USA > Delaware > New Castle County > Wilmington > Centennial services of Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church, Wilmington, Delaware, October 13-20, 1889 > Part 7
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REV. ENOCH STUBBS,
Pastor of Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church, 1872-'75.
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salvation on this side the ocean, by presenting to our fathers the Gospel in its simplicity, must be held in precious commemoration. Let preacher and poet, history and "centennial " keep alive the memory of these heroes, whose spiritual triumphs have done more for us than all the Waterloos the world has ever seen.
True, the faces of John and Charles Wesley smile down from the walls of Westminster Abbey, and we might be moved to rear similar memorials to Coke and Asbury on this continent. But they need no other monument than the living verities of to-day-the souls saved, the churches ringing with salvation and bristling with innumerable agencies for the extirpation of sin-verities which are the outcome of their heroism and faith.
WHAT MONUMENTS
they have in the multitudes who bear the Methodist name ! It is said, there are more Methodists in the world to-day than there were English speaking people at the time of Wesley's conversion. What a monument is found in the experience of these millions ; their eyes opened to see God and eternal things ; their ears to hear the trump of Sinai and the coming judgment day, softened by the sweet notes from Bethlehem and Calvary. "Peace on earth." "Father forgive them." This nation is a monument, for it has been lifted to a table land of higher possibilities than could have been occupied had the voice of our Methodist Fathers never been heard. Families, by thousands, are in sunlit parlors, and in a joyous salvation, who would have been in cellars of moral and social neglect and wretchedness, if the itinerant preacher had not found them.
As it would be almost an impertinence to add to the brief record upon Benj. Franklin's tombstone, since every telegraph pole is a monu- ment to his memory, and ten thousand telegraphic machines are click- ing eloquently his praise, while the very lightnings, in brilliant penmanship write his name on the sky; so there needs no other memorial to those who brought spiritual lightnings from the heavens, illuminating hearts and homes, and warming the world with the rich glow of a moral and spiritual incandescence, than the souls and lives of the millions of men and women, who in the past hundred years have been brought from darkness to light, and are to day shining on earth, or resplendent in heaven. We had better
BE SURE THEY ARE DEAD
before we bury and monument the Fathers of American Methodism. They live in more than thirty thousand ministers, forty-five thousand local preachers, and five million Methodists on the soil of North
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America. This pyramid of souls is the standing memorial of their work for God ; nor these alone, but the countless host whose names are on the registers of church and class meeting, but who have passed their Gethsemane and Calvary, mounted the Olivet of ascension and are entered into the "many mansions " that Jesus promised to prepare for them. To the toilers of the century, in the pulpit and out of it, on this hallowed spot, there is a record on high, in the many whom they found within an inch of hell, but are now casting their crowns at the Saviour's feet.
The times when our fathers were laying the foundations of this present Methodism were not specially favorable to easy triumph. What religious ignorance and unbelief, and what worldly and indiffer- ent churches there were one hundred years ago! Some souls were open, to conviction and hungry for the living bread, but others were clad in the armor of unbelief. From the work shops of Hobbes, Vol- taire and Tom Paine there were malignant opposition and persecution, and the attack must be made with skill and courage. There must be wise generalship and apostolic faith ; guns of large calibre, sword of fine' steel, and temper and skill to use them. Our fathers were not mneře
" THEOLOGICAL IRONSIDES. "
Though an invincible battalion of the great army, it was not by intellectual "might or power " their victories were won. They were clad in the panoply of Emmanuel, and shone in the burnishedarmor of love truth and faith, by which many a fortress deemed impregna- ble was taken with a bound and a shout.
It is always refreshing to recall the days of the early itinerant preacher-the spiritual cavalry of the Great Captain's forces. With souls and saddle bags filled with ammunition, they wrote salvation songs as they went, composed sermons at a jog trot, and discharged them with a power that has made the echo audible, and the vibration still powerful after the lapse of a hundred years. Such men could afford to lie down, without pomp, when their work was done. "Their works do- follow them." But what a resurrection must await them. Perhaps there will be no special displays over the humble mounds under which they "rest in hope ; " but when they see on every hand the " fruit of their labor " and the " travail of their souls," they will begin the resurrection life with louder doxologies than ended this.
