The Life-Story

IV simple and brief are the outlines of
a human life. And yet only eternity
can fill out those outlines, and make

visible the unseen mysteries which we call

character and influence.

Adoniram Judson Gordon

IVas born April ig, iSj6.

Was cojiverted to God in 18j2, and was baptized the same year.

Was in New London, from 18^j to 183’j; in Brown University, from iSjy to 1860; in Newto7i Theological Seminary, from 1860 to 186j.

Ordaif led at Jamaica Plain, June, 186j.

Married to Maria Hale, October ij, iS6j.

Removed to Boston, December, 186g.

Departed this life, February 2, 18g.

THE LIFE-STORY

This life thus reaches over a period lacking little of three-score years, and may be roughly divided into three parts, each embracing about twenty years: the first twenty, his growth to manhood; the second twenty, his development as a Bible student and preacher of the word; and the third period being especially memorable for his maturity as a Spirit-filled teacher and leader.

The character and life of Dr. Gordon are so rich, both in incident and suggestion, so full of lessons in living for generations to come, that it is proposed to prepare a fuller biography hereafter. But, by way of introducing this marvelous personality to readers who were acquainted with the man only through his writings or public utterances, it may be well to give a brief sketch, as in profile, of his leading characteristics, and especially such as may help to elucidate the experiences connected with the dream, here recorded.

Dr. Gordon will long be remembered as a prince among the preachers and teachers of the modern pulpit. With preachers, as with musicians, there are different and distinct classes, and it is easy to find to which he belongs.

Some study to express the word and mind of God; they are exegetes. Others study their own states and express their own spiritual moods and experiences; they are autobiographers. Others deal in divine conceptions, but invest them with the interest of their own experimental history; these are witnesses and reach the truest ideal. Dr. Gordon was one of these. No man’s preaching was a more faithful exposition of the word of God. He would have counted it an affront to the Scriptures to use them as a mere convenience to hang his own thoughts on, or caricature them by a misapplication of sacred words. He was both too original in research and too independent in opinion, to become a mere reflector of others’ views, like the copyist, or substitute sound for sense like the dealer in platitudes. He honestly, patiently, and prayerfully studied the word of God, and then illustrated — we might almost say illuminated — it by his own experience.

No review of this life, however hasty, must leave out his work as an author. Ten marked contributions to the literature of the age remain, apart from the editorials and more transient articles in the “Watchword,” the religious newspapers, the “Missionary Review,” etc. His books fall into five classes. One on “The Ministry of Healing,” another, his “Coronation Hymnal,” and this last, his “Spiritual Autobiography,” must stand by themselves. Then there are four precious books which center about the person of Christ: “In Christ,” “The Two-fold Life,” “Grace and Glory,” and “Ecce Venit,” Two have specially to do with the Holy Spirit: “The Ministry of the Spirit,” and the “Holy Spirit in Missions.” But what a wide range and scope of treatment, and on what vital themes! It is not too much to say of these books that they constitute religious classics, and ought to form part of every well-furnished library.

In his literary style three things are peculiarly prominent: first, his vigorous and discriminating use of language; secondly, his marvelous power of analysis and antithesis; and thirdly, his simple, natural, forceful illustrations. In these respects his writings will repay any one for critical and habitual study. If the literary productions of any man of this century can in these respects supply a better model for young men who are preparing to preach, we know not where they are to be found. Dr. Gordon’s book, for instance, on the “Ministry of the Spirit,” is so tersely written and so carefully wrought out in every part, that there is scarcely one needless noun or heedless adjective in all the sixty thousand words which compose it; while every page bristles with new and instructive suggestions; and the whole is so reverent and worshipful that it suggests a man consciously treading on holy ground.

Twenty-five years of this serviceable life were spent in the Clarendon Street Church, Boston; and in helping to mold that church into conformity with primitive apostolic models was found the crowning work of his life. It implies neither exaggeration of his own merit nor depreciation of the service of any other man to affirm that it was

THE LIFE-STORY XUl

permitted to him, amid the atmosphere of Unitarianism and hberahsm, to build up a believing brotherhood, characterized by as simple worship, pure doctrine, and primitive practice as any other in the world.

To those who are familiar with the inner secrets of the life of this church, its central charm is one which is not apparent to the common eye: the adnmtistration of the Holy Spirit is there devoutly recognized and practically realized. The beloved pastor sought, and with great success, to impress upon his people the fact that in the body of Christ the Holy Spirit literally though invisibly indwells;; that he is ready, if he finds a willing people, to oversee and administer all that pertains to the affairs of the body of Christ; and that, as his administration both demands and depends upon co-operation, there must be neither secular men nor secular methods introduced into the practical conduct of Christ’s church, but the Spirit of God must be recognized and realized as the Divine,, Archbishop finding there his See. It took years ‘^ to get this practically wrought into the life of the church; but under his persistent teaching and patient pastoral guidance, there came a gradual elimination of worldly elements, and a gradual transformation of the whole church as a working body until it has become a model for other churches, approximating very closely to the apostolic pattern.

