USA > Ohio > The Western Reserve of Ohio and some of its pioneers, places and women's clubs, Vol. I > Part 9
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I went to Hartford and they were questioning the ortho- doxy of Dr. Bushnell. Dr. Hawes was afraid to call on sinners to come forward and "would have been afraid to use that method." I said we must ask them to make a decision. The young converts held prayer meeting and invited inquirers. The ministers would not go to the public schools for fear of sectarian
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influence. Some boys asked one and another minister to come and to pray with them.
.A young woman called young men together and had a talk with them and prayer and many of them were converted. Mrs. Finney established a prayer meeting for ladies. Their united ef- forts promoted the revival. We went to New York from Hart- ford and I preached a few times for Henry Ward Beecher.
Mrs. Finney held meetings in Park Street Church. Five hundred thousand were converted in the Northern States. Slav- ery seemed to shut it out from the South.
If the Bible is not true there is no hope for them. If God is benevolent we would infer that sinners could be forgiven, but impenitent sinners could not be forgiven. So the Bible revealed the only rational way they could expect salvation."
Then I presented Christ and the revelations made in the Gospel. The man who said he would not believe in Christianity attended all the lectures. Merchants arranged to have their clerks attend. In public houses and banks the work of the re- vival was talked about. There was a candid inquiry of what the Bible taught. A man from the East said, "Your hands are tied by our stereotyped ways of doing things." It is true, self- wisdom hinders the work. In an intelligent community great freedom can be given without danger of disorder.
The next winter we went to Syracuse. I directed my re- marks to the Christians. I labored in the different churches. Mrs. Finney held ladies' meeting in the lecture room of the church.
Dr. Campbell had read my "Systematic Theology," but be- ing Scotch he tried to prove the Thirty-nine Articles and the Westminster Articles of Faith. They were surprised that I reasoned with the people, but many said that my reasoning was
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logical. I had felt it myself and therefore did not wish to take anything for granted, but meet the intellectual wants of the people.
I then went to Dr. H. who had eight children, all uncon- verted. The eldest son was an atheist. After a few weeks I preached in Huntington Hall. I preached on the refugees of lies. This eldest son felt convicted of sin and was converted; also every member of the family.
Mr. Brown, who received me on the first visit, had seven churches and twenty teachers and preachers. He had two or more flouring mills and God poured into his coffers as fast as he poured them into the Lord's treasury.
He was now in Burough Road Chapel, which was torn to pieces on temperance. The old members made confession one to another. Mr. Herbert said it was entirely a new church. Mr. Herbert visited me in America and said, "If conversions did not occur every week they thought something was wrong. Iniquity that had been covered up for a long time was made bare. Many professors of religion made restitution."
I was invited to Scotland, to the Evangelic Union-the E. U. as it is called. Mr. Kirk had not the sympathy of Pres- byterians. He was editor of the "Christian News" of Glasgow. They differed with me in their views of faith, and by saying I had his views he shut out the Presbyterians. e un SI Mrs. Kirk worked very harmoniously in the women's meetings and put the women of Scotland in a new position in regard to personal efforts in revivals.
I went to Aberdeen and the minister was more hedged in by prejudice than Mr. Kirk. I was asked to go to Bolton, near Manchester. I accepted, for in this country I labored with both Congregationalist and Presbyterians.
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In Bolton the Lord commenced to work immediately. Our first meeting was in the chapel of Rev. Davidson, who had in- vited me. It was filled the first night. I said prayer would be immediately answered if they took the stumbling blocks away. Praying people were stirred up to lay hold of God for a bless- ing. Through the week the spirit of prayer was increasing. I was invited to preach in the Congregational church and there asked for inquirers and the vestry was thronged with them. I went to Temperance Hall that would hold more than either church. The hall was crowded every night. I told them to canvass the city and to go two and two. Often a Methodist and Conregationalist would go together. All sectarianism was vanished. I asked inquirers to come forward and great num- bers came. The Methodists were noisy and at last I asked them to be more quiet so that inquirers would think, and he led by one voice, in prayer. This crossed their ideas of a powerful meeting, but they continued to work and pray. Soon people came from Manchester. One time sixty appeared converted in one evening.
