The History of Washington County in the Vermont historical gazetteer : including a county chapter and the local histories of the towns of Montpelier., Part 66

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 66

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Then the idea grew up that such tem- ples stifled the Spirit ; that art was a dan- gerous ally of devotion; that the most ugly building was the one that God was most likely to inhabit ; that the upright and pure soul was his only true temple. They were very beautiful and true words, and pointed to high truths, just as the towers and minarets of the old temples pointed to them ; but they are just as little able to reach and preserve them. Hardness, se- verity, dogmatism, could hide itself where there seemed to be only the utmost sim- plicity and barrenness of form. But both were false. Each doctrine is unscriptural and fatal. The one gave religion bound as a captive into the hands of art, and made its services fantastical, sensuous and corrupt. The other gives God's beautiful universe up to the devil, as his rightful possession, and makes him the monopolist

of all that attracts and charms our bodily sense. The one bound the invisible under the dominion of the visible. The other tramples the life out of the material and visible. We do wisely, then, as our fath- ers would have done had they had the war- fare of our day on their hands, when we aim to make all that is artistic and all that is beautiful, bring their tributes and lay them at the feet of Christ; we should ex- clude nothing that makes our polity more attractive and effective. While we do not doubt that its essential glory is the pres- ence of Christ in its service, we shall not be likely to exalt any form of outward beauty above its intrinsic worth.

Nor is our Congregational system un- worthy that it should avail itself of all the helps and ministries of beauty. A gener- ous, practical catholicity may well dwell in a palace. A church that does not assume to declare its own organization as com- mensurate with the Church of God, which allows of diversity of ceremony and un- essential form, might well have a royal tabernacle. If we believed in augury and signs, we might easily translate into a happy omen the gentle inclination of obeisance which the cross on yon Roman tower has been making for the year that is past, to Bethany church. For why should not the least denominational, sectarian, ex- clusive and arrogant of all the churches, receive, like Joseph's sheaf, the homage of all its brethren?

We love this Congregational polity. In it the life takes precedence of the form, and we would irradiate with its life a beautiful form. Nor would we refuse our fellowship to those who have the same spirit, but a narrower and contracted form. We have no Shibboleth to utter. We have no rit- ualistic bed on which to stretch or shorten the human spirit. We have no old judaistic skins in which to pour the new wine of the Gospel. We give to every church, to every man, the largest possible liberty. In the midst of a sisterhood of Christian de- nominations, we boast that we are not de- nominational. We call each Christian brother-we call every living church a sis- ter church. It is not a word fellowship;

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we can welcome all to our congregation, to our ordinances, to our table. We love this freedom of church, a freedom to give as well as to receive-to give the hospital- ity of our pulpits, our sacraments and our charities.

We give an earnest protest against sec- tarian exclusiveness, and ask only that a man should love our Lord Jesus Christ in order to our communion. We hold our- selves at liberty to love a Pascal and Fenelon, a Tillotson and Beveridge, a Calvin and Luther, a Williams and Wesley. And when we see some good brethren of other churches put into the strait-jacket of their own creeds or ritual, and kept from a hospitality and a charity which Christ re- quires, and their own hearts intensely de- sire, by their ecclesiastical order, I rejoice that we are under no such bondage, and under no sad necessity to prove that the blood of the Son of God only runs in the veins of our own denomination. And why should not an unsectarian church, the oldest, most numerous and most inde- pendent in New England, by far; rich in members, influence, position and history ; rich in the records of the living and in the rolls of her dead; with no necessity of pleading for additions to her numbers with that resistless earnestness with which a hungry man cries for bread, and with a disposition to give bread to all that per- ish, why should not such a church have suitable dwellings for its sanctuaries? Why should not the garments of such a broad and catholic polity be of Tyrian dyes, and its habitation be fashioned after the simil- itude of a palace? And we have reason to bless God for the generous Christian en- terprise and cultivated Christian taste which are coming to be shown in the mem- bers of our faith and order in the erection of their churches.

