183 
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 (Beneral John W. jfoster 
 
 flRemortal Sermon 
 
 2)elfvercD in 
 
 Z\)c Cburcb of the Covenant 
 
 Sunbai^ mornino, December 2nb 
 
 1917 
 
 Bi? IRev. Charles IKIloo^, H).D» 
 
(Beneral 3ohn Wi. jFostet 
 
 flQemortal Sermon 
 
 BeliPcreO in 
 
 ^be Cburcb of tbe Covenant 
 
 Sunba^ morning, December 2nb 
 
 1917 
 
 Bi? IRev, Cbarles Moo^, D.H)» 
 
 PRINTED BY THE CHURCH 
 
.1 
 
 RESOLUTIONS BY THE SESSION 
 
 ^HE SESSION of the Church of the 
 k.»| Covenant records with great sorrow the 
 ^=« death of Elder John W. Foster because 
 of its deep sense of the loss it means to the 
 Session and to the Church; although the Ses- 
 sion appreciates that he had his desire in de- 
 parting and that for him it was far better 
 since he was going home at the end of the 
 battle a victorious warrior. But his place in 
 the Session and in the Church can not be 
 filled. From the time he entered the Session 
 in 1901, no one was more faithful in the ser- 
 vice of the Church; no one more generous in 
 his gifts of time and money; no one more wise 
 in counsel or determined and energetic in ac- 
 tion. He gave a consistent example in his 
 attendance upon the church services, including 
 the weekly prayer meetings and upon meet- 
 ings of the Session, which was typical of his 
 zealous and efficient devotion to all the inter- 
 ests of the Church. His mind and his heart 
 embraced them all in their relation to the 
 Church at large and to the world. He had a 
 particular care for the work of Peck Memorial 
 Chapel and contributed generously to it. It 
 may now be said, although he forbade the 
 announcement of it during his lifetime, that 
 he was the donor of the parish house of Peck 
 Memorial Chapel. It was characteristic of his 
 
 
;J^ modest way of giving that he did not wish 
 
 ^ this gift to be known. In all his relations to 
 
 Q^ the Church he was an inspiring leader, an 
 
 ; afifectionate elder brother, a true soldier of 
 
 i Jesus Christ who fought a good fight, kept the 
 
 ^/ faith and finished his course winning the 
 
 crown of life. 
 
 Charles Wood, 
 Moderator of the Session. 
 H. B. F. Macfarland, 
 
 Chairman of Committee. 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 Nov. 30, 1917. 
 
E are to consider together this morning 
 ^j the hfe and services of General John 
 W. Foster, for many years an honored 
 Elder of this Church. 
 
 The text chosen suggests in some measure 
 the temper and consummation of his life 
 spirit. 
 
 "Hold that fast which thou hast, that no 
 man take thy crown. Him that overcometh 
 will I make a pillar in the temple of my God 
 and he shall go no more out." Rev. 3:11, 12, 
 
 "When we see a man," writes the Gene- 
 van philosopher Amiel, "we say, 'Let us 
 also be men,' " We are to look this 
 morning at a man who lived for many years 
 in the public eye, who was one of the marked 
 personalities of the city he admired and loved, 
 who was the companion, friend and adviser 
 of a great multitude in this Church, this com- 
 munity, this country, and, as well, in countries 
 half way round the globe. We look at him 
 not to praise him, but to gain such inspiration 
 from his life that we, too, may say, "Let us 
 also be men." 
 
 The pulpit is not the place for eulogy on 
 either the members or officers of the Church, 
 however distinguished they may be, as they 
 
 5 
 
lay down their eartlily tasks and pass to their 
 reward. Any such use of the pulpit on the 
 Lx)rd's day would have been objectionable to 
 General Foster, and particularly so if he him- 
 self were to be the subject of the eulogy. He 
 would have hesitated perhaps even to permit 
 himself to be spoken of on an occasion like 
 this. If yielding to persuasion he had con- 
 sented to this consideration of his career, it 
 would only have been with the hope that there 
 might come a stimulating suggestion from 
 some incident or aspect of his life and work. 
 Far removed as he was from anything like 
 self-depreciation, self-praise and self-satis- 
 faction were even more distasteful to him. 
 Even the most hurried reading of his "Diplo- 
 matic Memoirs" is sufficient to convince the 
 reader that he did not possess the by-no-means 
 rare art of so narrating important events as 
 to create a halo around the head of the narra- 
 tor. He gave no undue importance either to 
 himself or his career. He had a saving sense 
 of humor not associated with the vivid imagi- 
 nation which usually accompanies it. He 
 could laugh at himself as heartily as he 
 laughed at others. He writes, evidently with a 
 smile of keen amusement, of a social function 
 to which he was invited in the City of Mexico, 
 where all the diplomats were expected to be 
 present. He went, unwillingly and with great 
 discomfort, through a tropical thunder-storm, 
 to find that he was the only guest present. But 
 for his delectation and in spite of all his efforts 
 
 6 
 
to prevent it, an elaborate pTogram of classical 
 music was rendered, of which he says, "I did 
 not know one note from another." He had, 
 however, a quick ear for musical words and 
 poetic rhythm, loving Scott and other poets of 
 his school with a love that never changed from 
 boyhood to old age. 
 
