Radio Script #1195

Little Talks on Common Things
March 18, 1979

A prominent Waterville citizen in the middle of the 19th century was the Rev. David N. Sheldon, pastor of the local Unitarian Church. He had been president of Waterville College (now Colby) for ten years from 1843 to 1853. How was this possible. since ever, Colby president from Jeremiah Chaplin in 1818 to Franklin Johnson in 1942 had been a Baptist in the college chartered by that denomination in 1813? The answer is that David Sheldon experienced a radical change in religious conviction.

Born into a devout Baptist family, Sheldon had graduated from Williams College in 1830 and had then spent four years in France in charge of a religious mission. After serving in several Baptist churches, he was selected as Colby’s fifth president in 1843. His study with outstanding European philosophers and theologians made his teaching of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, a subject taught for many years by Colby presidents, distinctly noteworthy. In fact, associated with Sheldon during his ten years as head of the college were a number of recognized scholars. George Keely was known in England by scientists with whom he corresponded about a range of subjects from minerals to new experiments in the area that was just getting the name physics. Justin Loomis was already so skilled in the rising subject of chemistry that when Waterville’s first murder was committed in 1847, authorities were told there was no need to send the stomach contents to Boston for analysis to Ilcle~l poison, but that it could be done equally well by Professor Loomis at Waterville College Professor James Champlin, who himself would later be a Colby president, not only did effective teaching in Greek and Latin, but was also the editor of several textbooks in the classics. Martin B. Anderson, the Professor of Rhetoric, soon left Waterville to become the first president of the University of Rochester.

Before 18~~ the College trustees had turned to di!.t:lllt areas for all four preceding presidents. This time they found the man they wanted close at hand, for right in town was pastor of the First Baptist Church, David Sheldon who was becoming known widely for his brilliant sermons. Sheldon was very popular with the students. Unlike his predecessors he did not preserve a dignified aloofness, but was friendly with the Colby boys on their own level – a good mixer without being a patronizing backslapper.

The Baptists who supported Colby at that time were of the hardshelled, orthodox Calvinist variety, vastly outnumbering the more liberal Free-Will Baptists who rejected the concept of predestination in favor of belief in man’s freedom of choice. When, after only a year in the presidential chair, Sheldon preached a sermon that today would be called at the most only mildly liberal, those hard-shelled Baptists were shocked. Vociferous in protest was Rev. Milton Wood, Sheldon’s successor as pastor at the Waterville church. He and Sheldon waged theological war in the columns of Maine’s Baptist paper, Zion’s Advocate. When Sheldon further defended his position in a book entitled Sin and Redemption, the Maine Baptist Convention came close to excommunicating him. The resolution they passed said, the mnin doctrines of a work entitled Sin and Redemption recently published by a member of this body, are in the views of this, Convention essentially unscriptural and fatally erroneous.”

Although Sheldon’s theological views even alienated some members of the faculty, especially Professor Keely, who resigned rather than continue to serve under the alleged heretic, the president held on for a ten year term until 1853. When he then resigned. his resignation letter went to his long-time enemy Milton Wood, who was still serving as secretary of the college trustees. The letter said: “In view of the want of harmony and cooperation among faculty of the college, I here with resign the office of President with the resignation to take effect either three or six months from this date, at the option of the Trustees, although I strongly prefer the earlier date.”

When Sheldon left Colby, he presented the trustees with a rather unusual claim. He pointed out that his predecessor, Eliphaz Fay, had remained in Waterville occupying the President’s house that had been erected for the first president. Jeremiah Chaplin, in 1819. So Sheldon had been compelled to rent a house at his own expense. That, said Sheldon, had obviously been unfair. He therefore asked for such payment toward his rent as the trustees considered just. He asked also to retain in his personal possession a large, elegant Bible and a mahogany chair, both of which had been placed in the college chapel as gifts by the students to their popular president. The trustees granted both requests.

Despite his controversial ideas, Sheldon immediately found a Baptist pastorate at Bath. There he became an avowed Unitarian, but stayed in the same shipbuilding city, taking the pastorate of its Unitarian Church, one of the founders of which had been Maine’s first governor, William King, the very man who as a Massachusetts state senator had fostered the bill that secured the Colby charter in 1813. Though King had not been a Baptist, he like Sheldon was no Unitarian when Colby was founded and he was one of very few non-Baptists on the Colby Board of Trustees. It was a bold stroke, indeed, when the Waterville Unitarians invited Sheldon to become pastor of their newly organized church. Thus this controversial religious leader returned to the Rcene where he had served as Baptist pastor and president of the college. There he spent the remainder of his life. Dying in 1919, he was buried in Waterville Pine Grove Cemetery.

