BOYHOOD'S MEMORIES.
My earliest remembrances of the first church edifice on Broad
street, except the grand pulpit and a general glory of galleries and
chandeliers, are rather dim. The auditorium seemed to be a vast and
awful place, where a little boy would not like to be left alone in
the twilight or the darkness. Nevertheless all my daylight memories
of it are of the most genial sort. The great middle aisle, so
well-fitted for a marriage or wedding parade, but which afterwards,
when as a preacher, from the marble memorial pulpit, I looked down
into its sheer length and emptiness, I considered as a tunnel of
waste space, was carpeted red. The enamel-white pew-doors, with white
porcelain number plates, bright red pew facings and cushions, and
the lines of black silk hats of the gentlemen, laid just outside the
pew doors, made a morning picture in which color was not lacking. In
the afternoons, the aisles, occupied by eager hearers, were crowded
with settees and chairs, so the silk hats of pew owners had to be
kept, literally, indoors. On week nights I was often a witness of
the ceremonies, in which several of the twenty-five hundred or
more couples which were yoked in wedlock by John Chambers during
his pastorate, received the nuptial benediction, and the bride the
pastor's kiss.
At the orient end of the aisle, before the enlargement of 1853, rose
the great mahogany pulpit, which swelled out in its capacious center
and then rounded out with a still more generous curve at either end,
from which rose two short pillars, as imposing to my youthful mind
as those of Hercules. I remember how much I wondered, my infantile
intellect being confused, when my father pointed out the "pillars" on
the Spanish silver dollars, that two things so different, coin marks
and pulpit ornaments should be called by the same name. On the top of
these pillars at first was a globe lamp filled with oil, though in the
march of progress, wick and chimney gave way to gas burners. Even to
this day, my mental associations of the "lamps", in the parable of the
ten virgins, are those of my boyhood's days in Chambers Church. Great
crimson velvet curtains hung from near the ceilings, and shining brass
bands on the carpet of the pulpit stairs are also in my recollection.
My next impression of the dear old house of worship was in 1853, when
not quite ten years old, and living on Girard avenue, in the northern
part of the city, I was taken "down town" to the sacred edifice when
it was undergoing a process of enlargement and change. The fashions
of 1831 were to give way to those of 1853. There was another great
curtain, this time not of velvet, but, if I remember right, of coarse
canvas, which separated from, but also allowed a partial view into a
space in which masons, plasterers and carpenters were at that time
more familiar than were sitters and worshippers.
In the twenty-one years of its history, the large building erected
in 1831 had become too strait. By resolution of the annual meeting
in April, 1853, the old pulpit had been taken away, the eastern wall
knocked out, and the whole edifice changed in appearance by making an
oriental extension of fifteen feet, while in front, on Broad street,
the portico, with its imposing platforms, pillars and pediment were
added. During the interim, when homeless, the congregation worshipped
in Concert Hall, on Chestnut street. When I saw again the old church
home, simplicity had given away to luxury. It was like the exchange
from Ben Franklin's two-penny earthen porringer and pewter spoon for
china and silver.
The enlargement at both ends gave fifty-four additional pews in the
audience chamber and more abundant space in the new Sunday School
room, which, though a basement, was well lighted through plenty of
windows on three sides. There was also a large "infant school" room,
or primary department, over which my mother presided for several
years, besides the large committee room, afterwards used for meetings
of the Session, and also as a Bible class conducted during many years
by Mr. Rudolph S. Walton. These rooms fronted on Sansom Street. On the
north side, lighted from the alley, _straatje_, or little street, as
the Dutch would say, were the library rooms.
In a word, the building had been modernized, with improved furnaces
and gas lighting apparatus, new carpets, new cushions and large
galleries, etc., so that when again I saw the edifice some months
later it seemed not only a new and more gorgeous house of worship,
with the glory as of the second temple, but everything was so shining
and and clean, that it struck me as being an unusual sin to do what
the small boy is so tempted to do,--to scratch the varnish on the pew
backs. It is true that the very brightness of that varnish challenged
the average urchin to see if he had not about him a pin, or the nib
of a broken steel pen, to make his initials visible, or possibly
some music. No carpet, or terry, or pew cushions ever seen on earth
before, as I imagined, could be of a richer red, and beside the
white enamelled front of the pulpit platform, nothing ever appeared
whiter or glossier. The pulpit itself was carved in foliations,
all as glistening white as if, though in reality wood, it were
polished marble. In later years this altar-like pulpit gave way to a
square structure of more massive dimensions, Doric in outline and
simplicity, that extended across the whole space between the columns.
