In my pastoral rounds I sometimes had an opportunity to do more execution in a single talk than in a score of sermons. I once spent an evening in a vain endeavor to bring a man to a decision for Christ. Before I left, he took me up-stairs to the nursery, and showed me his beautiful children in their cribs. I said to him tenderly: "Do you mean that these sweet children shall never have any help from their father to get to Heaven?" He was deeply moved, and in a month that man became an active member of my church. He was glued to me in affection for all the remainder of his useful life. On a cold winter evening I made a call on a wealthy merchant in New York. As I left his door, and the piercing gale swept in I said, "What an awful night for the poor!" He went back, and bringing to me a roll of bank bills, he said: "Please hand these, for me, to the poorest people you know of." After a few days I wrote to him, sending him the grateful thanks of the poor whom his bounty had relieved, and added: "How is it that a man who is so kind to his fellow creatures has always been so unkind to his Saviour as to refuse Him his heart?" That sentence touched him in the core. He sent for me immediately to come and converse with him. He speedily gave his heart to Christ, united with, and became a most useful member of our church. But he told me I was the first person who had ever spoken to him about his spiritual welfare in nearly twenty years. In the case of this eminently effective and influential Christian, one hour of pastoral work did more than the pulpit efforts of almost a lifetime.
CHAPTER XIII.
SOME FAMOUS PREACHERS IN BRITAIN.
Binney.—Hamilton—Guthrie.—Hall.—Spurgeon.—Duff and others
In attempting to recall my recollections of the eminent preachers whom I have known, I hardly know where to begin, or where to call a halt. I shall confine myself entirely to those who are no longer living, except as they may live in the memory of the service they wrought for their Divine Master and their fellow men. When I first visited London, in early September, 1842, the two ministers most widely known to Americans were Henry Melvill and Thomas Binney. Melvill was the most popular preacher in the Established Church. His place of worship was out at Camberwell, and I found it so packed that I had to get a seat on one of the steps in the gallery. He was a man of elegant bearing, and rolled out his ornate sentences in a somewhat theatrical tone, but the hushed audience drank in every syllable greedily. The splendid and thoroughly evangelical sermons which he orated most carefully were exceedingly popular in those days, and even yet they are well worth reading as superb specimens of lofty, devout and resonant oratory. On a very warm Sabbath evening I went into the business end of London to the "Weigh House Chapel" and heard Dr. Thomas Binney. He was the leader of Congregationalism, as Melvill was of the Church of England. On that warm evening the audience was small, but the discourse was prodigiously large. Binney had a kingly countenance, and a most unique delivery. His topic was Psalm 147th, 3d and 4th verses. "God is the Creator of the universe, and the comforter of the sorrowing." He thrust one hand into his breeches pocket, and then ran his other hand through his hair, and began his sermon with the stirring words: "The Jew has conquered the world!" This was the prelude to a grand eulogy of the Psalms of David. He then unfolded the first part of his text in a most original style, made a long pause, scratched his head again, and said: "Now then, let us take some new thoughts, and then we are done." The closing portion of the rich discourse was on the tender consolations of our Heavenly Father.
Thirty years afterwards Dr. Binney was invited to meet me at breakfast at the house of Dr. Hall, with "Tom Hughes," Dr. Henry Allon and other notabilities. The noble veteran chatted very serenely, and offered a most majestic prayer while he remained sitting in his arm-chair. His physical disabilities made it difficult for him to stand; and very soon afterwards the grand old man went up to his crown. When I was spending two delightful days with Dr. McLaren, of Manchester, I described to him Binney's remarkable sermon. "Were you there that night?" inquired McLaren. "So was I, and though only a boy of sixteen, I remember the whole of that discourse to this hour." It was certainly a rare pulpit power that could fasten a discourse in two different memories for a whole half century.
Do many of the Londoners of this day remember Dr. James Hamilton, the pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Regent's Square? They should do so, for in his time he was the most popular devotional writer of both sides of the Atlantic; and during my visit to London, in 1857, I was very happy to form his acquaintance. He was a most cordial and charming man, slender, tall, with dark eyes and hair, and a beaming countenance. When one entered Hamilton's study he would hurry forward, seize his hands, and taking both in his, reply to your "How do you do, sir," with "Come in, come in; I am nicely, I assure ye." Would that all ministers were as cordial and approachable. When I attended his church in Regent Square they were singing, when I came in, a Psalm from the old Scotch Version. The choristers sat in a desk below the pulpit. The singing was general through the church, and excellent in style. Dr. Hamilton preached in a gown, and, as the heat grew oppressive in the middle of his sermon, threw it off. The discourse was delivered with extremely awkward gestures, but in a voice of great sweetness. The text was: "My soul thirsteth for the Living God." He described an arid wilderness, hot and parched, and down beneath it a mighty vein of water into which an artesian well was bored, and forthwith the waters gushed up through it and swept over all the dry desert, making it one emerald meadow. "So," said he, "it is the incarnate Jesus flowing up through our own dusty, barren desert humanity, and overflowing us with Heavenly life and grace, until what was once dreary and dead becomes a fruitful garden of the Lord." The discourse was like a chapter from one of Hamilton's savory volumes. Five years afterwards, I dined with Hamilton, and the Rev. William Arnot (who afterwards was his biographer), and I went to his church to deliver the preparatory discourse to the sacrament on the next Sabbath.
On my way up to London, I halted one night at Birmingham, and while out on a stroll, came upon the City Hall, which was crowded with a great meeting in aid of foreign missions. The heroic Robert Moffat, the Apostle of South Africa, was addressing the multitude, who cheered him in the old English fashion. Two years before that, Robert Moffat had met a young man in a boarding house in Aldersgate Street, London, and induced him to become a missionary in Africa. The young man was the sublimest of all modern missionaries, David Livingstone. Two years after that evening, Livingstone married Miss Mary Moffat (daughter of the man to whom I was listening), in South Africa, and she became the sharer of his trials and explorations. After Moffat had concluded his speech, a broad-shouldered, merry-faced man, with thick grey hair rose on the platform. "Who is that?" I inquired of my next neighbor. With a look of surprise that I should ask such a question in Birmingham, he said: "It is John Angell James." He was the man whom Dr. Cox wittily described as "An angel vinculated between two Apostles." He spoke very forcibly, in a hearty, humorous vein, and I could hardly understand how such a jovial old gentleman could be the author of such a serious work as "The Anxious Inquirer." But I have since discovered that many of the most solemn and impressive preachers were men of most cheery temperament who could laugh heartily themselves when they were not making other people weep. Mr. James looked like an old sea captain; but he was an admirable pilot of awakened souls, whom thousands will bless through all eternity.
