When your Rector asked me to preach this anniversary sermon I accepted with an impulsiveness not at all characteristic of me, and with that lack of wisdom upon which I rely to steer me away from tasks which may be too great for me. But because of the associations of members of my family with Cheshire, and because of my own associations with it as an Academy boy, there is naturally a soft spot in my heart for Cheshire.

And so when Dr. Skilton asked me to preach this sermon I yielded to the temptation as readily as the truant lad from school yields to the siren call of the “old swimming hole,” and with the same disregard of consequences. My uncle, sometime Rector of this parish, has told its story in commemorative sermons, and, as a rule, I find that where he has been, the bulk of the wheat has been garnered and carried off on the cart, and the gleanings therefore very meager. There was no Boaz with his caution to “let fall some of the handfuls of purpose” for those that come after. And so if I offer nothing new you will understand the reason therefor.

Of the township of Cheshire I need not speak at any length. Its earliest history lies in that of the town of Wallingford, for out of Wallingford it-came. We are not particularly interested at the moment in the secular history of the town. Our thoughts are on the story of the Episcopal Church in this place. It was a perfectly natural and practical reason which led the “West Farmers,” as the dwellers in this section were called, to petition the General Assembly to be constituted a separate parish. Their complaint read:—“By reason of the distance from the town and difficulty in the way, we are under great disadvantage to appear on the public -worship of God and also for Edicating our Children.” Those were the two things about which, be it said to their credit, our forefathers were particularly careful. We are equally careful to-day—about Edicating our Children—not quite so careful to appear on the public worship of God, though distance and difficulty in the way have been practically eliminated.

In May 1724, the General Assembly voted to grant the petition, and also voted that “the said parish for the future be called by the name of New Cheshire.” Why New Cheshire, I do not know, why Cheshire at all, I do not know. One’s first thought would be that settlers from the county in England bearing that name, there is no town or village there named Cheshire, were responsible for it. And they may have been, but there is no evidence of it. Mr. Beach in his “History of Cheshire” says that the name does not “appear to have been given to the village in response to any petition, or in consequence of any request on the part of any of its inhabitants. It seems to have been determined by a vote of the Assembly in the same way that names were given to many other towns.” But whatever may have been the origin of the name, I think that we may safely leave out of consideration the Cheshire Cheese and the Cheshire Cat, as being, even in the remotest degree, responsible for it.

Now would you like to know where Cheshire is? Barber In his “Historical Collections,” locates it in this way 13 ½ miles from New Haven, 25 from Hartford, 9 ½ southeast from Waterbury, and one mile from Beachport, a small cluster of buildings on the New Haven and Northampton canal.” Ah, that takes us back to bygone days, to things that once were, but are no more. It is a good deal like describing New Haven as seventy-five miles from New York, and two miles from Cedar Hill.

In 1780, Cheshire was incorporated, and took its place in the galaxy of Connecticut towns, with a population of about two thousand. Here, as elsewhere in New England, provision was immediately made to meet the religious needs of the people. The Puritan fathers were careful to see to that, as was eminently proper, and Churchmen, to give them their distinctive title by which they were known in those days, came on, and in spite of the peculiar difficulties which they had to encounter, perhaps because of them, taught the doctrines of the Church as they received and believed them, with the result that whatever else might be said of the religious life of those days, and much else might be said, this certainly was true that it had all the evidences of life, vigor, alertness, pugnacity, certainty. In my less Christian moments I sometimes wonder if we have not lost something.

Of course in our New England towns our Congregational brethren were first on the ground. But it was in their case, as in the case of Adam, not good for them to be alone, and the Episcopal Church struggled into existence as best it could to make its contribution to the religious life of the Colony. Here in Cheshire the first Congregational church was built in. 1724. They had it all their own way then for there was not a single Episcopalian here. But things were beginning to warm up. Down the line, “13 ½ miles,” was Yale College, where, two years before, had been that alarming disturbance occasioned by several men, the Rector of the College among them, who had declared for Episcopacy. We can not quite appreciate what that meant, times are so different. It had every appearance of being a major catastrophe, a veritable trembler, and men looked and listened for the cracking walls.

