USA > Pennsylvania > Dauphin County > Harrisburg > Centennial memorial, English Presbyterian congregation, Harrisburg, Pa. > Part 18
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It is probably quite clear by this time of the week that the English Presbyterian Church of Harrisburg is cele- brating its Centennial, but I hasten to add -- and I believe
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Remarks by Dr. William C. Cattell.
I am expressing your sentiments as well as my own-that it has never seemed to me as if our brethren of the Pine Street Church were really a separate Church. They shared our common worship for sixty-five years: there have been, and there are, so many ties between us, and those ties have been so intimate and so continuous during the last thirty- five years, that it never has seemed as if the churches were separate, but rather as if they were parts of the same con- gregation worshiping in different buildings. In that spirit I would like to present to you a gentleman whose name and face are not only familiar to you all, but are known and honored wherever the Presbyterian faith is honored throughout the land; I would like to call upon him as one who was formerly an associate pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Harrisburg-Dr. Cattell.
REMARKS BY DR. WILLIAM C. CATTELL.
I have taken a couple of days out of a very busy life, and have traveled many miles that I might be present at this Presbyterian reunion. For here in Harrisburg the happiest years of my life were spent. I have indeed happy memor- ies of other places where I have lived, especially of Easton, where, among a refined and cultured people, I spent nearly thirty years, engaged in a work that awakened my highest enthusiasm, and that brought me into intimate relations with beloved colleagues in the Faculty and with the young and joyous life of college boys. Yet, I say frankly to you here, as I say everywhere, that my heart is in Harrisburg It was only four brief years that I lived here, but those were years in which I occupied a position which I believe to be
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the most blessed and delightful that can fall to the lot of man. I was the Pastor of a kind, loving, united people. So long as I live shall I cherish in my heart of hearts the memory of their love and loyalty which made my sacred work among them a supreme joy. I can say now, after the lapse of thirty years, what I said in my last words to them from the pulpit as I turned away from my happy home here to resume my college work at Easton: "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you." That was the text, as some of you may recall, from which I preached my farewell sermon.
But the memories which have so endeared Harrisburg to me are not exclusively those connected with the people of my old pastoral charge. I had not lived here long without finding that in this "mother church," at whose invitation we are here to-night, were some of the most lovable people that ever lived.
Let me remind you that Harrisburg, in 1860, was only a large town, containing not much over fifteen thousand inhabitants. What were then open fields are now streets of closely-built houses. The palatial residences, everywhere to be seen now, were then unknown. The life here, a gen- eration ago, was plainer and simpler than it can be in the great and busy city to which Harrisburg has now grown. People got to know each other easily. Neighbor was another name for friend, and the "neighborhood " was widely extended. It was, therefore, not long before the young Pastor of the Pine Street Church found that there were other good people here besides those of his own fold, although they, first and last and always, were the nearest to
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his heart. Naturally, he found these good people, first of all, and the most blessed of them all, in the old "mother church," and the friendships formed among them I have sacredly cherished all these years.
And so I rejoice to be here to-night. Many, indeed, of those I loved in this Church, and in my old pastoral charge have gone to the better land. Yet many remain. And it has been a great joy to me, as I passed through these crowded rooms, to take one and another by the hand-the two congregations so intermingled that those from one could hardly be distinguished from those of the other. Their kind greeting will be a precious memory to me for the rest of my life.
Yonder is my dear and honored brother, Dr. Robinson, who, as Pastor of this Church, so cordially welcomed me to Harrisburg nearly thirty-five years ago. We were both young men then. In his presence I should hardly dare to say about him all that is in my heart. But this I dare say While he has been called to a high position as a professor in one of our oldest theological seminaries, and the whole Presbyterian Church holds him in deserved honor, his old people here, and all of us who knew him, claim him to be in a special sense " our Doctor Robinson." Our respect for him and our personal love strengthen as the years go by.
