Who Was Theodore L. Cuyler? Brooklyn Pastor and Writer of Comfort
Theodore Ledyard Cuyler was an American Presbyterian pastor who lived from 1822 to 1909. For thirty years he led the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, New York, which he founded and which grew into one of the largest Presbyterian congregations in the country. He was also one of the best-known religious writers of his century. By his own count he wrote about four thousand articles for the religious papers, along with books of comfort for the grieving, plain guides to the Christian life, and handbooks for young ministers. He was a pastor first, and everything he wrote came out of pastoral work.
Here's a fuller look at his life, what he taught, and which of his books to start with.
Boyhood on Cayuga Lake
Cuyler was born on January 10, 1822, in Aurora, a village on Cayuga Lake in western New York. His father, a promising young lawyer, died in 1826, when the boy was four and a half. His mother took him to her father's farm by the lake, and there he grew up among the cows, the hay fields and the long Puritan Sabbaths.
He never forgot what he owed her. In his autobiography, Recollections of a Long Life, he wrote:
God made mothers before He made ministers; the progress of Christ's kingdom depends more upon the influence of faithful, wise, and pious mothers than upon any other human agency.
Recollections of a Long Life, Boyhood and College Life
She had dedicated him to the Lord as a baby, the way Hannah gave Samuel, and she turned down a relative's offer of a law library because she expected her boy to be a minister. Cuyler said he could not name a day when he was converted. He grew into faith under her teaching, and he joined the church at seventeen.
He entered the College of New Jersey at Princeton at sixteen and graduated in 1841. In 1842 he traveled through Britain. He visited the poet Wordsworth, called on Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle, and gave his first public address at a temperance meeting in Glasgow. He then studied at Princeton Theological Seminary and finished in 1846.
Early pastorates
His first preaching was in Burlington, New Jersey. In 1849 he became the first pastor of the new Third Presbyterian Church in Trenton. In 1853 he married Annie Mathiot of Ohio, and the same year he was called to the Market Street Reformed Church in New York City. During these years he began writing short articles for the religious papers, a habit he kept for the rest of his life.
Thirty years in Brooklyn
In 1860 Cuyler moved to Brooklyn, and in 1862 his congregation opened its new building on Lafayette Avenue. He stayed until 1890. Under his ministry the church grew to several thousand members. He was known less for learned sermons than for steady pastoral care: visiting every family, sitting with the sick, praying with the troubled and following up new converts. He set the whole congregation to work, with mission chapels, Sunday schools and young people's meetings.
He believed revival belonged in the local church. He held special meetings and saw seasons of awakening, and he argued that a faithful pastor should reap his own harvest:
If a preacher can preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ faithfully, and the Lord God is with him, why rob him of the joy of the harvest by sending away for any stranger?
Recollections of a Long Life, My Experience in Revivals
Cuyler was also a leader in the temperance cause and an opponent of slavery. He counted many famous Christians as friends, among them Charles Spurgeon, D. L. Moody and Horatius Bonar. When he retired in April 1890 he preached a farewell sermon on the joys of the ministry, which he printed at the end of How to Be a Pastor.
A writer for the whole church
Cuyler wrote for papers like the New York Evangelist, the Independent and the Christian Intelligencer, and his pieces were reprinted in Britain and Australia. A friend once estimated that his articles had been printed in two hundred million copies. He liked short paragraphs and plain words, and he wanted every piece to help someone who was perplexed, troubled or straying.
Many of his books gather those papers. Pointed Papers for the Christian Life follows the believer from the first steps toward Christ to heaven. One line shows how he wrote:
One honest hour with Jesus may be the first step towards an eternity of glory.
Pointed Papers for the Christian Life, One Honest Hour with Jesus
Comfort learned in sorrow
Cuyler's most loved books came from grief. He and his wife had twin boys in 1863. In 1868 one of them, Georgie, died of scarlet fever at four and a half. So many letters of sympathy came that his wife asked him to print some of them, with the story of the child. That became The Empty Crib, a small book that has comforted bereaved parents ever since.
In the autumn of 1881 their daughter Louise died of typhoid fever at twenty-two. Out of that loss came God's Light on Dark Clouds, written, as it says, in his "lonely room." It's a book for anyone in the dark:
The real victory of faith is to trust God in the dark and through the dark.
God's Light on Dark Clouds, Trusting God in the Dark
He never pretends that grief is small. But he keeps pointing to the love of God that shines through it, and to the hope of those who sleep in Jesus.
Counsel for ministers
After he left Brooklyn, Cuyler kept preaching and writing. He put his pastoral experience into two short books. How to Be a Pastor covers visiting, funerals, prayer meetings, training converts and revivals. The Young Preacher speaks straight to young men starting out, about growing sermons from the Bible, winning souls and the holy life of the man behind the message:
The more soul you put into your preaching, the more souls you will bring to Jesus Christ.
The Young Preacher, The Delivery of Sermons
His sermons from these years are collected in Stirring the Eagle's Nest. In 1902 he published his Recollections, full of the people he had known and the joy he had found in fifty-six years of preaching.
Brooklyn named a small park near his old church Cuyler Gore in his honor. He asked only that it be kept bright with flowers. He died on February 26, 1909, at eighty-seven.
Why he's still read
Cuyler isn't a theologian's theologian. He's a pastor talking to ordinary people about trusting God, fighting sin, bearing sorrow and serving Christ where they are. His sentences are short and his examples are homely, and he always comes back to Jesus. For grieving readers, and for anyone called to care for souls, he's still one of the warmest guides there is.
Where to start
TheWay Library has sixteen of his books, all free to read. If you're grieving, start with God's Light on Dark Clouds; if you've lost a child, The Empty Crib. In the later years of life, try Beulah Land. For a new believer, Newly Enlisted is a good first gift. For the Christian life in short daily portions, read Pointed Papers. If you're a pastor or preparing to be one, read The Young Preacher, then How to Be a Pastor. To know the man, read his Recollections.
Our guide to Theodore L. Cuyler's books describes all sixteen, and our collection of Theodore L. Cuyler quotes gathers his best lines. For more books like his, see the best Christian books on death and grief. All his books are on the Theodore L. Cuyler author page.