BX 9220 .M66 1914 
 Moore, Walter W. 1857-1926. 
 Appreciations and historica: 
 addresses 
 
MOSES DRURY llOGK. 
 
JAN "Q 1915 
 A., 
 
 APPRECIATIONS 
 
 AND 
 
 HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 
 
 Walter W. Mooke, D. D., LL. D., 
 President of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, 
 
TO 
 
 L, F. M. 
 
Contents! 
 
 Page 
 
 Moses Drury Hoge 5 
 
 Jacob Henry Smith 14 
 
 William Henry Green 23 
 
 Cyrus Hall McCormtck 31 
 
 WiLLJ/vM Wallace Spence 67 
 
 Joseph Bryan 77 
 
 The Centennial Celebration of Union Seminary 81 
 
 The First Fifty" Years op Union Seminary 86 
 
 Beginnings and Development of the Presbyterian Church 
 
 IN North Carolina 129 
 
3fUu2itration£J 
 
 Moses Drxjry Hoge Frontispiece. 
 
 Facing Page 
 
 Jacob Henry Smith 14 
 
 William Henry Green 23 
 
 Cyrus Hall McCormick 31 
 
 William Wallace Spence 67 
 
 Joseph Bryan 77 
 
 John Holt Rice 103 
 
 Benjamin M. Smith 120 
 
 Robert L. Dabney 123 
 
 Thomap E. Peck 125 
 
Jilosiesi Bturp ?|oge 
 
 Address at the Memorial Service in the Second Presbyterian Church of 
 Richmond, February 5, 1899. 
 
 Few men in any walk of life have ever so deeply 
 impressed an entire community with the power 
 of a noble personality as the lamented servant of 
 God whose virtues and labors we commemorate 
 to-day. Certainly no minister of the gospel in 
 all the history of this ancient commonwealth was 
 ever accorded a position so eminent by the public 
 at large. This popular estimate was deliberate 
 and exact. The people knew him. For more than 
 fifty years, through storm and sunshine, in war 
 and peace, they had studied his character and 
 watched his work, and they have rendered their 
 verdict: that Moses D. Hoge was a man; a strong, 
 wise, high-minded, great-hearted, heroic man; 
 that through all these years of stress and toil 
 and publicity he wore the white flower of a blame- 
 less life; and that he preached the gospel of the 
 grace of God with a dignity and authority and 
 tenderness, with a beauty and pathos and power 
 which have rarely, if ever, been surpassed in the 
 annals of the American pulpit. 
 
 Long before the close of his consecrated career 
 he had taken his place in public interest even by 
 the side of those stately memorials of this historic 
 city which men have come from the ends of the 
 earth to see — the bronze and marble reminders 
 of the men who have forever associated the name 
 of Virginia with eloquence and virtue and valor. 
 
6 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 No visitor who had come from a distant State 
 or a land beyond the seas, to look upon these 
 memorials of the great Virginians of former days, 
 felt that his visit to Richmond was complete till 
 he had seen and heard the man who, though an 
 humble minister of the Cross, was by common 
 consent the most eminent living citizen of a com- 
 monwealth which has always been peculiarly rich 
 in gifted sons. It was his privilege to preach to 
 a larger number of the men whose commanding 
 influence in public life, in the learned professions, 
 or in the business world, had conferred prosperity 
 and honor upon the State, than any other spiritual 
 teacher of the time. He was more frequentl^^ 
 the spokesman of the people on great public oc- 
 casions than any other man whom Richmond has 
 delighted to honor. He was more frequently the 
 subject of conversation in the social circle than 
 any other member of this cosmopolitan com- 
 munity. In every community where he once 
 appeared his name was thenceforth a household 
 word. It is not my province at present to speak 
 of these things. I allude to them only in order to 
 emphasize the fact that the explanation of this 
 preeminence in public esteem lay largely in the 
 character of his work in the pulpit. That was his 
 throne. There he was king. 
 
 In attempting to comply with the request of 
 the session of his church to say something to-day 
 in regard to this outstanding feature of Dr. Hoge's 
 work, a feeling of peculiar sadness comes over my 
 heart. It will be many a long day before any man 
 who knew him can stand in this pulpit without 
 a sense of wistful loneliness at the thought of that 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 7 
 
 venerated figure, with its resolute attitudes and 
 ringing tones, which for fifty-four fruitful years 
 stood in this place as God's ambassador, laying 
 the multitude under the enchantment of his 
 eloquence, diffusing through this sanctuary the 
 aroma of his piety, and lifting sad and weary 
 hearts to heaven on the wings of his wonderful 
 prayers. As some one has said of the death of 
 another illustrious preacher, we feel like children 
 who had long sheltered under a mighty oak; and 
 now the old oak has gone down and we are out 
 in the open sun. We hardly knew, till he fell, 
 how much we had sheltered under him. His 
 presence was a protection. His voice was a power. 
 His long-established leadership was a rallying 
 centre for the disheartened soldiers of the cross.. 
 
 We do not murmur at the dispensation which 
 has taken him from us — 
 
 "But oh for the touch of a vanished hand 
 And tlie soinid of a voice that is still!" 
 
 There were certain physical features of his 
 preaching which are perfectly familiar to all who 
 have heard him even once, and which will be 
 remembered by them forever, but which cannot 
 be known by description to those who have not. 
 When he rose in the pulpit, tall, straight, slender, 
 sinewy, commanding, with something vital and 
 electric in his very movements, yet singularly de- 
 liberate, and, lifting his chin from his collar with 
 a peculiar movement, surveyed the people before 
 him and on either side, with his grave, intellectual 
 face and almost melancholy eyes, no one needed 
 to be told that there stood a master of assemblies. 
 
8 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 The attention was riveted by his appearance and 
 manner before he had uttered a word. 
 
 As soon as he began to speak, the clear, rich 
 and resonant tones, reaching without effort to the 
 limits of the largest assembly, revealed to every 
 hearer another element of his power to move and 
 mould the hearts of men. To few of the world's 
 masters of discourse has it been given to dem- 
 onstrate as he did the music and spell of the human 
 voice. It was a voice in a million — flexible, 
 magnetic, thrilling, clear as a clarion, by turns 
 tranquil and soothing, strenuous and stirring, as 
 the speaker willed, now mellow as a cathedral bell 
 heard in the twilight, now ringing like a trumpet 
 or rolling through the building like melodious 
 thunder, with an occasional impassioned crash 
 like artillery, accompanied by a resounding stamp 
 of his foot on the floor; but never unpleasant or 
 uncontrolled or overstrained; no one ever heard 
 him scream or tear his throat. Some of his 
 cadences in the utterance of particular words or 
 sentiments lingered on the ear and haunted the 
 memory for years like a strain of exquisite music. 
 As you listened to his voice in prayer, "there ran 
 through its pathetic fall a vibration as though the 
 minister's heart was singing like an Aeolian harp 
 as the breath of the Spirit of God blew through its 
 strings." It was a voice that adapted itself with 
 equal facility to all occasions. When he preached 
 to the whole of General D. H. Hill's division in the 
 open air, it rang like a bugle to the outermost 
 verge of his vast congregation. When he stood on 
 the slope of Mount Ebal in Palestine and recited 
 the twenty-third Psalm, it was heard distinctly 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 9 
 
 by the English clergyman on the other side of the 
 valley, three-quarters of a mile away. When the 
 body of an eminent statesman and ruling elder 
 in his church was borne into this building and laid 
 before the pulpit, and the preacher rose and said, 
 "Mark the perfect man and behold the upright, 
 for the end of that man is peace," the sympa- 
 thetic intonations fell like healing balm on 
 wounded hearts. When he stood in the Senate 
 Chamber at Washington beside the mortal remains 
 of the great Carolinian, and said to the assembled 
 representatives of the greatness of this, nation and 
 of the w^orld, "There is nothing great but God;" 
 the voice and the words alike impressed the 
 insignificance of all human concerns as compared 
 w^ith religion. When he stood in the chancel of 
 St. Paul's and stretched his hand over the casket 
 containing the pallid form of "the daughter of the 
 Confederacy," and said, "Blessed are the pure 
 in heart for they shall see God," it had the au- 
 thority and tenderness of a prophet's benediction. 
 Of the intellectual qualities of his preaching, the 
 first that impressed the hearer was the exquisite 
 phrasing. He was a marvelous magician with 
 words. He w^as the prince of pulpit rhetoricians. 
 He had made himself a master of the art of verbal 
 expression, because, to use his own words, he knew 
 that "style was the crystallization of thought," 
 and he believed that "royal thoughts ought to 
 wear royal robes." The splendid powers with 
 which he was endowed by nature had been at once 
 enriched and chastened by the strenuous study 
 of the world's best books. Every cultivated 
 person recognized the flavor of ripe scholarship 
 
10 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 in his diction and even those devoid of culture felt 
 its charm without being able to define it. The 
 mellow splendor of his rhetoric captivated all 
 classes of hearers. This rare beauty of his 
 language, this exquisite drapery of his thoughts, 
 sometimes tempted superficial hearers to regard 
 him as merely a skillful phrase-maker. Nothing 
 could be farther from the truth. He was a superb 
 rhetorician because he was a true scholar and 
 a profound theologian. His rhetoric drev/ deep. 
 The ocean greyhound, which seems to skim the 
 billows, does in fact plow deep beneath their 
 surface, and hence the safety of her cargo of human 
 lives and precious wares. This masterful preacher 
 was easy and swift — he distanced all his brethren — 
 but he was always safe, and his ministry had the 
 momentum which only iveight can give. All his 
 life long he was a student — a student of books, a 
 student of men, a student of the deep things of 
 God. When men beheld the external splendor 
 of the temple at Jerusalem, with its walls and 
 roofs of white marble, surmounted with plates 
 and spikes of glittering gold, they somxCtimes 
 forgot the immense substructions built deep into 
 the ground and resting upon the everlasting rock; 
 but without that cyclopean masonry hidden from 
 view, those snowy walls of marble and those sky- 
 piercing pinnacles of gold could not have been. 
 Dr. Hoge's surpassing beauty of statement was 
 bottomed on eternal truth. 
 
 He was, therefore, not only an orator, but a 
 teacher. His sermons were not only brilliant 
 in form, but rich in truth. So that not only in 
 point of finish, but also in point of force he ranks 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 11 
 
 with the masters of the contemporary pulpit. 
 It is true that many of his later discourses were 
 somewhat discursive in treatment, necessarily so 
 because of the innumerable demands upon his 
 time, but he never failed to bring beaten oil to 
 the sanctuary when it was possible, and he never 
 for a moment relinquished or lowered his concep- 
 tion of the teaching function of the ministry. 
 His people were not only interested and enter- 
 tained, but they were fed and nourished with truth. 
 The lecture which he delivered at the University 
 of V^irginia forty-nine years ago on "The Success 
 of Christianity, an Evidence of its Divine Origin," 
 and known to some of you from its publication 
 in the portly volume entitled "Evidences of 
 Christianity," is a noble specimen of the kind of 
 work he was capable of when he was at his best. 
 His substantial attainments, then, were no less 
 remarkable than his graces of speech ; but here we 
 have sighted a subject too large for the limits of 
 this address. To use Dr. Breed's figure, a small 
 island can be explored in a few hours, but not a 
 wide continent. The one may be characterized 
 in a word, but not the other. This island is a 
 bank of sand, that one a smiling pasture, a third 
 a mass of cliffs, a fourth a mountain peak; but the 
 continent is a vast combination of all these 
 features, indefinitely multiplied. So the gifts of 
 some men are insular and may be summed up in 
 a few words, but the gifts of the man in whose 
 memory we are assembled to-day were continental. 
 Every one that had heard him even once saw that 
 there were here peaceful valleys where the grass 
 grew green, and the sweet flowers bloomed, and 
 
12 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 streams ran rippling; but those who sailed farther 
 along shore found that there were also mighty 
 cliffs where his convictions defied the waves of 
 passing opinion; and when they pushed their 
 exploration into the interior, they came upon great 
 uplands of philosophy, where the granite of a 
 strong theology protruded, and where the snows 
 of doctrine lay deep; but the thoughtful explorer 
 knew well that the granite was essential to the 
 solidity of those towering heights and that with- 
 out those snows upon the peaks there w^ould have 
 been no streams in the valleys, no broad reaches of 
 meadow, no blooming flowers. He was indeed 
 a superb rhetorician, with a marvelous w^ealth of 
 diction, a phenomenal power of description, and 
 a rare felicity of illustration; but rhetoric in the 
 pulpit has no abiding charm apart from truth. 
 Strong men and thoughtful women do not sit 
 for fifty-four years in ever-increasing numbers 
 under a ministry which has not in it the strength 
 of Divine truth, deeply studied, sincerely be- 
 lieved, and earnestly proclaimed. 
 
 We have now seen something of what he was in 
 his preaching as a man, and something of what 
 he was as a scholar, but, after all, the hiding of his 
 power lay in what he was as a saint. Nature had 
 done much for him. Cultivation had done much. 
 But grace had done most of all. He preached 
 from a true and profound experience of the mercy 
 and power of God. He knew the deadly evil of 
 sin. He knew the saving grace of Christ. He 
 knew the brooding sorrows of the human heart. 
 He knew the comfort of communion with God. 
 He knew that the gospel was God's supreme 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 13 
 
 answer to man's supreme need; and the crowning 
 glory of this pulpit is that, from the first day of 
 its occupancy to the last, it rang true to the 
 evangel: "Behold the lamb of God that taketh 
 away the sin of the world." There was never a 
 day in all these fifty-four years when men could 
 not have pointed to him as to the original of 
 Cowper's immortal portrait — 
 
 "There stands the messenger of truth: there stands 
 The legate of the skies! — his theme divine, 
 His office sacred, his credentials clear. 
 By him the violated law speaks out 
 Its thunders; and by him, in strains as sweet 
 As angels use, the gospel whispers peace. 
 He stabhshes the strong, restores the weak, 
 Reclaims the wanderer, binds the broken heart. 
 And, arm'd himself in panoply complete 
 Of heavenly temper, furnishes with arms 
 Bright as his own, and trains, by every rule 
 Of holy discipline, to glorious war 
 The sacramental host of God's elect!" 
 
14 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 3^eb. Jacob ?|enrj> ^mitJ), M. JB. 
 
 From, the Central Presbyterian, February 9, 1898. 
 
 The first time I ever saw Dr. Smith was in a 
 large book-store in Charlotte, N. C. If I had 
 never seen him again I should have carried with 
 me through life the memory of that compact 
 frame with its decided and vigorous movements, 
 the deep rich tones of his voice, his genial and 
 hearty greeting of the proprietor as he asked where 
 the latest books were kept, and the intelligent 
 sureness and authority of his manner, as with shrewd 
 and racy comments he took down and ran through 
 with his eye one volume after another of history, 
 philosophy and works on general literature. Hav- 
 ing some taste for reading myself, though then 
 quite ignorant of the particular books he was 
 handling, I felt drawn to a man who was evidently 
 so much at home among books, and lingered near 
 him to hear his remarks, though I did not venture 
 to speak to him, being only a lad of some thirteen 
 years and very shy. He remained only a few 
 minutes, but quite long enough to impress me 
 with the fact that this was no ordinary man. I 
 wished he had stayed longer. 
 
 It was therefore with uncommon pleasure that, 
 a few years later when I was a student at Davidson 
 College, I saw this same man walk up the aisle 
 of the old chapel one Sunday with his neat black 
 sermon case under his arm and take his place 
 reverently in thic pulpit. I settled myself as com- 
 
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HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 15 
 
 fortably as the uncompromising pews of the old 
 building which we then used as a church would 
 allow, confident that we were going to hear some- 
 thing good, but thinking more, I fear, of the 
 pleasure it would give me to listen to the play of 
 that strong and flexible voice, and of the vigor 
 of thought and the literary finish which must 
 characterize the sermons of such a man as I had 
 heard talking in that book store, th^n of the truth 
 itself which he was commissioned to deliver to 
 us as an ambassador of Christ. That did not 
 last long, however, after he began. The voice 
 did indeed roll in rich volume through the house, 
 crashing almost like artillery in impassioned 
 passages and seeming to shake the building; and 
 the style had indeed that unmistakable flavor of 
 good reading which results only from years of 
 familiarity with the master minds of the race. 
 But attention to these things soon gave place to 
 absorbed interest in the subject itself, "Turning 
 points in life," Luke xix, 41-42: "And when he was 
 come near, he beheld the city and wept over it, 
 saying. If thou hadst known, even thou, at least 
 in this thy day, the things which belong unto 
 thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes." 
 I can still see his hand follow with thumb and 
 forefinger the edge of the pulpit in a straight line 
 till it reached the corner and then turn sharply 
 at right angles to its former course. I can still 
 hear the earnest tones making the application to 
 turning points in life. Hundreds of sermons have 
 faded from my memory. That one stands out 
 like a great promontory on a flat and sandy shore. 
 That afternoon I was introduced to him at the 
 
16 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 house of one of the professors and got a view of 
 another side of his character, as his conversation 
 flowed hke a sparkHng stream, with innocent 
 humor breaking over it ever and anon hke gleams 
 of sunlight. I remember especially his pleasant 
 badinage with the student who acted as precentor 
 in the choir, his compliments on the character of 
 the music, and his playful criticism of the too full 
 exhibition of the "machinery" or "works," re- 
 ferring to the conspicuous manner of beating the 
 time. So here was a man of range. One whose 
 religion did not gloom the brightness of life. 
 No hesitation in speaking of religion at an}^ time, 
 but no cant. No hesitation about enjoying the 
 innocent pleasures of life, but no unseemly levity. 
 
 Students of all kinds were impressed with his 
 preaching whenever he visited a college town. 
 By the way, when he was pastor of the church at 
 Charlottesville, among other students of the 
 University of Virginia who attended his ministry 
 and were converted under his preaching was a 
 youth from New York by the name of Charles 
 A. Briggs, a boy who was destined to achieve 
 enviable renown as a great biblical scholar and 
 equally unenviable notoriety as a great troubler 
 of Israel. By an inquiry and statement which the 
 erratic professor himself made a few years ago to 
 Dr. Rawlings in regard to the gentleman who 
 had preached at Charlottesville just before the 
 war, the fact was brought to Dr. Smith's attention 
 that he was Mr. Briggs's spiritual father. 
 
 When I became a student in the Seminary of 
 which he had been one of the most valued directors 
 for many years before and continued to be for 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 17 
 
 many years after, I saw him every spring and from 
 time to time heard him preach or make addresses, 
 being always struck with the thoroughness of his 
 preparation, the richness of his matter, and his 
 soulful manner of speaking. It gave one a rare 
 sense of satisfaction to see him preside over public 
 exercises as President of the Board; everything 
 was done with so m.uch strength and fitness. 
 None of the young men who received from his hand 
 their diplomas can ever forget the earnest and 
 tender words with which he sent them forth to 
 preach the everlasting gospel. 
 
 Whenever he was on the examining committee, 
 the classes knew that after the professor had 
 apparently covered the ground with them, there 
 would be a few pointed questions from that 
 watchful gentleman who never held a Hebrew 
 Bible upside down and never nodded during 
 these weary exercises, questions which somehow 
 seemed to put their real knowledge of the subject 
 to the proof more effectually than even those 
 of the professor himself. 
 
 Nobody who had once traveled with him from 
 Hampden-Sidney to Keysville, the route he gen- 
 erally took to and from the Seminary, was ever 
 quite willing thereafter to miake the trip in any 
 other hack than the one Dr. Smith was in. Those 
 eighteen miles seemed short, even when the rain 
 poured steadily from beginning to end and the 
 wheels toiled dismally through the mud and the 
 passengers were slammed this way and that, as 
 successive mud holes were encountered. Nothing 
 could dash the spirits of a crowd listening to those 
 irresistible stories, told as nobody else could tell 
 
18 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 them — of the man who pronounced "patriarchs" 
 partridges and who, the narrator said, was making 
 game of hol}^ things; of the ignorant preacher who 
 in reading the description of the coverings of the 
 Mosaic tabernacle read "badgers' skins," ''beggars' 
 skins,'' and commented on the severity of the old 
 dispensation as compared with the new, saying 
 that when a poor man died now he was given a 
 decent Christian burial, but then whenever a 
 beggar died, "they clapped his skin on the taber- 
 nacle;" of the darkey arraigned for stealing chick- 
 ens, whom the judge asked if he didn't know that 
 was a "reprehensible offence," and who replied 
 he "thought it wuz a plank fence, sah, but he 
 found it was a bobwire, sah ;" of the colored woman 
 whose infant he baptized and who, when asked 
 what name he was to give the child, almost 
 paralyzed him with the grave answer — "General 
 Beauregard!"; of the ludicrous accidents which 
 befell him and Dr. Pharr, or Mr. Doll, when they 
 were preaching together, such as his attempt to 
 raise the tune of "Blow ye the trumpet, blow," 
 when, just as he uttered the first word "Blow," 
 he inadvertently stepped off the high platform and 
 found himself pitching forward with long strides 
 down the aisle towards the door to keep from 
 falling; of the Scotchman who wished to be an 
 elder and when asked about his qualifications 
 said: "No, he could not pray in public, nor make 
 pastoral visits to the afflicted," and so on, and 
 when pressed to name his special qualification said 
 he could "raise an objection." The woods rang 
 with unrestrained laughter, trustees, students, 
 drivers all alike under the spell of his humor. 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 19 
 
 Then, it might be, in a few moments, all would be 
 moved well-nigh to tears as he related the story 
 of the Scotch girl who applied for admission into 
 the church, and, awed by the presence of the 
 session, could give no clear answers to their ques- 
 tions, and who, as she withdrew disappointed, 
 found her voice at the door and said "I canna talk 
 for Jesus, but I cou'd die for him," and was im- 
 mediately recalled and received .into the com- 
 munion of the church. 
 
 After I became a professor in the Seminary I 
 had the good fortune to see Dr. Smith still more 
 frequently, especially after my marriage to a 
 lady whom he had known well from her childhood, 
 and whom he always continued to call by her given 
 name in a fatherly and affectionate way. Our 
 house became his customary home when the 
 Board of Trustees was in session. He would 
 often come early, before the Board met, and stay 
 with us for several days, to the unqualified delight 
 of the whole family. It was on these occasions 
 that we saw most deeply into his heart. His 
 prayers in the family circle, his conversation at 
 the table, his long talks in my study, chiefly of 
 the joys and sorrows of a pastor's life — all revealed 
 to us the strong and tender man more clearly 
 than we had ever seen him before. Few people 
 outside of his own charge knew the wealth of 
 affection in his nature. He especially loved chil- 
 dren and they loved him. I recall the deep satis- 
 faction with which he related the incident of his 
 little grandson whose mother was trying to give 
 him some idea of the blessedness of heaven, and 
 the little fellow asked, "Is it as nice as Dan'pa's?" 
 
20 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 And, truly, there were few placjes this side of heaven 
 that were "as nice as Dan'pa's." All his brethren 
 know how signally Dr. Smith was blessed in his 
 home life: a gentle, wise and godly wife, fully 
 identified with him in all his work, and a troop of 
 exceptionally active and gifted boys and girls, 
 each of whom became early in life, under the 
 influence of that home and pulpit, an intelligent, 
 earnest and faithfu'l Christian — in nothing was 
 God's goodness to him more manifest than in his 
 family relations. He told me once that when 
 one of his sons was about grown he heard him 
 one afternoon through the open window of his 
 study, as the youth passed through the yard 
 towards the house, decline a companion's invita- 
 tion to meet him up town that night, adding that 
 "he did not know how the streets of Greensboro 
 looked by lamp light till he was eighteen years 
 old." "Yes," said the listening and pleased 
 father to himself, "and that's the reason you are 
 what you are to-day." If I may speak of it 
 without indelicacy, I would like to say to parents 
 in general that one secret of Dr. Smith's phenome- 
 nal success in bringing up that remarkable family 
 of sons and daughters was that he and Mrs. 
 Smith made their own home the most attractive 
 place to them in all the world. There was no 
 temptation to go elsewhere. It was not harsh 
 restraint. Those boys enjoyed all boyish things. 
 They excelled in all games, they skated and hunted 
 and fished. Dr. Smith often going with them in 
 their tramps through the woods. 
 
 One night at commencement a distinguished and 
 beloved member of the Board, who had seen much 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 21 
 
 sorrow and had grieved over wayward sons, 
 sitting next to me in the Seminary chapel before 
 the excersises began, called my attention to 
 Dr. Smith's beaming face as he sat on the opposite 
 side of the room, commented upon his age and his 
 remarkable vigor and elasticity, said he had had a 
 busy, fruitful, and happy life, and spoke especially 
 of the happiness he had had in his children, adding 
 with a half sigh that he supposed no one of them 
 had ever given his father a moment's uneasiness. 
 
 I have often heard another thoughtful minister 
 of our Church say that he would rather have Dr. 
 Smith's life work behind him than that of any 
 man he had ever known. And where indeed 
 could our young ministers find a man more worthy 
 of their imitation? His diligence as a student 
 kept his preaching fresh and rich to the very end — 
 and, by the way, he preached to a larger number of 
 thoughtful and eminent public men than any other 
 pastor that has ever lived in North Carolina, his 
 church being for years the State's chief nursery 
 of pure and learned lawyers, judges and governors. 
 His warm and tender sympathy with suffering 
 made him an angel of God to the afflicted, his 
 own deep experience of divine grace — his own 
 deep knowledge of the preciousness of Christ — 
 teaching him what to say for their comfort and 
 making him a veritable Barnabas to the bereaved, 
 the sick and the dying; his firm grasp of the great 
 doctrines of our Church; his intelligent conception 
 of her mission to the world ; his own experience as 
 teacher, pastor, and evangelist, all combined to 
 
22 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 make him an invaluable presbyter and an invalu- 
 able counsellor on the boards of our great institu- 
 tions. Yes, it is certain that he has a great work 
 behind him. It is not less certain that he has a 
 still greater work before him. 
 
WILLIAM HENRY GREEN, 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 23 
 
 OTilliam ?|enrp #reen 
 
 Presbyterian Quarterly, April, 1900. 
 
 Born at Groveville, near Princeton, January 
 27th, 1825, matriculated at Lafayette College at 
 twelve, graduated with honors before he was six- 
 teen two years tutor there, graduated at Prince- 
 ton Seminary in 1846, appointed instructor in 
 Hebrew the same year, and remaining in the same 
 department and the same institution for fifty-four 
 years (except the years 1849-1851, when he was 
 pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church, Phila- 
 delphia)— such are the external facts in the life 
 of the great biblical scholar who has so recently 
 gone to his reward at the ripe age of seventy-five. 
 
 Two or three of the facts above stated might 
 make the impression that he was a precocious and 
 brilliant man, to whom hard tasks were easy. 
 This was not the case. Dr. Green's career is one 
 of the best contemporary illustrations of the im- 
 mense results that can be accomplished by definite- 
 ness of aim, steadfastness of purpose, and hard 
 work. He had a clear, strong, well-balanced 
 mind, but he was not a genius, in the usual ac- 
 ceptation of that term. He became the greatest 
 biblical scholar in America, not by natural superi- 
 ority of intellectual endowments, but by devout 
 and strenuous study. When preparing for college 
 he insistently and earnestly begged to be excused 
 from the study of the languages on the ground 
 
24 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 that he had no aptitude whatever for them. This 
 incident in the Hfe of a man who became a world- 
 renowned hnguist is commended to the attention 
 of those who are pushing the fixed curriculum to 
 one side to make place for optional or elective 
 courses on the supposition that boys at college 
 best know what their own aptitudes are. 
 
 The real secret of young Green's perfect recita- 
 tions in the class room, and of his leisure for chess 
 playing and the reading of Tasso in French, lay 
 in his fidelity and his systematic habits. He was 
 not only prompt at every recitation, but he never 
 missed the college prayers in the chapel at five 
 o'clock in the morning, summer and winter. He 
 made conscience of work. He was a servant of 
 God in study. He early perceived the spiritual 
 value of earnest intellectual toil and the truth 
 of the exhortation which one of the early instruc- 
 tors in Princeton College used to address to his 
 pupils: "Gentlemen, you will find the best prepa- 
 ration for death to be a really thorough knowledge 
 of Greek grammar." 
 
 When he became a teacher, the same high and 
 serious temper made him intolerant of indolence 
 and lack of conscientiousness on the part of a 
 professed servant of God, and gave him the respect 
 of all his students. The permanent regard of 
 students is not to be won by indulgent and easy- 
 going methods, by expecting little of them, but 
 by inciting them to tasks that will develop their 
 powers and by setting them the example of con- 
 scientious application. Dr. Green was not un- 
 just, but he was exacting, and, though teaching 
 the least attractive and most difficult part of the 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 25 
 
 seminary course, the part that sometimes develops 
 those mysterious diseases of the eyes which about 
 the third or fourth week of the Junior year sud- 
 denly convince the candidate that he will never 
 be able to see well enough to master Hebrew, he 
 succeeded in making most of his men work harder 
 for him than for any other professor, not by 
 objurgation or passionate denunciation of idleness 
 or stupidity, but by "the simple weight and in- 
 sistence of his personality" — a modest, earnest, 
 firm, hard-working, scholarly Christian man. One 
 of his former pupils says: "There was often a 
 prevailing sense of short-coming. In many points — 
 we offend all." But they kept at it. The man 
 in the chair was a splendid example of what could 
 be done by keeping everlastingly at it. And they 
 knew that, great as were his own attainments and 
 uncompromising as were his demands upon them, 
 he was not a mere scholar and they were not mere 
 students of a language. He never forgot and 
 never allowed them to forget that they were pre- 
 paring to preach the Gospel, and that the measure 
 of their faithfulness in the seminary would be the 
 measure of their fruitfulness in the ministry. 
 
