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 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/memorialsermonprOOyoun 
 
LiB^ARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY of" ILLINOIS, 
 
 2 Jejf 
 
3 A vH 
 
A Memorial Sermon 
 
 Preached in the Church of the Puritans, 
 New York City, by the Rev. Charles J. 
 Young, D.D., Pastor, December 13, 1903, 
 in memory of John Dwight 
 
 
 Printed fay Tobias A. Wright 
 New York 
 1903 
 
Sermon 
 
 “. . . And thou shalt be missed, because thy seat will be empty.” 
 
 I Samuel , xx, 28. 
 
 TT is one of the peculiarities of Bible language 
 that it frequently suggests a great deal more 
 than it expresses ; that is, it not only states a fact, 
 or relates an incident, but the very method of this 
 statement — the phraseology used — awakens trains 
 of thought that stretch far away beyond the 
 sources or circumstance which gave rise to them. 
 The original application may be very local, and 
 limited, but the ultimate sweep of the truth, its 
 principle and scope, may be as wide as the world, 
 and as broad as humanity. The illustrations of 
 this fact are scattered broadcast all through the 
 Bible, but there is not time to refer to any other 
 than the one selected this morning as our text. 
 
 These were the words of Jonathan to his young 
 friend David, at a time when it became necessary 
 for him to explain the latter’s absence at the 
 King’s table. You remember that David was 
 accustomed to occupy a prominent position at the 
 royal feasts. 
 
 But the King had become intensely jealous of 
 
David and bitter toward him, on account of his 
 growing influence among the people, and so it be- 
 came necessary for him to fly in secret from the 
 palace and presence of the King. But the two 
 friends, devoted to each other with a loyal, loving, 
 manly friendship, had managed to meet quietly 
 away off in the fields by themselves. It was at 
 such an interview these words were uttered. The 
 Feast of the New Moon was to occur on the mor- 
 row, and King Saul would unquestionably discover 
 the absence of David, so Jonathan anticipating 
 trouble exclaims, “Thou shalt be missed, because 
 thy seat will be empty.” 
 
 It is long, long ages since the words were 
 spoken. Vast and varied changes have swept over 
 this old, sad, weary world since the time when the 
 two friends met together, in the fields of Gibeah. 
 In material things at least, the race today looks out 
 on a “new heaven and a new earth.” And yet in 
 spite of it all, time, change, progress, transforma- 
 tions, here they are the same words just as fresh 
 and fitting and timely as when they first fell from 
 the lips of the true-hearted Jonathan long ago. 
 
 As applied to the venerable and honored friend 
 in whose memory this service is held; with respect 
 to the wide and important interests which are 
 today so deeply affected by his absence, and as the 
 aptest expression I could find of the testimony of a 
 
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cloud of witnesses representing these interests, I 
 take up that old cry of friendship and bereave- 
 ment, — Oh venerable Father in Israel ! 
 
 “ Oh good gray head which all men knew, 
 
 * * * * That tower of strength 
 
 Which stood foursquare to all the winds that blew," 
 
 surely “thou shalt be missed, because thy seat 
 will be empty.” 
 
 In yonder home where with patriarchal dignity 
 and grace thou didst rule by love ; in the commer- 
 cial centre where for fifty-seven years thy name 
 was a synonym of business honor, integrity and 
 fair dealing with thy fellow man; in this Church 
 where every page of her history, every step 
 of her progress, every agency of her benevolent 
 and missionary work bears witness to thy unstinted 
 and ungrudging generosity, — in all these direc- 
 tions thou shalt be sorely and deeply missed 
 “because thy seat will be empty.” 
 
 Nor here alone. In the wider fields of the 
 Redeemer’s Kingdom, in the mission work at home 
 and abroad, in institutions of education and art, 
 in the South Land with the destitute and neglected 
 mountain whites, among the American Indians, 
 freedmen, seamen; everywhere that the good 
 Spirit of God directed thy charities, thou shalt be 
 this day mourned as well as missed with unfeigned 
 sorrow. 
 
