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MEMORIAL 
 
 A QUARTER-CENTURY'S PASTORATE. 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 Preached on the Sabbaths, Jan. 3d and 17th, 1869, 
 
 IN THE 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NATCHEZ, MISS. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. JOSEPH B. STRATTON, D.D. 
 
 PUBLISHED FOR THE USE OF THE CONGREGATION. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 
 1869. 
 
1 
 
 " .« 
 
 . - • - 
 
 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 • &SgSe3- 
 
 PAET FIEST. 
 
 "Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee hy pro- 
 phecy, with the laying on of the hands of the preshytery." — I. Tim. 
 iv. 14. 
 
 The word "gift," employed by the apostle here, is a 
 comprehensive term, meaning the office of a Christian 
 minister, which it was Timothy's privilege to exercise, 
 and the qualifications for that office which had been con- 
 ferred upon him by the providence and Spirit of God. 
 The word could with propriety be applied still to any 
 Christian minister; although in Timothy's case his quali- 
 fications may have included some of those supernatural 
 powers which we know were conferred in the apos- 
 tolic age upon officers and even private members of the 
 Church, — which no Christian minister now is authorized 
 to claim. 
 
 The "gift," in virtue of which Timothy was constituted 
 a Christian minister, is said to have been given to him 
 " by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the 
 
 (ff) 
 
4 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 presbytery." The reference to "prophecy," as connected 
 with his induction into his office, is most naturally ex- 
 plained by supposing it to mean some intimations made, 
 at some unknown period, by parties gifted with the power 
 of prophesying or speaking for God, that it was the will 
 of God that Timothy should adopt as his calling the work 
 of the ministry. An instance of such intimations we find 
 in the thirteenth chapter of Acts, where we read — as cer- 
 tain persons in Antioch, called "prophets and teachers," 
 were ministering to the Lord, and fasting, the Holy Ghost 
 said, — doubtless to them and through them, — "Separate 
 me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have 
 called them." Concurrently with this " prophecy" which 
 designated him to his office, we are told Timothy's gift 
 was "given him with the laying on of the hands of the 
 presbytery." The term "presbytery," here, means a body 
 of men bearing the office of presbyters, — or elders, as 
 the word is generally rendered in our translation. ]STo 
 other meaning can be given to it without landing us in 
 grammatical or logical absurdity. To preclude all ques- 
 tion, however, as to its meaning, we find it occurring in 
 two other places in the E"ew Testament, — once in Luke 
 xxii. 66, where it is said, "the elders of the people" (in 
 the original, "the presbytery of the people") "came 
 together" in council; and again in Acts xxii. 5, where 
 it is said by Paul, in his defense before the populace of 
 Jerusalem, "the high-priest, and all the estate of the 
 elders" (in the original, "all the presbytery"), "bear 
 me witness;" — places where no one ever dreamed, or 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 5 
 
 could dream, that it meant anything else than a body 
 of men bearing the office of presbyters, or elders. 
 
 Now, who or what sort of men these presbyters were, 
 with the imposition of whose hands Timothy was in- 
 vested with his office, a glance at the allusions to be 
 found in the book of Acts and the Epistles will inform 
 us. We find Paul and Barnabas ordaining them in the 
 churches of Asia Minor, which they had gathered during 
 that mission unto which the Holy Ghost had required 
 them to be "separated;" — we find them in the church 
 at Jerusalem; — we find them in the church at Ephe- 
 sus; — we find them, in fact, everywhere where the reli- 
 gion of Christ appears embodying itself in an organized 
 community of believers. They constitute, as plainly as 
 history can teach it, the regular, the local, the stationary 
 ruling and teaching estate in the corporation of the 
 Church. Their title was transferred from the usage of 
 the Old Testament Church, — was venerable for its an- 
 tiquity, and sanctioned by a Divine warrant. Their 
 functions embrace all the forms of service attached in 
 the Scriptures to the Christian ministry. They are 
 called very frequently the "overseers" or "bishops" 
 of the Church of God, — a name expressing in its import 
 the whole circle of acts by which superintendence, gov- 
 ernment, or nurture could be exercised or administered 
 in the Church. That this is so, — that the term overseer 
 or bishop, in the language of the New Testament, is con- 
 vertible with presbyter,— any one can satisfy himself by 
 looking at the twenty-eighth verse of Acts xx., where 
 
Q QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 Paul says to the Ephesian elders convened by him at 
 Miletus, " Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock, 
 over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you over- 
 seers" (or, as the word is in the original, "bishops"), — or 
 by looking at Tit. i. 5, 6, and 7, where, after telling 
 Titus to ordain elders in Crete, provided he could find 
 any who were " blameless," the same apostle adds, " for 
 a bishop must be blameless;" evidently using the words 
 elder and bishop as interchangeable. Agreeably with 
 these cases, in every instance in the New Testament 
 where the word bishop occurs, the word presbyter or 
 elder may be, and ought to be, allowed as a substitute; 
 and every function which is ascribed to the office of 
 bishop may be, and ought to be, ascribed to that of 
 presbyter or elder. . 
 
 This office, I remark now, was manifestly, according 
 to the New Testament, the one which was to perpetuate 
 the ruling and teaching estate in the Church. The apos- 
 tolic college, after the addition of Matthias and Paul to 
 it, consisted of thirteen persons. While they lived, they 
 were presbyters, or bishops, — that is, officers clothed 
 with the power of ruling and teaching, — in common 
 with those who bore, in a technical sense, these titles. 
 Hence we find Peter saying, " The elders which are 
 among you I exhort, who am also an elder;" and 
 John, in two of his epistles, styling himself "the elder." 
 But the apostles were more than this. They were 
 charged with functions which, in the nature of the case, 
 could not be shared with others, and could not be trans- 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 7 
 
 feited to other hands. They must, for instance, be able 
 to say that their commission had come to them directly 
 from the Lord ; that they had had a personal acquaint- 
 ance with Him ; and that they were authorized to affirm 
 His resurrection and His present existence from their 
 own observation. Thus, Paul was accustomed to make 
 good his claim to the apostleship by the bold challenge, 
 "Have not I seen the Lord?" They must, furthermore, 
 be inspired men, — capable of completing the faith of the 
 Church by expounding the revelations which Christ had 
 made, and by adding to these such as the Holy Ghost saw 
 fit yet to make. They must stand where the prophet of 
 the Old Dispensation stood, and speak to the minds and 
 consciences of men with the authority of God. This 
 they affirm, again and again, that tjiey do do. But no 
 class of persons but they could do it. The apostles, in- 
 dubitably, had a place to fill, peculiar to themselves ; and 
 it is a solecism to speak of their having successors in the 
 literal sense of the term. They passed away when their 
 work was done, and the only successors they left were 
 the ruling and teaching estate of the presbyters. This 
 survived as a permanent order of officers in the Church, 
 and as the main element in securing its organic per- 
 petuity. 
 
 By a body of these presbyters, and formally " with 
 the laying on of their hands," Timothy was put in 
 charge with his gift as a Christian minister. It is said, 
 indeed, in the Second Epistle addressed to him by Paul 
 (ch. 1, v. 6), "I put thee in remembrance that thou stir 
 
8 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 up the gift of God which is in thee, by the putting on* of 
 my hands." But, whatever this may mean, it is certain 
 it cannot contradict the other declaration. Paul's hands 
 must still have been put upon Timothy in such a way 
 as should leave the laying on of the hands of the presby- 
 tery possessed of its full force and effect, as the instru- 
 mentality by which he received his gift. And this will 
 be the case if we suppose — either that Paul refers here 
 to some imposition of hands, performed by him, upon 
 Timothy, in order to communicate to him those extraor- 
 dinary gifts of the Holy Spirit which we know were, in 
 the primitive Church, often in that way conferred upon 
 believers; or that Paul, being an elder as well as an 
 apostle, like Peter and John, had taken part with the 
 presbytery in ordaining Timothy to the ministry. Either 
 of these suppositions is probable, and makes the saying, 
 that Timothy's gift was communicated by the putting on 
 of Paul's hands, consistent with the other saying, that it 
 was communicated by the laying on of the hands of the 
 presbytery ; while, if we suppose that it was the putting 
 on of Paul's hands alone which communicated the gift, 
 we shall make completely void the declaration that it 
 was with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery 
 that he received it. It is altogether inadmissible, there- 
 fore, to suppose that Timothy was ordained by Paul 
 alone ; it is perfectly consistent to suppose that he was 
 ordained by the presbytery. 
 
 And now, being ordained so, he became a presbyter, 
 — a bishop, — and was capable of joining in communi- 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 9 
 
 eating the gift be had received to others. Accordingly, 
 the apostle enjoins him, in his Second Epistle, " The 
 things that thou hast heard of me, among many wit- 
 nesses," — perhaps the very things addressed to him, in 
 the presence of the presbytery, on the occasion of his 
 ordination, — "the same commit thou to faithful men, 
 who shall be able to teach others also;" and in another 
 place, he admonishes him to "lay hands suddenly," or 
 hastily, "upon no man." This power of perpetuating 
 the ministry by the ordination of faithful men, lay in 
 the hands of the presbytery after the apostles were 
 gone, as it had lain in their hands while they were 
 living, and lay in their hands as a function common 
 to them all. For we read of no distinction among pres- 
 byters in the New Testament. Up to the time when 
 the ISTew Testament history closes, we have every reason 
 to conclude that the record in ordinary cases of any 
 other minister's ordination would have been in the same 
 form as that of Timothy's, "with the laying on of the 
 hands of the presbytery;" and we have no reason to 
 conclude that it would have been in any other form. 
 And ecclesiastical history for the first two centuries 
 gives us no reason: to conclude that the record of such 
 an event within that period would have been in any 
 other form. After that period, indeed, we fiud a change. 
 The parity of presbyters was invaded; the monarchical 
 principle, borrowed from the familiar and imposing con- 
 stitutions of State government, was engrafted upon the 
 polity of the Church ; and an order of officers claiming 
 
10 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 to be superior to the presbyter, and holding in their 
 hands the sole right to ordain, began to appear. This 
 change, in the course of ages, culminated in the Pri- 
 macy of the Bishop of Rome, as the head of the uni- 
 versal Church; and with the exception of such small 
 bodies of Christians as the Waldenses and Albigenses, 
 who seem never to have acknowledged the Bishop of 
 Rome, and never to have abandoned the theory of the 
 parity of presbyters and the right of presbytery to or- 
 dain, — with this exception, the ordaining power was con- 
 ceded to be a function of that order of which the Bishop 
 of Rome claimed to be chief. 
 
 The Reformation in the sixteenth century was an 
 effort, on the part of that portion of the Church which 
 participated in it, to throw off the excrescences of various 
 sorts which had accumulated upon its faith and prac- 
 tice, and recover the position and organic structure in- 
 dicated for it in the Scriptures. It was a reformation, 
 because it undertook to restore to the Church the form 
 prescribed for it in the word of God. In this move- 
 ment, one of the first steps was to assert the suprem- 
 acy of presbyters, as the only order of ministers suc- 
 ceeding to the apostles, and to reinvest them with 
 their original right to practice ordination. Those of the 
 Reformers who were ecclesiastics had received ordina- 
 tion in the Church which they sought to reform, from 
 the hands of men who, whatever they claimed to be 
 more than presbyters which they were not, were never- 
 theless presbyters, and so formally could ordain. Em- 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. ]\ 
 
 powered by this ordination, they in their turn, as pres- 
 byters, ordained others; and so the succession, taking 
 again the channel marked out for it in the New Tes- 
 tament, has flowed on from the Reformed Churches of 
 the Continent of Europe, which, as they ceased to be 
 Papal, invariably became Presbyterian, to Scotland and 
 England, and thence to these American shores. The 
 historical current by which any man receiving ordi- 
 nation to the Christian ministry, by a lawful presby- 
 tery, may trace the conveyance of his gift from apostolic 
 times, can thus unequivocally and consistently be shown; 
 and he has a right to assume that his gift has been con- 
 veyed to him by that current, without being required 
 to perform the natural impossibility of marking, as on 
 a map, every inch and every turn of its channel. He has 
 a right to say, when taunted with the question, "Where 
 was your Church before the time of Luther?" or other 
 similar ones, "It was in the time of the apostles ;" — " it 
 was in the days which the Scripture history covers, — the 
 oldest and the most authentic of the periods of Church 
 history;" — "it was in the plan of His kingdom, which 
 God in the beginning drew by the finger of His Spirit 
 on the pages of His word." He has a right to say, 
 when charged with exercising an unauthorized ministry, 
 "I stand on the same ground with Timothy; on ground 
 farther back and higher up than that defined by tradi- 
 tion, or the writings of the Fathers ; on ground where 
 Paul, in all his apostolic authority and infallibility, 
 appears indorsing the act of the presbytery who by the 
 
12 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 imposition of their hands invested his disciple with the 
 ministerial office." 
 
 I shall perhaps be excused for this exposition, if any 
 excuse is necessary, when I remark that twenty-live 
 years ago, almost to a day, I was, by an agency and au- 
 thority of precisely the species I have been describing, or- 
 dained in this house to the office of the gospel ministry. 
 The "gift" that is in me, as an officer in the Church of 
 God, was then given me by "prophecy," or what I re- 
 garded as intimations of the Divine will, and " with the 
 laying on of the hands of the presbytery." I was, of 
 course, satisfied then that the commission with which I 
 was charged was an authentic one. The studies, the re- 
 flections, and the observations of subsequent years have 
 only confirmed me in this conviction. The grounds 
 upon which that commission claimed to be authentic 
 have been canvassed, sifted, attacked, and defended innu- 
 merable times, and the result of all these processes has 
 been, to my mind at least, to make more manifest the 
 exact coincidence of these grounds with the facts, the pre- 
 cedents, and the teachings of Scripture. And, with the 
 Scripture as my warrant, I have felt that I was in posses- 
 sion of the surest, the most complete, and the most an- 
 cient title to my office which was attainable in the case. 
 I have felt, in accepting the gift of the ministry through 
 the channel by which it was conveyed to me, that I was 
 not taking that honor unto myself, but receiving a call 
 from God to it, as was Aaron. And in this confidence I 
 have continued in all good conscience, as a genuine pres- 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 13 
 
 byter iii the Church, to bear authoritative testimony to 
 the truths of the gospel, to exercise rule in the house of 
 God, to administer the sacraments, to take part in the 
 councils of the Church, and to join in the laying on of 
 hands upon others who were to he initiated into the min- 
 istry, from the day of my ordination till now. In the 
 due appreciation of the "gift" conferred upon me, I 
 have not failed ; in the proper exercise of it, I am only 
 too conscious of being guilty in many ways of that "neg- 
 lect" against which the apostle cautions Timothy. 
 
 As will have been observed from the remarks just 
 made, my introduction to this church was signalized not 
 merely by an act of installation by which I was set over 
 it as its pastor, but by an act of ordination by which I 
 was inducted into the ministerial office. When I came 
 to this congregation, in the latter part of May, 1843, I 
 came simply as a licentiate of the Presbytery of Philadel- 
 phia, under the care of which body, from the fact that 
 my residence for a number of years prior to my adop- 
 tion of the ministry as my profession had lain within its 
 bounds, I had placed myself. A few months before the 
 period fixed for the closing of my studies at the Theo- 
 logical Seminary at Princeton, the school in which I 
 received my training, and which was presided over, at 
 the time, by such masters in divinity as Drs. Archibald 
 Alexander, Samuel Miller, Charles Hodge, and Joseph 
 Addison Alexander, I had been authorized by Presbytery 
 to preach as opportunity offered, according to that wise 
 provision of our Church by which "the brethren" of the 
 
14 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 household of faith are invoked to form and pronounce 
 their judgment in aid of that of the Presbytery, as to the 
 possession by a candidate of those gifts which indicate 
 that he has been called of God to the ministry. From 
 the halls of this school, after having preached, I think, 
 only on four or five occasions, I proceeded directly to 
 this city, in pursuance of an invitation some time pre- 
 viously addressed to me by the Session of this church. 
 I came less a stripling in years than in appearance ; but a 
 veritable stripling in the arts of spiritual championship, 
 having on such armor as I had been able to acquire 
 during a course of three years' study, but all unpracticed 
 in the use of that armor. I came because the junctures 
 of Providence had seemed to open the path before me, 
 and without a wish or purpose in my mind except to 
 learn the issue to which that path, in the ordering of 
 Providence, was to lead me. That issue was indicated 
 by the warm-hearted welcome extended to me, and the 
 favorable temper in which my labors were received by 
 the people, and chiefly by the presentation to me, on the 
 12th day of June, less than four weeks after my arrival, 
 of a unanimous call to become their pastor. To a call 
 presented under such circumstances, there seemed to be 
 only one response to be given ; and, accordingly, in the 
 course of the summer, from my home in !New Jersey, 
 whither I had returned in July, I announced to the con- 
 gregation my acceptance of it. It was not until Novem- 
 ber of that year, 1843, that I was able to assume the 
 charge of the post so assigned me. In that month I 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 15 
 
 began the residence in Natchez, which has continued 
 ever since. The Presbytery of Mississippi, to which this 
 church belonged, convened in this city in the latter part 
 of December, and, after sustaining my qualifications for 
 the pastoral office, by the various trials prescribed in our 
 Form of Government, proceeded, on Sabbath the 31st, 
 to administer the rite of ordination. On that occa- 
 sion, by appointment of the Presbytery, the Rev. Jere- 
 miah Chamberlain, D.D., President of Oakland College, 
 preached an appropriate sermon from Heb. xiii. 17 : 
 " For they watch for your souls, as they that must give 
 account;" and the Rev. William Montgomery, the ven- 
 erable patriarch of the Presbytery, made the ordaining 
 prayer, and took the lead in the imposition of hands. 
 The installation service followed immediately; and the 
 close of these solemnities found me charged with that 
 double "gift," of the Christian ministry and the pastor- 
 ship of this church, which, under God's peculiar bless- 
 ing, I have been permitted to exercise for the succeeding 
 twenty-five years. 
 
