The History of Washington County in the Vermont historical gazetteer : including a county chapter and the local histories of the towns of Montpelier., Part 65

Author: Hemenway, Abby Maria, 1828-1890
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Montpelier, Vt. : Vermont Watchman and State Journal Press
Number of Pages: 1064

USA > Vermont > Washington County > Montpelier > The History of Washington County in the Vermont historical gazetteer : including a county chapter and the local histories of the towns of Montpelier. > Part 65

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into it and make the place of His feet glo- rious.

I have thought it not inappropriate to this occasion, to ask your attention to the uses of the material temple ; the moral and spiritual purpose of such a house as that in which we are assemhled to-day; and why we should build it, and why we should love it!

I. To begin with its lowest uses, it will be in the first place an intellectual land- mark, cultivating the best thought and the best taste.

As it towers in conspicuous beauty high above the surrounding buildings, it is a natural expression in solid stone of an in- tellectual truth. May we not say that it illustrates, on a small scale, Bishop Butler's argument upon the necessity for a visible church? It is a silent, but most eloquent, preacher of the first and highest of all truths. It embodies and visibly perpet- uates the institutions of Christianity. A visible church is a standing memorial of the duty we owe to our Creator, and by the form of religion ever before our eyes, serves to remind us of the reality. And the more impressive and beautiful the form, the more easily will the transition be to the true character and glory of the ob- ject of worship. Throughout the civilized world, each of the temples of christendom bears a voiceless but effective testimony for Christ. No thoughtful man ever looks at it from without, even if he never enters it as a worshipper, but he asks himself: " What does this building represent? Why is it here? Is it the monument of an ex- tinct sentiment, or of a living conviction ? Is it the ornamented sepulcher of religious faith, or the powerful instrument of a springing and advancing life?" Thus the material building suggests a line of thought, backward and forward. It is a history, or a prophecy. Its dim aisles, and vaulted corridors and arched ceilings, its columns hewn into transparent strength, and its roof painted with the colors of the iris, have a message to men which they can but hear. It is a message of warning, or a message of hope.

There is a city of the old world whose

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palaces and squares are now falling into the sea, out of which she rose. Never did earthly city have a more beautiful shrine. It was at once a type of the redeemed church of God, and an illuminated scroll of His written word. Neither gold nor crystal was spared in its building, and it was adorned with all manner of precious stones. The skill and the treasures of the East gilded every letter and illumined every page, till " the temple shone from afar like the star of the Magi." And as I walked along the alleys of that strange city, or floated upon its liquid streets, and remembered how she had thrown off all shame and restraint, and had become filled with the madness of the whole earth, the falling frescoes of gold, and the sinking columns of marble of her great cathedral, seemed to utter in the dead ear of Venice, " Know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." Her sin was done in the face of the House of God, burning with the letters of His law. And the building, now shored up from its watery grave by huge timbers, has a his- tory, in which one who sees it, must read both the triumphs and the corruptions of Christianity.

There were no material churches, or scarcely any, in the early ages of persecu- tion. When the church dared to come forth from the catacombs and live in pub- lic, she had already triumphed-her places of worship were the symbols of victory. And do they not now speak to our reason and our hearts, and to our imaginations, somewhat as of old? What means the house of christian assembly, but that God delighteth still in the communion of His saints? What means the tapering spire, but that our hopes are beyond the sky to which it points? What means the cross which rises from the eastern porch, but that the atoning blood which flowed on calvary, warrants these hopes in sinners, such as we? What means the declaration traced in the centre of yon orbed window, but that our peace, comfort and salvation are centered in the triune Godhead? What means the lamb pencilled over organ and choir, but that all our praise is due unto

