USA > New York > Erie County > Buffalo > Manual, catalogue and history of the Lafayette St. Presbyterian Church of Buffalo, N.Y. > Part 25
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the merits of his friends, and invested them with qualities which existed only in his own warm imagination. He was made on too large and too noble a scale to be capable of the small sin of jealousy. He lived to praise, seldom to censure. He was never afraid that any man would stand in his light.
I urge then, children, all of whom he loved, to try and imitate his example. Be true, brave, generous, as he was. Do not be afraid to stand up for the weak and injured. He never thought of his own popularity or interests in such a cause. In continuing his remarks, Prof. Hopkins spoke of his own sense of personal loss in the death of Dr. Heacock, and of the necessity under which he had felt himself, throughout all these scenes, of moderating both his language and manner, in order not to be betrayed into an exhibition of feeling that might be painful both to himself and to his hearers.
The hymn
" Rock of Ages,"
was then sung, when Mr. Henry H. Hale spoke as follows :
CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE OF THE LAFAYETTE STREET SUNDAY SCHOOL : It is your Pastor as well as ours that has gone. You will not see him again in this place where you have so often seen him, and where he so loved to be, but you will never forget him. Most of all I hope you will never forget what he was to you as a friend. He was truly and pre-eminently the children's friend.
Others have spoken and written of him eloquent and fitting words of what he was as a man, a minister, a Christian, and a citizen, but we meet to-day to think of him as the Pastor and the loving friend of this Sabbath School.
Nothing ever touched a deeper chord of feeling in his heart than to be told that his ministry had been owned of God and blessed to the children of his congregation. He often said to me that he considered that as the crowning honor of his life as a minister of the gospel. How true this is, your presence here to-day, and your en- rollment as belonging to Christ, will show in part, but your purposes and deeds from this day will more fully prove how deep and abiding has been his influence on your lives and characters.
To you who have been brought to Christ by him his words have always been and still are, "Abide in Christ." To you who hitherto have refused, he still says by word and by motto, "Come to Jesus."
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The first time I ever heard the name of Dr. Heacock was at Detroit, at the meeting of the General Assembly in May, 1850. He burst like a meteor in the sky before that audience, in a speech defending the rights of the Southern slave; a speech which even he was afterwards willing to acknowledge was eloquent. I did not hear that speech, but heard of it the next hour.
The first time that I ever met Dr. Heacock was at the fair held by the Lafayette Street Church in McArthur's building, or, as it was then called, McArthur's Garden. This was in the summer of 1850. I well remember the first touch of his hand, so soft, so warm, so true, as to make you feel the outgo of his generous heart towards you.
Most of you have no remembrance of the time when you first heard the name of Dr. Heacock spoken. It was in the household in your earliest infancy. Most of you cannot remember when you were first introduced to Dr. Heacock, but some of us remember when even the older ones of your number were introduced to him. It was in the church, at the baptismal service that he took you in his arms so tenderly and lovingly, and dipping his fingers in the water, gently laid his hand on your fore- head, and placed there the seal, which in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, bore evidence of your consecration to God by your parents. Those vows you afterwards confirmed and ratified when you stood before the same altar and made your confession of Christ. And now by both these sacraments you were introduced into the family of the Church, for the Church is a family, and we are all members of it.
The head and father of our family is gone, but the question of this day and hour is, what duty and obligation does that lay on each of us, from oldest to youngest ?
It is in our Church and Sabbath School to-day just as it would be if the father had gone from each of your homes. Your first duty then would be to comfort and strengthen each other by words and deeds of love; by each one sharing the larger responsibility thus laid on you ; by a patient forbearance and large-hearted charity with your brothers and sisters, remembering you need the same from them ; by a true courage and hopefulness that shall cheer them on in every duty ; by a spirit of self-denial that will lead you to make sacrifices of personal feeling for the good of the family ; by a constancy and devotion to your own family in preference to any and every other family ; by a jealous watch over every interest of your family, never speaking disparagingly of it at home or elsewhere ; in short, striving to make it a happy Christian home. This you would do in your household. Will each and every one of you do it in this Sabbath School and Church Home? The children of the Infant class can do it; all in this room can do it. The young people of the Bible class can make their influence a power in this Church by doing it. As mem- bers, we must all make our Church a happy Christian home for our own sakes, and for an attraction to others ; not from selfish aims and motives, but for their good and to honor Christ.
