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 17
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Calvinistic Churches, but of all Churches of evangelical faith and purity and redeeming zeal. In the loss of the vast numbers of which I have spoken, who should had been ours, to sister communions we have this very sub- stantial comfort,-our loss has been to these our sister Churches a mighty gain to their vigor, their substantial faith, their Christian quality, and in it is fascinating promise of such even emphasis on the two great poles of evan- gelical doctrine as shall yet blend into one communion and one mighty co- work the Calvinist and the Arminian for the glorious Kingdom of our com- mon Lord.
Contributions to the Nation's Life ? I have not spoken of that which is indeed of supreme moment,-this, namely, the vitality of this great faith of
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ours infused into the very veins and arteries of its subjects by the actual conversion of millions to all righteousness towards men and God, creating, so, a fresh and stalwart integrity of character, an indefeasible virtue, a holy passion of human brotherhood, of an all but incalculable value to the Nation's Life, without which, could it even endure ? It has redeemed men, homes, hamlets, communities, cities, states from all forms of destroying evil. I have not spoken of its vast influence in all manners of Reform nor of the immense wealth of its Benevolences which touch to heal and help in every woe to which men are heirs,-its Hospitals and Infirmaries, its Homes for the aged and disabled, for the orphan and the friendless. I even boast its incomparable bigness of heart towards every undenominational good work. Mr. Moody used to say that, if he wanted $100,000 for a Y. M. C. A. build- ing or any good thing outside the Church, he expected to get at least $80,000 of it from Presbyterians. He tested his expectation over and over to its successful proof. I have not spoken of the wonderful and Christly work which these Churches of the Calvinistic stripe are carrying on in every part of the world for its evangelization. They are, by all their doctrines and covenants, primarily evangelizers. They are pouring the redeeming Blood of Christ into the very heart of human life, giving that Divine Life to the nations, and, by giving it, getting for their own land the more of that essential Life that is Divine,-that shall build and secure its enduring grandeur.
If I were to cite any single Church as a concrete illustration of my theme I am sure it should be this one. It found this village of Ithaca the dis- tributing center for all sorts of traffic coming to the Inlet by water. Caravans of teams hauled their freights in every direction for a hundred miles. The rendezvous for the teamsters and the owners of the traffic was here. Their great day of revel, gambling, horse-racing, drunkenness and general debauch was Sunday. Ithaca went by the name of "The Pit " for its notorious wickedness. Such this Church found it a hundred years ago ; worshipped God in school houses and hay lofts, and where it could,-a small and feeble folk. By and by came, sent of God, a MAN, every inch a man, the greatest man, I think, whom this fair valley has ever claimed for its own. God was with William Wisner from the first, though at one time the officers of the Church banded against him and demanded and secured his resignation. Action was delayed by a wise Presbytery for the Pastor was dangerously sick, and finally the resignation was withdrawn and the magnificent ministry continued. The Church rallied. Wonderful revivals came sweeping scores and hundreds into the Church. Two hundred and twenty-five members were received on confession of faith on three successive Sabbaths one year. In
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fifteen years had come such a moral and religious transformation that redeemed Ithaca became as famed for its purity and piety as it had been for its wickedness, and the great leader resigned his charge for the express reason that there were but three or four adults of his congregation who were not members of the Church and, so, he would best go to Rochester where there was greater field for evangelistic work ! Sample, this of what other Churches in other places east and west and everywhere had done and are doing for the redemption and upbuilding in all virtue, piety and beauty the communities in which they are planted ! Not all the scenes of their work are so fair as is your, nay " our " beautiful city, nestled here amidst these exquisite hills at the head of "Fair Cayuga." Not all their conquests have been so complete and dramatic ; not all their hill-tops are crowned like yours with the splendid towers of a superb University ; yet they are all doing work in some sort like that which this venerable and vital Body of Christ has done.
