The history of the Broadway tabernacle church, from its organization in 1840 to the close of 1900, including factors influencing its formation, Part 12

Author: Ward, Susan Hayes, 1838- nn
Publication date: 1901
Publisher: New York [The Trow print]
Number of Pages: 408


USA > New York > New York City > The history of the Broadway tabernacle church, from its organization in 1840 to the close of 1900, including factors influencing its formation > Part 12


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" But there was one incident of the war which signalized the loyal devotion of this church to country and to Christ. It was in that darkest hour when delays and defeats had so blighted hope that treason came out of its lurking places in the North and hissed its venom at the Gov- ernment; when the President hesitated either to enforce the draft or to call for volunteers; and when timid conservatives began to say, ' We had better give it up and make terms.' Your pastor came into the pulpit with a plea for Christian manhood, saying, 'Of what avail are our churches, if we shall no longer have a government or a coun- try, let the churches save both. Let this church call for volunteers; equip a regiment and put it into the field to show that we will never give it up.' At the close of the service someone called upon the con- gregation to remain; proposed a subscription for a church regiment; and before night of that memorable Sabbath, upwards of thirty thou- sand dollars were laid upon this altar. Two women sent me each five hundred dollars, saying, 'We cannot go; put men in our stead.' * That action went like a flash of electricity through the land; it brought letters of thanks from Senators at Washington, from members of the


* One of these was Mrs. Marshall O. Roberts.


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Cabinet, from generals in the field. It cheered the burdened heart of the President and gave new courage to his indomitable Minister of War. Though the immediate action of the Government superseded this new recruiting office, yet the spontaneous and magnanimous act of that day will forever stand as the proudest memento of our Christian patriotism."


In behalf of the Sanitary Commission Dr. Thompson went for weeks with the consent of his church through the Middle and Western States, speaking every night to vast audiences and drawing out liberal contributions from his hearers. He received a commission from the New York Branch of the Christian Commission, as did many other New York clergy- men, and did service in the front, carrying hospital stores, min- istering to the comfort of the wounded, and speaking words of Christian hope; while for the Union Commission he ad- dressed large meetings in Washington and elsewhere, and gathered again and again large contributions from the Taber- nacle Church for Union refugees.


But the severest test of Dr. Thompson's patriotism, his crowning sacrifice for the cause of liberty, was the giving up to the service of his country of his oldest son, a student in Andover and a young man of rare promise, John Hanson Thompson. He enlisted, with his father's consent, May 25, 1862, and died of typhoid pneumonia, March 16, 1863. In those ten months of service by his ready response to every call of duty he had proved how " nigh is grandeur to our dust." He was described by one of his comrades as "always quiet and gentle, looked as if he couldn't stand it, he was so slim; never said much, but always did it." At the request of his army associates, as well as of the members of Dr. Thompson's Young Men's Bible Class, his father wrote "The Sergeant's Memorial," which had a wide circulation, especially in the army. The father hastened to his son as soon as he learned of his serious illness, but reached the camp too late to find him living. From the strain and exposure of these Southern journeys and labors for the soldiers Dr. Thompson never recovered.


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During this pastorate the charities of the church covered a wide range. Dr. Thompson's international interests put him in touch with Christian work all over the world. The reg- ular scheme of church benevolences for a series of years was but slightly varied from this, adopted in 1859. Contributions : January, Seaman's Friend Society; March, Home Missions; May, Congregational Union; June, New York Bible Society ; September, Tract Society (Boston) ; October, Education in the West; November, Foreign Missions. It was, perhaps, specified that the money raised for the educational work should be given to Oberlin, and for years the American Tract Society was passed over because of its lack of moral courage in the matter of slavery. Many special causes were presented in the course of the year. It might be that a colored man was permitted to stand at the door of the lecture-room Fri- day evening to take such sums as should be given him, or a colored woman to receive a collection to free her children from slavery. The records tell of a collection for aid of suf- ferers in Syria, the pastor to preach on the subject; a collec- tion for Hayti; for suffering fellow-citizens in Kansas, for the Evangelical Society of Geneva, the Spanish Evangelical Society, for freed people on the banks of the Mississippi, and of many another object, outside denominational bounds, aided by the church.


