February 2017

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February 13: Rev. Dr. Robert Strong

13 February, 2017 in February 2017 by archivist | No comments

Here in the PCA Historical Center I often come across the most interesting and useful things while searching out a patron’s request for some article or other material. For context, this article was written in the midst of those years leading up to the formation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Dr. Strong’s audience would have been those men who were considering leaving the old Southern Presbyterian denomination in order to form a new, faithful Church.

A History Lesson
by ROBERT STRONG [1908-1980, and pastor of the Trinity Presbyterian Church, Montgomery, AL, 1959-1973]

[The Presbyterian Journal, 27.42 (12 February 1969): 9-11.]

The struggle for the faith in the Presbyterian Church USA has been protracted. I grew up in that church and was ordained in it years ago when it was called the “Northern Presbyterian Church.” Thus I knew at first hand the issues as well as some of the people involved in the conflict.

Beginning in the nineteenth century, the strife deepened in intensity in the twentieth century and came to a climax in the 1920’s. Awareness of the rising tide of unbelief, and resistance to it, occurred in a spectacular way:

In 1923 the General Assembly endorsed adherence to five cardinal points of doctrine: the verbal inspiration of Scripture, the virgin birth of Christ, His mighty miracles, His substitutionary atonement and His bodily resurrection.

In reaction came the Auburn Affirmation, so-called because men of Auburn Seminary were its authors and from Auburn, New York it was distributed to gain additional signatures. In time, these amounted to 1100 names.

Cause and Effect

The Auburn Affirmation was in two parts: The first was an attack upon the right of the General Assembly to single out certain doctrines when the Northern Presbyterian Church was already committed to a system of doctrine as set forth in the Westminster Confession of Faith. This was specious logic. This was illogic! This was evasive action.

In the second part of the Auburn Affirmation, an attack was made specifically upon the doctrine of verbal inspiration. It was alleged that this doctrine was harmful!

The other doctrines were treated in a way to suggest that a man in good standing might follow a different interpretation of the virgin birth, of the miracles, the Cross, the empty tomb, from the position set forth in the General Assembly’s deliverance of 1923.

The effect was to say that the General Assembly’s statement which was, of course, in the historic Christian and Presbyterian tradition, was only one of several possible interpretations. The effect was really to call into question these doctrines as historically stated and received. The issue was out in the open.

The center of traditional Presbyterianism had been Princeton Theological Seminary, but some of those connected with Princeton were sympathetic with the liberalizing trend in the Northern denomination. They agitated for and secured General Assembly reorganization of Princeton’s administrative set-up.

In the Northern Church, the Assembly has full control of the seminaries and must approve even the bestowing of the professorial dignity upon a man. So the General Assembly could and did reorganize Princeton.

Instead of two boards, one to deal with temporal matters and one to deal with theological training, the seminary was reorganized to have but one board. And on that board two Auburn Affirmationists were named.

This was the signal to Dr. Robert Dick Wilson, the famous Old Testament scholar, Dr. J. Gresham Machen, the famous New Testament scholar, Dr. Oswald T. Allis, assistant to Dr. Wilson, Dr. Cornelius Van Til, beginning on his career of instruction in theology and apologetics, and John Murray, an instructor in the seminary, to take alarm. They resigned from the faculty.

Others, like Parks Armstrong, a great defender of the faith in the New Testament field, and Casper Wistar Hodge, a solid theologian in the Hodge tradition, remained with Princeton Seminary.

The five men who resigned became the nucleus of the faculty of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. A number of prominent Presbyterian ministers and laymen associated themselves with these leaders as the board of trustees of the new seminary. According to its charter, the seminary would be forever free of ecclesiastical control.

Westminster Seminary opened its doors in 1929. The seminary drew increasing numbers of students and my own enrollment occurred in the fall of 1933.

Incidentally, I had the inestimable privilege of being a student of }. Gresham Machen, a magic name and a most interesting personality. I digress to note that Prof. Machen was a character! Sometimes he would lecture his classes at a furious pace, with his head against the blackboard, writing the Greek alphabet in small letters. Once in a while he would go up the stairs on hands and knees.

On occasion he would stand on a chair, continuing his lecture with no change of expression. He was such a skilled lecturer he didn’t need to resort to tricks and devices. 1 guess it was just an expression of a facet of his character — it bespoke the non-conformist. He was a great stunter at student events and was ever being called on to give recitations.

Machen was a great scholar. His books are classics. I will continue to be personal by saying that when I was attending theological school in California, I found in an atmosphere of modernism there a true friend, Machen’s book, The Origin of Paul’s Religion. I think it is his very greatest; I rate it higher than bis Virgin Birth of Christ.