Him who hath loved us and washed us from our sins in his blood? What means that open Bible, translucent with the light of Heaven, and shedding its beams down upon the head of the preacher, save that God's word is the source of His wisdom, and the hiding-place of His power? What mean these inscriptions on the walls, over arch, aisle and door, except, not that Rome has a monopoly of Scripture or of Heaven, but that the Son of God is the impregnable foundation of the Christian Church, and faith in Him the only way of entering His kingdom and glory? And what signify these colors, which cling so fondly to the instructed eye, and bind the very senses to the chariot wheels of ce- lestial meditation, save that God Himself would be worshipped in the beauty of ho- liness? There are very few of us appre- ciate the nobleness and sacredness of color. It is not a subordinate beauty. It is not a mere source of sensual pleasure. He who says so, speaks carelessly. What would the world be if the blue were taken from the sky, and the gold from stars and suns, and the silver from the moon, and the ver- dure from the leaves, and the crimson from the blood of man, and the flush from the cheek, the radiance from the eye, and the whole earth were clothed in an ashen gray? Should we not then know what we owe to color? The fact is, that of all God's gifts to the sight of man, color is the holiest, the most beautiful and divine. The great architect of the world has employed colors in His creation as the accompaniment of all that is purest and most precious. He has laid the foundations of His temple in jasper and sapphire, and garnished its blue dome with stars of light. We shall not worship Him in less holiness, if we worship Him in more beauty than our fathers knew. Even as we gaze upon the outline of the chief buildings which have been reared for Christ, our thoughts must be insensibly affected. In the training of the soul we must subordinate the senses to the service of religion. And the beauty of the church is not a poor teacher, for the eye cannot choose but see, and it will sug- gest to the imagination, to the heart of

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many a man, the supremacy, the great- ness, the solitary magnificence of God.

There are many tendencies of thought in our day that serve to obscure this primal truth. Men are wont to merge Jehovah in the work of His hands, or to deny the ex- istence of His Son. The great questions which are debated around us, touch not simply the person of Jesus Christ, but the existence of God himself. Skeptical in- fluences are being constantly infiltrated into the thought of society, into the minds of the young, and into the life of the world.

Now this church takes such debated and assailed truths, and a great deal else, for granted. It stands to the minds of the very youth that play and wander under its shadow, in the place of an argument. It represents in a visible, material form the . settled faith of the church. It lends new charm to that faith. It tacitly forces the truth of God's majestic separation from, and infinite superiority to, His creatures, fairly in upon the intelligence of a child. It does more. It forces in upon his con- viction, also, the nearness of God to man, and the love which He bears to us.

This is God's house, separate from the whirl of the streets, from the passion of the hour, from the jostle of life. It stands alone among other buildings, unlike them all, more massive, more imposing, more elegant. But its doors are open. The mighty noise of its music swells through its arches. Its floor is moistened by the tears of love and penitence. The King Himself holds court in it, and His wor- shippers throng His presence, and carry away His bounty. So its silent and me- lodious eloquence is ever more of man's distance from God, of God's nearness to man. Will God in very deed dwell with man? The temple of prayer answers the question as no argument can. Some of us may remember when our minds were first opening in a world of thought, and groping their way in the twilight toward a deeper and higher knowledge. Into this mental confusion, how would not a mate- rial symbol of the truth have helped to in- troduce the welcome reign of light and

order? Tell a child that revealed religion is the highest of all truths, that all other truth leads up to it, or radiates from it, and he will faintly, if at all, guess your meaning. He has not yet climbed high enough to get your idea. But throw your doctrine into a concrete form, so that his eye, and ear and imagination shall be taken captive ; let it speak to him from the timbers and beams of the house, from the colors of its walls and ceilings, from the stones of its foundations and structure, from the music of its organ, as well as from the lips of the preacher, and you shall speedily make your way to his thought and to his heart, and give him a lasting form and impress. He may not be con- scious of the powers at work upon him, or the result achieved within him. He will receive the moulding influence as the tree drinks in its verdure, as the flower absorbs its loveliest tints from the air and sunlight, but it will form his character and his habit, and give him a lifelong loyalty to the truth he has received. As the years pass over him, and full of good service, with the peace of his God and Savior in his soul, he feels that he is sinking towards his grave, he will look back, perchance, to this church as the first instructor of his im- mortal spirit. Here was mapped out the truth which came from Heaven, and which can alone redeem a sinful or sustain a dying man. He will then remember how in the home of his youth, when all naked statement of truth would have been lost upon him, there was one building among many, noblest in its proportions, richest in its ornamentation, which pointed to a truth, the knowledge and love of which was life eternal. And his gratitude, multiplied by the gratitude of others, from genera- tion to generation, will justify the wisdom of those builders, who would not suffer their eyes to sleep, nor their eyelids to slumber, nor the temples of their heads to take any rest, until they had found a temple of the Lord, a habitation for the God of Jacob. He, and such as he, till the last stone is not left upon another, will bless those who thus set forth, in language which all could understand, the preciousness, the unap-

