LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 BX 9225 
 
 .L44 
 
 Y6 
 
 1905 
 
 Young, James 
 
 s., 
 
 
 Memorial 
 
 of Rev. 
 
 Philo 
 
 French 
 
 Leavens 
 
 
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flftemodal 
 
 OF 
 
 1Re\>. Ipbilo jfrencb Xeavene, H).2)< 
 
 CONTAINING 
 
 a Brief Biograpb^ anb Selected Sermone 
 
 COMPILED BY 
 
 v'' 
 
 TRev. 3ames S, l^ouna 
 
 PASSAIC, N. J. 
 
 O. S. FREEMAN 
 
 1905 
 
ieMtor'0 mote. 
 
 A brief word seems needed at the commencement of this 
 book. 
 
 From notes and letters written by Dr. Leavens, this sketch 
 has been compiled, so that in many places he writes his own 
 story. 
 
 Grateful acknowledgment is made of the valuable aid ren- 
 dered by his wife. 
 
 Acknowledgment is also due the Passaic Daily News for 
 the use of numerous extracts published at the time of the death 
 of Dr. Leavens. 
 
 With the hope that the reader may be helped to a better 
 knowledge of the man and roused to higher living by his 
 example, this book is sent forth 
 
 J. s. y. 
 
 Garfield, N. J., April 3rd, 1905. 
 
Ibletorical Sl^etclx 
 
 Words seem inadequate when the attempt is made to paint 
 even a brief picture of another. One longs for the skill of the 
 artist with brush and canvas. What can give shape to the 
 words, so that they will bring before the mind's eye the outline 
 of the life we seek briefly to portray? How shall we catch and 
 fix with glowing colors upon the canvas, the wondrous char- 
 acter of him whose picture begins this book ? 
 
 In thought, we travel to that New England home in Berk- 
 shire, Franklin County, Vermont, where, on November 19th, 
 1838, Philo French Leavens first saw the light. To gain any 
 idea of the influences which surrounded and helped form the 
 man we knew, let us glance into that New England home, a brief 
 description of which, together with some notes of his life, we find 
 among Dr. Leavens' papers. 
 
 Paschal Paoli Leavens, his father, was born in the early part 
 of the last century, rounding out full seventy years of life before 
 he went home to God. 
 
 Those were stirring times in which he lived, times which 
 msde character as men struggled to reduce the hills to subjuga- 
 tion and help stabilitate the community toward right living. 
 
 One has but to walk over those hills and note the ruggedness 
 of the soil to realize that only men of unflinching purpose and 
 vigorous character could compel it to yield its treasures. Such 
 a man was Paschal Paoli, who succeeded his father in the 
 Berkshire home. He was a man of such thrift that he could 
 win a success out of the heart of a Vermont farm, to do which 
 is no easy task. 
 
 That he was a man of sterling integrity can be readily seen 
 when we remember that in the course of his life he held well nigh 
 every office in the gift of his townsmen. We even see him leav- 
 ing his home to serve repeated terms in each branch of the legis- 
 lature, and for some years we find him serving as assistant judge 
 of the county court. 
 
In those days the spirit of the times was religious. The meet- 
 ing house on the hill was the power from which influences came 
 to shape and move many a manly and womanly character whose 
 impress is still felt on the men and women of to-day. We like 
 to think of Paschal throwing aside affairs of state and home and 
 taking a hand in the establishment of this place of worship. 
 
 It was among the first buildings erected in that village of 
 Berkshire. "Doubtless a two-year-old," Doctor Leavens has 
 said, "would have been allowed sometimes to go up on the hill. 
 Once there he would have observed the liberty pole, and then 
 across the green he could not but have admired the meeting 
 house of ruddy brick and white-painted woodwork." 
 
 In such an atmosphere and under such influences Doctor 
 Leavens was born. Nine children blessed that household, and it 
 needs no stretch of imagination to think that life in that farm 
 house must have been a merry one. 
 
 At the age of three the young Philo was sent to school, 
 "chiefly," so he says, "to get me out of the way." The prin- 
 cipal playground of the boys was the "meeting house," where they 
 would romp about the building and the row of "horse-sheds" 
 that stretched away from the northeast corner. "One of the 
 earliest recollections," he tells us, "which I have of my conscious 
 self is as a child standing in the entry of that meeting house 
 wrapped up like an Esquimaux papoose in some home-made tog- 
 gery, cut out of an old 'camlet cloak' left by my Grandfather 
 Bowen when he died in 1843. I don't know why I was standing 
 there, and still less do I know why I remember it." Early im- 
 pressions are deep. Was that first recollection the beginning of 
 the call which led him into the ministry? 
 
 "O, the fascination to a barefooted boy to climb the lightning- 
 rod of that meeting house ! A timid fellow might pull up as high 
 from the ground as to the second-story window ; it was a bril- 
 liant act to go to the eaves, but one who could mount towards the 
 'green doors' was no less than a hero." Often, doubtless, with 
 his mates the young lad tried that lightning-rod, but more often, 
 we think, they must have climbed inside to the "green doors," and 
 swinging them open, would enter where they could walk around 
 in safety. 
 
 "The historic view from Cologne Cathedral in Europe hardly 
 impressed me more in middle life," he tells us, "than did this 
 
stretch of fields and forests from the 'green doors' of the 'meet- 
 ing house' when I was a child." 
 
 As the years pass, one can almost see the life of that home as 
 one by one the children began to help in the work of the farm. 
 None of the sons followed the life of a farmer, but became in- 
 stead successful business or professional men. With such a fact 
 before us it is easy to think that they would be at other pursuits 
 and pastimes whenever the busy farmer could spare them. 
 
 Life in that New England village in those days was quiet yet 
 strenuous. The main occupations, outside of the farm work, 
 were connected with the school and the meeting house. 
 
 Services were held in the meeting house, four denominations 
 taking a Sunday each month. Of these the Methodists had the 
 lead. "Quarterly meeting," Dr. Leavens says, "used to make an 
 impression on me on account of the crowd and the loud preach- 
 ing. The 'love feast' I never attended, but when the presiding 
 elder was to preach on Sunday morning I wanted to be there. 
 
 "I would sit with wonder through the sacrament of the Lord's 
 Supper at the conclusion of the long service. The members went 
 forward, of course, to receive the elements. As they advanced, 
 the congregation would sing to the minor strains of 'Windham,' 
 the verse: 
 
 ' 'Twas on that dark, that doleful night, 
 
 When powers of earth and hell arose 
 Against the Son of God's delight, 
 
 And friends betrayed Him to His foes.* 
 
 "The strong, harsh voices put wondrous feeling into the 
 words. Then the verse : 
 
 * Before the mournful scene began, 
 
 He took the bread and blessed and broke; 
 What love through all His actions ran! 
 
 What wondrous words of grace He spoke! ' 
 
 "Then in the act of the sacrament the strident voices would 
 cry: 
 
 'This is My body broke for sin; 
 
 Receive and eat the living food: 
 Then took the cup, and blessed the wine; 
 ' Tis the new covenant in My blood." 
 
8 
 
 "I remember sitting with a hushed heart while this went on. 
 What if some voice had whispered, 'Keep still, child; you will 
 be doing something like that at least six times a year for eight 
 and thirty years before you are through with life.' " Was the 
 call to his future work beginning to take shape? As we before 
 remarked, early impressions are deep. 
 
 "Though revivals of religion passed over the community," 
 Dr. Leavens says, "I have thought it remarkable that I was never 
 in the least moved. A number did join the church, I believe, one 
 'quarterly meeting,' as the fruit of such work. But to me, far 
 more effective was the day-by-day religion of 'Uncle' George 
 Larabee and steadfast souls of his kind," 
 
 Early in life the temperance question was presented to him. 
 "One John Haslan, an Irishman, I should think, startled some of 
 us into signing the pledge of total abstinence. I remember when 
 I put my name down. It was by candle-light in the meeting- 
 house itself. There was a lecture on temperance and the 
 preacher did not go up the two-story pulpit but occupied the less 
 sacred seat beneath it, on a level with the pews, where also he 
 could let his wit fly more freely. The affair wound up with the 
 pledge, and, as I said, I wrote my name. That bond afterward 
 constrained me in college, constrained me in the life of the great 
 city, has constrained me at festive tables where wine has flowed 
 freely, and has constrained me in long travels through the heart 
 of wine-producing countries in the Old World. 
 
 "But I must not forget the Sunday-School. It began in my 
 childhood and was undenominational. Homer Smith was su- 
 perintendent, and I suppose he was a Baptist. For lessons we 
 simply memorized scripture. Parts of the Gospel of John are 
 in my mouth to this day as placed there then. I belonged to a 
 class of boys in the front pew, and Charles Jenne was our 
 teacher. One time, as soon as school was dismissed, we rushed 
 to get out, and I was at the head of the line so as to be pushed 
 by the rest. Charles laid his hand on me and said in his soft 
 way, 'You would not go before your teacher, would you?' I 
 shrank back rebuked, and with a never-to-be-forgotten lesson in 
 manners. We received the 'Sunday School Advocate,' a Meth- 
 odist paper for children, and I never left a word unread or an 
 'enigma' unsolved. 
 
"But the greatest event was when once there was to be a 'cel- 
 ebration.' It was to be held on the green, which was trans- 
 formed into a grove, or bower, by setting out bushes and hang- 
 ing flags. On a Sunday beforehand the superintendent asked 
 for boys who would 'speak a piece.' He requested volunteers to 
 rise. "Neal," Lewis and I stood up in our class. After that act 
 I had no tranquility of mind until the event was over. Some 
 verses were found for me and I learned them. The great day 
 came and I took my turn to mount the meeting-house steps 
 and 'speak my piece' to the assembly. I have often wondered 
 if that incident implied my call to the ministry. It is no 
 exaggeration to say that some thousands of times since then 
 have I been required to stand before assemblies, sometimes 
 few, sometimes many ; sometimes a class of children, again a 
 circle of scholarly and critical men, or a very decorous congre- 
 gation in church, to express my mind. It was the Sunday 
 School in the old 'meeting house' that drew me out the first 
 time." 
 
 His father early discovered that he was destined for a 
 scholar. Dr. Leavens did not enjoy working about the farm, 
 but preferred to be shut up with his books. Almost the first 
 money he had to spend was invested in the Life of Benjamin 
 Franklin, and he often told how he hugged that book under 
 his arm, counting it a great treasure and could hardly wait to 
 get home to read it. 
 
 So the years passed and we can readily imagine that with 
 such a love of knowledge burning like a fire within him, no 
 stone was left unturned in furthering the passion of his heart. 
 He saw the point toward which he aimed and, though distant, 
 the vision shaped his life. The district school in that little 
 village, during its winter sessions had no more eager student 
 than this young lad and when the farm with its many cares 
 claimed his help, during the summer months, every spare 
 moment was spent in furthering his longing. Such fidelity 
 was not without its reward. Stronger and clearer grew his 
 grasp till one by one the studies of the district school had 
 been surmounted and he was ready to pass beyond its 
 influence. 
 
 Recognizing that, if his son was to accomplish anything in 
 higher institutions of learning, a good preparation was needed, 
 
10 
 
 his father sent him to the Academy at Fairfax, Vermont. Evi- 
 dently these were not wasted years, but every opportunity 
 for advancement was grasped with eager hand as the vision 
 which he had seen in earlier life drew him on in the path of 
 knowledge. 
 
 Just before leaving the academy there came to Dr. 
 Leavens, then a young man of nineteen, the greatest change 
 which can come to an immortal soul in a mortal body. A 
 deep religious interest swept over the town and touched that 
 student body with unwonted power. The question of personal 
 salvation could not be put one side, certainly not by a young 
 man of Dr. Leavens' temperament. With him, to face a ques- 
 tion was to settle it one way or the other. Here was the fight 
 of his life. The movements of that conflict only God knows, 
 as that mind weighed the subject on every side, but he tells 
 us the decision in his own words and over his own signature 
 under date of April 26th, 1857: 
 
 "After attending an inquiry meeting at Professor Uphams 
 I return to my room ; and here at this time I wish to make an 
 humble confession to God for my sins and a consecration of 
 myself to His service. 
 
 "Here, Jesus, Saviour of Men, into Thy hands I commit 
 myself. Forgive Thou my sins and grant me a share in Thy 
 atonement, I pray. Make me wholly Thine, make me useful, 
 make me finally an inhabitant of heaven. O! prepare me for 
 life, prepare me for death, and prepare me for the judgment. 
 Guide me and use me as Thou seest fit but save me eventually 
 through Thy mercy and not my merit." 
 
 "Here unto this prayer I affix my name this Sabbath 
 evening, 10 o'clock. 
 
 "P. F. Leavens." 
 
 Can we realize what that decision meant to this young 
 man and to those who were to feel his influence in the years 
 to come? It was the enlisting of a soldier for battle. It was 
 the entrance on a campaign from which there would be no 
 retreat till he should receive from God's hand the victor's 
 crown. 
 
 We can easily think that the closing months for the young 
 student at that academy were months of honor, when faithful 
 work met its full reward. In September, 1857, we find him 
 
II 
 
 entering the Class of 1861 in the University of Vermont at 
 Burlington. Shall we take a brief inventory of this young 
 man's powers at this time? We find an intense love for Jesus 
 Christ which was growing into a passion with the advancing 
 days. A mind keen, active and well trained. A courageous 
 determination to stand for principle, as he saw it, come what 
 may, and a determination to do his best with the opportunities 
 now his. With such a purpose guiding his life it is not to be 
 wondered at that his class standing was high and that the 
 membership of Phi Beta Kappa crowned his earnest work. 
 His position as a student is clearly shown from the fact that 
 he gained the Commencement stage, speaking on the subject 
 "Personal Virtue, the Determinant of Conduct." That it was 
 fresh, vigorous and full of power we gain from the press 
 comment of that event, which speaks of "The clear and able 
 production of Mr. Leavens." 
 
 During his college course he was overwhelmed by the news 
 which reached him from Berkshire that his mother had gone 
 home to God. She had been a wonderful power in his life 
 and his grief at her departure was uncontrollable. He has 
 often said that the sense of loss would come over him with 
 such force, at times, that he would put his head down on his 
 desk in his room and sob aloud in the wildness of his grief. 
 His great affection for her had been a mighty influence for 
 good ; and her departure, as it helped him to enter into the 
 grief of others, was only another instrument fitting him for 
 the great work of his life. 
 
 His religious life in college was not hidden. Early in his 
 course he made his position known and took a stand for Jesus 
 Christ, uniting with the Congregational Church in Burlington. 
 That it was not a hasty step and that his Christian life had been 
 one of growth, he himself tells us, under date of November 6, 
 1858: 
 
 "To-morrow — Providence permitting — I purpose to unite 
 myself with the Congregational Church in this place, and I now 
 take my pen in hand to note down a few of my feelings before 
 entering into this connection, I do this especially that I may 
 avoid that too common fault of falling into a state of coldness 
 after the interest of conversion and profession have passed away. 
 
 "It is now about one year and five months since I was led to 
 
12 
 
 hope in the Saviour, since I saw Jesus to be indeed the Christ. 
 O ! what glorious changes does such a view make in all the ap- 
 pearance of life ! What a change have my own views of my 
 position as a moral being undergone! I was led at the time of 
 my conversion to consecrate myself to the service of God, and 
 unworthy as was that consecration both in itself and in the spirit 
 of it, I hope my Heavenly Father did accept it and did number 
 me among His people. I hope this because I did not do it in my 
 own name, but pleaded the merits of Christ as my Saviour. And 
 as I assume the bonds of Church connection I desire to renew 
 this consecration with more solemn vows to be Christ's for time 
 and for eternity. I desire to take as large views as possible of 
 the amazing love of God for rebellious man, in providing a way 
 of return to Himself for man who had so recklessly violated all 
 His laws and rendered himself so unworthy the regard of so great 
 a being. I desire to realize as well as I may the condescension 
 of the Son of God who was willing to take upon Himself the form 
 of sinful flesh, and dwell among men, to be persecuted on earth, 
 to suffer and die the shameful death of the Cross, all this, hav- 
 ing given up the glory which He had with the Father before the 
 world was. I desire to appreciate as well as possible my obli- 
 gations to the Holy Spirit, which has made me sensible of sin 
 and aware of the way of life. Thus understanding, in as high 
 degree as I can, my infinite and eternal obligations to God, do I 
 wish to devote myself with all that I am or hope to be, with all 
 that I have or hope to have of earthly possessions, of talent, abil- 
 ity or influence, to the service of my God for now and for ever. I 
 desire that my frequent prayer may be fulfilled, viz., that God 
 will make of me whatsoever He shall please, whatsoever shall 
 redound to His own honor and glory, and shall fit me for the en- 
 joyment of His presence in His Kingdom at last. If He wish me 
 to preach the gospel of Christ to my fellowmen, I desire to hold 
 myself in readiness to obey His will, and I pray that He will pre- 
 pare the way that I may do so successfully and to the advance- 
 ment of His cause and kingdom among men. Or, if it be His will 
 that I labor in any other part of His vineyard, I do desire that 
 He will make of me an earnest and faithful laborer, and when 
 my life shall have been spent, I pray that it may have accom- 
 plished a good purpose and I may be permitted to enter into man- 
 
13 
 
 sions of rest prepared in the skies, there to give glory, honor and 
 praise to Father, Son and Holy Ghost forever. Amen. 
 "After prayer I hereunto subscribe my name. 
 
 "Philo French Leavens." 
 
 At the close of that solemn Sunday, November 7th, 1858, he 
 writes : 
 
 " 'Tis done. I have bound myself in the presence of the 
 Church and before the heart-searching God to the service of my 
 Heavenly Father. I have partaken of the emblems of the body 
 and blood of the crucified Redeemer. I stand out now before 
 my fellowmen as a disciple of Christ. I stand thus renewedly 
 consecrated to God with the solemnities of the sacred ordinances 
 of the Church. And now my prayer is, that unworthy as this 
 dedication is and unfaithfully as it may have been made, the Lord 
 God of Heaven will accept it, forgiving the errors which I may 
 have committed in making it. And I farther pray that the Great 
 Ruler of the universe will now take me under His own direction 
 and in all the events of life control me according to His own most 
 Holy Will and direct me to His own honor and glory; and es- 
 pecially do I pray that I may be enabled to live a whole life of 
 usefulness and obedience to His will, that coldness or lack of 
 earnestness may never, never at any time, come cv?' me, but 
 that I may ever stand ready, with ardor increased beyond that 
 of first love, to do His bidding — that He will purify all my motives 
 and make me, while I seek the advancement of His cause in the 
 world, to do so with the humility of an ill-deserving instrument 
 and with right feelings of heart — that He will break down within 
 me all feelings of pride and self-exaltation, and make me to feel 
 at all times that I am not my own, but that I am bought with a 
 price even the precious blood of Jesus — that my life, my all are 
 not henceforth any longer mine, but Christ's. 
 
 "And now. Holy Father, Blessed Saviour and Blessed Spirit 
 — Adorable Trinity — accept, I pray, this unworthy servant who 
 would thus devote himself to Thee ; and in his weakness be his 
 strength — in his folly be his wisdom — in his blindness be his 
 guide and in his sinfulness be his salvation. 
 
 "Lord, hear me through Thine own mercy in Christ Jesus." 
 
 "Philo French Leavens." 
 
14 
 
 The earnest desire of the man to be used of God is seen in 
 the following note with which he concludes the paper: 
 
 "If this should ever fall into another's hands may it lead to a 
 similar or a better consecration of such an one." 
 
 "P. F. L." 
 
 In the Christian work of the student body in college Dr. 
 Leavens was greatly interested. He has often spoken of the 
 prayer meetings of his college days as being helpful. Much per- 
 sonal work was done in his class. The Christian students would 
 meet in little groups to pray for their unconverted friends by 
 name. As the years went on and he saw his friends taking a 
 stand for Christ, and becoming useful both in the church and the 
 world, it was a satisfaction to him and an inspiration to better 
 service for the Master. 
 
 After his graduation from college he taught for two years 
 with marked success in Vermont. Near the close of his engage- 
 ment as a teacher his mind reverted to the promise made Novem- 
 ber 6, 1858, to enter the ministry if God so willed. He therefore 
 asked himself the following questions: 
 
 Have I the intellectual ability? 
 
 Have I a fit Christian character? 
 
 Is there a need of me in that vocation? 
 
 Can I fill any other better? 
 
 Can I make the sacrifices? 
 
 Will I make the sacrifices? 
 
 Will God accept me? 
 
 Will I direct my energies to the ministry? 
 
 Will I proclaim this my purpose to my friends and the world ? 
 
 That these questions were not hastily answered nor the 
 decision rashly made, he tells us in the "Covenant with God," 
 which he made at Hinesburgh, Vermont, on April 20, 1862 : 
 
 "After much thought, much misgiving and shrinking, I 
 enter into the following covenant between myself and God — 
 Resigning all hopes of wealth, of fame, of ease, and of inde- 
 pendence, I will make the gospel ministry my life work. 
 
 "I accept, if God will, a life of labor, of dependence, of want, 
 and even of neglect and suffering. My only aim shall be to 
 find out truth, teach it to my fellow-men, and persuade them 
 
IS 
 
 to accept it; the ultimate object being always to win men to 
 Christ as the Saviour of their souls. 
 
 "I will yield all my own plans and wishes to the known Will 
 of God. 
 
 "I will seek fitness for my work by close communion with 
 Him. The rewards that I will desire for myself are the love of 
 God, communion with Him, the fellowship of Christ and the 
 Spirit, and at last Heaven. 
 
 "To this work I will at once and at all times direct my 
 efforts, entering upon my studies as soon as practicable, striv- 
 ing to do so September, 1863. 
 
 "This purpose I will never abandon except at the clear 
 direction of Providence. 
 
 "This determination shall be announced to my father in my 
 next letter to him (it was expressed in conversation in July), 
 and at proper times freely expressed to my friends. 
 
 "Lord, take me with the power, the culture and all the 
 means of influence Thou hast given me, and fit me to preach 
 Thy truth. Consecrate me to this service ; make ready for me 
 a labor and prepare me to perform it. Provide the way for me 
 to enter upon the needful studies. Give me clearness and 
 vigor of intellect, piety of heart, sincerity of life and such 
 friendliness of manner as shall win the love and confidence of 
 men. Arm me for the conflict, fortify me against opposition 
 and discouragement, give me a shield against temptation, and 
 fit me to bear success without pride. Place me where Thou 
 seest best and use me as Thou wilt, that I may perform the 
 best possible service and gain the best possible preparation for 
 Heaven. 
 
 "O Lord, I pray Thee to accept me in this work and hear 
 this prayer for Jesus, my Redeemer's sake. 
 
 "Alone in my room, this Sabbath evening, I place my name 
 to this Covenant and Prayer with this fixed purpose that, by 
 the blessing of God, it shall henceforth determine my life. 
 
 "Philo F. Leavens." 
 
 When, one year later, the time came for him to take defi- 
 nite action, he writes : 
 
i6 
 
 "Stowe, Vt., June 14, 1863. 
 
 "The time has now come for me to decide my course for 
 the next year. In accordance with the foregoing covenant 
 shall I direct my efiforts to theological study? Duty is clear. 
 I will do so. This witnesses my determination. May God be 
 my help, otherwise it is all vain. 
 
 "Philo F. Leavens." 
 
 "I have expressed this purpose to my father," he writes a 
 little later, "and found not only his assent but quite cordial 
 approval, and even offer of assistance. This is more than I could 
 expect. I thank God for so disposing his heart. I receive it 
 as a new evidence that He approves my purpose. So now the 
 plan of my life is to engage in theological study as soon as 
 possible." 
 
 The early sixties were strenuous times. The state of the coun- 
 try stirred every man. It was no time for light thinking. The 
 stress of war produced strong characters, as life or death hung 
 in the balance. With other thoughtful men, Dr. Leavens was 
 greatly exercised by this state of affairs, and on June 12, 1863, 
 he makes this note from Stowe, Vt. : 
 
 "There is soon to be a draft of men to serve in the Army of 
 our country, and my name stands in the first class. I am so 
 likely to be called upon that I wish to settle upon my course 
 before the call comes. The Government has a right to the 
 service of all its citizens. In this crisis duty also requires that 
 that service should be cheerfully rendered. Who shall go to the 
 war is to be decided by an impartial draft. My being and my 
 powers have been consecrated to God. I believe He rules in 
 all, even the minutest, events of life. His will will then 
 determine whether my name be drawn or not. 
 
 "I believe our Government is engaged in a righteous cause. 
 If then my name is drawn, this shall be my course: I will 
 cheerfully obey every order of the established authorities. I 
 will fairly submit to the necessary examinations, frankly 
 answer all questions, making no false pretensions and con- 
 cealing no truth. I have not three hundred dollars, so that I 
 cannot pay the sum required in lieu of service. If my friends 
 should wish to free me by paying the money, this shall be 
 my course: I will fully and honestly state to them my plans 
 
17 
 
 and purposes for life, leave them to follow their own judg- 
 ments, and I will abide by the result. This shall determine 
 my course up to the beginning of military service, if God calls 
 me away from my previous plans to this unexpected life. 
 
 "P. F. Leavens." 
 
 ''O God! help me to rest my whole confidence on this 
 blessed assurance: 'The Lord is my Shepherd.' Be very near 
 to me in all my ways, if my name is drawn for military service. 
 Let me not shrink from any duty, any trial, or any sacrifice, 
 for the good of my country and humanity. 
 
 "Help me to glorify Thee in all my life, and at length also 
 in a triumphant death. 
 
 "Even though I walk through the valley and the shadow 
 of death, may Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me. 
 
 "May God for Christ's sake hear this, my prayer. 
 
 "P. F. Leavens." 
 
 As he had expected, his name was drawn for service, but 
 God had other plans for His servant and we find this note, writ- 
 
 "October 2nd, 1863. 
 
 "A few hours before I started to report my father placed three 
 hundred dollars in my hands with the injunction not to enter the 
 army on any account. I had not time to explain to him my plan 
 for life but did so subsequently and received his approval. Thus 
 my commutation was paid and I was left free to pursue my 
 studies. 
 
 "P. F. L." 
 
 It must have been with the consciousness that he was follow- 
 ing the plan of God that Dr. Leavens entered, in the early fall of 
 1863, the Union Theological Seminary, New York, in the class of 
 1866. 
 
 Of the work of that first year we find but little record, but it 
 is easy to judge what an inspiration it must have been to Dr. 
 Leavens to come under the influence of such men as Drs. Shedd, 
 Hitchcock and Henry B. Smith as they opened before him the 
 wonderful truths of God. 
 
 Dr. Shedd, of all the professors, seemed to make the most im- 
 pression upon him, for he writes of him, "He impresses me as 
 profound and sincere in all his thinking, and his whole bearing 
 
i8 
 
 is so upright and unpretentious that I mingle love with my rev- 
 erence for him. There is no man whose thoughts and character 
 we ponder more in the Seminary than Dr. Shedd." 
 
 Dr. Leavens gave himself up to the atmosphere of the Sem- 
 inary with great heartiness, and one can readily see how that 
 alert mind developed in strength as the influence of the strong 
 men about him gradually deepened their hold upon him. 
 
 At the close of that first year Dr. Leavens, with others, 
 listened to the call for help to minister to the sick and dying 
 soldiers, and during that summer we follow him as in God's 
 name he goes forth. On April 27th, 1864, we find this entry in 
 his diary of that summer, from which we take extracts, which 
 gives us a glimpse of his work. 
 
 "Determined to go out on the Sanitary Commission ; pro- 
 ceeded at once to buy the necessary outfit; flannels, boots, 
 blankets (army and rubber). All things ready, took the cars at 
 the foot of Courtland Street at 7 P. M, Reached Washington 
 at 7 A. M. Thursday. Came to the rooms of the Sanitary 
 Commission ; breakfast at the Ebbitt House, where we are to 
 board." 
 
 The intervening days were passed in sight-seeing, while they 
 were waiting for orders, and on April 30 he writes : 
 
 "We were invited to visit the lodges of the Sanitary Com- 
 mission. We had a long walk through the city; saw the 
 greatness and orderly working of the Commission. After 
 dinner we went over to one of the lodges to see the arrival 
 of some twelve or fifteen thousand sick from the army. While 
 waiting, Dunning and I strolled down to the Potomac at Long 
 Bridge. Train did not arrive till evening. Here was our first 
 extensive view of the horrors of war." 
 
 It is interesting to note his purpose on entering this service 
 as he discloses it in the entry of May ist: 
 
 "My heart's desire is that this coming service may be better 
 to me than anything I ever did before in fitting me both for fu- 
 ture service in the world and for the world to come. God is able 
 to make all things work together for good to them that love Him. 
 May it be so with us !" 
 
 And the next night he writes: 
 "Alone for a moment. It is a moment for thought. We are 
 full of light and trifling conversation. God is not our sole 
 
19 
 
 theme. How much I miss the hours of silence and meditation. 
 May God not forsake me even in this strange life. My fixed 
 purpose is to live to His glory. May this part of my life be 
 true." 
 
 Those days of waiting were not easy days, for he writes on 
 May 3rd: 
 
 "Am becoming tired of this stay here, since it is not that for 
 which we came out. Am willing and even anxious to be sent out 
 to our duty in the army." 
 
 The preparation for action seemed to go forward with new 
 vigor at this point, and on May 5th he writes : 
 
 "We received instruction from Miss Gilson in cooking deli- 
 cacies for the soldiers. Miss Gilson is a lady who has been much 
 in the army, on battle-fields, relieving the soldiers. We are 
 learning about our coming duties." 
 
 And again. May 7th, he writes: 
 
 "We went out and learned from Capt. Dennistoun how to 
 pitch a tent. Some of us worked hard all the morning prepar- 
 ing our tents for the field. The weather was exceedingly hot, 
 and this work a severe prelude to our coming experience. At- 
 tended a promenade concert, in the evening, on the grounds in 
 front of the President's House. Concert by the "Marine Band," 
 but the attraction was the President himself, who was present on 
 his portico and spoke a few words, proposing three cheers for 
 General Grant and the Union armies. My view of the President 
 was very fine, since I stood but a few steps from him." 
 
 Dr. Leavens often spoke of this day with great joy and jthe 
 remembrance of the words, which he heard, was with him all 
 his life. 
 
 After days of waiting, filled with instruction in regard to the 
 coming duties, we find this entry on May loth : 
 
 "All packed and strapped, awaiting the order to go on board 
 the transportation for the field. On board our vessel at 1 1 
 A. M. Started down the Potomac for Acquia Creek at 12.30 
 P. M. We are put in divisions of ten men each, myself in sec- 
 ond division, under Capt. Dennistoun. Dinner at 5 P. M. ; 
 boiled ham, potatoes, bread and cheese, with coffee, on tin plates 
 and cups. Instead of stopping at Acquia Creek we pass on to 
 Belle Plain, which we reach about 8 P. M. My division is sent 
 ashore to put up a tent. Wounded men are lying all about in 
 
20 « 
 
 great numbers. We erect our tent and return for materials to 
 make coffee. May I not forget the scene of our landing in the 
 deep darkness, with the few bright fires and the many wounded 
 men lying all about. 
 
 "After I A. M. of Wednesday, May nth, returned to the 
 boat and slept on a pile of tent-poles till 5 A. M. Resumed our 
 work at the tent. We made a fire and coffee for the wounded 
 men. I helped in making the coffee and distributing to the 
 soldiers. Went about among the men as they lay upon the 
 ground. May 12th. Continued the coffee. Worked very hard 
 in the rain. At one time the rain came down so violently that 
 the water swept through our tent, wetting our goods, putting 
 out our fires and stopping our work. As soon as we could we 
 started it again." 
 
