A SPECIAL service was held in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Middletown, on the one-hundredth anniversary of the first Ordination held by Bishop Seabury, August 3, 1885, at 11 o'clock A. M. The processional hymn being ended, Bishop Williams began the Communion-service, the Collect being that for St. Simon and St. Jude's Day. The Epistle (that for St. Mark's Day) was read by the Rev. Prof. Samuel Hart of Trinity College, and the Gospel (that for St. Matthias's Day), by the Rev. Sylvester Clarke, Rector of Trinity Church, Bridgeport. After the Creed, the Bishop delivered this address:

The third of August, 1785, was a memorable day for this diocese and for our whole Church. For the first time an American Bishop was to hold an ordination in the United States. The event carries us back, in thought, to Apostolic days. The first act of ordination by the Apostles at Jerusalem, after the miracle of Pentecost, was the laying on of hands upon the seven deacons. The first ordination ministered by him who first bore the Apostolic commission to this nation, was an ordination—not of seven indeed, but of four—to the diaconate. The authority, the ministration, and the order imparted were in both cases the same, separated though the acts were by the great chasm of seventeen centuries. It is good to commemorate such an event. It is right to commemorate it in the place in which it occurred. Such a commemoration fitly ends the series of centenary observances which we began in Woodbury in the spring-tide of 1883. For the act of this day certified our fathers that what they had sought and cried out for through long and weary years was gained at last; that no longer did three thousand miles of ocean separate them from the possibility of admission to the "ministry of Christ, and the stewardship of the mysteries of God."

Let me, first, say something of the place in which the service of ordination, and all the services and acts connected with it, were held. There stood, at that time, on what used to be called the South Green in this city, a small wooden church known as Christ Church. There are not many persons, probably, now living who remember it, but a rough sketch of it, which has been preserved, has given many who never saw it an idea at least of what it was. It was not an altogether ungraceful building with its arched windows—regarded by many in those days as indicating Romeward tendencies—and its pointed spire. And it had nothing in common with those hideous combinations of packing-box and Grecian portico, which prevailed many years later on; but which decay and fire and other merciful interferences and visitations have made things of the past.

It had a story of its own, too—that old church—to tell; a story of trial, perseverance, and success; a story exactly parallel to that of the clergy, and especially the bishop, who came together within its walls. About the middle of the last century, a number of persons who, in the exercise of that "freedom to worship God," which has been claimed as the peculiar glory of New England, had declared themselves to be attached to the Church of England, petitioned the town authorities to grant them a piece of ground on which they might erect a church. Their application was refused. After a time it was renewed, and refused again. At last, a building-place was granted them, the situation of which has just been mentioned. It was a marshy spot, on which few persons believed that any building could ever be erected. It is strangely noticeable, however, that a great many things which never can be done, are nevertheless somehow brought about, especially in the progress of the Church. So it was here. Careful drainage overcame the natural lack of adaptation, and, though the work met with delays and drawbacks, the church was completed in 1755. It is a tradition of the time that when the frame of the building was raised, the shout that burst from the lips of those engaged in or watching the work was so loud and joyous that it might have been heard for the distance of a mile. Verily, good people of this parish, if your predecessors could not say that they had been brought "through fire," they could at least say that they had been "brought through water to a wealthy place"; wealthy, not in this world's goods, but in those spiritual gifts which are the eternal dowry of the Bride of Christ.

So much for the place. Next let us look at those who came together. If the place of meeting had been hardly won, those men had "endured hardness as good soldiers of Christ." Foremost, in the full maturity of his manhood, stands the newly consecrated bishop. He is in his fifty-sixth year. And inasmuch as the picture with which we are all familiar was painted while he was in London, we no doubt see him there as he was here in Middletown, a century ago. And a goodly sight it is; the sight of one who looked, and was, every inch a bishop.

Jeremiah Learning comes next to view. But for his advanced age, and the fact that imprisonment in a damp and noisome cell had made him a cripple for life, he would have stood in Seabury's place as our first bishop. He is now in his sixty-eighth year, having been born in Durham in 1717. He lived to the age of nearly eighty- eight, and one who remembered him In his latest years says: "He rises to my mind the very ideal of age and decrepitude—a small, emaciated old man, very lame, his ashen and withered features surmounted sometimes by a cap, and sometimes by a small wig— always quiet and gentle in his manner." Such a condition as is here described is still, however, in the future for him. He is still vigorous enough to preside in the convention of the clergy, until the new bishop takes that place, and to preach what was called, in the quaint phraseology of the day, "a well adapted" ordination sermon.

We turn to the secretary of the convention, Abraham Jarvis, who will in time become the second bishop of this diocese. He has just entered on the twenty-first year of his rectorship of this parish, a position which he will hold for fourteen more years. He is described, by one who knew him, as having "an uncommon tact at public business, and in a talent at drafting petitions, memorials, etc., having few, if any, superiors."

Most, if not all, of the excellent papers connected with the negotiations for the Episcopate were drawn up by him, and on him devolved nearly all the correspondence to which the negotiations gave rise. Nine others of the clergy of the diocese were present, and with them two from other places—the Rev. Benjamin Moore of New York, who came in no official capacity, and the Rev. Samuel Parker of Boston, who appeared as representing the clergy of Massachusetts. Dr. Moore was afterwards the second Bishop of New York, and Dr. Parker the second Bishop of Massachusetts. The clergy had assembled on the day previous, August 2nd, and Bishop Seabury had presented his letters of consecration. On the day we are commemorating, the services began with the reception and recognition of the bishop. Four of the clergy repaired to the parsonage, which stood nearly where the house of the Hon. Benjamin Douglas now stands, bearing with them the declaration of the clergy then convened, that "they confirmed their former election, and acknowledged and received Dr. Seabury as their Episcopal head. Two of the four immediately carried back to the convention the answer of acceptance by the bishop, while the other two followed in attendance upon him, and conducted him to the church." Here, sitting near the Holy Table, with the clergy gathered before him, he listened to their address, which was read by the Rev. Dr. Hubbard of New Haven. I quote from it three striking passages. Their recognition of their new bishop was made in these words: "We, in the presence of Almighty God, declare to the world, that we do unanimously and voluntarily accept and receive you to be our Bishop, supreme in the government of the Church, and in the administration of all ecclesiastical offices. And we do solemnly engage to render you all that respect, duty, and submission, which we believe do belong and are due to your high office, and which, we understand, were given by the presbyters to their bishop in the Primitive Church while, in her native purity, she was unconnected with, and uncontrolled by, any secular power."

After describing the earnest attempts to obtain the Episcopate from England, and the final failure of the attempts, they add: "We hope that the successors of the Apostles in the Church of England have sufficient reasons to justify themselves to the world and to God. We, however, know of none such, nor can our imagination frame any."

At the close of the address, after blessing God for the way opened in Scotland, whose bishops had freely given what they had freely received, they add, out of their full hearts, burning words of gratitude, and say: "Wherever the American Episcopal Church shall be mentioned in the world, may this good deed which they have done for us, be spoken of for a memorial of them."

To this address the bishop made a brief, but sufficient and dignified reply, expressing, among other things, his reliance on the "ready advice and assistance" of the clergy in the discharge of his office; so foreshadowing the character of his Episcopate.

The ordination was then proceeded with, and the four deacons were ordained. Dr. Leaming preached the sermon, as I have already said, and Mr. Jarvis "officiated as archdeacon" and presented the candidates. The order of service differed somewhat in arrangement, but in nothing else, from our order as it stands today. But the changes are not material enough to require any mention.

The ordination ended, the bishop dissolved the convention and directed the clergy to meet him in convocation at a later hour. This was the first convocation of the clergy of this diocese. They had before come together by their own agreement; now they were called together by their chief pastor. These meetings of the clergy continued till within my own memory, though they had ceased before I was consecrated, nor do I remember ever to have attended one as either deacon or presbyter. They were usually held. I believe, in connection with the sessions of the Diocesan Convention.

Of those who were admitted on that third of August to the diaconate, another will speak to you as I could not, so that little remains for me to add.

