Fifty Notable Years

After two and a half years of successful labor here, he accepted a call to the neighboring city of Nashua, a larger and more promising field, which he occupied to good effect. While giving great satisfaction to his people, he became deeply impressed with the conviction that his ability to serve the church in the capacity of a Christian teacher according to his own ideal would be made greater by a more thorough course of study than he had yet been able to take, or than he could take with the cares of a pastor upon him. He therefore determined to spend a year and a half abroad in study and observation. Resigning his charge in Nashua, he sailed from New York to England. Landing at Kinsale, Ireland, and exploring the lake region of Killarney, he passed on to Dublin, and crossed the channel into England, where he tarried awhile, visiting places of historic interest, and making the acquaintance of several persons who were specially interested in his own faith and profession. While in London and vicinity, he was cordially greeted by the Unitarian ministers there, and preached in two of their churches. He soon crossed to the Continent and came to Berlin, where he applied himself diligently in a course of study under German instructors for seven months. He next extended his travels to Palestine, visiting Jerusalem and many other noted places there. He also visited Athens, Constantinople, Cairo, the Pyramids, Malta, Naples, Rome, Florence, Geneva, and Paris, from which last-named place he went again to Berlin. He was absent a year and a half.

Soon after his return to his native land he was called to the pastorate in Roxbury, Mass. Here he had a successful ministry of ten years, not only fully sustaining the high reputation which the church had long enjoyed, but giving it new inspiration and vigor by the high and truly evangelical tone of his ministry. In 1860 he was called to that great city of the West, Chicago, then twenty-seven years old, and containing 150,000 people. He took charge of St. Paul's Church at a time when just such a helper and director as he proved to be was needed. His discriminating mind and firm will and patience and steadiness of action, worked effectively in building up the cause of Universalism in his own church, and giving it an honorable reputation in that great and growing city. And out of the city and through the State and the whole West the influence of his teaching and work as a representative of the Universalist Church has been justly acknowledged. He has done work for the Christian cause that deserves to be kept in perpetual remembrance. In the pulpit, as a pastor, as an earnest worker in all matters affecting education, reform, and the public weal, he has been found constant and faithful.

In 1860 Harvard conferred upon him the degree of A. M., and in 1863 Lombard University the degree of Doctor of Divinity. In 1868 he made a second visit to Europe, and brought home many treasures of art which were subsequently destroyed by fire in the two great conflagrations with which Chicago was visited. The fire that destroyed St. Paul's and his own beautiful residence on an adjoining lot imposed great responsibilities upon him, which he assumed and discharged with admirable skill. He visited New England and returned with $40,000 with which to repair the shattered fortunes of St. Paul's Church; and such has been his administrative skill, that, notwithstanding the heavy financial reverses to which the parish was subsequently subjected, their grand church, worth $200,000, is now without an incumbrance. Dr. Ryder himself suffered great loss by the fires, but it is pleasant to record what one who knows says of him, that he is still "in possession of 'enough and to spare.'"

Dr. Ryder's life has been crowded with duties. As a preacher and pastor and man of business he has made his mark on public opinion and human life during the forty years just closing. He has thoroughly identified himself with the faith and work of the Universalist Church. As an expositor of its faith he has always been clear and positive, and as an advocate of its work unmistakably emphatic. Organized church work, State work, national work, mission work – home and foreign, he has continually urged. The zealous and faithful women-workers of the church have always found in him a warm, hearty, and outspoken advocate on all occasions when and where his word of good cheer has been asked. As a preacher, another has thus truthfully spoken of him: —

"He has rare power. A model pulpit voice, deep, sonorous; a manner of wonderful impressiveness; a personality behind his words that makes every word tell; and long years of sagacious work without mistakes re-enforcing what he says, so that it is safe to say that no man's word in any Chicago pulpit, on any question before the people, goes as far as his in impressing the public mind."54

