USA > Indiana > Contributions to the early history of the Presbyterian Church in Indiana : together with biographical notices of the pioneer ministers > Part 21
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Another conspicuous trait in the character of Dr. Matthews was his modesty. He shrank from no duty, but he sought no distinc- tion, no fame, and even avoided publicity. His was in eminent degree the power of godliness. The first, last, and deepest impression left upon his students, his friends, and his neighbors, was that he was a holy man, of deep and rare attainment in grace, of rich and ripened fruit of the indwelling spirit of Christ.1
Dr. Matthews was in person spare and tall. While in his last years the infirmities of age manifestly increased he was able to continue active labor to the close of life.
1 Dr. J. Edwards's address in " Services of the Laying of the Corner-Stone and Ad- dresses at the Dedication of the Chapel and Library of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of the Northwest." 24 pp.
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Only a week before his death he met his students as usual in the lecture room. Submitting, however, to a surgical operation the result was quickly fatal.
ERASMUS DARWIN MACMASTER, who succeeded Dr. Matthews in the chair of theology, was a man of pro- digious native force. His individuality of feature and form, of manner and mind, would have commanded atten- tion anywhere. His scholastic attainments were of a high order. Upon the arena of manly conflict his weapons were those of a giant, while in the domestic precinct and in the circles of friendship he had a child's simplicity and a woman's tenderness.1 Of Scotch Covenanter blood, a son of the Rev. Gilbert MacMaster, long pastor of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Princeton, Ind., he was born in the year 1806. He graduated from Union College. While pastor at Ballston Spa, N. Y., he attracted the notice of representatives of Hanover College, Indiana, who were attending a meeting of the Synod of New York in search of a president for their institution. The invita- tion which they extended to him was favorably received, and in 1838 he removed to the West. An agitation for the enlargement of the institution and its transfer to Madison, with a new charter, as Madison University, involved Dr. MacMaster with some of the earliest friends of Hanover who clung to the old place and the old patient methods.2 In 1844 the transfer was effected ; but the lack of support enforced the abandonment of the enter- prise after one year of trial. Thereupon Dr. MacMaster was called to the presidency of Miami University and took up his residence at Oxford, Ohio. Upon the death
1 An old friend recalls the gracious affectionateness with which he unfailingly greeted his sisters on retiring for the night and when he met them in the morning.
2 See "Speech of Mr. MacMaster in the Synod of Indiana, October 4, 1844, in relation to Madison University," with postscript. Madison, Jones and Lodge, 1844. 39 pp.
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.of Dr. Matthews, however, the Indiana Seminary looked at once to him, and he came in 1849 to New Albany as teacher of divinity. Here he continued for ten years, and until the institution was established by the Assembly of 1859 in Chicago. That Assembly was an animated one. For the last time, in full force and with undaunted courage, the South came to meet their brethren of the North. In that stormy period everything touched in some way the institution of slavery.1 When it came to the choice of professors for the reorganized divinity school a man with the well-known progressive sentiments of Dr. MacMaster was sure to be thrust aside. Out of two hundred and seventy-seven votes he received but forty- five for the chair of didactic theology. Thereupon he went into retirement, watching silently the marvelous events of the Civil War, which brought so sudden and complete a vindication .? He saw the Presbyterians of the North all facing at last, and many of them facing about,
toward his platform. He was no longer in the minority. At St. Louis in 1866 the General Assembly placed him in the chair for which he was so eminently fitted, and he went to Chicago as professor of theology. He had hardly ·entered upon his duties, however, when death overtook him. After ten days of suffering he expired, December IO, 1866. His death was as remarkable as his life had been. During his illness his mind was constantly upon the Scriptures. He repeated passage after passage, and, it may be said, chapter after chapter, in the original Greek.
1 See " Speech in the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, May 30, 1859, on the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of the Northwest," by E. D. MacMaster. Cincinnati Gazette Co. 1859. With appendix. 40 pp. Also, "The Late General Assembly and the Theological Seminary of the Northwest," by "Alpha." 16 pp. The public press of the time teemed with communications from well-sharpened quills.
