The Fortieth Anniversary of the Foundation of the Parish of Christ Church, of Elizabeth, N.J., 1893:
A Sermon Preached by the Very Rev. Eugene Augustus Hoffman, D.D. on Easter Day, April 2nd;
And a Sermon Preached by the Rev. Henry H. Oberly, M.A. on Low Sunday, April 9th.
Elizabeth, New Jersey: Printed by Order of the Vestry, 1893.
“This is the day which the LORD hath made:
We will rejoice and be glad in it.”—PSALM cxviii. 24.THE Psalm from which these words are taken is the last of those (beginning with the 113th) which composed the greater Hallel, and was sung by the Israelites at every celebration of the Paschal feast. It was probably used at the first great Feast of Tabernacles, described in the book of Nehemiah, held in the second Temple after its consecration, when priests and levites, Israelites and proselytes, with trumpets and shawms, joined with heart and voice in giving “thanks unto the LORD, for He is gracious: because His mercy endureth for ever.”
It is also one of the proper Psalms appointed by our Church for Easter Day; and it is as appropriate for it as if it had been specially composed to be sung at the annual commemoration of our LORD’S rising from the dead. Opening with a striking invitation to all nations, whether they be Jews or Gentiles, to “give thanks unto the LORD, for He is gracious; because His mercy endureth for ever,” it proceeds to sing His praises in words which, though partially applicable to the Church and to the individual, can only find their full meaning in the LORD Jesus Christ. Throughout the whole of it we find, as even the Jews admit, constant [3/4] allusions to the Messiah and His triumphs over all the enemies of truth and righteousness. His enemies—the enemies of salvation—came about Him like bees; but like bees, they only perished themselves, leaving their stings behind them. This day is the Scripture fulfilled, “I shall not die, but live,” for “I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore.” “Death hath no more dominion over Me. I hold the keys of hell and of death, and therefore when I overcame death, by rising from the dead, I opened the gates of heaven to all believers.” “This is the Stone,” the tried stone, the precious cornerstone, which, as S. Peter testifies, “was set at naught by the builders, and is become the head of the corner.” Like that great stone, for which, according to the Jewish legend, no place could be found in the wall of the Temple, until at the close of the work it rested on the wall as the head cornerstone, crowning the whole building. That these words apply to Him, and to His rejection by the Scribes and Pharisees, there can be no question, for our LORD Himself said unto them, “Did ye never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the LORD’S doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes”?
This is the day on which Christ rose from the dead, the day which brought salvation to our race and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers, the day which has changed the chronology of the entire world. “This is the day which the LORD hath made; well may we rejoice and be glad in it,” saying, as children say to themselves, “This is the great [4/5] and wide sea,” as if trying to take in the thought; or as a traveller in foreign lands may say to himself as he enters Rome, “This is the Eternal City.” “This is the Day”—the day of days, the feast of feasts—which the LORD hath made for His redeemed, when Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us.
“O day of days! shall hearts set free
No ‘minstrel rapture’ find for thee?
Thou art the Sun of other days,
They shine by giving back thy rays.“Enthroned in thy sovereign sphere
Thou shedd’st thy light on all the year:
Sundays by thee more glorious break,
An Easter day in every week:“And week-days, following in their train,
The fulness of thy blessing gain,
Till all, both resting and employ,
Be one LORD’S Day of holy joy.”But with all this, the joy of Easter is very different from the joy of other feasts. It is a sober, meditative joy—the reward of labor and toil undergone for the sake of Him who loved us and gave Himself for us. It is the joy of ransomed sinners. It is the comfort of those that have mourned. It comes through suffering, and has been purchased with blood. To have any reality, it must be based upon a godly sorrow for those sins which nailed the Redeemer to the Cross.
The LORD is risen indeed to-day, and hath appeared, but to what kind of persons? First, to a mourning penitent, a restored daughter of sinful Eve, Mary Magdalene, whose devoted love kept her the last at the Cross, and brought her the first to [5/6] the tomb. Then to the little company of Galilean women, who of their abounding charity had taken of their small store to purchase sweet spices to perfume His dead body. Then to Peter, the chief of penitents, whose bitter tears secured this peculiar blessing. Then to the sad disciples at Emmaus, to whom He was made known in the breaking of bread. And, lastly, to the bereaved Church, assembled in that upper room., and waiting in Apostolic fellowship for His appearing
The joy of Easter Day is a joy which lifts the dark shadow from the graves where our beloved sleep. Hence the Easter Anthem sings of life, but only through the grave and gate of death. As we draw near with the holy women to see where Jesus lay, we find the damp, dark tomb, which but yesterday was the symbol of corruption, to-day fragrant with the sunshine of the resurrection. No longer a mere charnel-house, but the resting-place of the Christian pilgrim as he waits for the summons to enter within the gates of the Holy City.
