tihvary of Che theological ^tminaxy PRINCETON . NEW JERSEY PRESENTED BY Rev. Wallace Radcliffe^ D.D. BX 9211 .W3 C46 1903 The Centennial of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Wallace Radcliffe, D. D., L.L. D. THE CENTENNIAL OF THE NEW YORK AVENUE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH WASHINGTON, D. C. 1803— 1903 THE CENTENNIAL BOARDS. THE CENTENNIAL SESSION. Rev. Wallace Radcliffe. James W. Dawson. Charles B. Bailey. C. H. Fishbaugh. Charles A. Baker. W. B. Gurley. Joseph C. Breckinridge. J. M. Harlan. Harrison L. Bruce. T. H. Herndon. Sardis L. Crissey. W. B. Hughes. THE CENTENNIAL DIACONATE. Charles S. Bradley. J. D. M'Chesney. F. O. Becket. B. C. Somerville. R. P. A. Denham. Charles Stott. James A. Freer. Henry Wells. Philip F. Lamer. J. H. Wurdeman. THE CENTENNIAL BOARD OF TRUSTEES. Walter Clephane. Brice J. Moses. Samuel W. Curriden. Charles B. Pearson. Edward Graves. Charles W. Richardson. John B. Larner. W. P. Van Wickle. J. Ormond Wilson. CONTENTS. Page Foreword ......... 9 Centennial Committees ....... 1 1 Centennial Sermon by Dr. Radcliffe. ... 16 Address of Mr. Walter Clephane .... 38 Address of Rev. Dr. Bartlett 47 Address of Gen. H. V. Boynton ..... 57 Introductory Remarks of Justice Harlan ... 65 Address by Dr. M'Master 68 Address by President Roosevelt .... 92 Address by Secretary Hay 97 Introductory Address by Secretary Wilson . . lor Address by President Patton . . . . . 103 The Greetings . . . . . . . . 124 The Church Reception . . . . . . . 154 The Centennial Historical Exhibit . . . . 155 The Succession in the Pastorate . . . . 164 The Succession in the Bench of Elders . . . 165 The Succession in the Diaconate . . . . 167 The Succession in the Boards of Trustees . . 168 The Succession in the Sunday School Superintendents 171 ILLUSTRATIONS. Wallace Radcliffe, D. D., LL. D. New York Avenue Presbyterian Church (1862-1895) New York Avenue Presbyterian Church (1903) Willard Hall James Laurie, D. D. Rev. Ninian Banantyne . Daniel Baker, D. D. Rev. John N. Campbell Rev. Stephen B. Balche D. X. Junkin, D. D. . Phineas D. Gurley, D. D. S. S. Mitchell, D. D. . John R. Paxton, D. D. W. A. Bartlett, D. D. . The Centennial Bench of Elders The Centennial Diaconate The Centennial Board of Trustees . Frontispiece. 0pp. page 8 24 32 56 64 72 88 90 104 120 128 136 144 152 163 167 FORE WORD. The exact date for the Centennial celebration of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church would be May 13, 1903. The Session, in deciding upon such celebration, thought it wise to defer it until some convenient date in the autumn, to be determined by the committee of arrangements. This committee was appointed to consist of the elders, deacons, and trustees, with power to add to their number. They decided that the celebration should begin on Sabbath, November fifteenth, and continue on the evenings of the three succeeding days. Because of the age of the church, and its historical and ecclesiastical importance, and the unusual programme announced, the occasion wakened a wide- spread interest, not only in this community but through- out the country, and received unusual notice from the Associated Press and from the daily and weekly papers. The church was in part quickened in preparation for the occasion by a series of Sunday evening historical studies upon Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Edwards, and Witherspoon. The church was appropriately decorated. The chan- cel was beautiful with palms and ferns and flowers. In the north and south arches blazed in electric lights " 1803 — 1903." The large middle arch was festooned with the American flag. On the south space, between the chancel and the gallery, was the "Banner of the Covenant," made of blue silk, bearing a St. Andrew's cross and the words in the four spaces, " Christ," 10 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. "King," "Kingdom," "Covenant"; on the north space a blue banner bearing in gilt the seal of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, with the words, " Christus Levatus Salvator." The pillars and front of the gallery, and the organ were also gracefully festooned. The lecture room was beau- tiful with plants and flowers and draperies ; the walls were hung with portraits of the former pastors, and in the main room was the historical exhibit, which proved to be a conspicuous and instructive part of the celebra- tion. All the services were crowded. The crowning event, which was conceded publicly to be one of the most significant incidents in the history of the District, was on Monda}^ evening. Few gatherings, not a part of government routine and having official significance, have included so many distinguished people or have been so representative. The President of the United States and the secretary of state sat in the celebrated Lincoln pew, and each made an address. A justice of the supreme court of the United States presided. The main body of the church was filled with members of the cabinet, justices of the supreme court, senators, representatives, justices of the supreme court of the District, the District commissioners, officers of the army and navy, and others prominent in the government, business and ecclesiastical life of Washington. Much credit for the interest and success of the cen- tennial is due to the culture and ready service of the choir of the church, consisting of Mrs. W. H. Shir- cliff', Miss Pauline Whitaker, Mr. John H. Nolan, and Mr. M. H. Stevens, with Mr. J. Porter Lawrence as organist and precentor. The committee of arrangements was constituted as follows : THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 11 Wallace Radcliffe, D. D., LL. D., C/iazrman. Walter Clephane, Esq., Secretary. Mr. Brice J. Moses, Treasurer. Reception. Gen. Joseph C. Breckenridge, Chairman. Hon. R. A. Alger, Dr. W. C. Borden, Hon. J. C. Burrows, Rev. John Chester, D. D., Dr. J. B. G. Curtis, Hon. John B. Cotton, Dr. Sardis L. Crissey, Mr. J. H. Cranford, Hon. S. B. Elkins, Hon. William P. Frye, Rev. John L. French, Col. R. I. Fleming, Hon. A. P. Gorman, Mr. W. B. Gurley, Hon. John M. Harlan, Hon. William T. Harris, Hon. H. S. Irwin, Hon. H. D. Mirick, Dr. Z. T. Sowers, Hon. James Wilson, Mr. W. C. Whittemore, Hon. Lawrence Weldon, Hon. J. Ormond Wilson, Hon. J. W. Yerkes. Finance. John B. Larner, Chairfuaji. Albert Halstead, Vice-Chair man. Charles S. Bradley, Charles A. Baker, Walter C. Clephane, S. W. Curriden, Charles H. Davidge, James A. Freer, Edward Graves, Brice J. Moses, Charles B. Pearson, Charles W. Richardson, Charles G. Stott, George W. White, Joseph E. Willard. Social Functions. John D. McChesney, Chairmati. Henry Wells, Vice-Chairman Dr. J. Wesley Bovee, Dr. J. Wythe Cook, Percy Cranford, Egbert A. Clark, George B. Gardner, Alexander Grant, Charles L. Gurley, Shields Gurley, J. Porter Lawrence, Lee D. Latimer, Frank Libbey, Philip F. Larner, W. K. Mendenhall, James H. McKenny, 12 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. Albert McChesney, William P. Metcalf, John H. Nolan, M. V. Richards, A. H. Snow, Charles G. Stott, Dr. John W. Shaw, J. H. Spalding, W. R. Speare, George W. Trowbridge. Historical Research. Mrs. James O. Adams, Chairman. Walter C. Clephane, Mrs. A. G. Draper, A. J. Chipman, Miss Edwards, Joseph A. Deeble, Miss E. M. Mills, R. P. A. Denham, Mrs. George J. Musser, J. H. Doty, Miss M. E. Pancoast, Hon. John Randolph, Mrs. J. T. Young. Decorations. J. Henry Wurdeman, Chairman. Mrs. Charles B. Bailey, Mrs. C. B. Pearson, Mrs. J. H. Cranford, Mrs. Edward Graves, Mrs. C. W. Richardson, Mrs. G. W. Trowbridge. The Press. Gen. Henry V. Boynton, Chairman. Hugh B. Nesbitt, Vice-Chairman D. N. Burbank, Rev. Thos. Gordon, D. D., Mr. H. G. Johnson, C. A. Joerissen, Wilson N. Paxton, Robert A. Phillips, Dr. J. J. Piirman, Theodore F. Shuey, Dr. D. E. Wiber, A. G. Wilkinson. Invitations. William P. Van Wickle, Chairman. Charles B. Bailey, W. Frank Clark, Charles B. Estabrook, Charles H. Fishbaugh, Prof. W. S. Harshman, Endicott King, C. H. Lincoln, Capt. E. H. Parsons, James H. Saville. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. Printing. Samuel W. Curriden, Chairman. J. Edward Bates, James W. Dawson, Dr. W. D. Hughes, C. M. Irelan, John Mitchell, C. H. Schaaf, Charles P. Stone, Edward Tarring. Ushers. Charles S. Bradley, Chairman. Frank O. Beckett, Walter C. Clephane, R. P. A. Denham, James A. Freer, Philip D. Lamer, W. P. Metcalf, Lee D. Latimer, Brice J. Moses, J. D. McChesney, A. G. McChesney, Isaac Pearson, Charles G. Stott, B. C. Somerville, Henry Wells, J. H. Wurdeman. THE CENTENNIAL SABBATH. At Eleven o'clock in the Morning. The great congregation rose and sung : Praise God, from whom all blessings flow ; Praise Him, all creatures here below ; Praise Him above, ye heavenly host ; Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The invocation was made by the pastor and was closed with the Lord's prayer in which the congrega- tion joined audibly. The choir rendered Hawley's arrangement of " The Te Deum." The forty-sixth psalm was read by the pastor. Hymn No. 103 was sung to the tune of Park Street. Before Jehovah's awful throne, Ye nations, bow with sacred joy ; Know that the Lord is God indeed ; He can create, and He destroy. We are His people, we His care. Our souls, and all our mortal frame ; What lasting honors shall we rear. Almighty Maker, to Thy name? We'll crowd Thy gates with thankful songs, High as the heavens our voices raise ; And earth, with her ten thousand tongues. Shall fill Thy courts with sounding praise. Wide as the world is Thy command. Vast as eternity Thy love ; Firm as a rock Thy truth must stand, When rolling years shall cease to move. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 15 Dr. W. A. Bartlett, a former pastor of this church, read Ephesians fourth chapter to the seventeenth verse, and led in prayer. The two hundred and ninety-eighth hymn to the tune of Austrian Hymn was then sung as follows : Glorious things of Thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God ; He whose word cannot be broken, Formed thee for His own abode ; On the Rock of Ages founded. What can shake Thy sure repose ? With salvation's walls surrounded. Thou may'st smile at all Thy foes. See, the streams of living waters Springing from eternal love, Well supply Thy sons and daughters, And all fear of want remove. Who can faint, while such a river Ever flows their thirst t' assuage? Grace, which like the Lord, the giver, Never fails from age to age. Round each habitation hovering. See the cloud and fire appear For a glory and a covering, Showing that the Lord is near ; Thus deriving from their banner Light by night and shade by day, Safe they feed upon the manna Which He gives them when they pray. During the offertory the choir sang Martin's " How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts, my soul longeth, yea even fainteth for the courts of the Lord." THE CENTENNIAL SERMON.* BY Rev. Wallace Radcliffe, D. D., LL.D., Pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, •♦Your fellowship in the Gospel from the first day until now." (Philippians i 15. ) " From the first day until now." That first day was a day of small things, of limited horizon and narrowed circle. Its progress was through the age of modern miracles — the century which has given to civilization its strongest sceptre and widest empire — the century which has endowed the earth with liberated science ; with multiplied arts ; with enriched literature ; with republican government; with a simpler, larger, and richer religious knowledge and faith. In that day of small things, the state was but a narrow strip along the Atlantic ; the government was an experiment ; the church was a flickering torch in the wilderness. The state in that century has met its problems with resolu- tion and intelligence and extended its sceptre across the continent and the seas. The government has as- serted and confirmed its right to life and empire ; and the church has gained a louder voice, a stronger scep- tre, a mightier congregation. The century of this church's life is almost contempora- neous with the life of the capital, and its touch has been varied and significant in the varied and significant life of the capital and of the nation. * Stenographically reported by Mr. A. Warner Parker. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 17 It is asked, in the very beginning of such a discourse. How can you celebrate the centennial of the New York Avenue Church, whose name dates back not much further than fifty years, and in the presence of an existent First Church which has not yet, and will not for some years, attain its centennial? Well, in the first place, let us remember that the church, which was the beginning of this church, was not associated, whilst it was an Associate Church, with the American Presby- terian Church. It was, for twenty years after its origin, a part of the Associate Reformed Church, a branch of the Scotch Church transplanted here, whose char- acteristic was an emphatic orthodoxy in doctrine, and in worship the exclusive use of the psalms of David. The Associated Reformed Church, whose local name was the F Street Church, antedated the First Presbyterian Church, but was not associated with the Presbyterian Church of America for twenty years. And, when the union of the F Street Church and the Second Church was consummated, the mere fact that in the absorption of one by the other a new name was given does not change the identity or life of the church. Would any man claim that his wife's life was dated only from the date when she as- sumed his name by marriage? And I am told that leg- islatures can change the name, whilst they would not dare to change the individuality, of a man. This church antedates all others, save one, in the city of Washington. It was born in the year 1803. In 1859 ^^ changed its name, but not its identity, in the church life that came to it under the title and in the experience of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. When this church was organized, Washington was not an attractive place, — residences were few; slashes were abundant ; gardens and fields, in bad order, ex- 18 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. tended up through this immediate neighborhood ; Penn- sylvania avenue, the Appian Way of Washington, was but a small street, muddy and full of ruts, crossed in the lower part of it by a few streets quite as unat- tractive and often unusable ; travel was by lumbering coaches, from the Capitol to the White House and on to Georgetown ; the huntsman shot quail yonder under the shadow of the Capitol ; and brides went seeking gar- lands for their bridals on the Anacostia Flats. The best land was valued at fourteen cents a foot. Presi- dent Jefferson, personally, superintended the planting of four rows of Lombardy poplars along Pennsylvania avenue from the Capitol to the White House, an avenue that in the spring was a series of impassable beds of red clay. The church attendants from the suburbs bounced over deep cuts, rocks, and even tree stumps, and the villagers trod on grass in the streets and occa- sionally waited patiently for the ruminating cow to step aside, whose jingling bell was the only Sabbath bell of Washington. It was a day of wood fires, of the cur- few, of powdered wigs and queues — a day of magnificent distances, of few constables, fewer office seekers, and only one letter carrier between the navy yard and Georgetown — the day of the straggling village, with never a dream of the stately Capitol of brick and marble. It was the day of the Louisiana purchase ; the dav of the JefTerson administration ; the day of the beginnings of men and things for the larger national life and experience of to-day. A little handful of Scotch-Irishmen came with the government from Phila- delphia to Washington, and to them came the Rev. Mr. Laurie from Scotland, by the advice of the celebrated Dr. Mason of New York. He brought with him his young Scotch wife to the capital, which seems even in those early days to have been the favorite wedding trip. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 19 He came, lumbering in the stage, from Philadelphia, and then from Baltimore, by many changes, through difficult roads, with harsh experiences of travel by day and by night ; so that we are quite ready to believe the story that, wearied and disgusted, he at last stuck his head out of the window, calling to the driver : " Driver, aren't we getting near to Washington?" " Sir," said the driver, " we have been driving through it for two hours," It was his privilege to gather together this little handful of Presbyterians. Their first meeting place was in the lobby of the old Treasury hall, I believe destroyed subsequently by the British. His inadequate salary compelled him to seek a clerkship in the Treasury, in which double work he continued all his life. It was his, not only to preach, but to solicit funds for the new building as far north as Boston, and as far south as Savannah ; to hunt up the scattered sheep ; often to make the fires and sweep the floor, that his people might worship in comfort. He brought from Scotland two silver cups which were heirlooms in his father's house. These were used for a long time as the communion service, and they still exist and have been loaned to our historical exhibit by his granddaughter, Mrs. Theo. Mosher. In a few years a little building was occupied on the corner of Fourteenth and F streets, where the extension of the New Willard now stands. In 1807 enough money was collected to erect, a few yards further west, a brick building, which was used until the erection of this church building, and which, subsequently, was known as the Willard hall. In this church he con- tinued for fifty years. It was the first place for Prot- estant worship erected in this city. In his older years infirmities incapacitated him from regular work. Ser- vice was supplied at first by the Rev. Septimus Tuston, 20 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. a native of Philadelphia, who gave a few years to this associated service, but, compelled by his health to with- draw, gave the subsequent years of his life to a special care for the colored people, and, in the latter years, to the cause of the Freedmen. Following him, came Rev. Ninian Banantyne, but only for a few years, in which, by gentleness, by geniality, by tenderness, by active sympathy, by conservative service, he won a large and cherished place. On his death, he was buried by the east side of the church, but, on the subse- quent enlargement of the building, his body was carried to the Congressional cemetery. A tablet to his memory was erected in the F Street church, which, in some way, has disappeared ; but his memory and work abide. The Rev. Levi H. Christian supplied the pulpit a short time. There came for four years Rev. D. X. Junkin, subsequently known and honored in the whole church as an able preacher and ecclesiastic. It would be injustice to forget the services of Rev. Joseph Nourse, who, born in London, Eng., in 1754 A. D., came to this countr}'^ at fifteen years of age, became a Presbyterian minister, had honorable record in the Revolutionary War, lived through two wars, three systems of government and eight adminis- trations, and especially in his later years endeared him- self to the young church by his constant and devoted service. For fifty years. Dr. Laurie was pastor. He supple- mented his meagre salary by a clerkship in the United States Treasury. He was a shepherd to the whole community. He organized and was the first secretary of the Washington City Lyceum. He was first presi- dent of the public school board. He established and labored in the first school for colored youth. He was active in organizing the first societies for the relief of the THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 21 poor and destitute. And at last the end came to the hard, strong life of gift and sacrifice, whose mission was to lay foundations, but whose monument is in the redeemed lives and effective organization of to-day. Dr. Junkin, who had been co-pastor, remained for one year follow- ing the death of Dr. Laurie. After him came Dr. Gurley, whose life is so intimately identified with the history of this church and community, and scrolled with special incidents in the history of the nation. But let us not anticipate, but recall the fact that in 1819 a few persons connected with the American Pres- byterian Church, finding the church at Georgetown too far distant for regular attendance, were encouraged by the pastor, and eminently by the ministrations of his son, the Rev. Stephen Balche, to organize in this neighborhood a church for public worship. It was then a great common ; the population slow in its advance thitherward. They organized with fourteen families: built on this spot a little brick building. As one emerged by its two or three wooden steps, he looked out upon a great common, to the north a few scattered houses, trees and shrubbery where now is Franklin Park ; fac- ing him was an odoriferous tanyard, through which ran a pretty full stream ; the centre of the square was a bog, always under water and abounding in water snakes, to the delight of the small boy. Yonder, at Thirteenth and H streets, w^as a clump of trees, giving to the house they shaded the name of " The Seven Oaks." The streets were as nature formed them, except- ing Fourteenth street, which, as an important thorough- fare into the country, was surfaced with a coat of gravel. To this church came Rev. Daniel Baker, of strong presence and, subsequently, of distinguished character and life in the history of the whole church. Strong, earnest, able, he preached three times on the Sabbath, 22 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. in the afternoon at the market place ; gave himself very heartily to evangelistic work, so that in midsummer one of the most effective revivals occurred in the history of the community. It is said of him that preaching in the market place, where gathered about him all sorts and conditions of men, a bar-keeper said he would go to hear that man Baker, if he would preach on the text he would give him. Mr. Baker consented, and the bar- keeper, more familiar with common phrase than with his Bible, sent in his text, " Mind your own business." And Mr. Baker announced his text from I Thessalo- nians 4: 11, "That ye do your own business," and by his exposition of what is one's own business won the heart of the bar-keeper, who became a regular attend- ant upon his ministry. In this church John Qiiincy Adams was a constant attendant, attracted to Mr. Baker by his pulpit power and his winning personality, and became his life-long friend. From here. Dr. Baker went to Savannah and different sections of the country, and his evangelism was as a flaming fire. In the latter part of his life he built large and strong the foundations of the educational and ecclesiastical life in Texas that are to-day his enduring monument. It ought to be said of him, in this connection, that often in the recent work of Mr. Moody that evangelist had Dr. Baker's sermons translated, printed, and distributed in Europe, as fer- vent, eloquent, and effective appeals of evangelism. He was followed by Rev. John N. Campbell, of brief but memorable history in connection with this church ; a man of rare culture and ability, but whose whole career here is overshadowed by the Peggy O'Neal episode. She and President Andrew Jackson were attendants upon the worship of this church and the politic-social excitement penetrated. The pastor undertook to chal- lenge the presidential pewholder, and the result may be THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 23 imagined. When an irresistible force rushes against an impenetrable wall, something breaks. The Presi- dent withdrew from the church ; Mr. Campbell was called to the First Church, Albany, N. Y., where he had a distinguished ministry for thirty years and till his death. Then there came into this church a succession of ministers. The little handful of people had the finan- cial difficulty that so often taxes ecclesiastical life, but there came, one after another, earnest consecrated lives, each with its special gift, and gathered into symmetry and life the Second Presbyterian Church. Rev. Edward Smith served for three years, but we have no record of his work. None the less is the quiet, unrecorded pastorate without honor, carr3nng, as it often does, the richest savor and an eternal benediction. For four years Rev. Courtland Van Rennssalaer gave his service to the struggling church. It is a distinction to this church to have the association of a name so hon- ored and beloved in the whole church. Of distinguished colonial family, of large wealth, trained by his father to a large and rich munificence, he gave his pastoral ser- vice here and to the Presbyterian Church at Burlington, N. J., and, subsequentl}?- until his death, to the Presby- terian Board of Education. He has written his name in golden letters in the affections and achievements of the Presbyterian Church. Rev. W. W. Eells followed with a quiet and unevent- ful pastorate of four or five years, and after him the Rev. P. H. Fowler, later moderator of the New School General Assembly. Then there came a Rev. Mr. Wood, a Congregational minister, whose coming was as a tempest, for out of the seventy or eighty members, forty entered a protest against the preaching of a Congregational minister, as subversive of Presbyterian 24 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. doctrine and contrary to the law of the church, and the forty persons marched themselves out of the church and organized for worship in a neighboring hall. Subse- quently came the Rev. Mr. Eckard, a Philadelphia lawyer, missionary, and teacher. He came for his firs* service and found only a congregation of one. But subsequently, by earnest effort, the congregation was enlarged, and his beautiful spirit and simple teaching brought harmony and unity ; and he, withdrawing finally, at first to Lafayette College, Pa., and, in the eighty-third year of his age, to his home at Abingdon, Pa., left this memory of his life, that he had shaped the disorganized elements, held them together and secured the property for the subsequent union which resulted in our large and historic life. Honor here should be given also to Rev. J. G. Hamner, who gave several months of hard and gratuitous work for the rescue of the little flock. So the situation lies : The Second Church, dis- organized, more or less discouraged, only a handful of people, worshipping often, even in the former days, with the F Street Church under Dr. Laurie's care, and, more frequently in the latter days, under the pastoral care of Dr. Gurley. In 1859, the inevitable came, the two churches united under the name of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, accepting the F Street pastor. Dr. Gurley, selling their property on F street, tearing down the little brick building on this site and erecting the present structure. I am told that, at the laying of the corner-stone of this building, there was a gathering of three thousand people, making manifest the large impress upon the community even at that early date. It was Dr. Gurley's good fortune that Providence gave him name and place in this critical time of the church's history, whose influence, tact, and skill brought :.fr, mm The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. 1862— 1895. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 25 together and held together the varied elements of the two churches. He came well furnished from two dis- tinguished pastorates in Indianapolis, Ind., and Dayton, Ohio. He moved through the trying period of the Civil War with dignity, with tact and effectiveness. He was not a man of harmful compromise. Very likely a man often of wise silences. I do not suppose it was said of him in those days, as was said of many others, that one never could know when he prayed for the President. Without a doubt he prayed for the President of the United States. President Lincoln, who was a regular attendant upon his services, and his devoted friend, explained his choice of Dr. Gurley because, as he said, " Gurley does n't preach politics." I suppose he meant by that " Gurley does n't preach partisan politics." In the large and comprehen- sive sense, politics must be preached ; the large duties of citizenship, the absolute obligations of patriotism, especially in times of necessity and peril, must be preached in the faithful message of Christ. He was in frequent counsel and friendship with President Lincoln. He knelt in prayer at the bedside of the martyred President ; he delivered the eulogy in the East room of the White House ; he accompanied the body to its burial at Springfield, and, on the way, wrote the hymn that was sung on that occasion. His pastoral life demands a more detailed narration than is possible in this discourse. This church is his monument. His death-bed was one of beauty. It is striking, to read of the death of the two men who were so distinctly the master builders here. Dr. Laurie, upon the Sabbath, knowing that the end was coming, as it did come upon that day, sent word to his congregation to sing for him "Jerusalem, my happy home, name ever dear to me." And it was Dr. Gurley's grace to send, on his last Sabbath, a written 3 26 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. message to his waiting people, proclaiming with his last words the simplicity and comfort of the gospel of Christ in his own heart. He died September 30, 1868, in the fifty-second year of his age. His name we hold in treasured memory, and congratulate ourselves that he still abides in the usefulness and faith and honor of children and children's children in this church and community. He was succeeded by the Rev. S. S. Mitchell, young, fearless, vigorous, independent, a splendid preacher, a man of large Scriptural knowledge, wide scholarship, and of keen analysis both of truth and duty. He had his storms, I believe (you have had a good many here), but they were the result of fearlessness which had con- viction, and did not hesitate at its expression. He led the church successfully through the adoption of the limited term eldership, not without some little friction and noise, and it was his also to establish the Bethany Mission, which has always since been a cherished and blessed wrecking station of the church. He wrote himself in strong characters into all our subsequent life. Leaving here, he had honored pastorates, first in Brook- lyn, N. Y., and subsequently in Buffalo, N. Y., where he still abides, and where his name is in merited affec- tion and honor, and his pulpit a recognized power and benediction. He was followed for four 3'ears by the Rev. John R. Paxton, original, dramatic, independent, striking in appearance and expression, whose person- ality and pulpit power gathered about him great throngs of admirers. He wrote his impress and influence in the largely increased numbers and gifts of this church. From here he went to a conspicuous pastorate in New York, from which, after ten years of metropolitan popu- larity and distinction, he retired from active professional life. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 27 His successor was the Rev. Dr. W. A. Bartlett, who had thirteen beautiful years of delight and success. He came at the time of the church's great opportunity, with the wisdom and the power for their recognition and use. The membership largely increased ; the gifts multiplied. He summoned the affection and enthusiasm of the people. Under his pastorate, Faith Mission was established and developed. We are glad to welcome him here to-day to rejoice with us in our centennial joy, as he recognizes to some degree the results of his patient, brilliant, successful service. He was succeeded by the present pastor in 1895. As we survey this histor}^, especially in its first half- century, we are interested, occasionally impressed, sometimes amused, by certain distinctive incidents and usages. We read of the announcement by Dr. Laurie, posted on his church, that " owing to the indisposition of the pastor there will not be any divine service per- formed at his meeting-house " ; frequent notices are about his " meeting-house." We have advanced a little further, and we have enlarged and sanctified the "meeting-house" into the church. It was a day of service by "early candle-light"; a day of afternoon mid-week meetings ; a day of sunrise prayer-meetings. We are told that the presbytery, meeting in the F Street church for successive days, held sunrise prayer- meetings every day. I suggest that to the ministers who are present for presbyterial imitation. We some- times hear good souls protesting against the pulpit robes as innovations ; the}'^ were of use in at least one of the early pastorates, that of Rev. Mr. Campbell. The race prejudice was not very strong in those days. Sessional records are frequent of the admission to membership of colored candidates. The early records show an active, if not always harmonious, 28 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. interest in the music of the church. I read of the moderator of the session and four elders closinc; a meeting of the session with prayer and the singing of a hymn ! Imagine four of our elders singing a hymn ! They had precentors, they had also their quartette ; at times their choruses. They had at one time very posi- tive principles on the subject, for the session decided once that no instrument should be used in the choir but a bass viol ! What there was particularly sacred about a bass viol, I cannot imagine ; but the piety of our ancestors is written in the decision. At another time they had the flute and the violin and the violoncello. It is very interesting to notice their delicacy on the sub- ject. Now-a-days we announce ourselves very posi- tively ; but it is interesting to read in that old document that the session "preferred" — just imagine — "the session p?'e/erred" — " that there should be no closing pieces after the service, but would not object if, occa- sionally, there was an opening piece." In the early days, the services of the F Street Church must have been very barren. A recorded order of the morning service includes only one hymn. That would delight the rapid-transit christians of to-day, whose only demand in public worship is brevity. Only one hymn ! But they grew to a larger appreciation of the beauty and the grace of worship. They appropriated to the choir all the money their treasurer could collect in the galleries — an advance in appreciation. They also did the unusual thing of adopting a resolution of apprecia- tion and good wishes to an organist who, after sixteen months' service, was removing to another city. At a yearly meeting they adopted a resolution thanking the choir — just think of it — thanked the choir, for their services that added so much to the beauty and success of their public worship. The succession of our books THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 29 of praise has been Rouse's Psalms of David, Watt's Psalms and Hymns, Presbyterian Psalmodist, Laudes Domini, The New Laudes Domini, and the Hymnal of the Presbyterian Church, now used. Another charac- teristic is their active discipline. Discipline to-day is very informal and hesitant ; but they did not hesitate. Intemperance was a frequent cause for discipline ; non- attendance of church ; neglect of the ordinances ; gos- sip ; slander; fashionable society ; extravagant parties ; and, above all things, idleness. They suspended the men for idleness, too. We will not restore that charge, our session might be too busy. Certain characteristics abide in the church from the earliest days. One of those is church loyalty. It stands, as it has always stood, by its own church. It was a Presbyterian Church without any if, or but, or perhaps, and it was not ashamed to say so. It had no excuses to offer, no apologies to make. It believed in the Con- fession of Faith ; it taught and lived it ; we can trace that steadfastness in the beginning of things. We sel- dom realize the effectiveness of the first word, the first thought, and the first touch in organized life. Yonder, a century ago, these few Scotchmen, narrow, ignorant, bigoted, if you will, were men of conviction who knew something and believed it, and right down into the foundations of that church they built that conviction, and the church, through the century, has been standing true to that conviction. Those of you who have heard the recent Sunday night sermons, introductory to this centennial, will recognize that, so far as this pulpit is concerned, we do not believe that Calvin is dead. All that is truest and best of Calvin, the central doctrine of Divine sovereignty, the harmonious system of doctrine, are accepted and taught with conviction and enthusiasm here to-day, believing that Calvin received them from 30 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. Augustine, and Augustine from Paul, and Paul from the Holy Ghost. Now let us understand it ; let us congrat- ulate and proclaim that this church is a Presbyterian Church, and has no apologies to make. We are proud of the same. It has stood for Presbyterian doctrine and worship and life through the century. When exigencies came, when forces were distinctly arrayed for special antagonism, and truth demanded intelligent and heroic avowal, this pulpit uttered no uncertain sound, and this people had no guess or perhaps in their belief ; but significantly, clearly, absolutely, it stood by the stand- ards of the church and the word of God. Those elders of the former da37s organized their scheme of education, distributed the Confession of Faith, distributed monthly the tracts on the church history and life and personal experience, and thus they built into the life, injected into the very blood of this church, the essential, vital, crowning elements of true spirituality and church suc- cess. Another characteristic was its hospitality. Its doors were open constantly for union gatherings in religious, benevolent, and civic interests. It was in frequent use by the Washington Orphan Asylum and similar socie- ties for their early anniversaries. It was the scene of many public and historic occasions in those days, notably the farewell given to General Lafayette on the occasion of his last visit to this country, when John Quincy Adams, then President of the United States, delivered the address which has since become classic. Later, when the Foundry Methodist Episcopal church was being repaired, this church building was given for their public worship ; and only two years ago, when, by the exigency of the sale of their property, this same congregation was without a home, this building was offered for their mid-week meetings, and freely used by them for more than a year. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 31 Whilst it is impossible to enumerate the many in- stances of its hospitality that have become historic, it is well, on this occasion, to recall that in this church was held the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (1893), which decided the celebrated Briggs contro- vers}^ the General Council of the Alliance of the Re- formed Churches throughout the world holding the Presbyterian system (1899), and the sessions of the Gen- eral Assembly's Committee upon the Revision of the Confession of Faith (1902). For denominational, interde- nominational, and for non-denominational purposes, for benevolent and social activities, this church has opened its doors, and given rooms and welcome to our fellow- citizens ; and we want to emphasize that to-day, as always, our doors are open and the glad hand and the smiling face and the best place are ready in our wor- ship and fellowship. Another characteristic of the church is its patriotism. It has alwa3's been signifi- cant in its national interests, and in no partisan sense, but in a large and rich way it has stood four square in the questions of right and duty and liberty as expressed in national exigency and life. That was in part pro- duced, in part is expressed, by the unusual attendance of public men upon its services. The church is com- monly called "The Church of Presidents." There have been in frequent attendance such men as Millard Fillmore and other presidents ; but in regular attend- ance we find such names as John Qnincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and before his presidency, Benjamin Harri- son. It is a suggestive side-light upon the church in- terest of such men to find that President Pierce attended public worship twice upon the Sabbath, and that he and Mrs. Pierce entertained the Sabbath-school of this church 32 THH CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. as specially invited guests at the White House. You go down through the line of vice-presidents, cabinet officers, justices of the supreme court, heads of departments, men of conspicuous standing in the army and nav}'^, and it is a magnificent roll of adherents. This church has caught inspiration, doubtless, from that fact; but its patriotism has also been a winning influence as it caught the eye and won the attention of such men. It is also known as the " Lincoln Church." We cherish that great name ; we are proud of the associa- tion ; we retain yonder the Lincoln pew and are proud that it is ours, as we hope that the generation, by our pa- triotism, by our delighted and delightful memory, may cherish and carry into the generation that is to come the name and influence of Abraham Lincoln. I think we will all endorse the words once used by a pastor of this church when he said : " I had rather sit in that pew, if it were made of mud or dirt, than in one of beaten gold ; it will be a Mecca for our Presbyterians, and an influ- ence for patriotism for our children and our children's children." The story of the Lincoln pew is worthy of rec- ord. When this church was re-pewed in 1887-8, the retention of the pew used by President Lincoln was mildly urged, but its dark color brought a quick decision. It would be incongruous and off'ensive in contrast with the new oak pews. A patriotic insistence from a feminine source installed it in one of the Sabbath-school rooms, where it remained for years. Elder Charles B. Bailey presented the resolution to the annual meeting of the church (1893) transferring the pew to the church room, which was adopted ; but only after considerable delay it was transferred, and finally indicated as the pastor's pew. The present silver plate bearing the appropriate name and dates was another feminine suggestion and persist- ence, and was placed on the pew through the generosity Thk F Street Presbyterian Church, Later Willard Hall. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 33 of Mr. Charles B. Pearson. We recognize that patriot- ism is a Christian duty. We remember that the best Jew- was the one who best loved Jerusalem. We seek to cast into our fountains of influence the salt of Christian patriotism ; our prayers, our songs, our words, our ser- vices, are for the state, for liberty, for civic righteous- ness, for national life and conquest. Another characteristic of the church has been its service. It has been distincjuished for the unusual ex- cellence, the beauty, heartiness, and grace of its wor- ship. But through and from that worship it carries to the community its willing and large service. Figures are hard to get at, especially the early figures. But I find that there have been added to the communion roll over three thousand persons, a Sabbath-school mem- bership to-day of eight hundred and thirty-seven schol- ars, a roll to-day of twelve hundred and twenty-seven communicants, exclusive of a reserved roll of one hun- dred and twent^^-five. The money raised is very nearly nine hundred thousand dollars — a magnificent record. Whilst this evangelism has characterized our individual church life, our money, thought, and activity have been largely devoted to the development of denominational interests in this capital. This church has been directly or indirectly concerned in nearly all of our Presb3'terian Church growth. In 1828 difficulties arose in the Second Church concerning the election of a pastor, which resulted in the formation of 'the Central Presbyterian Society, which afterwards was brganized under the name of the Fourth Presbyte- rian Church. In 1853 the Seventh Street, now the Westn^j/iister Church, owed its existence to the mission- ary efforts of this church, giving workers in its begin- ning in Columbia Fire Engine house, the lot for its present site through the generosity of Mr. Charles 34 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. Stott, an elder, and such men to its eldership as Dr. S. A. Edwards, U. S. A., Mr. William Ballantyne, and Mr. S. R. Handy. When, in 1S63, the present Metropolitan Presbyterian Church was started on Cap- itol Hill, several of our members were actively inter- ested in it, one of them, Mr. Joseph Hutchinson, being for some time the superintendent of the Sabbath-school. In 1865, during Dr. Gurley's pastorate, the young men's meeting, led by a committee, among whom were such men as Gov. A. R. Shephard, Gen. E. C. Carrington, and U. L. Waller, organized in the northern part of the city the North Church, which began its career under the wise pastorate of Rev. Louis R. Fox. About 1872 a mission school was established northeast of the last-named church, which subsequently became the Gurley Memorial Church. In 1874, under the pastorate of Dr. Mitchell, Bethany chapel was built and equipped. In 1885 fifty-two persons were granted letters to form the Church of the Covenant. In 1889 one hundred and nineteen members were dismissed, to organize the Gurley Memorial Church. In 1890 Faith Mission chapel was built and equipped for its large work. The last three movements were under the pastorate of Dr. Bartlett. In 1890, during the present pastorate, an- other large accession was dismissed to the Church of the Covenant, and also another group, who became the organizers and supporters of the Washington Heights Church. This church has also trained many who have risen to consecrated and distinguished service in the Church of Christ, among whom we give special mention of Rev. E. R. Craven, D. D., LL. D., secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Publication ; Rev. W. H. Rob- erts, D. D., LL. D., stated clerk of the General Assem- bly of the Presbyterian Church in the United Slates THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 35 of America; Rev. Charles B. Ramsdell, D. D., pastor of the North Presbyterian Church of this city ; and Rev. W. F. Doty, of Tahiti. These are our characteristics — church loyalty, patri- otism, hospitality, service. Use the gift that comes in the history and experience of this hour, to-day. Won- drous memories cluster — rich, fragrant memories. Congratulations, joy, song, but doubtless many a tear. The fathers, where are they? The man of longest continuous membership in this church is Mr. Joseph A. Deeble, with us to-day, rejoicing in the memories and triumphs of this centennial. The fathers unseen abide in the word they spake, in the grace they lived, in the contribution they gave, and in the influence that mem- ory preserves. «' The ones we loved, They worshipped here — we see their steps ; The years have not erased the prints Of the dear feet — the sunlight glints Along the pathway, where they trod Well sandaled with the peace of God." Our faith is in loyalty to that same church ; in the grace of that same hospitality; in the glow of that same patriotism ; in the sacrifice of that same service that will, to the generations following, declare that their God is our God, and this God will be their God, and crown with grace and glory. At the close of the sermon the congregation arose and sang the three hundredth hymn, as follows : I love Thy kingdom, Lord, The house of Thine abode, The church our blest Redeemer saved With His own precious blood. 36 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. I love Thy church, O God, Her walls before Thee stand, Dear as the apple of Thine eye, And graven on Thine hand. For her my tears shall fall ; For her my prayers ascend ; To her my cares and toils be given. Till toils and cares shall end. Sure as Thy truth shall last. To Zion shall be given The brightest glories earth can yield. And brighter bliss of heaven. The benediction was pronounced by Rev. John L. French, of the presbytery of Washington City. CENTENNIAL SABBATH. An Evening of Reminiscence. at seven forty-five in the evening. The worship began with the rendition by the choir of Spohr's " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters." The Scripture lesson, being the eighty-fourth psalm, was read by the pastor. The one hundredth hymn to the tune of Old Hundred was sung as follows : All people that on earth do dwell, Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice ; Him serve with mirth, His praise forth tell. Come ye before Him and rejoice. The Lord ye know is God indeed ; Without our aid He did us make ; We are His flock. He doth us feed. And for His sheep He doth us take. Oh, enter then His gates with praise. Approach with joy His courts unto ; Praise, laud, and bless His name always. For it is seemly so to do. For why? the Lord our God is good. His mercy is forever sure ; His truth at all times firmly stood. And shall from age to age endure. The prayer was made by Rev. T. S. Hamlin, D. D., pastor of the Church of the Covenant. From this point in the service the hymns were lined out, the organ was not used, and the musical accom- paniment was by flute, violin, and violoncello, this 38 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. arrangement of the musical part of the service being adopted as a reminiscence of the old-time methods. The six hundred and eighty-fourth hymn was sung to the tune of St. Martin's. Let children hear the mighty deeds Which God performed of old ; Which in our younger years we saw, And which our fathers told. He bids us make His glories known, His works of power and grace ; And we'll convey His wonders down Through every rising race. Our lips shall tell them to our sons, And they again to theirs, That generations yet unborn May teach them to their heirs. During the offertory the choir sang Billings's "Christ the Lord is risen indeed," an anthem of the early days. Then followed — SUGGESTIVE INCIDENTS BY WALTER CLEPHANE, ESQ. In his discourse this morning our pastor referred to the deplorable conditions prevailing in the District of Columbia at the opening of the century. In a letter written about that period, Gouverneur Morris said that nothing was wanting to make the city perfect " but houses, cellars, kitchens, well-informed men and ami- able women, and other trifles of that kind." The scar- city of churches seems not to have troubled him over- much ; and indeed there was a scarcity of churches in those days. But our predecessors of this church were early upon the ground. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 39 A handful of Presbyterians formerly connected with the Associate Reformed Church at Philadelphia, who worshipped for a while in a small building back of Wil- lard's hotel, in the month of May, 1803, with the sanc- tion of the presbytery at Philadelphia, organized them- selves into the F Street Church, calling for their first pastor Rev. James Laurie. Dr. Laurie was a Scotch- man, educated at the Edinburgh University, a classmate of Lord Brougham. His first wife was a cousin of Sir Walter Scott. So that talent of no mean order was thus placed at the service of this congregation. The church over which Dr. Laurie was called to pre- side was then holding its services in the hall of the old Treasury building, where in the winter Dr. Laurie would himself start the wood fire. The luxury of a sexton was unknown. During the services one of the officers of the church would place additional logs in the stove, and sometimes the roar of the burning wood almost kept the preacher's voice from being heard. James Laurie was a Scotch Covenanter, and a great stickler for good old Presbyterian orthodoxy. It is said that on one Sabbath, when there happened to be an eclipse of the sun, he refused to permit the members of his household to observe it. We can readily understand how a man of such stern religious caliber could conduct the daily sunrise prayer-meeting, to which Dr. Radcliff'e alluded this morning, and strange to say it is said to have been well attended. Possibly his popularity is due in some degree to the fact that he never but once took a written sermon into the pulpit with him, an example which has been worthily followed by most of his successors. He liked the simple story of the cross, told in the plainest way, and advised all young preach- ers to enter the pulpit without notes, saying : "Just tell 40 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. the old, old story in your own way, only be sure you tell it." His pastorale extended over a period of more than fifty years. While the F Street Church was growing, slowly to be sure, but nevertheless steadily, under his ministra- tions, the Second Presbyterian Church of Washington was struggling along. Many of its members were negroes ; and the same thing might also be said of the F Street Church. Its first regular pastor was Dr. Dan- iel Baker, a man of considerable note in ecclesiastical circles, and one for whom Mr. Moody expressed the greatest admiration. His tombstone bears this simple inscription : " Daniel Baker, preacher of the gospel, a sinner saved by grace." During the incumbency of Dr. Baker, John Quincy Adams was a regular attend- ant upon the church, and one of its trustees, giving lib- erally for its support. He occupied a pew against the north wall of the old building which preceded this one. President Jackson also attended this church during the succeeding ministry of Dr. John M. Campbell. Indeed, it is said that most of Jackson's cabinet also worshipped here until the church was almost disrupted, as was the cabinet itself, by reason of the fact that Mrs. Eaton, wife of the secretary of war, more familiarly known as Peggy O'Neal, constantly attended its ser- vices. Many of the members and adherents threatened to leave unless she did. General Jackson upheld her in her course of conduct, and brought upon himself the very stormy interview with Dr. Campbell, which was referred to by our pastor, in which the clergyman told the president in very plain language what he thought of him. The dialogue ended disastrously, for by that time many of the members of the church had ceased their attendance; the presence of Mrs. O'Neal was ren- dered impossible ; President Jackson was so angry that THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 41 he also withdrew ; and the pastor was left without a congregation, and found it expedient to resign, himself, which he did shortly after. From this time on, the church dwindled and was fre- quently closed ; dust settled on the pews and pulpit, and the edifice itself seemed doomed to ruin. Then the Rev. Mr. Eckard arrived on the scene and was placed in charge. The first Sabbath that the church was opened after this season of depression, one gentle- man accompanied him to the church. After waiting for some time for others, they closed the doors and went home. On the evening of the same day they returned. Thirty-four persons gathered for evening worship. Thirty of those persons had come from other churches by request, to at least give the appearance of a congre- gation and lend encouragement to Mr. Eckard. There- after the church progressed with varying vicissitudes of fortune, until its members united with the F Street Church in 1859, when the name of the latter organiza- tion was changed to the New York Avenue Presbyte- rian Church. In those early days the Bench of Elders earned its title. We find recorded at almost every meeting of the session, particularly of the old Second Church, a trial of some member who had not lived up to his vows. Suspensions and excommunications for intemperance, profane swearing, slander, even for the non-payment of debts, were frequent. Indeed we are almost forced to the belief that the elders had little else to do than to enquire into the shortcomings of their neighbors. We read in the minutes of a meeting of the session of the Second Church, held in 1826, that a certain gentleman who had absented himself from public worship for sev- eral months was suspended. Should our session take up such matters in these days, I imagine its numbers 4 42 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. would have to be materially increased, and then the body divided into reliefs for purposes of trial. I men- tion these incidents not merely for the sake of affording amusement, but in order that we may understand the customs of that period. With this object in view, per- haps I will be pardoned if I read to you a few extracts taken verbatim from the minutes of the session of that church. It would make it more interesting if I should read the names of the parties concerned, but reasons of policy forbid. April 1st, 1822. '*It having appeared to the session that Mr has for a considerable length of time been very remiss in his attendance upon the ordinances of this church, on motion Mr. Brumley was directed to call upon Mr. .... and enquire into the reasons of his late remiss- ness. Mr. Brumley was directed to prepare a sessional report to be laid before the presbytery at their next meeting in Baltimore." June 14, 1822. "Mr. Brumley stated that he had called upon Mr. . . . . as he had been directed, and Mr 's replies were of such a nature as to render it inexpedient for session to take any further measures upon the subject, especially as Mr 's attendance upon the ordi- nances of the church has of late been more regular." December 8, 1822. " It being ascertained that Mr , one of the communicants, had attended at the race-ground during the races and retailed spirituous liquors there, Mr. Brum- ley was appointed to cite him to appear before session next Wednesday evening to give his reasons for so doing." THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 43 Mr. Brumley seems to have been selected to exercise the unenviable functions of inquisitor in many of these cases. Next session, " Mr , being present, was requested to state his reasons, etc. He gave his reasons in full, together with the circumstances which led him to attend during the races. The session, after hearing Mr 's statement, took into consideration many palliating cir- cumstances connected with the case, and moreover, being assured by Mr that he was sincerely sorry for what he had done and that he would do so no more, deemed it sufficient that the Moderator should admonish Mr , which was accordingly done." F Street Church, 1826. Mr was accused of intemperance, and inter- posed the following ingenious plea : " He acknowledged that he had occasionally been overcome with drink, but that in every instance in which he was so overcome, as well as he could recollect, it was when in company with those who had deceived him as to the strength of the liquor he had been invited to take." Notwithstanding the obvious merit of this plea, it did not save him and he was suspended. Later on it appears that his friends continued to deceive him, and as he did not part company with them, he was forced to sever his relations with the church. Second Church, 1824. A certain physician applied for admission to the church ; his examination before the session was prayer- fully protracted ; and for som.e time his reception was a matter of doubt. I now read from the minutes : 44 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. "The session being satisfied with regard to Dr. . . . 's piety, be was admitted, but as it was shown to session that Dr. . . . occasionally attended the large parties usually given by the heads of Departments and others high in office in this city, and it being the opinion of session that such places, to say the least of them, are unfavorable to growth in grace, the Moderator was requested to announce to Dr. . . . his admission, and at the same time to state to him the views of the ses- sion, and earnestly and affectionately recommend that for the future he withdraw from such places." Whereupon the following resolution was solemnly spread upon the minutes : "Whereas, large and expensive parties are frequently given in this city, and whereas attendance upon them seems calculated to injure a Christian's growth in grace, and moreover has at least the appearance of too great conformity to the world, therefore resolved, that while session do not consider an occasional attendance upon them a sufficient ground of formal church censure, yet session do not hesitate to declare their disapprobation of them, and do most affectionately and earnestly recom- mend to all communing with our church not to attend such places." Just why an occasional attendance upon these gath- erings should not have been deemed unfavorable to growth in grace to a proportionate extent, is not dis- closed. Possibly in this way our forefathers left a loop- hole so that in case they themselves should ever be so fortunate as to receive invitations to these functions, they might attend without violating the rules of the church, and thus ascertain how far a single "party" would accelerate the Christian upon the downward path. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 45 Strange as it may seem, the subject of church music was one causing considerable irritation over fifty years ago. In these days we cannot understand how a mat- ter of this kind can possibly cause dissensions, but we find a number of references among the minutes of the old F Street Church to this subject, and accompanied by letters of complaint as to the methods in vogue. I note this entry under dale of June 26, 1848 : " On motion it was resolved that the leader of the choir be requested to confine himself in singing, to the air, and when a new tune is to be introduced, it may be practiced either before or after the services so that the congregation may have an opportunity to learn it." Most of the incidents that I have related to you are beyond the personal recollection of the oldest of us. With those events of more modern times, after the building of this liouse of worship, I deem it more fitting that others should speak. I cannot forbear to mention, however, that in 1862, this church, then new, only escaped being seized for use as a hospi- tal, by the personal intervention of President Lincoln, who was then an attendant upon its worship, and who so frequently sat in yonder pew. The congrega- tion, upon assembling for the weekly prayer-meet- ing, found lumber stored against the New York Avenue side of the building. All recognized the significance of this. Mrs. Dr. Gurle3s the pastor's wife, hastened to the White House and had an inter- view with Mr. Lincoln, who at once issued the order which spared the church. Little Willie Lincoln was a member of our Sunday- school and deeply interested in its work. He was very fond of Dr. Gurley, who was present at his death-bed, and expressed the wish to him that the contents of his 46 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. little iron bank be given to the missionary society of the Sunday-school. Not long afterwards Mrs. Lincoln gave Dr. Gurley the money, which the pastor presented to the society at one of its Sunday-afternoon meetings, saying: "Willie Lincoln wanted the missionaries to have his money from his iron bank, so I have brought it to you as he requested, this afternoon. Willie will never come to our meetings again. He has gone to live with God in his beautiful home above. May you all, yes, every one of you, meet him there." And now for a few moments, permit me to draw aside the veil and take you with me into a little room towards which at the dead of night the hearts of a nation are straining. Upon the bed lies the tall form of him who so often sat in that pew in the centre aisle. Around him stands a little group composed of a grief-stricken family and a few men conspicuous in the life of the nation. By the bed-side is seated a Christian minister. The end has come. All that was mortal of Abraham Lincoln has departed for the great beyond. After a silence pregnant with grief. Secretary Stanton turns to the clergyman, and in a broken voice says, " Doctor, won't you say something ?" Then Dr. Gurley, after struggling for the mastery of his feelings, says : " Let us talk with God," and pours forth a prayer eloquent in its simplicity, but full of solace to the bereaved ones around him. And so the spirit of Abraham Lincoln is borne upwards to its eternal resting-place upon the wings of a prayer uttered by the lips of the pastor he loved so well. Our predecessors have passed away. Their religion was identical with ours, but its outward expression was in many ways different. What they believed was wrong we now regard with indifference. But dare we say that they were absolutely wrong and we are abso THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 47 lutely right ? Probably even the boldest of us would hesitate before saying this. Had it not been for their sturdy faith and strict doctrines, it may be that we should to-day be wandering in the darkness of uncer- tainty and skepticism. " With us is left the sacred charge To hold in memory dear All that their lives so truly taught, Of faith and holy fear." Then an address was delivered by Rev. William Alvin Bartlett, D. D., pastor of this church for twelve and a half years, from 1882 to 1894, upon — SOME PASTORAL REMINISCENCES. There is something august and stupendous about a century. The word itself is so ample, its forces are so world-compelling. When I say that I was graduated from college more than half a century ago, and that I have lived two thirds of these hundred years, I feel related to the aeons and the ages. While a century is but a tick in the clock of destiny, it is still long enough probation for a judgment day ; long enough to test principles, theories, experiments, and observe their trend, and all thinkers are summing it up. It has been a century of upheaval and start- ling changes. We have quarreled with the stars for their secrets, and battled with the earth for its myster- ies. No line of thought, religious, governmental, or scientific, but has been radicated and readjusted. We have excelled the fish in swimming ; we are on the eve of surpassing the bird in flight. Religion has been proved, called in from irrelevancies to essentials. Rev- erent scholarship has sifted the Bible, to separate history 48 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. from Eastern legend, discriminating the voice of God from the jargon of oriental jugglers and thaumatur- gists, to recognize sunlight from swamplight, till we know that neither growth in grace nor human progress depend upon somnambulism and spooks. One hundred years ago that great patriot and states- man, who, after the substance of the Declaration of Independence was agreed upon by the committee, cast its verbal form — the admiration of the world, and which has placed a laurel wreath of immortality on his brow — President Jefferson, smitten with Voltaire's leprosy of unbelief, though a hero of liberty, has had a sporadic piebald progeny of agnostic followers at best. Infidelity is death, not life. It is a stone, not a seed. It has no inoculating power. Twelve negations are a coroner's jury sitting on the remains of the thirteenth negation, the dead burying the dead. The Christian belief of every president since, down to Theodore Roosevelt, and not Jefferson's cavil, explains the past, controls the present, and challenges the future. Reli- gion emerges from the century, purged, purified, broad- ened, humanized, and with a practical, near God. The- ories of government come out of the furnace, with the republican form pre-eminent. Republics — the people sovereign. A limited monarchy, the attempted wed- ding of the king and the people, grows weaker and weaker as a competitor. The opera bouffe kingdom of Lebaudy, the Frenchman, on the uninhabitable, trop- ical sand dunes of Africa, ridicules monarchy, and laughs it out of serious competition. While it has been a century ripped up by wars infer- nal, it has also enjoyed peace and forecast of the broth- erhood of man almost celestial. Radical ! Not how God works, but is there a God? Not is the law of gravitation universal, but is there a law of gravitation? THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 49 The size of the globe for occupancy has been doubled the last hundred years. We have counted and graded the human famil}', and Providence by a " coup de dieu " has placed us in the Philippines, the open door of the Orient, to educate the largest and most important mass of undigested humanity. We are there with a few muskets to terrify, but with an unseen army of in- telligence and character to conquer. We are there with the all-conquering form of government and the all-con- quering religion. We stand at the finish of this century, opulent in achieved results, with this modern intellectual and relig- ious human force fervid to wrest the next progress from things and thoughts, and hurl humanity into the future, with something swifter than electricity and more luminous. What I wish to say is, that this New York Avenue Presbyterian Church has been contemporaneous with this writhing century. It was born in the year of the Louisiana purchase. It lives in the year of the ocean- bound republic. It has touched with its prayer and praise, with its holy men and women, everything that has ever occurred in this District of Columbia ; the march of the nation's laws improving for a hundred years, the decisions of that great unblemished court, the signatures of the executive, the stress and strain of mental conflict — all have been touched and shot through by the influences from this church. Its character is seen in the result, the undetachable odor, the unac- countable light, modifying and bettering. Its warp has sought the woof by the swift flying shuttle of events until it is a parcel of the fabric, giving tint and pattern to it all. A church so placed in this strategic city of Washington swings a searchlight around the horizon of the nation. 