 Moses Stuart, Addison Alexander, William 
 Henry Green — these three. But the greatest of 
 these is Green. Because talent is better than 
 genius in the class-room. Alexander's brilliant 
 mind acquired knowledge with an ease and swift- 
 ness as of intuition, and hence, as has been said, he 
 appeared to have no consciousness of a process in 
 his appropriation of a language or its literature. 
 The result was that it was not easy for him to set 
 forth a methodical process of acquisition for the 
 
26 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 average man. Only the choice few could keep up 
 with him. As the French officer said of the charge 
 of the Light Brigade, "It was magnificent, but it 
 was not war." Addison Alexander was un- 
 doubtedly the brightest star that ever shone in the 
 Princeton constellation, but he was not the 
 greatest teacher. It was Green who introduced 
 method and system there in the study of Hebrew, 
 and showed his students how any man of intelli- 
 gence and industry could get a secure working 
 knowledge of the language and become an ex- 
 pounder of God's Word at first hand. 
 
 "The great thing about William Henry Green," 
 says Dr. Cuyler, "is the beautiful combination 
 of docility and courage that has distinguished 
 all his career." His modesty impressed every- 
 body. I shall never forget the flutter into which 
 I was thrown one day while teaching a class of 
 ministers in a Summer School of Hebrew at the 
 Episcopal Divinity School in Philadelphia, when 
 the door opened and the greatest biblical scholar 
 in America walked quietly in and sat down — 
 William Henry Green! I suppose I gasped. I 
 know I felt as Dr. Peck said he did when Edwards 
 A. Park entered his church in Baltimore and seated 
 himself to hear him preach. I felt as a young 
 lieutenant would have felt who, when descanting 
 to his comrades on the art of war, had seen Na- 
 poleon Bonaparte join his little circle of auditors. 
 I knew him slightly and he had always treated 
 me in the kindest and most cordial manner, 
 but I was abashed, dismayed, scared. With an 
 effort I recovered my composure and proceeded 
 with the work in hand. As my eye fell occasion- 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 27 
 
 ally on the quiet figure of the Princeton 
 Coryphaeus there was something so modest and 
 sympathetic in his expression that I was reassured 
 and braced. When a discussion arose, and I 
 appealed to him for his opinion, and he supported 
 in a quiet word or two the view which I had taken, 
 I began to feel some measure of actual comfort. 
 I think that even if he had expressed a different 
 view I should have been helped, so quiet, strong 
 and gracious was his manner. I had long known 
 the scholar. That day I began to know the man, 
 and in all my subsequent meetings with him the 
 impression deepened of his manly modesty and 
 courage. 
 
 Dr. Green's courage was rooted in his faith and 
 his zeal for the truth. When a graduate of Yale 
 Theological Seminary talking to Archibald Hodge 
 at Dr. Cuyler's table tried to make garne of 
 Princeton as fossilized, Hodge said to him: 'The 
 trouble with you Yale theological professors is 
 that you only teach your students to think. 
 Thinking sent Adam out of Paradise. In Prince- 
 ton we let God do the thinking, and teach the 
 students to believe." Tt was the great goodness 
 of God to Princeton that, at the time when the 
 central subject of theological debate was shifted 
 from the domain of systematic theology to that of 
 biblical criticism, He gave the seminary in this 
 department a man who believed with all his heart 
 in a supernatural revelation, and who at the 
 same time saw clearly that the conservative 
 position must be defended by scientific processes. 
 And perhaps the most valuable of all his eminent 
 services to the Church was his fearless use of the 
 
28 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 higher criticism. The careful words of Dr. Charles 
 M. Mead are none too strong: "It cannot be 
 doubted that among the higher critics who, with 
 patient toil and profound scholarship, lead in the 
 maintenance of sound views of the Bible and aim 
 to strengthen the foundations of a reasonable 
 faith, will always stand the name of William 
 Henry Green." Six of the fifteen volumes which 
 he has published deal with these problems ex- 
 clusively. His masterpiece in this line is his work 
 on "The Unity of Genesis." Besides these fifteen 
 volumes, he has published nearly two hundred 
 review articles and pamphlets, philological, ex- 
 egetical, critical, not counting the Expositions of 
 the International Lessons, which for nine years he 
 contributed to the Sunday School Times. These 
 figures will give some idea of his prodigious in- 
 dustry. 
 
 His courage was not less clearly shown in his 
 occasional adoption of new views of interpretation 
 than in his sturdy defence of old views as to the 
 trustworthiness of the Scriptures. He knew that 
 his suggestion that the flood was not universal 
 in extent, but only universal in the sense that it 
 destroyed the whole human race, except the family 
 of Noah, would seriously disturb many good 
 people. He knew that his rejection of Usher's 
 chronology of the pre-Abrahamic period, and his 
 contention that the Bible gives us no information 
 as to when the world was created or how many 
 thousand years ago man appeared on the earth, 
 would give pain to many. But, having satisfied 
 himself that Usher and his followers had mis- 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 29 
 
 interpreted the fifth and eleventh chapters of 
 Genesis, that Hnks were omitted from these tables, 
 and that they were never intended to furnish the 
 basis of a chronology and could not be used for 
 that purpose, he stated his conviction candidly 
 and supported it with his customary wealth of 
 learning and fairness of argument. 
 
 The estimation of his ability and general scholar- 
 ship by those who had the best opportunity of 
 knowing him was shown more than thirty years 
 ago by his election to the Presidency of the College 
 of New Jersey, which, on being declined by Dr. 
 Green, was tendered to Dr. McCosh. What the 
 faculty of Princeton College continued to think 
 of him to the end, is shown in its congratulatory 
 address at his fiftieth anniversary as a professor: 
 "As an advocate of the higher criticism, his eminent 
 learning has been ennobled by intelligent reverence 
 for the Holy Scriptures and by true spiritual dis- 
 cernment in connection with that linguistic tact, 
 literary skill and historic research which are 
 requisite in the study of all ancient literature. 
 The result is that he has not disturbed the faith 
 of the unlearned, while commanding the respect 
 of scholars." The estimation of his character 
 and learning by other scholars in the same depart- 
 ment may be inferred from his selection as Chair- 
 man of the American Old Testament Revision 
 Committee. The estimation of his talents and 
 attainments by scholars abroad is Indicated in the 
 publication of some of his works in German and 
 Spanish, and was fully and warmly expressed in 
 the multitude of greetings sent him on his fiftieth 
 
30 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 anniversary from the great Universities of Europe. 
 Many of these scholars did not agree with him in 
 his critical views, but they could not withhold 
 admiration for the simplicity and sincerity of his 
 character, the greatness of his attainments, the 
 courtesy and ability of his discussions, and the 
 unity and power of his life — as scholar, teacher, 
 author and man of God. 
 
CYRUS HALL McCCRMICK. 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 31 
 
 ® J)e mtt anb ^orl^ of €vtm ^. jWcCormick* 
 
 Two events in the history of our country stand 
 out above all others in their importance and far- 
 reaching effects. One was the achievement of 
 our national independence by the thirteen colonies 
 on the Atlantic slope, and the other was the con- 
 quest of the vast territory which stretches across 
 the continent from the Alleghany mountains to 
 the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 THE SCOTCH-IRISH STOCK. 
 
 In the accomplishment of both of these stu- 
 pendous tasks, which have made America what 
 she is to-day, the providence of God assigned the 
 brunt of the battle to that bold and hardy and 
 God-fearing race commonly known as the Scotch- 
 Irish, who, coming to the New World to secure 
 the religious liberty denied them in the Old, 
 pushed through the already settled coast lands 
 and took possession of the forest-covered foot 
 hills and long fertile valleys of the Appalachians. 
 There "they took root and flourished, stretching 
 in a broad belt from north to south, a shield of 
 sinewy men thrust in between the people of the 
 seaboard and the red warriors of the wildernessf." 
 
 *Historical address delivered November 1, 1909, at the celebration 
 in Chicago of the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Cyrus H. 
 McCormick, the eightieth anniversary of the founding of McCormick 
 Seminary, and the fiftieth anniversary of the removal of the Seminary 
 to Chicago. 
 
 tTheocIore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, I. p. 1.37. 
 
32 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 These were the men who before any others declared 
 for American independence, and who from the 
 beginning to the end constituted the backbone 
 of the Revohition. "They gave Washington thirty- 
 nine of his generals, three out of four members of 
 his cabinet, and three out of five judges of the first 
 Supreme Court." 
 
 These, too, were the men who led the way across 
 the mountains to the great interior, "the pioneers 
 of our people in their march westward, the van- 
 guard of the army of fighting settlers, who with 
 axe and rifle won their way from the Alleghanies 
 to the Rio Grande and the Pacific," who by battle 
 and by bargain, overcame and displaced Indians, 
 French, and Spaniards alike, and gave to the 
 American people the vast inland empire of which 
 your own great city is now the metropolis. 
 
 CAPPING THE WORK OF THE NATION-MAKERS. 
 
 It is to the "Presbyterian Irish" then, as Mr. 
 Roosevelt calls them, to whom we are chiefly 
 indebted for the winning of the west. It was they 
 who furnished most of the leaders as well as the 
 rank and file of that victorious army of continental 
 conquest, such as James Robertson, who, with 
 John Sevier, tamed the rugged wilderness of East 
 Tennessee, and solved there the problem of self- 
 government, giving to the settlers the first written 
 constitution ever adopted by a community com- 
 posed of American-born freemen; Andrew Lewis, 
 the leader of the backwoods hosts in their first 
 great victory over the Northwestern Indians; 
 William Campbell, their commander in their first 
 
*" HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 33 
 
 great victory over the British at King's Mountain*; 
 Andrew Jackson, who won at New Orleans the 
 most successful land battle ever fought by Ameri- 
 can arms; David Crockett, hunter, humorist, and 
 hero, who died in the Alamo with his back to the 
 wall and a semi-circle of dead Mexicans around 
 him felled by his swinging rifle; and Sam Houston, 
 winner of the independence of Texas and first 
 president of that republic. These, and many 
 other leaders in our winning of the west were fur- 
 nished by the Scotch-Irish, to say nothing of their 
 afterwards putting five Presidents in the White 
 House. 
 
 But, while it was these robust and resolute 
 pioneers of the Scotch-Irish stock who scaled the 
 Alleghanies, subdued the wilderness, subjugated 
 the savages, displaced the aliens, and gave to 
 English-speaking Americans this mighty domain 
 which stretches from the Appalachians to the 
 Pacific and from Canada to Mexico, yet this 
 wide and fair and fertile domain which is now 
 occupied by thirty-one populous and prosperous 
 commonwealths could never have been what it 
 is to-day, at least on its present prodigious scale — 
 a region of fruitful farms and thrifty towns and 
 opulent cities, creating new wealth at the rate of 
 sixteen billions a year — a continent of fabulous 
 possessions and possibilities; the home of fifty 
 millions of busy and happy people; the granary 
 of a world, where three States alone, Minnesota 
 and the Dakotas, produce enough wheat to feed 
 all the people of England — God's greatest answer 
 
 *Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, pp. 134-135. 
 
34 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 to the universal prayer, "Give us this day our 
 daily bread" — all this, I say, could not have been 
 had it not have been for the genius and character 
 and work of still another man of that same Scotch- 
 Irish strain. That man was Cyrus McCormick. It 
 was his invention of a machine for cutting grain by 
 horse-power which crowned all the other achieve- 
 ments of the sterling stock from which he sprang, 
 and without which all the other exploits of those 
 strong nation-makers, splendid as they are, would 
 have been incomplete. For it was the reaper which 
 flung open the mighty empire of the northwest, 
 by making possible its enormous crops of grain, 
 and thus stimulating the construction of thousands 
 of miles of railroad, and peopling half a continent 
 with prosperous settlers. 
 
 As long ago as 1859 the great lawyer, Reverdy 
 Johnson, said: "The McCormick reaper has al- 
 ready contributed an annual income to the whole 
 country of fifty-five millions of dollars at least, 
 which must increase through all time." And in 
 1861 Edwin M. Stanton showed upon a map how 
 "McCormick's invention in Virginia had carried 
 permanent civilization westward more than fifty 
 miles a year." But even such statements as these, 
 remarkable as they are, do not measure the value 
 of his invention in lessening human toil, supplying 
 mankind with cheap and abundant food, increas- 
 ing the world's wealth and promoting the advance 
 of material civilization. For they take account 
 only of North America, whereas the reaper has 
 benefited in the same way South America, New 
 Zealand, Australia, Europe, Asia and Africa. 
 "To-day," as Herbert Casson says, "the sun 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 35 
 
 never sets and the season never closes for American 
 harvesters. They are reaping the fields of Argen- 
 tine in January, Upper Egypt in February, East 
 India in March, Mexico in April, China in May, 
 Spain in June, Iowa in July, Canada in August, 
 Sweden in September, Norway in October, South 
 Africa in November, and Burma in December. 
 It is always harvest somewhere" and the music of 
 the reaper follows the ripple of the ripened grain 
 all round the world. The harvester has not only 
 made America the best fed nation on the globe 
 but has enabled the whole world "to take dinner 
 at one long table." 
 
 RANK AS EPOCH-MAKER. 
 
 It has been said that for six thousand years the 
 human race was hungry, with the exception of 
 the rulers and their retinues. To the masses of 
 mankind life was an agonized struggle for food. 
 Even within the memory of men now living there 
 were bread-riots in New York City, and starving 
 men fell on the streets of Boston and Philadelphia. 
 But with the advent of the reaper, life ceased to 
 be merely a battle for bread. With the world 
 growing wheat at the yearly rate of ten bushels 
 a family, as this marvelous invention has enabled 
 it to do, the gaunt spectre of famine has vanished 
 forever. With our eighty-five millions of Ameri- 
 cans eating twelve thousand million loaves of bread 
 a year and yet sending a thousand million dollars 
 worth of food to other nations, the pinched 
 children of want need never again suffer the pangs 
 of hunger. By cheapening the bread of the toiling 
 millions this Virginia inventor "has moved all the 
 
36 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 civilized peoples up out of the bread line" and has 
 opened to the laborers in field and forge, in mine 
 and mill, the possibilities of a higher life. "The 
 Man with the Hoe," the stolid drudge, "brother 
 to the ox," has at last been freed from the all- 
 absorbing struggle for mere existence and given 
 some opportunity for mental culture and social 
 recreation and the refining amenities of the 
 home. 
 
 It is evident therefore even from this brief 
 review of what he accomplished that the man 
 whose life and work we commemorate to-night 
 was not merely one of the world's great inventors 
 and captains of industry, but an epoch-maker of 
 the first magnitude, the creator of an economic 
 revolution, the greatest promoter of agricultural 
 development that ever lived, and one of the su- 
 preme benefactors of the human race. 
 
 It would be incongruous and unseemly to use the 
 language of exaggeration when speaking of a man 
 as genuine as Mr. McCormick, to whom anything 
 fulsome was always distasteful, and I beg to say 
 that in this estimate of the value of his services 
 to mankind I have endeavored to weigh my 
 words and to refrain from any overstatement and 
 that after a careful study of his life I am prepared 
 to prove that the position I have claimed for him, 
 preeminent as it is, is fully justified by the facts 
 of his career and the results of his work. 
 
 THE OLD HOME. 
 
 "Rockbridge County (in Virginia) has given 
 birth to a remarkable number of distinguished 
 men. Among them have been soldiers in all the 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 37 
 
 wars of the United States, judges of both State 
 and federal courts, attorney-generals of Virginia 
 and of other States, representatives in State 
 legislatures and in congress, celebrated ministers 
 of the gospel, and missionaries in foreign lands. 
 This same county has given a general-in-chief and 
 president of the republic of Texas, a United States 
 minister to France, Russia and Austria, governors 
 of Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Tennes- 
 see and West Virginia — while eight United States 
 senators were born within a radius of six miles of 
 Lexington" (the county seat). This is a record 
 which as Professor Latane has said, "may well 
 challenge comparison with any other county in the 
 land. But the one Rockbridge name that has 
 gone around the world, that is known to-day in 
 every civilized land, is that of Cyrus Hall McCor- 
 mick, the inventor of the reaper. In every 
 country of Europe, in Asiatic Russia, in Persia, 
 in Australia, in South America, and in South 
 Africa, is heard the click of his reaper and the 
 whir of his binder*." 
 
 Cyrus Hall McCormick was born February 15, 
 1809, at the old homestead, Walnut Grove, mid- 
 way between Lexington and Staunton, being the 
 eldest of eight children, six of whom lived to grow 
 up. His parents, Robert and Mary Ann Hall 
 McCormick, held an influential position among the 
 people of the Valley, both being of high intelligence 
 and marked force of character, devout, thrifty, 
 and well to do; and they made for their children 
 
 *Prof. J. H. Latane, Bulletin of Washington and Lee University, 
 July, 1909, p. 6. 
 
38 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 a comfortable and happy home, teaching them 
 habits of industry and self-reHance, and training 
 them up in the nurture and admonition of the 
 Lord. There was no coddHng. There were even 
 touches of Spartan severity in the training of the 
 lad whose life was destined to be one of stern con- 
 flict with innumerable difficulties and with active 
 and relentless opposition. He was often roused 
 at five o'clock in the morning to work in the fields. 
 He went barefooted, as boys of his age ought to 
 do. He sat on a slab-bench in the little log school 
 house. He learned to read from the book of 
 Genesis. His other text-books were Murray's 
 Grammar, Dilworth's Arithmetic, Webster's Spell- 
 ing-book, and the Shorter Catechism. On Sun- 
 days he listened earnestly to strong preaching in 
 New Providence Church and sang with delight 
 the great hymns of the ages, for he was ever a lover 
 of music and ever a deeply religious nature. The 
 words and melodies of those sweet old hymns 
 remained with him throughout life, sang in his 
 heart during all the stress of his stalwart years, 
 and sustained and cheered him even down to the 
 end. As a result of this old-fashioned, wholesome, 
 character-making Presbyterian training, the key- 
 notes of which were industry, honesty and re- 
 ligion, he carried with him through life a rare 
 capacity for work, a dominating sense of duty, a 
 clear and reverent and happy faith, a quiet scorn 
 of pretense and ostentation, and a passionate love 
 for justice and truth. In other ways too heredity 
 and environment played their usual important 
 part in the making of his character and the de- 
 velopment of his gifts. He inherited from his 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 39 
 
 father his genius for invention and from his mother 
 his skill in practical affairs. 
 
 Robert McCormick was a man of unusual busi- 
 ness acumen and enterprise and acquired a large 
 estate, 1800 acres in all, consisting of four adjoin- 
 ing farms, on three of which he operated success- 
 fully saw-mills and on two of them flour mills. 
 But he was more than a substantial farmer and 
 man of affairs. He was a reader, being specially 
 fond of history and astronomy. He had an im- 
 agination. Naturally therefore, he gave much 
 attention to the mechanical side of farm life and 
 the problem of labor saving machinery, and ac- 
 quired considerable local fame as an inventor. 
 In the workshop on his farm he fashioned an 
 ingenious hemp-brake, operated by horse power, a 
 clover sheller, a blacksmith's bellows, a hydraulic 
 machine, a threshing machine, and a hillside plow. 
 The subject to which he gave most thought, 
 however, v.as a machine for the cutting of grain. 
 But here he missed the way entirely, and in 1831, 
 after various experiments extending over some 
 twenty years, he gave up the project as hopeless. 
 It was reserved for the son to succeed where the 
 father failed. 
 
 THE YOUNG INVENTOR. 
 
 He had already shown that he had inherited his 
 father's inventive talent. While still a lad he had 
 one morning astonished his teacher by bringing 
 to school an elaborate map of the world, showing 
 the two hemispheres side by side, which he had 
 drawn upon paper in ink, and then mounted by 
 pasting the paper on linen, and hanging the whole 
 
40 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 on two varnished rollers. Such aids in the 
 school room are common enough now, but that a 
 mere boy should produce such a thing then showed 
 clearly that he possessed the true inventor's power 
 of striking out a path for himself. When only 
 fifteen years old he had made a grain cradle suited 
 to his boyish strength, which embodied a distinct 
 improvement over any other form of that imple- 
 ment, and had swung it over many a broad acre 
 of wheat, keeping pace with the full grown hands, 
 all unconscious of the fact that he was destined 
 to release millions of his fellowmen from the 
 severe toil of which he was then having a practical 
 experience. At the same early age he too had 
 invented a hillside plow for throwing alternate 
 furrows on the lower side, and a little later a self- 
 sharpening, horizontal plow. When at eighteen 
 he studied the profession of surveying he made a 
 quadrant for his own use which is still preserved, 
 and is one of many witnesses to the accuracy and 
 thoroughness of his workmanship. He had al- 
 ready made an improvement on Robert McCor- 
 mick's machine for breaking and cleaning hemp. 
 For years he had seen his baffled father at work 
 on the mysterious reaper; and in the same year 
 that the elder McCormick abandoned the task in 
 despair, the younger inventor, as though fired to 
 the supreme effort of his genius by the silent 
 challenge of the discredited reaper standing outside 
 the shop door, rejected decisively his father's 
 model, adopted an entirely different principle, 
 and in a few months, after much patient brooding 
 over his new conception and many ingenious 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 41 
 
 efforts at combining the various parts, he solved 
 triumphantly the problem of the centuries. 
 
 THE FIRST REAPER. 
 
 The machine which he constructed, every part 
 of which, both in wood and iron, he fashioned 
 with his own hands, consisted of first, a recipro- 
 cating knife with a serrated edge for shearing off 
 the stalks; second a platform to receive the falling 
 grain, flexibly affixed so as to accommodate itself 
 readily to the irregularities of the surface; third a 
 horizontal and adjustable reel to sweep the stand- 
 ing grain towards the blade and to deliver the 
 severed stalks parallel upon the platform, in a 
 swath ready to be raked off and bound ; and fourth, 
 a divider, serving to separate the grain to be cut 
 from that to be left standing. 
 
 This first machine, therefore, crude as it was in 
 construction, being built by hand in a plantation 
 shop, nevertheless embodied all four of the cardinal 
 features which all subsequent attempts have shown 
 to be indispensable to a successful reaper. Having 
 created the true type, the inventor himself never 
 departed from it, and in conformity with that 
 type all other successful harvesters have since been 
 made. "Despite all subsequent invention, and it 
 has been lavish, no one has contrived a successful 
 substitute for McCormick's original plan. From 
 it has proceeded in unbroken succession, and with 
 remarkable adherence to the primary arrange- 
 ment, although subsequently enriched with many 
 refinements in details and supplemental improve- 
 ments, the reaper that has taken and still holds 
 possession of the markets of the world." 
 
42 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 In the summer of 1831, then, late in the season, 
 after laboring hard to complete his machine in 
 time for the harvest of that year, Cyrus H. Mc- 
 Cormick hitched a horse to his new invention and 
 drove it clattering into a small patch of wheat on 
 his father's farm, which at his request had been 
 left standing, for the first test of its powers. The 
 revolving reel swept the yellow grain against the 
 blade and in a moment more it lay in a golden 
 swath upon the platform, from which it was raked 
 off by a young laborer named John Cash. That 
 was the first grain ever successfully cut an^^where 
 in the world otherwise than by manual labor. 
 
 Several days later, after making certain improve- 
 ments in the reel and the divider, the young in- 
 ventor gave a public exhibition of his machine at 
 Steele's Tavern, a neighboring village, where with 
 two horses to the reaper, he cut six acres of oats 
 in a single afternoon, a feat equal to the work of 
 six laborers with scythes. He had opened a new 
 era in the history of agriculture. 
 
 The next year, 1832, he gave a public exhibition 
 near Lexington, eighteen miles to the south of his 
 home, which was witnessed by fully a hundred 
 people. The field was hilly, and the machine, 
 not having yet found itself, at first worked badly, 
 slewing as it moved, and cutting the grain irregu- 
 larly. There is a story, that the owner of the field, 
 seeing this, rushed up to the inventor and shouted 
 "Here! this won't do. Stop your horses. Your 
 machine is rattling the heads off my wheat," and 
 that various bystanders bluntly pronounced it a 
 humbug, one of them exclaiming, "Give me the 
 old cradle yet, boys!" It was a disheartening 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 43 
 
 moment, but just at this juncture one of the 
 spectators, the Hon. WilHam Taylor, a man of 
 commanding appearance and a citizen of note, 
 who had been watching the work with keen 
 interest, came forward and said, "Pull down the 
 fence and cross over into my field, young man. 
 I'll give you a fair chance to try your machine." 
 This offer was promptly accepted, the reaper was 
 driven into Taylor's field, which was not so hilly, 
 and again cut six acres in less than half a day. 
 
 "Thus it was that at twenty- two years of age, 
 this young inventor, on a secluded farm in Virginia, 
 constructed the first successful mechanical reaper." 
 It was crude, no doubt, as all inventions are at 
 first, but it was a reaper that reaped, and it in- 
 cluded every fundamental element of all the prac- 
 tical harvesters since constructed, and laid the 
 lines on which all subsequent invention has had 
 to move. 
 
 MANUFACTURING THE MACHINES IN VIRGINIA. 
 
 Though he had mastered the essential principles 
 of a reaper and embodied them in a machine 
 that would actually cut grain, he did not at once 
 apply for a patent, but with the thoroughness 
 characteristic of the man he "subjected his 
 machine to repeated tests during three successive 
 harvest seasons under a variety of conditions and 
 with different grain, and took out his patent 
 (June 21, 1834), only after having fully vindicated 
 and exhibited its practical value." 
 
 Even then he was not ready to put his reaper on 
 the market, for as he himself afterwards said, he 
 would not "attempt sales either of machines or 
 
44 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 rights to manufacture until satisfied that the 
 reaper would succeed well in the great variety of 
 situations in which it was necessary to operate." 
 "Thus season by season, from 1834 to 1839, the 
 inventor patiently carried on his trials, personally 
 manufacturing his several experimental machines 
 in the blacksmith shop at Walnut Grove. This 
 historic building can still be seen upon the old farm, 
 preserved by his widow and children as the birth- 
 place of the mechanical reaper."* Some weeks ago 
 I stood within this quaint old shop, and noting 
 its primitive arrangements and appliances, won- 
 dered, as hundreds before me have done, at what 
 this youth had accomplished with the limited 
 resources at his command. 
 
 The two things he most needed were money and 
 cheaper iron. So he decided to build a furnace 
 and make his own iron. His father and a neigh- 
 bor joined him in the enterprise. They built the 
 furnace, made the iron, and had taken the first 
 step towards success when the financial crash of 
 1837 wrecked the business and plunged them 
 into an abyss of debt. Cyrus McCormick gave 
 up everything he owned to the creditors, and he 
 and the rest of the family "slaved for five years 
 to save the homestead from the auctioneer." In 
 1839 he began in earnest the manufacture and sale 
 of the reaper in company with his father and his 
 two brothers, William and Leander. The prob- 
 lem was one of extreme difficulty. He was with- 
 out capital. There were no railroads. All the 
 
 *Reuben Gold Thwaites, Cyrus Hall McCormick and the Reaper, p. 
 243. 
 
4 HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 45 
 
 material had to be hauled overland. "The sickles 
 were made forty miles away, the blades, six feet 
 in length, being transported on horseback. In 
 this manner the work was carried on in the old 
 blacksmith shop at Walnut Grove— the first two 
 machines being sold in 1840; two others m 1841, 
 at a hundred dollars each; seven in 1842, twenty- 
 nine in 1843, and fifty in each of the years 1844 
 and 1845." The first consignment sent to the 
 west, in 1844, was taken in wagons from Walnut 
 Grove over the mountains to Scottsville, a distance 
 of some sixty miles, then down the James River 
 canal to Richmond, thence by sea around Florida 
 to New Orleans, and then up the Mississippi 
 and Ohio rivers to Cincinnati. 
 
 THE MOVE TO THE WEST. 
 
 This order from the west for seven machines 
 re\^ealed to Mr. McCormick, who was now a 
 stalwart man of thirty-six, his great opportunity, 
 and he was quick to seize it. In the fall of the 
 same year, 1844, with $300.00 in his belt, he set 
 out on horseback for the west, for he recognized 
 at once that the great interior with its wide, flat 
 and fertile prairies was the natural home of the 
 harvester. "In that vast land-ocean, with few 
 laborers and an infinity of acres, the reaper was 
 as indispensable as the plow. To reap even one 
 of these new States by hand would require the 
 whole working population of the country."* 
 
 In your own State, where he was afterwards 
 to make his permanent home, a sight awaited 
 
 ♦Herbert N. Casson, Everybody's Magazine, 17, p. 762. 
 
46 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 him which fired his zeal to fever heat. "He saw- 
 hogs and cattle feeding in the autumn wheat 
 fields, which could not be reaped for lack of 
 laborers. Five million bushels of wheat had grown 
 and ripened, enough to empty the horn of plenty 
 into every farmer's home. Men, women and 
 children toiled day and night to gather in the yel- 
 low food. But the short harvest season rushed 
 past so quickly that tons of it lay rotting under the 
 hoofs of cattle. The sight of the trampled wheat 
 goaded McCormick almost into a frency of 
 activity."* 
 
 On he rode through Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, 
 Missouri, Ohio and New York, looking everywhere 
 for manufacturers who would build his machines. 
 At Brockport, New York, on the Erie Canal, he 
 found two men who appreciated his invention and 
 agreed to build a hundred machines, a decision 
 by which both of them eventually became inde- 
 pendently rich.f 
 
 In the first two years after leaving Virginia he 
 sold 240 reapers. B}^ 1847 a Cincinnati branch 
 was turning out machines under the superin- 
 tendence of his brother Leander, and others were 
 being constructed in Chicago on a royalty basis. 
 
 ESTABLISHMENT AT CHICAGO. 
 
