0. p. FITZGERALD 
 
SUNSET VIEWS 
 
 IN THREE PARTS. 
 
 BY 
 
 BISHOP O. P. FITZGERALD, 
 
 •/ am a fart of all that I have »?e^."--TENNYSON 
 
 Nashville, Tenn. ; Dallas, Tex. : 
 
 Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South. 
 
 Smith & Lamar, Agents. 
 
 1906. 
 

 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1900, 
 
 By the Book Agents of the M. E. Church, South, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
TO BE READ OR SKIPPED. 
 
 In most of the things that they do, men act from 
 mixed motives. Whether the making of this book 
 shall prove an exception to this general rule, the reader 
 will judge. Of this I am sure : The chief motive is to 
 magnify the mercy of God. And the thought that these 
 pages may make a channel for his grace to flow^ into oth- 
 er souls w^arms my heart as I pen these words. 
 
 Several kindly voices had said to me : " Tell the 
 story of the men and times you have seen, in your own 
 way." The thought took hold of my mind, and almost 
 grew into a purpose. I have not the vanity or the 
 idiocy to think that my life is worth writing. I would 
 not do it if I could. No man who tells the story of 
 his own life ever tells all. There are reserves of self- 
 respect and privacy that are sacred to all save the hope- 
 lessly vulgar and vile. I have no grudges to settle. 
 I do not wish to leave a line written by this hand that 
 will give pain to any human heart. Posthumous mal- 
 ice is the meanest of all : it combines both malignity 
 and cowardice. The Christian statute of limitations 
 applies to all grudges in noble souls, when time has 
 come to cool the heat of passion or to clarify the judg- 
 ment. Death cancels all debts of reprisal. 
 
 A week ago I decided, if so God willed, that I would 
 print these chapters in their present form. This final 
 decision was made just as the setting sun flushed with 
 glory the hills that encircle Nashville, the beloved city 
 whose people are like kinsfolk to me, from whose homes 
 so many elect souls dear to me have already gone up to 
 the city that hath foundations whose maker and builder 
 
 is God. |y!57403 
 
CONFIDENTIAL. 
 
 This book is now submitted to my friends in the 
 shape of its original plan. The sermons and the lec- 
 tures are omitted. Men and things take their place. 
 Thus the book is made a homogeneous work. If it 
 shall thereby be made more acceptable to the readers, 
 I shall be grateful. My literary constituency has al- 
 ways been generous in its treatment of me as a book- 
 maker. If this, my last endeavor on that line, may 
 give them any measure of pleasure and profit, I shall 
 be glad and thankful. O. P. Fitzgerald. 
 
 Nashville, Tenn. 
 
 (iv) 
 
SUB-PREFACE. 
 
 To burn or to print these pages — that was the ques- 
 tion with me when, thinking the time of my departure 
 was at hand, I was setting my affairs in order. Much 
 stuff, such as it was, was consumed, but these pages 
 were spared for reasons that may be guessed at by the 
 discerning. My old friends will be indulgent. If any 
 of them shall conclude that I have ventured once too 
 often as a bookmaker, so be it. I have not been the 
 first, nor will I be the last, to err in this way. 
 
 The AuTtroR. 
 
FOREWORD. 
 
 That vision of the sunsetting came to me in a dream 
 of the night. It was a vision that excelled all that 
 mine eye had seen in all my vs^aking hours. I stood 
 on the top of a peak, high and lifted up above ten 
 thousand lesser ones grouped below and all around it, 
 all bright with the glory of a cloudless sunset. The 
 silence was holy. The note of a song bird, the chirp 
 of an insect, or the flutter of a butterfly's wing would 
 have jarred on my ear then and there. I had sunk to 
 sleep after a day of weakness and pain — thinking, 
 thinking, thinking, and praying : thinking that I might 
 next awake in the spirit-world or linger on here only 
 to suffer, and praying that grace might be given me 
 to go or to wait, as it pleased God. The vision came 
 when it was needed by the soul that clung to God and 
 was sweetly tuned by him for its touch. I awoke 
 with a blessedness in my spirit that cannot be put into 
 words. A still, small voice whispered to my inner ear : 
 "At evening time it shall be light." And it is. 
 
 The title of this book was born of that vision. The 
 blessing of it abides. O. P. F. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 To Be Read or Skipped iii 
 
 Confidential iv 
 
 Sub-preface v 
 
 Foreword vi 
 
 Blood Will Tell, but Not All 3 
 
 An Early Start 9 
 
 My First Schooling 15 
 
 A Sad Night Ride : 21 
 
 How Methodism Kept Its Hold 27 
 
 Taking Shape 33 
 
 Formative Influences 39 
 
 Four Old-time Revivalists 47 
 
 A Unique Pedagogical Experience 55 
 
 In Richmond in the Forties 61 
 
 Afloat 69 
 
 A Turning Point 77 
 
 Initiated ' 83 
 
 My Environment 89 
 
 My First Sermon 97 
 
 Preaching to the Blacks 103 
 
 Sent to Savannah 107 
 
 Savannah 113 
 
 To Cahfornia 119 
 
 On the Pacific Side 127 
 
 Cahfornia as We Found It 135 
 
 Those Early CaHfornians 141 
 
 Some Preachers I49 
 
 Five Fathers of Georgia Methodism 159 
 
 The Old Panel 169 
 
 A Midwinter Meditation 1 79 
 
 (vii) 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Little Note i8o 
 
 My Impulsive Friend 183 
 
 Some Types of Methodist Women 191 
 
 Our Jewish Friends 199 
 
 Sunset Views at Seabreeze 205 
 
 The Novel-reading Pest 211 
 
 A More Excellent Way 217 
 
 Money-makers. . '. , 223 
 
 Tom Reed 229 
 
 Our New Year Motto 233 
 
 The Future Safe „ . . . 239 
 
 Birthday Reflections 243 
 
 Mark Hanna Astonished 247 
 
 Our Irish Friends 253 
 
 Transfigured Singers 259 
 
 An Abiding Benediction 269 
 
 William McKendree 273 
 
 McTyeire as an Editor 281 
 
 The Question We Are All Asking: Why Do 
 
 They Not Come Back ? 291 
 
 The Son of Man 301 
 
 Our Three Pillows 305 
 
 Big Ab : A Typical Old-time Negro 309 
 
 Another Question All Are Asking : When and 
 
 Why Did Miracles Cease ? 315 
 
 Led by the Spirit 325 
 
 John M. Daniel and Some of His Contemporaries 331 
 
 Sunset Views from My Bedroom Window 339 
 
 A Fresh Interpretation 347 
 
 The Master's Message 35 1 
 
 Heredity 355 
 
 "The Goal" , 359 
 
BLOOD WILL TELL, BUT NOT ALL. 
 
 1 
 
BLOOD WILL TELL, BUT NOT ALL 
 
 BLOOD will tell. From Adam and Eve 
 down to this day, this has been an ac- 
 cepted truism. From Abraham to the 
 latest born inheritors of titles or" dollars, 
 men have loved to air or invent their 
 pedigrees. Our family was like other families in 
 this respect. The lower the family fortunes sunk 
 — and they sank to a point that was very low at 
 one time — the more they had to say as to what 
 they had been in earlier days. Perspective smoothes 
 genealogies as well as landscapes. Distance lends 
 enchantment to the view where the imagination 
 gilds the summits of vision. It is well that this is 
 so. There is enough that is petty. and pitiful in 
 our everyday life to give us cause for thankfulness 
 for the glamour that is on the past, as well as for the 
 glory that through faith and hope gild the future. 
 
 My parents — Richard Fitzgerald and Martha 
 Hooper — were both Virginians, and belonged, at 
 least in a chronological sense, to the first families. 
 I could wish that I knew the verity of the tradition 
 that this Virginia branch of the Fitzgeralds was 
 akin to Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who was a martyr 
 for the cause of freedom for Ireland. There is no 
 nobler name in Irish history. This is saying much. 
 The noblest Irishmen are among the noblest of 
 earth's true nobility, whether titled or untitled. A 
 mean Irishman is the meanest of men. Irishmen 
 are extremists, patriots of the first quality or trai- 
 tors of blackest dye ; martyrs glad to die for truth 
 or ready to sell it to the highest bidder. God bless 
 
 (3) 
 
4 Sunset Views. 
 
 old Ifplatid ! God bless her children wherever 
 they may wander to the latest generation ! 
 
 The families of the Hoopers, the Powells, the 
 Goodes, the Grants, the Irbys were branches of the 
 family tree. My maternal grandmother was a mar- 
 vel of energy in business and fervor in religion. 
 She had every soul on the plantation aroused at 
 daybreak and ready for work. Her gift in prayer 
 was mighty. At a camp meeting her prayers 
 seemed to move heaven and earth. She ran a dis- 
 tillery famous for the quality of its whisky. There 
 is no question of her sincerity as a Christian. At 
 that time members of th'e various branches of the 
 Church of Christ took their drams as a matter of 
 course, ran distilleries, and '* treated" in election 
 campaigns. The stillhouse and '* meetinghouse " 
 were owned and managed by the same persons as 
 a matter of course. The Methodists were among 
 the first to make war against whisky in that region, 
 as elsewhere in this land. The fires of that old 
 stillhouse have long since ceased to burn, the very 
 site of it is lost; but the songs of the Methodists 
 are still heard among those Dan River hills. The 
 dear old mother in Israel now sees more clearly 
 what few could see in her day — the sin and curse 
 of strong drink — and when we join in the new 
 song in heaven, she will be there too. The ideas 
 and standards have changed, and changed for the 
 better, during the intervening decades. God is 
 God, and this world is his world. 
 
 An illustration of the reign of God's grace in the 
 world may come in just here. Among the negroes 
 on the farm was *' Uncle Lunnon," who in an earlier 
 and darker time came over from Africa as a compul- 
 sory immigrant in a British slave ship. He was al- 
 most as strong as a gorilla, and very profane and 
 hot-tempered. But he was honest and truthful. 
 
Blood Will Tell, hut Not AIL 5 
 
 He lived to be one hundred and twenty years old — 
 the oldest man of any cwlor that I ever saw. The 
 most remarkable fact concerning Uncle Lunnon 
 was his conversion in the last year of his life. 
 By the grace of God he was brought under deep 
 conviction by this thought which came into his 
 mind: *' I have been faithful to my earthly mars- 
 ter, but I've been a mean nigger toward my heav- 
 enly Marster. I've lived longer than any nigger I 
 ever heard of; in my prime I was stronger than 
 any man, black or white, I ever met. But I've 
 been a cussin' and not a prayin' man all my life. 
 I am a mean nigger." So, to use his own lan- 
 guage. Uncle Lunnon put the case to himself. In 
 genuine penitence he bowed before God, and 
 helped by the counsel and prayers of my uncle. 
 Bannister Fitzgerald, Uncle Lunnon was led to 
 lay hold of the hope set before sinners in the gos- 
 pel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit itself 
 maketh intercession for us. If any channel is 
 left open in a human soul, the grace of God will 
 flow in. 
 
 Heredity is a potent factor in every human life. 
 Free agency is also a fact. Heredity may give a 
 trend upward or downward, but free agency de- 
 termines the movement. Not fatality, but free 
 agency, fixes destiny. The rule of judgment is 
 equitable. The Judge is infallible. Where little 
 is given, little is required; and where much is 
 given, much is required. Lack of effort is the 
 only ground of condemnation of any human soul. 
 The slothful servant, not the one less gifted, is the 
 one who went into outer darkness — not only by the 
 sentence of the Judge, but by the drift of his own 
 indolence, or by the perversity of his own will. 
 No soul ever perished in any other way. 
 
AN EARLY START. 
 
AN EARLY START. 
 
 WHEN two days old, I came into the 
 Church of Christ in a sense good and 
 true, and have been in it in some 
 sense until now. Membership with 
 me means membership forever. The 
 Church militant merges into the Church trium- 
 phant. The Church is the one organization on 
 earth in which membership never lapses. The 
 reader understands my meaning when I say that I 
 came into the Church when two days old — that is 
 to say, I was then dedicated to God in baptism. 
 Dr. Abram Penn, of the Virginia Conference, was 
 the administrator. The second member of my 
 *' given" or Christian name is Penn, and was 
 given for that man of God, whose memory is 
 blessed. After pouring or sprinkling upon my 
 head the crystal drops that symbolize the promised 
 grace that cleanses the soul through the atoning 
 blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, he knelt at the 
 bedside and prayed that the man-child might live 
 before the Lord ; that he might be a disciple of 
 Jesus; that he might be a Methodist preacher. " I 
 felt the answer," said my mother to me with wet 
 eyes in a low voice that I seem to hear now as I 
 write the words. She felt the answer — and so 
 have I all my life. Christiaps used to talk that 
 way in those days concerning prayer. They be- 
 lieved that the prayer of faith touches God , and that 
 God can and does touch the petitioner and the sub- 
 ject of the prayer at the same moment. The old 
 Book seems to put it the same way. Many Christians 
 reach this level at times in their lives. It is a high 
 
 (9) 
 
lO Sunset Views. 
 
 plane: up there the air is very pure and the light 
 is clear-shining. My mother had that sort of faith. 
 According to her faith it was done unto her: she 
 lived to know that the boy-child she gave to God 
 in the baptismal covenant was a minister of the 
 gospel of Jesus Christ. My dear, Christian mother ! 
 She w^as said to be wonderfully beautiful in her 
 youth. To me she was always beautiful. She 
 was a woman of many sorrows. The last time 
 I saw her the marks of age and pain and grief 
 were on her face. I shall see her again, clothed in 
 beauty greater than that of her bridal morning, up 
 yonder in that land where the weary rest. She 
 was a sweet singer, and her songs were mostly in 
 the minor key. She had sorrows of her own, and 
 was touched by all the sorrow of the circles in 
 which she moved, from, the highest to the lowest. 
 She ministered to all, and was loved by all. These 
 many years she has been within the vail. I shall 
 know her when we meet, and the rest of the city 
 of God will be completer when once more I feel 
 the clasp of her arms. 
 
 Yes, I came into the Church when two days 
 old, and the tie was never wholly broken. The 
 relation of the baptized children of the Church 
 to the Church and its Head is very sacred to 
 every parent who knows and feels what is meant 
 by the baptism of children. Many show that 
 they neither know nor feel its solemn and bless- 
 ed significance. There will be an awakening 
 and a reform in the brighter day that is com- 
 ing !n Christendom. Then will be understood 
 the fullness and sweetness of the meaning of the 
 Master's words: *' Suffer the little children to 
 come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is 
 the kingdom of heaven." What do the words 
 mean? We may be sure that they do not mean 
 
An Early Start. ii 
 
 that our children are farther from God and lower 
 in privilege in the New Testament Church than 
 under the old dispensation. We may be sure that 
 they do not mean that our children must of neces- 
 sity go into sin and be stained and maimed and 
 stunted in their spiritual development by it. We 
 may be sure that they do not mean that they are 
 to be turned loose in the world and branded by 
 the devil, afterwards to be lassoed and tamed if 
 possible by special effort. No, no ! The Master's 
 words must mean at least this much: that the 
 baptized children of the Church belong to him ; 
 they are initially inducted into his kingdom ; they 
 have the promise of prevenient grace and guidance 
 up to the line of moral accountability. Then 
 what? Just this: they may and ought to tide right 
 over by faith into the conscious salvation of the 
 gospel. Faith is choice — the choice of the parent 
 at first, the choice of the child when choice for it 
 is possible. My mother felt the answer to her 
 prayer of faith at my baptism: I feel it now. 
 
 The millennium cannot come until the Church 
 shall have assumed its proper relation to the chil- 
 dren of the Church. If it were to come, it could 
 not stay with a Church that allows a wall of ice to 
 shut ofi her children from her communion. Ques- 
 tion: May not the lapse into sin of so many chil- 
 dren in the families of ministers of the gospel and 
 other good people be owing to their error at this 
 point? The religious natures of their children 
 bud into initial life normally at an early age, and 
 are killed by the frosts of neglect and delay. They 
 may not have a second budding time: if they do, 
 will not the growth be a stunted growth? The 
 promise is to you and your children in the present 
 tense for all. Let him and her that readeth un- 
 derstand. 
 
MY FIRST SCHOOLING. 
 
MY FIRST SCHOOLING. 
 
 THE image of my first school-teacher rises 
 before me as I begin this chapter — that of 
 a sweet-faced, sweet-voiced, holy woman, 
 who opened the daily sessions with a 
 prayer that made us feel that she was 
 talking with God and that he was there. The dis- 
 cipline of her school was strict, but it was the 
 strictness of a constraining and pervading personal 
 influence rather than a code of rules or fear of 
 punishment. A boy about my own age one day 
 was detected in a falsehood, and was told to stand 
 in a corner and think of his sin against God. All 
 the corporal punishment I ever felt or witnessed 
 in all my life never impressed me with the guilt and 
 shame of falsehood as did that object lesson. She 
 somehow made us feel that all sin w^as sacrilegious 
 as well as mean. We all loved her. The image 
 of Rebecca Field — that was her name — keeps its 
 place in my heart undimmed. She was what 
 coarse people call an old maid — one of those 
 sweet-souled and finely-tuned women who, mak- 
 ing no homes of their own, bless every home they 
 touch; one of those Christlike spirits that, with a 
 self-abnegation incomprehensible to lower natures, 
 live for others, sweetening this dull, sordid world 
 and ripening for that other world beyond where, 
 with that other Mary whom Jesus loved and a blessed 
 company of such elect souls, they will find their re- 
 ward and fit companionship. That long sentence 
 grew upon me, but its length will be excused when 
 the reader is told that this holy woman, my first 
 teacher, gave me a love for all such that I can 
 never lose. 
 
 ("5) 
 
1 6 Sunset Views. 
 
 My next teacher was a man — a man to be re- 
 membered. He was a good man, but severe, with 
 notions of school government and discipline quite 
 in contrast with those held by my first teacher. 
 He did not spoil his pupils by sparing the rod. He 
 whipped them with apparent enjoyment and ex- 
 traordinary energy and frequency. Those gum 
 and hickory switches, four or five in number, 
 were placed above his desk, not for ornament, but 
 for use. I heard him say more than once that I 
 was his favorite scholar: he exhibited his favorit- 
 ism by whipping me more than the others. Under 
 the circumstances I was not very proud of the 
 distinction. Fear and force ruled his school. 
 The boys hated and feared him, and loved to an- 
 noy him as much as he seemed to enjoy flogging 
 them. It was a hard time for both teacher and 
 pupils. Once during the term we >' turned him 
 out ' ' for a holiday, and it was done by main force : 
 a big boy asked for a holiday, and was refused; 
 and then the irate pedagogue was thrown to the 
 floor and held down until he agreed to the demand. 
 We went away triumphant and rejoicing. But 
 when we came back after the holiday was over, 
 he '* got even" with us, and more. Those gum 
 and hickory switches made up for lost time. It is 
 needless to say that to me the memory of the teach- 
 er that prayed and ruled by love is sweeter than that 
 of the one who whipped and ruled by fear. 
 
 My third teacher was a quaint old Irish-Ameri- 
 can, a fine scholar, a gentleman of the old school, 
 whose passion was mathematics and whose special 
 abhorrence was faulty syntax. He was not averse 
 to the use of the rod in dealing with boys, but he 
 never gave a blow to a girl: the chivalry of his 
 race on its upper side was in his blood and breed- 
 ing. An Irishman's best, let me again sa}^ is as 
 
My First Schooling. 17 
 
 good as the best to be found anywhere on earth. 
 He would show a partiaHty toward the girls that 
 made the boys angry sometimes. At this distance 
 this trait lends a grace to his memory. His weak- 
 ness leaned in the direction of a chivalrous senti- 
 ment that has made half of the poetry of the 
 world and a large part of its blessedness. It is a 
 pleasant fact to record that my old Irish-American 
 schoolmaster became a Christian man. He was 
 converted at a Methodist camp meeting, and was 
 quaintly demonstrative on the occasion. On the 
 camp ground he had an enemy, a man named 
 Kemp. Glowing with his hrst love as a Christian 
 he sought his enemy, and finding him in the midst 
 of a group of men, he grasped his hand, saying 
 impulsively: '*Kemp, give me your hand — I feel 
 humble enough to shake hands with a dog I " The 
 •old man kept the faith unto the end of his life. 
 
 My next and last teacher was a small man, 
 quick of motion and speech, with a big head cov- 
 ered with black bushy hair, spotless in his apparel, 
 jealous of his dignity, with a passion for work and 
 genuine good will toward all his pupils. He was 
 what many wpuld call a fussy man, ready to take 
 sides in all personal quarrels, a hot partisan in 
 politics, and perpetually entangled in mild love 
 scrapes. But he had the pedagogical gift beyond 
 question, and was at bottom a true man. There 
 was a streak of romance in his life, but the pathos 
 of grief and death crowd it out of this record. 
 
 I had other schooling all along, of course — the 
 schooling of my environment, which was mixed 
 and peculiar. Our home was a frequent stopping 
 place for the Methodist preachers. When farthest 
 from religion in his daily life, my father never lost 
 his respect and regard for the Methodist Church 
 and its ministry. Her Church life was for my 
 
1 8 Sunset Views. 
 
 mother the golden thread that ran through all the 
 tangled web of her life. So in my boyhood I 
 heard (as a boy hears) the sermons of such pulpit 
 giants as Peter Doub, James Reid, and William 
 Anderson ; the tremendous exhortations of Father 
 Dye; the seraphic songs of Jehu Hank. I was 
 saturated with the spirit of that time of mighty revi- 
 vals, polemical controversy, and sharp hand-to-hand 
 fighting with the world, theflesh, and the devil. And 
 the fighting was indeed sharp. The whisky distill- 
 ery, the cross-road doggery, the cockfight, the horse 
 race, the card table, were all around. I saw and 
 heard much that I would be glad to forget forever. 
 It was largely a duel between the Methodist Church 
 and the whisky devil during this period. When 
 in 1866 my father, then an old man, told me that 
 he went alone once every day to pray in the little 
 Methodist chapel in sight of his home, and that 
 he had found peace with God, and was waiting for 
 the call to go up to meet my mother, I thanked 
 God for the Methodist Church that has made the 
 desert places of America blossom and its wilder- 
 nesses to rejoice. 
 
 The life and death of my brother William, two 
 years older than myself, was a graciously educative 
 influence of my boyhood. He was frail in his 
 physical constitution from the start, and there was 
 something about him that seemed to indicate that 
 he was destined for another and higher sphere than 
 earth. He was never known to utter an evil word, 
 or to show a wrong temper, or to strike an angry 
 blow. There was a spiritual beauty about him that 
 awed and attracted both the old and the young. He 
 died in his teens, lying in our mother's arms, his 
 face shining rapturously as he said with upward 
 look, *' Lift me higher ! " That death and the life 
 that went before it were part of my schooHng. 
 
A SAD NIGHT RIDE. 
 
A SAD NIGHT RIDE. 
 
 I WAS a sad-hearted boy that winter day when 
 I left home to go out into the wide world alone. 
 My mother's hot tears fell on my face as she 
 gave me a parting kiss. I feel it all as I write 
 these lines to-day, more than fifty years after- 
 wards. I was under fourteen years old. The 
 family fortunes had sunk to a point where it be- 
 came imperative that I should become self-support- 
 ing. From that day to this I have fought this bat- 
 tle. The record of the struggle would be a record 
 of my gropings in the dark and sinnings in the 
 light on the one side, and of the patience and 
 mercy of my God on the other. (That last sen- 
 tence might be taken as an epitome of my whole 
 life.) Blessed be His name I 
 
 My destination was Lynchburg, Virginia. It 
 was twelve miles to Danville, where ended the first 
 stage of my journey. I felt like one in a dream 
 as the four-horse stage wheeled me along. The 
 winter sky looked cold, and there was a heaviness 
 'about my heart and a lump in my throat. I had 
 no appetite for the hot supper set before me at 
 Williams's Tavern. When a boy in his early teens 
 loses his appetite, there is something serious in the 
 case. x\t two o'clock in the morning I was roused 
 and told that the stagecoach was waiting for me. 
 That ride ! It seemed a long, long time from two 
 o'clock to daybreak. The weather was very cold, 
 the very stars glittering coldly in the sky, the 
 horses' hoofs making lively time on the frozen 
 roadbed. The jolting of the stagecoach and the 
 sadness of my heart kept me wide awake dur- 
 
 (21) 
 
22 Sunset Views. 
 
 ing the long hours. The sense of loneHness was 
 then first felt, not for the last time. There are 
 souls that feel it all their lives — orphaned at the 
 the start, isolated all along. To such heaven will 
 be sweeter, if possible, than to all others — the 
 heaven where the family of God shall meet and 
 mingle in fellowship unrestrained, with love un- 
 mixed and unending. Blessed are the homesick 
 who shall reach that home I I was too heartsick 
 to realize how cold it was. When at sunrise 
 we drove up to the tavern at Pittsylvania Court- 
 house, I was so nearly frozen that I had to 
 be lifted out of the stagecoach, taken into the 
 house, and set by the big log fire to thaw. The 
 landlady gave me a kindly look, and spoke kindly 
 words that touched my boy-heart. But I thought of 
 the home I had left on the other side of Dan River, 
 and again there was a lump in my throat. It all 
 comes back — that long cold night ride, the all-day 
 ride that followed, and the heartache that never 
 left me for a moment. Over the hills of Pittsyl- 
 vania and Campbell counties, crossing Staunton 
 River, which then looked big to my boyish eyes, 
 the wintry wind whistling through the forest trees, 
 the smoke curling upward from mansions or cabins 
 in the clearings, the Blue Ridge outlined north- 
 ward in the sky that looked so far away and so 
 cold — it all comes back with a rush upon my memo- 
 ry, my first day alone in the world. There was a 
 sort of semi-orphanage in my consciousness that 
 day that has given me sympathy for orphanage all 
 my life. And I do not wonder that the Book that 
 tells us what is in God's heart toward his creatures 
 says so much about the children that are mother- 
 less and homeless. The heavenly Father may not 
 be seen by the natural eye in the order of the nat- 
 ural world, but the throb of his heart is felt in the 
 
A Sad Night Ride. 23 
 
 Word that tells us what he is and how he feels. 
 The heavenly Father! — that is what he calls him- 
 self. Our Father, who art in heaven, thy king- 
 dom come in our hearts, in our lives, in our world, 
 is the prayer that rises from my soul in penning 
 the closing words of this short chapter! Amen, 
 
HOW METHODISM KEPT ITS HOLD. 
 
HOW METHODISM KEPT ITS HOLD. 
 
 IT may be worth while for me to pause in this 
 straggling narration, and tell how it was that 
 Methodism held its grasp upon me. The so- 
 lution seems to be very simple: Methodism 
 went everywhere that I went. There was al- 
 ways within my hearing a Methodist voice that 
 would expose the sophistries of infidelity, and I 
 was never beyond the sweep of a revival wave that 
 bore me back toward my mother's Church. No 
 matter how high might rise the tides of worldli- 
 ness, passion, or unbelief, the tides of spiritual life 
 in Methodism rose higher still. The Methodist 
 idea then seemed to be that the mission of the 
 Church was to save sinners in a sense more ex- 
 pHcit than is now understood by many. The great 
 revival out of which Methodism was born was still 
 sweeping over the land. Through Methodism and 
 other evangelical agencies God was commanding 
 all men everywhere to repent. The kingdom of 
 heaven was at hand in a sense that was special. 
 To save sinners, not to build up the Church, was 
 the Methodistic idea. The continent shook be- 
 neath its tread. This is the gospel that was 
 needed. The Church was built up, of course, 
 wherever souls were born of God into new life 
 under her ministry. There never was seen any- 
 where else such rapid growth in Church member- 
 ship as there was in Methodism in the flush time 
 of its revival power. Has a change come over it? 
 Is a change desirable? Is a change to be ex- 
 pected ? No ! Let us have no radical change in 
 our convictions as to what are the true functions 
 
 (^7) 
 
28 Sunset Views, 
 
 of the Christian Church. Let us have no radical 
 change of opinion or practice as to what is the 
 special mission of Methodism. Methodism is not 
 a sacerdotalism. When it becomes thus mummi- 
 fied, it will be ready for its shroud of formalism 
 and for burial. It is Christianity in earnest — in the 
 present tense. (Dr. Chalmers would not object to 
 the added clause, even if it does seem tautologous. ) 
 Methodists when saved become soul-savers in 
 some form of Christian service. All are to be at 
 it, and always at it, as long as they live on earth. 
 To build up the Church in the true New^ Testa- 
 ment sense of the word is not only to polish its 
 living stones, but to work in new^ material. The 
 saints fall on sleep every generation, and others 
 must take their places in the militant Church. 
 The baptized children of the Church come to the 
 point when they should ratify the baptismal cove- 
 nant made by their parents, and make covenanted 
 blessings theirs by choice. Shall we wait for a re- 
 vival to take them into full fellowship ? Not neces- 
 sarily. But the right sort of a revival, at the right 
 time, raises a gracious tide of spiritual power that 
 sweeps them over the bar into the port — the bar 
 of worldliness, or doubt, or indecision. Thus a 
 large percentage of our membership came into the 
 Church; how large, the reader may be astonished 
 to learn if he will make inquiry. And for back- 
 sliders, the periodical revival is the reopening of 
 the gates for their return to the fold they have 
 left. 
 
 This is the true history of the revival in Metho- 
 dism, and it is largely the same in other evangeli- 
 cal bodies. It is not a question of theory, but of 
 facts- -facts all pointing to the same conclusion, 
 namely, that this is the method owned and blessed 
 by the Holy Spirit. Its development among us 
 
How Methodis7n Kept Its Hold. 29 
 
 was providential beyond question: its maintenance 
 is demanded by every consideration affecting the 
 salvation of men and the glory of God. All that 
 can be truly said as to false methods and false re- 
 vivalists may be assented to freely without any dis- 
 count upon the value of genuine revival work. Sa- 
 tan never fails to counterfeit as far as he can any 
 good work he cannot stop. The lying wonders of 
 Simon Magus counterfeited the gracious miracles 
 of the true disciples of our Lord. This short chap- 
 ter, which came in of itself, so to speak, as a re- 
 flection on a personal statement, may end here with 
 this remark: The time may come when Methodist 
 and other evangelical bodies can afford to dispense 
 with revivals, truly so called; but the child is not 
 born who will live to see that time. 
 
TAKING SHAPE, 
 
M 
 
 TAKING SHAPE. 
 
 Y life in Lynchburg began at the age when 
 a boy grows fastest and is most impress- 
 ible. He takes shape in body and soul 
 between his first teens and early man- 
 hood. I learned to set type in the print- 
 ing office of the Lynchbui'g Rcfiiblican^ and ac- 
 quired a taste for journalism that has never left 
 me. That part of my schooling, in the order of 
 divine providence, was destined to have a very pos- 
 itive influence upon all my after life. That was a 
 time of intense political feeling and sharp politi- 
 cal debate. It was also a period during which re- 
 ligious controversy ran high. Political discussion 
 and denominational debates were carried on ear- 
 nestly by a people who had strong convictions and 
 much loquacit3\ The Whigs and Democrats, 
 nearly balanced in numbers, contended for politi- 
 cal supremacy. Virginia was always at the front 
 in those days; every voter was also a propagan- 
 dist, and every youth an incipient statesman, at 
 least in his own estimation. My naturalization was 
 rapid, though not without friction and tribulation. 
 Lynchburg boys of that day were like all other 
 boys of all other times and places. They were of 
 the normal type, and loved to wrestle, box, swim, 
 and shoot. Being a new boy, I had to run the 
 gantlet — that is to say, to fight every boy of my 
 own age and size, or back down when challenged. 
 My blood and my home teaching did not incline 
 me to nonresistance. In fact, I always had a rel- 
 ish for fighting. It is certain that I had all the 
 fighting I wanted. The names of Kirkwood Otey, 
 3 (33) 
 
34 Sunset Views. 
 
 Paul Banks, Henry Orr, Walter Withers, Beall 
 Blackford, Nick Floyd, and others, come to my 
 mind — boys with whom I had battles that were 
 drawn battles, none of us at any time getting 
 enough drubbing to prevent renewal of the fight 
 when occasion offered. Those Lynchburg boys 
 were made of true metal. The strength of the. 
 hills was in their frames, the inspiration of a glori- 
 ous history was in their souls, an heroic heredity 
 was in their blood. They fought fairly, and never 
 cherished malice, giving and taking hard knocks 
 without flinching. In the ' * war between the states ' ' 
 these Lynchburg boys made their mark. They 
 marched with Stonewall Jackson through the Val- 
 ley of Virginia, and followed Lee in his wonder- 
 ful campaigns. Braver soldiers never wore uni- 
 forms. 
 
 The Christian religion will, in its final triumph, 
 bring in the reign of universal peace. The time is 
 coming when the nations shall learn war no more, 
 when swords shall be turned into plowshares, and 
 spears into pruning hooks. Of this I have no 
 doubt. Not only does the word of God promise 
 it, but it seems to me patent that if Christianity 
 stopped short of this result it would be to that ex- 
 tent a failure. In the happier age that is coming, 
 war will be looked upon as a horrible feature of 
 a darker period of the world's history, when the 
 evolution of God's purpose to give to the world 
 knowledge, truth, freedom, and peace through the 
 gospel of Jesus Christ was in its earlier and incom- 
 plete stages. The noncombatant theories were 
 not taught me in my boyhood, and the world had 
 not then reached the promised time of peace. Cow- 
 ardice was held to be a sin and a shame among 
 men and boys everywhere. The whole American 
 nation was possessed of this martial spirit, and it 
 
Taking Shafe, 35 
 
 has led us to make presidents of our successful 
 generals, from Washington to Taylor and Grant. 
 I fought my way to peace among the Lynchburg 
 boys . 
 
 I am a noncombatant now in theory, as it 
 seems to me all New Testament Christians ought 
 to be. But it would perhaps be as awkward for a 
 nation in this year of our Lord to announce and 
 act upon noncombatant principles as it would 
 have been for a Lynchburg youth among his com- 
 panions a half century ago. Combativeness has 
 hitherto been invariably a constituent element of 
 human nature. It is in the blood, instincts, and 
 history of our race. Hero worship has been the 
 universal religion. What is to become of the 
 combativeness after the era of universal peace has 
 dawned ? Will it disappear ? Or, will the love of 
 conflict find legitimate exercise in other and high- 
 er fields of activit}^ ? Progress is the law under 
 which the world moves in its pathway through the 
 ages — progress by conquest, progress by over- 
 coming obstacles and beating down opposing 
 forces of whatever kind. To him that overcom- 
 eth is given the promise to eat of the tree of life, 
 and of the hidden manna; and to him will be 
 given the white stone in which the New Name is 
 written which is known only to its recipient; and 
 to him will be given power over the nations. But 
 the weapons of this warfare are not carnal. The 
 victory that overcometh the world is the victory of 
 faith. What does that mean to the reader? The 
 true answer would reveal his status and trend. 
 
FORMATIVE INFLUENCES. 
 
FORMATIVE INFLUENCES. 
 
 FORMATIVE influences! This heading 
 for this chapter presents a riddle. Who 
 can know or analyze the agencies or influ- 
 ences which have made him what he is? 
 During the years of my stay in Lynchburg 
 I was employed first in the newspaper office, and 
 afterwards in a bookstore, and last of all as a post- 
 office clerk. I read everything I could lay my 
 hands on — mostly the newspapers of the day. The 
 party press of both sides engaged my youthful 
 mind, and I became an expert in partisan phrases 
 and catchwords, if not an adept in constitutional 
 law and political legislation. I adopted opinions at 
 this time that I still retain, and became subject to 
 prejudices and partialities that will be buried only 
 in my grave. In the selection of my reading I had 
 no guide save my own whim or choice or the limi- 
 tations of my purse. If it could be so, I would 
 be glad even at this late day to blot from my mind 
 the memory of some things I read during this pe- 
 riod of my life : bad books that were read out of 
 mere curiosity and thrown aside with disgust. 
 Curiosity ! How many young persons start on 
 the paths that lead to hell to gratify curiosity ! 
 The first vicious book, the first step in any of the 
 ways that take hold on hell, is thus taken by so 
 many that follow in the footsteps of the first trans- 
 gressor in this world's tragic history. 
 
 In the choice of my companions I exercised the 
 same freedom, having no guide save my own pref- 
 erence or the relationships naturally springing out 
 of my environment. If any reader of these pages 
 
 (39) 
 
40 Su7iset Views. 
 
 doubts that man is a fallen being, and that the trail 
 of the serpent of sin is all over this earth, he has 
 had a different experience from mine, or he must 
 draw a different conclusion from the same facts. 
 The vileness of what many youths call *'fun" ex- 
 ceeds even its idiocy. Respect for my mother, 
 and a voice in the inner soul that was never si- 
 lenced, made me turn away from profanity or ob- 
 scenity if I could, or to hear it with disgust if I 
 could not shut it out. But it was no more possi- 
 ble for a boy left to himself to escape contact with 
 foulness of speech than with foulness of the print- 
 ed page. Thus it came to pass that I heard as 
 well as read much that it is painful to remember — 
 the pain being mixed with gratitude to God for 
 the repulsion that was always felt at its polluting 
 touch. Let me say it just here: Never for one 
 moment of my life have I committed any sin, or 
 come into contact with sin in any of its grosser 
 forms, without feeling such a repulsion for it as to 
 prove to me that the Holy Spirit has never left me 
 nor ceased to move upon my soul since I crossed 
 the line of moral accountability. Reading over 
 that last sentence, and knowing it to be the affirma- 
 tion of a fact, my heart is lifted in silent gratitude 
 to God as I write these words. I would close 
 this paragraph with a word of advice to any young 
 person who may read what I say: Be simple con- 
 cerning evil. Do not start to hell from curiosit3^ 
 Ignorance on these lines is pleasing to God and 
 honorable to yourself. The flippant assumption by 
 young people of a knowledge of the world on its 
 dark under side is at once a weakness and a wick- 
 edness — a weakness to be ashamed of, a wicked- 
 ness to repent of. Avoid alike the idiocy of such 
 a pretension and the vileness of such an experi- 
 ence, O youthful reader, whoever you may be. 
 
Formative Injliiences. 41 
 
 Two men's names drop from my pen point here 
 while I am speaking of the formative influences of 
 my youth. They were both great and good men, 
 though of different types. The one was Doctor 
 WilHam A. Smith, of the Virginia Conference of 
 the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. To his 
 owrf generation he was well known — a giant in de- 
 bate, one of the foremost leaders of his side in the 
 struggle that ended in the division of the Church 
 in 1844. He was indeed a grand man. Lion-like 
 in port, with a voice to match, in the arena he 
 moved as a conqueror. There was a limp in his 
 gait from a crippled limb, but there was none in 
 his logic. In debate, when sure of his premises, 
 he was irresistible. His awakening sermons were 
 terrible. Fortified by well-chosen Scripture texts, 
 with exegesis and deduction clear and strong, he 
 showed the sinner who listened to him that he 
 was on an inclined plane sliding down hellward, 
 and that repentance or ruin was to be chosen then 
 and there. He was as simple as a child, knowing 
 no concealments as he knew no fear. He believed 
 in Arminian (or Wesleyan) theology and in state- 
 rights politics. He trained with John Wesley's 
 followers in the Church and with John C. Calhoun's 
 followers in the State. His call to preach must 
 have been very clear and strong: nothing short of 
 this could have kept him out of party politics. In 
 either house of Congress he would have been con- 
 spicuous in the eyes of the nation. Whether he 
 was ever tempted to turn aside in this direction, I 
 know not. The devil has a way of taking such 
 men up into a high mountain — the mountain of 
 imagination — and showing and promising to them 
 the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them. 
 Such as have listened and yielded have found that 
 he is a liar from the beginning. The preacher- 
 
42 Sunset Views. 
 
 politician, as a rule, is a failure for both worlds. 
 Tragedies along this line have come under my ob- 
 servation that are sad enough, if it were possible, 
 to excite the pity of the arch deceiver himself. 
 What Doctor Smith saw in me that attracted his 
 notice and elicited his good will, I cannot tell; but 
 it was a fortunate circumstance for me that it, was 
 so. When I was a clerk in the Lynchburg post 
 office, he would come inside and talk with me for 
 hours at a time. Rather, he would talk to me. He 
 loved a good listener, such as I must have been 
 then. Those monologues would be good reading 
 now for persons who think. The only record of 
 them extant is in the memory of the boy who heard 
 them with w^onder and delight. Forgetting that he 
 had only a single hearer — and he only an inquisi- 
 tive youth — the great man would unfold great 
 schemes of thought, and argue and illustrate them 
 with a power that was tremendous, and an enthu- 
 siasm that was charmingly contagious. The friend- 
 ship of such a man was to me a blessing and an in- 
 spiration. At that time I was young, and impress- 
 ible in many ways. My veneration for Doctor 
 Smith was tinged with awe because of a story that 
 his parsonage was "haunted" at night. The 
 story was, that sound of the rocking of an invis- 
 ible cradle by invisible hands went on night after 
 night during the still hours when the family were 
 abed and the world asleep. This was never de- 
 nied nor explained. The supernatural touch, real 
 or fancied, all of us respond to in our earlier years. 
 It answers to something that is in us all — a belief 
 in a world unseen. 
 
 The other personality that comes in here is that 
 of Doctor Robert B. Thomson, of the Methodist 
 Protestant Church. His benignant presence seems 
 almost to pervade the room as I write his name. 
 
Formative Influences . 43 
 
 He was a man of medium size, who looked larger 
 than he was under the afflatus that gave him the 
 pulpit transfiguration. His dark eyes glowed with 
 the fires of thought. About him there was the in- 
 definable magnetism that drew the hearts of the 
 people, old and young, to him. He was eloquent 
 in the truest and highest sense of the word. He 
 had the clairvoyance that springs from the sympa- 
 thy that flows out of a great heart filled with the 
 love of souls. Doctor Thomson seemed to know 
 my needs and my perils, and gave me touches that 
 have influenced me to this hour. The worth of 
 such a man to a community cannot be measured 
 this side of the final judgment. For him there is 
 in my heart an affection that is almost filial in its 
 nature. 
 
