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HISTORIC SKETCH

F 1Q4 .W4 f\22 Copy 2

FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST

In Wetherslield,

GIVEN FROM THE PULPIT JULY 9, 1876,

A. C. ADAMS,

Pastok op the Chuhch.

HARTFORD. CONNT.: 1

I THE ALLEN & SHERWOOD CO., PRINTERS. ]

1877.

HISTORIC SKETCH

OP THE

FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST

In AYethersfield,

GIVEN FROM THE PULPIT JULY 9. 1S7C,

BY

Af'c?" ADAMS,

Pastou of the Church.

HARTFORD. CONK.: THE ALLEN & SHERWOOD CO., PRINTERS.

^h'^

PlBT.ISnEP BY REQUEST OF THE CHURCH.

HISTOPvIC SKETCH

"Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt; Thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it."— Psai,m l>xxx : 8.

It is now a little more than two hundred and Ibrty years since the valley of the Connecticut began to be occupied by our fathers. It was only aV)out tifteen years from the landing at Plymouth, and five from the settlement of Boston, and yet the emigrating proi>ensity, which has ever since characterized the Yankee nation, had already begun to work. There was not room enough in the Bay Colony, and it must be found- elsewhere.

Why the first movement was made in this direction may be partly due to the representations of Walupiinacut, an Indian Chief, who visitedjhe Bay as early as 1031, and invit.ed^th£_Engr_ TI^HTo^orne and secTfor themselves the fertility and beauty of a region still accounted the Paradise of New England. About two hundred and forty years, and yet, if you date from the first dem- onstration toward a settlement, it is two hundred and forty-three

years.

That Wethersfieid was one of tlie three towns first settled, is universally agreed. But which was the first of the three, Hart- ford, Windsor, or Wethersfieid? The facts seem to be, that in 1633 a trading house was built in AVindsor, at the mouth of the Tunxis, now known as the Farmington ; that in 1634 a little company of settlers came to Pyquag, soon after called Wethers- fieid, and built their huts there ; that in 1635 other settlers came to AVethersfield, and also to Hartford and Windsor. The Wind- sor people speak of theirs as the oldst town in Connecticut. If you date from the establishment of the trading house, it unques- tionably is; but if from the time when families came, and houses were built for them, then Wethersfieid. On the whole it is a

pretty evenly-balanced question, and we may as "well cast the deciding vote in favor of our own town, and call Wethersfield first. Hartford has no claim at all to that distinction.

But if we are first we shall have to admit that it is because we Avere a little more willful and impatient of authority than our neighbors. People of Watertown, Dorchester, and Newtown, all petitioned the General Court of the Bay Colony for leave to emi- grate. The Court refused, at first, the permission it afterwards granted; but we, the Watertown people, had made up our minds to come, and so came, regardless of the General Court, and were on the ground, a few of us, and built our huts in the fall of 1634. But this was only preparatory, and you must come to 1635 and 1636 to see the three settlements really established.

The Journey of these little communities across the country, and the hardships which attended the first settlement, ought not to be soon forgotten by their children. Men, women, and chil-

dren making their way on foot thimiglia hundred and twenty_ miles of pathless forests, over mountains, and through thickets, swamps, and streams, — a fortnight on the Avay, — the Windsor peoi)le not reaching their destination till November, and in that same month the river frozen over; the winter one of great severity, not as fatal, but attended with as great hardship and suffering, as the first at Plymouth; household supplies, sent around by Avater from Boston, greatly delayed, and much utterly lost; starvation threatened; some of the people making their way back through the forest to Massachusetts, others by Avay of the river and the sea; the remnant, Avitli Avhat supplies they have, and Avith Avhat they obtain from Die forest, just managing to li\'e through. Keinforcements come Avith the summer of 1636, and the colony is fairly established.

Wethersfield, as originally purchased of the Indians, Avas six miles long on the river, and eight miles from east to west, three miles on the cast side of the river, and five on the Avest side. To this Avas added subsequently a five mile purchase eastward, Avhich made the Avhole territory six miles by thirteen. The deed, as recorded on our ToAvn Records, must have astonished Tarramug- gus, Massacuppee, and the five other Indians Avho set their marks to it. A whole Law Lexicon might as Avell have been discharged upon them. The Committee Aviio made the purchase (it Avas in

1673,) bear names familiar to iis of the present day, — Chester. Talcott, Treat, and Welles.

With these three towns — Windsor, Hartford, Wethersfield — Connecticnt began; and the first General Court, made np of rep- resentatives from the three, was held in 1637, although a Court was held the year before under the authority of the Bay Colony.

In the preamble to the first Constitution we see upon what idea Connecticut began. That preamble reads as follows: "For- asmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God so to order and dispose things as that we, the inhabitants of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield, are now dwelling upon the river of Connecticut and the lands adjoining, and whereas, the Word of God requires that to maintain peace and union there should be an orderly and decent government according to God, we do therefore associate and conjoin ourselves as one public State or Commonwealth, and do for ourselves and our successors, and such as shall be adjoined to us at any time hereafter, enter into combination and confed- eration " — and what for ? for herein is their peculiarity — '' to jireserve the liberty and the purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ which we now profess, as also the discipline of the churches, which, according to the truth of the said Gospel, is now practiced among us" — there is the first grand object, and then comes in secondarily this, — "also in civil affairs, to be guided and governed according to such laws, orders, and decrees as shall be made, ordered, and decreed."

