HOME AND CHURCH. LOVE AND WORK.
Let us now look into John Chambers's inner life,--of the heart as
well as the intellect. We have seen how the vigorous and lusty twig
which grew up in the classical academy of Baltimore began to bend
away from certain statements and formulæ in the Westminster symbols,
_as then interpreted to him_, which gave the afterwards robust and
widespreading tree a tremendous inclination. "As a man thinketh in his
heart, so is he." John Chambers's convictions shaped his message and
colored all his preaching. There were probably reasons, other than
those merely intellectual, for the young man's tremendous antipathy
to the idea that the fullness of the Christian life and the message
of Jesus could be compressed into the mathematical statements made at
Westminster during the days of the British Commonwealth.
When I was a student at Rutgers College, New Brunswick, New Jersey,
from 1865 to 1869, I was asked, as an incoming freshman, by the
president, Rev. William H. Campbell, D.D., LL.D., concerning my
religious training. I told him how much I owed to John Chambers in
Philadelphia. A bland light overspread the full expanse of that face,
so seamed with thought and studious toil and which nothing but warm
affection could call handsome. Indeed, it seemed as though every
wrinkle was smoothed out, as a prairie-like smile suffused its whole
area. Then, laughing heartily, he said, "Well, I can remember when
he had orthodoxy taught him with the sole of a slipper." Evidently
then, according to the accepted and supposedly wholesome custom of the
times, the future preacher received at intervals what was expected
to be a physical aid to faith, though in reality the result was the
reverse of what was expected. Whether the slipper was applied to the
lad before or after intellectual defection, its use induced reaction.
Whether, as is probable, the correction by leather came from the
employer to whom the apprentice was bound, or from the schoolmaster is
not known. The boy would not accept Westminsterism whole, certainly
not as then interpreted.
Above all, this young Irish-American lad had a big, warm heart. As
he read the Scriptures for himself he was early filled with that
idea, which afterwards he infused into the lives of thousands,
that the gospel is a glorious message to the individual, that the
Christian life is a Way, as well as a belief, that there are elements
in religious life and experience which do not submit to exact
definitions, and that the mercy of God is the largest factor of the
Divine life toward wrong-doing man. In this the time of his youth,
as well as all through his life, he felt deeply rather than thought
coolly. Whether we must ascribe most or all of the results to the
towering personality of his teacher, John Mason Duncan, and of his
long continued training at a most susceptible age under so forceful
a master, certainly, whatever our philosophy of the known facts may
be, he was filled with an antipathy to creeds. In a time and climate
of theological severity, and amid the rancor of controversy, he was,
among his clerical brethren who set higher value than he did, upon
"the form of sound words" or logical formulas, verily a pilgrim and
stranger upon the earth. He rejoiced to see by faith the day we live
in, even the work of the General Assembly, and of the Synods and
Presbyteries of 1903.
Ever hoping and praying for the day to come when the creeds,
especially of the Presbyterian body of churches, in which he had
been educated, would be revised, he lived and "died in faith, not
having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them
from afar". The change of theological climate, the revision of the
Westminster symbols and the simplification of theology into which we,
in this twentieth century have come, even the work of the General
Assembly, that met in New York in 1902, and in Los Angeles in 1903,
was what he in hope long ago looked for. He believed in expressing
forms of faith in the language of living men, not of dead ones, for he
ever taught not only that God was, but that He is.
To recapitulate, John Chambers left the classical academy in 1818,
after five years' instruction. He remained seven years longer in
Baltimore, active in church life and work. During this time, he was
occupied also in business, thus earning his livelihood, for he had
learned the trade of a jeweler. During these years, his life was made
rich and joyous by one who had crossed his path, and who was to be to
him his beloved wife, Miss Helen McHenry. She was the first of three
noble specimens of womanhood who were to light his household fire,
irradiate his home, double and share his joys and sorrows. How often
and how tenderly did "our pastor" refer to "the partner of his life",
the beloved "companion of his bosom!" What a refining power, what a
potent influence, stimulating to marital purity and mutual "love that
lightens all distress", was his steadfast example. It was his frequent
felicitous use of passages from the Song of Songs, that so impressed
one boy's mind that, despite his vow, registered in college, never
to write a "commentary", he composed and published "The Lily Among
Thorns".[6]
[Footnote 6: The Lily Among Thorns. A Study of the Biblical Drama
entitled The Song of Songs. Boston, 1889.]
