rejoicing, it is that the Primus of Scotland and the Primate of
all England were hindered from personal participation in an
occasion which had their warmest sympathies, Seabury's consecration
will always be the poetic incident in American Church history,
and it would have been a sweet revenge of time to have had
them united in the ratification of an act of piety and charity
which the predecessor of the one did not dare, and of the other
dared to do. Of that act and its momentous issues so much has been
and will be said, and more fittingly, both here and elsewhere to-
day, that it is enough if the churchmen of Connecticut be
permitted now to say through me, that it is a privilege for which
they are deeply grateful to have been instrumental in bringing
about the very first movement of the Church in Britain from an
insular to a Catholic position; in demonstrating--to quote the
words of Lord Nelson uttered in your hearing at Aberdeen--"that
establishment and endowment are not necessary to Church life." For
it is to be remembered that not only was there not an Anglican
bishop exercising acknowledged jurisdiction in America before
Seabury, but there was not an Anglican bishop anywhere outside of
the British Isles. Our fathers, sending Seabury for consecration,
awakened the English Church to the consciousness that it had a
duty to the world in extending its episcopacy beyond the shadow of
its cathedrals and palaces. For this great result, "so far beyond
what they had hoped for," of their wise and holy enterprise, we
humbly adore the great Head of the Church on this hundreth
anniversary of its inception in the consecration of the first
bishop of Connecticut.
For thirty-three years, dear Bishop, chief pastor of the first
American diocese, you have carried on wisely and well the work
which Seabury began, going in and out among us with the pastoral
spirit in your heart, of which the graceful gift of the Scottish
Church to you is the expressive symbol: "To the flock of Christ a
shepherd." We welcome you once more to your home and to ours; to
the diocese you love and serve; to the parishes which love and
reverence you; and to the institutions you have founded and
fostered. You have been absent from us long enough for our comfort
and, as we gladly believe, for yours. Fourscore and four years of
the eighteenth century Connecticut endured to have its bishop on
the other side of the Atlantic. Three months is enough in the
nineteenth. May the twentieth find you here, with pastoral staff
in hand, and loyal hearts and sustaining hands of clergy and laity
all around you, and half a century of episcopal work behind you--a
golden track of useful and honored years; and before you the large
reward--"not of debt but of grace"--for the due use of the many
talents and the fulfilment of the large responsibilities entrusted
to the fourth bishop of Connecticut.
And with this welcome to you and your companions--our
representatives--we would renew the expression of the pious hope
with which a hundred years ago the clergy of Connecticut concluded
their address of welcome to their first bishop: "Wherever the
American Episcopal Church shall be mentioned in the world, may
this good deed, which the Scottish Church has done for us, be
spoken of for a memorial of her!"
THE BISHOP'S REPLY.
Bishop Williams replied:
I cannot express to you, my dear brother and my dear brethren, the
thankfulness--and I think I may speak for my brethren of the
delegation to Scotland--with which your kind words fill my heart.
I can truly say that I saw no brighter day than that on which I
returned to my own diocese, my clergy, and my people. And I say
this with a full recognition of the great joy and gladness of
those days in Aberdeen, the memory of which must abide while life
shall last.
The memories of the past, the blessings of the present, the hopes
of the future, all centred there, roused all souls, sank into all
hearts. It was a great sight to behold the Churches in Scotland,
England, Ireland, and America, together with those of the
dependencies of Great Britain, and from the islands of the sea,
lands that no one knew of a hundred years ago. It told its own
story, made its own impression of unity and brotherly love, "the
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."
No description can tell you sufficiently of the warmth of our
welcome and the abounding hospitality which met us. You must have
heard the kindly word, and looked into the beaming eye, and felt
the hearty hand-grasp, to make those things real. And far down
underneath all, giving life to all, was the deep sense of that
communion in which by the fourfold Apostolic bond we were bound
together in Christ Jesus.
I have asked the brethren whom you so kindly sent with me to say
something to you, one of the past as contrasted with the present,
another of the first day, and another still of the second day of
the commemoration at Aberdeen.
