Several years ago, the Rev. Howard Carlson, a minister in the Bible Presbyterian Church, shared a letter written by the father of Carl McIntire, addressed to the Rev. A.B. Dodd, a missionary to China. Both men were at that time members of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. One of the real joys of an archivist’s job is getting to read other people’s mail. [that’s an old archivist’s joke, but with a strong measure of truth]. This letter offers a rare glimpse into a close friendship between two young men preparing for their respective lives of ministry, one in the distant fields of China, the other, by God’s providence, remaining at home.

—– Original Message —–

From: Howard Carlson

To: presbyterians-bpc@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 10:55 PM

Subject: McIntire 03.doc

Rev. Carlson introduces this letter, saying that,

Bonnie, my wife, is granddaughter of Albert Dodd, Missionary to China. He was a close friend of Curtis McIntire and the below letter was addressed to Dodd by the Rev. Curtis McIntire. They were to have gone to China together, but McIntire became ill the night before the ship left. Interesting thought – if Curtis McIntire had not become ill, Carl McIntire would have been born in and lived at least his early years in China.

Then he presents a transcription of the letter from the Rev. Curtis McIntire:—

Albany, Mo July 11 1903

“My dear dear Dodd:

I have been looking for a letter from some time from you.  I wrote you several weeks ago and perhaps you never received.  I am hungry for you.  I am up in the country 14 miles north of Albany as tomorrow is my day in our country chapel.  I don’t know how many times I think of you.  I have been thinking this morning on an evening sermon “And there shall be no night there.”  It’s in the description of the new Jerusalem.  No night there.  Night is the time for sinning, for suffering, for sorrowing.  Now night is taken for sin and its darkness but on those streets of gold with Him there will be no night there for He is the light thereof.  Isn’t it grand.  How I wish I could have a talk—one of the good old talks we used to have—one where we could open our hearts and minds to each other without the reserve we have to have with the rest of the world.  I have been awfully busy this summer.  Its hard to get disinterested people out of their old ways to a real activity of love for Him and the cause.  But I have one church that is a joy to my heart. Thirty were present 1st Sunday, 60 the next, 70 [hard to read; could be 120 or 170] the next, and my next visit maybe the church will be too small. It takes all my time visiting. I’m afraid I haven’t spent enough time on my sermons. I can’t get time to write [no? rest?] a word of them. They would be lots better if I could. Now I feel like I have spent too much time with people for Him and too little time with Him for people. I wish I could be with Jesus as much as I want to and to Him what I desire, but the flesh is strong and I let things of my work be the temporary excuse. Oh I love Him and I am so untrue. Don’t you feel that way? Oh to be used wholly by Him. I remember one of the verses they sang at Winona last year which went something like this:

A band of faithful reapers we
Who gather for eternity
The golden sheaves of ripened grain
From every valley hill and plain
Our song is one the reapers sing
In honor of their Lord and King
The Master of the harvest wide
Who for a world of sinners died”

Now the chorus

To the harvest field away
For the Master calleth
There is work for all today
Ere the darkness falleth
Swiftly do the moments fly
Harvest days are going by
Going going going by.”

I suppose you are getting ready to be off for Persia. How I would like to see you! You could tell me the glories of the Conference at N.Y.

I can’t decide where I want to apply for China, Korea, India are before my mind. I wish you would tell me what you think I ought to do considering myself and the work in the places. I am attracted to the evangelistic work of Korea. But China appeals to me for its need of workers, the need which is darkness. I wouldn’t be so careful [uncertain] about making my choice but I ____ that is one of the ways God has of placing me and I am to exhaust my possibilities; then if it’s not the place He will cause the Board to overrule. Let me know what you think. I want the outside view and you can give it me.

I haven’t had a long letter from “Herb” for some time. I’m afraid he isn’t savoring [uncertain] the work as much as I did last year.  I’m sorry I couldn’t meet for Commencement. But I learned you were still in the east. I saw Miss Forley [uncertain] and asked her to remember me to [you?uncertain]. And if you see her give my choicest regards to her and her sister for me.

