Dr. Robert Dick Wilson

We have written before how one of the great Princeton professors and a founding professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, Dr. Robert Dick Wilson, died on this day, October 11, at the start of the second academic year at Westminster. Today, we present a different insight into his death, as Dr. Allan A. MacRae, another of the founding Westminster faculty, wrote home to his parents and related something of Wilson’s death, his funeral, and the resolution of his estate:—

October 14, 1930

Dear Folks:

No doubt you have read in the papers of Dr. Wilson’s death. When I wrote you last week he had been ill for a few days but it did not seem to be serious. The turn for the worse came quite suddenly. We thought at first that it was simply a bad cold but it seems more probably to have been a weakening of the heart that was coming on for some time. He had said a few words at the opening of the Seminary, and had conducted one class before he was taken ill. He was in bed about four days and seemed to have trouble with his breathing, a thing that had never bothered him before. Monday evening Mrs. Wilson phoned me rather later and asked me to come over. He was having a spell of hard breathing and imagining that some one was choking him. I succeeded in quieting him and he seemed to recover completely. But the next day the doctor had him taken to the hospital. After three days of comparatively little trouble there he suddenly took a turn for the worse. He was unconscious from Friday afternoon at three until Saturday afternoon at five. Mrs. Wilson, Dr. Allis, a few others and I spent the whole of Friday night with him, expecting the end at any moment. But he was unconscious and I do not believe that he suffered a great deal. The funeral is to be this afternoon at four o’clock.

It is a blow to the Seminary and a great loss to me in particular. I had looked forward to working with him a great deal this year. But when I think of the great amount that Dr. Wilson accomplished in his life and of the tremendous help that he gave the Seminary by his testimony and his personal assistance during its first year, I feel that we should rather rejoice in his great usefulness.

He was very cheerful and happy right up to the last. In the hospital he was joking and making light of his suffering when I last talked with him. He always had an unusually genial spirit.

The relatives of Dr. Wilson and of Mrs. Wilson have been arriving one after the other during the last three days. I have met some of them at the train and have tried to do anything I could to help. Both of them are members of large families. Dr. Wilson had five brothers and four sisters. The youngest of the brothers to die was fifty-seven and he and the other who has passed away were along in their seventies. His oldest brother, who is two years older than he, is here now. They are all very fine people and several of them have been very successful in various lines of work. The brother who died at fifty-seven was a missionary to Persia and died as a result of his treatment in a Turkish prison during the war.

After the funeral this afternoon they will all go out to Indiana, Pennsylvania, where Dr. Wilson was born, and where he wished to be buried. They will return tomorrow evening.

Mrs. Wilson has asked me to go over all of Dr. Wilson’s books and papers. It will be quite a task but I am sure I will find a great deal of valuable material. Just before he went to the hospital he handed me the manuscript of an article that he had been working on during the summer and asked me to go over it. She has also asked me to go over the financial things with her. She will appoint herself executrix, but she would like me to help her in determining what to do. She has had very little business experience, in her life. He was never in a position to save very much, so it is important to conserve for her what he left.

Words to Live By:
This letter by Dr. MacRae is found among his own papers, now preserved at the PCA Historical Center. Among that material were several boxes of manuscripts that constitute the papers of Dr. Wilson. All of which stands as a warning to our present electronic age, with its email and social media which is so ephemeral, so easily deleted or passed over. In centuries to come, as historians look back there will likely be a void—an absence of detailed information—at least at the individual level, such as that provided above, for many of us fail to preserve the important communications that come our way. We fail to treasure up our history, to do what is necessary to preserve it. Again, partly it is because of that electronic format, but perhaps the larger problem is our own attitude towards the value of our history. The whole problem exposes well our low view of the value of history. And isn’t it interesting that, for a culture with a low view of history (and thus a low view of self), we now find ourselves engaged in an intense struggle over issues of identity?  

An Injustice Which Found No Excuse

Related here is a brief account of Presbyterian missions among the Cherokee and Choctaw Indians, just prior to and immediately following the grave injustice of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Removal Act resulted in what is now known to history as “The Trail of Tears,” in which tribes were forcibly relocated to the West. It could be argued that the Presbyterian mission never recovered from this setback, though efforts continued, particularly in the latter part of the nineteenth century:—

