaulding had removed to Pennsylvania. As his successor, the Rector selected James DeWolf Perry, Jr., the father of the present Bishop of Rhode Island, a young divinity student then teaching in Bristol.
At the Bishop's bidding the young man was ordained deacon and for a year or more devoted his Saturdays and Sundays at least
1 Grace Church never paid Dr. Clark over $2,500 a year and furnished hardly more than $1,000 in all for his assistants.
2 In the clergy list in the Convention Journal for 1861, Mr. Spaulding is entered as "Assistant Minister of Grace Church."
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to Grace Church. Dr. Perry years later wrote a very interesting account of his relations with Bishop Clark for Mrs. Sturtevant's Memoir of her father.
No record of any successor to Mr. Perry1 appears until the engagement of Rev. William S. Boardman, whose name is in the Convention records of June, 1864, and who probably began his duties in May of that year. In December he left Grace Church to accept a rectorship in Albany. The Corporation at Easter, 1864, had at last made an appropriation ($800) for an assistant and on the resignation of Mr. Boardman elected Rev. Benjamin W. Atwell as Assistant Minister to serve until Easter, 1865. Mr. Atwell had been a Universalist minister and was ordained deacon at the time he began his duties at Grace Church.2
At the Annual Meeting at Easter, 1865, the number of vestry . men was increased from seven to eleven. This was in accord with the strong recommendation of the Vestry in their report. "The small number of the Vestry for several years has placed the affairs of the Corporation in the hands of a very few, the remaining members paying little attention to details. This change it is hoped will be a cause of more immediate interest to a greater number than heretofore." As Bishop Clark was at this time left off the list, it seems likely that the change was largely at his suggestion, and in the nature of preparation for his retirement from the rectorship, which his Convention address that June showed was felt by him to be well nigh imperative in the near future.
As the Annual Meeting of 1866 drew near it was becoming com- mon knowledge that the Bishop would ask the Diocesan Con- vention in June to arrange for his devoting himself entirely to the work of the Diocese. Indeed, the Bishop had for some time been raising a fund3 to furnish a suitable episcopal salary without in- creasing the burden on the parishes through assessment, and the parishioners of Grace Church had contributed over $10,000 for this purpose.
1 Mr. Perry left in 1862, probably in the fall. Mr. Boardman's name is signed as "Assistant Rector" to the parish report of 1864 but appears in the vestry records and clergy list as "Associate Rector".
2 The exact duration of Mr. Atwell's services at Grace Church is uncertain; but at the end of May, 1865, he was in charge of the Church of the Messiah.
3 By June this fund amounted to $40,000. The subscriptions from Grace Church were second only to those from St. John's ($15,000) and more than from all the other churches of the diocese together.
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In the Vestry Report of 1866 it was noted that "The Bishop is likely to resign his rectorship to devote himself wholly to the Diocese." With the approach of a new era in people's minds, the report devoted a few solemn words to retrospect and survey.
"Let us thank our heavenly Father for our continued strength and prosperity, and that He has granted unto us during the year past, peace and unity within our own borders as well as a happy release from national strife. The present healthy condition of our corporate finances with the fact that we have no debt while our current income has fully met our current expenses will awaken, in the minds of those who were early connected with this church organization, a recollection of their very different condition when they with self-denying spirit were striving year after year to build up this sanctuary to the Almighty and to provide here an enduring structure in which they, their children and their children's children, might assemble for Holy praise and prayer. Many of those Fathers and Mothers have gone to their reward but some remain who can unite with us in this grateful tribute to their memory."
Bishop Clark resigned the Rectorship in a letter dated Septem- ber 1, 1866, although in the interval of almost eight months before his successor took office he officiated many times and accepted nearly $600 for his services from the time of his resignation to Easter, 1867. The Vestry passed several appropriate resolutions expressing profound regret at the separation, deep appreciation of what the Bishop had done for the parish, and cordial good wishes for his future in his episcopal office.
Thus ended the second longest rectorship in the life of Grace Church in its first hundred years and then ended also the period of nearly a quarter of a century in which the fortunes of the Church and of the Diocese were closely intertwined. These years had been years of inestimable advantage to Grace Church, so that it had become, as Bishop Clark said publicly in 1865, one of the largest and most important parishes in the whole Church.
It was providential that Bishop Henshaw's successor proved a man of such wisdom and power. In 1855 much had been well begun that required time for its accomplishment. Bishop Clark had just the qualities of ability and character needed to bring to completion the ambitious plans for the church edifice, to strengthen the internal organization of the Church, and to fill its pews with supporters. Perhaps most significant of all, he was admirably fitted to secure for a vigorous Episcopal Church a natural and recognized place among the leading forces for good
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in the community. Bishop Clark by the close of the Civil War had done all this. He had demonstrated his great effectiveness as a faithful pastor, a sagacious leader, an eloquent preacher, and a sympathetic interpreter of the thought of his Church to the com- munity.
