MY HOME LIFE.
One of the richest of the many blessings that has crowned my long life
has been a happy home. It has always seemed to me as a wonderful triumph
of divine grace in the Apostle Paul that he should have been so "content
in whatsoever state he was" when he was a homeless, and, I fear, also a
wifeless man. During my own early ministry in Burlington, N.J., my
widowed mother and myself lodged with worthy Quakers, and realized
Charles Lamb's truthful description of that quiet, "naught-caballing
community." On our removal to Trenton, when I took charge of the newly
organized Third Presbyterian Church, we commenced housekeeping in what
had once been the residence of a Governor, a chief-justice, and a mayor
of the city; but was a very plain and modest domicile after all. My new
church building was completed in November, 1850, and opened with a full
congregation, and I was soon in the full swing of my pastoral duties. As
I have already stated in the opening chapter of this volume, my father
and mother first saw each other on a Sabbath day, and in a church. It
was my happy lot to follow their example. On a certain Sabbath in
January, 1851, a group of young ladies, who were the guests of a
prominent family in my congregation, were seated in a pew immediately
before the pulpit. As a civility to that family we called on the
following evening, upon their guests. One of the number happened to be a
young lady from Ohio who had just graduated from the Granville College,
in that State, and had come East to visit her relatives in Philadelphia.
The young lady just mentioned was Miss Annie E. Mathiot, a daughter of
the Hon. Joshua Mathiot, an eminent lawyer, who had represented his
district in Congress. That evening has been marked with a very white
stone in my calendar ever since. It was but a brief visit of a fortnight
that the fair maiden from the West made in Trenton; but when she, soon
afterwards returned to Ohio, she took with her what has been her
inalienable possession ever since and will be, "Till death us do part."
My courtship was rather "at long range;" for Newark, Ohio, was several
hundred miles away, and I have always found that a man who would build
up a strong church must be constantly at it, trowel in hand. On the 17th
of March, 1853, the venerable Dr. Wylie conducted for us a very simple
and solemn service of holy wedlock, closing with his fatherly
benediction, one of the best acts of his long and useful life. The
invalid mother of my bride (for Colonel Mathiot had died four years
previously) was present at our nuptials, and for the last time was in
her own drawing-room. Mrs. Mathiot was a daughter of Mr. Samuel
Culbertson, a leading lawyer of Zanesville, and was a lady of rare
refinement and loveliness. She had been a patient sufferer from a
painful illness of several months' duration, and peacefully passed away
to her rest in September of that year.
Of the qualifications and duties of a minister's wife, enough has been
written to stock a small library. My own very positive conviction has
always been that her vows were made primarily, not to a parish, but to
her own husband; and if she makes his home and heart happy; if she
relieves him of needless worldly cares; if she is a constant inspiration
to him in his holy work, she will do ten-fold more for the church than
if she were the manager and mainspring of a dozen benevolent societies.
There is another obligation antecedent to all acts of Presbytery or
installing councils--the sweet obligation of motherhood. The woman who
neglects her nursery or her housekeeping duties, and her own heart-life
for any outside work in the parish does both them and herself serious
injury. If a minister's wife has the grace of a kind and tactful
courtesy toward all classes, she may contribute mightily to the popular
influence of her husband; and if she is a woman of culture and literary
taste, she can be of immense service to him in the preparation of his
sermons. The best critic that ministers can have is one who has a right
to criticize and to "truth it in love." Who has a better right to
reprove, exhort and correct with all long suffering than the woman who
has given us her heart and herself? There are a hundred matters in the
course of a year in which a sensible woman's instincts are wiser than
those of the average man. There is many a minister who would have been
spared the worst blunders of his life, if he had only consulted and
obeyed the instinctive judgment of a loving and sensible wife. If we
husbands hold the reins, it is the province of a wise and devoted wife
to tell us where to drive.
It is very probable that my readers have suspected that this portraiture
of a model wife for a minister was drawn from actual life; and they are
right in their conjectures. In the discourse delivered to my flock on
the twenty-fifth anniversary of my pastorate was the following passage,
to whose truth the added years have only added confirmation, "There is
still another sweet mercy which has been vouchsafed to me in the true
heart that has never faltered and the gentle footstep that has never
wearied in the pathway of life for two and thirty years. From how many
mistakes and hasty indiscretions her quick sagacity has kept me, you can
never know. If you have any tribute of thanks for any good which I have
done you, do not offer it to me; go carry it down to yonder home, of
which she has been the light and the joy, and _lay it at her unselfish
feet."_ On that occasion (for the _only_ time) I heard a murmur of
applause run through my congregation.
