CHAPTER XVI
A RETROSPECT.
When I entered upon the Christian ministry fifty-six years ago, there was no probability that I would live to see four-score. My father had died at the early age of twenty-eight, and several of his brothers and sisters had succumbed to pulmonary maladies. My mother was dangerously ill several times, but had a wiry constitution and lived to eighty-five. That my own busy life has held out so long is owing, under a kind Providence, to the careful observation of the primal laws of health. I have eschewed all indigestible food, stimulants, and intoxicants;--have taken a fair amount of exercise; have avoided too hard study or sermon making in the evenings--and thus secured sound and sufficient sleep. In keeping God's commandments written upon the body I have found great reward. From the standpoint of four-score I propose in this chapter to take a retrospect of some of the moral and religious movements that have occurred within my memory--in several of which I have taken part--and I shall note also the changes for better or worse that I have observed. If as an optimist I may sometimes exaggerate the good, and minimize the evil things, it is the curse of a pessimist that he can travel from Dan to Beersheba and find nothing but barrenness.
The first change for the better that I shall speak of is the progress I have seen in church fellowship. The division of the Christian church into denominations is a fixed fact and likely to remain so for a long time to come. Nor is it the serious evil that many imagine. The efficiency of an army is not impaired by division into corps, brigades and regiments, as long as they are united against the common enemy; neither does the Church of Christ lose its efficiency by being organized on denominational lines, as long as it is loyal to its Divine head, and united in its efforts to overcome evil, and establish the Kingdom of Heaven. Some Christians work all the better in harness that suits their peculiar tastes and preferences. Denominationalism becomes an evil the moment it degenerates into bitter and bigoted sectarianism. Conflicts between a dozen regiments is suicide to an army. When a dozen denominations strive to maintain their own feeble churches in a community that requires only three or four churches, then sectarianism becomes an unspeakable nuisance.
I could cite many instances to prove the great progress that has been made in church fellowship. For example, my early ministry was in a town in which the Society of Friends had a large meeting house, well filled by a most intelligent, orthodox and devout congregation. But its members never entered any other house of worship. I had the warmest personal intimacy with some of its leading men, but they would say: "We would like to hear thee preach on First Day, but the rules of our society forbid it." I have lived to see the day when I am invited to speak in Friends' meetings, and I have rejoiced to invite Quaker brothers, and sisters also, to speak in my pulpit. When I visit London, the most eminent living Quaker, J. Bevan Braithwaite, welcomes me to his hospitable house, and we join in prayer together. I wish that the exemplary and useful Society of Friends were more multiplied on both sides of the sea.
During the early half of the last century sectarian controversies ran high, especially in the newly settled West. It was a common custom to hold public discussions in school houses and frontier meeting houses, where controverted topics between denominations were presented by chosen champions before applauding audiences. Ministers fired hot shot at one another's pulpits; churches were often as militant as mendicant, and all those polemics were excused as contending most earnestly for the faith. Both sides found their ammunition in the same Bible. When I was a student in the Princeton Seminary, a classmate from Kentucky gave me a little hymn-book used at the camp meetings in the frontier settlements of his native region. In that book was a hymn, one verse of which contains these sweet and irenic lines:
"When I was blind, and could not see,
The Calvinists deceived me."
