USA > Virginia > Virginia Baptist ministers. 4th series, 1885-1902 > Part 14
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umvirate," called "Another Sprig of Acacia," which told tenderly and graciously of the character and work of the friend who had passed away.
In 1856 Mr. Long graduated at Richmond College, his fellow-graduates being William F. Fox, H. H. Har- ris, George M. Morris, and William B. Meredith. He was elected tutor for the college, and this choice suggests that thus early there was in this young man elements and traits which were eventually to make him a great teacher. But he had decided to be a preacher, nor was he to be diverted from this purpose. During his course as student and tutor he had frequently preached, and after a year the tutorship was given up and he was ordained to the ministry at Grace Street Baptist Church in Richmond on July 5, 1857. The ordination sermon was preached by Dr. R. B. C. Howell, and Dr. Jeter delivered the charge. Rev. J. W. McCown was ordained at the same time.
In the fall of 1857, at the instance of Governor Broome, of Florida, Mr. Long accepted a position as teacher in the Florida State Seminary at Tallahassee. Here he spent one session, serving also for a part of this time as pastor of the Tallahassee Baptist Church. Al- though not yet twenty-five years of age, he seems to have made a fine impression as a preacher, and promi- nent citizens, including the Governor, were often found in his congregation. At the close of the session he was urged to remain longer, but he was eager to devote him- self wholly to preaching the gospel. He, accordingly, at substantial pecuniary sacrifice, resigned his Florida position and accepted the pastorate of the Cumberland Street Baptist Church at Norfolk, now the First Bap- tist Church of that city. He began his labors there in the early fall of 1858, and on October 19, 1858, was married to Miss Josephine Hardin Ragland, of Rich-
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mond. This young lady was one of a group of sisters distinguished alike for their intellectual gifts, personal charm, and their deep religious life. Here began a union of loving companionship and mutual happiness, which was not broken by the hand of death until after thirty- one years, when Mrs. Long died on December 1, 1889.
The Norfolk pastorate was not in all respects a happy one. The congregation was small and composed mostly of very poor people. It was with the utmost difficulty that they could pay even the greater part of the small salary promised their pastor, and he was finally forced to resign in May, 1861, because of their inability to sup- port him. But, notwithstanding the burden of poverty under which the church labored at this time, the min- istry of Mr. Long seems not to have been without effect. By the end of the second year of his pastorate the mem- bership, which had before been steadily decreasing, had increased from one hundred and thirty-three to one hun- dred and seventy-five, and the congregations were larger than they had been for years.
At the outbreak of the War Mr. Long settled his fam- ily on a farm in Goochland County, where he engaged in farming and preached for several country churches, being absent for some months, however, in 1863, in Danville, where he conducted a private school as a means of support. As the churches to which he ministered from his Goochland home were Fire Creek, Powhatan County, and Mount Tabor, Amelia County, geography shows clearly that he had long journeys to make riding or driving over eastern Virginia roads to meet his appoint- . ments. A country pastorate in eastern Virginia has many blessed comforts and compensations, but it is not without such hardships as exposure to cold and inclem- ent weather. These words may suggest scenes in this stage of Mr. Long's life. Nevertheless, there were none
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of his pastorates which he was in the habit of recalling with greater pleasure.
About the close of the War Mr. Long moved to Scottsville, Virginia, and became the pastor of the Scottsville and Hardware churches, a village and coun- try church being here united in one field. It was at this period that Mr. Long began those visits to "Ver- dant Lawn," the hospitable home of Rev. William P. Farish, near Charlottesville, which were to continue for so many years, and which were to be to him such a joy and delight.