Machen’s Influence

Machen was also an ecclesiastical activist. Many criticize him for that. They think he should have been content to dominate the theological scene by his writings, lectures and classroom instruction. It’s an open question.

As things moved along in the Northern Presbyterian Church, Machen took a still more active part. It wasn’t enough that he had led in the organization of this new seminary which was having increasing influence and would, through the years, send a perfect stream of conservative men into the Northern Presbyterian ministry as well as into other churches.

Machen was compelled to be active also in the ecclesiastical issues in other departments of the life of the Church. He took a great interest in world missions and offered an overture to the General Assembly asking that it study the Board of World Missions and institute corrective procedures. The modernist Pearl Buck was a case in point. Everyone knew how far removed from evangelical Christianity she stood, but she served in China as a missionary of the denomination.

Machen’s overture was turned down overwhelmingly. General Assemblies have a habit of not criticizing their own agencies — that’s one of the problems in our own Church. You just can’t get the Assembly to pass actions critical of their own boards. That has long been characteristic of Presbyterian ecclesiastical practice.

Machen and others then took the step, which to this day is debated as to its necessity or wisdom, of organizing the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. Some Southern Presbyterians were put on the board. This was window-dressing, for it was a Northern Presbyterian effort.

Charles Woodbridge was brought home from the Cameroons to be the executive secretary of the board. Several missionaries resigned from the official Board of the Presbyterian Church to accept membership under the Independent Board. The Northern Presbyterian leaders began to realize that here was a threat.

In 1934 at the instigation of Lewis Mudge, then Stated Clerk, the General Assembly passed a mandate whose language included such astounding declarations as this: a member of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America is as obligated to support the official programs of the church as he is to take the Lord’s Supper. That’s assuming a very extreme position!

Conform, Or Else!

The mandate’s thrust was against the Independent Board and called upon those who were members of the Board and missionaries under the Board to resign or face ecclesiastical penalties. Now such a mandate is distinctly in opposition to Presbyterian polity, for our system is to work from the bottom up. You go from the session to the presbytery, to the synod, to the General Assembly.

But here was the General Assembly arrogating to itself the right to tell individual ministers and lay members of the denomination to disassociate themselves from an independent agency working in the field of world missions. The argument of course was that this was competitive with the official Board.

Now what did the presbyteries do? They fell into line in almost all cases. Charges were filed against J. Gresham Machen, J. Oliver Buswell of Wheaton College, Carl McIntire, and Charles Woodbridge. On and on and on went these cases of process. The focus of interest was, of course, the case against Dr. Machen. He was a member of the Presbytery of New Brunswick.

A Footnote

Here is an interesting ecclesiastical footnote. Because he lived in Philadelphia, Machen had sought to be transferred from New Brunswick presbytery in the Synod of New Jersey. He had asked for a letter of transfer to Philadelphia presbytery and it had been acted upon.

The Stated Clerk of the Presbytery of Philadelphia had not sent back to New Brunswick that little coupon on the bottom of letters of transfer reporting a minister has been received into the membership of the new presbytery.

On the strength of that clerical failure, New Brunswick claimed and exercised supervision of Machen and entered into the exercise of jurisdiction by formal process of trial. I went from Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, where I was serving, to all three of the sessions of the Machen trial.

It was a travesty. He was forbidden to raise any question of jurisdiction. He was forbidden to raise any question of constitutionality. The trial proceeded on the narrow question: Will you obey the General Assembly’s order? I can still hear Machen saying,

“I cannot do that, it is against conscience; it is in effect to put the command of the General Assembly above my conscience and to make an ecclesiastical order superior to the Word of God. I cannot obey the order.”

The outcome was foregone. He was found guilty of disobedience, of violation of his ordination vow to be subject to his brethren. Now let this sink in. Machen was the greatest Biblical scholar of the century, a noble figure, an eminent figure. He was suspended from the ministry of the Gospel, forbidden to preach, forbidden even to go to the Lord’s table.

Similar condemnations were handed down upon other members of the Independent Board. These things were appealed to synod. Synod upheld the presbyteries. At last the appeals came to the 1936 General Assembly at Syracuse. I went to that meeting to be in at the death and sat in the balcony and watched the proceedings unfold.

Asserting that the General Assembly had the right to order the affairs of the whole Church, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly found in behalf of the Synod of New Jersey, which had found in behalf of the Presbytery of New Brunswick. The sentence of suspension from the ministry was affirmed.

