USA > Virginia > Henrico County > Henrico County > The first century of the First Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia. 1780-1880 > Part 13
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We are happy in this presence, and language refuses to express the fulness of love and joy we now experience. Looking into the faces of the many godly men and women who are here, we find reason to "thank God and take courage." Here sits our venerable brother (Dr. R. Ryland) who, as a minister, gave much of the strength of his vigorous manhood to sowing the precious seeds of eternal life; and as an educator, to preparing our people for that higher and broader culture, which is now so generally appreciated. He was the first President of Richmond College. He is to-day apparently as full of strength in body, of energy in intellect, of force in expression ; as warm in heart, as loving in nature, as ever in the past.
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Here, too, is our learned Gamaliel (Dr. B. Manly) in the vigor of manhood; every where regarded with " affectionate veneration," for his wisdom and piety. As happy in his explica- tions of whatever is intricate, as he is felicitous in enforcing whatever is practical, or transpar- ent in his expositions of whatever is polemic in theology. At his feet are gathering the conse- crated young Timothys from the Southern States, that they may "learn the way of the Lord more perfectly," and understand better how to , bear glad tidings of salvation to all the people.
Here, also, is our beloved Paul (Dr. J. L. Burrows)-not " the aged," for he never grows old-in the full stature of spiritual manhood. Matured in mental culture, with his Addisonian tastes and instincts. His much learning has not made him mad. He continues to speak forth the words of truth and soberness, with such force in argument, grace in style, and unction of the Spirit, that Felix trembles and Agrippa is almost persuaded to be a Christian.
" We venerate the man whose heart is warm, Whose hands are pure, whose doctrine and whose life Coincident, exhibit lucid proof That he is honest in the sacred calling."
And also, here is our Apollos (Dr. J. B.
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Hawthorne). " An eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures :" combining in the proclama- tion of his sacred message, the graces of elocu- tion, the vigor of thought, and the strength of argument. On every side we greet the well- trained, consecrated, laborious sons, from whose ยท successful toil in other fields, numerous sheaves are being gathered for the heavenly garner. We greatly rejoice in their success; and bid them God speed in their glorious life-work.
Here, in generous sympathy with our joyous hearts, are our invited guests. It is sweet to feel we are all one in Christ. One in doctrine, one in hope, one in labor, one in destiny. That we are now permitted to dwell together in unity.
Before me are the familiar forms and faces of the Stephens and Philips, who are always ready, "as they have opportunity, to do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the house- hold of faith." Having used the office of a Deacon well, they "have purchased to them- selves a good degree, and great boldness in the faith which is in Jesus Christ."
Seated on the pews before me, are the Phebes, the Priscillas, and the Marys. The faithful ser- vants of the Church, who have bestowed much
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labor on it. They are still waiting before the sacred altars, with hearts and hands ever ready, saying: "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" They constitute an element of wonderful power, beginning now, as they were in the days of the apostles, to be appreciated and encouraged.
Here are we, in the midst of a godly brother- hood, who uniformly have a mind to work. Having laid hold on eternal life, they are fight- ing the good fight of faith. They are building up the walls over against their own houses, while they are going forth bearing precious seed. They are keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, and are dwelling together in unity. "Behold, how good and how pleasant."
But I look in vain for forms and faces once familiar here. I listen for, but do not hear, the voices which once so lovingly imparted good cheer and wise counsel. Where are they? Did they not hear this call to fraternal reunion ? Have they gone in response to an invitation to the family gathering above ? Where are Mor- ris and Courtney and Bryce and Kerr and Hinton and Jeter, once the loved, honored and successful pastors of this fold? Where are Broaddus and Keeling and Jennett and Taylor,
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who stood for a time in their lot as watchmen on these walls ?
Where are the godly men and women, whose consecrated lives, whose religious intelligence, whose pious influence gave character and tone to the holy zeal and inspiration which to-day move us onward in our great mission of glori- fying Christ and blessing humanity? They were lent to us for a season, that they might point towards heaven, and lead the way. Now they "rest from their labors, and their works do follow them." On their brows sit the " crowns of righteousness" which were reserved for them. They have gone to behold the glory of the Son which he had with the Father. They fought a good fight, they kept the faith, they have finished their course. They have entered into the joy of their Lord.
It is probable that one hundred years from to-day the members of this Church will gather here to celebrate its Second Centennial. Not one now present will be here to witness the joyous proceedings of that occasion. For one hundred years the members of this Church have been gathering to our "home over there." Every month of the year witnesses the depart- ure of one or more. The voice still calls. It
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will continue to sound; and sooner or later it will be personal to each of us. The mansions are being prepared, they are almost ready for some of us. Soon the announcement will be made to us by him who has gone to prepare them, "Come, for all things are ready."
