The First Two Hundred Years of the First Unitarian Church of Providence

A Sermon Commemorative of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Founding of the First Congregational Church in Providence (Now the First Unitarian Church of Providence)

Delivered by the Minister

Augustus Mendon Lord, DD

Sunday

December 5, 1920

(transcribed from a pamphlet published by the congregation in the same year)

Isaiah XL, 3

This church, like all other old New England Congregational Churches whose history runs back into colonial times, has a double organization; it is organized as a Society or Parish, and also as a Church.

The Society, or the Parish, is the holding organization of the congregation; that is, it is the congregation organized to hold property and to transact the necessary business of a religious fellowship. In actual practice, for many of our New England churches, it has also assumed social and philanthropic functions, as the relations of the Church to the community have become more intimate and diversified.

The Church, on the other hand, in the strictly technical sense of the word according to the Congregational tradition, is the congregation organized for religious purposes, – especially for the maintenance of public worship; or, more narrowly still, for theological and sectarian purposes, – the maintenance of the public worship in accordance with a prescribed formal tradition, the perpetuation of a dogma or a denomination.

The prime requisite for membership in the Society or Parish has been some contribution to its financial support. The prime requisite for membership in the Church has been the profession of a religious belief, or the signing of a church covenant.

The head of the Society has been the President, or the Chairman of the Board of Trustees. The head of the Church has been the Minister.

But under the modifying influences and the liberalizing tendencies that have beset the last few generations in our New England churches, the distinction between Church and Society has become blurred at the edges; and, in many of our Unitarian Congregational Churches, at any rate, is nominal rather than real.

After all, the vital factor in the situation now, as indeed we see it has been from the very beginning, is the congregation, the group of people, the whole group of people, actually gathered together, willing and eager to think together, plan together, work together.

Church and Society, as historical terms in Congregational usage, are simply names of two functions of the same congregation. Where and when a given congregation first gathered together, just there and then the Church and the Parish to which they gave their name began to live.

Now all the accounts of the history of our church (and some five or six are preserved in printed pamphlets) agree that this congregation first gathered in the City of Providence in the year 1720. It is the two hundredth anniversary of this event that we celebrate today, – the beginning of Congregationalism in Providence (for this is the First Congregational Church in the city), as well as the beginning of the particular household and family of faith to which we ourselves are attached by ties of personal memory and association.

It seems to me a particularly happy circumstance, too, that we are able to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of our own church in the same year that we observe, with our fellow Congregationalists, Trinitarian and Unitarian alike, the three hundredth anniversary of the landing at Plymouth of the Pilgrims, the spiritual ancestors of us both.

For the first few years the progress of the Congregational movement in Providence was difficult and slow. It began in 1720 with the gathering of a small group of people who met a stated intervals for public worship; and for their preaching and the christening of their children depended on Massachusetts and Connecticut clergymen.

From Congregationalists in these neighboring colonies, also, this little group of Providence Congregationalists received contributions in money with which a lot was purchased where Dr. Hoyle, a representative of the society, on his own responsibility and initiative, began to erect a church building which was never completed, as the Society decided that the location was too far out of town. This same lot, however, the Society’s deed to which bears the date of 1722, was used as the burying ground of the society until 1785. The lot appears to have been near the junction of what are now Weybosset and Broad Streets, about in the neighborhood of Hoyle Street.

Another lot was secured and the first meeting house was built and occupied in 1723, on the site of the present Court House, at the corner of Benefit Street and College Street – then Rosemary Lane. In 1728 Rev. Josiah Cotton was called and installed by the Society, and a Church covenant drawn up and signed by nine members.

Such were the origins of our Society and Church, the actual beginning of which in 1720 we celebrate today.

On the history of the Church that follows up to the present time I do not propose to dwell in detail, for the reason that admirable summaries of that history have been published at comparatively frequent intervals. Short historical sketches by Dr. Hitchcock and Dr. Rowland are filed in the cabinet of the Rhode Island Historical Society. Many copies of the two historical sermons preached by Dr. Hall, and of a historical address by Rev. Carleton Staples, are in the various libraries of the city. More recently an excellent resume of these discourses re-enforced by personal investigation of the old records and documents of the Society, was made in a paper by Mr. Charles H. Young. There is also much illuminating material in a paper by Mr. Alfred Stone. Both of these addresses were printed by the Women’s Alliance. Added to these is the historical sermons preached by the minister of the church only four years ago in connection with the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the erection of the present church building, an event which I trust is still fresh in the memory of us all.

