Five Sermons | Page 3

Georgia.
The Church of England had no rights in the English colony of
Massachusetts. The Rev. William Blaxton, the Rev. Richard Gibson,
and the Rev. Robert Jordan endured privation and suffering, and were
accused "as addicted to the hierarchy of the Church of England,"
"guilty of offence against the Commonwealth by baptizing children on
the Lord's Day," and "the more heinous sin of provoking the people to
revolt by questioning the divine right of the New England theocracy."
An new life dawned on the Church in America when, in 1701, there
was organized in England "The Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts." It awakened a new missionary spirit. Princess

Anne, afterward Queen of England, became its lifelong patron. The
blessed work among the Mohawks was largely due to her, and when
these Indians were removed to Canada and left sheperdless, their chief,
Joseph Brant, officiated as lay reader for twenty years. The men sent
out by the society--the Rev. Samuel Thomas, the Rev. George Keith,
the Rev. Patrick Gordon, the Rev. John Talbot, and others--were
Christian heroes. No fact in the history of the colonial Church had so
marked influence as the conversion of Timothy Cutler, James Wetmore,
Samuel Johnson, and Daniel Brown to the Church. Puritans mourned
that the "gold had become dim." Churchmen rejoiced that some of the
foremost scholars in Connecticut had returned to the Church. I pass
over the trials of the Church in the eighteenth century, to the meeting of
the Continental Congress in 1774. It was proposed to open Congress
with prayer. Objections were made on account of the religious
differences of the delegates. Old Samuel Adams arose, with his white
hair streaming on his shoulders,--the same earnest Puritan who, in 1768,
had written to England: "We hope in God that no such establishment as
the Protestant episcopate shall ever take place in America,"--and said:
"Gentlemen, shall it be said that it is possible that there can be any
religious differences which will prevent men from crying to that God
who alone can save them? I move that the Rev. Dr. Duche`, minister of
Christ Church in this city, be asked to open this Congress with prayer."
John Adams, writing to his wife, said: "Never can I forget that scene.
There were twenty Quakers standing by my side, and we were all
bathed in tears." When the Psalms for the day were read, it seemed as if
Heaven was pleading for the oppressed: "O Lord, fight thou against
them that fight against me." "Lord, who is like Thee to defend the poor
and the needy?" "Avenge thou my cause, my Lord, my God." On the
4th of July 1776, Congress published to the world that these colonies
were, and of right ought to be, free. We believe that a majority of those
who signed this declaration were sons of the Church. The American
colonists were not rebels; they were loyal, God-fearing men. The first
appeal that Congress made to the colonies was "for the whole people to
keep one and the same day as a day of fasting and prayer for the
restoration of the invaded rights of America, and reconciliation with the
parent State." They stood for their inalienable rights, guaranteed to
them by the Magna Charta, which nobles, headed by Bishop Stephen

Langton, had wrung from King John. The English clergy had at
ordination taken an oath of allegiance to the British Crown. Many who
sympathized with their oppressed country felt bound to pray for King
George until another government was permanently established. Others,
like Dr. Provost, retired to private life. For two hundred years an
Episcopal Church had no resident Bishop. No child of the Church
received confirmation. No one could take orders without crossing the
Atlantic, where one man in five lost his life by disease or shipwreck. At
one time the Rev. William White was the only clergyman of the
Church in Pennsylvania. Even after we had received the episcopate, the
outlook was so hopeless that one of her bishops said, "I am willing to
do all I can for the rest of my days, but there will be no such Church
when I am gone." When William Meade told Chief Justice Marshall
that he was to take orders in the Episcopal Church, the Chief Justice
said, "I thought that this Church had perished in the Revolution." Of the
less than two hundred clergy, many had returned to England or retired
to private life. In some of the colonies the endowments of the Church
had been confiscated. There was no discipline for clergy or laity, and it
did seem as if the vine of the Lord's planting was to perish out of the
land.
On the Feast of the Annunciation, 1783, ten of the clergy of
Connecticut