 These personal reminiscences are related with some 
 diffidence; but this is my apology for them, that the 
 history of the church hangs necessarily very much upon 
 the thread of my own history, and with very many of 
 my hearers the facts I am relating belong to a period of 
 which they can have no recollection, and may serve, by 
 ministering to their intelligence, to quicken also their 
 interest in the church of their fathers. 
 
 At the time of my coming to Natchez, the condition of 
 
1(3 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 the city was not unlike that in which we find it at the 
 present moment. It was just recovering from the effects 
 of a wide-spread and disastrous commercial collapse, by 
 which its enterprise had been paralyzed and its wealth 
 almost annihilated. This crisis, as it is common to call 
 such phenomena, occurred during the years 1837 and 
 1838, and left the country in a state of virtual bank- 
 ruptcy. In close succession upon this financial con- 
 vulsion, the memorable tornado of May 7, 1840, had 
 visited the city and laid it to a great extent in ruins. 
 Impoverished by the destruction of property, embar- 
 rassed by debts of almost fabulous magnitude, bewil- 
 dered by the general failure of public and private securi- 
 ties, and immersed in litigation, the community found 
 itself thrown, with a suddenness which has been hardly 
 exceeded in the strange experiences of recent times, from 
 a plethora of prosperity into an extreme of exhaustion. 
 As a consequence, the tide of population and business, 
 for a series of years, continued to ebb away from Nat- 
 chez. This depletion would doubtless have been fatal, had 
 it not been that the intrinsic and inalienable resources 
 of the country are such as enable its inhabitants almost 
 to command wealth, and such as endow them with a re- 
 cuperative power which no conceivable check can en- 
 tirely subvert. It was not fatal, but in time yielded to 
 the effects of a patient development and husbanding of 
 these resources; and I have been allowed since to see, in 
 the homes of this city and neighborhood, as marked an 
 exhibition of general comfort and opulence as perhaps 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 17 
 
 the world could show. The heavy pressure of adversity, 
 however, was here when I begau my ministry, and the 
 church, like every other interest, felt its blight. One of 
 the evidences of this was that, although considerable 
 accessions were made to its membership every year, 
 for a long time no increase of its numerical force ap- 
 peared, by reason of the frequent dismissions granted 
 to persons removing to other places of residence. 
 
 The Presbyterian Church at Natchez, at the time I 
 became its pastor, had been in existence twenty-six 
 years, — its organization having been practically effected 
 in 1817, by the enrollment of eight persons as members. 
 The Rev. Daniel Smith, a clergyman from New Eng- 
 land, who had been laboring as a domestic missionary in 
 the community for more than a year, was invited to min- 
 ister to it as a stated supply; and John Henderson, Jos. 
 Forman, Richard Pearce, and ¥m. B. Noyes were or- 
 dained as its bench of ruling elders. To this body 
 Samuel S. Spencer was added in 1818. Steps had been 
 taken as early as 1810 for the erection of a Presbyterian 
 house of worship ; and in 1812 the corner-stone of the 
 building was laid. It was a brick structure, located on 
 the spot where our present church stands. It was dedi- 
 cated in February, 1815. The engagement with the Rev. 
 Mr. Smith having terminated in 1819, the Rev. William 
 "Weir, a native of Ireland, was elected pastor, and on the 
 31st of March, 1820, was installed by the Mississippi 
 Presbytery. This gentleman, therefore, was the first 
 
 2 
 
18 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 regular pastor of this church. He is remembered by 
 some few of our aged citizens, and is spoken of as a man 
 of learning, of great purity of character, and eminently 
 zealous in his work. His period of labor, however, was 
 a short one, his death having occurred on the 25th of 
 November, 1822. The square marble tomb which marks 
 the spot of his sepulture may still be found in a neg- 
 lected lot which belongs to the church in our city ceme- 
 tery. 
 
 The second pastor of the church was the Rev. George 
 Potts, who, like myself, first visited Natchez as a licen- 
 tiate of the Presbytery of Philadelphia. Having been 
 subsequently ordained by that Presbytery, he was in- 
 stalled pastor by the Presbytery of Mississippi in Decem- 
 ber, 1823. The number of communicants at this time 
 was forty-nine. The first donations reported to have 
 been made by this congregation were in the year 1825, 
 and consisted of twenty dollars to the " Missionary 
 Fund," and thirty dollars to the "Education Society." 
 In the beginning of 1825, Samuel Postlethwaite was or- 
 dained as a ruling elder, — a man distinguished for his 
 urbanity as a gentleman and for his integrity as a Chris- 
 tian, and a fine type of that band of merchants who in 
 the earlier times of Natchez made their class noble. In 
 1828, the church-edifice originally erected being found 
 inconvenient, the trustees resolved to erect a new one, 
 which work was in the course of the next two years suc- 
 cessfully effected. This second building was the original 
 of the one we now occupy, and was dedicated on the 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 19 
 
 first Sabbath of January, 1830, just thirty-nine years ago. 
 The pastorate of Mr. Potts terminated in November, 
 1835, having continued thirteen years. His removal 
 from Natchez was occasioned by his acceptance of a call 
 from the Duane Street Church in the city of New York. 
 He left a communion-list of one hundred and thirty-five 
 persons. During his incumbency another addition had 
 been made to the ruling eldership, in the person of Dr. 
 Andrew Macrery. 
 
 The successor of Air. Potts, was the Rev. Samuel G. 
 Winchester, a native of Baltimore, and previously pastor 
 of a church in Philadelphia. His installation took 
 place on the 24th day of December, 1837. The bench 
 of elders having been reduced by deaths and removals to 
 two members, — the venerable John Henderson and Dr. 
 Macrery, — the congregation elected to that office Thomas 
 Henderson, William Pearce, and Franklin Beaumont, 
 who were ordained on the 25th of February, 1838. In 
 the year following, the church-building was repaired, 
 and its means of accommodation enlarged by the intro- 
 duction of the galleries which are at present standing. 
 About the same time the very neat and commodious 
 parsonage belonging to the church was purchased for 
 the use of the pastor. Mr. Winchester's labors were 
 brought to a close unexpectedly by his death, in August, 
 1841, while he was absent at the North, whither he had 
 gone as Commissioner to the General Assembly, which 
 met that year in Philadelphia. It was my privilege, on 
 one occasion, to hear him preach in his former church in 
 
20 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 Spruce Street, in that city, during the sessions of the As- 
 sembly. I had no personal acquaintance with him, but 
 had gone to hear him, attracted merely by his reputa- 
 tion. I listened, thus, to the tones of his voice after they 
 had uttered their last counsels and exhortations in the 
 ear of his flock in Natchez. How strange the provi- 
 dence which had ordered it that the unknown student 
 who was listening that day to the eloquent preacher, 
 dreaming far more of being a missionary to China 
 than the successor of him to whom he was listening, 
 should be that successor! During Mr. Winchester's 
 ministry the number of communicants increased to two 
 hundred and three; and among the contributions given 
 by the church in 1838, I find one for Foreign Missions 
 amounting to $2508, and another for Domestic Missions 
 amounting to $2054. 
 
 In assuming the charge intrusted to me as the fourth 
 regular pastor of this church, I was assuming, I need 
 hardly say, to one in my circumstances, a work of no 
 little magnitude. Indeed, when I recall the amount of 
 labor of mind and spirit and body that I was compelled 
 to undergo during the first ten years of my ministry, I 
 am amazed that I am here to-day to refer to it. I do not 
 wish to magnify the hardships of my office with any pa- 
 thetic intent, but I do wish it were in my power to give 
 some adequate impression of the trials and toils compre- 
 hended in such a position as I have filled in this com- 
 munity, in order to blunt the edge of those complaints 
 of shortcomings in duty which are frequently directed 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 21 
 
 against the clerical profession, and which I have no 
 reason to suppose I have escaped. 
 
 The claims of the pulpit must ever present themselves 
 to the young minister as most formidable in their dimen- 
 sions. And they ought to do so. For an ambassador of 
 Christ to treat his message with levity is sadly out of har- 
 mony with his demand that his hearers should hear it 
 as though " God did beseech" them by him. These 
 claims necessarily involve an application of mind, in the 
 way of research and reflection,, of the severest kind. And 
 then they are incessant and inexorable in their exactions. 
 As soon as one effort is concluded, another must be pre- 
 pared for. "The inevitable hour" when the congrega- 
 tion must have its lecture or discourse, and must have it 
 whether the preacher be in frame or out of frame, is 
 always impending over him. Entertaining the views 
 which I held of obligation on this subject, and haunted 
 always, perhaps criminally, certainly painfully, with a 
 feeling of self-distrust, the work of preparing for the 
 pulpit, with me, has been an arduous one. I have been 
 accustomed, as you are aware, in my Sabbath preaching, 
 to make a large use of the pen. Sometimes in my earlier 
 ministry I felt constrained to depend upon this alto- 
 gether. The draft upon a clergyman's time, created by 
 this practice, I am coming more and more to think, 
 should be avoided by such training as may qualify him to 
 preach without the labor of literal composition. Pur- 
 suing the plan which I have adopted, and which it is not 
 easy now to depart from, I have written out completely at 
 
22 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 least six hundred discourses of different kinds during the 
 twenty-five years of my pastorate in this place. 
 
 A minister, again, at a central point like this, will find 
 his duties as a presbyter extending beyond the circle of 
 his own charge. And as one result of this he will have a 
 large amount of correspondence thrown upon his hands. 
 I have found that one day in each week, and often two, 
 were required for this species of work. 
 
 Then the maintaining of an intercourse with the indi- 
 viduals and families of his flock, is a part of his duty 
 which allows a pastor no rest. Although he may know 
 that his rule here, as in all things, is " to study to show 
 himself approved unto God," he knows, too, that his 
 people expect him to show himself approved unto them. 
 He may know, as is the case in a charge as extensive as 
 this, that it is impossible to satisfy the wishes of his peo- 
 ple without sacrificing every other department of his 
 work; but the reflection that he is not satisfying them 
 will be iu his mind like a goad, driving him forward, and 
 yet always tormenting him with the consciousness of fall- 
 ing behind the required measure of performance. 
 
 Then the casual services which are demanded of him 
 in connection with the wants, the troubles, and the afflic- 
 tions of the community in which he ministers — services 
 which are indefinitely various, which may spring upon 
 him at the most inopportune moment, and which are 
 sometimes inconsiderately imposed — constitute a tax 
 upon time, upon thought, and often upon feeling, of the 
 most exhaustive nature. 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 23 
 
 Then the teacher who is constantly teaching, must 
 seek to be constantly taught. He must keep himself in- 
 formed, that he may inform others. He needs the oppor- 
 tunity and the freedom of mind required for study ; not 
 merely such as shall furnish him for an exercise, but 
 such as shall make him generally intelligent. 
 
 And then, lastly, he has the same infirmities, the same 
 inaptitudes and indispositions, clogging his movements, 
 which other men feel, and under which they usually in- 
 dulge themselves with a cessation from labor; and he 
 has the same kind and the same measure of household 
 responsibilities claiming his attention and burdening his 
 mind, which other men, encompassed with domestic ties, 
 have. 
 
 Amid a set of obligations, exactions, and obstructions 
 like this, I was called to make my way when I took 
 charge of the pastorate of this congregation. And I was 
 called to make it too, I may add, very much alone ; for, 
 from the sparseness of our churches in this region, I 
 have enjoyed to a very limited extent the benefit of in- 
 tercourse with ministerial brethren. It ought not to be 
 surprising if in making that way I have often erred, 
 often been chargeable with that "neglect" which the 
 apostle forbids in his exhortation to Timothy; and for all 
 such delinquencies, in view of the statements just made, 
 I think I have not been unreasonable in expecting at the 
 hands of my flock that kind toleration which I can say 
 they have generally been disposed to extend to them. 
 
 I ought not to overlook to-day the remarkable good- 
 
24 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 ness of God, in the almost uninterrupted enjoyment of 
 health which has been vouchsafed to me during my long 
 ministry in this place. As nearly as I can remember, I 
 have been prevented by sickness from performing the 
 regular duties of the Sabbath — if I except the greater part 
 of the year 1859, when, from general exhaustion termi- 
 nating in a slight organic derangement, I was obliged to 
 suspend public speaking — but three times during twenty- 
 five years. I have been exposed within that period to 
 five epidemic seasons, some of them marked by great 
 malignity in the prevailing disease; but, though in daily 
 and almost hourly contact with the pestilence, it has not 
 been permitted to touch me. 
 
 I cannot, and I ought not to, forget, however, as my 
 thoughts retrace the path along which I have been led, 
 that if goodness and mercy have followed me in this 
 respect, I have not failed, in others, to experience the dis- 
 cipline of sorrow. My early years in Natchez were dark- 
 ened by the heaviest affliction which ever throws its 
 shadow on the heart of man. When we begin to count 
 off our quarter-centuries, it will seem to most of us, I 
 imagine, that we have passed through a series of dif- 
 ferent worlds in the course of our living. In one of those 
 distant worlds, a world lit once with the sunshine of 
 youthful romance, there hangs a cloud, fixed immovably 
 in the dim horizon. Under the influence of it, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, probably, I have passed 
 through the whole of my subsequent ministerial life. 
 Perhaps, as I was to stand by so many sorrowing ones 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 25 
 
 and help tliem to drink their bitter cups, it was not 
 without a purpose that I was made to drink such a cup 
 first, — that I was made to taste a sorrow which goes down 
 to the bottom of all human sorrows. If, as has so often 
 happened, I have had to say to the soul adrift on the wild 
 ocean of grief, "Jesus is near; and Jesus can help you," 
 it is because on such an ocean I have myself seen Him 
 present and realized the sustaining power of His grace. 
 And if, to the heart asking, in the desolation which the 
 removal of its dearest object has wrought, "What have I 
 now to live for?" I could hold up the claims of Jesus, 
 and give the counsel, "To me to live is Christ," and not 
 feel that I was mocking the anguish of the bewildered 
 questioner, it was because I had myself received that 
 counsel from the lips of dying love, and had found that 
 life still had a value in it, so long as it could be conse- 
 crated to Christ. 
 
 At the commencement of my pastorship the number 
 of communicants on the roll of the church was two hun- 
 dred and six. Since that time there have been added 
 five hundred and thirty-two, of whom four hundred and 
 three were admitted upon profession of their faith. 
 "Within the same period one hundred and eleven have 
 died, and three hundred and twenty-eight have been dis- 
 missed to other churches or have been stricken from the 
 roll. The drain upon the membership each year, by 
 deaths and dismissions, has almost kept pace with the 
 accessions ; so that, although there has been a constant 
 growth in the church, the number of communicants at 
 
26 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 present recognized is only two hundred and ninety-one. 
 The largest number on the roll at any one time within 
 the period of my ministry was three hundred and five. 
 The largest number of additions made in any one year 
 was made in 1858, when an unusual interest in religion 
 affected this community in common with most of the 
 country, and we had the pleasure of receiving into the 
 church ninety-four new members, most of them upon 
 profession of their faith. The Sabbath in that year, 
 June 6, on which the Session introduced to you, in one 
 body, sixty-nine persons who had been adopted into your 
 Christian family, and the rite of baptism was adminis- 
 tered to twenty of them, will doubtless be recalled by 
 most of you as a day memorable in your history. It 
 was a day which brought to many of your homes a 
 "great joy," like that which prevailed in the city of Sa- 
 maria, and a demonstration, coupled with that joy, that 
 the same Spirit which wrought the miracle of Pentecost 
 was still present and still active in the world, and could 
 still be depended on to bless the preaching of the gospel 
 and to answer the prayers of the Church. 
 
 The statement just made, that during the past twenty- 
 iive years only four hundred and three persons, under 
 my ministry, have been found willing openly to avow 
 themselves as believers in Christ, is one which at first 
 view is humiliating and disheartening. It seems a small 
 ingathering to reward the laborer who has in one field 
 borne the burden and the heat of so long a day. Still, 
 the eye of the Saviour rested, apparently, not so much 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 27 
 
 upon masses as upon single souls ; and His ministers, 
 where they cannot see crowds won to the obedience of 
 the faith, must magnify the worth of the single souls 
 whom they may have aided to bring to Christ, and must 
 feel, like the angels, that there is occasion for joy in the 
 fact that even one sinner repenteth. I confess, however, 
 that were it not for the assurance I have, that my influ- 
 ence has operated for good in ways that I have not 
 known and perhaps ought not to know, and will con- 
 tinue to operate after I have passed from my field of 
 labor, I should be oppressed with a profound sadness as I 
 survey the results of my ministry to-day. 
 
 With a few items more I will close this first part of my 
 sketch of a quarter-century's pastorship. 
 
 I have baptized six hundred persons, — one hundred 
 and two adults and four hundred and ninety-eight infants. 
 I have solemnized the rites of matrimony two hundred 
 and fifty times ; and in several of these instances the par- 
 ties have been the children of those whom I had pre- 
 viously united in marriage. I have conducted, or as- 
 sisted in conducting, five hundred and fifteen funerals. 
 In the performance of this last most trying part of a min- 
 ister's duty I have been called to enter, as it seems to 
 me, most of the homes of this city and the vicinity for 
 miles in every direction; and I have established a sad 
 link of association between my office and the family his- 
 tory of most of those among whom I live. I have fol- 
 lowed to their graves a large number of those who were 
 the fathers and mothers of the generation now before me; 
 
23 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 and were I to repeat their names the list would include 
 almost every one who has helped to make the society of 
 Natchez as reputable ami its traditions as honorable as 
 they confessedly are. In it would be found nine of my 
 ministerial brethren ; four of the Methodist Church, one 
 of whom was the venerated Carson, so long the St. John 
 of our city; one of the Episcopal Church, — the gifted 
 Chaclburne, who fell a victim to the yellow fever of 1853, 
 whom I had visited and prayed with in his sick-room, and 
 at whose burial I read the service of his Church ; and four 
 of my own Church, one of whom was the beloved spirit- 
 ual father by the putting on of whose hands I had been 
 inducted into my office, — Dr. Chamberlain, whose tragical 
 death in September, 1851, will be remembered by many 
 of you, and in memory of whom I preached a sermon at 
 the request of the Trustees of the College over which he 
 presided ; and another was the Rev. Benjamin H. Wil- 
 liams, for years, as the pastor of the Pine Ridge Church, 
 my nearest neighbor, and always my dearest friend, who 
 died in Vicksburg (where he had become pastor of the 
 Presbyterian Church) of the epidemic of 1855, and in 
 testimony of whose worth I also, at the request of his 
 congregation, pronounced a funeral discourse. 
 
