USA > Pennsylvania > Allegheny County > Pittsburgh > Centennial volume of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, PA., 1784-1884 > Part 9
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Turn your faces, then, with glad confidence toward the future. There the greater life of the church is still to be lived. Flash the light of the past upon that future and walk in the beaming path that light marks out for you. Carry the warmth of loyal affection, largely increased and intensified by this week of review, into the worship and work of that future. Advance boldly, asking at every step : What are the difficulties for us to meet : by what instrumentalities shall we grasp and set forward the work now given us to do : what measure of devotion in personal endeavor, carnest prayer, and freely given means, is required by the situation of to-day, and what are our motives? With our crown, our church, our city, our country and the kingdom of our Christ as motives, we ought not to fail of devotedness. With such motives we can push through the problem of how to secure a much larger proportion of Christian living to be lived through the church, making it less an incident and more an essential. Thus we shall solve the problem of "how to reach the masses." Thus we shall learn to overcome the thronging temptations that start upon every side for ourselves, our children and the world. Thus we shall submit cheerfully to these final conditions of success in the work of the First Church in its second century.
They are these :-
1. A spiritual life, maintained by devout communion with God, and diligent use of the means of grace to the highest possi- ble degree.
2. A just comprehension of the duties required of us and the opportunities placed before us.
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3. A thorough knowledge of our dangers, with deliverance from pride and presumption.
4. Old-fashioned severity of conscience.
5. Willingness to sacrifice tastes and inclinations for the more serious and imperative claims of imperiled souls.
6. Patient study of our past and its principles, by the suc- cessive generations as they rise, so that the reverence for what " God hath wrought " shall never be lost.
7. Learning, by mistakes even, to avoid isolation and narrow- ness, and contentions about little things.
8. Eclectic common sense, joined with principled conservatism.
9. UNFALTERING FAITH IN GOD.
" God of our fathers, from whose hand The centuries glide like grains of sand,"
Who hast so signally been the God of the century now com- pleted, to Thee we commit this church of the Lord Jesus Christ, for the century which now begins.
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SABBATH AFTERNOON ..
The Sabbath Schools of the Second and Third Presbyterian Churches, omitting their regular services, marched to the First Church and were comfortably scated on the main floor of the church, and the exercises proceeded in presence of a large audi- ence in the gallery. The occasion was throughout of the highest interest.
After devotional exercises, Dr. Wm. Speer was introduced. It was with peculiar gratitude that many heard the voice of this admirable writer, of whom the church is justly proud. He had been Superintendent for years, and had gone from the heart of the church in which he had grown up into the heart of that vast empire-China, accompanied by one of the noblest spirits among the consecrated young women of our history. Returning thence on account of ill health, he had engaged in varied labors for Christ as Missionary to the Chinese on the Pacific coast, as author of one of the best books for China ever written, and as Secretary of the General Assembly's Board of Education. He had again devoted his life to the interests of the Chinese by laboring for them in this country, and sought special qualifications for it by a second journey through China.
It was one of the gratifications of the occasion that he could be with us, and thanks are due that he undertook and completed the preparation of two such valuable papers as those which were contributed to the Sabbath School history and on the Missionary history of our church century. His paper that afternoon is as follows, and is replete with interest :
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DR. SPEER'S SABBATHI SCHOOL HISTORY.
Some of you probably have read the story of a man, Luke Short, who died in New England, at a hundred and sixteen years of age. When over a century okl, in the prospect of death, he remembered a sermon which he had heard when a youth, in England, from the celebrated preacher, John Flavel. The text was, "if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be anathema maranatha;" that is, "let him be accursed when the Lord shall come." The thoughts of Jesus Christ as a loving Saviour, yet as a just Judge, brought him to repentance. Thus this won- derful thing happened, that a man over a hundred years old was converted by a sermon which he heard when a boy. To-day we are to talk about things which have occurred during the hundred years which are past, and to learn lessons which shall be profit- able for all our lives to come. One of the blessings of the gospel is that it prolongs life. Each generation of Christians now lives longer than that preceding it. There may be some boy or girl but a few years old among the Sabbath School children that have met here this afternoon, who will join a hundred years from now in celebrating the immeasurably greater blessing which God has promised through the Lord Jesus Christ to bestow upon His church in these crowning days of this dispensation. May the Holy Spirit make all the life of every one of us, whether it be long or short, fruitful in works which the dear Saviour will bless to many on earth, and crown with joy when he shall come as the Judge of all.