You have thus in the early Connecticut a community of free- men who must ultimately, if their tendencies are carried out, be free in form as well as fact, and turn their preamble into a Declaration of Independence. You have men who believe in God as the fountain of authority, and in government as ordained by him and responsible to him. You have a company of godly men, a confederation of Christian churches, coming out into the Avilderness to occupy lands which they have purchased, to wor- shijo God as He prescribes, to organize society in His fear, and as they judge most for their own and their children's good. I do not see but they had a perfect right to do it.

And yet they were men who had human nature in them, and besides, as is almost always seen in the l)eginning of things, they understood their principles better than they did the limitations

6

of those principles, and the wisest way of working thera. Hence much that was extreme and impracticable, and that bred some- times discord among themselves. In this Wethersfield had its full share, both in difficulties of its own and in those shared with the colony at large. It may be an encouragement to some of us, who are apt to magnify tlie troubles of our time, and to think that everything is going to the bad, to see what our fathers went through.

No Church was organized in Wethersfield for the first seven years (1634 to 1641), and the people were, during that time, a fragment of the churcli in AVatertown. There were several min- isters in their company, and men of excellent repute, but none who stood in the exact place of a pastor ; and partly in conse- quence of that, differences and contentions arose. The ministers and elders of Hartford and Windsor, and subsequently Daven- port of New Haven, endeavored to restore harmony, but in vain; till at length, upon advice, one party left Wethersfield, and began a settlement at Stamford. A second secession took place not long after, in which "a. considerable number of families" went with another minister to Milford. Even those who remained were but moderately well united, and though the Church is said to have been organized in 1641, it was yet a debated (|uestion whether it was duly organized or not. As late as 1650, the Gen- eral Court has a deliverance on the subject, which begins with a preamble, that "T\7iereas, It is well knowni that there was a Church orderly gathered at Wethersfield by the full ai)probation of the Court and Churches," and then goes on to allege that '"divers members of said Church have removed without notice, and without the approbation either of the Court or of the Churches, and that some still resident in Wethersfield unjustly question the station and being of the Church," and thereupon the Court declares "that, for anything that doth appear, it is the true and undoubted Church of Wethersfield, and so to be esteemed." And yet the Court leaves it open for any Avho may think they can prove the contrary to appear at their coming session in May. From the subsequent silence on the subject, I conclude that nobody did appear, and that our poor little Church came to be an acknowledged fact. If a man or a church is alive, it goes a good way to show that sometime or other it was born.

The first duly installed pastor was Rev. Henry Smith, and with his advent you might hope that quiet times were coming. But no. Difficulty begins very early, first started and pushed forward by Mr. Chaplin, the ruling elder, who probably wanted to rule more than it was best he should.

Accusations were made against Mr. Smith, of some impropriety, or mal-administration in his office, and also of being no better than he should be in bis business affairs. The trouble spread, and the fight waxed hotter and hotter, till at length it was carried into the General Court. The Court acquit Mr. Smith; but he wants more than a bare acquital, and upon his sug- gestion, all who have any grievance against him are sum- moned. On a careful examination, the Court concludes that the complaints are mostly grounded in misapprehension, and that Mr. Smith was "much wronged by false reports and unjust sur- mises." His accusers are punished. Mr. Chaplin, " for setting his hand to a paper tending to defamation of Mr. Smith," is fined ten pounds. Francis Norton, " for setting his hand to the same,'' is fined five pouuds. Mr. Plum, for preferring a roll of grievances against Mr. Smith, and failing of proof in the prose- cution thereof, is fined ten pounds.

It would lighten our taxes wonderfully, if every man who alleges against his neighbor what lie cannot prove, was obliged to pay for it.

It is furtlier ordered that, " if any man shall renew these accu- sations against Mr. Smith, he shall be fined ten pounds."' The malcontents, of course, are not pleased with this. Some of them go off in a third secession, and settle in Branford. Others stay in Wethersfield and grumble ; till at length the General Court advises Mr. Smith, for peace sake, to lay doAvn his office, " if it can be done according to God." which means, I suppose, if he can do it with good conscience. The Lord saves the poor man the trouble of deciding that question, and, in the seventh or eighth year of his ministry, releases him from the turmoils of the earthly Church, and takes him, let us hope, to the Church that is at rest.

In 1650, comes Rev. John Russel, and it is a satisfaction that the storm that raged in his day did not originate in Wethersfield. It began in Hartford, and was felt all over Puritan Xew England.

It was known as the Hartford Controversy. " Wliat the precise nature of it was," says Cotton Matlier, " it was difficult at the time to tell," and certainly you cannot expect a very clear account of it now. Something, no doubt, very weighty, rousing up the consciences of good men, and making them feel that the salvation of the Church and the world was at stake. The con- troversy involved a certain reaction against the terribly stern theology of the time, and the attempted rigidity of ecclesiastical rule. It began with baptism and the half-Avay covenant, and ran into the question of Presbyterianism and Congregationalism, and of the relative claims of clergy and laity. The minority of the first Church in Hartford, finding themselves in a very hot fur- nace, begged the privilege of transfer to Farmingtou, or to Wethersfield, but that was denied them. They might not go away, and they might not stay, with any comfort. So, at length, they determine to go at any rate.