Fortunately, we have his own account of his first visit to this home, where friends in council held such high and noble converse, and where beautiful Virginia hos- pitality reigned. Describing this visit, he says: "It has now been more than twenty-five years since I first visited this old Virginia home. I had become a pastor in the country, preaching alternately at Scottsville and at the Hardware Church, up among the mountains. Once in a while, when I went to the Hardware Church, I rode on to Charlottesville to see John Hart and C. H. Toy, who were then there in the Albemarle Institute, and other friends, to get the cobwebs brushed from my mind, and to have a few hours of talk with men who knew well what talk is for. On one of these occasions I overtook William P. Farish going home. His ruddy face, his snow-white hair, his strong and vigorous frame, his hearty and cheerful voice, all impressed me. He called out to me from a distance, turning on his horse: 'What injury have I done you that you do not come to see me ?' When I next went to my Hardware appoint- ment I found Mr. Farish there before me, and I went home with him. More than any one I ever knew, he had the art of making a man feel comfortable in his house. There was no overdoing the matter, but some-
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how he always made me feel that I was doing him the greatest kindness to come to see him. I not only felt free ; I felt rich. For the time, I seemed to be the owner of a large house and 1,200 acres of land; everything about me was mine to use and enjoy. He had traveled, had seen many men; he talked well, and loved to talk, and he let his guests talk, too. In these early fall days, as always in the fall, the past comes back to me, and memory, sweeping over a broad field, pauses and lingers in the Farish household as I first knew it. Every mem- ber of the family is recalled, and the family as a whole. If it could have continued just as it was then! If the years were not fated to slip away and to change so many things and to bear so many things away with them !"
In 1865, when Virginia Baptists met, they found that in the desolation which had swept over the South their college, Richmond College, had been almost wiped out of existence. Dr. Robert Ryland made this character- istic report as president of the college: "It is a short story, brethren-and is soon told-our endowment was all in Confederate bonds-we have the bonds-you know what they are worth." The situation seemed desperate. Upon motion of Mr. Long, a committee, consisting of T. G. Jones, A. Broaddus, W. E. Hatcher, J. O. Turpin, and W. R. McDonald, was appointed to report on the situation. The General Association met in Richmond, June 7-11, 1866. At this time John C. Long secured a meeting of some of the alumni of the college. This gath- ering appointed Mr. Long, George B. Taylor, and H. H. Harris to lay their views before the Association. When the report of the Education Board came up saying they had "collected no funds-assisted no young men-trans- acted no business," the committee recommended the reopening of the college. This report was discussed by
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a number of speakers. An historical sketch of the col- lege, published some years ago, speaks thus of the dis- cussion of this report: "It will not be invidious dis- crimination to refer more particularly to three of the speakers. Mr. Long, in behalf of the alumni, with true filial devotion, made a pathetic plea for their dismantled mother, pointed proudly to her past and pictured with prophetic power a yet brighter future. He urged the propriety of using the remnant of endowment, if neces- sary, to reopen the college with full equipment. Mr. Taylor began more cautiously, advocating careful preser- vation of the existing fund as the nucleus of another en- dowment, but, warming up as he spoke, nobly seconded the appeal for early and complete resumption. The cli- max was reached when James Thomas, Jr., from his place near the center of the church, briefly told how, as one of the trustees, he had protested against the change of investment, and, when it was made in spite of all pro- test, had given up in despair, but added that 'the enthusi- asm of these young men' had touched him and that he was ready to subscribe $5,000 for another endowment and, pending its collection, to pay the salary of one pro- fessor. This thrilled the audience with hope and settled the question." So the college was saved and Mr. Long had had no small part in this victory.
In 1868 Mr. Long became pastor of the Charlottes- ville Church, succeeding Rev. Dr. William F. Broaddus. In this relationship he remained seven years. This was to be his last pastorate, and at this point it will be timely to give some estimate of him as a preacher and as a pastor and man. The following estimate is from the pen of Dr. Noah K. Davis, Professor of Moral Philosophy, for so many years at the University of Virginia, and a member of the Charlottesville Baptist Church: "In his private, personal character, Dr. Long was very modest
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and unassuming. He magnified his office, but never himself. Gentle and refined in his manners, he was attractive to strangers; genial and warm-hearted, he made many friends; cordial, sincere, and unselfish, he never lost them. A conversationalist of rare charm, he was popular in social circles. The respectful deference of his address, the firmness of his matured opinions, the fearless independence of his conduct marked him as a typical Virginian. His patience in trouble, his tender sympathy, his unswerving rectitude, marked him as a Christian gentleman.
"Endowed with a keen and subtle intellect, his mind and heart were ever full of questions whose solution he was always, often successfully, seeking. He welcomed light and truth from any quarter ; was an earnest, liberal- minded student; and thus became a ripe and finished scholar, with clear-cut, settled views on many contro- verted points and with ability and learning to maintain his ground. Yet he was not a disputant, but a thinker and a teacher. Alas for us, who are groping in the dark, that he did not live out a full measure of days !
