USA > Georgia > Bibb County > Macon > Georgia Baptists: historical and biographical > Part 20
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It has been justly said of Dr. Brantly, that his life was an uninterrupted scene of arduous labor. In addition to the min- isterial labors, which were always abundant, he was constantly engaged in the instruction of youth. To him idleness was in- supportably irksome. He had a love for labor. For several years, whilst residing in Philadelphia, besides being the pastor of one of the largest churches in that city, he taught a school, edited a religious newspaper, rendered much service to the Baptist Tract Society, of whose board he was the president, in the selection of tracts, and when the agent of that society, the beloved Davis, died, he discharged his duties for six months, in order that his destitute family might have the benefit of the salary for this period. His distinguished friend, the late president of the Alabama University,* speaking of him, says : "He was always busy, and yet never confused or behind-hand;
*Dr. B. Manly, Sr.
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and he ever found time for all the innumerable and nameless demands which were made upon him, whenever God and his fellow-men were to be served. The principle of his success amid herculean labors was, first, that he attended to one thing at a time, never suffering interruption; and secondly, he de- voted his whole energy, in the most concentrated and absorb- ing attention, to whatever was before him. His mind, by use, became like a prism catching the combined radiance of an in- tricate subject, and distributing it into its elements almost in an instant."
His love for teaching amounted almost to a passion. He de- lighted in that which many look upon as a drudgery. As might be expected, he was eminently successful in imparting knowl- edge. Many who now occupy important positions in the pul- pit, in our national councils, and at the bar, received much of their intellectual training from him. Wherever he met with an indigent youth of promise, desiring instruction at his hands, he tood him under his care without charge. He instructed gratuitously not a few, who are now useful servants of the Lord Jesus.
As an intellectual man, Dr. Fuller says of him, " He had not many superiors in this country." His mind was remarkable for his grand and comprehensive views. He seemed to grasp a subject in all its bearings ; and, resolving it into its elements, could hold it up in a very perspicuous light to others. His avocation as a teacher kept his naturally vigorous mind in healthy exercise. He delighted in the Latin and Greek clas- sics, and was constantly in the habit of reading them. His exquisite taste readily detected their beauties ; and no one could be long in his company without perceiving that his lips were
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In almost every department of learning he had attained re- spectable proficiency. It was, however, in the languages and in the metaphysics that he excelled. He was one of the most crit- ical linguists and profound metaphysicians which this country has ever produced. The already too protracted length of this article will not permit us to record evidences of his excellence as a scholar, which might be interesting and instructive.
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It may be said, however, that preaching was the forte of Dr. Brantly. This was ever his delightful employment. His noble person and fine voice conferred upon him great natural advan- tages as an orator. He never appeared so well as when pro- claiming the gospel to perishing sinners. It was impossible for any one to hear him, without being convinced that he was thoroughly in earnest. He seemed to say, "I believe, there- fore I speak." Some of the discourses which he preached were attended with extraordinary success. From twenty to thirty persons have been known to ascribe their conviction to a single sermon.
His appeals to the backslider were frequently irresistible. He would assail such persons with the most melting rhetoric to which we have ever listened. It required a stout heart, in- deed, to withstand the tears and entreaties with which he would beseech them to return to their deserted Lord.
Although the crowds that attended his ministry attest their general acceptance of his labors, and the fruits of his efforts at- test his usefulness, yet there were occasions when he was not equal to himself. At such times he seemed to preach with con- siderable difficulty, and not to enter much into the spirit of his subject. At other times, he was too abstract to be understood by plain people. His premises and deductions were not readily seen and appreciated. But if he was not always forcible and eloquent, he was always sensible, and preached, not for the purpose of saying something, but because he had something to say. His inequalities were chiefly owing to the fact that he was an extempore preacher. His numerous labors did not al- low him time to write his discourses, and he was frequently constrained to depend upon very imperfect preparation.
