Columbia S^nito rtfitp mtlirCttpofUmigork THE LIBRARIES O. P. FITZGERALD. FIFTY YEAES: Observations— Opinions— Experiences, BY BISHOP O. P. FITZGERALD. W* «p#rwl our years at a tale that is told."— Psalm xc. 9. > i i Nashville, Tenn.; Dallas, Tex.: Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South. Bigham & Smith, Agents. 1903. 7A2 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1903, By the Book Agents of the M. E. Church, South, Nashville, Tenn., In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Between Us. It does seem that what is to be will be. In good faith, and for what seemed to be good reasons. I gave up the purpose to write a book on the men and the times I have seen. I so announced in the preface to another book which I did risk in print, and which has had a kindly reception from an indulgent public. Since then I have had another shut-in season, and from force of habit, and with some hope that these chapters might also be read with some profit and pleasure, I let them take shape as they are. Ob- servations — Opinions — Experiences — things that I have seen, thought, and felt from time to time, off and on during the last fifty years — this indicates the scope of this volume. The time cannot be far off when the date of my last appearance will be definite. The conviction that this must be so has perhaps imparted more of freedom to some of these chapters — a sort of posthumous tender- ness and solemnity, so to speak. At this moment there is in my heart only good will to every human being: if anything said in these pages seems to breathe a different spirit, put it down to my awkward- ness. And if, on the other hand, I should seem to be effusive in speaking of persons I love in different re- lations, they will have to stand it. O. P. Fitzgerald. Nashville, Tenn. (3) Contents. PAGB About Preaching and Preachers 7 A Resolution Broken 15 About Editors and Editing 21 More About the Editors 31 With and About the Doctors 43 With and About the Lawyers 59 The Bishops 71 Where My Road Forked 97 About Some Politicians and Politics 103 About Teaching, and Some Teachers 115 With the Baptists 127 My Student 135 An Expanded East Tennessean 145 The Caning I Got in California 157 With the Irish 165 A Boston Morning Call 175 Le Conte 181 The Night I Saw and Heard Edgar Allan Poe.. 189 Some Doctors of Divinity 201 That New Grave in the Far East 211 An Experience 217 The Unsleeping Night Watch 223 All Creation 229 California in War and Peace 235 From Padan-aram Back to Bethel 243 (5) ABOUT PREACHING AND PREACHERS. (7) About Preaching and Preachers. I began to preach when about four years old. Our family were among the "campers" at the old Sharon Camp Ground in Rockingham County, North Carolina, where the preaching, the singing, the praying, and all the other exercises were of the liveliest kind. Those Methodists were an earnest people. They were the sort of persons described in the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apos- tles — the men that have turned the world upside down. Wherever they went a stir was expected. Of one of these fervent evangelists of that day it is reported that he opened his campaign by preach- ing from the text above mentioned: "These that have turned the world upside down have come hither also." (Acts xvii. 6.) He said: "My dear hearers, my sermon is divided into three parts. First, this world is wrong side up. Second, it must be turned right side up again. Third, we are the men to do it." And so they did. With a sort of instinct that I felt then, and which never left me, on the return of the family to our home after the (9) io Fifty Years. camp meeting closed, I began to hold a meeting of my own. Gathering together the little children, white and black, under one of the big black-heart cherry trees, what meetings we had! I was the preacher; they all sang with immense energy, and all the exercises were conducted in true camp- meeting style. We had penitential kneeling and praying, we had professions of conversion, and re- ceptions into Church membership — all in crude im- itation of the older folk. Tremendous excitement at times possessed us. My own exhortations, though doubtless ludicrous to any older persons who chanced to hear them, were impassioned and urgent. To this hour I remember how intensely I felt, and with what good faith I repeated the words of warning and invitation spoken by the fiery yet persuasive evangelists. Doubtless to this hour the spirit and methods of my ministry have been influenced by this juvenile experience. Those preachers of that early day looked and worked for immediate results — and, as a rule, they were re- warded according to their faith. Following their example in my actual ministry in maturer years, it has happened not seldom that at the close of a sermon — not knowing the secrets of the hearts of my hearers — I have given opportunity for any per- About Preaching and Preachers. 1 1 son or persons so inclined to make some formal movement toward Christian discipleship, and felt a solemn and unspeakable joy in welcoming those who responded to the invitation. There is need that preachers of the gospel guard against the dan- ger of revolving on the rusty axis of a perfunctory ministry. To warn sinners of the wrath to come, and then to dismiss them coldly, looks absurd, if not insincere. To magnify the Church as the pil- lar and ground of the truth, and as the fold of the Good Shepherd, and then offer no opportunity for any person or persons to enter that fold by formal union with the Church then and there, makes the same impression of absurdity and insincerity. Or- ganized Christianity is not merely a form of words and a round of mechanical observances. A living ministry makes a living Church; a living Church is a growing Church ; a growing Church takes in and assimilates fresh material continually — so the Old Book teaches. The "door of the Church" ought to be kept open always. The back door — the way of egress from the Church — cannot be entirely closed, yet should be seldom used. Let the dis- eased member be healed — if possible — as the Mas- ter enjoins. Pastoral fidelity will save in most cases. Brethren of the ministry, bring them in; 12 Fifty Years. watch over them in love; give up no soul as lost while life lasts. A perfunctory Christianity is ready for burial. Its epitaph may be written in the Master's own words: "Cut it down: why cum- bereth it the ground?" God's judgment fires have consumed some dead ecclesiasticisms: those that remain must take on new life, or share the same fate. The preachers I have heard file in solemn pro- cession before my mental vision as I write this chapter at Monteagle, Tennessee, on Tuesday, August 26, 1902. Among them I recognize some elsewhere mentioned by me, with others whose preaching broadened my vision and exalted my conception of the dignity and glory of the pulpit. Early in life I learned that clumsy syntax and de- fective pronunciation did not nullify the effective- ness of preaching which had in it common sense and true faith. At a later period I learned also that polished rhetoric and thorough scholarship might coexist with apostolic fervor and fruitfulness. Some effective preachers were readers of sermons; most of them were not. It is my opinion that the tendency in the direction of sermon-reading in the pulpit has gone far enough among the people called Methodists. Manuscript is a nonconductor in the About Preaching and Preachers. 13 pulpit — as a rule: the exceptions are rare. My advice to such preachers as may be tempted, from any cause, to read their sermons is: Don't. If need be, make your discourses shorter; have fewer "divisions" in the plans of them; and trust the Lord who hath promised to be with you in the power of the Holy Ghost. The fact that I used written notes quite freely on my last official rounds was, as my brethren know, because of my extreme nervous debility. But if I had to go over this part of my work again, I think I would ask for stronger faith and read no sermons. Note. — In another connection I have spoken in these words of two Nashville preachers whose names are familiar to some of my readers : "Dr. Joseph B. West, a man who knew books and loved his fellow, a man who in his sunny moods was as bright as a June morning on the Cumberland hills, who in his deepest thinking touched the inmost recesses of the souls of thoughtful men ; Robert A. Young, towering a head and shoulders above his fellows in intellectual gifts as in physical stature, who preached a gospel that was clear and strong and persuasive." Both of them have crossed over to join the com- pany before them gone into the Mystery and Silence whither we will soon follow them. There are some notables among the preachers still living that I am tempted to mention here — but we are not yet ready for their epitaphs or biographies. Another hand will hold the brush when their pictures are painted. A RESOLUTION BROKEN ('5) A Resolution Broken. "Brother Fitzgerald, you should do nothing else but go around telling anecdotes." So said Dr. Lewis Bascom to me at his dinner table one day in 1857. I was one of a very lively dinner party given by the mistress of the Bascom ranch near San Jose in the beautiful Santa Clara Valley, California. Blessed little woman! She saw both the tragic and the amusing sides of hu- man nature, and had a heart as tender as mother- hood and a wit not biting but as bright as sunshine. Dr. Bascom was the half-brother of the great pul- pit orator, Bishop Henry B. Bascom. He was a steward in the church of which I was then the pas- tor, and he had named a boy for me. He meant his remark kindly, but it was a center shot, hitting me in a vulnerable spot. He had "laughed until he cried," as the saying goes, over some anecdote related by his young pastor, and all he meant was that he was mightily amused over it. "Is that so?" I said to myself. "Only fit to tell anecdotes. Here is a revelation and a warning. * (17) 18 Fifty Years. I will never tell another anecdote as long as I live." And I did quit — for the rest of that day. Of course my friendly reader knows that I back- slid — so to speak. But the remark of my friend did me good. It ought to have done me more good than it did. I have told too many anecdotes, yielding to a tendency in that direction which mani- fested itself at a very early period of my life, and at times turning a deaf ear to the voice I most loved to hear. What do I think of this matter now, as I look back over the forty-five years that have flown by from 1857 to 1902? Well, it seems pretty clear to me that my resolution was on a right line, but rather ultra. It seems to me that it should have been not prohibitory but regulative, so to speak. It would have been about as wise to make a reso- lution against shedding tears. It is no more wrong to laugh than to cry. The risible muscles are as truly God's work as the lachrymal glands. There is a time to laugh — says the Old Book. It takes both good sense and good taste to decide when that time comes. Many times have I left the pul- pit in a penitential mood because I had allowed myself a latitude therein which I felt to be ex- cessive. The people laughed or smiled, and kept A Broken Resolution. 19 awake while I was thus talking to them. And I have not seldom observed also that on meeting, years afterwards, persons who had "sat under" my preaching, the parts of my sermons most distinctly remembered were the parts that had a flavor of humor. This very day — August 29, 1902 — a call- er reminded me of a passage of that sort in a ser- mon preached by me fifteen years ago. This tendency in the direction of humorous preaching grows by habit. The denunciatory preacher began with pertinent and pointed allu- sions to current evils and errors, and ended by becoming a common scold. The slangy preacher began by the use of an occasional vulgarism that was striking, and before he knew it the larger part of his talk ran into that muddy stream. The brother who astonished and grieved his brethren by the fury with which he rode a doctrinal hobby, began by expressing only a righteous and rational displeasure at the utter neglect of it by his apa- thetic coworkers. The brother who left the pas- torate to champion a moral reform on the hustings, at the start began to stir up his parishioners with no such intention. Blessed is that servant whom his Lord when he cometh shall find giving all their portions in due season — preaching a gospel that 20 Fifty Years. searches the depths of the hearts of men and strikes at the root of every evil that curses the world. Is this a digression? — if so, so be it. The substance of what I wished to say is this: Let preachers of the gospel guard against all sorts of mere oddities and eccentricities, including funniness for its own sake. There is a time to laugh, but it does not come often to the pulpit in a world like this. There is not much place for giggling in the pulpit in the presence of men and women who are burdened with care and grief and pain. The pastor whose heart is human and whose soul is devout will be wanted alike at the bridal and the burial in the homes of his people. It re- quires no mechanical effort on his part to obey the Master's injunction to "rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep." He has the Master's spirit, who at the wedding feast turned the water into wine, symbolizing the infusion of a heavenly joy into human love; whose word to the grief-stricken ones at the grave turned its gloom into glory immortal. The mystery of it we cannot explain: the joy of it we can and do feel. ABOUT EDITORS AND EDITING (21) About Editors and Editing. This chapter would have written itself if I had hesitated to do it. I have been with the editors all my life in one way or another, and have had a place among them as a fellow-workman during the bus- iest season of my life. When some years ago I was notified that I had been elected chaplain of the Tennessee Press Association, I thought of my boy Lee, whom they all knew and loved, and the fountains of a sacred sorrow were stirred within me. That chaplaincy made all the younger men of the Tennessee Press Association "my boys," as it seemed to me, when our boy Lee died in my arms that dark night, going, as we trusted, from parental love in its weakness and heart-break on earth to the Love Divine whose mystery baffles us, but which satisfies us early and stays with us forever. The daily newspaper is one of the costly luxu- ries of our modern civilization. It is part of a sys- tem that is artificial and unnatural. The turning of the night that was meant for sleep into a time of (23) 24 Fifty Years. toil is not a good thing. The newspaper men, the railroad men, the telegraph men, the hotel men, and all the rest of the great army who fight this battle against the natural order — blessings on their busy heads! It is a hard battle they fight, at best. They ought to be generous in their dealings with each other. Their rivalries ought to be such as to draw out what is manliest and most magnani- mous in their natures, avoiding everything that would add to the inevitable hardships of their call- ing the wounds and stings of the petty rivalries that have nothing at stake worth a tithe of what they cost. And, kindly reader of this page, a word with you here: When you sit down to your morn- ing meal, and glance your eye over the morning newspaper fresh from the press, with the ink scarcely dry on its pages, think kindly of the press gang, from the errand boy or copyholder to the editor in chief or the other great man who handles the cash as it comes in and goes out. Another word craves utterance in this connection, even if it shall be spoken in vain, namely: Should not an attempt be made to arrest this tendency of our time to throw the night season given to us for rest and slumber into the mill that grinds so fearfully in the rush and roar of the daytime? Can we About Editors and Editing. 25 retrace our steps, and go back to the primitive order, to work by day and rest by night? The reader smiles, and perchance is himself one of these victims of a system that nobody likes and nobody resists. Nothing can be done, you say? Under this high pressure must we rush on until — what? A crash or a landing? There may be a safe land- ing: the Conductor is aboard. What ought to be done can be done. One generation warns another, but does not handicap it except by consent. Take courage, brothers! — we are going forward, not backward. I have kept company with the editors all my life. My father was fond of polemics and politics. The followers of John Calvin and John Wesley among our neighbors were zealous and disputa- tious. The Whigs and the Democrats were not less ready to dispute with each other. I heard both sides, but it will point a moral for the mil- lionth time for me to say here that the opinions adopted or absorbed by me in boyhood are sub- stantially my opinions at this writing in my seventy-fourth year. It is so with most men and women: as the twig is bent, the tree inclines. The exceptions are rare — sometimes they are very hon- orable, and mean much; sometimes, otherwise. I 26 Fifty Years. have voted with the party to which my father be- longed. I am a member of my mother's Church — and I hope to enter the heaven where she waits my coming. I heard both sides before I was old enough to read, and the strength of my partisan feeling was in the inverse proportion to my knowl- edge of what was involved in the controversies. As soon as I could read I was instructed and forti- fied in my Methodist views by reading the old Christian Advocate and Journal of New York, and the Richmond Christian Advocate, printed at the capital of old Virginia. The elder Bond and Dr. Leroy M. Lee, the one in New York, the other in Richmond, were thus the first editors who im- parted to me their ideas and their spirit. They seemed to feel it to be their duty to smite the Canaanites that were still in the land and to con- tend for the faith once delivered to the saints — that is to say, they were ready to push their ec- clesiastical organization anywhere and everywhere in our new country, and to defend against all op- posers free grace and freedom of the will, a chance for every soul, and a call to affirm that the elect are whosoever will, and that the others are whoso- ever will not come to Christ. As these points were then presented to my youthful mind, it did About Editors and Editing. 27 not occur to me as possible that any other views of Christianity could be taken except through the most pitiable stupidity or the most willful per- versity. The disputes on these questions which I overheard made it plain that the disputants of op- posing views regarded our side as equally stupid or perverse. Those editors of that earlier time had a vocab- ulary that was rich in uncomplimentary adjectives, and did not always keep within the limits of par- liamentary courtesy. But they were honest, ear- nest men, not trimmers nor hairsplitters; they held that a thing was either right or wrong, and they neither asked nor gave any quarter to heresy. Yet — bless their bigoted souls! — they were the kind- est of neighbors, and interchanged all friendly social offices, their families intermarrying freely. So the heresy was hated and denounced, while the heretic was loved as a man and a brother. Bitter words then took the place of the dungeon, the pillory, and the gibbet in settling religious dif- ferences; now reason, persuasion, and argument are mostly taking the place of bitter words. They were picturesque gladiators, those editors of that day who debated on holiness, the mode of baptism, the apostolic succession, and other ques- 28 Fifty Years. tions of like character. Some of them achieved national reputations for the genius they exhibited in the use of language that ignored even the pre- tense of courtesy or civility and yet stopped short of downright profanity and indecency. No names will be called here. But this question will be asked: Why is it that editors who differ in their opinions or interests allow themselves a latitude in this matter of offensive personalities that is claimed nowhere else by public men? This is a habit that still lingers; how it began might be an inquiry of some interest, but how to stop it at once and fully is a question better worth considera- tion. As an old editor, and as chaplain of the Tennessee Press Association, let me speak my mind plainly on this point: Make it a rule that all per- sonalities be excluded from journalism, both re- ligious and secular. Where there may be an ex- ception called for, let the necessity be so clear that all good citizens who love truth and justice will approve. During my term of service as editor of the Christian Advocate at Nashville I had occasion to enforce this rule in dealing with two of my brethren, both of whom had preceded me in the editorship of that paper — one of whom was Bishop McTyeire, and the other was Dr. McFerrin. They About Editors and Editing. 29 were both mighty men in the Church, and no two men stood higher in my esteem. Under peculiar conditions each one wished me to give place in the paper to a communication that was excluded by the rule I had adopted. Both papers were bright and strong; that of McTyeire bristled with sharp points that would have stung to the quick his vulnerable adversary; that of McFerrin abounded in those sarcastic sallies that, when delivered with his peculiar nasal intonations, were so irresistible with a popular assemblage. They both looked sur- prised and displeased when I told them I must decline to publish their communications; both left my office walking flatfooted and holding them- selves stiffly ; both came back in a few days without complaint; both knew I had acted rightly in the matter; and both were, if possible, warmer in their good will toward me than before. They stood by me in enforcing this good rule in dealing with others. Right here my heart prompts a grateful, broth- erly word in remembrance of a service done me by Dr. William M. Leftwich, who not many months ago crossed over into that world whither we can go to meet our friends, but whence they cannot return to us — if matters relating to the 30 Fifty Years. two spheres of being are now as David said they were when, fresh from the grave of his dead child, he said: "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." (2 Samuel xii. 23.) When I was dis- abled for many weeks by a breakdown from over- work during the session of the General Confer- ence held in Nashville in 1882, without fee or reward of any sort — except the blessing that always follows such deeds — Dr. Leftwich did my editorial work from week to week, in a way that furnished one of the many evidences of the marvelous vitality and versatility of that many-sided man, who could preach doctrinal sermons of unusual breadth and depth; conduct revival services of indefinite dura- tion, doing all the preaching and, if needful, most of the singing at every service; write for the print- ers with rare facility and felicity; visit the sick and the well, the rich and the poor, like a true pastor; and push the temporal interests of the Church like a man of affairs who specialized in that one thing. It was a strange ending of the busy and fruitful ministerial life of this strong and willing worker that he should go to Los Angeles, California, that land of sunshine and salubriousness and beauty, only in a little while to sicken and die. MORE ABOUT THE EDITORS (30 More About Editors. How to do it, and how not to do it — I speak of the work of an editor — will be further considered in this chapter. These points will be taken in in- verse order. I got emphatic hints as to how an editor's work should not be done by studying the cases of the men who had failed more or less fully. The shore of the journalistic sea, if you will allow the figure of speech, was strewn with editorial wrecks. For every failure there was a cause, and to find that cause was to make one danger less for a new navi- gator. I am speaking of religious journalism; bear this in mind. The men that failed owed their failures to the operation of the law of cause and effect — a law which rules in all matters in this world and in all worlds. I knew of one brother who made a foredoomed and speedy failure because he started with no capital whatever: he had no money, no experience as editor or publisher, no credit with men of busi- ness sense. He was a failure from the start, and he and everybody else soon found it out. He ex- 3 (33) 34 Fifty Years. pected to reap what he had not sown: the unbend- ing law of cause and effect was too strong for him. He reaped as he sowed — reaping defeat from the seeds of silliness, the notion that he might get something out of nothing. I knew of another brother who thought he could make a weekly family religious newspaper succeed by making it the vehicle for never-ending serial articles on the subject of baptism by water. Week after week his "demonstrations" were strung out in the col- umns of his paper, filling whole pages, and weary- ing the few of his readers that tried to keep him company, and repelling the great body of his de- nominational constituents, to whom last year's almanac would have been scarcely less interesting. He was a mild, well-meaning monomaniac, not an editor. I knew of another — a gifted man, and a marvelous preacher — who tried to edit a weekly religious newspaper and at the same time do the work of a presiding elder requiring his service in different places every Sabbath day in a district ex- tending over a wide region of country. Of course he had to fail: the paper could not be self-editing; it was a hasty hodgepodge without form and mostly void of interest. The money put into it was sunk, the paper stopped, and was soon forgotten by More About Editors. 35 everybody save some of its creditors who were left to mourn their credulity, and were thenceforward wiser and poorer men. I knew of another who had a passion for controversy that amounted to lunacy; and unfortunately he lacked all sense of proportion: over a disputed historical date he would almost go into spasms, and he so habitually filled his columns with disputations about trifles that sensible and sober-minded people spent their time and their money for other and better reading. So he failed, and this might have been his editorial epitaph: Died of trifling. I knew of another — a very good man, who was a fine scholar and a great worker — whom much learning had made mad with the mild and amiable madness of pedantry. It was a failing that leaned to virtue's side, but it caused a failure; he could not turn a newspaper into a theological seminary. He did a good work for a few, but the average reader knew he could not grow spiritually fat on Greek and Hebrew ety- mology and the like. I knew of another — a man of much vigor and generous impulses, who at his best was estimable and likable — who started out as a reformer, and ended as a common scold — per- haps I should say he ended as an iconoclast; that is a bigger word, and has a politer sound. His 36 Fifty Years. main object of attack was his own Church, strik- ing right and left at all within reach, making doubt- less many good points, but becoming so indiscrimi- nate as to be practically pointless and powerless for good. A few of his brethren, fiery souls and full of fight, stood by him to the last; but the most of them preferred a milder and more varied diet, and went elsewhere to find it. This editor also left the tripod with larger experience and a lighter purse than when he took his seat thereon. And so on, and so on; I had plenty of object lessons as warnings as to where lay the dangers that it would be wise for an editor to shun — how not to do it. A few touches descriptive of the editors who taught us how to do it may be in order next. They were not in all cases better men than those who failed, but they were better editors, success being the test. (And it may not be amiss in this place to say, in parenthesis, that while contempora- neous judgment of men is usually just, the value of a man's work is not always to be measured by im- mediate visible results, and the balance sheet is not struck every time an ecclesiastical body votes for officers — editors and others.) Among those editors who taught us how to do an editor's work was one who knew what to say, More About Editors. 