They left their Hartford home, and made for themselves a home in what is now Hadley, Mass. The Church of Wethers- lleld, which sympathized with them, and was used to emigrating, went too, or rather a large, and some say the larger, portion of the Churcli, under the lead of the pastor, Mr. Russel. He •became the first minister of the Hadley Church, and he it was, as our history-reading young ])eople may remember, who shel- tered for a considerable time, under his own roof, the two Regi- cide Ju'dges, Goffe and Whalley.

So much for the first thirty years, (1634-16G4.) It is abso- lutely all, of any special significance, that I have been able to gather. Church Records, we have none, for this entire period. The Town Records, scanty and hardly decipherable, throw very little light. We are dependent, almost entirely, upon the Colo- nial Record, and upon incidental allusions of various writers, in connexion with the " Hartford Controversy." Certainly, what we do get is not just what we would like to find it, nor greatly flattering to our pride of ecclesiastical ancestry; but it is, per- haps, just as well to see it as it is, and to know that the past was not all good, any more than the present is all bad.

Besides there are points of relief in the whole matter. Con- tention about religion is certainly unlovely, and yet I am not sure but it is more respectable tlian contention about the paltry

matters of money and of place, which afflict our every-day life. It seems to imply at least that men make some account of religion. Moreover, the times of our fathers were the very times to which we should look for sharp discussion. They were times in which the seeds of great thoughts were coming up and grow- ing. Men were attempting new and advanced methods in society and in religion. They had broken out from the old social status, and from under all established rule. They were undertaking to organize a perfectly right society, and a right church, with little reference to former models. Tiiey were ter- ribly conscientious. They were terribly in earnest. No wonder they sometimes, fell into difficulty and strife. It is to be remem- bered, too, that we have not the whole story of these years before us, but only that part which might be expected to wear the most unfavorable aspect. Communities are not to be judged alto- gether by the records of the Police Courts, nor the domestic and social condition of nations by the history of their wars. And so in the Church. The things that make difficulty, that break up ministers, that divide churches, that gather councils, that carry ministers and people to the General Court, are conspicuous. But meanwhile, and behind all this smoke and dust, the people live on their quiet life. The Sabbaths come and go. The Word is preached. Tiie prayers and praises of God's house go up. Multitudes live godly lives, and are comforted and edified and saved, while at the same time foundations are laid for those who come after. Through tribulation the Church advances.

Upon the next thirty years (1664-1G95), we have more light, and the whole look of things is more favorable. "We have not^ indeed, any Church Records, even in this period, and the explana- tion suggested in respect to the previous thirty years, that the Records were carried away in some one of the secessions and lost, is less readily to be accepted, since the lack continues for more than a generation after the last of these secessions. We have, however, the '' Book of Town Votes," from which we can gather a good deal, chiefly, however, on the secular side of churcli life.

Three pastorates, and the intervals preceding and following, fill up the second thirty years. First, that of Rev. Gershom Bulkley (1666-1676). Mr. Bulkley was evidently a man of gen- uine goodness, and of large ability. He broke down in health,

10

however, early, and after ten years exchanged the ministry for the i)ractice of medicine, in which, as also in the service of the State, he was much distinguished. One entry in the Town Eecords in respect to him, 1 hke the tone of: "The town, being informed by their honored pastor that it was too hard for him, and beyond liis power, by reason of weakness of voice, to carry on the whole work of the ministry, they declare thtmselves freely willing to provide another minister to assist him in his woik, and to be a help and a comfort to him; and they desire that the honored pastor would afford them his advice and direc- tion respecting a meet process for that work, for which they wi)l be thankful to him, and will take the same into serious consider- ation."

You will not think it strange if I have a professional satisfac- tion in this action, both as evincing the people's generosity towards their minister, and their persuasion that in some things he miglit know more than they. They take the matter, there- upon, into "serious consideration," and in due time the Rev. Mr. Stone, whoever he may have been, is engaged as an assistant to Mr. Bulkley.

The next pastorate is tliat of Rev. Mr. Rowlandson, cut short by his decease in a little more than a year from his settlement. In C'lnnexion with this,a single item from the Town Rtcords, cer- tainly mo^t creditable to to the g^-nerosity of the people. " Voted, that Mrs. Rowlandson shall leceive the whole salary for the cur- rent year, amounting to one liundred and twenty pounds, and thereaiter thirty pounds a year, so long as she shall remain a widow among us." Considering how short the pastorate of Mr. Rowlandson had been, and that Mrs. R. had probably many years of life before her, it is a striking evidence of the people's regard for the ministry, and for all appi^rtaining to it.

After some interval comes the ministry of Rev. Mr. Woodbridge, "which continues for twelve years. On one occasion the town votes him twenty pounds additional, " on account of his extra- ordinary charges for the current year. At another time they vote that he shall have four score cords of wood — enough, one would think to kee}) him warm — "forty cords to be sent in by individuals, not more than one load to a man, and forty to be provided by the selectmen, in such way as they see lit," with a

11

proviso " that the loads sent in shall be viewed by Joseph Wright, and that if any load is not worth two shillings and six pence, it shall be retnrned to him who sends it,"

Evidently they had no idea of compromising with meanness, and were ready to say to a man that wonld cheat his minister, in the spirit of the Apostle's outburst upon Simon, the magician, " Thy wood-pile perish with thee."