Dr. Thomas Guthrie, of Edinburgh, was once pronounced by the London Times to be "The most eloquent man in Europe." Ruskin, Thackeray, Macaulay, and other men of renown joined in the crowd that thronged St. John's Church when they were in Edinburgh; and a highland drover was once so excited that in the middle of a powerful sermon he called out: "Naw, sirs, heard ye ever the like o' that?" My good wife made a run to Edinburgh while I was stopping behind in England, and on her return to me almost her first word was, "I have heard Guthrie; I am spoiled for every one else as long as I live." Guthrie, "Lang Tam" (as the toughs on the "Cowgate" in Edinburgh used to call him), was built for a great orator. He was more than six feet high, and would be picked out in any crowd as one of God's royal family. I once said to him: "You remind us Americans of our famous statesman, Henry Clay," There was a striking resemblance in the long-armed figure, the broad mouth and lofty brow, and still more in the rich melody of voice, and magnetic rush of electric eloquence, "There must certainly be a personal likeness," replied the Doctor, "for not long ago I went into the house of Mr. Norris, who came here from America, and said to myself, 'There is my portrait on the wall,' but when I came nearer I espied under it the name of 'Henry Clay.'" He used to say that in preaching he aimed at the three P's: Prove, Paint and Persuade. His painting with the tongue was as vivid as Rembrandt's painting with the brush. When I went to Edinburgh, in 1872, as a delegate to the two Presbyterian General Assemblies, Dr. Guthrie invited me to dine with him, and the gifted Dr. John Ker, of Glasgow, was in the company. After dinner, Guthrie literally took the floor, and poured out a flow of charming talk, interspersed with racy Scotch anecdotes. Among others told was one about the old Highland woman who said to him: "Doctor, nane of your modern improvements for me. I want naething but good old Dauvid's Psalms, and I want'em all sung to Dauvid's tunes, too." On the evening when I addressed the Free Church Assembly, I was obliged to pass, on my way to the platform, the front bench, on which sat the veteran missionary, Alexander Duff, Principal Rainy, William Arnot, Dr. Guthrie and two or three other celebrities. I have not run such a gauntlet on a single bench in my life. When I had finished my address, Guthrie, clad in his gray overcoat, leaped up, and kindly grasped my hand, and I went back to my seat feeling an indescribable relief. Dr. Guthrie a short time after attempted to visit our country, but was arrested at Queenstown by a difficulty of the heart, and returned to Scotland, and lived but a short time afterwards.
Sly personal acquaintance with Newman Hall began during the darkest period of our Civil War, in August, 1862 Up to that time I had only known him as the author of that pithy and pellucid little booklet, "Come to Jesus," which has belted the globe in forty languages, and been published to the number of nearly 4,000,000 of copies. When our Civil War broke out, Dr. Hall (with John Bright and Foster and Goldwin Smith) threw himself earnestly on the side of our Union He made public speeches for our cause over all England, and opened his house for parlor meetings addressed by loyal Americans who happened to be in London. He invited me to address one of these gatherings, but the necessity of my return home prevented my acceptance. Two years after the close of the war he made his first visit to the United States. He was received with enthusiastic ovations. Union Leagues gave him public welcomes, Congress invited him to preach in the House of Representatives; he delivered an address to the Bostonians on Bunker Hill; and every denomination, including the Episcopalians and Quakers, opened their pulpits to him everywhere. But the crowning act of his unique Americanism was the erection of the "Lincoln Tower" on his Church in London, as a tribute to Negro Emancipation, and a memorial to International amity. The love that existed between my brother, Dr. Hall, and myself was like the love of David and Jonathan. The letters that passed between us would number up into the hundreds, and his epistles had the sweet savor of "Holy Rutherford," When he was in America, my house was his home, when I was in London, I spent no small part of my time in his delightful "Vine House," up on Hampstead Hill. The house remains in the possession of his wife, a lady of high culture, intellectual gifts and of most devout piety. One reason for the close intimacy between my British brother and myself was that we were perfectly agreed on every social, civil and religious question, and we never had a chance to sharpen our wits on the hone of controversy. Our theology was all from the same Book, and our main purposes in life were similar. Many of my American readers heard Dr. Hall preach during some one of his three visits to the United States. What marrowy, soul-quickening sermons he poured forth in a clear, musical voice, and with a most earnest persuasiveness. Preaching was as easy to him as breathing. Including the Sabbath, he delivered seven or eight sermons in a week. Undoubtedly he delivered more discourses than any ordained minister during the nineteenth century. Peers and peasants, scholars and dwellers in the slums alike enjoyed his preaching of God's message to immortal souls. His favorite theme was the sin-atoning work of Christ Jesus; and the numbers converted under his faithful preaching were exceedingly great. One of his discourses in this country on "Jehovah Jireh," was especially helpful, and one on "Touching the Hem of Christ's Garment," was a gem of spiritual beauty. He generally maintained an even flow of evangelical thought, but sometimes he rose into a burst of thrilling eloquence, as he did in Mr. Beecher's church, when he made his noble appeal for Union between England and America. From his youth he was fond of street preaching. I have seen him gather a crowd, and hold them attentively while he sowed a few seeds of truth in their hearts.
I wish I had the space to describe some of the foregatherings that I have had with my twin brother in the Gospel. We visited Italy together, preached to "the Saints that are in Rome," and went down into that room in the sub-basement of St. Clement's where Paul is believed to have held meetings with them that were of Caesar's household. We roamed out on the Appian Road, over which the great Apostle entered the Eternal City. So conscientious was my brother Hall in his teetotalism that though tired and thirsty, he never would touch the weak, common wine of the country, lest his example might be plead in favor of the drinking usages. We once went up to Olney and sat in Cowper's summer house, and entered John Newton's church, and the old sexton told Dr. Hall that he had been converted by "Come to Jesus." We went together to Stonehenge, and as we passed over Salisbury Plain we recalled Hannah Moore's famous shepherd who said: "The weather to-morrow will be what suits me, for what suits God, suits me always." We spent a very delightful couple of days in rowing down the romantic river Wye, stopping for lunch at Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey. In his home he was a hospitable Gaius, with open doors and hearts to friends from all lands. He had the merry sportiveness of a schoolboy, and when our long talks in his study were over, he would seize his hat and the chain of his pet dog, and cry out: "Come, brother, come, and let us have a tramp over the Heath." He was a prodigious pedestrian, and at three score and ten he held his own over a Swiss glacier, with the members of the Alpine Club. He had hoped to equal his famous predecessor, Rowland Hill, and preach till he was ninety; but when he was near his eighty-sixth birthday he was stricken with paralysis, and never left his bed again. Those last two weeks were spent in the "Land of Beulah," and in full view of "The Celestial City." When asked if he suffered pain, he replied: "I have no pain, and nothing to disturb the solemnity of dying." On the morning of February fourteenth he passed peacefully over the river, and, as Bunyan said of old Valiant-for-the-Truth, "The trumpets sounded for him on the other side." No monarch on his throne is so to be envied as he who now wears that celestial crown.
Can anything new be said about Charles H. Spurgeon? Perhaps not, and yet
I should be guilty of injustice to myself and to my readers if I failed
to pay my love tribute to the most extraordinary preacher of the pure
Gospel to all Christendom whom England produced in the last century.
I heard him when he was a youth of twenty-two years, in his Park Street Chapel; I heard him several times when he was at the zenith of his vigor; I spent many a happy hour with him in his charming home. On my last visit there I had a "good cry" when I saw his empty chair in its old place in the study. I did not form any personal acquaintance with him until the summer of 1872, and it soon ripened into a most warm and cordial friendship. On each of my visits to London since that time I have enjoyed an afternoon with him at his home. His first residence was Helensburg House in Nightingale Road, Clapham, a Southwest District of London. That beautiful home was his only, luxury; but he spent none of his ample income on any sort of social enjoyment, and what did not go for household expenses went for the support of his many religious enterprises. On my first visit to him he greeted me in his free and easy, open-handed way. I noticed that he was growing stouter than ever. "In me," he jocularly said, "that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing," We spent a joyous hour in his well filled library; he showed me fifteen stately volumes of his printed sermons which have since been more than doubled, besides several of his works translated into French, German, Swedish, Dutch and other languages. The most interesting object in the library was a small file of his sermon notes, each one on a half sheet of note paper, or on the back of an ordinary letter envelope. When I asked him if he "wrote his sermons out," his answer was: "I would rather be hung." His usual method was to select the text of his Sunday morning sermon on Saturday about six or seven o'clock, and spend half an hour in arranging a skeleton and put it on paper; he left all the phraseology until he reached the pulpit. During Sunday afternoon he repeated the same process in preparing his evening discourse. "If I had a month assigned me for preparing a sermon," said he to me, "I would spend thirty days and twenty-three hours on something else and in the last hour I would make the sermon, and if I could not do it then I could not do it in a month."