 But the work was unsatisfactory. He was in- 
 volved in many troubles because of bad iron, poor 
 workmanship and unreliable manufacturers. So 
 in 1847 "he cut the Gordian knot by building a 
 factory of his own in Chicago." The place was 
 
 *HerI)ert N. Casson, Everybody's Magazine, 17, p. 762. 
 fldem. 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 47 
 
 then but little more than a country town built 
 in a swamp, but he clearly foresaw its future pre- 
 eminence as the connecting link between the 
 great lakes and the great west, and he saw at once 
 that this little town of ten thousand people, ugly 
 and forlorn though it was, was the place where 
 he could best assemble the materials — steel, iron 
 and wood — for the making of his reapers, and 
 also the place from which he could best ship the 
 finished machines both east and west; and thus 
 it was that Chicago acquired her most illustrious 
 citizen. 
 
 The year after his arrival his patent expired, 
 and although it was only eight years since he had 
 put his first machine on the market, and al- 
 though it was acknowledged that his invention 
 had conferred incalculable benefits upon the 
 race and enormously increased the wealth of the 
 nation, Congress refused to grant him just and 
 deserved protection by an extension of the patent, 
 and persisted in the refusal through a four-year 
 contest at Washington, waged by the ablest 
 lawyers in the land. Thus the basic principles 
 of his reaper were thrown open to the public, and 
 immediately a host of competitors sprang up, 
 flooding the market with machines in which his 
 ideas had been incorporated. But Cyrus Mc- 
 Cormick was an unconquerable man. He had an 
 indomitable will and a deathless tenacity of 
 purpose. Though smarting with a sense of the 
 injustice done him, he faced his rivals single- 
 handed — Athanasius contra mundimi — and deter- 
 mined to win by the sheer superiority of his pro- 
 duct. And win he did. Perfecting his mechan- 
 
48 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 ism year after year, by unceasing experiments 
 and continued improvements, and giving a written 
 guarantee with every machine he sold, he kept 
 his reaper in the lead. How great his achieve- 
 ment was may be seen from the fact that of more 
 than two hundred harvester companies that took 
 the field only ten survive to-day. 
 
 From the day he set foot in your city he pros- 
 pered in spite of innumerable difficulties. By 
 1860 the Chicago works were producing four 
 thousand reapers in a single year, 50,000 of them 
 in all were clicking in American wheat fields, 
 I'doing the work of 350,000 men, saving $4,000,000 
 in wages, and cram.ming the barns with 50,000,000 
 bushels of grain." For years he had struggled 
 with the strength of a Titan to overcome mechani- 
 cal difficulties and the obstacles of nature, to 
 vanquish indifference and prejudice, and to beat 
 down opposition in the courts, in Congress and 
 in the business world, and now at last he was on 
 the open highway to boundless success. Great 
 toils, great trials and great triumphs still awaited 
 him, but the clouds had parted and his path was 
 sunlit. And along with fortune Fame had come. 
 
 INTRODUCTION OF THE REAPER INTO EUROPE. 
 
 The reaper had been brought to the attention 
 of the British public at the World's Fair in London, 
 in 1851. At first it was the subject of some 
 ridicule; the London Times called it "a cross be- 
 tween an Astley (circus) chariot, a wheelbarrow, 
 and a flying machine." But in a few weeks, when 
 it was put into a grain field and given an actual 
 trial, and when its instant success was greeted 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 49 
 
 with a burst of cheers from the crowd, and when 
 the inventor was given "not only a first prize, but 
 a Council Medal, such as was usually awarded only 
 to Kings and Governments," "The Thunderer" 
 changed front completely and admitted that the 
 McCormick reaper was equal in value to the entire 
 cost of the exhibition. William H. Seward spoke 
 of it as a National triumph, saying, "No General 
 or Consul drawn in a chariot through the streets 
 of Rome by order of the Senate ever conferred 
 upon mankind benefits so great as he who thus 
 vindicated the genius of our own country at the 
 World's Exposition of Art in the Metropolis of 
 the British Empire." At the Paris Exposition in 
 1855 his reaper received the Gold Medal of honor 
 as "the type after which all others are made." 
 Eight years later after a field contest at Hamburg, 
 with dozens of other manufacturers, all making 
 m.achines more or less like his, the United States 
 Commissioner cabled to New York: "McCormick 
 has thrashed all nations, and walked off with the 
 Gold Medal." At the Paris Exposition of 1867, 
 he was decorated by Napoleon the Third with 
 the Cross of the Legion of Honor. How significant 
 the contrast, as Mr. Casson notes, when the last 
 emperor of France fastened this badge of the 
 Order of Merit upon the breast of the man who 
 "had built up a new empire of commerce that will 
 last as long as the human race shall eat bread." 
 Other European triumphs followed, and in 1878, 
 when he was called to Paris for the third time to 
 receive the Grand Prize of the Exposition, he was 
 elected a corresponding member of the French 
 Academy of Sciences, "as having done more for 
 
50 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 the cause of agriculture than any other living 
 man." 
 
 HIS MARRIAGE. 
 
 But the Grand Prize of all — the supreme blessing 
 of his whole career — conferred not by the hand 
 of any earthly potentate but by the King of kings 
 and Lord of lords — came to him in 1858 — for in 
 that year he married Miss Nettie Fowler of Jeffer- 
 son County, New York. With his devout ac- 
 ceptance of every statement of Holy Writ he had 
 doubtless always known that "whoso findeth a 
 wife findeth a good thing and obtaineth favor of 
 the Lord," but he was now to learn as never before 
 that "house and riches are the inheritance of fath- 
 ers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord," that 
 while a gracious God had lavished upon him bless- 
 ings innumerable during his childhood and youth 
 and earlier manhood. He had reserved till now the 
 best of all — the crown both of his happiness and 
 usefulness. It behooves me under the circum- 
 stances of the present occasion to speak with some 
 reserve of this "elect lady" whom we all revere. 
 But no treatment of my subject would be complete 
 and no understanding of some of his greatest 
 achievements would be possible without some 
 reference to her whose remarkable talents and 
 earnest piety and loving spirit and gracious address 
 made her the worthy help-meet of the gifted man 
 and large-hearted Christian whose life she bright- 
 ened and blessed for twenty-six happy years, and 
 who since his death has continued to abound in 
 all good works. 
 
 A recent writer has said with truth that "she 
 has been for fifty years, and is to-day, one of the 
 
^ HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 51 
 
 active factors in our industrial development. Her 
 exact memory and keen grasp of the complex 
 details of her husband's business made her prac- 
 tically an unofficial manager." 
 
 It is perhaps not generally known that the 
 immense McCormick factory here owes its exist- 
 ence to Mrs. McCormick. When the great fire 
 that swept Chicago in 1871 wiped out his $2,000,- 
 000 plant, Mr. McCormick thought of retiring. 
 He still had an ample fortune and he was sixty-two 
 years of age. His managers advised him not to 
 rebuild, because of the excessive cost of new ma- 
 chinery. 
 
 "As soon as the fiery cyclone had passed, he 
 and his wife drove to the wrecked factory. Several 
 hundred of the workmen gathered about the 
 carriage, and the chief engineer, acting as spokes- 
 man, said: "Well, Mr. McCormick, shall we start 
 the small engine and make repairs, or shall we 
 start the big engine and make machines?" Mr. 
 McCormick turned to his wife and said: "Which 
 shall it be?" It was a breathless moment for the 
 workmen. "Build again at once," said Mrs. 
 McCormick. "I do not want our boy to grow 
 up in idleness." "START THE BIG ENGINE," 
 said McCormick. The men threw their hats in 
 the air and cheered. They sprang at the smoking 
 debris, and began to rebuild before the cinders 
 were cold. 
 
 Such was the second birth of the vast factory, 
 which, in its sixty years, has created fully 5,000,000 
 harvesters, and is now so magically automatic 
 
62 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 that, with 6,000 workmen, it can make one-third 
 of all the grain-gathering machinery of the world.* 
 
 EFFECTS OF THE INVENTION. 
 
 I have already referred to the beneficent effect 
 of Mr. McCormick's invention in extending the 
 wheat growing area of the world. So long as 
 the sickle and the cradle were the only means of 
 reaping, the production of grain, which is man's 
 most important food, was subject to rigid limita- 
 tions. The difficulty was aggravated in America 
 by the scarcity of farm laborers in the West. 
 Ripe wheat will not wait. The harvest season is 
 brief. The crop must be garnered within a period 
 of ten days. A man with a sickle can cut but a 
 small area in a day and it is back-breaking toil. 
 This area was considerably enlarged of course by 
 the introduction of the cradle. But the mechani- 
 cal reaper, drawn by horses, leveling the grain in 
 sv/athes, gathering it in with giant gfasp, and toss- 
 ing out the bound up sheaves, has vastly increased 
 the capacity of the human harvester, besides free- 
 ing him from the hard labor of wielding the sickle or 
 the cradle, and straightening his weary back, and 
 seating him comfortably on the machine as the 
 driver of the team. The gathering of every bushel 
 of wheat used to require three hours of a man's 
 time. "In seventy-six years the Reaper has re- 
 duced the time-price of harvesting w^heat to ten 
 minutes a bushel." To the Reaper therefore we 
 are indebted for that mighty river of wheat 
 which now flows from the West, turning the 
 
 *Herbert N. Casson, Everybody's Magazine, 17, p. 764. 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 53 
 
 wheels of 14,000 flour mills, and giving to the 
 millions good bread at low prices. 
 
 BY-PRODUCTS OF THE REAPER. 
 
 Along that life-giving stream scores of rich cities 
 have sprung up like magic, a network of railways 
 have criss-crossed the country, huge fleets of 
 whalebacks have covered the lakes, and hundreds 
 of gigantic factories have been established for the 
 making of all manner of farming implements — 
 for the reaper gave a mighty stimulus to agricul- 
 tural invention, and in its wake there followed 
 inevitably a multitude of other labor-saving de- 
 vices for the sowing and cultivation and gathering 
 of crops of every variety; mowers, tedders, rakes, 
 balers, self-binders for corn and rice as well as 
 wheat, corn pluckers, shellers and grinders, grain 
 drills, harrows and cultivators, involving also, of 
 course, an enormously increased output of wood 
 and ore from the forests and the mines. 
 
 One of the most important of the indirect 
 effects of Mr. McCormick's invention was its 
 contribution to the preservation of the Union as 
 the outcome of the conflict between the States. 
 "During the Civil War the reaper was doing the 
 work of a million men in the grain fields of the 
 North." In 1861 Edwin M. Stanton said: "The 
 reaper is to the North what slavery is to the 
 South. By taking the places of regiments of 
 young men in the Western harvest fields, it re- 
 leases them to do battle for the Union at the 
 front, and at the same time keeps up the supply 
 of bread for the nation and the nation's armies. 
 Thus without McCormick's invention I fear the 
 
54 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 North could not win, and the Union would be 
 dismembered." There was an enormous draught 
 of recruits from the rural districts — Mr. Lincoln 
 called out every third man — yet the crops, in- 
 stead of decreasing, increased. Europeans could 
 hardly believe it, when told that the North was 
 supporting a vast army and yet was "selling 
 enough grain to feed 35,000,000 people and 
 sending three times as much grain to England 
 as we had ever sent before." 
 
 PATRIOT AND PEACEMAKER. 
 
 This contribution of the reaper to the preserva- 
 tion of the Union was an effect of his invention 
 which, of course, Mr. McCormick did not foresee, 
 though the preservation of the Union was a thing 
 which he desired with all his 'soul. Born and 
 reared in the South, yet living for years in the 
 North, he understood the standpoint of both, and 
 his views of secession and slavery were those of 
 an unsectional patriot and a statesman. A North- 
 ern writer* has said with truth that "No other 
 man of his day either in or out of public office 
 was so free from local prejudices and so intensely 
 national in his beliefs and sympathies." He did 
 not want the Union to be broken by secession, 
 but on the other hand he did not want the Con- 
 stitution to be destroyed by federal reformers. 
 He wanted the South to be freed from the incubus 
 of slavery, but he did not want it done by violence 
 and wrong in a way that would pour upon the 
 nation a cataract of calamities. He had himself 
 
 *Herbert N. Casson, The Interior, February 18, 1909. 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 55 
 
 forged a machine that would do the work of 
 thousands of slaves and that was certain to 
 prevent the introduction of negro labor in the 
 wheat States of the West. He wanted the insti- 
 tution of slavery abolished, but he deprecated 
 the impatience which, refusing to abide gradual 
 and peaceable emancipation, the only natural, 
 true and safe solution, plunged the country into 
 war. Before hostilities actually began, he strove 
 with all his might to make the wrangling partisans 
 listen to reason, and even after the war was at 
 its height he proposed a plan, endorsed by Horace 
 Greeley, for stopping the conflict and restoring 
 peace. But the plan failed, the madness con- 
 tinued, and the war was fought to the bitter end. 
 
 To the overpowered and impoverished South 
 he was one of the first of the magnanimous men of 
 the North to stretch out a friendly hand — but un- 
 fortunately all men in the North are not mag- 
 nanimous any more than all men in the South — 
 and because he gave help to prostrate institutions 
 in his native State, this great-hearted patriot 
 who loved both North and South and who had 
 labored with giant strength to preserve the Union 
 in a rational way was actually accused of disloyalty 
 to the Union. He disposed of these charges with 
 his customary vigor and conclusiveness and held 
 steadily on his lofty and beneficent course. 
 
 When politics invaded the courts of his Church 
 and her chief benefactors were proscribed and 
 men v.ere deposed from the boards of management 
 of her institutions and others put in their places 
 on purely political and party grounds, he faith- 
 fully pointed out to the Church her error and re- 
 
56 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 called her to the spirit of her Lord in these noble 
 words: "When are we to look for the return of 
 brotherly love and Christian fellowship, so long 
 as those who aspire to fill the high places of the 
 Church indulge in such wrath and bitterness? 
 Now that the great conflict of the Civil War is 
 past, and its issues settled, religion and patriotism 
 alike require the exercise of mutual forbearance, 
 and the pursuit of those things which tend to 
 peace." 
 
 CHRISTIAN AND PHILANTHROPIST. 
 
 Amid all the exacting labors of his life Mr. 
 McCormick, like Henry Van Dyke's peace-seeker, 
 always took time to look up at the stars. And 
 therefore, great as his influence was upon the 
 material interests of mankind, his influence upon 
 the higher interests of the race was greater still. 
 He did not think more of machines than of souls. 
 For fifty years he was a consistent, earnest, fruitful 
 member of the Presbyterian Church, and from the 
 earliest days of his prosperity to the end of his 
 honored life, he was the large-hearted and open- 
 handed friend of educational and religious institu- 
 tions, ever ready to help them with his sympathy, 
 his prayers, his counsel and his means. 
 
 He never ceased to love his native State. "He 
 never grew too busy or too famous to remember 
 with gratitude the days and scenes out of which 
 he was ushered into the world of action." In his 
 inaugural address as president of the Virginia 
 Society of Chicago, he said: "If I forget thee, O 
 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. 
 * * * Virginia," he continued, "is the scene 
 
J. HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 57 
 
 of all our most sacred and cherished memories. 
 There stood the old home. There flowed the 
 mountain stream. There bubbled the spring at 
 which we quenched our youthful thirst. There 
 were the friends of our childhood, now widely 
 scattered or dead." 
 
 It is easy for the public to mistake the nature 
 of a man whose life has had to be one long battle. 
 It was perhaps not unnatural for some to think 
 of this massive and unbendable Scotch-Irishman 
 as hard-fibred and imperious and devoid of senti- 
 ment. But that was only one side. We get a 
 glimpse of the other in the earthquakes of laughter 
 with which at times his great frame was shaken, 
 and in the upspringing of tears at sight of blue 
 mountains reminding him of his boyhood home; 
 and in his devotion to the memory of his mother. 
 One day in his later life when speaking of flowers 
 he said, "I love the old-fashioned pinks because 
 they grew in my mother's garden in old Virginia." 
 There were many beautiful and tender things with- 
 in a man who could say that. And one of those 
 beautiful and tender things was his abiding 
 affection for his native State. Two of her vener- 
 able and useful institutions held specially warm 
 places in his heart: Washington and Lee Uni- 
 versity, in his native county, and Union Theo- 
 logical Seminary, in Richmond. It is well known 
 that he gave to the former a handsome sum for 
 the establishment of a chair of physics, and that 
 in 1866, when our Seminary in Virginia seemed 
 doomed because of financial losses by the war, 
 he came to her rescue with a noble gift for the 
 endowment of the professorship of Old Testa- 
 
58 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 ment Interpretation. Had It not been for this 
 timely help in those dark days, Union Seminary 
 would not have been able to do for the Church the 
 great work she has been doing for the last forty 
 years in the furnishing of so large a proportion 
 of our ministers and missionaries. 
 
 Mccormick seminary. 
 
 Of course, his chief work on behalf of Christian 
 education and the spread of the gospel was the 
 endowment of the great school in Chicago which 
 bears his name. His interest in this institution 
 rested on deep conviction. As one of your own 
 former professors has said: "He was not only a 
 Presbyterian, but he was also a believer in the 
 theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith; 
 and it was his wish and his hope that the Seminary 
 should be a center of power for the defense of this 
 theology, and through its graduates, for its dis- 
 semination throughout the wide area open to the 
 Seminary's influence." 
 
 In the course of time, through another far- 
 reaching benefaction, he provided what was in 
 some measure an organ for the institution. A 
 religious newspaper called "The Interior," which 
 had been started in Chicago to represent the 
 Presbyterian Church, was thirty-six years ago 
 about to succumb to financial difficulties, when 
 its friends and owners applied to Mr. McCormick 
 to purchase it. So in 1872 he bought the paper 
 as requested, placed it on a firm financial basis, 
 secured an editor of rare ability, the Rev. Dr. 
 Francis L. Patton, succeeded since by other ac- 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 59 
 
 compHshed editors, and thus made It one of the 
 representative rehgious journals of America. 
 
 Your Seminary could never have been what it 
 is but for Mr. McCormick's adoption of it, so to 
 speak, in 1859, and his subsequent munificent 
 relations to it. Before he brought it to Chicago 
 the institution had led a very precarious existence, 
 having no solid basis and no assured future. 
 It was he who gave it all three of the elements 
 which Dr. Nathan L. Rice pronounced absolutely 
 essential to a successful theological seminary — a 
 suitable location, a pecuniary basis, and qualified 
 professors who enjoy the confidence of the Church ; 
 and it was, therefore, he who made possible all 
 its later development, and especially its remarkable 
 growth in the last twenty-six years. 
 
 Like most of our other theological schools, this 
 Seminary began as a mere department of a 
 literary institution, Hanover College, Indiana. 
 Like them, too, it soon abandoned this form of 
 organization as unsatisfactory. It is an interest- 
 ing fact that the two leading seminaries in the 
 Northern Church were founded by Southern 
 men — Princeton by a Virginian, Dr. Archibald 
 Alexander, and McCormick by a North Caro- 
 linian, Dr. John Matthews. Dr. Matthews began 
 his work at Hanover in 1830, and there continued 
 it with various assistants for ten years, when it 
 became evident that in order to get its proper 
 development the theological department must be 
 detached from the college and independently 
 organized. It was accordingly moved in 1840 
 to New Albany, Indiana, where for several years 
 it grew and prospered. But the increasing sharp- 
 
60 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 ness of the controversy in regard to slavery, in 
 which some of the professors took a prominent 
 but disastrous part, and the estabHshment and 
 immediate success of the Seminary at Danville, 
 Ky., gave the New Albany school another serious 
 check and led eventually to its removal to Chicago. 
 The decisive consideration in favor of this re- 
 location was an offer by Mr. McCormick of one 
 hundred thousand dollars for the endowment of 
 four professorships on condition that the seminary 
 should be permanently located in this city. The 
 gift was accepted, and the institution established 
 on what is undoubtedly one of the best sites for a 
 seminary that the continent affords. To this 
 original munificent donation, Mr. McCormick 
 added frequently and largely during his life-time, 
 and since his death the same princely benefactions 
 have been continued by Mrs. McCormick and her 
 children, so that now the seminary owns an ex- 
 ceedingly valuable property and possesses an 
 equipment for its great work that is unsurpassed 
 perhaps by any seminary in our land. 
 
 In view of this remarkable and continued liber- 
 ality, the governing bodies in 1886 changed the 
 name of the institution from ''The Theological 
 Seminary of the Northwest" to "The McCormick 
 Theological Seminary." And under that honored 
 name it will continue to send forth through all the 
 future its successive bands of soul-reapers. 
 
 It is evident, then, that great as are the results 
 of Mr. McCormick's invention in enabling men 
 to reap the material harvest of the world, still 
 more beneficent and far-reaching are the results 
 of his consecrated wealth in fitting men to reap 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 61 
 
 God's Spiritual harvest. The equipment of semi- 
 naries is obedience of the most practical and 
 fruitful kind to the command given by our Saviour 
 when he said: "The harvest truly is plenteous, but 
 the laborers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord 
 of the harvest that he will send forth laborers into 
 his harvest." 
 
 But it would be a mistake to infer from what I 
 have said that the seminary attained its present 
 position without arduous and protracted struggles, 
 severe reverses, and sore disappointments. And 
 in all these trials he suffered. The school was on 
 his heart. Most of its friends appreciated fully 
 what he was doing for it, and were deeply grateful, 
 but in some instances, as a minute of your faculty 
 states, "instead of admiration and gratitude for 
 his sagacity and beneficence, he was confronted 
 with no little opposition and opprobrium."* 
 But "they that sow in tears shall reap in joy. 
 He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious 
 seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, 
 bringing his sheaves with him." 
 
 What imagination can conceive the joys that 
 thrill his glorified spirit as one after another the 
 hundreds of ministers who went out from his 
 seminary arrive in the land of light when their 
 work on earth is done and tell him how through 
 the training here provided by his munificence 
 they have been able to give the bread of life to 
 their fellow men, and when the thousands of 
 ransomed souls who have been gathered into the 
 Kingdom of God from every part of the world 
 
 *Minute of the Faculty on the death of Mr. McCormick, May 24. 
 1884. 
 
62 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 by the men from his seminary tell him hoM' under 
 God they owe to him their knowledge of the gospel 
 and their deliverance from sin! Ah, yes, "He that 
 goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed" — 
 a seminary is literally a seedery — "shall doubtless 
 come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves 
 with him" — bringing his sheaves with him. 
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF THE MAN. 
 
 Cyrus McCormick was cast in a large mould. 
 He was a massive man in body and mind. In his 
 stalwart prime, with the physique of a gladiator, 
 deep chested, broad shouldered and ruddy, with 
 his leonine head and thick black hair, with his 
 firm face and strong eyes, he made an extraor- 
 dinary impression of physical and intellectual 
 force. And the longer one knew him the more 
 that impression of power grew. He was the 
 incarnation of decision, energy, tenacity and 
 courage. But all men of power are not great men. 
 The question remains as to their moral qualities — 
 the substratum of character. Are they men of 
 granite convictions that will defy the waves of 
 passing opinion? Are they men of regnant con- 
 science and stainless integrity? One of his friends 
 who knew him intimately and who is here present 
 to-night has happily characterized the real secret 
 of Mr. McCormick's success as follows: "That 
 which gave intensity to his purpose, strength to his 
 will, and nerved him with perseverance that never 
 failed was his supreme regard for justice, his 
 worshipful reverence for the true and right. The 
 thoroughness of his conviction that justice must 
 be done, that right must be maintained, made him 
 
/ HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 63 
 
 insensible to reproach and patient of delay. I 
 do not wonder that his character was strong, nor 
 that his purpose was invincible, nor that his plans 
 were crowned with an ultimate and signal success, 
 for where conviction of right is the motive-power, 
 and the attainment of justice the end in view, with 
 faith in God, there is no such word as fail." 
 
 His ethical perceptions were as quick and keen 
 as his business acumen. He did not have to work 
 his way laboriously through a moral problem; he 
 reached his conclusion in a flash, and there was 
 no uncertainty or doubt. On a business question 
 his judgment was clear and reliable; on a moral 
 question it was almost unerring. 
 
 And he was never disobedient to the heavenly 
 vision. What conscience commanded he did. 
 In an age accused of complete absorption in things 
 merely material and of indifference to the means 
 by which money is made and of selfish misuse of 
 accumulated wealth, he set an example of honesty, 
 integrity and benevolence which gave him a dis- 
 tinction among the mass of men like a braid of 
 shining gold on a sleeve of hodden gray. His 
 wealth was honorably acquired and nobly used. 
 His nature was not dwarfed but enlarged by his 
 devotion to business. Some men become mere 
 business machines; their nobler powers are atro- 
 phied — their natures are narrowed and shrivelled 
 by the ver}^ intensity of their devotion to business, 
 even honorable business. It was not so with him. 
 With all his sagacity and skill and success in 
 practical affairs, with all his concentration of 
 energy upon whatever enterprise he had in hand, 
 he remained to the last an idealist, high-souled, 
 
64 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 broad-minded, sympathetic, benevolent, devout — 
 an Abou Ben Ad hem, who proved his love to God 
 by his love to his fellow-men. He was no mere 
 moralist; the core of his character was his faith 
 in God. He was no mere humanitarian; the 
 mainspring of his benevolence was his gratitude 
 and love to our Heavenly Father. 
 
 Religion to him was not a detached and oc- 
 casional thing — a thing merely of times and 
 seasons. It permeated and controlled his whole 
 life. His business and his religion, so far from 
 being relegated to different compartments of his 
 life, were interwoven like warp and woof. In the 
 most crowded periods of his career "his letters." 
 as Dr. McClure has said, "were a combination of 
 intense devotion to business detail and of intense 
 devotion to religious principle." At the close of 
 a long statement about machinery and contracts, 
 he writes to his brother: "May the Lord grant us 
 all grace to live so that we shall have hope in our 
 death as had our dear father, and to this end 
 may we have a well-founded hope in our life. The 
 work is thine, O Lord. Wilt thou draw us unto 
 thee by the cords of thy love. For of ourselves 
 we can do nothing. May we be delivered from 
 the bondage of sin and have that peace which the 
 world cannot give or take away — peace in believ- 
 ing, which will be an anchor, sure and steadfast." 
 
 Such expressions were as natural to him as 
 breathing. He believed not only that there should 
 be business in our religion, and religion in our 
 business, but that religion is our business. "I 
 often regret," he writes, "that my example has 
 not been better, more pious; and yet I have often 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 65 
 
 felt a concern that was not expressed. Business 
 is not inconsistent with Christianity; but the latter 
 ought to be a help to the former, giving a con- 
 fidence and resignation, after using all proper 
 means, which speak peace to the soul. And 
 again, at a critical juncture in his business atiairs, 
 when he was struggling with manufacturers who 
 had broken their contracts, he says, 'This is the 
 point that should be aimed at, the feeling that 
 should be cherished— unconditional submission 
 and resignation to the will and hand of Provi- 
 dence; and with His smiles the most crooked 
 ways may be made straight and chastisements 
 converted into blessings. But for the fact that 
 Providence has seemed to assist me in our business, 
 it has at times seemed that I would almost sink 
 under the weight of responsibility hanging upon 
 m.e But I believe the Lord will help me out. 
 How grateful we should be! How humble on 
 account of unworthiness! And yet how rejoicing 
 that unworthy as we are, the law has been satis- 
 fied, and we may be saved by faith." 
 
 That was the real life of the man. And so, 
 during his declining years, when chastened by 
 much bodily affliction, he was sustained and 
 soothed by an unfaltering trust and bore his suffer- 
 ings without a murmur. 
 
 At last the strong staff was broken and the 
 beautiful rod. The powerful constitution which 
 had carried him victoriously through so many 
 conflicts was exhausted, and he was ready for his 
 rest. On the last Lord's Day of his life on earth 
 hearing it said that it was Sunday and a beautiful 
 day, he answered, "Yes, sweet Sabbath." As he 
 
66 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 lay, peacefully awaiting the end, he uttered tender 
 words to each of his children and his wife, taking 
 their hands one after another, then while they knelt 
 by his bedside he led with firm voice the last 
 religious service as the head of his family, and 
 finally sang with them his favorite hymn, 
 
 "O Thou, in whose presence my soul takes delight, 
 
 On whom in affliction I call, 
 My comfort by day, and my song in the night. 
 
 My hope, my salvation, my all." 
 
 To such a man death was but a translation. 
 On Tuesday, May 13th, 1884, he passed from this 
 life to the life on high, leaving behind him a record 
 of achievement as inventor, philanthropist and 
 man of God, which will perpetuate his fame "to 
 the last syllable of recorded time." 
 
WILLIAM WALLACE SPENCE. 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 67 
 
 OTiUiam WKallace ^pence 
 
 Union Seminary Magazine, October-November, 1901. 
 
 Notwithstanding all that has been said about 
 our age as an era of young men, it is undeniable 
 that much of the world's best work is still done by 
 men who are well advanced in years. The adage, 
 "Old men for counsel, young men for war," while 
 true in general, cannot be taken literally, as many 
 of our most useful men of action are old men. 
 Longfellow, in his "Morituri Salutamus," recog- 
 nized this fact in his catalogue of literary, achieve- 
 ments by the elderly: 
 
 "Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles 
 Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides 
 Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, 
 When each had numbered more than fourscore years, 
 And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten, 
 Had but begun his Characters of Men; 
 Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales. 
 At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; 
 Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, 
 Completed Faust when eighty years were past." 
 
 Von Moltke, Bismarck, Gladstone, Hannibal 
 Hamlin, Justin Morrill, John Hall, Moses Hoge, 
 William Henry Green, John I. Blair, of New 
 Jersey, and Charles Reid, of Norfolk, are exam- 
 ples of immensely active old age from the recent 
 past, while we still have with us such leaders in 
 public life as Lord Salisbury, such preeminent 
 soldiers as Lord Roberts, such teachers as Professor 
 
68 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 Killen, who at ninety-six presided at the recent 
 commencement of our theological college at Bel- 
 fast, such vigorous veterans in the ministry as 
 Benjamin M. Palmer and Theodore L. Cuyler, 
 and such masterful spirits in the business world 
 as the honored citizen of Baltimore whose name 
 stands at the head of this article. 
 