Finally, a noble material temple, such as this, is prophetic. It suggests and fore- shadows a future history. We cannot but have been struck, as we entered it this morning, with a building so simple in its plan, yet so ornate and splendid in its de- tail ; so lavishly decorated, and yet so en- tirely useful and practical ; such a beautiful

specimen of the taste and art of our time, and yet so wholly subservient to an end be- yond. I should misinterpret the spirit that has raised these walls, if I should bid you mark only the wealth of form and color that meets your eyes, or ask you to contrast it with the primitive models of our puritan architecture. We, at least, who have done something towards raising this temple of God, may feel that its beauties should enrich us with lessons of deeper and more practical value than can attach to anything which can be measured by the eye or sense. Its real interest to us, lies in its future and in its results. To us, and to our children, it may be indeed, for gen- erations, a Bethany; the home of Christ and his friends ; a place of wondrous mir- acles and benedictions ; the scene of large growths of spiritual character, that shall rival the cedars of Lebanon or the palm trees of Olivet. It will be a dear house- hold name which shall be embalmed in thoughts and feelings as fragrant as cluster about the old Bethany of the Son of God. The hopes and dreams of the past are crystalized into stone. We shall admire it more and more, love it more and more, as it becomes associated with all that is sacred and tender in our spiritual histories. Slowly but surely it will be the nucleus and habitation of a family of Christ which shall be ever forming, and ever separating and re-forming in the skies. We shall count no cost it has brought, no sacrifice we have made, for we have sown seed here that shall bear successive harvests of light and peace and joy while the world stands. We have broken the alabaster box on the head of our Savior, and who shall say that it shall have no memorial in the future? It will foster a large generosity, and be at once the proof and the helper of benefi- cence in the cause of Christ. It will wit- ness the vows, the prayers and the tears of our posterity, and its manifest presence will bring them the blessings they seek. To thousands of eyes and imaginations it will sing of the glory of the upper temple ; that glory which eye hath not seen, but which the eye shall yet see and be satis- fied. It will help our thoughts upward in

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their flights, and earthly architecture will be the symbol to us of the heavenly, the divine pattern of that which is in the king- dom of God. We have laid these stones and spread these arches and traced these colors, not as a show of veneration, not to put our love on exhibition, not to assure men that we believe in Christ, and can prove our faith on so magnificent a scale ; but the building itself is a part of our com- munion with Heaven. It is an invocation of trust. It is a sentence of praise. It is a hymn we sing, a prayer we offer. It stands in a line with the Stone of Bethel, with the Shekinah of the tabernacle, with the temple on Mount Moriah, " with the synagogue of Nazareth, with the upper chamber where the bread from heaven was the food and the blood of Christ was the wine, and with the room at Jerusalem, where the tongues of fire preached at the dedication of Christendom, and the Holy Spirit inaugurated the visible church for the nations."

And if any object that all this richness is needless, we say more, that it prefigures to our dull sense a wider and grander glory than we see. It is a mortal means to an immortal end. It lifts our gross under- standing. It images a beauty that tran- scends it. It is the hinder part of the glory that is inconceivable. It is the gate of Heaven and the vestibule of the Holy of Holies. It signifies more than we can at once receive. It is a stray fragment of the upper temple, a Gloria in Excelsis, amid the loud din and stir of the world around it. And each sweet melody or prolonged harmony of the princely organ is but a foretaste of that music whose won- drous noise fills the wide spaces of Heaven. Here we stand but on the threshold of music. The infinite combinations of the two thousand pipes of this instrument can never be made by the most skillful mortal player. The loftiest art can never com- pass a tithe of its harmonies. There is no sound without its significance, no organ without its antitype. And when this in- strument accompanies the simplest hymn which comes from the lips of childhood, or some grand old hallelujah chant of Asaph,

or prayer of David's, or pours forth its melodious strains like the rolling of a river or the rushing of a tide, I know it is a faint, yet but the faintest type of that surg- ing flood of sound which shall fill the heavens when the redeemed and the angels shall open the seven-fold chorus of halle- lujahs and harping symphonies. The solemn grandeur, or plaintive melody, or jubilant exultation of its manifold combi- nations, are a feeble prophecy of what that music will be when the voice of the whole church of God, the twelve-fold chorus of Israel's ransomed, shall join with all the trumpets and harps sounding on the other side, in the unimagined crescendo and glo- rious dechachord of Eternity. Thus we read the future in the present, and the temple of to-day is a prophecy of that wor- ship and that temple,

"When all the halls of Zion For aye shall be complete, And in the land of beauty All things of beauty meet. Where tears are ever banished And smiles have no alloy.

