Report of Commemorative Services with the Sermons and Addresses at the Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885 | Page 9

on that memorable twenty-fifth of March: "Could
necessity warrant a deviation from the law of Christ and the
immemorial usage of the Church, yet what necessity can we plead? Can
we plead necessity with any propriety till we have been rejected? We
conceive the present to be a more favorable opportunity for the
introduction of bishops than this country has before seen. However
dangerous bishops might have been thought to the civil rights of these
States, this danger has now vanished, for such superiors will have no
civil authority. They will be purely ecclesiastics... equally under the
control of civil law with other clergymen; no danger, then, can now be
feared from bishops but such as may be feared from presbyters." And
then they further say, how wisely! "Should we consent to a temporary
departure from Episcopacy, there would be very little propriety in
asking for it afterwards, and as little reason ever to expect it in
America."
The men who wrote those words grasped the real exigency as they who
spoke loudest about exigencies and impossibilities did not. They
foresaw, moreover, with the intuition of true wisdom, the danger of
resorting to the temporary expedient that had been proposed. For, in
truth, all history proves that such expedients and makeshifts always
exhibit a tendency to become permanent, and very soon challenge for
themselves a character, as legitimate and ultimate, which is not claimed
for them when they are adopted. Then that thing, whatever it may be, to
which they profess to lead men up, drops out of sight, and they
themselves fill the field of vision. Had the plan of the Philadelphia
pamphlet been adopted, such I fully believe, such the clergy of

Woodbury believed, must inevitably have been the result. That it was
not adopted, that the dangers inherent in it were avoided, was largely
owing to the action of the day which we commemorate.
In what simplicity and godly sincerity of heart they took the step that
lay right before them, met the difficulty from which others shrank, did
"the next thing," and, therefore, wrought for a marvellous future! Says
a thoughtful writer: [Footnote: Aubrey de Vere, Sketches in Greece and
Turkey.] "Men of ambitious imaginations retire into their study and
devise some magnum opus which, like the world itself, is to be created
out of nothing, and to hang self-balanced on its own centre; after much
puffing, however, the world which they produce is apt to turn out but a
well-sized bubble. Men of another order labor but to provide for some
practical need; and their work, humble, perhaps occasional, in its
design, is found to contain the elements that make human toils
indestructible."
It was fortunate for all who were to come after them that those men of
whom I speak were no dreamers or doctrinaires, and rode no
"half-saddled hobbies" of their own construction. They did not
undertake to formulate a creed adapted to the wants of the American
mind and the demands of the eighteenth century; they had that which
was for every mind and all time, in the One "Faith once delivered to the
Saints." They did not attempt to compose a Liturgy or Forms for Sacred
Rites and Services; these they also had, capable (doubtless) of
adaptation and change "according to the diversity of countries, times,
and men's manners," but still complete for all purposes of worship or
ministration, being, indeed, the growth of all the Christian ages. They
did not set themselves to create a new Church, or even to reason out
just what might possibly be dispensed with here or omitted there
because of "the present distress"; all they had to do, in that little
secluded room where they were assembled, was to provide what was
lacking in that organization which they had received; even as in that
secluded "upper room" in Jerusalem where the eleven were assembled
with the disciples, the vacant place in the Apostolate was filled up in
anticipation of the mighty Pentecostal gift. And because they were
humble enough, and therefore wise enough, to do just what they did,
they "builded better than they knew"; builded on that only foundation
that can be laid, even Jesus Christ; builded, also, as "wise

master-builders," not with the "wood, hay, stubble" of man's gathering,
but with the "gold, silver, precious stones" of the "New Jerusalem that
cometh down from heaven."
There is another thought that ought not be passed by. Says an old
Father, speaking of the Episcopate: "_Nomen oneris non honoris"; "It is
the name of a burden rather than of an honor." So here, the question
was not, To whom shall we give the honor? but, Who can best take up
and bear the burden? And what a burden it was! The wearisome quest
for consecration, sure to