This became the signal for action. Machen resigned from the ministry of the Northern Presbyterian Church. Other pastors resigned also, standing with Machen’s position that the Church had become officially apostate by subordinating the Word of God to the commandments of men.

These men laid plans for the formation of a new denomination and in June, 1936, in downtown Philadelphia, the first General Assembly of the then-named Presbyterian Church of America was constituted. Dr. Gordon H. Clark, a name familiar to all who have done any reading, nominated Dr. Machen to be the first Moderator of the new denomination.

For men like me, just out of seminary, it was a terrible issue to confront. What should we do? After a summer of agony, I decided that I would stand with Machen. I didn’t do this blindly; I sought to reason it through, suffer and pray it through. Many young men whose ecclesiastical careers were thought promising laid their heads on the ecclesiastical chopping block and, believe me, our heads were cut off!

Most of us called congregational meetings, announced our intention to resign and asked what the congregation wanted to do. The Willow Grove congregation, which had tripled in those two or three years I had been there, decided, two to one, to stand with its young minister. We left the property and met on the third floor of the Legion Hall for three years until we could buy ground and build a meeting house.

That was happening here and there over the country. Instead of calling it a split, call it a splinter. We were meeting in store fronts, rented halls or wherever temporary lodging could be found.

The Northern Presbyterian Church sued us at law over our name. The judge ruled the name must be changed. An awkward name was selected, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. As just a young pastor I was selected Moderator of the 8th General Assembly — we were a bunch of amateurs trying to build a denomination but making many, many mistakes.

One reason for the mistakes was that in 1937 the great, illustrious, the almost indispensable Dr. Machen was taken by death. Troubles compounded after that. There was a split between the majority in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the McIntire group. Then Charles Woodbridge was wooed away from his place of significant leadership in the OPC.

We had a heavy setback in what is called the Clark case. Unable to endure the pettiness shown toward Dr. Clark, man after man went into the old U.P. Church or the Southern Church. A great pool of ministerial talent was lost from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

These sorts of things are not matters that happened in a corner. No man is an island, and no church should be considered an island. What happens anywhere will affect us everywhere.

The things that went on in the North were a tocsin heard in the South. Maybe they served, in God’s providence, a purpose in our region. Perhaps the events just recalled helped to alert Nelson Bell and Henry Dendy and their colleagues so that they organized the Presbyterian Journal. It is certainly to the Journal that we owe the great victory of 1954-55 when we turned down union with the UPUSA Church.

Perhaps those influences that led not only to the Journal but also, at last, to other institutions, like the Reformed Seminary, account for the faith in our Southern Church. Many of these things which show the conservatives alert and determined and willing to act have resulted from the stand taken earlier in the North by men of conviction.

February 11: The Old Arch Street Presbyterian Church

11 February, 2017 in February 2017 by archivist | No comments

While searching earlier today for an obituary (not found) in an old issue of THE CHRISTIAN OBSERVER, I came across this interesting brief article concerning pastor, the congregation and the original edifice of the Arch Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. My primary interest is in the first few paragraphs. After that, well, you’ll have to read it for yourself.

THE OLD ARCH STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

The instrumentality of Whitfield in the erection of the ancient square edifice, that once stood on the north west corner of Arch and Third streets, is probably known to some of your readers, as well as the fact, that the people worshipping there, were styled “new lights,” and that sundry opprobrious epithets were applied to the memorable Gilbert Tennent, their pastor. I have sat in the old square house, more than once, and well remember when it was succeeded by the oblong building that occupied the site, until after the settlement of the late Dr. Cuyler, in the pastoral office.

There was no cellar under the original house, and the remains of the venerable and beloved Tennent were deposited beneath the brick floor, and so remained until the contemplated change in the place of worship was effected. The new edifice was furnished with a cellar; and being well suited to storage, was often perverted to the strange use of a place of deposit for the article that manufactures paupers so rapidly. In this cellar were deposited the remains of Tennent, a suitable brick enclosure having been made for the purpose.

The late Dr. Benjamin Rush, who was a warm personal friend and admirer of Mr. Tennent, was sorely grieved, that such a disposition had been made of the venerated dust of his favorite preacher. Horrified at what he deemed a kind of sacrilege, the following impromptu, pronounced while in conversation with a lady who was then a member of Arch street Church, gave vent to his feelings. The lady who is yet living, and who penned the memorable lines at the time of utterance, favored me with a copy, some months ago; and as they are well worth a place in your useful paper, they are forwarded for insertion. They represent the spirit of the departed saint, roused by the resurrection trump, as quitting his heavenly abode, to visit earth in search of his body, and run thus :

The trumpet sounds, the sleeping dead arise,
And Tennent’s spirit quits its nature skies;
To his dear church it wings its favor’d way
To seek reunion with its kindred clay,
Where is my body? cries the reverend saint,
“Lo here, good Sir, the Sexton, “no it ain’t,”
“My body rested under my church floor
That body rises from a liquor store!”

