A Scottish Missionary to the Jews
by Rev. David T Myers

How about another mystery quiz on This Day in Presbyterian History? Who said the following:  “I am first a Christian. Second, I am a catholic. (Author: note the small “c”); Third, I am a Calvinist.  Next, I am a paedobaptist. Fifth, I am a Presbyterian. I cannot reverse this order.” If you answered, “John Duncan,” or better yet, “Rabbi Duncan,” give yourself a proverbial pat on the back.

John Duncan’s years were 1796  to 1870, mostly in Scotland. His parents were  humble but pious Christians. They had a trying time in that all of their children had died in infancy. Indeed, son John developed a a case of small pox at a young age which almost killed him. In the process, it left him blind in one eye. Despite  his father’s employment as a shoemaker, son John entered at age 9 the prestigious grammar school in Aberdeen, Scotland, from which he graduated at age 14. With that he entered Manschal University, earning a master of arts in 1814.

His interest was that of becoming a minister. There was only one problem. Despite his parent’s godly heritage in the Associate Church of Scotland, young John was an atheist. Entering the theological college of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, he graduated in 1821, still holding atheistic views! After being denied entrance into the Presbytery of Aberdeen because he couldn’t affirm the Westminster Standards, he switched from atheism to theism. But he was still without Christ as Lord and Savior.

His licensure took place by the Presbytery of Aberdeen on June 24, 1825 however! (Author: Where were their minds?) John Duncan was still outside of Christ. One year later, after a personal conversation with  Rev. Cesar Milan, he finally bent his knee to Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior. After this experience, he had a lifelong dread of  superficial Christianity. On April 28, 1836, he was ordained a minister of the gospel.

In 1837, he married Janet Tower, with whom he had one child.  The difficult birth of their second child ended in both the death of his wife and child.  Looking at his wife’s body in the casket, he quoted Shorter Catechism number 37, “The souls of believers are at their death make perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory; and their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves, till the resurrection.”  This  catechism answer comforted him.

It was around this time that he began to have an interest in, and sympathy for, the Jewish people, especially for their salvation. The Church of Scotland set up in 1839 a Committee for the Conversion of the Jews. Two years later, on This Day in Presbyterian History, May 16, 1841, John Duncan, his new wife, and two others moved to Hungary.

His ministry there was only for two short years, but his passion for the souls of Jews caused many to dub him “Rabbi Duncan.”  Through Sabbath peaching of the gospel and what we would call “friendship evangelism” today, countless Jews became Christians.  Famous among the latter was Alfred Edersheim.  The Disruption of 1843 took place in Scotland and John “Rabbi” Duncan traveled home to his mother country.  Joining the Free Church of Scotland, he took the chair of Hebrew and Oriental Lanuages at their new college, where he stayed until his death of 1870.

Words to Live By:
There is no doubt John “Rabbi” Duncan had a spiritual journey which was long in coming.   His story cries out for our Sessions and Presbyters to make sure  that a work of saving grace has occurred in the souls of our members and candidates for church office.  Remember Jude 3 and 4.

When Methodists Became Presbyterians
by Rev.David T. Myers

The chart on America’s Pictorial history of Presbyterians  has always been somewhat confusing to this writer.  Yes, one can see the history of how Reformed and evangelical  Presbyterians have developed into what they are today. But all the additions and separations down through the ages since 1706 in America still causes one to wonder  about them.  An example of this is  the 1920’s union of the  Welsh Calvinistic Methodists with the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

With the former, we are taken back to the church in Wales in the eighteenth century.  An early leader Howell Harris from Wales studied at England’s Oxford University.  While there, he was influenced by the infant Methodist movement with its emphasis on study, devotions and visitation.  Returning to Wales in 1735,  he began to preach in the Methodist manner of ministry.  Joined by Daniel Rowland and George Whitefield, they began to shape the early church in that land of Wales.  George Whitefield’s emphasis on the teachings of John Calvin swung the church toward Calvinism so that the Protestant church on that island came to be known as the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Church. 