50 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. Washington is a queer, anomalous place. When Major I'Enfant, with Washington's surveyor's scrutiny, threw down his map upon the quivering swamps and hillocks, where mosquitoes fattened on a diet of malarial and typhoid fever, and, surcharged with venom, respected neither the courtesy of the senate nor the etiquette of diplomacy, but inocculated pauper and president alike, and after a due period of incubation, they were either dead or immune ; and when the wisdom of congress gave it its unaccountable relation to the body-politic, no one could have forecast its present sanitary condition nor its success as a city. Russia in the midst of her tyranny has the democratic Mir, a pathetic protest against czarship, a plea for liberty. Washington is an absolute tyranny in the midst of a great republic, an eloquent testimony to the fascinations of monarchy. The democratic Mir does not govern its community more successfully than the monarchical Washington rules its consenting and willing citizens. There are no happier serfs than the citizens of Washington, rejoicing in the privilege of taxation with- out representation. We hear no Patrick Henry crying " Give me liberty or give me death ! " No wise politician ever approaches them with the sinews of war for legiti- mate election expenses, for happily they have no vote to sell. Nor are they beleaguered by hosts of unproduc- tive females, with strident voice and frantic gesture, to turn the useless cradle into a ballot-box in this model American city. Luckily women and men are both alike disfranchised. It remained for this church to train a boy for com- missioner of the District who has occupied and ampli- fied the office as never before. Anomalous as well in its majestic architecture, not exactly according to any of the old patterns, THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 51 neither orthodox, Greek nor Gothic, but altogether adjusted and adapted to the free purposes and liberal forces for which this nation stands. What nation has a Capitol more fit, more vast, more dignified, more majestic in its dome-crowned mag- nificence? Symbol of the states federated into one unique nationality ! What a peerless city will this be when all departments of the government are fittingly housed in white marble, when all the projected parks and avenues fling out their dainty foliage, when tri- umphal arches, and memorial bridges, and living bronze amplify the story of our patriotism ! This is Liberty city. This is Freedom's capital. Ah ! Washington the superb — not Washington's federal city, but the city of Washington with his name written high that any eye can read at a glance the quality of the man who fath- ered this nation, and the quality of this nation, his off- spring. All of this to account for this church, its marvelous opportunity, its tremendous, unspeakable power. No force could unstrand its benignity from the high ideals of the American people. These are precisely the things we prize and that we are here to emphasize. This is the quality in the tree that makes leaves and fruit. This is the quality in the man that begets the fruits of the spirit. It is the invisible pervasive some- thing that swings and vitalizes and harmonizes this ma- jestic universe of live things. With the best results of science well in hand, dynamics, chemics, and elemen- tary laws of the universe and mind, we will soon control nature by touching a button, and mental and moral phe- nomena by an act of will. So I say I prize most, not the statistical record of my ministry here, but its inner spiritual power. The twelve years and six months that I was pastor of this church is 52 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. the longest occupancy, excepting that of the noble, gifted, and self-sacrificing Dr. Gurley» the organizer of this present church and builder of this edifice. I was here one eighth of a century, three presidential terms, two seinatorial. Life is not measured by time, but quality. The most important feature of this church is not its age — it could not help it — but it is its useful- ness. It is said that men boast of their age when they have nothing else to boast of. These twelve and a half years may be looked at in three ways. First, the exterior work of the church ; second, the church's relations to the city in its charity and humane efforts ; and, third, its spiritual life. Straitened for room and pressed by demands for Presbyterian expansion, we released with our blessing and contribution many influential families of Christian workers to organize the important and successful Church of the Covenant. It was a curious fact, noted by the trustees at the time, that the pews vacated for this exodus were all taken before the next Sabbath. Again, Gurley Mission, by its varied success and position, appealed to our judgment as ready to pass from mission success to an organized church. We enlarged the building ; we granted letters to one hundred and twenty-three, if I remember aright, of our efficient officers and wisest workers to meet this grand emergency. It followed speedily, from the hunger of this church for practical work, the organization of Faith Chapel, housed in a commodious brick building. Then, also, we furbished up the ever-faithful Bethany. After these subtractions from the membership, the five hundred and more enrolled communicants at the beginning of my ministry were swelled to the vicinity of one thousand two hundred at its finish. In God's plan, opportunity waits upon wise endeavor. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 53 This was the fecund period of the church's history, its prolific era, the mother church to many, the mother of churches as well. I have always counted it a privi- lege to have followed in this pastorate two men so gifted, so strong, so successful as Drs. Mitchell and Paxton. When the church was thoroughly repaired at an expense of over eighteen thousand dollars, the Lincoln pew was discarded with the others. We speedily discovered the mistake ; restored it to its best condition without changing its form, and later it was embellished with that legend which is placed upon the silver label to preserve a historic record and erect a shrine. 1 am informed that never in all its history was the church more numerous, more prosperous, or more influ- ential than under the guidance of its present pastor. The relations of this church to the city were intimate and direct ; its fraternal fellowship with all denomina- tions marked and vital. The Presbyterian Alliance, founded about this time, engaged the interest of the church by electing its pastor first president. When Bishop Paret removed from the city, a vacancy was left in the presidency of the board of directors at Columbia Hospital. The pastor of this church was chosen to fill it. As president of the Associated Charities, as the only clergyman a member of the Literary Society, as trustee of Howard University, one of the directors of the Humane Society, he served, putting the church in direct communication with the highest moral and educa- tional and humane interests of the city. A fairly dis- agreeable, though profitable, labor were my tramps to cabinet officers and their subordinates, to save the ser- vices to the government of some one marked for execu- 54 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. tion, and the salary to his family. On one occasion the commissioners of the District appointed the pastor of this church to make a personal and impartial examina- tion of all the institutions in the District of Columbia which received money from the government. This was faithfully done, and the report published in pam- phlet and on file. While pastor of this church I served as a member of the board of directors of the " House of the Good Shepherd" on the hill back of George- town. Possibly the only Protestant minister holding an official position in a Roman Catholic charity in Chris- tendom. An historic general assembly crowded this church for the Briggs trial. All the shining lights of Presby- terianism, with positive opinions, were in conflict, a heroic battle, conducted with Christian courtesy, and decided by the will of the majority. The pastor of this church was chairman of the committee of arrange- ments, as is customary, and so managed the large finances that after paying all expenses, about fifty per cent, of the contributions were returned to the various churches of the District. Now I say that this expansion and amplification of the church, these evidences of its wider usefulness in this great city, are not the things that I prize the most. I count them not the jewels of my pastorate. They are second to, though an evidence of, the unbroken spiritual communion of the membership ; they are second to the movement of new converts to the table of the Lord ; second to the sending of men converted, home to their constituents to live the divine life and organize churches ; second to the long and quiet years of relig- ious enjoyment, when, as one united and happy family, we trained our children in the Sunday-school and THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 55 walked in the green pastures and beside the still waters and refreshed our souls. Oh, blessed fellowship of the saints ! What visions of those who have sat on these seats, and who now walk in white ! "Ah! blessed vision, blood of God! The spirit beats its mortal bars, As down dark tides the glory slides. And star-like, mingles with the stars." In Oak Hill repose the remains of our infant son, my namesake, where we placed our asterisk for the white city of God. Here, also, was the childhood of our living son. So Washington is hallowed not only as containing the church of my final service, the church of exceeding and lasting affection, but as well, conse- crated to holy family memories. May I mention a few of those holding distinguished positions that worshipped here? The judges of that model supreme court. Strong, Bradley, and Harlan, a choice representative, and of the other important courts in the District, Andrew Bradley, McArthur, and Weldon ; four secretaries of state, Blaine, Frelinghuy- sen, Gresham, and John W. Foster, the only survivor; Senators Frye and Elkins, Faulkner and Gorman, Mc- Millan and Brice, Burroughs and Farwell ; and mem- bers of the cabinet, Robert Lincoln, Wilson, Folsom, Vilas, Miller, and Hoke Smith. The army and navy were well represented in Generals Dunn and Drum, Greely and Breckenridge, while for the navy stands that scholarly and modest Christian gentleman. Admiral Sampson, with Wadhams, Brownson, and others. We mention these as indicating the quality of mind to which this church has always ministered, from the days of Andrew Jackson ; but the ones who have ministered 56 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. to the spiritual life of the church most, and enriched the experience of its pastor, have heen the quiet, faithful saints, out of the glare of public position, many on sick beds, many enduring painful suffering and trial. If the displacing of a drop of water stirs the entire ocean ; if the beating of the air is registered in the outermost limits of the atmosphere, — then I say we can- not gather up the potency of an undying thought for good, of a simple service for Christ. This church has stood like a Leyden jar surcharged, shooting its blessedness into the nation. Along all the hilltops of vision the prophets tell of the coming day. The best thing Elijah the Third, in his raid and tirade in New York, said, was that he thought the devil was getting lazy, and there are those who see in this undis- puted progress of the race toward justice and righteous- ness, toward brotherhood and Christ, who believe that in the long swinging eternity the good God will tire out the bad devil. It is a moral absurdity to imagine, even by any theological indirection, that God would or could create a devil stronger than himself. God planted the seed of this universe, and he will harvest the crop. So, beloved, I come with a message of cheer and hope ; this race is in struggle, trembling up the heights and about to shudder into the radiant mantle of the everlasting morning. We bring you no baptism of tears, but a benediction of victory and Divine approval. When it is all over, as it will be soon, my fervent prayer is that each one of us, members of this house- hold of faith, may receive a welcome, an approval, and a home. The five hundred and twenty-second hymn was then sung to the tune of Balerma. James Laurie, D. D. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 57 The Lord's my Shepherd, I '11 not want ; He makes me down to lie In pastures green ; He leadeth me The quiet waters by. My soul He doth restore again ; And me to walk doth make Within the paths of righteousness, , , E'en for His own name's sake. Yea, though I walk through death's dark vale. Yet will I fear none ill ; For Thou art with me ; and Thy rod And staff me comfort still. My table Thou hast furnished In presence of my foes ; My head Thou dost with oil anoint. And my cup overflows. Then followed an address upon — THE NATIONAL IMPRESS OF THIS CHURCH. By Gen. Henry V. Boynton. " Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?" Thus, Job, in his wonderful poem, looking up to the heavens from the plains of Asia, in the days of the early patriarchs, gave voice to those emotions of wonder and reverence with which all the tribes of men look out upon the heavens. Wherever this great song of the Bible has become known through its countless translations, millions upon millions of the race, gazing upon the arch of stars, blazing with its firmaments of worlds and spanning the universe, have received into their souls the inspiration, the reverence and the spirit of worship which filled the 58 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. mind of Job when he gazed upon the Pleiades and pro- claimed their sweet and solemn influences to the suc- ceeding ages. And thus David, the singer of Israel, celebrating these same heavens in his immortal song : " There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." This church of ours has its Pleiades — its constellation of holy men — who, ministering at this altar from the early days of the Republic, have caused the sweet influ- ences of our religion to descend in blessing for a hun- dred years, upon men of might in all ranks of the nation's history, and upon a great multitude of lowly Christian workers who, through the years, by them- selves or their successors, have continually made glad the humble homes of the capital. Think for a moment of the men of national and inter- national aff'airs, who, during its early days, or in the fulness of its years, have attended its services. But before passing to them, let me name an army of silent workers, who, to my mind, for giving this church one element of widespread influence take rank above presidents, cabinets, legislators, and judges — our Chris- tian mothers of a hundred years, who, sowing the good seed with precious prayers, and watering it with their tears, have sent the sweet and never-forgotten influ- ences of their pure religion from a mother's knee, keeping pace with the wandering feet of manhood, into every corner of the land and across all seas. This may seem a digression where the theme assigned is the New York Avenue Church in the national life, but that trite saying is a true one, " The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 59 What may be called the presidential record of this church is notable. For the statistics to follow I am largely indebted to Mrs. J. O. Adams, the efficient chairman of the Church Committee on Historical Re- search. President John Quincy Adams was a regular attend- ant, and a trustee during his administration. He was present in all weathers. At one time he gave his check for twelve hundred dollars to meet church emergencies. At another, he advanced the same amount to assist the pastor in purchasing a home, and, later, when the pastor desired to sell, bought the house at its increased value. His secretary of the treasury and secretary of the navy attended. His life in this church is fittingly described in the closing words of the inscription on his tomb at Quincy, Mass.: "This Christian sought to walk humbly in the sight of God." Following Jackson's second term Martin Van Buren sometimes visited this church, and H[arrison, who suc- ceeded him, with his secretary of the treasury, Hon. Thomas Ewing, were attendants. President Polk was a member of the congregation. President Pierce was regular both at morning and even- ing services, and was often at the weekly meetings. He held that every public man should set an example of reverencing religion. President Buchanan was a member of this congre- gation. Mr. Lincoln was a personal friend of Dr. Gurley, and a regular attendant upon his ministry. The pew he occupied is still retained. After him Andrew Johnson was occasionally present. Of vice-presidents who have been of our congre- gation, these will occur to all : Colfax, Wheeler, Hen- dricks, StevcHson, and acting Vice-President Frye. 60 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. Of the legislative branch of the government, Sena- tors McMillan, Burrows, Gordon, Benjamin Harrison, Faulkner, Gorman, Proctor, Elkins, and Alger were of the congregation — the latter two, secretaries of war, and the last the very right arm of President McKinley throughout the war with Spain. Of other cabinet officers there were Postmaster Generals Wickliffe in 1841, Collamer in 1849, Bissell in 1885. John C. Calhoun, as secretary of war, next vice-president, and afterwards secretary of state, worshipped here, as did Attorney- General William Wirt in the term of John Quincy Adams, Secretary of the Navy Dobbin in 1853, and of recent years Secretary of State John W. Foster, Sec- retary Noble, and Secretary Hoke Smith of the Interior department, Attorney-General Griggs and Secretary of Agriculture, Wilson. Of speakers of the house of representatives many will remember Mr. Pennington, and all will recall Mr. Blaine and Mr. Colfax. Of the judiciar}?-, the attendants have been Justice Grier, Justice Campbell, Justice Bradley, Justice Strong who was long an officer of the church, and Justice Har- lan, now an officer and one of our leaders. This our national court of last resort, except when war is invoked to legislate, has ever been a Christian court, and, as we all remember with thanksgiving, Justice Brewer gave that notable opinion from which there was no dissent in the court, that ours is a Christian country. Chief Justice Cartter and Justice McArthur of the supreme court of the District, and Chief Justice Drake and Justice Joseph Casey, of the court of claims, were regular attendants and very active in church affairs, Justice Casey being for a long time a leading officer of the church. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 61 Justice Cartter, though an unbeliever in many of the doctrines of the church, was one of those most regular in his attendance, once giving me as the reason, that he considered it an obligation resting upon every public man to show his respect for religion by his presence at church ordinances, since the only sure and lasting foundation for any nation must rest on the general prin- ciples of the Christian religion. Of the military arm of the government, the rolls show Gen. R. B. Marcy, inspector-general, and his son-in-law, General McClellan, Gen. Silas Casey, of high rank. Admiral Foote, a devoted Christian of most noteworthy war service, and recently General Breckin- ridge, inspector-general, and a general officer in the field through the war with Spain, Paymaster-General Stewart of the navy, Paymaster-General Larned of the army, Judge-Advocate General Dunn, Judge-Advocate General Davis, Admiral Dahlgren, General Lawton, and Admiral Sampson. Of distinguished citizens a great company : Commis- sioner Macfarland, Commissioner Ross, Dr. Peter Parker, Jacob Gideon, George S. Gideon, Professor Henry, Gov. A. R. Shepherd, Governor Wells, Professor Newcomb, Jeremiah M. Wilson, Commissioner of Education Dr. W. T. Harris, J. Ormond Wilson, long superintendent of schools, Mr. A. T. Stuart, now our able and distinguished superintendent of schools, E. M. Gallaudet, Gen. Hiram Walbridge, Gen. B. H. Bristow, solicitor-general and afterwards secretary of the treasury, Solicitor-General Phillips, Senator Mitchell of Oregon, and a host of others of this general class. Of distinguished women there were from the White House: Mrs. John Quincy Adams, Mrs. Harriet Lane 62 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. Johnston, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Cleveland. Lady Franklin attended, and nearly all the ladies from the families of the cabinet officers already named. While we look back with reverence to those early presidents who gave their influence to building up this church, let us not fail to note and do honor to a presi- dent of this our day, who is not only a regular attendant upon Christian services, but a frequent participator in them, and a constant advocate of clean living, of high ideals, of a citizenship which fears God and labors for the best interests of the state and of humanity. An able soldier, of intense patriotism, and purest courage on the field of battle, intellectually endowed, and guided by Christian principles, is such a president as all Ameri- cans may delight to honor. And the influence exerted for good through weekly announcements of the press to the reading millions of our land, that he attends the ser- vices of his church and partakes of its communion, will be cited in some future centennial long after we have finished our labors, as we now point to the work of those presidents of the elder day to whom we do proper hom- age to-night. " And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of our Gedeons and Baraks and Samsons and Jephthaes ; of our Davids also, and Samuels, and of our prophets — " After such recital it is superfluous to ask if the New York Avenue Church has exerted influence in national aff'airs. The question is. How shall we measure it? By what mental system of weights and measures can it be so stated that the human mind can compass it? As we have seen, to name those who have listened to its teachings is to call a roll of presidents, cabinets, judges, statesmen, soldiers, and civilians — all of the highest rank, reaching back in an unending column to the early THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 63 days of the nation. Who shall tell what important pol- icies of peace or war have been adopted or modified because of the Christian teachings from this pulpit ; what laws have been enacted or influenced in the inter- est of our common humanity ; what decisions of up- right judges have blessed the land ; what the leaven of righteousness working through the citizens of might and the humbler Christians, who have crowded these courts for a hundred years, has accomplished in strengthening and ennobling the life of the republic? These and their sweet influences are all beyond hu- man means of measurement. " Their lines have gone out into all the world, and their words to the ends of the earth." Sweet, solemn, and exultant has been the march to and through all these fields of Christian effort and tri- umph. Not those alone whose names have been writ- ten on the rolls of the church have profited by its teach- ings ; but a vast company, greater perhaps than those which the church can number as its own, have doubt- less been held by the precepts here proclaimed to that high morality which ever3'where characterizes the dom- inating mass of American citizenship. This advance of the New York Avenue Church has been a wonderful march through the century, always to the grand music of the church triumphant, mingled with the glad sounds of wedding bells, softened with the baptismal chant, and saddened with funeral dirges as successive generations were laid to rest. Its light brightened from the faint gleams of its early days till its beams became like those of a city set on a hill, shining far and wide over our own land, reaching all fields of missionary labor, telling everywhere of that Light which illumines the world. 64 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. The first three verses of the three hundred and nine- ty-fifth hymn to the tune of Lenox was then sung. Blow ye the trumpet, blow, The gladly solemn sound ; Let all the nations know, To earth's remotest bound, The year of Jubilee has come ; Return, ye ransomed sinners, home. Jesus, our Great High Priest, Hath full atonement made ; Ye weary spirits, rest, Ye mournful souls, be glad. The year of Jubilee has come ; Return, ye ransomed sinners, home. Extol the Lamb of God, The all-atoning Lamb ; Redemption in His blood Throughout the world proclaim. The year of Jubilee has come ; Return, ye ransomed sinners, home. The benediction was pronounced by Rev. Dr. Bart- lett. Rev. Ninian Banantyne. MONDAY AT SEVEN FORTY-FIVE IN THE EVENING. Mr. Justice Harlan of the supreme court of the Uni- ted States presided. After an organ prelude he said : Ladies and Gentlemen : I congratulate you upon the auspicious character of this occasion. Although this is not strictly a religious meeting, it is a meeting in commemoration of the labors of a religious organization during a whole century. It is, therefore, most appropriate that the exercises be preceded by singing and prayer. Please rise and join in singing what has been often called the battle hymn of the Christian Church, " Onward, Christian Soldiers," — the three hundred and seventieth hymn. 1 Onward, Christian soldiers, Marching as to war. With the cross of Jesus Going on before ! Christ, the Royal Master, Leads against the foe ; Forward into battle, See, His banners go. Onward, Christian soldiers, etc. 2 Like a mighty army Moves the Church of God ; Brothers, we are treading Where the saints have trod ; We are not divided. All one body we, One in hope and doctrine, One in charity. Onward, etc. (36 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 3 Crowns and thrones may perish. Kingdoms rise and wane. But the Church of Jesus Constant will remain ; Gates of hell can never 'Gainst that Church prevail ; We have Christ's own promise, And that cannot fail. Onward, etc. 4 Onward, then, ye people ! Join our happy throng ! Blend with ours your voices In the triumph song ! Glory, laud, and honor. Unto Christ the King ; This through countless ages Men and angels sing. Onward, etc. The Rev. B. F. Bittenger, D. D., stated clerk of the presbytery of Washington City, then led in the follow- ing prayer : O Lord, Thou art our God, and hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the moun- tains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to ever- lasting Thou art God. Especially on this anniversary occasion, appointed to commemorate the organization of this particular church, do we bless Thee for the kindly leadings of Thy Prov- idence, and cherish with grateful remembrance the faith, the zeal and the consecrated lives of those who laid its foundations and erected this sanctuary for the worship of Thy thrice holy name. We bless Thee that, from the beginning of its history, through the inter- vening years to the present time. Thou hast greatl}'' THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 67 prospered it, made it the dwelling-place of Thy pres- ence and power, favored it with the ministrations of faithful pastors who proclaimed the glad tidings of sal- vation through our Lord Jesus Christ, edified Thy peo- ple in their holy faith, and through the transforming power of Thy Holy Spirit brought many into the fel- lowship of the gospel and made them meet to become partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. And now, we beseech Thee that the rich heritage of Thy favor vouchsafed to this church in the past may be the earnest of still greater favor in the future — bless- ing it and making it a blessing to all enjoying its min- istrations. May growing numbers unite in magnifying the divinely appointed ordinances, and may many be born into the kingdom of Thy grace of such as shall be saved. Bless Thy servant its pastor, continue to crown his labors with abundant success, and richly equip him for the duties and responsibilities of his sacred office. We pray also for the President of the United States, and for all associated with him in authority. Give to them that wisdom which cometh from above and is profitable to direct, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honest}'. Now, unto Him that is able to do exceeding abun- dantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the Church of Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world with- out end. Amen. Mr. Justice Harlan then said : Ladies and Gentlemen : Upon an occasion like this, we naturally think of our country and of its history during the past century. We have had many histories of the United States and 68 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. of its governmental operations, but we have had one book that is peculiarly a History of the People of the United States. We have the good fortune to have with us this evening the author of that book. He has fairly earned the title of being the historian of the American people. It is with great pleasure that I present to you Dr. John Bach McMaster, of the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania, who will address us upon — THE AMERICAN OF 1803. Doctor McMaster said : We have assembled this evening to do honor to the memory of the men and women who organized this church a century ago. Any building, any institution, any organization which numbers a hundred years of existence, carries our minds back to the days when our republic was still in its infancy. When the first pastor of this church preached his first sermon to the little gathering that formed the first congregation, there were not in all our land as many inhabitants as now dwell upon the soil of the state of New York or the state of Pennsylvania. Nowhere did our territory touch the gulf of Mexico, nor was our flag anywhere displayed beyond the Mississippi, for Louisiana, though just pur- chased, had not yet been delivered to us, nor indeed to France. Spain still held her grip on the mouth of the Mississippi. The far West, the frontier, was then at our very doors. Ohio, just admitted into the Union, was the only state north of the Ohio river. Detroit was a stockaded out- post of civilization. The Indians by thousands swarmed over the greater part of Indiana Territory, which then comprised all the old Northwest save Ohio. This city, but lately made the seat of Federal government, was a village in the woods. The south wing of the Capitol THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 69 was still unfinished. From the windows of the Palace, as the Republicans delighted to call the White House, the traveler who came to chat with the President, looked out over an expanse of swamp, meadow, and wood, pierced in every direction by the streets of a city of the future. Yet this capital city, magnificent in its plan, but scarcely started, almost destitute of houses and of people, was a true symbol of our country in 1803, and of the faith of our countrymen in the future. Were we to attempt, even in imagination, to go back to that time, see our countrymen in their habits as they lived, visit their cities and listen in their coffee houses to the discussion of the social, industrial, and political issues of the day, think as they thought, feel as they felt, get their point of view, we should be compelled (so great is the change wrought in a hundred years) — we should be compelled to turn memory almost into a blank and blot out recollection of our times and cus- toms. 'Tis easy to call the long roll of inventions, discoveries, improvements, in every art and science, familiar enough to us, but unknown to any man when this church was founded. 