In 1816, the Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury was sent out under the direction of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to visit the destitute portions of Tennessee. After spending some months in discharging his commission, he repaired to the Cherokee country. At a full council of the Cherokees and Creeks, at which Colonel Meigs, the Indian agent, and General Andrew Jackson, in behalf of the United States Government, were present, Kingsbury proposed to the Indians his plan of missions. It was favorably entertained. The chiefs invited the establishment of mission schools, and Mr. Kingsbury, in conjunction with a representative of the tribes, was directed to seek out a fit location. The result was the selection of the mission station known thenceforth by the name of the devoted missionary “Brainerd.” This project had previously been frustrated by the War of 1812 and by the removal of key men. It was now revived under better circumstances. In 1817, additional workers came, among them the Rev. Ard Hoyt, who was for some years pastor at the Presbyterian church in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

In the following year the mission to the Choctaws began, of which Rev. Kingsbury was invited to take charge. The laborers among the Cherokees were increased in number by the addition of laymen—Abijah Conger, John Vaill, and John Talmage, along with their respective families, and all from New Jersey. The removal of the tribes to the region beyond the Mississippi, though sorely opposed to their own desires, had already commenced; and in the latter part of November, 1817, Alfred Finney and Cephas Washburn set out on their journey, through a wilderness rendered almost impassable by flooded swamps and overflowing creeks, from Brainerd to Eliot in Arkansas.

The laborers in the mission field at Brainerd were for the most part connected with the Presbytery of Union, in East Tennessee. Robert Glen was a licentiate, Christopher Bradshaw a candidate, and “Father” Hoyt a member of it. The meetings of the Presbytery were to them “refreshing seasons.” Especially was this the case at the present juncture. “The Lord had recently poured out His Spirit in many parts of this Presbytery, and the friends of Zion” were “looking up with rejoicing.” The Presbytery had six young men under its care as candidates for the ministry, most of them, doubtless, the pupils of Anderson.

The missionaries were visited and cheered, among others, by members of the Presbytery and missionaries sent out by the Assembly. Saunders and Moderwell visited them on their tour. Erastus Root from Georgia, and Vinal and Chapman, sent out by the United Foreign Mission Society at New York on an exploring tour among the Indians west of the Mississippi, called upon them. Numerous and refreshing were these repeated visits from members or ministers of Presbyterian churches throughout the land. But a special interest was taken in the progress of the mission by the churches of Tennessee. In 1819, Isaac Anderson, Matthew Donald, and William Eagleton (of Kingston) were the visiting committee of the Presbytery, and signed the report of the examination of the mission schools.

From year to year the reports were generally favorable. In 1822 the large establishment at Brainerd was divided, and its members distributed abroad throughout the bounds of the tribe. In the following year nearly one hundred persons gave evidence of hopeful conversion, and at Willstown a church “on the Presbyterian model,” consisting of nine converted Cherokees, was organized on October 10th, and connected with Union Presbytery. Already in September of the same year the churches at Brainerd, Carmel, and Hightower had been received, so that on the list of the Presbytery were four churches within the limits of the Cherokee mission. The number was increased by the organization of another church at Candy’s Creek in the following year.

But already the plan was formed which was to result in disaster to the mission by the removal of the Cherokees beyond the Mississippi. Georgia took the lead in the harsh and cruel measures by which this plan was carried out. The missionaries were indignant and disheartened at the perfidy which violated repeated and most solemn treaties. They saw their own labors interrupted; they saw those whom they had been encouraged to hope would soon be brought to embrace the gospel, outraged and alienated by an injustice which found no excuse but in the sophistry of unscrupulous avarice, while the prospects of future success for the mission were becoming more dark and gloomy continually.

Still, they did not remit their efforts. Amid sad discouragements they labored on. Portions of the tribe were from time to time depairingly forsaking their old hunting grounds and their fathers’ graves for new homes in the distant wilderness. Yet, till actual violence was offered, and by the arrest of their persons the resolute purpose to effect a forcible removal of the Cherokees became too obvious to be longer questioned they remained faithful to their work. But from 1829 to 1835 the odious project was pushed forward to its disastrous results. Yet for nearly twenty years the Cherokee mission, largely sustained by the sympathy of the Presbyterian Church in Tennessee, presented a noble example of self-denying Christian effort,—the more striking when contrasted with the greed and injustice of men who viewed the native tribes only in the light of their own mercenary projects.

[The above account is excerpted, with some editing, from E. H. Gillett’s very readable History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. (1864), Vol. II, pp. 320-323.]

Words to Live By:
There are perhaps no easy answers when faced with such situations. One thing is clear, the Church is tasked by her Lord with the charge of proclaiming the Gospel, irrespective of opposition.  “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19b-20). Pray that we might be spared such trials, but if they come, may we be found faithful to the One who bought us with His own blood.

Truly there is nothing new under the sun. This from THE CHARLESTON OBSERVER, October 8, 1836:

MORALS! KNIVES!!