This sounds like a risky process, but it must be remembered that if Spurgeon occupied but a few minutes in arranging a discourse he spent five days of every week in thoroughly studying God's Word—in thorough thinking—and in the perusal of the richest old writers on theology and experimental religion.
He was all the time, and everywhere filling up his cask, so that he had only to turn the spigot and out flowed the pure Gospel in the most transparent language. A stenographer took down the sermon, and it was revised by Mr. Spurgeon on Monday morning. He told me that for many years he went to his pulpit under such nervous agitation that it often brought on violent attacks of vomiting and produced outbreaks of perspiration, and he slowly outgrew that remarkable sort of physical suffering.
Twenty years ago Mr. Spurgeon exchanged Helensburgh House for the still more elegant mansion called "Westwood" on Beulah Hill, near Crystal Palace, Sydenham. It is a rural paradise. At each of the visits I paid him there, he used to come out with his banged-up soft hat, which he wore indoors half of the time, and with a merry jest on his lips. On my last visit, accompanied by my brother Hall, I found him suffering severely from his neuralgic malady, but it did not affect his buoyant humor. When I told him that my catarrhal deafness was worse than ever, he replied: "Well, brother, console yourself with the thought that in these days there is very little worth hearing." He took my brother Hall, and myself out into his garden and conservatory and down to a rustic arbor, where we sat down and told stories. There were twelve acres of land attached to "Westwood," and he had us into the meadow, where we laid down in the freshly mowed hay and inhaled its fragrance. Mrs. Spurgeon, a most gifted and charming lady, had a dozen cows and the profits of her dairy then supported a missionary in London; and the milk was sent around the neighborhood in a wagon labeled, "Charles H. Spurgeon, Milk Dealer." After our return, the great preacher showed us a portfolio of caricatures of himself from Punch and other publications. At six o'clock we took supper and then came family worship—all the servants being present Mr. Spurgeon followed my prayer with the most wonderful prayer that perhaps I have ever heard from human lips, and I said afterwards to my friend Hall, "To-night we got into 'the hidings of his power,' for a man who can pray like that can outpreach the world." In the soft hour of the gloaming we took our leave, and he went off to prepare his sermon for the morrow.
Spurgeon's power lay in a combination of half a dozen great qualities. He was the master of a vigorous Saxon English style, the style of Cobbett and Bunyan and the old English Bible. He possessed a most marvelous memory—it held the whole Bible in solution; it retained all the valuable truth he had acquired during his immensely wide readings and it enabled him to recognize any person whom he ever met before. Once, however, he met for the second time a Mr. Partridge and called him "Partridge." Quick as a flash he said: "Pardon me, sir, I did not intend to make game of you," He was a man of one Book, and had the most implicit faith in every jot and tittle of God's Word. He preached it without defalcation or discount, and this prodigious faith made his preaching immensely tonic. His sympathies with all mankind were unbounded, and the juices of his nature were enough to float an ark full of living creatures. Joined to these gifts was a marvelous voice of great sweetness, and a homely mother-wit that bubbled out in all his talk and often in his sermons. Mightiest of all was his power of prayer, and his inner life was hid with Christ in God. As an organizer he had great executive abilities. His Orphanage, dozen missionary schools and theological training school will be among his enduring monuments. The last sermon I ever heard him deliver was in Dr. Newman Hall's church on a week evening. He came hobbling into the study, his face the picture of suffering. He said to me, "Brother Cuyler, if I break down, won't you take up the service and go on with it?" I told him that he would forget his pains the moment he got under way, and so it was, for he delivered a most nutritious discourse to us. When the service was over, he limped off to his carriage, wrapped himself in the huge cushions, and drove away seven miles to his home at Upper Norwood. That was the last time I ever saw my beloved friend.
It seems strange that I shall never behold that homely, honest countenance again; and since that time, London has hardly seemed to be London without him. It is a cause for congratulation that his son, the Reverend Thomas Spurgeon, is so successfully carrying forward the great work of his sainted father. If my readers would like a sample taste of the pure Spurgeonic it is to be found in this passage which he delivered to his theological students: "Some modern divines whittle away the Gospel to the small end of nothing; they make our Divine Lord to be a sort of blessed nobody; they bring down salvation to mere possibility; they make certainties into probabilities and treat verities as mere opinions. When you see a preacher making the Gospel smaller by degrees, and miserably less, till there is not enough of it left to make soup for a sick grasshopper, get you gone with him! As for me, I believe in an infinite God, an infinite atonement, infinite love and mercy, an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure, and of which the substance and reality is an Infinite Christ."
I once asked Dr. James McCosh, who was the greatest preacher he ever heard. He replied, "Of course, it was my Edinboro Professor, Dr. Chalmers, but the grandest display of eloquence I ever listened to was Dr. Alexander Duff's famous Plea for Foreign Missions, delivered before the Scottish General Assembly at a date previous to the disruption," I can say Amen to Dr. McCosh, for the most overpowering oratory that I ever heard was Duff's great missionary speech in the Broadway Tabernacle during his visit to America. In the immense crowd were two hundred ministers and the foremost laymen of the city. When the great missionary arose (he was then in the prime of his power), his first appearance was not impressive, for his countenance had no beauty and his gestures were grotesquely awkward. With one arm he huddled his coat up to his shoulder, with the other he sawed the air incontinently, and when intensely excited, he leapt several inches from the floor as if about to precipitate himself over the desk. All these eccentricities were forgotten when once the great heart began to open its treasures to us, and the subject of his resistless oratory began to enchain our souls. In his vivid description of "Magnificent India" its dusky crowds and its ancient temples, with its northern mountains towering to the skies; its dreary jungles haunted by the tiger; its crystalline salt fields flashing in the sun; and its Malabar hills redolent with the richest spices, were all spread out before us like a panorama.
When the Doctor had completed the survey of India, he opened his batteries on the sloth and selfishness of too many of Christ's professed followers; he poured contempt upon the men who said: "They are not so green as to waste their money on the farce of Foreign Missions." "No, no, indeed," he continued, "they are not green, for greenness implies verdure, and beauty, and there is not a single atom of verdure in their parched and withered up souls." Under the burning satire and mellowing pathos of his tremendous appeal for heathendom, tears welled out from every eye in the house. I leaned over toward the reporter's table; many of the reporters had flung down their pens—they might as well have attempted to report a thunder storm. As the orator drew near his close, he seemed like one inspired; his face shone as if it were, the face of an angel. Never before did I so fully realize the overwhelming power of a man who has become the embodiment of one great idea—who makes his lips the mere outlet for the mighty truth bursting from his heart. After nearly two hours of this inundation of eloquence, he concluded with the quotation of Cowper's magnificent verse,
"One song employs all nations," etc
With the utmost vehemence he rung out the last line:
"Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round."
