April 2015

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April 18: Rev. John Dorrance

18 April, 2015 in April 2015 by archivist | No comments

“But honey!, these books are an investment!”

Today we will look briefly at the life and ministry of the Rev. John Dorrance. Recently I’ve come to the realization that if you dig deep enough, there is always an interesting story or two to be found in every life. That proved to be the case with Rev. Dorrance. To begin our account of Rev. Dorrance, we turn first to E.H. Gillett’s history of missions in Louisiana:—

“One of the first—if not the first—to labor as pastor at Baton Rouge, was Dr. John Dorrance, a native of Pennsylvania, and a graduate of Nassau Hall and of Princeton Seminary. On the completion of his studies, in 1826, he was sent to the South under a commission from the Board of Missions, and his field of labor was Baton Rouge and vicinity. This had been, and still was, a place of great immorality. Its population, numbering about twelve hundred, had been collected from every State of the Union and every part of Europe. It is not strange that infidelity should have been common and openly avowed. Yet, in view of the temporal benefits of Christian institutions, the people invited the missionary to remain, and contributed to his support. He was ordained and installed, by the Mississippi Presbytery, pastor of the church at Baton Rouge in 1827; and during a pastorate of four years his labors were eminently successful.”

“Although the future scene of his ministry was in a Northern State (Wilkes Barre, PA), he left behind him a testimony that he had not labored in vain. Possessed of rare intellectual endowments, his mind was not brilliant, but admirably balanced, and capable of a prodigious grasp. If he did not shine as a student, he was wise and prudent as a man. He died in the triumph of a Christian faith, April 18, 1861.”

The first known Presbyterian services in Baton Rouge were conducted by the Rev. William McCalla, while he was a chaplain stationed there with the U.S. Army. Then in 1822, the Presbytery of Mississippi sent a Rev. Savage, who preached for a short while at several locations in the area. Then in 1827, Rev. Dorrance was installed over the work. During his ministry the church was organized and left its mission status behind. At its organization, the church had only fifteen members, but just five years later it was strong enough to plant a daughter church in Zachary, Louisiana. The Zachary church, now known as Plains Presbyterian Church, was founded in 1832, and it became one of the strongest in the South. It later became one of the founding congregations of the Presbyterian Church in America, in 1973.

So there’s that interesting aspect to our story. The other interesting note comes from an unexpected angle. A little searching on the Internet turns up a bookseller who has a rare volume for sale, once owned by Rev. Dorrance. The work is titled Liber Psalmorum Hebraice, or The Book of Psalms, in Hebrew. It was published in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1809 as part of the first American printing of any part of the Hebrew Bible. It is a small book, about the size of a common paperback, and has almost 500 pages. Part of the leather cover is now detached and there are other signs of wear that you might expect for a book this old. The first book published on American soil was an edition of the Psalter, published in 1640 by Harvard College. This became known as the Bay Psalm Book. You may have seen in the news not long ago that an old historic church planned to sell one of their two copies of this rare book, which finally sold for a record $14.2 million at auction. By contrast, the asking price for this copy of the Hebrew Book of Psalms is a steal at a mere $20,000. So yes, those books you are buying could be an investment. The problem is waiting around 200 years to cash in.

Words to Live By:
Books are among a pastor’s best tools. Much thought goes into picking the best available. Many are used frequently. Some are constant companions. The best books are those worth reading more than once. That’s true for all of us, whether pastors or not. And with the best book of all, I urge you to turn to the Bible at the start of each day, before the press of life interrupts. And learn to read the Scriptures meditatively—slowly, thoughtfully, and with application. For more on the practice of meditating on the Word of God, see the new book by David Saxton, God’s Battle Plan for the Mind.

“And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books, there is no end; and much study is a wearness of the flesh.” (Ecclesiastes 12:12, KJV)

For Further Study:
A small collection of Rev. Dorrance’s papers, consisting of ten sermon manuscripts, was preserved and is housed at the Special Collections Department of the Princeton Theological Seminary.  To see more about this collection, click here.

Sources: Gillett, Ezra Hall, History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, volume 2, 1864, pp. 379-380. (available on the Internet, here.

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April 17: Historic Property Cases

17 April, 2015 in April 2015 by Wayne Sparkman | No comments

With sincere apologies, I must record a correction. The fact is that the local court case was ruled unanimously in favor of the Hull Memorial and Eastern Heights churches. My thanks to Rev. Todd Allen for his gracious correction.

