“Remember how He spake unto you.”
These are the words of an angel. They were spoken in the early morning while it was yet dark, to frightened and sorrowful women, who had gone to the sepulchre of Christ with spices and ointments to embalm his body. These women fully expected to find the body of their Lord; for as they went they said, “Who shall roll us away the stone from the sepulchre?” When they reached the place, they found the stone was rolled away and the grave was empty. And one of them ran back to the disciples to tell them that the grave was open and the body gone. Those that remained went into the sepulchre and saw two men in glittering garments, who, seeing that the women were perplexed and afraid, standing with bowed heads and startled looks, said, with a shade of reproof in their tone, “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, he is risen.” And, perhaps, seeing that the women could hardly believe this, it was added, “Remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, ‘The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.’”
The words that are quoted as having been spoken by Jesus to his disciples were spoken in Galilee six months or more before this, and as they were not clearly understood at the time, it is not so very strange that they should have been forgotten.
It had been well if these sorrowing women, as well as the other disciples of the Lord, had remembered other words, and all the words that the Lord spake to them, not only while in Galilee, but in all other places. The world would be better to-day if those gracious words had been more carefully laid to heart.
I hope the words of my text will bear, without too much accommodation, the use which I shall make of them.
Almost three-quarters of a century ago, a boy was born in the family of a New England farmer. It was in the then territory of Maine, and near the little city of Augusta. The family were plain, poor people, and the child grew up, as many other farmers’ children grew up, accustomed to plain living and such work as children could properly be set to do. In the winter he went to school, as well as at other times when the farm work was not pressing. It would be very interesting to know, if we could know, whether there was anything peculiar in the early disposition and habits of this boy, or whether he grew up with nothing to distinguish him from his playmates. If we could only know what children would grow up to be distinguished men, we should, I think, be very careful to observe and record any little traits and peculiarities of their early childhood. The boy of whom I am speaking, and whom you know to be William Henry Allen, seems to have been prepared at the academy for college, which he entered at the advanced age of twenty-one years. Four years after, he was graduated, and at once he set out to teach the classics in a little town in the interior of the State of New York. While engaged in that seminary, he was called to a professorship in Dickinson College, at Carlisle, in our own State of Pennsylvania. In Dickinson College he held successively the chairs of chemistry and the natural sciences, and that of English literature, until his resignation, in 1850, to accept the presidency of Girard College.
From this time until his death, except during an interval of five years, his life was spent here. For twenty-seven years he gave himself to the work of organizing and directing the internal affairs of this college, with an interest and efficiency which, until within the last year, never flagged. It is not possible at this day for any of us to appreciate the difficulties he had to encounter in the early days of the college, but we do know that he did the work well.
See how he was prepared for the work he did. He was a lover of study. When only eight years old he had learned the English grammar so well that his teacher said he could not teach him anything further in that study. There was an old family Bible that was very highly prized by all the family, and his father told him that if he would read that Bible through by the time he was ten years old, it should be his property. The boy did so, and claimed and received his reward. That book is now in the possession of his daughter (Mrs. Sheldon). This early reading of the Bible will, perhaps, account for President Allen’s unusual familiarity with the Scriptures, as evinced in the richness of his prayers in this school chapel.
The school to which he went in his early youth was three miles from his father’s house; and in all kinds of weather, through the heats of summer and the deep snows of winter, he plodded his way.
I have said that his parents were not rich; and this young man pushed his way through college by teaching, thus earning the money necessary for his support. This may account for the fact that he entered college at the age when most young men are leaving it, viz., twenty-one years. It did not seem to him that it was a great misfortune to be poor; but it was an additional inducement to call forth all his powers to insure success. He knew that he must depend upon himself if he would succeed in life. And so he was not satisfied with qualifying himself for one chair in a college, but, as at Dickinson, he held two or three chairs. He could teach the classics or mathematics or general literature, or chemistry or natural sciences. Not many men had qualities so diversified, or knew so well how to put them to good account. You know very well that this liberal culture was not acquired without hard work. And this hard work he must have done in early life, before cares and duties crowded him, as they will absorb all of us the older we grow.