USA > New York > Tompkins County > Ithaca > History of the First Presbyterian church of Ithaca, New York, during one hundred years : the anniversary exercises, January twenty-first to twenty-fourth, 1904 > Part 15
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2. The theological student is to be trained rather than taught. By this I mean to distinguish between telling him things and directing his powers in the doing of things. This is a question of method. There are certain de- partments of the theological curriculum where the chief function of the instructor is that of imparting information. Here he may as easily and as effectively instruct a large number as a small, and in a way, he may do better work with the larger number of students. But these subjects are comparatively few and are growing less. The best pedagogical method for the Seminary is to set the young men at once to the doing of the things they will have to do when they go out into their life work. The way to learn to do anything is to do it. This is an expensive method, because an instructor can in this way direct the work of only a small number of stu- dents, and there must, therefore, be a large number of instructors in com- parison with the number of students. This is one of the reasons why we need a larger Faculty at the Seminary. One Professor in the New Testa- ment would be ample for teaching many more students than we have, if he is merely to tell them about the New Testament. But if the students are to be trained to use their New Testaments intelligently and effectively then several professors are needed to direct their work. The same remark may be made regarding all the other departments of the Theological School. When the Seminary is able fully to carry forward its work after this plan its value to the students and hence to the Church will be vastly augmented.
3. The theological student is to be trained in habits of self-direction.
There is no pursuit in life which allows larger liberty than the ministry. Here is no task-master in the person of a client, whose case must receive
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EDUCATION OF TRAINED LEADERS
due attention, in the person of a customer whose wants must be supplied, in the person of an employee who must be kept busy. The minister may do his work when and how he please, and if he please not to do it at all, as alas, is sometime the case, he may ; of course, always with the fair proba- bility that he will be, like a good thing, passed along from congregation to congregation with ever-accelerated velocity. The minister who aims to be faithful and diligent, must be his own task-master. He must sit as a con- stant sentinel over his own ministerial self. For this difficult and exacting duty toward himself and his work he must be prepared in the Seminary, a kind of preparation that is most difficult to give. The Seminary must so adjust the student to required work and toward his instructors that he will learn how to manage his time, how to form his ideals, how to estimate values. He must acquire fixed habits of study and work. He must get skill in the matter of his own adjustments to the various demands upon his time and interest. This is a matter too technical for elaboration here but I desire to say that this task lays a heavy burden upon the Seminary, requir- ing increased equipment in Faculty and in library facilities. But the Sem- inary must not shrink from taking up this burden nor its friends fail to provide for it the means for bearing it.
It is abundantly apparent that the training of young men for this high moral and religious leadership is an imperative obligation upon the Church, and that the Church which neglects or slightingly discharges this duty does so at her peril. This congregation, in the deep and abiding interest which its Pastors and members have taken in Auburn Seminary throughout its whole history, a history almost coterminous with your hundred years, has shown that it had a keen appreciation of its obligation in this regard. Most nobly have you discharged this obligation and therein have been of incal- culable service to the Church in securing for it a qualified and trained ministry.
GEORGE B. STEWART.
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Come-Coming Bay
S ATURDAY, January twenty-third, was observed as Home-Coming Day. Owing to the time of year and the severity of the weather, not many former members were able to return. "Warmest greet- ings to all the home-coming members of our beloved Church from a fellow member of sixty-seven years' standing " was the message sent by our oldest resident member .* Many letters from former members were received ; in some of them gratitude is expressed for help received here in beginning the Christian life and service. A few excerpts follow :
From TAPPAN HALSEY :- " I am still, at the age of 59 years, in the Sunday School, where I have been since when, in 1852, I received a Bible as a reward from my revered teacher Nancy Beers. I am an Elder in the Kenwood Evangelical Church, Chicago, where I have been an officer since its organization about twenty years ago. I mention these facts to show you that the work done by the faithful workers of the Ithaca Church goes on spreading and reaching farther each year Henry VanDyke says of the dews of Mt. Hermon that some fall every morn on St. Mary's church and its faithful physicians gather a handful and find it cures all ailments, and that this dew must be Christ's 'Commandment that ye love one another'. This is my message to the dear old Church at Ithaca."
From CHARLES H. BLATCHFORD :- " My years of membership in your Church while I was a student at Cornell University are a very delightful memory, especially the excellent sermons of Dr. Fiske and my attendance in the class of Prof. Lee."
