Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1883-06-13
Suurusl xro GOrrisr.
wednesday, june 13, 1888.
The Bishop seabury Centennial.

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The Bishop seabury Centennial.
Historical Discourse by Rt. Rev. Bishop |
Williams at the Diocesan Convention,
Protestant Episcopal Church of Com
nectfcut, June IL, 1853.
Man that had understaId ding of the times, to
know what Israel ought to dol Chron. I, 81
I know no better words than these to give |
direction to our thoughts in the service of |
this day. It is q service OF deepest thank |
fuIness and of most sacred memories. 1t
takes us back over the years of a century.
It brings to our remembrance the story of
the more than three score previous years
which led up to the event that we commend
rate. It awakens hope and trust for COM
ing and unknown future. It binds those
memories of the past and those hopes for
the future into one living body of thanks
giving, which, for all who have gone before
us, for ourselves, and for those who are to
follow us, must find utterance in the words
of the Psalmist, "Not unto us 0 Lord, not
unto us, but unto thy name give the praise,
for thy loving mercy and for thy truth s
sake"
Go back with me, brethren, in your
thoughts to the beginning of the century the
close of which we commemorate. LIZ Is the
festival of the Annunciatlon IN 1888 ana
we find ourselves in an inland village of what
was, ere long, to become the diocese of Con-
| not then the village of our time, the long
street of which, with its venerable elms and
| well kept homesteads, nestles beneath the
l craggy heights that overlook it, or spreads
out in peaceful loneliness towards stream and
valley Things were on q smaller scale then,
| rougher and ruder than, they now are. One
house, at least, still stands that was standing
l then; and if We enter it we shall ind
/ ourselves in the 'Glebe house." which is the
| abode of the missionary of the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel, and in the
presence of ten of the fourteen clergy OF
Connecticut who were ministering in their
cures at the close of the war of the Revolu-
ton. Neither history nor tradition has
preserved to us all the names of those true
hearted men. We know, however, from
| written records, that Marshall, in whose
house they met, Jarvis, of Middletown, who
| was their secretary, and Fogg, of Brooklyn,
| whose correspondence tells what we
should not otherwise have known, were
among them. Beyond these we are left to
| conjecture.
enter into, the deep anxiety of the hour
with all its doubts and fears so far surpass-
ing its hopes and encouragements. We re-
member how they felt themselves compelled
| to meet in the utmost secrecy not, has
sometimes been unworthily intimated, be-
cause they feared their own people, but be-
cause they knew not what interference might
befall them from the powers that were,
should their purpose be made known. We
think of them as, on that festival of the In
carnation, they knelt down, in an isolation
| and desolation of which we can have no
knowledge, to implore the guidance of the
heavenly wisdom in their counsels and efforts
for that divine institution which because of
the Incarnation is the body of the Lord Jesus
| Christ. We recognize what venture of
faith they were about to make in sending one
forth to seek conservation to the episcopate,
that so he might discharge the Office of a
bishop in the church of God to a flock weak
| and despised, scattered and peeled" and
| what a greater venture of faith he would
make who should go forth on that errand SO
doubtful and uncertain. We picture to our
| selves all the conditions of difficulty and dis
couragement by which they were surrounded.
| We remember that story of succeeding years,
| familiar as household words to US, was hid
den from them in the darkness that yelled an
| unknown future. We know that they could
not even have dreamed of all that was to
| come out of that days doings. We think of
all these things and many others which will
not attempt even to suggest leaving it to
your own thoughts to ELL out details that are
omitted, and the one conclusion to which all
our thoughts and all our ponderings must
bring us will be that these ten men of whom
the great world knew nothing then, of whom
it takes no thought now, were, nevertheless
"men that had understanding of the times
| to know what Israel ought to do.'
| The two events around which all the mem =
cries, the associations the details of this and
next years concentrations group them
| selves, are the election of our first bishop
in 1885, and his conservation at Aberdeen
in 1884. It seems to be my duty to-day
to limit myself strictly to the first of these :;
to what led up to it and to
the event itself, leaving it to who
ever should preach the sermon of next
year to speak of what followed the election,
of the conservation itself, and of its outcome
/ for this church. 1t seems narrow field
that to which I find myself imited-but,
unless I am greatly deceived. it presents to US
topics which will deserve careful considera-
ton.
First then, let me say something of what
led up to the election of 1888. In doing SO
| 1 must go back to the pTinaordiG of the
| church in this diocese.
| It ought never to be forgotten that the
first missionary-if may SO speak-of our
! church in Connecticut was the book of Com
mon Prayer. Keith and Talbot had, indeed,
preached at New London in 1902. Muirson
had organized the few churchmen at STRAIT
ford into parish in 1907. Different clergy
men had, from time to time, through the
| watchful care of Caleb Hearthcote,-a name
that we ought never to forget-ministered to
that little band in their sore trials and vexa-
tions. One Francis Phillips had come to
| them, and, after six months of neglect and
carelessness, departed, leaving only confusion
| behind him. But long before anything like
permanent ministration was begun at STRAIT
ford by George Pigott, on Trinity Sunday
in 1922, Samuel johnson at Gull
ford had been diligently studying the Book
| of Common Prayer, put into his hands by
Smithson-another name never to be forgot
ten-Rnd in their studies We find, it seems to
me, the true beginnings of what was to be.
come the diocese of Connecticut. The old
faith endorsed in the historic creeds of the
prayer book the law and life of worship
embodied in its formularies all leading up to
and centering in the highest act of Christian
! worship, the Holy Eucharist; its ideal of the
Christian life to wit in its catechism and
carried out in all its Offices from baptism to
burial; on these foundations, no broader
and no narrower, was our church now built
up. God grant that on those foundatio ns it
| may stand till time shall end
4 protest against the narrow and unhis-
teric idea that johnson and those who Ia
| bored with me after him conformed to the
| Church of England only because of their con-
| victions touching Holy Orders. No doubt
those convictions were factor, a most i'm
portant factor, in this change they made
But there was great deal more involved
than that one question Men who had gone
from the dry bones of Ames's Madulla and
| Wollelebins to the fresh springs" of Hook
er and Bull and Pearson must have found
how utterly unlike to the Catholic faith which
| they three were taught were the ''distribu-
| lions ana d1Vln1ty' IN Wn1cn they had been
4 trained. 1t was indeed, as one of them said
| emerging from the glimmer of twilight into
the full sunshine of open day." Men who
had unlearned their prejudices against ''pre-
composed forms of prayer" by the study of
such books as Kings ''Intentions of men in
the worship of God" and the fifth book of
| Rockers immortal work, and above all of
the book of Common Prayer itself, must
have reached another and a loftier ideal of
worship than any they had before. Men
who had passed from the narrow crsmped
and often conventional theories of Christian
living to which they were accustomed to the
reading of Soott's Christian Life and the
| works of Hammond and Kerr had surely
found something totally different from any
| thing they had known before. The question,
as it presented itself to them, took
| on no narrow shape, ran in no
single groove. 1t covered the orders, the
| faith, the worship of the church of God, and
II took II, with tha,,, the idaaI tha Cl-st