THEIR HALLELUJAHS RANG
many times in this ancient sanctuary. Their feet have walked these aisles ; around these altars they have wrestled for victory, and it seems
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to me on this occasion, they must be here, an invisible but a much greater company than the visible hovering o'er us, "unperceived amid the throng."
It would be impossible to measure their influence upon the Wil- mington of to-day. Many are sitting by rivers of prosperity, that overflow with blessings like the Nile. If they will seek for the sources of this stream, they will find them here ; fifty, seventy-five, and one hundred years ago. Here your fathers tasted of salvation waters. Sermons preached here enlightened the mind and aroused the con- science. From these altars they went with souls renewed, and with lives made holy. As sin went out, not only peace, but prosperity came in. Truth, sobriety and diligence, characterized them as they came and went between these pews and their ever brightening homes. Religion was found to have the "promise of the life that now is." Yes; it was here the seed was sown that has ripened in your days into a harvest of material as well as spiritual plenty. Thus, in temporal things, the living of to-day are indebted to the spiritual heroes of the century gone. They touched you, though yet unborn, in the homes you occupy; the business conducted in your name; the amount to your credit in the city bank ; the comforts that surround you ; the luxuries upon your tables and the education privileged to your children. Uninfluenced by their ministrations, though so long ago, all had been different ; instead of avenues and stone fronts, a sea-side cottage for vacation, and a tree in the corner at Christmas, it might have been hovel and lane : no Christmas tree, but that seen from the icy street through some other man's window. and some well clad hearer, this morning, in jail, or perdition, instead of here, rejoicing in God.
LET US KNOW,
however, that these blessings are held only on probation. Where are we scattering what we have reaped ? Are we sowing in Vanity Fair ? Is the fruit trodden under foot in the theatres and ball rooms ? Sow it in the benevolent fields of the church to which. under God, it is due, that it may spring up all over the earth to the salvation of lost millions. As our Fathers sowed that we might reap, let us scatter for the gathering of others, in distant ages and places. This is God's order, it is the soul of Methodism. If we prove unworthy to occupy this high palace of privilege, we shall receive orders to vacate, that others more loyal to the divine plan may enter and take possession. There is in operation a stern law for the "survival of the fittest," and the " fittest" are those who accept the Gospel, and employ the bless- ings it confers for the good of others. If we fail, others will occupy our position by and by, while we settle back to the place where good 5
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Bishop Asbury and his noble helpers found our parents a hundred years ago. Advantages are continually changing hands upon this principle. Who can say where he would have been, if these "fishers of men," baiting their hooks of gospel steel with many a sweet story and apt illustration, had not caught and lifted that thoughtless sire or miater- nal ancestor from the stream down which they were drifting to dark- ness and death. It is evident that in saving their souls, they also
MADE THEIR FORTUNES
and those of their children.
We have wondered, oft, whether the prophets of ancient Israel caught glimpses of the glory that should result from their faithfulness and sacrifice, and whether their souls would not have been intoxicated by such a revelation. So we wonder now whether these prophets of early Methodism could have seen, without dangerous self-complacency, the outcome of their faithful toils in Wilmington and elsewhere. Let us emulate their example and work for posterity as did they.
