My plan of action was this. Twice on each Sabbath, and on two evenings in the week, I preached as clearly and pungently as I could; sometimes to awakened souls, sometimes to backsliders, sometimes to the impenitent, sometimes to souls who were seeking salvation. I spoke of the great central truths:—personal guilt, Christ's atoning work, the offices of the Spirit, redemption, the claims of the Saviour, the necessity of immediate repentance, immediate acceptance of Christ and the joy and power of an useful Christian life. During a revival, sermons make themselves; they grow spontaneously. On the Monday evening of each week our young people had the field with their regular gatherings, and new converts were encouraged to narrate their experiences. On three other evenings of the week the whole church had a service for prayer and exhortation, conducted by our laymen. The praying women met on one afternoon; the girls by themselves on another afternoon, and the boys on another. During each week, from eleven to twelve, different meetings were held, and in so large a congregation, these sub-divisions were necessary. After every public service I held an inquiry meeting. I invited people to converse with me in the study during the day, and I made as much pastoral visitation from house to house as possible.
"So built we the walls … for the people had a mind to work." For five months that blessed work went forward, and as a result a very great number were added to the church, of whom about one hundred were heads of families. Our sacramental Sabbaths were holy, joyous feasts, and the sheaves were brought in with singing. Some of the new converts banded themselves in a new organization, and to perpetuate the memory of that glorious spiritual outpouring, they called it the "Memorial Presbyterian Church." It now worships in the beautiful edifice on Seventh Avenue, and is one of the most flourishing churches in Brooklyn. The effect of that work of grace reached on into eternity. One of its first effects, on the writer of these lines, was to confirm him in the opinion that the living Gospel, sent by the Holy Spirit, is the one only way to save sinners; that a church must back up a minister by its personal efforts, and when preacher and people work together only for God's glory, He is as sure to answer prayer as the morrow's sun is to rise in the heavens.
It has not been my practice to invite the labors of an evangelist; but in January, 1872, Mr. Dwight L. Moody, with whom I had as yet but a slight acquaintance, but whom I since have honored and loved with my whole heart, said to the superintendent of our Mission Chapel: "What a nice place this is to hold some meetings in." He was cordially invited; and at the end of a week about twenty persons had been mustered together on the sharp winter evenings. "This seems slow work," I said to him. "Very true," replied my sagacious brother. "It is slow, but if you want to kindle a fire, you collect a handful of sticks, light them with a match, and keep on blowing till they blaze. Then you may heap on the wood. I am working here with a handful of Christians, endeavoring to warm them up with love for Christ; and, if they keep well kindled, a general revival will come, and outside sinners will be converted." He was right; the revival did come. It spread into the parent church, and over one hundred converts made their public confession of Christ before our communion table. It was in those little chapel meetings that my beloved brother, Moody, prepared his first "Bible Readings," which afterward became so celebrated in this country and in Great Britain. A few months afterward I met Mr. Moody in London. Coming one day into my room, he said to me: "They wish me to come over here and preach in England." I urged him at once to do so; "for," I said, "these English people are the best people to preach to in the world." Moody then said, "I will go home,—secure somebody to sing, and come over and make the experiment." He did come home,—he secured my neighbor, Mr. Sankey,—returned to England, and commenced the most extraordinary revival campaign that had been known in Great Britain since the days of Whitefield. I cannot dismiss this heaven-honored name without a word of honest, loving tribute to the man and his magnificent work. D.L. Moody was by far the most extraordinary proclaimer of the Gospel that America has produced during the last century, as Spurgeon was the most extraordinary in Great Britain. Those two heralds of salvation led the column. They reached millions by their eloquent tongues, and their printed words went out to the ends of the earth. The single aim of both was to point to the cross of Christ, and to save souls; all their educational and benevolent enterprises were subordinate to this one great sovereign purpose. Neither one of them ever entered a college or theological seminary; yet they commanded the ear of Christendom. The simple reason was—they were both God-made preachers, and were both endowed with immense common sense, and executive ability.
CHAPTER VIII
AUTHORSHIP
Printers' ink stained my fingers in my boyhood; for, at the age of fifteen, I ventured into a controversy on the slavery question, in the columns of our county newspaper; and, in the same paper, published a series of letters from Europe, in 1842. During my course of study in the Princeton Theological Seminary, I was a contributor to several papers, to Godey's Magazine in Philadelphia, and to the "New Englander," a literary and theological review published at New Haven. I wrote the first article for the first number of the "Nassau Monthly," a Princeton College publication, which still exists under another name. Up to the year 1847 all my contributions had been to secular periodicals, but in that year I ventured to send from Burlington, N.J., where I was then preaching, a short article to the "New York Observer," signed by my initials. This was followed by several others which, falling under the eye of my beloved friend, the Rev. Dr. Cortland Van Rensellaer, led him to say to me: "You are on the right track now; work on that as long as you live," and I have obeyed his injunction. Within a year or two I began to write for the "Presbyterian" at Philadelphia. Its proprietor urged me to accept an editorial position, but I declined his proposal, as I have declined several other requests to assume editorial positions since. I would always rather write when I choose than write when I must, and I have never felt at liberty to hold any other position while I was a pastor of a church. My contributions to the press never hindered my work as a minister, for writing for the press promotes perspicuity in preparing for the pulpit.