 When it is remembered that Mr. Spence is now 
 eighty-six years of age, the following list of his 
 personal offices at the present time will strike the 
 reader as a remarkable illustration of our opening 
 proposition. He is the senior elder in the First 
 Presbyterian Church; president of the Presby- 
 terian Ear, Eye and Throat Hospital; president 
 of the trustees of the Aged Men's Home; president 
 of the trustees of the Aged Women's Home; 
 treasurer of the Egenton Orphan Asylum ; manager 
 of the Home for Incurables; vice-president of the 
 Mercantile Trust and Deposit Company; vice- 
 president of the Baltimore and Annapolis Short 
 Line Railroad; director of the Baltimore and 
 Lehigh Railroad, the Eutaw Savings Bank, the 
 First National Bank, and the Consolidated Gas 
 Company. 
 
 These multifarious activities at his time of life 
 sufficiently attest his extraordinary capacity for 
 business and his abiding interest in philanthropic 
 and religious work. They witness also to the 
 unique position which he holds in the confidence 
 and esteem of his fellow-men. His long and hon- 
 ored preeminence in business affairs and Christian 
 work, the rare combination of intellectual force 
 and moral principle involved in such a career, and 
 the variety and munificence of his private and 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 69 
 
 public benefactions, characterized as they have 
 been in every case by enHghtened views and 
 sound judgment, all mark him as a large-hearted 
 and large-minded man, whose antecedents and 
 work are well worth the study of young men, 
 especially at a time when business success is so 
 often sought by unworthy methods and so often 
 used for unworthy ends. 
 
 William Wallace Spence was born in Edinburgh 
 in the year 1815. His father was John Spence, 
 a highly respected physician of that city, famous 
 then, as now, for the learning and skill of its 
 medical faculties. His mother was Sarah Dickson, 
 of Prestonpans, where the Young Pretender and 
 his Highlanders won their delusive victory in 1745, 
 and close to Dunbar, where a century earlier 
 Cromwell won his decisive victory over the Coven- 
 anters. The story of these stirring events, and 
 many others like them in the strenuous history 
 of his country, must have soon become familiar 
 to the boy to whom his parents had given the name 
 of Scotland's national hero, and must have con- 
 tributed to the formation of a strong and self- 
 reliant character, capable alike of high enthusiasm 
 and of patient and persistent pursuit of a purpose. 
 No history is better fitted than that of Scotland 
 to inspire a boy with both of these contrasted 
 qualities. The names of heroes like Wallace and 
 Bruce, reformers like Knox and Hamilton, poets 
 like Burns and Scott, and preachers like Ruther- 
 ford and Chalmers, are associated forever with 
 her mountains and moors and lochs, her cities 
 and towns and clachans, and are a perpetual 
 inspiration to her youth. The influence of such 
 
70 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 a history upon a boy of young Spence's ante- 
 cedents, training and natural intelligence, must 
 have been a considerable factor in the formation 
 of his character. But his best heritage was the 
 robust faith of a long line of godly forebears. 
 For generations his ancestors had cherished the 
 intelligent and sturdy piety which has been Scot- 
 land's crowning glory. His parents bottomed 
 his character on the Word of God and the Shorter 
 Catechism, and his subsequent life testifies to the 
 thoroughness with which he learned that "man's 
 chief end is to glorify God." 
 
 The City of Edinburgh in the time of Mr. 
 Spence's boyhood was one of the chief literary 
 centers of the world. Her great university, her 
 magisterial quarterly, her command of the trench- 
 ant pens of Jeffrey, Macaulay, Carlyle and Wilson, 
 the surviving influence of Burns, the magical 
 genius of Scott, the pulpit influence of Chalmers 
 and Gordon, and the general preeminence of her 
 poets, philosophers, theologians and critics, cre- 
 ated a unique literary atmosphere about him, the 
 influence of which he has never ceased to feel, as 
 all know who have talked with him about books 
 or browsed in his well-stocked library. 
 
 At the age of eighteen he resolved to come to 
 America, and in the winter of 1833 he set sail for 
 New York. After six months there he came to 
 Norfolk, Va., sharing the then general belief that 
 this city, by reason of its fine location and splendid 
 harbor, was destined shortly to become one of the 
 leading Atlantic ports, possibly second only to 
 New York itself. He was fortunate in getting a 
 situation as clerk in the well-known house of 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 71 
 
 Robert Soutter & Sons, a firm having a large 
 trade with the West Indies and other foreign 
 lands. The knowledge and experience gained by 
 Mr. Spcnce during his stay with this house, 
 from 1834 to 1839, may be said to have laid the 
 ground-work of his subsequent success in business. 
 He became so fam.iliar with the West India trade, 
 having supplemented his knowledge of it by spend- 
 ing some months in the various islands for that 
 purpose, that at the end of four years he felt 
 justified in beginning business on his own account. 
 For two years more he conducted his business at 
 Norfolk, and then, despairing of the city's reach- 
 ing the commercial importance which had been 
 predicted for it, and which it is only now be- 
 ginning rapidly to attain, he removed to Balti- 
 more, whose foreign and domestic trade had just 
 received a fresh impetus from new western con- 
 nections, which gave it special importance as a 
 grain, sugar and coffee market. In connection 
 w^ith his brother, John F. Spence, he began 
 business in Baltimore under the firm-name of 
 W. W. Spence & Co. His former experience had 
 developed in him the essential qualities of quick 
 perception, sound judgment and fearless action, 
 and he soon took a leading position in the trade. 
 The shipping merchants of Baltimore recognized 
 at once that a new force had appeared among 
 them. At the end of eight years, when the 
 house had become permanently established and 
 had acquired a high reputation, extending to all 
 the countries with which Baltimore had com- 
 mercial dealings, Mr. John F. Spence went to 
 San Francisco to open a house there and take 
 
72 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 advantage of the commercial importance to which 
 that city had been raised by the successful ter- 
 mination of the Mexican war and the discovery 
 of gold on the Pacific coast. And so, in 1849, 
 Mr. Andrew Reid, of Norfolk, a gentleman of 
 remarkable business ability, who in association 
 with his brother, Mr. Charles Reid, had gained 
 a valuable knowledge of the shipping and com- 
 mission trade, came to Baltimore and united with 
 Mr. Spence, thus forming the firm so widely 
 known as Spence & Reid. The two partners 
 were admirably adapted to each other, the business 
 grew and prospered, the firm establishing ex- 
 tensive connections in Great Britain, the British 
 provinces. South America and the West Indies, 
 sustaining always the highest credit and exempli- 
 fying the happy combination of a dignified con- 
 servatism with alert enterprise. 
 
 In 1862 the Civil War jeopardized a portion 
 of their extensive business. On one occasion one 
 of their regular coffee packets on her return trip 
 from Rio de Janeiro was captured by a Confederate 
 cruiser, and, on her release, was seized again by 
 a Federal cruiser, and obtained her final release 
 only after much expense and difficulty. Chiefly 
 on account of the liability of such occurrences the 
 branch house of Spence, Montague & Co. was 
 established in New York, James C. Spence and 
 S. P. Montague being made the resident partners. 
 
 The success of the firm was such that by 1874, 
 after twenty-five years of happy association, both 
 partners felt justified in withdrawing from gen- 
 eral business. 
 
 The wealth and prominence achieved by Mr. 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 73 
 
 Spence have brought to him opportunities for 
 doing good which he has recognized and improved 
 in a large-hearted and open-handed manner. 
 Besides his generous support of the regular work 
 of his church and his frequent special contribu- 
 tions to its equipment for its great work in Balti- 
 more, including the gift of the exceptionally sweet- 
 toned pipe-organ which leads its music, and besides 
 his interest in educational enterprises and his 
 active part in the organization and management 
 of benevolent and charitable institutions, he has, 
 in many ways unknown to the world, brought 
 relief to perplexed hearts and comfort to sorrowing 
 homes. 
 
 While cultivating his own taste for the fine 
 arts, he has been a liberal patron of artists by 
 generous purchases and by organizing art ex- 
 hibitions. In 1893 he presented to the city of 
 Baltimore the colossal bronze statue of Scotland's 
 national hero. Sir William Wallace, which stands 
 with uplifted sword at the western extremity of 
 the lake in Druid Hill Park, and is daily admired 
 by hundreds of visitors. Three years later he 
 presented to the Johns Hopkins Hospital a 
 marble replica of Thorwaldsen's "Christ the 
 Divine Healer." It stands in the center of the 
 main hall, under the great dome, so that, as the 
 donor said on the day of the unveiling, "To every 
 weary sufferer entering these doors the first object 
 presented to him is this benign, gracious figure, 
 looking down with pitying eyes and outstretched 
 arms, as if it were saying to him, Come unto me 
 and I will give you rest." Mr. Spence has made 
 frequent gifts to the Johns Hopkins University. 
 
74 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 But the benefaction for which he will be most grate- 
 fully remembered throughout the South was his 
 gift of $30,000 to Union Theological Seminary for 
 the erection of the beautiful fire-proof library to 
 which the seminary has given his name. An ex- 
 cellent oil portrait of Mr. Spence occupies the place 
 of honor on the walls of the elegant reading-room 
 of this building, so that all coming generations of 
 our young ministers may become familiar with the 
 strong and kindly face of the Christian gentleman 
 whose enlightened liberality has so greatly pro- 
 moted the comfort and effectiveness of their 
 preparation for their great work in life. 
 
 It is sometimes supposed that those who attain 
 to wealth and high position miss the best things 
 in life in the way of personal friendships, or that, 
 at least, they cannot be sure that those who profess 
 to be their friends are so in fact, as it is inevitable 
 that men of means and power will be sought by 
 some for their influence and aid rather than for 
 themselves. Mr. Spence has probably had his 
 full share of such experiences, but no man ever 
 had truer friends or less doubt of their sincere 
 attachment, and none ever derived more true 
 pleasure from his friendships. A quiet, undem- 
 onstrative, dignified gentleman, with the pro- 
 verbial caution and discrimination of his race, he 
 does not form friendships hastily, yet he has the 
 faculty of attracting to himself choice and con- 
 genial spirits, who, under the influence of his 
 genuine kindness, thoughtfulness and comrader}^ 
 soon pass from the stage of pleasant acquaintance 
 to that of warm and abiding friendship. It is 
 difficult for any one who knows Mr. Spence 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 75 
 
 intimately to write of him without falhng into the 
 strain of apparently undiscriminating eulogy. 
 But surely no language would overstate the case 
 as to his genius for hospitality. In 1866 he pur- 
 chased "Bolton," the famous and beautiful resi- 
 dence on Hoffman street, which was erected 
 more than a century ago, and in the drawing-room 
 of which Jerome Bonaparte in 1804 met the lovely 
 Betty Patterson, whom he afterwards married. 
 Mr. Spence added to the house a third story and 
 two wings, and here, aided by his gentle and win- 
 some wife, an "elect lady" indeed, whose recent 
 death was one of the heaviest sorrows of his life, 
 and by his daughters and granddaughters, he dis- 
 pensed for thirty-five years the most delightful 
 hospitality, making "Bolton" the constant centre 
 of a charming social and intellectual life and the 
 occasional scene of the most elegant and elaborate 
 functions. He has recently sold this fine old 
 place to the State of Maryland as a site for the 
 Fifth Regiment Armory, but has carried to his 
 new home on St. Paul street the old "Bolton" 
 atmosphere of comfort, refinement and cordial 
 hospitality. To chat with him there through a 
 winter evening on matters grave or gay; to sail or 
 drive with him at Mount Desert through a summer 
 morning; to hear him read to a small circle of 
 guests, selections from Scotch Wit and Humor, 
 or describe to some favored friend his boyhood 
 in the old country, or his coming to America; to 
 listen to his devout recognition of the gracious 
 Providence which directed his movements in the 
 beginning of his business career; to follow his rem- 
 iniscences of Dr. Chalmers, whom the boy Spence 
 
76 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 knew in Edinburgh, and of Dr. William S. White, 
 from whom the youth Spence received his deepest 
 religious impressions in Virginia, and of Dr. 
 Backus, to whom, as his pastor and friend, the man 
 Spence gave his full confidence, tender affection 
 and hearty and steadfast support in Baltimore — 
 any one of these experiences reveals new and 
 attractive phases of a clear and powerful mind, 
 a strong and well-balanced character, a warm and 
 loving heart, and a deep and thoughtful piety. 
 
 We have thought it right, though without his 
 knowledge and permission, to publish in this 
 magazine, which is read by so many of his friends, 
 this brief account of the outward facts of his life 
 and the qualities of mind and heart which have 
 determined his beautiful and beneficent career, 
 and made him so conspicuous an example of emi- 
 nent and honorable success in business, combined 
 with Christian benevolence and manifold far- 
 reaching usefulness. 
 
JOSKPH BRYAN. 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 77 
 
 Memorial Mass Meeting, Jefferson Hotel Auditorium, Dec. 3, 190S. 
 
 The characteristics of cities are no less clearly 
 marked than those of individuals. In the activi- 
 ties of every city there is usually one dominant 
 note. Ancient Tyre was a city of commerce; 
 she cared for the bodies of men. Ancient Athens 
 was a city of learning; she cared for the minds of 
 men. Ancient Jerusalem was a city of religion; 
 she cared for the souls of men. Not exclusively, 
 of course, in either of the three cases, but pre- 
 dominantly. However complex and varied the 
 activities of any one community, however inter- 
 mingled the things of the body and the mind and 
 the spirit, there is always one controlling purpose, 
 one dominant ideal. When Matthew Arnold said 
 of a certain American city, "It is too beastly 
 prosperous," he did not mean that it had no in- 
 tellectual or spiritual resources — no great libraries 
 or schools or universities or churches — for it had; 
 but he meant that the material and commercial 
 interests over-shadowed the intellectual and spirit- 
 ual; that the keynote of the city, the chief end of 
 its being, the main object of its effort was material 
 gain. 
 
 What is the keynote of Richmond? Are our 
 people sordid or noble? Do we believe that a 
 man's life consisteth in the abundance of the things 
 which he possesseth? Do we measure men by 
 
78 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 what they have or by what they are? Are we 
 Hving for mere gain or for character? Is our 
 chief aim the making of money or the making 
 of men? Is our dominating principle selfishness 
 or is it service? I think we can answer this crucial 
 question without hesitation and without shame. 
 We are citizens of no mean city. A community 
 is known by the manner of man that it honors. 
 The significance of this movement to provide a 
 permanent memorial of Mr. Bryan lies in the fact 
 that it is a revelation of our civic character. 
 
 He was universally recognized as our ideal 
 citizen, as the finest embodiment among us of the 
 qualities that we admire and wish to conserve 
 and perpetuate. He was, indeed, a man of 
 wealth, but the essential fact about that is that 
 his wealth was honorably acquired and nobly 
 used. He was indeed a great captain of industry, 
 but the essential thing is that his nature was not 
 dwarfed but enlarged by his devotion to business. 
 "Some men become mere business machines; their 
 nobler powers are atrophied — their natures are 
 narrowed and shrivelled by the -very intensity of 
 their devotion to business, even honorable business. 
 It was not so with him. With all his sagacity and 
 skill and success in practical affairs, with all his 
 concentration of energy upon whatever enterprise 
 he had in hand, he remained to the last an idealist, 
 high-souled, broad-minded, sympathetic, benevo- 
 lent, devout." At a meeting in the Chamber of 
 Commerce a year or so ago, I heard him quote 
 those warning lines from Goldsmith: 
 
 "111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
 Where wealth accumulates and men decay." 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 79 
 
 He believed that with all his soul. Let us not be 
 misunderstood. Every intelligent and earnest 
 man must rejoice in the material prosperity of 
 our city, the industry and thrift of our people, 
 their eager interest in the development of our 
 resources and the expansion of our business. But 
 we are a thrice happy people in the fact that, in 
 an age which is accused of complete absorption 
 in things material, our leaders in business are not 
 indifferent to the things of the mind and the heart; 
 that they do not under-value character and cul- 
 ture; that the man to whom we point as our model 
 citizen, the finest product of our life, was not only 
 a capable and successful man of affairs but a man 
 of culture and charm, of purity and faith. 
 
 When I came to this city about ten years ago 
 and got a view at close range of its business 
 activities, the thing that struck me most forcibly 
 was the fact that the great majority of the men who 
 controlled its capital and directed its energies and 
 molded its business life were not only correct 
 men but religious men; not only men of sound 
 morality but of pronounced religious faith. That 
 seems to me to be truer of Richmond than of any 
 other city that I know; and that is the glory of 
 our town. We do well to honor the memory of a 
 man who in a community that is rich in men of 
 lofty ideals stood out among us like a standard 
 bearer among ten thousand, a man of cultivated 
 mind and gentle heart and stainless character 
 and devout life, an Abou Ben Adhem, who proved 
 his love to God by his love to his fellow-men. He 
 was no mere moralist; the core of his character 
 was his faith in God. He was no mere humani- 
 
80 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 tarian; the mainspring of his benevolence was his 
 gratitude and love to our heavenly Father. 
 
 Joseph Bryan, then, was a rare man. His 
 buo3^ant spirit, his sparkling mind, his bubbling 
 enthusiasm, the verve and elan of his whole 
 manner, made him everywhere and always like 
 a burst of sunshine. There was an almost boyish 
 impulsivemess about him, but this impetuous 
 frankness, instead of making trouble as it might 
 easily have done for a nature less noble, only 
 revealed more clearly the purity of the springs of 
 his being. In nothing was this quickness more 
 noticeable than in his ethical perceptions. "He 
 did not have to work his way laboriously through 
 a moral problem; he reached his conclusion in a 
 flash, and there was no uncertainty^ or doubt. 
 On a business question, his judgment was clear 
 and reliable; on a moral question, it was almost 
 unerring." It was this moral refinement, this 
 high strain of the mind and spirit which gave him 
 a distinction among the mass of men "like a braid 
 of shining gold on a sleeve of hodden-gray." 
 
 And it is the priceless value to a community of 
 qualities like these, so splendidly exemplified in 
 him, that justifies this movement to perpetuate 
 the memory of such a character and such a life. 
 Let us then provide this memorial and let it say 
 to our children and our children's children, "This 
 was our ideal citizen, an upright and able man of 
 affairs, an unselfish leader of civic progress, an 
 open-handed philanthropist, a golden-hearted gen- 
 tleman, and a reverent and radiant man of God." 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 81 
 
 Efje Centennial Celebration of Pinion ®f)eo= 
 logical Seminar? 
 
 The one hundredth anniversary of the founding 
 of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia was 
 celebrated with suitable exerices on Sunday, 
 October 13th, and Wednesday, October 16th, 
 1912. On Sunday two addresses w^ere delivered 
 in the Seminary Chapel, one on "The First Fifty 
 Years," by Dr. W. W. Moore, and the other on 
 "The Last Fifty Years," by Dr. W. L. Lingle. 
 
 On Wednesday, the two controlling Synods hav- 
 ing previously taken order for a joint celebration 
 at that time, the Synod of North Carolina came by 
 special train from Goldsboro to Richmond, where 
 the Synod of Virginia was in session, and the two 
 bodies repaired to the beautiful campus in Ginter 
 Park for the exercises of the afternoon. A large 
 tent had been erected to afford shelter in case of 
 rain, but it was a perfect autumn day, and on the 
 green lawn, "under this October sun," some fif- 
 teen hundred persons assembled. One thousand 
 of these, the more direct representatives of the 
 Synods, wore souvenir badges in the Seminary 
 colors, blue and white, which bore a picture of 
 Watts' Hall, the date of the celebration, and the 
 college toast — ''Vivat, crescat, f lor eat Seminarium! 
 One hundred wore besides on the lapels of their 
 coats bows of white ribbon. These were the 
 present students of the Seminary, and the printed 
 
82 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 programme stated that the students could thus 
 be identified and that they would be glad to show 
 visitors about the grounds and buildings and to 
 give any information desired. 
 
 The President of the Seminary opened the exer- 
 cises with the following words of welcome: 
 
 "Never before in all her long history has the old 
 Seminary had the happiness of welcoming home 
 at one time so many of her scattered sons and fold- 
 ing them in her motherly embrace. In 1899 we 
 had the honor of a visit in these halls from the 
 General Assembly, and it so happened that nearly 
 half of the commissioners then present were former 
 students of this seminary. In 1905 we had the 
 pleasure of entertaining in the same way the Synod 
 of Virginia, three-fourths of whose ministerial 
 members were alumni of the Seminary. But 
 neither of those occasions equalled this in the num- 
 ber of old students present. To all these, her sons, 
 who have gathered today under the ancestral roof- 
 tree, she extends a loving welcome and upon all 
 she pronounces a motherly benediction. And to 
 those who are not her sons but her nephews, sons 
 of her sister seminaries, she extends a welcome 
 no less warm and cordial. To the ruling elders also 
 of the two great Synods, to the elect ladies who 
 have favored us with their presence in such large 
 numbers, and to the hundreds of our visitors who 
 have come to the Seminary's crowning to rejoice 
 with her, she extends a glad and grateful greeting. 
 To everyone of you she says in the genial words 
 of Horace, ''Tibi splendet focus .'' Nay, to everyone 
 of you she says in the warmer language of Scrip- 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 83 
 
 ture, 'Come in, thou blessed of the Lord, where- 
 fore s'tandest thou without?' 
 
 FeUcitous responses were made by the Moder- 
 ator of the Synod of North Carohna, the Rev. 
 W. McC. White, D. D., and the Moderator of the 
 Synod of Virginia, the Rev. E. T. Wellford, D. D. 
 
 Mr. George W. Watts, "President of the Board 
 of Trustees and the greatest benefactor of the 
 Seminary," was then presented as the presiding 
 officer of the occasion. The hymn, "O God of 
 Bethel," was sung, and the great congregation 
 was led in prayer by the Rev. T. S. Wilson, D. D., 
 grandson of the Rev. S. B. Wilson, D. D., who 
 was for twenty-eight years a professor in the 
 Seminary. The addresses of Dr. R. F. Campbell, 
 Dr. D. M. Sweets and Dr. T. H. Rice on Union 
 Seminary in the Pastorate, in Religious Journalism, 
 and in Theological Education and Religious 
 Thought, and the Poem of Dr. W. H. Woods, were 
 all listened to with eager interest. This part of 
 the programme was closed with the Benediction 
 pronounced by the Rev. Dr. R. P. Kerr, of Bal- 
 timore. 
 
 Refreshments were served from the Refectory 
 from 5 to 6 o'clock, the buildings and grounds were 
 illuminated, and a reception was given in Rich- 
 mond Hall by officers of the Board of Trustees, 
 members of the Faculty, and ladies of the Seminary 
 Community, assisted by Mrs. M. V. Terhune 
 ("Marion Harland"), of New York. It was a 
 truly delightful social commingling, and hundreds 
 of old friends met who had for years been widely 
 separated. 
 
84 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 The exercises were resumed at 8 o'clock in the 
 City Auditorium. No other building in Richmond 
 would have held the crowd. The city papers 
 described it next morning as "a monster mass 
 meeting." The Presbyterians turned out in un- 
 precedented numbers to show what they thought 
 of their Seminary, and to listen to the various 
 addresses. There were nearly three thousand 
 of them, including the largest number of Southern 
 Presbyterian ministers ever gathered in one place. 
 After the singing of the hymn, '*I Love Thy King- 
 dom, Lord," the congregation was led in prayer 
 by the Rev. P. H. Hoge, D. D., son of Dr. Wm. J. 
 Hoge, one of the former professors in the Seminary, 
 and great grandson of Dr. Moses Hoge, the first 
 professor. 
 
 The greetings of our sister seminaries in the 
 South were happily presented by Dr. McPheeters 
 of Columbia, Dr. Vinson of Austin, and Dr. Hemp- 
 hill of Louisville, and the written greetings of 
 thirty-five other seminaries, colleges and univer- 
 sities were announced by the Rev. Prof. T. R. 
 English, D. D. Besides these there was a great 
 number of letters from the old students and other 
 individuals which were not intended for publica- 
 tion, but which gave profound pleasure by their 
 warm and affectionate greetings. 
 
 The Hon. Wm. Hodges Mann, who was intro- 
 duced as the author of the statement that he 
 regarded it a higher honor to be an elder in the 
 Presbyterian Church than to be the Governor of 
 Virginia, made a hearty and ringing address of 
 welcome, to which the Moderators of the two 
 Synods responded in a way that won all hearts. 
 
<^ HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 85 
 
 The two main addresses of the evening were 
 made by Dr. Egbert W. Smith and Dr. James I. 
 Vance, both graduates of the institution in the 
 class of 1886, on Union Seminary in Home Mis- 
 sions and Union Seminary in Foreign Missions. 
 
 Mr. John S. Munce, representing the Board of 
 Trustees, announced that Mrs. Nettie F. McCor- 
 mick, of Chicago, had that day telegraphed a 
 hearty message of congratulation to the President 
 of the Seminary, saying that she wished to give 
 to the Endowment $10,000 in memory of her 
 husband, Cyrus H. McCormick, Sr. ; and that Mr. 
 George W. Watts had also marked the occasion 
 by making, far ahead of time, the final payment 
 of $15,000 on the $45,000 pledged by hini for the 
 endowment of the Presidency of the Seminary. 
 
 With the singing of the Doxology and the pro- 
 nouncing of the Benediction this memorable 
 celebration, successful and happy in every par- 
 ticular, was brought to a fitting close. 
 
 — Union Seminary Magazine. 
 
86 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 l^fje Jf irgt Jf iftj) iearg of Winion aTfjeolosical 
 Seminar j> 
 
 Centennial Celebration, October IS, 1912. 
 
 II Timothy 2:2 — "The things that thou hast heard of me among 
 many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be 
 able to teach others also." 
 
 "The things that thou has heard of me" — that 
 is, the essentials of the Christian faith pubHcly 
 committed to Timothy's trust as a minister of the 
 gospel. "Among many witnesses" — meaning the 
 presbyters who had taken part in Timothy's 
 ordination. "The things that thou hast heard 
 of me among many witnesses, the same commit 
 thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach 
 others also." In these words the apostle states the 
 two fundamental qualifications of ministers of the 
 gospel. They must be men of character, and they 
 must be men of capacity. First, they must be 
 men of character, Christian character, trust- 
 worthy men; or, to use his own word, "faithful" 
 men; and secondly, they must be men of capacity, 
 "able to teach others also," as he expresses it — 
 that is, they must be men of the requisite in- 
 tellectual force and training to instruct their 
 fellow-men. Not every good man is called to 
 preach. Piety is an indispensable qualification 
 for the ministry but it is not the only qualification. 
 Besides piety, the minister must have a well 
 disciplined and well furnished mind and the power 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 87 
 
 to make the truth clear to other minds and to 
 impress it on other hearts. 
 
 The branch of the Church to which this Semi- 
 nary belongs has always paid large attention 
 to the proper preparation of the minister for the 
 duties of his office. The educated minister is 
 central to our activities. A man of intelligence 
 and attainments and force in the pulpit is essential 
 to fully organized Presbyterian worship and work. 
 The Protestant ideal of public worship is quite 
 different from that which obtains among Roman 
 Catholics. In Roman Catholic worship, the prin- 
 cipal functionary is a priest who claims to offer 
 sacrifice and who performs the ceremonies of an 
 elaborate ritual. The appeal is chiefly to the 
 senses and the aesthetic sensibilities. Protestants, 
 on the other hand, hold that the minister is not 
 a priest at all but a teacher. His function is 
 not the performance of ceremonies but the in- 
 culcation of truth. The Protestant churches 
 make their appeal to the mind rather than to 
 the senses. They rely upon ideas rather than 
 ceremonies, because they are convinced that it is 
 only by the intelligent apprehension of the truth 
 that the spiritual life can be truly nourished and 
 developed. The difference appears even in their 
 respective styles of church architecture. The 
 central thing in a Roman Catholic church is the 
 altar; the central thing in a Protestant church is 
 the pulpit. In other words, Roman Catholic 
 churches are built for ceremonies and Protestant 
 churches are built for preaching. It is not 
 without significance that our own Church in par- 
 ticular has been historically not a builder of 
 
88 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 cathedrals but a builder of schools and colleges 
 and seminaries. 
 
 Now, since according to this view the principal 
 functionary of Christian worship is a trained 
 minister, and since his main business is the ex- 
 position of scripture and the inculcation of truth, 
 it follows that the making of trained ministers 
 is for us a vital matter. It has been so recognized 
 throughout our history. The Presbyterian 
 Church has uniformly insisted upon the thor- 
 ough education of its religious leaders, so much 
 so indeed that generally speaking the public mind 
 associates with Presbyterian ministers the ideas 
 of intellectual stamina and ample learning. 
 
 How has our Church in this Western World 
 endeavored to meet the need for the broad and 
 thorough training involved in this Pauline con- 
 ception of the ministerial office? The Presby- 
 terian Church in America was composed originally 
 of emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland. 
 For many years the ministers of their various 
 congregations were drawn from beyond the seas. 
 As the Church grew, however, and the population 
 of the country increased, the supply thus obtained 
 proved to be inadequate, and the necessity for a 
 native ministry became more and more apparent. 
 This necessity was accentuated by the American 
 Revolution. The political separation from the 
 mother country made it clearer than ever that we 
 could not depend for a permanent supply of 
 ministers upon the universities of the Old World, 
 three thousand miles away in what was now a 
 foreign land and in an atmosphere largely out of 
 sympathy with American ideals. Accordingly, 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 89 
 
 academies and colleges were established from time 
 to time during the eighteenth century at various 
 places, such as Princeton, Lexington and Hamp- 
 den-Sidney; and the candidates educated in these 
 institutions received their theological training by 
 serving a sort of apprenticeship under approved 
 divines here and there throughout the country 
 who directed their studies. But this plan also 
 was presently seen to be inadequate, especially 
 after the great revivals of 1799-1804, and it be- 
 came apparent that the only way in which the 
 demand could be met was to organize regular 
 institutions for theological education. 
 
