USA > Virginia > City of Norfolk > City of Norfolk > Centennial of Court Street Baptist Church of the city of Portsmouth, Virginia > Part 4
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I am here to-day to speak of the stones God has selected from the quarry of humanity in the Court Street Church, of Portsmouth, Va., in His spiritual house, or the ministers of the gospel who were once members of this church during the last hundred years.
About fifty years ago a sprightly but wayward youth in Old England ran away from his native home. He shipped for America, and continued for many years to follow the sea. His parents were members of the Church of England, and he was reared in that faith. He was fond of reading. Books being scarce on ship-board, he was forced to read his Bible. He committed nearly the whole
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of the Bible to memory, which proved a great bless- ing to him in future life. He was a good sailor. Energetic and faithful, he commanded the respect of all.
While in the harbor of New York, he attended services at the Seamen's Bethel. The truth reached his heart; he was brought to see his need of a Saviour. He was converted and joined the Episcopal Church.
From this time the Bible was more precious than ever to him. He read it with new eyes and new desires, because he had a new heart. He read it looking for the footsteps of Jesus, desiring to walk in them. Several portions of it gave him much trouble. Among the rest the third chapter of Matthew. Jesus baptized by John, going down into the water and coming up out of the water ; what could it mean ? He had never seen the ordinance of baptism administered in that way. He had not followed in the footsteps of Jesus in that direction.
The second chapter of Acts also arrested his attention, where he read, "And they that gladly received his word were baptized," and other pas- sages which invariably connected baptism with faith; also Romans, sixth chapter: "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death."
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He asked himself again and again, What does all this mean? He knew nothing of the Baptist denomination ; had no idea there was such a peo- ple in the world who baptized none but professed believers, and baptized such only by burying them in the water. He was in great trouble, but God had a place for him in His temple and His own way of preparing him for it and bringing him to it.
When Jonah was flying from duty God sent a storm and a big fish to arrest him and bring him back to the work from which he was fleeing. Unlike Jonah, this young man knew his duty and was going to do it, but did not know how to discharge it.
God sent a storm to put him in the way to do the will of the Lord more perfectly. His ship was wrecked on your coast, near Cape Henry. The officers and crew were saved and brought into this port. While here, he attended this Church, heard its pastor, Rev. Thomas Hume, preach, and saw him baptize believers-at swim- ming-point-where so many of us put on Christ in baptism. The way was clear before him now. He made haste and delayed not. He conferred with the pastor, presented himself to the Church, related his Christian experience and told the deal- .ings of the Lord with him almost exactly as I
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have just given it to you. He was baptized by Brother Hume in 1840, and united with this Church.
He abandoned the sea, and went to the Valley of Virginia, where he taught school for several years. But the school-room was not the place God designed him to fill. His heart was fired with zeal to save souls. He occasionally spoke in meeting and led in prayer.
The people soon discovered that the root of the matter was in him, and that he was called of God to preach the gospel., He was licensed to preach.
He labored as a missionary in that region for two years. Then for three years as General Agent of the Association of Virginia. Then for about two years as Agent of the Home Board of the S. B. Convention.
During these years, as he went about among the Churches, he drew large congregations, aroused the Churches and was the instrument in the hand of God of saving many.
In 1849 he unwisely consented to accept the pastorate of a city Church-the First Church of Petersburg.
I say unwisely, because he was not adapted to that kind of work. A pastorate required more study, more close application, more concentration of effort, more arduous labor than he had the
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ability or inclination to give. As another has said, " A city charge was too small a sphere for him. He longed to dash out into the wide world, to labor among the churches at large." The Churches were constantly calling him to help them in protracted meetings, and he was always ready and willing to help. The result was that he spent but little time with his own people. Two years satisfied him and his Church that he was neither a born or a made pastor.
