SHAWMUT CHURCH.
Shawmut Church, in Boston, stands at the corner of Tremont and
Brookline Streets. Its history is one of unique interest. Its very
name connects the old and new world together. A Saxon monk, named
Botolph, after completing his Christian studies in Germany, founded,
A. D. 654, a monastery in Lincolnshire, on the Witham, near the sea,
and made it a centre of holy light and knowledge. He was the friend of
sailors and boat-folk. The houses which grew up around the monastery
became Botolph's Town, or Boston. "Botolph" is itself but another form
of boat-help, and the famous tower of this English parish church,
finer than many cathedrals, is crowned by an octagon lantern, nearly
three hundred feet above the ground. It serves as a beacon-light,
being visible forty miles distant, and, as of old, is the boat-help of
Saint Botolph's Town. This ecclesiastical lighthouse is familiarly
called "Boston Stump," and overlooks Lincolnshire, the cradle of
Massachusetts history. At Scrooby, a few miles to the west, lived and
worshipped the Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers. From this shire, also,
came the English people who settled at Shawmut on the 17th of
September, 1630.
The Indian name, Shawmut, was that of the "place near the neck,"[1]
probably the present Haymarket Square. The three-hilled peninsula
called Tremont, or Boston, by the white settlers, was connected with
the main land at Roxbury by a long, narrow neck or causeway. The
future "South End" was then under the waves. After about two centuries
of use as a wagon road, this narrow strip between Boston and
Roxbury--so narrow that, at high tide, boys were able to leap from the
foam of the South Bay to the spray of the waters of the Charles
River--was widened. Suffolk Street, which was one of the first
highways west of Washington Street to be made into hard ground, was
named Shawmut Avenue. About the middle of the nineteenth century,
much land was reclaimed from the salt mud and marshes and made ready
for the pile-driver, mason, and builder. Two splendid districts, the
first called the "South End," and the second the "Back Bay," were
created. Where, in the Revolutionary War, British frigates lay at
anchor, are now Beacon Street and Commonwealth and Massachusetts
Avenues. Where the redcoats stepped into their boats for
disembarkation at the foot of Bunker Hill, stretch the lovely Public
Gardens. The streets running east and west in the new districts,
beginning with Dover and ending with Lenox, are named after towns in
the Bay State. About midway among these, as to order and distance, are
Brookline and Canton Streets.
[Footnote 1: Other good authorities interpret
Shawmut as meaning "living waters."]
On a chance space of hard soil around Canton and Dedham Streets, in
this marshy region, a suburban village of frame houses had gathered,
and here a Sunday school was started as early as 1836. In January,
1842, a weekly prayer-meeting began at the house of Mr. Samuel C.
Wilkins. On November 20, 1845, a church was formed, with fifty
members. In the newly filled up land, the pile-driver was already
busy in planting forests of full-grown trees head downward. All around
were rising blocks of elegant houses, with promise of imposing civic
and ecclesiastical edifices of various kinds. In the wider streets
were gardens, parks, or ample strips of flower-beds. This was the land
of promise, and into it pressed married couples by the hundreds,
creating lovely homes, rearing families, and making this the choicest
part of the young city. For, though "Boston town" is as old as Mother
Goose's rhymes, the municipality of Boston was, in 1852, but thirty
years old. The congregation of Christian people which, on April 14,
1849, took the name, as parish, of The Shawmut Congregational Society,
and, as a church, one month later, the name of the Shawmut
Congregational Church, occupied as a meeting-house first a hall, then
a frame building, and finally a handsome edifice of brick, which was
dedicated on the 18th of November, 1852. This building is now occupied
by the Every Day Church, of the Universalist denomination. The tide of
prosperity kept steadily rising. The throng of worshippers increased,
until, in the very midst of the great Civil War, it was necessary to
have more room. The present grand edifice on Tremont Street was
erected and dedicated February 11, 1864; the Rev. Edwin Bonaparte
Webb, who had been called from Augusta, Maine, being the popular and
successful pastor.
Boston was not then noted, as she certainly is now, for grandeur or
loveliness in church edifices. Neither excellence nor taste in
ecclesiastical architecture was, before the war, a striking trait of
the city or the people. To-day her church spires and towers are not
only numerous, but are famed for their variety and beauty.
Fortunately for the future of Boston, the people of Shawmut Church
found a good architect, who led the van of improvement in church
architecture. The new edifice was the first one in the city on the
early Lombardy style of architecture, and did much to educate the
taste of the people of the newer and the older town, and especially
those in the fraternity of churches called Congregational.
Both its architecture and decoration have been imitated and improved
upon in the city wherein it was a pioneer of beauty and the herald of
a new order of church architecture. It is a noble vehicle of the
faith and feelings of devout worshippers.
The equipment of Shawmut Church edifice made it a very homelike place
of worship, and here, for a generation or more of Carleton's life, a
noble company of Christians worshipped. The Shawmut people were noted
for their enterprise, sociability, generosity, and unity of purpose.
