174 Too Hot for Church This Summer? Attend Sunday Services out in the Country! (1891)

During the early 1890s summer services and special gatherings of the Church of the Advent (Academy of the New Church) in Philadelphia took place “out in the country” in what is now the borough of Bryn Athyn. Locations included Knight’s Hill, “Mr. Pendleton’s barn,” and “the evergreens in front of Mr. Schreck’s residence” (see New Church Life 1895, 127). A notice in New Church Life reads as follows: 

“The services of the Church of the Advent, in Philadelphia, will be resumed on the 21st of September, at 565 North Seventeenth Street. Services are being held at Knight’s Hill, Bethayres, Pa., in the neighborhood of which place a number of the members of the Church of the Advent are spending the summer” (New Church Life 1891, 132).

Summers in the (non-air conditioned) cities of the 1890s were very uncomfortable, Continue reading » » » »

171 Cornerstone Laying Ceremony in Durban, South Africa (1923)

“Before the ceremony, a short service was held at the pastor’s residence. The Forty-second Psalm was sung to the music of the English composer, C. J. Whittington. After the sermon, which treated of the Divinity of Christ, the congregation proceeded to the site of the new building. The stone was laid by the pastor, Rev. H. L. Odhner, acting for the Bishop of the General Church of the New Jerusalem. It was an unhewn stone, inscribed with “The Head of the Corner” in Hebrew characters, and with the references, Ps. cxviii and Matt. xxi, 42., and was dedicated as a symbol of the doctrine concerning the sole Deity of Jesus Christ, who was the Word made flesh, or God Incarnate; the acknowledgment of this central truth being that rock upon which the Lord said He would found His church, and the cornerstone of the true Christian religion. A children’s choir sang the 118th Psalm in Hebrew, after which the architect presented the Rev. Odhner with an inscribed silver trowel (see photo above) for the official laying” (Natal Mercury, December 14, 1923. In New Church Life 1924, 314).

Glencairn Museum has in its New Church collection the ceremonial trowel that was used by Hugo L. Odhner during the cornerstone laying ceremony described above (05.R0.545). The trowel is inscribed as follows: “Durban Society of the Church of the New Jerusalem, Foundation Stone Laid by Rev. H.L. Odhner BTh., 18th Nov. 1923″ (see photo above). Although the trowel mentions November 18 as the date of the ceremony, according to a report by Odhner in New Church Life, the actual date Continue reading » » » »

170 Rev. John Hargrove Delivers New Church Sermon before Jefferson and Congress (1802)

John Hargrove (1750-1839) was one of the first New Church ministers ordained in America, and his ministerial career included several remarkable events. On December 26th, 1802, he delivered a sermon On the Leading Doctrines of the New Jerusalem to President Thomas Jefferson and members of Congress. Two years later in 1804 he delivered another sermon in Washington on Christmas day—On the Second Coming of Christ, and On the Last Judgment— this time before both Houses of Congress. His 1804 sermon is currently part of the Library of Congress exhibit, ”Religion and the Founding of the American Republic.“

John Hargrove was born in Ireland in 1750 and came to Baltimore in 1769. On November 28th, 1776, he married his first wife Hannah England, and soon afterwards became a Methodist. He was ordained as a preacher and later became a deacon in the Methodist Church. Hargrove was first introduced to Swedenborg Continue reading » » » »