If I sought concrete illustration of what a Church may do directly for the Nation's weal, still I should point to this same Heaven-favored Church and then to the far, vast, rich and wonderful Northwest " where rolls the Oregon", those mighty spaces between British America and California,-between the Rockies and the Pacific, and say " Behold O proud Republic, the gift to thy resources, to thy territorial empire, to thy glory and grandeur of the future, which this brave Presbyterian Church won for thee !" Her devotion to the kingdom of Christ sent Parker and Whitman with his heroic wife on their mission of redemption to the Red men. Whitman saw that region of meas- ureless resources about to pass into foreign control and like the saint, the hero, the patriot and the Christian that he was, undertook that awful, won- derful, wintry journey alone, through deep snows and intolerable cold and blinding storms, over pathless regions, confronting every conceivable peril of savage man and beast, of starvation, of bewilderment and loss of way, of helpless entanglement out of which there could be no way. That journey has always seemed to me a miracle. That strange figure as it came unan- nounced to Doctor Parker's door here on your hillside, in his rough and worn buffalo-skin clothing,-hands and face blistered with the frost sores till he was almost unrecognizable; then going to Washington to confront Webster, Secretary of State, and the President with his story of the extent, the resources, the political, military, economic and commercial value of that enormous territory and how it was about to pass into British control. He convinced incredulity, overcame hesitancy, arrested a treaty well under way to exchange that magnificent Northwest for a fishery privilege off the coast of New Foundland ! His brave and patriotic and terrible adventure saved to his country not only that immense and prolific region but our whole empire
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of the Pacific coast,-our outlook and outlet upon the vast Orient. He made possible for us a place among the great World Powers. But for that heroic servant and representative of this Church, our western frontier, with scarce a doubt, would forever have remained the Rocky Mountain ridge. Hemmed in to the north and west by the mighty Empire of Great Britain, we should have been doomed to the rank of a second rate Power.
That we now stand confronting the teeming Orient with a Pacific coast line stretching from Behring Straits to Lower California is due to Marcus Whitman, for had we not had Oregon we should never have acquired Cali- fornia, or Alaska. We should never have fronted the Orient nor had our stepping stones of the Hawaiian Islands, Tutuilla, Guain and the Philippines to the very gateways of China and the Far East, that hive of our swarming race, where the most thrilling dramas of the new era are to be enacted. There our arms, diplomacies and energetic enterprises are to, and inust, have large and glorious part in shaping and pressing forward the civilization and destinies of that larger half of mankind as it is awakening and ready to sweep into the currents of modern time and modern progress. I say all this of opportunity for our magnificent future in this new era of human develop- is strangely due to that terrible, wintry, lonely, patriotic, Christian and audacious journey of your representative,-the Martyr Hero of this venerable Church ! Those men of the Church in those old days builded better than they knew when they sent their Missionaries to the savages of the far West and this man leading back his great colony to Oregon over the mountains, showing Fremont his way, and saving the Pacific slope, went back to martyrdom at the instigation of the traders whose plans he had baffled, by the hands of the ignorant savages he had gone to bless. His monument stands on the spot where he and his brave wife were ruthlessly slain and a Presbyterian College which bears his honored name has risen to bear his fame to the remotest generations of men. I know no Church which has so signally deserved of the Republic as has this, over whose venerable head an hundred years have passed, yet lier locks are not white with age, her eyes are not dimined nor is her natural force abated. Long may her bow abide in strength! Venerated fathers have passed to their reward. Their children have risen up to call them blessed and to enlarge and glorify their work. So may it be in this Church from generation to generation, each generation stronger, purer, grander than the former. May she bud and blossom and bring forth fruit ever richer and more abundant even to the Second Coming of her gracious Lord and her Eternal King! Amen and Amen !
ASA S. FISKE.
Haring the Future.
COLOSSIANS II:3. "In Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." (Job xxii : 15-30; Matt. xvi.)
T HE past, back into which the future is ever rushing, as the miles sweep under the flying train,-the past, is that by which we esti- mate and dare what is to come. The present is but that instant of pause before the pendulum lets another second slip from the ratchet. While we count it is gone-ancient. But we must remember and we must anticipate ; and "facing the future " openly, we carry into it our persistent selves. We can neither lose nor keep what we have been.