We can scarcely now imagine to ourselves the mingled joy and doubt, hopes and fears, thankfulness and uncertainty, that filled the minds and agitated the hearts of those who came together here a hundred years ago. The great point, no doubt, was gained; but what was to follow? Would the consecration of Seabury be everywhere accepted? or would there be those who would reject it because an Act of Parliament had established Presbyterianism in Scotland, and other Acts of Parliament had proscribed the Scotch Episcopate? Would all churchmen in all the thirteen States of the Confederation be united in one body? Or were there such discordant elements, that they who held to the Apostolic Faith and Order would be thrust out? Was there vitality enough in the Church in Connecticut to live and grow? Or, when they who composed it then were gone, would it dwindle and die out? No man could have answered those questions then; God has answered them since. And as we run back along the story of the years that have written out the answer which we read this day, we come at last to that day, so truly memorable, and to the bishop, the clergy, the candidates, who then assembled to take their several parts in the first Episcopal Ordination in America.

In the library of Trinity College is preserved—many of us must have seen it—Bishop Seabury's Mitre. I am sure I cannot better express what may be called our culminating thought today, than by quoting some lines written by the Bishop of Western New York on that venerable relic:

"The rod that from Jerusalem Went forth so strong of yore, That rod of David's royal stem, Whose hand the farthest bore? St. Paul to seek the setting sun, They say, to Britain prest; St. Andrew to old Calidon, But who still farther West?

"Go ask! a thousand tongues shall tell His name and dear renown, Where altar, font, and holy bell Are gifts he handed down; A thousand hearts keep warm the name, Which share those gifts so blest; Yet even this may tell the same, First mitre of the West!

"Aye! keep it for this mighty West Till truth shall glorious be, And good old Samuel's is confest Columbia's primal see. 'Tis better than a diadem, The crown that Bishop wore, Whose hand the rod of Jesse's stem The farthest westward bore!"

The Rev. Dr. Beardsley then read the following biographical account of the four candidates admitted to the diaconate by Bishop Seabury at his first ordination:

Of the candidates ordained in Middletown on the third of August, 1785, COLIN FERGUSON was the only one not of Connecticut. He came from Maryland, and the testimonials recommending him were signed by the Rev. Dr. William Smith, afterwards president of the House of Deputies, and others of that State. He was born in Kent County, and was the son of a Scotsman who emigrated to this country and maintained a respectable character but never rose to affluent circumstances. An opportunity occurred for the youth to accompany a Scottish schoolmaster about to return to Edinburgh, and he gladly availed himself of it and thus obtained a classical education without expense to his father. After several years spent at the University of Edinburgh, he came back to America with a good reputation for scholarship, but it does not appear that he had the ministry in mind so early as this. He found employment as an instructor, and upon the establishment of Washington College, Chestertown, Md., in 1782, he was chosen a professor in it, and held the place until Dr. Smith, the president or principal, returned to Philadelphia, when he was promoted to the headship of the institution. It was under the direction of Dr. Smith that he studied theology, and his ministerial labors were chiefly limited to St. Paul's Parish, Kent County, of which for sometime he had the charge in addition to his college duties. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him shortly after his ordination by the institution with which he was connected, and was a deserved honor on the score of learning. He was a member of the August General Convention of 1789, and signed as one of the delegation from Maryland the "Resolves" of that body which led to the final union and settlement of the Church in all the States.

About the year 1804, the Legislature of Maryland passed enactments which deprived the college of the means of a liberal support, and Dr. Ferguson thereupon resigned his office and "retired to his farm in the vicinity of Georgetown Cross Roads, where he spent the remainder of his life." He died of paralysis on the 10th of March, 1806, in the 55th year of his age.

"As a preacher," says one [Footnote: P. Worth, in Sprague's Annals of the American Episcopal Pulpit, p. 344.] who was his pupil for seven years and had constant opportunities to make observations upon his character, "I cannot say he possessed any remarkable power. His sermons, as specimens of composition, were of a high order, creditable to him as a scholar and a writer, but they were not strongly marked by an evangelical tone. Perhaps I should not do him injustice, if I was to say that his sermons, in this respect, were not very unlike those of the celebrated Dr. Hugh Blair."

I take the names of the candidates in the order in which they lie in the Registry Book of Bishop Seabury—not that this order determines the actual order of ordination, for I am confident it does not.

HENRY VAN DYCK was born in the city of New York in 1744, and was the only son of his parents. He graduated from King's (now Columbia) College in 1761, when the institution was in charge of its first president, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson. After graduating, he studied law and located himself in Stratford, Conn., whither the family had removed and become settled. He married Huldah Lewis of that place, August 9, 1767, and on the sixth day of the ensuing month, he and his wife were admitted as communicants in Christ Church, which was then under the rectorship of Dr. Johnson for the second time, he having resigned the college and returned to Stratford.

It does not appear that he had much success in the legal profession, and he wrote his discouragements to William Samuel Johnson, special colonial agent from Connecticut, then in London, who confided in his integrity and had entrusted him with the collection of some debts that were his due. In his reply, Johnson said: "It gives me concern to find that you have not met with that obliging behaviour from the profession which you expected; those men at the bar have, I believe, most of them experienced the friendly assistance of those who have gone before them, and should not therefore in point of gratitude refuse it to help those who are coming forward and to succeed them, not to mention that it is exceedingly ungenerous and illiberal to endeavour to cramp rising genius, or use any attempts to monopolize a profession which should be ever open to men of merit, and especially those who enter into it in the regular methods of education. You will find, however, that nothing will so effectually overcome any difficulties, prejudices, or inconveniences of this nature as the course you say you are in, and in which therefore you will by all means persevere, of an assiduous, careful attention to your business and an upright, diligent conduct in every branch of your profession. This will secure you in the possession of the business you have, and increase it, enable you to transact it with ease and honor, and by degrees enforce the complaisance at least, if not the esteem, of those who by some slights and little negligences wished to have depressed you, and by that means perhaps secured to themselves a greater proportion of business.

"I sincerely give you and Mrs. Van Dyck joy upon your marriage, and hope you will long, very long, enjoy all the blessings of the connubial state, which I have ever esteemed essential to human happiness. It would have given me an additional pleasure to have known that your father had consented to it, and though it seems he would not, I still hope he may yet see such happy effects of the measure as to approve it and be convinced by its consequences that he ought not to have been so inflexibly averse to it." [Footnote: Ms. Letter, November 23, 1767.]

Mr. Van Dyck continued the practice of law until about the time of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. He was brought forward as a lay-reader under the auspices of the Rev. Ebenezer Kneeland, successor in the Church at Stratford to the Rev. Dr. Johnson whose granddaughter, Charity, he had married. From the records of the Episcopal Church in the adjoining town of Milford, it appears that at a vestry meeting, held April 17, 1776, after electing wardens and vestrymen, Mr. Kneeland being present, it was "voted that Mr. Henry Van Dyke be desired to read prayers on such Sundays as Dr. Kneeland shall be absent, and that we will see him rewarded for his trouble." This was done with entire unanimity by the advice and consent of Mr. Kneeland. An item in a publication of the time, under date of August, 1779, though incorrect in reporting him as a clergyman, gives evidence that he had ceased to pursue the legal profession: "The Rev. Henry Van Dyke is at Norwalk, and wants to go to Long Island with his family."

After the independence of the colonies had been declared, the full use of the liturgy of the Church of England was no longer tolerated, and for ten years there was seldom any assembling for prayers or preaching or any new choice of officers in the Church at Milford. But in January, 1786, Mr. Van Dyck, being then in Holy Orders, proposed to take the care of the churches in Milford and West Haven, and his proposition was acceded to at a salary of 90 pounds per annum; Milford agreeing to pay two-thirds of it and West Haven the remainder. He removed with his family to Milford in the May following, and the church thought itself happily provided with a "pasture" for life.

In this, however, there was disappointment, for in February, 1787, "the appearance of a committee from Poughkeepsie" to secure him as rector in that place and Fishkill, made the people of Milford and West Haven somewhat indignant. They claimed that his engagement with them was for a longer period, while he affirmed that it terminated at the end of the year. He had been in treaty with the Church at Poughkeepsie for some time, and visited and officiated in it before he was in Holy Orders. The records show that he conducted divine service in Christ Church as early as June, 1784, and that the congregation desired the vestry to adopt such measures in conjunction with their brethren of Trinity Church, Fishkill, as might be proper for the settlement of Mr. Van Dyck. The arrangement was completed by offering him as compensation the use of the glebe, containing more than two hundred and fifty acres, and, 80 pounds New York currency from the parish in Poughkeepsie and 40 pounds from Fishkill. They wished him to come whether in orders or not, but nothing more was heard of him till he addressed a letter dated Stratford, May 22, 1785, to the vestry of Christ Church, requesting certificates and testimonials which would entitle him to ordination by Bishop Seabury who was already in Nova Scotia and "momentarily expected" in Connecticut.