But no walls cracked. However, an event like that could not be without its results. It turned the spot light upon Episcopacy, if I may use that phrase, and emboldened those who professed loyalty to it, and focused attention upon it as nothing else could. Those men went abroad for ordination, came back to this country, and with boldness and confidence born of conviction set forth the claims of the Episcopal Church. Samuel Johnson was the master mind, he who nobly served the Church at Stratford, and serving it there, served it in neighboring places—as a missionary, yes, but above and beyond that by the inspiring influence of his labors and his teaching. Johnson may never have been in Cheshire, about that I do not know, but the example of his missionary zeal elsewhere had its effect, and members of the Church of England in these parts began to take courage, and assert themselves as Churchmen. It is no meaningless title that has been given to him, “The Father of Episcopacy in Connecticut,” for in a very real sense that he was.

It is said that here in Cheshire the Episcopal Church owes a heavy debt to that consecrated layman, Joseph Moss, who, in those early days, gathered together in a neighbor’s house a little handful of like-minded people, and read to them the service of the Church, thus giving reality to St. Paul’s phrase, “the church which is in his house.” And so the spark was kept alive, awaiting the time when the smouldering embers should spring into, flame. It is to this same godly man that the parish owes the site whereon this building stands, as well as the adjoining churchyard. This was in 1760, the year from, which you date the birth of your parish.

It was the Rev. Ichabod Camp who presided over that birth. He was a graduate of Yale College in the class of 1734, went to England for Orders, returned as missionary to Middletown, Wallingford and Cheshire. You see your early history is bound up in that of Wallingford. Camp labored in this field about eight years.

He was followed by the Rev. Samuel Andrews, who, like his predecessor, was a graduate of Yale, and a missionary of the Venerable Society. His field was Wallingford, Cheshire and North Haven. You had to share him, as you had to share Camp, with others. Missionaries were few, funds were limited. But notwithstanding that, the little church here in Cheshire, built in 1760, had to give way to a larger one in 1770. Mr. Andrews was a faithful missionary. As Mr. Dexter says, “His ministry was strong and useful, until the approach oi the Revolution, when he offended public sentiment by his declared sympathy with the mother country.” Well, he was at least honest and loyal to his convictions. Those were difficult times, and it was not easy for men with a conscientious regard for the oath of allegiance to throw it off as of little or no value. Putting myself back in their place I can quite appreciate their dilemma. But Mr. Andrews was outspoken in his position, perhaps more so than was necessary, and the time came when it was well for him to leave. In 1786, he removed, to St. Andrew’s New Brunswick, where, though he suffered a paralytic stroke within a year after his arrival, he remained as Rector until his death in 1818.

For two years now the parish was without a Rector, having only occasional services. But in 1788, the Rev. Reuben Ives, Cheshire born, was called to the rectorship. He had been down in New London serving in the double capacity of pupil of, and assistant to, Bishop Seabury. His arrangement with the parish was that he should give to it two-thirds of his time, the remaining third to be Utilised in missionary work in adjacent towns. That was, of course, an economic measure. An extract from a letter of the Rev. Chauncey Prindle to the Rev. Tillotson Bronson, who was then in Vermont, has perhaps a bearing on the economic aspect of the matter. He says in giving him the clerical gossip or news of the day:—“Ives has contracted with Cheshire for two-thirds of the time; & is also in quest of a Rib. Is consulting his own mind together with Polly Marshals relative thereto.” He got his “Rib,” her name was Susannah Anna Maria Marshall, little wonder they called her Polly, and she was the daughter of the Rev. John Rutgers Marshall, in whose rectory at Woodbury assembled the electors, or selectors, of Seabury, March 25, 1783.

Apparently Mr. Ives made good use of that, fraction of his time not given to Cheshire, in fact I am not sure “that he did not draw a little from Cheshire’s time. I am led to think that from this extract from a letter of Dr. William Smith, Principal of the Academy, to Mr. Hobart afterwards Bishop Hobart. He says:—“I am destined here to act the Clergyman & the Academician, sometimes alternately sometimes in Conjunction. I have once officiated for Mr. Ives, who is two-thirds of his time riding to serve unnuptialed Churches, some of whom “pay him 6 dollars for his Sermon, others 5 or 4 or 3—or fair words ‘till the Fall comes, & then they pay him in notions. And think this is a mighty notional way of doing.” I like that phrase “unnuptialed Churches.” I suppose that means churches without a Rector. Mr. Ives continued as Rector of Cheshire until 1820, completing a rectorship of thirty-two years, the longest, I think, in the history of the parish. There was some sort of difficulty which clouded the end of his rectorship, hastened that end. I have not taken the trouble to ascertain what it was. What is the use? Mr. Ives died one hundred years ago next year and there lingers Still the memory of a kindly faithful servant of God, of one who served his Church with fidelity and zeal. Let that memory live undisturbed and unharmed through the years.