 Such was the work of the intervening days, and on Sunday, 
 May 15th, he writes: 
 
 "Helped to arrange the tent. We had an influx of Sanitary 
 delegates on their way to Fredericksburg. Prepared a lot of 
 milk punch and fed five men just in who had been without food 
 two days. Gave a man my German Testament. Evening. A 
 train of ambulances came in full of the wounded. Distributed 
 punch to the men in the tents and ambulances. A severe rain 
 came on and after that I went out with crackers and coffee. A 
 hard evening's work. How very little like the Christian Sab- 
 bath ! No reading ; no worship ; no prayer save silent utterance 
 to God." 
 
 By May 21st they were on their way to Fredericksburg, after 
 hard service among the wounded, where, on the evening of Sun- 
 day, May 22nd, he writes : 
 
 "Received orders to go to the field hospitals of the 6th Corps, 
 1st Division, and go to work. Here the surgeon put me to 
 dressing wounds. I had never done such work and the first case 
 I had was a fearful one, but I was able to do the work, and 
 finally dressed a large number. It is awful duty. Almost no 
 other cause would induce me to engage in it. But the con- 
 sciousness of duty and the gratitude of the sufferers is a large 
 reward. O, that I could have more religious thought. My life 
 will run to waste. May a gracious God save me and through 
 this darkness lead me." 
 
 Leaving Fredericksburg, where they had spent a week of 
 
21 
 
 busy service, the party was sent to Port Royal, and after work- 
 ing among the wounded there he writes on May 29th : 
 
 "A beautiful morning. I arise with some thoughts of God. 
 Read a chapter from Jeremiah. After breakfast we had a good 
 'sing' on deck. Soon off, for York River, as we suppose. May 
 God help me to make this a Sabbath. We had a service con- 
 ducted by the chaplain of the ist Minnesota. In the evening 
 another, in which, instead of a sermon, the preacher read a 
 jumble of written productions in poor prose and horrid rhyme 
 upon sundry topics connected with the war. With great dis- 
 gust I listened to the end. Have been able to study Scripture a 
 little to-day. Some good conversation ; too much idle." 
 
 At 5 P. M. the next day they paused near White House, their 
 destination, where on May 31st he writes: 
 
 "All day on board the boat in extreme laziness. Have had 
 no call to go on shore. It is a wonder to be here in the heart of 
 the enemy's country with no fear or cause of alarm. The day 
 has been passed in reading and lounging. Our books are few." 
 
 On the evening of June 7th he writes : 
 
 "With Mr. Sayres, got up a requisition and established a 
 Sanitary station. Am much disgusted with this manner of 
 living. The way of eating, drinking and sleeping, the deadness 
 of thought, etc., are abhorrent to me. Only the conviction of 
 duty to the soldiers can keep me at it." 
 
 "June I2th. No Sabbath. Day like any other, except that 
 our work has been very light. My business is still in the tent. 
 O, for a little while alone in which to think and pray. But, no ; 
 everything must be done in a crowd. How dehumanizing is 
 war ! I shall always hate it, for I see its most hideous forms. 
 No sentiment too secret, or too sacred, for war's rude hand to 
 lay bare and crush." 
 
 Leaving White House, the party was sent to Yorktown, 
 where they were greatly interested in the forts and in the works 
 remaining from the Revolutionary war. From Yorktown they 
 were sent to Fortress Monroe, where Dr. Leavens speaks of the 
 beautiful weather, the charming journey, and what was best of 
 ail, Lu him. a rpligiouc ccrvicc On June 17th the journey up 
 the river was resumed as far as City Point, where they estab- 
 lished a station and resumed work among the soldiers. On 
 June 20th he writes: 
 
22 
 
 "A great luxury to have slept in a bed. Morning went on 
 shore alone. Wrote a letter in the evening for one poor man 
 very badly wounded. Was pleased to see his anxiety not to 
 alarm his friends at home." 
 
 The next day he speaks of much hard work in the hot sun, 
 and on June 22nd he vv^rites : 
 
 "Had many thoughts of my entire dependence upon God and 
 His goodness in sustaining me in this dangerous life. When I 
 see so many of my associates called home by illness I see that 
 nothing I can do can save me from sickness or death. I rest on 
 the mercy of God alone. If I can honor Him on earth I trust 
 He will spare my life ; otherwise He will take me away. Let 
 that thought be clear; so long as I can honor God on the earth 
 more than in Heaven, He will keep me here. After that He will 
 take me hence." 
 
 The days pass rapidly, one very much like the other, filled 
 with work in the tents and ministry to the needy soldiers. Dr. 
 Leavens speaks of the intense heat as affecting him badly and 
 for a while he was disabled by a slight illness, but on recovery 
 he resumes his work with more care for his own condition. On 
 July 3rd he writes : 
 
 "At rising we found a quiet Sabbath morning, almost giving 
 promise of a day of rest. Soon came the announcement that 
 wounded men were arriving, and all set to work to meet their 
 wants. About 10 A. M. came an order to repair to the boat for 
 a journey to the front. Not proper Sabbath work, but, alas, 
 our Sabbath is sadly profaned out here. At length we start; 
 but the dust, who could describe it? Worse and worse it grew 
 as we advanced. Perfect clouds were formed and the ride was 
 very uncomfortable. 
 
 "July 4th. Arose early; washed in a brook; made a break- 
 fast of crackers, sugar and prunes. As soon as proper we 
 started our load for Gen. Burnside's headquarters. Here we 
 left a share and then passed around to the 2nd Division, Gen. 
 Potter, where we left a portion. Gen. Potter sent me with a 
 captain to the brigade headquarters. Not finding the brigadier- 
 general, we went out to the breast-works, in sight of the enemy's 
 lines. I confess to a little nervousness in sight and hearing of 
 the bullets, but I kept a firm front." 
 
 While at headquarters Dr. Leavens found many of his Ver- 
 
2Z 
 
 mont friends whom he enjoyed seeing, but was much concerned, 
 on reaching City Point, to find that his seminary friends, on ac- 
 count of illness, were about returning home. He speaks often 
 of his loneliness, after their departure, which drives him more 
 closely to his God. On the evening of July 8th he writes: 
 
 "Sat awhile by the bedside of a young Pennsylvania soldier, 
 and even while I was watching came his last hour, and the spirit 
 left the body. Poor man ! No friend near and no word to be 
 conveyed to his sorrowful home. 
 
 "Am lonely, as usual," he writes later, "since the departure 
 of my intimate friends. Most of those remaining are entire 
 strangers, and all are really so. I lose heart for my work and 
 am thinking of the end of my engagement and a visit to Ver- 
 mont." 
 
 "Alarmed to-night," he writes on July 12th, "by a para- 
 graph of news announcing the death of an officer in Gen. Sher- 
 man's army ; fear it is my cousin." 
 
 There is nothing special to note in the passing days save that 
 he began to feel more at home in his work as he gained ac- 
 quaintance with his new associates. On the evening of July 
 27th he writes : 
 
 "Went out with sponge and bay rum in hand to sit by the 
 beds of the men. Bathed the heads and hands of several of the 
 sickest. Especially interested in a boy with fever in the 2nd 
 ward. He is very low and deranged. It is impossible to reach 
 his soul with any word of encouragement or hope." 
 
 "July 28. Evening. Sat beside the boy in the 2nd ward, not 
 expecting him to live. Left him at 10 P. M. little hoping to find 
 him the next morning. This is a better phase of hospital work 
 and takes me down close to the life of the men. O, how much 
 they endure ! Words cannot tell it. Had an earnest talk with a 
 young boy about religion. Poor boy, how dim his views about 
 the true way, yet he seems to wish to be a Christian. Up early 
 on Friday morning and sat for half an hour by the dying bed of 
 the boy in the 2nd ward. Almost alone I watched his death, 
 then helped to lay out his body within his soldier's blanket for 
 burial. He had suffered long and deeply. Never had I seen 
 him sufficiently rational to speak either of his friends or of his 
 own condition. To my surprise, his nearest neighbor, an old 
 
24 
 
 man, had died and been carried out during the night; also one 
 from the first ward. It makes a solemn morning for me." 
 
 Amid such scenes the days pass and on August 4th he writes : 
 "At noon it was announced that we were to have a sail on the 
 river at 2 P. M. I hurried through my wards with articles for 
 distribution and was at the landing in season. We went on 
 board the small steamer S. E. Brozvn, I taking a place on the 
 upper deck, and moved down to City Point. Here we took in ad- 
 ditions to our number and turned in the direction of Bermuda, 
 up the James. It was a delightful afternoon. The water was 
 smooth, a gentle breeze was blowing, and all around was in 
 quiet and happiness. The party assembled mainly on the lower 
 deck in the forward part of the vessel, where the upper deck 
 kept off the sun, while a full, open view vv^as given at the sides. 
 Here they sat closely huddled, talking and laughing merrily. I 
 sat on the nearest corner of the upper deck, that is, on the right 
 side forward, just before the wheel-house. So we went on, ad- 
 miring the scenery and enjoying the invigorating atmosphere, 
 when suddenly, without a moment's warning, came the crack of 
 rifles and a volley of balls fell into the midst of the party. All 
 sprang for shelter. With two others, I jumped behind the 
 wheel-house, but not too soon to hear a groan and see blood on 
 the floor below. With the aid of an old wheelbarrow I tried to 
 protect myself from all range of the enemy's guns, while the 
 boat pulled ahead for the protection of a gunboat. Again al- 
 most a difficulty, for the engines stopped, but in a moment they 
 rallied and we reached security under the shelter of the gun- 
 boat, 
 
 "Now I went below and found one of our engineers on the 
 opposite side of the vessel shot through the head and in a dying 
 condition ; and on our side Mr, Mayo shot through the back 
 and lying on his face; also Mr, Wilson shot through the abdo- 
 men and suffering intensely. All was confusion, many en- 
 tirely frightened. For myself, I felt quite useless, and longed 
 for some safe place. After some minutes I got more collected, 
 and after the crowd had subsided around the sufferers I took my 
 place beside Mr. Wilson to help care for him. I did not leave 
 him on our journey. We fanned him, gave him drinks and 
 changed his position constantly for his comfort, O, how bitter 
 were his sufferings as he lay with his back on the hard floor, 
 
25 
 
 rendered all the more intense by the knowledge that it would 
 shock his dear friends at home. How piteous were his allusions 
 to mother and brothers. 'Oh, if I had fallen in battle,' he said, 
 'where it would have been of some use, it would not be so hard.' 
 'Oh,' said he, in his deepest agony, 'it is not myself I am think- 
 ing of, it is my friends at home.' His first words to me were, 
 'Oh, Mr. Leavens, I am sick again, sick again.' He had been 
 ill on his first arrival at our camp for a few days. And then he 
 would cry for rest: 'Oh, give me rest; when shall we reach the 
 Point?' 
 
 "With the protection of the gunboat we arrived at City Point 
 in safety. The engineer was dead and we removed the other 
 two to the upper deck of our eating barge, where we placed them 
 comfortably on stretchers. I maintained my place by Mr. Wil- 
 son. By this time I had learned the movements that gave him 
 relief and was able to lift him more gently than others. All the 
 evening I stayed by him, doing all I could to soothe his pains 
 and cheer his heart. Poor man, no words can tell his anguish. 
 May I never forget the scene. His appeals to the doctors were 
 heart rending. All the time, too, he thought of his friends. 'Do 
 not let my name be put in the papers.' 
 
 "Then he would appeal to me to know if I thought he could 
 live. 'Tell me the truth,' he would say. Not knowing pre- 
 cisely his wound, I could express hope. 
 
 "Many came to look upon him and offer a kind hand, but 
 not till Mr. Rounds came could I feel like leaving him. O, how 
 precious to me was his exclamation when some one attempted 
 to move him but without good success. 'O, Mr. Leavens, there 
 is none of these gentlemen that knows how to move me but 
 you.' 
 
 "At 11.30 o'clock I lay down to sleep a few hours. It was 
 a long time before I fell into a troubled slumber. At 3 A. M. 
 Mr. Rounds called me and I resumed my place by the bedside. 
 We had previously removed him to a temporary bed on which 
 he could rest more easily. Close by was Mr. Mayo, attended 
 by Mr. Martin. At length Mr. Martin lay down and I watched 
 the two alone till morning dawned. 
 
 "Mr. Wilson lay very quietly, only requiring now and then 
 a drink of water. It was a season not to be forgotten. I sat be- 
 tween the two sufferers. Around on the deck lav a score or two 
 
26 
 
 of sleepers. The neighboring boats were still. As morning 
 dawned one and another of the boats pushed out silently and 
 made their way down the river. Lighter became the eastern 
 sky and more and more stir and noise arose all about, but still 
 lay the sufferers. At this time an elderly man came up and 
 knelt in prayer by the beside where I sat. How gently did Wil- 
 son raise his hand in thanks. 
 
 "He did not have the agony of last night, but lay calmly in 
 his bed. Paleness as of death was on his face. His flesh was 
 warm and his pulse fair. What a tender satisfaction it was to 
 sit by his side and be ready for any little wish. As morning 
 came on he revived a little and now and then spoke a word. 
 Once I asked him of his friends, hoping perhaps he would give 
 me some message for them in case our worst fears for him 
 should be realized. He spoke of his plans and in answer to my 
 questions told me how many brothers he had and a few other 
 things. 
 
 "The morning wore on ; many called around to see him ; 
 many kind inquiries were made for him. 
 
 "We now took off his clothing and put on clean. At lo 
 o'clock the "Elizabeth" was ready to start for Baltimore, and the 
 plan was adopted by Mr. Potter and Dr. Swalm to take the two 
 men to Fortress Monroe and procure their passage to New 
 York, accompanying them, of course, or, failing in this, to go to 
 Baltimore, telegraphing to their friends. I felt sad to see Wil- 
 son go off. I wanted to have the care of him. When we got on 
 board and I told him I must leave him, he spoke so tenderly, 
 
 ' "and are you going to leave me, Mr. Leavens ; 
 
 you are the only man of them all that knows how to take care of 
 me." 
 
 "He thanked me most gratefully for what he termed my 
 kindness to him. I do not preserve these things for vanity's 
 sake, but for their preciousness to me. And so I bade him good- 
 by, expressing the hope to meet him in New York. I pray God 
 to spare his life if it be consistent with His Holy will." 
 
 This incident made a deep impression upon Dr. Leavens, es- 
 pecially when he learned subsequently of Mr. Wilson's death be- 
 fore reaching Baltimore and called out more deeply his sympa- 
 thy for suffering humanity. 
 
 That the executive ability so marked in Dr. Leavens' later 
 
27 
 
 life was manifest even then, we see from the entry on August 
 9th and loth, when he writes: 
 
 "Holding the post of superintendent at this station, my work 
 is mostly in the tent. Duties are to make requisitions, oversee 
 issues, and decide all doubtful cases. It is a delicate task for 
 which I have an ill adaptation. It causes me much pain to re- 
 fuse a man that which he asks for, and much anger to be im- 
 posed upon. I see the need of making my first convictions more 
 promptly, and abiding by them more firmly. 
 
 "All these days am meHitating and consulting about leaving 
 for home." 
 
 Securing the consent of his superiors to his departure, while 
 waiting for passes he continued his work. On Sunday, August 
 14th, he writes: 
 
 "At 10 A. M. attended a service at the 2nd Corps. An Epis- 
 copal clergyman officiated. After this we had a social meeting 
 in view of the departure of the veteran agents. I was called on 
 with others to speak." 
 
 And on Monday, August 15th, he writes: 
 
 "Up early. Prepared a requisition. Finished up all my con- 
 cerns, bade good-by to my associates and left for the boat." 
 
 On reaching his home in Berkshire, Vermont, he writes to a 
 friend : 
 
 "By special permission I anticipated the close of my term of 
 enlistment in the United States Sanitary Commission and came 
 home ten days before my time. This I did so as to have a little 
 rest to prepare for the next year in New York. Two weeks at 
 home have almost done the work and I am ready soon to return. 
 * * * I came to be very much absorbed in our work during 
 the summer, so that when I first came home I thought of almost 
 nothing else. Now, however, my mind is getting back toward 
 study and life in the Seminary. * * * I shall return to New 
 York between the loth and 15th inst., and hope I may see you on 
 my way." 
 
 Thus began his second year of study. 
 
 As we recall the wonderful experiences through which he 
 had passed it is not strange that he writes on November 6th, 
 1864: 
 
 "To-day I have been permitted to come around the table of 
 the dying Lord, after an absence of eight eventful months. How 
 
28 
 
 much of religious value have I learned in these months. Some 
 of the deepest experiences of all my life have been in this sea- 
 son. The best lessons of God's Providences have come in this 
 time. I have had the closest contact with suffering- humanity; 
 my deepest sympathies have been aroused ; and the clearest feel- 
 ing of dependence on God have all come in these months. 
 
 "I have many things to thank God for in recalling this sum- 
 mer's experience. First of all, that He preserved my life and 
 health. Two from our seminary died, two were shot by my side, 
 one mortally. Almost all my associates became sick, yet I was 
 wholly spared and suffered only the slight illness of a week, and 
 that among kind friends. 
 
 "Again I have to thank Him for such an opportunity for 
 merely worldly advantage, extensive travel, visits to scenes of 
 deepest interest, views of the operations of war, and familiar 
 sight of the great men and great movements of the day. 
 
 "But especially have I to thank Him for those experiences 
 which stirred the deep emotions of my soul and have quickened 
 me, I hope, to a higher life. A deep feeling has been awakened 
 in me by the thought that so many fellowmen are dying for our 
 country, for our people, for me. What a sacrifice ! And my 
 life and safety are part of the favor it procures. May this 
 thought always lead me to that great sacrifice of the Son of God. 
 May I live more nobly because my fellowmen have died for me, 
 and more righteously as before God, because His Son has died 
 for me. 
 
 "And now that I am once more in study and hastening for- 
 ward to my true life work after such a divergence, may God be 
 more present with me. As the solemn experiences of the past 
 summer come back to me, O, may I mould them into the 
 structure of a noble Christian character." 
 
 "P. F. Leavens." 
 
 With such purposes of thought and action one cannot but 
 think that his life grew in beauty and strength, the advantages 
 of his position being seized with eagerness and profit as the 
 vision of his youth became more of a reality to the cultured man. 
 
 The years pass rapidly, and as he came near the close of his 
 Seminary course he writes on April 29th, 1866: 
 
 "The last communion season was so crowded, both before 
 
29 
 
 and after, that I did not make the usual record of my religious 
 feelings. Now an hour is given in which to recall a little that I 
 would preserve. Three separate lines of thought engage my 
 mind: i. The completion of my course of studies. 2. My 
 preaching at Orange, and, 3, the question where my life work 
 shall be. 
 
 "As to the first I feel the need of more devout gratitude to 
 God that He has led me safely through so many years. The 
 course of my education has been far beyond and far unlike any- 
 thing that in my youth I anticipated. I cannot fail to recognize 
 the hand of the Lord leading me. I cannot doubt that He is 
 leading me for His own wise ends. My highest honor is to work 
 under and with God. How to make His ends my ends. His 
 plans my plans should be more and always my question. The 
 highest thanks be to God for my education and to Him be given 
 all the possible service of my life. 
 
 "As to the second. I can only feel that God has done a great 
 work in our congregation. True it is but a beginning of what 
 we would like to see, yet it is more than we seem to ourselves 
 worthy to receive. As to my own part in the work, I cannot 
 but feel very humble. Whatever others may say or think to me 
 all that I have done appears slight. The imperfection of my 
 preaching has been painful to me. I know that I present the 
 truth of God most inadequately. The wonder is that the Spirit 
 could find a channel through the word thus spoken. Eighteen 
 have come into the church. My joy has been very great. The 
 last two days of Communion were very sacred. I have seen 
 enough of the blessedness of the ministry to make me eager to 
 press on to my life work, if God will. 
 
 "The third is the most trying subject. All the world is be- 
 fore me and I can go to but one place. At least the extravagant 
 impulses of less mature days are curbed. The work of one man 
 is but a fraction. No man is to achieve the salvation of the 
 whole world. Christ is the Lord of the Vineyard. He over- 
 sees the work in its vast plan. Each disciple is a humble in- 
 strumentality. He is to work out his own salvation and to 
 work for the world, all under the direction of the Master. How 
 and where to do it best are the questions in my mind. 
 
 "I think I have reached the ability to say as never before, 
 and now with sincerity and without reserve, I will go any where 
 
30 
 
 that the Master sends me. I put myself in His hands. I con- 
 fess that I cannot direct my own Hfe. I depend upon Him. Nor 
 can I reasonably expect that He should make known my future 
 very far. I must only ask my duty from day to day. O, to be 
 able to keep this position of willingness to go anywhere and 
 do anything as Christ shall require. The issue in my mind is 
 between being a foreign missionary and remaining in America. 
 How to settle the question, it is not easy to know. May the 
 Lord guide me." 
 
 "P. F. Leavens." 
 
 Thus he faced the question before him. He had in his 
 hand a call to go to Constantinople as a missionary under the 
 auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
 Missions, and the University of Vermont was eager to honor her 
 son by giving him a place in the faculty at Burlington. Should 
 he accept either or should he decline both and become a preacher 
 over a settled congregation? As we before remarked, for Dr. 
 Leavens to face a question was to carefully settle it. As he 
 looked forward into the future his life began to take shape before 
 him, and on November loth, 1866, led as he believed of God, he 
 laid down this scheme as the rule of his life : 
 
 "To lay aside the thought of ever being a missionary ; to lay 
 it aside not indeed as a burden from which I have happily 
 escaped, but as a privilege from which I am restrained ; and 
 while I withdraw from that service, yet to pledge my life-long 
 sympathies, prayers, and co-operation with those who are ac- 
 counted worthy to bear the Gospel into heathen lands. 
 
 To lay aside the thoughts of being a professor as neither my 
 privilege nor my duty. 
 
 To assume the work of a preacher, in the office of pastor, as 
 the duty and the joy of my life. 
 
 To seek, by every means within my reach, the complete re- 
 covery of health for the sake of this work. 
 
 To direct my studies, from this day forth, in the most effective 
 manner to the discovery of that truth which pertains to the 
 salvation of men. 
 
 To direct my observation to this single end, viz. : to learn 
 the lost condition of men in all its phases and results and the 
 methods by which the relief of the Gospel may be applied. 
 
 To exercise myself in all sympathy with and feeling for 
 
31 
 
 my sinful fellow men ; in all beneficence of deed for their good ; 
 and in all eloquence of speech to set before them their condi- 
 tion and the way of life through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
 To concentrate all the energy of body, soul and spirit which 
 I have or can acquire upon this one purpose and work. 
 
 "O, Christ the Redeemer, who sittest at the right hand of 
 God ; who art the Lord of this earthly vineyard ; to whom I 
 have once consecrated myself for service in Thy ministry — 
 now again I give myself to Thee to be a preacher of Thy 
 Gospel here in my native land. Dost Thou not assign me to 
 this work? I believe Thou dost. I give up the thought of any 
 and every other work and choose this alone. 
 
 O, Christ, I am unworthy — yet as Thou hast called, so ac- 
 cept me, I humbly pray, and make me, if it please Thee, the 
 instrument of vast good to my fellow men. 
 
 Make me, I especially pray, the means of good to my kindred 
 and among them chiefly to my little brother. 
 
 I will not seek for myself ease, nor sensuous pleasure, nor 
 v/ealth, nor honor. 
 
 I will seek only every human and every Christian excellence. 
 I will seek for Christ, praise and reverence and love and honor 
 and service from the hearts of men. 
 
 O, Christ, the Saviour, hear these vows of consecration and 
 hear the prayer made years ago when I gave myself to Thy 
 ministry — and which now from the heart I repeat. 
 
 O, take me into Thy service, use me to Thy glory, and when 
 I die, O, take me to be with Thyself according to Thy gracious 
 promise and for Thy name's sake. Amen. 
 
 "Now in the presence of the heart-searching God, after 
 humble devotion, with all sincerity of heart, I affix my name 
 to the foregoing scheme, covenant and prayer, with the purpose 
 that they shall determine my life henceforth." 
 
 Philo French Leavens. 
 
 Was the future bright as he faced it? We will let him 
 speak as he wrote at the close of the foregoing covenant. 
 
 "I have made engagements in view of remaining in New 
 York until Spring. 
 
 My means of support are now scanty and the requirements 
 for board, clothing, books, means of culture and benevolence 
 
are very large. But I will proceed in accordance with the pur- 
 pose this day consummated, trusting- in God for support, firmly 
 believing in His providential care. 
 
 I will do my daily duties to the best of my ability, I will 
 use what God gives me with prudence and generosity. 
 
 I will have faith in Him. I have already fixed on next May 
 as the time when I hope the Lord will set me at earnest work 
 in the ministry. I leave the place to be arranged by His provi- 
 dence and designated in His way. I ask for a place where all 
 my powers can be used to the highest advantage and to the 
 glory of His name. 
 
 Thanks be to God for all His unspeakable gifts. Special 
 thanks for His guidance to this decision and this renewed pur- 
 pose for my life. Unto the Triune God be glory for ever." 
 
 P. F. L. 
 
 The weeks pass slowly as he waits for the guiding pillar 
 to move. The time was filled with study and preaching as God 
 gave the opportunity. 
 
 In the early part of 1867, while in the Seminary, he was sud- 
 denly summoned to the presence of Dr. Hitchcock, who, after 
 greeting him, asked, "Are you engaged for Sunday?" On 
 learning that he was free. Dr. Hitchcock said "I have a 
 call for a young man to go to Passaic, New Jersey. I do not 
 know where it is. I have looked on the map and in the railway 
 guide and can find no trace of it. The only directions I can 
 give are to buy a ticket to Passaic on the railway leaving New 
 York at the foot of Chambers street and ride till you come to it. 
 Will you go?" Accepting the invitation Dr. Leavens first set 
 foot in Passaic for the service on January 20th, 1867. His min- 
 istrations were so acceptable to that little band that in the lat- 
 ter part of February he received an invitation to supply them 
 for one year. He had previously received a call from a church 
 in Courtland, New York, and as he faces the decision he writes 
 on March ist, 1867: 
 
 "To-morrow I must give an answer to this call. Let me 
 note some reasons why I should accept: 
 
 It has been decided by an advising board of clergymen that 
 the enterprise just starting is prudent and the church which it is 
 proposed to form is needed. 
 
33 
 
 If there is work for a church there is work for a minister. 
 
 It is an enterprise started by young and vigorous men in a 
 place where people of influence are likely to increase. 
 
 The invitation to me to become their minister is prompt, 
 unanimous and enthusiastic. 
 
 It places me among business men, where I can be as likely 
 as anywhere to benefit my brothers and other friends. It gives 
 me access to the city with all its society and means of culture. 
 
 So far as I can see, the place is as well adapted to the pecu- 
 liarities of my abilities as any I can expect to find. And the 
 next morning he writes : 
 
 "As I come near the hour when I must decide whether to 
 accept the proposition from Passaic or not, I am greatly com- 
 forted by Proverbs 16:9, 'A man's heart deviseth his way bjt 
 the Lord directeth his steps.' It is impossible for me to decide 
 the question before my mind, with complete wisdom. I can not 
 comprehend the whole plan of God's work in the world so as 
 to know where I am most needed. I can not properly judge of 
 my own abilities, and I can not foresee the results of my efforts 
 at any particular place. 
 
 The utmost I can do is to yield myself into the hands of 
 God, to submit my will to His and allow Him to direct my steps. 
 As well as I can judge I think I ought to go to Passaic. I there- 
 fore say to the Lord 'if Thou wilt have me go to Passaic, let it 
 be so directed. If not, then place obstacles in the way. My mind 
 is made up to accept the proposal presented to me, but if Thou, 
 O, Lord, wilt have it otherwise, now between this and the hour 
 when I am to give my answer, do Thou interpose such hin- 
 drances as are best. If it is Thy will I wish to go to Passaic. If 
 it is not Thy will I wish not to go." P. F. L. 
 
 Resting the question with God he came to Passaic. Was he 
 right? Had God led him? Let the years answer as he passed 
 onward to growing maturity in the work to which he had been 
 called. Standing on this vantage ground and looking back over 
 the past thirty-eight years one can only say "This was 'the finger 
 of God.' " 
 
 Dr. Leavens was not yet quite out of his twenties when he 
 came to Passaic, earnest, hopeful and full of bright plans for 
 the future of his work which opened up on every side. 
 
 The Sunday School was organized in February, 1867, and 
 
34 
 
 on March 6th, of the same year, the First Presbyterian Church 
 was formally organized in the village of Passaic by the Pres- 
 bytery of Newark. There were 22 communicant members and 
 George Denholm and Lewis W. Bartlett were ordained elders 
 and William Blair and George McGibbon deacons. Dr. Leavens, 
 then a licentiate for the ministry, still continued as the supply, 
 for the new organization, till January 17, 1868, when he was 
 ordained and installed as pastor by the Presbytery of Newark. 
 The church worshipped in the upper room of Howe's acad- 
 emy, the little building at the corner of Prospect and Academy 
 streets, during the first years of its history and its work began 
 to take shape with the passing days. 
 
 THE OLD ACADEMY. 
 
 
 The services were held in the Academy till May 23rd, 1869, 
 when the young enterprise was moved to a school hall then stand- 
 ing at the corner of State and River streets, where the work was 
 pushed vigorously forward. 
 
 In the reconstruction which followed the reunion of the Old 
 School and New School branches of the Presbyterian Church 
 in 1870, the Passaic church passed from the Presbytery of New- 
 ark on June 22nd, of that year, to the newly formed Presbytery 
 of Jersey City, within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of which it 
 has since remained. 
 
35 
 
 While worshipping in the school hall efforts were put forth 
 toward a church building where, amid proper surroundings, the 
 
 SCHOOL HALL. 
 
 work could gain new strength. Lots were secured on River 
 street (now Park Place), and the work of building commenced. 
 
 THE RIVER STREET CHURCH. 
 
36 
 
 Amid many vicissitudes the work made progress and on July 
 23rd, 1 87 1, the Church held its last service in the hall and with 
 much rejoicing set the new building apart to the service of 
 Almighty God. 
 
 On December nth, 1873, Dr. Leavens married Miss Helen 
 J. Barry, one of his parishioners, who had recently moved with 
 her family from Boston. Four children blessed that union, two 
 sons and two daughters. Far be it from us to lift the curtain 
 and disclose much of that family life, but the brief glimpse we 
 have reveals the true father, loving to play with his children, 
 soothing them in their childish troubles and availing himself 
 of every opportunity to impart instruction in the home or when 
 on their walks. He always found his greatest happiness and 
 inspiration in the society of wife and children. Is it any wonder 
 that his home drew near to heaven and that God's peace was 
 there? Sorrow entered that home and overwhelmed the father 
 and mother when their third child, a boy of fourteen months, 
 suddenly left them one night for the home beyond. The child 
 was unspeakably dear to them and for a while they were stunned 
 at the thought of the broken family circle, but they learned much 
 while in the " valley of weeping " and a new sympathy, ever 
 after, flowed from that home toward those in sorrow, and re- 
 vealed that God was answering prayer in making his servant 
 more useful to his fellow men. 
 
 Slowly, yet surely, the influence of the church and its pas- 
 tor deepened its hold upon the city with the passing years. As 
 the work enlarged wise councils prevailed, and, in the year 1885, 
 the property, which in 1870 had cost more than $15,000, was sold 
 for $6,500, and with the proceeds the congregation purchased the 
 present site at Passaic avenue and Grove street. 
 