 He entered diplomacy with his eyes wide 
 open. He saw distinctly that the diplomatic 
 career which was thrust upon him might easily 
 become enervating and fatal to high enthusi- 
 asm, and under possible conditions which he 
 found reproduced more than once in his long 
 life — even the refuge of social and political 
 parasitism. It was to him self-evident from 
 the first that 
 
 "Honor and shame from no condition rise. 
 Act well thy part, there all the honor lies." 
 
 His supreme purpose was to "act well his 
 part," however lowly or exalted it might be. 
 He was determined to do the right thing in 
 the right way so far as the right thing and the 
 right way were to be found. His demand on 
 life from callow youth to ripe old age was not 
 for a brilliant career, but for an honorable mis- 
 sion — a place where he might be able to do 
 something for the world. That desire was the 
 deep prayer of all his days. There was no time 
 in his four-score years or more that he could 
 not have said with solemnity and sincerity, like 
 the Master to whom he was ever joyously loyal, 
 "I must work the works of Him that sent me." 
 "In diplomacy," he said, "as in most other 
 
 7 
 
pursuits of life, strict devotion to duty and a 
 mastery of matters one has in hand usually 
 lead to success." 
 
 Near the close of his public career he wrote, 
 "Whatever success I have had in my profes- 
 sion and in my diplomacy is in a large degree 
 to be attributed to my close and undivided at- 
 tention to my business, to the exclusion of all 
 ulterior interests. During my residence in 
 Washington I had a number of tempting offers 
 — to assume the presidency of trusts, banking 
 or other corporations, or to represent large 
 business enterprises in foreign countries, but 
 I decided it was better to make a speciality of 
 matters which I understood, rather than to be 
 led into ventures of which I knew little, and 
 for which I might prove not fitted. When a 
 case was entrusted to me I sought to master 
 every question connected with it. And if my 
 clients were not successful it was for no want 
 of time and thought on my part." If genius 
 be, as defined, "the capacity for taking in- 
 finite pains," then he had far more than a 
 touch of genius. 
 
 But it is not merely nor mainly because of 
 what he accomplished in the high positions 
 which he held that the study of his life is so 
 well worth while, as because of the high mo- 
 tives which swayed him and the increasing 
 purpose to serve his day and generation, his 
 country and humanity that ran like an irresis- 
 tible current through the years from beginning 
 to end. 
 
 8 
 
As he turned and looked back nearly a dec- 
 ade ago, over the long way along which he 
 had been led, he wrote on the last page of his 
 Memoirs: "The retrospect of a life of more 
 than three-score years and ten occasions much 
 satisfaction and little regret, thanks to a kind 
 Providence, a favoring government and a host 
 of friends." He had so little to regret, be- 
 cause during his fifty years of public duty he 
 had never been betrayed, like the great Eng- 
 lish cardinal, into serving his God with only 
 half the zeal he served his country or his 
 party. 
 
 Whether as a young soldier, in far from 
 vigorous health, called to make the great sacri- 
 fice of his life in enlisting in the war for the 
 deliverance of the negro from bondage, leav- 
 ing a wife and child to war-time uncertainties, 
 or as Minister to Mexico, then, as now, seeth- 
 ing with personal and factional animosities 
 and intrigues; or as minister to Russia, where 
 blind revolt against crushing despotism re- 
 sulted at last during his sojourn in St. Peters- 
 burgh in the assassination of the Czar, Alex- 
 ander II, "the most progressive and liberal 
 ruler that ever sat upon the Russian throne," 
 he calls him; or as Minister to Spain, then 
 just recovering from a spasm of revolution 
 and recrowning the uneasy head of a Bour- 
 bon — Alphonso XII, "weighed down with a 
 family history more wretched than that of 
 any of the other monarchs of Europe," so 
 General Foster writes ; or whether as spe- 
 
 9 
 
cial envoy sent for the making of 
 commercial treaties in Spain, and to the 
 Orient to formulate terms of peace between 
 China and Japan — among the most memor- 
 able events of his life he thought it; or as Sec- 
 retary of State in one of the bewildering 
 epochs of foreign affairs — in all these posi- 
 tions as well as in his home and his church, 
 he was the same, unassuming, clear-headed, 
 true-hearted, indefatigable and efficient man 
 and Christian that he had been in his little 
 native town in Pike County, Indiana. It is 
 not uninteresting to remind ourselves that 
 from this same county came another great 
 Secretary of State, also connected with this 
 church. There first in his Indiana home he 
 learned from his mother, who died while he 
 was yet a boy, that "Man's chief end is to 
 glorify God and to enjoy Him forever." 
 