"Our ordination," he said, "will take place immediately on his arrival, for which we are making all possible preparation, after which we shall repair to our several congregations as soon as we can." The preparation was probably under the direction and oversight of the Rev. Mr. Learning, the first choice of the clergy of Connecticut for bishop.

On the second Sunday after his ordination, in fulfilment of a promise which he had made, the Rev. Mr. Van Dyck visited the church in Fishkill, but he was only a bird of passage in doing this. His private affairs were in the way. He had become indebted to a gentleman in New York to the amount of L125, and under the trespass law of the State, if he entered it and remained, he was liable to arrest and imprisonment. The Legislature, by vote, permitted him to return, and finally an amicable adjustment was effected with the creditor through the agency of the vestry in Poughkeepsie, and he was established as rector of Christ Church, Whitsunday, May 27, 1787, and continued in charge till 1791. He then removed to New Jersey and became rector of St. Peter's Church, Amboy, and Christ Church, New Brunswick; but in July, 1793, he accepted the rectorship of St. Mary's, Burlington, which he held for three years. His residence in this place was saddened by painful domestic afflictions. The death of his widowed mother, who had been an inmate of his family for many years, followed by that of two of his daughters under peculiarly sorrowful circumstances, must have made him quite willing to leave Burlington, and assume, in 1797, the charge of St. James's Church, Newtown, L. I. Here he continued to officiate for five years, and he is said to have been the first clergyman who devoted his entire services to that parish. This was his last and longest rectorship, for he left Newtown in 1802, and on the 12th of September in that year he conducted the services in Grace Church, Jamaica, then vacant, "and offered to officiate further."

Davis [Footnote: John Davis, Travels of four Years and a half in the United States (1798-1802), p. 155.], in his travels in the United States, speaks thus vividly of a visit he made to Newtown, and of his entertainment in the place: "I was fortunate enough to procure lodgings at Newtown under the roof of the Episcopal minister, Mr. Vandyke. The parsonage-house was not unpleasantly situated. The porch was shaded by a couple of huge locust trees, and accommodated with a long bench. Here I often sat with my host, who like Parson Adams always wore the cassock; but he did not read AEschylus. Mr. Vandyke was at least sixty; yet if a colt, a pig, or any other quadruped entered his paddock, he sprang from his seat with more than youthful agility, and vociferously chased the intruder from his domain. I could not but smile to behold the parson running after a pig and mingling his cries with those of the animal."

The New York Evening Post of September 17, 1804, contained this obituary: "Died early this morning, the Rev. Henry Van Dyck, aged sixty, one of the clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and formerly rector of St. James's Church, Newtown. He was possessed of an affectionate heart and excellent understanding. He discharged with zeal, fidelity, and ability, the duties of his calling. In private life he was esteemed by all to whom he was known. Funeral this afternoon at five o'clock from his house, No. 4 Cedar street, New York, where his friends and acquaintances are invited to attend."

It is stated in the Rev. Dr. Hills's History of the Church in Burlington, p. 339, that two children survived him—"a son and a daughter; Richard Vandyke married, had a large family, and lived to a good old age. He died in 1856." The death of the daughter, who never married, occurred thirty years earlier.

ASHBEL BALDWIN was born in a farm-house on the hills of Litchfield, Connecticut, March 7, 1757. His father, Isaac Baldwin, was a graduate of Yale College in the class of 1735, and an older brother, who bore the paternal name, was graduated in 1774. Ashbel was later, graduating in 1776, the year of the Declaration of American Independence. Isaac Baldwin the senior, on leaving college, began the study of theology and was licensed as a Congregational minister, and preached for a time in what is now the town of Washington, Conn. [Footnote: Dexter's Yale Biographies and Annals, 1701-1745; p. 523.] But he soon relinquished the study, and turned his attention to agricultural pursuits, settling upon a farm in Litchfield, and becoming an eminently useful official in the public affairs of the town and county.

His son Ashbel contracted a lameness in boyhood by going into the water and imprudently exposing himself to a cold, which stiffened and shortened one of his limbs and made his gait ever afterward unequal and limping. He had not relinquished his attachment to the Congregational order when he graduated and subsequently took a temporary tutorship in a Church family in New York. Stanch churchmen in those days, if for any cause the parish church was closed on Sunday, turned their parlors into chapels, and had in private the full morning service. Mr. Baldwin, being the educated member of the household, was required to act as lay-reader, and not knowing how to use the Prayer-Book, and yet ashamed to confess his ignorance to the head of the family, he sought the assistance and friendship of the gardener, who gave him the necessary instructions, and very soon love and admiration of the Liturgy and conversion to the Church followed. How long he continued in his private tutorship is unknown.

For two or three years during the Revolutionary War he held the appointment of a quartermaster in the Continental army, and was stationed for a time at Litchfield, where there was a large depository of military stores, "principally taken at the surrender of General Burgoyne," and guarded by a considerable detachment of soldiers. For his services in this capacity he received a pension from government, which became his principal means of support in the last year of his life.

Upon the cessation of hostilities and the acknowledgment of Independence, he applied himself to theological studies, and though but a candidate for Holy Orders, he was an interested spectator at the meeting of the clergy in Woodbury on the Feast of the Annunciation, 1783, when choice was made of the first bishop of Connecticut.

On Monday, June 20, 1785, Bishop Seabury arrived at Newport, R.I., after a voyage from London of three months, including his stay in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and reaching his future home in Connecticut a week later, preparations were immediately begun to meet his clergy and hold his first ordination. Of the four candidates admitted by him to the diaconate in this city a century ago to-day, Van Dyck, Baldwin, and Shelton belonged to Connecticut, and were recommended by its clergy, of whom in convention assembled the Rev. Jeremiah Leaming was president. Mr. Baldwin was sent at once to his native place, and continued in charge of St. Michael's Church, Litchfield, till 1793, when he resigned and accepted the rectorship of the venerable parish at Stratford. He was instrumental in awakening the zeal of the Episcopalians of Litchfield county, and leading them to re-open their churches after the desolations of the war as well as to project new ones. His recognized position in the diocese was early one of influence and responsibility, and his energy and facility in the dispatch of business made him especially useful in the deliberative and legislative assemblies of the Church. He was chosen Secretary of the Convention of the Diocese of Connecticut in 1796, and continued to discharge the duties of that office for a period of nearly thirty years. He was a deputy to the General Convention for an equally long period, and held the office of Secretary in the House of Deputies, from which he retired in 1823 with the thanks of that body "for his long and faithful services."

As the General Convention of 1799 was the first which Mr. Baldwin attended in the capacity of a deputy, so that of 1823 was the last. He was conspicuous in that council for remarkable self- possession, and promptness and facility in giving expression to his opinions. The type of his theology led him to take the "old paths," and reverence for the memory of the bishop who ordained him held him up to a high standard of legislation for the Church. He would have her doctrines and discipline well defined and guarded, and his first action in the House of Deputies was to move a resolution to take into consideration the propriety of framing Articles of Religion. He lived at a period when Puritanism was rife in New England, especially in Connecticut, and while it was his policy to avoid being drawn into controversy, his devotion to the interests of the Episcopal Church never faltered or became doubtful under any pressure of circumstances. He was a parson without the smallest trace of bigotry, and attracted and retained the affections of all who was privileged to know him well in his private and official capacity. He was a good reader of the Liturgy, an instructive, if not a learned preacher, and had a clear, sonorous voice, and a persuasive manner which rendered his discourses acceptable to all classes of people. His best and happiest days were passed in Stratford, where for over thirty years he held the rectorship of the parish which had been served by those two eminent divines, Johnson and Leaming.