That end of the sacred edifice to which our eyes first turned
and longest dwelt, seemed to have passed through a veritable
transfiguration. My boyish fancy, struck by the biblical phrase,
suggested its shining whiteness as having been blanched by "fuller's
earth"--to me an entirely unknown and mystic substance. As for the
red velvet, on which the big Bible lay open, nothing before or since
seemed to have richer gloss or texture, or more strikingly huge
tassels. Two fluted white marble Ionic columns rose from the pulpit
floor space to the ceiling. Back against the wall, instead of the old
sofa, ten or twelve feet long, of veneered mahogany, with cushions
covered with horse hair cloth, was a modern and more jauntily carved
article of half the old length and apparently less comfortable. But
what has comfort to say, as against fashion? Hanging beside the sofa,
against the wall, on a white porcelain knob, was the very large oval
fan of crow feathers, which, while to the ungodly it represented a
rather narrow handled ace of spades, was then the thoroughly orthodox
ornament of a pulpit, with which the preacher was expected to cool his
brow without chilling his zeal on hot days in summer. Indeed there
were some very hot days, when, glued to the overheated cushion, the
small boy envied "the freedom of irreligion of the flies." As to the
physical activity of the pastor, while preaching it was very vigorous,
but it was too graceful to approach closely the reputed ideal of
Abraham Lincoln, who liked to have a parson discourse "as if he were
fighting bees". Nevertheless the fan, at restful moments, when he
was seated, came into requisition as often as did the historic white
handkerchief in time of oratorical action.
To the right and left of the pulpit were two high windows, with panes
of colored glass. Rather long and narrow, each consisted of two
upright sashes or divisions, like casements, which could be easily
opened in summer for ventilation. So much color, even to frivolity in
the eyes of some, looked positively gay and suggested modern luxury
more than ancestral simplicity.
Above the level of the floor and middle aisle was a large platform
two steps high and probably six or eight feet wide, on which was
marshalled the range of chairs for the pastor and his elders, who had
ample room on it, even with the communion table set about the middle
of the stage. At either end of this platform was a line of pews, five
or six in number, at right angles with the eastern wall and entered
from the west. In later years, these gave way to a screen of white
painted wood and ground glass, covering stairways into the lower
room. As for the ceiling, it was truly imposing in its great central
countersunk rotunda and depressed squares, which showed how grandly
the architect had treated this portion of the edifice.
The cost of the improvements was nearly fifteen thousand dollars,
but the number of pews became 242 and the capacity, including the
galleries, had increased so as to seat fifteen hundred persons.
Nevertheless, for many years, it was not uncommon, as I clearly
remember, to pack together under the one roof twenty-five hundred
auditors. This was done by sitting and standing, by stowing away the
children upon laps and down on hassocks, filling the aisles with
seats, having rows of human wall flowers blooming upright all along
the gallery, aisles, passage ways, and steps, and by cramming the
vestibule, which was often completely occupied by settees or with a
standing crowd. Happily no fire broke out or panic ensued during these
dangerous jams. After the benediction the trustees, church officers,
and boys and men were only too glad to volunteer as ushers, sextons,
or laborers. "Amen, Jacob, carry out the benches", was less a jest
than a reality which we boys liked. Give a boy some muscular as well
as spiritual occupation and he can stand the long services.
The most impressive scenes in the regular church services were those
of the last Sundays in March, June, September, and December, when the
memorial supper of the Lord, as instituted by Him, was enjoyed. This
celebration of Holy Communion was an intensely dramatic as well as a
moving scene. Indeed, sometimes, on the highly wrought imagination,
and under the melting appeals of the man who saw, felt, and lived the
truth, it was powerfully remindful of the ultimate division between
the sheep and the goats. All the lower part of the church was reserved
for and occupied by the communicants. In addition, as I remember
seeing more than once, the aisles were thronged even to the pulpit
stairs. Of the thirteen hundred and more members the overwhelming
majority was likely to be present at communion seasons. The gallery
was reserved and usually filled, yes, often packed, with the
"sinners", to whom, in the course of the services, with streaming eyes
and imploring hands, John Chambers would make intensely personal and
moving appeals, which, perhaps in hundreds of cases, wrought decision.
To this day "the galleries" in any edifice have to me a suggestion of
impenitence about them. Nevertheless how, and particularly why, as I
read, the king was "held captive in the galleries" (Song vii., 5), was
utterly beyond my boyish comprehension.
One of these seasons, which marked my own first participation in the
sacrament, I well remember, being but fourteen years old, the number
uniting at this time being about forty-four. We made two lines along
the pew fronts on either side of the aisle.
Another famous occasion was that of June, 1858, in the time of the
great revival which swept over the land, and especially Philadelphia.
Of seventy new members added, twenty-seven were baptized by the
pastor. Of the seventy, sixty-seven were received on first confession
of faith after examination and three by letter.
A writer in the _Christian Observer_ of Philadelphia describing the
scene, remarks: "The pastor administered the ordinance of baptism.