 In all those years, and in those which have 
 followed since he left public life, he held fast, 
 not only to the great essentials of the Chris- 
 tian faith which he had received from a long 
 line of Christian ancestors, but he kept a firm 
 grasp as well on the inferences and conclusions 
 which seemed to him in his young manhood, 
 not only reasonable and logical, but necessary, 
 from the premises which he then heartily ac- 
 cepted, and which he never found himself 
 forced to surrender in whole or in part. 
 
 Spending, as he did, a large portion of his 
 life in countries where both social and ecclesi- 
 astical customs have made the first day of the 
 
 10 
 
week a festival, from which only the early hours 
 are reserved for religious ceremonies, tlie re- 
 mainder of the day being given over to pri- 
 vate or public entertainments or to court func- 
 tions, or to theatrical and operatic perform- 
 ances, he nevertheless kept Sunday privately 
 and publicly in the good old way, as he always 
 thought it, of his childhood — the way of quiet- 
 ness, meditation, prayer and praise, the read- 
 ing of the Scriptures and other devotional lit- 
 erature. He did this without any attempt to 
 propagate his Puritanism, or to censure even 
 by a disapproving manner the long-established 
 customs and conscientious convictions of his 
 Latin American or European co-religionists 
 who had been educated to look upon both 
 Puritanism and Protestantism, and all they 
 stand for, as unauthorized and schismatic. He 
 was able to do this with the hearty cooperation 
 of all his family, and in such a way as to give 
 no offense. "At home," he writes, "it had 
 been our practice to observe Sunday as a re- 
 ligious and rest day, and we did not think it 
 necessary to abandon our custom. Our 
 friends in Mexico" — and it was equally true 
 later of his friends in Russia and Spain — 
 *'soon came to understand us, and in a little 
 while we ceased to be embarrassed by calls or 
 invitations. We were regarded by them as a 
 little odd, but we never found that we suf- 
 fered thereby in their good esteem." 
 
 His European friends were but a small part 
 of the great company whose feelings toward 
 
 11 
 
him were those of warm and grateful friend- 
 Hness. Though they might speak a different 
 tongue, all alike understood his thoughtful 
 helpfulness. There was little that could prop- 
 erly be done that he would not do for a friend 
 in any part of the world. Many recipients of 
 benefactions from his hands rise up today and 
 call him blessed. 
 
 It seemed to him, however, when matters of 
 principle were in question, as Mrs. Carlyle said 
 it seemed to her, that "reciprocity is not all 
 on one side," and that Protestants have the 
 right to expect the same sympathetic or at 
 least the same forbearing attitude toward their 
 customs that they themselves desire to take 
 toward members of other forms of religious 
 faith, whether in St. Petersburg or Madrid — 
 in the City of Mexico, or in the City of Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 Inflexible, as some doubtless thought his 
 Protestantism, it was not rigid or exclusive. 
 He was tolerant to an extraordinary degree 
 even to phases of Presbyterianism, with which, 
 personally, he could not agree. Belonging to 
 what might be called, for lack of a better 
 name, "the conservative school of Presbyte- 
 rianism," and looking with some apprehension 
 at even the suggestion of radicalism or lib- 
 eralism, in the denomination he so dearly 
 loved — it was his breadth of mind and irenic 
 spirit that more than once restored harmony 
 in such important committees of the general 
 assembly as those on the revision of the con- 
 
 12 
 
fession of faith and the readjustment and re- 
 adaptation of the lessons taught in our Sunday 
 schools to a more modern and systematic cooarse 
 
 of study. 
 
 It was this soundness of judgment, this 
 saneness of mind, this "sweet reasonableness" 
 that explains much of his success as a diploma- 
 tist and statesman. A distinguished foreigner 
 who knew him intimately seizes upon this judi- 
 cial temper, this clarity of perception, this 
 fairness in following facts to whatever con- 
 clusion they might lead as one of General Fos- 
 ter's most marked characteristics. "Not only 
 his great ability," he writes, "and his high sense 
 of honor, but his constant desire to effect a 
 settlement for the lasting good of his own 
 country and the just satisfaction of the rights 
 of man have made a deep impression on the 
 minds of all who like myself have had per- 
 sonal experience of his manner of dealing with 
 international relations." It was this that made 
 him "the best equipped man diplomatically in 
 the country," as Mr. Blaine called him when 
 sending him to Spain. 
 
