USA > South Carolina > Charleston County > Charleston > Two centuries of the First Baptist Church of South Carolina, 1683-1883. With supplement > Part 10
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Thy children and Thy children's children? Are not her prayers and tears and agonies, through many generations, recorded in the book of Thy remembrance? Are not multitudes of her sons and daughters, gathered as sheaves in Thy heav- enly garner, before Thy eyes as witnesses of the faith and zeal of their mother church? Forget her not in her old age. Lead her gently onward and upward. Though she has been among the pots, yet may she be as the wings of the dove covered with silver and her feathers with yellow gold. May her way be as the path of the just that shineth more and more unto the perfect day !
And ever blessed be the name of Him-the great Head of the Church-from whom all bless- ings come and unto whom all praise is due! " His name shall endure forever; His name shall be continued as long as the sun ; and men shall be blessed in Him. All nations shall call Him blessed. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. And blessed be His glorious name forever, and let the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen and Amen."
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MISSIONS AND EDUCATION.
BY JAMES C. FURMAN AND J. L. M. CURRY.
THE CHURCH'S RELATION TO
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS.
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BY JAMES C. FURMAN.
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DR. FURMAN'S ADDRESS.
T O trace things up to their beginnings is a mental propensity obvious to universal ob- servation. It is, in fact, a flowering out of one of those intuitions of the intellect which Dugald Stewart has fitly designated "fundamental laws of belief." To this instinctive belief, the belief in causes, is cognate the desire to follow the course of events up to their origin. We see the early operation of this impulse in the child-inquisitive- ness which asks: "Who made this?" We see it in the wide-spread and insatiate appetite for news. The explorer, who has traced a river's course, gains satisfaction when he discovers the springy dell where the sun-light, peering through the dense foliage, gleams upon the tiny rill that forms the head-waters of the wide and winding stream. It is this same feeling which constructs and cherishes the family genealogy, which appre- ciates a well-written biography the more when the parentage and birth-place of the subject are given, and enjoys history the better when it has
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gained a clear comprehension of the rise and the early development of national life.
For such a feeling, thus manifestly natural, we should expect to find scope in a religion emana- ting from Him who is alike the God of grace and the God of nature. And this expectation is amply realized. In the Book of God, inspired wisdom, as with the sweep of an eagle's wings, carries us back over earth's empires and peoples, their commerce and their contentions, their crimes, their civilizations and their religions, to the origin of sin and to its first effects, and then to the first faint glimmering of mercy in the promise to the guilt-bewildered mother of our race. The Evan- gelists, ere they tell us of the Mediator's conflict and victory and that note of triumph from the bloody field of redemption-" It is finished,"-tell us of the Babe in Bethlehem. One of their num- ber (Luke), who had made for Theophilus "a treatise of all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day when he was received up," in his second work-the Book of Acts-does not tell us in brief how ministers should preach and how churches should be gathered and constituted and governed, satisfied with giving us gross results and sharply-drawn formulas; but he takes us to the fountain-head. He tells us of the themes of
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Peter and Stephen and Philip and Paul; he lets us look in upon incipient churches in Judea, in Antioch, in Galatia, in Philippi and Thessalonica, in Corinth and Achaia.
The purpose, then, of our present gathering is justified alike by the naturalness of the feeling which originated it and by the sanction of unques- tionable precedents. Yet as things proper in themselves are not only capable of a wise use, but are also subject to abuse, we need to guard this feeling from the intermixtures of vanity and vain-glory and to see that it be exercised in con- junction with a scrupulous regard to truth and with a reverent recognition of God as the foun- tain of all that is right and good in man. We are sure that were those men of the past, whose pious doings we would now recall, permitted to speak to us to-night, they would each rehearse the sentiment of an earlier fellow-worker: "Not I, but the grace of God in me."
In the distribution of the memorial topics to be discussed on this bi-centennial anniversary, the one assigned to me is The Connection of the First Baptist Church in Charleston with the Cause of Missions and the Cause of Education.
