THEODORE L. CUYLER.
I cannot refrain here from thanking my old friend, Dr. St. Clair McKelway, the brilliant editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, for his generous tribute which accompanied the publication of the above letter. His grandfather, Dr. John McKelway, a typical Scotchman, was my family physician and church deacon in the city of Trenton. Among the editorial fraternity let me also mention here the name of my near neighbor, Mr. Edward Gary, of the New York Times, who was with me in Fort Sumter, at the restoration of the flag, and with whom I have foregathered in many a fertilizing conversation. Away off on the slope above beautiful Stockbridge, and surrounded by his Berkshire Hills, Dr. Henry M. Field is spending the bright "Indian summer" of his long and honored career. For forty years we held sweet fellowship in the columns of the New York Evangelist.
The experience of the great Apostle at Rome, who dwelt for nearly two years in his "hired house," has been followed by numberless examples of the ministers of the Gospel who have had a migratory home life. My experience under rented roofs led me to build, in 1865, this dwelling, which has housed our domestic life for seven and thirty years. A true homestead is not a Jonah's gourd for temporary shelter from sun and storm, it is a treasure house of accumulations. Many of its contents are precious heirlooms; its apartments are thronged with memories of friends and kinsfolk living or departed. Every room has its scores of occupants, every wall is gladdened with the visions of loved faces. I look into yonder guest chamber, and find my old friends, Governor Buckingham, and Vice-President Wilson, who were ready to discuss the conditions of the temperance reform which they had come to advocate. Down in the dining-room the "Chi-Alpha" Society of distinguished ministers are holding their Saturday evening symposium; in the parlor my Irish guest, the Earl of Meath, is describing to me his philanthropies in London, and his Countess is describing her organization of "Ministering Children." In the library, Whittier is writing at the table; or Mr. Fulton is narrating his missionary work in China; out on the piazza my veteran neighbor, General Silas Casey, is telling the thrilling story of how he led our troops at the storming of the Heights of Chapultepec; up the steps comes dear old John G. Paton, with his patriarchal white beard, to say "good-bye," before he goes back to his mission work in the New Hebrides.
No room in our dwelling is more sacred than the one in which I now write. On its walls hang the portraits of my Princeton Professors, and those of majestic Chalmers and the gnarled brow of Hugh Miller, the Scotch geologist, the precious gifts of the author of "Rab and His Friend." Near them is the bright face of dear Henry Drummond, looking just as he did on that stormy evening when he came into my library a few hours after his arrival from Scotland. I still recall his reply to me in Edinburgh, when I cautioned him against permitting his scientific studies to unspiritualize his activities. "Never you fear," said he, "I am too busy in trying to save young men; and the only way to do that is to lead them to the Lord Jesus Christ," In former years this room was my beloved mother's "Chamber of Peace" that opens to the sun-rising. Her pictured face looks down upon me now from the wall, and her Bible lies beside me. In this room we gathered on the afternoon of September 14, 1887, around her dying bed. Her last words were: "Now kiss me good night," and in an hour or two she fell into that sweet slumber which Christ gives His beloved, at the ripe age of eighty-five. Her mental powers and memory were unimpaired. On the monument which covers her sleeping dust in Greenwood is engraved these words: "Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee."
This room is also hallowed by another tenderly sacred association. Here our beloved daughter, Louise Ledyard Cuyler, closed her beautiful life on the last day of September, 1881. On her return from Narragansett Pier, she was stricken with a mysterious typhoid fever, which often lays its fatal touch on the most youthful and vigorous frame. She had apparently passed the point of danger, and one Sabbath when I read to her that one hundred and twenty-first Psalm, which records the watchful love of Him who "never sleeps," our hearts were gladdened with the prospect of a speedy recovery. Then came on a fatal relapse; and in the early hour of dawn, while our breaking hearts were gathered around her dying bed, she had "another morn than ours." Why that noble and gifted daughter, who was the inseparable companion of her fond mother, and who was developing into the sweet graces of young womanhood, was taken from our clinging arms at the early age of twenty-two, God only knows. Many another aching parental heart has doubtless knocked at the sealed door of such a mystery, and heard the only response, "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." Upon the monument that bears her name, graven on a cross, amid a cluster of white lilies, is inscribed: "I thank my God upon every remembrance of thee." The lovely twin brother, "Georgie" (whose sweet life story is told in "The Empty Crib"), reposes in our same family plot, and beside him lies a baby brother, Mathiot Cuyler, who lived but twelve days. As this infant was born on the twenty-fifth of December, 1873, his tiny tomb-stone bears the simple inscription: "Our Christmas Gift."
During all our seasons of domestic sorrow the cordial sympathies of our noble-hearted congregation were very cheering; for we had always kept open doors to them all, and regarded them as only an enlargement of our own family. In our household joys, they too, participated. When the twenty-fifth anniversary of our marriage occurred, they decorated our church with flags and flowers and suspended a huge marriage-bell on an arch before the pulpit. After the President of our Board of Trustees, the Hon. William W. Goodrich, had completed his congratulatory address, two of the officers of the church in imitation of the returning spies from Eshcol marched in, "bearing between them on a staff" a capacious bag of silver dollars. A curiously constructed silver clock is also among the treasured souvenirs of that happy anniversary.
In April, 1885, the close of the first quarter-century of my ministry was celebrated by our church with very delightful festivities. Addresses were delivered by his Honor Mayor Low, Dr. McCosh, of Princeton, Dr. Richard S. Storrs, and the Hon. John Wanamaker, Post-Master General. A duodecimo volume giving the history of our church and all its activities was published by order of our people.
From such a loyal flock in the full tide of its prosperity, to cut asunder, required no small exercise of conscience and of courage. When the patriarchal Dr. Emmons, of Franklin, Massachusetts, resigned his church at the age of eighty, he gave the good reason: "I mean to stop when I have sense enough to know that I have not begun, to fail." In exercising the same grace, on a Sabbath morning in February, 1890, I made before a full congregation the following announcement: "Nearly thirty years have elapsed since I assumed the pastoral charge of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church; and through the continual blessings of Heaven upon us it has grown into one of the largest and most useful and powerful churches in the Presbyterian denomination. It has two thousand three hundred and thirty members; and is third in point of numbers in the United States. This church has always been to me like a beloved child: I have given to it thirty years of hard and happy labor. It is now my foremost desire that its harmony may remain undisturbed, and that its prosperity may remain unbroken. For a long time I have intended that my thirtieth anniversary should be the terminal point of my present pastorate I shall then have served this beloved flock for an ordinary human generation, and the time has now come to transfer this most sacred trust to some other, who, in God's good Providence, may have thirty years of vigorous work before him, and not behind him. If God spares my life to the first Sabbath in April, it is my purpose to surrender this pulpit back into your hands, and I shall endeavor to co-operate with you in the search and selection of the right man to stand in it. I will not trust myself to-day to speak of the pang it will cost me to sever a connection that has been to me one of unalloyed harmony and happiness. It only remains for me to say that after forty-four years of uninterrupted mental labor it is but reasonable to ask for some relief from the strain that may soon become too heavy for me to bear."
The congregation was quite astounded by this unexpected announcement, but they recognized the motive that prompted the step, and acted precisely as I desired. They agreed at once to appoint a committee to look for a successor. In order that I might not hamper him in any respect, I declined the generous offer of our church to make me their "Pastor Emeritus."
As my pastorate began on an Easter Sabbath, in 1860, so it terminated at the Easter in 1890. Before an immense assemblage I delivered, on that bright Sabbath, the Valedictory discourse which closes the present volume, and which gives in condensed form the history of the Lafayette Avenue Church.