From 1861, and the Commencement of the Civil War, to 1872, and the Celebration of Dr. Hodge’s Semi-Centennial
He entered upon this period a hale and vigorous man, in the fulness of all his powers intellectual and physical, elderly, yet in perfect preservation, and he closed it an old man ofseventy-four years, already showing the stealthy progress of decay. The light color of his hair rendered less conspicuous the first sprinkling of frost, and his vigorous constitution and regular habits rendered his carriage, bearing and whole appearance unusually youthful. The peacefulness and sweetness of his disposition contributed to the same appearance of perpetual youth. His countenance, which had always been handsome, became beautiful as he grew older, radiant with the peace and love and hope which had now come to be the perpetual mood of his spirit. His health for the most part was excellent and uniform. He suffered from a
decided though not dangerous attack of typhoid fever from February 26, to March 13, 1859; from inflammation of the bowels January and February, 1865, and from a very alarming attack of fever from January 28, to March 2, 1871. As he grew older his general nerve force grew less and less capable of resisting depressing influences. He wept easily, and often much against his will. He was easily exhausted by the effort involved in public speaking, and by all draughts upon his emotions. Although under ordinary conditions his health was apparently perfect, as a sound yet heavily laden boat floats well in smooth water, yet he sank easily and rapidly upon slight occasions of nervous shock or physical derangement, as the same boat fills and sinks when the water is agitated. Especially was he readily and often alarmingly exhausted by severe heat. Hence it came to pass that while he spent the month of May of each year (from 1866 to 1878) or a good part of it with his brother-in-law, General David Hunter, in the city of Washington, he spent the months of July and August always at some cool watering place. His journal shows that in the later summer of 1862 he was at Rhineland, on the upper coast of Long Island, and at Altoona, Pittsburg, Cresson, Lancaster and Saratoga. In 1863 he went to Rhineland in July and to Saratoga in August. In 1864 he spent August at Huntingdon, Long Island. In 1865 he spent July and the first of August at Saybrookpoint, Connecticut. From the summer of 1867 to the end of his life he spent with his wife, and often others of his family, the midsummer, generally all of July and August, at Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island. In all these places he carried with him the atmosphere of Christian love and devotion. He formed delightful acquaintanceships and some permanent friendships. He conducted religious services, and assisted in forming permanent religious institutions. And by these systematic refreshments he so preserved the tone of his physical system that he was enabled to bear his best fruit in old age.
JET. 69-7 5 .] ILLS S YS TEMA TIC THE OLOGY. 451
HIS SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. During all these years he was working continuously and at least as hard as his health justified, for besides twenty-six of his most influential articles in the Princeton Review he wrote during this period his great work on “Systematic Theology,” of two thousand two hundred large octavo pages. The preparation of the first part of this vast work, treating on the foundations of Natural Theology, and its relation to materialism and other antitheistic theories, scientific and philosophical and traditional, exacted of him a great amount of special reading and reflection. And the body of the work on the great common-places of Christian Theology are not copies of his past lectures, but are fresh compositions in which his views are recast and all the harvest of his past studies are gathered. The original manuscript, just as it passed from his hand, has been recovered from the printers, and bound in several volumes is preserved in the Seminary Library. It discovers for the most part that the composition was as free and easy as the style is clear, as it is remarkably free from all evidences of arrested or embarrassed thought in erasures and interlineations. It was written entirely with one dilapidated gold pen, whose flexible side and divergent nibs long ago rendered it incapable of use in any other hand than his own. No one now knows certainly when the rewriting of this work commenced. It was probably projected and in some way commenced as early as 1864. But it was probably not grappled with very earnestly before 1867. The manuscript of the first volume was sent to Houghton & Co., the printers, December 27th, 1870, and the manuscript of the last volume was completed October 8th, 1872. Hence it was, with exceptions too small to be worthy of mention, all written since he past the end of his sixty-ninth year.
His correspondence continued, as it had been for many years, immense in volume and very burdensome. From his
452 CORRESPONDENCE AND RELAXATION. [1861-72.
former pupils and others, ministers and laymen, in all parts of the country, questions were submitted to him and long and laborious answers were expected. Some of these required and frankly suggested wide special research, as he had the advantage, denied to the questioners, of access to large public libraries. The questions submitted covered the whole ground of doctrine, exegesis, experience, and ecclesiastical law. He conscientiously and laboriously responded to these appeals to the best of his ability, writing often answers covering several sheets. If these could now all be collected and classified, they would probably constitute a treasury of wisdom, equal both in value and in volume to all his other writings together. His letters to his brother, at this period, contain many such passages as the following, constantly recurring. “I am driven almost to death by demands on my pen; letters remain unanswered and correspondents neglected, &c.”
At the same time the requirements of advancing life led him more and more to seek refreshment of strength in relaxation. In December, 1856, he bought a beautifully situated farm on the Millstone river, three miles from his residence, and placed it for some years in the charge of one of his sons. He visited it in all possible weather during that son’s occupancy, once a day, planning and superintending its draining and cultivation with the most unflagging interest. In summer weather during these years also he played croquet in the lawn before his front door; in the evenings of both summer and winter he played back-gammon. He entered into both these games with the most profound interest, contesting every inch, and debating every mooted point, with all the seriousness belonging of right to the most important matters, delighting to win, yet always submitting to the fates of war with the utmost sweetness of temper. From this time also we begin to have noticed that he was willing to rest his mind as well as his body by reading on due occasions the novels which the younger members of his family placed within his reach. He had always been an intenselyinterested observer of ptiblic events, and had entertained very positive opinions upon political questions. He was fundamentally an old Federalist, then a Whig, then a Republican of the Conservative wing. From the beginning of the war, this interest in public affairs was naturally very much intensified, and for many years he eagerly read every day all the newspapers he could conveniently reach.
THE SABBATH AFTERNOON CONFERENCE.
After the death of Dr. Archibald Alexander, Dr. Hodge became and continued to the end of his, life the great attraction and power in the Sunday afternoon religious conferences of the professors and students. The prominence and effectiveness of this weekly exercise was unquestionably for the last half century a grand special characteristic of Princeton Seminary. During these past years it was in many respects the most remarkable and memorable exercise in the entire Seminary course. They were held every Sabbath afternoon by the professors and students for the discussion and practical enforcement of questions relating to experimental religion and the duties of the Christian life. The members of all the successive classes will bear testimony to the unique character and singular preciousness of those Sabbath afternoon Conferences in that sacred old Oratory, whose walls are still eloquent to them with imperishable associations. Here the venerable professors appeared rather as friends and pastors than as instructors. The dry and cold attributes of scientific theology moving in the sphere of the intellect, gave place to the warmth of personal religious experience, and to the spiritual light of divinely illuminated intuition. Here in the most effective manner they sought to build up Christian men rather than form accomplished scholars and to instruct them in the wisest methods of conducting their future work of saving souls and edifying the Church of Christ.
The text or topic for consideration was announced at the preceding meeting. The professors presided in turn, and were called upon to speak in the inverse order of seniority, the professor presiding for the day coming last. For many years the discussion was opened by remarks volunteered by the students, but in later times, the entire hour has been occupied by the professors.
The historical character of this remarkable service is of course derived from the peerless endowments, intellectual and spiritual, of the first three professors in the institution. Men so different, yet together constituting such a singular completeness of excellence by the combination of their complementary graces.
Dr. Miller, the model Christian gentleman, and typical divine, whose original, generous and genial nature had been transfigured by the long indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and whose outward manner had evidently been conformed by long self-training to the highest models, would have been the first to attract the eye and to impress the ear of the stranger. His long and active life had furnished him with rich stores of experience of men as well as a vast volume of learning derived from books. All this he poured forth with a deliberate and stately copiousness, in a manner serene and dignified, yet full of impressive force and tender unction. His adoring sense of the majesty of God, and of the seriousness of human life, of the reality and solemnity of divine things, and of the obligations attending the Christian profession, and above all attending the office of the Christian ministry, gave form and color to all he said. His instructions were always wise and practical, and were characteristically illustrated from an inexhaustible fund of apt and often witty, but always dignified anecdote, drawn from all literature, sacred and profane, and from his own extensive intercourse with men as a pastor and as a citizen.
Dr. Archibald Alexander, incomparably the greatest, as he was the first of that illustrious family, though neither
^ET. 64-75.] THE SABBATH AFTERNOON CONFERENCE. 455
more learned, nor more holy than his older colleague, was far more original. He was modelled upon nothing, but every thing in him and about him to the last detail of thought, or glance, or inflexion, or gesture was immediately determined by spontaneous forces working straight outward from within. It was this entire absence of self-consciousness, this absolute simplicity of thought, emotion and expression, and its spontaneous directness to its point, added to his other natural and gracious endowments, which gave this great teacher his singular pre-eminence. His intellect was intuitive rather than logical. Although he exhibited flashes of acute analysis, as sharp and rapid as a Damascus blade, yet he did not characteristically excel in broad views of truth in their relations, nor in lengthened processes of consecutive thought. He was eminently quick in his observation, and penetrating in his insight, accurately noting facts and reading characters in rapid glances. He held in his retentive memory the spoils of a vast and widely selected reading. All the treasures of divine wisdom and grace, which the Holy Ghost communicates to life-long students of the Word, when to high intellect is added all the simplicity and docility of a little child irradiated his soul and made it luminous to others. All the secrets of the human heart and its various experiences under the discipline of the natural conscience and of the word and Spirit of God were known to him, and he possessed the finest skill in interpreting and in treating, with acute precision, the states and frames of all who sought his counsel or listened to his instructions. Dr. Theodore D. Woolsey, ex-president of Yale College, at Dr. Hodge’s semi-centennial, said that “Dr. Alexander should be called the Shakespeare of the Christian heart, because of his wonderful knowledge of it in all its morbid and healthful exercises.”
This utter simplicity, this all-penetrating insight, accompanied with a wonderful spontaneousness of thought, imagination and speech were personal attributes, inseparable from his presence and manner, and incapable of being transmitted to the printed page. During his later years, when urged to put the results of his studies and reflections in the permanent form of writing, he often said, “No, if I have any talent, it is to talk sitting in my chair.” And however much he may have been mistaken in failing to recognise the value of his writings to the Church, there is no doubt that his gifts as a talker on the themes of Christian experience were without parallel among his contemporaries. He, more than any man of his generation, appeared to those who heard him to be endued with the knowledge, and clothed with the authority of a prophet sent immediately from God. He was to us the highest peak of the mountains, on whose pure head the heavens, beyond the common horizon, pour the wealth of their iridescent radiance.
In his early and middle life he had been an orator endowed with singular powers of dramatic representation. In his old age he was always calm and quiet, but such was his intense sense of the reality of the subjects on which he discoursed, that often, as he spoke of angels, of heaven, of the beatific vision of saints, of Christ and of his second coming and judgment, his hearers felt that their eyes also were opened to discern the presence of things unseen and eternal. Every Wednesday evening Dr. Alexander presided at the public prayers in the Oratory. The instant the students were in their seats he came in rapidly, his cloak hanging often diagonally from his bent shoulders, his head inclined as in revery, yet flashing sudden glances on either side with piercing eyes, which seemed to penetrate all the secrets of those upon whom they fell. He sat down with his back to the windows, and his right side to the students, sitting low — almost hidden by the desk. Drawing the large Bible down before him, he seemed to lose at once all sense of human audience, and to pass alone into the presence of God. As he read, and mused and ejaculated the utterances of all the holy exercises of his soul upon the Divine Word, a solemn hush fell upon us, and we felt not as those who listen to a teacher, but as those who are admitted to approach, with the shoes from off their feet, to gaze in and listen through an opened window to the mysterious workings of a sanctified soul under the immediate revelations of the Holy Ghost.
Dr. Hodge was by a whole generation younger than these venerable fathers. Hence during the first years of his professorship his part in these Sabbath afternoon conferences, although regularly discharged, was less prominent than theirs. During the long period, however, from about 1848 to his death in 1878, he was recognized by all as the central sun which gave light and heat to the entire service.