 In reviewing the records which I have preserved of 
 these solemn ceremonials, and passing from them, by a 
 natural transition, to the numerous death-chambers I 
 have had to visit, I seem almost to have dropped the 
 tie of identity with the living present and to be encom- 
 passed with the population of a past world, — a spec- 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 29 
 
 tral population, whose feet I had helped to guide to the 
 borders of that spirit-laud into which they were, one by 
 one, passing. And I can aver to you, my friends, with 
 all honesty, and with the intensest emphasis, that the 
 testimony which I derive from my converse with this 
 silent and shadowy throng is all in favor of that religion 
 which for twenty-five years I have been engaged in 
 recommending to you. 
 
 Is it argued by the preacher that this life is too in- 
 secure, too unsubstantial, to be pursued as the portion of 
 the soul ? My reminiscences tell me that the argument 
 is good. I have seen the fact affirmed most abundantly 
 demonstrated. I have observed that death is ever at 
 hand to defeat the best-laid schemes and blast the most 
 rational hopes of man. I have seen him again and 
 again selecting as his victims the very ones who, we 
 would have said, ought not to die, and could not die. I 
 have seen him cut down with his remorseless scythe the 
 fairy child, the maiden in the pride of her beauty, the 
 minister of God in the midst of his usefulness, the mother 
 with her little flock living upon her love, and the father 
 holding up his dependent household by his providence 
 and care. I have seen, in one of our epidemic summers, 
 a young mechanic, whose energy and probity had opened 
 for him, as he supposed, a sure avenue to wealth, and 
 the bride whom he had brought, in her ruddy girlhood, 
 a few months before, to his neat little home, both 
 almost at the same hour prostrated by the fever, torn 
 from one another and from all earthly objects by the 
 
30 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 stupor in which he was wrapped and the delirium which 
 had seized upon her. and reunited only when death 
 came, in less than two days, and again almost at the 
 same hour, to bear them both to the presence of God, — 
 and in one burial a few of us laid them, side by side, in the 
 same grave. That incident, and hundreds of others, of 
 the same import, though less striking in their details, 
 have taught me that the man who makes the world his 
 trust is the grandest madman who ever built a costly 
 house upon a foundation of sand. 
 
 Is it argued by the preacher that the way of the trans- 
 gressor is hard ? I have seen this verified, when I have 
 seen the drunkard, after throwing away talents which 
 might have made him reputable, and wrecking the 
 hearts of those who loved him, going to his early grave; 
 when I have seen the man of violence groaning in re- 
 morse on his bloody death-bed ; when I have seen the 
 criminal shuddering in his cell, in terror of the gallows 
 to which his crimes had brought him; and when I have 
 seen — for I have seen this too — the tenant of the house 
 of shame closing her life of vice in the agonies of de- 
 spair. "When I have seen these, and a hundred other 
 spectacles, implying the same doctrine, though less 
 marked in form, I have been satisfied that the wages of 
 sin, from first to last, is death. 
 
 And is it argued by the preacher that godliness is 
 
 profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that 
 
 now is, and of that which is to come ? A long proces- 
 
 ion of beautiful characters, graced with the piety of the 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 31 
 
 gospel, and radiant habitually with the peace which 
 trust in Jesus and love to God had inspired, rises before 
 me. And a long series of scenes, in which these charac- 
 ters, after demonstrating the genuineness of their faith by 
 their patience in suffering, had calmly, joyfully fallen 
 asleep in the arms of their Saviour, to waken in His like- 
 ness and in His presence in heaven, comes to light on 
 the pages of my memory; and when I think of them, I 
 am sure the apostle was right when he called Christ and 
 His salvation God's " unspeakable gift ;" when he de- 
 scribed the faith of the believer as a "precious" faith; 
 and when he professed himself willing to " count all 
 things but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of 
 Christ Jesus his Lord." 
 
 And it is not, I ask you to notice, a testimony fur- 
 nished merely by the exercises and phenomena which 
 attend the actual moments of death, to which I thus 
 refer, — for I know only too well that such exercises may 
 be specious and such phenomena illusory; but I hold Up 
 that testimony before you, as founded upon this broad 
 induction, this absolute fact, — that I have never stood by 
 a death-bed, in the whole course of my twenty-five years' 
 ministry, which did not make it unequivocally evident 
 that the party dying had made an infinite mistake if he 
 
 HAD NOT LIVED — A CHRISTIAN. 
 
PAET SECOND. 
 
 "And he gave some, apostles ; and some, prophets ; and some, evan- 
 gelists ; and some, pastors and teachers ; for the perfecting of the saints, 
 for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." — 
 Eph. iv. 11, 12. 
 
 It is a solemn and affecting view of the subject which 
 the apostle here presents, that the overseers and in- 
 structors of the Church are "a gift" to it by its as- 
 cended Head ; and that the work of these officers in the 
 Church is the perfecting, that is, the rectifying and com- 
 pleting, of His "saints," or chosen ones, and the serving 
 and edifying, or the nourishing and rearing up, of His own 
 " body." It teaches us what the world, in its prevalent un- 
 belief, is ever prone to forget, — that the policy of Heaven 
 enters intimately, in many ways, into the policy of earth ; 
 and it reminds us that in our treatment of what are 
 called the institutions of human society we may be 
 touching, reverently or profanely, the ordinances of God. 
 
 It will be my business to-day to show to some extent 
 how far the pastorate and the membership of this church 
 have appreciated and discharged their reciprocal obliga- 
 
 3 (33) 
 
34 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 tions during the past twenty-five years. Resuming the 
 thread of my narrative at the point where I dropped it 
 in my last discourse, I may remark that at my assump- 
 tion of my pastorship, at the close of the year 1843, I 
 found in office only three of the five ruling elders who 
 had been associated with my predecessor. John Hender- 
 son, who is entitled perhaps more than any other to the 
 name of the founder of this church, who continued to 
 take the deepest interest in its welfare to the end of his 
 life, and who was a conspicuous example of the piety he 
 sought to promote, — like Enoch, "walking with God," 
 and like Abraham, " commanding his children and his 
 household after him," — had died in 1841; so that it was 
 never my privilege to know him. Dr. Andrew Macrery 
 I met on my first visit to Natchez, in the spring of 1843. 
 He was then venerable in years, and broken by infirmi- 
 ties, and before my return to the South, in the fall, had 
 gone to his rest. In the three surviving members of the 
 Session, Thomas Henderson, William Pearce, and Frank- 
 lin Beaumont, I found kind and indulgent friends, able 
 and ready to aid my inexperience with their sympathy 
 and counsels. In the first-named of the three I had 
 an invaluable coadjutor, — one upon whose sage judg- 
 ment I always leaned with confidence; while he, in his 
 humility and his veneration for the office I bore, was 
 ever disposed to sit at my feet as a little child. 
 
 With a Session of this limited constituency, the affairs 
 of the church were conducted quietly and prosperously 
 for the next four years. In the spring of 1848, Messrs. 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 35 
 
 Pearce and Beaumont having removed from Natchez, 
 the former to Louisiana, and the latter to Texas, where 
 they are still living, it became necessary to replenish the 
 eldership. Accordingly, the congregation, at a meeting 
 held February 13, 1849, elected to that office Dr. John 
 Ker, Samuel B. Newman, and James Carradine, who 
 were subsequently, on the 27th of May following, or- 
 dained. Dr. Ker's services were soon withdrawn from 
 the church. He died suddenly, on the 4th of January, 
 1850, universally respected and lamented by the com- 
 munity. He had been, to a degree unusual with the 
 class of planters to which he belonged, a public-spirited 
 man. That extravagant term, "the soul of honor," 
 sometimes applied to the favorites of the crowd, could 
 perhaps without extravagance have been applied to him, 
 if by it we mean a character marked by pure and liberal 
 principles, by an undeviating regard for justice and pro- 
 bity, and by a spontaneous and infinite detestation of all 
 wrong-doing and all mean-doing; for this he eminently 
 possessed. He was the patron of every good cause, the 
 friend and benefactor of the people, and at one period of 
 his life served the city of Natchez as its representative in 
 the Legislature. In his religion he was as honest and 
 as earnest as he was in everything else. It was a rare 
 spectacle to see one who had grown up among the loose 
 practices and opinions of the early society of Mississippi, 
 and who had been exposed to the temptations of wealth 
 and popularity, as he had been, receiving with meekness 
 the engrafted word of Christ, and then, in meekness of 
 
36 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 wisdom, carrying out its precepts as he did; and there- 
 fore, and because I had perpetual experience of his 
 paternal kindness from the first hour of my arrival in 
 Natchez, I pay this loving tribute to his worth and 
 memory to-day. 
 
 As early as 1845, in the second year of my ministry, I 
 had begun to give a portion of the Sabbath to the re- 
 ligious instruction of the colored population of the city. 
 Previously, with the exception of occasional services 
 rendered by clergymen of the Methodist Church, no- 
 thing had been done, under the auspices of our local 
 churches, for the evangelization of this portion of the 
 community. A service was opened for them in the 
 building formerly standing in the rear of this church, 
 and remembered by many of you as the "Session-house;" 
 and I continued to preach to them on the night of each 
 Sabbath, after preaching twice to my regular congrega- 
 tion, more or less for a period of six years. This effort 
 was attended with the most gratifying success. The con- 
 gregations increased from year to year, until the place 
 became altogether too strait for them. The services I 
 performed among this people were, in some respects, the 
 most satisfactory of any that belong to my public minis- 
 trations. The pulpit, in their presence, has fewer of 
 those temptations to self-seeking which in other cases 
 are liable to disturb the purity and simplicity of the 
 preacher's purpose ; and the gospel in their hearing, 
 addressing a class of minds where the affections pre- 
 ponderate over the thoughtful judgment and the sober 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 37 
 
 intelligence, is apt to be listened to with an openness of 
 heart, and a responsive sensibility, which are rare in 
 other assemblies. The attractiveness of these Sunday- 
 night meetings drew to them many of my white congre- 
 gation ; and I shall recall to some of you, I know, by 
 this allusion, many an occasion in which, in sympathy 
 with the crowd before you, you have felt that the truths 
 of Christianity had a strange power, and the plaintive 
 numbers of the sweet hymn, "There is rest for the 
 weary," and the stirring notes even of that ruder one, 
 "The old ship of Zion," have raised your souls to a glow 
 of devotional tenderness or exhilaration akin to that 
 which the finest chant of cathedral choristers might have 
 inspired. And the influence of these services, I am satis- 
 fied, was not ineffectual for good. Many from this class 
 were added to the Church; and a faithful walk has de- 
 monstrated, of some of them at least, that they were 
 neither insincere nor mistaken in professing themselves 
 Christians. I have seen too many instances among them 
 of faith working by love and purifying the heart, of piety 
 leading to correctness of life and respectability of char- 
 acter, to allow me to doubt that the grace of the gospel, 
 notwithstanding the peculiar disadvantages it has in their 
 case to encounter, can still among them, as among others, 
 convert the natural man into a new creature in Christ. 
 The increasing size of this congregation made it evident 
 that enlarged accommodations should be provided for 
 them ; and accordingly, in 1848, measures were adopted 
 for the erection of a new house of worship. 
 
38 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 The wants of the Sunday-school, at the same time, in- 
 dicated the necessity of this step. The Sabbath-school 
 enterprise seems to have been inaugurated in Natchez 
 in the year 1817, about the time of the organization of 
 this church. It was, at its inception, conducted upon 
 the union plan, — most or all of the Protestant congrega- 
 tions participating in it; and the meetings of the school 
 were held in the Baptist church. The first superin- 
 tendent was Israel Spencer, a member of this church, 
 still living, and holding the office of ruling elder in 
 the church at Port Gibson. I had the opportunity, not 
 long since, of hearing this venerable and beloved father 
 revert to his labors in this department at that early day, 
 when the aged men and women of the present were the 
 boys and girls of this city. Very soon after the com- 
 mencement of Mr. Potts's ministry, — about the year 
 1824, — it was thought best to establish a separate school, 
 under the direction of the Presbyterian Church. Of this 
 school Samuel Postlethwaite became the superintendent. 
 He was succeeded by Absalom Pettit; he, by Obadiah 
 Congar; and. he, by Alvarez Fisk, whose interest in the 
 youth of Natchez was at a later day attested by those 
 benefactions which laid the foundation of our excellent 
 " Institute." Mr. Fisk was succeeded in 1829 by Thomas 
 Henderson, who continued to preside over the school till 
 his death in 1863. His successor was James Carradine, 
 the present superintendent. It has been my custom, 
 from the beginning of my ministry, to visit this school 
 occasionally, and for many years to do so regularly each 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 39 
 
 month, and to conduct an examination of the children in 
 the Catechism. During this period I can, therefore, bear 
 intelligent testimony to the excellence of the system of 
 instruction which has prevailed in it; and I have seen 
 the result of it, I have no doubt, in the large number of 
 these children who, in their mature years, have united 
 themselves with the Church. The condition of the school 
 at the present epoch is eminently prosperous, — its roll, 
 including teachers and scholars, numbering about three 
 hundred. It is a valuable auxiliary to the work of the 
 pastor; and the advantages which it offers in the way of 
 religious culture are such as no parent who is not sure 
 that he is accustomed to supply this in a better or at 
 least in as good a form at home, ought to deny to his 
 children. 
 
 The growth of this institution, coupled with the wants 
 of the colored congregation, as just intimated, suggested 
 the expediency of erecting a building suited to the pur- 
 poses of both. With this object in view, the edifice at 
 the corner of Pearl and Washington Streets, known as 
 "the Chapel," was constructed during the course of the 
 year 1848. On the 12th of April, 1849, it was dedicated. 
 Since that time, this commodious building, having twice 
 narrowly escaped destruction by fire, has been the fami- 
 liar place of resort of the congregation at all their weekly 
 and occasional meetings. It has been identified with the 
 history of the city in its various mutations, having been 
 the spot where the people of all denominations have been 
 wont to gather in their times of public interest, to join 
 
40 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 in their thanksgivings or to lift up their cries for deliver- 
 ance to God. 
 
 During the summer of the same year, 1849, a spacious 
 and elegant study was erected on the parsonage-grounds, 
 for the benefit of the pastor; a project, I may remark, 
 which originated with, and was largely paid for by, the 
 young ladies of the "Oakly School," at that time under 
 the care of Miss D. Postlethwaite. 
 
 Two years later, in 1851, the size of the church-edifice 
 having become inadequate to meet the wants of the con- 
 gregation, it was determined to enlarge it. This was 
 done by removing the old " Session-house," purchasing 
 an adjoining lot of ground, and extending the building 
 sixteen feet in the rear, which gave it the dimensions 
 and general appearance that it possesses to-day. In 
 the course of the next year the handsome iron railing 
 which surrounds the church-premises was set up. The 
 expense to the congregation of erecting the chapel and 
 study and improving the church was about $13,000. 
 The fresco-work with which the latter is internally 
 adorned was added in 1859. 
 
 In September, 1851, partly to relieve the pastor of the 
 charge of the colored congregation and partly to supply 
 the destitutions of our suburban population, a city mis- 
 sion in connection with this church was established, and 
 the Rev. Daniel McNair invited to conduct it. In ad- 
 dition to the colored congregation in the chapel, Mr. 
 McNair immediately opened a place of worship, and a 
 Sabbath-school, in a hired room on the extreme of St. 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 41 
 
 Catherine Street. Mr. McNair's efforts in this field con- 
 tinued till May, 1855 ; and, as the result of them, a mani- 
 fest improvement took place in the habits of the commu- 
 nity among whom he labored, an interesting Sabbath- 
 school was collected, and a number of persons were 
 gathered into the communion of this church. Mr. McNair 
 was succeeded by the Kev. Joseph Weeks in 1855, and 
 he by the Rev. Thomas H. Cleland in 1856. 
 
 In this year it was resolved by the trustees of this 
 church to erect a house of worship for the Mission Con- 
 gregation; and, accordingly, the tasteful edifice at the 
 corner of Pine and Jefferson Streets was built during 
 1857, and dedicated February 28, 1858. The cost of 
 this building and of a parsonage connected with it was 
 about $10,000. In the fall of 1858, the Mission Congre- 
 gation having been received by the Presbytery of Missis- 
 sippi as "the Second Church of Natchez," forty persons 
 from this church were set off to form its membership, 
 ruling elders were elected, and the Rev. Mr. Cleland was 
 chosen as stated supply. In 1860 the house of worship 
 and parsonage provided for the Second Church were 
 conveyed as a gift to the trustees of that corporation by 
 the trustees of the First Church ; though, I may remark, 
 the salary of the minister continued, till the dissolution of 
 the Second Church, to be paid mainly by the First 
 Church. Mr. Cleland retained his position till the close 
 of the year 1862, when he removed to another charge. 
 Subsequently to his departure, owing to the distracted 
 condition of the country, the dispersion of members, and 
 
42 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 the death and removal of the ruling elders, it was found 
 impossible to sustain the church in active existence ; and 
 a year ago, the trustees having reconveyed the property 
 to the First Church, . it was declared dissolved by the 
 Presbytery, and the remaining members were directed to 
 connect themselves with the First Church. The prop- 
 erty has since been sold, and the church is now owned 
 and used by a society of the Colored Methodist Church. 
 
 This enterprise is thus noted because it was one in 
 which this congregation, at the time, took a large inter- 
 est, and one which, notwithstanding its early extinction, 
 was productive of great public good, and deserves to be 
 put on record as a testimony, for the generation to come, 
 of the evangelic zeal and the " mind to work" which 
 characterized their fathers. 
 