For a portion of the time he had this parish in connection with the neighboring one at Tashua, ministering to the latter every third Sunday, and holding frequent services in school-houses and private dwellings. His mode of travelling was in a chaise, and on one occasion he drove up rather hurriedly to meet an appointment at a house where the people had already assembled, and stepping nimbly down from his seat he was accosted by the host who was not a churchman: "I suppose, Mr. Baldwin, as it is the season of Lent, you will not take any refreshments before beginning the service." "No, nothing for me," was the reply; "but my horse is a Presbyterian; he must be fed."

Mr. Baldwin was a man of keen discernment, quick apprehensions, and ready retort. In social intercourse he had wonderful powers of adapting himself to circumstances, and was alike an acceptable visitor in the families of the wealthy and refined, the humble and the uneducated, and a welcome guest at their tables. It was his practice, as it was the practice of many of the clergy in that day, to administer baptism in private houses, using the occasion of a lecture to make the office a public one. Very often whole households were baptized in this way, and sometimes their connection with the Church was afterwards unfortunately lost through neglect to exercise a proper degree of vigilance and care.

Mr. Baldwin married Miss Clarissa Johnson of Guilford, a grand- niece of his predecessor in Stratford, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson. She died childless many years before him, and he never married again. He was in the full possession of his mental faculties and blessed with a fair degree of health when he resigned, in 1824, the Rectorship of Christ Church. For a time he lingered in the neighborhood of Stratford, but could not be idle, and was soon in charge of the parish in Meriden, and afterwards officiated in several places, as Tashua, Wallingford, North Haven, Oxford, and Quakers' Farms. Ten years were thus passed, doing what he could for the Church which he had served so faithfully and loved so much; but in 1834 failure of eyesight and other infirmities obliged him to cease from all public service and go into retirement. It was natural for him to dwell for the rest of his days among or near his old parishioners, and for many years, as it suited his convenience, he resided at New Haven, Bridgeport, and Stratford. He was at the latter place in 1837, when he addressed a letter to Bishop Brownell, taking an affectionate leave of the Diocesan Convention then sitting in New Haven, and resigning the only office of trust in its gift which he had continued to hold.

The letter was characteristic of the man, chaste and beautiful in its style, and pathetic in its allusions. The concluding paragraph read:

"My dear Sir, when I first entered the Church her condition was not very flattering. Surrounded by enemies on every side, and opposed with much virulence, her safety and even her very existence were at times somewhat questionable; but by the united and zealous exertions of the clergy, attended by the blessings of her great Founder, she has been preserved in safety through every storm, and now presents herself with astonishment to every beholder, not as a grain of mustard seed, but as a beautiful tree, spreading its salubrious branches over our whole country. The Church, by a strict adherence to its ancient landmarks, its priesthood, its liturgy, and its government, has been preserved from those schisms which seem to threaten the peace of a very respectable body of Christians in our country. May the same unanimity and zeal which animated our fathers, still be preserved in the Church. My days of pilgrimage, I know, are almost closed, and I can do no more than to be in readiness, by the grace of God, to leave the Church militant in peace. May I be permitted, Sir, to ask the prayers of my bishop and his clergy, that my last days may be happy."

Mr. Baldwin went to Rochester, N.Y., a few years later, and became an inmate in the family of one who had removed thither from Connecticut, and who was under special obligations to him for kindness and care bestowed in previous years. He died in that city on Sunday, February 8, 1846, lacking twenty-seven days to complete his eighty-ninth year. There is a memorial window erected to him in the chancel of Grace Church, Long Hill, Conn., which occupies ground included in the scene of his early ministration.

PHILO SHELTON was a grandson of Daniel Shelton, the founder of the New England branch of the Shelton family in America. He was one of a family of fourteen children, and was born in Ripton (now Huntington) on the 7th of May, 1754. He received a classical education, and was the first alumnus of Yale College who bore the name of Shelton. He graduated in 1775, just after the outbreak of the Revolutionary war, and soon, as a candidate for Holy Orders, he acted in the capacity of a lay-reader in several places until his ordination. When a British expedition under the command of Gen. Tryon was fitted out at New York in 1779, to subdue the shore-towns of Connecticut, Fairfield was one of the places invaded, the torch was applied to the dwellings of the rich and the poor, and the Episcopal church there, the parsonage, and other property belonging to the parish were consumed in the general conflagration. This destruction impoverished and depressed the people as a whole, and many of them fled; but the few churchmen who remained rallied from all discouragement, rebuilt their houses, and met in them on Sundays to worship God according to the forms of the old liturgy, Philo Shelton having been secured for a lay-reader. He read at the same time for the Episcopalians at Stratfield, where a wooden church was built as early as 1748, and also for those in Weston, where the flock had not been broken up by the disasters of the Revolution.

While waiting for ordination, he settled in life and married, April 20, 1781, Lucy, daughter of Philip Nichols, Esq., of Stratfield (now Bridgeport), [Footnote: The marriage was undoubtedly solemnized by the Rev. Christopher Newton of Ripton, the only Church clergyman in the vicinity, and still Mr. Shelton's rector. He baptized the first child, Lucy, born June 27, 1782.] strong churchman and first lay-delegate chosen to represent the Diocese of Connecticut in the General Convention. In February, 1785, a formal arrangement was made that his services in each of the three places should be proportioned to the number of churchmen residing in them respectively, and until he should be in Orders it was stipulated to pay him twenty shillings lawful money for each day that he officiated. Ashbel Baldwin, his nearest neighbor in parochial work, and most intimate friend and associate in efforts to build up the Church in Connecticut, used to say that the hands of Bishop Seabury were first laid upon the head of Mr. Shelton on the 3d of August, 1785, so that his name really begins the long list of clergy who have had ordination in this country by bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church. In the Diocesan Convention, under an established rule of that body, he invariably outranked Mr. Baldwin, and so was frequently the presiding officer in the absence of the Bishop, which is another proof that he was his senior by ordination as well as in years. At the first convocation of the clergy after the death of Bishop Jarvis, held in Stratford, June 1, 1813, Mr. Baldwin, as Secretary, entered the names of twenty-nine who were present, and then recorded: "The Rev. Doctor Mansfield desired to be excused from serving as President on account of his age and infirmities; which excuse was accepted by the brethren. The Rev. Philo Shelton, being the next oldest presbyter, took the chair." Should it be said that this does not refer to the diaconate, it may be answered that the obituary notice of his widow, who died in 1838, speaks of him as "the first clergyman ordained by the first American Bishop."

After his admission to Holy Orders, according to his own statement, Mr. Shelton took full "pastoral charge of the cure of Fairfield, including Stratfield and Weston, dividing his time equally between the three churches, with a salary of one hundred pounds per annum from the congregations and the use of what lands belonged to the cure." It was a small living for a clergyman who already had a wife and two children, but the Revolutionary War had so reduced the people and their resources, that it could not well be made larger. Five years passed away before the enterprise of building a new church in Fairfield was really begun, and then it was erected about a mile west of the site where the old one stood, and was only inclosed and made fit for occupancy at the time, and not finished and consecrated till 1798.

The population was drifting from Stratfield toward the borough of Bridgeport, and in 1801 it was deemed advisable to demolish the old church and build a new one in a more central situation. Mr. Shelton saw the wisdom of this movement and encouraged it, though it was attended very naturally with some painful considerations, and took away a pleasing picture from the landscape which filled the vision of Dr. Dwight when he wrote his poem entitled "Greenfield Hill":

"Here, sky-encircled, Stratford's churches beam, And Stratfield's turrets greet the roving eye."

The new church in the borough was so far completed as to be used for public worship in the beginning of Advent, 1801, and two years later "the ground floor was sold at public vendue for the purpose of building the pews and seats thereon, and finishing the church; and the money raised in the sale amounted to between six and seven hundred dollars." The cost of the building—about thirty-five hundred dollars—was over and above this, and was met by the voluntary contributions of the people. Mr. Shelton, in speaking of the completion of the whole work, said: "It has been conducted in harmony, with good prudence, strict economy, and a degree of elegance and taste which does honor to the committee, and adds respectability to the place."