As all acquainted with his life-work know. Dr. Hodge’s distinguishing attributes were great tenderness and strength of emotion, and the power of exciting it in others; an habitual adoring love for Christ, and absolute submission of mind and will to his word; a chivalrous disposition to maintain against all odds, and with unvarying self-consistency through all the years of a long life, the truth as he saw it — crystalline clearness of thought and expression, and an unsurpassed logical power of analysis and of grasping and exhibiting all truths in their relations. Dr. Alexander once said to a friend that the mental constitution of Dr. Hodge was more than that of any man he knew — like that of John Calvin, without his severity. As he sat in the Conference he spoke freely, without paper, in language and with illustration spontaneously suggested at the moment. To the hearer the entire exercises appeared extemporaneous. The matter presented was a clear analysis of the scriptural passage, or theme, doctrinal or practical, chosen for the occasion. An exhaustive statement and clear illustration of the question. An exhibition of the evidence of the doctrine and of the grounds and reasons, methods, conditions and limits of the experience or duty. A development of each doctrine on the side of experience and practice; a demonstration of the practical character of all doctrine and of the doctrinal basis of all genuine religious experience and practice.
As to its manner, the entire discourse was in the highest degree earnest, fervent and tender to tears; full of conviction and full of love. While the temporary impression made upon most hearers was less remarkable than that produced by Dr. Alexander in his happiest moods, all the students, and especially those who were diligent in taking notes, felt that they took away with them from Dr. Hodge a far larger mass of coherent thought for permanent use than from any of the rest. The reason for this is abundantly evident when the drawers of his study are opened, and the large accumulation of careful preparations for this exercise are examined. He prepared and wrote out a careful analysis or skeleton of every Conference discourse. Although designed to meet no eye but his own, these analyses are fully written out, and are verbally complete in all their articulations. They cover every variety of subject relating to Christian doctrine and personal experience, and church life and work. And although his audience was completely changed every three years, it appears that he seldom used the same preparations twice, but prepared, even after he had passed his 80th year, a new paper for each Conference, often constructing analyses of the same theme several times. This was his method of mental preparation. He habitually thought with his pen in his hand. He prepared his analysis of his subject before he wrote his sermon, or lecture, or article, or chapter of his books. He also made written analyses of the important books he read.
Dr. Prime wrote in the Observer, June 27, 1878: “Far above his fame as a champion of the truth, was and is his glory that he gloried in the Cross of Christ. He was a child-like, humble, praying, believing, hoping Christian. In the Oratory on Sunday afternoons his spiritual ‘talks* to
^T. 64-75-] THE SABBATH AFTERNOON CONFERENCE. 459
the students were like streams of the water of life flowing by the throne! The pathos of his voice, his words, his tears, his prayers were irresistibly affecting. Then he communed with God and his children. How the hearts of his disciples burned within them as he opened unto them the Scriptures! Beyond the lecture-room and the pulpit, the memory of those holy hours will remain with them who sat with him, in heavenly places.”
One of his favorite pupils* has brought him before us at this service, in a sketch as beautiful as it is life-like:
“No triumph of his with tongue or pen ever so thrilled and moved human hearts as did his utterances at the Sabbath afternoon conferences in the Seminary Oratory, which will live in the immortal memory of every Princeton student. A subject would be given out on the Sunday before, generally some one which involved practical, experimental, spiritual religion — such as Christian fidelity, love of God’s word, prayer, the Lord’s Supper, the great commission. After brief opening services by the students, the Professors spoke in turn; but Dr. Hodge’s was the voice which all waited to hear. Sitting quietly in his chair, with a simple ease which seemed born of the moment, but was really the fruit of careful preparation, even with the pen, he would pour out a tide of thought and feeling which moved and melted all — solemn, searching, touching, tender — his eye sometimes kindling and his voice swelling or trembling with the force of sacred emotion, while thought and language at times rose to a grandeur which held us spell-bound. Few went away from those consecrated meetings without feeling in their hearts that there was nothing good and pure and noble in Christian character which he who would be a worthy minister of Christ ought not to covet for his own.”
His public work, during this most prominent and influential period of his life, related to three great questions: The
* William Irvin, D. D., of Troy, N. Y.
civil war, and the duty of Christian citizens in relation to it. The relation of the Church to political questions, and the merits of the actual decisions of the General Assembly (O. S.) upon questions growing out of the war. And third, the proposed reunion of the two branches of the Presbyterian Church.
THE CIVIL WAR.
On this all-absorbing subject he wrote the following articles: “The State of the Country,” January, 1861. “The Church and the Country,” April, 1861. “England and America,” January, 1862. “The War,” January, 1862. “President Lincoln,” July, 1865. Several of these were reprinted and widely circulated in pamphlet form, and were regarded as of great merit and practical value by prominent statesmen.
He has given his own account of these publications in a subsequent article reviewing the course of the Princeton Review in relation to “The State of the Country,” October, 1865, and in his “Retrospect of the History of the Prhiceton Review” in the Index Volume, 1871. In the latter he says:” The Prmceton Review has as freely as any other journal, and with the same right, neither more nor less, said what it felt bound to say on Secession, on the Rebellion, on the duty of loyalty and the support of the Government; on Slavery and Emancipation; on the power and authority of Church courts within the limits of the constitution, and on the principles which should govern our action in the great work of reconstruction, both in the Church and State.
“We have looked over the several articles in this journal published during the war, and we find in them nothing which we wish to retract. We are humbly thankful that our voice, however feeble, has throughout been on the side of the Union and the Government, and against the whole course of those who endeavored to dissever the one and overthrow the other. There is no journal in the land can present a fairer record of patriotism and loyalty. It is true, as the Presbyterian Banner, of Pittsburgh, in an excellent yET. 63-67.] THE CIVIL WAR. 461
editorial printed in December, 1862, states (at least by implication) that among the supporters of the Union and the Government there are two parties, a radical and a national party. On this subject it wisely taught ’ that the people must be united. A platform broad enough for all loyal people to stand upon, must be adopted. The Radicals cannot carry their principles through. It is utter folly in them to think so. They have not the numbers. The people will not go with them. And the Republicans cannot, as a party, so wage the battle as to triumph. They have the reins of government, but only half the people, a power far too weak. Neither could the Democrats on party principles succeed. There must be union; and to have union we must adopt broad, noble, national principles.’ This is the ground on which we have always stood. Party politics, as such, have had no place in this Rcviezv. Radical principles and measures are alien to its character and spirit. It has advocated the national cause on national principles, as a great moral and religious duty.”
In his “Retrospect,” 1 871, he says:” The first article having reference to our national difficulties was written before the secession of South Carolina, but did not appear in print until after that event, viz: January, 1861. The article is entitled ‘The State of the Country.’ It began by saying ‘There are periods in the history of every nation when its destiny for ages may be determined by the events of an hour. There are occasions when political questions rise into the sphere of morals and religion; when the rule for political action is to be sought, not in considerations of state policy, but in the Word of God. On such occasions the distinction between secular and religious journals are obliterated.’ It is on this ground that we, as conductors of a Theological Review, felt justified on entering upon the discussion of questions involving our national life. In taking this course we were sustained by the example of the whole religious press of the country. South as well as North.
“The design of the article in question was, in the first place, to consider the complaints of the South against the North, which we endeavored to show were either altogether unfounded, or did not furnish any justification for the dissolution of the national union; and, in the second place, to prove that secession was not a constitutional mode of redressing evils, whether real or imaginary. That article was received at the South, to our surprise, with universal condemnation, expressed in terms of unmeasured severity. At the North it was pronounced ‘moderate, fair and reasonable,’ except by the Abolitionists, who rivalled their Southern brethren in their denunciations.”
DR. HODGE TO THE EDITOR OF THE “SOUTHERN PRESBY-TERIAN.”
Princeton, Jan. 3d, 1861.
My Dear Sir: — I received last evening a copy of the Soitthem Presbyterian, for Dec. 29th, 1860, containing a notice headed “The Princeton Review on the State of the Country.” The article in the Review thus denominated, you characterize as “an unfortunate, one-sided and lamentable attack upon the South.” I think, my dear sir, that it will promote the cause of truth and brotherly love which we both have at heart, if you will permit the Editor of the Review to state to your readers in few words the design of the article on which you pronounce so unfavorable a judgment.
It was intended to produce two effects within the limited range of its influence; first, to convince the South that the mass of Northern people are not abolitionists or hostile to the rights and interests of the South; and second, to convince the North that the course adopted by the abolitionists is unjust and unscriptural. You say that the writer of the article in question “affirms that the aggressions or grievances of %vhich the South complains have no real existence.” The article, however, says that the South has “just grounds of complaint, and that the existing exasperation towards the North is neither unnatural nor unaccountable.” It says that “the spirit, language and conduct of the abolitionists is an intolerable grievance.” It says that “tampering with slaves is a great crime. That it is a grievance that would justify almost any available means of redress.” It admits that all opposition to the restoration of fugitive slaves, whether by individuals, by mobs or legislative enactments, is immoral, and that the South has a right to complain of all such opposition. It admits that the territories are the common property of the country, and that the South has the same rights to them that the North has, and it calls for an equal division of these territories on the plan of the Missouri compromise. The article does not deny the reality of the grievances complained of, but it denies that those grievances are justly chargeable on the people of the North. It endeavors to prove, by a simple process of arithmetic, that the abolitionists against whom these charges justly lie, are comparatively a mere handful of the people of the North. Southern men and ministers of the highest eminence pronounce the abolition party to be not only Antichristian but atheistic, to be perjured and instinct with the spirit of the French revolutionists, and then the North is pronounced to be thoroughly abolitionized. We know this to be untrue. We know this to be a false judgment pronounced upon thousands and hundreds of thousands of pious. God-fearing people. We hold it, therefore, to be a solemn duty to all concerned to show that such judgment is altogether unfounded, in fact. Such is the main design of the article in question. Whatever may be thought of its execution, the design must of necessity commend itself to every good man. If Southern men knew the North as we know it, they would no more think of secession than they would of suicide. We have done what we could out of a pure conscience to convince the South that we are not hostile to its rights and interests. If our Southern brethren take this in evil part we shall deeply regret it, but cannot repent of what has the full assent of our reason and conscience.
* * * It nowhere advocates coercion in the present crisis. It deprecates all appeal to force, and urges acquiescence in the recommendation of a convention of the States, that disunion, if it must come, may at least be peaceably effected.
Your friend and fellow-servant,
Editor of the “Princeton Review.”
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, Dec. 13, 1860. I am thoroughly disgusted with the poltroonery of Northern men. If they would take moderate and just ground, and take it firmly, and not go down on their knees, and call themselves the sole wrong-doers, there would be some hope. Your brother,
C. H.
464 ^-^^ CIVIL WAR. [1861-65.
DR. HODGE TO DR. BOARDMAN.
Princeton, Dec. 16, 1860.
My Dear Sir: — * * * * My own mind is decided for the publication of the article. If it is to do any good it is to be done now. I have no idea of producing the slightest effect on disunionists. But there are many conservative men at the South who wish to have their hands strengthened, to whom it will be a matter of importance to have it proved that the whole North is not abolitionized, and that the mass of the people are true friends to the constitutional rights of the
South. Besides the Republicans need to be moderated. Mr., a
leading Republican of this State, expressed himself warmly against all concession, but after reading my article, wrote to me that he thought it took the true ground, and that it was right and best to conciliate.
I fully believe that the truth mildly spoken will always and everywhere do good, and I feel impelled to follow my own strong conviction of duty, and speak out what I solemnly believe to be the truth; the more especially, because, the country is about being plunged into unknown evils, mainly because the truth is not known.
Yours truly, C. H.
DR. HODGE TO DR. J. C. BACKUS.
New York, Dec. 28, 1860.
My Dear Sir: — * * * I greatly rejoice to hear that my article seems to you likely to do good. Since I came here I have heard a good deal about it, which confirms my own hopes.
There were two things in your letter which astonished me. First, That you supposed that I had changed my ground on the slavery question within the last ten or fourteen years. I cannot conceive how you got that impression. Within a few years past I re-printed the article on Slavery, (with my own name), printed first in 1836, which was circulated by southern men all over the South. And in the commentary on the Ephesians precisely the same, doctrine is taught, which Southern men freely endorsed. I have not changed an inch, but I have not gone on with the extreme men of the Calhoun school. I utterly dissent from the doctrine of Dr. Palmer’s sermon.
The second thing that surprised me was that you should think that my article would render the Republicans more uncompromising and defiant. It condemns the principles and spirit of abolition; it calls for the faithful execution of the fugitive slave law; it represents all personal liberty laws designed to interfere with the restoration of fugitives immoral; it urges the restoration of the Missouri Compromise, which the conservative men North and South are calling for, and which the extreme Republicans resist. I know that it has induced some leading Republicans to be willing to take moderate ground and to meet the South half-way. Indeed my great hope of the pamphlet doing good is that it will correct public sentiment at the North.
Your friend,
Charles Hodge.
