John Murray's legacy

John Murray, the first great apostle of Universalism in America took John Wesley's words one step further and was expelled from the movement, only to have his philosophy reappear years later on the shores of Long Point, when two small Freeman girls found something on the shore.

John Murray and John Wesley co-preached for the Universalist movement in England. The latter denied the Calvinist who affirmed that the elect alone were saved. His primary message was "Christ died for all and salvation is free," so when John Murray outran his friend by starting with John Wesley's premise, "Christ died for all," and preached, "If Christ died for all, then are all men saved," he was utterly cast out. Imprisoned, in debt, bereaved of wife and child, he set sail for America to hide and never preach again. When his fog-bound vessel stood off Barnegat, N.J., he went ashore at Good Luck for fish and milk. There he met Thomas Potter who said, "You are the preacher for whom I built my meeting house." Murray denied being a preacher but finally acquiesced to Potter's insistance of, "You cannot say that you have never preached and preached the doctrine, 'If Christ died for all, then are all men saved.'" It was then John Murray promised to preach in Potter's meeting house if the fog did not lift before Sunday. "The fog will never lift," said Potter, "till you have preached in my meeting house." Potter couldn't read or write, had thought his way out of the darnkness of the old theology into the light of, "God is love and all men are His children." Persuaded of this truth, he built a meeting house and was waiting for a minister to proclaim it. In comes John Murray.

Murray's adventures were eventually published in a leather-bound book and cast into the water by an unknown, where it floated in the tide to Long Point where Sylvia and Elizabeth Freeman, daughters of Prince Freeman, retrieved it from the water. After drying it, they read it, believed its teachings and became the first Universalist in the community. They showed the book to relatives and neighbors on Long Point and to friends on the other side, and out of discussion and agitation grew the Christian Union Society. The record book, evidently not the earliest book, begins with the entry of a meeting in 1829 at Enos Nickerson's schoolhouse, when they voted to build a meeting house on the eastern corner of Central and Commercial Streets. In time the building was sold to the Methodists who renamed it Wesley Chapel. Then the Universalists built their present church. The interior was decorated by the father of the Rev. Charles W. Wendte, D.D., a German who had studied art in Italy. He came to America to introduce the frescoing of buildings, when most New England meeting houses were bare. The unfaded walls repeat the designs he studied in Siena, Italy, the ceiling reflects that of the Temple of Neptune in the Acropolis. The organ was bought by a long and valiant list of subscriptons of the young men in town.

The daughters of Sylvia Freeman came every Sunday from the Point. When they faced the choir they saw 36 young ladies, each with a beautiful bonnet tied under their chins by a broad and fluttering ribbon. On Sunday afternoon, the two little girls played "meeting." There were two essentials for the play. One was the broad ribbon bonnet strings, and the other was a mysterious word which the angelic singers seemed to utter. "Ssspersse, oh sssperssse, " And now in Sylvia's family if anyone behaves in a very elegant and genteel manner, they say of her, "She is ssspersssing."