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proached preciousness of our divine Re- deemer's gospel.

2. A second use of the material temple is the culture of reverence. Reverence is not merely a virtue, to find its exercise when we go to church. It ought to be the habit of the soul. Reverence is the recognition of greatness. It is the soul seeing something higher, better, nobler than itself. Woe to him who has no en- thusiasm, no passionate love for persons, services or institutions which represent God, and who, therefore, has no rever- ence ; who believes that there is no great- ness before which it should be his happi- · ness to lie prostrate, and towards which he may not aspire. Nothing is more cer- tain than the intellectual and moral deg- radation of him who never feels veneration or love. The sneer which he lavishes on all around, reacts on his own moral life. The insolence which marks his address is traced in every line of his face. He whose motto is "Nil admirari;" who sees no good in what others respect; who never looks through the clear crystal lens of gen- erous appreciation on a beauty or a great- ness that is not his own, will sooner or later win the indignation or the compassion of his fellow men.

So deeply did one semi-infidel feel this to be true, that he is said to have declared, that if God did not exist, it would be nec- essary to invent Him for the use of the educator of the human mind. It is only the sight of God which creates reverence. Hence the church alone is the school of reverence. The church of Christ alone brings God home to the human soul. Na- ture knows not God. For a moment it seems to detect Him in the starry heav- ens, or in the stormy sea; or in the fra- grant freshness of the summer air; or in the calm brilliancy of a perfect landscape. But it only admires. It has no heart for reverence, because it has no heart for ad- oration. It banishes God behind a sys- tem of laws.

But the Gospel, on the other hand, is the religion of Immanuel, God with us. He is with us in His Providence, in His power, in His wisdom, in His love. He

is with us in His advent, in His tempta- tion ; in His ministry, in His passion ; in His resurrection, in His sacraments. Ever since the incarnation, the " tabernacle of God is with men." The Shekinah has rent the veil of the temple, and come forth among us. We know that He is not far from any one of us. We express this knowledge when we speak of Him; when we keep His Word; when we enter the place of His assembly. It is in the vis- ible, material church we learn reverence by precept and example. The silence, which is only broken that man may speak of God, or to God ; the adoring attitudes of devout worshippers ; the chant which raises the soul above the world ; the con- fession which opens upon it, through flashes of moral light, the true sight of the Most Holy ; these things suggest, day by day, year by year, a sympathetic attitude of the spirit. They succeed, at last, in persuading us to bend before Him who is the object and explanation of what is going on around us. They cry out, as if with one voice, to the soul, and the voice does not die away, " Oh, come, let us worship and fall down and kneel before the Lord our Maker." And thus a constant attend- ant at the church learns an inward habit, which is the safeguard of his intellect, the charm and lustre of his social life, the aroma of his character and intercourse, and the final deliverance and redemption of his soul. Very few lovers of the church and of church-going, find their way down to death. Their path is a shining one. They learn at last the value of the blood of atonement ; the glory of the Savior, and a hearty recognition of His supreme beauty. The profound yearnings of the spirit, which bring them within the house of God, are at length satisfied. The message of light and pardon, repeated week by week, is at last heard. Men may murmur about the dullness of the sermon ; but for every soul that is alive to the terrible mysterious- ness of life and death, and who resorts to the place where it may find God and come even to His seat, there is a freshness and perpetual interest in the Gospel message. He who seeks its repetition will learn the

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secret of its power, and find the peace which it brings. " It was here," some will say, of this very church," " it was here, O my Lord and my God, that I learned to know and love Thee, and found out my own misery, and felt the grace and sweet- ness of thy pity and thy pardon. It was here I learned the awfulness and blessed- ness of life, the greatness of eternity." And many a redeemed soul will sing here- after, " Lord Jesus, in this, Thy temple, I told Thee my sins and my sorrows, was washed in Thy blood, and saw Thy glory face to face."