About the time of our marriage, I received a call from the Shawmut
Congregational Church of Boston, and soon afterwards overtures from a
Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, and from the First Presbyterian
Church of Chicago. All these attractive offers I declined, but within a
few months I accepted a call from the Market Street Dutch Reformed
Church of New York--a far more difficult field of labor. My ministry in
Trenton was one of unbroken happiness, and the Church were profusely
kind; but at the end of nearly four years I felt that my work there was
done. The young church had built a beautiful house of worship without a
dime of debt, and it was filled by a prosperous congregation. I was
ready for a wider field of labor.
The Market Street Dutch Reformed Church, to which I was called, was down
town, within ten minutes' walk of the City Hall, and was beginning to
feel the inroads of the up-town migration, when my excellent
predecessor, Dr. Isaac Ferris, left it to become the Chancellor of the
New York University. Although most of the well-to-do families were
moving away, yet East Broadway was full of boarding houses packed with
young men and these in turn packed our church on Sabbath evenings. Of
the happy spiritual harvest-seasons in that old church, especially
during the great awakening in 1858, I have written in the chapter on
Revivals. I was as eager for work as Simon Peter was for a good haul in
fishing, and every week there, I met on the platform the representatives
of temperance societies: The Five Points House of Industry, Young Men's
Christian Associations, Sunday schools or some other religious or
reformatory enterprise. These outside activities were no hindrances to
either pulpit or pastoral work; and, like that famous English preacher
who felt that he could not have too many irons in the fire, I thrust in
tongs, shovel, poker and all. The contact with busy life and benevolent
labors among the poor supplied material for sermons; for the pastor of a
city church must touch life at a great many points. Our domestic
experiences in early housekeeping were very agreeable. The social
conditions of New York were less artificial than now. Pastoral calls in
the evening usually found the people in their homes, and I do not
believe there were a dozen theatre-goers in my congregation. After a
very busy and heaven-blest ministry of half a dozen years, I discovered
that the rapid migration up town would soon leave our congregation too
feeble for self-support. I accordingly started a movement to erect a new
edifice up on Murray Hill, and to retain the old building in Market
Street as an auxiliary mission chapel. A handsome subscription for the
erection of the up-town edifice was secured, and the "Consistory" (which
is the good Dutch designation of a board of church officers), convened
to vote the first payment for the land. The new site was not wisely
chosen, and many of my people were still opposed to any change; but the
casting vote of one good old man (whom I shall thank if I ever encounter
him in the Celestial World) negatived the whole enterprise, and it was
immediately abandoned.
A few weeks before that decision, I had received a call to take charge
of a brave little struggling Presbyterian Church in the newer part of
Brooklyn. I sent for the officers, and informed them that if they would
purchase the ground on the corner of Lafayette Avenue and Oxford Street,
and pay for it in a fortnight, and promise to build for me a church with
good acoustics and capable of seating from eighteen hundred to two
thousand auditors, I would be their pastor. Instead of turning purple in
the lips at such a bold proposal, they "staggered not at the promise
through unbelief" and in ten days they brought me the deed of the land
paid for to the uttermost dollar! I resigned Market Street Church
immediately, and on the next Sabbath morning, while the Easter bells
were ringing under a dark stormy sky, I came over and faced, for the
first time, the courageous founders of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian
Church. The dear old Market Street Church lingered on for a few years
more, bleeding at every pore, from the fatal up-town migration, and then
peacefully disbanded. The solid stone edifice was purchased by some
generous Presbyterians in the upper part of the city, who organized
there the "Church of the Sea and Land," which is standing to-day, as a
well-manned light-house amid a dense tenement-house foreign population.
The successful work that is now prosecuted there is another confirmation
of my favorite theory that the only way to reach a neighborhood crowded
with the poorer classes, is for the wealthy churches to spend money for
just such an auxiliary mission church as is now thriving in the
structure in which I spent seven happy years of my ministry.
This portion of Brooklyn to which we removed in 1860, was very sparsely
settled, and Rev. Henry Ward Beecher said to me: "I do not see how you
can find a congregation there." He lived to say to me: "You are now in
the center, and I am out on the circumference," Brooklyn was then
pre-eminently a "city of churches," and, though we had not a dozen
millionaires, it was not infested with any slums. In a population of
over three hundred thousand there was then only a single theatre, and
when one of our people was asked: "What do you do for recreation over
there?" he replied, "We go to church."