 Under the energetic management of the board of trustees, the 
 fine brown stone edifice, the congregation's present home, was 
 erected and furnished at a cost of $30,000 and was ready for 
 occupancy on the first Sunday in January, 1887. Six years after 
 the property adjacent and fronting on Grove street, now the 
 Manse, was purchased and in 1897 the Sunday School Hall was 
 erected and the interior of the church renovated. In 1899 the 
 indebtedness was removed so that the entire property, complete 
 in every detail, was free and clear from all incumbrance. 
 
FIIiST I'RESr.YTElUAX CIIllUU, PASSAll'. .MOW .JKHSKY. 
 
37 
 
 Did this church and pastor rise to the wondrous opportunity 
 thus given them? As we look at the life of the First Presby- 
 terian Church of Passaic we see in a very real sense the life of 
 Philo F. Leavens. His pastorate has been golden, and it would 
 be impossible to estimate the wealth of moral and spiritual uplift 
 of which Dr. Leavens has been the fountain head. His ministry 
 was blessed from the very first. From a handful of members, 
 his church has grown to be one of the largest and most influen- 
 tial in Passaic. Through slowly developing civic affairs, through 
 times of stringency in finance, through apathy often, and again, 
 through religious fervor. Dr. Leavens has led his people to fore- 
 handedness, to strength, to power, to great usefulness. He pos- 
 sessed largely the missionary spirit — no doubt the great secret 
 of his power and success. He cared for his own, but he was 
 anxious for the spread of the Gospel far and wide. In the early 
 days, prior to 1873, the church took a lively interest in the Dun- 
 dee chapel and this work was carried on with great success, and 
 Grace Presbyterian church is still a successful work, though it 
 was found necessary to change its location and name. The First 
 church extended encouragement and contributed members to 
 the enterprising Presbyterian church organized in Garfield, and 
 in later years it has organized a work of great value in the bor- 
 ough of Wallington, which is slowly but surely establishing 
 itself in that place as a power for good. 
 
 The rising congregations about the mother church testify 
 to the breadth of Dr. Leavens' mind and the goodness of his 
 heart. He longed for the universal spread of the gospel of 
 peace and goodwill, and he labored with his great heart and 
 large brain to bring about that result. He was recognized by 
 church officials as being thoroughly conversant with both home 
 and foreign missionary literature, and his historic studies in 
 many lines of human activity made him far-seeing and very use- 
 ful as an adviser in secular affairs. As a preacher he was pro- 
 found, but the warm blood of his character enabled him to get 
 close to the hearts of his people and deliver a message that the 
 city needed. His private life may be described by a term which 
 he himself used once in a sermon, "a symphony of prayer," to 
 which may be added the good works it is known that he did 
 and the good deeds which he did but which will never be known. 
 
 During his long residence in Passaic Dr. Leavens was asso- 
 
38 
 
 ciated with every movement for the welfare of the city and its 
 people. He took a leading part in the establishment of the Pas- 
 saic Home and Orphan Asylum Association, the pioneer chari- 
 table organization in the city. Throughout its history he was 
 chairman of its advisory board. He was deeply interested in 
 the organization of the Young Men's Christian Association and 
 has kept a fatherly watch over it since its inception. He was 
 one of the founders of the Charity Organization Society and in 
 this way be has kept in touch with the noble work of the Union 
 Benevolent Society, a work which he had already assisted for 
 many years. His private charities were numberless, and doubt- 
 less thousands could testify to the debt they owe to Dr. Leavens. 
 The charitable work which, perhaps, lay closest to his heart, was 
 that of the General Hospital. He was one of the board of gov- 
 ernors and a member of the finance committee. The affairs of 
 this organization have always weighed heavily upon him. His 
 pen always wrote the annual reports and many of the appeals 
 for financial support were indited by him. 
 
 Dr. Leavens always manifested a deep interest in educa- 
 tion and at a critical period for the Passaic schools he was presi- 
 dent of the board of education, being a member of that board 
 in 1 88 1 and 1882 and again from 1892 to 1894. In times of 
 doubt and hesitancy his opinion was always sought and no bat- 
 tle for municipal betterment has ever been waged without his 
 advice and active assistance. His silent vote was for the Repub- 
 lican party, to which he has acknowledged allegiance since, as 
 a boy, he shouted for Fremont and cast his first suffrage for 
 Abraham Lincoln. He often confessed to a degree of irritation 
 at the clerical restraint which kept him out of the stir and battle 
 of politics, but this was due to his intense desire for civic 
 righteousness, not to any longing for the life of a politician. 
 
 The influence which Dr. Leavens exerted among his brother 
 clergymen was very great, not only in the city of his residence, 
 but also in the State. In the Presbytery of Jersey City he served 
 at different times on the more important committees and for 
 many years was chairman of Home Missions, the committee hav- 
 ing charge of new and growing churches in the territory cov- 
 ered by this Presbytery. His far-seeing vision and broad 
 scholarship, his wondrous gentleness of spirit and deep humility 
 made him a tower of strength to one in trouble or perplexity 
 
39 
 
 and his council seemed to be that of a man who had inquired 
 at the oracles of God. Were principle assailed none was more 
 fearless in its defense than he, yet the true courtesy and broad 
 charity of the man was so manifest that even an opponent would 
 be led to admire and bow before that courage which stood for 
 the right as God led him to see it. Such a work and character 
 as his could not be hidden and in 1888 the University of Vermont 
 recognized and honored her distinguished son by conferring 
 upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and in 1904 the 
 Synod of New Jersey honored him by placing him at the head 
 of the home mission work in the State. Rarely has one been 
 called to a position for which he was better prepared than Dr. 
 Leavens, and as we think of him and of what might have been 
 we stand amazed at God's dealings in calling him away. 
 
 Three times in the course of his busy life he crossed the 
 ocean to visit the Old World, and the inspiration received and the 
 information gained was always at the service of his fellow men. 
 
 As a writer Dr. Leavens was clear and forceful, abreast of 
 the times, with a style peculiar to himself. He was a member 
 of the American Society of Church History and of the American 
 Academy of Political and Social Science, and the many articles 
 from his pen in the magazines and missionary periodicals were 
 widely read. His little book " Planting of the Kingdom " had 
 a wide run among the Presbyterian churches, and his last work 
 on " The Leavens Name, Including Levings," reveals a won- 
 derful skill in research worthy of the man's full powers. 
 
 The years pass swiftly, each filled with a service of ministry 
 to others. No time now for brooding or self-introspection. The 
 King's business requires haste and the servant is eager to obey. 
 As one looks back over the last few years of Dr. Leavens' life 
 one realizes by its strenuousness that he recognized that the time 
 was short. 
 
 In 1900 at Christmas time a severe illness laid him aside 
 for a while and it was feared that the end had come, but God 
 planned otherwise and after a brief rest he resumed work with 
 renewed vigor. 
 
 In the latter part of December, 1904, Dr. Leavens contracted 
 a cold. He thought nothing of it at first and continued work 
 with his usual energy but it seemed to increase its hold upon 
 
40 
 
 him, and when, on December i8th, he entered the pulpit it was 
 with the greatest difficulty to himself that he conducted the ser- 
 vices. Though not alarmed about his condition he met his ap- 
 pointments during the week with increasing weakness. Dr. 
 Leavens was not a man to give up easily, but each succeeding 
 engagement left him with less strength for the next as he gathered 
 himself together to meet the call. On Friday of that week he 
 thought it wise to seek his bed, hoping that a rest would enable 
 him to conduct the Christmas services the following Sabbath. 
 
 The next day, however, he was worse and it was found neces- 
 sary to secure a preacher for that occasion. On Sunday morn- 
 ing, pneumonia developed. Nurses familiar with the disease 
 were immediately secured and his faithful physician. Dr. F. F. 
 C. Demarest advised a consultation, and called in Dr. Percy H. 
 Terhune of Passaic. 
 
 Ever mindful of his wife and her constant thought of him, 
 Dr. Leavens called her to his bedside at this time and, with 
 great difficulty yet clearly, said, "I am in God's hands. He 
 knows the issue of this illness and I am willing to trust Him. I 
 know He will do what is right." It is not for us to attempt to de- 
 scribe those moments as husband and wife together faced the pos- 
 sible will of God and bowed in submission to the Eternal One. 
 
 So suddenly had he been stricken that on Sabbath morning the 
 congregation learned for the first time that their pastor was 
 ill. Their sorrow and anxiety were intense as a bulletin sent 
 from the sick room, at the close of the morning service, an- 
 nounced the seriousness of his illness. On Monday his condi- 
 tion continued so grave that it was thought wise to call in a 
 specialist, and Dr. Janeway of New York was sent for. He 
 agreed with the local physicians that Dr. Leavens' condition 
 was critical and that the chances for his recovery were most 
 slender. As the different members of his family arrived and 
 gathered about the bedside of their father, he had a word and 
 a smile for each one. 
 
 Everything that human skill could do for his comfort and 
 relief was done. Dr. Demarest was almost constantly at his 
 bedside watching every change. The faithful nurses, the de- 
 voted wife rarely left him as the hours of that Monday wore on. 
 
 During the afternoon his wife, as she bent over him would be 
 rewarded by his accustomed smile. At other times the watchers 
 
41 
 
 would see the lips move and hear his voice saying, " Come, 
 come," as he gazed at scenes not of earth. 
 
 Towards evening there was a slight improvement in the pulse 
 that offered some encouragement to the anxious ones, but heart 
 failure set in suddenly and even as they were watching, the call 
 came and he saw the Light and caught the thrill of heavenly 
 joy as he entered into the presence of his Lord, 
 
 As we stand in the shadows gazing after him shall we faint 
 or be discouraged? Nay, we look upward and forward; for 
 with the Pilgrim of old, "Just as the gates were opened to let 
 them in, I looked in after them, and behold, the city shone like 
 the sun, the streets also were all paved with gold, and in them 
 walked many men with crowns on their heads, palms in their 
 hands, and golden harps, to praise withal. And after that they 
 shut up the gates; which when I had seen, I wished myself 
 among them." 
 
^be jfuneral Service. 
 
 On Thursday, December 29th, at 1 1 :30 A. M., the family gath- 
 ered in the parlor where lay the body of him who had been the in- 
 spiration of that home. Prayer was offered by the Rev. James 
 S. Young of Garfield, New Jersey. After a last look upon the 
 face of their beloved one, the casket was closed and, preceded 
 by the funeral director and Mr, Young, it was lifted to the 
 shoulders of the bearers and slowly carried from the Manse to 
 the church, where it was placed before the pulpit, the officers 
 acting as guard of honor. From that moment till the hour for 
 the service, a constantly increasing throng passed to pay the 
 last tribute of love and respect to their friend and pastor. 
 
 People in every walk of life were represented in that com- 
 pany whose grief gave eloquent tribute to the love and rever- 
 ence they felt towards him who, with the touch of immortality 
 visible in his face, seemed to rest in peaceful sleep. 
 
 As the hour of service drew near, the church was quietly 
 filled with parishioners ; members of the Presbytery of Jersey 
 City, and of the Pastor's Association; the Officials of the city; 
 representatives from the Synod of New Jersey and from the 
 various organizations with which Dr. Leavens had been con- 
 nected. 
 
 At 2 o'clock the soft strains of the organ were heard and 
 the congregation rose as the officiating clergymen, the Rev. 
 Charles Herr, D. D., of Jersey City, the Rev. Fisher Howe 
 Booth of Tenafly, and the Rev. James S. Young of Garfield, fol- 
 lowed by the honorary bearers and the immediate relatives and 
 friends, passed slowly up the aisle. 
 
 According to an express wish of Dr. Leavens in a conversa- 
 tion a few months prior to his death, no address was made but 
 the beautiful Anglican service for the burial of the dead was 
 used. Special prayers were offered by Dr. Herr and Mr. Booth. 
 At the conclusion of the service, the choir rendered the follow- 
 ing verses from one of his favorite hymns : 
 
43 
 
 For thee, O dear, dear Country, 
 Mine eyes their vigils keep; 
 For very love, beholding 
 Thy happy name, they weep. 
 The mention of thy glory 
 Is unction to the breast. 
 And medicine in sickness. 
 And love, and life, and rest. 
 
 Oh, sweet and blessed Country, 
 The home of God's elect! 
 Oh, sweet and blessed Country, 
 That eager hearts expect! 
 Jesus, in mercy bring us 
 To that dear land of rest; 
 Who art, with God the Father, 
 And Spirit, ever blest. 
 
 After the benediction, the casket was lifted to the shoulders 
 of the bearers and borne from the church, followed by the 
 funeral cortege. 
 
 As the sun was setting all that was mortal of Dr. Leavens 
 was, with the words of the Apostles' Creed and a simple Com- 
 mittal service, laid to rest in the family plot in Cedar Lawn 
 Cemetery till the resurrection morn. 
 
flDemorial Service* 
 
 A large company of parishioners and friends gathered at the 
 First Presbyterian Church on the evening of January 19, 1905, 
 to do honor to the memory of the late Rev. Dr. Philo French 
 Leavens, first minister of the church and for 38 years its pas- 
 tor. The memorial service was prompted by the great love 
 with which Dr. Leavens was universally regarded, and the out- 
 pouring of sorrowing people was a fitting tribute to the noble 
 dead. 
 
 The Rev. James S. Young, pastor of the Garfield Presby- 
 terian Church, and moderator of session, presided at the memo- 
 rial service. After an organ voluntary by Ernest R. Moody, organ- 
 ist and choirmaster of the church, the church choir rendered an 
 anthem, " Crossing the Bar," by Barnby. Prayer was offered 
 by the Rev. N. S. Becker, pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church, 
 and the Rev. J. H. Whitehead, pastor of the North Reformed 
 Church, read the Scripture lesson. Psalm xxiii and St. John 
 xiv:i-4, 25-29. After the singing of the hymn, "Servant of 
 God, Well Done," Dr. Charles A. Church, an elder of the First 
 Methodist Church, was introduced to speak of Dr. Leavens' life 
 and work as a citizen. Dr. Church said: 
 
 Doctor Xeavens' Xite an& Morft as a Citiaen* 
 
 By Charles A. Church, M. D., Passaic. 
 
 " Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, 
 And the sound of a voice that is still ! " 
 
 The sentiment of these beautiful lines of Tennyson must 
 find an echo in the heart of every one present at this memorial 
 service to-night, and particularly in the heart of every one 
 
45 
 
 who is accustomed to statedly worship here, for there have 
 been few occasions since the organization of this Church 
 when a congregation has met within the walls where it was 
 accustomed to worship and that voice has not been heard and 
 that touch felt. Doctor Leavens is not dead. As I stepped 
 to the telephone on that last night of his upon the earth, 
 rang the bell and placed the receiver to my ear, I heard 
 these words : "Doctor Leavens has passed away." Not dead — 
 just stepped behind the curtain which separates time from 
 eternity; it seems to me, if I should speak to him, he would 
 answer me, but the conditions are reversed now — he would 
 hear me, but I could not hear him. 
 
 In a note received from Mrs. Leavens by Mrs. Church a 
 few weeks after his passing away she said, "We know that he 
 lives in his influence and in his work," and in these he will 
 live on and on. 
 
 The translation of Doctor Leavens reminds me of the 
 translation of Elijah. On that last night at eight o'clock, as 
 the physicians, looking for some warning or something hope- 
 ful in his countenance, saw what they thought to be possibly 
 signs of returning strength and life, and feeling encouraged, 
 they undertook to give encouragement to those around him. 
 But, at twenty minutes past eight o'clock the chariot had 
 stopped at his bedside and he had stepped in and vanished out 
 of their sight, and left us with our questionings and wonder- 
 ings. And I wonder to-night if the look that the physicians 
 saw upon his face at that time was not the reflection of the 
 chariot which he saw, by the eye of faith or the inner con- 
 sciousness or whatever it is in us that sees beyond the vision 
 of the human eye, and knew that his warfare was over and 
 his victory won. And I wonder who caught his mantle as 
 it fell. 
 
 But I am to speak of Doctor Leavens as a citizen. He was 
 a citizen of Passaic — a citizen of no mean city, we think. And 
 I do not think that I overstep the bounds of temperate speech 
 when I say that he was her foremost citizen. There was no 
 duty of citizenship that he did not perform. He went to the 
 polls and expressed his opinion on the great questions of the 
 day. When called upon he did not hesitate to discharge the 
 duties of public office. We are proud to-day of the public 
 
46 
 
 school system of this city. We love to have men come from 
 a distance, go into our schools and take away our ideas and 
 our thoughts to utilize them in their own homes. The present 
 condition of the schools of this city has grown out of the work 
 that Doctor Leavens did in the School Board years ago. 
 Sometimes he was criticized for what he did, but the results 
 have borne out all that he did, and we are grateful to him 
 to-day for his work in that direction. 
 
 But the great work of Doctor Leavens in this community 
 must ever be this Church, which has never had a pastor but 
 him. This is his life work. This will be his monument. You 
 may pile stone upon stone until they pierce the clouds, but 
 this Church will always be his monument. Every member 
 that has come into it from its organization up to the time 
 of his passing away (almost a thousand) has been welcomed 
 into it by the sound of his voice and received by the touch 
 of his hand. Some day you will put his name, in memoriam, 
 upon one of the windows of the Church, possibly over on this 
 west side — I would love to think of it there, where the gor- 
 geous sunsets of the western sky would paint it into beauty 
 and glory, and you could never forget him. 
 
 But his work was not alone for this Church. The Young 
 Men's Christian Association of our city bears his marks. To 
 those who have known the inside of the Young Men's 
 Christian Association from its organization until the present 
 time, four men will stand up prominently. They are : A. Swan 
 Brown, William L Barry, David Carlisle and Doctor Leavens. 
 A. Swan Brown was the locomotive that kept puffing and 
 pushing and pulling and kept the wheels in motion. William 
 I. Barry made it possible to accept the ofifer of Edo Kip and 
 secure the lot upon which the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
 ciation building now stands. David Carlisle, with his business 
 tact and ability, gathered together the scattered interests and 
 wove them into brick and mortar and piled them up on 
 Lexington Avenue where they now stand. But, ever present, 
 restraining over-enthusiasm, strengthening and upholding 
 where there was weakness, and stimulating and encouraging 
 when there was depression, in the work, was the voice, the 
 wisdom and the influence of the man we mourn to-night, 
 
47 
 
 Doctor Leavens. His work in the Young Men's Christian 
 Association has been of inestimable value. 
 
 In the charitable work of this city Doctor Leavens has 
 always taken a prominent part. The Passaic Home and 
 Orphan Asylum has seen his work and felt the influence of 
 his power from its organization up to the present time, and 
 since the organization of the Advisory Board Doctor Leavens 
 has been Chairman of that Board, and always interested, 
 always wise and always helpful. The Union Benevolent 
 Society v/as organized before he came to Passaic, but he has 
 taken an active part in it since he came, and his work and his 
 influence have been felt there. The Charity Organization 
 grew out of the desire to make the Union Benevolent Society 
 more useful. The Charity Organization was Doctor Leavens' 
 effort to solve what has always seemed to me to be an 
 insolvable problem — how to help the poor and not to injure 
 them. It has been often said, you can pauperize any man 
 with a loaf of bread. The man who has once eaten the bread 
 of idleness and charity will never again, willingly, eat the 
 bread of industry and effort. They have in what is known as 
 Beggardom, at the lower end of the Bowery in New York, 
 v/here the city beggars congregate, an adage among them- 
 selves, which says, "Once a beggar, always a beggar." I 
 saw only a few days ago in the Saturday Evening Post, told 
 as a true incident, of a man, who had a good business, but left 
 his store one night and locked it without having a nickel in 
 his pocket to pay his car fare home. Not wishing to unlock 
 his store again, he asked some one on the street to give him 
 five cents. It came so easily that he asked afterwards for 
 other five cents, and finally gave up his business and became 
 a regular beggar. It is a difficult problem to solve, but Doctor 
 Leavens has done his part towards its solution. 
 
 Last, but not least, of the work that Doctor Leavens has 
 done — last because undertaken later in his life, but not least 
 because heavy upon his heart — was his work for the General 
 Hospital. The financial affairs of that institution have caused 
 him great anxiety. He has made effort after effort to try 
 and induce the people to do more than they had ever done 
 before to sustain that hospital. I may be a heretic. I guess 
 I am. But it seems to me that if we cannot do both, if we 
 
4.8 
 
 should build less expensive churches and support our hos- 
 pitals better, our efforts would be more pleasing to God and 
 more helpful to the people. Something has been said in this 
 community, particularly in the public press, about establishing 
 an endowment to be known as the Leavens Memorial Endow- 
 ment Fund of the Passaic General Hospital. I can think of 
 nothing that the people of this community can do which 
 would please him better, were he where he could see the work, / 
 than just such an endowment as would leave the hospital free 
 from the necessity of continual begging for its support. It 
 is very strange to me sometimes why a hospital is so poorly 
 supported, but still, if you stop to think of it, there are good 
 reasons for it. The people do not understand the work of a 
 hospital. They go into the hospital possibly on visiting days, 
 and there see a nice row of clean beds, the counterpanes 
 placed upon^them at a perfect angle and the pillows straight- 
 ened out to a nicety, as the nurses are taught to make them 
 up, and they see pretty girls, becomingly dressed, with white 
 collars, white cuffs and a white apron, and they look upon that 
 as the work of a hospital. That is not the work of a 
 hospital ; that is a hospital on dress parade. It 
 has about as much to do with hospital work as our 
 annual firemen's parade has to do with putting out 
 fires and rescuing people and saving property. Go into 
 the hospital in the morning, when the iEilthy sores have to be 
 dressed and when the soiled bed linen has to be changed; 
 go over into the homes of the poor and see those that lie upon 
 beds of pain and sorrow and languishing in some little room 
 where they cannot get air and where the attendants cannot 
 get to them to care for them, and then see them transferred 
 to the hospital with its comforts and conveniences ; or go 
 into some hovel and try to help some mother who is striving 
 in the pains of childbirth on a bed of rags, and then see her 
 transferred to the comforts and the blessings and the con- 
 veniences which a hospital can furnish, and you will see 
 something of the reason why Doctor Leavens, who saw all 
 these things, was in favor of, and tried to do so much for, 
 the upbuilding and maintenance of the hospital. Another 
 thing that is so important is the surgical part of the work. 
 There is no possibility of doing in any private home, no matter 
 
49 
 
 how wealthy, what can be done in a hospital in surgical 
 work ; it has not the conveniences and the conveniences can- 
 not well be put into a private house. A building must be 
 made purposely for it, and rooms set apart, and expensive 
 paraphernalia installed, before the great work can be done 
 that our hospitals are doing. I tell you the surgical work of 
 the hospital at the present time is an important part of its 
 work. So many deaths from one single disease, appendi- 
 citis, do we read about in the papers nowadays ; and almost 
 every life that is sacrificed to that disease might be saved by 
 utilizing in time the paraphernalia and the arrangements for 
 that purpose in a well equipped hospital. I could talk longer 
 about the hospital, which Doctor Leavens loved so much and 
 for which he worked so hard. 
 
 Dr. Leavens' life was to me like a beautifully cut diamond. 
 Such a diamond has many sides, and every side is polished, 
 and every side reflects light, but after all the real value is 
 in the diamond itself. Doctor Leavens' life had many sides, 
 and every side was a polished side, and every side reflected 
 the light of his Master, but the real value of the life was in 
 the manhood of the man and in the man himself. 
 
 You cannot estimate to-day the value, the priceless value, 
 of such a life in a community like this. We think Passaic is 
 a clean city with a clean government and clean people, and 
 it is; and how much Doctor Leavens' life in our midst has had 
 to do with its cleanness no one on this side of the Judg- 
 ment will be able to tell, but in this day of commercialism 
 and gold, the example of such a man and the personality of 
 such a man, and the influence of such a man upon the youth 
 that are growing up in our community, are priceless treasures 
 which can never be told, teaching them, as it does, that there 
 is something better than wealth, something better even than 
 political power, and that something is Christian character. 
 
 Following Dr. Church, the Rev. Dr. Charles D. Shaw, for 
 30 years pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Paterson, 
 spoke of Dr. Leavens as a Presbyter. Dr. Shaw said : 
 
50 
 Dr. Sbaw's BDt)rcsB. 
 
 " The earliest ecclesiastical relation held by the Rev. Dr. 
 Leavens to the Presbyterian Church in this vicinity was as a 
 member of the Presbytery of Newark, from the year 1867 to 
 the year 1870. The division between Old School and New 
 School was then in existence. The Old School Presbytery of 
 Passaic and the New School Presbytery of Newark divided this 
 neighborhood between them. In Paterson there was an Old 
 School Church, the First, and a New School congregation, the 
 Second. Otherwise, in this region there were but few Presby- 
 terian organizations. 
 
 " When the good people of Passaic felt that the time had 
 come to establish a Presbyterian Church in their growing com- 
 munity, their sympathies were with the younger body, and they 
 asked organization at the hands of the Newark Presbytery. Dr. 
 Leavens, then fresh from his theological studies was ordained 
 and installed as pastor, and became a member of the Presbytery 
 of Newark. 
 
 " The writer has no personal knowledge of the doings of the 
 next three years, but from his acquaintance with conditions then 
 existing he judges that there was no particular opportunity for 
 a young man and a stranger to make his mark upon that large 
 Presbytery. The powerful churches of the city of Newark, 
 manned by pastors of large ability and wide experience, naturally 
 controlled all legislation and all action, and the voice of a new- 
 comer was seldom heard, and little regarded. 
 
 "The spirit of the times, however, was the spirit of reunion, 
 and in the year 1870 the two branches of the church were joined 
 together. This made needful a readjustment of presbyterial 
 and synodical lines. The three counties of Hudson, Passaic and 
 Bergen were classed together as the Presbytery of Jersey City, 
 and all Presbyterian clergymen residing within those limits were 
 required to take their membership in the new Presbytery and to 
 render to it their allegiance and their service. 
 
 " Into this Presbytery I came in the autumn of 1874 ; there- 
 fore, I am able to speak from my own personal knowledge of 
 Dr. Leavens as a Presbyter for the past thirty years. 
 
 "While he was always faithful in attendance upon Presby- 
 
51 
 
 tery, and always deeply interested in its affairs, there was a long 
 time in which he took no prominent part and laid no claim to 
 especial leadership. This was because, with a modest deference 
 for age and experience, he courteously gave way to older men, 
 at whose feet he was content to sit and whose advice he was 
 willing to follow. 
 
 "Yet then, as always, he was attentive, alert, clear-sighted, 
 watchful, having deep and positive convictions ; recognized and 
 honored as a wise and faithful supporter of every worthy cause. 
 
 "As time went on, and the older Presbyters passed away from 
 duty to glory, Dr. Leavens was more fully recognized as a wise 
 counsellor and a judicious administrator. These qualities were 
 brought into clearest view and widest usefulness when the sys- 
 tem of Synodical Home Missions was established and the Synod 
 of New Jersey undertook the support and guidance of all the 
 missionary churches within her borders. From the very be- 
 ginning Dr. Leavens was a member of the committee having 
 charge of Synodical Home Missions within the borders of this 
 Presbytery, and in that capacity he rendered most excellent ser- 
 vice to the cause. During that time he was active, and in a 
 very high degree instrumental, in establishing the church at Gar- 
 field and the mission at Dundee. 
 
 " The Garfield church had extremely small beginnings. It 
 was organized with a membership of fourteen persons. So 
 dubious was the outlook that the committee was by no means 
 positive as to the wisdom of going forward with the organiza- 
 tion. But, largely owing to the courage and hope of Dr. 
 Leavens, the step was taken and the little church was launched 
 upon its feeble life. Many of you here present know how fine 
 a success has been achieved in that field under the faithful shep- 
 herding of its present pastor. But the man who, in the face of 
 opposition, weakness and discouragement, opens a door of op- 
 portunity and usefulness should not be forgotten in the reckon- 
 ings of triumph. If, on that night of indecision and trembling, 
 Dr. Leavens had said : 'Brethren, our wisdom lies in retreat- 
 ing,' there would have been no Presbyterian church in Garfield 
 to-day. But his voice was for advance, and the forward move- 
 ment ended in victory. 
 
 " The Dundee Mission grew out of the discernment, by the 
 Passaic church and its pastor, of a great and urgent opportunity. 
 
52 
 
 Religious services were established in a rapidly growing and in- 
 dustrial community ; a large Sunday-school followed, a con- 
 gregation was quickly gathered, a building was erected and a 
 pastor installed. Everything flourished for a while, when an 
 unforeseen change set in. The great influx of immigrants from 
 Eastern Europe, speaking foreign languages and mostly hold- 
 ing a different faith, fairly swamped the Dundee church. It 
 was found necessary to sell the building, find another site and 
 erect a new edifice. This rendered inevitable a change of name, 
 and Grace Church of Passaic stands on our roll instead of Dun- 
 dee. In the good accomplished in that enterprise, from its incep- 
 tion as a mission until the present time. Dr. Leavens had a great 
 share ; how great will never be known until the books of eternal 
 record are opened before the great white throne, 
 
 " After a few years of faithful and fruitful service upon the 
 Home Mission Committee Dr. Leavens became its chairman. 
 His intense nature then concentrated itself upon the work of 
 aiding and advising old churches and of discovering and occupy- 
 ing new fields for Gospel cultivation. 
 
 " Of course, it is to be remembered that as every command- 
 ing general has efficient and invaluable help from other officers, 
 so Dr. Leavens was greatly aided by the strong committee of 
 which he was chairman. A leader without followers has little 
 power. Dr. Leavens had brave and faithful followers, and he 
 led them into success. His enthusiasm, his devotion, his holy 
 zeal, his consecrated enterprise and his clear business sense were 
 of the greatest value in the delicate decisions wherein duty to 
 the Presbytery and to the individual congregation had to be 
 weighed and measured and adjusted, so as to do right to all 
 and wrong to none. 
 
 " Dr. Leavens never neglected his own congregation while 
 performing his varied duties and carrying his various burdens 
 as a Presbyter. Probably many persons only knew him as the 
 diligent and honored pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in 
 Passaic. But every aid-receiving church within our bounds 
 knew and trusted and revered him as a father and a friend in 
 the Lord, to whom they told their troubles and were comforted, 
 and whose strong hand lifted them over the hard places and 
 led them out of dark places into the light. 
 
 " The Synod of New Jersey understood his worth and valued 
 
S3 
 
 his ability in these directions. At its last meeting, in October, 
 the interests of Synodical Home Missions were readjusted, and 
 Dr. Leavens was virtually placed at the head of the work in the 
 entire State of New Jersey. When he had just reached this top 
 and crown of opportunity for extended usefulness God said: 
 'It is enough, thou good and faithful servant. Come up higher.' 
 He is gone, and we stand amazed, looking up to heaven. 
 
 "Not only in Home Missions, but in Foreign Missions also, 
 Dr. Leavens was one of the best informed persons in our whole 
 church. His interest in this great cause was unflagging. 
 
 "The life of Dr. Leavens as a Presbyter may be thus char- 
 acterized: He was very faithful and diligent in business, neg- 
 lecting nothing, forgetting nothing, ever watchful for new op- 
 portunities to glorify his Master and to do good to souls ; wise 
 in counsel, judicious in action ; looking upward, moving on- 
 ward ; a man of God, thoroughly furnished for every good 
 work." 
 
 Here the congregation sang the hymn "Ten Thousand Times 
 Ten Thousand," and then the Rev. Joseph Addison Jones, for- 
 merly of this city, but now of Perry, N. Y., whom Dr. Leavens 
 called his "son in the ministry," spoke of Dr. Leavens as a friend 
 and pastor. Mr, Jones said: 
 
 IRep. jflDr. Jones' BDbress. 
 
