Radio Script #1194

Little Talks on Common Things
March 11, 1979

Today I want to tell you about an interesting man who was born in Winslow in 1761 and who was fourteen years old when the first shots fired in Concord that began the Revolutionary War. He was Nathaniel Chase, whose father had married a widow left with four children when her husband was killed by the Indians. About his childhood Nathaniel wrote: “We lived in a town that had Just been settled with all population scattered and poor. There was neither schoolhouse nor meeting house in the town. There was a school two miles away, but by the time I was old enough to attend, my father needed my help to support the family, and my total attendance at school did not exceed ten weeks. Hy father taught me patiently many evenings at home. When the Revolution broke out, my father was one of the minute men who enlisted, leaving the care of the family with me, though I was only fourteen years old. Two years later I enlisted when I was sixteen, and was in the service until 1781. When I was then discharged, I set out on my own.”

In the spring of 1781 Nathaniel, then 20·years old, took snow shoes, gun and hatchet, and with two companions, walked forty miles to the wilderness that became Buckfield. There he cleared twelve acres of land, built a log cabin, and into it moved his father’s family. By right of continued living on the place, as provided by the Massachusetts Settlers Act, he secured deed to 100 acres on which the cabin stood for his father and an adjoining 100 acres for himself. There in Buckfield in 1783, he married Rhoda Elliott.

Converted at the age of 27, Nathaniel Chase decided to become a minister of the Baptist denomination. At the time then was no Baptist church anywhere near his farm, and it was 1789 before he began to officiate as a preacher. Two years later a Baptist Church was organized in Buckfield, and Chase divided his time between that church and one in Hebron. Not until 1800 was he officially ordained.

The’ people of Buckfield were not at all sure they wanted to see Chase ordained. The selectmen called a special town meeting which voted to protest against Chase’s ordination. They offered two objections: Chase was by that time possessed of considerable land title, if he were an ordained minister would be exempt from taxation, and in addition the reserved ministerial lot would become exempt. . To these objections the Baptist ordaining council responded that they had no concern with property, but were ordaining Chase solely to spread the gospel. The council prevailed over the selectmen, and Chase was not only ordained, but also was the Buckfield minister for 15 years.

After his tenure at Buckfield, Chase became a kind of circuit rider, what the church called a missionary, holding services at various churches throughout Maine and New Hampshire. In the last years of his life he supplied without charge a number of destitute churches in Oxford County. His substantial property holdings permitted him to give that free service, and he also had a Revolutionary soldier’s pension. After losing two wives by death, Chase married a third time. When he died in 1853, he had been father of 16 children.

In his memoirs, Nathaniel Chase commented on his profession. He wrote: “When I was a young man, knowing as much as I know now, preaching was the last vocation I would have chosen. But, as a call from God, I would select it above all others. Today I am sure such a call would demand of me more knowledge than I have gained. How much better I could have done if I had enjoyed a good education. I recommend to every young man who intends to preach that he get all the knowledge he can.”

Of this preacher the History of Buckfield tells us: “He was a man of great activity and energy. Through his instrumentality a meetinghouse was built, the first church edifice in town, and it has always been known as Elder Chase’s church. In after years it fell into disuse, was then moved to the village and occupied as the town house for town meetings. When the members declined, Elder Chase united the Buckfield Church into the older Church of Hebron.By this time he was not a ~lI’ttlc·.j pn·a(‘hc·I’. tlllt a travelling missionary.”

Concerning Chase’s landed property, the Buckfield History said: “To his hundred acres secured by legislative grant, he quietly acquired 200 additional acres by purchase. He was a diligent worker, and as the years went by, he bordered his farm in improved acreage wrested from the forest until his landed possessions were among the largest and most valuable in the settlement, and he was accounted a wealthy man. He successively built three houses: first a log cabin; second a frame house; and third a large square,house of two stories in which he lived until his death at the age of 92.”

The History goes on to say: “Elder Chase was almost entirely self-educated. He always preached without notes, Bible and hymn book were his only pulpit aids. He was a hard working man on his farm and in the woods, and the out of doors was his study room. While he worked, his mind was busy. preparing next Sunday’s sermon. It was said of him, that so absorbed would he be in thought that he would often hoe a row of corn, turn around and hoe back the same row. He was a man of firm will, blunt speech, and austere presence. but under his austerity were a kindly heart and a lurking sense of humor. Always industrious himself, he had no sympathy with idlers.”

Some of Nathaniel Chase’s caustic remarks were repeated all over Oxford County·. One of them was this: “The longer I live the more I am convinced that it takes a pretty good man to make a good Christian. If a man will steal a sheep before he is converted, he is quite likely to steal one afterwards.”

One habit of Elder Chase’s was to select the hymns at home for the coming church service, wrap the hymnbook in a handkerchief and put it in the pocket of his Sunday coat. On one occasion a mischevious nephew withdrew the book and substituted in the pocket a pack of cards. When the preacher withdrew the package from his frock and unwrapped the handkerchief a shower of cards fell in all directions from the pulpit, to the consternation of both preacher and congregation.