 During all this time I lived in an atmosphere 
 sweetened by the lives of holy women whom I met 
 in the family circle and in the places of religious 
 worship. Their faces shone in holy beauty, and 
 their songs and prayers and good works made 
 what is divinest in human character audible, visi- 
 ble, and tangible. Four of these — Mrs. Early, 
 Mrs. Otey, Mrs. Saunders, and Mrs. Daniel — 
 made a quartette so Christlike that unbelief was 
 abashed in their presence, and all that was holy 
 and beneficent bloomed within the spheres of their 
 gentle ministries. 
 
 One of the formative influences of this period of 
 my life is mentioned last of all, though not the least 
 potent. From time to time the post would bring 
 me a letter from my mother, breathing mother-love 
 and telling me what was in her hope and prayers 
 for me. Tear-stains were on the sheets, and my 
 own eyes grew misty as I read them. Her love 
 held me fast, and inspiration was in the thought 
 that well-doing on my part would give her joy. 
 
44 Sunset Views. 
 
 Her prayer touched God, and God touched me. 
 My blessed mother! She trod the paths of pain 
 and toil and heartache and self-sacrifice through 
 all her life. I was too blind to see what I owed to 
 her while she was yet living her life of service 
 here on earth. Like too many others, the mother- 
 love with its self-abnegation and self-devotion — 
 the self-abnegation that denies nothing that love 
 demands, and the self-devotion that gives all that 
 love can give — I took as a matter of course. I now 
 see more clearly and feel more deeply what I owe 
 to my mother. May I here express the hope that 
 some day, somewhere, I may meet her and tell her 
 the love and gratitude that are in my heart? Some 
 day, somewhere? 
 
FOUR OLD-TIME REVIVALISTS. 
 
 V. 
 
FOUR OLD-TIME REVIVALISTS. 
 
 FIRST in my memory is George W. Dye — 
 Father Dye he was called by the people — 
 who in family prayer at my father's house 
 seemed to talk with God as friend talks to 
 friend, and who at the old Sharon camp 
 ground on a Sunday morning, as it seemed to my 
 boyish mind, turned loose a spiritual cyclone upon 
 the awe-stricken multitude. The revivals he con- 
 ducted were of such a character that no one who 
 believed at all in a supernatural religion could 
 doubt that they were the work of God. Gam- 
 blers, debauchees, profane swearers, and even 
 drunkards, were powerfully converted — to use a 
 phrase that has been current among the people 
 called Methodists. The expression is just right: 
 in no other way could they have been converted 
 at all. Sin is a powerful enslaver: Satan is a 
 strong tyrant, holding the castle of the human 
 soul. The power that dislodges him must be still 
 stronger. The gospel of Christ is the power of 
 God unto salvation. Power! Those old circuit 
 riders had it. All substitutes for it are worthless. 
 The more machinery you have without power, the 
 more worthless is any organization. Father Dye 
 types a class not yet extinct. 
 
 Another one that comes to mind was George 
 W. Childs — the most ghostly-looking man I ever 
 saw. His frame was tall and thin, his step noise- 
 less, his face as pale as death, and he had a rapt, 
 far-away look that made him seem to be not of the 
 earth earthy, as are common men. It was easy to 
 believe that there is a great spirit-world after see- 
 
 (47) 
 
48 Sunset Views. 
 
 ing this unworldly old circuit rider. The s^.range 
 power that attended his preaching could be ac- 
 counted for in no other way. It was said of him 
 that he had lain in a trance three days and nights, 
 that he was never known to laugh afterwards, and 
 that he was never heard to speak of it. Whether 
 or not like Paul he saw things not lawful to be ut- 
 tered — or thought he saw them — we cannot say. 
 But that then and there he had an experience of 
 some sort, that thenceforward made him a changed 
 man, is beyond doubt. Boy as I was, I was strange- 
 ly thrilled and awed in the presence of this man of 
 God — for such he was. His very looks refuted 
 materialism. 
 
 The influence of William M. Crumley (men- 
 tioned elsewhere in these pages) has never left 
 me since I last saw him in 1866. In the pulpit he 
 too had that strange power that no one was ever 
 able to analyze or explain. He was not eloquent 
 in any ordinary sense of the word. His sermons 
 were the most informal talks, in a subdued con- 
 versational tone; and yet it was no unusual occur- 
 rence for the crowded congregations that attended 
 his ministry to be wrought up to the point of im- 
 mediate surrender to Christ. In his own way he 
 made a " still hunt" among his parishioners that 
 found them all. No member of his flock was left 
 unfed. He was a revivalist everywhere — he was 
 himself a revival incarnated. I never heard him 
 speak in a loud voice. I never heard him make 
 an appeal to the emotions that was not also an ap- 
 peal to the conscience. That I had even a short 
 season of pastoral training with such a man is a 
 fact for which I have never ceased to be grateful. 
 He was a man of God : that solves the secret of his 
 success. 
 
 A very different sort of man was Leonidas Ros- 
 
Four Old-thne Revivalists. 49 
 
 ser, but he too was a revivalist whose power was the 
 wonder of his brethren. He was by no means a 
 quiet man anywhere or any time when tiwake. It 
 is Hkely that even his dreams had a dramatic and 
 pictorial quality. He was criticised, smiled at, 
 and followed up and listened to by multitudes. 
 Many were converted under his ministry. If 
 there could be such a being as a sanctified dandy, 
 he was one. The fit of his clothes, the pose of his 
 body, the seemingl}- self-conscious look that never 
 left him for a moment, the dramatic recital of in- 
 cidents in which he himself was an actor, could 
 not fail to elicit remark, especially in ministerial 
 circles. (Note: Ministers in their proneness to 
 criticise one another are not worse than other 
 men.) But what was the secret of Rosser's 
 power? It was the genuine earnestness of the 
 man. He knew that the gospel he preached was 
 the power of God unto salvation. His ineradica- 
 ble Rosserisms were on the surface : deeper with- 
 in his soul was the burning love for souls that 
 somehow melts the hearts of the hardest sinners. 
 He had a faith so mighty that all sorts of peo- 
 ple, saints and sinners alike, caught its contagion. 
 The individuality of the man was not lost, but the 
 excellency of the power was of God. The quali- 
 ty of his ministry was attested by its fruits. He 
 was a man of God, not without human infirmity — 
 where is the man who is not? — whose natural gifts 
 as a speaker and charms of personality were sup- 
 plemented by that one element that differentiates 
 human eloquence from apostolic power. 
 
 Here is another revivalist, presenting a contrast 
 to Rosser in every particular save one: John Forbes, 
 a local preacher, who during many years was as 
 a flame of fire over the Dan River region in Vir- 
 ginia and North Carolina. He was a man of the 
 4 
 
50 
 
 Sunset Views, 
 
 people; poor as to this world's goods; without 
 book learning, except that found in the one Book 
 of books ; living in a cabin that could not be called 
 a cottage without a verbal strain; a tall, gangling, 
 ungainly, genial, free-and-easy sort of rural apostle. 
 He was as guileless as a child, andf eared not the face 
 of man. The common people heard him gladly, 
 while the more cultured listened to him with won- 
 der. His sermons presented two points : the te^r- 
 rors of the law, and the freeness and fullness of 
 gospel grace. "The wages of sin is death, but 
 the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord" — that was his message; he had no 
 other. It was God's own message, and it had 
 God's own attestation. According to the prom- 
 ise, it killed and made alive. Critics were dis- 
 armed, scoffers were silenced, quibblers were con- 
 founded, cavilers were convinced. If it was not 
 the power of God, what was it that wrought so 
 mightily by the ministry of this large-boned, 
 large-featured, unlearned, simple-hearted, farmer- 
 preacher? Because of his plainness of speech on 
 one occasion some lewd fellows of the baser sort 
 threatened to give him a beating if he ever dared 
 to hold another meeting in their neighborhood. 
 Their threat did not frighten Forbes, w^ho soon af- 
 terwards began a special protracted service among 
 them . The threat of the offended parties had been 
 given wide publicity, and a vast congregation as- 
 sembled, many of them drawn by the expectation 
 of a row. The old preacher opened the service 
 with the usual exercises, and then announced a 
 text embodying his one pulpit topic — the certainty 
 that unrepented sin would be punished, and that 
 God was ready to bless and save all who would 
 truly repent of their sins. Toward the close of 
 the sermon, in describing the security of the faith- 
 
Four Old-time Revivalists. 51 
 
 ful and their final coronation, he " got happy," as 
 the plain country people expressed it — that is to 
 say, his soul was flooded with the joy of the Holy 
 Ghost. '* Where are those fellows who came here 
 to-day to whip me ?" he asked. *' Why, He would 
 not let a thousand such harm me. Where are 
 they?" he repeated; and as he spoke, with his eyes 
 shut and his rugged face shining, he left the preach- 
 ing stand and made his way up and down the 
 aisles, exhorting as he moved. "My God," he 
 exclaimed, ''wouldn't let fifty thousand sinners 
 whip me to-day ! — but boys," he continued witha 
 sudden overflow of tenderness, "he is able to for- 
 give and save you all this day," placing his hand 
 upon the head of one of the opposing party as he 
 spoke. The effect was indescribable. A mighty 
 wave of feeling swept over the entire assembly 
 amid songs and shoutings on the part of be- 
 lievers, with tears and sobbings among the un- 
 converted. The preacher got no whipping that 
 day. The meeting was kept up. Among its con- 
 verts were most of the hostile gang who had come 
 to whip the preacher. 
 
 When the old man died he did not own enough 
 of this world's goods to buy a burial lot, but his 
 name is as ointment poured forth in all that Dan 
 River region, where on both sides of the state line 
 so many of the holy dead, whose images rise be- 
 fore my mental vision as I write, are sleeping in 
 Jesus, awaiting the morning of the resurrection. 
 
 *' The treasure is in earthen vessels, that the ex- 
 cellency of the power might be seen to be of God, 
 and not of men." 
 
A UNIQUE PEDAGOGICAL EXPERIENCE. 
 
A UNIQUE PEDAGOGICAL EXPERIENCE. 
 
 THAT was a curious sort of school that I 
 taught. The teacher, his methods, and his 
 classes were all unique. I look back upon 
 this episode in my life with amused sur- 
 prise — if that is a good phrase with the 
 right meaning. My father, animated by patriot- 
 ism and zeal for the war party to which he be- 
 longed, had gone as a soldier to the Mexican war, 
 in which he did his duty, was crippled for life, 
 came back alive, and drew a pension from the 
 government with patriotic punctuality to the end of 
 his life. During his absence I lived at home with 
 my mother. The neighbors, who always over- 
 rated my learning, requested me to open a school 
 for their children, and I did so. I had about sixt}^ 
 pupils, ranging from the alphabet up as high as I 
 could go. Classification was after a system — no, 
 a method — of my own: system was not in it 
 Some of the older pupils had formerly been my 
 schoolmates ; and if they did not know more than 
 I did, it must surely have been their own fault. 
 We all did pretty much as we pleased, and had a 
 good time. The government of the school was 
 mild, but mixed. The use of the rod was then 
 still in fashion, but I did not use it often. The 
 switches that were kept in sight behind my desk 
 were placed there mainly to satisfy the expectation 
 of my patrons, and for moral effect. One bow- 
 legged boy — still living at this writing — at the end 
 of six 'months had failed to master the alphabet 
 under my instruction. There were other pupils 
 who knew more than their teacher, especially in 
 
 (55) 
 
^6 Sunset Views. 
 
 mathematics, in which he was never strong: 
 these were kept busy in other studies in which 
 he was more advanced. The good will of all con- 
 cerned supplemented my shortcomings. 
 
 Some of my old pupils are still living. When now 
 and then I meetwith one of them, the greetingon both 
 sides is hearty. Few of them are left. When we meet 
 in the spirit-world, there will be a look of inquisi- 
 tiveness in our eyes: the inquiry will then come 
 up, What did we do for each other back there at 
 that old-time school in those old days ? Not much 
 was done, but something. My pupils got the best 
 that was in me then; and the fact that I was their 
 teacher and exemplar made my best better than it 
 would otherwise have been. That is the way God 
 educates us. Tests come to us that reveal to us 
 our ignorance and weakness. Responsibility comes 
 to us to steady and strengthen us. If you would 
 teach a boy to swim, throw him into deep water. 
 The youth who is petted and praised and coddled 
 at home until he thinks it a great feat to rise and 
 dress himself for breakfast, and believes that the 
 chief functions of young manhood are to excite the 
 admiration of one sex and the envy of another, 
 thrown on his own resources develops a latent man- 
 hood that astonishes himself and all who know him. 
 Necessity is the mother of manhood in action. 
 Many men have saved their boys by losing their 
 money. Just as many have ruined their boys by 
 making money for them without training them for 
 its use. At times I have been tempted to harbor 
 in my soul a complaint that the fortunes of the 
 family to which I belonged went down in my youth 
 to a point so low that I lost the advantages and op- 
 portunities of other youths of my own age . But per- 
 haps oftener I have thanked God that by my pov- 
 erty I escaped in some measure the perils that were 
 
A Unique Pedagogical Experience, 57 
 
 fatal to so many of them. It might have been that 
 with a better mental training and a broader culture 
 my life would have been larger and more fruitful 
 of good. Or, it might have been that with the freer 
 use of money, giving me access to indulgences out 
 of my reach, with the lack of the spur of neces- 
 sity to labor, I might have been one of that great 
 army of young men of my country who were vic- 
 tims of plenty — slaughtered by the vices that lie in 
 wait for youth when it is idle and full of passion. 
 Adversity is a good mother. Prosperity is a de- 
 ceiver to many. 
 
 The pupil that got most good out of that unique 
 school was myself. My knowledge of some of the 
 branches taught was increased, and the dignity 
 of pedagogy, while it did not sit easy on a youth 
 of my temperament, was a good thing for me 
 to feel or to assume. The country schoolmas- 
 ter has been described by Washington Irving and 
 many others. There were some among the rural 
 pedagogues who had scholarship, discipline, and 
 moral force, but there were many others no better 
 qualified for the work of education than I was. It 
 was not time wasted after all. Those big barefoot 
 boys and rosy, laughing country girls learned a 
 little, and I learned a lesson that has been relearned 
 by me many times since — namely, that all I did not 
 know would make a very big book. The attempt 
 to teach something that you think you know will 
 give you a clear perception of the difference be- 
 tween vague notions and true knowledge. If a 
 term of teaching, long or short, could be included 
 in every post-graduate course, there would be fewer 
 failures by men who sport degrees. If there is any 
 wisdom in this suggestion, and if any will act on 
 it, let it be put to my credit. 
 
 All this time the Methodist Church kept its arms 
 
58 Sunset Views. 
 
 around me, never withdrawing them for a moment. 
 I heard the preaching of its preachers, I read the 
 Christian Advocate and such miscellaneous Meth- 
 odist reading as was then current in country dis- 
 tricts. The ubiquitousness of the itinerant system 
 was illustrated in the fact that in town or country, 
 at home or on my travels, I have never for one day 
 of my life been beyond the reach of the wide- 
 reaching arms of that branch of the Church of 
 Christ called Methodism. 
 
IN RICHMOND IN THE FORTIES. 
 
IN RICHMOND IN THE FORTIES. 
 
 AT the close of the war with Mexico I went 
 to Richmond, Virginia, and there abode 
 for some time. Richmond was then noted 
 for big Whig majorities, plucky Demo- 
 crats, abundant Baptists of all shades of 
 color, lively Methodists, fine-toned, middle-of-the- 
 road Episcopalians, and Presbyterians who knew 
 their catechisms and walked with God. The 
 Whig and the Enquirer had for many years kept 
 up a political duel of national notoriety and influ- 
 ence. They furnished ammunition and w^atch- 
 words for the partisans of Henry Clay and Andrew 
 Jackson over all the land. There was a touch of 
 chivalry in their fighting that was admirable, but 
 it did not suffice to avert a tragedy that made good 
 men of all parties mourn. The duello was even 
 then an anachronism: grown men playing Ivanhoe 
 after Ivanhoe and his like were dead and buried. 
 By virtue of the ability of its party organs, the 
 zeal of the local following, and the traditions of 
 the past, Richmond was then virtually the political 
 capital of the Union. The place was always in a 
 political whirl. The women did not think of vot- 
 ing and holding office, but every one of them who 
 was not busy in Church work w^as in some way 
 active in politics. Some were busy both for the 
 Church and the party they loved. The Baptists 
 had great swing with the negroes in Richmond at 
 that time — and have not lost it yet. 
 
 The African Baptist Church was a wonder to 
 visitors from the North and from the old world 
 who came to Richmond with the notion in their 
 
 (6,) 
 
62 Sunset Views, 
 
 heads that negro slavery was indeed the sum of 
 all villainies, and that a slaveholding community 
 was divided into only two parts — brutalized black 
 slaves and cruel white owners. For the thou- 
 sandth time I repeat here that I am glad that slav- 
 ery is gone. It had to go. It had its day, and it 
 had done its work. But let me say, what has 
 been better said by wiser men, that the roots of 
 all that is most hopeful in the present condition 
 and prospects of the African race in these United 
 States of America, and in all the world, including 
 Africa, are to be found in the work that was done 
 for them by the evangelical Churches in the South 
 before the abolition of slavery. The Baptists and 
 the Methodists led in this good work for the negro 
 race. On the one side, immersion appealed to the 
 love of the spectacular that is in them. Freedom 
 of speech and in song appealed to a race that is full 
 of eloquence and full of music, on the other. It 
 has been a close race. That God may still bless 
 both sides, and the final victor be made to do his 
 very best to win, is a prayer in which all good Meth- 
 odists and Baptists may join. The gospel of Christ 
 will solve the negro problem, and all other prob- 
 lems, in its own good time and in its own best way. 
 The two preachers I heard oftenest in Richmond 
 were Doctor David S. Doggett, Methodist, and 
 Doctor T. V. Moore, Presbyterian. They were 
 pulpit princes of the first rank. The descrip- 
 tives that would put Doggett before the reader 
 would be: lucidity, elegance, vigor, unction — 
 with emphasis on the last word. He drew and 
 delighted, edified and held admiring crowds. His 
 pulpit power made him a bishop and sustained 
 him in the office. He was a light that burned and 
 shined. In administrative genius and parlimen- 
 tary tact he was not notable : in the pulpit he did 
 
Ill Richmond in the Forties. 63 
 
 a work and made a name the Church will not let 
 die. In an enumeration of the ten foremost preach- 
 ers of American Methodism, the name of David 
 S. Doggett could not be omitted. About Doc- 
 tor Moore there was a charm that everybody felt 
 but none could fully define. He was a tall, spare- 
 built man, with a face that was pale and scholarly 
 yet strong, with a resonance in his voice that 
 pleased the ear while he reasoned of heavenly 
 things and persuaded sinners to be reconciled to 
 God. He read his sermons, but he read them in 
 such a way as to make the hearer feel that he was 
 listening to a confidential letter that the preacher 
 had studied out and prayed over for his special 
 benefit. He being dead, yet speaketh. And in the 
 Richmond pulpit of that day stood Anthony Dib- 
 rell — a tall, dark man, with the port of a prophet 
 of the Lord, from whose sermons flashed the light- 
 nings of Sinai and the glory of the cross. By ev- 
 ery token, he was a man of God. There was also 
 Doctor Leonidas Rosser, a mighty revivalist in his 
 day — a man with the fervor and almost the elo- 
 quence of a Whitefield. His hortatory power was 
 extraordinary. He touched his word-pictures with 
 the strongest colors : he was a master of the adjec- 
 tive in the pulpit, if ever a man was. Great congre- 
 gations were moved under his preaching, and whole 
 communities were swept into the current of the 
 revivals that attended his ministry. There was 
 Doctor John E. Edwards, a declamatory whirlwind 
 set to music — a man of small stature physically, 
 firmly set, with a large, well-shaped head, blond- 
 ish hair and skin, bright deep-blue eyes that 
 flashed or melted as he spoke, and a voice as clear 
 as a silver trumpet, and enunciation the most 
 rapid of any man I ever heard. A distinguished 
 American statesman, after hearing him preach, 
 
64 Sunset Views. 
 
 said : "There are two great declaimers in the Unit- 
 ed States — Rufus Choate and John E. Edwards — 
 and the greater of the two is Edwards." Then 
 there was Doctor Leroy M. Lee, who was the 
 editor of the RicJmiond Christian Advocate, then 
 in the prime of his powers — a man who was ready 
 for a tilt with any and all persons opposed to Ar- 
 minian theology and Methodist polity. He was a 
 man of convictions, and fed his readers and hear- 
 ers on strong meat. It was a sturdy sort of Metho- 
 dists that were reared in the families that took and 
 read his paper. They could give a reason for the 
 faith that was in them. In the pulpit he was in- 
 clined to polemics and pugnacity, but could and 
 did often preach a gospel that was tender and 
 sweet and joyful — because the old editor had felt 
 its tenderness, its sweetness, and its joy. Doctor 
 Lee had in his physiognomy and in his character 
 some of the features that belonged to that other 
 Lee of Virginia who led in the field the armies of 
 the Confederate States of America. These men 
 were my tutors while I was still in a special sense 
 in the formative period of my life. There are oth- 
 ers whose names come to my mind, but I forbear. 
 Their influence I thankfully acknowledge, and will 
 never lose. 
 
 Among the men I then met in Richmond was 
 Edgar Allan Poe. I have a very vivid impression 
 of him as he was the last time I saw him on a 
 warm day in 1849. Clad in a spotless white linen 
 suit, with a black velvet vest, and Panama hat, he 
 was a man who would be notable in any company. 
 I met him in the office of the Examiner, the new 
 Democratic newspaper which was making its 
 mark in political journalism. It was ultra state 
 rights in tone. John M. Daniel, its editor in 
 chief, put into his editorials a caustic wit, a free- 
 
/;/ Richni07id in the Forties. 65 
 
 dom in the use of personalities, and a brilliant 
 rhetoric that won immediate success. Even the 
 victims of his satire must have admired the keen- 
 ness of his weapon and the skill of his thrust. There 
 was a natural affinity between Poe and Daniel. Ar- 
 rangements were made by which the scope of the 
 Exaininer was to be enlarged, and Poe to become 
 its literary editor. Through the good offices of cer- 
 tain parties well known in Richmond, Poe had 
 taken a pledge of total abstinence from all intox- 
 icating drinks. His sad face — it was one of the 
 saddest faces I ever saw — seemed to brighten a lit- 
 tle, as a new purpose and fresh hope sprang up in 
 his heart. The Richmond people did a thing for him 
 in away that had the old Virginia touch. He was 
 invited to deliver a lecture ; the price of admission 
 was fixed at five dollars a ticket, and three hun- 
 dred persons were packed into the assembly rooms 
 of the old Exchange Hotel at that price. The re- 
 markable essay on*' The Poetic Principle," found 
 in his prose works, was composed for that occasion. 
 I had the pleasure of hearing it read, and remember 
 how forcibly I was struck with his tone and manner 
 of delivery. The emphasis that he placed upon the 
 dictum that the sole function of art was to ministet 
 to the love of the beautiful was especially notable. 
 With the $1,500, the proceeds of the lecture, in 
 hand, he started to New York for the purpose of 
 settling up his affairs there, preparatory to enter- 
 ing upon his work on the Examiner in Richmond. 
 The tragic sequel is well known. Stopping in 
 Baltimore en roiite^ he attended a birthday party 
 to which he had been invited. The fair hostess 
 pledged him in a glass of wine; he sipped it de- 
 spite his pledge ; that sip was as a spark of fire to 
 a powder magazine. A few days afterwards he lay 
 dead in a hospital, where he died of mania a pottc, 
 5 
 
66 Smiset Views. 
 
 He had the sensitive organization of a man of gen- 
 ius, and for him there was no middle ground be- 
 tween total abstinence and drunkenness. The 
 thought will press upon the mind: Who can esti- 
 mate the loss to American literature by this un- 
 timely death ? During the two tremendous decades 
 from 1850 to 1870 what might he not have achieved 
 on the lines of his special endowment? The sud- 
 den quenching of such a light in such a way is a 
 tragedy too deep for words. It was the work of 
 the alcoholic devil — the devil that some young 
 man who has genius, or thinks he has it, may be 
 hugging to his bosom as he reads this page. God 
 pity such folly ! Is it not time that this devil were 
 chained in a Christian land? And should not ev- 
 ery good man and woman help in doing it? I am 
 not sorry that I took an humble part in the effort to 
 save Edgar Allan Poe from the doom that overtook 
 him. [A different and more favorable account has 
 been given of Poe's death by a recent writer of 
 respectability and evidently good spirit. The ac- 
 count given by me is that which was current at the 
 time.] 
 
 Thus my schooling, such as it was, went on in 
 Richmond — taking in religion, politics, literature, 
 and whatever else was going on at the time. It 
 was a taste of many dishes that had a keen relish 
 for a youth who loved to read and was a student 
 of human nature in his own way. I was pulled 
 this way and that by opposing forces and conflict- 
 ing ideas; but by the grace of God Methodism 
 had the strongest hold on me, and kept it. 
 
AFLOAT. 
 
AFLOAT. 
 
 THE word that makes the heading of this 
 chapter describes the state of my mind and 
 the manner of my hfe for some years just 
 before and after I had reached twenty-one 
 years of age. I was afloat. My inherited 
 behefs were under review. Every young man 
 who thinks at all comes to this point. I read ev- 
 erything that came within my reach. I talked with 
 all sorts of people on all sorts of subjects. Among 
 these subjects was Swedenborgianism. Having 
 heard that John C. Calhoun was a disciple of that 
 wonderful Swede, Emanuel Swedenborg — seer, 
 madman, enthusiast, as you like — I felt a desire to 
 know more of the man and his system. After 
 reading his "Arcana Celestia," the treatise on 
 *' Heaven and Hell," and his other works, I reached 
 the conclusion that Swedenborg had as clear a 
 view of some phases of religious truth as any other 
 uninspired man; that much learning and thinking 
 made him mad ; and that at length he mistook the 
 dreams and vagaries of an overwrought mind for 
 divine revelations. I am glad that I read Sweden- 
 borg' s works, and feel assured that they left a d'e- 
 posit with me of profitable suggestion that I will 
 never lose. He was a visionary, a man to be classed 
 with dreamers and theorizers rather than with the 
 few elect spirits who have been the real religious lead- 
 ers of the world. The first notable Swedenborgian 
 I ever met was Richard K. Cralle, of Lynchburg, 
 Virginia — a man whose brain was as massive and 
 as angular as the unique dwelling built by him on 
 one of the many hills of that hilly city on the spark- 
 
 (69) 
 
70 Sunset Views. 
 
 ling, swift-flowing James. This house was called 
 *'The Castle." It was built of stone, turreted, 
 many-windowed, with corridors winding in and out, 
 like a fortress of the middle ages, with a weird, 
 ghostly effect that gave rise to a belief among the 
 colored people and others that it was ''haunted." 
 I had heard Mr. Cralle read some of Mr. Cal- 
 houn's letters to him, in which his religious be- 
 Jiefs were expressed with the freedom of intimate 
 friendship. Swedenborgianism is a queer com- 
 pound — fascinating, elusive, disappointing. It has 
 enough of scriptural and philosophical truth to whet 
 the appetite of the reader, but lacks coherence, 
 solidity, credibility, and symmetry. Swedenborgis 
 not a lamp to light our path in the night, but an 
 aurora borealis that flashes across the cold and 
 darkened skies of speculative theology. So I 
 think, having in my thought just now a number 
 of Swedenborgian friends whose beautiful lives 
 proved that they are walking in white with their 
 Lord the Christ of God. 
 
 The glamour of Universalism flashed upon my 
 pathway during this time — a belief that always had 
 an unsatisfying charm for me, but for which I can 
 find no sufficient warrant in the teaching of the Bi- 
 ble, nor in the analogies of nature, nor in the un- 
 challenged facts of human history. In certain sen- 
 timental moods all of us have Universalist fancies 
 or impulses. But God in his word declares that 
 the soul that sinneth must die, and his administra- 
 tion throughout all departments of his government 
 of the universe illustrates the awful truth — the aw- 
 ful necessity, let us say. 
 
 Unitarianism attracted my attention, through the 
 writings of some of the gifted men who professed 
 and expounded it; but it never disturbed my mind 
 for one moment. The divinit}^ of Jesus Christ can- 
 
Ajloat. 71 
 
 not be questioned without impeaching his veracity. 
 The divinity of Jesus Christ cannot be denied with- 
 out denying the record given of him in the New Tes- 
 tament Scriptures. Jesus Christ was God manifest 
 
 in the flesh, or he was stop ! I will not write the 
 
 words that imply the admission of doubt. He was 
 very God as well as very man. Unitarianism may 
 be toyed with by dilettanti, and by a class of reli- 
 gionists whose hearts challenge what their pride 
 of intellect would deny; but it never had, and 
 can never have, any large following among peo- 
 ple who believe the Bible and have the true heart- 
 hunger of earnestness in the search for rest to 
 their souls. 
 
 Calvinism staggered me then, as it does now. 
 I have known so many grand and good men and 
 women who were Calvinists, or thought they were, 
 that I feel like lifting my hat when I hear the name 
 of the inexorable old logician of Geneva. When 
 we speak of the divine foreknowledge and the 
 free agency of man, and all correlated facts, we 
 are easily confounded; but when we read that 
 Jesus Christ by the grace of God tasted death for 
 every man, the doctrine of election seems clear 
 enough. Here it is: *'The elect are whosoever 
 will; the nonelect are whosoever won't." That 
 is about the way they all put it now. I never got 
 anything but good from a Presbyterian pulpit or 
 book. 
 
 By some sort of instinct, or by some sort of good 
 fortune, I began about this time to move south- 
 w^ard. I never did like cold weather. When the 
 thermometer sinks toward zero, my physical com- 
 fort sinks with it. The familiar hymn that speaks 
 of heaven as a place where there are '* no chilling 
 winds " always had a special charm for me. One 
 winter I spent in Raleigh, North Carolina. The 
 
*J2 Sunset Views. 
 
 Raleigh of that day was unique — a city whose v^ery 
 groves of oaks and stately old mansions had a quiet 
 dignity in keeping with the character and manners 
 of the people. It was not a fussy or garish capital ; 
 it was serene and sound. The state legislature, 
 then in session, was a study. Its lower branch was 
 presided over by Mr. Dobbin, afterwards Secretary 
 of the Navy under President Pierce's administra- 
 tion — a man who combined the polish of a French 
 courtier with the wisdom and honesty of a patriot 
 whose head was clear and whose heart was true. 
 His opposite was General Cotton — a colossal com- 
 moner from Chatham county, whose oratory had a 
 cyclonic energy, whose figures of sp^eech were as 
 gigantic as was his own physique, whose orations 
 excited wonder among his colleagues and applause 
 in the galleries. The Stajidard, the Democratic 
 organ, was conducted by William W. Holden, a 
 sturdy, scholarly-looking man with heavy black 
 eyebrows and pallid complexion, who then harped 
 on state rights and hurrahed for Andrew Jackson. 
 The Register^ the Whig organ, was conducted by 
 Gales and Seaton, and had long been an exponent 
 of the policies and a supporter of the candidates of 
 the party whose idol was Henry Clay. Among the 
 preachers I heard in Raleigh was Doctor Rufus T. 
 Heflin, one of its Methodist pastors — a man whose 
 face was that of one who held secret communion 
 with God, and whose preaching had that indefina- 
 ble yet unmistakable quality, the unction from on 
 high, that differentiates the true preaching of the 
 gospel from all merely human orator}^ This man 
 and his preaching were a link that bound me still to 
 the Church in which I was born and baptized. 
 
 I spent a season in Columbia, South Carolina. It 
 was then as now the capital of that state ; and a 
 lively capital it was in that day of big cotton crops. 
 
Ajloat. 73 
 
 and other big things, good and bad, to match. It 
 was an aristocratic city then, having an aristocracy 
 of birth, an aristocracy of money, an aristocracy 
 of brains, and an aristocracy of courage. Wade 
 Hampton, son of the father so named also, was 
 then a roystering young fellow with a practically 
 unlimited bank account, a lover of sport, and afraid 
 of nothing — typical of the rich young Southerner 
 of that day. The genius of John C. Calhoun and 
 the scholarship and oratory of William. C. Preston 
 and others like them had inoculated South Caroli- 
 na and its capital city with their opinions and in- 
 spired their youth with their ideals : patriotism was 
 a passion and the hustings and the forum the lad- 
 ders to civic glory. Chivalry was not a misnomer 
 with those South Carolinians. The one unpardon- 
 able sin in a public man was cowardice : it was the 
 one thing despised by all men in all the grades of 
 society. The fashion, so to speak, set in the di- 
 rection of a lofty public virtue and an ardent and 
 uncalculating patriotism and state pride, and chiv- 
 alry that was well named. That chivalry was at 
 times rassh and passionate, but it had its roots in 
 convictions that were genuine, and a devotion that 
 was absolute. Doctor Whitefoord Smith was the 
 preacher I heard oftenest in Columbia — and what 
 a preacher he was I All sorts of persons crowded 
 to hear him. He had the easy swing of the hus- 
 tings and the brilliant rhetoric of the schools, the 
 evangelical glow of a man of prayer and the polish 
 of a man who knew and loved the classics. Meth- 
 odism in South Carolina was then aglow and mov- 
 ing. Bishop William Capers was in the prime of 
 his strength — a man who was a Chrysostom in the 
 pulpit, a Barnabas to the sorrow-stricken. Doctor 
 William M. Wightman was then editing the South- 
 ern Christian Advocate, published at Charleston, 
 
74 Sunset Views, 
 
 and he was putting into it the vigorous thought, 
 logical method, and elegant diction for which he 
 was distinguished. He was afterwards a professor 
 in the Southern University, and then made a bish- 
 op ; but he never did better work for his Lord and 
 for the Church than when he was editor of its or- 
 gan in South Carolina. The Methodism of the 
 state and of its capital was strong enough to be 
 seen and felt even by a wayfarer. It made for 
 me an atmosphere warm enough to keep alive in 
 my soul the seeds of truth that had been sown 
 therein. The arms of my mother-Church were 
 still around me, holding me back from evil and 
 ruin. If these pages shall ever see the light, how 
 many readers will be ready to join with me in 
 thanksgiving to God for the influence of Metho- 
 dism which goes everywhere and always carries a 
 blessing! And how many will also be ready to 
 join with me in a prayer that it may never lose the 
 love that impels its movement, or the light that 
 shines upon its pathway of blessing. 
 
A TURNING POINT 
 
A TURNING POINT. 
 
 AN attack of typhoid fever was a turning 
 point in my life. It came to me in the city 
 of Macon, Georgia. I was a stranger, and 
 at a hotel. The mulatto boy, Albert, who 
 waited upon me, saved my life. The doc- 
 tors had given me up to die. I heard them say to 
 the boy: '* Give him anything he asks for." I 
 made a sign that I wanted ice water, and it was 
 brought — a pitcher full, cold as it could be. I 
 drank, and drank, and drank ! I felt the cool- 
 ness to my very finger-tips, and said to myself in- 
 wardly, ** I will get well" — and I did. It was the 
 ice water that did it. The surprised doctors post- 
 poned the funeral that they expected. I came up 
 out of the jaws of death, and by slow degrees ap- 
 petite and strength came back to me. I had time 
 to think and pray, to look at my past life, and to 
 ponder the paths of my feet. By a happy coinci- 
 dence the mulatto boy, who was my nurse, be- 
 longed to the man who became my bosom friend 
 — Robert A. Smith, that unique combination of 
 lawyer, soldier, and saint, of whom I have written 
 elsewhere. Chivalry of the highest type of the old 
 South and saintliness as sturdy as Luther's and as 
 tender as Fletcher's were blended in this man. He 
 crossed my path in the providence of God at a 
 critical moment in my life, and I shall thank God 
 forever that it was so. In a prayer meeting, or by 
 the bedside of the sick or the dying, I never heard 
 a man pray who seemed to be nearer to God. At 
 the head of his military company, the Macon Vol- 
 unteers, I never saw a knightlier figure. He was 
 
 (77) 
 
7^ Sunset Views, 
 
 what will be regarded as a strange anomaly in the 
 good time coming for this earth — a Christian sol- 
 dier. It is distinctly promised in the word of the 
 Lord that wars are to cease to the ends of the 
 earth, and that the nations shall learn war no more. 
 This is a strange thought in this day of war ships 
 that cost milHons of dollars each, huge standing 
 armies, forts, arsenals, and military schools for 
 which the masses are loaded down with taxation, 
 and peace is kept between civilized nations by fear 
 and skillful balancing of power rather than by rea- 
 son, persuasion, and religion. Civilized nations, 
 did I say? It is not Christian civilization, surely. 
 The Prince of Peace will bring in another sort — 
 and it will be here in this world, for it is his world. 
 He shall reign until all enemies are put under his 
 feet. War is the child of sin, and the enemy of all 
 that is good. The groans of the dying victims of 
 the sinking war ship Maine, in the harbor of Ha- 
 vana, are in my ears as I write to-day — February 
 23, 1898 — mingling with the music of the song of 
 universal peace heard by the ear of faith as it comes 
 nearer and yet nearer. 
 
 That robust yet tearful evangelist. Doctor 
 James E. Evans, was then pastor of the Mulberry 
 Street Methodist Church in Macon. He was a 
 great man all round — a Church financier of the 
 first order in ability; an expository preacher, who 
 rightly divided and pointedly applied the word of 
 truth ; a weeping prophet, whose tears were not the 
 expression of nervous weakness and shallow sen- 
 timentality, but the overflowing of a mighty soul 
 travailing in agony over lost souls. All Macon 
 was stirred by this deep-toned preacher, who had 
 power with God and man. This revival wave 
 struck me when I was ready for it. On my sick- 
 bed and during my convalescence the Holy Spirit 
 
A Turning Point. 79 
 
 had spoken to my soul the things that made for my 
 peace because I was quiet enough to hsten. I 
 thought on my ways, and turned my feet to the 
 testimonies of God with a solemn earnestness born 
 of reflection and under the leading of the Holy 
 Spirit that had followed me and striven with me 
 all my life. Kneeling at the chancel with others 
 one night never to be forgotten, amid prayer and 
 holy song, Doctor William H. Ellison bent above 
 me and softly spoke to me some words that helped 
 me then and there to give myself wholly to the 
 Lord — to choose the Lord Jesus Christ as my Sav- 
 iour, with a purpose to follow him as long as I 
 lived. There was no reserve in my consecration. 
 Heaven came into my soul — the heaven of holy 
 peace, and the joy of the Holy Ghost. The expe- 
 rience was unspeakably solemn and sweet. Yes, 
 thank God, it is unspeakably solemn and sweet, 
 for I feel it now^ as I did then. It is the same in 
 its quality, but — let me w^ite it with humility and 
 adoring thankfulness — it is fuller and deeper after 
 the lapse of years between the early fifties and this, 
 next to the closing years of the nineties. I need 
 not give a name to this experience. The initiated 
 reader knows what it is ; the uninitiated may know. 
 Whosoever will may take freely of this water of 
 life; and he may do so now. 
 
INITIATED, 
 
INITIATED. 
 
 THE year 1854 ^^^ the date of my entrance 
 upon the traveling ministry of the Meth- 
 odist Episcopal Church, South, as my 
 life work. The only discount upon my 
 grateful joy in recording this fact is from 
 a consciousness of my shortcomings. But God 
 in his grace and goodness has so borne with me 
 and sustained me during all these years that grati- 
 tude ought to be the dominant note of my song — 
 and it is. The Georgia Conference met at At- 
 lanta that year. The Atlanta of 1854 ^^^ smaller 
 than that of to-day, but it was of Hke quality- 
 wide-awake, busy, but not too busy to be hospita- 
 ble. Bishop William Capers presided; J. Blake- 
 ly Smith was secretary. It was a venerable body 
 of men. Somewhat has been said of some of 
 them by me elsewhere. To them Georgia Meth- 
 odism is indebted for much of what it has achieved. 
 For the secretary, Brother J. Blakely Smith, I 
 felt a peculiar regard as a friend and brother. 
 This special friendship between us had its begin- 
 ning in a singular incident, which is here recited 
 for a good purpose, after some hesitation. It hap- 
 pened in this way. Secretary Smith was a large- 
 framed man, with florid complexion, deep, strong 
 voice, and a masterful way in what he said and 
 did. Not knowing him as he was, my first impres- 
 sion concerning him was unfavorable. He seemed 
 to me to be impatient and rude in his treatment of 
 a large proportion of the preachers of the Confer- 
 ence. My ideal of the ministerial office was a 
 most lofty one, and I was shocked and grieved 
 
 (83) 
 
84 Sunset Views. 
 
 at what seemed to me so palpable a violation of 
 ministerial and brotherly courtesy. My surprise 
 and resentment increased daily. At length, during 
 a forenoon session, E. P. Pitchford, a venerable 
 and holy man, one of the patriarchs of the body, 
 rose just in front of me and asked the secretary 
 some question pertaining to the business of the 
 Conference. The answer was crusty, even to rude- 
 ness: in substance it seemed to imply that it was 
 a silly question, such as only a simpleton would 
 ask. A look of pain came over the good old man's 
 face; he stood a moment in silence, then sank 
 into his seat, bent his head forward shaded by his 
 hands, while the tears coursed down his cheeks. 
 Before I knew what I was doing I was on my feet, 
 and being recognized by the bishop I said: *' Bish- 
 op Capers, I am not a member of this body, but I 
 ask leave to say a few words just now." ''Pro- 
 ceed, Brother Fitzgerald," said the saintly and 
 courtly man in the chair. ** What I want to say is 
 this: that the secretary of this Conference seems 
 to have two sets of manners. To you, sir, and to 
 the titled and more distinguished members of this 
 body, he is polite almost to excess ; but if he has 
 once spoken kindly to any of the younger men or 
 the less notable older men of this Conference, I 
 have not heard it. Look at Father Pitchford, who 
 sits yonder in tears of humiliation : if he had been a 
 dog, he could scarcely have been spoken to more 
 scornfully." Just then I began to realize what I 
 was doing under the impulse that had come upon 
 me — the sort of impulse I always feel at any ex- 
 hibition of arrogant officialism or tyranny of any 
 sort. But a shower of '*Amens " rose all around 
 as I sat down with a flushed face and heart aflut- 
 ter. 
 