But no number of incidents that I can quote, will fully give you the impression made by the perusal of these old records. They abound in traces of the large place which religion held in the community, and of the great concern to have its institutions duly honored. The house of worshij), the safeguards thrown around the Sabbath, the provision for training the young in sacn d music, at the town's expense, the earnestness to secure and maintain a stated and pii-rmanent ministry, the many comings and goings to this end, the negotiations held, the messengers traveling on horseback, far and near, the careful and exact pro- vision made, for both pastor and assistant, many things that I cannot well give, muke the impression of a community singularly practical and in earnest in matters of religion.

There is one instance connecteJ with the measures taken to fill the pastoral office, which is almost droll in its frankness and par- ticularity. Eev. Mr. Willauhee is invited from "the Bay," to come and minister to them. If he will come and preach a year, "they will pay him seventy pounds, and furnish a house for him to live in, and give him the use of the land known as the Church's Land. Tliey will also pay for the transportation of his family and goods from the Bay Cidony. where he lives." Then, further, '• If God shall unite our hearts in him to be our minister, we will add to his maintenance as God shall enable us; or if not, if he do not like us, or we do not like him to be our minister, we will pay for his transportation back again to the Bay." Certainly, that is frank and fair; he knows and they know that ministers and peo- j)le sometimes like one anottier, and sometimes not, and they talk it right out from the b-giuning, and the minister knows just what to expect.

These old Town Records, let me say in pa-sing, are a wonder- ful treasury. They open to us a state of society, and a domestic, social, religious ongoing of things, which it is not a little difficult

12

• . t A little almost iiulependent com-

to realise as actually ^^f ^^l * ,.^ "„;;„ the forest, carrying on

munity, cutting down for 't^'f » P';^";' ^„^ elaborateness of the

government, almost wUh t'j^^" „' „,g„,ent npon all sorts

lost angust legislaf.e bod.es. '"'"IJ^^'^.^^^oJerately snccess- of aflairs. nndertaking to ma. tarn. l»w ^ ^^^^ ^.^^ ^_^^^g

fal,a perfect society. ''"°"'"S "™; ^fl,;,, between neighbors, them, save by town ™t':.'-^S"'*''"=, ifr^a grants to widows sustaining religious i-t.tntK,ns, n,a^^»J^ tr^sury-on good ,„d orpl>ans, loaning money i'^^^'^J^ fellow citizens, punisU- secnrity, you maybe f"-''"™ ! "Tmp oprie.ies, and ill ma„- ing not crimes only, but '"g'-f """''' '7'°5 t,,e motive, and the „<;^.,_it could not last, ^^V^ ^^^^^^^Zn to the present good training it gave, v.s.ble '^1'^%^^^.^ Town Meetings, lay. may well command °" ' PJ« :„,i u,, an interval for occnring very f^l"*^""-'' ''''* f™ n" in the evening, discuss- Innch, from nine in the >™;-" "« *° »^'J^ tions. recall and

i„g and determining almost »" '"^«;"*^^ ^,,,„,e, to the effect i„p,.ess tbe often quoted ^^^-'^f^^^^^ Contment had their that the free institutions of the Ameiicai birth in the New England T°™ Meeting. ^^^^

I might dwell longer upon these ' "J " ' ^,,,^,^ j^ the early my subject, for the town was Ff ''"''"y '' ;;" ,he shaping Ses, and the Church has "-"- '^;™ .^^ becal'ed the third force of the town. But Pf ^ °".*' ''^^' "^^ „i„irtry of Ilev.

rt::feniii:inS::i^;;::f"

leather-covered memorandum ^^^^l^Z^tl^ yetrs. cer's pass book, is all we have for a ministry ol lo.iy j

(1694-1 7:)8.) ^^^„^j „j baptisms, and

The book IS ^J^^Z. here and there of comnuini-

r rl^^aX:;; few bnef ^JoHc. . -ciphne. a^^^^^^

Z')^::;'^;:^'^^ of Joslah Ei,ey,-Eebecca, I

18

think its name was. " Child of Isaac Goodwin, — Sarah, I think the name was." "Elizabeth, I think its name was, child of Joseph Steele." " Mary, I think Avas the name, child of Josiah Churchill." "Josiah, I think its name was, child of Jonathan Wright."

I suspect, however, from certain indications, that it is not altogether poor memory, but great scrupulosity on the part of Mr. Mix, as regards the exact truthfulness of his statements. Here and there we have one baptised upon the parents, "owning the covenant," though not really members of the church.

The good man evidently yearns to give assurance of God's grace in baptism to all he can. Now and then the Negro ser- vant of this or that man is baptized, upon the master's promis- ing to train him religiously. One entry, more perhaps in the spirit of his Master than the intense individualism of our time would readily acknowledge, is as follows: " Baptized Ebenezer, child of Jerusha Hollister. The mother had died, and this poor illegitimate orphan I spoke to the selectmen about, that they would engage in behalf the town for its Christian education, which was not I suppose, dissented from, and so I baptized him. The child died next day."

Almost all the baptisms seem to be of children, and there were probably very few adults in the community in those days who had not been baptized. Here are two or three cases of the manner of treating faults in those days "I admonished" — John Smith, we will call him — "before the assembly, on the Saturday afternoon, for drinking to excess. He offered a confession of his sin; but having fallen the same way before, it was looked upon as a thing which he was frequently guilty of, and he was there- fore by me admonished." Again: " reproved in the assembly," John Robinson, we will call him, for something, I cannot make out the entire record, but it has to do with " watermelons." The father of John "also spake before the assembly in a way of con- fession for his fault, in respect to his sou's conduct, and that he had encouraged him to withstand public confession."

