USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > The Old stone church; the story of a hundred years, 1820-1920 > Part 8
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Let it not be forgotten that during the pastorate of
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Dr. Aiken the congregation passed through two of the worst panics ever experienced by the nation. The panic of 1837 came two years after his installation, and during the rebuilding of the edifice, destroyed by fire, there was the panic of 1857. Of the earlier crash Dr. Aiken said in his twenty-fifth anniversary sermon :
Like the shadow of the sun-dial of Ahaz, the wheel of for- tune rolled backward, and left many who had been con- sidered rich in bankruptcy.
Since then there have been similar periods, but none as severe as that one. Men turned resolutely to the regaining of their fortunes, but the mind seemed engrossed with material things. There is a record that during at least two years of that financial stress Dr. Aiken voluntarily surrendered two hundred dol- lars of his salary of fifteen hundred dollars, lest he be a burden to his people.
The excessive severity of the panic of 1837 can be better appreciated when it is remembered that for ten years following that financial crash there was a great scarcity of money throughout the country. Commercial transactions returned to the primitive exchange of commodities to such an extent that even land was purchased by work, or by the giving of some- thing other than money. A church was constructed in Connecticut wholly through the gift of onions, the main product of the community. In Cleveland a building was erected at the corner of St. Clair and Bond Streets during that period, and it gained the name of "Calico Block," because those who wrought
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upon the structure were paid mainly by orders upon the owner's store.
In Dr. Aiken's twenty-fifth anniversary sermon delivered in 1860 there was this tribute paid to the Sunday School work of his time:
A word regarding the Sabbath School attached to this congregation, the oldest I believe in the city. There was at first a lack of room and a scarcity of officers and teach- ers. The colonies departing took many valued workers among the young. Still with much exertion on the part of superintendent and teachers our school has always been respectable, both in interest and numbers. Under God, you, my friends, who have labored in this depart- ment, have I doubt not been instrumental in doing much good. As I think of the past, I recall to mind some of our Sunday School scholars who departed in triumph to the better world, and as I look over the community I see multitudes of useful, happy citizens who, but for our training, might have been a curse to themselves and to society. Let us never lose our love for the Sabbath School, nor relax our efforts to extend its influence in this city and in this land.
In the Sunday School known to Dr. Aiken were Lucius Fairchild, destined to become governor of Wisconsin; George Hoadley, afterwards governor of Ohio; Charles A. Otis and William Castle, who be- came mayors of Cleveland; Edwin Cowles, later editor of the Cleveland Leader, and Alfred Cowles, his brother, who became editor of the Chicago Tribune; Douglass Cleveland, later a judge; H. Kirke Cushing, in the course of time a very prominent physician; Reuben F. Smith, for many years an elder in the Stone Church, and president of the Cleveland
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and Pittsburgh Railroad; Elder Solon L. Severance, and many others who became influential in church and state. Four of the teachers went as foreign missionaries: Dr. N. Adams and Miss Sarah Van Tyne, to Africa; Mr. Samuel W. Castle to the Sand- wich Islands, and Mrs. Samuel Hutchings to Ceylon. No wonder Dr. Aiken reviewed with great satisfac- tion the existence of a Sunday School of that quality.
Sixteen years of Dr. Aiken's pastorate had elapsed before Cleveland, then a city of twenty-one thousand one hundred forty inhabitants, became the terminal of a railroad of any importance. Early in 1851 the Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati Railroad was completed, and the pastor of the Stone Church took a more prominent part in the celebration commemo- rating the arrival of the first train than he had antic- ipated. On Washington's Birthday the first train brought to Cleveland the governor of the state, mayors of cities touched by the new road, officers and members of the Ohio Legislature and railway officials. Prior to the gala day Dr. Aiken had casually mentioned his purpose to deliver Sunday morning a sermon on "The Moral View of Railroads." Much to the pastor's chagrin a local editor made a news item of the private statement.
