Morning journal and courier., 1888-04-23
THE MIsTORIOAL ADDRESS

M4OMOE4XS SoS 1885,
 THE HISTORICAL ADDRESS
 By the Rev. Newman smyth, D. D.,
 Delivered ApriI 22, 1888, at The Conn
 memoraslon of the Two Hundred
 and Rfnieth Anniversary of the
 Pounding CT Center Church.
 Fellow citizens with the saints--Epp-2-19.
 sT have enjoyed a good day." remarked John Davenport two hundred and fifty years ago of that first Sabbath when he preached beneath an oak upon the temptations in the wilderness. Of the whole period of times since then this church may now confess, "It has been good day of the Lord'' The min istry of three among the living, and of the ten who are numbered with the dead, consti- tute the apostolic succession, from then un- til now, of the church which was first estab- hshed upon these shores. Of the pastorates, still fresh in your memories of my immediate predecessors, and of the years of my own life at home among you, it is not necessary for
 me to speak. And the published historical discourses of Dr. Bacon relieve me from the task of presenting in their due order and pro- portions the lives and the works of those
 men who before him had served God in the
 ministry of this church.
 But it is now fifty years since Dr. Bacon
 wrote of the fathers, and it is fitting that once
 more, as we pass on, we should glance at the portraits of those characters which look down upon us from our past. The first face round and full, like the face of monk in his gown, yet clear, and with pure eye as of one looking into the future, is the face of John Davenport. He was the master mind of that Puritan company, as Theophilus Eaton was their right arm of strength. He was called of God to be the architect of church and State, and he sought as he has said, Ito avoid errors in Fundamentals, :"
 knowing what "a cleft in the fabric above"
 ... "the breaking or yielding of stone
 in the groundworks of building may make;"
 and therefore, simply because he did honest
 work according to his measure, he builded
 better than he knew, and into Gods larger,
 COZ 5inenta1 plan of law and liberty. The new face among the historical portraits which
 may be restored from our records was marked
 by the same strong Puritan features, yet over 1t there seems to be cast g subtler refine
 ment of spirit and more pathetic gentle
 ness of expression than is usually associated
 with the Puritan type of character. Before coming from another colony to be associated
 with MT. Davenport as the first ordained teacher of this church, Mir. Hocke had
 preached on "New England's Teares for Old
 England's Feares," and again with mingled
 pity and invect1ve upon ''New Englands and
 Ireland's Sorrows" It was Mir. Hooke who
 had said, "Do not love your reward beyond
 your works, ,'> expressing in such words the
 Puritan's commanding sense of duty to be
 done for duty's sake; the true servant of
 God, MT. Hooke taught, is unlike the idle
 servant, swho will be often listening to the
 clock or looking upon the sun and longing
 for the evening, not minding so much his
 work as his wages" After he had retu1aed
 to England to occupy for 8 brief moment
 high place in Cromwell's favor, and upon the
 death of the great protector to be himself de-
 posed and "to suffer trouble" MT Hooke [eol
 still had faith by which to write of "The
 Privilege of the Saints on Earth be- yond these in Heaven" in their trials
 and discipline; from which strong discourse
 of faith extract these sweet words of char
 ity, rare for his age, and not unneedful even
 now: "In some things peradventure thou art
 in the light, and am in tho dark; in others
 perhaps the day shineth unto me, and not to
 thee. There are some in the visible Church
 who are bemisted, when others are enlight- ened, and yet all agree in fundamentals, who ought to live in unity, and the stronger to exercise charity towards the weaker. X
 For 1t is God alone who revealeth
 light unto me. He may in some things
 make it day to one and night to another"
 After MT. Davenport had removed to Bos-
 ton-disheartened overmuch by the union
 of New Haven with Connecticut. but doubt
 less influenced also by the need of the strong man from New Haven to resist the spread of
 certain erroneous views among the churches
 in Boston and its vicinity-Mr. Nicholas
 
 office of pastor and teacher, which before
 had been kept distinct. We may not only look upon Mir. Street as a worthy successor | of Mir. Hooke and MT. Davenport, Ca pious and able man." according to Governor Win throp's characterization of him, but also VI Y may regard him as a true herald of what af \ forwards, in the great years of our country'i history, proved the political power of thii pulpit; for in the debate concerning New ' Haven's rights MT. Street, seconding Mr. Da. venport, urged that "ths answer should bt | of faith and not of fear" Those words might be inscribed a true, historic motto | above this pulpit whose answer fer these two hundred and fifty years in all great contro versies of State or Church has been an an. ! swer of faith and not of fear.
 ! For the ten succeeding years after 1874 \ in what conservative men who remembered | the customs of the fathers were already be \ ginning to speak of es 'fthese declining ! times"-this church passed through an in. \ terregnum, and suffered some of those bless \ ine3 attendant. upon excessive candiaatine which have not been altogether unknown iH ! more recent times. At length the messen | gers of the church brought report that MT James Pierpont, . youthful graduate ot tho | new college at Cambridge, was "a godly | scholar, 9 man of good parts, and aekely tt make good instI unent.h He was also com mended as ''a man of peacs," "who desires peace in church and town"
 N In tho colonial records find a comnuni cation from MT. Davenport, in which he ex pressed to the magistrates the hope "that g \ small college (such as the day of small things \ will permit), should be set up in New Haven" It was given to Mir. Pisrpont to set that hope caneto it's fruition. As the Hep Y kins grammar school grew out of MT. Dav N exports zeal for education, Yale college honers MT. Pierpont among its founders His services in establishing the college rsn | ders continued regard by us for its interests Ia part of the historic loyalty of tht \ church to itself; and we may count i Y to-day a proper reason for gratitude in the commemoration of this church that al early pastor of it, with two other Connection \ clerRymen, succeeded in establishing a smal | college, and in the course of time in educa | ting, as an historian has justly observed, body of laymen up to the level of their owI Eculture, so that they might be. enti Isted il part with the management of the college; anG also we may count it worthy of grateful men \ ton that those ministers in the persons O their successors in the Congregational pull pits of this State are still tolerated upon tn corporation of great university.
 How we'll Mir. Pierpont fulfilled the hop of the messengers of the church who found him out and thought he would make goot instrument appears from Cotton Nather' high euloRy of him after he had been snatehet away "from the golden candlestick of Nev Haveu-a burning and shln1ng light, where of the whole colony of Connecticut for many years enjoyed the comfortable influences" Another glowing ccmmendation of hil ministry has come down to us, which I vii read notwithstanding the apparently unin \ tended doubtful compliment of the rhetoril of it to the members of his congregation I sfHis moral nature was so softly diffused ove his church and people that they appeared t, \ lose themselves in the absorbing element, a | dark forms seem sometimes in pleasant sum mer days to dissolve in an atmosphere 0 \ light"
 \ It would be a pro6tless task to lift the vol N from the dissensions which culminated in th latter days of the long ministry of MT. Moves The whole story lies before me in the scare legible records of church and society, all it passion silenced long since, all its spirit o party faded as the leaves of the records, ant in the present co o-operation of two stron churches upon this Green only the happy is sues of it left. It was one of those ineyita ble controversies in which the intolsrabl nuisance of a union between church an, State in free country was brought to reve lation.
 The wild evangelist through whom the of fense first came lived to repent of his hurt ful extrayagances, and Mir. Moves was per mitted to outliye the years of the offens