 The liberality of the congregation was exhibited also, 
 I may add, about the same period in which it was exe- 
 cuting these larger schemes, in the expenditure, in 1856, 
 of the sum of $3852 in repairing and enlarging the par- 
 sonage. I find that within the ten years extending from 
 1850 to 1860 the sums contributed by this church, in 
 various ways, for religious and benevolent objects, 
 amounted to $148,434, — a fact which will serve to show 
 the high grade of prosperity to which the country had 
 advanced, and, at the same time, the readiness of a part 
 at least of the people to consecrate their wealth to the 
 service of God. This period may probably be taken as 
 the palmy decade in the history of the church, — when it 
 could have been said of its members, as of the early 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 43 
 
 Church, "the multitude of them that believed were of 
 one heart and of one soul; neither said any of them that 
 aught of the things which he possessed was his own;" 
 and "walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort 
 of the Holy Ghost, they were multiplied." 
 
 In January, 1853, the church sustained a heavy loss in 
 the dismissal of Samuel B. Newman, one of its ruling 
 elders, to the Prytania Street Church in New Orleans, to 
 which city he had removed his residence. The eldership 
 beins: now reduced to two members, an addition to it 
 was made by the election of L. M. Patterson, Oren Met- 
 calf, Alexander J. Postlethwaite, and Thomas C. Pollock 
 on the 29th of June, 1855 ; who, having accepted the 
 office, were duly ordained on the 8th of July following. 
 
 No additions have since been made; but death has not 
 suffered the little band of seven who then constituted the 
 Session of the church, and for a series of years were ac- 
 customed to hold fraternal counsel together and join in 
 prayer and deliberation in behalf of the flock of which 
 they were overseers, to remain unbroken until now. On 
 the 6th of March, 1863, Thomas Henderson, after hav- 
 ing served the church as a ruling elder for twenty-five 
 years and as superintendent of the Sabbath-school for 
 thirty-four years, departed this life ; and on the 3d of De- 
 cember, 1866, Alexander J. Postlethwaite followed him 
 to the grave. 
 
 Of these brethren beloved, from the freshness of the 
 sense of bereavement in my own breast, and from my 
 reluctance to open wounds in the hearts of many who 
 
44 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 hear me, I am almost afraid to say what I think and 
 know. But I am giving testimony, to-day, from a posi- 
 tion which I shall never occupy again ; and it seems to 
 me I should leave the history of my pastorate incom- 
 plete if I did not signalize the privilege I have enjoyed 
 in heing associated with such men. Besides, our de- 
 parted friends, though dead, yet speak to us when we 
 speak to one another of them ; and it is wrong, unjust 
 to our faith, to clothe the death of the Christian with re- 
 pulsive attrihutes, or avoid a recurrence to it, as if it were 
 a mere calamity. 
 
 The obligations which this church is under to these 
 two men will never be known on earth. They were 
 both distinguished for modesty, — obscured, I may say, 
 by the retiringness of their disposition and habit; and 
 the world was almost as ignorant of the extent of their 
 excellence, as the soil in which the diamond lies buried 
 is of the value of the gem it incloses. Both showed, 
 throughout the whole of their Christian life, that the 
 type of their piety had been drawn, reverently and im- 
 plicitly, from the Scriptures. They had not speculated a 
 religion into existence for themselves. They had not 
 been accustomed to say, " I believe this or that to be 
 true, because I wish it to be true, or because I think it 
 ought to be true." But, hushing their own wishes and 
 thoughts, they bowed to the majesty of God's word; 
 gave it the credit of absolute truth ; informed themselves 
 of its contents; drank of it as their spiritual drink; ate 
 of it as their spiritual food ; and so became the healthy 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 45 
 
 and symmetrical Christians they were, — with their con- 
 sciences illuminated, and their hearts sanctified, till their 
 thoughts approved and their wishes accepted just what 
 God's word revealed, and, like the Psalmist, they could 
 say, " How sweet are thy words unto my taste ! yea, 
 sweeter than honey to my mouth !" Both had a breadth 
 and a depth of heart which, from their unostentatious 
 temperament, would not have been suspected by those 
 who were not brought into intimate contact with them. 
 Though governed strictly by a regard for duty, they were 
 not the mechanical servants of law. Though attached to 
 the church to which they belonged, they knew nothing 
 of the blindness or exclusiveness of ecclesiastical partisan- 
 ship. Though rooted and grounded, like the tree's trunk, 
 in the doctrines of the gospel, they showed the efflores- 
 cence and the fruitage of the tree's bough, in the affec- 
 tions of the gospel which adorned their characters and 
 their lives. The "love of Christ," as apprehended by 
 them, "constrained" them; and, under the inspiration of 
 this apprehension, they loved Christ first, — then loved 
 the Church which He had redeemed, — and then the 
 world for which He had died. I do not wish to say any- 
 thing extravagant; and therefore I do not say that they 
 did not have their defects, and that they did not some- 
 times fall into errors. But I well remember how, on 
 one occasion, happening to hear a cynical skeptic 
 railing at the Church and denouncing professors of 
 religion as hypocrites, when I asked him the question, 
 "Did you ever know Thomas Henderson?" he dropped 
 
46 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 his head, and murmured, "Yes, — yes: he was a Chris- 
 tian !" 
 
 Mr. Henderson's long connection with, and prominence 
 in, the church, and his position in the mercantile and 
 social world, made his influence to he widely felt and 
 his worth to be generally known. The gifts which he 
 had received from nature, and which had been cultivated 
 by education only to a limited extent, were wonderfully 
 developed and expanded by the anointing from above 
 which had* been conferred upon him; so that, in per- 
 spicacity of mind, in the well-balanced movement of his 
 judgment, in his clear discernment of the principles of 
 rectitude and the forms and proportions of truth, in the 
 propriety and felicity with which he performed the duties 
 of his office, in the way of public prayer or exhortation, 
 he had very few superiors. His talents forced him, in a 
 measure, out of that retirement which he sought; and 
 the Church at large asked, in various ways, the benefit of 
 his services. He was for many years one of the vice- 
 presidents of the American Colonization Society; from 
 its foundation, a trustee of Oakland College, our sy- 
 nodical institution ; a frequent member of our local eccle- 
 siastical councils; and on several occasions a Commis- 
 sioner from his Presbytery to the General Assembly. 
 His liberality was princely, or rather, let me say, Chris- 
 tian-like. The needy of all classes went to him for aid, 
 without reserve; and the readiness with which it was 
 dispensed revealed the principle upon which he uni- 
 formly acted, that in the disbursement of his wealth he 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 47 
 
 was discharging a stewardship intrusted to him by the 
 Lord. He contributed to the religious and benevolent 
 enterprises of the Church on a scale which far out- 
 stripped the rate at which Christians ordinarily estimate 
 their obligations; and the benefactions he dispensed are 
 working to-day in the leavening power which Chris- 
 tianity is exercising in all parts of this land, and living 
 in the schools and churches which are springing up over 
 the world on heathen soil. And, yet, so carefully was 
 this outflow of his liberality ordered, — that it might be 
 a sacrifice to God, and not to his own fame, — that, so far 
 as such a thing could be, it was kept from the eye of 
 man; and perhaps no one but God ever knew its full 
 extent. When he died, the population of the city were 
 his mourners; and over the community, and the church, 
 and the family, — with an intensity increasing as each of 
 these circles grew less, — there hung a stifling sense of 
 loss, as if a presence which had been a safeguard and a 
 blessing to them all, had been withdrawn from them. 
 
 Mr. Postlethwaite's term of service and sphere of influ- 
 ence were more contracted; but during that term and 
 within that sphere I have never known a man in whom 
 the "willing mind" — the first requisite of the Christian 
 laborer — was more conspicuously displayed. With him 
 the expression "ye are not your own" was more than a 
 theoretic formula. He realized it in his deepest con- 
 sciousness, and he acted in accordance with it in his out- 
 ward life. Totally free from guile, or the craft which 
 ceaselessly revolves about self, his supreme desire was to 
 
48 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 be useful, — to help others to be happy. Ou every inch 
 of earth which his hand could till, he sought to plant a 
 flower. His abilities were given, often with a severe cost 
 to his own comfort, to the Church; and in many a private 
 mission of his own, with which his nearest friends were 
 hardly acquainted, he bore his charities to the poor and 
 his consolations to the sick and the bereaved. He died 
 in his prime; called, we know not why, to higher forms 
 of that pious ministry he had so loved while present with 
 us. 
 
 In closing what I shall have to say in regard to the 
 eldership of this church, I cannot but remark, when I 
 recall the seventeen who have borne this office, that the 
 gift of such men as some of them were, and are, is a 
 token of special favor, by its great Head, to the Church. 
 Pillars indeed we may call them, in the house of the Lord, 
 having in them the strength of granite and the beauty 
 of alabaster. And when I hear the man, outside of the 
 Church, making his flippant fling at the hollowness of the 
 piety inside of the Church, I point to these men, and 
 ask if the presence of such wheat is not proof that the 
 piety of the Church is the growth of a Divine planting, 
 sufficient to outweigh all the evidence to the contrary 
 which the presence of the tares to be found in it can 
 afford. 
 
 It will be proper now, in carrying out my design, to 
 notice briefly some of the ways in which the church has 
 recognized its relations to the social corporation with 
 which it has been identified, and has promoted, as it was 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 49 
 
 its duty to do, the good of the community in which it 
 was established. 
 
 Not to speak of the bearings upon the intellectual 
 character and habits of a people, of a ministry of the spe- 
 cies of that which has officiated in this pulpit and come 
 in contact with the minds of this congregation continu- 
 ously for a period of fifty years, — bearings which are not 
 often acknowledged, but which cannot be inconsiderable, 
 — I would affirm, first, of the Presbyterian Church in 
 Natchez, that it has always lent its influence to the 
 support of efforts for the promotion of sound popular 
 education. Believing, as we do, that Christianity con- 
 templates man as a rational being, that it proposes to 
 lead him to eternal life through the knowledge of the 
 true God and of Jesus Christ whom He has sent, and 
 that ignorance is the mother neither of devotion nor of 
 morality, but of superstition and vice, we have every- 
 where aimed to plant the school-house alongside of the 
 church, and to elevate the intelligence of the masses, 
 that, in their ability to think, they might be the better 
 able to understand the claims of Christianity. One of 
 the first bench of ruling elders ordained in this church, 
 Richard Pearce, and the first superintendent of the Sab- 
 bath-school, Israel Spencer, were the Principals of an in- 
 stitution of learning, the first of which there is any re- 
 cord in Natchez. During my acquaintance with the city 
 there have always been in it one or more schools of a 
 good character under the charge of persons connected 
 with this church. At one time there were in existence 
 
 4 
 
50 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 here no less than three female and one male boarding- 
 schools under such supervision, all well sustained and of 
 a high order. As a part of my duty as a member of the 
 Synod of Mississippi, I have been, from my settlement in 
 the country, a member of the Board of Directors and 
 Trustees of Oakland College, an institution founded by 
 the Presbyterians of the Southwest nearly forty years 
 ago, and the first institution of the kind founded south of 
 Tennessee. The endowment of this college came largely 
 from this congregation ; and one individual in it, who 
 chose to be unknown, gave $20,000 to it as the founda- 
 tion of a Theological Chair. In the year 1845, Natchez 
 witnessed the opening of its Common school, known 
 ever since, and most honorably, as the "Natchez Insti- 
 tute." The enterprise originated with the late Alvarez 
 Fisk, a communicant in this church, who had previously 
 offered to the city several valuable pieces of property 
 upon condition that the corporation would establish a 
 school for the gratuitous education of the youth within 
 its limits. The gift was accepted ; and, in pursuance of 
 a resolution adopted by the people at a public meeting, 
 an ordinance imposing an annual tax upon the citizens 
 for the consummation of the design was passed by the 
 Common Council. Much distrust and some opposition 
 in reference to the scheme were entertained; and with 
 the view of allaying these, and under the conviction that 
 in helping forward the scheme I should be serving the 
 cause of Christ, I preached a sermon in this pulpit, April 
 13, 1845, from the text (Hosea iv.), " My people are de- 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 51 
 
 stroyed for lack of knowledge," — in which I urged upon 
 my own congregation, on religious grounds, the duty of 
 sustaining the projected school, and in which I used 
 the following language : " The object is one which should 
 enlist our conscientious co-operation. We should wel- 
 come the institution proposed to be established amongst 
 us, as a legitimate ally in the work of human salvation. 
 If it is properly conducted, it is adapted to fulfill this 
 office. It may save many souls from ruin whom igno- 
 rance would otherwise have destroyed. And while there 
 is a possibility of its doing this, while it is free to act as 
 the handmaid of religion, it is entitled to receive our 
 warmest countenance and support. With the favor of 
 God vouchsafed to it in answer to our prayers, genera- 
 tions to come will bless us for the pious benefactions 
 which founded it ; and a fountain will be opened here, 
 which shall join with countless others, in all lands, in 
 eventually covering the earth with the knowledge of the 
 Lord, as the waters cover the sea." The institution was 
 opened, and, through the favor of God vouchsafed to it, 
 has continued to the present day. It has never had any 
 manner of relationship to this church or any other church; 
 but, inasmuch as the instruction given in it is consonant 
 with the teachings of Christianity, and as all true knowl- 
 edge is favorable to the ends proposed by Christianity, I 
 have always, as a citizen, watched over it with the liveliest 
 interest ; and as an evidence of this I may add that I 
 have annually been a member of the Examining Com- 
 mittee, and on seven or eight occasions have acted as 
 
52 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 the chairman of that Committee and prepared the 
 Annual Report to the City Council. 
 
 I make this allusion to the Institute, because the origin 
 of it belongs to the period covered by my ministry ; and 
 because no small part of the influence by which it has 
 been fostered into its present proportions has come from 
 this congregation. 
 
 I claim, in the next place, for the church over which I 
 preside, that it has always been active in supporting 
 schemes of benevolence. While we maintain the dis- 
 tinctive ground upon which the Church stands as a 
 Divine institute, by which it is forbidden to own a parity 
 to itself, on the part of any merely eleemosynary society, 
 we hold that the Church is bound to be pre-eminently an 
 eleemosynary society. We hold it to be a part of pure 
 and undefiled religion "to visit the fatherless and widows 
 in their affliction," as well as "to keep ourselves unspotted 
 from the world." In accordance with this theory, I find 
 a number of persons, who afterward composed the mem- 
 bership of this church, uniting with others, as far back as 
 1816, to form a "Female Charitable Society," the object 
 of which was "the supporting a charity school and the 
 maintaining poor orphans and widows" within the city 
 of Natchez. This society was the germ of the present 
 "Natchez Protestant Orphan Asylum." I find that the 
 Rev. Daniel Smith, then supply to the Presbyterian con- 
 gregation, preached a sermon for the benefit of this in- 
 stitution in February, 1817; and that in 1821 Samuel 
 Postlethwaite, afterward an elder in this church, when 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 53 
 
 the institution required a permanent outfit, presented 
 to it a lot of ground at the northeast corner of what 
 are now Pine and Homochitto Streets, upon which the 
 first asylum was built. This institution was and con- 
 tinues to be a public one, under the control of no par- 
 ticular denomination of Christians, but sustained by the 
 contributions of all the Protestant bodies, and presided 
 over by a board of managers chosen from the subscribers. 
 But in their liberality in supporting it, and their self- 
 denying patience in conducting it, I may safely say the 
 members of this church have been second to no others. 
 Some of them are toiling now, I know, in common with 
 their associates from other churches, with a solicitude 
 which is truly maternal, and which hardly allows them 
 rest day or night, to provide means for the support of 
 the sixty-four fatherless little ones whom an almost ex- 
 hausted treasury threatens with starvation. 
 
 Until within late years, another organization existed in 
 the church, called the "Ladies' Benevolent Society," 
 whose donations to some good object annually ranged 
 from three hundred to one thousand dollars. The "poor- 
 fund," created by voluntary offerings on communion Sab- 
 baths, has furnished from two to three hundred dollars, 
 annually, for the use of the indigent. 
 
 But, beyond these public methods, I can testify that 
 many in this congregation have made it their business, 
 and found it a pleasure, to minister in private ways to 
 the relief of the needy and suffering. It is a mistake to 
 think there are no sisterhoods and brotherhoods of mercy 
 
54 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 in Protestant communities; and I gladly avail myself of 
 this opportunity to proclaim it. I have seen them at 
 work these twenty-five years at their blessed calling. I 
 have seen them, angels in human shape, from this church 
 and from other churches, quietly, and without parade, 
 striving to lighten the burdens of the children of want 
 and woe. I have seen them in times when the epidemic, 
 with its invisible artillery, was prostrating its hundreds 
 each day, hovering over the beds of the squalid and the 
 friendless; find many a sufferer, I am sure, has felt, as 
 Florence Nightingale's soldier did, like kissing their 
 shadows as they passed. I am cognizant of the fact 
 that within these last two years, when the destitution of 
 our population in some cases almost reached the starving 
 and the freezing point, the hearts of many a household 
 have been made glad by seeing bread on their tables and 
 fire on their hearths, furnished by benefactors whom they 
 did not know. The almoners here have made no adver- 
 tisement of their deeds. Untrumpeted and unmarked, 
 they have asked no praise, no reward, from man. They 
 will get them, I trust, when He, out of love to whom 
 they have so labored, and whose spirit they have so ex- 
 emplified, shall say to them, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto 
 one of the least of these, ye did it unto me." 
 
 I would bear witness also to this third fact, that this 
 church, ever since I have known it, has maintained, at 
 least to some good degree, an attitude in favor of the 
 social moralities which Christianity enjoins. In its pub- 
 lic testimony, and by the example, I think I can say, of 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 55 
 
 most of its members, it has sought to subserve the public 
 virtue, and, so, the public good, b}^ checking the tend- 
 ency of the age and the locality to extravagance, to in- 
 temperance, to Sabbath-desecration, and to illicit amuse- 
 ments. And though abounding vice may sometimes 
 have broken over its borders and intruded into its terri- 
 tory, I persuade myself that the presence of this church 
 in the community has been, in many a direction, a bar- 
 rier to the torrent of excess and corruption which has 
 been setting upon it. 
 