Certainly no one was ever attracted to our own modest little temporary
sanctuary by its beauty; for it was unsightly without, though very
cheerful within. Soon after we commenced the building of our present
stately edifice the startling report of cannon shook the land from sea
to sea.
"And then we saw from Sumter's wall
The star-flag of the Union fall,
And armed hosts were pressing on
The broken lines of Washington."
Every other public edifice in this city then in process of erection was
brought to a standstill; but we pushed forward the work, like Nehemiah's
builders, with a trowel in one hand and a weapon in the other. To raise
funds for the structure, required faith and self-denial, and in this
labor of love, woman's five fingers were busy and helpful. One brave
orphan girl in New York gave, from her hard earnings as a public school
teacher, a sum so large that the announcement of it from my pulpit
aroused great enthusiasm, and turned the scale at the critical moment,
and insured the completion of the structure. Justly may our pulpit
vindicate woman's place, and woman's province in the cause of Christ and
humanity, for without woman's help that pulpit might never have been
erected.
On the 16th of March, 1862, our church edifice was dedicated to the
worship of Almighty God, Dr. Asa D. Smith, of Dartmouth College,
delivering the dedication sermon, and in the evening, my brilliant and
beloved brother, Professor Roswell D. Hitchcock, gave us one of his
incisive and inspiring discourses. The building accommodates eighteen
hundred worshippers, and in emergencies, twenty-five hundred. It is a
model of cheerfulness and convenience, and is so felicitous in its
acoustics that an ordinary conversational tone can be heard at the
opposite end of the auditorium. The picture of the Church in this volume
gives no adequate idea of the size of the edifice; for the Sunday School
Hall and lecture-room and social parlors are situated in the rear, and
could not be presented in the photographic view. I fear that too many
costly church edifices are erected that are quite unfit for our
Protestant modes of religious service. It is said that when Bishop
Potter was called upon to consecrate one of the "dim religious"
specimens of mediaeval architecture, and was asked his opinion of the
new structure, he replied: "It is a beautiful building, with only three
faults: you cannot see in it--you cannot hear in it--you cannot breathe
in it."
I need not detail the story of my happy Brooklyn pastorate; for that is
succinctly given in the closing chapter of this volume. Our home-life
here for the past forty-two years has been a record of perpetual
providential mercies and unfailing kindness on the part of my
parishioners and fellow townsmen. Brooklyn, although removed from New
York (for I cannot yet twist my tongue into calling it "Manhattan") by a
five minutes' journey on the East River Bridge, is a very different town
in its political and social aspects. New York is penned in on a narrow
island, and ground is worth more than gold. It is therefore piled up
with very fine apartment houses for the rich, or tenement houses for the
poor to more stories than the ancient buildings on the Canongate of
Edinburgh. Here in Brooklyn we have all Long Island to spread over, and
land is within the reach of even a parson's purse. A man never feels so
rich as when he owns a bit of real estate, and I take some satisfaction
in the bit of land in the front of my domicile, and in the rear, capable
of holding several fruit trees and rose-beds. Oxford Street has the deep
shade of a New England village. We come to know our neighbors here,
which is a degree of knowledge not often attained in New York or London.
The social life here is also less artificial than at the other end of
the bridge. There is less of the foreign element, and of either great
wealth or poverty; we have neither the splendor of Paris, nor the
squalor of the by-streets of Naples. The name of "Breucklen" was given
to our town by its original Dutch settlers, but the aggressive New
Englanders pushed in and it is a more thoroughly Yankee city to-day than
any city in the land outside of New England. My old friend, Mayor Low,
urged the consolidation of Brooklyn with New York on the ground that its
moral and civic influence would be a wholesome counteraction of Tammany
and the tenement-house politics. For self-protection, I joined with my
lamented brother, the late Dr. Storrs, in an effort to maintain our
independence. Ours is pre-eminently a city of homes where the bulk of
the people live in an undivided dwelling, and I do not believe that
there is another city either in America, or elsewhere, that contains
over a million inhabitants, so large a proportion of whom are in a
school house during the week, and in God's house on the Sabbath.
[Illustration: THE LAFAYETTE AVENUE CHURCH.]
