USA > Pennsylvania > Washington County > Claysville > Our church and our village > Part 6
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Address BY GEORGE W. F. BIRCH, D.D., LL.D.
We are here to-day because the history of the Christian church in this community and the reverent love of a child and grandchildren for an honored an- cestor testify, through the tablet which has just been unveiled, that the good which Thomas Hoge did dur- ing the seventy and more years of mortality was not interred with his bones when he was laid in the house appointed for all living. And while I appreciate the significance of the poet's appeal:
" Can storied urn or animated bust, Back to its earth recall the fleeting dust ?"
yet I must say that the face which stands out from this tablet recalls that command of the Emperor Con- stantine by which the cities of Greece and Asia were despoiled of their monuments to add to the attractions of Constantinople. To this Edward Gibbon refers in his " History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire " when he writes, " The trophies of memora- ble wars, the objects of religious veneration, the most finished statues of the gods and heroes of the sages and poets of ancient times, contributed to the splendid triumph of Constantinople," and gave occasion to the remark of the historian Cedrenus, who observes with some enthusiasm " that nothing seemed wanting ex-
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cept the souls of the illustrious men whom those ad- mirable monuments were intended to represent."
So on this day, when this old meeting-house makes its mark as the " Westminster Abbey " of Claysville, the fact that the bas-relief which centres our interest on this occasion, is an exact copy of a wax portrait which reproduced its living subject eighty-five years ago, and that in it persons now living recognize the founder and the first pastor of the Claysville Presby- terian Church-this fact, I insist, is enough to make our enthusiasm burst forth in the word: Nothing seems wanting here but the soul of the good and faith- ful man whom this admirable work of art is intended to represent. "Nothing seems wanting," did I say? Indeed, it does only scem so. For the Holy Ghost has given us the story of the proto-martyr Abel in order that we may know that in the faith which has had, does have, and will have its outcome in the history of this church, we have the soul, beaming from the eye and swelling forth from the lip, of this likeness of Thomas Hoge. For by this church he, being dead, yet speak- eth. The value of the historical pictures hanging in the Rotunda of the Capitol at Washington which were executed by John Trumbull consists in the fact that the interest in the figures presented in those paintings finds its reason in the consideration that for the most part they are the life-likeness which the painter trans- ferred to the canvas. A fellow-artist paid a high com- pliment to Gilbert Stuart when he remarked, "How fortunate it was that a painter existed in the time of Washington who could hand him down looking like a gentleman!" One of the lights of English literature
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tells us that " portrait painting is painting from recol- lection, and from a conception of character, with the object before us to assist the memory and understand- ing."
So the artist who framed the wax into the life-like- ness which reappears in this bronze, deserves our thanks for handing down the one whom we honor to- day, looking like a gentleman, and has conveyed to us a character study which it will be the work of this occasion to delineate. This delineation, rightly per- formed, will be a demonstration of the Scripture pro- verb: " The memory of the just is blessed," as it will be the revelation of a godly parent, a faithful minister, a public benefactor, an individual contribution which the Bible has immortalized in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. But if that portrait could speak, the godly, faithful, benevolent man would tell us that just as faith-filled Abraham sometimes dis- trusted God; as patient Moses was impatient; as brave Elijah fled from Jezebel; as the man after God's own heart, David, stained his career with an act of gigantic iniquity; as Time's recording angel has linked forever Peter's noble confession with Peter's base denial, so he fought his battle with the imperfections of human nature, and entered Heaven, not on account of in- herent righteousness, but on account of imputed righteousness, as he preached and prayed and lived the truth set forth in the Thirty-second Psalm:
" Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
" Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile."
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And like David in his climb toward Heaven, he made descents, but every restoration was a higher ascent.
This delineation will also be a demonstration of the proposition that the undercurrent of the progress of Christianity in general, and of this church in particular, in this community, is the ministry of Mr. Hoge. We are told that "it was long a subject of wonder how the water is always flowing into the Mediterranean Sea, whilst there is apparently no outlet, till it was explained by ascertaining its undercurrents. In 1683 such a strong undercurrent was discovered, which goes out by the Straits of Gibraltar. A vessel full of stones was lowered, and the current was found to be so strong that it dragged the boat along, despite the upper cur- rent."
