-o}ltq< 
 
 THE 
 
 CELEBRATION 
 
 oy TtlE: 
 
 ^TER-MILL£iV,Y5j 
 
 ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OE- TMEI 
 
 i;|e{ji0iriiieil pi;i0fifdaiiit mnkh %lmuh 
 
 OF TMB mtf QF 
 
 pL-:^^'!:': ^p III 
 igen-biatbt muuht maifet. 
 
 
 j^he (ploijy of (^hildijen ai{8 theivi ^"athmis. 
 
 In the Church, Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Ninth Street 
 
 liii-ii^i 
 
A^ 
 
 S.IS30 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 |)vcfator}3 Koticc. 
 
 Scruifcs in tl)c Afternoon 
 
 }lr. 0rmist0n*s Eemarl^s. 
 Br. tiermilye's Hiscaxarsij. 
 
 0ciDicc6 in tl)c ^Dcning: 
 
 |tddri3ss Cxi iha Ei3U. Br. Mx. 
 Jtjddtjess o-t the Eeu. Br. liagers. 
 
 Address at the iivx^.u. 3>r. ^rusbt). 
 Jiddtess 0f the Eeu. 3->r. Jinderson. 
 
 liddress 0f the Eeu, Br. Tiffaiit). 
 liddress at the llev. Br. Storrs, 
 
THE PROCEEDINGS. 
 
 At a meeting of the Consistory of the Reformed 
 Protestant Dutch Church of the City of New York, 
 held September 5th, 1878, the Rev. Dr. Chambers 
 called attention to the fact, (of which he said that he 
 had recently been reminded by the Rev. Dr. Corwin, 
 of Millstone, N. J.), that the present year was the 
 250th since the organization of this church. The 
 evidence of the fact is contained in the second volume 
 of the " Documents relating to the Colonial History of 
 the State of New York," published some years ago 
 by order of the Legislature, The appendix to this 
 volume gives at length a letter describing the first 
 visit of an ordained minister to the Island of Manhat- 
 tan. The letter was first printed about twenty years 
 ago in the Kerk-historisch A r chiefs a periodical 
 issued in Amsterdam, and in the year 1858 was trans- 
 lated and published in this country by the Hon. Henry 
 C. Murphy, then minister at the Hague. It was 
 
Quarter- Millefiniai Anniversary of the 
 
 addressed by die Rev. Jonas MIchaelius to the Rev. 
 Adrianiis Smoutius, of Amsterdam. The writer had 
 served as chaplain abroad in San Salvador and Guinea 
 on the west coast of Africa, but in January, 1628, 
 sailed to New Amsterdam, to labor under the super- 
 intendence of a committee of ministers appointed by 
 the Synod of North Holland. The present letter is 
 the first written after his arrival, and bears date 
 August II. In it, after an account of the voyage and 
 its hardships, occurs the following passage : 
 
 " We have first established the form of a church [geineentc) ; and 
 as Brother Bastiaen Crol very seldom comes down from Fort Orange, 
 [Albany], because the directorship of that fort and the trade there is 
 committed to him, it has been thought best to choose two elders for 
 my assistance and for the proper consideration of all such ecclesiastical 
 matters as might occur, intending the coming year, if the Lord permit, 
 to let one of them retire and to choose another in his place from a 
 double number first lawfully presented by the congregation. One of 
 those whom we have chosen is the Honorable Director himself, and the 
 other is the store-keeper of the Company, Jan Huyghen, his brother- 
 in-law, persons of very good character as far as I have been able to 
 learn ; having both been formerly in office in the church, the one as 
 deacon, the other as elder, in the Dutch and French churches respect- 
 ively, at Wesel. 
 
 "We have had at the first administration of the Lord's Supper full 
 fifty communicants — not without great joy and comfort for so many — 
 Walloons and Dutch; of whom a portion made their first confession of 
 faith before us, and others exhibited their church certificates. Others 
 had forgotten to bring their certificates with them, not thinking that a 
 church would be formed and established here ; and some, who had 
 brought them, had lost them unfortunatelv in a general conflagration, 
 but they were admitted upon the satisfactorv testimony of others to 
 
Protestant Reformed Dutch Church. 
 
 whom they were known and also upon their daily good deportment, 
 since we cannot observe strictly all the usual formalities in making a 
 beginning under such circumstances. We administer the Holy Sacra- 
 ment of the Lord once in four months, provisionally until a larger 
 number of people shall otherwise require. The Walloons and French 
 have no service on Sunday, other than that in the Dutch language, ot 
 which they understand very little. Some of them live far away and 
 could not come on account of the heavy rains and storms, so that it 
 was neither advisable, nor was it possible, to appoint any special service 
 for so small a number with so much uncertainty. Nevertheless, the 
 Lord's Supper was administered to them in the French language, and 
 according to the French mode, with a preceding discourse, which I 
 had before me in writing, as I could not trust myself extempora- 
 neously." 
 
 After the reading of this document, it was ''Resolved, 
 that this Consistory will observe the 250th anniversary 
 of the origin and founding of this church, and that a 
 committee of three be appointed to confer with the 
 pastors and report on the time and manner of the 
 celebration." Messrs. Theophilus A. Brouwer, James 
 Anderson, M. D., and Henry Van Arsdale, M. D., were 
 appointed the committee. At a subsequent meeting 
 of the Consistory this committee reported, recom- 
 mending that the celebration take place on the 21st 
 of November, in the church on 29th Street and 5th 
 Avenue, and suggesting such services as they consid- 
 ered appropriate to the occasion. The report was 
 adopted, and the same committee was continued, with 
 power to take charge of the anniversary and make 
 the necessary provision for the exercises suggested. 
 These were an historical discourse by the senior 
 
Qiiartci'-Millemiial Anniversary of tJie 
 
 pastor in the afternoon, and a series of addresses of 
 congratulation and sympathy in the evening, by repre- 
 sentatives of the different denominations in our city, 
 together with devotional services rendered by honored 
 brethren of our own communion, the whole inter- 
 spersed with suitable music. The committee accord- 
 ingly made the requisite arrangements, issued invita- 
 tions, prepared programmes and gave due notice, so 
 that when the day arrived, although the weather was 
 unfavorable, large audiences were in attendance, that 
 of the evening being greater than the seating capacity 
 of the church, and the entire plan was carried out, as 
 shown by the reports herewith given, in a very 
 gratifying way. At the next meeting of the Consistory 
 (December 5) that body, by a formal vote, tendered 
 their thanks to the committee "for the able and highly 
 satisfactory manner in which they had discharged their 
 duties." 
 
 The buildino- in which the services were held was 
 tastefully decorated for the occasion with flowers and 
 banners. In the pulpit alcove, midway between floor 
 and ceiling, was fastened a wreath of red and white 
 roses encircling a white dove. A delicate festooned 
 spray of ivy ran up above in graceful curves, meeting 
 the edge of an American flag on the left and the edge 
 of the Holland standard on the rieht. The flag^s 
 swept down to the floor, and between them hung an 
 anchor of white roses and pinks. The wall on each 
 side was draped with American flags. The front of 
 
Protestant Reformed Dutch Church. 
 
 the preacher's stand was festooned with arbutus. A 
 mass of white and yellow roses, pinks and carnations, 
 in the centre of which in red flowers was worked the 
 number "250," adorned the front of the desk. On 
 the church wall, at the left of the pulpit, in the centre 
 of a square frame of evergreens on a bank of white 
 flowers, was worked "1628," and on the right, in a 
 similar manner, "1878." Colored silk banners floated 
 from the gallery rail, inscribed "Faith," "Hope," 
 "Charity," "Obedience," "Love," "Genius," "Cour- 
 age," "Mercy," &c. "Praise God from whom all 
 blessings flow," was written over the organ pipes. 
 The atmosphere of the church was redolent of the 
 perfume of the flowers. 
 
 The music, under the direction of Dr. S*. Austen 
 Pearce and Mr. W. E. Beames, rendered by several 
 combined choirs, numbering over seventy trained 
 voices, aided by the organ and appropriate brass 
 instruments, was of a very high order of merit. 
 
 Seats vv^ere reserved on the right hand of the pulpit 
 for ruling elders and elders of the Great Consistory, 
 and on the left for deacons in office and deacons of 
 the Great Consistory. The officiating ministers occu- 
 pied seats in the pulpit. They were followed from 
 the vestry by Mayor Ely, Consul-General Burlage, 
 from Holland ; President De Peyster, of the New 
 York Historical Society; President Monroe, of the 
 Y. M. C. A.; Hon. John Jay, William E. Dodge, and 
 other well-known residents of New York. Many 
 
lO Quarter-Millennial Anniversary of the 
 
 members of the St. Nicholas and Historical Societies 
 were among the congregation, and an unusually large 
 number of clergymen, both of the Dutch Reformed 
 Church and of all the other evangelical communions, 
 occupied seats which had been reserved for them in 
 the front of the church. 
 
Protestant Refonned Dutch Church. 
 
 II 
 
 Present ©ffuers of tl)e €l)urcl). 
 
 Rev. THOMAS E. VERMILYE, D.D., LL.D.. installed October 
 20, 1839. 
 
 Rev. TALBOT W. CHAMBERS, D.D., installed December 2, 1849. 
 
 Rev. WILLIAM ORMISTON, D.D., installed September 11, 1870. 
 
 €{Ux%, 
 
 JAMES ANDERSON, 
 WILLIAM BOGARDUS, 
 THEOPHILUS A. BROUWER, 
 ROBERT BUCK, 
 PETER DONALD, 
 JOHN GRAHAM, 
 
 DANIEL P. INGRAHAM, 
 SAMUEL B. SCHIEFFELIN, 
 GAMALIEL G. SMITH, 
 JOHN L. SMITH, 
 HENRY VAN ARSDALE, 
 JOHN VAN NEST. 
 
 5cav0U^. 
 
 HENRY W. BOOKSTAVER, 
 WILLIAM L. BROWER, 
 JOHN S. BUSSING, 
 ROBERT DORSETT, 
 WILLIAM H. DUNNING, 
 JAMES S. FRANKLIN, 
 
 ALEXIS A. JULIEN, 
 HENRY E. KNOX, 
 NEILSON OLCOTT, 
 WILLIAM B. RUNK, 
 ABR'M V.W.VAN VECHTEN, 
 CHARLES H. WOODRUFF. 
 
 Clerk— GEORGE S. STITT, Esq. 
 Treasurer— JAMES PHYFE. 
 
12 
 
 Quar-tcr-Millemiial Anniversary of the 
 
 ®l)c ®rcat €on5i6torj). 
 
 RICHARD AMERMAN, 
 JAMES ANDERSON, 
 ABRAHAM BEEKMAN, 
 ABRAHAM BOGARDUS, 
 WILLIAM BOGARDUS, 
 ORLANDO M. BOGART, 
 HENRY W. BOOKSTAVER, 
 JAMES H. BRIGGS, 
 THEOPHILUS A. BROUWER, 
 WILLIAM L. BROWER, 
 ROBERT BUCK, 
 JOHN S. BUSSING, 
 CORNELIUS C. DEMAREST, 
 PETER DONALD, 
 ROBERT DORSETT, 
 WILLIAM H. DUNNING, 
 JAMES S. FRANKLIN, 
 WILLIAM C. GIFFING, 
 DAVID GILLESPIE, 
 JOHN GRAHAM, 
 STEPHEN HASBROUCK, 
 DANIEL HOWELL, 
 WILLIAM P. HOWELL, 
 DANIEL P. INGRAHAM, 
 GEORGE T. JACKSON, 
 PETER A. H. JACKSON, 
 ALEXIS A. JULIEN, 
 CALVIN E. KNOX, 
 
 HENRY E. KNOX, 
 JOHN LABAGH, 
 FREDERICK T. LOCKE, 
 FRANCIS T. LUQUEER, 
 EBENEZER MONROE, 
 ELBERT B. MONROE, 
 EDWARD A. MORRISON, 
 NEILSON OLCOTT, 
 JAMES PHYFE, 
 WILLIAM B. RUNK, 
 SAMUEL B. SCHIEFFELIN, 
 GAMALIEL G. SMITH, 
 GEORGE SMITH, 
 JOHN L. SMITH, 
 GEORGE S. STITT, 
 HENRY SNYDER, 
 HENRY VAN ARSDALE, 
 JAMES VAN BENSCHOTEN, 
 JOHN VAN NEST, 
 ABRAHAM V. W. VAN VECHTEN, 
 JASPER T. VAN VLECK, 
 CHARLES VAN WYCK, 
 EVERARDUS B. WARNER, 
 PETER R. WARNER, 
 WILLIAM WOOD, 
 CHARLES H. WOODRUFF, 
 JOHN S. WOODWARD, 
 WALLACE P. WILLETT. 
 
Protestant Reformed Dutch Church. 1 3 
 
 "JProfppbings in f|p 3£ffprnoon* 
 
 These were eo.ndueted preeiselt) in aeeorrlanee 
 with the t0n0u;ing: ptugramme^ 
 
14 
 
 Quarter-Millennial Anniversary of tlie 
 
 ^Programme for Jflcnioon Sertrttc. 
 
 Bev. Milliani l5)i|mi8ton, l^^.B. , pi|esiding, 
 
 ■t ;4livv.vt.v.Yti ("^fiiaise @od ftjom whom) j- ((^aiji i-i j jt) 
 1 gfl.\0l(J9tl ^ all blessings flow," j ^unc, "l|)ld Hundred " 
 
 2 ^UtllCm "!:$) (pod, when ^hou appeaiiest." ^lozaijt 
 
 3 ^alirtUf^ |i(^atUn0 by Hev.Mm. 1. Campbell, B.:t-^. f |2i°' 
 
 ^ gniy^j: 
 
 by lev. S5. ^. ^tJutton, B.B. 
 
 S ftymw 92^ 
 
 June, "^t. iVnns" 
 
 I. Our God, our help in ages past, 
 Our hope for years to come, 
 Our shelter from the stormy blast, 
 And our eternal home : 
 
 3. Time, like an ever-rolling stream, . 
 IJears all its sons away; 
 They fly, forgotten, as a dream 
 Dies at the openmg day. 
 
 2. Before the hills in order stood, 
 Or earth received her frame, 
 From everlasting Thou art God, 
 To endless years the same. 
 
 4. Our God, our help in ages past. 
 Our hope for years to come, 
 Be Thou our guard while troubles last, 
 And our eternal home ! 
 
Protestant Reformed Dutch Church. 1 5 
 
 ^rognnnmc for Afternoon cf crbttt. 
 
 6 fti.StOVical ^\$tiS\\X$t by Bev. Thomas 33. Vm|milyc, BJ?). 
 
 7 ftpm S59 - - - t^unc, " $t. (j;hon.a8 " 
 
 1. I love Thy kingdom, Lord, 3. If e'er to bless Thy sons 
 
 The house of Thine abode, My voice or hands deny. 
 
 The church our blest Redeemer saved These hands let useful skill forsake, 
 With His own precious blood. This voice in silence die. 
 
 2. I love Thy church, O God ! 4. If e'er my heart forget 
 
 Her walls before Thee stand, Her welfare or her woe, 
 
 Dear as the apple of Thine eye, Let every joy this heart forsake, 
 
 And graven on Thy hand. And every grief o'erflow. 
 
 5. For her my tears shall fall, 
 
 For her my prayers ascend ; 
 To her my cares and toils be given 
 Till toils and cares shall end. 
 
 8 fiallcUljlTlt (!lharu.5i - - - Beethoven 
 
 to ^^tt^rtidiOtt bn Bev. %. m. Moodbrklge, :)^.:JD. jsem.nary Tet 
 
 *■ — J "^ ^^ . t) ' ( Brunswick, N.J. 
 
 Music will lie under the direction of Dr. S. Austen Pearce. 
 
 Mr. W. E. Beames will preside at Organ. 
 
Protestant Reformed Di4tch CkurcJi. 1/ 
 
 MfFPnoon jSpptiirp, 
 
 ^t three a'elach the liieu. Br. 0rmistan taak 
 the ehair, and after the appointed masical and 
 deuotional services had heen rendered, made 
 the foUaitjing: remarhs intraduotanj to the xlis- 
 eaurse af the necasian. 
 
Protestant Reformed Dutch Church. 1 9 
 
 DR. ORMISTON'S REMARKS. 
 
 For a nation, church or family to commemorate 
 marked events and special periods in their past 
 history is as instinctively natural as it is eminently 
 profitable. To recall with reverence and pride the 
 moral worth, the noble deeds, and the heroic endur- 
 ance of a devout, faithful and valorous ancestry is not 
 more grateful than it is dutiful. Such an exercise is 
 fitted to quicken piety, deepen gratitude, inspire 
 patriotism, and stimulate to high and emulous en- 
 deavor. 
 
 Of late, in all parts of our land, centennial celebra- 
 tions have been frequent and various, connected with 
 events relating to the independence of the country 
 and the formation of its o-overnment. Doubtless these 
 services have availed much in deepening the senti- 
 ments of patriotism and reverence in the hearts of the 
 people. 
 
 Many churches, also, have taken a retrospective 
 survey of their origin and progress, with a view to 
 fresher effort for greater achievements in the future. 
 
 This is the purpose of our assembly to-day. We 
 
20 Ouartc]--M}llciiiiial Aiuiivi'rsary of the 
 
 propose reverently and gratefully to refer to the or- 
 ganization and history of a congregation whose origin 
 is coeval with the first settlement of the country, and 
 antedates the founding of our city. It is probably the 
 only Protestant church organization in the United 
 States which has attained its two hundred and fiftieth 
 year. 
 
 Shortly after the exploration of the Hudson by the 
 adventurous navigator whose name it bears, emigrants 
 from Holland, then a powerful state and the home of 
 civil and religious liberty, came to the Island of. Man- 
 hattan and the banks of the Hudson for purposes of 
 trade. They brought with them an open Bible and 
 religious ordinances, and were the first evangelists in 
 the state. 
 
 Their interesting story will be eloquently told by 
 my revered colleague, the senior pastor of the church, 
 to whom, with great propriety, that duty has been 
 assigned. 
 
 I would only further say, that, without detracting in 
 the slightest decree from the merits and services of 
 other early settlers and churches, we may, with perfect 
 sincerity and becoming modesty, claim, for our Dutch 
 forefathers, a prominent place in establishing the civil 
 and religious institutions of this republic. 
 
 The Reformed Protestant Church of the Nether- 
 lands, whence they came, was characterized by a sound 
 scriptural orthodoxy and a liberal, enlightened charity. 
 Steadfast in principle and catholic in spirit, her rela- 
 
Protestant Reformed Dutch CImrch. 2 1 
 
 tions with the churches of Great Britain were intimate 
 and friendly. The persecuted of other countries 
 sought a refuge in that land and received a cordial 
 welcome from the church. Freedom of conscience 
 was the common privilege of all — citizen and stranger 
 alike. The Pilgrim Fathers themselves, whose fre- 
 quent eulogiums are well merited, found there a home, 
 and a school where they learned much concernino- the 
 management of both civil and ecclesiastical affairs, 
 which gready affected their views and policy in mould- 
 ing the institutions of the new world where they 
 found a permanent home. 
 