2 Dr. MacMaster was a great admirer of Bacon, whose portrait adorned the wall of his study. Underneath the picture, in the doctor's "horrible chirography," was a sentence from Bacon, in which the philosopher declared his willingness to leave his character to the judgment of posterity.
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He had the unshaken and exulting confidence of Paul. In the closing moment his eyes kindled to intense brilliancy, his hands were raised as if in surprise and adoration, and to his brother he said: "I see heaven opened and Jesus. standing at the right hand of God." These were his last words. 1
The Rev. Dr. Edward P. Humphrey, who, as a director . of the seminary at New Albany, was brought into close official relations toward him, writes ? as follows of the sub- ject of this sketch :
Dr. MacMaster had an imposing personality. He was very tall, his hair was thick and white, his countenance open and full of expression, his eyes shining with thought and emotion. In his movements he was deliberate ; not graceful but dignified ; with a certain magisterial air. He was somewhat reserved, especially among strangers. I doubt whether his most intimate friends would venture to take undue liberty with him. And yet he was. polite and affable, and never forgetful of even the minor courtesies. of life ; always a model Christian gentleman.
His father was an eminent and honored minister of his church- one of the branches of the kirk of Scotland wherein the Presby- terianism was intensified; whose right to be rested on the assumption that it was the best representative in existence of the best type of the pure and unadulterated old faith. The mother was a person of marked clearness of spiritual vision and of great force of character, modified by womanly gentleness. The son closely resembled her in his best qualities.
Dr. MacMaster was not what men call a popular preacher. Those who had often heard him preach expected from him, when they went to hear him again, a sermon full of weighty matter, the substance and the arguments and illustrations taken from the divine word, the whole arranged with the skill of an accomplished logician, the points made with prodigious clearness and force, rarely lighted up with a touch of poetry or fancy ; although, when the current of thought became very deep and rapid, imagery
1 The " remarkable spiritual vision " here referred to is vividly remembered by the Rev. Dr. George I .. Spining, who was a pupil of Dr. MacMaster's, and who witnessed the final scene.
2 Louisville, Ky., March 1, 1886.
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sometimes came to the surface, clothed with Miltonic grandeur.' The power of impassioned exhortation was not among his gifts. He set forth the matter and excellencies of the gospel offer lucidly and earnestly, and then left his hearers to the workings of the spirit of God upon their consciences. I do not remember to have seen him preach a written sermon, or use even brief notes. He had a copious vocabulary at his command and never faltered for a word.
The great work of his life was done in teaching systematic theology in the New Albany Seminary. Few men have been as thoroughly furnished for that great office by knowledge of the divine word, by thorough inward conviction of the agreement of the Presbyterian system of doctrine with that word, and by a gift of teaching every way admirable. His method was his own. The topic for the day had been previously announced; the students were expected to gather, from the Scriptures and from other sources, information as full as possible in regard to the doctrine in hand. Dr. MacMaster took the chair, with no table before him, no printed book or written memorandum in his hand. The students were seated in a semi-circle near by. They were called on, in their order, to answer questions proposed by the teacher- these questions so formed as to elicit the knowledge or the igno- rance of the pupil, his difficulties, and his mistakes, arising from confusion of thought or from imperfect definitions. The teacher, too, was ready to be interrogated. An animated conversation was likely to spring up, leading to inquiry and thought and private study. Such a mode of teaching would be a failure in the hands of some men ; but Dr. MacMaster was too full of resources to fail, too clear in his conceptions, too ready and patient in his dealing with the quick-witted and the plodding; correcting the over-complacent and encouraging the diffident. His pupils to this day talk about the clearness of his spiritual and intellectual vision, his love of truth, his eagerness in its exposition and defense, his skill in detecting subtle and dangerous errors in religion, and
1 Dr. MacMaster's public prayers must have had something of the character of the dis- ·courses here described by Dr. Humphrey. On a single occasion I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing Dr. MacMaster. A year before his death he was present at a union morning prayer-meeting of the two Synods (Old and New School) of southern Indiana, in the First Presbyterian Church, Madison. He was called upon to offer prayer. Even his name had been previously unknown to me ; but the thought and language and tone of the prayer at once enchained attention. It was a body of divinity-deliberate, system- atic, progressive, complete. Its intellectuality would have seemed out of place but for the masterful lighting up of Scripture which it embodied, together with a certain awful worshipfulness. I judge that the prayer must have occupied the greater part of an hour.