"Dr. Long's earnestness and thoughtfulness were espe- cially apparent in his preaching. He never in the pulpit uttered a sensational word, but, as a brother minister writes of him, 'he always preached the very marrow of the gospel, the old-fashioned doctrines of God's word which he firmly believed and consistently held.' There was a rare pathos in his style, great vigor and originality in his thoughts, and profound earnestness in his appeals. Write it in his epitaph :
" 'The law of truth. was in his mouth, And iniquity was not found in his lips ; He walked with God in peace and equity, And did turn many away from iniquity.'"
An earlier estimate, more fully characterizing Dr. Long's work in the pulpit, appeared many years ago in
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the Southwestern Baptist, and though written of him while he was still a young man-apparently during his Norfolk pastorate-it is equally true of his later years : "The Rev. John C. Long is one of the quietest and most unpretending of our ministers. He preaches in a low tone, rarely elevates his voice above its ordinary key, and goes on in his smooth way, uttering the deepest truths and presenting the freshest views of religious doc- trine and experience as if it were a matter of course to know what is true and worthy of public proclamation. He ought not to be heard in a noisy, promiscuous, un- thinking crowd. He is not a Boanerges. He has no pretense-no mere argumenta ad homines-no reason- ings for one place whose soundness he suspects and would be ashamed to utter in another. He aims to be right; and the right and the true he believes to be adapted to all audiences alike. Go to hear him, if you have a chance, on a quiet evening in October, when the rustling of the autumn leaves and the distant lowings of the herd are all the noises the ear can catch, or on a Wednesday night in a city church, in the lecture-room, when the city is quiet and no hum of busy industry is abroad-get into a snug corner, as near the pulpit as you can-be attentive to the minister as he goes on un- folding, first, the meaning of his text; then presenting the illustrations which enforce it, then its application, and as he rises with his theme, mark his quiet earnest- ness, his perfect mastery of his subject, the simplicity and beauty of his illustrations, the strong (almost start- ling) and perfectly novel view of some puzzling and dif- ficult topic, and you are delighted-you are 'carried away'-you feel that it is good to hear the gospel from the lips of a master, to ponder its sacred matters with a thinker who honors its truth, and is in earnest in show- ing you its hidden treasures. Mr. Long preaches more
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like the English Manning writes than any other minis- ter I know. He is not, and never will be, what is called a popular preacher. He can never have lung enough to sway the giddy crowd of thoughtless and superficial listeners. He hasn't pretense enough-quackery enough -to create a stir in a fashionable audience. His place is with the thinkers, with the thoughtful, whether learned or unlearned, and they who attend his ministry to be profited by the truth will secure lasting and blessed benefit; and his fellow-ministers who shall hear even occasionally his pulpit efforts will not be unprofited. I was not surprised to hear that a brother whom he had visited, and for whom he had preached several sermons, should recur to the visit as one affording both pleasure and profit to himself-the views of truth presented were so fresh and new and truthful. There is, of course, the highest literary polish in his pulpit efforts. He has read much, and deeply drunk of the well of English un- defiled. His contributions to periodicals evidence this."
As pastor of the Charlottesville Church, Dr. Long had among his members the family at "Verdant Lawn," that typical Virginia home to which allusion has already been made. His own pen shows him once again a visi- tor in that charming home. Since his first visit, Mr. Farish and his wife had died, and now their son-in-law, Rev. John T. Randolph, and his wife, occupied the home. Dr. Long says: "The masters had changed, but the spirit, the tone, the genius of the place was the same. Many a time Hart, William Fife (son of Rev. James Fife), as close a thinker and as pure a spirit as one ever meets in life, Robert S. Morgan, the leader of our choir, and I went together to the old home. Usually we walked through the fields; we went before supper and left next morning after breakfast. We never could see that our sudden, unannounced coming made any change in the
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family arrangements. Certainly it caused no confusion or haste or embarrassment. It produced no ripple, no chafing in the stream of family life. The table always seemed to be expecting guests. And after supper there was conversation - keen, earnest, honest discussion. Those who talked tried to be as much simple truth-seek- ers as ever Socrates was. Sometimes there was a cessa- tion of 'high argument' and then came confidential home- talk among friends, and sometimes there was music. Morgan sang his 'Flee as a Bird.' It was midnight be- fore we retired to rest. Fife is dead; Morgan is in South Carolina; John Hart is still a schoolmaster in Old Vir- ginia, and I am here. But, besides those who went with me, there were others whom I often met at 'Verdant Lawn.' I have spent days there with Dr. Sears, for- merly President of Brown University, and Agent of the Peabody Fund. I have been there with Dr. Jeter and J. W. M. Williams, and John A. Broadus and Noah K. Davis, and with others not, like them, known to the great world, but nearer and dearer than all. How much at home I have been there! I have slept in every cham- ber in that great house, the privilege of pastor and friend.