 The first definite step in this direction in the 
 American Presbyterian Church was taken in 
 1789, when a class of seven or eight young men 
 began a systematic course of study in theology 
 under the instruction of the Rev. Wm. Graham, 
 the Rector of Liberty Hall Academy near Lexing- 
 ton, Va., the forerunner of Washington and Lee 
 University. Two years later (1791) the Synod 
 of Virginia appointed Mr. Graham to give regular 
 instruction in theology, and at the same time 
 projected a plan for the raising of funds to main- 
 tain a permanent system of theological education. 
 Mr. Graham continued to teach theology till his 
 resignation of the rectorship of Liberty Hall 
 Academy in 1796. The Synod's plan of securing 
 funds for a permanent theological school not 
 being promptly carried out, the Presbytery of 
 Hanover began to move in the matter. It de- 
 termined to raise an endowment for this purpose 
 which should be under its own control, and in 
 1797 it adopted a plan drawn up by the Rev. 
 
90 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 Archibald Alexander for the education of minis- 
 ters. But still the enterprise halted. The school 
 failed to materialize. The needed leader and 
 organizer had not yet appeared, the man who 
 should realize the dreams and hopes of both the 
 Synod and the Presbytery. 
 
 But in 1806 the man for the crisis did appear 
 in the person of a young minister onl}- twenty- 
 nine years of age, who had been in the ministry 
 only about two years and who was at that time 
 pastor of Cub Creek Church in Charlotte County. 
 His name was John Holt Rice. To him more than 
 to any other man the Presbyterian Church in 
 the United States is indebted for the existence 
 of its leading seminary. He was not its first 
 professor, but he was its real founder. His first 
 connection with the work was in the capacity of 
 agent to secure funds. The Presbytery of Han- 
 over had the discernment to see that, young as 
 he was in years and experience, he was the man to 
 realize the hopes it had so long cherished in regard 
 to a permanent theological seminary. The 
 memorable action which put him in the lead of the 
 movement was taken in 1806. In April of that 
 year, to quote from the Minutes of the Presby- 
 tery, "The Presbytery of Hanover taking into 
 consideration the deplorable state of our country 
 in regard to religious instruction, the very small 
 number of ministers possessing the qualifications 
 required by the Scriptures and the prevalence of 
 ignorance and error, on motion, 
 
 Resolved: 1. That an attempt be made to es- 
 tablish at Hampden-Sidney College a complete 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 91 
 
 theological library for the benefit of students in 
 divinity. 
 
 2. That an attempt be also made to establish 
 a fund for the educating of poor and pious youth 
 for the ministry of the gospel. 
 
 3. That the Rev. Messrs. Archibald Alexander, 
 Matthew Lyle, Conrad Speece, John H. Rice, 
 Major James Morton, Major Robert Quarles and 
 Mr. James Daniel be a Standing Committee to 
 manage this business and make report to Presby- 
 tery at its usual meetings. 
 
 4. That whatever funds are raised by the Com- 
 mittee shall be vested in the trustees of Hampden- 
 Sidney College. The appropriation of all such 
 funds, however, shall forever remain with the 
 Presbytery." 
 
 On the 30th of April, 1806, this Committee 
 met and appointed Mr. Rice a special agent to 
 solicit donations in books and money for the 
 objects proposed throughout the whole State; 
 upon which he repaired to Richmond and after- 
 wards proceeded to Norfolk to secure the desired 
 aid in behalf of the infant institution, and by the 
 spring of 1807, funds to the amount of $2,500 
 were raised for this purpose. In the same year, 
 the presidency of Hampden-Sidney College be- 
 coming vacant by the removal of Rev. Archibald 
 Alexander to Philadelphia, Rev. Moses Hoge, of 
 Shepherdstown, \'a., was unanimously chosen to 
 fill the vacant office. The vote of the trustees 
 was accompanied by pressing letters from the 
 brethren of the Presbytery, one of whom, himself 
 a trustee of the College, says: "What I wish to 
 present to you for your serious consideration is the 
 
92 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 importance of our theological school. For some 
 years to come the head of the theological school 
 must be the president of Hampden-Sidney College. 
 Now, the eyes of all who are, at the same time, 
 friends of this institution and acquaintances of 
 yours, are directed to you as the fittest person 
 in the compass of their knowledge for a professor 
 of divinity." His biographer states that "The 
 prospect of usefulness which seemed to be ex- 
 tended before him by the projected establish- 
 ment of a theological seminary at Hampden- 
 Sidney was, as he repeatedly informed his friends, 
 the reason why he decided to remove thither." 
 In a letter, dated January, 1810, Dr. Hoge says: 
 "It was chiefly from a regard to a theological 
 seminary lately established at this place that I 
 was induced to accept the presidency of Hampden- 
 Sidney College. Of that seminary you have 
 probably seen some account in the public prints. 
 It has already been useful, and will, there is 
 reason to expect, continue to be so for ages to 
 come." In August, 1812, he writes: "We have 
 now nine or ten who intend to preach the gospel, 
 and about the same number of my alumni are 
 now preaching." It is clear, therefore, that the 
 Seminary was already in existence and doing good 
 work even before the formal action of the Synod 
 of Virginia in 1812. But in that year the Synod 
 "Unanimously resolved on the establishment of a 
 theological seminary and unanimously concurred 
 in the appointment of Dr. Hoge as their professor," 
 and thus, as his biographer states it, "The seminary 
 instituted by the Synod embosomed the project 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 93 
 
 of the Presbytery of Hanover."* Satisfactory 
 arrangements were made with the trustees of the 
 College, by which Dr. Hoge could perform the 
 duties of both the presidency and the professor- 
 ship of theology, and for the remaining eight years 
 of his life he prosecuted the work with signal 
 ability and success, sending more than thirty 
 young men from his classes into the ministry. 
 
 The first professor in this Seminary, then, as 
 established by the Synod of Virginia in 1812 was 
 Moses Hoge. He was a man of mark as saint and 
 scholar and preacher. "Of his own experience, he 
 said that he had never known the time when he 
 had not loved the Lord, yet he never knew the time 
 when he thought he loved Him as he ought." 
 The power of his Christian character is well illus- 
 trated in the remark of John Randolph, of Roa- 
 noke, that there were only two men who could 
 bring quiet to a certain court green on court day — 
 Patrick Henry by his eloquence, and Dr. Hoge by 
 simply passing through. He exercised a wide 
 influence in his time by his writings and did much 
 to stem the tide of French infidelity which at that 
 time swept over this country. But it is as a 
 theological teacher that the Church is most 
 deeply indebted to him. No less an authority 
 than Dr. Robert L. Dabney has declared that it 
 was Moses Hoge who impressed upon the Virginia 
 ministry that moderate type of evangelical Calvin- 
 ism that has ever since distinguished it; and 
 Archibald Alexander was in his youth indebted 
 to him for more correct views of divine grace in 
 
 *Ms. "Life of Moses Hoge, D. D.," by his son, Rev. John Blair Hoge. 
 
94 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 regeneration, and thus Princeton also felt his 
 impress. He was the progenitor of a line of 
 brilliant and powerful preachers of his own name 
 who for three generations have in the ministry 
 rendered service which proves them to be worthy 
 sons of their honored sire. 
 
 Dr. Hoge died in the summer of 1820, and at 
 the following meeting of Synod, Dr. Archibald 
 Alexander was appointed to succeed him as pro- 
 fessor of theology. Dr. Alexander declined the 
 appointment, and the Synod, after trying in vain 
 for two years to fill the place (a task rendered 
 the more difficult, doubtless, by the fact that 
 Dr. Hoge's successor in the presidency of the 
 College was a layman), transferred the Seminary, 
 with the funds which had been collected, to the 
 Presbytery of Hanover, in trust, to hold the same 
 for the object of its founders under its own man- 
 agement, but subject to the supervision and con- 
 trol of the Synod, and in obedience to the call 
 of the Moderator, the Presbytery now met at 
 Prince Edward on the 16th of November, 1822, to 
 accept the trust and make the necessary arrange- 
 ments for carrying it into execution. That Pres- 
 bytery, which then included nearly all of eastern 
 Virginia, had, as we have seen, projected a theologi- 
 cal school even before the synod had taken the 
 steps above described, and had collected a small 
 sum for the support of it. This was now added 
 to the funds transferred to them by the Synod, 
 and the Presbytery, having resolved to reorganize 
 the Seminary, and having appointed a new board of 
 Trustees for it, proceeded to make choice of a 
 professor; and having solemnly invoked the di- 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 95 
 
 rection of Almighty God, unanimously elected the 
 Rev. John Holt Rice, D. D., pastor of the First 
 Presbyterian Church, of Richmond, to the office.* 
 
 Dr. Rice had just been elected to the presi- 
 dency of Nassau Hall (Princeton College). After 
 mature deliberation, he declined the call to New 
 Jersey, though at a great pecuniary sacrifice, 
 and, some months later, on June 2, 1823, he 
 announced his acceptance of the Presbytery's 
 appointment to the work in Prince Edward. He 
 was then recovering from a severe and protracted 
 illness, and, with a view to recruiting his health, 
 he made a journey by sea to New York, traveling 
 thence to Saratoga Springs and other points, and 
 improving the opportunity thus afforded to raise 
 additional funds for the proposed Seminary, in 
 Albany, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Freder- 
 icksburg and other places, and therefore did not 
 reach Hampden-Sidney till the autumn. Finding 
 that no accommodations had yet been provided 
 for him, he accepted the invitation of President 
 Cushing, of the College, to lodge with him tempo- 
 rarily, and soon after opened his school of the 
 prophets, with three students (Jesse S. Armistead, 
 Robert Burwellf and Thomas P. Hunt), in one 
 end of President Cushing's kitchen. The services 
 of Professor James Marsh, of Hampden-Sidney 
 College, were secured to teach the Hebrew lan- 
 guage. 
 
 On Thursday, January 1, 1824, the Board of 
 Trustees met in the college church, and in the 
 
 ♦Memoir of the Rev. John Holt Rice, D. D., by Wm. Maxwell. 
 fGreat-Grandfather of Mr. B. R. Lacy, Jr., one of our present stu- 
 dents. 
 
96 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 presence of a large congregation the Seminary 
 was formally opened; Dr. Rice was regularly in- 
 stalled as Professor of Theology, and delivered 
 a discourse appropriate to the occasion, based 
 upon 2 Timothy III, 14-17: "But continue thou 
 in the things which thou hast learned and hast 
 been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast 
 learned them, and that from a child thou hast 
 known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make 
 thee wise unto salvation through faith which is 
 in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspira- 
 tion of God and is profitable for doctrine, for 
 reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous- 
 ness, that the man of God may be perfect, thor- 
 oughly furnished unto all good works." 
 
 The whole endowment of the Seminary on the 
 day of its re-opening consisted of about $10,000. 
 There was in addition a Contingent Fund of 
 about $1,000 per annum, made up of contribu- 
 tions from the churches of the Presbytery. But 
 there was no building as yet, nor even a site for 
 one. Both, however, were soon provided, thanks 
 to the ability and energy of the indefatigable 
 founder. The first building, a three-story brick 
 structure, which is now the eastern end of the old 
 Seminary building at Hampden-Sidney, was fin- 
 ished in 1825. 
 
 In 1826 the Seminary was taken under the 
 care of the General Assembly, the trustees of that 
 body taking charge of the funds; and in 1827 the 
 Presbytery of Hanover surrendered the institu- 
 tion to the joint management and control of the 
 Synods of Virginia and North Carolina. In com- 
 memoration of this copartnership, its name was 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 97 
 
 changed to Union Theological Seminary. From 
 the time of this happy association of the two 
 synods in its support and control, there was a 
 more rapid increase in students, funds and equip- 
 ment. Dr. Rice toiled terribly at his task. He 
 literally worked himxself to death that the institu- 
 tion might succeed. It did succeed. He lived 
 but seven years after beginning his work as pro- 
 fessor, yet in that short time he made it one of 
 the foremost theological schools of the country, 
 securing for it a large building for lecture-rooms, 
 chapel and dormitories, besides two detached 
 residences for professors, a fair collection of 
 reference books as a library, valued at $8,000, three 
 instructors, and nearly forty students. 
 
 In 1831 he died and was succeeded by the Rev. 
 George A. Baxter, D. D., President of Washing- 
 ton College, Lexington, of whom it has been said 
 that by natural endowments he was the most 
 talented man who ever served the Seminary as a 
 professor. Yet the institution sorely missed the 
 resourcefulness and administrative capacity of 
 Rice, his phenomenal mastery of detail, his con- 
 suming enthusiasm and his boundless energy. 
 Moreover, the country was just entering upon a 
 period of industrial depression and the Church 
 was trembling on the verge of a controversy which 
 was destined to split it asunder. Besides, various 
 other seminaries were now being established in 
 different parts of the country, so that for twenty 
 years after the death of Rice the number of stu- 
 dents was small, in spite of the fact that able 
 men were added to the faculty from time to time, 
 such as Dr. Samuel L. Graham and Dr. Francis 
 
98 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 S. Sampson in 1838, and Dr. Samuel B. Wilson 
 who succeeded Dr. Baxter in 1841. In 1853 Dr. 
 Robert L. Dabney was added; in 1854 Dr. Benja- 
 min M. Smith; and in 1856 Dr. Wm. J. Hoge. 
 The number of students, which in 1851 had fallen 
 to eleven, fluctuated for the next ten years, 
 the smallest number being eighteen in 1858, and 
 the largest thirty-nine in 1860, about the same 
 number that had been enrolled in the last year 
 of Dr. Rice's life thirty years before. In 1860 
 Dr. Thomas E. Peck was elected Professor of 
 Church History, so that when the war broke 
 out the Faculty consisted of Drs. Wilson, Dabney, 
 Smith and Peck. The progress of the Seminary 
 was rudely checked by the great conflict into 
 which the country was plunged in 1861. Its 
 students responded to the call of their country. 
 It is one of the glories of the institution that it 
 emptied its halls into that immortal army which 
 was always outnumbered and never outfought, 
 and that its students took part in that unparalleled 
 struggle in which the North won the victory and 
 the South won the glory. One of the most 
 promising of these students, Captain Hugh A. 
 White, was killed in battle at the head of his com- 
 pany in 1862. Another, who has risen to deserved 
 distinction as soldier, friend and staff officer of 
 Stonewell Jackson, minister, editor and author, 
 and whom we all honor and love, sits with me on 
 this platform to-day. And last night, after I 
 had finished this part of my address, I received 
 from him this note: 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 99 
 
 October 12, 1912. 
 Dear Dr. Moore: 
 
 I enclose a copy of a list I had made some time ago, from 
 the General Catalogue, of students of Union Seminary 
 who were in the Confederate army. It occurs to me that 
 you may care to see this list in this time of historic interest 
 in the Seminary. Sincerely always 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 James P. Smith. 
 
 I do care to see this list, and I am sure you will 
 care to hear it — it is the honor roll of the Seminary 
 in those sad and glorious years. I give it entire: 
 
 UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN THE CON- 
 FEDERATE ARMY. 
 
 Killed in Battle 3. 
 Rev. Dabney Carr Harrison, Chaplain, Fort Donald- 
 son, February 16, 1862. 
 
 Edgar Wirt Carrington, Seven Pines, May 31, 1862. 
 Hugh Augustus White, Captain, Second Manassas, 
 August 31, 1862. 
 
 Died of Wounds Received in Battle 1. 
 James Wilson Poague, May 26, 1864. 
 
 Died of Sickness in Camp 2. 
 
 Samuel M. Lightner, May 18, 1862. 
 James M. Lynch, June 29, 1862. 
 
 Chaplains 14. 
 
 Rev. Moses D. Hoge Rev. H. G. Hill 
 
 Rev. Abner C. Hopkins Rev. P. C. Morton 
 
 Rev. Richard McIlwaine Rev. W. W. Houston 
 
 Rev. Thos. W. Hooper Rev. H. P. R. McCoy 
 
 Rev. E. H. Harding Rev. B. B. Blair 
 
 Rev L C Vass Rev. A. B. Carrington 
 
 Rev. T. W. Gilmer Rev. James M. Wharey 
 
100 
 
 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 In the Ranks 44. 
 
 Geo. W. Finley, Captain Arch McFadyen 
 
 K. M. McIntyre W. D. Morton 
 
 L. H. Yeargan Josiah M. Smith. 
 
 Jno. S. Young J. S. Hunter, Captain 
 
 Wm. E. Hill Jno. W. Primrose 
 
 H. R. Laird J. A. Wallace 
 
 E. C. Gordon E. H. Barnett 
 
 R. M. Tuttle, Captain P. P. Flournoy 
 
 J. A. Wood J. H. H. Winfree 
 
 H. M. Anderson J. K. Hitner 
 
 W. G. Baird Tazewell M. McCorkle 
 
 A. H. Hamilton M. H. Houston 
 
 Frank McCutchan Edward Lane 
 
 R. H. Fleming, C. S. Navy Geo. L. Leyburn 
 
 Cornelius Miller J. M. McIver 
 
 Thornton M. Niven G. Nash Morton 
 
 Geo. H. Denny W. U. Murkland 
 
 W. S. Lacy Jno. M. Goul 
 
 Harvey Gilmore Jas. W. Shearer 
 
 Daniel Blain H. C. Brown 
 
 S. Taylor Martin, Captain H. L. Darnall 
 
 G. B. Strickler, Captain James P. Smith, Captain 
 
 Killed and died from sickness 6 
 
 Chaplains 14 
 
 In the ranks 44 
 
 Total 64 
 
 The number of students fell from thirty-nine 
 in 1861 to four in 1862; and these four were young 
 soldiers who had been captured at Rich Mountain, 
 had been released on parole and had not yet been 
 exchanged. So that in the last of the first fifty 
 years of its history the Seminary was just where 
 it was in the first of those fifty years, so far as the 
 attendance w^as concerned. 
 
 During the hundred years of its service the 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 101 
 
 Seminary has educated about fifteen hundred 
 ministers. Only about four hundred of this 
 number belong to the first fifty years, but the 
 Hst of these four hundred includes such names as 
 William S. White, Drury Lacy, Daniel Lindley, 
 Theodorick Pryor, Benjamin M. Smith, John 
 Leyburn, John L. Kirkpatrick, George D. Arm- 
 strong, William Brown, J. M. P. Atkinson, G. W. 
 McPhail, John H. Bocock, Stuart Robinson, 
 Francis S. Sampson, Moses D. Hoge, William T. 
 Richardson, Jacob Henry Smith, Robert L. Dab- 
 ney, Clement R. Vaughan, William Henry Ruffner, 
 William A. Campbell, Alexander Martin, William 
 Walter Pharr, Lindsay H. Blanton, Richard 
 Mcllwaine, John B. Shearer, Thomas L. Preston, 
 E. H. Barnett, A. C. Hopkins, and many others 
 equally deserving of mention. 
 
 Such is the bare outline of the history of the 
 Seminary in its first fifty years, its founding, 
 its growth, its vicissitudes, its succession of hon- 
 ored and useful professors, its varying attendance 
 of students, its excellent output of four hundred 
 well-furnished ministers. I might, of course, fill 
 in this outline with a great multitude of facts 
 concerning the gradual enlargement of its course 
 of study, the accumulation of its library, the in- 
 crease of its outfit and endowment, and its gener- 
 ous benefactors. But I prefer instead to try to 
 give you some idea of the spirit and ideals and 
 services of the institution in those early years by 
 sketching briefly the character and work of some 
 of the men who have put upon it their permanent 
 impress as members of its faculty. For, after all, 
 it is not buildings and books and money that 
 
102 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 make a great seminary, but professors of strong 
 personality and deep consecration and ample 
 learning and ability to teach their subjects in a 
 vital and practical way and to inspire their stu- 
 dents with an intelligent and deathless enthusiasm 
 for the gospel which they are to proclaim. 
 
 Of Dr. Hoge I have already spoken. Of Dr. 
 Rice it is important that I should give you some 
 further account. 
 
JOHN HOLT RICE. 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 103 
 
 fcfjn Jlolt ma 
 
 John Holt Rice was born in Bedford County, 
 Virginia, in 1777. His father was a lawyer and 
 a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church, but 
 though an intelligent and popular man, he was not 
 prosperous, so that the boyhood home of the future 
 theologian was one at first of only moderate com- 
 fort and afterwards of downright poverty. His 
 mother, a cultivated and pious woman, sister of 
 a clergyman of the Church of England, died when 
 he was about twelve years old, and the chief care 
 of the family fell on his elder sister, who had to 
 do all the hard work of the house. John showed 
 what manner of man he was to be by his efforts 
 to lighten her burden, helping her to milk the cows, 
 wash the clothes, and scour and rub the floors. 
 When his father miarried again, the step-mother 
 treated him with great rigor. When he came 
 home from school at night, she would set him to 
 his regular task of picking cotton and then send 
 him to bed without a candle. But the instinct 
 of the scholar was strong within him and, while 
 his step-mother thought he was fast asleep, he 
 would be reading his Horace by the blaze of the 
 light-wood which he had hidden away for this 
 purpose, and when the light-wood gave out, he 
 would go on reading by the fire alone, bending 
 over the book on the hearth till he would almost 
 singe his hair. From his very infancy he had 
 
104 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 manifested that passion for books which distin- 
 guished him throughout his Hfe. 
 
 At fifteen years of age he made pubHc con- 
 fession of faith in Christ. He spent a year and 
 a half in Liberty Hall Academy (now Washington 
 and Lee University), then studied for two years 
 with young George A. Baxter, who was teaching 
 an academy in Bedford and who some forty years 
 later succeeded his former pupil as professor of 
 theology in this seminary. In his eighteenth 
 year, young Rice secured a position as tutor in a 
 family at Malvern Hill below Richmond, and set 
 out for that place, his whole outfit being $L75 
 and a handkerchief full of clothes. A year or 
 two later he traveled on foot a hundred and 
 forty miles to secure the position of tutor in 
 Hampden-Sidney College. There in 1802 he 
 married Anne Morton, daughter of Major James 
 Morton, "Old Solid Column," as he was called, 
 the friend and comrade in arms of General Wash- 
 ington and the Marquis de la Fayette. This 
 accomplished and consecrated woman, his faith- 
 ful helpmeet throughout his life, survived him 
 many years and was still living at Hampden- 
 Sidney when our friend. Dr. James P. Smith, was 
 a student in the Seminary. 
 
 Recognizing his call to the ministry, Mr. Rice 
 was ordained in 1804 and became pastor of Cub 
 Creek Church in Charlotte County, at the same 
 time working a farm and teaching school five 
 days in the week to supplement his meagre 
 salary. For eight years he labored there, minister- 
 ing to both white and black, and proving himself 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 105 
 
 a master workman as a country pastor. Then In 
 1812, just after the burning of the Richmond 
 theatre, in which so many Hves were lost, which 
 represented the genius and wealth and fashion 
 of the capital, and which was followed by a strong 
 reaction against immorality and frivolity, he 
 came to this city, in response to urgent calls, for 
 the purpose of organizing a church and giving a 
 new impulse to vital religion, and here for ten 
 years he showed that he possessed gifts for a city 
 pastorate no less remarkable than those which 
 he had used so effectively in his work in the 
 country, prosecuting a ministry so wise, so strong, 
 so loving, so fruitful, that the church which he 
 organized has ever since been a power for righteous- 
 ness, a fountain of blessing, and a mother of other 
 churches through which the everlasting gospel 
 has been proclaimed at home and abroad. The 
 beginnings of his work here were difficult enough. 
 He preached at first in the Masons' Hall and the 
 Capitol, and, though large crowds came to hear 
 him, the church when organized consisted of only 
 sixty members. The salary promised the minister 
 was small and, T am sorry to say, was not paid with 
 promptness, and the preacher himself was poor, as 
 indeed he continued to be throughout his life on 
 account of giving all his accumulations to whatever 
 religious work he had in hand, and especially later 
 to this Seminary. When he died, a slip of paper 
 was found in his pocket on which were these 
 words, "It is necessary that I die poor." The 
 hardships of his earliest years in Richmond may 
 be inferred from the fact that on one occasion the 
 only food in his house was a bag of black-eyed 
 
106 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 peas. There was not even bacon to give them 
 flavor, and the minister had not a cent of money. 
 Mrs. Rice decided to sell their mahogany dining 
 table to meet the necessity. The husband smiled 
 and said, as he turned towards his study, 'T trust, 
 my dear, the Lord will provide." "Just then a 
 knock was heard and a servant was found standing 
 at the door wath an ample supply of food sent by a 
 friend who lived in the country near Richmond." 
 These hard conditions did not continue long. 
 The church increased in numbers and in 1816 
 entered its own house of worship, which was then 
 far down on Franklin Street and was afterwards 
 replaced by a building on the site of the present 
 City Hall, of which the present First Church is 
 an exact facsimile. 
 
 A man who fearlessly attacked every form of 
 evil was, of course, not popular with bad men 
 and some of them showed their hostilit}^ in a 
 scurrilous way. Dr. William S. White in his 
 biography gives this incident: "On entering his 
 study one morning he handed me a letter filled 
 with vulgar abuse of him, and written by a book- 
 seller of Richmond of no small pretensions. The 
 reading of it filled me with indignation. I won- 
 dered how he could endure it, or what he would 
 say in reply. But when I returned to him the 
 letter, he handed me the reply already written, 
 smiling good-naturedly as he did so. It was 
 couched in the well-known stanza of William 
 Cowper, with only the prefix 'Sir' — 
 
 " 'A pious, learned, or well-bred man 
 Will not insult me, and no other can.' 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 107 
 
 This, with his signature, abruptly appended, was 
 the whole reply. There the matter ended." 
 
 Dr. Rice's services to the cause of religion were 
 not confined to Richmond. In 1819, the year in 
 which he served as Moderator of the General 
 Assembly in Philadelphia, when it was proposed 
 to elect Thomas Cooper an infidel to a professor- 
 ship in the University of Virginia, Rice published 
 an article which so aroused the Christian senti- 
 ment of the State that Mr. Jefferson advised 
 Cooper to decline the appointment, which he did. 
 Other valuable services he rendered to the Church 
 and country at large, as will be shown presently, 
 but valuable as were his services while in Rich- 
 mond, his greatest work still lay before him — 
 namely the development of the struggling Semi- 
 nary which had been started through his agency 
 ten years before, and upon this, the supreme work 
 of his life, he entered as already stated in 1824. 
 The venerable Dr. Robert Burwell, one of the three 
 members of his first class, in a paper which some 
 of us heard at Hampden- Sidney eighteen years 
 ago, told us many interesting things about the 
 great founder's manifold and arduous labors while 
 trying to get the institution on its feet. His 
 lectures were written from day to day and, pressed 
 by innumerable duties of other kinds, he was not 
 always ready when the hour for lecture came. 
 So, says Dr. Burwell, he would tell us to wait and 
 would go on writing and, when he had finished the 
 lecture, would deliver it to the class. Such was 
 the pressure under which he worked. 
 
 There were indeed times at long intervals when 
 he wisely unbent the bow. On the same occasion 
 
108 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 at Hampden-Sidney eighteen years ago, Dr. 
 Moses D. Hoge related an incident not of the grav- 
 est character, which it may not be improper to 
 give here as illustrating Dr. Rice's love of good 
 literature and his method of relieving the dreadful 
 strain of his work and of keeping his mind fresh 
 and flexible. The Waverley Novels were then 
 coming out and were exciting universal interest. 
 One of them, just published, came from Rich- 
 mond to Hampden-Sidney on a Saturday morning. 
 
 "Seizing it with avidity, he commenced its 
 perusal. He became absorbed, fascinated; time 
 flew, the afternoon came and then the night. 
 The doctor read, read, and read on. Presently 
 he heard the clock strike twelve. Saturday night! 
 He suddenly shut the book and laid it down, 
 possibly with some compunction. He had to 
 preach the next day. The next morning he went 
 into the pulpit and preached one of his noblest 
 discourses. When the services ended, an old 
 colored woman came up to him, and grasping his 
 hand, she said, "I knew we were going to have a 
 good sermon to-day, for late last night as I was 
 passing your house I saw the light burning in 
 your study, and I said, there is my pastor hard at 
 work while other people are asleep; there is my 
 dear pastor beating He for the sanctuary." The 
 story was too good even for the oil-beater to keep 
 to himself. We may be sure he did not tell it as 
 an illustration "of the way young men should 
 prepare for the pulpit." 
 
 But these moments of recreation were rare. 
 Generally speaking, he labored incessantly, he 
 took no vacation, he gave himself no rest. Wearied 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 109 
 
 and worn out by his constant struggle with diffi- 
 culties of all sorts, he was not unnaturally at times 
 depressed, and Dr. Burwell says that on one 
 occasion, when the class came to his study un- 
 expectedly, they found him utterly spent, sitting 
 beside his table with his head lying on his arms, 
 saying to himself that his perplexities and diffi- 
 culties would surely kill him. And they did. 
 This Seminary cost the life of Rice. 
 
 Yet this sorely overworked man found time even 
 for authorship. How wide and strong his in- 
 fluence in this way still is on some of the notable 
 young men of our time may be illustrated by the 
 statement of Robert E. Speer made in this chapel 
 a few years ago, that Dr. Rice's Biography of 
 James Brainerd Taylor had been one of the 
 influential books in his life. 
 
 John Holt Rice was a man of large views and 
 bold initiative in many directions, but there are 
 five things of a creative sort that he did which 
 deserve special mention. 
 