The practice of carrying knives and Pistols in our peaceable community prevails to an alarming extent, and should be expressly prohibited by an act of the Legislature as unlawful weapons. Lord Ellenborough it will be recollected, caused a law to be passed making it a capital offense to stab, wound, or maim, with felonious intent; and if we cannot check a fierce and furious spirit in other sections of the country, means, strong and effectual means must be adopted to prevent it here. Persons must not misunderstand their rights—they must not suppose because this is called a free country that it is not, or was not a country of laws—of order and good government. Carrying Knives and Pistols is illegal, because it may lead to a breach of the peace. A man armed at all points with deadly weapons is more apt to get into broils and difficulties than he who is unarmed, for he feels confident of his own strength, and in a sudden ebullition of passion the dagger may be fatally used. They should be abolished by Statute : there is no necessity to carry them, and they are dangerous to the peace, the safety, and the character of the City.

Now this is wrong in a city constituted like ours, and the subject should occupy the attention of our public authorities, and above all convictions for stabbing should be followed by strong and severe punishments.—New York Evening Star.

It is strange that Intelligent Editors should live in the midst of scenes of immorality for years, comment upon them in every paper, and in all aspects, and yet should let their philosophy be perpetually on the surface. What harm in carrying knives by the gross, if there is no disposition to use them? Is it the habit of carrying private arms, or the habit of cherishing those feelings which make arms pernicious, that is to be censured? If Quakers should arm their whole sect, who would fear evil? And why? Quakers do not drink, don’t gamble, do not haunt theatres, nor horse races, nor sporting clubs.—Now if the good citizens of New York would let alone the knives and pistols and dirks and fall upon the evil morals of their vagrant population, if they would purge out their grog shops—maintain the influence of religion over the community, visit theatres less and church more, we should soon hear as little about the danger of carrying “knives,” as we did forty or fifty years ago. And their political papers, if they would cease to laud the theatre, to puff demoralizing scenes, would find less need of bewailing the consequences. As it is in the morning they bid god speed to strong causes of vice and immorality; and in the evening they bemoan their natural and inevitable results. This is double handed folly.

[excerpted from The Charleston Observer 10.41 (8 October 1836): 162, columns 3-4.]

The Tide of War Turned to Favor Independence of America
by Rev. David T. Myers

Americans were gathering to do battle that fall of 1780.  The only problem was that those who were on the side of England and those who were in favor of independence were the forces who were gathering.  It would be neighbor against neighbor, Patriots against Tories, Continental troops against British troops.

It would also be a “pay-back” battle. Colonials down in the southeastern parts of what later on be called the United States had suffered at the hands of the British troops under Lord Cornwallis.  In fact, if you were associated with the Scot-Irish Presbyterians in the south, you especially had your pastor persecuted, their manses burned, the theological libraries destroyed, the psalter thrown away, and the wife and families left destitute.  If you were on the other side of the skirmish with British troops, there would often be a “no quarter” order handed on, like at the Battle of Waxhaw.

So when the order came to gather, the patriots mounted their horses, said their farewells to their wives and children, and with their guns, rode to the designated spot. And who came but members from the Presbyterian congregations of the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia. Seven hundred and fifty Presbyterian patriots gathered at the designated spot.

Once there, William Campbell picked out the best of the men in a force of one thousand men.  These were individuals who had gained their prowess from fighting the Indians in their hamlets and towns.  Some were part of the regular Continental line.  They went in search of British commander Patrick Ferguson, who had settled down on King’s Mountain near the border of North and South Carolina.

Finding him camped there with eleven hundred loyalist on October 7, 1780, they surrounded the area and began to advance up the hill to begin the attack.  Several times, the British loyalist would charge with the bayonet and push the patriots down the incline.  In the end of the short battle, they could not defend their area, given the deadly sharpshooting of the riflemen. Ferguson was killed and his entire force either killed or captured.

At several points, atrocities took place with small groups of the patriot soldiers.  But when patriot officers, many of whom were Presbyterian elders, arrived on the scene, such practices were halted. It was a complete victory of the forces of Britain, and a turning point in the Revolution. Cornwallis began to retreat, with the patriots of Mecklenburg with their long rifles, hitting the flanks of the army.

The tide of the American revolution was changed to the favor of the American cause.

Words to live by:
It is amazing how the Lord work through His spirit in the actions of His church.  All can be dark and dreary. It seems as if His church is hanging on by their fingers in the great battles of righteousness. Then His people can gather, sometimes in desperation, and seek to be faithful to the cause and kingdom of Christ. And God will bring out a great victory to the glory of His name and the good of His people. We must simply be faithful to our God at all times. Faithful to His Word and will, is the condition of God’s blessings.