Let us look at the heredity of his affianced. As early as 1735,
Francis McHenry, an ordained minister of the Presbyterian church came
from Ireland to America and was associated with Gilbert Tennant in the
Deep Run, or Neshaminy, churches in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and
also in the beginnings of the Log College, which by direct evolution
became the great Princeton University.
His grandson was Francis Dean McHenry, a shipping merchant of
Baltimore, whose daughter Helen was born in September, 1805, when the
boy in Ohio was nearly seven years old. When he met her in Baltimore,
he had the lover's "three T's" or elements of success--propinquity,
opportunity, and importunity. Those who knew John Chambers in later
life will not marvel why he won her, rather might they wonder how
any maiden could resist the urgency of the warm-hearted and handsome
youth, who was the largest and handsomest of the Chambers family. As
matter of fact, she made capitulation in due time and was led to the
altar.
It was but a very short time after John Chambers had reached the first
stadium in his successful career and was an ordained minister, that
the marriage took place in Baltimore, March 14th, 1826.
The young preacher brought his bride to Philadelphia and enjoyed just
three years and six months of wedded happiness with the companion of
his youth. Those who remember Mrs. Chambers speak of her beauty and
animation, and of her whole-hearted sympathy with her husband's work,
but her life was destined to be brief. The first child born of the
union was John Mason Duncan Chambers, whom the happy father joyfully
named after his spiritual father, under whom his soul life had opened
and ripened in Baltimore. His second child, a daughter, Helen Frances
Chambers, now Mrs. James Hackett, living at Pomfret Centre, Conn.,
still survives him.
John Mason Duncan Chambers, born March 15, 1827, married Miss Emma
Ward of Winchester, Virginia, in October, 1851. He died November,
1857, leaving three children, of whom Helen McHenry is the only
survivor. She is married to Mr. George Lothrop Bradley, of Pomfret
Centre, Conn., and Washington, D. C.
Helen Frances Chambers, born April 25, 1829, was married July 17,
1849, to Mr. James Hackett, of Baltimore. Their one surviving child,
Helen McHenry Hackett, married George F. Miles. With Mrs. Hackett,
these two grandchildren are the only descendants of John Chambers.
The pastor, elect and ordained, brought his bride to Philadelphia
and took a house on Thirteenth street, below Walnut, and there began
his home. Being on the same street as his church, he had not been
many months at work before scores of people living on Thirteenth,
or streets parallel and crossing it, were attracted to become
worshippers with him as their pastor. As one lady, still lovely in
her eighty years of life, tells the story from girlhood's memories,
the "Chamberites", as they were at first called, were every Sunday
morning seen to be moving with their faces set northward toward "the
Church of the Vow"; and the preacher, being from the first the soul of
promptness, "led the procession".
Between Thirteenth and Broad streets and Walnut and Locust, had grown
up "the Village", where for lack of accommodation in the church
edifice, the Sunday School was established. On Sabbath afternoons, the
whole school adjourned bodily to the church, walking up Thirteenth
street to Filbert.
Yet even with a growing Sunday School and enlarging church membership,
the way of the young pastor was far from smooth, and the First
Independent Church of Philadelphia was in no danger of being
smothered with kindness. Almost as a matter of course, an industrious
army of prophets arose to foretell failure to a church founded on
the Bible alone. Rather, instead of "prophets", we should say a
busy host of fortune-tellers, since the Hebrew and Biblical word,
prophet, does not mean predicter, but the utterer of truth. The little
ecclesiastical infant, rather foundling, needed much warmth of prayer
and devotion, certainly during its first decade. With shakings of the
head and emphatic use of the hands in dreadful warning of calamity,
the Philadelphia variety of soothsayers declared that in two or three
years, the First Independent Church would go to pieces. Both laymen
and ministers were loud in declaring that such a church, without a
"creed," (though the Bible is a very library of creeds), could not
thrive or live. The idea of success in rearing a church, with the
Holy Scriptures only as a rule of faith and practice, was scoffed at.
In our day, it does indeed seem strange that Protestant ministers
should so talk, but experience, the great teacher, showed "the divine
sufficiency of the Bible as a rule of faith and practice, and ... also
a bond of union holding together a large and flourishing congregation
in Christian love and harmony". So wrote John Chambers in 1859.
