William Elliot Griffis

“ Outwardly the edifice, built of a combination of light brick, Scotch granite, and terra cotta, seemed but little "like a church", yet only, as it were, to impress upon the mind the absurdity of ever calling an edifice—a thing built by masons and carpenters—a "church", which is a company of human souls called to do God's will. Yet for such uses, and for such a company, and intended to be helpful to the education and training of the young in social holiness and for the worship of God, what could be better? ”

“ A stroke of paralysis was nature's first warning that the best days of his strength were over. The time seemed now to have come when an independent church, of the type which had for nearly half a century demonstrated its power to live and grow, was no longer needed. It was not self-conceit, but dire necessity that compelled John Chambers to reflect and to ask the question whether, after the removal of his own personality and the snapping by death of the ties which bound three generations to him in love and loyalty, the church could exist as an independent body. ”

“ No memorial tablet was ever put up in the Chambers's church to the memory of the young men from the congregation who gave their lives to their country.
It is perhaps on the whole better to dwell lightly upon the record of John Chambers during the war, partly because it is a blessed thing to know how to forget. Even the battlefields "nature has long since healed and reconciled to herself in the sweet oblivion of flowers". We have now a united country, the ulcer of slavery is a thing of long ago, and some things are seen more clearly. ”

“ I found the Church of the Love of God, the John Chambers Memorial Church, standing alone in its glory. No human dwellings were nearer than a quarter of a mile, though houses of worship could be discerned rising out of the fringe of dwellings. But this pioneering, "preparing in the desert a highway for our God", was exactly what the First Independent Church people and the Bethany Mission colony of 1858, had done before. It was simply planting the standard for the hosts to follow. What grand faith to go ahead of population and to be literally a forerunner of the gospel! ”

“ Even then Broad Street was considered the western boundary of the city of Philadelphia.
Bright and happy was that February morning of 1830 when the young pastor, with many of his flock around him, took his place on the green sward at Broad and Sansom streets. With his long hair brushed into lively motion by the matin breezes, he poured out a prayer to Heaven for the blessing of the triune God. "Like all Irishmen, John Chambers knew how to handle the spade", and handle it well he did on that day when he turned up the first spadeful of earth. ”

“ We studied the Bible itself, and not lesson helps. One reason to-day why there is such a gulf between the Sunday School and the pulpit, and why the average scholar and even teacher is so apt to be scared at the "higher criticism"—even if indeed he knows what it is—is because he is fed, not on the Divine Word itself, but on those dilutions of it, and those plates of hash called lesson helps. Instead of the pure milk and meat of the Gospel, even the teachers stuff themselves with pre-digested food and machine-prepared aliment of all sorts. ”

“ John Chambers was a man of power in this line beyond any other of the preachers I have heard in my more than seventy years. I sometimes came from Hartford to Philadelphia to hear him in his church on Broad street. His voice would ring out with such intensity, and his words would so thrill through every nerve of my being that it seemed to me that a more than human being was making an appeal. ”

“ The eloquent preacher closes his discourse, which is from beginning to end directed to the conscience, with a good, warm, direct appeal to his hearers for personal decision.
Enough of proof is here given that from the first, even to the last year, if not the latest moment of his life, John Chambers never lost sight of the needy, sinful, human soul, and that he always closed with a tender and affectionate personal appeal. Men might be as steel against his logic, but their hearts melted under his winning importunity. ”

“ It would be of little help to young men, struggling against their own besetting weaknesses to gain self-mastery and attainment to true Christian manhood, to picture only the John Chambers, as we knew him,—in the serene evening of life, when passions had cooled and reason reigned, and the gray light of Heaven's morning had settled on his head. ”

“ That foolish fellow who made himself, and all good fellows miserable by his religion is dead at last. He caught a cold going to prayer-meeting, and he is gone, religion and all. The world will not greatly concern itself about you, or your memory. But just invent a new lie about one of God's saints. It may be as improbable as this one which Gashmu invented, that the Jews were about to rebel, and at once you take your position among the famous men. Your name will go down to posterity, as one whom the world will not willingly forget. ”