Like the early Presbyterians in Scotland, immigrants from Wales emigrated to the American colonies, like Pennsylvania, New York, and later Kansas.  By 1828, they were organized into six “presbyteries” with a general assembly every three years.  Their confession of faith was modeled after the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Discussion with the Presbyterian Church took place in the eighteen hundreds, but no talk of merger was successful.  It  was not until – and here we have to guess the month and the day –  May 15, 1920, that the smaller Welsh Presbyterian church  merged into the Presbyterian church in the United States of America by a vote of  99 to 20. Their Calvinistic theology as well as their confession built upon the Westminster Confession of Faith made this union to possible.  They brought 14,000 members, and six missionaries serving in India into the union.

Words to Live By:
Unions of like minded bodies are not foreign to American Presbyterian history.  And local names in our states like a Welsh Presbyterian Church reflect this union.  We rejoice in such Biblical unions.  It is only where unions wind up giving up solid Biblical doctrines that the Bible believer must reject all  such unions.  Our basis must always be the Reformed faith, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and the Great Commission of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Life of a Christian Minister Can Never Be Written.
by Rev. David T. Myers

Erskine Mason was born in New York City on April 16, 1805. He was the youngest child of the Rev. John M. and Anna L. Mason, D.D. As a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary in 1825, Erskine was ordained on October 20, 1826 and installed as pastor of the Scotch Presbyterian Church on Cedar Street in the City. Almost a year later he married, and this at roughly the same time that he was installed as pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Schenectady. Then, with but three years experience, he was called to serve the prestigious Bleeker Street Presbyterian Church in New York City. Another six years later, he accepted a position as professor of Church History at Union Theological Seminary, while retaining his post as pastor of the Bleeker Street Church. By 1846, his congregation could see that he needed a time of rest and relaxation, and so enabled him to spend several months in Europe. He returned refreshed and it appeared that he had many years of ministry ahead of him. Yet surprisingly, his life proved short. Returning from an annual outing in the country in August of 1850, he soon felt weak and his health began to decline. When his last moments came, he declared, “It is all bright and clear.” Seated in his chair, he breathed his last, and died on May 14, 1851.

That too brief survey of his life will have to suffice this day, if we are to leave room for the wonderful opening words spoken in memory of Rev. Mason. The following, though admittedly a bit flowery (in good nineteenth-century fashion), was composed by the Rev. William Adams. Given the focus of our blog, I thought it appropriate to reproduce his words here:—

“The life of a Christian minister never can be written. Its incidents may be easily mentioned, for they are few. His parentage, birth, education, conversion, ordination, preaching, illness and death, comprise the whole. The whole? His real life consists not in striking and startling events. When the streams are flushed with the spring-freshet, overflowing the banks and sweeping away the dams and the bridges, the marvel is heralded in every newspaper; but when the same streams flow quietly along their ordinary channels, making the meadows to smile with verdure, refreshing the roots of the trees and turning the wheels of the mill, they excite no remark, even though their tranquil flow awakens a grateful admiration. Sum up the professional labors of a minister, and give the product in so many sermons, written and delivered!

“As well to attempt to gather up the rain, measure and weigh it. A certain amount of water you may show, but what of the moisture which has been absorbed by the tender vegetable, and the leaves of the trees? The life of a preacher is spent in addressing the intellect and conscience of his fellow-men. Ten, twenty, thirty years has he preached. How many thoughts, in how many minds has he suggested during such a period! What manifold judgments and purposes, what great hopes and wise fears have had their origin in his own thoughts and words! What sayings of his have been lodged in men’s minds, which have worked in secret about the roots of character! Even while despondent himself, because so few visible results of his toil are revealed, his opinions by insensible degrees are growing into the convictions of others, and his own life is infused into the life of a whole generation.