That Dr. Aiken felt sensitive over this unusual advertising of religious goods is made clear by the introductory note to the printed sermon, issued in pamphlet form in response to the request of forty prominent citizens who had attended the service. The apologetic foreword was,
The pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, anticipating
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the presence of strangers on the Sabbath, had determined to speak on the absorbing topic of the day, and had inti- mated the same to one or two friends. It so happened that one of our editors hearing of it inserted on his own responsibility a notice of it in his paper, which circum- stance will account for the large number of strangers in the Old Stone Church.
What this pastor of "ye olden time" would think were he to peruse the church notices in a modern Saturday paper, with their cuts of churches and of pastors and frank admissions that "great sermons" will be delivered both Sunday morning and evening, can only be imagined.
During the pastorate of Dr. Aiken at Utica, N. Y., he had preached before DeWitt Clinton and party at the time of the completion of the Erie Canal. The earlier homiletic material may have been applicable to the railroad discourse, but the latter's text could never have been made the basis of the canal-boat sermon. Averse as Dr. Aiken was to advertising sermons, semi-sensational ingenuity was at least em- ployed in the selection of his text for the Cleveland effort. It was Nahum 2 :4:
The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall jostle one against another in the broad ways; they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings.
The prophet spoke not of modern railway systems or automobiles, but of the machinery of war such as the chariots of the King of Babylon rushing against Nineveh. A brief outline of Dr. Aiken's sermon is not only interesting, but even now instructive:
Roads are symbolic of civilization. Egypt, famous for arts and science, had her Thebes with one hundred gates,
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all of which must have opened to as many spacious high- ways, leading to every part of her kingdom. The Jewish commonwealth constructed roads and gave special care to those leading to the cities of refuge. Three hundred years before Christ, Rome had her Appian Way, the en- during nature of which road still excites the admiration of mankind. The old Saxons, living in castles upon inac- cessible rocks, were comparatively barbarians, ever fear- ing for safety of life and property. With no methods of transportation civilization languished. Great has been the progress of invention. At the best the stage-coach rumbled slowly over public roads. Bazaleel was raised of God to devise cunning work in gold, silver and brass. So was it with Watt, who applied steam to travel. Twenty years ago the first locomotive ran from Liverpool to Man- chester, but now there are many railroads. Forty-three years ago the first steamboat ploughed the waters of the Hudson River, and in 1838 the first boat propelled by steam crossed the Atlantic.
The hand of God is in all this. Some look with gloomy eye upon the "iron horse," as destined to subvert the laws of God and man, introducing moral and political anarchy, but we are not to be troubled by such spectres. To view the railroad as a mere auxiliary to increase wealth is very superficial. That is a consideration for the economist, but there are higher moral and social aspects of the rail- road's advent. It will prove a barrier against frequent wars, by bringing nations together and creating more sympathy for and knowledge of each other, thus promot- ing a spirit of brotherhood.
Then there will be a tendency to unite perfectly the heterogeneous classes of our immigrants, to modify sec- tional jealousies and to diffuse education through travel. "Many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall increase." The railroad will be a leveller, bringing the lowly nearer
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to the plane of the rich through increased means of travel. One benefit will be its auxiliary assistance to the cause of temperance, employes having to be total abstainers, if they are to be trustworthy and efficient.
This last point was almost prophetic. The consti- tutional prohibition amendment came to triumph when the principle of "safety first" was applied not only to railway employes, but also to those of manu- facturing concerns and to the operators of auto- mobiles on public highways.
Dr. Aiken's climax was:
My friends, the stirring scenes through which we are pass- ing, the movements of which we are spectators, and in which we are the actors, are great to us, and in connection with the progress of the race, and with the destiny of our country and the world, they are great in reality. But another existence is before us, other scenes are yet to open, scenes of still greater interest, vastly different in their nature, of a higher order, spiritual and eternal; and we are all approaching them in the rail-car of time, with a speed more rapid than lightning, more irresistible than chariots of fire. God grant that through infinite mercy in Jesus Christ we may be faithful in our day and genera- tion, live to some valuable purpose, that when we reach the great depot of our earthly existence, we may enter into the building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
With a copy of this sermon in the Western Reserve Historical Society Library, there is a second printed sermon delivered by Dr. Aiken. The theme is "Amusements," not only a burning problem then, but also one that has troubled Christians ever since.
