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Sermon

PREACHED AT THE

FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF
ST. JAMES' PARISH
Fordham, New York City
October 25, 1903
BY'
The REV. JOSEPH N. BLANCHARD, DD.
AND
Published by request of the Vestry

NEW YORK
A. G. SHERWOOD & CO.
1904.

1853-1903
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY SERMON
October 25, 1903
St. James' Church, Fordham, New York City

" Ye shall hallow the fiftieth year." — Lev. xxv: io.
I should like, if I were able, to draw a
picture of the Fordham of fifty years ago,
when, on Sunday afternoon, June 19, 1853,
the services of our Communion were first
held in the Dutch Reformed Church — the
white church on the hill, as it was then called.
Here was distinctively a rural community, with
no trolleys to disturb its quiet, no broad
avenues, only roads and winding lanes — a
region of country homes and farms. Ford
ham was the name of a somewhat stray
station on the Harlem railroad, then the
only means of communication with the out
side world — a station with a feed store and a
blacksmith shop, where infrequent trains re*
luctantly halted, and at which a few passen-

gers alighted. There were no grea$ bridges
to connect this district with the island of
Manhattan — only one, the old Macomb's Dam
bridge, except the railroad bridge ; no Jerome
Park reservoir to drag its slow length along.
It was a picturesque neighborhood, having
the beauty of its heights overlooking the
Harlem, and of the fields and meadows below
those heights, with no ambition to be any
thing but what it was, a pleasant country
place conveniently near to New York, and yet
suggesting in its quiet and retirement nothing
of this nearness, almost absolutely cut off
from its great neighbor.
Then I should like to draw a picture of the
little district school house, which was the first
building this Parish owned — bought for $90,
put in suitable condition for $85, in which, on
June 11, 1854, your fathers worshiped — that
modest school house, in which, removed to
the site where we are, services were held
almost forty-nine years ago this very day,
October 22, 1854. I would remind you that
all the ground your corporation now owns —
fourteen city lots, I think-^-was purchased for
$1,150, and that the cost of buying, refitting
and removing this building was, all told, $300.

3
There, on what a naive observer of that day
terms "a wild, romantic spot, almost indicative
of the moral waste formerly overspreading
this region," this school house for eleven
years served as the spiritual home of this
Parish. The building itself, more a parallelo
gram than a square, which soon had a chancel
and transepts added, some of you may re
member, in later days, under the more pre
tentious title of Chapel, until, in the march of
improvement, it finally disappeared. It could
hardly be called " a thing of beauty," but it
was a " joy " to all who came here week after
week to hear God's word and to receive His
sacraments. Again, I should like to draw a picture of
the United States of that day, and of the city
of New York, of which you were not then,
but are now, a part. Here was a land, from
East to West numbering just 23,191,876, not
one-third of its present population, which,
under the recent election and inauguration of
Franklin Pierce as President, had seen the
death of the old Whig party ; a country half
slave and half free, which, to the eye of the
ordinary citizen, had at that moment no sign
of any coming storm between North and

South ; whose population was still chiefly
clustered about the Atlantic seaboard, though
beginning to feel the great trend of western
immigration; a country with no railroads to
the Pacific, and with the excitement of the
California gold fields almost ready to wane.
The city of New York, with 515,547 souls,
was as large as Baltimore to-day, and only
two and one-half times the size, in numbers,
of the present Borough of the Bronx, in
which we are this morning ! If you want
to have a vivid conception of how far New
York was built up, look at the sketch of the
Fifth Avenue Hotel site in 1850, which you
can see on any menu of that hostelry, and
you will realize the rural appearance of what
is at this moment the very heart of a great
city. If Madison Square was like that in
r853, you can imagine what Harlem and
the Bronx were.
I would draw yet another picture of our
own Communion in the United States, with
but 98,358 communicants in all its length and
breadth, not one-seventh of its present num
bers — a Church of not much missionary
enthusiasm for the far West, already showing
signs of its coming strength ; with scarcely