 The history I have undertaken to give would not be 
 complete, perhaps, if I did not make at least a brief allu- 
 sion to three extraordinary periods which have occurred 
 during my ministry. 
 
 The first to which I refer is the epidemic season of 
 1853. Up to that date I had never witnessed a visitation 
 of the yellow fever in a general and unequivocal form. 
 The security in which we had allowed ourselves to fall 
 was suddenly broken that year by the appearance of sev- 
 eral cases of this dreaded disease, as early as August; 
 and in a short time its presence in the city was acknowl- 
 edged by the public authorities. Many of you will 
 remember the panic which ensued. The portion of the 
 population which could escape fled, as from an invading 
 foe, to such places of shelter as they could find in the 
 country. The residue, consisting to a large extent of 
 unacclimated persons, remained to await their fate. 
 There were few of them whom the pestilence did not 
 reach; and many of them it carried to the grave. For 
 
56 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 nearly four months the places of business were generally 
 closed. The grass literally sprung up in our untrodden 
 streets; and the silence, not of a Sabbath, but of a 
 funeral hour, hung over our usually bustling city. With 
 the exception of once, when I was absent in the country, 
 religious service was held during the whole summer at 
 the regular time, once each Sabbath, in the chapel; 
 where a few of my stricken flock found it a comfort to 
 seek the consolations of the sanctuary. Such scenes of 
 sorrow as I was compelled to witness may, perhaps, 
 have been useful to me as a part of my training for my 
 office; but they are such as I pray God I may never have 
 to witness again. I tried to do my duty as a minister of 
 religion during that season, and in the doing of it expe- 
 rienced literally the fulfillment of the promise, "A thou- 
 sand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right 
 hand, but it shall not come nigh thee." The scourge 
 slowly withdrew itself; the last victim was a beautiful 
 and gifted young lady, who had in a false confidence re- 
 turned from her retreat to the town, and whom we laid 
 in her grave on the 6th of December; and then, as I 
 believe generally happens after such appalling disturb- 
 ances of the public composure, the tide of life and busi- 
 ness and pleasure flowed back again as buoyantly as 
 though eternity had not been flashing its light upon the 
 vanity of them all. 
 
 The second period to be noted is the summer of 1858, 
 distinguished for the remarkable revival of religion 
 which occurred generally throughout our city. Chris- 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 57 
 
 tians of the various denominations, moved, as it seemed, 
 by a spontaneous impulse, began to ask if some portion 
 of the gracious shower which was visiting other portions 
 of the land might not be caused to descend upon this 
 thirsty spot; and, as the result of their conferences, a 
 daily union prayer-meeting was opened at the chapel on 
 the morning of May 3, which was continued, without 
 intermission, till the beginning of the following Novem- 
 ber. A month previously to this, I had commenced a 
 daily service in the afternoon, for the special benefit of 
 my own congregation. The latter of these meetings I 
 conducted entirely for seven months; the former I as- 
 sisted in maintaining for nearly the same length of time. 
 The hours spent together thus, in the house of prayer, 
 will be recalled by many as hallowed seasons; and hun- 
 dreds, probably, look back to the summer of 1858 as the 
 time of their spiritual birth. 
 
 The third epoch which deserves a mention is the dark 
 and dismal period embraced by the late war, extending 
 from 1861 to 1865. At the commencement of this 
 period, foreseeing that it was to be a time of trial and 
 calamity to my friends, and of peril to the interests of 
 the kingdom of Christ, I resolved to direct my efforts 
 conscientiously to the mitigating of the one and the pro- 
 tecting of the other. The sad incidents of the period — 
 the horrors which lie inclosed within that deep gulf — I 
 have no disposition to uncover. A storm terrific beyond 
 precedent — so strange in its inception, its progress, and 
 its results, that, it seems to me, men ought to stand awe- 
 
58 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 stricken before it, as before one of the most wonderful of 
 God's wonderful works — swept over our land, leaviug it 
 the bereaved, the impoverished, the disorganized terri- 
 tory we see it to-day. Happily for us, our town was not 
 found available for any strategic purposes; and until 1863 
 the literal convulsions of war hardly disturbed the quiet 
 of our community. Once only, on the evening of the 
 memorable 2d of September, 1862, we were exposed for 
 three hours to the fire of a fleet of gunboats from the 
 river, by which the town was extensively damaged, 
 though the lives of the inhabitants, with one excep- 
 tion, were almost miraculously preserved. Not without 
 reason, on this occasion, our almost unaccountable de- 
 liverance was connected in the minds of the people with 
 the fact that they had not ceased, week by week, during 
 the war, to assemble for common prayer, to supplicate 
 from God that fatherly compassion which our exigencies 
 needed ; prayer, I may remark, which, for the most part, 
 those who conducted it strove to have chastened with 
 that humility and submissiveness which at all times 
 become the petitions of weak and fallible men, and espe- 
 cially become them in times of fevered popular excite- 
 ment. After the occupation of the town, on the 13th of 
 July, 1863, Natchez became a military post. Soon after 
 this, domestic sorrow again invaded my household ; and, 
 accepting the opportunity kindly offered me by the com- 
 mandant of the post, I visited my native State, in the 
 vain hope, as the event proved, of saving the life of a 
 beloved child. On my return in December, I found 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 59 
 
 Natchez a swarming hive of strangers, and the church — 
 in which, as God's house, accommodation had been, prop- 
 erly, extended to all — filled on the Sabbath with a crowd 
 of worshipers of whom scarcely one in ten was known 
 to me. The regular service of the Sabbath morning was 
 continued from that time until the close of the war 
 enabled me to resume the usual routine of duty. During 
 this anomalous period, I can say, the gospel was preached 
 in this pulpit with the sincere desire that it should prove 
 the power of God unto salvation to all who heard it; and 
 I am not without the hope that it will be found in eter- 
 nity that the seed then sown has taken root in souls 
 whom personally I never knew. No one, I think, can 
 review the dealings of God with this church during the 
 successive stages of the war, without acknowledging that 
 they were characterized by singular goodness, and with- 
 out feeling confirmed in the conviction that it was not a 
 vain thing to put ourselves, as we did, at the outset of 
 the convulsion, under the shadow of His wings. 
 
 These recitals, perhaps, cover the ground which ought 
 to be occupied by my narrative. I will only add that 
 since the reassembling of my scattered flock, in 1865, 
 we have been mainly learning the depth of poverty to 
 which we have been reduced, and the multiplied embar- 
 rassments into which the vicissitudes of the past few 
 years have thrown us. Still, we have encouraged our- 
 selves in the Lord our God, and He has not failed us. 
 He has enabled us to maintain our existence amid the 
 difficulties which thickened upon us, year by year, until 
 
60 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 now we can look around upon the auspicious change 
 which the past year has wrought, and hope the crisis 
 is over; and the hardships of our adversities may be- 
 queath us a blessing, by making us a more diligent, self- 
 denying, and trustful people. Like Israel with the Red 
 Sea behind them, it becomes us to-day to join in a grate- 
 ful chorus, and proclaim, " The Lord is my strength and 
 song, and He is become my salvation : He is my God, and 
 I will prepare Him an habitation; my fathers' God, and 
 I will exalt Him!" 
 
 As entering into our ecclesiastical history, perhaps I 
 ought to mention just one fact more. In the year 1861, 
 in consequence of the dismemberment of the nation, the 
 Presbyterians in the Southern States generally found 
 themselves obliged to effect a complete organization of 
 their own, and, therefore, constituted a General As- 
 sembly, in which they have since been annually repre- 
 sented, and which ultimately assumed the title of " The 
 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the 
 United States." "With this body this church, through 
 its Presbytery, is organically connected. How long this 
 separateness of organization will continue, or ought to 
 continue, I of course am not authorized to say. Frac- 
 tures which heal slowly perhaps heal most effectually; 
 and it would seem that, in a normal state of things, frac- 
 tures in any body ought to heal some time. I cannot, 
 therefore, withhold the expression of the hope that a 
 personal unity, generated by the Spirit of God, may 
 soon prepare the way for the knitting together in their 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 61 
 
 old relations of the whole Presbyterian family of the 
 country. 
 
 I have set before you thus, dear brethren, a few par- 
 ticulars in the ministry of this church for the last twenty- 
 five years, which may serve, to some extent, to show how 
 the office which I have borne, as your pastor, has been 
 discharged. The reverse side of the history, — the ac- 
 count of my "neglectings" of the gift which has been in 
 me, — I am well aware, could be given, and perhaps 
 given by no one better than myself. This, however, 
 ought to be confessed to a higher tribunal than yours. 
 
 Let me glance a moment, before I conclude, at the 
 manner in which you have acquitted yourselves of your 
 obligations under the gift bestowed upon you by your 
 Divine Lord. 
 
 It would be strange ingratitude if I did not say that 
 during my long residence among you I have been fol- 
 lowed personally by your unwavering kindness. On 
 several occasions, when I have been solicited to change 
 my charge, the argument which has kept me here has 
 been that you did not want me to go. At the end of 
 these twenty-five years' labors, I believe I may call 
 every individual, not merely in this congregation, but in 
 Natchez, — so far as its people are \known to me, — my 
 friend. I have become embosomed in this society, not 
 merely in fact, but in spirit. My relations with other 
 clergymen and other congregations have always been 
 pleasant and cordial ; and among the latter my services 
 have been extensively rendered. No root of bitterness 
 
62 QUARTER-CENTURY SER3I0N. 
 
 has ever sprung up to trouble the harmony which has 
 subsisted between me and my flock. I mention this, to 
 show that that flock must have discharged their duty in 
 the one particular, at least, of "esteeming very highly in 
 love for their work's sake" those who have been set over 
 them in the Lord. I have not a whisper of complaint to 
 utter in respect to your treatment of me; unless it be 
 that your love has led you to lean upon me too much 
 and upon yourselves too little. The occasion is too 
 solemn to allow an indulgence in flattery; and therefore, 
 in praising you for your care of me, I ought not to con- 
 ceal from you that my observation has led me to notice 
 in you the following defects, — which, if they exist here, 
 exist only because this congregation is made up of the 
 same infirm materials of which all congregations are 
 composed. 
 
 First, I think there is among you too much of an 
 easy or drowsy habit in looking at the vineyard in 
 which, as the Lord's laborers, you are called to work. 
 In a community where every one is as independent and 
 as free from need as was the case formerly with this, it 
 is not strange, perhaps, that you should have taken it for 
 granted that the world was so comfortable that there 
 was no occasion for you to ask the question if there was 
 any service which it needed at your hands. This was a 
 wrong conclusion, however, even in respect to such a 
 community as this was. The world is always, and in 
 every part of it, a groaning and a travailing world; and 
 it becomes the faithful Christian to remember this, and 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 63 
 
 to keep his eye open with an outlooking benevolence, 
 and his foot moving with a pre-eminent helpfulness, 
 which shall suffer no opportunity of doing good to escape 
 him, and shall spare him the pain of saying, when such 
 an opportunity has gone by unimproved, "I am sorry 
 I did not know of this." 
 
 Second, I think there is among you too much of a dis- 
 position to overlook what I may call your corporate ob- 
 ligations as members of the Church. Religion, as I have 
 often taught you, is the Christian's business; and the 
 Church is organized in part that it may aid each Chris- 
 tian in doing his business. It is an association of men 
 who are described as "fervent in spirit, serving the 
 Lord." It cannot do the work of these men. It cannot 
 do its own work unless each man in it recognizes his 
 obligation to do his portion of it. The Church is but 
 the aggregate of the individuals in it ; and it is nugatory 
 for any individual to argue that because a Church exists 
 he is absolved from all obligation to work in his private 
 capacity and sphere. 
 
 Third, I think there has been evidence of an undue 
 laxness in your loyalty to the principles and claims upon 
 which your Church asserts its right to the character of a 
 Church. I know it is our privilege to hold a theory 
 which allows the largest liberality in the recognition of 
 other bodies as churches of Christ. We believe the 
 Church, in its true form, to consist of all who show that 
 they have been redeemed by the blood of Christ and are 
 animated by the Spirit of Christ. We cast out none 
 
64 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 whom we have reason to believe the Lord has accepted. 
 External and economical matters we regard as secondary 
 to this prime condition in the constituency of the Church ; 
 and therefore, though other bodies differ from us in 
 these, if we can call them Christians in the sense of the 
 ISTew Testament, we fraternize with them, we commune 
 with them, we make no attempt to proselyte them. But in 
 doing this we are not renouncing our preference for our 
 own Church, nor discrediting the reasons which make us 
 believe it is entitled to our preference. Now, what I 
 wish to say is, that if that Church is worthy of being a 
 spiritual home for us, it is worthy of being the same for 
 all who look to us for guidance. It is worthy of being 
 the same for our children. And if we do not strive to 
 keep them in it, if we allow them to wander to other 
 folds, we are disloyal to the principles and claims upon 
 which that Church rests, and are suffering divisions to 
 break into our families, where, to say the least, there is 
 no necessity for it. 
 
 Fourth, I think I may say there is not enough of 
 religious study among you. Theological learning and 
 ecclesiastical intelligence are suffered to be too much the 
 monopoly of those who teach you. We are not the robust 
 and thorough-working Christians our fathers were, be- 
 cause we do not search the Scriptures as they did, and 
 do not concern ourselves with the concerns of Christ's 
 kingdom as they did. I hold that "the faith once de- 
 livered to the saints" ought to be a subject of interest 
 always to the saints; and the mission of the Church, to 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 65 
 
 convert the world, ought to enlist the solicitude and 
 attention of all who belong to the Church. 
 
 And, fifth, I think there is prevalent among you too 
 weak a sense of the authority and value of the divine 
 ordinances of Sabbath-keeping and. public worship. The 
 world has its canons and customs, and they press upon 
 us with tremendous power. Self has its desires to urge 
 and its arguments by which to sustain them. But neither 
 the exactions of the world nor the solicitations of self 
 should be suffered by the Christian to trench upon the 
 institutions and enactments of God. Religion, which is 
 obedience to these institutions and enactments, is worth 
 all the cost the practice of it involves. The benefit de- 
 rived from a Sabbath well kept will outweigh all the 
 gain which may possibly accrue to us from a Sabbath 
 broken; and the blessing which may come to us in the 
 house of God will be cheaply purchased by the effort 
 and the inconvenience demanded of us in going there. 
 
 Suffer these few hints, dear brethren, as I close the 
 reminiscences which this interesting occasion has called 
 up. The spot on which I stand to-day is to me very 
 solemn ground. The history of twenty-five years of 
 transactions with immortal souls lies behind me; before 
 me, the intervening vista is so short, so uncertain, I see 
 nothing but eternity. It would be wild presumption to 
 suppose that the end of another quarter-century will find 
 me here. Four generations have sat within these walls. 
 Of the first, a few yet survive, — patriarchs leaning on 
 their staves and waiting for their departure. To the 
 
 5 
 
66 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 second, the old men and women of the day belong, ap- 
 pearing among us with ranks already sadly thinned by 
 death. The third are the fathers and mothers now pre- 
 siding in our homes. And the fourth are their children. 
 So we pass away, like the waves, breaking and dying, in 
 regular succession and with mournful cadence, upon the 
 sand. "For all flesh is as grass; and all the glory of 
 man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and 
 the flower thereof falleth away. But the word of the 
 Lord endureth forever. And this is the word which by 
 the gospel is preached unto you." Yes, beloved, from 
 all this fleeting pageant which has been passing before 
 me as I have pursued this narrative, from these vanished 
 families, changed homesteads, broken love-links, death- 
 beds and graves, among which I have been wandering, I 
 turn to this blessed gospel, whose truths, whose prom 7 
 ises, whose gifts, endure forever ; and I feel that I love it 
 more, and I promise myself that, by God's grace, I will 
 preach it with more fidelity, than ever before. And I 
 charge you, my people, to hear it from my lips, in all 
 time to come, with these thoughts in your hearts, that as 
 we have stood together to-day where we can stand only 
 once, so life itself, with its opportunities of salvation, is a 
 handbreadth, where you can stand only once; and that, 
 if these opportunities are not improved while they are 
 given, the regret which will follow you into the long 
 eternity, where you must soon pass as your forefathers 
 have done, will be endured only once, but that once will 
 
 be FOREVER. 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMOX. 67 
 
 With these thoughts pressing upon my own heart, 
 I feel as if I could not let this occasion pass, as if I 
 could not quit a spot made so tender by its reminis- 
 cences and so serious by its prospects, without addressing 
 a special admonition to some of you, to whom peculiar 
 circumstances give a prominent place in my regards 
 to-day. There are those among you who have traveled 
 with me, step by step, through these twenty-five years, — 
 who heard, perhaps, my first sermon in this house, and 
 have continued to be my hearers ever since, — but who 
 have never yet, by any authentic sign, indicated that 
 you have embraced the faith which I have been trying 
 to inculcate. Year by year, Sabbath by Sabbath, I have 
 met you here, and met you thankfully and in the hope 
 that the message you w T ere to hear might be the one 
 which should carry life to your souls and win you to the 
 Saviour. But, thus far, this hope has been disappointed. 
 Such disappointment is a bitter trial to a minister of the 
 gospel. He never can speak the pain, the sorrow, it 
 causes him. May I not ask to-day, from friends who 
 have stood by me personally and borne my counsels and 
 reproofs in my official teachings so long, if there is not 
 some response due to the propositions of the gospel 
 made to them thus for twenty-five consecutive years, 
 and if, in view of the arguments and considerations by 
 which those propositions have been sustained, that, re- 
 sponse ought not to be like that of the eunuch to Philip, 
 — "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. See; 
 here is water. What doth hinder me to be baptized?" 
 
68 QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 
 
 Some of 3'ou are growing old. These flying years 
 have left their traces upon your whitening brows and 
 your bowed frames. We cannot meet here together much 
 oftener. O my friends, cannot we meet on ground nearer 
 to Christ and nearer to heaven, — cannot we meet at the 
 sacramental table and join in the blessed festival which 
 tells of a common redemption and a common hope of 
 glory, — before we part on earth forever ? 
 
