^ tt^ liujjt^^^L. SlZtLr ?^^r^ 
 
 Class F I o ^ 
 
 Hnnk- ,M5H^ 
 
 (MiHSKNTKI) liY 
 
CENTENNIAL SERMONS 
 
 ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 The Cente[[ Congijegatio^al Chui[ch, 
 
 OF 
 
 MERIDEN, CONN., 
 
 PREACHED IN THAT CHURCH 
 
 Sundays, October ist and 22D, 1876, 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD HUNGERFORD, 
 
 PASTOR OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 HARTFORD: 
 
 PRESS OP THE CASE, LOCKWOOD & BRAINARD COMPANY. 
 
 1877. 
 

 Gift 
 
SERMON. 
 
 Zechariah 4:10. "For who hath despised the day of small 
 things?" 
 
 I AM going to lead you back, my friends, this after- 
 noon, to the day of small things. In a very hasty 
 way — altogether too hasty a way, I propose that we 
 follow, through nearly one hundred and fifty years, 
 the path which the feet of your fathers have worn 
 into the soil, until that path brings us to this place 
 where we worship to-day. 
 
 It seems to me especially fitting that the pastor of 
 this church should go back into those early years. 
 The history of neither of the Congregational churches 
 in this city can be complete without those anteced- 
 ents, out of which the life of both has sprung. As 
 two branches of one family, now living apart, but 
 with no family feuds between them, we hail and vene- 
 rate a common ancestry, as we hold to one and the 
 same Congregational polity, in which we serve one 
 Lord. 
 
 But more than this : I should not be true to the 
 position which your love assigns me, as pastor of 
 this church, if I were to forget that the small begin- 
 nino:s of all the church life in all Meriden centered a 
 century and a half ago in a place not far from this 
 spot ; that it was all removed hither soon after the 
 
close of the first quarter of a century ; so that right 
 around this old homestead cluster the traditions of 
 over a hundred and twenty years. Hither your 
 fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers have 
 turned their faces Sabbath after Sabbath, from gene- 
 ration to generation. Here, within the sound of my 
 voice, a whole line of pastors, in unbroken succes- 
 sion, has preached the gospel. First, Hall, then 
 Hubbard, and Willard, and Ripley, and Hinsdale, 
 and Perkins, and Stevens, and so on down the line. 
 To this place, in the olden time, the bodies of your 
 fathers and your mothers were brought for the last 
 service on earth, before they were borne to that wind- 
 swept graveyard on yonder hill, or to that still nearer 
 one under the trees. On this very spot many of you 
 who no longer worship here, were baptized; and here 
 many of you stood when you first named the name 
 of Christ. Around this place have gathered, in the 
 last century and a quarter, the rumors and excite- 
 ments of our country's great and terrible wars, and 
 the new^s of many battles has been discussed in this 
 center, to which the people gathered in all times of 
 great commotion. Here great questions of public 
 policy have been discussed from the pulpit, and the 
 discussion has been prolonged by the people ; while 
 around these very doors the passions of men have 
 raged in open-handed violence, over which at last 
 right has triumphed and peace has spread her wings. 
 Oh, sacred spot ! Oh, holy and hallowed memories ! 
 Lift up your heads, dear friends, in the just pride of 
 such traditions, and fail not to honor the very dust 
 whereon your church is built as dust consecrated by 
 
5 
 
 the feet which have trodden it, and by the stirring 
 memories which history has written in it for ever. 
 
 Let us turn, then, to the day of small things. 
 
 On the closing Sunday of October, one hundred 
 and forty-seven years ago this month, at the hour of 
 morning service, you might have seen a little mixed 
 company of young and elderly people gathering on 
 the southwestern slope of yonder height, which we 
 still call " Meeting-house Hill," and gravely stepping 
 in family knots from under the trees (which in this 
 season are clothed in colors caught from the sunsets,) 
 into a little church, only thirty feet by thirty, no 
 larger, therefore than many a country school-house. 
 But they came out from under the autumnal glory 
 into the glory of the house of the Lord. It was a 
 very precious house to them : built out of hardy 
 sacrifices with sturdy toil. 
 
 It is very still up here on this Sunday morning ; 
 if, perchance, it is one of our gentler October days. 
 There has been no sound of a bell to break the quiet. 
 Steeple or bell this house has none. There has been 
 no clatter of carriages ; these people have come on 
 foot, or at best on horseback, — a father in the saddle, 
 with a mother and child mounted on the pillion 
 behind ; or, perhaps, a father walking by the side of 
 his horse while the whole family cling to the saddle 
 and the mother's skirts. Far away to the south the 
 old home settlement of their fathers in Wallimrford 
 
 o 
 
 street caught their eyes as they turned to enter the 
 house of God, and the whole country was bathed in 
 rest. 
 
 Inside the church, these fathers and mothers, in 
 
 T* 
 
plain homespun, or possibly, in case of some mother 
 — if the vanity of the world and the temptation 
 of so public a place were too much to be resisted 
 — in a silk gown which had been her mother's, were 
 ranged on benches, the women on one side and the 
 men on the other, in grave rows, waiting in silence 
 for the service to begin. 
 
 In that service there is neither organ nor choir. 
 The singing is congregational. The whole service is 
 simple and earnest, consisting of prayers and hymns 
 and spiritual songs, and the preaching from a text. 
 
 I was going to say — together with the reading of the 
 word — but it is a singular fact that at this time *' in 
 New England reading a chapter in the Bible," as a 
 set form, "in public worship, was looked upon as a long 
 step in the direction of a liturgy ;" and our fathers 
 hated liturgies as a relic of popery. " Dr. Hopkins, 
 who ventured upon the dangerous feat (of reading the 
 Scriptures in public worship), during his ministry in 
 Western Massachusetts, (1743 — 1769) brought on 
 himself a storm of opposition." 
 
 It was a small beginning, but to one who has seen 
 anything of the frontier life of our national growth, 
 the picture which I give you here is only the oft-re- 
 peated story of the first church built in many a new 
 settlement, during the past two hundred years, with 
 like toil, and in like simplicity, and holding, for a 
 shorter or longer period, a like simple worship. There 
 is, however, this difference. At that time the primi- 
 tive character of worship was insisted on as matter 
 of principle. The circumstance and show of our 
 modern worship have won their way, through much 
 opposition, against the older methods. 
 
These people who sit waiting in this October still- 
 ness for the service to begin, are people of other 
 habits, and other thoughts in many respects, from 
 ourselves. We differ from them in some things which 
 touch the religious life, and in some of these things we 
 differ for the worse. But, after all, we are more like 
 them in religion than in anything else. To the essen- 
 tials of their religious faith, and to the spirit of their 
 church polity, and to their ideas of religious liberty, we 
 still hold. But in matters of state the change has been 
 revolutionary. These fathers and mothers of ours 
 are true and loyal subjects of King George the second. 
 They are Englishmen in near descent, and are proud 
 of being under the English king. 
 
 The mother country is the center of their civil life 
 and thought, and in the jDrayer which will soon go up 
 to heaven, our gracious sovereign the king of these 
 colonies will, no doubt, be conscientiously and loyally 
 remembered. 
 
 The republic has not yet been born. The Declara- 
 tion of Independence is still nearly fifty years in the 
 dim future, not yet thought of by one of these loyal 
 subjects of the throne, as even a remote possibility. 
 The wise policy of the adviser of King George in 
 fostering the trade of the colonies, and avoiding taxa- 
 tion, was delaying the day of struggle, and, although 
 in discussion about matters of royal prerogative, and 
 rights of trade, the jealousy of England was some- 
 times manifested in hinted fears lest by fostering the 
 numbers and wealth of the inhabitants of the colo- 
 nies they " were creating formidable antagonists to 
 
8 
 
 English industry, and nursing a disposition to rebel- 
 lion," nevertheless, at this time neither rebellion nor 
 a republic had been born in the thought even of the 
 colonies. At this moment the thoughts of these 
 fathers went in politics little beyond such matters, as 
 the attempt of England here in Connecticut, to per- 
 petuate the English laws of inheritance in favor of 
 the oldest son ; or, in religion, they were occupied with 
 the church difficulty, now going on among their neigh- 
 bors in Guilford, over the Rev. Thomas Ruggles ; or 
 in politics, again, with the strife, at that time prolonged 
 in Massachusetts, between the General Assembly and 
 the Crown about the salary of the governor whom 
 England sent over to look after her interests in that 
 colony. 
 
 If I seem to go out of my way to speak of these 
 things here, it is because the simple mention of the 
 date at which this church began its life conveys noth- 
 ing to our minds except the element of time. That 
 which concerns us is to know what those fathers were 
 thinking of, and how they lived in the days of small 
 things. We must connect the date with the social, 
 political, and religious circumstances which alone con- 
 stituted the founding of a church, an important event, 
 and which introduce us to the daily life of the people 
 we commemorate. 
 
 In regard to religion, these fathers stood on the eve 
 of great events which were powerfully to affect their 
 religious life. 
 
 Previous to this time our churches had been much 
 engaged with the forms of church government. But 
 history tells us that both in this country and in Eng- 
 
land, the spirit of piety, and the practical religious 
 life had greatly declined. 
 
 One of your former pastors, Mr. Perkins, says, we 
 may conclude with almost entire certainty, that Meri- 
 den did not differ much in these respects from the 
 rest of New England. But a change was coming. 
 One month later, that is, in November of this same 
 year, John Wesley, in England, then twenty-six years 
 old, joined his brother Charles at Oxford, where the 
 Holy Club was formed, and the foundations of that 
 great movement which has made Wesley's name re- 
 vered and loved throughout the Christian world, were 
 baptized by the name of Methodist. Another man, 
 who was destined to exert a mighty influence on our 
 American churches, George Whitefield, lacked at this 
 time, but one month of being fifteen years of age, 
 and in eleven years more, or in 1740, at the early age 
 of twenty-six, he was to preach to vast crowds in the 
 cities and villages of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 
 and Connecticut. Here also, in this same month of 
 October, in this little church on Meeting House Hill, 
 or more likely from the steps in front of it, owing to 
 the crowds which everywhere came together when he 
 spoke, he was to stir the religious thought and heart 
 of Meriden. 
 
 One more man, whose name was to be identified 
 with the great religious awakening, soon to come over 
 the churches, Jonathan Edwards, was also at this time, 
 and in this month of October, twenty-six years old. 
 Two years earlier, he had been settled at Northamp- 
 ton, where, under his preaching, was to begin only six 
 years from the founding of our church, that series of 
 
lO 
 
 revivals, whose waves rolled to and fro through our 
 churches for seven years, and on the full tide of which 
 Whitefield preached. 
 
 So much for the place of this little company of 
 morning worshipers in the political and religious 
 history of our land. As to their material and social 
 circumstances, they were for the most part plain 
 farmers, who themselves or their fathers, toward the 
 close of the previous century, or about fifty years 
 before, had begun to occupy lands in what is now 
 the town of Meriden. For such families as lay in 
 the southern half of our town, the church at Wal- 
 lingford had been the nearest place of worship. The 
 way was long, the roads miserable, so that, with the 
 increase of settlements in this section, a separate 
 place of worship became a necessity. In 1724, "the 
 north farmers," i. e. those in this section, which was 
 then within the limits of Wallingford, were permitted 
 by special vote in Wallingford town meeting, to 
 " hire a minister for four months this winter on their 
 own charge." Thus one hundred and fifty-two years 
 ago our fathers held their first regular preaching 
 services. In the following year, 1725, they formed 
 themselves into a separate ecclesiastical society under 
 the name of Meriden. For two years more they 
 maintained preaching only in the winter, and that in 
 private houses. In summer they could go down to 
 Wallingfgrd. In 1727 this little church on the hill 
 was built. So lately as the twenty-second of this 
 present month of October, 1729, these worshipers 
 had now, at length, organized themselves into a 
 Christian church on a day specially set apart as a 
 day of fasting and prayer. 
 
II 
 
 Thus slowly, step by step, — thus wearily and with 
 sacrifice, — thus earnestly and devoutly, did our fath- 
 ers plant themselves here as a Christian community, 
 the center of which was evermore to be the Christian 
 church. They were the men who had cleared away 
 the forests for the first cultivated farms, and they 
 were clearing them still. Selecting what seemed to 
 them the most promising sites for future homes, they 
 had built and were still building their houses in what 
 was only fifty years before a wilderness, lying dan- 
 gerously remote, on account of Indian wars, from 
 the settlements at Wallingford on the one side and 
 Hartford on the other. 
 
 The surroundings of the little meeting-house were 
 still wild. It was perched up there on the hill far 
 aw^ay from any of the centers into which our fathers 
 of Meriden had settled. Looking dow^n from it the 
 eye swept a large territory in every direction, which 
 was then without a village, and must have been mostly 
 covered with forests, through wdiich rough roads led to 
 distant and widely separated clusters of farm-houses. 
 Broad Street was probably at that time without a 
 house. Over all of what we call the older part of 
 Meriden, thickly crowded now with dwellings, stores, 
 public buildings, and manufactories, there was noth- 
 ing to mark the site of the future city. To the 
 east, around those swampy lands which lie south 
 of the Middletown road, half way between us and 
 the mountains, lay a little settlement, which, taking 
 its name from the swamp, was called " Dogs' Misery," 
 to note the fact that in those dense thickets, wild 
 animals, taking refuge, were able to baffle the dogs of 
 
12 
 
 hunters in their pursuit, or turned upon them when 
 driven to bay and tore them to death. 
 
