A Father’s Instruction, and A Son’s Rejection

The Rev. William Hamilton Jeffers, D.D., LL.D., was born at Cadiz, Ohio, on May 1, 1838. His parents were members of the Covenanter Church (i.e., the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America], and Dr. Jeffers received the strict religious training which was customary in this communion. He took his college course at Geneva College and graduated in 1855. For his theological training he attended Xenia Theological Seminary, which became one of the leading institutions of the United Presbyterian Church of North America (UPCNA), completing his ministerial training in the year 1859.

At the time of graduation from the Seminary, he left the church of his fathers and became a member of the United Presbyterian body, and began his career as a preacher by spending one year in the West in home missionary work, but hardship and exposure broke his health. He then began his pastoral work at Bellfontaine, Ohio, serving the United Presbyterian church there from 1862-1866. These years included some of the most stirring days of our national history, when the scourge of civil war threatened the Union and the foundations of our government. Like many of the young ministers of that day, he heard his country’s call, not to take up arms in her defense, but to minister to the soldiers in the camp and on the battle field by bringing to them the comforts of the Christian faith. Within the circle of his family he spoke of these days with satisfaction. As a chaplain he had more than average success.

During his college and seminary days Dr. Jeffers had shown a special aptitude for the study of languages, and had made himself a proficient scholar not only in the classical tongues, but also in Hebrew. When he was just twenty-eight years old, he was appointed a member of the committee charged with revision of the Psalter for the UPCNA. In many cases he found it impossible to make a mere revision, and so was compelled to produce an entirely new version.

While Dr. Jeffers served notably as a pastor, his chief work was as a teacher. Beginning in 1877, he taught for twenty-six years at the Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh. In his prime he was considered one of the ablest instructors in the institution. The students recognized that he was a clear thinker, not only conversant with the details of his own department, but more or less familiar with the chief results of investigation in other fields of theological scholarship. With his career there beginning in 1877, Dr. Jeffers would have been one of Robert Dick Wilson’s professors, though Wilson already excelled in his Hebrew studies by the time he attended Seminary.

Investigation reveals that Dr. Jeffers published very little, and only three pieces have been discovered. His inaugural address, when he was inducted into the chair as professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis, in 1877, was titled The Importance of the Study of the Old Testament Scriptures. Besides a single lecture published in the Western Seminary’s Bulletin, the only work from his pen was a Memoir on the life of the Rev. Samuel Jennings Wilson, published as an introduction to the latter’s posthumously published Occasional Addresses and Sermons (1895). Apparently Jeffers was reluctant to put anything into print, partly because of his high ideals of scholarship, and partly because of an great sensitivity to criticism.

Sincere adherence to his convictions and a loyalty to his friends were marked characteristics of this humble man of God. As might be expected of a man of his temperament, he was very devoted to his family, and lavished his love and care on his wife and children.

As true as that must have been, however, the story becomes both confusing and painfully interesting when we begin to look at the lives of his two sons. The younger son, Hamilton [1893-1978], became a noted astronomer, and I could not discover anything as to whether he was or was not a Christian. The other son, John Robinson Jeffers [1887-1962], grew up to become a renowned poet of the American West, but was, at the same time, a deeply troubled and profligate son who, so far as we can see, never repented. His works were full of biblical imagery, but Robinson Jeffers, for all appearances, rejected the Christian faith of his father.

Words to Live By:
Certainly from this distance we cannot say what went wrong, nor can we understand why Robinson Jeffers rejected the gospel, given his father’s testimony and example. It is curious to find that while the biblical scholar is largely forgotten today, there is an artistic community that keeps alive the works of the poet son. Parenting is an act of faith, lived out in full dependence upon the only God who saves to the uttermost. As PCA pastor Bill Iverson is fond of saying, “God has no grandchildren,” — meaning that the work of evangelism must be done afresh in every generation. Or as T. D. Witherspoon urged parents, “Don’t think that you have to wait to talk to your children about spiritual matters.” This is where the Catechism is so helpful, because it brings these issues up for discussion around the family table. Catechize your children; pray with your children; pray for your children!

