strange persistence...

Part one of  "A LAY VIEW OF SLEEPING IN CHURCH." from the collection "Eutychus and his Relations: Pulpit and Pew Papers", by Brooke Herford.  (This from the preface, "The ' Pulpit and Pew' Papers in this little book were written and published anonymously, during the years 1860 and 1861 by the late Dr. Brooke Herford in the early years of his ministry...it is stated that the ' Eutychus' papers ' made some little stir and roused considerable curiosity in their day, and will repay perusal still. There is a strange persistence in the minor weaknesses of humanity')

"For my part I pity Eutychus. He has been held up as a warning to sleepy congregations, and his falling down set forth as a judgment, by grave old divines of the precise Puritanical school, who could not appreciate the difficulty of keeping the attention fixed through long sermons, especially such sermons as their own. The clerical mind has a curious faculty of exaggerating small ecclesiastical offences, and while on most subjects entertaining very enlarged views and charitable feelings, has no sympathy with the little difficulties of the laity in these matters. I wish, therefore, to present a lay view of the subject.

It has a strange attraction for me. I have read those few verses in the twentieth chapter of Acts, again and again, and I love to touch and retouch the quaint little picture of the early church which they have left upon my mind. I seem to sit among the eager people grouped together in that little upper-room at Troas. Paul is on his way to Jerusalem, and the foreboding is strong upon his spirit that he shall never see them again. We do not know what he said,—Luke had taken ship and gone on before to Assos, so he was not there to tell us—but there are no more touching words in all the Acts than his farewell to the elders of Ephesus, given at the end of the same chapter; and it would be in much the same strain that he would speak to these poor folk at Troas, that last Sabbath-night of his brief stay. Have you never seen a crowded little preaching-room, away in some back street or country place,— a small, low room over a couple of cottages, with many lights stuck here and there against the walls, and homely long-headed weavers and poor women eagerly crowding to hear, and children sleeping heavily in the close hot air, and many faces peering in at the door. I think of such sights which I have seen many a time among the Methodists, when I was a young man, as often as I read of Eutychus. Poor young man, who has not seen him sitting, ' fallen in a deep sleep.' I dare say he was as fond of Paul as any of them, and listened lovingly at first. But ' Paul was long preaching,' and ' continued his speech until midnight' ; and so at last, what with the heat, and the lights, and some of the apostle's longer points about the Judaizing teachers and the dead works of the law, gradually the words began to melt into a pleasant dreamy flow of sound, and his head bowed down in that ' deep sleep.'

What a break in the midst of his touching words, when at last poor Eutychus overbalanced as he sat on the window-ledge, and suddenly his feet flew up and he disappeared with a heavy fall! How the people would rush out with lights and crowd about him, till Paul came down and knelt bending over him, with such a deep, longing prayer that he might be spared, and soon could say, to the great joy of the wondering friends, ' Trouble not yourselves, for his life is in him.'

What a lesson for poor Eutychus! I don't think he would go to sleep in chapel again for a long time, and when he did, he would take care not to sit in a window!"

Blessings

the open way to God...

This from James Freeman Clarke's "Messages of Faith, Hope and Love" (also posted this morning at Wonderful Epoch) 

"IN every age and every land it has been the universal and profound conviction of Christians that Jesus has been made to them the open way to God; that through him, somehow, they find forgiveness ; through him, hope; through him, a new life in their heart and soul.

This is the key to the ardent language of Paul. This is why he forever repeats the name of Christ. This is why he says, We are rooted and grounded in love. To Paul there came from Jesus this divine revelation of a great Fatherhood, and it broke the bonds of his Pharisaic literalism, of his routine religion ; took him out of his ritual, ceremonies, texts of Scripture, into a new life of perfect trust and hope and joy. " To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." "The life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God." " I live, but not I: Christ lives in me." Christ to him was the manifestation of a divine tenderness of which he had never before dreamed. So that, no matter what happened to him, he was sitting in heavenly places with Jesus; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.

And this unspeakable gift was not given to Jesus alone or to Paul alone, but it is given to you and to me. To us the word of this salvation is also sent. Salvation! for what can be more safe than to feel ourselves in the embrace of an infinite love. Salvation ! for we know that our sins will be destroyed and our evil cleansed by coming into this heavenly atmosphere of love. Salvation ! for how can we continue to sin if we are kept in the presence of our Father ?"

Have a blessed Sabbath

the very watchword...

This from Brooke Herford's sermon, 'PATIENT CONTINUANCE IN WELL-DOING.

 "To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality— eternal life!' (Romans ii. 7.)