DR. BEARDSLEY'S ADDRESS.
The Rev. E. E. Beardsley, D.D., LL.D., rector of St. Thomas's
Church, New Haven, historian of the diocese and biographer of
Bishop Seabury, then made the following address:
So much has been written and spoken about the consecration of
Bishop Seabury, that it must be well understood by all intelligent
Connecticut churchmen, if not by all American churchmen. It is
quite unnecessary to take you over the familiar ground; but I have
been sometimes asked; "What was the Scottish Episcopal Church,
that her bishops a century ago should venture an act which the
bishops of the Church of England declined to undertake?" The
question involves an answer which goes back a century farther,
even to the time when Episcopacy was established in Scotland as a
state religion under the reign of the Stuart kings. The revolution
of 1688 caused the fall of James II., king of Great Britain and
second son of Charles I., and with him fell the Episcopal Church
in Scotland, as an establishment William, the Prince of Orange,
had married his daughter Mary, and fitting out an expedition when
the people were ripe for a change, he invaded England, and seizing
the throne, was crowned with his wife to the sovereignty of the
realm. The Church of England took a prominent part in forwarding
this revolution, which was a religious one in its origin, and in
transferring the crown, on the abdication of James II., to the
heads of William and Mary. The Anglo-Saxon mind combines with love
of liberty a veneration for national institutions and traditions.
It resisted in this instance the determination of the king to
render himself absolute and restore the Roman Catholic religion in
England. Hence the English Church as a whole felt herself bound to
cast off allegiance to him, for, in addition to the various
oppressions which he had heaped upon her, he had sought in the
character of supreme governor to force upon her the adoption of
doctrines and ceremonies contrary to those which she was under the
most sacred obligations to hold and defend.
But it was not so with the Scottish Church. James had never
tyrannized over her or harassed her with oppressions, and
therefore she continued to assert her allegiance to him, and, of
course, to recognize the claims of his descendants. The Scottish
bishops were in the English line of succession from leel-with
orders as valid as those of the Archbishop of Canterbury--but,
because they cast in their lot with the house of Stuart and
refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new sovereign or to
pray for him in their liturgy, they and their flocks were put
under disabilities and subjected to the severest penalties,
without producing the effect, however, of changing in the
slightest degree their religious or political sentiments. Three
times within the next half century a part of the Scottish people
rose in arms against the king of England in favor of the exiled
Stuart family, the last formidable rising being in 1745, under
Charles Edward, the Pretender, who was disastrously defeated at
the battle of Culloden; and then the worst horrors of civil war
followed; parsonages and places of worship were destroyed, more
stringent laws were enacted against the sympathizers with the
Stuart dynasty, and the Episcopal clergy were forbidden to
officiate except in private houses, and then only for four persons
besides those of the household, or if in an uninhabited building
for a number not exceeding four. For a first offense they were
subject to imprisonment for six months, and for a second to
transportation for life to the American plantations. Laymen
attending a prohibited meeting were liable to a fine of five
pounds for the first offense and an imprisonment of two years for
the second.
This was the state of things when Seabury (afterwards bishop)
embarked in mid-summer, 1752, for Scotland to attend a course of
medical lectures at the University of Edinburgh, and upon its
completion to proceed to London and receive Holy Orders in the
Church of England. On the morning of the Sunday after his arrival
in Edinburgh, he inquired of his host where he might find an
Episcopal service, and was answered: "I will show you; take your
hat and follow me; but keep barely in my sight, for we are closely
watched and with jealousy by the Presbyterians." He followed him
through narrow, dirty lanes and unfrequented streets, and finally
disappeared in an old building several stories high, and ascended
to an upper room where a little band of faithful churchmen had
gathered to worship God in the forms of the liturgy and according
to the dictates of their conscience. That building stood until a
few years ago. A friend in Edinburgh gave me a photograph of it,
which is valuable as showing the uninviting quarters to which the
poor Episcopalians were driven in those days to find freedom in
their religious services. The upper room where they met was
acquired by purchase in 1741, and the tradition is that the person
who sold it, being an invalid churchman, reserved to himself the
right to occupy an apartment on the same floor with a window
opening into it that he might hear and share in the service. A new
church, retaining the old name, St. Paul's, Carubber's Close, has
been built on the ancient site with space for future enlargement,
and it was my privilege to preach in this church last September,
and a very attentive congregation helped to brighten for both
myself and Professor Hart, who accompanied me, the interesting
historic associations.
