USA > Virginia > Henrico County > Henrico County > Annals of Henrico parish > Part 11
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GOD TO VIRGINIA.
"He that walketh in darkness and hath no light, let him trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon his God."
VIRGINIA TO GOD.
"God be merciful to us and bless us and cause the light of thy countenance to shine upon us; let thy ways be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations."
ENGLAND TO VIRGINIA.
"Behold I bring you glad tidings-unto you is born a Saviour, even Christ the Lord."
VIRGINIA TO ENGLAND.
"How beautiful are the feet of them that bring glad tid- ings and publish salvation."
Men to be reached by such noble appeals as that were not men of the common, the baser sort. This same high hearted religious spirit appears in them as we see them again, after they have crossed the Atlantic and landed here, near to us and begin the work of building America. Whitaker writes of Sir Thomas Dale, soon after they land in 1611: "Our religious and valiant governor, a man of great knowledge in divinity and of a good conscience in all things, both which
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be rare in a martial man." Again he writes a few months pro afterwards: "We preach in the forenoon, catechise in the to afternoon ; every Saturday I exhort in Sir Thomas Dale's the house." In 1612 Pocahontas had been taken prisoner by the cop English, and Dale is now Governor of the whole colony. He Sta labored long and tenderly to ground the faith of Jesus dis Christ in the heart of this Indian Princess. He writes about con her in 1613: "Were it but for the gaining of this one pre-five cious soul, I would think my time, toil and present stay well tot spent." Whitaker baptizes her, and in April, 1614, marries poly her to John Rolfe. Very soon after this she and her husband removed to the neighborhood of Henricopolis, not far from hie Richmond, and there they live until Pocahontas leaves Vir- Th ginia to die in England. There this famous Indian Prin- and cess and gracious child of the wilderness, whose blood flows in the veins of some of your own people to-day, listened to the sermons, joined in the responses of the English Liturgy che and knelt at the communion table of this, your old parish, in citi its infant days. I should think you would always read that hu passage of your history with tender and loving eyes. Just st after this Whitaker writes: "Though my promise of three years' service to my country be expired, I will abide in my vocation here until I be lawfully called from hence." Your rector, in his admirable summary of the history of the Parish, says : "He was indeed lawfully called by Him whose provi- dence is supreme," within a very short time, for in the spring That of 1617 this, our first rector, the gentle and earnest Whita- ker, known to history as the "Apostle of Virginia," was neco called away by sudden death. In 1619 a successor to the rec- torship of the Parish is found in the Rev. Thomas Bargrave. During his ministry a law was passed by the Colonial Legis- chi lature, which illustrates the connection between Church and the State, imported to America from the mother country. Per- or p haps some clergyman with small salary and poorly paid. who struggles to do his work and feed and clothe his chil- dren, might find some grim comfort and cool philosophy in this provision and advice of the State to our early mission aries. The law enacts that each clergyman shall receive from his parishoners 1,500 pounds of tobacco and 16 barrels pobl
of corn, quite a good provision for the times. But the law der
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proceeds to say that if the levy should prove unequal in value ;o 200 pounds the minister must be content with less. On the one side it was doubtless a signal advantage to the Epis- copal Church in its infancy to receive the support of the State as the established Church; on the other hand there were disadvantages from that (to our American ideas) unnatural connection, which hindered its development and progres- sively weakened its power with the masses of the people up o the period of the Revolution, when the connection was dis- solved. The Wardens of the Episcopal Church, under the aws of the State, discharged in a measure the duties of our chief of police and of your attorneys for the Commonwealth. They were the legal guardians of public order and peace, and the vindicators of justice. When these officers repre- sent, as among us, the sovereignty of the people as the foun- ain of law, and when they discharge that duty faithfully, hey ought to be among the most honored and popular of our citizens. Transfer that function to the officers of your churches and at once you would realize the inevitable estrangement of the hearts of the people from the church y reason of the unnatural coalition and identification of civic and ecclesiastical functions.
