THE FIRST PROTESTANT CHURCH.
On Sunday, Aug. 31, was celebrated in Salem the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the organization of the first Protestant Church formed in America. The church of the Plymouth colony was organized in Holland, and existed in this country from the first landing of the Pilgrims, in 1620; but the Salem church, established in 1629 by Endicott and his companions the year after their arrival, was the pioneer of its kind in organizations. In June of that year a ship arrived at Salem with four ministers—Samuel Skelton, Francis Higginson, Francis Bright, and Ralph Smith—and a letter from the London company, setting forth as clearly as words could do the noble purpose for which the Massachusetts colony was planted. “For that the propagating of the gospel,” they wrote, “is the thing we do profess above all to be our aim in settling this plantation, we have been careful to make plentiful provision of godly ministers, by whose faithful preaching, godly conversation, and exemplary life, we trust not only those of our own nation will be built up in the knowledge of God, but also the Indians may, in God’s appointed time, be reduced to the obedience of the gospel of Christ.” Bright soon after returned to England, and Smith became the first minister at Plymouth. Of the ceremonies attending the election and ordination of Skelton and Higginson as pastor and teacher of the church at Salem, Charles Gott, the first deacon, gives an account in a letter to Governor Bradford, of Plymouth, as follows: “Every fit member wrote in a note his name whom the Lord moved him to think was fit for a pastor, and so likewise whom they would have for a teacher; so the most voice was for Mr. Skelton to be pastor and Mr. Higginson to be teacher; and they accepting the choice, Mr. Higginson, with three or four more of the gravest members of the church laid their hands on Mr. Skelton, using prayer therewith. This being done, then there was imposition of hands on Mr. Higginson.” The covenant was drawn up in a single comprehensive sentence, and was the only thing in the shape of a church platform, or articles of belief, or creed to which the members of this early American church were required to subscribe. It was as follows: “We covenant with the Lord, and one with another, and do bind ourselves in the presence of God to walk together in all his ways, according as he is pleased to reveal himself unto us in his blessed word of truth.” It was a long time after this when assent to any theological dogma, or creed, first came to be a condition of church membership in Massachusetts. The early New England Puritans had many rules for their behavior and for the governance of their outward walk in life, but none regulating their religious belief. These came in later and finally became so rigid as to produce, about fifty years ago, a disruption of the great Congregationalist body when the first church in Salem and the first church in Plymouth and the first church in Boston ranged themselves on the side of the liberal party and came to be called Unitarian.—Inter-Ocean.