I preached on restitution and one man said he had taken only the legal share in settling the estate of a widow, but he ought not to have taken that. The work went on and the revival reached every family in the city of 30,000. One mill man was miserly; he came to me and confessed it and I said, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and all things else will be added." He said, "Do you believe that?" I said, "It is the Bible; of course I believe it." His miserly feelings melted. He hired a mission- ary and set him to work to save souls. Mrs. Finney held meet- ings for women and they were largely attended.
In April we went to Manchester. There was a lack of mu- tual confidence, a jar among the leaders, a dissatisfaction with some who were chosen to carry on the work. The barriers did
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not break down. The ministers did not generally attend the meetings. We stayed until August. It was difficult to get peo- ple to go to any other denomination than their own. Sectarian lines are more distinct there than here.
We came to Oberlin. They had built a new church. We had four months preaching twice on the Sabbath and inquiry meetings on Sabbath afternoon. One evening I was taken with a severe chill and confined to my bed for two months. A change in the preaching lets down the tone of the revival. During the summer months there is great pressure on the students, hence not favorable to a revival of religion. The impression was, that in term-time we could not expect a revival, but I had come for the sake of the students and my health would not permit revival-labor the whole year through. Here, in spring, summer and early autumn I could do more good than anywhere else. So I stayed on in Oberlin. The students learned to work in re- vivals. The Young People's meetings have been blessed.
In 1856 and '57 the revival was more powerful among the inhabitants than since 1860. Again I broke down in the midst, and the brethren carried it forward. I preached on "Resisting the Holy Ghost" and then called on those converted to rise up. And also those not converted who would accept the teachings of the Holy Spirit to give themselves to Christ and we would make them subjects of prayer. Nearly every one in the place stood up under this call.
Mr. Finney resigned his pastorate in 1872, but completed his last course of lectures 1875, a few months before his death. The burden of years rested lightly upon him. He died on Sab- bath, August 16, 1875, aged 83 years. He has given to the world a new thought as to the requirements of the Holy Spirit and its influence on the actions of our life.
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WHAT OBERLIN HAS DONE FOR SCIENCE
George Frederick Wright graduated from the classical course of Oberlin College in 1859, and from its theological course in 1862. He served five months in the Civil War when he was discharged on account of ill health. For ten years he was pas- tor of the Congregational Church in Bakersfield, Vt. While there he pursued private studies in science and philosophy and made extensive observations upon the glacial phenomena of the region. In 1871 he was called to the pastorate of the Free Church, Andover, Mass., where he found an important unsolved glacial problem almost in the back yard of the parsonage. This was an extensive system of eskers which he was the first to cor- rectly explain in a paper read before the Boston Society of Nat- ural History in 1876. He became an active member of this so- ciety and was for a time a trustee. Professor Asa Gray of Cambridge became a life-long personal friend and co-operated with him in his investigations and publications, especially in the preparation of the "Logic of Christian Evidences" and "Studies in Science and Religion," published by W. F. Draper in 1880. The first of these books has passed through several editions. In 1880 he was employed by the state of Pennsylvania to trace the boundary of the glaciated region across that state. The same year he was called to a professorship in Oberlin, and for several years was engaged in determining the limits of the glaciated area in the various states east of the Mississippi River. The latter portion of the time he was under commission from the United States Geological Survey. In 1886 he spent a month upon the great Muir Glacier in Alaska, and brought back the first detailed account of that great mass of moving ice. Soon after he was invited to give a course of Lowel Institute lectures in Boston upon the "Ice Age in North America." These
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were repeated in Brooklyn, N. Y., Baltimore, Md., and other cities, and were finally recast and enlarged to fill a volume of 700 pages in "The Ice Age in North America and its Bearings upon the Antiquity of Man," published in 1889 by D. Appleton & Co. To such an extent has this become a standard work that. a fifth enlarged and revised edition was called for in 1911, and published by the Bibliotheca Sacra Company at Oberlin. In pur- suance of his investigations, Professor Wright has spent whole summers in Alaska, Greenland, the Rocky Mountains, and Northern Europe, and has journeyed across Asia through Mon- golia, Manchuria, Siberia, Turkestan, and the Caucasus region. Besides the books already mentioned he has published "Man and the Glacial Period," "Divine Authority of the Bible," "Green- land Icefields and Life in the North Atlantic," "Scientific As- pects of Christian Evidences," "Asiatic Russia," "Scientific Con- firmations of Old Testament History," and the "Origin and An- tiquity of Man," besides a large number of articles in scientific journals. Since 1883 he has been editor in chief of the Biblio- theca Sacra, the oldest theological quarterly in America, and since 1902 of the Records of the Past, published in Washing- ton, D. C. He is now president of the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society, and still actively engaged in pursuing the investigations to which he has so long been devoted.