The rest of his life was given wholly to itiner- ating and holding protracted meetings. He was what we call at this day an Evangelist, and a most excellent and successful one. The Lord blessed him wherever he went. His preaching was so eminently evangelical, his spirit so kind, his bearing so gentlemanly in the pulpit and out of it that he won all hearts, and was eminently qualified by nature and grace to do the work of an Evangelist. His labors were greatly blessed in Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland. I had him with me in two protracted meetings, once in Lynchburg and once in Baltimore, and can testify from personal experience to these things. I have many pleasant reminiscences of him which might interest you, but I will not consume time to mention them.
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It was a long-cherished idea with him to visit his native land and to testify for Jesus among his kindred and countrymen. In 1853 he carried out this long-cherished desire and sailed for England, spent several months there in social intercourse and in religious meetings ; preaching the gospel he so much loved.
On his return voyage his steamer-the "City of Glasgow"-went to the bottom, and nothing was ever heard of her. All on board found a watery grave. The older members of this congregation will recognize in this picture the likeness of the beloved J. L. Reynoldson, one of the ministers that went out from this Church.
Many great and useful men in Church and State began their career in a printing-office. The hand- ling of letters made them literary in more senses than one. The manipulation of type made them typical men. Putting up other men's ideas stirred
up their own ideas. Once there was a Portsmouth boy, born and reared in your midst, who became a practical printer. That boy had brain, and when God gave him grace it was made evident that He had some other place for him than the composi- tors' office. We heard this morning from an ex- superintendent of this school the trouble this boy gave his teacher by his sceptical and inquiring
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mind. The Church was not long in discovering his gifts and graces, and they licensed him to preach the gospel.
In 1863, during the time that tried men's souls in all this South land, especially in this city, after it was evacuated by the Confederate forces and was under martial law, the Church called him to be its pastor. He served them until he went to Ken- tucky. The history of his going to that State may interest you, and not be out of place in an address on those sent into the ministry by this Church.
During the war our missionaries in China and Africa were cut off from our Foreign Mission Board in Richmond. The Baptist Churches in Baltimore considered themselves the Southern Baptist Con- vention for the time being, and determined to do all they could to meet the necessities of our mis- sions. We organized a Board of Foreign Missions and had what we called meetings of S. B. Conven- tion each year during the War. Hiram Woods was chosen Chairman of the Board; Wm. Crane was Treasurer, and the pastor of the First Church Corresponding Secretary. Dr. Fuller presided at our annual meetings. The Corresponding Secre- tary kept up a regular correspondence with our mission and discharged the usual duties of corre- sponding secretary without any pecuniary com-
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pensation. We were cut off from every State connected with the S. B. Convention. We did the very best we could in raising funds, and I as- sure you there were many large and noble contri- butions made in those trying days by the Baptists of Baltimore.
Immediately after the surrender, in the month of May Kentucky was opened to us, and the Cor- responding Secretary hastened there to attend the meeting of its General Association held in Cov- ington. He received a most cordial welconie. It was the first opportunity they had had to venti- late their Southern feelings, and they welcomed most heartily the representative of the Southern Baptist Convention. He made one address, took up a collection of $1800 and hastened back to Baltimore so as to send the money as soon as possible to our suffering missionaries. Seeing the sympathy of the Baptists there with our work and their readiness to give, and knowing the needs of our missions, the Corresponding Secretary de- cided to abandon his usual summer vacation and spend the month of August in visiting the Churches and district associations in the interest of Foreign Missions.
During this visit he learned how much the Churches in Kentucky needed efficient pastors, and
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how anxious they were to secure them. He there met for the first time his dear friend Dr. Helm, the leading spirit among the ministers of Ken- tucky. He mentioned the name of this preaching printer here in Portsmouth to Dr. Helm, and sug- gested that he should influence some Church to invite him to visit them.
On his return to Baltimore he wrote to this young man, telling him what he had done, and urging him, if any Church in Kentucky invited him to visit them, to go ; and if any Church called him, to accept, saying to him : Go to Kentucky if the way is open, for as long as you stay in Ports- mouth you will be nothing but Charlie Dobbs, but if you go to Kentucky you will be Mr. Dobbs, and, it may be, Dr. Dobbs.