The glorious psalm which has been read, the forty-eighth, was intended for grand occasions like the present, when we are met to commemorate God's wonderful goodness to us as a church
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and people for a hundred years. God put it into this book ; and He has preserved the book for more than two thousand years, that Christians now, as well as those who have lived in all the ages before us, might have thoughts and words suitable and ac- ceptable for just such memorable and happy days in the history of His people as this one. Let us all join, the young and the old, parents and children, teachers and scholars, in proclaiming to His praise, "Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of His holiness." This city has been in many respects in the past "a city of our God ;" and this church has been greatly honored by Him as "a mountain of His holiness." Therefore we should greatly praise Him from our hearts and with our tongues to-day.
The psalm teaches His people for what they should praise God, under such circumstances :
I. It looks back to the past, to what God had given to them in the land where Israel dwelt of old; the beautiful and rich country and its remarkable situation in the world. It was "beautiful for situation ;" "the joy of the whole earth." These things were designed to be pledges of great blessings to them from Him as the creator of the world and the governor of its nations.
II. The psalm declares, " as we have heard, so have we seen, in the city of the Lord of Hosts, in the city of our God :" that is, that those pledges have been fruitful in the bestowments of the present. What God had promised in' the covenants of the past had all been beheld and enjoyed in the history and experiences of His people and in the comforts and enjoyments which His hand had poured out upon them.
III. We are authorized of God to "tell all these things" to our children : that they may love and serve God still better than we, and may depend upon the certain fulfillment of the promises of far greater future good which God is to grant to the church and to the world. "Mark well," "consider," all these facts and all this history, "that ye may tell it to the generation following."
The subject assigned to me is "The Sabbath School and Mis- sionary History of the First Church."
Let these divine suggestions indicate the heads of the address to-day, in our review of the first century of the Sabbath School history of the church. Part of what is said in respect to it will be applicable to the other branch of the subject, the Missionary
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history, which will be given at another time. We will now consider,
I, 1784. The beginning of the century ; its pledges of blessing to our fathers.
II, 1884. The present ; the bestowments of blessings which the century has brought to ourselves.
III, 1984. The future. The promises of blessing to our children.
1. The PLEDGES OF BLESSING TO OUR FATHERS. Jerusa- lem was "beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, on the sides " or margin or borders, "of the North." I have not time to describe the exceeding interest of the "situation" of Palestine, the very centre of the Old World : and how Jerusalem was set from the beginning to be "a joy of the whole earth ;" and tell all the beautiful stories of her relations to Babylon, the mighty ancient empire of the North, the political and intellectual influ- ence of which, and the commercial intercourse of its people, then extended from the Mediterranean and Red seas to India and China in the far East-what grand pledges of blessing from the beginning these geographical and national relationships were to the Israel of old.
And are the same kind of evidences of God's creating and all controlling power of wisdom and goodness, in America, and in Pennsylvania, and in Pittsburgh, to be disregarded and forgotten by His better beloved and more highly blessed spiritual Israel of to-day? God, in his mercy, forbid. It is not our place now to recount God's blessing to other localities and Christian commu- nities. But I do desire to lead these children and their teachers and parents, and the Christian people here to-day, to mark well and consider the blessings of God's word, which so many utterly slight; so that they shall remember them, and associate them with these centennial observances as long as they live, and teach them to the generation following.