5
any missionary enthusiasm for the foreign
field, about able to hold its own in the cities
and large towns, and just commencing to feel
the full swing of the Oxford Movement ; a
Church with few problems except those of
party factions, but one which here and there
evinced, notably in the famous Muhlenburg
Memorial, some evidence of appreciation of
the issues it was so soon to face. If you fasten
these pictures in your mind : the neighbor
hood, rural and picturesque ; the first Church,
that unpretending quaint School House ; the
nation and city, undeveloped yet developing,
at peace, but with unrest in the heart; the
Church, of which yours was but a part, small,
hardly conscious of its possibilities — you can
better understand the changes which have
come over this place and its greater environ
ment in these fifty years. Of course fifty
years will make surprising changes anywhere;
but I am within the bounds of sober judgment
when I say that hardly any like period could
have been more fruitful than this in startling
contrasts. You can stand here today and
foresee somewhat of that which is to happen
to this region in the coming fifty years ; but

6
who of all the little company that made their
way to the first services of St. James', Ford
ham, could have foreseen that which has
happened between that day and ours ?
For you know that this rural community has
passed completely out of its isolation. By slow
and by rapid stages it has gone forward until it
has actually come to be, what it was in name for
some years, an integral part of a great city,
upon its outskirts surely, but in a growing sec
tion of it. Its future is not uncertain, it is
certain. Its parks, its avenues, its hospitals,
asylums, universities, its trolleys, its elevated
roads, and, with sorrow some of you will say,
its city assessments show what it is and will
be. It has not only leaped over its rustic
characteristics, it is fast leaping over its semi-
urban characteristics. Then you know that
the City of New York, to which you belong,
has grown from its comparative weakness to be
a huge city of 3,437,686 souls, the second city
in the world, coming with no hesitating steps
after its great rival across the seas, in num
bers, wealth and commerce. The land you
paid $1,150 for is worth $56,000 — fifty times
that amount.
The United States, then at peace, has gone

through a costly Civil War which has not only
taken away the old division between free and
slave States, but has made a new North and
a new South. The Atlantic cable, not then
laid, has revolutionized the intercourse of the
world. The telephone, then undreamed of,
has revolutionized the business of this city and
of the United States. The railroads to the
Pacific have so welded the East and West to
gether as to utterly discredit the prophecy of
so shrewd a man as Henry Ward Beecherwho
is reported to have said, after the close of the
Civil War that, the next Civil War would be
between the East and the West and that then
the East could not succeed. The short Spanish-
American War of 1898 has for good or evil
brought our eountry out of its old seclusion
into full contact with European and Eastern
diplomacy and life.
Then you are aware that since 1853 Darwin's
" Origin of Species," an epoch-making book,
has been published. No one who considers
how that single work has changed the thought
of mankind can be insensible to the change it
has wrought both in science and religion. If
one should say this has had to do with science
and not with religion, let him remember that it

8
has affected our whole view of nature and
human life and, therefore, must have profound
ly affected our method of presenting religion
which is so much concerned with nature and
human life. If nothing can alter the unchang
ing truth of God, much can alter human con
ceptions of that truth. If you believe as
I believe that the tremendous revolution
effected both in science and theology in these
fifty years, has only strengthened the basis for
the essential truths of Christianity, still you
must recognize how much our ways of approach
ing, interpreting, defending those truths have
changed ; how little some things seem that
then loomed large, and how large other things
seem that then looked small. It can almost be
taken for granted that since the first century
of the Christian era, scarcely any other fifty
years has meant so much to the habits and
modes of thinking of the world as those which
have passed since 1853. Not science and
theology but living, business, traveling have
been nearly all made over. The world, out
wardly at least, and inwardly, too, is more dif
ferent in the year of our Lord 1903 from that it
was in 1853, tnan *853 is different from 1753
or 1653.

9 But
why should we think of these wonderful
changes in human thought and life ? As we
meet this morning to remember and to thank
God for the years of this Parish, why not sim
ply remind ourselves of the changes in this
district which have made the title, under which
this Parish was incorporated (and which it still
legally bears) such an anachronism, so much of
it without meaning, " St. James' Parish, Ford
ham, in the Township of West Farms, and in
the County of Westchester." There is no
Township of West Farms, and we are not in
Westchester County. Is this not enough to
consider? No. For you and I as American
citizens and as disciples of Jesus Christ cannot
forget in what a world we are living and are
doing our work. This may not have been a
great Church, as men count greatness (though
that it shall be such in no distant future, if you
are faithful to your duty we cannot doubt),
but the men and women who have worshiped
here have felt, must have felt, the touch of the
life of the greater world about them. Every
Church situated like this has come, through
priests and people, into sympathy with the
movements which have made the city and