So when human life commenced to congregate in this town, Mr. Hoge turned into its channel the streams of that river which makes glad the city of our God. Once and again the moral current of this church and community has been in the wrong direction, but because the force of the undercurrent of the olden time has not been, to use the word of another, " tran- sient like Cherith, nor muddy like the Nile, nor furi- ous like Kishon, nor treacherous like Job's deceit- ful brooks, nor 'naught ' like those of Jericho," this church and community have, in the main, shown the gladness of the city of our God, as the streams of this undercurrent have appeared in Ralph Erskine's classi- fication : " the perfections of God, the fullness of Christ, the operations of the Spirit running in the channel of the covenants of promise."
The sight of this memorial will awaken and make
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permanent a new interest in the history of this church and congregation. During the preparation of this paper an issue of the New York Observer came to hand, and I found in it an item which reads as follows:
"Can the common people be made to take an interest in history ? It appears that they can be, if only the right means are employed for that purpose. A much needed step, for example, has lately been taken in the direction of making Westminster Hall, in London, more evidently a symbol of his- tory to the crowds who every week visit it. A tablet has lately been put up in the wall close to the stairs which descend into the crypt, thus marking the position of an archway which for upward of one hundred and thirty years was the principal means of access to the old House of Commons. Another inscription locates the spot where the Earl of Stafford stood during his impeachment before the House of Lords. It is said that the Saturday crowds who visit Westminster invariably throng around a tablet, that has been in position some time, which shows the place where Charles I. stood his trial. It is clear that the run of people appreciate history when they know where the history is."
This quotation is the voice of our own experience. Every visitor to Washington City stops to think when he notices on the floor of the Pennsylvania Depot the brass star that marks the spot where President Garfield fell. As you ride over the Pennsylvania Railroad from Monmouth Junction to Freehold, N. J., as you ap- proach the latter place you pass a signboard with the inscription, "Moll Pitcher's Well," recalling the woman heroine of the bloody battle of Monmouth, which was no insignificant factor of the success of the American Revolution. The first time I was in Hartford, Conn., I hunted for the site of the Charter Oak, and it was a
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great satisfaction to read the story carved on the mon- ument that marked it.
So this memorial will be a memory of childhood; a permament reminder of the wilderness which saw the beginnings of this tabernacle of Divine worship; an index-finger which will help the antiquarian in his studies of the past.
The proper commencement of a sketch of Thomas Hoge is a glance at the heraldic story of his name. From Burke's "Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland " and other authorities the statement is drawn which runs as follows: "It is the well-known Nor- wegian name of many a fierce viking, a word which recalls the private bands of Northmen who plundered the coast of Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries, and who are no inconspicuous figures in the traditional and probably mythological history of America. The ancient Scandinavia (the modern Norway and Sweden) was the home of those Gothic tribes who brought with them from the cradle of humanity the religion and language of the Aryan race. Aryan is a name prob- ably meaning 'noble,' given to themselves by the ancestors of the leading nations of Europe and India. As yet they are a small people of Central Asia, feed- ing their flocks near the source of the Oxus. They were the direct descendants of Japheth.
" The name may be found in various nationalities, as follows: Germany, Hoche; France, Hugo and Hogue; Norway, Hacon and Haug; Holland, Haig and Hague; Scotland, Hogg, Hoge, and Hog; Den- mark, Hooch; Saxon, High and Haah. In England the name is generally written Hogg, but it occurs in
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old family writings and papers as Hoogg, Hogge, Hodge, and Hoddge.
" The coat of arms of the Hoge family of Scotland presents-argent, a cross crosslet; sable, between three bears' heads; erased azure; crest, an oak tree-mean- ing, I suppose, that the members of the family who made that coat of arms their sign manual were ready to lay down their lives to the death in behalf of the cause which they defended.
" So that the ancient family of Hoge, whether we spell the name Hogg or Hog or Hoge, was of no vul- gar origin, as its members have claimed their descent from one Haug of Norway, a gallant robber and de- stroyer in his day, who doubtless praised Odin and Thor by drinking from a cup made from the skull of a victim.