The loss by fire of the earlier records of the church places us at some disadvantage as to di-
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rect documentary evidence on the first of these points. Yet there is incidental testimony which makes it clear that an interest in that kind of evangelical work which we are now accustomed to designate as missionary was by them felt and acted on. In one of the authentic documents re- lating to this period of the history of South Caro- lina is found the acknowledgment in regard to similar labors put forth by Episcopal ministers sent into the Province from London : " Wherever we go, the Baptists are before us."
" History repeats itself." And in the founding of this church we are furnished with a marked parallelism with the establishment of churches in apostolic times. Persecution drove the disciples out of Jerusalem; but they went everywhere preaching the word. Paul was sometimes con- strained, for safety to his life, to betake himself to new fields of labor. He falls under the cen- sure of the civil authority, and is made, as though he were a criminal, to bear the indignity of "bonds and imprisonment." Yet he afterwards could say : "I would not have you to be ignorant that the things which have happened unto me have turned out rather to the furtherance of the gospel." So with William Screven, the founder of this church. Whether or not persecution drove
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him from his home at Somerton, in England-his native land-it did drive him from his adopted home in New England, he having been fined and imprisoned and forbidden to preach by the Gen- eral Court of Massachusetts; and coming in 1682, he sought, on the western bank of Cooper River, in or near Somerton, freedom to worship God in proclaiming the gospel of his grace. But popu- lation determining toward Oyster-point (afterward designated Charles-town, and about a hundred years later Charleston), he found himself with his fellow-exiles, added to by other Baptists who had come from England with Lord Cardross, occupy- ing here his field of labor, and in the true mis- sionary spirit making preaching excursions to other places. After the retirement of Mr. Scre- ven in 1706, the church passed through a season of which the notices are dim, and the experience of which must have been very painful and dis- couraging ; but in the settlement of Oliver Hart a brighter day dawned upon them. "Like people, like priest," was Hosea's sad epitome of the lapsed condition of Israel in his day. Like priest, like people, is, in like manner, a sententious de- scription of a religious body under the leadership of a devout and earnest and large-minded man of God,-such leadership as it has been again
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and again the lot of this church to enjoy. “In 1755," I quote from the History of the Charleston Association, " the Association, taking into consid- eration the destitute condition of many places in the interior settlements in this and the neighbor- ing Provinces, recommended the churches to make contributions for the support of a mission- ary in those parts. Mr. Hart was authorized and requested, provided a sufficient sum should be raised, to procure, if possible, a suitable person for this purpose. With this view he visited Penn- sylvania and New Jersey in the following year, and prevailed with Rev. John Gano to undertake the service, who attended the annual meeting and was cordially received. The Association requested Mr. Gano to visit the Yadkin first, and afterwards to bestow his labors wherever Providence should appear to direct. He devoted himself to the work. It afforded ample scope for his distin- guished piety, eloquence and fortitude ; and his ministrations were crowned with remarkable suc- cess. Many embraced and professed the gospel. The following year he received from the Associa- tion a letter of thanks for his faithfulness and in- dustry in the mission."
Surely here we have in idea the kernel of those more expanded plans of Christian labor
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with which we are familiar as State Missions and Home Missions. The record is a noble one. Four years before, a small association of three churches, Charleston, Ashley River and Welsh Neck (a fourth, Euhaw, being accidentally ab- sent) had in this "city by the sea," entered into a voluntary union for the promotion of religion, the first of its kind in this broad land, with the solitary exception of the Philadelphia. It was a "day of small things," but of grand pur- poses ; and this incipient effort of evangelization clothes them with immortal honor. We may ap- propriate to the holy men engaged on this work the encomium written by an inspired pen: "If our brethren be inquired of, they are the mes- sengers of the churches and the glory of Christ." At a later period a special mission to the Catawba Indians was maintained .* When the little one had become a thousand, and other associations had grown up as vigorous scions from the parent stem, the influence of this early purpose was seen in the kindred efforts on the Savannah River, the Edgefield, the Welsh Neck and in the similar
* Rev. John Rooker being the missionary. This man of God, when in his old age, the writer of this paper, then a young man, had the privilege of seeing some forty-nine years ago, at Sugar Creek Church, near the border of North Carolina.
