THE MASTER OF HEARTS.
In John Chambers, sanctified common sense was combined with spiritual
fervor. As a young pastor, he had right ideas about finance and the
honest support of a church. Money was needed for the salaries and
expenses of keeping the edifice comfortable and in repair. Before the
first year had passed by, it was evident to the "Chamberites", that
a new building would be necessary, even if the law suit had gone in
their favor. The voices of the croakers and prophets of evil, at first
loud and thunderous, had sunk to the "peep and mutter" stage and were
rapidly approaching silence.
In a new field, larger financial resources would be necessary, but
from the first, only manly, honorable, and truly scriptural methods of
providing revenue were employed. Never in all the history of the First
Independent Church was there a fair or supper to which admittance
was charged. Those methods of raising money, too often associated
with religious societies, to the scandal of faith, the equipment
of the jester, and the furnishing of the ungodly with excuse for
self-righteousness, were tabooed by Mr. Chambers. He believed both
that the laborer was worthy of his hire, and that men ought to pay
for their religious privileges. He was so successful in this policy
that within six years, having paid all debts, his people in the spring
of 1830 bought at Broad and George (now Sansom) streets, that lot of
land for four hundred dollars, which afterwards was sold for over
four hundred thousand dollars. The land and house of worship, the
subsequent enlargement and repairs, as well as the running expenses
of the church, so long as it was independent, were paid for by
subscriptions. "We have never in our lives," said John Chambers in
1875, "gone abroad for means to help us."
The region west of Broad street was then "out in the country". Green
fields, or vacant lots, stretched to the Schuylkill River. At Broad
and Market were the Water Works. When afterwards these were removed
and the pumps and reservoir were established at Fairmount, four small
parks, with their trees and green sward, made one of the city's
breathing spaces. Even then Broad Street was considered the western
boundary of the city of Philadelphia.
Bright and happy was that February morning of 1830 when the young
pastor, with many of his flock around him, took his place on the green
sward at Broad and Sansom streets. With his long hair brushed into
lively motion by the matin breezes, he poured out a prayer to Heaven
for the blessing of the triune God. "Like all Irishmen, John Chambers
knew how to handle the spade", and handle it well he did on that day
when he turned up the first spadeful of earth. After the diggers
came the masons, who built honestly a solid foundation, and then the
corner-stone laying in March, 1830, and finally the dedication in
June, 1831. Dr. John Mason Duncan preached first in the new house in
the morning and the sermon was royally long. One little boy, now an
honored pastor of eighty, remembers that it ended at half-past one!
Alas, that Saint Paul's faults, like that at Troas, should be more
imitated by us preachers than his virtues! In the afternoon Rev. James
Arbuckle preached. "The house was crowded to excess all day."
How one family, and indeed a group of families allied by blood or
marriage, came to be life-long supporters of and worshippers in the
First Independent Church, we must now tell. We shall speak of one
member named Mary.
It was in 1832, the winter in which the famous English actress, Fannie
Kemball, sister of Mrs. Sartoris (whose grandson, in our day, married
Nellie, the daughter of General Grant) was starring in Philadelphia in
the old Chestnut street theatre, on the South side of Philadelphia's
most fashionable street, above Sixth. Mary had spent a winter of great
gaiety, revelling in the joys of the dance, the theatre and every sort
of worldly amusement--much to the grief of her mother, a woman of
unaffected piety, who was praying that her daughter might look less at
things perishing and more at the eternal.
Yet no message from the Unseen, sent through a human preacher, had
yet reached the ears of Mary's inner being. It was while the anxious
mother was most earnestly praying, that Mary was invited by a maiden
friend, whom she had met at a picnic and with whom she had formed
a warm friendship, to visit her and go to hear the new minister on
Thirteenth street. Mary came, and saw, and heard, and was conquered.
At the first sermon she hung spell-bound on the lips of the emotional
and electrifying young orator, who during all his ministrations had
also that peculiar unction, without which, preaching, however logical
and learned, avails little.
On coming home, after the service in the new church on Broad street,
Mary told her mother that she would never go to the theatre again; she
had heard the grandest speaker that she had ever looked upon in her
life; who outshone every actor she had ever seen, and whose message
had more charms for her than the theatre itself. Soon after this Mr.
Chambers with his wife made his first pastoral call at Mary's home.
About this time, late in the winter and toward the spring, there was
a revivalist assisting Mr. Chambers, who to eloquence and magnetic
power, added the power of the draughtsman. He was an artist in words
and with the chalk also. He drew a cross on the blackboard, and
without the element of color, but with the aid of music moved the
emotions mightily. He called upon the congregation, led by sweet
voices, to sing, "Alas! And Did My Saviour Bleed". His appeals, tender
and powerful, were responded to. Many were brought "under conviction"
and declared themselves from that time followers of Jesus Christ. On
the day that Mary united with the church, one hundred persons were
received at the communion table and into membership.