Dr. Ryder has what another has termed "an impressive presence," not in bodily size, but in a pleasant dignity which is attractive rather than imposing. An indication of cool self-confidence is in every word and action. He is thoroughly in earnest as a public speaker, and as thoroughly sincere and fearless in maintaining what he believes to be the right of the subject under consideration. A capital instance of this quality in him was given in the discussion of a topic that came up at the United States Convention during its session in Lynn in 1875. He had been invited to speak of "The Needs and Methods of Spiritual Awakening," and used great plainness and force of speech in reference to what he deemed some of the spiritual failures of professed Universalists which needed amendment. His matter was well considered, and his words were stirring and strong. An attempt was made to pass a vote of censure. He had discharged a duty laid upon him, and deserved the thanks of his hearers, even though they had not assented to a word he uttered, if they were convinced – as doubtless all were – that he honestly believed what he said and discharged a conscientious duty. His defence and vindication of himself were admirable. The attempt to censure so significantly failed that the author of the resolution very readily withdrew it. A chronicler of the occasion wrote that it was worth a long journey to listen to that "outpouring."

During the war Dr. Ryder was a strong helper of the Union cause, active, eloquent, and untiring in his support of the government in manifold ways.

In addition to his other agreeable personal characteristics, Dr. Ryder is well known to those most intimate with him as a genial, courteous, and warm-hearted friend and companion. All his pastorates bear testimony to the love which the children and youth bore him, because of the interest in their welfare which he so constantly manifested.

In April, 1882, Dr. Ryder resigned his position as pastor in Chicago, and has since, with his companion, made a voyage to Europe. It is not his intention to take upon him the duties of another pastorate, but he will doubtless be always in readiness to aid as he may the interests of the church to whose prosperity his life thus far has been so constantly devoted.

The Birthplace of Hosea Ballou

In concluding the accounts of ministers here given, it seems appropriate to add a brief reference to an event of recent occurrence, to which the attention of the Universalist public had been specially called. We refer to the meetings held under the direction of the "Cheshire Association," on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the 18th, 19th, and 20th of August, 1882, in Richmond, N. H., the birthplace of Rev. Hosea Ballou, and in honor of this distinguished and venerated man. During these days, discourses were preached by Rev. Quincy Whitney, Rev. S. S. Fletcher, Rev. Dr. S. H. McCollester, Rev. Dr. A. A. Miner, and Rev. Dr. G. H. Emerson. Multitudes were in attendance, and the occasion was deeply impressive, and is significantly historical. Appended to a special account of the great gathering, Dr. Emerson, editor of the "Christian Leader," presents the following description of the birthplace of Mr. Ballou. We are glad to give it a place in this volume: —

"Stratford-upon-Avon has its one interest for the great world in the happy fortune of giving to every age the Bard who, in the faculty for putting an almost inspired wisdom into verse that is not simply matchless, but at a vast altitude above that of every other poet who has spoken the Saxon tongue, – William Shakespeare. The little town of Ayr would be nothing but a Scottish post-village but for the circumstance that Robert Burns first breathed within its borders. But first Stratford and then Ayr, for the English-speaking world, rise to an importance simply unique, above every hamlet upon the British Isles, London and Edinburgh hardly excepted.

"Those who with us fully believe that the future is to honor Hosea Ballou with a niche in the temple of fame, as the peer of the elder Edwards, and as hardly the second of Franklin, who find in the 'Treatise on the Atonement' the quarry where Bushnell has polished a few boulders, will further agree with us that the gazetteer of the coming century will put into conspicuous type, and honor with some detail of description, the New Hampshire farming town where Hosea Ballou was born. The compiler of Lippincott's did not know its claim to distinction, when he summarily disposed of Richmond, N. H., as 'a post-township in Cheshire Co., 53 miles S. W. of Concord.'

"In a recent attendance upon the grove meeting, not the least among the inducements to make the journey was the opportunity to see the homestead where Hosea Ballou first took the breath of life, and to explore some of the vales and hills his boy feet must have trod more than a century ago… As we enter this little village, a church at our right, half a century old, is the Universalist church, – the members of which have nearly all left, to be good parishioners at Winchester, Keene, and other more thriving and distant neighborhoods.