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And yet, let there be no mistake as to the 
 meaning of the message and service this morning. 
 We are not here to attempt to tabulate the long 
 list of benefactions of this honored man. I believe 
 such an attempt would be as distasteful to him 
 and to those who are nearest to him, as it would 
 be impossible to accomplish. I believe Mr. 
 Dwight, as much as any man who ever made good 
 use of life, illustrated Archbishop Trench’s beauti- 
 ful prayer : “ God grant that day by day we may do 
 more and may esteem it less.” Neither are we 
 here, in the least degree, to idealize or spiritualize 
 a character whose chief encouragement for other 
 men lies in the fact that it was intensely human. 
 The very opposite is the end in view. It is to show 
 what a real human life can become when that life 
 is surrendered to and permeated by the spirit of 
 his Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. It is to let men 
 know that there is a power in the religion of 
 Christ to stimulate to the highest, noblest, grand- 
 est things, when that religion is permitted to 
 have its way in the human heart and character. 
 It is to let men feel that Christian philanthrophy 
 and usefulness have their spring and source away 
 back in the heart of Him who said, “ It is more 
 blessed to give than to receive.” That is the 
 object of this service, and I claim for it a place 
 of very high and timely significance. For, breth- 
 
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ren, from such a life proceeds the mightiest argu- 
 ment that can be offered to men for fair dealing, 
 and uprightness in business transactions. 
 
 Such a life is God Almighty’s grandest protest 
 against the far too common violation of the 
 ordinary laws of common honesty in business. It 
 is the best object lesson in the world for the young 
 men coming to the front. It teaches them that 
 real success is not what a large part of the business 
 world now regard it. It is not a flash in the pan. 
 It is not a lucky hit, or fortunate speculation. And 
 emphatically it is not the bare-faced robbery of 
 manipulated values, created to deceive the unwary 
 who in their innocence and ignorance are chasing 
 rainbows. Not that, is the foundation of any such 
 success as this true man achieved. 
 
 This life, just passed into life triumphant and 
 glorious — teaches men that real success, the success 
 that abides and endures, is a product of principles 
 as deep and changeless as the throne of God. 
 Principles of a living faith in a living God, princi- 
 ples of an enlightened and well regulated 
 conscience responding to the claims of moral law 
 and Christain obligation, principles that rule the 
 heart and will, — and let us say with reverent 
 significance the pocket also, — principles whose em- 
 bodiment in the life and character of this rare man 
 bring to his memory today such a tribute of love, 
 
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honor and regard, as but very few men of fifty- 
 seven years of business life in this great metropolis 
 have ever been crowned with. This is the aim of 
 this service. Is it not one way of obeying the 
 Master’s injunction, “ Let your light so shine before 
 men that they may see your good works and glorify 
 your Father which is in Heaven.” 
 
 Like many another a good man, like George 
 Washington, Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, 
 John Ruskin, John Wesley, and a long line of the 
 most illustrious men this world has ever known, 
 John Dwight owed a great deal to the fact that he 
 was born right. I mean by that, not merely that 
 he was born in the grand old Bay State and in 
 South Hadley — the very centre of rich Colonial, 
 Revolutionary and Puritan history, though that 
 was certainly a great deal taking all things into 
 consideration — but I mean what Cowper meant 
 when he boasted of the fact that he was “born of 
 parents passed into the skies,” born of a God-fear- 
 ing, God-respecting, God-loving mother. There is 
 no part of this man’s life that I have ever heard of 
 where you cannot find that fact illustrated. The 
 key that opens the treasury of his experience, his 
 character and power to influence and help men, 
 lies in a single sentence: “the Grace of God and 
 mother’s training.” 
 
