None Excelled Him on Two Continents

Samuel Blair was born in Ireland in 1712 and emigrated to America at a young age.  Educated at the Log College by William Tennent, he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Philadelphia on November 9, 1733.  Called to two congregations first in New Jersey, he ministered the Word of grace for six years. But it was at Faggs Manor Presbyterian Church in Cochranville, Pennsylvania where he came to have his greatest influence upon colonial America.

Installed there in April of 1740, he began a classical and theological college for pastoral training, similar to what he had received at the Log College. The new school would later produce for the kingdom of grace men like Samuel Davies, apostle to Virginia, John Rodgers, first moderator of the General Assembly, John McMillan, Apostle to western Pennsylvania, Charles Cummings, Robert Smith, Hugh Henry and many others who would make a mark for Christ’s kingdom.

In 1740, a great reawakening came upon the colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia, including Faggs Manor Presbyterian Church. Blair took as his initial text that of our Lord’s words in Matthew 6:33, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness.”  That priority in the things of the Lord brought a spiritual awakening and revival to the people of that 1730 congregation. Soon, Pastor Blair was engaged in preaching tours all over New England. All of this revival emphasis, plus the question of education for the ministry brought about a schism in the Presbyterian Church in 1741.

In his doctrinal views, Samuel Blair was thoroughly Calvinistic. A spiritual awakening is of the Lord. Period! He did not hesitate to preach on predestination to his people. His pulpit manner was such that Samuel Davies believed no one was more excellent than he was in exposition of the Word of God. When the latter took a trip to England to raise funds for the College of New Jersey, and heard many a fine preacher, he still concluded that none held a candle to Samuel Blair.

Over his grave in the cemetery, at what is now called Manor Presbyterian Church, there is found the following inscription. It says “Here lieth the body of THE REV. SAMUEL BLAIR, Who departed this life The Fifth Day of July, 1751, Aged Thirty-nine Years and Twenty-one Days. In yonder sacred house I spent my breath; Now silent, mouldering, her I lie in death; These lips shall wake, and yet declare A dread Amen to truths they published there.”

Words to live by:  Thirty nine years plus!  Not a large amount of life on this earth was spent by the Rev. Samuel Blair. But his life was not to be measured by the shortness of his life, but rather by what the Holy Spirit accomplished through Him for the sake of the gospel. And when we look at that, Samuel Blair lived a full life for the increase of the kingdom and the edification of the elect. Only one life will soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Today we present two recollections on the first professor of the Princeton Theological Seminary, the esteemed Rev. Dr. Archibald Alexander [1772-1851]. The first of these recollections is found on page 1 of THE CHRISTIAN OBSERVER, vol. 48, no. 45 (10 November 1869), though the author of the piece is identified solely by the pseudonym “Memor.” The second account is drawn from RECOLLECTIONS OF USEFUL PERSONS AND IMPORTANT EVENTS, by S.C. Jennings, D.D. (1884), pp. 99-100. The portrait of Dr. Alexander is taken from Nevin’s PRESBYTERIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA.

For the Observer and Commonwealth
REV. DR. ARCHIBALD ALEXANDER

Dear good old Dr. Alexander! How we loved him in New Jersey! Many a time have I seen people stop and look at him as he passed—even those who had never seen him loved and admired. The true Christian knew why. In the pulpit he was very different from many of the present day, but we all felt that he was indeed a minister of Jesus Christ unto us, and in the sacred desk, and at the communion table we seemed to be brought near to God and to Heaven. In this respect few were his equals and this power is a great gift. Many living servants of God know that they feel his influence to this day and thank God for it. Sabbath afternoon we met in the lecture room for conversation up on some subject before announced. Any student said what he wished, and they spoke freely, moderately and well. But our spiritual feast was when Dr. Alexander and Dr. Miller, and young professor Hodge, as he was then, sitting in their chairs would give us the essence of their matured thoughts. At the time I admired and relished it, but in riper years only could I really appreciate our privilege. There was no apparent effort, but the spring of living thought seemed to pour forth spontaneously. In this exercise Dr. Alexander excelled, and I thought could condense more ideas in a few sentences than any man I ever met. He was so devout and spiritual and earnest that we felt his words. “Pray”—on one occasion, he said, “pray on. And if in the closet alone with God you desire to remain longer and God seems indeed to be there,—Pray on; and if your heart inclines you to tarry longer—pray on and hour after hour—hour after hour. It is a heavenly gale, and you may make more advances than you have in a year, ‘Pray on.’ ”  —Memor.
—The Christian Observer 48.45 (10 November 1869): 1.