"A little farther on, at our left, is a 'meeting-house,' – it is true to that classic cognomen. It is black with age. It seems hardly strong enough to keep timber, board, and shingle together. It cannot be less than a century and a half old. The very sight of it takes us back to a former and very primitive age. The glass is held to the sash by bits of tin, – the putty got tired long ago and 'let go.' We cannot enter, but we can look through the windows. On the north side is the great, square pine pulpit, possibly one that never knew the smell of paint. The square pews have high seats from which only tolerably long limbs can touch the knotty floor. There is no grace of form, no cunning device of architect, nothing to woo a trained fancy. In and of itself, it is a hulk that only cumbers the ground.

"Why, then, did we look often, long, and spell-bound upon this wretched old rookery, and see therein a fascination not to be noted in the Capitol at Albany or the mammoth and costly post-offices of New York and Boston? The answer is in the history. More than a century ago, Rev. Maturin Ballou preached regularly from that pine pulpit. Among the regular auditors, possibly the most thoughtful of them all, his little legs dangling from the rough benches, sat his little son – Hosea.

"On the morning of Sunday, our friend and host, Mr. L. Martin, says to his pastor of many years, the Rev. E. Davis: 'Take my horse and carriage, and show these people where Hosea Ballou was born.' 'These people' include Dr. Miner, Rev. Mr. Stone, of Canton, Rev. Q. Whitney, and the editor of the 'Christian Leader.' Mr. Davis knows the way, but in Mr. Bowen, who owns the farm contiguous to the once Ballou territory, he finds and calls a pilot and village antiquarian. Perhaps a mile east of the Keene and Richmond road, a mile and a half from the Universalist church on the hill, right at the foot of 'Grassy Hill,' we find a strictly modern house, and a very old barn, and a much older corn-house, – less now by a good sample than it was before we saw it. It is a one-story house, with modern windows, and three small chimneys. Mr. Bowen explains: 'That house contains the frame within which Hosea Ballou was born, and the form of the interior is substantially the same.' He was confident that the three chimneys were the same in material as the one big chimney of the old structure. Of the corn-house near by, Mr. Bowen says: 'That is just the same, only it is older and is now going to decay.' Knoll, stream, valley, plain, and high hill to the east, – in the woods of which run the fence or wall that bounded the Ballou farm: upon these time can have wrought but little change. We saw them upon that Sunday morning as Hosea Ballou saw them, – as child, as boy, as youth, as man. From that quiet spot, so rural, so out of the way, so completely in the backwoods, almost hidden by precipice and hill, came the acorn, the oak whereof is now strong and vigorous, – we trust with healing in its leaves. The little boy entering that corn-barn to get fodder for his father's horse, cows, and oxen, – is that the same whose stalwart form first rose before us in the School Street pulpit forty years ago; whose eloquent tongue set the blood thrilling in our youthful veins; whose majestic bearing seemed to us – what it was – that of an Apostle?

"It has been our good fortune to look upon the Forum where Cicero declaimed in orations that yet thrill; to traverse the Colosseum where Trajan had a private box; to walk the streets of Pompeii whose pavements were trodden by resident Greeks and strangers centuries before the advent of Jesus.

"But there is an ample niche in our memory left. We place therein, to recall reverently, gratefully, and with weird association, our visit, on the morning of August 20, 1882, to the birthplace of Hosea Ballou, Richmond, N. H., 'twelve miles from Keene, due south.' The town of hill, vale, and forest is largely deserted by man. Farms that once waved with corn are now covered with forests of pine. The locomotive has never been seen – hardly heard – within its borders. But its history is precious. For what it was, for what it bequeathed, it shall live in history and in song."

CHAPTER XX.