The Episcopal Church suffered from this prejudice from 10 fault of its own. Nay, it is a part of the debt of gratitude hat all of our citizens of every denomination owe to her, hat in our early days she bore this burden and discharged his thankless duty that had been imposed upon her with becoming fidelity. With the time at my disposal I might ell you the story of the life of this Parish from 1619 to the building of this Church in 1741; of the great university for which the money had almost been raised in England and in nd er- the Colony, which would have been located at Henricopolis, or perhaps here in Richmond; of the great calamity of the id, Indian massacre in 1622, which swept over the Colony, il destroyed Henricopolis and almost extinguished the Parish in und put an end to the scheme of the university. The Parish on- 'evives from the calamity, struggles on with its ups and ire lowns, its changes and vicissitudes, recording here and there elspoble work from faithful pastors, and noble sacrifice and aw levotion from its members. When your vestry book was
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begun in 1730, the principal Church in the Parish was Curles Church, on the north side of James river, ten miles below Richmond. That Church has been demolished in the last half century. The only relic of it that remains is the bowl of your baptismal font. It was found miles away from the site of Curles Church in a cellar, where it was used as a mortar for beating hominy. And here it is to hold the sacred symbol of the waters of baptism, wherein God de clares your children to be His children, and the Holy Spirit His gift to them, and Christ's redemption their glorious pos- session. In 1739, under the ministry of the Rev. Wm. Stith the grandson of William Randolph, of Turkey Island, who had received the best education that America and England could give, and who afterwards became the historian of Vir ginia, the plan for building a new church was agitated. After some debate, and acting under the advice of William Byrd a distinguished gentleman of the Colony, who gave the land the Vestry of Henrico Parish chose this spot, called Indian Hill, in Richmond. Under the superintendence of Richard Randolph it was built and entered for worship on the 10th of June, 1741, one hundred and fifty years ago to-day Your kind rector and friends, who take a loving pride in the honored memories of the Parish, have pointed out to you anc to visitors from all parts of our country, who never leave Richmond without a visit to St. John's Church, the lines the walls and the dimensions of that old Church. It ha: been added to and altered since, but the old bricks, the pulpit the sounding board, the timbers and the forms are all here ir this building where we worship to-day. It stands here and does its blessed work for the infant days of Richmond, train ing its children, marrying its young men and maidens, bury ing its dead, and breaking the bread of life to its people through the colony days until the cloud of the Revolution breaks upon the land. The Virginia Convention of 177! met in these walls on the 20th of March. Mr. Selden, the rector, and the ancestor of many of your worthiest familie to-day, is the chaplain of that famous Convention. It is com posed of remarkable men for any age or any country. Ou: children are familiar with the great debate upon the question of peace or war with the mother country. Yonder is the
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spot, tradition tells us, where Patrick Henry, the greatest natural orator of his time, arose and uttered the words that perhaps told more upon the world than any single speech that history tells us of. They tell us that his voice was calm when he began, but when he closed it shook the walls of this old church, and sounded like the shout of a warrior. When he sat down the assembly had lost its composure; they all leaned over and kept still, their eyes fixed on his pale face, and then by common consent, the die was cast and Virginia cast in her lot and led the cause which triumphed in the establishment of popular government and American liberty. Before the eight year war was done, this old Church passed through an experience of desecration and humiliation. When Richmond, during the Revolutionary War, fell into the hands of Arnold, this sacred place was made a barracks for the British soldiery. It must have seemed to pastor and peo- ple that the final word in their parochial history was then being written. But the storm passes away and the sun comes out again, and the old Church takes its place as the leader of the affairs of the Church in Virginia. In May of 1785 the convention of the reorganized Diocese of Virginia was held in Richmond, and its religious service was held in this church, the sermon being preached by the Rev. John Bracken. Edmund Randolph, afterwards Governor of Vir- ginia and then Attorney-General of the United States, and then Secretary of State, and pilot at the helm of government in its first voyage over untried and stormy seas-this man was the lay delegate of your Church in that important Con- vention. He drew up this remarkable appeal to the members of the Episcopal Church in Virginia, representing its wasted condition, and exhorting them to rally to its support. In it occurs the sentence which has become famous in Church his- tory : "Of what is the Church now possessed ? Nothing but the glebes and your affections." Randolph also reported and advocated resolutions that were passed by this Virginia Con- vention with the members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the other States of America! For thirty years the Rev. Mr. Buchanan ministered in this Church; years of depression they were for your Parish, but years of brave and cheerful and self-denying work for your pastor. A kindly