 There is another class, who once were my hearers, but 
 now are not. From some cause, not easily assigned, they 
 have forsaken my ministry and abandoned the house of 
 God. In private they maintain the kindest relations 
 with me, and I do not imagine that they would say 
 that my preaching has had the effect to convince them 
 that the gospel is unworthy of their respect and cred- 
 ence. I fear some wile of the evil one has bound them 
 with a spell. I fear that he who in the beginning over- 
 threw an ordinance of God with the lying assurance, 
 "Ye shall not surely die," has persuaded them that the 
 ordinances of God are still worthless and may be neg- 
 lected without damage or guilt. My words this morn- 
 ing, probably, do not reach them ; but some report may 
 bear to them my affectionate entreaty, uttered as I enter 
 to-day upon this new stage of my journey, with my face 
 looking directly into that eternity which lies before us 
 both, that they will come back to their Father's house and 
 prosecute with me the residue of our way to that eter- 
 nity under the shadow of His altars and the promises of 
 His covenant. 
 
QUARTER-CENTURY SERMON. 69 
 
 And the young men of my charge, who have grown 
 up under my teaching, some of whom were baptized by 
 my hands, — may I not ask them, as I see them to-day 
 lifted to the heights of enterprise and power by these 
 same years which have carried me over the summit and 
 turned my steps downwards toward the vale beyond, — 
 may I not ask them if it is not time that they had taken 
 their position, heartily and boldly, as the followers and 
 friends of the Saviour? The shoulders which have borne 
 the ark hitherto in our Israel are dropping rapidly away. 
 The servants who have ministered in the Lord's house in 
 former years, you have seen, have largely passed into his- 
 tory. Those of us who now serve at its altars will soon 
 have our place in history too. Oh, upon whom should the 
 mantle of the fathers fall but upon their sons ? Young 
 men of this congregation, the past, with its sacred memo- 
 ries, the future, with its precious hopes and interests, are 
 calling to }-ou to come and take your stand bravely on 
 the ground of your fathers' faith and by the side of your 
 fathers' Redeemer, and to do in your day the work for 
 God and His Church, which they did in theirs, that at 
 last, beyond the lapse of years and the waste of death, 
 they and you may meet together in " the Church of the 
 first-born, which are written in heaven." 
 
A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PKEACHED ON THE SABBATH, JANUAKY 6, 1884, 
 
 IN THE 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NATCHEZ, MISS. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. JOSEPH B. STRATTON, D.D., 
 
 PASTOR. 
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 18 84. 
 
SEEMOK 
 
 " And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led 
 thee these forty years in the wilderness." — Deut. viii. 2. 
 
 The narrative of the transfer of the Hebrew race from 
 Egypt to Canaan strikes us probably as something apart 
 from legitimate human history. What gives it this ex- 
 ceptional character is the fact that it abounds with extra- 
 ordinary Divine interpositions in behalf of the people 
 concerned. The Lord their God led them through all 
 their way by direct and sensible tokens. After all, how- 
 ever, the warp of the movement, viewed separately from 
 the supernatural material which is inwoven with it, stands 
 side by side with a hundred or a thousand analogous 
 events to be found in the annals of the world. It is simply 
 the spectacle of an enslaved race freeing themselves from 
 bondage, migrating to another territory, conquering it, 
 and planting themselves there as an organized common- 
 wealth. The spectacle is different from that presented in 
 ordinary history, because the veil is lifted from the force 
 which was working behind its successive developments, 
 as the exposure of the mechanism beneath the face of a 
 
 73 
 
74 A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 watch reveals the force which determines the measured 
 motion of the hands upon the dial. It is not unreasonable 
 to conclude that if the veil were lifted from the secret 
 springs of historic events in the case of other nations and 
 communities, the finger of God would be seen to be 
 touching and directing those springs as clearly as we are 
 permitted to see it doing this work in the case of the 
 Israelites. This is the doctrine of a Divine Providence, 
 a doctrine which men must hold in order to possess any- 
 thing worthy of the name of a religion. It is a doctrine 
 revealed everywhere in the Bible, and illustrated here in 
 the case of the Hebrew race by an actual literal example. 
 We may cease to look at the forty years occupied in the 
 exodus of the Hebrews as an anomalous period therefore, 
 and may use, concerning any similar period in the life of 
 any other people, the language of Moses in the text: 
 " Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy 
 God led thee these forty years in the wilderness." Wher- 
 ever history is, however contracted the theatre may be, 
 there is the hand of God. It is, my brethren, that we 
 may trace the operations of that hand during a portion of 
 our history as a church that we have come together this 
 morning. 
 
 Forty years ago, in this house, I was invested by apos- 
 tolic authority, and through the medium of apostolic rites, 
 first, with the office of a Christian minister, and then, with 
 the special charge of this church as its chief bishop and 
 pastor. I need hardly remark it was to me a moment of 
 absorbing interest, and of almost overpowering signifi- 
 
A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 75 
 
 canec. I find in an old memorandum-book an entry 
 bearing date the 31st of December, 1843, in these words : 
 " This day I was ordained by the Presbytery of Missis- 
 sippi to the ministry of the gospel, and installed pastor 
 of the Natchez Church. An eventful future and a solemn 
 eternity lie before me. God help me to fulfil the vows my 
 soul has made !" Forty years of that " eventful future" 
 which I then anticipated lie behind me now, and but a 
 short space, at the longest, divides me from that " solemn 
 eternity" which I then saw in the distance. The events 
 of that future, now the past, it will be my object to some 
 extent to review. I am reminded at the outset that when 
 I say I became pastor of this church in 1843, I must make 
 the statement with some qualification. In its constituency 
 this church is to-day almost an entirely different body of 
 people from what it was when I assumed the charge of it. 
 The pastor survives, but where are the hands which then 
 grasped his in fellowship, and the tongues which then 
 gave him a loving welcome ? The forms of those who at 
 my installation composed the membership of this congre- 
 gation have for the most part passed away. I count on 
 the roll of communicants but sixteen of the two hundred 
 and five who constituted its membership in 1843. Of this 
 original band many have removed to other localities, and 
 some are surviving in other parts of the country. Among 
 these I may notice the name of Mr. Franklin Beaumont, 
 who was one of the three ruling elders in office at the 
 time when I became pastor of the church. He is now a 
 venerable man, nearly or quite ninety years of age, and is 
 
76 ^ FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 spending the evening of his long life in the town of Lud- 
 lowville, in New York. In a letter recently received from 
 this aged patriarch, the only being remaining on earth 
 who officially participated in the ceremonies of my instal- 
 lation, he utters these words of benediction: "May God 
 be with you, my former pastor, and your dear family, 
 caring for you and strengthening you for every good word 
 and work !" The great majority of the flock who received 
 me as their youthful shepherd have been translated by 
 death. Of the ministers belonging to the Presbytery of 
 Mississippi at the period of my induction into my office, 
 not one is now living. It is an interesting fact that one 
 of these ministers was the Rev. William Montgomery, 
 one of the first party of pioneers who, under a commis- 
 sion from the Synod of North Carolina, visited the Terri- 
 tory of Mississippi in 1801, and planted the foundations 
 of the Presbyterian Church in this then wilderness of the 
 Southwest. " Father Montgomery," as he had come to 
 be called long before I knew him, made the ordaining 
 prayer at my ordination, and delivered the charge to the 
 pastor at my installation. Through this link the term of 
 my ministry connects itself historically with the chain 
 which carries us back to the inception of Presbyterianism 
 in the Southwest. The church of which I am pastor to- 
 day consists very largely of those who were infants when 
 I began my ministry, or who have been born since that 
 date. The children who are brought to me now for 
 baptism are the children of those whom I baptized long 
 years ago, and in some cases the children of these children. 
 
A FORTY FEARS' PASTORATE. 77 
 
 I have lived to see one upon whose brow in childhood I 
 placed the sacramental seal a ruling elder in the church. 
 One generation has given place to another, and this other 
 begins to feel the presence and the pressure of a third ; so 
 that the facts of yesterday, as they seem to me, are grow- 
 ing into traditions among those who now occupy the stage, 
 and the men and women who are to me living beings, 
 when my memory recalls them and my tongue speaks of 
 them, are by those around me apprehended only as myths 
 or shadows. The sweep of forty years over the world is 
 like that of a mighty flood, — it leaves scarcely a vestige 
 of the objects which were standing at the beginning. 
 Nothing impresses the mind more forcibly — and, I may 
 add, more sadly — with the ephemeral character of the 
 present life than the rapidity with which the traces of 
 man's existence may be erased from the scenes and walks 
 which he once filled. From the list of those who have trod 
 these streets, dwelt in these homes, worshipped in these 
 pews, I could mention the names and picture the forms of 
 many who illustrated the noblest types of manhood and 
 womanhood, who stood in their places in the church and 
 in society like majestic pillars or graceful corner-stones, 
 bearing up by their example and testimony the manifold 
 interests of the community so visibly, that to the eye of 
 their contemporaries it seemed that their continued pres- 
 ence was a condition essential to the continuance of truth 
 and righteousness on the earth. And yet they have gone 
 like the leaves of autumn, and in the short space of forty 
 years the ground on which they acted their parts is peopled 
 
78 A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 by a race who cannot remember them, and can hardly be 
 made to understand that such persons ever lived. This 
 vanishing so quickly and so completely of things so real, 
 and embodying in themselves so grandly every element 
 by which a right to endure could be substantiated, from 
 the sphere where they had begun their existence is to my 
 mind proof conclusive that this life is 011I3 7 an initial state, 
 pointing as by a necessary sequence to an immortal one 
 beyond it. A world which has proved itself incapable of 
 keeping safe that which had so shown itself entitled to a 
 safe-keeping must certainly be followed by another which 
 shall better preserve the treasure intrusted to it. Extinc- 
 tion in such a case is incredible. The earth turns on its 
 axis, and the stars which blazed in the sky sink one by 
 one below the horizon and seem to have perished; but 
 they have only left one hemisphere to kindle the firma- 
 ment of another. The eaglet in its nest feathers its wings 
 from day to da} T , and moulds "and fills out the symmetry 
 of its royal form, and then disappears. The nest is 
 vacant, but the eaglet is floating yonder in the wide 
 empyrean, with its pinions flashing back the lustre of the 
 sunbeams. 
 
 It will be remembered by many of 3^011 that in January, 
 1869, at the close of the first quarter-century of my 
 ministry, I delivered two discourses, presenting the main 
 facts in the history of this church up to that point. Those 
 discourses were published, and are perhaps in the hands 
 of most of you. They can be furnished to those who do 
 not possess them. The period canvassed in those dis- 
 
A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 79 
 
 courses it will not be necessary to review on the present 
 occasion, only so far as to reveal the thread which connects 
 the events of the subsequent fifteen years with the early 
 facts of our history. Recurring briefly to some of these 
 facts, I remark that the organization of the Presbyterian 
 Church in Natchez dates from the year 1817, when nine 
 persons, — four males and five females, — under the direc- 
 tion of the Rev. Daniel Smith, a minister from New 
 England, who had been laboring for some time in the 
 city, were enrolled as members. To these nine others 
 were shortly after added, and a corps of ruling elders, 
 consisting of John Henderson, Joseph Forman, Richard 
 Pearce, and William B. Noyes, was elected. The Rev. 
 Mr. Smith was invited to minister to the infant church as 
 stated supply. Prior to this the few Presbyterians in 
 Natchez had been accustomed to worship at the Pine 
 Ridge Church, then called " Salem Church," which had 
 been organized in 1807, and in which John Henderson 
 and Joseph Forman had served as ruling elders. As far 
 back as 1800 and 1801, Natchez had received a visit from 
 three ministers of the Presbyterian denomination, who 
 had been sent out by the Synod of North Carolina on an 
 exploring tour to the Territory of Mississippi, — the Rev. 
 James Hall, the Rev. James Bowman, and the Rev. Wil- 
 liam Montgomery. 
 
 These missionaries, or some of them, devoted several 
 months to labors in this city, and so favorable was the 
 impression left by them, that on their departure an address 
 of thanks, signed by more than thirty of the leading 
 
80 A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 citizens, was presented to them, closing with a request 
 that they would return, or send others to complete the 
 work they had begun. In 1808 the Rev. Jacob RickhOw, 
 a minister in connection with the Presbytery of New 
 Brunswick, in New Jersey, arrived at Natchez, and for 
 several years taught a school and preached to a small 
 congregation. The erection of a Presbyterian house of 
 worship was projected in 1810, and in 1812 the corner- 
 stone of a building was laid on the spot where our present 
 church edifice stands. The building was of brick, and 
 occupied the summit of a hill corresponding with the 
 one still standing on the opposite side of State Street. It 
 was completed and dedicated in 1815. In this church the 
 congregation worshipped till 1829, under the ministry, 
 successively, of the Rev. Daniel Smith, stated supply from 
 1817 to 1819; the Rev. "William Weir, a clergyman from 
 Ireland, the first regularly installed pastor, from 1820 to 
 1822 ; and the Rev. George Potts, a native of Philadel- 
 phia, who was installed second pastor in 1823. In 1828- 
 29 the original church edifice was taken down, the hill 
 graded to the level of the present site, and a new structure 
 erected, which, after having undergone various internal 
 changes and having been lengthened sixteen feet in 1851, 
 forms substantially the building in which we still worship. 
 In 1835, Mr. Potts resigned the pastorship in order to 
 accept a call to a church in New York ; and in 1837, Rev. 
 Samuel G. Winchester, a native of Baltimore, and pre- 
 viously pastor of a church in Philadelphia, was installed 
 the third pastor of the Natchez Church. Mr. Winchester 
 
A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. gl 
 
 having died in 1841, the church remained vacant until 
 December 31, 1843, when I was installed its fourth pastor. 
 At the close of Mr. Weir's ministry there were forty-nine 
 communicants on the roll ; at the close of Mr. Potts's, one 
 hundred and thirty-five; and at the close of Mr. Win- 
 chester's, two hundred and five. To the original four 
 ruling elders there were added, by successive elections, 
 Samuel S. Spencer, in 1818; Dr. Andrew Macrery, in 
 1821; Samuel Postlethwaite, in 1825 ; and Thomas Hen- 
 derson, William Pearce,and Franklin Beaumont, in 1838. 
 These last three constituted the eldership at the time of 
 my installation. 
 
 To complete just here the enumeration of those who 
 have filled this important office in the house of God, I 
 may add that in 1849, Mr. Pearce and Mr. Beaumont 
 having removed to other States, the Session was reinforced 
 by the election of Dr. John Ker, Samuel B. Newman, and 
 James Carradine. Dr. Ker lived only to the following 
 year, and in 1853, Mr. Newman removed to New Orleans. 
 An addition of four new members was made in 1855, by 
 the election of L. M. Patterson, Oren Metcalf, Alexander 
 J. Postlethwaite, and Thomas C. Pollock. Mr. Thomas 
 Henderson, the patriarch of the Session, and the exemplar 
 of every grace and gift which characterizes the faithful 
 bishop, died in 1863, and Mr. Postlethwaite followed him 
 to the eternal rest in 1866. In 1871 a further, and the 
 last, accession to the eldership was made by the election of 
 John W. Henderson, Frederick J. V. Lecand, and James 
 Carson, Esq. No breach in the body as thus constituted 
 
82 A FORTY FEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 occurred till May 1, 1875, when it pleased God to remove 
 from it a brother beloved in the person of James Carra- 
 dine. For twenty-six years Mr. Carradine had devotedly 
 served and tenderly borne upon his heart the interests of 
 the church of which the Holy Ghost had made him over- 
 seer. From the death of Mr. Henderson he had been 
 invested by the Session with the office of superintendent 
 of the Sabbath-school. The exercise of this office was to 
 him truly a labor of love. With a parental fondness he 
 watched over his youthful charge, and with the magnetic 
 power which an enthusiastic temperament and a kind 
 heart threw into all his dealings with others, he drew to 
 him the affection and confidence of his flock. In early life, 
 at a time when for a young man to embrace a religious 
 life was to make himself singular, perhaps unpopular, in 
 his circle, lie had the manliness to obey the dictates of 
 his conscience, and the courage to avow himself a follower 
 of the Saviour, " despising the shame." With him the 
 profession of his faith was no pious form, no mere as- 
 sumption of the decencies of a religious walk; it was a 
 consecration of his entire soul and life to God. The con- 
 ception of the love of Christ, impressed upon his heart 
 at the beginning of his career, was so simple, and yet so 
 profound, that he never ceased to be under the constrain- 
 ing power of it. His zeal made him ready to use whatever 
 talents he possessed in his Master's service, and the fer- 
 vency of his spirit gave to all his efforts a glowing heat 
 and force. Under these circumstances it was not. hard for 
 him to open his lips in public prayer, or to express his 
 
A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 83 
 
 convictions of truth or duty in public exhortation. Mr. 
 Cairadine was a man of business, and felt that, as such, it 
 was in the sphere of business that his religion was most 
 carefully to assert itself. His circumspection here made 
 him, by the testimony of all his associates, an upright 
 and honest man. Overtaken by disaster in his early 
 enterprises, he never rested till every obligation he was 
 under to others had, by patient toil and economy, been 
 fully discharged. Through years of subsequent prosperity 
 he maintained a credit without a flaw, and a character so 
 uncorrupt that it was more than half the basis of his 
 credit. And in his last days, when the storm again pros- 
 trated him, it was, perhaps, the overstrain of his efforts 
 to be just to others, when others had failed to be just to 
 him, and the hard sacrifices he made in order to save that 
 good name which he valued more than wealth, which 
 exhausted both mind and body, and left him an easy prey 
 to the assaults of disease. Alike in his blessings and his 
 chastisements he acknowledged the loving kindness of 
 God, and, perfected by the gracious discipline contained 
 in each, he passed at his death, we may be sure, into the 
 rest which God has prepared for His weary ones. He was 
 a whole-hearted lover of his church, and found in its 
 society and fellowship and its institutions and usages the 
 provision which his soul craved. And to-day, I am per- 
 suaded, it will be a pleasure to many who remember him 
 to use with me this occasion to recall his worth, and to 
 bedew with a fresh tear his grave. 
 