37 and always said it well; and also knew what not to say, and left it unsaid. He did not waste his strength or the time and patience of his readers on abstractions or irrelevancies. He belonged to the living world, and kept in the middle of its currents of thought and activity. He saw all that was go- ing on, and he made his readers see through his spectacles. He proved himself to be a leader in thinking, and his influence and following steadily increased. That he was a great editor nobody now doubts, though of course he did not escape some friction while he was in the work: nobody does es- cape wholly who is not wholly worthless in such a place. There was another editor who was efficient and popular in a narrower way. He was ardent and tactful as a denominational champion, and so achieved denominational success. He hit every hostile head in sight, and was quick to see one. He never put off the war paint entirely, seeming to feel that he had a call to smite the Hittites hip and thigh — meaning by the Hittites all assailants of Methodist doctrine in general and all assailants of the historical record of his own branch of Meth- odism in particular. He had at ready command tke phrases that caught the popular ear, and soon 38 Fifty Years. proved that he was one of the zealots who had a zeal according to knowledge. He did a good work for those warlike times, and received the honors due to a champion who met all comers against his Church and held his ground. In more peaceful times there was less need for such service, and he was not so heroic and conspicuous a figure in the Church; but his name abides as a synonymn of intelligent partisanship and unflinching courage. He lived in warlike times, and his people cheered him on in the battle and crowned him as a good soldier who fought a good fight and kept the faith once delivered to the saints. There was another editor who was so classic in style and so sweet in tone that to read after him was to get training in true culture and growth in grace at the same time. To say that he was a Christian scholar would be to make a common- place remark; but if we stop to think of what the words mean in all their depth and breadth, what more could be said of him? The fragrance of his life still lingers among us. There was another editor whose paper was the exponent of a faith so strong and the channel for a spirituality so fervent and unfailing that it edi- fied the Church, and like a south wind in spring- More About Editors. 39 time caused every seed of truth to germinate in the minds of its readers and every holy aspiration to bloom in fuller spiritual beauty — if this mixed figure may be tolerated. This editor was not ranked as a star of the first magnitude in the jour- nalistic heavens; he was not talked of as much as some noisier and shallower men; but he achieved a sort of success that the Lord of the harvest will recognize and reward when he comes to reckon with the laborers. There was another editor who was not always equally philosophical and pointed in his editorials, nor always equally enterprising in the collection of news suited to a religious newspaper; but it was a very rare occurrence that the dish he set before his readers was not seasoned with the attic salt of a wit so bright and original that its very victims felt like joining in the merriment. One more editor I will name — that of a little four-paged paper that was as sweet and as juicy as a Georgia peach that ripened in the middle of the season for peaches on the southernmost branch of the tree. To read it was to partake of angels' food. His editorial song was pitched to the tune of that of the multitude of the heavenly host at Bethlehem when the Prince of Peace was born 40 Fifty Years. — and its echoes are still sounding in the hearts of his select audience. But enough under this head — only remarking that though no names are called, if these touches are true to life, the reader will place them where they belong. My helpers — I had many, many helpers in my work as editor from the start; for it did seem as if a million and a half of Methodists had conspired to compel me to succeed. But there were two men who were my helpers in a special sense, appointed thereto officially by the Church — Dr. John W. Boswell and Dr. (now Bishop) Warren A. Candler. The former — Dr. Boswell — was a helper indeed. He worked with the precision and regularity of clockwork. His sound judgment was unfailing, or as nearly so as that of any man I ever knew. He went for the right things, and moved in a straight line invariably. No question of difference ever rose between us. He was a man to be trusted and to be leaned on — for he loved his Lord and his Church, and had an uncommonly large equip- ment of consecrated common sense. My other official editorial helper — Bishop Warren A. Cand- ler — has truly said that during the entire two years that we worked together, our offices opening into More About Editors. 41 each other, the door was never once closed between us. This was not because we always saw things alike at the first glance, but because we were work- ing to the same ends, and had no secrets to guard or personal aims to promote. I am sure that in saying this I speak truly for both of us. He was a helper who could help, having the large and ready perception that enabled him to see all that was taking place in the world in which we lived and moved and did our work as editors, and with it a driving power that was tremendous. If he had gone radically wrong, he would have made a smash that would have been felt far and wide. But he loved the Church and its Head with a true heart, and the inherited traditions of the grand old Georgia fathers made him conservative, while the fervent spirituality which they typed seemed to him the normal atmosphere of the New Testament Church. If in any case he overcharged a gun, he was ready to withhold his fire. If at any time he thought he saw that his senior needed a word of exhortation, he gave it freely. We were blessed in our work, and happy in our fellowship. My dear old Junior — that is the form in which I ad- dress him when I write to him now — if our earthly lives are not safer and sunnier, and our heavenly 42 Fifty Years. entrance more abundant, because of our associa- tion, one of the sacred hopes that gild my sun- set sky will be disappointed. The old questions will close this chapter: Has the special providence of God any part in the calling of any Christian, clerical or lay, to any particular sphere of service? Is positive failure in any work for the Church a sign of mistake as to a call thereto? I am inclined to give an affirm- ative answer to both questions. If this answer be the right one, there is here a momentous matter for you, kindly reader. WITH AND ABOUT THE DOCTORS (43) With and About the Doctors. When the holy apostle Paul and the beloved physician Luke met, they fell in love with each other at first sight, and never afterwards parted for any length of time. It is thought that Luke's first visit was purely professional, and had some- thing to do with Paul's thorn in the flesh. As to what peculiar ailment that was, opinions differ widely. I will venture only a negative view, to wit: it was not what the moderns call nervous pros- tration. Had he been buffeted by that sort of trouble, he would not have used the singular num- ber in describing it: he would have spoken of the "thorns" that were as numerous as were nerves. Luke the physician was not made the instrument of healing Paul the apostle — that was not accord- ing to the will of God, who knew that his patient needed more grace rather that more bodily strength. But who can tell how much was the indebtedness of the suffering apostle to his beloved physician? We may take it for granted that he set his mind at rest by letting him understand what not to expect in the way of relief: a man of (45) 46 Fifty Years. true heroic mold like Paul braces himself to en- dure the inevitable. In this case it was a happy circumstance that the divine will as communicated in a heavenly vision agreed with the prognosis and advice of a doctor who believed in God and in the laws of nature which are simply the expression of God's will in this material sphere. At least we may be sure that Dr. Luke protected his friend from the impositions of quacks. There is a pathos that touches the heart in the words of Paul written after the apostasy of Demas and the departure of his other companions: ''Only Luke is with me." Luke himself had in the mean- time become an apostle, St. Paul being the chief human instrumentality in bringing about this gracious result. These friendships, in which there is a happy coincidence of temperamental affinities and complemental gifts, make some of the bright- est passages in Bible biography, and have run as threads of gold through very many of the Chris- tian lives that have made this world, in spite of its sin and pain and heart-break, bloom at some times and places in heavenly beauty and blessed- ness. That flower of paradise, holy friendship, sheds its fragrance, and that fruit of the indwell- ing Spirit, holy love, comes to its perfectness, in With and About the Doctors. 47 numberless hearts and homes that thus get fore- gleams of the glory and foretastes of the joys that await them "up yonder," where our heavenly Father has prepared for them better things than they can ask or think. Softly, softly! This is enough for me to say on this subject now. If, through the unfailing mercies of God, I shall gain an entrance into that world into which no trouble shall come, and from which no loved one shall depart, I cherish the be- lief that my Christian friendships shall be no small part of the inspiration of my song of gratitude for the past and a chief ingredient of the felicity of the unending future. The best that is in our thought is not equal to the best that God hath prepared for us. Now are we the sons of God, and therefore heirs; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Am I digressing? Some of my readers will ex- cuse me for so doing, because they have the same point of view as they look backward and forward. Among the doctors I have known, the image of one rises before my mental vision persistently — that of a gifted man who had a genius for med- icine and a passion for whisky. He died before his time from the violation of the laws of health which no man understood more fully. Poor victim of a 48 Fifty Years. fatal appetite, he had almost every virtue except self-control, and was his own worst enemy. His name is withheld from this printed page — a name that would be recognized as belonging to a family connection noted for its civic virtues and social graces in one of our older Southern communities. It does seem strange to many sensible people that so many physicians who know so well the awful effects of drunkenness nevertheless persist in this fatal indulgence. Two or three causes may be sug- gested here. In some cases the cause is Heredity. In many cases it is Habit. This is not the place to preach; but the words of the Old Book come in: "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: whoso is deceived thereby is not wise." Science is a good thing in itself; but godless science is as weak and silly as sin in a fight like this. Another cause of the prevalence of the drink habit among doctors may be found in the fact of their irregular habits in eating and sleeping. Called up and out at all hours of the night as well as the day, with nerves disordered by loss of sleep and digestion impaired by irregularity of meals, they are tempted to seek stimulation from alcoholic drinks — and, like others who know less and do the same, pay compound interest on the debt thus contracted in the reac- With and About the Doctors. 49 tion that always follows such stimulation. "I know, I know what a fool I am in this matter of drunkenness, but it is too late, too late for me to get free," said a great-hearted, gifted physician, a princely man in personal appearance, whose pro- fessional benefactions reached all sorts of people — the poor and friendless, the stranger in the land no less than those more favored. He was a fre- quent attendant upon church services, and there was no limit to his kindness to me as his pastor and friend. One of his horses — a long-legged, sinewy sorrel — was placed at my disposal when- ever I wanted to ride; and for the little woman in the parsonage and her child his behavior was fatherly as well as professionally kind and skillful. God was good to him at the last. He laid hold of the hope set before him in the gospel with a firmer grasp, and he was held steady amid the waves and billows that beat upon him, and his sky was clear when he was launched upon the Mystic Sea. Dear old friend, will you bear the scars of the battle when I see you again? No, thanks to the good God, the body sown in weakness is raised in power. The risen Jesus hath promised that it shall be fashioned like unto his own. It doth not yet appear what that body shall be — but 4 SO Fifty Years. we shall be satisfied when we awake in that like- ness. The broad, benignant face of a San Francisco doctor here comes up before my mind — a guile- less, unworldly man, who was a homeopath in med- ical practice and a Swedenborgian in religious belief. He did not do much harm to his patients, if we were disposed to deny that he did them much good: his doses were so small and so few. His presence was so gracious that his entrance into a room was like California sunshine. He had no doubts on religious subjects, and he never tired of talking of them. Jesus Christ, the Divine Man, was more real to him than the head of his political party is to the hottest partisan during election times. The Bible — magnified by him as The Word — was to him clear in its meanings when ex- pounded by Emanuel Swedenborg, whose inter- pretations came direct from the Author. To him the Holy Book blazed with light, and the world around him bloomed in beauty because he read in that Book the truth as it is in Jesus and saw in nature the reflection of the Divine Image. If ever I met an unworldly man, he was one. His presence at a religious service was a felt addition to the spirit of worship, though it might dilute in With and About the Doctors. 51 some degree the aggregated orthodoxy of the con- gregation. Long years ago he passed over into that spiritual sphere that was so real to him while he was here in the flesh. He knows more now than he did while with us in the body. The nat- uralizing of such a man for heavenly citizenship would not be a lengthy process. His name seems to be framed before me, encircled with the words in shining letters, "A life is hid with Christ in God." A striking contrast to my sunny-souled old Swe- denborgian dispenser of tiny pellets for the sick comes before my mind just here in the person of a doctor of the old-time pattern. He was of the old school in medicine, dispensing calomel, quinine, and castor oil in full doses, and holding to repent- ance, faith, a new heart and a new life as expounded by John Wesley, with a pretty strong persuasion that sanctification was a distinct experience pos- sible to all believers and actually attained by some. I was his pastor. I scarcely ever knew him to miss a prayer meeting or a class meeting. He was gifted in prayer, and stirred up his gift by constant exercise. He could be depended on to raise the tune whenever called on to do so. In him were conjoined the tenderest heart and the sternest 5a Fifty Years. dogmatism — a man who refused all toleration of error and evil, and yet would have divided his last dollar with an erring fellow-man, or gotten up at midnight to do an act of kindness for the worst of evildoers. He followed up his medical pre- scriptions with prayer for his patients; if any of them got well, he gave God thanks therefor; when any of them died, he seemed to think it was be- cause their time had come in the order of a divine government in which free agency and foreknowl- edged were harmonized in a way he could neither doubt nor comprehend. In the mines among my friends was a noted surgeon — almost giant in size and strength — who had such a passion for "operating" that it was said in a spirit of good-humored exaggeration that it was dangerous to have him around if you had even stuck a splinter in your finger, for off must go the arm. "Where have you been, Doctor?" I asked him one day as he came riding homeward after a professional visit. "I have just been up the creek a few miles to whack off a man's leg," he answered, emphasizing the "whack" with unmistakable gusto. But he was a true master of his profession. Those that joked about his overfondness for capital operations were the very ones to send for him With and About the Doctors. 53 when serious surgery was needed. He was a sur- geon, and that only. He thought and talked and delighted in nothing else. So far as I could see, his idea of a heaven would be a realm where there would be unlimited facilities for surgical study and practice — especially the practice. He had a steady hand, and he bore the pain of his patients with a fortitude that he thought becoming to a man who put science above sentiment in his work. I am thankful that I never had need for his surgical service. Doctors are notoriously sensitive and punctil- ious in their dealing with one another. The odium theologicum is not worse than the odium medicum. That is to say, doctors of medicine and doctors of divinity have about the same human nature, which is always a poor weak thing on its under side. Bigotry in the pulpit is a Twin Ugliness to Proscriptiveness in the medical professor's chair. Magnanimity is a flower of heavenly growth that is beautiful wherever it is seen. As health is more precious than money, so professional differences among doctors are more bitter than competition among business men. It has been my fortune more than once to number among my friends in the same city two physicians who were not on 54 Fifty Years. speaking terms with each other. Two of these medical belligerents had a habit of favoring me with their opinions of each other, respectively. They were both high-toned, high-mettled men. All my efforts to bring them into friendly relations with each other failed. They exhausted their whole vocabulary of vituperative adjectives in the expression of their contempt for each other. The cause of their alienation at first was a difference of opinion in the diagnosis of' a patient who died — each giving the other the credit for the fatal result, which was most likely inevitable. That is the apple of the eye of a doctor of medicine, his most sensitive spot — the imputation of a wrong diag- nosis in a dangerous case. A doctor of divinity is sometimes just as silly in resenting a doctrinal dif- ference concerning an important point in biblical interpretation. Many of both vocations live long enough to become more or less ashamed of this weakness in this life; in the life to come some of them will be almost incredulous as to the pettiness of which they were capable here below. During my pastorate in a California town of classic history, and which is a floral paradise, I had a medical friend who was a confessed materialist — not of the coarse and blatant type, but a sad- With and About the Doctors. 55 hearted, hungry-souled man, who was asking the old question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" He was a regular attendant at church services, and always a respectful if not a devout hearer of such sermons as I was able to preach. He seemed pleased when from time to time other members of his family made a religious profession and became members of the Church. We had many rides and many talks together on the great question of Re- ligion; and I am sure that these talks did me good at least, for in trying to answer his inquiries that were truly searching and subtle, I was stirred up to think and read more earnestly and widely on the line of Christian evidences. His heart was nearer right than his head. The New Testament Christ had for him an ineffable attraction. One day when we were riding on a favorite drive, under the blue Californian sky, he asked me what I thought of the retention of personal individuality and the recognition of one another in heaven. Of course — yes, of course — I replied that in that sphere we would know and love not less but more than on earth, and therefore we might expect to recognize each other and enjoy a fellowship with all congenial spirits that will be unbroken and eternal. "The thought has more than once occurred to me," 56 Fifty Years. he said, "that if there is a heaven, and if I should reach the place, I would like to find Sir Waiter Scott and thank him for the help he gave me by his books in the weary and troubled seasons of my life." A slight digression will be pardoned here. Two days ago a clerical friend visited me in my room, and we talked to each other and prayed together. The interview was sacred; toward its close he asked me, "What do you think will be your first thought when you enter heaven? My first feeling," he continued, "will be that of thankfulness that I will thenceforward never be liable to sin again." He has been an invalid with shattered nerves for years, with a consequent tendency toward severe self- judgment and mental depression. To me the ques- tion was puzzling — My first thought in heaven? Perhaps the very first will be thankfulness mixed with surprise that I am really there. The next? — and the next? — and the next? It was overwhelm- ing! It was crowding heaven into a few moments. There they come — those that slept in Jesus that I had known on earth; some it may be who had been helped thither by me in some degree; the mother who prayed for me and loved me until death; friends who had preceded me and looked for my With and About the Doctors. 57 coming because we had walked together part of the way and had taken the same vows and were led by the same Spirit. But one vision more than all the rest took possession of my soul — the Bea- tific Vision, the view of Jesus face to face, seeing him as he is. To see Him as He is — that means that we shall see clearly. As He is — a present tense that stretches on and on forever — Infinite Duration for the study of Infinite Perfection. WITH AND ABOUT THE LAWYERS. (59) With and About the Lawyers. The New Testament has little or nothing to say about lawyers in the secular sense of the word. In fact, if the professed disciples of Christ lived up to the letter and spirit of his plain teachings, and the teaching of St. Paul in the first seven verses of his First Epistle to the Corinthians, litigation among Christians would be an obsolete thing, and lawyers would be a class whose functions would dif- fer from what they are now so widely that they would scarcely know themselves by the same name. Arbitration is presented by St. Paul as the proper mode of settling disputes of all sorts, property rights of course included. And when nations nominally Christian become really Christian, war will be regarded as an extinct barbarism. This will come to pass as certainly as God hath prom- ised it. This year of our Lord 1903 has brought the dawn of this better time. The creation of the Hague Arbitration Commission by the great pow- ers of Christendom marks a great epoch in this world's history, and challenges even the dullest soul to believe that the time is coming when the (61) 62 Fifty Years. nations shall learn war no more. The very thought of this as a possibility is thrilling. Yes, Arbitra- tion has come to stay. The very destructiveness of modern implements of warfare will help to hasten the end of war: the wrath of man shall thus be made to praise the Lord. This great change has come almost unnoticed: our busy writers and readers have been taken up with smaller matters that touched them more directly. A Bible text comes to my mind: "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation." The signs of the times are not discerned in their real significance and rela- tive importance by the very ones who are proudest of their fancied wisdom and are readiest to en- lighten their generation with their interpretations and predictions. From apostolic times even until now this folly has been going on. The one thing needful for each generation and for each individual is to be ready, remembering that the kingdom of heaven must be within us as preparatory to en- trance into the everlasting kingdom in its aggre- gated constituents and final glory. And at last the revelation of the Son of man will come with a suddenness that will be as startling as a lightning flash from a cloudless sky. This mention of Arbitration has led me into With and About the Lawyers. 63 what may seem to be a considerable digression. But what is written is written. In the New Testa- ment Scriptures there is but scant mention of law- yers. When Paul wrote to Titus, "Bring Zenas the lawyer," it is thought by those who have good understanding in these matters that he referred to a doctor of laws, rather than to a doctor of divinity. That is the last glimpse we have of Zenas. He was probably consulted about some matters of ritual and such like pertaining to the relations of the old and the new dispensations. Paul had to answer the inquiries of many persons, and to instruct new disciples who had everything to learn. This lesson of the Master was enforced: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Christian rulers, Chris- tian jurists, and Christian lawyers took the places of the heathen rulers, jurists, and lawyers in due time. The names of the best of these may be re- corded among those that the Christian world has recognized as the salt of the earth and the lights of the world. The names of the worst of them — apostates, deceivers, wolves in sheep's clothing — will recur to the thoughtful reader of these chapters as illustrative of the fact that in the false professor of Christianity may be found the worst type of 64 Fifty Years. human wickedness, as it superadds hypocrisy to all other vileness and gives to sin its crowning infamy. These were the ideals of the legal profession that I first met in life. The able and upright jurist was the embodiment of all that was to be admired and venerated in human character. The tricky law- yer was the embodiment of all that was lowest and vilest. The unjust judge is regarded as a mon- strosity of bygone times. The colossal figures of Marshall, Taney, and their compeers and succes- sors, stand majestic and flawless before the admir- ing gaze of this generation. The names of the great advocates are household words everywhere in our land. Let a question come in here. Some- times it happens that a professedly Christian law- yer has a case like this to come to him: A man accused of crime asks him to undertake his de- fense; looking into the case, he finds that his client is guilty as charged in the indictment, but by skill- ful perversion or suppression of its true history he might secure acquittal. What ought a Chris- tian lawyer to do in such a case? This proposition seems clear to me: A lawyer has no more right to use deceit and falsehood in his profession than a tradesman in his buying and selling. Litigation With and About the Lawyers. 