And what shall I say of Dr. DeWitt, the venerable senior Pastor of this Church when I came to Harrisburg? I looked up to him with a reverence I have felt for few men. Of all those articles of historic interest collected in the adjoining room well worthy of days of careful study, nothing has so attracted me as the portrait of this venerable man. I stood
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long before it to-day, gazing upon those benign and well- remembered features, and recalling his rare and beautiful old age as he went in and out among the people whom he had so lovingly and so faithfully and so ably served for nearly half a century. Even in the declining years of his life he was a preacher of rare power. I recall a sermon I heard him preach shortly after I came to Harrisburg. A large tent was pitched upon the Capitol grounds in which meetings were held after the manner of the evangelistic services now so common. The patriarch took for his text, " Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow ; though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool." Never shall I forget the deep impression made upon the great assembly as the silver-haired man, with a voice trembling with emotion, and in language of classic purity characteristic of all his'sermons, pleaded with his hearers to accept God's merey so fully and freely offered in the gospel. All around me were men in tears !
There comes to me a pleasant memory connecting Dr. De Witt with our own services in the new church dedicated in 1860. Dr. Gurley, of Washington City, preached in the morning, and Dr. Burt, of Baltimore, in the evening, when this church was closed and both congregations met together and sent their prayers and saered songs heavenward from the same altar. The next day I called upon Dr. De Witt and invited him to preach on the following Sunday morn- ing. He at once, and with his usual courtesy, accepted the invitation. But I saw he was under the impression that I had invited him as " a supply " in view of my absence from
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Remarks by Dr. William C. Cattell.
home that day, and I said to him: "No, Dr. DeWitt, I could not be away from my people when the very first sermon is preached to them in the regular ministration of the gospel after the exceptional exercises of the dedication. I shall be in the pulpit with you. But it is more fitting that this first sermon shall be preached by you than by the Pastor of the Church. You are the honored father of us all." And I shall never forget the pleased look with which the patriarch recognized that the invitation to him was intended, not to fill a vacancy occasioned by my absence, but to em- phasize the high appreciation in which he was held by the community in which his whole ministerial life had been spent.
I should like to recall other pleasant memories I have of. Dr. De Witt and of the members of this Church whom I knew and loved in those far off days, especially among the elders; and I should not hesitate to name first of all that eminent man of God, Mr. James W. Weir. But there are other speakers to follow, and the reminiscences that crowd upon me would detain you too long.
But there comes to me a sad memory to which I must briefly refer-the civil war, which, during the last three years of my pastorate, transformed our hitherto quiet and peaceful town into one vast camp of soldiers. Their tents were pitched not only in the open fields around us, but in the public grounds and even in the streets. Preaching by their camp fires and ministering in the great hospitals soon established for the sick and wounded, all the pastors here found new and most sacred duties added to the work among
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their own people. Our congregations upon the Sabbath day were at times almost broken up with the excitement and stir and confusion that everywhere prevailed. On that Sunday-I remember it well-when the skirmish occurred at Oyster's Point, but three or four miles from the city and we could plainly hear the booming of the cannon, the con- gregation of the Pine Street Church numbered exactly twelve! But in those dark days pastors and people in all the churches seemed to be drawn nearer to each other as all drew nearer to the throne to which their petitions were sent for that help of which we all stood in such need. The darkness around us deepened as the months slowly passed away. In fact, in the second invasion of Pennsylvania by the confederates under General Lee, Harrisburg became a beleaguered city. Intrenchments for its defense were thrown up on the opposite bank of the river-I myself worked upon them with pick and shovel ! All the State archives were hurriedly removed for safety ; women and children fled from their homes. The sentinels were still keeping watch and guard upon those outworks for the defense of the city when I took leave of this dear place in the fall of 1863- though in my farewell words from the pulpit to my beloved people, I could even then point them to the star of hope shining through the riven clouds of the war and betokening the near hour when the fratricidal strife would be ended and the restored Republic rise to a higher and nobler life.