During the ministry of Mr. Ives the parish increased in numbers and in strength. As my uncle puts it, “had apparently been visited with the love and favor of God.” Their growth was such that they felt the need of enlarging the church. They did enlarge it in 1795, and for good measure they put on a steeple. The original building was not a thing of beauty architecturally. It was forty-two feet square and rather high, I am speaking of the building you understand. You are familiar, I am sure, with that story ascribed to Bishop Seabury, who seems to have had quite a sense of humor, and who therefore was quite human, though his detractors are slow to recognize that fact, that story, to the effect that when some member of the parish told him that they were planning to add a steeple to their church, with a twinkle in his eye replied that “he thought they had better build a church to their steeple.”

Probably it was due to Mr. Ives more than to any other one man that the Episcopal Academy came to Cheshire. To bring the School here was an accomplishment which had its significance for the parish, and for the town as well. I can not go into the history of the School here, that is a story by itself, and an interesting story. It is true that the threads of the story of the parish and the School are closely interwoven, and the perfect pattern emerges only as we follow both. My uncle says that, Mr. Ives “lived long enough to see the Academy prove anything but a blessing to the parish.” I suppose “the reference there is to the unsatisfactory arrangement whereby one man served in the double capacity of Principal and Rector. My uncle was himself the victim of the arrangement. Obviously, a divided service did not mean an adequate service either to the parish or the School. Apparently he was the last to serve in that double capacity.

When it was determined to have an Academy in the State there was some rivalry as to its location, or better, perhaps, some doubt as to where it had best be located. But that did not present an insoluble difficulty to Connecticut Yankees. The Convention simply appointed a Committee “to receive such proposals as may be made to this Convention from any Town in this state for the purpose of establishing and supporting an Episcopal Academy in such Town.” There you have it. If any town wanted the Academy they knew what to do. Cheshire got the Academy.

Just what were the determining factors in the choice I can not say, but I am quite willing to believe that Dr. Bowden, the first Principal of the School, in his prospectus of the School enumerated the advantages of Cheshire which had some weight. He says:—”To those who are not acquainted with the Town of Cheshire, it may be expedient to observe, that it is situated in a pleasant and healthful country, about fourteen miles from New Haven. The Road to it is good—the Necessaries and Conveniences of Life are abundant; and the Manners of the People, afford as few Temptations to Vice, as can be reasonably expected, when the Population is considerable.” That was written in 1796. Any place that afforded as few temptations to vice as could be reasonably expected was certainly the best place for a school. And I expect that Cheshire would qualify equally well in that respect to-day, though the road to New Haven is much better than it was when Dr. Bowden knew it, and the journey to it merely a matter of minutes.

But I am forgetting my self and dwelling too long on the Academy. It is interesting to note that in the earliest Diocesan Journals Lay Delegates are almost invariably reported as being present from this parish. Thomas Atwater was in the Convention of 1792, Dr. Elnathan Beach in 1794, Benoni Hotchkiss in 1795, Moses Moss in 1796, and for the next few years it was either Mr. Moss or Mr. Atwater, with special emphasis on Mr. Atwater. But when in 1806 Burgage Beach got started there was no stopping him until 1828, and then only for him to get his breath, so to speak, for he appears at intervals until 1838. I mention this matter of Lay Delegates, because it always seems to me to redound to the credit of a parish if it is regularly represented by its Lay Delegate or Delegates, in the Convention, and that was particularly true in those early days when modes of transportation were slow and difficult. Your first parish report appears in the Journal of 1818, and there were sixty-five families and seventy-five communicants.

When the rectorship of Mr. Ives came to an end in 1820 he was followed by a succession of ministers who shared their time and strength with the Academy, the Rev. Tillotson Bronson, the Rev. Asa Cornwall, the Rev. Henry M. Mason, the Rev. Christian F. Cruse, the Rev. Bethel Judd, and the Rev. E. E. Beardsley, all Principals of the Academy except Mr. Cornwall, who was an Assistant in the Academy.