65 will be scarce when lying ceases. If all lawyers were truth-loving and truth-telling — well, I will not finish that sentence; but I will say that if it were known from this hour that no wrongdoer would be able to find an apologist or defender or rescuer in the person of a lawyer, crime on all lines involving secrecy and deceit would be at once abated to a degree that would astonish even the shrewd barristers themselves who have not given special thought to this matter. 'The wisdom that is from above is . . . without hypocrisy." Lawyers are not excepted from this statement. I have observed that this matter is to a large ex- tent self-regulative. Like seeks like. As a rule the ethical status of a lawyer is indicated by that of his clients. The tricky lawbreaker employs a tricky lawyer to save him from the punishment he deserves. In most of our cities there is a class of men called lawyers who make a science of perjury in behalf of criminals. These men manufacture alibis and straw bail to order. On the other hand, I call to mind just here a law firm in San Francisco whose members, three in number, were so well known for their consistent Christian character that it eventually came to pass that the intrusting to them the management of a suit at law gave strong 5 66 Fifty Years. presumption that their client had a righteous cause. And when the senior member of the firm was elevated to the bench, it was amusing to see how he substantially constituted himself a chancery court, deciding every case that came before him on its equities when they were plainly discerned, all technical quibbles and ingenious devices to the contrary notwithstanding. Indignant protests were made by some of the disappointed barristers, but the benignant face of the old judge never lost its serenity, nor did he give any sign of a disposi- tion to change his purpose to make his court a court of justice in the truest, strictest sense of the word. Litigants who concocted fraudulent schemes carried them elsewhere. In one of the mining towns of California I knew a noted and strangely successful criminal lawyer who was a psychological puzzle to everybody and a sort of byword to his professional brethren. He was almost uniformly successful in jury trials. What made him so, it would be hard to guess even now. His pleadings were remarkable for their prolixity, vehemence, and lack of logical coherence and unity. Fixing his glittering black eyes upon the "gentlemen of the jury," he would hold their gaze as it were by a sort of fascination, while he With and About the Lawyers. 67 literally howled in what seemed to be endless itera- tion the most extravagant declamation, with mixed figures, volcanic rhetoric, and violent gesticula- tion. To a listener who had a little leisure it was an amusing performance. But the fated jury had to listen through it all; and it was curious to see how they would gradually yield to the influence of this extraordinary pleading, their under jaws re- laxing as a conquered expression spread over their features — and, behold, they were ready to render a verdict in favor of his client. Was it hypnotism? A little episode came to my knowledge in the same town that illustrated those early times and gives us a touch of the human nature that shows itself among all sorts of people. An illiterate man, of jovial disposition, of general popularity, with strong prejudices, was in some way elected to a judgeship. Toward one of the lawyers of the place he had an inveterate dislike; and he invaria- bly ruled against him. On one occasion his honor made a ruling so flagrantly unfair and absurd that the lawyer, losing all patience, gathered up his papers and left the court room, saying, "I have never been able to get justice in this court!" "No," said the judge, "you never shall" — using an expletive that I prefer not to print. 68 Fifty Years. My mind reverts to other jurists whose Christian character was so beautifully transparent, whose presence was so reverend, and whose atmosphere was so devout, that any trifling with the solemnity of an oath, or any manifestation of undue levity or laxity of principle, seemed almost as much out of place in the courts where they presided as in a church itself. I have known of some judges who opened their sittings with prayer to the Allwise God for guidance in their decisions and for his blessing upon all their official work. This was of course only practicable in communities in which there was more of Christian unity and strength of Christian sentiment than is common. The names of some of these jurists almost flow from my pen point. Candor suggests the mention here of another lawyer who was an avowed skeptic as to the Chris- tian religion, who in most particulars did seem to exemplify the loftiest ethics and to practice the most graceful courtesies that belong to the Chris- tian gentleman. He was never known to use the name of God lightly, but always spoke of him as in a class alone He was as a father to the younger members of the bar, and on occasion his magna- nimity reached those heights where that consum- With and About the Lawyers. 69 mate flower of manhood, true chivalry, bloomed in its superbest beauty. I always grudged him to the opposition. He is still living at this writing, and at this moment I feel toward him (if I may make the comparison) as the Master felt toward the young man whom he looked upon and loved, and to whom he said, "One thing thou lackest." In the same city I knew another lawyer scarcely less gifted, and even more versatile — a man who when on the bench made more than a State reputa- tion as a jurist learned, upright, and fearless; who when addressing a jury discerned with the instinct of genius the salient points of the legal battle, and touched the chords of human nature with a humor that was spontaneous and contagious, a pathos that brought the tears to strong men's eyes; whose homely English style went straight to the common mind, now and then bringing in a quotation from the Bible as a clincher to some logical nail he was driving home. At one time he was an attendant upon a weekly class meeting I conducted. It was a delight to have such a man in such a service. He seemed to illustrate happily the saying of Jesus, that to inherit the kingdom of heaven men must be converted and become as little children: the in- genious lawyer was also the ingenuous disciple of 70 Fifty Years. the Christ. If I have drawn a true picture of this lawyer, there is no need that I should put a label on it for some who will read this chapter — which I will close with the declaration of my belief that he is one of many lawyers of this type, who are wise with the wisdom that is learned from the study of books and the study of human nature in their actual contact with the world, and are at the same time wiser in the higher wisdom learned at the feet of the Master. There may be some hard things said in this chapter on lawyers, which was written while a cold wind was making us shiver one winter day in Nash- ville. But they are about three-thirds true, and are permitted to remain. THE BISHOPS. (7') The Bishops. My opinions as to the scriptural authority for the order of bishops, and my feeling toward them as actual persons pictured in ecclesiastical history, were much divided from the time I first began to read and think and feel. When I read of the do- ings and sayings of such men as Bonner and Laud, and the rest of that altitudinous set, I felt for the time an aversion to all of them. And when, on the other hand, I read the hymns of Heber and the ser- mons of Phillips Brooks, I fell in love with them all. Just so it was that as I came to know more of all sorts of bishops, I fell in love with some and fell out with others. I never could become excited over the contention so long kept up, and often so bitter in spirit, as to the validity of the order and the priority of the title claimed by this or that re- ligious body. I would rather be able to write such a hymn as Heber's, beginning, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty" — we might call it his hymn of adoration of the Triune God — than to exchange ecclesiastical pedigrees with all the pontiffs from Caiaphas to the present incumbent at Canterbury (73) 74 Fifty Years. or Constantinople. I would rather be able to preach like Thomas Chalmers, George Whitefield, or Charles Spurgeon, than to parade titles enough to exhaust all the letters of the alphabet. I would rather be God's instrument in doing a tithe of the work done by John Wesley for the world than to sit in all the chief places in all the synagogues of all the successors of the scribes and priests who when our Lord was here on the earth had such a poor opinion of him and thought so highly of them- selves. (Can any candid reader of ecclesiastical history doubt that these last mentioned have in- deed had a constant succession, a succession of pre- tenders whose pretensions have been in the inverse ratio to their good works?) As I liked some of the bishops I read of in books more than others, so it has been with those that I have seen at closer range. Elsewhere in my writings I have spoken of "the old panel." When I headed this chapter "With the Bishops," of course I had in my mind those of my own denomination of the one Church of Christ. Not that I used the definite article in the sense that we are the only and only lawful claimant of the title. The thought in my mind was, changing my purpose elsewhere announced, I would speak a word concerning my colleagues of The Bishops. 75 the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Of the wisdom or good taste of this utterance each reader will judge for himself. Taking them according to seniority, I begin with Bishop John C. Keener. "Yes, he is rightly named, a Keener indeed," said my old California friend Lowry, sketched elsewhere. Lowry^ had known him as editor and preacher, and recognized in him an able and fearless defender of the faith once delivered to the saints. Keener he thought was well named: his blade was sharp and his thrust direct. He did his own thinking, and thought much. He was so sure of his own love of truth and honest purpose that he found it hard to doubt the soundness of his judgment in any matter that touched closely either his head or heart. We may be sure that consciously he knew no man after the flesh, though it is certain that he had very positive convictions both as to men and measures. Once I had occasion to differ with him in a matter of official administration. It was a matter of slight importance, but as the correspondence had ended rather abruptly, I had a slight apprehension that he was hurt or displeased with me. The next time we met in person was at the session of the General Conference in Baltimore in 1808. We met on the 76 Fifty Years. steps leading to the platform, he going up as I went down — and the moment he recognized me, he threw his arm around me tenderly, and with deep emotion thanked me for a paper on the Res- urrection which I had published in one of our Church periodicals. Since that day both of us have had fresh cause to regard this tremendous fact of the Resurrection with a deeper joy than we had known before. The fifteenth chapter of the apos- tle Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians comes before my mind, and I find a glow in my heart, as I think of our senior Bishop Keener. Bishop Alpheus W. Wilson is first, and most of all, a preacher. Away back yonder — no matter how many years ago — I began to see and hear allusions to "Alph Wilson," after the fashion of our people in giving pet names to soldiers, politi- cians, and preachers of rising reputation. He was of good preaching stock of the old "Maryland line" of Methodism, so to speak, in a true apostolic succession, as I look at such things. When he was put into connectional office by his election as Mis- sionary Secretary, everybody took it as a matter of course. He quickly got the ear and heart of the Church. He subsoiled it with missionary princi- ples and facts. He plowed deep and sowed good The Bishops. 77 seed which is bearing rich harvests unto this day. He is not a diplomat, but something greater and better — an ecclesiastical statesman with a mission- ary heart that takes in all the world, and a brain to match. Bishop Eugene R. Hendrix has made good use of an unusually good chance in life — if that word may be allowed here. He had at the start a re- ligious parentage, a robust physique, and more money than most men with which to begin life. I have known other young men who had all these, and yet failed utterly because they lacked the one thing needful — that is, conformity to the will of God as taught in his Word and indicated in his providential leadings. In his early youth he be- gan to follow Jesus, and has given his whole life to the work given him to do. He has been an inces- sant student, and as a laborer has put forth his whole strength. He has served the Church as a pastor, presiding elder, president of one of its col- leges, and an active member of its several connec- tional boards. He is a logical thinker who tries to make sure of his facts, and spares no pains needed therefor. When the Master called him to work in his vineyard, he called one who has proved himself a laborer indeed. Beginning promptly at an early 78 Fifty Years. hour, he is still at it, doing more and better work all the time. His vision is clearer and wider, his insight deeper, his heart tenderer — so say the hearers of his sermons wherever he preaches, whether in city, village, or country. He is an ex- ample of what the Master meant when he said, ''Study to show thyself a workman that needeth not to be ashamed." And when he talks of "Skilled Labor for the Master," he speaks that which he knows, and furnishes in his own life a fine illustration of the subject discussed. Bishop Charles B. Galloway's gift is eloquence — ■ a gift that, with the help of all sorts of people, he has stirred up from his sophomore days until now. He has been a student when not in the pulpit or on the platform, or on his way thereto. But whoso follows in print the round of his engagements for one year will see that to be a true successor of Asbury — who studied his Bible and made his ser- mons on horseback — he would have to think and read and write while whirling over the country on the steam-cars or across the ocean on the steam- ships of this later time. And this is just what is done by all bishops that are on the effective list who are not fossilized or fossilizing visibly. Bish- op Galloway has that one strongest evidence that The Bishops. 79 he has been called to preach, namely: he can preach. His entire physique — his voice, his eye, his mag- netism — pardon the word, for it will come in, that something that the true orator must possess, but which no one can describe and no human skill im- part — are those of the orator born. He, too, started early, and up to this date has fulfilled the early promise he gave of a career of great useful- ness and eminence as a minister of the gospel. In presenting to him a medal which he had won in an oratorical contest at the University of Missis- sippi, a noted politician said to him in a vein of pleasantry: "I am glad, sir, that you have chosen the Christian ministry as your calling; for had you gone into politics, you would have taken every- thing in sight and left nothing for the rest of us." The young man who gives up the pulpit for the hustings — disobeying a heavenly vision to engage in a scramble for the things that perish — does not always get what he bargains for. He makes a bad trade even when he does grasp the bauble that dazzled his eye. Bishop Galloway's epitaph can- not be written now. I speak of him as I know him. Hard work has not broken his fine physical consti- tution: popularity has not inflated his soul with pride; the exercise of power and influence has not 80 Fifty Years. hardened him. But time and grace have mellowed his spirit, and grief in its sacredness has drawn him into a closer fellowship with the Man of Sorrows, and tuned his preaching into subtler and fuller harmony with the wailing of earth's sufferers under the reign of sin and death. Bishop John C. Granbery is an all-round man — big everywhere, but nowhere knotty or gnarled. He has both size and symmetry. Paul described him in part when he described Barnabas — "a good man, full of faith and the Holy Ghost." As was said by another of our colleagues, when I found myself differing from Bishop Granbery in a matter involving a question of Christian ethics, I was moved at once to review most carefully the grounds of my judgment. He cherishes the chivalrous tra- ditions of the Old South, which had a real exist- ence, not confined wholly to the turgid rhetoric of stump speeches and party platforms. He has that which goes higher and farther — the mind that was in Christ Jesus. We met for the first time at the session of the General Conference held in the city of New Orleans in 1866. Our fellowship has been unbroken — yea, undisturbed — ever since. While he was a teacher in Vanderbilt University, and I was editing the connectional organ at Nash- The Bishops. 81 ville, we had what we called our "Saturday hour" together — from eleven o'clock to twelve on that day was sacredly set apart for personal communion. Those conversations are registered in my memory. They took a wide range — theology, Church affairs, new books, and matters of interest in current litera- ture, and at last carried by a mutual impulsion into an exchange of Christian experience that tuned my soul for the further touches I needed from the Lord my God. We were born the same year — in 1829; we asked and were granted release from full official labors at the same time — in 1902. Which will first be called to the rest that remains I know not. My heart sends him a greeting in this chapter. In the depths of my soul there is a joyful expectation that in due time our fellowship shall be renewed. Even as a possibility, the wonder and blessedness of this expectation would fill the evening sky with glory indescribable. Bishop Robert K. Hargrove came of an Ala- bama family that was thrifty, clean, and honest. His special gifts were accuracy and punctuality. If he had an appointment to meet you at ten o'clock, you had no need to fear that you would not see him until five minutes after the set time for him to be there. In recording business transacted 6 82 Fifty Years. he put down exactly what was done, not allowing his imagination or any temptation in the way of rhetorical flourish to color the plain facts. I have differed from him in opinion, but I would not fear to risk my life on the conviction that he always tried to speak truly and to act justly. He never shirked a duty because it required hard work, he never went into the pulpit unprepared; he never quit working at any problem until he got a solu- tion. The Church never had a more faithful serv- ant. With steady steps and loving heart he has followed his Master, who in that day will say unto him, "Well done, good and faithful servant." Good and faithful — these two words make the golden key that unlocks the gate of glory. Bishop Atticus G. Haygood was a Georgian all over, all through, always — the product of his times and his teachers. He had the intensity of the fiery evangelists who kept Georgia in a blaze for an en- tire generation. He had his share of the declama- tory eloquence that caught the ear and charmed the heart of the nation in such men as Pierce, Toombs, Stephens, and Grady. He had that humorous vein that is found in nearly all Georgians in high places and low alike. And he had besides all these that one thing that differentiates genius The Bishops. 83 from talent, and makes a pathfinder rather than one who jogs along in the beaten tracks. He was original as a writer — either saying what was new, or saying in a new way what had been said before. His writings touched the consciences of men and opened the fountains of their liberality. If he ever did an unbrotherly act, or spoke an envious word of a fellow-laborer, I never heard of it. His cour- age was not of the kind that waited to see which way the majority was going, and then rushed to the front vociferating its shibboleth loudest of all. In a special sense he was my colleague: we knelt together at the chancel at our ordination in St. Louis in 1890. As editors we had worked to- gether for some measures, and against others. The last time I saw him was at an Annual Confer- ence in Arkansas,where we sat together on the plat- form while Laura Haygood. his sister, was making her pathetic appeal for China. It was evident even then that he was failing in strength. Through great tribulation they have since passed into the city of God. I always think of them together — and if I meet one of them up there, I shall expect to see the other in that land of which it is said it shall know no pain. It makes me dizzy with joy to think what this may mean. The height and 84 Fifty Years. depth of it who can measure? O departed brothers and sisters who knew so much pain here, not one of you has come back to tell us what you see and feel up there. Our hearts ask why this is so. The cry of the father at the burial of his dead child — recorded in the nineteenth chapter of the Second Book of Samuel — has the pathos of a heartbreak and the inexorability of an interdict that may not be disobeyed: "He cannot return to me; but I can go to him." If they could come back at will, the two worlds might become so mixed that we might lose the blessedness of this probation where we walk by faith; while they could give only imperfect glimpses of the glory that can be revealed only to the glorified. If it were possible for them, and best for us, our loved ones would come back to us. As I write these words this morning to my inner ear comes floating across the years the echo of an old song sung long ago by lips that are now sing- ing the new song up there — They shall meet again who have loved. Bishop William Wallace Duncan's "given" name is not the only thing about him that has a martial ring. Whether Covenanter or Catholic, Royalist or Republican, whatever else might be lacking in a Wallace or a Duncan, he would not be lacking in The Bishops. 85 a disposition to stand up for his convictions or rights. Whoever has met Bishop Duncan in any sort of combat would discover, first, that this mili- tant episkopos of our new century had started to light to a finish; second, that he seemed rather to enjoy it; and third, that when the white flag of peace is floating over the battlefield of polemics, his guns are silent. The only condition he made when he agreed to hold the Memphis Conference in my stead, because I was disabled by sickness, was that I would say nothing about it. As a wit, at times his shafts fly thick and fast; but his arrows are not barbed, and there is no venom in his sting. He does seemingly love to sting an apathetic brother into wakefulness and activity. He keeps too busy in the work of the Church to make many guesses at the meaning of unfulfilled and unex- plained prophecies, or to unravel the tangled threads left to this generation by the doctrinal dis- putants of the past. His dogmatism does not lack emphasis. He seems to think that it is his mission to sow the good seed of the kingdom of God, be- lieving that the Lord of the harvest will see that it shall prosper in the thing whereto he hath sent it. He is not one of those who lag in the rear, giving their criticism before the battle and their advice 86 Fifty Years. afterwards. Our Church on the Pacific coast needs a militant leader of its forces. No one can possibly understand the conditions over there from hearsay. Bishop Duncan is studying them directly in person. His opinions when matured will have much value in the estimation of the Church. A man like this will bear acquaintance. The longer I have known him the more fully I have trusted him. A difference of opinion is tolerated by men who as a matter of course stand by their own con- victions. Bishop Joseph S. Key is in the true succession, being the son of Caleb W. Key, one of the fathers of the old Georgia Conference. He (the father) was one of its presiding elders in 1854 when I be- came a member of that body. I remember him as a strongly built man, with a face sagacious and se- rene — the sort of man who when he spoke knew what he wanted to say, and when he moved knew where he wanted to go — a safe, true man whose value answered to his mint-mark. We (Bishop Key and myself) have kept in sight of each other since we first met in 1854. All the time he has been in the itinerant field, while much of my work has been on the tripod. His orthodoxy is as straight as a gun barrel, his good sense as uniform The Bishops. 87 as sunshine in summer time in California. If I were looking for a man to lead a charge against an in- trenched foe with superior numbers, I might not choose him first of all; but I have known noiser men to flinch under such a test, while he did less boasting and no running. His role is not the per- formance of imposing evolutions in the sight of an enemy, and for the admiration of hero worshipers in our own ranks; but in this sturdy, well-poised man the Church has a Key that will fit the wards of all parts of our complex Church machinery, and has helped to open many a door that seemed to be closed against the ecclesiastical experts. As a preacher his chief desire seems to be to say what God has commanded, believing that he will see to its accomplishment of that whereunto it was sent. If I were a heresy-hunter, I would never think it worth while to get on the trail of Bishop Key. We, too, were born in the same year. His physical strength has outlasted mine. If I get the start of him, and enter first that world of spirits which now seems so near to me at times, if he does not show his brotherly face up there in due time — pshaw! that "if" is only a disjunctive used here as a form of speech — he will come. Both of us have now the forward look. "Forgetting the things that are 88 Fifty Years. behind, and reaching forth to those that are before, we press toward the mark for the prize of our high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Bishop Warren A. Candler is rather below the average in stature of Georgians, a stocky man with a chest like a bison, a big head firmly set upon his broad shoulders, the front part indicating ex- traordinary perceptive faculties with coordinating powers to match, his back head showing, if there be anything in craniology, immense propelling force. I think I know him. He was with me two years as assistant editor of the Christian Advocate at Nashville, and the door was never shut between us. We usually thought alike on questions that were worth thinking about; we felt the same love for the Church. He is a spiritual child of Georgia Methodism. He is apt to "speak out in meeting," holding that a light hidden under a bushel is use- less. He is aggressive in his thinking and plan- ning, holding to that old notion so confidently held by the Georgia fathers that the gospel of Jesus Christ is for all the world, and that its Author will see to it that it shall be given to all the world; the only condition being this, that they who carry it shall preach the whole truth as the truth is in Jesus. As a preacher Bishop Candler is incisive, The Bishops. 