Well, two and thirty years pass away and the same Seabury who
joined in the worship offered there under such discouraging
circumstances has crossed the Tweed and appears in an upper-room
in Long-Acre, Aberdeen, to receive a spiritual gift which for
reasons of state had been refused him by the bishops of the Church
of England.
The old Scottish Church, sometimes called the catholic remainder
of the ancient Church of Scotland, differed in no essential
particular from the Church of England except that she did not lean
upon apolitical Episcopacy--an Episcopacy directed and controlled
by parliamentary legislation. She was now in the lowest depths of
depression and adversity. Her bishops had become reduced to four
and her clergy to forty, and these ministered, it is true without
molestation for the most part, to the little remnants of faithful
churchmen scattered through the cities and villages of the land.
Probably the feeling among outsiders was that the Scottish
Episcopal Church would never again have much influence or attract
many adherents. Three of the four bishops, however, when duly
applied to, took the matter of raising Dr. Seabury to the
apostolic office into immediate and solemn consideration and
consecrated him without delay. One of them said: "I do not see how
we can account to our great Lord and Master, if we neglect such an
opportunity of promoting His truth and enlarging the borders of
His Church."
And for whom did they consecrate this bishop, but for Connecticut,
whose clergy with far-seeing wisdom had taken the earliest steps
after the independence of the colonies to secure the Episcopacy--
a boon which, though greatly desired and needed in this country,
had long been sought for to no purpose? The Church in Connecticut,
and indeed in all the American colonies, was at this time in a
critical, headless condition--living, yet on the verge of death,
and something must be done to save and restore what was so broken
and disordered. I suppose there could not have been more than two
hundred Episcopal clergymen, if there were as many, in all the
colonies at that date, and fourteen of them were in Connecticut
ministering to weak and diminished flocks that had more to hope
and pray for than in human probability they were likely to
realize.
How much did that simple consecration service in the upper-room in
Long-Acre, Aberdeen, open up for Churches of the one faith! If the
act was not sublime in itself, it was the beginning of a sublime
history, and the English Church thereupon awoke to a sense of her
duty to the child she had long nursed in the colonies and now left
friendless and forlorn, as well as to a more decent recognition of
the poor, down-trodden Scottish communion. The offensive laws
which had been for some time comparatively inoperative were soon
repealed or modified by act of Parliament; and the laity, more
than the clergy, felt the advantage of the relief gained, which
was fully secured to them by legislative enactments half a century
later. The House of Hanover was entirely accepted and prayed for
in the Scottish as in the English liturgy. Then the Episcopal
Church in Scotland began to rise from the dust, and to-day she has
seven bishops and two hundred and seventy clergymen, with a
zealous and hearty laity who are not content to possess spiritual
privileges without making them practically useful. We were all
struck with the reverence among the Scottish people for the fourth
commandment, and with the spectacle of goodly numbers of every
religious denomination going to the house of God in company. I am
sure they quite surpass the Americans in the regularity of their
attendance upon public worship, and a Scotch mist, which
oftentimes is about equal to a New England rain, seems not to be
considered a sufficient excuse for staying at home when the Lord
invites us into His sanctuaries. The external improvement, or
rather advancement, of the Scottish Church is seen in various
things. Her decayed and barn-like churches have been succeeded by
substantial and appropriate, and in many cases beautiful edifices,
and altogether she is now in a better condition, with brighter
prospects, than at any period in her previous history.