For nearly forty years the scene of his ministerial labors was undisturbed, and he dwelt among his people in quietness and confidence, and had the satisfaction of seeing them attain to a high degree of worldly prosperity, and St. John's Church in Bridgeport, especially, to be one of the strongest and most flourishing in the diocese. The silent influence of a good life carried him along smoothly, and left its gentle impress wherever he was known. "A faithful pastor, a guileless and godly man," is a part of the inscription upon the marble monument erected over his ashes in the Mountain Grove Cemetery at Bridgeport, a few years since, by his son William, and these words sum up very appropriately his ministerial and Christian character.

While he confined himself closely to the duties of his cure, he shrank not from work put upon him by the diocese, and was for twenty-four years a member of the standing committee, and a firm supporter of ecclesiastical authority in seasons of trial and trouble. He was also several times chosen a deputy to the General Convention, and never failed to attend its sessions.

There were things that gave him great pain towards the end of his days, and "put his confidence in the providence of God to a severe test." He and Mr. Baldwin, so long earnest and friendly workers in adjoining fields of labor, appear to have reached the same determination at the same time, and probably they conferred together before resigning their respective rectorships, which they both did in 1824. Bishop Brownell, referring to this action in his address to the annual convention of that year said: "These clergymen were admitted to their ministry at the first Episcopal ordination ever held in America, and have served their respective parishes for more than thirty years. They have labored faithfully in the Church in this diocese during its darkest periods of depression, and through the progressive stages of its advancement they have taken an important part in its councils. They have 'borne the burden and heat of the day,' and are entitled to the gratitude of all those who enjoy the fruits of their counsels and labors."

Mr. Shelton confined his services after this wholly to the Church in Fairfield, but he did not long survive the change. He died on the 27th of February, 1825, and was buried under the chancel of the old church in Mill Plain, Fairfield, where he had ministered so many years, including his time as lay-reader, and a marble tablet was provided by the congregation to mark his resting-place, on which among other things were inscribed the date of his birth, graduation, admission to Holy Orders, and the words: "being the first clergyman episcopally ordained in the United States."

In 1842 the parishioners of Trinity Church, Fairfield, voted to remove all the public services to the chapel, which had been built seven years before in the borough of Southport, about a mile and a half distant from Mill Plain, and to transfer the site, title, and rights of the parish to that edifice. The old church was afterwards taken down and parts of it used to build the rectory in Southport. The memorial tablet was also transferred, but on the afternoon of March 11, 1854, the Southport Church was accidentally burnt, and the tablet destroyed. The remains of Mr. Shelton now have a final resting-place with his sainted wife and two of his daughters in the cemetery before mentioned. A monumental tablet in the wall of St. John's Church, Bridgeport, "bears an affectionate testimony to his Christian worth and ministerial fidelity." Bishop Brownell, in his address to the Annual Convention of the Diocese, said of him very truly: "He has faithfully and successfully labored for almost forty years in the parish from which his Divine Master has now called him to his rest. He has taken an important part in the ecclesiastical concerns of the diocese, from the period of its first organization, and the moderation and prudence of his counsels have contributed, in no small degree, to the welfare of the Church. For simplicity of character, amiable manners, unaffected piety, and a faithful devotion to the duties of the ministerial office, he has left an example by which all his surviving brethren may profit, and which few of them can hope to surpass."

His widow survived him thirteen years—an intelligent and devout churchwoman who, as it has been said, "left a name only to be loved and honored by her friends." Two of his sons entered the ministry. The younger of them, George Augustus Shelton, a graduate of Yale College, died in 1863, Rector of St. James's Church, Newtown, L. I. The other, the late William Shelton, D. D., succeeded his father for a time in Fairfield, and then went to Buffalo, where for more than half a century he was the distinguished Rector of St. Paul's Church, the oldest parish in that city. Both died childless, and the name of Shelton has disappeared from the list of our clergy.

The Bishop then proceeded with the service, being assisted in the administration by the Rev. Dr. Beardsley and the Rev. Messrs. Francis Goodwin and S. O. Seymour of Hartford. After the service, the churchwomen of Middletown entertained the clergy and visitors at the Berkeley Divinity School.

The following is a list of the clergymen who were present:

The Right Rev. the Bishop; the Rev. Dr. Beardsley of New Haven; the Rev. Messrs. E. W. Babcock, New Haven; Prof. John Binney, Middletown; J. W. Bradin, Hartford; Sylvester Clarke, Bridgeport; Francis Goodwin, Hartford; F. D. Harriman, Middle Haddam; Prof. Samuel Hart, Hartford; J. W. Hyde, West Hartford; Prof. W. A. Johnson, Middletown; W. F. Nichols, Hartford; J. L. Parks, Middletown; Prof. F. T. Russell, Waterbury; B. S. Sanderson, Wethersfield; S. O. Seymour, Hartford; John Townsend, Middletown; S. H. Watkins. Bristol; W. W. Webb, Middletown; Charles Westermann, Middle Haddam; Henry Edwards, Hagerstown, Md.: W. B. Walker, Augusta, Ga.



APPENDIX.

COMMEMORATION AT ABERDEEN,

OCTOBER 7-8, 1884.

In his address to the Diocesan Convention of 1884, Bishop Williams said:

"I have received an invitation to be present at Aberdeen, Scotland, during the first week in October next, and to take part in the celebration of the centenary of the consecration of our first Bishop. This invitation I have, after much hesitation, decided, with your consent, my brethren, to accept. And inasmuch as the month of August and early September are not very available for visitations of the parishes, as it is more than forty years since I was in Great Britain, and as it is very unlikely that I shall ever visit it again, I have also determined, again with your consent, to sail for England, if so God wills, on the nineteenth of July, hoping to be permitted to return hither as soon as the services of the Commemoration are ended.

"I am to be the bearer of an address to the Episcopate of Scotland from the House of Bishops in this country; and it would be peculiarly gratifying to my feelings, as well as most seemly in itself considered, could I also carry out an Address from our own Convention. If our whole Church owes a debt of gratitude to the venerable prelates who laid hands on Seabury, surely this Diocese has especial cause to acknowledge to their successors the obligations under which the loving kindness of those prelates has placed those who have gone before us, ourselves, and those who shall come after us to the latest generations."

This part of the Bishop's address was referred to a special committee, on whose recommendation—their report being presented by their chairman, the Rev. Dr. Harwood—the following resolutions were unanimously adopted:

Resolved, That this Convention has heard with great satisfaction that the Bishop has received and accepted an invitation to be present at Aberdeen in October next, to take part in the centenary commemoration of the Consecration of Bishop Seabury; and that, in giving its assent to the Bishop's request for leave of absence, the Convention assures him that the best wishes and prayers of the Diocese will go with him.

Resolved, That the Rev. Dr. E. E. Beardsley, the Rev. Samuel F. Jarvis, the Rev. Samuel Hart, and the Rev. William F. Nichols, be and they are hereby commissioned to present to the Scottish Bishops an Address in the name of this Convention; and that the Secretary be instructed to furnish them with a certificate of their appointment.

Resolved, That this Committee have permission to sit after the adjournment of this Convention, to prepare the Address.

At a meeting held after the adjournment of the Convention, the Rev. Dr. Beardsley being called to the chair, it was resolved, on motion of the Rev. J. J. McCook, to take measures for procuring a suitable memorial of the gratitude of the Diocese of Connecticut to be presented to the Church in Scotland at the approaching centenary commemoration; and to that end the chairman appointed as a Committee, with power, the Rev. Messrs. John Townsend, John J. McCook, and William F. Nichols. The Committee determined that the memorial should take the form of a Paten and Chalice, and subscriptions for the same in small amounts were solicited and received from clergymen and lay persons throughout the Diocese.

THE Bishop of Connecticut and the four Presbyters appointed by the Convention attended the commemorative service at St. Andrew's Church, Aberdeen, on the seventh day of October. [Footnote: The Rev. Howard S. Clapp and the Rev. Gouverneur M. Wilkins were also present from Connecticut.

Duplicate copies of the special minutes of the Episcopal Synod recording the proceedings at the Centenary in Aberdeen and of the official record of the meeting of the Synod on the eighth of October, have been forwarded to the Bishop of Connecticut for preservation in the Archives of the Diocese. They are authenticated by the signatures of five of the Scottish Bishops and attested by Hugh James Rollo, Esq., W. S., Registrar to the Primus and Assistant Lay-Clerk to the College of Bishops.] The Holy Communion was celebrated according to the Scottish rite; and, in the presence of a large congregation, including Bishops of the Scottish, English, Irish, American, and Colonial Churches, about two hundred clergymen, and a large body of the faithful laity, Bishop Williams preached the following sermon:

ISAIAH 1x. 5.—"Then thou shalt see, and flow together, and thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged; because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee."