Just imagine the incense of devout praise ascending heavenward in such a thick smoke of sectarian contentions! All the denominations were more or less afflicted with this controversial malady; and I will venture to say that in Kentucky and Ohio and other new regions, the Presbyterians were often a fair match for their Methodist neighbors in these theological pugilistics. I might multiply illustrations of these unhappy clashings and controversies that have often disfigured even the most evangelical branches of Christendom. What a blessed change for the better have I witnessed in my old days! Among the foremost efforts of denominational fellowship was the organization of the American Bible Society, the American Tract Society, and the American Sunday School Union. Later on in the same century came those two splendid spiritual inventions--The Young Men's Christian Association, and the Society of Christian Endeavor. Sir George Williams, the founder of the one, and Dr. Francis E. Clark, the father of the other, should be commemorated in a pair of twin statues of purest marble, standing with locked arms and upholding a standard bearing the sacred motto: "One is our Master, even Christ Jesus, and all ye are brethren." To no man are we indebted more deeply than to the now glorified Mr. Moody who made Christian fellowship the indispensable feature of all his evangelistic endeavors--with Brother Sankey leading the grand chorus of united praise. Union meetings for the conversion of souls and seeking the descent of the Holy Spirit are now as common as the observance of Christmas or of Easter Day. Personally I rejoice to say that I have been permitted to preach the Gospel in the pulpits of all the leading denominations, not excepting the Episcopalian; and I once welcomed the noble and beloved Bishop Charles P. McIlvaine of Ohio to my Lafayette Avenue Church pulpit, where he pronounced a grand discourse on "The Unity of All Christians in the Lord Jesus Christ." If I lived in England I should be heart and soul a nonconformist. But I can gratefully acknowledge the many kind courtesies which I have received from the clergy of the Established Church. Once, when in London, I was invited to the annual dinner given by the Lord Mayor to the archbishops and bishops, and I found myself the only American clergyman present. The Archbishop of Canterbury, when Bishop of London, did me the honor of presiding at a reception given me at Exeter Hall, and whenever I have met the venerable Dr. Temple I have been cheered by his warmhearted and "democratic" cordiality of manner. In return for the kindness shown me by my brilliant and scholarly friend, Archdeacon Farrar, I was happy to preside at a reception given him in Chickering Hall. He had a wide welcome in our land, but it was as the untiring champion of temperance reform that he was especially honored on that evening. He and Archdeacon Basil Wilberforce are among the leaders in the crusade against the curse of strong drink. Amid some evil portents and perils to the cause of evangelical religion, one of the richest tokens for good is this steady increase of interdenominational fellowship. For organic unity we need not yet strive; it is enough that all the regiments and brigades in Christ's covenant hosts march to the same music, fight together under the same standard of Calvary's Cross, and press on, side by side, and shoulder to shoulder, to the final victory of righteousness and truth and human redemption.
Another change for the better has been the enlargement of woman's sphere of activity in the promotion of Christianity and of moral reform. As an illustration of this fact, I may cite a rather unique incident in my own experience. During the winter of 1872 I invited Miss Sarah F. Smiley, an eminent and most evangelical minister in the Society of Friends (and a sister of the Messrs. Albert and Daniel Smiley, the proprietors of the Lake Mohonk House) to deliver a religious address in my pulpit. The discourse she delivered was strong in intellect, orthodox in doctrine and fervently spiritual in character; the large audience was both delighted and edified. A neighboring minister presented a complaint before the Presbytery of Brooklyn, alleging that my proceeding had been both un-Presbyterian and un-Scriptural. The complainant was not able to produce a syllable of law from our form of government forbidding what I had done. Long years before, a General Assembly had recommended that "women should not be permitted to address a promiscuous assemblage" in any of our churches; but a mere "deliverance" of a General Assembly has no binding legal authority.
In my defense I was careful not to advocate the ordination of women to the ministry in the Presbyterian Church, or their installation in the pastorate. I contended that as our confession of faith was silent on the subject, and that as godly women in the early church were active in the promotion of Christianity (one of them named Anna having publicly proclaimed the coming Messiah), and that as the ministry of my excellent friend, the Quakeress, had for many years been attended by the abundant blessings of the Holy Spirit, my act was rather to be commended than condemned. The discussion before the Presbytery lasted for two days and produced a wide and rather sensational interest over the country. The final vote of the Presbytery, while withholding any censure of my course under the circumstances, was adverse to the practice of permitting women to address "promiscuous audiences" in our churches. Two or three years afterwards, a case similar to mine was appealed to the General Assembly and that body wisely decided that such questions should be left to the judgment and conscience of the pastors and church sessions. When the news of this action of the assembly reached us, the old sexton of the Lafayette Avenue Church hoisted (to the great amusement of our people) the stars and stripes on the church tower as a token of victory. It has now become quite customary to invite female missionaries, and other godly women, to address audiences composed of both sexes in our churches; the padlock has been taken off the tongue of any consecrated Christian woman who has a message from the Master. I invited Miss Willard and Lady Henry Somerset to advocate the Christian grace of temperance from my pulpit; and if I were still a pastor I should rejoice to invite that good angel of beneficence, Miss Helen M. Gould, to deliver there such an address as she lately made in the splendid building she has erected for the "Naval Christian Association."
