LIGHT AT EVENING TIME.
In the seven or eight decades of work for the Master by John Chambers
and his alumni, besides those who have finished their work on earth
and whose names I do not remember, not having known them, or known
them but slightly, there are others, preachers of the Gospel, probably
twenty or more, still in active career. It is interesting to look down
the list of those who are, with the writer, fellow alumni of the First
Independent Church, and to see also in what varied paths of service
they follow the Master. In the list of eighteen Christian ministers
known to the writer, six are Presbyterian, two are Methodists, three
Baptists, two Congregationalists, and three Episcopal. The first
of those attracted to the gospel ministry by the pastor was Thomas
Irvine, who died about 1827 or 1828. The second was the Rev. Charles
Brown, who united with the church October 1, 1826, and was ordained
June 30, 1833. Thus began, in true apostolical succession, a line of
prophets of the good word of God.
It was one of the unanswerable proofs of the genuineness of John
Chambers's Christianity, that he taught the religion of Jesus as
something more than a set of opinions, or even of convictions. He
showed us all how to agree to disagree, to be friends, and keep "the
unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace", even when we could not see
eye to eye. He cared very little what denomination "his boys" entered
as preachers of the Gospel. What he rejoiced in was their bearing
witness to Christ. Intense as he was, in his ethical earnestness and
in the reality of religion, tenacious of his own ideas as is ivy to
the wall, he accorded the same liberty of conscience and action
to others that he allowed himself. In this, our leader was large
minded as well as big hearted. I am inclined to think that his real
generosity of mind and breadth of theological sympathy were greater
than those of many laymen, whose mental view and habits have long been
fixed. For an absolutely judicial opinion on this subject, I should
trust the men in the pulpit rather than those in the pew. If this view
seems a novelty, let us turn to the Rev. Dr. Edgar Levy, the venerable
pastor of the Berean Baptist church of West Philadelphia. Now over
four score, he united with the church about 1835. He said at the
semi-centennial or jubilee of May, 1875:
"Dr. Chambers has always been the counsellor and friend of young men.
What pastor ever had the power of drawing around him, to the same
extent, the young men of our city? Eternity alone will disclose the
army of young men who have lighted their torches at this altar, and
who have gone forth to enlighten and save a dying world.
"Many of these young men have entered other denominations; but our
pastor never seemed otherwise than glad that they had found fields of
usefulness in other directions. His only concern seemed to be that
they might be true men, useful men, faithful to God and to duty. And
here, I cannot refrain from an allusion to my own change of church
relations, as illustrative of his generosity. When I felt called upon
to leave this home of my youth and unite with another people who bear
a different name, I called on him to tell him of my purpose. And while
he could not accept of my views, I shall never forget with what a
largeness of heart he took my hand in both of his, and bade me go and
preach the everlasting Gospel to perishing men."
Our great teacher was a man of continuous spiritual growth, in his old
age ripening in the wisdom that helped and in the faith that makes
faithful. Some things were seen by himself more clearly when God had
given him the perspective of experience. This was so notable, that it
excited the surprise of those who remembered only the former fiery
days. He became less impetuous and abusive of his enemies. One alumnus
writes, "A few years before his death, I asked him (Dr. Chambers)
why he had fallen away from his strenuous and frequent utterances in
behalf of total abstinence. He replied that experience had taught him
that to make a man 'every whit whole' was almost as easy as to save
him from a single evil habit, or to correct a single fault, and that
he had come to feel that the utterance of a complete gospel was more
necessary than preaching temperance. I think that this showed Mr.
Chambers to be a less narrow-minded man than he had sometimes appeared
to be".
His nephew writes: "After I graduated at college in 1866, I went to
the Union Theological Seminary and visited him a number of times. I
was not quite clear about entering the Presbyterian ministry. He urged
me to do so and told me confidentially the plans to get his own church
into the Presbytery before his death. When I asked him how he could
advise me to subscribe to the Westminster Confession when he could not
do it himself, he said: "My son, I can swallow some things now I could
not forty years ago"!
In a word, John Chambers saw as clearly as Whittier:
"The letter fails and systems fall,
And every symbol wanes;
The Spirit overbrooding all
Eternal Love remains."
With prophetic eye he perceived also that "the individualism of the
middle of the nineteenth century" was soon to belong to the past, and
that unity and co-operation were to prevail over competition and
independency. Yet to suppose John Chambers was ever a sectarian would
be to misjudge him wholly. His very life breathed out the prayer:
"O Lord and Master of us all!
Whate'er our name or sign,
We own thy sway, we hear thy call,
We test our lives by thine."
During the last decade of his life Dr. Chambers withdrew somewhat from
public speaking outside of his own pulpit. About four years before
his death came a stroke of paralysis which somewhat weakened him.
His physician was the celebrated specialist and author who, like Dr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, has enriched both science and literature. Dr.