However, "liberal", or, rather scriptural, in his theological
opinions, the young minister was, since especially he cared nothing
for any man's boasted "predestination" or "election" to eternal life,
unless that same man showed the fruits of faith in holy living, he
was anything but liberal in his ideas of morals, or as related to
amusements, or the keeping of the Christian day of rest. We shall see
this clearly when we note how he dealt with one of his theatre-going
elders.
In his fortieth anniversary sermon, May 14th, 1865, which was printed,
Mr. Chambers referred to this experience, stating that during the
two-score years of his ministry no word of disagreement, or of an
unpleasant character with his fellow-presbyters, had ever been spoken,
with the exception that we are about to describe, and which, in order
to make a perfectly correct record, Mr. Chambers himself would not
omit.
Shortly after administering his first communion, the young pastor
found that "one of the original elders was in the habit of attending
theatrical amusements and of taking his children with him". What
resulted from this discovery is given in his own words:
"This conduct was so directly in opposition to what were then my
convictions of what was right, and which opinion I still hold--so
directly in the face of the teachings of the Bible, that I could not
remain silent under it, but at once sought Mr. ----, in order that we
might have a mutual explanation of our views. Upon my putting the
question to him, as to whether he thought his course was a proper
one--whether it was the love of Christ which induced him to frequent
such places, and if in so doing he was bringing up his children in
the nurture and admonition of the Lord by making them his companions
on such occasions, I found that he was obstinate in his determination
to adhere to his own course of action. I referred him to Second
Corinthians, sixth chapter, fourteenth to eighteenth verse, and then
told him that I could not and would not serve with him in the Session;
that either he or I must resign, and proposed that it should be left
to the vote of the Church. If the Church advocated or permitted
indulgence in theatrical amusements, if it was considered a means of
grace and the proper school in which children were to be trained up
for God, there was but one path for me to pursue--to dissolve my
connection with them at once. If on the contrary they sustained me in
my views, Mr. ---- must resign. He was unwilling to submit the matter
to the vote of the congregation, knowing only too well that their
standard of piety was a high one, and that his conduct would meet with
their severe displeasure. Consequently he resigned his office of elder
in the spring of 1826, and from that day to this neither elder nor lay
member has advocated visits to the theatre as the way to heaven, and I
am sure with the Bible as their rule of life, never will".
[Illustration: JOHN CHAMBERS. About 1856.]
It soon became very evident that the young minister and his people
were Separatists of a strict sort. They believed in being "in the
world", but not "of the world". The passages in Corinthians which had
been quoted, "Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate",
was one on which the pastor preached many times in the course of his
ministry. His insistence was from the first that Christian people
ought to find their enjoyment in religion and be visibly different
from those who had no scruples against cards, dancing, gaming, or the
theatre.
Was not John Chambers right? He had a just fear of the real influence
of these methods of killing time. Furthermore, those who can remember
the Chestnut street, of even as late as the sixties, need not wonder
at his earnest and pointed preaching--for every sermon-bullet of John
Chambers hit the target, and usually the bull's eye. In language not
to be mistaken and often with tears, he called upon young men and
women to rise upon higher levels into a more spiritual life than
was then common. A realistic description of the vice, that openly
flaunted itself on Philadelphia's gayest street, would not here be in
good taste, or be relished if given; but it was something horrible.
Whether the world, on the whole, is getting better or worse, it is
quite certain that the houses of ill-fame, the midnight street-walkers
and the pictures once visible in public places and in the saloons,
inexpressibly obscene as they were, are not found at the present time,
or if so, are much more concealed, for they have at least been driven
to cover. It seemed to be the idea of the young minister that he ought
to know what was going on in the world, and to teach his people to
know, while yet choosing the pure, and avoiding the impure. He was
liberal enough in his attitude to his brethren of other names, always
working with them in practical religion.
Some of the years of his first marriage were spent on Arch street,
near 13th street. In later years he lived on Walnut above Broad on
the south side. From about the time of "the war" and until his death,
he dwelt at the corner of 12th and Girard street north of Chestnut.
Thus his whole pastoral life was spent in the very heart of the city,
seeing things as they were, and with his eyes open to the manner in
which the people amused themselves.