Foreign missions were in their early and vigorous growth eighty years ago. I rode in our family carriage to church with Sheldon Dibble and Reuben Tinker, who were just leaving Auburn Theological Seminary to go out as our pioneer missionaries to the Sandwich Islands. The Missionary Herald was taken in a great number of families and read with great avidity. Many of the readers were people who not only devoutly prayed "Thy Kingdom come," but who were willing to stick to a rag carpet, and deny themselves a "Brussels," in order to contribute more to the spread of that Kingdom. Wealth has increased to a prodigious and perilous extent; but the percentage of money given to foreign missions is very far from what it was in the day of my childhood. It is a growing custom for ministers to utter a prayer over the contribution boxes when they are brought back to the platform before the pulpit; I suspect that it in too many cases should be one of penitential confession.
While I was a student in the Princeton Seminary we had a visit from the veteran missionary, Levi Spalding, who sailed from Boston to Southern India in the very first band which invaded the darkness of Hindooism He was as nearly like my conception of the Apostle Paul as anyone I ever beheld. He told us that when he was a youth and his heart was first drawn to the cause of missions, he told his good mother that he had decided upon a missionary life (which was then thought equivalent to a martyrdom), and she was perfectly overcome. He said to her: "Mother, when you gave me as an infant to God in baptism, did you withhold me from any service to which I might be called?" She assented in a moment--went to the old chest--from it she took a half-dollar (all the money she possessed in the world), and, handing it to him, said: "Levi, you may go, and this starts you on your education." On his way over to India his preaching converted all the sailors, including the ship's carpenter, "whose heart was as hard as his broadaxe." That was the stuff our first missionaries were made of. The tears flowed down our cheeks as we listened to Spalding's recital, and the result of his visit was that more than one of our students volunteered for the work of foreign missions.
It was also my great privilege during that Princeton course to put eye upon a man who, by common consent, is regarded as the king of American missionaries. On my way from Princeton to Philadelphia in the Christmas week of '45 I found among my fellow passengers a gentleman with a very benign countenance, and to my great delight I learned that he was Adoniram Judson, who was on his final and memorable visit to his native land, and was received everywhere with the most unbounded and reverent enthusiasm. He had begun his work in Burmah in 1813, but under great difficulties. During the first six years he made no converts; he defied the demon of discouragement and labored on with increased faith and zeal, and then came an abundant harvest. The colossal work of his life in Burmah was the translation of the Holy Scriptures into the Burmese language. To this work, which is likely to endure, he added a Burmese-English dictionary. At length the toils and exposures broke down his health and he was obliged to take several voyages in adjoining waters. Soon after I saw him he married Miss Chubbuck and returned to Burmah in the following year. The old conflict between the holy and heroic heart and failing body was soon renewed. He resorted once more to the sea for relief, but died during the passage, on April 12, 1850. When crossing the Atlantic in the summer of 1885 I spent much of the time with that noble minister, Rev. Edward Judson, of New York. A funeral at sea occurred, and as the remains were disappearing in the water Mr. Judson said to me, with solemn tenderness: "Just so my beloved father was committed to the deep: his sepulchre is this great, wide ocean," That ocean is a type of his world-wide influence. Not only in the priority of time as a fearless pioneer into unknown dangers, but in profound and patient scholarship, and in the beauty of a holy and lovable personality, Adoniram Judson still hold the primacy among our American missionary heroes.
The progress which has been made in Christianizing heathendom during the last century (which may well be called the century of foreign missions) is familiar to every person of intelligence. The number of converts to Christianity is at least two millions, and several millions more have felt the influence of Christian civilization. The great mass have not been suddenly revolutionized, as in Luther's time, but one by one individual hearts yield to the gospel in nearly every land. As a serious offset to these glorious results the commerce of nominally Christian nations is often poisonous. Britain carries opium into China and India; America and other civilized nations carry rum into Africa. The word of life goes in the cabin, and the worm of death goes in the hold of the same vessel! The sailors that have gone from nominally Christian countries to various ports have often been very far from acting as gospel missionaries. It is not only for their own welfare, but that they may become representatives of Christianity that the noble "American Seamen's Friend Society" has been organized. The work which that society has wrought under the vigorous leadership of Dr. Stitt entitles it to the generous support of all our churches. If toiling "Jack" braves the tempest to bring us wealth from all climes, we owe it to him to provide him the anchor of the gospel, and to save him from spiritual shipwreck.