He could not check his headway, and repeated the line a second time, louder than before, and then with a tremendous voice that made the walls reverberate, he shouted once more:
"Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round!"
and sunk back breathless and exhausted into his chair. "Shut up now this Tabernacle," exclaimed Dr. James W. Alexander. "Let no man dare speak here after that."
CHAPTER XIV.
SOME FAMOUS AMERICAN PREACHERS.
The Alexanders.—Dr. Tyng.—Dr. Cox.—Dr. Adams.—Dr. Storrs.—Mr. Beecher.—Mr. Finney and Dr. B.M. Palmer.
The necessary limitations of this chapter forbid any reference to many distinguished American preachers whom I have seen or heard, but with whom I had not sufficient personal acquaintance to furnish any material for personal reminiscences. In common with multitudes of others on both sides of the ocean, I had a hearty admiration for the brilliant genius and masterful sermons of Phillips Brooks, but I only heard two of his rapid and resonant addresses on anniversary occasions, and my acquaintance with him was very slight. I heard only one discourse by that remarkable combination of preacher, poet, patriot and philosopher, Dr. Horace Bushnell, of Hartford,—his discourse on "Barbarism the Chief Danger," delivered before the "Home Missionary Society." His sermon on "Unconscious Influence," was enough to confer immortality on any minister of Jesus Christ. I never was acquainted with him, but after his death, I suggested to the residents of New Preston, that they should name the mountain that rises immediately behind the home of his childhood and youth, Mount Bushnell. The villagers assented to my proposal, and the State Legislature ratified their act by ordering that name to be placed on the maps of Connecticut. In this chapter, as in the previous one, I shall give my recollections only of those who have ended their career of service, and entered into their reward.
During the six years that I spent in Princeton College and in the Seminary (between 1838 and 1846) I came into close acquaintance with, and I heard very often, the two great orators of the Alexander family. Dr. Archibald Alexander, the father of a famous group of sons, was a native of Virginia—had listened to Patrick Henry in his youth; had married the daughter of the eloquent "Blind Preacher," Rev. James Waddell, and even when as a young minister he had preached in Hanover, New Hampshire. Daniel Webster, then a student in Dartmouth College, predicted his future eminence. The students in the Seminary were wont to call him playfully, "The Pope," for we had unbounded confidence in his sanctified common-sense. I always went to him for counsel. His insight into the human heart was marvelous; and in the line of close experimental preaching, he has not had his equal since the days of President Edwards. He put the impress of his powerful personality on a thousand ministers who graduated from Princeton Seminary.
In his lecture-desk and in the pulpit he was simplicity itself. His sermons were like the waters of Lake George, so pellucid that you could see every bright pebble far down in the depths; a child could comprehend him, yet a sage be instructed by him. His best discourses were extemporaneous, and he had very little gesture, except with his forefinger, which he used to place under his chin, and sometimes against his nose in a very peculiar manner. With a clear piping voice and colloquial style he held his audience in rapt attention, disdaining all the tricks of sensational oratory. Twice I heard him deliver his somewhat celebrated discourse on "The Day of Judgment;" it was a masterpiece of solemn eloquence, in which sublimity and simplicity were combined in a way that I have never seen equaled He used to say that the right course for an old man to keep his mind from senility was to produce some piece of composition every day; and he continued to write his practical articles for the religious press until he was almost four-score. What an impressive funeral was his on that bright October afternoon, in 1851, when two hundred ministers gathered in that Westminster Abbey of Presbyterianism, the Princeton Cemetery! His ashes slumber beside those of Witherspoon, Davies, Hodge, McCosh and Jonathan Edwards.
Among the six sons who stood that day beside that grave, the most brilliant by far was the third son, Joseph Addison Alexander. Dr. Charles Hodge said of him: "Taking him all in all, he was the most gifted man with whom I have ever been personally acquainted," In childhood, such was his precocity that he knew the Hebrew alphabet at six years of age (I am afraid that some ministers do not know it at sixty); and he could read Latin fluently when he was only eight! Of his wonderful feats of memory I could give many illustrations; one was that on the day that I was matriculated in the Seminary with fifty other students, Professor Alexander went over to Dr. Hodge's study, and repeated to him every one of our names! When using manuscript in the pulpit, he frequently turned the leaves backward instead of forward, for he knew all the sermon by heart! His commentaries—quite too few—remain as monuments of his profound scholarship, and some of his articles in the Princeton Review sparkled with the keenest wit.
Oh, how his grandest sermons linger still in my memory after three-score years—like the far-off music of an Alpine horn floating from the mountain tops! His physique was remarkable, he had the ruddy cheeks of a boy, and his square intellectual head we students used to say "looked like Napoleon's." His voice was peculiarly melodious, especially in the pathetic passages; his imagination was vivid in fine imagery, and he had an unique habit of ending a long sentence in the words of his text, which chained the text fast to our memories. The announcement of his name always crowded the church in Princeton, and he was flooded with invitations to preach in the most prominent churches of New York, Philadelphia, and other cities. One of his most powerful and popular sermons was on the text, "Remember Lot's Wife;" and he received so many requests to repeat that sermon that he said to his brother James in a wearied tone, "I am afraid that woman will be the death of me."
There may still be old Philadelphians who can recall the magnificent series of discourses which Professor Alexander delivered during the winter of 1847 in the pulpit of Dr. Henry A. Boardman, while Dr. Boardman was in Europe. The church was packed every Sabbath evening, clear to the outer door, and many were unable to find room even in the aisles. Dr. Alexander was then in his splendid prime. His musical voice often swelled into a volume that rolled out through the doorway and reached the passerby on the sidewalk! During that winter he pronounced all his most famous sermons—on "The Faithful Saying," on "The City with Foundations," on "Awake, Thou that Sleepest!" and on "The Broken and Contrite Heart." It was after hearing this latter most original and pathetic discourse that an eminent man exclaimed, "No such preaching as that has been heard in this land since the days of Dr. John M. Mason." I enjoy the perusal of the rich, unique, and spiritual sermons of my beloved professor and friend; but no one who reads them can realize what it was to listen to Joseph Addison Alexander in his highest and holiest inspirations.
Was Albert Barnes a great preacher? Yes; if it is a great thing for a man to hold a large audience of thoughtful and intelligent people in solemn attention while he proclaims to them the weightiest and vitalest of truths—then was Mr. Barnes a great ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ. He combined modesty and majesty to a remarkable degree. He had a commanding figure, keen eye, handsome features, and a clear distinct voice; but so diffident was he that he seldom looked about over his congregation and rarely made a single gesture. His simple rule of homiletics was, have something to say, and then say it. He stood up in his pulpit and delivered his calm, clear, strong, spiritual utterances with scarcely a trace of emotion, and the hushed assembly listened as if they were listening to one of the oracles of God. His best sermons were like a great red anthracite coal bed, with no flash, but kindled through and through with the fire of the Holy Spirit Bashful, too, as he was, he denounced popular sins with an intrepidity displayed by but few ministers in our land. In the temperance reform he was an early pioneer. For Albert Barnes I felt an intense personal attachment; he was my ideal of a fearless, godly-minded herald of evangelical truth; and he had begun his public ministry in Morristown, N.J., the home of my maternal ancestry, and in the church in which my beloved mother had made her confession of faith. When our Lafayette Avenue Church was dedicated—just forty years ago—I urged him to deliver the discourse; but he hesitated to preach extemporaneously, and his sight was so impaired that he could not use a manuscript. At the age of seventy-two he was suddenly and sweetly translated to heaven. Over the whole English-speaking world his name was familiar as a plain teacher of God's Word in very spiritual commentaries.