 1. In the first place, he organized the Virginia 
 Bible Society, as I am sure our friend, Mr. Porter, 
 well knows. That was in 1813 and antedated the 
 organization of the American Bible Societ}^ It 
 has continued to this day its beneficent work of 
 disseminating the Word of God. 
 
 2. In the second place, he established in 1815 
 the Christian Monitor, and in 1818 the Virginia 
 Evangelical and Literary Magazine, and had al- 
 ready given the impulse which led to the establish- 
 ment of the first weekly religious newspaper in 
 the world, and, as you will doubtless hear from 
 
no APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 Dr. Sweets on Wednesday, he was thus the father 
 of rehglous journahsm, 
 
 3. In the third place, he organized the first 
 Young Men's Missionary Society that ever existed 
 in the whole of that territory extending from 
 New York to New Orleans, It was known as the 
 Young Men's Missionary Society of Richmond. 
 It consisted of about forty members. And it 
 had for its object the securing of men and means 
 for the propagation of the gospel in the destitute 
 portions of our own land. It was thus that he 
 led the way in the matter of definite and dis- 
 tinctive organizations of young men for Home 
 Mission Work. That was in 1819. 
 
 4. In the fourth place, he led the way in the 
 organization of one of the greatest existing agencies 
 for the evangelization of the heathen world, the 
 Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, repre- 
 sented now by the executive agencies of both 
 great branches of the Presbyterian Church in the 
 United States. This he did by an overture to 
 the General Assembly, dictated from his death- 
 bed, in which he requested the Assembly to declare 
 that the Church "is a Missionary Society, the 
 object of which is to aid in the conversion of the 
 world, and that every member of the Church is a 
 member for life of said society, and bound in 
 maintenance of his Christian character, to do all 
 in his power for the accomplishment of this 
 object"; asking also that "it be earnestly recom- 
 mended to all church sessions, in hereafter ad- 
 mitting new members to the churches, distinctly 
 to state to candidates for admission that if they 
 join the church, they join a community, the ob- 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 111 
 
 ject of which is the conversion of the heathen 
 world, and to impress on their minds a deep sense 
 of their obHgation, as redeemed sinners, to co- 
 operate in the accomplishment of the great object 
 of Christ's mission to the world." The overture 
 outlined also the form of the business organization 
 which v;as to have immediate charge of the work, 
 prescribing its duties and officers; and further- 
 more provided for the co-operation of this agency 
 with workers of other denominations in the same 
 line. This overture Dr. Rice forwarded to his 
 friend, Professor Charles Hodge of Princeton, 
 requesting the concurrence and support of the 
 brethren there, and, to make a long story short, 
 the measure which he proposed was eventually 
 adopted (in substance) by the General Assembly. 
 The Board which was thus organized on his initia- 
 tive now expends in the work of foreign missions 
 more than a million dollars a year, and its evan- 
 gelists, churches, schools, colleges, theological 
 seminaries, hospitals and printing presses are 
 making known the unsearchable riches of Jesus 
 Christ in every part of the heathen world. Such 
 are some of the results of the great movement 
 started by Dr. Rice in 1831. You will not wonder 
 then that I spoke of him as a man of creative in- 
 fluence in Christian work. 
 
 5. The fifth great thing that he did, as you 
 might almost infer from the impulse that he thus 
 gave to the work of missions at home and abroad 
 was to establish a theological seminary, which 
 should furnish a regular supply of laborers for 
 the home and foreign fields, and about fifteen 
 hundred of them have gone out from his institu- 
 
112 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 tlon to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ. 
 This Seminary, as that marble tablet on the wall 
 before you states, is his lasting monument. 
 
 I trust that enough has now been said, albeit 
 in a hurried way, to show that John Holt Rice was 
 one of the most widely useful men that God has 
 ever given to the Church in America: a scholar 
 of rich and varied attainments, a prophet of clear 
 and far-reaching vision, a man "that had under- 
 standing of the times to know what Israel ought 
 to do," a leader of extraordinary enterprise and 
 skill in practical affairs, and an epoch-maker in 
 the work of Bible distribution, religious journal- 
 ism, home missions, foreign missions and, minis- 
 terial education. 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 113 
 
 (georse Sbbision paxter 
 
 Dr. Rice was succeeded in 1831 by "Revi' George 
 A. Baxter, D. D., then president of Washington 
 College at Lexington. His students there called 
 him affectionately "Old Rex" and in all the ex- 
 tant references to him we find this tone of affec- 
 tion. One of his students speaks of his ponderous 
 frame, his massive head, his dignity, his rich, tender 
 voice, the majestic march of his pulpit discourse, 
 his' swelling emotions, his unconscious tears — the 
 embodiment of all that was great and good and 
 loving. Dr. Moses Hoge has told us that the 
 portrait of Dr. Baxter in the reading room of our 
 library does not give a correct idea of his face or 
 form, that it fails to represent the real majesty 
 of his presence, and further that the fragments 
 of his writings which have been preserved do not 
 give any adequate idea of his intellectual powder, 
 adding that he has heard many of the most dis- 
 tinguished divines in our own and in foreign lands 
 and has heard few who surpassed Dr. Baxter in 
 argumentative force, in pathos or in pulpit effec- 
 tiveness. Dr. John Leyburn, of Baltimore, also 
 one of his pupils, says his chief delight was in 
 preaching the gospel and that when he began to 
 preach at Hampden-Sidney, the people asked him 
 to give them longer sermons, a rather unusual 
 request in those days or in these and one which 
 speaks well for the intellectual stature of the 
 Hampden-Sidney people, for Dr. Stuart Robin- 
 
114 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 son, another of his pupils, says that as a preacher 
 Dr. Baxter "had too Httle ornament and too 
 much thought to be very attractive to the mass of 
 hearers, if they were strangers. For, though he 
 wielded the club of Hercules, it had not a single 
 wreath to adorn it. It often required a culti- 
 vated as well as an attentive mind to follow 
 the rapid flow of his thoughts; but to such minds 
 his sermons were both an intellectual and spiritual 
 feast." One of his most remarkable sermons, 
 preached in the open air at the foot of the moun- 
 tains near Goshen Pass, in which he referred to 
 the cry of the impenitent at the last day for the 
 mountains and rocks to fall on them, caused his 
 hearers to rise from their seats and turn and see 
 if the mountain was not really about to fall. 
 But, great as he was in the pulpit, his power of 
 lucid reasoning shone resplendent in the class- 
 room. Dr. John Leyburn says that "All the 
 great topics he was called upon to handle had been 
 themes of reflection during almost all his life. 
 They were imbedded, too, in his heart as well 
 as in his understanding. In the discussions of the 
 lecture-room, even when others might have been 
 taken up with the more intellectual aspects of the 
 subject, his tear-filled eyes would give evidence 
 that the truths he was examining had penetrated 
 further than the regions of the understanding. 
 He was sometimes, however, full of humor. This 
 was particularly manifested when he could get 
 a student into a logical dilemma. In order to 
 do this, he would begin with questions remote 
 from his ultimate purpose, and having elicited 
 from the unsuspecting pupil one answer after 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 115 
 
 another, would finally bring him, very much to 
 his surprise, right up into a corner. This feat was 
 always accompanied by our venerable professor's 
 shaking his great sides with good-natured laugh- 
 ter." One of the most talented of his pupils. 
 Dr. John H. Bocock, makes the remarkable state- 
 ment that Baxter's mind was "as mighty a mind 
 as I can well conceive of in the possession of a 
 mere mortal." ,. 
 
116 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 Samuel p. Wiil^on 
 
 Dr. Baxter died in 1841 and was succeeded by 
 Dr. Samuel B. Wilson, whose grandson is the 
 editor of the Presbyterian of the South and whose 
 great-grandchildren are members of the Ginter 
 Park Church. His dignified, courtly, modest de- 
 meanor, his long, silvery hair, his finely chiseled 
 features, ample brow, kindly eyes and cheery 
 smile, as described by one of his former pupils. 
 Rev. J. M. Wharey, D, D., are still well remem- 
 bered by some here present to-day. One who knew 
 him well says that to spiritually minded, intelli- 
 gent, thoughtful Christians, the simplicity of 
 manner and expression, the strong good sense, the 
 practical piety, humble submission to God's au- 
 thority, and fervent love and gratitude to his 
 Lord and Saviour pervading all his sermons, gave 
 great satisfaction and made his preaching emi- 
 nently instructive. Perhaps I can give you the 
 truest impression of this singularly lovely and 
 useful servant of God, who was for twenty-eight 
 years a professor here, by citing two incidents. 
 He was a modest and diffident man and shrank 
 from putting himself forward. He was also 
 scrupulously truthful and shy of making a state- 
 ment that might seem exaggerated. When a 
 young man he was quite strong and used to say 
 that the first time he visited the Natural Bridge 
 he threw a stone from below and struck the arch. 
 Later in life he ceased to relate the incident, and, 
 
* HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 117 
 
 when a friend asked him about it, he said that he 
 had thought he did, but, finding the feat consider- 
 ed so difficult, he had ceased to say so. 
 
 The other incident speaks volumes. A gentle- 
 man applied for admission into the Church who 
 had been previously careless and negligent of his 
 religious duties. When asked what had caused 
 the change in his religious views, he replied, "The 
 life and character of my neighbor, Dr. Wilson." 
 
118 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 jFrancJs; ^. ^ampsion 
 
 It is understood, of course, that up to this point 
 in this discourse concerning the successive pro- 
 fessors in the Seminary, I have confined my re- 
 marks to the four successive occupants of the 
 Chair of Systematic Theology and have said 
 nothing about the professors in the other depart- 
 ments who were associated with them. The time 
 does not permit us to mention all, and I am se- 
 lecting representative men of the several periods. 
 
 The next is Francis S. Sampson, Master of 
 Arts of the University of Virginia, student of 
 Oriental Literature in the Universities of Halle 
 and Berlin, and professor of that department in 
 this Seminary for sixteen years, beginning in 
 1838, a blond, slender, agile man, scrupulously 
 neat, tasteful and simple in dress, solid and 
 symmetrical in mind, methodical and thorough 
 in his habits of study, so much so that the most 
 gifted of his pupils and colleagues has stated that 
 the results of his studies remained more per- 
 manently and fully his own than those of any man 
 he has ever known. He speaks with equal en- 
 thusiasm of Dr. Sampson's fervent piety, holy 
 example, and unrivalled power as a teacher. In 
 the class-room, he was so animated and ardent 
 that the most sluggish student could not resist 
 the impulse. He constructed his own system of 
 Hebrew etymology, but unfortunately it was not 
 published. Nor did he publish any volume during 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 119 
 
 his lifetime, which ended in 1854, when he was 
 only thirty-nine years of age; but there is a well- 
 known and valuable posthumous volume from his 
 pen, "Sampson on Hebrews." Dr. Dabney, his 
 ablest pupil, in the last article that he ever issued, 
 dictated indeed on the very morning of his death, 
 says, "Having sat under the teaching of several of 
 the most learned and able professors who ever 
 appeared on this side of the Atlantic, I am com- 
 pelled by the truth to declare that Dr. Sampson's 
 instructions were more valuable to me than those 
 of any other living man." 
 
120 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 benjamin iW. ^rnitj) 
 
 Of Dr. B. M. Smith who succeeded Dr. Sampson 
 in 1854 and was for thirty-five years an active 
 professor in the Seminary, my own teacher and my 
 venerated predecessor in the Chair of Old Testa- 
 ment Exegesis, time would fail me to speak as 
 my heart would prompt. When I came to the 
 Seminary as his assistant professor in 1883, I 
 boarded for several years at his table, I knew and 
 loved the members of his family, and the memories 
 of that sweet and happy Christian home will 
 abide with me and bless me throughout life. Dr. 
 Smith was a versatile man. Before coming to the 
 Seminary, he had been a student of Semitic lan- 
 guages in Europe, then pastor at Danville, Tinkling 
 Spring, Waynesboro and Staunton, and had been 
 Secretary of the Board of Publication in Phila- 
 delphia. In addition to his work as professor for 
 nearly two score years, he did a great deal of 
 writing, contributing elaborate articles to the 
 reviews, issuing in separate form various addresses 
 and sermons, and publishing several books, such 
 as his prize essay on "Family Religion," his 
 "Introduction to the Poetical Books of the Bible," 
 which was published both in Europe and America, 
 and his Commentary on Proverbs which is still 
 current as a part of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 
 Bible Commentary. One of the most laborious 
 tasks he performed and one of the most useful 
 for the history of our branch of the Church was 
 
BENJAMIN M. SMITH. 
 
<• HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 121 
 
 the compilation of the General Catalogue of the 
 Seminary, published in 1884, and containing brief 
 sketches of all the students who had matriculated 
 in the sixty years since the reorganization of the 
 institution by Dr. Rice. The General Catalogue 
 published in 1907 is based on Dr. Smith's and is 
 more indebted to it perhaps than to all other 
 sources. 
 
 Dr. Dabney, in talking with me once about 
 Dr. Smith, said that the chief characteristic of 
 his mind was its alertness. There may have been 
 more learned men. There may have been more 
 profound men. But there were few quicker men 
 than he in his mental processes. He was probably 
 the most adroit debater ever seen in our church 
 courts. He knew how to think on his feet and was 
 never at a loss for an idea or a word. All his 
 public speaking was marked by a readiness, an 
 ease, and a copious fluency that I have never seen 
 surpassed. He was master of that elaborate 
 extemporaneous style, best known to our genera- 
 tion perhaps from the speeches of Mr. Gladstone, 
 which was so perfect that one who did not know 
 him, listening to the rolling and sonorous periods, 
 inevitably received the impression that every 
 word had been carefully written out beforehand 
 and committed to memory. On fifteen minutes' 
 notice, he could stand up and body forth for an 
 hour, without hitch or hesitation, elevated 
 thoughts on important subjects, in language of 
 the utmost propriety and dignity, in long and 
 complete sentences, with almost innumerable 
 ramifications, each worked out to perfection; and, 
 after holding such a sentence in the suspense 
 
122 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 of construction for, perhaps, five minutes at a 
 time, making matter sufficient to occupy a printed 
 page, would bring the entire compHcated structure 
 to a triumphant finish. An accompHshed Htera- 
 teur of his day said that Dr. Smith's off-hand 
 oratory reminded him of a mighty river, flowing 
 with broad expanse, without chafing or unseemly 
 impetuosity, deliberate, smooth, majestic. His 
 public prayers and his reading of hymns were 
 hardly less notable. When opening the General 
 Assembly as the retiring moderator at New 
 Orleans in 1877, he produced a profound im- 
 pression by his reading with faultless emphasis and 
 deep feeling Newton's hymn, "In evil long I took 
 delight." 
 
 His greatest service to the Seminary was ren- 
 dered just after the war when the institution, 
 paralyzed by that great cataclysm, had for awhile 
 not a cent of income and seemed doomed to ruin. 
 By his personal exertions as Financial Agent, 
 aided by the influence of his great colleagues, 
 Dabney and Peck, he collected for the support of 
 the Seminary about $90,000 in the ten years from 
 1866 to 1876. 
 
ROBERT L. DABNEY. 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 123 
 
 a^obert %. Babnep 
 
 Gigantic intellect, volcanic emotions, vast learn- 
 ing, whole-hearted consecration — Coryphaeus of 
 American theologians, marvelous teacher, most 
 illustrious of all the great men who have served 
 this Seminary — what can one say of him in a 
 paper like this? There are many of us here present 
 this morning who sat at his feet and who remember 
 him vividly. Stalwart and ungainly in person, of 
 dark complexion, with firm face and strong black 
 eyes, of hot, eager, resolute temper, a good hater, 
 an ardent lover, austere in manner but tender of 
 heart, terrible in sarcasm and invective, but 
 loving and sympathetic to all in distress — I once 
 heard him preach at the funeral of a dear young 
 friend with the tears literally streaming down his 
 face. Grim fighter as he was against all false- 
 hood and wickedness, in his social relations he 
 was benignant and genial. In his lectures, his 
 argument moved with the strength of a tornado 
 but with the precision of an engine. Fused with 
 passion the great doctrines of our faith poured 
 from his mind like red hot iron from a furnace. 
 Yet, when he questioned the members of the class 
 never was a man more patient, more gentle, more 
 considerate with a timid or dull student than this 
 intellectual Titan who a moment before perhaps 
 had been laying about him with the hammer of 
 Thor. 
 
 It has been said that a small island can be 
 
124 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 explored in a few hours, but not a wide continent. 
 The one may be characterized in a word, but not 
 the other. So the gifts of some men are insular 
 and may be summed up in a few words, but the 
 gifts of this man were continental. It would 
 be impossible in the time at our command to give 
 any adequate picture of him. And it is the less 
 necessary to attempt it because his portrait has 
 been painted at full length by my colleague. Dr. 
 Johnson, in a biography of characteristic thor- 
 oughness and strength which is accessible to you 
 all and which I would exhort you all to read. It 
 would be a reproach particularly to any student 
 in this Seminary not to be familiar with that ad- 
 mirable book. Not only so, but ignorance of it 
 would involve to you a great loss which no minister 
 in the Presbyterian Church should be willing to 
 suffer. 
 
 "I dwell among mine own people," said the 
 great woman of Shunem to Elisha. How loyal 
 Dr. Dabney was to his own people and to this 
 Seminary, and how little he was moved by con- 
 siderations of ambition or gain is well illustrated 
 in his prompt and positive refusal of the posi- 
 tions offered him and urged upon him in Prince- 
 ton Seminary, at the Fifth Avenue Church, New 
 York, and elsewhere. 
 
 Dr. Dabney was a many-sided man — student, 
 teacher, farmer, mechanic, financier, political 
 economist, patriot, army chaplain, soldier. Chief 
 of Staff to Stonewall Jackson, philosopher, theo- 
 logian, author. Seminary professor pre-eminent, 
 and mighty preacher of the gospel. 
 
THOMAS K. FRCK. 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 125 
 
 In view of the prodigious force and conceded 
 pre-eminence of Dr. Dabney, you may feel that 
 no man can now be mentioned who will not seem 
 dwarfed by comparison with such a colossus. 
 But there remains one man whose connection with 
 the Seminary began in the first fifty years and 
 who though not so versatile or so great in creative 
 force, nevertheless bears well the comparison 
 with him as a teacher. That man was Dr. Thomas 
 E. Peck who in 1860 resigned the pastorate of the 
 Central Church, Baltimore, to become Professor 
 of Church History, and who for more than thirty 
 years continued to teach successive classes with 
 a wealth of learning, a saintliness of influence, 
 and a perspicuity and power of statement which 
 have rarely been equalled. 
 
 One of his outstanding characteristics was 
 poise. "His mind was not so massive as Dr. 
 Dabney's, nor so brilliant as Dr. Thornwell's, 
 but was perhaps in the equilibrium of its faculties 
 superior to either." 
 
 Another notable feature of his teaching was 
 its seminal quality. A seminary is etymologically 
 a seedery, a place where seed is sown. The 
 thoughts that Dr. Peck gave his pupils had this 
 germinant quality. 
 
 He was a master of condensation and concise- 
 ness of statement. His extemporaneous utter- 
 ances on any subject to which he had given con- 
 
126 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 sideratlon could be printed without revision. He 
 was a man of golden thought and crystal word, 
 exact, reliable, absolutely exempt from any dis- 
 position to strain after novelties, solid, straight- 
 forward, candid, convincing. 
 
 As a preacher he was more weighty than popu- 
 lar. He told us once that when he was just enter- 
 ing the ministry he visited a certain church with 
 a view to a call. He did the best he could, but 
 on his return home he received a letter from the 
 session informing him politely but plainly that 
 they had no further use for his services and telling 
 him that the trouble was there -was too much ball 
 for the powder. By the way, he was fond of fun. 
 His ordinary manner in social life was quiet, 
 gentle, even grave, deepening at times almost to 
 melancholy, yet rent and shattered at intervals 
 by veritable earthquakes of laughter. 
 
 With all his ability and all his learning he 
 was a singularly modest man, and possessed that 
 rarest and most distinctive of the Christian 
 graces — genuine humility. The hundreds of young 
 men who sat at his feet felt the power of his child- 
 like faith and his Christ-like character, and were 
 the stronger to proclaim what they learned from 
 his lips because of the influence of that which 
 they had learned from his life. When God called 
 him home it fell to my lot to make the address 
 at his funeral and what I said then I say now, 
 that while his views of God's spotless holiness and 
 of his own deep sinfulness were such that he 
 could only think of himself as the chief of sinners 
 (and he actually called himself that in his last 
 will and testament), yet he came as near to being 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 127 
 
 a holy mail in his character and Hfe as any other 
 man I have ever known. 
 
 Hoge, Rice, Baxter, Wilson, Sampson, Smith, 
 Dabney, Peck — these and others hke these of 
 whom time does not now permit us to speak are 
 the men who under God stamped upon this Semi- 
 nary in its first fifty years the characteristics 
 which have made it such a boundless blessing to 
 the world, its thorough and solid scholarship, its 
 Pauline ideal of ministerial character and attain- 
 ments, its staunch adherence to the great doc- 
 trines of the Reformed Faith, its practical effi- 
 ciency, its high average of pulpit talent and 
 preaching power, its humble dependence upon 
 God, its intelligent and steady zeal for missions — 
 for it must be remembered that its society of mis- 
 sionary inquiry was organized as early as 1818, 
 that this one Seminary has trained a full half 
 of all the ordained missionaries that our branch 
 of the Church has sent to foreign lands, and that in 
 proportion to the number of its students it out- 
 ranks every other seminary in America in the quan- 
 tity of mission work done in its vicinity and in its 
 per capita contributions to missions. 
 
 Surely we may thank God from our hearts 
 to-day for the gift to this institution of the great 
 and good men who in the first half centur}^ of its 
 existence wrought into its very fibre the principles 
 and ideals which have given it its distinguished 
 place and its large efficiency among the Christian 
 forces of the world. 
 
 They began in a small way. Jacob said to God 
 at Peniel: "With my staff I passed over this 
 Jordan; and now I am become two bands." 
 
128 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 Moses Hoge started with two or three students. 
 To-day the enrollment is one hundred and seven. 
 But this could not have been without the labors 
 of the fathers from Hoge and Rice to Dabney 
 and Peck. Let us then thank God for these master 
 builders and let us remember that our heritage 
 "is a summons as well as a legacy," and that we 
 can best honor their memory by emulating their 
 virtues — and so may God continue to make the 
 institution to which they gave their toils and 
 tears and prayers a fountain of blessing to the 
 Church and the world. 
 
 Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and 
 to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is 
 now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 129 
 
 ®f)e peginninssi anb ©ebelopmcnt of tfje 
 
 ^resbpterian Ci)mcfj in i9ortt) 
 
 Carolina 
 
 Address at the Centennial Celebration of the Synod 
 of North Carolina, in Alania?ice Church, October 
 17, 1913. 
 
 PONS ET ORIGO. 
 
 The Presbyterian Church in North Carolina is 
 mainly the result of two streams of immigration 
 from Northwestern Europe — one from the North 
 of Scotland and the other from the North of Ire- 
 land. Both streams were set in motion by the 
 oppressions of the British government. Both the 
 Scotch and the Scotch-Irish came to the New 
 World seeking the civil and religious liberty which 
 was denied them in the Old. The Scotch entered 
 by the port of Wilmington and occupied the Cape 
 Fear country in and around what is now Cumber- 
 land county, and the Scotch-Irish entered mainly 
 by the ports of Philadelphia and Charleston and 
 occupied chiefly the Piedmont region farther west. 
 
 EARLIEST PRESBYTERIAN SETTLEMENTS. 
 
 To this day these two parts of the State are the 
 chief centers of our Presbyterian strength. Yet 
 it is an interesting fact that the earliest of the 
 Scotch-Irish settlements was not on the Yadkin 
 or the Catawba, but in Duplin county, where a 
 
130 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 colony of Presbyterians from Ulster settled about 
 1736. Their principal place of worship was called 
 Goshen Grove, and was about three miles from 
 what is now Kenansville, and to this venerable 
 congregation the present Grove church at Kenans- 
 ville traces its origin. Farther down towards Wil- 
 mington, in what was called The Welsh Tract, in 
 New Hanover county, was another early settle- 
 ment, at first composed of Welsh emigrants, but 
 shortly afterwards reinforced by other families. 
 In the northern part of the State also (known 
 later as Granville, Orange and Caswell counties) 
 Scotch-Irish settlements began about 1738. 
 
 THE FIRST MISSIONARY, WILLIAM ROBINSON. 
 1742-1743. 
 
 The religious needs of all these scattered Pres- 
 byterian settlements in North Carolina were met 
 in a measure for a number of years by missionaries 
 sent from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where 
 there was already a large and rapidly growing 
 Scotch-Irish population. The first of these mis- 
 sionaries, and the first Presbyterian minister that 
 ever preached in North Carolina, seems to have 
 been William Robinson, who spent a part of the 
 winter of 1742 and 1743 among Presbyterians set- 
 tlements in this colony. His work as a missionary 
 in Virginia had been remarkably successful, but 
 the results of his labor in Carolina were very small. 
 We do not even know what the places were that 
 he visited in his tour, but as the Presbyterian set- 
 tlements in Duplin and New Hanover were the 
 oldest in the State, it is probable that these were 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 131 
 
 among the places that he visited, as well as the 
 settlements in Orange and Granville. 
 
 HUGH M'ADEN'S MISSIONARY JOURNEY. 
 1755-1756. 
 
 No such uncertainty attaches to the movements 
 of the next missionary who is known to have 
 preached in these parts, Hugh McAden, for in a 
 full and interesting journal — which has happily 
 been preserved almost entire, and which is the 
 most valuable document that has come down to us 
 from those early days — he describes in detail the 
 extended missionary journey through Virginia and 
 the Carolinas on which he was sent as a young 
 licentiate by Newcastle Presbytery in 1755 and 
 1756, a journey which occupied a whole year. 
 Traveling horseback and preaching as he went, he 
 passed through the Valley of Virginia from the 
 Potomac almost to the Peaks of Otter, hearing as 
 he came with sorrow and dismay the news of Brad- 
 dock's defeat, crossed the Blue Ridge, then the 
 Dan River, and entered North Carolina July 29, 
 1755. Without undertaking to enumerate all the 
 places at which he preached in homes or meeting 
 houses after entering the State, let us mention a 
 few in order to get a general idea of his route: 
 Hico, Eno, Grassy Creek, Fishing Creek, Haw- 
 fields, Buffalo, Yadkin Ford, Rocky River, Sugar 
 Creek (October 19th), the Broad River country 
 in upper South Carolina, the Waxhaws; then back 
 into North Carolina, revisiting some of the places 
 touched on his southward journey and including 
 Coddle Creek Thyatira and Second Creek; then 
 east to the Highlanders on the Cape Fear, preach- 
 
132 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 ing at Hector McNeill's (The Bluff), Alexander 
 McKay's (where Longstreet church now stands), 
 Bladen Courthouse, and other points; then to 
 Wilmington, where on February 15, 1756, he 
 preached in the morning "to a large and splendid 
 audience," but in the afternoon to only "about a 
 dozen," a slump which greatly surprised and de- 
 pressed him. The next two Sundays he preached 
 at Mr. Evans's, in The Welsh Tract, and the peo- 
 ple there took some steps towards raising a salary 
 and calling him as pastor. In March we find him 
 at the house of Mr. Dickson, the clerk of Duplin 
 county, where he preached to a considerable con- 
 gregation, most of whom were "Irish," as he calls 
 them, meaning, of course, "Scotch-Irish." It must 
 always be remembered that by this name is meant 
 not a mixture of Scotch and Irish, but Scotch peo- 
 ple of pure strain who had lived for a few genera- 
 tions in the North of Ireland. McAden pursued 
 his journey northward as far as Edgecombe; then 
 westward, coming again in April to the Granville 
 county region, which he had traversed the preced- 
 ing summer; and passed out of the State on his 
 homeward journey on May 6, 1756. On his re- 
 turn to Pennsylvania he seems to have visited 
 James Campbell, a Scotch minister who was then 
 preaching in Lancaster county, in that State, and 
 turned his attention to the condition of his coun- 
 trymen on the Cape Fear, with the result that in 
 the following year (1757) Mr. Campbell moved 
 thither and became their minister. 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 133 
 
 FROM CULLODEN TO THE CAPE FEAR. 
 
 The Scotch settlements on the Upper Cape 
 Fear antedated those of the Scotch-Irish on the 
 Yadkin and the Catawba. Some Scotch famihes 
 are known, to have been there as far back as 1729, 
 when the province was divided into North and 
 South CaroHna; and when Alexander Clark ar- 
 rived with his shipload of emigrants in 1736 he 
 found "a good many" Scotch already settled in 
 Cumberland. But the great influx of the High- 
 landers began ten years later, after the disastrous 
 Battle of Culloden, where their unworthy and ill- 
 starred leader, Charles Edward, the Young Pre- 
 tender, was utterly routed, and after five months 
 of wanderings and hardships, aided by the heroic 
 Flora McDonald and others, escaped to France. 
 His misguided but devoted followers were hunted 
 down and slain in large numbers, their houses 
 burned, their cattle carried away, their property 
 destroyed, and their country ravaged with a ruth- 
 less hand. Many were carried captive to England 
 and scores of them publicly executed there as 
 rebels. Finally, however, George H, with tardy 
 clemency, pardoned a great number of them on 
 condition of their taking the oath of allegiance. 
 But even then they were subjected to much petty 
 oppression and many indignities, being forbidden 
 to own any weapons or to wear their ancient na- 
 tional dress, and being surrounded by armed men 
 and spies of the government. These were the 
 conditions that gave rise to the large settlements 
 of the Scotch on the Cape Fear. Hundreds of the 
 Highlanders sailed for the New World. In 1749, 
 a company of about three hundred, under the 
 
134 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 leadership of Neill McNeill, landed at Wilmington 
 and settled in the region of which the community 
 then known as Crosscreek, afterwards as Campbel- 
 ton, and now as Fayetteville, was the center. 
 These were followed by other large companies of 
 their countrymen who wished to escape persecu- 
 tion and improve their general condition, and so 
 in time they spread through all the territory now 
 comprised in the counties of Cumberland, Bladen, 
 Sampson, Moore, Harnett, Montgomery, Robeson, 
 Hoke, Scotland, Richmond and Anson. 
 