With jasper glow thy bulwarks, Thy courts with emeralds blaze,

The sardius and the topaz Unite in thee their rays;

Thine ageless walls are bonded With amethyst unpriced,

Thy Saints build up its fabric, And the Corner Stone is Christ."

And now what wait we for? What re- mains but that you should perfect your work? If this building is to be all and more than we pray or think ; if it is to be the habitation of God and the fountain of nameless blessings to you and to your children to the last generation ; if He who dwells in the highest Heavens is to make it His tabernacle, and in very deed dwell with us, and vouchsafe His spiritual pres- ence, power and glory in His temple, I now call upon you to offer to Him this build- ing, and dedicate it to His sole service, and to the honor and praise of His dear Son.

[The keys were here presented, and the building offered for dedication, by D. Taft, Esq.]

Acceptance and Dedication,

By Prof. M. H. Buckham.

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We receive this building at your hands. I ask you now to rise and stand upon your feet, as we offer it as our gift to Almighty God, and dedicate it to the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. With one ac- cord let us consecrate it to the Master's glory, to Christ and the Church. And as the dedication of the church is vain with- out the solemn consecration of the wor- shippers too, I call upon you all to dedi- cate yourselves to the service of God. To Him may your souls be dedicated. To Him may your bodies be dedicated. To Him may your spirits be dedicated. And that He may graciously accept this solemn act, I call upon you all now to pray.

Anthem.

Benediction, By Rev. L. Tenney.

MISSIONARIES :- Mrs. Sarah Coleman, married Erastus Dean of Salisbury, and went from this Church to the Cherokee Mission about 40 or 50 years since, Mrs. Emeline (Bradshaw) Dodge, and Mrs. Coleman, who married Freder'k Ellsworth. Samuel Mosely from this place went to the Choctaw Mission, and Mrs. Lucinda (Washburn) Wright, who married a mis- sionary not from this State.

ART AND NATURE-VERMONT IN SUMMER.

We have no quarrel with art. It is the province of man's genius. It is the realm of his skill and intelligence. But we have a greater love for nature. It is the prov- ince of God's genius, the realm of his in- finite intelligence and power. He never paints. He creates. The glory and sweet- ness and marvels of life are the effects of His handiwork. In perpetual change in har- mony with invariable law He finds the se- cret and hiding of His power. There are some galleries of art that are especially in- teresting. The Louvre ravishes the inexpe- rienced eye. But the Dresden and Floren- tine halls never weary the cultivated vis- ion and the instructed taste. Men travel across the sea, time and again, to look upon these triumphs of human genius. There are bright pictures in other gal- leries worth the price of an European tour to look at but once. The mar- riage of St. Catherine, and the infant Sa-

viour in the Vatican, haunts the mem- ory like an imperishable dream. A few great paintings in certain salons stand out from all the rest like the face of Denner in the Imperial collection at Vienna ; or a few unsurpassed art collections attract the attention of all tourists, like the Academy of St. Luke in Rome. And it is the same in nature. A few regions God has made more beautiful than others. His hand has fash- ioned some dreams or symbols of heaven in certain landscapes of earth. And we have always thought that the Almighty in- tended, when He formed the hills of Ver- mont, and shook out the green drapery of the forests over their sloping shoulders, and made them fall in folds like the robe of a king along their sides, to give us a dim picture of the new creation and the celes- tial realm. Italy is a land of rarer sunsets and deeper sky, of haunting songs and grander memories ; Switzerland is a region of more towering sublimity and unapproach- able grandeur, but in all the galleries of God, there is none that so shows the ex- quisite genius of creative art; the blending of all that is beautiful and attractive, with nothing to terrify the eye ; the mingling of much of the material glory, both of the earth and the heavens, with so little to ap- pall the sense. Vermont in summer is the Almighty's noblest gallery of divine art. We never traverse its valleys or climb its hills, in this sweetest of all months; we never lie down on the banks where the wild thyme blows, or under the shade of the balsam or the fir ; we never trace the mountain streams and watch for the silver flashes which tempt the silent, gentle angler, who " handles his worm tenderly," to throw his fly ; we never penetrate the secret places in the heart of the hills, or watch the pleasant wooing which is always going on in shady places between the rip- pling waters and the ash, the beech and the willow, which bend to kiss them as they pass, without a grateful sense of the riches of God, and an irrepressible wish to share them with our friends whose sense of beauty is mainly nurtured at human sources .- Rev. Mr. Lord in the Vermont Watchman.