 "The work of the minister embraces a two- fold sphere; the 
 pulpit and the parish. In the pulpit he is the instructor of his 
 people; in the parish he becomes their pastor and friend, shep- 
 herd and father. How efficiently Dr. Leavens filled this pulpit 
 you know well. The note of culture, the legitimacy of Scriptural 
 interpretation, the freshness of thought, the freedom from arti- 
 ficial phrases, the varied forms of expression, the compelling 
 power of noble words and nobler manhood, the glow and flash 
 of the love of Christ in face and eye ; these all were characteris- 
 tic of him as he gave utterance to the truths of the Gospel arous- 
 ing men and women to higher thinking and holier living. No 
 man could sit under his preaching without receiving intellectual 
 stimulus, moral quickening and spiritual uplift. This church 
 
54 
 
 is a monument, not to a sensational, but to a scholarly and spirit- 
 ual ministry. 
 
 " But the man was back of the preacher. He was such a 
 preacher because he was such a man. Once he told me of the 
 ideal he set before himself at the beginning of his ministry. It 
 was to do everything that would make him the best man and 
 minister ; and to lay aside everything that would hinder that end. 
 Being a minister he was not less a man. A student of literature 
 he was also a student of life. A master of books he was also 
 a master of hearts. He was not an ascetic, separating himself 
 from men, breathing the atmosphere of a cloistered retreat. He 
 mingled with men and women in their crowded life, bringing 
 to them the refreshing cheer and solid comfort of a real religion. 
 I have come into contact with many ministers in city and coun- 
 try and I have yet to find another who knew so thoroughly, 
 and ministered so faithfully to his people and parish, as Dr. 
 Leavens. Some hold that the demands of pulpit preparation 
 exempt them from pastoral work. Others delegate to assist- 
 ants the visiting of the poor and needy, the ministrations to the 
 sick and sorrowing. He never did. Though often urged to 
 allow others to relieve him of some of his pastoral cares, he 
 always refused to entertain the proposition. A call for ser- 
 vice from the humblest member of the congregation, or dweller 
 in the city, was to him a call to duty, and his great heart would 
 not permit him to delegate his duty to another. 
 
 " To-night I speak as one of you, for he was my pastor and 
 friend as he Avas yours. Need I recall how lavishly he spent 
 himself for our sakes? He entered into every phase of our life. 
 He rejoiced with us in all our achievements. He mourned 
 with us in all our sorrows. When we were discouraged and 
 depressed he knew just the right word to say to us. If he did 
 not speak we saw his sympathy in his face and that helped us. 
 His fatherly love went out to every child that came into our 
 hearts and homes. And if, suddenly, the crib became empty 
 he stood by our side and we leaned upon him, and we always 
 found him most to us when we needed him most. Paraphras- 
 ing the words of another I may fittingly say that every baptism 
 baptised us into closer fellowship, every marriage married us 
 into closer union, every funeral that bore away our beloved 
 dead made stronger the bond of sympathy between us. Many 
 
55 
 
 of you have never known another pastor, you will never know 
 one of kindlier spirit. 
 
 " In his sermons he occasionally gave glimpses of his pas- 
 toral work. Some years ago in a sermon on ' The Bread of 
 Life' he told of calling upon a poor woman whose mind had been 
 affected by the loss of her baby. He described the poverty of 
 the home. Then he showed how much more Christlike it was 
 to relieve the suffering by providing bread for the nourish- 
 ment of the body, before offering the ' Bread of Life ' for the 
 strengthening of the soul. He was intensely practical and phil- 
 anthropic. He was never greater than when ministering with- 
 out a thought of condescension to some poor member of the 
 community. 
 
 " It was my privilege to accompany him at times when he 
 made a first call upon strangers. He would take in the situ- 
 ation at a glance. His opening words would put the people 
 at ease. He would lead the conversation in such a way as to 
 put himself in possession of the facts of the family history, pres- 
 ent circumstances and future prospects. When he left the 
 home he would be prepared to serve that family, tactfully and 
 helpfully, in all ways proper to a Christian minister. 
 
 " Not only are your homes and offices sacred because of his 
 calls and words there, but that study yonder is a sacred spot to 
 many a soul. There wavering men have found impulse to stead- 
 fast life. There wearied and baffled souls have found hope. 
 There men in the stress of business and under the burden of 
 financial responsibility have found strength to be true and patient 
 and brave. There anxious mothers have gone to ask his in- 
 terest in their sons. There young men passing through the 
 temptations and struggles of college life have unbosomed their 
 secrets and found a warm heart and a helping hand. There 
 some disturbed by doubts have found faith through contact with 
 a great life into which the spirit of God had truly entered. 
 
 "But the work of this church was only a part of his pastoral 
 care. People of strange race and alien tongue sought him in 
 their sorrow and found him ever ready to share their burdens. 
 Nothing human was alien to him. He has read the funeral ser- 
 vice in squalid rooms filled with people who understood not one 
 word he said, but they could not fail to understand the sin- 
 cere sympathy revealed in his fine, spiritual face. His door was 
 
56 
 
 open to all who needed his help. He belonged to the people. 
 The advantages of culture and social station which have made 
 smaller men aristocrats only served to broaden his sympathies. 
 He was a master-Christian, reincarnating in high degree the 
 sacrificial spirit of the Christ. He worked for others without 
 a thought of self. His ministry was a ministry of kindness 
 and encouragement and hopefulness. We shall never know the 
 number and range of his labors of love until we reach the land 
 of open vision. I feel that I have spoken more of the work than 
 of the man. 
 
 "But in the work the splendid outlines of the man stand 
 revealed. Counted by years his life did not cover the Psalm- 
 ist's allotment, but reckoned by its beneficent activities it covers 
 a century and more. For 
 
 " 'We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths, 
 In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
 We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives 
 Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.' 
 
 "What a friend he was! There are few nobler words in 
 human language than the words friend and friendship. There 
 are few spheres so difficult to fill as the sphere of friendship. 
 A biographer of Lincoln has said that one of the great presi- 
 dent's most admirable qualities of leadership was his immeas- 
 urable capacity for friendship. Any man who united with him 
 in his aim to 'save the Union' became his friend. So it was 
 with Dr. Leavens. His attractive personality drew men to 
 him and they yielded to the spell of his frank and true and 
 generous nature. They realized that his purpose was single — 
 to do good in Christ's name and for Christ's sake, and that he 
 was not seeking their praise or patronage. So they loved him 
 as a brother and father and followed his leadership. They 
 learned to repose great confidence in him in matters where much 
 wisdom and a strong grasp of facts were required. 
 
 " His friendships were not confined to men of mature years. 
 With increasing years his mind and sympathies remained youth- 
 ful and his circle of friends received constant recruits from 
 among the young. Because of his friendship many of us 
 younger men have found our lives doubled in all the faculties 
 of enjoyment and service. What undeveloped creatures some 
 
57 
 
 of us would have been without that genial touch which enfolded 
 us. Will you permit me here to pay grateful tribute to him 
 who was not ashamed to call me his " son in the ministry." Al- 
 most two years ago his hand was laid upon my head in the ordi- 
 nation vows of the Christian ministry. During the previous 
 twelve years he had been my friend and father. Quick to share 
 my aspirations ; resourceful in suggestion of ways and means 
 for reaching the desired end ; showing his joy at every advanc- 
 ing step ; never unduly lavish in praise ; always cautious and 
 just in his decisions ; in days of struggle giving zest with words 
 of hope; warning to keep steadily in view the chief end of all 
 education and experience, namely, efficient usefulness in the ser- 
 vice of the Master. On the night of my ordination among 
 many other words he said: 'Three terms, or propositions, have 
 been axiomatic with us all the way. One is the truth, the 
 vitality and the sufficiency of our Holy Scriptures. Another is 
 the reality and potentiality of sincere prayer to God. Still 
 another the over-brooding and in-dwelling of the ever-present 
 Spirit. In these is the hiding of power. In these is the foun- 
 tain of life. You will not forsake them ; you will surely keep 
 to them. In them is the ground of your own salvation, and in 
 them the living bread which you have to offer others. And now, 
 to bid you go, words fail us, the invention of words fails us, 
 and we fall back on words once spoken to apostles in a thrilling 
 situation, spoken from the lips of the angel of the Lord, and 
 in these borrowed words we bid you, 'Go, stand, and speak 
 to the people all the words of this life. And God be with you 
 to bless you.' 
 
 " My personal debt of gratitude to him can never be cal- 
 culated or expressed. Whenever I mentioned it he would say 
 in his generous manner: 'That was paid on the cross long 
 ago.' Whatever under the guidance and grace of God I may do 
 I lay without reserve at his feet. To me he was a friend indeed 
 and a father beloved. And what he was to me, he was, in other 
 ways, to many another young man. I have spoken of him as 
 I knew him. I can never say such things of another. Oh, 
 that a tithe of what can be said of him might be said of me 
 when I shall have exchanged service here for service yonder. 
 He has gone, but our mourning is turned into praising, because 
 the grace of God made him so good, and because he wrought 
 
58 
 
 so nobly for our welfare. His life was a gift direct from the 
 heart and hand of God, instinct with His power. Let us linger 
 lovingly over his life story. Let us seek to catch inspiration 
 from it. Let us learn from his life what we are to be and do 
 for good on earth. 
 
 " 'Down through our crowded walks and closer air, 
 O friend, how beautiful thy footsteps were! 
 'Twas but one step for those victorious feet 
 From their day's path unto the golden street.' " 
 
 Following Mr. Jones, the Rev. Leonard W. S. Stryker, pas- 
 tor of St. John's Episcopal Church, the last speaker of the even- 
 ing, addressed the congregation on Dr. Leavens as a Christian 
 man and scholar. Mr. Stryker said: 
 
 " It is a rare privilege to be present on such an occasion as 
 this when we are met together to do honor to the memory of 
 our chiefest citizen. 
 
 " And yet, for obvious reasons, it is impossible at this time, 
 or at any number of times, perhaps, to adequately express the 
 meaning of his great life, which to us seemed to touch at so 
 many points the circumference of that circle that marks the 
 outer edge of a full, well-rounded, complete human life. This, 
 and this only, is the cause of the regret I feel as I stand here 
 to-night to do my part as a young friend of an illustrious Chris- 
 tian man, 
 
 " Man's life consists of two parts ; the external and the 
 internal — that which lies on the surface to be seen of all men, 
 and that which lies hidden in the inner recesses of his being, 
 known only to the man himself and to his God. 
 
 " Our knowledge of men, therefore, must be imperfect and 
 partial. Believing that 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' 
 we infer that the external or surface life is indicative of the 
 character or real life that lies hidden beneath. How far this 
 estimate of character may be depended upon as a true one, our 
 own experiences teach us. But when we come to consider a 
 specific instance — a life par excellence of nobility and good- 
 
59 
 
 ness, we must admit that this judgment is but a feeble and 
 fragmentary presentation of the truth. 
 
 " A great, good man lives so that his right hand does not 
 know what his left hand doeth; in a measure, that is to say, 
 he himself does not know, and certainly does not remember as 
 a small man may, what he is and what good he does. This 
 being true of him whose memory we honor, it seems like an 
 irreverence to attempt to discover the real man. 
 
 " Some one in a brief, suggestive essay on 'Our Unpub- 
 lished Self says : 'The life of what we call a good man, one 
 who in the main has been dominated and directed by his noblest 
 part, may be compared as to its inner and outer features, with 
 the crust of the earth as related to its interior. The speech, 
 action and general career which we know and admire are the 
 flowers, fruit, and fair scenery of a surface beneath which — 
 beyond our ken — volcanic fires have raged.' But the time must 
 come when this hidden fire, which is self, must show itself, not, 
 as our figure would lead us to suppose, to spread ruin and desola- 
 tion, but to make us see its glory, feel its warmth, and be 
 helped by its power. That life, recently ended, shone forth 
 with extraordinary brilliancy and beauty and power in the 
 avenues and streets, in the highways and byways, in the homes 
 of the rich and of the poor of this city, showing us all what it 
 means to be a Christian man. 
 
 " But it is not possible to set down at once all the charac- 
 teristics of a Christian man ; they are too numerous, too dif- 
 ferent, too elusive. Of the many marks of his Christian man- 
 hood there are some that seem to stand out from among the 
 rest, and of these I mention two — bigness and gentleness. 
 
 " It was said of the late Henry Drummond that his mission 
 was not to be consistent, but true. This need not be taken as 
 a reflection in any way upon a man's loyalty to his standards or 
 belief. It points rather to a broad culture and a generous esti- 
 mate of men and things. It points back to the Christ, whose 
 teaching was meant to break down Jewish narrowness and false 
 consistency. How utterly foreign to the Christian manhood 
 of him in whose honor we are met here to-night, was anything 
 that stood for narrowness and smallness. It was his bigness 
 that everyone felt. This charactertistic drew men of all condi- 
 tions and opinions to him. To know him — nay merely to 
 
6o 
 
 meet him — was to love him. He was big enough to see and 
 to feel and to meet men of widely different opinions, and to 
 send them away conscious of the fact that they had been in 
 touch with one whose breadth in most cases greatly exceeded 
 their own. That much-abused word 'catholic' seems to have a 
 real meaning when we think of his spirit. 
 
 " And then gentleness. Poeta nascitur, non Ht. If it is 
 true that the poet is born, not made, so I believe it to be true 
 that the true gentleman is born, not made. It is not something 
 that may be regarded as the result of education and environ- 
 ment. It is not something that may be acquired. Into the 
 bone and fibre of his being it enters as the life-blood into his 
 body. So was he — let us separate the word — a gentle man. 
 Not a whit weak and vacillating, but gentle and tender because 
 he was so big and strong. Both in his private and public life 
 this trait was conspicuous. One who could not see, perhaps, as 
 others, his bigness, could note this. True gentleness can be 
 seen by the child, who cannot grasp the meaning of the expres- 
 sion — a catholic-minded man. Gentleness was born in him, 
 and in his mature manhood it blossomed like a flower of rare 
 fragrance and beauty. 
 
 " In that home which he adorned this, as I happen to know, 
 was seen in many ways. In his life as a husband and father, 
 in his conception of life in the home, in his conduct as one of 
 the family, and not as its head, this side of his Christian man- 
 hood was known in its fullness. And when he came out into the 
 world, where we knew him best, he was not different. Every- 
 where he went, the gentle man was seen. Quiet, not reserved, 
 dignified, not distant, gentle, not weak, he entered into that 
 larger family life of the city, giving to it freely and constantly 
 of the wisdom and the gentleness with which God had so richly 
 endowed him. Because of all this simple greatness of char- 
 acter we need not hesitate to say that we remember him as one 
 who deserves in a real sense the name of father. 
 
 " I have felt all along that there are many others who are 
 better qualified than I am to speak of him as a Christian man, 
 and I am more than ever convinced of this when I come to 
 speak of him as a scholar. In the nature of things, many know 
 more of his intellectual equipment, because of a longer and more 
 intimate acquaintance with him. 
 
6i 
 
 " The word scholar stands for two things — the learner and 
 the learned. The man to be known as a scholar must have 
 been, and must always be, a learner. Solid and enduring foun- 
 dation stones must first be laid upon which to rear the build- 
 ing. No lasting structure can be raised without this support. 
 It is something, then, to be able to turn back to the early years 
 of preparation for his lifework, and to mark in the record which 
 his own hand has left us the value he placed upon his school, 
 college and seminary life, and to learn from other sources the 
 remarkable shovv'ing he made therein. There seems to have 
 been little waste of time then, and those years of study were not 
 all of them passed amid ease and comfort. That work bore its 
 fruit in later years. We who knew him in his mature life 
 were made to feel, not only the presence of these foundation 
 stones, but to see the breadth and strength of the building that 
 rested upon them. He was keen, original, a student always, and 
 able to discuss — by no means a usual thing — doctrinal and eccle- 
 siastical matters intelligently and accurately with those whose 
 special training, theologically at least, was different from his 
 own. I am not able to state in what special subjects he may 
 have been a finished scholar, but I know that the accuracy and 
 varied character of his learning were such as to impress one 
 with the depth and breadth of his scholarship. Many can bear 
 witness to this. One could not feel that he was unfamiliar with 
 anything that was worthy of note. In the realm of pure the- 
 ology, in the sphere of modern Biblical research and criticism, 
 in all departments of religious thought, he was not found want- 
 ing. Nor was it a superficial knowledge he betrayed in any of 
 these things ; it was a knowledge that comes to a man of large 
 intellectual calibre, who has spent his life as a student, storing 
 away in an unusual mind the result of his careful, accurate 
 work. 
 
 "Yes, his was an unusual mind. And without this gift, 
 all the years of studious habits could not have produced the 
 scholar he was. It was his mental equipment that made him 
 a man of such rare judgment. 
 
 "His broad scholarship enabled him to weigh small things 
 and large in a way that a man of less learning could not 
 have done. And so his judgment was rarely at fault: and, 
 if I needed any counsel upon any subject I knew where I 
 
62 
 
 could find, not only an attentive ear, but a man who could 
 see further, probe deeper and reach a logical conclusion more 
 quickly than any other man I have ever known. 
 
 "Any estimate of the man as I knew him must include 
 bigness of heart and breadth of scholarship, coupled with 
 gentleness and depth. But these qualities show us, I believe, 
 that he had felt a finer touch than the best the world or man can 
 give. They tell us above all things that he knew Christ. And 
 what is the knowledge of Christ? It is not historical, merely, or 
 doctrinal, or intellectual, but personal. The difference between 
 the spiritual and personal knowledge and all other kinds of 
 knowledge of a person is as wide as that between acquaintance- 
 ship and friendship. Speaking of this difference, a recent writer 
 says that 'it may be said roughly to consist in this, that whilst 
 the intellectual knowledge of the facts about our friend tells 
 us what he has been and is to others, the spiritual knowledge 
 tells us what he is to us. The one is hearsay, the other is 
 personal experience.' He had long since discovered this dif- 
 ference, and to-day we speak of him as a Christman — a stronger 
 term, perhaps, at this moment, than Christian. 
 
 " We all acknowledge what a blessing this great life has 
 been to us. Let us also remember how near at one time in 
 his life that blessing came to be given to others. The truth is, 
 we never might have known him. How much more then ought 
 we to appreciate it now. He longed to spend his life in the 
 missionary field, and he shaped his life accordingly. But 
 through no fault of his own this had to be given up. He was 
 also offered a work that appealed to him strongly in another 
 way — a place in the faculty of his own university. Again, it 
 was not his fault that this also came to naught. It seemed 
 that God had other work for him, and in his own characteristic 
 way he records his experience at this time in his life, and his 
 purpose to do the work to which God should call him. So 
 he came to this city. 
 
 " Human life is measured by its quality, not by its quantity. 
 It is what a man is, not his age, that counts. Much the same 
 thing can be said of good men, of young and mature years. 
 You have asked me to speak of Dr. Leavens. I cannot say 
 more. From my heart I know that he whom we loved was big 
 
63 
 
 and gentle, broad and charitable, self-sacrificing and devoted, 
 pure and blameless." 
 
 The hymn, " For All Thy Saints, Who From Their Labors 
 Rest," was then sung, after which prayer was offered by the 
 Rev. Dr. A. H, Ball, pastor of the Congregational Church. 
 The choir then rendered a second anthem, Foster's " The Souls 
 of the Righteous," after which the congregation was dismissed 
 with benediction by the Rev. Mr. Young. 
 
Cbe Xlmitatlon a^^ lEitent of tbe preacber's 
 Commi00ion. 
 
 Jer. I, 6. 
 (First Sermon after Ordination.) 
 
 Passaic, N. J., Jan. 19, 1868. 
 
 Jer. i:6, 7. "Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, I can not speak; for 
 I am a child." 
 
 "But the Lord said unto me. Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt 
 go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I shall command thee 
 thou Shalt speak." 
 
 These are the words of Jeremiah and Jehovah. They con- 
 tain his response to the call of the Lord to him to be a prophet. 
 The terms of the call go just before. There are some noteworthy 
 statements in that call. First, there is a remarkably clear state- 
 ment of the sovereign working of God in man's creation. Then 
 there is a remarkably clear expression of the fore-knowledge 
 of God. "Before I formed thee * * * j knew thee." And 
 finally there is a remarkably clear statement of the fore-knowl- 
 edge of God in respect to the character and duties of this man. 
 "Before thou camest forth * * * j sanctified thee and or- 
 dained thee a prophet unto the nations." 
 
 These august statements of God constituted Jeremiah's call 
 to the office of a prohpet. It has been conjectured that this call 
 came to him while very young, because he says, "Ah ! Lord 
 God ! behold I cannot speak ; for I am a child." Probably, how- 
 ever, his calling himself a child does not indicate extreme youth- 
 fulness but expresses his consciousness of weakness. The office 
 of a prophet was no easy one. Jeremiah was acquainted with the 
 sufferings and the tragic fate of the prophets since the days of 
 Samuel. He shrank from following in their footsteps, and he 
 besought the Lord to excuse him. But the Lord replied: "Say 
 not I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I send thee, and 
 whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak." 
 
65 
 
 I take the example of Jeremiah to be a vivid example of the 
 call and commission of a true minister of God. He is fore- 
 known of God before he is created and fore-ordained to his 
 office before he is born. When his duty is made known to him 
 every true candidate for the ministry I suppose shrinks from the 
 work. To talk to men perpetually of their duty; to denounce 
 sin ; to warn of danger ; to exhort ; to entreat incessantly, — is not 
 an office to be desired. 
 
 Then every true minister is driven by the charge of Jehovah, 
 — Thou art My servant and "thou shalt go to all that I shall 
 send thee," and "whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt 
 speak." For him who has consecrated himself unreservedly to 
 the service of Jehovah there is no escape from this solemn obli- 
 gation laid upon him. 
 
 Now, although I have read so large a section, I propose to 
 be restricted to the last clause, — "Whatsoever I command thee 
 thou shalt speak." The theme which I derive fromthe language 
 is the Limitation and Extent of the Commission of the Preacher. 
 
 •ffts Ximitation. 
 
 He is to speak what God commands him. I can see in fancy 
 the ancient prophet, moving from place to place and waiting from 
 day to day for a message directly from God to deliver to the 
 people to whom he is sent. Through immediate inspiration he 
 received his theme and the substance of his discourses. O, happy 
 office compared with that of the preacher to-day — to receive 
 Jehovah's truth and Jehovah's word directly from Heaven into 
 his soul and pour them forth unchanged and unstudied into the 
 ears of the people I 
 
 But far different and far less simple is the office of the 
 modern preacher. 
 
 He is still limited to God's commands, but God's command- 
 ments no longer come to him through immediate inspiration. 
 They are locked up in the sacred volume. The modern preacher 
 assumes and believes that the Holy Bible is a revelation from 
 God. It is a finished revelation. It contains God's will and 
 commandments. Whatsoever is in the Holy Scriptures that 
 shall he speak. He is limited to this volume of inspiration, of 
 written revelation. 
 
66 
 
 Let us consider then what subjects of discourse are shut out 
 of the preacher's field. The Vv^orld is full of themes for public 
 discussion. 
 
 There is the broad expanse of histor}'' of which men may 
 write or speak. Mankind has been on earth for many thousand 
 years. Countless nations have risen and fallen. Grand wars 
 have been carried on. Notable characters have come forward. 
 Great ideas have been advanced and defended. The chronicles 
 of humanity for thirty centuries are crowded with achievements 
 in arts and arms, triumphs of war and peace, themes for the 
 painter and poet, for the historian and the orator. He who will 
 enter the domain of secular history may find enough to write 
 of and to talk of. But this is not the region where God's specific 
 commandments are found. It is not, therefore, the place for the 
 preacher. His commission shuts him out from that boundless 
 expanse. He may not go into secular history for his themes or 
 the material of his discourses. 
 
 Science in this age has opened a vast field of knowledge. 
 Astronomy has pierced the heavens. Geology has penetrated 
 the earth. Anatomy has laid bare every tissue of the body. 
 Chemistry will analyze every grain of matter. The subtle agen- 
 cies of electricity and magnetism have been caught and con- 
 quered. The powers of air and water, of steam and lightning, 
 and almost all natural forces have been discovered by science 
 and made tributary to man. The microscope and the telescope 
 and an hundred curious instruments are prying into the secrets 
 of nature. In short, science has brought out subjects for most 
 enthusiastic study, themes of absorbing interest for writers and 
 fit to awaken eloquent orators. In witness of this remember the 
 brilliancy of the lectures of the lamented astronomer Mitchell. 
 But, though God is in all the regions of science, the specific 
 commandments of God are not there to be found. Therefore, 
 this is not the domain of the preacher. His commission excludes 
 him. He must not go to science for themes of discussion or for 
 doctrines to deliver to men. 
 
 Philosophy has her empires, vaster, she claims, and richer far, 
 she claims, than those of science or of history. Men, indeed, who 
 are engaged in commerce, mechanical trades or agriculture have 
 little to do directly with pure philosophy. What to them are the 
 theories of Plato or Aristotle, or the profound speculations of 
 
67 
 
 Leibnitz, Descartes or Kant, men of whom they never heard? 
 What are the opinions of Lord Bacon or John Locke? What 
 care they for the methods of German schools, French schools, 
 Scotch or English schools of philosophy? What even to the 
 mass of Christian men and women are the more philosophical 
 theologians? What are Augustin, or the school-men, or Calvin? 
 And yet these deep thinkers of the race, hidden in their cloisters 
 and buried in their books, do more to shape the minds of all of 
 us than we are aware; for though dead, yet through their v/rit- 
 ings they mould the minds of the medium men who mould the 
 minds of common men. Dry and barren as may seem to you the 
 writings of these abstruse philosophers, when by chance you look 
 into their dusty books, yet to the scholarly man they present a 
 fat and verdant pasture to which he yearns with all his heart. 
 "O give me leave," he says, "to shut myself up with these im- 
 mortal thinkers of the ages past." 
 
 But philosophy contains not in her rich empire the specific 
 commandments of Jehovah. Therefore, the preacher is excluded 
 from this field also. However congenial to his own mind such 
 studies might be, he must not seek in dry philosophy for the 
 themes or the material of those discourses which he presents to 
 men in the mass. His commission shuts him out from this 
 domain. 
 
 Aesthetics, poetry and other forms of polite literature; paint- 
 ing, sculpture and many branches of fine arts, unfold much that 
 is beautiful and true and elevating to humanity. A cultured 
 mind delights to roam in these pleasant fields and gather to itself 
 not merely fair flowers but also nourishing fruit. But in no field 
 of aesthetics do you find the specific commandments of God. 
 Aesthetics, therefore, cannot be the preacher's source of themes 
 or doctrines. 
 
 So then neither in History, or Philosophy, or Aesthetics does 
 the preacher find the ground on which he can stand and speak 
 authoritatively. He is excluded from all these by the terms of 
 his commission. 
 
 I do not say that the preacher should know nothing of 
 these realms of human learning. Far from it. As an intellec- 
 tual and scholarly man he may traverse them to their boundaries. 
 He cannot lay up too vast treasures of human lore. Let him be 
 educated in all departments to the fullest extent. Neither do I 
 
68 
 
 say that he is never to use any part of this accumulated learning, 
 if he be so fortunate as to gain it. He will use it every day. 
 It is that which enlarges his mind ; which gives him power to 
 grasp the themes of religion ; skill to reduce them to statements, 
 and facility in presenting them to the minds of men. Then, too, 
 he may draw upon all the stores of learning that he can lay up 
 for illustrations of religious subjects, examples of the value of 
 religion, and reasons by which to enforce it upon those to whom 
 he speaks. 
 
 The limitation lies in this, that the preacher must find his 
 themes and his substance of doctrine in some field or mine en- 
 tirely separate from any domain of learning purely human. 
 That is, as we have said, in the volume of the Holy Scriptures. 
 The faithful preacher of religion is shut up to this book. He 
 exalts the Bible above all human learning. He believes it to 
 contain more important truths. He is assured that it contains 
 more authoritative dogmas. He implicitly takes it as the Word 
 of God. 
 
 God is, in a manner, in History, in Science, in Philosophy 
 and Art so far as they are true. But all these have an admixture 
 of human error. God speaks in the Bible, and it contains only 
 pure truth. Whatsoever the Word of God says, that the preacher 
 is commissioned to speak. His commission extends not a whit 
 farther. 
 
 Having spoken now of the limitations of the preacher's com- 
 mission we go on to speak of its extent. 
 
 It extends to the whole of the Sacred Scriptures. Do not 
 imagine that we suppose him to be fenced in to a stinted field. 
 We shall attempt to show that permission to study and to pro- 
 claim all that is in God's written word gives him ample area. 
 
 We said in speaking of the limitations of his commission 
 that he is shut out of the regions of secular history. But the 
 Bible presents a long line of history more venerable than any 
 contained in the books of men from which he is not excluded. 
 He has what is contained in no other books — the history of the 
 Creation, the Flood and the dispersion of tongues. He has the 
 story of the call of Abraham; the rise of the Hebrew people; 
 the escape from Egypt; the wandering in the wilderness; the 
 kingdoms of Israel and Judah ; the captivity and the restoration. 
 He has then the history of the Son of God upon earth and the 
 
69 
 
 career of the apostles. This long, though narrow field of His- 
 tory — shaped like the river Nile — is also, like that valley, ex- 
 ceedingly fertile. It abounds with themes and materials which 
 the preacher may use freely. It is History which he is bound to 
 use, for it is the record of that portion of the action of our race 
 in which God has come into contact with men. Adam, Noah, 
 Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Jesus of Nazareth and 
 the Apostles were organs through whom Jehovah made known 
 His Will. All that pertains to them and their associates must 
 be set before men in all ages, because it contains the elements 
 of religion. Their characters must be portrayed because they 
 were moulded, as it were, by the hand of God, or were developed 
 under special divine influences. 
 
 Such events as the destruction of Sodom ; the deliverance 
 from Egypt; the conquest of Canaan; the desolation of Jerusa- 
 lem and the bondage in Babylon, must be set forth by the 
 preacher, because the finger of God may be seen in them as in 
 no other events past or current. 
 
 Sacred history abounds in miracles. It is almost a series of 
 miracles. The plagues of Egypt; the opening of the Red Sea; 
 the life in the desert; the conquest of Jericho, and numberless 
 other events are miracles of God which must be kept fresh in 
 the memories of men in this skeptical and materialistic genera- 
 tion. 
 
 This history reveals the working of supernatural agents. 
 Angels are frequent in the story. Prophets, or men endowed 
 with superhuman powers, are prominent. 
 
 But of more importance than all else is the fact that the 
 Bible presents the history of Jesus Christ, the Son of God 
 among men. Here is an inexhaustible theme for the preacher. 
 It is noticeable that the Bible alone sets forth this marvellous 
 narrative. No uninspired man of ancient times was permitted 
 to do what unbelieving men of our day have dared; that is, to 
 write the life of Jesus Christ. 
 
 All the records of His history are in the books of the four 
 evangelists. Into that narrow compass, as into a nutshell, are 
 condensed the miracles, parables, sermons, sufferings and all 
 the actions of our Lord Jesus. It is the business of the preacher 
 to shed upon these germs all the light of contemporaneous his- 
 tory, of antiquities and geography, and bring forth that won- 
 
70 
 
 derful life in such natural and complete pictures that men and 
 women of these late ages shall be led to sympathize with and 
 love that Man of sorrows who came down from Heaven. Has 
 the preacher skill to paint scenery ? Let him tell us of the charm- 
 ing landscape visible from Nazareth, of the beautiful sea of 
 Galilee, of the dark garden of Gethsemane, of the doleful ap- 
 pearance of Calvary when the Cross stood there, or of the mild 
 and wonderful view at Bethany when Jesus ascended in the 
 clouds. 
 