The author of the sketch before us says that "Dr. Brantly possessed a facility, both in writing and speaking, such as I never knew it in any other person; yet so severely had he trained and castigated his mind, that this did not hinder him from attaining great excellence." Frequently, when we have supposed him to be wholly unprepared, he would come out upon his congregation with discourses possessing all the beauty and force of studied compositions. In illustration of this remark, we subjoin an extract from a sermon preached extempore, and
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subsequently written out, as nearly as could be recollectcd. It is an appeal to the unconverted portion of the congregation :
" Sinners, it is precisely thus that matters stand betwixt you and your eternal Judge. Your earth-born hearts will not re- linquish their attachments. Your lovers you have, and after them you will go. That God, who takes no pleasure in your death, is the witness and opposer of your desperation. Not much longer will he resist your madness ; not much longer will he endure the insulting infidelity of your hearts. Of one thing, however, you cannot suppress the conviction : every step you take in your journey is contrary to the will of God. Under- stand and appreciate the truth now, and do not travel all the way to hell to find it out. When once you are locked up in eternal darkness, are consigned to the imprisonment of eternal despair, and tortured with the raging fires of avenging justice, you will feel, when too late, that you are indebted solely to yourselves for the sad doom. So long as forms of horror shall haunt and terrify your spirits, and fierce passions shall prey upon them, and inexorable despair shall hold them with its ty- rant grasp, and tormenting fiends, nurtured in your own bosoms, shall exult and rave amid the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in the horrible pit, so long will remain fast- ened upon your hearts the conviction that your perdition is of yourselves. You mean to remain unjust, ungodly, unreconciled to your own happiness and salvation. Yourselves, then, are planting the fangs of the viper in your own bosom. Show some mercy to yourselves, and desist from the bad enterprise of self- immolation to the prince of hell.
" Look forward a little, and see yourselves in eternity, with unrepented sins. Light and peace have disappeared ; time's beguiling pleasures and recurring enjoyments have ceased for- ever ; friendship's softening sympathies, and society's cheering smile, and humanity's mitigating touch, have all vanished from the dismal scene; the voice of mercy bas ceased, and love's re- deeming work has been completed. You are then sad expect- ants of hopeless wretchedness-abandoned to your sins, left with your tormentors within you ; capable of misery, and inca- pable of comfort, you are prepared for all the complex suffer- ings of a ruined soul. The hell is one of your own seeking-
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the bed on which you are writhing, but not reposing, is made by your own hands. All hell resounds with the justice of God. All heaven proclaims his righteousness."
Dr. Brantly had the faculty of securing the strongest attach- ment of those for whom he labored. His tender and sympa- thizing heart, identifying him with all the vicissitudes of his people, weeping with those that wept, and rejoicing with those that rejoiced, won their confidence and riveted their attention. As a pastor it has been truly said of him, that he " grew steadily in the admiration and love of his flock." The tears and tenacity with which his beloved people in Philadelphia clung to him, when he announced his resignation, evinced that they were far more decided and earnest in their unanimity than when they had called him twelve years before. The distress of the church and congregation in Charleston, when he was smitten down, evinced the continued strength and sincerity of their affection, after an acquaintance of seven years. In his intercourse with his people, he was remarkable for his candor. He was in the habit of speaking the truth in love, in a very plain way. This trait of his character excited the indignation of some who did not know him. They took him to be unchar- itable and overbearing, but when they understood him, their attachment and respect were increased.
Amidst his various engagements, Dr. Brantly did not neglect the keeping of the heart. He walked daily with God. Those who were most intimately acquainted with him, know that his piety was a uniform flame. He ever cherished the most hum- bling views of himself, and the most exalted views of Christ. He was always the consistent christian, thoroughly conscien- tious in everything which he undertook, seeming to keep ever before him the day of final account.