 The secretar}^ rose to his feet with a pale face 
 
Initiated. 8 
 
 and trembling voice. '* Brethren," he said, "is 
 this that Brother Fitzgerald has said of me true?" 
 
 **Yes," said the venerable Allen Turner; "yes, 
 we have noticed it, and talked of it, and grieved 
 over it." 
 
 A number of assenting voices responded in dif- 
 ferent parts of the Conference room. 
 
 "As God is my judge," said the secretary with 
 deep emotion, "as God is my judge, I did not 
 know it. My natural manner is rather brusque or 
 abrupt. To you, bishop, and to the older and 
 more distinguished members of this Conference, 
 to whom I have been accustomed to look up with 
 reverence and admiration, my manner may have 
 been more deferential than to other members of 
 the Conference. But I love every member of this 
 body: if there was any rudeness in my manner, it 
 was not in my heart; and as to Father Pitchford, 
 I feel as if I could go to where he sits, kneel at 
 his feet, ask his forgiveness, and bathe his feet 
 with my tears. And as to my young Brother Fitz- 
 gerald," he continued with profound feeling, "I 
 honor him for what he has done, and will always 
 love him. He spoke out to my face in open Con- 
 ference what was in his heart, while my older 
 brethren only censured me privately, never speak- 
 ing to me of my fault." 
 
 There was a true man ! He became from that 
 day my devoted friend ; and the more fully I knew 
 him, the more I admired and loved this able-bod- 
 ied, warm-blooded, great-souled Georgia preacher. 
 The moral of this incident, narrated with some 
 hesitancy, is: First, that a good man may err un- 
 consciously in his bearing; and, second, that crit- 
 icisms behind his back are not likely to do him 
 any good. It may be noted here that when I 
 started to California Blakely Smith accompanied 
 
86 Sunset Views. 
 
 me from Macon as far as Fort Valley on a cold, 
 frosty morning, saying: ** I want to be the last 
 Georgian that gives your hand a farewell shake." 
 He has passed over into the world of spirits. If he 
 were here on earth, his manly nature would un- 
 derstand the motive that prompts me to recall this 
 incident of the far-away past. 
 
 Blessed be the memory of those old Georgia 
 preachers ! About the time I had gotten through 
 my impulsive arraignment of the secretary, it oc- 
 curred to me that I had committed ecclesiastical 
 hara-kiri; that that company of venerable and holy 
 men would look upon me as a pert and pragmatic 
 youth, unsuited to the solemn and delicate func- 
 tions of the Christian ministry. But they took me 
 to their hearts, and made me feel the glow of affec- 
 tion which has not cooled to this hour. I was ad- 
 mitted on trial with expressions of hearty good will 
 that would have moved a colder man than I think 
 myself to be. Dear old Georgia! my second 
 mother on the religious side. May the God of our 
 fathers smile on their children's children unto the 
 latest generation ! 
 
 Thus was I initiated. 
 
MY ENVIRONMENT. 
 
MY ENVIRONMENT. 
 
 I WAS fully- initiated into Church relationship 
 in Georgia, and I shall always be thankful 
 that it was where it was, when it was, and 
 how it was that this came about. My en- 
 vironment was favorable, and God was lead- 
 ing me. Georgia Methodism was then very power- 
 ful, a militant army accustomed to victory. Look 
 for a moment at the men w^ho stood in her pulpits 
 and served at her altars. The two Pierces — the 
 father and son, *'the old doctor" and the bishop 
 — were then at the zenith of their power and pop- 
 ularity. George F. Pierce was then the pulpit 
 star of Georgia — an Apollo in physical beauty, a 
 pulpit orator possessing every quality that excites 
 the admiration and delight of listening multitudes, 
 and, best of all, gifted with a spiritual insight that 
 enabled him to flash into the hearts of sinners the 
 search-light that made them see the exceeding sin- 
 fulness of sin. Georgia was magnetized by this 
 favorite son. His personality pervaded the state. 
 The last declamation or pungent aphorism of 
 "George Pierce," as he was fondly called to the 
 last, was current coin in all circles of society in 
 Georgia. That state is richer to-day because his 
 genius was sanctified genius. This well-worn 
 word is used thoughtfully in this connection : 
 sanctified genius is the highest human instrumen- 
 tality that God uses to bless the world. The ** old 
 doctor," Lovick Pierce, the father, was not as 
 *' flowery" or rhetorical or brilliantly declamatory 
 as his. son, but it w^as the undoubting belief of 
 many of the elder Georgians of that day that he 
 
 (89) 
 
90 Sunset V'iews. 
 
 was the profoundest thinker and the ablest ex- 
 pounder of the Scriptures then living. He was 
 truly a marvelous preacher — deeply spiritual, with 
 a mighty sweep of thought and a vocabulary to 
 match, with the unction of the Holy One that lit- 
 erally made his face to shine. He delighted in the 
 grandest themes, and his diction had the roll of 
 evangelical thunder. The simple grandeur of 
 his character had a charm for all sorts of peo- 
 ple. The rudest rustic of the backwoods, the 
 profoundest jurist, and the most learned scholar 
 alike held him in reverent esteem. That mighty 
 man of God, Samuel Anthon}^ — "old Ironsides" 
 he was fondly called by his admirers — was preach- 
 ing sermons that stirred to the depths the con- 
 sciences of entire communities. Single sermons 
 by him almost wrought moral revolutions where 
 they were preached. He did not fear the face of 
 man, and shunned not to declare the whole coun- 
 sel of God. His tall, gaunt, sinewy figure, his 
 rugged features and severe simplicity of dress 
 were in keeping with his character and his mes- 
 sage. At times he rose to heights of almost super- 
 natural grandeur of thought and expression, and 
 at others he melted into a tenderness that was over- 
 whelming. In the one mood he was an Elijah; in 
 the other, a Jeremiah. My faith in God is stronger 
 to this hour because I heard the sermons and 
 prayers of this old Georgia hero-saint. And 
 there was William M. Crumley, a wise and holy 
 man, a spiritual battery always charged; John 
 W. Knight, an eccentric genius, who in one 
 mood was ecstatic as an angel and in another 
 wished he were **a black cat"; Eustace W. 
 Speer, whose short expository sermons sparkled 
 with gems of wisdom and flashes of rhetorical 
 beauty from the first sentence to the last; Ed- 
 
My Environment, 91 
 
 ward H. Myers, who had the gift of usefulness 
 more than that of popularity, a scholar worth}^ 
 of the name, a preacher who preferred to profit 
 rather than merely to please his hearers, a teach- 
 er who put conscience as well as capability into 
 his work in the schoolroom ; William Arnold — 
 ''Uncle Billy,'' as he was familiarly called — who 
 combined common sense and uncommon spiritual 
 power in the pulpit and in the councils of the 
 Church; Jesse Boring, a man of genius and a 
 man of many tribulations, whose sermons at times 
 reached the most startling and effective climaxes; 
 John M. Bonnell, whose saintliness and scholar- 
 ship made him a sort of Georgia Melanchthon; 
 John C. Simmons, sturdy as a Georgia oak, fer- 
 vent as a tropical summer; Alexander Means, in 
 whom pedagogy, poetry, and pulpit eloquence 
 were delightfully blended; Augustus B. Long- 
 street, best known as a humorist, but whose best 
 work was done in the pulpit and in the classroom, 
 whose influence impressed on the fleshly tablets of 
 the hearts of his pupils will last when his " Geor- 
 gia Scenes" may be forgotten; John P. Duncan, 
 a sunny-soiiled man, whose sweet spiritual songs 
 helped to float many a penitent over the bars of 
 unbelief into the still waters of peace; and then a 
 lot of younger men, some of whom have since 
 made their mark: John W. Burke, the friendli- 
 est of the friendly, a lover of children and beloved 
 by all; J. O. A. Clark, a thinker whose logic was 
 tuned to love; J. W. Hinton, who hewed huge 
 masses of truth out of the quarry of inspiration 
 and built them into homiletic structures solid and 
 stately; W. P. Harrison, a walking encyclopedia 
 of religious knowledge, guileless as a child, wise 
 with the wisdom that comes from above; Thomas 
 F. Jordan, an eloquent man of sanguine temper. 
 
92 Situ set Views. 
 
 who kindled quickly and set his hearers aglow; 
 George G. N. MacDonell, a crystal of Christian 
 character without a flaw; Oliver P. Anthony, a 
 kingly-looking man with soul to match, whose 
 heart was as gentle as that of a woman, whose 
 courage was that of a knighthood when knights 
 were knights indeed; Robert W. Bigham, who 
 on both sides of the continent has lived a life and 
 preached a gospel that made many to see the beau- 
 ty of divine truth and to follow Him who is the 
 Way, the Truth, and the Life; W. H. Christian, 
 who is a man with that gift of common sense which 
 the Head of the Church is always ready to utilize 
 for its edification; W. F. Glenn, an Israelite with- 
 out guile, an editor whose work is pitched on the 
 New Testament plane, a man whom it is impossi- 
 ble not to love and to trust: these, and many more 
 not less worthy of mention, were then at work as 
 Methodist preachers in Georgia. 
 
 For a special reason I mention one more name — 
 that of William Davies, one of the young men who 
 was then just starting in the ministry. He was a 
 tall, handsome man, ruddy-faced, blue-eyed, grace- 
 ful in every motion, and of presence magnetic. 
 He came of a preaching family, but for a time he 
 had been *'wild." In one of the deep-reaching 
 revivals that were prevalent in Georgia in that day 
 he was powerfully converted — that is the old 
 phrase; the initiated reader will understand it. 
 He heard and obeyed a call to preach which im- 
 mediately followed his conversion . * ' Fitzgerald , ' ' 
 he said to me one day, *'I love God more than 
 you can love him : he has done more for me than 
 for anybody else on earth " — his eyes swimming in 
 tears as he spoke. I have had the same feeling 
 many times. Who that ever felt the joy of par- 
 doned sin has not had it? Under the ministry 
 
My Environment. 93 
 
 of such men as these a living membership was 
 iDrought in and built up in the Church — men like 
 Matthew Rylander, whose prayers opened the 
 gates of heaven and brought glory from the mercy- 
 seat; Ed. Salisbury, whose songs had the touch 
 that was sweeter than art could give, the touch of 
 the live coal from off the altar; Thomas R. R. 
 Cobb, a statesman who in public life exhibited 
 the integrity and ability that befitted his sphere, a 
 Methodist who in his private life united a humility 
 that was most beautiful with a social glow that 
 was irresistible; Walter T. Colquitt, politician 
 and preacher, Methodist and Democrat, strangely 
 mixed, a very brilliant man; Robert Toombs, 
 whose Methodist wife, together with his friend- 
 ship for George F. Pierce, brought him into close 
 touch with Methodism. Pierce and Toombs — the 
 bishop and the senator — were classmates at the 
 University of Georgia and close friends all their 
 lives. It is said that once in a confidential mood 
 Toombs laid his hand on Pierce's knee, saying, 
 ** George, I want you to take me into the Church." 
 *' Why do you wish it? Are you ready to begin in 
 earnest a Christian life ? " asked the bishop. **No, 
 George," replied Toombs, '*I am not fit for mem- 
 bership in the Church. But I have a fear that I 
 may die suddenly some day, and some fool might 
 say that I was a skeptic." From the United States 
 Senator to the humblest walks in life Methodism 
 in Georgia was regnant, touching all classes and 
 making an atmosphere for its adherents warm with 
 spiritual life. The class meeting was still a living 
 institution of the Church in Georgia, in which its 
 young life was watched over and developed in a 
 way that promoted stabiHty and growth. I was 
 enrolled at once as a member of a class — the one 
 led by Robert A. Smith, of whom I have spoken 
 
94 Sunset Views. 
 
 elsewhere, and whose name, as my eye falls upon 
 it on this page, makes me feel like saying: My 
 God, I thank thee that there is such a thing in this 
 earthly life as Christian friendship, and for the 
 hope that it will be renewed and perfected and 
 perpetuated in the unending years that await us in 
 the world of spirits. 
 
MY FIRST SERMON, 
 
MY FIRST SERMON. 
 
 IT must have been foreordained that I was to 
 be a preacher of the gospel. A sort of pre- 
 sentiment that it was to be so had been with me 
 from my early boyhood. It was in Doctor 
 Penn's prayer at my baptism at two days old. 
 It was the wish and the expectation of my mother. 
 It was like a prophetic undertone through all my 
 previous life. My Methodist brethren and other 
 Christian friends now seemed to expect it. Three 
 things entered into my call to preach, as it seemed 
 to me then and as it seems to me now — the mov- 
 ing of the Holy Spirit, the consensus of the 
 Church, and God's providential leadings. I was 
 first licensed to exhort — a function now almost 
 disused, but once greatly magnified among Meth- 
 odists. Some of these exhorters preached well: 
 some preachers only exhorted warmly. Exhorta- 
 tion ought to be a part of most sermons. Not 
 every zealous young man waited for official license 
 in those days, for the Methodists of the time had 
 felt, believed, and hoped for what was worth tell- 
 ing. They had liberty. The class meeting was 
 a school of the prophets in a gracious sense. The 
 leaders were not always learned in literature, sci- 
 ence, philosophy, or art, but as a rule they were 
 wise in things pertaining to practical religion. 
 They knew the Bible, they knew Jesus as a Sav- 
 iour, they knew human nature, they knew human 
 life, and they gave to many young men the first 
 impetus toward the pulpit. Taking a portion of 
 Scripture, I began to expound and exhort. The 
 exposition was doubtless most elementary in its 
 7 (97) 
 
98 Sunset Views. 
 
 quality, and the exhorting was what might be ex- 
 pected from a young exhorter whose chief tenet 
 and prof oundest feeling were that Jesus Christ was 
 the Saviour of sinners in the present tense. 
 
 My first sermon was preached in a Presbyterian 
 church. It happened thus: I was on a visit to my 
 kindred in North Carolina. On a bright Sunday 
 morning I had driven with my sister Martha over 
 to the old Bethesda Presbyterian church, near the 
 line between Caswell and Rockingham counties, 
 with the expectation of hearing the Rev. Dr. J. G. 
 Doll, a distinguished preacher of that denomina- 
 tion. On our arrival I saw that the grove around 
 the old country church was crowded with horses 
 and vehicles of all sorts, from the stylish family 
 carriages of the rural '* quality" down to the most 
 primitive carryalls and lean-bodied nags of the 
 poorer sort. As I drove up to the edge of the 
 grove that songful old saint and elder, Uncle John- 
 ny Jones, who seemed to be watching for me, 
 came up, took my horse's bridle, fastened him to 
 a swinging limb of an oak, and after helping my 
 sister to alight took me aside. 
 
 ''Oscar," he said very solemnly, ''you must 
 preach here to-day." 
 
 "Uncle Johnny, I am not a preacher," I an- 
 swered, flushing with a pecuhar feeling that came 
 over me. 
 
 "You have been holding meetings, haven't 
 you?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes, but only prayer meetings among our 
 Methodist people: I have no license to preach," I 
 answered. 
 
 '* Oscar, you must preach here to-day!" said 
 the venerable man with deep solemnity. "A note 
 from Dr. Doll tells me that he was seized with 
 sudden sickness and is at Yanceyville in bed, un- 
 
My First Sermon. 99 
 
 able to get here. You see what a great crowd of 
 people have come out to hear him, some of them 
 living ten miles or more away. There will be a 
 great disappointment if we have no preaching, and 
 harm will result to the cause of religion. Oscar, 
 you must preach ! " 
 
 A struggle had been going on within me while 
 the good old man was speaking. I felt that the 
 hour had come for the decision of a momentous 
 question. I said: 
 
 **Go into the pulpit with me, conduct the pre- 
 liminary exercises, and then I will do whatever I 
 feel I ought to do." 
 
 **A11 right," he said cheerfully. 
 
 As I walked down the aisle of the church, it 
 seemed to me almost that it was a league in length ; 
 and as I sat in the pulpit and glanced at that wait- 
 ing congregation, the faces seemed to multiply 
 themselves indefinitely. It was a clear case of 
 pulpit scare. The dear old elder was a sweet 
 singer and gifted in prayer. When he had fin- 
 ished I had a text ready, and a full heart. The 
 text was Jeremiah xii. 5 : * ' If thou hast run with the 
 footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how 
 canst thou contend with horses ? and if in the land 
 of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied 
 thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jor- 
 dan?" That sermon will not here be given even 
 in outline — if outline it had. But if ever I have 
 had ** liberty" in preaching, I had it that day. 
 Many of my old schoolmates and early friends 
 were in the congregation, curiosity and sympathy 
 mingling in their consciousness. A great tide of 
 feeling swelled up from the depths of my heart 
 and overflowed all. We all wept together. The 
 old elder praised God, and old Bethesda was. 
 aglow. I had my license to preach; surely the 
 
lOO Stinset Views. 
 
 Lord had settled for me the question of my voca- 
 tion. His Church had already been drawing me 
 the same way. The Church and its Head draw 
 the willing soul in the same direction when the 
 Holy Spirit has control. Dr. Doll came up the 
 next day: special services were begun, and many 
 souls were brought to Christ. Surely the Lord 
 has his own best way of working. My life-work 
 was found, and my soul was flooded with a peace 
 that was the peace of God. 
 
PREACHING TO THE BLACKS. 
 
PREACHING TO THE BLACKS. 
 
 ON my return to Georgia I received a local 
 preacher's license in the city of Macon. 
 Shortly thereafter Dr. Mason, who had 
 charge of the negro Methodist congre- 
 gation, died, and I was put in charge of 
 it. I have a lively and grateful recollection of 
 this experience. Those black Methodists were 
 numerous, responsive, musical, and demonstrative 
 to a degree that was astonishing to uninitiated vis- 
 itors. They gave me their hearts and helped me 
 much in many ways. My first Sunday with them 
 was memorable for the prayer that followed my 
 attempt to preach. I had called on Abram Mc- 
 Gregor, the patriarch of the flock- — a tall, black 
 man, with high cheek bones, a face whose lines 
 were all strong and good, and a soul that loved 
 God and feared nothing but sin. By virtue of his 
 strength of character and deep piety he was a sort 
 of patriarch and untitled king among his people. 
 He prayed at my request: *'0 Lord, we thank 
 thee for de gospel which has been dispensed wid 
 on dis occasion, and which de people have listened 
 to wid so much patience. Bless our young broth- 
 er wid a big heart and a weak voice " — and so on. 
 I have never heard a more honest prayer, and in 
 some of his verbal lapses the old man spoke wiser 
 than he knew. 
 
 My predecessor, Dr. Mason, was a high-met- 
 tled Christian scholar and teacher, spontaneous 
 and trenchant — a man of work. He spoke his 
 own thoughts in his own way. He was one of 
 many men of large ability and deep piety who gave 
 
 (103) 
 
I04 Sunset Views. 
 
 their service to the negroes in those days, helping 
 to prepare them for the tremendous changes that 
 were swiftly coming. The colored Methodists of 
 the South had as good^ preaching as the white 
 ones before the war between the states. In fact, 
 as a rule they had the same preachers. If now 
 and then a weak or doubtful young brother was 
 sent to a colored charge as an experiment, the 
 same thing was done with white charges. It 
 is a blessed thing that slavery is gone. It is 
 also a blessed thing that before their emancipation 
 through the zealous ministry of the several Chris- 
 tian denominations in the South — the Methodists 
 not the least — the negroes of that section had at- 
 tained the rudiments of Christian civilization suffi- 
 ciently to make the transition both' desirable and 
 safe. The world's equitable second thought is al- 
 ready beginning to see this. The Christian peo- 
 ple of the South did well for the negroes, all 
 things considered, under the old regime. But 
 their work for them is not all done. They have a 
 duty to perform in the present tense — the duty of 
 giving them the gospel in its fullness of power and 
 plenitude of blessing. In discharging this duty 
 they will at the same time conserve their own 
 highest interest and the welfare of the colored 
 millions dwelling in their midst. I am at the date of 
 this writing (February 3, 1898) still glad to lend a 
 helping hand to this work in behalf of the negro 
 race, and there is surely an open door. This 
 seems to me a good place to say: The opportuni- 
 ty waited for does not come ; the good work you 
 can do comes to you when you are ready for duty. 
 
SENT TO SAVANNAH. 
 
SENT TO SAVANNAH. 
 
 1WAS "read out" to Andrew Chapel, city of 
 Savannah, junior preacher, with William M. 
 Crumley as my senior. The ride on the rail- 
 road from Macon to Savannah was memora- 
 ble to me. I was quite a young man, and that 
 day felt that I was even younger than I looked . The 
 question came into my mind: What will the Savan- 
 nah Methodists think when they see me? Will 
 they not ask themselves. What was Bishop Ca- 
 pers thinking of when he appointed such a boy to 
 preach in such a city as Savannah? The teippter 
 rode with me all the way — making, as it now seems 
 to me, a final and desperate assault on my faith and 
 courage as a minister of the gospel. I pictured to 
 myself the astonishment and disappointment of the 
 good people when they saw how raw a youth had 
 been sent to them clothed with pastoral author- 
 ity. The suggestion presented itself : Why not flee 
 from such a trial? Why not go to one of the ho- 
 tels, on your arrival at Savannah, spend the night, 
 and on the morrow take passage on a steamer to 
 New York? The difficulties, humiliations, and 
 trials of the position assigned me presented them- 
 selves to my mind most vividly and persistently as 
 I swept along on the cars. If a personal devil ever 
 assaulted a young preacher, he assaulted me then 
 and there. I had sinister companionship that was 
 invisible, but not unfelt, riding through Georgia 
 that day of trial. While thus agitated by conflict- 
 ing feelings and distressful thoughts, the train 
 rolled into the station — lo, we were at Savannah ! 
 Before I had time even to look at my hand-bag- 
 
 (107) 
 
io8 Sunset Views. 
 
 gage, several kindly-looking gentlemen came walk- 
 ing through the cars with inquiring faces. One 
 of them paused as he looked at me, and said: 
 
 *'We are looking for Brother Fitzgerald, the 
 young preacher who has been appointed to Sa- 
 vannah — do you know whether he is aboard the 
 train?" 
 
 With a sort of dazed feeling I told them that I 
 was the man, and almost before I knew it they 
 had me and my baggage in a carriage whirling 
 rapidly along the streets. The carriage halted, 
 and one of the brethren said: 
 
 ** Brother Fitzgerald, here we are at Brother 
 Stone's, where you are to stop." 
 
 A motherly-looking lady met me in the hall, and 
 after a very kindly greeting said: "Come with 
 me, and I will show you your room." Leading me 
 upstairs, I was shown into an elegantly furnished 
 apartment. *'This is your home," said the good 
 lady; "here you will stay while you live in Savan- 
 nah. Come down now and get some supper," 
 she added cheerily, leading the way into the din- 
 ing room, where a nice hot meal was waiting. 
 
 It was all like a dream. In spite of my previous 
 misgivings and depression, I actually began to feel 
 comfortable. The mother-touch had reached me. 
 Blessed be God for the women who have that 
 touch ! Without them how much darker and cold- 
 er would be this world into which so much of 
 trouble and pain has somehow found entrance ! 
 Whoso hath felt true mother-love finds it easy to 
 believe in God's love. Among the memories of 
 my life that will not fade is that of this Savan- 
 nah couple — Marshal Stone and his wife. He, 
 the former city marshal, was as soldier-like in 
 character as Andrew Jackson, whom he greatly 
 resembled in personal appearance. A tall, grave- 
 
Sent to Savannah. 109 
 
 faced man, with thin lips and firm-set features, he 
 could have been stern in his looks but for a serene 
 benignity that made you feel that he was a strong 
 man to trust rather than a strong man to fear. 
 That was Marshal Stone — a man who hated all 
 that was mean and loved everybody. His wife 
 was the most spontaneous, irrepressible, quaint, 
 outspoken, witty, and practical of uncanonized 
 saints. She said the queerest and did the kind- 
 est things all the time. Even in her most sol- 
 emn religious moods and acts there was often a 
 touch of humor; her most humorous sayings and 
 doings had often a tender or solemn side that gave 
 her acquaintances many a surprise. Her descrip- 
 tive powers were such that her narratives and dia- 
 logues were almost as vivid as life itself. This 
 couple had no children of their own, and having 
 ample means at their command they were the ben- 
 efactors of every good cause and the helpers of all 
 who needed help in Savannah. They belonged 
 to the Methodist Church, and gave it love, la- 
 bor, and money without stint. I linger on their 
 names, with a tenderness in my heart — as well I 
 may. They gave me my first preacher-home, and 
 with a grace and heartiness all their own provid- 
 ed for all rny wants, without money and without 
 price. *'This is your home," she said to me on 
 the night of my arrival — and she made it so in the 
 fullest sense of the word. When I meet them in 
 the home of the soul — this is my undoubting hope 
 now — that home will be more a home to me be- 
 cause I shall see their kindly faces and hear their 
 kindly voices. Many traveling preachers whose 
 eyes may fall on these lines will echo the prayer: 
 Father in heaven, give thy special grace and 
 abounding mercy unto these children of thine 
 who give homes to thy ministering servants ; grant 
 
no Sunset Views, 
 
 that their dwellings here may be blessed with thy 
 continual benediction, and that they may reach 
 that home above where the family of God shall 
 live together with him in whose presence there is 
 fullness of joy, and at whose right hand there are 
 pleasures for evermore. Amen, 
 
SAVANNAH.! 
 
SAVANNAH. 
 
 THE Savannah of 1854 was unique in its 
 blending of simplicit}^ and repose with a 
 polish and sparkle in its social life that 
 gave its old denizens the undoubting con- 
 viction that it was the best place on earth, 
 and made it easy for a new-comer to fall in love 
 with the place. The old Southern tone was dom- 
 inant, but there was an infusion of Northerners 
 sufficient to give somewhat of the briskness and 
 breeziness that are found wherever Yankees are 
 found in all latitudes of earth. The rule in that 
 day was, that the Yankee who came South to stay 
 did so because he had an affinity for the people 
 and fondness for the climate. What fire-eaters 
 were many of them in politics ! What sticklers for 
 ** strict construction," and all that sort of thing! 
 The peripatetic Northern travelers who came on a 
 visit to make trade, or for professional letter-writ- 
 ing for the newspapers, were of different types, 
 and had a different standing. Believing that these 
 visitors were looking for the seamy side of South- 
 ern society, that was the side shown to them. *'I 
 am a truer Southerner than you are," once said a 
 lawyer from Connecticut to me ; *' you are a South- 
 ern man by birth, I by choice." The rule worked 
 both ways : there were Southern-born men that ex- 
 hibited every peculiarity that made the word ''Yan- 
 kee " synonymous with everything that a brave, 
 generous soul dislikes. Sectionalism was then ab- 
 surd, unjust, and hurtful, disgusting in its grosser 
 forms. Neither the North nor the South had a 
 monopoly of that or of any other silliness or mean- 
 8 ("3) 
 
114 Siuisct Views. 
 
 ness. When the war between the slates came, 
 these Northern-born Southerners were among the 
 first to go to the front, and they spilled their blood 
 freely for the cause of the South. Abraham Lin- 
 coln and George H. Thomas were both Southern- 
 born men who are canonized as political saints in 
 the calendar of the North. Admiral Farragut 
 was also a Southerner by birth. The accident of 
 birth means nothing as to ingrain quality. The 
 sectionalist in the broad, vulgar sense of the word 
 has been a nuisance in both sections of our coun- 
 try. He may be tracked by the marks of blood 
 and fire. A sectionalist in this evil and narrow 
 sense of the word is an anachronism in these 
 United States in this year of our Lord 1898. He 
 is lonesome, and soliloquizes mostly when he sa3^s 
 anything in his own bad way. 
 
 But I am digressing, and will come back to Sa- 
 vannah, anle bellum. Dreamy, delightful, seduc- 
 tive old Savannah ! I have not seen it for more 
 than forty years, but the memory of it is fresh and 
 sweet and sacred. If I were a poet, I would put 
 its Bonaventure Cemetery into verse. It is itself 
 a poem. There is nothing just like it elsewhere: 
 the live-oak avenues, draped with the long sea- 
 moss, gently stirred by the soft breeze; a sky that 
 bends in deepest blue above, with no sound to 
 break the stillness save the faint note of a song 
 bird in the minor key, or the whisper of a breeze 
 like ** the sighing of broken reeds" that sym- 
 bolizes that of breaking hearts. Sidney Lanier 
 might have sung the song of Bonaventure had he 
 seen it as I have seen it. The elegance of the cit}^ 
 and the heartiness of the country met you in the old 
 Savannah in a way that gave you wonder and de- 
 light. The gentlemen of the old school were so 
 gentlemanly in their own lofty, easy-going way; 
 
Savannah. 115 
 
 the women of the old school were so ladylike in 
 their own gracious, queenly way; the tradesmen 
 were so urbane and so neighborly, rather than sharp 
 and shoplike; the old negroes were so grand, and 
 the young negroes were so jolly, in the old Savan- 
 nah, that whoso once tasted the flavor of its life 
 never lost its charm. And its religious life was of 
 a type all its own. The Baptists were numerous 
 and zealous, both among the white people and the 
 negroes. The negro Baptists were led by Andrew 
 Marshall, a black apostle whose word was law 
 among them, and whose life was patterned after 
 that of his Lord. The Roman Catholics were Ro- 
 manists naturalized, liberalized, and largely evan- 
 gelized by their Georgia environment. The Pres- 
 byterians were as solid as if molded in Geneva, 
 and as sunny as a Georgia landscape in a clear Oc- 
 tober day. The Episcopalians were a people who 
 had scholars in theirpulpits ; whose high-churchism 
 was not noisy; whose traditions were comforting 
 to themselves, but not obtrusive; whose social life 
 was for the most part very sweet. Their Bishop 
 Elliott was a colossal and aesthetic giant, gor- 
 geous-looking in his episcopal robes ; a man who 
 knew botany and theology, who held to the tactual 
 succession in the ministry, and was a judge of good 
 painting and good eating. And the Methodists — 
 the stirring, wide-awake, militant, moving, musical 
 Methodists of Savannah — they went everywhere, 
 and had a hand in everything good that was go- 
 ing on, now and then making a tangent under a 
 sudden impulse or inspiration. The presiding 
 elder was John W. Glenn, who personally looked 
 like the pictures of Martin Luther — sturdy, thick- 
 set, heavy-jawed, large-brained, firm of lip, with a 
 gleam in his eye that was martial or tender as oc- 
 casion demanded. I have seen him walk the floor 
 
ii6 Sunset Views. 
 
 like a caged lion, chafing over follies that he saw 
 but could not abate in ecclesiastical administra- 
 tion; again, I have seen him the center of a social 
 circle where good fellowship reached the high- 
 water mark; and again, and yet again, I have seen 
 him in the pulpit, the incarnation of ministerial fidel- 
 ity, pleading with sinners with melting tenderness, 
 expostulating with backsliders with awful earnest- 
 ness, or calling believers up to the heights of ho- 
 liness where the sun shines night and day. He 
 knew the blessed paradox expressed in that last 
 clause of the foregoing sentence — in the night of 
 sorrow and pain as in the sunshine of gladness 
 alike, he walked in the light of the Lord. And my 
 senior was William M. Crumley, a low- voiced, 
 slow-moving, magnetic man, whose persuasions 
 brought multitudes of souls to the pitying Christ, 
 whose prayers at the bedside of the sick and in the 
 chambers death-darkened made a channel for the 
 stream of heavenly peace and comfort to souls that 
 were burdened and hearts that were broken. Dur- 
 ing the epidemic visitation of yellow fever — that 
 oft-recurring scourge of scourges of our South At- 
 lantic seaports — sectarian lines were obliterated: 
 Crumley, who stayed at his post of duty, was the 
 pastor of all classes, rich and poor alike; and when 
 it was over, his name was tenderly spoken by thou- 
 sands in the homes of the smitten city. The Chris- 
 tian heroism developed during these awful visita- 
 tions illustrates a compensatory law of God : they 
 leave the stricken communities sorrowful and pov- 
 erty-smitten, but richer in all that is precious in 
 Christian civilization and ennobling in human 
 character. 
 
TO CALIFORNIA. 
 
TO CALIFORNIA. 
 
 FROM Savannah I was called to go to Cali- 
 fornia by the fatherly and apostolic Bishop 
 James O. Andrew. That such a man as 
 he should become the center of a fierce 
 -sectional struggle, is one of the strange 
 things that now and then take place in this strange 
 world. I will not even briefly rehearse that story 
 here. We have already had too much of it. Let 
 us not dig up any buried quarrels, but rather scat- 
 ter every seed of love that we can gather from the 
 past. The dear old bishop made the call, and I 
 obeyed. My sturdy and strong-willed presiding 
 elder, John W. Glenn, in what he felt to be right- 
 eous wrath, paced the floor and stormed against 
 my going. But I went under a strong persuasion 
 of duty. Savannah gave me a motherly fare- 
 well. My pen lingers on the page as the image of 
 one woman comes up before my mind — that of 
 Mvs. Marshal Stone, who had given me a home 
 and almost a mother's love. Her thoughtfulness 
 in my behalf blessed every step of the journey and 
 made itself felt long afterwards. It was of the sort 
 that forgets nothing and grudges nothingin doing a 
 kindness. I started on my journey with her kiss 
 and her tears upon my face. And what a journey 
 it was ! Its first episode was one never to be for- 
 gotten — one to be thankful for forever. At Enon, 
 Alabama, a quiet little village on Chunnenuggee 
 Ridge among the pines, I took a companion for 
 my California trip, and for life — and she has been 
 my good angel from that hour to this. We started 
 five minutes after the ceremony that united our 
 
 ("9) 
 
I20 Sunset Views. * 
 
 lives. She sits on my left, sewing, as I write this 
 by lamplight on the evening of March 23, 1898 — 
 God bless her! 
 
 At New Orleans we spent a few days, includ- 
 ing a Sunday. It was then a gay metropolis, 
 Frenchy in its glitter. Southern in its glow. Its 
 brunette beauties shaded off into octoroons with 
 rounded forms and laughing faces, deepening 
 into the honest, solid blackness of the genuine 
 negroes, who kept in Louisiana the complex- 
 ion and the jollity they brought with them from 
 the Congo. It was a jolly city in that day, unlike 
 any other American city. The Picayune of that 
 date was one of the unique newspapers that had a 
 flavor and a field all its own, with a touch of indig- 
 enous literature in its columns and a bonhomie 
 that gave it a national good will. Sunday was 
 mostly a French Sunday — that is to say, it had much 
 frolic and some religious worship. Here I met for 
 the first time McTyeire and Keener, afterwards 
 made bishops. McTyeire was editing the JVew 
 Orleans Christian Advocate, and winning his spurs 
 as a thinker, writer, and leader in the Church. 
 The questions he asked me, and the things he said 
 to me, went straight to the mark, and made me 
 feel that I had met a man who was a mind-reader, 
 and who knew all that was going on. Keener 
 was a presiding elder, whose quaintly classic and 
 incisive sayings and heroic methods were much 
 talked of even then. ** Yes, he's a Keener, sure 
 enough !" said an admirer, with a chuckle, quoting 
 one of his sharp sayings. These two men strong- 
 ly impressed the young preacher who has always 
 found a fascination in the study of men. To this 
 day I have not forgotten the preaching of Dr. J. 
 B. Walker at the Carondelet Methodist Church 
 on Sunday. A small, well-knit, dark-skinned, 
 
To California. I2i 
 
 black-haired, heavy-whiskered man, with brilliant 
 black eyes, with a fluency that was almost miracu- 
 lous in its rapidity, with a rhetoric that was ring- 
 ing and an enunciation that was as clear as it was 
 quick, he preached for about thirty minutes — it 
 seemed less to me — and quit when in full motion, 
 leaving, as it seemed to me, everybody wishing he 
 would go on. A Gulf breeze was not fresher than 
 his thought; his manner was as graceful as the 
 movement of a clipper-ship under full sail. Years 
 afterwards I made an earnest effort to bring Dr. 
 Walker to San Francisco, believing that if any 
 man could get a hearing for Southern Methodism 
 in that city, he was the man. But who knows? He 
 might have met there his pulpit Waterloo, as not 
 a few other notabilities have done in that city, which 
 has its own climate and its ow^n way of think- 
 ing, speaking, and doing on all lines of thought, 
 speech, and action. 
 
 Linus Parker was then a young preacher in 
 New Orleans, and had begun to attract atten- 
 tion and admiration by writing articles for the 
 press that were out of the usual style — original 
 in thought, with subtle touches of insight and 
 flashes of beauty that made the reader stop, re- 
 read, and linger wdth delight over his charming 
 page. He was elected to the office of bishop in 
 1882. Overwhelmed with the weight of the re- 
 sponsibility thus incurred, he grasped my hand 
 with tears in his eyes, and said: ** My brethren 
 have made a mistake; I am not suited to the 
 place." Sweet-souled, finely-tuned Linus Par- 
 ker! His humility was equal to his genius. His 
 course as a bishop of the Church was quickly 
 run. As ointment poured forth is his name. 
 
 A lively time we had in Nicaragua, en route to 
 California. It was just after Walker's first filibus- 
 
122 Stmset Views. 
 
 ter raid. The Nicaraguans naturally regarded all 
 North Americans with suspicion and dislike. They 
 were sulky, and we were watchful. At the " Half- 
 way House," between the head of the lake and 
 San Juan del Sur, on the Pacific coast side, we had 
 a night adventure that was somewhat exciting. 
 About six hundred native Nicaraguan soldiers had 
 gathered there to meet Filibuster Walker, should 
 he come again. There w^ere about ninety of us 
 North Americans. An enterprising agent of the 
 evil one had opened a bar for the sale of liquor 
 in a thatched shanty near by. Men of both 
 parties drank freely. A half-drunken Ameri- 
 can and a half-drunken "Greaser" came to 
 high words, and at length our man slapped the 
 face of the other, with an oath. Instantly there 
 was a clamor in angry, broken Spanish, as the 
 Nicaraguans leveled their six hundred muskets at 
 us. Almost as quickly, our men drew their re- 
 volvers, and stood ready. It promised to be a 
 lively and not altogether unequal fight — six hun- 
 dred tawny natives armed with old flintlock mus- 
 kets, on the one side, and ninety North Americans 
 armed with their deadly quick-shooting revolvers, 
 on the other. It was a critical situation — the pull- 
 ing of a single trigger on either side would have 
 made bloody work. I was in the front of our par- 
 ty, mounted on a mule, unarmed, perfectly sober, 
 but somewhat anxious. The women of our party 
 w^ere seated in wagons, the rest of our men, like 
 myself, being mounted on mules ready to start. 
 Acting upon an impulse, advancing a few steps to 
 get in sight and hearing of both parties, I lifted 
 my hat and said: 
 
 " Gentlemen, I have witnessed this whole diffi- 
 culty from the first. This fellow" — pointing as I 
 spoke to the man who had assaulted the Nicaraguan 
 
To California. 123 
 
 — ''is mostly blamable for all the trouble. He is 
 the aggressor, and is a disgrace to the American 
 name." 
 
 Amid approving grunts from the Nicaraguans 
 our half-drunken American began an interruption, 
 when a tall Pennsylvanian of our party, who spoke 
 Spanish and had acted as my interpreter, turned 
 quickly upon him and, placing the muzzle of his 
 revolver within an inch or so of his head, said 
 sternly : 
 
 *'Hush, you scoundrel! If you speak another 
 word, I will blow your head off." 
 
 The ruffian did not speak again; he saw the 
 flash in the tall Pennsylvanian's eye and caught 
 the ring of decision in his voice. (When I put in 
 this parenthesis the statement that this Pennsyl- 
 vanian was Captain James McLean, many old Cali- 
 fornians will recognize him as the popular *'Jim" 
 McLean who was so well^ known in the southern 
 mines — as brave a man as ever wore a soldier's 
 uniform. He had won distinction and his title in 
 the Mexican war. ) 
 
 Seeing my opportunity, I said: " Gentlemen, 
 let this fellow stay here and drink and quarrel and 
 fight if he wishes to do so, but let us go on our 
 journey, and take care of these women who' are un- 
 der our protection. All in favor of so doing say. 
 Aye." 
 
 Every man save one shouted, "Aye!" The 
 right chord had been struck — no American wor- 
 thy of the name ever fails to respond when ap- 
 pealed to in behalf of woman. We are a gallant 
 people, though not always entirely consistent in 
 dealing with women and the woman question — 
 so called. There is not much of a ''question" 
 about it where the Bible and a true manhood, 
 rather than whisky and infidelity, decide. 
 
124 Sunset Views. 
 
 *'A11 right, here we go!" I shouted, putting 
 the spur to my Httle mule ; and away we went un- 
 der the tropical stars, our men giving ** Three 
 cheers for the women!" as we started. It was 
 an exhilarating gallop of fourteen miles ; and when 
 the steamer's lights at San Juan del Sur came in 
 sight, how we shouted ! That was my first glance 
 at the world's great ocean — the Pacific, so called 
 — and it was a glad sight as matters stood with us 
 that night. 
 
ON THE PACIFIC SIDE. 
 
ON THE PACIFIC SIDE. 
 