In the two centuries of its existence this Society has been served by eleven ministers. The salient characteristics of most of these men have been dwelt upon in one or another of the addresses to which I have already referred.

The outstanding ministry in the first hundred years of our church history is the ministry of Dr. Hitchcock, and the correspondingly outstanding ministry in the second hundred years is the ministry of Dr. Hall.

The portrait of Dr. Hitchcock which hangs in our parish parlors has always had a fascination for me. I rarely pass it without a glance at his face. Such an unecclesiastically human face it is, with a reassuring twinkle in the eye; and his collar is decidedly not of the Presbyterian model inherited from the Puritan Divines. Obviously it is worn “with a difference.”

Fortunately Dr. Hitchcock has left diaries and letters, – delightful reading they are, – which amply bear out this first impression.

The diaries that have been preserved cover mostly the period of the Revolutionary War, – the period directly preceding his ministry in Providence, – when Dr. Hitchcock was a brigade chaplain under General Washington, with the rank of Colonel. Evidently he was a man among men. His company was widely sought after by his fellow officers. He shared their festivities and he shared their councils. Mr. William B. Weeden, himself a distinguished soldier, who edited a selection from Dr. Hitchcock’s diaries, notes that Dr. Hitchcock is the only army chaplain of whom it is recorded that he was invited to take part in the councils of war on an equal footing with other officers of the line. More than that, Dr. Hitchcock apparently made valuable strategical suggestions. The plan for protecting the Hudson River from a naval invasion by stretching a chain from bank to bank has been credited to him.

Not only letters from Dr. Hitchcock are preserved, but also a few letter to Dr. Hitchcock. In some ways letters to a man may reveal his virtues and his failings as clearly as does anything he writes himself, especially if these letters are written by his wife, as happens to be the case with the particular letters of which I am thinking.

Mrs. Hitchcock was a woman of keen intelligence, rare tact, and wide sympathies, and a redeeming sense of humor – an invaluable asset for a minister’s wife.

Generally speaking, any married minister that is worth his salt will cheerfully confess that no small part of his worth is due to his helpmate and best comrade and friend. Certainly, as far as I can discover, the ministers that have served this church most successfully have been peculiarly fortunate in this respect.

With such domestic background it is not surprising that Dr. Hitchcock took a deep interest in the education of women. He wrote a two-volume novel with the higher education of women as its central theme. Only a man of far-sighted social vision could have written along these lines at that time.

Another testimony to his catholicity and his prescience is preserved in Swan Point Cemetery. There, on the little knoll known as “Pastors’ Rest” at the centre of the First Congregational Society’s reservation, Dr. Hitchcock is buried, and at his feet lies his old slave* and body servant. The inscription on the stone erected in memory of this man was composed by Dr. Hitchcock himself, and is not only a tribute of personal affection, but also shows a militant faith in the brotherhood of man, a faith which was fulfilled by a later generation through those who went out from this church and laid down their lives that slavery in America might be forever impossible.

Most significant of all, however, in view of the subsequent history of this church and its final identification with the Unitarian movement in New England, is Dr. Hitchcock’s prophetic liberalism in theology. A paper in his handwriting, which, with certain phrases altered, was afterward printed in the form of an introduction to the Charter and By-Laws of the Society, contains the following paragraph:

“The members of this Society wish to build themselves up, not on the prejudice of a party, but on the broad basis of Christian philanthropy under the Congregational mode of worship and observances. Under this style they mean not to exclude any good man, of whatever religious profession, from their charity or friendship; but to exercise the government over themselves, and enjoy all the ordinances of worship within themselves, agreeable to the Congregational platform, which we deem most suitable to the republican form of our present happy national government.”

As a matter of fact, in the knowledge of causes which comes only with the revelation of effects (“By their fruits ye shall know them”), it is apparent now that, whatever may have been the intentions or hopes of their sponsors in Massachusetts and Connecticut, the germs of liberalism were in the hearts of this little group of Providence Congregationalists from the very beginning.

They called that kind of minister. They liked that kin of preaching. Josiah Cotton, their first settled minister, was charged with “not being evangelical enough,” with being “a preacher of damnable good works,” etc. John Bass, who became the second minister of the church, was dismissed from his previous charge of the Congregational Church in Ashford, Connecticut, by the Consociation of the County of Windham “for dissenting from the Calvinistic sense of the Quinquorticular Points, which,” Mr. Bass goes on to say, “I ignorantly subscribed to before my ordination; for which, an all my other mistakes, I beg the pardon of Almighty God.”