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the exceptionable, stimulating effect of his mode of teaching.
When to all this we add testimony to his blameless Christian life, his unstained honor and integrity in the sight of all men, we have before us the image of an eminent servant of God.
JOHN W. CUNNINGHAM, the first professor of sacred rhetoric in the seminary, after a few years sought the more congenial work of the pastorate, continuing it until his death.
GEORGE B. BISHOP was Mr. Cunningham's successor. He was a fine scholar, an admirable teacher, and withal a fearless, pungent preacher. But coming to the professor- ship with health already impaired by study, his career was. short.
JAMES WOOD, another professor in this chair, was more than a professor.
He was an unwearied and successful soliciting agent. He was the careful superintendent of the seminary's property. He kept the refectory. He gave or got assistance for every indigent or troubled student. He was a fair scholar, but was a better theo- logian and preacher than exegete. He had, too, that kindly tact, that Christian art of "putting things" which enabled him to bear his part in a heated controversy with calmness, firmness, and without bitterness.
THOMAS EBENEZER THOMAS, LEWIS W. GREEN, WILLIAM M. SCOTT, and PHILIP LINDSLEY are all well- known and honored names which belong to a later period of the seminary's history.
WABASH COLLEGE was established a little after the close. of the era to which these sketches particularly refer. It would, however, be inappropriate to conclude a chapter relating to Presbyterian education in Indiana without some mention of an institution which has had so successful a career and now stands almost alone in the state as to the.
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fulness of its endowments and the promise of future enlargement.
This college owes its origin to the counsels and efforts of five home missionaries, who early selected the upper Wabash valley as their field of labor. One of the earliest to agitate this subject was Rev. James Thomson, who settled in Crawfordsville, Noven- ber, 1827, and others connected with Crawfordsville Presbytery, then embracing most of the country of the upper Wabash, who often spoke to each other of the importance of a timely effort to plant an institution of learning, under good religious influence, and after the model of those planted by the fathers in the older portions of the country. It was not, however, till the autumn of 1832 that any definite measures were taken to carry the design into effect. The first meeting on this subject was held at the house of Rev. James Thomson, November 21, 1832. Present at this meeting were Rev. Messrs. James Thomson, James A. Carna- han, John S. Thomson, Edmund O. Hovey, and John M. Ellis, together with Messrs. John Gilliland, Hezekiah Robinson, and John McConnel.
The deliberations of this meeting resulted in the unanimous resolution that 'efforts should be made without delay to establish at Crawfordsville an institution of learning in connection with manual labor. At that time there was no literary institution, either located or projected, in this state north of Bloomington. Some of the considerations that showed the importance of the measure determined upon at that meeting are stated in the following extract from a letter written afterward by one of the persons who shared in its deliberations : "Being at that time an agent of the American Education Society, I became acquainted with the painful destitution of educated ministers in Indiana, and , I learned from the brethren that they had been urging the moral destitutions of the state on the attention of eastern churches and theological seminaries, imploring their aid in sending more laborers into the great field whitening for the harvest. And that for these four years of entreaty, only two additional ministers could be obtained. This was a most depressing demonstration that the East could not be relied on to furnish pastors for the teeming multitudes of this great state. At the same time it was found that there were some twelve 'or fifteen pious young men, of the best promise, in the churches of the Wabash country, who would study for the ministry could they but have the facilities of education.
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This seemed, in those circumstances, the clearest providential indication to found a college for the education of such young men."