IO
nation what they are now. Most of all, if this
Church has been as we believe a reservoir of
spiritual' force, if it has been a nursery of charac
ter, we are deeply concerned with everything
that deals with life and character. The Church
is in the world. The knowledge of the world's
struggles, growth and thought are the means
by which it learns how to serve the world for
its Master's sake. Yet, I
am sure that you are turning from all
that surrounds us here ; from that greater life,
too, of which we must be conscious we are
somehow a part, to think of the simple interest
ing story of your own parochial life. You are
turning from the problems of the larger world
to the events which have made up your Parish
history. It is, I need not say it, it is a privilege
and a pleasure to me to speak at this service,
because everything connected with this Church,
where I came as a young man, just beginning my
ministry, is very dear to me ; and I value as I
look back upon my experience here, the help,
the friendships, the affections I enjoyed, which
I have not ceased to prize, and which have
been and shall be always sources of hope and
inspiration to me.

II

You would not care that I should go over
all the steps by which that history has been
marked ; for many of them are contained in a
sermon preached October 2,1878, at your Twen
ty-fifth Anniversary and since then there has
been but one change in the rectorship. And
yet I think I ought, even beyond what I said at
the opening of this sermon of your Parish be
ginnings, I think I ought to point out some of
the salient features of this quiet, but eventful,
story. I may then remind you that of the ten
men who on July 25, 1853, at a meeting held
at the house of William Alexander Smith to
incorporate this Parish, were elected your first
vestry — and I give the names : Wardens :
Lewis G. Morris, William Alexander Smith ;
Vestrymen : Oswald Cammann, Francis Mc-
Farland, William Watson Waldron, George
Bement Butler, Samuel Raymond Trow
bridge, Gulian Ludlow Dashwood, William
Ogden Giles, and Nathaniel Piatt Bailey
— three, William Alexander Smith, Wil
liam Ogden Giles, Gulian Ludlow Dash-
wood, are living ; but only one is still
connected with this Church, though no longer
serving on the Vestry. In these fifty years
there have been just six rectors, not many in

12

days of frequent changes. It is a curious fact
that these six rectors have served you not for
fifty years but for forty-six years and four
months. Owing to the delays and necessary
interregnums in securing successors, due to
our modern method of choosing incumbents,
this Parish in these fifty years has been three
years and eight months without a rector,
though not without services.
If I were to mark each rectorship by some
definite work it has accomplished I should say
that the Rev. Joshua Weaver's, from '54 to '63,
saw the starting and the careful nursing of the
infant life of this Church; Dr.Thomas Richey's,
from '63 to '67, the building of the present stone
Church, consecrated November 1, 1865 ; Dr.
Charles C. Tiffany's, '67 to '71, the decorating
of the Church and the inception of a move
ment to build a Rectory; Dr. Mytton Maury's,
from '71 to '75, the payment of the mortgage
debt on the Church ; my own, from '75 to '85,
the payment of the floating debt and the
building of the Rectory; the Rev. C. J. Holt's,
1885 to 1903, the redecorating of the Church
and the erection of the Parish Building, which
finally removed the School House of 1854,
which went the way of all the earth and be-

13
came "fuel for fire." If I might still further
characterize these different rectorships and
without invidious comparison, for we are more
than glad to have four of the six rectors in
this chancel to-day, I would say that Mr.
Weaver's, a period of nearly nine years, was
the period of your rise and growth as a rural
Parish ; that Drs. Richey's, Tiffany's, Maury's,
and my own rectorships, from '63 to '85, a
period of twenty-two years, was the transition
period from a rural to a suburban Parish, and
that Mr. Holt's, eighteen years, longer than
any one of his predecessors, has seen the
difficult period of transition from a suburban
to a city Parish, from a comparatively stable
if sparse population to a constantly shifting if
constantly growing community.
This is surely a time to recall the memo
ries of the past. How rich they are ! What
if these pews could be filled to-day with the
many who have been here in the Church Mili
tant and are now in the Church Triumphant!
This building could not hold the multitude
which your thoughts and mine would bring
back of those who have knelt in these pews
and at yonder altar. It would be rash to
mention names for there are those here who

