CHAPTER XIX.
LIFE AT HOME--AND FRIENDS ABROAD.
A few months after my resignation, the Lafayette Avenue Church extended an unanimous call to the Rev. Dr. David Gregg, who had become distinguished as a powerful preacher, and the successful pastor of the old, historic Park Street Church, of Boston. He is also widely known by his published works, which display great vigor and beauty of style, and a fervid spirituality. When Dr. Gregg came on to assume his office, I was glad, not only to give him a hearty welcome, but to assure him that, "as no one had ever come up into the pilot house to interfere with the helmsman, so I would never lay my hand on the wheel that should steer that superb vessel in all its future voyagings." From that day to this, my relations with my beloved successor have been unspeakably fraternal and delightful. While I have left the entire official charge of the church in his hands, there have been many occasions on which we have co-operated in various pastoral duties among a flock that was equally dear to us both. Recently the Rev. George R. Lunn, a young minister of exceedingly attractive qualities both in the pulpit and in personal intercourse, has been installed as an assistant pastor. The divine blessing has constantly rested upon the noble old church, which has gone steadily on, like a powerful ocean steamer, well-manned, well-equipped, well-freighted, and well guided by the compass of God's infallible word. Last year the church rendered a signal service to the cause of Foreign Missions by erecting a "David Gregg Hospital" and a "Theodore L. Cuyler Church" in Canton, China. They are both under the supervision of the Rev. Albert A. Fulton, who went out to China from our Lafayette Avenue flock, and has been a most energetic and successful missionary for more than twenty years.
My ministry at large has brought a needed rest, not by idleness, but by a change in the character of my employment. Instead of a weekly preparation of sermons, has come the preparation of more frequent contributions to the religious press. Instead of pastoral visitations have been the journeyings to different churches, or colleges, and universities and Young Men's Christian Associations for preaching services. I doubt whether any other dozen years of my life have been more crowded with various activities. To my dear wife and myself have come increased opportunities for travel, which have been, during the almost half century of our happy wedded life, a constant source of enjoyment. We have journeyed together from Bar Harbor, in Maine, to Coronado Beach, in Southern California. We have traversed together the Adirondacks, the White Mountains and the Catskills, the prairies of Dakota and the orange groves of Florida, the peerless parks of Del Monte on the shores of the Pacific, and the "Royal Gorge" in the heart of the Rocky Mountain Range. Our various trips to Europe have photographed on our hearts the memories of many dear friends and faces, some of whom, alas! have vanished into the unseen world. In the summer of 1889, when we were at Ayr, the late Mr. Alexander Allan, came down for us in his fine steam yacht, the Tigh-na-Mara, and took us up to his hospitable "Hafton House" on the Holy Loch, a few miles below Glasgow. For several days he gave us yachting excursions through Loch Goil, and the Kyles of Bute, and Loch Long, with glimpses of Ben-Lomond and other monarchs of the Highlands. When we saw the gorgeous purple garniture of heather in full bloom, we no longer wondered that Sir Walter Scott was quite satisfied to have his beloved hills devoid of forests.
Another memorable visit of that summer was to Chillitigham Castle in Northumberland, from whose towers we got views of Flodden Field and the scenes of "Marmion." The venerable Earl of Tankerville (who was a contemporary and supporter of Sir Robert Peel in Parliament), and his warmhearted Countess, who has long been a leader in various Christian philanthropies, entertained us delightfully within walls that had stood for six centuries. In a forest near the Castle were the famous herd of wild cattle which are the only survivors of the original herd that roamed that region in the days of William the Conqueror. They are beautiful white creatures, still too wild to be approached very nearly; and Sir Edwin Landseer, an old friend of the Earl, has preserved life-sized portraits of two of them on the walls of the lofty dining hall of the castle. When the servants, gardeners and other retainers assembled for morning worship in the chapel, the handsome old Earl presided at the melodeon, and the singing was from our American Sankey's hymn-book, a style of music that would have startled the belted knights and barons bold who worshipped in that chapel five centuries ago.