From REV. BEVIER SMITH, (see page 65, no. 32) :- " My relationship to the Ithaca Pres. Church will always be a close one for it was withiu her walls that I, a lad of twelve, made my first public confession of Christ, and enlisted among His followers. I look back with a feeling of deep gratitude toward those blessed influences both in the home and in the Church and Sun- day School, that led me to give myself to the Master as a disciple and worker of His."
From REV. ALFRED T. VAIL, (see page 64, no. 22) :- " It is hardly needful for me to say that the Ithaca Pres. Church is very near to my heart. It was in this Church during my junior year in Cornell, in 1879, that I first bowed the knee in confession of Jesus Christ as my Savior and Master .
The warm-blooded earnest sermons of Dr. Stryker went home to my heart. . It was the ounce of Dr. Stryker's pressure upon my coat button in the vesti- bule of the church one morning that made me feel that in him I had a personal friend. After- wards I talked the matter over with him at close range in his study . Soul longings arose within that could not be satisfied with what was found by investigation of the 'garments of God ' in nature. I must have God as my friend, and found Him such through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, preached and taught in your Church. Here I formed a warm friendship with Jared T. Newman, who was thinking along the same lines with me, and who took such a per- sonal interest in me that I was brought out into the open as one seeking and accepting Jesus Christ. At the same time I had begun to earnestly consider the Bible for myself to see if these things were so. I am greatly indebted to one of your excellent Christian men, George R. Williams, who was my S. S. teacher in one of the little rooms of the old chapel. There I used to fire some questions at him that must have been embarrasing at times. But by his Christian
* Those now living who have been longest in the membership of this Church are : Mrs. Jerusha Parker (Whaley ) Van Kirk, united on confession in 1831, now non-resident, Mrs. Mary Hardy Williams, on conf., 1836, Mr. Luther J. Sanford, on conf., 1846, Miss Harriet N. Williams, on conf., 1837, Mrs. Estella Hazen Blood, on conf., 1847, Mrs. Sarah Esty Wilgus, on conf., 1848, Miss Harriet VanHoesen, on conf., 1848, Mrs. Caroline B. Wood, on conf., 1838, Miss Jane L. Hardy, on conf., 1843,
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courtesy and kindness and the personal consideration with which he met me, he won me to himself, and helped win me to the simplicity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ It was in a corner of the chapel, in a prayer meeting of young men on Sundays, that I began to pray and speak for Christ. During my junior year, one Sunday morning upon the spot where you are now gathered, together with my friend Newman, and a Miss Brown, I bowed to Christ in confession and baptism. Under the guidance of Dr. Stryker, and by the encouragement of George Williams, I entered Auburn Seminary with fear and trembling, a student for the gospel ministry. I cannot tell how much I am indebted to the friends in the Ithaca Pres. Church for starting me in Christian life and work. I have gone on in the spiritual life and strength there received, supplemented with the renewed help of God, preaching God's word now for nearly twenty years. In a new church building, in the centre of the growing city of Buffalo, with an increasing work upon my hands, I continue until this day. As you did for me, may you help light many a student of the great University in your midst, with that true Light beyond any light of nature, even with 'that Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world'".
