Jakob Hemphill's Bell and the First Continental Prayer

The city of Philadelphia smelled of bread and horses and river wind. It was September of 1774, and the streets buzzed with something Jakob Hemphill had never felt before. Every cobblestone seemed to hum. Jakob was nine years old. His father was a printer, and that morning his father had pressed his hand and said, "Come with me, son. Today you will see something worth remembering all your life." They walked together to Carpenters' Hall, a handsome building of red brick on a quiet lane. Out front stood men in coats of brown and black and deep blue. Some had ridden for days. Some had sailed from faraway colonies. They were delegates — the first Continental Congress of America — and they had gathered because things were growing very frightening. The British government had closed Boston Harbor. Soldiers now walked the streets of Massachusetts. People were afraid. And these men, representing twelve colonies from New Hampshire to South Carolina, had come to decide what to do. But they could not agree on anything. Jakob pressed close to his father at the edge of the hall and watched the delegates argue. Some wanted bold action. Some wanted peace. Some were angry. Some were afraid. They spoke over one another, and the room grew loud, and Jakob thought it sounded like a storm trying to decide which way to blow. Then a man named Thomas Cushing of Massachusetts rose to his feet and made a suggestion. He said they should open the next morning's session with prayer. Another man objected at once. "We are too different," he said. "We come from different churches. Different ways of worshiping. We cannot pray together." Jakob held his breath. Then a tall man from Virginia stood. His name was Patrick Henry, and when he spoke, the room went still as a pond at dawn. "I am not a Virginian," he said quietly, firmly. "I am an American." The room was silent for a long moment. That evening, Jakob's father came home and set his hat on the peg and sat down at the supper table. He folded his hands and looked at Jakob with shining eyes. "They voted yes," he said. "Tomorrow morning, they will pray." The next morning, Jakob rose before the sun. He stood outside Carpenters' Hall as the bell of Christ Church rang across the rooftops. One by one the delegates arrived. They took their seats. And then an old Episcopal minister named Jacob Duché walked to the front of the room. Jakob pressed his face close to the tall window. He could see the men inside bowing their heads — men from different colonies, different faiths, different fears. And Reverend Duché began to read from the thirty-fifth Psalm. "Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me. Fight against them that fight against me." Jakob closed his eyes too. The words drifted out through the glass and into the morning air, and for a moment, he forgot to be afraid. Later, a man named John Adams wrote a letter to his wife Abigail about what happened in that room. He said he had never heard a better prayer in his life. He said it moved the whole room to tears. He said he felt, for the first time, that these divided men might truly become one people. Jakob did not know about the letter. He was just a boy watching through a window. But he remembered the sound of that bell, and the heads bowed together, and his father's warm hand finding his in the morning cold. When he was an old man, Jakob Hemphill would tell his grandchildren about that September morning. He would say: they were afraid, and they prayed, and something changed. Not all at once. But it began there. It began with bowed heads and a single, shared word. Amen.