The stirring prophecy which contains these words presents to us, as does many another prophecy, the Divine ideal of the Church of God. It shows us what that Church would be, even here in "the progress of time, while, living by faith, she sojourns" in a world lying in wickedness, had not man's folly and sin marred that Divine ideal. It points us forward to the day when "in the stability of that eternal seat which—now she patiently awaits, she shall attain the final victory and the perfect peace." [Footnote: St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei., Lib. i., Preface.]

The entire prophecy, as it runs through the several chapters from the first of which the text is taken, finds its two horizons, so to speak, in the First and Second Advents of our Lord. Its theme is the period that lies between them. That period it describes as one long year of Jubilee, the period of the new creation redressing the confusions and desolations of the older one, in the power and abiding presence of the same Holy Spirit That once moved "upon the face of the waters," and is now, "by the washing of regeneration" and in His own renewing life, "shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour." As the story of that older creation began with the fiat "Let there be light," so the prophecy of this new one begins with the words, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come." As that creation found its consummation in the Paradise wherein grew "every tree pleasant to the sight and good for food," and in which unfallen man was placed, so this finds its consummation in the new Paradise "in the midst" of which stands the tree of life whose "leaves are for the healing of the nations"; the dwellers in which are "trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord"; while itself is called "sought out, a city not forsaken."

So much for the whole prophecy; and time forbids me to say more, if indeed more were needed. Let us turn to that integral portion which the text contains; and I venture, for the moment, to reverse the order of its wording and to speak of its last clause first.

"The abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee." Growth is the normal law of the Church's life. It may not always and at any given time be growth in numbers, though, if other growth be not lacking, that is sure to come. But growth there must be; growth "in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ"; growth "into Him in all things Which is the Head, even Christ"; growth upon and in "the chief Corner-stone, in Whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord." And such growth does—it must—lead on directly to the gathering in of souls into the Lord's kingdom; it must arouse that which we call the missionary spirit in the Church, which was illustrated, as never before nor since, in the life and example of Him Who came "to seek and to save that which was lost"; which was inculcated by Him when He bade the Twelve to "disciple all nations"; which was the burden of the last words, "unto the uttermost part of the earth," that fell on the ears of the adoring Apostles as He entered into the bright cloud of the Ascension; and to which the miracle of Pentecost had such direct and solemn reference. [Footnote: Baton's Bampton Lectures, 1872, p. 363.]

When this normal law becomes a living conviction in the minds and hearts of the Church's members, and, therefore, in the mind and heart of the Church herself, then those two things follow which the first part of my text (though, indeed, it is the illation from the latter portion) brings before us, when it says that because of the conversion of "the abundance of the sea," and because of the incoming of "the Gentiles," "thou shalt see, and flow together, and thine heart shall fear and be enlarged."

First, "thou shalt see, and flow together"; or, as it might better read, "thou shalt see and be enlightened." As the mind takes in those latest words of the Lord, "unto the uttermost part of the earth," as the eye beholds the Church spreading outward from its one centre in Jerusalem, "the vision and the faculty divine," if not created, are at least sharpened and strengthened. We learn how God "hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." We understand, as never before, "what is the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of

[Footnote: Eaton's Bampton Lectures 1872, p. 363] the world hath been hid in God, Who created all things by Jesus Christ."

So it fared with St. Peter, after that vision of the great sheet coming down from heaven had fully opened to him the universality of the Church of God. Then his "delusive dream of temporal deliverance became a real assurance of eternal redemption." Then his "narrow estimate of the Divine Covenant with his own nation expanded, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, into the sublime conception of the 'Israel of God.'" [Footnote: Lee On Inspiration, p. 249 (American edition).]

"Thine heart shall fear and be enlarged." The fear surely is not that of shivering dread or slavish terror. But it is that subduing awe which always accompanies great joyfulness, and enters into it in such a mysterious and perplexing way; even as God says, by Jeremiah, that when all the nations of the earth shall hear of the good which He will do unto Israel, "they shall fear and tremble for all the goodness and all the prosperity that I procure unto it." So when Jacob, awaking from the sleep in which he learned of the new Covenant with God through the Incarnation of Christ, exclaimed: "How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the House of God, and this is the gate of Heaven!" And then, as the unbounded love and mercy of the Father of all spirits comes to be understood, the heart is in very deed "enlarged," as St. Paul's heart was toward his Corinthian children; and it goes along, in loving, active sympathy with the great purpose of God, "that in the dispensation of the fulness of times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him."

Thus as the "Vision of peace, the blessed city Jerusalem" has dawned upon our sight; as we have watched, its ever-spreading walls and rising towers; as we have seen it builded up with living stones, which are human souls redeemed and sanctified; we have entered with a keener insight into, we have come to comprehend more truly and more fully, "the length and breadth and depth and height" of that "manifold wisdom of God" which is made "known by the Church" even to "the principalities and powers in heavenly places"; and our hearts have kindled into that constraining love of Christ, in which we rejoice, with joy unspeakable, to work together with Him in bringing men to the knowledge of the one way of salvation, while, in the same deep love, we also endeavor to "keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

Fathers and brethren, honored and beloved in the Lord! as I stand here, this day, with a full heart but with trembling lips, the unworthy successor of him who, in this city of old renown, received a century ago the sacred deposit which he bore to the Western world; as I look on this truly august gathering which tells, as no words can tell, how God has blessed the vine planted in early, possibly in Apostolic, days in "Britain divided from the world," enabling her "to stretch out her branches unto the sea, and her boughs unto the river"; as I think of all that has come and gone in those hundred years in the marvellous growth and the awakened inner life, acting and reacting on each other, of the mother and the daughter Churches—for we all spring from one and the same noble stock—I can find no better words in which to sum up memories, thoughts, forecastings, than those which I have endeavored somewhat to unfold: "Then thou shalt see, and be enlightened, and thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged; because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee."

And yet, one cannot but remember how far beyond all possible anticipations of those brave hearts that once made such a venture for Christ and His Church, are the things which our eyes look upon, and which are a part of our everyday life and experience.

When those ten presbyters, whose priesthood had not been gained without trials and perils which only the deepest convictions could have nerved them to bear, met in that secluded unknown New England town, on the Festival of the Annunciation, in 1783, and laid the burden of seeking for the Episcopate on Seabury, what could they have seen about them but the disorganized elements of an apparently decaying life? When, on the 14th of November, 1784, in that upper room in this good city, those venerable prelates (whose names are to-day household words through all the length and breadth of what has been called "The Greater Britain of the Western World") handed on the high commission they had received in trust, what could their eyes have looked upon but scattered flocks under their few shepherds, which must meet, if they met at all, in uncertainty and peril, to worship God as their fathers had worshipped before them? Still, if they saw little around them to encourage and support, theirs (we may well believe) was the eye of faith that is strengthened to pierce the future. If they heard few words of cheer from men, there came upon their ears, from a Greater than man, words of strong hope and glorious promise. In that Transatlantic gathering, small and unnoticed as it was, the ten who came together heard, in the Gospel of the Annunciation, that "with God nothing is impossible," and in the song of the Blessed Virgin they were bidden to bethink themselves how "God remembered His mercy and truth toward the House of Israel," exalting "the humble and meek," filling "the hungry with good things," and helping "His servant Israel." Here in Aberdeen, on that memorable day of November, they said in the morning Psalter: "O what great troubles and adversities hast Thou showed me! and yet didst Thou turn and refresh me; yea, and broughtest me from the deep of the earth again"; and then, as the strain of praise swelled higher, higher still, while the vision of the City of God in all its grandeur broke on the eye of faith, there came the inspiring words—how their hearts must have thrilled as they uttered them!—"He shall deliver the poor when he crieth, the needy also, and him that hath no helper... He shall be favourable to the simple and needy, and shall preserve the souls of the poor.... There shall be an heap of corn in the earth, high upon the hills; his fruit shall shake like Libanus, and shall be green in the city like grass upon the earth."