If I could bring before you now in succession the men and women of God who have labored here for the past century, some in the office of pastor, others as local preachers, and others as exhorters, class lead- ers and prominent laborers at these altars, what recollections and emotions would be stirred ? Here is the one who found you in the brick- yard of spiritual slavery, and here you would have lived and died ; but, as a Moses, he brought down upon your Egypt such plagues that you were aroused and departed. Here is he who when the rocks en- closed your path and the sea rolled across it, bid you " stand still and see the salvation of God," and with his rod stretched forth and point- ing to the promise, the way of duty was made plain and a path opened through the deep. Here, too, is one that held up his hands in prayer for you until your Amalek was driven back. Here the Miriam that lifted your soul to holy enthusiam with her song and timbrel of joy. This one seemed to stand between you and God. Through him the Infinite spoke to your very soul, He stood upon this pulpit like the law-giver on Sinai handing down to you the truth written as by God's own finger. Here comes another, pre-eminently a preacher and expositor. His text might look like a rock, hard and dry. But as he smote "firstly, secondly and thirdly," it was rent at every blow, the waters of life gushed out as fountains, and the streams therefrom have never ceased to flow. And still another of these fathers was of all things a pastor. How he fed his flock ! What rich pastures he found. Though the world was a desert to you, under his tender leadership you gathered manna fresh every day. What "coriander seed"
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SWEET AS HONEY,
dropped from his loving lips, still lie in the corners of memory ! And thus one was your Joshua leading you into the promised land, another, your David felling Goliath from your path, another your Solomon rear- ing silently in your soul the beautiful temple of a holy character. This one the tearful Jeremiah weeping over your spiritual retrogressions; that a Josiah demolishing your idols and with royal skill reforming your life. Here is a Daniel following you into your spiritual Babylon; there a very Paul shaking your jail as with earthquake power, and here one that turned your Patmos into Paradise and put your spiritual sky aflame with visions of mercy and judgment and the city of jasper and gold. Truly in the services of such a ministry and a succession of such apostolic men, Wilmingtonį has been "lifted to heaven with privileges."
WHENCE THIS SUCCESS?
is a question of the first importance; for it devolves upon the present generation to carry forward what the fathers began.
One secret of their success was the fundamental character of their work. They were not superficial. They dug down to the native rock, and laid their solid blocks of truth upon it. There has been no settling of foundations. If the walls have cracked anywhere it has been the fault of careless building thereon. We need no modification of founda- tions-no change of doctrine, or aim, for our fathers built on the Word of God.
They were men of simple faith. This was another secret of their success. They believed the powers that protected ancient Israel were around them. That they were doing work for God, co-working with the Infinite King for the betterment of the race. How could they fail ? Would not God protect and prosper His own cause ? This made heroes of them all. There was nothing they would not attempt at the bidding of His Providence Odds against them were nothing, for with God on their side they were ever in the majority. They re-enacted the scenes of Jericho, taking many a city with the "ram's horn" of attack and the shout of victory; but their sublime faith was the invisible inspiration of both.
Their faith was truly divine aud philosophic. They were not trust- ing in their own efforts, but in invisible forces, which to them were tremendously and gloriously real.
INVISIBLE FORCES !
All power is invisible; gravitation is invisible, but it brings down the sturdy oak, and the mighty avalanche; cohesion is invisible; but it
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holds the universe in a grip so powerful that no world, however ponderous, can tear itself from its hold.
The invisible is the foundation of the visible. The human body is built upon the invisible spirit. When that slips away the body is but a handful of dust. The universe floats in the invisible, all pervad- ing presence of Deity. Invisible powers supports the whole. So society at its best, a society of love and goodness, can only exist upon a foundation of invisible truth. Our fathers built the church on this invisible but Divine basis; they harnessed the chariot of Methodism to these unseen, but irresistible forces. They could not fail while such a faith united them with the power of God.
Men are apt to cling to what is visible for protection; they will trust a fetich; depend on a horse shoe; follow a fanatic-something they can see, but they are slow to trust the invisible power that upholds all things. Israel distrusted God, the unseen but omnipotent, but could worship a golden calf, and would doubtless have worshipped the bones of Moses could they have found his place of burial. But our fathers of the century past, well knew that power was with the invisi- ble Jehovah, and they looked "not at the things which are seen but at the things which are unseen;" hence their victories.
