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

by Julia Keese Colles

Rev. Arthur Mitchell, D. D.

Rev. Dr. Mitchell was the third pastor of the South Street Presbyterian Church, which was the fifth, says our historian, "in our galaxy of churches." The time of his ministration, during which the church was greatly enlarged, both internally and externally, was from 1861 to 1868.

Dr. Mitchell is the son of Matthew and Susan Swain Mitchell, and was born in Hudson, N. Y. He was graduated at Williams College in 1853, was tutor in Lafayette College, Pa., for one year, and then traveled for a year in Europe and the East. Returning he entered the Union Theological Seminary of New York City and was graduated from there in 1859. In this year he accepted the charge of the Third Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Va., and in Oct. 1861, he became pastor of what was then called, the "Second Presbyterian Church" in Morristown. The first Presbyterian Church of Chicago, Ill., claimed him in 1868 and in 1880 the First Presbyterian Church of Cleveland, Ohio. In 1884, Dr. Mitchell became Secretary of the Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church to which position he had been called fifteen years before, but had felt constrained to decline. This important office, which from his intense and life-long interest in the great cause of Christian missions to the heathen world, he was remarkably qualified to fill, he has held to the present time. In all his ministrations, in each individual church which he has served, he has succeeded in imparting his own love of, and interest in, Foreign Missions and his position as Secretary of this department of the church organization has enabled him to stimulate the great congregations and masses of individuals throughout the denomination.

Dr. Mitchell's eloquence in the pulpit and on the platform, is so well-known that it seems hardly worth while to refer to it. Mastering his subject completely as he does, he has the rare power of condensing clearly and giving out his thoughts in language and in tones of voice which hold and attract his audience to the end. He has published no books, only sermons and addresses in pamphlet form and innumerable articles in magazines and newspapers. To the great value of this sort of literary work, several of our distinguished authors have already testified. In the Church at Home and Abroad, we find the most exhaustive articles from Dr. Mitchell's pen, on the missions and conditions of the various countries of the earth which he has also recently visited in a trip around the world. These are all written from so large a standpoint that they are about as interesting to the general reader as to the specialist. In the publication, the "Concert of Prayer" many of these valuable papers are found and a considerable number of his addresses, articles, &c., are bound among those of other writers, in large volumes. In the next generation we find a writer also, in Dr. Mitchell's daughter, Alice, who does not desire mention for the reason that her writings are so fragmentary and scattered. Nevertheless, her literary work has been considerable and cannot be easily measured or described. One who knows her well, says: "Not many ladies are better read in missionary annals." In an article of hers, of great interest, published in the Concert of Prayer for Church Work Abroad, and entitled "The Martyrs of Mexico," we come upon the story of the Rev. John L. Stephens, previously mentioned in this book among "Travels", &c., and who, Miss Mitchell tells us, was one of the earliest missionaries of the Congregational church to Mexico.

We have already mentioned that Mr. Matthew Mitchell, the father of our writer, lived in Morristown for many years and married for his second wife, Miss Margaret, the daughter of the good Doctor John Johnes, and the granddaughter of the good Pastor Johnes.

We give a short passage from the opening of Dr. Mitchell's Memorial Sermon on James A. Garfield, delivered in the First Presbyterian Church of Cleveland, Ohio, on Sunday, Sept. 25, 1881, and published by a number of prominent men who requested the privilege:

FROM THE "MEMORIAL SERMON" ON JAMES A. GARFIELD.

We share, my friends, to-day, the greatest grief America has ever known. It is no exaggeration to say that no one stroke of Providence has ever spread throughout all our land such poignant and universal pain, or has been so widely felt as a shock and a sorrow in every portion of the earth.

I am not using words without care. I do not forget those dreadful days of April, sixteen years ago, when the slow procession passed from State to State, bearing the remains of the beloved Lincoln to the tomb. But there was one whole section of our land, it will be remembered, which had never acknowledged him as their ruler, and had never viewed him alas! except as their foe. Innumerable noble hearts there discussed the crime that laid him low; but although they abhorred the assassin's crime, around his victim their sentiments of confidence and admiration and loyalty had never been gathered.

I do not forget the horror which smote the nation when Hamilton fell, the universal pall of sorrow of which our fathers tell us,—the metropolis of the country draped in black, the vast and solemn cortège, which amidst weeping throngs, followed Hamilton through its chief avenue to the grave.

And as one heart, the hearts of Americans mourned for Washington. There were friends of liberty who wept with them in every part of the world. But liberty itself had not then so many friends on earth as now. By one great nation Washington was held to have drawn a rebel sword. And against another, our earlier ally, he had unsheathed it and stood prepared for war. And even by the countrymen of Washington it could not be forgotten that he had nearly fulfilled the allotted years of man. His work was done. His years of war had won for his country the full liberty she sought. His eight glorious years of Presidential life had organized the Government, established its relations to foreign powers and made its bulwarks strong. At his death it was even said that he had "deliberately dispelled the enchantment of his own great name;" with wonderful unselfishness he himself placed the helm in other hands, looked on for a time at the prosperity which he had taught others to supply, and "convinced his country that she depended less on him than either her enemies or her friends believed." And then he died in the peaceful retirement of his home. It was the death of a venerated father whose work was done.