“ Yes, but that depends on which newspaper and which pulpit. It is certain that in the eyes of some, printing machinery and type, and daily square miles of inked paper, for which whole forests have been destroyed, have more moral potency than worship, prayer, and preaching. Yet against this modern parable of the mustard seed become a tree, phenomenal and imposing, we have happily also the Master's parable of the leaven, or of might unseen, of a kingdom coming "without observation". "Things seen", even when dazzling are not really as potent as those which transform the life. ”

“ In this position, he was confirmed by the fact that the Westminster standards, the Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, teach that the Bible is the only infallible rule of faith and obedience. These all unite in declaring that the Scriptures are "given by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life", "the rule of worship", the only rule of faith and obedience; which teach "what man is to [31] believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man", and form "the rule given us of God to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him." ”

“ There were five or six of us young men, as students of Mr. Duncan, and we had organized some meetings through the city of Baltimore, and God was with us; and the warm heart—if I had any warm heart at all—that I brought to Philadelphia, was kindled at the altar of those dear young brethren. How much we are indebted to God for young men! How much, my brethren, are the eldership, are you, am I, indebted to young men!" Dr. Chambers's last words in this paragraph are especially appropriate, because it is the tendency of most theologians and elderly men to teach that God was, not that he is. ”

“ Not alone to delight those with vivid memories, who knew, loved and honored John Chambers, have I undertaken this work of filial piety, but to tell to young men of to-day the story of a consecrated, strenuous, and successful life, the secret of which was self-conquest and strength in God.
One great purpose and benefit of biography is lost if it does not clearly reveal the growth of character, and, in the case of a beautiful and successful life, a personality worthy of being held up as an example. ”

“ So then, whether standing in the shadow of the great edifice—typical of the soaring twentieth century—or setting foot on its roof high in air, many fathoms higher in the deeps of space than where once we sat or stood, and thence gazing upon the sea of humanity beneath, or over the great city set between the two silver streams, and ever fascinating and beautiful with boyhood's memories, let us stop to recall the past. ”

“ Whether the world, on the whole, is getting better or worse, it is quite certain that the houses of ill-fame, the midnight street-walkers and the pictures once visible in public places and in the saloons, inexpressibly obscene as they were, are not found at the present time, or if so, are much more concealed, for they have at least been driven to cover. It seemed to be the idea of the young minister that he ought to know what was going on in the world, and to teach his people to know, while yet choosing the pure, and avoiding the impure. ”

“ Francis Newland was long the Asaph of the house of God, and lover not only of music but of all good things, tolerant and charitable, patient with the silliness of the young, [100] a noble father and friend, a most winsome saint, having many lines of conviction diverging from those of the pastor, liberal in his thinking, yet ever loving and beloved by John Chambers. I may truly say that he gave out stimulating and purifying influences like a mountain. I saw him last on earth when in Boston he visited his daughter and the Shawmut Congregational Church, of which I was pastor. ”

“ Never in all the history of the First Independent Church was there a fair or supper to which admittance was charged. Those methods of raising money, too often associated with religious societies, to the scandal of faith, the equipment of the jester, and the furnishing of the ungodly with excuse for self-righteousness, were tabooed by Mr. Chambers. He believed both that the laborer was worthy of his hire, and that men ought to pay for their religious privileges. ”

“ I have tried to show in the typical Irishman, the creature of heredity and the passionate patriot, the aspiring Christian and the child of God, educated by unseen but potent influences, winning steadfast victory over sin and self, becoming king of men and master of hearts, leading a host to triumph along the pathway to Heaven, able to do all things through Christ his helper.
The wonderful character and personality of John Chambers were not sudden creations. They were growths. ”