3. Another use of the material temple, is to assist the culture of the conscience. The moral sense learns and grows by dis- cipline. Ever since Christ drove the money-changers out of the house of prayer, the conscience has had new light upon the sacredness of places of worship and the duties of religion. Doubtless the con- science is roused and trained by association as well as by authority. It is informed and invigorated by every opportunity for good or for evil. There are seasons in every man's life when he finds himself face to face with forms of evil, upon resistance to which his whole eternity depends. For many a falterer this church may strike the trembling balance in his favor. The strug- gle, of which his soul is the scene, may here be laid bare before the all Holy and Merciful. The temptation to lust, or cru- elty, or avarice, or selfishness, or coward- ice of soul, may be exorcised, or, at least, lose half its force in the scenes and ser- vices of this building. When all has seemed to be lost, and the darkness of sin has well nigh settled down upon the heart, then God here turns himself again, and looks down from Heaven, and beholds and visits in mercy. There are, indeed, those to whose conscience the church says noth- ing. But with the great majority it is not so. Its services, its ministers, nay, the very lines and beauties of its architecture, are destined to be intertwined with the deep secrets of many a spirit, and to have their place in the checkered history of thought and hope, of fear and passion, of suffering and joy, which will be revealed by

the light of another world. And among the spiritual mysteries which will here- after be known as belonging to these walls, not the least will be their silent contribu- tion to the growth of the moral sense.

4. Nor shall it be without its effect in shaping the aims and unfolding the pur- poses of many a life. This life it teaches us is not a game of chance, or a decree of fate, the sport of events, or the result of fixed necessity. Each man is instructed by it and in it, that he is to hallow his earthly life by a religious principle. It stands as a perpetual memorial of God and of human responsibility in the very centre and heart of secular business and strife ; an unchangeable teacher of man's obliga- tion to make his life a single tribute to God's glory. And this church, in itself, in its services, is destined to have a large influence upon men's purposes in life ; is destined to brace their wills to the right, to promote their obedience to the truth, to open their hearts to a larger destiny than would have been possible without it. In the very proportion of its inspiring and im- pressive beauty, it is to become a helper of our souls in all good. Here our hearts will be opened, and kept open. The very place that is filled with fragrant perfume of the spicery that has been poured on Christ's head, will assist the soul to a better life. Creatures of association as we are, here our wills will be directed and strengthened ; here our whole inward life will get a unity and force, which will tell both in time and eternity. Here provision may be made for the dark days that are coming, "for in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His tabernacle ; yea, in the secret place of His dwelling shall He hide me, and set me upon a Rock."

In dedicating this church, we do not gratify a mere artistic or æsthetic senti- ment. We do not inaugurate a monu- ment, which the economy of common sense, or the demand of Christian love, might deem superfluous. For this church, in all its lofty beauty, is a hymn of praise to the Son of God, and embodies and gives shape to the essential features of the Christian work and life. The ministries