One of the glories of Brooklyn is its vast and picturesque "Prospect
Park," with natural forests, hills and dales and its superb outlook over
the bay and ocean.
I hope that it may not be a violation of propriety to say that the Park
Commissioners in this city of my adoption bestowed my own name on a
pretty plot of ground not far from my residence; and its bright show of
flowers makes it a constant delight to my neighbors. Last year some of
my fellow-townspeople made an exceedingly generous proposition to place
there a memorial statue; and I felt compelled to publish the following
reply to an offer which quite transcended any claim that I could have to
such an honor:
176 SOUTH OXFORD STREET, JUNE 12, 1901.
MESS JOHN N. BEACH, D.W. MCWILLIAMS, AND THOMAS T. BARR.
_My Dear Sirs_,
I have just received your kind letter in which you express the
desire of yourselves and of several of our prominent citizens that
I would consent to the erection of a "Memorial in Cuyler Park" to
be placed there by voluntary contributions of generous friends here
and elsewhere. Do not, I entreat you, regard me as indifferent to a
proposition whose motive affords the most profound and heartfelt
gratitude; but a work of art in bronze or marble, such as has been
suggested, that would be creditable to our city, would require an
outlay of money that I cannot conscientiously consent to have
expended for the purpose of personal honor rather than of public
utility. Several years ago the city authorities honored me by
giving my name to the attractive plot of ground at the junction of
Fulton and Greene Avenues. If my most esteemed friend, Park
Commissioner Brower, will kindly have my name visibly and
permanently affixed to that little park, and will direct that it be
always kept as bright and beautiful with flowers as it now is, I
shall be abundantly satisfied. I have been permitted to spend
forty-one supremely happy years in this city which I heartily love,
and for whose people I have joyfully labored; and while the
permanent fruits of these labors remain, I trust I shall not pass
out of all affectionate remembrance. A monument reared by human
hands may fade away; but if God has enabled me to engrave my humble
name on any living hearts, they will be the best monument; for
hearts live on forever. While declining the proffered honor, may I
ask you to convey my most sincere and cordial thanks to the kind
friends who have joined with you in this generous proposal, and,
with warm personal regard, I remain,
Yours faithfully,
THEODORE L. CUYLER.
I cannot refrain here from thanking my old friend, Dr. St. Clair
McKelway, the brilliant editor of the _Brooklyn Eagle_, for his generous
tribute which accompanied the publication of the above letter. His
grandfather, Dr. John McKelway, a typical Scotchman, was my family
physician and church deacon in the city of Trenton. Among the editorial
fraternity let me also mention here the name of my near neighbor, Mr.
Edward Gary, of the _New York Times_, who was with me in Fort Sumter,
at the restoration of the flag, and with whom I have foregathered in
many a fertilizing conversation. Away off on the slope above beautiful
Stockbridge, and surrounded by his Berkshire Hills, Dr. Henry M. Field
is spending the bright "Indian summer" of his long and honored career.
For forty years we held sweet fellowship in the columns of the _New York
Evangelist_.
The experience of the great Apostle at Rome, who dwelt for nearly two
years in his "hired house," has been followed by numberless examples of
the ministers of the Gospel who have had a migratory home life. My
experience under rented roofs led me to build, in 1865, this dwelling,
which has housed our domestic life for seven and thirty years. A true
homestead is not a Jonah's gourd for temporary shelter from sun and
storm, it is a treasure house of accumulations. Many of its contents are
precious heirlooms; its apartments are thronged with memories of friends
and kinsfolk living or departed. Every room has its scores of occupants,
every wall is gladdened with the visions of loved faces. I look into
yonder guest chamber, and find my old friends, Governor Buckingham, and
Vice-President Wilson, who were ready to discuss the conditions of the
temperance reform which they had come to advocate. Down in the
dining-room the "Chi-Alpha" Society of distinguished ministers are
holding their Saturday evening symposium; in the parlor my Irish guest,
the Earl of Meath, is describing to me his philanthropies in London, and
his Countess is describing her organization of "Ministering Children."
In the library, Whittier is writing at the table; or Mr. Fulton is
narrating his missionary work in China; out on the piazza my veteran
neighbor, General Silas Casey, is telling the thrilling story of how he
led our troops at the storming of the Heights of Chapultepec; up the
steps comes dear old John G. Paton, with his patriarchal white beard, to
say "good-bye," before he goes back to his mission work in the New
Hebrides.