 ON the Pacific side — so this chapter is 
 headed. But it was a misnomer as we 
 found it. In the Gulf of Tehuantepec 
 the storm on the sea was startling to a 
 landsman ; even the oldest sailors looked 
 anxious as the stanch ship rolled and tossed on the 
 billows, the wind blowing a heavier gale than I 
 had ever seen before. One of the sailors — a ro- 
 bust, friendly-faced Irishman — gave me a piece of 
 wisdom that I have not forgotten. Meeting him 
 on the guards of the vessel about twilight, the sea 
 rolling heavily, the wind whistling, and the ship 
 pitching fearfully, I asked him : 
 
 "What sort of weather will we have to-night?" 
 "I'll tell you in the morning," he answered, 
 looking at the sky, his eye twinkling as he spoke. 
 He was an old sailor. He had learned the lesson 
 that comes to most men who live long in this world 
 — this lesson, namely, that it is safer to prophesy 
 after, rather than before, the event. A hasty or 
 passionate prediction commits him who makes it 
 to an irrational and obstinate effort to bring the 
 thing to pass. The storms of life cannot be pre- 
 dicted in advance ; the mystery of life cannot be 
 understood now. We will be told in the morn- 
 ing. That glad morning will come — the morning 
 that will be followed by no night of darkness and 
 storm. For it we must wait. For it we can wait 
 without mistrust or impatience, knowing that in 
 every crisis we may look for the One mighty to 
 save to come to us walking upon the sea. No 
 night is too dark, no sea too rough, to keep him 
 from coming when we need his help and comfort. 
 
 (127) 
 
128 Sunset Views, 
 
 On the Pacific side, did I say? Those early 
 years of California history had in them but little 
 that was pacific. What a transition for me from 
 Georgia to California, from dreamy, even-going 
 old Savannah to the newness and rush and roar 
 of San Francisco I Th« first thing that impressed 
 me was that everything and everybody seemed to 
 be unsettled. The spirit of 1849 ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^ 
 air in 1855. Each person seemed to be ready for 
 '*a strike" of some sort — to make a strike, or to 
 be struck. Scarcely any one seemed to have any 
 fixed plans or expectations. The pulse of Cali- 
 fornia beat fast and strong, but irregularly. It all 
 seemed very strange to me, and it had a sort of 
 charm that was indefinable. There was a morbid 
 element in that early life in California, and it in- 
 duced habits of thought and action that became 
 chronic with many. Once a Californian, always 
 a Californian, in this sense. The gambling ele- 
 ment — the disposition to take chances for the big 
 things and the little things that were to be gained 
 or lost in the turn of life's wheel of fortune — was 
 everywhere pervasive. 
 
 Bishop Andrew presided at the session' of the 
 Pacific Conference held at Sacramento City, April, 
 1855. That fatherly and apostolic saint had an 
 heroic vein that ran all through him. When told 
 that there was an impression prevailing in some 
 quarters that his mission to California was to wind 
 up the Southern Methodist Conference and aban- 
 don that field, he said, "If that is what is want- 
 ed, they sent the wrong man" ; and as he said it 
 there was a compression of the lips and a flash in 
 his eye that bespoke a true chief of the militant 
 Church. Martyr metal was in him: for a princi- 
 ple he would have died as a matter of course with- 
 out flourish and without fear. He was not in the 
 
On the Pacific Side, 129 
 
 least melodramatic. His wife was with him — and 
 the echoes of her voice are still heard and the fra- 
 grance of her presence still lingers there. Her 
 face was an evangel. She was the Methodist Ma- 
 donna while she was among the Californians. A 
 woman came to see her one day while she and the 
 bishop were wdth us in Sonora, the mining town 
 where I did my first preaching in California. This 
 woman had a history; she had then two husbands 
 living in the same town, and a third elsewhere. 
 She was passionate, impulsive, fierce in one mood, 
 and pitiful and generous almost beyond belief in an- 
 other. She came to bring some little token of good 
 will to the parsonage — if that one-roomed board 
 shanty on the steep red hillside may be so called — 
 and there she met and was introduced to our Ma- 
 donna. Lingering, she sat and gazed upon the face 
 so restful and benignant, so gentle and so holy in 
 its expression — and sudden]}^, with a gush of irre- 
 pressible emotion, she rushed across the room, 
 dropped on her knees, hid her face in her lap, and 
 sobbed, '* Mother!" This woman had been a 
 sinner and had been much sinned against, and 
 doubtless had longed for the mother-love which is 
 so like the love of God. If that woman was not 
 converted by that look, she was comforted, and 
 must have had at least a momentary glimpse of 
 that love divine which is the fountain of all the 
 true love that blesses this world. 
 
 My first two years in California were spent in 
 the Southern Mines, Sonora being my station — 
 with Shaw's Flat, Columbia, Brown's Flat^ Whis- 
 ky Hill, Yankee Jim's, Mormon Creek, Chinese 
 Camp, Jamestown, Poverty Flat, Woods's Creek, 
 Jackass Gulch, and some other minor mining 
 camp, as my parish. Gold dust, whisky, gam- 
 bling, fighting, shooting, and other things of the 
 
130 Sunset Viezus, 
 
 sort, made life lively. The first four funerals that 
 I attended told the story of life at the time in the 
 mines of California — two of them were suicides,, 
 and the other two had been murdered. " Bang! 
 bang! bang!" we would hear the rapid succes- 
 sion of pistol shots in the Long Tom saloon in the 
 dead of the night. "■ Somebody is killed," we 
 thought, or said; and the next morning I would 
 be called on to perform the funeral rites of the 
 Church over the dead body of some poor fellow 
 who had been shot down in that far-famed resort. 
 It was run by old Ben Aspinwall — a huge-framed, 
 adipose giant, who regarded such tragedies as a 
 matter of course; who never became excited, tak- 
 ing things as they came; a strange old sinner, who 
 would take the last dollar from a miner who bet 
 against his faro-bank and as readily count out his 
 twenty-dollar gold pieces to help in burying the 
 dead or in charity to the living. I mention his 
 name here with only a kindly feeling; the old gam- 
 bler has for many long years been in some other 
 world than this ; this posthumous mention will do 
 him no hurt. He was a typical man of his class, 
 only bigger in body, of steadier nerve, and freer 
 of hand than others. All my life I have heard of 
 the proverbial generosity of professional gamblers. 
 Is it true that they are notable for their generosity? 
 And if so, what is the secret of it? The old 
 proverb, " Come easy, go easy," might explain 
 it to some minds. But it occurs to me that the ex- 
 planation may be found in the devil's casuistry 
 suggested to a gambler's soul that if he will divide 
 what he wrongfully takes from one rnan with an- 
 other man who is needy, he will thus condone for 
 his sin, and get a credit mark in his book of life 
 which must be balanced at last. The devil always 
 has a lie ready for all who will listen to him. 
 
On the Pacific Side. 131 
 
 The life of California at that day was mostly 
 young life. Young men ruled and rioted after 
 their fashion. They were strong, passionate, 
 credulous. Their sins were the sins of inexperi- 
 ence and passion in a new country. Their virtues 
 were courage and hopefulness. They feared not 
 God, man, or devil. They persuaded themselves 
 that they were the starters of a new era of some 
 sort in their new western world. They scoffed 
 at the wisdom of the past, invented a slang all their 
 own, and extemporized a moral code for them- 
 selves, conspicuously slighting several of the ten 
 commandments. They struck out at a wild pace 
 for an unknown goal. Mark Twain and Bret 
 Harte have painted them to the life as far as they 
 went. The names of the public men of California 
 who died by the bullet or the bottle would make a 
 long roll; but I would not, if I could, call these 
 men back from the mystery and sanctity of death. 
 The splendid manhood thus eclipsed makes as sad 
 a chapter in real life as has been enacted on this 
 planet. 
 
CALIFORNIA AS WE FOUND IT. 
 
CALIFORNIA AS WE FOUND IT. 
 
 THE Spaniards and the Roman Catholics 
 had long held possession of California; but 
 manifest destiny was against their owner- 
 ship and rulership. Republicanism and 
 Protestantism were bound to supplant and 
 succeed Imperialism and Romanism in Califor- 
 nia. That Romanism was a singular compound of 
 strength and weakness. It was saintly and sinful. 
 It was heroic, and it was evasive and illusive. 
 Grand religious ideals and shameful worldly pol- 
 icies were blended in a way that excited mingled 
 admiration and execration in ingenuous souls. The 
 heroic and the saintly age of Spanish evangelization 
 and conquest has registered itself in the very no- 
 menclature of California, from San Francisco Bay 
 to San Diego. What a saintly country in name! 
 But what a devilish history! It is a mixture, and 
 an evil mixture — the Church and the State. The 
 kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of this world 
 — God and mammon — left their marks. The Jes- 
 uit fathers were of two sorts — the devotees who be- 
 lieved with all their hearts, and the diplomats who 
 schemed with all their cunning; the propagandists 
 of the faith, and the tools of the Spanish political 
 conquest. The writer who ignores the one or the 
 other of these elements, in his estimates of the 
 forces that operated in the Spanish settlements of 
 America, will give a narrow, one-sided, and mis- 
 leading statement. 
 
 The ''Society of Jesus" on its religious side 
 exhibited much that was worthy of its name — self- 
 sacrifice, courage, consecration, enthusiasm, that 
 dared danger and death for love of their Lord and 
 love of souls. On its other and darker side, its 
 
 ('35) 
 
136 Sunset Views. 
 
 human side, it reflected the meanest, darkest, foul- 
 est, cruelest phases of the corrupt and bloody po- 
 litical governments of that time. The review of 
 this history should burn into our souls the truth 
 taught us by our Lord Jesus Christ himself, that 
 his kingdom is not of this world. The union of 
 Church and State is an unnatural union. It dis- 
 organizes the State and corrupts the Church. The 
 history of the world has furnished no exception 
 to the truth of this statement. The disorgani- 
 zation on the one hand, and the corruption on 
 the other, have been measured by the extent to 
 which this mesalliance has been carried. The 
 abolition of the temporal power of the papacy did 
 not come a day too soon for all concerned. The 
 Methodist movement in Great Britain saved Prot- 
 estant Christianity from the ruin with which it was 
 threatened by its alliance with the State. The 
 Greek Church has this fatal flaw. Lutheranism 
 also has it. This Roman leaven must be cast out — : 
 and it will be. The unification of the Church will 
 come by the separation from the State of all its 
 branches, and their* streams flowing into the one 
 sea of love whose tides shall sweep away all di- 
 visions among the followers of the divine, risen, 
 reigning Christ. 
 
 In California I knew men and women of the 
 Roman Catholic Church whose nobility and sweet- 
 ness of Christian character equaled the best among 
 the multitudes of the noble and the good I have 
 known among Protestants. If I get to heaven 
 and fail to meet them there, it will be a great sur- 
 prise and disappointment to me. I love all alike 
 who truly bear the image of my Lord. My wish 
 and prayer for the elimination of all bigotry and 
 exclusiveness arise not from any lack of love for 
 those from whom I am separated. It is because I 
 
California as We Found It, 137 
 
 do love them that I want the barbed wire fences 
 removed. 
 
 The Sunday bull fight was a California insti- 
 tution long after I became a citizen of the state. 
 I never saw one — and never wanted to. Its bru- 
 tality ought to have disgusted even the Digger In- 
 dians. It has often been described as a cowardly 
 sport, but the man who could thus take the chances 
 of impalement or of being ripped up by a tortured 
 animal, and brave the righteous wrath of a mercy- 
 loving God, exhibited a quality that was not heroic 
 in any honorable sense of the word, but had in it 
 a cruelty that was devilishly daring. A bull fight 
 on a religious holiday tells the story of the Cali- 
 fornia of that curious Spanish semi-civilization, 
 with one part of Christian faith and many parts 
 of many things utterly unlike it. The roots of 
 that one thing that was good will remain; the 
 evils, having in themselves the germs of dissolu- 
 tion because they are evils, will pass away. The 
 bull fight will be read of in a future age with dis- 
 gust mingled with incredulity; the religious holi- 
 day will be more and more what its name implies 
 to the devout and cultured mind. To the credit of 
 their religious teachers let it be said that the early 
 Californians had the sentiment of reverence left in 
 their souls. At the same time truth compels the 
 admission that they were very weak and low in 
 practical morality. The first gold-seekers did not 
 make things better. Many of them left their 
 regard for the ten commandments behind them 
 when they started to the gold fields. When a new- 
 comer expressed astonishment or indignation at the 
 grosser exhibitions of vice, ** You forget that you 
 are in California," an earlier immigrant would say 
 with a smile of pity on his face. The multitude 
 were doing evil, and it was easy to run with them. 
 
THOSE EARLY CALIFORNIANS. 
 
THOSE EARLY CALIFORNIANS. 
 
 THOUGH I was in California twenty-three 
 years, my surprise never wore off. The 
 natural features of the country itself, its 
 seasons, its productions, its institutions, 
 its people, were new at the start, and gave 
 fresh surprises to the last. The life was so pecul- 
 iar and so intense that a new-comer was quickly 
 naturalized if he could only speak any sort of Eng- 
 lish. Many sorts of English were spoken, from the 
 best to the worst. The precise and pedantic Eng- 
 lish of the educated NewEnglander,and the nasal 
 drawl and verbal sinuosities and queer provincial- 
 isms of the unlettered or partially educated NewEn- 
 glander; the elegant diction of the most cultured 
 Southerner, the ludicrous imitations of a class of 
 pretenders who aped them, and the marvelous 
 grammatical twists and mirth-provoking phases of 
 the illiterate man from the South; the rugged and 
 picturesque dialect of the Westerner who had 
 lived close to nature and whose ideas and vocabu- 
 lary were well matched in directness and vividness 
 of coloring; the educated Irishman who spoke 
 the best English, and the uneducated Irishman who 
 spoke the funniest and most original ; the educated 
 Englishman who had every word in its place 
 rightly pronounced, and the Englishman to whom 
 the eighth letter of the alphabet was a perpetual 
 puzzle in its relation to vowel sounds; the Ger- 
 man, Frenchman, Dutchman, Italian, Spaniard, 
 Scandinavian, Russian, and all the rest, whose 
 English, varying in quantity and quality, revealed 
 their nativity and indicated how long they had been 
 
 (HI) 
 
142 Sunset Views, 
 
 under our stars and stripes. Bishop Pierce hit it 
 when he said, '*CaHfornia is a jumble." It was 
 a strange mixture — a little of all the world in con- 
 tact, but not in cohesion. There was constant 
 effervescence and startling explosions among these 
 Calif ornians gathered from everywhere, and with 
 so many different ways of thinking, speaking, and 
 doing. There was a charm about it that never 
 was lost — the charm of novelty. Individuality was 
 marked. Conventionality had been left behind. 
 The Californian was, to an extent scarcely con- 
 ceivable in older communities, a law unto himself 
 — and herself, I might add, for the early California 
 women, though fewer in number, were not less 
 notable than the men for their originality. Some 
 of them, thrown on their own resources, developed 
 astonishing energy and capacity for self-support 
 on right w^omanly lines ; others exhibited aptitude 
 for badness and descended hellward with a ve- 
 locity that was awful. When a woman does start 
 down, down she goes! Everybody expects it, 
 and very many are ready to facilitate her descent. 
 The best women are better than the best men, 
 speaking in a general way. The worst women, if 
 not really worse than the worst men, are more 
 hopeless. Hopelessness makes recklessness. God 
 pity the man or woman who helps to shut all the 
 doors of hope against any sinning, suffering soul ! 
 The tragedies that came to my knowledge in Cal- 
 ifornia prove that there is a personal devil, or that 
 there are malign agencies that bring to pass all the 
 evil ascribed to Satan in the Holy Scriptures. A 
 personal devil — why did God permit him to come 
 into being? Why does not God kill him? These 
 questions, asked alike by the little child in its sim- 
 plicity and by the thought-weary philosopher in 
 his despair, have had many answers — some impious 
 
Those Early Calif or nians. 143 
 
 and flippant, some reckless and despairing. We 
 do know that the evil is here. We do know that an 
 evil effect must have an evil cause. And so we are 
 driven by the logic of facts to accept the saying 
 of Jesus: An enemy hath done this. There is no 
 use in caviling and quibbling. Moral freedom is a 
 fact. Moral freedom abused brings suffering here 
 in this world where we can see and feel it. When 
 the pitying Christ himself tells us that, persisted 
 in, evil volition will carry its curse into the next 
 world beyond, why should we doubt? Universalism 
 makes an ingenious appeal to sentiment, but the 
 text of the Book and the obvious trend of all that 
 is in sight now are against it. Is this a digression ? 
 Not much. A glance at the worst of this life sug- 
 gests a query concerning the possibilities beyond. 
 If I am digressing, I will digress a little farther, 
 by quoting for the reader the words : Behold, now 
 is the accepted ti?ne; behold, now is the day of sal- 
 vation. Now we can be saved. This ought to 
 satisfy us now. Fuller light hereafter is part of 
 the salvation promised. We can wait for it thank- 
 fully and patiently. 
 
 It was surprising to find that almost everything 
 in California was in dispute. A lawsuit or a shoot- 
 ing scrape was had over almost every mining claim 
 or land grant. The hottest election campaigns in 
 the older states were but child's play in compari- 
 son with such contests in early California. ( Ever}-- 
 body else in America save an old Californian will 
 be excused for doubting this.) Oratory, treating, 
 ** still-hunting," mass meetings, street processions, 
 personal encounters in newspaper controversy and 
 with fists, knives, and pistols, made running for 
 office a lively experience in those early days of 
 California. The almost incredible bullying and 
 terrorism of the San Francisco roughs surprised 
 
144 Sunset Views. 
 
 and for awhile paralyzed the city. The uprising 
 and vengeance of the Vigilance Committee aston- 
 ished, electrified all concerned. The gold fever 
 somehow gave a feverish diathesis to everything 
 in California. That fever burns on yet. The red- 
 hot California of 1855 is a slowly cooling but not 
 cold cinder in 1898. The ashes smolder in many 
 hearts that were then swept by the firesof passion, 
 that never burned more fiercely this side of perdi- 
 tion. 
 
 The truly good were also surprisingly good in 
 the California of that time. Negative goodness 
 was good for nothing then and there. The timid 
 fled, the half-hearted went back and walked no 
 more with their Lord. If there was a weak spot 
 in any professed Christian's belief, it was revealed; 
 if there was a flaw in his character, it broke down 
 at that point. Early California was strewn thick 
 with moral wrecks. But those who were true were 
 the truest of the true disciples of Jesus. Those who 
 stood those fires heated seven-fold came forth re- 
 fined of dross and shining in the beauty of holiness. 
 Never for a day was I out of sight and touch with 
 some of these faithful ones. There was Drury K. 
 Bond, a miner at Sonora, whose sunny, friendly face 
 reflected a soul as guileless as a child's ; who moved 
 amid the fires of sin that raged around him, un- 
 scorched; whose look, tone, and everyday walk 
 were so Christlike as to disarm the criticism of the 
 most cynical and skeptical, and fortify the faith 
 of all who had faith. He became a preacher, 
 spent a few years in the work of the ministry, do- 
 ing good in a quiet, blessed way all his own — and 
 then went home to God. There were other mi- 
 ners like him in the California mines in that early 
 time, lights shining in dark places. Then there 
 was Judge David O. Shattuck, of San Francisco — 
 
Those Early Californiaiis, 145 
 
 that surprising compound of legal wisdom, social 
 simplicity, and Methodistic strength and fervor. 
 His apostolic presence bespoke his goodness, a 
 goodness that none could question; his judicial 
 decisions were the terror of tricky lawyers and the 
 joy of the common people ; his sermons — he was 
 a local preacher — were models of clear exegesis, 
 pointed application, and fatherly tenderness. He 
 was a marvel to all who knew him — wise as a ser- 
 pent, harmless as a dove, in the sense in which 
 the words were used by the Master in whose steps 
 he walked. Here they come trooping before my 
 mental vision, but here I must close this chapter. 
 10 
 
SOME PREACHERS. 
 
SOME PREACHERS. 
 
 TO hear Dr. Eustace Speer preach was hke 
 listening to a music box that played the 
 tunes that were liveliest and sweetest, and 
 left you wishing for more when it ceased. 
 He never toyed with his subject, as the 
 manner of some is. His sermons had no ** intro- 
 ductions." With the first sentence he grasped his 
 theme by the proper handle, and held it firmly 
 to the last. Though a very rapid speaker, every 
 word was well chosen and in its right place. "The 
 effect of his discourse was cumulative. When he 
 stopped, the hearer had a homiletic picture vivid 
 and symmetrical photographed in memory. The 
 doctrine he preached had the old-time Georgia 
 Methodist quality of straightedgedness. He did 
 not refine, symbolize, or explain away the texts 
 that reveal the God of the Bible as hating sin and 
 loving holiness; he did not joke about hell-fire, 
 as if it were only painted fire ; he did not confound 
 the guilt of willful sin against God with the euphe- 
 mistic phrases now used by many who preach a 
 gospel of progress, so called — but progress back- 
 ward toward a theology that makes a God of straw 
 and ethics that make one thing about as good as 
 another ; the namby-pamby gospel of the babblers 
 who have invented a new terminology for their 
 new religion, which is no religion at all. Dr. 
 Speer could make the foolishness of sin look very 
 foolish indeed. The sophistry of sin he could 
 reveal with logical flashes that went through it like 
 X-rays. His satire burned the proud flesh of the 
 unrenewed and the unrepentant like caustic. His 
 
 (H9) 
 
150 Sunset Views. 
 
 wit, sparingly used in the pulpit, had a flavor like 
 that of Dr. South, who impaled error on epigram- 
 matic points. He used quotation with rare felicity : 
 his quotations were diamonds set in gold. At Mul- 
 berry vStreet Church in Macon, Ga., one Sunday, 
 in a discourse of exquisite beauty and tenderness, 
 he quoted from *' The Pilgrim's Progress " the de- 
 scription of Standfast at the crossing of the Jordan, 
 and he did it in a style so graphic that the impres- 
 sion remains with me undimmed to this moment. 
 His short prayer-meeting talks, expository and hor- 
 tatory, stirring and brief, were models. I never 
 heard from him a dull sermon, nor attended a 
 dull service led by him. He had the social gift: he 
 seemed to know everybody, and drew everybody 
 to him by sympathetic attraction. And by the 
 true pastoral instinct he found his way to the 
 places where there were sorrow and pain. His 
 presence was gracious and exhilarating, if I may 
 so describe it. About five feet ten inches in height, 
 '' raw-boned," rather large-limbed, with uneven 
 features, aquiline nose, and bright brown, express- 
 ive eyes, with light-brown hair covering a noble 
 head firmly set on his broad shoulders — a genius 
 in the pulpit, and akin to every soul he met outside 
 of it: this is Dr. Speer as he appears to me after 
 the lapse of the many years that have come and 
 gone since I sat under his ministry — a privilege 
 for which I shall never cease to be thankful. 
 
 Dr. Whitefoord Smith was the most popular 
 preacher in Columbia, the capital city of South 
 Carolina, when I first knew him. He was a high- 
 flyer whose wing was steady, and whose eye was 
 fixed on the sun — a gray eagle of the pulpit. His 
 descriptive powers were remarkable : what he saw 
 he made his hearers see. He possessed the en- 
 thusiasm that gave his subject possession of himself 
 
Some Preachei's, 151 
 
 for the time being. What he felt his hearers felt : he 
 had the sincerity of conviction and intensity of feel- 
 ing that made the facts of the gospel and the experi- 
 ences of religion tremendously true. His hearers 
 caught his enthusiasm, and were borne with him on 
 the high tide of his magnificent pulpit oratory. As 
 a declaimer, he was brilliant and fascinating to all 
 classes of persons. The sweep of his gesture suit- 
 ed the sweep of his rhetoric. It was spread-eagle 
 style, but in no derogatory sense of the word: the 
 king-bird of the air is never mistaken for any 
 other genus. " Let us go to-night, and hear 
 Whitefoord Smith," said the blase man of the 
 world, who wanted a fresh luxury of some sort; 
 the woman of fashion, who liked to go with the 
 crowd ; the student of human nature, who took de- 
 light in analyzing the elements of his pulpit power; 
 the schoolboy and schoolgirl, who gloried in pul- 
 pit pyrotechnics and poetry; the old-time Metho- 
 dists, who believed in a judgment day and a New 
 Jerusalem with its golden streets and rainbow 
 arching the great white throne on which sat the 
 King of glory — all these flocked to hear Dr. 
 Smith, and all were profited more or less as well 
 as pleased. The Church was edified under his 
 ministry, for through all his cloth-of-golden pulpit 
 oratory ran the scarlet thread of the doctrine of the 
 cross. He built upon the sure foundation — Christ 
 Jesus, the wisdom of God and the power of God. 
 He reached the masses and drew them, Christward 
 — this pulpit light who soared and shone, a star of 
 the first magnitude in the heavens. 
 
 Dr. R. T. Nabors left a memory with us as flaw- 
 less as a crystal. No one ever heard him preach 
 without falling in love with both the preacher and 
 his gospel. The graciousness of his message was 
 equaled by the grace of its delivery. The frailty 
 
152 Sunset Views. 
 
 of his body marked him for early translation to the 
 higher sphere whose airs he inhaled in holy com- 
 munion with his Lord, and lent a pathos to his 
 ministry that none could resist. Your first thought 
 when you saw him enter the pulpit was that there 
 was a man suited to bring us a message from the 
 world of spirits : he was himself more spiritual than 
 earthly, as he stood there before the people — a man 
 not above medium stature, notably gentle andgrace- 
 ful in bearing, his palid face ashine from an inner 
 light, his thin frame clad in faultless black, his 
 features feminine in their fine delicacy, reflecting 
 every changing phase of thought and feeling in his 
 discourse, and withal an aroma of heavenly-mind- 
 edness that filled the house of God with its fra- 
 grance. He was a living epistle, known and read 
 of all who came within the range of his ministry. 
 A finer touch than mine would be required to de- 
 scribe his preaching. The usual descriptives seem 
 coarse and awkward when applied to Nabors. 
 When he was brought to Nashville and stationed 
 at West End, near Vanderbilt University, one 
 object had in view was to give the students of 
 that institution an object lesson in saintliness — 
 saintliness without sanctimony, saintliness with- 
 out sentimentality or softness, the saintliness of 
 a manly nature touched and transfigured by the 
 touch of the Master. He was what is called by 
 some a flowery preacher, but only in a good 
 sense. There was in his soul a love of beauty that 
 led to an inevitable efflorescence in his speech. 
 His flowers were never artificial ; they had both 
 the bloom and the fragrance of living plants grow- 
 ing in the garden of the Lord. The lilies of the 
 valley graced the garlands he wreathed for the 
 brow of the King; the rose of Sharon with him, 
 as in the Song of Songs, the queen of all. He 
 
Some Preachers, 153 
 
 was so attuned to the diviner harmonies that his 
 sermons were truth set to music. The crucified, 
 risen, reigning, interceding Christ was his one 
 theme of discourse. The refrain of the Corona- 
 tion Hymn was the keynote of his preaching: to 
 crown him Lord of all was the aim of his ministry 
 and the inspiration of his eloquence. The vener- 
 able chancellor of the university sat enthralled by 
 his genius and uplifted by his touch, while the lit- 
 tle children looked and listened with a pleasure 
 and wonder they did not understand, but felt that 
 it was easier for them to love the Christ preached 
 to them by this disciple who lived so close to him 
 and had so much of his spirit. 
 
 George Sim, an undersized Englishman of few 
 words, was a gold mmer in one of the mining 
 camps of northern California. One night, ar- 
 rayed in his mining apparel, a red flannel shirt and 
 corduroy breeches, he sat among the hearers in 
 the rear of the little chapel on the hillside. The 
 preacher was filled with the Spirit, and the sermon 
 shot an arrow of conviction to the heart of the 
 grave and taciturn little Englishman. Conviction 
 was speedily followed by conversion, and his con- 
 version by a call to preach. The reader will see 
 that language of certainty is used in this brief nar- 
 ration. He gave every evidence that his convic- 
 tion was genuine and his conversion clear. One 
 of the surest evidences of his call to preach was in 
 the fact that he could preach. A man who can- 
 not preach is not called to that function, though 
 some good men have seemed to think otherwise. 
 The first time I ever heard him, and every time 
 thereafter, I had a surprise. His sermons, reported 
 verbatim et literatim^ would have graced any first- 
 class homiletic magazine of our day. There was 
 a finish about them very remarkable : the unity of 
 
154 Sunset Views. 
 
 the parts, the severe sententiousness of the style, 
 the closeness of the logic — in a word, the polemic 
 vigor and literary beauty of his sermons were ex- 
 traordinary. I never heard from his lips a dis- 
 course which would not have borne the test of 
 the printer's ink. Of how many living preachers 
 could this be truthfully said? His preaching was 
 simplicity and directness in perfection, the undi- 
 luted gospel in the fewest words, mostly Anglo- 
 Saxon monosyllables like his text-book, the Eng- 
 lish Bible, which he quoted with special frequency 
 and felicity. He knew that English Bible : he was 
 saturated with it; its thought had interpenetrated 
 his thought, its spirit had flooded his spirit. He 
 had little gesture of any sort, was sparing in illus- 
 tration or anecdote, and never uttered a joke in 
 the pulpit. He simply preached the gospel, and 
 nothing but the gospel, in its plainest terms and 
 fewest words — not with enticing words of man's 
 -wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of 
 power. That blessed demonstration attended his 
 ministry from first to last. Souls that were hun- 
 gry for the word of life were eager to be fed by 
 him — cultured men and women who knew the 
 difference between the simple beauty of the truth 
 that is the highest beauty of the universe and the 
 meretricious beribboning and bespangling of it by 
 bunglers and babblers. "Where did he get all 
 he knows?" was asked by a scholarly man after 
 meeting Sim socially. He seemed to have read 
 more widely than other men with far larger oppor- 
 tunity: the treasures of history, science, art, phi- 
 losophy, and general literature, in the truest and 
 largest meaning of the word, were at his command. 
 No rubbish cumbered his capacious brain, and the 
 glorious gospel of the grace of God filled all the 
 needs of his soul. He knew it to be clothed with 
 
So?ne Preachei's. 155 
 
 a power all its own. He felt that power in his own 
 heart, and as preached by him it was felt by many 
 who will be glad forever that they sat under his 
 ministry. 
 
 Another name comes in here — that of Robert 
 W. Bigham, who died at Demorest, Georgia, Oc- 
 tober II, 1900. He was my presiding elder in the 
 California mines in 1856. '*Bob" Bigham, his 
 old Georgia comrades fondly called him in his 
 younger days. The abbreviation was expressive 
 of the affectionate familiarity that lent its special 
 charm to the inner circles of clerical friendship. 
 He came of good old Georgia stock, and was mold- 
 ed by Georgia Methodism when it was at the height 
 of its militancy and fervor. He was an uneven 
 preacher: at his best his sermons were massive 
 and symmetrical homiletical structures. His great- 
 est failures suggested more than some noisier men 
 ever say in the pulpit. He was a faithful servant 
 of God. He was a true friend. *' Fitzgerald," he 
 said to me one day in his brotherly way, "you 
 have a dangerous gift, the gift of popularity." His 
 kindly heart may have led him to exaggerate the 
 measure of good will felt for me by those early Cal- 
 ifornians, but his admonition was timely for any 
 young preacher. He was fearless and guileless. 
 In a contest he never thought of making any con- 
 cessions .where any righteous principle or policy 
 was involved, and was incapable of evasion. He 
 was the soul of Christian chivalry in the truest, 
 loftiest sense of the word. Our paths parted. I 
 am glad that I knew him. 
 
FIVE FATHERS OF GEORGIA METHODISM. 
 
FIVE FATHERS OF GEORGIA METHODISM, 
 
 THE Indian fighter, the hunter, and the cir- 
 cuit rider were taking possession of the 
 land. The rifle, the ax, and the saddle- 
 bags held sway. Daniel Boone and Fran- 
 cis Asbury typed the manhood of the time. 
 The men then called of God to preach were men 
 who feared not any face of clay. Only men of 
 strongest mold and fearless soul could have got- 
 ten a hearing. The weakly bookish and oth- 
 erwise weakly pulpit peddler of theological Per- 
 hapses, such as are now seen and heard in some 
 places, would then have been ignored or laughed 
 at. The people had no time to waste on idle or 
 merely curious speculations. They gave a hear- 
 ing only to men who brought them an earnest 
 message in the present tense. Those old Georgia 
 preachers were converted sinners who knew how 
 to preach to sinners. They believed in total de- 
 pravity and full salvation ; many of them claimed 
 that they knew both experimentally. These preach- 
 ers were the product of their times by the grace of 
 God. We shall not look upon their like again. 
 Men as great and as good may appear when they 
 are wanted, but they will be men of a different 
 type. Their chief characteristic was robustness. 
 Georgia Methodism as it is now is their work. 
 The names mentioned in this chapter represent 
 their generation. These men — Samuel Anthony, 
 James E. Evans, William J. Parks, John W. Glenn, 
 and William Arnold — will sit for the picture, in 
 the background of which are the thousands they 
 led, the Georgia Methodism which is so largely 
 the fruit of their labors. 
 
 (>59) 
 
i6o Sunset Views. 
 
 Samuel Anthony was my pastor at the old Mulber- 
 ry Street Church in Macon when I first knew him. 
 The mention of his name brings up memories that 
 are vivid and sacred. In no other man have I ever 
 seen such a blending of sternnes§ and tenderness. 
 While denouncing worldliness in the Church or 
 threatening impenitent sinners with the wrath of 
 a sin-hating God, his tall form seemed to rise to 
 a loftier stature, and his voice rang out like the 
 peal of a super-terrestrial trumpet. The hearer 
 felt that he was listening to judgment-day thun- 
 der, and could almost see the flash of its lightnings. 
 In expostulation with hard-hearted sinners, and in 
 pleading with backsliders to come back to the path 
 of duty from which they had strayed, there was an 
 awfulness in his pathos that cannot be put on pa- 
 per. " It has been said that only a mother knows 
 the heart of a mother," he said one day while 
 making one of these appeals. ** Only a mother 
 knows the heart of a mother, and only a pastor 
 knows the heart of a pastor" — and his frame 
 quivered with irrepressible emotion as he spoke. 
 There was a quaking and melting that day in the 
 great congregation. The man of God felt the 
 pangs of soul-travail, and a mighty revival came to 
 the birth. He was a true pastor who watched for 
 souls as one that must give account. Was he elo- 
 quent? He was more than eloquent: he was sur- 
 charged with a power that went beyond any de- 
 scribable effects of tone or gesture in human 
 speech. When the pulpit glow was on his strong, 
 rugged face, it shone like the sunlit face of a gran- 
 ite cliff. In his impassioned appeals the tones of 
 his voice mellowed into sweetness and fell into the 
 rhythmical flow that seems to be the natural ex- 
 pression of human thought and emotion when at 
 full tide. Six feet and three or four inches in 
 
Five Fathers of Georgia Methodism. i6i 
 
 height, long-Hmbed and large-boned, with uneven 
 features and particularly high cheek bones, deep- 
 set blue eyes under heavy, dark eyebrows, with a 
 complexion that spoke of fresh air and temperate 
 living — this is the man as he now comes up before 
 my mind. I humbly thank God that I ever met 
 him and sat under his ministry. 
 
 John W. Glenn was my first presiding elder. He 
 was a presiding elder who presided ; he was a lead- 
 er who led. He was a rugged sage who saw men 
 and things in the dry light of real facts, and who 
 acted upon the facts as he saw them with almost 
 mathematical certainty. He knew nothing of eva- 
 sion or irresolution. There were to him only two 
 sides to any question — the right side and the 
 wrong side. He marshaled his Church forces like 
 a true general who knew what ought to be done, 
 and calculated to a fraction the resources at his 
 command. He planned wisely, and then moved 
 boldly — as Von Moltke phrased it, *« he pon- 
 dered well, and then dared." The Church moved 
 forward under his leadership. The stragglers 
 were disciplined and made to keep step, or were 
 drummed out of camp. He was a true disciplin- 
 arian: that is to say, he knew the law of the 
 Church by heart, and enforced it to the letter. 
 The paternal element was conjoined with the au- 
 tocratic in his make-up. To me, a young preach- 
 er with everything to learn, he was patient and 
 faithful in his dealing. His outburst of opposition 
 to my going to California almost electrified me. It 
 is plain enough to me now that he saw farther and 
 more clearly than some others who then had the 
 ear of the Church. As a preacher the substance 
 of his message was: Obey the gospel, do your 
 duty now as God commands, and receive his bless- 
 ing; disobey or delay at the peril of your soul. 
 1 1 
 
1 62 Sunset Views. 
 
 He spoke as one having authority, as the accred- 
 ited minister of the Lord Jesus Christ, called, com- 
 missioned, and equipped for the work committed 
 unto him. The pleasure of the Lord prospered in 
 his hand. He never took a backward step as a lead- 
 er. He never cheapened the terms of membership 
 in the Church to accommodate or conciliate the 
 half-hearted. He did not use sedatives where caus- 
 tic was needed in dealing with diseased members of 
 the ecclesiastical body. His faithful ministry re- 
 sulted in the awakening and reclamation of many 
 souls, while it conserved the purity and power of 
 the Church. Standing on his sturdy limbs, ro- 
 bust of frame, with a leonine head massive and 
 bushy-haired, with a face whose features expressed 
 transparent honesty and courageous forcefulness, 
 the figure of John W. Glenn will hold its place 
 among the men who led Georgia Methodism in the 
 days of its highest militancy. 
 
 James E. Evans was the weeping prophet in his 
 day, a man who could preach and sing and pray 
 with an intensity of feeling and a sustained energy 
 that were little short of the miraculous. The dom- 
 inant note of his preaching was its fervidness. 
 His soul was on fire, and he kindled a holy con- 
 flagration wherever he went. Charles Wesley's 
 hymns as sung by him seemed to catch an added 
 glow and a more thrilling power. He could preach 
 three sermons a day, lead the singing at every 
 service, exhort mightily, and make intercessory 
 prayers that seemed to lift penitent souls for whom 
 he prayed into the very arms of the pitying Christ. 
 Those sermons, exhortations, songs, and prayers 
 are echoing in living hearts to-day; they set in 
 motion tides of gracious influence that will break 
 upon the shore of eternity. He was a marked 
 exception to the rule that the revivali?t and the 
 
Five Fathers of Georgia Methodism. 163 
 
 Church financier are not to be looked for in the 
 same person. He had a double vocation as preach- 
 er, church-builder, and debt-raiser. His great 
 physical stature, his personal magnetism, the mel- 
 ody of his voice, and his versatility in social gifts 
 marked him for leadership in the Church. He was 
 a faithful steward of the manifold grace of God. 
 His tread was that of a giant. Georgia Metho- 
 dism will bear the impress of his genius as long as 
 the waters of the Ocmulgee sing their way to the 
 sea. 
 
 The one word that comes to my pen point in de- 
 scribing William J. Parks is "aggressiveness." He 
 pushed to his logical conclusions over all sophis- 
 tries and suppressions. He pushed his way to de- 
 sired results over all opposers. He was the auto- 
 crat of debate : the most eloquent orators and the 
 most subtle special pleaders went down before the 
 onset of this man, who always seemed to know all 
 the facts involved in a discussion and to be able to 
 set them forth in the fewest and most forcible 
 words. There was no confusion in his thought, 
 no waste in his verbiage. He was in himself a 
 Conference majority in most cases by the mere 
 force of his parliamentary genius. In a legislative 
 body where he could have found full play for his 
 powers he would have ranked with the first men 
 of his time. He was as an oracle for wisdom 
 among his compeers, and had a permanent follow- 
 ing among the masses accorded only to men who 
 are born to lead. His sermons were like shots 
 from a rifled gun before which nothing could 
 stand. He could impale an error or expose a fal- 
 lacy in a single sentence that struck to the heart 
 and stuck to the memory. He was deliberation 
 personified. His sayings were quoted far and 
 wide; ''Uncle" Billy Parks, as the people fondly 
 
164 Sunset Views, ^ 
 
 called mm, thus furnished ammunition for multi- 
 tudes of Methodists in their polemic warfare, and 
 in their conflict with the world, the flesh, and the 
 devil. His character and his work are as solid 
 and enduring as the strength-girded Stone Moun- 
 tain upon which the storms have beaten from cen- 
 tury to century and left no scar. 
 
 William Arnold was unique among his contem- 
 poraries. He stood alone as the delineator of the 
 lives of the saints and painter of the glories of heav- 
 en. Far and near he was sent for to preach funeral 
 sermons for the old and the 3^oung, the rich and the 
 poor alike. With his long white hair, serene, rud- 
 dy face, soul-lit blue eyes, and apostolic presence, 
 he seemed to belong to the spiritual world of which 
 it was his delight to preach to the rapt and tearful 
 multitudes that sat under his ministry. To look 
 upon him and hear him made it easy to believe in 
 the truths he proclaimed and to love the Christ 
 whose image he bore. He was a living demonstra- 
 tion of the power of the gospel to lift men above 
 the plane of nature — a walking embodiment of 
 that spiritually-mindedness which is life and peace. 
 When he stood in the pulpit, with his silver locks 
 falling around his temples, his rapt face aglow with 
 the holy flame that burned within his soul, it seemed 
 to the lookers-on that in him the two worlds met. 
 Death, the resurrection, and the joys of the re- 
 deemed were his themes — especially the joys of 
 the glorified saints. The best hymns that bore on 
 these subjects he quoted with wonderful fluency 
 and appositeness : many of his funeral sermons 
 were hymnological mosaics, sparkling in more than 
 poetic beauty. The popular impression was that 
 he improvised much of the verse he uttered: it 
 came from his heart with a spontaneity and unctu- 
 ousness that seemed like inspiration rather than 
 
Five Fathers of Georgia Methodism. 165 
 
 memory. The listening saints fell in love with the 
 heaven of which he preached and sang, renewed 
 their vows, and quickened their steps thitherward. 
 The mourners looked up through their tears and 
 took comfort. At times a mighty afflatus would 
 descend upon the man of God and upon the wait- 
 ing assembly, and preacher and people were swept 
 away upon mighty tides of emotion that could no 
 more be checked than the roll of the ocean at its 
 flood. Nobody wished to check the mighty and 
 solemn joy. It came because the channels were 
 open; they let it flow in unhindered, and praised 
 God for a present salvation and a hope that was 
 full of glory. Uncramped by conventionalities, 
 and unused to repression of opinion or feeling, 
 they could not help shouting. It is almost certain 
 that they did not try to help it. It did not hurt 
 them. Their joy was full, and tliey gave it vent 
 in their own way. The voices of the white-haired 
 preacher and most of those old shouting Georgia 
 Methodists have long since joined in the hallelu- 
 iahs of the glorified hosts in the city of God. The 
 echoes will never cease among their s;n*iitual chil- 
 dren so long as there is a Methodist W>me or a 
 Methodist altar in Georgia. 
 