'Tis easy enough to say that no man at that time had ever walked down a gas-lighted street, or received a telegram, or spoken through a telephone, or ridden in an elevator; that nobody had ever beheld a twenty-story building nor seen a pane of glass ten feet square ; that the railroad, and the steam- boat, and the steam-printing press, and the trolley, and the ocean steamship, and a thousand sorts of trades, indus- tries, professions, and occupations, which aflTord a liveli- hood to twenty millions of people in 1903, have all come into existence since 1803. But no such statement affords any conception of the mental condition of the American of 1803. At most it enables us to form a rude idea of his social surroundings. These wonderful 70 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. improvements have become so much a part of our daily life that the thoughts we think and the things we do are powerfully influenced by them without our conscious knowledge. What then was the state of mind, the point of view, the intellectual condition of the man who never in his life had, for a single moment, been sub- jected to the influence of one of them ? This cannot be described, cannot even be fairly apprehended. Yet we are what we are, because they were what they were. In any study of passed-away people, what it really con- cerns us to know is, were they aiding or hindering the great march of progress, were they striding forward in the van, cutting the path, sweeping away the hindrances to progress, making the broad highway, or were they far in the rear with their feet merely marking time. My purpose this evening, therefore, is not to attempt the impossible, but to pass in brief review the attitude of the Americans of 1803 towards some of the social, industrial and political issues of his own time, and those in particular which are of the same sort as trouble us. A century ago the men born just after the peace were still in their minority. Control of affairs was in the hands of the generation that fought the Revolution and established the United States. On them rested the solemn responsibility of so founding the new republic that its history might not be that of Greece and Rome retold, of so starting it on its course that, no matter what might happen to other nations of the world in time to come, our form of " government, of the people, by the people, for the people," should never perish from the earth. The great work of these men had been making con- stitutions and founding commonwealths. No sooner had the war for independence fairly opened, no sooner had Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill been THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 71 fought, than the work of replacing the old colonial charters with brand new written constitutions of gov- ernment was begun in eleven of the thirteen rebellious colonies. No sooner had the Declaration of Independ- ence been issued than steps were taken to unite the thirteen in a league by another written instrument which the framers called the Articles of Confederation. When, after fair and full trial, this ill-jointed, crude, misshapen piece of apprentice work fell apart, it was replaced by that masterpiece, our Federal Constitution. When our countrymen in their grand march across a continent were preparing to enter upon the congress lands lately ceded by the states, an instrument of colo- nial government, the great Ordinance of 1787, was framed and a new political organization, the Territory, was created. Thus within the short space of eleven years these men had framed and put in operation fourteen constitu- tions, and by 1803 had created four more. In our study of the American of 1803, we may well begin by asking ourselves what were his ideas of government ? What opinions did he really hold touching the rights of man ? To whom did he give the franchise ? What was his basis of representation ? What powers did he grant, what restraints did he impose on legislatures, govern- ors, the courts ? The destruction of one form of government based on the divine right of kings and the establishment of an- other deriving its authority from the will of the people, brought out, in the first place the assertion of a theory of government, and then the application of this theory to existincr conditions. In theory he believed, that all government of right originates from the people, is founded in compact, and is instituted solely for the good of all ; that all men are 72 THE CENTENNIAL, EXERCISES. born equally free and independent ; that in forming the social compact on which government rests, men give up certain rights and retain others, among which are the inalienable rights of which he cannot divest himself, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; that all governments derive their just pow- ers from the consent of the governed ; and that when a government fails to accomplish the end for which it is established, it is the right of the people to alter, amend, or abolish it. Such being the theory, it would at first thought seem not unreasonable to expect that he should have applied it ; and that the early state constitutions at least would be the embodiment of these great principles. But in fact they were nothing of the sort. In theory, all governments de- rive their just powers from the consent of the governed, yet there were but three states in 1803, Vermont, Ken- tucky and Ohio, where the governed could give their consent. Elsewhere the voter must own a specified number of acres of land, or land worth a certain sum, or have an annual income of so many dollars from a freehold estate, or own personal property worth a par- ticular number of dollars. Virginia limited the fran- chise to such of her citizens as owned twenty-five acres of land properly planted, and with a house thereon at least twelve feet square ; or were possessed of fifty acres of wild land, or of a freehold or estate in one of the towns established by law in colonial days. The New Jersey constitution gave the franchise to all per- sons who owned real estate worth fifty pounds. Con- struing the word " persons " literally, men, women, aliens, and free negroes having the property qualifica- tion voted as late as 1807. In New Hampshire the voter must be a Protestant as well as a taxpayer. Daniel Bakkr, D. D. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 73 These restrictions on the franchise were by no means trivial. They were feh in every state, and deprived thousands of the governed of the right to express that consent from which all governments derive their right powers. In New York, when the property qualifica- tion for voters was removed in 1820, fifty thousand citi- zens gained the right to vote. It was estimated that in Virginia, in 1829, eighty-nine thousand men were de- prived of the right to vote, by property qualifications. When the franchise was limited to owners of land, houses, and personal property of considerable value, it is not surprising that seats in the legislature, on the bench, and in the executive chair were restricted to a still smaller class of people. To be a member of the lower branch of the legislature, a citizen in any one of nine states must be seized of a freehold of from one hundred to five hundred pounds ; to be a member of the upper house, from two hundred pounds to one thousand pounds, or, in the Southern States, of from three hun- dred to five hundred acres. Governors must be pos- sessed of freeholds worth five hundred or one thousand pounds, and in one state of five thousand pounds. Nor was a property qualification always enough. Religious restrictions were often added. Everywhere the largest religious liberty was guaranteed. The citizen might hold any faith, or none. But unless he used this lib- erty in such wise as to be a Protestant in some states, or a Christian in others, he was hopelessly debarred from ever becoming a governor or a legislator. In Maryland, so late as 1830, no Jew could practice law, serve on a jury, sit on a bench, nor hold any office of profit or trust under the state. What was true of the voter and the office-holder was equally true of the system of representation. In no 74 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. state did it rest on population. Throughout New Eng- land members of the upper house were chosen in dis- tricts or counties, and were in proportion to the number of taxable polls, or the amount of public taxes paid in each. In New York the senators came from four sen- atorial districts, and were in proportion to the number of freeholders owning estates above one hundred pounds in value. The Pennsylvania senate was based on tax- able inhabitants. Maryland chose her senators by an electoral college. Elsewhere the county was the basis of representation in the senate. For the lower house in every state, representation depended on the number of ratable male polls over twenty-one years of age, or taxable inhabitants, or qualified electors, or, in Ohio, on the number of free male inhabitants. There, as elsewhere, it was believed that taxation and representation went hand in hand ; there, as elsewhere, women were taxed, yet it was not considered necessary that even taxable women should be counted in apportioning representation. Nowhere did population determine the number of representa- tives. The poor man counted for nothing. He was governed, but not with his consent. He was one of the people, but he did not count as such in the appor- tionment of representation. The broad doctrine that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed was not applied in all its fullness by the fathers. The most they were ready to admit was, that all government derives its just powers from the consent of the taxpayers. To accuse our countrymen of a century ago of delib- erate inconsistency, of boldly proclaiming religious lib- erty, political equality of all men, and the right of the people to rule, and then establishing state governments in which class distinctions of rich and poor, sect and THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 75 creed, were carefully observed, would be the height of injustice. To have broken away suddenly from lime- honored customs and ancient usages, the traditions and prejudices of the past, and applied the new doctrines in all their fullness to the government of a people not yet prepared for them, would have been an act of folly worthy of anarchists. These men were not anarchists. The political maxims they announced were high ideals to be lived up to, and attained in a decent and orderly manner, and so in time they were. This distrust of the plain people, this disbelief in the ability of the mass to rule, was further displayed in the manner of choosing rulers. Governors in six states were still chosen by the legislatures, and so in many instances were the judges, sheriff's, coroners, constables and justices of the peace, and militia officers down to the grade of captain. Nor was the governor when elected possessed of a tittle of the power now exercised by his successor. No extensive patronage, no well paid offices, were at his disposal. In twelve states he had no veto. In Ohio, whose constitution had just been made, and for that day was extremely democratic, the governor signed no bill, made no nominations, exer- cised no veto, appointed but one man to office, save when a vacancy occurred during a recess of the legis- lature, and bore no part in law making. To the American of 1803 the legislature was the safe depository of power, the great bulwark of popular lib- erty and the rights of man. To the legislature, there- fore, were given the largest powers, in the broadest terms. The prohibitions, the special instruction, the administrative details which form so important a part of our modern state constitutions, were unknown a century ago. A long and bitter experience has brought us to a different point of view. To-day, the legislature is a 76 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. necessary evil to be checked, restrained, bound down. Our forefathers thought two sessions of the legislature each year not too much. To-day, in thirty-nine states, one session in two years is quite enough. Our hope now lies in the executive and the courts. By our fore- fathers the judge was as much an object of distrust as the governor. Of all remnants of monarchy the life tenure of judges was most offensive. Why, it was often asked, should this be? Why should we change our rulers every year or two and not our judges? If it be dangerous to lib- erty to entrust men with long-continued power to make laws, is it not equally dangerous to liberty to give them life-long power to interpret laws. Is there any attribute of the judicial office which makes the judge immune to the evils and temptations which beset the law-maker or the governor. While all else in the state is transient, he is permanent. President, congresses, governors, legislatures, come into office, serve their terms and go back to private life, while he sits undisturbed on the bench. Is this republican government? He is a highly privileged man, a member of a caste, an aristocracy. Is not this repugnant to the great principle of responsibil- ity to the people which lies at the base of representative government? More serious still to the men of 1803 was the assump- tion by the courts of the right to declare a law uncon- stitutional and void. That a people who looked up to their legislatures as the true interpreters of their will, who would not sub- ject them to even the mild restraint of a limited veto by the governors, should quietly permit the courts to con- trol legislation by setting aside laws, was not to be ex- pected. In our system of government, it was argued, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches are sep- THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 77 arate and co-ordinate. To the legislature has been assigned the duty of making laws ; to the executive the duty of seeing that they be faithfully executed, and to the judges the business of interpreting the laws between man and man, in short, of carrying out the intention of the legislature. Do they execute the intent of the legis- lature when they refuse to enforce a law because, in their opinion, it is contrary to the constitution? Is not such an act equivalent to a repeal, and if they may repeal a law, are they not superior to the law-making branch of government? Are not judges sworn to obey the constitution and the laws? Can they be said to obey a law when they declare it to be null and of no force? The answer was, legislators as well as judges are sworn to obey the constitutions of their states. If they enact a law which is at variance with their constitution, must the people submit? If so, then is the offending legis- lature a law unto itself and free to do whatsoever it pleases. But the people are not bound to submit, and their remedy is to be found in the refusal of the court to apply the law. Our countrymen, however, were slow in coming to this view. Thus when the mayor's court in New York, in 1784, held a trespass act to be null and void, the offending aldermen were summoned by the citizens to attend a public meeting and explain their conduct. When a Rhode Island court in 1786 decided it had no jurisdic- tion in a case made cognizable by law, the general as- sembly summoned the five judges to attend and assign the grounds and reasons for their judgment, heard their excuses, and the next year put others in their places. "When in 1808 the supreme court of Ohio pronounced certain parts of an act unconstitutional because they conflicted with the Federal Constitution, the judges were impeached, tried, and acquitted, but not before the house 78 THE CENTENNIAI. EXERCISES. of representatives had voted that judges did not have authority to set aside an act of the legislature by declar- ing it unconstitutional, null and void. Georgia in 1816 and Kentucky in 1824 made similar declarations, and the century was well advanced before this power of the courts was generally admitted. Judged by his acts, the American of 1803 still be- lieved that government should derive its just powers from the consent of the rich and well-to-do ; that voters should be owners of land or freehold estate ; that holders of office should be men of real substance, Christians or Protestants, or at least profess belief in the existence of a God ; that property qualifications should increase with the importance of the office ; and that the strong arm of government should be the legislature, not the executive nor the courts. Such being his ideas of the political, what were his ideas of the social rights of man? According to the political doctrines fashionable at that day, all men were not only created politically equal, but were endowed by their maker with certain inalienable rights of which they could not strip then>- selves, nor be divested by others, and among these were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If this were true it followed that life was not to be taken, nor lib- erty restrained, save when required by the well-being of the state. Did our forefathers pay heed to this doctrine? The early settlers from England brought with them and planted in the New World such ideas of the treat- ment of crime and the criminal as were current in the mother country. Their early penal codes were not their own handiwork but were fashioned after statutes, orders, and customs of the England of the seventeenth century, and were marked all through with the barbar- ity, cruelty, and inhumanity of the age. The constitu- THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 79 tions of six states did indeed declare that cruel and unusual punishments should not be inflicted. But the usual punishments were cruel enough from our point of view. Thus in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1789 ten, and in Pennsylvania twenty, crimes, and on second conviction any crime save larceny, were punishable with death. In Virginia, and afterwards in Kentucky, to swear falsely, to destroy a will, obtain money or goods on false pretenses, steal a horse, a writ or record of a court, or commit robbery on the highway were but a few of twenty-seven offenses for which a man or woman might suffer death. In New York six- teen crimes were capital. For such misdeeds as did not merit death on first conviction the common punishments were branding, whipping, cropping the ears, standing on the pillory, sitting in the stocks, or ducking. In Maryland each county was required to have an assortment of branding irons and use them unsparingly. S on either cheek meant seditious libeller ; T on the left hand meant thief. The man with an R on the shoulder was a vag- abond or rogue ; with an F on the cheek a coiner twice convicted. New Hampshire branded her burglars with the letter B on the right hand for the first offense, on the left hand for a second offense, on the forehead if the crime were done on the Lord's day. Connecticut put an F on the forehead of the forger of a deed ; the letter I on the villain who sold arms to the Indians, and cut off" the ears of counterfeiters. In Delaware the blasphemer was flogged, stood upon the pillory, and branded with the letter B on the forehead. Virginia ordained that deceitful bakers, dishonest cooks, cheat- ing fishermen, careless fish dressers, should lose their ears. 80 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. Publicity, in the opinions of the fathers, was a great corrective and preventive of crime. In Pennsylvania, therefore, the robber and the thief, whether man or woman, after receiving at the whipping-post thirty-one lashes well laid on, was condemned to wear, in plain view, on the left sleeve of the outer garment^ between the shoulder and the elbow, a Roman T. The letter must be four inches each way and one inch wide, must be of red, blue, or yellow cloth, must be worn from sunrise to sunset and for a period of six months. If found without the letter the penalty for the first offense was twenty-one lashes, and for the second thirty-nine lashes and a T branded on the forehead. Every pauper who received any aid from any county, city, or place, as also his wife and children, must wear on the sleeve of the outer garment, in plain view, a large P of red or blue cloth and the first letter of place to which he belonged. The whipping-post and the stocks were conspicuous in every city and large town, and the ducking stock was still occasionally used. In Pennsylvania counterfeiters of the colonial money were to be flogged thirty-one lashes, stood on the pillory, and have their ears cut off". Counterfeiters of the province brands were to stand for two hours on the pillory on a market day. Any one who raised the denomination of a bill of credit was to have thirty-one lashes, was to be put on the pillory and have his ears cut off and nailed to the post. That punishments of these sorts were enforced down to and well into the nineteenth century, there is abundant evidence. In 1787, in Boston, five thieves were sen- tenced to be flogged, two more set on the gallows, and a counterfeiter on the pillory. In 1789 eleven were ordered by the court to be flogged in front of the state house. In 1803 two ofTenders stood on the pillory for THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 81 one hour on two consecutive days and were well pelted. So late as 1817 a sailor was bound to iron rings on the outside of the wall of a Philadelphia prison and publicly flogged. In 1811 the supreme court of Georgia sen- tenced a woman to be ducked in the Ocanee. In 1819 in Georgia and in 1824 in Philadelphia, common scolds were ordered to the ducking stool ; but the sentence was not executed. Later yet Judge Cranch in this city sentenced a woman to be ducked in the Potomac ; but ducking was by that time obsolete and she was fined instead. To the credit of our forefathers it must be said that the leven of the rights of man was at work, and that, when the nineteenth century opened, many of these barbarous forms of punishment were swept away. Manhood was clothed with a new dignity and even the criminal was admitted to have rights his more fortunate brother was bound to respect. The stocks, the pillory, the whipping-post, the branding-iron, and the shears ceased to be instruments of punishment in many states. Pennsylvania limited the death penalty to murder in the first degree ; New York abolished it for fourteen offenses and retained it for two. In Connecticut, burg- lary, arson, forgery, and house-stealing were not capital crimes after 1790. The one offender whose misery excited scant sym- pathy was the poor debtor. In every state and territory, and in this District in 1800, the poor debtor, whether man or woman, could be seized by the creditor and thrown into jail, there to remain till the debts, jail fees, and costs were paid in full. When the amount involved was large the debtor might obtain a stay of proceed- ings, or by giving up all his estate, he might escape imprisonment, or be required to live within the limits of the jail. But no such privileges were accorded the 82 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. wretch who owed a shilling or a sixpence, or a cent. The debt proven, to jail he went. Once behind the bars his lot was harder than that of the lowest criminal. Thieves, murderers, felons of all sorts, were fed and cared for at the cost of the state, but for the luckless debtor no such provision was made. The food he ate, the clothes he wore, were provided b}^ his friends, the public, or by " The Society for Alleviating the Misery of Public Prisons," " The Humane Society," or some like organization. The room in which he was confined with scores of hardened offenders was utterly without fur- niture of any sort. In it were neither chairs, tables, cots nor so much as a bench. He sat on the floor, ate oft' the floor, and at night lay down to sleep on the floor without a blanket to cover him. Against this violation of the right of man to liberty, society at last rebelled, and in 1792 a change for the better was ordered. " Whereas," says the law, " many persons confined in the prison, called the debtors apartment, in the city of Philadelphia, are so poor as to be unable to procure food for their sustenance, or fuel or clothing in the winter season, and it is inconsistent with humanity to suffer them to want the common necessaries of life, the inspector must provide fuel and blankets for such debtors as by reason of their poverty could not get them, and allow each seven cents a day for food." For twenty years thereafter the community seems to have thought this was all humanity required, and no further change was made in the law till 1814. In 1804 the paupers in the Baltimore almshouse issued a card to " The Humane Housekeepers," thanking them for the relief afforded by a supply of " rags for our sores " and urging them to continue the good work as no other means of getting rags was known to them. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 83 From such documentary evidence as may now be had it appears that in the large cities many hundred debtors were sent to jail each year. The keeper of the debtor's prison in New York certified, so late as 1816, that during the year one thousand nine hundred and eighty-four debtors were committed to his care ; that one thousand one hundred and twenty-nine were impris- oned for debts under fifty dollars ; that seven hundred and twenty-nine owed less than twenty-five dollars, and that every one of them would have perished but for the kindness of the Humane Society, which supported them with food and blankets ; and that he himself had more than once been forced to buy fuel with his own money lest they should freeze to death. To misery such as this the community and the law- makers were callous, and the second decade of the century was closing before the old states began, one by one, to exempt women from imprisonment for debt of any amount, and men for debts under fifteen dollars. It was, indeed, true that all men have an inalienable right to liberty. But the petty debtor who had no estate, no property to surrender, did not enjoy that right in every state in our Union prior to 1850. To us, as we look back to these times, the social, industrial, and financial problems, compared with ours, seem simple enough. The net annual revenue of the government in 1803 was eleven million dollars, and the yearly outlay four million dollars. During the four years of Mr. Jefferson's first term of office, 1801-1805, the cost of government, civil list, foreign intercourse, army, navjs Indians, and interest on a public debt, was but thirty million dollars, and sixteen million dollars of this was four years' interest on the public debt, includ- ing one vear's interest on the Louisiana Purchase bonds. 84 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. The public debt of our country in 1803 was but seventy- seven million dollars, and was being paid so rapidly that thirty-four million dollars was discharged while Jefferson was president. The federal government issued no money save gold and silver coin. Stocks and bonds were almost unknown. The only stocks in exist- ence were three kinds issued by the government, repre- senting the national debt, the stock of the first bank of the United States, the stocks of thirty-six banks char- tered by the different states, and the stocks of a few companies for building turnpikes and canals. No race problem troubled the American of that day. To the immigrant he gave no concern. There were no Chinamen to be excluded, nor was the country required to assimilate seven hundred thousand foreigners each year. The few thousands that arrived annually were chiefly " free-willers " and " redemptioners " from Eng- land, Ireland, and the Rhine country. Labor unions were local affairs confined to journeymen type-setters, cordwainers, tailors, and to the particular cities in which they lived, and organized primarily for benevo- lent purposes — to help the sick, bury the dead, comfort the widow and the orphan. Lockouts and strikes were small affairs, and dealt with by the mayor's courts as conspiracies. A working day was from sunrise to sunset, with an hour for breakfast and another for dinner. From such sources of information as are now accessible — diaries, pay-rolls, estimates of the cost of internal improvements, advertisements in the newspapers — it appears that, for a long working day in summer the unskilled laborer when hired by the day was paid a dollar and one third, and proportionally less in winter, when the hours be- tween sunrise and sunset were fewer ; that hiring by the month was the common practice, and that for such THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 85 labor the wages were lowest on the seaboard and high- est on the frontier. Near the New England coast, laborers when fed and lodged were paid seven dollars a month in winter and ten in summer. Throughout the farming regions of Pennsylvania, farm hands when fed and housed received eight dollars per month of twenty-six working days. In central New York, four- teen dollars a month when the laborer bought his own food. Boatmen on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers were given one dollar per day. When the road from Gene- see to Buffalo was in course of construction, laborers were so scarce that to secure thirty men an offer was made of food, lodging, whiskey every day, and twelve dollars per month. If statements made in 1803 may be relied on, wages had risen nearly three hundred per cent, in twenty years. At the close of the Revolution farm hands in New England were rarely paid more than eighteen dollars a year, and sailors eight dollars a month. In Pennsylvania and Maryland the free-wilier and the redemptioner still formed the chief source of labor supply. Speaking generally, the free-willers or in- dented servants were men, women, and children who, imable to pay their passage to our shores, signed a con- tract or indenture before leaving the Old World. This indenture bound the owner or master of the ship to transport them to America, and bound the emigrant after arrival in America to serve the owner, master, or their assigns for a certain number of years. On reach- ing port the owner or master whose servants they then became, sold them to the highest bidders. The redemptioner, on the other hand, was an immi- grant who signed no indenture before embarking, but agreed with the shipping merchant that after reaching America he should be given a certain time in which to 86 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. find somebody to redeem him by paying the passage money, or freight, as it was called. Should he fail to find a redeemer within the specified time, the ship cap- tain was at liberty to sell him to the highest bidder, in which case the redemptioner became an indented ser- vant and was subject to the laws governing such cases. When a ship laden with from one hundred to three hundred such persons arrived, we will say at Philadel- phia, the emigrants, arranged in a long line, were marched at once to a magistrate and forced to take an oath of allegiance to the king, or later to the United States, and then marched back to the ship which an- chored in midstream. An advertisement would then be inserted from day to day in some city newspaper, and the sale would begin. In a Baltimore newspaper for 1804 are many such no- tices as these : "GERMAN REDEMPTIONERS. " On board the ship Weser a number of healthy peo- ple, among whom are shoemakers, coopers, and good house servants, who wish to engage with masters for their passage. For terms apply to the Captain on board." " REDEMPTIONERS. " There still remain on board the ship Aurora from Amsterdam about eighteen passengers, amongst whom are — Servant gii'ls, gardeners, butchers, masons, sugar bakers, one shoemaker, one silversmith, one leather dresser, one tobacconist, one pastry cook, and some a little acquainted with waiting on families, as well as farming and tending horses. They are all in good health." When at last the emigrant was so fortunate as to find a purchaser, he was taken before the mayor or recorder of Philadelphia, or in later times a justice of the peace, THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 87 signed a contract, and became in the eyes of the law a slave, and in both the civil and criminal code was classed with negro slaves and Indians. None could marry without consent of the master or mistress, under penalty of an addition of one year's service to the time set forth in the indenture. They were worked hard, were dressed in the cast-off clothes of their owners, and might be flogged as often as the master or mistress thought necessary. If they ran away, at least two days might be added to their time of service for each day they were absent. Father, mother, and children could be sold to different buyers. Such remnants of cargoes as could not find purchasers within the time specified, were bought in lots of fifty or more by speculators known as " soul drivers," who drove them through the country from farm to farm like a herd of cattle, and sold them for what they would bring. Redemptioners of this sort were generally unskilled, were worth from thirty to forty dollars, and bound to service for five years. They were worked hard, were poorly fed, and were well treated or ill treated accord- ing to the temper of their owner. That the more enter- prising, the daring, and the reckless ones should seize the first opportunity to run away was only to be ex- pected. No problem of our day seems so difficult of solution as municipal government. None in 1803 was more simple. The great cities of that time were but over- grown towns, and all the machinery of town govern- ment was still in use. Disbelief in the ability of the people to choose their rulers wisely was as apparent in city as state government. There, too, the favorite doc- trine of checks and balances was applied in all its vigor. No government was good unless the legislative branch 88 THE CENTENNIAIv EXERCISES. consisted of two distinct bodies, that each might be a check on the other. If each was chosen at the same time, in the same manner, by the same body of voters, the}^ might differ in size and in terms of service, but they ■would be animated by the same feeling, have the same point of view, and might as well form one body, sit in the same room, and vote on all questions at the same time. In Baltimore this idea was carried to an extreme. There the people elected one branch of the city council ; but who should be chief magistrate and who should sit in the second branch of the council was determined by electoral colleges. Every other year the voters in each ward assembled and chose, viva voce, two citizens to serve, one as an elector of the mayor and the other as an elector of members of the select council ; and by the two colleges so formed the mayor and eight council- men were duly elected. The president appointed the mayor of this city. Free, white, tax-paying males of full age elected twelve men to form the council, and when these twelve assembled they elected five of their number to serve as the upper branch. Over Philadelphia, the chief city of the country, pre- sided a mayor, a recorder, and fifteen aldermen, and the select and common councils. The people elected members of the council. But the governor of the state of Pennsylvania appointed the recorder and the fif- teen aldermen, to hold office during good behavior. Councils each year elected one of the aldermen to serve as mayor. In New York were a mayor and recorder appointed by the Council of Appointment, a board composed of the governor and four state senators. The people John N. Campbell, D. D. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 89 elected the members of the council. Annually in Phil- adelphia the voters in each ward elected two persons fit to be constables, one of whom the mayor appointed to office. In both cities the constables kept the peace and en- forced the ordinances by day, as did the city watch by night. Any citizen in Philadelphia might be summoned by the constable of his ward to serve on the night watch. On refusal, he must pay a shilling fine. The part played by the citizen in municipal affairs was far greater than at present. Each householder must twice a week, from April to December, sweep the pavement before his dwelling, from the house line to the middle of the street, and gather the dust into heaps, to be re- moved by the city cartman. From December to April no such service was required, and the sole scavengers were tne hogs, which the law permitted to roam at large. There was, indeed, a rude sort of fire depart- ment, consisting of the chief engineer, his assistants, and the fire wardens. But each householder must keep behind his front door a canvas bag and one or more leathern fire buckets. With these, at the cry of fire, the man of the house must run to the burning building. Should there be no man of the house, the bag and the buckets must be put out on the sidewalk, to be carried off by some passer-by. The citizens dragged the engine to the fire, worked the pumps, stood in line and passed the buckets from the nearest wells to the engine, and with the aid of the bags saved what property they could. Though their civic duties were many, their burdens were light. Taxes were few and the rates low, and when money was needed for public improvements, resort was had to a lottery. This institution, long since branded as a public evil, proscribed, and finally driven from our 90 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. land, was, in 1803, an innocent, moral, and often used means of raising money which could not be had by sub- scription, and for which the people would not submit to be taxed. In 1802-3, the legislature of Maryland char- tered lotteries to aid the Episcopal Church at Elizabeth- town, the Roman Catholic Church, the Baptist Church and the German Reformed Church at Baltimore, to buy a fire engine for Middletown, improve the streets of Elizabethtown, and help Charlotte Hall School. In 1803-4, lotteries were authorized to improve the market at Baltimore, pave the streets of Annapolis, buy a fire engine and pumps for Easton, improve the Baltimore Free School, build a road, construct a bridge, and help sundr}^ churches at Shrewsbury, Tarrytown, Woods- bury, Fredericktown and Baltimore. Pennsylvania since 1798 had authorized a lottery to raise twenty thousand dollars for a stone bridge over a creek near Philadelphia, twenty thousand dollars for paving the streets of Lancaster, five thousand dollars for a schoolhouse at New Hanover, twelve thousand dollars for a bridge over the Delaware at Easton, be- sides aiding in like manner numbers of churches, schools, canals, turnpike and toll-bridge companies. In 1803 the legislature considered the expediency of creating a lottery to raise two hundred thousand dollars for the benefit of the state treasury. Scarce a college or university of our day whose exist- ence goes back to the Revolution but added to its funds or enlarged its library with the profits of a lottery. Churches erected their spires, bought their bells, built their parsonages with proceeds of lotteries. Wharves were constructed, grammar schools and academies founded, city halls repaired, public improvements of ever}^ sort were accomplished with mone}^ derived from the sale of lottery tickets. Not till the population had Stephen B. Balche, D. D. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 91 SO increased in state and city, not till propert}^ had so grown in quantity and value that a small tax-rate could yield a large return, not till the lottery had ceased to be a public necessity and had become a source of pri- vate gain did our fathers begin to regard it as an evil to be suppressed. But it is not necessary to pass in review every phase of life a centur}^ ago. Surely enough has been said to make plain the fact that our ideas of the political, social, and industrial rights of man are utterly unlike those of our forefathers. Could our positions be re- versed, could the men of 1803 come back and be with us this evening, they would be astonished beyond meas- ure at the wreck which time has made of their practices, and at the marvelous fulfillment of their theories. The safeguards which they set up against the abuse of lib- erty were long since thrown down. Manhood, not houses, lands, income, wealth, is now the basis of rep- resentation. Scores of executives, great and small, once appointed, are now elected. The fraudulent, not the honest, debtor is now imprisoned. The slave, the bond servant, the redemptioner, the freewiller, are un- known to us. The hours of the working day have been reduced one third. The workingman has his lien law, and his children the free common school. The street gamin no longer pelts the thief in the stock. The smell of burnt flesh no longer defiles our prisons. No test oath is exacted of our chosen rulers. Despite this progress there are some relics of the past still with us. So long as there is a part of the commu- nity taxed and not enfranchised, just so long is the old doctrine of no taxation without representation violated. So long as there is one law-maker not elected by the direct vote of the people, just so long is government of the people by the people unattained. Our forefathers 92 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. were much concerned with the political rights of man. With us the problem of the hour is the full determina- tion of his industrial rights. That in time to come this new issue will be settled as justly, as fully, as happily as the old, is absolutely certain, and the man who doubts it misreads the lessons of the past, is blind to the signs of the times, has no faith in the principles of our gov- ernment, and is not fit to be called an American. Mr. Justice Harlan then said : We have listened to a most interesting and instructive address, and thank the learned speaker for it. In this I do not doubt I express your sentiments. This occasion, ladies and gentlemen, is honored by the presence of the Chief Executive of the United States. We are grateful to him for coming. One of the interesting incidents in the history of this church is that for several years immediately prior to his death Abraham Lincoln regularly attended religious services in this church, and held a pew. The identical pew occupied by him has been preserved. It is the one in which a worthy successor of the Martyr President now sits. (Applause.) We will not trouble our honored President to come to this platform ; but if, from the pew he occupies, he will say a few words to the people here assembled, it will give us all very great pleasure. President Roosevelt arose in his place in the Lincoln pew and responded : Mr. Justice: Let me first express the appreciation that all of us feel to Professor McMasters for his exceedingly inter- esting address ; and the address showed why he can justly claim to be the historian of the People of the THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 93 United States, for what he has told us was what the people did, not merely what the outward forms and observances were, but what the life of the people, was a century ago. And, Mr. Justice, I think that the recital has left in the minds of all of us the feeling that while we revere our ancestors, we are not wholly discontented that we live in the present day. To each generation comes its allotted task, and no generation is to be excused for failure to perform that task. No generation can claim as an excuse for such failure the fact that it is not guilty of the sins of the preceding generation. It was a surprise to me, I sup- pose it was a surprise to many of us, to realize that a hundred years ago, in the days of the fathers, the lot of the poor debtor was so hard. It seems incredible to us now that there should have been such callousness to the undeserved human suffering then. I hope sincerely that a century hence it will seem equally incredible to the American of that generation that there should be corruption and venality in public life. (Applause.) We can divide, and must divide, on party lines as regards certain questions ; as regards the deepest, the vital questions, we cannot afford to divide ; and I have the right to challenge the best effort of every American worthy of the name to putting down by every means in his power corruption in private life, and above all corruption in public life. (Applause.) And, remem- ber, you, the people of this government by the people, that while the public servant, the legislator, the execu- tive officer, the judge, are not to be excused if they fall short of their duty, yet that their doing their duty can- not avail unless you do yours. In the last resort we have to depend upon the jury drawn from the people to convict the scoundrel who has tainted our public life ; 94 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. and unless that jury does its duty, unless it is backed by the public sentiment of the people, all the work of legislator, of executive officer, of judicial officer, are for naught. (Applause.) Mr. Justice, a man would be a poor citizen of this country if he could sit in Abraham Lincoln's pew and not feel the solemn sense of the associations borne in upon him ; and I wish to thank the people of this church for that reverence for the historic past, for the sense of historic continuity, which has made them keep this pew unchanged. I hope it will remain unchanged in this church as long as our country endures. We have not too many monuments of the past. Let us keep every little bit of association with that which is highest and best of the past, as a reminder to us equally of what we owe to those who have gone before, and of how we should show our appreciation. This evening I sit in this pew of Abraham Lincoln's, together with Abra- ham Lincoln's private secretary, who, for my good fortune, now serves as secretary of state in my cabi- net. (Applause.) If ever there lived a president who during his term of service needed all of the consolation and of the strength that he could draw from the unseen powers above him it was Abraham Lincoln — sad, patient, mighty Lin- coln — who worked and suffered for the people, and when he had lived for them to good end gave his life at the end. If ever there was a man who practically applied what was taught in our churches, it was Abra- ham Lincoln. The other day I was re-reading, on the suggestion of Mr. Hay, a little speech not often quoted, of his, yet which seems to me one of the most remark- able that he ever made ; delivered right after his reelec- tion, I think, to a body of serenaders who had come. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 95 if my memory is correct, from Baltimore or Mar3dand, and called for an address from him from the White House. It is extraordinary to read that speech, and to realize that the man who made it had just come successfully through a great political contest in which he felt that so much was at stake for the nation that he had no time to think whether or not anything was at stake for himself. The speech is devoid of the least shade of bitterness. There is not a word of unseemly triumph over those who have been defeated. There is not a word of glorification of himself, or in any im- proper sense of his party. There is an earnest appeal, now that the election is over, now that the civic strife has been completed, for all decent men who love the country to join together in service to the country ; and in the speech he uses a thoroughly Lincoln-like phrase when he says, " I have not willingly planted a thorn in the breast of any man," thus trying to make clear that he has nothing to say against any opponent, no bit- terness toward any opponent ; that all he wishes is that those who opposed him should join with those who fa- vored him in working toward a common end. It would be trite to say anything about Lincoln, and yet I am going to point to one thing : In reading his works and addresses, one is struck by the fact that as he went higher and higher all personal bitterness seemed to die out of him. In the Lincoln-Douglass debates one can still catch, now and then, a note of personal antagonism ; the man was in the arena, and as the blows were given and taken, you can see that now and then he had a feeling against his antagonist. When he became president, and faced the crisis that he had to face, from that time on I do not think that you can find an expression, a speech of Lincoln's, a word of Lincoln's, written or spoken, in which bitterness is 96 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. shown to any man. His devotion to the cause was so great that he neither could nor would have feeling against any individual. In closing, Mr. Justice, let me say, in thanking you of this church, the church so closely kindred to my own Dutch Reformed Church, in thanking you for ask- ing me here, let me say how peculiarly glad I am that in the chair sits one man, a justice of the supreme court, and that I could be escorted here by another man who has just severed his connection from one of the highest places in the United States army, both of whom, you, Justice Harlan, you, General Breckinridge, had enjoyed the wonderful privilege of proving by their deeds the faith that was in them in the days that tried men's souls ; both of whom did their part in holding up the hands of mighty Lincoln, and both of whom were born in the state of Lincoln's birth. (Applause.) Mr. Justice Harlan said : Ladies and Gentlemen : No higher praise could have been bestowed upon a statesman of the Revolutionary period than to say of him that he enjoyed the confidence of the Father of his Country. No higher praise can be bestowed upon a public man of this day than to say of him that he en- joyed the confidence of the Savior of his Country. But that can be said of one now in high position, and enjoy- ing in a marked degree the respect of the American people. I allude to the distinguished secretary of state, who was the private secretary of Abraham Lincoln, and who is with us this evening. No one now living was closer to Lincoln than he was, or knew more of his innermost thoughts. When Mr. Lincoln attended reli- gious services here, Mr. Hay often accompanied him and sat at his side. Will Secretary Hay give this audi- ence the pleasure of a few words from him? THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 97 Mr. Secretary Hay arose in his place in the Lincoln pew, and responded : Mr. President, Mr. Justice, Ladies and Gentlemen : I could not find it in my heart to detain you, at this hour, even for a moment, by any words of mine. But perhaps you may consider that you have time to listen to one or two phrases uttered in this city many years ago by that great man to whom Mr. Justice Harlan has just alluded. Some of you, I am sure, share with me the memories to which this occasion and place give rise, of the days when I have sat in this church with that illustrious patriot, whose fame even now has turned to something remote and legendary. But whatever is remembered or whatever lost, we ought never to forget that Abraham Lincoln, one of the mightiest masters of statecraft that history has known, was also one of the most devoted and faithful servants of Almighty God who has ever sat in the high places of the world. From that dim and chilly dawn, when, standing on a rail- way platform at Springfield, half veiled by falling snowflakes from the crowd of friends and neighbors who had gathered to wish him iGodspeed on his mo- mentous journey, he acknowledged his dependence on God, and asked for their prayers, to that sorrowful yet triumphant hour when he went to his account, he re- peated over and over in every form of speech, his faith and trust in that Almighty Power who rules the fate of men and nations. To a committee of Presbyterians who visited him in 1863, he said: "It has been my happiness to receive testimonies of a similar nature from, I believe, all denominations of Christians. This to me is most gratifying, because from the beginning I saw that the issues of our great struggle depended on the Divine interposition and favor." A year later he said, 98 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. among other things, to a committee of the General Con- ference of the Methodist Church : " God bless the Meth- odist Church ; bless all the churches, and blessed be God, who in this our great trial giveth us the churches." I will not multiply extracts from those hundreds of public utterances, nor will I quote the sublime words of the second inaugural, which sound like a new chapter of Hebrew prophecy, as these might be classed among the official speeches of rulers which recognize the power for good of the ordinary relations between religion and wise government. But I will ask you, and this shall be my last word, to listen to a few sentences in which Mr. Lincoln admits us into the most secret recesses of his soul. It is a meditation written in September, 1862. Perplexed and afflicted beyond the power of human help, by the disasters of war, the wrangling of parties, and the inexorable and constraining logic of his own mind, he shut out the world one day, and tried to put into form his double sense of responsibility to human duty and Divine power ; and this was the result. It shows, as has been said in another place, the awful sin- cerity of a perfectly honest soul trying to bring itself into closer communion with its Maker. " The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be and one must be wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's pur- pose is something different from the purpose of either party ; and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is prob- ably true ; that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power on the THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 99 minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun, He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds." Mr. Justice Harlan said : Ladies and Gentlemen : We have come to the last stage of those interesting exercises. This is a most remarkable assemblage. We have here the chief magistrate of our country, and members of his cabinet ; the acting vice-president of the United States, senators and representatives in the congress of the United States ; members of the highest judicial tribunal in our land — the supreme court of the United States ; the judiciary of the District of Colum- bia ; the commissioners of the District ; the lieutenant- general of the army; above all, the people, the source of all power in this republic. No such assemblage should conclude its sessions without an opportunity being given to sing one of our national anthems. I invite you to rise, and before the benediction is pro- nounced, to join with the choir in singing, " My Country, 'tis of thee." The congregation sang : My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing ; Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims' pride. From every mountain side Let freedom rino; ! 100 THE CENTENNIAI. EXERCISES. My native country, thee, Land of the noble free. Thy name I love ; I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills ; My heart with rapture thrills Like that above. Let music swell the breeze. And ring from all the trees Sweet freedom's song ; Let mortal tongues awake. Let all that breathe partake, Let rocks their silence break, The sound prolong. Our fathers' God, to Thee, Author of liberty. To Thee we sing : Long may our land be bright With freedom's holy light ; Protect us by Thy might, Great God, our King. The benediction by Rev. David Wills, D. D., LL. D., was then pronounced. TUESDAY. An Evening of Doctrine.* at seven forty-five in the evening. Hon. James Wilson, secretary of the department of agriculture, presided. The service began with the musical rendition of Ej're's Credo, " I Believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord." Secretary Wilson in taking the chair said : The holding of a hundredth year anniversary of your work and the work of your fathers here is a great occa- sion for the New York Avenue Church. It is a matter of great interest not only to yourselves but to every one in the city. It is a marked occasion. It is being spoken about everywhere. You and your fathers have held the banner aloft here for a hundred years, and Presbyte- rianism is just the same now that it was a hundred years ago. There have been some little modifications made for the benefit of outsiders in our Confessions. We do not need to have any made for us ; we know all about it. Dr. Radcliffe told us beautifully last Sabbath about the kind of people who established the church that was the forerunner a way back a hundred years ago — those old Scotch people. Did it ever occur to you how much charity those people had for the outside world? Have you ever heard a prayer that was common among those people? It may not have been made lately in your * Steuographically reported by Mr. Tlieo. F. Sliuey. 102 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. hearing. " Lord, mak' us recht, for Ye ken we are unco hard to turn." So Presbyterianism is just the same now that it will be a hundred years hence. It is not only an affair of the heart with us but it has the approval of the head besides, and those who want to turn us from the faith will have their hands full. We are not that kind of people. I have been, off and on, worshipping with you for thirty years. I was sent by an Iowa constituency to congress at that time, and naturally came to the Presby- terian Church. Where else would I go? I would not have felt at home anywhere else. An impression was made on my mind the first Sabbath I came here. The pastor was Dr. Mitchell, I think. He told you, or your fathers, probably both, about distress in Kansas. It was a rough cold winter. He wanted to send a whole car- load of coal to those people, ordered by telegram from the nearest place. I was a little anxious to know just what kind of people you were at that time, and made inquiry the next day. I went out of my way to make it. •' Yes," one of the elders said, " we sent a whole train- load, ordered by telegraph, to those people." I judged your faith by your works in those days. The prayer was offered by Rev, W. C. Alexander, D. D., of West Presbyterian Church, Georgetown, the oldest Presbyterian Church in the District of Columbia. The two hundred and twenty-fifth hymn was sung : In the cross of Christ I glory, Towering o'er the wrecks of time ; All the light of sacred story Gathers round its head sublime. When the woes of life o'ertake me, Hopes deceive, and fears annoy, Never shall the cross forsake me : Lo ! it glows with peace and joy. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 103 When the sun of bliss is beaming Light and love upon my way, From the cross the radiance streaming Adds more lustre to the day. Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure. By the cross are sanctified ; Peace is there that knows no measure, Joys that through all time abide. In the cross of Christ I glory. Towering o'er the wrecks of time ; All the light of sacred story Gathers round its head sublime. Mr. Secretary Wilson then said : It is my privilege to introduce to you to-night one of the great hearts of Presbyterianism, who comes to us from one of the citadels of our faith, Rev. Francis L. Patton, D. D., LL. D., president of the Theological Seminary at Princeton, N. J., who will address us upon — A CENTURY OF PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE. President Patton said : Mr. Secreta7'y, Ladies and Gentlemen: I consider it a great privilege and a high honor to be allowed to participate in these centennial services. I offer to you my cordial congratulations on the success attending these services, and my sincere congratulations on the splendid past of this church, on its prosperous present and its bright hopes of the future. I am here because my friend, my old friend of sem- inar}' days, the pastor of this church, asked me to come, and I could not say no. I am here also because I did 104 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. not wish to say no, for I have a very pleasant recollec- tion of the fact that during the greater part of one winter it was my privilege to serve this church in the supply of its pulpit, and I like to flatter myself with the thought that it is quite as much to the friendly feeling of some of my old-time acquaintances as it is to any fitness in me for the task assigned me that I am indebted for the invitation to be here to-night. Yet I stand here with a painful sense of hesitation. Last night you were here in the favoring presence of the President and the high officers of government to listen to a most interesting discourse sketching the salient fea- tures of the century, by a master of American history. To-night you are pleased to come here — I tell you now, w^iatever expectations you have formed to the contrar}^ notwithstanding — to hear from me a very plain and simple talk on what I fear is a very unattractive theme. Now, I shall treat this theme as it is enunciated in the program with that degree of liberty which all public speakers are allowed. I shall treat it in a certain sense as a point of departure and shall not say very much about it. The Presbyterian Church at the opening of the century found itself fairly well established in the faith. The great Deistic controversy had been cleared up. The Church of England had made a splendid contribution to the literature of apologetics in the defence of revealed religion, and the Presbyterian Church, with the other churches, was pretty strongly entrenched in its belief that the Bible is the only rule of faith and practice, and that its Confession of Faith was the best inter- pretation and explication of the Bible. Of course it had controversies in those days. Such was its mas- culine character it could not get along without contro- versies. It fouirht those without when thev stood in its David X. Junkin, D. D. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 105 way, and when they were not near it fought its own members, but light it must. It had controversies with the Arminians, with the Baptists, with the Unitarians, with the Universalists. But this is to be remembered, that in each and every case the controversy was fought out to a finish, on the basis of belief in the plenary inspiration and authority of the Scriptures on both sides. If a man denied the divinity of Christ it was because he did not believe the Bible taught it. If he denied the doctrine of eternal punishment it was because he did not believe the Bible taught it. What- ever he believed or disbelieved he believed or disbe- lieved because he believed that the Bible taught or did not teach in the particular case. Now, that is a very important point to remember, because it shows how completely the controversy has shifted. Then there were controversies, as I said, among themselves. There was a great body of theo- logians — there were Edwards, and Hopkins, and Emmons, of an earlier day ; there were Taylor, and Park, and Hodge, and Breckenridge, of later years. There were modifications of the Calvinistic theology running all through New England. The modifications were slight perhaps, but slight is one of those relative terms which we sometimes employ. Slight they are to some of us perhaps, but they did not think so then. These modifications to some extent came into the Pres- byterian Church, and the Presbyterian Church began to debate them within its own borders. Questions in regard to the extent of the atonement, questions in regard to the incarnation, questions in regard to natural and moral ability, were debated. Then there came the schism and the separation, with old school and new school churches standing side by side in every city, 106 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. town and village of the country. Then came the reunion of thirty-three years ago. Then, after the reunion it occurred to some that inasmuch as the division occurred, possibly over some of the phrases of the Con- fession of Faith that were not as felicitously expressed as they might have been, it might be well to make the phrases a little more felicitous. So there came the movement for a revision, which after various fortunes, or misfortunes, resulted in the completed revision adopted by the church. That is the history in brief of Presbyterian doctrine so far as I wish to allude to it. It was a controversial era. And you must say this for those men, that right or wrong they were in dead earnest. There are two rea- sons for being uncontroversial. One is in having nothing to fight about, and the other is in not caring one way or the other. Peace is not necessarily a sign of the best condition. The old men who fought out these battles on what you think were very small issues (and small they may have been, I am not raising that ques- tion) were men of intense convictions. They were men of moral earnestness. They were men who be- lieved. Of course this is not an era of controversy. It is what we call an era of research and investigation and induction. Nothing moves us to resentment. It is as if a man should impugn your motives or challenge your veracity, and instead of blushing in the face or feeling resentful, or doing what some people would regard as quite justifiable, you should simply ask him to a con- ference in regard to the facts concerning your psycho- logical slate. That is the temper of this day in the- ology. Now, we, I say, are not living in a time when this matter interests many people very much. Some people THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 107 think that this old theology is passing away, and I think so far as that remark implies that it is losing its hold on a great many people, it is a correct remark. You know what that old Christianity was. I mean that old-fashioned missionary Christianity, prayer-meet- ing Christianity, monthly concert for missions Chris- tianity, the old Christianity of the shorter Catechism that some of us were brought up on. You know that it is not the same kind of Christianity that we are getting a great deal of at the present time. You know what it was. It posited the great truths of natural relig- ion — God, freedom, immortality. It posited the great truths of revealed religion — sin, incarnation, atonement, regeneration. That was the old Christianity. I am not going to talk to you about that old Chris- tianity, but I am going to talk to you to-night about the new Christianity, for there are a great many people who no longer believe in that old Christianity, but who have adopted the new. What are the signs of the new Christianity? What are the symptoms of this disease which so many have without knowing it, which is doing its dire work in their religious constitution, until sometimes they are in a state of hopeless illness before they are aware of it? I will tell you some of them. In the first place, there is a marked indifference to doctrine, and a conspicuous silence respecting it. You hear a great deal about vice, but nobody says much about sin. You hear a great deal about immorality, but nobod^^alks about the atone- ment, and these doctrines get the go-by. There is a marked attention to the social side of Christianity. There are reasons for this. In the first place, the new psychology, which some people know a great deal about, which most people know something about, and which all people like to think that they know a little 108 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. about, has shown us that there is such a close relation- ship between the individual and the organism of which he forms a part that it is impossible for us to do justice to the individual without taking cognizance of the indi- vidual's environment. Then there are the pathological conditions of society which confront us on every hand, so that the question as to what to do with the poverty, the disease, and the crime, which come as direct consequences of the con- gested life of our great cties, is looming up as a great problem with which the pulpit has to deal. Then there are the great questions of citizenship, which emerge all the time, and the pulpit feels that it has to deal with them, and very properly so. There- fore, to a very large extent, the ministrations of the pulpit are becoming the ministrations of a man who is trying to do what he can to brighten the life and sweeten the homes of the people to whom he ministers ; with this effect, that the regeneration of society is tak- ing the place of the regeneration of the individual, the salvation of the organism in the life that now is, is superseding the problem as to the salvation of the soul and the life which is to come. And what is called Christian sociology is being substituted for Christ Jesus and Him crucified. Now, I am not complaining that these secular themes find place in the pulpit, for they ought to find place there. It is the business of the Gospel in its application to practical problems to show how the Gospel is the solution of all these problems. But it is one thing to Christianize society, and a very different thing to social- ize Christianity, and the latter is what we are doing. Then there is the tendency to look at the ethical side of religion. We are preached to out of the Gospels and the Sermon on the Mount. We are told to be good, to be kind, to be forgiving, to clothe the naked, and to live THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 109 the life of service. Even the doctrines of the Bible are looked at from their ethical side, and we are told that there is no such thing as an atonement in the sense you generally mean, but that the atonement is simply a symbolical way of stating the great ethical truth that a man should be willing to sacrifice himself for the good of other people, and die in order that he may live. Now, these are the symptoms. You will find them cropping out in pulpits here and there all over the land, and they will be finding utterance, too, on the part of men who have not given themselves the trouble to make any specific dogmatic statement of where they stand ; indeed, I do not know that they always are quite sure where they do stand. But these are symptoms of a disease. The disease is the new Christianity, and the great rubric of the new Christianity is that the function of the church is moral reform, and the Gospel is the great scheme for the regeneration of society. Now, this position may have been reached in one of two ways. It may be that men have reached this posi- tion by a new interpretation of the Bible, or it may be that they have reached this position by a new attitude towards Christianity. I do not think that they have reached this position by a new interpretation of the Bible. Those who most depart from the faith as we believe it are most ready to say that the Bible teaches it, but it is so much the worse for the Bible. I am, therefore, in the fullest kind of sympathy with a certain heterodox thinker who said that the Bible is certainly an orthodox book. The new position is not reached by a new reading of the Bible but by a new attitude towards Christianity. This new attitude towards Christianity may have been the result of one or two things. It may be that a sci- entific study of the Scriptures shows that they will not 110 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. support the old views of Christianity, or it may be that a new philosophy of Christianity shows that it will not support the old views of the Scriptures. Whether it be from the literary study of the Scrip- tures that we have been forced to a new philosophy of Christianity, or whether it be that from a new philoso- phy of Christianity we have been forced to a lower view of the Scriptures, will depend altogether on circum- stances ; but both forces are actually in operation and have been for some time. The new Christianity is the result of both — the result of a literary criticism on the one hand, which has weakened faith in the authority of the Scriptures on the one side, and the result of a phi- losophy of religion, or a metaphysic, which has made it impossible for men to receive the miraculous stories of the Bible on the other side. The consequence is that you are finding men coming up to Christianity under these conceptions. So that the real trouble at the pres- ent day is a difference of opinion on the question. What is Christianity? Now, I venture the affirmation that there are few questions of graver import and greater importance at the present moment than this. What is Christianity? I will tell you why I think some people have not felt so much interested in the recent discussion of the revision of the Confession of Faith. It was not because that they did not believe that you could improve the phrase- ology of the Confession. It was not that they do not believe that the phraseology has been improved. It was the feeling that it did not touch the deeper question, and that it would not do what it was expected to do. It was the feeling that some man might have who was putting a new paper on his drawing-room, and whose interest in it was in a certain sense modified by the knowledge that somebody else was putting dynamite down in the cellar. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. Ill What is Christianity? I will tell you what we think it is. I will tell you what Christianity has always been regarded as being, during this great century of Presby- terian doctrine, which is the theme of my discourse. Christianity, according to that view, is a supernatural revelation of a way of salvation from sin through the incarnation and bloodshedding of the Son of God. That is the old Christianity. Now, suppose that be true — and we who are here to-night are among those who believe it to be true — suppose, for the sake of argument, that we concede it to be true, then what follows? Why, then, I say you need only to postulate in behalf of a man the ordinary outfit of intelligence to be able to say of that man that he is interested in the question as to the seat of authority in religion and the extent of it. If a piece of supernatural information has been com- municated to this world in regard to salvation I want to know where it is. If it is in the organism, let us know it. If it is in a book, let us know it. But the question as to whether it be in the church, or whether it be in the Bible, is a matter of great moment. You may not agree with the Roman Catholic or the Anglican, but you must respect his honest convictions and his intelli- gent interest in this question. If you have come to the other conclusion and found it in the Book, then, when you have settled the question as to the seat of authority, the next question for you will be the contents. If that piece of supernatural informa- tion has been communicated by God to man and the deposit of faith has been lodged in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, there can be few questions of greater moment than this. What do they say? In those old times when men believed without hesitation or a moment's doubt in the absolute authority, plenary inspi- ration and inerrancy of the Scriptures, the one question 112 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. of interest with them was, What do they say? And men would read the Scriptures. They would pore over their Greek Testament or their Greek lexicon and their Greek grammars and their commentaries. They wanted to know what Ellicott said and what Meyer said about these things. They would come up against those hard passages, and the ministers would meet on Monday morning in solemn conclave and listen to a paper an hour long by somebody who had exhausted all the inge- nuity of exegetical skill in order to tell us what was meant by being baptized for the dead ; and men would look anxiously for the coming of the next Quarterly Theological Journal, when some wise, learned, expert in exegetical theology would give him a new view of what was meant by preaching to the spirits in prison. There are not many ministers' meetings that discuss such questions now, I take it. This intense, enthusias- tic interest in exegesis is dead. Why? So they came to the great questions as to doctrine. Is there a piece of supernatural information couched in human language and deposited in the Old and New Testament, and does it tell about the place of Jesus in the scale of being? What was He? Was He God alone, or man alone, or both God and man, or neither God nor man? People say they are not interested in doc- trine now. Why not? Does the Bible speak about human sin? What is it? What is its extent, and what the penalty, and how did it come, and what is its rem- edy? People say they do not want to hear about doc- trine now. Why not? I tell you that if men believe in supernatural revelation, and that it is found in the Bible, no man, if he be above an idiot, can help being inter- ested in these theological questions. But men, sensible men too, say they are not, and we must believe them. Men with the ordinary intellectual outfit say that. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 113 What am I to conclude? My conclusion is that the reason for this decline of interest is in a changed atti- tude, and that they do not define Christianity as I define it and as the church during this century has defined it. How do they define it? Now, I am not speaking for anybody in particular, and I am not talking about any- body in particular. I am talking about tendencies, and yet I am not putting up a man of straw by any means. Ever}^ one who knows the theological literature and the tendencies of this day, knows perfectly well that I am not, and I am responsible for what I say. The new Christianity is a traverse of the definition that I gave a little while ago. We affirm that Christi- anity is a supernatural revelation of a way of salvation through the incarnation and bloodshedding of the blood of God. They deny it. The denial is in a general form ; but the substitute which they setup may take one or more forms. Let us look at two of these forms. If Christianity is not what we have said, what is it? It may be, and in the minds of a great many it is, a moment, a stage in a great cosmic process of evolution. We have come up from the lower to the higher in the organic life, in mental development, in moral life, in religious belief. There has been an evolution of religious literature, an evolution of the religious ideas embodied in that literature, and an evolution of the interpretation of those ideas. There has been an evolution of Christian doctrine through the cen- turies. Very well. You may put that in the terms of mind or you may put it in the terms of matter. You may put it in the Hegelian form or you may put it in the Spencerian form. The Hegelian came first, and the Spencerian came last. It is the naturalistic inter- pretation that has the vogue just now. There is a certain recrudescence of Hegelianism in England 114 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. just now. However, whether it be one or whether it be the other matters not, so far as our purpose is con- cerned. The effect of it is to give you a purely natu- ralistic interpretation of our Scripture, so that there never was a fall, and there is no sin except in so far as sin is a word to mark the fact that man has not yet arrived at the goal of his development ; miracles did not happen, and there was no atonement, and could be no Incarnation. So your doctrine is pretty well gone. You do not wonder that people under those circum- stances do not care much for doctrine. Why should they? There is none. There is nothing left but the ethics, but the Sermon on the Mount, but the closing passages in the Epistles with which Paul wound up his fine letters. Perhaps that is not the only view of Christianity either, and it is not, because under the influence of this metaphysical thinking all the doctrines of the Bible were evaporated, your atonement was explained this way, and your Trinity was explained that way, and the person of Christ was explained another way, and there came a revulsion of feeling ; for when the pendulum gets as far as it can go one way, there is nothing left for it to do except to go back just as far as it can the other way. It has got that way now. So as there were those who, denying our definition of Christianity, said it was a moment in a great process of evolution, there are those at the present day who will tell you that Christianity is the self-revelation of God in Christ, and now they pose as the great reformers of the church. These are the men who have delivered us from metaph3'sics and the trammels of the schools. These are the men who have gone back to the historic basis of Christianity in the historic life of Christ. These THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 115 are the men who preach Jesus only, and see no man but Jesus only. These are the men who emphasize the historic Christ. Now that is the good side of it. There is that good in it. But that is not the only side of it. They say we have Jesus. Jesus is a revelation to us of God, We cannot trust the argument from design or the argu- ment from the order of the world to prove the existence of God. We cannot trust their authority or cogency. We trust Jesus for proving to us that there is a God, and for showing to us, moreover, what kind of a God He is. We are delivered from metaphysics, and we are independent of criticism. Now let critics do their work. We have got Jesus. Banish metaphysics, get independent of the critics, and it looks as though you had your Christianity out clean, with nothing to inter- fere with it or challenge it. Let us see. You say that you are independent of criticism. I have heard that story before. I have heard at least two classes of men say that they were independent of criti- cism. I have heard the Anglican say that. I have seen the coalition between the Broad Churchman and the High Churchman where the Broad Churchman could swallow everything that the High Churchman would say and the High Churchman could swallow everything that the Broad Churchman would say. And so men of the " Lux mundi'" school say, " Bring on your criticism and do your worst with Paul or the Gos- pels, we have the doctrines in the church." How did they get their doctrines in the church ? How did they get their church? How do they come to be' so confi- dent about their church? If the church had not been spoken of in the New Testament, where would they have got the church, and if the New Testament goes, where is the church going? 116 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. I have heard other Protestants say the same thing. I have heard men of the Church of Scotland say, " It does not make any difference what the higher critics have to say ; go along with your two Isaiahs, or your two Zachariahs, and make what you please of the four Gospels and second Peter and the Epistles of Paul, we have the witness of the Spirit," and they quote to me the Confession of Faith. How do they know that they have the witness of the Spirit? They are in a certain psychological state, which they are pleased to impute to the witness of the Spirit. How did they come to put that interpretation upon that psychological state? They got it out of Paul, and if it is all up with Paul what about the witness of the Spirit? Independent of the critics ! Suppose it be true that you have not any four Gospels. Suppose Schmiedel is right, and you cannot put your finger on more than five or six marked incidents of the life of Christ on which to build the narrative of his earthly career? Suppose that the Epistles of Paul, though they were written by him, are unworthy of credence, for that seems to be the position some want to put us in? Some of them say, " We could believe the Gospels if we only had them," and then they say, " We have Paul, but we do not believe him," and between the Paul that they have but do not believe and the Gospels they would believe but do not have, they make very sorry work of it. Suppose that is it, what becomes of your religion in- dependent of the critics? Is not the whole religion of the historic Christ right there? Then you are not in- dependent. Then that first boast of yours must go down. You are not independent of criticism. Are you independent of metaphysics? Who was Jesus? How was He revealed? You say He has revealed God. How do you know? You say He has taught you the THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 117 way of life. How do you know? Who was He? Was He a mere man? Then why does He speak with any more authority for me than Epictetus or Socrates? Was He more than man? How much more? Did He live before He was born? Had He a pre-existent state? Then He had a place in the scale of being. Then you have a metaphysic. Was He God? Then you have a metaphysic. How can you posit anything regard- ing Jesus more than His bare humanity and not be metaphysical? I cannot say. You say you do not know whether He was God. No, they do not. You say you do not attach any importance to the miracles. No, you do not. But that He is to you as if He were God. His divinity is a value-judgment, and you rev- erence and worship as though He were God. Well now, how can you worship Him as God if you do not know Him to be God? How can you believe Him to be God if you have no evidence that He is God? How can you be emotionally accepting what you have already intellectually rejected? That is your position. You are simply cheating your judgment through your feelings. Then you cannot escape metaphysics. But you have given up doctrine because that is metaphysics. You have given up the Trinity because that is metaphysics. You have given up the divinity of Christ because that is metaphysics. You have given up the atonement, for that is metaphysics, too. You have eliminated doctrine of all it contains, but you keep its morals. You are back again where you were before. You are back with the Hegelians. You have the Sermon on the Mount and you have the ethics. That is exactly what you have not got, my friends. That is the very worst part of it. That is the pathetic conclusion of this whole business. 118 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. What I want to have the church understand (and would to God I could speak in the tones of a trumpet until they did hear it and could understand it) is, that Christianity must be more than ethical in order to be even ethical. Do you not see it? You say you have the Sermon on the Mount. You have the great law of monogamy. You have the great Christian doctrine of divorce. On what authority? Now, let us get right down to this question. Jesus says something on the subject of marriage. He teaches monogamy, and He limits divorce a vinculo to a specific cause. Do you believe that doctrine on the authority of Jesus, or do 3'ou value Jesus on the authority of that teaching? Which? Does the teaching authenticate Jesus, or does Jesus authenticate the teaching ? Which ? Well, let us look at it either way. Of course, if Jesus is divine and speaks with authority, then in His magisterial tone you have an absolute answer. But suppose he is not — suppose that he is simply a great teacher like Socrates or Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, or anybody else who enunciates moral sentiments. I may like them or 1 may not like them. Suppose I do not like them. Suppose I do like them. I follow Jesus. In other words, Jesus's teaching meets a certain moral aesthetic in me, brought up as I am. If I had been brought up in the Mohammedan empire I would not have felt that way. Now then, do you not see where we are ? Give up the divinity of Christ, give up all the doctrine, stop with the ethics, what is to support the ethics ? Have we an absolute intuition? Would a. man say that it is self-evident, universal, and necessary, as an a priori element of his thinking, that a man shall have only one wife and that he shall put her away only for one cause ? THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 119 There is no intuition in my mind that way. Well then, what is the authority for the Christian view of marriage and divorce ? So with a great many other things. When Paul says, *' Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend," he enunciates that great doctrine which has done more to moralize the world than any- thing else outside of the Sermon on the Mount. Does he speak by revelation, or is he simply voicing for you and me an intuition that you and I, and every- body else, have had all along? I have not any such intuition. Have you? If you did not know that Paul said it, and had a right to say it, would you believe it? Then, when you have given up the dogmatic side of Christianity — that is the point I want to make (people say, " We do not want the doctrine ; it is the morals we want " ) — I say when you have given up the dogmatic side of Christianity, what is to support it? You have not only reduced your Christianity to morals, but you have done more than that. You have reduced it to moral philosophy, which is a very different thing. You have appealed from the high court of the supernatural to the court of philosophy. You have appealed unto Cfesar. To Ceesar you shall go. And when you have eliminated the supernatural and got rid of the dogmatic, your morals of Christianity are down to the level of moral philosophy. Let us go along now and talk about moral philosophy, and ask ourselves one or two fundamental questions. Here we are, all of us, with a very tolerable degree of respect for the Ten Commandments. We violate them in thought, word, or deed, some or all of them, but we still have great respect for them. When we violate them we say we ought not to do it, and that is something to be said for 120 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. a man. It is something for a man who does do wrong to have something in him that tells him he ought not to do wrong. But you are now in a position where you will not only do wrong, but you will have no restraint on doing wrong. You are in that position where you will not only break the Ten Commandments, but where you will have this question confronting you. Why in the world should I ever keep them if I do not want to? I defy you to find in the answers of the ethical philoso- phers of to-day (and I think I know something about them) a satisfactory answer to this question, Why should I be moral? I do not care what you mean by being moral, take it to cover any one of the Ten Command- ments or all of them, I defy you to find in the philosophers of to-da}'- such a satisfactory answer to the question. Why should I be moral ? as that you would feel restrained, and that there will be something in you that will effect- ually resist this rising tide of passion. Now then, why do I value morals? Because if I should be immoral, you may be immoral, and every- body may be immoral, and if the world generally should steal and lie and cheat, I do not know how long it would take, but in the course of several millions of years, society would go to pieces. Now, believe me, in the hands of some of the ripest thinkers of the present day, that is about all they can say for it ; and to the man who says " let it go to pieces," you have absolutely no answer. Ah, my friends, Christianity has moralized this world, not simply because it has taught precepts, but because it has taught as one that had authority to teach, and not as the scribes. It taught this morality in con- nection with the doctrine of sin and the doctrine of atonement, and the doctrine of God and the doctrine of incarnation, and the doctrine of a future state, and the THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 121 doctrine of the schism in our nature between the good and the bad, and the doctrine of the help of the Holy Spirit. It was these great theological truths in connec- tion with these great moral verities that constituted the great conception of the Kingdom of God, and it is that conception which has made this world moral, not a few scattered maxims of prudential morality. When you have given that up, and the body of doctrines and pre- cepts which constitute it, you have absolutely nothing to stand in the way of appetite, and selfishness, and greed. After that it is only when passion dies and virtue itself becomes an appetite, that you can hope for a morality that will stem the tide of lawlessness. In its last analysis there is in the new Christianity a complete surrender of supernaturalism. I do not say that in the persons of all who profess it, or of even the most who protess it, it has come to this. I am speaking of its tendencies in its last analysis. It is a complete surrender of supernaturalism, and the surrender of supernaturalism is the surrender of obligatory morals, and the surrender of obligatory morals is the sur- render of morality itself save as it is enforced by the sanctions of affection, by the jealous care a man has for his own interests, by fear of social ostracism, by the sheriff, and the shot gun. You have either to believe that there is no morality that is binding on anybody, or else you have to believe in a morality that is binding, in a duty that must be performed, and failure to perform which is sin. The moment you say " ought," and the moment you put that word " ought" in its proper place in your vocabulary, that moment this old doctrine of sin that you thought you had got rid of comes back, and the moment you are face to face with that doctrine of sin in the " ought not," there comes up the cry of the 122 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. soul for something that will deliver us, something that will save, for some power that will forgive. Mark well what is meant by giving up the old Christianity. For we are at the place where Peter was when, con- scious of the alternatives before him, he said, Lord, to whom shall we go but unto thee, for thou hast the words of eternal life ? My friends, we have either to go on in this journey of negation and doubt to the very bottomless pit of despair, or we have to retrace our steps and go back, and back, until we rehabilitate Paul and give him his ancient place, and back, and back, until we come to atoning blood. I do not take any pessimistic view of the future, because the Holy Ghost is the great hope of the church, and our faith does not stand in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. But in that great defection which seems likely to come, and which will affect not our church only but all Protestant Churches, and all churches of every kind, I do believe there is a great work to be done by the churches that still hold on to a dogmatic faith. While I do not wish to arrogate for the church that I have the honor to serve any conspicuous position above other churches, still I think that in view of her past history, in view of her scholarship, her equipment, her zeal for theological learning, and the interest she has taken in the purely theoretical side of religion, if you choose to call it such, a work greater than any she has ever done is before her in defending the faith once for all delivered to the saints. The one hundred and fifty-fourth hymn was then suno; : Phineas D. Gurlev, D. D. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 123 1 Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim, And publish abroad His wonderful Name; The Name, all victorious, of Jesus extol ; His kingdom is glorious, and rules over all. 2 God ruleth on high, almighty to save; And still He is nigh — His presence we have ; The great congregation His triumph shall sing, Ascribing salvation to Jesus, our King. 3 Salvation to God, who sits on the throne I Let all cry aloud, and honor the Son : The praises of Jesus the angels proclaim. Fall down on their faces and worship the Lamb. 4 Then let us adore, and give Him His right, All glory and power, and wisdom and might, All honor and blessing, with angels above, And thanks never ceasing, and infinite love. The benediction was pronounced by Rev. A. S. Fiske, D. D., pastor of Gunton Temple Presbyterian Church of Washington, D. C. WEDNESDAY. An Evening of Greetings.* at seven forty-five in the evening. The pastor presided. The services began with the rendering by the choir of Whiting's '' The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." ^ The following prayer was then offered by Rev. C. B. Ramsdell, D. D., pastor of the North Pres- byterian Church, Washington, D. C. : We thank Thee, O God, for this church home. We rejoice that here so many of us have made profession of our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and have been permitted to enjoy so many precious communion sea- sons. We thank Thee for the blessed ministrations of those who, in former years, here instructed and com- forted us. We thank Thee for those who still labor here, and for those who, in the colonies and missions of this church, are to-day seeking to advance the king- dom of our dear Lord. We pray, O God, that as, in the century past, this church has in all its utterances and service proved loyal to our Divine Saviour and to His holy Word, that so it may prove loyal in all the j'ears to come. Grant, we beseech Thee, the continued outpouring of Thy Holy Spirit upon this people so that ever increasing numbers may be here converted and sanctified through Thy grace in Jesus Christ. If consistent with Thy holy will may this congregation of believers abide in faith and service even until Jesus come. Amen. *Stenograpliical]y reported liy Mr. A. Warner Parker. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 125 The one hundred and fourth hymn was then sung: 1 Tlie Church's one foundation Is Jesus Christ her Lord ; She Is His new creation By water and the word : From Heaven He came and sought her To be His holy bride ; With His own blood he bought her, And for her life He died. 2 Elect from every nation. Yet one o'er all the eartli. Her charter of salvation One Lord, one faith, one birth ; One holy Name she blesses. Partakes one holy food, And to one hope she presses, With every grace endued. 3 'Mid toil and tribulation. And tumult of her war, She waits the consummation Of peace for ever more ; Till with the vision glorious Her longing eyes are blessed. And the great Church victorious Shall be the Church at rest. The greetings were then extended as the representa lives were presented by the pastor, Dr. Radclifte. The Pastor : I welcome you, my brethren, to this the last of our public centennial celebrations. All have been delight- ful, but we have saved the best wine until the last. The exercises this evening will continue until nine o'clock, when the reception occurs to which we invite all. To-night we have a very pleasant and effective illus- tration of the Holy Catholic Church. It is one of the 126 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. great joys of our Christian life and work that we are parts of the one great army ; we touch shoulder to shoulder, and believe and march heart to heart under the one great banner of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our brethren here come to us with greetings and congratu- lations. The first greeting will be from the Synod of Baltimore, with which we are ecclesiastically connected, and will be deliv^ered by the moderator, Rev. T. C. Easton, D. D. Dr. Easton : Mr. President and Beloved Friends : It is with great joy that I come as the bearer of warm and loving greetings from the Synod of Baltimore as its present moderator to this beloved and highly hon- ored church, now celebrating its one hundredth anniver- sary. The Synod of Baltimore covers the following terri- tory : The state of Maryland, the state of Delaware, the District of Columbia, and a large section of the state of Virginia. It represents 154 churches and 27,082 communicants and a Sunday-school army of 27,764. In the name of these churches, communicants, and Sunday-schools I am happy to extend their hearty and loving congratulations. Remembering that the hon- ored, beloved, and consecrated pastor of this church has held the highest gift to be bestowed on the ministry of the Presbyterian body and was recently moderator of the General Assembly, it is not at all out of place to extend the greetings of the whole church in these United States, represented by 7,822 churches, 7,7^5 ministers, and 1,677,477 communicants, and a Sunday- school army of 1,076,457, all of whom could they THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 127 speak to-night would voice their glad thanksgiving with us to Christ, the head of His church, for the growth, and prosperity, temporal and spiritual, that has crowned your one hundred years. To-night I am carried back to the scenes of my boy- hood, in Roxburghshire, Scotland, where, on the banks of the Jed, there stands an old royal oak known as the "Capon Tree." It is one of the monarchs of the forest. Beneath its wide-spreading branches the dukes, lords, and earls, after hunting, would feast upon roast capons and rub}'^ sparkling wine. It is known to be over a century and a half old, and is mentioned in "Gilpin's Forest Scenery" as one of the noblest objects in the Scottish border landscapes. Travelers from all lands have visited this venerable oak. Qiieen Victoria sat delighted beneath its grateful shade. Some of Scotland's honest sons and bonnie lasses have plighted their troth beneath its boughs. Weary travelers have rested under its umbrageous branches, and happy child- hood has spent many a long summer day in that favored spot. So this dear venerable church, bearing the grace of a centar3% has in many respects been like that royal oak. Under the ministry of this century, thousands upon thousands have been nourished, strengthened, comforted, and saved to eternal life. Like the old oak, it is still green and flourishing and fulfilling the prophecy of Israel's royal singer, it brings forth its fruit, rich and lucious fruits, in old age. We congratulate you to-night upon your large, generous, and noble benefac- tions and philanthropic gifts. None knows this bettei than the church of which I have the honor to be pastor, and it sends to you to-night, through me, its grateful acknowledgments, wishing for the New York Avenue Church a grander future in the new centur\^ upon which you are ushered. 128 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. Pardon a personal reference ere I take my seat : This church is largely responsible for my being called to a Washington pastorate. Dr. Bartlett, whose genial bright spirit has prompted so many to seek counsel from him, was asked what man to call on Capitol Hill. He said to the committee : " Call Easton, of San Fran- cisco," and so I came from California. Then, in turn, I am somewhat responsible for this church calling its present brilliant, eloquent, popular pastor. Dr. Rad- cliff'e, for when Judge Randolph and other members of the committee conferred with me about calling the pastor of the Fort Street Church, Detroit, I said, " By all means call Radcliffe," and he came. Long may his bow abide in strength, and his clear clarion trumpet tones ring out "the old, old story of Jesus and his love" into the new century, to achieve more brilliant victories and to win more souls as stars in the coronet of our Redeemer. At the memorable battle of Ivry, when King Henry rode past his troops, he charged them to remember " Seine's empurpled flood, And good Coligni's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood; " then facing the advancing hosts led by Mayenne and D'Aumale, he cried out : " Press where you see my white plume shine, Amid the ranks of war ; Be this your oriflamme to-day — The helmet of Navarre." Victory perched upon their banners ; the St. Bartholo- mew massacre was avenged ; the tyrant was crushed in the dust; and the enemies of God suffered his rightful vengeance. Samuel S. Mitchell, D. D. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 129 As the soldiers of a Heavenly King, we bid you follow wherever the banner, the snow-white banner of the Cross as the oriflamme of His Sacramental Host shall wave. Let your watchword along the battle line be '* For Christ and the Glory of the Coming Kingdom, "^ nor let us rest before every foe bows the knee to the enthroned Immanuel. The Pastor : The next greeting is from the Presbytery of Wash- ington, and will be delivered by its moderator, Rev. J. G. Hamner, D. D . Dr. Hamner : The Presbytery of Washington City, at its fall meet- ing at Manassas, Va., directed its moderator and stated clerk to convey its hearty congratulations on the celebra- tion of this centennial. Allow me, without doing any- thing more as there are so many more to speak to-night, to read you the greeting as it was written : To the Pastor and Officials of the JVezu York Avenue Church : Dear Brethren, — It gives me pleasure to commu- nicate the following action of the Presbytery of Wash- ington City, taken at its stated meeting held in Ma- nassas, Va., October 6, 1903 : " The Presbytery has heard with great satisfaction of the coming of the centennial of the New York Avenue Church, and hereby tenders its hearty congratulations. We rejoice with them in their great past, in the long line of their distinguished ministry, and in their eminent place as a bulwark of the faith in the capital city of the Republic. 130 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. " We are confident that the past is only the prophecy and promise of larger things to be. "We invoke upon the church thus entering upon a new century of activity and power, the richest bless- ings of the everlasting covenant." B. F. BiTTINGER, Stated Clerk. P. S. It was also ordered that the foregoing resolu- tion be forwarded to the church by the moderator and the stated clerk. J. Garland Hamner, Moderator. B. F. Bittinger, Stated Clerk. The Pastor : I was hoping that Dr. Hamner would recall to us the fact that his father was very intimately connected with the interests of this church and gave, in the days of the extreme necessities of the old Second Church, his best endeavors and most blessed service. Dr. Hamner : Doctor, you will allow me, as you have suggested it, to say a word regarding my father's connection with this church. My father, the Rev. Dr. Hamner, of Bal- timore, having had for twenty years a pastorate there, spent the last years of his life as a minister at large, helping and aiding feeble churches. He never received a cent of salary in all his ministr}^ having a special repugnance to a " hireling ministr}^." It came to pass that he spent nearly two 3^ears in supplying the Second Church, whose building occupied this site ; and I know that he took great interest in consummating the union THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. Vol of the F Street and the Second churches. And I remember so well preaching myself in the old F Street church, when a boy student in the seminary. In my audience was President Buchanan (listening rather impatiently to the boy preacher) : and General Cass was there, and Professor Henry also. I remember President Buchanan's coming up after the sermon and speaking a very kind word regarding my entering the ministry. I have always felt a very peculiar interest in the New York Avenue Church. My special friends, Dr. Paxton and Dr. Bartlett, always led me to feel very much interested in this church. You have my very heart}' well wishes for the entrance into this new century of life and devotion. The Pastor : The greetings of our Baptist brethren will be pre- sented by Rev. J. J. Muir, D. D. Dr. Muir : Permit me to read, Mr. Chairman, the action taken by the Baptist Union, at present in session, and also of the ministers of the Conference, of which I happen to be the president, which accounts for my being the bearer of the greetings and congratulations. The Rev. Mr. Winbigler, pastor of the First Baptist Church, whose centennial was held very recentl}', and Dr. Greene of the Calvary Baptist Church, were also appointed as members of the same committee. The Columbia Association of Baptist Churches, at present in annual session, tender to the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church ■cordial greetings and hearty congratulations on the happy close of a hundred years of marked usefulness in our capital city, and we trust that the centennial exercises now being held shall prove a worthy inspiration to continued and ever-increasing prosperity. 