This is one sample picture of many of dissolving views of souls in
Mr. Chambers's ever enlarging congregation. His ministry was from the
first one of direct appeal. It was emotional, the personal element
being powerful always, but there was no leaving of the converts
to themselves or to neglect. Behind and above the Celtic fire and
enthusiasm of John Chambers, was the life of the Spirit moving them
through him. The converts were looked after. They were personally
warned, exhorted, instructed, and taught. During this first year, yes,
during fifty years, John Chambers seemed an incarnation of Paul's
scripture: "Whom we preach, warning every man and teaching every man
that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus". No extra or
special meetings were held in these early years, and none that we can
recall in the later days, but the regular services were steadily "the
occasions of converting power."
I have intimated that the secret of the great preacher's power cannot
be discovered by mere logical analysis. One might as well try to
explain John Chambers's influence over human hearts and lives by
his printed words alone or through mere description, as to attempt
to show, by a simple knowledge of the properties of lead alone, the
astounding effects of a Krag army rifle. The venerable Dr. Henry Clay
Trumbull, veteran editor of the Sunday School Times, writes under date
of June 11, 1903:
"An orator's or a preacher's power sometimes depends largely on his
intensity of utterance or of manner. He can actually throw himself
into his hearers so that they will, for the time, think or feel as
he does, even beyond the meaning of his words. Thus it was said of
Whitefield as a preacher that he could move an audience to tears by
saying the word 'Mesopotamia'. One who has felt the power of some
preachers can understand the force of that statement.
"Rev. John Chambers was a man of power in this line beyond any other
of the preachers I have heard in my more than seventy years. I
sometimes came from Hartford to Philadelphia to hear him in his church
on Broad street. His voice would ring out with such intensity, and his
words would so thrill through every nerve of my being that it seemed
to me that a more than human being was making an appeal. On more than
one occasion I have taken out my pencil to note such an utterance
which had seemed to be inspired, but there was actually nothing to
write down. No period could give the ring or the thrill. It was simply
George Whitefield saying 'Mesopotamia'. It was an element of John
Chambers's power. But I love to tell of that power".
The communion seasons were from the first occasions of the
manifestation of spiritual power. Often the minister himself would be
almost overcome by his own feelings, or, perhaps we should say, by the
vividness of his vision of the crucified Lover of our souls. Often in
such a case it was his habit, during a pause in the rush of feeling
to sit down upon his chair, throw his head back and completely cover
his face with his handkerchief, his hands resting upon the arms of
his chair until his tears and the storm of emotion had swept by. These
over, he emerged as the embodiment of quiet grace, dignity, and calm
strength, the master of the assembly.
After the darkening of his home through the removal from it by death
of his wife, Mr. Chambers, left with two little children, found
consolation in even profounder consecration to the work of leading
souls into the Way. His own spiritual life was deepened and his
sympathies with suffering humanity widened by his own sorrows. He had
always a message for those, who like himself, knew the weight of known
griefs or secretly borne crosses. In later years he was to lose his
only son. My own recollections of the young physician, whom my pastor
always so tenderly referred to as "my son Duncan", are of a handsome
and promising man, whose life was all too short. I remember how keen
and warm were the sympathies of great congregations, during the time
when the father's heart was wrung with grief, as the telegrams and
letters told of the ravages of disease and the approaching end.
The biographer never saw the first Mrs. Chambers, who is described
by those who knew her as very lovely in person and manner, but her
children and the other "partners in life"--his favorite phrase--are
well remembered.
The second marriage of Mr. Chambers was on September 30th, 1834, to
Martha, the widow of Silas E. Weir, a merchant of Philadelphia and the
daughter of Alexander Henry, a merchant in Philadelphia, and aunt to
Mayor Alexander Henry.
My impressions of Martha Chambers extend from the month of March,
1855, until a short time before her death, on Friday, March 16, 1860.
I have dim remembrances of my being a very little boy, when an august
lady, who wore her hair in bands low down on her cheeks, as the
fashion then was, with a very sweet smile, spoke kindly to me in the
Broad street Church. I recall how every Sunday morning and afternoon,
the stately man of God with his "companion in life", a lady of equally
imposing appearance with himself moved up the middle aisle and, if I
am not mistaken, often arm in arm, until reaching the space opposite
the pew. Then the pastor would with his left hand, open the door.
After ceremoniously seeing his consort well inside, he would shut the
pew door and then move briskly forward and up the pulpit steps to the
sofa.
Thus happy in his home life, rich in sweet domestic influences having
ever a true "help meet for him", John Chambers, during most of his
mature life, was helped not only of God but by woman's finer strength.
He was the master of hearts also in his home, having Browning's
"two soul sides". Martha Chambers once told my mother that she
envied even the washerwoman that washed her husband's clothes. In
Philadelphia to-day there are many daughters and grand-daughters that
do excellently, and they have "Martha Chambers" in their name.
Of each one of three noble specimens of womanhood, in their
appropriate time and sphere, it could be said,
"Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders
of the land".