 

On April 17, 1966, because of extreme liberal trends in their parent church, two Savannah Presbyterian churches, Hull Memorial and Eastern Heights, led by their pastors Clifford Brewton and Todd Allen, voted to sever all ties with the Presbyterian Church U. S. denomination. This Action resulted in the Presbytery attempting to take control of the property, and a court case, settled first by a local jury that ruled unanimously in favor of the two congregations. Rev. Todd Allen comments that:

“Savannah Presbytery then appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court who approved the Jury decision unanimously in favor of the two congregations. The case was then appealed to the United States Supreme Court who remanded the case back to the Georgia Supreme Court giving neutral principles of law for that court to use in adjudicating the case. The Georgia Supreme applied the neutral principle enunciated by the United States Supreme Court and by a  unanimous  decision awarded the two local churches their church properties. The presbytery again appealed to the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case and that ended litigation after 3 ½ years of litigation in January of 1970. It should be noted that all court decisions were unanimous.”

The Savannah court case was an unprecedented, history-making event that overturned nearly 100 years of inequitable law practices in the United States and changed the way the civil courts in the future could deal with church property disputes. The case caused major church denominations to study their administration, relations, and rules relating to their connection with local church congregations. The specific and immediate effect of the case was a means for a somewhat peaceful withdrawal in 1973—with their properties—of some 250 churches from the Presbyterian Church U. S.  The case was a crucial element in the success of the Continuing Church movement that resulted in the formation of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).

The significance of the historic event was, at least in that immediate historical context, that no longer could church tribunals exercise property takeover tactics to force compliance to certain disputed doctrines, or for any other reason the denomination may choose: Ended was the practice of stealing church property in the name of organized religion. This case liberated those local churches in the PCUS from denominational tyranny.

The heart of the Supreme Court ruling in the Savannah case was in favor of what are termed neutral principles of law, as opposed to the civil court being guided or even ruled by the doctrines (including bylaws and constitution) of the denomination.

During the time that the property issue continued to be debated and was sent to the Georgia Supreme Court, Pastor Brewton accepted an appointment as an aide to Governor Lester Maddox, resigned the pastorate at Hull Memorial, and moved to Atlanta. Meanwhile Pastor Todd Allen was at the forefront in the property struggle through the Georgia Supreme Court, which ruled for the local churches, and the case then went onward to the U. S. Supreme Court. Allen also was a leader in organizing Vanguard Presbytery in 1972, a new presbytery established for churches withdrawing from the PCUS, thus providing them a Presbytery to join while awaiting the formation of the new denomination.

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April 16: Warfield’s Eulogy for Dr. Paxton

16 April, 2015 in April 2015 by archivist | No comments

“A nail driven in a sure place.”

William Miller Paxton is another of those names that seems now forgotten to the modern ear. He was notably a pastor in Pittsburgh, then a professor of homiletics (preaching), first at Western Theological Seminary, also in Pittsburgh, and later at the Princeton Theological Seminary, with a pastorate in New York City falling between those two appointments. His grandfather, the Rev. Dr. William Paxton, was also a noted pastor, who was born on April 1, 1760 and who died on April 16, 1845. But in researching the extended family, I was intrigued by this account and so am posting here today an account of the grandson, rather than the grandfather. The full account, and more, can be read here, but in abbreviated form and touching on just a few of the significant events in Dr. Paxton’s life, here is a portion of the eulogy given by Dr. Benjamin B. Warfield for his friend and colleague:—

paxtonWmMWilliam Miller Paxton was descended from a godly ancestry of thoroughly Presbyterian traditions…The earliest of his paternal ancestors who has been certainly traced—the fourth in ascent from him—is found a little before the middle of the eighteenth century living in Bart township, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, in a Scotch-Irish community which worshiped at Middle Octorara Church. The only son of this founder of the family served as an elder in that church; and out of it came his son, Dr. Paxton’s grandfather, the Rev. Dr. William Paxton, who, after having like his father before him fought in the Revolutionary War for the liberties of his country, enlisted as a soldier of Christ in the never-ceasing conflict for righteousness. Crossing the Susquehanna, he was settled in 1792 as pastor of Lower Marsh Creek church, in what is now Adams county, Pennsylvania, and there fulfilled a notable ministry of half a century’s duration.

