[Speech of Rev. Dr. D. Sage Mackay at the eleventh annual dinner of the
Holland Society of New York, January 15, 1896. The President, Dr. D.
B. St. John Roosa, said in introducing the speaker: "Before I announce
the next toast I want to remark that one of our distinguished
speakers, a Huguenot, said at the St. Nicholas dinner, that it was
such a particularly good dinner, that there were such particularly
good speeches, and that very few of them had been made by Dutchmen.
But now we shall have a gentleman who represents the profession we all
delight to honor, and who will delineate the next regular toast:--
'The Dutch. Domine: guide, philosopher, and friend,
A man he was to all the country dear.'
"I have the pleasure of introducing a gentleman who wishes he had been
born a Dutchman but who is not entitled, I suppose, to that great honor,
as he is to many others deservedly showered upon him--the Rev. Dr. D.
Sage Mackay."]
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--I will confess, at the outset
here to-night, that when by the courtesy of your Committee I was asked
to respond to this sentiment, which so poetically and yet so truly
enshrines the memory of the old Dutch Domine, that I felt somewhat in
the condition in which a member of the Glasgow Fire Brigade found
himself some years ago. One night, being on duty, he had the misfortune
to fall asleep, and to insure his comfort before doing so he had
divested himself of his heavy overalls. About midnight the alarm bell
rang. He staggered to his feet, and in the condition of a man suddenly
aroused from sleep drew on the overalls so that back was front and front
was back. In the excitement of the moment he forgot all about his
abnormal condition. Coming down the staircase of the burning building he
had the misfortune to slip and fall heavily to the ground, in a heap of
cinders. His companions eagerly asked him if he was hurt. "No," he
replied, with true Scotch canniness. "No, chaps, I canna' say I am
hurt, but eh, sirs, I maun hae got an awfu' twist." [Laughter.] And so,
sir, when I, unfortunately to-night, a Scotchman born and bred, was
asked to reply to the toast "The Dutch Domine," I felt that in the
arrangements of the evening there was something of a twist. [Laughter.]
And yet, if twist it may be called, it was only on the surface.
After a happy experience in the Dutch ministry, and after enjoying for a
second time the hospitality of this honorable Society, I know nowhere
where a Scotchman can feel himself so at home as in the genial
influences of Dutch custom and Dutch tradition. [Applause.] We gladly
echo all these patriotic and inspiring sentiments which have fallen from
the lips of the speakers to-night. We believe that Dutch influences have
salted America, but we Scotchmen have got the idea somehow that Scotland
was leavening if not salting Holland for a hundred years before that
exodus to these shores took place. [Laughter.]
General Morgan, on one occasion, in discussing the fighting qualities of
the soldiers of different nations, came to the conclusion that in many
respects they were about the same, with one notable exception. "After
all," he said, "for the possession of the ideal quality of the soldier,
for the grand essential, give me the Dutchman--he starves well."
[Laughter.] And, no doubt, when provisions are scarce, no man can afford
to starve better than he, for the simple reason that when provisions are
plentiful no man can manage to eat better. [Laughter.]
I feel like mentioning as the first quality of the Dutch Domine to-night
the possession of a good digestion. I myself have fared so well on Dutch
fare for these last two or three years that I feel I could almost claim
to be a Dutchman, very much as a man once claimed to be a native of a
certain parish in Scotland. He was being examined by counsel. Counsel
asked him, "Were you born here?" "Maistly, your honor," was the reply.
"What do you mean by 'maistly'? Did you come here when you were a
child?" "Na, I didna' cam here when I was a chiel," he replied. "Then
what do you mean by 'maistly,' if you have not lived here most of your
life?" counsel asked. "Weel, when I cam here I weighed eighty pun, and
now I weigh three hundred, so that I maun be maistly a native."
[Laughter.] So, perhaps, that "maistly" may be the claim to be a
Dutchman which some of us may make, if we go on.
The sentiment to which I have been asked to respond is one which I doubt
not will strike a responsive chord in the memories of most of you
Hollanders here to-night. Across the vanished years will come back the
picture of the old Dutch village, nestling in some sheltered nook behind
the Hudson, and there in the old-fashioned pulpit arises the quaint,
once well-loved face and form of the Domine, with big, dome-shaped head,
full mouth and nose, marked with lines of humor, the fringe of white
whiskers, and underneath, around the throat, the voluminous folds of the
white choker, a kind of a combination of a swaddling-band and a
winding-sheet, suggestive of birth or death, as the occasion demanded.