From REV. LEWIS HARTSOUGH :- " A few days after my birth Mrs. Daniel Bates took me in her arms, devoutly saying :- 'This boy must preach the gospel'. Her faith, with mother's never faltered in this which I began to do fifty-two years ago last August . We moved to Varna in the summer of 1843, and when the branch Church at Varna was organized from your Church father was made an Elder, and I was converted in early boyhood in the gracious revival that at once followed that organization and added some sixty members thereto . . ยท
. My connection with the main Sunday School at Ithaca began in the Infant Class,
grading up till I reached the Bible Class On going to Ithaca mainly for school advantages, I transferred my membership to your Church, was a member of its choir, also of a Bible class and Superintendent of a branch school down at Fall Creek. I generally led the singing in the main Sunday School .. After listening to my oration on Oliver Crom- well at commencement exercises of Ithaca Academy in the Town Hall, July 14, 1848, Daniel Bates offered me a good education at Harvard University if I would become a lawyer. I grad- uated, instead, at Cazenovia Seminary in 1852 . Had there been a fund that I could have used in completing an education so my health could have been saved me, I presume I would never have left the Church of my spiritual birth. Hence I threw in my lot with the Methodist Church. The Conference I joined met in Ithaca in July, 1851. Receiving my first appointment, I called on Mrs. Daniel Bates ; her parting words were :- ' Now, Lewis, do not tell sinners to try to get religion, but tell them to surrender to Christ and He will save.' Blessed ordination ! and it was always heeded . I was obliged to change climate and so went
west to my great advantage. (see page 63, no. II.) Altogether, in the active work of the ministry, I have travelled some 400,000 miles, have made 9,000 pastoral visits and have preached at least 1,500 times. I have published, with a partner in each, two music books- The Sacred Harmonium (1864) and Beulah Songs (1879), besides, as Musical Editor, two other books. (His best known hymn is I hear Thy welcome voice that calls me Lord to Thee.) This song, words and music, was the gift of the Holy Spirit in one of the most suc- cessful revivals of my ministry. So many, many have told me how this song has helped them ; and so, with grateful heart, I have thanked the blessed Spirit for its gift. . . My relation with your choir in those early days was an inspiration to me that the other singers little knew. I most gratefully acknowledge that I owe very much to my early Presbyterian training. The Lord has been gracious to me and I would acknowledge His 'Leading Hand.'"
It was a source of regret that Mr. Zenas Parker, who had been asked to write a Poem for this occasion was prevented by illness from being present. In his absence it was read by the Pastor. Mr. Parker was formerly a mem- ber of this Church and Superintendent of its Sunday School from 1852-55, at which time he was Principal of the Lancasterian School.' He now re- sides at Bath, N. Y., " bringing forth fruit in old age."
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THE POEM
S TANDING on this holy platform, On this centenarian plain, Hallowed thoughts and sacred memories Are crowding on my brain. Three and fifty of God's cycles, Covering all my manhood's prime, Leave their fadeless footprints On the sands of time.
Here I came a pilgrim stranger, Came with you to lose or win, Asked for fellowship and shelter, From the blighting curse of sin ; Asked to be enrolled a member, And you took the stranger in.
Then we stood and vowed together, Vowed we'd keep our honor bright ;
Vowed that God should be our Father,
And Bethlehem's Babe should be our light. Vowed we'd guard this sacred alter, Till our spirits took their flight. Were we earnest-did we mean it?
Have we kept that solemn vow? Let the voice of conscience answer When at the cross we bow.
A hundred years at God's commanding, This has been a Christian Church ; Hark-the echo, how it thrills the living soul ;
How it spans the mighty distance To the blood-washed sinner's goal, Waking there in that bright throng The matchless music of immortal song. Just a century of Sabbaths,
Sanctioned by Jehovah's choice ;
Just a century of sermons, Uttered by the human voice.
A hundred years of fervent praying For the Spirit's power, Tells the story of her progress,
Tells the story of this hour. Ten decades of song and anthem,
Lifted to the God of love, Echo through the golden arches Of our Citadel above. A hundred years of Christian kindness To God's sick and worthy poor ; If in Jesus name you've done it- Heaven will open wide its door. Ten decades of nursery teaching, "Now I lay me down to sleep,"
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HOME-COMING DAY
Teaching babes to love this Jesus, And "pray the Lord their souls to keep." Mother, have you been deluded ? Have you thought the child too young To lisp the precious name of Jesus- Lisp it with the infant tongue? Long ago you taught it " Mamma,"-
Taught that stammering tongue ; Why not teach that baby " Jesus " When it's just as young? Long ago you planted your love In its tender heart ; Why not give the love of Jesus That same early start? Who will teach the child these lessons,
If your chance is lost ? Who will bear the crushing sorrow, Who will stand the cost ?
God gives to his Church a commission- To fill in the fulness of time. If they fall into line with his leading- The results will be truly sublime. One of your missions appears to have been Preparing young men for the field ; To go in the strength of the Master, Wearing His buckler and shield.
There is one of the men you have furnished, Of whom I am prompted to speak ; For six happy years of my life He was my Pastor and guide, And humbly I served as an Elder, Where with honor he sat to preside. Like his Master he dared to say No When tempted to follow the world ; He carried Christ's banner above him, And it was never known to be furled.