 We may be honesdy proud of the founders and 
 fathers of our venerable church. Faithful in their 
 adherence to scriptural doctrine and the rights of con- 
 science — insisting on an educated ministry for the 
 
 church and good common schools for the children 
 
 staunch and daundess in the maintenance of civil 
 freedom and free insdtudons — industrious, fruo-al and 
 home-loving in their habits, they were fit founders of 
 the insdtutions of a new land, and worthy ancestors 
 of a free, God-fearing posterity. Direcdy and indi- 
 recdy we owe them much, and we lovingly revere 
 their memory. 
 
 Nor would I claim too much were I to say that, 
 though we may differ from our honored ancestors in 
 many things, yet as a church we still retain the same 
 love for the truth of God, and the same zeal for its 
 maintenance, defence and extension ; and sustain to- 
 
22 Quarter-Millennial Ainiii'crsary of the 
 
 wards all other evang-elical churches the same loving, 
 brotherly regards. 
 
 Holding the same system of doctrine — maintaining" 
 the same ecclesiastical polity — observing the same 
 customs with but little variation, and evincing the 
 same spirit of christian catholicity, the Reformed 
 Church of to-day exhibits many lineaments which un- 
 mistakably indicate her hereditary family likeness. 
 Cherishing tenaciously her own time-honored customs, 
 she profoundly respects the conscientious convictions 
 and established practices of all sister churches, with 
 whom she seeks to live in the unity of the Spirit, as 
 children of the same Father, and servants of the same 
 King. May our precious heritage be the inheritance 
 of our children. 
 
Protestant Reformed Dutch Church. 23 
 
 DR. VERMILYE'S DISCOURSE, 
 
 PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 
 
 The speaker prefaced the address with the follow- 
 ing remarks : " I have received many visits, and a 
 number of letters from various quarters, which show 
 the profound interest everywhere taken in this anni- 
 versary. One of these is from a lady in Philadelphia, 
 whose possession of the time-honored prefix 'Van,' 
 vouches for her rip-ht to send a letter of concrratula- 
 tion. I have also here a copy of the charter, granted 
 by William III, in 1696, to 'the minister, elders and 
 deacons of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of 
 the City of New York.' Among the incorporators are 
 names still found among us — William Beekman and 
 Jacob Kip. 
 
 "I hold in my hand — (Dr. V. exhibited a handsome 
 gold-headed cane) — an interesting memorial, pre- 
 sented in commemoration of this occasion by one who 
 is a Van of the Vans. It is made of a piece of the 
 wood used in the construction of the old North 
 Church in William Street, recently taken down, and 
 
24 Quartcr-HIillcnnial Ainiivcrsary of the 
 
 within the top is placed a thimbleful of the soil of the 
 Netherlands mingled with a little earth taken from 
 the spot where the first Dutch Church on this conti- 
 nent was planted, thus aptly symbolizing, as the donor 
 happily expresses it, the union of the two countries in 
 the commingling of their soils. Upon the head is 
 engraved the name of Dr. Vermilye, and upon the 
 sides those of Drs. Chambers and Ormiston, with the 
 years 1628, 1728. I shall keep it and prize it dearly 
 till I die." 
 
Protestant Reformed Dutch Church. 25 
 
 DISCOU RSE. 
 
 We meet by the invitation of " The Consistory of tlie 
 Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the City of New 
 York," to commemorate the 250th Anniversary of its 
 existence — the Mother of the Dutch Churches in this City, 
 and, in a sense, of the entire denomination: of regularly 
 organized churches the eldest, we believe, of the Protestant 
 family on the continent : the forerunner, commissioned like 
 the Baptist in the wilderness, to herald on the shores of the 
 newly discovered world the sublime command, " Prepare 
 ye the way of the Lord : make straight in the desert a 
 highway for our God." The occasion appeals naturally to 
 the sympathies, not of the people of this particular congrega- 
 tion or of our communion only, but to the descendants of 
 the Dutch wherever and in whatever religious connexion 
 they may be found ; to our fellow christians of every name ; 
 no less to the student of history, the man of letters, the 
 patriot who is interested in the development of the state ; 
 to every one who intelligently notes the march of events, and 
 hopes and believes in human advancement. The Consistory 
 has assigned to me the duty and the honor of giving the 
 commemorative discourse. And without delaying upon 
 the " cxordiinii reuiotiini " of our ancient form, and without 
 formal approach by rhetorical preliminaries, I pass at once 
 to the subject before us. 
 
 Of the people who early settled this continent from the 
 various parts of Europe, two, or rather three, nationalities 
 were especially present. And these, let it be marked, were 
 the most advanced in ciyil liberty, and the most determined 
 defenders of the Protestant faith : the English, who first 
 settled Virginia, but afterwards were more largely represented 
 
26 Quarter-Millennial Anniversary of the 
 
 by the Puritans of New England ; and the Dutch, who 
 founded Manhattan, spread along the Hudson as far as 
 Albany, west into New Jersey and down upon the Delaware. 
 With subsequent immigrations came the Huguenots in con- 
 siderable numbers, flying from the fiery persecutions in France. 
 And, although companies of them located in Maine and 
 Massachusetts, where their names and some interesting relics 
 still exist ; and others found a home in and about Charleston, 
 South Carolina, and are yet represented there by worthy 
 descendants — the largest portion established themselves in 
 this region. Their social and flexible character caused them 
 easily to assimilate and become one with the Dutch, while 
 they in turn exerted a very happy influence upon the people 
 with whom they mingled ; and to this day, places and families 
 among the most noted and honored in the land, bearing 
 Huguenot names, attest the excellent quality of that element 
 in the formation of our social, and religious, and political life. 
 But from Holland came the founders of our Cit}- and 
 State : " our Alban Fathers and the walls of lofty Rome." 
 It is a singular territory. There, man, under the most un- 
 propitious conditions, in the words of the poet, has " scooped 
 out an empire and usurped the shore." It lies on the border 
 of the sea — almost /// the sea — opposite the south-east coast 
 of England ; and has been formed evidently by the detritus of 
 the rivers, the Rhine especially, brought down even from the 
 high Alps, and by the sand thrown up from the abyss of the 
 ocean ; originally a morass, which the tide overflowed, and 
 which no sagacity could have predicted would become dry 
 land fit to be inhabited ; the accretions of ages and persistent 
 skill have brought it forth. The rivers have flowed on and 
 left their deposits ; the ocean has piled up the sand for soil, 
 and pebbles and stones which formed the downs ; and by 
 vast labors of man they have become a solid bulwark against 
 the farther encroachment of the waters, securing a safe and 
 commodious hs^bitation. Many parts lie much below the level 
 of the sea, protected from inundation only by the dykes. And 
 it was very exciting in riding through the beautiful park at 
 
Protestant Reformed Dutch Church. 27 
 
 ' Rotterdam, to pass along the base of this wall and see sea- 
 going steamers and ships, of the largest bulk, at anchor 
 apparently more than a hundred feet directly above us. The 
 dyke was the only protection. And as I gazed, I realized 
 the grandeur of the divine interdict, " Hitherto shalt thou 
 come and no farther: and here shall thy proud waves be 
 stayed." Much of the soil thus recovered from the sea, with 
 incredible toil and cost, would be thought too poor to 
 recompense the husbandman. But the patient industry of 
 a free people, expended upon it for centuries, has made it 
 productive almost beyond imagination. And those parts 
 recovered directly from the ocean, and at first but sand, were 
 made among the most productive of all. Everywhere rich 
 vegetation appeared. Populous and thriving cities grew up 
 like lodcfes in a o-arden of delifrhts. The canals also, so 
 readily constructed and supplied with water, became an easy 
 means of internal communication ; like the blood vessels of 
 the human system conveying life and vigor throughout the 
 corporate body. 
 
 But besides its agricultural character, and perhaps almost 
 by a natural necessity, from its proximity to the sea, Holland 
 became a maritime power. Its hardy sons were trained to 
 face the storms and breast the billows of every ocean, and 
 bring home the treasures of " the gorgeous East and the open- 
 ing West." Thus by the operation of natural causes and the 
 persistent labor of an energetic race was the country gradually 
 prepared for a high destiny. Small in size — scarcely appear- 
 ing upon the geographical map of Europe — and most un- 
 promising at the beginning, instead of remaining a sterile 
 and desolate shore, where only the fisherman spread his nets, 
 it has supported in abundance and happiness a greater number 
 of people in proportion to its area, than any other country 
 on the globe. Other lands needed but to be cleared for 
 occupation — this to be created. Its existence show^s how 
 intelligent, untiring industry, against almost insuperable diffi- 
 culties, can make "the desert blossom like the rose." As its 
 history will likewise teach us what man himself may become 
 
28 Quarter-Millennial Anniversary of the 
 
 under the pressure of great and urgent necessities. I am 
 reminded of a pleasant anecdote told by the late Hermanus 
 Bleecker. When he was minister near the Hague, he was 
 accompanied on one occasion by a gentleman of high position, 
 to the top of the main church in Amsterdam, from which 
 one might take in at one view almost the entire seven 
 provinces. As they looked around, the gentleman exclaimed 
 with great animation and pardonable pride, "we are a small 
 territory, Mr. Bleecker, l)ut we are a great people." 
 
 And in truth their history is even more remarkable than 
 the physical characteristics of the country. As far back as 
 authentic records penetrate, the people of the Low Countries, 
 /. e. of the northern provinces, which we intend when we 
 speak of Holland, as distinguished from the Highlands, to 
 which the country rises from the sea on the east and the 
 south, and whose inhabitants were originally from a different 
 stock and have always showed somewhat different traits — from 
 the earliest annals the people of the lowlands have borne one 
 character: simple, frugal, honest, patient of toil; intelligent 
 rather than imaginative ; not propense to war, yet indomita- 
 bly bold, full of endurance, and prompt to maintain their 
 liberty and rights. Their local situation would seem to 
 indicate that the peaceable occupations of agriculture and 
 commerce were their natural destiny. Enterprise would be 
 expended in trade for the acquisition of wealth rather than 
 in the pursuit of military renown, the extension of territory, 
 or the enlargement of power. Yet no country in Europe 
 has been so often the theatre of sanguinary wars — not of her 
 own seeking, but in defense of her soil ; or, as the convenient 
 battle ground of her neighbors where their common liberty 
 was vindicated. And their endurance and successes are the 
 astonishment of the world. It would seem as if an invading 
 army might march over the level land almost without resist- 
 ance. But Caesar's trained legions were boldly met and 
 checked by the intrepid Belgae. Voy eighty years the conflict 
 was prolonged with Spain, the strongest power in Europe. 
 There William of Orange, in the spirit of his memorable 
 
Protestant Reformed Dutch Churcli. 29 
 
 motto :"/ 7C'/// viaintain ; I zcill hold on;'' now beaten, and 
 then victorious, kept the French at bay ; and Marlborough 
 succeeding him, at length foiled their best armies until the 
 Grand Monarque was ruined by the struggle. They had 
 conquered the land from the ocean ; they held it against all 
 comers. And Holland achieved the glory of a nation of 
 heroes ; as by her commerce she subsidized the east and the 
 west, gathered their wealth into her treasury and became the 
 richest people in the world. So was it with the Queen of 
 the Adriatic. And in many respects the history of these 
 two most singular countries is not dissimilar. 
 
 But Holland was not merely a field of arms, or a nation 
 of traders. She became also the chosen seat" of learning. The 
 education of the young was carefully regarded. An evidence 
 of a very interesting character survives in the school of our 
 church, still flourishing as ever, under Mr. Dunshee, its able 
 principal; the first literary institution probably in the country; 
 established in 1626, and the teachers brought from Holland 
 at that early date. It proves the value the Dutch placed on 
 right education. Their universities, Utrecht and Leyden es- 
 pecially, were among the foremost in a learned age. Men 
 of renown filled the professorial chairs, and students came 
 from all parts. The founding of the university at Leyden 
 rises to moral sublimity. When, by the unconquerable bold- 
 ness of her sons, the tide of Spanish invasion had been rolled 
 away, the Prince of Orange, in remembrance and acknowledg- 
 ment of their deeds, offered to make Leyden the seat of an 
 annual fair which would bring wealth to the city, or of a 
 university : and the citizens grandly chose the University. 
 There it has stood and stands — the monument of the great 
 struggle and of the heroism of their fathers ; but still more 
 the monument of their nobility of thought; perpetuating their 
 intellectual and moral life : the life of culture, of progress, of 
 power, of a free people, which the blood of the sires purchased 
 for their sons. Few things are so impressive as to stand, 
 as I have done more than once, in its council chamber, and 
 recall its origin, and look upon the portraits of scholars and 
 
30 Quartcr-JSIilloniial Atniivcrsary of tJic 
 
 statesmen, orators and soldiers, whose names are the glory of 
 their own land, and whose figures stand boldly out upon the 
 historic canvass of the great men of all times. 
 
 The invention of printing, the art of arts, contested by 
 several and especially by Gutenberg, of Mentz, belongs 
 almost demonstrably to Koster, of Haarlem, about 143S; 
 although improved and perfected, it may be, by Gutenberg, 
 from models secretly conveyed, it is said, from Koster. 
 
 And it is worthy of note, that the Latin Vulgate was 
 probably the first complete printed volume, done by Guten- 
 berg, at Mentz, about 1455. In Holland, the press was 
 free from censorship, which continued in England as late as 
 1694 so that authors interdicted there printed their books 
 abroad. Tyndale's translation, 1535, not allowed to be print- 
 ed in England, was thus printed abroad and carried back and 
 secretly distributed at home. Thus Germany and Holland 
 deserve the credit, beyond their age, of just and advanced 
 thought and corresponding action, in this great means of 
 public enlightenment and progress ; and by its liberal course, 
 Holland, in its full measure, became the printing and publish- 
 ing house of Europe ; much to its own advantage as well 
 as that of letters. Milton would there have found no cause to 
 fulminate his grand, indignant sentences, to the men of the 
 great commonwealth, on unlicensed printing ; and Locke, as 
 late as 1694, would have had no call to utter protests on the 
 same subject, happily, the last protests needed in free and 
 enlightened England. 
 
 From such causes and the toleration there existing, scholars 
 as well as persecuted religionists, and even political refugees, 
 long found a safe and quiet asylum in the Low Countries. 
 Burnet and Locke, with others, driven from . England, took 
 shelter there and freely pursued their studies. These latter 
 remarks apply, however, most strictly to the times when and 
 after the Republic was inaugurated. The period of her great- 
 ness was one of those epochs in which mind seems to be 
 uncommonly active, and all the wheels of life roll on with 
 uncommon energy. From 1500, onwards, for nearly two 
 
Protestant Reformed DiitcJi C/uircIi. 31 
 
 centuries, Holland performed the most illustrious part on the 
 theatre of events. She seemed the pivot on which Europe 
 moved. It was the time of her greatest sufferings, and of her 
 meridian splendor. She was the mainspring and seat of 
 political negotiations ; the arena of battles ; the mediator of 
 peace ; the retreat of the persecuted for conscience sake from 
 other lands ; the strength of the weak, and the light-bearer 
 of the times. Her statesmen read law to the nations ; her 
 warriors fought the battles of freedom and shattered the arm 
 of arbitrary power ; her scholars instructed the mind of the 
 age ; her divines expounded the faith by which Protestantism 
 yet lives. We give this as a true description of Holland's 
 place and influence in the time of her maturity; and from this 
 land of wonders, from such a stock, at just about the culmi- 
 nating point of this great social and national development, 
 came the discoverers and first settlers of Manhattan. 
 
 The juncture of time was of most auspicious omen. In 
 the year 1609, the long conflict with Spain was suspended at 
 the suggestion of Philip III, by a truce for twelve years. The 
 indomitable Dutch were reluctant to accept it, so little did 
 they bend under their burden — so warlike had they become. 
 For during the whole continuance of the struggle they were 
 carrying on their commerce and actually augmenting their 
 strength. The truce was in reality a confession on the part 
 of Spain that she was vanquished, and practically established 
 the independence of the United Netherlands. Henceforth, 
 Holland was acknowledged among nations as a free, self- 
 governing Republic. It was in the very same year that 
 Hudson sailed on the voyage which resulted in the discovery 
 of the river that bears his name, which he explored to Albany ; 
 and in the acljuisition by Holland of the vast region extending 
 from the Capes of Delaware to Canada, styled the New 
 Netherlands. True, discoveries had already been made by the 
 English in Virginia ; the Huguenots in Florida ; the French 
 in Acadia, now Canada. But the wide region I have mention- 
 ed was yet unknown. The Dutch explored Long Island 
 Sound and discovered the Housatonic and Connecticut rivers, 
 
32 Quarter-Millennial Anjiivcrsary of the 
 
 and rightly claimed the adjoining territory which the English 
 wrested from them ; nor were content until they had gorged 
 New Amsterdam also. The admirable adaptation of this 
 island as a mart of trade with the natives, and of the harbor 
 for commerce was quickly understood. In [614, the New 
 Netherlands Company was chartered for four years, and made 
 » Manhattan a trading port. In 162 1, the West India Company 
 was formed to conduct commerce in the west, and Manhattan 
 came under their power in fee. And it should never be 
 forgotten that the island first held by discovery and occupancy, 
 the right of might, was in '1621 fairly purchased from the 
 natives, thus admitting their ownership, for twenty-four dollars.* 
 The West India Company appointed its own governors 
 of the island, and of course its affairs w^ere conducted on 
 Dutch principles, as well as by Dutch men. The principles 
 were integrity and strict honor ; the men righteous and often 
 dogmatical governors. 
 
 Hitherto I have not spoken of Religion. It was not to be 
 imagined that a people so reflective and earnest should be 
 indifferent on such a subject either at home or in their colonies. 
 Always. their national life had been invigorated by religious 
 faith. When, then, the Reformation arose, it was a thing of 
 course that the new movement, which upheaved the founda- 
 tions of society in the nations around, should at once awaken 
 deep interest and sympathy in Holland, and that the sim- 
 plicity of form and purity of doctrine of the new teachers, 
 when once understood, should be preferred by very many to 
 the corrupt teachings and elaborate and sensuous ceremonial 
 of Popery. And they had the charm of novelty. But there 
 was a special cause which, beyond question, had great influence 
 in confirming this feeling. The nation with* which they 
 
 * Our honored president of the Historical Society has made a curious calcula- 
 tion that by this time, computing interest, the $24 would reach a sum almost 
 beyond the power of figures. It brings to mind an incident in the early history of 
 Massachussetts, when a large portion of the town of West Springfield, one of the 
 most beautifnl parts of the Connecticut river, was '■' sivapped'''' for a wheelbarrow. 
 What that barrow would be worth at this time (in fiat money) I cannot say. 
 But it should Ijc an Alpine heap. 
 