In this "South End" of Boston was reared a large proportion of the
generation which to-day furnishes the brain and social and religious
force of the city and suburbs. In Shawmut Church, gathered, week by
week, hundreds of those who, in the glow of prosperity, held common
ambitions, interests, and hopes. They were proud of their city, their
neighborhood, and their church, yet were ever ready to extend their
well-laden hands in gifts to the needy at home, and to send to those
far off, within our own borders, and in lands beyond sea.
The great fire in Boston, of which Carleton wrote so brilliant a
description, which, beginning November 9, 1872, within a few hours
burned over sixty-five acres and reduced seventy-five millions of
property to smoke and ashes, gave the first great blow to the
material prosperity of Shawmut Church. Later came the filling up, the
reclamation, and building of the Back Bay district. About 1878, the
tide of movement set to the westward, progressing so rapidly and
steadily as to almost entirely change, within a decade, the character
of the South End, from a region of homes to one largely of business
and boarding houses. Still later, about 1890, with the marvellous
development of the electric motor and trolley cars, making horse
traction by rail obsolete, the suburbs of Boston became one great
garden and a semicircle of homes. Then Brookline, Newton, and
Dorchester churches flourished at the expense of the city
congregations. Shawmut Church, having graduated hundreds of families,
had, in 1893, to be reorganized.
Of this church Charles Carleton Coffin, though not one of the
founders, was certainly one of the makers. As a member, a hearer, a
worshipper, a teacher, an officer, a counsellor, a giver of money,
power, and influence, his name is inseparably associated with the life
of Shawmut Church.
When Carleton's seat was vacant, the chief servant of the church knew
that his faithful ally was serving his Master elsewhere. After one of
his trips to Europe, out West, or down South over the old
battle-fields, to refresh his memory, or to make notes and photographs
for his books, the welcome given to him, on his return, was always
warm and lively.
First of all, Mr. Coffin was a good listener. This man, so fluent in
speech, so ready with his pen, so richly furnished by long and wide
reading, and by habitual meditation and deep thinking, by unique
experience of times that tried men's souls, knew also the moments when
silence, that is golden, was better than speech, even though silvern.
These were not as the "brilliant flashes of silence," such as Sidney
Smith noted as delightful improvements in his friend "Tom" Macaulay;
for Carleton was never a monopolist in conversation. Rather, with the
prompting of a generous nature, and as studied courtesy made into fine
art, he could listen even to a child. If Carleton was present, the
preacher had an audience. His face, while beaming with encouragement,
was one of singular responsiveness. His patience, the patience of one
to whom concealment of feeling was as difficult as for a crystal to
shut out light, rarely failed.
In Japan there are temples, built _in memoriam_ to heroes fallen in
war. These are named Shrines for the Welcome of Spirits. They are
lighted at sunset. Like one of these that I remember, called the
Soul-beckoning Rest, was this listener, Carleton, who begat eloquence
by his kindly gaze. Nor was this power to lift up and cheer--this
winged help of a great soul, like that of a mother bird under her
fledgling making first trial of the air--given only to the
professional speaker in the pulpit. This ten-talent layman was ever
kindly helpful, with ear and tongue, to his fellow holder-in-trust of
the one, or of the five, talents; yes, even to the little children in
Christ's kingdom.
The young people loved Carleton because he heard and loved them. To
have his great, kindly eyes fixed on some poor soldier, or neighbor in
distress, was in itself a lightening of the load of trouble. Unlike
those professional or volunteer comforters, who overwhelm by dumping a
whole cart-load of condolence upon the sufferer, who is unable to
resist or reply, Carleton was often great in his power of encouraging
silence, and of gentle sympathy.
Bacon, as no other Englishman, has compressed in very few words a
recipe for making a "full," a "ready," and an "exact" man. Carleton
was all these in one. He was ever full. In the Shawmut prayer-meeting,
his deep, rich voice was the admirable vehicle of his strong and
helpful thoughts. Being a man of intense conviction, there was
earnestness in every tone. A stalwart in faith, he was necessarily
optimistic. A prophet, he was always sure that out of present darkness
was to break forth grander light than former days knew. This world is
governed by our Father, and God makes no mistakes.
That rhetorical instrument, the historical present, which makes the
pages of his books tell such vivid stories, he often used with
admirable effect in the prayer-room, impressing and thrilling all
hearts. No little one ever believed more confidently the promises of
its parent than did this little child in humility who was yet a man in
understanding. Yet his was not blind credulity. He always faced the
facts. He was willing to get to the bottom of reality, even though it
might cause much drilling of the strata, with revelation of things at
first unpleasant to know. I never knew a man whose piety rested less
on traditions, institutions, persons, things, or reputations taken for
granted. To keen intuitions, he was able to add the riches of
experience, and his experience ever wrought hope. Hence the tonic of
his thought and words. He dwelt on the mountain-top of vision, and yet
he had that combination, so rare, yet so indispensable in the
prophet,--vision and patience, even the patience of service.