WHAT OBERLIN HAS DONE FOR BULGARIA
Esther Tapping Maltbie was born in Southampton, O., April 30, 1836. She supported herself through college and grad- uated from the Oberlin classical course in 1862.
For eight years she taught in public schools, part of the time in the colored schools of the South.
In 1870 she went West to teach, but offered herself to the American Missionary Board and in three months was sent to
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be an assistant at Samokov, Bulgaria. It was their first school for women. When she reached there she found the principal had died the month before.
Samokov is a beautiful mountain city, thirty-five miles from Sofia. The summer home of the royal family is nearby. A rapid mountain river gives an endless supply of purest water.
Miss Maltbie came of Puritan ancestors and has their love of education. The entire responsibility fell at once on this young teacher and she has been its principal for 38 years and is the Mary Lyon of Bulgaria.
This school began eight years before the Bulgarians gained their freedom after five years' bondage to Turkey. They had not lost their religion or language and the Bible had been trans- lated into the people's tongue.
They elected parliament and a prince and made education compulsory.
Miss Maltbie came to serve. She has been the leader of a group of consecrated teachers whose eye was single and fulfilled the promise that the body shall be full of light. Their influence has reached to Macedonia where they speak the Bulgarian language.
In a multitude of city homes Miss Maltbie is loved and honored. Of its 130 graduates some have married army officers, others are wives of lawyers, merchants, bankers, teachers and preachers. Twenty-three have taken post-graduate studies in European and American Universities. Fifty were members of the Alumnae Society of Sofia. Many hundred have taken only partial courses and are teachers and home-makers.
Miss Maltbie on her seventieth birthday received telegrams and notices in the newspapers of all parts of the country. Her associates speak of her dependence on prayer, and that she has
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the gift of getting on well with fellow-workers, and her ability to keep on moving in the face of discouragements.
She is the personal friend of every pupil and seeks to in- spire them with Christian courage. She is their nurse in sick- ness and makes her room a hospital. During the 38 years no pupil has died at the school.
She is now teaching the second generation, a dozen daugh- ters of former scholars.
Her pupils are recognized for their uprightness, honesty, thrift, economy, simplicity and devotion to home duties. Miss Maltbie is fond of horseback riding and when in her seventy- first year she could come out to meet her guests and escort them five hours up the mountain to Samokov. She was most cordially welcomed by groups of young women who had walked out to meet them with flowers and singing Bulgarian songs.
Later when we all took a ride to Sofia she was lovingly greeted by one carriage load of girls after another returning from their vacation. Their look and tones was the heart lan- guage of all nations.
She has given sympathy which often is lacking in our own schools and she said, "I count myself happy that I have had each year a part in the work of the Master Architect of Character." These words are the secret of the steadfastness with which her life has been held to a single purpose and for forty-six years magnified the high office of teacher .- Irving W. Metcalf, Oberlin Alumni Magazine, May, 1908.
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WHAT OBERLIN HAS DONE FOR CHINA
William Scott Ament was the only son of a widowed mother and had one sister. He was born in Owosso, Mich., in 1851. He graduated at Oberlin in 1873. He then studied in the Union and Andover Theological Seminaries and offered himself to the American Board in 1877. He was assigned to China. He was a very sincere Christian and the boys of Owosso remember his warm appeal to them to become Christians. A foreign field ap- pealed to him and China was his choice. He was given the supervision of the native workers. For nearly 32 years Mr. and Mrs. Ament worked together with only short intervals at home. He married Mary A. Penfield (a graduate of Oberlin in 1875), August 23, 1877. One of their furloughs was extended to three years, because of the death of his sister and the feeble health of his mother; those years he was pastor of the Congre- gational Church at Medina, O.