And, lastly, the joy of Easter Day is a joy that will forever fill the skies. Thither has He, who is our Elder Brother, already gone. There He waits to welcome all that believe and die in Him and rise again to everlasting life. “If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.” “For the LORD Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the LORD in the air: and so shall we ever be with the [6/7] LORD.” Therefore we go forth from this house of prayer to-day, though it be to return to a life of suffering and sorrow, comforting one another with these words, “Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept,” knowing that “our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh in us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” And therefore we can lead the way to the open grave, whither we are bearing some beloved one, with the consoling words, “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the LORD; “and hear as it were from the departed the triumphal reply, “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold and not another.” Well then may we exclaim, but oh! with how much’ fuller joy than the psalmist ever dreamt:
“This is the day, which the LORD hath made:
We will rejoice and be glad in it.”The day, however, brings with it to this parish an additional joy as the anniversary of its foundation. Forty years ago on Easter Day, when the evening was come, there gathered at the call of the rector, in the small Sunday-school room which ran along the east end of the old S. John’s church, a little band of devout churchmen, just enough legally to organize a second parish. It was a larger venture of faith than many realize to-day. In common with the other parts of the State, the old borough of Elizabeth—or, as it was then called, [7/8] Elizabethtown—had been settled by those who were firmly attached to the Presbyterian faith. The Church in New Jersey was then but a feeble, weak body, and during the early years of the century was compelled to struggle for its very existence. The most encouraging word which faithful, patient Bishop Croes could speak to its annual convention was, “Brethren, let us thank God and take courage that we have lost nothing since we last met.” And even when the late great-hearted Bishop Doane was elected in 1832, surprise was expressed that such a man should think of accepting the bishopric of a State in which “the Church had been dead and buried for twenty years.”
In 1853, when this parish was organized, Elizabethtown had a population of less than 4,000 persons. The religious element of the community, as in the State, was very largely Presbyterian. They had three large, flourishing congregations, ministered to by beloved pastors of marked ability. The old church, with a feeble, struggling mission at the Port, was all that represented the churchly element. Although it had been enlarged in 1840 to a building forty-five feet wide by sixty-six feet long, and had enjoyed for twenty years the faithful ministry of the Rev. Richard Channing Moore, it had only a small congregation. It numbered less than one hundred communicants, and the total amount of its offerings reported to the convention for the preceding year was but six hundred and thirteen dollars and sixty-three cents. All honor to those who in their day and generation kept the Church alive under such circumstances! It was the day of small things, when it required no [8/9] little courage to assert the Church’s claims. Christmas and Easter sermons were frequently but apologies for the observance of those days. Churches properly arranged for our liturgical services, as we have them now everywhere, were well-nigh unknown. In S. John’s, following the pattern of the lowest Erastian period of our Mother Church, the east end was occupied by the old “three-decker” arrangement; the pulpit surmounting the reading desk, which was furnished with a large Bible flanked on either side by a quarto prayer-book; while a marble shelf with a large cushion on each end, and surrounded by a semicircular railing, was all that was provided for an altar. The church was opened only for services on Sunday, and a lecture on one evening in the week, with the Holy Communion once a month. Chanting was confined to the two canticles in the morning and evening services; and these, with one of the old metrical versions of the Psalms and two or three verses of a hymn from the very limited hymnal, were all that was musically rendered. Nor was this peculiar to S. John’s. It simply followed in these things the general custom of the Church in that day. A vested choir, with a choral service, was not to be found in the country; while to have chanted the Te Deum, or the responses to the Commandments, would have aroused an immediate protest from the congregation. When they were first attempted in this building, several years later, they were the occasion of an indignant remonstrance from the vestry to the rector. Even after Bishop Odenheimer’s consecration in 1859, a simple choral service sung at the opening of the Diocesan Convention in Grace [9/10] church, Newark, aroused a storm such as has been seldom witnessed in so grave a body. About this date, a beautiful bunch of calla lilies, which a devout parishioner on Easter morning had reverently placed in the font of a neighboring church, was thrown into the street before the service began by one of the zealous wardens; and your preacher the same clay received a letter from one of his leading vestrymen urging him to remove a small bunch of flowers (the first that had been seen in this chapel) which a loving woman had placed upon the credence shelf. In the same spirit, when a small wooden cross was placed on the gable of the parish school-house, it was wrenched from its place and broken to pieces, before it had been there twenty-four hours. Is it to be wondered at that in such a period, church architecture was almost an unknown art? Even Bishop Hobart printed a pamphlet with illustrations, recommending to those about to build churches, what has been called “the three-decker arrangement,” already referred to, of pulpit, desk, and holy table. And the architect of Trinity church, New York, it is said, was compelled, in order to secure its present limited chancel, to erect it without authority in the summer months, when the vestrymen were out of town!