It may be thought that this sketch will be incomplete if we are silent as to the imperfections of him of whom we have been speaking. We do not deny that there were defects in his char- acter. He was a fallen creature, and therefore sinful. If it could be of any benefit, we might fill many pages with a recital of his frailties. But we think that the good which grace ac- complished through him so immeasurably exceeded any evil which he may have done, that we may be pardoned for dwel-
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ling upon the former to the omission of the latter. In addi- tion to this, it is true-and with these words, uttered by the ever to be loved and lamented man whose life we have at- tempted to sketch, we close-that " Death applies the finishing touch to the character of a good man. This may be regarded as a reason why his remembered history is clothed with a pe- culiar majesty and charm. That spirit which once delighted us with the communications of affection and wisdom, now wears . the vestments of perfection. It is enrolled among the spirits of the just made perfect. Its graces, once lovely on earth, are · now resplendent in heaven. Its pensive groans, once heaved from an aching heart, are succeeded by the softest harmonies of heavenly music. The languor and the sickness have fled for ever, and to their place have succeeded the health and vigor of immortality. The erring judgment has acquired those attri- butes of truth and certainty which will forever preclude future mistake and deception. It is not wonderful, then, that our as- sociations should draw down from the bright empyreal, whither they have ascended, a portion of that perfection with which good men are now arrayed, in their supernal blessedness, and place the same to the credit of their earthly history."
"This sun has set.
Oh, when shall other such arise ?"
SILAS MERCER.
We take the following sketch of this good man, so prominent in the history of Georgia Baptists, from "Benedict's History of the Baptists :"
"Silas Mercer was born near Currituck bay, North Carolina, in February, 1745. His mother died while he was an infant; his father was a zealous member of the Church of England, and carefully instructed him in the catechism, rites and traditions of that communion. From early years young Silas was reli- giously inelined, but it was not until he arrived at manhood, that he was brought to the knowledge of salvation through a divine Redeemer. He was for a long time embarrassed and bewildered with that legal system which he had been taught in his mother church, and so deeply rooted were the prejudices
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of his education, that it took him long to learn that salvation is not of works. But he at length gained clear and consistent views of the gospel plan, and was through his long ministry a distinguished and powerful defender of the doctrine of free, un- merited grace.
Until after his conversion, Mr. Mercer was most violently opposed to Dissenters in general, and to the Baptists in particu- lar. He would on no account hear one preach, and endeavored to dissuade all others from attending their meetings. He most firmly believed what his father and parson had taught him, that they were all a set of deceivers, that their heresies were dan- gerous if not damnable, and that to hear one preach would be a crime of peculiar enormity. He knew, however, but little about them, only that they had separated from the church, and ought therefore to be opposed and avoided. For these reasons he continued a violent opposer to them, and zealously to defend the church; but his ingenuous mind could not long be restrain- ed by the shackles of tradition, without examining things for himself; he therefore began a course of inquiries, which grad- ually underminded his traditionary creed, and led on to the Baptist ground. He first resolved to follow strictly the rubric of the church, both in doctrine and discipline; and finding it . enjoined immerson, unless the weakness of the child required a milder mode, he had two of his children dipped. The first a son, in a barrel of water at the priest's house, and the other a daughter, in a tub, which had been prepared for the purpose at the church. The son was named Jesse, who has been a worthy minister in Georgia ; he was baptized again, on a profession of his faith, and is of course an ana-Baptist. Mr. Mercer was also struck with the neglect of discipline in the church ; he saw with pain that persons grossly immoral in many respects were admitted to their communion, and became convinced that things ought not so to be. Hervey's Theron and Aspasio started him from the Arminian system and set him on a train of reflec- tions which issued in a thorough conviction of the doctrine of the gospel. He labored for a time to reform the church, but finding the building was too far gone to be repaired, he receded from it with reluctant steps, and became a Baptist when he was about thirty years of age, and continued from that time to
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the end of his life an ornament to their cause and a skillful de- fender of their distinguishing tenets.