 Is he quick to divine character? Let him lay open to us 
 the mind of Nicodemus while the Saviour talked with him by 
 night ; or of the woman of Samaria ; or of Peter, of John, or 
 of Judas. 
 
 That life of Jesus is a study for the acutest mind and sug- 
 gests abundant themes for thoughtful, pathetic, or eloquent dis- 
 course. 
 
 So you see that this single volume opens a vast field of 
 history and biography for the preacher to use. 
 
 He is permitted, yea, he is bound to enforce all the moral 
 inculcations of the Word of God. They are found in the stern 
 statutes of Sinai; they are detected in the wild, or in the plain- 
 tive psalms of David ; they gleam like lightning in the denunci- 
 ations of the undaunted prophets ; they lie as plain types on 
 snow-white paper in the words of Christ; they are cut into 
 maxims as with a pen of diamond in the writings of the 
 apostles. 
 
 The Bible is full of statements of ethical duties. What a 
 man owes to his fellow-man, when sick or when well, when 
 poor or when rich, in business or in society ; what the hus- 
 band owes to the wife or the wife to the husband, the parent 
 to the child or the child to the parent ; the master to his ser- 
 vant, and the servant to his master; the debtor to the credi- 
 tor, and the creditor to the debtor ; the citizen to the ruler, 
 and the ruler to the citizen — duties to the aged and to the 
 children, the distressed, to the enslaved, to the ignorant and 
 the erring — all these moral obligations are set forth in the 
 Bible in many forms. These are proper themes for the 
 preacher. He may discourse on justice, on equity, on liberty, 
 on charity, on generosity, on benevolence, on magnanimity, 
 on obedience to rightful authority, on the care of the aged, 
 
7^ 
 
 on the training due to the young. Those principles of peace, 
 order, and virture, which hold society together and keep it 
 pure, are matter concerning which God in His Word gives 
 commandment and of which the preacher must speak. 
 
 In speaking of the extent of the preacher's commission we 
 rise now to that which is of paramount importance. He is per- 
 mitted and is under obligation to set forth those supernatural 
 doctrines which are found only in the Word of God. Sacred 
 history is akin to secular history; moral duties are partially 
 learned from human systems of ethics ; but the supernatural 
 doctrines of the Bible have no analogy. They are revealed 
 from Heaven. They are higher than human thought unaided 
 can ascend. The peculiar and most honorable sphere of the 
 preacher is in the field of supernatural doctrine. Rightly to 
 set forth the true doctrine of God and His government ; of the 
 apostasy and sin of man ; of incarnation and redemption 
 through the blood of Christ; of resurrection, judgment, and a 
 future state — rightly to set forth these doctrines, I say, is the 
 preacher's highest duty. Here rests his most solemn responsi- 
 bility. The pondering of these doctrines is that which should 
 rack and wear and tear his mind. Oh, who will assume the 
 responsibility of rising up before his fellow-men and declaring 
 v/ho and what God is ; how fearful is an alienation from Him 
 by reason of sin, and how desperate our eternal future with- 
 out aid. Who, then, will venture to sound the depths of the 
 Godhead to bring forth the Son of the Father and show Him 
 boni of a woman to become the Saviour of the world? Who 
 will explain how the death of Christ on the cross atones for 
 all sin; and how He who once went among men has risen to 
 a seat at God's right hand in Heaven, where He now inter- 
 cedes for us? Who will undertake to win depraved men to 
 that Saviour, and to faith in the ineffable doctrines, by the 
 persuasive powers of human speech? "Ah! Lord God, I can- 
 not speak, for I am but a child!" 
 
 The preacher though shut up to this single volume has yet 
 the vastest field when you measure it by the magnitude of 
 those themes which it is his chief duty to expound. 
 
 He is commanded to speak of God. What larger theme 
 can there be? He is to declare His justice. His sovereignty, 
 His holiness. He is to maintain the strictness of His moral 
 
72 
 
 government, and the severity of His punishment of the wicked. 
 He is to v^rarn men how fearful a thing it is to fall into the 
 hands of the living God. 
 
 Then he is to show the way of His mercy through Jesus 
 Christ, the fulness of His love, and the tenderness of His 
 compassion. Oh, who understands God with sufficient clear- 
 ness to make Him the subject of discourse after discourse 
 before intelligent and thinking men ! 
 
 The preacher is commanded to speak of sin. The Word 
 of God represents us as an apostate and lost race. Mankind 
 is penetrated by sin as by a fatal poison : The faithful preacher 
 must take up the theme. He must uncover the enormity of 
 transgression against the Holy One. He must charge upon 
 the consciences of men their individual and personal guilt. He 
 must reiterate the threatenings of the Almighty against the 
 obdurate sinner. He must sound an alarm to signify the dan- 
 ger of dying in sin ! Oh, who knows the depravity of the 
 human heart; who will explain the mystery of sin? Rather 
 who will so show us our sinfulness that we shall be ready to 
 flee to the Redeemer? 
 
 The preacher is commanded to explain the central fact and 
 doctrine of evangelical religion, viz., the incarnation of the Son 
 of God; that He existed with all the prerogatives and powers 
 of God long ere this world was made ; that in His brief life 
 among men He assumed our nature in order to accomplish our 
 deliverance from sin. He must defend His true divinity. He 
 must declare His resurrection, ascension, and present exalta- 
 tion. He must explain His offices as creator, redeemer, inter- 
 cessor, and final judge. Oh, what a boundless theme is that 
 of the incarnation ! 
 
 The preacher is commanded to unfold the doctrine of re- 
 demption. Maintaining the justice and severity of God, he 
 must also maintain His mercy ; and he must show how that 
 mercy is manifested most completely and most gloriously in 
 the system of redemption through the crucifixion of His Son. 
 The death of Jesus Christ is a perfect, a divinely ordained, way 
 of salvation. Those sufferings on the cross were an expiation 
 for our sins. He who comes unto God humbly trusting in the 
 merit of Jesus Christ shall be saved. This doctrine the 
 preacher must not only proclaim, but defend against the ques- 
 
73 
 
 tionings of sincere skeptics and the railings of malignant foes. 
 
 The preacher is commanded to forewarn men of the facts 
 of a resurrection, judgment, and future life. These events lie 
 in the inscrutable future. No human speculation or research 
 has found them. God has told us of them. These are, in the 
 strictest sense, revealed truths. No man dare utter an opinion 
 concerning them beyond what he reads in God's book. Just 
 what God has said may the preacher say. He may speak in 
 different words indeed. But he may not express a thought 
 which he does not discern in the Bible ; neither may he with- 
 hold a thought which he finds there. 
 
 The preacher is commanded to speak of the worlds to come. 
 
 So it appears, I say, when you measure the preacher's com- 
 mission by the greatness of those themes which he is required 
 to study and unfold, especially when you regard those grand 
 supernatural doctrines, that his scope is ample and the de- 
 mands upon him are enough for all his powers. 
 
 The preacher's foremost duty is to be a student of the 
 Holy Scriptures. 
 
 I would remark upon the labors of a minister in this depart- 
 ment of his work. God has been pleased to give us His word 
 at the hands of man}'- authors, from Moses to St. John. Some 
 of it is in the form of history ; some in poetry ; some, prophecy ; 
 narrative, parable, sermon, or even doctrinal disquisition, like 
 some of the epistles. Unquestionably this is the best form for 
 a revelation. It makes a book suitable for casual reading by 
 a child or a man, by a sinner or a saint. But it makes a 
 book which requires profound and critical study at the hands 
 of a theologian. For common reading we open our English 
 Bible, but he whose desire has been awakened to know that 
 book to its depths will not be satisfied till he weighs every 
 word of the original Greek and Hebrew. I speak now of an 
 ideal. Imagine yourself, then, sitting down to your Bible in 
 two unspoken and difficult languages, surrounded with dic- 
 tionaries of antiquities, and maps of ancient countries, with the 
 purpose to fix the date and place of each event ; to probe each 
 text and each word in the whole volume ; to bring together 
 all that bears on each doctrine; to reduce all the ideas of reva- 
 lation into a harmonious system, the whole of which you 
 
74 
 
 could defend and each part of which you could discourse upon 
 with confidence — and you have an impression of the duty of a 
 Biblical student. The foremost duty of the preacher is to be 
 such a student of the Bible. The best hours of his day are 
 due to this work. The best energy of his mind should be 
 thrown into that labor. If he be not constant to this study, 
 he is not fit to stand before the people. Other duties I know 
 he has — many. But first of all he should be a scholarly, pro- 
 found, thoughtful student of the Word of God. That book 
 contains what God commands, and what God commands is all 
 that he is authorized to speak. 
 
 If ever you find a minister who strives after that ideal, you 
 are bound to listen to him, not for his words but for God's 
 Word. Should he chance, rarely or often, to be eloquent, that 
 is nothing. Should he possess personal qualities, that is noth- 
 ing. What he is truly estimable for is that he stands as a kind 
 of organ through which the Word of God is spoken. 
 
 When on a serene morning awakens a camp of gay cava- 
 liers and summons them to a day of parade and pageantry, 
 and they spring with alacrity to their duties, shouting con- 
 gratulations and praises, they do not send their salutations to 
 the instrument that aroused them, but to the general at whose 
 command it was sounded. When another morning a bugle 
 startles a camp of weary horsemen from their half-finished 
 sleep, and calls them to battle, carnage, and death, if they 
 murmur or repine it is not at the instrument that summoned 
 them, but at the general by whose orders it was sounded. 
 
 So a faithful minister who brings his message from the 
 Holy Scriptures would choose to be regarded as no more than 
 an instrument, not worthy in any case to receive praise, nor 
 (if he is faithful to God's Word) amenable to blame. He is 
 an instrument. And whatever response his message may 
 awaken must be addressed unto God, by whose commandment he 
 has spoken. Always look beyond the human messenger to 
 the divine message which he brings. When he speaks Jeho- 
 vah's Word and your heart responds, respond unto God. The 
 prophet speaks only what God commands. If ye hear, answer 
 ye then unto God. Ye have to do with Him and not with His 
 servant. Unto Him, Most High, be all your praises, and 
 honors, and thanks, and service. 
 
 And to Him be glory now and forever. 
 
75 
 
 Sentences from a sermon on "Desirable Characteristics 
 FOR Our Church," the first sermon in the Church-edifice on 
 River Street (Park Place); July 23, 1871, 
 
 Bible-study. — "We want a congregation in which every 
 member shall be interested in God's Book." "The minister in 
 this matter should be chiefly a leader. He is different from 
 any other intelligent member of the congregation only in that 
 he is able to give more time and exclusive attention to Bibli- 
 cal study." 
 
 Benevolence. — "Our theory is that giving in the Church 
 should not be regarded as a hardship but a pleasure." "Our 
 aim will be to make the benevolences of the Church systematic 
 and then cultivate the giving spirit. We should be sorry to 
 hear any member of this congregation complaining about what 
 the Church costs him. Let him refuse to give rather than give 
 and make it a matter of subsequent lamentation." 
 
 Education. — "When the schools of this town were much 
 below what they are now, we said that we believed in educa- 
 tion, and we say it again now. Any measure that will tend 
 to elevate the standard of education in the community or to 
 widen the influence of our schools will find in this people, I 
 trust, out-spoken and zealous supporters." "We should be 
 proud to raise up liberally educated men and women for the 
 next generation, young men that shall take college honors 
 and young women that shall become proficient in advanced 
 studies." 
 
 Moral questions. — "I believe that we are bound to deal with 
 concrete evils and not merely with sin in the abstract." 
 "There is no more flagrant evil in society around us than 
 intemperance, I understand this Church to be free to fight 
 that evil. We are probably not a unit as to the ways and 
 means; but we are undoubtedly a unit in our strong opposi- 
 tion to the drinking habits of the day, and we are sufficiently 
 tolerant to allow the question of methods for counteracting 
 the evil to be freely discussed and tried." 
 
 As to the children. — "We accept the theory of our Church 
 in regard to children to the fullest extent. We rest upon the 
 promise of the blessings of religion not only upon us, but also 
 upon our children and our children's children." "We renounce 
 the old-fashioned notions of austerity toward children. We 
 
76 
 
 believe that the best thing you can do toward a boy is to like 
 him." "We do not admit any other feeling toward children 
 but love. We love them when they laugh and when they cry ; 
 when they are good and when they are bad; when they help 
 us and when they make trouble — always." "Our happiest 
 duty, our liveliest pleasure, our purest satisfaction shall be to 
 help the children in their helpless years, to win their hearts, 
 to show them the excellence of a good life, to bring them up 
 to stand by our sides as full, equal, and honored members of 
 the Church." 
 
 Influence. — "I hold this to be a sound rule, namely, when 
 you have done your duty by a man, in the circumstances where 
 you providentially meet him — YOUR DUTY in the full and 
 generous sense which Christianity implies — you have attained 
 the maximum of influence with him. I know people sometimes 
 think that a little flattery, a little cajolery, a little excess of 
 attention, will add to your influence, but I do not believe it. 
 You may gain for the moment, but there will follow a reac- 
 tion in which you will lose five points for every one that you 
 have gained." "Do right by a man to the best of your ability. 
 Deal fairly with him. Show him all proper courtesy and kind- 
 ness. Respect his peculiarities. Talk with him in regard to 
 religion when the subject comes in naturally. Do not feel 
 bound to drag it in. Stand before him always in the fulness 
 of your Christian manhood, ready at any moment to do any- 
 thing in your power to forward him in respect to religion, and 
 you may believe that under God's secret guidance you will do 
 most and best for his good." "Influence proceeds more from 
 a man's behavior than from his words." 
 
 "It should be added, however, that there are those toward 
 whom we should be more aggressive. These are the vicious, 
 the exceedingly poor, those who from one cause or another 
 are doAvn in life. We must go to them ; make them feel that 
 we are their friends; enforce kindness upon them. But even 
 this must be done with great respect." 
 
71 
 
 From a sermon on "Gratitude and Courage" (Acts 28, 
 16), preached at the end of ten years. Dec. 31, 1876. 
 
 "To look back upon it seems the height of hardihood to have 
 started in a Church enterprise without a dollar ; without build- 
 ing or land, or even the implements of worship." "Say nothing 
 of the intervening years ; say nothing of the efforts, of the trials, 
 of the mistakes, of the disappointments, of the hopes deferred 
 that make the heart sick ; pass by it all and see here to-day a well 
 organized Church of a hundred and fifteen or more communi- 
 cants, a thrifty congregation possessing more elements of strength 
 than it uses, a serviceable House of Worship, an independent 
 and well-sustained Sunday School, and all the appliances of 
 divine service." "Whatever has been accomplished in these ten 
 years has been done by straightforward and laborious, as dis- 
 tinguished from easy or speculative methods." It "leaves the 
 congregation to-day not strained, not exhausted. Every man, 
 woman and child is as fresh for Christian work as he was ten 
 years ago to-day." 
 
 "We are developed into a Church with no specialty." "Not 
 the Church of a class ; not of the rich, because they are rich, or 
 of the poor because they are poor; not of the fashionable as 
 fashionable, or of the unfashionable because unfashionable." 
 
 "Just what you want for future enlargement is to be repre- 
 sented now in every comer of the town, and every branch of em- 
 ployment and every grade of society." 
 
 4: * * 4: ♦ 41 
 
 "Let the future be approached with courage and with en- 
 ergy. Above all other desires that have a right to occupy our 
 hearts here this hour, it is desirable that the Church of God 
 succeed. We have no personal ends in this place which cannot 
 stand aside for the sake of the Church. It will be a great relief 
 if you will allow me to say that the remark is true of no one 
 more than myself. I have a profound interest in this particular 
 Church as the enterprise upon which, in its adverse days, I 
 was moved to stake my ability and my honor. But I have 
 ceased to have apprehension in regard to it. * * * I am 
 aware that ten years is as long a period as a man is likely to 
 serve one Church, especially if it be his first; well aware also 
 of advantages that may come to a Church from a change of 
 
78 
 
 pastors. I have no desire to hold my position for a day longer, 
 except as it may be for the advantage of the Church; and you 
 may be sure that in the future always I shall endeavor to keep 
 my own affairs in such shape that it should never become for 
 my personal interest or my personal pleasure an object to retain 
 the pastorate of this Church beyond the day when it shall seem 
 to your judgment advantageous for the Church itself." "The 
 ten years of life which are hidden in the foundations of this 
 enterprise are my joy and rejoicing, whether the remaining ser- 
 vice may be longer or shorter." 
 
 A Struggling Aspiration; from a sermon on "The Welfare 
 OF Our Church" (Matt. 13, 12). Preached Oct. 9, 1881. 
 
 "What 'hath' this our Church? What is its present capital? 
 — supposing it were to claim the rule, — To him that hath shall 
 be given?" 
 
 "It has a capable body of members. They number, accord- 
 ing to the roll, one hundred and fifty, just one-half a complete 
 Church." "We have organization. It means more and takes 
 longer to acquire than one thinks." "We have a precious Sun- 
 day School. This School and our many Christian homes stand 
 around the Church, and are the source of perpetual recruits and 
 additions." "We have a valuable property. Those who know 
 what it is to belong to a Church that has NOTHING will not 
 under-estimate what our advantage is to have THIS." 
 
 "How to 'have more abundantly'? In other words, what is 
 the way for us to come up to be a full-sized, sub-urban Church ?" 
 
 "I will give you my reasoning. We are here to-day a Church 
 that was formed in the name of Christ in good faith. The 
 original members have held to the body more than is usually the 
 case. Death has taken some, but on the whole has been lenient 
 in demands. Pastor and people have held to each other through 
 all vicissitudes. Work thus undertaken and so tenaciously ad- 
 hered to, has a right to expect, under the blessing of God, abso- 
 lute success." ***•'! declare before you to-day that the 
 rest of my ministry with this people, be it long or short, I hold 
 before my mind the aspiration that the Presbyterian Church of 
 
79 
 
 the City of Passaic shall go up to be the peer of the complete 
 Churches in the towns around New York. I will be content with 
 no other goal, I ask all the brave men and women of the con- 
 gregation to put the aspiration before their minds, too. And let 
 us as Christian workers consecrate ourselves to that end, hanging 
 upon Christ's word, — 'To him that hath shall be given and he 
 shall have abundance.' " 
 
 "We must put it in position so that at our dying hour we can 
 say that we gave ourselves to God in that enterprise, and we 
 never slacked until we had proved Him and His best word, and 
 had brought it to a success triumphant and glorious to His 
 name." 
 
 A Forecast, with Nothing in Sight; from a sermon on "The 
 House of the Lord." Preached on the last Sunday before vaca- 
 tion, July 13, 1884. 
 
 "The consecrated Church Edifice is the House of God. The 
 sentiment is too valuable to be discarded. The Church is a sacred 
 place, and, if kept sacredly, has an educating power. Herein 
 is one of the charms of the English Church of which so much 
 is said in our literature. It is an architectural structure. Some 
 man of artistic sense designed it ; it is choicely located ; green 
 lawns lie about it, and trim hedges fence it in ; its walls are of 
 durable stone ; ivy has climbed the sides and covered the tower ; 
 a chime of bells sounds out on Sabbath morn. Within, the eye 
 is pleased and rested ; the light is softened by the stained v^^in- 
 dows ; pulpit, communion table, baptismal font, and all other ap- 
 pliances are set with studied taste ; the organ seems part of the 
 building, and its notes blend with the scene. Who has not 
 pictured to himself such an English Church, a part of the Eng- 
 lish landscape, and, in another view, an indispensable factor in 
 English life and society? What educating influence it has over 
 the generations which resort to it ! The 84th Psalm seems made 
 for it — 
 
 "How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts ! 
 A day in Thy courts is better than a thousand !" 
 
8o 
 
 '"But an English Church can no more be transferred to 
 American soil than nightingales can be imported and acclimated. 
 Each community must have sanctuaries after its own general 
 character." 
 
 "Every one who feels that his life is guided of God ought to 
 honor the situation in which himself is placed. By such a rule 
 I am bound to magnify sub-urban life. And why not? There 
 is not, on this continent surely, any rival to New York as a com- 
 mercial center. And the work of every one of us revolves within 
 its sphere. Of New York's suburbs there are a few that are 
 richer than Passaic, because richer men Have gone out to them ; 
 but there are many more that are poorer. For all the elements, 
 in fair combination, that go to make up a thrifty, promising, 
 home-like and refined suburb, there are not many places around- 
 New York better than has this come to be where we live." 
 
 "Since the first of May, when we paid off the debt on this 
 building, I have queried much whether I should every say any- 
 thing more about Church development in the city of our homes 
 or should not stop short. And yet I think I must set up an ideal 
 of a suburban Church for future aspirations to hang upon. I 
 do not think I can stop short." 
 
 "The site is a little way up yonder, where they look from 
 second-story windows over a fine, broad landscape ; and the 
 avenues are receiving macadam. The structure is of stone, and 
 an architect of established reputation designed it to suit the 
 site. It is not vast ; its interior will seat six hundred people when 
 quite full. Its school room (which is not a basement) will ac- 
 commodate three hundred, or perhaps a few more, teachers and 
 scholars. Externally it affords repose and joy to the eye that 
 rests upon it. Within, it is chaste and simple, but studied, com- 
 pact, harmonious and complete. It is a benediction to enter it, 
 so exactly does it fulfil the longings of a cultivated mind for 
 amiable courts of the Lord. The bit of tiling in the vestibule, the 
 genuine color in the windows, the soft tone of the organ, the 
 tints on the wall, all harmonize, so that the worshipper has 
 nothing around him to blame for distraction, but may let his 
 heart go at once to the adoration of God Who fills the House. 
 Then the grass-plot around, and the shrubs and flowers, will 
 break the fall when he comes out from the sanctuary into the 
 
8i 
 
 rough world. Do I see all this in fancy, and imagine ourselves 
 transferred from this thereto?" 
 
 "But there is a man given to hard calculations who knocks 
 me over with the question: 'How are you going to bring about 
 such a change?' The same would have said to David, 'How are 
 you going to build your Temple on this rock of the Jebusites?' 
 Yet his ideal was realized. And so may mine be if you will make 
 it yours." 
 
 "We must always have something ahead to do. We are 
 set in a growing community and we must keep up. We must 
 keep ideals before our eyes. Could I direct events I would have 
 Ladies' Aid Society and Young People's Guild work on just as 
 heretofore. I would have them hoard money. Make the pile a 
 hundred, then five hundred, then a thousand dollars, and so on. 
 I would have men watch property ; and by and by, I am sure, 
 there would come a chance, with some hundreds of dollars in 
 hand to secure some charming site on which a beautiful Church 
 might be expected to stand to advantage for a century. The 
 site secured, and perhaps paid for, some other changes would 
 be ripe which would enable us to dispose of this property where 
 we are, and turn the avails into a new structure. The future 
 is full of possibilities. What we want is a fine ideal ; then faith 
 and persistence." 
 
 "Does some one say : 'Don't talk it to me ; I've had enough, 
 and I'm tired?' Very well; if you are tired, lie back and rest; 
 let me talk this to the young men. Here they are, settled citi- 
 zens of this city, making fortune more or less, with life rather 
 before than behind them. They want to do something for 
 God. Let them undertake the problem of transferring this 
 Presbyterian Church of Passaic into that larger place and that 
 finer condition which will make it equal to the ideal of a sub- 
 urban Church. We will give them ten years for it, if necessary ; 
 though eight would be preferable, and five would be far better. 
 All this for an aim in the distance." * * * 
 
82 
 
 From a sermon on "The Ideal Church Edifice/' preached 
 July 12, 1885. 
 
 "At times, of course, the problem of Church-building is per- 
 plexing." * * * "Bui the future of Passaic is clearer than 
 it was eighteen years ago. We may put our minds to the ques- 
 tion: What is the right idea of a Church edifice for this sub- 
 urban city? and feel that we have the elements tangible at 
 last." 
 
 "It should be refined. It should meet the demands of people 
 who go in and out of a great city, see stately buildings, frequent 
 art galleries, are often in music halls, and have hitherto wor- 
 shipped in metropolitan churches." 
 
 "It should be choicely located. By and by it becomes clear 
 to all where a church MIGHT stand with most noble eflfect." 
 
 "It should be of itself educating. Remember our children. 
 Its preaching, its music, its social influences, and then, too, its 
 architecture, its surroundings and its appearance do have a 
 marked effect upon them every day." 
 
 "The elements (these and others) can be laid out. To my 
 handling they yield but one conclusion. It is that this congre- 
 gation should put before its mind the ideal of a choice sub- 
 urban Church and work straight toward it. * * * Elimi- 
 nate all idle fancies, all mere ambitions, all faithless fears. Get 
 down to a simple, chaste, refined plan of a Church edifice which 
 will sit in this city of growing beauty a perfect adaptation; let 
 an architect put it on paper with every detail ; obtain most rigid 
 estimates of cost ; leave no room for impulsive afterthoughts ; 
 wrap the thing in the desires of your souls and carry it before 
 God in your prayers, asking Him, in Whose hands events are, 
 Whose also are the silver and the gold, to open the way — and 
 this can be done." 
 
 From a sermon on the "New Church Edifice/' March 14, 
 1886. 
 
 "Take our situation just now. It requires us to join and 
 combine v/ith great care our trust in God and our own energy." 
 * * * "The Lord has led us hitherto and right up to the 
 
83 
 
 point where we now stand." * * * "Many things might 
 have been better, but the singleness of purpose, the pertinacity, 
 the hold-fast quality, which have characterized the history of 
 this congregation are now its element of strength." * * * 
 "The rise of our present scheme of a new edifice has such 
 providential features that it looks to us firm and right. It is 
 no one man's idea. The scheme is the result of all our wishes 
 fused and blended." 
 
 "The steps in it have been providential. The disposal of 
 this property where we now worship is providential. It goes 
 for less than half that which it cost ; but it does not go out 
 of the kingdom of God. The disposal of it to an earnest peo- 
 ple who will continue to speak the same Gospel of truth and 
 comfort which we have spoken, is one of our claims to divine 
 favor in our future tasks." 
 
 "The hand of Providence reveals itself in the site which we 
 have secured. It is the very pivot around which we originally 
 revolved. At that time the site was not so manifestly central, 
 eligible, and perfect as it has been made by the growth of the 
 city, the opening of streets, and the placing of business 
 and residences. * * * The place has been held in reserve 
 while everything around it was built upon — in reserve for a 
 House of the Lord." 
 
 "Again we note the generosity toward the scheme. There 
 is a generosity of sentiment as well as of substance. I am 
 bound to say that the expressions of good-will from other 
 Churches of the city and from people in general have been 
 animating and encouraging." 
 
 "Let us make the erection of the Church an act of love and 
 devotion. It is certain that for some of us it will be the last 
 great effort of our Christian lives. Probably for many of us 
 it will be the effort on which our service of the Master will 
 culminate." 
 
 The last ivord in the old Church; from a sermon on the 
 "Review of Twenty Years," preached December 26, 1886. 
 
 "And now we say farewell to the old Church. We have 
 long had our hearts set on a better. And yet the old roof has 
 
84 
 
 protected us well ; the old walls have kept out the winter winds 
 faithfully; the old 'basement' warmed us for many sacred 
 meetings of prayer and hours of study in the Holy Book. If 
 the old House could speak it might tell us that it has loved 
 us better than we have reciprocated. It might say it is sorry 
 to have us go. And perhaps we might want to beg it to keep 
 close and secret all the faults and errors, all the hard thoughts 
 and unkind feelings, all the careless moments and neglected 
 opportunities, that it has been mute witness of against us. 
 Surely we have nothing to boast of, and may go out with 
 bowed heads, thinking of our infirmities." 
 
 "But then as time recedes and again and again we look 
 back, we, the while by God's grace drawing nearer a heav- 
 enly home, we shall catch up a song of praise, we shall recall 
 a host of forgotten tokens of goodness and mercy, and we shall 
 be ready to declare that, notwithstanding all, those were years 
 of the right hand of the Most High." 
 
 After fifteen months; from an "Annual Sermon," April 8, 
 1888. 
 
 "By this time we are wonted to our place of worship. It 
 is no longer novel. The paths are beaten toward it, and we 
 frequent them from habit. The convenience of the locality 
 and the beauty of the situation are demonstrated. For a long 
 time to come, doubtless, will the edifice be a visible and con- 
 spicuous witness for religion to an ever-increasing community 
 in the very center of which it stands." 
 
 "We are encouraged by our clear financial standing. Of 
 course we have not everything that a congregation needs ; and 
 we have something that it needs not. Thus we HAVE NOT a 
 'parsonage,' and we HAVE a mortgage. Yet we pay our way. 
 If the mortgage were off and the 'parsonage' were on, it would 
 make a difference of a thousand dollars a year to our favor in 
 the account of current expenses. It will be realized some day." 
 
8s 
 
 From the "Annual Sermon/' March 31, 1889. 
 
 Of the congregation. — "A careful count is jotted down of 
 every meeting. Taking everything as it has occurred, the 
 morning service has averaged 232 the past year and the even- 
 ing (not including children's services) has been 194. The 
 staid morning congregation is 250 to 275 ; the ordinary even- 
 ing is 175 to 200." 
 
 Of the Sunday School. — "There is an enrollment of about 
 350 officers and teachers. Of these 138 are listed in the pri- 
 mary class. The attendance has risen as high as 260; it aver- 
 ages 208." 
 
 Of Dundee Chapel. — "In 1886 the Session, with the ap- 
 proval of the Board of Trustees, entered into correspondence 
 with the Dundee Company, asking if they would place the 
 Chapel, which is their property, at the disposal of this Church, 
 on condition that we occupy it with Christian work for the 
 benefit of the neighborhood known as 'Dundee.' Our over- 
 ture was accepted and the Chapel was placed at our disposal. 
 It was a careful negotiation, written and recorded. So we 
 came into the use of the building which might be our own 
 if we chose to buy it at a very low price. 
 
 "There we have an afternoon Sunday School with an enroll- 
 ment of 259. It is customary to have from 160 to 180 in ordi- 
 nary attendance. A large body of active and interested youth 
 gather in the classes." 
 
 The Sphere of Our Influence. — "I shall take liberty from 
 the occasion to say something of the sphere of our influence. 
 We have been stationed here as the representative of a de- 
 nomination which is vigorous in the nation, and especially 
 powerful in this metropolitan district centering in New York. 
 We have been accustomed to assert our faith in our town. 
 When it was a trivial hamlet, we believed in its future and 
 organized this Church, upon whose success we pledged our 
 life service. When the days were dark we kept our faith and 
 built the edifice on River Street (Park Place). There we were 
 constantly saying, 'Be hopeful ; the growth of the town will 
 justify us some day in moving to the avenue and erecting an 
 ideal sub-urban Church.' It happened in due time. But the 
 city has not reached its stature. Indeed never has it exhibited 
 
86 
 
 so much expansiveness as now. We are at this point to assert 
 our belief that we are stationed at a center around which is 
 to cluster a population of twenty, then thirty, and finally fifty 
 thousand. Not all to gravitate to one point, as it would in a 
 city remote from the metropolis, but to cluster around sub- 
 centers where the railway stations and the little post-offices 
 now are. We believe in Passaic Bridge, and Clifton, and Gar- 
 field, and even Carlton Hill, and Wallington and Athenia. 
 That is, people are coming to them ; souls are to be looked 
 after; they are to be fields for Christian work. Such is the 
 only view we care about. Of the population which drifts to 
 these neighborhoods, a good percentage is more amenable to 
 Presbyterian than to any other Church influences. I suppose 
 we are stationed where we are, to look out for that influence. 
 It is fair to presume that we have been granted twenty-two 
 years of experience in order to use the same for others upon 
 fair opportunity. We would not think of encroaching upon 
 fellow-workers, still we cannot but take what falls in our way. 
 So we like to operate a mission in Dundee, just waiting to 
 see whatever God will bring it to." 
 