 Take one or two illustrations, I cannot multiply 
 
 8 
 
them for obvious reasons. In 1844 the young man 
 went West to the Rock River country, Illinois, 
 there secured a sheep ranch, and then returned 
 to arrange his affairs, intending to go back and 
 settle down for life in the West. The mother was 
 aged and feeble then, and the distance to Illinois 
 seemed as great in proportion as the distance to 
 Alaska would seem to any of us here this morning, 
 if similarly situated. So a great grief settled on 
 the mother’s heart at the idea of what was perhaps 
 a life-long separation from her son. It decided him 
 in a moment. He gave up the West and came 
 to a city where he could reach that mother in a 
 night and day. So mother-love decided the point 
 between what was then the far West and life in 
 New York City for fifty-seven years. 
 
 Very often he bore testimony with humble 
 but loyal love, to the fact that if he ever 
 accomplished any good in the world, or did any- 
 thing to help his fellow men by the use of means 
 God had given him, he owed it all to his mother’s 
 sixpence, and to some words she said to him when 
 a boy, as she put that sixpence in his hands. It 
 was the night of the monthly concert of prayer for 
 foreign missions, and the sixpence was his to do 
 just what he pleased with. Now John Dwight 
 would not have been the boy he certainly was 
 in all that that implies, if there had not been 
 
 9 
 
a sharp struggle in his heart between the heathen 
 and himself, — but the heathen won. 
 
 Now will you mark the significance of that 
 victory through the far reaching streams of beni- 
 ficence that have made glad many a waste place, 
 since they started from that little spring in South ~* 
 Hadley so long ago. On the first Sabbath of last 
 month, we had our annual offering for foreign mis- 
 sions in this church. He was then in his last ill- 
 ness, and undoubtedly he knew it, for the mind 
 remained clear to the very end. One of the family 
 went home from the morning service and said 
 something regarding it, and the .object of the 
 offering that day. He called for his check book 
 and instantly gave the generous sum which made 
 the offering so large this year.'' Mother passion in 
 the boy’s life, and mother passion strong in death 
 at eighty-four! Oh mothers, mothers! what im- 
 mense possibilities God has placed in your hands 
 for moulding lives and developing character! 
 Between that sixpence in South Hadley so long 
 ago, and that check on the death bed last month, 
 what a long, long record of munificent giving 
 there has been. And yet, my friends, as the 
 streams are to the spring in the mountain, as the 
 oak tree is to the acorn, so is that record of gen- 
 erous giving to the mother’s love and the mother’s 
 sixpence in that old New England Christian 
 
 io 
 
home. Verily that woman in France was* right 
 when she said to Napoleon: “What France needs 
 most is good mothers.” 
 
 And so now we can understand more clearly I 
 think, why it was that in season and out of season, 
 everywhere, he gave wisely, gave intelligently, 
 gave with judgment, yet so largely and so con- 
 stantly for the cause of God and the wellfare of his 
 fellow men. Shall I say here what I have the 
 very best possible authority for saying, that he 
 gave not because he did not know the value of 
 every dollar thus given, that is, not because he did 
 not have any natural feeling of reluctance in 
 giving it. He did.^ But he gave because the grace 
 of God and his Christian mother taught him effec- 
 tively that “ None of us liveth to himself, and no 
 man dieth to himself, for whether we live we live 
 unto the Lord or whether we die we die unto the 
 Lord.” Hence, his giving was a majestic testi- 
 mony to. the power of Christ to overcome natural 
 tendencies. 
 
 But John Dwight gave hi msel f as well as his 
 substance to the work of the Master. He did not 
 fail in the effort and labor necessary for the exten- 
 sion of Christ’s kingdom. With his gifts went also 
 with equal generosity his personal activity as 
 officer and worker. From the time of his early 
 manhood until advanced in age, so I have been 
 
informed, he was a teacher in the Sabbath school. 
 When an elder in the Chelsea Presbyterian Church, 
 of which the Rev. Dr. E. Dunlap Smith was then 
 the pastor, he conducted for many years a bible 
 class composed of both young men and women, 
 and taught from year to year the epistle of Paul 
 to the Romans, often spending the most of his 
 leisure moments during the entire week, and 
 sometimes studying as many as twenty hours, in his 
 preparation for this class. Besides this labor in 
 his own church he interested himself in the work 
 of the American Sunday School Union, and for a 
 number of years taught a class of young men in 
 Union Sunday School, No. 120, on Ninth Avenue. 
 