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and associations, the very roof and win- dows, the very tower and buttresses of this building, are destined to mould practically the daily life of those who are here to learn to face the battle of life as men and Chris- tians should face it. And here, too, many a modest flower will catch a Divine inspi- ration, and blossom into lovely and fra- grant beauty, and shed its incense of praise, until it shall be transferred to a more glorious temple, to bloom there love- lier and forever. Such a church, we trust, will do more than promote the intellectual and moral growth of those who worship in it, of the community around it. It will do more than cultivate taste and art. It will open men's hearts to God. It will help them toward Christ. It will teach them the rare graces of Christianity. It is the product of self-denial. It will be its teacher too. This church is no mere offering of that which has cost nothing. It is the gift of love, and love lives by sacrifice. Love is not the desire to have. It is the passion to give. And we trust that this church will be to us a means of grace in this respect, and perpetually teach us that all the best things of life come by our sac- rifices, and that our proudest, divinest sat- isfaction will arise in the future from our most generous offerings to the service, work, and glory of God. This house will show us, so long as it stands, that our best riches, our richest feelings and delights come from our largest gifts to God. Learn we this, if nothing else to-day, that joy comes by giving to Christ. It is more blessed to give than to receive. And thus this building will have manifold influences upon our souls. Hereafter we shall know how these lines of beauty, on which our eyes now rest with tranquil pleasure or cu- rious admiration, have been graven deep in many a memory, and have linked for- ever many a soul's inmost life with the eye and hand of the Creator.

5. Another use of such a material edi- fice as this, is to render more attractive the system and polity of faith and worship with which it is connected. It will add a charm to the Congregational order and service. There is no reason why the ex-

cellent order of our New England fathers should not make all the warm sentiments of our nature tributary to its growth. None, why its beams and timbers should not breathe the very odors of the cedars of Lebanon. None, why its garments should not smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces. It is the church of our fathers, the old homestead and sanctuary of our hearts, full of rich mem- ories, of dear associations, of priceless legacies of faith and hope and patience from those who have left the earthly con- gregation and gone above the stars. This simple, beautiful and catholic polity is the very daughter of the King. She has trusted so much to her intrinsic and im- perial grace as to laugh at outward adorn- ing. She has been so beautiful and glo- rious within, that her friends have dreamed not of her exterior robing and drapery. But she is all glorious within, and why should not her clothing be of wrought gold. In her places of assembly the saints have sat and worshipped, and why should not her gates be jasper, her walls chalcedony, and her arches and ceilings traced with the colors of the rainbow. Within her sanctuary, millions without number have learned the new song, and why should not the frescoed arches of her roof resound with the anthem of the organ. It will not do altogether to despise the moral uses of material beauty. It will not do for a church to be beneath the intelligence, the taste and the wealth of a community. We may make art our master and we may make it our servant. We have too much abjured it as either. We may now give to it its proper place, as a helper and minister in our great and noble work. The day is past for Israel to dwell in tents or in barns. When she needs to do it, she may, nor will she lose the ark and the covenant and the shekinah. But when she needs not to do it, she must exchange her tabernacle for a temple; for even Christ demands what we can give Him, and He who is worshipped in spirit and in truth, would have the worship of His house conform to our taste and wealth and love. The es- sence of Puritanism was not hatred of

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beauty, but love of Christ; and wherever love of Christ may prompt to a more beau- tiful temple, the spirit of the fathers will linger, and Elijah's robe may fall upon Elisha's shoulders. The prophet of fire may make way for the Prophet of Peace. Our church has fought a noble battle for Christ under a leader nobler than itself; nor need it now be weary of its work, nor fear to adapt its usages and forms to the exigencies of future conflicts. So long as it keeps the old spirit, it may not hesitate to avail itself of new formal attractions.

After Christ had gone into the heavens, and the old temple of Mount Moriah had perished, and the arch of Constantine was built, the temples that had been construct- ed for the service of divided and local gods were pressed into the service of the One God. Every form and symbol, it was be- lieved, which belonged to the old world, might be claimed as the spoil and heritage of that which succeeded it. But one and another form which had pressed into its service the roughest stone, the richest marble and the rarest art, could as little resist the idolatrous tendencies of the heart as Solomon's temple had done. All came at last to feed the earth-born tastes which they had boasted they could subdue and sanctify.

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The History of Washington County in the Vermont historical gazetteer : including a county chapter and the local histories of the towns of Montpelier., Part 65

Author: Hemenway, Abby Maria, 1828-1890 Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Montpelier, Vt. : Vermont Watchman and State Journal Press Number of Pages: 1064

Author: Hemenway, Abby Maria, 1828-1890
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Montpelier, Vt. : Vermont Watchman and State Journal Press
Number of Pages: 1064