The seed of liberal thought, sowed thus at the very beginning of our life as a religious organization, fell in good ground and sprang up and grew, and at last brought forth fruit after its kind during the ministry of Dr. Edes, the immediate successor of Dr. Hitchcock, and a contemporary and friend of William Ellery Channing, when the First Congregational Church of Providence became definitely Unitarian.

Dr. Edes was succeeded by Dr. Hall. I have left myself little time in which to speak of the splendid service of Dr. Hall whose ministry, as I have said, is the most outstanding in the second century of our history as a church.

But there is the less need of an extended presentation of the power and distinction of his ministry, because some of you personally shared the benefactions of the closing years of that long and faithful pastorate of over thirty-three years, the longest in the history of our society, during which this church came to be known as “Dr. Hall’s Church,” a name by which it is not infrequently called even now.

Moreover, two monographs of his life have been published; one a memorial volume printed shortly after his death, copies of which are in many of your homes; and the other an account written for the series of biographical sketches included in “Heralds of a Liberal Faith,” issued by the American Unitarian Association a few years ago.

A thoughtful, well-balanced, direct and fearless preacher, never dwelling on negations or on criticisms of the opinions of those who differed from him, Dr. Hall depended on the positive content of his message, what he did believe, to carry conviction. And so he won the respect of men of widely divergent views and allegiances, and worked with them for the good of the community. Many of the charitable and philanthropic institutions of the city owed their origin to his suggestion and initiative.

Yet he recognized his first duty and highest privilege to be the personal service of his own people; and as a parish minister entered into the joys and sorrows of successive generations who, old and young alike, turned to him as an intimate friend for counsel and sympathy, and the affection which never failed.

Like Dr. Hitchcock, Dr. Hall was fortunate in the domestic background of his life. And here I speak from personal knowledge. For when I was a divinity student I was a frequent Sunday evening guest at the Boston home of his widow, Mrs. Hall, and her daughter, Harriet, in the little house on Pinckney Street. They were both women of remarkable intellectual breadth and of alert social consciousness. His son, Edward Ware Hall, was my own minister when I was a layman in the First Parish of Cambridge, and he made the prayer at my installation here. To that extent I should like to believe in the validity and efficacy of apostolic succession.

All the successors of Dr. hall in the ministry of this church I have had the privilege of numbering among my personal friends.

Mr. Knapp, the only one of them still living, is the dean of our Unitarian clergy in duration of his ministry since ordination. He still has the zest for living of a boy, and the brave optimism of youth, and is always ready with a word of cheerful greeting and eager interest.

Mr. Staples was my near neighbor in Lexington, which I was settled in Arlington, Massachusetts. I knew him as a great-hearted man of unconquerable enthusiasms, warm in his affections, a devoted friend; like Father Taylor, “a lover of folks.” Careful of details, with a memory tenacious of family associations and traditions, he must have been an ideal pastor. And as such, indeed, I find him recalled by all who knew and loved him here.

To my immediate predecessor in this pulpit, Dr. Slicer, I owe a great debt. When I accepted the call to be your minister he wrote to me, “I want to make every friend of mine in this parish a friend of yours.” He set about doing it forthwith, and never, as long as he lived, let slip and occasion for furthering that purpose. Dr. Slicer was one of our great denominational leaders; a wide reader, a careful student, a master of epigrammatic literary style, a born orator, quick of wit and ready in repartee, a distinguished publicist and a dauntless reformer. This church is rarely fortunate in having shared in the life more abundantly which such a spirit as his contributes to its day and generation.

All along, of course, in everything that I have said concerning our church history, I have been mindful of the fact that this is a Congregational Church; that is, that the main source of its power, the determining factor in its policy, the final authority in its administration, is the congregation, not the minister.

And it has been a notable company of men and women that have gathered here, bringing to the interpretation of their religion lives rich in varied service of the community, and opening to the ministrations of their religion wide fields of thought and inspiring spheres of practical activity. Generation after generation this congregation has included distinguished statesmen, senators, governors, mayors, leaders in manufacture, commerce and finance; jurists and physicians and educators.