A half century ago Dr. William B. Sprague, of Albany, was in the front rank of Presbyterian preachers. His fine presence, his richly melodious voice, his graceful style and fresh, practical evangelical thought made him so popular that he was in demand everywhere for special occasions and services. He was a marvel of industry. While preparing his voluminous "Annals of the American Pulpit," and conducting an enormous correspondence, he never omitted the preparation of new sermons for his own flock. With that flock he lived and labored for forty years, and when he resigned his charge (in 1869) he told me that when removing from Albany, he buried his face and streaming eyes with his hands, for he could not endure the farewell look at the city of his love. When I first heard him in my student days I thought him an almost faultless pulpit orator, and when he and the young and ardent Edward N. Kirk stood side by side in Albany, no town in the land contained two nobler specimens of the earnest, persuasive and eloquent Presbyterian preachers.
When I came to New York as pastor of the Market Street Church, in 1853, the most conspicuous minister in the city was the rector of St. George's Episcopal Church on Stuyvesant Square. Every Sabbath the superb and spacious edifice was thronged. It was quite "the thing" for strangers who came to New York to go and hear Dr. Tyng. Even on Sunday afternoons the house was filled; for at that service he preached what he called "sermons to the children"—but they were not only sprightly, simple and vivacious enough to attract the young, they also contained an abundance of strong meat for persons of older growth. He was an enthusiast in Sunday school work—had 2,500 scholars in his mission schools, and possessed an unsurpassed power in nailing the ears of the young to his pulpit.
Dr. Tyng was the acknowledged leader of the "Low Church" wing of Episcopacy in this country, both during his ministry in the Epiphany at Philadelphia, and in St. George's at New York. He edited their weekly paper, and championed their cause on all occasions. He was their candidate for the office of Bishop of Pennsylvania in 1845, and the contest was protracted through a long series of ballotings. It was urged, and not without some reason, that his impetuous temper and strong partisanship might make him a rather domineering overseer of the diocese. He possessed an indomitable will and pushed his way through life with the irresistible rush of a Cunarder under a full head of steam. His temper was naturally very violent. One Sabbath evening he was addressing my Sunday school in Market Street, and describing the various kinds of human nature by resemblances to various animals, the lion, the fox, the sloth, etc.: "Children," he exclaimed, "do you want to know what I am? I am by nature a royal Bengal tiger, and if it had not been for the grace of God to tame me, I fear that nobody could ever have lived with me." There was about as much truth as there was wit in the comparison. His congregation in St. George's knew his irrepressible temperament so well that they generally let him have his own way. If he wanted money for a church object or a cause of charity, he did not beg for it; he demanded it in the name of the Lord. "When I see Dr. Tyng coming up the steps of my bank," said a rich bank president to me, "I always begin to draw my cheque; I know he will get it, and it saves my time."
His leading position among Low Churchmen was won not only by his intellectual force and moral courage, but by his uncompromising devotion to evangelical doctrine. He belonged to the same school with Baxter, John Newton, Bickersteth, Simeon and Bedell. In England his intimate friends were the Earl of Shaftesbury, Dr. McNeill and others of the most pronounced evangelical type. The good old doctrines of redemption by the blood of Christ, and of regeneration by the Holy Spirit were his constant theme, and on these and kindred topics he was a delightful preacher.
Strong as he was in the pulpit, Dr. Tyng was the prince of platform orators. He had every quality necessary for the sway of a popular audience—fine elocution, marvelous fluency, piquancy, the courage of his convictions and a magnetism that swept all before him. His voice was very clear and penetrating, and he hurled forth his clean-cut sentences like javelins. A more fluent speaker I never heard; not Spurgeon or Henry Ward Beecher could surpass him in readiness of utterance. On one occasion the Broadway Tabernacle was crowded with a great audience that gathered to hear some celebrity; and the expected hero did not arrive. The impatient crowd called for "Tyng, Tyng;" and the rector of St. George's came forward, and on the spur of the moment delivered such a charming speech that the audience would not let him stop. For many years I spoke with him at meetings for city missions, total abstinence, Sunday schools and other benevolent enterprises. He used playfully to call me "one of his boys." At a complimentary reception given to J.B. Gough in Niblo's Hall, Mr. Beecher and myself delivered our talks, and then retired to the opposite end of the hall. Dr. Tyng took the rostrum with one of his swift magnetic speeches. I leaned over to Beecher and whispered, "That is splendid platforming, isn't it?" Beecher replied: "Yes, indeed it is. He is the one man that I am afraid of. When he speaks first I do not care to follow him, and if I speak first, then when he gets up I wish I had not spoken at all." Some of Dr. Tyng's most powerful addresses were in behalf of the temperance reform; he was a most uncompromising foe of both of the dram shop and of the drinking usages in polite society. He also denounced the theatre and the ball-room with the most Puritanic vehemence.
Dr. Stephen H. Tyng's chief power, like many other great preachers, was when he was on his feet. He should be heard and not read. Some of the discourses and addresses which enchained and thrilled his auditors seemed tame enough when reported for the press. In that respect he resembled Whitfield and Gough and many of our most effective stump speakers. The result was that Dr. Tyng's fame, to a great degree, perished with him. He published several books, of a most excellent and evangelical character, but they lacked the thunder and the lightning which make his uttered words so powerful, and probably none of his many books are much read to-day. The influence of his splendid and heroic personality was very great during a ministry of over fifty years, and the glorious work which he wrought for his Master will endure to all eternity.
To have heard Dr. William Adams of New York at his best was better than any lecture on "Homiletics"; to have met him at the fireside or in the sick room of one of his parishioners was a prelection in pastoral theology.
The first time that I ever saw him was fully fifty years ago; he was standing in the gallery of the old Broadway Tabernacle at an anniversary of the American Bible Society, and Dr. James W. Alexander pointed him out to me saying—"Yonder stands Dr. William Adams, he is the hardest student of us all." It was this honest incessant brain work that enabled him to sustain himself for forty years in one of the conspicuous pulpits of the largest city in the land. He always drew out of a full cask. Let young ministers lay this fact to heart. It was not by trick or happy luck, or by pyrotechnics of rhetoric that Dr. Adams won and kept his position in the forefront of metropolitan preachers. The "dead line of fifty" was not to be found on his intellectual atlas. One of the last talks with him that I now recall was on an early morning in Congress Park, Saratoga. He had a pocket Testament in his hand, and he said to me, "I find myself reading more and more the old books of my youth; I am enjoying just now Virgil's Eclogues, but nothing is so dear to me as my Greek Testament."
All of Dr. Adams' finest efforts were thoroughly prepared and committed to memory. He never risked a failure by attempting to shake a sermon or a speech "out of his sleeve." His memory was one of his greatest gifts. Sometimes when his soul was on fire, and his voice trembled with emotion, he rose into the region of lofty impassioned eloquence. His master effort on the platform was his address of welcome to the members of the "Evangelical Alliance" in 1873. How the foreign delegates—Doctors Stoughton, Christlieb, Dorner and the rest of them—did open their eyes that evening to the fact that a Yankee-born parson was, in elegant culture and polished oratory, a match for them all. Dr. Adams' speech "struck twelve" for the Alliance at the start; nothing during the whole subsequent sessions surpassed that opening address, although Beecher and Dr. Joseph Parker were both among the speakers. He closed the meeting of the Alliance in the Academy of Music with a prayer of wonderful fervor, pathos and beauty.