This brings us down to 1850. The Rev. Mr. Beardsley was followed by the Rev. Joseph H. Nichols. How familiar sounds the language of his report. It is the report for 1851. He says:—“There is, moreover, in this parish, a remarkable deficiency in the number of children and youth in proportion to that of the families nominally belonging to it.” Have you ever heard anything like that? There is no particular virtue in taking heart from the failures of the past, but there is a certain satisfaction in knowing that the things which trouble us are not peculiar to us. It is not a bad thing when one gets a bit discouraged to turn back along the years and see that matters are much the same from one generation to another. Mr. Nichols’s source of discouragement is a source of discouragement to-day.

But over against the note of discouragement he places a note of hope when he says, “It is hoped that on account of the rare beauty of its scenery, and the salubrity of its atmosphere, gentlemen from our cities may be induced to select this spot for their rural residences. There can be but little expectation of growth from any other source. Meanwhile, the Clergyman whose lot it is to labor here, however faithfully he may preach, and however consistently he may live, must be content with the day of small things.” Well, if he can only be content his day of small things may issue in a day of larger things.

The Rev. Hilliard Bryant, who succeeded Mr. Nichols in
1852, was able to report the purchase of a Parsonage, a bit of parish equipment which is almost indispensable and also the erection of a “beautiful and substantial” stone fence about the Churchyard. Apparently, it was, the first intention to erect an iron fence. Mr. Bryant takes a philosophical view of his work, which, he realizes, does not make any show when reduced to mere figures. “The same routine of duty is required, and the same preparation on the part of the clergyman, where
the attendance is small, as where it is more numerous. The
Gospel net must be let down and drawn up, whether any thing
be enclosed or not, and it requires as much toil and patience,
where the fishes are few, as where the ‘draught’ is more abundant.” Exactly! And what a wonderful thing that is for the parson to remember, and the people as well!”

In his report for 1860 Mr. Bryant gives us an inkling of what was beginning to take shape in the mind of the parish. The church building which had been consecrated by Bishop Brownell August 1st, 1840, was not large enough. All the slips were taken except a few under the organ loft, and there was a call for more. But they had to wait a few years for the desired alterations.

However, in due time they came, and in his report for 1865, which was his final report, he was able to say, that as “an evidence of the growth and prosperity of this Parish, it may be here stated that during the past year, it has enlarged and greatly improved and beautified its Church edifice by the addition of a recess chancel, new vestry room, ceiled arch, ribbed and grained, new altar, pulpit lectern and reading desk, also furnace and lamps—all at an expense of over three thousand dollars.” The chancel window was put in at that time, and was the gift of George A. Jarvis, a son of Cheshire. In the summer of 1875 the church was further enlarged and improved, and was reopened and rededicated February 24, 1876, a former Rector preaching the sermon, which was published. A window to Rev. Mr. Ives was put in at this time.

It is not possible to speak in any detail of the rectorships that followed, as much as I might like to do so. Good faithful parish priests have been your leaders. It was my privilege as an Academy boy to. listen to one of them, the genial, quick-witted Irishman, Oliver H. Raftery, quick-witted of course because he was an Irishman, who was Rector from 1876 to 1886. I say ‘listen’ advisedly, because that is the proper word to use, but you need not read too much meaning into it.

There had to be the attitude of listening, because watchful Professor Woodbury sat not far away. And yet, all pleasantry aside, it is my recollection that the Rector did his part to quiet “the bubbling spirit of youths who were never averse to bubbling.

Following Mr. Raftery came the Rev. J. Frederick Sexton, who, like his predecessor; served a decade, and like his predecessor also was an Academy boy. His rectorship marked another milestone in the life of the parish. Improvements and additions were made which gave you the needed space for those activities which are an essential part of the work of a parish in these modern days. All this was done at a cost of more than $6,000, and in this connection should be mentioned the name of George A. Jarvis, Esq., of Brooklyn, N. Y., whose benefactions to the parish made possible these changes, or at all events so lightened the burden that the parish was able to carry it.

But my story is nearing its end. It is the simple story in brief, very much in brief, of one hundred and seventy-five years of life and work of a Connecticut parish, which traces its beginnings back to pre-Revolutionary days, to days when Connecticut was a Colony of the British Empire. They were strenuous days for our feeble Church here, but days when the fibre of the Church was strengthened by opposition, when its roots took firmer hold to meet the winds that lashed its branches, just like that sturdy tree on the hillside. There are times when it seems as if it must go down, but it stands firm and defiant, stronger because of its testing, stronger because it has learned its power of resistance.