No room in our dwelling is more sacred than the one in which I now
write. On its walls hang the portraits of my Princeton Professors, and
those of majestic Chalmers and the gnarled brow of Hugh Miller, the
Scotch geologist, the precious gifts of the author of "Rab and His
Friend." Near them is the bright face of dear Henry Drummond, looking
just as he did on that stormy evening when he came into my library a few
hours after his arrival from Scotland. I still recall his reply to me in
Edinburgh, when I cautioned him against permitting his scientific
studies to unspiritualize his activities. "Never you fear," said he, "I
am too busy in trying to save young men; and the only way to do that is
to lead them to the Lord Jesus Christ," In former years this room was
my beloved mother's "Chamber of Peace" that opens to the sun-rising. Her
pictured face looks down upon me now from the wall, and her Bible lies
beside me. In this room we gathered on the afternoon of September 14,
1887, around her dying bed. Her last words were: "Now kiss me good
night," and in an hour or two she fell into that sweet slumber which
Christ gives His beloved, at the ripe age of eighty-five. Her mental
powers and memory were unimpaired. On the monument which covers her
sleeping dust in Greenwood is engraved these words: "Return unto thy
rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee."
This room is also hallowed by another tenderly sacred association. Here
our beloved daughter, Louise Ledyard Cuyler, closed her beautiful life
on the last day of September, 1881. On her return from Narragansett
Pier, she was stricken with a mysterious typhoid fever, which often lays
its fatal touch on the most youthful and vigorous frame. She had
apparently passed the point of danger, and one Sabbath when I read to
her that one hundred and twenty-first Psalm, which records the watchful
love of Him who "never sleeps," our hearts were gladdened with the
prospect of a speedy recovery. Then came on a fatal relapse; and in the
early hour of dawn, while our breaking hearts were gathered around her
dying bed, she had "another morn than ours." Why that noble and gifted
daughter, who was the inseparable companion of her fond mother, and who
was developing into the sweet graces of young womanhood, was taken from
our clinging arms at the early age of twenty-two, God only knows. Many
another aching parental heart has doubtless knocked at the sealed door
of such a mystery, and heard the only response, "What I do thou knowest
not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." Upon the monument that bears
her name, graven on a cross, amid a cluster of white lilies, is
inscribed: "I thank my God upon every remembrance of thee." The lovely
twin brother, "Georgie" (whose sweet life story is told in "The Empty
Crib"), reposes in our same family plot, and beside him lies a baby
brother, Mathiot Cuyler, who lived but twelve days. As this infant was
born on the twenty-fifth of December, 1873, his tiny tomb-stone bears
the simple inscription: "Our Christmas Gift."
During all our seasons of domestic sorrow the cordial sympathies of our
noble-hearted congregation were very cheering; for we had always kept
open doors to them all, and regarded them as only an enlargement of our
own family. In our household joys, they too, participated. When the
twenty-fifth anniversary of our marriage occurred, they decorated our
church with flags and flowers and suspended a huge marriage-bell on an
arch before the pulpit. After the President of our Board of Trustees,
the Hon. William W. Goodrich, had completed his congratulatory address,
two of the officers of the church in imitation of the returning spies
from Eshcol marched in, "bearing between them on a staff" a capacious
bag of silver dollars. A curiously constructed silver clock is also
among the treasured souvenirs of that happy anniversary.
In April, 1885, the close of the first quarter-century of my ministry
was celebrated by our church with very delightful festivities. Addresses
were delivered by his Honor Mayor Low, Dr. McCosh, of Princeton, Dr.
Richard S. Storrs, and the Hon. John Wanamaker, Post-Master General. A
duodecimo volume giving the history of our church and all its activities
was published by order of our people.