Protestant Refonned Dutch CJiurch. 33 
 
 warred, their cruel and relentless oppressor, was Catholic : 
 who forbade all freedom of action and even of thought upon 
 religious subjects ; who had pursued them in ferocious war 
 on that account ; whose determined purpose it had been 
 for eighty years to force Popery upon them with its hellish 
 inquisition, its servility and chains. They had resisted unto 
 blood in maintaining the better part; and it had the power 
 over them of dearly purchased right. The system they chose, 
 however, was not derived from Germany, as might have been 
 expected, but from France or Geneva. They became Calvin- 
 ists and Presbyterians — not Lutherans — and that was the form 
 they introduced into the colony. The precise time of planting 
 the church here was also significant. It was not only at the 
 period of Holland's supremacy, in social elegance, in learning, 
 in jurisprudence and politics ; but it was during the agita- 
 tions attendant upon and succeeding the sitting of the celebra- 
 ted Synod of Dort : a fact which very discernably exerted an 
 influence upon the church of the colony, as it did upon all 
 the interests of church and state at home. Of that famous 
 Synod let us then say a few words. It was convoked by the 
 States General ; was composed of delegates from the several 
 provinces; and from the foreign churches ; the Church of 
 England included, and only the French Reformed absent, by 
 the interdict of their king. It met at Dort on the 13th of 
 November, 16 18, and was called to consider and settle the 
 theological controversy which arose from the teachings of 
 James Arminius, professor of theology at Leyden, which 
 were opposed by Francis Gomarus, likewise professor. Hence 
 the parties were designated as Arminians and Gomarists ; but 
 from a remonstrance presented by the minority, they were 
 also more generally known as remonstrants, who were the 
 Arminians, and contra-remonstrants, who were Gomarists or 
 Calvinists — and certainly of the straighter sort. It was sub- 
 stantially the old controversy of Augustine and Pelagius, and 
 later of the Semi-Pelagians. It was before Augustine; for of 
 such controversies, whether of form or substance, it may be 
 truly said, there is nothing new under the sun ; nor was it 
 
34 Quarter-Mill omial A]inivcrsary of tlie 
 
 finally disposed of in his time. And although the points in 
 issue were thoroughly discussed at Dort, it was not then termi- 
 nated ; and we ma)^ predict it never will be to the universal 
 agreement of minds tha't think, as free minds will think, from 
 different positions upon different lines. The more imperative 
 the reason for toler3.nce and charity. The Synod held 152 
 sessions, and was dissolved in May, 1619 : the president 
 declaring that" its miraculous labors had made hell tremble ; " 
 a prominent member saying that in that Synod " there were 
 some things divine ; some things human ; and some things 
 diabolical." The proportions Jiowever not precisely stated. 
 Anterior to the meeting of the Synod the matters in dispute 
 had convulsed the universities and churches and families, and 
 involved the peace of the state. Nor did the decisions of the 
 Synod which were on the side of the Calvinists, they being 
 the majority, allay the storm. Alas ! that such dire effects 
 should flow from such causes. Yet this is human nature. 
 And all history teaches that the wildest excitements and the 
 fiercest wars, have sprung up on just such apparently inappro- 
 priate grounds. I do not think that they who most cordially 
 adopt the theological conclusions of the Synod are bound, 
 at this day, to defend the spirit which, for a large part, anima- 
 ted its leaders. In many of their utterances and deeds they 
 manifested anything but christian meekness and were vindic- 
 tive and cruel. But private interests became deeply implicated, 
 and passions were embittered and furious. And, in judging the 
 case, candor bids us remember that Calvinism was the long 
 settled creed of Holland — that the Arminians were the ag- 
 gressors — that in the pulpits and even in the theological 
 chairs they persisted, contrary to earnest expostulation in 
 teaching doctrines which the Calvinists sincerely believed not 
 only to be contrary to the standards, but subversive of the 
 faith delivered to the saints. And the experience they had 
 had in the Catholic church, showed them the power of ideas 
 to corrupt ; made them more intense in their beliefs ; and 
 warned them against principles which they imagined led by 
 logical sequence, to some of the worst errors of Rome. They 
 
Protestant Reformed Dutch Church. 35 
 
 may have been wrong, but, no doubt, they were sincere. 
 The question involved is a very plain one. It is not whether 
 men shall teach and act according to their convictions, but 
 whether it is honest and to be tolerated, that they shall use 
 the advantages of position and emoluments they have received 
 on specific conditions, to undermine and overthrow sentiments 
 and institutions they solemnly pledged themselves to uphold. 
 And he has read very superficially, who has not learned that 
 heresiarchs, while unchallenged, easily to their own satisfaction 
 reconcile their defections from the old paths with rectitude ; 
 particularly if their interests are concerned. Sometimes, no 
 doubt, it is because they do not fairly realize how far they have 
 deflected from the right line ; but oftener, probably, because 
 self-opinion stands for divine illumination, and they imagine 
 they have been elected by supernal wisdom to pour light upon 
 the darkness of all preceding ages. That one's convictions 
 run counter to the principles or practices of an association is a 
 very good reason why he should not enter or should leave it ; 
 but a very bad reason that he should enter or remain in bad 
 faith to subvert what he is appointed to defend. Arminians are 
 apt to look only on their side, and then the Synod of Dortwas 
 an unparalleled atrocity, and its theology necessarily unsound. 
 So, a class of religionists seem to see on the long, dark page 
 of martyrology, but one sentence: "Calvin burned Servetus." 
 That easy but false formula, they would have us think, refutes 
 Calvinism, and demon.strates Socinianism. Happily a brighter 
 light has dawned or a better .spirit has come to our times — 
 not we would hope from mere laxness of conviction but a 
 widening of intelligence and love — and a rigid Calvinist may 
 now believe, without incurring the penalty, de hcvretico coinbu- 
 reudo, that an Arminian can be saved. 
 
 But that Synod was not all polemical and diabolical. 
 Many measures were adopted for the advancement of practical 
 religion, having no connexion with controversy. A new 
 translation of the Bible was likewise directed : a work begun 
 on the order of the States by S. Aldegonde as early as 1594, 
 and discontinued at his death. Six eminent scholars were 
 
36 Qiiartcr-Millciuiial A)iiiivcrsary of the 
 
 appointed as translators, and six substitutes, in case of the 
 failure of the translators, of whom two died during the progress 
 of the work. A company of final revisers was also appointed ; 
 all most approved scholars. The translators and their families 
 were collected at Leyclen, and supported at the public expense ; 
 and after the most careful elaboration, the work was finished 
 and printed in 1637, at a cost to the States General of twenty- 
 five thousand pounds sterling, and ordered to be usecl in the 
 churches. The translation has been as highly prized by the 
 Dutch, as our English version, which came into use about 
 the same time, has been cherished by the English speaking 
 race ; and the notes and comments of the translators, also pub- 
 lished, are held in high estimation by Biblical scholars. 
 
 I may be excused for having enlarged upon this Synod, 
 for it supplied the theological life-blood of the Dutch church, 
 which yet has not all run out. 
 
 Although the advent of the colonists to Manhattan was 
 in those troublous times, they were not fugitives, as were the 
 Huguenots, from Popish, or the Puritans from Protestant 
 persecution. They belonged to the ruling party in the Mother 
 Country, and brought with them, as a thing of course, the 
 established church order and the Calvinistic creed, and some- 
 what perhaps of the spirit of the contra-remonstrants. And 
 that creed, symbolized in the Heidelberg CatccJiisin, adopted 
 at a Synod of Dort as early as 1574, and re-affirmed by the 
 celebrated Synod in 1619, has ever prevailed in the Dutch 
 churches in this country. As the Synod stamped it with the 
 seal of orthodoxy, the immigrants held it fast as living truth ; 
 the more that great and holy men had so strenuously con- 
 tended for it at home. This will account, in measure at least, 
 for the steady adherence of the Dutch church among ourselves 
 to its doctrines while conceding to others full liberty in their 
 own communions. Just as in Holland all fugitives found a 
 refuge ; but she would tolerate no faithlessness in her own 
 church. 
 
 Wise policy as well as just principle directed the West 
 India Company to supply their trading posts and colonies with 
 
Protestant Reformed Dutch Church. 37 
 
 the means of education and religion — and such provision, we 
 are assured, from the first was made for Manhattan. We 
 know that in 1626 two pious school masters came over with 
 Director Minuet. Their duty, besides instructing the youth in 
 secular learning, was to conduct religious services on the 
 sabbath day, by reading the Scriptures, the creed and a 
 sermon ; (much like the deacons' meetings in New England) ; 
 and they were to minister to the sick until such time as an 
 ordained minister should be provided. From the latter duty 
 they were called " Ziekoi-troosters," i. c. Comforters of the 
 sick. Until recently, it was thought that the first ordained 
 minister was the Reverend Everardus Bogardus, who came 
 with Governor. Wouter Van Twiller in 1633 ; and that he 
 organized the church in that year. But a letter discovered by 
 Mr. Murphy when he was minister at the Hague, written by 
 the Rev. Jonas Michaelius, says, he " arrived at the Island of 
 Manhattan the nth of August, 1628;" and adds: "we first 
 established the form of a church ; and it has been thought 
 best to choose two elders for my assistance ; one of them is 
 the Hon. Director himself We had at the first administration 
 of the Lord's supper full fifty communicants — Walloons and 
 Dutch." This was five years before the arrival of Dominie 
 Bogardus; and fixes the origin of the church in 1628; which 
 date will make the Dutch, the oldest organized Protestant 
 church in the New World. At least I am not aware of any 
 earlier regular organized body. And the primitive organiza- 
 tion lives in the collegiate church — " whose were the fathers" — 
 which retains the title ; the charter ; the unbroken succession of 
 the ministry and consistory ; the records from the beginning ; 
 and the property from time to time bequeathed to the 
 ^' Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the City of New York " 
 — at least so much as remains. Of these funds a liberal use 
 has always been made by the consistory for the benefit of 
 other churches and for objects of general utility to the denomi- 
 nation. I think I am justified in saying that, excepting for 
 the building of their church edifices, a very liberal proportion, 
 compared with their own expenditures, has been thus dispensed 
 
38 Quarter-Millefinial Aiudvcrsary of the 
 
 in past times to their brethren. Whether such aid does not often 
 injure, by impairing the feehng of self-reliance, is a serious doubt. 
 The ruling- power of each Dutch church is in the consist- 
 ory — for it is Presbyterian and representative, and not Con- 
 gregational. The ministers, elders and deacons, compose the 
 consistory : the minister, according to apostolical commission, 
 to preach, administer ordinances and exercise the pastoral 
 supervision ; the elders to assist him in spiritual matters, but 
 not to preach or administer the sacraments ; the deacons, as 
 at the first, to attend to the poor and serve tables. Thus we 
 see in each church a regular order. From the letter of 
 Michaelius we learn that he ordained two elders. Necessarily 
 that organization was imperfect. But as the church grew in 
 numbers, it at length assumed its normal form of consistories, 
 classes, particular and general Synods — a complete system for 
 the denomination — and thus it is at present constituted. Ac- 
 cording to the ancient rules, to the consistories pertained the 
 control of temporal as well as spiritual matters, as now in 
 most of our churches. But several years ago, in courtesy to 
 the popular craving for a share of whatever office or power 
 may exist, authority was granted by legislative enactments in 
 this State, to commit the temporalities to a Board of Trustees, 
 elected by the pew-holders. This practice has been adopted 
 in some of our churches, but is by no means generally accepted. 
 A peculiarity of Dutch, as compared with Scotch or Irish 
 Presbyterianism, is the rotation of the lay members of con- 
 sistory. Their election for two years, instead of for life, 
 although eligible to re-election, is thought to possess these 
 advantages : that a larger number of the male members may 
 become interested in the affairs of their, church, and thus a 
 Board of Trustees is superfluous ; and also, that a troublesome 
 or unqualified member may be quietly dropped — a great bless- 
 ing often to pastors, consistories and people. 
 
 Our church, both here and in the Mother Country, has 
 always demanded an educated ministry, and has shown no 
 inclination to be long satisfied with sound for substance, 
 ranting for reason, or professions for piety. The first preachers 
 
Protestant Reformed Dutch Church. 39 
 
 were men of solid parts, imbued with the excellent learning 
 that at that day abounded in Holland. It was long the 
 custom and for a time a necessity for the churches in the 
 colony, not only to obtain their ministers from the Mother 
 Country, but, also, to send thither young men of promise, 
 desiring the ministry, to be educated and ordained. Utrecht 
 and Leyden received such from all parts. Alas ! how changed ! 
 Three years ago, when at Leyden, a learned professor informed 
 me that of the 800 students, but eight were pursuing theology. 
 And, with a meaning glance, he was at the pains to tell me 
 that the theologues were the stoutest Darwinians in the 
 University. If so,, the fewer their numbers the better. At 
 Utrecht there were somewhat more. Heidelberg had about 
 the same small number. And from good authority I learned 
 that reverence for the inspired word was much diminished by 
 the influence of modern ideas, called science, and that personal 
 religion seemed at a low ebb. Dr. Livingston settled here in 
 1770, more than 150 years after Manhattan was founded, 
 having spent four years at Utrecht, in preparation for his 
 work. He was one of the last, or the last, so educated, and 
 brought the Holland mode of preaching by logical, orderly, 
 but, perhaps, too precise and numerous divisions ; and when 
 made professor at New Brunswick, he used the Holland style 
 of theological tuition — the much spoken of " Classis argu- 
 mcutoruui ; " systematic, thorough as far as it went ; dry as a 
 bone, but really teaching theology, and vastly to be preferred 
 to a hap-hazard method that teaches nothing. The Dutch 
 descent and Dutch training of Dr. Livingston, no doubt, 
 conduced very largely to his popularity among his people. 
 He occasionally preached in that language for the comfort of 
 some of the aged ; but Dr. Kuypers was the last who did 
 so. The connexion of New Amsterdam, as it was then 
 named, with Holland, had much relaxed after it passed under 
 English sway in 1664 and became New York. Many returned 
 home and few came. Intercourse was much with England ; 
 little with Holland. The colony was estranged, though not 
 alienated. And while at the transfer, all the rights of the 
 
40 Qiiaytcr-jMillejiiiial Ainiivcrsary of the 
 
 Dutch church were secured by treaty, and the language 
 continued in use in social life and in religious services, yet 
 English being that of the ruling class, of course, encroached 
 upon and gradually supplanted the Dutch. Hence, arose the 
 strife, chiefly between the young and the old people, in regard 
 to a change to English preaching ; which, when yielded and 
 determined by the calling of Dr. Laidley in 1764, just one 
 hundred years from the English occupation, sent off a large 
 portion of the opponents of English preaching with true Dutch 
 spunk and admirable consistency to the English church. 
 In like manner, the foreign education of the ministry and de- 
 pendence of the churches upon the classis of Amsterdam, led 
 to the CiVtHS and Coifcroitie controversy, which resulted in the 
 final independence of the American churches and ministry, and 
 in the establishment of our own Classes, and of the Institution at 
 New Brunswick. It was not strange that the Dutch language 
 and customs declined : rather it was perfectly characteristic 
 and highly creditable to the steady people, that their attach- 
 ment to Holland, its language and whatever was Dutch should 
 have lingered among them so long, under such adverse cir- 
 cumstances. Yet, natural as it was, no one can now doubt, 
 that the pertinacity it assumed at several junctures, was injur- 
 ious to the church ; as there can be as little doubt that a too 
 facile yielding to innovations in more recent times, has been 
 equally disastrous. 
 
 The pastors of the Collegiate church have always been on 
 an equality, excepting the deference which christian and gen- 
 tlemanly courtesy has yielded to the senior. Until quite lately 
 they performed in rotation the same services in all the 
 churches. They wore, and continue to wear, the Geneva gown 
 and bands, in which costume they were accustomed to walk 
 from their dwellings to the church on the sabbath-day. As 
 that practice might now be thought to savor of ostentation, it 
 is discontinued, and the ministers are robed in the vestry. 
 With the portraits of the ministers the walls of the consistory 
 chamber are adorned ; I say adorned ; for really they form a come- 
 ly and intellectual-featured gallery, not speaking of the living. 
 
Protestant Reformed Dutch Chnrcli. 41 
 
 The public worship was arranged of course in conformity 
 with that of the mother church. The order became a part of 
 the constitution, and was made obhgatory, so as to secure a 
 proper uniformity throughout the denomination, and was not 
 left to the taste, or want of taste, or caprice of individual 
 ministers or congregations, which destroys the similitude of 
 the service and ensures disorder. There was sufficient form to 
 engage reverential attention and not allow religion to be 
 stripped bare ; yet there was not so much formality that it be- 
 came perfunctory and exhausted devotion in rites and ceremo- 
 nies. The psalmody was also fixed by law. In church the 
 elders sat in the pew on the right, the deacons on the left of the 
 pulpit. At the close of the service, when the minister descended, 
 they stood to receive him, and each gave the right hand of fel- 
 lowship and approval. The clerk, in his desk beneath the pulpit, 
 opened the morning service by reading the commandments 
 and announcing the psalm to be sung, when the organ pealed 
 forth and the whole congregation united in praise. And never, 
 I think, in Spurgeon's tabernacle in London, nor in the great 
 churches in Holland, have I heard such impressive congrega- 
 tional singing as when Mr. Earle led and the vast assemblage 
 joined in the old Middle Church, or Mr. Sage in the North. 
 While singing the minister entered, stood for a few moments 
 reverently at the foot of the pulpit stairs in silent prayer, his 
 back to the people, ascended the pulpit and conducted the ser- 
 vice. Preceding the second, or long prayer as it is some- 
 times termed, came the salutation, reading the S. S. and 
 the ''exordium rciiiotiim'' — an address having, as the name 
 expressed, a remote, and often a very remote, bearing on the 
 subject of the sermon. In the old churches tablets were hung 
 upon the walls, indicating the psalm to be read or sung.* 
 
 *Over the pulpit, in the North Church, hung the Harpendinck coat of arms, as 
 it was thought to be ; but perhaps, as Dr. DeWitt reasonably thinks, a memorial, 
 placed there by the Consistory, in remembrance of the donation of his farm to the 
 Consistory — a large tract of land, then a pasturage, now occupied by stores — from 
 which has come the most of the property of the Collegiate Church. The motto 
 would seem to confirm this idea : '■'■Dando Conscrvat " — "by giving, he keeps." 
 
42 Quarter-Millennial Anniversary of the 
 
 This was the order still observed in my youth in the old Mid- 
 dle and North Churches, so that when in Holland, although I 
 understood nothing of the language, the service was not 
 strange. And at Haarlem the crowd that collected at the 
 cathedral evening service brought vividly to my mind the great 
 congregation which, on sabbath evenings, used to fill the old 
 Middle Church with people gathered fi-om the various 
 churches around. 
 
