TRANSFER OF THE CHURCH TO THE PRESBYTERY.
For forty-eight years the congregation to which John Chambers
ministered had formed an Independent Church. The time had now come
when the same company of Christian believers, which had been the Ninth
Presbyterian Church, was to enter upon the third stage of its history,
and become the Chambers Presbyterian Church.
On the 9th of May, 1825, Mr. Chambers had received his call. Amid
all vicissitudes, the removing to a new neighborhood, the building
first, and then the enlarging, of the church edifice, the terrible
storm of the Civil War, and the removal of a large number of his
people elsewhere, nothing had seriously interfered with his work
or threatened its stability or continuance, but in 1874 the pastor
began to think seriously about the future of his flock. The whole
trend of population in all three directions, north, south, and
west was away from Broad and Sansom, while business was steadily
encroaching upon the neighborhood once wholly occupied by homes. John
Chambers had overstepped the limits of three score years and ten. A
stroke of paralysis was nature's first warning that the best days
of his strength were over. The time seemed now to have come when an
independent church, of the type which had for nearly half a century
demonstrated its power to live and grow, was no longer needed. It was
not self-conceit, but dire necessity that compelled John Chambers to
reflect and to ask the question whether, after the removal of his own
personality and the snapping by death of the ties which bound three
generations to him in love and loyalty, the church could exist as
an independent body. Long he pondered the matter. He breathed his
thoughts at first to no one, not even to his wife, but looked to God
for light. He waited for the vision. While he was musing, the fire
burned. He has himself told the story:
"For a whole year I did not even say to the beloved companion of
my bosom what my object was, what I was thinking about, but I was
casting around to know what was to become of this house. I thought
of that little house down at the eastern end of Girard street, where
the venerable and godly Samuel Wylie, D.D., lived and preached Jesus
Christ, and I remembered the degradation which afterward fell upon
it. I remembered the beautiful church on Seventh street, below Arch,
where our honored friend, Dr. Beadle, preached, and I remembered that
it was converted into a place for negro minstrels. I recollected the
house where my once remarkable and eloquent and noble friend, Thomas
H. Stockton, preached Christ Jesus, and how it was desecrated from the
service of Almighty God to the service of the devil, and I said one
morning, as I sat upon the summit of a hill away off yonder in the
state of New York, just as the sun was going down, and I looked out
upon that beautiful country: 'God helping me, when I go home I will
tell my brethren the conclusion I have reached after a whole year's
study and thought and prayer.' That conclusion that I had come to
was that we would go into the Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia,
we would change our charter, and we would put this church in such a
chartered position that we should never lose it, but it should stand
firm and fixed upon the immutable principles of the Lord God, firmly
consecrated to the holiness of the atonement and the blood of the
saints. We did it. We went into the Presbyterian Church. Those men of
God threw their arms around us, almost with shouts of hallelujah, in
the room just back of our house. The Presbytery met us and welcomed
us, and I had the satisfaction of seeing this church taken into
fellowship with that denomination where they are to-day, and where I
trust the church will ever abide and prosper under God's blessing.
I say devoutly that we did not lose our membership by the change. I
believe there were two communicants who took some offense. One of
them, poor fellow, has gone to Heaven, I believe, but there were but
those two who left us, and I am as certain as I can be that if that
dear brother had lived, they would have, both husband and wife, been
with us now".
It is very certain that the step was a wise one. It is still more
certain that had such a transfer taken place before, or during the
war, there would have been a much larger procession of members into
the Congregational Church, wherein scores of "Chamberites" could from
the opening of the war be counted. Deeply indoctrinated in primitive
and apostolic ideas, they who remained with the pastor until 1874
would, if the change had been made twenty years earlier, have gone
like those who in 1861 went out from the First Independent Church,
largely because of their ideas as to Union and secession, and entered
the Central Congregational Church.
The Presbytery "dealt very leniently", as a Doctor of Divinity told me
in 1903, "with the old 'War Horse'".
Dr. Herrick Johnson tells us that when, at the Presbytery's
invitation, John Chambers gave his reminiscences of fifty years'
service for God in Philadelphia, the address was a revelation and
inspiration and a benediction. We insert here his letter to Dr.
Chambers's nephew:
1070 North Halsted Street, }
CHICAGO, Jan. 1st, 1903. }
_Dear Dr. Milner_:
My personal knowledge of the Rev. John Chambers is limited to
the later years of his life. During my Phila. pastorate, he
held a unique and conspicuous place in the city, as pastor of
an independent Presbyterian Church, Presbyterian in its form of
Government, yet independent of ecclesiastical authority.
He grew some great men in that period. He was the sturdy
champion of some great causes. His intense and stalwart
contention for civic and social righteousness could always be
counted on. The rush and force and downright abandon with which
he flung himself against every form of evil made him a leader of
men and a winner of victories.
He was as bold as a lion, and had the heart of a child. His
emotions were not born blind, and therefore, while intense, were
under curb and bit. His preaching was often "the quiescence
of turbulence". He himself might well be characterized "a
phlegmatic fanatic". His talk before our ministers' meeting
one day, after he had returned to the Presbyterian fold, and
when he had been invited to give us some reminiscences of his
fifty years service for God in Philadelphia, was a revelation,
an inspiration and a benediction. We felt there was but one
John Chambers, whom God had sent into this world, marked 'not
transferable' and 'good for this trip only'".
HERRICK JOHNSON.
It was soon after this event, that he received the title of Doctor of
Divinity, and henceforth we called him "Doctor Chambers".
A Congregational minister, one of the alumni of John Chambers
Independent Church writes:
"I think he must have been pained when he turned his church over to
the Presbyterians. Yet here was practical wisdom. At his death there
was no longer room for an independent church in Philadelphia of the
type of the church which he had founded. He did not lack practical
wisdom."