The demarcations of time and tense are steps in the logic of God, and special dates are critical as they rouse and register both reflection and fore- cast. "Bursting into the silent sea " of every new period and its new proba- tions we must 'take observations' by the constant stars. Not for long at a time is 'dead reckoning ' safe.
An epoch well-considered in the life of a community or a person gives all purposes and sympathies a realignment. Its appreciation gives a new point of departure for hope and intention. The goal and the course shine in the gathered light.
To such a period you have come and wisely you are valuing it. It is mine to attempt to help you to look on.
It is fitting that, in completing its first century, this organized Church should take its bearings-read the moral skies-and venture the on-coming years with bright and steady eyes.
God works with and within the materials of human life. He makes Him- self understood by what is intelligible by us. As in the miracle of the loaves He multiplies what inan has and builds into what we know. A Saviour must be " found in fashion as a man " and the Kenosis limit itself to the syllables of what man can appreciate. And so this book is divine in that it is su- premely human-God's wisdom in man's words-the incarnation the best analog of inspiration.
But all history is a book-not a page of it profane, save as it is profaned by denying the omnipresent Spirit. Like the Hebrew (says Van Oosterzee), it is " written with consonants only ". Its vowels are supplied by those who understand its spiritual orthography. Moral sequence makes the latest and ever progressing chapters in the revelation of the continual God.
Backward then, and about us, we look that we may advance with Him who is " with us alway " "as He was with our fathers ".
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PRESENT EDIFICE, FROM NORTHWEST
PRESENT EDIFICE, FROM SOUTHEAST
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Intensity is what measures the abundance of life. To live is more than to exist. One man may live ten times as much as another in the same year. A 'lifetime ' is what one makes it. Who would compare the qualitative amount of Methusaleh with that of Paul, or the reign of George III with the presidency of Lincoln ?
And the human story is climactic. The geometrical progression,-the swiftening movement, the enlarging implications, measure the evolution of the plan of God. The gathered momentum of present times constrains wider thinking and bolder action. It inspires a comprehension detached from old measurements, an expectant attention toward fulfilling and expand- ing providences, more bravery under the problems of new obedience, many of which are as yet nebulous but all of which our Leader will resolve. The scenery changes ; but the light lasts. Our vicissitudes are not His !
The present condensation and compacting of the world is divinely instru- mental. By war, by commerce, by diplomacies that even forget or disdain Him, God is showing the problem of man to be one problem and is outrun- ning our sloth as His own Missionary ! The work of discovery is nearly done, the integration of humanity begins. The geography of the drama is nearly learned. The modern meaning and mandate of the gospel is that it can not much longer be held segmentally : but that man is to be brought to a common denominator. We must factor with a whole world, not with its conceited fractions !
The mission of the Church, as His agent and voice is the message of the only Christ to the big earth and to all its peoples. So sang the angels !- so spake and so speak the prophets. The word of the Church translates the message-readjusting, as every map and code must, to the self-disclosures of that message, and holding its warrant in its docile flexibility to that from which it derives.
The message must be credible, portable, essential, universal. Methods are only approximate and elemental principles must revise and correct them. Strength lies in obedience to the primary testimony, and this central truth is to be seized utterly and to be told, dismayed by no mundane opposition. It must disembarass itself of formulas, tenuous inferences, technicalities,-all that is remote and circumferential, and trust the efficiency of the central thing. And the central thing is the personality of Christ. Life's word,-the world's light ;- God manifest in flesh and time, to redeem man and time ;- in whom all things are and hold together ;- in whom all is ' headed up' and complete,-history, the Book, the Church, society, knowledge, wisdom, goodness, eternity ! Heir of all things, determinative of all,-the permanent
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and transcendent Son of Man. Recognition of Him is the one test, obedi- ence to Him the only requirement, the fruits of His Spirit the infallible proof.
The essence then must rule the accident and the Gospel of God be stripped to the quick. This word inust waive unpentecostal prejudices, hereditary idioms; the abatements of sentimentality, casuistry, convention ; pride of dialectic, rubric, canon, shibboleth, and resume the "simplicity of Christ ". The pyramid must stand on its base. A seed, to germinate, must not be crushed, carved, or perfumed : but planted. Received meekly, it is able, by its intrinsic life, to save to the uttermost. The simplicity is the universality. Its obstacles are localisms. Some man-made redundancies there are to be denied and shorn off.