 "So we have a kindly interest in the Germans. They wor- 
 shipped in the 'lecture room' of the old Church many years ; 
 they are a Church of our Presbytery." 
 
 "Some seventeen months ago there came to our Presbytery 
 in the usual way a request to help in effecting a Presbyterian 
 organization in the village of Garfield. Such advances are no 
 novelty. It is commonly supposed to be praiseworthy for men 
 and women in a rising settlement thus to shoulder responsibili- 
 ties and undertake to lay foundations for an independent, self- 
 governing Church, where they may worship, receive the sacra- 
 ments and train their children. This application came before 
 Presbytery, as I say, in due form. Presbytery is a conservative 
 and cautious body; but it granted the application and effected 
 the organization. The same now stands, though somewhat 
 storm-tossed. * * * Is it best to ofifer the cordial hand to 
 those men and women in Garfield in their heroic attempt? Is 
 it best to put the shoulder to it and make an effort for Home Mis- 
 sions and genuine Church Extension close at hand?" 
 
 "So many irons in the fire ! So much to think of and to worry 
 about! Well, no matter. If providence will give us health 
 
87 
 
 and a sound judgment we can work it all out. Let us just keep 
 right in every iota. Or if we have fallen into a mistake, let us 
 back out squarely. By this time we ought to know our sphere 
 and our vocation ; and we ought to be able to detect the signs 
 by which God leads us. Having His tokens going before, the 
 path is clear." 
 
 Completion and Then Apprehensions. — "In the year we may 
 be said to have completed our building. The finial was replaced ; 
 the drainage from the roof put right ; the surrounding walks per- 
 fected ; the grounds beautifully terraced ; and another season we 
 shall see the carpet of green and the ivy climbing the walls." 
 
 "We have been startled by the disablement, through sick- 
 ness of some of our men in the prime of life. The Session has 
 been obliged to accept the resignation of one of its valiant elders. 
 The Board of Trustees has been delayed in its plans by the 
 illness of its zealous and enthusiastic president. Many of us have 
 missed the calls of our 'beloved physician,' who is in search of the 
 health to which he has so often aided us. We have sometimes 
 felt as if the stays were going from under us. But, no; it is 
 delay, not failure ! One or another may have to slacken his hand 
 for a time, but our public interests go forward." 
 
 Of the "Mission in Dundee/' from a sermon on "The Re- 
 view OF A Year/' April 5, 1891. 
 
 'Our Mission School has been severely tried. Its removal 
 from the building in which it had grown up, though foreseen 
 and inevitable, was far from comfortable. We stood there simply 
 for God's cause and not for our own or for any man's financial 
 profit. We stepped out from under the roof in August, not 
 knowing but our 'mission' would be ruined. We at least were 
 conscious of honor. Half a year has elapsed, and we have to be 
 thankful, first of all and most of all, that our teachers and 
 scholars have held by us with perfect heart. We can hardly 
 think of a soul that was dislodged. It is only the very little 
 ones that we have lost, and we will pick up every one of them 
 as soon as we can get back into the neighborhood. The 'mission' 
 has never borne spiritual fruits before. At least seven young 
 
88 
 
 men have come from it into the Church since the date to which 
 I have alluded. We have gathered up enough material wealth 
 to take the deed of lots which are now held by the trustees of 
 the 'mission' free and clear as the basis of a building to be its 
 own. We have plans; we have a subscription under way; as 
 fast as the Lord will lead us we will go to the goal. We have 
 committed our work to Him; we trust that our thoughts shall 
 be established." 
 
 "To carry out those plans of mission work on the other side 
 of Dundee Canal to which we have been providentially led, is 
 necessary to the well-being of the Church here worshipping. In 
 order to retain room in this building for people who settle on 
 these hill streets and avenues, we must provide places for those 
 of our name who are numerous in the dense population of 
 the other part of town. There is something to be done here on 
 the avenue in the future that will require men of means. And 
 I deem that I should be shortsighted and unfaithful to my trust 
 if I should not do my best so to steer the ship, that by and by 
 there would be a constituency in these pews that would make 
 light of handling a mortgage, or buying a parsonage, or enlarg- 
 ing the Church, or building a Sunday School Hall, as provi- 
 dence might open the way. There is a great deal more Presby- 
 terian timber this moment within five hundred rods of this 
 Church door than can be worked into this single congregation. 
 'There is that scattereth and yet increaseth' ; and I am sure that 
 our building up inexpensively at a distance leaves you here to 
 grow and acquire strength in a manner that will prepare you for 
 the exigencies and the pleasurable duties of the future. If you 
 do not understand me NOW, you will live to see it." 
 
 Of the "Church in Garfield," from the same sermon. 
 
 "It was resolved at the beginning of the year to direct our 
 Home Missionary gifts to the fields in our immediate vicinity." 
 
 "A young pastor was settled over the incipient Church at 
 Garfield. We ventured to assume some responsibility in agree- 
 ing to see $200 of his salary provided in consideration of his 
 aiding in the 'Mission' at Dundee. Our plans have been some- 
 what disconcerted by the loss of the building. But the pastor 
 has stood by us as much as the circumstances have permitted ; and 
 meanwhile his own Church has developed finely. Starting last 
 June with a communion roll less than twenty, now it is nearly 
 
89 
 
 seventy. Then a Sunday School few in numbers, now it is a 
 thorough School with fine attendance. There is the full equip- 
 ment of a Church with a devoted constituency. And I am bound 
 to say that the young man has done his work courageously, cheer- 
 fully and with first rate wisdom. We have seen the pledge 
 toward his support redeemed promptly month by month. I have 
 to thank our Christian Endeavor for the gifts they have put into 
 my hands on this account. I have to thank our Sunday School 
 also. I am indebted to the 'Home Mission' envelopes which have 
 been dropped into our collections. So by the good guidance and 
 grace of God the account is kept even and this arm of service is 
 upheld. I ask Christian Endeavor to direct its missionary offer- 
 ing in this channel yet a while longer." 
 
 From a sermon on "Led by a Straight Way," at the occa- 
 sion of the "Twenty-Hfth Anniversary," March 6, 1892. 
 
 "Now a little about the future. — This Church must always 
 carry a right heavy intellectual ballast. Everything needs to 
 be popularized nowadays? To be sure, but then we do not 
 want all the meat turned to soup. 
 
 "There is always something to be said on weighty subjects. 
 There has to be something in preaching besides exhortation, 
 and stimulation, and botheration ! It is really warming and 
 cheering to gather full seats and talk over animatedly the old 
 and ever new themes of the Gospel and win souls to accept 
 them. I love the atmosphere of revival. But, when it is not 
 prevailing, from year's end to year's end, there must be preach- 
 ing; and, thank God, it has something to do, if it can only 
 handle real subjects and handle them with intellectual force. 
 There can be a good deal accomplished by clear-headed preach- 
 ing to a few clear-headed hearers. The thinking thus started 
 gets on to other circles. 
 
 "I wish we could honor also the clear-headed teaching of 
 religion. There are unrealized ideals for the Sunday School, 
 along the line of simple instructiveness. Amid the great de- 
 mand for fervor, and music, and cordiality, I am not at all 
 afraid to set up a claim for sleek and strict intellectuality. Give 
 
90 
 
 us a grasp of mind ; give us critical discernment of truth ; give 
 us power of expression that will cut between right and wrong 
 like the surgeon's knife. Popularity is evanescent, but the 
 man who has helped you to a mental grip upon truth, and a 
 soul's wedlock to righteousness, is never to be forgotten." 
 
 "This Church wants to enter its second quarter of a century 
 floating the banner of generosity. What we have given has 
 not hurt us. As God shall prosper us we proceed in the same 
 straight way. We are open to conviction about tithing our 
 incomes. We will listen to the committee of Christian 
 Endeavor which would like to suggest that we assume from 
 this time the entire support of a missionary in China. We 
 will dream about a parsonage. We will imagine a new Sun- 
 day School Hall. We will presume a Mission Church paid for. 
 Meanwhile we will try to secure enough for ourselves to eat 
 and to wear; and the generous intentions will all work out 
 comfortably in time. We will not fret, but 'to do good and 
 to communicate we will forget not.' " 
 
 "The Church wants to plan for more diligent oversight. It 
 has not been our experience that too much prodding of delin- 
 quent Church-members has been profitable. Scratching a sore 
 does not cure it. If we let it alone, it may get well. We might 
 poultice it. I hold that each Church-member is under God's 
 constraint. When he goes wrong nobody knows it better than 
 himself. A rebuke, in order to help him, must be administered 
 in most gracious temper. But a manifestation of Christian 
 love and kindness will soften him and keep him in shape to 
 come back to duty one day. I have never had happiness in 
 Church-discipline ; but I have had inexhaustible satisfaction in 
 turning a kindly side with unweariable patience toward one 
 who may seem to err or to be slack," 
 
 "And now we need to set our hearts with renewed devo- 
 tion to the grateful business of reaching and saving souls of 
 men. The fruitful Church is like the fig-tree of which it is 
 true, I believe, that its branches may bear at the same time 
 ripened figs and opening blossoms, not to say also fruit in 
 various stages of growth. We have always ideals about reach- 
 ing and persuading souls that are far better than our attain- 
 ment. One thing is certain, the element of time plays a greater 
 part in all good work toward the saving of souls than we once 
 
91 
 
 supposed. We have imagined that there might be an instan- 
 taneous conversion and all was secured. Hardly so; it is still 
 the rule, 'Work out your salvation,' and 'Be thou faithful unto 
 death.' " 
 
 From a sermon on "Six Years in the New Church and 
 AN Endeavor to Look Ahead," from Exodus 24 16 : March 26, 
 1893. 
 
 "God knows no hurry. He never seizes advantages. What 
 cannot wait is not worth having. The way to work with Him 
 is to be slow and sure, ever deeply studious of His designs. 
 Each stage is a preparation for one higher, until you shall have 
 reached the destined summit. If you tarry six days, six weeks, 
 six years, on a certain shelf of the mountain, it is simply to get 
 breath to go to the top." 
 
 "That joyous Sabbath, the first in the year 1887, brought 
 up from the old home on River Street the congregation that 
 had erected this edifice. There was a band of men that had 
 learned to stand shoulder to shoulder and had carried their 
 Church over the transition with power. What was our con- 
 sternation to see that phalanx broken after a few months. 
 One and another, and another, died in the prime of life, to our 
 incurable grief. Then one and another, and another, was each 
 required, by the exigencies of health or occupation, to change 
 his residence. We can never group again on earth the band 
 that built this Church, although we had assumed, never ques- 
 tioning, that they were building it for themselves. It hath 
 proved that, like the prophets, 'not unto themselves, but unto 
 you, they did minister those things' which ye now enjoy. Happily 
 others have appeared to take their places. We rejoice in those 
 who have been inclined to cast in their lot here. New group- 
 ing for present or for future enterprises will be formed." 
 
 "Six years we have tarried here and the 'glory of God has 
 abode on the mount' ; now the question is, if the Lord higher 
 up does not call out of the cloud." 
 
 "For fear that He does call, we will make haste to look 
 around and calculate what He may think we ought to have 
 that we have not." 
 
92 
 
 "First, I am sure He would say: 'You ought to have a big 
 'Sunday School room. You ought not to be dainty or proud; 
 'what you want is space, light, and air. Passaic is a great 
 'town for children ; all you have to do is to open a door and 
 'they will gather. Yes; you want a spacious Sunday School 
 'room. Your present rooms are all right for Church-parlors; 
 'and some time they can be thrown into the main room and 
 'constitute an annexed district of pews. But they are too small 
 'for Sunday School.' " 
 
 "Now a message like that is unanswerable. It is exactly 
 true. Who has wisdom to solve the Sunday School problem 
 will give us the key to all the rest." 
 
 "Do we need a manse? 'Manse' is Scotch for parsonage, 
 and it is rather the better term. It's a house which the Church 
 supplies for the minister to live in. It is a question in Church 
 economy whether it is profitable in cities and suburbs to own 
 a manse, or maybe cheaper to let the minister rent his domicile 
 as do so many of the people." 
 
 "I suppose it is like almost all other questions, not to be 
 settled as a theory, but according to facts. If a chance came 
 to a Church to secure a 'manse,' it might be inexcusable to 
 forfeit the opportunity. When a congregation is bending its 
 attention to the future, if this object is in sight it would be 
 unwisdom not to fasten consideration upon it. One man knows 
 just as well as another whether it is, or is not, in sight for us 
 in present circumstances." 
 
 "In fair judgment the Church has won what it anticipated 
 when it built in 1886. But, all things considered, the unexpected 
 advancement of the city considered, the outlook for the future 
 being taken into account, we are not yet quite at the top of 
 Sinai. The plant, to wit, Church, manse and Sunday School hall, 
 is not complete.' 
 
 "I do not know but it devolves on us who have had the 
 shoulder to the wheel so long, to strike out the final plan. If 
 it does devolve on us, let us do it. It is just as well now as any 
 time. If we are not wise now, we are never going to be. If 
 WE are not wise in respect to these things, those who succeed 
 us can hardly be so. If a scheme can be traced in black and 
 white which will be ultimate for this First Presbyterian Church 
 of Passaic, I would like to set eyes on it. I would not be afraid 
 
93 
 
 to attempt it. The easiest thing in the world to do is the right 
 thing. Anything too great strains a body; anything top small 
 shrivels a body ; the exactly right thing is an inspiration." 
 
 From a sermon on "Attachment to the House of the 
 Lord," from Psalm 26, 8, preached April 7, 1895. 
 
 "The time has fully arrived for some thorough and careful 
 forecast of the future. Some of us who have been in the traces 
 a long while might desire to rest ; but it is impossible. There is 
 a vitality in the community which will allow us no repose. There 
 is no way but forward. Since we erected this edifice in 1886, the 
 North Reformed Church has built ; the Baptists have rebuilt ; the 
 new Episcopal Church has been erected ; the Methodists have re- 
 fitted their House of Worship and put up a chapel in the north 
 part of the city ; the Congregationalists have obtained their edi- 
 fice; the Garfield and Dundee Churches have been established 
 and provided with houses of worship; the Germans have ob- 
 tained a property ; the Hollanders of one congregation have our 
 former property, while another has erected a fine building on 
 Hope Avenue, and a third flourishes on Monroe Street; the 
 Slavs have erected a Roman Catholic Church and the Poles 
 another; the Swedes have built a Lutheran Church; the 'colored 
 people' have built, — and yet we have advanced ; our Sunday 
 School cries out for more room, and the future is full of promise 
 of growth in the community. There is room for two or three 
 thousand people to settle within easy distance of our site. They 
 are coming and sure to come. Two years ago we procured the 
 adjacent property so as to be in position to enlarge our facilities. 
 It must inevitably be done. The time has arrived to strike out 
 the plan. We want the complete and final plan. I suppose in 
 1886 the thought was that this Church was final ; but it is not. 
 The younger people coming up with buoyancy and energy crowd 
 the veterans. We must have plans for the future. No matter 
 how long it requires to execute them. Remember that the Ca- 
 thedral of Cologne was planned in the 13th century and finished 
 in the 19th; but it was completed in accordance with the draw- 
 ings of the architect of the 13th century. The first business of 
 
94 
 
 our new Church year must be a courageous forecast and a 
 definite scheme of expansion. I hope men will not be afraid of 
 it. We have always found it good to blaze ahead. We have 
 reached an opportunity. They will be happy men who lend their 
 hearts to it and achieve that SOMETHING which remains to 
 be done in and by this congregation. For my part I can advo- 
 cate no policy but the bold one. There is a scheme for the future 
 in the materials of the present. There is no living man who sees 
 it clearly yet ; but it would yield to discovery. And I believe that 
 the true plan for the future would be found more simple and 
 more practicable than many of us now think. It must be brought 
 to lines on architect's paper. So far need not cost much or 
 frighten anybody. Then if it is imperative to wait, why, we can 
 wait as long as the builders of Cologne ! But that would not be 
 the upshot. What is right can be done. It can be done as fast 
 as it ought. Let it be undertaken." 
 
 "Thus hath the Lord of hosts spoken, saying, 'Execute true judg- 
 ment, and shew mercy and compassion every man to his brother: and 
 oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger nor the poor; 
 and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart." 
 Zech. vii: 9. 
 
 "These are the things that ye shall do: Speak ye every man the truth 
 with his neighbor; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your 
 gates : let, none of you imaa;ine evil in your hearts against your neighlwr 
 and love no false bath: for all these are things that I hate, saith the 
 Lord." Zech. viii: 16. 
 
(5ob'0 Mill in Sufterlng. 
 
 Job 9, 24. 
 
 Passaic, July 17, '04. 
 Job Ix: 24, "If it be not He, who then is it?" 
 
 One could hardly name another line in the whole volume of 
 Scripture whose shade of meaning is so elusive as this which 
 we now recite. Of course we have read it from the "revised" 
 English. But the nine simple monosyllables do by no means give 
 expression to the thought that struggled for utterance in the mind 
 of him who was speaking under the name Job. 
 
 It is a mind startled by the problem of suffering. Startled? 
 The word is too weak. It is a mind thrilled and tortured by the 
 problem of human suffering. 
 
 Job is proceeding upon the presumption that God directly in- 
 flicts suffering. He is in himself an example. Indeed he is 
 sketched as with the skill of a consummate artist, at the opening 
 of the book, to give point and pungency to the discussion of 
 God's justice in inflicting suffering. Had he not been a "man 
 perfect and upright; one that feared God and eschewed evil"? 
 And had he not risen honorably to the summit of prosperity and 
 dignity ? Then the evil day dawned and he was given over to the 
 "adversary" to be tormented. First the "oxen and the asses" 
 were swept away in a night by the Sabeans ; next the lightning 
 struck the flocks of sheep and blighted them ; then the Chaldeans 
 swooped down like vultures and carried off the wealth-bearing 
 camels; then the cyclone struck the houses and buried all the 
 children dead in the ruins; and finally Job himself was stricken 
 with loathsome and excruciating boils, that gnawed as close to 
 the vital nerve as it was possible to bite without extinguishing 
 life itself. It is agreed that art cannot surpass the delineation of 
 Job as a picture of misery. 
 
96 
 
 The presumption is that God inflicted it. The question to 
 Job's mind is how God can be right. He dares to handle the 
 question, as he would carry on a controversy between man and 
 man. If one, trying to counsel as a friend, should say : 
 
 "Behold, God will not cast away a perfect man; 
 Neither will He uphold the evil-doers," — 
 
 Job will reply: 
 
 " Of a truth I know that it is so : 
 But how can a man be just with God?" 
 
 and he will rush forward like a torrent, maintaining that God 
 is vindictive. He has the power ; He is irresistible ; He is 
 indiscriminating : "He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked": 
 "He mocketh at the trial of the innocent" : "the earth is given 
 into the hand of the wicked": "He covereth the faces of the 
 judges thereof" : all things seem to Job to be out of order and 
 perverse ; and God is at the prompter's desk directing the 
 tragedy. 
 
 " If it be not He; 
 Who then is it?" 
 
 The disputants in the Hebrew drama would fain break or 
 check the torrent of Job's declamation. One must needs read 
 the whole, and read it with even closer care than he would 
 read Shakespeare, or Goethe, or Dante, in order to catch the 
 drift of thought and feeling. In the main, on the part of the 
 so-called friends the contention is that suffering comes upon 
 us in the proper and orderly administration of justice. There 
 are most stubborn difficulties in the way of maintaining that 
 cool proposition. I know nothing more diflficult, nothing more 
 utterly impossible, than to maintain the proposition in the face 
 of some man sorely stricken and dismantled in the prime of 
 life. I visit such a man these days ; and I listen to his vehe- 
 ment contention that God has dealt unfairly with him. And 
 I can by no means change that man's mind by any argument 
 that I can put up on the opposite side of the contention. Nor 
 could Job's visitors overcome and silence him in argument, 
 the challenge being simply whether God were dealing justly. 
 
 Again, within the last few days we have buried one whose 
 deprivations, it seemed to us, surpassed the depth of Job's sore 
 
97 
 
 inflictions. Her name was on the roll of this Church, and she 
 was so utterly the last of her race, and she had been so unob- 
 trusive and so unobserved and so silent in the Christian life, 
 that it seems no breach of delicacy or propriety to recall her 
 story. Born (on the other side of the sea) perhaps in the year 
 1831, her mother died in the event of giving her birth. She 
 never saw a mother's face or heard a mother's voice. The 
 father, too, dropped out of the story before she was born, and 
 the mother's parents brought up the waif. With them she came 
 to America at about the age of fifteen. At once she took her 
 place at work in the mill. But the mill in the year 1846, run by 
 water-power, in a petty village far from the railroad, clumsy 
 and awkward in every way, was a different institution from the 
 mill of to-day. 
 
 One time the girl ventured too near the floundering arms 
 of a cumbrous wheel, and the sleeve on her left arm caught 
 with a cruel grip that drew in the hand to the elbow. Instinc- 
 tively she threw out the right hand to rescue the other, when 
 that also was drawn into the crushing vise. It is better imag- 
 ined than told. And imagination can reproduce the maimed 
 girl, when rescued from the clutch of the wheel, waiting three 
 hours for messengers to scour the country and bring to her 
 relief a doctor. Suffice it to say that both arms were ampu- 
 tated. That were bad enough ; but when the wounds failed 
 to heal, afterward a second operation was necessary ; and out 
 of it finally the girl came with nothing at all left of one arm, 
 and only a stump not reaching to the elbow-joint of her once 
 good right arm. Eighty and fifty years was she to carry the 
 burden of life under that fearful handicap. 
 
 The inflictions upon Job recede into the back-ground before 
 such an example. Was he stripped of wealth?: In one stroke 
 was she bereft of all the chances, prospects, and even possi- 
 bilities, of anything to be earned or acquired. Was he robbed 
 of his children by the hurricane?: In one moment was she 
 condemned to childlessness all her days. Job's wealth was re- 
 placed ; Job's family was re-established ; but hers was a depri- 
 vation to which half a century of life never brought a stitch 
 of relief. In the presence of Job's aggravations might it be 
 discussed whether God dealt justly: who would dare take 
 
98 
 
 up that discussion in the presence of her whom we laid in the 
 grave a few days ago? 
 
 The drama of Job offers suggestions : 
 
 One is the careless suggestion that trouble comes by 
 chance. It was an accident, they would say, that befell the 
 children killed in the cyclone; it was an accident that hap- 
 pened to the sheep struck by lightning; it was an accident to 
 the girl who lost her hands and arms in the mill ; it was an 
 accident that carried off a thousand lives when the excursion 
 boat burned in the river. 
 
 Oh, we are dismissing lightly a thousand calamities as "acci- 
 dental." That may do for the newspapers ; it may do even for 
 the coroner's jury ; but it by no means suffices for the exac- 
 tions of profound religious thought, such as shook the soul of 
 Job in the book that bears his name. 
 
 Another suggestion is that suffering comes in the execu- 
 tion of the laws of cause and effect. So the railway collision, 
 being traced to a mis-placed switch, is regarded as explained. 
 So the loss of Job's oxen, being attributed to an inroad of the 
 Sabeans, is accounted for. The herdsmen should not have 
 been pasturing or plowing on the dangerous territory. How 
 Job's "boils" would be accounted for by a law of "cause and 
 effect," I am sure I don't know : it is a poor, lean law, anyhow, 
 when it comes to a religious way of looking at things ; and so 
 we drop it. 
 
 Nowadays it is higher-sounding to say that trouble is the 
 unavoidable friction in a process of development. The sacri- 
 fice of some thousands of human lives at the head of the Yel- 
 low Sea is on account of friction between two empires in the 
 process of the development of states in the population of the 
 globe. And the calamities of Job were owing, in a consider- 
 able degree, to the crude stage in the development of civiliza- 
 tion which allowed the Sabeans and the Chaldeans to be play- 
 ing so freely as bandits and robbers. And the girl might com- 
 fort herself — might she? — with the thought that she contribu- 
 ted something to the evolution of manufactures in America. 
 A poor comfort that : it never entered into her head. It would 
 have done no good if any one had tried to put it there. I talked 
 with her a few days before she died — but, I have not told all 
 her story yet. 
 
99 
 
 None of these specious answers do any good in the relig- 
 ious discussion of the problem of suffering. We fly right over 
 a process of evolution and confront Him Who projected tiie 
 evolution. We ask what He means by the suffering. 
 
 We transport our minds through the law of cause and effect 
 as swiftly as a message under-running the Atlantic by cable 
 telegraph, and face Him Who promulgated the law of cause 
 and effect and we demand what He means by suffering. 
 
 We ply our insistent demand for the first or the final cause 
 in the problem of suffering, and 
 
 " If it be not He; 
 Who then is it?" 
 
 And now we are ready to say that the problem of suffering 
 may not be perfectly solved, simply as no part of natural phe- 
 nomena is perfectly solved. Suffering must fall into the ranks 
 with all the imperfect sciences. We know a good deal about 
 the sciences, and we know a good deal about suffering. 
 
 And yet, if we will be quiet a minute, we may learn sonv - 
 thing about the patient endurance of suffering the equal of 
 which we never saw before and will never see again. 
 
 We left the girl at the age of fifteen, in the year 1846, bereft 
 as we described. There was no mother to speak a soothing 
 word, and no father to say, "I will take care of you." The aged 
 grandparents died soon after. Then she slipped into the home 
 of one whom she might call brother. A dozen years 
 older than herself, married to a beautiful young woman, 
 his door opened to the crippled girl. No children were ever 
 bom in that house. The years brought changes as they bring to 
 every family, but it settled more and more immovably into a 
 compact of those three, — the gruff, exacting, yet withal kind and 
 calculating man ; his patient, loving, toilsome wife ; and this 
 helpless person between them. 
 
 O do not think it was a dreary household. Altogether the 
 contrary. They always had a garden brilliant with flowers ; the 
 house was alive with canaries and other singing birds ; there 
 were books of a substantial and instructive quality. Any one 
 would have been entertained in a call at that house as it used 
 to be thirty, twenty, or fifteen years ago. 
 
 Do not think that the crippled sister was an idle dependent. 
 Far from it. Nobody more industrious. She could do more 
 
lOO 
 
 things about the house and the garden than you would imagine. 
 Many a time have I rung that door-bell and waited for her to 
 come, turn the lock and open the door. Once she did not respond, 
 and I went around to the garden and found her running the 
 lawn-mower. Usually she would beckon me to the parlor and 
 bring a chair. How I would shrink from accepting a seat that 
 that handless, armless woman had transported across the room ! 
 But her vivacious way of doing it and the smile on her face 
 would disarm objection, and I would have to accept her polite- 
 ness. I mention such things as illustrations of the ingenuity 
 with which she had devised means to overcome her terrible 
 handicap. How much better so, than Job's sitting down on 
 an ash heap and howling about his miseries. 
 
 That was a bright, and busy, and happy home, to each of the 
 three inmates, far above the average of homes. But age creeps 
 on ; and the dissolution is inevitable. About twelve years ago 
 the man died. Then the two women were left to themselves. 
 There was a provision for their support; they had only to take 
 care of each other. And so they did in the home ; and "they 
 walked to the House of God together." They had their sittings 
 here; they attended worship, and came duly to the sacraments 
 for many years. 
 
 Then they had to face the infirmities of age. Why did not 
 God let the maimed and helpless one go first? 
 
 But He ordered it the other way ; and the one with hands was 
 left to be taken care of by the one without hands. That is a 
 very long story, and I will not tell it ; but there is one incident in 
 it that sets me in awe at the providence of God. 
 
 Of course a person without arms incurs many a fall and has 
 hard work to get up unassisted. In the midst of her cares this 
 child of God once fell and broke a bone. And what bone do 
 you suppose it was? It was that poor fragment of an arm that 
 had been spared to her in the calamity of fifty years ago. That, 
 her sole dependence, had to be bound in splints and carried about 
 for weeks till the fracture should heal ; her faithful heart all the 
 while torn at the sight of the other lying in bed and needing her 
 assistance. If ever mortal on earth might call in question the 
 doctrine of divine providence it seemed to me that here was the 
 rightful questioner. 
 
 But I never heard from her lips any echo of Job's complain- 
 
lOI 
 
 ing. It was well indeed that there was in her no murmuring 
 disposition. There were even severer things in store. 
 
 Those two souls depended upon each other. No use to say 
 what might have been arranged for their comfort. They would 
 have their own way, and no one had authority to overrule them. 
 Whatever they might lack in the outward appliances for com- 
 fort was made up for by a stern and grim resolution in the heart 
 to take life as it was ordered to their lot. 
 
 And the lot that was ordered called for a long and wearisome 
 sickness in the one who had the only two hands there were in the 
 house. Contrivances and ingenuities provided the way to get 
 along through the months that led down the steady grade to, 
 at last, the days, then hours of voiceless, motionless, and almost 
 unconscious waiting for the end. 
 
 That patient died toward the dawning of a morning; no one 
 else in the house but the armless sister. And where was she? 
 One of her accidents had overtaken her ; one of the worst. 
 Bustling about some way she had mis-stepped and fallen to the 
 foot of the cellar stairs ; and there she was found lying, bruised 
 and blood-stained, unable so much as to rise to her feet, while 
 the other had been drawing her last breath on the bed overhead, 
 unwatched, untended. Again we queried, is there sarcasm in 
 divine providence? Who could have ordered fate on a plan that 
 seems so cruel? But then, our own judgment commanded silence, 
 for if these souls themselves utter no complaint, why should we 
 complain for them? There was no tone for the funeral that 
 shortly followed but the tone of Christian triumph. She that was 
 dead had fought her fight as she wished to fight it ; had finished 
 her course and kept her faith. 
 
 Then the armless woman, seventy-three years old, was left 
 alone. In our last talk with her we reminded ourselves of the 
 strangeness of the providence that she, the utterly helpless one, 
 should outlive all the rest of the family group. She felt the 
 wonder and awe of it. There was the house, however, there was 
 the estate, not great but quite sufficient, and there was her stub- 
 born determination to continue to live as, and just where, she 
 had lived, notwithstanding it left her, day and night, much of 
 the time alone. 
 
 One day the Chief of Police of the city was calling on her. 
 He was a life-long friend, and in some sense a guardian of her 
 
102 
 
 ititerests. He was speaking to the woman, perhaps in remon- 
 strance about her staying alone in the house. 
 She turned upon him and said : 
 
 "I'm not alone here." 
 
 "O, you are not?" he repHed in surprise, "who is with you?" 
 
 "God is here," she answered like a flash. 
 
 He related the fact to me, as we stood on the green sward 
 beside her grave in Cedar Lawn. 
 
 Was God there that night, the 3d of July ? It was ten o'clock 
 and she was moving about the rooms, her lighted lantern under 
 the stump of an arm. She started to go up the stairs to her 
 chamber. Somewhere in the ascent something went wrong; she 
 lost her footing and fell backward. She was found a few min- 
 utes later, her head doubled under the weight of her body and 
 life gone out like a lighthouse struck by a cannon ball. 
 "I am not alone," she had said, "GOD is here." 
 
 Was He there then ? Who ordered that event ? Was it chance ? 
 Or was it fate? Or was it a law of cause and effect; or was it 
 a turn in a development of some process? 
 