This is a pleasant reunion, but that will be infinitely more so. I anticipated this with plea- sure ; I look forward to that with joy. Here is only a part of the family ; all will be there. Tears and sighs are here; fulness of joy will be there. We shall soon separate here, per- haps to meet no more till we pass over the other side ; there we shall go no more out for- ever. Here we have mixtures of joy and sor- row, because of sin ; there we shall be of the "spirits of the just made perfect." Here are va- cant seats, and broken links, and aching hearts; there the loved and lost are found, the tears are dried, and death has gone forever. Here we are exiles from our Father's face, and our heavenly home; there we shall be " forever with the Lord."
" Here in the body pent, Absent from him I roam, Yet nightly pitch my moving tent, A day's march nearer home."
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Now we pant after God; then we shall be satisfied. Now we hunger and thirst after righteousness; then we shall be filled. Now we are members of the church militant and are pressing onward ; soon we shall come to " Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and unto an in- numerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first born, which are written in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the Mediator of the new cove- nant."
We will rejoice and be glad, for great is our reward of grace in heaven.
ADDRESS
BY H. McDONALD.
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B RETHREN and sisters of the First Church: I congratulate you on this, the glad cen- tennial of your Church. You are honored in that so many of your former Pastors are here to greet you. Here is Dr. Manly, who served you with his young and noble manhood. I was once his Pastor. I am sure he was more helpful to me than I was to him; here is Dr. Burrows, who seems to have lived with the Church all through her life from the fulness of fellowship and accuracy of detail with which he portrayed her noble history ; but the years have gone over him lightly ; he will always be young ; here also is our beloved Warren, whose stay with us drew all hearts to him and whose withdrawment made us so sad only to make Georgia rejoice in the return of her noble son ; here too is your present young and gifted
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Pastor, the worthy successor of these beloved brethren. Accept my congratulations for the large, harmonious membership which fills these pews, and whose labors in all Christian work deserve unstinted praise. Thanks be unto God for all these.
What shall we say as our hearts have been so deeply moved at the mention of the former Pastors, whose labors are ended and whose is the everlasting rest ? Morris, and Courtney, and Kerr, and Hinton, and Jeter whose name makes every lip tremble-what a noble galaxy in the firmament of heaven ! Besides these, how many that once filled these pews, and whose hearts and voices praised the Lord of all, have gone to join the church of the first born in heaven ? All honor and praise to God for this noble vine !
We come to-day from the churches that sur- round you ; and, as children, we call you blessed. Nearly four years ago I came from Kentucky. My heart was heavy as I left her noble and ever dear people; but when I reached Richmond and received such a glad welcome from my own beloved Second Church, the pang of separation gave way to the joy of such hearty kindness. I thank you to-day for
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the grace and beauty with which you trained your daughters. With such a mother, how could they be otherwise than graceful and noble? With such a history of constant en- deavor and gracious success, need we urge you to cherish deepest gratitude to God? Not by might or by power, but by his Spirit has all this been done. His hand led you from the feeble band of fourteen that organized on Union Hill to your present strength of numbers and effi- ciency. Let such mercies be recorded in the joy and praises of your heart and life. Let every heart and hand raise an Ebenezer to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
With our gratitude for the past and present, let confidence and hope lead and brighten the future. Let the centennial upon which we now enter be as the one we close, only much more abundant for the glory of Christ and the good of men. With your hearts stirred by the glad- some memories of the holy living of the men and women who labored wisely and well in the past, let us turn to him who gave all, and anew let us give ourselves to him for work or sacri- fice, as infinite love and wisdom direct. So be it; so be it !
SERMON.
BY
T. T. EATON.
SERMON.
"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."-Matt. v. 48.
T HOSE who have spoken to you so elo- quently and well for the past two days, have told you of what God hath wrought in and through this Church during the century of its existence. They have recalled for you the past; I come to point you to the future, and to hold up before you a noble aim for which to strive- "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."
No people have ever risen to greatness who did not place before their youth some ideal for which to strive. The ideal may never be real- ized; it would not deserve the name if it could be fully reached: but it is the point toward which all struggle, the model after which each man strives most earnestly. Show me what the ideal of any nation is, and I can tell you, to a great extent, the character of that people. And
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one of the most important duties of rulers and teachers of men is to erect some noble standard by which all shall be judged, and praised or blamed, as they approximate or deviate from it. Glance with me over the history of the world, and see the ideals of the nations, the results which followed their adoption, and the inherent defects in each, The great problem has ever been to make man perfect as is possible-to reach the highest stature of perfected man- hood. And the difference is only in what con- stitutes true manhood, and the means by which it is to be attained. You may be very sure that there can be no noble nation whose ideal does not contain some of the qualities necessary to a perfected manhood.