 Far away to the north, on the Old Colony road, a 
 number of farmers had settled, beyond the present 
 glass works, up as far as the Old Stone House which 
 first bore the name of Meriden. In that section 
 there were people enough to make an important 
 move. Fourteen persons signed a petition, which, 
 touching so large a matter, had to be addressed " To 
 the Honorable, the Governor and Council and house 
 of representatives, in General Cort assembled, in his 
 Majesties colony of Connecticut, att New Haven, 8th 
 of October, 1724." The people represent that they 
 " are compelled to drive unruly cattell nere 6 or 9 
 miles" before they can find a pound. They pray 
 " that there may be order for a pound near ye Meri- 
 den or Stone House," and for this they solemnly 
 aver that they will " ever pray." It is to be hoped 
 they got the pound. To the" southwest also there 
 was a settlement, at Hanover, which had been laid 
 out into village lots as early as 1689. Down in the 
 valley at the Corner, or in what was then called 
 Pilgrims' Harbor, there was also the beginning of a 
 settlement. 
 
 The distribution of these little groups of farmers 
 at remote quarters of the town, had made the ques- 
 tion of the location of the first meeting-house one of 
 great difficulty. Discussion ran high, — the interests 
 of the several sections were hard to adjust. But, 
 strangely enough, as it seems to us, in view of the 
 present distribution of population, neither the Cor- 
 ner, nor yet Hanover, nor the farmers of the north, 
 
13 
 
 were strong enough to overrule the then thriving 
 community of "Dogs' Misery." It won the day. 
 The Center had no existence and was not taken into 
 the account. The timbers were gathered on the 
 southwestern slope of the hill ; but those who con- 
 tended for a more westerly location brought their 
 teams in the night, and, with something of Yankee 
 fun and grit mixed with the work, dragged the timbers 
 over the little brook, which still runs at the western 
 foot of Meeting-house Hill, to a point near the Avery 
 Hall place on Curtiss street. They showed their grit 
 and they had their fun ; but the very men and teams 
 which had sweated at the work through the night, 
 had to sweat the next day over the work of drawing 
 the timbers back again. We do not learn that any 
 feud was perpetuated from this discussion. 
 
 The little congregation worshiped, and grew in 
 the humble church, during twenty-eight years, from 
 the time of its building. There, without fires in the 
 cold winters, and through long services, the good wo- 
 men sat patiently wrapped in furs and mufflers, while 
 the men stamped their feet to keep them warm. To 
 have heated a church would have been a desecratins; 
 luxury. It would have been a soft piety that could 
 not endure any and all degrees of temperature in the 
 house of God. So the wind swept over the little 
 building, and the snow piled its drifts around it until 
 the spring came with its first robin song, and the 
 good people basked in the sun again, before the door. 
 Then the summer flung out its leaves over the forest, 
 and October turned them to crimson and yellow and 
 brown again, and the autumnal ingathering of fruit 
 2 
 
14 
 
 closed with its Thanksgiving feast, in the scattered 
 farm-houses, where broad-mouthed fire places, piled 
 high with logs, filled the kitchens and parlors with 
 light that shone out through the windows into the 
 night, while the flames roared and crackled up the 
 chimney throat, and apples, and cider, and nuts, and 
 country games went round, until the tallow-dipped 
 candles burned low in the sockets of the candlesticks, 
 and the ashes were raked over the still glimmering 
 heaps of coals to keep the fire till morning. 
 
 The number of those who were first joined in the 
 covenant of the church was fifty-one, of whom twen- 
 ty-one were men and thirty were women. 
 
 The names which appear in this list are for the 
 most part names which have been and still are identi- 
 fied with the history of the town — the names of your 
 fathers — the Royces, the Yales, the Merriams, the 
 Fosters, Collins, and Hough, and Ives, and Way, and 
 Curtiss, and Camp. The number of families in the 
 place in 1724, five years before the organization of 
 the church, were only thirty-five, and it had probably 
 not much increased in 1729. As you have seen that 
 those thirty-five families were divided between some 
 four different sections of the town, there could have 
 been nothing really approaching the pretentions of 
 a village, throughout the present area of Meriden. 
 
 The little church grew. Mr. Perkins, whose his- 
 torical sketch, prepared with great care, and published 
 in 1849, w^ll always be the starting point for the study 
 of our history, says that so far as he can learn, for 
 "year after year, not more than one or two were united 
 to the church anniially." But in this he is mistaken. 
 
15 
 
 The record shows that in 1730, twenty-seven were re- 
 ceived, and in 173 1, at least eight, and though the 
 record is confused at this point, perhaps nineteen 
 were received in the latter year. During the thirty- 
 six years following the organization of the church, two 
 hundred and fifty-three persons were added to the list 
 of the original membership. This is an addition of 
 seven a year, as an average for the whole period. It 
 seems that the little church, in common with many 
 others in New England, felt the great wave of revival 
 in the times of Edwards and Whitefield ; for I find 
 in the year 1741, after Whitefield had preached in the 
 fall of 1740, on the steps, thirty-one were united to 
 the church. 
 
 But we dare not leave out of the account of this 
 rapid growth, the severe and strong labors of that first 
 pastor of the church, whom we shall find, if we go 
 back to that October service, at which we began our 
 history ; standing in the first month of his settlement, 
 small of stature, a youth of twenty-one years, to whom 
 it is to be given to see a strong church rise out of 
 these small beginnings, whose work it is to be, touched 
 by the Spirit of God and of liberty, to lead this young 
 flock out of the wilderness and through the storm into 
 a larger place. 
 
 Theophilus Hall was a man of powerful intellect, 
 and of large heart. As I have searched among old 
 papers, it has been an inspiration to come into con- 
 tact wdth the earnestness, and the vigor of this man, 
 who began to preach a hundred and fifty years ago. 
 If you picture your early fathers, dear friends, as sitting 
 •in listless attitudes, dozing through long discourses — 
 
i6 
 
 up there on the hill — you are wide of the mark. The 
 uninteresting preacher, if you have ever had him, 
 was of later date. This man's words flashed ; his 
 short, quick, clean cut sentences went to the mark. 
 His familiar style with its "don't," and "won't," and 
 "can't," and its "you'll," makes it easy to listen, while 
 his sentiments belong more to a future age than to 
 the one in which he speaks. Apt illustrations and 
 sudden surprises give zest to the flow of his thought. 
 He is direct, personal, and eloquent. I do not hesi- 
 tate to say, that if he stood in one of our pulpits to- 
 day, he would stand there as a thoroughly popular 
 preacher, whom men would love to hear preach, and 
 would love to criticise when he should be through 
 preaching. He knew no fetters. He believed in re- 
 ligious liberty as distinguished from ecclesiastical 
 bonds and oppressions ; he believed in civil liberty 
 and was bold to speak it ; he believed in liberty of 
 thought ; and he believed and did not fear to preach 
 that doctrine of love which goes down into the heart 
 of the practical christian life — a life like Christ's. Of 
 those who talk much of religion, but know little of the 
 practical part he cries — " Such are they that are mak- 
 ing the religion of Jesus Christ to consist only in a 
 heated imagination, in trances, visions, and enthusias- 
 tic flights and raptures ; that are affecting party names 
 and tei'ms valuing themselves thereon, imposing their 
 own sentiments upon others, and stigmatizing those 
 that can't conform to them or pronounce their darling 
 Shibboleths." " No better are they that are casting 
 a slight upon holiness and sanctity, good works and 
 obedience to the commands of Christ as absolutely << 
 
necessary terms — prerequisite to our acceptance with 
 God. Such talk as this, is it not against the crown 
 and dignity of heaven ?" To those who cry against 
 works and preach a passive faith, he answers : '* Is not 
 believing as much doing and acting as any other duty ? 
 I knov/ not why the word (works) is re- 
 stricted to bodily exercise The love 
 
 of God and repentance of sin are as much works and 
 acts of obedience as any external duty whatsoever. 
 And is not faith the same ? 
 
 "Saving faith is the submission of the whole man 
 to Jesus Christ as our Lord and Master." 
 
 And here are things, touching the subject of faith, 
 I have wished to say and have never dared to say 
 them. He said them more than a hundred years 
 ago. "There are those," says he, "who have a hope 
 in God, and if you'll inquire into the reason of it 
 they'll boldly tell you, * We know we are sinners, 
 but Christ has died to save such ; there is merit 
 enough in Him ; He is a whole Saviour ; and our 
 whole dependence is on the righteousness and merits 
 of Jesus Christ.' " Then turning to his hearers, he 
 cries : " but you'll say, * all this is nothing but pre- 
 sumption, a false hope and trust.' " " I know it well 
 enough," he answers ; " but all hope and trust in 
 God will be no better if there is nothing else." Bold 
 words, dear friends, but true. Then, addressing him- 
 self to one who asks : " Is not this a legal way of 
 justification.^" he cries: "I answer, legal or illegal, 
 it matters not, if it be the way the Gospel establishes 
 and Christ and His apostles preached." 
 
 Do you wish for more t "A principle of obedi- 
 2* 
 
i8 
 
 ence, a divine conformity, is absolutely necessary to 
 acceptance with God. Can it possibly be otherwise ? 
 Are there any contraries in Nature greater than sin 
 and holiness ? Can a swinish nature, whose whole 
 delight is in the filth of sin, relish the pure joys of 
 heaven ? " 
 
 His plainness, and his great liberality, and his 
 eloquence, all come out in the sermon on the death 
 of Rev. Isaac Stiles, of North Haven, preached 
 June 1st, 1760. In speaking of the righteous, he 
 says : " What great blessings to the world such are. 
 All men are not blessings to the world ; some are 
 the foremost judgments and the greatest plagues on 
 the earth. Their lives are prolonged in judgment, 
 and it is a mercy to the world when they are taken 
 out of it." Then, after illustrating, he goes on : 
 " But, O, 'tis good men — not such as wear religion 
 only as a cloak to cover their deformities ; or make 
 use of it as an engine of cruelty, or a handle to serve 
 vile purposes ; nor every party zealot that thinks 
 himself holier than others, is for caUing fire from 
 heaven upon all that differ from him ; — but right 
 doivn honest, upright men, that are the greatest bless- 
 ings under heaven. . . .These are the gems and pearls 
 of the earth." And in the same sermon, this burst 
 of eloquence on death: "What joy to leave the 
 stormy ocean and enter into port ! To come off from 
 the field of battle with trophies of victory ! Much 
 greater, yea, joy unspeakable and full of glory, to 
 leave all the troubles of this world for peace and joy 
 in the heavenly ! Blessed soul, that exchanges cor- 
 ruption for incorruption ; this crazy body for one 
 
19 
 
 furnished like Christ's glorious bodv ; and this mor- 
 tal life for a crown of glory that fadeth not away ! 
 ' O, death, where is thy sting !' " 
 
 Great soul ! No wonder the people loved him ; no 
 wonder the church grew ; no wonder in 1755 the house 
 was too small ; and, after twenty-eight years, they 
 built the preacher a larger church, near where this one 
 now stands, — a church which weathered the storms 
 of the Revolution, and looked down on the changes 
 of Meriden life and population for seventy-six years. 
 No wonder, too, that one who spoke so well, but so 
 keenly, found his share of enemies, and criticisms, 
 and pastoral trials. No matter how conciliatory his 
 course, no matter how tenderly he spoke, — and his 
 words were sometimes like the words of a lover, — 
 there were those who would gladly have thwarted 
 him in his efforts. When Dr. Dana, pastor of the 
 mother church in Wallingford, was put under the ban 
 of the consociation, and a bitter attempt was made 
 to throw him out of his pulpit, on the charge of 
 heretical doctrine, the pastor of this church stood by 
 him and invited him to his pulpit. For this act of 
 liberty, as well as, it would seem, out of opposition to 
 the sentiments of the pastor, an attempt was made 
 to call Mr. Hall to account before the association of 
 the county. I find on the record an entry of a very 
 full church meeting on the 24th day of May, 1762, 
 to the effect that, " after solemn prayer and supplica- 
 tion made to Almighty God, the complaint against 
 the pastor of this church, given to the association 
 of New Haven County, and signed by Ebenezer 
 Prindle, Gideon Ives junior and Noah Yale, was laid 
 before the church." 
 
20 
 
 It seems probable that the complaint before the 
 association urged against Mr. Hall heretical interpre- 
 tations of the gospel and the crime of exchanging 
 with his neighbor of the Wallingford church. The 
 Meriden church met the case promptly, stood by its 
 pastor, declared in the " most unanimous manner " that 
 the complainants had, for a great number of years past, 
 appeared uneasy and dissatisfied with the preaching 
 of the word ; had been wont to take it up in a sense 
 contrary to the acceptation of the people in general ; 
 that there was no just ground for their complaint ; 
 that it seemed designed to disturb the peace and 
 quiet of the church ; and that the preaching of Mr. 
 Dana was acceptable and agreeable. Thus flatly did 
 the church rebuke the men who looked for an occa- 
 sion to break the strength of the pastor. The church 
 went before the association and the affair seems to 
 have been dropped. 
 