To do this we have the noble example of our Pastor, showing in all these years the power of an unselfish life. That has been to me a greater power than his preaching, great as it was. There is nothing we shall remember like our Pastor's unselfish love. " He gave himself to us, everywhere and always."
Our latest memory will recall the scene in this Church, draped by sorrow in deepest mourning, beautified by love with choicest flowers, hung around by memory with the words spoken by our Pastor in his dying hours-words of love, hope, faith and " victory !"
His open grave, draped in greens and studded with blooms, testified of that love which followed him even there, and from thence, as his last gift on earth, he gave back to us those beautiful flowers to keep as a perpetual reminder of his unselfish love.
Possessing his spirit and thus following him, you will embalm his memory in perpetual bloom and perpetual green. Then will you be his everlasting crown of rejoicing, and his sheaves gathered in the harvest of heaven.
After the school had sung,
" In the Christian's home in glory,"
Elder Charles H. Baker, late superintendent, said :
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LAFAYETTE STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.
The more I contemplate the life and character of our Pastor, the more lost I am in wonder and admiration ; and the more difficult it is to express my love and reverence.
But let me try to tell you of some things that made me admire him so much. They may help us to build up our own Christian characters. First of all, do you know how patient he was? I think it was from the last Wednesday evening prayer meeting he ever attended, we were walking home together, when he turned sud- denly and said to me, " Why should we complain? We have a long life of joy and peace and comfort, and perhaps a few days of suffering, but after that an eternity with Christ. Why should we complain ?" A few days before his death I called to inquire after him. They told me that he had said a short time before, " I do not expect God to work a miracle in my case, but I do wish he would ease this terrible pain just a little."
He believed of his Saviour just what the old hymn makes him say :
" Mine is an unchanging love, Higher than the heights above ; Deeper than the depths beneath- Free and faithful-strong as death."
And in return for that wondrous love he gave all his energies of heart and mind, consecrating his whole life to the service of that Saviour. This made him powerful and successful in all his walks of life.
He counted it a high honor to be called a follower of Christ. Many own it as if half ashamed to do so. He was always willing and ready to advocate the cause of his Master. Napoleon's " Old Guard" followed him through all his marches and victories : yes, even in his defeats and retreats to the crowning disaster at Waterloo. They called it honor to suffer, and even to die for their leader. But our Pastor's leader never knows what it is to be defeated, and his soldiers are always victorious. The highest, noblest, yes, the very best of all honors, is to be a true "soldier of the cross."
As he conquered sin and death, so also we can conquer ; and we too can be " the children of a king."
Then followed the reading of a letter of sympathy and condolence-a memorial- from the school addressed to the bereaved family, and is from the pen of Miss Mary L. Chichester, one of the committee appointed to prepare it :
BUFFALO, May 13, 1877.
Dear Loved Ones :
One week ago! A week of what sorrow to us, of what unspeakable joy to him. Heaven is nearer and dearer to us than ever before, for is not our Pastor there ? We would not recall him-if we knew that one word of ours would bring him back we would leave that word forever unspoken ; it is better so, we believe it, although we cannot yet see why. But oh ! how we shall miss him.
We, the little ones of his flock, how we shall long to see him come into our little room with his loving smile, and to hear him say " My dear little children." Many of us he has taken in his arms when our parents consecrated us to God ; and, although we cannot remember that time, we have often seen him take other little ones in his gentle, tender way, and have thought, so he took me.
And we, the girls, can we ever forget the way in which he called us "Daughter." which made us feel, each time that we heard it, a stronger desire to be that which his chivalric nature regarded with such reverence, a true woman.
And we, the boys, how well we remember the days when we went out on some pleasure excursion with him ; how sometimes the waters of the lake lured us, and he would calm our impatience to plunge into the waters in the heat of a noon-day sun with laughing words and a promise that, as the day grew cooler, he would accompany us ; and how, as the hour drew near, we gathered about him with shouts and laughter claiming the promise. We revered but we did not fear him, for perfect love had cast out fear.