 It was this in part that made Ambassador 
 Bryce speak of him as "the most distinguished 
 diplomat of our time." His extraordinary 
 fairness, his rare ability in getting the other 
 man's or the other nation's point of view 
 and giving full weight to whatever of 
 right and reason there might be in it, 
 his lucidity in stating the processes of his mind, 
 appears on every page of his diplomatic me- 
 
 13 
 
moirs, and is especially marked in the chapter 
 on "Presidents Under Whom I Have Served." 
 They are all there — the men who occupied the 
 White House from 1861 to 1909— with but 
 one exception. His miniatures of them are 
 life-like. He has painted tliem as he saw 
 them. However he may have differed witK 
 some of them politically, socially or religiously, 
 his pen picture is so convincing in its fairness 
 that few of their friends would ask that it 
 should be retouched. 
 
 It was this that made his advice invaluable 
 in all our church courts, from the Session to 
 the General Assembly, The Presbyterian 
 Board of Foreign Missions has already placed 
 on record its grateful recognition of the inesti- 
 mable value of services rendered as an unoffi- 
 cial and unremunerated adviser. The Session 
 of this Church, of which he was for sixteen 
 years a member, has similarly expressed itself. 
 
 He gave unstintedly of his best to the work 
 of the church, to him the visible kingdom of 
 Christ on earth. Two buildings, the Parke 
 Memorial Church, in his home town, and the 
 Peck Memorial Chapel, in connection with this 
 Church were — one entirely, and the other in 
 large part — his contributions. He made pos- 
 sible, by his encouragement, and by a most 
 generous gift of $10,000, the raising of $90,- 
 000 here in our Presbytery, to release all our 
 churches from the debts which were crushing 
 out the life of some of them. 
 
 He was never asked to do anything for the 
 
 14 
 
church which he did not cheerfully and 
 promptly do if it were possible, at whatever 
 cost of time, strength and money. He gave 
 the same careful and profound thought and 
 consideration to the details of our church work, 
 to the maintenance and increasing of our gifts 
 to home and foreign missions, and the various 
 benevolent agencies of the church, which he 
 gave to the most important affairs of State. 
 When a pastor was called to this Church 
 nearly ten years ago, he went as one of a com- 
 mittee of three to Philadelphia to confer with 
 the clergyman who had been so honored, and 
 all his statements, both favorable and unfavor- 
 able concerning the condition of the church 
 here were found to be extremely accurate, and 
 altogether uncolored by his personal feelings 
 for this Church, which he acknowledged were 
 those of deep affection and partiality. In an- 
 swer to a letter written him by this possible 
 pastor, as to certain questions which had not 
 been asked the committee, he went to Phila- 
 delphia again, instead of responding by letter, 
 and spent some two hours in going carefully 
 over the whole matter. While announcing him- 
 self as in a general way opposed to anything 
 like innovations, he suggested that if some 
 were to be necessarily introduced, it should 
 be done at once and with as little talk about it 
 as possible. 
 
 Until within the last year he regularly 
 attended a Bible Class here in the morn- 
 ing, taught by an old and honored friend, re- 
 
 15 
 
maining to the morning service of the church, 
 coming also to the afternoon service and 
 rarely omitting the midweek meeting on 
 Thursday evening for prayer and conference 
 in both of which exercises he was always 
 ready to share. 
 
 His was a life extraordinarily free from 
 catastrophes and cataclysms. It moved on 
 through war and peace, through camp and 
 court, through the affairs of the State and of 
 the church, with the same dignity and calm- 
 ness, with the same respect for himself and 
 regard for others. His was a life with no 
 startling reversals of purpose or of policy. 
 He trod all the days of the years of his long 
 pilgrimage on the shining tablelands to which 
 our God himself is Moon and Sun — the way 
 to which — the path of duty he saw as a lad, 
 sloping upward from the threshold of his own 
 home, the path which he found, the other day, 
 led to heaven. 
 
 "Oh, happy home ; oh, happy children there, 
 Oh, blissful mansions of our Father's house — 
 Oh, walks surpassing Eden for delight. 
 Here are the harvests reaped, once sown in tears ; 
 Here is the rest by ministry enhanced ; 
 Here is the banquet of the wine of Heaven. 
 Riches of glory incorruptible, 
 Crowns, amaranthine crowns of victory. 
 The voice of harpers harping on their harps, 
 The anthems of the Holy Cherubim, 
 The crystal river of the spirit's joy, 
 The bridal palace of the Prince of Peace, 
 The holiest of holies, God is there." 
 
 There, with God, forevermore, are they who 
 have sincerely loved and faithfully served Him 
 here, on earth. 
 
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m^ ^^^^^^'< OF CONGRESS 
 
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