^^ PRINCETON. N. J. ^ 
 
 1 
 
 Library of Dr. A. A. Eod^e. Presented. 
 
 i 
 
 _.. -___ .L6 B81 ^. . . 
 Buffalo (N.Y. ) . Central 
 
 Presbyterian Church. 
 Memoir of John C. Lord, D.D 
 
 
 
 _ 
 
 

'^ V Ow EPerme S** 
 
1/ 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 JOHN C. LORD, D. D, 
 
 PASTOR OF THE CENTRAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
 FOR THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS. 
 
 CoMriLED BY Order of the Church Session. 
 
 BUFFALO : 
 THE COURIER COMPANY, PRINTERS. 
 
 187S. 
 
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RESOLUTIONS BY THE CHURCH. 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Lord, the founder of this Church, and its 
 honored Pastor for more than a generation, has passed from earth 
 to the better world. 
 
 Although, at his venerable age and in his frail ^condition of 
 health, this event was not wholly unexpected ; although the worn- 
 out soldier of the Cross, for some weeks had been longing for the 
 summons to lay down his weapons and armor, and be at rest, — yet 
 the shock of our bereavement seemed sudden, and our hearts and 
 tongues are still stricken with the " dull paralysis of woe." 
 
 Society at large mourns the loss of a great and good man of 
 singularly sturdy and massive character. We, his old parishioners, 
 lament an affectionate, sympathizing friend ; a wise counselor ; 
 a loving, faithful shepherd, endowed with those rare, magnetic 
 qualities that irresistibly knit our affections to his, our gifted, 
 great-hearted Pastor ; our beloved and revered Father in Israel. 
 
 All his blessed ministrations ; all our sweet communions with 
 him, are now but a beautiful memory, — yet a memory which is im- 
 perishable, and, we trust, will be fruitful for good evermore. 
 
 God grant us all a re-union with our dear and sainted Pastor in 
 the land where there shall be no partings; no sundering of sacred 
 ties, and where the Infinite Father shall wipe away the tears from 
 every eye. 
 
 Resolved, That the foregoing tribute be transmitted to the 
 widow and family of the deceased, with assurances of our most 
 respectful and affectionate sympathy, and that a copy be entered 
 c'li the minutes of ihe Clerk. 
 
RESOLUTIONS BY THE COMMON COUNCIL. 
 
 Whereas, The Rev. John C. Lord has been called from his 
 earthly career to his heavenly abode and reward, therefore, 
 
 Resolved, That the death of Dr. Lord removes from among us 
 one of the most devout Christian ministers and eminent divines 
 of the country. 
 
 Resolved, That his long, useful and faithful service as Pastor of 
 one of the oldest and largest Churches of the city, his distinguished 
 and unquestioned abilities, his many Christian virtues and his 
 unselfish devotion to the best interests of the community in which 
 he lived, for more than half a century, make his loss one that will 
 be sensibly realized by a large circle of mourning friends. 
 
 Resolved, That the Council extend its sympathy to the family 
 and friends of the deceased, in this their irreparable loss. 
 
 Resolved, That the Council will attend the funeral of the 
 deceased, as the last fitting tribute it can pay to the memory of the 
 revered dead, before his remains are committed to their mother 
 earth. 
 
 Resolved, Tliat these resolutions be spread upon the minutes of 
 the Council and a copy thereof given to the family of the 
 deceased. 
 
 Attest: F. F. F.VRGO, 
 
 City Clerk. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Pacr. 
 
 I. Biographical Sketch, 5 
 
 II. Funeral Services, 44 
 
 III. Memorial Sermon, 62 
 
 IV. Memoriai, Paper, 87 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 BY REV. CIIAS. ^YOOD. 
 
 There is a letter, still carefully preserved, 
 written from Washington, N. H., on September 
 6th, 1805. In it the Rev. John Lord announces 
 the birth of a son on the morning of the 9th 
 of August. To the father's name was added 
 that of the mother's family, and the child was 
 called John Chase Lord. When he was five 
 years of age his father removed to Burlington, 
 in Otsego count)% of this State. There he 
 attended the common school, from which, at 
 the age of twelve, he entered the Union Acad- 
 emy of Plainfield, N. H., which was founded by 
 his uncle, the Hon. Daniel Kimball. 
 
 One or two essays, and a few poems in an old 
 scrap-book, are the only relics of this early period 
 of his life. They are by no means phenomenal. 
 They are just such essays, and poems, as many 
 a boy of the same age, now studying in some 
 high school or academy, will write this year. 
 
6 MEMOIR OF JOIIX C. LORD. 
 
 and neither the writinijs, nor the writer, will the 
 world ever hear of. We have no record of 
 what books he read, or of what books he refused 
 to read. He was not a John Stuart Mill, criti- 
 cising in his teens, verbal errors in the accepted 
 text of Sophocles, or Euripides; neither was he 
 a Francis Bacon, elaborating a system of phi- 
 losophy to supersede Aristotle's, before his face 
 showed signs of a beard. He was a thorough- 
 going boy, and loved just such books as ordinary 
 boys love. At this school he remained for three 
 years. But there are no absolute standards of 
 time : the boy of thirteen, receives more im- 
 pressions in one year, than the man of forty, in 
 ten ; and these few years spent in New England, 
 breathing an atmosphere which, theologically 
 and politicall)', is unique, gave a coloring to his 
 thought, which never wholly faded awa}'. 
 
 From New Hampshire, he went to Madison 
 Academy — afterward Madison College. But he 
 always spoke of his collegiate course, as having 
 begun in 1822, when at the age of seventeen, he 
 entered Hamilton, at Clinton, N. Y. 
 
 In the two years which he spent there, his 
 intellectual development was rapid. His literary 
 efforts began to give promise of unusual intellec- 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 7 
 
 tual power. His poetry, too — for such it might 
 now be called — evidenced a nature, open on the 
 emotional, as well as the intellectual side. He 
 was fond of reading, but preferred to read rather 
 outside, than within the ordinary curriculum, and 
 as the necessary result, he never took the rank in 
 his class, to which his abilities entitled him. He 
 cared nothing for the athletic sports which were 
 then working their way toward the popularity in 
 which they are now so strongly intrenched. Like 
 Kingsley at Oxford, and Sumner at Harvard, he 
 left behind him no legends of marvellous muscular 
 feats. It may be doubted, if he ever handled a 
 bat, or vaulted a bar, or shot a gun. 
 
 He was not at this time a Christian. Like 
 Augustine in the years when he studied at 
 Carthage, he gave promise rather of an enemy, 
 than a friend of Jesus of Nazareth. He was 
 never dissolute, but during his collegiate course, 
 and for some years after, he was thoroughly indif- 
 ferent, and did whatever his tastes led him to 
 believe would be pleasurable. He staid but two 
 years at Hamilton ; when becoming somewhat 
 tired of the routine of college life, and longing for 
 a field where he could at once make use of the 
 powers of which he was becoming conscious, he 
 
8 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 left very suddenly, with a classmate, and went 
 to Canada. There he undertook an enterprise, 
 which at that time, was thoroughly characteris- 
 tic. He became editor-in-chief of a newspaper, 
 which was sent out through the Provinces with 
 the irresistible name of " TJic Canadiany No 
 copy of that sheet can now be found ; but we 
 are safe in believing, that however uninteresting 
 may have been its news department, its edito- 
 rials at least, would be read. With much that 
 was crude, there must have been a ring, and snap 
 to the rhetoric, that would catch the eye, and 
 arrest the attention, even of a political opponent.) 
 Why he became satisfied with a single year's 
 experience as an editor, is uncertain. He may 
 have found that in his undeveloped mental 
 condition, the draft upon his energies was 
 too great ; or, which is perhaps more prob- 
 able, "■The CanadiatT' brought silver so slowly 
 into the pockets of its young editors, that a 
 change was felt to be a necessity. This latter 
 supposition is borne out by a fact which he 
 tells us in his diary, that he came to Buffalo — • 
 where he had decided to make his future home — • 
 with only enough money for one meal, and a 
 night's lodging. Almost immediately he was 
 
BlOCiRAPIlICAL SKETCH. 9 
 
 admitted into the office, of the then leacHnf;^ 
 lawyers of Western New York, Messrs. Love & 
 Tracy. He must, even at this time, have had 
 much of that dignified, and winning presence, 
 which afterwards drew around him so many 
 friends, or the doors of that office would never 
 have been opened to him, for he himself was 
 his only recommendation. That he won his way 
 rapidly into popular favor is evident, for at the 
 celebration of the Semi-Centennial of our national 
 existence, he was chosen to voice for the city, the 
 feelings of that memorable hour. His oration is 
 still remembered for its poetic imagery and beau- 
 tiful diction. 
 
 What Buffalo was in that year of 1825, is 
 pictured for us by his own pen ; in his Quarter 
 Century Sermon, he says: "The population of 
 the then village, was about 2,500. At that 
 time, that part l)'ing east of Washington street, 
 was an almost inaccessible morass ; while the 
 territory lying west of Franklin, and north of 
 Chippewa and Niagara, was an almost un- 
 broken forest, where the huntsman often pur- 
 sued the game abounding in the primeval 
 woods. I remember well, that within a }'ear 
 or two after I became a resident of this city, 
 
lO MEMOIR OF JOIIX C. LORD. 
 
 an enormous panther was killed a little be- 
 yond North street, in the rear of what was 
 then called the Cotton farm. Some of the old 
 residents will remember that the captors of this 
 formidable animal, one of unusual dimensions, 
 had their trophy upon exhibition, at the old 
 Farmers' Hotel on Main street, for some time. 
 During the first year of my residence the Erie 
 Canal was completed. I saw the waters of the 
 Atlantic poured into Lake Erie, one of the 
 ceremonies of the celebration of the great 
 enterprise which united the lakes with the 
 ocean. Between Buffalo, and Black Rock, there 
 was then a decided rix'alry. the inhabitants of 
 these two villages striving manfully to fix in 
 their respective localities the focus of trade, and 
 exhibiting toward each other an enmity like that 
 anciently existing between the Jews, and the 
 Samaritans. Of course, the\' could not celebrate 
 the completion of the Erie Canal together; 
 hence there were two celebrations, and two first 
 boats to pass from the lake to Albany — and 
 which should take the precedence? — a moment- 
 ous question at the time ! I do not now 
 remember whether General Porter, the Magnus 
 Apollo of Black Rock, or Judge Wilkcson, the 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. II 
 
 Jupiter Tonans of Buffalo, arrived first at the 
 capital of the State. Happily, these contro- 
 versies are now matters of history; the two 
 rival villages are utterly lost in the prosperous 
 and populous city which has absorbed them 
 both." In the following year, for the purpose of 
 enlarging somewhat his very meagre income, he 
 started an academic school on Main street, near 
 Clinton. His reputation was already so well 
 established, that very quickly the seats in his 
 room, were filled with scholars. Some who 
 were that winter under his instruction, are still 
 among the most influential men of our city, and 
 have cheerfully given their testimony to his abil- 
 ities as a teacher. In 1827, he was made Deputy 
 Clerk of Erie county; and on February 19, 1828, 
 he was admitted to the Bar. 
 
 His life during the first year of practice was 
 not very different from that of his professional 
 associates. In the last month of the famous 
 twelve occurred the one romance of his life, his 
 marriage to Mary E. Johnson, daughter of Dr. 
 Ebenezer Johnson, afterwards the first Mayor of 
 Buffalo. This was an elopement ; but it was 
 probably the most dignified elopement that has 
 ever taken place since the world began. For 
 
12 MEMOIR OP^ JOHX C. LOUD. 
 
 reasons, ^\■hich both Mr. and Mrs. Johnson sub- 
 sequently saw were insufficient, they had opposed 
 tlicir daughter's marriage. Mr. Lord made but 
 little effort to conceal his intention of carrying 
 out his purpose, and the wedding was witnessed 
 by a large number of the leading people of the 
 village. During his ministerial life. Dr. Lord had 
 no firmer friends than Dr. and Mrs. Johnson. 
 
 At the time of his marriage, he was a very 
 regular attendant upon the services of the First, 
 the only Presbyterian Church then in the \il- 
 lage. lie was soon elected a trustee, and took 
 much interest in the temporal welfare of the 
 society. He was unwilling to go further. To 
 become a Christian, required sacrifices which 
 he had no desire to make. Some phases of 
 the religious experience through which he soon 
 passed, have been preserved on the pages of his 
 journal. It was a strong man's struggle with a 
 strong will, but the victory was complete. When 
 his mother was told that her son had offered 
 prayer in one of the church meetings, she wept 
 with gladness, and said that her greatest wish 
 had been granted ; her son had become, she felt 
 assured, a sincere Christian, and she was ready 
 to depart in i)eace. 
 
BIOC.RArillCAL SKETCH. I 3 
 
 There was still another struggle before him. 
 He began to feel that he ought to become a 
 preacher of the Gospel. It was not easy for 
 him to relinquish the hopes of the large wealth 
 which he saw already gathering. But he was 
 not long in making the decision. In 1831, he 
 entered Auburn Seminary, for the study of the- 
 ology. He might, in a few months' preparation, 
 with the foundation he already had, have been 
 admitted to the ministry without a regular 
 theological course; but with his love of thor- 
 oughness, he refused this offer, though anxious 
 to commence the work at once. 
 
 After graduating at Auburn, and spending a 
 few months in preaching at the little village of 
 Fayetteville, in this State, he was ordained, and 
 installed over the Presbyterian Church of Gen- 
 eseo, Livingston Co., N. Y., in September, 1833. 
 Of the character of his preaching at this time, we 
 may judge not only from its fruits, which were 
 very remarkable, but by the testimony of some 
 who sat under it. It was thoroughly evangelical. 
 His sermons were less thoughtful, but not less 
 earnest, than after his removal to Buffalo, where 
 he felt the spur and answered to it. His theolog- 
 ical stand-point varied but little from the time 
 
14 MF.MOIR OK JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 when lie left the Seminar)', to the hour of his 
 death. He stood firmly on the creed which ]\Iil- 
 ton has clothed with immortal words in Paradise 
 Lost; which Augustine, and Luther, and Calvin, 
 and Knox, and Bunyan, and Whitefield, and Rob- 
 ert Hall preached with a power, before which 
 selfishness and sin slunk away abashed. He was 
 intensely orthodox according to the Genevan 
 standards. His faith was not born of ignorance, 
 but of the travail of a mind, too honest to reject 
 any portion of a creed, of which Mr. Froude says, 
 when comparing it with other theological systems, 
 "Calvinism is nearer to the facts, however harsh 
 or foreboding those facts may seem." 
 
 If his statement of doctrine was of such form, 
 and flavor, as to recall the preaching of the six- 
 teenth centur\', it was not that he differed in 
 belief from the vast majority of the reformed 
 clergy of his, or the present da}', rather that he 
 was unwilling to re-translate, into more modern 
 forms, the truths which had been the bone and 
 sinew of Scotland and England, both the Old 
 and New. Our English Bible to-day, is a very 
 different book in appearance, from that which 
 King James' translators gave to the world. The 
 words have altered their form, though every sen- 
 
■ BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 1 5 
 
 tcnce speaks the same truth now, as then. Dr. 
 Lord loved the old, better than the new. He 
 feared, and there was sufficient cause, that in the 
 sentences, whose form was novel, false doctrine 
 might without suspicion be embodied. All his 
 life long, he loved to seek the old paths, and 
 walk in them. If he ever allowed himself less 
 liberty than would have been lawful, he was 
 more than compensated for his loss, in the 
 straiehtness of his course, and the steadiness of 
 his step. 
 
 While he worked on at Geneseo, the progress 
 of events in Buffalo, was causing the way to be 
 opened for his return to the city in Avhich he 
 had been known only as a lawyer, and a teacher. 
 In 1835 the First Presbyterian Church had sent 
 out a colony. The Presbytery of Buffalo organ- 
 ized these thirty-three members into a society, 
 with the name of the Pearl Street Presbyte- 
 rian Church, on November 15th, of the same 
 year. They were holding their services in a 
 building which Dr. Lord himself has thus de- 
 scribed : " The edifice was rudely constructed of 
 hemlock boards doubled upon scantling, and 
 filled in with tan-bark. Its cost was about three 
 hundred dollars." By this society, a unanimous 
 and hearty call was placed in his hands. Un- 
 
l6 MK.MOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 willing as lie was, to leave the people to whom 
 he had become greatly attached, hoping that in 
 time he woidd be able to fulfill his long-cherished 
 plan of w^orking in the valley of the Mississippi, 
 he yet felt that this was an opportunity of such 
 large usefulness that he dare not refuse it. The 
 call was accepted. He preached his first sermon 
 in his new charge, in the month of No\'ember, 
 1835. In a year from that time, the prosperous 
 young society had completed a church building, 
 at a cost of some thirty thousand dollars. It 
 was of a form so peculiar, as to be still vi\'idly 
 remembered by all who ever worshipped within 
 its walls. Built in the shape of an egg, lighted 
 from above, it was considered by a newspaper 
 correspondent of the time, to be " not unlike the 
 famous city Temple of London." 
 
 But the pastor soon became more famous 
 than the church. His preaching forced atten- 
 tion even from those who were able to sleep 
 through the musical services, which, by the aid 
 of a well-trained choir, and so large a number 
 of musical instruments that they were popularK^ 
 called a " brass band," were by no means un- 
 imposing. His thought ^\■as original, and his 
 courage in attacking the popular sins of the 
 
IJIOGRArillCAL SKE'li'II. I7 
 
 people, was leonine. The famous French preach- 
 ers, were not more fearless than was he. During 
 his ministry, his life was more than once threat- 
 ened by men who knew no other way to silence 
 a tongue, whose arguments they could not answer. 
 