Before the excitement of the Civil War had died away the pastor reorganized the departments of church work, taking some hints from the methods of his Episcopal brethren, espe- cially from Dr. Tyng's efficient organization. He established a Bible class for the women of his congregation, attended by from twenty-five to forty, that is still a precious memory to those who availed themselves of it. Some of his apt pleasan- tries are yet quoted; as when in his talks on Egypt and the Holy Land (for they began with the Old Testament) many exclaimed wonderingly, "I never heard of such a thing;" their teacher responded, " My knowledge is not to be abashed by your ignorance." He illustrated the grip of the Mosaic law on the New England conscience by the story of a deacon


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who met him after morning service, in a church where he was preaching as a stranger, and said, "If it were not the Sab- bath I should ask you home to dine with me." Dr. Thomp- son replied: " Since a better man than I once dined on the Sabbath with a worse man than you, I should not refuse if you asked me." One season some proposed that they should study from Jeremiah; but Dr. Thompson said it was too sad a portion of the Bible for them. He was a cheerful man who, as he used to say, always endeavored to do the possible and accept the inevitable. When he went abroad the class was taught by Dr. William H. Thomson, whose success as a Bible teacher is known far beyond the limits of the Taber- nacle Church. Dr. Thompson spent many hours each week in preparation for this class. He opened it with prayer, and at its close read one of the meditations afterward published in his "Home Worship." A member of the class writes: " His opening prayer always seemed to breathe peace. The remembrance is strong, through all the years, of the hush that came to the spirit by his voice in prayer." When Dr. Thomp- son left New York, for a residence in Berlin, his Bible class sent him a basket of flowers with a note containing a check for $100 for the purchase of books, that they might still be associated with him in his Biblical studies. His acknowledg- ment, written from Liverpool and signed "Your loving teacher," has been preserved for thirty years by one of his grateful pupils.


Dr. Thompson's marvellous capacity for work has already been noted. The following is the programme of one of his Mondays, usually a pastor's rest day, in 1868. Till about ten in the morning he remained in the church office to receive callers, notice of this being given from the pulpit Sunday. The usual Monday Ministers' Meeting followed. Early in the afternoon he gave one of his course of lectures on Palestine at Rutgers' Female College, met his Bible class at three o'clock, and, later, conducted a funeral-four of these being regular engagements. Dr. Bacon called him the busiest man he ever knew, " the most diligent to do with his might what-


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soever his hands, reaching in every direction, could find to do," and Professor Austin Phelps, who once spent a month in his New York home, writing for the Congregationalist of Dr. Thompson after his death, says of his " wonderful work- ing power," that at one time the severity, at another the variety, of his labors excited astonishment.


After a week of multiplied engagements, all systematized and planned for by clock work, Professor Phelps assumed that the doctor would give his people an old sermon on Sunday morning. He says:


" At the close of the morning service I fancied that my conjecture had proved true. He had preached a sermon written in full; elaborate, finished, logical, illustrative, ornate-a sermon which was like himself a variegated structure, one of the most faultless discourses that I have ever heard-on the doctrine of the Trinity! My copious notes of that sermon exist among my papers to this day. I brought it home with me to exhibit to my pupils as a model of a scholarly, yet a popular, sermon on that very difficult theme. The interest of his audience in it was a refreshing answer to the objections to doctrinal preaching.


" Judge of my surprise at learning, when I met him at the dining hour, that the entire plan of that discourse had been concocted on the previous Sunday evening, and the whole of it had been written in the first four mornings of the following days. It was a sermon such as the Rev. John M. Mason, D.D., a celebrated pastor in New York in the olden times, if he could ever have written it would have spent a month in the writing, as he advised his younger brethren to do in dis- coursing on similar subjects."


Dr. Thompson was in close touch with Andover; Professor Park's stately form was a familiar figure in his pulpit, and Professor Phelps was a close personal friend. As late as 1871 he delivered a course of lectures on Egyptology before the Andover Seminary.


But in attending to outside, large affairs Dr. Thompson did not overlook the individual interests of his people. He was solicitous about the small details of their secular life, and gave time and thought for their service. He begged a lady of his church to patronize a sister member who was setting up a little thread and needle store in her neighborhood; he in-


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terested himself in the success of a school kept by another member; still another who conducted a boarding-house was filled with gratitude for his kind interest and sympathy when she suffered bereavement. He even gave German lessons to a member of his church and choir, who with a friend studied under his direction.