Nor was either sex spared in these Church administrations. "I read publicly the testimony of Henry Latimer and Grace Kilburn, against Prudence, the wife of John Smith," though what the offense was I cannot make out, and then used words

14

to this effect: "In tlie name of Christ I charge this sin upon you, and warn yon to turn from it, and bring forth fruits worthy of amendment of life," ajiplying to her those words, 1 Cor. Yi : 10. It must have been a preity serious matter to go to church in those days, unless one carried a clean conscience with liim. Still farther, under date of March, 1700, ju.st when the Baptist ways of thinking were coming up in Connecticut: "Naomi, the wife of Philip Goff, had ceased to attend the public worship of God with us, and had been re-baptized by Jonathan Sprague, living in the Narraganset ctiuntry, I think. She owned her separation from the communion, and her re-baptization. She also alleged that we are no Church. I enquired of her what gave being to a Church. She said, 'profession of faith in Christ.' I replied, as /^/r«'//Z.-, ' we profess faith in Christ.' She alleged that word in Coiinthians, '"Come out from among them, and be ye separate,' and I think I told her that was a coming out from heathen tem- ples. After debating this, and inl'ant baptism, and wliether by dipping or sprinkling, I admonished her, and suspended her from the Lord's Supper."

Then a second time the said Naomi is warned to "depart from her schism," but I fear to little purpose. I should not expect to make much impression on man or woman who could interpret Scri^iture as preposterously as Mistress Goff seems to have done. Then there is a case where " John Jillit acknowlt^dged his sin in unfaithfulness to his word, and promised to amend in that, and so I baptized him." If John kept that last promise, I should say that there was more encouragement to baptize hirii than if he could tell a great experience, and was yet unfaithful to his Avord.

Then there are two or three other cases, which I will not quote, which imply quite enough strictness of discipline, and which the moderns would call meddling with what was none of the minister's business. On the whole, Mr. Mix was a man I should take to, more than to most. IModest, unpretending, rigidly conscientious, tender in his sympathies toward every living crea- ture, yet marching right up to the hardest duties and the great- est severities without flinching — a good specimen of the Puritan pastor at his best.

It was in Mr. Mix's time that Newington and Rocky Hill,

15

then called Stepney, became separate parishes, both of them about the \-eur 17:20. Glastonbury had b- en incorporated as a town in 1G'.)0, just before Mr. Mix came, and its first minister was settlt^d in 1G92. The records tell ns, not always in the clearest and most connected way, the whole story : the petition of the inhabitants in each case, the representation of their dis- advantage in great distance from chnrch, the town's consent to a separation, the grant thereupon of a portion of the parsonage lands, and the relinquishment by the people of the new parish of all claims on the old property previously owned in common. On these conditions they were permitted to set up for themselves.

After Mr. Mix, comes Rev. James Lockwood, whose pastorate extended from 1739 to 1772, thirty-three years. From the beginning of Mr. Lockwood's ministry, we have clearer day-light, and more sense of our own relation to the establishment than before. Glastonbury is gone, and Newington and Rocky Hill gone ; and the " First Ecclesiastical Society of Wethersfield," stands out palpably before ns. It has the same territory that Wethersfield now covers, and about the same population within that territory, all having one and the same church home, and listening to one and the same minister. It was a grand institu- tion, and, for the pastor, a grand opportunity.

Mr. Lockwood was equal to the demand. "He was a good clas- sical scholar," says President Stiles, " a man of prudence, and avoided intermeddling deeply with religious controversies. He was formed for usefulness, and was an honor to the ministry." You will not object to what the president adds, that " he spent his ministerial life in a large parish, of perhaps three hundred families, who are said to be as well instructed in religion as any Church in Connecticut. He has had the prudence to lead that flock in great peace and love through his ministry." The fact is added, which is perhaps quite as significant of the esteem in which he was held, that he was invited, in 1758, to the presidency of the College of New Jersey, and then in 1766 to the presi- dency of Yale College, both of which invitations he declined, and both for the same reason, "his strong attachment to the people of his charge, and his consequent unwillingness to sepa- rate himself from them." Two notable facts stand out beyond the rest in Mr. Lockwood's tima One, a revival, which is said

.16

to be the first that Wethersfield ever knew, though fjir less powerful than others since. It was in Whitfield's time, and cunuecled, according to tradition, with a visit which that famous evangelist made to this place. The Church Kegister gives indication of it in the fact that forty-three were received to the Church in 1741, and twenty-five in 1742, whereas, Mr. Lock wood's ministry, apart from these two years, averages only seven or eight a year, little more than halt as many as the' aver- age of the last twenty years. The other prominent fact was the erection of this present house of worship, the corner stone of which was laid in 1761, a hundred and fifteen years ago. It was a great undertaking for those days, and a massive testimony to the hold which God's worship had upon the people. It was built, moreover, in hard times, one more illustration of the fact that it is when the people have a mind to work, and not when work is easy, that important undertakings are carried through. The Society Records abound in testimony to the consultations and devices, and comings and goings, and taxations and expen- ditures, through which the work was brought to its issue. Mr. Lockwood had the satisfaction of preaching in it for about eight years (1764 to 1772), when his ministry ended, and he was gathered to the company of God's faithful servants who had gone before.

After Mr. Lockwood, comes Rev. Dr. John Marsh, whose pas- torate covers the time from 1774 to 1821, though the colleague- ship of Dr. Tenney commences in 1816, and Dr. Marsh's active ministry is probably to be regarded as closing about that time. His was the last and longest of three long pastorates, Mr. Mix filling out forty-four years, Mr. Lockwood thirty-three, and Mr. Marsh forty-eight. His ministry began and ended in times of great public excitement.