Deposed by Man, but Not By God
by Rev. David T. Myers

They called them “precopalians,” which strange as it may sound (and spell!), was  defined as Scottish Presbyterians who were leading Anglican congregations in northern Island, or Ulster.  At one time, in the seventeenth century, there were 27 Presbyterian ministers in churches in Ulster, all there to pastor the large number of Ulster Scottish families in the area.

Our post today deals with the Rev. James Hamilton, who traveled before he was ordained to Ulster.  Even after graduation from the University of Glasgow, he went to Ireland where his uncle had vast acreage in the northern part of Ireland. In time, our young man was noticed by a Presbyterian minister by the name of Robert Blair, who encouraged James to enter the ministry. It was on March 3, 1626 that James Hamilton was ordained as a minister in the Church of Ireland by the Irish bishop Robert Echlin. Hamilton began his pastorate in the Ballywalter Church and stayed there for a decade. The church later on became a Presbyterian Church, perhaps by the solid doctrinal preaching of Pastor Hamilton, as he is listed at their first pastor.

The presence of so many Presbyterians in the Irish churches brought the inevitable clash between who was the head of the church—the king of England or the Lord Jesus. When the Church of Ireland sought to bring subservience to the former and urged that the Presbyterian ministers deny the National Covenant of 1638, which had just been signed, James Hamilton resigned. He offered, along with two other ministers, to debate the matter, but the bishop simply deposed him from the ministry. He was ordered to be arrested, but escaped from their hands.

Around this time, Hamilton with three other Presbyterian ministers and 140 Ulster Scots commissioned a sailing vessel known as the Eagle Wing to sail to America. However due to storms, a broken rudder, and other calamities, the ship had to return to Ireland. Hamilton traveled on to Scotland and became involved with the Covenanters. He eventually became the minister of the Presbyterian Church of Dumfrees, Scotland.

It is interesting that he returned to Ireland for various purposes, once even to administer the Solemn League and Covenant in Ulster. Why he was not arrested, we don’t know, other than the providential care of God watching over him. On one of his trips to Northern Ireland, his ship was captured by forces not conducive to his faith. He served 10 months in prison but was set free in 1645. Returning to Scotland, he was appointed by the General Assembly to be a chaplain to King Charles II, but wound up with another prison sentence in the Tower of London.  Oliver Cromwell eventually gave him his freedom.  He eventually retired in Edinburgh.

James Hamilton died this day, May 10, 1666.

Words to Live By: A learned and diligent pastor, his life and ministry was certainly filled with hardship and difficulty. Even in his married live to wife Elizabeth Watson, this union would produce 15 children, with only one living to adulthood and the rest dying in infancy. God’s servants have often lived in hardship and difficulty. Think of Paul’s description of his ministry in 2 Corinthians 6:4 – 10 and 11:23 – 27. James Hamilton was deposed from his office by man, but supported by God’s Spirit in his life and ministry, always faithful to live and work in God’s will.  Let us, dear readers, keep busy serving our God and King, leaving the results of that service  in the hands of the Lord.  Romans 8:28 reads, “And we know that God causes all things (i.e. the sufferings of this present time) to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” (NAS)

While searching out a question for a patron of the PCA Historical Center, I came across this letter to the editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY [the new series, 1956ff.] In this letter, Ned B. Stonehouse, professor at Westminster Theological Seminary and biographer of Dr. J. Gresham Machen, writes to offer a corrective to a statement in a previous issue of the magazine.

MACARTNEY AND MACHEN
[Christianity Today 6.5 (8 December 1961): 16 [240].]

Please permit a brief footnote to G. Hall Todd’s attractive review of the new autobiography of Clarence E. Macartney (Oct. 13 issue). The book should be widely read because of its firsthand report of the doctrinal controversies of the twenties and thirties as well as for many other features to which the reviewer draws attention.