DR. HODGE TO DR. BOARDMAN.
Princeton, Jan. 17th, 1861.
My Dear Sir: — I have already written to the Southern Presbyterian, Columbia, S. C, and to the Central Presbyterian, Va., letters which will appear in the next issues of those papers. In these letters I have said everything in the way of explanation that can be said. I have no doubt that good will come of it. I am not surprised at the reception my article has received at the South. The first impression will give way to serious consideration, except with those who will be satisfied with nothing but unmitigated abuse and condemnation of the North. I believe the article will do good at the South. A southern planter has, I understand, ordered a thousand copies of it. A letter received from Dr. Smith of Danville Seminary says it is doing good there. A gentleman born at the South told me he knew there were thousands of men there who would heartily respond to its sentiments.
We must not, however, forget that there is a North as well as a South. If I am to believe a tenth of what I hear, I never wrote anything for the Review likely to do the Seminary and all concerned greater service. Letters have come from Democrats, (Douglas and Breckinridge) as well as Republicans giving that assurance in the strongest terms. I received last night a letter from Judge Elmer, a Democrat in Maine, thanking me for having written the article. Horace Binney and Daniel Lord are among the men who have expressed their approbation. Brethren at the West write that it has done more than they can well express to sustain the Old School cause and strengthen confidence in Princeton. Its influence against abolitionism and the uncomproinising spirit of party leaders is everywhere recognized. I cannot, therefore, regret its publication.
You see that the secessionists everywhere resist submitting the question to the people. They can pack a convention, but they fear a vote direct from the polls. A gentleman from Alabama, himself a secessionist, told me to-day that had the question there been referred to the people it would be rejected by a great majority. He said not one man in a hundred in Alabama either expected or wished the
State to remain out of the Union. They go out to compromise. The North, 1 am sure, would gladly accept the propositions of the borderstates committee, which Mr. Crittenden himself acceded to. Mr. Crittenden’s compromise which calls on the General Government to establish slavery everywhere south of 36.30 is what Henry Clay said no power on earth could force him to vote for. I still hope that God will deliver us.
Sincerely your friend,
Charles Hodge.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, Feb. 18, 1861. My Dear Brother: — * * * * My article has been very extensively abused at the South, but there ha. been no attempt to answer it,
except by “a Pennsylvania elder” (Judge or Judge ). Prof.
Bledsoe’s piece I have only looked at. He devotes his strength to the Missouri Compromise, which I have nothing to do with. I simply mentioned the fact of its abrogation as offending the conscience of the North, and as one of the political antecedents of our present troubles. No part of the argument turns on that point. The real question is, whether slavery is a municipal (or local) institution, or whether it is a national one founded on the common law of property, or on the constitution. This is the point to which the “Elder” addresses himsslf. Ha censures me as a clergyman for writing on such subjects. I would venture anything that I could pick out blindfold 500 clergymen who could refute his argument to the satisfaction of any honest jury. The idea, however, which he insists upon has taken hold of the Southern mind. The people at the South have come to believe that the Constitution guarantees the protection of slavery in all the Territories, and, therefore, that any Congressional law forbidding its introduction is unconstitutional and a gross violation of their rights. This is the sole justification of secession as urged by Dr. Thornwell in his article on the state of the country, re-printed in last New York Observer. He says the adoption of the principle that Congress can prohibit slavery in the Territories is the abrogation of the Constitution, and even renders disunion a necessity. There never was a greater perversion of historical truth. The very opposite is true, &c. (The remainder of this letter is lost),
Dr. Hodge says in his article on the “Princeton Review on the State of the Country and of the Church,” Oct. 1855, speaking of his article on ths “State of the Country,” Jan., 1 86 1, “No article ever printed in this journal from the pen of its editor ever excited greater attentk)n. It was reprinted at length in several of the religious papers of the widest circulation in the country. It was published in pamphlet form and distributed in thousands, by the friends of the Union and of the North, and it was sent abroad as representing the views of the supporters of the government. It was bitterly condemned and stigmatized by three classes of men. First and principally.at the South. The writer was there stigmatized as ’ an Abolitionist ’ and ‘Black Republican.’ In the second place, it was severely criticised by men at the North who agreed with the South in principle and sympathized with it in feeling. Thirdly, as might be expected, we incurred anew the condemnation of men belonging to the radical party, of which Garrison and Wendell Phillips are the principal representatives.”
He proceeds in his “Retrospect” in 1871: “In April of the same year (1861) appeared another article on ‘The Church and the Country.’ Secession was then an accomplished fact, and the war with all its uncertainties was about to commence. The article was designed as a plea for the unity of the Church, even in the event of the dissolution of the national union. The two great sources of apprehension that the political troubles of the country would lead to a division of the Presbyterian Church, were the alienation of feeling on the part of our Southern brethren, and the new, unscriptural, and anti-Christian sentiment which leading men among them avowed on the subject of slavery. Instead of regarding it as merely allowable under certain circumstances, they had come to advocate it as a good; as the best organization of labor; as to be conserved, extended and perpetuated. They also maintained that slavery was founded on natural, and not on municipal law; that it did not depend on ]^q lex loci, and therefore that slaveholders had the right to carry their slaves and to retain them, as such, wherever they could carry any other kind of property, provided the holding of that kind ot property was not specially forbidden by the sovereignty into which they went. On this ground it is claimed that slavery went of right into all the territories of the United States; that Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in the territories, but was bound to protect property in slaves as well as any other kind of property. The assertion of the right of Congress to prohibit slavery in a territory in which it was the local legislature, was declared to be a * thorough and radical revolution; it proposes new and extraordinary terms of union. The old Government is as completely abolished as if the people of the United States had met in convention and repealed the constitution.’ * How new this astounding doctrine was is plain from the fact that the act of Congress prohibiting slavery north of latitude 36° 30 was, as Mr. Benton tells us, the wish of the South, sustained by the united voice of Mr. Monroe’s cabinet (including John C. Calhoun and William H. Crawford), the united voices of the Southern senators, and a majority of the Southern representatives.f
“It is to the refutation of the extreme views just mentioned that the article in question is principally devoted.
“In 1 852 an article appeared entitled, ‘England and America.’ The Christian public in this country were very slow to believe that England sided with the South in our recent struggle. This was so unexpected, so unreasonable, so contrary to the professed principles of both government and people, that Americans could not believe it until the conviction was forced upon them. The whole secular press of that country, whether metropolitan, provincial or colonial, with few exceptions, were as vituperative and denunciatory of the North, as the Southern papers themselves. The same is true, scarcely with the same number of exceptions, of the religious press,, whether controlled by Episco-
*” Dr. Thornwell on “State of the Country,” p. 26. ■j- Thirty Years in the Senate, vol. I. p S.
AT. 63-67.] THE CIVIL WAR. 469
palians, Presbyterians, or Congregationalists. This is a fact for which we have never seen or heard any satisfactory explanation. The article in question was written as a protest against this unrighteous judgment. It was designed to show that the rebellion was made in the interest of slavery. This was proved by the fact that the grievance complained of had almost exclusive reference to that institution. Those grievances were the denunciations of abolitionists; the obstructions thrown in the way of the restoration of fugitive slaves; the refusal to admit slaveholding in the free territories; the election of an anti-slavery president, and the like. It was proved by official declarations of public bodies; by the avowals of the leading politicians of the South; by the appeals of the Southern press to slaveholders to sustain a war made for their special interests. That English anti-slavery Christians should sustain a rebellion made to conserve, perpetuate, and extend slavery, was a moral phenomenon that astonished the Christian world. In the second place, the article was designed to show that even with regard to slavery the South had no serious grounds for complaint: that the abolitionists, who denounced all slave-holders as criminal, were a small minority of the people of the North; that the general government, on which alone rested the obligation of executing the fugitive-slave law, so far from being remiss in the discharge of that duty, had erred in the opposite extreme; and that in refusing to sanction slavery in the free territories. Congress had acted on the principles not only of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Lowndes, and of all the great representative men of the South, but of the civilized world. Judge McLean, in the Supreme Court of the United States, said from the bench that the great principle decided by Lords Mansfield and Stowell, against which there is no dissentmg authority, was ’ that a slave is not property beyond the operation of the territorial law which makes him such.’ He further said, the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that
* slavery is a mere municipal regulation, founded on and limited to the range of territorial law.’ Judge Curtis of the same Court said, ‘Slavery being contrary to natural right is created only by municipal law. This is not only plain in itself, and agreed to by all writers on the subject, but it is inferable from the Constitution, and has been explicitly declared by this Court.’ He further said, ‘I am not acquainted with any case or any writer questioning the correctness of this doctrine.’ It was the practical assertion of this doctrine which men at the South said worked a repeal of the Constitution, and absolved them from all allegiance to the national government. That England should desire the success of a rebellion having such an object, and sustained by such reasons, was a grief and a marvel to the Christian world.
“The article on ‘The War,’ January 7, 1863, was written during the gloomiest period of the struggle. The South, although inferior in point of numbers, had many advantages. They operated near their resources; they were united; their laboring population being slaves were not combatants, but carried on the work of production, while the population were at liberty to take the field. The North labored under the disadvantage of operating at a great distance from their resources, and over a territory a thousand miles in extent, and the people were far from being united. A large party was opposed to the war from the beginning. A still larger portion of the people were opposed to the administration, and did all they could to prevent its success. Many who at the commencement of the struggle sided heartily with the national government, had become alienated and hostile on account of the measures which had been adopted. The design of the article was to promote harmony among the people of the North. There could be no hope of such harmonious action unless the conscience of the people was on the side of the government. ‘There never was a time,’ the writer said, ’ when the public con-
^T. 63-67.] THE CIVIL WAR. y i
science was more disturbed, or when it was more necessary that moral principles in their bearing on national conduct should be clearly presented.’ It was then urged that the great principle, that the moral law, or, the will of God, however revealed, binds nations as well as individuals, should be the rule of public action. The dictum of Coke, one of the greatest legal authorities, * That any act of Parliament which conflicts with the law of God is null and void,’ should be written in letters of gold in every legislative hall and in every court of justice in the country.
“On this principle the article urged that the legitimate, the avowed object of the war, viz., the preservation of the union, should be religiously adhered to; and that the war itself should be conducted in strict observance of recognised military law. The two great subjects on which public sentiment was dangerously divided, were the right of the President to suspend the writ of liabeas corpus, and his authority as commander-in-chief, and as a war measure, to decree the emancipation of the slaves. The article took the ground that both these rights belonged to the President during times of war, and for military ends, /. c. for the preservation of the country, and for the suppression of rebellion.”
CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS BROTHER.
His letters to his brother during these memorable years contain many interesting expressions of opinions on passing events.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Washington, July 24, 1861. My Dear Brother: — As I am here at headquarters, you may think I ought to give you some definite information as to the disastrous battle of the 21st (the battle of Bull Run). Accounts of facts, however, and opinions as to the causes of those facts, are as discordant here as elsewhere. Some throw the blame on the volunteers; others on the original plan; others on the bad management of McDowell; others on the inefficiency and want of courage of the officers.
472 BATTLE OF BULL RUN. [iS6i,
First, as to the plan and purpose of the expedition, Gen. Scott, as I hear from the best authority, endeavors to wash his hands of the whole business. He says that for the first time in his life he was a coward and yielded to the pressure of politicians in the Cabinet, in Congress, and to popular clamor; that he disapproved of the whole thing from beginning to end. This will be admitted by no one to be the slightest justification; besides, the object of the expedition was, even in the judgment of all concerned, a feasible and important one. That object, as Col. Hunter told me just before he started, was not to assail Manassas Junction, or to drive Beauregard from that position, but to threaten his rear and force him either to retreat or to come out and give battle on equal terms. Instead of this, however, either from a change of plan on the ground, or from error in its execution, there was a direct assault on the outworks of Manassas Junction, and an effort made to drive the enemy from that position. I heard it said beforehand that it would be as preposterous to assail Beauregard in a position which he had employed forty (?) days in strengthening as it would have been in him to assail our intrenchment on the other side of the Potomac. The force sent was sufficient to cope with Beauregard on the open field, but totally inadequate either to assail his intrenchments or to fight him and Johnston combined. The thing actually attempted was to do both. It was known before the battle that Johnston had arrived at the Junction, and yet the assault of the position was made. That it succeeded as far as it did is wonderful, and shows conclusively the superiority of our troops to their opponents. We fought from morning till night double our number, who had every advantage of position and covered batteries, driving the enemy in that time several miles. Until the panic seized our troops, every one thought the day was ours.