 He was a rapid writer, for all his life long he 
 was as great a lover of books, almost as Macaulay 
 himself, and he was full of information on nearly 
 every subject. Facts, and theories, had not 
 been tumbled so hurriedly, or promiscuously into 
 the corners of his brain that only a laborious 
 process of digging could exhume them. His 
 kno\\ledge was ticketed ; what he wanted he 
 knew where to find at once. His mind was 
 trained to do its best, without being whipped 
 to its task. Many of his most eloquent sermons 
 and addresses, were prepared so quickly, that from 
 the pen of a man less thoroughly well informed, 
 they would have been superficial, and uninter- 
 esting. " He writes rapidly," says Dr. Samuel 
 Johnson, " who writes out of his own head," and 
 Dr. Lord was one who had rarely to refer to a 
 book, after he took liis seat at his desk. 
 
 In the city of which he had now become a res- 
 ident for the second time, he felt an interest which 
 never shrank. He loved Ikiffalo ; he loved to 
 
1 8 MEMOIR OF JOIIX C. LORD. 
 
 praise her beautiful streets, and to hear others 
 praise them. Among his poems, which were pub- 
 lished in a volume in 1869, he has not forgotten 
 to sound her honor. 
 
 Queen of the Lakes, whose tributary seas 
 
 Stretch from the frozen regions of the Nortli 
 
 To Southern climates, where the wanton breeze 
 O'er field and forest goes rejoicing fortli. 
 
 As Venice, to the Adriatic Sea 
 
 Was wedded, in her brief, but glorious day; 
 So broader, purer waters, are to thee. 
 
 To whom a thousand streams, a dowry pay. 
 
 What tho' the wild winds o'er thy waters sweep. 
 While lingering Winter, howls along thy shore, 
 
 And solemnly "deep calleth unto deep," 
 While storm and cataract responsive roar. 
 
 'Tis music fitting for the brave and free. 
 
 Where Enterprise and Commerce vex the waves ; 
 
 The soft voluptuous airs of Italy 
 
 Breathe among ruins, and are woo'd by slaves. 
 
 Thou art the Sovereign City of the Lakes, 
 
 Crowned and acknowledged ; may thy fortunes be 
 
 Vast as the domain which thine empire takes. 
 And onward as thy waters to the sea. 
 
 Mis affection for Buffalo was shown not in 
 poetry alone. To her he bequeathed his mag- 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. I9 
 
 nificcnt library of several thousand volumes, 
 containing many rare and valuable works. 
 
 No one of her citizens was more often called 
 upon than he, to speak as her representative, 
 upon occasions when an oration was demanded. 
 Such requests were never refused, though by 
 them, his energies, strained already in his heavy 
 professional duties, were at times sorely over- 
 taxed. By his Presbytery, he was sent as a 
 representative to the General Assembly of 1836, 
 the last truly oecumenical council of the denom- 
 ination which was to meet till 1870. The sepa- 
 ration which had long been widened between the 
 two parties of the Church, was consummated in 
 1837, when two organizations were formed, which 
 were popularly called "Old " and " New" School. 
 That he would feel more in sympathy with the 
 conservatives of the old school, was made certain 
 by all his methods of thought. For a score of 
 years, his Church stood alone as the representative 
 of that type of Presbyterianism in Buffalo. But no 
 one rejoiced more heartily than he, when in 1869 
 the two " schools " were merged into one Presby- 
 terian Church. 
 
 He was ready to raise his voice in protest, when- 
 ever he saw an\' deserting the forms of faith, to 
 
20 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LOUD. 
 
 wliich he was so intense!)' attached, both b}' edu- 
 cation, and conviction. Those were days in which 
 a man of courage and individuahty, who would not 
 be swept along with the crowd, had to sleep with 
 his armor on. The land was overrun with theologi- 
 cal and philosophical freebooters, who were terrible 
 as destructive, but feeble as constructive forces. 
 There Avas no ark that they feared to touch. 
 There was no altar which they respected. In 
 France, Comte had crushed and mangled — so it 
 was believed — all existing systems of theology, 
 and ignoring even the fragments, had built up, of 
 freshly-hewn stones, something which was called 
 the "Religion of Humanity." In England, many 
 had become disciples of the French Positivist. 
 Harriet Martineau \\'as preparing to write the 
 " Atkinson Letters." The nature of man was 
 being restudied, and results were reached, that 
 were subversive of the existence of a God, and 
 of personal responsibility. Oxford was torn with 
 the dissensions of Ritualist and Evangelical. 
 Brothers — like the Newmans — were separating, 
 one turning to the Romish Church, the other to 
 Atheism. Here in America, the foundations of 
 men's faith \\-cre being as rudely shaken. In 
 Boston, Theodore Parker, with an eloquence 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 21 
 
 seldom surpassed, was drawing crowds of young 
 men away from orthodox}^, and giving them, in 
 its stead, beautiful words, and inspiring moral 
 precepts, but no atonement for sin, no assured 
 hope beyond the grave. 
 
 The young pastor of the Pearl Street Church 
 had eyes and ears open. He knew what was 
 going on in the great world. He was not one 
 to stand idly, witnessing the encroachment of 
 what he believed to be fatal errors, and utter 
 no warning. He spoke plainly in his sermons 
 to young men, a volume of which was published 
 in 1838, and he spoke with equal plainness in 
 his more public discourses, and lectures. In an 
 address delivered before the students of Ham- 
 ilton College, he says : 
 
 " In the nineteenth century, the grand hin- 
 drance to the progress of the Gospel is to be 
 found in the perversion, obscuration, or open 
 denial of the supernatural element of Christian- 
 ity. The philosophy of Locke and his followers, 
 and of Hobbes and Bentham, who have super- 
 added the utilitarian scheme to the materialism 
 of the former, are thought by their admirers to 
 have disenchanted the universe of the spiritual 
 and supernatural. There is no longer a 'divinity 
 3 
 
22 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 that stirs within us,' or without us. The innate 
 and ideal are consigned to the tomb of the 
 Capulets, and the mine and the cotton factory- 
 are the divinities of mountain and rivulet. Of 
 the effect of this philosophy upon the fine arts, 
 this is not the time nor place to speak ; it is 
 enough to say, that this philosophy is more 
 grossly material than the polytheistic, which, 
 though it could not elevate man religiously, at 
 least preserved his reverence for the super- 
 natural, his conceptions of the ideal, and gave 
 to the world those miracles of art, or, to use 
 the words of one of our own poets: 
 
 ' Those forms of beauty seen no more, 
 Yet once to art's rapt vision given.' " 
 
 From 1840, to 1850, his thought rapidl}' ripened, 
 but lost nothing of its freshness, and elasticit}-. In 
 1 841, the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity 
 from his alma mater, Hamilton, was conferred upon 
 him. During these years he received more invita- 
 tions than he could accept, from literary associa- 
 tions of the towns, and cities, to deliver lectures. 
 Few men at that time could call together a larger 
 audience ; very few gave their audiences as solid, 
 or acceptable mental pabulum. His lectures on 
 " The Land of Ophir," " The Progress of Civil- 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 23 
 
 ization," " The Star Aldebaran," " The War of 
 the Titans," and "The Romance of History," 
 were famous throi-ighout this, and the neighbor- 
 ing States. A number of them, gathered into a 
 vokime, were published in 185 1. That these 
 platform utterances were not for amusement 
 alone, the reading of a single page of any of 
 them would be sufficient evidence. At the close 
 of his lecture on " The Star Aldebaran," after a 
 beautiful description of what that star has looked 
 upon in the past, and what it may look upon in 
 the cycles of the future, he says : 
 
 " Thy grave, O hearer, shall Aldebaran watch 
 when the fire of thine eye is quenched, when the 
 bloom on thy cheek has faded, and guard the 
 portals of thy grave, until the day when the 
 Master of Life shall cast down the throne, and 
 break the dominion of Death. Thy spirit will 
 soon leave its house of clay, and pass out upon 
 the universe, and perchance, to this distant star 
 thou mayest wing thine uninterrupted way ; and, 
 bethink thee, as thou surveyest its glories, that 
 its light is resting upon the remote planet of 
 thy birth, and glistening upon the marble that 
 affection has reared to thy memory — over the 
 deserted and decaying tabernacle that enshrined 
 thy soul, and which is again to receive it when 
 
24 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 raised a spiritual, and incorruptible bod}', by that 
 word of power, that from emptiness, and noth- 
 ingness, from darkness and chaos, summoned at 
 the beginning, matter and motion, light and 
 life." 
 
 In his equally famous lecture on the "Ro- 
 mance of History," having described the origin 
 and results of the Crusades, in sentences which 
 are almost as rhythmical as blank verse, he asks : 
 
 " How is it that the Christian, and the Hebrew 
 have alike suffered the soil sacred to both, to 
 remain cursed by Mahomedan hordes, and all 
 her sacred places dishonored, and blasphemed 
 by the sign of the crescent ? There is no other 
 explanation than the prophecies of the Bible, 
 which declare that Judea must remain in the 
 hands of the spoiler, and the abomination of 
 desolation continue in the holy place, until the 
 set time for the return of the Hebrew, when he 
 shall acknowledge him whom his fathers cruci- 
 fied ; and so to-day, the Mosque of Omar stands 
 on the site of the temple, and the Christian 
 pilgrim must pay a price to behold the sacred 
 places of Jerusalem ; he must undergo the scru- 
 tiny of a bearded Turk before he can kneel at 
 the sepulchre of the Saviour." 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 2$ 
 
 Of the year 1849, '^vhen the city was shrouded 
 for many months in gloom, he speaks in his 
 Quarter Century Sermon : 
 
 "During my ministry in this city, we have at 
 various times been visited by the pestilence 
 which walketh in darkness. No advent of the 
 cholera during my pastorate, has been so severe 
 as that of 1849. This disease commenced its 
 ravages early in June of that year, and did not 
 wholly disappear before the month of November. 
 At times, the number of deaths was from forty 
 to fifty in a day. A general gloom spread over 
 the city ; men looked anxiously in each other's 
 faces; those who were in full health to-day 
 were coffined on the morrow. Every day the 
 names of some well-known citizens were cat- 
 alogued among the dead. Many who were at- 
 tacked and recovered, were reported for a time 
 as deceased. More than once I was saluted 
 joyfully in the streets by some friend who had 
 heard that I was dead. It was in truth, a time 
 of mourning, lamentation and woe ; and the sad- 
 ness of the people ^^'as like that of the ancient 
 Hebrews in the valley of Hadad-rimmon. The 
 remembrances of that disastrous summer will 
 never be effaced from my mind." 
 
26 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 He began the year 1850 with a New Year's 
 Sermon, from which an extract was widely copied 
 for its beauty by the newspapers : 
 
 " The impressions made upon the sands by the 
 current of human actions and human passions 
 during the year that is past, are now hardened 
 and fixed in stone. As the soft substance of 
 clay, receiving the impression of the waters and 
 marking their motion, course and flow, becomes 
 at length a rock, whose imperishable engravings 
 are read by succeeding generations ; and as the 
 growth and products of trees and plants, and the 
 anatomy of animals of different ages, make their 
 impressions in the earth, which, anon, hardening 
 into stone, reveals their forms and characteristics 
 to subsequent periods, so the tablets of time 
 passed, retain and reveal the actions, the passions, 
 the events, which are to be fully disclosed when 
 the strata shall be broken up, and the deposit of 
 different ages, and every race, shall be read in 
 the great day of final revelation. This is the 
 true eternity of temporal things. Who would 
 think that the yielding sand, in which the foot- 
 step of the passer-by leaves its impression, should 
 reveal that foot-print a thousand years afterwards, 
 to the men of a remote Lfcneration? Who would 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 2/ 
 
 believe, unless it had been so abundantly proven, 
 that the figures, wrought in the soft clay made 
 in sport, which the next rain might be expected 
 to wash away, should appear in another age, 
 graven in a rock as with a pen of iron ? These 
 results science has demonstrated in the natural 
 world. They are in the moral world indicated 
 by experience, and attested by revelation. What 
 an extraordinary and beautiful analogy is this. 
 As in the natural world the most minute traces 
 of the lowest forms of life and action, are dis- 
 closed by a process at once universal and exact ; 
 so, the words we speak, the thoughts we con- 
 ceive, the actions we perform, falling upon the 
 sand remain fixed in an eternal record. Philos- 
 ophers say, that the earth retains and reverber- 
 ates every uttered sound forever. We make our 
 thoughts, our words and our actions, in time, our 
 companions through eternity. With what impor- 
 tance does this view clothe the life that now is ; 
 with what power the things, which we are apt to 
 regard as idle dreams, which seem to perish as 
 they pass, but whose shadows, falling on the cur- 
 tains of eternity, are fastened forever. What an 
 event is the beginning of a new year, in which 
 we are to write for the world to come on the 
 
28 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 strata of which — to pursue our geological figure 
 — all actions are to be graven, as with the point 
 of a diamond upon a tablet of adamant, for an 
 everlasting record. How do these thoughts dig- 
 nify the passing moment, and the passage of the 
 years of time, on whose fleeting sands are writ- 
 ten the enduring records, which, for good or ill, 
 we are to read throughout the cycles of our 
 endless existence." 
 
 It was also in this year, on Thanksgiving Day, 
 that he delivered the most memorable discourse 
 of his life. If the Church of that day, was called 
 to pass through struggles which some feared, and 
 many hoped would end in death ; the State, had 
 reached a crisis not less momentous. In 1620, 
 a Dutch trading-vessel landed twenty negro slaves 
 in Virginia. What prophet could then have fore- 
 told the stupendous issues which hung upon that 
 apparently insignificant event ? 
 
 In 1850, all men saw that the permanenc}^ of 
 the republic was imperiled from one cause alone — 
 the existence of slavery in the Southern States. 
 The South was solid in its determination to 
 maintain a s)\stcm which had made her planters 
 wealth)', and which promised more in the future, 
 than in the past. The North was di\-itled, b)' no 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 29 
 
 means equally. A large and influential portion 
 sympathized with the South, on the ground, that 
 slavery was constitutional. Another large body 
 of Northern citizens wished for the abandonment 
 of all enforced labor, but saw no way in which 
 it could be done. There was beside, a small, 
 but now rapidly-increasing number of so-called 
 abolitionists. They believed slavery to be the 
 gangrene on the body politic, and like John 
 Brown, many of them were ready to shed their 
 blood, if by no other means, the foul spot could 
 be removed. Some of these were men true and 
 noble. Some of them were over-zealous, and 
 reckless as to the instruments they used in the 
 consummation of their desires. 
 
 A Fugitive Slave Law had been enacted on 
 September 18, 1850, which authorized the slave- 
 holder to arrest and seize his fugitive slaves in 
 any State of the Union. No law was ever more 
 thoroughly discussed or more bitterly opposed. 
 It was the one subject of which men spoke to 
 each other, as they met on the streets and in their 
 places of business. It was to be expected, that a 
 clergyman of decided opinions, would make use 
 of the opportunity offered by a service of a na- 
 tional character, to discuss a question so impor- 
 
30 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 tant in all its bearings. Dr. Lord was one who 
 had the most intense reverence for " the powers 
 that be." He believed them ordained of God. 
 "We take the ground," said he in that sermon, 
 " that the action of civil governments within their 
 appropriate jurisdiction, is final and conclusive 
 upon the citizen." From this premise he drew 
 the conclusion, that unless it could be proven, 
 that God has never permitted slavery under any 
 circumstances, no citizen has a right to resist 
 laws which recognize and protect that institu- 
 tion. The sermon was printed, and widely dis- 
 tributed, and read, and misunderstood. It was 
 believed that it opened the way for governmental 
 anarchy; that it would authorize a government 
 in making theft, and arson, and murder, legal or 
 obligatory. He had written "the action of civil 
 governments within their appropriate jurisdic- 
 tion" is final; but in the heat of controversy, 
 men leaped to conclusions, and Dr. Lord was 
 called a Judas, and a Benedict Arnold. That his 
 sermon not only expressed the opinion of a large 
 number of the most highly-respected men of the 
 countr}', but expressed it with a logical force sur- 
 passing all similar pamphlets, is attested b}' many 
 letters which were received when the discussion, 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 3 1 
 
 caused by its publication, was at its height. Dr. 
 Spencer, a clergyman of Brooklyn whose reputa- 
 tion was national, wrote him of the discourse in 
 terms of highest commendation. " It is the clear- 
 est exposition of the truth we have yet had," he 
 said. From Washington, President Fillmore sent 
 the following letter: 
 
 Washington, D. C, Jan. 13, 185 1. 
 Rev. J. C. Lord, 
 
 J/f Dear Sir : " The cares of state" leave me 
 no time for general reading, and it was not till 
 this evening, that I found leisure to peruse your 
 admirable sermon on the " Higher Law and 
 Fugitive Slave Bill." I return you my thanks, 
 most cordially and sincerely, for this admirable 
 discourse. You have rendered the nation a great 
 and valuable service, and I am highly gratified 
 to learn, that thousands and tens of thousands 
 have been reprinted in New York, and sent here, 
 and are now being distributed under the franks 
 of members of Congress. It cannot fail to do 
 good. It reaches a class of people of excellent 
 intentions, but somewhat bigoted prejudices, who 
 could be reached in no other way. Again I 
 
32 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 thank you for the service you have done my 
 countr)', and am 
 
 Truly yours, 
 
 Millard Fillmore. 
 