89 practical, faithful, with enough of pungency to flavor his logic and theology, giving his hearers touches of humor or satire that make one smile and another wince. Wherever he goes he stirs the stagnant pools of ecclesiastical torpidity. If you wish to see Obstinacy Inveterate, try to force him to do something against his will. If you wish to see a soul dissolved in tender- ness, make a legitimate appeal to the tender side of his nature. Judging by the amount of money he has collected for Church enterprises — and especially for Emory College — some per- sons might be led to think that he loves that sort of work. In his case, as in others, when a man shows aptitude and willingness for service in that line, he is kept at it in this our day. In some instances the gospel commission might be parodied so as to read: "Go into all the world and take collections." No disparagement of him is intended when I say that there is no telling at any time what he will do next. He is an impulsive man who takes things as they come — and things keep coming to a live man in a world like this. As a writer he has the power of strong conviction and rare command of language. He is too red-hot in his zeal to toy much with mere rhetoric for its 90 Fifty Years. own sake, but when he does employ it he uses the genuine artiele. There is substance as well as glitter in his figures of speech. I lis editorial ex- perience makes him a better writer and a safer critic than he could have been without it: he knows better what not to say, and lias a broader charity for those who say what he does not like. It would take a man of his type a long time to get reconciled to the idea of substituting the gospel of a present, free, and full salvation by such showers of agnostic snow and sleet as are falling from so many pulpits in our day, whose occupants seem to covet a reputation for learning, and to think that doubt is the sign of wisdom. lie has seen too many genuine revivals of religion, and felt too much of their power, to be troubled with unbelief. More and more he seems disposed to do as St. Paul determined to do- that is, to know nothing among men but Jesus Christ, and him crucified. When I met him at Monteagle in the summer of 1902, his range of thought was wider and there was a deeper note in his pathos than when we worked together in Nashville. We are both of us now standing where we hear more distinctly the mur- mur of the Shoreless Sea. Bishop Henry C. Morrison — look at him as he The Bishops. 91 stands there square and firm on his feet, decision in every line of his face, his robust frame in a pose that somehow reveals the born orator even when his lips are closed. How strong he look-! He was younger when 1 first knew him. If he has lost somewhat of the buoyancy of his young man- hood, lie has gained in the ripeness and symmetry of his Christian character. He may now see- a deeper meaning in that word of Jesus: "Every branch in me that beareth fruit, he purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit." i b- has alv been a worker in the vineyard of his Lord. He handled the missionary affairs with fidelity and large success. But very properly he has alw< regarded preaching as his chief vocation. When God calls a man to preach, woe to him if he calls himself to anything else instead! Providential disabilities are of course excepted. The apostle Paul was kept from preaching several years by being put in jail, but just as soon as he was let out he began again. There is no need that any connectional officer of the Church who is a preach- hould "rust out" in that work for lack of op- portunity. It only widens his sphere, and incre;: his value as a ministerial unit. Bishop Morrison belongs to a generation of Kentucky preachers fol- 92 Fifty Years. lowing Bascam, Kavanaugh, Morton, and others like them — men of full stature, fiery and tender by turns, too much in earnest to take time for specu- lation in the pulpit, with too much common sense to make a bother about the mint, anise, and cum- min of a religion of mere form. Bishop Morrison understands the text: "Preach the word in season, and out of season." That is, to preach it whenever opportunity offers. It means the preaching of a man whose love for souls is as a fire in his bones, and who above all things prays that he may by any and all means save some. His individuality is marked. He thinks for himself, and acts accord- ingly. He has his own way of expressing himself — it is terse, picturesque in spots, always moving toward one end, namely, carrying the stronghold of the enemy. The great sorrow that has come to his heart and home will draw him closer to the heart of his Lord and bring closer to him the heart of this sorrowing world. The best things, in the best sense of the word, ought to be ahead of this servant of God for both worlds. He knows the one condition — fidelity. Bishop A. Coke Smith, though officially the youngest of all the bishops, is one of the most ma- ture in experience as well as one of the most versa- The Bishops. 93 tile in gifts. He knows books, men, and business. Like a good family horse, he works well every- where. The Church has always given him enough to do. The only objection I ever heard to his election to the bishopric was, that it was a pity to take such a man from the pastorate. It would be uttering a truism to say here that a man who would not be missed and mourned elsewhere would be out of place in the office of bishop. Bishop Smith was in the eye of the Church as a coming man many years ago — and when the hopes of his brethren came to fruition in his election to the office of bishop, to many of them it seemed a matter of course. When he was filling one of the professor- ships in Vanderbilt University, the boys liked him because he was manly and friendly. Wherever he has served as a pastor, his parishioners became hard to satisfy with any other man. In the pulpit his logic is strong, his language is elegant, and his aim so direct that it cannot be misunderstood; that aim is the salvation of souls. The Church years ago had learned to expect that he would build up any charge he served; and also that by prudent conduct and sensible methods he would conserve what he gained. He has not had the time, even if he had the inclination, to follow new 94 Fifty Years. lights or to keep step with the procession of gar- rulous reformers of our time who seem to think that what is needed is more light in a generation which falls so far short of living up to the light which it actually possesses. The real danger lies in the direction of its withdrawal, according to the law that has never once failed in its operation under similar conditions in all the history of this world. "If the light that is in thee become darkness, how great is that darkness" — no one can tell, whether it be applied to a whole generation of forgetful souls, or to any one of their number. Bishop Smith is one of those men who never enjoy robust health, now and then giving indications of a break- down, who yet keep at work, gaining all the while in spiritual perception and power — "growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ," as the apostle puts it. I have already said, in connection with his work as a teacher, that Bish- op Smith is manly and friendly. It ought to be added here that he is thoughtful and brotherly as well: if any office on earth requires thoughtfulness and brotherliness it is that of a bishop. There is not a perfunctory atom in his whole make-up. He "belongs" to his Lord and his Church. At the start he gave, and he still gives, that evidence that The Bishops. 95 he has passed from death unto life, that he loves the brethren. That love begets love — the love that lives forever. [The friendly reader will notice the omission of one name from the sketches of the bishops in the foregoing chapter — that of Bishop Hoss. The ex- planation is found in the fact that it appears else- where under this heading: "An Expanded East Tennessean." It is printed just as it was written some years ago while Bishop Hoss was editor of the Christian Advocate at Nashville. He is the same man, plus some experiences that have not caused any diminution but have brought him en- largement without alloy.] WHERE MY ROAD FORKED 7 (97) Where My Road Forked. It was a strange little episode in the life of a man whose sense of ill desert on the one hand, and the singular manifestations of the mercies of God in his behalf on the other, humble, melt, and bewilder him as he writes these lines. The reader is left to his own interpretation of it. I was sitting in an alcove of the California State Library one night in the winter of 1872. I had held the office of chaplain to the popular branch of the State Legislature, keeping up my work as editor of the Pacific Methodist Advocate, then as now the Pacific coast organ of the Southern Meth- odists, so called. Hearing a rapid step ascending the stairs, a presentiment came to my mind that a crisis was at hand in my life. The feeling was in- tensely solemn, as well as sudden. There were hurried knocks at the door; on opening it a well- known politician's face met mine, and he began to speak hurriedly: "I am just from the caucus of the Democratic party, and am instructed by its members to say to (99) ioo Fifty Years. you that you can have their unanimous nomination for United States Senator if you will accept." "Get thee behind me," I began — but my friend the messenger interrupted me, his face flushing as he spoke: "This is no small matter, and no slight token of good will that is offered to you. In case of your acceptance, peace and harmony will be restored to the party." "May I ask you, my friend, to bear for me this message to the caucus?" I said. "Tell them that I am profoundly touched by the expression of their good will, but my vocation is not politics. To ac- cept this nomination would change the whole course of my life; it would be taking the wrong fork of the road. I am deeply sensible of the honor intended, but my mind is clear and my purpose fixed: I must and do thankfully decline. Within a month from now my best friends belonging to the caucus will feel and say that I made the right decision." My expectation was fulfilled. Most of the mem- bers of that party caucus within a very short time expressed their approval of my declination of the nomination kindly tendered by them. One or two Where My Road Forked. 101 of the number were less forgiving: their manner toward me was always colder thereafter. But what impressed me at the time, and still impresses me solemnly thirty years afterwards, is my sudden presentiment that a moral crisis in my life was at hand. I had not had the remotest thought that any such nomination was coming to me; it had never been mentioned to me by any human being. The sense of peril and the sense of deliverance following my decision were equally sud- den. Did a voice speak to my inner ear? Did an invisible hand hold me back? Yes, thank God! Had I accepted that nomination, I should not now be sitting at my writing desk this August 18th, 1902, tracing these lines with a grateful heart and a holy hope glowing in my soul. Whether suc- cessful or unsuccessful as a politician, I should then and there have parted with my peace. Esau's mess of pottage did not satisfy him. Many of his successors fail even to get the paltry prizes for which they bargain. That the roads "forked" for me that night, I am certain; that it was the mercy of a good God that led me to take the right way, is a conviction that I expect to carry with me to my last day on earth. ABOUT SOME POLITICIANS AND POLITICS. ( io 3) About Some Politicians and Politics. I am inclined to the belief that the average poli- tician — the chronic office-seeker and the chronic officeholder — deteriorates in character. Many of them stoop to conquer at the start, and never stand erect afterwards. Not a few sink lower and still lower, until detection in some unpardonable and unconcealable delinquency or death brings the in- evitable catastrophe. Like other men, politicians sow as they reap. Entangled by a little deceit, they are tempted to conceal it or to evade its con- sequences by other deceptions, each one becoming an additioanl strand in the fatal chord. I have noticed that almost uniformly any politician, small or great, who achieved a reputation for cunning as an electioneerer or as a party manager, failed of lasting success. The names of a number of gifted men will occur to the intelligent reader in this con- nection. On the other hand, no reader of Amer- ican history or observer of what has taken place during this generation can fail to be struck with wonder at the success of the blunt and seemingly blundering men who have achieved their success (105) 106 Fifty Years. in spite of the utmost indifference to public opinion and an utter lack of the suavity and tactfulness that so many deem needful for the man who would win the applause and gain the votes of his fellows. The American people, while they are ready, at short notice, to make a demigod of a man who wins battles and wears brass buttons, have a way of letting an unmasked demagogue drop very sud- denly into obscurity or infamy. They are naming children after Andrew Jackson unto this day from Boston to the sunset. If Henry Clay had been as brilliant a soldier in the field as he was eloquent in oratory and able in statesmanship, he would have swept the country in a very whirlwind of popular enthusiasm. Zachary Taylor — "old Rough and Ready," they dubbed him — stayed at home and held his peace after his nomination for the Presi- dency, while his partisans exploited his military achievements, and he was duly elected. Winfield Scott, his superior as a soldier, and certainly not his inferior in qualifications for the duties of a civil ruler, in his anxiety for success was brought down by the recoil of his own overcharged guns — to use a military figure. He made himself ridiculous, by what seemed to be foppishness of manner and by the absurdity of some of his sayings intended About Some Politicians and Politics. 107 for the popular ear. The opposition dubbed him "Old Fuss and Feathers," quoted his silly sayings, and he was literally laughed down. The pursuit of politics is usually and almost inevitably a hardening process. Partisans allow themselves a latitude that is amazing in their de- traction and abuse of political opponents. This is the fashion of our country — and an evil fashion it is. Men of gentlemanly instincts and kindly hearts are often sensitive in their natures, and feel deeply the wounds inflicted without malice afore- thought in the mere wantonness of political debate. Acting upon the law of retaliation, they strike back when coarsely assailed, and before they are aware of it they are in danger of becoming as violent and as coarse as their assailants. I have seen men of lofty type harden under these influences. They become jealous, suspicious, revengeful. In cases where special personal rivalries have existed, duels have been fought between men who have fought to the political death of one or the other with a persistent and cold-blooded savageness that fur- nishes a sad illustration of what is in human nature on its under side when its selfish instincts are al- lowed free course. These duels are sometimes fought between men of the same political party, 108 Fifty Years. but are not on that acount any the less savage. Such a duel, it is said, was fought by Blaine and Conkling: they both had a presidential bee buzzing in their bonnets, and neither was willing to give way for the other. If Blaine was bitter in his feeling toward his rival, it was an exceptional experience with him. He was the most amiable of men: he delighted in kindliness to all sorts of people. Even his most decided political foes, after they had once met him, had a pleasant memory of him and a kind word for him ever after. There is a pathos in his story that goes to the heart: its moral does not need to be pointed here. Lincoln and Douglas were rivals with something of the usual result. Douglas — alert, full of energy, intensely ambitious, and much accustomed to have his own way in Il- linois — did not mince his words in describing the man Lincoln and his party. And Lincoln, though we cannot think of him as employing invective or losing his temper, we may be sure did not fail to make his rival feel the keenness of his satire and to wince under the strokes of his humor. Calhoun and Webster, as representatives of opposing political ideas, were pitted against each other while they were living, and are thought of by their country- men in the same way since their death. If they About Some Politicians and Politics. 109 were conscious of any personal element in their contention, they were too wise to let it be known by any spiteful word or act. Webster polished his periods and burnished his rhetoric and thundered grandly as the expounder of the Constitution and defender of the Federal Union. Calhoun, .as the defender of minority rights and strict construction of the Constitution, linked his logic in mighty ar- guments that are classics in the literature of poli- tics. The fourth of July orators quote Webster's majestic and mellifluous flights of patriotic elo- quence, and the schoolboys declaim them enthusi- astically all over the land unto this day. Students of political economy and inquisitive scholars of every sort, who wish to know what is what and who is who in American history, read Calhoun in their quiet hours — if not to be convinced and converted to his views, yet with increasing ad- miration of his genius. Which was the greater of the two? Both — Webster as an orator, Cal- houn as a thinker. Their places are secure in our American Hall of Fame, where their statues might fitly be placed side by side. Thus they will be thought of by succeeding generations of their countrymen. Neither of them ever reached the Presidency, but their fame will not be thereby no Fifty Years. diminished as the decades come and go. Per- spective obscures or totally hides a small figure, while it reveals the symmetry and real grandeur of a great one. At a time (in the early forties) when I had the privilege of getting Mr. Calhoun's thoughts at second hand as expressed by himself in letters to a friend, he seemed to feel a far greater interest in the religion of Christ and in the question of a future state of existence than in the conten- tions of political parties or the rivalries of politi- cians. Both of these great Americans, however they may have differed on minor questions, have left on record the expression of their belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ and their trust in him as the Saviour of sinners. Calhoun inclined to Swe- denborgianism; Webster held to the creed of his mother, who was a Congregationalist. During his thirty years' service in the United States Senate, Thomas H. Benton had no rival, strictly speaking, in his own State of Missouri. Doubtless there were plenty of smaller and young- er men who were ready to take his place. He was the peer of the giants who were his fellow-senators. He was not as witty as were some of them, nor as brilliant in declamation as were some of the rest, but in a general way he knew more than all of them About Some Politicians and Politics. 1 1 1 put together. After he had made examination and expressed a definite opinion with regard to any question of fact, debate was in most cases practi- cally ended. The settlement of the Oregon bound- ary line was substantially his work. His array of facts and figures on the currency question gave him the sobriquet of "Old Bullion/" and his utter- ances are a factor to this day in the molding of public opinion in these United States. He was strong and steadfast in his beliefs and purposes, a publicist worthy of the name, who gave his country service that was inspired by genuine patriotism and guided by a comprehensive knowledge of affairs, with rare sagacity in practical statesmanship. In his last days he was a man of sorrows: death visited his home so often that, to use his own words, the face of the undertaker became so familiar to him that it was almost pleasant, reminding him that he would soon follow his dead children to the grave, and turning his sad heart to the lively hope of the resurrection of the dead by the living Christ. Gwin and Broderick — "Duke" Gwin, and "Dave" Broderick, as they were popularly known at home and abroad — were strangely matched in California politics. They both belonged to the same political party, Gwin a Southerner from Mis- ii2 Fifty Years. sissippi, Broderick a New Yorker. Gwin was the son of a Methodist preacher, and never lost the marks of his heredity; Broderick was of Irish and Roman Catholic parentage. Gwin was a man of mark in any company, of colossal size and com- manding appearance. He knew men, was a born politician, idolized the memory of Andrew Jack- son, and never lost a lingering fondness for the Methodists, though he wandered far away from the Methodist fold. Broderick was a ruddy-faced, thick-chested, athletic man, who ran with "the boys" in the fire companies, and held about the same relation to the Roman Catholics that his rival held toward the Methodists. Both aspired to the United States Senatorship: Gwin was in, and wished to stay; Broderick thought that rota- tion in office was good Democratic doctrine, and thought that his time had come to exchange the chieftainship of the San Francisco primaries for senatorial honors and emoluments. They were curiously but not unequally matched. Gwin, being already in office, had inside leverage and powerful backing from the outside. Broderick was person- ally popular with the young Democracy that made the most noise and did the larger part of the voting where noise and votes counted. The contest was About Some Politicians and Politics. 1 13 at the first animated, then it became bitter, and at last ended in a tragedy. Poor Dave Broderick! he went to the field as a duelist, and was shot by Judge Terry, also known as "Dave" Terry among the early Californians, who nicknamed almost everybody and everything "for short," from "Fris- co" to "Jimtown." Later, Terry was shot dead in his tracks by another Californian who was quick on the trigger as himself, and who "got the drop" on him, as they put it in shooting circles. I fear that it is true, as I have already intimated, that the average politician deteriorates in charac- ter. Some make a sort of drawn battle of it, losing and gaining ground from time to time, deceiving themselves by the sophistries that self-love is ready to accept. One of these is embodied in the maxim that "the end justifies the means"; and another like unto it is expressed in the adage that "the devil must be fought with fire." Both are soph- isms silly enough to satisfy even the Father of Lies himself. There is not room enough in these pages to register the names of those who were caught in the whirl of the peculiar temptations that beset men in public life and swept to swift destruction. There are tragedies of this sort written in letters of fire 8 H4 Fifty Years. in every state, every county, every township in all this land. God save a young man who starts on this treacherous sea so strewn with wrecks ! There is only one Pilot who can be trusted to steer him safely. Some names will occur to my readers just here — names of public men who withstood the stress of temptation and were faithful unto the end. Not all of them have received their crowns of honor alike in this world, but their fame will brighten here as the years roll on, and the Right- eous Judge will reward each according to his work in the day that shall try them as by fire. I have an outstanding (conditional) engagement to be pres- ent when a distinguished member of the United States Senate — a man with a brilliant record of heroism in the field and eloquence in the forum — formally signifies his allegiance to his mother's God by uniting with his mother's Church. While he waits, the hour draws nigh when he will have to answer another summons in the imperative mood and present tense. The policy of delay adopted by him and all such is not the way to the Victory of Faith. ABOUT TEACHING, AND SOME TEACHERS. ("5) About Teaching, and Some Teachers. Teaching in the highest sense of the word is a vocation — that is to say, a calling by the will of God. That is the definition according to the dic- tionary. In the dialect of the plantation of the cotton country the true teacher is "marked" for it. That many have come into the work of teach- ing without this call, is painfully true. Ignorance has pretended to teach the ignorant. The ability to teach is an indispensable sign of a call to teach. No man can teach what he does not know. The next requisite for the true teacher is enthusiasm. The man who is called to teach is an enthusiast in his devotion to that work. He prefers teaching to any other employment. He would rather make a bare living at teaching than to make much money by doing something else. The fact that but few teachers do make money does not repel the man who has a call. The reader will think of the famous teachers he has known from personal acquaintance or by reputation, and will find no exception to the rule: the true teacher is an enthusiast. Concen- tration is another condition of success. No one (»7) u8 Fifty Years. man can do everything equally well. The smat- terer at everything is a failure all round. Every- thing becomes more and more multiform and com- plex in our modern civilization. The competitor who is not a specialist usually goes down surely and quickly. The successful teacher stirs up the special gift that is in him; this one thing he does with all his might. That is the way the Binghams and the Webbs did great things whereof we are glad here in the South. This is the way in which men like them did great things whereof others are glad in other parts of our land. Knowledge, en- thusiasm, concentration, specialization, are the conditions of success, and the signs of a vocation rather than an avocation. The true teacher may be tempted in hours of despondency and weariness and heartache, from which none wholly escape in this life, to think that his calling is laborious, meager in results, and often thankless. From these moods and moments of gloom no worker with high ideals and keen sensibilities is wholly exempt. Yet among the names held closest to the heart of the world are those of the men and women who have followed the Great Teacher in devoting their lives to building character on right foundations for eternity instead of making money. Teaching, and Some Teachers. 