I Cannot help thinking that this very phrase, with the position that it holds in Christian thought, is a sign of one of the noblest characteristics of Christianity. Christianity has brought out, as no other system ever did, the beauty and worth of simple, faithful living, apart from any greatness or conspicuousness. That simple kind of life was not of much account in the ancient world. The ancient world's idea of ' glory, honour, and immortality,' was of reward for the conspicuously great. He who should do some striking act of heroism, or some noble service to his country, for him, certainly—immortality! A Hercules, slaying the lion or dragon that had become the terror of a whole tribe ; a Leonidas, dying at the head of the forlorn hope of Greece; a Curtius, leaping into the chasm that superstition whispered could never close till Rome's best treasures were cast into it—no doubt about immortality for these, or such as these,—ancient thought followed them to heaven and fancied them dwelling among the gods or changed into shining stars. But there was no idea of anything of this kind for the rank and file of the common people. The husbandmen of the Campanian fields, who through those old-world centuries had to delve and plough, and take their corn to market, and live busy days about their farms; the merchants, who at Tyre or Corinth had to buy and sell, and try and make a little profit here and there ; the women, who, in the inner chambers of those ancient houses, had to pass their days in the thousandfold little cares of home and children—these—let alone the myriads, humbler yet, of hired labourers or slaves, —well, of course such work had to be done, such classes had to be, but as to their being of any account with the gods, or as to any ' glory, honour, and immortality' being in store for them, that hardly entered men's minds! There, exactly, it was that the elevating power of Christ's religion came in so strikingly and beautifully. It touched human life even in its homeliest levels with a new self-respect. It inaugurated a kind of divine democracy. It gave to the lowliest a new hope, a new encouragement. The Gospel's teaching of the great heavenly Father, as near to the labourer in the sand quarries as to the priest in the temple, and loving every one of these toiling ones,—not merely beneficent to mankind in the mass, but knowing them and loving them soul by soul, as a father knows his children; and the Gospel's great practical illustration of that divine love in a Christ who had especially gathered poor men about him, to teach them and inspire them with his glorious hopes; yes, and the whole tone of Christ's teachings, dwelling so tenderly on the work, and cares, and temptations of the common world, taking his parables from hired men, and vine-dressers, and busy women at their sweeping or their baking—all this was what really took hold of the heart of mankind. It is when I think of all this, that Paul's saying—' patient continuance in well-doing'—looks grandest to me. It stands out not as a mere fragmentary text, but as almost the very watchword for the Christian life, and rich with such a large, appreciative hopefulness for the common race of men."

Blessings

the Emerson Cult...

Before diving into Brooke Herford's sermons, this bit of background on Boston Unitarianism upon his arrival at Arlington Street Church in 1882. Regular readers will know that I love, yet constantly wrestle with Emerson.  This is why I wrestle...(from a memoir of Rev. Herford by John Cuckson...)

"The religious atmosphere of Boston Unitarianism was eminently prudent and conservative, and charged with pride of the days of Channing and Parker and Gannett, but beginning to show the first symptoms of spiritual numbness and torpid inactivity, from which it has hardly yet recovered...

...Inside the Unitarian churches, the Emersonian gospel of individuality, so lofty and inspiring and helpful in every direction, except in that of organized life in the church, was winning its way, and the zeal of Drs. Bellows and James Freeman Clarke was unable to withstand its somewhat disintegrating tendencies. It was giving new strength to individual faith, but no strength to the organization of that faith, for ecclesiastical purposes. Men felt themselves lifted into a diviner air by the Concord seer, but the expansion was toward higher altitudes, rather than towards close and active fellowship for practical ends, such as those which create churches, and strengthen them. Emerson was deeply religious, but it was the religion of solitude and seclusion, and not of the church and of the congregation, the religion that worships beneath the stars and pines, and not the faith that communes with itself, only that it may the more effectively stand in close and helpful relations with men and women steeped in sin and wretchedness. And so the spirit of Emerson made more transcendentalists than missionaries, more solillaquists, and prophets on their own account, than Christian workers. Under its spell the liberal ministers placed such emphasis on self-development and self-reliance, that they turned a noble truth into a hurtful exaggeration. In his Divinity School Address, which had so powerful an influence upon the religious thought of the time, Emerson broke away from traditions and history, and did scant justice to the instinct of hero-worship, which lies at the root of all religion, and especially of the religion of Jesus. In condemning what he called the noxious exaggeration of the person of Jesus, he unconsciously fell into the opposite exaggeration of asserting that "the soul knows no persons." No better example could surely be found of the falsehood of extremes. It would have been much nearer the truth to have said, the soul knows nothing but persons. Religion in all its aspects and phases is a personal relationship. It is the worship of a person, the federation of persons, and the love and service of persons. The religion that revolves around self, as a centre, even though it be the higher self, is a glorious illusion.