 Ten years later, like Dr. Lord himself, nearly 
 all who had then sympathized most cordially with 
 him, became known as earnest advocates of the 
 Union. In many instances the same principles 
 w^ere held, but the secession of the Southern 
 States, reversed the conclusions which had been 
 reached under very different circumstances. 
 
 By the General Assembly which met in 1852, in 
 Charleston, S. C, he was elected moderator by 
 acclamation, an honor which has been conferred 
 upon but few. Early in the same year, the new 
 church edifice, whose foundations had been laid 
 in 1848, at the time of the sale of the egg-shaped 
 building, was dedicated, as the Central Presby- 
 terian Church, a name which for reasons then 
 considered sufficient, had been substituted for 
 that of Pearl Street. The new church audi- 
 torium was at that time, the largest west of New 
 York, but it was crowded, even to the aisles, for 
 many Sabbath evenings in succession, during the 
 series of sermons, which it was his custom to 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 33 
 
 deliver in the winter months. Those on the 
 "Connection of Sacred and Profane History" are 
 still fresh in the memory of the people. Near the 
 close of one of these, on the " Descendants of 
 Ishmael," occurs a description so beautiful, that 
 we will make this page the amber to preserve it, 
 for the enjoyment of all who shall ever read this 
 sketch. 
 
 " Over what sacred monuments does the Ish- 
 maelite, their divinely-appointed guardian, keep 
 watch and ward. He waits by Hor, where Aaron 
 reposes in his last sleep, and conducts the 
 traveler amid the eternal solitudes of desert, and 
 mountain, to Jebel Haroun, or Aaron's Mount, 
 and shows him the sepulchre of the Hebrew 
 priest. Sinai rises from the desert, with the same 
 abrupt majesty, as when, from its fire-clad sum- 
 mits, God uttered the law. There still is the vast 
 ampitheatre where the children of Israel, tremb- 
 ling with fear, beheld the solid mountain move 
 at the touch of its Maker, its summit crowned 
 with thunders, its foundation shaken by earth- 
 quakes, and heard the words of the first covenant 
 proclaimed, amid blackness, and tempest in the 
 tones of Omnipotence, and with the sound of 
 
34 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 that trumpet, ^\•hich hoard once more, shall wake 
 the dead and summon them to the judi,niient of 
 the eternal law to whose annunciation it gave 
 witness. The Arab guards this awful monument, 
 his shout alone breaks the solitudes of Jebel et 
 Tur, the bells of his camels, alone disturb the 
 perpetual silence which Sinai keeps, since from 
 her granite precipices God uttered his voice. 
 The wild man of the desert guides the traveler 
 to Horeb, the Mount of condemnation, where, 
 awestruck, he gazes upon the rocks which seem 
 to have been fashioned in their wild and savage 
 grandeur for the utterance of the Law in the 
 ears of the apostate children of Adam. To the 
 prophetical nation, who retain unchanged, the 
 manners and customs of the Patriarchs, is com- 
 mitted the custody, not only of the sacred places 
 within their own tcrritor)^ but of the adjacent 
 soil. Over Palestine, the Arab wanders, like a 
 spectre of the past. He waters his camels at the 
 wells of Isaac and Jacob, he haunts that wavcless 
 lake wliich entombs the cities of the plains, the 
 onl}' living thing in that valley of death, so judg- 
 ment smitten, that time, which changes all, has 
 left untouched its Dead Sea, in which is found no 
 form of life, and its blasted borders, upon which 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 35 
 
 no dew falls, or rain from heaven to water the 
 parched and desolate earth. As he flits around 
 the sea of death, so he guards the city of the 
 dead, the rock-bound fortress of Edom. He 
 dwells in all the places of Israel, and Esau, the 
 living likeness of the past, beside its hallowed 
 tombs, the present witness, verifying the inscrip- 
 tions upon its ancient monuments, the sole 
 abiding representative of Abraham, remaining on 
 the soil rendered sacred to all time, and to all 
 generations, by the utterance there, of the Divine 
 Oracles, by the manifestation of the powers of 
 the world to come, by the advent and expiation 
 of the Son of God." 
 
 It had been his custom, to preach year after 
 year without any vacation. During the winter 
 of 1859-60, feeling the need of a change, he 
 spent six months, by leave of absence from his 
 Church, in Mobile. The time w^as used not in 
 recuperation alone. He preached every Sabbath 
 at the Government Street Church. This was his 
 only absence from his parish, during his whole 
 pastorate of thirty-eight }'ears. He returned from 
 Mobile just before the breaking out of the civil 
 war. While the conflict lasted between the 
 North and South, he never wa\'ered in his ad- 
 
36 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 herancc to the Northern cause. Right, and law, 
 he beHeved, were with her armies, and with that 
 behef, it would have been impossible for him to 
 have taken any other position, than the one he 
 so firmly held, and so eloquently advocated till 
 peace was declared. 
 
 That one who had long filled so prominent a 
 position, would often be urged to accept invita- 
 tions to some other field of labor, was to be ex- 
 pected ; but the calls which he received, whether 
 to other pastorates, or to occupy a professor's 
 chair in a theological seminary, were declined, 
 with but one exception, that from a Church in 
 Pittsburgh, without any interruption whatever in 
 his relationship to his own Church. But in this 
 instance he was entreated so heartily to remain, 
 by his own people, and many of the leading citi- 
 zens of Buffalo, that he felt it right to refuse the 
 call from that center of Old School Presbyter- 
 ianism. From 1868-70 he began to feel, as he 
 had not before, that his pastoral duties, were 
 somewhat overburdcnsome. He was not one to 
 complain ; and only after his people had made, 
 and pressed the request did he give his consent 
 to the calling of a colleague. The Rev. A. L. 
 Benton, of Lima, N. Y., accepted the request of 
 
BIOGRArHICAL SKETCH. 37 
 
 the Central Church, and became in 1870 his co- 
 pastor. Of him Dr. Lord never failed to speak in 
 terms of high commendation. This relationship 
 was severed in 1872, by Mr. Benton's acceptance 
 of a call from the Presbyterian Church at Fre- 
 donia, N. Y., where he is still laboring among a 
 united people, with much success. It was now 
 Dr. Lord's request, that the Church should ac- 
 cept his resignation, so that the pastorate might 
 be given entirely into the hands of his successor. 
 With great reluctance, this request was at last 
 granted; and in September, 1873, the relationship 
 which had existed for nearly forty years was 
 dissolved. 
 
 During the few years which remained to him 
 his failing powers were cheerfully used to further 
 every cause of righteousness and mercy. The 
 last extended journey of his life, was to Cleve- 
 land, as a Commissioner to the General Assembly, 
 an appointment which he had desired, in order 
 that, by his influence, resolutions might there be 
 adopted, recognizing and commending, the work 
 of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
 Animals. He was one of the founders of that 
 organization, and was always one of its most 
 hearty and liberal supporters. 
 
38 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 While health permitted, he was a regular 
 attendant upon the services of the Church, ^^•here 
 he had so long preached the word, and no more 
 sympathetic or uncritical hearer ever sat in its 
 pews. His happiness was great whenever a meas- 
 ure of success was granted to his successor. His 
 most earnest efforts were exerted by voice, and 
 act, to enlarge, to the measure of his hope, the 
 prosperity for which he offered most fervent 
 prayers. All this he did in a manner so unas- 
 suming and beautiful, as to win the admiration 
 and love, of many to whom he had never before 
 revealed the more tender side of his nature. 
 For he was a man, whose character was so built 
 up of contradictions, that he was always specially 
 liable to be misunderstood. He was stern, but 
 so gentle of heart, that often as he read an affect- 
 incr passage of some book, he would lean his 
 head upon his hand, and weep like a woman 
 over a tale of suffering. He would not suffer 
 his personal rights to be trampled upon, yet no 
 man was more often the victim of excessive 
 kindheartedness. He was zealous in his accu- 
 mulation of wealth, and economical in its use; 
 yet he preached all his life for a nominal salary, 
 and few men of his limited means, were more 
 
BIO(JRAPHICAL SKETCH. 39 
 
 ready to bestow charity upon the needy, or to 
 lend his name to aid a friend in pecuniary embar- 
 rassment. He loved old truths, and old forms, 
 yet his sermons were always marked by their 
 originality of expression, and freedom from the 
 rigid rules of the scholastics, as to arrangement 
 of materials. He was systematic in nothing 
 except theology. He had high views as to the 
 authority of the ministerial office, but he was free 
 from professional affectations, and never sought 
 or desired any " benefit of clergy." 
 
 He had both the feminine and masculine tem- 
 perament. He was not by any means indifferent 
 to commendation, but he was not to be turned 
 aside by opposition, or discouraged by failure. 
 He delighted in the New Testament, and when 
 unable to read himself, he would ask repeatedly, 
 in the course of a morning, for some chapter from 
 the Gospels or Epistles, but he had a reverence 
 as great, an affection as warm, for the Old Testa- 
 ment. " He loved to strike again, the harp of 
 David, to place to his lips the golden trumpet 
 of Isaiah," to clash the cymbals of Miriam, to 
 cry with the exultation of the triumphant He- 
 brews, " who is like unto thee, O Lord, among 
 the gods, who is like thee, glorious in holiness, 
 
40 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 fearful in praises, doing wonders." He expressed 
 freely, and with decision, his desires concerning 
 trifles, but throughout the last two years of his 
 life, unable through failing vision to read a word, 
 lover of books that he was, and eager to have his 
 friends read to him, he uttered no word of com- 
 plaint, he expressed no wish that his eyesight had 
 been spared. " The ways of the Almighty are 
 unimpeachable," was one of the last sentences 
 he ever spoke. 
 
 While never denying, in mock humility, those 
 powers of mind and person, which made him so 
 successful as a public speaker, he relied as a 
 preacher of the Gospel for success, on that God 
 of whom he sinirs in his ode to the Deitv. 
 
 O God, unchangeable and infinite, 
 In whom all being is, and was, before 
 Creation broke upon the eternal night, 
 Or ancient silence heard the rush and roar 
 Of mingled elements, when earth and sea 
 And air, and chaos, strove for mastery — 
 While Darkness, brooded o'er the giant strife — 
 And earth was void and formless — without liglit or life- 
 Yet in thy counsels, from eternity, 
 All things were manifest — all creatures known 
 And visible, to tliine Omniscient eye, 
 As when the light — at tliy commandment shone 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 4I 
 
 Around the new-formed universe — when sang 
 The morning stars, and heaven's high arches rang 
 With shouts of praise — creation's jubilee 
 Like mingling waters, of the upheaving sea — 
 
 ******* 
 
 Millions of eyes, O God, are gazing out 
 
 Upon thy works — Who knows them ? Who hath found 
 
 The bound of Being ? Philosophy, in doubt 
 
 Explores, irreverent, the eternal round, — 
 
 And Reason wanders wide, till she has heard 
 
 The still, small voice, of thy revealed Word, 
 
 Which unfolds mysteries to her darkened sight 
 
 And proves — whatever else is wrong — that God is right. 
 
 No eye hath seen Thee — uncreated One ! 
 
 Dwelling in the thick darkness, which conceals 
 
 The glory, none can view and live. Thy Son 
 
 Alone, to the whole universe reveals 
 
 The God-head's brightness, whose transcendent beam 
 
 Is in the God-man's person, tempered seen; 
 
 The eternal life is bodied forth in sight — 
 
 The Finite apprehends in Him the Infinite, 
 
 Without children of his own, he lavished un- 
 stintedly his fatherly love upon an adopted 
 daughter. When in 1873, her son, a noble and 
 chivalric officer of the regular army, was mas- 
 sacred by the Indians, his grief was like that of 
 one who weeps for his own flesh and blood. 
 
 His lassitude increased rapidly during the fall 
 of 1876. He knew, and often said, that he would 
 
42 iMEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 spend the winter in heaven. He was so feeble 
 at the opening of the new year, that his easy- 
 chair was exchanged for the bed which he was 
 never again to leave, till carried to the grave by 
 the hands of men who loved him. For two days 
 he was unconscious of earthly sights or sounds. 
 Like Christian in the land of Beulah, he was 
 but waiting for the coming of the summons from 
 the Celestial City. On Sunday, the 2 1st of 
 January, at the hour of evening service, he drew 
 one deep breath, and his long life Avas over. 
 Within sight of the home A\here he spent twenty- 
 five happy years, encircled on every side by the 
 parishioners and friends of his youth and matu- 
 rity, his body lies in Forest Lawn, of which, in 
 the flush of his ripe and vigorous manhood, with 
 the thought it may be of this hour he wrote: 
 
 Place for the dead ! 
 Not in the noisy City's crowd and glare, 
 By heated walls and dusty streets, but where 
 The balmy breath of the free summer air 
 Moves, murmuring softly, o'er the new-made grave. 
 Rustling among the boughs which wave. 
 
 Above the dwellers there. 
 
 Rest for the dead ! 
 Far, far from the turmoil and strife of trade. 
 Let the broken house of the soul be laid ; 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 43 
 
 Where the violets blossom in the shade, 
 And the voices of nature do softly fall 
 O'er the silent sleepers all — 
 
 Where rural graves are made. 
 
 Place for the dead ! 
 In the quiet glen where the wild vines creep, 
 And the desolate mourner may wait and weep 
 In some silent place, o'er the loved who sleep, 
 Nor sights, nor sounds profane, disturb their moan, 
 With God, and with the dead alone, 
 
 "Deep calleth unto deep." 
 
44 MExMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 FUNERAL SERVICES. 
 
 ADDRESS BY REV. DR. A. T. CHESTER. 
 
 " Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, 
 or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at 
 the cistern ; then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and 
 the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." 
 
 Standing on this solemn occasion, in this 
 sacred desk, which our departed friend and 
 brother honored for so many years of his long 
 ministry, and to which his death seems to give a 
 new consecration, I would give utterance to words 
 which shall be in accordance with his life-long 
 teachings, and with the example he has given us. 
 
 I have chosen therefore, as the basis of a few 
 remarks, these words of scripture which were so 
 often on his lips. He used them in his prayer, or 
 in his address, on every funeral occasion at which 
 he officiated in his later years. This splendid 
 imagery of the Hebrew poet was especially im- 
 pressive, as his fine imagination gave background 
 to every tint and shade, — and when some divine 
 message of momentous bearing was thus revealed, 
 
FUNERAL SERVICES. 45 
 
 for him it had a double charm. He accepted the 
 teaching as from God, while each grand figure 
 stirred his lively fancy, and every telling word 
 stamped itself upon his faithful memory. 
 
 To everything of earth there must be an end. 
 To the longest life, though it reach beyond the 
 three-score years and ten, the time must come 
 when the throbbing heart shall cease to beat, 
 when the silver cord of the nervous system shall 
 be broken, and the brain in its golden bowl shall 
 cease to thrill with thought, when all the mech- 
 anism of life shall cease to move, like the breaking 
 of the pitcher at the fountain, or the wreck of the 
 wheel at the cistern, — the most striking emblems 
 of disaster among the Orientals, where water and 
 life are nearly synonymous. 
 
 To the most successful ministry, though it be 
 continued beyond a generation, the end must 
 come. Though plans be successful, and treasures 
 be counted by the million, yet must the owner 
 die ; though life be prolonged in the enjoyment 
 of financial victory, yet at length the end must 
 come, to the richest as to the poorest ; to those 
 of noblest intellect and highest culture, as to the 
 dull and uneducated. " For the living know they 
 shall die." We do not need inspired teaching to 
 
4^ MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 convince us of this. ,We know it, but we do not 
 heed it, and so God comes nigh by his providence 
 and gives us proof of the momentous fact, as 
 some fellow-being is struck down by the angel of 
 death, and we are permitted to look upon the cold 
 clay on its way to the grave. And even then, 
 such is the sluggishness of our spiritual nature — 
 while we may be convinced that another is dead, 
 we do not always reach the conclusion, each for 
 himself, I too must die. It is the single relig- 
 ious design of our funerals, not to comfort the 
 living, not to honor the dead, but to impress the 
 lesson of mortality, to lead each one who joins in 
 the sad procession to say, I too must die. And 
 that not for the saddening effect thus produced, 
 not to bring gloom and darkness over the mind, 
 but to lead to the contemplation of the future 
 life, and to the preparation necessary for its hajDpy 
 condition. 
 
 This same word that speaks so impressively of 
 the end of the mortal also reveals the immortal. 
 This invests death with so much interest and gives 
 it such importance. " Then shall the dust return 
 to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return 
 unto God who gave it." This is the proper, most 
 natural disposition to make of the decaying body 
 
FUNERAL SERVICES. 47 
 
 when life has departed, to bury it in the earth 
 and let its disorganized particles return, as soon 
 as possible, to the dust from which it was made. 
 How much better than any attempt to preserve 
 it from utter decay, resulting only in the hideous 
 mummy-forms of the Egyptians — how much bet- 
 ter than the burning and the preservation of the 
 ashes by the Pagans, in their ignorance of God's 
 purpose or their want of faith in His power to 
 give a spiritual body in place of the natural. Yes, 
 even these dear bodies Ave do not lose by the 
 power of death. Out of the dust of their decay 
 He who raised them up at first as the habitation 
 of the living soul, shall build a spiritual temple 
 for the everlasting residence of the immortal 
 spirit. But this is the teaching of most import- 
 ance : " And the spirit shall return unto God 
 who gave it." 
 
 The soul of man, that came from God, shall go 
 back to God. That which has such godlike attri- 
 butes could have no other origin, can have no 
 other destination. While this is purely a doc- 
 trine of revelation, it seems also most natural 
 and reasonable. Upon each of these glowing 
 spirits of ours He retains the creator's claim. 
 Made in his likeness and image and by the breath 
 
48 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 of His mouth, it can neither escape His notice 
 nor avoid his control. He has fitted it for im- 
 mortahty, and made immortality its heritage. 
 