119 The images of a noble company of such teachers crowd upon my vision as I write. Will the friendly reader allow me to take a group picture of some of these? Only a few words of introduction will be allowed for each one, though a folio would not be beyond what some of them deserve. Take them as they come. There is Landon C. Garland, a gentleman of the old school, scholar, manly, saintly. "It was not so much what Dr. Garland taught me when I was his pupil at Randolph-Macon, but what he was before my eyes in his daily life, that makes me owe him so large a debt of gratitude and affection," said Bishop McTyeire. Dr. Garland as Chancellor of Vanderbilt University wrought well in scholas- tic service, but he did what was still better: by his influence and example he infused the leaven of Christian character into the lives of many young men who will help in their turn to leaven all the circles they touch. Revered and beloved old sage and saint, his spirit still walks in the campus groves and lingers in the classic halls of the university, an imperishable benediction. Here is George W. F. Price, an educator all over and through and through. He was a man who had the polish of learning and the glow of religious 120 Fifty Years. fervor rarely blended. I never think of him with- out a fresh sense of thankfulness that this genera- tion had the blessing of such a life as his. The young women who carried into their homes the best things he taught them revealed what is meant by Christian culture when the word is rightly used. Here are the brothers John and Joseph Le Conte — the astronomer and the geologist — whose uplifting influence on the beneficiaries of their serv- ice will last as long as the stars shine in the firma- ment or the Yosemite Falls sing their song of praise to Him who in the beginning created the heavens and the earth. Dr. John Le Conte illus- trated what has been said concerning enthusiasm and specialization. His passion was astronomy, and he drew all his studies in that direction. He was the provisional president of the University of California during a part of my official term as State Superintendent of Public Instruction. At my in- vitation he consented to make an address during the session of the State Teachers' Institute in the city of San Francisco. "You would have me take a popular subject for my lecture?" he asked. "Of course/' I replied; "a large part of your audience will be teachers in the primary grades of the public schools." "All right," he said cordially, U I will Teaching, and Some Teachers. 121 take a popular subject." Imagine the amaze- ment and amusement I felt when he sent me the announcement of his subject, which was: 'The tenability of the fundamental assumption of the Nebular Hypothesis." For nearly two hours he argued before that audience in behalf of his pet astronomical theory, oblivious of everything else. I cannot affirm that all those maidens who taught in the primary grades were charmed with that most learned discussion of what was then a question of profound interest among leading scientists every- where. The younger brother, Dr. Joseph Le Conte, was more widely known than the older one among the learned in the high places of the earth. Elsewhere in my writings I have spoken of him more at length. Take a glance now at those two other brothers, W. R. Webb and John Webb. Both had an un- doubted call to pedagogy; each is a genius in his own way. The older brother, W. R. Webb — "Old Sawney," as he is nicknamed by his pedagogical family scattered over half a continent — possesses the administrative gift; he is a true disciplinarian, ruling wisely and well as the headmaster of a school. He is a discerner of spirits, by some sort of intui- tion discerning what is in a boy and which way he 122 Fifty Years. is going with a strange facility and almost unerring accuracy. How is it, you ask, that these men, whose every thought is pure and whose every im- pulse is noble, are such good mind-readers, quick to detect as well as skillful to correct anything wrong in their students? For the same reason that mother-love is quickest to detect any change for the worse in her boy. Nothing is so quick- sighted and keen-sighted as love. John Webb, the junior brother, is a specialist in teaching lan- guages: it is almost enough to make an old man wish that he could be a schoolboy again if thereby he could have as his instructor this prince of lin- guistic pedagogues. These brothers have made the little village of Bellbuckle in Tennessee — a name that has not a classic sound — a spot to which will always revert the grateful thoughts of their students, who, as they are fighting the battles of their lives, will realize more and more fully that the discipline they were under there was not stern, but wise, and that they carried thence the wisdom that is more precious than much fine gold. Here is Charles S. Smyth, that mass of mathe- matics and Methodism, who was as honest as the multiplication table, as kind as a brother, and as breezy as a May morning on the Santa Rosa hills. Teaching, and Some Teachers. 123 He could cipher and laugh and weep, and you might draw on him without limit for all that gave dignity to manhood and value to friendship. John M. Bonnell's place in this picture is just here. In mental vigor he was virility itself; in delicacy of thought and feeling he was as sweet as a white rose in bloom on the Georgia hills where he lived and taught so many faithful years. His pulpit style was precise without prudishness or pedantry, and marked by a felicity of diction that charmed the ear and a spiritual glow that warmed the heart. By some occult association, I always think of him and that other Georgian who was also a teacher and a preacher, Professor Charles W. Lane, in the same connection. After knowing these two Christian teachers, the one a Methodist and the other a Presbyterian, it seems to me im- possible to doubt that there is something in the Christian religion that lifts its possessor above what is to be expected from human nature in its best estate without it. Another figure is in my mind's eye, and another name is at my pen point — that of W. A. Robert- son, otherwise known in San Francisco as Pro- fessor Robertson, Principal Robertson, Rebel Robertson, and in the social circle that knew him 124 Fifty Years. best "Billy" Robertson. He was a many-sided man. His courage was of the quality that would have held the pass at Thermopylae, or stood with Horatius at the bridge. He was a Confederate soldier, a volunteer from Georgia, and was in the ranks when the last gun was fired. Naturally he found me in my office when he reached San Fran- cisco, a stranger. A place was found for him as a public school teacher in the city, and he was ef- ficient and popular from the start. He was the life of every social circle he entered. Sympathetic, with a large bump of human nature, witty, with a rare histrionic gift, "Billy" Robertson brightened all hearts and homes wherever he went. He was one of the men I took a liking to at first sight, and further association knit us in a close and indis- soluble fellowship. Indissoluble, did I say? He has passed over the narrow stream of death whither his dear Christian mother had preceded him. On the bright eternal hills beyond shall we meet again? Here are some women who have a place in this picture. Every head as we gaze upon it seems to be encircled with the light reflected from the face of Him who taught with supreme wisdom and au- thority, and who is himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Their names are already written in Teaching, and Some Teachers. 125 that book which shall be opened when the Lord shall reckon with his servants, rewarding each and all according to their works. Among them is Rebecca Field, who comes before my mental vision as she rose from her knees in prayer in the opening of the little school where I learned my alphabet. And here is Laura Haygood as I last saw her before she went back to China; she was already marked for death; we could see that she was a sufferer in the body, but her lips uttered no complaints, and a holy peace was on her face. And here are others, yet alive, who are writing their names in letters of light on living hearts: Lucy Kidd Key, who has planted the seeds of Christian character in so many Texas homes to bloom in the beauty of holiness long after she has entered into the promised rest; Clara Poynter, who is herself a living epistle of Christ, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; and many more, among them one whose prayers are still heard in the depths of my soul, whose voice still sings the songs of Zion to my inner ear, and whose hand that guided my boy- ish footsteps beckons me to come on to meet her where scattered families gather inside the gates. This chapter must now come to a close. Other great names of teachers come to my mind here — 126 Fifty Years. among them Robert E. Lee, who in the love of God and humanity gave his countrymen a timely lesson when he showed that he preferred teaching to money-making. John A. Broadus, Stonewall Jackson, and other elect spirits, are in the same company; but they have been pictured by other hands outside of this group which arranged itself as it were before memory's camera. It was in my heart to draw an outline picture of Chancellor Kirkland, of Vanderbilt University — a man who by some sort of intelligence seems to know exactly what ought to be done, and by some sort of instinct knows how a thing may best be said and done. With him I thought of grouping Dr. Thomas Dodd, the golden-mouthed Kentuck- ian who drew like a magnet and shone like a star; Dr. David Sullins, of East Tennessee, in whose soul is the stored-up sunshine of so many summers, whose life radiates love and light at the sunset; and others of their contemporaries whose names are written on the fleshly tablets of the grateful hearts of this generation — but for reasons I stop here. WITH THE BAPTISTS. (' 2 7) With the Baptists. The first Baptists I knew in my boyhood were of the sort called the Primitive Baptists. They were then a numerous people in all that border land of the Dan River valley in Virginia and North Carolina. They were a peculiar people, zealous for their own opinions, with a habit of attending to their own affairs. They were a people who paid their debts, and frowned on man-made creeds and secret societies of every sort. By some they were called Hardshell Baptists — why so called I can hardly tell, unless it was because of their great tenacity of opinion and persistency of purpose. They were mostly literalists in their modes of bib- lical interpretation — and this made them very absurd when they chanced to be wrong, and very firm and true and strong when they proved to be right. In the pulpit they liked men who made no show of book-learning or store clothes. Of one of these Primitive brethren in that early day I heard the statement that in one of his sermons he de- nounced some of the prevalent sins of the times in the plainest and strongest terms, saying: "You are 9 ( I2 9) 130 Fifty Years. a sinful set up here, and you commit almost all sorts of sins and abominations. But, my breth- ring, some things is sins, and some isn't. As for pitchin' dollars, fightin' chickens, playin' cards, shootin' for beef, and drinkin' whisky, them things may be sins, or they may not: the Scripter do not say. But, my brethring, this thing of playin' marvels is all wrong — for the Scripter says em- phatically, 'Marvel not!'' This brother was a literalist, and his book-learning was small; but he was no more absurd than many others in other communions who knew more than one dead lan- guage, and have been dubbed doctors of divinity in due form. Pedantry pronounced and honest illit- eracy make blockheads that are near akin. The one saving element in these illiterate Primitives was their honesty. As the light shone in upon them more strongly, their prejudices were moder- ated, their sympathies widened, and it came to pass that the children and children's children of these Primitive Baptists of my earliest acquaintance were drawn into the ranks of the great Baptist Church of the later time, whose people sat at the feet of such teachers as John A. Broadus, heard the gospel from the lips of such men as Sylvanus Lan- drum, and kept step in the ranks with such men as With the Baptists. 131 John B. Gordon. The trend of the age and the spirit of the Old Book led them forward on the line of the Missionary Church which has the promise of the abiding- presence and power of the risen Christ, whose right it is to reign, and who must reign until all enemies are put under his feet. Must reign — that is the word! While I was editing the newspaper organ of the Southern Methodists of the Pacific coast, pub- lished in San Francisco, I had a little episode in connection with the Baptists that I love to think of. The First Baptist congregation of that lively city, so lively in its movement and so independent in its ways of thinking and doing, lost their pastor, Dr. Brierly — a good man who could not harmo- nize with his choir, and so left. Sitting in my office one day, the kindly face of old Deacon Breed ap- peared at the door, and coming in at my invitation he said before sitting down: "Dr. Fitzgerald, I came to get you to scotch for us at the First Baptist Church. We have lost our pastor, and it will probably take us a good while to obtain a suc- cessor. Can you help us?" Well, I did help my Baptist brethren as best I could, occupying their pulpit for several months, preaching the old gospel of the grace of God as I 13 2 Fifty Years. knew and felt it. Of course I did not think it needful to specialize on the mode of administering water baptism, but I did emphasize the need of the baptism of the Holy Ghost — which is the baptism that brings light, love, and power to the believing soul. It was a gracious experience to me. Not a word was said about money, but at the end of every month the benign and business- like old Deacon brought me one hundred and fifty dollars in gold; and I took it — to please the Bap- tists and to help a good cause. That Baptist money helped to keep our Methodist paper going in a time of severe stringency. It was "all in the family," as the popular saying goes — in the spirit- ual sense there is only one Church, to which all true believers belong. About once a month the good old Deacon would come into my office and say: "Dr. Fitzgerald, we'll give you a rest next Sunday. Brother Gilbert will come down from Stockton, and preach for us." I knew what that meant, namely, that the dear old Baptist preacher would come down and immerse my converts and give them the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. This was all right with me: I knew the usages of the Baptist people, and if the gospel I preached was good enough for their pul- With the Baptists. 133 pit, minor matters might stand aside, awaiting the promised time when all the Lord's people should be one, even as our Christ and his Father are one. What this means, who can say? It is what we all desire : there is always a glow in my heart when I think of it. I will not be living here on earth when that day comes. But I look with assured hope for what will be still better, namely, a meet- ing with a blessed company of the Baptists I have known and loved on that shore where storms never beat. Fellowship then and there will be unbroken and unending, the fellowship of the saints in light. MY STUDENT. (■35) My Student. That is what he called himself — my student. Sitting in my office at the Methodist Publishing House in Nashville one day in the early eighties, a colored man in clerical garb came in, and, lift- ing his high-crowned hat, asked : "Is this Dr. Fitzgerald, editor of the Christian Advocate?" "Yes, that is my name," I answered. "My name is Blank, and I am pastor of a col- ored Methodist church in Nashville. I know you are a busy man, Doctor, but I have come to ask you to explain a Bible text that I expect to preach from next Sunday morning. There will be hun- dreds of colored people there, and I want to give them the pure gospel of Christ in its true meaning and in the right spirit. ,, I drew a long breath, and fixed my eyes on my visitor, who evidently was in dead earnest. I call him Brother Blank because our relation as teacher and student was actually — if informally — confi- dential. He made no secret of the fact that he felt the need of help, and was glad to get it. As (i37) 138 Fifty Years. well-meaning persons are sometimes hypercritical, and rivalry is uncharitable under all shades of color, it seems right and proper to protect my student from unmerited censure. As I sat looking at him, I said to myself: I am indeed a busy man; grind- ing the organ for more than a million of Metho- dists every week is a heavy work for any man; my spare moments are few and my strength lim- ited. But here comes a call not to be lightly dis- missed — a call to aid in expounding the Scrip- tures to a thousand black people, giving the col- ored pastor of the flock what help I can in his ef- fort to teach the truth as it is in Jesus: what an opportunity to a man whose mind and heart are in tune for the work! Brother Blank read my face, and pulling out a memorandum book, he said, "Here is my text for to-morrow morning's sermon, " reading to me as I listened. I dictated as he wrote down the words. It did seem to me then, as it has often seemed to me since, that the good Lord gave me an exposition for my colored brother more quickly than when it was for my own use alone. He surely was very receptive and very grateful. "The Lord was with us yesterday!" he exclaimed as he sa- luted me in my office on Monday. "We had a big My Student. 139 congregation, much good feeling, and several persons joined the Church." That was the way our acquaintance and fellow- ship began. He had a genius for good texts: in- variably he chose passages of Scripture that were pithy and practical rather than flowery or occult, as the manner of some is. At least once a week he came in to see me: if at any time he found me more busy than usual, he waited with unfailing patience until I became ready to put his text into homiletic shape. He often encouraged me by as- suring me that the Lord was with us. And verily so it seemed unto me: I got many gracious touches to my own soul while trying to help my dusky stu- dent. The spiritual glow enkindled in my soul while in conference with him must have been felt in the columns of the Church paper and in my books that somehow seemed to write themselves as it were from time to time. It seemed to me that thus I got a deeper insight into the meaning of that petition in the Lord's prayer: "Thy king- dom come" — that kingdom which is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost — all in the pres- ent tense. This is the order: let that kingdom come in our hearts, in our lives, in our homes, in our churches, in our world. It begins in the heart, 140 Fifty Years. and takes in the fullness of grace here and the hope of glory hereafter. They who receive freely must give freely. The cistern that stores the water from the spring that supplies Monteagle is almost in sight from the cottage in the woods where these words are writ- ten this August day, 1902. The water is pumped sparkling, pure, and abundant, and is gathered into a mighty reservoir on the top of the mountain. The source is practically inexhaustible, the stream running full and free every day and every moment of the year. But confined within the reservoir the water would stagnate and be a breeder of cor- ruption and disease. The Master said to his dis- ciples: Go into all the world with this gospel of my kingdom, and lo, I am with you always. It is only by obeying his command that we can receive the blessing promised, the blessing of his presence and the baptism of his power in the present tense. Now is the day of this salvation. Anticipating in the order of time, I give here an incident that will illustrate what my student and myself were to each other. One day when I was lying in bed disabled by that persistent and incorrigible ailment La Grippe, brought to this land of ours by a Siberian bacillus, which many of My Student. 141 us could wish had stayed in that land of icicles and frost-bites, he was told that I was confined to my bed by sickness, and was not able to receive vis- itors. 'Tell the Bishop," he pleaded earnestly, "that I must see him — it is a matter of life and death." Thus urged, I strained a point, and putting on my apparel went downstairs and recognized my colored clerical brother. "What can I do for you?" I asked. "I am sorry to disturb you when you are sick," he replied in insinuating tones, "but it is truly a matter of life and death: to-morrow I have to of- ficiate at the funeral of one of my most faithful church members, and I want you to help me to arrange the funeral sermon from this text in the fourteenth chapter of Revelation, thirteenth verse: 'Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord/ ' His plea was literally just — it was a matter of life and death — and though I felt a little annoyed at the turn he had taken, I did my very best in the exposition of that precious passage of God's holy word. His dark face beamed with satisfaction as he penciled down the words at my dictation; while my own memory went back over the years that had passed since I first used the same scripture as a 142 Fifty Years. message of consolation at the burial of a believer in California, away back yonder in the early seven- ties. The smile of grateful satisfaction on the face of my student was an ample compensation for whatever extra effort I had made in imparting to him homiletical hints. He came down to the depot to see me off on the occasion of my first round after the change of my official relation to the Church. "What shall I do?" he asked with a tremor in his voice. "I have been your student all these years, and the Lord has been with us. What shall I do without you?" "My successor, Dr. Hoss, who is a learned man with a kindly heart, will be ready to help you; and there are other learned and gifted doctors of di- vinity whose offices are at the Publishing House who will be able and willing to do you a friendly turn," I answered. "That is true," he answered; "they are very kind, and I am thankful for their friendly spirit, but somehow the black folks don't understand them as well as they do you." Thanks to my thankful student for this word. And thanks to the good providence of God that gave me training in this school so early in my min- My Student. 143 isterial life. He sharply watched for my return to Nashville from these official journeys from time to time, and he always had one or more texts of Scripture ready for our consideration. Let me say again: My student surely had a genius for the choice of good texts, whether his teacher had a genius for homiletics or not. And again let me say that I got more good than I imparted in these efforts to help my student. "It is more blessed to give than to receive" — if you give in the Master's name and in his spirit. AN EXPANDED EAST TENNESSEAN. 10 (H5) An Expanded East Tennessean. The living friends who know us both know how close is my relation to Dr. E. Embree Hoss. The providence of God brought us together; the law of affinities did the rest. I was in California many years before he came. He was then a very young man, and looked younger than he was. He was thrown into rough waters at the start over there, and learned to swim where many have been bruised among the rocks and some have gone down. Here he had new lessons in human nature, and learned new notes in the song of degrees which makes the strangely varied music of a life — a song whose notes become more and more jangled and tuneless if the life be not pitched on the right key, but which when rightly pitched gets sweeter and still sweeter until it is lost in solemn silence at the grave. On this twentieth day of June, 1898, the thought of my friend was in my heart and my pen was in my hand, and what follows took form then and there. A many-sided man is Dr. Hoss. He is a schol- ar. Scholars are few in any circle. His knowl- (H7) 148 Fifty Years. edge is wide and exact. He knows much, and knows what he knows. His memory grasps and holds all within its reach. His acquisitions are coordinated by sound judgment and good taste. He is a two-sided man in the sense that in his sen- sibilities he is as tender as tenderness itself, while his courage is as tempered steel. His heart is an ocean of feeling, his will is an immovable rock. All who like him love him. All who fight him know that they fight a man who is fearless. I have seen him, when every instinct of caution on the human side would prompt evasive utterance or cowardly silence, throw himself into a contest for a principle or for a friend with a dash of en- thusiasm and an aggressive vigor that swept the field. Again I have known him to lead a charge where he knew that victory was impossible. Two strains of blood were in his veins. His father's family — the Hosses — were Dutch; his mother's side — the Seviers — were Huguenot. He could stand a siege with the sturdiness that came of generations of Hollanders who believed in God and could wait on his providence. He could kindle with wrath or pity as instantly as any Frenchman that ever fought a battle or felt a sor- row. During the last decades of my life he was, An Expanded East Tennessean. 149 as I have said, one of my dearest friends. When I was in trouble, he always drew closer to me; when any danger threatened me, he was ready to be my defender. He gave me the true exegesis of the inspired words, "A friend loveth at all times." He stood every test. If there was jar or strain at any point, it was in the fact that while in our Church fellowship and social affinities there was cordial agreement in general, he was intimate with some persons to whom I could not get close; while some of my friends persisted in not being very friendly toward him. Yes, it jarred a little, at least on one side: the brotherly love that clasps the brother of your heart would also clasp all that is dear to him. I have looked into the faces of good and true men that I knew to be estranged from each other, and thanked God for the prom- ised revelations and readjustments of that day when we shall see face to face and know even as we are known. I have here on earth coveted the blessing of the peacemaker, and essayed to be a peacemaker. I have not always succeeded: my head was not wise enough, my touch was not fine enough; but even where I failed, my peaca re- turned to me. This digression may end with the declaration that the truest friendship between two 150 Fifty Years. human souls does not require them to share each other's partialities or repulsions. But it remains true that in any case where the affection is deep and true, and difference jars a little. The ozone of the East Tennessee breezes was in Dr. Hoss's lungs; the tonic of its chalybeate springs was in his blood. Those East Tennesseans never think of neutrality when a fight is on. They take sides at once, and usually for life. In our Civil War they were divided into two parties, for and against the Southern Confederacy: there was no third party thought of. Their blood was shed freely on both sides. In a polemic contest they would argue as long as they could articulate with a vehemence not always measured by the impor- tance of the question at issue. Whether it was the sovereignty of God and the free agency of man, or the mode of Christian baptism, or the number of orders in the Christian ministry, it was all the same to these men of the hills: they ran up the red flag of battle with no thought of ever pulling it down. In a political campaign among them there was no place for a weakling or a coward. The brother who could not give and take hard knocks had no call to take part in a partisan or sectarian debate in East Tennessee. Andrew An Expanded East Tennessean. 