132 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. Permit a few words. We congratulate you most heartily on the successful close of a notable century. This has all been referred to on other evenings of your exercises, and in it all the evangelical churches of the city have shared, realizing that in your successes and achievements our common Christianity has been blessed. What has been the attain- ment through all the struggles and difficulties, through all the heart-aches and sacrifices, of those years have not only been to you but to us all a comfort and an inspiration. I remember a little while ago a friend of mine called attention to the fact that he looked with a otc eal of interest upon an old lady who was caring for a plant. He asked her what she was doing. She said : " I am watering and at the same time watching this century plant. It is a little thing. I never expect to see it grow to any large proportions. I certainly never expect to see it bloom, but someon-c else zvill!''' And what that old lady did in the kindness and delightfulness of her heart, the brethren that had to do with the organization of this church, that has grown so splendidly and brought forth such fruit in the richness of the closing century, did in the first days of its life. We congratulate you also upon the strength of your denominationalism. It is a good thing to know that there are those who believe something in these days ; who have a creed so definite and conclusive that they hold to it with all the tenacity of those who recognize the fact that their creed is worthy to be formulated in noble action and in splendid devotion. You know what old Carlyle said about that first question in the shorter catechism, " What is the chief end of man? " But of course you all know that. I was brought up on that \\\ THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 133 Scotland, years ago, myself. He said, " There is no gospel of dirt in that." And certainly there is not. There is stalwartness. There is solidity of thought; and we congratulate you to-night upon the strength of your denominationalism, and how you have magnified it in 3'our work and in your worship. We congratulate you lastly upon the breadth of your interdenominationalism. You have been enabled to be true to the convictions dear to you, and you have recog- nized convictions as equally dearto others ; so that while you have been striking hands thus in the consecration of your own respective views, you have also been ena- bled to strike hands with others in their common rela- tionship, in a common Christ and in a common hope. And so we congratulate you to-night on the pleasant relationships sustained with all denominations. I think it was stated one evening this week that this house has been open almost every week through the years to some phase or other of interdenominational life, welcoming into its sanctuary peoples of all creeds who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerit}^ May God give you large blessing in the coming century ! Having reached this magnificent height of outlook, none can tell to-night, none can begin to spec- ulate, as to what your history may be in the coming years ; but we shall all rejoice by the grace of God, in every success and in all the experiences of hope and life, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. The Pastor : Our brethren of the Protestant Episcopal Church have appointed a committee of two, Dr. Alfred Harding and Dr. R. H. McKim, both of whom we are very glad to welcome. Dr. McKim will offer their greetings. 134 the centennial exercises. Dr. McKim : Dr. Radcliffe ., Christian Brethren : I bring you cordial and very sincere congratulations upon this happy occasion from the Bishop of Washing- ton and from the clergy and laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church ; and I do so in no formal or con- ventional spirit. We know the talents and value of your pastor ; we recognize the splendid service of this body of Christian people in this communit}'; we recog- nize what they have done for humanity, for Christian manhood, for that strong, virile Christianity that char- acterizes you and your church ; we recognize, I say, all these things, of which I will not stop to speak, and therefore our congratulations to-night, and our greet- ings are very hearty and sincere. My brethren, it seems to me that this occasion accen- tuates in a peculiar manner what I shall venture to call the unity in diversity of our Protestant Christianit}-. Here we are to-night on this platform, representatives of various forms of Christianity ; I wish it were not so. I wish that we were all together not only in spirit, but in every particular. I do not think that the present condition of Christendom in that respect is ideal at all. Yet behind and underneath all this apparent diversity there is a real unity, a unity that means a great deal, a unity in which we may well rejoice, which we ought to recognize, and which may be the instrument of great work for God and for man. Is there not much unity here among us? Do we not all stand upon the unity of the doctrines taught in the Apostles' Creed? And is there not the unity of a common ethical standard, a common love of Jesus Christ, a common recognition of his sole mediatorship, and of the individual relation of each Christian soul to its God through Jesus Christ? My Christian brethren of all these various denominations, THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 135 we ought to recognize and accentuate that unity. We who are on this platform represent, I believe, nearly forty millions of the citizens of the United States, a splendid aggregation of power : and I say that Protes- tant Christians ought to stand together, ought to stand by each other, for the time is coming, indeed now is, when we shall need to stand together, and it is nowhere more important than in the metropolis of this country — I need not say — you understand ; I say that here in the metropolis of this country it is of exceeding importance that those who believe in the fundamental principles of the Reformation of the sixteenth century should stand shoulder to shoulder, because the peril of the sixteenth century has not altogether passed away. This occasion accentuates, even more, perhaps I may venture to say — what shall I call it? — the zeal, the virile strength, and the splendid services for God and man of that great Presbyterian communion of which you form a part. We of tlie Episcopal Church recognize the splendid services and the splendid work of the Presby- terian communion. We know something about your high intellectuality and your splendid scholarship. We love to read what your scholars have written ; we love to be led by them. We recognize also what the great Pres- byterian communion has done and is doing in this vast land of ours, in the waste places of the West and South. We look across the sea and we see what you are doing in foreign lands ; we look at home and see your zeal for Jesus Christ, especially your conservatism, sturdiness which shall be able to cope with the questions that arise as man to man in this age in which we live. We recog- nize your conservatism, your love of the past, while you have also the open mind for the future. And as we look back over a century of your theology I think we are inclined to hope a little more than was indicated by 136 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. a very distinguished theologian who spoke from this pulpit last night. We recognize all this ; and more than this, we look to 3^ou as our brothers and allies in the great battle that is coming on and must come on with greater strength as the years roll by — the great battle for God and for humanity, for true righteousness of civic institutions and in private life, for the Christian religion and for the Christian ideals. I tell you, my brothers, the battle for Christianity will be hard, and those who love Jesus Christ must stand together in that great battle — the battle against unbelief, against un- clean living, against unholy divorce, against that pagan luxury which is sweeping like the destroying one over our land to-day, threatening the high ideal of home and family. I say in all these struggles which are before us, in all these battles against intemperance, against impurity, against bestial profanity, we look to the Pres- byterian communion as a splendid aggregation of forces, and we rejoice to know that what we are trying to do in our way you will also help us to do in your splendid way. We thank God that, as we look into the future, we can believe that this great battle of which I speak will be fought, not by one branch, but by all the united iDranches of Protestant faith and Protestant truth. The battle for the purit}^ of the home, the battle against intemperance, injustice, unholiness, the battle against the manifold evils of a licentious divorce law, is some- thing we must stand together for and unite our forces for the glory of God. Therefore, as I stand here to-night, and bring you the greetings of my brethren of the Episcopal Church, I say again it is in no formal or conventional manner, but with a sense of the power you represent, and of the fact that we lean upon you as our brothers and our allies in the work which God has given us to do in this land. John R. Paxton, D. D. the centennial exercises. 137 The Pastor : We will now have the greetings of our Methodist Churches, which will be delivered by Rev. Lucien Clark, D. D. Dr. Clark : To the pastor and members of this church I bring the cordial greetings of the ministers and churches of the Methodist Episcopal Church of this city. We congratulate you on the splendid success of this centennial celebration. We congratulate you on a century of history and of magnificent achievements. Who can estimate the value of this church, located in the center of this great city, to the country and to the world ! From this center of truth and light rays have gone forth to all the world ! A century of preaching, a century of prayer, a cen- tury of sacred song, a century of benevolence, a cen- tury of holy living by the members of this church whose names have been and are now upon its rolls, mean more than we can think. One hundred years is a long time for a man to live, but it is not a long time for a church to live. This church is not in its infancy, neither is it in the decline of its life. We may expect that it will live a thousand years, and that its future will be far greater than the past, and that in the cen- turies to come the seeds of truth will continue to be sown here that shall go forth into all the world and their fruits shall shake like Lebanon ! One hundred years ago a Methodist preacher would not have been expected to bring the congratulations of his denomination to a Presbyterian congregation. The denomination that I represent was at that time just nineteen years old, but it had a foothold in this city, 138 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. and its representatives were men who made their mark and left their impression upon the city. And if a Methodist preacher had come to a Presbyterian Church at that time with his congratulations we are not sure that he would have been received with overwhelm- ing satisfaction, because at that time the denominational lines were denominational barriers ; aye, and strong. Your people believed in the Westminster Confession of Faith without any modern improvements. Our people did not. They believed that that confession of faith con- tained much deadly heresy, and they trained their artil- lery' against it and fought it for fifty years. I suppose that Dr. Radcliffe and I now could sit down and pre- pare a confession of faith to which three fourths of the members of both denominations would cordially sub- scribe. One hundred 3'ears ago your ecclesiastical ancestors sang Rouse's Version of the Psalms. I tried very hard yesterday to find a copy of that book and I could not find one within the city except in the Sunday- school room of this church and that was guarded by a young man. If I could have found it I should have recited to you some stanzas from that remarkable book for our edification. You were singing Rouse's Version of the Psalms. We sang, " Shout, shout, we're gain- ing ground, Halle-, halle-lujah !" Now we all sing — " Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love." The Pastor : I was looking over an account the other day of the laying of the corner-stone of this building, and one who took a prominent part in those services is here to-night with greetings. I am glad to present to you, as one bearing the greetings of the Lutheran Churches, Rev. J. G. Butler, D. D. the centennial exercises. 139 Dr. Butler : In bringing the greetings of the Lutheran Church, my thought has been fixed upon the object lesson here to-night, this illustration of the wondrous Christian unity into which we have grown during these one hundred years. Not only Martin Luther, and John Calvin, and V/ycliffe, and Wesley, but all shades of evangelical faith are represented here to-night, and we can sing heartily *' Blest be the tie that binds." We have grown into that maxim, " In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity." And we get into the spirit of that. I do not think we will get beyond that, but we can agree upon the essentials ; we can agree, we are agreeing I trust, in charity toward all men, especially toward all that are of the household of faith. I am not quite a hundred years old. Dr. Radcliffe, and yet I have a pleasant remembrance of all the pas- tors of this church celebrating its centennial to-night. When I came to this city in 1849, a young pastor with a very small salary, the church burdened with debt, one of the first men I met was Dr. Laurie, pastor of the old F Street Church, and he had the gracious condescension to invite the boy that I was to preach in that church. I also knew Dr. Junkin, the sainted Dr. Gurley (one of the grandest men that ever lived in the city of Wash ington). Dr. Mitchell, Dr. Paxton, Dr. Bartlett, and now my eloquent brother who is the pastor of this church. Dr. Radcliffe. I rejoice that this church, dur- ing all these hundred years, has stood a witness for Christ and the Gospel ; for the word of God ; for the day of God, now being so greatly secularized ; for the house of God, deserted by such multitudes; for the family as God appointed it, as against unscriptural divorce and polygamy that debauches the homes ; for soberness, as 140 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. against the saloon ; for justice between labor and capi- tal ; for the love of our neighbor, of whatever race he may be. A church that has stood for one hundred years bearing this testimony deserves not only to live but to be crowned with great honor. This church, as no other church in this city, has come into contact with the life of the nation, not only as it exerted its influence upon the current of life flowing through the city, then a mere village, but as it has touched the lives of great men ; and in the family of churches always sustaining a fraternal, catholic relation. I remember that when I came to this city, the first pastor who called upon me was a Presbyterian pastor, and for fifty years my relations have been of the most cordial character with the Presbyterian Church, and with all churches of our Lord Jesus Christ, Christians of every name. And this church has stood for all these years, not only in contact with the life of the city, but with the great national life. It has reached more public men than any other church ; " the church of the presidents," cabinet officers, senators, representatives, judges of the supreme court; the church of men high in the places of the nation. I present a concrete illustration indicating the influence of this church and the growth and power of Christianity in this nation (for I have not time to elaborate this thought) : One hundred years ago, when Thomas Jef- ferson was counted among the followers of Thomas Paine, who could have imagined that to-day in this New York Avenue Church, in the pew once occupied by Abraham Lincoln, would stand the President of the United States witnessing for Christ ! (I wonder if he ought not to have been a preacher.) I am very sure that he is a very good president, and whom we ought all to highly respect for his Christian character. The New York Avenue Church has had so much to do in THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 141 molding the life of this great nation ; and whilst we are exposed all the while to the winds of doctrine, I feel that this church, with other churches in this city, is standing and protesting forever, — and I want to empha- size that word Protestant, as did Dr. McKim, — standing and protesting forever for everything that is sound and right and true; I feel that this church, with our other Christian churches, is for God, for God's day, for God's house, for God's word ; and that His kingdom will con- tinue to be blessed as the armies of the Lord march forward to certain victory ! Who does not rejoice to-day in the power of this the greatest of the powers among the nations of the world? And shall we not, and must we not, link very closely with the power of this national government the influences of the churches of this city, but especially the influence of this New York Avenue Church? I am sure we all rejoice in the past one hun- dred years of your history, and as we look out upon the next century, what can we wish more. Dr. Radcliffe, than a repetition, with increasing power and glory. We are sure the New York Avenue Church will stand with our Protestant churches for Christ and His king- dom ; Luther and Calvin and Wyclifi'e, and grand old John Knox — the man who cried, " Give me Scotland or I die," and of whom the bloody queen said, '* I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the armies of Europe." With a record such as this, supplemented by John Wesley, what may we not expect, as we sing in our hearts, as I am sure we do, " Onward, Christian soldiers?" Ah ! what thoughts crowd in our memories, as we remember the hosts that have gone from this church to the better land and to their reward ! With that part of the host that 3'^onder waits, we will stand for Christ until the Master shall say, " It is enough, come up higher ! " 142 the centennial exercises, The Pastor : The greetings of the German Reformed Church will now be delivered by Rev. J. M. Schick, D. D. Dr. Schick : It is with strong feelings of pleasure that I come, representing one of the least of the tribes of Israel, to congratulate you upon, not just the existence of one hundred years, but upon the fact that God has deemed you worthy to stand during these one hundred years for that principle that you have never ceased to love, and for that truth you have never ceased to teach. It is a great thing to be recognized of God in the doing of a great work. I want to congratulate you because you stand in a movement that stands for self-government and self-control ; because you have a message for this nation, coming out of your historic life, and because of the bearing of that message, which the world has come to recognize, and which as a nation we are more and more coming to emphasize. I congratulate you upon the fact that the whole world is coming to recognize something of that unity of the Christian Church. We stand with 3'OU, and there never was a time when the Church of Jesus Christ was so united ; but we are com- ing to recognize it more. The Protestant Churches in the past were very much like the Irishman who was killing a snake, and the snake would keep twisting and squirming ; and some one coming by, said, " Why don't you kill that snake?" The Irishman replied, '*I have killed him, but it is very hard to get him to know it." That is the way we have been about the unity of the churches of Jesus Christ. There never was a time when we were not one. And I am not so sure but that we are to be congratulated that we did not know of our unity. Why, if our fathers had not fought, we could not rejoice to-night over the fact that we are now united. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 143 or over the unity of that life in which we now stand. We are growing nearer to our Lord Jesus Christ and His truth, and the nearer men come to Jesus Christ the nearer they get together ; the closer we come to him the more nearly we are bound to touch shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart in doing His work. For this reason I am glad, though representing so small a body and so new a congregation, to congratulate you upon the great work of the century, upon the high honor God has given you in keeping you in this place to bear his name, upon the success he has given your work, and the joys that are bound to increase and mul- tiply, and the influences that are bound to come forth ; entering upon the new century in the spirit of the past development, entering the new with consciousness of the ideals that are to be attained, with confidence in God because of the past, without fear for the foe that is before us because we have succeeded in the past, with- out a fear because we rely upon Him who has guarded and guided aright in truth and righteousness, because Christian influence to-day in our national life is greater than at any other time in our history ; and although there is much to regret and much more to be done, although there is a long journey yet to be traveled, this is true, as God is true. His word shall not fail, it shall accomplish that which He pleases. And because of this trust and because of our confidence in the history that is behind us, we go forth to the new century stronger and in firmer assurance that His word will prevail. And come what will, grow in wickedness as many nations will, this is true, the Church of Jesus Christ undivided, the Church of Jesus Christ recognizing the work it has to do, cannot fail ! Because we are in this mind, we congratulate you and recommend jaiu in that name of Christ to go forth into the new century, trusting His love and assured of His power. 144 the centennial exercises. The Pastor : There are two Presbj^erian denominations in Wash- ington, the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America, and the Presbyterian Church in the United States. The brethren of the latter in Washington send their greetings through our brother beloved. Rev. A. W. Pitzer, D. D. Dr. Pitzer : Dr. Radcliffe and Christian Friends: Will you please allow me to indulge in personal allu- sions in the little time I shall take to talk to-nicrht? In this very church some thirty years ago I heard a blind man sing, " One more day's work for Jesus ; one less of life for me." That sentence came to me just now. One century of work for Jesus ; one century of work for that Redeemer who loved us and died for us, and looks down with tenderest compassion upon us. Last week a very intelligent Christian woman, very familiar with this city, said to me, " I believe the New York Avenue Church has been the most potent force for righteousness and Presbyterian Christianity in Washington city." I said, " I believe what you say is true." I said that privately ; I wish to say it here in public. Other men labored and ye have entered into their labors. Will you let me read six lines from a sermon that I preached twenty-three years ago, and you will see why I wish to read it? "Just before this church was organized, the Rev. Dr. P. D. Gurley, who was for years a faithful minister of the Lord Jesus Christ in this city, building up, filling and crowding the New York Avenue Church, holding that large congregation to- gether during all the trials and scenes of the Civil War, turned it over to his successor the largest and most William A. Bartlett, D. D. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 145 important congregation in Washington — this represent- ative Presbyterian minister said to one of the movers in establishing this church (and I will call her name here to-night) : ' You have done right ; this is a good move, and I am glad of it. Doubtless it will save to Presby- terianism many who have gone to other churches, and I wish you God-speed in building up your gospel church.'" Those are the words of Dr. Gurley, to whose untiring labors in this city the future prosperity of this congregation is largely due. And after him came the aggressive, resolute, strong S. S. Mitchell, and after him the genial and brilliant Bartlett. And shall I say that he who comes and fills the place now is not the least among all these men? So far as I know you have had no down-grade theology in this church. Not that I suppose the Confession of Faith is infallible, or that the men who drew it could not err, but there is such a thing as down-grade theology, and a departure from the written word of the living God ; and there has been no uncertain sound from this pulpit. Dr. Radcliffe, did you know that this church gave us Gen. John M. McCallum? You gave us the stated clerk of our session for many years, Mr. J. B. A. Shields, and he served for more than a quarter of a cen- tury. Mr. Alexander R. Shepard, with his large heart and spontaneous liberality, gave me a check for five hundred dollars one time to help in building the Central Presbyterian Church. Dr. Radcliffe didn't know the difference between the two churches. [Dr. Radcliffe : Neither do you.] No, I don't know the difference either. When I was trying to establish fraternity between the two assemblies, in the good providence of God, the pastor of this church and I arranged that I should supply the two churches for an entire summer, and so we alternated back and forth. 146 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. I have had so many friends in this church, I have felt so much at home here, that it is almost like congratu- lating m3-self to-night. Why, Dr. Radcliffe, it is a very remarkable thing that you can gather around you such a body as you have here to-night : I do not know when or where it could have been done before. I want to go back a moment to Dr. Radcliffe's intro- duction, *' The Presbyterian Church of the United States." The Presbyterian Church i7i the United States, not of the United States. Now, I wish to say that I am on record and have been for twenty-three years that I am in favor of uniting all Presbyterian bodies in this country, and I would take in all the dif- ferent Presbyterians, even the Cumberland Presbyte- rians, on this basis, the concensus of the creeds held by these different bodies. There is enough in them common to all, and it will build a platform broad enough and strong enough, not only to hold all the Presbyterians, but we will take in these Congregation- alists, and the Methodists, and the Baptists, and the Episcopalians (I think Vv-e would leave Dr. Butler out). (Laughter). Now, we have had a real good time. I have just got started and now it is time to quit. The Pastor : Our Congregational brethren send their greetings by Rev. S. M. Newman, D. D. Dr. Newman: Dr. Radcliffe, Brothers of the Nexu York Avenue Churchy Ladies and Gentlemen: It is a very gracious thing that the Master of men, the Lord Jesus Christ, permits us in our capacity to stand here and congratulate each other. Every iota of THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 147 truth we have held, every glimpse of far-reaching use- fulness we have cherished like a vision — all these have been given by the spirit of the Master. It is very gra- cious of Him, I say, to permit us, to encourage us, to come here and congratulate each other. I most heartily concur in all that has been said about the history, the place and usefulness of this church. I put before you the congratulations of the Congregational Churches in this respect : We are still sailing in the " Mayflower," and we want to know that you still hold fast the tradi- tions of life. In the first half of the seventeenth century I tried just as hard as I could to get away from my brother. Dr. McKim. But I rejoice to-night to be on the platform with him. It is the coming of the Spirit of God ; it is the testimony of the power of God. He speaks through the gracious words of Dr. McKim. He speaks through the mouth of Dr. Pitzer, the word of unity, and declares that, however much we may differ in the little variations of ritual of prayer and song, the Master bows at the altar and receives undivided our gracious prostrations of spirit. We wish to have a voice in such a congratulatory service as this, and so I came at the behest of my brethren ; and I say, God bless you. The best of all is not that you have a hundred years of life behind you, but that you have the expanse of glory, the breadth of coming centuries before you. You have the prospects, the undimmed expectations, the glory of life. You have been so true to Christ in the past, that he is going to ask great things of you in the future. May God, by His spirit of power, enable you to be true to the convictions, the opportunities, the open doors, the larger service, the unbounded contact with the whole world, which we all to-day have, and the founders of this church did not have ! May God, by His spirit of power, help you to 148 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. walk in the path of increasing service and duty to Him, and may the spirituality of all heavenly benedictions rest upon you evermore I The Pastor : When I was a young pastor in Pennsylvania, I re- member seeing in a newspaper a prayer which so much impressed me that I cut it out and put it into my manual of forms, where it has often been to me a help and an inspiration — an exceptionally beautiful and impressive prayer, throughout — and I was glad, in coming to Washington to meet the one who compiled that prayer. It was offered at the funeral of President Garfield, and its author is here to-night to extend to us the congratu- lations of the Christian Church, Rev. F. D. Powers, D. D. Dr. Powers ; I count it a special privilege to bring to you. Dr. Radcliffe, and to the people of this historic church, the Christian salutations of the people whom I represent. It is no small honor that God has granted to you to be set as a city upon a hill, in the midst of this capital, and of this nation, for a full rounded century. And this church has borne its testimony through all these years. It seems hardly possible that when it began its work, in the city of New York there were but sixty thousand people, and Philadelphia had but forty thousand, and Boston twen- ty-four thousand, and Washington was only a few little groups of huts. It was the year after Thomas Paine's " Age of Reason " was published, and people were feel- ing that men were swinging awa}' from the old faith, and that even the President of the United States had taken up with the current unbelief of the times. This THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 149 church began then to bear witness, and for one hundred years has borne it faithfully. John Ruskin found in the city of Venice on the foundation of the old church of St. Giacomo di Rialto, an inscription which read : ** This wa}'' to the old temple. Let the merchants' laws be just, his works true, his covenants faithful." It is a brief and beautiful epitome of those influences that should go out from any sanctuary. Every church, in some measure, bears this witness ; but here at the capi- tal of the nation, at the center of the nation's life, in a peculiarly far-reaching, effective way this influence is outpoured. As you have succeeded in proving your- selves worthy of the high calling wherewith you were called, all of your sister churches have shared the honor with you, where one member suffers all the members suffer with it. In the twenty-eight years of my pasto- rate in this city, I have counted among my personal friends the pastors of this church and many of its mem- bers, and your sister congregations have felt an inspira- tion as they realized that they were workers together with you in the service for our city and for the common Christianity we all hold inexpressibly precious. And what is it that has made you in this century ; that has kept the gracious women and noble men and sweet children that have been your crown and your joy ; that has uplifted the mission of life and honor and leadership all over the country, that have found here help and strength and encouragement? What is it that shall keep you in the century that you now enter? It is, brother, the grace of God. The Hebrew said to the Christian in the market place, "What is it that makes your faces shine?" " I do not know," was the reply. " I see your Christians everywhere and their faces shine ; what do you do to make them shine?" And the other, un- derstanding, answered. " The grace of God." And the 150 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. best wish I could bear to Dr. Radcliffe and to the mem- bers of this church is that this grace of God shall abide with him and with them. May I tell a story, sir? The presence of my friend, Justice Harlan, reminds me of it. It is a story drawn from the history of my own church. Judge Jeremiah Black, of Pennsylvania, and his wife were devoted members of my communion. The judge was a member of President Buchanan's cabinet. My people met in a little hall over an engine house not far away. Judge Black had a driver named Peter, and one day he said to Mrs. Black: " Mrs. Black, I want to ax you some- thing, and yet I don't like to ax it, madam." " What is it, Peter?" " Are you always going to attend church at that engine house down there?" " Until we get a better place, Peter," replied Mrs. Black. " Well," said Peter, "you know the drivers of the other mem- bers of the cabinet laugh at me a good deal about stand- ing before that engine house with my carriage. Will you let me drive back, after leaving you at the engine house on Sundays, and stand with my carriage before that Presbyterian church ?" " Yes, Peter," said Mrs. Black, " provided you will always come back in time to take the judge and me home." We do not envy you. Dr. Radclifle, the glories of the work you have accomplished. We pray that the fulness of the blessings of the gospel of peace may be upon you in this new century upon which you so auspiciously enter. Mr. Justice Harlan : Dr. Radcliffe, will you allow me a word before these exercises are concluded? In order that I may not be embarrassed as to what is to be proposed, I ask that Rev. Dr. McKim take the chair. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 151 This series of meetings have been a source of great joy to the members of this church. But to me, and doubtless to others, the present has been the crowning meeting of this Centennial season. I do not remember that upon any occasion in my life I have ever seen such an assemblage as there is in our pulpit to-day ; ministers of nearly all of the Christian denominations, recognizing the fact that they are brethren engaged in a common work. You, gentlemen of the ministry, have brought the greetings of your people to this church to-night, and they are very grateful to all of us. But there are greetings of another sort that ought to be expressed here to-night. Now, without consulting with any human being as to what I am to say (I have n't even consulted my wife who sits at my side ; I am exer- cising the privilege that a man ought now and then to exercise upon his own responsibility), I wish to say to 3'ou gentlemen of the ministry that nothing said by you in commendation of our pastor is too strong. He has gone in and out before this people for many years, and I am sure has never had any thought except to do his whole duty to this people. During his ministry here he has been absent from his post only a few days, and then only because of sickness. While he has at all times discharged his full duty to this people, we perhaps have not done our duty towards him. But I do not wish all the praise bestowed upon him. He enjoys that greatest blessing that any minister can have, a wife who takes a deep interest in his work and stands back of him at all times to encourage him. Now, Mr. Chairman, Dr. McKim, I move that this assembl}'', and you gentlemen of the ministry joining with us, extend by a rising vote to Dr. Radcliffe and his good wife a vote of hearty congratulation and thanks. 152 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. Dr. McKiM : Is that motion seconded? Dr. Pitzer : I second it most heartily. Dr. McKim : Those in favor of this motion will rise. (The entire audience and the ministers on the pulpit rise.) The Pastor : This was not on the programme and I like to go right through a programme without a hitch. I certainly ap- preciate very much the words and their spirit as they have just come to me. I have done my work here because I have been so ably seconded, because I have had with me so constantly the confidence and enthusiasm and co-operation of this people. You have been a good people to serve. It has been an honor to be the minister of Jesus Christ to you ; and I am glad in this presence to say that never was that rela- tion so pleasant, and never in our work and in the fel- lowship of the church were there such harmony and mutual confidence and co-operation as to-day. The sun shines brightly ; we have delightful fellowship one with the other, and all the experiences of these last few days but cement the friendship and give us confidence and great promise for the days that are to come. I wish to thank you, brethren, for your presence and your words here to-night. We have had a good many beautiful things illustrated here. You have shown us a splendid refutation of the common slander upon the min- istry. We have a reputation for prolixity sometimes, and yet I want this congregation to witness what splendid speeches in miniature have come to us. You could not gather any other body of men together who would do as the brethren of the ministry have done to-night. You get a lot of politicians together, and to accomplish what we have done this evening they would have stayed until . a Sh ?: £ O := - ^ w w ^ & THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 153 midnight. And yet they have not only given us their congratulations, but they have put into terse sentences and strong expression good, earnest, and kind thought; we heartily congratulate you. But more than all we have been very much touched with your presence and your words. We rejoice with vou in the communion of the saints as it is here presented. We are one in Jesus Christ. We all love Him and His church — not His churches — but His church — the one body of Christ. And thanking you for your presence, we send with you our prayer for God's presence with you in your work and for His abiding benediction upon your words and lives. The four hundred and twenty-fifth hymn was then sung : Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love : The fellowship of kindred minds Is like to that above. Before our Father's throne We pour our ardent prayers ; Our fears, our hopes, our aims, are one. Our comforts and our cares. From sorrow, toil, and pain. And sin, we shall be free ; And perfect love and friendship reign Through all eternity. The benediction was pronounced by Rev. J. Russell Verbrycke, pastor of the Gurley Memorial Presbyterian Church, Washington, D. C. 154 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. At the close of the service in the church a reception was held in the lecture-room, which had been very gracefully decorated for the occasion. The receiving party consisted of Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Wallace Rad- cliffe, Rev. Dr. and Mrs. W. A. Bartlett, Justice and Mrs. J. M. Harlan, Gen. and Mrs. J. C. Breckinridge, Mrs. R. A. Alger, Mrs. A. P. Gorman, Mrs. J. C. Burroughs, Mrs. W. B. Gurley, Mrs. J. D. M'Ches- ney, Mrs. J. H. Cranford, Mrs. C. A. Richardson, Mrs. C. B. Pearson, Mrs. C. A. Baker, Mrs. C. B. Bailey, Mrs. Brice J. Moses, Mrs. Henry Wells, Mrs. W. P. Van Wickle, Mrs. J. Ormond Wilson, Mrs. George C. Gorham, Mrs. R. I. Fleming, and Mrs. R. P. A. Denham. Music was furnished by Haley's orchestra. Refreshments were served. The reception was thronged, and continued till a late hour. The Centennial Historical Exhibit OF THE NEW YORK AVENUE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. November i^-i8, 1903. 1. Map of Washington, 1800, J. O. Adams Picture of Washington as Dr. Laurie y^rj-/ saw it, J. O. Adams 2. Copy of the Washington Directory, 1822, showing Dr. Laurie's residence at that time, Mrs. G. J. Musser 3. Picture of Rev. James Laurie, D. D., first pastor of F Street Church ( 1 803-1 853), with his autograph. Miss Lizzie Deebie 4. Text-books used by Dr. Laurie at the University of Edinburgh (three in all, one over four hundred years old), Mrs. A. McB. Mosher 5 . Miniature of Dr. Laurie, and lock of his hair, Mrs. A. McB. Mosher 6. Silhouettes of Dr. Laurie's second wife and her daughter, Mrs. A. McB. Mosher 7. Original communion cup used in the F Street Church, 1803, Mrs. A. McB. Mosher 8. Plan of the F Street Church ; names of pew-holders at time of union, Joseph A. Deebie 9. Sofa of the F Street Church, made by Thompson Bros., New York Avenue Church [0. Miniatures of Mr. Michael Nourse, Mr. Joseph Nourse, Mr. James Nourse, Miss Emma Nourse [ I . Sermon preached at funeral of Mr. Michael Nourse, by Rev. Courtlandt Van Rensselaer, co-pastor F Street Church. (Mr. Nourse was an original elder in Dr. Laurie's Church, and was Register of the Treasury during the administration of General George Washington.) Miss Emma Nourse 156 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 12. Chair which belonged to Col. Michael Nourse, elder and pre- centor — often used by Dr. Laurie during prayer-meetings at the house, Mrs. Mary Hassler Newcomb 13. Hymn-book used in the F Street Church, 1820, Mrs. Annie Cathcart 14. Infant baptismal certificate of Mrs. Joseph Deeble and Mrs. Joseph Thompson, by Rev. James Laurie, D. D., Miss Lizzie Deeble 1 5 . Letter of Dr. Laurie's, acknowledging gift of sixty dollars from ladies of F-Street Church, Miss Lizzie Deeble 16. Daguerreotype of Gen. John McCalla, an elder in the F Street Church; born 1793, died 1873, Miss Maria McCalla 17. Picture of Rev. Septimus Tustin, D. D., stated supply F Street Church, 1839-1845 (son-in-law of Rev. S. B. Balch, D. D.), Miss Mary Tustin 18. Book written by Rev. Septimus Tustin, D. D., "Alcyone," Miss Jennie Tustin 19. Picture of Rev. Ninian Bannatyne, co-pastor F Street Church, 1 845-1 848 — copy of a miniature painted in Washington in 1844, Mr. Stanhope Bannatyne 20. Badge and program carried by Rev. Ninian Bannatyne on the day of his graduation, Mr. Stanhope Bannatyne 2 1 . Note enclosing check for two hundred and fifty dollars sent to Rev. Ninian Banantyne the day he died, by John Lenox, of New York city, Mr. Stanhope Bannatyne 22. Paper containing an article on the death of Rev. N. Banna- tyne, co-pastor F Street Church, by Rev. James Laurie, D. D., Mr. Stanhope Bannatyne 23. Picture of Mrs. Amelia A. Bannatyne, wife of Rev. N. Banna- tyne, who died in 1897, surviving her husband fifty-one years, Mr. Stanhope Bannatyne 24. Picture of Rev. Courtlandt Van Rensselaer, stated supply F Street Church, copy of painting made from a daguerreotype forty-two years after death. Rev. E. B. Hodge, D. D. 25. Picture of Rev. D. X. Junkin, co-pastor F Street Church, 1850- 1854, and one of his books, Mrs. B. M. Junkin 26. Hymn-book used in F Street Church. Hymns marked that were used at Dr. Laurie's funeral, and written program of the services, J. B. Larner 27. Picture of monument of Dr. and Mrs. Laurie, Congressional cemetery, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 157 28. Picture of grave of co-pastor of F Street Church — Glenwood. Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 29. Picture of Daniel Ratcliflfe, elder in F-Street Church, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 30. Badge worn on anniversary of the Sunday-school of the F Street Church during the administration of President Pierce, Mrs. G. J. Musser 31. Plan of the old Second Presbyterian Church, made by Mr. David McClelland, one of the trustees, Mr. Frank McClelland 32. Specifications regarding the building of the Second Church, Miss Nannie McClelland 33. Portrait of Rev. Stephen B. Balch, D. D., founder of the Sec- ond Church, painted by Peale, 1780, Miss Julia R. Balch 34. Picture of Dr. Balch, S. W. Curriden 35. Picture of Rev. Daniel Baker, D. D., first pastor of Second Church, 1822-1828, when forty years of age ; original por- trait on panel in oil at Marysville, Tenn., Mrs. Sarah J. Baker 36. Picture of Rev. Daniel Baker, D. D., fifty years of age, from a miniature on ivory, Mrs. Sarah J. Baker 2)"] . Picture of Rev. Daniel Baker, D. D., from an old daguerreotype taken in Texas at the age of sixty-five, Mrs. Sarah J. Baker 38. Book — "Life and Labours of the Rev. Daniel Baker, D. D.," Mrs. Sarah J. Baker 39. Portrait of Dr. Thomas B. Balch, acting pastor of the Second Church, Miss Julia R. Balch 40. Picture of old Bridge Street Church, Georgetown, D. C, Miss Julia R. Balch 41. Picture of Dr. S. B. Balch, copy of a steel engraving formerly owned by his daughter, a former member of the Second Church, Miss Cordelia Jackson 42. Picture of grandnephew of Gen. George Washington, Mr. G. C. Washington, a member of Dr. S. B. Balch's church. Miss Cordelia Jackson 43. Picture of residence on Analostan of Gen. John Mason, where Dr. S. B. Balch was frequently entertained. Miss Cordelia Jackson 44. Picture of the house in which the first Presbyterian services were held by Dr. S. B. Balch, one of the old landmarks in Georgetown (still standing, 1903), Miss Cordelia Jackson 158 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 45. Picture of the Scotch Row in Georgetown, occupied in early days by members of Ur. S. 1]. Balch's congregation, Miss Cordelia Jackson 46. Picture of a daughter of Dr. S. B. Balch, from a miniature in possession of her daughter, IMiss Cordelia Jackson 47. Picture of the house where Dr. Balch died, 33d and North streets, Georgetown. 48. Communion service used in the Second Presbyterian Church, loaned to the church by Mr. Lewis Clephane, Walter C. Clephane 49. Paper regarding the loan of President John Quincy Adams to the Second Church, Miss Nannie McClelland 50. Picture of Mr. David McClelland, librarian of the Sunday- school of the Second Church. 51. Portrait of Mrs. Eliza M. Gurley, a member of the Second Church. This portrait was painted on the portico at Arling- ton, by a Mr. Williams, who afterwards entered the Confed- erate army, and later was hung as a spy, Constance E. Adams 52. Picture of Benjamin Butler, attorney-general during the admin- istration of Martin Van Buren, attendant at the Second Church, Mr. Levin Handy 53. Engraving of Rev. Dr. Campbell, pastor of Second Church, Mrs. William Strong, Albany, N. Y. 54. Photograph of Dr. Campbell, pastor of Second Church, Rev. W. F. Whitaker, D. D. 55. Picture of Mrs. Eaton (Peggy O'Neal), from a miniature taken in)'Outh, about the time she attended the Second Church, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 56. Picture of Mrs. Eaton (Peggy O'Neal), from a photograph by Brady, aged 80, J. O. Adams 57. Picture of Rev. J. R. Eckard, last pastor of the Second Church, Rev. Leighton W. Eckard 58. Picture of Mrs. J. R. Eckard, Rev. Leighton W. Eckard 59. Picture of Mrs. John Ouincy Adams, J. O. Adams- 60. Table which belonged to John Ouincy Adams, presented by his widow to a member of the Second Church. In the cor- ner of one of the drawers is the autograph of " J. O. Adams,' which he wrote there, in ink, about 1842, J. O. Adams 61. Picture of Rev. John Breckinridge, D. D., who frequently sup- plied the pulpit of Second Church, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 159 62. Pictures of the presidents who attended the two churches: John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 6^. Picture of Dr. Gurley when at Princeton, a student in the Theological Seminary, age 21 years. From a miniature in the family of his granddaughter, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 64. Dr. Gurley's flute, used by him when a member of Seminary Choir at Princeton, 1838, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 65. Portrait of Rev. P. D. Gurley, D. D., pastor of F Street Church, and first pastor of United Church, 1 854-1 868, painted by Miss Lillie Sullivan, a member of this congregation, Frances Gurley Adams 66. Photograph of Dr. Gurley, New York Avenue Church 67. Portrait of Mrs. P. D. Gurley, painted 1830, Constance E. Adams 68. Communion service used by Dr. Gurley in F Street Church, New York Avenue Church 69. Psalms and Hymns, 1843, Miss M. T. Brady 70. Picture of Mr. William Rutherford, who gave the corner-stone of this church, Mrs. Matilda Rutherford 71. Picture of Mr. James Skirving, who gave the copper-plate in corner-stone of this church, and engraved thereon the names of the members at the time of the union, Samuel Skirving 72. Picture of the New York Avenue Church, Constance E. Adams y^. Picture of the New York Avenue Churcli, Mrs. G. J. Musser 74. New ^ork Avenue Church (each of the above having the steeple). 75. Pulpit furniture used at the dedication of this church, i860 (sofa and two chairs). Miss M. T. Brady 76. Bible presented to the church by Mr. William Ballantyne, in i860, at the dedication. New York Avenue Church 77. Hymn-book used the first six months after the union, Mrs. G. J. Musser 160 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 78. Picture of Mr. Charles Stott, elder at the time of the union in the F Street Church, for years a member of this church, Mrs. Lillian Stott Woodard 79. Picture of Mr. William L. Waller, elder in this church and in F Street Church, Rev. William Waller 80. Picture of Mr. J. V. A. Shields, elder in F. Street Church, Mrs. J. V. A. Shields 81 . Picture of Mr. George J. Musser, deacon, 1 863-1 875, treasurer 1866-18 — , and trustee, Mrs. G. J. Musser 82. Sermon case used by Dr. Gurley while pastor of this Church, Frances Gurley Adams 83. One of Dr. Gurley's sermons, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 84. Dr. Gurley-s note-books, used in connection with his church work, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 85. " Hymns from the Land of Luther," a gift to Dr. Gurley from Miss Mary Coyle, a member of this Church, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 86. A preparatory lecture, by Rev. P. D. Gurley, D. D., Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams Sy . Book presented by Dr. Gurley to his mother-in-law. Inscrip- tion by Dr. Gurley, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 88. Letters written by Dr. Gurley while pastor of this Church, to his niece, Mrs. Matilda Gillert 8g. Two pictures of Mrs. Harriet Lane Johnson, J. O. Adams 90. Picture of Abraham Lincoln. The first time this picture was ever exhibited, Mr. L. C. Handy 91. Two pictures of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, J. O. Adams 92. Razor used by President Lincoln, A. McKericher 93. John Brown's spear, used during the raid at Harper's Ferry, presented to President Lincoln while a member of this con- gregation, A. McKericher 94. Picture of President Lincoln, with Mrs. Lincoln's autograph, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 95. Lincoln souvenirs : Invitations. Programmes. Hymn sung at funeral of President Lincoln, at Springfield. Funeral address composed by his pastor, Rev. P. D. Gurley, D. D. Picture of chair in which Mr. Lincoln sat when informed of his nomination. THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 161 Picture of hat worn by President Lincoln at his second inaugu- ration, and presented at his death to Dr. Gurley, his pastor. Piece of the overcoat Mr. Lincoln wore the night he was shot. Pictures of the Lincoln family, given Dr. Gurley by Mrs. Abra- ham Lincoln. Flowers given Mrs. Gurley by Abraham Lincoln. Picture of ink-well President Lincoln used in signing the Eman- cipation Proclamation. Programmes carried by Dr. Gurley at the funeral of President Lincoln. Copy of Mr. Lincoln's marriage license. Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 96. Canes presented to Dr. Gurley by Abraham Lincoln, Charles L. Gurley and Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 97. Picture — Lincoln's death-bed — Dr. Gurley on the right, at the head of the bed, J. O. Adams 98. Address delivered by the side of President Lincoln's cofBn in East Room of the White House, by his pastor, Dr. Gurley, J. O. Adams 99. Sermon on the death of Mr. Lincoln — " The Voice of the Rod " — preached by Dr. Gurley, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 100. Picture of parsonage during the pastorate of Dr. Gurley, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 10 1 . Hymn sung by children of Sunday-school of New York Avenue Church on New Year's Day, 1865, at home of pastor, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 102. Order of exercises at Anniversary of Washington City Sunday- school Union, May 18, 1863, at 10 A. M., Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 103. Programme at laying of corner-stone of the new building of the Young Men's Christian Association, November 27, 1867, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 104. Articles of Reunion used by Dr. Gurley at the General Assem- bly, of which he was moderator, in 1867, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 105. Last sermon preached in this church by Dr. Gurley, Februar}- 18,1868, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 106. Letter of B. F. Winslow, written to Dr. Gurley the day after his last sermon, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 162 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 107. Dr. Gurley's hymn-l)ook at the time of his death, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams [08. Address of Dr. Gurley at funeral of Col. Isaac K. Casey, Miss M. T. Brady log. Order of exercises of Canal Mission Sunday-school, Miss Pancoast ro. Last words of Dr. Gurley. 1 1 . Resolutions adopted by tlie Church Boards on the death of Dr. Gurley, Miss Pancoast 12. Poem on the death of Dr. Gurley, Constance E. Adams 13. Two pictures of monument erected by New York Avenue Church to memory of Dr. Gurley, in Glenwood, Constance E. Adams 14. Flowers from a large wreath sent by President Andrew John- son for the casket of Dr. Gurley, Constance E. Adams 15. Bust of Rev. P. D. Gurley. D. D., by Clark Mills's second cousin, Frances Gurley Adams 16. Paper prepared and read at twenty-fifth anniversary of the Ladies' Home Missionary Society of this Church, by Mrs. P. D. Gurley, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 17. Treasurer's Book, Branch Sewing Society of New York Avenue Church, 1869-1903, Mrs. Edward Tarring 18. Picture of Gurley Mission Chapel, 1877, Frances Gurley Adams 19. Picture of Rev. S. S. Mitchell, D. D., pastor 1869-1878, New York Avenue Church 120. Hymn-book used during Dr. Mitchell's pastorate. !2i. Picture of Rev. John R. Paxton, D. D., pastor 1S78-1882. [22. Picture of Mrs. John R. Paxton. 123. Picture of Rev. W. A. Bartlett, D. D., pastor 1 882-1 894, New York Avenue Church 124. Hymn-book used during the time of Dr. Bartlett. 125. Pulpit used formerly in the main room of this church. 126. Picture of Judge Claughton, elder in this church. Miss Lillian Claughton Johnson [27. Another picture of Judge Claughton, Mrs. Merritt [28. Picture of W. A. Wheeler, Vice-President of the United States, attendant of this church, C. R. Fay, Malone, N. Y. 129. Picture of Joseph Willard, trustee of this church for many years, Joseph E. Willard THE CENTENNIAI. EXERCISES. 163^ 130. Picture of Noble D. Larner, for many years trustee and treas- urer of this church, J. B. Larner 131. Picture of Alexander Shepherd, who gave the organ to the church, J. O.Adams 132. Two pictures of Rev. Wallace Radcliffe, D. D., LL. D., pastor of the New York Avenue Church. 133. Letter from the only surviving child of President Abraham Lincoln, in connection with the Centennial celebration of this church, in which he refers to the affection which his father and mother entertained for Dr. Gurley, Mrs. Emma Gurley Adams 134. Letter from Rev. J. L. Vallandingham, D. D., now in his ninety-second year, for a while stated supply of F Street Church, now living (1903) in Newark, Del., Mrs. Emma Gurlev Adams CENTENNIAL SUCCESSION OF OFFICERS. PASTORS. F Street Church. James Laurie, D. D., 1803-1853 Septimus Tustin, D. D., co-pastor, 1839-1845 Rev. Ninian Banantyne, co-pastor, 1 845-1 848 Rev. Levi H. Christian, co-pastor, 1850 David X. Junkin, D. D., co-pastor, 1850-1854 Phineas D. Gurley, D. D., 1854-1859 Second Church. Rev. Daniel Baker, 1821-1828 Rev. John N. Campbell, 1 828-1 830 Rev. E. D. Smith, 1830-1835 Rev. P. H. Fowler, stated supply, 1836 Rev. George Wood, 1836-1840 Rev. Courtland Van Renssalaer, stated supply, 1 840-1 844 Rev. James R. Eckard, 1849-1858 Rev. J. G. Hamner, D. D., stated supply, 1858-1859 New York Avenue Church. Phineas D. Gurley, D. D., 1 859-1 868 Samuel S. Mitchell, D. D., 1869-1878 John R. Paxton, D. D., 1879-1882 William A. Bartlett, D. D., 1 882-1 894 Wallace Radcliffe, D. D., LL. D., 1895 Bethany and Faith Mission Chapels. Rev. Ward Bachelor, 1 882-1 885 Rev. Robert H. Fleming, 1886-1890 Rev. G. A. C. Woodruff. 1891-1894 Rev. Edward Warren, 1 894-1904 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 165 BENCH OF ELDERS. F Street Church. Date of Induction James Nourse, 1803 John McGowan, 1803 Alexander McDonald, 1803 William Mackey, 1821 David Munroe, 1840 William Buist, 1840 Archibald Thompson, 1840 Frederick A. TschefFaley, 1845 Arscene Gerault, 1845 Charles Stott, 1848 William J. Waller, 1850 JohnM. M'Calla, 1850 Edward Myers, 1852 J. M. Wilson, 1854 Lewis A. Edwards, 1854 S. S. Baxter, 1854 John Van Santwood, 1858 James V. A. Shields, 1858 Second Church. John Craven, 1821 Joseph Brumley, 1821 Stephen Collins, 1824 Ezekiel Young, 1824 James H. Handy, 1824 George Gillies, 1828 Alexander M'Donald, 1831 Joseph M. Hand, 1831 G. M. Phillips, B. F. Lamed, 1852 Henry R. Schoolcraft, 1852 Charles Sumner, 1852 John W. Easely, 1852 L. H. Machin, 1854 John M'Kinney, 1854 P. A. Tscheffaley, 1856 J. S. Clements, 1856 J. P.Tustin, 1856 W. L. Cleaves, 1856 16G THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. New York Avenue Churcli. Michael Nourse, 1859 Sidney S. Baxter, 1859 John M. M'Calla, 1859 Charles Stott, 1859 William J. Waller, 1859 John Van Santwood, 1859 James V. A. Shields, 1859 James P. Tustin, 1859 John M'Kinney, 1859 Frederick A. Tscheffaley, 1859 Joseph S. Hubbard, 1861 J. A. Deeble, 1861 William Ballantyne, 1871 Charles B. Bailey, 1871 William Strong, 1872 Joseph Henry, 1874 A. R, Quaippe, 1874 Joseph Casey, 1874 C. B.Jewell, 18&0 N. A. Robbins, 1883 John Randolph, 1884 Henry H. Wells, 1884 Sardis L. Crissey, 1884 Calvin B. Walker, 1885 John W. Foster, 1885 Samuel F. Phillips, 1885 H. C. Claughton, 1886 J. R. Van Mater, 18S8 William B. Gurley, 1889 William B. Robison, 1894 C. E. Mott, 189s Andrew Bradley, 1897 A.J. Halford, 1897 W. D. Hughes, 1899 Thomas Beck, 1900 John M. Harlan, 1900 Joseph C. Breckinridge. igoo C. H. Fishbaugh, 1900 Harrison L. Bruce, 1900 i ^^^^HHHI^^H^ ^'^HES^I^B ^^M^^^B^^^KiifLiB r^mmmF^^* m yRje— aM^JililK' ' m P^ii£^^^^^H^H^^^^^^iHlL|ffi^^^HH|^'<^^ t ''" ^^ ^^•1i| "'•'-^il (h r ^'*w , fii^kJtttHm m^i ^ '1 R HEu^ #/^ *;^ • ■= ^ r ^. -^^^Ite^^^"* 1 1 gf ^ - i^^^iIIIIImBI^' '^^^ ^B^^^^^^^^^^p MmK ^ .^ £^^^1 ^vi "\ ir*^*BBBHie^ll^^^HIPtfffmM 'ii^^^ "^^^^^^ff < ■ 1 ■BJ^^^^^^I^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^BflN^'i THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 1(>7 Charles A. Baker, 1900 Thomas H. Herndon, 1901 John W. Dawson, 1903 THE DIACONATE. F Street CJntrch. J. H. Hamilton, 1853-1863 B. F. Rittenhouse, 1853 J. A. Deeble, 1853-1863 William Ballantyne, 1853-1856 Mr. Isaac Wailes, 1853-1854 J. S. McKie, 1853-1854 A. G. Ridgley, 1853-1856 W. W. Miller, 1854-1857 G. W. Morris, 1854-1857 John Van Santwood, 1856 J. V. A. Shields, 1856-1859 D. Radcliffe, 1856 James Hutchinson, 1856-1863 George Lowry, 1856 Gary Gynne, 1863-1869 William M. Lean, 1856 Joseph Nairn, 1856 H. Walbridge, 1856 Second CJiurch. The work of the diaconate was assumed by the bench of elders. New York Avenue Church. W. H. Hoffman, 1863 J. B. Munroe, 1859-1866 George J. Musser, 1863-1875 C. M. Parks, 1 866-1 870 J. D. McChesney, 1866 Jacob W. Ker, 1 866-1883 A. C. Bradley, 1873-1875 Mark Brodhead, 1 873-1 885 R. P. A. Denham, 1873 O. M. Muncaster, 1 873-1 S75 168 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. C. H. Meriom, J. R. Imbrie, B. H. Warner, J. L. H. Winfield. Charles S. Bradley, J. R. Van Mater, W. B. Gurley, F. O. Beckett, Russell B. Taylor, Charles E. Foster, P. F. Lamer, W. B. Robinson, Ralph Baldwin, E. X. Brugess, James A. Freer, B. C. Somerville, W. C. Clephane, A. J. Halford, C. G. Stott, Albert Carhart, C. F. Nesbit, Brice J. Moses, J. H. Wurdeman, Henry Wells, BOARD OF TRUSTEES. F Street Church. J. P. Chapman, 1822 William Buist, 1841 Samuel Stott, 1841 F. A. Tscheffaley, 1841 Trueman Cross, 1842 James Eveleth, 1842 George Lowry, 1842 P. McMoreland, 1842 John D. Barclay, 1843 Benjamin F. Rittenhouse, 1843 Joseph Thompson, 1845 William D. Brackinridge, 1845 1874- .ISS9 1874- -1897 1874- .1885 1874- -1880 1875 1875- -1888 1882- -1889 1883 1885- -1888 1886 1900 1882 1888- ■1894 1888- -1889 1888- 1893 1889 1889 I89I 1904 I89I 1897 1893 1894- 1897 1898- I90I 1900 1904 1900 I90I THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 169 Joseph A. Deeble, 1845 A. M. Perault, T. Purrington, Owen Munson, Hugh Pugh, Daniel Ratcliffe 18-45 Henry Barron, 13.5 Charles Stott, 2845 James H. Hamilton, 1847 William Mechlin, 1847 Isaac H. Wailes, 1847 S. K. Handy, 1849 William McLean, 1850 1850 William King, > i8rj James S. McKie, 1852 A. G. Ridgely, 18^2 Chester Walbridge, 1852 William Ballantyne, 1853 Joseph W. Nairn, 1854 John Van Santvvood, 1855 1856 1856 1856 James B. Munroe, iScg Second Church. Henry Forrest, 1820 George Gillis, 1820 James H. Handy, 1820 Edward G. Handy, 1820 Benjamin Homans, 1820 James Larned, 1820 John McCleland, 1820 Joseph McCorkle, 1820 Josiah Meigs, 1820 Nicholas B. Van Zandt, 1820 Joseph Brumley, 1821 Jacob Gideon, Joseph W. Hand, 1821 1822 Joseph Lovell, 1822 John Q. Adams, 1823 John M. Moore, 1823 Samuel L. Southard, 1824 170 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. Samuel W. Handy, 1825 Samuel Stettinus, 1825 Peter Lenox, 1826 Cornelius McLean, 1826 Henry Ould, 1826 Thomas B. Dashiel, 1827 Joseph Haskell, 1827 Daniel H. Haskell, 1827 Nathaniel Towson, 1828 Joseph W. Hand, 1828 Isaac H. Wailes, 1828 Robert Mills, 1830 Stephen Collins, 1831 Louis M. Goldsborough, 1831 Alexander McDonald, 1831 Thomas F. Hunt, 1833 Joseph McClerg, 1833 H. R. Gedney, 1835 John Wilson, 1835 Charles Dummer, 1837 Estwich Evans, 1837 Thomas Fillebrown, 1837 New York Avenue Church. William L. Hodge, 1S60 Benjamin F. Havard, i860 David A. McClelland, i860 George L Musser, 1866 Charles B. Bailey, 1869 Silas Casey, 1870 James E. Fitch, 1870 John W. Thompson, 1870 Jourdan W. Maury, 1872 H. W. Gait, 1872 William M. Gait, 1882 John W. Douglass, 1S86 Noble D. Earner, 1886 Lewis Clephane, 1886 B. H. Warner, 1886 William Thompson, 1886 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. 171 William McKee Dunn, 1887 D. O. Wickham, 1887 John M. Harlan, 1888 Frederick Pilling, 1888 J. Ormond Wilson, 1888 James Wilkinson, 1889 Alexander T. Britton, 1892 T. H. Alexander, 1897 Robert I. Fleming, 1897 Edward Graves, 1898 Charles B. Pearson, 1899 Charles W. Richardson, 1901 Walter Clephane, 1903 S. W. Curriden, 1903 John B. Larner, 1903 Brice J. Moses, 1903 W. P. Van Wickle, 1903 SUPERINTENDENTS OF SUNDAY SCHOOLS. F Street Church. C. Stott, 1851 W. L. Waller, 1852 William Ballantyne, 1854 Dr. Edwards, 1856 Dr. 0. Munson, 1857 J. V. A. Shields, 1858 Second Church. No records. Westminster Church. John R. Wood, 1853 William Ballantyne. Joseph Herron. New York Avenue Church. J. V. A. Shields, i860 Prof. J. S. Hubbard, 1863 Samuel Ker, 1864 C. M. Park, 1866 172 THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. C. B. Bailey, 1871 A. H. Bradley, 1873 C. H. Merwin, 1875 E. M. Stewart, 1876 A. H. Qiiaippe, 1877 S. L. Crissey, 1880 F. S. Williams, 1881 J. R. Van Mater, 1882 N. A. Robbins, 1893 C. A. Baker, 1896 Metropolitan Church. Joseph Hutchison, 1863 North Church. B. F. Winslovv, 1864 Rev. Louis R. Fox, 1866 Gurley Memorial Church. Benjamin F. Winslow, 1867 Henry C. Studley, 1869 William B. Gurley, 1870 N. A. Robbins, 1876 C. H. Merwin, 1887 Bethany Church. Thomas R. Cree, 1873 S. L. Crissey, 1874 Charles S. Bradley, 1878 S. L. Crissey, 1881 John W. Foster, 1885 N. A. Robbins, 1887 William B. Robinson, 1891 Edward Tarring, 1901 Faith Church. N. A. Robbins, 1891 Rev. G. A. C. Woodruff, 1892 Charles S. Bradley, 1893 A. N, Dewey, 1901 O ne Hundredth Anniversary qf The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church Washington, D. C, Rev. Wallace Radcliffe, D. D., LL« D., Pastor Stind&.y, Mond&.y, Tuesday, Wedtiesddwy NOVEMBER. 15 to 18/ IpoS THE F STREET CHURCH WILLARD HAI-L SOUVENIR PROGRAM Celebration of the O ne rl undredth A nniversa^ry OF The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church Washington, D. C. Rev. Wallace R&dcliffe D.D.. LL.D. P&.stor SUNDAY— II A. M. and 7.4=; P- M. MONDAY— 7-45P-M. TUESDAY— 7.45 P. M. WEDNESDAY— 8 to II P. M. November 15 to 18, 1903. i803 - 1903 ONE HUNDRED YEARS of service and achievement. A life of labor in the heart of the National Capital amid the stir of the thrilling events through a century forever memorable. A record of honorable service to which is added the grace of present attainment and strength for greater achievement. Surely this is worthy of recognition and grati- tude and summons congratula- tion and just pride. On May 13, 1803, the F Street Associate Reformed Church was organized and REV. JAMES LAURIE was chosen Pastor. He continued in that relation until his death, a period of fifty years. The first meetings were in the corridor of the old Treasury building, in which the Pastor was a clerk. Then they occupied a small building- on the corner of F and Fourteenth Street, on the site now SUNDAY I I A. M. • The Centennial History of New York Avenue Presby- terian Church." The Pastor 7.45 P- M. •AnEveningof Reminiscences." W. A. Bartlett, D.D., Walker C. Clephane, Esq., Gen. H. V. BoYNTON. The music will be of the old time order. covered by the r e c e n 1 1 v c o m- pleted extension of the New Wiilard. Later the substantial building was erected immediately west of the original site, which, after the removal to the present building, became the well-known Wiilard Hall, the scene of many festive and historic occasions. He was succeeded for a brief pastorate by REV. D. X. JUNKIN, who afterwards became a very conspicuous and influential ecclesiastic and educator. And he was succeeded by REV. PHINEAS D. GURLEY, D.D., in 1853. whose pastorate marl. Frenen I)r. Z. T. Sowers Rev. John Chester, D D. Col. R. I. Fleming Hon. James Wilson Dr. J. B. G. Curtis Hon. A. 1'. Gorman Mr. W. C. Whittemore Hon. John B. Cotton Mr. W. B. Gurley Hon. Lawrence Weldon Dr. Sardis L. Crissev Hon. .lohn M. Harlan Hon. J. Ormond Wilson Mr. J. H. Cranford " Hon. William T. Harris Hon. J. W. Yerkes Hon. 8. B. Elkins Hon. H. S. Irwin Hon. J. C. Burrows FINANCE John B. Larner, Chairman Cliarles S. Bradlev James A. Freer Charles W. Richarilson Charles A. Baker" Edwar.i Graves Charles G. Stott Walter C. Clephane Albert Halstead George W. White S. W. Curriden Brice J. Moses Joseph E. Willard Cliarles H. Davidge Charles K Pearson SOCIAL FUNCTIONS John D. McChesnev, Chairman Henry Wells, Vice Chairman Dr. J. Wesley Bovee J. Porter Lawrence John H. Nolan Dr. J. Wythe Cook Lee D. Latimer M V. Richards Percy Cranford Frank Libbev A. H. Snow Egbert A. Clark Philip F. Larner Charles G. Stott George B. Gardner W. K. Mendenhall Dr. John W. Shaw Alexander Grant James H. McKenny J. H. Spalding Charles L. Gurley .Albert McChesney W. R. Speare Shields Gurley ' William P. Metcalf George W. Trowbridge HISTORICAL RESEARCH Mrs. James O. Adams, Chairman Walter C. Clephane J. H. Doty Miss E. M. Mills A. J. Chipman Hon. John Randolph Mrs. George J. Musser Joseph A. Deeblo Mrs. A. G. Draper Miss M. E. Paneoast R. P. A. Denliam Miss Edwards Mrs. J. T. Young DECORATIONS J. Henry VVurdeman, Chairman iMrs. Charles B. Bailey Mrs. Edward Graves Mrs. C. W. Richardson Mis. J. H. Cranford ' Mrs. C. B. Pearson Mrs. G. W. Trowbridge THE PRESS Gen. Henky V. Boynton, Chairman Hugh B. Neshitt, Vice Chairman D. N. Biirbank Wilson N. Paxton Tlieoilore F Shuev Rev. Thos. Gordon, D. D. Robert A. Pliillips Dr I ). E. Wiber Mr. H. G. Johnson Dr. J. J. Pnrman A. (i. Wilkinson C. A. Joerissen INVITATIONS Willi A>r P. Van W ickle. Chairman Charles H. Bailev Charles H. Fishbaugh C. H. Lincoln W. Frank Clark" Prof. W. S. narshman Capt. E. H. Parson.'* Charles B. Estabrook Endicott King James H. Saville PRINTING Samuel W. Curriden, Chairman J. Edward Bates C. M. Delan Charles P. Stone James W. Dawson John Mitchell Edward Tarring Dr. W. D. Hughes C. H. Sehaaf USHERS Charles S. Bradley, Chairman Frank O. Beckett Philip D. Larner B. C. Soinerville Walter C. Clephane Brice .1. Moses Henrv Wells R. P. A. Denham J. D. McChesnev .1. H. Wurdeman James A. Freer Charles G. Stott ^^^l8?8ie58S?3538e000ei^'^^ CHOIR MRS. SHIRCLIFF. Soprano MISS WHITAKER, Contralto MR. JOHN H. NOLAN Bass MR. M. H. STEVENS, Tenor MR. JOHN PORTER LAWRENCE, Organist and Precentor Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 1 1012 01217 5800 DATE DUE DEMCO 38-297