The ideal of the Greeks was one of perfect beauty-physical beauty primarily, and in this their success was what we might expect to find. No people ever lived who carried their physical frame to such a height of perfection as did the Greeks. They studied and obeyed the great laws which govern health and beauty; they encouraged strength and grace by every means in their power, making their crowns, for skill in games requiring strength and agility, an honor and a glory, for which men sought earnestly;
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and placing before their young men and maidens the perfection of physical beauty, in the statues of their divinities, as models to be imitated and reached, if possible.
As a natural result, no nation of earth has ever reached so high a type of physical beauty. To this day, amid the dwarfed, maimed, stunted bodies of men around us, our sculptors and painters can find no ideal for manly beauty or womanly grace, but are compelled to study the works of Phidias, Zeuxis, and other ancient artists; and we can find no higher comparison than to say of a face or a figure: "It is as beautiful as a Greek statue." They strove, too, for mental and moral beauty, as well as for that of the body, but with less success. There were far-reaching laws of mind and spirit which they could not grasp so readily as the physical laws. They laid down noble systems, but did not place before their youth those systems embodied in concrete forms.
Physically, the beauty of Apollo was flawless; morally, the character of the god was far from perfect manhood. The results upon the young could not fail to be disastrous ; and the Greeks grew by degrees too much devoted to physical beauty, in which they excelled, and moral
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strength dwindled, while mental effort was con- fined too much to subtle disquisitions; and their nation fell before the Roman power. Their ideal was not perfect; but, such as it was, they reached it as no other people have ever done, and stand alone, high types of physical beauty, which, desirable indeed, is far from constituting perfect manhood.
The ideal of manliness among the Romans was one of courage and obedience to law-two most noble and essential traits of character, which made a great nation out of scattered bands of robbers. The world seldom sees such soldiers as these iron men, reared from their childhood to see all disgrace in cowardice and insubordination, and all honor in bravery and discipline. The models placed for the imitation of Roman youth were that Brutus, who in obe- dience to the majesty of law, condemned his own sons to the death they deserved, and saw ' the penalty inflicted without a falter ; and that embodiment of courage, Horatius, who faced the enemy that had defeated the entire army in the field, and fought their whole force without one thought for his own safety, so only he could make his life last for the struggle till the bridge was down and the city saved. Discipline and
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courage ! no wonder men led by such an ideal conquered the whole world. Our earth has never seen a nobler race of men, as a race, than those old Roman patricians, who welded all Italy into a sword for the world's conquest, and made it the proudest of boasts, "I am a Roman citizen "-a boast even an inspired Apostle was glad to make. And as we look back upon their nobility and greatness, we sigh to think that their obedience could not have been directed to the law of God, and their cour- age against the evil in the world, rather than against Gauls and Germans. Since their ideal had two great virtues, it made of them a great people, and in these points for which they strove they surpassed all other nations, as the Greeks did in beauty. As their ideal was defective, so in time it failed them : the courage of the old Romans became cruelty and brutality, their dis- cipline made them obedient, not to righteous law, rightly enacted, but to the command of any victorious general who led their legions; and, when thus their ideal was changed and lowered, their national life went with it, and Rome be- came but the garnished sepulchre of her ancient greatness.
Two ideals swayed Europe during the Mid-
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dle Ages, the monk and the knight. Evil as have been the results of the monastery, there was in the institution originally a great truth, or it would never have gained the hold upon the world which it possessed. Falsehood is weak; no system entirely false could control men's lives ; and the great systems of false re- ligion have succeeded, not because of their falsity, but because of the truth that was in them, which bore up their falsehood and made it powerful and dangerous. There was an es- sential element of true manhood in the ideal of the monk, however many errors were mingled with his theology, and however .mistaken the means by which he sought to reach that ideal. The monastery was founded upon the great necessity of keeping in subjection the body with its passions and appetites-a necessity I fear we heed too little in these days, erring as far upon one side as the monk erred upon the other. For be assured the Apostle Paul meant something more than idle declamation, when he bade Christians to "crucify the flesh." It is the Holy Spirit that classes "the flesh" with "the world," and " the devil," as one of the three great enemies alike of piety and high manhood. One of Paul's greatest fears was
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lest, failing to keep under his body, he should be found to have fought in vain. "The lust of the flesh" is one of the chief sources of sin, and indeed all through the Epistles no duty is oftener or more earnestly enforced upon Chris- tians than that of crucifying the flesh. Now crucifixion is not passive, but active; not the mere denial of gratification, but the actual in- fliction of suffering, and this is what the old monks strove to do. It is no delight in suffer- ing or crucifixion which makes a merciful and loving Saviour give such harsh orders about the flesh, but that it is a great tempter of the soul. How many of the sins of which we are guilty-I mean outward sins and not evil ten- dencies-would a disembodied spirit have no temptation to commit ? Take our bodies from us to-day, and all human legal enactments would be useless, all the second table of the " law would pass away with the temptation to violate it. The ideal of the monks was right in the point of the necessity for crucifying the flesh, but wrong in the means they used to reach that desirable end-but, believe me, God will honor more their honest effort to keep the body in subjection, than, the modern refusal to crucify it at all.
