The Fourth Anniversary

“He thanked God, and took courage.” — Acts xxviii., 15.

PAUL had just come ashore at Puteoli, and was soon to go across the country to Rome, to meet, perhaps, a great many trials and perplexities. The Christians at Rome hear that Paul has landed at Puteoli and is on the way, so they go out to escort him to the city. When he saw them, his heart revived, or, as my text says, “He thanked God, and took courage.” That is descriptive of my own feelings this morning. You may not be aware that this is the anniversary of my settlement as the pastor of this church. Fifty-two times the shuttle has flown, in each flight weaving a week, with a golden border of Sabbath. Three hundred and sixty-four times the clock has struck twelve for the noon and twelve for the night. In that time, how many marriage garlands have been twisted, how many graves dug, how many sorrows suffered, how many fortunes won, how many souls lost, how many immortals saved!

Four years ago, this month, I came to you with chastened spirit, for only the Sabbath before I had delivered my valedictory sermon in Philadelphia, and the sharp laceration of soul which I felt that Sabbath-night as, standing at the foot of the pulpit, I bade ftirewell to long -tried friends, many of them my own children in the Gospel, can be appreciated only by those who have gone through the same process. Coming here, I found strangers in both boards of the church, and a building ahnost empty. Still mj heart failed not, for I was sure that God had called me to the work, and, however weak a man may feel in himself, he is strong while leaning against the throne of the Lord Almighty. Instead of standing among strangers to-day, I look off upon familiar faces, and upon those with whom I have been taking sweet counsel, and those whom I know are remembering me, day by day, in their prayers. So I shall address them this morning as one large, Christian family. I have thought that in this, my anniversary sermon, it might be well if I should tell you what, by the help of God, I have been trying to do in this congregation.

In the first place, I remark, I have been trying to win your confidence and love, not by sycophancy or by the consultation of your prejudices, but by preaching a straightforward Gospel, regardless as to where it hit. A minister living amidst people who do not believe in him can not be useful. When a congregation wish that their pastor would be called to some other position, he really has a call to go. When they have the idea that he is influenced by selfish and worldly motives, his usefulness is done, and he as really has a call to go as he had a call to come. There are churches being depleted and blasted by a ministry not adapted to them. A minister has no more right to kill a church than a church has a right to kill a minister. I know a man who professes to be a minister of Christ, who is in his third settlement. The two previous churches that he served have come to extinction as the result of that ministry, and there is not much prospect that the third will long survive; while, on the other hand, there are ministers of Christ who have for thirty and forty years stood in the same places, and the tie of affection and confidence between pastor and people has all the time strengthened.

A good many years ago, a lad, fifteen years of age, heard, in England, John Flavel preach from the text: “If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.” The lad grew up, came to this country, and lived to be one hundred years of age, not having found Christ. One day he stood in the field, and the memory of that sermon of John Flavel crossed his mind, and the thought of how that minister of Christ, at the close of the service, said: “How can I pronounce the benediction, when there may be some here who love not the Lord Jesus Christ, and are Anathema Maranatha.” The remembrance of that minister brought the old man to Christ at one hundred years of age, and eighty-five years after he had heard that Gospel sermon. Oh! it is a grand thing to preach earnestly, faithfully, and successfully this glorious Gospel. Kow let me be frank, and say to you, my dear people, that I have tried to win your confidence and your deep sympathy in my Christian work. If you have seen in me many shortcomings, be aware of the fact that I have had a deeper realization of them than you possibly could have had, and I am here to say that you have given me more than I deserve, and that your kindness through the last four years has made my ministry in this place an undisturbed satisfaction.