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bodies which, in consequence of increase in the number of churches, have been formed out of the original association and its derivatives. Now, happily, they are all blended in that organization, " The State convention of the Baptist denomina- tion of South Carolina," here and now assembled, a stream of Christian beneficence to the weak and the destitute, whose swelling current is but the gathering of many confluents, but whose original source, its fons et origo, is Charleston's First Baptist Church.
The Convention itself was the product of the thought of a pastor of this church. Its first sug- gestion to the Charleston Association was through the church's annual letter to the Association. The church at the High Hills of Santee made a similar suggestion at the same time, but those who know that the High Hills Church had been the first pastorate of the Charleston pastor, by him "dearly beloved and longed for," and that towards him Dr. Roberts, their next pastor, exercised sen- timents of uncommon reverence and affection, will easily perceive that this concurrence of recom- mendation was not a chance coincidence, but is to be explained by the fact that the older pastor had infused his own spirit and views into the lat- ter, and that a contemporaneous suggestion from
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two churches was deemed more likely to disarm prejudices which might arise against a proposal if coming from a single church, especially if that church occupied a position that exposed it to jealous suspicion. Let no one imagine that here was an instance of adroit manœuvering. In the character of the city pastor to whom we allude there was not a shred of the wire-puller. By the purity of a most unselfish spirit he was lifted above the expedients of the trickster, yet he was not blind to human weaknesses even in good men. The elder Dr. Basil Manly, having re- turned to South Carolina after years of absence as president of Alabama University, said of him, in an address in Greenville, that "he was the wisest man he had ever known; " and it was this wisdom which brought forward a great public re- ligious measure in such a way as not to wake any prejudice. "Giving no offence (no occasion of stumbling) either to the Jew or the Gentile or to the church of God."
This may seem to some to have been an un- necessary cautiousness. The boy born in our mountain city and familiar with the rumbling of the railway locomotive carrying its long line of freight-cars, any one of which can convey its tons of salt and make its transit from the sea-
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board to the mountains in twenty-four hours, is almost incredulous at the story of the time when the loaded wagon making its way over the same space consumed two weeks of working days to transport a freightage of a single ton. The cir- cumstances of our fathers and our own are very different. Time does not allow our enlarging on this topic; but it is relevant to state that at the first meeting, which was held at Columbia, the most central point in the State, only three asso- ciations were represented, and the whole number of delegates was nine. At the next session ten delegates appeared .*
We have said nothing about the church's con- nection with Foreign Missions. Its later doings are known and read of all men familiar with our denominational history in South Carolina. But there is an unwritten history worthy of allusion. The pastor of this church was in sympathy with the leaders of Baptist thought in England, and occasionally corresponded with some of them. Letters, which early in the late war perished in
* In Georgia the attempt to organize the General Association (which afterward became the Georgia Baptist State Convention)- an attempt made in 1822, a year after the Convention in South Carolina was formed, excited bitter and prolonged opposition, though it numbered among its advocates such leaders as Mercer and Brantly, and Sherwood.
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the burning of a house in Sumter District, be- longing to one of his sons (the late C. M. Fur- man, Esq.), showed the interest which he and they took in matters pertaining to the common salvation. Among these correspondents were Drs. Rippon and Ryland, and the seraphic Samuel Pearce, the beloved disciple among the English Baptist ministers of his day, and who longed so earnestly to be allowed to go as a missionary. Before the dawn of actual missionary effort broke, there were men there and here who, under the inspiration of God's promises, were looking for- ward for revelations of providence in regard to the heathen world with the anxiety of bedarkened wayfarers watching for the morning. And when the first faint streak of coming day became visible, they were wont to sing with solemn pathos, as I have heard from one who was a youthful witness of their devotion, the beautiful hymn :
O'er the gloomy hills of darkness, Look, my soul, be still and gaze : All the promises do travail With a glorious day of grace. Blessed jubilee, May thy glorious morning dawn !
Let the Indian, let the Negro, Let the rude barbarian see
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That Divine and glorious conquest Once obtained on Calvary. Let the Gospel Loud resound from shore to shore.