EDUCATIONAL AIDS

THE Universalists, like some others of the Christian sects in America, were at first destitute of the educational forces which have so signally aided and strengthened the more popular churches of the land. They had no colleges, no academies, or theological schools at their command. Although some of their ministers were very respectable scholars, giving good evidence of their literary attainments in their pulpit instructions, and now and then an uncommon genius would appear, making his talents specially available as a writer or preacher, the larger number were more notable mainly for their plain good sense, their reasoning powers, their very intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures, and their aptness in the use of them in the defence and advocacy of their faith. These last named qualifications gave the Universalist minister a vantage-ground in the elucidation of his faith, which often rendered it impossible for a theological opponent, however well trained as a scholar, to sustain himself in an attempted vindication of his opinions. If, therefore, Christian truth could be thus clearly and impressively set forth by those of but limited educational resources, how much more effective might it prove if thoroughly prepared and armed with a ripe and ready scholarship? This consideration, as was to have been expected, in due time moved some of the wisest and best friends of the Universalist Church to take steps towards the accomplishment of this object.

And not for the ministry only was this advantage sought. Those who were needed to sustain the ministry were equally involved in the attainment of it. Every Christian sect has been elevated and sustained in a great measure by giving its support to educational institutions, – the college, the divinity school, the academy. If an educated ministry is one of the great aids in sustaining Christian truth and the Christian Church, so is an educated laity. Both would have their religion represented and upheld by the highest educational supports and influences of modern civilization.

Besides, Christian Universalism is a child of the light. It is "not of the night nor of darkness." It would send out its inquiries everywhere into the universe in its readiness to "prove all things and hold fast that which is good." It would stand face to face with all the questionings that come up in science, history, philosophy, fully persuaded that all these, truthfully consulted, will more and more confirm its great doctrines of God, the divine law and its operations, the divine purposes and their fulfilment, the reign of righteousness and its final triumph over all evil, as made known through Christ, the Head, Guide, and Emancipator of Man. Hence it could not be otherwise than that the enlightened Universalist should be the earnest advocate and friend of educational institutions.

A notable evidence of this interest was seen in the instituting of Tufts College in Medford, Mass. It was a timely generosity that gave it being on that pleasant hill which "the centuries had piled and planted to be the candlestick on which Charles Tufts should set the light of this institution."55 It was incorporated in 1852, and opened for students in 1855. Its prosperity has been of steady growth, its funds have multiplied and its endowments increased; the last report of the President (E. H. Capen, D. D.) showing it to be "no longer an experiment, but a power." The aggregate assets of the college at the present time, including the buildings and one hundred and twenty acres of land, are not less than $1,000,000. With a Faculty of great practical efficiency, and with the close personal intercourse of teachers and pupils, no institution of the kind in America affords better facilities for a thorough education. In connection with the college is the Divinity School, with its able and devoted instructors. A professorship in the school was endowed by Charles Packard, Esq., of Boston. An elegant chapel near the main college building is soon to be ready for use, at a cost of $25,000, the gift of Mrs. Mary T. Goddard, of Newton, Mass.

Lombard University, at Galesburg, Ill., is another institution, founded by Benjamin Lombard, of Galesburg. The university building is of brick, three stories high, with spacious rooms. It has libraries of about 5,000 volumes; an extensive mineralogical cabinet, including a rare collection of shells; a valuable philosophical and chemical apparatus, and a permanent fund of about $100,000. Young men and women are admitted alike to all classes and all courses of study. Rev. N. White, Ph. D., is President, as also of the Theological Department in connection with the university. All departments of the university are open to the students of theology without charge.

St. Lawrence University is at Canton, St. Lawrence Co., N. Y. It has two fully organized departments. 1. The collegiate, comprising the usual four years' classical course, and a four years' scientific course. Rev. A. G. Gaines is president and Craig Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy. Young men and women are admitted to the institution on the same conditions. 2. The theological, of which Rev. I. M. Atwood, D. D. (the successor of the late Dr. Fisher) is president. Competent and faithful teachers are in both schools. The location and surroundings of the school are favorable to uninterrupted study. A good number of well-educated and useful ministers have gone out from Canton.