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"THE CHURCH OF THE MESSIAH." INDEPENDENT.

BY REV. J. EDWARD WRIGHT.

It seems appropriate to introduce a sketch of this society, with some account of Unitarian and Universalist work done in Montpelier before 1864. "In an ac- count of the religious condition of the town previous to 1811, the late Rev. Chester Wright stated that previous to 1800, there had rarely been any preaching except by the Methodists ; that the increased popula- tion from 1800 was divided into various sects, the largest number professing Uni- versalism." Among the prominent men among the first settlers who avowed them- selves Universalists were Gen. Pearley Davis and his brother Hezekiah, Capt. Stephen Foster, Mr. Arthur Daggett, Es- quire Sibley, and Capt. Isaac Putnam. Rev. Paul Dean, who was the Universalist minister in Barre in 1808, and for some years thereafter, preached occasionally in Montpelier, as did other ministers of that sect from time to time. Universalists par- ticipated, under the leadership of Gen. Davis, in building the Union meeting- house, at the Center of the town, at an early date. Later, they effected a sep- arate organization, and built a substantial brick house of worship at the East village, and later still, the same society, while con- tinuing to use the brick house, built an- other, of wood, at the North village. " The following list of Universalist preachers in Montpelier, has been gathered from Wal- ton's Register : 1833, John M. Currier ; 1834, John M. Austin ; 1835, B. H. Fuller, J. Wright; 1836, J. Wright ; 1837, '38, John Gregory ; 1839, J. Wright, J. Boy- den ; 1840-'66, Eli Ballou ; 1867, '70, J. O. Skinner ; 1871, Eli Ballou."

But it is not to be understood that all of these ministers were engaged in preach- ing in Montpelier during the years set against their names. No doubt all re- sided here, and some of them preached within the limits of the old town of Mont- pelier, but some were employed elsewhere.

For some 17 years preceding 1830, little or nothing was done to sustain Universal- ism in this town ; but about the year 1831,

a society was organized in what is now Montpelier, prominent in which were such men as Wooster Sprague, (who started the enterprise,) Simeon S. Post, Dr. J. Y. Dewey, Richard W. Hyde, Alfred Wain- wright, Araunah Waterman, Mahlon Cot- trill, Edward Brown, Joel Goldsbury, and General Shubael Flint. The Rev. John M. Austin served as pastor of this society for some 3 years, when he was called to Dan- vers, Mass. The meetings were held in the old State House, near the present Pa- vilion. After Mr. Austin left, the society had no regular meetings ; but occasionally a meeting was held by them in the Mason- ic Hall, the Rev. John E. Palmer of Barre, and the Rev. Russell Streeter, and others, occupying the desk from time to time, until 1840, when Rev. Eli Ballou bought "The Christian Repository," and removed from Stowe to Montpelier to edit and publish it. He preached a part of the time for several months after coming to town, in Masonic Hall, but found himself too much occupied otherwise, to justify his continuing the ef- fort. In 1851, he obtained the assistance of Rev. John S. Lee, (now Prof. in Canton Theological School) ; a new society, called "The Liberal Christian Church," was or- ganized ; and meetings were regularly held for 2 years in. the "Free Church," (now " Capital Hall,") the first year by Messrs. Ballou and Lee, alternately, the second year by Mr. Ballou alone. But the dis- couragements proved too great to be over- come, and another long period of inaction followed.

Very few Unitarian ministers had ever been heard in Montpelier ; and only occa -. sionally had an avowed Spiritualist given a lecture, or a " seance." Among the for- mer the Rev G. W. Burnap, D. D., of Baltimore, Md., (whose sister was the mother of our honored townsmen, Charles and George Reed), the Rev. A. A. Liver- more of Keene, N. H., the Rev. Chas. Brooks of Hingham, Mass., and the Rev. Mr. Ingersoll of Burlington, preached here at different times.