 Since the first draft of this discourse was written, intel- 
 
84 A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 ligence has reached us of the death, on the 1st of this 
 present month, of Mr. L. M. Patterson, another of the 
 ruling elders of the church. Elected in 1855, Mr. Pat- 
 terson's term of office has extended through twenty-eight 
 years. For nearly or quite fifty years he has been a 
 devoted member of this church. Embarking in mercan- 
 tile business in his early years, he shared in the general 
 prosperity of the period, until the reverses of 1838-39 
 involved him with hundreds of others in commercial ruin. 
 Since that time his life has been a struggle with a series 
 of vicissitudes, alleviated by few glimpses of happiness. 
 He was patient and retiring in his disposition, firm in his 
 religious principles, and ever ready to obey the call of 
 duty. His charity was proverbial, his sympathies wide, 
 and his many good deeds gained for him the reputation 
 of the friend of the poor. For several years his accumu- 
 lated infirmities made it necessary for him to retire from 
 active life, and in the home provided for him by his 
 daughters, surrounded by their loving ministries, at the 
 age of eighty, he closed his eyes upon a clouded world, to 
 open them, we trust, upon that brighter one where failure 
 and disappointment are unknown. 
 
 Of the remaining members of the Session, it may not 
 be out of place to remark that the years which have 
 passed since their assumption of their office have, in the 
 case of most of them, left their imprint in the way of 
 impaired health and efficiency. They begin to show by 
 many signs the enfeebling effects of age or disease. 
 These facts are referred to that I may call attention to an 
 
A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 85 
 
 exigency which evidently impends over us as a church. 
 The time is near when, among those who are enlisted in 
 the service of Christ, some will be needed to maintain the 
 order of His house by bearing office in it. The call of God 
 to undertake the work of the ruling elder comes to certain 
 of His covenanted servants, just as distinctly as it comes to 
 others to undertake that of the teaching elder. And this 
 call is to be recognized largely in providential circum- 
 stances. That call is apparently even now addressing 
 the challenge to some in this church : " Who among you 
 are ready, like Joshua of old, to step into the place of the 
 departing Moses, and go in and out among God's people 
 as the leaders of His host?" And the duty is laid no less 
 clearly upon these people of God at this juncture to be 
 earnest in prayer, that His spirit may so move upon the 
 hearts of those whom He is calling to this work, and may 
 so touch their hands and their tongues, that they shall 
 willingly offer themselves as guides and guardians of His 
 flock when the older shepherds are gone. 
 
 I may add at this point that in the year 1872 the 
 organization of the church was for the first time made 
 complete by the introduction into it of a Board of Deacons. 
 The care of the poor, and the other forms of duty belong- 
 ing to this office, had not previously been so urgent as to 
 demand the services of a special body of men. The 
 necessity for them became more and more apparent 
 during the years which followed the late civil war, when 
 the crowding into the town of numbers of emancipated 
 slaves incapable of providing for themselves, the failure 
 
gg A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 of investments to yield an income, and the lack of employ- 
 ment for mechanics so multiplied the cases of destitution 
 and distress that the casual liberality of individuals was 
 no longer adequate to abate the general distress. Accord- 
 ingly, the church felt called upon to undertake this min- 
 istry of charity, and proceeded to elect as its agents, on 
 the 24th of April in the year just mentioned, five deacons, 
 viz. : William Abbott, James W. H. Patterson, Thomas 
 Mason, John Harper, and Hiram M. Baldwin. A great 
 amount of good has been systematically and judiciously 
 done within the last ten years by this excellent Board. 
 God's bounty, through the hands of these almoners, has 
 flowed into many a poverty-stricken home, has comforted 
 many a penniless invalid, and has brought relief to many 
 a desolate heart. Since 1872 some two thousand three 
 hundred dollars in money has been distributed by the 
 deacons. The original Board remains in office at the 
 present time, with the exception of Hiram M. Baldwin, 
 who departed this life August 20, 1873. Coming into 
 the church by a profession of his faith during the revival 
 of 1858, Mr. Baldwin brought with him convictions of 
 Christian doctrine and of religious duty which had been 
 derived from the Word of God and fastened upon his 
 mind by early training, and which were kindled into 
 active motives and principles by his vivid apprehension of 
 the grace of Christ in redemption. His heart was given 
 to the service of his Master and to the work of the church. 
 As a prominent merchant for many years in this city, his 
 character was distinguished for probity, and as a Christian 
 
A FORTY FEARS' PASTORATE. 87 
 
 his piety was of a simple and childlike type, and steady 
 and consistent in all its outward expressions. His light 
 shone with a calm but unequivocal lustre while he lived, 
 and his death was lamented by the church as an almost 
 irreparable calamity. 
 
 I have alluded to the very natural remark which I 
 penned on the night of the day of my installation, when 
 with a trembling glance I was exploring the darkness 
 which enveloped the way upon which I was entering, — " an 
 eventful future lies before me." I can say to-day, as I 
 look back over the period covered by my ministry, that it 
 has verified at every point the character which it bore in 
 the vision of it which, forty years ago, loomed up before 
 my excited imagination. That period has been an emi- 
 nently eventful one. Changes in the condition of the 
 world, so stupendous that no thoughtful mind can fail to 
 see in them the august unfoldings of a Divine intelligence 
 and plan, have been crowded, like the miracles of the 
 exodus, into this brief space. The political map of every 
 quarter of the globe has been more or less altered. 
 Political theories have been materially modified. The 
 functions of government have come to be better defined 
 and more generally understood, and the prerogatives of 
 rulers and the rights of the ruled are vibrating in almost 
 all lands into a juster equilibrium. Religious toleration is 
 granted on a scale never known before. A Bible Deposi- 
 tory stands within the shadow of the Vatican at Rome. 
 Arbitration, guided by reason and justice, is offering itself, 
 as an umpire in national disputes, as a substitute for grim- 
 
88 A FORTV YEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 visagedwar; and olive-crowned plenipotentiaries, deliber- 
 ating in quiet halls, now settle controversies which once 
 could have been adjusted only on bloody battle-fields. 
 International expositions of the arts of industry and the 
 products of agriculture, — oecumenical gatherings of reli- 
 gious bodies, evangelical alliances and associations bring- 
 ing the men of kindred faith from every section of the 
 globe into council, — have become an institution of the age, 
 and are visibly breaking down the barriers of ecclesiasti- 
 cism and sectarian prejudice and animosity which have 
 heretofore divided the families of God's people. Christ- 
 endom has been distributing the arts of civilization all along 
 the lines of its commerce, and Christian missions have been 
 bearing that religion — of whose benign inspiration these 
 arts are the fruitage — to the realms of heathenism. The 
 New Zealander has become a worshipper of Jesus. Aus- 
 tralia is an evangelized empire. The dark continent of 
 Africa has been laid open by the heroism of a Livingstone 
 and a Stanley, and marts of business and schools and 
 churches are springing up in its far interior. Science has 
 been bringing to light new truths from the archives of 
 nature, and deciphering old truths from the inscribed 
 walls of Assyrian palaces and the tombs of Egyptian 
 kings. Navigation and commerce have been revolution- 
 ized through the applications of steam. Oceans have been 
 compressed into the dimensions of estuaries by the speed 
 given to the modern ship. Railways, after spreading their 
 iron net-work over the countries of the West, are stretch- 
 ing their lines eastward into India, China, and Japan. 
 
A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 89 
 
 The telegraph furnishes the daily paper with the news of 
 yesterday from the farthest points of the earth. It con- 
 ducts the negotiations of States, and sends the throb 
 of joy or sorrow from heart to heart over leagues of 
 intervening space. President Garfield dies, and in a few 
 hours the sable emblazony of mourning hangs from the 
 capitols of Europe and even of Asia. He is buried, and 
 Queen Victoria orders flowers, which were blooming on 
 their stems when her order was given, to be laid upon his 
 bier. The man who had died forty years ago, if he should 
 return to the world to-day, would hardly know the planet 
 on which he had lived, or would be constrained to confess 
 a power like that which divided the Red Sea and levelled 
 the walls of Jericho has wrought this amazing metamor- 
 phosis. 
 
 And on the narrower platform of our own country a 
 similarly eventful process has been going on. Our popu- 
 lation has more than doubled itself since 1843. The war 
 with Mexico gave to our government a territory on the 
 Pacific slope which has grown into a splendid empire. 
 The recent civil war has banished slavery from a cluster 
 of States, and effected such an overthrow of the social, 
 commercial, and political economy under which their in- 
 habitants lived that the problem of existence, it may 
 almost be said, has had to be wrought out by them afresh 
 from new data and by new principles. Great cities, the 
 nerve-centres of trade and speculation, have sprung up 
 on Western plains where the prairie-grass once waved, or 
 in mountain valleys where slumbered the undiscovered 
 
90 A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 coal and iron. Accumulations of wealth by the millions, 
 which would in the days of our fathers have seemed 
 impossible, are now an every-day phenomenon. A fleet 
 of iron steamers from every shore in the world now daily 
 enters our Atlantic ports. A summer excursion leads the 
 tourist to the banks of the Mle, the Ganges, or the Jordan. 
 Machinery ploughs our fields, sows our grain, and reaps 
 our harvests. The magic wire flashes a vote in Congress 
 from Washington to San Francisco, before the echo of 
 the voices which gave it have died in the parliamentary 
 hall, and wafts the last sigh of a dying mother in Maine 
 to her son in Texas, before the lips which breathed it are 
 cold. In flying hotels, driven by an invisible giant along 
 pathways of steel, more men than Moses led through the 
 Arabian desert are gliding every hour of the day or night 
 with lightning speed over this American continent. The 
 journey from ]STew York to Natchez, which in my early 
 days had to be made mostly in stage-coaches over the 
 Alleghany mountains and in steamboats through the long 
 windings of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, requiring 
 two or three weeks and sometimes a month in the transit, 
 can now be made in a little more than sixty hours. 
 
 And to come now to our own particular home in this 
 community and this church, it is still an " eventful" history 
 which we have to survey in the retrospect of the last forty 
 years. Dividing that period into successive stages, I may 
 say the first one, consisting of eighteen years, from 1843 
 to 1861, was characterized by a uniform and wholesome 
 prosperity, — I say wholesome prosperity because, for a 
 
A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. Q\ 
 
 series of years prior to this, the State of Mississippi had 
 been the theatre of a remarkable unwholesome prosperity. 
 Values of property and products had been swollen to 
 an excessive magnitude ; credit was asked and given to 
 an insane degree ; financial recklessness prevailed ; the 
 promises of individuals and corporations circulated as 
 capital ; until as a natural outgrowth of such infatuation 
 a collapse ensued, and the country was prostrated by an 
 almost universal bankruptcy. In this wrecked condition 
 I found it at the commencement of my ministry. The 
 church was affected in common with other interests by 
 the decline in population and material resources which 
 followed upon this commercial catastrophe. In 1844 its 
 membership had been reduced, according to the report 
 made to the General Assembly, to one hundred and ninety- 
 three. Its contributions to Domestic and Foreign missions 
 amounted to eleven hundred and eighty-three dollars, 
 while in 1838 they had amounted to four thousand five 
 hundred and sixty-two dollars. By slow degrees, how- 
 ever, both country and church rose again from this 
 depression, and regained a normal condition of thrift and 
 progress. In 1860 the membership reported was three 
 hundred and sixty, and the contributions to Domestic and 
 Foreign missions amounted to the sum of three thou- 
 sand nine hundred and sixty-one dollars. In the same 
 year there was reported as raised for special congrega- 
 tional purposes the sum of ten thousand six hundred and 
 ninety-six dollars. During the year 1858 eighty-seven 
 persons were admitted to the church on profession of 
 
92 A FORTY FEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 their faith. This bright period was brought to a close by 
 the fearful conflict in which the Northern and Southern 
 sections of the United States became involved, as the 
 result of the heated political controversies which had long 
 divided them. The issues of that conflict, direct and 
 indirect, revolutionized the whole system of life under 
 which this community had subsisted to an extent almost 
 without a parallel in history. They can be likened only 
 to the devastations of an earthquake. Property of untold 
 value was swept from the hands of its possessors as 
 by a magician's wand. A dynasty of men once lords of 
 the soil, and exercising the authority of feudal barons in 
 their domains, — many of them as princely in character as 
 they were in estate, — has ceased to exist. Slavery has 
 been abolished, and as a consequence domestic usages and 
 methods of labor have been changed. The colored race 
 have become sharers in the rights of citizenship, and 
 were converted in a moment into a tremendous political 
 power in the state. For a series of years the rigors of 
 military rule, and the even worse disorders induced 
 by the misrule of a mercenary provisional government, 
 so blighted the energies and so obstructed the efforts of 
 our people that every public interest languished, and a 
 mortal paralysis seemed to have settled upon the body 
 politic. The church during this dark period felt sadly 
 the obscuration of this disastrous eclipse. Many of its 
 constituents were obliged to change their residence and 
 seek a livelihood in other sections of the country ; it 
 was reduced to a painful degree of impoverishment in its 
 
A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 93 
 
 resources, and what was perhaps worse, the pressure of 
 worldly cares and the endless struggle with secular em- 
 barrassments, to a deplorable extent, threw the blight of 
 a spiritual insensibility into the hearts of the people of 
 God. In 1875 the reported number of communicants 
 was two hundred and eighty-eight, of whom not more 
 than two-thirds, probably, could have been called living 
 or active members of the church. And the contribu- 
 tions for Domestic and Foreign missions for that year 
 amounted to only one hundred and ninety-seven dollars. 
 
 A third era of a more auspicious character, I am per- 
 mitted thankfully to announce, has within the last few 
 years dawned upon our city and the contiguous country. 
 Capital which had vanished from its old channels has reap- 
 peared in new ones, and is seeking new outlets for itself. 
 Instead of the monuments of our former prosperity, which 
 were to be found in a hundred palatial residences adorning 
 our environs, we see the monuments of the prosperity of 
 to-day in the towering smoke-stacks of our factories, in 
 the arriving and departing trains of our railway, in the 
 suburban boroughs which are linking; themselves to the 
 outskirts of our corporation, and in the scores of tasteful 
 dwellings which every year is adding to the homes of our 
 people, and in the increasing number and advanced 
 grade of our institutions of learning. A spirit of hope- 
 fulness and enterprise has awakened like a strong man 
 from his slumber, and has already attested its prowess in 
 the bold achievements it has wrought, and is bracing itself 
 we may trust for still more conspicuous efforts. And the 
 
94 A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 church, too, is catching something of the returning sun- 
 light, and feeling something of the lift of the incoming 
 tide. All along these clouded years to which I have been 
 referring, there has been an inner circle of its members, — 
 an elect band whom no tribulation or temptation could 
 estrange from the service and kingdom of the Lord, — who, 
 in the midst of abounding worldliness, have kept their 
 garments unspotted and maintained a walk with God, — 
 and who have ceased not to mourn over the desolations 
 of Zion, and to stretch forth their hands to sustain her 
 crumbling altars. They have stood by their pastor in 
 all these times of discouragement, in keeping up the 
 ordinances of worship and carrying on the various de- 
 partments of the work of the church. As an evidence 
 that some faithful souls still survived, I may mention that 
 in the year 1876 a plain but commodious chapel was 
 erected and dedicated on a lot purchased on St. Catherine 
 Street, for the use of the population living on and con- 
 tiguous to that important thoroughfare. A Sunday- 
 school was opened, and regular weekly services have 
 been held ever since, — conducted for the most part by 
 one of the ruling elders of the church. This chapel, we 
 have reason to believe, has endeared itself to those for 
 whose benefit it was reared, and the Holy Spirit has 
 deigned to bless its humble ministrations to the good of 
 many of them. 
 
 At the present time many things indicate an awakened 
 interest on the part of the congregation in the welfare of 
 the church, — of which the anniversary exercises in which 
 
A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 95 
 
 we are now engaged may be taken as one. Perhaps these 
 indications go even so far as to reveal, to some extent, 
 that the healthful throbbing of the spiritual pulse of the 
 church has recommenced. The ordinary attendance upon 
 public worship is large and apparently increasing. The 
 influx of population to our town has brought us some 
 accession of valuable members. The Sunday-school in- 
 struction has been so blessed of God that a considerable 
 number of those who have been under it have attached 
 themselves to the communion of the church. During the 
 year just closed twenty-four persons were added to our 
 membership on profession of faith, and two on certificates 
 from other churches. The present roll of members con- 
 tains three hundred and twenty names. The contribu- 
 tions to Domestic and Foreign missions for the year have 
 amounted to five hundred and sixty-one dollars and forty- 
 five cents. The finances of the church have reached a 
 condition which relieves its supervisors of the embarrass- 
 ment under which for some years past they have been 
 laboring. There are signs, too, that that miserable 
 fallacy that the church as a whole — which is an abstract 
 conception — can live and do its work while the individual 
 members, who are its concrete components, are doing 
 nothing, — is being discovered and dismissed. The con- 
 viction that each follower of Christ has some respon- 
 sibility in carrying forward the work of his church, 
 and that this work is to be effected as the aggregate 
 result of the many separate efforts of the persons who 
 constitute its membership, has been taking shape in 
 
96 A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 the minds and asserting itself in the action of onr 
 people. The question has been raised, can we not have 
 a hive with no drones in it ? In order to effect this result 
 a plan of organization, which is designed to promote 
 unity of feeling and to afford facilities for more efficient 
 action in Christian work, has been adopted. Under this 
 plan the whole body of communicants has been distributed 
 into minor divisions, each of which has been placed under 
 the leadership of suitable officers, and monthly meetings 
 are appointed for the proposing and transacting of busi- 
 ness. The plan is yet in its experimental stage, and can 
 succeed only in so far as it finds hearts among Christ's 
 professed followers who are willing to respond to His call 
 for laborers in His vineyard. But, in so far as it has yet 
 been tried, it has already proved itself capable of ac- 
 complishing important results. We are brought, it seems 
 to me, my brethren, by these facts to a point in the history 
 of this church in which the Saviour seems to be asking us 
 to watch and to pray with Him with as much earnestness 
 as He showed when He made the same request of His 
 disciples in Gethsemane ; and in which so much depends 
 upon our fidelity to the trust He has committed to us, — 
 that it may be said the enemies from whom He has to fear 
 the most damage, are the slumberers who are to be found 
 in the house of His friends. Material prosperity by itself 
 does not constitute the prosperity of a community. You 
 may build up your fabrics of industry and at the same 
 time bring down the character of your men. You may 
 spread out your threads of enterprise, and in their meshes 
 
A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 97 
 
 strangle the morals of your people. You may fill the air 
 with the whir of machinery, and in the uproar drown the 
 voice of God. Sodom stood as the metropolis of a terri- 
 tory so rich in resources that it could he likened to ".the 
 garden of the Lord," and yet the inhabitants of it became 
 so corrupt that a storm of fire swept them from the earth. 
 A higher authority than our treatises on political economy 
 has declared that " Righteousness exalteth a nation, but 
 sin is a reproach to any people;" and in its ultimate out- 
 workings the principle will be found to be as true as is 
 the law of gravitation. In all our ambitious schemings 
 it behooves us, therefore, to remember that righteousness 
 is the fundamental condition and security of all the success 
 we covet. The church must guard this sacred corner- 
 stone, and every loyal member of the church ought to 
 be found at his post ready to do his part of this duty. 
 Religious faith, religious principle, and religious modes 
 of life must be maintained, and to this end the concerted 
 efforts of all Christian people should be directed to the 
 support and multiplication of the institutions of religion, 
 the protection of the Sabbath from desecration, the sup- 
 pression of vicious customs, and the extirpation of the 
 haunts of vice, the discouragement of illicit practices in 
 trade, and the enforcement of civil and criminal law. 
 Fraud, unchastity, drunkenness, and blood-shedding are 
 as truly bars to the prosperity of a community as are 
 cyclones and epidemics, and if the sins of luxury, sensu- 
 ality, and sordid mammon-worship are to be the fruits of 
 our prosperity, it may be found that our " children's teeth 
 
(J8 A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 have been set on edge" by the " sour grapes" their fathers 
 have eaten. 
 