Among Dr. Clark's outstanding qualities were his mental alert- ness and progressiveness. He had a liberal and inquiring mind and a generous recognition of the minds of others. This may have been one of the reasons for his great interest in and influence over college students and the younger element in the parish, which were especially valuable to Grace Church not only in the years of the War but those before and after. To their anxiously inquiring spirits his openmindedness and true liberality were very invigorat- ing. To this quality in Bishop Clark Bishop Doane paid the following strong tribute:
"In my judgment, he was far and away the broadest Church- man in the best sense of the word, almost the only broad one I have ever known among those who either accept or fall heir to that distinction of Churchmanship, because he had absolutely his own clear and positive convictions and, as absolutely, his recognition of the liberty of other people's convictions in the honest acknowledgment of the fact that there are differences of doctrinal positions within the broad lines of the Church, and that every man had the same right to his own convictions that he had himself."1
How little of a partisan he was in days when party spirit ran high, and what importance he attached to harmony and unity of action could be made clear by scores of quotations. In his Convention address of 1859 he said, "It is a very rare thing to hear the Shibboleths of party even so much as mentioned in the Diocese. Thank God for that!" Later in speaking of the General Con- vention, he said, "In all matters affecting freedom of action and reasonable adaptation of the Church to the times, the House of Bishops have manifested a readiness to meet the actual emergencies about us."
ยท Dr. Fiske, the best known High Churchman in Rhode Island, in his discriminating memorial sermon bore witness to these qualities :
"Bishop Clark has generally been accounted 'Broad,' so called, and considered, if any man could be so considered, the founder
1 THOMAS MARCH CLARK by Mary Clark Sturtevant, p. 74, Milwaukee, 1927.
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of the Broad Church school of thought in the American Church, but I scarcely think he would like to be thought of as the founder of a party. There was about him very little of the partisan as generally understood. He was one whom all could claim. His mind was naturally, I should judge, somewhat speculative and adventurous. It was explorative, on the lookout for fresh fields and eager to make and appropriate new discoveries." 1
Bishop Clark joined a keen sense of humor to a strongly puri- tanic sense of discipline and a strain of melancholy-in later years very pronounced, but apparent even in the years of his rectorship. Many of his war experiences left a lasting impression and colored his attitude toward the life around him. How stern he could be in his self-control is well brought out by the account Dr. Perry gives of his breaking-off smoking.
"I ventured to remark that when I was his assistant he was an habitual, if not an excessive, smoker; and asking him when and how he gave up the habit, he replied: 'One evening, alone and thoughtful, sitting in front of an open fire, I was enjoying a good cigar, when I said to myself: Tom Clark, you are a slave to your cigar, and slavery of whatever degree and of any kind does not become a Christian man; I threw my cigar into the fire and have not smoked from that time.' Asked if he did not miss what he had enjoyed during so many years, and if the abrupt change did not require a struggle, he replied, 'Yes, but only for a few days, and the result was worth the effort."2
The fame of Bishop Clark rested, however, particularly on his great power as a preacher and speaker. To strong intellect, keen humor, and intense feelings he added a presence of marked impressiveness and a voice of unusual clearness, richness, and charm. Bishop Lawrence says of him that he was "the first preacher I ever heard who did not use the conventional sermonic language"; and quotes Bishop Potter's comment: "Bishop Clark was the first preacher in our Church and probably in the Church of England to talk English."
With such naturalness of speech joined to his deep moral earnest- ness it is no wonder that his hearers felt the spell of his eloquence. Mrs. Sturtevant records this well-considered tribute from Rev. John B. Diman.
1 THOMAS MARCH CLARK by Mary Clark Sturtevant, p. 188, Milwaukee, 1927.
2 THOMAS MARCH CLARK by Mary Clark Sturtevant, p. 182, Milwaukee, 1927.
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"Bishop Clark was one of the great orators of his times. I feel that this remark may be made not in that spirit of exaggeration that sometimes quite excusably enters into a panegyric, but as a simple fact. He had all the natural gifts that make the real orator; a massive and magnetic presence, a full toned and sym- pathetic voice that could be so controlled and modulated as to express every kind of feeling, a rich and poetic imagination, in- tense human sympathy, and a facility in speaking which never seemed to fail him." 1
It is not to be wondered at that Grace Church with such a man for leader made great strides forward in its position in the com- munity and exercised a profound influence on the lives of its members. Nor did Bishop Clark's valuable oversight cease with his resignation of the rectorship, since for nearly forty years thereafter as bishop of the diocese he was ever ready with wise advice and loving interest to promote the prosperity of his old Church.
1 THOMAS MARCH CLARK by Mary Clark Sturtevant, p. 225, Milwaukee, 1927.
CHAPTER IV
THREE RECTORS FROM AFAR
KELLOGG-CURRIE-GREER
1867-1888
All the first five rectors of Grace Church were New England born, but for some reason, impossible now to ascertain, the Vestry went well to the South to select the next three. Quite likely Bishop Clark felt such a step would help to broaden the Church here and to unify the Church throughout the country. Probably suggestions were made by Dr. Vinton, who, as an influential rector in Philadelphia and New York, came in contact with many clergy from other parts of the country and to whose influence when in Boston Dr. Kellogg attributed his decision to enter the ministry.
The first mention of any candidate to succeed Bishop Clark is in a vote of the Vestry of December, 1866, electing Amos D. Smith, S. C. Kinsley and John B. Anthony a committee to pro- ceed to Philadelphia to hear the Rev. Day Otis Kellogg, Jr. On the receipt of their report, the Vestry voted to call a Corporation meeting and request the Corporation to send its own committee to hear this young preacher. The Corporation was so well sat- isfied with the report, however, that it voted to recommend that the Vestry extend the call at once. This the Vestry accordingly did and secured Mr. Kellogg as Rector at a salary of $3500.
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