 On baptismal and communion occasions the entire forms 
 were always read. The mother presented the child ; and at the 
 Lord's Supper the participants sat at tables spread through the 
 aisles, filled frequently three or four times ; and as addresses 
 were made at each table the service was often greatly protracted. 
 It was also the usage of the Dutch church to observe the day^ 
 of special religious memorial : as Christmas, Easter, and those 
 commonly observed by the Protestant communities in Europe. 
 Nor did they feel that by thus emphasizing the great facts of 
 Christianity they were guilty of any obsequious and irreligious 
 imitation of mystic Babylon. 
 
 From the first it was required of the ministers that on the 
 Lord's day afternoon they should expound the Heidelberg 
 CateeJiisni ; going through it once every year. In time this 
 custom naturally became repetitious and formal, and lost very 
 much of its interest with the people ; and a change was or- 
 dained by constitutional authority. When the old Middle 
 Church was being dismantled and converted into a post-office, 
 Dr. Knox, of sacred and beloved memory, and I, there met 
 good Dr. Milner. As we stood in the pulpit, looking on the 
 ruin, and recalling the days of old, the years of many genera- 
 tions of worshippers in the venerable edifice. Dr. Milner said : 
 " do you keep up the custom of preaching on the catechism 
 every Sunday afternoon? " " No, Sir;" replied Dr. Knox, in 
 his mild tone ; " it has been directed that we shall go through 
 it once in four years instead of one." " That is," retorted Dr. 
 Milner very pleasantly, " you are obliged to make it four times 
 as tedious as before." Yet while the pleasantry was relished, 
 and the former custom might have been irksome and a change 
 
Protestant Reformed Dutch Church. 43 
 
 might have become desirable, it seems a simple dictate of rea- 
 son and prudence, that some method should be adopted in all 
 churches by which the people may receive distinct and system- 
 atic instruction in the evidences and articles of their faith. 
 Never, probably, was careful elementary exposition, and a 
 clear unfolding of doctrine, more imperative than in what is 
 proudly called our enlightened age ; when multiform specu- 
 lations of strange import are thrust upon the attention of 
 the people ; when preaching on taking themes and in the 
 treatment of subjects, seems to aim often at novelty to amuse or 
 startle, rather than substance to instruct ; and when vagueness 
 of conception exists painfully in the common mind in regard, 
 oftenfto some of the first principles of the oracles of God. 
 The consequence to be feared is, that many being less rooted 
 and grounded in principles than those of farmer times, and 
 being unfurnished with tlie armor of God, unguarded by 
 the panoply of an intelligent conception of christian doctrine, 
 will not readily detect the specious falsehood and may fall 
 into pernicious errors. It is said, philosophically, that re- 
 ligion is first intuitional and emotional ; and after it so exists, 
 it is formulated into a system and becomes theology. The 
 scholar may thus theorize if he please. But, practically, 
 Christianity exists in the great facts of the Bible alone, which 
 are its doctrines, its principles of belief and practice. And 
 personal Christianity does not first develop itself from some 
 vague sentiment of natural veneration ; it is not a deposit 
 from our own reasonings, which crystalize into christian 
 conviction ; but so far as it is christian experience, its very 
 essence is specific truth revealed in the Bible, received into 
 good and honest hearts, and lived in the life. And for this 
 end, instruction in the articles of faith is necessary. Any 
 other religiousness will prove evanescent, unreliable, dangerous. 
 The intuitional and emotional must flow from the Word and 
 keep close to it, or it becomes wild fire ; the mother of " all 
 monstrous, all prodigious things," under the name of religion, 
 it may be, but without " fruit unto life eternal." Christians 
 are those who believe in Christ as He is set forth in the 
 
44 Quarter-Millennial Anni-ocrsary of the 
 
 Gospel. And they should be so instructed as to " give a 
 reason of the hope that is in them," because it is a most 
 reasonable thing. Hence, in pastoral work, the importance 
 of doctrinal preaching. ''Go! teaehf" reads the great com- 
 mission : teach those distinctive principles, doctrines which 
 are the sinews and strength of the christian revelation. Thus 
 will the church become " the pillar and ground of the truth." 
 But, indeed, it is not our catechisms, which are now dis- 
 credited, but our very Bibles. Instead of, "In the beginning 
 God :" the philosopher now reads ; In the beginning, " the 
 potentialities of physical forces." Physical science leads the 
 age ; and it is very much in the hands of men manifestly 
 without religious sympathies inclining them " to look through 
 nature up to nature's God ;" or men avowedly or covertly hostile 
 to Christianity. It is pure, cold, materialism ; anti-superna- 
 tural ; anti-spiritual ; for a large part blank atheism. Yet are 
 their speculations no novelties. The universe came, say they, 
 and was not created. It fell into beautiful, grand, exquisite 
 forms and adaptations, by accident, and not by intelligent 
 design. And, mind, the most wonderful existence of all, 
 evolved itself out of inert, senseless matter ; and at the moment 
 of its appearance was as marvellously endowed in the first 
 man as now, and this miraculous power of evolution ended and 
 died. Thus the Bible ; our spiritual and immortal being ; moral 
 distinctions ; God, heaven, hell, are swept away as without 
 authority or utility ; and in a very literal and appalling sense, 
 this philosophy proclaims over the departing : " Dust thou 
 art and unto dust thou shalt forever return." Even where 
 such an extreme of atheism is not reached, this same un- 
 believing spirit cavils at the plain interpretation and authority 
 of the Bible. It is, says the Judas critic, a good book in 
 many respects, but is not in any special setise inspired and 
 infallible. Science discredits many of its representations. It 
 no longer satisfies the reason of the age. And the history 
 and teachings of Jesus Christ, and those of His Apo.stles, must 
 be received, explained or rejected, as our new light may 
 decide. All idea, however, that the book had a special, su- 
 
Protestant Rcfonncd Dutch Church. 45. 
 
 pernatural origin, was, in a strict sense, a directly inspired gift 
 of God, more than many other writings, is absurd. And you, 
 theologians and Christians, had better take the kindly warning 
 and not make yourselves ridiculous by insisting upon " old 
 wives' fables." But, again, this boasting is not new. So 
 Porphyry and Celsus proclaimed the overthrow of Christianity 
 in primitive times. So spake the Deists of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, and so the French encyclopedists. And, 
 all, singularly enough, with the same assumption and arro- 
 gance, and scorn of christian faith, which has ever puffed up 
 the infidel objector, as if his cause were already triumphant 
 and Christianity put to rout. Yet it has survived, and they 
 and their works caused no real impediment to its progress. 
 It lives ; its power over the soul is unabridged ; it is cherished 
 by growing numbers ; but where are they and their confident 
 predictions of its downfall? Not an outpost has been fairly 
 carried, and the citadel yet stands impregnable and defiant. 
 The truth is, there exists in the human soul, implanted by its 
 Maker, a conviction of the supernatural, and of immortality 
 and retribution, which the pride of philosophy may silence in 
 a few, but which, in the mass of human kind, not all the phi- 
 losophy on earth can extinguish. And also of all the religions 
 which have appeared, (and religion in some form man cannot do 
 without), of all these it is felt that Christianity alone fully meets 
 the case. It rests upon its own proper evidence, both external 
 and within, and is realized to be reasonable, elevating, satisfying, 
 sufficient. His Bible teaches the humble believer a more 
 sensible cosmogony than theirs ; his catechism unfolds sublimer 
 truths : to them his best reason assents, and scorns the other. 
 To his Bible, the catechism of his youth, the faith of his fathers, 
 a divine Redeemer and immortal hope through Him, he 
 cleaves, against all the wisdom of the wise — which is foolishness 
 with God. And the best way to foil the unbeliever and confirm 
 the faithful is to keep before the people the direct proofs and 
 doctrines of the Bible; at proper times even by simple catecheti- 
 cal rehearsal. Hence, the wisdom of the church in making 
 some authoritative provision for this end. — The practice of thus 
 
46 Quarter-Millennial Anniversary of tJie 
 
 keeping the great doctrines of the Bible prominent will also 
 serve to correct another tendency of the times, which is to 
 reduce religion to a mere philanthropy, and of course to con- 
 fine its range very much to this world and physical wants, 
 rather than to give it its true scope, the life of God in the soul 
 and the life eternal. There is indeed much suffering and sorrow 
 which demand tender sympathy and aid, but which no human 
 power can remove, and which the spiritual power of the Bible 
 alone enables men to support with hopeful submission. And 
 those influences will ever prevent the rebellious suicide from 
 seeking relief by breaking feloniously into the sacred house of 
 life. Poverty and vice, and degradation there are. But they 
 are not to be expelled by closing your Bibles, your churches, 
 your missions, and sabbath schools, and scattering the wealth 
 of the industrious and skillful among the idle or vicious. 
 These evils will always exist, but the only assuaging emollient, 
 the only panacea, is the elevating power of Christianity, as is 
 seen by comparing communities where it operates with those 
 from which it is absent. True religion evermore brings forth 
 the purest and most sustained philanthropy; but philantropy 
 is not all of religion. 
 
 I have pointed out our ecclesiastical origin in the established 
 church of Holland. For forty years, the Collegiate was the 
 only church in New Amsterdam. At first, 1626, they wor- 
 shipped in a large upper room over a horse-mill, which was 
 their house of prayer for seven years. In 1633, at the in- 
 stigation of Dominie Bogardus, a wooden building was put 
 up near what is now the Old Slip ; where they continued to 
 worship until 1642, when a new stone edifice was erected in 
 the fort, at the south-east corner of the Battery, and this they 
 occupied for fifty years, until 1693, when Garden Street was 
 opened — although the location had been seriously opposed as 
 being too far out of town — which objection has also been 
 urged at the erection of each successive new church edifice. 
 Until the erection of Garden Street, the rights of the church 
 and its property had been held by general laws. But in 
 1696, a regular charter was obtained from the Dutch William, 
 
Protestant Reforified Dutch Church. 47 
 
 a year or two before that of Trinity. And the names of the 
 consistory chartered are some Dutch, some Huguenot, still 
 found among us. In 1729, the Old Middle, on Cedar and 
 Liberty Streets, long called the New Dutch, and since the 
 Post Office, was dedicated. And in 1769, the North, corner 
 of William and Fulton, then in the fields. Dr. Laidlie 
 preached the dedication sermon, and English preaching was 
 fully established. The old church in the fort was named St. 
 Nicholas, the name of the Dutch tujelary saint, not yet 
 forgotten among those of the true lineage. It has not been 
 in my plan, however, to relate the details of church erections, 
 the lives of the pastors, or minute incidents, occurring through 
 the long history of our ecclesiastical existence. That work 
 has been done by several hands. Much information will be 
 found in Broadhead's History of New York ; in Dunshee's 
 History of the School ; in Judge Disosway's volume on The 
 Early Churches of Nezv York ; and in the sermon of my late 
 revered colleague. Dr. DeWitt, preached at the re-opening of 
 the North Church, in August, 1856. This last is so thorough, 
 as well as authentic in its gatherings, that scarce a few stray 
 sheafs remain wherewith a gleaner may fill his bosom. 
 
 With the increase of trade, and for agricultural objects, the 
 colony spread over Manhattan, to Brooklyn, up the river, and 
 into New Jersey ; and missions among the Aborigines were 
 also established. It has been claimed that the first Dutch 
 Church was at Fort Nassau or Orange, now Albany. The 
 history of that ancient church is very interesting ; but the 
 claim to priority is, I think, without historical foundation. It 
 shows, however, that with the Dutch immigrants, religion 
 went hand-in-hand with commerce. In process of time, after 
 1664, as the colony grew, other types of worship appeared. 
 But it should be noticed that, with the exception of a few 
 Portuguese Jews who fled to Holland and came here for traffic : 
 and with the exception of the Catholics in Maryland, and 
 also some Spanish Catholic settlements in the extreme South, 
 the whole of eastern North America, now included in the 
 United States, was discovered and settled by Protestants. 
 
48 Quarte7'-I\Iillen)iial Anniversary of tJie 
 
 And it will remain theirs so long, but only so long, as they 
 are faithful to the trust of civil and religious freedom, 
 extorted from persecuting powers, and confirmed to them as 
 by the last will and testament of the martyrs of the cross : 
 by "the church under the cross," as that of the early Dutch 
 Protestants was significantly named. — In consonance with the 
 example of the mother church, ours has always displayed a 
 catholic spirit in its intercourse with its neighbors : a spirit by 
 no means incompatibie with its love for its own fold. When 
 the English took possession, the chaplain of their forces held 
 service by invitation in the church at the Fort, as also did Mr. 
 Vesey, the first rector. When Garden Street was opened the 
 consistory invited him to occupy it part of the day. When 
 he was inducted into the rectorship of Trinity, the English 
 Governor named two of the Dutch ministers to represent the 
 body. On several occasions the consistory has very cordially 
 invited our Episcopal brethren to use our church edifices : 
 and the Episcopal ministers of the olden time on Sabbath 
 evenings attended the Dutch church and sat in the elders' pew, 
 as was the custom with our own ministers. Thus was the 
 good will expressed, that long united England and Holland 
 in ties of mutual advantage and confidence ; which was broken 
 from commercial rivalry by Cromwell and the witty and 
 vile Charles II, but which was resumed when William of 
 Orange drove out the Stuarts and bestowed constitutional 
 liberty on England and on America. It has been remarked 
 that social considerations greatly influence the church re- 
 lations of individuals. And between the Dutch and Epis- 
 copalians early intermarriages and the intimate social in- 
 tercourse they produced, established a very fraternal feeling, 
 which embraced the churches, and which jias not yet been 
 lost among their descendants. Indeed, i believe the original 
 Dutch families are now more numerously represented in that 
 body than in our own. In like manner a cordial, friendly 
 feeling and ready co-operation in good works with brethren of 
 other evangelical denominations have always prevailed in the 
 Dutch Church. Yet her spirit was conservative ; in doctrine ad- 
 
Reformed Protestant Duteh CJiitreh. 49 
 
 hering to the Calvinism originally professed ; equally removed 
 from Antinomianism on one side and Arminianism on the 
 other; and in practice inculcating not a dogmatical and 
 formal, but spiritual, active piety ; believing in true revivals, but 
 opposing the dreams of dreamers and the machinery and ex- 
 cesses of fanaticism. She has been less determined than per- 
 haps she should have been to "enlarge the place of her tents 
 and stretch abroad the curtains of her habitations;" and does 
 not at this day occupy so wide a space as early advantages 
 promised, and as might well be desired. But this fact is by 
 no means to be attributed to her creed or her forms. Many 
 adverse causes have been in operation. Naturally the Dutch 
 are not aggressive ; yet they have found on their borders some 
 of the most aggressive and self-reliant people on the face ot 
 the globe, who, in settling the New World, have far outstripped 
 them. Again, the persistent use of the Dutch language was 
 very detrimental. The changes also, authorized many years 
 ago when a new constitution was adopted, introduced the idea 
 that she needed greater assimilation to surrounding forms, to 
 make her more popular and give her better vantage ground ; 
 and that idea, entirely.erroneous as it has appeared to me, has 
 brought forth a brood of innovations, not for her own internal 
 good, nor for the good she was doing and was qualified to do 
 in the general Protestant family and the community at large. 
 The Dutch Church had, by inheritance, a name, a history, an 
 open Bible, a Protestant faith, an earnestness of spiritual life, 
 which gave her the affection and respect of all the Reformed. 
 Her worship was orderly and devout; her customs and usages 
 consonant with propriety and good taste, and were endeared 
 to her people by the tender and sacred associations of childhood 
 and antiquity. The Collegiate Church had its own high position 
 in the city as the Collegiate Dutch Church. And all voices of 
 the past and reasonings toward the future seemed to admonish 
 her with concurrent emphasis, to stand on the old paths and re- 
 buke novelists, and admit only such changes as the change of 
 conditions rendered manifestly imperative. A heedless digging 
 at the roots of an ancient oak may strike and sever those fine 
 
50 Qiiartcr-Millciuiial Anniversary of tJic 
 
 fibers that run far down into the soil and give it its nutriment, its 
 leafy glories, its fruit, its long life, and hold it upright and 
 steady in its place. And then a slight wind may shake and lay 
 low the pride of the forest. Yet the old church is not over- 
 thrown. Vital power and large resources she has, and wisely 
 directed they will keep her in her proper position of eminence 
 and usefulness. "As a teil tree and as an oak whose substance 
 is (yet) in them when they cast their leaves, so the holy 
 seed is the substance thereof" 
 
 The completion of one-quarter of a thousand years brings 
 out an interesting review. The church of the horse-mill has 
 been succeeded by nine church erections, most of them large 
 and imposing structures. Twenty-eight pastors have officiated 
 in the pulpits — five of them still living. Devout men and 
 women in large numbers have filled the seats, formerly in not 
 a few instances, the same pew being occupied by several gen- 
 erations. Nearly twenty-seven thousand children have re- 
 ceived baptism. The fifty " Walloons and Dutch," who 
 partook of the first Lord's Supper in that upper loft, have 
 increased to nearly eleven thousand communicants. And of 
 the funds, nearly $400,000 have been given to other churches 
 and ministers, chiefly within the present century. Besides 
 the direct blessings in the conversion of sinners, and in the 
 pure lives, and happy, hopeful deaths of the many pious wor- 
 shippers, who can compute the indirect influences exerted by 
 such an institution upon the morals, the peace and prosperity 
 of the community?" Eternity alone can unroll the record. 
 Would that this memorable day might be to us as that day 
 when the reading of the long, forgotten law aroused Israel 
 to remember God's dealings with their fathers, and to covenant 
 anew to walk in his statutes, and observe his ordinances to 
 keep them. Then should our altars glow with fresh flames, 
 and our churches anew would be filled with the divine presence 
 and glory. 
 
 I place myself in imagination upon the tongue of Manhattan 
 Island, two hundred and fifty years ago. All nature is clothed 
 in the garments it wore at the creation. The rivers roll quietly 
 
Reformed Protesta?it Dutch Church. 5 i 
 
 on, and the beautiful bay spreads out its waters unruffled, 
 excepting as the canoe of the Indian shoots across its bosom. 
 But gradually the scene changes. The city rises to view and 
 grows, until it becomes the largest of the Western World, the 
 great heart of the continent, sending the strong pulsations of 
 intellectual, commercial, political, social, religious " life, to the 
 remotest extremities. North and South and East and West, 
 the vast wildernesses have been cleared away. In place of 
 sparse tribes, who made the forests their hunting grounds, 
 and the streams their fisheries, appear myriads of the most 
 intelligent and enterprising people in the world ; hamlets have 
 given place to populous cities, the wigwam to the palace, 
 adorned with all that wealth can buy, or taste can create. 
 Instead of the whoop of the savage that scared the solitude, 
 the roar of machinery and the bustle of untiring industry 
 animates the rivers, the great lakes, the plains ; and now, by 
 modern inventions, time and space seem annihilated, and the 
 North speaks to the South, and the voices on the Atlantic are 
 echoed from the Pacific shores. The colonies have passed 
 into the greatest Republic the world has known, which is felt 
 to be a power" among nations, an essential factor in the ad- 
 vancement of the race. The whole primeval wilderness teems 
 with civilized men; the wide domain is infused and impelled 
 by the thought and principles of Christianity, and a new con- 
 tinent is set as a brilliant star in the crown of Im'manuel. 
 