I. Now then, this open secret is to be identified with no preferred style of organization. Any is good which serves the great end, any is bad which idolizes the means. To impose one particular method fetters vitality. "God fulfills Himself in many ways". The dynamical does not serve but utilizes the mechanical. You do not organize an oak, you plant its acorn. Manu- facture is not growth. God gives life a body as it pleases Him and to each its own.
Therefore no one polity is exclusive. Since no one theory of "orders " is final, no one theory is imperative. The way makes secondary the means. Grace is not bestowed in uniform packages. This renounces the separate specialties of all denominations. They are but given names-Christ is the sirname. They are adjective ; He is substantive. India, Japan, China, may be allowed to serve Him in their own garments. Fact is more than fashion. The reflex of this liberty shows the fatuity here of our too much emphasis upon religious provincialisms. There is a feeble segregationalism which wastes energy and frustrates influence. The affinity of mere temperament and taste is pitiful strategy and its extreme defence is schism, and schism is a great heresy ! A too large amount of Home Missionary money is wasted in the wicked rivalry of denominations.
Worse yet are the social stratifications of caste and class-partitionings which the real Christ ridicules and rends. He loves the society of all souls. His welcome leaves out none of the least of His brothers. Liturgics also are often lesser herbs! There is no Presbyterian faith, Methodist obedience, Episcopal self-sacrifice, Baptist salvation, Roman authority, Protestant liberty ; but all these if actual are of the indivisible Christ. One name, one bond of peace ; He alone is the differential. One shepard-one flock. One captain-one army. Institutionalism is not Christianity. Its modes are mutable expediences. Garb, gait, days, gestures are no true substitute for the one salutation and prayer-" Peace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity !"
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2. And, moreover, neither can the minor premises of any one philosophy, occidental or oriental, limit the major Christ. No mental processes must girdle the fact or attempt to surpass the plain essential thing of allegiance.
Theology is philosophy applied to religion. It is valuable-inevitable ; but it is incidental. Its provisional and fallible definitions have a constant tendency over to emphasise the individualistic point of view, and to sub- ordinate life to terminology. It is always in danger of gnosticism and of a rationalism calling itself a finality. It, therefore, as do all tentative things, needs constant rewriting. Exceeding modesty becomes it, as it becomes every human science, and all the more as its inferences are made remote.
To say " nothing new in theology " is to repeat the immobility of Christ's bitterest foes-the Rabbis. To claim the continued presence of Christ with His " yet many things to say " is to avow that no category has fathomed or catena exhausted Him. His meaning is ever unfolding and compels con- stant enlargement of view, and statement, and obedience. The Book itself is not a chemical analysis, but a portrait. "The development of doctrine (says Fairbairn) is not a logical but a biological process." Our discursive systems are but broken lights. Rapidly they wax old. They outgrow themselves while in the making, and the better they say the more they imply yet to be said. Seeing better with each new ray of His illumination, the message which makes Him its reason must constantly revise, and often retire, earlier explanation, appealing constantly to the latest demonstrations of the experience of His fellowship and seeking that growth in knowledge which comes ambulando. Loyalty therefore retrenches its devices and in mneek expectancy heeds the new chapters of His self-revelation. Substan- tial adherence to the one Lord is the one faith. Variety not uniformity of emphasis upon the numberless inferences is the note of healthy relation to Him, in us as it was in the Apostles. "Sayest Thou this of thyself, or did some other tell it thee of Me?" Plural creed is always compromise and most so when most minutely elaborated. To force consent or subscription is to erect a human system into infallibility. It is pontificial and usurping. Every man must chew his own food. The Athanasian anathema goes far toward blasphemy. It promotes evasion and an insincerity which is septic. " Take heed lest there be anyone that maketh a spoil of you through his philosophy, after the tradition of men." Christ is the Door and Key- Peter's ascription the Rock. To live and love by and for Jesus, the Messiah, is elemental and genital. It is all. Theory does not precede but follows duty. To obey is to believe. To follow is to find. All that postpones or inverts this vital order is superservicable, and its comminations are empty. What is Christocentric is Christian, and every true radius swings about this point. This reduces the essential thing to its lowest terms.
