Recollections of a Long Life: An Autobiography

by Theodore L. Cuyler

Another change for the better has been the enlargement of woman's sphere of activity in the promotion of Christianity and of moral reform. As an illustration of this fact, I may cite a rather unique incident in my own experience. During the winter of 1872 I invited Miss Sarah F. Smiley, an eminent and most evangelical minister in the Society of Friends (and a sister of the Messrs. Albert and Daniel Smiley, the proprietors of the Lake Mohonk House) to deliver a religious address in my pulpit. The discourse she delivered was strong in intellect, orthodox in doctrine and fervently spiritual in character; the large audience was both delighted and edified. A neighboring minister presented a complaint before the Presbytery of Brooklyn, alleging that my proceeding had been both un-Presbyterian and un-Scriptural. The complainant was not able to produce a syllable of law from our form of government forbidding what I had done. Long years before, a General Assembly had recommended that "women should not be permitted to address a promiscuous assemblage" in any of our churches; but a mere "deliverance" of a General Assembly has no binding legal authority.

In my defense I was careful not to advocate the ordination of women to the ministry in the Presbyterian Church, or their installation in the pastorate. I contended that as our confession of faith was silent on the subject, and that as godly women in the early church were active in the promotion of Christianity (one of them named Anna having publicly proclaimed the coming Messiah), and that as the ministry of my excellent friend, the Quakeress, had for many years been attended by the abundant blessings of the Holy Spirit, my act was rather to be commended than condemned. The discussion before the Presbytery lasted for two days and produced a wide and rather sensational interest over the country. The final vote of the Presbytery, while withholding any censure of my course under the circumstances, was adverse to the practice of permitting women to address "promiscuous audiences" in our churches. Two or three years afterwards, a case similar to mine was appealed to the General Assembly and that body wisely decided that such questions should be left to the judgment and conscience of the pastors and church sessions. When the news of this action of the assembly reached us, the old sexton of the Lafayette Avenue Church hoisted (to the great amusement of our people) the stars and stripes on the church tower as a token of victory. It has now become quite customary to invite female missionaries, and other godly women, to address audiences composed of both sexes in our churches; the padlock has been taken off the tongue of any consecrated Christian woman who has a message from the Master. I invited Miss Willard and Lady Henry Somerset to advocate the Christian grace of temperance from my pulpit; and if I were still a pastor I should rejoice to invite that good angel of beneficence, Miss Helen M. Gould, to deliver there such an address as she lately made in the splendid building she has erected for the "Naval Christian Association."

Foreign missions were in their early and vigorous growth eighty years ago. I rode in our family carriage to church with Sheldon Dibble and Reuben Tinker, who were just leaving Auburn Theological Seminary to go out as our pioneer missionaries to the Sandwich Islands. The Missionary Herald was taken in a great number of families and read with great avidity. Many of the readers were people who not only devoutly prayed "Thy Kingdom come," but who were willing to stick to a rag carpet, and deny themselves a "Brussels," in order to contribute more to the spread of that Kingdom. Wealth has increased to a prodigious and perilous extent; but the percentage of money given to foreign missions is very far from what it was in the day of my childhood. It is a growing custom for ministers to utter a prayer over the contribution boxes when they are brought back to the platform before the pulpit; I suspect that it in too many cases should be one of penitential confession.

While I was a student in the Princeton Seminary we had a visit from the veteran missionary, Levi Spalding, who sailed from Boston to Southern India in the very first band which invaded the darkness of Hindooism He was as nearly like my conception of the Apostle Paul as anyone I ever beheld. He told us that when he was a youth and his heart was first drawn to the cause of missions, he told his good mother that he had decided upon a missionary life (which was then thought equivalent to a martyrdom), and she was perfectly overcome. He said to her: "Mother, when you gave me as an infant to God in baptism, did you withhold me from any service to which I might be called?" She assented in a moment—went to the old chest—from it she took a half-dollar (all the money she possessed in the world), and, handing it to him, said: "Levi, you may go, and this starts you on your education." On his way over to India his preaching converted all the sailors, including the ship's carpenter, "whose heart was as hard as his broadaxe." That was the stuff our first missionaries were made of. The tears flowed down our cheeks as we listened to Spalding's recital, and the result of his visit was that more than one of our students volunteered for the work of foreign missions.

It was also my great privilege during that Princeton course to put eye upon a man who, by common consent, is regarded as the king of American missionaries. On my way from Princeton to Philadelphia in the Christmas week of '45 I found among my fellow passengers a gentleman with a very benign countenance, and to my great delight I learned that he was Adoniram Judson, who was on his final and memorable visit to his native land, and was received everywhere with the most unbounded and reverent enthusiasm. He had begun his work in Burmah in 1813, but under great difficulties. During the first six years he made no converts; he defied the demon of discouragement and labored on with increased faith and zeal, and then came an abundant harvest. The colossal work of his life in Burmah was the translation of the Holy Scriptures into the Burmese language. To this work, which is likely to endure, he added a Burmese-English dictionary. At length the toils and exposures broke down his health and he was obliged to take several voyages in adjoining waters. Soon after I saw him he married Miss Chubbuck and returned to Burmah in the following year. The old conflict between the holy and heroic heart and failing body was soon renewed. He resorted once more to the sea for relief, but died during the passage, on April 12, 1850. When crossing the Atlantic in the summer of 1885 I spent much of the time with that noble minister, Rev. Edward Judson, of New York. A funeral at sea occurred, and as the remains were disappearing in the water Mr. Judson said to me, with solemn tenderness: "Just so my beloved father was committed to the deep: his sepulchre is this great, wide ocean," That ocean is a type of his world-wide influence. Not only in the priority of time as a fearless pioneer into unknown dangers, but in profound and patient scholarship, and in the beauty of a holy and lovable personality, Adoniram Judson still hold the primacy among our American missionary heroes.

