A Sermon for the Silent - 1859
Thomas Gallaudet.
Introduction
Thomas Gallaudet was the son of a deaf-mute mother (Sophia) and married a deaf-mute woman (Elizabeth Budd). Like his father before him (also named Thomas) he took a deep interest in those who cannot hear. Ordained an Episcopal priest, he held the world’s first-known church service for the deaf, on the campus of New York University. Seven years later, his silent congregation acquired a church building in New York city. On this day, August 7, 1859, he preached the inaugural sermon for St. Ann’s church, taking as his text Mark 4:26,27: “And he [Jesus] said, ‘So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.’”
Quote
“Our Saviour, being the everlasting Word by whom all things were made, could use the imagery of the natural world more strikingly and appropriately than any one else, to set forth and illustrate the great moral principles which he came to promulgate and enforce. How clearly and powerfully does he teach us, by his reference to the growth of the seed, that the doctrines of the everlasting gospel—the principles of the kingdom of God, of which he was the Head—produce their effects upon the hearts of mankind in a silent, gradual, mysterious, unfathomable manner,—that the ripe fruit of Christian character comes at length from the planting in the soul of the germ of the new spiritual life. Our Lord also doubtless intended to teach his apostles that the growth of the spiritual kingdom of the faithful, brought into outward communion by baptism, should start from feeble beginnings and have such a strangely gradual, yet vigorous growth, that they should not know how the work went on. Our Saviour, in his parables upon these subjects, evidently teaches that man must use certain appointed means, believing that, in consequence of the operation of certain great laws of God, he will eventually gather in the bountiful harvest, though he knoweth not how. The truly devout mind draws the divinely intended inference that, in disseminating the truths of the everlasting gospel, the means which Christ has appointed must be used; though he knoweth not how the seed, having been planted, is nurtured by the co-operation of God the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, with the Church, the apostolic ministry, the preaching of the word, the use of the holy sacraments, and other means of grace. Yes, brethren, mysteries in spiritual matters surround us at every step of our pilgrimage, and it is utterly vain for self-complacent philosophers to attempt to fathom them.”
“The Sermon Delivered upon the Occasion of St. Ann’s Church for Deaf-Mutes Commencing its Services at the Church in eighteenth Street, Near Fifth Avenue, Seventh Sunday after Trinity, August 7, 1859, by the Rev. Thomas Gallaudet, Rector.” New York: George E. Nesbitt & Co., Printers and Staioners, 1859.