When Sheldon became the Waterville Unitarian minister, his liberal, dynamic preaching attracted large congregation. An alarming number of members of the Waterville Baptist Church withdrew from that body to join Sheldon’s Unitarianism. A Baptist pastor of a different disposition would have become Sheldon’s life-long enemy. But the young man who then served the Baptist Church was no belligerent Milton Wood. He was a thorough Christian gentleman, George Dana Boardman Pepper, who was proud to bear the name of Colby’s first missionary, George Dana Boardman. Pepper and Sheldon became friends and the association was so effective in healing wounds in both denominations that in 1875, when Sheldon was still the Unitarian pastor and the Baptists decided on a thorough remodeling of the Baptist meetinghouse, Sheldon’s old church accepted the gracious offer of the Unitarians to use the Unitarian church for Baptist services while their own structure was being renovated.

In 1979 theological belief seems of little importance to many church people. The First Baptist Church of Waterville, whose pastor Milton Wood had so strongly denounced Sheldon, no longer practices closed communion. but welcomes to that sacred sacrament any person who accepts Christ and it admits into membership by letter, persons from any other Christian Church. Yet that church strongly holds to the historic Baptist principle of redemption by faith and of firm separation of. church and state.

To understand how far the conventional churches have now departed from Calvinist predestination – the doctrine that when you’re born you’re done for – let us note some of the things to which members subscribed in that church of Sheldon’s time.

Here’s one statement from the’ Articles of Faith of the Freeport Baptist Church. “We believe that rl:ln \.’;18 creat I’d f n n state of holiness, but that Adam fell from that holy and happy slate. In consequence, all mankind are now sinners not by constraint but by choice, being utterly devoid of the holiness required by the Law of God, wholly given to gratification of the world of Satan and of tIlt·ir ll-;,rn sinful passions and therefore under condemnation to eternal ruin. The only way of salvation from this state of condemnation is through elevation by God to blessedness through the righteous atonement of Christ, and those who are elected to receive this gift will be eternally saved.”

At the very time when David Sheldon was preaching in Bath in 1862, the Rockland Baptist Church published a manual which said: “We believe that man was originally created in a state of perfect rectitude, that he fell from that state by transgressing the divine command, and in consequence all his posterity are by nature sinners and being enemies of God are condemned by his law. The only way of deliverance from that state of condemnation is through atonement made by Christ. We believe that all who will finally be saved were from the foundation of the world chosen in Christ from salvation and it is they who experience a regeneration of change from sin to holiness, wrought in the heart by opening of the Holy Spirit.”

Among the regulations of that Rockland church was this (Inc>: “Any member absenting himself from the stated meetings and communion of the church for three months shall he visited by the Discipline Committee, and, unless he shows, repentance by statement and action, shall be brought before the church for punishable action including the possibility of
dismissal. ”

In the covenant of the Freeport church were these words: “we covenant to watch over each other for )o~ood, to reproach and admonish one another if occasion shall require, and if we find any of our members guilty of unchristian conduct, we will expose them, &lull will perform our duty to banish the unrepentant from our midst. ”

Like Bath and Rockland, Waterville too, was that kind of church when David Sheldon was its pastor, before he got his liberal views. A later church historian wrote of Sheldon: nile Il,”d tile t . t t ‘1 L& emer~ y . 0 assa~ some of the ancient landmarks of religion. He was ahead of his time in demanding freedom of thought and tolerance in matters of belief. In 1855 he was invited to address the literary societies of Waterville College, the Adelphi and the Literary Fraternity, who met jointly during Commencement week to hear some noted speaker. Only two years earlier Sheldon had left the Colby presidency and was in 1855 pastor of a Baptist Church in Bath. For his address to the two societies Sheldon chose the subject of Moral Freedom. In that, address he, launched the controversy that waged around him as long as he lived. He said: “I call it Moral Freedom because it is the earnest action of a free mind that casts off enshackling chains, and which, having faith, in God and man’s own capability for progress, finds its proper work in seeking emancipation from all tyrannies, even those of the church. It is the liberty of every man to follow his own honest convictions and to seek the realization of his own ideals of truth, beauty and virtue, uninhibited by external opportunities. Freedom to investigate to the fulllest extent all subjects on which man can firm an opinion, whether sacred or secular, is every individual’s right. The free man will not exalt the teaching of a regimented age over an enlightened one.. The church dogmas of one age are not the dogmas of another age. God is eternal, but teachings about him are subject to change.”

After that address til(‘ st arm bn·h,. ~f()~;t Baptisit publications demanded Sheldon’s excommunication. He didn’t wait for it, but 0l1l~ ycar later became an avowed Unitarian.

Now please do not misunderstand this broadcast. This is not to denounce Baptists. I am one myself and am a member of a church that, while defending historic Baptist principles, believes in tolerance and understanding of other faiths. Nor is this meant to praise and exalt the Unitarian belief. No. The purpose of this broadcast is to call your attention to a man in the 19th century who, right here in Waterville, stood up against powerful opposition for what he sincerely believed. Such a man
always deserves respect.

And with that we say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1979