 We turn to the East, and the ocean, over which small 
 shallops brought adventurous men to unknown lands is cross- 
 ed in every direction by multitudes of ships, carrying the 
 stores of both continents to and fro, and hundreds of thousands 
 of voyagers. Meantime, Europe has more than once been 
 shaken to its foundations and presents a new aspect. Some 
 of the old monarchies survive ; but thrones have been 
 cast down ; old institutions have vanished ; the masses have 
 been elevated; the stately grandeur and arrogance of the i^v^' 
 humbles itself before the many, and political forms appear, 
 in which the people are considered as an element in the 
 state. Literature, science, the mechanical arts, have made 
 
52 Quarter- Millennial Anniversaiy of the 
 
 astonishing progress, and changed the very face of life. 
 Popery and Mohammedanism have lost their significance, and are 
 manifestly hasting to their predicted end. The Oriental world 
 has thrown down its separating walls, and the faith, enterprise, 
 civilization, religion of the west are introducing new ideas, a 
 new faith and new soul into their effete systems. " Eastern 
 Java now kneels with the native of the farthest west and 
 worships." No former period of history, not the rise and 
 supremacy of Imperial Rome when it spread Roman power, 
 and thoughts and institutions over the nations ; nor when the 
 empire broke into the ten prophetic kingdoms behind which 
 the little horn came up to seduce, and subdue, and crush all 
 other power; no portion of recorded time has wrought such 
 changes upon man's earthly habitation, and thoughts and 
 modes of living as have occurred during the life-time of this 
 church. The politician and the historian see truly, but see 
 only the effects of man's agency and rest in second- causes. 
 The Christian surveys the scene in another spirit, and recog- 
 nizes the march of the King of Kings " whose goings forth 
 have been from of old, from everlasting." He sees in all the 
 course of time, and especially in these later events, the acts of 
 Jesus Christ whose is this world and who seems now hasting His 
 preparations to take full possession of His purchased Kingdom, 
 " the earth and the fulness thereof" He sees and adores. 
 
 But what eye can pierce the darkness ; what human sagacity 
 can forecast the events of the next 250 years ? It is not given 
 to man to read the future. But the Scriptures utter divine 
 revelations, and say " let him that readeth understand." 
 Upon that darkness, then, we turn the lamp of prophecy, and 
 wondrous scenes are unfolded to the eye of faith. Long be- 
 fore those years shall have run their course the millennial 
 glory, as we believe, shall have overspread the earth. Not in 
 the degradation of the mediator, Christ, to a human shape, 
 surrounding himself with the pageantry and low splendors of a 
 worldly monarchy shall it be. But upon the throne to which 
 He ascended, sitting at the right hand of the Father, " He shall 
 see the travail of His soul ;" the life of sorrow ; the agony of the 
 
Reformed Protestant Dutch Church. 5 3 
 
 garden ; the impalement of Calvary ; the disgrace of death ; His 
 incarnation and atonement in their blessed fruits, " and shall be 
 satisfied." The church shall continue its offices, not, as we 
 believe, all merged in one, but still diverse in form to suit 
 diversity of tastes, yet truly one in mutual recognition, and 
 brotherhood and love. Governments will exist, and they not one, 
 perhaps, but several. Social and civil life will go on as now, for 
 men will still be men, but good men. And learning and the 
 arts of life, inventions and discoveries which even in our day of 
 wonders we can scarce imagine, will be in full operation. Wars 
 and rumors of wars shall be no more heard. Commerce shall 
 interchange the riches of all climes and bring all people into 
 kind fellowship. All these various agencies in harmonious 
 action, which are God's providence over the world, and above 
 all, Christianity, the one acknowledged religion, pervading and 
 animating all hearts, all relations, all duties; these and such 
 shall be the days of the Son of Man on the earth and they shall 
 last a thousand years. Then, and now speedily perhaps, shall be 
 heard the gratulations of a renovated race. The prophetic sea 
 of peoples, and nations and tongues, so long at strife, shall have 
 rocked itself to rest. And diverse languages shall make no 
 discord, but become the several parts in the one hymn of 
 praise ; and there shall go up from all peoples and tongues 
 under heaven, earth's grand hallelujah chorus, and the burden 
 shall be : " Now is come salvation and strength, and the 
 Kingdom of our God and the power of His Christ." 
 
Reformed Protestant Dutch Chnrc/i. 55 
 
 $n\i\m in i-^F ^tiFning. 
 
 These vuere eanditcted accarding to the follotuing 
 
 pr0gratnme, luhich uias carried out 
 
 to the minutest particular. 
 
56 
 
 Qitartcr-MillciDiial A)i)iivcrsary of the 
 
 Irocjramim for (l^faemng Scrb'ite. 
 
 Beu. ^albot '(M . ^hambci|8, B.B., pijesiding, 
 
 1 ie geum 
 3 ftyum 557 
 
 ^ijendelssohn 
 
 by Hcv. m. I. B. ipayloii, B3. L^tcZr, 
 
 Of the 
 
 I. Glorious things of thee are spoken, 
 
 Zion, city of our God ; 
 He whose word cannot be broken, 
 
 Formed thee for His own abode : 
 On the Rock of Ages founded. 
 
 What can shake thy sure repose ? 
 With salvation's walls surrounded. 
 
 Thou mayst smile at all thy foes. 
 
 Church 
 
 See, the streams of living waters, 
 
 Spnnging from eternal love. 
 Well supply thy sons and daughters, 
 
 And all fear of want remove : 
 Who can faint, while such a river 
 
 Ever flows their thirst to assuage ? 
 Grace, which, like the Lord, the Giver, 
 
 Never fails from age to age. 
 
 5 g^tldf^^^ 
 
 7 ^aar(?!s$ 
 
 Round each habitation hovering. 
 
 See the cloud and fire appear. 
 For a glory and a covering. 
 
 Showing that the Lord is near : 
 Thus deriving from their Banner 
 
 Light by night, and shade by day. 
 Safe they feed upon the manna 
 
 Which He gives them when they pray. 
 
 by BevJ. iPoiigan Bix, !t?).B. 
 
 Of the 
 
 Protestant 
 Episcopal Church 
 
 by ilicv. '%. l^. Bogeiis, !t?).B. \^^ 
 "^h«s Iteavens aijc felling." 
 
 Of the 
 efornied 
 tch Church 
 
 lllaydn 
 
 by Bev. lowajjd (^Jiosby, B.B. ^'''c'hurch 
 
 Of the 
 
 8 g^ddresi^ 
 
 by Beu. ^homas B. ^^'nderson, H^^b. {Baptist church 
 
Reformed Protestant Dutch CliurcJi. 57 
 
 Irogramme for €betung ^<;rbia. 
 
 O plpui X - . . _ ^uue, " i^anctus " 
 
 I. Holy, Holy, Holy ! Lord God Almighty ! 
 
 Early in the morning our songs shall rise to Thee : 
 Holy, Holy, Holy ! merciful and mighty ; 
 God in Three Persons, Blessed Trmity I 
 
 Holy, Holy, Holy ! all the saints adore Thee, 
 
 Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea. 
 
 Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee, 
 Which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be. 
 
 3. Holy, Holy, Holy ! Though the darkness hide Thee, 
 
 Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see. 
 Only Thou art Holy ; there is none beside Thee 
 Perfect in power, in love, and purity. 
 
 4. Holy, Holy, Holy ! Lord God Almighty ! 
 
 All Thy works shall praise Thy name, in earth, and sky, and sea : 
 Holy, Holy, Holy ! merciful and mighty ; 
 
 God in Thi-ee Persons, Blessed Trinity ! Amen. 
 
 1 %mxm - by Bev. ^. 1. I^iffany, :i?).B. 1,,,^'!;^,,^ 
 
 1 1 ^(Ulr^lSi.Si - bij Beu. Eicbaiid %. ^toims, B.B. | c°"g-g^4""'' 
 
 12 galklujaft ^\\tsxn - - - - :^andel 
 
 13 goxMogjI - fgnm574. - ^vme, "i^-)H fundiied" 
 
 I. P'rom all that dwell below the skies 2. Eternal are Thy mercies, Lord : 
 Let the Creator's praise arise ; , Eternal truth attends Thy word ; 
 
 Let the Redeemer's name be sung Thy praise shall sound from shore 
 
 Through every land, by every tongue. to shore 
 
 Till suns shall set and rise no more. 
 
 1^ §ewc(lktiatt 
 
 Music will be under the direction of Dr. S. Austen Pearce. 
 
 Mr. W. E. Beames will preside at Organ. 
 
Reformed Protestant Diiteli ClutrcJi. 59 
 
 ®I)C 2lili!VC6SCS. 
 
 At half-past seven o'clock the Rev. Dr. Chambers 
 took the chair, and the pulpit was occupied by the 
 other pastors and the officiating clergy, At the close 
 of the preliminary music and devotions, the president 
 said : 
 
 "The purpose for which we are gathered this even- 
 ing is to listen to some words of sympathy and con- 
 gratulation from brethren representing the different 
 ecclesiastical communions by which we are surrounded. 
 The oldest of them dates its origin back to the 
 English conquest, and came naturally to be called at 
 that time the Engrlish church, while we were known as 
 the Dutch church. The speaker this afternoon re- 
 minded us of the pleasant relations which then existed 
 between the two bodies. Those relations have con- 
 tinued unchanged from that day to this. There was, 
 at the close of the last century, a ripple of controversy 
 on a doctrinal point between one of the ministers of 
 this church (the Rev. Dr. Wm. Linn), and one of the 
 
6o Quartcr-Milloinial Anniversary of tJie 
 
 assistant ministers of Trinity, (the Rev. Dr. Benjamin 
 Moore, afterwards Bishop of the Diocese), and it 
 resulted, as such controversies usually do, in each party 
 being more firmly persuaded of his own opinion; but 
 it was conducted without personalities, without bitter- 
 ness, and left no sting behind. 
 
 "I have the pleasure of introducing to you, as the 
 representative of that church, one whom we honor for 
 his own sake, and for his father's sake, and for the 
 sake of the official position which he occupies : the 
 Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix, Rector of Trinity Church." 
 
Reformed Protestant Dutch ChurcJi. 6 1 
 
 DR. DIX'S ADDRESS. 
 
 Reverend Fathers of the Consistory of the Collegiate Church, 
 and dear friends and brethren : 
 
 In the name of the most high God, whose dominion is an 
 everlasting dominion and His kingdom from generation to 
 generation, under whose protection we are gathered together 
 here, and to whom alone we look as the giver of every good 
 and perfect gift, I bring to you, on this two hundred and fiftieth 
 anniversary, the message of good will and peace. Peace be 
 to you in this your spiritual house ; peace be to you in your 
 homes and in your liearts ; and love with faith from God the 
 Father and the Lord Jesus Christ ; and grace be with all them 
 that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. 
 
 Let me begin by disclaiming for myself the very high honor 
 of occupying the first place among the speakers of this even- 
 ing. That honor belongs to the office I hold, not to the person 
 who fills it. Every one familiar with our metropolitan history 
 knows that the rector of Trinity Church for the time being 
 would, as a matter of course, be present on this occasion. 
 The corporations which you and I represent are the oldest in 
 the City of New York. The Collegiate Church and Trinity 
 Church have long, long histories, which began when this 
 city was comparatively a mere village, and have run on, side 
 by side, in cloud and sunshine, under the providence of Al- 
 mighty God. We have always been good friends ; through 
 some special perils, common to us both have we been brought 
 in safety ; our relations in the earliest days were very intimate; 
 and although those relations no longer exist, yet the mutual 
 honor and regard have not failed. Thus it is meet and right 
 that on this great day of your rejoicing we should see each 
 other face to face, and that I should bring to you a kind word 
 
62 Qiiaj-tcr-Miliennial Anniversary of the 
 
 from my people, and in their name, as well as on my own 
 part, wish you health and prosperity. 
 
 Changes have come with the growing years to your house; 
 but while we keep this feast the thoughts revert, as by instinct, 
 to the Dutch era of our history and the old Dutch Church. 
 With accuracy have you counted the days back into the past. 
 In 1623 the first permanent agricultural settlement was made 
 in New Netherland, and in 1628, five years later, the first 
 Dutch minister arrived at Manhattan, and began the regular 
 exercise of his ministry. That period of our history is appre- 
 ciated more and more as time passes on. I was trained from 
 my boyhood to honor and love the good old Dutch forefathers, 
 and to admire their simple, homely ways ; the studies of mature 
 years have added force and depth to those first impressions. 
 The latest of our historical writers, in treating of those times, 
 says that " it is plain that under the Dutch rule New York 
 must have been the happiest, though not the most progressive, 
 of the American provinces." " That happiness," he adds, 
 " was due to the simplicity and contentment, the easy-going 
 industry and love of harmless amusement, and to the liberal 
 and kindly spirit which marked the men and their manners." 
 " They worked steadily, governed their households wisely, and 
 persecuted nobody." No wonder that they enjoyed life; no 
 wonder that our restless, pushing, driving, ambitious, and dis- 
 satisfied people do not enjoy it. Talk as we may of modern 
 enterprise and progress, they do not always bring happiness ; 
 they are apt to banish peace and breed discontent and disgust. 
 The happy days are gone, to return no more till men will 
 moderate and curb their desires, and relish, as of old, a quiet, 
 simple life. 
 
 You all know that the first form of Christianity professed in 
 this place was brought hither by the settlers from Holland. 
 Your ancestors did nothing without religion. Hither came 
 the dominies, the schoolmasters, the comforters-of-the-sick, 
 along with the first colonists ; and on those humble foundations 
 which they laid was invoked the benediction of Almighty God. 
 You know, also, that the Dutch were a liberal and tolerant 
 
Refonncd Protestant Dutch Church. 63 
 
 people; and that, as a consequence of their generous temper 
 and policy, this island became an asylum for the persecuted 
 and oppressed in adjacent parts. It is one of the brightest 
 features in your history; it explains, perhaps, the cordiality 
 with which your invitation to rejoice with you this evening has 
 been accepted. 
 
 But while we, descendants of English Churchmen, thus do 
 honor to the virtues of the Dutch and to the spirit of that 
 form of Christianity which they established here, we may 
 claim credit and commendation for the way in which our 
 ancestors behaved themselves when the first period of the his- 
 tory closed. New Amsterdam was taken ; it became New 
 York ; and the Church of England was planted where the Classis 
 of Amsterdam had been the supreme and only ecclesiastical 
 authority. But observe how scrupulously the rights of your 
 forefathers were respected. There is nothing like it in history ; 
 never did conquerors treat the conquered with such deference 
 and consideration. As far as possible the old customs 
 were preserved ; private rights, contracts, inheritances, were 
 scrupulously regarded ; and as for the Reformed Dutch 
 Church, it seems to have been treated as a sacred thing. It 
 was more than protected ; it was actually established by law 
 by an English governor under English auspices. This was, 
 perhaps, no more than a fair return for the good deeds done 
 by your people. When your turn came to be under the yoke, 
 it was said to you in substance : " You shall still be free ; 
 not one of your old customs shall be changed until you 
 change them yourselves ; by us you shall not be meddled 
 with ; keep your places of worship, your flocks, and all you 
 have, in peace." And so, to their old church of St. Nicholas, 
 inside the fort, did your people continue to wend their way in 
 absolute security, though English sentries were at the gates ; 
 and within the walls over which the standard of England 
 waved did the good Dutch dominie speak his mind as freely 
 as ever to his spiritual children ; nor was it until they had 
 finished their devotions and withdrawn that the English 
 chaplain ventured within the same house of worship to read 
 
64 Qnartcr-Millcniiial Anniversary of the 
 
 his Office from the Book of Common Prayer. I see in this 
 what does credit to humanity ; here be kind consideration, ' 
 mutual respect, and on both sides a study of the things that 
 make for peace. Nor is it strange that when the Episcopal 
 ministry was at length set up, and my reverend predecessor, 
 William Vesey, had appeared in New York, in deacon's and 
 priest's orders, and having his commission as first rector of 
 Trinity Church, the civil ceremony of induction should have 
 taken place in the new stone church in Garden Street belong- 
 ing to the Dutch congregation, and that among the subscribing 
 witnesses should have been two of the ministers of your faith. 
 It was on Christmas-day, in the year of our Lord 1697, that 
 he was duly inducted into his office by Governor Benjamin 
 Fletcher ; and in the same building, for about three months, 
 until the completion of the church of the English congregation, 
 did your Dominie Selyns and our Rector Vesey officiate 
 alternately, the one in the Dutch language, the other in the 
 English tongue. 
 
 It is not only on the religious side, however, that you chal- 
 lenge our respect as a historic body; your church was the 
 pioneer of education in this place. The good old Dutch fore- 
 fathers believed that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of 
 wisdom ; and so wherever they sent the minister they also 
 sent the schoolmaster, that learning might go on abreast with 
 religion, and that religion might give its blessing to learning. 
 When the colony passed under English rule the old system 
 was exactly maintained; with this sole difference, that school- 
 masters must get their licenses from tl,ie Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury instead of the Amsterdam Classis. It is generally 
 acknowledged that the existing system of education in the 
 State of New York owes its origin, in part, to the character, 
 policy, and customs of your predecessors, whose scheme, in 
 its general features, was adopted by the English, and whose 
 influence thus remained active long after the reins of civil 
 power had been taken from their hands. 
 
 Of such as these specimens are the other parts of the 
 historical record of your venerable household of faith ; and 
 
Reformed Protestant Dutch Church. 65 
 
 for these good beginnings are you justly held in honor by 
 the intelligent citizens of New York. What has been the 
 history of your denomination, from those early days to our 
 own, you know better than we who are exterior to your fold ; 
 but, in observing you, we think that we find among the 
 children many of those qualities and traits which pleased us 
 in the fathers. You have little or nothing to do with sensa- 
 tional religion ; you seem a sober-minded, steady-going folk ; 
 you do not shock us by exhibitions of unwholesome excite- 
 ment, nor do you, by your manners or words, rob religion 
 of her dignity, or weaken the habit of reverence in the hearts 
 of the young. It has been my fortune to become acquainted, 
 officially, with some individuals of your number ; I am now 
 connected in the same way with others, by duties which bring 
 us frequently together ; and in these cases, what was at first 
 a professional acquaintanceship has ultimately taken the 
 higher form of sincere respect and affectionate regard. In 
 particular I recall the venerable form, the benevolent features, 
 of one whom I came to honor and love, and on whose 
 memory I shall ever dwell as that of one who seemed a 
 pattern of Christian virtues — the Rev. Thomas De Witt, whose 
 colleague I was for several years in the fulfillment of an im- 
 portant trust, a man whom it was a help and blessing to know. 
 If he and men like him were fair examples of the result of 
 your principles and the quality of your religion, you cannot 
 be thought to have degenerated, even though in name, and 
 perchance otherwise, changes have passed over your house. 
 To that house I cheerfully bring greeting from our people, 
 assuring you of our good will, and trusting that, as years go 
 on, we may work together, under the providence of the Lord 
 of all, for those ends which shall best promote His glory, the 
 salvation of souls through Christ, and the peace and order 
 of the commonwealth. 
 
