Stand Still and See the Salvation of God.

Asa Hillyer was born in Sheffield, Massachusetts, on April 6, 1763. His father was a physician, who served in the army during the Revolutionary War, with young Asa attending by his side in the later years of the War.

Asa entered Yale in 1782, graduating in 1786 at the age of twenty-three. He prepared for the ministry under the guidance of the Rev. Dr. Buell of East Hampton, and completed his studies with Dr. Livingston of the Reformed Dutch Church in New York.

Licensed to preach by the Old Presbytery of Suffolk, Long Island in 1788, he was appointed to supply churches in Connecticut. In 1798, the General Assembly appointed him a missionary to the northern part of Pennsylvania and the western section of New York. His travels lasted for nine weeks and covered some nine hundred miles, preaching almost every day. He was the first minister to ever preach in the region that is now Auburn, New York.

In 1801, Rev. Hillyer was called to serve the First Presbyterian Church in Orange, New Jersey. At that time, this was one of the largest and most influential churches in the State. Hillyer’s ministry was well-received by the congregation, and he remained their pastor for thirty years. In 1833, he resigned his charge and devoted his remaining years to serving as pulpit supply for other churches in the region and to visitation. The Rev. Asa Hillyer died on the evening of August 28th, 1840.

The Rev. James Hoyt wrote a history of this church, titled “The Mountain Society:” A History of the First Presbyterian Church, Orange, N.J. (New York, 1860), and in this history, a full chapter is devoted to Rev. Hillyer’s thirty years as pastor. Among the facets of this chapter, it is notable that there were three marked occasions of revival during Hillyer’s years, 1807-08, 1816-17, and 1832. Of the first of these revivals, there is this striking description of the times prior to the revival:

“But it may not be improper to remark here, that for some time previous to this, everything around assumed a gloomy aspect in regard to evangelical piety. All meetings for prayer except the first Monday in the month, were relinquished. Gambling, horse-racing, intemperance, and dissipation of every kind, threatened all social order with destruction. A moral society had been established for two years, the object of which was the suppression of vice and immorality; but no human effort was able to withstand the torrent of vice which threatened us on every side. At the same time the exertions of Christians were paralyzed; the wise were sleeping with the foolish. This state of things alarmed a few praying people; they agreed to resume a prayer-meeting which had, for the first time in forty years, been relinquished the spring before. This took place about the latter part of July. For a number of weeks not more than twelve or fourteen persons attended; but such fervent and earnest wrestling with God I never witnessed. They prayed as though they saw their children and neighbors standing on the verge of destruction, and that, without an immediate interposition of almighty grace, they were lost for ever.”

“Then in 1807, began a great revival of religion in the town. Ninety-seven joined the church in one day, and about two hundred in all. Fifty, or more, were gathered at Bloomfield.”

“It was soon perceived that our public assemblies were unusually solemn, but no special impression appeared to be made until the third Sabbath in September. In the morning the assembly was addressed on the awful solemnity of a future judgment; and, in the afternoon, from these words: Choose you this day whom ye will serve. This was a day long to be remembered. Such solemnity had not been seen for many years, and many date their first impressions from that day.”

Two things seem remarkable about this account. First, there was the prevailing sinfulness of the wider society in those years. And second, unlike the typical characteristics of a Second Great Awakening “revival”, this occasion was marked by a great solemnity and lack of excitement or passions. Further on in the account, we read that “No attempt was made to work upon the passions…The assembly was unusually solemn. Numbers were evidently pricked to the heart. Their tears, which they made great exertion to conceal, betrayed an awakened conscience…No disturbance was made. All retired in solemn silence.”

