Gleanings by the Way

by John A. Clark

Detroit, is an interesting and beautiful town. The parted stream above the city, and the island around which it winds, as well as the view of Sandwich on the opposite side, with the improved country that stretches around it, are all points of interest upon which the eye loves to linger. The houses in Detroit are generally composed of wood, which are very neatly painted. Several streets running parallel with the river are exceedingly beautiful, especially Jefferson Avenue, which is the Broadway or Chesnut street of Detroit. The Episcopal Church is a very neat gothic building. A second Episcopal Church of a larger size is soon to be erected in another part of the town. The churches and other public buildings in Detroit are certainly highly creditable to the place.

I met, soon after my arrival at Detroit, the Rev. Mr. R——, who had come to supply the pulpit of St. Paul's during the first Sunday of the Bishop's absence. It has always appeared to me that there was great wisdom in the views expressed some years since by our present presiding bishop—that every diocesan should have a parochial charge. His judgment, as delivered at the time to which I refer, was, that all our dioceses should be small, as they were in primitive times; that the mitre should have no worldly splendour or peculiar emoluments connected with it; that each bishop, like the rest of his clergy, should have his own parochial charge, to whom he should look for his maintenance. One reason assigned for this—and that is what I particularly refer to—was that as one of the great duties of a bishop is to preach the gospel, it is infinitely important that his heart should be burning with love for souls; and that he only who had a particular congregation, the charge of whose souls was upon his hands, would ordinarily feel a ceaseless and ever wakeful solicitude for dying sinners; and if he did not feel this he would not preach with the power and unction that become an ambassador of Christ, and the chief pastor of the church. Go to that man who, as a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ, has been spending his days and nights in prayer and toilsome labours to promote the spiritual interests of the flock committed to his care, and then visit him after he has been acting four or five years in the capacity of a professor or president of a college, and see if he does not recognize the truth of this doctrine, see if he does not sigh for that spirituality and burning love for souls, which once bore him on so cheerfully in his labours. However this matter shall be viewed, the bishops in many of our dioceses must have parochial charges, and this will constitute an important portion in the field of their labour. In this department of labour the Bishop of Michigan has been pre-eminently blessed.

One could hardly desire a larger measure of popularity, either with his parish or in his diocese, than Bishop McCoskry enjoys. Every where the highest testimony is borne to the loveliness and excellency of his character, and the faithfulness and evangelical spirit of his ministry. This I heard from all quarters—from clergy and laity, Episcopalians and Presbyterians. Indeed I think the bishop's greatest danger lies in this quarter. May he still have grace as he hath hitherto done, amid all these praises of men, to count himself as nothing, and to sit as a little child at the feet of Jesus. When all our bishops become distinguished for their meekness and simplicity, for the fervour of their love, their spirit of evangelical piety, and their unquenchable zeal to exalt Christ, and rescue dying sinners from the iron grasp of the god of this world, we shall then indeed see a return of primitive days, and evidences of a truly apostolic church.

I was delighted to learn from the Bishop of Michigan, that in his contemplated visitation through his diocese, he purposed to hold as far as it was practicable, continued services for several days in each parish, like the Rhode Island convocations, or the Pennsylvania and Virginia associations. A clergyman speaking of these anticipated services, remarked, "they will be worth to me in such a place a whole year's labour." In the place to which he referred, the Episcopal Church was just about being organized, and there, as every where, the great obstacle to the establishment of our church was the impression that we were destitute of piety, and that our object was to establish a particular denomination, and not to save souls. Let the missionary go where he will and preach Christ crucified, and the people will rally around him. Let him only make the impression on the mind of any community that he has a message from God to them—that he stands as between the living and the dead to stay the plague—that in his view all other things dwindle into nothing, when compared with the salvation of their undying souls—and he will not want hearers, he will not want materials with which to build up a church. The people are not opposed to an Episcopal form of government—they are not opposed to our liturgy—they are not opposed to our doctrines—but they are opposed to a dead church. Whether these, their impressions in relation to us are well or ill-founded, one thing is certain, these impressions do in ten thousand instances exist, and in my view, that minister of our church, is the best and soundest churchman, who preaches most faithfully the doctrines of the cross, and exemplifies most fully the power of Christianity upon his heart by a holy life. It is not by controversy and argumentation, but by doing their Master's work, by putting forth all their energies to bring men to repentance and the foot of the cross, that our clergy will remove this impression in relation to our want of piety, and make our Zion a praise in all the earth. And this, I believe, to a very great extent, the clergy of Michigan are striving to do.