It is difficult for us to-day to realize that such a condition of things existed in the Church in this country less than forty years ago. But it must be recalled in order to understand the venture of faith made by the founders of this parish, and the marvellous advance in all that appertains to the reverence, dignity, and beauty of the public services which has been gained everywhere during that period.
[11] With such surroundings, the little band of churchmen, supported by a few devout women, whose study of the revival, which had then recently taken place in the Church of England, had placed them in advance of their time, gathered on Easter evening, 1853, to organize a parish on principles then so little known, though now so generally recognized. They set out (as stated in the rector’s first annual address) resolved, with reliance on GOD’S blessing, to erect a house where to the poor the Gospel might be preached, the blessed terms of salvation constantly proclaimed, the sacraments of the Gospel duly administered, and the daily sacrifice of prayer continually offered: to gather around the house of God those institutions which make the Church doubly blessed, and exhibit it to the multitudes who dwell about it as the Divine fountain whence flows out all that ministers to their temporal and spiritual necessities—a building where the lambs of the flock might be brought up in the nurture and [11/12] admonition of the Lord, a house of refuge for the Magdalen and the penitent, a home for the orphan and infirm, and a dwelling for one or more of the priestly line, who should go out day by day into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in the poor and the maimed, the halt and the blind. These were the principles to which they pledged their hearts and hands; these the works which in faith they then began, and which we are here to commemorate to-day. [At this time there were but four churches in the State which had daily prayers, viz.: S. Mary’s, Burlington, with Grace church, Christ church, and the House of Prayer, Newark. The weekly Communion was only celebrated in the last three. In this connection the following extract from a letter of the Rev. John Talbot to the secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, dated in Burlington, N. J., 1724, will not be without interest: “. . I preach once on Sunday morn, and Catechize or Homilize in the afternoon. I read the prayers of the Church, in the church, decently, according to the order of Morning and Evening Prayer, daily through the year, and that is more than is done in any church that I know, apud Americanos. . . . I have commonly the Sacrament administered once a month, and at the great feasts two or three days together.”—HISTORY OF THE CHURCH IN BURLINGTON, by Rev. G. M. Hills, D.D., p. 189.]
At this meeting two wardens and seven vestrymen were elected, not one of whom is now living. [The names of the wardens and vestrymen are as follows: WARDENS. Benjamin Williamson. Charles Howard Edwards. VESTRYMEN. John Joseph Chetwood, Treasurer. Cornelius L. King. William M. Whitehead, M.D., Clerk. Henry S. Hayward. William C. Dayton. Edward Mayo. Francis Barber.] On the 5th of April, your preacher to-day, then in deacon’s orders and a missionary at the Port, was unanimously called, by the advice of the bishop, to the rectorship. On the second Sunday after Easter, services were begun by the rector-elect in the lecture-room of the First Presbyterian church, which was most kindly placed, by the Rev. Dr. Murray and his Session, at the disposal of the new congregation until it secured a building of its own. On the 23d of April, the parish was duly incorporated under the name of “The Rector, Wardens, and Vestrymen of Christ Church, in Elizabeth Town.” At this time there were connected with it only twenty-five communicants and forty Sunday-school [12/13] children. The services at first attracted but a small attendance—forty or fifty persons usually comprising the Sunday morning congregation—few persons caring to cast in their lot with a parish avowing at the outset churchly principles so far in advance of the times, whose rector did not hesitate to preach in his surplice and to make a collection every Sunday morning, with the use of the Prayer for the Church Militant. But from the outset it was determined that we would have a church patterned after the Prayer Book in all its parts—no more and no less.
Considerable difficulty was for a time experienced in securing a lot in a central location sufficiently large for a church, chapel, and rectory. The mere fact that a magnificent elm-tree (which one of the vestrymen who had been born in the town could not bear to see cut down) stood in the centre of the lot on the south-westerly corner of Broad and Grand Streets, alone prevented the adoption of that site, which would have proved a most unsuitable location. The ground now occupied was purchased on the fourth of July, and plans procured from Richard Upjohn, architect, for a fine church, with tower and spire on the corner, a suitable rectory, and a parish building which could be used temporarily as a chapel, and then, by adding another story, be converted into parish, Sunday-school, and other rooms, so necessary for the work of a live parish. Will it seem out of place for me to express the earnest hope that the original plan, which Bishop Doane characterized as “truly grand,” may still be carried out, and the corner lot of this noble site be occupied by a church that will be an ornament to the city as well as the pride of the congregation?