Few men, perhaps, have had more severe conflicts in renoun- cing the prejudices of education than Mr. Mercer. His kind but bigoted father threw in his way obstacles which he could not at first surmount ; the church priest, and the whole Epis- copal fraternity around him, used the most assiduous endeavors to prevent him from going amongst the heretical Baptists. The first of the denomination he ever heard preach was a Mr. Thomas, at that time a successful preacher in North Carolina. It was with much reluctance, and with many fearful apprehen- sions of the dangerous consequences, that he was induced to attend the meeting. But in spite of all his prejudices, the preacher drew his attention and led him to think that he was not such a dangerous deceiver as he had always before supposed. This was on Monday. The next Lord's day, the priest being ab- sent, and his father being clerk, performed as usual the duties of his office. As yet none of the family knew that Silas had been to the Baptist meeting. After the service of the day was over, a person asked him, in the hearing of his father, how he liked the Baptist preacher ? He was much confused and knew ·not what to answer ; but his conscience obliged him to express some degree of approbation, at which the old gentleman burst into tears and exclaimed, " Silas, you are ruined !" and out he went, hastily home. Silas, alarmed, took hastily after him to soothe his grief and appease his resentment. The offended father and offending son were so deeply affected with the tri- fling affair, that they forgot their wives and left them to go home alone. The charm was now broken, and from this period Mr. Mercer began to entertain more favorable views of the people he had hitherto so much censured and despised. Not long after this he removed to Georgia, and settled in what is now Wilkes county, where, about 1775, he was baptized by Mr. Alexander Scott, and united with the church at Kiokee, by which he was almost immediately approbated to preach. At the commencement of the American war, he fled for shelter to Halifax county, in his native State, where he continued about six years, all of which time he was incessantly engaged in preaching as an itinerant in different places around ; and it is
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found by his journal that, taking the whole six years together, he preached oftener than once a day, that is, more than two thousand sermons in the time. At the close of the war, he re- turned to his former residence in Georgia, where he continued to the end of his days. In this State he labored abundantly with good effect, and was the means of planting a number of churches in different parts of the country. He was justly es- teemed one of the most exemplary and useful ministers in the Southern States. His learning was not great, but having a de- sire that his young brethren might obtain greater advantages than he enjoyed, he had set up a school at his house, procured an able teacher, and was in a promising way to promote the interests of learning in the churches around him; but in the midst of his benevolent plans and distinguished usefulness he was, after a short illness, removed from the scene of his em- ployments, in 1796, in the fifty-second year of his age.
The following portrait of Mr. Mercer's character is found in Mr. Semple's "History of the Virginia Baptists," page 82 : " Mr. Mercer, both in countenance and manners, had consider- ably the appearance of sternness, and to feel quite free in his company it was necessary to be well acquainted with him. He seldom talked on any other subject except religion, and when in company with young preachers, or those who might question his doctrine or his opinions, his remarks chiefly turned on po- lemical points. He was indefatigable in striving to maintain his opinions, and for this purpose would hear any and all ob- jections that could be raised, and would then labor assiduously to remove them. His arguments, however, neither in private or public life, were ever dressed with oratorical ornaments. He spoke and acted like one who felt himself surrounded by the impregnable bulwarks of truth, and therefore did not wish to parley."*
He was more distinguished as a preacher than writer, but he devoted considerable time to study, and the following pieces were the productions of his leisure hours :
1st. "Tyranny Exposed and True Liberty Discovered," in a 12 mo. pamphlet of sixty-eight pages, the design of which was to show the rise, reign and downfall of anti-Christ.
* Mr. Mercer is here described as he appeared in Virginia, in 1791, in company with Jeremiah Walker, in the time of a great controversy respecting doctrinal points.
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2d. " The supposition of the Divine Right of Infants to Bap- tism, from their formerly having a right to circumcision, con- futed," being a letter to a friend. This piece was not printed.
3d. " The History of Baptism," carried to some extent, but left unfinished.
4th. Two "Letters on Election," left unpublished.
JAMES MATTHEWS, SR.
The subject of this memoir was born in Virginia, the 15th of October, A. D., 1755. His parents were Moses and Sarah Mat- thews, who were poor but reputable members of the "High Church," as it was then called, but without any knowledge of the regenerating influences of the Holy Spirit. Consequently they taught their son nothing of the necessity of the new birth. While James was quite an infant, his parents moved to South Carolina, where he grew up to manhood, with scarcely any other improvement than that gained by the labors of the field in procuring the necessary support for the family.
