Twenty-Five Years in the Pulpit
‘’ I HERE are stages and halting-places in a man’s journey of life, — such as Bunyan’s Pilgrim reached at the Wicket Gate and the House Beautiful and the Delectable Mountains. One such point of retrospection a minister reaches when he has finished a quarter of a century in the pulpit. He feels like sitting down for a moment, and gazing backward over the long highway, and like entering a few serious thoughts in the diary of his existence. The writer of this paragraph has come to the “silver wedding” of his ministry.
Eleven years have passed since we spent our first Sabbath with the Lafayette-avenue Church. It then numbered one hundred and forty members. To-day it has on its roll fourteen hun-
* Written in April, 1871.
dred and three. The number of admissions by profession of faith has been smaller than in previous years. They number but forty-two. In the most successful year (1866) there were three hundred and thii’ty additions; nearly all on confession of faith in a new-found Saviour.
Twentj’-five years ago to-day we preached our “maiden” discourse, before a congregation of solid and somewhat somnolent farmers, in the little hamlet of Clover HUl, New Jersey. It was our first attempt with a manuscript; and, whether from excessive fatigues during the previous week or under the sermon, several of the audience — like the first farmer in Eden — fell “into a deep sleep.” We then learned that every written sermon needs the frequent spur of a spirited extempore passage.
Before that first year closed we were domesticated in our work in a small congregation in quiet Burlington, at that time the residence of the pious, kingly-hearted Dr. Cortland Van Rensselaer, and of Bishop Doane, who was famous for his High Churchism, and his “shovel-hat.” In that little parish of Burlington we tasted the joys of our first revival. It was like an encamping at Elim under the threescore and ten palm-trees, and beside the twelve wells of water. A call from Trenton, the capital of the State, to gather a new congregation, took us thither in the autumn of 1849. A new edifice was reared, and from it a colony has since “swarmed out” to form still another congregation. It is a matter of profound joy to us to have been permitted to oversee the erection of three church edifices for the worship of Jehovah. God grant that the walls of those structures may glitter in the light of the millennial morning!
After our ministry in Trenton came a detour of seven years through the quiet domains of our Dutch Keformed neighbors in New York. Happy years those were, too, in old Market Street, with gracious showers in the golden year of 1858. We left our Dutch kinsfolk with pleasant memories, and without ever having learned to smoke a pipe, or being contaminated with any dangerous degree of conservatism. In 1860 we crossed the ferry to
Brooklyn; and during the next year the foundations of Lafayette-avenue Church edifice were laid, amid the roar of Fort Sumter’s guns. The flag that celebrated the triumph of freedom floated afterwards from its towers. The building then stood almost on the edge of Brooklyn: it is now about at the centre.
These five and twenty years have been spent in unbroken labor, each day rounded with sound honest sleep. We count it a subject for devout thankfulness that we have never been kept from the pulpit by sickness, except on one single Sabbath! If any ministerial brother who believes in using a little ale or port wine “for his stomach’s sake” has done better than that, we should be happy to form his acquaintance. Sleep is worth more than all the stimulants in the universe. During this quarter of a century we have preached about four thousand times, and made about as many public addresses. We have been permitted to receive 2,527 persons into church-fellowship, of whom twelve hundred united on profession of faith.
But if we were called on to decide between the spiritual results of labors with the tongue and labors with the pen, we might give the preference to the latter. During our whole ministry we have made it a rule never to let a week pass without at least one article of a moral or religious character — long or short — being sent to the press. These articles number about thirteen hundred. Their circulation in Great Britain and Canada has been almost as general as in the United States. We have made a proximate calculation of the number of copies printed during these twenty-five years, and find that they amount to over fifty-five millions! If each copy had but a single reader, here were fifty-five millions of opportunities to reach immortal souls! We hope that our readers will pardon this personal allusion: we throw out the fact as a stimulus to our ministerial brethren to make a more liberal use of the pen, and the weekly religious press. All that we have accomplished has been small in comparison with the widely circulated writings of Newman
Hall, Spurgeon, and the pastor of Plymouth Church.
Looking back to-day to the starting-point of our ministerial life, we are amazed at the changes which this quarter of a century has witnessed. When we began our work the Mexican war was just opening; and California had not yet yielded up her golden secret to mankind. The magnetic telegraph was in its infancy. But one line of ocean steamers existed on the globe! The statesmanship of America was then chiefly occupied in constructing new guarantees for the peace and perpetuity of the ‘■’■peculiar institution.” Thank God! we saw the last bubble rise to the surface to mark where Pharaoh perished with his chariots and horsemen!
Clay, Webster, and Calhoun then led the American forum. Lyman Beecher, Archibald Alexander, Albert Barnes, and Dr. Thornwell were the representative men of our Calvinistic pulpit. That resplendent “star” which now hangs over Brooklyn heights was just rising above the horizon, from an obscure parish in
Indiana. Chalmers was then the foremost pulpit orator on the globe. Spurgeon was but a schoolboy in his eleventh year. Skinner, Cox, Kirk, Bascom, Wayland, and Addison Alexander were in their splendid meridian.
At that day the fresh rupture between the “Old” and “New School” Presbyterianism was ghastly and gaping, — a great ugly wound that threatened to ulcerate. Little did we then dream of occupying a seat in the first reunited General Assembly.
So has the past quarter of a century flown by, — “like a tale that is told.” At the risk of being charged with egotism we have narrated the meagre story of our small part in its sayings and doings. It has gone with its account into the record-book of the day of Judgment. When the next quarter of a century ends, the hand which pens these lines will probably be motionless. Another voice will be heard in yonder pulpit. God grant that both pen and voice may never declare or publish “any thing save Jesus Christ, and him crucified!”