[Speech of Rev. Dr. Henry C. Potter, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of
New York, at the seventy-third annual dinner of the New England
Society in the City of New York, December 23, 1878. Daniel F.
Appleton presided and proposed the toast, "The Church--a fountain
of charity and good works, which is not established, but
establishes itself, by God's blessing, in men's hearts."]
MR. PRESIDENT:--I take up the strain where the distinguished
Senator from Maine [James G. Blaine] has dropped it. I would fain be
with him one of those who should see a typical New England dinner spread
upon a table at which Miles Standish and John Alden sat, and upon which
should be spread viands of which John Alden and Miles Standish and the
rest, two hundred and seventy-three years ago, partook. I would fain see
something more, or rather I would fain hear something more--and that is,
the sentiments of those who gathered about that table, and the measure
in which those sentiments accorded with the sentiments of those who sit
at these tables to-night. [Applause.] Why, Mr. President, the viands of
which John Alden and Miles Standish partook did not differ more
radically from the splendor of this banquet than did the sentiments with
which the Puritans came to these shores differ from the sentiments of
the men who gather in this room to-night. If it had happened to them as
it happened to a distinguished company in New England, where an eminent
New England divine was called upon to lead in prayer, their feelings
would have been as little wounded as those against whom he offered up
his petition; or rather, if I were here to-night to denounce their
sentiments as to religious toleration, in which they did not believe;
their sentiments as to the separation of the Church from the State, in
which they did not believe any more than they believed in religious
toleration; their sentiments as to Democracy, in which they did not
believe any more than they believed in religious toleration--those of us
who are here and who do believe in these things would be as little
wounded as the company to which I have referred. The distinguished
divine to whom I have alluded was called upon to offer prayer, some
fifty years ago, in a mixed company, when, in accordance with the custom
of the times, he included in his petition to the Almighty a large
measure of anathema, as "We beseech Thee, O Lord! to overwhelm the
tyrant! We beseech Thee to overwhelm and to pull down the oppressor! We
beseech Thee to overwhelm and pull down the Papist!" And then opening
his eyes, and seeing that a Roman Catholic archbishop and his secretary
were present, he saw he must change the current of his petitions if he
would be courteous to his audience, and said vehemently, "We beseech
Thee, O Lord! we beseech Thee--we beseech Thee--we beseech Thee to pull
down and overwhelm the Hottentot!" Said some one to him when the prayer
was over, "My dear brother, why were you so hard upon the Hottentot?"
"Well," said he, "the fact is, when I opened my eyes and looked around,
between the paragraphs in the prayer, at the assembled guests, I found
that the Hottentots were the only people who had not some friends among
the company." [Laughter.]
Gentlemen of the New England Society, if I were to denounce the views of
the Puritans to-night, they would be like the Hottentots. [Laughter.]
Nay more, if one of their number were to come into this banqueting hall
and sit down at this splendid feast, so unlike what he had been wont to
see, and were to expound his views as to constitutional liberty and as
to religious toleration, or as to the relations of the Church to the
State, I am very much afraid that you and I would be tempted to answer
him as an American answered an English traveller in a railway-carriage
in Belgium. Said this Englishman, whom I happened to meet in Brussels,
and who recognized me as an American citizen: "Your countrymen have a
very strange conception of the English tongue: I never heard any people
who speak the English language in such an odd way as the Americans do."
"What do you mean?" I said; "I supposed that in the American States the
educated and cultivated people spoke the English tongue with the utmost
propriety, with the same accuracy and the same classical refinement as
yours." He replied: "I was travelling hither, and found sitting opposite
an intelligent gentleman, who turned out to be an American. I went on to
explain to him my views as to the late unpleasantness in America. I told
him how profoundly I deplored the results of the civil war. That I
believed the interests of good government would have been better
advanced if the South, rather than the North, had triumphed. I showed
him at great length how, if the South had succeeded, you would have been
able to have laid in that land, first, the foundations of an
aristocracy, and then from that would have grown a monarchy; how by the
planters you would have got a noble class, and out of that class you
would have got a king; and after I had drawn this picture I showed to
him what would have been the great and glorious result; and what do you
think was his reply to these views? He turned round, looked me coolly in
the face, and said, 'Why, what a blundering old cuss you are!'" [Great
laughter.] Gentlemen, if one of our New England ancestors were here
to-night, expounding his views to us, I am very much afraid that you and
I would be tempted to turn round and say: "Why, what a blundering old
cuss you are!" [Renewed laughter.]
But, Mr. President, though all this is true, the seeds of our liberty,
our toleration, our free institutions, our "Church, not established by
law, but establishing itself in the hearts of men," were all in the
simple and single devotion of the truth so far as it was revealed to
them, which was the supreme characteristic of our New England
forefathers. With them religion and the Church meant supremely personal
religion, and obedience to the personal conscience. It meant truth and
righteousness, obedience and purity, reverence and intelligence in the
family, in the shop, in the field, and on the bench. It meant compassion
and charity toward the savages among whom they found themselves, and
good works as the daily outcome of a faith which, if stern, was
steadfast and undaunted.
And so, Mr. President, however the sentiments and opinions of our
ancestors may seem to have differed from ours, those New England
ancestors did believe in a church that included and incarnated those
ideas of charity and love and brotherhood to which you have referred;
and if, to-day, the Church of New York, whatever name it may bear, is to
be maintained, as one of your distinguished guests has said, not for
ornament but for use, it is because the hard, practical, and yet, when
the occasion demanded, large-minded and open-hearted spirit of the New
England ancestors shall be in it. [Applause.] Said an English swell
footman, with his calves nearly as large as his waist, having been
called upon by the lady of the house to carry a coal-scuttle from the
cellar to the second story, "Madam, ham I for use, or ham I for
hornament?" [Laughter.]
I believe it to be the mind of the men of New England ancestry who live
in New York to-day, that the Church, if it is to exist here, shall exist
for use, and not for ornament; that it shall exist to make our streets
cleaner, to make our tenement-houses better built and better drained and
better ventilated; to respect the rights of the poor man in regard to
fresh air and light, as well as the rights of the rich man. And in order
that it shall do these things, and that the Church of New York shall
exist not for ornament but for use, I, as one of the descendants of New
England ancestors, ask no better thing for it than that it shall have,
not only among those who fill its pulpits, men of New England ancestry,
but also among those who sit in its pews men of New England brains and
New England sympathies, and New England catholic generosity! [Continued
applause.]