But leaving Scotland, how does the contrast stand with the
American Church as placed along with her condition one hundred
years ago? Connecticut has her one bishop, but her fourteen clergy
have increased to nearly two hundred, and her parishes have
fourfolded in numbers, and more than fourfolded in strength,
activity, and generosity. When Leaming preached the sermon before
the convention of the clergy in Middletown at the welcome given to
Seabury on his return from Scotland, the Church was so insignificant
in the State that no notice was taken of the occasion in
the contemporary prints, and she was so poor that it was
a problem how the parishes could decently support their
rectors, now that the stipends of the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel had been withdrawn. Seabury himself, writing to a
Scottish bishop three years later, said: "We have now sixteen
presbyters in this diocese and four deacons who will soon be in
priests' orders. Four more--i. e., twenty-four in the whole--will
be as many as the present ability of the Church can support. It
does, however, grow, and converts from Presbyterianism are not
unfrequent." The growth has been so great that at our last annual
convention in this diocese the reported contributions, including
parochial expenses and salaries, amounted to upwards of $620,000,
and if there had been no omissions to make returns the aggregate
would have--been considerably larger. If we give a moment's
attention to the whole Church in the country, we find that we have
sixty-six living bishops, the list from Seabury down numbering one
hundred and thirty-four; and the clergy in all the dioceses and
missionary jurisdictions must be well nigh on to four thousand.
It is in no spirit of boasting that we make this comparison. "Not
unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy Name give the praise,
for Thy loving mercy and for Thy truth's sake." Yet it is becoming
on this one-hundredth anniversary of the consecration of the first
bishop of Connecticut to remember that results under God have
flowed from it so vast in extent that no human eye could have
forseen them at the time; no human heart could have believed that
the Episcopal Church in America, cemented in one body and carrying
with united zeal her doctrines and ritual into every part of our
great republic, would so soon verify in a broader sense than he
used them the words of the ancient seer: "How goodly are thy
tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel! As the valleys are
they spread forth, as gardens by the river's side, as the trees of
lign-aloes which the Lord hath planted." It is becoming also on
this anniversary to remember with profound gratitude that we live
in an age when happily persecution for the sake of religion has
passed away, and when the ever old but ever new commandment of
peace and love rises above sectarian strife and projects its
influence into whole communities of earnest and believing souls.
The responsibilities entailed upon us by our position and our
prosperity are to be read in the light of history, and fulfilled
in the fear of God and in the faith of "the Church which is the
pillar and ground of the truth."
REV. MR. NICHOLS'S ADDRESS.
The Rev. W. F. Nichols, Rector of Christ Church, Hartford, and
chaplain to Bishop Williams in his recent visit abroad, spoke of
the first day of the commemoration at Aberdeen:
He said it would be useless to deny that there was an individual
pleasure in having this welcome to round out the happiness of
getting back to one's home and one's work, as there was an
individual pleasure at the honor the diocese had put upon those
whom it had sent with the bishop to Aberdeen, and an individual
appreciation of the prayers that had been offered on both sides of
the Atlantic, in private as well as in public, for preservation on
the journeyings by water and by land--an individual appreciation,
too, of what it was to have around the family altars and the
church altars in Scotland as well as in our own country, voices
joining with those on shipboard in the lines:
"O hear us when we cry to Thee For those in peril on the sea";
and so he ventured personally to thank him who had so kindly
spoken the words of welcome and through him the diocese.
But he did not forget that this was not a welcome to which he
should reply as an individual, but one extended to an embassy
returning from a sacred mission. An embassy responding to its
welcome would naturally refer to two things: the one, the
immediate facts and occurrences of its visit; and the other, the
bearings of the visit upon the relations between the two countries
concerned, Others would do this fully on more general lines; it
had been assigned him to speak more especially of one of the days
of the celebration at Aberdeen, and that was Tuesday, October 7th.