It was your Dr. Niles with one short limb, Well stocked with wisdom and wit, A fine entertainer in any pure class With which he might happen to sit. In regard to the limb that was short, He said to me once in his prime,
"No matter how heavy the grade, It is down grade with me half the time." He was one of the bravest and brightest of men It has been my good fortune to know ; Mantled with garments of friendship, He went to his Christ-lighted bed, And he slept like a saint in his casket, When ashes to ashes was said. No seed has been sown by this thrice honored Church
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HISTORY OF THE CHURCH
More directly productive of good to the age,
Or reflecting more clearly its own bright renown, Than placing such names on the historic page. God will watch this faithful sowing, He will garner in the wheat, And in the promised land of rest,
Each golden sheaf you'll meet.
The stars that you have won for Christ,
Through Christian faith and Christian love, Will form a constellation bright-
In the Galaxy above. Great harvests from your faithful work,
Not seen by mortal eyes, Will wave in richest grandeur there-
On the fields of Paradise.
This little snap-shot picture-
Of the coming dawn,
Will glow like golden sunlight,
Till the Resurrection morn. To-day we watch the beauty On this century's brow,
To-morrow glimpse the glory Of a hundred years from now.
Two former members spoke briefly,-Mr. Charles Humphrey bringing the greetings of one whose vocation of mining engineer has several times sent him around the world, and who voiced the loyalty of many who have gone forth from this Church; and Professor Henry S. Williamis, of Yale College, a former Elder and Sunday School Superintendent, speaking of the larger breadth of view that now prevails in the Church ; he regretted some mis- takes that had been made in his time, and called attention to the fact that the Church has no reason to be afraid of truth; that by reason of our dis- trust and reluctance to look with favor upon the results of scientific inquiry, we have suffered in the past; and that in order to hold its influence among men, the Church must preserve an open mind toward truth from whatever source it comes, absolutely sure that we have nothing to fear from the most searching and painstaking investigation.
THE RECEPTION.
In the evening a delightful Reception was held in the chapel. Many of the ladies and several of the gentlemen wore costumes of the olden time, thus giving an air of quaintness and of auld lang sine. An impromptu choir also rendered such old time anthems as "Sherburne " and "Russia."
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PRESENT EDIFICE, FROM THE PARK
PARLOR IN PRESENT EDIFICE
The Contribution of Presbyterianism to the Nation's Life.
L OOKING down upon this assembly I see many a new and unfamiliar face; but, also, very many faces of the well remembered and well beloved, whose difficulties and griefs I have been permitted to share, and in whose gladnesses to rejoice. Scattered all over this fair city and its surrounding hills are homes in which I have been a wel- comed guest, in which I have united happy lives in marriage and from which I have borne forth to burial the sacred forms of those whom we call "dead " mingling my tears with those who wept. But, to the vision of my soul, there are more faces here than those you wear,-faces of the translated and transfigured, floating above your heads, above the places where they used to sit and bow in holy worship, -faces of the unforgotten and beloved of past years,-faces that shall yet welcome us to their comradeship in the " Better Land ", so we serve well our time, as they served theirs. Welcome, ye in- visible witnesses of our glad services on this joyful Centennial Day! Wel- come to our grateful commemoration of your work in this fair and stately Temple which these later hands have reared to your honor and to the praise of your glorious Lord !