And some of us have grown to manhood and womanhood knowing no other Pastor ; how glad and proud we felt when, as from year to year our minds devel-
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oped, we found that we were growing into a better understanding and a higher appreciation of his great thoughts.
Some of us have come to him from other pastors whom we loved, but ere long we found them taking a second place in our affections, he must be first. Some of us have come to him strangers, but his great loving heart took us in, and never while he lived could we feel utterly friendless.
Many of us can never forget the days when sorrow entered our homes, how he came like an angel of God and spoke words of comfort and sympathy, how he wept with us over the graves of our loved ones, and pointed us to that home where they had gone and where we would join them never again to be parted.
We feel that words are cold and inadequate to express our sorrow and our loving sympathy with you in your great grief, and we can only say, let us weep with you, for we too loved him, and will ever count it the greatest privilege of our lives that we were allowed to be MEMBERS OF HIS SABBATH SCHOOL.
When the hymn, " A beautiful land by faith I see,"
had been sung, Elder George L. Squier, many years the superintendent of the school, spoke as follows :
Dr. Hopkins has explained the meaning of that crescent of flowers over that dear form, and told you that it is an emblem of knighthood, and explained how the kings of the earth used to confer knighthood upon their distinguished subjects. But our beloved Pastor needed no knighthood from earthly kings, for he was knighted, by the King of kings, when at his birth He endowed him with all those noble qualities that combine to make a nature's nobleman, and when afterwards He shed upon him so rich a portion of that divine grace which made him the highest type of the Lord's nobility-a Christian knight-a title which he honored and dignified and beautified through all his life.
Children, you all loved our dear Pastor-no one could know that grand, noble, generous, great-hearted man without loving him. But do you know how much he loved you? I will give you a glimpse of his heart that he gave me. It was about a month ago, in one of the last brief interviews I was privileged to have with him. In speaking of the possibility of leaving us he said :
" I can part with the adults of my people, for they can get along without me, but I cannot bear to leave the dear children-that is the hardest of all. As their sweet faces come up before me I cannot say good-bye to them. There are strings bind- ing each heart to mine. If God wills I can break the strings that bind me to the men and women of my congregation, but how can I snap the heart-strings that bind me to the dear children !"
And as he spoke the great tears rolled down his cheeks and his lips quivered with emotion, showing how his great heart throbbed with love for you. Do you appreciate such love from such a heart? Then how can you better show this appreciation and honor him than by following his footsteps and imitating his life ? God may not have endowed you with that rich profusion of noble qualities with which He endowed him, but God can give you that grace which sanctified and beautified and enriched his character. Seek and obtain that grace and follow in the footsteps of your sainted Pastor in a noble, generous, Christian life, and when your life's work is done he will welcome you to the heavenly home with even greater love than he bore for you on earth.
The exercises concluded with singing
" The sweet by-and-by."
The memory of these impressive exercises, a tribute of love to the deceased pastor, will long be cherished by all those present.
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LAFAYETTE STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.
MEMORIAL LETTER FROM THE CHURCH, BY CHARLES G. BRUNDIGE.
To the Family of our Beloved Pastor, Rev. Grosvenor W. Heacock, D. D.
DEAR FRIENDS : Many of us have already personally expressed to you how deeply and sincerely we grieve with and for you, and all of us would have done so had it been practicable. It seems to us proper, therefore, to yield to our feelings and unite in an expression of sympathy with you in this great sorrow which has come upon you, his family, and upon us, his Church and congregation.
It has always seemed to us, that the ties which united the Pastor and people of the Lafayette Street Church were of a peculiarly intimate and tender nature. He was not our Minister only ; he was more. He was Father, Brother and Friend as well as Pastor to each one of us. And so fully had he become enshrined in our hearts, that it almost seemed as if we were united more by blood than by the bonds of mere church fellowship. And the same feeling has extended to his family, and we have always cherished an interest in their welfare and happiness, such as we have in those endeared to us by domestic ties. Hence, dear friends, we address you with the freedom and informality of those, who, gathering around a common hearthstone, would speak of a dear departed head and guide in whose love we all had shared.