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While Dr. Aiken's attitude toward popular amuse- ments would now be termed puritanical, the dis- course was no sensational tirade against card-playing, theater-going and dancing, but a dignified discussion of the evil tendency of popular amusements upon character from the Grecian and Roman periods to his day.
During the twenty-six years that Dr. Aiken was pastor of the Stone Church, he encountered more adverse and perplexing forces than ordinarily come to the Christian minister. Various reforms were bitterly waged within and without the churches. The subjects of temperance, of abolition, and kindred issues incessantly arrayed parties against one another and made it difficult for a pastor always to act with wisdom and prudence. With all the kindness and discretion possible for ministers to employ, many were unable to hold ground successfully, and more than one Western Reserve church was temporarily rent asunder or utterly destroyed in the bitterness of re- form upheavals.
In no part of the Reserve was party strife higher than in Cleveland. Without regard to the fear or favor of men Dr. Aiken tried to pursue a course best calculated to promote the cause of freedom, and at the same time to save his congregation from dis- memberment. Many times did he endure the savage criticisms of the ultra-abolitionists, who insisted that he devote his pulpit utterances wholly to their burn- ing issue. Even Abraham Lincoln endured for a long time the charge of having been lukewarm in the esti-
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mation of the ultra-abolitionists. At the outbreak of the Civil War "John Brown's Body" was sung with more zest by some than "We are coming, Father Abraham," but the patient waiting of the Emanci- pator for his opportunity to deal slavery its death- blow is now more admired than the overt act of John Brown at Harper's Ferry. Notwithstanding the fact that such a semi-fanatical course was made the means of stirring to a high pitch the spirit of the North against the slave oligarchy, it is fortunate that in the founding of churches on the Western Reserve every pastor was not an ultra-abolitionist.
During those years, in which the souls of men were sorely tried, a committee of Cleveland Presbytery drafted resolutions to be forwarded to the General Assembly of 1846, fifteen years before the Civil War. As chairman of that committee Dr. Aiken doubtless penned the following overture :
The subject of slavery is one of deepening interest in our churches. Indeed we may say that upon all classes it is taking a stronger hold than ever before. There is less excitement, but more thought; less talking, but a more settled purpose to act; less denunciation, but a more thorough conviction of the guilt and evil of slavery. We will not take the time of the Assembly with remarks upon the sin of slavery, nor do we think it necessary to adduce proof of its disastrous effects upon all our institutions, social, civil and religious. To us it seems like treason to our Master to shrink from censuring human bondage, and oppression, because they are sanctioned by law and are therefore "political institutions." We cannot believe that our beloved fathers and brethren, in their holy convoca- tion, will hesitate to take an elevated stand, by some wise,
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decisive action, on the side of heaven and oppressed humanity. By multitudes both in church and out of it, they are expected to do it, and we pray God that we may not be disappointed.
Of Dr. Aiken's later service, Dr. Goodrich said in his semicentennial sermon :
When in the New School Assembly of 1857, held at Cleve- land in the Stone Church, the hour came when the rem- nant of pro-slavery element was to be sloughed off, the brief, incisive words of the venerable pastor of this church broke the web of tedious debate and led the way to a high decision for Christian liberty.
It was at that General Assembly that twenty southern commissioners left the body as a protest against the action.
Another source of trial and embarrassment on the Western Reserve, during the long pastorate of Dr. Aiken, were the recurrent religious delusions. In reference to his experience, he left this testimony :
There was a time when the idea of Christian Perfection- ism in this region became so prevalent as almost to resolve all religion into the belief of it. This was followed by a species of fanaticism most extraordinary, widespread and desolating, and though the mass of this congregation stood firm, its influence was very perceptible in counter- acting the plain truths of the gospel. The effects of Miller- ism are still visible in the spirit of skepticism and infidelity engendered by it, and will long remain a sad memento of the danger of forsaking the truth to follow misguided and bewildered mortals.