 When therefore, death destroys its connection 
 with the decaying body, it must make its way 
 directly to its maker to learn its everlasting des- 
 tination. As neither the fact of existence, nor 
 the time and place of our being was left to our 
 own choice, as in all this we are under the control 
 of the Almighty Maker's will, so our future home 
 must be settled by Him — to Him must the spirit 
 return as soon as it is freed from its fetters of 
 clay — when it becomes capable of reaching the 
 divine presence. It cannot stay here, where as 
 we know by experience, earthly bodies are essen- 
 tial to the spiritual movement and development. 
 It cannot go to some other world beyond the 
 reach of God's presence, for that presence per- 
 vades the entire universe. The spirit in obedi- 
 ence to the law of its being must return unto 
 God who gave it. Nor are we left in any doubt 
 as to the method of securing a favorable recep- 
 tion for the immortal part when it shall have put 
 off mortalit}-. h^iith in the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 penitence for sin, and the purpose to sin no more, 
 and a life si)cnt under the iufiuciice of such faith 
 
FUNERAL SERVICES. 49 
 
 and penitence, shall secure for us admission to 
 the joys of God's special presence in Heaven ; 
 for the want of this we are taught we must be 
 banished from that joy forever. What moment- 
 ous weight is thus given to every death, not that 
 a life has ceased on earth, not that a human body 
 is given up to be turned back to dust, but that 
 a spirit has gone to God to receive its reward 
 for eternity; that an earthly probation has come 
 to an end, and an unchangeable condition of joy 
 or of woe has been begun. These are the sim- 
 plest teachings of the word of God upon this 
 subject. So we have the solemn warning given 
 to each one of us, " Prepare to meet thy God." 
 We need a preparation. Sinners as we are, we 
 cannot risk a rejection of the spirit, when after 
 death it must make its way to God. The proba- 
 bility is too great that sin and holiness will not 
 agree. We need assurance in some way, that 
 even in our imperfection and our guilt, we can 
 come before our God acceptably, and while sci- 
 ence and philosophy cannot answer, while in our 
 deepest unaided reasonings we cannot reach any 
 satisfactory result, while darkness and doubt ob- 
 scure the entire future, revelation speaks out, and 
 immortal life is brought to light by Jesus Christ 
 
50 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 in the Gospel. We are creatures of God. We 
 have sinned againt him. We deserve eternal 
 death. We are doomed to endless woe. But 
 the Saviour has come for our relief. He has 
 made atonement for us. He has borne our pun- 
 ishment. For His sake we may be pardoned. 
 We have but to believe on Him, accepting Him 
 as our Saviour, and to prove that this belief is 
 genuine by a consistent religious life, and then 
 for His sake we are restored to God's favor and 
 made sure of everlasting life. 
 
 We are living amid religious privileges that we 
 may have an opportunity to become the disciples 
 of Christ that we may become the friends of 
 God. This is the most momentous of all ques- 
 tions for each one of us — have I such a belief 
 in the Lord Jesus Christ that He has become 
 my Saviour? It is to give the answer to this 
 question that your spirit and mine, must return 
 at once to God, \\hcn life is ended. What a 
 change is thus made in a moment. Now the 
 spirit, joined to the body, is here surrounded by 
 the earthly and the mortal, perhaps ignoring the 
 existence, or not perceiving the presence of its 
 God ; now, in a moment, as disease has accom- 
 ])lishcd its work, or as some accident brings life 
 
FUNERAL SERVICES. 5 I 
 
 to a sudden end, now, in a moment, that spirit, 
 your spirit, yourself, is standing before God, far 
 removed from all the surroundings of earth and 
 of time, to learn your final and eternal destina- 
 tion. There is no more uncertainty, no more 
 probation, no delay. You must be welcomed as 
 one of His own dear children, because you are 
 joined by faith to His Son, or must be sent away 
 forever, never more to share in His mercy or to 
 partake of His love. Is not death important 
 then ? Should we not be ready to meet it at 
 any unexpected moment? Have you, who meet 
 here in presence of the dead, such a hope in 
 Christ as will prove an anchor of the soul in the 
 trying hour? Have you such a hope, such an 
 assurance as he had, who from his coffin, is en- 
 forcing these solemn considerations upon you ? 
 Do you believe in the Saviour, whose atoning- 
 sacrifice it was his joy to make known for more 
 than forty years? It seems fitting that he should 
 be brought here, on his way to the grave, once 
 more to utter, though with silent lips, the mes- 
 sages of salvation. Will not some of you who 
 refused to listen before, now give heed ; though 
 being dead, he yet speaketh ? I have sought to 
 say what I believe he would wish me to say in 
 
52 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 this solemn audience. I believe, could he speak, 
 he would si\y, " speak not of me in eulogy, but 
 proclaim once more salvation by grace through 
 the Lord Jesus Christ — speak of impending death, 
 of the return of the spirit to God and of the way 
 to secure the friendship and everlasting favor of 
 God, through Jesus Christ. Let the echoes of 
 these great truths, which I have sought to pro- 
 claim with my living voice in all these years of 
 my ministry, ring over my coffin, while from my 
 mute lips the warning comes once more to my 
 congregation — to my old friends and neighbors — ■ 
 to every one who can hear it, ' Prepare to meet 
 thy God.' " 
 
 Yet, I cannot close without a word of another 
 kind. Dr. Lord's long and faithful service as a 
 preacher of righteousness must be acknowledged 
 by his brethren. I have been working by his side 
 for nearly thirty years, and it would be an un- 
 pardonable omission if I did not bear testimony 
 to his faithfulness to all the fundamental doc- 
 trines of the gospel, and his fearlessness and 
 boldness in proclaiming whatever his own mind 
 receiv^ed as the truth on any religious or political 
 question, however unpopular for the time, that 
 truth might be. Whichever side he might take, 
 
FUNERAL SERVICES. 53 
 
 on any important topic of Church or State, he 
 was always true to his own convictions, and 
 advocated his cause under the influence of the 
 purest and noblest principles, both of piety and 
 patriotism. Of his success in building up and 
 developing this large and important Church, his 
 pastor will doubtless speak at large ; but it is a 
 grand work of a life-time if nothing else had 
 been accomplished. Of his identification with 
 Buffalo, and his love for its interests, mention 
 has already been made in the action of the city 
 government, and in the various resolutions occa- 
 sioned by his death. Though for some time 
 withdrawn from active life, yet it may be ques- 
 tioned whether such a breach could be made by 
 the death of any other man in this community. 
 We mourn for him as for a father beloved ; we 
 cherish his memory ; we will seek to profit by 
 his example. 
 
 There was something in his life that seems to 
 make especially appropriate to himself one of 
 his own admirable verses on the Apostle Paul : 
 
 " O miracle of sovereign grace, the persecuting Saul 
 Hath run by faith the Christian race, and is 'such a 
 one as Paul 
 5 
 
54 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 The aged,' prisoner of the Lord, whose time is near at 
 
 hand, 
 And who looks for his departure as the storm-tossed look 
 
 for land ; 
 For there's ' a house not made with hands ' that nev-er 
 
 shall decay, 
 The Lord of Hosts, the righteous Judge, shall give me 
 
 in that day." 
 
 ADDRESS BY REV. D. R. FRAZER. 
 
 When God sent the fiery chariot to bear EHjah 
 from his work to his rest, so profound was Elisha's 
 sense of the great loss he had sustained in the 
 removal of his leader, teacher and friend, that, in- 
 stead of attempting an analysis of his character, or 
 rehearsing the exploits of the departed prophet, he 
 cried out in deepest anguish of spirit, " My Father, 
 my Father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen 
 thereof!" Realizing the fact that greater than 
 all spoken grief is that which is unspoken and 
 unspeakable ; realizing the fact that words cannot 
 adequately portray the tenderest emotions of the 
 heart, Elisha regarded and accepted silence as the 
 most befitting expression of his deep grief. 
 
 Lamenting, as we do to-day, the loss of a be- 
 loved father in Christ, one whose many years, 
 whose personal traits, whose long term and faith- 
 
FUNERAL SERVICES. 55 
 
 ful service in the Christian ministry entitle him to 
 this distinction ; coming, as we do to-day, to pay 
 our last sad tributes of respect and affection to 
 him before we bear him hence to his rest, we may 
 well imitate the example of the prophet, and let 
 our words be few, since our words, be they never 
 so fitly chosen, must fail to embody our sense of 
 the deep loss which we have sustained. 
 
 Although death is a very common event in our 
 world, yet in no sense, is it a common event 
 which calls us together to-day. A great light, 
 which has shone for over a half a century in this 
 community, and in whose radiance we all have 
 rejoiced, has suddenly been extinguished. No, 
 not extinguished, for we read that "they that turn 
 many to righteousness shall shine as the stars 
 forever and ever." Not extinguished, but only 
 removed to shine yonder with brighter beam and 
 more glorious ray, yet so removed that hereafter 
 the radiance shall burst upon us, only from the 
 historic past. 
 
 Although grief is the ordinary attendant of 
 death, it is in no sense, an ordinary grief which 
 burdens our heart to-day. The soldier, who in 
 the vigor of his early manhood enlisted for Christ 
 and threw away the scabbard, has now laid down 
 
56 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 the sword. The man of strong mind, of deep 
 affection, of imperial will, of invincible determi- 
 nation, of earnest piety, has now fallen on sleep. 
 The bereavement has cast its sable pall, not only 
 over this Church, which bewails the loss of its 
 founder and first pastor, but over all these 
 Churches, aye, over every heart and home in this 
 community, for the universal conviction is, that 
 " a prince and a great man has fallen to-day in 
 Israel." 
 
 Although we may not accept as an absolute 
 statement of fact the maxim that " circumstances 
 make the man," yet it is true, within given limits, 
 that circumstances do exert a powerful influence 
 in the formation of our characters and in the 
 determination of our life-record. 
 
 By force of circumstances a part of the min- 
 istry of our departed father was largely contro- 
 versial. He served in the time of great ecclesias- 
 tical excitement ; in the days of fierce theological 
 contentions, and he will live in history as one of 
 the central features of those troubled times. He 
 heartily loved discussion, and his logical mind 
 would rush into argument with all the zest that 
 the well-trained war-horse rushes into the battle, 
 and whatever may be our views in relation to 
 
FUNERAL SERVICES. 57 
 
 the sentiments which he adv^anced, no one can 
 question the fact, that among all the contestants 
 there was none more decided in opinion, none 
 more loyal to conviction of right and truth and 
 duty than was he. 
 
 But these are not the things by which we, his 
 friends, his neighbors, his brethren, remember 
 him. When we want his record, we look at the 
 permanent work which he wrought for Christ. 
 When we want to see his memorial, we lift our 
 eyes and look about us. This Church of Christ 
 gathered by his energy, this colossal edifice built 
 by his perseverance, are more abiding testimo- 
 nials to his worth and his work, than would be 
 the most gorgeous, symmetrical and costly mau- 
 soleum which affection could rear to his memory. 
 Others may recall the logician, the theologian, 
 the disputant. We remember only the man of 
 childlike simplicity, of marked unselfishness, of 
 deepest piety. We retain, in grateful recollec- 
 tion, not simply those sterner elements of char- 
 acter which go to make up the strong man, but 
 also that singular gentleness and winning tender- 
 ness which softened and sanctified these. And 
 how beautifully these sweeter traits were mani- 
 fested in the last days. I have sometimes 
 
58 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 thought that the problem of life most difficult 
 of solution is the problem, " how may we grow 
 old gracefully?" It is indeed a hard thing, for 
 one who has mingled among the activities of 
 life, to find, by reason of advancing age and the 
 many infirmities which age brings, that he is no 
 longer able to keep step with the world's prog- 
 ress, but, despite his disinclination, is compelled 
 to fall back among the stragglers. It must be a 
 still harder thing for a man, who, by his own zeal 
 and energy, has made for himself an honored 
 place and name, to be compelled to step aside 
 and allow another to occupy his position. The 
 average man would be jealous ; the old man 
 would be out of s}'mpathy with the plans and 
 projects of the younger. But what a beautiful 
 solution to this problem did our dear father give. 
 I may not anticipate what my brother Wood will 
 doubtless tell you in his memorial discourse on 
 next Sunday evening respecting the character 
 of his personal relations to the departed, further 
 than to state that which our brother's modesty 
 may hinder him from presenting. Instead of 
 that carping, scorching criticism which some old 
 pastors feel in conscience bound to inflict upon 
 their successors, this dear man of God has told 
 
FUNERAL SERVICES. 59 
 
 me repeatedly that he considered himself the 
 greatest admirer of this young brother's ability, 
 and that he devoutly thanked God for the success 
 which had attended his ministrations, and I hold 
 that there is nothing within the reach of human 
 possibilities that could more clearly manifest the 
 real nobility of the man. 
 
 If you will pardon a personal reference, I can 
 say that the same thoughtfulness and tenderness 
 were also extended in a marked manner to me. 
 Dr. Lord was a positive man in every respect 
 — a negative in none. If he liked you, you 
 knew it, and I have the satisfaction of knowing, 
 that for some reason or other, he liked me, and 
 doubtless to that fact my selection for the present 
 service may be ascribed. You, brethren of the 
 Central Church, will remember how touchingly 
 and earnestly he urged upon you, during the prog- 
 ress of the extra service of last winter, the duty 
 of caring for your pastor; how solemnly he en- 
 joined you not to allow him to overtax himself, 
 and you may remember the illustration he ad- 
 duced to enforce his appeal when he said, " that 
 dear brother of the First Church must die before 
 spring, and that because of overwork." Thank 
 God the dear old father was wrong in his conclu- 
 
6o MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 sion, because wrongly informed as to the facts of 
 the case, yet this same tender solicitude has been 
 the characteristic feature of his intercourse with 
 me. In almost the last conversation I had with 
 him, he pressed upon me the importance and 
 necessity of caring for my health, and then said, 
 " My dear brother, I have passed the compli- 
 mentary age. I never do anything for compli- 
 ment, and I never want any compliment paid me. 
 Never ask me to preach for you as a compliment, 
 but when and whenever you have a real need, 
 whenever I can really serve you, call upon me 
 without the slightest hesitation." This was the 
 man as I knew him, and is it any marvel as I 
 stand beside his lifeless form with these tender 
 recollections running through my mind, that for 
 one I feel, as doubtless we all feel, like crying 
 aloud with the Prophet, " My Father, my 
 Father ! " 
 
 Very appropriately we have brought the old 
 pilgrim back once more to the place of his toils, 
 his trials and his triumphs, but only to bear him 
 hence to his last long resting place. Never again 
 shall we see that patriarchal form in this sacred 
 desk ; never again will he dispense to you the 
 emblems of the broken body and the shed blood ; 
 
FUNERAL SERVICES. 6l 
 
 never again will that well known voice awake the 
 slumbering echoes of this house of God. He has 
 done his w^ork, and has done it well. For nearly 
 a half century he has occupied a public position, 
 yet he comes down to the grave without an 
 enemy, without a stain upon his character or a 
 spot upon his reputation. Life's labors over, he 
 rests in Christ, and we shall see him again only 
 when this mortal shall have put on immortality. 
 Although we may not speak his worth or esti- 
 mate our loss, yet we may imitate his example, 
 and we will enshrine among our dearest earthly 
 memories the name of John C. Lord. 
 
62 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 MEMORIAL SERMON. 
 
 BY REV. CHAS. WOOD. ■ 
 
 " Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen 
 this day in Israel?" — II Samuel, 3: 38. 
 
 A PRINCE, though the blood of kings or nobles 
 flowed not in his veins; though no sovereign's 
 hand had placed the star or the ribbon upon 
 his breast. A prince among men, by God's gifts 
 of nature and of grace. No fitting eulogy can 
 be spoken of him whom we this hour seek to 
 honor; already it has found utterance in the 
 gathering of this great assemblage, in the gar- 
 lands of respect cast upon his grave by the 
 members of the Common Council and of the 
 Press, in his own works which do follow him 
 while he now rests from his labors, in the very 
 walls and stones of this edifice; most of all, in 
 the Christian lives of multitudes who were led by 
 him in the way of truth, and in the tears of those 
 who in nearly every town and hamlet of our State, 
 as well as in our own city, hear with unfeigned 
 sorrow of his departure. 
 
MEMORIAL SERMON. 63 
 
 The eloquent biographer of one of the most 
 brilHant of English historians and essayists, is 
 content to find all needed hereditary honors for 
 his hero in " a genealogy which derives from a 
 Scotch manse." We too are content to trace 
 back the stream of John Chase Lord's life to a 
 source equally honorable. He was born in a New 
 England parsonage, and to the day of his death 
 the influences of that home were marked in his 
 habits of thought and of speech. 
 
 The years of his sojourn upon this earth were 
 almost commensurate with the history of this city. 
 It was in 1801 that the foundations of Buffalo 
 were laid — it was on the ninth of August, 1 805, 
 that he began the struggle of life. In early boy- 
 hood he attended a common school. Afterward 
 he received instruction at one of the academies of 
 New Hampshire, his native State. Neither in 
 these schools, nor at Hamilton College, which he 
 entered at the age of seventeen, did he give prom- 
 ise of a career so full of usefulness as that which 
 has now closed. Few could have foretold, unless 
 gifted with the keenest powers of reading char- 
 acter, that such a lad would develop into such a 
 man. " I was wild and reckless," he says, and 
 though he had great reverence for all that was 
 
64 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 true and good, his better purposes were often 
 overborne by the strong tides which swept 
 through his impetuous heart. Like Paul, in the 
 days when he sat at the feet of GamaHel, he saw 
 no beauty in that Master whom he has since so 
 faithfully served. 
 