«—∞—»

“Between the years 1824 and 1827, Drs. Alexander and Miller and Professor Hodge were (in the Presbyterian Church) the only public instructors of theological students. Dr. Alexander commenced this work in 1812. Twelve years afterward he was still vigorous in mind. In body he was rather small, with some gray hairs. As he sat in the recitation room, reclining his head upon his hand, small, piercing eyes looked upon the students, ready to approve their performances; or, when need be, to correct their mistakes. He appeared rather reserved, and yet in private was very paternal, exercising his thorough knowledge of human nature with great skill.

“A peculiarity in him was the clearness of his style in teaching and preaching. His great learning enabled him to use the very words—mostly of Saxon origin—by which his hearers comprehended the truth easily. This example of his should be imitated by young ministers of our time. While he adapted language to his subject, as when he wrote his volume on the Canon of Sacred Scriptures, and that on the Evidences of Christianity, his manner of preaching was more like his admirable book of Christian Experience—clear, practical and searching. There was no going outside of the themes of the Bible to find something new and entertaining. He condemned unprofitable speculations in the class room, and never practiced them in the pulpit. In his lectures on pastoral care to the students, he recommended special seasons of labor to promote revivals, wisely chosen, with the choice of proper persons to give aid in the preaching. I remember when there was a revival at Princeton, he went to give instruction to the young.”
—Jennings, S.C., Recollections of Useful Persons and Important Events within Seventy Years. Vancefort, PA: J. Dillon & Son, 1884. Pp. 99-100.

Words to Live By:
What a wonderful encouragement!—”Pray on; and if your heart inclines you to tarry longer—pray on and hour after hour—hour after hour. It is a heavenly gale, and you may make more advances than you have in a year, ‘Pray on.’ ”
Pray on, brothers and sisters, pray on indeed. Now as never before, come before the Lord’s throne of grace and glory and seek Him earnestly, that His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.

A Presbyterian Martyr in the Abolitionist Cause
by Rev. David T. Myers

This Presbyterian minister was called by some the first casualty of the Civil War. Certainly, his death on November 7, 1837 was over the primary issue of that War Between the States, namely, that of slavery. With the intriguing name of Elijah Lovejoy, the pastor of Des Peres Presbyterian Church and later, the College Avenue Presbyterian Church, was well-known in the twin states of Missouri and Illinois in the early part of the nineteenth century.

He was the son of a Congregationalist minister, but Elijah only came to faith in Christ as a young adult, while sitting under the preaching of a Presbyterian preacher. No long after, he made the decision to attend Princeton Theological Seminary and was ordained in 1833, shortly after graduation. (See April 18th historical devotional). It wasn’t his ministry in the pulpit which was so controversial. Nor was it his service as the Stated Clerk of the local Presbytery. Both of these positions were acceptable to the church world, and unexceptional in the world at large. What set him up in notoriety was that he had organized the American Anti-Slavery Society in the area. He then backed up that organization as a newspaper editor of an abolitionist paper in both St. Louis, Missouri and Alton, Illinois.

Both of these places were on the front line of this issue. Missouri was a slave state, even though all around her were free states. It was also the focal point of slave catchers who would enter into their confines to hunt down slaves who had escaped their plantations. In short, it was the center of both pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the population. And Elijah Lovejoy became the voice of the latter faction.

Initially, reactions against Rev. Lovejoy’s work were aimed solely at the tools of his publishing trade. The pro-slavery citizens of the area simply responded to the good Presbyterian minister by destroying the printing press of his abolitionist newspaper, which effectively stopped him from printing either the St. Louis Observer or the Alton Times. Three times, his printing press was destroyed and its parts were scattered into the Missouri River. Each time, another press was located and the abolitionist newspaper continued to be published.

As Rev. Lovejoy sought to prevent yet another attempt to hinder his work, his next printing press was moved to a warehouse building near the waterfront. This time a dozen or so law enforcement men were organized to guard it, assisted by Rev. Lovejoy, and his supporters. But the people who were determined to stop him were larger in number. There are varying reports of the ensuing skirmish. Some say that when Rev. Lovejoy tried to shove a ladder, placed there for the purposes of burning the two-story building, away from the structure, he was killed by a shotgun slug fired from the front of the building. Others say that he tried to reason with the mob on the ground floor before being shot. In either case, he was killed instantly in the ensuing gun battle. The printing press was again destroyed after his killing, and with his death, tensions continued to be inflamed. A later attempted prosecution in the courts failed to find anyone guilty.

A monument was erected in 1897 in his memory, at a cemetery in Alton, Illinois. But in the ensuing years, and particularly with the heat of national crisis in 1861–1865, in many ways Lovejoy became little more than a footnote in the nation’s history. To this day there are certainly those who work to keep alive the memory of his work, but for most, it seems he is largely forgotten.