Be this as it may, at the time Mr. Herford settled at Arlington Street Church, what was called the Emerson cult was at its height. It did not openly discourage organized religious fellowship, but made it difficult, if not impossible. The churchly habit and congregational worship were slack, and in some instances every characteristic of well-defined Christian conviction was "disemboweled," and religion was lost in a "cadaverous abstraction." The older churches suffered less than others from this tendency to universalize everything. They still clung to liberal Christianity, and retained the few rites of the primitive faith, such as baptism and the Lord's Supper. The field in which Channing and Gannett had laboured so long and to such purpose was, therefore, eminently congenial to Mr. Herford. He found an atmosphere in which he could gladly preach and labour."

Blessings
(iluustration is "View from the steeple of Arlington Street Church)

Let us suspend our service for a moment...

Over the next few days, I will excerpt some of the works of Rev. Brooke Herford. Born in England, Herford served churches there before coming to America where he served in Chicago and then at Arlington Street Church (the Church of Channing and Gannett) in Boston (1882-1892 .)  For today, this anecdote from "Heralds of a Liberal Faith."

"...he (Herford) received a call from the Arlington Street Church in Boston. It offered him a somewhat more comfortable life, which he did not want but which would do him no harm, and to enter into the tradition of Channing and Gannett was an invitation he could not refuse. The settlement was fortunate for Boston also. Two blocks from Arlington Street, Phillips Brooks was at the zenith of his power and fame at Trinity Church. Equally nearby was George A. Gordon at the new Old South Church. Brooke Herford was a worthy member of this trio, and they worked intimately and happily together.
   Herford preached twice every Sunday with the large auditorium of the Church often so full that people were sitting on the pulpit stairs. Occasionally, to be sure, some of the people at the Vesper Service would get up to leave as the musical program ended, and just before the sermon began. Once, as this happened, Mr. Herford said from the pulpit, “Let us suspend our Service for a moment, until those children who cannot sit for an hour have left the Church.”

Blessings

complete harmony and perfection...

For the UU Salon's June question, from the Introductory of Thomas Baldwin Thayer's influential "Theology of Universalism" published in 1862. 

"This is essentially the theology of Universalism, the character and action which, following the sacred Scriptures, it ascribes to God as the Supreme Governor of the universe, and the Creator and Father of men. In him are united all possible perfections ; and by the necessity of his nature, he is infinite in all his attributes, and unchangeable—the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. He is the source of all our blessings, the inexhaustible fountain of good to man in this world, and in all worlds, in time, and in eternity.

This doctrine of the complete harmony and perfection of all the divine attributes, of the infinite benevolence of God in the creation and government of the world, inspires the true believer with reverent trust, with devout gratitude, and with an earnest desire to conform to all the requirements of his righteous laws. It imparts courage in the presence of danger, resistance in the time of temptation, patience in tribulation, resignation in suffering, and peace in the hour of death. The experience of these beneficent influences, and the happy consciousness of this spiritual renewal, justify the Universalist Christian in claiming for his faith, that it has all the characteristics of a divinely authenticated religion ; that it is, in a word, identical with the Gospel as taught by the Saviour and his chosen disciples."

Blessings

a living perpetual epistle...

I was very gratified to receive yesterday an email from a minister, not Unitarian, who discovered James Freeman Clarke through this space. Readers of this blog and of Wonderful Epoch, know of the importance of JFC in my own spiritual and religious life.  One of the many reasons this is so was his true ecumenical spirit both within Unitarianism and the larger body of Christ.  He embodied a spirit of Christian unity that is all too sadly lacking. James Freeman Clarke died on this day in 1888.  These words were spoken in a sermon by the great Boston Episcopalian preacher Phillips Brooks shortly after JFC's death...

" He belonged to the whole Church of Christ. Through him his Master spoke to all who had ears to hear. Especially, he was a living perpetual epistle to the Church of God which is in Boston. It is a beautiful, a solemn moment when the city, the Church, the world, gather up the completeness of a finished life like his, and thank God for it, and place it in the shrine of memory, to be a power and a revelation thenceforth so long as city and Church and world shall last. It is not the losing, it is rather the gaining, the assuring, of his life. Whatever he has gone to in the great mystery beyond, he remains a word of God here in the world he loved. Let us thank our Heavenly Father for the life, the work, the inspiration, of his true servant, his true saint, James Freeman Clarke."

Blessings