151 Johnson was the political product of the times and of the land to which he belonged. William G. Brownlow was another. Both were men whose vocabulary abounded in expletives and superla- tives, with a genius for invective and a passion for combat that suited the stormy time which they and such as they helped to make more stormy. Johnson became President of the United States by virtue of the bellicose vigor that was in him and by the most tragic event in our national history — the assassination of President Lincoln. Brown- low became Governor of Tennessee at a time when bitter partisanship was at a premium, and the fires of sectional strife were still smoldering, and conservatism was biding its own good time that was coming. Dr. Hoss passed his earlier years amid these influences, and the warrior fires that were in his blood were kept alive in one way or an- other. On the maternal side he was the grand- son of Governor John Sevier, the only man who ever met Andrew Jackson with equal force of will. They were too much alike to' love each other, and the trend of contemporaneous events made them rivals rather than allies. There is not a living man or boy in Tennessee to-day whose 152 Fifty Years. character does not bear something of the impress of these fiery chiefs. If in Dr. Hoss there was a knightly love of combat which was his from in- heritance and environment, he had in him still more largely a genius for loving men and begetting love from them. What he would have been with- out religion, a wiser man than I would be needed to tell. But the Methodists got into the Hoss family, and where they go they carry sweetness and light — that is, if they are of the genuine sort. The man who might have been a brilliant and bel- ligerent lawyer or politician became a Methodist preacher, with a message of love from God to every man and the offer of hope to every sinner he could reach. It was certain that when he was once converted he would be a preacher. There was no middle course for him: all the man or none is the law for all such. The Methodist preachers that he met were of the fervent and heroic type. His conversion was of the sort that melted and remolded him at a white heat. He was only six- teen years old when he began to preach — a boy in years and in warmth of zeal, impulsive, hopeful, enthusiastic, trusting the human nature which he knew mostly on its better side, looking for the speedy conversion of the world through the gos- An Expanded East Tennessean. 153 pel which he had found to be the power of God unto his own salvation. At the Ohio Wesleyan University he was sharpened and broadened by taking a two-years' course of study. One of his fellow-students was J. B. Foraker, afterwards United States Senator from Ohio. They met later in life when one was editor of the Christian Advocate, chief organ of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the other a United States Senator. The Civil War had made a gulf between them, but time and heavenly grace had bridged it. Dr. Hoss's schooling in Ohio gave him per- haps something more of alertness, or what in the West is called "snap," and it also gave him a clearer perception both of the strong and weak points of Northern life — and so it made him at the same time a broader man on sectional lines and a more skillful swordsman in a sectional contest. He was one of many Southerners who in North- ern schools obtained the intellectual equipment that made them the chosen champions of South- ern thought. John C. Calhoun was an alumnus of Yale College. His name seems to glow as I write it on this page. He will be known in com- ing generations as the great defender of minority rights, and he will look larger and grander as the 154 Fifty Years. perspective increases. No stain of insincerity or dishonor rests upon his fame. The minority to which he belonged is as truly glorified by his gen- ius as was the Lost Cause by the valor of Lee. Alexander H. Stephens was another Southern man whose training in a Northern school fur- nished him for brilliant service to his section in that troublous time when the consequences of the well-meant blunders of several generations had to be met and atoned for by one. The keen blades so skillfully wielded by these men in defense of the South were whetted on the other side of Ma- son and L)ixon's line. It is known to the reader that Mr. Stephens was Vice President of the Southern Confederacy, and that he was educated at Princeton with a view to the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. But it was not so foreor- dained: he became a lawyer, a politician, and a statesman. His physical frame was perhaps the slightest that ever fed such a brain. Like Cal- houn, Stephens passed through the fires of parti- san and revolutionary conflict with a stainless reo ord. * The short, stoutly-built, close-knit, heavy-mus- cled frame, the capacious lungs, the huge crani- um, high forehead, and big back-head, the bril- An Expanded East Tennessean. 155 liant pair of eyes that could flash electric fire in a debate and melt into a tenderness all the more ir- resistible because it was the tenderness of a strong, heroic soul — this is my friend: the editor whose learning enriched every topic he touched, whose courage was equal to any crisis; the preacher whose exegetical resources were a homiletical gold mine, whose practical expositions of divine truth made his hearers feel the pressure of obligation in the present tense and anticipate the solemnity of the final assize; the teacher whose touch stimulated into delighted activity all the responsive faculties of his pupils; the author whose books showed that he had drunk deeply from the hidden springs of inspiration, and that he had climbed the heights trod only by the few that truly think and pray; the man of affairs who knew Church law by heart and could count money; the kinsman and friend whose devotion stood every test and was equal to any draft; the man of God who walked in the Master's footsteps and was found where duty called — at the front, or where a pitying heart or helping hand was needed anywhere within his reach — this was my friend, Dr. E. Embree Hoss. His faults — doubtless he had them, but they were lost from my sight. A perfect man? No: only 156 Fifty Years. One perfect man has walked here among men — and He was crucified nearly two thousand years ago. [In reading the proof sheets of this sketch of my friend and brother, I have a fresh realization of the fact that this last performance of mine in the line of bookmaking has swung clear out of the sphere of conventionality, and takes liberties that are unusual with men and things. It is too late now to change anything by subtraction, addition, or otherwise] THE CANING I GOT IN CALI- FORNIA. (•57) The Caning I Got in California. "That is a shiny cane for you, a Methodist preacher, to carry." This has been said to me many times both be- fore and since I left California at the call of the Church. Usually it was said rather in a spirit of good-natured badinage, but candor compels me to make the admission that more than once it was meant in sober earnest by friendly and scrupulous brethren. And I may also here make the con- fession that at times I have had some misgivings myself as to whether it was altogether proper that a Methodist preacher should carry a gold- headed cane. My scruples have not been strong enough to cause me to discard the cane with its shiny head, but I have thought it well to offer a word of explanation to inquisitive persons on both sides of the continent. One of the General Rules of my Church for- bids "the putting on of gold and costly apparel." There was a time when this rule was construed more strictly than it is now. When I was sup- plying the pulpit of a congregation of colored (■59) 160 Fifty Years. Methodists in Georgia, a zealous young minister who was a good speaker took my place at a Sun- day morning service. Unfortunately his plain silver watch was out of order, and he had bor- rowed from a friend another which happened to be made of gold, with a rather heavy and showy chain of the same metal attached. That watch and chain ruined that service. The visiting preacher no- ticed that his hearers were strangely unresponsive; during the delivery of his entire discourse there was not the least sign or sound of approval. When he had finished an aged colored preacher, the leader of that flock, arose frowning ominously, and after a short but impressive pause, every eye and ear attent, said: "I want ter call yo' attention to what de Dis- cipline says about w'arin' of gol' an' cos'ly 'parel [quoting the words]. Dat's de law of de Church, an' dat's de teachin' of de Bible. In heaven gol' is plenty as rocks, de streets is all paved wid it. But de gol' of dis world will perish; it will be burnt up in de fires of de las' day, and [here he cast his glance up to the pulpit where sat the visiting preacher] dem dat w'ars it zvill be burnt up wid it." Many and emphatic were the approving re- sponses of the congregation. When I next met The Caning I Got in California. 161 the official members of the church, I was asked by this aged leader: "Who's dat you sent here to preach, a man standin' in de pulpit kivered all over wid gol'?" I explained meekly that it was a borrowed watch, assuring him that the one owned and usu- ally worn by the young brother was a plain ortho- dox silver timepiece. "What did he want to preach wid a watch for, any way? Do you s'pose de Lord Jesus Christ ever preached wid a watch?" was his indignant reply. I gave it up. My young friend with the bor- rowed watch was not acceptable to that congre- gation — and they saw him not again. I again take up my cane. This is the story. At the session of the Pacific Annual Conference held in the city of Sacramento in 1859, in the ex- amination of character my name was called — I was then editor and publisher of the Pacific Methodist, the Conference organ. "O. P. Fitzgerald — is there anything against him?" asked the presiding bishop; and the usual answer was taken for granted, "Nothing against him," when the Rev. B. R. Johnson, who was the presiding elder of the Petaluma District — "Uncle Ben," as he was called in Missouri and California 11 162 Fifty Years. — arose, and with a grave face and steady voice said: "Yes, there is something against Brother Fitz- gerald, and it becomes my duty to tell what it is." There was a perceptible buzz at this unexpected turn things had taken. I was younger then than I am at this writing, and being unconscious of anything wrong in my record, it was with rising pugnacity that I waited to hear whereof I was ac- cused. "Yes, there are charges against Brother Fitz- gerald," continued Uncle Ben in the same em- phatic manner; "he is charged with being editor and publisher of the best religious newspaper on the Pacific coast" — et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, with many kind allusions to my work and my- self personally, which I will omit, closing with the remark, "For all of which his friends in the Peta- luma District think he deserves a caning. Stand up and take it." So saying, he handed me this gold-headed cane amid the lively responses of the brethren and friendly visitors. I was not displeased, but I was embarrassed by the turn the matter had taken. My heart was touched, and it is likely that I The Caning I Got in California. 163 showed that it was so. In reply I said something like this: "You have taken me by surprise. My heart is moved, and you, Brother Johnson, and those you represent in making this gift, will accept the thanks I am unable to express in suitable words. This is a beautiful production of California art — this cane with its head of purest California gold set with crystal quartz veined with the same precious metal, designed with exquisite taste and highly polished by a lapidary who is master of his craft. For a plain man like me it is a costly gift. I value it highly, not so much for the gold that it con- tains, bur for that which gold cannot buy, the most precious gift that can be bestowed in this earthly life — the good will of true friends, the friendship that brightens our lot in prosperity and is stead- fast and sweetest in adversity. This friendship, hallowed by the love of God, will survive the final judgment, when the elements themselves shall melt with fervent heat, and the dead, small and great, stand before God. When I lean on this cane in the sunset of my life, when these locks are white and thinned by time, and this frame is weak and worn, I shall feel in the depths of my soul that I am not leaning on so much wood and metal, 164 Fifty Years. but on the strong arms and warm hearts of the givers." That time has come. My California cane sup- ports my steps now as with failing bodily strength I approach nearer and still nearer to the valley of the shadow where I hope to be supported by the rod and the staff of which David sings in the twenty-third Psalm. Its music, solemn as death, yet sweet as heaven, is in my soul as I trace these closing words. The incident comes back to me and the faces are before my vision as I write. Among them is one that holds my gaze — that of Dr. J. C. Simmons, the patriarch of the Pacific Conference. He knows the Bible by heart, and with a heart of love and tongue of fire has preached the gospel of Christ for fifty years. There he sits with his white hair, features as irregular as a foothill range in California, and as benignant as a midsummer sunrise on the summit of Mount Shasta. We may hope to meet one another again Where we shall see the King in his beauty — all of us. WITH THE IRISH. ('65) With the Irish. Most of the Irish I met in the early part of my life were men who had a fondness for righting, and were not easily beaten in fair combat. In politics they voted a straight ticket, and made their full share of the noise of political campaigns. The fact that General Andrew Jackson was of Irish descent glorified the whole Irish people in my estimation. The tradition that our branch of the Fitzgeralds belonged to the Leinster stock, of which a martyr- hero was the chief, intensified this sentiment in my boyish heart. I have never lost it. My old Irish schoolmaster, Joseph O'Brien, seemed to me a marvel of learning — and so he was. He knew most of the dead languages, so called. He spoke the most perfect English, plus the brogue that made it more emphatic and melodious. He knew the Latin poets by heart, and quoted the British poets as readily with rare facility and felicity. His knowledge of natural history was full and exact: he knew it as a science. The "copies" he set for his pupils in their writing-books were almost in- variably striking apothegms from the sages or ex- (167) 168 Fifty Years. quisite touches from the poets of different tongues and times, ranging all the way from a proverb of Solomon to a line from Shakespeare or Milton. He was a terror to dullards or shirkers in the school- room. When he was converted among the Metho- dists at the old Shady Grove camp meeting, great was his and their joy. He made a good Metho- dist: his end was peace. He sleeps under the oaks in that old Shady Grove churchyard. Blessings on his memory! When I meet him face to face in the world of spirits, I would be glad to express to him in person the gratitude that glows in my heart as I pen these reminiscences of this first Irishman who touched my life for good. The next Irishman that comes before my men- tal vision in these backward glances is that of a physician who attended me in a long sickness. He was a quiet, scholarly man. His face had in its expression the strength and kindliness that suit all doctors. The public, so called — that is, the average men and women — have a way of lionizing the surgeons who are both rough and ready. He- roic remedies in therapeutics and heroic operators in surgery are still in fashion in Christian lands, so called. After recovering from my sickness I learned that my Irish doctor was a Roman Catho- With the Irish. 169 lie — a fact which he had never hinted to his grate- ful patient. But it gave me a very distinct impres- sion that a man might be a Roman Catholic and at the same time a follower of Him who called Luke, "the beloved physician," to be one of the Twelve. Both a Methodist and a Romanist doc- tor prescribed for me in that sickness, and were agreed as to what their patient needed to cure his bodily ailment. Their names need not be written here: both are written, I trust, in the Book of Life. By degrees I became acquainted with the Roman Catholic clergy. I found them, as I found the clergy of other communions, differing one from another in gifts and graces — good, better, best; less good, no good, bad. The most of them were good men, I doubt not. Now and then one of them proved himself to be an apostate; and in such cases some of our people were about as fair in their judgments as is common with partisans or bigots wherever found — attributing the lapse of an indi- vidual from virtue to the inherent and ineradicable viciousness of the party or sect to which he be- longed. Judged by this rule, there is not a Church, a party organization, a school of ethics, or a family connection that would be able to stand. That the Roman Catholics have so often done sim- 170 Fifty Years. ilar injustice in dealing with other religious bodies does not alter the principle herein involved. Two wrongs do not make a right. Evil cannot be over- come with evil. These truisms are eternally true. The visible unity of Christ's Church will not come in this way. But it will come. "There will be one fold and one shepherd." Some of these Irish Catholic priests that I have known were ascetics, austere and rigid; others, a few here and there, were by visible tokens rather over-jolly, leaning toward the opposite extreme; others, not a few, went about doing good, placing their feet where they saw the footprints of their Lord. These Irish priests were mostly good talkers in the pulpit and out of it. They were not disposed to neutrality in any contest going on around them. They were ready to expend their enthusiasm, their eloquence, their money, and even their lives for any cause that was dear to them or a friend they loved. The old adage applies here: "Like priest, like peo- ple." No truer Methodists have I ever met than those of Irish blood. The exceptions are about as numerous as you would find in other nationali- ties: the same human nature being in all sorts of folk. The Irish women I have met might be described With the Irish. 171 in general terms in the same words which I have applied to Irish men. On the one hand, they are good, better, gnd best; and on the other hand, they are less good, no good at all, and bad. I will add here another observation which will not be dis- puted by my readers of either sex, namely: The best Irish women are better than the best Irish men; and the worst Irish women are worse than the worst Irish men — so at least they seem to me. The spotless purity, the never-tiring patience, the limitless self-sacrifice of Irish women show woman- hood at its best in their homes. They have the faith that believeth all things, endureth all things, and hopeth all things, transfiguring the lives and homes of their lowliest and highest alike with the glory of Bethlehem, Gethsemane, and Calvary. The worst of the Irish women — stop, my heart would fail me in any attempt to tell how deep is the fall and how utter the degradation of any wom- an, whether Irish or what not, who sinks into sin unchecked and is the slave of passion uncontrolled. The Irish women who compose the religious orders of the Roman Catholic Church have clone a blessed work in the name of the pitying Christ in all the cities of America where sickness, sorrow, pain, and death have called for ministrations of mercy and 172 Fifty Years. help such as only Christian women can bestow. I hold firmly and gratefully to my lifelong assurance that Christian homes are the holiest places on earth, and that wifehood and motherhood are the most sacred and loftiest functions of Christian womanhood. But should I reach heaven and not meet there the Sisters of Mercy and the Sisters of Charity whom I have met in the hovels of want, the abodes of sickness, and the chambers of death — yes, I will say it — should I reach another world called heaven, and miss there the faces of these "Sisters," I should feel that I was in the wrong place. (As I lift my eyes from this page a woman's face meets my gaze, a woman that wore no uniform as a member of any "order" or "society" here on earth, but who for nearly fifty years has been a liv- ing epistle demonstrating to me the truth as the truth is in Jesus.) God pity the Irish women who go wrong! — they stray so far! God bless the Irish women who follow their Master in paths of holy service on their way to the city of God, where they will join their songs with the songs of the white- robed multitude that no man can number, gath- ered out of every kindred, tongue, tribe, and peo- ple. The Irish saints will be among that multi- tude. And if the racial peculiarities of this life on With the Irish. 173 earth are carried to that world to come, we may be sure that the presence of the Irish contingent will not lessen the depth of their joy nor lower the high halleluiahs of their song. The Irish race are endowed with eloquence, cour- age, enthusiasm, reverence, and sensibility. These qualities have been exhibited preeminently in their past history. The present outlook for the race is brightening. The signs point in the direction of political solidarity. In the battles yet to be fought the Irish will be found on the firing line. The word of God promises the coming of the day when nothing shall hurt or destroy in all the earth, when Jesus shall reign King of kings and Lord of lords. Good Irishmen are praying and working to hasten its coming. My long-coveted trip to the old country still waits. A BOSTON MORNING CALL. ('75) A Boston Morning Call. It was easy to think of the city of God where there is no night of pain or grief or death that Au- gust morning in 1901 when I went out to visit Bishop Foster at his home in Newton Center, near Boston. The heated spell was broken, the copi- ous rains had washed the face of the city, suburbs, fields, and gardens; the sun was unclouded, and the breeze was brisk and bracing. My traveling companion was that one person whose presence has made all bright things brighter and all burdens easier to be borne in this world for so many gracious years. My meeting with the bishop was not cold or formal. As I grasped his hand it was a source of gratification to me to see that it was the same Bishop Foster who stood before me — the Bishop Foster I had loved ever since I first read his book on "Christian Purity." Both of us were younger and stronger then than we are now. The strong, kindly face, the noble head with the white hair a little thinner, the bright dark eyes that still melt with tenderness if they do not flash with all of the i2 (177) 178 Fifty Years. old-time brilliancy of the pulpit orator whom thou- sands heard with delight and remember gratefully — yes, though weak and worn and weary and wait- ing, this is the same Bishop Foster whose hand held mine in a brotherly clasp. "I have come to bring you a message — not my message, but a message from the Lord," I said to him: " 'All things work together for good to them that love God.' You know by whom it was spoken and where it is recorded in the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. It means just what is said: 'all things' means all things, and in the pres- ent tense." "Blessed be God, his word is true," said the patri- arch with bowed head. "We cannot understand such a saying now, it is too deep for us, but we can trust our Lord. He is the Head." The tone of his voice and the look on his face as he pronounced these four weighty words, "He is the Head," cannot be put on paper; but they ex- pressed the faith that holds its grip and the hope that maketh not ashamed. Not far off is also the joy that is unspeakable and full of glory. All that passed during this brief yet gracious in- terview cannot be recited here. For several years Bishop Foster has been disabled by bodily infirm- A Boston Morning Call. 179 ity. He is now eighty-two years old. He has been a minister of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ sixty-five years, having begun at the age of seventeen. He has suffered much. With all hu- mility and in sincere brotherly kindness I gave him the favorite prescription that I have tried to use during these last years of my own physical suffer- ing: Three parts of patience, and one more part of patience — four-thirds, if that were an allowable mathematical expression. We who have preached patience to others have gracious opportunity given us to practice what we preach — and here is one of the things that works together with other things for our good. Kneeling side by side, we prayed together. Our prayer was a prayer of thanksgiving — thanksgiv- ing for unfailing mercies going back, back through all our past lives, thanksgiving also for the hope that the grace that hath brought us safe thus far will bring us home at last. Surely the Lord was there, and we knew it. "Give my love to the brethren," said the bishop as we were taking our farewell — meaning by the "brethren" the million and a half of Southern Methodists whose love for him antedates the troubles of later times, and who believe that never 180 Fifty Years. for one moment has he lost the fraternal heart- beat that is in us all now — thanks be to God! There was a solemnity and touching pathos when, in parting, we spoke of meeting again, he pointed upward with a wistful look in his eyes that seemed to express what was felt by Paul, the aged apostle, when he said that it was "far better to depart and be with Christ." This is the order of God's dealing with us: Patience under suffering now; glory ever- lasting to follow. All things do work together for good. LE CONTE. (181) Le Conte. The peculiar troubles of the Reconstruction period that lost the Le Conte brothers to the South brought gain and gladness to California. In 1867 Professor Louis Agassiz, of Harvard Uni- versity, wrote to me at San Francisco, saying that if the Californians would act promptly they could secure the services of the brothers John and Joseph Le Conte for their new university just starting. "Their equals in their respective chairs would be hard to find/' said Agassiz, together with other things in the same spirit. They were written to at once, and invited to come on specified conditions. Their acceptance was prompt, and in a little while they were at their posts and at work. The senior brother, John, in deference to his age and expe- rience, was made the first provisional president of the university. He modestly and wisely preferred the duties of his professorship, and though he did good work in the presidency he was glad at the first opportunity to turn over its honors and toils to another. The recent death of Dr. Joseph Le Conte (183) 184 Fifty Years. brought him vividly before me as I knew him. The Californians — especially young California — fell in love with him at the start and never fell out. A striking illustration of this fact took place at San Diego a few years ago. The State Teachers' In- stitute was in session there at the time of my visit, and as an old Californian and former superintend- end of public instruction, I was kindly invited to visit the body. On being introduced I made a brief address, acknowledging gratefully the cour- tesy shown me, and indulged in some reminis- cences of earlier times and congratulations on the then hopeful condition and prospects of the uni- versity. During my brief talk I made incidental mention of the name of Dr. Joseph Le Conte — whereupon the institute exploded with enthusiasm. The members of the body went wild after a schol- arly, occidental fashion; they stamped their feet, they clapped their hands, they waved their hats, and cheered and cheered again. The last time I met Dr. Le Conte was at a Sun- day morning service in the little church near Berke- ley. I had discoursed in my own way on a favor- ite subject — the imperishability of all the acqui- sitions of a human soul on earth when hallowed by the blessing of God — and had reasonable "lib- Le Conte. 