When sickness and death visited his people, Dr. Thompson's tenderness never failed. One who left the church at the out- break of the war because her husband, a Southern sympathizer, refused to sit under his ministry, still speaks with gratitude of Dr. Thompson's tender pastoral care in times of sorrow, the memory of which has led her, more than once, when in Berlin, to seek his burying-place in the Jerusalem Church-yard.


Premonitions of failing health led Dr. Thompson, in 1866, to seek rest abroad. During his absence, instead of hearing a variety of preachers, the church engaged Professor Roswell D. Hitchcock to supply the pulpit. He was a brilliant and im- pressive preacher, and from this time, as if they had found in him an associate pastor, the church turned naturally to Dr. Hitchcock when Dr. Thompson was away.


It was not until October 22, 1871, that Dr. Thompson re- signed his charge. The announcement came with a shock upon his people, as he had been reticent in regard to his health. His doctors, however, insisted that he should withdraw from all public responsibilities and he himself could no longer sat- isfy his conscience in the discharge of pastoral duties when life was constant care, almost a constant suffering, and when unmistakable symptoms threatened the brain.


The church recognized at once the inevitableness of the separation, and immediately appointed a committee consisting of Messrs. Caleb B. Knevals, Levi M. Bates, Marshall O. Rob- erts, William Henry Smith, and John Gray, to raise from the church and society a sum not less than $30,000 to be pre- sented to their retiring pastor on the anniversary of his instal- lation. Besides this a voluntary subscription of $20,925 was at once taken, which was afterward raised to $25,000, mak- ing the church's provision for its pastor's future amount to


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$55,000. The council called by the church and pastor to con- sider his resignation met November 8th, with Dr. Leonard Bacon as moderator, and it was agreed that the resignation should take effect November 15, 1871.


Dr. Thompson preached his farewell historical sermon No- vember 12th, and his acknowledgment of the provision made for his temporal support was read before the society Novem- ber 22d. "Was there ever before just such a parting between a pastor and his flock?" he said. " All the tender and grate- ful tribute which Death is accustomed to call forth, it is per- mitted me to receive, and at the same time to enter upon a new life of hope."


The following letter was written the day his resignation took effect :


NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 15, 1871.


MY DEAR MR. COFFIN: Will you be so good as to request for me a letter of dismission from the Broadway Tabernacle Church to the Dom-Kirche, Berlin, Prussia?


It pains me deeply to sever the last tie of formal connec- tion with the church of my love, my hope, my joy, my life; but my only ecclesiastical standing now is in my church mem- bership, and my view is that this should always be main- tained in the place where one resides. I do not expect ever to be able to take up my residence again in New York. There is talk of organizing an American church in Berlin, and I wish to be ready to do my part as a private member. Mean- time I take a letter to an evangelical church.


In sacrificing the sentiment of a formal union I shall realize more fully the strength of the spiritual tie that binds us in Christ. Truly yours, JOSEPH P. THOMPSON.


Relieved of temporal anxieties through the generosity of his people, Dr. Thompson withdrew to Berlin, Germany, where he planned to spend his remaining years of life in the quiet pursuit of Oriental study. He had in mind a work upon Egypt for which he had made copious notes, but the exigencies of pressing public topics prevented his carrying out the work. He became the leading international representative of America in Europe. He devoted all the time his health would permit


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him to work, to the service of his country and his country- men abroad, to the reform and codification of the laws of nations, to advance and support the honor, the policy, and the actions of his country abroad. In the words of Dr. Bacon, written after his death:


" The most remarkable illustration of dominancy of the mind over the enfeebled and wearied body which he ever gave is that which he has shown in these last years when with strength almost gone and brain half broken he has still been interpreting Germany to this coun- try, this country to Germany and both to England. Perhaps no other equal period of his life has been more full of useful labor."