 In his journal, begun, as he tells us, "for the 
 purpose of recording and keeping in remembrance 
 the wonderful mercies of Almighty God," he 
 writes, that in his school and college life, he was 
 a source of constant grief to his Christian parents, 
 because of his repeated refusals to give heed to 
 Divine truth. Leaving college before the end of 
 the regular course, he spent some months in Can- 
 ada as the editor of a paper. Thence he came to 
 Buffalo. He reached the village in 1825, with 
 eighteen pence in his pocket, with no prospect of 
 receiving aid from influential friends, of whom at 
 that time he had not one of the many hundreds, 
 who in later days esteemed it an honor to call 
 him by that name. 
 
 For the first year, while pursuing the study of 
 the law, his chosen profession, " I was barely 
 able," he sa}'s, " to procure sustenance." But he 
 had formed resolutions of frugality and industry 
 at the close of his college life, to which he now 
 
MEMORIAL SERMON. 65 
 
 faithfully clung, and in which he found his best 
 friends. He was determined to succeed, and he 
 did. He pushed his way rapidly. He began to 
 make money. Instead of spending it in extrava- 
 gance, he invested it judiciously. " In 1828," he 
 says, " I married my beloved wife. On every side 
 my prosperity was enlarged," and then he analyzes 
 the motives which at this time ruled his life. God 
 was not in all his thoughts. In the Church itself 
 the world was ever present. He heard the truth, 
 but he heeded it not. There is nothing more in- 
 teresting in his journal than the account he gives 
 of his first religious impressions. 
 
 " About this time," he writes, " my wife began 
 to be very thoughtful upon religious subjects. I 
 noticed the change, but had not so far lost my 
 respect for religion as to dissuade her from cher- 
 ishing such thoughts ;" but he says, " there was 
 no more worldly-minded young man in the village 
 of Buffalo than myself." He was expecting soon 
 to be appointed District Attorney for Erie county, 
 and he had, as he thought, no time to pay atten- 
 tion to the voice with which God was even then 
 speaking to him. Suddcnjy there came from 
 Rochester the news that a number of leading 
 lawyers of the place, some of whom had been 
 
66 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 very skeptical, had become Christians. This 
 startled him, drew his attention for a time away 
 from worldly plans; a wide-spread religious inter- 
 est began to manifest itself in the church he 
 attended. He listened now, when he went to the 
 sanctuary, to the preaching of the truth. There 
 soon came to him an overwhelming sense of sin. 
 " I was weighed down by it," he says, " I began 
 to pray. Some Christians too, took courage to 
 speak to me, and to pray with me." But the 
 more earnestly he sought Christ, the more earnest 
 was the Evil One in his efforts not to let such a 
 man escape from his power, to become a dreaded 
 enemy. " My mind was filled," he says, " with 
 terrible blasphemies ; at times I was prostrated to 
 the floor by the most terrible thoughts." But lie 
 was never easily discouraged when he knew he 
 was in the right way. He kept on seeking. He 
 kept on praying, and one day as he pra}-ed, the 
 feelings of his heart were changed. He began to 
 praise God for His justice and truth — a work 
 which he never gave over while his mind was able 
 to do the bidding of his will. There he belie\-cd 
 the purpose of his life was altered. Henceforth 
 he was to live for Christ. 
 
MEMORIAL SERMON. 6/ 
 
 His was not a nature, as we all know, to cher- 
 ish such a purpose in secret only. Early in the 
 spring of 1830, when the trees were beginning 
 to put forth the buds and leaves of a new life, 
 he stood with his wife before the pulpit of 
 the First Presbyterian Church of Buffalo, and 
 there, together, they consecrated themselves to 
 the service of the Master. Remembering his 
 wholeheartedness, we are not surprised to find 
 that the next page of his journal gives his reasons 
 for entering the ministry of the Gospel of Christ. 
 In one of them he writes that his heart had 
 been greatly touched by the necessities of the 
 Far West, and having property of his own suffi- 
 cient to support him, so that he need be no bur- 
 den to any of the missionary societies of the 
 Church, it was his hope, if God should seem so to 
 direct, to labor at least for a number of years in 
 the valley of the Mississippi. Though by the 
 providence of God he was shut out from the ful- 
 fillment of this wish, he alludes to it very often, 
 and for many years he gave no small portion of 
 his salary for the support of a missionary upon 
 the frontier. At the close of his three years' 
 course of theological study in Auburn Seminary 
 he hopes that "he has grown in the kno\\iedge of 
 
68 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD, 
 
 God and in acquaintance with the doctrines of 
 revealed rehgion," F'rom the seminary he went 
 to supply a Church at Fayetteville, in this State, 
 intending to remain there for a few months before 
 going to the West ; and becoming greatly inter- 
 ested in the people of that charge, he prays that 
 he may not be kept, by lov^e for them, from the 
 work in the great valley, if such be God's will. 
 
 From this time his journal opens to us a side of 
 his character of which many perhaps have been 
 almost totally ignorant. It was a great surprise 
 to the clergy, and to the people of Scotland, 
 when, upon the publication of the memoirs of 
 Norman McLeod, it was found that he who had 
 been so famous for his eloquence, his humor, and 
 his exuberance of animal spirit, was also a man 
 who had lived in as close communion to God as 
 any who, because of great sanctimoniousness of 
 manner, have been given a place in the unwritten 
 Protestant calendar of saints. Some such feeling 
 of surprise might be aroused in the hearts of 
 those who remember our departed friend as the 
 theologian, the controversialist, whose arguments 
 often tore in shreds the logic of his opponents, 
 who was always ready, like David, to meet either 
 a lion, or a bear, or a giant, in single combat, 
 
MEMORIAL SERMON. 69 
 
 when upon the written page they see the record 
 of a spiritual Hfe which was equally deep and 
 strong. Like David, he knew what it was to talk 
 with God in the night watches. Many of his 
 prayers breathe the spirit of that wondrous fifty- 
 first Psalm. Often he cries "Create in me a clean 
 heart, oh God." The first entry he makes in his 
 journal, after reaching Fayetteville, is one filled 
 with desire for the salvation of his people; and, 
 with his close analysis of motives, he adds the 
 hope that there may be no selfishness in this, 
 and asks the help of God that he may desire 
 the prosperity of every Church in Zion even as 
 his own. Again and again, as he closes the 
 narration of the Sabbath work, and there is but 
 little concerning any other day, he mourns his 
 lack of peace and faith, and prays for greater 
 holiness and humility. He speaks of a high 
 temper as the source of his besetting sin. He 
 fears that he is often too irritable, and he 
 reminds himself of Paul's admonition to Tim- 
 othy, " The servant of the Lord must not strive, 
 but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, 
 in meekness instructing those that oppose them- 
 selves." When there came to the village some 
 who taught doctrines which he believed were 
 
 6 
 
70 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 not grounded upon the word of God, he saw 
 that they were sincere and hesitated to speak 
 against them, " lest haply I should be found," 
 he says, " fighting against God." Not far from 
 Fayetteville, at a place called Pompey Hill, he 
 was invited to preach during a season of much 
 religious interest, and the inquiry meetings which 
 Avere held during the day, and in the evening, were 
 filled with those who were anxious to hear what 
 they must do to be saved. In these meetings 
 there came to him a consciousness of God's pres- 
 ence such as he had not known before. " I felt," 
 he writes, " like walking softly before God." 
 
 From Fayetteville he was called to Geneseo, 
 and there, too, God placed His seal to his minis- 
 try. In his short pastorate, many who had been 
 utterly indifferent to the truth were brought to 
 Christ. Nearly all the heads of families who 
 were in the habit of attending his church, came 
 into the fold. Some who are now officers of 
 Presbyterian Churches in this city, were then led 
 to acceptance of the Saviour. By their con- 
 sistent lives, they have borne witness, that his 
 preaching was not in mere words of man's wis- 
 dom. Durin<r the weeks in which that work was 
 
MEMORIAL SERMON. 7 1 
 
 being carried on, his one prayer is, " that he may 
 be able to giv^e God all the glory." 
 
 In Buffalo the First Presbyterian Church, with 
 which he and his wife united at the beginning 
 of their new life, was fast becoming too strait 
 for the numbers that wished to attend. It was 
 deemed best that a colony should be sent off, and 
 a new^ Church formed. At once the thoughts of 
 this little company, who were now to build a 
 home for themselves, were turned to Geneseo. 
 Could they not secure for their pastor the young 
 man whom they had first known as a successful 
 lawyer and teacher? Some of them had sat at 
 his feet, learners of earthly wisdom, they had 
 grown to love him, and gladly would they hear 
 from him the words that could make them wise 
 unto salvation. They urged him to come and 
 be their guide. He was already attached to the 
 town. Many personal friends were eager for him 
 to become once more a resident of Buffalo. 
 He felt, so he whites, " that his nature was 
 such that he needed to have a great deal to do 
 to preserve his cheerfulness of spirit." Here he 
 would find a field for his activities, affording un- 
 limited opportunities for work, and in October, 
 1835, he once more made this his home, scarcely 
 
72 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 dreaming that he should dwell here, till called 
 of God to the many mansions. 
 
 He found Buffalo a thriving country town. He 
 has lived to see that town become the third city 
 of the State. He found here one Presbyterian 
 Church ; he has lived to see eight others organ- 
 ized and developed. Each of the other denom- 
 inations too, has not failed to do its share in 
 providing for the religious wants of the people. 
 Neither can we in truth refrain from saying that 
 to his w^ork, part at least of this prosperity, both 
 temporal and spiritual, is due. He began his min- 
 istry here in a church of apostolic plainness, and 
 in that church he preached the plain gospel of the • 
 Apostles. The truth he taught was not new, 
 but his way of presenting it was something very 
 different from the preaching which is usually 
 heard in the churches. He spoke, so it has 
 been said, "like one who saw twelve jurors be- 
 fore him whom he was determined to convince 
 before he sat down," but the flash of his poet- 
 ical imagination gave light and beauty to his 
 severest arguments. He was, almost from the 
 first, ranked among the leaders of thought. 
 Arouiid him gathered both j-oung men and old, 
 
MEMORIAL SERMON. 73 
 
 who were fascinated by his briUiant powers and 
 his genial manner. 
 
 The Church grew — grew with what was con- 
 sidered, at that time, astonishing rapidity, I 
 will not dwell upon the story of its life which 
 has so often been told. We have come tocrether 
 to-night to think of the pastor, not of the church, 
 and the pastor of the Pearl Street Church, 
 afterwards called the Central, soon became, per- 
 haps, the best known man in the city. Corre- 
 spondents of eastern papers were never tired of 
 describing his personal appearance, and the pecu- 
 liarities of his oratory. In how many exciting 
 days were his powers fully tested ! He was a 
 member of the General Assembly of 1836, where 
 he witnessed and took part in scenes like those 
 which filled with excitement the United States 
 Senate and Ho'use of Representatives in i860. 
 There began the separation, which was com- 
 pleted the following year, between the Old and 
 New School parties in the Presbyterian Church. 
 By the fact of his position as the only member of 
 the Old School body in this city, he was forced 
 into greater prominence than he desired. Part of 
 his fame is due to his success as a controversialist, 
 but he tells us that he never sought controversy. 
 
74 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 He never snuffed the battle afar off. He fought 
 only when he believed that peace could not be 
 purchased except by the denial of some principle 
 to which he clung with the tenacity of a whole- 
 hearted faith. When circumstances were changed, 
 and he knew that there were others who would 
 see that the truth did not suffer because of silence, 
 he sheathed the sword which he had wielded 
 so manfully, and never again drew it from its 
 scabbard. 
 
 He loved better to do the works of mercy. 
 When, in 1849, the Asiatic cholera was claim- 
 ing its scores of victims each week, he who had 
 been foremost in theological battles, was now 
 foremost in fighting with all his power the terrible 
 pestilence, and the dire distress which followed in 
 the path of the plague. Three years after this, 
 in 1852, the Presbyterian church conferred upon 
 him one of the greatest honors of his life. He 
 was unanimously elected moderator of the Gen- 
 eral Assembly, which convened that year in 
 Charleston, S. C, and presided with the grace and 
 dignity which characterized all his public appear- 
 ances, while his addresses of welcome to delegates 
 from sister churches of our own and other lands 
 
MEMORIAL SERMON. 75 
 
 are still remembered for their good taste and 
 appropriateness. 
 
 His vigorous bodily health, which had with- 
 stood the assaults of disease, was now some- 
 what impaired, and by the advice of his phy- 
 sicians he spent some six months of the fall 
 and winter, just before the civil war, in preach- 
 ing to one of the churches of Mobile. As a well- 
 known man he was received with great kindness by 
 
 all the citizens. He was shown, of course, the bet- 
 
 i 
 
 ter side of that peculiar institution of the South, 
 which was so soon to cause a war, from whose 
 wounds we have not yet recovered. The terrible 
 evils of slavery were hidden from his sight ; what 
 wonder then, upon his return to the North he was 
 ready to speak with greater forbearance of the 
 slaveholder than the facts would warrant in the 
 judgment of his Northern friends ! In theological 
 views and by nature he was a conservative, and 
 with this thought before us, we shall be able to 
 understand, what has always seemed to many a 
 mystery, that in 1861, he who had spoken but a 
 few months previously in favor of the South, was 
 among the most earnest in eloquent condemnation 
 of those who had rebelled. In this he was per- 
 fectly consistent. Slavery was constitutional. 
 
'/(y MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 The laws of the land protected the slaveholder. 
 With his reverence for law, he could not but 
 condemn those men of the North, whose zeal had 
 led them into deeds which were unconstitutional 
 and unlawful ; but when the roar of the first shot 
 fired on Fort Sumter came to his ears, from that 
 moment his love of law made him a firm supporter 
 of the flag which rebels had sought to tear down. 
 From this position he never wavered. Some of 
 his most eloquent and memorable addresses were 
 delivered in the trying days of 1862 and 1863. 
 He saw many whom he had baptized in their 
 infancy march forth, as strong men, to fight 
 bravely for the right. Alas ! from this pulpit 
 often he looked down into the pale, upturned 
 face of some hero who had fallen at the front, or 
 in the hospital, had breathed away his shattered 
 and broken life. Of these men who had thus 
 shed their blood for their country, he could never 
 speak but with trembling voice and quivering lip. 
 No one longed for an honorable peace more ear- 
 nestly than he. No one rejoiced with a greater 
 joy when the last blow was struck. 
 
 But the fierce battle with evil, which he had 
 so long fought, began now to tell upon his 
 splendid powers. His spirits had indeed been 
 
MEMORIAL SERMON. 'J'J 
 
 kept up, as he had hoped, by having a great 
 deal to do. But he had done too much ; the 
 work of his own church was enough. To that 
 he had added greatly by public efforts. The 
 bow had been strung too high. It was strained. 
 He always loved to work, but the time was 
 slowly coming when work was an effort. His 
 church urged upon him the duty of having 
 some assistance. In response to their entreaty 
 he consented that one who had been very success- 
 ful in a large village of Western New York should 
 be called, and installed as his co-pastor. But in 
 a little more than two years this new relationship 
 was broken through the co-pastor's acceptance 
 of an urgent invitation to take charge of a church 
 in a beautiful village some forty miles from 
 Buffalo. Again he had to do the whole work 
 of his charge, but he had a high standard of 
 what a minister should be. " The work of the 
 ministry," so he wrote in his journal while at 
 Fayetteville, " is an exceedingly great and labo- 
 rious work, a work which requires the intellect 
 of an Edwards, the piety of a Brainard, the 
 zeal of a Paul, and the faith of an Abraham ; " 
 and he adds the prayer, " God help me for 
 His Son's sake." God answered the prayer; he 
 
78 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD, 
 
 had done a great work, and he was not satisfied 
 to undertake with diminished powers that which 
 in his vigor had taxed him so severely. He 
 asked his people to accept his resignation. But 
 he had baptized many of them when they were 
 children. He had heard husband and wife plight 
 to each other their troth. He had received them 
 into the membership of the church. He had 
 broken to them the emblems of Christ's body. 
 He had buried their dead. He had wept with 
 them in their sorrows. He had rejoiced with 
 them in their joy. How could they give him up? 
 Against his own judgment, he kept on for a time, 
 but at last he over-persuaded them, and was 
 released from a pastorate which he had continued 
 for thirty-eight years. 
 
 Many of us here to-night never knew him 
 at all. He was to us, what Edmund Burke was 
 to those who sat in the House of Commons in 
 1794. The memory of his great efforts was 
 still fresh among the friends of his more vig- 
 orous days. We saw only the flashes of light, 
 which were but hints of the bright and steady 
 flame which had burned so long. His mind 
 had been so trained, both by the study of law 
 and of theology, that in the years of his high- 
 
MEMORIAL SERMON. 79 
 
 est mental activity, every subject seemed at a 
 glance to fall in pieces, as a plant beneath the eye 
 of a skillful botanist is in a moment resolved into 
 its component parts. While other men were 
 forced to dig with pick and bar among the rocks 
 for the hidden truth, to him at the first blow, the 
 whole mass seemed to reveal its treasures. He 
 had the power — by no means as common even 
 among great scholars as could be desired — of 
 seeing more than one side of a subject. This 
 made him fair in his statement of objections to 
 the revealed word. In his famous course of lec- 
 tures to young men, which at times crowded even 
 the aisles of this edifice, he stated the difficulties 
 of skeptics with such vividness and strength, that 
 timid Christians were startled, and almost holding 
 their breath, would wait with intense eagerness, 
 and with a half-defined fear that no satisfactory 
 answer would be found. But the sword of his 
 logic was keen, and with a sigh of relief they saw 
 it cleave the head of the giant from the body. 
 