THE OLD PANEL 
 
THE OLD PANEL. 
 
 THEY were of the race of the Colossi — 
 those bishops of the old panel of Southern 
 Methodists. There was not a runt nor a 
 weakling among them . They differed one 
 from another as widely as good men could 
 differ. They were not all equally great, but each 
 was a genius in his own way. Men as great as 
 they, and even greater than some of them, failing 
 nowhere save in elections to connectional office, 
 lived obscure lives in narrower spheres of service, 
 and had no memorial other than the obituary de- 
 partment of the Church paper and the mortuary 
 register of the Annual Conference. They did not 
 live for fame ; their record is on high — and that is 
 all they sought. But we have found ourselves ask- 
 ing, What would have been the record of certain 
 gifted men who were talked of and voted for for 
 the episcopacy, had they not died without it ? Who 
 knows? Mere officeholding is not fame. To the 
 incompetent and unworthy, both in Church and 
 State, it has been a pillory rather than a pedestal. 
 Joshua Soule stood at the head of the old panel of 
 bishops in more senses than one. He was a South- 
 ern Methodist from Maine. With half a chance, 
 those big-framed men from Maine made excellent 
 Southerners. There was a tonic quality in its 
 great forests of pine and in its coast breezes that 
 gave a bulk, firmness, and fineness to its manhood 
 that found responsiveness in the large-framed, lib- 
 eral-minded, high-mettled Southerners of the best 
 class. Blaine's personal popularity in the South 
 was very great; and when he made an anti-climax 
 
 (169) 
 
I^O Sim set Views. 
 
 of his public career, the South was a chief mourner 
 at his political grave . That other man from Maine , 
 Speaker Reed — Tom Reed, ''the Czar," in news- 
 paper lingo — was a social lion among Southern- 
 ers in Washington City. These men were weighty, 
 warm-blooded, human — not lucky in politics, but 
 with a personal following like that of Clay or Jack- 
 son. When Joshua Soule refused ordination on 
 what many men would have called a mere punctilio, 
 but what was to him a point of honor, he showed the 
 metal of which he was made. He was wrought 
 steel, double-refined in the fiery trials that some- 
 how come in some form to every man who does 
 anything worth doing in this world. He left noth- 
 ing behind him worth mentioning in the line of 
 written or printed thought. He was not a writer, 
 nor a dreamer, nor a theorizer. He was a Metho- 
 dist preacher who stuck to his vocation, and an 
 administrator who administered according to the 
 Methodist discipline, with an eye single to duty 
 as prescribed by the law of the Church and the 
 Head of the Church. But though he left behind 
 him no ''literary remains," he did bequeath to the 
 Church a legacy rich beyond computation — a life 
 without spot or blemish, or any such thing; an ex- 
 ample of subordination of self to duty in the pres- 
 ent tense, imperative mood; a nobility of Christian 
 manhood that stood every test. He set the fashion, 
 so to speak, in his great office. His life is worth 
 more to his Church than a library filled with books 
 that deal with Christian duty and ethics as ab- 
 stractions. Any man, in the succession to Bishop 
 Soule, who should prove to be self-seeking, cow- 
 ardly, or small-minded, would furnish a demon- 
 stration of invincible natural depravity and sinis- 
 ter heredity. Bishop Soule looked the man he 
 was: tall and stately, with the gravity of a thinker; 
 
The Old Panel, 171 
 
 virile, incisive, reverend, serene, with that impres- 
 sion of reserved force pecuhar to the grand men 
 who possess it; a man among men, and a mighty 
 man of God. 
 
 When the famous race horse, '* Bascom," was 
 announced as the winner on the race track at 
 Lexington, Ky., a gigantic Kentuckian, amid the 
 cheering of the crowd, exclaimed, *' Hurrah for 
 Bascom ! I'll bet ten thousand dollars that the 
 man that colt was named for can beat any other 
 man preaching in these United States." He found 
 no takers in that crowd. The great preacher was 
 at the top of his fame, the man of the hour as a 
 pulpit orator. That is what remains of Bascom — 
 the tradition of wonderful oratory. * ' Bascom can- 
 not be described," said Bishop Kavanaugh ; ''he 
 was simply overwhelming. There was a majesty 
 of bearing, a rush of imagery, a vehemence of 
 manner, a flow of emotion that could not be an- 
 alyzed or described. I loved him," continued 
 his lovable and much-loved successor, ** for he 
 was as absolutely guileless and tender of heart 
 as he was transcendent in his intellectual endow- 
 ment." Bascom's printed sermons were a disap- 
 pointment. The Bascom who thrilled with his 
 wonderful oratory the crowds who thronged to 
 hear him at our national capital — whose name was 
 the synonym for eloquence everywhere among his 
 countrymen, drawing the largest congregations and 
 eliciting the largest share of contemporaneous ad- 
 miration and applause — is looked for in vain in 
 these printed sermons. For the most part they 
 are magniloquent, turgid, and rickety in structure: 
 here and there they have a touch so giant-like in 
 its swing and power that the reader recognizes the 
 production of genius, though it is genius unhar- 
 nessed and half asleep. He was undoubtedly a 
 
172 Sunset Views, 
 
 very great preacher; and not only the tradition of 
 his wonderful oratory, but the fruit of it, abides. 
 He was a man of sorrows. He stands before the 
 Church like a mountain peak overtopping the sur- 
 rounding hills, its sides draped in the mist, cloud- 
 capped, the light breaking through the gloom at the 
 sunset. 
 
 The one word that describes Bishop James O. 
 Andrew is the word "fatherly " — the sort of father- 
 liness that implies not only benignity, but strength, 
 wisdom, forethought, patience. He was a vicari- 
 ous sufferer, the storm-center of a tempestuous 
 epoch in the history of the Church. It so happened 
 that this most fatherly man gave occasion for the 
 clash that w^as bound to come because it was bar- 
 gained for in antecedent legislation both in Church 
 and State, and was involved in the conjunction of 
 conditions that precipitated the long-dreaded yet 
 inevitable catastrophe. He was strong enough and 
 true enough for the crisis. Pushed to the front of 
 the line of battle, he had at his back all the forces 
 of his section. It was a sectional tight: the old 
 regime and the letter of the constitution were on 
 the side of the South, and the drift of events and 
 the spirit of the age were with the North. The 
 split in the Methodist Episcopal Church was only 
 a symptom of a disease, the germs of which were 
 injected into the body politic by the framers of our 
 government. The first gun in our civil war was 
 fired at Philadelphia in 1789, and the last at Ap- 
 pomattox in 1865. Yes, the last: whatever may 
 be the destiny awaiting this nation in the unknown 
 future, it will be met by us as a united people. 
 During all those years of strife, neither weakness 
 nor acrimony was ever exhibited by Bishop An- 
 drew: through it all he bore himself with dignity 
 and patience. His face bore the marks of inward 
 
The Old Panel, 173 
 
 struggle, but he gave no outward sign of the secret 
 griefs that he carried only to the Lord who was 
 his sun and shield. Full-grown and stalwart, 
 forcefulness and friendliness beaming from his 
 strong, open face, his thin gray locks falling on 
 either side of his noble head, he stands in his lot 
 in Church history, a father in Israel who will hold 
 his place in the veneration and affection of our 
 people so long as they maintain the principles of 
 truth and righteousness for which he was a cham- 
 pion and in some sense a martyr. 
 
 Standing in close relation to Bishop Andrew, his- 
 torically and otherwise, is Bishop Robert Paine. 
 Born in North Carolina, trained for his work in 
 Alabama, matured and developed in Mississippi, 
 and mellowed and sweetened in his wide sphere of 
 connectional service and in the school of suffer- 
 ing, he did a work for the Church whose value 
 cannot be computed this side of the judgment day. 
 He was a Southern gentleman of the old school, a 
 Christian of the type that built up what is best in 
 our civilization, a servant of the Church who was 
 faithful to every trust and equal to the heavy re- 
 sponsibilities devolved upon him by the suffrages 
 of his brethren. To have known him was to pos- 
 sess a prophylactic against misanthropy or pessi- 
 mistic views as to the ultimate possibilities of hu- 
 man nature. As president of a Christian college 
 the quality of Christian manhood revealed to his 
 pupils in his daily intercourse with them what 
 lies beyond all text-book pedagogy: the possibili- 
 ty of such an imitation of Christ as kindled within 
 them the loftiest aspiration and spurred them to. 
 the most strenuous endeavor. The only thing of 
 essential importance concerning any man, young 
 or old, is just this: the quality of his manhood. 
 The traditions of Bishop Paine at Lagrange Col- 
 
174 Sunset Views. 
 
 lege remain among us to this day; and the life of 
 this land of ours is purer and sweeter because of 
 the fact that by word and deed this Christian gen- 
 tleman and scholar put his impress upon the souls 
 of his students. Bishop Paine was one of the men 
 whose very excellences might disparage him in the 
 judgment of the superficial. He was so rounded 
 in character and in his intellectual make-up that 
 the wonder-hunters looked elsewhere for mate- 
 rial to satisfy their morbid cravings. The erratic 
 genius who is one half crank and the other half 
 a nondescript mixture will make more noise and 
 oftener get his name into men's mouths and the 
 newspapers, but when he dies nothing more is left 
 of him than of the meteors that stream across the 
 November heavens at night. Men like Bishop 
 Paine shine on like the fixed stars. During his 
 lifetime he was not accredited with a great num- 
 ber of great sermons — sermons of "phenomenal 
 brilliancy, profundity, and power," using the ste- 
 reotyped phraseology — but his pulpit work was uni- 
 formly so lofty that excellence was assumed as a 
 matter of course. As a bishop, he formed correct 
 judgments of men and things and did what was 
 right and wise so habitually that it was only after 
 he was disabled from further service that the 
 Church began to realize his worth. This man of 
 gentle blood, upon whose fine natural stock was 
 ingrafted the diviner element of the Christ-life, 
 subsided first into graceful superannuation, and 
 then went up to be forever with the Lord whom 
 he followed so long with loving heart and steady 
 steps. 
 
 Bishop John Early was of the virile old Virginia 
 clan of that name, a clan whose spinality stands 
 all tests. General Jubal Early was one of these: 
 he who refused to sign the ordinance of secession 
 
The Old Faciei. 175 
 
 when Virginia went out of the Union, and also re- 
 fused to surrender when the Southern Confedera- 
 cy furled its banner at Appomattox. They are a 
 self-directing, aggressive, persistent race, hard to 
 turn when once started on a chosen line of action. 
 To such men neutrality is incomprehensible where 
 anything is at stake worth fighting for, and retreat 
 or surrender unthinkable while there is one round 
 of ammunition left. All the diplomacy Bishop 
 Early knew and practiced was the diplomacy of 
 the imperative mood on the basis of existing facts. 
 As a pastor, he saw what his parishioners ought to 
 do and led them to do it. As a presiding elder, he 
 planned campaigns of church-building and soul- 
 saving and executed them with a celerity and vig- 
 or that made the dawdling and timid dizzy. As a 
 connectional Book Agent, he exhibited the same 
 business qualities. As a preacher, he was simply 
 John Early: there was none exactly like him, and 
 he left no successor. He had a mighty faith in 
 God. He was a phenomenal revivalist. The 
 saints rallied to his call, and sinners capitulated. 
 He had his own way of doing things. *' Touch 
 her if you dare! " he said to an irate youth who 
 essayed to force his sister from the altar where she 
 was kneeling with others during one of his revival 
 meetings. The youth did not dare: the tone and 
 gesture of the militant elder caused a sudden 
 change of purpose. The tender side of Bishop 
 Early never left him: he was brother, father, 
 friend, helper wherever brotherliness, friendship, 
 and helpfulness were needed. When there was a 
 fight on hand he was not dodging in the rear, but 
 at the front shooting bullets ; but he never fired 
 under the white flag nor struck an unfair blow. 
 He lived to be an old man, and was weary toward 
 the end. When his discharge came he was glad. 
 
176 Sunset Views, 
 
 George F. Pierce, a pulpit monarch and master 
 of the platform, a genius without eccentricity; 
 Hubbard H. Kavanaugh, whose eloquence was a 
 demonstration of the supernatural element that is 
 imparted to human thought and speech, according 
 to the promise of the L»ord, whose humor and gen- 
 tleness flooded with sunshine all the circles he 
 touched in his long and illustrious career; Hol- 
 land N. McTyeire, ''a leader of men and a lover 
 of little children," whose greatness will grow with 
 the coming years that will more and more reveal 
 the far-reaching wisdom of his plans, the mighti- 
 ness of his stroke, and the singleness of his aim; 
 David S. Doggett, "the golden-mouthed " ; Enoch 
 Marvin, the Missourian, whose career shows how 
 the divine touch transfigures whomsoever receives 
 it, who stirred the hearts of the multitudes that 
 hung upon his lips as he preached a full gospel 
 from a soul fully baptized with the Holy Ghost 
 sent down from heaven ; William Capers, the apos- 
 tle of negro evangelization in the South, a man 
 who in the social circle and everywhere exhibited 
 the polish of genuine culture, and in the pulpit 
 flamed with the true pentecostal glory; Linus 
 Parker, whose life was an evangelical poem, who 
 wrote editorials noted alike for classic beauty 
 and spiritual insight, whose sermons were flawless 
 homiletic crystals — all these belonged to the old 
 panel, but as I have made larger mention of them 
 elsewhere, this glance will suffice here. 
 
A MIDWINTER MEDITATION. 
 
 la 
 
A MIDWINTER MEDITATION. 
 
 STEADY, steady! To-day, January 23, 
 1900, the suggestion comes to me that the 
 work of my Hfe is done. The questions 
 that arise in my mind are searching, the 
 feelings aroused are unspeakably solemn. 
 The work of my life — what has been its prime mo- 
 tive and inspiration? Have I built upon the true 
 foundation ? The words of the apostle Paul in the 
 third chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinthians 
 speak to my inner ear : ' ' Other foundation can no 
 man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 
 Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, 
 silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every 
 man's work shall be made manifest: for the da]; 
 shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire ; 
 and the fire shall try every man's work of what 
 sort it is." 
 
 Steady 1 We all know that the last stroke must 
 come some day. But to me this has hitherto al- 
 ways seemed a far-off possibility. I sit and face 
 the issue, knowing that here is a blessing for me if 
 I have faith to grasp it. 
 
 Steady ! The richest blessing that can come to 
 me is to make God's will my will in all things at 
 all times. The habitudes of my life have been 
 such as to make this test a test indeed.- 
 
 Softly! The blessing is here. The thought 
 comes to me to-day, not for the first time, that by 
 the gracious law of compensation that seems to run 
 through all the divine administration as far as we 
 can trace its operation, the very excess of pain 
 blunts its edge; the very extremity of weakness 
 
 (179) 
 
i8o Sunset Views. 
 
 tempers the consciousness of it. Thus thinking, I 
 open a book lyingon my table — **The Pilgrim's 
 Progress" — and read John Bunyan's account of 
 Mr. Standfast's crossing the Jordan at a time 
 <'when there was a great calm in the river" — and 
 it seems to me that if I should be called to go over 
 to-day there would be no storm upon its banks. 
 Thy will be done, O God ! The foundation stand- 
 eth sure. 
 
 A LITTLE NOTE. 
 
 I WAS tempted by my love' of the men, and from 
 force of habit long indulged, to give in these pages 
 a brief sketch of each and all of my colleagues in 
 the Board of Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, South. But I forbear — saying only this 
 word from the depths of my heart: The longer and- 
 more fully I have known them — each and all — the 
 more absolute has been my confidence in them and 
 love for them. Their brotherly kindness to me 
 has been unvarying and unstinted. 
 
 O. P. Fitzgerald. 
 
MY IMPULSIVE FRIEND 
 
MY IMPULSIVE FRIEND. 
 
 BLESS his restless, rapturous, lowly, lofty 
 soul ! For a long time I have been trying 
 to keep up with him. It has been a lively 
 chase that he has led me. Not for the 
 first time, the thought comes to me here 
 that for a good reason I understand him better 
 than do others. That reason is found in the fact 
 that there is between us some similarity of disposi- 
 tion. Among my readers there may also be some 
 persons who will recognize in this pen sketch some 
 reflection of their own lineaments. Along this line 
 there are touches of nature that should make us all 
 kin. The pocket glasses carried by most of us are 
 usually imperfect reflectors: the light is not clear 
 when self is the medium. The practical, plain- 
 spoken apostle James tells us that a man beholding 
 his own natural face in a glass goeth his way, and 
 straightway forgetteth what manner of man he is. 
 My impulsive friend belongs to a large family con- 
 nection, albeit many of his kinsfolk do not recog- 
 nize the relationship. 
 
 Blessings on him, my impulsive friend, who is a 
 puzzle to all that know him and a mystery unto 
 himself! Blessings on him now, as the sunset of 
 his life draws near ! There is a mighty comfort in 
 the fact that he is in the keeping of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, who is the one only infallible Priest of 
 every human soul. He knows our frames. 
 
 Blessings on my impulsive friend as the shadows 
 lengthen ! The thought of him recalls the peculiar 
 
184 Simset Views. 
 
 prayer attributed to a dying man of eccentric dis- 
 position. He had been excitable, impulsive, way- 
 ward, uneven in his career, and he knew it was so. 
 This was his prayer: '* O Lord, thou knowest me 
 better than I know myself. I cannot tell thee any- 
 thing that is new. Thou knowest that I have done 
 many things in my time, some good and some bad. 
 Be pleased, O Lord, to put the good against the 
 bad, and so balance the account." Blessings on 
 the erring, perplexed soul of such a man as this ! 
 He is akin to every one of us, more or less. The 
 great High Priest will teach us a wiser, safer way 
 than is -suggested by such a prayer, but we need 
 not play the Pharisee by drawing around us the 
 robes of self-righteousness with thankful confes- 
 sions of our own superiority. 
 
 My impulsive friend has been a perplexity to his 
 friends and a discouragement to himself for a long, 
 long time. But he has been gaining ground. 
 Comparing himself with himself, one season after 
 another, this is surely true: he is growing in 
 grace and in the knowledge of what is best for a 
 man to know. The wisdom which is from above 
 is patient. 
 
 My impulsive friend, looking upon the world as 
 it is, with all its sorrow and pain, its darkness 
 and its agonies, its disease and death, has at times 
 fallen into doubt and almost sunk into despair. 
 **What is the use of contending against such 
 odds?" he asks himself. '*The mystery of it all 
 confounds me ; the bitterness of it is too much for 
 me." So he says, and then he sings a pessimistic 
 dirge to the old tune that was used by Job and his 
 successors— the triumph of evil over good in this 
 world. In this frame of mind he declares that he 
 is sorry that he was ever born into such a world, 
 and professes that he would be glad to get out of 
 
My Impulsive Friend, 185 
 
 the whole thing if he could. He feels that it is 
 all a mockery and a failure, and passionately he 
 avers that he would like to stand from under the 
 pressure of such an existence. Soon thereafter, 
 perhaps the very next week, he reads of the vic- 
 tories of truth and of the joys enkindled by love 
 in past times and in his own day here and there; 
 as he reads his own heart catches the glow, and 
 he feels that nothing is too hard for God. He is 
 then ready to contract for the conversion of the 
 whole world. In the arms of love that encompass 
 him he cannot doubt that all mankind may be 
 clasped. He insists on the practicability of the 
 immediate conversion of the world, enjoins in a 
 most literal sense obedience to the command to do 
 that work at once — and astonishes himself and 
 others by what he undertakes as a worker or giver 
 while in this frame of mind. Bless his excitable 
 spirit! His optimism of faith is genuine, lifting 
 him to a height where he sees what is hidden from 
 souls that never rise above the dead level of life's 
 routine ; nor will he ever again descend to the dis- 
 mal sphere in which the Lord is judged alone by 
 feeble sense. Thenceforth he watches and prays 
 more earnestly, gaining all the while in the knowl- 
 edge of God and of himself. 
 
 My impulsive friend is not lacking in courage 
 and combativeness. These qualities do not al- 
 ways go together, but they are not incompatible. 
 My friend has had militant moods in which he 
 seemed anxious without delay to meet and van- 
 quish all the foes of truth and righteousness, or to 
 die in the attempt. While in such a mood as this, 
 it seemed to him that he could glory in tribulation, 
 and a little touch of martyrdom had a charm for 
 his imagination. As a good soldier of Jesus Christ 
 he saw at such times the near approach of the 
 
1 86 Sunset Views. 
 
 promised triumph of his kingdom. Most earnestly 
 he insisted on obedience to marching orders from 
 the Captain of our salvation, and was ready to 
 lead the assault on the strongholds of the enemy. 
 He was impatient of delay, and for doubters he 
 felt only a sort of impatient pity. After one of 
 these militant moods would come a reaction. An 
 impulse in the direction of what seemed to him a 
 proper humility of spirit led him to question his 
 own fitness for any place in the army of the Lord. 
 To be a doorkeeper in his house exceeded his 
 sense of merit. This feeling of unworthiness led 
 him to think that for him there was no call to 
 leadership or aggressiveness of any sort in the 
 militant Church. It then seemed to him that 
 about the best thing he could do for the cause 
 would be to stand aside where he could not do 
 anything to confuse the counsel or to obstruct the 
 movement of the hosts of Israel. But he did not 
 actually retire from the field of battle while he was 
 in this desponding mood. While he was under his 
 courageous and aggressive impulse he made actu- 
 al advance into the enemy's country, and therein 
 helped to lift up standards that will never be low- 
 ered or withdrawn. 
 
 Bless his heart, the heart of my impulsive 
 brother! Those who know him best love him 
 most. They know numberless things that attest 
 the essential trueness of his great, warm heart, 
 things that the world outside can never know. 
 They see that as the years go by his spirit is more 
 serene and his gait is steadier. His impulses 
 carry him more and more in one direction — Christ- 
 ward. The hair of his head grows thinner and 
 whiter, and his face is marked by the tracks of 
 time and toil and suffering. The light of a living 
 hope is in his eye, the joy of a love that abides is 
 
My Impulsive Friend, 187 
 
 in his heart. He is more and more tender and 
 patient toward souls that are weak in the faith. 
 He prays more and is less inclined to disputation. 
 Everything we know concerning him encourages 
 the hope that he wall finish his course with joy. 
 
 The Shepherd and Bishop of souls knows how 
 to deal with impulsive spirits. In the fellowship 
 that awaits the redeemed, which will be illimitable 
 in duration, we will celebrate more fitly the mercy 
 that saves these souls. The apostle Paul was 
 meditating on this line of thought when he said: 
 '* We all, with open face beholding as in a glass 
 the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same 
 image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit 
 of the Lord." We shall be like him, for we shall 
 see him as he is. The patience that bore with 
 us, the wisdom that planned and managed for us, 
 the power that protected us, the love that demon- 
 strated to us that we had a Saviour on earth, will 
 up there culminate in a supreme glorification 
 which in its essential elements will be more and 
 more an assimilation. 
 
SOME TYPES OF METHODIST WOMEN. 
 
SOME TYPES OF METHODIST WOMEN. 
 
 THERE is nothing that is invidious in my 
 intention in speaking here of Methodist 
 women particularly. There are other 
 women in other circles just like these 
 Methodist women that I have known more 
 intimately for so long a time. Whatsoever is true, 
 whatsoever is of good report in my life, has come 
 to me largely through the ministry of these blessed 
 Methodist women. The heaven that is pictured 
 in my hope, and to which I feel that I am drawing 
 nearer day by day, is a heaven largely of their 
 making, and of which they will surely be one of 
 the chiefest of constituent elements. In presenting 
 these types of our elect women, I call no names 
 for obvious reasons; but if some of them should 
 be recognized by some of my readers, I shall not 
 be surprised nor displeased. Many of our best 
 women have had no public recognition ; they have 
 shrunk from it and found work enough to keep 
 them busy in quieter ways. A rather prosy poet 
 has said something of " stars retired in solitudes of 
 ether, not of essential splendor less, though shining 
 unobserved," and his words come to mind in this 
 connection. 
 
 There comes before my mind one of these truly 
 elect women: a queen crowned in holy beauty, 
 the wife of a chief pastor of the Church. She 
 brings with her an atmosphere of worship, diffus- 
 ing the fragrance of heaven. Those Western 
 worshipers breathed more quietly after her coming 
 and were readier for God's message. She was 
 tall and straight, gentle and graceful in move- 
 
 (•91) 
 
192 Sunset Views, 
 
 ment; her face was the* face of a saint who had 
 done some thinking and had known some suffer- 
 ing in her day; the silvered hair and noble brow 
 lent to her head the halo that the old masters put 
 on the heads of the holy women who walked with 
 their Lord in white. Her voice was low and soft. 
 When she led in prayer in the great congregation, 
 or in a smaller assembly of worshipers, it was a 
 leading indeed — for she voiced the desire of souls 
 in a way that showed that her sympathies touched 
 her fellow-worshipers and her faith touched God 
 at the same moment. The polish that comes from 
 successive generations of Christian ladyhood, and 
 the molding that comes of the fusion at a white 
 heat in the Master's image, made her a living 
 epistle in which could be read the beauty of holi- 
 ness, working in our homes the miracles of grace 
 that verified unto our faith the miracles of glory 
 yet to be revealed. She left in all the homes she 
 entered a memory that is a joy. 
 
 Here is -another elect sister, also the wife of a 
 chief pastor in the Church. He was perhaps the 
 most brilliant and popular pulpit orator in our en- 
 tire communion, but she was as free from self- 
 consciousness as a violet blooming by the wayside. 
 She was a wife, a mother, a sister, a neighbor; 
 and in all these relations she seemed to have a call 
 to gather up the fragments of religious oppor- 
 tunity that might otherwise be lost. To her hus- 
 band, coming from his public duties with over- 
 wrought nerves and exhausted energy, her look, 
 her tone, her restfulness of spirit were as a quiet- 
 ing potion. She was a mother in Israel whose 
 presence made it easier for us all to understand the 
 revelation which the Heavenly Father has given of 
 his love to his children. When in troublous times 
 her husband was called to walk through the fires, 
 
Some Types of Methodist Women. 193 
 
 she walked with him an unconscious heroine who 
 would have met martyrdom had it come to her 
 in the way of duty without a murmur or a dread. 
 
 Here is another of these chosen ones, and she 
 too was a chief pastor's helpmeet. They were 
 truly a royal pair, using the word to describe 
 what is noblest in man and what is loveliest in 
 woman. Seeing them together, it was easy to be- 
 lieve that their union was predestined. It was not 
 a union of opposite qualities that balanced, but of 
 tastes, gifts, and convictions that drew them into 
 the same paths of consecrated service for their 
 Lord and toward each other. In the homes of the 
 rich she moved with a queenly grace all her own. 
 In the roughest log cabin or board shanty she bore 
 herself with a dignity and tactfulness so perfect 
 that poverty claimed kinship with her, and in the 
 rudest circles she left a memory of lofty Christian 
 womanhood that never left them. 
 
 There was one of these elect women who had a 
 gift for teaching and for prayer, and who went 
 as a missionary to the foreign field, and gave her- 
 self wholly to the Master's service that struck 
 only that one note. No person that ever met her 
 thought of her in connection with any marriage 
 save her union with the Christ, the heavenly Bride- 
 groom, who is wedded to the Church bought by 
 his own blood. Absolute consecration was her 
 message to the Church. That she should become 
 a chronic invalid, and suffer intensely from bodily 
 pain, is one of those mysteries of divine provi- 
 dence that confound us all along in reading the 
 history of this world. She suffered long and in- 
 tensely; but she kept at her work without any in- 
 termission, uttering no word of complaint from 
 first to last. The eyes of the whole Church were 
 fixed upon her as from day to day were read the 
 
 13 
 
194 Sunset Views. 
 
 reports of the progress of her malady; the object 
 lesson needed by all was furnished by her — the 
 lesson of a complete consecration to one work, 
 and that consecration maintained with unflinching 
 courage and hopefulness, feeling that while flesh 
 and heart were failing God was the strength of her 
 heart and would be her portion forever. God's 
 grace was sufficient for her in the absence of al- 
 most everything to which our poor human nature 
 clings, demonstrating that in these days as in 
 earlier times we may have such a measure of the 
 love of God as gives unbroken peace to the fully 
 consecrated soul. 
 
 I knew an elect maiden whose gift was that of 
 holy song, and she stirred up the gift that was in 
 her in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. 
 The melody that was in her heart tuned her voice, 
 giving it a quality that all the schools of the world 
 could not impart. She delighted in singing, and 
 her singing was a joy to all who heard. At the 
 exact moment and with unfailing adaptation she 
 was always ready to glorify her Lord and give a 
 special blessing to a band of believers by snatches 
 of holy «ong, that still echo in living hearts. This 
 daughter of music sang her life song — and then 
 she died. I think of her in that city of God 
 where she has caught the melody of the *' new 
 song" sung by the elders having harps and gold- 
 en vials full of odors to the Lamb that was slain, 
 who redeemed us to God by his blood out of 
 every kindred and tongue and nation. 
 
 There was another elect woman who might be 
 classified under this text of Scripture: ''The 
 Lord loveth whom he chasteneth." She ate the 
 bread of dependence, and had not where to lay 
 her head except as it was the gift of charity. 
 The property that had been possessed by her fam- 
 
Some Types of Methodist Women. 195 
 
 ily had been swept away by a deluge of financial 
 disaster. She was an invalid without hope of 
 cure, a sufferer every day and every night. She 
 made no complaint. Nothing in her look or tone 
 indicated that the ugly serpent, Envy, had any 
 hiding place in her trusting heart. Over her 
 wasted features a deeper spiritual beauty shone, 
 and all who saw her recognized a sufferer who had 
 learned her lesson in communion with the Man of 
 Sorrows. 
 
 The distinctive fact concerning another of our 
 women was that she gave, and gave of her sub- 
 stance to glorify God and to bless her generation. 
 A look into her face was a luminous comment on 
 this text: **The Lord loveth a cheerful giver." 
 That love irradiated her entire personality. It 
 overflowed her in the buoyancy of spirit. Follow- 
 ing in the footsteps of her Master, she went about 
 doing good. She subsidized all the charitable or- 
 ganizations within reach, and made many like- 
 minded persons coworkers with herself in the dis- 
 tribution of her money. God showed his love for 
 her as a cheerful giver, I may reverently suggest: 
 First, by blessing her providentially with the re- 
 sources required to maintain her record as a cheer- 
 ful giver; secondly, by actually keeping her in a 
 cheerful mood that was as a stream that flowed 
 from an unfailing fountain ; and thirdly, by that 
 exuberance in the joy of her beneficent life that 
 makes the love of God so sweet to such elect souls. 
 In her soul the kingdom of heaven had flowered into 
 that joy as its crowning manifestation. 
 
 The image of one morar of these elect women 
 shapes itself on this page. She knew joy and 
 grief, ease and pain in their turn. She was tried 
 by every test in her life of prayer. She took the 
 word of God as a light to her path and a lamp to 
 
196 Sunset Views. 
 
 her feet. For more than fifty years I knew her 
 Hfe. If there was one false note in that life dur- 
 ing all that time, I never discovered it. This leads 
 me to say, in concluding this inadequate chapter: 
 The gospel of Christ that so exalts and beautifies 
 human lives is not a spent force. A voice whispers 
 to my inner ear: The heaven that is being pre- 
 pared for such as these is worth striving for. 
 
OUR JEWISH FRIENDS. 
 
OUR JEWISH FRIENDS. 
 
 THE greatest name of antiquity was Moses, 
 a Jew. The greatest name of our dispen- 
 sation is Saul of Tarsus, a Jew. The 
 greatest names among the financiers of 
 this generations are the Rothschilds, who 
 are Jews. The One Name that is above every 
 name is that of the Galilean Jesus, a Jew. They 
 are the chosen people. Reject the supernatural 
 element in their history, and you will find it inex- 
 plicable. That history could no more have been 
 invented by human agency than could such a na- 
 tionality have been created by it. The history of 
 this people is an indisputable record of wonders 
 past and a prophecy of w^onders to come in God's 
 own time and way. Blindness, we know, has 
 happened to Israel in part on their spiritual side. 
 But there is no other race that keeps up more fully 
 with the procession on secular lines of modern 
 progress. The promise of their coming into the 
 Church of Christ spans their stormy sky as a bow 
 of hope. When that event takes place, it will be 
 the crowning event in the process of the world's 
 evangelization. Here and there some are coming 
 in from time to time, and everywhere there seems 
 to be an inquiring and receptive spirit spreading 
 among them of all classes; including the rabbis, 
 that minister at their altars; the teachers, who hold 
 places in our institutions of learning; the mer- 
 chants, who get their full share of the trade that is 
 going on, not excepting the transactions of the 
 stock exchange, where all sorts of men in this our 
 day are making haste to be rich, and where so 
 
 (199) 
 
2(X) Sunset Views, 
 
 many of them find the warnings of the old Book 
 are justified by the result. The divine providence 
 that took Moses and Saul and Jesus from this 
 race knew what it was doing. The assurance that 
 in the fullness of the Gentiles these Hebrew chil- 
 dren shall be '* grafted in" means nothing less 
 than that they shall be an integral part of the living 
 Church, and that will mean nothing less than the 
 arrival of the latter-day jubilee for the kingdoms 
 of this world. 
 
 The *' Zionist Movement," so called, is a 
 significant feature of our times. It indicates that 
 the promise that the chosen people *' shall return 
 to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their 
 heads " is still firmly believed, and causes some of 
 us to think that one of these bright mornings, not 
 far off, the living generation of men on the earth 
 will wake up and find that the thing has been 
 done. Then will be broken the back of unbelief. 
 Doubters will then be ready to join in the song: 
 **The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let 
 the multitude of isles be glad thereof." 
 
 There is no room for us to disbelieve the ac- 
 counts that are coming to us of the cruelties 
 against the Jews by the Russian authorities. Those 
 Russians are making a record that they will have 
 to answer for. They are sowing bitter wrongs; 
 they will reap retribution accordingly. If they 
 could escape, they would be the first on record. 
 The living God has something to do with living 
 men and nations. He has reminded us that those 
 that made Israel a spoil were themselves spoiled, 
 and those that led them into captivity were them- 
 selves carried into captivity. In the sight of the 
 nations of the earth, it will be seen again that ** He 
 that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor 
 sleep." He will, to use his own expression. 
 
Our Jewish Friends, 20i 
 
 "make bare his arm." That is to say, the devout 
 and inteUigent spectator of current events will rec- 
 ognize in them the work of God just as truly as 
 he sees the marks of his doings in the history of 
 earlier times. The fifty-first and fifty-second 
 chapters of Isaiah strike a note that yield sweet 
 music to the heart of a believer: *' The redeemed 
 of the Lord shall return, and come with singing 
 unto Zion ; and everlasting joy shall be upon their 
 head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and 
 sorrow and mourning shall flee away . ' ' This figure 
 of speech cannot mean less than that the long and 
 troubled night of delay will pass, and the glad 
 morning wall dawn. There are streaks in the 
 eastern sky now^ visible. A glad song will soon 
 be sung by a glad world as promised. 
 
SUNSET VIEWS AT SEABREEZE. 
 
SUNSET VIEWS AT SEABREEZE. 
 
 SEABREEZE is a city in Florida of surpass- 
 ing beauty. It has the sea on one side and 
 an arm of the sea on the other. The arm 
 of the sea is so extended and so riverhke 
 that it was named HaHf ax River, in remem- 
 brance of an Englishman who could talk and trade 
 and diplomatize, whose name has been given to 
 rivers, cities, counties, and entire provinces in 
 America. It is no wonder that they named the 
 place Seabreeze. Situated as it is, it gets the sea 
 air, no matter which way the wind blows. It 
 comes in through the south window of my room 
 this February day, gently rustling the curtains and 
 •bringing to our ears the mocking bird's song, that 
 stirs within us thoughts both sweet and sad, like 
 the song itself. Men and women who had money 
 and taste (in some cases crankiness) have come 
 here and laid off a city with broad avenues, built 
 residences of palatial splendor and cottages of 
 every style of beauty, leaving the live oaks, the 
 pines, and- the palms, and all the semi-tropical 
 flora in its wild loveliness, just a little tamed by 
 man's training touch, the sea moss clinging to the 
 gnarled and twisted limbs of the trees, the birds in 
 full chorus singing their songs, the same as they 
 did before civilization and newspapers were ever 
 heard of on our planet. Beauty, beauty ever}^- 
 where, around, above, below ! This is Seabreeze. 
 The sunset views at Seabreeze are notable for 
 two things: vividness and vastness. On the land- 
 ward side is the richness of the coloring. The 
 sunset clouds look like chariots of fire drawn by 
 
 (205) 
 
2o6 Sunset Views. 
 
 steeds of flame. Intensity belongs to this region, 
 where the flowers literally bloom nearly all the 
 time, and the beams ever shine or nearly so. The 
 sunset sky, as we see it across the broad, bright 
 river, is wondrous in its beauty. The slanting 
 sunbeams turn the blue waters of the river into 
 silver and gold, shining like the apocalyptic sea of 
 glass. The red glow of the lower sky gradually 
 fades into fainter colors higher up, until in mid- 
 heaven the white masses of the clouds hang like 
 tents in which might be encamped all the heavenly 
 hosts. The crowning effect of the sunsetting at 
 Seabreeze is seen when the crimson globe in the 
 sky duplicates itself in the water. These sunset 
 views at Seabreeze might stagger the Muse of 
 John Milton or strike the greatest landscape 
 painter with despair. As I am neither a poet nor 
 a painter, the friendly reader will not be over- 
 critical. 
 
 On the oceanward side is the vastness. The 
 ocean is the biggest thing on earth. This is our 
 first thought when we look upon it. This is a fa- 
 vorite theme of the poets. The Psalmist speaks 
 of the goodness of God as being like *'this great 
 and wdde sea." No other figure of speech would 
 express it so well. The sweetest organ tones of 
 Faber roll out in the song that celebrates '*the 
 wideness of God's mercy like the wideness of the 
 sea." Great and wide— these are the right words. 
 Its wideness stretches away and away as we look 
 upon it, until it seems to be lost in iHimitabifity. 
 Its greatness overwhelms us as we stand on the 
 beach at Seabreeze and watch the breakers as 
 they come rolling in with their combing beauty 
 and thunderings that shake the solid earth beneath 
 our feet. Gazing along this shore line of forty 
 miles of beach, we seem to catch the rhythm of its 
 
Sunset Views at Seabreeze. 207 
 
 everlasting roll. The strength of the sea is ours, 
 and we feel as if we might have taken part in the 
 song when the morning stars sang together and all 
 the sons of God shouted for joy. 
 
 As I write these last w^ords my soul is pervaded 
 with a gracious consciousness that, through the 
 mercy of God, as a child of God, I may hope to 
 join in the nobler, sweeter song that celebrates his 
 power to save. Other sunset views open to the eye 
 of faith. I see that ** city of God," and think of 
 the meaning of the words that describe it. The 
 familiar suggestion comes to mind: If God has 
 made so beautiful this world in which we now live, 
 what will it be in the city of the Great King? It is 
 a place, not merely a state. It is more real than 
 these things that perish with the using can be. It 
 is described in the Bible as '' a city that hath foun- 
 dations." This means something worth the tell- 
 ing, but we know not specially what it is. The 
 main idea is stability, and that is the chief thing. 
 That is what we long for. What we long for we 
 shall get; what we get we shall keep. This suf- 
 fices. The negative side of what is promised is 
 given in the words of the old song which says that 
 there "sickness, sorrow, pain, and death are felt 
 and feared no more." The positive side includes 
 all we could ask: the promise is that no good thing 
 shall be withheld. If children, then heirs, "heirs 
 of God, and joint heirs with Christ" — these are 
 the very words of that promise. What it means is 
 more than we can take in now: all good things, 
 beginning with the Lord himself, who is our por- 
 tion. 
 
 The sunset views given me here at Seabreeze 
 might dazzle and blind me but for the fact that I 
 have been vouchsafed a fuller perception of the 
 fatherhood of God and of the brotherhood of 
 
2o8 Sunset Views. 
 
 Christ. The heirship and joint heirship mean 
 everything that is large and lasting. There is 
 room for all and love for all. The gates of that 
 city of God shall not be shut at all by day, and 
 there is no night there. Forever with the Lord 
 and with one another — that is the promise. Where 
 he is, there we shall be also. The apostle tells us : 
 "Them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring 
 with him." (i Thess. iv. 14.) Does this mean 
 recognition? To me in my sunset view it looks 
 that way; and we may be sure that we shall know 
 more, and not love less, up there. If I get safe 
 home, I hope to meet some who have helped me on 
 the way. May I hope to meet some that I have 
 helped? If I carry with me thither the human 
 heart that throbs within me now, there is one face 
 the missing of which would cast a shadow upon 
 the brightness of the place. Away with the 
 thought. 
 
 My sunset views at Seabreeze this sweet Sab- 
 bath day, when the sunshine is on river and sea, 
 kindle a glow in my soul that strengthens my hope 
 that I shall not fail to reach that home prepared 
 for the family of God. Old friends that have 
 "read after me" for a long time will lift for me a 
 prayer as they read what is herein written. 
 