 The records of this period are very scanty, and are 
 much taken up with matters of discipline, which in 
 our earlier history was more faithfully administered 
 than now, and took cognizance of matters such as we 
 should be very likely to pass by. Lest some here 
 might possibly be nearly enough related to the per- 
 sons concerned in one curious case of discipline to 
 be disturbed at the mention of their full names, I 
 will 'only say, that in the year 1745 there was a 
 complaint against certain members whose Christian 
 names were, Enos, Benjamin, John, Samuel, Noah, 
 David, and another David, who were all suspended 
 on account of disorders committed in the night time. 
 The case of these persons, bearing a remarkable array 
 
21 
 
 of scripture names, came under the cognizance of the 
 civil courts and judgment was pronounced against 
 them. From the church record, and from a curious 
 old paper which has come into my hands through one 
 of the families of the parish, but which had never 
 been understood until the correspondence between it 
 and the church record was discovered, it appears that 
 Enos and Benjamin and John and Samuel and Noah 
 and the two Davids had been guilty of making night 
 hideous "by ringing bells and blowing horns on the 
 highway." The neighborhood took offense at it. It 
 is possible there was some political bearing to their 
 action, though it may have been only one of those 
 frolics which were liable to be treated as breaches of 
 the peace. They were convicted in court, and the 
 church record quaintly says, that Enos and Noah and 
 one of the Davids, before the church, acknowledged 
 that said actions were neither justifiable nor com- 
 mendable, and they were really sorry that they had 
 any hand in it and promised that they would do so no 
 more. The church took them back, but Benjamin, 
 Samuel, and the other David, justified their conduct, 
 and their case was sent up to the association, from 
 which august body it came back with advice to the 
 church to receive them if they would " promise to 
 behave orderly for the time to come," otherwise to 
 hold them under suspension. The church followed 
 the advice, but I have not yet learned whether the 
 three obstinate ones ever gave in. 
 
 How hard it was for the pastor to adjust all the 
 affairs of the young but growing church, appears 
 from the course of some of the people in connection 
 
22 
 
 with the erection of a new meeting-house. It took 
 five years to discuss the location of that building. 
 Mr. Hall was evidently a man of affairs, and was the 
 owner of a very considerable property. He lived on 
 the spot where his direct descendant, Mr. Avery 
 Hall, now lives, in a house of which the present one 
 is said to be as nearly as possible a copy. He built 
 also, for his son, the large house over the way from 
 us, on the corner of Broad and Main streets, long 
 used for a hotel ; and he gave the acre of ground on 
 which we stand for the erection of the new church. 
 But there was jealousy of the pastor's influence. 
 Some evidently thought it would not do to build on 
 ground owned by the minister. Some advantage 
 might accrue to him. The acceiDtance of the gift 
 might bring him some larger claim upon the people, 
 and increase his power. A party sprang up in oppo- 
 sition, but the day was again carried against the 
 opposition. Thus pestered and troubled, you will not 
 wonder that the great heart of Theophilus Hall grew 
 weary, and that, in an ordination sermon preached at 
 Berwick, (Matthew Merriam's ordination, Sept. 25, 
 1765,) only less than two years before he died, he 
 should have poured out his soul in words like these, 
 on the trials and the joys of a pastor's life: "With 
 respect to the people, innumerable difficulties arise 
 from this matter ; there is so much weakness and 
 ignorance, so much pride and self-conceit among 
 them, so many different tastes and opinions, and 
 their state and circumstances so very various, that it 
 is almost impossible rightly to divide the word of 
 truth among them. If you conform to one, you may 
 
23 
 
 be sure you will offend another ; and if you preach 
 
 the truth, it may be you will displease them all 
 
 Some are too knowing to be taught, others too proud 
 to T^e reproved, and how^ many are there disposed to 
 find fault? They look upon their ministers with a 
 jealous eye, and are apt to think the least failing in 
 them an unpardonable crime. 
 
 " How often is this the case, that one or the other 
 of these dilemmas or the like are retorted upon us 
 by the people ? If we take no care of our secular 
 interest, we are idle and indolent men. If we preach 
 anything new to them, 'it is heresy;' but if we don't, 
 then we are charged with old sermons. If we are 
 familiar with our people, they will despise us ; but if 
 we keep them at a proper distance, then we lord it 
 over God's heritage. 'John came neither eating nor 
 drinking, and they say he hath a devil. The Son of 
 Man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold 
 a man gluttonous and a wine bibber, a friend of 
 publicans and sinners.' " 
 
 Alas ! dear friends, that thirty odd years with a 
 single people should have forced such a passage 
 from such a man. And yet the dear little church 
 had stood by him until it had grown with him into 
 strength. From a membership of fifty it had risen 
 to be a strong church.* From the little meeting- 
 house on the hill the congregation had removed to a 
 new and substantial house in the future center of the 
 growing population. 
 
 The hard struggle of the day of small things was 
 
 * In 1770 the membership was 185 and the familes in the parish 123. 
 
24 
 
 over. The voice which for thirty-seven years had 
 sounded a ringing note of Hberty, and had fearlessly 
 proclaimed the need among men of a divine life, is at 
 last hushed. The first pastor is dead. In the early 
 spring of 1767, they bore him through the scenes of 
 his toil, over the little brook, up the steep hill-side, 
 past the site of the little church, to the burying- 
 ground on yonder southern slope. There they laid 
 him down and covered him with the sod, and on the 
 red sandstone slab over his grave they wrote these 
 words : 
 
 IN MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 THEOPHILUS HALL, 
 
 Pastor of the church, who, having for thirty-seven 
 
 years discharged the duties of his function with 
 
 distinguished fidelity and accomplished 
 
 Christian life, the uniform disciple 
 
 of Jesus Christ, 
 
 Deceased March 230, 1767, in the sixtieth year 
 
 OF HIS age. 
 
 " They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of 
 the firmament." 
 
 We need no account of that funeral. Over that 
 grave all contention was hushed. In it all bitterness 
 was buried. Love wove around it a garland of 
 memories brought from all their rural homes, and the 
 benediction of God's peace was upon it. For more 
 than a hundred years the grass has freshened and 
 
25 
 
 faded over it ; for more than a hundred years the 
 winter wind has swept it and the summer rains 
 have moistened it. To-day the slab which commem- 
 orates that Hfe of our early history lies neglected 
 and broken on the ground, desecrated by the sport 
 of heedless passers-by. But the lives that were 
 made better by that life, the tears that were dried, 
 and the mourning hearts that were comforted, and 
 the wayward ones that were saved by it, are praising 
 it still and will praise it for ever. How mightily that 
 life and that vigorous thought have influenced the 
 growing future of this place, even down to the pres- 
 ent generation, we know not. But I am proud, dear 
 friends, to have been instrumental, this day, in bring- 
 ing the memory of it out of the forgetfulness of the 
 past and re-consecrating it in the heart of this gene- 
 tion. 
 
SECOND CENTENNIAL SERMON 
 
 PREACHED ON THE 
 
 ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OF THE ORGANIZATION OF THE 
 
 Congregational Church 
 
 IN MERIDEN, 
 Sunday, October 22 d, 1876. 
 
 Tkxt— Rev. 3: 8. — "Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man 
 
 can shut it." 
 
SERMON. 
 
 Onck more, mv friends, let us li y to get a i)icture 
 of the popular life to which our church, by God's help, 
 about the year 1770, was still supplying moral and 
 si)iritual power. The church is nothing without the 
 people. The kingdom of heaven comes to society 
 busied with schemes of national development and of 
 political government. On this troubled sea of human 
 interests, with its clashing waves, the church of God 
 may seem only a driven boat, w^ith quivering mast and 
 storm-reefed sail, tossed at the mercy of innumerable 
 waves ; but through the storm and under the cloud 
 she is God's pilot-boat to individuals and nations. 
 
 Over what kind of seas is our little church, at the 
 time of the death of its first pastor, helping to guide 
 the people .'' There have been great changes since 
 that 22d of October, of the year 1729, when, on a day 
 set apart for fasting and prayer, your fathers entered 
 into the covenant of a Christian church. Thirty- 
 eight years have passed, during which the nation and 
 the parish with it have been growing rapidly in num- 
 bers and in material wealth. The last two or three 
 years of the life of Hall had also been spent among 
 scenes of political excitement, under which the nerve 
 of the nation first quivered and then strung itself for 
 battle. The lenient policy of King George the Second 
 
30 
 
 had been succeeded by the oppressive policy of the 
 mad King George the Third. Taxation by sea was 
 to be followed by taxation on American soil, which 
 our fathers declared subversive of American liberties. 
 It is an old story, but these Centennial sermons would 
 be tame without it. It was God's narrow way to the 
 open door. On the 27th of February, 1765, British 
 legislation for the Colonies brought the stamp act 
 through the House of Commons. On the eighth of 
 March following, the House of Lords agreed to it 
 without " amendment, debate, protest, division, or 
 single dissentient vote," and George the Third signed 
 it on the 2 2d day of March, just two years and one 
 day before the death of that '' zealous advocate for 
 civil and religious liberty," Meriden's first pastor ; 
 who, therefore, lived long enough to witness the recoil 
 of a stunned nation at the reception of the news of 
 that act, and to see the rebound as the nation sprang 
 to the work of resistance. He heard often, no doubt, 
 the cry of " Liberty, Property, and No stamps," which 
 rang on the streets even in the mouths of children. 
 He was a sharer in the excitement here in Connecticut, 
 when those five hundred farmers and freeholders, 
 mounted on horseback, armed with freshly peeled 
 white cudgels, forced the stamp officer, Ingersoll, on 
 the broad ^Wethersfield street, to resign his office, 
 throw up his hat, and three times shout, " Liberty 
 and Property." 
 
 What part our Meriden fathers took in all this, we 
 have little left on record to tell us ; but we know that 
 the great tide wave did not pass over these hills and 
 through these valleys without gathering force as it 
 
31 
 
 swept by our ancestral homes, and the doors of the 
 new church on Meriden green. We know tliat wlien, 
 in January, i 'j66, tlie Sons of Liberty, of New York, 
 sent out their proclamation declaring that they would 
 go to the last extremity, and venture their lives and 
 fortunes, effectually to prevent the stamp act, their 
 resolution was speedily brought to Connecticut, and 
 the town of Wallingford, of which this Meriden parish 
 then formed a part, in a meeting in which, no doubt, 
 the Meriden pastor and people participated, voted a 
 fine of twenty shillings on any inhabitant "that should 
 use or improve any stamped velum or paper ;" and the 
 organization of Sons of Liberty formed in the town of 
 Wallingford and Meriden declared, with their breth- 
 ren of New York, that they were prepared " to oppose 
 the unconstitutional stamp act, to the last extremity, 
 even to take the field." It would be a precious memo- 
 rial of those brave spirits who nursed the fire which, 
 ten years later, flamed out in the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, if I were able here to produce some of 
 the words which fell from the pulpit on the Sundays 
 which followed those stirring weeks down to the time 
 when Parliament, one year before Mr. Hall's death, 
 repealed that act. He who could speak so eloquently 
 and boldly must have spoken most eloquently and 
 boldly in those last days, from which he was so soon to 
 enter into rest But I find no word of it all. In the 
 lull which followed the intense excitement of that first 
 great struggle of the people, he passed away, and left 
 the church to plunge into a contest with the ecclesi- 
 astical powers around it, wherein our fathers showed 
 
32 
 
 that ecclesiastical freedom was not less precious to 
 them than civil liberty. 
 
 That controversy over the installation of the Rev. 
 John Hubbard, the second pastor of this church, has 
 gone into history, along with the celebrated contro- 
 versy in Wallingford over the ordination of Dr. Dana. 
 It was more than a controversy between a majority 
 and a minority in a country church. It was a con- 
 test between the rights of the local church under the 
 congregational system, and associations and consocia- 
 tions ruling over the churches with authority. It was 
 a continuation of the struggle, in these Connecticut 
 churches, between Congregationalism pure and sim- 
 ple and a Presbyterianized Congregationalism set 
 forth by the Saybrook Platform (in the year 1708,) 
 and established by act of the General Assembly of 
 these Connecticut colonies as the basis of a quasi 
 State church. The roots of the Hubbard controversy 
 strike deep into religious liberty. Things were ripe 
 here, as you know from my first discourse, for the 
 breaking out of an already disaffected party, when, in 
 the October* following the death of Theophilus Hall, 
 the church invited John Hubbard, of New Haven, 
 then about forty years of age, to preach for four weeks 
 on probation. The appearance of that preacher on 
 the scene was the signal for action. Mr. Hubbard 
 was reputed, as reputation then went, to be unsound. 
 He could not have preached more than one Sunday, 
 whenf forty-seven members of the society petitioned 
 their fellow-members to advise with either association 
 
 * October 5th, 1767. T October 12th, 1767. 
 
33 
 
 of New Haven County, as was then the custom, on 
 the subject of a candidate for the pastoral office. But 
 the church was shy of associational interference. It 
 meant to choose its own pastor. 
 
 On the 2d of November, having probably heard 
 the eight probationary sermons, it voted, forty-two 
 to twenty-one, in favor of inviting Mr. Hubbard "to 
 the pastoral office." The minority appealed to the 
 association. The association summoned the accused 
 pastor-elect before it ; the pastor-elect denied the 
 jurisdiction of that ecclesiastical court, and the asso- 
 ciation replied by taking away his license. The con- 
 sociation with its higher authority confirmed this act. 
 So John Hubbard preached without a license. 
 
 The church entered on its record a declaration 
 made* "by a full vote," the preamble of which throws 
 light on the state of things among the churches at 
 that time. " Whereas," it says, " there has much 
 controversy and dispute existed in this Colony of 
 late concerning ecclesiastical discipline, and particu- 
 larly concerning the authority of councils and the 
 rights of particular churches, we think it expedient to 
 declare explicitly our purpose to * stand fast in the 
 liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.' " " We 
 understand," the declaration goes on to say, " that no 
 consociation has right, by the constitution, to take 
 cognizance of or intermeddle with any of the affairs 
 or doings of any particular church upon the desire or 
 application of private members of said church, unless 
 said church first consented thereto or had excom- 
 
 *November 20th, 1767. 
 
34 
 
 municated said private members We declare 
 
 ourselves to be a CongregatioTial church, and we 
 understand the constitution as allowing and securing 
 to us the full enjoyment of the rights of Congrega- 
 tional churches, especially the right of exercising 
 discipline by ourselves and choosing our own pastor." 
 