14
could be more accurate than I. No doubt
each one of your rectors, who are with us,
could add to any list that might be given.
Even if one carefully excluded the living, even
if you should single out such names as Oswald
Cammann, Lewis G. Morris, Gustav Schwab,
William B. Ogden, Hugh N. Camp, as five
who stand, if one should mention them, for
very much which this Church has been in the
past, and even if you went on to add other
names, such as Dr. George P. Cammann,
Moses De Voe, Victory E. Wetmore, Henry
B. Laidlaw, Charles A. Brown, and many others
identified with the work and worship of this
Church but now in the land of light and im
mortality — still " silence is often the highest
and most eloquent form of Veneration." It is
better to think of these departed ones in Christ
in the hush of reverent contemplation, each
one making his own mention. If one could take
down these Parish Records from their shelves
and go over the pages upon which are written
the names of young and old and call their
faces back again it would be a great and in
spiring if pathetic list. To say, that that would
be true of the life of any parish as old as yours,
does not take away from the human interest

»5
we have in this record. The fact that other
lives are as dear to those who have known
them does not make our special calendar less
dear or sacred.
But no story, no recital, can do more than
give a faint impression of what has been
achieved. The material results of all these
years are in this Church, this Rectory, this
Parish Building, this large and commanding
site — none too large for the destined future
growth of this Parish. The spiritual results
of these years are in many lives and homes
here and far away from here, in many parishes
and dioceses. Surely it is wise to think of
the results which have been secured. But it
is far wiser, it is the chief value of the service
we hold this morning, to stimulate us to look
forward rather than backward, to set our faces
toward the issues of the present. We have
higher duty now than to draw pictures with
startling contrasts, or to revive memories of
the "years that are no more." It is my duty,
and my privilege, to remind you that you are
confronting perhaps the most momentous
chapter in all your history. Before you there
is the problem of how to serve a swiftly
growing, swiftly changing community, and to

16
serve it not for the mere building up of this
Church but for the sake of the Christian
life of this whole neighborhood.
Let me try to point out some of the ways in
which you may best do this :
i. I am sure that you must realize what
this Parish Church of yours is; that it is not a
club to provide an agreeable place for your own
worship, that it is a spiritual home for this
community. Whatever your personal prefer
ence for the pewed or the free church system
(and under either system parishes may be
wrongly conducted) the essential thing to be
secured in the Church is hospitality — the ex
pression of a generous welcome on the part
of those who habitually worship here, and of the
feeling that no amount of money contributed
gives anyone a proprietary right in God's
House. Such a spirit of hospitality is most
of all important in a parish existing in a com
munity which has rapidly passed through a
radical change in its constituency. You are
to manifest that spirit, not because where
there is strong, and likely to be stronger
religious competition, you want to be first in
meeting a mere commercial demand, but be
cause this is the best way in which you can

17
help a shifting population to realize that this
building is the Father's House, the home of
all His children.
2. Then, in these days when a divided
Christendom feels its divisions but does not
know how to heal them, you should appreciate
the vantage ground this Communion of ours
occupies in this country if it will seek to be a
Church which makes for reconciliation, for a
large-minded adjustment of our differences.
United on the one hand by our ministry and
worship to the older historical Churches of
Christendom, we are united on the other hand
by ties of blood and speech, by sympathy with
their scholarship, by the changes through which
we passed in the sixteenth century, by com
mon methods of approaching truth, to those
great Protestant organizations which have had
so large a share in making our country what
it is, whose love and service of our common
Master we must honor and emulate. Is it
nothing to you as a parish that you began your
first services in the oldest Protestant church —
the Dutch Reformed — in this district ? You can
serve your own Church and the great catholic
Church of Jesus Christ best, not by disregarding
or accentuating differences, but by laying stress

i8
upon agreements, not by flaunting or arrogat
ing the name of Catholic, but by being such,
by believing, as I heard Bishop Lawrence of
Massachusetts so wisely say in the address at
the Tenth Anniversary of his Episcopate, "by
believing that with all loyalty to our own
faith we can with far greater sympathy than
at present work with Christian brethren of all
names, can enter into intellectual sympathy
with Christians of every name. They may
have something to learn from us, we certainly
have much to learn from them, and mutual
converse will bring us into mutual confidence,
charity and faith." Only through such an at
titude can the reunion of Christendom ever
come. 3. Again, in the lifetime of this Parish there
has been a marked change in the methods
of working almost all parishes. They who
started this Church would have felt that the
Church and Rectory were enough to properly
equip it. You have shown by the Parish
Building you have erected that you have an
other conception of the mission of the Church.
All over this land in the last thirty years men
have come to think that the Church must
enter into the week-day work of the world.