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and genial book has been published here in Richmond telling us of the loving brotherhood between your rector, Dr. Buch- anan, and the Rev. John Blair, Presbyterian minister in this city. The Church was loaned to our sister Church, and each minister, Blair the Presbyterian, and Buchanan the Episco- palian, ministered to their respective congregations on alter- nate Sundays. It may be that the kindly relations between these two pastors of different churches may have helped to transmit to our people in Richmond a spirit of sweet reason- ableness and of kindly brotherhood between the various denominations of Christians. To this simple beginning, under the blessing of God, may be traced perhaps a stream of higher Christian civilization upon the subject of the rela- tions between the various Protestant Churches of Christen- dom than we find in some other communities. The Church that asserts exclusive claims for its ministry, its worship, its organization, is unconsciously to itself its own worst enemy. The Church that believes in itself, is loyal to itself, but loves and believes in and welcomes with a brother's fidelity the sister churches around it, is the Church for the people of our land. The time would fail me to tell more of the story of the rectors who have ministered to the generations through all the years of the present century. of the Rev. William Hart, who comes after the death of Dr. Buchanan in 1822, who seems to have been among the first of the Christian min- istry in our country to recognize the power and the blessing of Sunday school work as the nursery of the Christian Church. Then the Rev. William Lee, who becomes rector in 1828, and under whose ministry the Church takes the name of "St. John's"; of the Rev. Edward Peet, the Rev. Robt. Croes, the Rev. J. H. Morrison, and of the Rev. Henry S. Kepler, of the Rev. John T. Points, the devoted mission- ary who occupied the rectorship in succession from 1830 to 1860; of the Rev. Dr. Norwood, who begins his ministry in 1862 and resigns the rectorship in 1868-years of tribu- lation, but years when your people were making names in history that are never going to die. Dr. Norwood's form, his face, his strong words in this pulpit, his faithful pas- torate, are all living in the memories and the hearts of your people to-day. Then comes Dr. Henry Wall, of whom you
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say that his preaching was full of grace and power. He leaves you in 1875. Then comes the Rev. Alexander W. Weddell; you can tell me more about him than I could tell you. He had high aims and a manly heart, a lofty enthu- siasm in the work of ministering to souls. You have put a beautiful monument at the door of your church that tells in eloquent words the record that he made among you. For your children's sake may God keep his memory green, and here your old church has stood, all through these years that we have travelled. It has been looking down from this hill upon Richmond and seen all the stages of its life. It has rejoiced in the birthdays and in the cornerstone laying of all these other churches, its children. On the hill by the river it has watched the sure growth of your beautiful city of the dead, and through the trees it has caught glimpses from its tower of the marble monuments, in the morning and the evening sunshine. Down beneath, the scattered village of the colony is growing into a city ; far out on the landscape iron roads are coming year by year to bring commerce to its merchants and custom to its industries. The hum of ma-
chinery, the multitudinous sounds of a city have been grow- ing deeper year by year, as they have been borne up to the old Church on the hill. How wonderful is the moral, and spiritual significance of a city. Some one has said: God made the country, man made the city ; but God made the city, too. The city is His ordinance for the necessities of human civilization. He ordained it to be the workshop for the country ; the point where the commodities of all climes meet and thence are distributed to the peoples and the nations. And it is His ordinance that it is also the type and the prophecy of the final destiny of a redeemed humanity, of a city not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, its throng- ng toilers, its great charities, its courts of justice, its halls of education, and of legislation, its blessed homes, its sor- cows, its sins, its shame, and amid them all its Churches, pointing away, pointing upward. What is a city but a real- zation, a living symbol of a world that is fallen, but a world hat has been redeemed ? And the Church of Christ the Saviour of men, how it stands at the centre of all the activities ind varied life of the city, how it interprets the city to itself,