I say, " beautiful for situation" is Pittsburgh, and the great region of the valley of the Ohio, of which this group of cities and towns is the centre.
How wonderfully our nation, the United States, sits as a queen upon this grand American continent! Her sapphire throne, the shining waters of the Mexican Gulf. Her left arm, thrilling with the nerves and blood, the life and enterprise of the grand
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valley of the Ohio, a thousand miles in length. Her open palm, 'here at Pittsburgh, to receive, as it were, by the extended fingers of these great water and land communications, the tribute of the Atlantie States and of the transatlantie commerce. Her right arm, the mighty Missouri, with its water courses and land high- ways outstretched to the borders of the Paeifie, and ready to dis- tribute there the munificent gifts of blessings which God has sent along with the westward course of the sun since the beginning of our era. "Beautiful for situation" is Pittsburgh. No one knows how beautiful this region is who has not seen much of other parts of the world. Pittsburgh is planted of God just where it is, in order to be " a joy" to the continent. He would have it "a joy to the whole earth." And so may it be.
And God gave to Israel not alone its location but its soil and minerals and productions of every kind. He created for its use "a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills, a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without any searceness ; thou shalt not laek any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass." And no less for His own glory, and for the good of those that were appointed to dwell therein, has God en- (lowed this part of the American continent with a peculiar abundance and variety of sources of wealth and power. He has enriched this region in an extraordinary measure with fertile soils, unbroken to the hill tops, suited to the growth of the most nutritious grains and to afford the most abundant pasture for herds and flocks, and with fountains and streams of water; and with the common minerals, iron and coal and lime, which are the most valuable of all that the earth affords as means of ereating diversified and beneficial industries, and in multiplying popula- tion and wealth. The coal and iron and lime of Pennsylvania are far better gifts of God than the gold and silver of California and Nevada. These are the minerals which the vast and ener- getie growth and spread of population in this new world most needed. It is these which have supplied the rails and the wires and the bridges, the engines and the machinery for a multitude of commercial and manufacturing uses and for manifold designs, both great and small, the utensils of peace and the implements of war.
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And still further, God gave to the land its people, the chosen race, who took possession of it. He led Israel out of bondage, and avouched them to be his peculiar people, and blessed their land and their store houses. And it was the same God who led to this region those who were to occupy it. He caused the primary and controlling population of this favored part of the New World to be a people fitted for the great and beneficent ends which He would here accomplish through them, by many centuries of national and intellectual and spiritual education and discipline in the islands of Western Europe. Children in school should mark and consider, in studying geography and history, the wonderful way in which during two thousand years God prepared our ancestors for their task in this republic.
The people of this oklest Presbyterian Church are peculiarly called to consider these primary facts with regard to this region and its history, inasmuch as they have the chief original interest in them. Its founders planted in this locality, amidst most perilous and trying circumstances, what, with perhaps one ex- ception, was the first organization and house for the spiritual worship of the living and true God. For nineteen years it was the only one of the Presbyterian order. For nearly half a cen- tury from the origin of it, there was only one other church of that order in Pittsburgh and Allegheny. And its history has lent it a peculiar prominence in respect to the Presbyterian in- terests of the valley of the Ohio.
II. . In 1884 we turn to review the century pis al, and ask whether GOD HAS BESTOWED THE BLESSINGS upon the genera- tions of their children which the pledges at the beginning of it seemed to indicate ? Let us group THE EVIDENCES THAT HE HAS DONE SO under several heads.
1. God has poured forth direct spiritual blessings upon this region in a measure scarcely paralleled elsewhere .. Here, more than anywhere else in the land, the power of the great revival of 1800 was felt, and its best fruits enjoyed.