But, turning now to the theme set for me at this hour, it is almost neces- sary to say that we are not fanatics of an ecclesiastical cult nor bigots of a creed, though we believe profoundly in both creed and cult as highway and impulse to the best type of manhood and the finest Christian attainment. Accordingly let us widen a little the precise terms of the theme proposed. Indeed, I do not imagine that, in its phrasing, the word " Presbyterianism " was set so much to stand, narrowly, for our Church Polity as for the funda- mentals of our common "Presbyterian and Reformed Faith",-the deep bases for character-building. We should hardly be able, endeavor it as we might, to discriminate between the variations of ecclesiastical denominations which build on the same fundaments of faith, in their contributions to the nation's life. These divisions, therefore, will be largely disregarded. "Con- tributions to the Nation's Life "? Well, the earliest comers to New Eng- land,-the Pilgrims,-were Puritans, sturdiest of Calvinists and practical, though unavowed "Independents". The Massachusetts Bay colonists and other early New England settlers were equally staunch in doctrine but far more nearly of the Presbyterian type in Church government. The Dutch of
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New Amsterdam were of both Presbyterian polity and doctrine. So were the Huguenots, scattered through all the colonies but especially in the Caro- linas. Of course the Scotch and Scotch-Irish were bred-in-the-bone and sealed-in-the-fire Presbyterian both in polity and doctrine. All these ele- ments of the colonial life must be reckoned with together. They were of one piece,-of the same grand type. With their differing strains of racial blood, history and tradition they constitute a unit of force from the first, whether their chosen seats were in New England, New York, New Jersey, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania or West Virginia and the adjacent mountain regions. It is to be said, then, that this broader and inclusive Presby- terianism provided the great mass of the original material of the colonies, whether you estimate it either by numbers or by weight. Their population at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War was about three millions. Of these the best estimates now made give about 900,000 as of Scotch and Scotch-Irish origin ; about 400,000 as of Dutch, closely allied German, and Huguenot sources ; while about 600,000 were of English descent. But all were alike of Calvinistic color and mostly of Presbyterian preference. Two- thirds of the free white population were of these bloods. With the excep- tion of the English Episcopalians, whose " Thirty-Nine Articles " were also Calvinistic, with that only partial exception, all these elements had passed through the fires of bitter persecution and been forged under its awful hammers into temper and quality for independent life in the new world. The English Established Church had power and prestige through its colonial governors and the colonial Episcopacy of Virginia, which drove "dissenters " out to the more hospitable and tolerant Catholicism of Maryland. The High Church Governor of New York, at one time, by a sheer legislative trick, made that an Episcopal colony for nearly twenty years and prosecuted Makemie and others for illegally preaching within their dioceses. But the mass and weight of the intellectual, moral, social and spiritual forces of colonial life lay always in the deep hearts and sturdy faith and indomitable wills of these dissenting believers. They were "it ",-the open secret of all that the colonies were or were to become.
Few care to question the power of religious conviction upon individual character and social development, especially when that conviction has had the tempering, long and hot, of the furnaces of persecution and the hardy experience of exile and savage wildernesses and more savage foes. None venture to deny the potency of religious conviction upon the whole course of our colonial history, or to fling doubt on the commanding place of such individual character in the grounding of a "government of the people, by the people, for the people". The common faith of the "Presbyterian and
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Reformed " doctrine, held by the great majority of the people was the shap- ing and master force for character and institution in the colonies.
This force straightway concerned itself for public and general intelligence. The public common school was the child of the Church through all the prominent colonies. All the Colleges, for nearly two hundred years, were founded and fostered by the same sturdy religious faith. Harvard, Yale and Princeton were its crowns of a heroic sacrifice and devotion. The larger groups, of later birth,-Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Williams, Amherst, Union, Hamilton and the rest had like brave origin. Their Presidents and Pro- fessors were, for the most part, rigidly orthodox ministers and their studies were arranged for the equipment of a "Learned Ministry." Here, then, we find the foundation of our incomparable systems of the common and the higher education for all our people,-at once the glory and the security of our free institutions.
Politically, the Township was the primary institution throughout the colonies. It was the old English " Hundred" re-shaped and adjusted to new conditions. Its citizens and voters were members of the Churches, in the earliest times, and subject to their discipline. The Town Meetings were, substantially, the Churches, acting in both civil and religious capacities. The Towns and their "Meetings" were training-schools in all the arts of free government, foster-mothers of the very spirit of independent self- government on the larger scale that was to be. It was the Town-meeting of Boston which rocked in the "Cradle of Liberty" under the impassioned eloquence of Samuel Adams, James Otis and their patriot compeers.
These dissenting Churches had, of necessity, established in the old world a system of self-government by representatives of their own election. They would none of Teachers, Elders or Pastors set down on them, willy nilly, by Pope, Prelate or Bishop. They brought with them hither, and held strenuously, this most vital axiom of freedom and it was adopted through all the non-Episcopal colonies to the utmost limit of what was possible under the British crown. They were reverent of the just laws which them- selves had enacted. They revered authority while authority was legitimate, impinging on no liberty of thought or conscience. They held their souls and their freedom for eternal career so sacred that they would again, as their fathers and they had done before, joyfully venture life, estates and sacred honor in revolt against any tyranny that should invade their inalienable rights as citizens of God's eternal kingdom. To settle their own faitlis,- to buttress them, to make secure the rights of men as free candidates for the grandeurs of eternity in the limitless universe under the sovereignty of Jehovah,-these were their "inalienables ". Holy devotion to and champion-
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