The charges he gave them severally, as he baptized them into the
name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, were various,
scriptural, appropriate--words of hallowed counsel, touching the great
end of life--are never to be forgotten. As the seventy stood before
that immense audience, professing their faith in Christ, their ever
living, reigning Saviour, and as the pastor addressed them and the
large assembly of communicants in words of life and truth, in which
all seemed to feel a living interest, the scene was solemn, grand, and
glorious. We were ready to exclaim: 'This is none other but the house
of God and this is the gate of Heaven'. The distribution of the bread
and the wine to the thousand or twelve hundred communicants occupied
nearly an hour. The church was then briefly addressed by Dr. Converse
and again by the pastor. All were reminded that as members of the
church they were not their own; they had been bought with a price;
redeemed not with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of
Christ".
On his fiftieth anniversary, Dr. Chambers said: "The ordinance of the
Lord's Supper has been administered every quarter of a year for the
last fifty years, and there has been but one communion during the
whole time when there were not additions, and that was one of the
quarters when I was in Europe. We have never received at any single
time fewer than seven, and no more at one time than one hundred and
twenty to the communion. I state these facts that you see how good God
has been to us, and how great our debt is."
I am very frank to say that, as a small boy, the moment of dismission
from the church service, after three hours indoors, was a very happy
one, and the event usually awaited with pleasure as the crowning
circumstance of the function. Truth compels me to state that my
facility and celerity in covering the distance along the north side
aisle, between the pew door and the vestibule, was something that
often amazed my elders. Our pew was third from the front, but I
reached the doorway, not wholly out of breath, nor usually mixed up
in the crowd. I always did have an admiration for Elijah who could
outrun Ahab's chariot and horses. The truth also compels me to add
that my idea of happiness, at 12 M., was to join that amazingly large
"curbstone committee" of boys and men, often three or four deep, which
gathered on the edge of the pavement, among and in front of the "tree
boxes"--for Broad Street was lined with trees then--in order to see
the thousand or more people come out of the vestibule and down two
sets of steps to the pavement. This was the time when, in my eyes,
young girls were the prettiest,--even more than they have ever been
since, and nearly everything in the world was usually bright and
glorious, even though I had many boyish sorrows unknown to the world.
I must be self-righteous to confess that often it chanced, that while
I had been genuinely "at church" and inside of it, not a few of the
"curbstone committee" were young men (with some older ones) who had
not been in church at all, but had come to escort the pretty girls
home, or to meet their friends; though of course the great majority
around the "tree boxes" had been listeners, if not worshippers
within. Usually on the large stone platform, between the entrance
door and the columns, the pleasant friendly interviews and final
handshakes with pastor and parishioners and friends in general, took
place.
It was about half past twelve when we arrived home, on Twentieth
street four doors south of Chestnut. Father, mother and seven
children, the normal family, and often with guests, enjoyed, after
due thanks to God, the bountiful fare, and the one hour of the week
when the head of the house was present at the mid-day meal. Then
about 1:40 P.M., we were off again to Sunday School which opened at
two o'clock, and which once a month took the form of a Temperance or
a Missionary meeting. At times, besides the appropriate singing and
special addresses, often from the Master's envoys abroad, but home on
a furlough, we had the missionary news from all parts of the world
read to us. I remember particularly the presence and words of two
Christian Indians from Kansas. One speaker, among many, whom I well
remember hearing, was Rev. Wilder, the founder of the Week of Prayer.
Among other enterprises, in which my boyish energies were enlisted,
was that of securing contributions in money for the equivalent of
one or more bricks in the American Sunday School Union building on
Chestnut Street. Another was the financing of two and a half shares
in the missionary ship _Morning Star_. I remember how the pastor
thrilled us with the news of the Reed treaty of 1858, saying "China
is open to the gospel". The Yedo embassy of 1861, giving me my first
sight of men from the Mikado's empire--and especially as I saw "Tommy"
and others at short range on Chestnut street--powerfully impressed my
imagination. I little knew at the time that I should be an educational
pioneer in the then distant archipelago.[8]
[Footnote 8: See The Mikado's Empire, Townsend Harris, Life of
Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, Japan in History, Folk-lore and
Art, The Religions of Japan, etc.]
The afternoon Sunday School over, the preaching and worship in the
auditorium above usually attracted a much larger crowd than in the
morning. Often I have seen every available space in the aisles,
stairways, vestibule and pulpit platform taken up.
The afternoon exit to the small boy was even more interesting than in
the morning, for the pavement and "church parade" show was greater.
Hence, also, for purposes other than of strict devotion the said
small boy usually took his seat in the gallery, near the head of the
stairs. The benediction over, he was promptly on the side walk to see
the largest number of pretty girls, and other people more or less
interesting.