To no other benevolent society have I more cheerfully given service of tongue and pen than to this one. An honest view of the foreign mission enterprises to-day reveals the laying of broad foundations, and the building of solid walls, rather than any completed achievements already wrought. Blood tells, and God has entrusted his gospel to the Anglo-Saxons and the other most powerful races on the globe. The religion of the Bible is the only religion adapted to universal humanity, and in the Bible is a definite pledge that to all humanity that religion shall yet be preached.
Among the great spiritual agencies born within my memory, none deserves a higher place than The Young Men's Christian Association. When my beloved brother, Sir George Williams (now an octogenarian) started the first association in London on the 6th of June, 1844, he "builded better than he knew," The modest room in his store overlooking Paternoster Row in which he gathered the little praying band on that day is already an historic spot. My own connection with the Young Men's Christian Association began in New York when I joined the association there in the second year of its existence, 1854. We met in a room in Stuyvesant Institute and the heroic Howard Crosby was our president. We had no library, or reading room, or gymnasium, or any of the appliances that belong to the institutions of these days. After several migrations, our association found its permanent home in the spacious building on Twenty-third Street, to which Morris K. Jesup and William E. Dodge were among the foremost contributors. The master spirit in the operations of the New York Association for thirty years was Mr. Robert McBurney, who, when he landed from Ireland, was only seventeen years of age. He was among my evening congregation in the old Market Street Church. During my seven years' pastorate in that church I delivered a great many discourses and platform addresses on behalf of the association, and through all of the subsequent years it has been a favorite object on which to bestow my humble efforts. Here in Brooklyn a host of young-men have found a moral shelter, and many of them a spiritual birthplace, in the fine structure, reared largely from the munificent bequests of that princely Christian philanthropist, the late Mr. Frederick Marquand. It is not permitted to every good man or woman before they die to see the glorious fruits of the trees they planted, but to the eyes of the veteran George Williams the following facts must seem like a rehearsal of heaven. The Young Men's Christian Association now belts the globe with half a million of members, and ten times that number in some direct connection with the organization. It is housed in hundreds of solid structures which have cost between thirty and forty million dollars--each one a cheerful home--_a_ place for physical development, manly instruction and training for Christ's service.
It has brought thousands of young men from impenitence to Christ Jesus, and made thousands of young Christians more like Jesus in their daily life. The most effective lay preacher of the century, D.L. Moody, confessed that in his training for spiritual work he owed more to the Young Men's Christian Association than to any other human agency. It has moulded the students of colleges and universities; it has been the salvation of many a soldier and sailor; it has led many into the gospel ministry; it has taught the whole world the beauty and power of a living unity in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit has set the Divine seal of His blessing on its world-wide work, and to the triune God be all the praise and all the glory.
As I witnessed the birth of the Young Men's Christian Association, I also saw the birth of a kindred organization, the "Society of Christian Endeavor." Many years ago an absurd and extravagant statement was widely afloat, claiming that I was the "grandsire" of this society. The simple truth was that Dr. Francis E. Clark, its heaven-directed founder, had seen in some religious journals my account of the good work wrought by the Young People's Association of the Lafayette Avenue Church, and he recognized the fact that its chief purpose was not mere sociality or literary advancement, but the spiritual profit of its members. He examined its constitution and reports, and when he constructed his first Christian Endeavor Society in the Williston Church of Portland, Maine, he adopted many of its features; and my beloved brother Clark, in his public addresses, has generously acknowledged such obligation as he was under to our Young People's Association (now in its thirty-fifth year of prosperous activity). It has always been a source of grateful pride that it should have furnished any aid to the origination of one of the foremost spiritual instrumentalities of the century. As any attempt to describe the sublime grandeur of Niagara would be a waste of time, so it would be equally futile for me to describe the magnificent extent of the Christian Endeavor Society's operations and the immense spiritual results that have flowed from them. There is no civilized speech or language where its voice is not heard; its line has gone out to all the earth, and its words to the ends of the world. It has done more than any other single agency to develop the life and to train for service the energies of the youthful members of the churches It has yet still wider possibilities before it, and when the hand that planted this mighty tree has turned to dust its boughs will be shedding down the fruits of the Spirit on the dwellers in every clime.