Now as to the question why we failed at last, the answer may be found in what has been said. More was attempted than could be accomplished with the resources at command. This may be a sufficient answer to the question. But it is openly said that there was great mismanagement in handling the troops. In the first place, they were exhausted by a long march before they came into action. The several divisions started from Centerville at 2 o’clock, A. M. Two of them had but three or four miles to go before getting into position. Col. Hunter’s division, which was to make the principal attack, had twelve miles to march through the woods and over difficult ground. He was on the road from 2 A. M. to n. His men were tired out. Some of the soldiers who have been here three months told me that that march was the hardest day’s work they had performed since they came to Washington. In that state of exhaustion they came
JET. 6s.] BATTLE OF BULL J^UAT. 473
under fire, and were called upon to assail battery after battery, and charge regiment after regiment, and they did it successfully from II to near 5 p. M. Bringing his men into action in such a state of exhaustion was not Col. Hunter’s fault. It was the service assigned to him in the programme of the battle.
In the second place, it is said that there was great delay on the part of Tyler’s division. He had but two or three miles to go, and was expected to commence the fight by 6 o’clock in the morning, and draw attention to that part of the field, while in point of fact the real battle was begun by Hunter’s division at 1 1 A. M. There were several shots fired from 6 o’clock oaward by the large rifle gun in Tyler’s division, to feel the position of the enemy, and wake them up; but there was no real fighting there until 11 o’clock. So I hear it said by men on the ground.
In the third place, what appears to me the greatest proof of mismanagement in the whole affair, is that not one-half our men were brought into action. The reserve, consisting of seven New Jersey regiments, under Gen. Runyan, were not called up until the stampede began and the day was lost. Mrs. Howland tells me that her husband informed her that eight regiments of Miles’ division, to which Mr. Howland was attached, stood watching a ford, the whole day idle. They had a little skirmish of their own in the afternoon, but they received no order from morning until the order of retreat at the close of the day. Besides this, Blenker’s brigade, including the German Turners, the Garibaldi, and other choice regiments, were not brought into action. And yet the retreat was covered by the regulars, cavalry and infantry. Miles was idiotically drunk the whole day, and was incapable of doing anything. But how McDowell could leave so many of his men unemployed, it is hard to understand. He may have thought the day was his own without the assistance of the idle troops, but those troops should have been in position to meet any emergency. The day was won to all appearance. This is the unanimous testimony of all on the ground, civilians as well as military men. The panic was probably on one part of the field where the battle had been actually fought out by the sudden appearance of large reinforcements to the enemy, and a successful charge of cavalry on one regiment, which was broken and put to flight, and thus created a panic in the exhausted troops around them. This did not extend to all the army. The division of Miles’ to which Mr. Howland belonged had nothing to do, retired in perfect order and got back to Alexandria without losing a gun or musket or soiling their hands.
I am very much pained to hear how the regular officers are dis»-
474 BATTLE OF BULL RUN. [186i.
posed to speak of the volunteers. There were doubtless some regiments which behaved badly, but whatever fighting was done, was done by the artillery and the volunteers, and the loss fell principally upon them. That loss is very much less, however, than was at first supposed. The 71st New York, said to have been cut to pieces, lost only about 20 in killed; and so in many other cases the reports prove equally exaggerated.
Col. Hunter’s wound is more serious than it at first appeared, but he is doing well, and will be about in a few days. He must have had his head turned to the right, and a fragment of a shell cut the muscle just under the right ear, and divided some small arteries. Dr. Wood, the second medical officer in rank in the army, lives next door to us, and was here when the Colonel arrived. He told me afterwards that in all his experience he never saw a man so near death as the Colonel was when he fainted and sank on the floor of the entry. His pulse could not be felt for some time, his hands and feet were cold, and it was some hours before it was safe to raise his head. His wound bled the whole day. He lay in his carriage from 12 to near 5 P. M., and then when he started to return they got involved in the stream of soldiers, wagons and artillery, and had literally to fight their way through. This, of course, agitated him, and caused him to make more or less exertion. Mercifully he had a few friends around besides Sam, who gradually got a dozen troopers to surround the carriage and get it out of the press.
Col. Hunter is not responsible for anything said in this letter. The views are my own gathered from many different sources. You may tell Wistar that Sam says that Fanny is the greatest little fighting horse going. She wagged her tail when a shell burst over, or a cannon ball passed under her nose. He rode her all over the field in the midst of shot and shell for hours, the admiration of all beholders. The Col. says Sam. took it as great fun, and seemed perfectly at home, exciting and encouraging the troops as though he had been used to it all his life. It is a great mercy the Col. was wounded so early in the day. He says he and Sam would certainly have been both killed had they continued all day in the advance, exposed as they were all the time before he was disabled. When the Col. was shot he sent Sam to tell Colonel Porter that the command of the division fell on him. Sam had to ride all over the field in every direction for an hour before he could find Col. Porter, and then was almost as long in finding the place to which his uncle had been taken.
God has been most merciful to us in this great trial.
iET. 63-67.] THE CIVIL WAR. 475
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, Jan. 9, 1862. My Dear Brother: — Thxs letter is about myself. The pain in my chest, of which I spoke to you, instead of being occasional and shooting, has of late been constant, quiet and aching, (not severe). It is produced or increased by any prolonged exertion of any kind, mental, emotional or bodily. At times it is attended by increased action of the pulse both as to frequency and force, and then I feel queer, a little disposed to nausea, and a little to fainting. Twice I have had to give up and go to bed. All this is, I suppose, what you call nervous. Nevertheless it is dispiriting not to be able to work. Dr. Alexander, although all his life dyspeptic and hypochondriac was as able to work at 80 as he was at 40.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER. Rhineland, (north shore of Long Island,) July 15, 1862.
My Dear Brother: — -Much to our regret we leave here to-morrow morning. If I was not obliged to be in Pittsburgh on the 22d, we should much prefer remaining where we are until the close of the month. Here we have pure salt air, beautiful scenery, kind friends, abundance to eat and drink, delightful bathing, and a large library, and nothing to do. These are all the necessary conditions of recuperation. This house stands directly north and south on an eminence. To the north is the Sound with the Connecticut shore in the distance, on the west the broad inlet into Huntington harbor; and to the south the harbor itself and the village two miles distant, on the opposite shore. Mary says that I am better than I have been for a year. Certain it is that we are both getting awfully fat.
It is useless to speculate on our national affairs. Everything shows the great advantages of a military despotism in time of war over a republic, in the unity of plan and control, and in command over the resources of a country. It is clear that six millions of people by conscription can be made to furnish more men than twenty millions by volunteers. I fear we shall after all be out-numbered on every important battle-field, especially if our affairs are to be left in the hands of Mr. Stanton. It was suggested that Gen. Halleck was to be made Secretary of War. This would be a grand move. But the radical Republicans, I fear, are too strong to allow Mr. Lincoln to act according to his own judgment in this matter. I still have full confidence that God is on our side, and that He will bring us safe, and I trust purified, out of all our troubles.
We hope to be in Princeton before the first week of August is past, unless we are induced to linger longer at Altoona or Cresson. May all good rest on you and yours, my dear brother.
Charles Hodge.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, Dec. 7, 1862. My Dear Brother: — * * * Gen. Halleck labors hard but to little purpose to throw the responsibility of the disastrous Pope campaign on McClellan. This must ultimately recoil on himself. The disastrous results of his management are enough to appall him.
Your brother, C. H.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, Dec. 24, 1862. My Dear Brother: — When President Lincoln and Mr. Stanton, by their mismanagement, had got everything into confusion, the country hoped that the appointment of Gen. Halleck to the chief command of the army would secure intelligent control of our vast resources and lead to a speedy and happy end of our great struggle. He has proved an utter failure. Nothing but disaster has followed his measures, until at last the country is apparently on the brink of ruin. “Oh that my enemy had written a book!” was the shrewd exclamation of an ancient patriarch. Halleck has written official letters and reports, and has thereby placed himself upon a pillory from which he will never be able to descend. He staked his own reputation and the interest and honor of the country on the removal of McClellan from the Peninsula. All the disasters which McClellan predicted as the consequences of that movement have been realized. Thousands of lives have been sacrificed, millions of money have been squandered, the whole summer wasted, the prestige of our arms destroyed, the country disgraced, and foreign nations emboldened in their hostility. Burdened with the responsibility of these tremendous consequences of his mismanagement, he most ungenerously and unjustly endeavored to throw the blame on McClellan, and finally succeeds in driving him from the command of an army which he had created and saved, and which was enthusiastically devoted to him. This was done in opposition to the judgment of two-thirds of the people in the country. It may be safely said that the whole Democratic party as represented in the recent elections, and at least one-half of the Republican party, regard McClellan (as Burnside
.IJT, 63-67.] THE CIVIL WAR. 477
does) as the only man competent to the command of that great army. This also is the judgment not only of the Prince de Joinville, but a Prussian officer of rank in the service of the Confederates has recently published in Germany an account of the battles before Richmond, in which he gives McClellan credit for consummate ability, and attributes his failure to take Richmond to the fact that McDowell did not co-operate with him.
It can hardly now be considered an open question that in the matters between Halleck and McClellan the former was fatally wrong. In y!Q. first place, common-sense would seem to teach that it was absurd to remove an army of eighty or ninety thousand men from a strong position within twenty miles of Richmond two hundred miles by water in order to march them back over a difficult route of 60 or 80 miles by land to the same place. In the j-,?r;z place, the reasons assigned for this strange movement show Halleck’s incompetency. McClellan demanded 35,000 reinforcements. Halleck said the Government could only give him 20,000. For the sake of the difference of 15,000, he undertook to order the transfer of McClellan’s whole command, although the country was raising 300,000 new troops at the rate of several thousands a day. His great reason, however, was the military principle that columns of attack should be within supporting distance, consequently it was a false position to have the eneiny between McClellan’s army and an army moving from Fredericksburgh. It is a sure mark of an ordinary mind to be governed by general maxims, without the power to see when and how their application is modified by circumstances. No one, I suppose, now doubts that if McClellan had been suitably reinforced at Harrison’s Landing, Lee never would have dared to leave Richmond to attack Pope or McDowell.
It is not, however, so much the blunders of Halleck, disastrous as they have been, as the anirnics he displays, which have forfeited for him the respect and confidence of the people. His charges against McClellan are so evidently unjust and selfish in their motives that they reveal the character of the man. He complains of his delay to leave Harrison’s Landing, and contrasts it with the promptness with which Burnside obeyed the order to evacuate New Port News. Burnside had no incumbrances. He had nothing to do but to strike his tents and embark. McClellan had immense siege artillery in position along miles of intrenchments, and vast accumulations of munitions and commissary stores, with innumerable wagons and horses. It required ten days of incessant labor night and day to get these things aboard the transports ready for a start. Besides, Lee did not move an inch from Richmond until McClellan was actually on march for Fortress Monroe. Had the delay been two weeks it could not have altered the matter the least. He censured McClellan for moving only six miles a day in Maryland, when he had the army to reorganize, everything to accumulate on his way, and when as it was he kept so much in advance of his ammunition train that his artillery at Antietam had to fire blank cartridges for the last two hours of the battle. He himself took fifty-four days to march a victorious army from Pittsburgh Landing to Corinth, about 20 miles, and then delayed an attack until Beauregard, and his whole army, and all he had, had escaped. This may have been right, but it shows that Halleck is not the man to sneer at delays. The Natiottal Intelligencer calls him “the prince of cunctators in the field, but a Prince Rupert when sitting in the War Department.” Such was his anxiety to vindicate himself and to injure McClellan that he published his plans and principles to the world, and thereby informed Gen. Lee that he had no reason to fear an assault on Richmond from Suffolk, but might accumulate his whole force to resist the one attack from Fredericksburgh. This seemed incredible, and therefore many believed that his report was designed as a blind, and that the movement on Fredericksburgh was only a feint, while the real attack was to be made by Banks on the south of the James River. No one can read the testimony given before the Senate’s Committee without being painfully impressed with the incompetency of all concerned in the movement on Fredericksburgh. Halleck washes his hands of the whole thing, as though he was not commander-in-chief. Burnside says he took it for granted that Halleck, who gave the command about the pontoons, would see it executed. Halleck says it was Burnside’s business to see that the order was carried into effect. Gens. Woodbury and Meigs say, that as it would take only two days and a half for Burnside to reach Fredericksburgh, it was impossible in that time to get the pontoons on the ground. Woodbury swears that he begged Halleck to arrest the transfer of the army to Fredericksburgh for five days, to give time to execute the order about the pontoons, but he refused to delay the movement an hour. The consequence was the delay of a fortnight, giving Lee time to collect all his forces, and to render the position impregnable. The greatest of all Halleck’s sins against the country, however, was the removal of McClellan from the command of such an army in the midst of a march and the execution of a plan of campaign, and appointing a man who says himself that he was not only incompetent, but that he knew less of the positive strength of the several corps than any division commander in the army. What the consequences of this step have been we now all see and deplore.