Your readers are aware, the Dr. Rush hated intemperance and all its relations.

PAUL.

[excerpted from THE CHRISTIAN OBSERVER, 31.6 (7 February 1852): 21, column 5.]

February 11: Archibald Alexander’s Last Sermon (1851)

10 February, 2017 in February 2017 by archivist | No comments

He forbade all words of praise upon his tomb.

Not “calendar specific” but an interesting account of the last sermon delivered by the Rev. Dr. Archibald Alexander, first professor at the Princeton Theological Seminary. Thereafter, a transcription of his gravestone.

From THE PRESBYTERIAN MAGAZINE, IV.2 (February 1854): 94.

DR. ALEXANDER’S LAST SERMON.

It was in the First Presbyterian Church at Princeton, and on the 20th of July, 1851. The Sabbath was one of the most beautiful I ever saw. The harvest was just over, and the farmers, who made up the country portion of the congregation, had finished reaping the fruits of their year’s toil, and had carefully housed their crops. Many of them were present with their faces bronzed by the harvest suns.

Judge, therefore, the appropriateness of Dr. Alexander’s subject. His text was I Cor. iii. 9. “Ye are God’s husbandry.” I can, of course, give but an imperfect outline; but he said:—

”These words apply to the Church universal, or its members taken individually. The agriculturalist who wishes to raise a good crop does four things:
1. He prepares the ground.
2. He sows the best seed he can procure.
3. He takes care of the grain when growing.
4. He reaps and stores away the harvest.

So, in spiritual things it is necessary for us :
1. To make ready our hearts to receive the impressions of the truth—to come to Christ repenting of all our sins, and asking forgiveness of them for his sake.
2. We must plant the good word of God; and
3. We must cultivate the good seed by prayer, self-examination, and the use of all the means of grace. We must learn the precepts the Bible lays down, and practice them in our walk and conversation. As the husbandman is never free from solicitude and care until he gets the cropt stowed safely away, so the spiritual man can never cease to watch or relax his diligence till life is over.
4. He will reap his reward, to some extent, here, but the great reward shall be hereafter.”

A death in keeping with his life.

HIS TOMB.

Dr. Alexander’s tomb has the following inscription :

Sacred to the memory
of
ARCHIBALD ALEXANDER
Doctor of Divinity
and
First Professor of the Theological
Seminary in this place :
Born in what is now Rockbridge county,
Virginia, April 17th, MDCCLXXII :
Licensed to preach the gospel
October 1st, MDCCXCI :
Ordained by the Presbytery of Hanover
June 9th, MDCCXCIV :
A Pastor in Charlotte and Prince Edward
for some years :
Chosen President of
Hampden Sidney College in MDCCXCVI :
Pastor of the Third Presbyterian
Church in Philadelphia in MDCCCVII :
Professor of Didactic and Polemic
Theology in MDCCCXII :
He departed this life
In the faith and peace of Christ,
October 22d, MDCCCLI.

[He forbade all words of praise upon his tomb.]—PRESBYTERIAN.

Image source : The Alexander Memorial. New York: Anson D.F. Randolph & Company, 1879.

February 8: Samuel G. Craig [1874-1960]

8 February, 2017 in February 2017 by archivist | No comments

More of our content from an older blog and not tied to today’s date.

Under the Sun: “When We Must Economize” (1931)

When Samuel G. Craig was editor of The Presbyterian in the late 1920’s, he began to use his position to speak out against the changes going on at Princeton Seminary, as modernists were put in place on the Seminary’s Board of Trustees.  For that vocal opposition, “Management” let him go.  Craig then turned around and formed The Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company in 1930 right at the start of the Great Depression.  J. Gresham Machen provided some of the start-up capital.  Craig’s first publication was a bi-weekly magazine called Christianity Today and it ran consistently through the Depression era.  From a conservative Presbyterian viewpoint, Christianity Today and The Christian Beacon were the two publications of record covering the modernist controversy in the Church. Thus the importance of these publications.  Later, as Craig’s attention turned more to publishing books, Christianity Today was slowly put to rest, and the last issue appeared in 1949.  [note: the same name was picked up by a different publishing group in 1956 and that publication continues to this day].

