Most sincerely your friend,
BENJAMIN HARRISON.
CHAPTER XVI
A RETROSPECT.
When I entered upon the Christian ministry fifty-six years ago, there was no probability that I would live to see four-score. My father had died at the early age of twenty-eight, and several of his brothers and sisters had succumbed to pulmonary maladies. My mother was dangerously ill several times, but had a wiry constitution and lived to eighty-five. That my own busy life has held out so long is owing, under a kind Providence, to the careful observation of the primal laws of health. I have eschewed all indigestible food, stimulants, and intoxicants;—have taken a fair amount of exercise; have avoided too hard study or sermon making in the evenings—and thus secured sound and sufficient sleep. In keeping God's commandments written upon the body I have found great reward. From the standpoint of four-score I propose in this chapter to take a retrospect of some of the moral and religious movements that have occurred within my memory—in several of which I have taken part—and I shall note also the changes for better or worse that I have observed. If as an optimist I may sometimes exaggerate the good, and minimize the evil things, it is the curse of a pessimist that he can travel from Dan to Beersheba and find nothing but barrenness.
The first change for the better that I shall speak of is the progress I have seen in church fellowship. The division of the Christian church into denominations is a fixed fact and likely to remain so for a long time to come. Nor is it the serious evil that many imagine. The efficiency of an army is not impaired by division into corps, brigades and regiments, as long as they are united against the common enemy; neither does the Church of Christ lose its efficiency by being organized on denominational lines, as long as it is loyal to its Divine head, and united in its efforts to overcome evil, and establish the Kingdom of Heaven. Some Christians work all the better in harness that suits their peculiar tastes and preferences. Denominationalism becomes an evil the moment it degenerates into bitter and bigoted sectarianism. Conflicts between a dozen regiments is suicide to an army. When a dozen denominations strive to maintain their own feeble churches in a community that requires only three or four churches, then sectarianism becomes an unspeakable nuisance.
I could cite many instances to prove the great progress that has been made in church fellowship. For example, my early ministry was in a town in which the Society of Friends had a large meeting house, well filled by a most intelligent, orthodox and devout congregation. But its members never entered any other house of worship. I had the warmest personal intimacy with some of its leading men, but they would say: "We would like to hear thee preach on First Day, but the rules of our society forbid it." I have lived to see the day when I am invited to speak in Friends' meetings, and I have rejoiced to invite Quaker brothers, and sisters also, to speak in my pulpit. When I visit London, the most eminent living Quaker, J. Bevan Braithwaite, welcomes me to his hospitable house, and we join in prayer together. I wish that the exemplary and useful Society of Friends were more multiplied on both sides of the sea.
During the early half of the last century sectarian controversies ran high, especially in the newly settled West. It was a common custom to hold public discussions in school houses and frontier meeting houses, where controverted topics between denominations were presented by chosen champions before applauding audiences. Ministers fired hot shot at one another's pulpits; churches were often as militant as mendicant, and all those polemics were excused as contending most earnestly for the faith. Both sides found their ammunition in the same Bible. When I was a student in the Princeton Seminary, a classmate from Kentucky gave me a little hymn-book used at the camp meetings in the frontier settlements of his native region. In that book was a hymn, one verse of which contains these sweet and irenic lines:
"When I was blind, and could not see,
The Calvinists deceivèd me."
Just imagine the incense of devout praise ascending heavenward in such a thick smoke of sectarian contentions! All the denominations were more or less afflicted with this controversial malady; and I will venture to say that in Kentucky and Ohio and other new regions, the Presbyterians were often a fair match for their Methodist neighbors in these theological pugilistics. I might multiply illustrations of these unhappy clashings and controversies that have often disfigured even the most evangelical branches of Christendom. What a blessed change for the better have I witnessed in my old days! Among the foremost efforts of denominational fellowship was the organization of the American Bible Society, the American Tract Society, and the American Sunday School Union. Later on in the same century came those two splendid spiritual inventions—The Young Men's Christian Association, and the Society of Christian Endeavor. Sir George Williams, the founder of the one, and Dr. Francis E. Clark, the father of the other, should be commemorated in a pair of twin statues of purest marble, standing with locked arms and upholding a standard bearing the sacred motto: "One is our Master, even Christ Jesus, and all ye are brethren." To no man are we indebted more deeply than to the now glorified Mr. Moody who made Christian fellowship the indispensable feature of all his evangelistic endeavors—with Brother Sankey leading the grand chorus of united praise. Union meetings for the conversion of souls and seeking the descent of the Holy Spirit are now as common as the observance of Christmas or of Easter Day. Personally I rejoice to say that I have been permitted to preach the Gospel in the pulpits of all the leading denominations, not excepting the Episcopalian; and I once welcomed the noble and beloved Bishop Charles P. McIlvaine of Ohio to my Lafayette Avenue Church pulpit, where he pronounced a grand discourse on "The Unity of All Christians in the Lord Jesus Christ." If I lived in England I should be heart and soul a nonconformist. But I can gratefully acknowledge the many kind courtesies which I have received from the clergy of the Established Church. Once, when in London, I was invited to the annual dinner given by the Lord Mayor to the archbishops and bishops, and I found myself the only American clergyman present. The Archbishop of Canterbury, when Bishop of London, did me the honor of presiding at a reception given me at Exeter Hall, and whenever I have met the venerable Dr. Temple I have been cheered by his warm-hearted and "democratic" cordiality of manner. In return for the kindness shown me by my brilliant and scholarly friend, Archdeacon Farrar, I was happy to preside at a reception given him in Chickering Hall. He had a wide welcome in our land, but it was as the untiring champion of temperance reform that he was especially honored on that evening. He and Archdeacon Basil Wilberforce are among the leaders in the crusade against the curse of strong drink. Amid some evil portents and perils to the cause of evangelical religion, one of the richest tokens for good is this steady increase of interdenominational fellowship. For organic unity we need not yet strive; it is enough that all the regiments and brigades in Christ's covenant hosts march to the same music, fight together under the same standard of Calvary's Cross, and press on, side by side, and shoulder to shoulder, to the final victory of righteousness and truth and human redemption.