Then these last words seem particularly indicative of what we might expect of a true time of revival:

“One evening, after the benediction had been pronounced, the whole assembly stood in solid column. Scarcely an individual moved from his place. Such evidences of deep and heart-felt sorrow I never witnessed before, on any occasion. While all stood in solemn silence, there seemed a great appearance of solemnity than during any part of the previous exercises. Sometimes it seemed we had only to stand still and see the salvation of God. It seemed, indeed, that the Lord was there, and that He gave us an example of His immediate work upon the conscience and heart.

Words to Live By:
If God is going to bring a great turning from sin, it must and can only be His work. It will not be brought about by emotional antics or other man-made contrivances. For our part, may we be earnest in prayerfully waiting upon Him.

Stand in awe, and sin not; commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.
Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the LORD.
(Ps. 4:4-5, KJV)

As we grow ever closer to General Assembly season, today’s post seemed appropriate:

“Even in the case of old ministers he thought it a good thing to talk over our views occasionally.”

In the PCA’s Book of Church Order, in the first paragraph of the chapter treating of the ordination and installation of ministers, it states in part that

Ordinarily a candidate or licentiate may not be granted permission by the Presbytery to move on to the field to which he has been called, prior to his examination for licensure or ordination. Likewise an ordained minister from another Presbyterian Church in America Presbytery or another denomination, ordinarily shall not move on to the field to which he has been called until examined and received by Presbytery.

Where does that requirement come from? Why is it important? Well, history is what we do here, so a bit of background seemed important as I came across it today. And as the PCA’s Book of Church Order is based directly on the polity (i.e., the church government) of prior denominations, this history is all the more relevant.

The setting of this story is the meeting of the Presbyterian Church, U.S. (aka, Southern). It is the third day of their General Assembly, and the report comes that an entire Presbytery wants to join the denomination. There is testimony that these men are entirely orthodox. But they would rather not suffer the pain of a theological examination by the receiving body. At which point the Rev. E. Thompson Baird rose to address the issue:

Rev. Dr. Baird sketched the history of the origin of the rule requiring the examination of ministers passing from Presbytery to Presbytery. Dr. Lyman Beecher came to a Presbytery in New York from some Congregational Association, and was admitted without examination, and immediately took a letter of dismission to an Ohio Presbytery, and was received, and subsequently stated that he had never signified his adoption of the Confession of Faith. The late Dr. [Archibald] Alexander therefore advocated the adoption of the examination rule, for without it a single Presbytery might deluge the church with heretical ministers. The rule was not directed especially against the New School Church, for at the time of its adoption that church had no existence. Nor had it been suspended in the case of the United Synod.—They had examined the Old School and the Old School had examined them, and it was not until they were thoroughly satisfied as to one another’s soundness that they came together. Nor could it be reasonably objected to. He was not ashamed to proclaim anywhere what he believed as to the great doctrines of religion, and he was not willing to alter our whole system to open the door to a few who were not willing to come in the same way that others had been received. The importance of it is increased at this time—it is more necessary than ever in these days of fanaticism that we should have such a rule. Even in the case of old ministers he thought it a good thing to talk over our views occasionally. When a venerable father in the church comes to be examined, if we cannot find any heresy in him, we can at least learn a great deal from him about the great doctrines of grace. The speaker continued that if the rule is absolute, nobody’s feelings can be hurt by it. He therefore saw no necessity for its repeal.

And apparently he made his case well, for when the report was adopted, the Assembly refused to repeal the rule requiring the examination of all ministers entering a Presbytery. So it is that our Book to this day still expects and requires a Presbytery to examine and receive a minister before he can be allowed onto the field of ministry within that Presbytery.

A Hard Life on the Frontier

A remarkable man, eminently fitted for the times in which he lived, he was wonderfully versatile, and could do just about anything he put his hand to. Joseph Badger became the great missionary of the Western Reserve and a pioneer to regions further west.

Joseph was born in Wilbraham, Massachusetts on February 28th, 1757. At the age of eighteen, he entered the army and served for several years. After coming to faith in Christ, he was admitted to Yale College in 1781 and pursued his studies “under great pecuniary embarassment.” Among the many ways in which he scrapped by, some were even ingenious; he spent three months building a planetarium, for which the college paid him one hundred dollars.