Particularly gratifying in my judgment is Macartney’s evaluation of the character and witness of J. Gresham Machen which may serve to correct certain persistent distortions. Yet one statement of Macartney’s in this context is highly disturbing. It is that after Macartney offered to act as Machen’s counsel before the Permanent Judicial Commission in 1936, Machen declined, “saying that if I defended him, he might be acquitted, and that was not what he wanted” (p. 189). The full correspondence is available to myself and shows that at this point Macartney’s memory failed him. In a letter of about 1200 words Machen, while expressing deep gratitude for the offer, declined on the ground that he felt that his counsel, who would be his spokesman in connection with the subsequent appraisal of the trial regardless of the outcome, had to be a person who would “represent my view in the most thorough-going way,” which, to Machen’s distress, Macartney did not do.

At this time indeed (May 9, 1936), after many years of struggle for reformation from within, Machen had come to believe that the denomination was apostate and he longed for a separation. Nevertheless, as this letter also emphasizes, Machen’s sense of obligation to fulfill his ministerial vows was such that he could not condone the evil involved in his anticipated condemnation even though it might become the occasion of good. In his own words in the letter, “But I cannot acquiesce in that evil for a moment, and therefore I am adopting every legitimate means of presenting my case even before the Modernist Permanent Judicial Commission.”

NED B. STONEHOUSE
Westminster Theological Seminary
Philadelphia, Pa.

Last Man Standing

The Rev. George Holinshead Whitfield Petrie was born on May 5, 1812 and he died on May 8, 1885. Lacking a good substantive account about the Rev. G.H.L. Petrie, we will instead take the liberty of writing about his son for this day’s post.

George Laurens Petrie was born on February 25, 1840, when Andrew Jackson was the leading political figure in the nation. He was educated in classical preparatory schools, and later at Davidson College and Oglethorpe University. Finally, he took his preparation for the ministry at the Columbia Theological Seminary, graduating there in 1862. Our account states that during the Civil War, Petrie enlisted in the Confederate service as a missionary under the direction of the Presbyterian Church, doing work similar to that of the Y.M.C.A. during World War I. [You may remember that J. Gresham Machen served  with the Y.M.C.A. in France during WW1].  Petrie was soon asked by the Twenty-second regiment of Alabama volunteers to serve as their chaplain. Accepting this call, he was then regularly commissioned as a chaplain of the regiment.

Chaplain Petrie was also ordained to the ministry of the Gospel on the basis of his call to serve as regiment chaplain. Prior to that, he had standing only as a licentiate. In his capacity as chaplain, he served under General Joseph E. Johnston, and later under General J. B. Hood, and finally again under Gen. Johnston. During his time of service, he was in the battles of Resaca, New Hope church, Kennesaw Mountain, Bentonville and Kinston. He was also in the campaign that ended with the battle of Sumter, South Carolina, a battle which was fought after the surrender which officially ended the war.

After the war, Dr. Petrie taught a classical school in Montgomery, Alabama for two years, and served as professor of Latin at the Oakland College in Mississippi for another two years. He then filled pastorates in Greenville, Alabama and in Petersburg, Virginia, 1872-1878, before answering a call to serve as the pastor of the Presbyterian church of Charlottesville, Virginia. He then served as pastor of the Charlottesville church for fifty years, from 1878 to 1928, and was greatly loved by members of both the church and the community. It was noted in 1929 that of the eight hundred members of the Charlottesville congregation, Dr. Petrie had received all but fourteen of them into membership during his pastorate, and those fourteen were already there when he arrived in 1878.

In 1930, just a year before his death, Rev. Petrie was the oldest living alumnus of both Oglethorpe University and Columbia Theological Seminary. He had also been present as a visitor at the first General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian Church, when it met in Augusta, Georgia, and in 1930 was the sole surviving attendant from that first Assembly. His notable career ended at the age of 91, when the Rev. Petrie died on March 27, 1931.