185 erty," as the fathers used to say. At the close of the service Dr. Le Conte, whose presence I had not perceived, came forward, and, grasping my hand across the chancel, said with signs of deep feeling: "I am an evolutionist, but a Christian ev- olutionist." That is what he was. He believed that evolution was the method, and that God was the Creator and Governor of this world and all worlds. On another occasion he said to me: "Change the days into periods in the opening chapter of Genesis, and a congress of all the scien- tists in the world could not change a word for the better." He was a communicant of the Presby- terian Church. In his devoutness, simplicity, and benignity he trod in the footsteps of the Master whose he was and whom he served. He realized the limitations of the human intellect here on earth, but he was no agnostic in the sense in which that word is often used as a disguise for blamable ignorance and an excuse for neglect of duty. He was no materialist in the sense in which that word is used by some who affect the proud humility of atheism, and glory in the shame of so losing them- selves in second causes as to forget or deny the Great First Cause. He was not one of the unde- vout scientists who exhibit that sort of madness. 1 86 Fifty Years. He was as grand as Mount Shasta, and as benig- nant as the sunshine on the California hills in its season. It was fitting that he should die where he did — amid the beauties and wonders of the Yo- semite Valley. He loved Nature in all her moods; he caught the whisper of her secrets, and then in his own matchless way expounded them to his fel- lows. That his eyes have opened upon the inef- fable beauty and sublimer wonders of the world of spirits, I reverently believe. The record he made and the influence that will follow from his life and his teaching will be an imperishable part of the en- dowment of the University of California. The young men of his generation took knowledge of him that he had been with Jesus, and it was im- possible for them ever after to be what they pre- viously were or to move on their former plane. The familiar thought here comes to me again: What a blessed sphere of being will be that where such spirits as that of Le Conte are gathering! The certainty and amplitude of their knowledge will leave nothing to be desired. The promise is, that they shall be satisfied when they awake in the likeness of their Lord. Satisfied — that is a very comprehensive word. It implies three things at least: First, exemption from weakness; sown in Le Conte. 187 weakness, the spiritual body is raised in power. Second, exemption from liability to sin; the image of Christ means holiness beyond a doubt and be- yond the danger of relapse. Third, exemption from any confusion or misgiving concerning the wisdom and goodness of God in his dealings with us as moral agents. We shall be satisfied that no soul was ever punished for any sin that was not voluntary. No man will be dissatisfied there, be- cause all will see clearly what is affirmed explicitly in the word of God, that no man is ruined by any sin save his own. Power without weakness, knowl- edge without ignorance, holiness without sin — no wonder such an inheritance satisfies. The wonder is, that with such a destiny revealed as a possibility, anybody should be satisfied to imperil it by the de- lay of a single day. If I knew what Joseph Le Conte first saw, and what he first thought, when after closing his eyes in the Yosemite Valley he awoke in the likeness of his Lord — if I knew what he knows, I would tell it to the reader. But as he has not come back with the message, we will do as he did: we will trust the love that we can feel, and wait for the light that is coming. THE NIGHT I SAW AND HEARD EDGAR ALLAN POE. (189) The Night I Saw and Heard Edgar Allan Poe. The sad face of Edgar Allan Poe would brighten for at least one brief moment could he see this Vir- ginia edition of his works. I scarcely know what word to use in describing it. The poet himself might find a single descriptive unique enough to fit. But he is elsewhere and otherwise employed. So it is left to some of us living men who, though we may lack his genius, are not wholly lacking in a perception of beauty, to thank Professor James A. Harrison, the editor, together with the pub- lishers, for these volumes — twenty-eight in num- ber — in which are printed, in a form so nearly per- fect, the works of a literary genius so weird and wonderful that he almost makes a class by him- self. The publication of this edition of Poe's works is one of the many signs of a revival of interest in him as a man and as a writer. It is not my purpose in this paper to review these volumes, though it would be a labor of love to one who has always felt the charm of Poe's genius, and had some slight (190 192 Fifty Years. knowledge of the man as he was in the last days of his life — a life that seemed all too brief when he died, leaving those who survived and came after him to guess and wonder what he might have done had he lived as long as some of his critics. At the time of Poe's death it was an unsettled question as to what was his proper place in litera- ture — a meteor sweeping across the heavens, or a fixed star that was to shine always in the literary firmament. This curiosity was the principal mo- tive that prompted me to attend the lecture de- livered by him in the city of Richmond just before his death. With this motive there were mingled a feeling of neighborliness and a sentiment of local patriotism. Poe was then a much-talked-of man. The critics were still trying to determine whether we had among us a brilliant literary genius or merely an oddity of some sort. But at any rate he had caught the ear of the reading public, and their curiosity was whetted to see and know more concerning him. The best people of Richmond were glad to learn that he had taken a pledge of total abstinence from alcoholic liquors and become a member of the order of Sons of Temperance, which was then making a great stir in all parts of our country. This organization was the advance Edgar Allan Poe. 193 guard of the temperance forces, fighting battles and winning victories whose effects are felt unto this day. It was given out that Mr. Poe had arranged to take a place on the editorial staff of the Rich- mond Examiner, a newspaper of growing notoriety and influence which was aspiring to a position of leadership among its contemporaries in the South. It was understood that he was to be its literary editor, with a carte blanche to speak his whole mind on all subjects, and with the expectation that he was to make a fresh start and do the best work of which he was capable. John M. Daniel was to con- tinue as editor in chief, with special responsibility for its political attitude and utterances. This meant that the paper was to be ultra state's rights in its views, trenchant in its style, ready for a tilt with all timid and doubting patriots, and apt to apply a touch of caustic to any dunce or weakling who came before the reading public in such a way as to justify the belief that he was a fool. And how Daniel's satires did burn! The victims of his per- sonal paragraphs were pilloried to be gazed at by their fellows with pity or contempt, as they might severally incline. Robert W. Hughes was to be a special contributor on economic questions. He had a passion for statistics, and made the impres- *3 194 Fifty Years. sion upon the average reader that he understood the science of political economy, and was a true patriot — an impression that was somewhat modi- fied in after days. Arthur E. Petticolas was to be the art editor. He was of a Virginia family that took to art as naturally as birds take to singing and flying. Painting and music were specialized by the Petticolases, male and female, and x\rthur pos- sessed both the enthusiasm and the culture that qualified him for his work as an art editor. Then there was Patrick Henry Aylette, who was to be a sort of special contributor, a free lance in the discussion of all questions in ethics or politics. He was a descendant and namesake of Patrick Henry, the inspired orator of our American Revo- lution. Aylette was a picturesque specimen of the Virginia lawyer-politician of that day. He was almost a physical giant, being nearly seven feet high. He overflowed with good fellowship, and had a vein of genuine humor running through all he spoke and wrote. This was a strong journalistic combination, and would have produced notable results had the scheme been consummated. To give expression to their interest in him as a rising literary celebrity, to extend to him moral encouragement in the life of self-control to which Edgar Allan Poe. 195 he had pledged himself, and to furnish him prac- tical help in the adjustment of his pecuniary af- fairs, Air. Poe was invited to deliver a pay lecture on any subject he might be pleased to name. The assembly room of the old Exchange Hotel was chosen as the place; the price of tickets was fixed at five dollars each. About three hundred persons could be crowded into this auditorium; yet every seat was filled, and some of the ticket-holders had to be turned away. I was one of the audience, and was fortunate in getting a good seat where I could see and hear all that I came to see and hear. When Mr. Poe came upon the platform and stood before that crowded house and looked into those friendly faces, over his features came almost a smile as he bowed with quiet dignity and grace. Almost a smile — so I write the words — for, though I saw him frequently during the last months of his life, I never saw him laugh or even smile. His face was habitually the saddest I ever saw. Having been duly introduced to his audience, he announced his subject, namely: "The Poetic Prin- ciple." Readers who are familiar with Poe's works know what he said then and there; those who may wish to read its full text may find it in Volume XIV. of this Virginia edition of his works, last 196 Fifty Years. chapter. He stood before us a medium-sized man, elegantly dressed in black, with dark complexion, good features, shapely head, and great dark eyes that after having once seen you could never for- get. As to elocution, there was not a trace of any such thing in his delivery. Not a gesture was made by him from first to last. His voice was without any conscious inflections in the usual sense of the word. Yet he held the undivided attention of his hearers as he stood there and read page after page — seeming somehow to evoke the very souls of the poets he quoted, now and then lifting those large, luminous eyes and flashing forth meanings newer and deeper into the rhythmical sentences as they flowed from his lips. Those eyes! they were eyes that held your gaze with a strange fascination, and seemed to see deeper and farther than those of other men. When he spoke contemptuously of "the thing called the North American Review" the glint of them was as a lightning flash; when he spoke of Alfred Tennyson as "the noblest poet that ever lived," their kindly expression seemed to diffuse a gentle glow over that listening assem- bly. It was a touch subtle but sure that brought out the special characteristics of the different poets of whom he gave his critical judgments and from Edgar Allan Poe. 197 whom he quoted at length — Bryant, Longfellow, Pinkney, Moore, Byron, Willis, Hood, Scott, Thomson, Tennyson, and the rest. In my own mind this lecture of Poe is associated with one that I heard from Ralph Waldo Emerson in San Fran- cisco at a later day. Two tamer readers I never heard, judging by ordinary standards; yet esti- mated according to the pleasure received in the hearing of them, and the permanence of the impres- sion made by them, they hold a place all their own among my delightful recollections of the men I have seen and heard. Whenever he made any al- lusion to the Supreme Being, Mr. Poe's manner was marked by every indication of profound reverence. The thesis of the lecture, as given in Mr. Poe's own words, was as follows: "I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical de- scription of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the intellect or with the conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever with duty or with truth." The very heart's core of the lecture, as I remember it at this distance of time, is in the extract follow- ing. As I trace the words on the printed page that lies before me, it all comes back vividly — the magnetism of his presence, the subtle thrill that 198 Fifty Years. was in his voice, and the strange fascination that was in his eyes. Having conveyed to us his con- ception of the poetic principle — suggesting that, while this principle itself is strictly and simply the human aspiration for supernal beauty, and af- firming that the manifestation of the principle is always found in an elevating excitement of the soul — that passion which is the intoxication of the heart — or of that truth which is the satisfaction of the reason — he said: "We shall reach, however, more immediately a distinct conception of what the true poetry is, by mere reference to a few of the simple elements which induce in the poet himself the true poetical effect. He recognizes the ambrosia which nour- ishes his soul, in the bright orbs that shine in heaven — in the volutes of the flower — in the clus- tering of the low shrubberies — in the waving of the grain-fields — in the slanting of the tall mountains — in the grouping of clouds — in the twinkling of half-hidden brooks — in the gleaming of silver riv- ers — in the repose of sequestered lakes — in the star- mirroring depths of lonely wells. He perceives it in the song of birds — in the harp of yEolus — in the sighing of the night-wind — in the repining voice of the forest — in the surf that complains to the shore Edgar Allan Poe. 199 — in the fresh breath of the woods — in the scent of the violet — in the voluptuous perfume of the hyacinth — in the suggestive odor that comes to him at eventide from far-distant, undiscovered is- lands, over dim oceans, illimitable and unexplored. He owns it in all noble thoughts — in all unworldly motives — in all holy impulses — in all chivalrous, generous, self-sacrificing deeds. He feels it in the beauty of woman — in the grace of'her step — in the luster of her eye — in the melody of her voice — in her soft laughter — in her sigh — in the harmony of the rustling of her robes. He deeply feels it in her winning endearments — in her burning enthusiasms — in her gentle charities — in her meek and devo- tional endurances — but above all, ah, far above all, he kneels to it — he worships it in the faith, in the purity, in the strength, in the altogether divine majesty of her love." A few days afterwards it was whispered from lip to lip in the streets of Richmond, "Poe is dead!" I have no heart for the recital of the details of the story of his death. The facts in brief, as they were understood at the time, were these: At a birthday party in the city of Baltimore he was tempted to break his pledge of total abstinence; he yielded and fell, and died in a hospital from the effects of over- 200 Fifty Years. indulgence. Here the curtain falls upon this piti- ful, pitiful tragedy of the life and death of Edgar Allan Poe. It would be idle to indulge in speculation as to what Poe might have achieved had he lived longer or differently. But one thing may be said here: The quality of the work he did during the period of his total abstinence, including this very lecture, proves that with him there was no necessary con- nection between alcoholic stimulation and literary inspiration. ' SOME DOCTORS OF DIVINITY (20I) Some Doctors of Divinity. To certain doctors of divinity, properly so called, our Church owes a special debt of gratitude for a theology that has been in the main consistent with itself and reverently conformable to the teaching of the Bible. They were genuine doctors of di- vinity, men who were first students before they became teachers. They were disciples who had sat at the feet of the Master and learned of him, and who from that personal contact went forth to teach with authority, and not as the scribes who only memorized and repeated dead formulas, nor as others who propounded their conundrums and kept up their guessings and called the exercise the study of divinity. The men who have taught theology among us have been men who believed in God, a personal God in whom we live and move and have our being, who is not far from every one of us — Creator, Preserver, Redeemer. They believed in God, and it was not difficult for them to believe that he could reveal himself to the children of men. These men of large caliber set a fashion, so to speak, of searching for truth rather than seek- ( 2 °3) 204 Fifty Years. ing for novelties. As mighty men-of-war they sailed the seas of religious thought, carrying guns that were too heavy for the smaller craft that flaunted hostile flags and mistook and misnamed things so grossly. There they are — a group of these teachers of our teachers — the editors of our Southern Methodist Quarterly Review in succession: Henry B. Bascom, Albert Taylor Bledsoe, David S. Doggett, Thomas O. Summers, James W. Hinton, W. P. Harrison, John J. Tigert. The expression was used deliberately: these men were the teach- ers of those who in their turn became the teachers of our people at large — holding to the form of sound words, and following the good fashion set by declining to take a panic whenever an untrained yoke jostled the ark. Bascom, the first editor of the Review, was more of an orator than a writer; but he was a massive man, a thinker who had a mighty sweep in his thought, a leader who was followed gladly and proudly in his day. He struck a high key- note for our Quarterly Review at the very start, setting forth a supernatural religion that dealt with divinity and with accompanying signs and wonders. He trod the sunlit summits of faith above the fogs of doubt: men in the Church who Some Doctors of Divinity. 205 were seeking" ammunition with which to fight it had to go elsewhere to find it. And there is Bledsoe, militant and mighty Dr. Bledsoe, who had the strength of a giant and loved to put it forth in fair and open fight for the truth as he saw it. A young theologian of to-day, tak- ing up Bledsoe's "Theodicy" and looking over its chapters, will rightly conclude that there were giants in his day, or that at least there was one thinker who gave to the exposition of Arminian theology a learning that grasped the whole sub- ject and a logic that went to the bottom of it. There may be more of condensation and some change for the better in the methods of modern text-books on theology; but the theological stu- dent will prize Bledsoe in his library as long as the student of natural history studies the anatomy of the mastodon in the museum. Bledsoe was a controversialist who did love the truth and did love to fight, and so had a double motive for combat. His duels excited a lively interest at the time they took place: the last that was seen of some of his opposers was when they met him in the open sea of polemic conflict, and after the shock of the col- lision were seen no more. Doggett is no stranger to the reader of these 206 Fifty Years. pages. As a preacher and writer he was ortho- doxy set to music, a Chrysostom in style, who charmed his contemporaries by the solid strength of his thought and the splendor of his rhetoric, but never fell into the sin of Nadab and Abihu by kind- ling the strange fires of exegetical eccentricity or magnifying the transient trifles of the passing hour — as the manner of some is. As the editor of the Quarterly Review his influence was both conserva- tive and potential in a high degree: his learning was set for the truth as the truth is in Jesus, evangelical scholars being the judges. And I may be per- mitted in all kindness and candor to say just here that they are the best judges in this matter: there is a subtle quality in Christ's gospel which is recog- nized by the scholar who is evangelical as well as learned. This quality is spiritual insight; it is not a substitute for learning, but it is the one thing that supplements the furnishing of a teacher truly sent of God — a man who on the human side dis- cerns natural things in the natural way, and yet knows that spiritual things must be spiritually discerned. This does not look to the substitution of rant and cant for study on the one hand; nor does it substitute the profane babblings of materi- alism, the oppositions of science so called, for the Some Doctors of Divinity. 207 faith which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen by the natural eye. Thomas O. Summers I have described elsewhere — Dr. Summers, the student always busy, the po- lemic always ready to give a reason for the creed he taught, the brother whose hand was ready to clasp in fellowship that of every other disciple of Jesus on earth. He did seem to think it was strange that anybody with the open Bible before him could doubt that the Methodists were in the apostolic succession, and the movement that John Wesley providentially begun was bound logically to run into the millennium. At the same time he thought it just as strange that any person could make a difference of opinion with regard to religion the ground of a difference of feeling between brethren of different communions. He was ready in season and out of season to contend for the faith once de- livered to the saints, while at the same time he would not have scorned to wash the feet of the poorest disciple of any persuasion on earth that named the name of Christ. He stood ready to bruise the head of any snake of unbelief that showed itself in his day. He was a learned, watchful, and courageous saint, who felt that he must fight now, fully expecting to reign with his Lord hereafter. 208 Fifty Years. The time when they could not endure sound doc- trine did not come in his day: they had to endure; he left them no choice. Hinton was and is one of the kindliest of men, but his religious opinions were so fused in the white heat of the great evangelical revival in Georgia that he finds it difficult to imagine how a man can sincerely call himself a Christian and hold to any other view of doctrine or method of saving souls. He spared no pains or toil in expounding and de- fending the truth, and grudged no space in his Review for the most elaborate discussion of the grandest themes by the ablest thinkers. He ex- hibited the sincerity that is patent to all, and had that sort of orthodoxy that is contagious. Dr. Harrison was another Georgian like-minded in essentials. He was a patient student, and turned all his studies one way. To get a flash of exegeti- cal light he would have been willing to devour a whole library or to cross an ocean, if possible. He was an enthusiast in pursuit of the highest truths. He loved to follow an exegetical trail that was cold to ordinary students and teachers. If the sources of biblical interpretation were not clear of obstruction or free from alloy, it was surely no fault of his. No one who knew him as he was feared Some Doctors of Divinity. 