[Laughter.] So he appeared an almost essential feature in the landscape,
as year in and out he ministered in unassuming faithfulness to the needs
of his people. By the bedside of the dying, or in the home of the widow,
a comforter and friend; in the stirring days of revolutionary struggle,
a leader and patriot, and sometimes a martyr too; in the social
gatherings around the great open fireplace in the long dark nights, pipe
in hand, a genial companion, so in every walk of life, in scenes
gladsome or sad, the old Domine was a constant presence, an influence
for righteousness, moulding his people in that simplicity of life and
independence of spirit, which in all times have been preeminent as
features in the Dutch character. Into the homespun of common life, he
wove the threads of gold, revealing by life and precept that type of
religion which is not "too bright and good for human nature's daily
food."
What were some of the distinctive features in the character of the old
Domine? Pre-eminently, we remember him for his wide and genial humanity,
as a man strong in his convictions yet generous in his sympathies,
faithful in his denunciation of sin yet holding outstretched hands of
brotherhood to the weak and tempted. In a parish near by to where my
grandfather was settled, there had been three ministers, one after the
other in quick succession. The old beadle compared them to a friend
something after this fashion: "The first yin was a mon, but he was na' a
meenister; the second yin was a meenister, but he was na' a mon; but the
third was neither a mon nor a meenister." [Great laughter.] But the
Dutch Domine was at once a man and a minister. The official never
overshadowed the man, neither did the humanity of the man degrade the
sacred office. All strong character is the union of two opposite
qualities, and in the Dutch minister I trace the harmonious presence of
two elements not often found in one personality. On the one hand there
was a rigid adherence to his own church and creed, so that to the
orthodox Dutch mind, whatever may happen elsewhere, heaven will be
peopled by Reformed Dutchmen, and in the celestial hymn-book an appendix
will be found for the Heidelberg Catechism and liturgical forms of the
Dutch Church [laughter]; but on the other hand, with this loyalty to his
own creed, there was a generous tolerance towards the view of others, a
broad-minded charity, expressed in thought and life, towards those whose
standpoint in religion differed from his own. In reality, your old
Domine had, and I venture to say, has, little sympathy with that narrow
ecclesiasticism, which in effect claims a monopoly in religion and would
practically hand over the salvation of the race to the hands of a close
corporation. Now, whence did it come; where did he learn this
steadfastness to his own principles, yet this generosity towards the
convictions of other men, which has been so eloquently dwelt on to-night
as a cardinal feature of the American character through the leavening
power of Dutch influence? It came, gentlemen, as part of his birthright.
We have been told that to study and appreciate Dutch character and Dutch
history we must keep in view what has been called the geographical
factor, that constant war with the elements, which trained the Dutchman
to patience, to endurance, and to self-mastery. So, in studying the
Dutch Domine, you must keep in view the historic factor out of which he
and his church have come. I make no extravagant claim for the old Dutch
Church of New Amsterdam and New York, when I say she stands to-day for a
great and a splendid tradition in American life. She enshrines within
her history facts and forces which have been woven into the texture of
her most enduring institutions. Out of the darkness of persecution she
came, bearing to these shores the precious casket of civil and religious
liberty. When with prophetic vision she gazed across the Western sea,
and saw the red dawn of a new day glow upon the waters, that dawn but
reflected the red blood that dripped like sacramental wine from her
robes--the blood of martyrdom poured forth for that sacred trophy of
liberty of conscience which it is your privilege and mine to hand on to
the generations yet to come. For full forty years, the Dutch Church was
the only religious institution on this island, and who in these early
times, when the great ideas for which America stands to-day were in
their formative stage, guided in the light of truth the young country to
a larger conception of her destiny? Not only from the standpoint of
religion, but from the standpoint of education, the Dutch Church and her
clergy were a mighty factor in the evolution of the great twin truths of
civil and religious liberty. To the Dutch Church we owe it, that
liberty, in the reaction from old-world despotism, was not allowed to
degenerate into license. To them we owe it that freedom of conscience
was impressed not merely as a right to be claimed, but as a duty to be
safe-guarded, and, need I say?--this sense of personal duty and
responsibility in respect of the rights of conscience is the note above
all others that we have to strike in our nation's life to-day.
[Applause.]
Gentlemen, in the old country, among others, I have looked at the
monument of your noble old Dutch Admiral, Tromp, and there it says,
"Unconquered by the English, he ceased to triumph only when he ceased to
live," and I take these words, the epitaph of the old hero, not indeed
as the epitaph of Dutch influence--that will never die--but as the ideal
of Dutch character in this country in the years to come. Let it cease to
triumph only when it ceases to live; let it seek to lead onward and
upward to a diviner freedom this country, whose history is the evolution
of the great God-given idea--civil and religious liberty. [Applause.]