It pleased the Lord, in his fifteenth year, to excite in him a solicitude about his future state. It was not, however, until August of his seventeenth year, that he became the subject of those heart-searching convictions which resulted in his being brought, about the middle of October, into the liberty of the gospel by faith in Christ. After enduring many doubts and fears for several months, he was baptized in March the follow- ing year, 1773, by Jacob Gibson, the venerable pastor of the Baptist church on Little river, (or Broad river,) South Caro- lina; with which church he united. Under the ministry of Mr. Gibson he was nurtured for several years. About this time also, his parents, much to his comfort, became hopeful subjects of divine grace and united with the same church, in which pro- fession they lived happily, and died hopefully in a good old age.
Soon after our brother had obtained hope in Christ, his mind became impressed with the condition of his fellow-men, and un- der a discourse from Elder A. Marshall, of Georgia, his feelings became so elevated that, ere he was aware, he was exhorting the people. After he was united with the church, his desire to do good to the souls of his fellow-creatures increased, and he
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became more deeply impressed with the duty of engaging in the ministry. But he was still deterred by his want of suita- ble qualifications. To supply his want of education, he en- deavored to make attainments in learning by every means in his power, but, for want of time and books, he never attained to that degree which he so much desired. The revolutionary war taking place, he was called into camp. Surrounded by loose, carnal company, he had but little opportunity, and less suitableness of spirit, for preaching. Still he could not be at rest.
When far advanced in age, he wrote to a friend that from the first dawn of his christian hope his mind was impressed with the duty of publicly exhorting, though he had no expectation of en- tering upon the ministry-nay, the very thought was too much for him-but he could not suppress the desire to do good to his fellow-men. He was much disposed to solitude, and sought occasions to ride alone to meeting. One Sabbath morning, when thus riding alone on a private road, he was impressed to turn aside for prayer. He did so, and while at prayer the words, " I have chosen you to preach the gospel," seemed, like thunder, to burst from heaven into his heart. But instantly he felt a violent opposition to what seemed to him the will of God. He went to meeting in extreme anguish. At the close of the prayer the minister said, " Send thy gospel far and wide ; and for this end take thy gospel ministers near thee." At hearing these words he seemed himself to be taken near, even into the arms of the Saviour, and the words, "I have chosen you to preach the gospel," rushed with double force on his mind, and he trembled, so that he could scarcely regain his seat. This left an abiding impression on his mind that God had called him to preach the gospel to a dying world. But still he hesitated, under an appalling sense of his want of quali- fications.
In the meantime, he had married a Mrs. Jenkins, a member of the church, by whom he had one son. But it pleased God soon to remove her from him by death. This trying bereave- ៛ ment was the occasion of his becoming excited to a more active discharge of his duty, to which he was also encouraged by having received the approbation of the church to preach the gospel.
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In 1782, he moved into the State of Georgia with his mother- less little boy, and united with the Red's creek church, under the care of Elder.L. Savage, in Columbia county. He preached among them, and traveled as he had opportunity for two or three years. Having gained their approbation and esteem, he was called to ordination, and came under the imposition of hands by a presbytery, namely, Elders L. Savage, D. Tinsly, S. Walker and A. Marshall, in 1785. With these excellent men he lived in high esteem, both as a christian and as a minister, during their lives. He now went forth as a missionary of the cross, filled with a fervid zeal for the Lord and an ardent love for the souls of men. He soon acquired general esteem, and his career promised, as it has by the grace of God accomplished, much usefulness. He married his second wife in 1786, Miss Rebecca Carlton, who was his mourning relict. She proved to be a help meet for him indeed, and "helped him much in the gos- pel." Of the twelve children, three of the sons and an infant daughter, as also his first born son, are gone to their long home. One of the sons has since the death of his father, been ordained to the gospel ministry. The latter is a hopeful exhorter; and the other three are moral and respectable citizens. The three daughters all profess hope in Christ.
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