At the beginning was the Revolutionary "War, and the grand epoch which the people of the United States commemorate so conspicuously the present year. The cloud of that war was already rising dense and dark, and its thunders muttering, at the time of his settlement in 1774, and soon the long and weary conflict came on. How largely Wethersfield shared in its toils and sac- rifices does not appear from records so distinctly as might be desired. But we have enough from various sources to show us

17

that Dr. Marsh and the people were intensely in sympathy with it.

In 1775 we have on record the resolutions passed in town meeting, expressive of sympathy with the people of Boston in their privations, and providing for a contribution of supplies, to be sent them. Still earlier, resolutions endorsing the patriotic action of the General Court, and pledging co-operation for the country's defence. At the very opening of the contest, was the organization of that famous company of a hundred men, addressed by the pastor on a Sunday morning, upon the tidings of the bat- tle of Lexington, dispersed in the afternoon to make the needed preparations, drawn up again near evening upon the green in front of this church, commended to God in prayer, and at once setting out for Boston, escorted by the pastor and others beyond the river. They returned indeed soon after, upon information that their services were not yet needed, but set out again, and were with the little army in season to share in the battle of Bunker Hill, under the command of Capt. John Chester. Many hints of what was going on, and of how the people felt and acted throngh those eventful years, are scattered through the town records, though hardly significant enough to demand quotation here. Enough to show that Wethersfield was not behind the State at large, and not to be behind Connecticut in that great conflict, was to be in the very front rank; for no State of the whole thirteen furnished, in proportion to its population, so many men, and so many years of service, as Connecticut did.

Tiie Church and the pastor were heartily in the work. Indeed that was true of the Churches and pastors of New England gen- erally. "It was the ministers that did it," said President John Adams. And the late Eev. Dr. Spring, of New York, afhrms with a positiveness that will be justified more than ever when the researches of this centennial year are complete: ''Had the Con- gregational and Presbyterian ministers taken the ground that the ministers of certain other denominations did, the war of in- dependence would never have been carried through."

The fact of Washington's sojourn in Wethersfield, for some days at least, during the war, and of the presence of other high officers, both French and American, who were here in consulta- tion with him, is undoubted. His attendance upon this church, hi ; courtesy to its pastor, his demonstration of interest not to

18

say surprise, at the great choir of a hnndred and fifty, Ihiing the entile gallery front, are facts tiiat have been handed down to ns. The patriotic utterances of the pastor throughout the war, and the patriotic earnestness of liis prayers, are spoken of by those who were accustomed to hear of tliem from their older kindred.

And yet, undoubtedly, the war excitement wrought unfavora- bly, for the time, on the spiritual interests of the people. Still more unfavorable the year that immediately followed, when Avar had so largely demoralized the country, and the infidelity which came in so largely throngli the French alliance had spread through the central portions of the country, and almost poisoned the fountains of the national life. In such times Dr. Marsh's ministry began. Hardly less unfavorable were the closing years when that contest, surpassing in bitterness all others that Con- necticut has ever known, was going on between the "old stand- ing order" and Federalism on the one hand, and the Democratic party and the newer religious sects on the other. The new con- stitution of Connecticu!, putting the churches upon one common footing, and upon their own unaided resources, fell like mid- night upon our churches and pastors, and yet ushered in for them a more glorious morning than they had ever known. It was adopted, and the great conflict ended the very year that Dr. Marsh died. And yet, amid all these disturbing influences, his ministry was a fruitful one. The work of the Church went stead- ily on. There were ingatherings from year to year; the most conspicuous in 1814, two years before Dr. Tenney came as col- league. In that year eighty-six were added to the Church, and in the whole period of Dr. Marsh's ministry, four hundred and eighty-five. Eev. Dr. Sprague, in his Annals of the American Pulpit, says of Dr. Marsh, "There is reason to believe that he feared God from his youth. He used to say that he did notkuow •when he had not a love for religion. His sermons indicate a much higher degree of literary culture than was common among his contemporaries. He was an earnest friend of education, and rendered important aid to indigent young men, who were prepar- ing for usefulness. He was a zealous patriot, and took a deep interest in the establishment of our independence and of our constitutional government. In his last illness he had great tran- quility of mind, and died in the joyful hope of a better life."