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The sins are legion which come from over- feeding or too high feeding of the body, and there is no more powerful defense against their attacks, nothing of greater avail in lessening their power, than the great duty of fasting, so often practised by Christ and the Apostles, so much considered a matter of course, that Jesus says, "when ye fast," as he says, "when ye pray," as if these were two duties his people would not think of omitting, and they therefore needed direction how to perform them accepta- bly rather than a commandment to do them. I fear, in this great duty of fasting, the churches are shamefully remiss, and the consequences of their failure are wide-spread over the earth to- day. Every commandment hath its peculiar blessing-its virtue, which it is designed to pro- mote, and which can be accomplished by obedi- ence to it, and it alone. This duty of crucifying the body hath its blessing of purity, to be at- tained in no other way, and uncleanness rules pampered bodies with a power which is well nigh irresistible. The Greeks gave their youth simple food and frequent fasts, in order to en- sure to them that physical beauty which was their ideal. The Romans did the same, that they might be brave to endure hardship as well
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as to face danger, and strong to be conquerors and rulers of their own propensities, that no passion should interfere with their obedience to law. Shall Christians, with nobler aims, do less ?
The monkish ideal was right on this point- right, too, in seeking to conquer fleshly lusts by simple food and fasting; but wrong, when, going beyond this, they strove to weaken mus- cular power as well as evil desires. They had their reward, however, in the success they achieved. Their orders spread rapidly over Europe, and their efforts to convert the heathen to at least as true a religion as they themselves knew, succeeded as no subsequent efforts of men bearing a purer doctrine have ever done. They had great strength to labor-great powers of endurance and a stern imperviousness to many temptations, which they would never have had but for the ideal they followed. What was wealth to a man whose clothing was rough hair garments, who wore no ornaments, owned no house to adorn, and ate only the cheapest food ? Bribery of such men was impossible. For them, avarice had no power; luxury, no charms ; and poverty, no terror. So long as they were true to their ideal, so long the truth
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that was in it brought its reward; and as we read their history we sigh to think that they should not have loved and served God, instead of the Pope ; prayed to Christ, instead of to images and the Virgin ; believed in justification by faith, instead of absolution at priestly hands; and learned the great lesson of crucifying the body out in the world, bearing a man's part and doing a man's work for the souls of men, instead of flying from the battle-field to hermit- age and monastery. But their ideal was im- perfect ; carried too far, it overthrew itself in the scourging and nail-wearing which became unendurable ; and in the rebound, they ceased from their fight against the flesh, gave up their simple diet and homely vestments, and became corrupt and corrupting. The light that was in them, from obedience to that one command- ment, became darkness; and how great that darkness was, let their after history tell us.
While the monks placed before themselves the ideal of spiritual power, strengthened by overcoming the flesh, the laymen strove to reach the knightly ideal, the noblest of all which man has ever invented-nay, which would have been impossible to man alone, and has borrowed its noblest features from the oracles of God. The
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ideal of chivalry was courage, mercy, truth, and fidelity, founded on faith and obedience; and the results of this ideal, when acting upon noble natures, are seen in the characters of Bayard and Sydney. Fourteen years of his life the young knight spent in learning that great foundation lesson-obedience; and with it humility, in the menial services he must per- form as page and squire. All through his course, religious duties were his constant por- tion, and dependence on God was strictly inculcated. And to be generous and merciful was as mucha duty and a gloryas to be brave and renowned in war. To have succored the needy, relieved the suffering, and freed the oppressed, made a man as honorable as to have captured a city, or routed an army.
The face of Europe changed under the power of this ideal: cruelty became an object of blame rather than of praise ; self-sacrificing devotion took the place of selfish rapacity as an object to be striven for by the young. It was a useless and wicked waste of time and treasure and blood to endeavor to drive the Turks out of Palestine; but he was a far nobler man who left his home and its comforts behind him to go into a distant land to encounter certain danger
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and probable death in his love and reverence for the tomb of Christ, than the man who has indeed no Paynim blood upon his hands, but whose life is spent in money-making and self- aggrandizement. The knightly ideal was shad- owed, alas, by the blighting errors of the Papacy, and flawed by its too great faith in physical blows and the power of the sword. But in spite of these great errors, it was a glorious model for the youth of Europe, and brought forth fruits which we are enjoying to-day. But as their ideal faded before their eyes, pride took the place of humility, and poverty became riches, and the knights became in their turn oppressors. Then the institution of chivalry became a jest and a reproach, to be buried with their unwieldy armor and their stately courtesy ; not, however, until its grand ideal had perished, and the spirit had passed away, leaving the dead body of an empty pageantry.
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