Upon his graduation in 1783, he turned his studies to theology, working under the tutelage of the Rev. Mark Leavenworth. He was licensed by the Congregationalist New Haven Association, and eventually accepted a commision to serve as a missionary in the Western Reserve of Ohio.

Mr. Badger always retained a preference for Congregationalism, but united with the Presbytery of Ohio, under the 1801 “Plan of Union” — an arrangement whereby Congregationalists and Presbyteries jointly worked at planting churches in the westward expansion — and he remained in connection with the Presbyterian Church the rest of his life.

One single account of his life on the mission field will have to suffice to indicate something of the hardships endured by this pastor and his family:

“On his return, he went to his missionary station at Sandusky, and, after making some necessary arrangements, repaired to Pittsburgh, and made a report to the Missionary Board, and then returned to his family. Before he reached home, he was met with the melancholy tidings of the death of one of his daughters. After spending a few days with his afflicted family, he went back to his missionary field, and pursued his labors with the Indians until about the middle of November, when he received a letter from his wife, informing him that their house had been burnt, with nearly all their provisions and furniture. He immediately hastened to his distressed family, and by aid kindly furnished by their neighbors and friends, he quickly succeeded in building another cabin, and placing his family again in comfortable circumstances.”

The duties of the ministry were paramount to all else for Rev. Badger, and his chief aim in life was the furtherance of the Gospel. In religious conversation he was pleasant, instructive, discriminating, and quite practical. In prayer he was eminently gifted, and apparently highly devout. In his sermons he made up in vigorous and well digested thought, for any defects which, owing to his imperfect early education, might be apparent in his style. One said of him, that “His talents in the pulpit were above mediocrity.” (!)

Rev. Badger possessed a spirit of courage and perseverance unsurpassed. His personal trials and sufferings during much of the greater part of his long life exceeded those of most any other minister of his time. Few, if any, ministers could have been found in New England in those days who would have cheerfully, even heroically, given up the charge of a prosperous congregation in order to brave the perils and hazards of a missionary in what was then the wilderness of Ohio.

At the age of eighty, as his voice began to fail and his health declined, he was forced him from the field and surrendered his last pulpit. He lived another ten years, finding opportunity to preach on occasion. His last years were spent in the home of his only surviving daughter, and he died on April 5, 1846.

Words to Live By:
When we look back at the level of sacrifice exhibited by many courageous pastors in those early days of the American frontier, I sometimes wonder if we can even understand their lives and the depth of their service.

Diligence seems a good word to characterize Rev. Badger’s life, and perhaps that quality is something to meditate on, when we read an account of such a life.

2 Peter 1:5-11 (KJV):
5   And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;
6   And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;
7   And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.
8   For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9   But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.
10 Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:
11 For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Our post today comes from the classic work by John Flavel, The Mystery of Providence. With the thought that we might have a better eye to our praise of our Redeemer, the following selection gives us five due considerations to keep in mind. And while here Rev. Flavel speaks primarily of God’s provisions for our living here on this earth, our praise to God ought even to be all the greater for all that Christ has accomplished in our redemption by His death and resurrection!

Rev. Flavel begins:

There are five things belonging to the praise of God, and all of them have relation to His providences exercised about us:

• A careful observation of the mercies we receive from Him (Isa. 41:17-20). This is fundamental to all praise. God cannot be glorified for the mercies we never noted.
• A faithful remembrance of the favours received (Ps. 103:2; 106:13).  “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.” (Ps. 103:2). Hence the Lord brands the ingratitude of His people. “They soon forgot His works.” (Ps. 106:13).
• A due appreciation and valuation of every providence that does us good (1 Sam. 12:24). That providence that fed them in the wilderness with manna was a most remarkable providence to them; but since they did not value it at its worth, God had not that praise for it which He expected. (Num. 11:6).
• The stirring up of all the faculties and powers of the soul in the acknowledgment of these mercies to us.  Thus David: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name.” (Ps. 103:1) Soul-praise is the very soul of praise; this is the very fat and marrow of that thank-offering.
• A suitable recompense for the mercies received (Ps. 116:1. And the Lord taxes good Hezekiah for the neglect of it (2 Chron 32:24-25).  This consists in a full and hearty resignation of Him to all that we have received by providence from Him, and in our willingness actually to part with all for Him when He shall require it.