 People had got into a troublesome way of talking 
 about rights in those days, of British navigation laws 
 and stamp acts. The Wallingford matter, too, had 
 put these men on their guard. They held to the 
 value of Congregationalism as a system of church 
 liberty. Their dead pastor had taught them that. 
 They believed in the rule of majorities ; and they 
 had heard in the last thirty-seven years too free a 
 discussion of Christian doctrine to be alarmed by the 
 cry of heresy. That declaration, flung out on the 
 20th of November, was a warning to the consocia- 
 tion, which was already on the move. 
 
 On the 29th of December, the month following 
 that declaration, the parish of Meriden was the scene 
 of lively discussion in every family, at the early morn- 
 ing meal, and by every fireside in the evening. On 
 that day a council of churches met at the call of the 
 majority to ordain John Hubbard ; and, on the same 
 day, the Consociation of New Haven County met 
 also, here in Meriden, to prevent the ordination. 
 For four days these two ecclesiastical bodies held 
 sessions, discussed, resolved, remonstrated, and grew 
 warm over against each other, until at last the council 
 which the majority had called "considered the broken 
 state of the society," and were of opinion it was not 
 best to proceed to ordination. But the trouble was 
 not over. 
 
35 
 
 In the following March,* in a protest which 
 sounds very much like 1776, our church re-asserted 
 its privileges. That document, which sets forth its 
 grievances and declares its withdrawal from the con- 
 sociation, is worthy of a full reading here were there 
 time for it. It begins by pointing to the relation of 
 this trouble to that in Wallingford ; refers to the in- 
 terference of the consociation at the time when the 
 council met in Meriden ; declares it does not know 
 what is further intended, but supposes that unless the 
 church desist from its choice of a pastor, it is to be 
 treated as the Wallingford church was — the minority 
 to be declared the church, and they themselves scat- 
 tered "as the ashes of the martyrs in the air, and their 
 bones at the grave's mouth." They declare that they 
 see no safety but in flight. They therefore renounce 
 the consociation, and assert that they will pay no re- 
 gard to its authority. Then within a weekf they offer 
 to the minority to give up their preference for Mr. 
 Hubbard, " though his preaching and labors are very 
 agreeable to us," provided the opposers of Mr. Hub- 
 bard's settlement "join with the major part of this 
 church in asserting and maintaining that Christian 
 liberty which we so highly esteem, .... renounce 
 the consociation .... until said consociation gives 
 up their unwarrantable claims." The entry of the 
 scribe, Benjamin Rice, at the close of this proposition 
 shows how things were going : ** The above proposal 
 was universally assented to by the major part and it 
 was wholly rejected by the minor with contempt." 
 
 *March 22d, 1768. t March 28th. 
 
36 
 
 The minority persevered and carried the case before 
 the Colonial Assembly.* The majority in its turn 
 called a second council having two ministers from this 
 Colony of Connecticut, one of whom was the Rev. 
 James Dana, (who was also scribe of the council,) and 
 four from outside the colony. Of these, the Rev. Dr. 
 Ezra Styles, of Newport, afterwards President of Yale 
 College, was brother-in-law of Mr. Hubbard. The 
 others were the Rev. Joseph Lothrop, of Springfield, 
 Rev. Robert Buck, also of Springfield, and the Rev. 
 John Ballentine. This council met on the 20th day 
 of that always lovely month of June {1769). Before 
 it appeared a committee of the association on behalf 
 of the minority, and before it also appeared the minor- 
 ity itself, with a protest. The discussion continued 
 with protest, propositions, and rejections, until the 
 majority of the church — declaring that they do not 
 believe the difficulties can ever be adjusted, and that 
 they have exhausted all expedients — close with an ex- 
 pressed conviction that if, as had been proposed, a 
 mutual council agreed on by the parties in the church 
 should meet and advise Mr. Hubbard not to settle, 
 even that would not bring peace ; but on the con- 
 trary, " we never shall be as well united as now, but 
 fear our unhappy dispute will terminate in the great 
 interest of the Church of England." How far that 
 last dark hint about the formation of an Episcopal 
 Church in the parish of Meriden may have influenced 
 the minds of the reverend ministers on that council, 
 we can only guess. But the council was convinced, 
 
 *May, 1768. 
 
37 
 
 and on the 22d of June, granted the petition of the 
 church, and ordained the pastor of its choice. Both 
 sides in the controversy had shown the persevering 
 spirit of the times. 
 
 What the views of Mr. Hubbard were, I have not 
 as yet been able to ascertain ; * but from such hints as 
 I am able to gather, nothing in his theology would 
 render him objectionable to any church of ordinary 
 intelligence at the present day. The contest was due 
 to the progress of thought in a time when men's 
 minds were thoroughly roused — when there was a 
 great tendency to free discussions, and when with the 
 chafing at political bondage there came a new and 
 fresh assertion of the liberty of the old Congregational 
 way against the restraints of a half way Presbyterian- 
 ism. Such times would necessarily involve conflict. 
 
 The discussion continued in the colony after the 
 council had decided the case. A portion of the church 
 withdrew and maintained separate worship. But the 
 magnetism of men is often mightier than the preju- 
 dices of men. The fine qualities of the new pastor 
 forced themselves upon the hearts of the opposers ; 
 his kindness, his charity, and his courtesy won them 
 all back. Animated and interesting as a preacher, 
 his freedom of thought possessed a charm for that age 
 of liberty, and his "unusually pleasant and benignant 
 countenance," remembered still in 1848 by the sur- 
 vivors of his ministry, disarmed malice, if malice there 
 was, or dissipated innocent but unnecessary fears. 
 Moreover, the time when he entered upon his minis- 
 
 * For Mr. Hubbard's Confession of Faith, since discovered, see 
 Appendix. 
 
 4 
 
38 
 
 try was auspicious. It was a time pregnant with that 
 future, in which men's thoughts turned from the 
 smaller strifes of parishes to the concerns of a nation 
 passing through the baptism of blood. The years 
 were speeding rapidly on to the revolution, with its 
 sacrifices, its homes mourning over the slain, and its 
 long watching for the fulfillment of patriotic hopes. 
 These years were favorable for such a man to win the 
 hearts of the people. 
 
 It is a significant fact which comes to my knowledge 
 just at the moment of writing these lines, that per- 
 haps the only person living, who was born in Meriden 
 during Mr. Hubbard's ministry, an old lady, residing 
 near Aurora, Illinois, a hundred years of age this fall, 
 very naively said to a great-grandson of our John 
 Hubbard, that her father's family found it convenient 
 to remove from Meriden while she was very young. 
 As she was born in i ']']6, and circumstances point to 
 the tory leanings of her father, it will readily be un- 
 derstood how convenient it was for the family to take 
 its departure. 
 
 Mr. Hubbard lived to see the close of that war and 
 to share in the rejoicings over a victorious peace. 
 But at about this time he was thrown from his sleigh 
 and so severely injured that he ceased preaching. He 
 lingered among an affectionate people some three 
 years longer, when he died and was buried, under the 
 chill winds of a November day, in the new cemetery 
 beneath the trees to the south of us, the land of which 
 he himself had deeded to the town of Meriden. There, 
 at the head of one of the graves, those who revere the 
 past may find a quaint old free-stone slab on which 
 his people thus delicately commemorated his virtues : 
 
39 
 IN MEMORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 REV. JOHN HUBBARD, A . M . , 
 
 Pastor of the Church in Meriden, who 
 
 Died Nov. iSth, 1776, JEtat 60. 
 
 He was a rational and serious Christian, exemplar)' 
 for gravity, integrity, piety and benevolence. He 
 was an able minister of the New Testament and 
 beloved by all his flock for his faithfulness 
 and apostolic diligence in the work of the 
 ministry, and for the prudence, kind- 
 ness, and humanity which adorned 
 his manners and rendered him a 
 most excellent pastor." 
 
 By the side of that weather-worn slab of sand- 
 stone stands another, which commemorates his wife, 
 Mary, who died March 2, 1806, having that day 
 completed her 70th year. Of her the sculptor's 
 chisel says : " An early Christian profession was 
 adorned by her living to Christ. With a rare tender- 
 ness of conscience, she kept in view the glory of God 
 in ail the duties of her relations and conditions. Re- 
 marking the Providence which numbereth the hairs 
 of our heads, she improved by every incident." Then, 
 with a touch of sympathy, the chisel tenderly adds : 
 " The comforts of vital piety, which she sensibly en- 
 joyed, were subject to intervals of extreme mental 
 darkness." ** Light is sown for the righteous." 
 
 If I were to search for some words with which to 
 
40 
 
 close this notice of a charitable life, I could hardly 
 find any more worthy of our heeding, as members of 
 a Christian church and as neighbors and friends, than 
 these, taken from the only sermon of Mr. Hubbard's 
 which has come into my hands. It is a pungent but 
 kindly one on the sin of backbiting, preached March 
 1 2th, 1776, a hundred years ago. After defining that 
 vice as consisting " in speaking ill of others, slander- 
 ing and reproaching of them in their absence, and 
 consequently when they have no opportunity to ex- 
 culpate or vindicate themselves," and after saying that 
 " Besides the unreasonableness of this practice, it is 
 a mean vice, having its special deformity as it betray- 
 eth a soul that is either wholly devoid of every prin- 
 ciple of ingenuity and friendship, or inattentive to the 
 great and sacred law of love and charity," he closes 
 by making this application: "The subject remindeth 
 us also of the importance of cultivating a spirit of 
 
 universal candor, charity, and love Then shall 
 
 we be disposed to put on, as the elect of God, bowels 
 of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind ; then will 
 the God of love and peace dwell among us." 
 
 Before the death of John Hubbard, the Rev. John 
 Willard had been settled as colleague pastor in June, 
 1786. I am able to add almost nothing to what oth- 
 ers have written in regard to him and his pastorate. 
 His work here fell in that unfortunate period of finan- 
 cial depression and moral deterioration which follows 
 upon long and exhausting wars.' It is not likely that 
 the population increased rapidly. He was an anima- 
 ted preacher, of very tall and slender figure, and a 
 sermon which has come into my hands, preached in 
 
41 
 
 a neighboring parish, on the training of children, was 
 by request, I beheve, of that parish, put into print. 
 
 On his settlement, the old division in the church 
 showed itself afresh, and he seems to have had a 
 troubled ministry. Again the doctrinal discussion 
 was renewed as under Hubbard. It is a fact, having 
 a bearing no doubt on his work, that the First Baptist 
 church in Meriden was organized in the midst of that 
 controversy, two months after his settlement, and the 
 Episcopal church was organized before the close of 
 his ministry. It is said that great numbers either 
 deserted public worship altogether or transferred 
 themselves to other denominations. The old yeast of 
 discontent was doing its work. The history of the 
 previous twenty years, the progress and diversity of 
 opinion in the church, the conflict between the new 
 and the old, had made a rendering of old church ties 
 inevitable, and these denominations offered the occa- 
 sion for a result which was already being precipitated. 
 Discouraged by causes which were, no doubt, beyond 
 human control, Mr. Willard committed what, I fear, 
 was the error of resigning his post, and was dismissed 
 in 1802. By that event, for the first time the pastoral 
 relation in this church was violently broken, and, 
 since that day, no pastor has rounded out the work 
 of his whole life among you. One has come back 
 to die after an absence of years, and another has 
 been brought here and buried ; but pastorates have 
 been increasingly brief, and no pastor has died in the 
 harness. Has it always been the preacher's fault ? 
 
 I learn* that in the ten years ending in 1795, all of 
 
 * Manuscript sermon ol Mr. Hinsdale. 
 
 4* 
 
42 
 
 which fell in Mr. Willard's ministry, the number of 
 additions to the church were sixty-five or an average 
 of six and one-half per year. 
 
 We must not leave the last century, my friends, 
 without a glimpse at the state of society in that period 
 which we love to think of as the romantic period of 
 American history. In the last quarter of the last 
 century, the drift of population pointed more and more 
 towards the formation of an important center along 
 the line of our present Broad street. Here the church 
 had been built ; here, across the way, the house which 
 afterwards became the half-way tavern for the days 
 of stages, had been built ; on the hill, where Edward 
 Miller's house now stands, the Rev. John Hubbard 
 built and lived in a house which has since been re- 
 moved to the east side of South Broad street, and is 
 occupied by our friend, Mr. Sanderson. The high- 
 way which forms the present street in front of the 
 church had been laid out, and farther north, at the 
 head of what is now Liberty street, Mr. Willard, the 
 third pastor, built what, for the time, was a sufficiently 
 stately house, the same square-roofed building, with 
 projecting upper story, which has been since removed 
 to a point on Broad street, opposite Mr, Bassett's. 
 The place of burial, too, had been changed from the 
 sunny hill-side to the cemetery just south of us. 
 These private houses with the church, ranging along 
 the wide but rough highway, already formed a center 
 towards which the population drifted, until the open- 
 ing of the railroad. 
 
 The spirit of progress and change was working out 
 
43 
 
 the greater future of Mcriden and the whole land. 
 The survivors of those subjects of the British king, 
 who first gathered in the church built on this spot, 
 had now become free citizens of a free country. The 
 colony of Connecticut had become a State. He that 
 " openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no 
 man openeth," had set before them an open door. 
 