Naturally his themes and his illustrations, so pertinent and
illuminating, were taken largely from history. It is because he saw so
far and so clearly down the perspective of the past, that he read the
future so surely. "That which hath been, is that which shall be,"--but
more. "God fulfils himself in many ways." To our friend, history, of
which the cross of Christ was the centre, was the Heavenly Father's
fullest revelation. Many are the ways of theophany,--"at sundry times,
and in divers manners,"--to one the burning bush, to another the Urim
and Thummin, to another the dew on the fleece, to one this, to another
that. To our man of the Spirit, as to the sage of Patmos, human
history, because moved from above, was the visible presence of God.
The war, which dissolved the old world of slavery, sectional bigotry,
and narrow ideals, and out of the mother liquid of a new chaos shot
forth fresh axes of moral reconstruction, furnished this soldier of
righteousness with endless themes, incidents, illustrations, and
suggestions. Yet the emphasis, both as to light and shading, was put
upon things Christian and Godlike, the phenomena of spiritual courage
and enterprise, rather than upon details of blood or slaughter.
Neither years nor distance seemed to dim our fellow patriot's
gratitude to the brave men who sacrificed limb and life for their
country. The soldierly virtues, so vital to the Christian, were
brought home to heart and conscience. He showed the incarnation of
truth and life to be possible even in the camp and field.
Having been a skilled traveller in the Holy Land, Carleton frequently
opened this "Fifth Gospel" to delighted listeners. There hung on the
wall of the "vestry," or social prayer-room, above the leader's chair,
a steel-plate picture of modern Jerusalem, showing especially the
walls, gates, and roadways leading out from the city. Carleton often
declared that this print was "an inspiration" to him. It recalled not
only personal experiences of his own journeys, but also the stirring
incidents in Scripture, especially of the life of Christ. Having
studied on the soil of Syria, the background of the parables, and
possessing a genius for topography, he was able to unshackle our minds
from too close bondage to the English phrase or letter, from
childhood's imperfect imaginations, and from our crude Occidental
fancies. Many a passage of Scripture, long held in our minds as the
hand holds an unlighted lantern, was often turned into an immediately
helpful lamp to our path by one touch of his light-giving torch.
For many years, Carleton was a Bible-class teacher, excelling in
understanding, insight, explanation, and application of the divine
Word. Many to-day remember his teaching powers and their enjoyment at
Malden; but it was in Boston, at Shawmut Church, that Mr. Coffin gave
to this work the fullness of his strength and the ripeness of his
powers.
Counting it one of the noblest ambitions of a man's life to be a good
teacher, I used to admire Carleton's way of getting at the heart of
the lesson. His talent lay in first drawing out the various views of
the readers, and then of harmonizing them,--even as the lens draws all
rays to a burning-point, making fire where before was only scattered
heat. Carleton was one of those superb teachers who believe that
education is not only putting in, but also drawing out. In his class
were lawyers, physicians, doctors of divinity, principals of schools,
heads of families, besides various specimens of average humanity.
Somehow, he contrived, within the scant hour afforded him, often
within a half hour, to bestow not only his own thought, but, by
powerful spiritual induction, to kindle in others a transforming
force. After the teaching had well begun, there set in an alternating
current of intensity that wrought mightily for the destruction of dead
prejudices, and the building up of character.
In his use of helps and commentaries he had a profound contempt of
those peddlers of pedantry who try to make the words of eternal truth
become merely the lingo of things local and temporary. He was fond of
utilizing all that the spade has cast up and out from the earth, as
well as of consulting what the pen of genius has made so plain. He
believed heartily in that interpretive, or higher criticism, which has
done so much in our days to open the riches of holy Scripture. From
the very first, instead of fearing that truth might be injured by an
examination of the dress in which it was clothed, or the packages in
which it was wrapped, Carleton was in hearty sympathy with those
scholars and investigators who, by the application of literary canons
to the Hebrew and Greek writings, have put illuminating difference
between traditions and the original message. He believed that, in the
popular understanding of many portions of the Bible, there was much
confusion, owing to the webs which have been spun over the text by men
who lived centuries and ages after the original writers of the
inspired word. Though he never called himself a scholar, he knew only
too well that Flavius Josephus and John Milton were the makers of much
popular tradition which ascribed to the Bible a good deal which it
does not contain, and that there was often difficulty among the plain
people in distinguishing between the ancient treasure and the
wrapping and strings within which it is now enclosed. Hence his
diligent use of some of the strong books in his pastor's and other
libraries.
Above all, however, was his own clear, penetrating, spiritual insight,
which, joined with his rich experience, his literary instincts, and
his own gift of expression, made him such a master in the art of
communication. While his first use of the Bible was for spiritual
benefit to himself and others, he held that its study as literature
would scatter to the wind the serious objections of sceptics and
unbelievers.