But I will not detain you longer. Let me, as I take my seat, thank you, Mr. President, for your kind words of welcome this evening to the people of the Pine Street
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Church as, with their first Pastor and the beloved man who now ministers to them in sacred things, they are gathered here with hearty congratulations, and best wishes and fervent . prayers for the dear old mother Church. We highly appre- ciate such greeting from a man like yourself, whose Chris- tian character and eminent endowments add luster to the high judicial office you hold. And upon all the congrega- tion and their honored Pastor, whom I, too, like his own people, have learned to admire and love, I fervently invoke the continued and increasing favor of Almighty God.
The PRESIDENT: I need not remind you who was the first pastor of this Church. I do not intend to eulogize him after the address to which you had the pleasure of listening last night, but I may say that he must have been of remark- ably good stock. Probably his harmonious balance of faculty was nowhere more admirably shown than in his selection of this congregation as one of his early fields of labor, and the congregation, I have no doubt, showed an equal balance of good judgment when they selected him as their first pastor.
We are exceedingly fortunate to-night in having two of his grandsons with us, who illustrate the excellence of the stock. Mr. Snowden's descendants have been distinguished in all the departments in which men can win distinction for themselves in civil, military and diplomatie life, and if there is any other position of trust or honor to which they have not yet attained, I am sure they are now upon the way to its attainment. I will call first upon General Snowden, grandson of the first Pastor of the Church.
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REMARKS BY MAJOR GENERAL GEORGE R. SNOWDEN.
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : I am very glad to be here with you to-night on this interesting and historic occasion. A friend remarked to me not . long since, that he thought I was a much better Presby- terian in theory than in practice. Without disputing his opinion, I confess to be among the best Presbyterians in theory. Because I believe that any man or woman raised in the Presbyterian Church, in her Sunday-schools, under the sound of the gospel as it has been preached from her pulpits in this country for the past 200 years, must realize that our civil institutions are based if not upon the con- fession of faith and the shorter chatechism at least upon her form of government. The theory of our federal union is based upon the form of government of the Presbyterian Church, as was once wisely said by Chief Justice Tilghman. The first principle of Presbyterian polity is republicanism. It is based upon the consent and intelligence alike of the governing and the governed. I do not think it too much to say that had not our Presbyterian forefathers come to this country and advanced to the Cumberland Valley, we would not now be living in a land of civil and religious liberty, wisely said by the Puritan poet, Milton, to be the most precious of all our earthly possessions. When the pioneers of this Church went forward to the wilderness they took with them the Bible and established the meeting house and the school.
There are no doubt sections of the country more noted in history than yours. Philadelphia has the State House and the Bell, and the achievements of New England have been
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Remarks by Major General George R. Snowden.
celebrated by poet and historian. Our ancestors rushing on to clear the wilderness, to drive back the savage, to open the West to settlement, were too busy making history, to have time to write it. It is very gratifying now to see that in the last few years the deeds of Pennsylvanians are be- coming better known. They were as distinguished, and our ancestors were as earnest and active in the Revolution as the patriots of Massachusetts, Virginia, or of any other part of our country. This section not so famous in history or known abroad as it ought to be, is one which can refer with the greatest pride to its course in the Revolution, to the part which it took in securing Independence and the Union. The spirit of patriotism was so strong that persons suspected of luke-warmness to the cause were subjected to trial and punishment as well in the church as the civil courts. It is no wonder considering the character of the early settlers of these valleys that here was recruited the most distinguished regiment which ever carried the flag, bearing it alott in honor from Quebec to Yorktown, the First Con- tinental. The men who went forth from Paxtang, Silvers' Spring, Carlisle and Chambersburg were ever at the front and yielded to none in devotion to the cause to which they pledged themselves and their fortunes.