The way was opened. He went, he saw and he was captured ; and, sure enough, he is to-day Dr. C. E. W. Dobbs. He served several Churches efficiently in that State, then he went to Indiana, where he was pastor of a Church and editor of a religious paper. He is now the popular pastor of the Baptist Church in Columbus, Miss.
He was elected secretary of the General Asso- ciation of Kentucky many years in succession, and served the Southern Baptist Convention in that capacity several terms. Professor Rust said of
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him : " He was a recording secretary by nature, and must have been born with a quill behind his ear."
He has been a close student and a voluminous writer in our weekly and quarterly papers. I have read many of his articles with pleasure, profit and surprise at his scholarship and mature thought.
The Lord blessed him with an excellent wife, whose father, Geo. Barrett, was one of the best members this. Church ever had. One of Dr. Dobbs' sons has recently graduated at our Theo- logical Seminary, and, I am told, is a fine student and an excellent preacher. Neither this church nor this town need be ashamed of Charlie, now Dr. C. E. W. Dobbs.
A minister once had two sons. When they were quite young, the father said one of them had a taste for literature, and the other for business, and he determined that he would make a literary man of one and a business man of the other. The sequel proved that he was correct in his judg- ment. For one of them was a successful mer- chant in this city to the day of his death. The other gave himself to literature, and is to-day as well qualified, I presume, intellectually, to fill the chair of English literature as any man in Amer- ica. He has taught in several institutions of high
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order, and is at present professor in the Univer- sity, North Carolina.
Though he has never given himself wholly to the work of the ministry-always connecting teach- ing with preaching-yet he has served several churches with acceptance. Among the rest, the Cumberland Street Church, Norfolk, where he succeeded his father.
At a very early age he had logical and serious thoughts on the subject of religion. On one oc- casion he submitted to his little brothers the ques- tion, " What is the best thing in the world?" One said one thing, and one, another. But "Tom " said with emphasis : "That the best thing in the world was heavenly cake and wine, for when they handed them around in Church everybody took some." But he added: "I think they are real mean, for they will not give me a bit."
There we have religion, logic and human nature equally blended. You will recognize in this pic- ture the likeness of Rev. Thomas Hume, D.D.
Rev. J. G. Council, once a member of this Church, sends me the following concise history of himself: "In the world sixty-seven years; in Christ forty-eight years; in the ministry forty- two years."
This brother pursued a course of three years'
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study in Richmond College and. two at Columbian College, Washington, D. C. He commenced his labors under the supervision of the executive com- mittee of the lower district of the Portsmouth Association as missionary in Norfolk and Princess Anne Counties.
After a year he succeeded Rev. Jeremiah Hen- dren as pastor of Kempsville Church. He was pastor six years in connection with that Church, and organized during that time the Churches at Mulberry and Lake Drummond.
He was pastor for six years of the Red Bank and Lower Northampton Churches on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, where his labors were blessed.
In 1861, about the beginning of the war, he was called to the first and only Baptist Church in Matthews County, Va. He continued there, with one other Church that he organized, for eight years. He then succeeded Rev. O. F. Flippo at Pocomoke City, Md. He remained there only two years- years of affliction, sickness and death.
It was there he lost his most excellent and ex- emplary wife-a real helpmeet. I knew her well, and am quite sure he might have said in truth : "By the grace of God and Sarah Ann White I am what I am."
. At the same time he lost one of his children,
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while two others were near unto death with the typhoid fever.
We must not wonder that, under these painful circumstances, he was willing to accept a call to Newington and Ebenezer Churches in Gloucester County.
He remained with these Churches about eight years, when he was recalled to Kempsville, the place of his second pastorate in connection with London Bridge Church, where he remained three years.
He went from Kempsville to Front Royal, War- ren County, Va., and then to Roanoke County, where he is now serving four Churches with Hollins' Institute. This brother supposes he has baptized 700 converts. He has not lived in vain, nor should this Church be ashamed of his record.
It is said that facts are stubborn things. But it does not follow that a man of facts is a stubborn fellow. But it does follow that a man of reliable facts is a blessed and good article to have among us. Such a man is making history and preserving what might otherwise be lost. He is bringing the present generation under obligations to him. And children not yet born will rise up and call Geo. J. Hobday blessed.