 The people who came into church on those Sun- 
 days in the latter portion of the last century, were 
 men and women of deep convictions, of heroic cour- 
 age, of mighty endurance, and of earnest life. They 
 were earnest, but not so grave, I imagine, as some 
 of us have pictured them. The stir of those days 
 was favorable to vivacity of manners, and the Yankee 
 loved a strain of wit then as well as now. In society 
 there was a certain courtliness which we have drop- 
 ped. The dress was more pretentious, or seems more 
 so to us. The short clothes, with long hose, buckles 
 at the knees, and buckled shoes, the cocked hats and 
 full white' or gray wigs, which were worn in public, 
 give an air of stateliness to our fathers, but they did 
 not forget to be playful. Their homes were plain but 
 cheerful, with the opening fields around them in 
 summer and with the blazing wood fires in winter. 
 Luxuries had not found their way into domestic life. 
 The women did house-work. The oppression of trade 
 by England had stimulated home industry. Spin- 
 ning-wheels for wool and flax hummed lullabys to 
 children in the broad kitchens, and hand-looms clat- 
 tered through the winter days as they wove the yarn 
 or the thread into homespun. The homes of minis- 
 ters were not always sober. Doctor Styles, the same 
 
44 
 
 that formed one of the council which ordained John 
 Hubbard, tells us in his manuscript diary at Yale 
 College, of a donation party at his house in Newport, 
 where the women had a spinning match, at which 
 there were thirty-seven spinning-wheels going at one 
 time. 
 
 There was a grand break down of denominational 
 lines, at least, that day. Among the spinners were 
 two Quakers, six Baptists, and twenty-nine of his own 
 society. Besides the spinners were sixteen reelers 
 to reel the yarn. Sixty persons dined at the parson- 
 age. What a humming and buzzing ! Do you suppose 
 those fifty and more women made no music at the 
 pastor's house ? The fathers and mothers of 'yS were 
 earnest but not over-staid people. They were pro- 
 gressive folks. The world moved fast in the last 
 quarter of the last century. 
 
 In the houses there were no carpets. Even in 
 1802, there was but one in the town. Down to the 
 year 1789 there had never been owned here anything 
 more nearly approaching a pleasure wagon or travel- 
 ing buggy, than the three two-wheeled rude chaises 
 without top, which had hitherto constituted the turn- 
 out of the town. People — men and women, young 
 and old — rode on horseback from house to house. I 
 have heard my mother, who was born in 1800, tell of 
 the merry times, when young men came to take young- 
 ladies to ride behind them on pillions, and dashed 
 away two upon a horse over Torringford hills. Women, 
 as well as men, were good riders in those days. In 
 a country where there were only rough roads, every 
 body learned to mount a horse. 
 
45 
 
 Mr. Perkins tells us that down to the year 1802, 
 there was not here a single road that was rounded up as 
 we make roads now. When the Hartford and New 
 Haven Turnpike through the center of the town was 
 completed, about the year 1800, it was considered a 
 " vast, wonderful, and curious work." People came to 
 see it, just as they afterwards flocked to see the first 
 railroad. The completion of such roads was a neces- 
 sary preliminary to those splendid stage lines which, 
 down to 1830 or '40, furnished the swiftest mode of 
 communication, with their relays, and their proud 
 drivers on rattling coaches, shaking the reins over 
 four running horses, ringing out the signal note 
 of the French horn, then seizing the long whip and 
 sending the cracking lash around the ears of the 
 leaders, as coach, passengers, baggage, and mail rolled 
 down past the village houses towards the half-way 
 house on the corner. 
 
 The morals of the last portion of the last century 
 in this town of Meriden, may be gathered from the 
 style of church discipline and from the well-known 
 drinking habits of society. The population of Meri- 
 den in 1790 is said not to have been more than about 
 nine hundred, and for that population, and down to 
 18 1 2, there were not less than five and perhaps eight 
 taverns, all keeping liquors. But it must be remem- 
 bered that the traveling habits of the public, in a 
 time when journeys were made on liorseback, and 
 later in wagons and stages, made taverns necessary in 
 a place so favorably situated as Meriden was for a 
 resting point on the great thoroughfare from Spring- 
 field and Hartford through New Haven to New York. 
 
46 
 
 But the old tavern with its bar, its great room for 
 strangers lounging before the open fire, its numbers 
 of all classes brought together for a night away from 
 home, with its practice of social drinking which then 
 pervaded society, with its story-telling, and its village 
 lounging — that being the place to which people natu- 
 rally resorted to hear the news from strangers, and 
 often the place for distribution of the mails — the old 
 New England tavern of the last century and the 
 early part of this was not a promoter of what we 
 should term good morals. 
 
 Slavery existed in a mild form among our fathers 
 of the last century. In the year 1790, Connecticut 
 had two thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine slaves ; 
 and even down to the year 1 840, in this State the pro- 
 cess of gradual emancipation which had been adopted 
 here had still left us seventeen slaves, Mr. Perkins esti- 
 mates that in 1770, there were in the whole town of 
 Wallingford and Meriden fifty-six slaves — an estimate 
 based upon the records of deaths for thirty-eight years. 
 The hardships of slavery, bitter enough in any case, 
 were mitigated here in New England by the fact that 
 the slaves were household servants and farm hands, 
 whose masters and mistresses did not themselves dis- 
 dain the severest toils, so that the servant was brought 
 into closer contact with the master. 
 
 I am able to present you here to-day with a docu- 
 ment which will make you realize the immense differ- 
 ence between the last century and this century in 
 respect to the sacredness of human personality. It 
 is the original document of sale of a negro girl in this 
 town in the year 1750. The paper was found in an 
 
47 
 
 old drawer of the Royce family, and is kindly furnished 
 me by Mrs. Robert Hull. 
 
 "Know all men l)y these presents that I Joseph Shailer of 
 haddam in the County of Hartford in the Colony of Connect- 
 icut in new england do acknowledg my self in plain and open 
 market for and in consideration of the some of one hundred 
 and sixty pounds to have sold and set over unto dec Benjamin 
 Roys of Walingford in New Haven County one nes^ro girl 
 called violet aged about three years to be the sd Benjamin 
 Koyses slave and servant and to his heirs and asigns during 
 the full term of her natural life avouching my self to be the 
 proper and sole owner of the sd negro girl and have a Right to 
 dispose of the sd negro girl during the term of her natural life 
 further I do here by Bind my self and Heirs to defend and 
 warant the sd negro girl violet to the sd Roys his heirs and 
 asigns against the lawfull claims of all persons what soever as 
 witness here of I hereunto have set my hand and seal this 20th 
 of April AD 1750 
 
 Joseph Shailer 
 
 Neliemiali Pratt 
 
 Daniel Hoult" 
 
 It seems that deacons of chinches, and ministers as 
 well, did p.ot esteem it a violation of Christian prin- 
 ciple to own and buy and sell negro girls — "violets" — 
 or negro boys and men. 
 
 Out of that century many habits of society have 
 been prolonged into the present one, and it has been the 
 task of the Christian church here and elsewhere to 
 prosecute the work of eradicating practices which the 
 pure gospel of Jesus Christ does not fail in the end 
 to expose and condemn. 
 
 As its leader in the moral and spiritual work of the 
 opening century the church (Jan. 3, 1803,) called a 
 man of very different type from any who had gone 
 before him. Erastus Ripley was the fourth pastor of 
 
48 
 
 the church.* I do not learn that there was any 
 division over his call to the ministerial office here. 
 There seems to have been no question as to his 
 soundness. He was a thoroughly sincere and good 
 man, bold in denouncing sin, not sparing to speak 
 according to his conviction of duty, even at a funeral. 
 He dealt stout blows and frequent blows with the 
 doctrine of election and future punishment. He was 
 a strong writer but a heavy speaker ; — a tall, broad- 
 shouldered, heavy man who did not often smile. In 
 the course of his ministry the congregation rapidly 
 diminished. Great numbers joined themselves to 
 other denominations, and at one time it seemed as 
 if the church would become quite extinct. During 
 eleven years he labored under great discouragements. 
 For seventy-four years, or since the days of White- 
 field, it is not known that there had been a general 
 revival of religion. 
 
 Out of a sermon celebrating the one hundredth 
 anniversary of the church, preached by Mr. Hinsdale, 
 Mr. Ripley's immediate successor, January 3, 1830, I 
 learn that the pastor of the church, after a period of 
 great mental depression, was seized with a strong 
 conviction that there was to be a revival. The revival 
 came and came in power. At first church prayer- 
 meetings were held consisting of a very few persons, 
 but " their numbers were soon greatly increased." 
 Sinners in different parts of the town were at length 
 aroused and crowded to the place of prayer. The 
 Spirit of God moved over the place bringing one of 
 
 *Ordainecl in the following February over the church, after a church 
 fast. 
 
49 
 
 those mighty seasons which some of you remember 
 so well, — in which stillness and thoiightfulness per- 
 vade places of business and homes ; the Word of 
 God comes to hearts with convincing force ; men 
 inquire after the way of salvation ; sinners are con- 
 verted and Christians are lifted into a higher life. 
 Mr. Hinsdale testifies that the blessed effects of this 
 season were still visible when he spoke. Such a 
 work, after so long a period as that intervening since 
 Whitefield's time, was a great and glorious experience, 
 and was no doubt sufficient mightily to affect the 
 currents of life throughout the town. It was thought 
 by some that one hundred were converted in this 
 revival. The record shows sixty-five additions to the 
 church in the year 1815, no doubt in large part the 
 fruits of this work. But there was a reaction. In 
 1 816 there are but nine persons entered on the record 
 as new members ; in 181 7, none. 
 
 Mr. Ripley was dismissed from the pastoral charge 
 in February, 1822. It is an item of interest that the 
 salary at this period was only ^400. Mr. Ripley's 
 nature seems to have been well adapted to the strong- 
 er and severer work of the ministry, but he lacked 
 social qualities. Children were afraid of him. I 
 trust it will be deemed at this distant day no lack of 
 delicacy in me to say so. It is the testimony of those 
 who were children when he was pastor that in the 
 homes and in the schools children all feared him. It 
 is said that our revered brother, now in heaven, Levi 
 Yale, could not refrain from telling, with a hearty 
 laugh, how one of the little girls in a district school, 
 to whom the pastor was talking about dying, turned 
 
 5 
 
50 
 
 to him with a look of pitiful pleadino^ and said : 
 *' Please, Mr. God, let me live a little longer."* One 
 of the older members of this church, whom we know 
 only to love, will forgive me if I tell you a story. 
 She avers that Mr. Ripley made her tell a lie. Down 
 in the old district school-house he was passing, as he 
 was wont to do, along the benches talking with the 
 little folks, when he came to Emeline. '' Well, 
 Emeline, I hope you say your prayers every night." 
 Emeline was in the habit of saying her prayers, but 
 her conscience told her very plainly that she did not 
 say them every night. She was too frightened to 
 tell the truth ; so she whispered out, ** Yes, sir." " I 
 hope you tell the truth, Emeline," said the solemn 
 preacher; "you know it would be an awful thing lo 
 tell a lie. You must not say you pray every night 
 unless you do. But I hope you do, don't you ? " 
 Says Emeline, " Yes, sir." It was awful to tell a 
 lie, but to her child-mind it was more awful still to 
 tell the truth to a minister who stood to her in the 
 place of God, with power to punish all little children 
 that ever forgot to say their prayers. But this pastor, 
 whom the children did not love, was called to a good 
 
 * It was not so very uncommon for children of those da3^s to think 
 the minister was God. Nor was it always a proof of very great sanc- 
 timoniousness in the pastor. My mother, who sat under that remark- 
 able and so-called eccentric preacher familiarly known as Parson Mills 
 of Torringford, declares that, as she used to look at him in the dignity 
 of the pulpit (for he was a man of great dignity, though he was often 
 amusing), she believed him to be God. Our venerable brother, pas- 
 tor Arms, of Norwich, tells me the same thing has happened to him. 
 Those who know his benignant dignity, without reserve, will not 
 attribute it to any severity of manner. 
 
work. One such revival experience as that of 1814 
 was worth all it cost him. He was afterwards settled 
 in the parish of Goshen, in the town of Lebanon, 
 where his power as a revival preacher was also appar- 
 ent and bore blessed fruit. He afterwards returned 
 to this place and died here November 16, 1843, ^^ the 
 ripe age of seventy-three years. 
 
 In the fall of that year 1822, in which Mr. Ripley 
 was dismissed, and in the month of November, the 
 Rev. Charles J. Hinsdale was settled over a church 
 in which the revival memories of six years ago were 
 still fresh, and in which they were to be repeated 
 before his ministry should close. The church had 
 indeed, in common with many in New England, at 
 this time entered upon a revival period, marked at 
 intervals by great outpourings of God's Spirit. Such 
 seasons came under nearly all the succeeding pastors 
 and preachers down at least to the year 1848, and 
 have been renewed at intervals since. Mr. Hinsdale 
 will be remembered by many of those present here 
 as a man of engaging manners, thoroughly social, in 
 which, as well as in an animated pulpit style, his effi- 
 cacy as a pastor largely lay. He says of himself in his 
 closing sermon at Blanford, that the great fundamen- 
 tal doctrines of the gospel formed the staple of his 
 preaching. His pastorate was remarkably success- 
 ful ; the church and congregation increased ; and by 
 his business management, so far as that belongs to a 
 pastor, he doubtless helped much to secure the out- 
 ward prosperity of the church and society. It was 
 during his ministry that, in the year 183 1, this house 
 of worship in its original form was erected, after the 
 
52 
 
 old one, built in 1755 just in front of this, having 
 stood for seventy-six years and witnessed the growth 
 of a prosperous community, had become unequal to 
 the demands of the times. 
 
 That old church of Revolutionary days, how pre- 
 cious its memories had become ! At first, and until 
 1803, without a steeple, then, for the first time of all 
 churches here, it sent the peal of a bell over these 
 Meriden hills — calling to Sabbath worship and town 
 meetings ; tolling the ages of the dead and the 
 solemn march of funeral trains ; and ringing, as was 
 often the New England custom, for the farmers' 
 nooning and the evening covering of fire at nine 
 o'clock. 
 