 In large public gatherings, when he was seen 
 pushing his way toward the platform, a sense of 
 satisfaction came at once to all. They knew the 
 meeting would be a success. A writer in a reli- 
 gious paper has told of the general desire that 
 
80 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 was everywhere manifested to hear his lectures; 
 and liis orations before literary societies. He 
 himself had ridden on one hot midsummer day, 
 more than forty miles in an open wagon, to listen 
 to such an address. That the effects which he 
 produced were by no means due to mere oratori- 
 cal power is amply attested by the judgment 
 which the General Assembly passed upon his 
 intellectual ability when it offered him a Professor's 
 Chair in Princeton Theological Seminary. But 
 his heart was here, and he felt that even so flat- 
 tering an invitation as this must be refused. Like 
 the Breckenridges, and other men whose names 
 the Church will never forget, he was by no means 
 always equal in his public efforts. Neither was he 
 careful to reserve his best things for great occa- 
 sions. Upon a rainy Sabbath, or at the Wednes- 
 day-evening lecture, some of his most beautiful 
 thoughts were given to those who had braved 
 the storm, or the darkness. But it was not in his 
 natural gifts for public speech that he trusted to 
 win men to Christ. He felt intensely, that it is 
 not by might or by power, but by the Spirit of 
 God, that the work is to be carried on, and for 
 the assistance of that Spirit he never ceased to 
 pray. 
 
MEMORIAL SERMON. 8 1 
 
 His character, like his whole nature, was strong. 
 He was impetuous, like Peter, though the Saviour, 
 who ever kept Peter from falling, after that one 
 sad hour of denial, kept him from dangers into 
 which, else, he would have been led. Like nearly 
 all who have done the best w^ork for Christ, 
 he had great animal powers, and appetites, and 
 these controlled, directed toward one point, the 
 glory of God, made him the successful man he 
 was. He had a thorough hatred of all .shams, 
 and it was because he feared that by writing out 
 his religious experiences and spiritual yearnings, 
 he might be led into that exaggeration, which he 
 thought he had perceived in many memoirs, that 
 he gave up the journal, which he had begun with 
 motives equally sincere. Such a character was 
 not one to be easily blown hither and thither by 
 every wind of doctrine. When you once knew 
 his firm convictions on any important subject, 
 after that you had no difficulty in knowing where 
 to find him. If ever, for the time, he was led 
 into any path of doubt or unbelief, he w^aited till 
 he came again into the full light, before he de- 
 scribed the dark way to his people, so that by no 
 uncertain words was the rest of any believing one 
 disturbed, and they who were walking in dark- 
 
82 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 ness were encouraged by his bright and hopeful 
 counsel, to enter again, as he had, into the light. 
 
 He never brought the processes through which 
 his own mind had passed in the study, into the 
 pulpit. He came there only with the results of 
 his work. He did not look upon the house of God 
 as a place where the chaff is to be sifted from the 
 wheat. That he believed, should be done before 
 the sanctuary was entered, so that only the pure 
 grain might be spread out before the people. To 
 his kindness of heart, great enough to embrace 
 even the dumb creatures, many testimonials have 
 already been borne. Strong as his reasoning 
 powers were, his heart was stronger, and very 
 often, because of pity, he thrust his hand deep 
 into his pocket, against his better judgment. He 
 was so frank himself, that it was hard to convince 
 him that all were not equally honest in making 
 those statements which so aroused his sympathy. 
 
 The things that were lovely and of good report 
 were the only things he dwelt upon with pleasure. 
 Unlike most public men, he was always ready to 
 attribute the best motives, whenever the proofs 
 to the contrary were not overwhelmingly great. 
 Already, too, by the pastor of the Church which 
 was his spiritual mother, mention has been made 
 
MEMORIAL SERMON. 83 
 
 of the unbounded generosity which characterized 
 his bearing towards his successor. I have often 
 felt, as I saw^ him sitting modestly in his pew, 
 how unavaihng all efforts of mine would have 
 been, had he not given his hearty co-operation. 
 Whenever, for a moment, there has been a ripple 
 of discord, it was his voice that cried "peace," 
 and that voice was always obeyed. Apparently 
 his greatest desire was to hide himself, so that 
 all eyes might be turned away from the past, 
 of which he had so long been the central figure, 
 to the necessities of the present, believing that 
 only thus could the highest prosperity of the 
 Church he had loved and nurtured be attained. 
 He' lived long enough to see the answer to some 
 of the prayers he had offered, in a measure of 
 success, over which he rejoiced more heartily 
 than any of us. Then he felt ready, he said, to 
 make one more prayer, " Lord, now lettest thou 
 thy servant depart in peace." 
 
 Never again shall we see his stalwart form ; 
 never again shall we hear his voice pleading 
 to God for us, but by him, this place has 
 been filled with sacred associations, whose many 
 tongues still plead with us that his God might 
 be our God. If we have heard his prayers 
 
84 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 and counsels, and have gone away unmoved, 
 may God grant that, as memory brings before 
 us that form and face, — the very tones of that 
 voice, — a tear of repentance shall moisten the 
 cheek, and with a cry of sorrow for the past we 
 shall cast ourselves at the. feet of the Saviour, 
 of whom he was but a disciple. Yet once 
 more, not in memory onl}-, but face to face, 
 shall we all look upon him. In that great day, 
 when the books shall be opened and the quick 
 and the dead shall stand before the judgment 
 throne of Christ, he will be there and we shall 
 be there. Will the look upon his face be one 
 of sorrow ? Are there any of us who, through 
 persistent rejection of Christ, must in that hour 
 be told to depart from the presence of God ? 
 Then, not the least terrible of the stings of re- 
 morse, will be the remembrance through all eter- 
 nity, of the words we have heard him speak 
 which might have saved us, but which we heeded 
 not ! The remembrance of that look of anguish 
 which was upon his face, as he stood upon the 
 right hand of God, that they A\hom he had 
 loved, have lived and died as the enemies of his 
 Saviour. To be lost we must trample under foot 
 the love of Christ, the prayers and entreaties 
 
MEMORIAL SERMON. 85 
 
 of Christian parents and friends. Yes, we must 
 trample under foot the pleadings of those lips 
 now silent and cold. It cannot be. Let there 
 come from the depths of every heart this night 
 the prayer which has never yet been unanswered, 
 " Save me, oh God, for thy Son's sake." 
 
 As I stand and look over this great congrega- 
 tion, there rises before me the vision of a multi- 
 tude more vast than has ever been encircled by 
 walls of stone. It is the vision of that throng 
 which gathered upon the battlements of Heaven 
 last Sabbath evening, just as the church-bells of 
 earth were calling men into the sanctuary to 
 worship God. Angels and archangels are there ; 
 apostles and prophets are there ; among them are 
 many hundreds, who by the words spoken from 
 this pulpit, through the years of the past, were 
 brought into the kingdom of God. Upon their 
 death-beds the hope filled their hearts that they 
 should meet him, who had taught them the way 
 of life, when his turn should come to cross the 
 dark river. With shouts of gladness they wel- 
 come him safe home at last ! But he lingers not. 
 Through the streets of gold he presses his way 
 till he stands by the throne of Him who died 
 that we might live; and as he lays his bright 
 
86 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 crown before the pierced feet of Jesus, he speaks. 
 Listen ! are not these the words that come from 
 his Hps? "Not unto us, O Lord; not unto us, 
 but unto thy name give glor}-, for thy mercy and 
 for thy truth's sake." 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. 87 
 
 MEMORIAL PAPER. 
 
 A PAPER BY THE HON. JAMES O. PUTNA^r. 
 
 Read be/ore the Buffalo Historical Society, April =>, iS^J. 
 
 The Historical Society devotes a passing hour 
 to reminiscence and study of the life, character, 
 and career of the late Rev. Dr. John C. Lord : 
 
 He was born in Washington, New Hampshire, 
 on the ninth of August, 1805, and was the son of 
 Rev. John Lord and Sarah Chase, who was the 
 cousin of the late Chief-Justice Salmon P. Chase. 
 At the age of tweh^e years he entered Plainfield 
 Academy, in his native State. He subsequently 
 entered Madison Academy, and afterwards Ham- 
 ilton College of New York, where he remained 
 two years. He graduated in the same class with 
 our distinguished fellow-townsmen, Judge Clinton, 
 and the late Dr. Thomas M. Foote. After two 
 years' editorial experience in Canada, he came to 
 Buffalo in 1825, entering the office of Love & 
 
88 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 Tracy, then the leading law firm in Western New 
 York. He taught a select school for a few 
 months, having Orsamus H. Marshall, Esq., and 
 Dr. James P. White as pupils. He was admitted to 
 the Bar in 1828. In the latter part of that year 
 he was married to Miss Mary Johnson, daughter 
 of the late Dr. Ebenezer Johnson, the first 
 Mayor of Buffalo, and one of its leading citizens. 
 That marriage had its specially romantic incident, 
 which survives a pleasant tradition of the time. 
 In the same year he formed a partnership with 
 Judge Love, which continued about two years. 
 During those years he held several civil and mil- 
 itary commissions, the prizes offered to the enter- 
 prise and talent of young professional aspirants. 
 
 He brought to his profession, talent, health, 
 and ambition. He had also, in an extraordinary 
 degree a faculty for accumulation, and a stimu- 
 lating love of property. • He had the forecast and 
 the pluck, \\hich, with opportunit}', lead to for- 
 tune. There seemed no element wanting to 
 assure him the largest success in his chosen 
 profession. 
 
 Yet in the midst of his earl}- triumphs, to the 
 surprise of all who had watched his auspicious 
 beginning, he heard the \'oice which arrested Paul 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. 89 
 
 on that journey to Damascus, and obeyed it. 
 From that hour he turned his back on all the 
 allurements of a worldly ambition, for the labors 
 and sacrifices of the ministerial office. This act, 
 which shaped all his long public career, reveals, as 
 nothing else could do, the ardor of his nature, 
 the depth of his convictions, and the fountain 
 springs of his character. 
 
 After uniting with the First Presbyterian 
 Church of this city, he entered the Auburn Theo- 
 logical Seminary, in 1830, from which he grad- 
 uated in 1833. 
 
 He was soon called to Geneseo, and for two 
 years was pastor of the Presbyterian Church in 
 that village. During that time occurred in his 
 Church, and in the community, one of the most 
 remarkable revivals in the history of Western New 
 York. The Doctor often referred to that move- 
 ment as one of the most interesting with which 
 he had ever been associated. In November, 1825, 
 his mother-church, " the Old First," had reached 
 a stage of growth when colonization became a 
 necessity, and she planted the first of those more 
 recent Churches which represent the Prcsb)'tcrian 
 interest in Buffalo. 
 
go MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 The Pearl Street Church was organized in 1835, 
 worshiping at first in a temporary building. Doctor 
 Lord, the favorite son of the First Church, was 
 called to the pastorate of the new enterprise. In 
 1836, was erected a beautiful church edifice, which 
 from its peculiar interior construction was famil- 
 iarly called " the goose egg." I have seen grander 
 churches at home and abroad, but St. Peter's in 
 Rome hardly made a stronger impression on my 
 mind in my mature years, than did that unique 
 Pearl Street Church on my youthful fancy. 
 
 I attended its Sabbath service in the fall of 
 1836 or 1837, on the occasion of a chance visit to 
 Buffalo. It was without galleries, its audience 
 room of oval form, the pulpit at the street end, 
 and the orchestra at the rear. A full band, at 
 least to my fancy it was full, furnished the instru- 
 mental music. The blare of trumpets, and the 
 harp, and the sackbut, and the viol, seemed to 
 realize the musical glories of the old temple ser- 
 vice. I had never before heard any instrument 
 in worship of more cunning workmanship than 
 the wooden pitch-pipe, and the steel tuning-fork, 
 which were accustomed to launch "Mear" and 
 "Dundee," "China" and "Silver Street," and 
 kindred melodies, upon the air of ni)' native vil- 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. 9 1 
 
 lagc church. That orchestral magnificence still 
 haunts my imagination. I aju sorry " the goose 
 egg " was made a victim to the spirit of modern 
 improvement. 
 
 Such were the beginnings of Doctor Lord's 
 Buffalo career. In the course of a few years the 
 needs of his congregation demanded a large edi- 
 fice, and the present magnificent church in whose 
 parlors we are now assembled, was built, and the 
 Society reorganized under the name of the Cen- 
 tral Presbyterian Church of Buffalo. And here, 
 from about 1850, until his final retirement from 
 the pulpit, and the dissolution of the pastoral tie, 
 Dr. Lord ministered in season and out of season 
 to his people. Here were delivered those great 
 sermons and orations which placed him in the 
 front rank of American pulpit orators. He made 
 this church edifice by his labors and sacrifices, by 
 his intellectual force and the power of his genius, 
 monumental. 
 
 The life of an able man is revealed by his opin- 
 ions, his advocacy of them, and his character. 
 And in the case of Doctor Lord it is pre-eminently 
 true that these constitute, in a larsfe decrree, his 
 personality, and to them we must direct our 
 studies for a just appreciation of him. If in my 
 
92 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 brief sketch I shall draw on him for ilkistration, I 
 do so because they are better than any I can 
 offer, and because we are met here, by the altars 
 where he ministered, to commune with his spirit, 
 and to catch a fresh inspiration from his thought 
 and life. 
 
 Doctor Lord was for many years a large part of 
 the intellectual, the moral, and in its best sense, 
 the political history of Buffalo. During the mid- 
 dle period of his life there was not a question in 
 Church or State of general public interest, in 
 which he was not a leader of opinion on one side 
 or the other. 
 
 In some respects he was a man of the past, 
 rather than the present. His intellectual and 
 theological sympathies were moulded by the ear- 
 lier time and in the severe school of the Fathers 
 rather than by the advanced opinion of later 
 thinkers and actors. Both by mental organiza- 
 tion and training he preferred the old ways to the 
 new, and for primal truths would seek what he 
 regarded the golden morn of time, rather than 
 our meridian whose brightness he would not 
 always take for light. Some of the grandest 
 intellectual dispku's ever -witnessed among us 
 were his pulpit and platform defenses of the oltl 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. 93 
 
 philosophies, the old theology, the old economies 
 of Church and State. There are yet some who 
 remember those occasions when he delivered his 
 popular addresses, kindling with his own zeal the 
 thousands who were under the spell of his mag- 
 netic eloquence and thought. There were some 
 seeming contradictions in his positions at different 
 times on some questions ; but they were only 
 seeming. His life of opinions was a harmony. 
 Even his Higher Law sermon, the boldest expres- 
 sion of his life, and the most defiant of the gen- 
 eral sentiment on the question of slavery and on 
 the relations of human government to the people 
 and to God, was perfectly consistent with his later 
 position after slavery had thrown the gage of 
 battle at the feet of the nation. 
 
 These characteristics and the fact that he was 
 a polemic actor, as well as a closet student, must 
 be borne in mind, for any correct appreciation of 
 his public life. In theology, he was a Calvinist. 
 Had he been nurtured by St. Augustine, and 
 trained by the great Genevan, he could not have 
 been a more earnest champion of the doctrines, 
 in all their length and breadth, and in their widest 
 applications, to which they have given name. If 
 we consider the tendencies of thought, both in 
 
94 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 Europe and America, at the time Dr. Lord en- 
 tered upon the ministry, and remember the semi- 
 revolutionary attitude of leaders abroad and at 
 home, on social and religious questions, we shall 
 not fail to see, that positive and controversial as 
 was the character of his mind, he must adopt 
 affirmative opinions on the whole range of ques- 
 tions agitating the public mind, and maintain 
 them with a zeal allied to passion. About con- 
 temporary with his entry upon the ministry, the 
 European wave of German philosophy and tran- 
 scendental mysticism, which had done so much to 
 disturb the old systems of belief in Germany, and 
 after their introduction by Carlyle, in England, 
 struck the New England coast, and their influence 
 was soon felt in all schools of religious thought. 
 It was at the period of the Doctor's settlement 
 here in his new profession that Emerson was 
 introducing the followers of Channing to those 
 liberal fields, where so many now find pasturage 
 in the oriental doctrine of the Over Soul. The 
 transcendentalists were dreaming their dreams at 
 Brook-Farm, presenting them to the public in the 
 most fascinating forms of modern culture. In 
 the more orthodox schools, 15ushnell, Barnes, 
 Bcecher, Ta)'lor and others, were maintaining 
 
MEMORIAL PArER. 95 
 
 their new interpretations of Scripture before coun- 
 cils and assemblies, some of them passing that 
 once terrible ordeal — the trial for heresy. 
 
 Tractarian Ritualism, too, was at its height in 
 the English Church, and its mediaeval spirit was 
 startling the staid Protestantism of both hemi- 
 spheres. Superadded to these disturbing ele- 
 ments in the theologic world. Science appeared, 
 pressing its audacious footstep in every field of 
 legitimate inquiry, astonishing by its revelations 
 as to the age and method of creation, and filling 
 the minds of many good men with fears that they 
 would lead the world to the sty of Epicurus and 
 the negations of Atheism. 
 