Taking up the first of the two things which an embassy would
naturally report upon, he spoke of the events of the day--the Holy
Communion in the six churches of Aberdeen and in private chapels
at 8 o'clock; the principal service at St. Andrew's Church at 10
1/2 o'clock, with the sermon by our own Bishop from Isaiah lx. 5;
the two hundred clergy (including eighteen bishops from Scotland,
America, England, Ireland, and the colonies), the large
congregation, the use of the Scotch Office for the Holy Communion,
both at the early and the later services; and also, briefly, of
St. Andrew's Church and its decorations. In speaking of the
photograph of the clergy who were present, which was taken at the
close of the service, he pointed out two curious facts about the
groups: without any prearrangement, part of an American flag had
been taken on the plate; and then the only clerical descendant of
Bishop Skinner present--the Rev. J. Skinner Wilson--stood by the
side of the only clerical descendant present of Bishop Seabury--
the Rev. Dr. W. J. Seabury of New York city.
He gave some description of the banquet held at Music Hall in the
afternoon, and of the speeches of those who proposed and those who
responded to the toasts, especially the toast to "The Church in
America," proposed by Dr. Wordsworth, Bishop of St. Andrews, and
responded to by our own Bishop. He referred to some letters which
those who had read the Aberdeen papers sent home had seen, in
which there was discussion of the phrasing of the toast "The
Church _in_ Scotland." He said it did not become him to
comment on the discussion at such a time, only if they should
think of making any change in the phrasing at the next centenary
it occurred to him that "Scotland in the Church" might be tried.
After speaking of another morning commemorative service, at which
Canon Body of Durham preached an able and appropriate sermon, and
giving passing reference to an enthusiastic meeting of the Scotch
"Free and Open Church Association" held in the evening as an
accompaniment to, rather than as a part of, the day's commemoration,
he passed on to speak of the second thing upon which an embassy
would naturally report, and that was the bearings of the day's
events upon the relations between the two Churches. In this
connection he spoke of the sermon and the use of the Scotch
Communion-office of the morning and the hospitality of the
afternoon, which, like the hospitality of the whole stay in
Aberdeen, showed that while the latitude of the place was that of
the far north--it was opposite the northern part of Labrador--the
latitude of the atmosphere and hearts within was most truly that
of the warm and sunny south. In conclusion, he spoke of the
unifying impetus given, both social and spiritual, and expressed
his belief that while the embassy thanked the diocese for the
welcome, all could before God's altar and in that highest
sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving with which they were keeping
the anniversary of the consecration of the first bishop of our
diocese and the American Church, thank Him Who has purchased to
Himself an universal Church by the precious Blood of His dear Son,
that as He was with the ministers of apostolical succession in
their highest office to make the great venture of faith one
hundred years ago, so He has ever been with their successors. Let
all realize how much of that purchase of the Son of God has
already been rendered up to Him since 1784, and how in 1884 we are
empowered by the Holy Spirit to extend the Church of Christ more
and more, not in Scotland only, not in America only, but in the
whole world!
REV. MR. HART'S ADDRESS.
The Rev. Professor Hart of Trinity College then gave an account of
the second day of the commemoration at Aberdeen:
I am to try to give in a few words an account of the many events
of the second day of the commemoration at Aberdeen; they shall be
as far as possible the very words which were used in the addresses
which were read and delivered there. The Holy Communion was
celebrated at an early hour in all the churches of the city; and
the special service of the day was held in St. Andrew's Church.
Before the service began, the Rector of Christ Church, Hartford,
on behalf of a considerable number of the clergy and laity of
Connecticut, presented to the Bishop of Aberdeen, as representing
the Scotch Church, a handsome silver paten and chalice, to be used
by himself and his successors. The written address which he read,
prefacing it with a few words, recognized the two-fold gift of a
century ago--an Episcopate which, in words so often used at the
time, was "free, valid, and purely ecclesiastical," and a
Eucharistic Office embodying catholic and primitive principles.
The Bishop of Aberdeen accepted the gift as a witness of faith in
God's promises, of the love of the brethren, and of unity of
worship, as well in the past and the future as in the present. He
then proceeded to celebrate the Holy Communion according to the
English rite, which the Scotch canons now require to be used at
all synods and ordinations, two other Scotch bishops assisting
him, and the vessels just presented being employed both in the
consecration and in the administration.