From your valley proceeded South and West influences which led to the success of the Revolution and the formation of the Union. We have the authority of Washington that without the Presbyterians the cause would have failed. The swarms of Presbyterians, like bees, industrious but quick, if disturbed, to sting, which settled here and went on to the Southwest were the men who won the battle of King's
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Mountain, and forced Cornwallis to Yorktown where he surrendered to the genius of Washington. The Declaration at Mecklenburg preceded that of Philadelphia. Our ancestors took a prominent and influential part in achieving the liberties of the American people and in forming the plan of government under which the country has so greatly grown and prospered.
It is the advantage of our free institutions that they develope the character of the individual citizen. I recollect very well when quite young commanding a company in the Army of the Potomac hearing the men in the ranks talk of their duty. Nearly all of them were from the hum- blest walks in life, yet they seriously considered the obligations resting upon them; they felt that they were fighting for the liberties of themselves and of their posterity, every man carrying a musket realizing that the success of the war was his individual concern. No armies of other countries could ever have that personal and patriotic senti- ment. Those who march under the brilliant colors of England, Germany, or Russia cannot comprehend, for they have never felt, that sense of manhood and of citizenship which the American citizen entertained when he went forth as a volunteer. I speak of this, ladies and gentlemen, other- wise it might be out of place on this occasion, simply because I believe it to be largely owing to the teachings and the traditions of the Presbyterian Church. It was born in persecution ; its flourished in spite of all assaults made upon it by weapons spiritual and militant, to reduce to servitude men who believed in this Bible. They drew from the teachings of the New Testament that all men are created
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Remarks by Major General George R. Snowden.
free and equal ; they believed that government is justly based upon the right of every man to a voice in it, and they learned from experience the necessity of every man's being ready when occasion requires with strong arm and resolute heart to defend his principles. The Scotch-Irish especially, coming into your valley, founded a community based upon liberty, upon the belief that man is capable and ought to govern himself.
There are not as many Presbyterians in the country as there should be; there ought to be more of them. I do not speak of the religious doctrines of the Church, others more capable have done so. But its polity I do not believe is equaled by any other religious organization in the world, and it is superior to all in unswerving and uncompro- mising devotion to civil and religious liberty. From its formation to the present its voice has ever been for the right of man to govern himself, to worship his Creator according to the dictates of his own conscience and to maintain that no one can come between him and his Master. It would, therefore, be better for the country if there were more Presbyterians, better for the welfare and permanence of our civil institutions. But there are enough of them, as we believe, to preserve our liberties to the remotest generation; at least enough to stand forth on every battlefield, in peace or war, to indicate these sacred principles. As long as the Presbyterian Church shall endure, to the end of time there will be a strong, perhaps a dominating element in the land which will have a con- trolling voice in higher politics, tending to the perfection and perpetuity of our free institutions.
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At the conclusion of General Snowden's address, Miss Bunton sang with fine expression, " The Angel Came," by F. II. Cowen.
The PRESIDENT: I spoke of two grandsons, you will re- member, and it gives me pleasure to say that the gentleman who will next address you has, like his cousin to whom you have just listened, a claim of his own upon your attention. He is not only the grandson of the first pastor of the church, but he is also one of the most distinguished mem- bers of the Pennsylvania bar-Mr. Ross Thompson, of Erie.
REMARKS BY COL. J. ROSS THOMPSON.
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I am much indebted to the pastor of this church, Dr. Stewart, and some warm friends for a kind invitation to be present and par- ticipate in the interesting ceremonies commemorating the Centennial anniversary of this church, of which my grand- father was the first pastor.
The one hundredth anniversary of the origin of this church naturally takes the mind's eye back over the records of the past and grasps in the stupendous results of these years and the wonderful strides taken in science and arts. Monarchies have risen and fallen. Republies, like meteors, have flashed across the pages of history. Wars of most stupendous character, involving momentous questions and fates of nations, have been waged. The pages of history are full of startling events, all in the life time of this church.