I remark again, I have tried, in my ministry during the past year and the past four years, to create amidst this people Christian sociality. There are churches that are arctic seas, iceberg grinding against iceberg. The attendants upon them come as men come into the ferry-boat, sitting down beside each other — no nod of recognition, no hand-grasping of fellowship, no throb of brotherly and sisterly affection. They come in, they sit down, they go out. From Saturday to Monday morning they are ferried over by Christian ordinances, and that is all there is of it. Now, my dear brother, if you are cold and hard and selfish, then the higher the wall you build around your soul, the better. You would do well to be exclusive; but if there is in you any thing kind, any thing lovely, any thing noble, any thing useful, let it shine out. Suppose a vessel were driven on the rocks, and while fifty people were struggling in the surf, one man gets safely to the beach, and runs up to the fisherman’s hut and sits down and warms himself, regardless of those who are still struggling in the water — what a cruel thing that would be! How much better, like the survivors of the Atlantic shipwreck, toiling with both hands until the left hand gave out, and until the right hand gave out, and then with their teeth seizing the clothing of the suffering ones and pulling them ashore! And what do you suppose God thinks of us if, having escaped from the floods of sin and darkness and death, we are culturing an unchristian selfishness, while there are hundreds and thousands all around about us still struggling in the wave? I say, let us have a kindly sympathy and helpfulness toward those who are all around us. Every church was intended by God to be a large family circle — of fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters. What kind of a family circle would that be where the brothers did not recosjnize each other and the parents were characterized by frigidity and heartlessness? Sons and daughters of God, have yoa no higher appreciation of the larger Christian brotherhood in which you are gathered in churches? Who is that that used to sit before you in the Tabernacle? Do not know. Who is that that used to sit at your right hand and at your left hand? Do not know. You ought to have known. It is a sin not to be acquainted with those who sit by us in the house of God year after year. Do not stand upon the formalities of society. In the name of Christ, I declare to you the privilege of giving the right hand of fellowship to every one who comes to the same church. We have tried to culture this Christian sociality in the sociable; much has already been accomplished, and when our new church shall be built, we will put our hand more earnestly to the work. The church sociable ought to be the most cheerful of all places. Let there be in it a time to laugh. Do not with long faces overshadow the young people. You go to church and to the prayer- meeting to worship; then worship, and have nothing but worship. You go to the sociable; then have nothing but sociality. Yet there are church reunions so entirely formal that the liveliest thing in all the evening is the long- metre doxology. Be cheerful, be kind, be sympathetic with all with whom you are associated. If fish go in schools, and if sheep go in flocks, and if flowers go in tribes, and if stars swing in galaxies, then let all those who worship in the same church move together in loving and shining bands. “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”

Again, I have tried in this church to preach an every-day religion. The vast majority of my congregation are in business life. It would have been absurd for me to talk about abstract trials when I saw by the paper that gold was going down, and men were losing their fortunes. We must bring a Gospel comfort just suited to the condition of the people to whom we preach. Here is a physician who comes into a sick-room where there is a case of diphtheria. Does he apply to it medicines for cholera, or yellow fever, or marasmus? Oh no, it is a specific for diphtheria. And if we want to make the Gospel successful in the hearts of men in the way of comfort, we must bring that particular phase of it which is thoroughly adapted to the case. So I have from time to time tried to bring you a Gospel that would be appropriate in Wall Street, and in Broadway, and in Schermerhorn Street, and in Montague Street.

It is a simple fact that there are but few men who take the comforts of religion into their business. You get sick, or a member of your family dies; you say, “Send for the minister!” But suppose you are in a business corner; suppose the sheriff is after you; suppose your best friend betrays you; suppose there are three or four men in the front office with duns for debts that you can not meet; suppose that you can no more sleep at night than if you were on the top of a mast in a Mediterranean hurricane; suppose with flushed cheek you walk the floor nights, your head aching as though it would split open — why, then, do you not send for religious consolation? No, you do not. You send for some poor, miserable skinflint, and ask him if he will lend you a thousand dollars at two per cent, a month, and he will not do it! You go to a friend you helped in time of trouble, and want to get his name on your note, and he will not give it, and in utter despair, and wild with trouble, you say, “If it were not for my wife and children, I would jump off the dock.” I remember a man who, in 1857, helped a dozen people through the financial straits. He loaned a thousand dollars here, and five thousand there, and ten thousand there, and took his friends to the bank, and allowed them to go on his credit, and helped them through. Five years after his trial came. Where were those old friends? Gone; or, if they came into his store, it was only to say, “God bless you!” forgetful of the fact that one ounce of pure financial help at that time would have been worth fifty tons of “God bless yous.” Instead of going at such a time to worldly resources, why did you not go to God? Why did you not lock the door of your private office, and get down on your knees, and say, “Oh Lord! thou seest my business trouble. There is that note at the bank. I have no money to meet it. There is my rent, it has become due: what shall I do about it? There are my unsalable goods at the warehouse. Lord Jesus, help me out of this trouble.” God would have done it as certainly as he sits upon the throne and offers help to men who want it. You did not go for it, and you did not get it. If you had made your religion do that, it would have been worth something. Your religion, instead of being a robe to wrap around you and keep you warm in the chill blasts of trial, has been merely a string of beads around your neck, very beautiful to look at, and that is all. In the last panic in New York, amidst all the excitement, there was a man found in Wall Street, in his back office, with a loaded pistol lying on the table where he was writing a farewell letter to his family. What did that man most need? Was it the counsel of the brokers? The help of the note-shavers? No! He wanted the comfort and the peace of Christ’s religion. I have seen a man in a business strait go through, sustained by the grace of God. By disaster, in one night his fortune all went. When I saw him before, he was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars; now he was not worth a farthing. Yet he was counting up his heavenly treasures. If God had knocked out the bottom of his earthly fortunes, that bottom was found to be the top of the chest in which are the jewels of heaven! And if his riches took wings and flew away, in their flight they met the ravens of God coming down to hungry Elijah! That man to-day, on a salary of twelve hundred dollars as a clerk in the same store over which he had presided with great dignity, is happier than Henry YIII. was on the day when Anne Boleyn came to the palace — than Napoleon III., at the time of his coronation — than any man who trusts in the wealth or honor of this world for his chief satisfaction. I expect the day will come when I can set the consolations of that Gospel on your