Next comes the pastorate of E,ev. Caleb J. Tenney, D.p., who

19

was settled as colleague with Dr. Marsh, in 1816, and became sole pastor at Dr. Mursh's decease, in 1821. His ministry lasted twenty-five years, or, if you count it closed when a collea;:i;ue was furnished him, it was nineteen years oniy. The most memorable event of his tim?, if I may not rather say in the whole history of the Church, was the great revival of 1820-21, none equaling it in extent or in power, wliether before or since. It was in a time of revivals, widely spread through Connecticut. It was preceded, as one who vividly remembers it tells me, by a great amount of wonderfully instructive, faithful, impressive preichiug, in the ordinary course of Sabbath labor; preaching which, sent home by the Holy Spirit, brought profess 'd Christians to a deep sense of their sins, and to d'-ep repentence before Grod. From Decem- ber 1820, onward for several months. Rev. Mr. Nettleton, so fa- mous in that day and since, labored in connexion with the pastor. I cannot do better than to give an extract from Mr. Tenney's own account of the revival as contained in a religious newspaper. "Previous to the revival our (Church consisted of about two hun- dred and sixty members. As its fruit, precisely two hundred more have been added, seventy-nine of them heads of families. Some instances of conversion have been strongly marked. The awakening of some has been sudden and powerful, and has soon issued in triumphant peace. In others it has been as the still small voice. One man, who had been a total disbeliever in revel- ation, examined the subject with all the coolness of a mathema- tician, until, in the course of a few weeks, the great truths of Scripture bore upon his soul with insuppn'table power, and he yielded to God. One aged man said, 'If I have ever been born of God, it was on the day I was seventy-six years old.' Another said, ' It, was the day I wa5 sixty-eight.' In one family, a mother of eleven children, who had long gone to the table of Christ mourning that of her great family there was not one to accom- pany her, now hopes that eight of her children are converted to God. In another family, consisting of parents and seven chil- dren, all but one hope they have b.'come Christians. God has illustriously displayed his perfections in the work which is emphatically llis. To Him all the glory is due."

Very considerable additions were made to the Church in 1826 and in 1831, thirty-seven in the first-named year, and fifty-five in the last-named. It was after this ingathering that the Church

20

had a membership of five hundred, a larcrer number tlian at any other time in its history. Rev. Royal Robbins. in a historical discourse' i:)repared for the Centennial of this church edifice, in 1861, but in consequence of his oAvn sudden death never deliv- ered, says of Dr. Tenney : " As a preacher and a man he was so plain and unpretending, that his scholarship seems to have attracted little notice; but the power of his discourse and the influence of his piety were wonderfully felt by all who came in contact with him. I hardly know whether to characterize him more as a son of thunder, or a son of consolation."

In the later years of Dr. Tenney, came up that theological con- troversy which the older ministers, and people of our time, so w^ell remember, and which, passing beyond the limits, I will ven- ture to say the fit limits, of the ministerial association and the professional school, shook the churches almost to their founda- tions. The plain people, like Ahimaaz, the sou of Zadok, " saw a great tumult," even if like Ahimaaz, they " knew not what it was." Dr. Tenney was deeply, and of course, most conscien- tiously enlisted. The people were, to some extent, arrayed in parties. Rev. Mr. Warren brought in as colleague, through tlie influence of Dr. Tenney, and the portion of the church that most fully sympathized in his views, continued but a single year. Then, after a year's interval, came Rev. Robert Southgate, know- ing enough not to know Taylorism or Tylerism, but only Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and the church was at peace again. Mr. Southgate's ministry, as well as that of Dr. Tenney, must be accounted as among the richest spiritually, in the history of the church. The greater part of it was a time of revival, and in the five years, during which it continued, one hundred and seventy- five were added to the church.

The pastorate of Rev. Dr. :Mark Tucker (1845-1856), comes within the clear remembrance of many of you, and I will not speak of it at length. He was already widely known and honored as a faithful and successful minister of Christ, when he came among you. He had occupied various positions of prominence and importance. He came, comparatively in the evening of his days, and yet fresh and vigorous, and hopeful. How true a man he was, how conscientious, how faithful, how charitable, how christian, you well remember. Even to old age, he carried sunshine with him. For the greater part of the time after his

21

pastorate closed, lie lived among you honored and beloved, till a little more than a yiar since, God took him to his reward,

Eev. Willis Colton's ministry, (]S5G-18(;6). so f;.ithfulso earn- est, so kindly, leaving behind it so many friends and so many who felt that their minister was their friend, is fresh in your remembrance, better known to you than to me, and does not seem to require extended notice. It gathered into the church about a hundred and forty members. My own pastorate dates from January 1868, and is corsequently in its ninth year.

I have given, thus, a rapid sketch of the history of the First Church of Christ in Wethersfield, glimpses rather of its condi- tion, such as I have been able to gain through openings here and there in the darkness of the past. I cannot stay to speak of town affairs as such. I cannot stay to speak of particular fami- lies ; of names honored in this community, and commonwealth, and country ; of officers and men who shared in the contest for our national independence ; of judges and chief justices, who were born here, and baptized in this church ; of men conspicu- ous in the councils of the nation ; of the brothers of a single household, Avho went out from among us, and whose benefactions to private and public charities are reckoned in millions; of christ- ian ministers, trained up among us; of many others, who in various spheres have served God and their country. I speak of the church, and of the town, only as it connects with the church, and as I can, within the limits of a Sabbath discourse.

The study which I have given to the whole subject, though yielding less than might have been hoped on some points, has been to me a study of great interest. It has been pleasant to come so near the roots of our New England life, and to see a lit- tle more distinctly what manner of men our fathers were, and from what beginnings our structure of church and state alike has been reared. One would like to know- those beginnings more minutely. One would like to be put back, if that were possible, into a week of Mr. Mix's ministry, or Mr. Lockwood's, and to see and feel the whole ongoing of a society so peculiar and so unlike our own. There was a wonderful manhood in the best part of society in those early days; a God-consciousness, as they Siiy now, a sense of justice, equal and exact, a genuine and yet a carefully meted and bounded philanthropy, an impossibility of doing any- thing save by exactest use of square and compass ; an inflexible

22

determination to do right, and yet not to go a hair's breadth be- yond right. And yet there was a bad element in society even then, as bad and base as anything in onr day ; kept under and I^anished with great severity, indeed, but not eradicated. Nor was the good, all that a glowing imagination has sometimes painted it. There was wilfulness as well as conscientiousness, rigidity, as well as firmness, harshness, as well as faithfulness. The records do not show a golden age. The sharp and fre- quent contentions of the first thirty years, the ceremonialism of good Mr. Mix's time, the immoralities among church members, intimated on almost every page of Mr. Lockwood's records, the infelicitous methods by which, here as elsewhere, it was souglit to maintain the tone of public morals, and to compel the support of religious institutions of all these things show that our fathers had not attained perfection, either of theory or practice, and save us from the temptation to worship them or their times.