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how the home finds its meaning in the Church, to train its children to be members of Christ and His children, how the weary toiler, the merchant harassed with his cares in the week come to the Church on Sunday to drink of the springs of Elim in the worship and the word of God, to refresh him. How the dens of shame, the homes of the prodigal look away and up to the Church dimly and gropingly and cry, "Come to us, seek us, save us, for we are lost." Such is a city ; such is the Church that stands in its midst. In closing, let me point to one or two lessons that St. John's teaches us to-day. It teaches us to persevere, it teaches us to hold on, it teaches us that the day of our usefulness and our work as a Church may seem to be at an end, but we must be patient. God has work for us to do. Three times in its history its Vestry and its people were about to move away and build a new church, but the providence of God kept it here. When the Monumental is built you said, "That will take away our life," and it seemed to do it for a long time. When St. Paul's is built you said, "Our fate is sealed, we must not expect our people to pass by these beautiful Churches and come miles away to worship in these old walls." But the old Monu- mental is new and strong and full of Gospel life, and St. Paul's is strong and beautiful, and old St. John's is here still -more vigorous in its old age a long way than in its youth, warmer with the spirit of Christ than it was in the morning of its life, doing a wider work than it has ever done before. The lesson is, hold on ; the tide may ebb to-night but it comes in glad and strong in the morning. And then St. John's has its lesson to the country, to our loved land on this its one hundred and fiftieth birthday. You remember the name of the man I mentioned who superintended the building of these walls in 1741. You remember again the same family name of the man, the layman who represented you in the impor- tant councils of the Church after the Revolution. These men were great grandsons of one of the earliest members of your Parish. A simple, strong, true man he must have been ; out of his loins sprang three great men. He was the ancestor of Chief Justice Marshall, the greatest jurist of America. He was the ancestor of Thomas Jefferson, the greatest political thinker of America. He was the ancestor of Robert E .. Lee,
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the greatest soldier of America. He was also the ancestor of that other statesman who was Junior Warden after the Revolution, and who represented you in the Diocesan Council of your Church, and whom, though much misunderstood, I regard as one of the greatest and purest of American poli- ticians. Strange that they all should have come of the off- spring of this simple strong man, who lived at Turkey Island, just below our city. St. John's to-day reminds its country of old days of plain living and high thinking, and speaks words of warning to these days, when greed of gain threatens to paralize the intellect and corrupt the heart and under- mine the foundations of the nation. It tells of days of political purity to these days of strange and defiant and shocking political corruption. It speaks words of hope, too, to its dear country. It says, I have had my dark days and have seen the light break through the clouds. Trust God- trust in the people led by the spirit of God. Trust your godly mothers to teach the children the ten commandments. Trust your godly fathers to teach your boys to keep their bodies in temperance, soberness and chastity. Trust your churches and stand by them as they raise the standards against the enemies that come in like a flood. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Love your neighbor as yourself and reform and redeem your country by first getting the spirit of Christ to reform and redeem you. That is St. John's message of hope to America. It speaks to us to-day of the permanency of the Christian Church and Gospel. Other institutions may grow old, like machines and old vehicles that are superseded by the forces of nature that we harness to do man's work and to turn the wheels of his mate- 'ial progress; but steam and electricity, natural selection and evolution, science and wealth cannot cure the soul. Each new soul that is born begins from the beginning; each new generation has the same temptation to fight; makes the same mistakes ; wanders into the same errors ; makes the same ship- wreck. Sin and sorrow and death are always the same, ilways new, and the Church of the living God, and that rings to the nations the healing leaves of the tree of life, nust stand to tell men of the fountain for sin and of the hope f redemption and of the gift of the Spirit.