 Who has a better right to answer than she, who was most 
 concerned? She had said, "GOD is here." 
 
 "If it be not HE, WHO then is it?" 
 
 We have said that the problem of suffering may not be per- 
 fectly solved at present, simply as no part of natural phenomena 
 is perfectly understood. 
 
 Now we are to say that it may be sufficiently cleared up for 
 the comfort of the individual himself ; and in respect to the total 
 it may safely be left to the eternal goodness of God. 
 
 We have been speaking of two whose names were on our 
 roll and who have lately died. It is about twelve years ago that 
 they wished to unite with us ; though many of us had known them 
 a long while before then. They were not able to bring formal 
 certificates, because the village Church to which they had be- 
 longed previously had became practically extinct. But we hap- 
 pened to meet a clergyman who had been pastor there, perhaps 
 back before the war. We asked a word from him, and he re- 
 plied, "It gives me great pleasure to testify to the Church mem- 
 
I03 
 
 bership of these persons, and to their most exemplary Christian 
 character." 
 
 Somewhere, then, away back, maybe fifty years ago, not long 
 after the terrible privation overtook her, did the woman who fell 
 and died the other day, think out the question of her relation 
 to God, and become submissive to His Will. 
 
 "What Job stormed and raged about, she accomplished. What 
 Jesus did, so calmly yet so grandly, in the garden of Gethsemane, 
 when He said, 'Not my will, but Thine be done,' she, too, suc- 
 ceeded in doing in her heart. She came to a peaceful under- 
 standing with God in regard to her afflictions, so far as it con- 
 cerned herself. I do not remember a word of complaint, in the 
 style of Job's complaints, in all the years of my acquaintance. 
 She had accepted her lot as the Will of God. Not that she ever 
 so formulated it in language ; but, what is better, she so lived it. 
 She took up her cross, heavy, unutterably heavy cross that it was, 
 and patiently, even cheerfully follov/ed Christ. 'She did what 
 she could.' 
 
 "Her last work on earth was among the flowers that God 
 caused to blossom in her garden. Her last thoughts were of 
 people whom God had made her friends. Her supreme human 
 wish was to be independent; and that wish was granted to the 
 utmost letter. And all the rest, — the mountainous pile of ques- 
 tions that men dispute about, were left over to the better under- 
 standing of a future life. 
 
 "Job has become a pale figure to my imagination. I have 
 seen a life of privation and suffering, in comparison with which 
 his troubles were easy. And I have seen it borne, to the end, 
 witlT a serene submission to the Will of God, beside which his 
 wailing and writhing appear sheer agonies of intellect. They 
 stumbled at the lesson ; while the Christian girl learned it. 
 
 "With better right than he, could she say, 'Naked came I out 
 of my mother's womb.' 
 
 "Then, that fateful night, three score and ten years with three 
 added, she might have changed his tense, and said, 'Naked I do 
 return.' 
 
 "And all along the unmurmuring years she had been saying. 
 The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away : Blessed be the 
 name of the Lord.' " 
 
3e0U0 SeainninG to ITcacb. 
 
 Luke 3, 23. 
 
 Passaic, Nov. 27, 04. 
 
 Luke iii:23, "And Jesus Himself when He began to teach, was about 
 
 thirty years of age." 
 
 A recent periodical contains a notice of an American theo- 
 logical professor who has died in the current year. He had 
 attained distinction in his department. Many a reader will take 
 note how he won. Born in the year 1844, he graduated from a 
 New England college at the age of twenty-three. He went 
 directly to a Seminary and graduated in theology in the class of 
 187a at the age of twenty-six. Naturally he might have taken 
 a Church and become a pastor. But his course was otherwise. 
 Means coming to hand he went to Europe for further study. He 
 spent many years in the Universities of the Old World. Not 
 until he was at the age of thirty-four years was he ready to as- 
 sume a professorship in Chicago. But he soon took a leading 
 rank in the scholarship of the Old Testament and produced bril- 
 liant results. He had taught twenty-five years, when he died a 
 few months ago. Twenty-five years out of a life of sixty were 
 devoted to instruction. It seems too small a part ; but the dis- 
 tinguished professor's career is justified in the eyes of men of 
 learning. 
 
 Compare the career of Jesus. Born near the middle of the 
 reign of Augustus, the story of His nurture is entirely hidden. 
 One solitary incident occurring when He was twelve years of age 
 is preserved. Then for a moment He was found "in the temple, 
 sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking 
 them questions." 
 
 The observant and inquisitive child ! Then the curtain falls. 
 Eighteen years of youth and early manhood pass without a letter 
 of record. At length He reaches His active career and "when 
 
105 
 
 He began to teach, was about thirty years of age." It is well 
 known that His teaching was completed within a period of little 
 more than three years, when it ended in His crucifixion. Thirty 
 years of preparation and waiting for no more than three years 
 of action ! It seems out of all proportion. 
 
 Now we address ourselves to the inquiry with what condi- 
 tions of precise and complete knowledge was Jesus invested when 
 He thus began to teach? 
 
 First, and at the basis, so to speak, we observe that He had 
 lived those long years within an epitome of nature as complete 
 as could well be embraced in the sphere of a life, if the person 
 living it were to be stationary. If one may travel he may see all 
 the world ; but if one must be sedentary it becomes of great sig- 
 nificance where he is set down. 
 
 Now Nazareth, where Jesus passed His unrecorded years, has 
 been misunderstood. The slur, "Can any good thing come out 
 of Nazareth ?" has misled us. In truth, it was a regal site. Few 
 places on the face of the earth combine such advantages for ap- 
 prehending nature. It lies in the temperate latitude, but the eye 
 takes in snow-topped Hermon, where there is Arctic climate. It 
 is a common journey to the deep vale of the Jordan, even to the 
 Dead Sea, where the atmosphere is torrid. The entire range of 
 cold and heat is accessible by a tour on foot. Then there is 
 rugged mountain, fertile valley, terraced hill-side, bleak desert, 
 sandy seashore, infested wilderness, — all within reach, if one be 
 only addicted to pedestrian tours. The vegetation of that land 
 was diversified. If King Solomon were able to speak "of trees 
 from the cedar that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that 
 springeth out of the wall ;" to speak also of "beasts, and of fowl, 
 and of creeping things, and of fishes," He Who was "greater 
 than Solomon" would not have overlooked the opportunity for 
 that ample knowledge of nature. From Nazareth could He be- 
 hold with naked eye, the inland lake, the salt sea, the gurgling 
 brook, the turbulent river; then the storm cloud, the brilliant 
 sunrise or the glowing sunset; and at night the most dazzling 
 display of the starry skies. If one might not travel (in the mod- 
 ern sense of the word) Nazareth would serve Him as an epitome 
 of nature. 
 
 Then Jesus, before He began to teach, being thirty years of 
 
io6 
 
 age, had been in touch with human society in phases so various 
 as quite to comprise the subject. 
 
 Here, however, we may be obliged to revise our predisposi- 
 tions. Perhaps we have acquiesced in the blank and have tacitly 
 assumed that Jesus in all those untold years lived as a pale re- 
 cluse in His mother's domicile. We now question the presump- 
 tion. The one fact known does quite demolish such a theory. 
 At twelve years of age he broke the restraint and faced the founts 
 of information. We are now going to accept the hint and to 
 assume that Jesus through all those years was the most ob- 
 servant and the most inquisitive person that ever lived among 
 men. We are going to assume that He was abroad, frequenting 
 the fields, the work-shops ; then the streets, the villages, the lake 
 shores ; climbing the mountains, threading the deserts, unearth- 
 ing curious things ; and especially that He familiarized Himself 
 with life in near-by Tiberias, the capital of Herod's tetrarchy, 
 and many times made leisurely tours to Jerusalem unheralded 
 and unnoticed. To such an observer and inquirer a marvellous 
 variety of human life was exposed. The Jewish substratum of 
 society was tunnelled and torn by all sorts of invaders. The 
 Greek peoples were everywhere for trade ; the Romans were 
 every where for governing; languages were in Babel-like con- 
 fusion ; customs jostled against each other in rivalry ; races 
 stood at arms in mutual hostility ; only the iron sceptre of the 
 empire kept any semblance of order. Jesus walked full thirty 
 years, child, boy, man, in that maelstrom of humanity before 
 He opened His lips to teach. Always observant, always in- 
 quisitive, always retentive, never ambitious, never wasteful of 
 strength or energy, what store of knowledge did He not ac- 
 cumulate! What maturity of judgment had He not acquired! 
 What precision in estimate of mankind and man! 
 
 Keeping to our present method it is proper to observe that 
 for such an One as the Son of Mary there was just then and 
 there a rich intellectual nurture. 
 
 I know, indeed, how difficult for us to divest ourselves of the 
 notion that He had not our schools, our universities, our librar- 
 ies, our newspapers, our telegraphs, our resumes of world-wide 
 information ; and how difficult not to infer that He had nothing 
 intellectually stimulating. But we are altogether wrong; and 
 I wish now to sponge out those dicta of our preposterous self- 
 
I07 
 
 esteem. I wish to say that Jesus, during those thirty years, lived 
 in an atmosphere intensely stimulating to the intellect. 
 
 Remember that we have to blot from existence nearly two 
 thousand years of time in order to get back and stand beside 
 the child and youth in Nazareth. That carries away nineteen- 
 twentieths of all that has interested us. But it takes us into a 
 position where other great thoughts and themes fill the world 
 and engage all the powers of human intelligence. 
 
 When Jesus was young the history of oriental empires should 
 have been a living and common story. What is to-day slowly 
 and painfully deciphered from unburied ruins in Babylonia, 
 and Egypt and all the Orient, was then a vivid recitation. It 
 should have been, too, a story told. Does someone ask, 
 "Where are the books?" Let the questioner understand that 
 there may be knowledge without books. Once, men learned 
 by the hearing of the ear. History was recited. The 
 annals of empires were told. If told within the hear- 
 ing of the boy who was pre-eminently inquisitive and 
 observant, did He fail to absorb it? I can believe 
 that Jesus knew the world's history from the beginning better 
 than the brightest undergraduate in American colleges can tell 
 of his own country. There are names which should have thrilled 
 Him. There is Nebuchadnezzar, the founder of Babylon ; there 
 is Cyrus the Persian, conqueror of the same Babylon ; there is 
 Alexander the Great, only some three hundred years prior to 
 His day: and especially there was the name of Julius Caesar, the 
 greatest among mortals, who fell under the stroke of the as- 
 sassin, barely forty years before Jesus was born. I am pre- 
 suming now that Jesus came to know, and to weigh, and to ap- 
 preciate all these histories. 
 
 The keenest thinkers prior to, and in, His hour were, of 
 course, the Greeks. Now let us not obfuscate ourselves with 
 the presumption that in order to get that treasure of thought, 
 Jesus must needs begin like an American boy with a Greek 
 grammar and toilsomely learn a dead language. Why, the 
 language was spoken on every hand. If He needed it He 
 had only to pick it up. Nor did He require to slave at school 
 over the Greek authors, dead or alive. The salient features 
 of Greek philosophy should have been then the general prop- 
 erty of thinking men. To get the treasure He only needed 
 
io8 
 
 to come within hearing of scholarly people in the same way 
 that he gravitated to the presence of Jewish "doctors" when 
 He was twelve years old. 
 
 Then let us remember that Latin literature was at its richest 
 bloom just those hours while Jesus was living. It is not neces- 
 sary to imagine that He studied Latin after the fashion of the 
 High School boy of to-day, as of course He did not. It is only 
 useful to presume that the essence and flavor of that fresh 
 thought from the West was wafted to the Orient in the train 
 of the Roman conquerors and rulers, and that He Who sur- 
 passed all others in the quickness of His perceptions caught at 
 it the first of all. Then it were most natural that the maxims of 
 Roman law, forced upon the conquered people should have been 
 discussed in the land where lived the proud and virile race, born 
 and bred to law as Moses had codified it. I am in a mood to 
 believe that Jesus long before He touched the age of thirty years 
 had mastered the Roman law. 
 
 Another suggestion should appeal to us. We mean now the 
 fact that Jesus read the Hebrew scriptures ; and that those 
 scriptures were read by Him on their own ground and in their 
 pristine light. Will we take in the proposition ? Will we remem- 
 ber that we are reading the Old Testament on the other side of 
 the globe from where it was enacted and written ; some thousand 
 of years also after it was actual ; in a language utterly unre- 
 lated to that in which it was composed, and with minds stuffed 
 full of modern conceptions. How unspeakably different was it 
 with Jesus reading ! There were the sites before His eyes where 
 the things happened. There were the towns and cities, the rivers 
 and the mountains, the routes of travel and the caves of refuge. 
 He could locate the whole story of the Old Testament. Then the 
 language, though not still spoken perhaps, was in a manner 
 living to His ears. He caught the subtle meaning of phrases. 
 The rhythm of words and poetic lines touched Him. It was 
 like a mother tongue. And the modes of thought, the passions 
 of the thwarted prophets, the raptures of the sanguine poets, 
 the melancholy of a Job — everything in the books, — so hard and 
 dry to us — was sweet and succulent to the child bred in the 
 synagogue, thrilled with patriotism and coming to conscious- 
 ness of Sonship to God. 
 
 I deplore that I have lived so long, and have never before 
 
I09 
 
 thought of, so as to appreciate, that magnetic atmosphere in 
 which Jesus, as child, as youth, and as maturing man, passed 
 the unwritten thirty years. 
 
 But we must shift the aim now in order to observe how all 
 that time Jesus had within Him the incentives of a pure nature. 
 Not in the least will we now dogmatize about His virgin birth. 
 The practical point in that concise relation of St. Luke concern- 
 ing the advent and infancy, is that He came to life untarnished. 
 The innocency of the babe is not the adorable thing about it. 
 It is far more important that the boy at five years could look 
 out upon the world around Nazareth with straight sight, and 
 could take the facts back to be cogitated in a pure soul. The 
 important feature is that the boy at twelve had an untarnished 
 nature so that He could sit guileless and fearless at the stools 
 of doctors and both hear and ask them questions. And it rises 
 in value as we go on to think that He could take the story of the 
 empires into a mind that ran clear in its operations, as a moun- 
 tain brook ; that He could analyze Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alex- 
 ander — that He could analyze Julius Csesar, the palpitation of 
 whose energy still thrilled the world, — and could correctly tell 
 wherein all these were weak and had failed., 
 
 I am trying to impress myself with the stirring thought that 
 Jesus, through all the thirty years under review, had faculties 
 which had been protected from contamination, or weakening by 
 any kind of injury. Are we not to fill the years with such mental 
 activities as would be spontaneous and irrepressible in such a 
 nature? By what show of authority or what shadow of reason 
 have we been always thinking of the long period as a colorless 
 blank, and a lifeless desert in the biography of Jesus? Will we 
 not now imagine Him the keenest observer, the shrewdest critic, 
 the most farsighted prophet, the mind of broadest comprehen- 
 sion, not only of His age but of any age? 
 
 At thirty the scholarly man will have arrived at his point 
 of view and will have discovered his course. He may not have 
 matured, but he will have got his direction and will have fixed 
 his aim. It was with Jesus as with other men. At thirty He 
 had reached the parting of the ways and must needs choose His 
 career. Conditions and preparations had culminated. The bap- 
 tism in the Jordan at the hand of John marks the date and the 
 outpouring of the Holy Spirit, with the voice from heaven, 
 
no 
 
 crowns the long stage of observation, reflection, tuition and ex- 
 perience. 
 
 Jesus then came to the consciousness of His power. He then 
 must choose His career. If we may think and speak in this way, 
 the "temptations" explain themselves. They were the thrusting 
 aside of such proffers as ambition had to suggest. The tempta- 
 tions were three, or classified as three. 
 
 Had Jesus come to the consciousness of power over the 
 course of nature, so that He could produce bread faster than 
 by the wheat bin, the grist-mill and the baker's oven? To 
 produce bread is the key to wealth, command, and even empire. 
 When Jesus did miracle in that line He kept Himself within the 
 course of nature. He turned wheaten loaves into more loaves. 
 He was not far from nature, for nature constantly turns sacks 
 of wheat into more wheat. It was a satanic suggestion to strain 
 power and turn stones into bread. He properly scorned the 
 thought. 
 
 It scarcely needed the climbing of a high mountain to get 
 into His mind the idea of world-wide empire. Had He not 
 heard of Alexander, who died at the age of thirty-three, weeping 
 (they say) because there were no more realms for him to con- 
 quer ? Had he not reflected well upon the recent career of Caesar, 
 the founder of imperialism? Did He not comprehend that the 
 risings of power in His own soul, the ability He began to feel 
 to command men, the arts He began to be conscious of to de- 
 velop resources, the passion of the age for revolution, — all offered 
 to Him an incomparable chance to seize the empire of the world. 
 He saw, too, the wrong of it as an eruption of personal am- 
 bition and He thrust it away. 
 
 Had not Jesus heard the voice saying from Heaven, "This 
 is My beloved Son"? Then would not God protect His Son? 
 "Try it," came the thought. "Leap recklessly from the pinnacle 
 of the temple in the sight of the crowd and demonstrate how 
 God will hold up His Son." But that was spectacular. That 
 was the folly of a show, with no other purpose but to win 
 momentary favor with the mob. Jesus rejected it with scorn. 
 
 What was He thinking? Conscious of the culminated pow- 
 ers within Him, now at the age of thirty years, what was He 
 thinking ? 
 
 He was measuring the cost of attempting to introduce and 
 
Ill 
 
 to give the mastery to truth and righteousness among men. 
 "For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteous- 
 ness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." 
 
 What did He refuse to think about? He refused to think 
 about using His incomparable abilities to gather an empire 
 around Himself as monarchical center. From the start He said, 
 "My kingdom is not of this world." No Cyrus, no Alexander, 
 no Caesar afforded Him a precedent. He proposed a thing 
 unique and sublime. He proposed to inject truth and right- 
 eousness into society, a working force in souls of men, and 
 make sure that the same would gain headway, increase with time, 
 secure mastery, and at length rule. Not easily should such a 
 project be launched. Wickedness was intrenched. Whoever 
 should storm the citadel would be apt to pay the price with his 
 life. Jesus fortified His heart to make the attack and win. He 
 would establish the kingdom of God, though the kingdoms of 
 the world hung Him on a Cross. 
 
 "Being about thirty years of age," according to our present 
 view, Jesus had mastered all that is embraced by us under the 
 two categories, history and prophecy. He had mastered the 
 story of the past, and He forecasted the course of the future. 
 He saw in one comprehensive view the problem of the world. 
 He took into His hand the key to control it. He had considered 
 every phase and every possible variation in human society. "He 
 needed not that any should testify to Him of man, for He knew 
 what was in a man." He could not be deceived in regard to any 
 person that should come within His sight. He had looked 
 deeper into nature than any scientist of the twentieth century. 
 In my opinion we ought not to speak of the miracles of Jesus 
 as contradictions of the laws of nature, but rather as acts wrought 
 in a fuller comprehension and command of the lav/s of nature 
 than any one else had attained. There was no reason why He 
 should violate nature ; there was the best of reason why He 
 should lovingly concur with the laws of God in nature. Know- 
 ing those laws, knowing the heart of man, then appreciating the 
 world from its beginning in the past to its consummation in the 
 future. He laid hold of the proposition to give the kingdom unto 
 truth and righteousness, the truth and righteousness that are 
 God in essence. 
 
112 
 
 Time was not an important consideration. "One day is v/ith 
 the Lord as a thousand years; and thousand years as one day." 
 A human Hfe is as a breath that suspires and vanishes. But the 
 projection which Jesus initiated when "He began to teach" goes 
 on. For the moment we have our part in it. To-morrow we 
 will be gone. Some one else will then take it up. Just as be- 
 fore us there have been those to promote it. There have been 
 Christian sages and saints ; there have been martyrs and apostles, 
 a goodly fellowship, touching back to the hand and the beating 
 heart of Himself. 
 
 Whom let us remember. "And considering the issue of their 
 life, imitate their faith. JESUS CHRIST is the same yester- 
 day, and to-day; yea, and forever." 
 
HII ^bln^s Belivercb to 3c0U9. 
 
 Matt, ii, 27. 
 
 Passaic, Dec. 4, 04. 
 
 Matt. xi:27, "All things have heen delivered unto Me of My Father: 
 and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know 
 the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to 
 reveal Him." 
 
 A long time have we delayed and hesitated before attempting 
 a sermon upon this sublime utterance of our Lord Jesus, His 
 tone never rises higher ; never is His voice clearer. To make 
 this proposition somewhat real is to clarify the richest field in 
 religious inquiries. 
 
 Let it be noticed that the paragraph in St. Matthew's book 
 stands apart. "At that season Jesus answered and said." No 
 mark indicates the date. Not so much as a hyphen connects it 
 with what goes before or what stands around. Here is pure 
 thought isolated and resting upon its own foundations. 
 
 Let it be noticed that Jesus spoke from His position as a man 
 in the midst of men. We must throw ourselves back and take 
 a place beside Him, in the group that heard Him, and understand 
 Him as He required to be understood then and there. Surprised 
 must have been those minds when they caught the force of His 
 language, saying firmly, "All things have been delivered unto 
 Me of My Father." For it was understood by those who heard 
 Him that "He called God His own Father." 
 
 What was that endowment upon Jesus that justified Him in 
 the saying? Such is the question of the present sermon. 
 
 Our first proposition is in these words, "All things were 
 given unto Him that He should know them." 
 
 The atmosphere, or element, of our remarkable Scripture is 
 cognizance or cognition. It will help us much if we make the 
 limitation. Is nothing given to me unless I grasp it? Is noth- 
 ing given to me unless I control it? Is nothing given to me 
 
114 
 
 unless I am empowered to exclude all others from sharing it? 
 No, indeed. The finest work of art in all the galleries is mine 
 if I may but see and appreciate it. I care not who owns it to 
 sell or buy. It is mine if its merit has entered my soul. The 
 wisest book in the world is given to me, if I may but understand 
 it. Let a millionaire possess the pages and binding, and let him 
 trade it. Perhaps he does not master the contents. If he does 
 not, and I do, the book is more mine than his. The one who has 
 the spiritual essence owns the volume rather than the one who 
 claims the parchment and printing. 
 
 The whole vault of the starry skies at night is given to the 
 astronomer who understands the vision. He may not touch one 
 star; he may not control a movement; but he is not distressed 
 at such an embargo; he is satisfied when he only knows. 
 
 "At that season Jesus answered and said, I thank Thee, O 
 Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these 
 things from the wise and prudent and didst reveal them unto 
 babes." Nothing there but the play of knowledge. No power, 
 no possession, no control, surely no hoarding, no domineering. 
 Only a revelation, a disclosure; and on the other side an ap- 
 preciation, an apprehension by knowledge. 
 
 And thereupon He adds, "All things have been given unto 
 Me of My Father." Let us, therefore, imagine ourselves stand- 
 ing at the side of Jesus a certain moment when He felt conscious 
 that He had arrived at a full understanding of "all things." 
 
 One of the early Christian thinkers and writers caught this 
 shading of the text. Origen says, "To a nature that is incor- 
 poreal and for the most part intellectual, no other attribute is ap- 
 propriate save that of knowing and being knov/n." Then he 
 cites the language, "No one knoweth the Son save the Father; 
 neither doth any know the Father save the Son and He to 
 whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him." 
 
 If we are to apprehend and seize the treasure of this Scrip- 
 ture we must divest ourselves of all such conceptions of it as 
 clutching with the hand, controlling with a sceptre, even holding 
 by title deeds, and get clear away to the spiritual conception of 
 liaving things by the airy grasp of knowing them. 
 
 Origen, whom we have already quoted, says again in com- 
 ment on our present Scripture, "By which it is clearly shown 
 that whatever among bodily natures is called seeing and being 
 
115 
 
 seen, is termed between the Father and the Son a knowing and 
 being known, — by means of the power of knowledge and not the 
 frailness of the sense of sight." If "seeing and being seen" is 
 ruled out, how much more "grasping and being grasped," "deed- 
 ing and being deeded," "ordering and being ordered," "buying 
 and selling and being bought or sold," — notions that come to our 
 carnal minds when anything is said about property acquired, 
 inherited, or received as gift. 
 
 Again, we say, let us exclude gross and material conceptions 
 of ownership as if we were misers or despots, greedy of posses- 
 sions and power; and let us admit no conception but the deli- 
 cious ownership of external things by simple knowing them. All 
 that a man understands, then, is his ; and what a man does not 
 understand is not his even though he should have it locked in 
 his safe. Whoever understands the most has the most. Knowl- 
 edge is a mode of taking title to immense possession. 
 
 Jesus touched a point where He could look into the eyes of 
 surprised mortals and say to them, in the sense now indicated, 
 "All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father." 
 
 We advance to an inquiry. In what sense is employed the 
 word "know?" In what sense might Jesus then say that He 
 had reached the culmination to "know" "all things." We recall 
 that "Jesus Himself when He began to teach was about thirty 
 years of age." We have heretofore dismissed from our minds 
 the irrational fancy that those had been years of intellectual 
 sloth or dreamy lethargy. We remember that Jesus as a child 
 "grew and waxed strong, becoming full of wisdom." We re- 
 member that once at twelve years of age, "they found Him in 
 the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing 
 them and asking them questions." "And all that heard Him 
 were amazed at His understanding and His answers. We can- 
 not reasonably think that the curtain then fell and He relapsed 
 into mental torpor. Presumably He went on as a boy would 
 advance from the age of twelve. With such an outstart and 
 eighteen years in which to progress, Jesus should have covered 
 the whole scope of human thought. At thirty He should have 
 known as much as was attainable. He should have had some 
 thought upon every subject; He should have formed some opin- 
 ion upon every species of inquiry. 
 
 Let us give Him one advantage. I cannot state it in a single 
 
ii6 
 
 word but may develop it in a few sentences. I have in mind the 
 difference between knowing painfully, as the result of toilsome 
 acquisition, and, on the other hand, knowing freely as glorious 
 intuition. Now take partial illustrations. The swimmer, it is 
 said, begins with cautious and self-conscious management of 
 hands, limbs, respiration and all his faculties. He gets an ex- 
 pert control of the apparatus after a while. But one day, quite 
 unaware, he subsides in the element of the water as if he had 
 been born there. Then he swims like a fish, that never had to 
 take lessons. It becomes his nature. In his study there is a 
 scholar writing. He thinks of orthography, of punctuation, of 
 sentence construction, of rules of rhetoric, all at one and the 
 same time; and painfully he grinds out a "composition." It is 
 the dullest work in school life. But run along a few years and you 
 shall see the man sit down, and of a sudden off he goes writing 
 as freely as a bird would fly. He has dropped all his rules and 
 restrictions ; expression and style come as blithely as nature. 
 
 They say that the pupil in music thrums and thrums, prac- 
 tices and practices, wearily and perhaps hatingly. Then he goes 
 over exercises unlimited in volume and variety, wondering all 
 the while what the drudgery is for. But one day, being a true 
 genius, the player suddenly forgets himself, and with himself, 
 he forgets all his bondage ; then he and his instrument coalesce 
 as one soul, and he plays away as if he were playing on him- 
 self. He never goes back to that fettering of rules again. Now 
 he is a free being in music. 
 
 These three are illustrations to suggest the difference between 
 an acquisition and an intuition. Pretty much all any of us con- 
 siders about knowledge is the drudgery of acquiring a little 
 of it. And we suppose there is no other way. We suppose one 
 must toil on forever, learning a scrap to-day, another scrap to- 
 morrow, making our minds just "scrap books." It is a poor 
 and mean estimate of a priceless word. Sometimes a man rises 
 above it. One gets far enough in astronomy, I suppose, to travel 
 in the celestial heavens as if he belonged there. One gets so at 
 home in the law as to breathe it as his atmosphere. One learns 
 engineering, for aught I know, so as to enjoy the problems as his 
 meat and drink. Every specialist comes to ease in his depart- 
 ment. Now it is conceivable that one might get to that facility 
 in all that men aspire unto. 
 
117 
 
 I have read of a man who once touched a remakable note 
 with the point of his pen. He turned off then a short paragraph 
 which the world has never been wilHng to let die. He says, 
 "Suppose I speak with the tongues of men and of angels." He 
 says, "Suppose I have the gift of prophecy and know all mys- 
 teries and all knowledge." Stop just there. Catch the flight 
 of a strong man's fancy, when he catches the glimpse of the 
 vision of unlimited knowledge. He sees a possibility. He does 
 not imagine himself toiling and toiling till he reaches it ; he 
 imagines himself soaring to a height where it shall break upon 
 him as an intuition, knowing "all mysteries and all knowledge." 
 
 Paul never attained it of course, for he was but mortal man. 
 But I am prepared to believe that Jesus attained it. We speak 
 after the manner of men ; because He addressed men face to face, 
 and spoke after their manner, when He said, "All thing have 
 been delivered unto Me of My Father." I am prepared to be- 
 lieve that Jesus was conscious at that moment that He held the 
 key to every department of human inquiry. It is not necessary 
 to say that He burdened His mind with all the detail of as- 
 tronomy like the modern astronomer. It is not necessary to 
 imagine that He cumbered His mind with the minutise of law 
 like the lawyer of to-day. It is not necessary to say that He was 
 loaded with theories about psychology lilce the lecturer on that 
 vague word now. It is not necessary to say that He speculated 
 concerning the future life after the manner of the theologian of 
 the nineteenth century. It is only necessary to say that Jesus 
 was conscious that He held the key, or the clew, to all these and 
 to all other subjects that were or ever would be embraced in the 
 fields of human inquiry or speculation. 
 
 How did He attain the supreme elevation? 
 
 Not by acquisition, not by investigation, not step by step. 
 But by inspiration. "All things have been delivered unto Me," 
 was His explanation. When then He got the vision, He held it 
 as an intuition. It was a free beholding of the whole plan of 
 the universe of God. 
 
 It is on record that such an inspiration came to Him. Re- 
 ferring to His relations with John, His forerunner, it is said 
 that "Jesus when He was baptized went up straightway from 
 the water; and, lo! the heavens were opened unto Him, and 
 He saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon 
 
ii8 
 
 Him ; and, lo ! a voice out of the heavens saying, This is my be- 
 loved Son, in whom I am well pleased." That was an inspiration, 
 indeed. It crowned the thirty years of patient walk; the thirty 
 years of unparalleled observation and acute inquisitiveness. Had 
 He been listening and asking questions? Now something hap- 
 pened that let the light in like a flood and raised Him above all 
 necessity of hearing or inquiring. Now He caught the un- 
 limited vision. Now His eyes were opened to the complete in- 
 tuition. Now He could say, "All things have been delivered 
 unto Me of My Father." Now came also the consciousness of 
 that prerogative which accompanies knowledge, and He could 
 say, "All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on 
 earth." 
 
 That Jesus so held the key to knowledge is evinced for us 
 by the fact that after Him the Christian world is advancing in 
 steady steps to the complete science of the universe. Why do we 
 stand obstinately bent on forcing minds of men to accept the 
 divinity of Christ as sheer and cold dogma? Why not rather 
 invite men to a consideration of the living facts of His case. 
 Jesus never isolated Himself, like a statue on a pedestal, and 
 demanded, "Worship Me." On the contrary Jesus did most 
 closely identify and articulate Himself with His people. He 
 survives and continues in them. Those three wondrous years 
 added to the thirty years of preparation did by no means com- 
 plete the story. The story of Christ is serial. He is perpetuated 
 in Christendom. And the end is not yet. Our age is but 
 an installment in the unfolding of the plan. The best thing we 
 can do as thoughtful minds is to catch the drift of the ages 
 since He closed His personal mission, for the Christian ages are 
 the continuation of the Christ. 
 