Tuesday, July 25th.

I was induced to start this morning for Ypsilanti, by the kindness and importunity of the Rev. Mr. R——, who offered, if I would return with him to his parish, to convey me in his own carriage to the several points I wished to visit in the interior of the state. The pledge was fully redeemed, and my comfort and pleasure greatly augmented by my acceptance of his kind offer. The road for the first twenty miles towards Ypsilanti gave us a fine specimen of the toil and tardiness of travelling in a new country. At one time the formidable slough received us into its cavernous depths, and as we went down, vehicle and horses and all, seemed to threaten to swallow us up in its miry embrace. Then, as we rose from this perilous depth, our carriage went bounding from log to log which lay side by side transversely across our path, deeply embedded in mud, constituting what is expressively called a corduroy road. These were almost the only alternations in our path for the first twenty miles. The land, after you leave Detroit, is, in almost every direction, low, clayey, and wet. It is also heavily timbered, and therefore will not be very rapidly settled. The soil of the farms that have been cleared up is said to be productive, but principally valuable for purposes of grazing.

The last ten miles of our course, as we urged our way on to Ypsilanti, lay through a country of a totally different character. I almost felt as though I was again travelling through a section of Illinois, though there were more signs of cultivation around me than I any where saw there. Our road now became fine, and we swept along through the oak openings, and by the side of successive fields of beautifully tasselled corn, luxuriant oats, and yellow bending wheat, with a speed which soon brought us to the place of our destination. Ypsilanti is a neat country village, built on Huron river, and contains a population of nearly two thousand.

July 27th.

We started yesterday morning from Ypsilanti, directing our course towards Ann Arbour. We found the country through which we passed, rich and beautiful, and bearing every where incontestible evidence that it was a soil which would remunerate the agriculturalist for every stroke struck upon its bosom.

Ann Arbour also stands on Huron river, and is a very pleasant village containing nearly three thousand inhabitants. There is here an Episcopal Church, which has been recently erected, that stands beautifully embosomed in a grove of oaks. Immediately adjoining the plot of ground on which the church is built, an acre of land which cost one thousand dollars, has been purchased by a gentleman residing, I believe, in Monroe, who purposes to erect upon it a neat and commodious dwelling for the use of the rector, and to convey it to the parish corporation as a parsonage. To this noble act of munificence he was prompted from his love of the Redeemer's cause, and an ardent desire for the success and establishment of our church in Michigan. He saw that if there was a house provided for the rector, the parish would soon be able to provide the means for his support, and that thus the ministrations of the Gospel would be permanently secured to this people. How many men there are within the bounds of our church, who could in like manner, with the utmost ease, bestow a few thousand dollars, and secure to feeble churches the certainty of future ministrations of the word, while at the same time they would be adding unspeakably to the comfort of a body of men who are wearing themselves out in the service of the Lord, and by their exhausting labours and toil to rescue sinners from death, are preparing themselves for a premature grave! Sure I am, when these opulent men, stand at last before God and the Lamb, and behold the resplendent crown of glory which Jesus has purchased for them by his toil and tears, and sweat and blood—when they look down into the depths of that hell from which he has rescued them, and up to the heights of that heaven to which he is about to exalt them, and when that same Jesus points to such an act of munificence, and says, Inasmuch as ye did it for the least of these my ministers, ye did it unto me, oh then I am sure they will not regret the few thousand dollars they have given to Christ! Would to God that many professors of religion, who have already wealth enough to ruin all their children, and are still holding back their pecuniary means and hoarding them up, refusing to consecrate any part of them to Christ, would think seriously of this, would meditate frequently on the scenes of that day.