THE NOVEL-READING PEST. 
 14 
 
THE NOVEL-READING PEST. 
 
 IT was said by Lamartine : **The novel may 
 become the opium of the West." The more 
 the thoughtful reader thinks of it, the more 
 serious will this matter become. 
 
 Novels, novels, novels ! Novels day and 
 night, novels all the week, novels on Sunday. 
 Novels that are sinister, novels that are silly. 
 Novels that whet the appetites, novels that inflame 
 the passions. Novels that furnish the feeble- 
 minded the literary diet that confirms their morbid- 
 ness and perpetuates their imbecility. The out- 
 put of new English novels is said to be four or 
 hve daily for every day in the year. Notwith- 
 standing the fact that so many of them are vile 
 and silly, outraging decency and overtaxing cre- 
 dulity, they somehow find publishers and readers 
 in unexpected quarters. Not long ago several 
 booksellers in one of our largest cities were in- 
 dicted and fined for selhng obscene books — mostly 
 translations from the French. Impure they were 
 admitted to be, but they were also bright and 
 scholarly, it was contended, and therefore to be 
 tolerated. The old-fashioned presiding judge, we 
 were glad to see, took a different view of the 
 matter. 
 
 The habitual novel reader — the mental opium 
 eater — reaches a degree of imbecihty almost be- 
 yond description. The blood-and-thunder novel 
 cannot be made too silly for its patrons, anymore 
 than the confirmed opium eater can satisfy him- 
 self by indulging his unnatural appetite for the 
 drug that has ruined him. The novel reader did 
 
 (211) 
 
212 Sunset Views. 
 
 not start on this line with the intention to go so 
 far. The novel that is mixed in its quality — 
 with heroic incident or generous sentiment on one 
 page, and falseness and foulness on another — is 
 the novel that should be prohibited with a vigilance 
 that does not sleep and a determination that does 
 not falter. In 1879 I said: *' It is a fact that 
 hundreds of thousands of our youths of both sexes 
 have placed within their reach a sort of literature 
 that is calculated to teach them that lust, murder, 
 and theft are normal conditions of human life, and 
 that purity, love, and honor are only obsolete su- 
 perstitions to be laughed at by the gay and pitied 
 by the wise. It is a fact that this literature is sap- 
 ping the foundations of social virtue in this coun- 
 try, lowering the moral standard of the mature, 
 and infusing deadly poison into the minds of the 
 young. It is a fact that good men and women 
 seem to be asleep, doing nothing to arrest this 
 monstrous evil, and in many places actually pat- 
 ronizing these poisonous publications. It is a fact 
 that you may meet some of the worst books in 
 some of the best families." 
 
 What I said then I would say now as to the rem- 
 edy for this deadly evil. The remedy is a home 
 censorship. Every head of a family can and ought 
 to assume the office of a censor. Let every 
 mother and father see to it that none but clean lit- 
 erature enters their houses. Let every good cit- 
 izen see to it that not a dollar of his money goes 
 for publications that pander to depraved tastes 
 and prurient curiosity. The withdrawal by the 
 respectable element of society of their patronage 
 from all publications save those whose pages are 
 pure would do much to mitigate this great evil. 
 The purveyors of corrupt literature would be left 
 to be supported by such as stand on their own 
 
Th e Nov el- Reading Pest . 213 
 
 low moral level. Look to your libraries, and cast 
 from your homes these serpents that coil in your 
 bookshelves or upon your center tables. Thus 
 may be maintained in our favored land the free- 
 dom of the press with the conservation of its bless- 
 ings in fullest measure. 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 
 
 AT one time I found myself sliding into an 
 ugly habit — the habit of watching to de- 
 tect the blemishes and weaknesses of my 
 brethren. I awoke to the realization of 
 the fact that this habit was growing on me, 
 and that it was doing me harm. About this time 
 one day I happened to hear a remark from a big- 
 framed, deep-voiced brother toward whom I had 
 (perhaps to a large extent unconsciously) suf- 
 fered myself to indulge a growing coolness. On 
 the occasion referred to he was speaking to 
 another party of the conduct of a mutual ac- 
 quaintance who had, so it seemed, an undue 
 eagerness in exposing the weakness of another 
 person who belonged to his own circle and for 
 whom he professed friendship. I was not eaves- 
 dropping the conversation, but I could not avoid 
 the hearing of this remark from my large and 
 loud brother: *' There was no good purpose to 
 be effected by his exposure of a brother's error; 
 and considering their relations to each other, he 
 ought rather to have felt like going backward and 
 spreading over him a covering to hide his infirmity." 
 That was the substance of what he said, and there 
 was an expression on his face and an emphasis in 
 his tone that impressed me deeply. Then and 
 there I got a new view of this man and a better 
 feeling toward him until his sudden death brought 
 out facts that revealed to me why it was that he 
 had so many and such warm friends among good 
 men and women. In him there was a strain of 
 
 (217) 
 
2i8 Sunset Views. 
 
 genuine magnanimity that found expression when 
 it was in order. 
 
 A man may persuade himself that he is a pubHc 
 censor when he is only a common scold. Think- 
 ing this matter over, I concluded that it would be 
 both safer and pleasanter for me to spend more 
 time in self-examination, and in trying to do some 
 good for all the persons I could reach in any way, 
 than in picking flaws in the record and character 
 of my fellow-men. 
 
 Among the notable men in the Church there was 
 one who, as he increased in years and grew in 
 reputation, reminded me more and more of the ex- 
 pression used in the Second Epistle of Peter and 
 the Epistle of Jude describing persons who in- 
 dulged in "great swelling words of vanity." That 
 meant that they were pretentious persons. Now, 
 this man of whom I am here speaking did actually 
 seem to "swell" with conscious self-importance 
 and a sense of superiority to his brethren. His 
 manner was an offense unto me and others. Aft- 
 erwards it so happened that we were thrown to- 
 gether more intimately, and I discovered that the 
 deepening of his chest tones was owing to a phys- 
 ical rather than a spiritual cause : it was owing to 
 the fact that he was growing in fatness as he grew 
 in years. From this same cause he was made to 
 look unduly pompous and aggressive. Knowing 
 him thenceforth as he was, taking some pains to 
 get closer to him for the Master's sake, I learned 
 how I had misjudged a good man. He was guile- 
 less as a child. He did not seek the chief places 
 in the synagogue, some of which were given to 
 him ; but he was ready at all times to bear the 
 heaviest burden or the bitterest cross. His heart 
 was true, his gifts were rich and varied; and he 
 had a capacity for winning affection for himself 
 
A More Excellent Way. 219 
 
 that no cold-blooded idolater of self or '* swelling " 
 mass of verbosity and vainglory ever possessed. 
 In my association with him I got for myself an in- 
 terpretation of John vii. 24: "Judge not accord- 
 * ing to the appearance, but judge righteous judg- 
 ment." 
 
 Among my acquaintances in a certain place 
 there was a high-spirited, great-hearted woman 
 who was a vicarious sufferer, thus sharing the fate 
 that has overtaken so many elect spirits in this 
 strange world. Circumstances not necessary to 
 mention made social intercourse between this lady 
 and myself infrequent and formal. Acting under 
 the impulse mentioned in the opening of this chap- 
 ter, one day I made her a visit with a chosen text 
 of Scripture in my mind, and with a great desire 
 in my heart for the blessing of God. She received 
 me with ladylike civility, but not very warmly. I 
 delivered the message I had brought from the 
 word of God, told her how I felt, and then we 
 kneeled and prayed together. It was the gate of 
 heaven ! The blessing asked for came. Thence- 
 forth there was no shadow of cloud between her 
 soul and mine. When we parted at the gate, the 
 look was on her face which I hope to see when we 
 meet inside that city whose gates are never shut 
 by day or by night. The traits of the gracious 
 personality I looked for in this fine-toned sufferer 
 I found. 
 
 The new world of friendly optimism that opened 
 to me with the entrance of the thought mentioned 
 at the opening of this chapter is as bright as the 
 morning hills beneath unclouded skies. 
 
MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 THE money-making gift is just as distinctly 
 a gift from God as any other. There is 
 no more reason why a man should make a 
 selfish use of this gift than that he should 
 make a selfish use of the gift of muscular 
 strength. It is as bad to cheat a brother as it is to 
 beat him. Abraham, the richest man of his gen- 
 eration, was " the friend of God " in a sense spe- 
 cially gracious. The beggar who died at the rich 
 man's gate in another age of the world was carried 
 by the angels to Abraham's bosom as a special to- 
 ken of God's favor, and as a proof that the rich 
 and the poor may be equally the objects of his love. 
 In my boyhood days I knew a boy who had the 
 money-making gift, and exercised it in a way that 
 was amusing. He loved to trade, and was always 
 ready to sell anything he had, or to swap pocket 
 knives, marbles, fishing tackle, firearms, or any- 
 thing belonging to him. Invariably he got the 
 best of all his trading. When he got through with 
 a series of these exchanges with another boy, the 
 rule was that he had all, and the other had noth- 
 ing. When that boy with the money-making gift 
 grew up to manhood, he opened a store in the vil- 
 lage where he lived; he cultivated a farm, and 
 made steady gains from both store and farm, en- 
 larging their operations until before middle age he 
 had absorbed the most of what had belonged to all 
 his neighbors. He was a money-maker only. He 
 had no public spirit; he had no philanthropy. He 
 never married, giving as his reason for choosing 
 
 (223) 
 
2 24 Stmset Views, 
 
 the unmarried state the fact that it was more eco- 
 nomical. He never made a reHgious profession — 
 largely, no doubt, for the same reason. He made 
 money, and was satisfied therewith — and when he 
 died he dropped out of sight and was forgotten. 
 
 I knew a black man, a slave on a Southern plan- 
 tation in the old days, who was a money-maker. 
 He was Uncle Cato, classically named after the 
 fashion of that time and region. He was richly 
 equipped for his vocation as a money-maker. He 
 worked a tobacco patch on his own account, and 
 by an infallible instinct knew when was the best 
 time to sell his crop for the highest price. He 
 reared poultry to sell, and had what seemed to be 
 the happiest luck therein. His week day nights 
 and his Sundays he utilized in the manufacture of 
 wooden ware with his own hands, which had a 
 sure selling quality, and which he always sold 
 for cash. On what was thought to be his death- 
 bed he revealed to a black woman who had been 
 kind to him in his sickness the spot where he had 
 secreted his hoarded treasures. But rallying 
 somewhat subsequently, he found that he had 
 strength enough to rise from his bed, hurry forth, 
 and remove his treasure to another spot, where it 
 was never found. The old black money-maker's 
 secret died with him. 
 
 I knew in California a man who was a money- 
 maker whose methods seemed to be as unfailing 
 as they were unique. He dealt mainly in mines 
 and mining stocks. Though of limited education, 
 his transactions were conducted on a scale so 
 large that the average financiers with whom he 
 dealt grew dizzy in dealing with him. *' I don't 
 know how it is," he once said to me in a familiar 
 talk, *'but when I see a body of ore of any sort, 
 something always tells me what it is; and I have 
 
Money-Makers. 225 
 
 never yet been misled." He was a money-maker 
 truly. Some persons who knew him said he had 
 genius. When he died he left so many milHons 
 of dollars that to guess at the figures might expose 
 one to the suspicion of lunacy. 
 
 I knew another man in California who quietly 
 got possession of the sources of water supply for 
 a big city, and coined money so swiftly and on a 
 scale so large that the story of it would read like 
 a tale of magic. He was a money-maker, and 
 seemed to be satisfied with handling his millions 
 upon millions until he had to let go in death, and 
 the law divided them among the legatees. In the 
 litigation that took place after his death it was 
 shown that the largest money-maker may be to the 
 last degree a friendless and lonely man. 
 
 I knew a man who happened to hit upon a name 
 that was so felicitous for a much-used article of 
 diet that the first thing he knew the sale of it went 
 far beyond anything he had looked for. He was 
 a money-maker of the genuine stamp. The more 
 he got the more he wanted. He was a money- 
 maker, and was satisfied to be only that. He kept 
 a steady gait until he died, and was grasping for 
 more when the end came. 
 
 I have known other money-makers who seemed 
 to be acting according to John Wesley's advice: 
 ** Make all you can; save all you can; give all 
 you can." Doubtless the most of these persons 
 had made a study of Bible-teaching on this subject 
 of money-making. It is likely that they had taken 
 to heart that pointed saying: *' The love of money 
 is the root of all evil." They understood it to 
 mean that there is no form of wrongdoing or folly 
 that may not be called into action through this pas- 
 sion, the love of money. In reading the history of 
 the Church and of the world the}^ saw abundant il- 
 
 15 
 
226 Sunset Views, 
 
 lustrations of the truth of the saying. Looking 
 around them upon the living world, and looking 
 into their own hearts, they saw that it was a matter 
 of the deepest personal concern to each and all. 
 They were affected solemnly by the saying of our 
 Lord himself, that it would be " easier for a camel 
 to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich 
 man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." In 
 view of this saying, they asked: "Who then can 
 be saved? " The consummate wisdom of the an- 
 swer they had considered. That answer did not 
 lessen the terribleness of the warning on the one 
 hand, nor did it furnish any ground for a mere 
 mone3^-maker to hope for heaven on easier terms. 
 But it magnified the grace of God in reminding us 
 that it was equal to the accomplishment of even this 
 miracle — the miracle of saving a rich man who 
 deals honestly with himself and with God. Such 
 a man is encouraged to believe that he can '* make 
 friends of the mammon of unrighteousness;" he 
 is comforted with the assurance that there is no 
 necessity that he should set his heart upon increas- 
 ing riches. With God this is a possibility — but 
 how difficult, and how rarely realized, God only 
 knows. Read the entire passage in i Timothy vi. 9, 
 10: *' But they that will be rich fall into tempta- 
 tion and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful 
 lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdi- 
 tion. For the love of money is the root of all 
 evil: which while some coveted after, they have 
 erred from the faith, and pierced themselves 
 through with many sorrows." As I read the. 
 words I recall the wrecks I have met in the circle 
 where all that makes human lives worth living has 
 been sold for money. Those that have escaped 
 have cause for eternal gratitude. 
 
TOM REED. 
 
TOM REED. 
 
 THEY made him Speaker of the House of 
 Representatives. They talked of him for 
 President of the United States of America. 
 But he died one day, and is now remem- 
 bered more on account of the pleasantries 
 that still circulate in his name than because of any 
 great measures of statesmanship that he fathered. 
 Physically he looked as sound and ruddy as a 
 Rhode Island greening apple. He enjoyed his 
 own jokes to the utmost. His humor was of the 
 contagious sort: he set a fashion for almost the en- 
 tire political world. He was good nature itself. 
 Because of him there is a gentler and brighter 
 tone to this hour in all the political circles of this 
 land. *'From California, did you say?" so he 
 said to me when introduced to him by Congress- 
 man Gaines, of Tennessee. *' Go right up to my 
 place in the gallery, take possession in California's 
 name, and stay as long as you choose." Whether 
 or not he meant all he said, it was very pleasant 
 for the time being, and makes a pleasant memory 
 in perpetuity. Whenever I see an allusion to Tom 
 Reed in our periodical literature, his mighty frame 
 seems to tower close by and the warmth of his 
 greeting comes back in a way that renews his 
 title to the epithet, prince of good fellows. 
 
 Patriotism of the unchangingly hopeful and op- 
 timistic type was constitutional with Tom Reed. 
 He ** enjoyed himself," literally. He enjoyed his 
 eating and drinking. Throughout the social cir- 
 cles he touched he diffused a spirit so mellow and 
 
 (229) 
 
230 , Sunset Views, 
 
 shed a light so bright that he became more and 
 more a distinct and fascinating element in the life 
 of our capital city. The Californians were very 
 fond of Tom Reed. He was a man after their 
 own heart. He was continually doing good by 
 stealth. Under cover of a gentle satire, at which 
 the victim himself was compelled to smile, the 
 burly philosopher would conceal his neighborly 
 tracks. Which is the same as to say that Tom 
 Reed was one of those wholesome, sunshiny men 
 that help to leaven successive generations with the 
 leaven of a humanness that makes it worth while 
 to know them and helps to relegate misanthropy 
 and cynicism to the weakest and wickedest souls 
 that groan and grovel in the darkness in which 
 they enwrap their lives. 
 
OUR NEW YEAR MOTTO. 
 
OUR NEW YEAR MOTTO. 
 
 SOMETIME ago it was proposed in our 
 Nashville Preachers' Meeting to adopt as 
 its motto for 1905 the words: *'Let broth- 
 erly love continue." The response was 
 hearty and unanimous. A sweet and ten- 
 der feeling seemed to pervade the service. Two 
 of our brethren who were present and voted for 
 the adoption of this motto for the new year — 
 Brothers Barbee and Amis — have since left us. 
 They now know more of what it means than ever 
 before. They feel more of the joy of unbroken 
 fellowship. If they could now speak to us across 
 the silence and mystery, tender and solemn would 
 be their words. The two worlds touch in my med- 
 itations this New Year's morning as I look from 
 my window south upon these Tennessee hills, and 
 think of what it is to be at home in the fairer 
 clime on high, seen by the eye of faith. 
 
 But stop a moment! It may be that some of us 
 need another word first. It may be that some of 
 us have taken with us into, the new year aliena- 
 tions, coldnesses, misjudgments, '*envyings," or 
 suchlike. We are great self-deceivers. Without 
 watchfulness and prayer we are liable to yield to 
 such temptations, with which we shall assuredly 
 be assailed. The *' other word " needed first to 
 be spoken to us may be this: Let brotherly love 
 be received as the gift of God, or in its renewal. 
 Before continuance comes impartation. To talk 
 of the continuance of brotherly love to one who 
 has never felt it is to speak in an unknown tongue; 
 
 (233) 
 
234 Sunset Views. 
 
 to speak of its continuance to one who has lost it 
 is to miss the word in season for that soul. The 
 word in season for all such persons was spoken by 
 the Master himself: *' If thou bring thy gift to the 
 altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath 
 aught against thee ; leave there thy gift before the 
 altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy 
 brother, and then come and offer thy gift." (Matt. 
 V. 23, 24. ) Lord Jesus, help us to lay these words 
 of thine to heart at this time, when we are making 
 our Christmas offerings and New Year's resolu- 
 tions ! 
 
 The point is, do not hesitate or delay to make 
 the first overture toward reconciliation or closer 
 fellowship. Do not stand on any notion of dignity 
 that may be sacrificed. Do not hold back from 
 making advance approaches for fear of meeting a 
 rebuff. Do not fail to act upon these most gra- 
 cious impulses from a dread of being misunder- 
 stood and misrepresented . All such flimsy excuses 
 should be laid aside; all such inferior motives 
 should be swept away as by the breath of the Lord. 
 I knew two brethren, ministers of the gospel, who 
 differed in temperament and opinion to such an 
 extent as to make their intercourse constrained 
 and cold. One of these brethren, thinking some 
 such thoughts as are herewith suggested, resolved 
 that he would seek a closer approach and sweeter 
 fellowship. The result was a surprise and a bless- 
 ing for both. There was a little dubiousness at 
 first, but it melted away in the warmth of personal 
 association. They found that they could work 
 together for the cause they loved ; that they could 
 rejoice together with them that rejoiced, and weep 
 together with them that wept. They found agree- 
 ment in the essential truths of religion, and no oc- 
 casion to discuss any matter of difference. They 
 
Our New Tear Motto, 235 
 
 felt the peace of God, whose banner over them 
 was love. More and more their hearts were at- 
 tuned for the fellowship of the militant Church, 
 to be renewed through grace abiding and abound- 
 ing in the world of spirits. And another result 
 seemed to follow, in fulfillment of the scriptural 
 declaration : * ' We know that we have passed from 
 death unto life, because we love the brethren." 
 The currents of a heavenly life pour into souls 
 thus opened in floods that fill them to overflow- 
 ing. The new life becomes more and more a pos- 
 itive experience ; they know, they feel, they testify. 
 Brotherly love established and continuing means 
 all this : the influx of the love of God that is full 
 and free, the witness of the Spirit to the blessed 
 fact, and a growth in all the elements of spiritual 
 life in the Church of God. 
 
 Pass on the motto for the new year, the watch- 
 word all along the lines: '* Let brotherly love 
 continue ! " 
 
THE FUTURE SAFE. 
 
THE FUTURE SAFE. 
 
 THE past at least is safe " — so wrote a friend 
 to another at a time when at a distance 
 from each other there seemed to be dan- 
 ger of misunderstanding. To them the 
 past was very sacred, and it proved to 
 be indeed very safe. They had every reason for 
 cherishing the friendship which had given them 
 strength and joy so many years. They saw and 
 felt that they had not the shadow of reason for 
 ahenation. The result was, that they clasped 
 hands in a fresh covenant and their hearts flowed 
 together in the fullness of a joy too deep for words. 
 Friendship means more to them now than ever 
 before. 
 
 Another thought comes to me with such force 
 that it asks expression. It is the future that is safe. 
 All the future belongs to us all. In a sense deeper, 
 with a meaning fuller than we usually realize, we 
 accept the word of God; " Now is the accepted 
 time." Blunders, delays, backslidings, losses you 
 may have had. You may be despondent; and if 
 despondent, you are weak. A disheartened man 
 repels the help he needs, and invites the enemy 
 he has most cause to dread and shun. The word 
 I have in my heart for every reader is this: The 
 future is yours. Knock, and its door of hope will 
 open to you now. You will not fail if you will 
 only try: your Helper is almighty. But your case 
 is peculiar, you say? Yes, my friend; every case 
 is peculiar. We know very little of each other, 
 but every heart is open to Him with whom we have 
 to do. Whatever may be your past experience, 
 
 (239) 
 
240 Sunset Views. 
 
 trust and try and your future is safe. There is no 
 provision for doubt in this gospel, and among the 
 multiplied millions of human souls, each with its 
 special needs, not one is exempted from its gra- 
 cious opportunity. Your future is safe if you will 
 have it so. Our gospel is a glad gospel. It is the 
 future that may be safe for us all. 
 
BIRTHDAY REFLECTIONS. 
 
 i6 
 
BIRTHDAY REFLECTIONS. 
 
 IF I should live another week (August 24, 
 1904), I shall celebrate my seventy-fifth birth- 
 day. Naturally I have had some serious and 
 solemn reflections concerning death. More 
 than once its mystery has seemed to be at 
 hand for me. Let me think aloud through this 
 medium for a little while, expressing three thoughts 
 that are in my mind. 
 
 1. Death is inevitable. Every succeeding birth- 
 day brings it nearer. But what consolation is 
 there in this fact of the certainty of death? Just 
 this: That it is the part of wisdom to accept the 
 inevitable with all possible submission. 
 
 2. Death is the only portal that opens for us 
 into higher and happier conditions. It is but 
 another and necessary step in the progress of 
 our being. There is a law here: Death is neces- 
 sary to progress. The more study we give to the 
 subject, the farther we look, the more we shall be 
 struck with the evidences of the operation of this 
 law on this plane of being. 
 
 3. The operation of this law terminates with 
 this state of being here on earth. Some re- 
 cent philosophers, so called, have suggested that 
 there may be many deaths and births to the same 
 spirit. I am glad that a voice from heaven has 
 spoken, telHng us that death cannot follow us 
 thither. O, blessed be God for this truth! If 
 there were no other revelation in the Bible, I would 
 be ready to fall down and worship God, who hath 
 brought life and immortality to light in the gospel 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ. It sounds like celestial 
 
 (243) 
 
2 4-4 Sufiset Views. 
 
 music in the depths of my soul as I read the words : 
 *' I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Be- 
 hold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he 
 will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, 
 and God himself shall be with them, and be their 
 God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their 
 eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither 
 sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any 
 more pain : for the former things are passed away.'* 
 (Rev. xxi. 3, 4.) 
 
 This is about the sum of my birthday reflections. 
 Knowledge without ignorance; pleasure without 
 pain ; progress without intermission ; life beyond 
 the reach of death. All this beyond a doubt, and 
 not far off. These reflections make a birthday 
 that is both glad and solemn for me. 
 
MARK HANNA ASTONISHED. 
 
MARK HANNA ASTONISHED. 
 
 THE one interview I had with the one and 
 only Mark Hanna I have never forgotten. 
 It was during the second campaign of 
 William McKinley for the Presidency of 
 these United States. Mr. Hanna was chair- 
 man of the National Committee of his party. Per- 
 haps no other man in the nation kept his finger so 
 nicely laid on the pulses of political parties as Mr. 
 Hanna. He said but little concerning practical 
 politics, but from time to time dropped an expres- 
 sion that indicated that he knew all the mysteries 
 of that sort of patriotism that gets its expenses 
 paid from the office seekers or office holders. He 
 was a likable man as he appeared to me that day. 
 What a comfortable, thick-set, deep-chested, fun- 
 loving, sharp-sighted man he was ! He was a stu- 
 dent of human nature, and he enjoyed the game 
 he was playing. It seemed almost impossible that 
 the news of his death, not long afterwards, could 
 be true. Vitality radiated from his personality at 
 every point. He was on his way to Thomasville, 
 Ga., where he had passed the previous winter. 
 He w^as making a special study of the negro ques- 
 tion on the ground in their very midst. He was 
 free to admit that as yet he had the very alphabet 
 of this question to learn. The scenes he witnessed 
 during the protracted and rather boisterous reli- 
 gious excitement in the leading colored congrega- 
 tion of Thomasville he recited with much animation. 
 Night after night he went to the church where the 
 meeting was held, took a seat in the gallery, and 
 looked on with ever-increasing astonishment at the 
 
 (H7) 
 
248 Sunset Views. 
 
 fluency of the speakers, the fervor of the prayers, 
 the melody of the songs, and the picturesqueness 
 of the tableaux exhibited in their bodily exercises. 
 *'They actually climbed the pillars that supported 
 the galleries of that church, so great was their ex- 
 citement," said Mr. Hanna. I narrated to him 
 some of my own experiences in the capacity of 
 pastor or assistant pastor of colored Churches in 
 Macon and Savannah. He listened with every 
 appearance of genuine interest. His face glowed, 
 and he punctured my narration with observations 
 that showed a specially ready grasp of all the 
 points in the negro problem that touched the foun- 
 tains of feeling or of mirth in his nature. Mark 
 Hanna had no element of fanaticism in his com- 
 position. Had he lived, he would have brought to 
 bear in national affairs a shrewd, cool conservatism 
 that would have been a potent factor in the pro- 
 motion of the generous policy now so happily 
 prevailing and increasing in all parts of our re- 
 united nation. It would seem that Mark Hanna 
 ought to have lived. If ever I saw a man that 
 seemed to be planned and built for long life, he 
 was that man — with a powerful physical constitu- 
 tion, and the philosophic, easy-going temper to 
 match. When I expressed the satisfaction I felt, 
 in common with all sorts of Tennesseeans, at the 
 appointment by President McKinley of' Gen. 
 Luke Wright to office in the Philippines, Mr. 
 Hanna seemed to run over with joy. He did not 
 conceal from me the fact that the policy of which 
 General Wright's appointment was a part was 
 adopted with his hearty concurrence, and would 
 be upheld by him with enthusiasm against all op- 
 posers, should opposers show themselves anywhere 
 within the lines of his party. Mark Hanna was 
 astonished at himself, seeing how much he had to 
 
Mark Hanna Astonished. 249 
 
 learn concerning this negro question with regard 
 to which the average American politician is in the 
 habit of claiming infallibility and dashing forward 
 with all the confidence begotten of ignorance. 
 And he was one of a class, already large and rap- 
 idly increasing, a class that had eliminated the 
 larger part of the difficulty of its settlement by 
 simply holding that rational and friendly methods 
 of adjustment were within reach. Rational and 
 friendly — these are the words that flowed from my 
 pen point. And this is my testimony as a Christian 
 man, as a citizen of a great nation whose brightest 
 chapters of history we may hope are yet to be 
 written. 
 
OUR IRISH FRIENDS. 
 
OUR IRISH FRIENDS. 
 
 THERE is nothing going on in this world 
 worthy of notice, good or bad, that our 
 Irish friends have not a hand in it. They 
 have had places in the pictures whenever 
 and wherever the champions of liberty 
 have been painted. They are good fighters, more 
 than ready to enter the lists when the occasion 
 comes. Many of them, in the -language of an 
 Irish historian, ** would rather die martyrs than 
 live saints." It was a typical Irishman who, when 
 questioned as to the origin of a contusion on his 
 head, replied: *' I have had a discussion — wid 
 sticks." That was the kind of controversy sought 
 by the Irishman of the old school who at fair time 
 expressed the hope that **some jintleman would 
 be kind enough to tr-r-ead on his coat tail." 
 
 The Irishman is likewise a lively voter. But it 
 is a slander to say that his motto with regard to the 
 suffrage is *' early and often." The long strug- 
 gle the Irish have made for their political rights in 
 the old country has taught them that eternal vig- 
 ilance is the price of liberty, and led them to see 
 to it that their civil privileges are not left to be 
 measured out to them or withheld from them at 
 the option of any other class of fellow-citizens. 
 The Irishman has a hand in all that transpires in 
 America. If he knows anything, he knows polit- 
 ical economy. His native gift of eloquence is as- 
 tonishing. Rouse him at midnight, with only one 
 eye half open, and call on him for a patriotic ebul- 
 lition, and you will find that he is able and willing 
 to give a reason for the political faith he has es- 
 
 (253) 
 
25 f Sunset Views. 
 
 poused. As an officeholder, he is not backward 
 norimpracticable. As a practical politician, he does 
 his full share of the work of governing this coun- 
 try. When a man is wanted to do full work for 
 this party or that, and to meet with a bold 
 front the approach of any enemy, they try to find 
 an Irishman therefor. As a soldier of fortune, so 
 called, the Irishman gets in place as soon as the 
 first, and may be depended on to do what is pos- 
 sible to courage and magnanimity. (If any reader 
 is disposed to contend that among our Irish friends 
 there are men who would have to be described in 
 different language, so be it. These exceptions are 
 all the more notable, because the Irishman is no 
 halfway traveler, go which way he will.) 
 
 Best of all, our Irish friends are doing the full- 
 est share of the everyday toil that is subduing this 
 continent to the reign of civilization. An Irish 
 sot is now and then encountered: some Irishmen 
 belong to that class of men who know for them- 
 selves no middle ground between total abstinence 
 and drunkenness. But an Irish loafer, the man 
 who rusts out or dry rots in idleness, would be a 
 strange discovery in most localities in our country. 
 The typical Irishman is a busy man. Rather than 
 be unemployed, he will at times even sell whisky 
 or be a petty politician. The petty politician and 
 the whisky seller are sometimes united in the 
 same person: the two callings have affinities that 
 are unmistakable. The aggregate result of this 
 combination exhibits human nature at its very 
 worst this side of the lowest depths. The venal 
 politician and the vender of vile whisky or beer 
 is restricted to no one nationality. And it remains 
 true in general that the Irishman is a worker. 
 Where they are grading railroad beds, you will 
 find him; where they are quarrying stone, you 
 
Our Irish Friends, 255 
 
 will find him ; where they are clearing the forest, 
 you will find him; where they are herding cattle 
 or sheep, you will find him; where they are driv- 
 ing wheeled vehicles, you will find him; where 
 pedagogy is going on in any of its grades, you will 
 find him; where they call for men to minister at 
 the altars of the sanctuary for nominal pay, and 
 with a glad heart, you will find him. 
 
TRANSFIGURED SINGERS. 
 17 
 
TRANSFIGURED SINGERS. 
 
 I HAVE seen them and heard them from 
 Hogan's Creek to the Golden Gate, from 
 Morehead's Mill in North Carolina to Mount 
 Shasta in California. Through the grace of 
 God, abiding and abounding, I hope to see 
 millions of transfigured singers in one company, 
 whose song we are told will celebrate the love 
 that gave itself for us that we might know the 
 power of Christ's resurrection and be made kings 
 and priests unto God and his Father. The pic- 
 tures of these transfigured singers are framed in 
 tender and holy associations and are hung in the 
 halls of memory. What our Heavenly Father 
 thinks of music may be understood by calling to 
 mind what he has said of it in connection with the 
 worship and spiritual interests of his militant 
 Church, and of the rapture and glory of the 
 Church triumphant. God's love of music runs 
 through every part of his physical creation, from 
 the song of the mocking bird to the majestic roll 
 of the breakers on the ocean's shore. 
 
 One transfigured singer seen and heard by me 
 in my boyhood I have never forgotten. It was at 
 a funeral service on a bright Sunday morning, the 
 burial of Uncle Tommy Weatherford, the patriarch 
 of Methodism in all that Hogan's Creek country. 
 He was a sturdy old saint, sweet-toned and strong, 
 and his neighbors of all denominations and those 
 of no denomination turned out to attend his burial. 
 The house, which stood on the top of a high hill 
 above the creek, was crowded, and the front yard 
 was filled with people. The preacher, Jehu Hank, 
 
 (259) 
 
26o Sunset Views. 
 
 stood in the door and sang the famihar old hymn, 
 *' On Jordan's stormy banks I stand." He was a 
 notable singer, and his name was a household 
 word among that people. There was power in his 
 voice and a wonderful clearness, and that subtle 
 touch that takes hold of the hearts of listeners 
 wherever it is met with. It was a literal transfig- 
 uration to my boyish eyes, as he sang with shining 
 face of the land where the flowers never fade, 
 where there is everlasting spring, and in an ecstasy 
 of holy enthusiasm he proclaimed as it were in a 
 musical shout that from that shore he could not be 
 frightened by death's cold flood. Not a word of 
 the sermon do I remember: no doubt it was what 
 a funeral sermon should be — sympathetic, tender, 
 and sensible. But that song — from it I got the 
 touch that transfigured the man of God as he sang, 
 and its music has never left me during all the 
 years that have intervened. 
 
 Of George Eckley, the musical black prodigy 
 of Macon in Georgia, I have spoken elsewhere. 
 He was normally as homely as homeliness itself — 
 squatty, with heavy features, flat nose, short fore- 
 head and low, and eyes that in repose were inno- 
 cent of any expression beyond what was merely 
 animal. He was a transfigured singer never to be 
 forgotten after you had once heard him. He led 
 the singing among those Methodist negroes in Ma- 
 con to whom I then held a sort of semipastoral 
 relation. He carried everything with him as a 
 leader in holy song. The volume of his voice was 
 great, its melody had a quality and a charm that 
 were all his own. He led, and all of that swarthy 
 congregation followed both of necessity and from 
 choice. Perfect in time, overwhelming in power, 
 and almost miraculous in its effect, when his 
 voice led nobody questioned his supremacy as a 
 
Transfigured Singers, 261 
 
 leader in the songs of Zion. He surely *' led " 
 the singing of that dark-complexioned and enthu- 
 siastic people who surely beHeved in a religion of 
 melody here and of joy hereafter. Some of 
 George Eckley's choruses are echoing in my 
 memory now as I pen these lines fifty years after- 
 wards. The chord that he struck never failed to 
 respond. If he led in a penitential hymn, sin- 
 ners would be softened and melted while he sang. 
 If he sang of the joys of religion here on earth, 
 or of the glories that awaited believers in heaven, 
 the rapture that was in his song made it kindling 
 and catching. He did not sing himself into ac- 
 tual physical good looks: that was an impossibil- 
 ity. But the swelling of his bosom under the 
 afflatus of holy song, the shining of his black and 
 homely face, the victorious sweep of his voice, 
 the rapt expression of the whole man, wrought a 
 visible change in him then and there that made it 
 easy for all of us who then saw and heard him to 
 lift our thought and faith to that world where that 
 which is sown in weakness shall be raised in 
 power. The transfiguration that awaits George 
 Eckley and his dark-skinned fellow-worshipers in 
 heaven will be a sight worth seeing. They will 
 all be singers up there, and their music will be 
 worth hearing. And as there will be nothing there 
 to hurt or destroy, it will be good to be there, 
 whether coming from the East or the West, the 
 North or the South, or the isles of the sea. 
 
 When I think or speak of transfigured sinners, 
 the image of the gentle Clara Whitehurst comes 
 before my mind. Child of music and of sorrow, 
 her song on earth took the minor key before she 
 left us to go up yonder to the home where there 
 is no sorrow or pain, and where the discords of 
 earth are past, and where the highest joys of 
 
262 Stmsct Views. 
 
 which she sang while she was with us are glad re- 
 alities. At my old McKendree class meetings in 
 Nashville she was my helper in holy song. When' 
 music was prescribed as a regular part in the or- 
 der of divine worship, it was an expression of a 
 special mercy to souls like hers. Her mind was 
 attuned to holy thought as truly as her voice was 
 attuned to holy song. She loved to sing, and it 
 gave her joy to express in song her love for God. 
 She was always ready : her spiritual intuitions were 
 so quick and so acute, and her knowledge of 
 Christian hymnology was so extensive and accu- 
 rate, that her little snatches of sacred song were 
 invariably delightful and good to the use of edify- 
 ing. A recipe for a good class meeting or other 
 social Christian service of similar sort might be 
 given here in words like these : A judicious choice 
 of Holy Scripture, a common sense interpretation 
 of it, a glow of spiritual fervor that infuses into 
 all the attendants the same spirit, prayers in the 
 same temper, and not too long, the whole inter- 
 spersed with sacred song to rgatch the sacred mean- 
 ing, the purpose of the entire service. Under the 
 influence of exercises like these, the whole of our 
 company of Christian friends underwent a gen- 
 uine transfiguration ; the lines made by care or toil 
 or trouble of any sort were smoothed away, and 
 the love of God in their trusting souls put into their 
 mortal bodies something of what awaits them, as 
 they fondly hope, where they will see the King in 
 his beauty as the center and joy of the multitude 
 of transfigured singers that no man can number. 
 
 In that same little band of Christian friends, the 
 McKendree class meeting, there was another lady 
 whose chief passion was a love of beauty. She 
 was an artist who could put form and color into 
 her visions or conceptions of the beautiful. Her 
 
T^'cinsfigured Singers, 263 
 
 maiden surname was one honored in art circles 
 everywhere. She was also a musician of unusual 
 gifts. When under the afflatus of holy song she 
 was a transfigured believer! There was a look in 
 her face and a tone in her voice that belonged to 
 the unseen sphere that lies so close to this and yet 
 is so truly a mystery to us all. Half playfully she 
 once said to me in later years: *' When a child, I 
 always wished to be a beautiful angel, and that 
 wish is still in my heart." Bless that yearning, 
 faithful spirit that held fast its early ideal and long- 
 ing for the beauty that time can neither dim nor de- 
 stroy ! She had been for many years an unceas- 
 ing sufferer from bodily pain that had left its marks 
 upon her body. But she remained true to her 
 lofty ideal and holy desire, and already there was 
 a partial fulfillment of her prayer. She is taking 
 on a spiritual beauty that increases as she draws 
 nearer to that spiritual realm. She has taken the 
 prescription I have ventured in playful earnestness 
 to offer to her and other elect souls who have been 
 called to walk in this path of pain: *' Three parts 
 of patience, and then — one more part of patience.'* 
 The heaven of the Bible, the heaven of our hopes, 
 is a heaven of beauty. Other members of that 
 circle had the gift of music and the longing for 
 beauty unmarred and unending. Their names 
 are written in God's book of remembrance. 
 
 Some readers may be inclined to smile when 
 they see here the name of Andrew M. Bailey 
 among the names of the transfigured singers. The 
 old Californians will call him to mind. He was a 
 rugged, angular, self-assertive man, a wonder to 
 those early Californians, and an aggravation to 
 many of them. I never knew a man who knew 
 more certainly whom and what he did not like. I 
 never knew a man who had greater power of in- 
 
264 Sunset Views, 
 
 dicating his dislikes by facial expression. There 
 is something comic in the notion of the transfigura- 
 tion of this old California pioneer preacher, 
 Brother Andrew M. Bailey. But I have seen 
 that miracle wrought. By common consent he led 
 the singing at the Santa Clara camp meetings held 
 away back in the fifties and sixties. That won- 
 derful voice of his ! I seem to hear it as I write 
 these words — clear as a bugle, sweet as a woman's. 
 Acres of the early settlers, with their families, 
 gathered under the evergreen oaks and the syc- 
 amores on Sunday morning, would crowd around 
 the ** preacher's stand" as closely as they could 
 as. with eyes closed and swinging of the body, 
 Wother Bailey sang of heaven. And as he sang 
 of that *' sun-bright clime," with its larger life, its 
 reunions, its sacred memories, and its unending 
 glories, the rugged features relaxed and seemed 
 to catch a touch of the light from above. There 
 was a transfigured singer! Men and women who 
 remembered Kavanaugh and Welburn and Deer- 
 ing and Browder and Morton and Linn, and the 
 rest of the leaders and fathers of the Church in the 
 old times and in their old homes *' back in the 
 States," were melted into tenderness under the 
 spell of Bailey's song. Their children, seeing 
 and hearing this transfigured singer, received 
 gracious suggestions they can never lose. When 
 Brother Bailey came to Nashville a few years ago 
 he was an old man, worn and weary and scarred 
 by the wounds received in life's battles. But he 
 was chastened in look and speech. When he told 
 me that his object in coming to Nashville was to 
 make a gift of ten thousand dollars to the cause of 
 missions, placing the money in the hands of the 
 ofl[icers of the Missionary Society of the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church, South, the Church of his first 
 
Transfigured Singers. 265 
 
 and his latest affection, I was listening to and look- 
 ing upon a transfigured singer. 
 