As to the deplorable affair at Fredericksburgh I think no one can read the testimony before the committee of the Senate without being further convinced that it was an inexcusable and criminal sacrifice of life. General Franklin testifies that the enemy could have prevented the passage of the river at either of the points proposed, had he chosen to do so, and that his own grand division was entirely at the mercy of Lee after he had crossed. He was, therefore, opposed to passing the river at all. Hooker says he was in favor of passing with his corps higher up, and with 40,000 men, taking, as he says he could have done, a position behind Fredericksburgh, from which the whole Confederate army could have been commanded? Sumner says he agreed to everything Burnside proposed, even to the passage of the river at least at that point. Then as to the attack on the enemy’s position it was against all probability of success. To bring infantry to storm intrenchments well furnished with cannon, when the troops have to be any considerable time under fire, is a desperate affair. The rebels at Malvern Hills failed utterly, although they assailed an unintrenched position, but one well defended by artillery. They failed notwithstanding their determined efforts at Corinth, though two to one to our troops; just as Packenham failed with his English veterans at New Orleans. The attempt proved that it was a foolhardy assault. After terrible slaughter and the most desperate efforts, continued from morning to night, not the slightest progress was made. Burnside said he failed because the thing attempted was “impossible!” Sumner says that had we carried the first line we could not have held it, that the second was still stronger. Here then by the admission of the two Generals who approved the measure, the thing they attempted was an impossibility. Notwithstanding this, Burnside says he had all his troops all prepared to renew the assault on Sunday morning, and was only prevented by the remonstrance of all his division commanders. Yet our President tells the army and the world that the attempt was not an error, that it failed only by accident. That is, they failed to accomplish an “impossibility” by accident! It really seems as if God had given up our rulers to fatuity. It is this and not any doubt of the power of government, or of the resources of the country, which makes me so despondent. Stanton or Halleck, or whoever has the ordering of matters, cannot concentrate men enough to overcome Lee’s army of 1 50,000 or 80,000 as some say. Banks is sent off to the ends of the earth; Foster is sent to make a raid and destroy a few bridges at the cost of 200 lives, and the whole resources of the country are frittered away.
You must think I have little to do when I write you such a letter. But my heart was so full I wanted to pour it out. Whether you agree
A^O THE CIVIL WAR. [1861-65.
with me or not I cannot say. I know I speak what hundreds and thousands of the best men of the country think. Your affectionate brother,
Charles Hodge.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, Jan. 27, 1863. My Dear Brother: — I enclose your check to my order. I cannot in conscience take your money. I have done too much of that already. As long as you were rich (at least in income), I did not care how much you gave me, but tempora mutantur, and we must chano-e with them. If I stick in the mud, which is not likely, I will call on you to help me out. If gold keeps going up we shall all be reduced to a common level.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, Sept. 16, 1864.
My Dear Brother: — Could I see you I would have a battle royal with you about McClellan. I think you do him great injustice. My view of the case is, (i). That McClellan is a gentleman, a Christian and a man of superior ability. (2) So far as his p.ublic acts or declarations go, he has been perfectly consistent. He has not only exhibited marvelous strength and self-control in submitting in silence to injuries, insults and misrepresentations, but he has uniformly adhered to his principles. Even in his letter advocating Judge Woodward’s election, which was a great blunder, he said nothincr which President Lincoln had not said over and over again. Into the blunder of writing that letter he was led not only by the importunity of friends, but I doubt not by false representations. Woodward was represented to him as holding loyal opinions, which, according to common belief he did not hold.
(3), His letter of acceptance is, in the first place, consistent with all his antecedents, with his noble West Point oration, and with all ls published and authorized declarations. And, in the second place, all its principles and statements are sound and good. They are identical, as to the necessity of the Union, the justice of the war, the suppression of the rebellion, the conditions of peace, with all of the declarations of Lincoln, with the unanimous vote of Congress, and with Secretary Seward’s recent masterly speech at Auburn. The only exception as concerns Lincoln to the above remark, so far as I know, is his unfortunate proclamation of six lines, “To whom it may concern,” a proclamation which makes emancipation an indispensable condition of peace; a proclamation condemned by the Evening Post, the Tribune z.Vi.^ the N. Y. Times, the three most influential repubhcan papers in the country.
(4). In saying that he assumed that the resolutions adopted by the Convention at Chicago were consistent with the sentiments of his letter, he did not act disingetiuousfy! It is notorious that the Democratic party is divided into unionists and disunionists, Peace and War Democrats, the war party being in the vast majority in the country and in the Chicago convention. That convention, or its managers, for the sake of carrying the election and getting the votes of both sections of the Democrats designedly framed a compromise platform, which, as the Richtnond Enquirer says, and says truly, may be understood either in a war sense or a peace sense. McClellan knew that the great majority intended it in a war sense, and therefore he said so in substance in his letter of acceptance. I agree with you that that platform is mean, contemptible and treacherous, and had McClellan placed himself upon it, pure and simple, without explanation, he would have sunk to the bottom of the sea and staid there. His letter I conceive has done the country as much good as national victory. It has given us a united North. It has placed the Democratic party distinctly on the ground that there is to be no peace except on the ground of Union. The insignificant faction of peace, or disunion Democrats has separated from the mass, and will only serve to weaken the party as a whole.
While I think thus highly of McClellan, I have no intention of voting for him. I agree with the New York Times, that this is no question of the relative merits of candidates. I regard Gen. McClellan as a first-rate Captain in a very bad ship, and with a horridly bad crew, and I have no notion of going to sea with him. I wish and pray for his defeat, because I do not wish to see the Democratic party, which has brought all these troubles and horrors upon us, restored to power.
These are my sentiments, and I believe them to be the sentiments of our best men and women.
The morning papers contain the sad intelligence of the death of the Rev. Dr. Potts. He spent a week with us at the end of June and beginning of July, and I little thought it was to be his last visit. He has been for thirty years a director of the Seminary and one of my intimate friends. I feel his death very deeply. I expect to go to New York on Monday to attend his funeral.
Your affectionate brother,
Charles Hodge.
482 THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN. [1865.
THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN, )Al?7
The assassination of President Lincoln, ^-nke an earthquake, convulsed his entire nature and broke up his deepest fountains of tears. The Rev. J. L. Russell contributed the following to the Presbyterian in April, 1879.
*’ It was Saturday morning. Our class (the Junior) was to recite to Prof. Caspar W. Hodge, in New Testament Literature. The news of the horrible deed was spreading like wild-fire when the class assembled at nine o’clock. As Professor Hodge came into the class-room some one whispered the evil news to him, and after a short prayer he dismissed us. As I passed, in returning to my room, the old Seminary Hall, Dr. Hodge stepped out on the stoop at the side-door of his study, and called to me. As I came near he said, ‘My little grandson tells me that something has happened to President Lincoln.’ I told him the facts of the case as reported. With quivering lips, and a face as pallid as death, he said, ‘O, it cannot be, it cannot be! ’
“Just then ’ extras ’ were cried on the street, and bringing one to him, I read Secretary Stanton’s dispatch. Dr. Hodge burst into a flood of tears and cried ‘My poor, poor country, what will become of thee! ’ and turning as one stunned and bewildered by a sudden stroke, he went into his study weeping as he went.
“About an hour later the bell rang, and the professors and students of the Seminary and some others gathered in the Seminary. Dr. George Junkin, who was to preach next day in the chapel, was present and made one of his intense soul-stirring speeches. Then Dr. Hodge prayed, and such a prayer. Could any man forget it? Not the words, for we could not always follow them. The petitions began with a sob and ended with a sob, and the great heart seemed like to break with the weight that was upon it.
“We saw the old time struggle at the ford of Jabbok re-enacted in that quiet place, where we were wont to meet for
^T. 67.] THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN. 483
prayer, morning and evening, and one whom we loved, one as mighty in soul, and purer in life than the Patriarchal Prince, wrestling with the same Angel of the Covenant, that he might learn the secret of God’s mysterious dealing with us, and wring from Him the promise of peace for this stricken land.
“That prayer came back to me a year ago, when I heard Dr. Hodge pray for the first time, as he dismissed the class of 1878. But how different! Then it only seemed to me that he turned his face round from its heavenward onlook, that its light might fall upon us, his old students, in a blessed benediction before he went hence.
“Dr. Hodge’s face as I saw it in the recitation room, in the oratory, in the chapel, and his voice as I heard it in lectures, in those matchless conference talks and in sermons, I love to recall frequently; but his face as I saw it, his voice as I heard it that day we wept for Lincoln, come to me a thousand times unbidden. I saw deeper into his heart that day than ever before or since.”
In the July number of the Princeton Review, he published an article on President Lincoln, which was a warm eulogy on his character and services, and a sincere lament for his death.
“When Mr. Lincoln died the nation felt herself widowed. She rent her garments, she sat in the dust, put ashes on her head, and refused to be comforted. Never in our history, seldom if ever in the history of the world, has the heart of a great people been so moved as when, on the 15th of April last, the intelligence flashed over the country that our President had been murdered. It was not merely sorrow for the loss of a great man when most needed, or of one who had rendered his country inestimable service, but grief for a man whom every one personally loved. It was this that gave its peculiar character to that day of lamentation. Still more remarkable in the annals of the country and of the world was the 19th of April — the day of the President’s funeral. At 12 o’clock, noon, of that memorable day, the whole country was draped in mourning; our palaces and cottages, our public buildings and private residences, our cities and villages, and isolated dwellings. Wealth veiled herself in crape, and poverty sought some symbol of sorrow, however insignificant. All our churches at that hour were filled with weeping worshipers. Millions of people were on their knees before God. The sun never shone on such a spectacle. Where, moreover, can history point to a funeral progress of fifteen hundred miles through countless myriads of uncovered mourners? The fact cannot be recalled. It was truly said by the Rev. Dr. Dix, of New York, ‘Abraham Lincoln has been canonized and immortalized by the blow of an assassin.’ No effect is without an adequate cause. Such an unparalleled movement of the heart of this great people; such an answering cry of indignation and sorrow from foreign and even unfriendly nations, prove beyond contradiction that Abraham Lincoln deserved to be reverenced, loved and lamented, as {q.^^ rulers of men have ever merited the confidence and love of their fellow-men.”
Dr. Hodge took that occasion to plead the humanity and sagacious magnanimity of Lincoln against the natural but blindly passionate cry for the judicial punishment of rebels which prevailed in that dark day of national sorrow and anger.
CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS BROTHER.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, Dec. 25, 1865. My Dear Brother: — * * * I trust the Radicals will not force us into a war either with England or Mexico. How wonderfully God has controlled and guided President Johnson. He has acted with consummate wisdom, and I think his annual message one of the best I ever read. Pennsylvania ought to be ashamed of such a representative as Thaddeus Stevens.
MT. 68.] RECONSTRUCTION. 485
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, Feb. 26, 1866. My Dear Brother: — I feel with you great anxiety about our public affairs. I think the President’s (Johnson’s) veto message conclusive, and that he ought to be sustained. I cannot understand the course of such men as Fessenden and Trumbull, whom I have been accustomed to regard as wise and moderate. Governor Olden and our ex-Congressman Mr. Nixon, have both said to me that four-fifths of the party are with Johnson and against Congress. 1 fear sometimes that this may not turn out to be the case. The President’s stump speech on the 22d, although undignified in some things, was a very strong one and will tell on the people, Mr. Seward’s speech, the same night, at the Cooper Institute, I think was excellent.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, July 27, 1866.
My Dear Brother: — I am glad to hear that you and sister Margaret are enjoying yourselves so much in the delightful regions of the North River. The heat, I hope, has spared you. To us it has been very oppressive. For three days we took refuge in the Seminary, which, being a large stone building, and shut up for some months, we found comparatively cool.
The Princeton Review is at last out. I do not know whether it will satisfy either party. It sides with neither, but takes its own middle course, commonly the most unpopular, although the safest. I seldom see the N. V. Herald, but its number for the 26th was terribly severe on Congress, and I believe for the most part justly. Any body led by Thaddeus Stevens must be led to evil.