Kingdoms wide that sit in darkness, Grant them, Lord, the glorious light; And from eastern coast to western May the morning chase the night,' And redemption, freely purchased, Win the day.
Fly abroad, thou glorious Gospel, Win and conquer, never cease : May thy lasting wide dominions Multiply and still increase. Sway thy sceptre, Saviour, all the world around !
It is the honor of the Baptists of America that their first great gathering on this continent was for the diffusion of the gospel, and it is an honor to the First Baptist Church in Charleston that their pastor was spontaneously chosen to preside on that august occasion.
The length of the discussion of this topic, cur- sory as it has necessarily been, precludes any but a very brief reference to the second topic, viz., the church's connection with education.
As early as 1755 efforts were made in the As- sociation to provide aid for young men designing to preach the gospel, but laboring under the dis-
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advantages of a want of education. Toward the funds pledged for this purpose, two years after- wards, i. e., in 1757, {133 were pledged by six churches, {60 of this amount by the Charleston church. In 1759 Mr. Evan Pugh (proposed by Mr. Gano) was examined, approved and put on a course of studies. Having gone through them, he was ordained in 1762. This investment yielded a heavy interest. Mr. Pugh's personal influence in the ministry was deep and strong, and some of his lineal descendants, Lides and Dargans, of the third and the fourth generations, have been or are now known and beloved as among the most valued ministers and private members.
In 1755, when this matter was broached in the Association, a society was formed in Charleston under the name of The Religious Society for the same purpose, along with other purposes in har- mony with this one, such as gathering a library, and meetings for increase of knowledge by dis- cussion. The formation of this society antedates by at least one year the movement in the Phila- delphia Association in behalf of education of can- didates for the ministry, and therefore may fairly be considered the first attempt in this direction. Under this provision, Edmund Botsford and Samuel Stillman were aided in the pursuit of their
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studies. A biography of Mr. Botsford by Rev. Dr. Charles D. Mallory has been published, and shows him to have been a man of great force and great usefulness. Dr. Stillman was the eloquent and successful defender of evangelical truth in Boston for forty-four years, where he died in 1771, greatly beloved and revered. It is matter of history that, in the incursion of Socinianism which swept away the Congregationalist lines, the Baptists main- tained the orthodox faith, Dr. Stillman being one of the resolute standard-bearers.
This was an auspicious beginning, but not many years elapsed before the War of the Revo- lution. This drove Mr. Hart from Charleston. When the weary years of conflict and confusion were over, difficulties in the way of his return were insurmountable. After several years of supplies of pulpit labor were over, the church se- cured, after repeated application, the settlement of the pastor, who for thirty-seven years gave his time and labor to their service. The gen- eral interests of Christ's cause elicited his pro- found concern. Among these education had its place-the education of the young, and especially the education of young men looking to the work of the ministry. In 1790 a draught of a plan was presented to the association by a committee
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composed of Messrs. Furman, S. Mercer, Mosely and Holcombe. These names, by the way, are suggestive : Silas Mercer was the father of Jesse Mercer, D.D., the founder of Mercer University, and Mr. Holcombe, afterwards Dr. Holcombe, of Philadelphia, the grandfather of the gifted Dr. Henry Holcombe Tucker, formerly president of Mercer University and afterward chancellor of the University of Georgia. In 1791 the plan was set into operation. Joseph B. Cook was re- ceived in 1792, John M. Roberts in 1793, and both of them were sent in 1794 to Rhode Island College, afterwards called Brown University, where Roberts graduated in 1796 and Cook in 1797. In 1792 Rev. Jesse Mercer was assisted with {10 and afterward supplied with books. Besides these names, we have others mentioned as receiving assistance from 1791 to 1810, viz .- Matthew McCullers, Sydenham Morton, William Jones, Samuel Eccles, Davis Collins, Ezra Court- ney, W. T. Brantly, Richard Todd, James Mc- Kellar, Jesse Pope, John Ellis and - Belcher. These names belong to the list of young preach- ers aided up to 1810. Within this period and afterward some of those who had been thus as- sisted made most valuable returns for the benefit they had received by themselves teaching others.