 To go straight to the point, then, we say that knowledge 
 follows in the wake of that impulse which Jesus started in the 
 world. We cannot summarize the history of twenty centuries 
 in a sentence or two; but we can challenge an intelligent man 
 to-day to dispute the fact that all progress in all species of 
 salutary knowledge at the present hour is in the enterprise of 
 Christian peoples. There is no progress outside the shining, or 
 at least the reflection, of the gospel. Were it possible to elimi- 
 nate from the world the living and palpable influence of Christ 
 this moment, it would be like quenching the life in a material 
 
119 
 
 body. The world would shrink back into barbarism. It is the 
 impetus which He started that pushes along to all investigations, 
 discoveries and illuminations, concerning the material worlds, 
 concerning the wonderful soul of man, the image of God, and 
 concerning the future life. It is but the prolongation of His 
 initiative when intelligence is widened, when religion is pro- 
 pagated among races formerly heathen, and that ideal is ap- 
 proached which is pictured in the oft-quoted lines, "When the 
 light of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord shall cover the 
 earth as the waters cover the sea." 
 
 No one else has had the perfect intuition of all God's works, 
 therefore He only leads to God. 
 
 He said, "No one knoweth the Son save the Father." Jesus 
 felt, and justly felt, that no one understood Him. As to human 
 companionship, He was solitary. No one reached His point of 
 view, or appreciated His thought. His only consolation was to 
 say, "He that sent Me is with Me; the Father hath not left Me 
 alone; for I do always those things that please Him." The 
 Father understood Him and that was enough. 
 
 More important was the other side of the case. "Neither 
 doth any know the Father save the Son, and he to whom the 
 Son willeth to reveal Him." Because He had the perfect in- 
 tuition of all the works of God, therefore He only leads to God. 
 
 The apprehension and welcoming of Christ to a man's heart 
 puts him on the straight road to the ultimate. When the honest 
 and aspiring boy takes Christ, he takes the key to all that is 
 worth knowing or worth being. If no man cometh to the 
 Father but by Him ; on the contrary no one who takes Him fails 
 to come to the Father. He was sure of Himself when He 
 asserted, "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life." 
 
 There is, indeed, very strong leadership in the teachings of 
 Jesus. Simple in form, plain in language, there is yet a quality 
 in those teachings that is inimitable and unapproachable. They 
 have a germinative quality that no other words possess. As 
 there is a quality in the diamond which no imitation can re- 
 produce, so there is a vitalizing efficacy in the words of Jesus 
 which no copies or paraphrases contain or convey. And yet His 
 leadership that brings men to God is not through the tuition of 
 words. 
 
 There is a force in His nature. One of the earlv Christian 
 
120 
 
 writers saw a thought of God which we may quote. A Hue runs 
 in this way, "Since His invisible essence is mighty, it confers 
 on all a profound mental intuition and perception." Yes; there 
 is the hiding of the power. Contact with Christ electrifies a 
 human soul. The Holy Ghost of God passes from Him to the 
 mortal man. Bring the sinner to Christ, and if Christ touch 
 him he shall be saved and live. Bring the blind to Christ, and 
 if Christ touch his eyes he shall see. Bring the dead to Christ, 
 and if Christ lay a hand upon him he shall arise and walk. But 
 the sign is not the great thing. The great thing is the thing 
 signified. And the thing signified is that Christ showeth the way 
 to the Father, because He is qualified for that office. "All things 
 have been delivered unto Him of the Father." In verity and 
 reality Jesus caught the vision that sages and saints have vainly 
 aspired unto. Jesus caught the intuition of all things in Heaven 
 and on earth. Get alongside Him. Feel the touch of His hand 
 and the breathings of His love. Join heart with Him. Pledge 
 loyalty to Him. Keep step with Him, Without fail will He 
 lead unto God and to all goodness and glory. 
 
^be 'Kenaiesance of 3e0U0' Influence. 
 
 Job 12, 32-33. 
 
 Passaic, Dec, 11, '04. 
 
 John xii:32, 33, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw 
 all men unto Myself." 
 
 "But this He said, signifying by what manner of death He should 
 die." 
 
 It fell to my lot last Sunday morning to have in hand a class 
 of a dozen bright boys. The lesson was a rugged subject for 
 such pupils. It was something about the sacrifices offered by 
 King Hezekiah upon the occasion of re-opening the temple after 
 he had cleansed and repaired it. The talk drifted to the sacri- 
 fice that has been offered for us, and all agreed that it was Christ 
 suffering on the Cross. 
 
 "Who crucified Jesus?" was a question raised. With one 
 accord the answer was rendered that the Jews did it. "What!" 
 we remonstrated, "can you say the Apostles' Creed?" 
 
 They thought they could ; and they ran along to the phrases, 
 "born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was 
 crucified, dead and buried." 
 
 "What about His suffering?" we inquired, and they repeated 
 the clause. 
 
 "Was Pontius Pilate a Jew?" They unanimously presumed 
 that he was so. 
 
 Now that is opening a subject quite too grave to be treated 
 with a class of boys only twelve years old. Difiicult, indeed, to 
 arouse them to an appreciation of the historical fact that Pontius 
 Pilate was the fifth Roman procurator of Judea, and that is 
 like saying that Luke Wright is the second American governor 
 of the Philippine Islands. The Roman procurator so far remote 
 from the capital exercised almost unlimited power. Pilate ruled 
 with the severity of a despot; and it was under this relentless 
 Roman that Jesus suffered. He was "lifted up from the earth" 
 
122 
 
 and suspended upon a Cross of wood in obedience to the sentence 
 of a Roman court, pronounced by a Roman magistrate, and car- 
 ried into execution by the Roman poHce. The Creed is just and 
 exact when it says, "suffered under Pontius Pilate." 
 
 Foreseeing that ignominious conclusion, Jesus declared that 
 after it was done to the full demand of the law and the court, 
 He would so reverse the effect that He would become attractive 
 and draw the very world to Himself. 
 
 Of course we know that there is a familiar line of fact fol- 
 lowing. Jesus "was crucified, dead and buried; the third day 
 He rose from the dead." He was seen in casual displays by His 
 disciples during an interval of five weeks and five days ; then He 
 disappeared quite entirely by ascending into Heaven. The pivotal 
 allegation in the series is that He rose from the dead. Christian 
 faith accepts it with the utmost ease, simply saying that the 
 power of God is quite adequate to furnish the explanation. "God 
 raised Him up;" and no more need be said. 
 
 We are not going over that ground this morning, for we 
 have traversed it a hundred times. We propose to strike into 
 a new vein. We propose to maintain that the recovery of Jesus 
 to a position of influence and leadership, after the ignominy 
 heaped upon Him by the Roman procurator, was a surprise 
 greater even than the resuscitation of a physical body. 
 
 Let us in the first place revert to the facts of the trial and 
 crucifixion and observe that Pilate had reason to presume that 
 he had suppressed Jesus. 
 
 It requires us, indeed, to lend ourselves for a few minutes to 
 painful point of view. That is to say, we need to yield to curios- 
 ity and go around behind Pilate's judgment seat so as to look 
 upon Jesus through his eyes. 
 
 What then shall we see? We shall see, as Pilate saw, the 
 figure of an abject man. It was One Who 
 
 "had no form nor comeliness that we should look upon Him, 
 Nor beauty that we should desire Him." 
 It was One "despised and rejected of men; 
 A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." 
 
 Let us be realistic and appreciate that Jesus, when He stood 
 before Pilate, was haggard from a sleepless night, bleeding from 
 recent rough handling, and manacled as a prisoner that had no 
 
123 
 
 friends. Pilate saw nothing else. Never had he seen Jesus in 
 health and peace, glowing with serenity of mind. Before Pilate, 
 "as One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised." 
 
 And there was but a single consideration. To the Roman 
 procurator Jesus appeared simply as a disturber of the peace. 
 The magistrate's question was, "how shall I dispose of Him 
 most expeditiously and most decisively?" 
 
 Now the trial accorded to Jesus in Pilate's court has been 
 examined with microscopic attention. Elementary conditions 
 were violated. The proceedings were rude, unceremonious and 
 abrupt. Though the judge was constrained to say, "I find no 
 crime in this man," he yielded to the clamor of the accusers 
 and gave them the verdict that they desired. Though he ex- 
 pressed the wish to free the prisoner, he did in fact condemn 
 Him to death. In a moment of irritation he hurled at the ac- 
 cused the challenge, "Knowest Thou not that I have power 
 to crucify Thee, and I have power to release Thee." There is 
 the animus of the court. He exercises power, and he exercises 
 it ruthlessly. Unquestionably he had no other thought but to 
 suppress that troublesome prisoner. The method had extin- 
 guished other victims ; why should it not put a complete end to 
 this one? Especially if He were put to death with all the pain- 
 fulness and all the deep odium of crucifixion the Roman gov- 
 ernor calculated that it would be the last of the case. 
 
 We have made ourselves accustomed a little to looking 
 through the eyes of the Roman magistrate, and if we will keep 
 the focus a while we may come to a surprise. 
 
 Jesus did not remain suppressed. For a brief hour, indeed, 
 it may have seemed to the Roman that his tactics had prevailed. 
 He heard no clamor or wailing. There were no threats of re- 
 venge. Jerusalem was hushed. The fact was that the little com- 
 pany of disciples were conscientiously keeping the Jewish sab- 
 bath, and it required of them perfect inaction. It is to be ad- 
 mitted also, perhaps, that they were stunned and left without aim. 
 There was no initiative in themselves. They could not plan for 
 the future. 
 
 But here, now, is one of the most remarkable facts in the 
 history of mankind. Very soon after Jesus' so ignominious 
 death His disciples renewed their confidence in Him. Hold on 
 to the presumption that we are looking through Pilate's eyes. 
 
124 
 
 As if some one had sought an interview ten weeks after the 
 crucifixion and had begun in some such strain as this : "The fol- 
 lowers of the One Who was crucified have renewed their confi- 
 dence in Him and are more devoted to Him now than they were 
 when He was alive and in the midst of them." What would the 
 worldly minded man have thought? How could he have ex- 
 plained the fact? 
 
 It is not merely that the disciples resolved to hang together 
 and protect themselves. They might have had confidence in 
 one another. The surprise is that they renewed their allegiance 
 to Him Who had been crucified so shamefully. I am not speak- 
 ing out of our wealth of experience, for we understand why they 
 took heart. But how could the purely secular mind explain it? 
 How could Pontius Pilate account for it? He had undertaken 
 to suppress Jesus; and now Jesus crucified, dead and buried, 
 was becoming more influential than ever had been Jesus living, 
 teaching and accomplishing miracles. 
 
 Presently those disciples were serving Jesus out of sight 
 more loyally and more zealously than they had ever served Him 
 in sight. While He had walked with them in the flesh they had 
 called His words in question ; they had doubted ; they had taken 
 the liberty to chide Him ; they had despaired and had vented their 
 desparation; but now that He was dead and gone they ceased 
 their criticism and began to adore Him. 
 
 There is another fact. Those disciples had more manifest 
 ability to win adherents after Jesus had departed from them than 
 they had ever had before. While He was with them converts 
 had been gained one at a time. Or if a crowd went over to His 
 side on account of some "miracle," immediately it melted away. 
 Some joined Him plainly for the sake of the "loaves and fishes." 
 
 But it was different after He was dead. Then believers were 
 added by the hundreds and the thousands. Then they committed 
 themselves to Him and to His service with burning zeal. Then 
 were men ready to die for Him, and the roll of the martyrs began 
 to be written. Then men became missionaries to announce Him 
 to others, and they undertook to win the world to Him. 
 
 And they organized and solidified. Before His death the 
 disciples were a group held together only by the influence which 
 His presence exerted. After He was gone something sprang up 
 in their own hearts, which cemented them and constituted them 
 
125 
 
 a body living and organic. Whereas they had been braced and 
 bolstered by contact with Him, now independent, they were im- 
 bued with strength which was so absorbed as to be their own. 
 
 We are looking through Pilate's eyes. In other words we 
 are trying to contemplate a familiar fact, divested for the moment 
 of all those considerations which faith and reverence has filled us 
 with. We are wondering how Pilate felt about his failure to 
 suppress Jesus. We are wondering how the strictly secular mind 
 undertakes to account for the fact that One considered insignifi- 
 cant enough and harmful enough to be hung on a cross in pain 
 and shame, did forthwith become a powerful and unquenchable 
 influence in society. 
 
 That renaissance of the influence of Jesus has no parallel in 
 the records of mankind. 
 
 There occur to us four names, with either of which an in- 
 teresting comparison might be instituted. They are Napoleon, 
 Cromwell, Caesar and Alexander. Each was great and grasp- 
 ing; there is something unusual about the body of each, and 
 each in his way bequeathed to the world a disappointment. 
 
 Napoleon is nearest and freshest to us. His ambition was 
 as great as the earth. He was condemned. He died in exile 
 and was buried in silence. But Napoleon's body had its disin- 
 terment. It was borne to France, and deposited in a mausoleum 
 in the heart of Paris. Not a few of us have stood by that sarco- 
 phagus underneath the dome of St. Louis. Everything was done 
 with his ashes that could be done to excite interest and per- 
 petuate the Napoleonic ideas. But it is a failure. Those ideals 
 have faded and are dead. There is no more magic in the name. 
 It is gone as a dream. 
 
 Cromwell is a greater name than we are apt to think. Where 
 Napoleon had am.bition, Cromwell had conscience, conscientious 
 scruple. He would have ruled England as a Puritanic state, and 
 then have had England rule the world. But in the providence 
 of God he died, and he was buried. It is a gruesome story in 
 English history how two years after he died they disinterred his 
 body and hung him. That did not hurt him; nor did it either 
 hurt or help his influence. wSome have thought him a saint ; some 
 have thought him sacrilegious. Either way his schemes and 
 theories have tumbled into ruin. 
 
 Csesar was the most influential man of the human race. He 
 
128 
 
 egregious mistake ever committed by a judge. But there went 
 up an appeal to the tribunal of Heaven. The error was over- 
 ruled. The decision of the Roman procurator was reversed. 
 The name of Jesus was restored to its rightful place. "For there 
 is none other name, under Heaven, given among men whereby 
 we must be saved." And now, therefore, He draws all men unto 
 Himself. 
 
3e0U0 jentbroneb in Ibearte of flDen. 
 
 Luke 22, 69. 
 
 Passaic, Dec. 18, 1904. 
 
 Luke xxli:69, "But from henceforth shall the Son of man be seated 
 at the right hand of the power of God." 
 
 Probably it has never occurred to us to ask why certain men 
 are spoken of as "saint." Why St. Paul, St. Ambrose, or St. 
 Thomas a Becket? If a man of the present day is called "Doctor 
 of Divinity," we understand that some college or university con- 
 ferred the title as an honor. Who confers the title "Saint"? 
 Only because it is so far removed from our line of thought are 
 we entirely ignorant about the subject. As a matter of fact there 
 has been a rigorous rule of "canonization." A name gets upon 
 the roll of "saints" only after a most searching scrutiny. The 
 man must have been dead a hundred years before he is eligible. 
 He may be beatified after fifty years if his record will pass the 
 scrutiny, and there are thirteen or fourteen stages in the ex- 
 amination ; but another half a century must elapse before he can 
 be "canonized." Then it must be proven that he had performed 
 at least two miracles before he died, and at least two have been 
 wrought since his death through his intercession. It is under- 
 stood that even the Roman Church is not doing much at the 
 present time in the way of nominating "saints." So those who 
 obtained the distinction of old retain it exclusively. 
 
 It occurs to us to ask, "Did Jesus win a title?" JESUS was 
 the personal name bestowed upon Him at His birth. Therefore 
 do we employ it freely and unreservedly in discourses like those 
 of which the present is fourth in a series. 
 
 CHRIST is not a name. It expresses His office as Mes- 
 siah. It is but the equivalent in another language of the term 
 that runs through Hebrew prophecy to denote the one coming 
 to save the world. 
 
 The two together sound to us like a complete name, and we 
 commonly speak of Him as JESUS CHRIST. 
 
128 
 
 egregious mistake ever committed by a judge. But there went 
 up an appeal to the tribunal of Heaven. The error was over- 
 ruled. The decision of the Roman procurator was reversed. 
 The name of Jesus was restored to its rightful place. "For there 
 is none other name, under Heaven, given among men whereby 
 we must be saved," And now, therefore. He draws all men unto 
 Himself. 
 
3e0U0 lentbroneb in 1beart£5 of HDen. 
 
 Luke 22, 69. 
 
 Passaic, Dec. 18, 1904. 
 
 Luke xxli:69, "But from henceforth shall the Son of man be seated 
 at the right hand of the power of God." 
 
 Probably it has never occurred to us to ask why certain men 
 are spoken of as "saint." Why St. Paul, St. Ambrose, or St. 
 Thomas a Becket? If a man of the present day is called "Doctor 
 of Divinity," we understand that some college or university con- 
 ferred the title as an honor. Who confers the title "Saint"? 
 Only because it is so far removed from our line of thought are 
 we entirely ignorant about the subject. As a matter of fact there 
 has been a rigorous rule of "canonization." A name gets upon 
 the roll of "saints" only after a most searching scrutiny. The 
 man must have been dead a hundred years before he is eligible. 
 He may be beatified after fifty years if his record will pass the 
 scrutiny, and there are thirteen or fourteen stages in the ex- 
 amination ; but another half a century must elapse before he can 
 be "canonized." Then it must be proven that he had performed 
 at least two miracles before he died, and at least two have been 
 wrought since his death through his intercession. It is under- 
 stood that even the Roman Church is not doing much at the 
 present time in the way of nominating "saints." So those who 
 obtained the distinction of old retain it exclusively. 
 
 It occurs to us to ask, "Did Jesus win a title?" JESUS was 
 the personal name bestowed upon Him at His birth. Therefore 
 do we employ it freely and unreservedly in discourses like those 
 of which the present is fourth in a series. 
 
 CHRIST is not a name. It expresses His office as Mes- 
 siah. It is but the equivalent in another language of the term 
 that runs through Hebrew prophecy to denote the one coming 
 to save the world. 
 
 The two together sound to us like a complete name, and we 
 commonly speak of Him as JESUS CHRIST. 
 
I30 
 
 But that is not all. Very soon after His shameful death did 
 the personality of Jesus rise at a bound in the estimation of 
 thoughtful men, and there was fastened upon Him the title, 
 LORD. No university conferred it. No bishop or pontiff con- 
 ferred it. No scrutiny or examination led up to the honor. 
 Spontaneously those who believed on Him recognized that in 
 Him which they could express in no other way than this title 
 which might be construed as divine. 
 
 Now it is within our reach to obtain the opinion of two 
 parties, — parties quite distinct from each other, — concerning the 
 personality of Jesus after the execution on the Cross. One 
 party would be those warmly devoted to Him; the other those 
 bitterly hostile to Him. A fair representative of the former is 
 Simon Peter. He is the man who in Jesus' lifetime had an- 
 swered the question, "Who do men say that the Son of man is?" 
 and produced the formula, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
 living God." He had shrunk, and stumbled, and denied, when 
 Jesus was on trial, but he recovered his poise and regained his 
 courage, so that within two months after the crucifixion he is 
 saying in a challenge, "Let all the house of Israel therefore know 
 assuredly, that God hath made Him both LORD and Christ, this 
 Jesus Whom ye crucified." There is a prompt application of the 
 title Lord by one of those who were devoted to Him. 
 
 A fair representative of the hostile party was Saul, who per- 
 secuted the Church. He changed his mind and became the 
 apostle to the Gentiles. After mature experience he wrote of 
 Jesus as appreciatively as any man that ever took the pen of 
 authorship. And he says, "I give you to understand that no man 
 speaking in the Spirit of God, saith Jesus is anathema; and no 
 man can say Jesus is LORD, but in the Holy Spirit." That con- 
 curs with what the Master had said in the words, "When the 
 Comforter is come. Whom I will send unto you from the Father, 
 He shall bear witness of Me." 
 
 It appears then that the title, LORD, was conferred upon 
 Jesus, immediately after His renaissance from the odium of Ro- 
 man crucifixion by men apparently spontaneous in their action 
 and utterance, albeit moved, as we perceive, by the Holy Spirit 
 of God. So was He in the minds of men at once exalted. We 
 wish carefully to adhere to the limitation now suggested. We 
 
131 
 
 wish not to attempt to follow an apparent form ascending into 
 the skies, and imagine it resting at last on some celestial throne. 
 If we try to shut our eyes against that flight of fancy, it is not to 
 object to it; it is only in order to obtain the value of another 
 mode of thinking. We wish to see the rise and exaltation of 
 Jesus in the minds of men. 
 
 It has been our effort in a former sermon to put into abey- 
 ance the claim of the resurrection of His body. We believe 
 it; but it does not now seem to us the most practical fact to 
 handle. We have said that "the renaissance of the matchless 
 influence of Jesus is the standing and incontestable proof of 
 the majesty of His character." Pilot thought he had sup- 
 pressed the party who stood before him for judgment ; what 
 must not have been his surprise to see the influence of Jesus, 
 though crucified, spring up vigorous, fascinating and sweep- 
 ing as a prairie fire. 
 
 The exaltation which we wish now to see and admire is 
 that exaltation in the minds of men. 
 
 For one thing the moral standard or ideal of Jesus was 
 seen to be as high as ideals can rise, therefore up to the 
 throne of God. It seems to me that we allow ourselves to 
 be dazed by over-much use of the word "infinite" whenever 
 we think or speak of God. We come to feel it presumption 
 that we should ever suppose that we had reached Him in any 
 respect. 
 
 For example, take the art of "refinement," whether it be 
 the refinement of a metal as gold; the refinement of such an 
 article as sugar; or the refinement of an oil. Of course there 
 are steps and grades. But is one to suppose that the process 
 of refining gold, or refining oil, or refining sugar can be carried 
 on indefinitely? Or is it not true rather that at length the 
 workman reaches a result where the product is gold in its 
 absolute purity ; or the product is oil that can not be im- 
 proved; or the product is sugar without a deleterious element? 
 There can not be an infinite series on the line of "refine- 
 ment" of any substances. 
 
 Can there be an infinite series on the line of moral and 
 spiritual ideals? Is truth capable of improvement upon improve- 
 ment endlessly? Or does not one arrive at the truth and there 
 stop, because there is no road farther? Is holiness capable of 
 
132 
 
 infinite advance, better and better without limitation? Or is 
 not holiness a quality to be attained and to stop at? 
 
 Our indulgence in the term "infinite" whenever we speak 
 or think of God may throw us into mental blur. For one 
 thing it may prevent our seeing that Jesus did really and prac- 
 tically offer to us a moral standard, a moral ideal, that rises 
 as high as the moral or spiritual ideal can reach. 
 
 Touched and vitalized by the influences of the Hody Spirit 
 at Pentecost, not long after Jesus had left the world, His 
 followers seemed suddenly impressed and inspired with the 
 loftiness, altitude and sublimity of Jesus' thought. They ap- 
 preciated Him as "by the right hand of God exalted." They 
 became bold to say, "Repent ye, and be baptized every one of 
 you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your 
 sins." Do this "and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost." They saw a way for men to reach God. In Jesus 
 they recognized the standard or ideal than which there could 
 be none higher. 
 
 The recovery of the influence of Jesus after the odious 
 crucifixion was immediate and complete. A man who has been 
 unjustly condemned may get his vindication in a hundred 
 years; but Jesus reversed the indignity of Pilate's judgment in 
 less than a hundred days. Forthwith His doctrine was 
 recognized as comprehending the questions of life and resolv- 
 ing them, therefore the final doctrine. 
 
 Here again it is confusing and blinding to talk of an end- 
 less progression in real knowledge. The vital question of 
 life is simple. It is the same for everybody, everywhere and 
 always. Why we live, how we ought to live, and what we are 
 to attain as the result of living is no clearer in the year 1904 
 than it was in the year that witnessed the death of Jesus 
 on the Cross. The answer with which He inspired His dis- 
 ciples was just as thrilling and satisfactory then as it is to-day. 
 The externalities of life are more complicated now than then 
 perhaps ; but the essence of life is not one whit changed from 
 what it was then. Jesus threw light upon it and satisfied 
 eager inquirers. Jesus throws light and satisfies the heart of 
 a man here in the end of the ages. There can be nothing in 
 the future that will do more. The doctrine of Jesus covers 
 
133 
 
 the subject and is final. It is the disclosure of the mind of 
 God. 
 
 The gist of our argument (if it is argument) is that Jesus 
 came to be regarded and now is regarded, as touching, re- 
 vealing and introducing the standard of perfection. That 
 means God. Through Him we have access to the Father. 
 He is as One Who has sat down on the throne of the Majesty 
 in the Heavens. The same Who "endured the Cross despising 
 the shame" "hath sat down at the right hand of the throne 
 of God. So may be expressed the purposes which He serves 
 to us as a "Mediator between God and men." 
 
 Our point of view requires us to see Jesus exalted in the 
 minds of men ; we therefore observe that as an historical fact 
 partisans have been passionately devoted, and are now de- 
 voted, to the opinion that He is divine in essence and author- 
 ity. So is He now enthroned "on the right hand of the power 
 of God." 
 
 One afternoon, a month or more ago, I was walking with a 
 friend on the streets of one of the boroughs across the river in 
 Bergen County. Without any intentional choice of our course 
 we were led past a Church which is altogether unique for this 
 country. The door stood open and we turned in, just to see 
 what the interior might be. A queer little man was sweeping the 
 floor. We had met him somewhere and therefore felt ourselves 
 introduced. He answered questions about the building and cas- 
 ually remarked, "There is to be mass here in about thirty min- 
 utes ; would we stay ?" We thought we would. I remember 
 now, it was election day ; we had voted, and now had our time on 
 our hands. Presently a fair-faced young man entered and pro- 
 ceeded to a lectern and began to arrange the books. "Is that the 
 priest?" we whispered. "No, it is his assistant," or perhaps 
 there was a technical title for it. 
 
 Soon the priest himself entered. He regarded the strangers 
 with a little surprise ; but the sexton introduced us and we ex- 
 plained that we were clergymen in a way and were honest in our 
 interest in the strange Church. He warmed up to us. Pres- 
 ently he invited us behind the gates of his sanctuary, and 
 showed us all the sacred implements of his liturgy of the "mass." 
 He opened drawers, and brought out vestments, and cups, and 
 crosses, and censers, more than I can now enumerate, explaining 
 
134 
 
 everything with utmost kindness. The time for "mass" arrived, 
 and we returned to our place where the worshippers should be. 
 One person in the meantime had come in. It was a woman, 
 lady-like in appearance and attire, and she had taken position 
 before an "ikon," as I suppose it was. I suppose it was an image 
 of Christ. Most devoutly was she reciting her manual of prayer. 
 She kneeled ; she prolonged that passionate devotion ; and 
 when she had reached the end, she bent forward, her face to the 
 floor and seemed to kiss the ground before that image of Christ. 
 Then the strenuous voices intoning "mass" began. There 
 were present the priest, his assistant before mentioned, the sol- 
 itary woman, the officious sexton, and the two strangers who 
 had dropped in accidentally. Full half an hour or longer did 
 that loud resounding tone of three voices fill the house. The 
 language was mainly Greek, brought from afar. Few as were 
 the persons present it impressed my friend and me as a 
 wonderful witness for Jesus. This was a Russian Church ; 
 the occasion that we had stumbled upon was a certain saint's 
 day. There are less than twenty Orthodox Greek families 
 in the vicinity of Passaic, and yet this provision has been 
 made to supply them with the ritual of their home land. 
 
 In imagination I transferred the scene. Let it have been one 
 of the vast cathedrals of St. Petersburg or Moscow. Instead of 
 a solitary woman, let there have been a concourse of thousands 
 of men and women, simultaneously reciting their prayers, with 
 one accord bending forward to kiss the ground before the 
 image of Jesus. That scene is usual in Russia ; millions wor- 
 ship in that impressive manner. 
 
 What of it? 
 
 The "what of it" to us now is the fact that in hearts of men, 
 almost incomputable for numbers, Jesus has been installed as 
 One "set down on the right hand of God." 
 
 Does one say, "It ought not to be so ; it is superstition ?" I 
 am not discussing the rightfulness of it ; I am calling attention 
 to the fact of it. We cite the intense devotion of the Russian 
 Church, which carries with it all the Greek Orthodox commun- 
 ion. Quite as emphatic, quite as reverent, altogether as ador- 
 ing, is the exaltation of JESUS in the ritual of the Roman 
 Church. There other millions upon millions have "enthroned" 
 Him in their hearts. Not a whit less sincere or complete is the 
 
135 
 
 adoration of the further millions who worship in the Churches 
 of the Anglican communion. Or take ourselves. If we have 
 not exhibits as in the "mass," and if we have not prescribed 
 forms of adoration, still altogether sincerely and adoringly do 
 we lift up the name and exalt the person of Jesus in our worship 
 of God. 
 
 When He said, just prior to His humiliation, "But from 
 henceforth shall the Son of man be seated at the right hand of 
 the power of God," He said no more than has come to pass 
 and is real before our eyes ; for in hearts of men He is this 
 day so enthroned. Suppose one denies the divinity of Christ. 
 He denies an abstraction. It has no effect whatsoever upon 
 the fact that Jesus is lifted up, enthroned and adored in the 
 souls of men. I am not putting forth the least effort now to 
 convince one of a dogma ; but I would like to have one notice 
 that the word which Jesus spoke has come true in a very real 
 and palpable sense. 
 
 I can not follow Him beyond the "clouds of heaven" and lo- 
 cate Him in the uncharted universe. But I can follow Him in 
 the souls of men. I can appreciate the intense devotion of the 
 four persons maintaining the ritual of their home Church 
 here in a strange land. I can appreciate the devotion in all 
 types and forms that centres in the name and the person of 
 Jesus. One may dismiss a dogma ; but one cannot dismiss a 
 fact. 
 
 I have an impression that the disagreement between those 
 who affirm and those who deny the divinity of Christ as a dogma 
 is never to be settled on the arena of intellectual debate. 
 
 There is another approach to the heart of the subject. It is 
 by the way of a fresh examination and interpretation, first of the 
 story of His life and teachings ; then, second, of His living 
 presence and influence in the throbbing world. I will not ask a 
 man to listen to my dialectic argument to prove the divinity of 
 Christ ; but I will ask a man to explain how One Who was so 
 treated as the Roman magistrate contemptuously dealt with 
 Jesus when he consigned Him to be hung upon a Cross, did so 
 soon regain His hold upon hearts of men and has through the 
 centuries so firmly retained that hold, and does now in hearts of 
 men occupy the position of One to be supremely adored. 
 
 Hitherto, in all our thinking about Jesus, we have been con- 
 
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 struing, and reconstruing, those few acts that He wrought 
 when He was here among men. We have been construing and 
 reconstruing those few words that are recorded as from His 
 Hps in the four Gospels. We have been analyzing and criti- 
 cising the effects He produced on wheaten loaves, or palsied 
 limbs, or tossing waves, — "miracles" as we say. 
 
 Why do we so limit ourselves? Why do we not try to con- 
 strue Christ as He is continuously manifest by His never-slack- 
 ened activity in the lives of His people all through the twenty 
 centuries? We strain imagination to see Him on an indefinite 
 throne in indefinite space; why do we not dismiss strain and 
 rest our thought upon Him in the souls of the endless series of 
 His people? 
 
 Let us seek a rational explanation of the phenomena of Christ 
 in the souls of men, and we can not but arrive at a correct esti- 
 mate of His nature.