Steam, with its wonderful transporting powers, the elec- tric wire encircling the earth, and on the wings of the lighting, carrying messages to the antipodes, the iron horse,
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Remarks by Col. J. Ross Thompson.
the steam railroad, the steam boat, the sewing machine, the photograph and the thousands of inventions useful to mankind, have come into play in the life of this church.
In the centennial celebration of the adoption of the Fed- eral Constitution, at Philadelphia, I saw an object lesson in the strides in transportation in the last one hundred years. First in the procession came the pack horses, with pack saddles, the first mode of transportation, then follow- ing the pack horses came the old Conestoga wagons, follow- ing this came the canal boat, following this a corps of civil engineers with their instruments, their levels and transits, following them the workingmen with the shovels and picks, next came the old fashioned locomotive, following this the modern engine of sixty tons, then the old fashioned railroad coaches, next the new and palatial cars, winding up with the grand Pulman palace car. Starting with the pack horse and winding up with the palace car, demonstrating the wonderful progress of transportation within the hundred years of this church. Our ancestors came here in the days of the pack horse and pack saddle. This was then the only mode of transportation.
In the same procession there was another object lesson, illustrating in a like manner the progress of civilization and the Christianized results of the work of the churches and within the life time of this church. I saw this procession headed by the savage Indians from the plains, decked in full war paint and the feathers of the untrained and un- civilized savage; following behind the men on horse back came a great array of little people dressed in gray, not with
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bows and arrows, but in their little arms carrying slates and pencils, and figuring and ciphering upon those slates.
Following them came the Indian girls in wagons working at the industries their Christian sisters worked upon; I saw them followed by the young Indians working at the trades, some at the saddler's and some at the tinsmith's trade. Starting in with the savage at the front and winding up with the Christianized man in the end. This in the age of this Church; from savagery to Christianity. I thought then of the grand school at Carlisle, where those Indians were educated, and of Carlisle as the home of my ancestors. The thought of those Indians at Carlisle recalled an incident in the life of my grandmother, the wife of Rev. Nathaniel R. Snowden, who resided there. The father of my grandmother was in Wyoming at the time of the massacre by the Indians. The Indian chief knew Dr. Gustine. My grandmother was a small child at the time. The chieftain had saved Dr. Gustine from the tomahawk and scalping knife of the Indians. As you recall, a portion of the massacre occurred in the day time .. When night approached Brandt, the half- breed chieftain, took Dr. Gustine with his little daughter down to the Susquehanna, putting Dr. Gustine and his little girl into a canoe, told him to paddle for his life. He paddled down the Susquehanna to Harris Ferry, now Harrisburg, and went from thence to Carlisle with his daughter, who afterwards became the mother of my mother. I thought of that circumstance in relation to the Indian and the civilization marked in this century. I would say, Mr President, that if the spirit of my grandfather should come down here to-day to see the strides made in this great
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Remarks by Col. J. Ross Thompson.
Church, to see this vast building with its beautiful arrange- ments, its organ, its beautiful windows, and would think of the little church he held over the jail, he would see in this one of the most wonderful strides made in the last hundred years.
I feel when I am talking here that I am talking, Mr. President, upon the ground that my ancestors occupied. I feel that when I am talking here I am recalling reminis- censes to people who are as much interested in them as I am myself. I can recall many curious things in my days. Some of you that are as old know that back in those days we did not have any hymn books. We had what we called the clerk, who sat in front of the pulpit. He had his tuning fork and would read off two lines and away we would go and then we would try again, then all would join in and sing. Some of you will recall this. There was a very peculiar characteristic of the preaching when I was quite a lad. I can recall with vividness, they always began with firstly, then secondly, lastly, allow me to conclude, and let me add. These things generally took about two hours and a half. Then, too, the prayers. They were very able prayers, but they were powerfully long. I recall when I was a lad visiting my grandfather's house that he always had prayers evening and morning. I could always tell when the old gentleman was about half through, for at this point he always prayed for the downfall of the Pope of Rome, the anti-Christ.
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