While at Dundee, as the guests of Mr. Alexander H. Moncur, the Ex-provost of the city, I had the satisfaction of preaching in St. Peters Presbyterian Church, whose pastor, sixty years ago, was that ideal minister, Robert Murray McCheyne. The Bible from which he delivered his seraphic sermons was still lying on the pulpit. When I asked a plain woman, the wife of a weaver, what she could tell me about his discourses, her remarkable reply was: "It did me more good just to see Mr. McCheyne walk from the door to his pulpit than to hear any other man in Dundee." A fine tribute, that, to the power of a Christly personality. A sermon in shoes is often more eloquent and soul-convincing than a sermon on paper. I spent a very pleasant hour with sturdy John Bright, and he told me that he had more relatives living in America than in England. His reason for declining the invitation of our government to visit the United States was that he knew too well what our enthusiastic countrymen had in store for him. The separation of Bright and Gladstone on the question of Irish Home Rule had a certain tragic element of sadness. When I spoke of this to Mr. Gladstone, the old statesman of Hawarden tenderly replied: "Whenever I think now of my dear old friend, I always think only of those days when we were in our warmest fellowship" Among the many other recollections of foreign incidents I must mention a very delightful luncheon at Athens with Dr. Schlieman in his superb house which was filled with the trophies of his exploration of the Troad and Mycenae. I found him a most genial man; and he told me that he had never surrendered his American citizenship, acquired in 1850. It was very amusing to hear him and his Grecian wife address their children as "Agamemnon" and "Andromache" and I half expected to see Plato drop in for a chat, or Euripides call with an invitation to witness a rehearsal of the "Medea." Athens is to me the most satisfactory of all the restored cities of antiquity, every relic there is so indisputably genuine. My sunrise view from the Parthenon was a fair match for a midnight view I once had of Olivet and Gethsemane.
I cannot close these recollections of foreign friends without making mention of the late Mr. William Tweedie and his successor the late Mr. Robert Rae, the efficient Secretaries of the National Temperance League (of which Archbishop Temple has long been the President). They rendered me endless acts of kindness, and at their anniversary meetings I met many of the most prominent advocates of the temperance reform in Great Britain. It gives me a sharp pang to recall the fact that of all the leaders whom I met at those meetings, the gallant Sir Wilfred Lawson and Mr. Caine are almost the only survivors.
Returning now to the scenes of our happy home life I should be criminally neglectful if I failed to give even a brief account of the gratifying incidents connected with the recent commemoration of my eightieth birthday. Reluctant as I was to quit the good Society of the Seventies, the transition into four-score was lubricated by so many loving kindnesses that I scarcely felt a jolt or a jar. During the whole month of January a steady shower of congratulatory letters poured in from all parts of the land and from beyond sea, so that I was made to realize the poet Wordsworth's modest confession:
"I've heard of hearts unkind kind deeds
With coldness still returning,
Alas, the gratitude of men
Has oftener left me mourning."
In anticipation of the event Mrs. Houghton, the editor of the New York Evangelist, to which I have been so long a contributor, issued a "Birthday Number" containing the most kindly expressions from representatives of different Christian denominations, and officers of various benevolent societies, and from representative men in secular affairs, like Mr. Andrew Carnegie, Mr. Jesup, General Woodford, the Hon. Mr. Coombs, Dr. St. Clair McKelway, and others. On the afternoon of January 9th, the National Temperance Society honored me with a reception at their Publication House in New York, which was attended by many eminent citizens and clergymen, and "honorable women not a few." Letters and telegrams from many quarters were read and an eloquent address was pronounced by Mr. Joshua L. Bailey, the President of the Society. The evening of my birthday, the 10th of January, was spent in our own home, which was in full bloom with an immense profusion of flowers, and enriched with beautiful gifts from many generous hearts. For three hours it was the "joy unfeigned" of my family and myself to grasp again the warm hands of our faithful Lafayette Avenue flock, and of my Brooklyn neighbors who had for two-score years gladdened our lives, as the Great Apostle was gladdened by his loyal friends at Thessalonica.
[Illustration: DR CUYLER AT 80]
[From a photograph, January, 1902]
On Saturday evening the 11th, the "Chi Alpha" Society of New York, the oldest and most widely known of clerical brotherhoods, gave me their fraternal greetings at the residence of the venerable Mrs. William E. Dodge, now blessed with unimpaired vigor, in the golden autumn of a life protracted beyond four-score and ten. The walls of that hospitable mansion on Murray Hill have probably welcomed more persons eminent in the religious activities of our own and other lands than any other private residence in America. Brief speeches were made; a beautiful "address" was presented, which now, embossed and framed, adorns the walls of my library. After this the Rev. Charles Lemuel Thompson, an Ex-moderator of our General Assembly, and now the Secretary of the Board of Home Missions, read the following ringing lines which he had composed on behalf of my fellow voyagers on many a cruise and in many a conflict for our adorable Lord and King. My only apology for introducing them here is their rare poetic merit which entitles them to a more permanent place than in the many journals in which they were reprinted. I ought to add that "Croton" is the name of the river and the reservoir that supply New York with its wholesome water:
OUR CAPTAIN.