The Cleveland Presbytery in 1841 appointed a committee consisting of the Reverend Sherman B. Canfield, D.D., pastor of the Second Presbyterian
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Church; the Reverend Samuel C. Aiken, D.D., and the Reverend H. Blodget, to prepare "An Exposition of the Peculiarities, Difficulties and Tendencies of Oberlin Perfectionism," a very elaborate theological document, a copy of which is preserved in the West- ern Reserve Historical Society Library.
What "Millerism" was against which Dr. Aiken had to contend can be better understood by a brief account of its exhibition in Cleveland. William Miller was born in Massachusetts in 1781. He had only a common school education, but was a man of strong native talent. At first he had been turned away from the fervor of prevailing revival meetings to skeptical teachings, but he soon returned to the Baptist faith. In 1803 a remarkable shower of meteors was interpreted by many to signify the approaching end of the world. Miller turned from farming to the study of the books of Daniel and Revelation, and in 1831 he began to expound the theory that the end would come between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. This was given additional emphasis by the great meteoric showers of November 12 and 13, 1833.
Licensed to preach, Miller traveled over the coun- try, everywhere addressing great audiences. After protracted calculations he announced that April 12, 1843, would be the exact date of the "Second Com- ing." Fifty or more people in Cleveland had accepted the doctrine and had secured an eloquent New England minister, the Reverend Charles Fitch, who came to Cleveland in 1840 and began to preach with great success. He became pastor of the "Church of
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the Second Advent," which first worshiped in the wooden building just west of the Stone Church, and afterwards in the famous "Round Church" con- structed on Wood Street, now East Third Street, between Rockwell and St. Clair Avenues. This unique edifice was of brick like a truncated cone, thirty feet in diameter at the base and fifty feet high. A convex roof of glass windows swung on hinges, ready to be opened outward at any time for the ascension of the members. There were two front doors on Wood Street, but no side windows. The only light the Round Church worshipers wanted was that which came straight down from heaven. The order of worship was that of the Presbyterian and Congre- gational churches, with the exception of the "Second Coming" doctrine. As the predicted date for the end of the world approached the excitement increased. When April 12, 1843, arrived the members of the Round Church arrayed themselves in white robes, worshiped all day, and looked for the hour of mid- night to verify their cherished doctrine, but "the wreck of matter and crash of worlds" did not materialize, and after the benediction had been pro- nounced the members of the white-robed congrega- tion dispersed to their homes. The Reverend Mr. Fitch died the following year and his flock was scat- tered, yet many retained their belief attributing the delay to miscalculation of the time, but thousands throughout the country having based their whole religious hope upon this one article of faith aban- doned all churches and lapsed into unbelief.
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The pastor of the Round Church was also editor and publisher of a monthly paper, entitled The Second Advent of Christ. Along with chronological charts and pictures of beasts explanatory of the mooted prophecies, was the statement :
We expect the Lord every day. Whether He will permit us to commence another volume of twelve numbers we know not. Or if He permits us to commence it is far more doubtful whether His coming will be delayed long enough to complete the volume.
Such a notice could not have been very encouraging to subscribers, as there was no promise of rebate in case the paper did not continue for a year.
Reference is often made to current religious fads of irrational character, and the question is asked why so many educated people can entertain them. Let no one think that those who were carried away with Millerism and other religious vagaries were only the simple-minded or ignorant. In the colleges of that period there were those who fostered, rather than allayed, the reigning disorders, while many edu- cated people were the leaders.
Reference has been made to Oberlin Perfectionism and Adventism. Western Reserve College escaped those extremes, but President Carroll Cutler, in his history of that institution, had the following to state regarding the students of 1835, the year that Dr. Aiken came to Cleveland:
They formed a Magdalen Society, in defence of the seventh commandment, in sympathy with a Mr. Mc- Dowell in New York. One student prepared and published
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tracts for circulation, and young men went abroad lectur- ing on the subject. They seemed to feel the moral burden of the whole world resting on their shoulders, and they were determined to discharge manfully their responsi- bilities. We cannot but admire their devotion to duty, as they understood it, but it is difficult to imagine present- day college students going around the country lecturing on the moral agitations of earlier years, however much they might debate any and all subjects of present interest in college classes and societies.