I hope you get this before you start. I don’t know when you are to leave. I wish we could be together at Princeton again next year. Maybe we never will meet but oh the joy that in Heaven we shall meet and we shall know each other again in that place of beauty and happiness and holiness where we shall together see Him. I can’t tell you all my heart but it’s best in those words to  you ‘Dear Dodd.’

Your own friend

C. Curtis McIntire”

Image source: Photograph of Mrs. & Mrs. A.B. Dodd, as found in The Independent Board Bulletin, 5.8 (December 1939), page 8.

Man Knows Not His Time

In The Daily Princetonian (Volume 38, no. 345, 27 January 1916), we read of the Rev. David R. Frazer, D.D., a graduate of the Princeton University, Class of 1861, who for many years was a trustee of Princeton University, that he had died very suddenly on Sunday, January 24, 1915, while visiting at the home of his son H.F. Spaulding Frazer, who was City Counsel for Newark, New Jersey, and a nationally known attorney. Following the funeral, the body of Rev. Frazer was buried in the Short Hills Cemetery.

Rev. David Ruddach Frazer, D.D., was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 10, 1837, the son of William R. and Eliza J. (Armitage) Frazer. He attended the Central High School of Baltimore, Maryland and attended Delaware College before completing his college education at Princeton University in 1861. He then spent three years at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he was graduated in 1864. In the same year he returned to Princeton and received a Master of Arts Degree, and in 1865 was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry. Dr. Frazer was then made pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Clifton, Staten Island, and held that position for two years, leaving it to preach at Hudson, New York. In 1872 he received a call to Buffalo, and was pastor of the Presbyterian Church of that city until 1880. He received a degree as Doctor of Divinity from Princeton in that year, and in 1887 was made a trustee of the University.

Portrait photograph facing page [15] in Centennial Celebration of the Dedication of the First Presbyterian Church, Newark, N.J., 1891.

Three published works by Rev. Frazer were located, the first of which can be found in digital format:Dr. Frazer preached in Brooklyn for the next three years and then accepted a permanent position as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Newark, New Jersey, being installed there on February 21, 1883. The First Presbyterian Church was the oldest church in Newark, originally Congregational by affiliation, and changing over to Presbyterian in 1720. Rev. Frazer followed the pastorate of the Rev. Jonathan F. Stearns, and was succeeded, after a vacancy of nearly three years, by the Rev. William J. Dawson. During Rev. Frazer’s tenure at First Presbyterian, the church gave substantially to the cause of  missions and church extension (i.e., church planting). He also served as the president of a home for the aged and infirm. Rev. Frazer served the Newark church until 1909, preaching up until June of that year. Retiring from the active ministry in 1909, Dr. Frazer was very much interested in the Theological Seminary in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and for a time acted as president of that institution.

1889
Memorial Jonathan F. Stearns, D.D. : a sermon, delivered in the First Presbyterian Church, Newark, N.J., Dec. 1st., 1889. Newark : Amzi Pierson & Co., 1889.  47 p.; ill.; 22 cm.

1891
“The Building of the Old Church,” Centennial sermon delivered at the dedication of the First Presbyterian Church, Newark, New Jersey, on the text of Isaiah 49:16.

1892
George Washington: An Address Delivered, Feb’y 22d, 1892, Before The Washington Association of New Jersey, by Rev. David R. Frazer, D.D. Also Letters Relating to the Execution of Major Andre, Presented by Mrs. Herbert Gray Torrey, at the Same Meeting. s.l.: s.n., 1892. 16 p.; 24 cm.