In August, 1879, while in London, where he had gone with a view of attending the meeting of the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Laws of Nations, he was pros- trated with sudden illness. His wife hurried to his bedside, and at his urgent request he was taken back, by slow and cautious stages, to his home in Berlin. At first there seemed to be temporary gain, and on his sixtieth birthday he tele- graphed to his son in America, "Creeping upward slowly. Blessings on my children. Sixty." After that he declined gradually. Almost his last act had been to prepare and for- ward to the Evangelical Alliance, at Basle, an eloquent pro- test against religious persecution in Austria. Being told that the Alliance had adopted his memorial to the Emperor of Austria, he looked down at his paralyzed arm and said, " Given. one more stroke for liberty with this right hand!" After several weeks of pain and restlessness came two or three days of unconsciousness, and on the morning of September 20th, the end. His wife, his youngest son, Dr. William Gilman Thompson, and his wife's brother, Rev. Dr. Edward W. Gil- man, were with him at the last, and Dr. Gilman remained to conduct the funeral service.


The flag of his country draped the study. walls.


" Dead he lay among his books, The peace of God was in his looks; "


crowns of flowers, palm branches, and growing plants sur- rounded him. Statesmen, professors, and diplomats, and many


HISTORY OF THE BROADWAY TABERNACLE CHURCH


American residents to whom he had proved a friend, gath- ered to pay the last service to the dead. His body rests in the Jerusalem Church-yard not far from the grave of Mendels- sohn, under the shade of lindens and locusts.


Dr. Thompson left four children-two sons and two daugh- ters-but one of whom, Dr. William G. Thompson, is now living. His wife returned to America, and was until her death, December 24, 1892, connected with the Tabernacle Church. His library of Oriental and archaeological works, especially valuable in the department of Egyptology, he gave to the American Oriental Society, of which he was a member.


Very many learned, patriotic, benevolent, and religious so- cieties with which he had been connected, both in Europe and America, offered resolutions of respect for his memory,* and the press, secular and religious, said many true and kind things in his praise. A tablet was set up in the Tabernacle to his memory, but his most lasting memorial was written in the hearts and the lives of his people.


"J. P. T.t


" Restless brain and dauntless will, Heart that throbbed with hope and pride, Mind that bent to drink its fill Every font of truth beside.


" Eyes emitting starry gleams From the depths wherein they dwelt, Lips on which a thousand themes Into eloquence would melt.


" Hand of hero, scholar, friend Ready aye with pen and deed Truth to champion, or to lend Help to weakness or to need.


" Brave and tender, frank and pure, Such was he the well beloved, Whom our love shall hold secure Though from outward sight removed."


* Appendix, I. + Verses by the Rev. Edwin Johnson, member of the Broadway Tabernacle Church, 1847-1851. Published in the New York Observer.


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SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF


JOSEPH. P.THOMPSON DD LL D:


PASTOR OF THIS CHURCH.FOR TWENTY SIX YEARS BORN IN PHILADELPHIA 1819 IMEN IN BERLIN 1879


MEMORIAL TABLET TO DR. THOMPSON Placed in the Church in 1872


-


CHAPTER VII.


THE THIRD PASTOR, WILLIAM MACKERGO TAYLOR.


DR. THOMPSON left a united church of five hundred and seventy-eight members, with well and newly organized de- partments and charities, and a City Mission, Bethany, already established in Northwestern Hall, at the corner of Thirty- eighth Street and Ninth Avenue.


The church made no delay in choosing his successor. The previous April the Rev. William M. Taylor, pastor of the United Presbyterian Church, Derby Road, Bootle, near Liver- pool, England, had taken for more than two months the pas- toral work of Dr. Storrs of Brooklyn. Mr. A. Baxter, an officer in Dr. Storrs's church, was the American head of a business house of which Mrs. Taylor's brother was the Eng- lish partner. Mr. Baxter, when visiting in his partner's home, had met Mr. Taylor, and it was through these business men that a meeting had been brought about between the two clergy- men in Liverpool, and Mr. Taylor engaged to supply the pul- pit of the Church of the Pilgrims for ten weeks. Mr. Taylor remained during that period in Brooklyn, at the house of Mr. Baxter, conducting all the services as acting pastor. For ten Sundays the church was filled, much of the time crowded to its utmost capacity. Toward the end of his engagement a plan was set on foot to build a huge tabernacle in New York that should seat several thousand people, where he should be engaged to preach .* At the close of his work in Brooklyn Mr. Taylor received a presentation of plate from the congre- gation in appreciation of his services.