 It was built with great cost, sixty by fifty feet, with 
 its high pulpit, of course, and its high single gallery ; 
 its floor occupied by great square boxes, or pews, as 
 they were then called, which were meant for times 
 when men had families to fill big pews and gloried in 
 having them. Around the front row of the gallery, 
 all the way around, sat the great choir, which had 
 learned to sing at the winter evening singing-school, 
 and which was large enough when it rose to embrace 
 in its circle the whole congregation. 
 
 Such was the old church, in which Mr. Hinsdale 
 preached his last sermon December 5, 1830, the 
 manuscript of which lies before me as I write. I 
 cannot more fitly close this notice of him and his 
 ministry than by quoting from that sermon the fol- 
 lowing eloquent words, "Seventy-five years ago," 
 said the preacher, " as at this present time, this house 
 was filled with venerable age, vigorous manhood, 
 
53 
 
 ardent youth, and restless cliildhood. Where are 
 they ? Scarce one left to tell the tale. Since that 
 period two generations have gone to join the congre- 
 gation of the dead What tender ties have been 
 
 severed ! what fond expectations laid prostrate in the 
 dust ! . . . . W^hat keen ^remembrance flits across the 
 soul as we people again this congregation with the 
 departed ! Does there not seem to come a voice 
 from these crumbling walls, ' For what is your life ? 
 It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, 
 then vanisheth away.' " 
 
 The new house was finished, and the dedication 
 sermon was preached June i6, 1831. You remem- 
 ber it well, as it stood in its original form till the year 
 1862, a period of thirty-one years. To that house, 
 which cost about seven thousand dollars, it has in- 
 terested me, and will interest you, to have discovered 
 the original list of subscribers, and to see from it in 
 what sums the money was raised, and to recall at the 
 same moment some of the leading men in the place. 
 
 Two years and a half Mr. Hinsdale preached in 
 the new church when he closed his useful ministry of 
 eleven years;* and in the following winter of 1833-4 
 the glory of the Lord filled the house in a revival 
 during the temporary preaching of the Rev. William 
 McLean, from which it is thought some seventy souls 
 dated their conversion. The church was now with- 
 out a settled pastor for some three years, until the 
 Rev. Arthur Granger accepted the position and was 
 installed in March, 1836. His brief ministry, which 
 
 *Mr. Hinsdale died at Klanford, Mass. He was killed instantly, 
 beins^ thrown from his carriage, October 17, 1871, aged 76 years. 
 
 5* 
 
54 
 
 began with a revival, closed July, 1838, after a period 
 of two years and four months. That Granger pastor- 
 ate is one of intense interest. 
 
 The years from 1837 to 1841, when Mr. Van Buren 
 was president, Vv/^ere years in which the anti- slavery 
 excitement reached some of its most disgraceful fea- 
 tures. It was the time when the term, abolitionist, 
 was a reproach, and when mob law and violence, burn- 
 ing of buildings, and dragging men through streets 
 with ropes, as in the case of Garrison in Boston, and 
 even killing, were made arguments to answer the 
 logic of reason and right. Communities were divided, 
 many good men were conservative. Party politics 
 and ambition intensified, as ever, the violence of the 
 contest. Here in Meriden, such men as Levi Yale, 
 Fenner Bush, and Julius Pratt, felt that more ought 
 to be done in agitation of the great question of the 
 day. They procured the use of the basement of this 
 church for a public lecture by the Rev. Mr. Ludlow, 
 of New Haven, whose benevolent face, looking out 
 from that picture on the table, will command your 
 respect and even love. The lecture had been an- 
 nounced from the pulpit, and the hour drew near 
 when it was to be determined whether, under the 
 patronage of some of the most honored men of the 
 town, there could be free speech in Meriden. The 
 excitement was intense, the occasion was important, 
 and the aspect of affairs dangerous. A company of 
 perhaps a hundred and fifty were gathered in that 
 lower room, which then occupied part of the space of 
 the present lecture-room. The speaker had opened 
 his address, when, outside, violent demonstrations 
 
55 
 
 begun. The door was locked inside and barricaded. 
 The mob gathered around it and banged it with a 
 battering-ram from a neighboring wood-pile. The 
 door was strong, but there was just cause of alarm 
 to the breathless company inside, who could never 
 know, in those days, to what desperate violence a 
 wild and passionate mob from a neighboring tavern 
 might carry measures against a defenceless company 
 of men and women. The door was opened by those 
 inside, when the company were assaulted with eggs, 
 the common missile of mobs in those days. 
 
 The meeting was broken up. Violence was offered 
 and some blows dealt. Those who tried to escape 
 were pelted with stones and eggs, till, as Mr. Ludlow 
 used to declare, he himself " looked like a big pump- 
 kin pie." But noble men like Bush, and Yale, and 
 Pratt, stood by him as a body-guard, walked in the 
 face of the mob and its howling threats and its flying 
 missiles, into the street, some of them escorting him 
 down to the house where Mr. Granger then lived, and 
 which stands next north of the house of Mr. F. T. 
 Ives on Broad street. No one was seriously injured. 
 The coolness of the men protected them. One gen- 
 tleman and his wife from Berlin were severely treated. 
 Blows were struck, — one knife is said to have been 
 drawn in the confusion. The rioters wei*e successful ; 
 mob law had asserted itself. The excitement involved 
 the whole community, and particularly this chuixh, 
 around whose doors the scenes had been enacted, and 
 whose members were divided in their views of ex- 
 pediency on the main question and perhaps even at 
 that time in their sympathies. Arthur Granger did 
 
56 
 
 not like excitement, he had hitherto kept quiet. Now 
 he spoke for free speech as against the hand of vio- 
 lence. Tlie opposition turned itself against him, and 
 a mob, born of hell, resulted in the dismissal of a 
 pastor of the Congregational church in Meriden. 
 Mr. Granger withdrew. He went to Middletown, 
 where he was soon settled, and thence to Providence, 
 R. I., where he also became pastor of a church, in 
 which office he died after a very short period of 
 service. 
 
 Mr. Granger was a man of very agreeable personal 
 appearance, stout, with a full but intellectual face, 
 and, if we may judge from the positions to which he 
 was soon called, a man of more than usual pulpit 
 power. He was cautious and averse to disputes. To 
 this aversion, one, who seems to have known him 
 intimately, ascribes the readiness with which he left 
 a pastorate which offered at that time little that could 
 be attractive to any but a man of strong nerve and 
 firm will. 
 
 For three years the ghurch was without a pastor, 
 when it secured, in May, 1841, the services of a man 
 whom no mobs could control and no opposition could 
 silence. George W. Perkins was the last of that line 
 of pastors who, from the time of Theophilus Hall, 
 for a period of nearly one hundred and twenty years, 
 presided over an undivided church. He was so well 
 known to many of you that what I say of him here 
 will seem tame to be said, except to the younger 
 portion of the audience, who never saw him. He 
 was a man of remarkable gifts. Of scholarly attain- 
 ments, he took pride in giving a character of literary 
 
57 
 
 excellence to his productions ; of a pleasant counte- 
 nance and a genial temper, he knew how to win men ; 
 possessed of strong pulpit power, he commanded the 
 respect of his listeners ; bold of speech, he did not 
 hesitate to emphasize his sentiments ; chastened by 
 affliction, he knew the worth of the gospel of Jesus 
 Christ to the needs of human hearts. It was his 
 strong will and his persuasive power, born of personal 
 magnetism, that held the elements of the church in 
 union through several years of violent moral and 
 political agitations. He was known throughout the 
 State as a strong opponent of slavery. It is said of 
 him by his biographer that he was, on that account, 
 one of the most unpopular men in Connecticut ; but 
 he was a man in whom there was neither sham nor 
 cant, — one of Theophilus Hall's downright honest 
 men, — liberal in his theology and free in his speech, 
 whom no threats nor sneers nor coaxing could silence. 
 His fellow-ministers were tired of hearing him on the 
 old theme of slavery. Yet they respected his ability, 
 and invited him to preach the Co/icio ad dentin at one 
 of the commencements of Yale College, on the sub- 
 ject of sanctification, into which it was presumed no 
 plea for the slave could be brought. But they had 
 chosen just the right theme for the man. George 
 Perkins rose in his place to speak. " Brethren," said 
 he to the astonished listeners, " the greatest obstacle 
 to sanctification in the church of America is slavery." 
 The church prospered under his ministry, and he 
 enjoyed his life in Meriden, though he was sometimes 
 obliged to confess that a whole year had been spent 
 without a single apparent conversion. It was under 
 
58 
 
 his ministry that the church at length divided. Of 
 that step the causes lay deeper than human design. 
 The drift of population towards the railroad, the in- 
 terests of- property-holders, the apparent inclination 
 of the pastor, acting according to an honest judgment 
 between the conflicting claims of his friends, all re- 
 sulted in a final decision, — the temporary excitement 
 of which has long since died away, — to erect a new 
 church in West Meriden. The records show at this 
 distant day to the careful reader a due degree of the 
 spice of controversy and of conflicting wishes, but 
 on the whole the division seems to have been wisely 
 effected. The larger portion of the church went with 
 the pastor, taking, I believe, one-half the property, 
 the records of the church, and the fair legal title* to 
 be called, as they have called themselves. The First 
 Congregational Church ; while they left to the old 
 spot a band of noble men and women who would not 
 desert it ; leaving to that band those memories which 
 
 * One, whom I have reason to regard as an impartial judge upon 
 this point, has informed me since the above was written, that this 
 statement is incorrect. The gentleman, who is in no way connected 
 with Center church, states that, as the law regula'ing such matters 
 then stood, the legal title to the name was never gained by the majority 
 who went away, but was assumed by the weight of influence. The 
 circumstances were peculiar. A majority left the old church and the 
 minority remained. The writer thinks that any one who is in the 
 habit of attending councils, will readily see at ihis distant day how 
 much better it would have been if those who went away had agreed 
 with those who remained upon a compromise, by which neither party 
 should claim to be the First, and each had adopted some local name, 
 which would not have perpetuated a vexed question. If such an 
 arrangement could be made when the other church goes into its new 
 and elegant place of worship, nothing would more effectually bury the 
 past and promote Christian harmony. 
 
59 
 
 we are now reviving, hallowed by the associations of 
 a hundred and twenty \ ears ; leaving to it the echo 
 of the voices of a whole line of noble pastors, and all 
 those precious traditions which, once rooted in the 
 soil, can never be torn away and transplanted. Under 
 the inspiring shadow of those traditions, over a hun- 
 dred members grouped themselves around the altar 
 which their fathers had builded. Some of them were 
 men of strength, men who had given the weight of 
 influential characters to this growing town. They 
 belonged to a generation almost the last of whom 
 have passed away, mighty men of old. 
 
 The remaining church was fortunate in its first 
 pastor after the division. Asahel A. Stevens, now 
 of Peoria, Illinois, then a young man, of engaging 
 manners and pleasant face, if I may judge from the 
 likeness which lies on the table before me, joined in 
 pastoral work with Mr. Perkins while the congrega- 
 tions remained together, and continued in the vacated 
 place after the division. He remained here until 
 1854, when, on account of his failing voice, amid the 
 regrets of an affectionate people, he was dismissed. 
 He was afterwards invited to return, but was com- 
 pelled to decline the call. A delightful revival which 
 came over the church while he was laboring in com- 
 pany with Mr. Perkins, was jealously attributed by 
 his friends, and doubtless would have been attributed 
 by his associate, largely to his youthful zeal. 
 
 I shall not detain you longer, dear friends, with 
 details of this later church history. It is well known 
 to most of you. How greatly you have been pros- 
 pered above your hopes and faith; with what labors 
 
6o 
 
 my predecessor, beloved by so many of you, helped 
 to build up the church ; and with what sacrifices, in 
 the past few years, you have enlarged and beautified 
 this house of your fathers, and how steadily the 
 church has been and is growing from those days 
 when a httle over a hundred of you banded together 
 afresh, until now, under God, you are strong in a 
 membership of about two hundred and sixty souls, 
 all this, with grateful hearts, ascribe to Him who has 
 " set before you an open door." 
 
 Once more, dear friends, before we step towards 
 the long century which stretches far away beyond 
 the mortal reach of any of us, let us turn to greet 
 the past : the dear and honored names of Hall, and 
 Hubbard, and Willard, and Ripley, and Hinsdale, 
 and Perkins, all dead now ; the dear faces of our 
 forefathers with their noble deeds ; the dear faces of 
 kindred and friends who have gone up on high. In 
 their names, too, let us greet the walls under which 
 they have gathered before us or with us, and which we 
 hallow for their sakes. Once more, with outstretched 
 arms, let us greet each other, promising to" put on, as 
 the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, 
 kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long suffer- 
 ing, forbearing one another, forgiving one another;" 
 once more let us greet the brethren of the same 
 household who have gone out from us ; once more the 
 whole church of God around us ; and upon ourselves 
 and upon them, with uplifted hands, let us pray: Grace, 
 mercy, and peace from God our Father, and Jesus 
 Christ our Lord, Amen. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 As the foregoing sermons touch only very briefly upon the 
 pastorates which follow that of Mr. Stevens, some of the more 
 important features of the later history of the church, down to 
 the present time, are presented in this Appendix. 
 
 Immediately after the dismissal of Mr. Stevens, the church, 
 October 13, 1854, voted to invite the Rev. A. S. Cheesbrough 
 "to supply the pulpit to the 1st January, 1856." Mr. Chees- 
 brough acted as pastor of the church during that period. At 
 the present time he is preaching in Durham, of this State, 
 where, it is reported, a revival work has been recently de- 
 veloped. 
 