One cold winter night Chase heard a noise in his corn shed. Investigating, he found there a poor man who had rifled through a bushel of corn that he intended to steal. The preacher shouted: “What are you doing here at this time of night? I suppose you are in need. So take half the corn. I’ll give you that in payment of your shelling the rest for me. But don’t let me catch you stealing corn again.”

At one time, when grain was scarce and meal and flour prices were high, a man came to Chase to buy corn. “How much do you want to buy?” asked Chase. “Six bushels.” the man replied. “Have you money to pay for it?” asked the preacher. “Right here in my pocket,” said the man. “Well then,” said Chase, “I can’t let you have any. If you have money in your pocket, you can buy corn from those who won’t sell for anything but cash. Some of my neighbors with large families are very poor and never see any cash. I must keep all the corn I can spare to lend them till they can raise some to pay me.”

I have already noted Nathaniel Chase’s regret that he did not have an education. Church historians have frequently pointed out criticism of early Baptists, that they did not believe in an educated ministry. If a preacher clearly had a heavenly call, God would put into his mouth a divine message to tell every Sunday. Ahundllllt letters, , diaries,and memoirs of early Baptist preachers reveal that such an attitude was [nr frum common. Baptists at the turn into the 19th century had already founded Brown University to train their preachers and would soon establish a Baptist College in Waterville, Maine, and a theological seminary in Newton, Massachusetts. By the middle of the 19th century, demand for educated Baptist clergymen had been so strong that in 1851, the AnH’ric:ltl Baptist Manual, a statistic;II, biogrnphf.Gd and historical magazine of the domination, published a lCrlr,chy nrticico on “An E,lu<.:atl’,1 Hinl~;lry.” I.,·t 111> note what that article had to say at the vt’ry t inl(‘ “,,11I’n nnrt i st!i W(‘f\.’ acclIsl’d of preferring uneducated !lIini.~tcrs. It sllid: “l:v(‘ry church ought to proclaim the gospel, but not by part, uneducated 1Y\1’11, however devout they might be. Of course the minister must be filled with the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit never directly teaches a man philosophy or grammar. The minister must acquire knowledge by the same method as the ungodly. The theologian must learn by the same process as does the philosopher. No man in the ministry, any more than any other vocation, can exercise forces he does not possess, nor can he communicate anything that he has not learned. There seems to be an impression that a minister may expect some sort of supernatural aid in spreading the truth, something no one would presume for a lawyer. God does not operate that way. He acts, enlightens, suggests, but all by means of man’s own mentality. The man who, without study tells us he utters only what is supernaturally communicated to him is likely to express himself in a manner that assumes an ignorant God, when in fact it is the preacher himself who is ignorant. It is an insult to the Deity to imply that he is an ignornmus. “The minister can impart nothing but what he has learned. The minister is a teacher, he must Learn in order to know, without knowledge he cannot teach.”

The article went on to say. “We often hear the stock question, ‘Are not uneducated ministers more \lIIl”fll1 than the educated?” The answer is, “Never, never!” The very fact that a man is efficient and useful is evidence that he is educated. We have indeed listened to men with little formal schooling who by persistent self-education have made themselves masters of content and form, and we have heard others with university degrees who bore us to distraction.

But from such experiences it does not follow that training in the school is unnecessary or unimportant. As n rille men do not educate themselves; it is far too difficult a task for most rC’rfoOn!’l~ demanding not only strong conviction, but diligent use of every rare hour. It I’; IIllually moTt’ ,’l1!tlvnblc and more quickly profitable lobe under till’ I nntruct ifln (If others who know more than the learner. The schools that train ministers dl’!ll.’rvl’ our support. They do not claim to manufactuer preachers in a factory dIll’s II product – they only seek to aid those to whom God has already chlH:l.’n.

“A minister must be intelligent, able to think and judge for himself; in a word, he must be able to teach. The question is, how can he best secure that training? Shall he, with all the distractions of inexperience and ignorance, snatch from what books he can find the things he ought to know, or shall he accept all the aid that wisdom and experience can furnish? The young man who declines the benefits that the schools can give, when he can possibly by any sacrifice, avail himself of them, by that very fact reveals his unfitness for the ministry.”

It was that view, so strongly expressed in the Baptist magazine in 1854, that prevailed in New England, though not always with a number of denominations whose ignorant, loud-voiced, pulpit thumping and prancing preachers paraded through the frontier lands of the opening west. It was because the early 19th century churches of Maine, especially the leading denomination, the predominant Congregationalists, were heh i 1\1′ strong 1 y (‘d”l’a tef\ c h’n,;y that those clergymen became such influential citizens. In many a ‘I!:l<lll N.”tine town the minister was a graduate of Harvard or Dartmouth or Brown, Bowdoin or Colby, and as the town’s most educated man he was looked upon as a civic as well as religious leader. Again and again, it was the minister who represented his district in the State Legislature, at first in Boston when Maine was a part of Massachusetts, and later in Maine’s successive state capitals in Portland and Augusta.

The ministers of Maine 125 years ago were by no means, uncultured ignoramus.

Year: 1979