Five Sermons | Page 4

met in the glebe house at Woodbury to elect a bishop.
They met privately, for the Church was under the ban of civil authority,
and they feared the revival of bitter opposition to an American
episcopate which might alarm the English bishops and defeat their
efforts. They did not come to make a creed, or frame a liturgy, or found
a Church. They met to secure that which was lacking for the complete
organization of the Church, and thus perpetuate for their country that
ministry whose continuity was witnessed through all the ages in a
living body, which is the body of Christ. I know of no greater heroism
than that which sent Samuel Seabury to ask of the bishops of the
Church of England the episcopate for the scattered flock of Christ. You
remember the fourteen months' weary waiting, and when his prayer
was refused in England, God led him to the persecuted Church of
Scotland. Now go with me to Aberdeen; it is an upper room, a
congregation of clergy and laity are present. The bishops and Robert
Kilgour, Bishop of Aberdeen, Arthur Petrie, Bishop of Moray, and

John Skinner, Coadjutor Bishop of Aberdeen, who preached the
sermon. The prayers were ended; Samuel Seabury, a kingly man,
kneels for the imposition of apostolic hands, and, according to the
godly usage of the Catholic Church, is consecrated bishop, and made
the first apostle for the New World. None can tell what, under God, we
owe to those venerable men. They signed a concordat binding
themselves and successors to use the Prayer of Invocation in the
Scottish Communion Office, which sets forth that truth which is
inwrought in all the teachings of our blessed Lord and His apostles, that
the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ is limited to the
worthy receiver of this blessed sacrament. The consecration of Seabury
touched the heart of the English Church.
In 1783 the Church of England did not have one bishop beyond its
shores. There are to-day fifteen bishops in Africa, six in China and
Japan, and twenty-three in Australia and the Pacific Islands, ten in India,
seven in the West Indies, and eighty-five in British North America and
the United States. Every colony of the British Empire and every State
and Territory of the United States has its own bishop, except the
Territory of Alaska.
On February 4th, 1787, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Provost, D.D., were
consecrated bishops in Lambeth Chapel, by John Moore, Archbishop of
Canterbury, William Markham, Archbishop of York, Charles Moss,
Bishop of Bath and Wells, and John Hinchcliffe, Bishop of
Peterborough. The sermon was preached by the chaplain of the primate.
Our minister to England, Hon. John Adams, urged the application of
Drs. Provost and White, and in after years wrote: "There is no part of
my life I look back with more satisfaction than the part I took--daring
and hazardous as it was to myself and mine--in the introduction of
episcopacy to America." Samuel Provost was a devoted patriot and one
of the ripest scholars of America. In the convention which elected him
Bishop of New York were John Jay, Washington's chief justice,
Marinus Willet, one of Washington's favorite generals, James Duane,
John Alsop, R.R. Livingston, and William Duer, members of the
Continental Congress, and David Brooks, commissary-general of the
Revolution, and personal friend of Washington. If less prominent in his
episcopal administration, Bishop Provost's name as a patriot was a
tower of strength to the infant Church.

Of Bishop White we can say, as John Adams said of Roger Sherman,
"He was pure as an angel and firm as Mount Atlas." He was beloved
and reverenced by all Christian people. When Congress declared the
colonies independent States in 1776, he at once took the oath of
allegiance to the new government. When a friend warned him that he
had put his neck in a halter, he replied: "I know the danger; the cause is
just; I have put my faith in God." In 1777 he was elected chaplain of
Congress, and held the office (except when Congress met in New York)
until the capital was removed to Washington. Francis Hopkinson, a
distinguished signer of the Declaration of Independence, and other
loyal sons of the country, were among those who elected him Bishop of
Pennsylvania.
One hundred years ago today the representatives of the Church in the
different States met to adopt a constitution. There had been tentative
efforts to effect an organization and adopt a Book of Common Prayer,
all of which were overruled by the good providence of God. Many not
of our fold desired a liturgy. Benjamin Franklin published at his own
expense a revised copy of the English liturgy. The House of Bishops
was composed of Bishop Seabury and Bishop White. Bishop Provost