Report of Commemorative Services with the Sermons and Addresses at the Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885 | Page 5

a century. It
brings to our remembrance the story of the more than threescore
previous years which led up to the event that we commemorate. It
awakens hope and trust for a coming and unknown future. It binds
those memories of the past and those hopes for the future into one
living body of thanksgiving, which, for all who have gone before us,
for ourselves, and for those who are to follow us, must find utterance in
the words of the Psalmist: "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto
Thy Name give the praise, for Thy loving mercy and for Thy truth's
sake."

Go back with me, brethren, in your thoughts, to the beginning of the
century the close of which we commemorate. It is the Festival of the
Annunciation in 1783; and we find ourselves in an inland village of
what was, ere long, to become the Diocese of Connecticut, the village
of Woodbury. It was not then the village of our time, the long street of
which, with its venerable elms and well-kept homesteads, nestles
beneath the craggy heights that overlook it, or spreads out in peaceful
loveliness towards stream and valley. Things were on a smaller scale
then, rougher and ruder than they now are. One house, at least, still
stands that was standing then; and if we enter it we shall find ourselves
in the "glebe-house" which is the abode of the missionary of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and in the presence of ten of
the fourteen clergy of Connecticut who were ministering in their cures
at the close of the War of the Revolution. Neither history nor tradition
has preserved to us all the names of these true- hearted men. We know,
however, from written records, that Marshall, in whose house they met,
Jarvis of Middletown, who was their secretary, and Fogg of Brooklyn,
whose correspondence tells us what we should not otherwise have
known, were among them. [Footnote: It is more than probable, I think,
that Mansfield of Derby, Hubbard of New Haven, Newton of Ripton,
Scovill of Waterbury, Clark of New Milford, Andrews of Wallingford,
and Tyler of Norwich were also present.] Beyond these we are left to
conjecture.
We may imagine, though we can never fully enter into, the deep
anxiety of the hour, with all its doubts and fears so far surpassing its
hopes and encouragements. We remember how they felt themselves
compelled to meet in the utmost secrecy, not, as has been sometimes
unworthily intimated, because they feared their own people, but
because they knew not what interference might befall them from the
powers that were should their purpose be made known. We think of
them as, on that Festival of the Incarnation, they knelt down in an
isolation and desolation of which we can have no knowledge, to
implore the guidance of the Heavenly Wisdom in their counsels and
efforts for that Divine Institution which, because of the Incarnation, is
the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ. We recognize what a venture of faith
they were about to make in sending one forth to seek consecration to
the Episcopate, that so he might discharge the office of the Bishop in

the Church of God to a flock weak and despised, "scattered and peeled";
and what a greater venture of faith he would make who should go forth
on that errand, so doubtful and uncertain. We picture to ourselves all
the conditions of difficulty and discouragement by which they were
surrounded. We remember that the story of succeeding years, familiar
as household words to us, was hidden from them in the darkness that
veiled an unknown future. We know that they could not even have
dreamed of all that was to come out of that day's doings. We think of
all these things and many others, which I will not attempt even to
suggest, leaving it to your own thoughts to fill out details that are
omitted, and the one conclusion to which all our thoughts and all our
ponderings must bring us is, that those ten men of whom the great
world knew nothing then, of whom it takes no thought now, were,
nevertheless, "men that had understanding of the times, to know what
Israel ought to do."
The two events round which all the memories, the associations, the
details, of this and next year's commemorations group themselves, are
the election of our first Bishop in 1783, and his consecration at
Aberdeen in 1784. It seems to be my duty, to-day, to limit myself
strictly to the first of these; to what led up to it and to the event itself;
leaving it to whoever shall preach the sermon of next year to speak of
what followed the election, of the consecration itself, and