“ In a word, to an independent thinker, loyal to the Bible as the word of God, as John Chambers was, the Westminster standards contain their own reductio ad absurdum to any one who puts creed, catechism, or confession above the Holy Scriptures, or who makes certain parts, or even a collection of parts, greater than the whole. ”

“ In physical righteousness John Chambers stood before his boys and young men as an inspiring exemplar. He neither "drank, chewed, smoked, or swore." For fifty years he put to confusion those who preached the necessity or justified the use of alcohol or tobacco. Over six feet high, in superb health and vigor, always invitingly clean in person, he reinforced every day the teaching of good fathers and mothers who strove to lead their sons to noble manhood. ”

“ As he read the Scriptures for himself he was early filled with that idea, which afterwards he infused into the lives of thousands, that the gospel is a glorious message to the individual, that the Christian life is a Way, as well as a belief, that there are elements in religious life and experience which do not submit to exact definitions, and that the mercy of God is the largest factor of the Divine life toward wrong-doing man. ”

“ The handsome young captain, after going to moral wreck, was mortally wounded in battle. When his body was brought home and laid in Laurel Hill, I remember the impressive final words of his saddened and disappointed pastor as he committed "to the care of the Resurrection and the Life" the relics of a once noble form:
"Alas! there are wrecks on humanity's sea
More awful than any on ocean can be".
Yet the preacher's burning denunciations of sin and his praise of holiness helped us all to keep step with the Infinite and hold to the right path. ”

“ He dubbed America "the land of synods". He wrote at the time when even the liberty of the presbyteries seemed endangered by the centralizing power of the synods: "To persevere in such a course is to raise up a class of men who, from the nature of the case, must be destitute of sympathy with the people; who will rise above the people as being their superiors and governors, and who will ultimately distract and divide the church by their philosophic subtleties and literary distinction". ”

“ Henry Clay Trumbull, veteran editor of the Sunday School Times, writes under date of June 11, 1903:
"An orator's or a preacher's power sometimes depends largely on his intensity of utterance or of manner. He can actually throw himself into his hearers so that they will, for the time, think or feel as he does, even beyond the meaning of his words. Thus it was said of Whitefield as a preacher that he could move an audience to tears by saying the word 'Mesopotamia'. One who has felt the power of some preachers can understand the force of that statement. ”

“ Of all the elders, Daniel Steinmetz seemed to me most steadily worth hearing in the prayer and missionary meeting. Steinmetz always had ideas. He was a Bible student and knew how to present a thought with admirable clearness and close practical adaptation to every day life. He was an intense, ardent patriot, and a useful man in both private and public life. He was one of that noble stock of cultured Pennsylvania Germans that has so enriched our national inheritance. ”

“ Not least among those who have builded the unseen but nobler city, and who have stamped their names indelibly upon human hearts and lives, even unto the third and fourth generation of its citizens, is John Chambers. During forty-eight years he was pastor of the First Independent Church, whose second edifice stood from 1831 to 1899 on the site of the twenty-storied "sky-scraper" at Broad and Sansom streets. ”

“ Chambers said "We have sent out from our church between thirty and forty young men who are in the ministry, two of whom are in the pulpit with me this morning.... A number of them have paid the debt of nature and gone home, after they renounced the cross to have a crown". It was during [105] this memorable week that under arch and crown of greenery and between wreathed columns, standing behind the pulpit, while his elders and trustees—a noble band of helpers—sat or stood on the platform beneath, that the last photograph of John Chambers was taken. ”

“ Crowded with twenty to forty out of the nearly one hundred men in the church, young and old, who could and would take part in the prayer meeting, they formed a reserve force of which any pastor might be proud. Those not sitting in these special pews were usually ranged somewhere near that famous corner, though occasionally, for best effect, they chose seats more generally distributed throughout the audience. Men like Burtis, Steinmetz, Smith and Walton, as I remember, were always clear, strong, edifying, speaking out of fullness as well as conviction. ”