19
In cities, towns, villages we have what, for
want of a better term, we call Institutional
churches. Our parishes tend to become ad
ministrative centres, instruments for serving
the bodily and mental needs of the people.
Our clergy are called to be administrators,
executives, rather than pastors, preachers.
I do not fault a movement which has so broad
ened the scope of the Church, but I venture
to say that these are secondary, they are not
first things. It is above all needful, whatever
else the Church may be, that she shall be a
spiritual force. You must keep all other work,
however valuable, subordinate to this. If this
other work has to be done — and I am not un
dervaluing it — if its doing takes from the
leisure our clergy need, that they may be
spiritual teachers, leaders, then the laity must
themselves undertake that work. The Church
can only meet the needs of this or any like
community as men know that here God speaks
His truth to man through man. No truth in
a book can take the place of truth in a life.
Men must here come into a different atmo
sphere from that of the world without it.
They must feel that God is here, not only
because He is everywhere where men seek Him

20
and realize His presence, but because here
you do seek Him, and here His word comes
to men out of the heart of those who burn to
speak it as they live it. This is the first, this
is the supreme need. The Church may have
all other things, but the Church must have
this uplift. It must have this message.
4. Understand, too, the importance of your
position in this Borough of the Bronx, with a
population from Harlem River to Williams
Bridge in 1900 of 200,000. Understand the
growth, the enormous growth that is com
ing. You hold a strategic, a commanding
point in this territory. With your present
equipment, Church, Parish House and Rec
tory, entirely free from debt, you surely see
your opportunity. You may have more
land than you need just now, but you have
not one foot you can afford to sell or part
with in view of the demands that shall be
made upon this Parish at no distant day. I said
this had not been one of the great Churches, but
in the next twenty-five years it ought to be, and
in the spirit of loyalty to Christ and His Church
you shall make good your future. Ask any wise
business man, ask any of the far-seeing men
who deal with our city's religious problems

21

what they think of the position of this Parish,
and they will tell you at once of its crucial
position. Your fathers builded better than
they knew. Yes, but how well they built !
How many churches, obliged to buy land at
great cost to meet a growing demand, would be
glad if their predecessors had been as wise as
yours ! Every time I think of the patience and
wisdom with which this Parish was started, I
am filled with admiration for the large-minded-
ness of its projectors, by which this site of
fourteen city lots, 296 by 260 feet, was secured.
Let no temptation, no financial difficulties, lead
you to part with any of it ! Ah ! when, fifty
years from now, your children shall keep the
one-hundredth anniversary of this Church, will
they be enabled to speak with as much admir
ation of your record and your work as you
can of your fathers' ? Strive for that. These
men of the past live in your thoughts and
minds. All men, as Mr. Bryce says, live after
they are gone in what they have done.
What a noble ambition may be yours ! Have
enthusiasm — generous enthusiasm — for this
Parish. It is worth it, not only because of
what has been achieved, but, even more, be
cause of the work before you in the near-

22

drawing future. It is a great thing to have a
noble inheritance, a good name, but it is
greater to be worthy of it, and it is far better
to feel that there is so much waiting for you,
that larger tasks are laid upon your shoulders
than your fathers bore.
And let all who have come here on this
morning to keep this feast with this dear
Church, hallowed by so many associations,
who rejoice to be here again, rejoice to return, if
only for one day, to this house, where in the
past we have loved to worship, let us all wish
for these, our brothers and sisters, to whom
has come the inspiring duty of carrying for
ward this work, let us wish for them courage
to meet it, zeal to fulfil it, and the abundant
blessing of Jesus Christ, that they may be
equal to all they are called upon to do.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 08540 1959