S. Weir Mitchell. The patient was particularly touched by the tender
solicitude of his Quaker friends, whose meeting house on Twelfth
street was just across from his home. On recovery he sent out to his
host of enquiring friends a circular containing his thanks in print as
follows:
A CARD FROM THE REV. JOHN CHAMBERS.
"For many days my mind has been exercised how I could in the
most Christian and modest way reach the eye and ear of a very
large number of friends whose solicitude for my restoration to
health and continued life has been so marked. I have concluded
that a simple card, sent out through the press, from an honest
heart, would be acceptable to all.
First, then, I owe a debt of undying gratitude to the Ministers
of the Prince of Peace, who came like doves to the windows of
my tabernacle with the inquiry late and early: 'How is he; any
change for the better?'
Again my gratitude is due to a large number of God's Israel, who
called again and again without any other object than to know
whether the light was beginning to burn brighter in the house of
sorrow. How Christian-like was this!
Then, again, I wish to acknowledge, as best I can, my debt of
gratitude to that large class of my fellow-citizens, beginning
with the learned jurist and reaching down to the humblest man of
toil. In this enumeration I take more than ordinary pleasure in
including a large number of the Society of Friends, especially
the members of the Twelfth Street Meeting. While memory lasts
those fond inquiries of old and young will not be forgotten.
Kind words never die. As to my own beloved people I may say of
them, as Jesus said of the faithful woman: 'They have done what
they could'. There has been nothing left undone to relieve the
anxiety of a pastor's heart.
The Press, too, has been most kind and generous, for which I
thank them. Nor can I pass unnoticed the eminent services of my
physician, S. Weir Mitchell, M.D., whose skill and devotion,
under God, have brought me into a state of convalescence.
Glorious Christianity! How unlike all other systems of religion.
JOHN CHAMBERS.
Philadelphia, March 28, 1871."
On reaching his seventy-sixth year, in 1874, the young people of the
congregation planned a delightful surprise, of which he thus told,
at the semi-centennial of his pastorate: "They converted these two
figures '7--6' into gold dollars, and they presented me the '76'
beautifully made up of gold dollars, containing one hundred and eleven
in all."
"The glory of young men is their strength" and hope. It would hardly
be fair to expect an old man of seventy-two, who had borne the heat
and burden of the day, and was already broken in health and by many
sorrows, to feel as hopeful and buoyant concerning things at the end
of the earth as a young man not yet thirty. Yet none more than himself
felt humiliated and took rebukes gladly, when he realized that he had
not honored his Master by as large a measure of faith as he ought to
have done.
Late in 1870, just before leaving for Japan, to which country I had
been invited by the lord of Echizen, to organize the education of
the lads of his province according to Occidental principles and in
modern methods,[10] I called on my old pastor to receive his blessing
and take farewell. Always hearty in his welcome and kindly in his
interest, I felt that his faith was not as strong concerning the
educational and missionary conquest of the Far East, as his preaching
and long-continued interest had led me to expect. As with the war for
freedom and national life, so in the war for the Everlasting Kingdom,
it seemed to me he took a too local view of a great subject. I was
genuinely surprised that, instead of heartily cheering me, he seemed
to discourage me. He spoke gloomily of the vast masses of untouched
heathenism and said that anything I could do was only as a drop in the
bucket.
[Footnote 10: See Verbeck of Japan, Chapter XI.]
Nevertheless, by the grace of God, I intended to make that drop tell,
and I felt that what man could not do, God would. I entered the
Japan, in which no native Christian dared then to make confession of
his faith, in which no more converts to Reformed Christianity than
could be enumerated on the fingers of one hand were known, and in
which descendants of the Roman Catholics of the early seventeenth
century were still in the crypts, undiscovered yet, even by the French
missionaries then on the soil. At that time, 1870, feudalism with
its mediæval ideals was the rule of society. A half dozen government
schools on Western principles, and only one or two of missionary
origin, were in their infancy. I went out to live four years in the
East, one of them as a lone exile in Fukui. This was the Japan which
Verbeck, Brown, and Hepburn by Christian teaching and healing, which
Satow, Aston, and Chamberlin through scholarship, and which Kido,
Okubo, and Iwakura by political action were reconstructing, and where
all the fascinations and horrors of the pagan world were rampant. No
life insurance company in America would then insure my life, except at
a heavy premium.
When I came back home in 1874, and in the still grandly attended
Friday night meeting spoke to Dr. Chambers' people, I told them
of Christian churches with nearly a thousand members enrolled, of
Christian schools and hospitals, and of a new Japan. I called the
attention of the now venerable pastor to this fresh illustration
of the truth he had so often proclaimed, how much greater God was
than our feeble faith, and how superbly the kingdom of heaven was
marching on. After the benediction, a hearty right hand shaken and
left shoulder patted in the ancient style, with words of glowing
friendship, made for my soul a picture set in diamonds of delight--the
last of the great man that has framed itself in my memory.