Like all parishes you are experiencing your difficulties, no doubt. But we are not set here to have an easy time. We are having a hard time, we may have a harder time yet, but is not that the lot of the Church of God, and of every individual Church that constitutes the Church of God here on earth? Turn back and read the record of the past and you will find that the very things about which we wail brought wails from our forefathers. I do not mean to suggest that there is any particular comfort in that for us. I never could derive any consolation from the thought that others had troubles as bad as, if not worse than, my own. But I mention it merely to point out that the Church has had its difficulties all along. It has had them because it is the Church. If the time should ever come when the Church is bowling blithely down a bump-less way we should give some serious consideration to what there is at the bottom of the incline. The bumps may keep us awake, and we who constitute the Churches are living in a day when it is mighty necessary that we keep awake.

There are those who are quick to tell us that the Church is an outworn institution, and confidently, point to the feeble flickering life of the Churches as proof of their assertion. I do not believe that the Church of God is through, and I do not believe that its most outspoken critics believe that either, or want to believe it. It is much easier to be brave in the daylight. We are living in the blessed sunshine of what the Church has done and is doing, and it is easy for those so minded to talk magniloquently of the failures of the Church, of the fruitless tree that cumbereth the ground, but would we talk so magniloquently if we were groping our way around in the darkness of heathenism, in the darkness unpierced by the radiant beams from Him who proclaimed” Himself to be the Light of the world? I do not believe that we would.

Now the moral of this bit of preaching is that we in our several Churches must prove ourselves Christians worthy of the name, and worthy Churchmen because worthy Christians. There must be greater zeal on the part of all of us, a finer sense of values, a truer appreciation of where the emphasis belongs. Our young people must more and more realize their responsibilities. There as no implied dig there; if you will pardon the unconventional word. I am not indulging in the favorite pastime of lambasting our young people. They strike me as mighty interesting, a bit problematical, perhaps, young people always have been that, feeling for something they do not quite get, superficially careless and indifferent, but beneath the surface more serious than we are apt to, think. If they are not what and all that the older people think they ought to be, let the older people ask themselves if they are giving them very much help by their teaching, and above all by their example. That is not a wholly foolish thought is it? I have faith enough in the youth of to-day to believe that when they really find themselves, When they emerge from this devastatingly semi-barbaric, and altogether vulgar age, they will accept their responsibilities, and do by the world and the Church as much as any” of their predecessors ever did, and do it more intelligently. We all know the difficulties which the Church faces, but I ask you if we ought not to meet those difficulties with more courage and faith than we are meeting them, “if our whole attitude ought not to be less negative towards them, if we ought not to see in them rather the testing of our loyalty than a reason for despair?

You will recall, it was some way back and perhaps you will not, that I implied that it was because of the associations of members of my family with Cheshire, that I was in a measure influenced to accept the invitation to preach this sermon. There are very few here, probably, who will understand the meaning of that. But here my uncle, the Rev. E. E. Beardsley, served his first rectorship from 1835 to 1839, and was again rector from 1844 to 1848. In the intervening years he served as Principal of the Academy. In those facts we might find sufficient reason for the love he always had for Cheshire. But there were other reasons. Just across the road there lived the young lady whom he married, born in St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, but most of her life a resident of Cheshire, dying at the early age of twenty-seven. With a truly poetic soul, passionately fond of the country, and just as fond of her Cheshire home, we can understand the lines which she penned upon her first return visit—

“Beneath thy spreading trees I stand,
My own dear home once more;
And now the latch is in my hand,
My foot waits at the door.
Yet pause I, ere I venture in
The old familiar way;
Amid the stranger’s household gods
My footsteps may not stray.

There is a voice upon the breeze,
A whisper in the air,
It floateth from the wild bird’s wing,
‘Thy home—it is not there.’
I fain would still th’ unwelcome sound
That cometh o’er and o’er,
While yet my echoing heart replies
‘This is thy home no more’.”

It is interesting, but not difficult of explanation, to know that those who in the past have formed their attachments here retain those attachments through the years. All that made Cheshire beautiful in the days gone by still is here, all that gave it strength and character. Here are its churches and its schools, not among them, it is true, the old School, around which our hearts are entwined, but a new School handing on the torch of knowledge. And here is the old church, old yet thrice new, whose century and three quarters of life we are commemorating to-day. May it go on to a greater fulfilment of its mission, more and more fruitful in its service for man and for God.