 As to Mr. Dwight’s relation to this church it 
 becomes a great deal more difficult for me to speak, 
 and the difficulty is too obvious to need explana- 
 tion.XThe first thousand dollars that secured the 
 site on which this building stands today, came from 
 that liberal hand, and that organ too, that has rung 
 out God’s praises, which he loved to listen to, is but 
 the resonant monument of the same liberality. 
 Twenty-five or thirty years ago a crisis came to 
 the struggling congregation as recorded in that 
 beautiful little book of my predecessor, Dr. Clark, 
 “ The Story of the Church of the Puritans.” The 
 mortgage was about to be forclosed and the prop- 
 erty taken out of the hands of the little flock, but 
 
the one foremost to the rescue with means to save 
 it was the one in whose memory we gather here 
 this morning. 
 
 I sat in his summer home, several years ago, 
 at Mount Holyoke, when he told me of a message 
 that he had just received from Northfield, the 
 home of Dwight L. Moody, and there, by degrees, 
 
 I got this touching story. • When Moody’s little 
 library was burned to ashes in the great Chicago 
 fire, and the news was printed here in the New 
 York papers, — the very day that he read the story 
 a telegram flashed to Chicago with a large contri- ' 
 bution to replace the books that had just perished 
 in the flames. And from that time until the time 
 I visited him, and I have no doubt until the end, no 
 year passed without his remembering the work of 
 this great evangelist. 
 
 Then too he had a large and constant interest in 
 the work of the Seaman Friend's Society whose 
 honored Secretary, Rev. Dr. W. C. Stett, has led 
 our devotions this morning. An interest, not 
 merely as Trustee and Director and constant 
 attendant at the noon-day prayer meeting, but in 
 the eternal salvation of these much tempted and 
 neglected men. That was the best thing about Mr. 
 Dwight’s benificence, it was permeated through and 
 through by a high and holy passion for the souls of 
 men. ‘'Sitting in his own home here in the city he 
 
 
told me of the conversion of the sailor, John Byrne. 
 I had never heard that story. Byrne was before 
 my time, but I distinctly remember how absorbed 
 in interest I was as he told me the details of that 
 man’s conversion, how the spirit of God filled that 
 rough, wild sailor, until he became a power for the 
 salvation for men. 
 
 I am greatly privileged in holding in my hand 
 today a copy of the Sailor's Magazine with an 
 article from Mr. Dwight’s pen. It is said this is 
 probably the only article he ever wrote for pub- 
 lication.^ It is the story of the conversion of John 
 Byrne and Mr. Dwight’s personal experience with 
 him. It is the same story he had told me written 
 out. I wish to read you the closing sentences, 
 for nothing could illustrate so well the man’s 
 exhalted spiritual mindedness in his efforts to save 
 and uplift humanity. The words are pathetic, 
 beautiful, and above all, true. 
 
 He is speaking of the great revival of 1857, in 
 this City in connection with the story of John 
 Byrne: “Oh the wondrous power of the Spirit, 
 that Almighty power which wrought in Christ 
 when He rose from the dead ! Who will dare say 
 it was not the descent again of cloven tongues to 
 inspire with new life and light the men of the sea ? 
 For the past thirty-five years this light has shone 
 forth from that upper chamber of the Sailor’s 
 
 14 
 
Home, still consecrated to prayer and private 
 conversation. That it may continue to prove a 
 very Bethel, ‘ A h ouse of God .’ to many a new born 
 soul, will ever be the prayer of those who labor for 
 the spiritual welfare of the men of the sea.” If he 
 had never written another line for the press that 
 article would distinguish him as having the spirit 
 of Christ, yearning like his Master for the souls of 
 men. 
 
