CHAPTER IV

"THE PRESBYTERIAN JUNTO":   1752-1775

"The early and just alarm our country took at the measures pursued by the
British Court towards us strongly points us to the watchful care of a kind Providence
over us."—John Rodgers, "The Divine Goodness Displayed in the American
Revolution," p. 12.

"When the centurion heard that, he went and told the chief captain, saying,
Take heed what thou doest: for this man is a Roman. Then the chief captain came,
and said unto him, Tell me, art thou a Roman? And he said, Yea. And the chief
captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said. But
I was free born."—Acts 22 : 26-28.

THAT little or nothing should have been said
until now about the affairs of the country
at large, at the time when the New Church
was founded or during the first years of its existence,
must appear strange and perhaps neglectful; for the
period was, of course, a momentous one. The epi¬
sode of the Stamp Act was still fresh in men's minds
when the church on Beekman Street was projected,
and throughout the succeeding years the clouds of
threatened conflict with the mother country were
becoming more and more ominous. Indeed, so ab¬
sorbing were the political questions of the period that
one can but wonder how men at the same time found
energy for starting and maintaining a new church.
It can be explained only on the assumption that
those colonial Presbyterians did really seek first the
kingdom of God.

Why, then, it will be asked, since political ques¬
tions were at the time of such absorbing interest, has

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