A GLORIOUS MACHINE,
however, was the organized Methodism which our fathers left us. If the power that saves is invisible, they well knew that its operator must be through a visible and tangible organism. Steam is invisible. but its force must be exerted through piston, crank, and wheel. Invisible wind must have a sail against which to press its sturdy shoulders if it must push our commerce from shore to shore. Mind, as invisible as either, must be furnished with body of visible form and tangible material if its plans and volitions are to effect changes in the world. What steam would be without engine, wind without sails, and mind without brain and hand, God's truth and spirit would be in this world without an organized church. None knew this better than the Methodist fathers, and they organized the redeemed souls about them, using each as his talents would permit, until Methodism with its itinerant ministry, local preachers, class meetings, camp meet- ing, love feasts and protracted meetings, was a steam engine for God, through which his power divine could be applied to the saving of the world. Well might beholders say they were "all at it" and
"ALWAYS AT IT."
Another secret of their success was the presentation of practical, saving truth. Theoretical and metaphysical questions touching Divine:
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and eternal things are intensely interesting, but with a perishing world around them our fathers had no time for them. They set forth with solemn earnestness, the doctrine that make wise unto salvation: the Trinity of the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Ghost; man's fall; sin and condemnation; mercy, free, full and universal. With unconditional election and reprobation they had no sympathy. It has never recovered from the blows they dealt it, and to-day efforts are being made to modify those dogmas by the people who have taught then.
When Rowland Hill was reproved for not preaching to the elect only, he requested his reprover to mark the elect with a bit of chalk, that he might address them in the future. Our fathers saw every soul marked not with chalk, but with the tear drops and the bleeding finger tips of Him who "gave His life for the world;"' and they pro- claimed His Gospel to all men. They preached repentance, faith and holiness, attainable in this life, and a final judgment day with an eternal heaven and an everlasting hell beyond it.
One great source of their influence was the well defined and orthodo.r meaning of the terms they used. Sin, to them, was not a trifling disease of the soul, incidental to its normal development and likely to be outgrown. It was a leprosy, deeply seated in the very centre of man's being, which only a Jordan of redeeming blood could wash away.
Human depravity did not mean a slight derangement of man's moral constitution.
A SCREW LOOSE SOMEWHERE,
so that a turn here and there would put man all right again. It was such a complete disorganization as required the taking to pieces of the whole machinery, that it might be put together new and aright by the original maker of the soul. "Ye must be born again," was a frequent text in the early Methodist pulpit.
God's law was put forth in no doubtful tone. To them the Ten Commandments were not the production of Moses as an Egyptian scholar ; excellent advice but without binding authority. They were the words in which the Eternal God had formulated the principles of His moral government of the world, given for the enlightenment of the human conscience. God was not a myth or an impersonal force, but a Personal and Eternal Deity-making sun, moon and stars with His "fingers"-but holding the saints "in the hollow of His hand." He was a father, loving man even in his wanderings, sending His son to bring the prodigal home again ; preparing a celestial feast where he
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shall be presented in the robes, ring and shoes of his original sonship, and inviting all to be present when the universe shall dance its joy at his restoration.
To our fathers Christ was not a celestial personage bringing us an example, but leaving unsolved the soul's greatest and most awful problem, "What must I do to be saved " from my past record and future consequence of sin? He was the Second Person of the God- head, with an incomprehensible love, exchanging a throne for a cross that He might, by His vicarious death, make salvation possible and just. Nor was the
BIBLE A STRING OF BALLADS AND TRADITIONS,
with the string cut so that each might take out the leaves he wished. No; it was a solid book. The covenant of God with man, for the salvation of the race; inspired by His Spirit; written with His fingers ; protected by His Providence ; a complete rule of faith and practice; opening with the only reliable account of creation ; bound together by the "scarlet thread " of Redemption, and closing with an apocalypse of glory for all who "obey this Gospel," and an eternal anathema against them that shall "take away from the words of the book of this prophecy."