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God bless you, dear old Church, minister and people, and give you in the coming years, when Richmond may widen out into a great city, a still wider field for your activities and blessings more abundant to crown your work. Keep close to the promise, "Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."
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ADDRESS Delivered by Hon. William Wirt Henry,
GRANDSON OF PATRICK HENRY, AT OLD ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, JUNE 10, 1891, 150TH ANNIVERSARY.
Few buildings in our land have withstood the varied casu- alties of time for one hundred years ; very few have remained for one hundred and fifty years. We would fain believe that a special providence has watched over and preserved this frail wooden structure since 1741, when it was erected, and kept it as a sacred shrine, where piety and patriotism have mingled their devotions. It is most appropriate that this generation should be reminded of its history by these exer- cises, and their veneration be quickened in recalling the im- portant events in Church and State of which it stands as a witness. In attempting to perform the part with which I have been honored on this interesting occasion, I shall be forced to take but a hurried view of the civil events, and of the distinguished actors in them, which have made this the most memorable building which remains in our State. Any attempt to do full justice to the subject would far transcend the limits of an address and would reach the proportions of a volume.
In the Vestry Book of Henrico Parish the following entries are found :
"At a Vestry held for Henrico Parish, on the 20th day of December, Anno 1739: Present-Mr. William Stith, Min- ister; James Powell Cocke and James Cocke, Church War- dens ; Richard Randolph, John Redford, John Povall, James Williamson, William Fuller and Robert Mosby, Gent., Ves- trymen. It is agreed that a Church be built on the most con- venient spot of ground near ye spring, on Richardson's Road,
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on the south side of Bacon's Branch, on the land of the Hon- orable William Byrd, Esq., to be sixty feet long and twenty- five feet broad, and fourteen feet pitched, to be finished in a plain manner after the moddle of Curl's Church. Richard Randolph, Esq., Gent., undertakes the said building and engages to finish the same by the tenth day of June, which shall be in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and forty-one; for which the Vestry agrees to pay him the sum of three hundred and seventeen pounds, ten shillings, current money, to be paid by the amount of sales of twenty thousand pounds of tobacco annually, to be lev'd on the Parish and sold here for money, till the whole payment be compleat."
"At a Vestry held for Henrico Parish, the 13th day of October, Anno Dom. 1740: Present-Mr. William Stith, clerk; James Powel Cocke, James Cocke, Gent., Church Wardens, Richard Randolph, John Redford, Bowler Cocke, John Williamson and Wm. Fuller, Gent., Vestrymen.
"Richard Randolph, Gentleman, produces a letter directed to him, from the Hon'ble William Byrd, Esquire, which is read as followeth, viz. :
" 'October 12, 1740.
"'Sir,-I should, with great pleasure, oblige the Vestry, and particularly yourself, in granting them an acre to build their Church upon, but there are so many roads already through that land, that the damage to me would be great to have another of a mile long cut through it. I shall be very glad if you would please to think Richmond a proper place, and considering the great number of people that live below it, and would pay their devotions there, that would not care to go so much higher, I can't but think it would be agreeable to most of the people; and if they will agree to have it there, I will give them two of the best lots, that are not taken up, and besides give them any pine timber they can find on that side of Shockoe Creek, and wood for burning of bricks into the bargain. I hope the Gent. of the Vestry will believe me a friend to the Church when I make them the offer, and that I am both theirs, sir, and,
'Your most humble serv't, W. BYRD.'
"Whereupon the question is put whether the said Church
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