One of his grandest speeches was delivered before the Free Church General Assembly in Edinburgh—in May, 1871. Dr. Guthrie told me that he swept the assembly away by his stately bearing, sonorous voice and classic oratory. The men whom he moved so mightily were such men as Arnot and Guthrie and Rainy and Bonar,—the men who had listened to the grandest efforts of Duff and of Chalmers. I well remember that when I had to address the same assembly (as the American delegate) the next year I was more disturbed by the apparition of my predecessor, Dr. Adams, than by all the brilliant audience before me.
Dr. Adams was gifted with what is of more practical value than genius, and that was marvelous tact. That was with him an instinct and an inspiration. It led him to always speak the right word, and do the right thing at the right time. Personal politeness helped him also; for he was one of the most perfect gentlemen in America. That practical sagacity made him the leader of the "new school" branch of our church, during the delicate negotiations for reunion in 1867, and on to 1870. He knew human nature well, and never lost either his temper or his faith in the sure result. To-day when that old lamentable rupture of our beloved church is as much a matter of past history as the rupture of the Union during the civil war, let us gratefully remember George W. Musgrave, the pilot of the "old school" and William Adams, the pilot of the "new."
The last sermon that I ever heard Dr. Adams deliver was in my Lafayette Avenue Church pulpit a few years before his death. His text was the closing passage of the fourth chapter of Second Corinthians. The whole sermon was delivered with great majesty and tenderness. One illustration in it was sublime. He was comparing the "things which are seen and temporal" with the "things which are not seen and eternal." He described Mont Blanc enveloped in a morning cloud of mist. The vapor was the seen thing which was soon to pass away;—behind it was the unseen mountain, glorious as the "great white throne" which should stand unmoved when fifty centuries of mist had flown away into nothingness. This passage moved the audience prodigiously. Many sat gazing at the tall pale orator before them through their tears. The portrait of Dr. Adams hangs on my study wall—alongside of the portrait of Chalmers—and as I look at his majestic countenance now, I still seem to see him as on that Sabbath morning he stood before us, with the light of eternity beaming on his brow!
In the summer of 1845 I was strolling with my friend Littell (the founder of the Living Age), through the leafy lanes of Brookline, and we came to a tasteful church. "That," said Mr. Littell, "is the Harvard Congregational meeting house. They have lately called a brilliant young Mr. Storrs, who was once a law student with Rufus Choate; he is a man of bright promise." Two years afterward I saw and heard that brilliant young minister in the pulpit of the newly organized Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn. He had already found his place, and his throne. He made that pulpit visible over the continent. That church will be "Dr. Storrs' church" for many a year to come.
Had that superbly gifted law student of Choate gone to the bar he would inevitably have won a great distinction, and might have charmed the United States Senate by his splendid eloquence. Perhaps he learned from Choate some lessons in rhetoric and how to construct those long melodious sentences that rolled like a "Hallelujah chorus" over his delighted audiences. But young Storrs chose the better part, and no temptation of fame or pelf allured him from the higher work of preaching Jesus Christ to his fellow men. He was—like Chalmers and Bushnell and Spurgeon—a born preacher. Great as he was on the platform, or on various ceremonial occasions, he was never so thoroughly "at home" as in his own pulpit; his great heart never so kindled as when unfolding the glorious gospel of redeeming love. The consecration of his splendid powers to the work of the ministry helped to ennoble the ministry in the popular eye, and led young men of brains to feel that they could covet no higher calling.
One of the remarkable things in the career of Dr. Storrs was that by far the grandest portion of that career was after he had passed the age of fifty! Instead of that age being, as to many others, a "dead line," it was to him an intellectual birth line. He returned from Europe—after a year of entire rest—and then, like "a giant refreshed by sleep," began to produce his most masterly discourses and orations. His first striking performance was that wonderful address at the twenty-fifth anniversary of Henry Ward Beecher's pastorate in Plymouth Church, at the close of which Mr. Beecher gave him a grateful kiss before the applauding audience. Not long after that Dr. Storrs delivered those two wonderful lectures on the "Muscovite and the Ottoman." The Academy of Music was packed to listen to them; and for two hours the great orator poured out a flood of history and gorgeous description without a scrap of manuscript before him! He recalled names and dates without a moment's hesitation! Like Lord Macaulay, Dr. Storrs had a marvelous memory; and at the close of those two orations I said to myself, "How Macaulay would have enjoyed all this!" His extraordinary memory was an immense source of power to Dr. Storrs; and, although he had a rare gift of fluency, yet I have no doubt that some of his fine efforts, which were supposed to be extemporaneous, were really prepared beforehand and lodged in his tenacious memory.
Dean Stanley, on the day before he returned to England, said to me: "The man who has impressed me most is your Dr. Storrs." When I urged the pastor of the "Pilgrims" to go over to the great International Council of Congregationalists in London and show the English people a specimen of American preaching, his characteristic reply was, "Oh, I am tired of these show occasions," But he never grew tired of preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The Bible his old father loved was the book of books that he loved, and no blasts of revolutionary biblical criticism ever ruffled a feather on the strong wing with which he soared heavenward. A more orthodox minister has not maintained the faith once delivered to the saints in our time than he for whom Brooklyn's flags were all hung at half-mast on the day of his death.
All the world knew that Richard S. Storrs possessed wonderful brain power, culture and scholarship; but only those who were closest to him knew what a big loving heart he had. Some of the sweetest and tenderest private letters that I ever received came from his ready pen. I was looking over some of them lately; they are still as fragrant as if preserved in lavender. His heart was a very pure fountain of noble thought, and of sweet, unselfish affection.
He died at the right time; his great work was complete; he did not linger on to outlive himself. The beloved wife of his home on earth had gone on before; he felt lonesome without her, and grew homesick for heaven. His loving flock had crowned him with their grateful benedictions; he waited only for the good-night kiss of the Master he served, and he awoke from a transient slumber to behold the ineffable glory. On the previous day his illustrious Andover instructor, Professor Edwards A. Park, had departed; it was fitting that Andover's most illustrious graduate should follow him; now they are both in the presence of the infinite light, and they both behold the King in His beauty!
Fifty years ago one of the most famous celebrities in the Presbyterian Church was Dr. Samuel Hanson Cox, famous for his linguistic attainments, for his wit and occasional eccentricities, and very famous for his bursts of eloquence on great occasions. He was at that time the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn, and resided in the street where I am now writing (Oxford Street); and the street at the end of the block was named "Hanson Place" in honor of him. His large wooden mansion was then quite out of town, and was accordingly called "Rus Urban," In that house he wrote—for the New York Observer—the unique series of articles on New School Theology entitled "The Hexagon," and there he entertained, with his elegant courtesy and endless flow of wit and learning, many of the most eminent people who visited Brooklyn. The boys used to climb into his garden to steal fruit; and, as a menace, he affixed to his fence a large picture of a watch-dog, and underneath it a dental sign, "Teeth inserted here!" The old mansion was removed years ago.
In 1846 he was the moderator of the "new school" Presbyterian General Assembly. It was during the sessions of that assembly that the famous debate was waged for several days on the exciting question of negro slavery, and when some compromise resolutions were passed (for those were the days of compromise salves and plasters)—Dr. Cox rose and exclaimed, "Well, brethren, we have capped Vesuvius for another year," But "Vesuvius" would not stay capped, and in a few years one of its violent eruptions sundered the "new school" church in twain.