So much for background.  But my point here today is how striking it is, when looking through old issues of Craig’s magazine, that there are so very few references to hard times.  The bulk of the magazine was published from May of 1930 until May of 1940, effectively coinciding with the full duration of the Great Depression.  And yet there are few references to economic disaster.  How should we explain this?  Anyway, here is one of the few such items to appear on the pages of Christianity Today that spoke to the economic situation in those years, an editorial which Craig excerpted from another publication. Good words for the Church when times are tight. And good words even now when the Church so often comes in conflict with the wider culture :—

When We Must Economize
Editorial in Grace and Truth.

When we must economize, where do we start?  The answer to this question is a good test of our love for our Lord.  If our first step in the hour of financial stringency is to discontinue our offerings to our Lord’s work, can we truly say that He has the pre-eminence in our lives?  Does such a step not betray that our love for Him has waxed cold?  Does it not show that we are depending upon ourselves for the supply of our needs rather than trusting His gracious providence?

The spirit of the Macedonian believers was in striking contrast to this.  Of them the apostle Paul testifies that “in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality” (II Cor. 8:2).  Such a spirit shows that souls are responding in a scriptural manner to the testings which God permits.  But any other spirit shows that our souls are missing the blessing which God designs for us in adversity.

Our gifts should be an expression of the worship of our hearts.  It is poor economy through reducing our gifts to try to make up for shortage of funds caused by expenditures for luxuries.  Such a policy indicates that we are lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.  God’s Word teaches giving proportionate to our means, and when our income is reduced it may be His pleasure for us to reduce our offerings; but most certainly He would have us start with other things first, and it may even be that in the face of reduced income He would have us increase our giving.

February 7: Archibald Campbell, Marquis of Argyle

7 February, 2017 in February 2017 by archivist | 3 comments

His Blood Baptized the Cause of Freedom, Conscience, and Pure Religion

marquis_argyleEarls, barons, lords and marquis — these titles are foreign to countless Americans.  Yet to those in Scotland and England, they are the stuff of ancient times, with some left over to the modern age.   We are interested in the last title, but only as it referred to the Marquis of Argyle, Archibald Campbell.  From an early period in Scottish history, his ancestors played a prominent part.  Vast domains were under their rule, with great power exhibited by this house.  It was said, for example, that today’s subject, Archibald Campbell, could have fielded an army of twenty thousand soldiers.  Well, you could imagine the gratitude of God’s people when Archibald Campbell joined the Covenanting Presbyterians at a General Assembly in 1638.

At the first and last coronation ceremony in which King Charles II was crowned in Scotland, which we developed for our readers on January 1, it was this Marquis himself who placed  the crown on the head of Charles the Second. We also saw that such early support would be repaid with years of persecution for Scottish Presbyterians, including the Marquis of Argyle himself.  When Charles finally ascended to the throne, Archibald Campbell traveled south to congratulate him. He never arrived in London, but was arrested on the journey there on February 7, 1661.  Clapped into the Tower of London, he lay in chains until the following winter. Then he was sent back to Scotland to be tried on everything from having signed the Solemn League and Covenant, to submission to Oliver Cromwell, to being acquainted with the plot to kill King Charles the First.

The trial would last several months and finally ended with the sentence that “Archibald Campbell, Marquis of Argyle, is found guilty of high treason, and is adjudged to be executed to death as a traitor, his head to be severed from his body at the Cross of Edinburgh on Monday, the twenty-seventh instance, and to be fixed in the same place where the Marquis of Montrose’s head was formerly.”

One would think that such a sentence would be met with a grim spirit. But such was not the case with this Covenanting Christian. He commented upon hearing the news that “I had the honor to set the crown on the King’s head, and now he hastens me to a better crown than his own.” Ascending to the place of execution on the day, he “blessed the Lord,” adding “I pardon all men, as I desire to be pardoned myself.”  With that, and other expressions of the forgiveness granted from Calvary, he went forth to be with His Lord and Savior.

It is said that in life he had “piety for a Christian, sense for a counselor, courage for a martyr, and a soul for a king.” With all these characteristics, he was among the first of the Covenanters to lay down his life for the Covenanted Reformation.

Words to Live By:  Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 1:26, “not many [of you were considered to be] wise according to human estimates and standards, not many influential and powerful, not many of high and noble birth . . .”  The apostle did not say “not any” were called, but “not many were called.”  We have in the Marquis of Argyle one such wise, influential, powerful and high and noble individual, who was called to stand up for the faith.

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