Bethel Church - Methodist - Edward T Taylor (Now Sacred Heart)

Edward T Taylor was an orphan and ran away at 7 to become a sailor and served in the war of 1812. In Boston he heard a sermon by Edward D Griffin at Park St Church and later Methodist Elijah Hedding and began attending Methodist church services. During the War of 1812, Taylor shipped aboard the privateer Curlew, which was captured by the British ship Acasta and its crew held at Melville Island, Halifax. Taylor's fellow prisoners asked the prison commandant to allow him to lead worship services in the prison.

After his release from Halifax, Taylor returned to Boston. He was licensed as a lay preacher in 1813. After a year or two, he settled in Saugus, Massachusetts, living in the home of a pious widow. The widow paid Taylor to work her small farm by teaching him how to read. He began holding prayer meetings and services in the widow’s house; when his audiences grew, he moved his services to a schoolhouse in East Saugus. He preached there, then Marblehead, Scituate, Duxbury, Harwich, New Bedford, Martha’s vineyard, Milford, Fall River as well as Bristol and Warren RI. n 1829, a group of Boston Methodists formed the Port Society of Boston to provide charitable assistance to, and religious services for, the city’s sailors. They acquired the vacant Methodist Alley Chapel located in the North End, which was the heart of Boston’s shipping industry. The Port Society renamed the chapel the Seamen’s Bethel, and at the end of the year Taylor was hired as Mariner’s Preacher. The Seamen’s Bethel was a nondenominational chapel and Taylor himself was a strong supporter of religious tolerance. Because so many Unitarians supported his ministry, Taylor was appreciative of Unitarian charity and relief work. He worked with, and was admired by, several Unitarian ministers, notably Henry Ware Jr.; William Ellery Channing; Ralph Waldo Emerson; James Freeman Clarke; Robert C. Waterston; and Cyrus A. Bartol.

Taylor became one of Boston’s most popular and best-known preachers, and he was known everywhere as “Father Taylor”. Unitarian minister Henry W. Bellows said of Taylor: "There was no pulpit in Boston around which the lovers of genius and eloquence gathered so often, or from such different quarters, as that in the Bethel at the remote North End, where Father Taylor preached. ... He was, perhaps, the most original preacher, and one of the most effective pulpit and platform orators, America has produced." He gained this reputation from being a sailor and preaching to sailors using nautical references his audience could easily identify with.

(For more see First Methodist Church)

What fruitage did these spiritual leaders produce? Mt 7:15-20. Consider John 17:16 vs Acts 20:29, 30. What would Jesus have said seeing this?

-Source Links-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thompson_Taylor

https://www.bu.edu/sthlibrary/archives/neccah/records-files-state/boston-records/

https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/public/gdcmassbookdig/oldhistoric00drake/oldhistoric00drake.pdf pg 168-172