Words like these carry with them unwonted power on occasions like those of which I have been speaking. To us they come like special prophecies of what we look on as a century now closing. To those others they came freighted with hope for an indefinite and unknown future. And what an inspiration they must have given to the venture they were making; a venture so entirely one of faith, that it is not too much to say of those who made it that they take their places in that long line of faithful ones, mentioned with such distinguished honor in the Epistle to the Hebrews, who, though they only saw "the promises afar off," still "were persuaded of them and embraced them," and therefore "obtained a good report." Can we imagine, dear brethren, a more striking illustration of the different aspect which things wear to the eye of sense on the one hand, and the eye of faith on the other, than that which the election and consecration of the first bishop for America present to us? All honor, then, to those brave hearts that accomplished them! Men may have counted "their lives madness and their end to be without honor." We know, blessed be the God of all grace and power! that they are "numbered among the children of God, and their lot is among the saints."

The temptation is strong to linger on the simple but impressive scene of the consecration: to try to picture that secluded oratory in the house of the Coadjutor-Bishop of this faithful diocese; to endeavor to bring back the congregation gathered in it, and the ministering prelates; to recall the form of the youthful priest who held the book from which the awful words of ordination were recited, Alexander Jolly, afterwards the sainted Bishop of Moray; to speak of this ancient city of Aberdeen, associated for all time in the memories of Churchmen with the names of John Forbes of Corse and Henry Scougal and the remembrance of its orthodox and learned doctors; but time forbids more than this briefest mention.

We behold—and it is a sight to stir the heart with "thoughts too deep for words"—we behold a suffering and a witnessing Church, in the depth of a long and wasting depression, reaching out the hand of love to a Church suffering and witnessing also, and trembling, to human seeming, on the verge of utter extinction. Perhaps—is it too much to say it?—it was because of this patient suffering and faithful witness that God gave to this Church the distinguished privilege of sending its first Apostle to the new world beyond the ocean. I cannot refrain from quoting here the admirable words of one of your own Scottish bishops. Speaking of the act which we commemorate, he says: "Mark, my brethren, how for the accomplishment of this work—according to the full measure of the gifts of the Spirit and of Apostolic order—it pleased God, as at the first, to choose the weak things of the world, and things that were despised, yea, and things which in the eye of man had ceased to be. To our Scottish Church with its hierarchy, which had formerly consisted of two Archbishops and twelve Bishops, then reduced to four; with its pastoral charge, which had once comprehended the care of every parish in the land, then shrunk to little mere than a score or two of scattered congregations—yea, and at the very time when an act of the civil legislature had declared all ecclesiastical orders conferred by her to be null and void; at such a time, to the poor persecuted remnant of the Church in Scotland was this grace given, that she should impart to the United States, now no longer dependent upon England, the first seed of the Episcopate which England had withheld. Yes, the first bishop who set foot on the continent of North America, the first bishop who went forth to a foreign land bearing the full blessings of our reformed Church, was consecrated to his Apostolic office, not amid the solemn pomp and august ceremonial of an English minister, no, nor in the privacy of an episcopal palace, but in the obscurity of an upper chamber in a common dwelling-house in Aberdeen." [Footnote: Bishop of St. Andrews; Mending of the Nets, p.17 (ed. 1884).] If, as has sometimes been generously said, this noble act of faith and charity has afforded a new and signal illustration of our Lord's own words, "It is more blessed to give than to receive," that does not make the act a whit less noble, nor diminish by one jot the obligation of undying gratitude on the part of those who received the gift it gave.

If we look at its immediate results, besides what has just been named, it assuredly gave an impulse to that action of the State in England, in consequence of which, within five years, three bishops of the English line were given to as many dioceses in the United States. It was the means, also, of joining in the American Episcopate the Scottish and the English lines of succession in a union that will endure while the world shall last. For though the prelate consecrated here ministered in only one consecration of a bishop after his return—that of the first Bishop of Maryland— yet, since that day, there has not been (and there can never be in time to come) a bishop in our American Episcopate, who, as he traces back his lineage through the network—for I surely need not say, here and now, that the succession is a network and not a chain of single links—will not find in it the name of that Bishop of Maryland, by whom he is connected with Seabury, and then, by him, with "the Catholic remainder of the Church of Scotland." Nor need one ask, nor could he have, if he did ask it, a nobler spiritual lineage than he has received in that double succession, which indeed becomes single again if we go back for a little more than another century.

Then, again, this deed of Christian charity did, no doubt, bring out from its obscurity into the light of day, the witnessing remnant of the ancient Church of Scotland, and was, perhaps, the first step towards the removal of those civil disabilities which had pressed her into the dust. How must the iron of suffering have entered into the soul of many a faithful priest in those dark days of trial, when, we are told, the clergy had given up the hope that any successors would come after them, and on the monument of one of them were written the despairing words, "Ultime Scotorum!" [Footnote: Epitaph by the Rev. J. Skinner on the tombstone of the Rev. Mr. Keith, Presbyter at Cruden: "Ultime Scotorum in Crudenanis, Keithe, Sacerdos."]

How strangely similar were the conditions of those who sought the Episcopate and those who courageously gave it in those days of doubt and darkness! How fitting it seems that, in the ordering of God's providence, one suffering Church, stripped of its worldly honors and its earthly wealth, should give to another, "scattered and peeled" and apparently on the verge of extinction, that deposit which it had maintained in the face of dangers that might well seem worse than death itself! They who have lived together under the shadows and in the sharing of life's tragedies and woes, know full well that there is no bond of union half so strong as the bond of common suffering; know full well that they whose hearts have touched each other only in hours of joy and gladness, can never be so bound together as those who have wept beside beds of death, or clasped each other's hands over open graves. Why should it not so be with bodies of men as with individuals? Above all, why should it not so be with sister Churches, bound together in the highest of all bonds? Was it not so here a century ago? When the kindly hand was outstretched here to help, when the loving word, carrying the very life of love, went across the ocean to those who were indeed "minished and brought low," was not the channel of Christian sympathy deepened, was not its flow made fuller and more strong by the conditions of which I have just spoken? And if it has pleased God, in His great mercy, to send brighter days, greater peace, better hopes to each of us, shall not the bond, once welded by suffering, still keep its strength? God grant it may! God grant that, till the Lord shall come to give His universal Church its final triumph, these Churches, so marvellously united, "may stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the Faith of the Gospel, and in nothing terrified by adversaries."

It would be more than ungrateful, it would be inexcusable, to omit here the recognition of the agency by which, under God, it came to pass that there were in what had been the colonies of Great Britain, and were now independent States, those who sought the Episcopate as essential to the full organization of an autonomous Church. That agency is found in the Venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts—a society to which American Churchmen must always look with undying gratitude, for to its noble labors they largely owe all that they were when Seabury was sent upon his mission of faith, and much of what they enjoy to-day.

It was no fault of that Society that there was not, in America, an Episcopate before the war of the Revolution. Had the godly counsels and the strong appeals of the bishops, clergy, and faithful laity who shared in its plans and operations, been listened to, American Churchmen would have had no need to seek the Apostolic office outside the limits of their own country. This is not the time nor is this the place to consider, in detail, the reasons—if reasons in any proper sense of the word there were— why the Episcopate, so strongly desired, had not been given. But it is worthy of notice that where the labors of the Society had been the most abundant and its missionaries most numerous, there the need of the Episcopate was most deeply felt and the call for it was loudest. Indeed, the only two colonies from which any opposition to sending bishops to America before the Revolution came, were Maryland and Virginia; and to those colonies, because in them the maintenance of the clergy was otherwise provided for, the Society sent few, if any, missionaries.