A committee, to act temporarily as trustees of the institution, was appointed at this meeting. A liberal subscription was obtained from the citizens of Crawfordsville, a tract of fifteen acres of land was donated by Hon. Williamson Dunn, upon which the trustees, having selected a site for the building in the forest, in the midst of nature's unbroken loneliness, consecrated this enterprise for the furtherance of virtue and knowledge among mankind, to God, and solemnly invoked upon it the divine. blessing.
Measures were shortly afterward adopted for the erection of a suitable building for the' preparatory department of the institu- tion. The trustees appointed Mr. Caleb Mills, then a theological student at Andover, Mass., as the principal of the preparatory department and Teachers' Seminary, under whose instruction the institution, in this form, went into operation December 3, 1833, with twelve students, nine of whom were professed Christians.
In January, 1834, application was made to the state legislature for a charter, which was granted, under the name of " Wabash Manual Labor College and Teachers' Seminary." One feature of this charter -that requiring the trustees to provide manual labor for the students-has, in a subsequent modification of it, been laid aside ; the other is retained, and deemed of prime importance.
The enterprise thus commenced was prosecuted with unremit- ting zeal. By proper efforts at the West and at the East, funds were obtained ; as the number of students increased additional teachers were appointed ; regular college classes were formed ; a president for the institution-Rev. Elihu W. Baldwin, of New York-a man peculiarly fitted for the work to which he was called, was secured ; the erection of a large college edifice was entered upon, and, in the fall of 1838, was completed ; a library was collected and a philosophical apparatus commenced. Everything promised prosperity ; but reverses and trials were at hand. This edifice, just completed, was destroyed by fire, and library and apparatus were consumed with it, causing a loss of not less than $15,000. This loss occurring at a period of great commer- cial embarrassment, involved the necessity of procuring a loan of $8,000, in addition to all the funds that could be obtained by voluntary contribution. The debt thus incurred was a crushing incubus on the enterprise for eight years. In the mean time, a
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loss still more deeply felt was occasioned by the death of the beloved president of the college, which occurred October 15, IS40.
But amid these discouragements, the friends of Wabash College yielded not to despondency. A successor to Dr. Baldwin, in every respect worthy of the position which had been made vacant by his death, was found in Rev. Charles White, D.D., who entered on the duties of president in the fall of 1841, and whose useful and efficient labors for the advancement of the institution were continued for a period of twenty years. The college was also relieved, at length, from the pressure of its pecuniary embar- rassments. Through the liberality of individuals, means were furnished, in 1846, for the liquidation of the debt that bore so heavily upon it. Important aid has been received also from the "Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Educa- tion at the West." Liberal donations for founding professorships have recently been made.1
Under the administrations of the Rev. Dr. Joseph F. Tuttle, Dr. White's successor, and of the Rev. Dr. George S. Burroughs, now at the head of the institution, the advance has been continuous. 2
1 Johnston's " Historical Discourse," pp. 23-6.
2 See also Hovey's " Historical Sketch of Wabash College," Dr. Tuttle's baccalau- reate of 1876, and various similar sketches by Dr. Tuttle.
APPENDIX.
I.
MISSIONARY AGENCIES AT WORK IN INDIANA PREVIOUS TO 1826.
TRANSYLVANIA PRESBYTERY issued the first commission to a missionary to Indiana. This action was taken at Danville, April 14, 1803. (Cf. Chapter III:)
In its care for the "regions beyond" the GENERAL ASSEMBLY was not much behind. An appointment was made in 1805 (see Assembly's minutes) for three months' missionary service "in the Indian (sic) Territory," etc. At its first meeting, May 21, 1789, the General Assembly had taken under consideration the work of missions, and each of the four synods was directed to name to the next Assembly two persons qualified to serve as missionaries on the frontier. The Presbyteries were instructed to make collections for the support of the missionaries. In May, 1790, several appointments of missionaries were accord- ingly made, western New York and Pennsylvania being then on the extreme frontier line. Similar appointments were made by the successive Assemblies until 1802. At that time, the importance and extent of the enterprise having greatly increased, it was resolved "that a com- mittee be chosen annually by the General Assembly, to be denominated ' The Standing Committee of Missions'; that this committee shall consist of seven members, of whom four shall be clergymen and three laymen." To this committee were entrusted the appointment and oversight
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of missionaries and the general management of missionary work during the recess of the Assembly. The committee continued its labors with great success until 1816, when the Assembly organized "the Board of Missions acting under the authority of the General Assembly of the Pres- byterian Church in the United States."