 The history of a community located as near the South- 
 ern seaboard as this city is, is liable to be made " event- 
 ful" by occasional visitations of those diseases which are 
 indigenous to the tropics. And, accordingly, it has been 
 my lot during the last forty years to pass through six 
 seasons made memorable by the prevalence of the yellow 
 fever. Considering our exposed position, it seems to me 
 it ought to be recognized as another testimony to the 
 kind superintendence of Providence that so few of these 
 epidemic plagues within so long a period have been per- 
 mitted to occur. In some of those which took place prior 
 to 1869, during the first quarter-century of my pastorate, 
 the mortality was appalling, and this church suffered the 
 loss of many of its cherished members. Within the last 
 fifteen years, with one exception, our city has been exempt 
 from the assaults of the pestilence. In 1871, for more 
 than two months, it prevailed among us, and carried a 
 considerable number of victims to the grave. Only one 
 of these was from our church communion. In 1878, when 
 the whole Southwest seemed to be overshadowed by the 
 death-laden cloud, this community was favored with an 
 almost miraculous escape. Beleaguered with a circle of 
 fire, like the bush which Moses saw, it remained un- 
 consumed. Death reaped its precious harvests in other 
 localities, but some sign, which w T e saw not, warned the 
 destroyer from our doors. This deserves to be called our 
 Passover summer. The best and most rigorous means 
 
A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 99 
 
 of protection were adopted and patiently carried out by 
 our citizens, and in one view our deliverance may be 
 ascribed to them. But, believing as I do, that God works 
 through all the devices of human wisdom and makes 
 them efficient, I am sure that an angel of mercy stood 
 guard over us at every quarantine station, and that our 
 escape was really due to the distinguishing goodness and 
 the protecting power of the Lord our God. In this con- 
 nection I may be pardoned for alluding to the remarkable 
 exemption from disease which has been vouchsafed to me 
 personally since I came among you. Few ministers, I 
 imagine, have enjoyed more uniform health than I have, 
 or have been able to devote as large a proportion of so 
 long a period to their work as I have done. This endur- 
 ance may be owing in a measure to the considerateness 
 you have shown in remembering that mortal beings 
 generally, and especially those who live under a constant 
 strain of brain and heart, need occasionally a season of 
 repose. 
 
 Among the events which are included in the ecclesias- 
 tical history of the last forty years, is one so singular, that 
 had it been prognosticated at the time when I began my 
 ministry, I should have pronounced it an impossibility. I 
 refer to the sundering of the Presbyterian Church into its 
 Northern and Southern sections, consequent upon the 
 late war. When the political elements began to threaten 
 the country with dismemberment, it was my hope and 
 almost my conviction, as I know it was of many others, 
 that the sacred cord of Christian brotherhood which held 
 
100 A FORTY FEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 this large denomination in union would be a cable strong 
 enough to prevent the dissolution of the States. But the 
 event occurred, and it has determined your relation as a 
 church and mine as a minister to a different fold from 
 that to which our fathers belonged. In all the commo- 
 tions, the excitements, and even the errors to which this 
 rupture may be traced we must believe the Lord was still 
 leading His people; and it may be His will, by this new 
 arrangement, to throw around important principles the 
 necessary safeguards, and to lend increased momentum 
 to the activities of His church. But that the animosities 
 which are apt to survive these family separations, and to 
 grow if not arrested into inveterate feuds, should, in such 
 a case as this, be allayed, must be an issue to be devoutly 
 desired by every Christian heart. And in order to this, 
 the forms of speech and thought which stimulate these 
 animosities, need to be, as far as possible, dropped from 
 the use of the parties. The hand of the Lord has again 
 been revealed in bringing about this issue. Within the 
 last two years fraternal relationship and correspondence 
 have been officially established between these two divided 
 bodies, and I gratefully reflect upon the fact that I have 
 been permitted at the close of my ministry to see the 
 consummation of this event, and to behold among the 
 phenomena of my setting sun, the rainbow of peace 
 throwing its arch over the chasm which has so long kept 
 apart the different branches of the one church under 
 whose auspices I began my ministry. 
 
 It may be well, before I close these reminiscences, to 
 
A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 101 
 
 mention some of the practical details of my ministerial 
 work, as illustrative of what is comprehended in a pastor's 
 vocation. From my note-books I gather that I have 
 delivered during my pastorate some six thousand sermons 
 and lectures. Among these have been complete courses 
 of study upon the " Life of our Lord," the " Life of St. 
 Paul," the " Lives of the Patriarchs," the " Times of the 
 Judges," the " History of the Kings of Judah and Israel," 
 the " Exodus of the Israelites," the " Prophecies of 
 Daniel," the " Book of Job," select portions of the "Book 
 of Psalms" and the "Epistles," the "History of the 
 Christian Church," and the contents of the "Westminster 
 Shorter Catechism." I have in addition to these de- 
 livered numerous addresses to benevolent and literary 
 associations. I have officiated at eight hundred and 
 fifty-five funerals. Among these, in late years, was that 
 of the venerable father in the Southwestern Church, the 
 Rev. Benjamin Chase, D.D., who died October 11, 1870, 
 and that of my life-long friend and co-laborer, the Rev. 
 James Purviance, D.D., formerly pastor of the Carmel 
 Church, and subsequently, from 1854 to 1860, president 
 of Oakland College, who died July 14, 1871. There have 
 been admitted to the church eight hundred and eleven 
 communicants, of whom six hundred and fifteen were on 
 profession of their faith. I have administered the rite 
 of baptism to one hundred and thirty-two adult persons, 
 and to seven hundred and ninety-two infants. I have 
 united in marriage four hundred and nine couples. There 
 has been contributed by this church, during my pastorate, 
 
102 A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 for religious and benevolent objects (exclusive of the 
 ordinary support of the church organization) an aggregate 
 of three hundred thousand dollars. I have in connection 
 with my regular labors contributed somewhat largely to 
 the literature of the religious press, and, besides several 
 pamphlets, have published one volume entitled " Confess- 
 ing Christ," to which I hope soon to add another, to be 
 entitled " Following Christ," — which two books I have 
 prepared mainly as a legacy to my people. The phases of 
 human life, and the scenes of joy and sorrow in the evo- 
 lutions of human experience, which have passed before 
 me in my intercourse with my fellow-men, would defy 
 enumeration, and would be stranger than all the fictions 
 which the poet or dramatist ever invented. And the 
 result of all has been to impress me with the conviction 
 that the state through which we are now passing is a 
 mazy wilderness, in which an absolute faith in God can 
 give us our only clue, and our only solace is to be found 
 in the hope of another world where what is rudimental 
 here will be perfected, and what is anomalous will be 
 adjusted and made plain. 
 
 I claim the privilege of adding to this historical review 
 a few reflections suggested by my position to-day. 
 
 First, I am teaching the same system of religion at the 
 end of my ministry, which I taught at the beginning of 
 it. It is the religion of the Bible, — a religion which claims 
 to be true because the Bible is the Word of God, and 
 which claims to give a right report of the sense of the 
 Bible, because it is sustained in all its essential features 
 
A FORTV YEARS' PASTORATE. 103 
 
 by the consenting testimony of all those churches which 
 receive the Bible without addition or admixture as a rule 
 of their faith. I read the Bible to-day precisely as I read 
 it forty years ago, and the various forms of evidence by 
 which it is proved to be God's book of religion are just 
 as strong in my mind now as they were then. I found in 
 that book the species of religion which satisfied both my 
 intellect and my heart when I was first led to ask the 
 question, what and where is religion? and I have clung 
 to it ever since, as an infant clings to its mother's breast. 
 And yet, in one respect, this religion of the Bible presents 
 itself to my mind under a new aspect after the preaching 
 of it for a lifetime. I have tested its applicability to the 
 circumstances and needs of men. I have had an ample 
 opportunity to understand these circumstances and needs, 
 and I have found the religion of the Bible squaring with 
 and fitting into them all. It is adjusted to the conditions 
 and wants of the soul as light is to those of the eye. It 
 suits man as the subject of those naturally pious instincts 
 which constrain him to seek after a Divinity, and shows 
 him a God worthy of his confidence and worship. It 
 suits man as the possessor of a moral sense, and shows 
 him a law which reveals perfectly to that sense, in broad 
 distinction, the two territories of righteousness and un- 
 righteousness. It suits man as a sinner, and shows him 
 how forgiveness may be obtained without impairing the 
 rectitude of God, or invading the immutability of His law. 
 It suits man as a being liable to temptation, and shows 
 him sources of supernatural succor. It suits man as an 
 
104 A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 infirm being, and shows him how, by spiritual aids, weak- 
 ness may be converted into strength. It suits man as a 
 mourner, and shows him springs of consolation in his 
 deepest distresses. It suits man as a dying creature, and 
 shows him a pathway to eternal life through the darkness 
 of the grave. It suits man at every season of life, in 
 every possible relation, under all conceivable contingen- 
 cies, and shows him in them all the exact way in which 
 he may walk most wisely and securely. If anything 
 better than this religion, as the converter, the reformer, 
 the benefactor, and the sanctifier of man, has been intro- 
 duced into the world, I have never seen or heard of it. 
 Of one thing I am sure, if this religion has not been able 
 to convert, to reform, to bless, and to sanctify those who 
 have been listening to the exposition of it for forty years, 
 nothing else which could possibly be brought to them 
 under the name of religion can be expected to do it. 
 Where the sunbeam from the heavens has failed to pene- 
 trate a darkened chamber, I am sure the lesser lights 
 which men have kindled, electric though they may be, 
 will fail still more signally. Therefore, my brethren, this 
 gospel of the grace of God which I have preached to you 
 in the past, I expect to preach to you to the end, and 
 with the observations of forty years behind me, I am, like 
 St. Paul, only the more " determined not to know any- 
 thing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." 
 
 Second, I am more than ever satisfied of the certainty 
 of the progressive prevalence and final triumph of the 
 religion of the Bible. Opposition to that religion has 
 
A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 105 
 
 taken new forms, and assumed a peculiarly bold front 
 within my recollection. A microscopic criticism, failing 
 to make the grand generalization which sees in the whole 
 Bible a unity of design and an orderly consistency which 
 entitle it to credence, is occupying itself with the minute 
 study of words and pli rases, and drawing from their 
 ambiguities or incompatibilities conclusions adverse to the 
 authenticity of the Holy Book. This is like the insect 
 pronouncing St. Paul's cathedral an abortion because its 
 tiny feet have stumbled over a rough spot within the 
 majestic dome. Materialists would take away from us 
 our God because they tell us we can know only facts, and 
 facts are natural not supernatural things. In this drift of 
 science towards the ultimate authority of facts, I think I 
 see the movement of a forerunner preparing unwittingly 
 the way for the enthronement of the religion of the Bible. 
 This principle of the materialist, that belief must rest on 
 facts, is the very one upon which the Bible has always 
 laid claim to the belief of men. Only, the Bible is more 
 accurate than the materialist, and admits that there are 
 facts which the senses do not take cognizance of. Science, 
 in following the train of facts which it can see and handle, 
 reaches, sooner or later, in every direction a point or line 
 where it needs for the solution of its problems some 
 fact which it cannot see or handle. It comes to the border 
 of a chasm where something ought to be, and where it 
 can find nothing. The Bible does not contradict science, 
 but speaks in exact harmony with it when it lifts its voice 
 over the chasm and cries, " In the beginning God created 
 
106 A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 the heavens and the earth." In leading men to build 
 their faith on facts, materialists are opening the very 
 track Iry which they must he led ultimately to accept 
 the Bible as a revelation of truth. The Bible is itself 
 a fact, the existence of which in our world, and the 
 contents of which call for notice and explanation, in 
 the face of all that science may say to its discredit. 
 Jesus Christ is a fact, and the existence of the church 
 which bears His name, and the extraordinary history of 
 that church are facts, and these all deserve study. The 
 phenomena of conscience, and the religious intuitions 
 and workings of the soul, are facts which no thoroughly 
 scientific mind can overlook. It is just because men will 
 not regard the facts by which they are environed, and by 
 which their destiny is to be determined, that the}' do not 
 become believers in the Bible. Let the apostles of science 
 push forward their discoveries, and lay bare as widely as 
 they can the domain of facts. I am sure that in doing 
 so they are only making ready the field for the mission of 
 the apostles of Christ. 
 
 Third, it appears to me that just here where we live, 
 and just at this epoch, there is a special reason why all 
 Christians — and I may, as your pastor, lay the obligation 
 particularly upon you, my brethren of this church — should 
 make the type of their religion so legible that the excel- 
 lency of it may be "known and read of all men." We 
 have become in the progress of the years a heterogeneous 
 population. Representatives of the creeds, the polities, 
 the rituals, the forms of thought, the virtues and the vices 
 
A FORTY YEARS' PASTORATE. 107 
 
 of various races and nationalities are gathered here upon 
 this narrow platform. All have a right to be here, and 
 all are covered by the aegis of our tolerant and liberal 
 constitution. We meet as neighbors, as associates in 
 business, and as visitors at our respective homes. How 
 necessary, in this crowd of observers, and in this throng 
 of competing claimants of the true religion, that we, — 
 to limit my remark to the members of my own flock, 
 — that ive should make such an exhibition of religion 
 after our Presbyterian model, that, by its manifest superi- 
 ority as a power to make men Christ-like and image- 
 bearers of God, in purity, in uprightness, and in charity, 
 it may lead others, whom we suppose to be in error, to 
 adopt our better system of faith and life. 
 
 Fourth, I would urge upon the present membership of 
 the church the duty of handing down to a future genera- 
 tion the ideas of Christian doctrine and of Christian 
 living, of loyalty to truth and consecration to God, which 
 have characterized its membership in the former stages of 
 its history. The homes of our fathers, in which the 
 thought of God mingled with every event in the family 
 history, in which the domestic altar stood by every fire- 
 side, and the blessed Saviour was an ever-present inmate, 
 where are they? The future lies in the hands of the 
 present, and we, who are the inheritors of blessings trans- 
 mitted to us by the pious ancestors of forty years ago, 
 are bound to see that those blessings shall be conveyed 
 unimpaired to the generation who shall occupy these seats 
 forty years hence. 
 
108 A FORTY FEARS' PASTORATE. 
 
 And, lastly, I would be reminded myself and remind 
 you, that it is a journey through a wilderness which we 
 are all now prosecuting. There is no resting, no finality, 
 in our present sphere. We are a caravan, not a settled 
 community. The value of everything to which we can 
 here turn our hands lies in something beyond. We are 
 travelling through arid tracts where no water is, and 
 through dreary solitudes where no sunbeam reaches us. 
 We pitch our tents each day at a new encampment. 
 Each night's repose is to freshen us for the morrow's toil. 
 The hot breath of the simoom or the wild blast of the 
 sirocco threaten us each moment with insidious or violent 
 destruction. Oh, happy they who have a better country 
 in view'! If you have no Canaan in your eye, my friends, 
 I pity you. You are aimless wanderers in a desert, entitled 
 to no higher respect than the birds of the air, or the 
 beasts of the field. Oh, let us beware of the folly of those 
 unbelieving Israelites, who, through a base rejection of 
 the terms upon which the prize was offered to them, 
 failed to enter into the promised rest ! We shall never 
 observe together a festival like this. Our earthly anni- 
 versaries will soon end, and the years of time melt into 
 the solemn eternity. The partings of the past will be 
 repeated in the future, and to the generation who shall 
 worship in these courts forty years hence most of us will 
 be the forgotten ones, as the worshippers of forty years 
 ago are to us to-day. Beloved, from these abodes of 
 sin and sorrow and death, let us resolutely set our faces, 
 and prosecute our march towards the realms of light ! 
 
A FORTY FEARS' PASTORATE. 109 
 
 Let us cling to the footprints of those who through faith 
 and patience have already inherited the promises ! Let 
 us follow the leadings of the Lord our God through the 
 intricacies of this mortal stage, that when we shall have 
 left it we may all meet, — heyond the Jordan, — where the 
 pain and the weariness of the pilgrimage shall be eternally 
 forgotten in "the rest that remains for the people of God !" 
 
Theological Seminary-Speer 
 
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