What do these feeble Jews? Will they fortify themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they make an end in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burned?
It is difficult to imagine a more hopeless undertaking—as men's eyes looked on it—than the attempt to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple at the close of the captivity. For seventy years their ruins had lain in the condition which Isaiah describes in such impressive words: "Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation; our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised Thee, is burned up with fire; and all our pleasant places are laid waste." Jerusalem was indeed "a heap of stones."
And who were they that should undertake to bring beauty, strength, and order out of all this ruin and desolation? A small and despised remnant of a once powerful people straggling back, as it might seem, in handfuls, from their seventy years' captivity.
Follow Nehemiah in his lonely night-ride as he makes his solitary circuit around the broken walls. Look at the scattered companies of the re-builders as they set about their work; so separated from each other, on that long line of ruined towers and bulwarks, that a trumpet must be sounded to gather them together, should they be attacked by enemies. Think of the sinking of heart with which the first stone to be relaid must have been lifted; think of the scorn with which they who hoped to see the failure of the forlorn attempt must have looked on him who lifted it; and you can then make real to yourselves the greatness of the undertaking and the apparently hopeless inadequacy of the means at hand for its accomplishment. No wonder that the enemies of Judah and Jerusalem cried, "What do these feeble Jews?" No wonder that "Judah said, The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed and there is much rubbish; so that we are not able to build the wall." No wonder that the provincial Jews—as they have been termed—sent "ten times" to recall their brethren aiding those who were laboring at Jerusalem, No wonder that Nehemiah "made his prayer unto God," and said, "Hear, O our God, for we are despised!"
Taking up, as I am to do to-day, the narrative of the events which followed on, and were the outcome of, the election of our first Bishop of which I spoke to you last year, and which gather round, and centre in, his consecration at Aberdeen a hundred years ago, I seem, as I try to reproduce those days and make them real to our minds, to hear Words uttered so like to those which have just been brought together that they appear to be the very echoes of that far distant past. Enemies are crying, "What do these feeble Jews?" Timid friends are saying, "The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed"—we cannot do the work. But brave hearts and loving hearts murmured to themselves, "Our God shall fight for us"; and among them all there was no truer, braver heart than that of Seabury, as, taking up the burden laid on him, he set forth on his quest—nobler than the knightliest of olden times—for that sacred Deposit which he was to bear to our western world.
How fared he in his quest? In the answer to this question we shall find the topic that invites attention now. And first of all, something must be said of the documents and testimonials which he carried with him. These were, so far as the clergy of Connecticut were concerned, prepared by the secretary of the meeting held at Woodbury (afterwards our second bishop), the Rev. Abraham Jarvis. They are quite too long for reading here; but it must be said of them that they are admirably conceived and expressed, and set forth a much truer and sounder ideal of the Church of God in its obligation to the State on the one side, and its spiritual duties, under the one Headship of Him Whose "kingdom is not of this world," on the other, than seems to have then prevailed in the mother country. Two passages from the letter of our clergy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, I venture to quote in proof of what has just been said.
"America is now severed from the British empire; by that separation we cease to be a part of the national Church. But, although political changes affect and dissolve our external connection, and cut us off from the powers of the State, yet, we hope, a door still remains open for access to the governors of the Church; and what they might not do for us, without the permission of government, while we were bound as subjects to ask favors and receive them under its auspices and sanctions, they may, in right of their inherent spiritual powers, grant and exercise in favor of a Church planted and nurtured by their hand, and now subjected to other powers."…. "Permit us to suggest, with all deference, our firm persuasion that a sense of the sacred Deposit committed by the great Head of the Church to her bishops, is so awfully impressed on your Grace's mind, as not to leave a moment's doubt in us of your being heartily disposed to rescue the American Church from the distress and danger which now, more than ever, threaten her for want of an Episcopate."
To the same purpose they spoke in their letter to the Archbishop of York. "This part of America is at length dismembered from the British empire; but, notwithstanding the dissolution of our civil connection with the parent State, we still hope to retain our religious polity, the primitive and evangelical doctrine and discipline, which at the Reformation were restored and established in the Church of England." And then they go on to say that, to complete and perpetuate this polity, "an American Episcopate" must be secured.
How clearly the men who used this language shewed that they fully comprehended the position and rights of a National Church; the obedience which "in all things temporal" the Church owes to the powers that are ordained of God; her complete independence and autonomy "in things purely spiritual"; and the great fact that by no political changes was this Church severed from the Church of England or from the historic Church of all the ages, so long as she continued "stedfast in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in the breaking of the bread and the prayers!"
The testimonials and letters thus furnished by the clergy of Connecticut were strengthened by similar documents signed by the venerable Leaming and by the rector and the assistant minister of Trinity Church, New York, and others. [Footnote: These testimonials, bearing date April 21, 1783, have misled some persons into the idea that Seabury was elected on that day in New York. This is a mistake easily made if one carelessly glances at the documents, but impossible if the documents are read.] Armed with these testimonials, and bearing a letter from the clergy of Connecticut to the Venerable Society imploring the continuance, at least for a time, of their stipends, the Bishop-elect reached London on the seventh day of July, 1783.