One of the most striking improvements that I have witnessed has been in the sanitary condition, both physical and moral, of our great cities. The conditions in New York, when I came to the pastorate of the Market Street Church almost fifty years ago, would seem incredible to the New Yorkers of to-day. The disgusting depravities of the Fourth Ward, afterwards made familiar by the reformatory efforts of Jerry McCauley, were then in full blast, defying all police authority and outraging common decency. The most hideous sink of iniquity and loathsome degradation was in the once famous "Five Points," in the heart of the Sixth Ward and within a pistol shot of Broadway. At the time of my coming to New York public attention had been drawn to that quarter with the opening of the "Old Brewery Mission," and by the first planting of a kindred enterprise which grew into the now well-known "Five Points House of Industry." The brave projector of this enterprise was the Rev. L.M. Pease, a hero whose name ought not to be forgotten. As my church was just off East Broadway, and within a short walk of the Five Points, I took a deep interest in Mr. Pease's Christian undertaking, and aided him by every means in my power. His wife became a member of my church. The "Wild Maggie," whose escapades described in the Tribune gained such public notoriety, became also, after her reformation, one of our church members and afterwards held the position of a school teacher. After the resignation of Mr. Pease and his removal to North Carolina, his place was taken by one of our Market Street elders, the devout and godly minded Benjamin R. Barlow. In order to keep awake public interest in the mission work at the Five Points, and to get ammunition, in its behalf, I used to make nocturnal explorations of some of those satanic quarters. I recall now one of those midnight forays of which, at the risk of my reader's olfactories, I will give a brief glimpse. In company with the superintendent of the mission and a policeman and a lad with a lantern I struck for the "Cow Bay," the classic spot of which Charles Dickens had given such a piquant description in his "American Notes" a few years before. Climbing a stairway, from which the banisters had long been broken away for firewood, we entered a dark room. There was only a tallow candle burning in the corner, and in the room were huddled twenty-five human beings. Along the walls were ranged the bunks--one above the other--covered with rotting quilts and unwashed coverings. Each of these rented for sixpence a night to any thief or beggar who chose to apply for lodging--no distinction being made for sex or color. As the lad swings the lantern about we spy the rows of heads projecting from under the stacks of rags. In one bed a gray-haired, disheveled head cuddled close to the yellow locks of a slumbering child. While we are reconnoitering, something like a huge dog runs past and dives under the bed. "What is this, good friend?" we ask. "Oh, only the goat," replied a merry Milesian. "Do the goats live with you all in this room?" "To be sure they do, sir; we feeds 'em tater skins, and milks 'em for the babies," Country born as we were, we have often longed to keep a dairy in this city, but it never occurred to us that a bedroom was sufficient for the purpose. Truly, necessity is the shrewd-witted mother of invention! Opposite "Cow Bay" was "Cut-Throat Alley." Two murders a year were about the average product of the civilization of this dark defile. The keeper of the famous grog shop there, who died about that time, left a fortune of nearly one hundred thousand dollars. In city politics the keeper of such a den is one of the leaders of public opinion. We climbed a stairway, dark and dangerous, till at length we reached the wretched garret through whose open chinks the snow drifted in upon the floor. Beside the single broken stove, the only article of furniture in the apartments, sat a wretched woman wrapped in a tattered shawl moaning over a terrible burn that covered her arms; she had fallen when intoxicated upon the stove and no one had cared enough to carry her to the hospital. She exclaimed, "For God's sake, gentlemen, can't you give me a glass of gin?" A half eaten crust lay by her and a cold potato or two, but the irresistible thirst clamored for relief before either pain or hunger. "Good woman," said my friend, "where's Mose?" "Here he is." A heap of rags beside her was uncovered, and there lay the sleeping face of an old negro, apparently of fifty. In nearly every garret we entered practical amalgamation was in fashion. The superintendent told me that the negroes were fifty per cent. in advance of the Irish as to sobriety and decency. Descending from the garret we entered a crowded cellar. The boy's lantern shone on the police officer's cap and buttons. A crash was heard, and the window at the opposite end of the cellar was shattered and a mass of riddled glass fell on the floor. "Poor fool!" exclaimed the policeman, "he thinks we are after him, but I will have him before morning." From these sickening scenes of squalor, misery and crime what a relief it was for us to return to the House of Industry, with its neat school room and its capacious chapel and its row of little children marching up to their little beds. It was like going into the light-house after the storm.