We do not grieve for him-his work is done, and well done-and we know that he has exchanged the toils, the sorrows and the pains of earth for the rest, the joy and the blessedness of Heaven. The honor and glory that he achieved here is infinitely transcended by the glory which surrounds him in the presence of the Son of God. He valiantly fought the battle of life-through Christ he won the victory, and now at the hands of the great Captain of Salvation, he has received the con- queror's crown. He has gained ; we have lost. For him, therefore, we rejoice ; but it is for you and for ourselves that we weep.
The wonderful harmony which, during the thirty-two years of his pastorate, has prevailed in this Church, is a strong attestation not only of the influence of the broad and charitable doctrines which he taught, but also of the love of his people for his person, their veneration for the saintliness of his character, and their confi- dence in his wisdom. The same qualities that combined to render his home so cheerful, loving and happy, made their power known in an equal degree in harmo- nizing the Church and making it a true brotherhood.
As you miss him from your home, so do we from the house of God ; as your fire- side is desolate through his absence, so are our gatherings for prayer. We shall miss him also from the street, we shall miss him from our homes, from the bed of sickness, from the chamber of death; and even now our hearts are yearning with yours for the sight of his noble form and the sound of his cheering voice. And we shall miss him more by and by. When perplexity, distress and doubt overwhelm our souls, when our loved ones are fading under the breath of disease, when we our- selves are sick unto death, how will our hearts reach forth in longing for his revered presence, and for those words of counsel and hope and consolation which none could speak as could he.
But against this grief there is placed, to us, the honor of having been of his Church and congregation, as there is to you of having been of his household. And this is an honor which will be treasured by you and by us, and which will be the more prized as the years roll on.
Nor are we insensible to the great responsibility which rests upon us, in that we have for so many years enjoyed the privilege of sitting under his ministry. We feel that it renders obligatory on us a broader charity, greater earnestness and unselfishness of character, and a higher and holier living. And we pray that we may not prove false to that high standard of excellence which he ever maintained in our midst, nor fall back from those noble aspirations which he was the instrument of implanting in our hearts. We pray that the good work which he wrought while he was with us, may not only continue, but broaden and deepen in our hearts and lives till, redeemed and sanctified, we shall rejoin him in the realms of glory.
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And now, dear friends ; permit us once more to express to you our sympathy in your affliction, and to assure you of our friendship and love, sanctified by the memory of him who was so dear to us all.
In behalf of the Lafayette Street Church and congregation.
MEMORIAL FROM THE COLORED CITIZENS OF BUFFALO.
It is said that one of the finest instincts of our nature is that one which prompts us to honor the dead ; and especially is this a fact when they who have dignified and adorned our common humanity are removed from the spheres they have worthily filled. But when the removal of such, invades the sacred circle of our best affections, and sunders personal ties of tenderness and strength, then to give some expression to the feelings which crowd our hearts under the pressure of public calamity and private grief, affords a grateful relief, and blends an exquisite pleasure with a sacred duty.
It is under the influence of such sentiments as these that we, the colored citizens of Buffalo, offer this humble tribute to the memory of the Rev. Grosvenor W. Heacock, D. D.
When in the darkest days of American slavery, a man would risk his reputa- tion, his social position, his ministerial standing, yea, even his life, for proclaiming his belief in the truthfulness of the declaration, " that all men are created free and equal," even though it was incorporated in the fundamental law of the land ; when it was considered heresy to the popular opinion to speak one word in sympathy for the down-trodden and oppressed; when the yell of the bloodhound was as music to the ears of Southern slaveholders and Northern demagogues, and the accursed lash was made to stripe the backs of honest men and women, whose only crime was that they were black ; when in the deepest of their misery their cries could be heard ascending on high, "How long, O Lord, how long," the colored men of Buffalo always knew of one kind heart open to them in sympathy, and who would always speak out eloquently in opposition to the trashy pretense of America being the " Land of the free and the home of the brave" so long as four millions of her sons and daughters, created in the image of God, were held in bondage. This cause he espoused from principle, and when God in his own good Providence saw fit to change the scene, and the shackles fell, and the protection of the government was given to all men, irrespective of race, color or previous condition, thereby rais- ing them to the dignity of an American citizenship, then, too, did he labor among us with all his accustomed zeal, in all movements tending to the elevation of our people ; and we cannot but recognize the fact that whatever has been attained by us here during the last fifteen years, is stamped with the impress of his genius and powerful influence. Your Church may mourn a pastor, the community may grieve at the loss of one of its best citizens, the clergy may lament at the extinguishment of one of their brightest and most radiant lights, but these all united cannot overcome the depth of that anguish which we, the colored citizens of Buffalo, felt at the news of the death of the Rev. Grosvenor W. Heacock, D. D.