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3. "Differences of administration " then, and "five words with the under- standing," rule out the exactions of both conformity and uniformity. But this protest prepares for what is positive and constructive,-this, that to hold fast to the single and simple Christ is to assert and maintain His absolute finality,-His total applicability to every human problem. All affairs and instances must come to this criterion. His jurisdiction is absolute and entire. There are no questions of human relation, individual or collective, that are not fundamentally questions of the authority and intention of the Son of God. It is His world. The history of redemption is His autobiography. The ' course of Time' is His course. The so-called 'stream of tendency ' reveals His control and approach. In the egg or out of it, even half-results are prophetic, and all signs are the 'signs of the Son of Man.' To be sure of this is to have discretion to interpret and courage to undertake. This confidence in His decrees will not lean upon temporary expedient nor be perplexed by any formal changes.
Spiritual, personal, general, then, the message of the centrality of Christ leaps all bounds of custom, rank, race. His wisdom is the beginning and the end. Aside from His interpretation of Time, Man, the World, God, all is eccentric and futile. He alone can deliver from misunderstanding and incredulity as to the issues of life.
(a) He is the core of the story and the record. He is the gospel. All these testimonies which were Greek are centripetal. In a thousand terms they affirm Him as the deep treasury of a Creator's faithful love.
(b) So, then, the Hebrew Scriptures are to be reread in the sunlight of the New. All there is patiently preparatory, crepuscular,-written in the future- perfect. One name unites, unifies them-Messiah which is Christos, and whose direct transfer would have been a mighty gain. Inspiration culmi- nates. The One " Anointed " revises, corrects, re-establishes, and with the finality of His " but I say" makes both Testaments Christian and makes them one reflex of the Word.
(c) Christ's place is central in philosophy. Word-warriors may ignore it, but how can the History of Philosophy or the Philosophy of History be writ- ten and from a theory of life omit His mnoulding thought ! Barren task ! What Ethics can be silent toward Him who is " the end of law for righteous- ness ?" For Him Plato and Aristotle groped.
(d) He is embedded in literature. Modern thought witnesses His motive and His mastery upon its every page. Secular classics are sterile-at the most giving the problem and no answer. He is the Answer. Sophocles
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shuddered and Plautus laughed ; but in the radiant poetry of Browning and Tennyson and Whittier the heart of hope responds and deep calls to deep.
(e) Art proclaims Him-Murillo, Raphael, Angelo. Every Madonna and Child, every cruciform cathedral, every spire and dome, proclaims the beauty, the altitude of His holiness.
(f) Music is His. Hayden, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven-what themes have fed their harmonies. Handel sits at His feet enraptured, sings that passion- ate praise-" And His name shall be called-Wonderful," and crowns all with that chorus whereat he " seemed to see the heavens opened." Melody sings its alto to the angels and 50,000 English hymns avow Him the leader of joy and praise. He has lifted the minors of earth into the major chords of faith and devotion.
(g) The passion to know well answers Him in whom "are hid the treas- ures of knowledge." In what lands flourish the sciences, of the soul or of its furnished world of objects, save where He has exalted and clothed reason. Let not the study of the mechanism forget the Mechanic and bite the hand that has fed it !
(h) He has touched even the horrors of war with mercy and set above them His "red cross ". Somehow the power of the sword has passed from barbarian hands to those which at least salute His name. He shall end it all at last,-this one true Crusader !
(i) The cemeteries of earth write His words over their gates and their graves. He has made the tomb a dormitory.
Yes, there is one central place-Olivet. There is one preeminent struc- ture-of wood,-eight feet high. There is one date of all eras-the Annus Domini !
When Tiberius was the Caesar and power was the idol, Paul wrote to Rome-"I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ." Other names change-Abram, Jacob, Simon, Saul ; but His name never.
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