Another college worthy of special attention is Buchtel, Akron, Summit Co., Ohio. It was founded by the Universalist State Convention of Ohio, and was named in honor of Hon. John R. Buchtel, its most generous and devoted benefactor, and was opened to students of both sexes, Sept. 11, 1872. The curriculum of study embraces: 1. A complete classical course of four years; 2. A thorough philosophical course of four years; 3. A full scientific course of four years. There is also a preparatory course of three years for each of the above courses. Rev. O. Cone is president of Buchtel, who has a company of able teachers with him. There are thirty-two perpetual scholarships of $1,000 each; and four professorship endowments (two for women), two of $25,000, and two of $20,000 each. The outlook from the institution was never more promising than at present, and its friends were never more devoted to its interests. Its generous founder has lived to see this child of his many anxieties and strong affection one of the great joys of his lifetime; and he richly deserves it. The college was lately freed from debt. Its total capital is $290,000.

Clinton Liberal Institute has been of good service. It was founded in Clinton, N. Y., in 1831, and removed to Fort Plain, N. Y., in 1879, and came into possession of the buildings and grounds formerly known as the Fort Plain Seminary and Collegiate Institute. It was the first academic institution set up by Universalists, and has had a steady success from the beginning. Charles V. Parcell, A. M., is president, and has with him a full corps of competent teachers. The amount of its property is $100,000.

One of the most convenient and beautiful educational buildings in New England is Dean Academy, at Franklin, Mass. It was incorporated in 1865, and derives its name from the late Dr. Oliver Dean of Franklin. The edifice with the outbuildings is valued at $200,000, is lighted with gas and heated by steam, and has every modern improvement and convenience for the comfort of the pupils. Its principal is Lester L. Burrington, A. M., Chase Professor of Latin and Greek. The institution is well endowed and is increasing in prosperity. It is an honor to the Universalist denomination as well as to its venerable founder, and deserves to be widely patronized and vigorously sustained. The edifice stands upon land once owned by the distinguished Orthodox divine, Dr. Nathaniel Emmons, formerly the minister of the town.

Goddard Seminary is situated in the beautiful village of Barre, Vt., six miles from Montpelier. The school is for both sexes, and offers three complete courses of study, viz. the college preparatory, of three years; the ladies' collegiate, of four years; the English course, of four years. The seminary is well supplied with anatomical models, skeletons, charts, globes, stereopticon, table and gas microscope, and apparatus for the illustration of physiology, astronomy, philosophy, and chemistry. The cabinet contains an excellent collection of minerals, fossils, and natural history specimens, and superior facilities are offered for the study of natural science.

This institution bears the name of one whose generous encouragement was given it in the beginning, – Mr. Thomas A. Goddard. He was a member of the Second Universalist Church in Boston, and during the long pastorate of Rev. Hosea Ballou was the faithful superintendent of its Sunday-school. Prosperous in business, he was always liberal in his contributions to the church and its charities, which in a large city were ever making appeals to him. From the time of the first movements for the founding of Tufts College, he was among its most interested and generous helpers, and was one of the first treasurers of the institution. When, a few years since, the infant seminary at Barre became embarrassed, a devoted friend, acting as its agent, determined to make a vigorous effort in its behalf. He came to Massachusetts, and calling on Mrs. Goddard, whose husband had aided the school in the beginning, the result was Goddard Seminary.

Westbrook Seminary and Female College is a boarding-school for young men and women, near Portland, in Deering (post-office Stevens Plains), Me. The institution began to be talked of as early as 1830. A generous citizen of Westbrook, Mr. Zechariah Stevens, had resolved to donate land ample enough for the school buildings and the needed adornment around them. How his gift has been improved, the present attractive appearance of the seminary declares. The institution was chartered in 1831, and opened in 1834. It has had friendly aids from time to time, one of them being Hersey Hall, the gift of Gen. S. F. Hersey of Bangor. Common and higher English courses, a college preparatory, and two collegiate courses for ladies are provided. The school-building contains the chapel, recitation-rooms, library, laboratory, and cabinet of minerals. Rev. J. P. Weston, D. D., is president of the institution.

Green Mountain Perkins Institute is situated in the village of South Woodstock, Vt. It was incorporated in 1848, and has since been in successful operation. The school is for both sexes, and offers three complete courses of study. The classical, of three years, includes Greek and Latin sufficient to prepare students for admission to any New England college. The ladies' collegiate for four years is offered to those wishing to take an extended course in Latin, French, and German, and higher English. The school has gained a good reputation.