Dr. Gordon has written many noble books and pamphlets; but among all the volumes he has produced, this is the most complete and satisfactory. This church is his permanent “living epistle.” The golden pen of action, held in the firm hand of an inspired purpose, has been for a quarter of a century writing out its sentences in living deeds, to be known and read of all men. And the greatest problem now awaiting solution is, how far this church is going to prove that the Holy Spirit still administers the body of Christ there. Should these brethren show that they have been inwardly saying, “I am of Dr. Gordon,” rather than, “I am of Christ”; and were this church to prove only a sheaf, of which the pastor was the bond, and which when the bond is removed falls apart, it would be a world-wide reproach. If, on the other hand, it shall not only as an organization survive the pastor’s removal, but shall preserve jealously the high type of excellence it attained under his ministry; shall prove not man-centered but Christ-centered; and shall regard itself as a kind of legatee unto whom the pastor has committed the gospel he preached, the work he began, and the witness he maintained, to be guarded and perpetuated — this survival of the whole work when the workman has gone up higher, will be a testimony to the whole church and the whole world, as mighty and as far-reaching as any witness of its sort in our generation.

It is a growing conviction that the hfe-work of Dr. Gordon has reached singular completeness, a rounded symmetry and sphericity. Nothing seems wanting. In the beauty of Christian character and culture he had so grown into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that it may be doubted whether the whole communion of believers presented one man more ripe in godliness and usefulness. He was in every sense a great man: great in his mind, in his genius, having not only the administrative but the creative faculty; not only organizing but originating. His versatility was amazing. He would have been great in many spheres. Had he been a judge, with what judicial equity and probity he would have adorned the bench. Had he been a trained musician, what glorious oratorios he might have given to the world. Had he been called to rule an empire, with what mingled ability and urbanity he would have discharged imperial functions.

But if he was not great in the eyes of men, he was great in the eyes of the Lord, and greatest because of his humility. Ordinary progress is from infancy to manhood; but, as Hudson Taylor says, Christian progress is in the reverse order, from manhood perpetually backward toward the cradle, becoming a little child again, one of God’s little ones, for it is the little ones that get carried in the Father’s arms and fondled. Coleridge sagaciously hints that the highest xvi THE LIFE-STORY

accompaniment of genius in the moral sphere is the carrying forward of the feelings of youth into the period of manhood and old age. Dr. Gordon more than any man I ever knew remained to the last perfectly childlike, while he put away and left behind whatever was childish.

In estimating the character of Dr. Gordon great stress should be laid on these childlike traits. The ma7i of God was emphatically a child of God. He never lost his simplicity; he rather grew toward it than away from It; there was a perpetual return toward the spirit, attitude, and habitude of a babe in Christ. His humility and meekness, his frankness and candor, his generosity and gentleness, will always stand out conspicuous in the remembrance of all who knew him best.

The love that flooded him was, however, a supernatural grace. Seldom do we find such energy of conviction softened by such charity for differing conviction. His creed was steeped in love. He disarmed criticism by magnanimity, and blunted the weapons of controversy by the impregnable armor of an imperturbable equanimity. While I was with him on one of our missionary tours, he gave utterance to certain convictions which met strong opposition; but one of his most stubborn opponents confessed that he would rather hear Dr. Gordon when he did not agree with him than any other man when he did.

One of the most beautiful features of his work

THE LIFE-STORY XVll

and character was his unconsciousness of the leal greatness of his attainment and achievement. When the Spirit of God controls a disciple, growth in grace and power and service becomes so natural and necessary as to be largely unconscious and in a sense involuntary. Great results come without human planning, certainly without human boasting. Mrs. Stowe said of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” that greatest work of modern fiction, that it was never begun or carried on by her with any thought of doing any great thing or becoming famous. She was simply possessed of an idea which she had to work out in a natural way, and she was a pen in the hands of God. And so yielding herself to him as an instrument, a book was produced which God used as a lever to upturn and overturn a monstrous fabric of wrong which it took a hundred years to build, and which was buttressed by commercial gains and carnal self-interest, and justified in the name of morality and even religion. A book was given to the world which Palmerston thrice read for its lessons on statesmanship, and which has been translated into fifty tongues.

This Boston pastor, even at the very last, when his successful pastorate seemed so solitary in its greatness, had no sense of having done any great thing; or if the thought of his superb triumph ever was suggested to him by others, he could only answer: “What hath God wrought!” “A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven.”

It is true, success of such sort as his is always costly. No man ever attains such exceptional godliness, or achieves such exceptional usefulness, without getting a reputation for being eccentric, or as a fanatic, if not a heretic. Aristotle long ago said that there is no great genius without some mixture of madness; nothing supremely grand or superior was ever wrought save by a soul agitated by some great unrest and upheaved by some great purpose. The torrents that are the melting of stainless snows, high up toward heaven, and which rush down the side of the mountain to carry healing waters afar to dry and desert wastes, leave a scarred and torn mountain’s breast behind. But, as Keith Falconer said: We must not fear to be thought eccentric, for what is eccentricity but being out of center? and we must be out of center as to the world if we would be adjusted to that other divine center of which the world knows nothing.