One who knows him well and appreciates him
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greatly writes me, "Hobday is a fine scholar and a great genius, in regard to doing things." That's the kind of men we need in this practical age- men of genius in doing, not promising, but doing things. It may be said of him, as is said of Sir Robt. Wren, the architect of great St. Paul, in London, " If you would see his monument look around you.' " If you would know what Hobday has done, is doing and what you may expect him to do, just look around you, for he is yet in your midst, a live man of facts and deeds. This brother was educated at Richmond College and our Southern Theological Seminary. Ordained 1871. May his shadow never grow less. Henry Petty, a useful preacher and popular writer, was once a member of this Church.
Ed. B. Morris, another Portsmouth boy and S. S. scholar, was baptized by your present pastor, educated at Richmond College and Crozer The- ological Seminary, and ordained in 1878. He was several years pastor of the Baptist Church at Waverly, now a portion of Baltimore. He is at present in Millville, New Jersey. With a strong and healthy body, an educated mind, a conse- crated heart, and an intelligent and pious wife, he . has been useful and promises to be more so.
Chas. A. G. Thomas was baptized by brother 6
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Owen, studied some years at Richmond College, and one or two sessions at our Theological Semi- nary at Louisville. He was licensed to preach by this Church in 1878. He supplied the Baptist Church in Nanjemoy, Md., one vacation with great acceptance while he was a student.
Raleigh and Eagle Rock, N. C., was a joint pastorate which he served a few years. The same was true of Yanceyville and Ashland, N. C. He made his field of labor in Yanceyville and Wake County, and had charge of a Mission in Washing- ton, N. C., four months. He is now at Elizabeth City, N. C., where his earnest preaching and faithful pastoral work are highly appreciated by the people and blessed by the Lord.
Rev. Walter P. Hines, a native of Isle of Wight County, was baptized by Rev. Jos. T. Deans, joined this Church by letter and was ordained in this house November, 1885. He did good service in Surry County, where he built two houses of worship and organized two Churches in two years. Was pastor at Kempsville and Salem Churches for one year. Is now pastor at Atlantic City, near Norfolk, where the work of the Lord prospers in his hands.
The history of Jos. S. Anderson, once a mem- ber of this Church, is short and sad. In 1868 he
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was received as a student for the ministry at Richmond College. A very promising young man. Was at College eighteen months and died of consumption before he ever preached.
I quote from another the following : "Theodore Knapp went from this Church. Was educated at Richmond College. Lived and preached in North Carolina for many years. Went to Penn- sylvania and some said he had the title of D.D. conferred upon him. This I always doubted. He went to Colorado and joined the Episcopalians. " Requiescat in pace." Rev. E. G. Cosprew (colored) was once a member of this Church and for many years a leader among his people.
Rev. J. D. Rayfield while a teacher in a public school in Annapolis, Md., organized a Sunday- school in Eastport, a growing village opposite Annapolis. He occasionally preached to the people. The Franklin Square Church, Baltimore, of which he was a member, sympathized with him, and took the mission under their care. During the present year a comfortable and inviting house of worship has been erected and paid for. A Church has been organized and brother Rayfield has been ordained its pastor. He has given himself wholly to the work of the ministry, and the Lord is greatly blessing his labors there.
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He is highly esteemed by his brethren in Balti- more.
Rev. John W. Daugerty was baptized by your present pastor and licensed to preach last January. He superintended two missions connected with this Church with such ability and success that the Church called for his ordination during the past week, when he was set apart to the work of the ministry.
The following brethren were licensed by the Church, but never ordained: James Weaver, in 1843; Edward Dunn, in 1845; Richard Allen, in 1848, and William Higginbotham. This brother was senior deacon of the Church. He was faith- ful unto death, and went to his reward last March.