 But we must draw a line somewhere, though it 
 is difficult to be brief with such a subject. I would 
 like to speak of his interest in literature and art 
 shown in his gift to Mount Holyoke College, of the 
 beautiful building devoted to these objects. I 
 would like to speak of his culture and tell you of 
 the nights I sat with him watching the stars 
 through his telescopes, on the top of Mt. Holyoke. • 
 That which surprised me was that he seemed as 
 familiar with the heavenly bodies, with the names 
 of planets, constellations and the whole surface of 
 the moon, mountains, plains and valleys, as I was 
 ‘'•'with the streets of the city we live in. I pass this 
 by; this is not a biography, it is just a flower 
 dropped upon the memory of a man whom to 
 know was to love. 
 
 No one can be more conscious than I of the 
 inadequacy of the tribute. The impulse to enlarge 
 is checked everywhere by the obvious limitations 
 
of the time and service. But one great truth forces 
 itself upon us and with the statement of it I close. 
 
 This rapid backward look however dim and 
 narrow over such a life, compels us in the very 
 nature of things to look up and on toward another 
 life as the only adequate consummation of such a 
 character. 
 
 It seems to me as if it were almost an insult to 
 common reason to believe that this life so grand 
 and full and rich in good works has ceased to 
 exist ! 
 
 That this man who touched human life at so 
 many different points, and everywhere with clean 
 Christly helpful contact, everywhere doing some- 
 thing and giving something to help man Godward, 
 has passed away forever from conscious being and 
 development ! 
 
 That this man like the psalmist’s tree “planted 
 by the rivers of nature and bearing fruit in old 
 age,” is now plucked up by the roots ! A fire that 
 kindled into a living glow many a sad heart in this 
 cold selfish world has burned itself out into ashes ! 
 A shining light that led many a voyager across the 
 stormy sea of life has at last gone out itself into 
 the blackness of darkness forever ! 
 
 My fellow men, does such an awful contradic- 
 tion as that appeal to either your judgment or 
 common sense? In the very nature of things we 
 
 16 
 
are forced by this noble, unselfish, godly life to cry 
 out a thousand times “No.” Every instinct of a 
 true nature demands something grander and more 
 glorious than all that can be compassed in the life 
 that now is. 
 
 Blessed be that Gospel that brings life and im- 
 mortality to light by the very existence upon earth 
 of such a character — that declares that all the past 
 is but the germ of a glorious future, bringing in a 
 completion that eye hath not seen nor ear heard, 
 nor hath it entered into the heart of man to 
 conceive. Blessed be the Son of the Eternal God 
 who says : “Come ye blessed of my Father enter 
 into the kingdom prepared for you from the foun- 
 dation of the world. For I was sick and ye visited 
 me ; I was hungry and ye fed me ; I was naked 
 and ye clothed me ; in prison and ye came unto 
 me. Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of 
 these my brethren, ye did it unto me.” Blessed be 
 the Gospel that declares that life here is not the 
 end but the beginning ; the grave, not the grave 
 of any child of God but only of the earthly house 
 he stopped in a little while. 
 
 Blessed be the voice that cries from innermost 
 glory to every such life: “Where I am there ye 
 shall be also,” and “they that turn many to right- 
 eousness shall shine as the stars forever.” Thank 
 God the very fact of such a life demands immortal- 
 
 17 
 
ity as the only reasonable explanation of its 
 existence. There must be another life to explain 
 and complete and perfect all of which this life 
 only begins. 
 
 "There the faded flowers shall freshen," 
 
 Freshen nevermore to fade ; 
 
 There the shaded skies shall brighten, 
 
 Brighten nevermore to fade ; 
 
 Brothers we shall meet and rest, 
 
 Mid the holy and the blest. 
 
 There the band is never broken, 
 
 Partings, claspings, sighs, unknown ; 
 
 Midnight waking, twilight weeping, 
 
 Heavy noontide, all are gone. 
 
 Brothers we shall meet and rest, 
 
 Mid the holy and the blest.” 
 
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