 THE FIRST SETTLED PASTOR, JAMES CAMPBELL. 
 
 1757-1780. 
 
 These immigrants of 1749 brought no minister 
 with them, and, as there was here no established 
 Presbyterian Church, dividing the country into 
 parishes by civil authority, and no collection of 
 ministers' salaries by law, as in the old country, 
 and as the immigrants could not immediately in- 
 vent and introduce a new method, they seem to 
 have had no regular public services till the arrival 
 of James Campbell in 1757, after his interview 
 with McAden. We have already seen that, in the 
 preceding year (1756), McAden had visited these 
 settlements and preached at various places to the 
 Highlanders, some of whom — knowing only 
 Gaelic — understood but little of what he said, and 
 that it was mainly McAden's reports of their 
 spiritual destitution that influenced Campbell to 
 come. He settled on the Cape Fear, a few miles 
 above Fayetteville, and began to preach princi- 
 pally at three points. In 1758 he was given a 
 formal call signed by twelve representative men 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 135 
 
 in the community, in which it was stipulated that 
 he should receive a salary of one hundred pounds 
 per annum. In a short time three churches were 
 organized, since known as Bluff, Barbecue and 
 Longstreet. 
 
 It was Mr. Campbell's custom to preach two 
 sermons each Sabbath, one in Gaelic for the bene- 
 fit of the Highlanders and the other in English 
 for the benefit of the less numerous families of 
 Lowland Scotch, Scotch- Irish and Dutch, who 
 were mingled with them. In a few congregations 
 of Fayetteville Presbytery this custom of bi-lingual 
 preaching was kept up for about a hundred years. 
 That Mr. Campbell's people were well trained by 
 his "exegetical and practical" preaching in the two 
 languages and by his thorough catechetical meth- 
 ods; that they had the Scotch genius for theologi- 
 cal discussion and were formidable "sermon- 
 tasters," is clearly shown by a remark of Rev. 
 John McLeod, who was for a few years Mr. Camp- 
 bell's assistant. He said "he would rather preach 
 to the most polished and fashionable congregation 
 in Edinburgh than to the little critical carls of 
 Barbecue." This church was Flora McDonald's 
 place of worship while she lived at Cameron's 
 Hill. For nineteen years Mr. Campbell prose- 
 cuted a laborious and fruitful ministry. For more 
 than a year of this period he also served the people 
 of Purity church, South Carolina, making the 
 long journey across the country at regular times for 
 that purpose. He was thus the first minister of 
 what is now the flourishing church at Chester. 
 When the Revolutionary War broke out his mettle 
 was still further tested, for in spite of the fact 
 
136 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 that most of his parishioners, mindful of their 
 former sufferings and their special oath of alle- 
 giance, supported the Crown, he, like all other 
 Presbyterian ministers through the land, promptly 
 espoused the cause of the Colonies. This led to 
 his withdrawal from his charge for four years, 
 during which he preached in the upper part of the 
 State, but in the last year of his life he returned 
 to his home, and there in 1780 he died. To James 
 Campbell, then, belongs the distinction of being 
 the first ordained minister to take up his abode 
 among the Presbyterian settlements of North 
 Carolina. 
 
 And yet the honor may well be shared by two 
 of his contemporaries — one in the west and the 
 other in the east, for in 1758, the same year in 
 which Campbell received his formal call to the 
 Cape Fear congregation, Alexander Craighead was 
 installed pastor of Rocky River church, not far 
 from the present town of Concord; and in the fol- 
 lowing year, 1759, Hugh McAden was installed as 
 pastor in Duplin and New Hanover.* Campbell, 
 Craighead and McAden — this is our triumvirate 
 of pioneer pastors. These three we honor as the 
 fathers of our Synod. 
 
 M'ADEN AND OTHERS IN DUPLIN AND NEW HANOVER. 
 
 McAden labored for about nine years in Duplin 
 and New Hanover; and then for reasons of health, 
 moved to Caswell in the Dan River valley, where 
 he spent the rest of his life, thirteen years, preach- 
 ing to the people of that county and the neighbor- 
 
 *It is thought by some good authorities that Mcx\den's settlement 
 preceded that of Campbell. I follow the dates given in Foote's Sketches. 
 
, HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 137 
 
 ing county of Pittsylvania in Virginia. He died 
 in 1781 at his home near Red House church. 
 
 The work in Duphn and New Hanover lan- 
 guished after McAden's departure, but some other 
 beginnings were made in that region which it 
 behooves us to notice briefly before turning our 
 attention to the planting of Presbyterianism in 
 the upper parts of the State. While "Wilmington 
 had no organized church till long after the Revo- 
 lution," the people there enjoyed the occasional 
 services of certain scholarly men who acted in 
 the double capacity of school teachers and minis- 
 ters. The first of these was Rev. James Tate, 
 who came from Ireland to Wilmington about 1760 
 and "for his support opened a classical school, 
 the first ever taught in the place. He educated 
 many of the young men of New Hanover who took 
 an active part in the Revolution." He was a 
 staunch patriot, and for a while during the war 
 for freedom he had to withdraw from Wilmington, 
 making his home at Hawfields. Though declining 
 all offers to become a settled pastor, he made 
 frequent journeys through New Hanover and the 
 adjoining counties, particularly up the Black and 
 South rivers, preaching to the people and bap- 
 tizing their children. "He received a small fee 
 for each baptism, either in money or cotton yarn; 
 and this appears to have been all his salary and 
 all the remuneration for his journeyings and ser- 
 vices." 
 
 About the year 1785 Rev. William Bingham, 
 also from Ireland, began to preach in Wilming- 
 ton and the surrounding country, and he, too, 
 supported himself by teaching a classical school. 
 
138 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 His success as a teacher was extraordinary, not 
 only in Wilmington but also in Chatham and 
 Orange counties, whither he moved later. He 
 was the progenitor of a famous line of head- 
 masters to whom Church and State are alike 
 deeply indebted. 
 
 The first church building on Black River was 
 erected about 1770. Rockfish, Keith and Hope- 
 well were organized under the ministry of Rev. 
 Robert Tate, who came to New Hanover in 1799. 
 
 ALEXANDER CRAIGHEAD AND THE SEVEN CHURCHES 
 OF MECKLENBURG. 
 
 So much for Presbyterianism in the East 
 down to 1800. Now we turn to the beginnings 
 of our Church in the West, the Piedmont re- 
 gion, stretching from the Dan to the Catawba. 
 The first minister to settle in this part of the 
 State, as already noted, was Alexander Craig- 
 head, a man of ardent temperament and strong 
 convictions, a warm admirer of the spirit and 
 methods of Whitfield in religious work, a fear- 
 less champion of civil and religious liberty, and 
 a progressive from spur to plume. Himself a 
 native of Ireland, he was well acquainted with 
 the oppressions to which his people had been 
 subjected by the bigots who ruled England; 
 and, when he came to America, about 1736, 
 he came burning with indignation and panting 
 to oppose any similar tyranny here. He was 
 far in advance even of his Scotch- Irish breth- 
 ren in his views on this subject. A pamphlet 
 which he published gave great offense to the 
 Governor of Pennsylvania. The Governor laid 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 139 
 
 it before the Synod of Philadelphia, of which 
 Craighead was a member, and the Synod ex- 
 pressed its disapproval of Craighead's views. 
 Other differences arose between him and his 
 more conservative brethren, and in 1749 he 
 moved to Augusta county, Va., and made his 
 home for six years in the bounds of the present 
 Windy Cove congregation. Braddock's defeat 
 in 1755 left the people of Craighead's charge 
 exposed to the murderous incursions of the In- 
 dians. Many of them, therefore, left their 
 homes, crossed the Blue Ridge, turned south- 
 ward, and settled permanently in the beautiful 
 country between the Yadkin and the Catawba, 
 niuch of which was then covered with tall 
 grass, open prairies alternating with heavy 
 cane-brakes and forests. Craighead came with 
 his people; and thus it was that North Caro- 
 lina secured her great apostle of independence. 
 Already other settlers of the same sturdy stock 
 were established there, and there McAden had 
 found them in 1755. In 1758, Craighead was 
 installed pastor at Rocky River, which then 
 included Sugar Creek, the first Presbyterian 
 minister to settle in the western part of the 
 State, and here for the remaining eight years 
 of his life, among a homogeneous and highly 
 intelligent people, thoroughly agreed in their 
 general principles of religion and church gov- 
 ernment, far removed from the seat of civil au- 
 thority, he preached the pure gospel and poured 
 forth his principles of civil and religious liberty. 
 The seed he sowed in this congenial soil yielded 
 a mighty harvest, for though he died in 1766, yet 
 
140 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 it was his voice that spoke in the ringing resolu- 
 tions of the men of Mecklenburg in May, 1775. 
 
 For eight years Craighead was the lone star 
 in this region, "the solitary minister between 
 the Yadkin and the Catawba," the one settled 
 pastor in "the beautiful Mesopotamia of Caro- 
 lina," the chief teacher of the people in religion, 
 the chief molder of public opinion on questions 
 both of Church and State. But other congrega- 
 tions were now growing up around the mother 
 Church, and in 1764 the Rev. Messrs. Elihu 
 Spencer and Alexander McWhorter were sent to 
 North Carolina by the Synod of New York and 
 Philadelphia to aid these congregations in ad- 
 justing their bounds and in effecting a more perfect 
 organization. In 1765 they reported to the Synod 
 that they had performed this mission. Among 
 the churches thus organized were Steel Creek, 
 Providence, Hopewell, Center and Poplar Tent; 
 and these, with Rocky River and Sugar Creek, 
 constituted the historic group of seven congre- 
 gations from which all the delegates came who 
 ten years later at Charlotte declared their inde- 
 pendence of the British Government. 
 
 JAMES HALL AND FOURTH GREEK. 
 
 In the same year (1764-'5), and on the same 
 tour, Messrs. Spencer and McWhorter organ- 
 ized the two oldest congregations in Rowan 
 and Iredell — namely, Thyatira and Fourth Creek, 
 the latter now represented by Statesville, Bethany, 
 Tabor and Concord in Iredell. These Fourth 
 Creek settlements and that at Cathey's (now 
 Thyatira) had begun some years before, perhaps 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 141 
 
 not far from 1750, and had been supplied with 
 occasional preaching by missionaries from the 
 Synod of Philadelphia and New York, as we know 
 from synodical records dating back to 1753. In 
 1765 these two congregations called Rev. Elihu 
 Spencer, but failed to secure him, and neither of 
 them seems to have had a settled minister till 
 about twelve years later, shortly after the be- 
 ginning of the Revolutionary War. 
 
 The first regular pastor of Fourth Creek was 
 James Hall, who had grown up among the people 
 of this congregation, and who became their pastor 
 in 1778. Graduating at Nassau Hall, Princeton, 
 with the degree of A. B. in his thirty-first year 
 (1774), he studied theology under the celebrated 
 John Witherspoon, president of that institution, 
 from whom also he imbibed his well-known 
 political views, and declining the position of teacher 
 of mathematics in the college, he returned to North 
 Carolina and began among his own people a 
 beneficent and arduous career as pastor, mis- 
 sionary, patriot, soldier and educator. He fired 
 the hearts of his countrymen to resist British 
 tyranny. He called his people to arms in de- 
 fence of their liberties. He served in the field 
 in the twofold capacity of cavalry commander 
 and chaplain of the regiment. Tall, sinewy, 
 courageous, cool, exact, resourceful and decided, 
 of fine voice and commanding presence, he was 
 every inch a soldier, and it is no wonder General 
 Greene offered him a commission as brigadier 
 general. But he was even more a soldier of the 
 cross than of his country, and while ever ready to 
 serve in an emergency, with tongue or sword, to 
 
142 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 rouse his countrymen from their lethargy or lead 
 them against the foe, he never lost sight of the fact 
 that his supreme work was to preach the gospel, 
 and, believing that others without his responsibili- 
 ties and opportunities as a minister could ren- 
 der the military service needed better than he 
 could, he declined the proffered honor in order 
 to devote himself more fully to his proper work. 
 He made many missionary journeys and was the 
 pioneer Protestant missionary to the lower valley 
 of the Mississippi. He attended the General 
 Assembly in Philadelphia sixteen times, riding 
 the whole way on horseback or in a sulky, and 
 was once moderator. 
 
 Besides his contribution to the intellectual 
 life of his people by his preaching, he founded 
 a circulating library, organized debating so- 
 cieties, formed classes in grammar for which 
 he wrote his own text-book, afterwards pub- 
 lished, and established a school of classical, 
 scientific and theological study, where many 
 of the leading men of the time in all walks of 
 life were educated, including at least twenty 
 prominent ministers, whose names we know 
 and whose labors extended and perpetuated 
 Dr. Hall's influence throughout the Carolinas, 
 Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky. He was 
 present at the formation of the American Bible 
 Society and was the first president of the North 
 Carolina State Bible Society. 
 
 An incendiary commander, who ravaged a 
 fair land during our Civil War, burning the 
 houses of the people and turning women and 
 children and invalids into the wintry weather 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 143 
 
 without shelter, said with full knowledge, "War 
 is hell." He was referring to physical conditions, 
 but it is largely true in the moral sense also. 
 The demoralization which always accompanies 
 war manifested itself at the close of our Revolu- 
 tionary struggle in an appalling increase of vice — 
 profanity, drunkenness and gambling. Dr. Hall's 
 spirit was stirred within him when he saw the 
 country so given to sin, and he prayed and 
 preached more earnestly than ever. God gracious- 
 ly blessed his efforts and granted to his charge the 
 first revival of religion in Concord Presbytery 
 after the Revolution. At one communion about 
 eighty members were received on profession of 
 faith and at another about sixty. 
 
 Such were the strenuous and varied activi- 
 ties of the father of Presbyterianism in Iredell. 
 
 OTHER REVOLUTIONARY WORTHIES WEST OF THE 
 YADKIN. 
 
 Craighead and Hall have been somewhat 
 fully sketched as representing the pre-Revo- 
 lutionary and Revolutionary periods of our 
 Church's history in the region between the 
 Yadkin and the Catawba. The limits of this 
 paper forbid our speaking with equal fullness 
 of Hall's contemporaries and successors in the 
 territory now comprised in Iredell, Rowan, Ca- 
 barrus and Mecklenburg, and in parts of Lin- 
 coln and Gaston — of Samuel E. McCorkle, the 
 first pastor of Thyatira (1777), who married the 
 daughter of Mrs. Steele, of Salisbury, the pa- 
 triotic friend of General Greene; who founded 
 the classical school in Rowan from which six 
 
144 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 of the seven members of the first class at the 
 University of North CaroHna came; who trained 
 forty-five bo^'s who afterwards entered the min- 
 i str}^ besides many others who served their country 
 at the bar, on the bench and in the chair of state; 
 who was himself elected the first professor in the 
 University at Chapel Hill, a position which he de- 
 clined; who devised and operated in his congrega- 
 tion with the aid of his elders a method of syste- 
 matic and comprehensive Bible study, which prob- 
 ably secured as good results in the way of scriptural 
 knowledge as any of the advanced methods of this 
 present time; — of Hezekiah James Balch, pas- 
 tor of Rocky River and Poplar Tent, the only 
 minister who sat in the Mecklenburg Conven- 
 tion of 1775; — of Ephraim Brevard, the Chris- 
 tian physician and statesman, who framed the 
 resolutions adopted by that convention; — of 
 Thomas H. McCaule, the patriotic pastor of 
 Center, who accompanied his people to the 
 camp and was by the side of General William 
 Davidson when that brilliant young officer was 
 killed at Cowan's Ford, leaving behind him an 
 illustrious name which will live forever in con- 
 nection with our great college for young men; 
 — of Humphrey Hunter, w^ho, when Liberty 
 Hall Academy at Charlotte was broken up by 
 the invasion of Cornwallis, joined the army 
 along with other students, was captured in the 
 defeat of Gates at Camden, fought and van- 
 quished with pine knots a British cavalryman 
 fully armed with sword and pistols, and short- 
 ly afterwards, with a few fellow-prisoners, seized 
 and disarmed the guard and escaped, was wounded 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 145 
 
 at Eutaw Springs, studied theology after the war, 
 and became pastor of Unity in Lincoln and of 
 Goshen in Gaston (where my own forebears 
 worshipped and are buried), and later of Steel 
 Creek in Mecklenburg, where he spent the last 
 twenty-two years of his life, acting also as free 
 physician to his people, as well as their pastor, 
 because of the scarcity of regular doctors at that 
 period — a good type of the intrepid, active, versa- 
 tile and devoted patriots and preachers who won 
 the liberties of this land and laid the foundations 
 of our society in the fear of God; — of the Alex- 
 anders, Grahams, Johnsons, McDowells, Osbornes, 
 Morrisons, Ramseys, Wilsons, Caldwells, Harrises, 
 Robinsons, Irwins, Phifers, Averys, Polks, Pharrs, 
 Griers and many others, the rank and file, the 
 bone and sinew of the staunch population which 
 dwelt between the Yadkin and the Catawba in 
 that formative period and whose faith and force 
 of character gave to the Presbyterian element the 
 pre-eminence in all that region which it maintains 
 to this day; — of all these nothing can be said in 
 this paper beyond this bare allusion. 
 
 THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH IN GRANVILLE, CASWELL, 
 ORANGE AND GUILFORD. 
 
 Besides Duplin and Cumberland in the east and 
 the Yadkin-Catawba country in the west, there 
 was a third portion of the State in which im- 
 portant foundation work was done in the pre- 
 Revolutionary period, the northern portion, the 
 region extending eastward and northward from the 
 place where we now stand to the Virginia line. Dr. 
 D. I. Craig has pointed out that if the graves of 
 
146 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 the three patriarchs of Presbyterlanism in North 
 CaroHna — Campbell, Craighead and McAden — 
 near Fayetteville, Charlotte and Milton, respec- 
 tively, be taken as starting points and lines be 
 drawn from one to another, those lines will form 
 an almost perfect triangle, including the central 
 portion of the State, the core of the Common- 
 wealth, and will touch most of the territory in 
 which the earlier Presbyterian settlements were 
 made, w^ith the greater part of our strength clus- 
 tering around the three angles. Two of these 
 angles, those near Fayetteville and Charlotte, we 
 have considered, and now turn to the third, the 
 one projecting into the northern tier of counties, 
 Granville, Caswell, Orange and Guilford (which 
 then extended to the Virginia line). Scotch- 
 Irish Presbyterians began to settle along the Eno 
 and Haw rivers about 1738, and were visited at 
 intervals by missionaries sent out by the synods 
 of New York and Philadelphia. We have already 
 noted the fact that McAden visited them in 1755, 
 and that about 1768, after his nine years' ministry 
 in Duplin, he became resident pastor in Caswell, 
 preaching at Dan River, Red House and North 
 Hico (Grier's). Three years before McAden's 
 settlement there — that is, in 1765 — the Presby- 
 tery of Hanover convened at Lower Hico church 
 (afterwards called Barnett's) in what is now Per- 
 son county (the first meeting of a Presbytery ever 
 held in the State), and had ordained Rev. James 
 Creswell pastor of Lower Hico and of Grassy 
 Creek and Nutbush churches in Granville county, 
 where Presbyterian immigrants from the neigh- 
 borhood of Richmond, Va., had settled some years 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 147 
 
 before. Grassy Creek is said to have been organ- 
 ized in 1753 and Nutbush in 1757. 
 
 HENRY PATILLO. 
 
 At the same meeting of Hanover Presbytery at 
 Lower Hico (1765), Rev. Henry Patillo was called 
 to Hawfields, Eno and Little River churches, 
 which he served for nine years. In 1780 he suc- 
 ceeded Creswell as pastor of Grassy Creek and 
 Nutbush. Patillo, a native of Scotland, had been 
 trained in theology by the celebrated Samuel 
 Davies, then living near Richmond, Va., and had 
 preached for six years in that State. His minis- 
 try in Orange and Granville continued for thirty- 
 five years. 
 
 Although he made an imprudently early mar- 
 riage in 1755 and lived in a "house sixteen by 
 twelve and an outside chimney, with an eight-foot 
 shed — a little chimney to it," as he tells us in his 
 journal, a house in which there were eleven people, 
 six of whom were his scholars, on the day that his 
 little chimney was shattered by lightning; and al- 
 though he was not college bred, he made himself 
 one of the best educated men of his time. This is 
 attested by the fact that in 1788, thirty-two years 
 after his marriage and twenty-nine years after his 
 ordination, he received the honorary degree of 
 Master of Arts from Hampden-Sidney College. 
 In the same year he issued from the press at Wil- 
 mington a volume of sermons. He seems to have 
 used his pen freely, and a number of manuscripts 
 on various religious subjects have been preserved, 
 but the most interesting of all his writings is his 
 Geographical Catechism, printed in Halifax in 
 
148 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 1796, "the first text-book written in North Caro- 
 Hna." The original manuscript of this work is 
 now in the Hbrary of Union Theological Seminary 
 at Richmond. A reprint of it was published by 
 the University of North Carolina in 1909. Into 
 sixty-two pages he has packed an astonishing 
 amount of information about astronomy, the air, 
 and the different countries of the world, all writ- 
 ten with admirable vivacity and all perv^aded by a 
 profound religious spirit, his chief purpose being 
 to give his readers more just conceptions of the 
 wonderful w^orks of God, as he states in the preface. 
 
 During virtually the whole of his adult life he 
 was a teacher. At Hawfields, Williamsboro and 
 Granville Hall he conducted schools which were 
 nurseries not only of learning, but of piety and 
 patriotism as well. 
 
 Like Craighead who laid the egg of independ- 
 ence; like Balch who helped to hatch it in the 
 Mecklenburg convention; like Hall and Hunter 
 who bore arms in the field; like McCaule, pastor 
 of Center, who once ran for Governor and fell but 
 little short of election; and, indeed, like all the 
 Presbyterian ministers of those stirring times, Pa- 
 tillo took an active interest in public affairs. He 
 was one of the prominent men chosen by Governor 
 Tryon to pacify the Regulators. He was sent as 
 a delegate to the first Provincial Congress of 
 North Carolina at Hillsboro in 1775; was chosen 
 as one of the chaplains of that bod^', and was 
 called to preside in the Committee of the Whole. 
 He was also a member of the Committee of Safety 
 for the Halifax district. 
 
 Not the least of Patillo's claims to honorable 
 
^' . HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 149 
 
 mention on the present occasion particularh' is the 
 fact that he organized Alamance church. That 
 was in the year 1762, one hundred and fifty-one 
 years ago. 
 
 DAVID CALDWTLL. 
 
 In the year 1764 Rev. David Caldwell, a ^oung 
 licentiate of New Brunswick Presbytery, was sent 
 to North Carolina as a missionar^^ and visited 
 Alamance church and also the sister church, Buf- 
 falo, which had been organized in 1756. He did 
 not come as a stranger. Many of these people had 
 known him in Pennsylvania before their emigra- 
 tion to North Carolina while he was preparing for 
 college, and when they left Pennsylvania they had 
 themselves suggested that when he was licensed 
 he should come to Carolina and be their minister. 
 And so it came about, though it was not till 1768 
 that he was formally installed as pastor. Rev. Hugh 
 jMcAden conducting the installation service. His 
 biographer. Rev. Eli W. Caruthers, who was also 
 his successor as pastor of this charge, says he 
 exerted a more extensive and lasting influence 
 than any other man belonging to that eventful 
 period, and that ''his history is more identified 
 with that of the country — at least so far as litera- 
 ture and enlightened piet}' and good morals are 
 concerned — than the history of an^' one man who 
 has lived in it." For that reason, as well as for 
 the reason that he was for sixty years the minister 
 of this church and was pastor of it when the Synod 
 of North Carolina was organized in 1813, it be- 
 hooves us to include in this paper at least a brief 
 sketch of his life and work. 
 
150 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 He was born in Lancaster county, Pa., in 
 1725, the son of a farmer in good circumstances. 
 He was reared in a Christian home and received 
 the rudiments of an EngHsh education. He then 
 served as an apprentice to a house carpenter till 
 he was twenty-one years of age; after which he 
 worked at his trade for four years on his own 
 account. He was twenty-five years old before he 
 ever saw a Latin grammar, but his heart was set 
 on the ministry, and he labored with unwearied 
 perseverance for an education. Let the young men 
 of this hurried age note the fact that he was 
 thirty-six years old when he received his degree 
 of Bachelor of Arts at Princeton College. After 
 teaching school for a year he returned to Prince- 
 ton and served as tutor in the college, pursuing 
 at the same time his studies in theology. 
 
 The salary promised him in North Carolina was 
 only two hundred dollars a year, but by the culti- 
 vation of a small farm and by the teaching of a 
 school he managed to provide comfortably for his 
 family. As there was no physician in the neigh- 
 borhood, he procured the necessary books, and by 
 diligent study fitted himself for the practice of 
 medicine, which he pursued with such success that 
 he became scarcely less celebrated as a doctor than 
 as a minister and teacher. Blessed with a power- 
 ful constitution and leading a temperate life, re- 
 tiring at ten and rising at four, studying diligently 
 in the early hours of the day, getting sufficient 
 physical exercise by labor on his farm and by pas- 
 toral visitation, systematizing the work of his large 
 school and his two large congregations, he per- 
 formed his multifarious duties as preacher, pastor, 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 151 
 
 physician and teacher in a manner which entitles 
 him to a unique position among the makers of our 
 Commonwealth. 
 
 The gracious wisdom and tact which he showed 
 as a very young man in composing the differences 
 between the Old Side and New Side parties in his 
 two congregations were but an earnest of his in- 
 valuable services throughout his long life as an 
 adviser and mediator in both private and public 
 affairs. Many of his people were involved in the 
 struggle of the Regulators, and he labored to the 
 last both with them and with Governor Tryon to 
 prevent the shedding of blood, and on the morn- 
 ing of the disastrous battle on the Alamance was 
 riding along the lines, urging the men to go home 
 without violence, when the command to fire was 
 given. But he was heart and soul with his people 
 in their opposition to British tyranny. He was a 
 member of the Halifax Convention called in 1776 
 to form a new system of government. His active 
 advocacy of the cause of the colonies among his 
 own parishioners made all the men of his congre- 
 gations thoroughgoing Whigs, and rendered him 
 so obnoxious to Lord Cornwallis that he offered a 
 reward of two hundred pounds for Caldwell's ap- 
 prehension, and when the main body of the British 
 army encamped for a time on his plantation 
 they plundered his house, burned his books and 
 valuable papers, destroyed his property and con- 
 sumed or carried away all provisions. Mrs. Cald- 
 well and her young children were compelled to 
 take refuge for two days and nights in the smoke- 
 house, with no food except a few dried peaches 
 which she chanced to have in her pockets. The 
 
152 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 doctor himself had lain in hiding for two weeks 
 or more in the wooded lowgrounds of North Buf- 
 falo, and after a narrow escape from capture had 
 made his way to General Greene's camp. The 
 battle of Guilford Courthouse, which was fought 
 in one side of the Buffalo congregation and within 
 two or three miles of Dr. Caldwell's house, was 
 the beginning of the end. Cornwallis .retreated, 
 and in a few months his surrender at Yorktown 
 gave the land peace. 
 
 ,An ardent patriot, a wise counselor, a skillful 
 physician, a faithful pastor, a strong preacher. 
 Dr. Caldwell rendered services of the most varied 
 and valuable character to his generation; but in 
 no capacity did he render a more important ser- 
 vice or achieve a more lasting renown than as a 
 teacher of youth. He had peculiar tact in the 
 management of boys and extraordinary skill in 
 the development of their powers, so that his log 
 cabin school, opened in 1767, speedily became 
 known as the most efficient institution in the 
 State. Not only so, it attracted students from all 
 the States south of the Potomac. He usually had 
 fifty or sixty scholars, a large number for the time 
 and circumstances of the country. He was "in- 
 strumental in bringing more men into the learned 
 professions than any other man of his day, at 
 least in the Southern States. Man}^ of these be- 
 came eminent as statesmen, lawyers, judges, phy- 
 sicians and ministers of the gospel." Five of 
 them became governors of States, including the 
 late Governor Morehead, of North Carolina. 
 About fifty of them became ministers, having 
 received from him their whole theological as well 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 153 
 
 as literary training. Among these were Rev. 
 Samuel E. McCorkle, of Rowan, already referred 
 to, and Rev. John Matthews, who succeeded 
 Patillo as pastor of Nutbush and Grassy Creek, and 
 later founded the theological seminary at New 
 Albany, Indiana, which was afterwards moved to 
 Chicago and is now known as McCormick Semi- 
 nary. 
 
 That so many young men entered the ministry 
 from this school was due in large part to Dr. 
 Caldwell's wife. In 1766, he had married Rachel 
 Craighead, the third daughter of Rev. Alexander 
 Craighead, of Sugar Creek, whom he had known 
 as a child in Pennsylvania some fifteen years be- 
 fore. She bore him twelve children, and vastly 
 increased the usefulness of his life in other ways. 
 The current saying through the country was, "Dr. 
 Caldwell makes the scholars and Mrs. Caldwell 
 makes the ministers." 
 
 Dr. Caldwell died in 1824, in his one hun- 
 dredth year, leaving to these congregations and 
 the Synod and the State the memory of a conse- 
 crated life, of varied talents wisely used, and of 
 a busy and beneficent career in the service of God 
 and his fellow-men. 
 