" The great antiquity of the surname of Hog in Scot- land will appear, as we learn that its use is coeval with the retirement of Cospatrick, Earl of Northumberland about the time of the Norman Conquest. The sur- name became hereditary in the reign of Malcolm Can- more, and was first assumed by the proprietors of the land of Hogstown, in the shire of Angus. In the bond of submission in 1296 (six hundred years ago) Alexander Hog is styled Alexander De Hogstown. We can at least conceive something of the nature of the environment of Alexander De Hogstown when we remember that the leading figure in the events which preceded and resulted in the accession of Malcolm Can- more to the throne was the Macbeth in whose case the truth of history has been sacrificed to the fancy with which William Shakespeare filled its framework.
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So that the man who seems to have been the success- ful general who led in the revolution which overthrew Duncan and confirmed his pretensions to the throne- the man who during eighteen years sustained his sovereignty, showed liberality to the church, and fell at last, for aught we know, like a hero-this man comes down to us linked with the madness of Lady Macbeth, the murder of Duncan, the ghost of Banquo, the revenge of Macduff, as facts attending his career were transformed by Shakespeare to point the moral he had in view.
" The heraldic story tells us that one of the Hogs of Scotland landed in Ireland in 1656. This member of the Hog family doubtless found Ireland prepared for his coming by the policy of Oliver Cromwell. The iron rule of that man of renown had, according to Macaulay, ' waged war resembling that which Israel waged on the Canaanites; smote the idolaters with the edge of the sword, so that great cities were left without inhabitants; drove many thousands to the Continent; shipped off many thousands to the West Indies, and supplied the void thus made by pouring in numerous colonists of Saxon blood and of Calvinistic faith.'"
So when Thomas Hoge was born, May 3, 1775, the family which still exists in England, Ireland, Spain, and the United States had been in Ireland one hundred and nineteen years. At his birth and throughout his childhood and young manhood Ireland was in a state of ferment, political and religious. On the 19th of April preceding the date of his birth (an interval of fourteen days), the American Colonists had unfurled the flag of freedom as a thing to die for at the battle of
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Lexington. It was as a boy who had passed his eighth year that he heard of the treaty of peace which con- firmed Great Britain's acknowledgment of the thirteen colonies as free and independent States. A boy would not be indifferent to the circumstances set forth by John Mitchel in his " History of Ireland," that " All eyes in Ireland were turned to this impending strug- gle, and the obvious community of interest which Ireland had with those transatlantic colonies, made their case the theme of conversation in private circles as well as of debates in Parliament. The attention of the country was still more strongly aroused when the Continental Congress, amongst other forcible ad- dresses issued at this time (1774), directed one to the ' People of Ireland.' That prince among orators, that distinguished Henry Grattan, declared that the ‘lib- erties of America were inseparable from the liberties of Ireland; that the rights of America were the only hope of Ireland and the only refuge of the liberties of mankind.'"
From the time that Mr. Hoge drew his first breath until he fled from his native land during the Rebellion of 1798, the noise of conflict filled his ears. Mr. Hoge grew up in a country which a statesman declared to be unfit to govern itself on account of its " corrupt aris- tocracy," " ferocious commonalty," " distracted gov- ernment," and " divided people." An integral part of Mr. Hoge's life in Ireland is related in Green's " His- tory of the English People," as follows: " An associa- tion of 'United Irishmen,' begun among the Protes- tants of Ulster with a view of obtaining Parliamentary reform, drifted into a correspondence with France
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and projects of insurrection. The Catholic peasantry, brooding over their misery and their wrongs, were equally stirred by the news from France, and their discontent broke out in the outrages of 'Defenders ' and 'Peep-o'-day Boys,' who held the country in terror. For a while, however, the Protestant land- owners banded together in 'Orange Societies,' and held the country down by sheer terror and blood- shed.
" At last the smouldering discontent and disaffection burst into flame. Ireland was, in fact, driven into rebellion by the lawless cruelty of the Orange yeo- manry and the English troops.