Thus you see how all the ingredients to praise have respect to providences. But more particularly I will show you that, as all the ingredients of praise have respect to providences, so all the motives and arguments obliging and engaging souls to praise are found therein also. To this end consider how the mercy and goodness of God is exhibited by Providence to excite our thankfulness.

The goodness and mercy of God to His people is seen in His providences concerning them; and this is the very root of praise. It is not so much the possession that Providence gives us of such or such comforts as the goodness and kindness of God in the dispensing of them that engages a gracious soul to praise. “Because Thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise Thee.” (Ps. 63:3). To give, maintain and preserve our life are choice acts of Providence; but to do all this in a way of grace and lovingkindness, this is far better than the gifts themselves. Life is but the shadow of death without it. This is the mercy that crowns all other mercies (Ps. 103:4). It is this a sanctified soul desires [that] God would manifest in every providence concerning him. (Ps. 17:7), and what is our praising God but our showing forth that lovingkindness which he shows to us in His providences? (Ps. 92:1-2).

Blessed be the Lord our God and our Savior; to Him be all glory and praise.

A Heart for Missions

Elisha Pope Swift was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts on August 12, 1792. His parents were the Rev. Seth and Lucy Elliot Swift. His father was pastor of the Congregational Church of Williamstown. Through his mother he was descended from Rev. John Elliot, the Apostle to the Indians. Elisha received his collegiate education at Williams College, in Massachusetts, and his theological education at Princeton Seminary.

He was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of New Brunswick, on April 24, 1816 and was ordained by a Congregational council in Boston on September 3, 1817, with a view to setting out for foreign missionary work. However, the American Board of Foreign Missions was compelled to delay his departure and so employed him for a time as an agent in the raising of funds. In 1818, Rev. Swift served as pulpit supply for several Presbyterian churches in Dover and Milford, Delaware, and then in 1819 he answered a call to serve as the pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. Here he continued to serve for thirteen years.

From 1831 to 1835, he served as Secretary of the Western Foreign Missionary Society, which was at that time located in Pittsburgh, and it was only in 1833 that he resigned his charge as pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church, in order to more fully devote himself to the work of missions. Rev. Swift had been the leading force in organizing this Society, and it was greatly shaped by his character and ministerial gifts.  By its location, the Society was fathered along by the Synod of Pittsburgh, and after several changes, both in title and in location, the Society eventually became the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

In the summer of 1835, Dr. Swift resigned his position as Secretary of the Missionary Society and became the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. He then served this church for twenty-nine and a half years. In the last five years of his life, with his strength beginning to fail, the congregation called Dr. Swift’s son, Elliott E. Swift, to serve alongside his father. This arrangement allowed Dr. Swift to preach as he was able, up until about six months before his death. At last, on April 3, 1865, the Rev. Elisha P. Swift passed from his earthly labors and entered his eternal rest.

