Authors and Writers Associated with Morristown / With a Chapter on Historic Morristown

by Julia Keese Colles

Rev. Albert Barnes.

Fifth in order of these early divines of the Morristown's First Church, is the Rev. Albert Barnes. He occupied this pastorate from 1825 to June 1830. It was here that he preached, in 1829, that remarkable sermon, "The Way of Salvation", which was the entering wedge that prepared the way for the unfortunate division among the Presbyterians into the two schools Old and New, which division and the names attached to each side, it may gladly be said, came to an end by a happy union of the two branches, a few years ago.

The Rev. Albert Barnes was also a pioneer of the Temperance movement in Morristown and his eloquence and influence in this cause resulted in the closing of several distilleries. From Morristown he was called to Philadelphia, where he passed through his severest trials. It is needless to mention that he was a voluminous writer and that he has made a world-wide reputation by his valuable "Notes on the Gospels", so well-known to all Biblical scholars. Rev. Mr. Henderson of London says: "I consider Barnes 'Notes on the New Testament' to be one of the most valuable boons bestowed in these latter days upon the Church of Christ." And the Rev. David King of Glasgow says: "The primary design of the Rev. Albert Barnes' books is to furnish Sunday School teachers with plain and simple explanations of common difficulties."

We are impressed with the rare modesty of so eminent a writer and distinguished divine when he read that the Rev. Albert Barnes several times refused the title of "D. D.", from conscientious motives.

Among the celebrated sermons and addresses published by this author was one very powerful sermon on "The Sovereignty of God", and also an "Address delivered July 4th, 1827," at the Presbyterian church, Morristown. In the "Advertisement" or preface, to the former, the author says in pungent words: "It was written during the haste of a weekly preparation for the Sabbath and is not supposed to contain anything new on the subject. * * * The only wonder is that it (the very plain doctrine of the Bible) should ever have been called in question or disputed—or that in a world where man's life and peace and hopes, all depend on the truth that god reigns, such a doctrine should have ever needed any demonstration."

The condition of Morristown when Mr. Barnes came into the pastorate, in respect of intemperance was almost beyond the power of imagination, serious, as the evil seems to us at the present day. He found "drinking customs in vogue and distilleries dotted all over the parish." Fearlessly he set himself to stem this evil, which indeed he did succeed in arresting to a large extent. His "Essays on Temperance" are marvellous productions, as full of fire and energy and the power of conviction to-day as when first issued from the press, and these addresses were so powerful in their effect on the community that "soon," says our historian, Rev. Dr. Green, "seventeen (of the 19) distilleries were closed and not long after his departure, the fires of the other two went out."

In the course of one of his arguments, he says: "There are many, flitting in pleasure at an imagined rather than a real distance, who may be saved from entering the place of the wretched dying, and of the horrid dead. Here I wish to take my stand. I wish to tell the mode in which men become abandoned. In the language of a far better moralist and reprover than I am (Dr. Lyman Beecher), I wish to lay down a chart of this way to destruction, and to rear a monument of warning upon every spot where a wayfaring man has been ensnared and destroyed.

"I commence with the position that no man probably ever became designedly a drunkard. I mean that no man ever sat down coolly and looked at the redness of eyes, the haggardness of aspect, the weakness of limbs, the nausea of stomach, the profaneness and obscenity and babbling of a drunkard and deliberately desired all these. I shall be slow to believe that it is in human nature to wish to plunge into all this wretchedness. Why is it then that men become drunkards? I answer it is because the vice steals on them silently. It fastens on them unawares, and they find themselves wallowing in all this corruption, before they think of danger."

The power and beauty of Mr. Barnes' most celebrated sermon on "The Way of Salvation", impresses the reader, from page to page. Towards the close, he says:

FROM "THE PLAN OF SALVATION."

"The scheme of salvation, I regard, as offered to the world, as free as the light of heaven, or the rains that burst on the mountains, or the full swelling of broad rivers and streams, or the heavings of the deep. And though millions do not receive it—though in regard to them the benefits of the plan are lost, and to them, in a certain sense, the plan may be said to be in vain, yet I see in this the hand of the same God that pours the rays of noonday on barren sands and genial showers on desert rocks, and gives life, bubbling springs and flowers, where no man is in our eyes, yet not to His, in vain. So is the offer of eternal life, to every man here, to every man everywhere, sincere and full—an offer that though it may produce no emotions in the sinner's bosom here, would send a thrill of joy through all the panting bosoms of the suffering damned."