Bright spots then, are in the past and grand features of the early times, in the presence of which we cannot well help con- fessing a certain degeneracy, but I am not inclined the more, from these recent studies, to believe that the former times were, on the whole, better than these. If we have lost something of the good which our fathers had, we have attained other good which they knew little about. The cause of truth, and humanity, and of our Lord Jesus Christ " goes marching on."

A word in closing, on the present and the future of our church. We occupy a position very different from that of our fathers a hundred years ago. The change that has passed upon our older communities generally, has passed upon us also. We are no longer the homogeneous people we were then. The " old standing order" has no longer the spiritual leadership of the entire community. The orioinal impulse, under which New England institutions began, has somewhat spent its force. The power of the old traditions is weakened. New varieties of the christian faith, and of church order have arisen to divide with us the labor and the responsibility. As the world is, and as the church is, it is, perhaps, better so. At all events, it is so, and our part is to ticknowledge in all cordiality and brotherliness, our christian neighbors, and the christian churches among us, of whatever name, and to work, so far as they wall let us, in a kind- ly co-operation with them.

23

At the same time onr distinctive field of labor is large enough to draw out all our energies,. and the encoiiragements which attend it on the whole, as great as at any previous time, certainly greater than a century ago. "We are indeed, but one church out of five, in a population no larger than when one church, a cen- tury ago stood absolutely alone. But we have still a hundred and seventy-five families, more than all the other congregations together, and have a proportionate privilege and responsibility. We have three hundred and thirfy-six church members, a larger number in proportion to the congregation than ever before. Something more than one third of these have come in within the past eight years. Of the comparative piety of the present gene- ration, it would not become me to speak. I certainly shall not say that we are better than our fathers. The study of the past makes me more than ever afraid that they were not much better than Ave, Our Sabbath School numbers about two hundred and sixty. It is larger than it was twenty-five years ago, when, with an equal population, there was no other school within the limits of the present town. If you add to it the Griswoldville school, which, though called a Union School, was originated, and is mainly carried on by members of our church, you have almost a hundred more to set down to the credit of the present time.

A century ago, nay, mainly until fifty years ago, prayer meet- ings were unknown among us. We have now four staged meet- ings in as many different localities, gatliering weekly, for prayer and praise, not less than two hundred persons. They are grow- ing ill interest : and if there are among us none so conspicuous for leadership in chiistian work as were a few whose names have come down from a generation ago, the number of those who share in that work is greater, and is still increasing. In our religious charities there is the same advance within the last thirty years, that is noticed in christian churches generally. In our panchial afEairs we h^ve emerged somewhat from the old darkness of law, and tax, and compulsion, and are learning to depend on public spirit and the spontaneous liberality of christian hearts.

Our church organ, purchased seven or eight years ago, at a cost of two thousand dollars, was the first that Wethersfield ever had, and, so far as I can learn, the first thing of any considerable mag- nitude tliat Wethersfield ever did by voluntary subscription.

Our new chapel, built and furnished at a cost of five or six

24

thousand dollars, followed soon after; and, along with it, the chapel of our Griswoldville brethren, at a cost of four thousand dollars. The same idea of i)nblic spirit and of si^ontaneoas giv- ing, and giving for the cause sake, and for our Lord and jVfaster, and not merely to pay the charge for a value received by our- selves, will put our finances and our whole establishment on a better footing than they ever held in their palmiest days.

Some of you may be almost ready, in view of these statements, to ask if your minister is not "become a fool in glorying." If there be such, my answer is that "ye iiave compelled me." I do but put glorying against Availing, and gratefully recognize the good of the jiresent as well as the often exaggerated glories of the past.

Our fathers were men of like passions as we are, and because they were our fathers, we are what we are to-day, in evil as well as in good. They were nothing without the grace of God ; with that grace we may hope to do our work as well, at least, as they did theirs.

I thank God for the past, but I thank him also for the present ; for the better understood gospel; for freedom from entangling alliance with the State; for the system which puts the supjiort of religious institutions on the friends of religion, instead of compelling it from friends and foes alike ; for the broad field of labor which is still left us, notwithstanding the denominational varieties of our time; for the theory and the growing practice which confers the privilege and imposes the responsibility of christian work upon the whole body of christian people, instead of restricting both to a professional class; for the comparative peace and harmony of our time; for the good work of God's grace which is going forward in many of our churches and is not wholly unknown among us; for the hope awakened by the Di- vine promises, by the signs of the times, by the Spirit working in our own hearts, of blessings in the near future. Earnest labor, fervent prayer, the indwelling and the outworking of the Spirit, have been the strength of this church in its best days past. In these lie all our hopes for the future. I pray you bretheren, engage in God's work anew. Give yourselves anew to prayer. Be sucn men that God will dwell with you by His Spirit. ''Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence, and give Him no rest till He establish and make Jerusalem a praise."

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