No part of all the Western world received more of the Society's fostering aid than the New England colonies; and to none of them was more help extended than to the colony of Connecticut. From the day when the foundations of the Church were laid in that colony on to the outbreak of the Revolution, the benefactions that came from England were abundant and unceasing. With possibly a single exception, all the clergy in the colony were missionaries of the Society. They were also sons of the soil, who, because of convictions too strong to be resisted, went back to the Church from which their fathers had gone out, and in doing so incurred odium and reproach, scorn and contempt, the loss of much that gives earthly comfort and rejoicing, and sometimes the sundering of ties that seemed to be a part of life itself. They were taught, too, by the bitter experience of half a century, the difficulties and dangers attendant on a voyage to England to obtain Holy Orders; difficulties and dangers then so great that one in every five of all sent out for ordination perished by sickness or by shipwreck, and saw his native land no more. Theirs may be inglorious confessorships, unknown to or forgotten by men, but confessorships they are, and we cannot doubt that they find their place in the Book of God's remembrance.

It can cause no wonder that men thus trained and tried should, when the severance of the mother country and its colonies was complete, have turned their first thoughts to the means of perpetuating that stewardship "of the mysteries of God," which they had so hardly won; that they should have held that to be the first step, and refused to take another till they had taken that. For, indeed, if the Church is to be rightly perpetuated under the conditions of a normal growth, it can only be perpetuated according to the original and organic law of its existence. When He to Whom in His resurrection "all power was given in heaven and in earth," committed to the Apostolic Ministry the tradition of the Apostolic Doctrine, in that great baptismal formula which is alike the source and summary of the Catholic Faith, He joined two things together that man may never put asunder. He may try the separation if he will—he has tried it, alas! more than once—but the end, the inevitable end, has always been the loss of the Apostolic Doctrine.

Then, on the other hand, the gift of the Apostolic Ministry without the most wisely guarded guarantees that there shall be a steadfast continuance in the "doctrine of the Apostles, and in the breaking of bread, and the prayers," is a gift of more than doubtful value. Men seem to think to-day, that they can leave out what parts they please from the original and divine organism of the Church, and still work the rest at will. The attempt, believe me, is just as futile as it would be to undertake to deal in like fashion with one of those huge machines that work, all about us, with such life-like power, and attempt to make it do its work, when some portion of its complex mechanism had been removed. We cannot be too thankful for the merciful guiding that kept our fathers, a hundred years ago, from so fatal a mistake as that. For here, as well as in England, guarantees were demanded and given, so far as it was possible to give them, before the succession was communicated.

I turn to that venerable document known to us as the Concordate, one copy of which is preserved in the Episcopal archives here in Scotland, and its duplicate in America, and I read words which it is well to remember to-day: words which speak of the due maintenance "of the analogy of the common Faith once given to the Saints, and happily preserved in the Church of Christ"; which declare, in terms of unmistakable clearness, "that the spiritual authority and jurisdiction" of Christ's ministers "cannot be affected by any lay deprivation"; which provide, so far as provision could be made, for the full communion with the Church in Scotland of the newly consecrated bishop, his successors, and his diocese, a communion which, as this day's service so solemnly attests, has come to embrace not that single diocese alone, but the entire Church in the United States; words, finally, which pledge the bishop then sent forth, to endeavor, "by gentle methods of argument and persuasion," to bring about a substantial agreement between the two Churches, in "the Celebration of the Holy Eucharist—the principal bond of union among Christians, as well as the most solemn act of worship in the Christian Church." How that pledge was, under the manifest and wonderful leadings of God's providence, fulfilled, not for one diocese, but for a national Church, our American Book of Common Prayer declares and will declare in all coming time.

I have spoken, fathers and brethren, of the past, for to it our thoughts naturally and chiefly direct themselves to-day. Its grand venture of faith, the brave hearts that made it, the generous givers of the precious gift, the undaunted receiver of the gift who bore it across the ocean—for all he knew, to stormier seas than the Atlantic's billows—these fill up the foreground of the picture on which our eyes are resting. As I turn from it, and from the figures of those venerable prelates who stand foremost in it, I remember (and I repeat, speaking for generations that have passed away and for generations that are to come) the words that were sent to them from hearts that burned with grateful love: "Wherever the American Episcopal Church shall be mentioned in the world, may this good deed which they have done for us be spoken of for a memorial of them!"

If, however, there is a past for which the deepest thankfulness is due, there is also a present which we may not forget, for in it our thankfulness, if it is real, must culminate. What a change has a century wrought for us! How unlike is 1884 to 1784! I do not much believe, my brethren, in numbering the people. I am sure that any boastful or vain-glorious numbering is but an evil thing. But surely when "a little one" has "become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation," we may gratefully recognize the merciful guidance and blessing of the Lord, Who has "hastened it in his time." In 1784, we see one single bishop of our communion, and one only, outside the realm of Great Britain and Ireland; and him with an unformed diocese and a future on which rested more clouds than sunshine. In 1884 time would fail him who should undertake to read the roll of regions occupied and churches organized. An American statesman once said, in words that have been often quoted, that England's drum-beat never ceased as it passed around the world. We can say that our English Te Deum, with its "Day by day we magnify Thee," rolls round the world as well, in unceasing and ever- increasing volume.

Of the vast regions to which that solitary bishop went in 1785, there is no part or portion which is not now an organized diocese or a missionary jurisdiction, and the increase has been thirty, sixty, yea, an hundred-fold. Here the things that seemed ready to die have been so strengthened by Him "without Whom nothing is strong," that a bright and blessed present points to an even brighter and more blessed future; while, if we look to that great Church from which our successions ultimately come, we find her outgoings and advances limited only by the limits of the world itself. In the name of her Lord and King she has indeed taken "the heathen for His inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for His possession."

Shall we dare from such a past and such a present to look forward through the years of a coming century? Those years are in the hand of God, and what they may bring to us it is not for us to know, nor need we ask. But we do know this, and it is enough for us to know, that if these Churches, holding fast "the form of sound words," and "holding forth the word of life," shall rise to the full measure of their opportunities and duty, in sole reliance on the power of Him Who died and yet liveth for evermore; in services of holy worship; in the proclamation of the remission of sins in Jesus Christ; in the tradition of His holy sacraments; in faithful, loving ministries to the bodies and the souls of men; if they shall so strive, then they shall have a work given them to do in the latter days, before the view of which the heart dies down in awe, and the voice is hushed in unutterable thankfulness.

"Visions of glory, spare my aching sight; Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!"

One word remains to be uttered here—the word of love and gratitude to this venerated Scottish Church, from the far-off Western world:

"O pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and plenteousness within thy palaces! For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will wish thee prosperity! Yea, because of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek to do thee good!"

* * * * *

A reception banquet was held on the afternoon of the same day, at which Bishop Williams replied to the toast of "The Church in America."

On the eighth day of October, a large congregation being assembled in St. Andrew's Church for the opening service of the Synod of the Bishops of the Scottish Church, at the close of the processional hymn, the Rev. William F. Nichols presented to the Bishop of Aberdeen the memorial Paten and Chalice, the latter bearing this inscription: [Footnote: The Chalice stands eleven inches high, and is of massive silver. The base is broad and heavily moulded. From above the base mouldings spring eight arched panels. The front one contains a crucifix, the cross and the figure of our Lord being in full relief. In the panel to the left are the arms of the See of Connecticut, resting on branches of oak. In the one to the right are the arms of the Bishop of Aberdeen, encircled by branches of the thistle. In the panel opposite that containing the crucifix are the emblems of St. Peter and St. Paul. The remaining four panels are filled with the emblems of the four Evangelists. From this part of the base rises a richly moulded plinth, supporting the lower shaft, which is worked in diaper tracery. The knop of the shaft is encircled with eight elaborately wrought bosses, ornamented with garnets and sapphires in gold settings. Above the knop the shaft has simpler treatment, being worked with quatrefoils in square panels, all in relief. From this rises the bowl of the chalice, which shows solid gilt, enriched with an outer cup of delicately chased silver work, divided into eight sections, to correspond with those of the stem and of the foot. The section above the crucifix shows the Alpha and Omega, entwined by passion-flowers. The next one to the left contains the IHS, entwined with the grape-vine. The next one to the right contains the X P, with sheaves of wheat. Beginning with the panel next to the right of this, the several ones are filled as follows:—the Greek cross with the thistle; next, the pelican with the rose of Sharon; next, the emblem of the Holy Trinity with the clover-leaf; next, the emblem of the Holy Ghost with olive branches; next, the crown of glory with palm branches. The Paten is enriched with a golden medallion on the rim, in the form of a vesica, which shows the Agnus Dei, executed in colored enamel.]