On his return to China he was the pastor of the South Church at Peking, the church of the students and American mis- sionaries. He was made trustee of Peking University, a Meth- odist institution (where Mrs. Rose's niece, Hattie Davis, taught for seven years introducing the kindergarten system as she had taught it in Flint, Mich.). Dr. Ament was also president of the Christian Endeavor Unions of China; chairman of a com- mittee on federation for all China; the president of the North China Tract Society and was tremendously active. His was not a life unmixed with affliction, for of the four children, only one survives and is in his college course in Oberlin.
Dr. Ament was in the siege of the Boxers and during the danger of the missionaries of Peking, who were in an annual meeting at Tungchou, and imperial troops were aiding the Boxers, he secured a train of Chinese carts and in the night he
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himself made the journey with heathen carters, who would go only as he accompanied them to Tungchou; the refugees and Chinese missionaries returned in safety to Peking. When the fires of fanatical rage were over and the time for settlement came, Dr. Ament was chosen as the one who would be honor- able and just to all. Church buildings had been destroyed, homes looted, widows and orphans had lost all they had. The Chinese custom was, in case of mob violence, that the village should make good the damage. Dr. Ament settled on the basis that the value of the property destroyed should be estimated and assessed, and one-third of the amount was added to make up a fund to be distributed among those whose husbands and fathers had been killed. China was not the open field it is to- day; they had to make their way by winning the confidence of the Orientals and live the gospel as well as preach it. Other notable leaders in theological education had preceded Dr. Ament -Dr. Goodrich, Dr. Sheffield and Dr. Arthur Smith.
Dr. Ament's decline and death was due to his unremitting labors. Mrs. Ament met him when she heard of his severe ill- ness in Peking. The long journey home was undertaken but he only reached Lane Hospital, San Francisco. He was buried in his native home, Owosso, Mich. He died at the age of 58 years. Dr. Martin of Peking University said of him, "He was one of the great missionaries; he had the love of both Protestant and native Christians of the capital. He helped to lay deep and broad the Christian foundations for China that is yet to be."- Rev. Henry M. Tenney, Oberlin Alumni Magazine, February, 1909.
WHAT OBERLIN HAS DONE FOR RAILROADS Frederick Norton Finney, Alumni Magazine, Oberlin, 1908
This youngest son of Rev. Charles G. Finney was born in Boston, March 7, 1832. His mother was Lydia Andrews Finney
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of Whitestown, Oneida County, N. Y. At fifteen he went to Western New York and worked on a farm for two years; the following four years he was clerk in Cleveland and studied law.
One day he saw a surveying party on the street. He of- fered to work for nothing for them; resigned his position in the store and became chainman. The engineer saw his energy and soon gave him higher places, and then charge of the party which surveyed the road of the Big Four between Cincinnati and In- dianapolis. His brother Charles lived in Oshkosh, Wis., and with him he read law. He became city engineer and county engineer and in 1860 surveyed the line of railroad running north from Oshkosh. The railroad was conditioned on the completion of this line within a limited time; his energy finished it in time to secure the land grant.
In 1864 he was made First Engineer of the Union Pacific Railway and made the first survey over the Rocky Mountains. They had the protection from the Indians of a company of United States cavalry. In the fall of the same year he was resident engineer of the Jamestown division of the Lake Shore Railway, retaining this position until 1867.
From 1867 to 1870 he was chief engineer and general super- intendent of the Erie and Pittsburgh. In 1870 to 1874 he lo- cated and constructed all the lines in Canada that are now con- trolled by the Lake Shore and Michigan Railway Co.
From 1875 to 1878 he was chief engineer and superintend- ent of the Toledo, Peoria and Wabash Railway.
In 1878 he became general manager of the Wisconsin Cen- tral and remained in that position eleven years. In 1889 he severed his connection with that road and had a period of rest and foreign travel.
From 1893 to 1904 he was superintendent of construction of
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the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway, and constructed nine hundred miles of railroad, being president of the company from 1904 to 1906. He also constructed the lines of the Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, and Texas and Oklahoma Railways and was president of those companies.