 Mr. Moderator: I have deliberately taken the 
 risk of wearying the Synod with this great mass 
 of local and personal details, because I believed 
 that it was only in this way we could get any 
 vivid impression of the amount of labor performed 
 by the fathers of our Church in this State — such 
 as Campbell and McAden, Craighead and Hall, 
 Patillo and Caldwell — and any just idea of the 
 value of their services in propagating a pure and 
 
154 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 strong religion, in bearing almost the whole burden 
 of education in the formative period of our history, 
 in determining so largely the staunch character 
 of the people of this Commonwealth and in pro- 
 moting the cause of civil and religious liberty. 
 "Without any disposition to disparage the labors 
 or the influence of others, it is believed that 
 North Carolina is more indebted to their en- 
 lightened and Christian efforts for the character 
 which she has ever since sustained for intelligence, 
 probity and good order than to any other cause." 
 
 THE SUCCESSION OF CHURCH COURTS. 
 
 As to the church courts, under whose auspices 
 the early work of our Church in North Carolina 
 was done, we have already seen that the early 
 missionaries were sent into this region by the 
 Synods and Presbyteries centering about Phila- 
 delphia and New York. In 1755, the year of Mc- 
 Aden's tour, the Presbytery of Hanover was 
 formed, embracing the whole South, North Caro- 
 lina included. Four meetings of Hanover Pres- 
 bytery were held in this State — one at Lower Hico 
 (Barnett's) in 1765, one at North Hico (Crier's) 
 in 1766, and two at Buffalo in 1768 and 1770, 
 respectively. In September, 1770, Orange Pres- 
 bytery was formed at Hawfield's church, in Or- 
 ange county, with seven ministers — McAden, Pa- 
 tillo, Creswell, Caldwell, Joseph Alexander, Heze- 
 kiah Balch and Hezekiah J. Balch — and about 
 forty or fifty churches, with a membership of 
 perhaps two thousand. In 1784, the Presbytery 
 of South Carolina was set off from Hanover with 
 six ministers. In 1788, the year in which the 
 
*' HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 155 
 
 General Assembly was organized, the Synod of the 
 Carolinas was erected and held its first meeting in 
 Center church, in Iredell, David Caldwell preach- 
 ing the opening sermon and presiding as modera- 
 tor. In 1795, the Presbytery of Concord, embrac- 
 ing the territory west of the Yadkin, was set off 
 with twelve ministers — Samuel McCorkle, James 
 Hall, James McRee, David Barr, Samuel C. Cald- 
 well, James Wallis, J. D. Kilpatrick, L. F. Wil- 
 son, John Carrigan, Humphrey Hunter, J. M. 
 Wilson and Alexander Caldwell. In 1812, the 
 Presbytery of Fayetteville was set off from Orange 
 with eight ministers — Samuel Stanford, William 
 L. Turner, Malcolm McNair, Murdock McMillan, 
 John Mclntyre, William Meroney, Allen McDou- 
 gald and William Peacock — and held its first 
 meeting at Center church, in Robeson county, Oc- 
 tober 21, 1813. The Synod of the Carolinas ex- 
 isted for twenty-four years, and was then divided 
 in 1812 into two synods, the Synod of North Caro- 
 lina and the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia. 
 The Synod of North Carolina held its first meet- 
 ing in Alamance church on October 7, 1813, and 
 it is the centennial anniversary of this event 
 which we celebrate to-day. There were twelve 
 ministers present at that meeting a hundred years 
 ago — David Caldwell, Robert H. Chapman, 
 James W. Thompson, William Paisley, Samuel 
 Paisley, Robert Tate, Murdock McMillan, John 
 Mclntyre, James Hall, Samuel C. Caldwell, John 
 M. Wilson and John Robinson — and three ruling 
 elders, Hugh Forbes, John McDonald and William 
 Carrigan. The opening sermon was preached 
 by Rev. James Hall, D. D., from the text, "Go 
 
156 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 ye into all the world and preach the gospel to 
 every creature," and Rev. R. H. Chapman, D. D., 
 was elected moderator and also stated clerk, 
 
 GROWTH OF THE SYNOD FROM 1813 TO 1863. 
 
 The Synod thus organized was composed of the 
 three Presbyteries of Orange, Concord and Fay- 
 etteville, and comprised thirty-one ministers, 
 eighty-five churches, and about four thousand 
 communicants. By 1832, there were sixty-four 
 ministers, one hundred and twenty-seven churches 
 and about eight thousand communicants; that 
 is, the number of both ministers and members 
 had doubled in twenty years, and the number 
 of churches had increased by forty-two. In 
 1860, when the Synod met at Statesville, there 
 were three presbyteries, ninety-two ministers, one 
 hundred and eighty-four churches, and about 
 fifteen thousand six hundred communicants; that 
 is, in about thirty years there had been a gain of 
 twenty-eight ministers (less than one a year), 
 fifty-seven churches (only about two a year), but 
 the number of communicants had again nearly 
 doubled. Then the country was plunged into war, 
 and the growth of the Church was rudely checked. 
 In the half century stretching from 1813 to 1863 
 the number of churches had more than doubled, 
 the number of ministers had trebled, and the num- 
 ber of communicants had grown from four thou- 
 sand to nearly sixteen thousand, a four-fold in- 
 crease; but during the four years of conflict in 
 the 60's the Synod gained only eight ministers 
 and five churches, and lost more than two thou- 
 sand communicants, mostly young men, the 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 157 
 
 Strength and hope of the Church, who were killed 
 in battle or died in prison. 
 
 SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE CHURCH'S WORK. 
 
 This sketch of the history of our Church in 
 North Carolina during the one hundred and 
 twenty years from the time that William Robinson 
 preached the first Presbyterian sermon in the State 
 (1742) to the time of our Civil War would not 
 be complete even as a bird's-eye view without a 
 more definite mention of certain special features. 
 
 POLITICAL. 
 
 1. The services rendered by our ministers and 
 people in the struggle for national independence. 
 
 The revolt of the American colonies was spoken 
 of in England as a Presbyterian rebellion. When 
 Horace Walpole said, "Cousin America has run 
 away with a Presbyterian parson," he w^as doubt- 
 less referring particularly to the Rev. Dr. John 
 Witherspoon, president of Princeton, whose speech 
 in the Colonial Congress swept the waverers to a 
 decision in favor of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence and who was the only minister of any de- 
 nomination who signed that immortal document. 
 But it was a remark that might well have been 
 made with the Presbyterian ministers of North 
 Carolina in view. These thoughtful and conse- 
 crated men well knew that with the common 
 course of politics ministers should have nothing 
 to do in the pulpit; but they knew also that there 
 were crises which justified their intervention as 
 ministers, when everything was at stake, including 
 even their right to worship God according to their 
 
158 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 own understanding of His requirements, and that 
 "measures of government that proceed from a 
 want of moral principle, that are fraught with in- 
 justice and corruption," and that involve the de- 
 struction of civil liberty and freedom of con- 
 science, "are as legitimate objects of denunication 
 and warning from the pulpit as anything else." 
 And they acted on the belief. They instructed the 
 people in their rights. They called them to arms 
 in defense of their liberties. They sat in the 
 councils of State. They endured the privations 
 of the camp and the fatigues of the march, and 
 they fought beside their parishioners on the fields 
 of bloody strife. It is not too much to say that 
 the American Revolution could not have succeeded 
 but for the Presbyterian ministers. While some 
 denominations in Carolina were opposed to war 
 under any circumstances, and therefore preferred 
 submission to armed resistance; and while the 
 clergy of some other denominations supported the 
 Crown and bitterly opposed the movements for 
 independence, the Presbyterian ministers through- 
 out the wiiole country gave to the cause of the 
 colonies all that they could give of the sanction of 
 religion, and wherever a minister of that denomi- 
 nation was settled the people around him were 
 Whigs almost to a man. This is now gratefully 
 recognized by our brethren of all denominations, 
 and whatever the indifference or shortcomings or 
 hostility of their own ministers to the people's 
 cause in the Revolutionary struggle, they all now 
 alike honor the Presbyterian ministers who de- 
 nounced the oppressions of the mother country 
 and fired the hearts of the people to resistance 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 159 
 
 and fought and suffered to secure the freedom in 
 which all alike rejoice to-day. 
 
 APOLOGETIC. 
 
 2. The services of our ministers in stemming the 
 tide of French infidelity which swept over our 
 country after the Revolutionary War. 
 
 As a result of the timely aid given us by France 
 in our struggle with Great Britain, the citizens of 
 the new republic were kindly disposed towards 
 the French people, and were, therefore, the more 
 ready to give a sympathetic hearing even to their 
 skeptical philosophy. The country was flooded 
 with their infidel publications. Many of our peo- 
 ple, and at least one of our ministers, afterw^ards 
 a professor in the State University, were swept 
 from their ancestral faith. But the great body 
 of our ministers were not only unaffected by it 
 themselves, but withstood it boldly and success- 
 fully, and in the end rolled back the tide and 
 rescued their people. Being well-trained and well- 
 equipped, they brought all the resources of their 
 learning and all the force of their logic to the con- 
 test, and eventually routed the disciples of Vol- 
 taire and Paine, and so saved their country alike 
 from the horrible demoralization of infidel France 
 and the paralyzing unbelief of Unitarian New 
 England. Witness the work of James Wallis at 
 Providence in counteracting the influence of the 
 talented and wealthy debating society of infidels 
 in his neighborhood, with its baleful circulating 
 library; and the work of Samuel C. Caldwell at 
 Sugar Creek, and of Joseph Caldwell at Chapel 
 Hill, the first president of the university; and 
 
160 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 many others. The educated ministry of the Pres- 
 byterian Church had come to the kingdom for 
 such a time as that. 
 
 REVIVAL. 
 
 3. The growth of the Church in periods of re- 
 vival. 
 
 The revival in Rev. Dr. James Hall's congrega- 
 tions in Iredell just after the Revolutionary War 
 has already been referred to. A much more ex- 
 tensive revival, which began about 1791 under the 
 preaching of Rev. James McGready, continued 
 for some years in what is now the upper part of 
 Orange Presbytery, affecting the congregations of 
 Hawfields, Cross Roads, Alamance, Buffalo, Stony 
 Creek, Bethlehem, Haw River, Eno, the churches 
 on Hico and the waters of the Dan, and also those 
 in Granville. In connection with this revival the 
 first camp meeting in North Carolina was held at 
 Hawfields in 1801, the people coming from a dis- 
 tance in their wagons and remaining for five days. 
 Such meetings soon became common all over the 
 South and West. From the churches of Orange 
 Presbytery the interest spread to those of Con- 
 cord and Fayetteville Presbyteries. In a long and 
 interesting letter written by Dr. James Hall in 
 1802, he describes a meeting in Randolph county 
 in January of that year which he and three other 
 ministers of Concord Presbytery attended with 
 about one hundred of their people, traveling fifty 
 to eighty miles on horseback and in wagons for 
 that purpose; another in the same month in Ire- 
 dell, conducted by eight Presbyterian, one Bap- 
 tist and two Methodist ministers, and attended by 
 
/ HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 161 
 
 four thousand people, notwithstanding the in- 
 clement wintry weather; another near Morgan ton; 
 another of five days in Iredell in March, conducted 
 by twenty-six ministers (seventeen Presbyterians, 
 three Methodists, two Baptists, two German Lu- 
 therans, one Dutch Calvinist and one Episcopa- 
 lian), when there were eight thousand to ten thou- 
 sand people present on Sunday, divided into four 
 worshipping assemblies; another two weeks later 
 in Mecklenburg almost as largely attended; an- 
 other in May near the Guilford and Rowan boun- 
 dary. The writer says: "We are extremely happy 
 in the coalescence of our Methodist and Baptist 
 brethren with us in this great and good work. 
 Party doctrines are laid aside and nothing heard 
 from the pulpit but the practical and experimental 
 doctrines of the gospel." 
 
 In these meetings hundreds of people were 
 deeply affected and great numbers were added to 
 the churches. But, as in Kentucky and elsewhere, 
 the judicious ministers were not a little perplexed 
 by the "bodily exercises" with which the religious 
 excitement was connected when, as if by an electric 
 shock, men, women and children, white and black, 
 learned and ignorant, indifferent and skeptical, 
 robust and delicate, would be struck down, crying 
 for mercy or lie motionless and speechless some- 
 times for five hours; for it was observed that "per- 
 sons who had no sense of religion were seized by 
 them both at places of public worship and while 
 about their ordinary business, and some times were 
 left as unconcerned as ever." The ministers 
 studied these phenomena closely, generally dis- 
 countenanced them, and had the satisfaction of 
 
162 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 seeing them gradually disappear while the real 
 religious interest continued. 
 
 As a result of these meetings the existing 
 churches were greatly enlarged, new congrega- 
 tions were formed, and many ministers of the 
 gospel were raised up. "Throughout Carolina 
 wherever the revival prevailed the communit}^ re- 
 ceived unspeakable blessings." 
 
 In 1832 there were again notable revivals in 
 various parts of the Synod, especially in Concord 
 and Orange Presbyteries. "It is said that one 
 hundred and sixty-three persons were added to 
 Rocky River church, one hundred and twenty-six 
 to Poplar Tent and Ramah, and one hundred and 
 thirty to Charlotte and Sugar Creek churches. It 
 was estimated that there were two thousand con- 
 versions within the bounds of the Synod, and that 
 six hundred of them were in the counties of Meck- 
 lenburg and Cabarrus."* 
 
 MISSIONARY. 
 
 4. The curious contrast between the activity of 
 the Church in home missions before the Revolu- 
 tion and the comparative neglect of this work 
 after the Revolution. 
 
 The gospel was faithfully preached to the 
 churches already organized, but for a good many 
 years there seem to have been no settled plans and 
 no systematic and persistent efforts to carry the 
 work into the regions beyond. The Synod- was not 
 marching, but marking time. Napoleon Bona- 
 parte said, "the army that remains in its trenches 
 
 *Craig : Development of the Presbyterian Church in North CaroUna, 
 24. 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 163 
 
 is beaten," and our Church had to pay the in- 
 evitable penalty for its inactivity during the early 
 decades of the nineteenth century. It lost many 
 golden opportunities, and our more active breth- 
 ren of other denominations, to their lasting honor, 
 came in and possessed much of the territory which 
 should have been evangelized by the Church which 
 was first on the field, which for long had the 
 largest numbers, and which has always had the 
 largest resources and the best trained ministers. 
 There were, of course, occasional creditable ex- 
 ceptions in both foreign and home missions, the 
 most notable of which was the work of a young 
 man fresh from Union Seminary, Daniel Lindley 
 by name, who became pastor of Rocky River in 
 1832, and in less than three years received into 
 the Church two hundred and fifty-two members. 
 It is said* that "he felt called to carry the gospel 
 to the forgotten people of the mountains of North 
 Carolina," but that Concord Presbytery denied 
 him that privilege. If that be true, it was one of the 
 most disastrous and far-reaching mistakes a Pres- 
 bytery ever made. But the missionary spirit which 
 Lindley had imbibed from John Holt Rice was 
 strong within him and would not be thwarted. 
 He sailed for South Africa, taking with him Dr. 
 Alexander E. Wilson, of Rocky River, and for 
 forty years labored in the dark continent to the 
 everlasting good both of the native Zulus and 
 the Dutch Boers. When he returned to America 
 in 1874, I was a freshman in college and heard 
 him make a moving address in the old chapel 
 (now Shearer Biblical Hall) at Davidson. 
 
 *Morrison Caldwell: Historical Sketch of Rocky River Church. 
 
164 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 There were doubtless other instances of genuine 
 missionary zeal and activity in both the home and 
 foreign work, but the fire did not spread, and the 
 splendid advance of the Synod as a whole on both 
 these lines has been the achievement of a later 
 day. 
 
 EDUCATIONAL. 
 
 5. The noble record of our Church in Christian 
 education. 
 
 This subject has been very properly given a 
 separate place on the programme of this celebra- 
 tion and will be fully treated by the able speakers 
 to whom it has been assigned, so that nothing 
 more than a passing glance at it is called for here. 
 The view taken by our Presbyterian forefathers 
 of the relations between the Church and education 
 was this: 
 
 "She dreads no skeptic's puny hands 
 While near her school the church spire stands, 
 Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule 
 While near her church spire stands the school." 
 
 Hence that remarkable succession of classical 
 schools to which for so long a time the State was 
 indebted for nearly the whole of its education be- 
 yond the mere rudim.ents of English — Queen's 
 Museum (afterwards Liberty Hall) at Charlotte, 
 Grove Academy in Duplin, the schools of Tate 
 at Wilmington, Bingham in Orange, Patillo in 
 Granville, Caldwell in Guilford, Hall at Bethany, 
 McCaule at Center, McCorklc at Thyatira, Wilson 
 at Rocky River and Wallis at Providence — the 
 forerunners of all our present institutions of high- 
 er learning. When the State University was pro- 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 105 
 
 jected, the people naturally looked to the Pres- 
 byterians to do the work. They did it. The in- 
 stitution has been in existence for one hundred 
 and twenty-four years. During the whole of this 
 period, with the exception of only twenty years, 
 its presidents have been Presbyterians, and a large 
 proportion of its professors as well. The first 
 president and the real father of the institution. 
 Rev. Joseph Caldwell, not only founded the Uni- 
 versity firmly, but stemmed the tide of infidelity 
 there after the defection of Kerr and Holmes, and 
 put the abiding stamp of religion upon its char- 
 
 acter. 
 
 The only educational institution that has ever 
 been under the direct care and control of the 
 Synod as such is the Theological Seminary, for- 
 merly at Hampden-Sidney and now at Richmond. 
 In 1827, this Synod and the the Synod of Virginia 
 associatied themselves in the joint ow^nership and 
 control of the institution, and in commemoration 
 of the alliance it was given the name of Union 
 Seminary. For eighty-six years the relation has 
 been one of unbroken harmony and of abounding 
 advantage both to the Seminary and the Synod. 
 The Synod has supported the Seminary with un- 
 wavering loyalty and generosity, and the Seminary 
 has supplied the Synod with the great majority 
 of its ministers. Of the 235 ministers now on 
 your roll, 135 were trained at Union Seminary; 
 that is nearly two-thirds of the whole number. 
 
 Ten years after the action in regard to the Sem- 
 inary, that is, in 1837, the Presbyterians of North 
 Carolina took another great creative step in edu- 
 cational work by founding Davidson College. As 
 
166 APPRECIATIONS AND 
 
 a result of these two movements, they have long 
 had and have today the largest and most fruitful 
 of all our Theological Seminaries and the largest 
 and most fruitful of all our Christian colleges. 
 
 One other educational factor of great im- 
 portance which came into existence in the period 
 assigned to this sketch is The North Carolina Pres- 
 nyterian, now known as The Presbyterian Stand- 
 ard, which was established in 1857, and which 
 for fifty-six years has informed and instructed and 
 edified our people. 
 
 These, then, fathers and brethren, are some of 
 the salient features of the history of our Church 
 in this State during the one hundred and twenty 
 years from the beginning by Robinson, the first 
 missionary, down to the year 1863. It is a his- 
 tory that we do well to cherish, for it will move us 
 to profound gratitude to God for the gift of this 
 land to our fathers and for the gift of our fathers 
 to this land; it will remind us that we are the 
 sons of noble sires, men who played the leading 
 part in forming the character and institutions of 
 this Commonwealth; it will thrill us with the 
 thought that the heritage of truth and freedom 
 and opportunities for service which they be- 
 queathe to us is not only a legacy, but a summons, 
 and that we can best honor their memory by emu- 
 lating their services; and it will inspire us with 
 the ambition to transmit this heritage to our pos- 
 terity not only undiminished, but enlarged. As 
 we enter upon the second century of our existence 
 as a separate Synod, let us hear across the century 
 the earnest voice of Hall, uttering in the old frame 
 
HISTORICAL ADDRESSES 167 
 
 building on this spot in 1813 the words of the 
 great commission, "Go ye into all the world and 
 preach the gospel to every creature"; and let us 
 resolve with all our hearts to obey that commis- 
 sion, to replenish the ranks of our ministry with 
 the choicest of our youth, to seek earnestly the 
 power of the Holy Ghost promised by our Lord, 
 and to be faithful witnesses unto Him both in 
 Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria and 
 unto the uttermost part of the earth. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Alexander, Addison — Compared with Wm. Henry Green 25 
 
 Baxter, Geo. A., President of Washington College- 
 Succeeds Dr. Rice as Professor in Union Seminary 97 
 
 Tributes of Drs. Moses D. Hoge, Stuart Robinson, John 
 
 Leyburn and John H. Bocock 113 
 
 Bryan, Joseph — Model citizen 78 
 
 Business success '8 
 
 Religious nature 79 
 
 Impulsiveness 8f 
 
 INIoral refinement ^^ 
 
 Caldwell, David — For sixty-six years pastor at Almance 149 
 
 Education 150 
 
 Small salary as pastor 150 
 
 Self-trained physician 150 
 
 Habits of study and work 1 50 
 
 Services and hardships in the Revolutionary War 151 
 
 Great work as a teacher 152 
 
 Mrs. CaldweU 153 
 
 Cald-wt:ll, Joseph — First president of University of North 
 
 Carolina 165 
 
 Campbell, James — First settled Presbyterian pastor in North 
 
 Carolina 134 
 
 BiUngual preaching 135 
 
 Centennial — Of C>tus H. McCormick 31 
 
 Of Synod of North Carolina 129 
 
 Of Union Theological Seminary 81 
 
 Cities — Characteristics of 77 
 
 Craighead, Alexander — First settled pastor in Piedmont 
 
 North Carolina 138 
 
 Father of the Mecklenburg Declaration 140 
 
 Dabney, R. L. — Combination of power, passion and tenderness. . 123 
 
 Versatihty 124 
 
 Graham, Rev. Wm.— Teaches Theology in Liberty Hall Academy S9 
 
 Green, Wm. Henry — Systematic student 23 
 
 Painstaking teacher 25 
 
 Modesty 26 
 
 Courage 27 
 
 Work as critic 28 
 
 Recognition of his character and learning by other scholars. . 29 
 
INDEX 
 
 Hall, James — First pastor of Fourth Creek 141 
 
 Account of great revival in North CaroUna 160 
 
 Hanover, Presbytery of — Begins the establishment of a 
 
 theological seminary at Hampden-Sidney 90 
 
 Sees its project adopted by Synod of Virginia 92 
 
 Resumes control 94 
 
 Surrenders management to Synods of Virginia and North 
 
 Carolina 96 
 
 HoGE, Moses — First professor in the theological seminary es- 
 tablished by the Synod of Virginia in 1812 at Hampden- 
 Sidney 92 
 
 His Christian character 93 
 
 John Randolph's opinion 93 
 
 Influence as a theologian 93 
 
 HoGE, Moses Drury — Pubhc estimate of 5 
 
 Appearance and manner 7 
 
 Voice 8 
 
 Rhetorical style 9 
 
 Substantial attainments 11 
 
 Spiritual qualities 12 
 
 McAden, Hxjgh — Missionary journey to North Carohna 131 
 
 Pastor in Duplin and New Hanover 136 
 
 In Caswell 136 
 
 McCoRMiCK, Cyrus H. — Effect of his invention on the develop- 
 ment of our continent 33 
 
 Rank as epoch-maker 35 
 
 Birth 37 
 
 Training 38 
 
 Inventive talent 40 
 
 Makes first reaper 41 
 
 The machine tested 42 
 
 Manufacturing the reapers in Virginia 43 
 
 The move to the West 45 
 
 Establishment at Chicago 46 
 
 Expiration of patent 47 
 
 Difficulties overcome 48 
 
 Introduction of reaper into Europe 48 
 
 Successive triumphs 49 
 
 Marriage 50 
 
 Character and influence of Mrs. McCormick 61 
 
 Effects of the invention in the cheapening of food 52 
 
INDEX 
 
 * 
 
 In the creation of raikoads and factories 53 
 
 On the outcome of the Civil War 53 
 
 Patriot and peacemaker 54 
 
 Christian and philanthropist 56 
 
 Love for Virginia 57 
 
 Gifts to Washington and Lee University and Union Theo- 
 logical Seminary 57 
 
 McCormick Seminary 58 
 
 Personalit}'^ "^ 
 
 Religious faith ^'^ 
 
 Death 66 
 
 Ministers — Not priests, but teachers 87 
 
 Inadequate methods of training prior to 1812 89 
 
 Patillo, Henry — Self-made scholar 147 
 
 His Geographical Catechism 147 
 
 His work as a teacher 148 
 
 His participation in pubUc affairs 148 
 
 Peck, Thos. E. — Perspicuity 125 
 
 Poise 125 
 
 Seminal quality of teaching 125 
 
 Weighty style of preaching 126 
 
 Gravity and laughter 126 
 
 Modesty, humiUty and Godliness 126 
 
 Presbyterian Church in North Carolina — 
 
 Result of Scotch and Scotch-Irish immigration 1 29 
 
 EarUest settlement in Duplin county 129 
 
 Other early settlements 130 
 
 Wm. Robinson the fnst missionary 130 
 
 Hugh McAden's missionary journey 131 
 
 Scotch settlements on the Cape Fear 133 
 
 James Campbell the first settled pastor 134 
 
 McAden, Tate and Bingham in the Wilmington region 137 
 
 Scotch-Irish settlements between the Yadkin and the Catawba 139 
 
 Alexander Craighead first pastor there 139 
 
 The seven churches of INIecklenburg 140 
 
 Thyatu-a and Fourth Creek • 140 
 
 James Hall, pastor, missionary, soldier, educator 141 
 
 Other Revolutionary worthies west of the Yadkin 143 
 
 Fathers of the Church in Granville, Caswell, Orange and 
 
 Guilford ^^'"^ 
 
 Henry PatUlo 147 
 
INDEX 
 
 David Caldwell 149 
 
 Succession of church courts 154 
 
 Growth of the Synod from 1813 to 1863 156 
 
 Losses by the Civil War 156 
 
 Services of the Presbyterians in the Revolutionary War 157 
 
 In stemming the tide of French infidelity 159 
 
 Growth in periods of revival 160 
 
 Neglect of home missions after the Revolution 162 
 
 Work in Christian education 164 
 
 Rice, John Holt — Founder of Union Theological Seminary in 
 
 Virginia 90 
 
 Financial agent of infant seminary 91 
 
 Elected president of Princeton College 95 
 
 Accepts professorship in Seminary at Hampden-Sidney . ... 95 
 
 Begins with three students 95 
 
 Consuming toils 97 
 
 Remarkable results of his seven years' work 97 
 
 Birth and home Uf e 103 
 
 Passion for books 103 
 
 Conversion 104 
 
 Education 104 
 
 Marriage 104 
 
 Pastorate of Cub Creek church 104 
 
 Called to Richmond 105 
 
 Work there as pastor of First Church 105 
 
 Prevents appointment of an infidel to a professorship in 
 
 University of Virginia 107 
 
 Moderator of General Assembly 107 
 
 Recreation with Waverley Novels 108 
 
 Organizes Virginia Bible Society 109 
 
 Establi.shes the Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine. . 109 
 Influence of his Life of James Brainerd Taylor on Robert E. 
 
 Spcer 109 
 
 Organizes Young Men's Missionary Society 110 
 
 Leads the way in organizing the Presbyterian Board of Foreign 
 
 Missions 110 
 
 Epoch-maker in religious work 112 
 
 Robinson, William — First Presbyterian preacher in North 
 
 Carolina 1 30 
 
 Rockbridge County — Remarkable number of distinguished men 36 
 
>' INDEX 
 
 Sampson, Francis S.— Personal characteristics 118 
 
 Piety ^^^ 
 
 Power as teacher ^ ^^ 
 
 Commentary on Hebrews 119 
 
 Scotch-Irish — Lead in achieving our national independence and 
 
 in v,-inning the interior of the continent 31 
 
 In North Carolina 1^9 
 
 Scotch Settlements — In North Carolina 133 
 
 Smith, Benjamin M.— Long professorship 120 
 
 Compiles General Catalogue of Seminary 121 
 
 Skill in debate ^^^ 
 
 Elaborate extemporaneous style 121 
 
 Great service to the Seminary as financial agent 122 
 
 Smith, Jacob Henry— Knowledge of books 14 
 
 Power as preacher 1^ 
 
 Conversion of Charles A. Briggs 16 
 
 Raconteur ^° 
 
 Social traits 1^ 
 
 Home life ^0 
 
 Wide and lasting influence 21 
 
 Spence, W. W.— Remarkable activity in old age 67 
 
 Native of Scotland 69 
 
 Edinburgh in his boyhood 'J^ 
 
 Sails for America ^" 
 
 Settles in Norfolk ™ 
 
 West Indian trade ' ^ 
 
 Moves to Baltimore '1 
 
 Partnership with Andrew Reid P 
 
 Prosperity 
 
 Benefactions 
 
 Gift of Library Building to Union Theological Seminary 74 
 
 Personal friendships ' _ 
 
 Hospitality 'J^ 
 
 Bolton l^ 
 
 Characteristics • ' " 
 
 Union Theological Seminary— Centennial celebration of 81 
 
 Beginnings of. by Presbytery of Hanover 89 
 
 Founded by Synod of Vu-ginia 92 
 
 Moses Hoge first professor 93 
 
 Reorganized under John Holt Rice 9o 
 
INDEX 
 
 Placed under joint control of Synods of Virginia and North 
 
 Carolina 96 
 
 Growth under Dr. Rice 97 
 
 Succession of professors before the Civil War 98 
 
 Record in the Confederate Army 99 
 
 Characteristics 127 
 
 Wilson, Samuel B. — Venerable appearance and courtly manner. 116 
 
 Simple and spiritual preaching 116 
 
 Scrupulous truthfulness 117 
 
 Influence of his saintly life 117 
 
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