“Dr. Swift was an unusually eloquent and impressive preacher. His large, penetrating eye, when fixed upon the hearer, gave to some of his searching addresses an almost irresistible power. In the commencement of his morning discourses he was usually deliberate, occasionally hesitating, as the result would show, for the most suitable and expressive words at his command. As he advanced, however, his delivery would become more rapid, and for fifteen minutes before he closed he would hold the listener in the most fixed and solemn attention. The conclusions of many of his sermons were among the grandest specimens of effective pulpit oratory to which the people in the region where he lived had ever listened. His public prayers were remarkable for fluency of utterance, comprehensiveness of petition, elegance of style and fervor of feeling. This, no doubt, has its explanation in his habits of private devotion. For many years he had four seasons of secret prayer, which he sacredly observed each day. Often, on Sabbath evenings, after his labors were completed, he would spend long periods in the retirement of his study, in audible intercession for his people. Dr. Swift belonged to a race of men now seldom found, but sometimes read about in the annals of the past.”

For Further Study:
E.P. Swift on the Call to Missions—
Among his several published efforts, Dr. Swift wrote an introduction to a Memoir of Mrs. Louisa A. Lowrie, of the Northern India Mission (1837), which is available online, here. The first several paragraphs of that introduction make for interesting reading, though the nineteenth-century prose may take some getting used to.—

“Man is, in himself, a lost, ruined and perishing sinner. Of this fact, the world is full of the most convincing evidence. The Bible professes to reveal to us God’s true and only system of salvation. This is a dispensation of life to guilty man through a Mediator, and it is also a distinct practical principle of the heart and life, developing itself by the production of a free self-consecration of its recipients to the glory of God and the well-being of mankind. Its vital power–its ascendancy over the inner man, in the production of pure and holy principles and actions, is an essential evidence of one’s interest in its blessings, while the most abundant and convincing manifestations of it to others becomes the surest way by which its great Author is honored and the world improved. Hence the lives of devoted Christians become useful and instructive, just in proportion as they are truly and wisely conformed to the great pattern, and the examples and biographies of eminent believers stimulate the pious in the path of duty, and impress the consciences of the wicked with a sense of their criminality.

“Periods of great trial and persecution in the world; and seasons in which God has, by His providence, especially called forth the visible power of religion, or remarkably poured out His Spirit upon the earth, for its increase, have been most distinguished for the development of the Christian principle. The present state of the world is peculiarly favorable to its useful display in judicious and disinterested efforts to bring millions of benighted and perishing sinners into the kingdom of God. The temporal and eternal benefits which the gospel can impart to the heathen are beyond all computation; and the Bible, while it urges the duty of its immediate dissemination, pledges its own veracity for the certainty that it shall eventually overspread the world. The events of providence are now more and more distinctly every year indicating the near approach of that joyful consummation.

“The labor and the self-denial, however, which a personal engagement in the missionary service in foreign lands requires, is so great, and the zeal of the disciples to spread the triumphs of the cross among remote and barbarous tribes of men is so small, that it must be long indeed before such a result can be anticipated, unless there is a very great increase of the true heroic and enterprising spirit of primitive times. Whatever tends to promote this, and to deepen the longing-desires of the visible family of God that His “kingdom may come” and His “will be done” in the “dark places” of the earth, should be earnestly encouraged. There are therefore three ends which may be proposed in the act of consecration to the work of Foreign Missions. This may be chosen like any other form of Christian action, to exemplify the practical influence of real piety—or, from a desire by a sincere and cordial and self-denied example of this sort, to aid and countenance the important and too much neglected duty of carrying the gospel to the heathen, or finally from the hope of a direct and immediate usefulness to the heathen themselves. The two former of these objects will be attained wherever love to Christ and holy principle is the moving cause, however brief or disastrous may be the effort itself. It is a great mistake therefore to suppose that the great moral ends of the undertaking are defeated, when the heralds of Christianity are cut down by the stroke of death before they enter upon the work; or where no actual conversions have been made. This would be to make the value of every effort to glorify the Redeemer to depend upon the measure of success which attended it, and imply a course of reasoning manifestly incompatible with fact.

Image source: The photograph, above right, is scanned from an original preserved at the PCA Historical Center. It was found tucked inside an 1858 pamphlet which had been purchased from a bookseller in Philadelphia.