209 any failure from lack of learning, lack of zeal, or lack of the courage of his convictions: he was un- worldly and unafraid of the world's frown. The present incumbent — John J. Tigert — is in the true succession. He was a pupil of Summers and of Granbery — a fact that furnishes a presump- tion of straight-edged orthodoxy which we all de- light to acknowledge. He is clear and strong, able to toil mightily, and very apt to place his work where it will tell most. The streams from which are supplied the teachings which flow through the pages of his Review are kept pure. Dr. Tigert is one of the genuine doctors of divinity: he knows the anatomy of the body ecclesiastic, and has his finger on its pulse. But he seems to have little am- bition to be the inventor of nostrums to cure its ills, real or imaginary: rather it seems to be his de- sire to feed our people with food convenient for them, to have them exercise themselves unto god- liness, and thus grow in grace and in the knowl- edge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Yet he furnishes an illustration of the pleasing fact that a man need not stop growing because he thinks within the lines of orthodoxy: he need not take a twist be- cause he is not hide-bound. There are those who seem to think that a little touch of heresy is a sign 14 210 Fifty Years. of a little streak of genius; but Dr. Tigert is not one of these. Three other names seem to come in here by in- evitable suggestion — the names of W. F. Tillett, Gross Alexander, and J. A. Kern. Drs. Tillett, Alexander, and Kern, all doctors of divinity worthy of the ne.me — each being the author of a book of divinity as well as a successful teacher of it. Dr. Tillett's book is entitled "Personal Salvation," and is a notably luminous, strong, and direct presenta- tion of the most momentous of all questions. Dr. Alexander's book, "The Son of Man," was a happy surprise to the religious public because of its in- cisiveness and originality and spiritual insight. Dr. Kern's book, "The Way of the Preacher," is such a rare combination of literary grace and prac- tical sagacity that it won its way with the preach- ers at once. It involves no strain on the con- science or stretch of meaning to call these teachers doctors of divinity. There are others — but this chapter is now full long. To put in all the names that crowd upon my mind would require not only another chapter, but a new book. THAT NEW GRAVE IN THE FAR EAST. (211) That New Grave in the Far East. "I am distressed for thee, my brother; . . . very pleasant hast thou been unto me." The words will come to mind when I think of the death of my dear friend, and nearest neighbor, Dr. D. C. Rankin, who died in Korea December 27, 1902. My judgment tells me that the dominant note in our souls should be that of thankfulness for the gift of such a man to the Church; but the sense of loss is so great, the grief we feel is so sore, that we can do little more than weep with those that weep, while we think of the new grave in the far East and remember that we shall see his kindly face no more on earth. These wintry skies have a deeper gloom when we think of our missing friend and brother. So speaks my heart. I know that what God does is right, and that what he permits is best. T do not mistrust his wisdom, nor rebel against his providence. But this is the paradox of this event to us: the very qualities that make us thankful that God gave such a man as Dr. Rankin to the Church intensify our grief and enhance our sense of loss when he is taken away. ("3) 214 Fifty Years. Dr. Rankin was a burning and shining light. He had a zeal that was according to knowledge. He was a living encyclopedia of missionary infor- mation and religious knowledge in general — and his knowledge was minute and exact as it was ample. His soul was on fire with love for lost souls; it was his joy to spend and be spent in his Master's service. Had he been spared to come back to his editorial work after making this East- ern tour, he would have sown the Church thick with facts bearing on the missionary work. He burned and shined; the peril of lost souls quickened his zeal, and the love of the living Christ gave him the spring of power. The cablegram that brought the tidings of his death was in these words: "Rankin asleep." Brave and beloved brother, your true heart never failed to respond to the call of duty, your willing hand never rested when it could do any work for your Lord. The Parable of the Talents takes on a fresh meaning when applied to such a life as that of Dr. Rankin; the reward of faithful service here on earth will be larger opportunity "Up Yonder" where the laborers shall be reckoned with by the Lord of the harvest. He will find congenial com- panionship among the heavenly spirits, whose of- That New Grave in the Far East. 215 fice it is to minister unto the heirs of salvation. Our thought and our love follow him in his flight; through grace abiding and abounding we hope to meet him where our Lord will make good his prom- ise that where he is we shall be also; and where he will also make good that other promise which our human hearts so much need in the presence of a sorrow like this: "What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." Above all and most of all, Dr. Rankin was a Christian scholar and worker. He made all his vast and varied attainments tributary to his work as a minister of the gospel of Christ. He laid all at the feet of his Lord. He could say with the apostle Paul, "This one thing I do." He was truly a marvel of scholastic fullness and accuracy — history, art, science, philosophy, literature, he knew as few men know them. He intermeddled with all learning, and what he knew he knew thor- oughly. His mind was a storehouse of useful knowledge, not the lumber-room of a pedant. A more transparently guileless man I have not known. He loved the truth, spared no pains in searching for it, and would have died for it, had duty called him to do so. I am glad that God blessed mv life with the 216 Fifty Years. friendship of such a man. I am thankful for the help he gave me in Christian living. I rejoice in the hope that through the unfailing mercy of God I shall meet him where we shall know even as we are known — that is to say, it will be made clear to us that we and our loved ones are led by the best way, though it was a way we knew not. But — yes, the question still suggests itself while we are on this side of the Great Mystery — why was it that such a man as D. C. Rankin should have the way opened for him to visit the mission fields in the far East, hoping to gain fuller equipment for his work, and then find there only a grave? My eye rests at this moment on the twenty-third verse of the thirty-seventh Psalm: "The steps of a good man are ordered [or established] by the Lord; and he de- lighteth in his way." I know, I feel that it is true; yea, more, I get a glimpse of the fact that to die as he did and where he did crystallized for his breth- ren a lesson that will not lose its beauty nor fail in its inspiration. Things do not go as we expect in this life — but the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous. That new grave in the far East means a current of fresh missionary zeal flowing into many souls who see in such souls as Rankin the image of the Christ who tasted death for every man. AN EXPERIENCE. («7) An Experience. I had been having frequent returns of those ''sinking spells" which were among the signs of my being an actual sufferer from that indefinable and relentless malady called nervous prostration. It is a term that means nothing in particular, but everything in general that is puzzling to science and painful to its victims. An attempt to describe it will not be made in this place. A description is not needed by readers who know what it is by ex- perience, and it would not be understood by any reader who has not felt it. I claim a brotherly re- lation to all who have had personal acquaintance with this malady, which is the product of the high pressure of this progressive time when we are going somewhere so fast. They know how it has made the days so trying and the nights so long. And some of them know how it has made sweeter the hope of entrance upon that life of which it is said, in words that seem so strange to us now, that one of its features will be everlasting exemption from pain. That is a good thing in a good world. One May day in this present year of our Lord (219) 220 Fifty Years. 1903 I was called to visit one of these sufferers. This sufferer was a sufferer indeed. She had been a very energetic woman in business life and as a worker in the Church — one of those women who took part in all the good work that was going on around her, keeping step with the foremost in the path of duty. Now she was a nervous wreck, un- able to walk, or even to stand upon her feet unas- sisted; her power of speech greatly impaired, her whole frame partially paralyzed and burdened with those disabilities that make a perpetual draft upon human patience and endurance. For her comfort and help I wished to take her a message from our heavenly Father, and had selected a passage from that golden chapter of New Testament Scripture, the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans: "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God." (Verse 28.) On the way to her house, as I rode along revolving these words, one of those "sinking spells" came upon me that have so often seemed to make it doubtful whether I was for the time being in or out of the body. After recovering consciousness, and de- clining to forego the intended visit, as was kindly suggested by my traveling companion, I rode on, revolving mentally my intended message. The An Experience. 221 more I thought of it the more it grew upon me. "This very sinking spell, from which I have just emerged," I said to myself, "punctuates the mes- sage that I carry, and tests the sincerity of the messenger." These words are truly wonderful words: "All things work together for good to them that love God." What do they mean? Just this: that everything that touches a soul that loves God is subsidized for the good of that soul. This in- cludes all losses, all crosses, all suffering. This wonderful saying broadened and brightened as I held it before my mind. Then the certainty that this wonderful saying is true was a source of still deeper joy. "We know," said the apostle. So we may say; so we do say. How do we know? (1) We know it, first of all, because God has said it. We can take him at his word. All great and gracious things are possible unto our great and gracious Lord. (2) We know it is so because we feel the love which is the condition of the blessing promised. Feeling this love in its sweetness and power now, it is impossible for us to doubt its continuance. We said to ourselves that we would hold this mighty truth in our thought; we would dwell on it in our prayers; we would make it a cause for 222 Fifty Years. praise and thanksgiving — so we felt, and so we purposed in our hearts; and the first thing we knew our souls were flooded with a mighty joy in the full persuasion — as the apostle expresses it in the clos- ing verses of this eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans — that from such love nothing shall be able to separate us in time or in eternity. So I felt as I delivered God's message to my suf- fering friend: so I feel now. I felt then that all was safe: I feel now that all is safe. Therefore I will join in the song that celebrates the Victory of Faith. And not forgetting that this love reaches forward and takes hold of eternity, I hope by and by with larger powers and fuller freedom to join in a sweeter, nobler song. THE UNSLEEPING NIGHT WATCH. ( 22 3) The Unsleeping Night Watch. At a time when I was suffering much pain, and losing much sleep, and when many of my friends were fighting the same hard battle sorely pressed, this one hundred and twenty-first Psalm came to me with a touch of help and comfort. When such a touch is genuine, it brings a desire to pass it on to others. The pathos of some of these cases of suffering from insomnia and nervous distress could not be put into words. Such sufferers need a special word of comfort — and here it is in the fourth verse of that Psalm: "Behold, he that keepeth Is- rael shall neither slumber nor sleep." This is the day of trained nurses for the sick- room, and they are a beneficent agency of our mod- ern civilization. But with all their special study and training they are limited. In the deep night watches they grow weary and heavy in spirit, need- ing slumber and sleep for themselves. Love itself, even the truest and the deepest, flags. The spirit may be willing, but the flesh is weak. There is a limit — not to what human love would do for its beloved object, but to what it can *5 ( 22 5) 226 Fifty Years. do. Blessed are they who know what such love is. There are some who have known it in days bygone, but by whose bedside will sit no more the patient watchers whose vigil was the expression of the love that gives its all gladly, yet with the reminder of its limitations that comes again and again in these solemn crises that bring us face to face with the fact that we are part of that "whole creation that groaneth and travaileth in pain to- gether until now." But there is a Benignant Presence in the sick- room all the time, when we sleep and when we wake alike. This is the promise: "He that keepeth thee will not slumber." The consciousness of that Presence filled my soul the night before this short chapter was written with a sense of holy security and ineffable peace as I closed my eyes for slumber. When I awoke next morning that Presence was still there. And a voice spoke to my soul in the very words of the Lord who is our keeper, the un- sleeping, unchanging helper and comforter of his people. "The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore." This is enough. It takes in all our goings and comings The Unsleeping Night Watch. 227 on earth. It includes all that lies before us in eter- nity. For the fifty years of the mercy which has not failed me for a single day, I magnify the Lord. And for the hope that it will be with me ever- more, my soul sings for joy, joining in this song of degrees. ALL CREATION. (229) All Creation. There lies below us the city of Asheville in the Land of the Sky, far enough away to drown its noises, but near enough to disclose every feature of interest. Just beyond is the French Broad River winding in and out among the cliffs, with here and there still, smooth stretches of deep water, and anon foaming among the rocks or rippling over the pebbly shallows. In the distance is the dim outline of the Unaka range of mountains, the dividing line between North Carolina and Tennes- see; among its peaks the "Old Bald" of Yancey county and Roan Mountain. Turning to the left and northwesterly, the outlines of the Smoky Mountains are seen, their jagged peaks cleaving the sky. Almost directly westward are the spurs and pinnacles encircling the head waters of Sandy Mush, New Found, and Turkey creeks — all tribu- taries to the French Broad. Then through a deep gap westward can be seen the top of the Balsam Mountains, and to the left of these the Cold Mountains at the head of Pigeon River. Then looking to the left our vision traverses the various ( 2 30 232 Fifty Years. ridges and spurs of mountains at the head of Hom- iny Creek until it rests on the majestic summit of Mount Pisgah, five thousand and seven hundred feet above sea level, flushed with the glories of the setting sun. From Pisgah by gentle gradations the line of vision moves along the tops of the dis- tant ridges of the range eastward and southerly, until it is lost in the smooth outlines of the Blue Ridge — the Blue Ridge in sight of which I was born, and which has been imaged in my soul wher- ever I have traveled by land or sea. Beyond the city of Asheville lying at our feet is Biltmore, chaste as a lily and classic as a true artist's dream. Back of us on the road we had followed returning from the Swiss Dairy Farm — a five-mile ride of matchless beauty — at a point on the narrow ridge where the landscape stretched away and away and away on all sides, over the sleeping valleys, the flowing river, the rippling brooks, the rugged cliffs, and the sloping hills, some one with a poet's soul, but an inartistic hand, had scrawled on a rough board the words, "All Creation." Then and there, with a sense of the Infinite in the depth of my soul, this thought came to me: The forward look takes in all creation, all that there is in all worlds — the Infinite God, the boundless universe, and all eter- All Creation. 233 nity. We are pupils in a school in which God is our teacher, his universe our text-book, and his eternal years the term of our tuition. What we know not now we shall know hereafter: the words have a meaning deeper than we can fathom. There will be no hurry, there will be no failure. All things are ours; we are Christ's, and Christ is God's. This is our inheritance. Nothing less will satisfy the child of God. The details are withheld from us now; it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we shall be like our Lord, for we shall see him as he is. There is no room for doubt. Now are we the sons of God — this we know — the Holy Spirit bear- ing witness in the present tense to our sonship, and certifying our heirship to the riches of his grace and glory. Yes; all creation is embraced in the vision of our faith, and, as Tennyson puts it, All experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades Forever and forever when I move. CALIFORNIA IN WAR AND PEACE. ( 2 35) California in War and Peace. Some incidents in my life in California illustrate two phases of American character. First, a true American worthy of the name believes that an- other man may differ from him in opinion and yet be honest at heart. Secondly, a true American believes that when a fight is ended and the white flag of peace is flying combatants on both sides should ground their arms, clasp hands, and be friends. During the War between the States I was the edi- tor and publisher of the Pacific Methodist, in the city of San Francisco, the organ of the Methodist Epis- copal Church, South, for the Pacific coast. It was then, I believe, the only paper west of the Rocky Mountains that bore the word "South" in its title. While I took no part in party politics, I did not disguise the fact that, as a Southern man, my sym- pathies were with my own people. In fact, I could not have done so had I tried. My temperament forbade. Of course, in the fierce excitement of the war time, I and my paper did not escape criticism and denunciation. Threats of personal violence ( 2 37) 238 Fifty Years. were made against me and the paper more than once when excitement ran highest. Mark Twain punctuated the sentiment of the then dominant sectional element in California when he said: "Fitz- gerald is editor and publisher of the organ of the Methodist Church, South, whose object is to show Southern people the Southern route to the South- ern corner of a Southern heaven." That was said only in fun; the irrepressible humorist had no ill- will toward the Southern Methodist people or the editor. In 1863 the Southern wing of the then divided Democratic party nominated me for the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction of Cali- fornia. They gave me their full vote (which was far short of a majority) at the polls, though my candidacy was rather passive than positive, as I made no speeches, wrote no letters, made no prom- ises, and spent no pennies in the canvass. In 1867, when the war was over, the divided Democrats came together, and at their State Convention unanimously nominated me again for the same of- fice. The war was over truly, the reaction had come, and the great-hearted Californians — not all saints, but most of them magnanimous and brave — by their votes elected the Southern Methodist California in War and Peace. 239 editor to that honorable and important office. The city of San Francisco, where I lived, gave me a handsome majority. That was American brotherhood; that was California manhood on its princely side. Whoso has once felt its touch never forgets it. And it might also be said that whoso has seen Californians when their wrath was kindled, as in the stormy days and nights of the Vigilance Committee, will never forget that side of the pic- ture. Another post-bellum episode of California life illustrates what Americans are on their good side, and gives a glimpse of the California that holds, and always will hold, a warm place in my heart. Some of my readers have a vivid recollection of the dark days in the South in 1867, when the failure of the crops brought to the South the danger of fam- ine following the horrors of war. As the accounts of the Southern situation that reached us in Cali- fornia became more and more distressing, the gen- erous hearts of the Californians were touched with genuine sympathy. From week to week the dis- tressing facts portending this trouble in the South were published by me in the paper I was editing in San Francisco. From Knight's Ferry, a little min- ing camp on the Stanislaus River, the sum of 240 Fifty Years. $509.09 in gold was contributed by the settlers and forwarded to me at San Francisco, with instruc- tions to transmit the money to General R. E. Lee for the relief of any of the families of Southern soldiers in Virginia that might be in need of as- sistance. Following my instructions, I sent the money at once. In due course of the mails came this note of acknowledgment from General Lee : Lexington, Va., i June, 1867. My Dear Sir: I received from Messrs. Lees and Waller, of New York, $509 in gold, forwarded by you, for the widows and orphans of Southern soldiers in Virginia, which I will endeavor to apply for the relief of those most requiring aid. I hope you will permit me to express my individual thanks to you and the generous donors for the aid thus given to the suffering women and children of Virginia, whose grateful prayers in your behalf will, I am sure, be registered in heaven. With great respect, Your obedient servant, R. E. Lee. Rev. O. P. Fitzgerald. In the third chapter of the Old Testament prophet Malachi there is an allusion which was probably present to the mind of General Lee when he spoke of prayers "registered in heaven." A Book of Remembrance is kept by Him to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid. The mental habitude California in War and Peace. 241 and method ot the trained soldier and the unfalter- ing faith of a man of God find expression in the use of this figure. The foregoing modest note of General Lee fed a flame that was already kindled in the hearts of the Californians. A movement in behalf of the suffer- ing Southern people was organized, and in a short time one hundred thousand dollars in gold was raised and forwarded to the relief committees in the South, without a discordant note among the con- tributors or the miscarriage of a dollar. 16 FROM PADAN-ARAM BACK TO BETHEL. ( 2 43) From Padan-aram Back to Bethel. On a bright Sunday morning in November, 1902, I had a fresh proof of a Bible truth that had long been dear to me. This is the way it came about: With some doubt whether I should be able to go through with it, I had agreed to hold on that day a special ordination service in one of the Meth- odist churches of East Nashville. Several fea- tures of the occasion invested it with unusual in- terest, and I had made special prayer that the wor- shipers might then and there be blessed of the Lord, trusting that I myself might also be fed with the rest. There was to be the ordination of an elder, an informal installation of church officials, and the administration of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. This prayer was in my heart: "Gracious Lord, in thine own best way bless me in this service." It is obvious enough that there was too much of it, humanly speaking, even for a strong man in full health. I preached after a fash- ion; I exhorted in snatches; I went through the ritual of the ordination; I improvised a form of installation of church officers; and while I felt I was (M5) 246 Fifty Years. trying to do my duty, I realized that my wheels drave heavily indeed. The spirit, I said to myself, is willing, but the flesh is weak: how can a man who knows what is meant by the words "nervous pros- tration" expect to find again much of light or life while still in the body pent? These bodies! how they clog our movements now! The heavenly vision, seen through tear-blinded eyes and the film of the fleshly veil, is dimmed. So I said to myself; and eager as I was to get a blessing from the Lord then and there, and that the service might be made a channel of blessing to the hearts of the people, the exercises proceeded on a dead level of decent dullness, not to say deadness — at least so it seemed to me. The ministers assisting in the service sang and prayed and read the Scriptures in good form; all were kindly and considerate to the officiating brother, whose physical weakness touched the thoughtful sympathy of a congregation that for successive generations had been trained to broth- erly kindness and hospitality. My inward desire and prayer was still this: "In thine own best way, gracious Lord, bless me in this service. As to the manner of it, and in all things, thy will be done; but where we are, as we are, and as we need, bless us, Lord." We had reached the prayer of conse- From Padan-aram Back to Bethel. 247 cration in the ritual of the Lord's Supper, and in making the general confession came to the words, "Have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us, most merciful Father: for thy Son Qur Lord Jesus Christ's sake, forgive us all that is past" — when with those last six words it pleased God to pour his blessing into my soul in his own best way. The fact of complete absolution, and the blessedness of knowing it to be so — all that is past forgiven, and the witness of the Holy Ghost thereto — it was the same touch I had felt nearly fifty years ago when kneeling at the chancel I laid hold of the hope set before me in the gospel — the same, the same! Like a flash of light, this thought darted through my mind: Suppose you had never before this hour heard of this gospel that promises to the penitent sinner the forgiveness of all his sins, and the wit- ness within of the fact as satisfying as if the pity- ing Christ were personally present to speak the word — if this were your first perception of this truth of the gospel, and your first experience of what it means to be a pardoned sinner — would you not realize a joy that might truly be described as unspeakable and full of glory? I do humbly trust that as I had come to that sacramental service without any conscious cleaving to sin in any form, 248 Fifty Years. or any sense of separation from God, the blessing I needed then and there came in a fresh reminder of this truth of the gospel — namely, that every spirit- ual blessing bestowed upon a disciple of Christ, at any stage of his experience, may be and ought to be an imperishable acquisition to the riches of his inheritance as a child of God and an heir of glory. That confession and renewal of my vows of conse- cration on that fair Sunday morning in November, 1902, brought the same touch that came with my conversion in 1853. Actual and entire forgiveness of sin, and the actual, indubitable blessedness of knowing it to be so — it was not a new experience to me; and yet it was a touch of the glory of that new life which is new forever. It was an illustration of the saying that the true believer keeps all he gets from first to last, his path shining more and more. I had prayed that God's holy will might be done in me — and it then and there came to pass that the servant of the Lord whose prayer had been mostly a prayer for the patience he had preached to others, and the faith that endures to the end — it came to pass that the blessing came in the same way as it came when first he knew the Lord, and the new song that made melody in his heart then and there was after all onlv the From Padan-aram Back to Bethel. 249 sweet old song of degrees which is a new song for- ever. Into my mind came the remembrance of the ex- perience of Jacob in his old age at Padan-aram when the Lord appeared to him the second time when he was in trouble and said to him, ''I am the God of Bethel." The God of Bethel!— that was enough. It was at Bethel that in his young man- hood's prime he lay that night under the silent stars, and saw the mysterious ladder, its foot on the earth, its top in heaven, whereon the angels of God were ascending and descending; it was at Bethel that he heard the voice of God promising his presence and blessing in all the way he should go. No part of that promise had failed. The vision of Bethel belonged to the patriarch in his old age as truly as it did the next morning after it was given to him. No good thing is lost by the servant of God who follows the path of duty. The gifts of God are without repentance. "Heaven and earth may pass, but my word shall not pass," saith the Lord. This is the message that came with the blessing I needed that November Sunday morning: No good thing is lost. And the best things are to come. We will take them as they come — and they will keep coming in God's own 250 Fifty Years. good time and in his own best way. From my own Padan-aram back to my Bethel I traced the way by which I had been led — and was glad. This seems to be a good place for me to say again: All that goes into our experience, conscious- ness, and character in this life — every blessing we get from God — we keep forever. Treasures of knowledge, treasures of memory, treasures of af- fection are thus "laid up" by us. The blessing of the Lord gives imperishability to all the experi- ences of the soul that has entered into the new life of faith, and walks uprightly. From such no good thing will he withhold now; from such no good thing will he ever withdraw. JUST ANOTHER WORD. (25') Just Another Word. In this book I have said some things I did not intend to say, and left unsaid many things I did intend to say. I had half a purpose to sketch a life that has touched mine for good for many years — a life that furnishes proof to me that the religion of Christ is not merely a record of dead ideals and faded glories, but a revelation and promise to willing souls of the very blessedness that God will impart now. That purpose has been abandoned for reasons that will be under- stood by indulgent friends who will be ready to condone all errors of omission or commission they may detect in these pages, and give me credit for good intentions. (253) COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES This book is due on the date indicated below, or at the expiration of a definite period after the date of borrowing, as provided by the rules of the Library or by special arrange- ment with the Librarian in charge. DATE BORROWED DATE DUE DATE BORROWED DATE DUE 29 *>*- C28(l14l)MtOO "0035521309 33S-C F57G3 BRITTLE BO NOT PHOTOCOPY ' JAN 2 4 1945