"When he came, hardly out of his boyhood, to our little parish
in Worcester, there was, so far as I know, no Congregational
church in the country whether Unitarian or of the ancient
Calvinistic faith, which did not require a special vote and
ceremonial of admission to entitle any man to unite with his
brethren in commemorating the Saviour as he desired his friends
and brethren to remember him by the rite of the last supper.
Until then, the Christian communion was but for a favored
few. Mr. Hale believed that the greater the sinfulness of
the individual soul the greater the need and the greater the
title to be taken into the fellowship and the brotherhood
of the Saviour of souls. So, without polemical discussion,
or any heat of controversy, he set the example which has been
so widely followed. This meant a great deal more than the
abolition of a ceremonial or the change of a rubric. It was
an assertion of the great doctrine, never till of late perfectly
comprehended anywhere, that the Saviour of men came into the
world inspired by the love of sinners, and not for an elect
and an exclusive brotherhood of saints.
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