 This musical gift, the ability to make music, was 
 not bestowed upon me. The love of it was given 
 me in double measure. Once in Boston I tried to 
 indicate to a Methodist pastor and some other 
 clerical friends who were present with us in his 
 study before the morning service the tune that I 
 wished to be sung to the closing hymn. They 
 listened kindly as I tried to hum the air that I 
 wanted to be sung: perhaps there was something 
 like a subdued smile on their friendly faces. 
 '* That is a tune we never heard before," said one 
 of the brethren gravely — and I very well knew 
 what that meant. My tune was only an attempt, 
 well-meant but unsuccessful. My heart was mak- 
 ing melody unto the Lord that good Sunday morn- 
 ing with the Boston Methodists. The thought 
 overwhelms me here with a mighty joy that I may 
 meet the fellow-worshipers to whom I have 
 preached the glad gospel of Christ where I shall 
 be numbered truly and forever with the Transfig- 
 ured Singers. I am unworthy, but God's mercy 
 isunbounded. There is music in the words: The 
 grace that abides is the grace that abounds. 
 
AN ABIDING BENEDICTION. 
 
AN ABIDING BENEDICTION. 
 
 GOD bless you, child ! " said Granny Snow- 
 to my mother — "God bless you, and 
 your children, and your children's chil- 
 dren as long as one of your posterity 
 lives on earth. God bless you for your 
 kindness to me, kindness so thoughtful, so patient, 
 so constant." 
 
 Scarcely any incident of my early boyhood has 
 recurred to me oftener than this. I had accom- 
 panied my mother in her visit to the bedridden, 
 poverty-smitten old saint, who lay there with her 
 wasted features framed in her snowy cap border. 
 It was the face of a saint who had suffered and 
 was patient. I was four or five years old, an in- 
 quisitive, noisy boy, pugnacious with my equals in 
 age and size, yet tender-hearted at the sight of any 
 sorrow or pain. The Irish strain in my blood 
 carries this mixture of a big lump of combative- 
 ness with a pitying heart. Both have needed 
 watching. 
 
 It has often seemed to me that, all things con- 
 sidered, this generation of my fellow-men has 
 made a specialty of according kind treatment unto 
 me. Agreeable surprises on this line have met me 
 all along the way. Old friends have proved truer 
 and nobler under unexpected tests. Strangers 
 have done me kindnesses with a grace and glow 
 that have made the beginnings of friendships that 
 grow sweeter and stronger as the years go by. At 
 such times the vision of Granny Snow's furrowed 
 face has appeared to my mind, and the tremulous 
 tones of her voice sounded in memory's ear. 
 
 (269) 
 
270 Sunset Views, 
 
 There must be something in such a benediction. 
 Does not the old Book say something about chil- 
 dren's children in connection with the transmission 
 of such blessings? Half a hundred years later,, 
 near this same spot where Granny Snow lived and 
 died, I was reminded of the incident recited in the 
 beginning of this chapter. I had come back from 
 the Pacific Coast an ordained minister of the gos- 
 pel, and by special arrangement preached to the 
 colored people on Sunday afternoon. Many of the 
 associations of the occasion appealed powerfully 
 to my heart. I had " liberty" in my preaching, 
 and closed the discourse amid many expressions 
 of feeling among my dark-complexioned hearers. 
 Among the rest, a stout-framed, jet-black woman 
 came forward with the tears streaming from her 
 eyes, and grasping my hand said: 
 
 *' I is a Baptis' myself, but it appears to me dat 
 de Lord has sent you to preach salvation to de 
 ends of de earth. I know'd your mammy, and 
 she was good to de black people" — 
 
 Here she broke down with sobs that mightily 
 shook her frame. It was like touching a spark to 
 tinder. What a hand-shaking I had, and what a 
 flood of holy song was poured forth from the 
 throats of those hundreds of dark-colored singers ! 
 It was evident to me that I had as many friends as 
 there were worshipers in that assembly, and that 
 they all warmed to me for my mother's sake. Her 
 image rose before my eyes, that were misty, and 
 the echo of Granny Snow's benediction sounded 
 within my soul. Blessed be the memory of that 
 mother who had her own sorrows and at times 
 grew faint under the weight of her burdens, but 
 who always had a hand for help to the lowly and 
 a word of cheer for the downhearted ! 
 
WILLIAM McKENDREE. 
 
WILLIAM McKENDREE 
 
 HE was the first native American Methodist" 
 bishop. He was in the true succession, 
 following Asbury. His "call" was of 
 the genuine New Testament sort, a call 
 to go and preach. He kept going and 
 preaching at an astonishing rate, crossing the Al- 
 leghany Mountains on horseback sixty-two times, 
 and averaging more than one sermon every day 
 for forty-seven years. Like Asbury, his prede- 
 cessor, he never married. The explanation he 
 gave of this fact was that he could never find time 
 for matrimony. In this he was unlike some of his 
 latter-day successors. He was a native of Vir- 
 ginia, and came of a family of that solid class 
 which is the backbone of both Church*and State. 
 The McKendrees were Episcopalians of the sort 
 that have almost everywhere taken to Methodism 
 so readily. They were an earnest people, those 
 McKendrees, and Methodism struck them at a 
 time when it was stirring to its depths the heart of 
 a continent. * 
 
 McKendree was the spiritual child of John 
 Easter, that unique and picturesque evangelist, 
 who preached a gospel of supernatural claims 
 which was attested by supernatural results. John 
 Easter was truly a mighty man of God. When he 
 stood before the waiting thousands at a camp meet- 
 ing, he carried his credentials in his face, and his 
 message moved the hearers with overwhelming 
 power. McKendree was " powerfully converted,'* 
 to use a phrase not yet obsolete in evangelical cir- 
 
274 Sunset Views. 
 
 cles. His sorrow for sin was profound; his sur- 
 render to Christ was complete. A new song was 
 put into his mouth with the inflow of the new hfe 
 into his soul. Ever afterwards that new song was 
 sung out by him in notes that were clear and sweet. 
 The gospel of perhapses, the gospel that deals in 
 interrogation points and guesswork, the gospel, 
 so called, that gets a glimmer of many things it 
 would like to be true, but no certainty with regard 
 to anything in particular — this was not the gospel 
 that saved McKendree. To him conversion meant 
 passing from death unto life, from darkness to 
 light, from the power of Satan unto God — a 
 change of heart, a change of Masters, a change of 
 life. What he had seen and felt with confidence 
 he told — and his spiritual children were after his 
 own likeness. He started with the feeling that 
 the gospel was the power of God unto salvation; 
 that feeling he never lost. It may seem a little 
 singular to us now to read what he said of his ex- 
 perience at the New York Conference held in 
 May, 1809 — that though he had a comfortable de- 
 gree of the Divine Presence, ''not many were 
 converted." 
 
 McKendree's call to preach came quickly aft- 
 er his conversion, and had all ^he marks of a call 
 from God. To him it was as distinct as was his 
 call to discipleship: so he alvvays felt and said. 
 The divine message was as a fire in his bones. 
 The Church took him and held him to her heart 
 as a good mother, giving him full work and full 
 pay as matters went in those times: first he got 
 fifty dollars a year, then eighty dollars, and then 
 a round hundred dollars. Blessed bachelor that 
 he was, he kept out of debt and avoided all mat- 
 rimonial snares. In the light of these facts in his 
 financial experience he could understand what 
 
William McKendree. 275 
 
 Bishop Asbury once said of the preachers of the 
 Western Conference: '* The brethren were in 
 want, so I parted with my watch, my coat, and my 
 shirt." (The friendly reader will not draw an in- 
 ference too strong as to the scantiness of the sober- 
 souled old bishop's wardrobe from the fact that he 
 speaks of his undergarment as he does of his 
 timekeeper, in the singular number.) 
 
 McKendree had a period of unrest for a season, 
 owing to the company he was keeping at the time. 
 He misjudged Asbur}^, and was led to speak of 
 him disparagingly; but when he met him as he 
 was, he changed his opinion. McKendree was 
 one of the men who are quick to resist tyranny on 
 the one hand and to assert and enforce rightful 
 authority on the other. Most of the men who do 
 anything worth the doing and attain unto wise and 
 beneficent leadership in the Church have their sea- 
 sons of unrest, breaking out sometimes in a '* rash " 
 that is remedial, happily precluding in most in- 
 stances all need for "constitutional" treatment. 
 McKendree had his attack at an early period in 
 his ministry, followed by rapid and complete re- 
 covery, with no subsequent relapse. In his office 
 he was vigilant and firrn in the maintenance of the 
 authority of the Church and in protecting it against 
 disturbers of its peace. When he thought Asbury 
 was in error, he opposed him frankly and fearless- 
 ly; but he never fell into the weakness exhibited 
 by some men who try to be good, and are partially 
 so, yet allow a difference in judgment to produce 
 alienation of friendship. His tact and good sense 
 may be seen in the following incident related by 
 an eye-and-ear witness: *' Previous to the first 
 delegated General Conference, May, 1812, Bishop 
 McKendree drew up a *plan of business' to be 
 brought before that body. His address w^as read 
 
276 Sunset Vievjs. 
 
 in Conference; but as it was a new thing, the aged 
 bishop ( Asbury) rose to his feet immediately after 
 the paper had been read, and addressed the junior 
 bishop to the following effect: *I have something 
 to say to you before the Conference.' The junior 
 also rose to his feet, and they stood face to face. 
 Bishop Asbury went on to say: * This is a new 
 thing. I never did business in this way, and why 
 is this new thing introduced? ' The junior bishop 
 promptly replied : ' You are our father, we are 
 your sons: you have never had need of it. I am 
 only a brother, and have need of it.' Bishop As- 
 bury said no more, but sat down with a smile on 
 his face." The *' new thing" proved to be a 
 good thing. 
 
 In the presiding eldership McKendree had de- 
 veloped and demonstrated his executive ability and 
 his extraordinary power as a preacher. In a legit- 
 imate sense of the words it may be said that he 
 worked his way to the bishopric. It is quite cer- 
 tain that he never sought the office. No surer 
 method could have been used by him to repel the 
 suffrages of his brethren than to let it be under- 
 stood by them that he was a candidate. He ac- 
 cepted the office reluctantly. We may be sure that 
 his reluctance was genuine: he was a genuine 
 man, incapable of such a breach of ordination 
 vow^s and such an offense against humility as would 
 be made by seeking responsibilities so heavy and 
 an honor so exalted. He preached at the Light 
 Street Church the Sunday before the General Con- 
 ference began its session in Baltimore, May, 1808 : 
 text, Jeremiah viii. 21, 22. He had " full liberty," 
 and great was the effect of the sermon, of which 
 Dr. Bangs gives a graphic description in his *' His- 
 tory of the Methodist Episcopal Church." *' The 
 congregation," he says, " w^as overwhelmed with a 
 
William McKendree. 277 
 
 shower of divine grace from the upper world." 
 When he descended from the pulpit, the brethren 
 were saying in their hearts, "This is the man 
 whom God delights to honor." Bishop Asbury, 
 w^ho was present, was heard to say that the ser- 
 mon would make McKendree a bishop, and the 
 remark did not hinder the result prophesied. On 
 May 12, the date upon which the resolution to 
 elect one bishop was passed, he was elected by the 
 largest majority that any bishop has ever received, 
 Asbury only excepted. He did not decline the 
 office after his election: he dared not do so. His 
 brethren had voted for him on his record as 'a 
 preacher, man of affairs, and administrator of 
 Church discipline, who had exhibited always the 
 self-denial, the zeal, and the prudence of an 
 apostle. While claiming nothing from the Church, 
 he ''belonged" to it in the fullest sense of the word. 
 He was in his fifty-first year, and in the full ripe- 
 ness of all his powers. His course was a trail of 
 light through all the twenty-seven years that fol- 
 lowed, until his death, in Sumner Count}^ Tenn., 
 March 5, 1835. 
 
 To William McKendree more than to any other 
 man is Episcopal Methodism indebted for the wis- 
 dom of its polity and the excellence of its parlia- 
 mentary methods. While not insisting upon any 
 closeness of analogies, somehow it seems to me 
 that what Washington was to the State McKen- 
 dree was to the Church in America. 
 
MCTYEIRE AS AN EDITOR. 
 
McTYElRE AS AN EDITOR. 
 
 GREAT orators are more numerous than 
 great editors. A hundred men are elo- 
 quent where one is found to possess the 
 indefinable touch that stamps him as a 
 born editor. Indefinable it is, just as 
 the touch of a musical genius, as contradistin- 
 guished from musical talent, is indefinable. A 
 glance at a newspaper in the one case, and the hear- 
 ing of a single bar of a musical composition in the 
 other, reveals the precious gift. 
 
 *'The young man has a gift," said Dr. Leroy 
 M. Lee, editor of the Richmond Christian Advo- 
 cate^ after reading some of McTyeire's first essays 
 in newspaper letter-writing. The older editor 
 spoke truly: the young man had a gift. People 
 began to ask: '* Who is this new writer who signs 
 himself H. N. McTyeire?" There was in what 
 he wrote an incisiveness and an epigrammatic 
 sparkle that betokened the advent of a man of gen- 
 ius. It is a gracious law of God that men love to do 
 that which they can do well . Native bent and prov- 
 idential leading take them in the same direction. 
 McTyeire excelled in so many things that the ap- 
 plication of this aphorism to him seems to be at- 
 tended with difficulty. He was many-sided. As 
 a merchant, planter, or stock breeder, he, would 
 have risen to the top. Whatever he did for the 
 time being seemed to be his forte. 
 
 The Church soon discerned that the new editor 
 in New Orleans was a man of mark. His lead- 
 ing editorials were on live topics. The headings 
 
 (281) 
 
282 Sunset Views, 
 
 of them were usually striking and suggestive. He 
 had the sense of proportion lacked by so many 
 gifted men: he did not waste his strength or space 
 on trifles. He knew how to winnow the chaff 
 from the wheat. By sheer ability his paper soon 
 became an influential organ of public opinion 
 within the bounds of the patronizing Conferences 
 and beyond. He was not disinclined to contro- 
 versy when occasion required. The retort he 
 gave to the Protestant Episcopal Bishop Green, of 
 Mississippi, must have elicited a smile from that 
 amiable high-churchman himself. The Bishop 
 wrote and published a series of letters on the 
 unity of the Church of Christ, in which he gave 
 special consideration to the relations of the Epis- 
 copalians and the Methodists, concluding, after 
 the manner of his school, with an invitation to the 
 Methodists to *' come back into the Episcopal 
 Church." *'That is cool!" said McTyeire, 
 *' that is cool ! The next proposition, we presume, 
 will be to turn the Mississippi River into Buffalo 
 Bayou." That was enough: the fallacious plea 
 for unity that was not unity was fitly answered. 
 In a good-natured way he gave the Pacific Con- 
 ference of his own denomination a touch of caustic. 
 The well-known Presbyterian preacher, Dr. Wil- 
 liam A. Scott, once of New Orleans and after- 
 wards of San Francisco, in one of his books had 
 repeated the statement that John Wesley once 
 tossed up a shilling to decide whether he would be 
 an Arminian or a Calvinist. This provoked Mc- 
 Tyeire's resentment and elicited from him a sharp 
 rebuke in a newspaper article. Not long afterwards, 
 during a session of the Pacific Annual Conference, 
 held in San Francisco, Dr. Scott presented each 
 member of the body with a copy of several of his 
 works, among them the one containing the charge 
 
McTyeire as an Editor, 283 
 
 against Mr. Wesley. The Conference, by resolu- 
 tion, thanked Dr. Scott for the books thus pre- 
 sented by him. When this action of the Confer- 
 ence reached McTyeire, he dryly suggested that 
 somebody present the Conference with the shilling 
 used by Mr. Wesley on the occasion referred to, 
 *'in order that its members might use it in cut- 
 ting their wisdom teeth." Though a small matter, 
 it is but just to Dr. Scott to say that the relation of 
 this story concerning Mr. Wesley was made 
 in no invidious spirit. Dr. Scott was a big- 
 brained, large-hearted Christian man who 
 loved Methodists and was esteemed by them as 
 an able and faithful minister of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. A joust between McTyeire and his brother 
 editor, Dr. Wightman, of the Southern Christian 
 Advocate^ attracted the attention of the entire 
 Church. They were pretty well matched — the 
 brainy and cultured Wightman, then in the full- 
 ness of his powers and rapidly rising to a foremost 
 place among his brethren; and McTyeire, bright 
 and keen and aggressive, who was winning his 
 spurs in the arena of intellectual combat. 
 
 McTyeire went loaded — pardon the expression — 
 for bigotry and arrogance. His satire was at times 
 blistering. Yet he was truly irenic — irenic in this 
 sense: that he recognized the essential unity of all 
 true followers of Christ, and was always ready to 
 extend the right hand of Christian fellowship to all 
 who reciprocated fraternal courtesies without set- 
 ting up exclusive claims or putting on foolish airs. 
 He was irenic on this proper basis, and in his in- 
 tercourse with his brethren of other denominations 
 he exhibited a refined courteousness and an eleva- 
 tion of spirit that won their admiration and good 
 will in no small degree. 
 
 As an editor McTyeire was broad as well as in- 
 
284 Sunset Views, 
 
 cisive. His discussions of current questions and 
 comments on passing events exhibited rare keen- 
 ness of observation and a mind richly furnished 
 by wide and varied reading. He was a close 
 reader of the periodical literature of the day, and 
 his eye ran over the columns of the newspaper 
 press with the rapidity of an expert and with the 
 instinct that hit at once upon what he wanted. He 
 had what might be called a genius for quotation : he 
 could take an extract and give it an editorial setting 
 so striking that the very author of the piece quoted 
 would be agreeably surprised to see how good a 
 thing he had said. The readers of his paper 
 learned to look for something on the editorial page 
 every week that would put them to thinking. 
 About once a month he wrote a leading editorial 
 into which he threw his whole strength. 
 
 McTyeire was so prominent and influential dur- 
 ing the stormy transitional period in which he lived 
 that he did not lack occasion for the exercise of 
 his special controversial gift. In one way or an- 
 other he took part in all that was going forward in 
 the Church. It was his disposition to take sides 
 on every question. Not seldom did it devolve on 
 him to be the special champion of views or meas- 
 ures that were hotly contested. Duty called him 
 into the lists, and he responded to the call. To- 
 gether with a natural relish for intellectual combat, 
 he had driving power enough to have made him a 
 revolutionary leader had not grace made him con- 
 servative. He was half Irish, and that half at 
 times seemed to be the whole man. Whenever 
 there shall be in Christendom a fight, whether with 
 spiritual or carnal weapons, in which no Irishman 
 takes part, it will be when there are no Irishmen 
 left. The Scotch half of McTyeire was not a non- 
 combative element in his constitution. 
 
Mc Tyeire as an Editor, 285 
 
 Barred subsequently by considerations growing 
 out of his official position from entering the arena 
 of newspaper controversy, McTyeire sometimes 
 relieved his mental tension and acquitted his con- 
 science by inditing articles that were published 
 anonymously in the newspaper press of the 
 Church. These articles were signed *' Old Meth- 
 odist," **An Elder," *' Onesiphorus," or some- 
 thing of the sort. But it was not easy for such a 
 writer as he to preserve his incognito. Not a few 
 discerning readers suspected that behind these fa- 
 miliar 7ioms de ■plume was the puissant President of 
 the Board of Trust of Vanderbilt University. 
 Now and then an aggrieved disputant complained 
 that he had been anonymously attacked, and in- 
 timated that he suspected the true authorship — 
 ** flushing big game," said an editor who had a 
 graphic way of putting things. Pending the meet- 
 ing of the General Conference of 1882, there was 
 a slight agitation in the Church on the subject of 
 organic union with the Methodist Episcopal Church 
 (North). It was a slight agitation indeed, scarce- 
 ly touching the great body of the ministry and 
 membership of our Church; but there seemed to 
 be some danger that it might reach proportions 
 or assume a phase that would imperil the har- 
 mony of the General Conference session, and 
 possibly cause other troubles. Two or three 
 sprightly writers had found access to the columns 
 of the Church press with articles advocating or- 
 ganic union, and a worthy and well-meaning broth- 
 er had even published a book advocating that 
 measure. Ever watchful of his Church's interest 
 and of the signs of the times. Bishop McTyeire 
 wrote an elaborate paper in which he recited the 
 history of the separation of Episcopal Methodism 
 in America into two coequal parts and the subse- 
 
286 Sunset Views. 
 
 quent history of each as it bore upon the ques- 
 tion at issue; then he drew a picture of Southern 
 Methodism peaceful, prosperous, and rapidly grow- 
 ing; and finally showed the confusion, discord, 
 and disaster that would result from the introduc- 
 tion of a proposition for organic union into the 
 General Conference. ** It will be a bold hand that 
 will throw this apple of discord into the body," he 
 said in conclusion. There was no hand bold 
 enough to make that cast after the appearance of 
 that masterly paper in the Nashville Christian Ad- 
 vocate, It was printed as an editorial, the editor 
 of the connectional organ being glad thus to util- 
 ize so conclusive an argument sustaining his own 
 view of the question. The article was not an- 
 swered: it was unanswerable. It demonstrated 
 the unwisdom of the proposed measure and punc- 
 tured the fallacies of its advocates in such a way 
 that the Church has ever since had rest on that 
 line. It did more: it conserved the fraternal re- 
 lations happily existing with the sister Methodism 
 which would have been imperiled by an abortive 
 attempt to force a measure which was then contra- 
 indicated by all the facts of the situation and could 
 be productive only of harm to all the precious in- 
 terests involved. The writer of this paper was the 
 editor of the connectional organ of the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church, South, at the time here spoken 
 of, and in stating these facts feels that he is only 
 discharging a brotherly obligation and giving honor 
 where honor is due. 
 
 American Methodism has had no abler editor 
 than McTyeire. In going over the files of the pa- 
 pers edited by him, the appreciative reader sees 
 everywhere the work of a mind of extraordinary 
 power, and is charmed by a style scarcely equaled 
 for its simplicity and force — the force of Saxon 
 
McTyeire as an Editor. 287 
 
 monosyllables shot straight at their object, rarely 
 missing and sure when they did strike to bring 
 down the game. While he was notably militant 
 and aggressive, his columns were illuminated with 
 flashes of the most genial humor, and his simple 
 pathos was inimitable and irresistible. He had the 
 insight and genuine sympathy that made another's 
 sorrow his own. He wrote many memoirs of the 
 sainted dead at the request of the bereaved, and in 
 these sacred tributes thoughtfulness and depth of 
 feeling were so blended that they were models of 
 their kind. In the families in which he had min- 
 istered to the sick and whose dead he had buried 
 he was never forgotten. 
 
 Wherever McTyeire's voice was heard, it rose 
 clear and strong above all the din and confusion 
 of his time, and it was recognized by all as the 
 voice of a leader. Had he remained on the tripod, 
 we cannot say whether his place in Methodist his- 
 tory would have been larger or smaller. He would 
 have done a different work, but it might have been 
 as great. Religious literature might have gained 
 what would have been lost elsewhere. 
 
THE QUESTION WE ARE ALL ASKING 
 WHY DO THEY NOT COME BACK ? 
 
 19 
 
THE QUESTION WE ARE ALL ASKING: WHY DO 
 THEY NOT COME BACK? 
 
 OF the millions who love us while they are 
 with us, and who die and leave us every 
 year, why does not one of them all come 
 back and tell us something of that other 
 life to which they have gone ? Why not, 
 why not? these human hearts have been asking 
 through all the long ages of the past, and they are 
 still asking the unanswered question wherever there 
 are living hearts that love, and vacant seats in 
 homes bereft, and empty cradles where sad-faced 
 mothers weep. Some whose great, true hearts we 
 knew promised when they left us to come back to 
 us with a message from the other side if they could 
 and if it were right for them so to do. But they 
 have not come back to us, though long years have 
 passed. The faces we loved to look upon are veiled ; 
 in the silence that is unbroken the voices we loved 
 to hear are hushed. Their images are still held in 
 our hearts, that could not forget if they would and 
 would not forget if they could. Embracing them 
 in our dreams, we awake clasping only the empty 
 air.. Thrilling with the tones that were sweet to 
 our ears before their lips were closed and cold, we 
 awake in the silence, and find no voice to answer 
 the question that our hearts are still asking: Why 
 do they not come back to tell us where they are, 
 and what they have seen since they went away? 
 
 That is a sad note wrung from the heart of 
 Israel's king, that grand, faulty man who had in 
 his soul passion enough to make a thousand trag- 
 
 (291) 
 
292 Sunset Views. 
 
 edies, and nobility enough to make a whole army 
 of heroes, a man so good at his best, so bad at 
 his worst. Of his dead child he said: *'I shall 
 go to him, but he shall not return to me." He 
 shall not return: that was certain. There is no 
 sign of doubt here. He accepted a fact that can- 
 not be denied: the dead do not return. That is 
 the rule. The exceptions are nothing but excep- 
 tions. Now and then, when God in his own wisest 
 way causes the line of separation to be crossed, it 
 is for a gracious purpose and with sacred safe- 
 guards. When man seeks to cross this line on 
 his own volition, his curiosity is baffled, his temer- 
 ity is rebuked, his diabolism unmasked. Where 
 the love of money is the root of this evil, the 
 conscious motive of a pretense of bridging the 
 chasm between the two worlds, it is hard to deal 
 with it in the exercise of our poor human wisdom. 
 Some of these pretenders, like Simon Magus, re- 
 pent and amend their lives; others, like the Witch 
 of Endor, bewitch souls that are weak or unset- 
 tled, souls that are unlawfully impatient. In the 
 Old Testament record these "witches" flit before 
 our vision enwrapped in lurid light, speaking 
 strange words and doing strange things. I have 
 no word of censure or scorn for the men and 
 women whose yearning hearts prompt them to in- 
 quire of these who say they can give an answer 
 to the question that all of us are asking. But if 
 any good has ever come from this sort of thing, 
 it has never come to my knowledge. My heart 
 invokes the pity of the good God for the breaking 
 heart that is hungering for the message that does not 
 come, the eager soul that chafes at the long, long 
 delay- 
 
 One world at a time, is the rule. If we try to 
 break over this rule, it is at our peril. But our 
 
The Question We Are All Asking. 293 
 
 Heavenly Father will not leave us in doubt as to 
 the main thing — namely, that there is a life to come. 
 We may hopefully and patiently wait to hear his 
 voice speak as never man spake. The attitude 
 of the soul toward this highest truth measures its 
 receptivity in a sense that conveys a warning as 
 solemn as the judgment and suggests a blessedness 
 beyond estimation. It is the old law in practical 
 operation: to him that hath shall be given. To 
 him who is a sincere lover of truth, more and more 
 truth will be revealed. The truth as it is in Jesus, 
 who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, will re- 
 ward the search of him whose desires invite its com- 
 ing and whose spiritual habitudes insure its assim- 
 ilation. A young Japanese student who had em- 
 braced Christianity at Vanderbilt University said 
 to me with a beaming face: *' The personality of 
 Jesus Christ mastered me." Bless his brave, man- 
 ly soul ! He loved the truth, and was eager in his 
 search for it; and when he received the Master's 
 touch, he was ready for it. The good seed in this 
 case fell upon good ground. The Japanese nation, 
 whose soldiers are not afraid to die and are faith- 
 ful unto death, it seems to me, is good soil in which 
 to sow the good seed of the kingdom of God. 
 Whatever of literalness there is in the prediction 
 that *' a nation shall be born in a day," we might 
 hope to see shown by that people whose fight 
 with the Russians in Manchuria is exciting the 
 wonder of the world at this hour. 
 
 One world at a time may be necessitated by the 
 limitations of this short human life on earth. We 
 are planted in the soil of earth, and there we must 
 grow. The conditions that belong to the life to 
 come would probably fit us no more than would 
 the life of a bird of the air suit a fish of the sea. 
 *' It doth not yet appear what we shall be," says 
 
294 Sunset Views. 
 
 the apostle John, who had seen as much of these 
 things as any one else has ever done. The all-sat- 
 isfying truth is revealed that in that life to come 
 the disciples who truly love their Lord shall be like 
 him, because *' they shall see him as he is." The 
 modes of that life, and the fullness of it, and the 
 glory of it, could no^be disclosed clearly or 
 profitably to those who are still in the body. The 
 glimpse that the apostle Paul had of the things 
 "up there " he was forbidden to reveal — perhaps 
 for this very reason the attempt to utter what he 
 saw in the language of earth would fail, and serve 
 only to bewilder and dishearten where he would 
 be glad to convey light and strength. The lan- 
 guage of earth is inadequate to describe the glories 
 of the heavenly life. The blundering and frag- 
 mentary discussion of this theme would divert into 
 unprofitable channels the activities demanded by a 
 probationary life that is very brief and whose 
 course is necessarily one of practical activities. 
 This probationary life means the *' working out 
 our salvation," with no time to lose and no 
 strength to fritter away in jabbering and wonder- 
 ing over matters that belong to another stage of 
 existence. Lazarus was three days and nights 
 somewhere in the world of spirits, but he brought 
 back no message for us. Moses, when he met the 
 Divine Presence on the mount, came back with a 
 shining face, but with no revelation beside the spe- 
 cific message with which he was charged — a mes- 
 sage that related not to the glories of heaven but 
 to the duties of earth. The meaning of all this is, 
 as it seems to me, one world at a time. The 
 teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ to his disciples 
 had to be graduated as they were able to bear 
 them. More is coming, and better. This we are 
 told, and proofs are plentiful that He that bath 
 
The Question We Are All Asking, 295 
 
 promised is faithful and able to bring it all to pass. 
 So we will watch and wait and work while it is 
 called to-day. Yes, we will wait until our change 
 comes — which change the apostle tells us (2 Cor. 
 iii. 18) will be a '*changefrom glory to glory, "good, 
 better, best. So we will take things as they come 
 here on earth. We may ** groan," being bur- 
 dened, and we are only human; but we will not 
 whine, we will not doubt, we will not complain 
 because we are called to follow the path our Mas- 
 ter trod. And we will sing out our song of joy 
 because, as Bunyan's pilgrim puts it, *' the thoughts 
 of what we are going to lie like live coals at our. 
 hearts." With the apostle Paul (Rom. v. 3-5) 
 say : *' We glory in tribulations also : knowing that 
 tribulation worketh patience; and patience, expe- 
 rience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh 
 not ashamed ; because the love of God is shed 
 abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is 
 given unto us." Read these words, so rich in 
 their meaning, so sweet to the taste, and do not be 
 afraid to rejoice in the consciousness that you 
 possess the best things here and that you are on 
 your way to the best things there — from grace to 
 glory, and from glory to glory. That word *' trib- 
 ulation " means ''thrashing," so the scholars tell 
 us. Studying these definitions in the school of ex- 
 perience, the deeper I go into their meanings the 
 more I am constrained to praise the Lord, and it 
 would be no perfunctory utterance for me to say 
 just here: Glory be to Him to whom belongs now 
 and forever the kingdom and the power and the 
 glory ! 
 
 With reverent souls let us revert to the other 
 clause of the Old Testament text with which we 
 began. The smitten king, getting ready to bury 
 out of his sight his dead child, and realizing that 
 
296 Sunset Views, 
 
 in the relation of father and child it was the last 
 of earth, said: *' I shall go to him." I shall go to 
 my child in my own identity, and meet the child 
 in its own identity. If his words do not have this 
 meaning, they mean nothing worth recording or 
 repeating. Human love is a mockery if it is to be 
 buried forever in the grave. When the apostle 
 Paul assures his sorrowing fellow-believers at 
 Thessalonica, who were mourning for their dead, 
 that " them that sleep in Jesus will God bring with 
 him" at the resurrection, can he mean less than 
 that they will be recognized when they meet? If 
 not, it was but a poor attempt to console their bro- 
 ken hearts. Elsewhere in the New Testament 
 (Luke xvi. 9) believers are exhorted to '*make to 
 themselves friends of the mammon of unrighteous- 
 ness," that the beneficiaries of their bounty might 
 welcome them *' into everlasting habitations." It 
 surely signifies that the earthly relation of giver and 
 receiver of kindness will form the basis of a rec- 
 ognition and fellowship that will gladden their ar- 
 rival and enhance their felicity in the City of God 
 forever. Christian culture intensifies and exalts 
 human affection and Christian friendship, and 
 gives to these relationships something of the sa- 
 credness and imperishability of every sweet and 
 holy thing that has been hallowed by the blessing 
 of the Lord. I know there are questions that will 
 arise that are hard to answer with regard to these 
 relationships here and there, and I have no de- 
 sire to appear to be wase above what is written ; 
 but I wish here and now solemnly yet joyfully to 
 record my belief that all the holy affections belong- 
 ing to the relationships ordained of God in this 
 earthly life will, in the essential elements that give 
 them their beauty and their blessedness, live as 
 long as God himself shall live. Thus believing. 
 
The c^uestion We Are All Asking, 297 
 
 my Christian friendships become more and more 
 precious ; and my daily prayer is, that my affection 
 which touches those in the inner circle of home 
 and kindred may be purer and wiser with the wis- 
 dom which is love, the love which will be carried 
 with us into the heaven where we shall see face 
 to face and know even as we are known, and 
 where awaits us, according to the promise of God, 
 knowledge without ignorance, power without weak- 
 ness, and love without alloy. All this I know goes 
 beyond any possible deservings of mine, but my 
 hopes are measured by the promise of the Lord. 
 
 These sunset views at Seabreeze may seem to go 
 far, but God's promise goes farther. The apostle's 
 doxology that closes the third chapter of his Epistle 
 to the Ephesians sings itself in my soul as I close 
 this chapter: **Now unto him that is able to do 
 exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or 
 think, according to the power that worketh in us, 
 unto him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus 
 throughout all ages, world without end. Amen." 
 
THE SON OF MAN. 
 
THE SON OF MAN. 
 
 THE motto for the morning prayer that sun- 
 ny Sabbath morning at Seabreeze was 
 Luke vi. 5: **And he said unto them, 
 That the Son of man is Lord also of the 
 Sabbath. " The prayer was something like 
 this: ** With adoration and praise we come before 
 thy presence, O Lord, as the Son of God, our di- 
 vine Redeemer. With sacred joy we draw nigh 
 unto thee, O Lord, as the Son of Man. Thou art 
 our blessed Immanuel, God with us in our hearts 
 and in our homes. Thou didst take upon thyself 
 our human nature, hungering and thirsting, toiling, 
 sorrowing, dying. Thou knowest our frames, and 
 rememberest that we are dust. Thou art the 
 Lord also of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is suited 
 in its design and influence to our human needs and 
 capacities. It is the Sabbath, not merely of forms, 
 but of service and help, of mercy. It is a Sab- 
 bath of light and love from the Son of Man to all 
 the children of men in all lands and throughout all 
 ages. Make it such a Sabbath to us, blessed Lord. 
 Be with us where we are ; hallow all our employ- 
 ments and devotions by thy blessing; give us, 
 above all, that which is the fulfilling of the law, and 
 be thou to us the end of the law for righteousness 
 as true believers. Son of Man, let us feel the clasp 
 of thine arms and be filled with the joy of thy 
 great salvation in this home and in all our hearts. 
 Amen." 
 
 The faces of the little company spoke the an- 
 swer that was given to the prayer. The venerable 
 
 (30O 
 
302 Sunset Views. 
 
 lady with white hair and wasted form, who had 
 been for many days a prisoner in the home, a help- 
 less cripple, had on her face the light reflected 
 from the countenance of her Lord. The toil- 
 worn, sorrow-smitten features of the little woman 
 in black at the head of the table were wet with 
 tears that spoke of tenderness and trust in the com- 
 panionship of the Son of Man, who was the man of 
 sorrows. The sister who sat near, also wearing 
 the sable color of grief, had a shining face and 
 a new light in her eye. The two visitors to Sea- 
 breeze felt, not for the first time but most sweetly, 
 that the Son of Man in the fullest, loftiest, sweet- 
 est sense of the expression was Lord also of the 
 Sabbath. 
 
 The other sister, youngest of the three, the af- 
 flicted child of the family, who was to be always a 
 child until her childhood was merged in the life to 
 come, had the look, at once pathetic in its weak- 
 ness and restful in its trust, which we may think 
 of as that which was on the faces of the little chil- 
 dren that Jesus took up in his arms and blessed 
 when he was with us in the actual bodily 
 presence. The black boy, the colored lad who 
 whistled and sang all day at his work in and 
 around the house, who always came in to the little 
 prayer service in the morning, was a little sobered 
 with that serene soberness of look that speaks of a 
 soul that gets a glimpse of the Mighty One Lord 
 who rules in righteousness, and is the Friend of 
 sinners and the Comforter who abides with his 
 people forever. 
 
OUR THREE PILLOWS. 
 
OUR THREE PILLOWS. 
 
 I HAD just received a letter from a friend who 
 is a chronic invalid, so utterly disabled by 
 sickness that he has not left his bed for many 
 months. My morning Scripture lesson was 
 the forty-first Psalm. The third verse struck 
 me with special force. The promise to a good 
 man that the Lord '' will make all his bed in sick- 
 ness" touched tenderly the heart of the writer, 
 who is acquiring an intelligent sympathy with the 
 sick in the only way by which it can come to us — 
 that is, by personal experience of the same sort. I 
 recall the remark of a dying believer many years 
 ago, who, when asked by his pastor, '* How are 
 you, sir?" said, *'My head is resting very sweet- 
 ly on three pillows — infinite love, infinite wisdom, 
 and infinite power." The thought came to me 
 that it is the same hand that makes the believer's 
 bed now, and upon the same pillows may rest the 
 weary head now as when the man of God wrote 
 this text. 
 
 Infinite love will withhold no good thing from 
 the trusting soul. It would bestow more than we 
 can ask or think. There may be vagueness in our 
 minds in the expression ** infinite love," but we 
 can look for nothing less, we can employ no nar- 
 rower terms in dealing with God. 
 
 In the next place, we are to remind ourselves 
 that infinite wisdom plans for all that infinite love 
 desires in our behalf. The wisdom of God — the 
 words suggest a breadth of meaning beyond de- 
 scription in human speech. 
 
 20 (305) 
 
3o6 Sunset Views. 
 
 In the third place, we may call to mind the fact 
 that infinite power can bring to pass all that infinite 
 love desires and all that infinite wisdom plans in 
 behalf of a trusting soul. 
 
 These are the three pillows: The love that 
 abides and abounds, the wisdom that never fails, 
 the power that saves to the uttermost. On these 
 three pillows ye may rest your heads, all ye that 
 suffer. Your needs may be great, but the re- 
 sources of your Comforter are sufficient, being in- 
 finite in their extent and eternal in their duration. 
 
BIG AB: A TYPICAL OLD-TIME NEGRO. 
 
BIG AB : A TYPICAL OLD-TIME NEGRO. 
 
 BIG AB was a typical negro of the old dis- 
 pensation. He had the size and strength 
 of a giant. He was good-natured and re- 
 ligious after a most cheerful sort. He af- 
 fected big words. In polemics he was 
 especially strong. He quoted Scripture abundant- 
 ly, though some of his texts would scarcely recog- 
 nize themselves as presented by him. He stood 
 high in the esteem of his own people, who admired 
 him for his physical prowess and for his stilted vo- 
 cabulary. He was honest through and through 
 and truthful to the core, albeit he was overfond 
 of superlatives. He had an ax for his own par- 
 ticular use that was larger than any wielded by 
 any other man on the plantation, and he had no 
 equal among them as a wood chopper. 
 
 I am just able to remember Big Ab's excite- 
 ment at the time of the Nat Turner insurrection in 
 Virginia. It was reported that Turner was at the 
 head of fourteen hundred negroes at the crossing 
 of Dan River at sunset, and might be expected to 
 reach our place, about eight miles distant, within 
 two or three hours. The report said that they 
 were killing everybody and burning everything as 
 they came. Taking his big ax. Big Ab climbed 
 to the roof of the corncrib facing up the stage 
 road in the direction whence Turner and his fol- 
 lowers were expected, saying: ** I'd like to see 
 any of dem niggers tech ole marster!" 
 
 The dusky giant was fully persuaded that, 
 
 (309) 
 
3IO Sunset Views. 
 
 armed as he was with his huge weapon, he could 
 repel a whole army of assailants. The alarm 
 proved to be false. Nat Turner got his quietus 
 long before he reached Dan River and the North 
 Carolina line. But had he come, he would have 
 found Big Ab ready to fight for his ole marster, 
 and willing to die for him if needful. Ole Mars- 
 ter was my great-uncle, James Powell; Big Ab's 
 full name was Abner Powell, according to the 
 fashion then prevailing where the patriarchal in- 
 stitution of *' domestic involuntary servitude " ex- 
 isted. 
 
 On another occasion very distinctly remembered 
 by me Big Ab exhibited a very natural excitement. 
 It was at the so-called "falling of the stars," 
 which took place in the fall or winter of eighteen 
 hundred and thirty something. I am not good on 
 dates, but that event has a very distinct place in 
 my recollection. 
 
 '* Look, Mistis!" said Aunt Ailsie, bursting into 
 my mother's room in terror; "look! de stars is 
 all falling from de sky ! De day of judgment is 
 come!" Aunt Ailsie was Big Ab's amazonian 
 black sister, and was of the same type of honesty 
 and faithfulness. I shall never forget the meteoric 
 display I witnessed that night. It seemed, to use 
 the language of a spectator who attempted to de- 
 scribe it, as if a great globe in midheaven had 
 burst into ten thousand times ten thousand glitter- 
 ing fragments that were flying in all directions 
 across the firmament. I have never witnessed any 
 other spectacle that equaled this in splendor; nor 
 do I expect to see anything like it until the com- 
 ing of the great day, when the elements shall melt 
 with fervent heat, the sun and moon be darkened, 
 and the dead, both small and great, stand before 
 God in the final judgment. And what a night 
 
Big Ab : A Typical Old- Time JVegro. 311 
 
 those black folks made of it! They sang, they 
 prayed, they exhorted, they shouted, they wept. 
 Big Ab was in his glory. He exhorted grandly, 
 and was particularly impressive in rolling forth 
 ponderous words that sounded like inspiration to 
 that excited audience. His faith was strong, and 
 he had lungs to match. 
 