“It is a peculiarity of his position that he touches the life of his people at those points which are the most memorable and important in their existence. He unites them in marriage, baptizes their children, and buries their dead. He dies, and is soon forgotten by the world. The sable drapery which was hung about his pulpit on his funeral day is taken down; his successor is chosen and installed, and the tide of life rolls on as before. But he is not forgotten by all. His life is not all lost and dissipated. As the manners of a father are acted over in his son, and the smile of a mother will brighten again, after she is dead, on the face of her daughter, so will the sentiments of a minister be transmitted after his ministry is closed, his words be repeated after he has ceased to speak, and all his hopes and wishes live again in other hearts, long after his own beats no more. His biography will not be finished nor disclosed till that day when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed; and the seals of his ministry will be set, like stars in the firmament for ever and ever.

“To accommodate to a Christian minister, the language employed by Mr. Coleridge, in reference to Bell, the founder of schools:—”Would I frame to myself the most inspirating representation of future bliss, which my mind is capable of comprehending, it would be embodied to me in the idea of such an one receiving at some distant period, the appropriate reward of his earthly labors, when thousands of glorified spirits, whose reason and conscience had, through his efforts, been unfolded, shall sing the song of their own redemption, and pouring forth praise to God and to their Saviour, shall repeat his ‘new name’ in heave, give thanks for his earthly virtues, as the chosen instrument of divine mercy to themselves, and not seldom, perhaps, turning their eyes toward him, as from the sun to its image in the fountain, with secondary gratitude and the permitted utterance of a human love.”

Words to Live By:
Rev. Adams concluded his memoir for Rev. Mason:—
“No one who goes hence returns to finish the work of life. But there is intensity of motive enough in the sober truth that every man is actually engaged day by day in writing that autobiography, which neither time nor eternity will efface. It may be written in high places or in low, in public remembrance or in the honest heart of domestic affection, but we are writing fast, we are writing sure, we are writing for eternity. Happy is he who, through the grace of God assisting him, like the subject of this memoir, records such lessons of kindness, truth and wisdom, that when he is gone, he will be held in grateful remembrance; happier still to have one’s name written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, that when every memorial and monument of his earthly history has perished, he may ascend with the Son of God, to Honour, Glory and Immortality.”

Born in Rendham, Massachusetts on March 13, 1918, Thomas G. Cross was educated at Hampton Sydney College and went on to prepare for the ministry at Faith Theological Seminary. In a ministerial career that spanned fifty years, the Rev. Thomas G. Cross was instrumental in establishing forty churches across the United States. He was ordained by the Bible Presbyterian denomination in 1943 and from 1948 to 1953, served as General Secretary for the National Presbyterian Missions agency. Among his published works is a concise history of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod.

The last years of his life were devoted to developing a pleasant and affordable retirement center primarily for the widows of Calvary and Palmetto Presbyteries. Bailey Manor, as it was named, in Clinton, South Carolina, was created from a former hospital. The Rev. Thomas G. Cross passed away on May 12, 1994.

Dr. Cross was survived by his widow, four sons and a large extended family including three brothers, David, Howard, and Walter G., Jr., all of whom also became PCA teaching elders. David, the youngest of the Cross brothers, has graciously supplied us today with his own recollections of his brother Thomas:—

Rev. Dr. Thomas G. Cross – March 13, 1918 – May 12, 1994
by his youngest brother, David Cross.

Tom was almost 24 years old and had been married to Jane for almost 2 years when I was born, so my earliest recollections of Tom are of his visits to our parents’ home in Scranton, PA. We sat around the kitchen table as he told stories about driving the length and breadth of the United States and even into Canada to help small groups of people who wanted to form a Bible Presbyterian Church. Many of those churches are now part of the Presbyterian Church in America. The skills in business affairs that he learned from our father were valuable assets in the things he did for those churches.

Tom was the General Secretary (Chief Operating Officer) of National Missions, the church planting agency of the denomination. As the ministry grew, Tom moved it to St Louis, where Covenant College and Seminary were starting and at the time was the center of the country based on population.

Soon after that move increasing tinnitus exacerbated by air travel and the needs of a family of four boys, motivated him to accept a call to the Bible Presbyterian Church in Greenville, SC. But his interest in church planting never dimmed. He became the founding pastor of Mitchell Road PCA as well as encouraging the planting of several other churches in that part of the state.