From such a loyal flock in the full tide of its prosperity, to cut
asunder, required no small exercise of conscience and of courage. When
the patriarchal Dr. Emmons, of Franklin, Massachusetts, resigned his
church at the age of eighty, he gave the good reason: "I mean to stop
when I have sense enough to know that I have not begun, to fail." In
exercising the same grace, on a Sabbath morning in February, 1890, I
made before a full congregation the following announcement: "Nearly
thirty years have elapsed since I assumed the pastoral charge of the
Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church; and through the continual
blessings of Heaven upon us it has grown into one of the largest and
most useful and powerful churches in the Presbyterian denomination. It
has two thousand three hundred and thirty members; and is third in point
of numbers in the United States. This church has always been to me like
a beloved child: I have given to it thirty years of hard and happy
labor. It is now my foremost desire that its harmony may remain
undisturbed, and that its prosperity may remain unbroken. For a long
time I have intended that my thirtieth anniversary should be the
terminal point of my present pastorate I shall then have served this
beloved flock for an ordinary human generation, and the time has now
come to transfer this most sacred trust to some other, who, in God's
good Providence, may have thirty years of vigorous work before him, and
not behind him. If God spares my life to the first Sabbath in April, it
is my purpose to surrender this pulpit back into your hands, and I shall
endeavor to co-operate with you in the search and selection of the right
man to stand in it. I will not trust myself to-day to speak of the pang
it will cost me to sever a connection that has been to me one of
unalloyed harmony and happiness. It only remains for me to say that
after forty-four years of uninterrupted mental labor it is but
reasonable to ask for some relief from the strain that may soon become
too heavy for me to bear."
The congregation was quite astounded by this unexpected announcement,
but they recognized the motive that prompted the step, and acted
precisely as I desired. They agreed at once to appoint a committee to
look for a successor. In order that I might not hamper him in any
respect, I declined the generous offer of our church to make me their
"Pastor Emeritus."
As my pastorate began on an Easter Sabbath, in 1860, so it terminated at
the Easter in 1890. Before an immense assemblage I delivered, on that
bright Sabbath, the Valedictory discourse which closes the present
volume, and which gives in condensed form the history of the Lafayette
Avenue Church.
Our noble people never do anything by halves; and a few evenings after
the delivery of my valedictory discourse they gave to their pastor and
his wife a public reception, for which the church, lecture-room and the
church parlors were profusely adorned; and were crowded with guests.
Congratulatory addresses were delivered by Dr. John Hall of the Fifth
Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, by Professor William M. Paxton, of
Princeton Theological Seminary; and congratulatory letters were read
from the venerable poet, Whittier, the Hon. William Walter Phelps, Mr.
A.A. Low (the Mayor's father), General William H. Seward, Bishop Potter
and Dr. Herrick Johnson, besides a vast number of others renowned in
Church and State. On behalf of the Brooklyn pastors an address was
pronounced by the Rev. Dr. L.T. Chamberlain, which was a rare gem of
sparkling oratory. In his concluding passage he said: "Nor in all these
have I for an instant forgotten the dual nature of that ministry, which
has been so richly blessed. I recall that in the prophet's symbolic act,
he took to himself two staves, the one was 'Beauty,' while the other was
'Bands.' In the kingdom of grace and in the kingdom of nature,
loveliness is ever the fit complement of strength. Accordingly, to her,
who has been the enthroned one in the heart, the light-giver in the
home, the beloved of the church, we tender our most fervent good wishes
For her also we lift on high our faithful, tender intercession. To each,
to both, we give the renewed assurance of our abiding affection. God
grant that life's shadows may lengthen gently and slowly! Late, may you
both ascend to Heaven: long and happily may you abide with us here!" The
report of the proceedings of that evening says that at this reference to
the "dual" character of his ministry, "the veteran pastor sprang to his
feet and, seizing Dr. Chamberlain's hand, exclaimed; 'I thank you for
that, and the whole assembly's applause revealed its heartfelt
sympathy." I had declined more than once, for good reasons, the kind
offer of my generous flock to increase my salary, but, when on that
evening that crowned my thirty years of labor, my dear neighbor and
church elder, Mr. John N. Beach (on behalf of the congregation), put
into my hands a cheque for thirty thousand dollars, "not as a charity
but as a token of our warm hearted grateful love," I could only say with
the Apostle Paul: "I rejoice in the Lord that your care has _blossomed
out afresh_" (for this is the literal reading of the great apostle's
gratitude).
The proceedings of that memorable evening were closed by a benediction
by the Rev. Dr. Charles L. Thompson, then Moderator of our General
Assembly and now the super-royal Secretary of our Board of Home
Missions. The proceedings were afterwards compiled in a beautiful volume
entitled "A Thirty Years' Pastorate," by the good taste and literary
skill of my beloved friend, the late Jacob L. Gossler.
In justice to myself, let me say that I have given this narrative of the
closing scenes of my pastoral labors, not, I trust, as a matter of
personal vain glory; but that good Christian people in our own land and
in other lands may learn from the example of the Lafayette Avenue
Presbyterian Church how to treat a pastor, whose simple aim has been,
with God's help, to do his duty.