Such success also costs self-abnegation. The whole raising of our church-life depends on the higher standard of our ministry. “Like people, like priest.” The ministry is the supreme flower and fruit of church-life — as to growth, its sign of consummation; as to fruit, its seed of propagation and reproduction. The ambition after a cultivated ministry flatters pride and carnality. But there is a culture which is fatal to the highest fruitfulness in holy things. The common wild rose has a perfectly developed seed vessel, but the double rose, the triumph of horticulture, has none — the ovaries being by cultivation absorbed into stamen and petal: the beauty of the blossom is at the expense of the fertility of the seed vessel. There is a type of ministerial scholarship that is destructively critical and proudly intellectual, and hinders soul-saving. Let it not be thought that it cost Dr. Gordon nothing to renounce and resign the proud throne among pulpit orators and biblical scholars which his gifts seemed to offer, and seek simply to be a Spirit-filled man — consenting to be misunderstood, misrepresented, ridiculed, that he might be loyal to the still small voice within his soul!

This beloved brother stands out as a man, a man of singularly gifted mind, with rare insight into truth and clear methods of thinking and expressing thought; a man of large and noble heart, quick in sympathy, quickened into divine love, and knowing the “expulsive power of a new affection” for Christ; a man of clean, pure tongue, whose speech was seasoned with salt and always with grace, anointed with power; a man of blameless life, in whose conduct the Babylonian conspirators would have found as little flaw as in Daniel’s.

But he interests us most of all as the rniMt of

God, the man of the Book, versed in the word of God; the” man in Christ” whom we have known since “fourteen years ago,” who looked back for his faith to Christ’s first advent, and forward for his hope to his second coming; the man of the Holy Ghost in whom the Spirit dwelt, and who dwelt in the Spirit, as the air is in us and we in it, his element; and as the man of God, of Christ, of the Spirit; in the church, a faithful preacher, loving pastor; and in the world, not of it, yet evermore to it a blessing.

Personally, the writer who pens this loving tribute never thinks of Dr. Gordon without recalling one specially memorable and delightful experience of association with him in a mission tour among the churches of Auld Scotland in 1888. After the World’s Conference on Missions in Exeter Hall, London, and while we were en route to the “Eternal City,” an invitation came from the Scottish capital, so urgent and earnest, that we should visit Edinburgh in the interest of missions before the students in the theological schools had scattered for the season, that he felt moved to abandon the Continental trip, and we went back from Paris, arriving at Edinburgh in time for a garden party at the grounds of Duncan McLaren, Esq., on Saturday afternoon, July 14. Then followed in rapid succession colossal meetings in the famous “Synod Halls” of the Free Church, and United Presbyterian body. And so

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great was the impression made by Dr. Gordon’s knowledge of missions, grasp of the whole subject, and especially his mingled earnestness and unction, that on the sixteenth of July a crusade was proposed to be undertaken by him and the the writer jointly, among the churches of Scotland. The pressure was so great that we yielded as to the will of God, and after a week in Edinburgh, with other great meetings in the Synod Halls, we left together, visiting Oban, Inverness, Strathpeffer, Nairn, Forres, Elgin, and Aberdeen, where we spent August 5th. Dr. Gordon then felt called to return to America, and the rest of the tour was without his helpful inspiration. But wherever he went in 1888 he is remembered, and will not be forgotten while this generation lasts. That year the impulse thus given to missions was such that more candidates offered and more money was contributed than in any previous year. Would that such a man could have been spared to make a world-tour of missions and carry a like inspiration elsewhere! When we think of such a man, taken from us in his very prime, when we might have counted on twenty years more of service, we can only remember the words of Holy Scripture:

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

“I was dumb with silence:”

“I opened not my mouth because Thou
didst it.”

“What I do thou knowest not now;”

XXll THE LIFE-STORY

“But thou shalt know hereafter.”

We have not yet come to the point where we may penetrate the thick darkness where God dwells, and know the secrets of his purpose who doeth all things well. We can only trust blindly in the promise that all things work together for good to them that love God.

” Ye sorrow not as others which have no hope.” Sorrow is not forbidden, but a hopeless sorrow is also a faithless sorrow.

We begin the New Testament with Rama, where Rachel’s disconsolate grief still echoes, weeping and refusing to be comforted for those who are not. But we are to leave Rama behind as we find Him who says: “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” and move on in his company toward the New Jerusalem.

Even the Psalm of Moses (90: 15, 16) teaches us a sublime lesson in divine compensation, “Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us.” An inspired prayer is also a prophecy. If we submit cheerfully to him he will give us gladness for every affliction and evil day, and even so great a sorrow as this shall somehow be turned into joy.

Professor Chapell has suggested a most appropriate quotation as the epitaph of this holy man and witness for Christ: ‘’I think it 7neet, as lo7ig as I am in this taberftacie.

To stir you up by putting you in re7neinbrance;

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Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, Even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shelved 7ne. Moreover I will e?tdeavour that ye may be able After my decease To have these things always in remembt’atice. For we have not followed cun7iingly devised fables

When we jnade known imto you The power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” i

1 2 Peter i: 13-16.