Fill--fill up your glasses--with Croton!
Fill full to the brim I say,
For the dearest old boy among us,
Who is ten times eight to-day.
It is three times three and a tiger--
It is hand to your caps, O men!
For our Captain of captains rejoices,
In his counting of eight times ten.
Foot square on the bridge and gripping
As steady as fate the wheel,
He has taken the storms to his forehead,
And cheered in the tempest's reel.
He has seen the green sea monsters
Go writhing down the gale,
But never a hand to slacken,
And never a heart to fail.
So It's--Ho'--to our Captain dauntless,
Trumpet-tongued and eagle-eyed,
With the spray of the voyage behind him,
And the Pilot by his side.
Together they sail into sunset--
Slow down for the harbor bell,
For the flash of the port, and the message
"Well done"---It is well--It is well.
So it's three times three and a tiger!
Breathe deep for the man we love,
His heart is the heart of a lion,
His soul is the soul of a dove.
It is--Ho!--to the Captain we honor,
Salute we the man and the day,
On his brow are the snows of December,
In his heart are the bird songs of May.
The Scripture passage from which I discoursed on the next Sabbath morning, January 12th, in our Lafayette Avenue Church pulpit--"At evening time it shall be light"--seems especially appropriate to an autobiography penned at a time when the life-day is already far spent. There are some people who have a pitiful dread of old age. For myself, instead of it being a matter of sorrow or of pain, it is rather an occasion of profound joy that God has enabled me to write in my family record "Four score years." The October of life may be one of the most fruitful months in all its calendar; and the "Indian summer" its brightest period when God's sunshine kindles every leaf on the tree with crimson and golden glories. Faith grows in its tenacity of fibre by the long continued exercise of testing God, and trusting His promises. The veteran Christian can turn over the leaves of his well-worn Bible and say: "This Book has been my daily companion; I know all about this promise and that one and that other one; for I have tried them for myself, I have a great pile of cheques which my Heavenly Father has cashed with gracious blessings." Bunyan brings his Pilgrim, not into a second infant school where they may sit down in imbecility, or loiter in idleness; he brings them into Beulah Land, where the birds fill the air with music; and where they catch glimpses of the Celestial City. They are drawing nearer to the end of their long journey and beyond that river, that has no bridge, looms up the New Jerusalem in all its flashing splendors.
In a previous chapter I have told the story of our bereavement when God took three of our precious children to Himself; but to-day we can chant the twenty-third Psalm, for the overflowing cup of mercies that sweeten our home, and for the two loving children that are spared to us. Our eldest daughter, Mary, is the wife of Dr. William S. Cheeseman, an eminent physician in the beautiful city of Auburn, the County-seat of my native County of Cayuga. It is the site of one of our principal Theological Seminaries, from which have graduated many of the foremost ministers in our Presbyterian denomination. One of the earliest professors of that institution was the revered Dr. Henry Mills, who baptized me in my infancy. Auburn is also well known as the residence of our celebrated statesman William H. Seward, who was Secretary of State under President Lincoln. From the window of my daughter's home I look over at the summer house in which that illustrious patriot meditated some of his state papers; and just beyond is the bronze statue reared to his memory. Our only living son, Theodore Ledyard Cuyler, Jr., the surviving twin brother of "little Georgie," fills an honorable position as an officer of the Postal Telegraph and Cable Company in New York. Since the death of his lovely young wife, several years ago, he has resided with us, and his only son, "Ledyard," is the joy of his grandparents' hearts. The sister and niece of my wife complete our household--and our happiness.
My journey hence to the sun-setting must be brief at the farthest. I only ask to live just as long as God has any work for me to do--and not one moment longer. I do not seek to measure with this hand how high the sun of life may yet be above the horizon; but when it does go down, may my closing eyes behold the bright effulgence of Heaven's blessings upon yonder glorious sanctuary, and its faithful flock. After my long day's work for the Master is over, and this mortal body has been put to sleep in yonder beautiful dormitory of "Greenwood" by the sea, I desire that the inscription that shall be written over my slumbering dust may be, "The Founder of Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church."