But in October of 1864, Mr. Charles A. Allen, a graduate of Harvard College in 1858, and of Meadville Theological School

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in 1864, began, in the spirit of a missiona- ry, to hold meetings in Montpelier, to which " liberal christians" of whatever de- nomination, were especially invited. The congregations met first in " Village Hall," but soon permission was obtained,-(not without opposition however),-to occupy the Court House; and for more than a year the meetings were held there. The number who assembled, hardly more than a dozen at first, rapidly increased. A so- ciety was formed in. Dec. 1864, under the title of "The Montpelier Independent Meeting House Society." In March of the next year Mr. Allen was ordained in the " Brick Church," Rev. R. P. Stebbins, D. D., preaching the sermon. The society soon proceeded to build a house of worship on the north-west corner of Main and School streets, which was dedicated Jan. 25, 1866, under the name of " The Church of the Messiah," Rev. F. Frothingham preaching the sermon. The cost of the site, the building, and the organ was about $20,000.

"The Covenant of Christian Fellowship in the Church of the Messiah," adopted May 19, 1867, reads as follows : "We write our names to this Covenant in the faith and fellowship of Christian disciples ; trusting in God our Father in heaven, ac- cepting the Gospel of Christ as our sover- eign law, and resolving, by the help of God, to live in honesty and charity with all men, and in Christian faithfulness with one another."

Among those active in the organization of this society were Richard W. Hyde, Col. Levi Boutwell, Hon. W. G. Ferrin, Joel Foster, Jr., Hon. Nelson A. Chase, Hon. Daniel Baldwin, Hon. Charles Reed, George W. Reed, Dr. G. N. Brigham, H. S. Loomis, L. B. Huntington, Rev. Dr. Eli Ballou, Albert Johonnott, George Wat- son, W. F. Braman, Hon. J. A. Wing, and, in most cases the wives of these gen- tlemen.

While the society was yet occupying the Court House, they organized a Sunday school, which has been at various dates under the superintendence of the pastors, and Hon. Charles Reed, Hon. N. A.

Chase, Messrs. Geo. W. Wing, Joel Fos- ter, Jr., Albert Johonnott, and Fred Blan- chard. Its library contains [1881] over 500 bound volumes, besides pamphlets. The teachers and scholars on its roll have together numbered for several years about 140, though the attendance has only occa- sionally exceeded 100. The number of families connected with the society through some or all of their members is over 200.

Mr. Allen's pastorate continued about 5 years. In the fall of 1869, he obtained leave of absence for a trip to Europe, and the Rev. J. Edward Wright, a native of Montpelier, was engaged to supply his place for a year. While away, Mr. Allen tendered his resignation, which was ac- cepted, and Mr. Wright became the pas- tor, and yet continues in that position.

The society has never been embarrassed by any considerable debt ; and, altho' com- posite in its membership, comprising Uni- tarians, Universalists, some Spiritualists, and not a few formerly associated with dif- ferent "orthodox" denominations, has throughout its existence enjoyed remarka- ble harmony, and almost uninterrupted prosperity. Too much praise can not be given to Mr. Allen for the hopefulness and zeal with which he, unsummoned, began the enterprise, and for the energy, and tact, and persistence, and untiring activity with which he labored, gathering the peo- ple together, uniting them with a common purpose, inspiring them with the convic- tion that they could build a church, and communicating to them his own spirit of faithfulness and self-sacrificing devotion.

THE CHRISTIAN REPOSITORY.

In 1833 Rev. John M. Austin, then pas- tor of a Universalist Society in Montpelier village, and Rev. B. H. Fuller, bought " The Universalist Watchman and Chris- tian Repository," of Rev. William Bell, who had published it a few years in Wood- stock, and changed the place of publication to Montpelier. Mr. Austin dissolved his connection with the paper in a short time, on his removal to Danvers, Mass., but Mr. Fuller continued the publication two or three years, when he sold half his interest

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to Rev. John Moore of Lebanon, N. H. The paper was removed to Lebanon, and published there a year or two by Messrs. Moore and Fuller. Then, about the year 1838, Rev. Joseph Wright became the pro- prietor, and Montpelier was again made the place of publication, Rev. John E. Palmer and others co-operating with Mr. Wright in the work.

In January, 1840, Rev. Eli Ballou, then of Stowe, purchased the paper and contin- ued its publication regularly as a weekly journal during 30 years, or until May, 1870, when he sold it to the ·' Boston Universal- ist Publishing House," and thus the paper was merged in " The Universalist," known at the present date as "The Christian Leader."

CHRIST CHURCH, MONTPELIER, VT.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF CHRIST CHURCH. BY HIRAM ATKINS, ESQ.

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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 66

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