[14] The cornerstone of the building in which we are now assembled was laid by Bishop Doane on the 23d of August, less than five months after the organization of the parish. Ten days later the parish school for boys was opened under the, charge of the Rev. James Adams, and steps taken to erect the wooden school-house which still stands on the adjoining lot. Thus early did the people of the parish recognize the fundamental fact that the only way to carry out thoroughly the Gospel plan of evangelizing the world is to bring the children up “in the nurture and admonition of the LORD.”
On the 13th of July, 1854, the building was dedicated as a chapel school-house, with a special service set forth for the occasion by Bishop Doane. He was assisted in this service by Bishop Wainwright, of New York. It was the last time that these two bishops, who loved each other as David and Jonathan, ever met on earth. The beautiful stone altar, the font, the windows, and other sacred appendages, all of which were the offerings of individuals, were carefully designed so that they could be transferred to the church when it is built. On the afternoon of the same day the corner-stone of the stone rectory was laid by Bishop Doane, the congregation thus testifying that, while setting apart a building for holy worship, they were not unmindful of the comfort of those who were to be called to minister In it. The next day the rector was instituted, and then began the saying of daily morning and evening prayer, with three services on each Sunday, at one of which the children were always publicly catechized. In the following January the second parish school—that for girls—was opened. And in [14/14] Advent, 1858, the way having been prepared by careful instruction, there was established the weekly Eucharist, which is not only the complement of the daily prayers, but the one act of the Church’s worship instituted by our LORD Himself as the keynote of all our prayers, from which they take their tone, and in which their meaning and efficacy are most fully developed. And so began in this building the full round of services, which fill the rolling year with the memorials of our Incarnate LORD, and which—God’s Holy Name be praised!—have continued to this day.
Of course, these things had to be established, at such a time, by those who had unshaken faith in the Church’s divine order, and in the face oftentimes of bitter opposition. A few who had joined us without counting the cost, when the popular clamor arose, went back and walked no more with us, The system of free churches, which we had advocated, was ridiculed in the leading church review as something which posterity would catalogue with other exploded dreams of the nineteenth century. A little manual, prepared for the use of those who received the weekly Communion, was characterized by a prominent Church paper as unworthy of review, because such a custom would never be known in this country! The doctrine of the Sacraments and the claims of the Church, which are generally acknowledged now to be found in the Book of Common Prayer, were then derisively spoken of (it was shortly after the defection of Newman) as Newmania on the soil of New Jersey. While the young rector—who only preached and practised that which he had been taught by such men as Wilson and [15/16] Turner, Ogilby and Haight, in the old seminary on Chelsea Square, and which he still preaches and practises without any variation or change—was then denounced as a Jesuit in disguise, and gravely described, in a carefully written volume, as one whose teaching was as far removed from Protestantism as it was possible to be and yet remain in a Protestant church.
But none of these things moved the little flock. Firmly and fearlessly did they stand, like an anvil when it is beaten upon, amid the difficulties and discouragements they had to encounter. Never did a Rector receive a more loyal and loving support than your preacher from his parishioners. I can, in my mind’s eye, replace them all at this moment, as they appeared Sunday after Sunday in their seats on either side of yonder nave. Many of their names are to be found among those distinguished in the annals of the Church and of the State. [Among them were the Daytons, Chetwoods, Jelfs, Ogdens, Mayos, De Harts, Lawrences, Kings, Barbers, Haywards, Williamsons, and Halseys.] Alas! that only a little remnant, less than a dozen all told, are left to join with us in our commemoration to-day.
Let us who remain, while we are reminded of the noble works that they did in their days, recall some of the things which, by God’s blessing, on the Church’s methods, have been promoted by this parish, that we may to-day give thanks unto the LORD, and praise Him for His goodness which endureth for ever.
In the first place, this parish has proved, what [16/17] most men then doubted, not only the advantages but the practicability of the free church system. In a community where it was predicted from the start that it would never succeed, even its friends looking upon it with considerable mistrust, it has been made, by God’s blessing, a complete success. “The rich and poor have met together before the LORD, who is the maker of them all.” And how often there may be seen in this church the beggar and the rich man kneeling side by side at the altar rail, as heirs together of the grace of life, you need not be reminded here. While obeying the Apostolic injunction—” Upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him in store, as GOD hath prospered him”—enough has been supplied, not only for the current requirements of the parish, but liberal offerings have been made from time to time for the charities of the Church at large.