Dr. Cox was a vehement opponent of slavery, and his church in Laight Street was assailed by a mob, and he was roughly handled. In 1833 he was sent to England as the delegate to the British and Foreign Bible Society, and at their anniversary meeting he delivered one of the most brilliant speeches of his life. He came into the meeting a perfect stranger, while Dr. Hamilton, of Leeds, was uttering a fierce invective against American slavery. This aroused Dr. Cox's indignation, and when he was called on to speak he commenced with exquisite urbanity as follows: "My Lord Bexley, ladies and gentlemen! I have just landed from America. Thirty days ago I came down the bay of New York in the steam tug Hercules and was put on board of the good packet ship Samson—thus going on from strength to strength—from mythology to Scripture!" This bold and novel introduction brought down the house with a thunder of applause. After paying some graceful tributes to England and thus winning the hearts of his auditors, he suddenly turned towards Dr. Hamilton, and with the most captivating grace, he said: "I do not yield to my British brother in righteous abhorrence of the institution of negro slavery. I abhor it all the more because it was our disastrous inheritance from our English forefathers, and came down to us from the time when we were colonies of Great Britain! And now if my brother Hamilton will enact the part of Shem, I will take the place of Japhet, and we will walk backward and will cover with the mantle of charity the shame of our common ancestry," This sudden burst of wit, argument and eloquence carried the audience by storm, and they were obliged to applaud the "Yankee orator" in spite of themselves. I count this retort by Dr. Cox one of the finest in the annals of oratory. Several years afterwards he visited England as a delegate to the first Evangelical Alliance. It was attended by the foremost divines, scholars and religious leaders of both Britain and the continent; and a brief five-minutes' speech made by Dr. Cox was unanimously pronounced to have been the most splendid display of eloquence heard during the whole convocation.
He owed a great deal to his commanding figure, fine voice, and graceful elocution. His memory also was as marvelous as that of Dr. Storrs or Professor Addison Alexander. One night, for the entertainment of his fellow-passengers in a stagecoach, he repeated two cantos of Scott's poem of "Marmion"! I have heard him quote, in a public address before the New York University, a whole page of Cicero without the slip of a single word! His passion for polysyllables was very amusing, and he loved to astonish his hearers by his "sesquipedalian" phraseology. A certain visionary crank once intruded into his study and bored him with a long dissertation. Dr. Cox's patience was exhausted, and pointing to the door, he said: "My friend, do you observe that aperture in this apartment? If you do, I wish that you would describe rectilineals, very speedily."
I could fill several pages with racy anecdotes of the keen wit and the varied erudition of my venerable friend. But let none of my readers think of Dr. Cox as a clerical jester, or a pedant. He was a powerful and intensely spiritual preacher of the living Gospel. In his New York congregation were many of the best brains and fervent hearts to be found in that city, and some of the leading laymen revered him as their spiritual father. Sometimes he was betrayed into eccentricities, and his vivid imagination often carried him away into discursive flights; yet he never soared out of sight of Calvary's cross, and never betrayed the precious Gospel committed to his trust.
The first time that I ever saw Henry Ward Beecher was in 1848. He was then mustering his new congregation in the building once occupied by Dr. Samuel H. Cox. It was a weekly lecture service that I attended, by invitation of a lady who invited me to "go and hear our new-come genius from the West." The room was full, and at the desk stood a brown-cheeked young man with smooth-shaved face, big lustrous eyes, and luxuriant brown hair—with a broad shirt collar tied with a black ribbon. His text was "Grow in Grace," and he gave us a discourse that Matthew Henry could not have surpassed in practical pith, or Spurgeon in evangelical fervor. I used to tell Mr. Beecher that even after making full allowance for the novelty of a first hearing, I never heard him surpass that Wednesday evening lecture. He was plucking the first ripe grapes of his affluent vintage; his "pomegranates were in full flower, and the spikenard sent forth its fragrance." The very language of that savory sermon lingers in my memory yet.
During my ministry in New York—from 1853 to 1860—I became intimate with Mr. Beecher and spoke beside him on many a platform and heard him in some of his most splendid efforts. He was a fascinating companion, with the rollicking freedom of a schoolboy. I never shall forget an immense meeting—in behalf of a liquor prohibition movement—held in Triplet Hall. Mr. Beecher was at his best. In the midst of his speech, he suddenly discharged a bombshell against negro slavery which dynamited the audience and provoked a thunder of applause. For pure eloquence it was the finest outburst I ever heard from his lips. Like Patrick Henry, Clay, Guthrie, Spurgeon and other great masters of assemblies, he was gifted with a richly melodious voice—which was especially effective on the low and tender keys. This gave him great power in the pathetic portions of his discourses. Of his superabounding humor I need not speak. It bubbled out so naturally and spontaneously that he found it difficult to restrain it even on the most grave occasions. Sometimes he sinned against good taste, and I once heard his sister Catherine say that "Henry rarely delivered a speech or a sermon which did not contain something that grated on her ear." His most frequent offenses were in the direction of flippant handling of sacred themes and Scripture language. This he inherited from his illustrious father.
Mr. Beecher is generally regarded as an extemporaneous preacher. This is a mistake. He prepared most of his discourses carefully, and full one-half of many of them were written out. Among these written passages he interjected bursts of impromptu thoughts; and these were generally the most effective passages in the sermon. While he repeated himself often—especially on his favorite topic of God's love—yet it was always in fresh language and with new illustrations. Abraham Lincoln said to me, "The most marvelous thing about Mr. Beecher is his inexhaustible fertility."
During the Civil War he was at the acme of his power. He was then the peerless orator of Christendom. It was his intention (as he once told me) to resign his pastorate at the age of sixty and to devote the remainder of his life to a ministry at large. But the tempest of troubles which struck him about that time forbade his cherished design, and he continued at his post until the touch of death silenced the magic tongue. Nearly thirty years have elapsed since I sat by him on the crowning evening of his career, at his "silver anniversary," in 1873. As to his later utterances in theology, and on some questions of ethics, I dissented from my old friend conscientiously, and I expressed to him my dissent very candidly,—as becometh brethren. I am convinced that if there were more fraternal frankness between the living, there would be less hypocrisy over the departed.
Charles G. Finney was the acknowledged king of American evangelists until Dwight L. Moody came on the stage of action. They resembled each other in untiring industry, unflinching courage, unswerving devotion to the marrow of the Gospel, and unreserved consecration to the service of Christ. The secret of Finney's power was the fearless manner with which he drove God's word into the consciences of sinners—high or humble—and his perpetual reliance on the immediate presence of the Holy Spirit in his own soul. Emptied of self, he was filled with the Holy Spirit. His sermons were chain lightning, flashing conviction into the hearts of the stoutest sceptics, and the links of his logic were so compact that they defied resistance. Probably no minister in America ever numbered among his converts so many lawyers and men of intellectual culture.
Soon after commencing his law practice he was brought under the most intense conviction of sin; and the narrative of his conversion—as given in his autobiography—equals any chapter in John Bunyan's "Grace Abounding." After light and peace broke into his agonized soul, he burst into tears of joy, and exclaimed: "I am so happy that I cannot live," He began at once to converse with his neighbors about their souls. When a certain Deacon B. came into his office and reminded him that his cause was to be tried at ten o'clock that morning, Mr. Finney replied, "Deacon B., I have a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead His cause, and cannot plead yours." The deacon was thunderstruck, and went off and settled his suit with his antagonist immediately.