At home, from half past five until seven o'clock was a happy time,
sitting on father's knee, while he told us stories of his voyages
to Manila or Africa, or Holland, or of his travels on different
continents, and among many kinds of people. As we grew older the
interesting library book, and the bright chat and pleasure round the
supper table made the time fly until 7:10 or 7:15, when we started
for the prayer meeting, which, year after year, was as I remember it,
held in the lower room. It was attended by from four hundred to seven
hundred people, frequently every seat being occupied, with settees
down the aisles to hold those who could not get in the cushioned pews.
The old, long and imposing mahogany pulpit from the old church
auditorium, but without its stairways, had been set into the lecture
room of the new and enlarged building. While the leader of the prayer
meeting occupied the space up and inside, Dr. Chambers sat below and
in front on a large chair, immediately outside the pulpit, his head
being just under the crimson velvet cushion on which the Bible rested.
The front row of seats, as I remember, was usually filled by a dozen
or so, more or less, of devoted women, who probably, next after God
and as His most trusted representative on earth, worshipped their
pastor. To the left, or eastward on the first seat, sat Mr. Newland,
the choir master, who started the tunes.
The storage battery of power was in the half-dozen or so pews running
north and south over in the northeast corner, at right angles to the
general line of seats. Crowded with twenty to forty out of the nearly
one hundred men in the church, young and old, who could and would take
part in the prayer meeting, they formed a reserve force of which any
pastor might be proud. Those not sitting in these special pews were
usually ranged somewhere near that famous corner, though occasionally,
for best effect, they chose seats more generally distributed
throughout the audience. Men like Burtis, Steinmetz, Smith and Walton,
as I remember, were always clear, strong, edifying, speaking out of
fullness as well as conviction. Some of their prayers will never be
forgotten. As the alabaster cruse of memory breaks from time to time
into recollection, the sweet aroma fills all the house of the soul.
Among those in this citadel and stronghold of these delightful
meetings who used most warmly to pray was an Irish brother, who once
petitioned most fervently that upon the pastor might descend "the
fullness of the godhead bodily". There were exaggerations in the old
church, but they were usually on the right side.
Bliss, Wanamaker, Seldomridge and other young men, as I see them in my
mind's eye, often sat on the western side.
Almost invariably in times of spiritual interest, which was, as
it seems to me, pretty frequent, constant and general, and almost
certainly so in the midwinter, the pastor, toward the end of the hour
would retire into the committee room--not then called "inquiry room".
Those who wished to meet him, or rather could not resist his appealing
invitations, would rise from their places and reach their waiting and
praying leader. This they did by passing westward, either through the
southern or the northern door and rooms leading out from the prayer
meeting room. After traversing some yards of a space, short and direct
on the south side, longer and more diagonal on the north side, "the
trembling sinner in whose breast a thousand thoughts revolve", reached
the friend of their souls. Sometimes, indeed, Mr. Chambers had no one
to meet him, but usually there were from two to twenty persons with
whom he had a word and perhaps a prayer. In that room hundreds of
decisions were made which affected souls for eternity. I shall never
forget my journey thither and the warm words that welcomed, warned,
and secured decision. That night the hymn was "O, to grace how great
a debtor". Nor could I, even if I would, let slip into oblivion the
meeting of the Session a few evenings later in the same room. The
decision of the boy to "turn to the right and go straight ahead",
seemed too sudden for one elder, and he spoke against immediate
reception and advised postponement. So quick a change from mischief to
seriousness seemed suspicious, if not dangerous.
God bless Rudolph S. Walton, transparent in his honesty as Japanese
crystal! How often we laughed over it afterwards--his brief mistrust
of me--as "holding forth the word of life" we cheered each other on in
the Christian Way.
Although the Sabbaths were thus filled up and strictly kept, no days
seemed more sunny and joyous. The weeknight services were the lecture
on Wednesday evening and prayer meeting on Friday. Often the first
service took the form of a big social Bible class, when in the
Socratic way, by question and answer, we learned more of God and of
His wonderful Word.
"All this work was made easy by the inspiration of our pastor....
No one could continue long a member of this church without finding
something to do."
Nor was this all. Besides "the untiring industry, the earnest manner
and the burning eloquence" of the pastor, he made us all as one
family, by his own fine manners and his training of us in sociability.
We had to be hospitable and act towards the unknown stranger, in each
case, as if we might possibly entertain an angel unawares. I remember
once seeing, about 1856, I think, a slender, bashful young man come
to our Sunday School. He carried his lunch in his pocket, so as to
attend both sessions, and church also, for between 12 and 2, there was
not time to walk to and back from his home far distant in the south
end of the city, somewhere near "the Neck." My mother spoke to him
and invited him to our house to dinner. I learned to know well, to
honor and to love the young man, looking up to him for inspiration and
cheer. He became one of John Chambers's "three big W's." He is now one
of Philadelphia's merchant princes, a maker of the new Quaker city, a
tireless worker for God and man.