Report of Commemorative Services with the Sermons and Addresses at the Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885.Episcopal Church. Diocese of Connecticut
Religion
Report of Commemorative Services with the Sermons and Addresses at the Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885.
Episcopal Church. Diocese of Connecticut
Seabury, Samuel, 1729-1796
A hundred years had gone. In that city where he sought his
consecration to the Episcopate the little upper room had
disappeared, and six churches had arisen. In one of these, the
successor of the humble "oratory in the house of Bishop Skinner,"
there are gathered seventeen bishops and near two hundred clergy,
together with a vast congregation of the faithful. What do they
represent? Not what those who came together a century before had
represented; not one Church brought almost to the verge of
extinction, and another threatened with even deeper ruin. No! but
they represent a Church that has emerged from the darkness that
shrouded it in Scotland; a Church that has risen from what seemed
but shattered fragments in the United States; the great Mother
Church of England; the national Church of Ireland; and the
Churches in communion with them on the Continent of Europe, in the
dependencies and colonies of the empire of Great Britain, on this
Western Continent, in India, Australia, Southern Africa, and the
islands of the sea. "A little one has become a thousand, and a
small one a strong nation."
What has brought them together? Not merely to do honor to the
memory of one man or of several men, though their memories are
inseparably blended with the thoughts and associations of the
occasion. "In many centenaries the dominant interest is the
personal. The birthday of the 'monk that shook the world' is a
handy peg on which to hang the whole of his marvellous career, and
the massive personality of the man is never absent from view. But
in the consecration of Bishop Seabury the Churchman beholds, not
the preponderance of an individual, but the birthday of a Church.
The difference is suggestive, and illustrates the radical
divergence between the Catholic and the sectarian frame of mind.
When the ideal of the one Body of Christ is strongly realized, the
Church will overshadow the individual; when it is little
cherished, the individual will eclipse the Church. We may be
content to be of those who think that, as the State is greater
than its worthiest citizen, so the Church should take precedence
of its greatest member."[Footnote: These admirable words are
quoted from the Scottish Church Review for November, 1884, p.
749.] Who would have more gladly owned all this, who would have
been more thankful for it, than he who gave its name to that
centenary? For, indeed, it was this which swelled the tide of
emotion to its height. It was because of this that men felt in
their hearts, and said with their lips, "Glorious things are
spoken of thee, thou City of God."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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