counting-room desk; under its light the bank protests, and the letters of angry creditors, reading like the full title-deed to the thrones and principalities of heaven. That is what I call an e very-day religion.

Again, I have tried in these four years in which I have been your pastor, to disjyel the cojiventlonalities of the Church. There is a tendency among Christian people to walk in religious things on ecclesiastical stilts, instead of coming down upon a plain, common-sense level. How few people talk religion; they whine about it I What cbarm is there for a wide-awake, warm-hearted, enthusiastic man amidst the cold formalities of the Church of God? He sees through them; he sees they are a sham. Fiiday morning, you go into a merchant’s store and buy a bill of hosiery. How his face lights up! How cheerful he is! How fascinating he is while he is selling the bill of goods! You go away, saying, “That is one of the most agreeable men I ever met in my life.” That very Friday evening you go into the prayer-meeting where that same Christian merchant worships, and you find him getting up and recommending the religion of Jesus Christ with a funereal countenance and a doleful phraseology, enough to make an undertaker burst into tears. How few people there are who talk cheerfully about the religion of Jesus! In other words, that man of whom I spoke had more exhilaration when he was selling a bill of goods than in recommending the religion which makes ail heaven ring with the anthems of the free. Now, ought that so to be? How many are driven from the doors of the churches by the simple reason that they do not want such a repulsive religion. They are afraid to shake hands with a Christian man, lest they shall be religiously assaulted. I remember very well how it was when I was a boy. I laid one hour and a half under the raspberry-bushes in the garden, to escape from the minister and the elder who came to my father’s house on a family visit; and my father came out on the back steps, and cried, “De Witt, where are you?” De Witt made no answer! Ought our religion to repel or attract? My little child, four years old, said to her mother: “Ma, ma, I saw in a book a picture of a man and a picture of God, and the man looked awfully frightened because he saw

God. Now,” she says, “if I had been there and God had come in, I would not have been frightened; I would have just gone right up and put my arms around his neck and kissed him.” Well, I thought that was pretty good theology. In other words, religion ought to invite our caresses, instead of driving the world howling away, as though it were something disagreeable, repulsive, and to be hated.

Again, I have, in these four years in which I have ministered to you, tried to preach a Gospel of comfort to the bereaved. This is the most delicate work to which the preacher is ever called. If you do not know how to treat a wound, you had better not touch it. How many people come to the wounds of the soul with a spiritual quackery, and they irritate and poison the wounds instead of care. It may require no great skill to take a sloop across the North River, but it does to engineer a steamship across the Atlantic; and there may be no great skill required to heal a little sorrow of the soul, but to take one through the storms and tossing seas of tribulation and trial does require some tact, and ingenuity, and especial grace. I do not suppose that in the four years in which I have ministered to you a single family has escaped bereavement — if not in your immediate circle, then in a near circle. Oh! how many households have been broken up by bereavement since I came among you. From most other sorrows you can run away. You can go home, but how if a part of the home itself is gone? Then it is not so easy. Then every thing reminds you of your loss. Suppose you should sit down at a piano, put a piece of music on the rack, then put your foot on the pedal and your fingers on the keys — the music would start off magnificently. But suppose you struck one key and the chord did not respond, because it was broken. Why, that ruins the entire accompaniment. Well, sometimes in life you have been going on in great joy and hilarity, when suddenly you have thought of a voice, just one voice, that has been hushed, of one heart that is slill, and the silent key spoiled all the music.