Although Mr. Taylor had never been heard in the Broad- way Tabernacle, and hardly more than two or three of the * Harper's Weekly, July 18, 1874.


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church had attended any service that he had conducted, his name and fame were well known to the church and society. The committee upon which was placed the responsibility of nominating a pastor for the church was an able one, composed of five of its leading men: Austin Abbott, John Gray, Caleb B. Knevals, J. H. Washburn, Thomas W. Whittemore. In its report this committee said :


"Mr. Taylor, now the pastor of a Presbyterian church at Bootle, a suburb of Liverpool, visited this country the past season, and is prob- ably so well known by reputation to most of the church and society as to make it unnecessary to speak of his attractiveness and power as a preacher of the Gospel. Two of your committee, Messrs. Gray and Knevals, who have heard him, can speak upon this point. The other members of your committee have made careful inquiries respecting Mr. Taylor's qualifications among leading ministers and laymen of our own denomination who know him personally and have observed his labors. The unanimous testimony thus elicited has satisfied us that Mr. Taylor is not only an eloquent and attractive preacher, but a man of deep and earnest piety who exerts a positive and efficient influence, eminently successful both in the conversion of souls, the nurture of Christians, and the upbuilding of the church; that his general religious views are in harmony with those held by this church; that in scholarship, culture, and spirit he is well adapted to the congregation, and that he will be most cordially welcomed by the pastors and leading members of our sister churches as an accession of strength not only to our church, but to our communion."


The committee further stated that Mr. Taylor's expressed pleasure with much he had seen in America the previous sum- mer, gave encouragement to hope that he would consider the call favorably.


The church and society felt no hesitation in extending the invitation to Mr. Taylor. The call was formally agreed upon and given in November, 1871. Dr. Thompson strongly fa- vored the choice and stood ready to use his influence with the pastor elect, and he willingly embraced the opportunity to do one more service for the people of his love. The society re- quested him to stop in Liverpool on his way to Berlin and urge and enforce their call upon the man they had chosen to


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be his successor. Mr. Taylor naturally hesitated to accept the charge of a church none of whose members were personally known to him; but his interviews with Dr. Thompson made the way much clearer. It was a delicate task for Dr. Thomp- son to undertake, but no one could have done it better, and in his formal letter of acceptance, written on December 29, 1871, Mr. Taylor referred to Dr. Thompson's message and the manner of its delivery :


" The frank, cordial, and brotherly manner in which he dealt with me will never fade from my remembrance; and now that I have consented to take his place, his visit will always be in my mind like the assurance of God to Joshua, when he said, 'As I was with Moses so I will be with thee.' "


"It chanced-Eternal God that chance did guide."


that many things in his late visit to America had impressed Mr. Taylor most favorably with respect to American people, churches, and institutions generally. The time of his visit was opportune for attendance on the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church at Chicago, the anniversary of the American Bible Society, a social gathering of the American Congregational Union, the anniversary exercises of Yale Theo- logical Seminary and other universities, and he had the com- panionship of the Rev. Edward Hassan, now of Salisbury, late of Wavertree, a ministerial friend and associate who had accompanied him from Liverpool. Their homeward journey had been made by way of Boston, Albany, Saratoga, Niagara, Hamilton, Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec, and in several of these towns public religious services had been held which the visitors attended. At Albany they had been met by a member of the Church of the Pilgrims (with his daughter), who claimed the privilege of being their host until they reached the Canada side at Niagara. Arriving at their hotel near mid- night, Mr. Hassan reports that :


" after sitting for a short time on the balcony of the hotel, engaged in quiet, grateful conversation within sound of the Falls and awe- stricken by our general surroundings, it was suggested that we should


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join in prayer. Dr. Taylor led in prayer, a never-to-be-forgotten prayer -simple in its terms, but comprehensive, fervent, blending thanksgiving for the loving-kindness and tender mercy which had enriched and blessed our lives hitherto, and supplications for the guidance and bless- ings of Almighty God in our diverse ways for the future: a prayer abundantly answered in the experience of all."




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