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Thus Dr. Roberts, who had an academy of his own on the Hills, gave gratuitous instruction to candidates for the ministry; and Dr. Brantly guided the studies of certain beneficiaries, no- tably, young Fincash, of Virginia, a young man of charming spirit and most engaging manners, who was early called from earth, and Iveson L. Brookes, of North Carolina, the effects of whose labors are still gratefully remembered in this State and in Georgia. Dr. Brantly also prepared for college that man of God, who filled the pul- pit of this church with such success after the death of Dr. Furman. It may not be improper to state here that Dr. Furman suggested to the Board of Trustees of the South Carolina Col- lege the name of Dr. Maxcy, its first president, whose magnetic power over students was never surpassed. We have seen tears in the eyes of the late Chief Justice O'Neal, and heard the tones, all tremulous with emotion, of the elder Dr. Manly, as they alluded to the strains of wis- dom and eloquence which in the class-room poured from the lips of their singularly gifted in- structor.
Dr. Furman had the clearest conception of the importance of improvement in the ministry, and his great heart (pardon the expression, I am
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speaking not as a son, but an historian) struggled with an intense desire for it. His church knew this well, and his example exerted a formative in- fluence upon them. Their constant annual con- tributions for this purpose far exceeded those made in any other similar body in the State; even the younger female members of his congre- gation had their " Juvenile Missionary and Edu- cation Society ; " and pious people, not Baptists, made donations and left legacies. Among these are the honored names of Mrs. Legare and Mrs. Gregory. The circular letter of the Charleston Association for 1797 is a powerful discussion and appeal on this subject. "The duty of the churches to provide for the instruction and im- provement of persons called by them to the min- istry previous to their entering on the work." This profound conviction, in the mind of Dr. Furman, lay at the bottom of that planning for the future, which eventuated in the formation of the Convention. He longed unutterably for the state of things which, in God's good providence, we see and know; but while his faith looked for- ward to it, he " died without the sight."
Dr. Roberts having died, the Convention estab- lished an academy, which, in the hope of Georgia's co-operation, was opened near the line of the
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two States, at Edgefield C. H. This hope not being realized, the site of operations was transferred to the High Hills of Santee, in Sumter District; and what had been called Furman Academy became Furman Theological Institu- tion, Rev. Jesse Hartwell and Rev. Saml. Fur- man being the professors. Some thirty young men were here gathered together, several of whom have been known in our own State and in others as men of mark. Talbird and Lathrop, and Kempton and Reynolds, and McIntosh 'and R. Furman, and DeVotie and Mahoney, and Na- pier and Nichols, and Lawton (Jos. A.) and Dar- gan (J. O. B.), and Graham and Duncan, and Hard and Cooper, and Harley and Chiles. Such are some of the names which we lovingly recall.
The desire to make the experiment of manual labor which had taken hold of many minds, par- ticularly those of Judge O'Neal and Rev. W. W. Hodges, occasioned a removal to Fairfield. A classical school, under the charge of Prof. W. E. Bailey, long known in Charleston as one of the most successful instructors, and afterward of Rev. W. W. Hodges, was established on the same tract of land with the theological institution, and was continued for a time; but the plan proving unsuccessful, and the building for the classical
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school having been burnt down, the theological institution became the exclusive object of atten- tion. For reasons which there would not be time now to explain, the faculty who were in of- fice at the close of its sojourn in Fairfield became satisfied that it was expedient to blend a colle- giate and a preparatory course of instruction with a theological one. These views having been communicated through the people, and meeting the approbation of the denomination, means were taken to carry out this design ; and, as another location would be better adapted to such a purpose, these means embraced the find- ing such a location. One of the faculty of the institution was appointed to visit different parts of the State, and to make report to the trustees. As the result, Greenville was chosen as the place, and Furman University found there a local habitation and a name, on a site unsurpassed in beauty. This removal gave to the State a colle- giate institution where hard and earnest, and fruitful work has been done in cultivating the heads and the hearts of young men of the State. The writer has good reason for saying that the realization of this idea was the inducement which led to the founding of Wofford College, in the im- pression made upon the mind of the venerable
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