Words to Live By:
For the above sketch, one of our sources was The Christian Observer for May 21, 1930. Adjacent to the article about Rev. Petrie, there was another article titled “The Charlottesville Presbyterian Church and the University of Virginia,” written by the Rev. W. Kyle Smith, pastor for Presbyterian students at the University. This article began:—

“One of the great challenges which the Church faces in connection with her youth is the increasinly large number of young men and women who are being educated in state institutions of higher learning. Most state institutions are leaving the task of meeting the specifically spiritual needs of the students to the Church. In doing this they are following what would seem to be the best American traditions of the separation of Church and State, and if the spiritual needs of the students are not met the burden of blame should fall on the Church, for one can conceive of situations against which the Church would enter a vigorous protest were state institutions to assume too much control of the spiritual life of her students. If the Church demands spiritual freedom for her students while studying in state institutions, she is under a solemn obligation to assume some responsibility for their spiritual welfare in intelligent co-operation with the state institutions.”

The PCA has over the last several decades risen to meet this challenge with the formation of the Reformed University Fellowship. There are now over 120 colleges and universities with RUF chapters, each tied to a local PCA church. Now more than ever, these college and university campuses are strategic places where the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be faithfully proclaimed. Pray regularly for this ministry, and find out more about it by visiting the RUF web site.

For Further Study:
The Petrie Family Papers are preserved at Auburn University, as Record Group 192. Boxes 1-7 contain the papers of the Rev. George H.L. Petrie. Boxes 8-13 hold the papers of the Rev. George Laurens Petrie, and the remainder of the collection, Boxes 14-29 contains the Papers of George Petrie, son of George Laurens Petrie, who was himself a noted historian and educator. The finding aid for this collection can be viewed here.

A Great Christian Biographer

William Buell Sprague was born in Andover, Tolland county, Connecticut, on October 16, 1795. He graduated at Yale College in 1815, then in 1816 entered the Princeton Theological Seminary, and after studying there for over two years, was licensed to preach by the Association of Ministers in the county of Tolland, on August 29th, 1818. As a pastor of the Congregational Church of West Springfield, Massachusetts, Rev. Sprague served with great success from August of 1819 until July of 1829, at which time he answered a call to serve the Second Presbyterian Church in Albany, New York. He was installed as pastor there on August 26, 1829, and he remained in this post for forty years, “remarkable for the extraordinary steadfastness and warmth of attachment existing through all that protracted period between himself and his large and intelligent congregation, and even more remarkable for the vast and varied labors performed by him” during those forty years. Rev. Sprague has aptly been described as “an industrious man, a cultivated, elegant, voluminous, useful and popular preacher; an indefatigable and successful pastor; an unselfish and devoted friend; loving, genial, pure, noble; an Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile; one of the most child-like, unsophisticated and charitable of men.”

While Dr. Sprague never relaxed his pulpit and pastoral duties, his added literary labors were prodigious, and their fruits exceedingly great. He preached nearly two hundred sermons on special public occasions, the most of which were published. He also produced a large number of biographies and other volumes on practical religious subjects. But the great literary work of his life was his Annals of the American Pulpit, which was undertaken when he was fifty-seven years old, and finished in ten large octavo volumes. [From this set, the three volumes pertaining to Presbyterian pastors was reprinted in 2005 under the title Annals of the American Presbyterian Pulpit]. Another of Dr. Sprague’s better known works is Lectures on the Revivals of Religion.

On December 20, 1869, Dr. Sprague was released, at his own request, from his pastoral charge in Albany, and he retired to Flushing, Long Island, where he quietly spent his remaining years. He passed away peacefully on May 7, 1876,and his mortal remains were taken to Albany for burial, with his funeral service held in the church where he had so faithfully served for so long.

[adapted from the entry found in Alfred Nevin’s Encyclopedia of the Presbyterian Church (1884).]

Words to Live By:
As a brief sample of one of Dr. Sprague’s sermons, the following is from the opening words of the sermon delivered upon the occasion of the death of his first wife, Charlotte Sprague. A particularly difficult occasion for any pastor, to deliver a sermon over the grave of any member of his family:—

Job xix. 21. “Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, oh ye, my friends, for the hand of God hath touched me.”

