Report of Commemorative Services with the Sermons and Addresses at the Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885.Episcopal Church. Diocese of Connecticut
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Report of Commemorative Services with the Sermons and Addresses at the Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885.
Episcopal Church. Diocese of Connecticut
Seabury, Samuel, 1729-1796
The story of that Episcopate cannot be told here. It has been
written in a faithful record accessible to all, and with which
most of us must be familiar. For almost twelve years the parish
priest in New London did his pastor's work, the humble-minded
bishop went, in homely ways, [Footnote: In a book published some
years ago, it was said that all clergymen in Connecticut
travelled, at the period spoken of, on horseback, "except,
perhaps, Bishop Seabury, who rode in a coach," He may have
"ridden" in a stage-coach, or in a coach belonging to some wealthy
layman; but the only vehicle which he ever possessed was a "one-
horse chaise."] in and out among his people, feeding the flock
"according to the integrity of his heart, and guiding them by the
skilfulness of his hands." And when God took him to his rest, the
mourning of his diocese was like the "mourning in the floor of
Atad," and the poor and the suffering, the widow and the
fatherless followed him to his grave, and wrote his epitaph in
their tears.
The power and value of an Episcopate like his cannot be measured
by immediate results--though such results were not lacking--which
are visible along its progress and at its close. Not only was it
not his peacefully to build on undisturbed foundations; it was not
even his to lay in peace original foundations. His was the harder,
the more hopeless task, to re-lay foundations which had been torn
up and scattered, and then begin to build upon them. And under
what discouragements was the task to be undertaken and prosecuted:
with diminished and diminishing numbers of fellow-workers; with
narrow resources and restricted means; amid manifold and
unexpected difficulties; amid jealousies that not infrequently
deepened into scornful enmity! How often must he have cried from
the depths of his heart: "Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is
offended, and I burn not?" Only a brave and genuine man, a man of
prayer and faith and love, could have borne up under such wearying
burdens. But he was all that, and even more than that. And,
therefore, to us who look back upon our history as a diocese from
the close of one century, to those who shall look back upon it
from the close of another, nay, in all time, its central figure
must be that massive one with which the limner's skill has made us
all familiar, as it stands facing wind and storm, supported by the
Word of God, which, in its turn, rests on the everlasting rock;
the figure of him by whom the God of our fathers said to our
"Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation
shall be laid." [Footnote: Isaiah xliv]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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