 At the same period, another wave, humani- 
 tarian rather than religious, came rolling in upon 
 us from England, a wave first evoked by the 
 spells of Sharp and Wilberforce, and Clarkson, 
 and which, after a struggle of forty weary years, 
 in defiance of the hostility of the Established 
 Church and the English aristocracy, had abol- 
 ished the African slave trade, abolished slavery 
 in the British colonies, and threatened* to over- 
 throw in methods wholly revolutionary our own 
 peculiar institution which had grown up under, 
 and was protected by, our Federal Constitution 
 
96 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 and laws. In short, the time of his settlement 
 here in the ministry was one of extraordinary 
 ferment, of intellectual audacity, of social experi- 
 ment and of revolutionary tendencies in Church 
 and State. 
 
 Doctor Lord's zeal for the old theology, and 
 his attitude on the slavery question, Avere greatly 
 stimulated to aggressive action by the new move- 
 ments. The sovereignty of law as the represent- 
 ative of a sovereign God, and human society as 
 a special organization by the divine econom}', 
 were with him central truths, the only foundations 
 of a true social philosophy, or of just systems of 
 law and government for men. And on the thresh- 
 hold of these revolutionary movements he planted 
 himself upon the old doctrines, a conservative of 
 conservatives, contending for the pld ideas, the 
 old formulas, and the old economies. After the 
 disruption of the Presbyterian Church in 1837, 
 there was but one ultimate choice possible for 
 him. He must go with the Conservatives. To 
 the adherents of either party who saw below the 
 surface, and felt the ground swell of the revolution, 
 " Old School " and " New School," represented 
 antagonisms which survived during the slavery 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. 97 
 
 discus.-;ion, and until both bodies were liberalized 
 by a new generation. 
 
 His ideas of the State, and its relations to the 
 citizen, revealed the harmony between Doctor 
 Lord the statesman, and Doctor Lord the pub- 
 licist and theologian. This harmony is clearly 
 brought to view in his celebrated Thanksgiving 
 Sermon in 1850, "On the Higher Law as applica- 
 ble to the Fugitive Slave Bill." His theological 
 system declaring the divine institution of human 
 governments and the sovereignty of human law 
 as the reflex of divine law, furnishes the basal 
 principle of that sermon. There was much in the 
 angry controversy at the time, much in the peril 
 many men believed to be menacing the stability 
 of the government, which gave point to the dis- 
 course, but its logic flowed from the principle 1 
 have stated. 
 
 It will be remembered that Mr. Seward, in a 
 speech in the Senate resisting the Fugitive Slave 
 Law, had avowed the higher law doctrine. 
 " There is a higher law than the Constitution " 
 was his formula. In a period of calm there was 
 nothing in this declaration which had been start- 
 ling. It was not novel ; it was old as human 
 thought. It was uttered by Cicero in language 
 
98 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 whose feeblest translation is as full of beauty as 
 it is of truth. " There is," he says, " a law which 
 is not one thing at Rome, another at Athens, one 
 thing to-day and another to-morrow, but one and 
 the same, eternal and immutable among all 
 nations, and in all time." Sophocles, of the 
 Greeks, had said in one of his tragedies by a 
 character defying legitimate but unjust authority: 
 
 " Nor of such force thy edicts did I deem, 
 That mortal, as thou art, thou hast the power 
 To overthrow the firm unwritten laws 
 Of the just Gods. These are not of to-day, 
 Or yesterday, but through all ages live." 
 
 It has been accepted by moral philosophers of 
 all times. The sentiment, properly interpreted, 
 is written on the universal heart of man. It is 
 the instinct of the human conscience. But 
 thrown out by our great senator as apparent jus- 
 tification of disobedience to a statute, obedience 
 to which seemed to be the condition of national 
 peace, it is not surprising that it should have 
 provoked alarm. He maintained in that sermon 
 the divine character of government and the duty 
 of the citizen because it was divine, to obey the 
 laws. He laid down this formula: "The action of 
 civil governments, within their appropriate juris- 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. 99 
 
 diction, is final and conclusive upon the citizen." 
 This theory of entire subjection to existing civil 
 authority he claimed to find in the doctrines of 
 the New Testament, and in the example and 
 practice of the primitive Christians. His sermon 
 throughout maintained his favorite theory that 
 Christianity did not come into the world a force 
 directly addressed to governments or to society. 
 The general doctrines of the sermon never had 
 more brilliant advocacy. It was universally 
 accepted as the ablest exposition of the conserv- 
 ative view of the ^relations of the citizen to the 
 government which appeared from the pulpit of 
 the time. It gave him a national reputation. 
 By the one side he was accepted as a prophet, by 
 the other as an apostate from the principles of 
 liberty. In a speech by Mr. Webster, at Syracuse, 
 in 185 1, defending his own seventh of March 
 speech in the Senate, he said : " They denounce 
 me as a fit associate of Benedict Arnold and Pro- 
 fessor Stuart, and Dr. Lord. I would be glad to 
 strike out Benedict Arnold ; as for the rest I am 
 proud of their company." It was only after the 
 storm of 1850 had culminated in civil war, result- 
 ing in the overthrow of the power which raised 
 the controversy, that the bitterness of the contest 
 
lOO MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 subsided and all parties began to act harmoniously 
 in the new era of homogeneous institutions. We 
 now begin to do justice to the great actors in that 
 drama. Calumny and detraction on the one side 
 and excessive adulation on the other, were equally 
 offensive to Truth, who serenely awaits the final 
 judgment of history. The last year has seen 
 erected in the metropolis of our State, memorial 
 statues of the two foremost leaders on either side, 
 and the American people have united in placing 
 the unfading laurel on the brows of Webster and 
 Seward. 
 
 Another position of the higher law sermon, 
 provoking, if possible, still sharper criticism, was 
 its defense of the relation of slavery because 
 approved by the political system of Moses. To 
 this the time had its answer. It was denied that 
 American slavery in the nineteenth century could 
 be justified by the civil code of semi-savage tribes, 
 recently emerged from a condition of foreign sub- 
 jugation and slavery, who had never risen above 
 the lex talionis for private wrongs, and who pun- 
 ished with death the smallest departure from their 
 social and sumptuary laws. 
 
 While he so defended the purely legal aspects 
 of slavery, neither in that sermon, nor in any 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. lOI 
 
 utterance of his public or private life, did he ever 
 apologize for the cruelties of the institution, or 
 claim that it was other than a relic of a bar- 
 baric past. 
 
 No social blandishments could weaken his 
 vision or warp his judgment on a question of hu- 
 manity. Whether he ever modified his views 
 upon the scriptural argument, I do not know, but 
 it is a matter of history that when slavery laid 
 its hand on the Ark of the Union, Doctor Lord's 
 patriotism rose to the height of the occasion, and 
 during the four years of defensive war for the 
 Government there was no voice in the land of 
 clearer, grander tone for liberty and the Union 
 than his. There were no abler discussions of the 
 whole controversy involved in that struggle, no 
 more impassioned appeals to the patriotism of 
 the country than are to be found in his political 
 sermons of that time. Their spirit may be di- 
 vined by this single sentence from a Thanksgiving 
 sermon of the war period, which closes his review 
 of the purpose of the Confederates to make 
 slavery the controlling power of this continent : 
 
 " For myself, I had rather the Almighty should 
 sink the continent in the sea, or that the nation 
 
 should nobly perish on the battle-field for freedom, 
 
 8 
 
102 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 than submit to this inglorious result — to the 
 lamentable degradation of our national prostra- 
 tion at the footstool of slav^ery." 
 
 He had but one way of defending a cause dear 
 to him — with all his might. He had no reserve, 
 he cut down the bridges and burned the ships 
 that there could be no retreat from the line of 
 action sanctioned by his head, and approved by 
 his heart. And in that crisis his patriotism was a 
 holy passion. How perfectly he was in sympathy 
 with the policy of final emancipation, is beauti- 
 fully illustrated by his poem entitled, 
 
 " TJie Silent Sorroiu of the Enfi-ancJiised Slave. 
 
 Suggested by the Obsequies of President Lineoln 
 
 in Buffalo y 
 
 It might fittingly close this review of a contro- 
 versial incident in his life, which more than any 
 other gave prominence to his career. Its closing 
 stanzas are as follows : 
 
 Ah ! who can know their untold agony, 
 
 To whom his death appears tlie crowning loss ? — 
 
 So the disciples feared on that dread day 
 
 When the great Sufferer hung upon the Cross. 
 
 The sable mother, as her eyes grow dim, 
 Wails o'er her first-born by the cottage fire ; 
 
 Freedom, though late for her is all to him — 
 Must it, alas ! with that great life expire ? 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. IO3 
 
 Old scarred and palsied slaves, who from the shore 
 Of burning Afric, in their youth were torn, 
 
 Bow down in speechless. misery before 
 The tale of horror on the breezes borne ! 
 
 They know not that the manner of his death 
 Forever seals their chartered rights as men — 
 
 That in their martyr's last expiring breath, 
 The Nation heard these solemn words again. 
 
 Two hundred years of unrequited toil 
 Have heaped up treasures for this day of blood, 
 
 And every drop of slave gore on our soil 
 Demands another from the Sword of God. 
 
 While his theological system led him to the 
 conservative action we have reviewed, no man 
 brought a larger sympathy to oppressed peoples. 
 And while it is true that he rejected the social 
 contract theory of the origin of States, yet in the 
 Higher Law sermon he distinctly maintained the 
 right of revolution for adequate cause. 
 
 Mazzini himself could hardly have hailed with 
 more enthusiasm the revolutions of 1848 in Eu- 
 rope. The democratic spirit of that time had no 
 grander interpreter of its passion and its hope. 
 
 His poem entitled, " Kings and Thrones are 
 Fallino-," was hailed on both continents as an em- 
 
I04 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 bodimcnt of the spirit of the epoch. Let me 
 recall to you a few of its ringing stanzas : 
 
 Kings and thrones are falling, 
 
 The sound comes o'er the sea, 
 Deep unto deep is calling 
 To the conflict of the free. 
 At the voices of the Nations, like the roaring of a flood, 
 The sun is turned to darkness, the moon is changed to blood. 
 
 The word of power is spoken 
 In accents loud and long ; 
 The iron chain is broken 
 
 From the ankles of the strong ; 
 The blind and beaten giant, is staggering up at length, 
 And the jDillars of his prison-house begin to feel his strength. 
 
 The powers of earth are shaking 
 
 From the Danube to the Rhine, 
 
 Old Germany is waking 
 
 Like a Cyclop from his wine. 
 
 And dark his brow with hatred, and red his eye with wrath. 
 
 While he scatters his tormentors like pigmies from his path. 
 
 King or priest shall never 
 Rebuild the broken wall. 
 For thought is freed forever 
 And truth is now for all. 
 The startled nations hear a voice through heaven and earth 
 
 resound, 
 The everlastine: word of God shall never more be bound. 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. IO5 
 
 The revolution was crushed, but its spirit sur- 
 vived in the popular heart, and to-day France, 
 Germany and Italy have entered upon their 
 careers of regeneration. The Doctor was right, 
 only right too soon. 
 
 In the middle portion of his ministry the Doc- 
 tor delivered occasional lectures on questions of 
 interest. In a scries before the Young Men's 
 Association, he developed his theory of civiliza- 
 tion and progress. They presented many original 
 views. He maintained that civilization was the 
 original condition of man, so cutting from the 
 roots the theory of development. Eden blos- 
 somed with the highest intelligence, and the 
 earliest races and peoples were at the acme of 
 culture. Civilization was normal, and progress 
 was toward barbarism. This view flowed out of 
 his theological system. Man, when first created 
 in the image of God, was at the highest point of 
 culture. Man's transgression sowed the seeds of 
 decadence, which in time resulted in corruption 
 and barbarism. From this condition peoples 
 were rescued by the restoration of indvidual man 
 to purity through religious culture. 
 
 In the same series of lectures, and on other 
 occasions, he took issue with the broad schools 
 
Io6 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 of every name on the subject of a progressive 
 Christianity. There could be no new interpre- 
 tations of Scripture, no modifications to meet 
 new systems of thought, or a progressive school 
 of social philosophy. 
 
 The theory of Guizot, as developed in his His- 
 tory of Civilization, that Christianity addressed 
 itself to the individual and not to social or polit- 
 ical institutions, he maintained with great ability. 
 The Higher Law sermon was largely a develop- 
 ment of that idea. I may say that in this posi- 
 tion Dr. Lord had the sympathy of the conserva- 
 tive school in all Christian Churches. It was one 
 of the series of rocks on which the Presbyterian 
 Church split in 1837, '^"'^ ^s the slavery contro- 
 versy advanced, the two antagonistic systems of 
 Christian philosophy became more pronounced. 
 Was Christianity a principle addressed to the 
 individual, or was it, as well, a force thrown into 
 the field of the world to act upon institutions 
 social and political ? If the first lu'pothesis were 
 the true, then slaver}', and poor-laws, and the 
 treatment of the criminal and insane, indeed all 
 the social questions which are pressing on us for 
 solution through law and governmental policy, 
 are outside the immediate action of Christian 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. 10/ 
 
 principles and the Christian Church. If the 
 second hypothesis be the true, then Christianity 
 is not only a power acting on individuals, but it 
 addresses itself as a law to every element of 
 society and to every institution in the State. 
 
 The advanced view of our day is a logical one. 
 It was a matter of course that, as the theologic 
 spirit declined, the humane spirit of Christianity 
 should advance. And the decline of the theo- 
 logic spirit results from the fundamental idea of 
 the Reformation — the right of private interpre- 
 tation of Scripture, coupled with the develop- 
 ment of social and political institutions. This 
 progress is not in the principles of Christianity, 
 for no philosophy can rise higher than its head- 
 lands, but in the better vision of our time. I 
 think we must come to the conclusion that the 
 whole history of Christianity has been a history 
 of development, slow but necessary, and every 
 step one of Providential training of the race from 
 high to higher. St. Simon Stylites, of the fifth 
 century, sitting on his pillar sixty feet in the air 
 for thirty years, was the model saint of his period. 
 The crusaders of the tenth and eleventh centu- 
 ries were an advance upon the ascetic of the 
 desert. The intellectual activities of Luther's 
 
I08 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 day amid the perpetual tramp of armies over 
 Europe, stimulated the thought of the age, and 
 prepared the way for a new era of institutions. 
 
 The parable of the good Samaritan and the 
 doctrine of the fraternity of men and the uni- 
 versal fatherhood of God, were in the New Tes- 
 tament from the beginning, but out of the range 
 of human vision until the time of Howard and 
 Wilberforce. The horizon of one era is the me- 
 ridian of another, and in the procession of the 
 ages all his constellations will shed their light 
 on the children of God. Says George Fox, in 
 his journal: "And I saw that there was an 
 ocean of Darkness and death ; but an infinite 
 ocean of light and love flowed over the ocean 
 of darkness, and in that I saw the infinite love 
 of God." 
 
 To-day, after nearly eighteen hundred years of 
 struggle for its just position in the world, the 
 social spirit of the Founder of Christianity, as 
 revealed in the incidents of his life and in his 
 Parables, has come to the front and leads our 
 era. It is the motive power of every humane 
 and philanthropic movement. Even the few 
 philosophers who, like John Stuart Mill and Har- 
 riet Martincau, co-operate in these modern move- 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. IC9 
 
 mcnts, whether or not they acknowledge their 
 obhgation, find their best inspiration in Jesus. 
 The great service of men who, Hke Doctor Lord, 
 stood in the old ways and acted as breakwaters 
 to the flood of new ideas, was this, and it cannot 
 be overestimated. They held on to the solid 
 body of doctrine without which Christianity de- 
 generates from a religion to a philosophy, so pre- 
 venting a precipitate radical revolution, until the 
 new and 'old ideas could adjust themselves to 
 each other, and act, as they now do, in accord 
 in their mission to man and to society. 
 
 In search of the central principle of the life 
 of Dr. Lord as it flowed out to the world through 
 his intellect and, through his heart, I believe I 
 find it in his faith in the divine. Deity was as 
 an atmosphere in which his spirit consciously 
 lived and wrought. Priest or prophet never wor- 
 shiped with more awe the uncreated Source of 
 Law and Love. Li this connection, remember- 
 ing with what vigor in his best days the Doctor 
 combated the materialistic tendencies of certain 
 schools, it is a matter of interest to know his last 
 thoughts, and to catch his dying testimony. Dur- 
 ing the session of the Scientific Association in 
 Buffalo, in August last, I found him one day in 
 
no MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 his librar\% his mind occupied with the discus- 
 sions of the week. He at once opened upon the 
 evokition theory of man. His defense of his old- 
 time views of the existence of God, of man as 
 created in His image, and man's need of a relig- 
 ious faith, recalled the Dr. Lord of twenty years 
 ago. I shall never forget these words, nor his 
 face, almost transfigured, as he uttered them : 
 " They cannot dethrone God, they cannot over- 
 throw His word, and I laugh them to scorn, I 
 laugh them to scorn." 
 
 His long ministry occurred, as we have seen, 
 at a transition period. He could, at its close, 
 look over the field and see that, after all the up- 
 heavals and changes of the time, the principles 
 of Christianity were more firmly entrenched than 
 ever in the hearts of men. He could well afford 
 to laugh at any school who hoped to strike out 
 of human consciousness, faith and trust in an 
 Author and Ruler of the world. So long as man 
 suffers and sorrows, so long as the spiritual faculty 
 survives, so long as the sentiment of reverence 
 and worship, the primal instincts of man, lead 
 his soul to the great ideals of virtue and good- 
 ness which, begin where the\' will, culminate in 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. Ill 
 
 Deity, materialism will never usurp the altars of 
 religion in human households. 
 