"In late years when I have visited my friends it has generally been alone. One of the family, Dr. W. P. F. Randolph, after Morgan went to South Carolina, was leader of our choir. He had a rich, deep, sweet voice, and he was passionately fond of music. His sister, Julia, was also a sweet singer, few sweeter. It was a pleasure long to be remembered to hear them sing together. This pleasure they always gave me when I found them at home. . I went out into the long back piazza, and, as I had often done before, watched the full moon rise in silent beauty above Carter's Mountain. The moun- tain was the same great leafy steep; the moon was the same in majestic glory ; but how much else was changed !"
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During his pastorate in Charlottesville, Dr. Long was popular with the people of other denominations and much beloved by his own members. As an evidence of his cor- dial pastor spirit, these words of Dr. Noah K. Davis, written after Dr. Long's death, are most significant : "More than twenty years ago, on coming here, the first to meet me, greeting me with a smile and grasp of hearty welcome, was the now lost friend and brother whom from that hour I loved. Of course. Who could resist him? He was my faithful pastor for some years.
""'We took sweet counsel together, And walked to the house of God in company.'
"I thankfully acknowledge his great helpfulness. When disheartened by the magnitude of my task, he gave me fresh courage by his hopefulness and wisdom. He entered into my work and helped me with his keen and disciplined intellect, giving me light as well as strength. And, more, he urged and helped my feeble ef- forts towards a higher life, giving me larger thoughts of unselfish service. Whatever I am that is worthy, he helped me to be, and I shall always think of him with glowing gratitude."
Dr. Long's personal appearance at this period of his life and some of his salient traits of character are well set before our eyes by the following words from Rev. Dr. J. W. McCown, one of "The Triumvirate" already alluded to: "A frame of medium height, slightly but firmly knit, and even in the early days a little bent with the student's stoop of shoulders; a face of rugged and homely mold, and strongly marked with lines of thought and care, and eyes that ever anticipated the tongue in the expression of varying mood and feeling. Such the out- ward form; within dwelt a keen, grasping mind of rest- less, ceaseless activity, and a great, magnanimous soul.
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There was a large satirical ingredient in his com- position; was there ever in this world satire so little bit- ter, ever a cynicism so sweet and tender? The mean- ness of human life stirred his pity, and its pathos touched him profoundly. The sting of his satire was ever healed by the balm of his sympathy."