From that time a law office was no place for the fervid spirit of
Charles G. Finney, and he resolved at once to prepare for the ministry.
Revivals followed his red-hot discourses wherever he went. At Auburn he declares that he had—during prayer in his own room—a wonderful vision in which God drew so near to him that his flesh trembled on his bones, and he shook from head to foot as if amid the thunderings of Sinai! He felt an assurance that God would sustain him against all his enemies; and then there came a "great lifting up," and a sweet calm followed after the agitation. Such extraordinary spiritual experiences occurred quite often during his career as a revivalist, and they remind one strikingly of similar experiences of John Bunyan—to whom Finney bore a certain degree of resemblance. At Rochester many of the leading lawyers were attracted by his bold and logical style of speech; and among his converts there was the distinguished jurist, Addison Gardner. It was during his ministry in New York that he delivered his celebrated "Lectures on Revivals," which were reprinted abroad and translated into several foreign languages. Of all Mr. Finney's published productions, these lectures are the most characteristic. Often extravagant in their rhetoric, and sometimes rather reckless in theological statements, they contain a mine of pungent truth which every young minister ought to possess and to peruse very often. I shall never cease to thank God for the inspiration they have imparted to my own humble ministry; and they have had a place in my library close beside the "Pilgrim's Progress," and the biographies of Payson and McCheyne, and the soul-quickening sermons of Bushnell, Addison Alexander and Dr. McLaren.
After his extended evangelistic labors in various cities, Mr. Finney was appointed to a theological chair in the newly organized college at Oberlin, Ohio. From this post, his irrepressible desire to kindle revivals and to save souls often called him away, and he conducted two famous evangelistic campaigns in Great Britain. He was the first man to introduce American revivalistic methods into England and Scotland; but his labors were never as wide, as influential, and generally acceptable there as the subsequent labors of Messrs. Moody and Sankey. Forty years of his busy and heaven-blessed life were spent at Oberlin, where he impressed his powerful personality on a multitude of students of both sexes; few religious teachers in America have ever moulded so many lives, or had their opinions echoed from so many pulpits.
With all my admiration of President Finney's character, I could not—as a loyal Princetonian—subscribe to some of his peculiar opinions. It was, therefore, with great surprise that I received from him a letter in 1873 (two years before his death) which contained the startling proposal that I should be his successor in the college pulpit at Oberlin! He wrote to me: "I think that there is no more important field of ministerial labor in the world. I know that you have a great congregation in Brooklyn, and are mightily prospered in your labors, but your flock does not contain a thousand students pursuing the higher branches of education from year to year. Surely your field in Brooklyn is not more important than mine was at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York, nor can your people be more attached to you than mine were to me." This letter—although its kind overture was promptly declined—was a gratifying proof that the once bitter controversies between "old school" and "new school" had become quite obsolete. When I mentioned this letter to my beloved Princeton instructor, Dr. Charles Hodge, a few weeks before his death, he simply remarked that "his Brother Finney had become very sweet and mellow in his later years." And long before this time the two great antagonistic theologians may have clasped hands in heaven.
The closing years of President Finney's useful life were indeed mellow and most lovable. In the days of his prime he had a commanding form, a striking face and a clear, incisive style of speech. Simple as a child in his utterances, he sometimes startled his hearers by his unique prayers. For example, he was one day driven from his study at Oberlin by a refractory stovepipe which persisted in tumbling down. At family worship in the evening he said "Oh, Lord! thou knowest how the temper of Thy servant has been tried to-day by that stovepipe!" Several other expressions, quite as quaint and as piquant, might be quoted, if the limits of this brief sketch would permit. What would be deemed irreverent if spoken by some lips never sounded irreverent when uttered by such a natural, fearless and yet devout a spirit as Charles G. Finney. He retained his erect, manly form, his fresh enthusiasm and intellectual vigor, to the ripe old age of eighty-three. On a calm Sabbath evening—in August, 1875—he walked in his garden and listened to the music from a neighboring church. Retiring to his chamber, the messenger from his Master met him in the midnight hours, and before the morning dawned his glorified spirit was before the throne! His is the crown of one who turned many to righteousness.
While I am writing this chapter of ministerial reminiscences, I receive the sorrowful tidings that my dear old friend, Dr. Benjamin M. Palmer, of New Orleans—the prince of Southern preachers—has closed his illustrious career. To the last his splendid powers were unabated,—and last year (although past eighty-three) he delivered one of his greatest sermons before the University of Georgia! His massive discourses, based on God's word, were a solid pile of concinnate argument, illuminated with the divine light, and glowing with the divine love shed abroad in his heart. In the spring of 1887, Mrs. Cuyler and myself visited New Orleans, and I cared more to see Dr. Palmer than all the city besides. He cordially welcomed me to the hospitalities of his house, and of that pulpit which had so long been his throne. I do not wonder that the people of New Orleans—of all classes and creeds—regarded him not only with pride, but with an affection that greeted him at every step through the city of which he was the foremost citizen.
As my readers may all know, Dr. Palmer, through the Civil War, was a most ardent Secessionist, and as honestly so as I was a Unionist. He spent much time in preaching to the Confederate soldiers, and he narrated to me an amusing incident which illustrated his calm and imperturbable temperament. On a certain fast-day (appointed by the Confederate authorities) he was to preach in a rural church within the Confederate lines. The Northern army was lying so close to them that a battle was imminent at any moment. Dr. Palmer had begun his "long prayer," when a Federal shell landed immediately under the windows of the church and exploded with a terrific crash! The doctor was not to be shelled out of his duty, and he went steadily on to the end of his prayer. When he opened his eyes the house was deserted! His congregation had slipped quietly out, and left him "alone in his glory."
Soon after my visit to New Orleans, my old friend was sorely bereaved by the death of his wife. I wrote him a letter of condolence, and his reply was, for sweetness and sublimity, worthy of Samuel Rutherford or Richard Baxter. As both husband and wife are now reunited I venture to publish a portion of this wonderful letter—both as a message of consolation to others under a similar bereavement and as a tribute to the great loving heart of Benjamin M. Palmer.
He says: "Truly my sorrow is a sorrow wholly by itself. What is to be done with a love which belongs only to one, when that one is gone and cannot take it up? It cannot perish, for it has become a part of our own being. What shall we do with a lost love which wanders like a ghost through all the chambers of the soul only to feel how empty they are? I have about me—blessed be God! a dear daughter and grandchildren; but I cannot divide this love among them, for it is incapable of distribution. What remains but to send it upward until it finds her to whom it belongs by right of concentration through more than forty years."
"I will not speak, my brother, of my pain—let that be; it is the discipline of love, having its fruit in what is to be. But I will tell you how a gracious Father fills this cloud with Himself—and covering me in it, takes me into His pavilion. It is not what I would have chosen; but in this dark cloud I know better what it is to be alone with Him; and how it is best sometimes to put out the earthly lights, that even the sweetest earthly love may not come between Him and me. It is the old experience of love breaking through the darkness as it did long ago through the terrors of Sinai and the more appalling gloom of Calvary. I have this to thank Him for, the greatest of all His mercies, and then for this, that He gave her to me so long. The memories of almost half a century encircle me as a rainbow. I can feed upon them through the remainder of a short, sad life, and after that can carry them up to Heaven with me and pour them into song forever. If the strings of the harp are being stretched to a greater tension, it is that the praise may hereafter rise to higher and sweeter notes before His throne—as we bow together there."