 During the Civil War Big Ab remained where he 
 was when it began, pursuing the even tenor of his 
 way, and giving his labor for the support of the 
 family to which he belonged. Doubtless he watched 
 the course of the struggle with the deepest interest, 
 knowing how much he had staked upon the result. 
 As in most human actions, his motives werotmixed : 
 family affection, the prudence demanded by one 
 in his place at a time when the white folks of all 
 parts of our country were shooting at one anoth- 
 er, made it a ticklish and perilous time for non- 
 combatants of all sorts. In this respect Big Ab 
 was a typical black man. The great body of the 
 negroes in the South remained where they were 
 on the farms, and worked in the fields for the sup- 
 port of the Southern armies, protecting the women 
 and children whose husbands, brothers, and sons 
 were there enrolled. There is nothing like this in 
 the history of the world. The remembrance of it 
 makes a hopeful factor in the present outlook with 
 reference to the race problem in these Southern 
 States. 
 
 After the war Big Ab accepted his freedom and 
 became a preacher of the Primitive Baptist per- 
 suasion. He had the confidence and good will of 
 the white people who knew his character, and 
 among his own people of color he was an oracle. 
 His sermons were homiletic gems, dealing in high- 
 wrought figures, occult symbolism with big words 
 remarkable for their melodiousness, if not for their 
 
312 Sunset Views. 
 
 lucidity. Speaking of him as a preacher, anothel 
 colored minister of the gospel was quoted as put- 
 ting his aspirations as follows: *' Hang our jaws 
 on de hinges of heaven, our tongues on de root of 
 salvation, and we'll mount de milk-white horse of 
 de gospel, and sail away to Galilee." 
 
 " Yes, that is Big Ab's style," was the answer; 
 ** and he can go on in that style interminably, 
 without break or pause." 
 
 Big Ab, when last heard from, was a notable 
 preacher of wholesome influence among his peo- 
 ple. His creed includes the Ten Commandments, 
 his rhetoric is guided by good sense in its most 
 flowery flights, his voice resembles melodious 
 thunder, while his mighty physique makes him the 
 king of the pulpit, as he was of the ** new ground " 
 when wielding his big ax as a wood chopper on 
 the old plantation. In calling him a typical black 
 man, I designedly seek to throw the light of hope 
 on the future of the negro race in the South. This 
 is said in the belief that there are a sufficient num- 
 ber of his type in these States to leaven the huge 
 mass of these black people who came to their free- 
 dom in the midst of the most complex conditions, 
 but with enough of the gospel of Christ in their 
 souls to light their way through the wilderness to 
 whatever promised land they are bound for. Big 
 Ab is worth whole acres of the class of politicians 
 of whatever color who make graft the object of 
 their highest ambition and look to a Federal office 
 as the climax of human aspiration and endeavor. 
 
ANOTHER QUESTION ALL ARE ASKING 
 WHEN AND WHY DID MIRACLES 
 CEASE? 
 
ANOTHER QUESTION ALL ARE ASKING: WHEN 
 AND WHY DID MIRACLES CEASE ? 
 
 WHEN and why did miracles cease? 
 We cannot help asking this question. 
 Wishing to get the right answer to it, 
 I consulted anew the commentaries: 
 they differed one from another, 'the 
 wisest among them saying the least. I inquired of 
 living friends of my own and other communions: 
 their answers would make a curious study for any 
 student of human nature. The last two persons 
 to whom I addressed this inquiry were doctors of 
 divinity and exegetical experts who stood as high 
 as the highest. Their answers made me smile as 
 I read them. They were both to the same effect. 
 They did not say explicitly: "We do not know." 
 They had been teachers in a biblical school, and 
 were not in the habit of parading their limitations 
 before the gaze of others, however keenly felt by 
 themselves. One said in substance: "Give me 
 time, and I ma)^ send you some sort of an answer 
 to your question; it is not a new question, its im- 
 portance cannot be denied, and I wish to speak 
 advisedly." I gave him time, but he has not yet 
 given me an answer. I do not think less favor- 
 ably of him because of his delay. The other doc- 
 tor of divinity said: " Give me time, and I will 
 answer if I can. It seems harder for me to find a 
 satisfactory reply now than it did when my years 
 were fewer and my reading more restricted." 
 Both of these brethren are still taking their time. 
 
 (3'5) 
 
3i6 Sunset Views. 
 
 Blessings on their cautious, honest souls! They 
 feel that it is better to be silent than to talk at ran- 
 dom or to risk saying what might harm the cause 
 of truth. If anybody should remind me that their 
 example was a good one for me to follow in this 
 matter, I will not take offense. For many years 
 whenever I have thought that I had something to- 
 say to my people, I have been in the habit of say- 
 ing it by word of mouth or scratch of the pen. 
 The sort of answer that I offer here will be ac- 
 cepted as well meant by the kindly constituency 
 for whom it has been prepared. 
 
 The question is. When and why did miracles 
 cease? What I have to say will be given to the 
 reader as it has been given to me. 
 
 Let us at the start define what a miracle is as 
 the word is used in our question. A miracle is a 
 work above the ordinary course of nature wrought 
 by supernatural power to authenticate a messenger 
 or message from God. False miracles are imita- 
 tions of these real miracles, and are dangerous ac- 
 cording to the measure of their resemblance to the 
 genuine. That there is a kingdom of evil antag- 
 onizing the kingdom of God in the earth is clear- 
 ly taught in the Bible, and much that we meet 
 with in human history and in the life that touches 
 our lives to-day can be accounted for rationally 
 and logically in no other way than by the accept- 
 ance of this strange and awful fact. Read Luke 
 X. 17-20 and John xii. 31. The mysteries belong- 
 ing to this matter of Satanic existence and Satanic 
 influence are confessedly great; but not greater 
 than the mystery enveloping this entire question of 
 a spiritual sphere that touches this in which we 
 now live and move and have our being. If we re- 
 ject whatever we find in the Holy Scriptures that 
 transcends our comprehension, we shall at once 
 
When and Why Did Miracles Cease? 317 
 
 find ourselves breathing the cold, deadly miasm of 
 unbelief. Our religion is supernatural from first 
 to last, and therefore more credible, if not more 
 comprehensible, as coming from God. His is the 
 kingdom, and the power, and the glory. He will 
 reign whose right it is. The gospel of Christ is 
 the Aaron's rod that swallows up all the inferior 
 and false systems of religion, so called, whether 
 the product of Satanic influence or the offspring 
 of human folly, that now darken the counsels of 
 our race. 
 
 Miracles, in the sense in which they are herein 
 considered, have never been turned over to men 
 as a field to be worked according to their own im- 
 pulses, whims, or desires. They made bare the 
 Almighty arm at proper times. They spoke God's 
 voice in due season. When man would intrude 
 into this sphere uncalled and unguided, it is to 
 meet the shadow of his impending doom like the 
 kingly but evil-spirited Saul at Gilboa, or to be 
 stricken with retributive lightning like Ahab when 
 he sought a message from the false prophets whom 
 God had not sent, and were ready to prophesy 
 unto him the lie that he wanted. The false heart 
 invites the false prophet, and the false prophet is 
 the ready messenger of the father of lies. True 
 miracles come under the law that all things in the 
 spiritual sphere are as truly under the law as in the 
 natural world. The pretended miracle workers 
 who would evade this law invite the confusion and 
 disaster that overtake them. There are entire peo- 
 ples now existing typified by the man who went 
 out from the prophet's presence leprous as snow 
 because he had forsaken the oracles of God and 
 listened to lying spirits. Some of these peoples, 
 we may hope, are ready for the healing touch of 
 the Christ; all the fitness he requires is that they 
 
31 8 Sunset Views. 
 
 feel their need of him. He is ready, and they 
 will be ready in that day of his power, which is 
 dawning. He will push this work to the comple- 
 tion promised in the assurance that *' He must 
 reign until he hath put all enemies under his feet." 
 He must reign whose right it is. It is a moral 
 necessity that he shall not stop short of this blessed 
 consummation. How deep is the meaning of the 
 words, " He shall see of the travail of his souU 
 and shall be satisfied!" (Isa. liii. ii.) What 
 satisfies Him will leave no room for complaint in 
 these sensitive hearts of ours, endowed with capac- 
 ity for loving with a love that is stronger than 
 death and as lasting as our being. That word 
 *' satisfied" is large enough for us all as children 
 of God and heirs of God and joint heirs with 
 Christ to the inheritance that is undefiled and be- 
 yond the possibility of defilement, crowned with 
 the quality of indestructibility and incapable of 
 diminution. 
 
 In no true sense of the word can it be said that 
 God has ceased to govern and guide in every 
 truest, highest, and best sense of the word this 
 world that he hath created and redeemed. We 
 can say as truly as did the Psalmist: '* The Lord 
 reigneth : let the earth rejoice." 
 
 In the special sense in which the word is here 
 used miracles did cease when the gospel dispensa- 
 tion under which we live was fully inaugurated. 
 The miracle of miracles is that gospel in its sources 
 and its agencies. 
 
 The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the 
 miracle of all miracles. It is the best-attested fact 
 in the history of the human race. That which was 
 universal and abiding took the place of that which 
 was local and transient. The miraculous birth, 
 personal ministry, sacrificial death with attending; 
 
When and Why Did Miracles Cease? 319 
 
 wonders and portents, the resurrection on the 
 third day, were facts authenticated beyond cavil by 
 living witnesses sufficient in number and in char- 
 acter combined to make a mass of *' infallible 
 proofs " too strong to be resisted and relating to 
 interests too important to be neglected by rational 
 souls to whom they might be made known. 
 
 The next thing to be done was to go into all the 
 world and preach this gospel as summed up in its 
 meaning and claims, its duties and its hopes, in 
 these two words: Jesus and the Resurrection. 
 Christianity means this; with its correlated facts 
 and results, means everything. The resurrection 
 of Jesus proved all that he had taught, authenti- 
 cated all the wonders he had wrought, and guar- 
 anteed all that he had promised. " Go and preach 
 the gospel, and I will be with you always, even 
 unto the end of the world," was his command to his 
 •apostles, and through them to their successors. It 
 had now come to pass that which is declared by 
 the apostle Paul (Eph. i. 10), "That in the dispen- 
 sation of the fullness of times he might gather to- 
 gether in one all things in Christ.". The reader 
 sees whither our argument leads. The miracle of 
 the resurrection, all-significant, all-embracing, this 
 transcendent miracle proven and proclaimed, your 
 minor miracles, that were significant and valuable 
 only as they led to this, sink into disuse and 
 vanish. 
 
 The great correlated fact of the gospel is that of 
 the Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in 
 a fullness and power that made it the practical in- 
 itiation of the new dispensation. The Lord's 
 command to his disciples was that they should not 
 depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of 
 the Father. When that promise was fulfilled, 
 Christianity was launched for its voyage that 
 
320 * Sunset Views. 
 
 would end on the millennial shore. The fulfill- 
 ment is recorded by one who knew the ** infallible 
 proofs," and who bears testimony that carries its 
 proof on its face, proof that has stood, and will al- 
 ways stand, all tests that are fair and sane. Read 
 the account as given in the first and second chap- 
 ters of the Acts of the Apostles. Read prayerful- 
 ly and plead the promise as you read. 
 
 Put with this the perpetual miracle of interces- 
 sory prayer which is being enacted by the living 
 Church, which is the depository of the truth as it 
 is in Jesus and the instrument of its propagation. 
 Read in Matthew xviii. 19, 20 the gracious prom- 
 ise: ** Again I say unto you, That if two of you 
 shall agree on earth as touching anything that they 
 shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father 
 which is in heaven. For where two or three are 
 gathered together in my name, there am I in the 
 midst of them." 
 
 That Presence in the midst is what God's peo- 
 ple would naturally wish to be true. This Pres- 
 ence in the midst is that which, being true, is the 
 perpetual miracle that supersedes minor tokens of 
 God's goodness and attests to each generation 
 that this gospel is the power of God unto salva- 
 tion. 
 
 There is the promise and its fulfillment. The 
 writer of this attempt to .answer the questions 
 herein propounded feels the fires of the Pentecost 
 burning in his soul as he pens these lines on the 
 7th day of February in the year of our Lord 
 1905. As a young man, he has had his visions; 
 as an old man, he is having his dreams. The 
 Pentecost came to stay. It is here, flaming in 
 holy spiritual fires in Wales, speaking with its 
 tongues of fire in Colorado, kmdling its light in 
 Japan, and working wonders prefigured by these 
 
When and Why Did Miracles Cease? 321 
 
 material symbols of the events that shall accom- 
 pany the final victory of the gospel of Christ. 
 Whenever, wherever, and forever whosoever shall 
 call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Here 
 it is (John xvi. 7) : ** It is expedient for you that I 
 go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will 
 not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send 
 him unto you." 
 
 There is the answer. It is the reincarnation of 
 the Son of God in every believing heart. The 
 mystery of it we cannot explain. The joy of it 
 we can feel. The glory of it in its final issues we 
 can share. 
 
LED BY THE SPIRIT. 
 
LED BY THE SPIRIT. 
 
 THIS sentiment has had a large place in my 
 thought, a special place in my prayers, and 
 a powerful influence on my life for many 
 years. The New Testament authority for 
 praying to be led by the Holy Spirit seems 
 to be explicit. The type of piety developed under 
 this view has always seemed to be clear and strong. 
 It fills a human life with glory and with God. Thus 
 Paul believed and spoke. Thus Wesley believed 
 and spoke. Thus have believed and spoken all 
 the men who have brought things to pass in the 
 history of the Church. This is a solemn and 
 lofty thought: no degree of familiarity can make 
 it otherwise. Led is the word. The walling soul 
 gets the blessing. The blessing is offered to no 
 other. Willingness to be led implies that the soul 
 is pivoted on the divine will. The prayer of the 
 disciple who would be led by his Lord is this: 
 '*Thy will be done." What does it mean to be 
 led just as I am and where I am? Let us see. 
 
 I seat myself at my writing table, take pen, ink, 
 and paper with a wish in my heart to obey that 
 command which requires that a believer shall *'be 
 willing to communicate." To whom shall I write? 
 What shall I write? Does the Holy Spirit have 
 any function herein? Surely, surely! At this 
 very table on which I am now writing I have sat 
 down many a time with this prayer to be led in the 
 use of my pen, and my thoughts have taken a 
 special direction, the objects of my prayer have 
 been made to stand out graciously clear, and the 
 
 (325) 
 
326 Sunset Views, 
 
 very stationery on which I have traced the words 
 that have come to me has seemed to be suffused 
 with a heavenly light. From somewhere came a 
 tenderness, a glow, and a sacred joy then and 
 there. 
 
 This very day, after I had been meditating on 
 this subject with an intense desire to get the right 
 view of it, and a purpose fixed and strong to be led 
 according to the promise, I visited one of our 
 bishops, a sufferer who had been led to meditate 
 on this same subject. He is a strong thinker, 
 having the learning of the schools, and is a sweet- 
 toned disciple of Jesus. We were led — so it 
 seemed to me with a mighty joy in my soul — to 
 exchange our thoughts on this subject of being 
 led by the Spirit of the Lord. Then we bowed 
 our heads and united in a prayer of thanksgiving 
 for the blessedness of the fellowship we had with 
 our Lord and with each other. The coincidences 
 of our communion were not by chance : led is the 
 word. 
 
 In Nashville I had a friend and neighbor who 
 was a chronic sufferer, a man once of buoyant 
 animal spirits and large estate, who had lost his 
 property and wrecked his health. One day in 
 connection with his name a passage of Scripture 
 came to my mind with a very vivid impression that 
 I should without delay make him a visit. Under 
 this impression I went to his house — and found 
 him dying. I delivered to him the message I had 
 brought from his Lord, and at his bedside offered 
 a prayer which had its inspiration in that message 
 of God to his suffering child. The message, the 
 subject thereof, the time of its suggestion, and of 
 its delivery — as it now seems to me there was lead- 
 ing at ever}^ step. 
 
 On another day in Nashville some colored Meth- 
 
Led by the Spirit, 327 
 
 odists asked me to be present at the closing exer- 
 cises of one of their colleges. They sent a car- 
 riage for me, and I went, straining a point in doing 
 so, as it was at a time when my bodily weakness 
 was extreme. It was borne in upon me that, in- 
 stead of attempting the usual sort of speech for 
 such occasions, I should talk about faith as the 
 condition of salvation for the souls of men. This 
 took the place of everything else. I spoke under 
 a solemn sense of the divine presence, as it seemed 
 to me. In the plainest way I sought to interpret 
 some New Testament teachings on that subject, 
 and ended with the relation of my own personal 
 experience concerning it. A full heart ran over 
 with its message. On a front seat I noticed one 
 of the students, a tall black man, who was one of 
 the expected graduates in the law department. 
 With an expression of intense eagerness on his 
 face he leaned forward and listened until I reached 
 the point where I defined faith to be choice, and 
 described when and how I first proved this to be 
 true by my own actual choice of Christ as I knelt 
 a penitent at the altar of the church in a revival of 
 the old times. At that point a new light spread 
 over his face; he rose to his feet, and, ascending 
 the platform, he grasped my hand warmly, and 
 said: "Bishop Fitzgerald, your talk has made a 
 channel by which I have found Jesus Christ as my 
 Saviour. I have made the choice, and found ac- 
 ceptance." 
 
 It was as clear a conversion as I ever saw. The 
 scene that followed was unlike what is usually ex- 
 pected on such occasions. A noted visitor from 
 the North looked on with evident wonder, while 
 the colored preachers, who were there in force, 
 sang of "the old-time religion" with that match- 
 less melody that is in the voice when the soul is 
 
328 Sunset Views, 
 
 touched and led by the Lord. Led: it was what 
 we all felt then and there. 
 
 Many years ago I had it in my heart to write a 
 treatise on the Christian life. In a circle of kindly 
 friends my purpose so to do was bruited: several 
 of these, having different shades of opinion there- 
 on themselves, suggested to me that in the proposed 
 treatise I should take the opportunity to give a defi- 
 nition of holiness as it is taught in the New Testa- 
 ment. I felt a natural desire to make such a deliv- 
 erance, and to put it in such form and spirit as 
 would make it a blessing to my readers. The de- 
 liverance was made. It was inthfese words: '*The 
 Sun of Righteousness never sets: it shines for- 
 ever; and on the soul turned toward it in faith its 
 beams will fall forever. This is holiness. This is 
 the new life that is new forever." Here and now 
 I am led to say the same thing. 
 
JOHN M. DANIEL AND SOME OF HIS 
 CONTEMPORARIES. 
 
JOHN M. DANIEL AND SOME OF HIS CON- 
 TEMPORARIES. 
 
 THE entrance of John M. Daniel into the 
 editorial ranks was like turning an electric 
 eel into a fish pond. In his Richmond tri- 
 weekly Exmniner what a shaking-up* he 
 gave to their dullness and dignity ! When 
 he wrote of the opposition he dipped his pen in 
 aqua fortis. He could not always resist the temp- 
 tation to put into the pillory a fellow-partisan who 
 seemed disposed to make himself ridiculous. The 
 average free white American citizen likes this sort 
 of thing. Many a steady-going party man stole a 
 furtive glance at the Examiner to see who was the 
 last man that had been *' blistered " in its columns. 
 The paper was neither amiable nor dull. John C. 
 Calhoun was its tutelar political saint. The reso- 
 lutions of 1798-99 were regarded by it as the final 
 expression of political wisdom. The echoes of 
 Andrew Jackson were still in the air, and people 
 were then naming many bab,ies for that irascible 
 and invincible warrior who was always ready for 
 a scrap and whose name is still a spell to rouse 
 the faithful. Party journalism was then in its 
 blossoming time in this free-spoken land. " Old 
 Father Ritchie " was at the head of the Richmond 
 Enquirer, wherein he expounded the doctrines of 
 Thomas Jefferson, and warmly insisted that, as 
 *' eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," a true 
 disciple of State rights must vote early and. at ev- 
 ery election. George D. Prentice was making 
 the Louisville Journal the vehicle for uncompli- 
 
 (330 
 
332 Sunset Views, 
 
 mentary allusions to the political adversary and 
 getting much enjoyment from the squirmings and 
 bellowings of the baited bulls of the partisan arena. 
 Now and then he dropped into verse, singing songs 
 that still linger in some circles. Colonel Greene, 
 of the Boston Post^ was putting into his para- 
 graphs a spiciness that made the very victims of 
 his satire enjoy it. Gales and Seaton were mak- 
 ing the old Raleigh Register ah arsenal for the 
 storage of political ammunition, Daniel Webster 
 and Henry Clay being the interpreters of the con- 
 stitution whom they followed. William W. Holden 
 expounded strict construction theories of govern- 
 ment and passionately exhorted for State rights 
 in the Raleigh Standard^ making a record which 
 was used afterwards by Zeb Vance in a way that 
 caused him to feel that all was vanity. Charles 
 Napoleon Bonaparte Evans, in the little but lively 
 Milton Chronicle, was poking fun at the Demo- 
 crats and in other ways tickling the borders of 
 North Carolina and Virginia with an audacity that 
 nothing halted and a good humor that was " catch- 
 ing" with all sorts of readers. George W. Ken- 
 dall was making the New Orleans Picayune as 
 benign as a circuit rider and as bright as a coin of 
 that denomination fresh from the mint. The 
 Southern Literary Messenger, intensely patriotic 
 and a little ponderous, was, through John R. 
 Thompson, telling its readers what they ought to 
 do just then in behalf of Southern literature. 
 Young and enthusiastic, with the optimism of in- 
 experience and high health, Robert H. Glass, 
 through the Lynchburg Refuhlican, was winning 
 his spurs in the advocacy of the views that in the 
 South became more and more pronounced as the 
 cataclysm drew nigher and still nigher until it got 
 here in the sixties. 
 
John Af. Daniel, 333 
 
 Just at this time in the current periodicals would 
 appear at short intervals something in prose or 
 verse so unlike anything else that was coming out, 
 so weird and so exquisite in the music of its peri- 
 ods, that the writer, one Edgar Allan Poe, was 
 charged with lunacy or genius by the inquisitive 
 literary public. He was getting a hearing at least; 
 his critics thought he would bear watching and 
 needed rigid censorship. It was inevitable that 
 Daniel and Poe should meet; each had something 
 to say and said it in his own w^ay. They regarded 
 each other at first with lawful curiosity, then with 
 a sort of presentiment that they were to hold rela- 
 tions of special friendliness toward each other and 
 work together for the cause of liberty and letters 
 in the South. They were a notable pair. I have 
 described Poe elsewhere.* Daniel's features were 
 as clear-cut as a cameo, his dark eyes lighting up 
 his classic face, his thin lips compressed after a 
 fashion that revealed a man who could think and 
 who loved to have his own way. In the regular 
 issues of his Examiner he badgered and buffeted 
 the old Whig Congressman, John Minor Botts, in 
 a way that was scarcely fair and yet was amusing 
 to the average Virginian of that day of oratorical 
 ponderosity and voluminous printed disquisition 
 from men who felt inclined toward statesmanship 
 and office-holding. Such men were not scarce in 
 Virginia or other parts of the South at that time. 
 Patriotism was never tongue-tied with the descend- 
 ants of Patrick Henry and his compatriots. In 
 California in the early days if in any mining camp 
 there was one local politician who could make a 
 speech at short notice, that man was apt to be a 
 Virginian or an Irishman. The traditions of Vir- 
 
 *See Harrison's "Life and Letters of Poe," vol. i, p. 316. — Ed. 
 
334 Sunset Views. 
 
 ginia and Ireland are friendly to that sort of thing 
 from away back. One of Daniel's associates was 
 a notability of the Patrick Henry clan — Patrick 
 Henry A34ette, of King William County, a man 
 giantlike in physical dimensions, who knew some 
 law and much politics, who wrote for the Exam- 
 iner, who interested himself personally in Poe and 
 Dani-el, and whose animal spirits and good temper 
 never failed. I knew two others of this same Henry 
 family who were alike noted for their gigantic 
 size — Capt. Nat. Henry and 'Squire Spottswood 
 Henry by name. The former was a cross between 
 Lord Chesterfield and Dr. Samuel Johnson; he 
 was ruffled and perfumed like the one, and had a 
 vocabulary and magnificently rolling diction like 
 the other. After running through with a large es- 
 tate, he served his fellow-citizens in the Dan River 
 valley as a schoolmaster. Blessings on his memory ! 
 To hear him talk, and recite to him, was like tak- 
 ing a postgraduate course in the urbanities. Plis 
 manners bore the genuine colonial stamp, and he 
 had at some former period of his life absorbed a 
 whole library of information suited to a country 
 gentleman who had leisure and means. The other 
 brother, 'Squire Spottswood Henry, was almost as 
 fluent in speech and massive in dimensions. 
 
 Those boys of the old days who were reared in 
 the country, who learned to ride on horseback 
 earlier than they could remember, and could 
 handle a fishing-pole and ** tote " a gun before 
 they could cipher as far as the single rule of three, 
 were big all over and strong all through. Longev- 
 ity was the rul-e with them. Specialists in medical 
 science had not invented so many diseases and 
 their remedies at that time, and indoor athletics 
 had not been so generally adopted as a substitute 
 for the open air. 
 
John M, Daniel. 335 
 
 Daniel invented special epithets to describe the 
 ** Bison," as he called Botts, the loud-voiced and 
 free-thinking patriot above alluded to, and man- 
 aged to make all references to him more pictur- 
 esque than favorable. The Richmond Whig yN2i^ 
 at that time the brilliant metropolitan organ of a 
 minority party, except that from time to. time a 
 wave of reform, so-called, v^ould sweep over the 
 commonwealth, astonishing both parties by a re- 
 versal of majorities, burying old party leaders and 
 bringing new men to the front. The Whig was 
 edited by John Hampden Pleasants, aparagrapher 
 like Henry Watterson, who could run into a two- 
 column disquisition concerning any man or ques- 
 tion he cared for on the shortest notice. Clay and 
 Webster still so dominated their party that the or- 
 thodoxy of the paper was measured by its agree- 
 ment with the policies they stood for. Whenever 
 a hostile head appeared, the Examiner y^di^ ready 
 to hit it. The Young South, of which it was the 
 champion, was combative and alert, not lacking in 
 self-confidence, believing that it had found the so- 
 lution of all political difficulties in the democracy 
 that guarded minority rights with special courage 
 and vigilance on the one hand and held fast to 
 hereditary compromises on the other. Poe was 
 drawn into affiliation with this element, and made 
 the Examiner the channel of communication with 
 the South just as it was awakening to literary con- 
 sciousness and getting a glimpse of its possibilities 
 in letters and statecraft all its own. Had Poe 
 lived, who knows what might have been done by 
 him in this field? 
 
 Blossoming time for the editorial fraternity in 
 this part of our country is the phrase I have used, 
 and it seems to me to be well chosen. Dr. Leroy 
 M. Lee was making a militant organ of the Rich- 
 
33<^ Sunset Views. 
 
 mond Christian Advocate. He was a contro- 
 versialist who used good English and believed in 
 experimental religion as taught by the fathers of 
 Methodism. In the Christian Advocate and Jour- 
 nal the elder Dr. Bond was demonstrating that or- 
 thodoxy was not a synonym for dullness, rallying 
 the faithful and routing the enemy in his weekly 
 issues. Dr. J. B. Jeter, in the Religious Herald^ 
 a big man who knew books and had a good opin- 
 ion of the world he lived in, was giving the Bap- 
 tists an organ that had breadth and depth and did 
 not lack denominational zeal. McTyeire, Deems, 
 Wightman, Doggett, Keener, Capers, Gillespie, 
 Myers, and Parker were coming on, the blossom- 
 ing of their genius showing itself already in the 
 journalism of the Church and elsewhere. What 
 these men wrote runs through the literature of 
 their Church like veins of gold through ledges of 
 quartz. I do not know that Dr. John E. Edwards 
 ever edited anything, but I do know that this mar- 
 velous declaimer was not averse to seeing his views 
 in print over his own signature. A marvelous de- 
 claimer he was! "There are in these United 
 States of America two great declaimers, Rufus 
 Choate and John E. Edwards — and the greater of 
 the twain is the preacher" — so said a well-known 
 politician from the North after hearing Edwards 
 in the pulpit. Here was a pulpit eagle that soared 
 and shined of a truth. The sympathetic reader 
 will understand how it is that Edwards's name ap- 
 pears among those of these editors:, he belonged 
 to their period, and was a man of genius, a North 
 Carolinian who was never spoiled by popularity 
 and who never lost the glow that he caught as a 
 boy converted to God in the Rockingham hills. 
 The English Bible gave him his style, and the 
 Holy Spirit gave him the touch of power. 
 
SUNSET VIEWS FROM MY BEDROOM 
 WINDOW. 
 
 22 
 
SUNSET VIEWS FROM MY BEDROOM WINDOW. 
 
 THE sunset view from my bedroom window 
 shows me a world that excites at once my 
 wonder and pity and calls to mind the 
 heaven of infinite blessedness revealed to 
 my faith. Compassion for the world in 
 its sorrow and pain is awakened whenever my 
 gaze is turned in that direction. A mighty joy 
 comes down into my soul w^henever my sunset 
 view takes in the promise and the hope of the 
 heaven revealed to my understanding by the Word 
 of God and certified to my glad heart by the Holy 
 Spirit. The pity that weeps over the sorrows of 
 earth, the rapture that is felt in anticipation of 
 what heaven discloses to my sunset view — these 
 are emotions that mingl'e in my soul as I look out 
 of my window. Looking forth upon the world as 
 it is, I feel that I might be glad to recover some 
 part of the strength that was mine at an earlier 
 day and help to lift some of its burden of sorrow. 
 I look upward to the sky that bends above these 
 Tennessee hills and feel a mighty drawing toward 
 its blessed mysteries. Those mysteries: they lie 
 so close to us here, and yet are so fascinating to 
 us because of this very fact that they are myste- 
 ries. We were thus endowed at the start; our 
 nature is whetted in its capacity and passion for 
 the progress which will be a factor in our felicity 
 forever. 
 
 Looking out of my window southerly the mod- 
 est spire of the Blakemore Chapel comes to view; 
 here the people called Methodists meet and wor- 
 
 (339) 
 
340 Sunset Views. 
 
 ship and work to help one another on to glory and 
 to God. As I look with good wishes in my heart, 
 from the Vanderbilt University campus just behind 
 me rings a bell which betokens something special 
 for that company of persons who study and teach, 
 who believe in God as creator and at the same 
 time believe in him as their Father in heaven. 
 Methodism was born in a university. The genu- 
 ine type of Methodism goes everywhere. Its best 
 type illustrates the well-attested truth that genuine 
 scholarship has an affinity with true religion. Ig- 
 norance is the mother, not of devotion, but of the 
 credulity which invites deception on the one hand, 
 and of the bigotry which prompts persecution on 
 the other. The Methodism presented to my sunset 
 view awakens fresh gratitude for what it has done 
 in the past and evokes a prayer warm from my in- 
 most soul that it may be true to itself and to God 
 for all time to come. 
 
 My sunset view rests at times upon the new 
 Roman Catholic school edifice that crowns the 
 highest point of the hill that rises southward. That 
 site might well have been foreordained for some 
 public institution. Our Roman Catholic friends 
 are not the only people that have a way of work- 
 ing strenuously for the fulfillment of divine prom- 
 ises as interpreted by themselves. They see no 
 need that faith and works shall be divorced. A 
 defective interpretation at this point has made the 
 trouble for all concerned. The attempt to make 
 a worldly kingdom of the Church was against 
 Christ's express command. " My kingdom," he 
 said, "is not of this world." In proportion as 
 you put the world into the Church, just in the 
 same proportion do you dim the Church's glory 
 and diminish its power. Europe is unlearning its 
 errors, and retracing its steps in this connection. 
 
Sunset Views from My Bedroom Window, 341 
 
 In our New World here in America we hope to 
 escape the mistakes made over there, and to keep 
 the peace while we shun the wrong. Our Lord 
 Jesus Christ tells us that his followers should all 
 be one even as he and his Father are one. (See 
 John xvii. 21.) That saying covers this whole 
 question. That which he has promised he will 
 surely bring to pass. So we will put our trust in 
 him, and be patient. We will live and let live. 
 The trend of our times is toward that toleration 
 which is the basis of that unity which will be gen- 
 uine and lasting. Thus nearly all of us feel in 
 these United States. The exceptions are fewer 
 from year to year: the dissenters grow less and 
 less formidable. At this point comes in my short 
 creed: *' I love everybody in the world — some 
 more than others." Most of my readers will 
 agree to this. Let us all who so profess make 
 sure that we give each clause of this creed its full 
 weight in the application of it. The sunset view 
 from my bedroom takes in its sweep a unified 
 Christianity. 
 
 Looking out of my window, the charred and 
 blackened walls of Roger Williams University, 
 lately destroyed by fire, meet my gaze. Roger 
 Williams University, my readers know, is the 
 school for our colored neighbors. Blessings on 
 these black believers ! They are not yet out of 
 the wilderness. None of us are out of the wil- 
 derness in the fullest sense of the word. But 
 the Promised Land awaits us all if we do not 
 willfully turn backward. God knew what he was 
 doing when he allowed the negro problem to be 
 transferred from Africa to America. He knew 
 these Southern people, with whom the negro's 
 lot was specially cast. He knew that, with 
 all their faults, these Southerners had their full 
 
342 Sunset Views. 
 
 share of the magnanimity and patience required 
 for the transition stages of advancement for a race 
 that was belated in the start. I feel like prophe- 
 sying, not smooth things but great things. Some 
 follies have already been exploded ; some persons 
 are wiser than they were in the North and the 
 South, in the East and the West. The old land- 
 marks abide. The golden rule, lifted up in these 
 troubled waters, sheds its light in. the midst of the 
 darkness. There is more common sense in the 
 interpretation of this rule, and not less of the spirit 
 of the Christ who came to seek and to save us all. 
 The negro question will be settled finally in a way 
 that will be pleasing to God, who is the God of all 
 the families of the earth. While this is being 
 done, the work of doing it will be educative to the 
 white people of the United States, who, with all 
 their acquirements, have yet much to learn. Cyn- 
 icism and misanthropy on the one hknd, and fanat- 
 icism in all its phases, will be equally at a discount. 
 Patriotism with a good heart — religion with good 
 sense — will work together for us all. The best is 
 yet to come for us all. 
 
 The sunset view of the landscape from my bed- 
 room window never tires. It has a charm all its 
 own for every day in the year, and a special charm 
 for each of the four seasons. This view begins 
 in beauty and ends in glory. Sloping up from 
 the valley are the nearer hills, varying in their out- 
 hnes and covered with oak, hickory, poplar, and 
 all the varied growth of the Tennessee woods. 
 Beyond and above these rise the two bluish peaks 
 that never lose their charm for me. They speak 
 to me in the language of Nature, and I listen with 
 a satisfaction that is never lost. Above these hills 
 is the sky — the heavens that declare the glory of 
 God, the firmament that shows his handiwork. 
 
Sunset Views from My Bedroom Window. 343 
 
 The glory of God is the supreme glory. Atheism 
 is the crowning absurdity. It seems to be an 
 idiocy in the presence of these sunset views. 
 *'The fool says in his heart, There is no God.'' 
 As I trace these last lines the words of Asaph, the 
 psalmist, sing to my heart a song of joy: ** My 
 flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength 
 of my heart, and my portion forever.'' 
 
A FRESH INTERPRETATION. 
 
A FRESH INTERPRETATION. 
 
 THE significance of the concluding clause 
 of this twenty-first verse of this twenty- 
 fifth chapter of Matthew was illustrated in 
 the last sickness of Bishop Hargrove, which 
 was so long protracted and so pathetic from 
 the fact of its absolute incurability from the start. 
 I had the privilege of visiting him from time to 
 time during all these long months of affliction, 
 <iuring which he was watched over with unremit- 
 ting vigilance and tenderly ministered unto by the 
 faithful wife who gave herself to this holy office as 
 only a woman can, self-forgetting, never tiring. 
 In my interviews with him, the rule was that I got 
 a blessing, whether I left a blessing with him or 
 not. The testimony he gave in these interviews 
 might be expressed in the very words of the 
 psalmist: ''My flesh and my heart faileth: but 
 <jrod is the strength of my heart, and my portion 
 forever." He knew in whom he had believed; 
 his foundation stood sure; his consolation was 
 strong. On the occasion of one of these visits, 
 after we had prayed together, he said, " I have no 
 pain of body, nor worry of mind;" and his face 
 was as serene as a cloudless morning on the Ten- 
 nessee hills. So it was always when he was able 
 to join in the prayer. On one occasion I w^as too 
 weak to give him the message I had brought for 
 him, and he was too weak to receive it. But we 
 
 (347) 
 
34^ ' Sunset Views. 
 
 inclined our heads in the attitude of prayer and in 
 the spirit of submission. When we parted that 
 (fay his face showed what my own heart felt — 
 namely, that we had received a fresh interpreta- 
 tion, sweet and solemn, of the scriptural assurance 
 that " the Spirit helpeth our infirmities." 
 
THE MASTER'S MESSAGE. 
 
THE MASTER'S MESSAGE. 
 
 ONE day I visited a Christian friend who 
 had been a great sufferer from bodily 
 affliction. Nervous depression was a 
 part of his trouble, and not the least dis- 
 tressing. I carried him a message, not 
 my own, but from my Lord. You may find it in 
 John xiv. 6: '* I am the way, the truth, and the 
 life." After reading the precious passage, fa- 
 miliar but as fresh as the dews of heaven, we 
 knelt and united in a prayer of thanksgiving, tak- 
 ing the words as the motto for our supplication. 
 The prayer was something like this: ** Blessed 
 Lord, many years ago we placed our faith on thee 
 as the way, the truth, and the life. We looked to 
 thee as the w^ay, and we have never been misled. 
 We looked to thee as the truth, and we have never 
 been deceived. We looked to thee as the life, and 
 found peace and hope and a joy that was unspeak- 
 able. We would now with thankful hearts renew 
 this vow of consecration. We would exercise 
 now that faith which is the choice of our hearts. 
 Without any reservation, without any trouble of 
 heart because of mysteries we cannot fathom, 
 without any shadow of doubt or discouragement 
 because of the sorrow and pain that may have 
 fallen to our lot— »-we would take thee, blessed 
 Christ, as the way, the truth, and the life." 
 
 We rose from our knees and the face of my suf- 
 fering friend and brother reflected the joy that 
 filled my own soul. With the Master's message 
 came to us the Master's blessing. 
 
 (350 
 
HEREDITY. 
 
 23 
 
HEREDITY. 
 
 EVERY natural law works for the man who 
 does the best he can where he is and as he 
 is. ** The fathers have eaten sour grapes, 
 and the children's teeth are set on edge. 
 As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not 
 have occasion anymore to use this proverb in Israel. 
 . . . The soul that sinneth, it shall die." ("Ezek. 
 xviii. 2-4. ) Every man will stand or fall according 
 to his own choice, and the responsibility of each 
 one is measured by his opportunity. That is a 
 ray of Old Testament light in a dark place. 
 
 We have a word from St. Paul (Rom. viii. 28) 
 which outweighs all the " if s " and guesses of 
 doubt and unbelief in this our day: *' We know 
 that all things work together for good to them that 
 love God." In *'all things" we may include 
 heredity. This word illuminates the whole heav- 
 ens to the eye of faith. 
 
 (355) 
 
"THE GOAL." 
 
" THE GOAL." 
 
 UNDER this head many years ago I wrote 
 a brief closing chapter to my little treatise 
 on '* Christian Growth." For reasons 
 that will be understood by at least some 
 of my readers I insert here the closing 
 paragraph : 
 
 *'I was profoundly interested in this question 
 [that of entire sanctification] about twenty-five 
 years ago. I was then the pastor of the Church 
 at San Jose, Cal. One bright morning I was 
 walking through the fields on my way to visit a 
 young Presbyterian friend who lay dying of con- 
 sumption in *The Willows,' a suburb about two 
 miles from the city. The sky was cloudless and 
 the air was balmy, the birds were singing in the 
 sycamores overhead, and the sunshine lay bright 
 and warm upon the beautiful valley. As I walked 
 slowly on, my soul was attuned to the repose, the 
 harmony, and the sweetness of nature. I felt, a 
 mighty longing for that perfect peace of God, that 
 rest of faith, which had so long engaged my thought 
 and prayer. Lifting my eyes, I beheld the sun in 
 the heavens shining with unclouded splendor. In- 
 stantly the great truth flashed upon me. It was 
 almost as if an audible voice had said to me: 
 * The Sun of Righteousness always shines, and 
 upon the soul turned toward it in humble, trusting 
 obedience it will shine forever.' My spirit was 
 instantly flooded with a great joy, and I said to 
 myself: * This is what I so long have sought — the 
 
 (359) 
 
360 Sunset Views. 
 
 Sun of Righteousness shines forever/ Long, 
 long years of toil and trial, of pain and sorrow, 
 have passed since that hour, and the same light 
 shines on the page as I write these last lines with 
 a glowing heart." 
 
 The foregoing was written in 1882. This is the 
 year of our Lord 1905. To my own surprise, 
 through the patience and mercy of God, I am still 
 alive, with a mighty joy in my heart, and a hope 
 that maketh not ashamed. This is the goal as I 
 understand the meaning of Christian perfection, or 
 sanctification, as some would call it. *' It is the 
 perfection of a faith that does not waver, of a 
 consecration that keeps nothing back, of a love 
 that never grows cold, of a hope that is full of 
 glory.'* This is the normal type of the true Chris- 
 tian life as I see it described in the Holy Scriptures 
 that are able to make us wise unto salvation in all 
 the fullness and sweetness of the meaning of the 
 words. Slightly paraphrased, this is the experi- 
 ence I have realized. And this is the testimony 
 of my heart as I now turn my sunset view to the 
 hills of God that stretch on and on forever. 
 
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 LD 21A-50m-9,'58 ^t .'^^^^^^V^^?:^ . 
 (6889sl0)476B University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 
YB 33656 
 
 
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