 Dr. Lord was not an exact scholar, nor did he 
 make pretensions to be such. He loved historic 
 studies, but I do not think he brought to them 
 the absolute judicial faculty, rare, if it ever ex- 
 ists, in earnest natures. Because of this he was 
 the more powerful advocate and confident leader. 
 His force was never weakened by hesitating opin- 
 ions after his position was once taken. 
 
 As a preacher he attained great distinction. 
 He had repeated calls to several of the strongest 
 and most important Churches of the country. 
 New York, Pittsburgh and Mobile sought to win 
 him from Buffalo, by inducements which required 
 a strong man to resist. 
 
 He supplied a pulpit, prior to 1850, in Mobile 
 for six months, while he sought an escape from 
 the rigors of our winter climate. There was a 
 time, about 1848, when, wearied with the loneli- 
 ness of his position as the pastor of the only 
 Old-School Church here, he was inclined to ac- 
 cept the Pittsburgh call. The Doctor felt his 
 isolation keenly. It was not the fault of per- 
 sons, but was the natural result of the sharp 
 controversies in which he gave blows quite as 
 
112 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 hard as he received. In those days clerg}'mcn 
 of different ecclesiastical relations had much less 
 fellowship with each other than now. They had 
 not yet discovered as, to some extent, they have 
 since, and, unless the world comes to a stand- 
 still, will to a still greater, that nothing enlarges 
 the clerical vision like broad out-looks over its 
 own denominational fence into neighboring fields 
 of thought. The odium tJicologicuui had been 
 an unknown quantity, had there always been 
 free trade in the commerce of theological ideas. 
 The years when I attended his Church were his 
 years of prime and of his hardest professional 
 work and greatest activity. His sermons were 
 not of the speculative or philosophic type, for 
 such was not the cast of his mind. He was then 
 much in the habit of "skeletonizing" his ser- 
 mons, trusting to the inspiration of the occasion 
 for their style and the complete elaboration of 
 his thought. He rarely failed to impress the 
 leading doctrines so sacred to him, and often 
 combated what he regarded the false philoso- 
 phies, in the pulpit and out, of the day. He was 
 of the militant order of men, and was nc\'er hap- 
 pier than when defending " the faith " against 
 the men and the system \\hich openl\- or covertly 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. II3 
 
 assailed it. He hated social wrongs, he hated 
 cant. That holy wrath which burns in the utter- 
 ances of the Hebrew prophets, as they scourge 
 the hypocrisy and oppression of their day, re- 
 appeared in this man of moral passion and of 
 glowing sympathy with the just, the good, and 
 the true, and of hate of the wrong, the hypocrite 
 and the false. No man was less awed by power 
 in any unworthy sense ; no man paid less hom- 
 age to accidental greatness. All the veneering 
 of society he mercilessly tore from those who 
 sought it for a covering of selfishness and op- 
 pressive greed. 
 
 One pulpit characteristic may be noted — the 
 large use he made of the poetry of the Bible. 
 Himself a poet, his fancy literally reveled in the 
 imagery of the Hebrew melodists. The Book of 
 Job, Ecclesiastes, the later prophets, and above 
 all, the Psalms, were of his poetic religious clas- 
 sics. I doubt if I ever heard him preach or pray 
 that he did not invest much of his thought with 
 the poetry of the Old Testament. More than 
 any man I ever knew, his type of mind, his meth- 
 ods of illustration, his genius, in short, were of 
 Hebrew mould. If he discoursed of death, the 
 Ninetieth Psalm was on his lips. He never 
 
I 14 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 wearied of the rhythmic thought of that " SonL,^ of 
 Moses." The imagery of the decay of the hu- 
 man faculties in the closing chapter of Eccle- 
 siastes, " The silver cord is loosed, the golden 
 bowl is broken, the pitcher at the fountain, and 
 the wheel at the cistern," were his interpreters of 
 the vanishing shadows of time. 
 
 " How is the strong staff broken and the beau- 
 tiful rod." " The beauty of Israel is slain upon 
 the high places, how are the mighty fallen and 
 the weapons of war perished," voiced his lament 
 over the great dead whom he mourned. His 
 memory was a picture-gallery of the Book of Job, 
 and in his moments of intellectual exaltation he 
 would bear you as in a triumphal chariot amid 
 the sublimities of the Arabian poet. He loved a 
 few of the old English poets from whose wells he 
 oftener drew than from the moderns. He had no 
 s)^mpathy with the sentimental schools, and his 
 taste was severe and exacting. As illustrating 
 his love of sacred poetry, I will relate an incident 
 connected with a visit to him a few weeks before 
 his death. He was too weak to walk unaided, 
 his voice feeble, but his spiritual vision clear as 
 the sunlight. He spoke of poetry as the natural 
 form of expression of divine praise and worshi[), 
 
mp:morial paper. 115 
 
 and quoted from his favorite Hebrew poets. He 
 asked me to read the translation of the Russian 
 Hymn to the Deity — a favorite, and a hymn of 
 marvellous grandeur and sublimity. 
 
 The reading concluded, he pronounced it the 
 noblest of modern hymns of praise. I said I 
 knew another not unworthy to go with it, and 
 read his own " Ode to God." At the conclusion 
 of the reading, the tears flowing down his cheeks, 
 he said, " It is much better than I thought." 
 
 With all the boldness and vigor of his mind, 
 his sensibility found expression, on occasion, in 
 strains of elegiac beauty. I am tempted to recall 
 an illustration of this side of his genius. This 
 example is from a funeral sermon delivered on 
 the occasion of the death of young Sprague, 
 son of the late Dr. Sprague, whose memory is 
 still fragrant among us. He accidentally shot 
 himself on Grand Island, and for three days his 
 body was undiscovered, and when found had no 
 appearance of decay. I quote from the sermon 
 a reference to this circumstance: 
 
 " He fell without a struggle or a motion ; one 
 moment full of life, in the next his mortal remains 
 lay under the shadows of the primitive forests, 
 protected from the sun by the boughs of those 
 
I l6 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 ancient trees, which were planted by the hand of 
 God before the vessel of Columbus touched the 
 shore of the new world. There, in the cahn quiet 
 of its last sleep, lay the body of our dear young 
 friend, for days and nights, yet, no wild beast of 
 the forest was suffered to touch it, no fowl of 
 the air was permitted to alight upon that soul- 
 deserted tenement; with strange instinctive rev- 
 erence the denizens of the woods respected the 
 remains which are before us to-day, unmutilated 
 and with less change than is the ordinary result of 
 death. No storm beat upon this defenseless tab- 
 ernacle of a departed spirit, no rain descended to 
 disfigure or deform that guarded body ; only the 
 dews fell, like angels' tears, and they were dried 
 up by the breath of the morning. We may im- 
 agine the innocent birds gazing down from the 
 neighboring trees with amazement, upon this 
 strange tenant of their solitudes; watching with 
 curious eyes the calm repose of the lifeless body, 
 until the 'sentinel stars set their watch in the 
 sky,' looking pitifully down through the openings 
 of the forest with their calm, pure eyes, till the 
 dawning day. So God protected the body of our 
 departed friend in the wilderness, until human 
 feet were directed to its resting-place, and hands 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. II7 
 
 of men, with reverence and solemn awe, raised 
 and bore it to those who waited in that fearful 
 suspense. Which is harder to be borne than the 
 bitterness of death." 
 
 His ablest papers were of a controversial char- 
 acter, whatever their form. He was like the war 
 horse of whose description he was so fond. " He 
 saith among the trumpets, ha ! ha ! and he smcll- 
 eth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains 
 and the shouting." His genius was happy in the 
 stimulus of opposition, and when engaged with a 
 foeman worthy his steel, he was incarnate courage 
 and power. There is a touching reference to the 
 part he had borne in the controversies of his time, 
 in his address to his people on the twenty-fifth 
 anniversary of his pastorate. He says : 
 
 " In the providence of God it has so happened 
 that much of the labor and odium of the neces- 
 sary controversy with aggressive errors and her- 
 esies has fallen to my lot. When rationalism has 
 put forth its dogmas, in some offensive and hostile 
 way, I have been called to stand in the breach." 
 , He then proceeds to speak of his defenses of 
 the doctrine of his Church, and his resistance to 
 the aggressions of Romanism : 
 9 
 
Il8 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 " In all this I have been the servant and agent 
 of the Protestant and Orthodox denominations 
 of this city, but it has happened in my case as in 
 that of many a better and abler man, that instead 
 of a grateful remembrance of a good service ren- 
 dered in a perilous time, the imputation of a 
 controversial temper has followed and been the 
 reward of the difficult and even dangerous duty I 
 have been called to discharge." 
 
 A single sentence reveals his satisfaction that 
 the age of controversy had passed, and that he 
 too welcomed the new era : 
 
 " If I know myself, I am not inclined to con- 
 troversy ; though constitutionally fearless I am 
 a lover of peace, and no one who has imputed 
 to me a spirit of controversy can rejoice more 
 than I have done that for the last few years, I 
 have not been compelled to enter the arena of 
 theological discussion." 
 
 The Doctor's feeling protest was unnecessary. 
 After the smoke of the battle has cleared away 
 and the passions of the hour subsided, Dr. Lord 
 appears one of the most unselfish and consecrated 
 men that ever entered the lists to battle for the 
 right. And of all the contestants, on either side, 
 
MEMORIAL TAPER. 1 I9 
 
 none returned from the conflict with brighter 
 shield or more untarnished honor. 
 
 Few men communicated so much with the pub- 
 lic through the press as did Dr. Lord. For the 
 first twenty years of his Buffalo ministry, he dis- 
 cussed almost every question of large interest. 
 His articles to the public journals and his pam- 
 phlets would make volumes. 
 
 In a pre-eminent degree, he for many years held 
 the position here which so many of the clergy 
 hold in Great Britain, that of an educator of the 
 public, and creator of public opinion on matters 
 of large, but general interest. I believe Great 
 Britain owes as much to some of her clergy as 
 she does to her statesmen, for the reform of 
 abuses which were crushing out her life. 
 
 Sydney Smith, and Charles Kingsley of a later 
 generation, are examples of clergymen who car- 
 ried the sorrows and physical needs of the masses 
 on their hearts, and were felt in every corner of 
 the Kingdom through their earnest work to re- 
 lieve them. It indicates a timely revolution. 
 The bodies of men must be taken care of as well 
 as their souls. The clergy are an educated class, 
 consecrated to self-denying labor, and removed 
 from the ordinary temptations to self-seeking, 
 
I20 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 and there is no reason why they should not be 
 great factors in every movement which seeks bet- 
 ter laws, and better administration affecting pop- 
 ular health, popular morals, and the comforts and 
 recreations of the people. I confess to no sym- 
 pathy with that feeling which would restrict the 
 clergy to the spiritual office of their profession. 
 Some of the best outside work done to-day in 
 this country, is done by the clergy of all schools, 
 liberal and orthodox. Their influence as a pro- 
 fession is not of the same type as fifty years ago ; 
 less popular awe hedges them in to make them 
 a peculiar class, above, rather than of, the people, 
 but their true power is, I believe, greater than 
 ever, because it is related more nearly to human- 
 ity in its daily needs. It has lost none of its 
 sense of the relations of the present to the future 
 life, but it has a better appreciation of the rela- 
 tions of this life to itself, as felt in the industries 
 and home-lives of men. 
 
 The strong elements of Dr. Lord brought out 
 in his public career were hardly more distinguish- 
 ing than the characteristics revealed in private 
 and personal relations. He was genial, with a 
 happy flow of wit, and humor and repartee. He 
 loved cheerful companionslii[) and valued the 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. 121 
 
 good things of the world as gifts of God for 
 human use. He had no small arts, or sly policies, 
 but was open, above board. If he opposed he 
 opposed like a man. If he was on your side he 
 was faithful to the death. He was impetuous 
 but chivalric. He had prejudices to conquer, but 
 no conscious injustice to others to lament. He 
 had the simplicity of a child, and without vanity 
 was proud. He was a rash man who ventured 
 to trifle with his self-respect, or to strike where 
 he loved. He would serve in no Philistine Tem- 
 ple for the sport of lords or fools. He would 
 rather, Sampson-like, " bow himself with all his 
 might" between its "middle pillars." There is 
 a holy anger that resteth in the bosom of wise 
 men. 
 
 He was a warm friend. He was truly " a good 
 Griffith," and no one who had need of a mantle 
 of charity could ask for one of more ample folds 
 than his. It was a beautiful trait and sometimes 
 cost him dear, for he was not a discriminating 
 judge of character. He was trustful, sympathetic, 
 and had a large vision for the virtues of his 
 friends. 
 
 His home was literally a place of refuge for 
 the poor and needy. Without children of his 
 
122 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 own, the children of others, and often of the 
 extreme poor, had the protection and care of his 
 house. These offices were sometimes rewarded 
 with grateful love. There is a poetic beauty in 
 this incident : A poor and simple-minded lad 
 living in the vicinity, had learned to call the Doc- 
 tor friend. When told of his death, he begged 
 for his little savings that he might buy flowers 
 for the burial time. He was gratified, and his 
 handful of winter bloom was placed at the feet 
 of his friend where they now rest in the deep 
 silence. 
 
 This sympathetic nature overflowed the ordi- 
 nary channels and led him to befriend the brute 
 creation. I will venture to say that no house in 
 the land has given more sympathy and care 
 to races of domestic animals than his. No 
 words but his own can give any adequate idea 
 of his hate of cruelty to the poor beasts that 
 serve us, and the high place he gives them in the 
 Divine Thought. The following of his sonnets 
 deserves to be written in gold : 
 
 " Doth God take care of oxen," — who upholds 
 All suns and systems — round whose august scat 
 The veiled Cherubim with covered feet. 
 Cry Holy! Holy! He whose care enfolds 
 
MEMORIAL TAPER. 1 23 
 
 The Heavenly Powers who thro' the streets of gold 
 Pass out angelic messengers, more fleet 
 Than winds to do his will? He who of old 
 Spared Nin'veh for his herds, doth yet behold 
 The poor dumb creatures, who do ever cry 
 To him for judgment, groaning with the lash 
 And wounds and hunger— can that All-Seeing Eye 
 Fail to regard and judge, before whose flash 
 The Heavens grow pale? Each moan of agony 
 Is placed on record 'gainst the avenging day. 
 
 How he loved Buffalo! Had it been all his 
 own he could not have been more devoted to its 
 interests. He believed in her, and in her future 
 as a leading American city. His life here as a 
 lawyer and clergyman, compassed almost the 
 whole growth of the town. He knew the earl)- 
 men who laid the foundations of the city. He 
 had followed many of them to the grave. He 
 had outlived all his early pulpit colleagues save 
 one,— who is still with us, discharging the duties 
 of the position he so long has honored. There 
 was no other who on that bleak winter's day 
 could so fittingly, and none with more feeling, 
 discharge the last offices at the grave of our 
 friend, than the venerable rector of St. Paul's. 
 
 About the last public appearance of Dr. Lord 
 was at the banquet of the Buffalo Bar, a few 
 
124 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 months before liis death. The occasion found its 
 highest interest in his presence. P^or the first 
 time in a half century he stood ^\■ith his early 
 <;uild — recognized as one of them, and honored for 
 his long and useful career. Out of two hundred 
 guests there was not one present who knew him 
 in his first professional days. His life had come 
 round a full circle, and he came like a warrior of 
 fifty years service, to bid the profession of his 
 youth, " Hail and farewell." I am sure that none 
 who were then present will ever forget the wit 
 and the genius, and the rich nature which he 
 brought to that banquet, and poured out so prod- 
 igally for our delight. His form and presence 
 never appeared more grandly than on that occa- 
 sion, and when he left he carried with him the 
 homage of all hearts. 
 
 I know that pictorial immortality is apt to be 
 as " words w^rit in water." Still it has been 
 thought best to found in the New City Hall a 
 representative portrait gallery of Buffalo's illus- 
 trious lawyers and judges. Dr. Lord had a dual 
 professional life : Eminent in one, honored in 
 both professions. Why should it not be devolved 
 upon the Buffalo artist whose national reputation 
 is our renown as well as his, to paint for that 
 
MEMORIAL PAPER. 12$ 
 
 gallery the picture of this peer of the greatest of 
 them all? Do you say this will never be? 
 
 I remember the reply of the elder Cato, to one 
 asking why he had no public statue. " I would 
 much rather be asked why I have no statue than 
 why I have one." 
 
 His long service in the ministry found him, at 
 length, old and weary. Responsive to his re- 
 peated and urgent requests, his people reluctantly 
 granted him release, and in 1873 his resignation 
 of the pastorate was accepted. That occasion is 
 historic and was marked by the tenderest expres- 
 sions of mutual love. A young man took his 
 place, whom the Doctor at once adopted to his 
 confidence and heart. And so the curtain drops 
 on the active part of a great life. 
 
 Twenty-five years ago our dear friend estab- 
 lished his home in a suburban retreat. There, 
 amid broad acres, beautified by his own hands, 
 and in a noble library where were gathered the 
 thoughts of the ages, he enriched his nature for 
 the duties of time, and prepared for the limitless 
 future. 
 
 For a half century he had consecrated his 
 powers to humanity and to God. Having passed 
 the summit hour of ordinary life, on Sunday, Jan- 
 
126 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 
 
 uary 21, 1877, he died. He died in the city that 
 honored and revered him, surrounded by kindred 
 and friends that loved him. His life was full- 
 orbed, his death a peaceful transition. 
 
 Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail, 
 Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt. 
 Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair 
 And what may quiet us in a death so noble. 
 

 
 
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