The triumphant progress of the Prussians strikes me as one of the most remarkable events of modern times. I do not believe the needle-gun had much to do with it. I know not which party has the right of it. But Prussia and Italy represent the Protestant interest, and Austria the Papal. Our sympathies are, therefore, with the Prussians. Great things will probably flow from this change in the dominant influence in Germany. Love to sister Margaret. Your affectionate brother,
Charles Hodge.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, Oct. 3, 1866. My Dear Brother: — * * * I am sad about the country. A distinguished Southerner, some time since, said the safety of the country depended upon the Democratic party. If they had patriotism enough to keep in the back-ground, asking nothing for themselves or their party, but striving to sustain the moderate and conservative element in the Republican party, all would be well. But if they strove to make party capital out of the dissensions of their opponents, and to get the government into their own hands, the result would be only evil. This latter course the Democrats have taken. They force everybody to go with the Radicals or to turn Democrats, and give the power of the country into the hands of a party which, during the war, was to a large extent disloyal. This, I hope, will not be done. If I were in Pennsylvania nothing would induce me to vote for such a man as Clymer.
If the Republicans would be content with the constitutional amendments, I suppose the country will go with them. But the speeches of Stevens, Wade, Sumner, Wilson, and the declarations of the leading papers, show that the adoption of the amendments is, as Sumner says, only a drop in the bucket. What those men want is universal suffrage and the disfranchisement of the white population in the South — giving the whole power to the negroes and a few hundred renegade white men in every State. With such outrageously wicked men as Butler and Stevens to be their representatives and mouthpieces, I do not see what any party can expect. My hope is that the Copperhead Democrats and the Radical Republicans may both be consigned to political extinction, and all their leading men sent to Coventry. Your brother,
Charles Hodge.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Washington, May 12, 1868. My Dear Brother: — * * * Most persons whom I meet regard the impeachment as altogether a party affair, and that judicially, or on the grounds of legal justice, there is no sufficient evidence to convict the President.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, December 20, 1867. My Dear Brother: — ■’SWovX^l I live another week I shall be seventy years old. You have already passed that boundary. When we look back over this long period, how much cause for gratitude meets our view. What a Mother we had to watch over our infancy and train our youth, and secure for us, at such sacrifice to herself, a liberal education. God has preserved us from wasting or disabling sickness.
^T, 70. ] SB V EN TIE TH BIR THDA Y. 487
He has granted us a good measure of professional success and usefulness. We have children who are our joy and delight; all of them the professed and consistent disciples of our blessed Lord; all promising to be useful in their several vocations. Their mothers, after having been spared to us for many years, as inestimable blessings, are now safe in heaven. And we are still blessed with health and the use of all our faculties, surrounded and sustained by those who look upon us with respect and love. Above all, God has given us a good hope through grace of eternal life beyond the grave. Who of all our acquaintance can recount such a catalogue of blessings? Such thoughts, my dear brother, I am sure, fill your mind at this season of the year; a season connected with the commemoration of our Saviour’s birth, the source of all good, and with the beatification of those we have so much reason to love.
We ourselves have nearly finished our course, and should strive to have our hearts filled with gratitude for the good in the past, and with joyful anticipation of blessedness in the future. Life for us is substantially over, and we have little to expect beyond the present, so far as this world is concerned. Our last days, however, may be our best, if we are only filled with the assurance of God’s love, and with devotion to his service and submission to his will. * * *
With much love and constant remembrance.
Your brother,
Charles Hodge.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER,
Princeton, April 19, 1869.
My Dear Brother: — ‘^
I am glad to hear that you think Grant’s administration still promises well. 1 do not. I am greatly disappointed. He promised to turn out no faithful, efficient officer, and to appoint no unworthy men for political reasons. He has not been able to keep either promise. He seems to have succumbed entirely to the politicians. He has swept the board, making some 1200 appointments in a few weeks, and displacing some of the very best officers of the revenue. Think of the appointment of such men as Ashley! proved to be guilty by his own confession of official corruption, to say nothing of his political course in Congress, which led to his rejection by his political party. The A^. Y. Times, so uniform and devoted in its support of Grant, says it is clear that our hope of the promised reform must be indefinitely postponed. I am afraid this is true. What can be done with a Senate that refused to ratify a nomination because the nominee was offensive to a Senator, and that by a vote of 38 to 8 .-• We are in a sad way. This is a good deal for me to say, for I am generally an optimist. * * * Mary sends love, and I join, of course.
Your brother, Charles Hodge.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, October 4th, 1869.
My Dear Brother: — When I wrote to you that I had a cold, sore throat, pain in the chest, and a boil, you said you were sorry for the former, but intimated that you did not care much about the last. That anthrax malitiosissimus, ferocissimus, execrabilissimus, however, has kept me awake night after night, and tormented me day after day. That you call nothing! I presume the anthrax to be the opprobrium medicorum. Shame on them! What could ever have put it into the head of Job to scrape himself with a potsherd when his body was covered with boils is more than I can understand. I could not touch mine with a feather. The old patriarch must have been in a desperate state of mind.
I do not believe that mine is a common boil. Dr. Schank has seen it frequently, and said he will not call it names, but that it is not going to be any worse, and will not be much better for some days. I go about as usual, and hope to be able to attend Presbytery 9 miles from here to-morrow.
If as a doctor you think there is anything actionable in this letter, I shall be on hand prepared to put in a justification. Your brother, Charles Hodge.
The following letter to his friend and former pupil, the Rev. Dr. Robert Watts, Professor of Theology in the Presbyterian College of Belfast, Ireland, is a good specimen of a large part of his immense correspondence, with pupils and friends in all countries, in answer to questions relating to every department of the faith and work of the Church:
DR. HODGE TO DR. WATTS.
Princeton, October 5th, 1865, 3fy Dear Sir: — Wistar has handed me your letter relating to the question raised among your brethren concerning the Witness of the Spirit. As you request an immediate answer, it is impossible for me to do more than state in a few words the view which I have been led to take on the subject, without any attempt to sustain that view either historically or exegetically. I write for you alone, as I have
^.T. 67.]” THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRITr 489
no idea that anything I say will be worthy of the attention of your Committee.
We must, of course, renounce all hope to understand the mode of the divine operation either in nature or in grace; as we have no idea how mind operates on matter, or matter on mind, we cannot understand how God produces the effects which in the Scriptures are attributed to his agency. The fact is all we can expect to know.
1. It seems to be plainly taught in the Bible, and to be the commonly received doctrine, that in the external world God operates constantly through, with, and without second causes. Whatever in the external world, as in plants and animals, is indicative of design is to be referred to the present agency of mind, /. e., to God. Matter cannot produce life, much less an immaterial, intelligent substance. Such substances, however, are constantly produced under the providential agency of God. The human soul operates in like manner through, with and independently of the functions of the body. Every time we speak or write, this threefold mode of exercise is evinced.
2. It is no less plain from Scripture and universally believed in the Church that the Spirit of God operates immediately on the soul. In the regeneration of infants this must be assumed.
3. It seems also clear that in the dealings of the Spirit with the souls of believers there is a constant exercise of His power in connection with and independent of the truth. We know not how one spirit operates on another; how evil spirits controlled the thoughts and feelings of the demoniacs, and of course we cannot pretend to know how the Holy Spirit controls the action of our minds, how He excites our affections or gives the truth a greater power over them at one time than at another. But He is more immediately present with our souls than the soul is with the body, and constantly controls them in a way consistent with the nature of mind and the laws of spiritual intercourse.
4. We are clearly taught that saving faith rests on the witness of the Spirit /y’and with the truth. This is represented in Scripture as something different from the evidence which the word itself contains of its own truth. It is “an unction from the Holy One.” It is “the demonstration of the Spirit.” The Spirit produces in our minds the infallible conviction that the Bible is true. This conviction is not the product of a process of reasoning, nor a conclusion from the. facts of our own consciousness. If it were it would not be infallible, and our faith after all would rest in something human and not in the power of God.
5. In like manner the Spirit witnesses to the believer that he is a child of God. The assurance of his adoption the Apostle refers to
490 “THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT.” [1865.
two sources; first, the conscious filial exercises of the soul towards God, and, secondly, the witness of the Spirit, who bears witness together {avuiapTvfm) with our spirits that we are the sons of God. Although compound words are frequently used in the same sense with the simple forms, this is only to be assumed under the stress of the context. When the context admits of the full and proper force of the word it should be retained; much more when that force is required by the connection. The passage simply teaches that the Spirit produces in the mind of a believer the assurance of his adoption: as in Rom. 5: 5, He is said to produce the assurance that we are the objects of God’s love.
There is no real ground for the charge of enthusiasm or fanaticism against this view of the subject, (i). Because it attributes to the Spirit nothing out of analogy with the constant operations of God in the external world and on the minds of men in his providence. (2). Because it is consistent with the constant representations of the Scriptures relating to the intercourse of the soul with God. We not only address Him and reveal or rather express to Him our thoughts and feelings, but He manifests Himself to us. We not only aver our love to Him, but He also reveals His love to us. The soul of the believer lives, or should live, in constant fellowship or intercourse with the Father of our spirits. He is at no loss for means and modes of communiating with his children.
(3). When our Confession attributes saving faith to the witness of God not only by or through but with the truth, it does not teach that God makes any new revelations. The word is true. It declares itself objectively to the reason, the conscience, and the affections to be true, and God by His Spirit affirms it to be true. There is no new revelation there. Neither is there in the witness of the Spirit to the believer’s adoption. He is a child of God. He has all the filial affections of a child. The Spirit produces assurance that what is true is true. The soul is not left to deductions from its own imperfectly understood or partially interpreted consciousness. God gives it a peace which passes understanding.
The fanatics at the Reformation and in all times have abused the doctrine of the inward teaching of the Spirit. So they abuse the doctrine that He witnesses to the adoption of believers. But in neither case have they any just reason for their perversions. And the Reformers as you know gave up their doctrines on neither point from fear that the truth would be abused.
I fear these few remarks will not be of much service to you, but I am not able to write more.
Your friend, very truly, Charles Hodge.
THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH
TO POLITICAL QUESTIONS AND THE MERITS OF THE ACTUAL DECISIONS
OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY (o. S.), ON QUESTIONS
GROWING OUT OF THE WAR.
It was inevitable that the Churches and ministers, both North and South, should be violently agitated by the passions which caused and sprang out of the tremendous political and military conflict between the hostile sections of the country. This excitement would also necessarily find expression alike in the writings and speeches of individual ministers and in the action of Church courts. Under these circumstances there came into existence also diversity of sentiment as to questions of principle and policy, and hence parties were formed within the Church, and violent struggles for predominance for a time disturbed her peace and dishonored her dignity. Some action by our Church courts, under such circumstances, was necessaiy and wise, in accordance with all ecclesiastical precedent in the past, as well as with the obvious duty of the hour. There can, on the other hand, be no question that the character of much of the actual deliverances of our Church courts at that time, was determined by the political passions and prejudices existing in the bosoms of ministers and elders, and often by the pressure arising from the clamor and threats of the general populace without.
It was under circumstances such as these, when the political newspapers and mob in Philadelphia threatened the minority of the General Assembly, in May, 1861, and when many members confessed that if they should vote according to their convictions they would be afraid to return to their constituents, that the conduct of Dr. Hodge appears to his friends the most noble. He had unequivocally taken the side of the Country, and from the first advocated the war for the Union. But when many, who had at the beginning sympathized with secession, or at least favored unworthy compromises, had become extreme radicals, and while the newspapers and other organs of public opinion severely denounced all dissent from the policy and spirit of the majority, he, for six years, without either fear or anger and with singular sagacity, sided with no party, maintained the attitude of an independent and incorruptible judge, criticised or commended the action of the Assembly, and laid down with clearness and force the principles which were involved in the burning questions, and the confused contentions of the hour.
He objected, as did also the Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge, D.D., in a paper presented by him and passed by the Synod of Kentucky in the fall of the same year, to the passage of the Spring resolutions of the General Assembly in May,
1 86 1, which decided in behalf of the Presbyterians of all the States, even of those already subject to the de facto government of the Confederacy, the political question as to whether their supreme allegiance was due to the States or to the Federal Government, and made consent to that decision a term of communion in the Presbyterian Church. He admitted all the principles involved in the paper of Dr. R. J. Breckinridge, passed by the General Assembly of
1862, but lamented the passage on the ground of Christian expediency, and the testimony of eminently wise and loyal brethren from the Border States, that its passage at that time would only tend to distract the Churches in their section, and weaken the hands of loyal men. Against the action of the Assembly of 1865, in Pittsburgh, whose members came up from constituencies lately and naturally maddened by the assassination of President Lincoln, he protested and reasoned with all his force. The intention of the great majority of that assembly was to brand secession as an ecclesiastical crime, and all in any way compromised with it, as ecclesiastical sinners, and to make repentance and open confession the condition of the re-admission of all such sinners to the communion of the Presbyterian Church.