 On the 30th December, 1856, the church "voted unanimously 
 to invite Rev. Asahel A. Stevens to return to us, and again 
 become our pastor." This invitation Mr. Stevens, while cher- 
 ishing for the church "most affectionate and grateful remem- 
 brance," was obliged to refuse. 
 
 The Rev. Lewis C. Lockwood was installed pastor of the 
 church June 3, 1857. This pastorate was for some reason un- 
 fortunate, and Mr. Lockwood was dismissed February 22, 1858, 
 after a period of only eight months. 
 
 At a meeting of the church held on the 25th May, 1858, "it 
 was voted unanimously that Rev. O. H. White be invited to 
 become the pastor of this church and society." Mr. White 
 accepted this invitation so far as to become the acting pastor 
 of the church, in which relation he continued, without install- 
 ment, down to the year 1862. Mr. White afterwards went to 
 New Haven, where he labored with the Howard Avenue church, 
 and he is at the present time, or was recently, in England, un- 
 der an appointment of the American Missionary Association 
 for the Freedmen. 
 
62 
 
 The Rev. J. J. Woolley was installed pastor of the church 
 October 22, 1862, in which office he continued until the 14th 
 of August, i87i,at which time, by advice of Council, the pas- 
 toral relation was dis'solved. Of him, as the immediate pre- 
 decessor of the writer in the pastoral office, it is due him to 
 say, that his great frankness of manner, his affection for the 
 soldiers in the late war, in which he had acted as chaplain, 
 and his general interest in the welfare of Meriden, won to him 
 a multitude of friends. His name ought to be permanently 
 associated with the granite monument which now stands in 
 front of our City Hall to commemorate the soldiers who died 
 in the Union cause. Largely to his labors we are indebted for 
 that public work. 
 
 The church prospered, particularly in the earlier part of his 
 ministry. The membership rose during his pastorate from 176 
 in 1862, to 212 in 1871 — a net increase of 46 persons. Mr. 
 Woolley removed to Pawtucket, in Rhode Island, where he is 
 now settled over an important church, as associate with the Rev. 
 C. Blodgett, D". D. 
 
 The present pastor of the church was- installed February 15, 
 1872. Were it not that the writer, in looking up the materials 
 which enter into this history, has learned the importance of 
 completeness in any account which is transmitted to the future, 
 this narrative would terminate here. But if the pastor of this 
 church a hundred years hence, should undertake anew the labor 
 which has now been gone through, he will send his thanks 
 back to his forerunners in these labors for a concise statement 
 of the events of the present pastorate, should this little volume 
 come into his hands. 
 
 The parsonage, in the front room of which these lines are 
 being written, was built in the preceding pastorate, largely 
 through the generosity and the labors of Dea. Walter Booth, 
 who gave the land and superintended the building. Very soon 
 after the present pastor was installed, the church and society 
 undertook to enlarge and beautify their house of worship. In 
 this undertaking the foundations were removed from all the 
 western portion of the building ; the ground was excavated for 
 a new lecture-room and parlors, and the whole building was 
 
63 
 
 extended twenty feet to the west. The interior of the audience- 
 room was thoroughly reconstructed, the galleries were taken 
 down and rebuilt, the present organ was purchased, and the 
 choir removed from the east to the west end of the building. 
 The whole cost of the reconstruction, including decoration and 
 the organ, was about $14,000, the whole of which has been 
 paid. The church has steadily grown until the present time ; 
 the net increase being from 213 in 1872, to 263 in this month 
 of March, 1877 — a gain of 50. 
 
 At the present writing the church is passing through a period 
 of revival, in which the entire city has participated, and the 
 results of which can not yet be determined. The work began 
 in a union of this church with the neighboring First Baptist 
 church, of which the Rev. B. O. True is pastor, the two churches 
 laboring together with the assistance of the Reverend Evange- 
 list A. B. Earle. There have been conversions in all the 
 churches — Christians have been greatly quickened, and a last- 
 ing impression, it is believ^ed, has been made upon the city. 
 As the work progressed, the Baptist, Methodist, and Congrega- 
 tional churches united, five in all, assembling together in entire 
 disresrard of denominational lines. 
 
 At other periods during the past five years the church has 
 seemed to experience a fresh baptism of the Spirit, but in gen- 
 eral its history has been one of gradual, and, perhaps, too quiet 
 development. It is a pleasure to write these lines at a time 
 when tlie church seems, at last, after long years of struggle 
 and of uncertainty, to be- established on a firm foundation, and 
 to be entering with fresh hopes on a period of greater pros- 
 perity than it has seen since the separation of the majority 
 from it. 
 
 The deacons of the church are at the present time as 
 follows: Benjamin H. Bovce, N. B. Wood, Hobert H. 
 Smith, James R. Sutliff. 
 
 The Members of the Examining Committee, which is also an 
 advisory board along with the pastor, are, besides the above 
 named deacons, David Hobert, Wm. H. Yale, Mrs. H. N. 
 Waters, Dr. John Tait, Miss E. A. Landfear, J. R. French. 
 
 The following figures will show the rate of growth of the 
 church since 1848: 
 
64 
 
 Pastorates. 
 
 Year. 
 
 Males. 
 
 Females. 
 
 Total. 
 
 A. A. Stevens, 
 
 1848 
 
 44 
 
 82 
 
 126 
 
 u 
 
 1849 
 
 47 
 
 ^2> 
 
 130 
 
 « 
 
 1850 
 
 54 
 
 98 
 
 152 
 
 it 
 
 1851 
 
 55 
 
 103 
 
 158 
 
 11 
 
 1852 
 
 55 
 
 lOI 
 
 156 
 
 ii 
 
 1853 
 
 56 
 
 100 
 
 156 
 
 A. S. Cheesbrough, 
 
 1854 
 
 70 
 
 107 
 
 177 
 
 (( 
 
 1855 
 
 68 
 
 109 
 
 177 
 
 ii 
 
 1856 
 
 61 
 
 107 
 
 168 
 
 L. C. Lockwood, 
 
 1857 
 
 60 
 
 lOI 
 
 161 
 
 0. H. White, 
 
 1858 
 
 58 
 
 97 
 
 155 
 
 u 
 
 1859 
 
 60 
 
 93 
 
 153 
 
 11 
 
 i860 
 
 64 
 
 102 
 
 166 
 
 li 
 
 1861 
 
 69 
 
 8s 
 
 154 
 
 J. J. Woolley, 
 
 1862 
 
 67 
 
 109 
 
 176 
 
 << 
 
 1863 
 
 68 
 
 100 
 
 168 
 
 (( 
 
 1864 
 
 71 
 
 123 
 
 194 
 
 « 
 
 1865 
 
 73 
 
 130 
 
 203 
 
 a 
 
 1866 
 
 73 
 
 126 
 
 199 
 
 u 
 
 1867 
 
 70 
 
 123 
 
 193 
 
 u 
 
 1868 
 
 90 
 
 152 
 
 242 
 
 11 
 
 1869 
 
 80 
 
 135 
 
 215 
 
 u 
 
 1870 
 
 .81 
 
 132 
 
 213 
 
 a 
 
 1871 
 
 81 
 
 131 
 
 212 
 
 Edward Hungerford, 
 
 1872 
 
 78 
 
 135 
 
 213 
 
 (I 
 
 1873 
 
 80 
 
 138 
 
 218 
 
 11 
 
 1874 
 
 82 
 
 161 
 
 243 
 
 (( 
 
 1875 
 
 86 
 
 170 
 
 256 
 
 u 
 
 1876 
 
 87 
 
 175 
 
 262 
 
65 
 
 REV. JOHN HUBBARD'S CONFESSION OF FAITH, 
 
 Copied from a printed pamphlet in the Historical Society 
 at Hartford, bearing the following title : 
 
 THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE COUNCIL CALLED 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 ORDINATION OF MR. JOHN HUBBARD, 
 
 At Meridex, December 29, 1767, 
 
 AND THE CONSOCIATION OF THE COUNTY OF NEW HAVEN, 
 CONVENED THERE AT THE SAME TIME. 
 
 New Haven. Printed and sold by Thomas and Samuel Green, 
 at their Printing Office in the Old State House. 
 
 Mr. HubbanVs Confession of His CJiristian Faif/i, ExJiibited 
 
 to the Council. 
 
 I believe there is one God supreme, possessed of all possible 
 perfection, excellency, and glory, the Almighty maker of heaven 
 and earth, and that He not only made but constantly exercises 
 a universal providence and superintendency over all the works 
 of His hands. That all things possible are beheld by His all- 
 seeing mind in one view, and that all things are under His abso- 
 lute control ; not a sparrow falls to the ground without our 
 Heavenly Father ; and that God worketh all things according 
 to the counsel of His will. 
 
 I believe in Jesus Christ, the second person in the blessed 
 Trinity ; the brightness of the Father's glory, that being in the 
 form of God He thought it no robbery to be equal with God, 
 and that as He was in the beginning with God, so He was God. 
 
 I believe in the Eternal Spirit, or Holy Ghost, the Father 
 underived, the Son begotten of the Father, the Holy Ghost 
 proceeding from the Father and Son, and that they are all 
 possessed of divine power and glory. 
 
 I believe that the moral oovernment of God Most Hiffh is 
 
66 
 
 absolutely perfect, and His whole administration without error. 
 That God created all things by Jesus Christ, for the manifesta- 
 tion of His glorious perfections, I beheve that God created 
 man in His own image, and made him upright, endowed him 
 with the noble powers of reason and understanding, and placed 
 him at the head of this lower world ; forbid him to eat of the 
 fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, upon pain of 
 death ; that he rebelled against the express prohibition of God, 
 and judgment came not only upon him, but upon all his pos- 
 terity to condemnation, and so death passeth upon all, for that 
 all have sinned ; he being the parent and head of the race, his 
 transgression was imputed to them, and they suffered the evil 
 consequences of his transgression, or they were made sinners. 
 That God did not leave ^\ to perish under the ruins of the 
 apostacy, but so loved the world that He gave His only begotten 
 Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but 
 have everlasting Hfe. This glorious and divine Personage, at 
 the appointment of the Father, when the fullness of time was 
 come, assumed our nature, taught mankind the way of God in 
 truth, opened the plan of mercy, the designs of God's grace to 
 our lost and ignorant race. I believe that He died upon the 
 cross, an expiation for sin, that the Father laid on Him the 
 iniquities of us all, and that He bore our sins in His own body 
 on the tree, offering himself through the Eternal Spirit to God, 
 without spot, and that the blood of His cross, or His obedience 
 to death and perfect sacrifice is the meritorious ground upon 
 which pardon is bestowed upon sinners, or that by Him we 
 have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sin, ac- 
 cording to the exceeding riches of God's grace. That He rose 
 from the dead, ordered that repentance and remission of sin 
 should be preached to all nations, ascended upon high, received 
 gifts for men, is seated at the right hand of the Majesty on 
 high; sent down the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, and ever 
 lives to make intercession for His people. And as the whole 
 Imman race are born of the flesh, and find a law in their mem- 
 bers warring against the law of their mind, and bringing them 
 into captivity to the law of sin, so in order to their eternal salva- 
 tion by Christ, I believe it is absolutely necessary that they be 
 
67 
 
 regenerated or born again ; this moral change T believe is 
 effected by the Spirit of Gcxl, through the truth, or that they 
 are born of incorruptible seed l)y the word of God, which liveth 
 and abideth for ever. The necessary conditions of acceptance 
 on the sinner's part are, repentance towards God, and faith to- 
 wards our Lord Jesus Christ; in which are included, or from 
 wliich flow all the graces of Christianity : for the gift and exer- 
 cise of which they are indebted to God, they are His gifts. 
 Yet in the ordinary method of God's grace, they are obtained 
 by a diligent use of all the means God hath appointed in His 
 Word, and that in the neglect of these we have no warrant 
 from the Word of God to expect the saving blessings of His 
 grace. I believe the necessity of the sanctitication of the 
 Spirit, as well as the belief of the truth, in order to our enjoy- 
 ment of the favor of God hereafter, and the possession of those 
 mansions which Christ by His obedience and death hath pur- 
 chased, and is now gone to j^repare for the heirs of salvation, 
 for without this none shall see God. I believe that all those 
 who are called according to God's purpose, are particularly 
 foreknown and predestinated, and justified upon account of the 
 righteousness of Christ, depended upon by them, and imputed 
 to them, they receiving Him as exhibited to them, as the Lord 
 their righteousness, and they shall be glorified, and that neither 
 death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor 
 things present nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor 
 any other creature shall be able to separate them from the love 
 of God, which is in Christ Jesus. And in the important busi- 
 ness of religion, weak, insufficient man is absolutely dependent 
 upon the influence of the Spirit of God. For it is God that works 
 in us, both to will and to do, and without the grace and strength 
 of Christ, we can do nothing, but through Christ's strengthening 
 of us, we can do all things. And that all necessary grace is pur- 
 chased by Christ, and freely offered to men with the call of 
 the Gospel : so that all who liv^e ungodly, and die impenitently, 
 must take the blame to themselves, and ascribe their eternal 
 damnation not to any constitution of heaven, or deficiency of 
 God, or the Redeemer, but to their own perverseness and ob- 
 stinacy ; and their own consciences must for ever vindicate the 
 
 Lora 
 
68 
 
 righteousness of God in their perdition, while on the other 
 hand those who by the grace of God comply with the offers of 
 His mercy, will for ever ascribe their salvation to the pure, 
 rich, and unmerited love of God and the grace of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, who loved them, and washed them in His blood. 
 I believe the resurrection of the dead, and that God hath ap- 
 pointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteous- 
 ness, by Jesus Christ, whom He hath ordained judge, both of 
 quick and dead, who will render to every one, according to the 
 deeds done in the body, whether good or bad. That the 
 righteous will be received to glory and the wicked punished 
 with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and 
 the glory of His power. These I take to be taught in God's 
 Holy Word, which I believe to be the only rule for Christians. 
 