Oh, if we could all die together I If we could keep the lambs and the sheep of our family flock all together until some bright spring day, the birds a-chant, and the water a-glitter, and then we together could hear the voice of the good Shepherd, and we could all go through the flood, hand in hand! If we only knew when we were to die, and we could gather our family and say, “Now Jesus calls us, and we must away;” and then we could put our little ones in the bed and straighten out their limbs, and say, “Sleep, now, the last sleep,” and then we could go to our own couches and lie down, and say, “Master, we are all ready. The children have gone, and we are ready.” But it is not that way. It is one by one — one by one. It may be in mid-wint«r, and the snow comes down twenty inches deep above our fresh grave; or it may be in the dark, damp, chill March midnight; or it may be in a hotel, our arm too weak to pull the bell for help; or it may be so suddenly we can not say good-bye. Oh, death is bitter — a racking, tremendous curse! The apple that our first parents plucked from the forbidden tree had in it two black seeds, one called Sin, the other called Death. But I bless God that h I have been able during these four years to preach to ’ you resurrection hope. A gale from heaven has blown off the “white -caps” of the billow of sorrow, and the feet of Christ have trampled the waves to a level, until over the glittering floor of the hushed waters have marched all the consolations of God, troop by troop.

“Oh, weep no more,
Your comfort slain;
The Lord is risen,
He lives again.”

So now I take the harp of Gospel comfort, and play three tunes: ‘’Weeping may endure for a night, but joy Cometh in the morning” — that is one; “All things work together for good to those who love God” — that is two; “And the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them to living fountains of water, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes” — and that is the third.

Above all, during the past year I have tried to present to you Christ the only Saviour from, sin and death and hell. I have tried to show you that unless a man be born again he can not get into heaven. If there be any truth about God or Christ, or death or judgment, or heaven or hell, that I have not presented, I wish you would let me know what it is, that now I may declare it. I have tried to show you that religion was an indispensable thing, not a mere adornment, but something that you must have or die. I know that truth is not always considered popular at this day; but somehow people have continued to come and hear it. I feel it is a vital truth of Christianity: “Believe in Christ and be saved — refuse him and die.” Christ has been so lovely to me that I want all the world to love him, and I have, with all the types and figures of God’s word that I could find, presented this Jesus to you, and I am glad to know that many of you have accepted the offer. The angels of God have not stopped singing “Harvest Home.” There are scores and scores of souls who during this past year have entered the Church on earth prepared, as I trust, for the Church in heaven.

Now the year is done. If you have neglected any duty, or if I have neglected any duty, it is neglected forever. Each year has its work; if we do not do the work during that year, we never do it. The year has been to me one of great happiness — the happiest year of my ministry, and the happiest year in my life. The great calamity that put our Tabernacle in ashes has, under the good hand of God, been the best blessing that could possibly have come to us. I think we all feel that. It has consolidated us as nothing could have done, and it has gathered the sympathy and the good feeling of Christians of all denominations in this country, and from the other side of the seas. And it has shown me that in this church there is a great band of Christian men and women who will stop at no self-denial, and who will be afraid of no hard work that is to be endured for Christ. The success of the recent effort made in another room in this building is significant of that, and the masons have already begun the foundations of a grand, glorious, free Christian church. While the best men and the best newspapers in this land are in sympathy with us, you know very well that there are some who are not in sympathy with the work done by this church. They do not understand it, and never will. In proportion as you are faithful will you be abused; in other words, the foster a ship goes, the more angrily will the waters boil. So there are some secular and religious newspapers of this day that are full of spite and full of venom. You say you do not understand it. There is no mystery to me about it. It is natural. It is the history of the Church of God all the world over in all ages. I feel that our church is on the right track, and I defy all earth and hell; for if God be for us, who can be against us? If God spared not his Son, but gave him up for us, shall he not with him also freely give us all things? I am persuaded that neither height, nor depth, nor length, nor breadth shall separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Our church will go up, and Christ will appear in it, and he will save thousands and thousands of souls. I see it coming, and I am in exultation at the prospect.

We enter now upon another year. It will be an eventful year. You and I may not live to see its close, for God can spare you and me, and ten thousand better persons than we are, and still carry on his work; but his Church will be prospered. Having risen up as you have to the work of giving the Gospel to the masses of Brooklyn, nothing can put you to confusion. We need no pillar of cloud by day to lead us, for God’s angels are sworn to defend us; and success in the future is as certain as though on that wall I saw coming out in letters of fire, while I speak, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” I will live to see the completion of the work undertaken. I know if God calls me before that time, he will let me come out on the battlements of heaven, and look oflP on the establishment of that work for which my soul longed. Roll on, sweet days of the world’s emancipation! when the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing, and all the

THE FO URTH ANNIVEIiSAB F. 161

trees of the wood shall clap their bands; and instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.