I have drawn this pen picture of but a part of the shocking revelations of that night, not only that my readers may know what kind of work I often engaged in during my New York pastorate, but that they may also know what kind of city I labored in. New York is not to-day in sight of the millennium; it still has a fearful amount of vice and heathenism; and the self-denying men who are conducting the "University Settlement," and the Christ-serving "King's Daughters," who are giving their lives to the salvation of the poor in the Seventh Ward are doing as apostolic a work as any missionary on the Congo. Nevertheless it is true that a "Cow Bay," or an "Old Brewery," or a "Cut-Throat Alley" is no more possible to-day in New York than the building of a powder factory in the middle of Central Park. The progress in sanitary purification has been most remarkable.
This narrative of the sanitary and moral reform wrought in the Five Points reminds me of another good man whom the people of this city and our whole country cannot revere too highly as a public benefactor. I allude to Mr. Anthony Comstock, the indefatigable Secretary of the "Society for the Prevention of Vice." I knew him well when he was a clerk in a dry goods store on Broadway, and when he undertook his first purifying efforts, I little supposed that he was to achieve such reforms. It was an Augean stable indeed that he set about cleansing. Fifty years ago our city was flooded by obscene literature which sought no concealment. The vilest books and pictures were openly sold in the streets, and an enormous traffic was waged in what may be called the literature of hell. Such a courageous crusade against those abominations and against the gambling dens, by Mr. Comstock--even at the risk of personal violence and in defiance of the most malignant opposition--entitles him to a place among our veritable heroes. At a time when deeds of military prowess receive such adulation, and when the "man on horseback" outstrips the man on foot in the race for popular favor, it is well to teach our young men that he who takes up arms against the principalities and powers of darkness, and makes his own life the savior of other lives, wins a knightly crown of heavenly honor that outshines the stars, and "fadeth not away."
The most unique organization that has been formed in our time for the evangelizing of the lost masses is the "Salvation Army." When I was in London, in the summer of 1885, I attended one of their monster meetings in Exeter Hall. There was an enormous military band on the platform behind the rostrum. Their Commander-in-Chief, General Booth, presided--a tall, thin, nervous man, who looked more like an old-fashioned Kentucky revivalist than an Englishman. His bright-eyed and comely wife, Mrs. Catharine Booth, was with him. She was a woman of remarkable intellectual force and spiritual character, as all must acknowledge who have read her biography. Her speech (on the Protection of Young Girls) was finely composed and finely delivered, and quite threw into the shade a couple of members of Parliament who spoke from the same platform on the same evening. When she made any telling point that awakened applause, her husband leaped up, and gave the signal: "Fire a volley!" Whereupon his troops gave a tremendous cheer, followed by a roll of drums and a blast of trumpets. The chief agency which the army employs to gather its audiences is music--whether it be the rattling of the tambourine, or the martial sound of a brass band. Some of their hymns are little better than pious doggerel, and they do not hesitate to add to Perronet's grand hymn, "All hail the power of Jesus name," such a stanza as the following:
"Let our soldiers never tire,
In streets, in lane, in hall,
The red-hot Gospel's shot to fire
And crown Him Lord of All."
Grotesque as are some of the methods of this novel organization, I cannot but admire their zeal and courage in dredging among the submerged masses with such spiritual apparatus as they can devise. They are doing a work that God has honored, and that has reached and rescued a vast number of outcasts. Their chief weakness is that they appeal mainly to the emotions, and give too little solid instruction to their ignorant hearers. Their chief danger is that when the strong arm of their founder is taken away he may not leave successors who can hold the army together. Let us hope and pray that the period of their usefulness may yet be protracted.
While an abnormal agency, like the Salvation Army, may do some useful service among the occupants of th