We have noticed the names of those once members of this Church who were licensed and ordained to preach the gospel. There is one name I am surprised not to find in either list. There must be a mistake somewhere; either that man did a great deal of preaching without being licensed by the Church or he was licensed and no record made of it, or in some way the record has been lost or overlooked. I refer to Deacon George Barrett. He was one of the most power- ful men in prayer I ever listened to. He fre- quently reminded us of Job when he said: "Oh
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that I knew where I might find Him ! that I might come even to His seat, I would order my cause before Him, and fill my mouth with arguments." Brother Barrett often found Him, and came even unto His seat, and ordered his cause before Him, and filled his mouth with arguments. The " will not" of old Jacob was often in his heart, " I will not let thee go except thou bless me." When this was the case he was oblivious of time and his surroundings. He seemed not to know whether he was in the flesh or out of it. But others knew that they were in the flesh, and frequently wished he would hasten to the Amen.
The only objection I ever heard to his prayers was that they were too long. £ He would some- times pray you into a devotional spirit and then pray you out of it. I once heard a good woman say: "I knelt down when George Barrett prayed. For awhile I was very devout, and enjoyed his prayer. I then became so wearied and so wor- ried that I promised the Lord if he would forgive me that time I would never kneel again when George Barrett led in prayer." But, as a rule, he lifted our souls near to God when he led our devotions. He was not only a good prayer, but a good talker. For many years he used to con- duct meetings on the Western Branch-now
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Churchland-every Sunday, and did much good among that people.
He was an able expounder of the Scriptures, and an earnest, effective speaker. He and Sam- uel Brewer, and William Morris and James Davis, and others whose names are not enrolled among the licentiates, were preaching the word and did effective missionary work in conducting meetings in destitute neighborhoods. I shall ever tenderly cherish the memory of George Barrett and feel that this centennial service would be incomplete without some allusion to this man of God. He was an intelligent, safe and prayerful Sunday- school teacher, earnestly desiring the salvation of his scholars. He was the direct agent in the hands of God in my regeneration and becoming a minister of the gospel.
Do permit me to give you the facts in the case. They are well calculated to stimulate and encour- age faithful Sunday-school teachers. One Sunday he asked me to do him a certain favor on Monday. I replied, "I will do so with pleasure; if I live." He looked me lovingly in the eye, and said, " John, it is right for you to say, ' If I live,' for you may die before to-morrow. If you should, what have you done for Jesus, who has done so much for you? And what will you tell
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Him is the reason you have done nothing for Him ? "
That was a word in season. I then made up my mind that I would do something for Jesus, that I would love and serve Him. But, alas! in making the effort to do so, I made the fearful dis- covery that my heart was so depraved that I neither loved God, nor His service. And before I could do either I must have a new heart. I mourned my depravity and my sins, and accepted Jesus, not only as my Saviour, trusting to His righteousness alone ; but, as my Teacher, to believe what He said; and as my King, to obey His com- mands. And I covenanted with Him if he would pardon me and give me a heart to love Him and His service that the remainder of my days, whether many or few, should all be devoted to Him. I hope He gave me such a heart. From that moment the vows of God were upon me. I could not lie unto the Almighty. Nothing was left me but to tell the Church the covenant I had made with God; and I said to them, Here am I, send me. So you will not wonder that I cherish the memory of this good man, though not technically, yet in reality, a preacher of the gospel, and that I wish the name of George Barrett enrolled among the ministers sent out by this Church. Another
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man, Ebenezer Thomson, though never licensed, has been for many years a lay preacher, and is esteemed by his pastor in Philadelphia as his assis- tant.
There was another member of this Church in those days, whose name I will not mention, who was very near becoming a minister, and to all human appearances ought to have been one. And here to-night I deeply regret his name is not among the ordained ministers sent out from this church. He was to my boyish fancy the most fascinating youth I had ever met, and I have not seen one more fascinating since. He was not a native of Portsmouth. He came here to visit his kindred-prominent people in society and mem- bers of another denomination. He attended this Church occasionally, and, as I believed then, and believe now, was regenerated, baptized by Rev. Thomas Hume, and joined this Church. He felt he was called to preach the gospel. The Church was of the same opinion. Provision was made for him to enter the then Richmond Seminary (now the Richmond College) to study for the min- istry.
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