66 Qiiaiicr-Miiiciinial Anniversary of the 
 
 At the conclusion of the foregoing- address, Dr. 
 Chambers said : 
 
 " In the early part of this century, one of the congre- 
 gations of the Collegiate church separated itself from 
 the main body and became independent. This was 
 the Garden Street church. When its house of wor- 
 ship, then, I think, the oldest in the city, w^as de- 
 stroyed by the disastrous fire in 1835, it divided itself 
 into two branches, one remaining in the lower part 
 of the city, the other removing up-town. The last 
 pastor of one of those branches, the Rev. Dr Hutton, 
 honored us with his venerable presence this afternoon, 
 and took part in the services. The present pastor 
 of the other, the Rev. Dr. Rogers, for many years 
 minister at Albany, in the church, of what two centuries 
 ago was called Fort Orange, an organization next in 
 age to our own, has consented to speak to us in the 
 name of the other Dutch churches of the island." 
 
Refonned Protestajit DutcJi Church. 67 
 
 DR. ROGERS'S ADDRESS. 
 
 Dear Brethren : 
 
 It is a matter of congratulation to myself that the duty 
 assigned me on this occasion is one which does not call for 
 lengthened or elaborate address. I come here as one of the 
 children of the ancient household, visiting the old paternal 
 roof, and bringing the congratulations and good wishes of the 
 family circle to the old folks at home. And it is a pleasant 
 thing that it comes just at this season of the year, when we 
 are to keep our annual thanksgiving service which brings 
 together the scattered children of the household, who come 
 back in so many instances throughout our land to see the 
 spot that gave them birth, to see the parents who brought 
 them into being and reared and cherished them, to thank them 
 for all they did for them in their infancy and youth, and to 
 spend a few hours in sweet family union and communion 
 before they separate again to go back to the work and the 
 warfare of life. 
 
 There are many of my brethren here to-night, sir, who 
 might more appropriately, more effectively, and more elo- 
 quently discharge the duty which the kindness of your Con- 
 sistory has assigned to me ; but there is not one of them all 
 who can do it with a warmer heart, or with a more true affec- 
 tion, or with a higher appreciation of what the Dutch Church 
 in New York owes to this ancient and venerable body. And 
 yet, sir, I have been in a measure perplexed as to the question 
 of identity and propriety here. Why, as I sat this afternoon 
 and listened to that glowing and eloquent description of the 
 history of the Dutch Church of New York, all it had done, 
 all it was, all that God had enabled it to be and to do, I sat in 
 the most comfortable and pleasant state of mind, thinking 
 
68 Quarter-Millennial Anniversary of the 
 
 that I was part of all that, and that my church, having been 
 for nearly two hundred years one of this circle of churches, 
 was the oldest of them all. I find when I look at that docu- 
 ment which called me to my native city, after years of absence, 
 to take a pastoral charge here, that I was called by the elders 
 and deacons of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in 
 Garden Street, in the city of New York, to be their pastor ; 
 and I learned this afternoon what I knew well before, sir, that 
 that old Garden Street church in the city of New York was 
 the very first of the Dutch churches of this city, and for many 
 years was the oldest church in this connection. And so I be- 
 gan to feel really it was a very indelicate thing for me to take 
 any public part in this service, as I was one of the family, and 
 should rather sit and absorb all these delightful and pleasant 
 things which our friend Dr. Dix has begun by saying, and 
 which these other excellent brethren are to continue to say 
 this evening. And yet it is a fact that seventy-two or seventy- 
 three years ago Garden Street did become independent of this 
 venerable body ; and so by a strange transformation — trans- 
 migration, I should say — one of the fathers has come to be 
 one of the sons, and I am sent here now to speak for the rest 
 of the children. Well, sir, I am glad to be counted as one of 
 the sons, and to have the honor of speaking in behalf of such 
 a respectable family. Sir, I bring you, then, the congratula- 
 tions, good wishes, and grateful thanks of the other churches 
 of our faith and name in this great city and vicinity. We 
 honor you ; we love you ; we are grateful to you ; we thank 
 God that we belong to the same family circle, and we are 
 grateful to you, grateful to this church, that for this two hun- 
 dred and fifty years it has held up on this Island and in this 
 land the banner of Christ witl% such a firm, true, and loyal 
 grasp, never trailing it before the foe. Many a trumpeter 
 blowing the silver trumpet of the Gospel has ascended your 
 towers during this two hundred and fifty years, but in not a 
 single case has the trumpet given an uncertain sound. The 
 pure faith of God's Word, the faith dear to our fathers, the 
 faith transmitted by them to us, the faith sent across the sea 
 
Reformed Protestant Dutch Church. 69 
 
 to bear fruit in this Western wilderness, has been upheld by 
 them during all this two hundred and fifty years with a true 
 Christian fidelity and Christian heroism ; and the children, 
 speaking in their name, are strengthened in their attachment 
 to this ancient faith and these ancient forms by the noble ex- 
 amjDle of fidelity which this church has set us during all these 
 two hundred and fifty years. No man who has sat under the 
 ministry of those men of God whose portraits grace the room 
 in the rear of this building, at which I wish all this vast as- 
 sembly could look, for they could not see in any portrait gal- 
 lery in the earth a nobler set of men — men of God, men of 
 culture, men of scholarship, men of devotion ; no man can 
 say that the trumpet has in a solitary case given an uncertain 
 sound, but the truths which, as we heard this afternoon, 
 have been testified to by the sufferings and blood of the 
 fathers in the old land, have been presented by the sons with 
 equal fidelity, and have borne abundant fruit in this new world ; 
 and all the children, the thousands and tens of thousands of 
 children that have been trained up in this church have been 
 trained, up in the same faith. And if you will remember the 
 history of the men who have been reared up in this church 
 and have gone out in the various walks of life, whose names I 
 might recount here, you would say that their history and 
 character were the natural influence of such a thorough and 
 earnest training. 
 
 What shall I say of the men themselves who have stood on 
 these towers and preached this faith ? I remember some of 
 them. I shall remember them as long as I live. Take the 
 three men who were the pastors of this church in my child- 
 hood, who, as I met them sometimes on the Sabbath arrayed 
 in their canonicals, impressed-my youthful imagination more 
 profoundly than it has ever been impressed since those days — 
 take these three men, so unlike and with so much individu- 
 ality about them, and yet such men of poAver and of such 
 wonderful character — Knox, Brownlee, and De Witt. If these 
 three men alone were to go down to posterity as the repre- 
 sentatives of the ministry of this church, their testimony 
 
Quaytcr-Millcit)ti(xl A)niivcrsan' of tin 
 
 would be one which never could be gainsaid. It would carry 
 convincing power to the very end of time in behalf of the 
 church which had chosen and sat under the ministry of men 
 like these. . So 1 might speak of the laymen of the church — 
 men \\\\o, in the various branches of life, at the bar, minister- 
 ing to the sick, in the walks of trade and finance, have been 
 men distinguished for integrity, for uprightness, for devout- 
 ness, for the fear of God and the love of all that was good in 
 man — such men as Wood, Woodruff, Frelinghuysen, Slosson, 
 Smith, Nelson, Van Nest, Suydam, Sturges, Jeremiah, and 
 Brower — and other men whom I cannot recall at the mo- 
 ment, but whose names are household words in the walks 
 of trade and among the brethren of the bar, and their 
 children and their children's children. The church that has 
 trained up and sent forth such men is certainly entitled to the 
 gratitude of all this community. 
 
 And, sir, I feel that we owe a debt of gratitude to 
 this church because she has maintained always the exter- 
 nals of worship, not only in their purity, but in their 
 beauty, in their liberality, and in their propriety. My 
 excellent friend who preceded me alluded to this. Surely 
 something is due of gratitude from the children to the parents 
 who have maintained the house of God in its beauty, in its 
 dignity, and who have kept its pulpit sacredly free, as has so 
 well been said, from anything like sensationalism, anything 
 that ministers to the lower tastes of the populace. I thank 
 God that the Dutch Church has no place in it for sensation- 
 alists, and if any ever appear for a time among us, they very 
 soon find that they are in an uncongenial atmosphere, and 
 they gravitate inevitably to their own place. I thank God 
 that our Church has always preserved the order, the decorum 
 and dignity of its pulpit, and the beauty and simplicity of its 
 forms of worship. And I am grateful that it has set an ex- 
 ample to all churches respecting caring for the ministry of the 
 Word. Her arrangements for them have always been of the 
 most becoming and liberal character. It was said in regard 
 to a certain distinguished New England divine, many years 
 
Reformed Protestant Diitcli Churcli. y i 
 
 ago, during his call to a certain prominent pulpit, the commit- 
 tee said : " We hope that if you accept our call, you will trust 
 God to keep you humble : you may trust the church to keep 
 you poor." That has not been the principle of this church. 
 She has never had one standard of spirituality for her dominies 
 and another for her members. She has provided things, not 
 only honest, but liberal in the sight of all men, and as believ- 
 ing in the cardinal principle of God's own word, that the 
 laborer is worthy of his hire. And in that she is entitled to 
 the gratitude of her children, and is an example to all her 
 sisters. But, sir, I must not enlarge ; in fact, I feel the time 
 is sacred to the representatives of other churches, and that I, 
 as one of you, have nothing to say except we are glad to come 
 back to our own home to see our parents, and to rejoice in 
 their vigor. Why, they are two hundred and fifty years old, 
 but there is not a wrinkle on their brows. Who would sup- 
 pose that he who enchanted us so long this afternoon was the 
 s2n;or minister of this church ? Why, the church is two hun- 
 dred and fifty years old ; but what is two hundred and fifty 
 years? We are just beginning our work — just beginning our 
 life. May you go on and set us a good example in all those 
 things to which I have referred, steadfast to the truth of God, 
 caring for the order and dignity of God's house, respecting 
 and honoring the faithful ministers of God, training up the 
 children in the fear of the Lord and in the faith of Jesus 
 Christ, and giving largely to benevolent causes, and to assist 
 feeble churches. I might have said much on that score, but 
 your character is too well known to need any enlargement. 
 May the past be prophetic of the future. For whatever may 
 be the signs of the times in regard to denominational pros- 
 perity and growth, one thing is certain, the power that this 
 church has exerted, and the prosperity to which it has attained 
 in these two hundred and fifty years, has been due to the fact 
 that its foundation was God's truth, the cross of Christ ; and 
 that foundation still stands, and on that foundation in years to 
 come this church, still resting and trusting to the power of 
 God's Spirit, has nothing to fear from the progress of time. 
 
72 Quarter- Milli'juiial AiDih'crsarv of the 
 
 We only hope that when generations and generations still, 
 have passed away, and we who are now the children, fathers, 
 and grandfathers, go down to our graves, others will arise up 
 after us to come up to such convocations as this in days to 
 come, and thank God then that this church lives, has done, is 
 doing, and will do a blessed work for God, for truth, for our 
 country, and for the world. 
 
Reformed Protestant Dutch Church. 73 
 
 After the performance of the anthem, "The Heav- 
 ens are TelHng," Dr. Chambers said : 
 
 " The next oldest denomination in our city is one 
 closely resembling our own in doctrine, and order, 
 and spirit — one with which we have always held in 
 timate and affectionate correspondence. It will be 
 represented here this evening by one equally distin- 
 guished in letters, in the professorial chair, and in 
 the pulpit ; one who was born and spent the most of 
 his life in this city, and one peculiarly dear to us as 
 springing from an ancestry which for generations has 
 been honored and loved in our Church. I have the 
 pleasure to introduce to you the Rev. Dr. Howard 
 Crosby." 
 
Refoniicd Protestant Dutch Church. 75 
 
 DR. CROSBY'S ADDRESS, 
 
 The Presbyterian Church most joyfully takes its place in 
 the ranks of those who to-night would honor and congratu- 
 late the oldest sister church on the Island of Manhattan. We 
 think we hold a very desirable position, chronologically, in 
 the Protestant family in New York. We look to our older 
 sisters, the Reformed Dutch and Episcopal churches, with an 
 affection that is somewhat tinged with reverence, while we 
 look upon our younger sisters, the Baptist, the Methodist, and 
 the Congregational churches with an equal warmth of affec- 
 tion, but, perhaps, tinged somewhat with a patronizing, or, 
 rather, niatroiii.ziiig spirit. 
 
 We draw from our older sisters that dignity and conserva- 
 tism which have always marked them, while we also are able 
 to exhibit some of that plastic adaptedness which so charac- 
 terizes our younger sisters. We think we stand midway be- 
 tween these for great good to ourselves. And yet, historically, 
 there is one fact concerning us which makes us not a little 
 proud in comparison with them all. If we look for that which 
 constitutes a mark of a church's genuineness, we look for 
 martyrdom, for persecution ; and wie boast of being the only 
 church in the city of New York that began its career amid 
 the storm of persecution. Let me carry you back, if you are 
 not aware of the story, to a fact in the history of this Island 
 of Manhattan. I touch for a few moments (for only a few 
 moments are given me) on the history of the Presbyterian 
 Church here. Let us go back to the month of January, 1707, 
 a cold January day, and we will take a look into the Govern- 
 or's house. There never was a Colonial Governor in New 
 York who so completely aped the monarch as Lord Cornbury, 
 He was own cousin to Queen Anne, who was then upon the 
 
76 Quarter- MillciDiial Anniversary of tlu 
 
 throne. He was determined to make the colonists understand 
 his relationship to the sovereign ; and so he carried a little 
 regal state with him in his gubernatorial home. We come to 
 that Governor's house and see those royally-furnished apart- 
 ments, and behold the Governor himself covered with gold 
 lace, proud of his dignity, sitting at his dinner-table, and at 
 the table, as invited guests, two very marked men — one es- 
 pecially you would note for his noble bearing, a man who wa£ 
 a scholar ; a man of fascinating appearance and manner, but 
 with a broad Scotch dialect. These two guests had but lately 
 arrived in New York, and the Governor, Lord Cornbury, had 
 invited them to visit the regal mansion, there to dine with his 
 lordship. They had accepted the invitation, and before that 
 rousing wood fire and the brass andirons in the big chimney, 
 they were enjoying the repast at the Governor's table. What 
 could be more friendly than that ? Four days afterward those 
 two men were languishing in the city jail, and there they spent 
 two long, weary months, at the bidding of that same Governor, 
 their host of four days before. One of those men twenty-five 
 years before had come from Scotland as a Presbyterian minis- 
 ter, first to Barbadoes, and then to the colony of Maryland. 
 That Roman Catholic colony of Maryland, and the Quaker 
 colony of Pennsylvania, and the Baptist colony of Rhode 
 Island, were the only three colonies that opened their doors 
 wide to Christians of all denominations. 
 
 The Presbyterians had gone into Maryland and into Penn- 
 sylvania ; the Synod of Picnnsylvania had been established in 
 the year 1706, and the outlying churches of that Synod ex- 
 tended into New Jersey, and even into Long Island. This 
 minister came from Maryland, where he had been stationed, 
 and had done a great and good work, northward to look at 
 the land, to New York and New England, and on his arrival 
 in New York had been so courteously (as we have seen) in- 
 vited by the Governor to take dinner with him, but on the 
 next day, which was Sunday, in the house of one William 
 Jackson, in Pearl street, this same man preached a sermon, 
 held divine service and baptiz.ed a child, while his friend, John 
 
Reformed Protestant Diiteh ChnreJi. jj 
 
 Hampton, also went to Newtown, Long Island, and there 
 preached in the church. For this offence of preaching in a 
 colony where there was not only one established church, but 
 two established churches, the Governor felt that his dignity 
 and the dignity of the Crown was assailed. The men were 
 arrested, and it was two months before they were let out of 
 jail and allowed to give bail for their appearance for trial. 
 Now that was the beginning of the Presbyterian Church in this 
 city. At that time there were but four church buildings in 
 the city. There was the old Garden Street Dutch Church ; 
 there was Trinity Church at the head of Wall street, and then 
 two other churches allowed by the government, because the 
 service was conducted in a foreign language, and for the bene- 
 fit of the foreign exiles — the French church in Pine street, 
 the Eglise du St. Esprit, and the Church of the Lutherans, on 
 the site that was afterward covered by the old Grace Church 
 on the corner of Broadway and Rector street. These were 
 the only four churches at that time in the city, and the city 
 extended only to Maiden Lane, except upon the East River 
 shore. And yet, twelve years after that, in 17 19, the Presby-. 
 terian church-building in Wall street was erected — such a 
 change had come over the public opinion. In 1741 a new 
 phase of Presbyterianism marked the city, and the Presbyte- 
 rian Church in the country from this reason. The old Scotch 
 and Irish Presbyterians had been mingling largely with Pres- 
 byterians from England, Wales, and New England. Those 
 who had come from England, Wales, and New England ha^l 
 rather more liberal views with regard to some practical mat- 
 ters than the old staunch men of Scotland and Ireland, and 
 the opinions began to differ and the preaching to be made 
 much wider, until at last, in 1 741, there was a complete divis- 
 ion, the old side representing the Scotch and Irish Presbyte- 
 rianism, who made a great deal of what they called " literature," 
 and on the new side the English, Welsh, and New Eng- 
 land members, principally, who made a great deal of personal 
 piety ; not that all the personal piety was on their, not 
 that all the literature was on the other side, but these were 
 
78 Quarter- Milk )inial Aiuiivcrsary of the 
 
 emphasized especially on the two sides. Then this breach 
 was made, and the Synod of New York was constituted ; then 
 came the College of New Jersey as a helper to the new side, 
 first planted at Elizabeth, then at Newark, and then at Prince- 
 ton. After seventeen years of this separation, in 175 8 they 
 came together again. This was the origin of Presbyterianism 
 in this city and in this part of our country. 
 
