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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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