2. The wild condition of the frontier at that time made this a fiekl in which zealous missionary efforts were imperatively re- quired. It was so among the young even more than among the adult people. And thus it arose that Pittsburgh was one of the first places in the world where the modern missionary idea of the Sabbath School was conceived and put in practice. From the
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earliest ages of Christianity there had been catechetical. and doctrinal instruction of the children of the church and of religious inquiries from the world. But the philanthropist, Robert Raikes, in 1781, seeing the ignorance and viciousness and wretchedness of the poor in Gloucester, England, determined to try and benefit and reform those whom he could by collecting and instructing their children.
The children of the soldiers and mixed classes of poor settlers about Fort Pitt, as they increased in number, afforded a similar field for missionary labors. The Sabbath day was spent by them , in noisy games, amusements about the water, walks upon the neighboring hills, and sometimes in intoxication and fights. In the summer of 1809 Major Ebenezer Denny, who had been a soldier in the Revolutionary war, remembering the prayers and counsels of his pious mother in Carlisle, Matthew B. Lowrie, brother of Walter Lowrie, the first Secretary of our Board of Foreign Missions, and other good men connected with the First and Second Presbyterian Churches, formed what they entitled a " Moral Society," one of the efforts of which was to establish a school where children and young people could be instructed on the Sabbath day. Mr. Lewis F. Allen, of Buffalo, N. Y., a youth- ful teacher in it, describes the school. It was commenced in the old Court House, in the square on Market street. The room was filled with a rude and ignorant crowd, of all ages up to manhood and womanhood ; white and black mingled together. Some of them were disfigured by bloody fights, then of almost daily occur- rence. A well grown hoy was without a nose ; it had been bitten off in a fierce battle. A number of earnest people gladly gave their time, outside of church hours, each Sabbath, to teaching these vicious and neglected young people to spell and read, and recite verses of the Scriptures and the Shorter Catechism. The people of the town generally regarded this humble and self-deny- ing work with contempt and open opposition. The life of Robert Raikes notices this truly missionary effort in Pittsburgh with marked interest, as the first example in America of the same form of missionary Sabbath School which that eminent philanthropist had succeeded in planting in several of the seaport and manufac- turing cities of England.
Four years later, in 1813, and two years earlier than the date sometimes given, as a number of facts preserved by the members 8
.
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of his family show, William Lecky, a member and trustee of the First Presbyterian Church, made an important advance upon the former movement. Pitying the poor children who ran wild upon the Sabbath in the upper part of the town, about the region of the church, he gathered a number of them on that day into his wagon shop, which was opposite to the church on Wood street. He engaged a powerful auxiliary in a young lady, Miss Eliza Irwin, who undertook to teach the children to sing Watt's hymns. Some of the older people were shocked by this occupation of the holy day in such unwonted employments, and arraigned Mr. Lecky before the church Session. But the wiser pastor Sustained him, saying, "let him go on with his teaching, something will come of it." And before long the youthful objects of his compassion were permitted to occupy the Session room in the rear of the church building. A portion of them he enticed into his pew to hear the sermon of the good pastor. This little school gave to some of these children instruction which made them ex- emplary men and women, and led them to become faithful fol- lowers of Christ.
Here then we see, at a frontier town on the Ohio, only three- quarters of a century ago, two of the earliest experiments of that grand and powerful and divinely blessed missionary agency, for the salvation of mankind through the youth of each genera- tion, which now has scattered over the American continent ninety thousand schools, which contain a hundred thousand teachers and seven millions of scholars, and by which a hundred and thirty thousand members are added yearly to the church of Christ. Indeed, the Missionary Sabbath School is now one of the most potent of evangelistie means for the revival of the dead or paralyzed Protestantism of some parts of the world, for the conversion of multitudes in Romanist countries and for the teaching of all nations whatsoever the blessed Redeemer and Lord hath commanded. The need of the Scriptures for the Sab- bath School was the principal cause of the formation of the first Bible Society ; which was in Great Britain, in 1804. Its inter- national lessons have stimulated the study of the Scriptures in all Christian nations, and in foreign missionary fields. The influence of the Sabbath School has revolutionized the music and the lyric poetry of the church, and made music an ally in all aggressive
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Christian and humanitarian work. It has powerfully aided in quickening the Christianity of the age.