In 1875 Dr. Long resigned the Charlottesville church to accept the chair of Ecclesiastical History in the Cro- zer Theological Seminary, at Upland, Pa. Here he spent nineteen years, and doubtless Dr. Stifler, one of his col- leagues, is right in saying that here he did his life work. While he was an excellent preacher, he was preeminently fitted to occupy a professor's place. From the very time of his graduation it seems as though the teacher instinct were lying latent in him, now and then showing itself. He was always a student, and increasingly a scholar. He was learned in the languages, especially Greek and Latin, both of which he read with ease. Many of the books which he had to consult in his historical work were ac- cessible to him only in the Latin tongue. While he, per- haps, would have preferred the chair of New Testament Exegesis, he soon proved his thorough fitness to teach history. It was remarked that the details of history never mastered him, but that he was the master of de- tails. He studied movements and principles rather than men. He made history interesting and profitable. In his first years at Crozer, his students complained of the dry discussions of Kurtz, their text-book, but were charmed with their teacher's lectures. At first, Church History had no place in the first year's course, but eventually Dr. Long had the satisfaction of seeing it taught in all three years. Dr. Johnson, one of the Crozer professors, de- clared that Dr. Long was very much like the late Pro- fessor Diman, of the chair of History at Brown, and remarked concerning these two teachers that "each was
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so urbane, so witty, so transparently the high-souled gen- tleman, that one felt' he was in the hands of a fitting guide when his teacher led him into the company of the great ones of the earth, and either illuminated secular history, as Diman did, by what occurred in the church, or church history, as Long did, by what went on in the world." Dr. Johnson naïvely adds: "I often told him how Dr. Diman did things, but with the stupid Yankee reserve, never ventured to say, 'You remind me of him all the time.' "
Since Dr. Long was able to go directly to original sources for information, and was in the habit of doing this, and as he was a thinker and given to arriving at conclusions for himself, he was highly qualified to write history, especially in view of the fact that he commanded a graceful and charming style. He was at work in his later years upon a history of the Reformation, but did not live to complete it. His contributions upon historical themes to the Quarterlies were pronounced by those worthy to judge of high ability, Dr. N. K. Davis saying, in regard to his article on the "Historic Episcopate," which appeared in the Bibliotheca Sacra, that work like that ought not to pass away. On controverted topics especially, his writings are remarkable for their perfect candor, fairness, and sincerity. Good examples are his tracts, "On Being a Baptist" and "Baptism in History in the East and West." It is especially to be regretted that he did not write a history of the Baptists, for which he was, by temperament and scholarship and sympathy, remarkably well equipped. A number of poems from his pen appeared from time to time, and the following, pub- lished in the Independent some time after his death, in addition to its literary merit, is not without biographic interest :
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"THE BLINDED EYES.
"I thought the shining sun was dark, And dark the bending skies; Alas ! I find the darkness all Is in my blinded eyes.
"I thought my fellow-men were cold And from me stood apart ; Deceived was I-the coldness all Is in my frozen heart.
"No music in the rippling brook, Nor in the breeze I find; The brook and breeze are not to blame, No music's in my mind.
"No beauty beams in all the fields, In flowers, shrub or tree; Yet not in them, but in myself, Is the deformity.
"I ask not that the outer world Another face may wear; But that myself, myself be changed, I make my daily prayer."
Not only as a teacher, but also as a man and as a preacher, Dr. Long was greatly esteemed at Crozer. A thorough Virginian and a Democrat, he went to Penn- sylvania, a most out-and-out Republican State, only a decade after the end of the Civil War. Yet he fully won the hearts of his neighbors. Dr. Johnson says : "He reviewed the War as judicially as though he were considering the struggle of the Greek and the Persian civilizations. I have never known his equal in this re- gard among such of us that lived in those terrible years. A characteristic conclusion was that history would ac- cept as the real heroes of the War Lincoln and Lee. If he was proud of the latter as a Virginian, he loved the former as an American. For years he taught a
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great Bible class in the Baptist Church of Upland, filled the pulpit for months, was heard with delight by thoughtful people in many churches, and was particu- larly dear to the brethren who make up the great Baptist Ministers' Conference in the City of Brotherly Love.
"Whatever was due to his learning and mental force, even more was accorded to his singularly winning char- acter. A gentleman 'born and bred,' a Christian from heart's core to tip of tongue, he commanded deference by his simple dignity and won love by his gentle ways. The students so trusted him that occasionally they made fearful exactions upon his time and waning strength; but he ever treated them according to his rule, always to deal with a man so that he might afterwards do him good."
Dr. Long received the degree of D. D. from his Alma Mater, Richmond College, and the degree of LL. D. from Baylor University, Texas.
Dr. Long had six children, born of his first marriage. One of these, a daughter, Harriet Ragland, died before him in early womanhood, a singularly pure and beautiful character. Five sons still survive. They are: Armi- stead R. Long, a lawyer of Lynchburg, Virginia; John C. Long, a farmer, Amherst County, Virginia; Charles M. Long, a professor in Bethel College, Kentucky; Jos- eph R. Long, Professor of Law in Washington and Lee University, and William F. Long, a lawyer of Char- lottesville, Virginia. Some time after the death of his first wife, Dr. Long married the widow of Charles G. Clark, M. D., of Troy, N. Y., a sister of Rev. Dr. E. H. Johnson, a professor of Crozer Theological Seminary. His second wife survived him, dying in 1907.
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