Words to live by:
Elijah Lovejoy had a firm conviction that the righteous God would overrule the sin of slavery, for the good of black and whites alike, to say nothing of His own glory. With firm conviction, this Presbyterian clergyman became a catalyst in print for efforts to put an end to the terrible institution. He paid the ultimate price for his stand against slavery. The church today needs godly men and women to take stands against the evils of our day. Will you be one who will answer that call for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ?

The Town which Billy Sunday Couldn’t Tame
by Rev. David T. Myers

“Chicago, Chicago, that toddling town
Chicago, Chicago, I’ll show you around, I love it
Bet your bottom dollar, you’ll lose the blues in Chicago
Chicago, the town that Billy Sunday couldn’t shut down.”

So went the opening lines of Frank Sinatra’s song, “Chicago,” which prominently proclaimed it as “the town which Billy Sunday couldn’t tame.” This writer often wondered whether listeners even knew who Billy Sunday was, but the populations of both small and large towns and cities in the early part of the twentieth century knew him well. Billy Sunday was an evangelist, who preached  to one hundred million people during his crusades, with the result that one million professed Christ as Lord and Savior. He was also a Presbyterian, having been ordained in 1903 by that church.

Billy Sunday was born William Asley Sunday in Iowa on November 19, 1862. His father was a Union Army veteran of the Civil War, and died of complications from battlefield wounds. His mother, unable to care for him and a brother, sent him to two Orphan Homes in Iowa. He eventually came under the tutelage of a Lt. Governor of Iowa who sent him to a public high school. It was there that this athleticism stood out, especially on the baseball field. Billy went on to play in the National League with Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia professional baseball  teams in the latter part of the eighteen hundreds.

It was while he was in Chicago in 1880 that he heard a street corner evangelist who invited him to attend the Pacific Garden Mission. He did, and  was converted to evangelical Christianity.  He began to attend a Presbyterian Church in Chicago regularly.  It was there that he met his wife, Helen Amelia “Nell” Thompson. They were married in September, 1888. In the next decade, after working for the YMCA, he became the advance man for Presbyterian evangelist J. W. Chapman.  When the latter returned to the pastorate, Billy Sunday took over the evangelistic crusades in small and large towns alike.

He popularized the “sawdust trail” in large wooden tabernacles, built for just the crusades. During his ministry, over 300 crusades were held in 39 years, with the gospel being presented and believed. In Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, for example, over twenty-five percent of the population came to Christ.  In the ensuing year, over 200 taverns permanently closed down. It was said that as he preached his messages, his Bible was always opened to the Messianic text of Isaiah 61:1, which reads, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath send me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” (KJV)   And all these results were being accomplished during his meetings.

Billy Sunday went to be with the Lord on November 6, 1935. His funeral was held at Moody Memorial Church in Chicago, Illinois, with Harry Ironside presiding, and 4400 mourners present.  His wife lived until 1957.

Words to live by: While the great evangelical truths of the historic Christian faith were believed and proclaimed by Billy Sunday, we cannot affirm that Biblical Calvinism was indeed taught by this Presbyterian evangelist. There were many flaws in his theology. He preached that man had some part in his conversion, even though God had always the greater part. Further, converts were sent back to the churches in which their membership was found, even if they were Roman Catholic. The deepest tragedy—a common one among men consumed by their ministry—his own children had disastrous moral lives as a result of Rev. Sunday’s frequent abandonment of his family for crusade meetings. There is much that we can commend, but also much to be sorrowful about in his life and ministry. God’s people, and pastors especially, need to remember that marriage, and thus family too, precedes and is the , in Scripture, marriage and family precede the existence of the Church. We must first be faithful in the context of our family before we can truly be fruitful in ministry to others.

The following editorial appeared on the pages of THE PRESBYTERIAN in November of 1924 [vol. 94, no. 45 (6 November 1924): 3-4].
It was provided without indication of authorship, but the Rev. David S. Kennedy was editor-in-chief at that time and thus was the likely author. Associate editors included William L. McEwan, Maitland Alexander, Samuel G. Craig, Clarence E. Macartney and J. Gresham Machen, and I suppose any of these men could also have authored this editorial. The editorial itself speaks a basic truth about the foundation of the Christian faith, while also providing an example of a straight-forward apologetic method for the modern era.

The Factual Basis of Christianity

One of the outstanding characteristics of modern religious liberalism—that which as much as anything else differentiates between it and historical Christianity and especially between it and evangelical Christianity—is its open or implied denial of the factual basis of the Christian religion.