 Meriden, Jan. i, 1768. 
 This is the confession of faith read by Mr. John Hub- 
 bard, Jr. 
 
 Test: JOHN DEVOTION, Scribe. 
 
 Jan. I, T768. — After reading and delivering in the foregoing 
 confession of faith, Mr. Hubbard gave answers to questions 
 that were asked him, as follows : 
 
 Q. In your confession of faith, speaking of Christ, you say 
 that He was in the beginning with God. What do you mean 
 there, by in the beginning.'^ 
 
 Ans. Before all time ; coeval with the Father. 
 
 Q. What do you mean by saying, Christ is God ? 
 
 Ans. That He is properly a divine person, possessed of 
 divine glory. 
 
 O. What is meant by the Spirit's, or Holy Ghost's, pro- 
 ceeding- from the Father and the Son ? 
 
 Ans. He proceeds in a manner different from what any 
 creatures do, and in such a manner that he is strictly eternal, 
 
 O. As there are Three Persons in the Godhead, are they 
 all properly speaking One God? 
 
 Ans. Yes. 
 
 Q. How are we sinners by Adam's transgression? Is it 
 
69 
 
 as we stand related to him as the head of the family? and so 
 do we derive from him family or relative guilt ? 
 
 Ans. Yes. 
 
 O. Do you believe that in consequence of the sovereign 
 judgment of God, whereby we are all subjected to death, all 
 mankind would have been finally ruined and for ever lost, if a 
 Mediator had not been provided ? 
 
 Ans. Yes. 
 
 O. Do you believe that if any of the human race are deliv- 
 ered from this state of guilt, condemnation, and death, it is by 
 the sovereign grace of God, on account of the righteousness of 
 Christ ? 
 
 Ans. Yes. 
 
 Q. Do you suppose that the present state of human nature 
 is such, that without the influence of the Spirit and grace of 
 God we should live and grow up in wickedness, and finally 
 perish ? 
 
 Ans. Yes. 
 
 Q. Do you suppose that these influences of the Spirit 
 would have been given to any if it had not been for the pur- 
 chase of Christ ? 
 
 Ans. No. 
 
 Q. By liberty do you mean that we have a natural and prac- 
 tical ability to do all that is required of us in order to salvation, 
 without the special influence of the Spirit of God ? 
 
 Ans. No. By saying we have liberty of will, I mean no 
 more than that we have such liberty as to constitute us moral 
 agents and accountable creatures. 
 
 Q. Do you beheve that by the new covenant and promise 
 of God saints have secured to them all that is necessary to their 
 perseverance and final salvation ? 
 
 Ans. Yes. 
 
 Q. Do you suppose the promise of God is so to be under- 
 stood as to secure assistance in the neglect of dnty ? 
 
 Ans. No. 
 
 O. Do you suppose the good works of believers are the 
 ground of their right and title to eternal life ? 
 
 Ans. No. 
 
70 
 
 O. Are the good works of believers the ground of their 
 election to eternal life ? 
 
 Ans. No. But the mere grace and mercy of God. 
 
 O. Do you believe that any works done, or that can be done, 
 by natural men, are accepted as gracious works ? 
 • Ans. No. 
 
 O. What do you understand by regeneration, or conver- 
 sion ? 
 
 Ans. It is a change of both heart and life from sin to holi- 
 ness by the influence of the Spirit of God. 
 
 O Is there an inward change previously necessary to the 
 performance of good works acceptable to God ? 
 
 Ans. Yes. 
 
 Q. Do you not suppose that God has predetermined the 
 final condemnation of impenitent sinners in consequence of His 
 foresight of their willful wickedness ? 
 
 Ans. Yes. 
 
 Q. Does not true faith include (over and above an assent to 
 gospel truth) a dependence upon Christ for salvation ? 
 
 Ans. Yes. 
 
 Q. How is this faith wrought .'* Is it not by the influence 
 of the Spirit of God given by Christ .'* 
 
 Ans. Yes. 
 
 Q. Tho' it is by the influence of the Spirit of God that 
 any are enabled truly to believe and do works spiritually good, 
 yet does this destroy moral agency ? 
 
 Ans. No. 
 
 These are the questions asked by tlie council, and answers 
 given by Mr. Hubbard, in the audience of a large concourse, 
 with full liberty, publicly offered to any, to ask any other ques- 
 tions, or to have an explanation of those already asked. 
 
 Test: JOHN DEVOTION, Scribe. 
 
 The council (besides the foregoing transactions with the 
 consociation), having received particular and full information 
 of the state of the church and society in Meriden, came to the 
 following result on Friday evening, Jan. i, viz : 
 
71 
 
 That altho' in our opinion, it is the undoubted and unaliena- 
 ble right of every church to choose their own pastor, or in- 
 structor, in righteousness, and altho' Mr. Hubbard api)ears 
 to be well qualified to do service in the churches of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, both as to his abilities and religious sentiments, 
 (so far as we have been acquainted with them by his examina- 
 tion and confession of faith) if he should be improved therein ; 
 yet, considering the broken and divided state of this church 
 and society, and other unhappy circumstances, we don't see 
 our way clear to proceed to his ordination at present. 
 
 Passed in council 
 
 Test: J(^HN DEVOTION, ) c: -i 
 
 JOHN WHITING, j^ ^^ribes. 
 
 This is, I believe, the first time that the above confession 
 and examination of John Hubbard have been reproduced. It 
 has been a matter of great interest to learn, over what Jwresy 
 this church and the colony were so long kept in turmoil. The 
 supposition, offered in the second of the foregoing sermons, 
 that there was nothing in Mr. Hubbard's belief wiiich would 
 render him unacceptable to any congregation of ordinary intel- 
 ligence at the present day, seems to be fully confirmed by the 
 discovery of this document. The Confession of Faith is i)re- 
 ceded in the pamphlet by the correspondence between the 
 consociation and the council. The council met at "Madam 
 Hall's,'" probably meaning the home of Theophilus Hall's 
 widow, on the present Avery Hall place. The consociation met 
 at some place not specified, but two miles distant from the 
 council. 
 
72 
 
 BASIS OF CHURCH MEMBERSHIP. 
 At a church meeting held May i, 1873, it was voted, with 
 but one dissenting voice, to do away with the previously exist- 
 ing doctrinal basis of church membership, and to substitute 
 for it the following 
 
 Form of Christian Profession and Covenant, 
 to which, alone, applicants for admission to the church are re- 
 quired, after examination by the committee and acceptance by 
 vote of the church, to give consent : 
 
 CHRISTIAN PROFESSION. 
 
 In presenting yourself (yourselves) for membership in Christ's 
 Church, you do now publicly profess your hearty faith in God, 
 who is revealed to us in the gospel as Our Father in Heaven ; 
 and in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son — the Saviour of the 
 world, — who died for our transgressions and rose again from 
 the dead, and huml^ly confessing your sins, you do now in the 
 presence of these witnesses solemnly avow the consecration of 
 yourself (yourselves) to God and His service in the observance 
 of all His commandments as set forth in His Holy Word ; de- 
 pending on the gracious influences of His Spirit for your com- 
 fort and strengthening in all godliness. 
 
 COVENANT WITH THE CHURCH. 
 
 You do also covenant to walk with this Church in christian 
 fellowship and in the conscientious performance of the mutual 
 obligations of its members and in the ordinances which Christ 
 has enjoined to be observed by His people. You engage to be 
 subject to the discipline of Christ's Church in general and this 
 in particular, so long as God continues you here. 
 
 RECEPTION BY THE CHURCH. 
 
 We then, the Church of Christ in this place, declare you to 
 be a member of Christ's Church in general, and this in particu- 
 lar ; and promise by divine help to treat you with such affection 
 and watchfulness as your sacred relation to us requires. This 
 we promise, imploring of our Lord that both we and you may 
 obtain mercy to be faithful in his covenant and glorify Him by 
 the holiness which becometh His house for ever. 
 
73 
 
 DATE OF ORGANIZATION. 
 
 The following Preamble and Resolution, setting forth the 
 facts relating to the date of organization of this church, were 
 adopted in a full meeting of the church, held on Easter Sun- 
 day, April I, 1877 : 
 
 Whereas, At the time of the separation of the majority 
 from this church, in the year 1848, a strong pressure was 
 brought to bear upon this church to induce it to yield its title 
 to be considered a church without a new organization, as is 
 shown by the following resolutions passed at different times 
 and entered upon the records, as also by an act of the council 
 ordaining the Rev. A. A. Stevens pastor over this church, 
 which resolutions and act of council are as follows, namely : 
 
 " At a meeting of brethren of the Congregational Church in 
 Meriden, held in the basement of their church on the 13th day 
 of January, 1848, the following preamble and resolution were 
 presented and passed unanimously : 
 
 " Whereas, A majority of this church, together with the 
 pastor, have left us and taken the church records ; therefore, 
 
 ^''Rt'sok-ed, That in consequence thereof, the regular administration of public wor- 
 ship and religious ordinances will not be suspended in this house ; but that we who 
 remain, now proceed with our present 'Confession of Faith and Covenant,' in all 
 church duties and ordinances: " 
 
 this preamble and resolution being marked upon the record 
 as " rescinded Jan. 24," and the action of the next meeting be- 
 ing recorded as follows : 
 
 " Monday, Jan. 24, 1848. 
 
 "The brethren of the church met agreeable to vote of the 
 last meeting. 
 
 " The first preamble and resolution passed at the last meet- 
 ing were reconsidered and rescinded, and the following pream- 
 ble and resolution were passed unanimously: 
 
 "Whereas, A majority of this church have voted to re- 
 move to their new meeting-house, arid the pastor has given 
 notice to that effect, and also given notice that his relation as 
 pastor to us who remain has closed, therefore, 
 
 7 
 
74 
 
 ^''Resolved, That we still are a Church of Christ; and though for substantial 
 reasons we waive our rights as being The Congregational Church of Meriden, and 
 we hereby assume the name of, and will hereafter be known as, the Center Congre- 
 gational Church of Meriden, and still holding to our church ' Covenant and Confes- 
 sion of Faith,' will go forward with the ordinances regularly administered : " 
 
 this resolution not having been rescinded, the record goes 
 on as follows : 
 
 "Another meeting was called Feb. 17, 1848. The follow- 
 ing preamble and vote were then passed : 
 
 " Whereas, A majority of the Congregational Church of 
 Meriden have built and occupied their new house of worship, 
 and whereas the former house is preferable to us, therefore, 
 
 '^^ Resolved, That we who remain to worship in the old house, do associate and pro- 
 ceed as a Church of Christ, by the name of the Center Congregational Church of 
 Meriden, with the present ' Covenant and Confession of Faith,' to sustain all church 
 duties and ordinances." 
 
 "The above resolution was passed in consideration of the 
 following declaration of the pastor of the Congregational 
 Church : 
 
 " If the preceding vote should be passed, I should feel au- 
 thorized to comply with the wishes of those who assent to it, 
 and enter their names on our record as having their connection 
 with us terminated. G. W. Perkins." 
 
 "March 15, 1848. 
 
 " At an Ecclesiastical Council convened at the house of the 
 Center Congregational Church, by letters missive from the 
 Center Congregational Church in Meriden, to take into consid- 
 eration the expediency of ordaining to the gospel ministry Mr. 
 Asahel A. Stevens, an inquiry was then made by the council 
 into the authority of the brethren calling this council to act as 
 a Church of Christ ; whereupon it was resolved that in view of 
 the following act of organization, without reference to any pre- 
 vious documents, viz : 
 
 " Whereas a majority of the Congregational Church of 
 Meriden have built and occupied their new house of worship, 
 and whereas the former house is preferable to us ; therefore, 
 
 ^^ Resolved, That we who remain to worship in the old lu)use do associate and pro- 
 ceed as a Churcli of Christ, by the name of the Center Congregational Churcii of 
 Meriden, with the present 'Covenant and Confession of Faith,' to sustain all church 
 duties and ordinances." 
 
75 
 
 '• This council rccou^nize the brethren so a,2:reeing as having 
 thereby become a duly orijanized Church of Christ." 
 
 And Whereas, From the first two resolutions, and from the 
 ambiguous language of the third resolution, in which the non- 
 ecclesiastical term ''associate," is carefully chosen as an am- 
 biguous term, agreed upon by the parties purposely to avoid 
 the usual word "organize," it is evident that this church re- 
 garded itself as never having ceased to be a church since the 
 original organization in 1729; 
 
 And Whereas, By the concurrent testimony of those still 
 living among us, wlio were conversant with the doings of that 
 time, and some of whom were present at the council, it appears 
 that the church had not previous to the council conceded — nor 
 did it, notwithstanding the language of the council (which lan- 
 guage was purely the council's own, and in no way binding 
 upon the church), at the time of the council concede, nor has 
 it since conceded that it has ever ceased to be a church, nor has 
 it ever had an organization since 1729 : 
 
 Therefore, in the liglit of this history, and for the informa- 
 tion of the public, 
 
 /\6'so/7U'(/, That we do as did our fathers, date the organiza- 
 tion of this church from the year of our Lord, 1729. 
 
 Attest : 
 
 CrEo. K. Flint, Clerk. 
 
[VIAY86 1908 
 
 fp