3. The spiritual influence of its Sabbath School work has been one of the most happy features in the history of the First Church.
Labors for the instruction and conversion of the young, ever brings down a peculiar blessing from Him who so loved children when on the earth. We early trace in our Sabbath School records the evidences of the influence upon teachers and parents. Meet- ings for prayer were held; many of them at daylight in the morning, that ordinary domestic or business employments might not be interfered with, and that the thirsting spirits of the sup- pliants might be refreshed for duties of the Sabbath or of secular life. A separate monthly concert of prayer for Sabbath Schools was held by the members of the church for many years. The pastors have testified that the labors of devoted teachers were among the chief means by which the children and young people were brought to feel the claims of Christ upon their hearts and to confess His name before men. These fervent labors prepared the way for revivals of religion.
The simple memorizing of Scripture, though the knowledge of those days had not yet made the study of God's book so delight- ful in some things as it is now, was a supreme benefit. At the close of the year 1828, the principal school of the church re- ported that the scholars, averaging an attendance of a hundred and ten, had committed, during the year, sixty thousand verses. This seems, in our questionable way of learning the Scripture lesson, a great quantity. But have not the Chinese boys in our mission schools, of whom there are some who have thoroughly committed the whole seven thousand nine hundred and twenty- nine verses of the New Testament, besides some portions of the Old Testament, done far more thereby to form a solid and strong Christian character, than the boys in America do without this ? It is a mistake of our present mode of teaching to instruct the young in "the word of God," otherwise than by " the words of God." Jesus says he spake " the words" which the Father gave to him. It is "not the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth," that impart spiritual wisdom, and spiritual peace, and spiritual power ; the power which is " mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds,"
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wherever they have been reared in opposition to Him throughout the world.
4. The missionary atmosphere in which the first Sabbath School was born here has animated its subsequent life. Teachers and pecuniary aid were sent forth to plant, in numerous destitute spots of the city and its suburbs, nurseries of the tree of life. At Ferry and Fourth streets ; in Virgin alley, and in Exchange alley ; down at the Point; on Penn, near Fifth street ; in a saw mill on the Allegheny, near Eighth street ; towards the Monongahela river, on Second street, between Smithfield and Wood streets; up in Kensington or Soho, and at other places in the lower parts of the city, the children of the families of the vicinity, most often the poor, were gathered into schools on the Lord's Day. Mem- bers of the church living at more distant points, as on Prospect Hill and at Minersville to the east, up on the top of Coal Hill to the south, and in Temperanceville below it on the Ohio, where the laborers in the coal pits and glass works could be reached, engaged in this precious though toilsome work, and were joined in it by others who went gladly to their help. In 1817, James Wilson and others collected an African school ; for Pitts- burgh was always a convenient and comparatively safe refuge for the hunted fugitives from the South. In buildings of all kinds, shops, factories, ward school houses, the good work was carried on. In Allegheny, a German lager beer saloon supplied a room above it, where a school, sometimes called the "Lager Beer School," was taught, which in time was baptized by the more religious name of the "Providence School." A great deal of money was bestowed for these efforts from the general church funds; but more still from individuals who were personally en- listed in them. Thomas Plumer made, in 1835, a bequest of two hundred and fifty dollars for Sabbath Schools, the interest of which the church Session has used with much advantage to several of them. John Wright, a faithful ekler, himself built a hall for a school. Several gentlemen, now living, have annually given large sums to others on this and the Allegheny side of the river. There were those who devoted what is far more valuable than money, health and life itself. Thomas B. Beer, son of an elder of the church, a graduate of Jefferson College entering upon studies for the ministry, it was believed at the time, sacrificed health, and in March, 1838, his life, to disease
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