With our fathers hell was not a mere probationary annex to the present life, where the belated scholar might learn the lessons he had neglected here, and take his place in the Kingdom of God after all-a doctrine that must encourage indifference to the opportunities offered here, besides having no foundation in the word of God. To them it was the place burning with the fire and brimstone of Divine indigna- tion and human remorse " for ever and ever." Deliverence therefrom was by faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ, a faith attested by a life of practical obedience to God. In the earnest and faithful presentation of such unequivocal Law and Gospel we find another of the great secrets of our fathers' victories. They fought the Lord's battles with the Lord's weapons. But no small part of the solution is in what they were by the saving grace of God. They were earnest men because they had found themselves sinners. They had been to the brink of the awful abyss, had seen its fiery depth, had well nigh slipped over, but being graciously saved and called of God to proclaim the deliverance to others they went forth equipped, like Gideon Ousley, with the knowledge of
THE DISEASE AND THE REMEDY,
and determined to make it known wherever the sun shone, or a sinner could be found.
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And was their not a power in their manner of its proclamation. They did not eulogize the gospel; they preached it. They made no apologies for the gospel; they simply gave it utterance. To the assemblies gathered to worship God and receive the bread of life, they did not defend the Omnipotent against some blasphemer, a frail man of dust, breath and sin, until then unknown to the people, and after the hour thus spent send the hungry home with a stone, and the young with doubts instead of faith, or bits of infidelity to gnaw upon. They sought to convict of personal sin and save the soul. They sought "the lost."
To us is committed the perpetuity of this great work, you begin here
A SECOND CENTURY.
If you would have it close one hundred years hence with results worthy the sons of such sires, maintain in all essential respects the doctrines and principles which make this such a
GLORIOUS CENTENNIAL.
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The Scriptural Conclusion and Expedient.
BY THE REV. JOHN A. B. WILSON, D. D.
Gal. iii : 22. "But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe."
The Bible contains the statement "Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee," Psalm 1xxvi : 10; and it furnishes its own demonstra- tion of its correctness, one of the strongest of which is the epistle now before us.
To Paul, the doctrinal and practical errors of the Galatian churches were an unmixed cup of bitterness. Yet, in the providence of God, even these heresies were made the occasion of an inspired defence of the very cardinal principles of Christianity. A defence which has come down the ages ever an armory and a bulwark to the church when assailed. A defence, that amid the darkness of Arianism, the stornis of Romanism, the murk of Antinomianism, the fog of Rationalism, like the Eddystone out in the midst of the troubled waters it rears its head unshaken by the fury of the blast; throwing out to the tempest- tossed a light which indicates at once the rocks of danger and the course of safety, until the storm has spent its rage and the darkness is past. And it still stands to encourage and assure those whom it saved in the hour of danger.
No question can be more practical or more important to man than that which enlightens him as to the attitude of his Creator toward himself, and how that attitude may be made most favorable. And for this purpose comes the conclusion and expedient of the text for "the scripture hath concluded (shut up, delivered over) all under sin that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to theni that believe."
REV. JOHN A. B. WILSON, D. D., Pastor of Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church, 1878-'80.
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The text presents two propositions for consideration:
I .- THE SCRIPTURAL CONCLUSION WITH REFERENCE TO THE MORAL CONDITION OF MAN.
" The scripture hath concluded all under sin."
11 .- THE SCRIPTURAL, EXPEDIENT IN VIEW OF THAT CONCLUSION.
"That the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe."
1 .- THE SCRIPTURAL CONCLUSION.
We must remember that a conclusion is not a wish, opinion, or argument, but a fact. Not a process of deduction or of induction but a result ; the correctness of which depends upon the character of the premises, the knowledge, wisdom and integrity of the reasoner. Here it is said that the scripture hath concluded ; meaning that this is the end reached by its author and herein recorded. Now, if it is true that " all scripture " is given by inspiration of God then is He the author, hence the reasoner, hence the conclusion is His; and upon His knowledge, wisdom and truth depends correctness of the deduction. But who shall doubt this when "The Lord is righteous in all His ways and Holy in all His works."-Ps. cxlv : 17. "He is wise in heart and mighty in strength, who hath hardened himself against Him and hath prospered." Job. ix: 4. "With Him is wisdom and strength. He hath counsel and understanding."-Job. xii : 13. So that we may "Ascribe greatness unto our God, He is the Rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways are judgment, a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He."-Deut. xxxii : 3, 4.
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