I have not chosen this passage, my friends, with a view to attempt any thing like a connected discourse; because my feelings forbid such an attempt. I have not chosen it with a view to urge any new claims upon your sympathy, because I know that your hearts have already bled for my affliction. I have not chosen it as an apology for an impatient and complaining spirit, for I am well aware that such a spirit, always unbecoming, is never more offensive, than in the sanctuary of God, and at the throne of grace; and I also know, that in addition to the common obligation of Christian submission which rest upon me, it is my imperative duty, as a minister of Jesus, and as one appointed to lead you to Heaven, now to give you some practical proof of the power of religious consolation. But, my friends, I have chosen this text, as a faithful expression of my feelings, under this bereaving stroke of Providence; and with a view to suggest from it some remarks, which I hope may have such an influence upon your minds, that you will be able to say, that it is good for you that I have been afflicted.

There are two thoughts upon which I shall dwell for a moment, which seem to be suggested by the latter clause of the text: The hand of God hath touched me.

I. The first is, that the afflictions of the present life are some of them peculiarly grievous. I know, my friends, that it is hard for those who are strangers to adversity to realize its bitterness; they can have but a faint idea of what passes within the heart which is wrung by the disruption of ties which seemed almost entwined with the thread of existence. They can go to the house of mourning and be affected by the tears of others, and by the badges of grief, and by the funeral procession, and by the open grave; but, after all, if they have never felt the rending of these ties themselves, they will be likely to carry away but a feeble impression of the agony of bereavement. Ask the husband or the wife, who has been bereaved of a fond, affectionate companion;—ask the father and the mother who have seen the object of their affections laid low in the dust;—ask the brother or the sister, who has wept over the grave of departed friendship, whether the afflictions of life are to be thought lightly of—and whether we can comfortably sustain them without the aids of Divine grace; and the bursting heart of each will return you an answer. Do not think, my friends, that I wish to heighten the picture by adding one dark shade which does not belong to it; I have no wish to give an exaggerated account of the ills of life, or to harrow your feelings, by pointing you to scenes of sorrow, into which you are in no danger of being brought. But I do wish to make every one of you who has never yet felt the bitterness of deep affliction, now feel that it is not a light thing to be even touched by the hand of God;—that those chords of tenderness which are strung in the heart cannot be broken without sending a thrill of agony through the soul;—and that if you think to pass through the furnace of deep affliction without the consolations of religion, you are only laying a plan to harrow your souls with anguish. You will find enough to bear in the day of adversity without the burden of unpardoned sin; there will be no excess of consolation, if you have all that which arises from an unwavering confidence in God, and from communion with a throne of grace. The reason, therefore, for my suggesting this thought, that the afflictions of life are some of them very grievous, is, that a correct impression of them may lead you to gain a seasonable interest in the consolations of religion. Rely upon it, that whatever you may now think, when the day of adversity actually comes, you will need the support of an almighty arm; and if you have not that to rest upon, you will find your hearts torn and rent by the severest anguish.

II. The other thought to which I wish to direct your attention is more consolatory: “the hand of God hath touched me;” that is, my afflictions have not sprung out of the ground; they are not the product of chance; but they are directed by Infinite goodness, and unerring wisdom. The hand which hath touched me is the hand of God—it is the hand of my Father.

And what, my Christian friends, is more consolatory than the thought, that all these dark dispensations are planned and executed by our Heavenly Father; that though there are many revolutions of the wheel of Providence which we cannot comprehend; nay, though there may seem to be a wheel within a wheel, and the mighty machine may confound us by its magnificent and mysterious operations; yet every movement is guided by an arm, absolutely resistless, by wisdom, which can never err, and by goodness, which does not even overlook the falling of a sparrow. “The hand of God hath touched me,”—not the hand of an impotent, or short-sighted, or malicious mortal,—not the hand of one who afflicts in cruelty, and has no concern for my happiness; but a paternal hand,—the same which pours blessings into my cup, from day to day, and which never wields the rod, but with the most kind and merciful designs. Is not this enough, O my soul, to assuage the tempest that has been raging within thee, and to bring back the calm, and sunshine, and quiet, which affliction had well nigh chased away? . . .

To read the rest of this sermon, The tribute of a mourning husband : a sermon, delivered at West-Springfield, July 1, 1821, the Sabbath after interment of Mrs. Charlotte E. Sprague, click here.