In the next place, we have lived to see the daily prayer and weekly Eucharist—in which, at one time, this parish stood almost alone in the United States, even though they were undeniably of Apostolic practice and provided for in our Book of Common Prayer—spreading throughout the Church, and becoming, thank God, recognized as an essential part of the spiritual life of well-ordered parishes.
And, lastly, we have cause to rejoice, not only at the wonderful growth of the Church in this city and State, but in the country at large, the ratio of increase being much greater than that of population. [In New Jersey they were, in 1853, but fifty clergymen of our Church actively engaged in work, of whom only seven survive; to-day there are more than two hundred. Then there were but fifty-seven parishes and missions, where now there are two hundred and sixteen. Then the Church in this city had only one hundred and twenty-eight communicants: to-day she has about twenty-five hundred; so that, while the population has increased ten-fold, the communicants have increased twenty-fold. In the United States during the last forty years, while the population has increased about three fold, the communicants of the Church have increased six fold and the contributions ten fold. Public Opinion, a well-known journal, recently gave the following statement: A good showing is made by the so-called Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. Over 4,000 clergy, 500,000 communicants, and nearly 2,000,000 baptisms, over 100,000 confirmed, this is a very fair result in the way of increase during the year. Besides, there are nearly 500 candidates for Holy Orders, and the records show an increase of income amounting to $2,000,000. The general growth of the Church far exceeds proportionately that of the population at large, or of any other religious section of it in particular. It looks like the “Church of the Future.”] The great principles which the founders [17/18] of this parish strove to make its peculiar features—the daily worship of the sanctuary, invested with the beauty of holiness; the weekly and festival sacrificial memorial of His precious death and passion, which the LORD commanded us to make the centre and crown of our worship; and the full development of all the means and appliances appertaining to parochial organization—in little more than a generation we have seen triumphantly acknowledged everywhere. The heart of the nation is beginning to yearn more and more for the Catholic faith of the Church of the living God. From all sides there comes up the longing cry for the unity, stability, and sobriety, combined with the liturgical worship and full sacramental grace, which alone can be found in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. Our duty is simply to be true to the vows of our baptism. To stand before the world as not ashamed to confess the faith once for [18/19] all delivered to the saints; manfully to fight under its banner against sin, the world, and the devil; and to continue Christ’s faithful soldiers and servants unto our lives’ ends. Then will the world recognize that God is with us of a truth, and that we are not unworthy descendants of those who planted Evangelical truth and Apostolic order on the shores of the New World.
Beloved brethren, I have already trespassed too far upon your patience; but let me, in conclusion, exhort you, with the rejoicings of this day, to remember the great work which still remains for you, as lay members of this parish, to do—a work that will stand the test of the purifying fire, which shall try every man’s work of what sort it is, and a work that will secure, to each and all, the approval of the King of kings when He receives His own with the welcome summons, “Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” for “inasmuch as ye have done unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” Say not that, as laymen, you have done all, when you have given of your abundance or of your poverty to the Church and to charity. Giving, though a blessed duty and privilege—for “it is more blessed to give than to receive”—is by no means all a layman’s duty or privilege. In every parish there is work, and more work than all its laymen can do. Under the direction of the priest who is set over them in the LORD, each layman or laywoman owes it to himself or to herself and to the Church, to be a co-worker with Christ, a fellow helper in Christ [19/20] Jesus, in the great and glorious work of the salvation and sanctification of the world. In training and teaching the young, in fostering and encouraging the schools, in going out into the streets and lanes of the city to search and to seek for those who are living in sin and shame, to bring them back to their Father’s house that they may be saved through Christ forever, and in all those ways by which an earnest layman can uphold his pastor’s weary, overburdened hands, there is work—aye, work in abundance—for every man, woman, and child whose heart the LORD has touched with the glad tidings of salvation, and who longs to impart the good news to all within his reach. Thus attesting the sincerity of your faith by your works, you will reflect the spirit of Him who gave Himself for us, and be imbued with a reflection of the fervor of His love, whose meat and drink it was to do His Father’s will, and to go about day after day doing good. And when this spirit has taken possession of your hearts, it will inflame them with something of the ardor of His self-consuming zeal; it will consecrate your time and your means to His service; it will send you out, each in your own sphere, on some errand of love or mission of mercy: and though it crucify you with Him, it will raise you up to reign with Him for ever.
“Therefore, my beloved brethren,” suffer me, in conclusion, to charge you in the words with which the great Apostle closes his unrivalled discourse on the resurrection, “be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the LORD, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the LORD.”