In the summer of 1853 I was called from the Third Presbyterian Church of Trenton to the Market Street Reformed Church of New York City. As a loyal Dutchman, I began to write at once for the "Christian Intelligencer," and have continued in its clean hospitable columns to this day. At the urgent request of Mr. Henry C. Bowen I began to write for his "Independent," and sent to its columns over six hundred articles; but of all my associate contributors in those days, not a solitary one survives. In May, 1860, My first article appeared in the New York Evangelist, and during these forty-two years I have tested the patience of its readers by imposing on them more than eighteen hundred of my lubrications. As I was preparing one of my earliest articles, I happened to spy the blossoms of the catalpa tree before my window, and for want of a title I headed it "Under the Catalpa." The tree flourishes still, and bids fair to blossom after the hand that pens these lines has turned to dust. I need not recapitulate the names of all the many journals to which I have sent contributions,—many of which have been republished in Great Britain, Australia and other parts of the civilized world. I once gave to my friend, Mr. Arthur B. Cook, the eminent stenographer, some statistics of the number of my articles, and the various journals in which they had appeared in this and other countries. He made an estimate of the extent of their publication, and then said to me: "It would be within bounds to say that your four thousand articles have been printed in at least two hundred millions of copies." The production of these articles involved no small labor, but has brought its own reward. To enter a multitude of homes week after week; to converse with the inmates about many of the most vital questions in morals and religion; to speak words of guidance to the perplexed; of comfort to the troubled, and of exhortation to the saints and to the sinful—all these involved a solemn responsibility. That this life-work with the pen has not been without fruit I gratefully acknowledge. When a group of railway employees, at a station in England, gathered around me to tender their thanks for spiritual help afforded them by my articles, I felt repaid for hours of extra labor spent in preaching through the press.
My first attempt at book-making was during my ministry at Trenton, New Jersey, when I published a small volume entitled "Stray Arrows." This was followed at different times by several volumes of an experimental and devotional character. In the spring of 1867 one of our beautiful twin boys, at the age of four and a half years, was taken from us by a very brief and violent attack of scarlet fever. We received a large number of tender letters of condolence, which gave us so much comfort that my wife suggested that they should be printed with the hope that they might be equally comforting to other people in affliction. I accordingly selected a number of them, added the simple story of our precious child's short career, and handed the package to my beloved friend and publisher, the late Mr. Peter Carter, with the request that they be printed for private distribution. He urged, after reading them, that I should allow him to publish them, which he did under the title of "The Empty Crib, a Book of Consolation." That simple story of a sweet child's life has travelled widely over the world and made our little "Georgie" known in many a home. Mrs. Gladstone told me that when she and her husband had read it, it recalled their own loss of a child under similar circumstances. Dean Stanley read it aloud to Lady Augusta Stanley in the Deanery of Westminster; and when I took him to our own unrivalled Greenwood Cemetery he asked to be driven to the spot where the dust of our dear boy is slumbering. Many thousands have visited that grave and gazed with tender admiration on the exquisite marble medallion of the childface,—by the sculptor, Charles Calverley,—which adorns the monument.
Fourteen years afterwards, in the autumn of 1881, "the four corners of my house were smitten" again with a heart-breaking bereavement in the death, by typhoid fever, of our second daughter, Louise Ledyard Cuyler, at the age of twenty-two, who possessed a most inexpressible beauty of person and character. Her playful humor, her fascinating charm of manner, and her many noble qualities drew to her the admiration of a large circle of friends, as well as the pride of our parental hearts. After her departure I wrote, through many tears, a small volume entitled "God's Light on Dark Clouds," with the hope that it might bring some rays of comfort into those homes that were shadowed in grief. Judging from the numberless letters that have come to me I cannot but believe that, of all the volumes which I have written, this one has been the most honored of God as a message-bearer to that largest of all households—the household of the sorrowing. Let me add that I have published a single volume of sermons, entitled "The Eagle's Nest," and a volume of foreign travel, "From the Nile to Norway"; but all the remainder of my score of volumes have been of a practical and devotional character. Of the twenty-two volumes that I have written, six have been translated into Swedish, and two into the language of my Dutch ancestors. Thanks be to God for the precious privilege of preaching His glorious Gospel with the types that out-reach ten thousand tongues! And thanks also to a number of friends, whose faces I never saw, but whose kind words have cheered me through more than a half century of happy labors. I cannot conclude this brief chapter without expressing my deep obligations to that noble organization, the "American Tract Society," which has given a wide circulation to many of my books—including "Heart-Life," "Newly Enlisted; or, Counsels to Young Converts"—and "Beulah-Land," a volume of good cheer to aged pilgrims on their journey heavenward.