Of the voluntary organizations which sent early aid to the Indiana wilderness the CONNECTICUT MISSIONARY SOCIETY was perhaps the most prominent. The General Association of Connecticut is composed of delegates from each of the local associations in the state and seems to have held its first meeting at Hartford in 1709. Soon after the War of the Revolution great numbers of the people of Connecticut having emigrated westward, attention was directed to their religious wants, and in 1795 the associa- tion issued an address to the new settlements making known their purpose to send them " settled ministers, well reputed in the churches, to preach among them the un- searchable riches of Christ, and as occasion might offer to gather and organize churches, to administer sealing ordi- nances, to instruct their young people, catechize their children, and perform all those ministerial duties which are usually practiced in the churches and congregations of Connecticut." Previous to this period, however, a few missionaries had been sent out, the first apparently in 1788. Until 1798 the General Association conducted directly, during its annual sessions, its missionary enter- prises, as the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church for a time was accustomed to do. But at the meeting in June, 1798, the association organized itself into a missionary society, with a board of trustees empowered to conduct its business. The object of the society was "to Christianize the heathen in North America and to support and promote Christian knowledge in the new settlements
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within the United States." This organization had from the first a most efficient management, and after more than twenty years of great activity formed an important nucleus of the later national society.
During the early part of the present century, in New. England and New York especially, a large number of state, district, county, and city mission societies were founded. Among these was the "YOUNG MEN'S MIS- SIONARY SOCIETY" of New York City. It had been organized January 23, 1809, as the " Assistant New York Missionary Society," changing its name as above indicated in 1816. This society became tributary to the "United Domestic Missionary Society" of New York, soon after the organization of the latter.
The "UNITED DOMESTIC MISSIONARY SOCIETY" of New York, a combination of a number of smaller societies of different religious denominations, was established in New York City in May, 1822. The fourth and last annual report of the society shows that during the year preceding they had aided 127 missionaries, four of whom were in Indiana. In connection with the meeting of the society May 12, 1826, a convention was held to consider the pro- priety of associating in a single organization the kindred missionary societies throughout the country, and it was finally resolved "that the recommendation of the conven- tion be adopted, and that the United Domestic Missionary Society now become the AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY, under the constitution recommended by the convention." The convention was composed of repre- sentatives from the states of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Alabama, and Arkansas. Its object was declared to be
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"to assist congregations that are unable to support the gospel ministry, and to send the gospel to the destitute within the United States."
THE INDIANA MISSIONARY SOCIETY was formed at a meeting of the friends of missions held at Livonia on the first Friday of August, 1822, according to a recom- mendation of Louisville Presbytery. The organization was tributary to the Assembly's Committee of Missions. Little was done the first year besides the establishment of a few auxiliary associations. During the second year ten weeks of missionary labor were accomplished. The third year the society had in its employ six missionaries resident within its bounds. Afterward its missionaries were found in every part of the state. At the annual meeting in August, 1826, the constitution was so amended as to make the society auxiliary to the American Home Missionary Society ; and the missionaries sent by the parent society to Indiana were located by the standing committee of the auxiliary. (See Dickey's "Brief History," pp. 18,, 19. ) Among the officers of the society were the Rev. Samuel T. Scott, president ; Dr. Isaac Coe, the Hon. James Scott, the Hon: William Hendricks, and General Homer Johns- ton, vice-presidents ; the Rev. William W. Martin, record- ing secretary ; and the Rev. Isaac Reed, corresponding secretary. The Rev. John M. Dickey was chairman of the standing committee.
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