This is particularly evident on the part of Dr. Fosdick, whose pen and tongue are doing so much to commend it to the present generation. His recent letter to the Presbytery of New York makes clear that his refusal to subscribe to the Westminster Confession is due not to the fact that he regards this creed as false as compared with other existing creeds, but rather to the fact that in the nature of the case, no creed can be true in any strict sense of the word. All creeds, all expressions of belief, according to Dr. Fosdick, are but the transient phrasing of what men have experienced within their own souls, with their fellows, or with God. That this holds good, in his estimation, of the doctrinal statements of the Scriptures as truly as it does of the Westminster Confession, is made perfectly clear in his recent book, The Modern Use of the Bible, which is being so widely and persistently advertised at the present time. Apart from the fact that Dr. Fosdick believes that the reduced Jesus left [to] us after literary and historical criticism has done its work was a real, historical person, there is virtually no recognition whatever of the factual basis of Christianity in this book. Everywhere it is maintained that the essential value of the Bible lies in its “reproducible experiences,” not in the historical facts or happenings it records. Dr. Fosdick has the Bible in mind as well as the creeds when he writes : “Christianity is a way of life, incarnate in Christ, that has expressed itself in many formulas, and will yet express itself in many more, and the world will ultimately choose that church which produces the life, whatever the formulas may be in which she carries it” (page 205). When it is considered that a few paragraphs preceding this he says, with the emphasis of italics, of the differences between Lutheranism, Calvinism, Episcopalianism, Methodism, Congregationalism, Unitarianism— defined as an “intellectual” revolt against an incredible metaphysic”—that “nothing matters in all this except the things that lead men into more abundant life” (page 201), it is evident that facts in the sense of events that have happened do not enter into his conception of Christianity at all in any vital way.

That Dr. Fosdick speaks as a liberal rather than a Baptist is obvious. If proof of this were needed—though of course, it is not—it could  be found in the also recent book, Christianity at the Cross Roads, by that truly representative Baptist, President E.Y. Mullins, of Louisville. As President Mullins truly maintains, the present controversy is ultimately a controversy about facts. At the basis of the present attack on evangelical Christianity is an unwarranted denial of the Christian facts. Over against those for whom Dr. Fosdick speaks, President Mullins affirms that Christianity “is primarily a religion of facts. The facts of experience and life confirm the facts of history. If these are unstable, the whole structure is unstable. Doctrinal systems of various kinds have arisen as interpretations of the facts. These, of course, cannot all be equally true. But the facts on which these systems attempt to build contain the vital issue for modern controversy” (page 176). When President Mullins so speaks, he speaks for evangelical Christians everywhere. The religion we profess is a religion with a factual basis. A mighty series of facts that find their culmination in the incarnation, atonement and heavenly priesthood of Christ supplies the foundation of the Christian religion. They are not to be regarded as a terminus in themselves ; and yet, apart from them, there would not be, and could not be, such a thing as Christianity. It cannot be said too strongly or too often that Christianity is grounded in facts, that it is what it is because certain things actually happened in the past. Whoever  rejects these facts or denies their eternal value and significance is, whether or not he realizes it, an enemy of the Christian religion.

To perceive the place that facts in this sense occupy in the Christian religion is to perceive that the chief value of the Bible lies in the fact that it records these happenings. It is to perceive that the question of the historical truthfulness of the Bible is a question of the first importance for Christianity. Compared with these facts, the moral and spiritual lessons the Bible teaches, the ideals it inculcates, and the religious experiences it relates are matters of secondary importance.

It is to perceive also that a non-miraculous Christianity is just no Christianity at all. We can eliminate the miraculous only as we eliminate the facts that lie at the basis of the Christian religion. Our choice, therefore, is not between a miraculous and a non-miraculous Christianity, but between a miraculous Christianity and no Christianity at all.

Again, it is to perceive that doctrines enter into the very substance of Christianity. A religion based on facts is necessarily a doctrinal religion, inasmuch as its facts have meaning only as they are interpreted. We may go further and say that the existence of a doctrinal authority is essential to a religion based on facts. How can we be assured that we rightly understand the meaning of these great facts unless we possess an authoritative interpretation of those facts? No one values the Bible aright unless he realizes that it contains not only a record of the great facts, apart from which there could be no such religion as the Christian religion, but an authoritative interpretation of those facts. Give the facts no interpretation other than that of the New Testament, and they will give us something other than Christianity. There is but one Christian interpretation of these facts, and that was given by Christ and His apostles.

Yet again to perceive the factual basis of Christianity is to perceive the sense in which it is a redemptive religion. It is to perceive that it is a redemptive religion, not in the vague sense characteristic of other religions, but in the particular sense that it offers salvation from sin, conceived as guilt and power and pollution, through the expiatory death of Jesus Christ. Christianity comes to us telling us, first of all, not what we must do to save ourselves, but what Christ has done to save us. At the heart of the Christian religion is the conviction that Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree. Apart from this fact, there is no redemption in the Christian sense of the word.

Other considerations might be mentioned, but these are sufficient to indicate the extent and degree to which facts are constitutive of the Christian religion; and thus to make clear that no system of thought and life that ignores or denies these facts is rightly called Christianity.