Fifty Notable Years: Views of the Ministry of Christian Universalism During the Last Half-Century; with Biographical SketchesAdams, John G. (John Greenleaf)
Religion
Fifty Notable Years: Views of the Ministry of Christian Universalism During the Last Half-Century; with Biographical Sketches
Adams, John G. (John Greenleaf)
Universalism; Universalist Church -- Biography; Universalists -- Biography; Universalists -- United States -- History
Rev. THOMAS JONES was a successor of Rev. John Murray, at Gloucester,
Mass. He came from the Methodists in England, and once belonged to the
Lady Huntington connection. He was a veritable Welshman, honest,
kind-hearted, blunt in speech, and unique in his method and style of
sermonizing. His discourses were most positive statements of
Universalism, and abounded in Scriptural quotations. Some one wittily
said of Father Balfour, that so great was his reliance on the
authority of the Bible, that he would go to it to find out whether a
suspected bank-note were counterfeit or not. A parishioner of Father
Jones remarked of him, that he could hardly get through saying grace,
even at a Fourth of July festival, without repeating the passage, "For
as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." He had
a long settlement in Gloucester, and died there at a ripe old age
(eighty-three), Aug. 20, 1846. The discourse at the funeral was
delivered by Rev. A. D. Mayo, the officiating minister and pastor at
the time. He paid a just tribute to the honored old Christian soldier,
and to the early defenders of our faith in America.
Rev. PAUL DEAN received fellowship as a Universalist minister in 1805.
He afterwards preached extensively in Vermont and New Hampshire, and
moved to Whitestown, N. Y., in 1810. He traversed frequently large
portions of Central and Western New York, and held several successful
discussions,--two, particularly, with Rev. Mr. Lacy, then a Methodist,
afterwards an Episcopalian Bishop. He removed to Boston in 1813, and
in 1823 his friends left the First Church, and built for him the
church in Bulfinch Street, now Unitarian. About 1828, he withdrew from
the fellowship of the Universalists, and, with a few others, formed
the "Massachusetts Restorationist Association." On its decline he left
Boston, and settled in Framingham, in 1840. He was an eloquent and
popular preacher, and was for many years an active Freemason, holding,
during the greater part of his manhood, the highest offices of that
Order in the United States. He died in Framingham, of paralysis, Oct.
5, 1860, aged seventy-seven years.
In his early ministry, Mr. Dean, while in Central New York, was
subject to the oppositions which others of his fraternity sometimes
encountered. On one occasion, an over-zealous woman was so highly
incensed at the expectation of his coming to the house where she
resided, that she had in preparation a kettle of hot water with which
to greet him, but was prevented by others from effecting her evil
design.
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