Dr. Paxton’s father, Colonel James Dunlop Paxton, was a man of intelligence and enterprise, of fine presence and large influence in the community, engaged in the manufacture of iron, first at Maria Furnace, and later near Gettysburg and Chambersburg. It was at Maria Furnace that William Miller Paxton was born, on the seventh day of June, 1824. His youth was passed mostly at Gettysburg…his collegiate training at Pennsylvania College. He began the study of law, [but] united on profession of faith with the Falling Spring Presbyterian Church at Chambersburg, in March, 1845, …[and] Not more than a month after uniting with the church, on April 9th, 1845, he was received under the care of the Presbytery of Carlisle as a candidate for the ministry, and in the ensuing autumn he repaired to Princeton for his theological training.

…”I well remember,” he has told us himself, “that when I was a student, no young man could pass through his first year without being constrained to reexamine his personal hope and motives for seeking the sacred office.” No doubt this is primarily an encomium upon the pungency of the religious training of those four great men under whose instruction he sat—Drs. Archibald Alexander and Samuel Miller, Drs. Charles Hodge and Addison Alexander….One of the things Dr. Paxton always congratulated himself upon was that he had had a double training in theology. “The class to which I belonged,” he tells us, “heard” Dr. Archibald Alexander’s “lectures upon Didactic Theology as well as those of Dr. Hodge. Dr. Hodge gave us a subject with massive learning, in its logical development, in its beautiful balance and connection with the whole system. Dr. Alexander would take the same subject and smite it with a javelin, and let the light through it. His aim was to make one point and nail it fast. I always came from a lecture with these words ringing through my mind, “A nail driven in a sure place.”

…The greatest ecclesiastical event which occurred during Dr. Paxton’s New York ministry was, of course, the reunion of the Old and New School branches of the Church. He was of the number of those who did not look with satisfaction on the movement for union. Oddly enough, however, as a member of the Assembly of 1862, when corresponding delegates to the New School body were for the first time appointed, and of that of 1870, when the consummated union was set upon its feet, he was an active factor in both the beginning and end of the movement…When once the union was accomplished, he became one of the chief agents in adjusting the relations of the two long separated bodies.

…In 1883 he came to Princeton to take up the work of the chair of Ecclesiastical, Homiletical and Pastoral Theology, made vacant by the resignation of Dr. McGill. His church, which had grown steadily under his hands from 257 members to 409 in 1883, and whose affection for its pastor had grown with the years, was loath to give him up.

Words to Live By:
Dr. Warfield continued in his eulogy for Paxton, with a message that was close to Warfield’s own heart:—

…what he took his real stand upon was the perfectly sound position that our theological seminaries are primarily training-schools for ministers, and must be kept fundamentally true to this their proper work.
From this point of view he was never weary of warning those who were charged with the administration of these institutions against permitting them to degenerate into mere schools of dry-as-dust and, from the spiritual standpoint, useless learning. A very fair example of his habitual modes of thought and speech on this subject may be read in the charge which he delivered to his life-long friend, Dr. A.A. Hodge—whom he loved as a brother and admired as a saint of God—when Dr. Hodge was inaugurated as professor in this seminary. Permitting himself greater freedom, doubtless, because he knew he was addressing one sympathetic to his contentions, he becomes in this address almost fierce in his denunciations of a scholastic conception of theological training, and insistent to the point of menace in his assertion of the higher duty of the theological instructor. Pointing to the seminary buildings—he was speaking in the First Church—he exclaimed: “There stands that venerable institution. What does it mean? What is the idea it expresses? . . . Is it a place where young men get a profession by which they are to make their living? Is it a school in which a company of educated young men are gathered to grind out theology, to dig Hebrew roots, to read patristic literature, to become proficients in ecclesiastical dialects, to master the mystic techniques of the schoolmen, and to debate about fate, free-will, and the divine decrees? If this is its purpose, or its chief purpose, then bring the torch and burn it! . . . We do not in any way deprecate a learned ministry. We must have learning . . . .But whenever in a theological seminary learning takes the precedence, it covers as with an icicle the very truths which God designed to warm and melt the hearts of men. . . .No, no, this is not the meaning of a theological seminary . . .It is a school of learning, but it is also a cradle of piety!”