It is well known that these “Pittsburgh orders,” as they
VET. 63-69] THE CHURCH AND POLITICAL QUESTIONS. 493
were called, remained a dead letter from the first, and were never enforced in the manner designed by their advocates in a single instance. It is also well known that they alone caused the action of the “Declaration and Testimony” men of that autumn, and consequently the high-handed action of repression of the General Assemblies of 1866 and 7, They took off from the Northern Presbyterian Church the majority of the Presbyterians of the Border States, and they constitute the principal grievance in the sight of the members of the Southern Presbyterian Church which perpetuates and threatens to perpetuate indefinitely the unseemly divisions and jealousies, which so many good men have earnestly yet ineffectually labored to allay.
In this regard Dr. Ward of the Indepcndait is certainly an impartial and competent witness. In an editorial on April nth, 1872, he writes: “In May, 1861, when the General Assembly adopted the ‘Spring resolutions,’ introduced by the venerable Dr. Spring of this city, in favor of sustaining the government against the rebellion. Dr. Hodge led in a protest, on the ground that the Assembly assumed a position not warranted as an ecclesiastical body; but it is well known that from 1861 to the close of the war, no publication in the country, secular or religious, spoke out more boldly than did the Princeton Rcviciv, against the rebellion, and slavery as its cause, and none sustained the government more vigorously and heartily in all its measures to maintain itself and save the Union. The successive articles on these subjects are well known to come from the pen of Dr. Hodge, and their tenor and influence were highly appreciated at the seat of government. When the war was over, the Old-School Assembly, meeting at Pittsburgh in May, 1865, adopted by a very large majority what were deemed by many, extreme measures of ecclesiastical reconstruction bearing upon ministers and churches at the South. Dr. Hodge was not a member of the body, but on reviewing these proceedings, he dissented from much of this
494 “^^^^ CHURCH AND POLITICAL QUESTIONS. [1861-67.
action. Whatever may have been thought of their expediency at the time, these ‘Pittsburgh Orders,’ as they have been termed, were never practically carried out, but have remained a dead letter ever since; and now as we look over our religious exchanges in the Presbyterian Church, there seems to be but one sentiment at the North on this subject, and that is in favor of uniting with the Presbyterians of the South on equal terms without any questions being raised growing out of the rebellion.”
The principles for which Dr. Hodge contended were the following:
I. That” Church courts are of divine appointment. The constitution is not a grant of powers, but an agreement between different Presbyteries and other church courts, as to the manner in which its inherent authority as a court of Christ shall be exercised. They have entered into various agreements by which they are united in the exercise of the powers derived from Christ. The same remark applies equally to our synods and general assemblies. The first General Assembly of the Church of Scotland met before there was any formal written constitution of the Scotch Church, but it met with all the powers that it ever subsequently possessed.
“The limits assigned to the power of church courts are determined directly or indirectly by the word of God. As they are church courts their authority is confined to the church. It does not extend to those who “are without.” It follows also from the same premises that being church courts they must be confined in their jurisdiction to church matters. They can only expound and apply the word of God to matters of truth and duty, and to the reforming of abuses or to the discipline of offences.
“As the Bible commands obedience to the powers that be, it is clearly within the province of the church to enjoin on all her members obedience, allegiance and loyalty... But as the Bible does not enable any man to decide whether these United States are a nation, or a voluntary confederacy of nations, the church has no voice in the decision of that question. Her members must determine it for themselves, and on their own responsibility. It was upon this ground that the editor of this Reviezv, with many others, protested against the action of the Assembly of 1861, in adopting the Spring resolutions. In those resolutions it was declared the duty of Christians in the seceding states to support the national government. If the Northern (as we believe the true theory) of our Constitution be correct it was their duty. If the Calhoun (or Southern) theory is correct, it was not their duty. This is purely a political question, for the decision of which the word of God gives no direction.
“In the Assembly of 1859, it was urged by Dr. Thornwell that the church is in such a sense a spiritual body, clothed only with spiritual powers for spiritual ends, that all intermeddling with anything not directly bearing on the spiritual and eternal interests of men was foreign to its office and derogatory to its dignity. All this is true, but it is very ambiguous. If by spiritual he meant what relates to the spirit, in the sense of moral and religious nature of man, then it is true that the church is restricted in her action to what is purely spiritual. But if the word be so restricted as to confine it to what pertains to the religious element of our nature, to what concerns the method of salvation, as distinguished from the law of God, then the above principle is most obviously false. It contradicts the great principle, universally admitted hitherto, that the church, as the witness of God, is bound to bear her testimony against all sin and error, and in favor of all truth and righteousness, agreeably to the Scriptures; that is guided by the word of God in her judgments and declarations... The Southern advocates of the new theory found it impossible to adhere to it. We find Dr. Thornwell preaching from the sacred desk elaborate sermons on slavery, and writing articles in religious journals on the state of the country.
Church papers were filled week after week with articles vindicating Southern principles, and synods pledged themselves to the support of the new confederacy. We do not blame these brethren for violating a false principle, and disregarding their own erroneous theory, but we protest against their condemning in others what they justify in themselves.
II.” What is the authority due to the deliverances of our ecclesiastical judicatories? ist. They are not infallible. ‘All synods or councils,’ says our Confession, ’ since the Apostles’ times, whether general or particular, may err, and many have erred; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as a help to both.’ If not a rule of faith or practice, acquiescence in their deliverances cannot be made a term either of Christian or of ministerial communion. Acquiescence in their deliverances being a very different thing from submission to their judicial decisions.
“2d. If they are not infallible there must be a judge of their correctness, and a standard by which judgment is to be formed. The judge is every man who chooses to exercise the privilege. The standard of judgment is of course the word of God. The censures which have been heaped upon this Review for the expression of its dissent from certain acts of the Assembly, as an act of presumption unbecoming in the members and servants of the Church, are to say the least undeserved.
“3. It follows from what has been said that the deliverances of ecclesiastical courts, from the lowest to the highest, cease to have any binding ioxc, first, when they transcend the sphere of the legitimate action of the Church; second when they contravene the compact contained in our Constitution; third, when they violate any principle revealed in the word of God.”
III. As to the relation of the Northern and Southern Churches he argued,” i. That it is Christ’s will that his
>ET. 63-69.] NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN CHURCHES. 497
people should be one, and that it is the duty of all those who agree in matters of faith and order, and are so situated that they may act together, to be united in one organic body. All who are willing to unite with us on the terms of the cordial adoption of the standards of doctrine and order, we are bound to welcome with the right hand of fellowship- 2. That there are reasons which render the union of Presbyterians North and South, East and West imperative at the present day. Other bodies of Christians, as the Romanists and Episcopalians, are united and compact. These two Churches bid fair to be the only two national Churches in the land. Shall we remain divided? Must we forfeit our national character? 3. Considerations of patriotism are as urgent as those drawn from the interests of the Church. The great aim of the National Goverment, and the great aim of all good citizens is the reconstruction of the Union. We hear on almost every side the utterance of the self-evident truth that ‘conciliation is essential to reconstruction.’ The reunion of the Northern and Southern Churches is almost indispensable to this conciliation. The New York Times, the most influential Republican paper, the great advocate of the war (Sept. 29, 1865), says the action of the Assemblies of Presbyterians and Convention of Congregationalists months ago was not conciliatory. It commends in strong terms the amicable spirit of the late Episcopal Convention in New York.”
In his review of the action of the General Assembly, July, 1865, he argued against the demand that repentance and confession must be exacted of our Southern brethren as the condition of readmission to communion,” (i.) That such a deliverance of the General Assembly could bind no man’s conscience and have no legal force. (2.) That secession was not an ecclesiastical sin. That, as all admit, revolution and rebellion are right on certain occasions, and no church has a right to decide upon those conditions. (3.) That such action was unprecedented, and (4.) It was unequal.
498 CASE OF DR. M’PHEETERS. [1864.
Thousands of people at the North sympathized with the South, and in many ways gave aid and comfort to the rebels. No one calls for arraigning them before our church courts. It is plain that a principle that cannot be carried out is false; and that those who are strenuous in enforcing it in the one case, while they refuse to enforce it in another, are either mentally bewildered or insincere.”
THE CASE OF DR. SAMUEL B. m’pHEETERS. He at great length and with great earnestness protested against the action of the General Assembly at Newark in 1864, in dismissing the complaint of that noble gentleman and Christ-like clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Samuel B. M’Pheeters, against the body assuming to be the Presbytery of St. Louis.” Less than one-fifth of that Presbytery, knowing that the majority would not attend, came together the 3d of June to dissolve the pastoral relation between the Pine Street Church and the Rev. S. B. M’Pheeters, D. D., without being requested to do so either by the pastor or the Church, and against the known wishes and judgment of the great majority of the Presbytery. The undeniable facts are these. I. He was a man universally respected and beloved. 2. He had taken and faithfully kept a stringent oath of allegiance to the Government. 3. The highest authorities of the land, the President and the Attorney-General, pronounced themselves so satisfied with his loyalty that they forbade his being interfered with on the part of the authorities, either as a citizen or as a minister. 4. Whatever were his private feelings, he so conducted himself and so performed his ministerial duties, as to retain the affection and confidence of the comrnunity, of six out of seven of the elders of his church, of the vast majority of its members and attendants; and of four-fifths of the members of his Presbytery. That such a man should be dismissed from his church and forbidden to preach in its pulpit, by a mere fragment of the Presbytery to which he belongs, who knew
^-T. 66.] CASE OF DR. M’PHEETERS. 499
him and all the circumstances of the case, seems to us an injustice which has few, if any, parallels in the history of our church.”
There can be no doubt now that this action was not only unrighteous, but that it was also a great mistake for the supporters of the government, and of the true theory of the relation of the Church to the moral and religious relations of political questions, to give to the honest advocates of a mistaken view their martyr. And no human cause was ever crowned by one purer or more heroic.
Whatever may have been the prevalence and violent expression of unchristian prejudices and passions among the men of either side with whom he came in contact, Dr. M’Pheeters at least always maintained Christian charity unwounded either by thought or word. His spirit was chastened with sorrow, and his physical health crushed, but he was never excited to bitterness. All his public and private utterances were full of love and grace. His letters all corroborate the testimony of his wife, that at no time during his years of trial did he, even in the privacy of home, speak a word which would have compromised him if known to the whole world.
For the last five years of his life he was the well-beloved pastor of the rural congregation of Mulberry, Kentucky. Here the beauty and glory of his life culminated and ripened fast for heaven as gently as the rich autumnal twilight melts into the perfect day. For more than three years he was confined to his couch, and preached and talked to his people always in a recumbent position. His house, the home of all his people, was thronged with constant visitors. From his couch the patient sufferer, at home and in the church, talked and preached with radiant countenance, and with matchless sweetness and spiritual power. A perennial dispensation of the gracious Spirit was kindly granted them. Many were converted, and the entire church walked with their angelic pastor on the
500 HOSTILE CRITICISM. [1861-67.
heights of Beulah, in constant view of the celestial city, and under the perpetual inspiration of its hopes and joys. Thus one of the humblest, gentlest, loveliest of mankind exultantly bore testimony to the all-sufficiency of his Lord.
It was for thus standing in his place during a period of confusion and conflict, and for teaching these principles, that Dr. Hodge was assailed, and his influence sought to be destroyed by angry and bewildered men. The Presbytery of Oxford, consisting of two pastors and four stated supplies, and an unusual proportion of men without charge, at its meeting, April, 1866, overtured the General Assembly, that “for the peace and purity of the Church,” Dr. Hodge should be directed to desist from teaching as he had done, and from thus “corrupting the minds of the young men in the Seminary, in regard to their church and country.”