When he retired from Mitchell Road he moved to Columbia, SC to start yet another church. Then returned to Greenville where he helped a struggling church to get moving.

For years he, and some like-minded men had been working on the idea of having a retirement home for people of average means. The right location seemed to elude them until a redundant hospital building became available in Clinton, SC. Tom and Jane sold their lovely home and moved into one of the first available apartments converted from old hospital rooms in Bailey Manor, which at the time was still a building site.

My last recollection of Tom was his visit to England in 1993. I was serving there with Mission To the World. He came for the 350^th anniversary celebration of the formation of the Westminster Assembly. He preached in the tiny church we were planting in Chelmsford and he wanted to know about things, even the small businesses that operated from trailers and sold tea and sandwiches alongside the highways.

Tom never lost his enthusiasm for the spread of the gospel, nor his interest in the people who surrounded him. His example has been a challenge to me for my whole life.

Words to Live By:
Tom Cross never lost his enthusiasm for the spread of the gospel.  Do you, as a reader of this post, have an enthusiasm for the spread of the gospel?  After all, that is what the Great Commission is all about, starting in your  home town (your Jerusalem), going to your county or state (your Judea), including parts of your living area which may be on the adverse side of life (your Samaria), and going through support of foreign missionaries, or going yourself to the other parts of the world.  May we all have Tom Cross’ testimony, that of being on fire for the spread of the gospel.

A Plea for Ministers and Money
by Rev. David T. Myers

Most of us can remember Paul’s vision which he experienced on his second missionary journey of a man who called out to the apostle, saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” (NIV – Acts 16:9)   Well, we don’t have any record of any visionary request for help, but early Presbyterians in this blessed land did correspond with Presbyterians in the mother country just two years after the organization of the Presbytery of Philadelphia in 1707.  There is a letter written on May 11, 1709 to Presbyterians in London, England from the Presbyterian ministers in the Philadelphia Presbytery appealing for more men and money to help the infant Presbyterian Church get off the ground.  Listen to the pathos in their words:

“Unto whom can we apply ourselves more fitly than unto our fathers, who have been extolled in the reformed churches for their large bounty and benevolence in their necessities!  We doubt not, but if the sum of about two hundred pounds per annum, were raised for the encouragement of ministers in these parts, it would enable ministers and people to erect eight congregations, and ourselves put in better circumstances than hitherto we have been.  We are at present seven ministers, most of whose outward affairs are so straightened as to crave relief, unto which, if two or three more were added, it would greatly strengthen our interest, which does miserably suffer, as things are at present are among us.

“Sir, if we shall be supplied with ministers from you, which we earnestly desire; with your benevolence to the value above, you may be assured of our fidelity and Christian care in distributing it to the best ends and purposes we can, so as we hope we shall be able to give a just and fair account for every part of it to yourself and others, by our letters to you.

“That our evangelical affairs may be the better managed, we have formed ourselves into a Presbytery, annually convened.  It is a sore distress and trouble unto us, that we are not able to comply with the desires of sundry places, crying unto us for ministers.  Therefore we earnestly beseech you to intercede with the ministers of London, to extend their charity to us, otherwise many people will remain in a perishing condition as to spiritual things.”

It is obvious that the seven ministers of the Presbytery of Philadelphia certainly saw that the fields of America were ripe unto harvest.  They also sadly realized that the laborers were few so as to reap that spiritual harvest.  And so they, in a spirit of prayer, asked for both ministers and money to take advantage of the opportunities for a wide and effective service in the American colonies.

It would be at a later date in the history of the American church, indeed several decades from this date,  that the question of where you were trained educationally became an issue in the visible church.  But at this early date in American Presbyterian history, they were at a critical crossroads, as the letter above proves.  They needed more pastors and more money to support those who were present in ministering to the masses.

Words to Live By: Such a prayer and plea as this is never outdated, even in current America.  We might add the adjective “faithful” before the men who are needed in our conservative Presbyterian and Reformed church bodies, but the need is the same.  Will you be a prayer warrior before our Sovereign God and heavenly Father for Him to thrust out faithful  laborers into the harvest fields?