Something to Ponder:

From Rev. Frazer’s training and first several pastorates, we might have assumed he was of New School sympathies. Perhaps it is inappropriate to raise that question, given that most of his ministerial career occurred after 1869, when reunion of Old School and New School occurred. But given the question, some light may be shed by the memorial sermon that Rev. Frazer delivered on behalf of his predecessor at First Presbyterian, Newark—the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Stearns. Here the speaker, Rev. Frazer, undoubtedly emulates the object of his address:

“Dr. Stearns began his pastorate here at at time when the rival rallying cries of Old and New School were too well known and were too frequently heard in the Church. As the new Pastor was, in some points in sympathy with Old School views while the Church was in New School connection, considerable interest was felt, in some quarters, as to his probable course under these conditions. But both Old School and New soon learned that Dr. Stearns was no ecclesiastical partisan; that he was a peacemaker rather than a polemic; that his work was constructive, not destructive, hence he was peculiarly fitted to be one of the most influential actors in securing the reunion of the two bodies. Long before this topic became a theme of public discussion, he sought to rid the New School of certain ‘entangling alliances’ which brought that body into disrepute with the Old. He was influential in the establishment, and for many years was a member of the Home Mission Committee, helping, by his wise counsels, to shape that policy which saved to Presbyterianism many churches which otherwise would have sought a different ecclesiastical connection. His sermon on ‘Justification by Faith,’ preached before the Synod of New York and New Jersey, at Poughkeepsie, on October 25th, 1852, did much to allay the suspicions of the Old School body as to the theological soundness of the New. He was an influential member of the New School Committee on reunion and when the inner history of that movement shall be given to the world the record will show that no one man did more of the real, telling work which secured the desired result than did Dr. Stearns.

Directed by Providence
by Rev. David T. Myers

Our Confessional Fathers in the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 5, section 1, would define “providence” with these words:

“God the great Creator of all things does uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by His most wise and holy providence, according to His infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of His will, to the praise of the glory of His wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy.”

That full, Scripturally-based statement is seen in the short life and ministry of our Presbyterian subject today.

There is so much that we don’t know about him. William Dean was born in 1719 in Ulster, or Northern Ireland. We don’t know anything about his parents, his upbringing, or even what education he has in that old country. We don’t know when he arrived in the colonies, though some have suggested that he was trained at the Log College. The first notice of him is on the records of New Brunswick Presbytery, held on August 3, 1741, when he was examined and later licensed to the gospel ministry on October 12, 1742.

He was sent with the words of his spiritual fathers to “preach the everlasting gospel where Providence may direct.” With that spiritual charge given to the young Irish man, he was sent to two settlements of Ulster families at Neshaminy and the Forks of the Delaware. Hearing him expound the Word of God, the people called him as their pastor, which call he refused! So he supplied their spiritual needs and added to those places, the area around Cape May, New Jersey. Later, he was sent to the Forks of Brandywine and Pequea.

Still continuing his ministry of “preaching the everlasting gospel where Providence may direct,” he was sent to Greenwich, New Jersey, and in October 1744 to what is now Fairfield, New Jersey and the Forks of the Delaware.

In the next year, he was sent with a Mr. Byram down into Augusta County, Virginia, where a great awakening took place under their proclamation of the gospel, continuing for six full years!

Ordained in May 1746, the Forks of Brandywine called him as pastor, with three acres presented to him and the congregation, and a meeting house erected. Presumably around this time, he married, and eventually four children were born to that union.

By this day, July 9, 1748, however, the next place he was located was in heaven! He died at age 29! So short was his time on earth, as Providence directed.

Words to Live By:
The celebrated Samuel Davies said that William Dean was an active, zealous, and faithful minister, speaking of him as a most useful minister. Davies, called by some “the apostle of Virginia,” lamented Rev. Dean’s early death. Many of our readers might ask “Why” to the God of Providence? Yet the only answer which can be given is that it was the Lord’s sovereign will. Let it be our testimony that each Christian reader will faithfully proclaim and live the everlasting gospel where God’s providence may direct our steps to our family members, especially our covenant children, in the visible church, and to the needy culture in which God will direct us. The New Testament writer James wrote, “(we) are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead (we) ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, (we) will live and also do this or that.’” (James 4:14, 15.)