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April 15: Southern Presbyterian Leaders, 1683-1911

15 April, 2015 in April 2015 by archivist | 2 comments

A Book for the Ages on American Presbyterianism
The jacket on the book our title refers to, states that its pages teem with “fervent evangelists, faithful pastors, learned professors, accomplished statesmen, and soldiers likely to inspire fear in the heart of any tyrant, all owing the inspiration of their lives to the saving truths they learned from the Scriptures and the Westminster Standards.”  Besides the blog you are reading each day, so does the book by Henry Alexander White entitled “Southern Presbyterian Leaders 1683 – 1911” help you to learn the above sentence. This author is about to suggest that you purchase this book for your covenant families and you.
Henry Alexander White was  a Presbyterian minister himself who was born on this day, April 15, 1861 in Greenbrier County, Virginia [Greenbrier would have become part of West Virginia in 1863 when that state was created and its borders sectioned off. Thanks to several alert readers.]. Two decades later he would make a profession of faith in the Presbyterian Church of Salem, Virginia. Education occupied his Christian life in the next nine years as he studied at Washington and Lee College, Union Theological Seminary, and Princeton Theological Seminary.  He would earn a bachelor’s degree, a doctorate, and a seminary degree in theology.  Licensed and ordained by the Lexington Presbytery in Virginia in 1881, he was well prepared into whatever ministry the Lord would lead him. And that ministry was on the faculty of both colleges and seminaries. He would serve numerous local pastorates in supply, equally adept in both classes of people in this full ministry.
It was at the age of fifty that he wrote this book. In his preface, it was on this day, April 15, 1911, his birthday, that he sat down to acquaint Southern Presbyterians with “a roll call of the finest representatives of evangelical piety and experiential Calvinism” found primarily in the churches and institutions of the old Confederacy. Actually, if you have been a reader of this blog during our maiden year of 2012, you already have gleaned some of these biographical portraits of these leaders. This author, who wrote most of that year, made liberal usage of these biographical sketches.
See how many of you recognize the names of these leaders. White treats men like Francis McKemie, John Craig, John Blair, John Brown, William Robinson, Samuel Davies, David Rice, James Waddel (how are you doing reader?) Hugh McAden, Alexander Craighead, Henry Potilla, David Calwell, Charles Cummings . . . and I have only mentioned the Presbyterian leaders from the Colonial Period from 1683 – 1774. White goes on to mention those who provided the spiritual  underpinning during the American Revolution, and those before, during, and after the period of the War Between the States.
Now if you cannot purchase the book, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, you can read it online, as Princeton Theological Library has posted it there. Perhaps reading it there will whet your spiritual appetite to order the book itself for your home library.
Words to Live By:
How we as Presbyterians need the past history of Presbyterianism to help us live for God in the present and prepare for the future as we quickly enter into a post Christian world. Happy reading!

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April 14: Rev. Samuel Davies

14 April, 2015 in April 2015 by archivist | No comments

A repeat today, as I’m rather under the weather. Prayers appreciated.

An Ambassador for King Jesus

Samuel Davies was born in Delaware in 1723.  His Welsh mother had named him after the prophet Samuel. Ever afterwards, he considered himself to be a son of prayer, as the biblical name Samuel inferred. His early dedication to God induced him to devote himself to God personally.  Joining the church at age 15, he entered Samuel Blair’s classical and theological school at Faggs Manor Presbyterian Church, in Pennsylvania.  He was ordained as a Presbyterian  evangelist in February 1747 by the New Castle Presbytery.

On April 14, 1747, Samuel Davies stood before Governor Gooch and his council at Williamsburg, to ask permission to preach at four meeting houses in Hanover Country in Virginia.  Readers need to know that Virginia in the pre-revolutionary days was officially Anglican in religion.  Anyone outside of that denomination needed permission to minister. Later this law would be changed with a separation between church and state.  But at this time, permission had to be sought.  Receiving it, Davies preached faithfully and sacrificially at these four preaching points, some twelve miles north of Richmond, Virginia.

Suddenly, he wife was taken from him by illness which resulted in death.  It was said of him at the time that, despite his sorrow, he was determined to spend what little remained of his exhausted lifestyle to advance his Master’s glory to the good of countless souls in need of the gospel.  This dedication brought people from a wide circumference to hear the preaching of the Word of God, including a mother and her young son Patrick Henry.

On November 1, 1748, he returned to the Governor to ask that seven more places of preaching be granted to him.  While there was some opposition to the increased number, he presented his case with such clarity and forcefulness of argument, his request was granted.

For eleven more years, he preached the Word of God in the county of Hanover, as well as four other counties of Virginia. He was, as one put it, the ambassador of a mighty king.  All, upon hearing his weekly sermons, knew that king to be no one except King Jesus.

Words to Live By:  All believers are to be ambassadors of King Jesus, declaring the message by their lives and lips,  for  all to be reconciled to God.

Image source : Photograph found facing page 33 of Virginia Presbyterianism and Religious Liberty in Colonial and Revolutionary Times, by Thomas Cary Johnson. Richmond, VA: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1907. Scan prepared by the staff of the PCA Historical Center.

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