Evident it is to one studying the long pastorate of Dr. Aiken in such formative years, permeated as they were with various abnormal political and religious agitations, that it was due largely to his practical wisdom, his weight of character, as well as to his unselfish devotion to the service of Christ, that the Stone Church escaped the disorders that rent dis- astrously so many other Christian bodies, and held steadily its course with growing strength and unity. As the pastor of the largest church in the Cleveland Presbytery, Dr. Aiken would have been accorded by his brethren leadership, but that also would have been proffered by his colleagues, by reason of his remarkable fitness for the wise guidance of Presby- tery, during the period of sore disruption in the Presbyterian Church.
The Cleveland Presbytery in 1836 petitioned the Western Reserve Synod to form three Presbyteries, namely those of Cleveland, Medina, and Elyria, out of the one then existing, the new bodies to be bounded by the counties in which their churches were located. Thus for a number of years the churches of the Cleve-
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land Presbytery were confined to Cuyahoga County. The General Assembly of 1837, meeting in Phila- delphia, exscinded the Synods of Western Reserve, Utica, Genesee, and Geneva, and forced them to form the New School Presbyterian Church.
Thus two years after Dr. Aiken's pastorate began in the Stone Church, there came the pressing need of wise leadership in the guidance of the New School Church. The first "convention" called to deal with the critical situation was held at Auburn, N. Y., August 17, 1837, the year of the disruption. The Cleveland Presbytery sent three ministers and one elder to this important conference. Dr. Aiken headed the delegation, and with him was the Reverend John Keep, a former supply of the Stone Church. Later Dr. Aiken led delegations to similar conventions at Detroit and Cincinnati. In all ecclesiastical courts he was the same practical adviser that he was in his Cleveland parish.
In 1858, when he had been sole pastor of the Stone Church for twenty-three years, and was in the forty- third year of his ministry and in the sixty-seventh year of his age, Dr. Aiken's health became impaired to such an extent that he suggested the securing of an assistant. On August 12, 1858, the Reverend William H. Goodrich, D.D., was called and installed associate pastor.
At the time Dr. Aiken informed the younger associate that within two or three years he would retire from active service. This the senior pastor did during April of 1861, when he was made pastor
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emeritus at an annual stipend of one thousand dol- lars, which was lovingly continued by the congrega- tion for eighteen years, or to the end of his earthly pilgrimage. He outlived his younger associate pastor over four years, and was present at the funeral of Dr. Goodrich, but was unable by reason of infirmities to participate. One of his last public appearances was at the installation of the Reverend Hiram C. Haydn, D.D., as associate pastor with the Reverend William H. Goodrich, D.D.
In the semicentennial sermon delivered by Dr. Goodrich in 1870, mention was made of the five re- vivals which had visited the Stone Church during the pastorate of Dr. Aiken, two of which were of unusual influence. Emphasis was placed upon the fact that three churches organized during that period had re- ceived almost every charter member from the Stone Church. During Dr. Aiken's pastorate, according to Dr. Goodrich, eight hundred eighty persons had been received into the church.
Dr. Aiken was first married in 1818 to Miss Delia Day, of Catskill, N. Y. She died in 1838, and the following year he married Miss Henrietta Day, a sister of his former companion in life. She was a woman of great force of character. Of the nine chil- dren born of these unions only a son and daughter, Mr. Charles G. Aiken and Mrs. Helen Day, survived their father. Six died in infancy, and a son was sup- posed to have been drowned at sea.
After the death of Mrs. Aiken in 1864, the aged father made his home with the son on Woodland
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Avenue, and at Tallmadge, Ohio. In an earlier address Dr. Aiken, in speaking of the strenuous ex- periences endured in his two pastorates, said,
A minister cannot preach to please himself. He cannot preach to please his people. He must be like a rock in the ocean. He must preach the truth and let the waves dash.
True, but even the rocks in the sea are finally worn away, not only by the furious dashings of the storm-tossed floods, but also by the ebb and flow of the more gentle tides. So was it in the case of this rock-like servant of God. The body became broken and the mental powers sadly weakened. Things present made but little impression, but of earlier years he was wont to speak more clearly; while at the mention of his Saviour's name, the aged countenance always brightened.
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