The service which this parish has rendered this nation in time of war is witnessed by the marble tablets on the north and south walls of the church, which record that ninety-one members of the parish offered their lives to their country in the War for the Preservation of the Union, and seventy-seven in the World War of 1914. To this we are proud to add the record of our church in the work of the Red Cross and kindred activities here at home, both the work that was done in our own Parish House under the direction of our War Relief Committee, a group of women of splendid initiative and tireless activity, and also the work which was done by individual men and women of this parish in organizing and directing the City and State units of the Red Cross, and administrative boards of the successive Liberty Loans.

But, as has already been implied, this congregation has not waited on the exigencies and excitements of war to call out its best powers. It has been no less distinguished in the quiet faithfulnesses of peace. Something over a hundred members of this parish are directors of trustees of philanthropic and educational institutions, colleges, schools, hospitals, libraries, organized charities; and not long since six of our number were presidents of such boards of directors.

There are two organizations which attempt to direct some of this fine intelligence and eagerness to serve toward meeting the specific needs and the definite opportunities of our own religious fellowship; the First Congregational Alliance which since its beginning in 1882, when it was a branch of the Women’s Auxiliary Conference of the Unitarian Churches, has had a history of continuous growth and ever deepening interest until it has become a vital factor in the maintenance and development of the life of the parish, social, intellectual and spiritual; and the Providence Chapter of the Unitarian Layman’s League, which came into being only a year ago under the happiest auspices, an has started to work with an enthusiastic energy which is full of promise for the future.

In closing, I should like to say just a word of two of grateful acknowledgment of my personal debt to this congregation. I count it a rare privilege to be able to associate the thirtieth anniversary of my installation as your minister with the two hundredth anniversary of the beginning of this church. Thirty years is a large part of any man’s life, and these particular thirty years have fallen in the very best part of my life, if reliance is to be placed on Dr. Osler’s standards and specifications of human capacity and usefulness. I came here in the Fall of 1890 when I was twenty-nine years old. A good deal has happened since then, not only around me, but also to me and in me.

To have entered into traditions such as I have described, to have been associated with men and women of the type mentioned, to have lived with you through intimate crises of joy and sorrow, hope and fear, faith and doubt, to have faced with you great issues in the life of society, of the nation, of humanity and civilization, has been for me a rich and wonderful experience of ever-accumulating compensations.

When the call from this church came to me I was doubtful of my ability to meet the situation here. The leisurely ministry of a pleasant, quiet, suburban parish, in which as a young man just out of the divinity school I had served only a little over two years, seemed to me to offer all the work I was capable of doing at that time. I explained the reasons for my hesitation to an old friend, Dr. Andrew P. Peabody of Harvard College.

“By all means, go!” said he. “It’s true you will have to do three times the work you are doing now. But you will have ten times the stimulus.”

He was right. Furthermore, the stimulus has never ceased.

I know that, from my own point of view at any rate, I was wise to come. Sometimes I think I have been selfish to stay; selfish to some other man who might have taken my place, and selfish to you. That thought has troubled me more than once. On one of the occasions when this trouble was rendered acute by the necessity of immediately deciding whether to stay or not, Dr. King, then minister of the First Baptist Church, comforted me by his sympathetic appreciation of my dilemma. “You know,” said he, “they say there is only one thing that can happen in the line of our profession worse than not to get a call to go somewhere else, and that is to get one.”

But I have never questioned the fact of my own personal joy in my ministry here, and today I am going deliberately to silence any conscientious scruples, and just be glad that I am here to share in your two hundredth anniversary.

And now, turning from the past to the future, as we cross the threshold of this anniversary together, and take the road that leads on through another two centuries, although many of us may travel that road but a very little way, and none of us to the end, yet may we realize that much depends on the road we choose, or rather the road we make. For we live in times of change more momentous, of adventure more critical for the social integrity and the spiritual peace of mankind, than were even the days that challenged the faith and courage of our spiritual forbears, our fathers and mothers in God, three centuries ago on the shore of Plymouth, two centuries ago on the hills of Providence.

We, too, have been brought to the borders of an untrodden wilderness. Shall the wilderness overpower and overgrow the souls of men, or shall the spirit of humanity conquer and transform the wilderness? To our generation also has come the trumpet call of divine opportunity: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord! Make straight in the desert a highway for our God!”

Let us strive and pray that those who gather in this meeting house two hundred years from now may have reason to be as grateful to us as we are to the little company of faithful men and women who started the First Congregational Church in Providence two hundred years ago.

* It isn’t entirely clear from this sermon, but Enos Hitchcock purchased a slave an immediately emancipated him. He was a fervent abolitionist.