The progress which has been made in Christianizing heathendom during the last century (which may well be called the century of foreign missions) is familiar to every person of intelligence. The number of converts to Christianity is at least two millions, and several millions more have felt the influence of Christian civilization. The great mass have not been suddenly revolutionized, as in Luther's time, but one by one individual hearts yield to the gospel in nearly every land. As a serious offset to these glorious results the commerce of nominally Christian nations is often poisonous. Britain carries opium into China and India; America and other civilized nations carry rum into Africa. The word of life goes in the cabin, and the worm of death goes in the hold of the same vessel! The sailors that have gone from nominally Christian countries to various ports have often been very far from acting as gospel missionaries. It is not only for their own welfare, but that they may become representatives of Christianity that the noble "American Seamen's Friend Society" has been organized. The work which that society has wrought under the vigorous leadership of Dr. Stitt entitles it to the generous support of all our churches. If toiling "Jack" braves the tempest to bring us wealth from all climes, we owe it to him to provide him the anchor of the gospel, and to save him from spiritual shipwreck.

To no other benevolent society have I more cheerfully given service of tongue and pen than to this one. An honest view of the foreign mission enterprises to-day reveals the laying of broad foundations, and the building of solid walls, rather than any completed achievements already wrought. Blood tells, and God has entrusted his gospel to the Anglo-Saxons and the other most powerful races on the globe. The religion of the Bible is the only religion adapted to universal humanity, and in the Bible is a definite pledge that to all humanity that religion shall yet be preached.

Among the great spiritual agencies born within my memory, none deserves a higher place than The Young Men's Christian Association. When my beloved brother, Sir George Williams (now an octogenarian) started the first association in London on the 6th of June, 1844, he "builded better than he knew," The modest room in his store overlooking Paternoster Row in which he gathered the little praying band on that day is already an historic spot. My own connection with the Young Men's Christian Association began in New York when I joined the association there in the second year of its existence, 1854. We met in a room in Stuyvesant Institute and the heroic Howard Crosby was our president. We had no library, or reading room, or gymnasium, or any of the appliances that belong to the institutions of these days. After several migrations, our association found its permanent home in the spacious building on Twenty-third Street, to which Morris K. Jesup and William E. Dodge were among the foremost contributors. The master spirit in the operations of the New York Association for thirty years was Mr. Robert McBurney, who, when he landed from Ireland, was only seventeen years of age. He was among my evening congregation in the old Market Street Church. During my seven years' pastorate in that church I delivered a great many discourses and platform addresses on behalf of the association, and through all of the subsequent years it has been a favorite object on which to bestow my humble efforts. Here in Brooklyn a host of young-men have found a moral shelter, and many of them a spiritual birthplace, in the fine structure, reared largely from the munificent bequests of that princely Christian philanthropist, the late Mr. Frederick Marquand. It is not permitted to every good man or woman before they die to see the glorious fruits of the trees they planted, but to the eyes of the veteran George Williams the following facts must seem like a rehearsal of heaven. The Young Men's Christian Association now belts the globe with half a million of members, and ten times that number in some direct connection with the organization. It is housed in hundreds of solid structures which have cost between thirty and forty million dollars—each one a cheerful home—a place for physical development, manly instruction and training for Christ's service.

It has brought thousands of young men from impenitence to Christ Jesus, and made thousands of young Christians more like Jesus in their daily life. The most effective lay preacher of the century, D.L. Moody, confessed that in his training for spiritual work he owed more to the Young Men's Christian Association than to any other human agency. It has moulded the students of colleges and universities; it has been the salvation of many a soldier and sailor; it has led many into the gospel ministry; it has taught the whole world the beauty and power of a living unity in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit has set the Divine seal of His blessing on its world-wide work, and to the triune God be all the praise and all the glory.

As I witnessed the birth of the Young Men's Christian Association, I also saw the birth of a kindred organization, the "Society of Christian Endeavor." Many years ago an absurd and extravagant statement was widely afloat, claiming that I was the "grandsire" of this society. The simple truth was that Dr. Francis E. Clark, its heaven-directed founder, had seen in some religious journals my account of the good work wrought by the Young People's Association of the Lafayette Avenue Church, and he recognized the fact that its chief purpose was not mere sociality or literary advancement, but the spiritual profit of its members. He examined its constitution and reports, and when he constructed his first Christian Endeavor Society in the Williston Church of Portland, Maine, he adopted many of its features; and my beloved brother Clark, in his public addresses, has generously acknowledged such obligation as he was under to our Young People's Association (now in its thirty-fifth year of prosperous activity). It has always been a source of grateful pride that it should have furnished any aid to the origination of one of the foremost spiritual instrumentalities of the century. As any attempt to describe the sublime grandeur of Niagara would be a waste of time, so it would be equally futile for me to describe the magnificent extent of the Christian Endeavor Society's operations and the immense spiritual results that have flowed from them. There is no civilized speech or language where its voice is not heard; its line has gone out to all the earth, and its words to the ends of the world. It has done more than any other single agency to develop the life and to train for service the energies of the youthful members of the churches It has yet still wider possibilities before it, and when the hand that planted this mighty tree has turned to dust its boughs will be shedding down the fruits of the Spirit on the dwellers in every clime.