A Historian for a Historical Devotional
by Rev. David T. Myers

The Presbyterian minister was convinced that when young men were called into the ministry, and then left the state of Texas for their religious training, most of them never returned to the Lone Star State.  So there was obviously one solution, namely, begin a theological seminary in Texas.  And he did, even giving the land for it, and today Austin Theological Seminary (a seminary of the PCUSA) is in existence today.

The Texas minister was William Stuart Red. Born in 1857, though some say 1860, in Washington County, Texas, he attended for a while a university in Tennessee before transferring to Austin College in Austin, Texas.  He then studied at Princeton Seminary for one year before transferring to Columbia Theological Seminary in 1884-85.  Finally, he returned back to the Lone Star State to Austin School of Theology and graduated from there in 1886.  After some further study in Germany and Scotland, he returned for licensure and ordination as a Presbyterian minister in the Presbyterian Church in the United States in 1887.

He was the pastor at six Presbyterian churches in Texas.  Beyond his care for the churches, he was also interested in a central depository for Presbyterian and Reformed history.  So, along with the Rev. Samuel Terry, Rev. Red gave funds for the creation of the Historical Foundation of Reformed and Presbyterian Churches at Montreat, North Carolina.

Before he died on July 8, 1933, his project after retirement from the ministry was The History of the Presbyterian Church in Texas.  His family finished up the 500 page book after his death from papers he had written.  Our PCA Historical Center has a copy of it in St. Louis, Missouri.

Words to Live By:
He seemed to be larger than life, but then aren’t all Texans?  Yet it is important to remember that his love for the state of Texas was grounded in Christian Presbyterianism in Texas.  Paul’s haunting question in the New Testament was “How shall they hear without a preacher?”  Rev. Red wanted Presbyterian preachers to train and serve their Lord and God so that his fellow Texans could hear the unsearchable riches of God’s grace.  That is true for all of our states.  Pray for where God has placed you on this day that the everlasting good news of eternal life might impact your state.

THE SCHOOL & FAMILY CATECHIST
The Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 31

Q.31. What is effectual calling?

A. Effectual calling is the work of God’s Spirit, whereby convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel.

EXPLICATION.

Convincing us. –Making us sensible, removing all doubt from our minds.

Enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ. –Removing the darkness of ignorance, and making us to understand the way of salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Renewing our wills. –Changing our desires and inclinations, from a love of sin, to a love of holiness; or making us to hate sin, which we formerly loved, and to love holiness, or goodness, which we formerly hated.

To embrace Jesus Christ. –To receive him, with affectionate hearts, in all his offices, as our prophet, our priest, and our king.

In the gospel. –In the covenant of grace, or the promise of life and salvation, which God has made to every sinner who repents of his sins, and believes in the name of his Son Jesus Christ.

ANALYSIS.

In this answer there are nine important points of doctrine taught :

1. That effectual calling is the work of the Spirit of God. –2 Thess. ii. 13. God hath, from the beginning chosen you to salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth. 2. Tim. i. 9. Who hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling.
2. That in this work the Spirit convinces us of our sins. –John xvi. 8. And when he (the Holy Spirit, the Comforter) is come, he will reprove the world of sin.
3. That in it he produces also a conviction of misery. –Acts ii. 37. Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their hearts, and said unto Peter, and the rest of the Apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?
4. That he enlightens our minds in the knowledge of Christ. –Eph. i. 18. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened. Phil. iii.8. I count all things but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.
5. That in the work of effectual calling, the Spirit also renews our wills. –Ezek. xxxvi. 26. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.
6. That he persuades us to embrace Jesus Christ. –Heb. xi. 13. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, (the promises of Christ,) and embraced them.
7. That he also enables us to embrace Christ. –John vi. 44. No man can come to me except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him. Phil. ii. 13. It is God who worketh in you, both to will and to do, of his good pleasure.
8. That Christ is freely offered for our acceptance. –Isa. lv. 1. Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk, without money, and without price. Rev. xxii. 17. Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.
9. That it is the gospel in which this offer of Christ is made. –John vii. 37. In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, if any many thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.