Since 1878 Mr. Finney has lived in Milwaukee and since 1883 in a beautiful home on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. He had great love for home life. His first wife, Jennie Abel, of Franklin, N. Y., died not long after their marriage. In 1863 he married Williana W. Clarke of Oberlin, a woman of great per- sonal charm and rare refinement of taste and character. Until her death in 1899 she presided over his home with unquestioned authority and gracious dignity.
He has made several trips to Europe, and built for the memory of his father, the Finney chapel, on the grounds of their old home. It was dedicated on Oberlin's seventy-fifth anniver- sary, June, 1908 .- Charles E. Monroe, Oberlin Alumni Maga- zine.
BEREA COLLEGE
Its Founders, John G. Fee, J. A. Rogers and James S. Davis
From the Berea Quarterly we learn many interesting facts. The mountains are the end of eight states. That of Kentucky is larger than Connecticut and Massachusetts combined. This region is impossible for canals, railroads or turnpikes. It has to be a land of horseback riding and saddles.
In their history we learn they desired an independent re -- public and made one, with John Sevier for governor, and called it Franklin State, after Benjamin Franklin. They were asked to unite with North Carolina and replied, "Your eagerness to take the land from the Indians has made you subject to their depredations. We did not expect your displeasure by our inde- pendence, which we are bound to support both by religion and honor." Patrick Henry, governor of Virginia, advised them to make terms with North Carolina, saying, "Your being so far away will make them willing to be reasonable." The governor of North Carolina died; his successor took the slaves of John Sevier. They gave up the struggle in 1878. This failure kept other provinces from trying the experiment. But one John Rob- inson, with one hundred followers who were disaffected, es- tablished a state at Nashville, Tenn. Andrew Jackson said that "Tennessee created a constitution that was the most republican of any in the United States." He was its first representative in congress. John Sevier was its first governor. This has given character to East Tennessee.
Berea is a village 130 miles from Cincinnati, reached by trains going to Atlanta. Students in attendance are about
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1,100 in the winter and 1,000 in the summer, as many labor on farms. The yearly expense of each student is $100 and all do some manual work to reduce that amount. It is exempt from taxation but has no aid from state or nation. Every gift of forty dollars meets one student's yearly cost to the institution. Send gifts to the president, William Goodell Frost, LL. D., Berea, Ky.
From a "Story of Providence" the "Birth of Berea College" by Rev. John Alamanza Rogers:
In 1858 Mr. Rogers visited Kentucky and said,"Though I have traveled over productive lands, that can be bought from one dollar to five dollars per acre, I did not see any other than a log house, nor for thirty miles any glass in the windows. Corn bread, coffee and bacon was the diet. Many families see nothing else unless in the summer, some vegetables. In a school I vis- ited the pupils went and came as they pleased. Spelling, reading and writing was the course of study. The teacher sat with his heels on his desk. When he said "study" they all halloed to- gether as loud as they could. But after the first burst of en- thusiasm, a few kept up a running fire until we left."
The church we were to preach in was built of logs, as were all the houses in that region. Slab benches were around the outside of the room. The other seats were of rails. The males filed to the right and the females to the left. Each person shaking hands with those who passed, until a seat was found. The pulpit was three feet square but made up in height what it lacked in other dimensions. The people listened attentively, both morning and afternoon, and at the close all of the friends of the Lord Jesus gave the preacher "the right hand of fellow- ship" as they passed before him. It was an affecting scene and some tears were shed.
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Cassius Clay said, "Those who own their land but had not slaves would favor freedom," and he devoted himself to this class and gave his influence to locate the college at Berea.
Rev. John G. Fee refused any fellowship with slave-holders. He had studied theology at Lane Seminary and instead of going as a foreign missionary, chose labor in his own state. Like Charles G. Finney, after debating with himself in a grove, he gave himself and said, "Lord, if need be, make me an abolition- ist." He preached to those who would hear him and was known by many who never saw him. He married Matilda Hamilton in 1854, a high spirited, courageous and noble woman, who stood by him and shared his dangers. They had six children.
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