 Now we take great pleasure to-night in recapitulating this 
 history to know that all our course in this city has been hand 
 in hand and heart with heart with this glorious old mother 
 church — the Reformed Dutch Church. We rejoice to know 
 that even while differencees have broken out among ourselves, 
 we have never had any differences with this Church, that we 
 always have honored, and honor still more now than ever 
 before. When we may be accused of now and then harbor- 
 ing some elements of sensation among ourselves, we draw 
 nearer to these conservative brethren and are strengthened; 
 and we believe that one of the designs of Providence in main- 
 taining the Reformed Dutch Church in the city of New York 
 was to help our own Presbyterian Church to walk straightly 
 among you. But I will not enlarge. It is from the bottom 
 of our hearts that we, as Presbyterians, give our congratulations 
 to-night. We like such meetings as these. We like to see 
 all who love the Lord Jesus Christ banded together in one 
 service. We wish we could have them from week to week ; 
 we wish that all distinctions might be obliterated except the 
 distinctions between those that love Jesus and those who do 
 not; and we shall be just as glad when Trinity invites us to 
 its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, and come there and 
 take our part and say our words of congratulation, and rejoice 
 with just as great sincerity as we would for our own two hun- 
 dred and fiftieth anniversary when that may come. 
 
Reformed Protestant Dutch Church. yg 
 
 At the conclusion of Dr. Crosby's address, Dr. 
 Chambers said : 
 
 "The brother who is next to address us appears for 
 a denomination which could dispute, and I think with 
 some justice, the claim to the special distinction 
 of martyrdom which has been made by the speaker 
 who has just sat down. The honor of being cradled 
 in persecution does, indeed, belong to the vener- 
 able body which he so worthily represents. But 
 twenty years before the occurrence of the incident 
 which Dr. Crosby related to us with so much pictur- 
 esque vividness, a Baptist minister came to Manhattan 
 Island, and although he was not put in jail, he found 
 it convenient to leave the Island much more quickly 
 than he came. This body of Christians, from whom 
 we are separated by order and discipline, but with 
 whom we are most closely united in substance of doc- 
 trine ; this body, which is identified with soul liberty 
 and soundness of faith, is represented to us this even- 
 ing by a brother who has long held an important 
 pastoral charge in this city, and has frequently, in 
 union efforts of prayer and conference, been associ- 
 ated with the ministers of our church, and particularly 
 with the one who last went to his rest. Dr. DeWitt. 
 I have the pleasure to introduce to you the Rev. 
 Thomas D. Anderson, D. D., of the Baptist Church." 
 
Reformed Protestant Dutch CJiurcJi. 
 
 DR. ANDERSON'S ADDRESS. 
 
 I thank you, Mr. President, for taking away from me the 
 somewhat unpleasant duty of referring to our page of mar- 
 tyrdom. 
 
 Beloved BretJiroi in Christ : 
 
 To stand on the rock of Plymouth shore first touched 
 by the foot of the landing Pilgrim ; to enter the hall in the 
 old State House at Philadelphia, where, with bold but reverend 
 pens, the Declaration of Independence was signed ; to walk 
 around the simple tomb by the side of the Potomac at Mount 
 Vernon, where quietly sleeps the dust of Washington, awak- 
 ens, by the associations surrounding these inanimate objects, 
 the emotions of every patriotic heart. 
 
 To read the very sentences of the " Compact" drawn up in 
 the cabin of the Mayflower, moulding the elements of gov- 
 ernment beneath the sanction of the Almighty ; to dwell on 
 the distinguishing characteristic in the charter of Providence 
 Plantations, according to every man, as a right, religious 
 freedom ; to slowly read the lines of the original document 
 of the Constitution of the United States, that blend in indis- 
 soluble union personal liberty, state rights, and national sov- 
 ereignty, we come still nearer, as the communicated thoughts 
 possess the mind, to the sources of those ideas which have 
 given to our people individualism, to our communities order, 
 and strength to our nation. In either case, however, we touch 
 not life — in the former, only the inanimate object, in the 
 latter, impersonal idea. But to-night, in reviewing the rise 
 and progress of Christianity and a Christian civilization on 
 our Island and in our State, our contact is with personal life. 
 One living- organization in all its vig-or stands before us that 
 
82 Qiiartcr-]\IilU)inial Ajuiivcrsary of the 
 
 has spanned the entire period of two hundred and fifty years, 
 since the planting of the Dutch colony at New Amsterdam 
 until the present evening; We are not called to tread, within 
 our Battery, on the consecrated spot where early stood the 
 church within the fort ; nor to decipher the venerable parch- 
 ments containing the symbols of this ancient body; but we 
 grasp living hands which have been joined to others in un- 
 broken succession from that day to this ; we respond to the 
 pulsations of the " eternal life," transmitted through renewed 
 hearts from those first believers in Christ, until they throb 
 against our own in the breasts of these brethren whom we 
 are here convened to greet, and who so generously share with 
 us the inspiration of this memorial hour. 
 
 Gathering up the faith and love, the impulses and achieve- 
 ments, the history and prophecy of all these years as they are 
 conserved in this living church only to be put forth again a 
 thousandfold in the multiple forms of Christian activity, have 
 we not, brethren, a beautiful image of the Body of Christ of 
 which He is the Head ? 
 
 . If, of the multitudes which, from the vast population of this 
 metropolis, have come to bid you hail on this quarter-millen- 
 nial birthday, all are not of your own household of faith, 
 shall it be thought to detract aught from your greatness, 
 because in one external ecclesiastical body they do not all 
 bow at one altar? Conditioned as the mind is in our present 
 imperfect state, with an open Bible in our hands, is it not well 
 that all outward restraint be removed, and the soul be allowed, 
 according to its convictions, to shape its faith and practice be- 
 neath no other authority than that of God ? Is it not to the 
 honor of 2i first Church that around it others have arisen to 
 emulate its excellence and share its sympathies ? Is not the 
 strength of the Collegiate Church greater, sharing, as it does, 
 the spontaneous joy in her prosperity of these sister denomi- 
 nations, which is only less than her own, and aided in her 
 efforts by their fraternal co-operation, than it would be if the 
 monotony of an imposed unity had quenched the generous 
 rivalries of different churches ?• It may well be considered as 
 
Reformed Protestant DutcJi C J lurch. 83 
 
 an additional wreath of bays around your brow, that Episco- 
 pahans and Congregationahsts, Presbyterians and Baptists, 
 Reformed and Methodists, ask the privilege of laying their 
 tribute of love and prayer on your altar to-night as a testi- 
 mony to the oneness in Christ of all believers, which, in your 
 kindly relations to other churches, you have so beautifully 
 illustrated. 
 
 I have been selected to represent our denomination, not 
 from any special fitness for the service beyond the possession 
 of a heart most deeply to appreciate it, but because I have 
 the honor to be the pastor of our oldest church in this city, 
 which, now through me in behalf of all of like views, extends 
 its hand of fellowship and of cheer. 
 
 Our Church has lived by your side for more than half of 
 your long lifetime, and, therefore, we have a right to speak with 
 some authority when we testify our liking for you. We like 
 your coiisei'vatisin, for amid necessary changes we can have no 
 progress, unless we hold fast that which is good. You hold, 
 doubtless, in your creed some articles from which we dissent. 
 But while you hold them as convictions prayerfully drawn 
 from the Bible, our common standard, we would be, not only 
 ungenerous, but untrue to our most dearly-cherished princi- 
 ples if we withheld our honor from your steadfastness. Still 
 further we honor you, not merely for holding your convictions, 
 but also for maintaining inviolate the order by ^^'hich provis- 
 ion is made to have them statedly presented to your congre- 
 gations, that they may be thoroughly furnished for every good 
 work. Against indifferentism and the wayward liberality of 
 the age, we honor your conservatism. 
 
 We like yoMv facile practicalness. What is to be done seems 
 to meet with all instrumentalities ready at hand, without en- 
 grafting on the system questionable and untried devices. 
 Although we are taught to believe that no church has a 
 stauncher order, yet nothing stands in the way of the freest 
 engagement in all true enterprises for the moral and spiritual 
 improvement of men. Indeed, your ecclesiastical system ap- 
 pears to us outsiders never to feel a strain while it gracefully 
 
84 Quarter-Millennial Anniversary of the 
 
 bends to all the requirements of Christian benevolence through 
 all its manifold workings. In this facile comprehensiveness 
 there seems to be a place for every temperament, for every 
 order of talent, and for every grade of ministration. 
 
 We honor you above all for that ricli evangelical vein that 
 runs through the writings of your authors, through the ser- 
 mons of your preachers, and through all the agencies you use 
 for the advancement of Christ's kingdom. It is this which 
 qualifies the Dutch Church to work so harmoniously in union 
 efforts when those efforts have for their object only the glory 
 of God and the well-being of man. For these things, with 
 others not named, we, as Baptists, honor you. Yet, while 
 frankly expressing our regard, we lay no claim to a monopoly 
 of the esteem which I am sure is held by us in common with 
 the other Christian denominations. 
 
 Apparently, casual circumstances often hold within them 
 prophecy and symbol. The church within the fort, provided 
 as one of the earliest resting-places for Jehovah Shammah on 
 this Island, bears to my mind such a significance. Let the 
 fort stand for the State, and the inclosed tabernacle for God 
 with us, and by this piece of heraldry we are taught that the 
 stability of the State is secured 6nly as within her borders 
 God abides. He only is the strong tower, the entrenched 
 citadel into which the nation can resort for safety. Walls, and 
 battlements, and the ocean are a defence only when they offer 
 their homage to Jehovah Jireh. Is the fort the nucleus of the 
 State, through whose openings along the avenues of com- 
 merce, population, trade, education, and government she will 
 project her future forces ? Along with all these, as from a 
 vital centre, must radiate the influences of Immanuel. 
 
 Is it too much to say that by some invisible guide this 
 people have been taught to read the prophecy of the church 
 within the fort, and to follow its teachings along the line of 
 their history ? So, at first, they sanctified by worship the 
 beginnings of the State ; so they dedicated the commerce of 
 the week to the Lord of the Sabbath, for the earth is the 
 Lord's, and the fulness thereof; so from the fort they accom- 
 
Reforuicd Protestant Dutch C/uiirh. 85 
 
 panied population from the Battery to Garden street, to Lib- 
 erty street, to Fulton street, to Lafayette Place, to Twenty-ninth 
 street, to Forty-eighth street, flanking their march uptown by 
 chapels, Sunday and industrial schools, and missions on the 
 right and left, that there might be none to say in this crowded 
 city, " No man careth for my soul." 
 
 When the language of Manhattan changed, with the gov- 
 ernment, from the Dutch to the English, the vital spirit of the 
 church within the fort transferred the same glorious Gospel 
 from the sonorous speech of Holland to the English vernacu- 
 lar through the ministries of the sainted Laidlie and Living- 
 ston. When trade usurped the dwellings of home, the 
 informing Christianity must not be driven from its central 
 position. It entered the busy mart, and at the hour of high 
 noon, in the .heart of traffic, true to this prophecy, the prayer- 
 meeting was enshrined, the Fulton Street Prayer-meeting that 
 has offered up before the Throne the prayers of a world. 
 Ever may this church continue a centre of spiritual power, 
 not alone upon this Island, but throughout this nation. Such 
 is the prophecy whose lessons have been so well learned and 
 followed by the Collegiate Church. 
 
 Wlien the State shall have passed away, and instead of this 
 earthly metropolis " the holy city, the new Jerusalem," will 
 come down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride 
 adorned for her husband, although there will be no commerce, 
 for there shall be no sea ; although the gates shall not be 
 closed, for there shall be no night there ; although the minis- 
 tries of relief will be ended, for there shall be no more pain ; 
 although the sun ^nd moon shall withdraw their light because 
 of the glory of the Lamb ; and although in the midst of this 
 four-squared city, with its walls of jasper, its foundation of 
 precious stones, and its gates of pearl, there shall be no tem- 
 ple ; when the assembled multitudes, the one hundred forty 
 and four thousand, with the innumerable company which no 
 man can number, shall hear the voice out of heaven saying, 
 " The tabernacle of God is with men, and Ke will dwell 
 among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself 
 
86 Quarter-Millennial Anniversary of the 
 
 shall be with them and be their God," then and there, beloved 
 brethren, shall we behold, with admiring gratitude, the radiant 
 glory of our earthly emblem, " The Church within the Fort." 
 
Reformed Protestant Duteli CJiurch. 87 
 
 Here the congregation united in singing Bishop 
 Heber's fine anthem, founded on the Trisagion, after 
 which the chairman said : 
 
 " The next speaker on the hst is from the youngest 
 of the o-reat Protestant communities of our country. 
 It is not much more than a hundred years ago when 
 a Methodist minister landed in this city and set up 
 his banner in the name of the Lord ; and when we 
 think of what resuhed from that venture, the aggres- 
 siveness, the fiery zeal, and the wondrous success 
 which attended the efforts of those brethren, we are 
 reminded of the verse of Bishop Berkeley : 
 
 ' Time's noblest offspring is the last.' 
 
 The brother who has kindly consented to represent 
 that communion on this occasion was the pupil of 
 Durbin and McClintock, and well holds up the banner 
 which they unfurled. I have the pleasure of intro- 
 ducing, to you the Rev. Dr. Tiffany, of St. Paul's 
 Methodist Episcopal Church." 
 
Reformed Protestant Diitcli Churek. 89 
 
 DR. TIFFANY'S ADDRESS. 
 
 Fathers and Brethren : 
 
 At the close of the very interesting and admirable discourse 
 to which we listened this afternoon, when my name was 
 announced in the list of speakers for the evening, a clergyman 
 who sat next to me asked, " And what relations have you to 
 the Dutch Church?" This question I now propose to an- 
 swer by saying that I belong to a Church which, though one 
 hundred and fifty years younger, has had many similar ex- 
 periences, and has providentially adopted many of the same 
 methods. I think it may be of interest to you to know some 
 facts which may have hitherto escaped your observation. 
 
 The one hundred and forty-three years, from 1623 to 1776, 
 exactly represent the interval between the arrival in this 
 country of your " krank-besoekers " from the Netherlands 
 and our " class-leaders " from Ireland. These men performed 
 similar duties in each church ; in the absence of clergymen 
 they visited the sick, read and expounded the Bible, and ex- 
 horted men to Christian duty and the activities of a Christian 
 life. Your " krank-besoekers " met in a room over a horse- 
 mill, ; our "class-leaders" met in a sail-loft. Last month we 
 celebrated the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the dedi- 
 cation of our first meeting-house in John street, and I felt 
 quite a veneration for our antiquity until I came under the 
 shadow of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the 
 Dutch Church. Though so long an interval separates the 
 organization of our churches, yet I find that history repeats 
 itself, and we have many things in common. Each church 
 was felt to be a necessity, and the abundant fruitage harvested 
 by each justifies the wisdom of its separate existence. Both 
 were born in the throes of a spiritual revival, and both were, 
 
90 Quaytcr-Millciuiial Ainiivcrsary of the 
 
 in some sense, nursed in persecutions, for the title, "The 
 Church of the Netherlands niidcr the Cross',' had a meaning 
 in the sixteenth century not unlike that attached to the term 
 "Methodist" in the seventeenth. You took the fields for 
 your pulpits a century before Whitefield and Wesley were 
 compelled to resort to them, by reason of the circumstances 
 which surrounded them. Your hymn^ of praise and songs 
 of salvation were sung in full voice by the congregation of 
 worshippers long before God raised up Charles Wesley to be 
 the sweet Psalmist of our modern Israel. You have always 
 had authorized, but not obligatory forms for public service. 
 If I read aright the motto on the shield of the old North 
 Church, and " daiuio co/iscivat" is an expression of your finan- 
 cial policy, it is only a more classic expression of the plan of 
 John Wesley, who built chapels and carried on his work by 
 means of "a penny a week and a shilling a quarter" from 
 each member of his societies. Your plan of rotation in the 
 pulpits of the Collegiate Churches we have enlarged into an 
 itinerancy which belts the globe. 
 
 But you adopted the Calvinistic interpretation of God's 
 Book, and we the Arminian. You, for reasons clearly set 
 forth this afternoon, largely limited your activities to the 
 neighborhood of your first planting, and have in consequence 
 built up a solid character and a robust conservatism, while we 
 have taken a wider range, are less conservative and sedate, 
 more open to the charge of sensationalism, because we have 
 been more largely moulded by the spirit of the age and the 
 o-enius of more modern institutions. And so, as we come 
 to-night and sit among you, the youngest of your guests, we 
 offer you our hearty greeting, with genuine appreciation of 
 your steadfast adherence to your principles and an honest 
 admiration of your vigorous age. 
 
 The service of to-night, however, impresses me more in its 
 bearing on the future than in its relation to the past, for while, 
 in a just sense, it is the culmination of a period in history, in 
 another it is the opening of a field for prophecy. And as, in 
 your admirable and felicitous introduction, Mr. President, you 
 
Reformed Protestant Dutch Church. 91 
 
 have spoken of the gentlemen who have preceded me as repre- 
 sentatives of olden times and older churches, and of me so 
 kindly as a younger member of a younger church, let me, now 
 that the old men have told the dreams which they have dreamt, 
 tell of the vision which this night suggests. The invitation 
 of the oldest Church to all the younger branches, and the 
 hearty response given to these invitations by the presence of 
 so many notable men from all the churches ; the coming to- 
 gether on this platform of so many men who represent so 
 many phases of belief and so many forms of worship, is to 
 me an indication that Christian forces are answering Christ's 
 prayer for the unity of His disciples. It indicates that the 
 days of exclusion and separation are giving way to days of 
 fraternization and brotherhood. Union takes the place of 
 controversy ; the theological champions and disputants are 
 retiring within their appropriate spheres, the schools and 
 seminaries ; and the churches are ceasing to dispute, and are vic- 
 ing with each other in love and good works. The contro- 
 versialist of the former days was the product of an age when 
 a man was mighty according to the thickness of the trees 
 against which he lifted up his axe ; he has no more a place 
 for his denunciations, nor an audience for his declamation. 
 In an advanced light men have been able to recognize the 
 hidden good which underlies apparent errors. Beneath 
 the differentials of creeds and formulas there is an integral 
 binding principle of life. As a humanness underlies all the 
 varieties of tribe and race, linking men to God and to each 
 other, so a divineness of consecrated living forms links of 
 union among men of varied creeds ; a principle of " natural 
 selection " formulated by Christianity centuries ago, when it 
 constituted fraternal love the test of discipleship, saying: 
 " We know that we have passed from death unto life because 
 we love the brethren." 
 
 It may be, Mr. President, that in these past days we have 
 all builded unwisely, even though each one's honest effort hsts 
 been to reproduce his idea of the pattern shown him in his 
 mountain of communion ; each building to exhibit his own 
 
92 • Quarter-Millennial A)inivcrsary of tJic 
 
 interpretation of God's plan. Sometimes, mayhap, we have 
 built over against one another. Sometimes there has been 
 in one hand a sword for destruction, while the other held a 
 trowel for construction ; but at best we have erected only 
 individual columns, which, however beautiful in our own eyes, 
 scarcely realize Christ's ideal by which the world was to be 
 convinced. May not these individual pedestals and columns 
 be united by a girder of Christian activity and brotherhood, 
 and surmounted by a dome of Christian thought and scholar- 
 ship, so that each one's best work shall be found to consist in 
 its being part of an holy temple in the Lord ; Jesus Christ 
 himself being the chief corner-stone on which the apostles 
 and prophets have built as a foundation ? 
 