" He is gone from this strange world of ours, No more to mingle its thorns with its flowers- No more to linger where sunbeams must fade, Where on all beauty death's finger is laid ; Weary with mingling life's bitter and sweet, Weary with parting and never to meet, Weary with sowing and never to reap, Weary with labor and welcoming sleep, In Christ may he rest, from sorrow and sin, Happy where earth's conflicts enter not in."
E. WILLIAMS CROSBY, Chairman. NIMROD D. THOMPSON, JOHN BUTLER, BENJAMIN YOUNG, THOMAS HARMER, SAMUEL MURRAY, JOHN DOVER, Committee.
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LAFAYETTE STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.
At a special meeting of the Session of the Lafayette St. Presbyterian Church, held May 16, 1877, Elder George L. Squier was appointed to draft resolutions expressive of the feelings of the said Session in regard to the death of their Pastor.
At the first regular meeting of the Session, held on the twenty-ninth day of May, 1877, Elder Squier presented the following preamble and resolutions to the Session, and they were unanimously adopted, viz .:
WHEREAS, On the sixth day of May, 1877, our beloved Pastor, the Rev. Grosvenor W. Heacock, D. D., entered into his rest, and, while we feel the total inadequacy of words to express our admiration of his character and life, our appre- ciation of the great work he has done for this Church and for the cause of Christ, and our deep grief in view of our overwhelming loss, we cannot refrain from adding our official testimony to the many loving and tender words that have been spoken over his grave ; therefore, we, the members of the Session of the Lafayette Street Presbyterian Church, do hereby
Resolve, That in the loss of our dear Pastor we have lost a shepherd, guide and loving friend, whom God had endowed with the richest gifts of manhood and sanctified with a double portion of His grace, so that it could be said of him, in a sense in which it can rarely be said of any man, that he was the noblest semblance of the divine image permeated with the divine love ; while in intellectual power he was pre-eminent, and as a pulpit orator he was surpassed by none in his day and generation, it is not the loss of these gifts that so overwhelm us, but it is the loss of that great, tender, all-embracing love, which was such a wonderful characteristic of the man, and which so transcended all his other great qualities as to be the most conspicuous force of his life. It was this great, sanctified, self-sacrificing love that made him such an exampler of Christ to all of his people, and drew every heart to him with a peculiar love, born of his love.
Resolved, That the loss to this Church of such a shepherd, so endowed and so sanctified, is inexpressible ; founded and established through his efforts, nurtured during a whole generation by his loving, watchful, judicious care, the supreme ob- ject of all the aueffint labors of his busy life, the loss to her is one that can- not be estimated nor replaced. He brought all the gifts of his great intellect and laid them upon her altar ; his prayers constantly ascended to God for her wel- fare ; urgent calls to larger fields of influence and honor could not draw him away from her ; more than seven hundred of her communicants have, by the blessing of God, been brought to Christ through his ministrations ; his great heart has throbbed through all these long years, with love unspeakable for his beloved people, and a consuming zeal for the salvation of their souls. How much he has done for us ; how much he has sacrificed for us ; how much he lias suffered for us; yet how humbly he has walked amongst us, the companion and friend of the weakest and lowliest, doing all for the Master, and giving the Master all the glory ; and even in his death his heart's desire was that he "might still preach to us as he never preached to us while living." Living, he lived unto the Lord ; dying, he died unto the Lord.
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