In his article, October, 1865, he says, “It has been intimated in some quarters, with small indications of sorrow, that in pursuing the course above indicated, this Rcviciv has lost the support of the loyal States. We learn from the publisher that this is a mistake. The list of subscribers in those states is as large now as it was before the war. It is in the seceding states the falling off has occurred. Some kind friends, without our knowledge, brought the matter before the last Assembly, but the Editor has not lifted a finger to secure patronage for the Rcviezv. To him its discontinuance would be a great relief He has carried it as a ball-and-chain for forty years, with scarcely any other compensation than the high privilege and honor of making it an organ for upholding sound Presbyterianism, the cause of the country, and the honor of our common Redeemer.” He had carried it for forty years, and in three years more he did finally lay it down. The reader of the past pages of these memoirs, will have some means of appreciating the pathos of the above sentences, coming as they do so near the closing scenes of such a period and character of service.
JET.6g-72.] REUNION OF THE PRESBYTERIANS. 50 1
This is not recorded in the spirit of complaint. Dr. Hodge’s nearest representatives are gratefully sensible of the universality, sincerity and singular eminence of the honors awarded him in his closing life. But no picture can be drawn, if the shadows are left out, and these shadows of storm-drifted clouds are left where they fell, that the truth of history may be preserved in its integrity.
THE REUNION OF THE OLD AND NEW SCHOOL PRES-BYTERIANS.
As was shown in a previous chapter of this book the division of the Presbyterian Church was caused by the belief on the part of those, chiefly of Scotch and Scotch-Irish descent, who were strongly attached to the unmodified Presbyterian usages and doctrines inherited from a past age, that the Church as then situated, was in great danger of being disorganized by amalgamation with Congregationalism, and corrupted by the toleration of variations of the Calvinistic system of New England origin. These doctrinal variations were of different degrees, some of them classified under the general head of Hopkinsianism, which Dr. Hodge thought did not occasion a ground of division, and others classified under the head of Taylorism, which he did regard as intolerable.
Immediately after the war, the two branches of the Church in the North approximated each other more nearly than ever before in size and condition, the Old School branch having been by that event separated from the large and intensely orthodox and conservative Southern section. They had moreover been drawn together by their intense sympathy in the great passions and sufferings of the immediately preceding years. The New School branch also, as Dr. S. W. Fisher declared in his speech before the National Presbyterian Union Convention in Philadelphia, Nov. 1867, had become separate from its past Congregational alliances and thus” God had elimi-
502 REUNION OF THE PRESBYTERIANS. [1867-70.
nated discordant elements, which gave them (us) much trouble, and which gave the (our) brethren of the other branch great occasion for censure.” Both branches were now completely and equally (with slight and transient exceptions) Presbyterian in their organization, and the graver departures from the old Calvinistic system had ceased to prevail. Besides these facts justifying reunion, there existed, as generally prevalent conditions prompting to it; — a disposition, upon the more politically radical party of the Old School to make up for the loss of the Southern Church, and an intense sympathy with that branch of the Church which was largely leavened with New England ideas: — a substitution on all sides of an interest in the history and comparison of theological doctrines and systems, for the interest in original speculation which had prevailed in the preceding generation: — and last, though not least, the influence of the general spirit of the age, which deprecates the value of doctrinal distinctions, and emphasizes the value of character, and practical energy and work.
In 1837-8 Dr. Hodge opposed, not the division of the Church, but the spirit, policy, and methods of some of the Old School leaders, in their attempts to effect that end. He did so because he was constitutionally a conservative, and spontaneously resisted all change; because he did not believe the evils prevalent to be as inrminent nor as dangerous as represented by the ultra Old School men; and because he disapproved of many of the methods they pursued, as unconstitutional, and as impolitic, involving the danger of giving the opposite party the advantage of possessing the majority, and actual legal control of the organization and property. In 1867-70 he occupied precisely the same position. He had shared in none of the “progress” of the times. He would not have divided the Church if reunited, but he saw no sufficient reason for uniting the actually and long-divided branches. For thirty years the Old School Presbyterian Church had been an
.«T. 69-72.] REUNION- OF THE PRESBYTERIANS. 503
established fact in the world. It had assumed its place, and discharged its functions in the family of Churches, as a witness-bearing body, as its special function maintaining intact by testimony and by discipline, the strict old Calvinism of our Fathers, and of the Westminster Confession, strictly interpreted. His life had been identified with this work; he loved it and believed it to be indispensable to the welfare of the sisterhood of Christian Denominations, which God had severally adorned with different graces, and to which he had severally assigned different functions. He did not believe that the reunited Presbyterian Church of the future would take the place of the Old School Church of the past. He was not insensible to the blessedness and the glories of Christian Union as he made plain by his speeches at the National Presbyterian Convention, Nov. 1867, and at the Evangelical Alliance, Oct. 1873. But he believed that under the present condition of the universal Church, each Denomination has its special gift and intrusted function, and that the gift and function of the Old School Presbyterian Church was one of the most precious and indispensable, and one which no other could fulfill. He never believed or said that his New School brethren were the holders or the teachers of heresy. He did not pretend to judge or to mistrust their orthodoxy. He simply maintained that as a historical fact those brethren had always, and did now, maintain and practice a principle and latitude of toleration different from that of the Old School. He held that if not for themselves, yet for others they interpreted the formula of subscription to our doctrinal standards in a different sense, or at least different spirit; that even if hereafter the Old School should produce all the heretics, the New School division of the New Church would provide their principal and most influential defenders, or excusers.
He therefore set himself once more to face and resist the current of the times, to oppose what he believed to be the rash course of the majority of his own church, and to call down upon himself the impatience and displeasure of many. He spoke and wrote in public and private, and voted against the movement on every occasion that was afforded him. He wrote in the Prmceton Review the articles on the General Assembly for 1866 and 1867; on “The Principles of Church Union and the Re-union of Old and New School Presbyterians” in 1865; and on “Presbyterian Re-union,” and on “The Protests and Answer” in 1868. He spoke, voted, and wrote and signed the Protest against it in the General Assembly of 1868. And after the majority of his most thorough sympathizers, seeing the event inevitable, had capitulated in order to secure the most favorable conditions possible, he wavered not a hair’s breadth, but rode nine miles to meet the Presbytery in Cranberry, on October 5th, 1869, with the “anthrax malitiosissimus” on the back of his neck, for the purpose of casting his final vote against it.
THE NATIONAL PRESBYTERIAN CONVENTION, PHILADEL-PHIA, NOVEMBER, 1867.
On the 6th, 7th and 8th of November, 1867, on the invitation of the Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, a National Presbyterian Union Convention met in the First Reformed Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia. Mr. George H. Stuart was President. Besides many corresponding members allowed to speak but not to vote, the Convention consisted of 162 representatives of the Old School branch of the Presbyterian Church, 64 of the New School, of the United Presbyterians 1 2; of the Reformed Presbyterians 1 2; of Reformed Protestant Dutch 6; of the Cumberland Presbyterians 6. Dr. Hodge was a member, and went to it under an “entire misapprehension, supposing from the wording of the call that the object of the meeting was prayer and conference, for the promotion of Christian fellowship* and harmonious action between the several bodies represented.” When, therefore, he found that the drift of all the speakers and resolutions was towards the establishment of
^T. 59-72.] NATIONAL PRESBYTERIAN CONVENTION. 505
a general organic union, he remained quiet, and made no address till the afternoon of the third day, when he expounded the sense in which he maintained the “Standards” should be embraced as containing ‘the system of doctrine taught in Holy Scripture.’
It came to the knowledge of this Convention that in the Annual Meeting of the Protestant Episcopal Evangelical Societies, consisting of about 450 members, bishops, clergy and laymen, held at that time in Philadelphia, prayer had been offered in behalf of the National Presbyterian body. Hence on Thursday a committee headed by Professor Henry B. Smith of New York, was deputed to carry the salutations of the representatives of all branches of the Presbyterian Church to their Episcopal brethren. On Friday morning, November 8th, a responding Episcopal delegation, consisting of Bishops M’llvaine of Ohio, and Lee of Delaware, and the Rev. Stephen H. Tyng, Jr., and the Hon. Judge Conyngham and Hon. Felix B. Brunot, brought the salutations and blessings of the Episcopal body to the representatives of the National Presbyterian ism. They addressed the Conference in warmly affectionate language, offered extemporaneous and eloquent prayers in their behalf, and pronounced upon them the Apostolic benediction. Such a scene has no parallel, considering the representative character of the bodies and persons concerned in the transaction, in the entire history of American Christianity.
“Dr. Hodge was brought forward by the President to respond to this deputation in the name of the Presbyterian Convention, and was greeted with great applause. He said: — ‘Gentlemen and brothers, honored and beloved: I am called upon, as you hear, to present, in the name of this Convention, their hearty greeting and salutation. You here see around you, sirs, the representatives of six Presbyterian organizations of this country, comprising in the aggregate at least five thousand ministers of Jesus, an equal number of Christian churches, and at least one million of Christians, who have been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. It is not only, therefore, as the organ of the Convention, but for the moment, as the mouth-piece of this vast body of ministers and public Christian men, that we, sirs, were commissioned to present to you our cordial and affectionate Christian salutations.
“We wish to assure you, sirs, that your names are just as familiar to our people as to your own! That we appreciate as highly your services in the cause of our common Master, as the people of your own honored Church. And, sirs, we rejoice with them in all that God has accomplished through your instrumentality.
“I hope this audience will pardon a reference that might seem too personal under any other circumstances than the present. The honored President of this Convention might easily have selected some more suitable person to be the mouth-piece of this body, but on the ground of one consideration, perhaps the choice of myself to be that organ is not altogether inappropriate.
“You, Bishop Mcllvaine, and Bishop Johns, whom I had hoped to see with you here to day, — you and I, sir, were boys together in Princeton College, fifty odd years ago. Often at evening have we knelt together in prayer. We passed through, sir, the baptism of that wonderful revival in that institution in 181 5. We sat together, year after year, side by side, in the same class-room. We were instructed through our theological course by the same venerable teachers. You, sir, have gone your way, and I have gone mine; and I will venture to say in the presence of this audience, that I do not believe you have preached one sermon on any point of doctrine or Christian experience, which I would not have rejoiced to have uttered. And I feel fully confident that I never preached a sermon, the sentiments of which, you would not have publicly and cordially endorsed.
“And now, sir, after these fifty odd years, here we stand,
MT. 69-72.] JVA TIONA L PRE SB YTERIAN CONVENTION. 507
gray-headed, side by side, for the moment representatives of these two great bodies of organized Christians. FeeHng for each other the same intimate cordial love, and mutual confidence; looking not backward, — not downward to the grave beneath our very feet, — but onward to the coming glory. Brethren, pardon this personal allusion, but is there not something that may be regarded as symbolical in this? Has not your Church and our Church been rocked in the same cradle? Did they not pass through the same Red Sea, receiving the same baptism of the Spirit, and of fire? Have they not uttered from those days of the Reformation to the present time, the same great testimony for Christ and his Gospel? What difference, sir, is there between your Thirty-nine Articles, and our Confession of Faith, other than the difference between one part and another of the same great Cathedral anthem rising to the skies? Does it not seem to indicate, sir, that these Churches are coming together? We stand here, sir, to say to the whole world, that we are one in faith, one in baptism, one in life, and one in our allegiance to your Lord and to our Lord.”
The reporter says, “During the delivery of this speech there was scarcely a dry eye in the house, and the speaker was frequently interrupted by the cries of ‘Amen,’ from the delegates.”
In an editorial of the next week, the Presbyterian alluding to the irritation which Dr. Hodge’s course in opposing his Church on the matter of its war-deliverances and the project of Reunion had occasioned, said: — “If any one has ever imagined that the influence of Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton, was waning, either in the Church, of which he is the ornament, and in which he is ever held in honor, or in other Presbyterian communions, it was only necessary for him to be present in the late Convention, and witness the reception given to the venerable Professor, to assure him that his imaginings were vain. Dr. Hodge chose to remain quiet during the most of the sessions of the body, but when he appeared upon the platform, it was to be greeted as no other man was received in that church. Spontaneously, and ere he had opened his lips to speak, applause started from all parts of the house, and was long continued and hearty. It was the ready homage of Christian men to one who had kept the faith, and taught it, and had ever been foremost in its defense, and so had won his way to the highest confidence and respect of the Church. It showed to all how good it is to work for one’s generation, and for the Church of God, and receive, as the end of life draws near, the precious tokens of the Church’s love and the Master’s approbation. It added to the interest of the occasion that his early and life-long friend was there to witness these expressions of esteem and confidence from the gathered Church; and we are very sure that no one in the assembly would have acknowledged more fully the justice of the tribute paid to Dr. Hodge than the beloved bishop of Ohio. We thank God for such men; for their lives and works, and for the honor and affection which are gathering about their names as passing years are bringing them nearer to the blessed home of the saints of God.”