"In 1796 and 1797 soldiers and yeomanry marched over the country, torturing and scourging the ‘crop- pies,' as the Irish insurgents were called, in derision from their short-cut hair. Their outrages were sanc- tioned by a Bill of Indemnity, passed by the Irish Parliament, and protected for the future by an Insur- rection Act, and a suspension of the habeas corpus. Meanwhile, the 'United Irishmen' prepared for an insurrection which was delayed by the failure of the French expeditions, on which they had counted for support, and, above all, by the victory of Camperdown. Atrocities were answered by atrocities, when the revolt at last broke out in 1798. Loyal Protestants were lashed and tortured in their turn, and every soldier taken was butchered without mercy.
" The rebels, however, no sooner mustered fifteen thousand men strong, in a camp on Vinegar Hill, near Enniscorthy, than the camp was stormed by the Eng- lish troops, and the revolt utterly suppressed."
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I have not been able to learn the precise part which Mr. Hoge took in the Rebellion of 1798.
As Dungannon, a town in his native county Tyrone, was the scene of the famous Convention of the Vol- unteers in 1782, the probability is that the youth of seventeen was a champion of the constitutional auton- omy of Ireland.
The significant factor in the career of Thomas Hoge is his attendance at the University of Edinburgh, which must have commenced, if it were not completed, during the second decade of his life. As to the advan- tages which he enjoyed at that notable seat of learning, it is enough to say that the faculty numbered among its members some of the greatest scholars of the age.
Dugald Stewart was in the chair of moral philoso- phy, who, in Lord Cockburn's estimate, " was one of the greatest of didactic orators, recalled the finest of the old eloquent sages," and warranted the assertion that " no intelligent pupil of his ever ceased to respect philosophy, or was ever false to his principles, without feeling the crime aggravated by the recollection of the morality that Stewart had taught him." As the course of moral philosophy, besides ethics proper, included lectures on political philosophy, the thought is sug- gested that Thomas Hoge's connection with the Irish Rebellion may have been his application of Stewart's lectures on the theory of government.
The head of the Edinburgh faculty during Thomas Hoge's student life was the distinguished Principal Robertson, whose rank in philosophy and literature will be understood as I name the historic triumvirate
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of the eighteenth century-Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon.
As I name Sir Walter Scott, who made forgotten history sparkle with the electric fire of his imagination; Francis Jeffrey, who brought to the Edinburgh Re- view the work of at once " the best critic and the best reviewer of the age"; Lord Cockburn, whose pleadings as a lawyer were remarkable for clearness, pathos, and simplicity; Francis Horner, the great political econo- mist; Sydney Smith, who was too human, too witty, too tactless, too buoyant, too logical, and too inde- pendent to reach the preferments on earth which lay within the scope of his capabilities; Henry Brougham, who, as he drove off one morning from the presence of Samuel Rogers, the poet, occasioned the remark of the latter, " There go Solon, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Archimedes, Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Chesterfield, and a great many more in one post-chaise " ; Thomas Brown, afterwards so remarkable for his originality and subtlety in the domain of psychology; James Mill, the historian, political and mental philosopher, who will never be forgotten as the father of John Stuart Mill; Sir James Mackintosh, the catholic-minded man of culture; Sir Archibald Alison, the celebrated his- torian-as I mention these names you will have some [ idea at least of the college world of Thomas Hoge. He must have known something of that " Debating Society," founded by Henry Brougham, where embryo legislators, judges, and preachers tried their early powers.
Then, too, think of the men who appealed to Thomas Hoge's interest as an Irishman. There was Henry
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Grattan, who, Protestant though he was, is described by a Roman Catholic historian as " a man of pure spirit and noble genius; an accomplished scholar and a poet, whose scholarship and poetry gave way to a grand, peculiar, and electric oratory, unsurpassed, probably unequalled, by the greatest speakers of any age or nation-not only a consummate orator, but a patriot in the largest and broadest sense."