 We heard this afternoon the wonderful announcement " that 
 a rigid Calvinist would not invalidate his orthodoxy if he 
 believed that an Arminian might be saved." After this pro- 
 digious step in advance, is it unreasonable to hope for a day 
 when, if the wolf and the lamb may not actually dwell to- 
 gether, and the leopard lie down with the kid, and the calf 
 and the young lion and the fatling together, yet an Arminian 
 and a Calvinist may walk arm in arm, and be closely followed 
 by priest with presbyter, and the procession be enlarged by 
 two agreeing bishops, though one of them may have received 
 his office by the holding up of hands in election, and the other 
 by the laying on of hands in consecration ; and all these be 
 seeking for some gathering, be it conference, convention, 
 council, consistory, synod, classis, or assembly, where the only 
 shibboleth for admission shall be " supreme love to God, and 
 corresponding love to the brethren." 
 
 And now Mr. President, so far as I may presume to repre- 
 sent the Church of which I am a member, I say, in the lan- 
 guage of one of old : " The Lord God of your fathers make 
 you a thousand times so many more as ye are, and bless you, 
 as He hath promised you." 
 
Reformed Protestant Dutch Church. 93 
 
 When Dr. Tiffany had conckided, Dr. Chambers 
 
 said: 
 
 "The last speaker on our programme belongs to a 
 body which is at once the oldest and the youngest. 
 It is the oldest, because in New England its origin 
 was coeval with our own, and yet the youngest, be- 
 cause it was within the present century, indeed, some 
 distance in it, that it made a permanent lodgment 
 upon this Island. The relations between the Dutch 
 Church and the Congregationalists have not always 
 been pleasant. Whoever reads the history of the 
 first hundred or hundred and fifty years after the set- 
 tlement at Plymouth and on this Island will see rec- 
 ords of questions which were sometimes very ardently 
 prosecuted as to conflicting jurisdiction ; and I re- 
 member to have heard the story which, no doubt, is 
 authentic, that a gigantic rooster, such as used to be 
 placed upon the top of the steeples of our churches 
 down in the Fort, was always found pointing, no mat- 
 ter from which direction the wind came, toward the 
 East. It scented danger from that quarter. But 
 these are reminiscences of the past. We bring them 
 up to smile at them. Now, cordiality, friendliness, 
 
94 Quarter-Millennial Anniversary of the 
 
 mutual regard, the strongest desire for each other's 
 welfare and co-operation in efforts for that one cause 
 to which we are all sworn, bind us closely together. 
 The brother who is to speak to us needs no introduc- 
 tion. Although his residence is beyond the East 
 River, and another city claims him as its ornament, 
 yet so often have audiences in New York as numerous 
 as this, and more so, been chained by his words of 
 eloquence and wisdom, that I need only mention his 
 name, the Rev. Richard S. Storrs, D.D., of the Con- 
 gregational Church, whom I now have the pleasure 
 to introduce." 
 
Reformed Protestant DnteJi ChurcJi. 95 
 
 REV. DR. STORRS'S ADDRESS. 
 
 yi/r Christian Friends : 
 
 It is not, I think, altogether to the discredit of the Congrega- 
 tional communion, that it has been planted in this great city 
 more recently than the others, the representatives of which 
 have spoken to us so eloquently this evening. Dr. Chambers was 
 mistaken, I am sure, in the inference which he naturally drew 
 from the attitude of that historical rooster. He was up there 
 looking out for recruits ! Our churches, at Plymouth, if not at 
 Salem, began earlier than yours, but for centuries Congrega- 
 tionalism w^as so interested in the progress and success of other 
 communions that whenever it sent any of its representatives 
 to New York, it sent them under a sort of implicit pledge to 
 become either Dutchmen or Presbyterians. Our friend Dr. 
 Bethune used to say — did say once, certainly, in commenting 
 upon a speech from some one who, as he thought, had un- 
 duly exalted his own denomination — that he felt bound in 
 justice to his own Church to declare that he presumed that in 
 heaven all Christians would be Reformed Dutchmen. How it 
 may be in heaven I do not know, but a great many Congrega- 
 tiorial Christians have come to be Reformed Dutchmen when 
 they came to New York. When you have had a promising 
 young man born and bred here, of whom you wanted to make 
 a pillar and an ornament in the Church, you sent him to New 
 England. We Congregationalists have taken him and put him 
 in one of our churches, for five or six years, and then sent him 
 back to you to do grand service, by eloquence and by character : 
 like your venerable senior pastor, Dr. Vermilye. We did the 
 same thing with Dr. Rogers; and if you have got any more 
 such young men, send them along, and we will fit them for 
 your Collegiate pulpits ! 
 
96 Quartcr-MilloDiial A)iniversary of tJie 
 
 It is very delightful to me, my Friends, to stand here this 
 evening, if only to renew the associations of my heart with 
 those men whom I have known, and honored, and loved, in the 
 pulpits of this Collegiate Church, and in the other pulpits of 
 the same communion in this city, with whom in my earlier 
 or later ministry I was familiar, who have passed now into the 
 heavens. I remember well those men to whom reference 
 has been made — Dr. Knox, Dr. Brownlee, and Dr. DeWitt, 
 clear and venerable names ! Dr. Milledoler had not ceased 
 from his labor upon the earth, though he had closed his min- 
 istry ; I remember him as graceful and beautiful, Dr. Brodhead 
 as majestic and charming, in old age. Dr. Dwight of the First 
 Dutch Church of Brooklyn, the successor of Polhemus and 
 Selyns, officiated in an important service at my installa- 
 tion in my church there, thirty-two years ago this week. I 
 never think without fond remembrance of his beautiful face, of 
 his courtesy of manner, of his tender interest in all good men 
 and good things, and of the prayer on which that evening he 
 lifted us all toward the heavens. And the wit, the poet, the 
 accomplished scholar, the careful theologian, the eloquent 
 orator, the devout and adoring Christian, Dr. Bethune, whose 
 funeral I attended in this very church sixteen years ago, was for 
 years my nearest neighbor, almost, and among my most inti- 
 mate friends. I cannot but think if he were here to-night, to 
 utter his kindling and lofty thought, in his impassioned elo- 
 quence, with his voice that spoke like a harp and rung like a 
 trumpet — if he were here to-night, to utter his love and venera- 
 tion for the Church to which his manhood and his age had 
 been given, and in which his heart was garnered up, how silent 
 our lips would be ! and how our hearts would throb within us ! 
 
 These' have gone into the heavens. Ah ! yes, but they are 
 the representatives to us, let us not forget, of all who have 
 ascended with them, in the history of this Church for two 
 hundred and fifty years. Back to the forest and the swamp, 
 back to the days of the tomahawk and the Indian bow, of the 
 wampum and the birch canoe, this history carries us. How 
 many have gone up, through the ministry of truth here, rising 
 
Reformed Protestant Dutcli CJnirch. 97 
 
 on the wings of prayer and adoration on earth, and then rising 
 with the angelic cohorts in the heavens, whose thought may 
 be with us to-night ! The mountains are full of the radiant 
 presence. More are they that have ascended than they who 
 tarry. The greater, the nobler, and the lovelier company is 
 on high. Ah ! my Friends, the church on earth and that 
 above but one communion make; and it is beautiful to stand 
 here, in that communion, and to feel ourselves surrounded and 
 over- watched by this great cloud of witnesses, by this celestial 
 company ! 
 
 Two hundred and fifty years. Yet, as I have sat here this 
 evening, I have been thinking, my Friends, how small a part of 
 the real history that is ! How the roots of this history run back, 
 far beyond that, into a grand and heroic preceding age. The 
 history of the Church in Holland, of which this was here the 
 earliest representative, is the most illustrious and sublime 
 history of modern Europe. The communion with which I 
 have been associated, in all my public life, sprang from a 
 parallel movement in England, but it never was marked by 
 the same heroic endurance, the same frequent sacrifice unto 
 martyrdom, which was familiar in the Church in Holland. I 
 remember what the historian tells us, of the 18,000 whom 
 Alva burned or butchered or buried alive, to trample out the 
 Reformed religion in the Netherlands. I remember the 
 massacres at Antwerp, at Naarden ; and I say again that there 
 is no page in the history of modern Europe so magnificent 
 as that. 
 
 It was true of the Dutch Church, as it has somewhere been 
 said of Christianity itself, that it sprang up under the axe, it 
 flourished in the blast, and it blossomed in the flame. It had 
 a grand renown, back of New Amsterdam, back of this conti- 
 nent, and of the ocean before us. You trace your lineage 
 to the most royal workers and champions of the truth in 
 modern times. No wonder you cherish that magnificent 
 renown ! It is a sublime inheritance. And standing here 
 to-night, with the thought which the last brother has suggest- 
 ed, that this occasion looks forward as well as backward, 
 
98 Quarter- Millennial Anniversary of the 
 
 we certainly, representatives of other communions, can ask for 
 you no greater blessing, no richer endowment of God, than 
 that the same sublime qualities which were illustrated in that 
 history may continue in you and in your children to the end 
 of time — the same constancy of faith, the* same sovereign 
 devotion, in the gospel of God. 
 
 We have heard to-night, and it has been truly said, that 
 this Church has been conservative of the truth. It could not 
 have been otherwise, without being supremely unfaithful to its 
 illustrious history. It was not a gospel of "mush" and 
 nonsense for which men met death with untrembling hearts, 
 and women submitted to be buried alive. It was a gospel 
 with not one prophecy too many, pointing forward to the 
 coming of the Lord, with not one miracle too many, to 
 illustrate His divine power and supremacy — a gospel in which 
 was the offer of forgiveness through the atonement, and of 
 purification by the Holy Ghost, and a heavenly promise for 
 those who receiyed it. 
 
 Carry on that gospel, so majestic, and glorious, and divine, 
 appealing so powerfully and vividly to the faith of the fathers, 
 into your subsequent history as a church ; and it shall be the 
 power of God, upon you and with you, for all the centuries ! 
 Carry on, as well, their spirit of self-sacrifice. 
 
 Churches grow by self-consecration. That motto I remem- 
 ber which Dr. Tiffany has referred to — " daudo conscrvat : " the 
 church .stands and grows by giving. The church comes to 
 be what it ought to be by communicating. The fervent mis- 
 sionary zeal of the Church in Holland was one great secret 
 of its magnificent rise and power. Men like your missionaries, 
 Scudder, Abeel, beloved disciples, going to carry the go.spel 
 to the heathen on distant shores, are working for your en- 
 largement, for your permanent continuance, as truly and as 
 effectively as though they were at home. 
 
 Carry on the same spirit which was in the fathers, of love 
 for liberty and for learning. We remember that splendid 
 example given by the citizens of Ley den, when after their 
 lieroic endurance of the siege, in reward or recompense of 
 
Reformed Protestant DittcJi CJiurcJi. 99 
 
 their valor and patience, they were permitted to take their 
 choice between the remission of a certain heavy and perpetual 
 tax, or the establishment of a University. Now, I don't know, 
 I won't undertake to say, what the citizens of New York 
 would do if such- a proposition were made to them ; but the 
 citizens of Leyden, hunger-bitten, famine-stricken, staggering 
 in their wan and wasted frames along the streets that had been 
 smitten as by the blast of fire in that terrific siege, chose the 
 University. All honor to the memory of their wisdom and 
 nobleness! I remember, too, that in the hall, I think, of 
 the Universit}^ at Utrecht, around the dome were placed or 
 planned words which declared that " the seat of learning is 
 the natural cradle of liberty." 
 
 Yes, it is true that the hall of human wisdom has been the 
 cradle of liberty, there and elsewhere. It is for us joyfully 
 to remember that the Declaration of Independence, written 
 by our fathers, caught its spirit, and even its terms, in part, 
 from the Declaration of Independence signed at the Hague in 
 1581 ; and that the union of the American colonies followed 
 closely the example of the union of Utrecht, which was the 
 corner-stone of the Netherland Republic. 
 
 As long as this sovereign constancy to the gospel, as long 
 as this sublime spirit of consecration, fortitude, and self-sac- 
 rifice, as long as this love of learning and of liberty com- 
 bined, remain in the Dutch Church, its future is secure. 
 Wealthy or poor, numerous or few, that makes no difference. 
 The church which has these elements within it, and which 
 does its work in the inspiration of them, is the Church of the 
 Future in America. 
 
 Two hundred and fifty years ! How utterly incredible, how 
 inconceivable, this city would have seemed to" those who 
 founded this church in its feebleness two hundred and fifty 
 years ago, looking out from the fort of which Dr. Anderson 
 has told us ; seeing in prophetic vision these vast avenues, 
 these populous squares, these thundering trains along the 
 streets — this city sweeping upward and outward, eastward, 
 northward, westward, and on every hand, and already beating 
 LefC. 
 
100 Quarter-Millennial Anniversary of the 
 
 with the tread of milHons of feet — incredible, indeed ! They 
 could not have conceived it. How httle can you and I con- 
 ceive what this city is to be, two hundred and fifty years in 
 the future ! what miUions of population are to be gathered 
 in it ! how its piers are to throb with the commerce of the 
 world, crowding against them ! how its influences are to go 
 out over all the land, and to the ends of the earth ! The same 
 faith in the gospel, the same constancy, fidelity, and self-sacri- 
 fice, the same love for liberty and for learning, and the same 
 hospitality toward other communions, which were the glory of 
 this Church in its earlier life, and have been ever since, will 
 give to that city of the Future influences that shall keep it 
 pure and make it purer, and will give to the semi-millen- 
 nial anniversary of this Church a glory that we cannot 
 prefigure, and can only vaguely anticipate. God grant it ! 
 
 I remember the. inscription on the monument of the great 
 Admiral Van Tromp, in the old church at Delft, written in 
 Latin, the close of which may, perhaps, be not unfairly trans- 
 lated thus : " At last, in battle with the English, himself un- 
 conquered, if not the victor, he ceased at the same moment to 
 triumph and to live." I hope that the epitaph of this Dutch 
 Church never will be written, while the continent stands ; but 
 when it is written, or spoken, in the last consummation, when 
 the Lord himself appears in the air, I trust it may be said, and 
 truly said of it, that if not itself the conqueror over all forms 
 of sin, it was itself unconquered, and that it ceased to triumph 
 for the Master only when it ceased to live ! 
 
Reformed Protestant Dutch Church. 
 
 lOI 
 
 %\^ jSurrpssion of 'JPasfopx* 
 
 1628-1878. 
 
 ; •-•-• 
 
 
 
 Jonas Michaelius, - - - - {circa}) 
 
 [628- 
 
 1633 
 
 EVERARDUS BOGARDUS, ----- 
 
 [633- 
 
 1647 
 
 Johannes Backerus, - - ' - 
 
 [647- 
 
 [649 
 
 Joannes Megapolensis, ----- 
 
 [649- 
 
 [669 
 
 Samuel Megapolensis, - _ _ - 
 
 [664- 
 
 [668 
 
 WiLHELMUs Van Niewenhuysen, 
 
 [671- 
 
 682 
 
 Henricus Selyns, - - - - - 
 
 682- 
 
 701 
 
 Gualterus Du Bois, ----- 
 
 [699- 
 
 [751 
 
 Henricus Boel, ------ 
 
 ^713- 
 
 754 
 
 Joannes Ritzema, ------ 
 
 744-] 
 
 784 
 
 Lambertus De Ronde, - - - _ 
 
 751- 
 
 784 
 
 Archibald Laidlie, - _ . _ _ 
 
 764- 
 
 779 
 
 John Henry Livingston, - - - - 
 
 77c^] 
 
 812 
 
 William Linn, - - 
 
 785-1 
 
 805 
 
 Gerardus Arense Kuypers, 
 
 789-1 
 
 833 
 
 John Neilson Abeel - - - - - ] 
 
 795-1 
 
 812 
 
 John Schureman, 
 
 809- ] 
 
 811 
 
 Jacob Brodhead, -----.] 
 
 809- ] 
 
 813 
 
 Philip Milledoler, ----- 
 
 813-1 
 
 825 
 
 John Knox, _-----.] 
 
 816-] 
 
 858 
 
 Paschal Nelson Strong, - - - - ] 
 
 816-] 
 
 825 
 
 William Craig Brownlee, _ - - - ] 
 
 826-] 
 
 860 
 
 Thomas De Witt, - - - - - ] 
 
 827-] 
 
 874 
 
 Thomas Edward Vermilye, - - _ - ] 
 
 839- 
 
 
 Talbot Wilson Chambers, - - - i 
 
 849- 
 
 
 Joseph Tuthill Duryea, _ - - - ] 
 
 862-] 
 
 867 
 
 James Meeker Ludlow, - - - _ ] 
 
 868-] 
 
 877 
 
 William Ormiston, -_-_-] 
 
 870— 
 
 
Reformed Protestant DntcJi ClinreJi. 103 
 
 ^he ensuing .^tanzas, fi|om the feiitile and gijaccful pen of Milliam 
 
 inland Bourne, Bsq., ai|e tahen fijom the columns of the 
 
 ** ^hijistian Xntelligencei| " of the weeh 
 
 following the celebijation : 
 
 §gmii. 
 
 S-iggested by the Tivo Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Collegiate Church, City 
 0/ New York, Thursday, November 2 ist, rSjS. 
 
 God of our Fathers I Thee we praise ! 
 
 Eternal King ! our sovereign Lord I 
 For all Thy love our songs we raise, 
 
 Forever be Thy name adored. 
 
 Through changing years, and scenes that pass 
 Like shadows on the path of time, 
 
 Thy mercies all our praise surpass. 
 Enduring as Thy truth sublime. 
 
 The promise spoken by Thy Son, 
 Thy samts in holy trust believed, 
 
 In tears and blood their course they run 
 Till they the conqueror's crown received. 
 
 Lo I I am with you to the end ! ' ' 
 
 We praise Thee for the Word divine ; 
 
 Give grace, O Lord ! all hearts to blend • 
 In love to this dear Church of Thine. 
 
 Give to this Zion life and light ! 
 
 Build up its walls and altars strong ! 
 Till all its love and labor bright 
 
 Shall end in Heaven's eternal song. 
 
I04 
 
 Quarter- Mill ejinial Anniversary. 
 
 Note. 
 
 ^he following diagram accur(ately »|epi|escnt8 the lettci|ing upon 
 
 the top of the litflemoiiial (^ane, pijcsented on the day of 
 
 the commemot|ation to the i]>enioi| Ifastoij, by 
 
 J^. H. W^. "l^an "^echten, :Ssq., as noticed 
 
 in the ptiefatotiy i^emaiihs by 
 
 !te)t|. "^eijmihje. 
 
 ^-nCTOft^ <^ 
 
 :pOCTO'?S 
 
 •YERMILVT/ CP\ 
 
 
 JONES S.CO. 
 
 INTERS. 114 FULTON ST., ( 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 108 829 4 •