There was John Philpot Curran, who reached the pinnacle of his fame in his defence of the accused in the State trials which took place in connection with the spirit of rebellion which caused Mr. Hoge to flee from his native land. There was Edmund Burke, to whom Lord Brougham accords a station among the most extraordinary persons that have ever appeared. And old Dr. Johnson said of him, “ Burke, sir, is such a man that if you met him for the first time in the street, where you were stopped by a drove of oxen, and you and he stepped aside to take shelter but for five min- utes, he'd talk to you in such a manner that when you parted you would say, 'This is an extraordinary man.'" There was William Pitt, whom Macaulay de- clares to be " the first English minister who formed great designs for the benefit of Ireland."
That portion of the world's chronology which is measured by Thomas Hoge's life on the other side of the water is one of the mile-post epochs in the history of mankind. It is filled with the seed events of hu- man annals. There are the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the wars of Napoleon, the for- mation of the Constitution of the United States of America, the origination of the Sunday-school, the
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prison work of John Howard, the construction of Sir William Herschel's great telescope, the discovery of vaccination.
So the year 1798 marks the time when the Scotch- Irishman, Thomas Hoge, in the twenty-third or twenty-fourth year of his age, first touched the shores of America, at the port of Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love was at that time the seat of govern- ment and the chief city of the republic. Thomas Hoge doubtless observed what McMaster so graphically de- scribes, "No other (city) could boast of so many streets, so many houses, so many people, so much renown." There had been made the discoveries which carried the name of Franklin to the remotest spots of the civilized world. There had been put forth the Declaration of In- dependence. There had long been held the delibera- tions of Congress. No other city was so rich, so extrav- agant, so fashionable. Seven years before, 1784, (Rich- ard Henry) Lee had described the place (Philadelphia) to Washington as an attractive scene of amusement and debauch. Lovel, another writer, had called it a place of crucifying expenses. But the features that most impressed travellers from distant lands were the fineness of the houses, the goodness of the pavement, the filthiness of the carriage-ways, the regular ar- rangement of the streets, and the singular custom of numbering some and giving to others the names of forest trees. When Thomas Hoge struck Chestnut Street, long since given up to the demands of com- merce, and lined with warehouses and shops, he would at once perceive the fashionable walk of the Phila- delphians. There, on any fine day when business was
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over, the bank closed, and the exchange deserted, crowds of pleasure-seekers gathered to enjoy the air and display their rich clothes. As the gentleman of the last century passed him he would notice that he wore a three-cornered cocked hat, heavily laced; that his hair was done up in a cue, and its natural shade concealed by a profusion of powder. His coat was light-colored, with diminutive cape, marvellously long back, and silver buttons engraved with the letters of his name; that his small clothes came scarce to his knees; his stockings were striped; his shoes pointed and adorned with huge buckles; his vest had flap pockets; his cuffs were loaded with lead; that partici- pation in the Revolutionary War would make him af- fect a military bearing and speak very frequently con- cerning campaigns; that when he bowed to the damsels that passed him, he took half the sidewalk as he flour- ished his cane and scraped his foot. As Thomas Hoge saw the lady responding to the salutation as she gravely returned it and courtesied almost to the earth, that which greeted his eyes would seem strange to us. Thomas Hoge's day was the day of gorgeous brocades and taffetas, luxuriantly displayed over cumbrous hoops which, flattened before and behind, stood out for two feet on each side; of tower-built hats, adorned with tall feathers; of calash and muskmelon bonnets; of high wooden heels, fancifully cut; of gowns without fronts; of fine satin petticoats, and of implanted teeth. The implantation of teeth was introduced by a French physician who, according to report, reaped a small fortune from the ladies by the performance of the oper- ation. In one of his advertisements, which is yet ex-
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tant, announcing it to be his business to transplant teeth, it is declared that he has, within the six months just passed, successfully transplanted one hundred and twenty-three, and assures those having front teeth for sale that he will give two guineas for every sound one brought him. It is to be hoped that if Thomas Hoge were invited out to dine he was not embarrassed by a specimen of table manners in vogue at that time. A French prince who was travelling in our country, in one of his letters speaks of what took place when he accepted an invitation to dine with the lady of Robert y Morris. He was repeatedly asked to have his cup refilled. He consented. When he had swallowed the twelfth cup of tea, his neighbor whispered in his ear, and told him when he had enough of the water diet he should place his spoon across the cup, else the hostess would go on urging him to drink tea until the crack of doom.
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