Bright and happy was that February morning of 1830 when the young pastor, with many of his flock around him, took his place on the green sward at Broad and Sansom streets. With his long hair brushed into lively motion by the matin breezes, he poured out a prayer to Heaven for the blessing of the triune God. "Like all Irishmen, John Chambers knew how to handle the spade", and handle it well he did on that day when he turned up the first spadeful of earth. After the diggers came the masons, who built honestly a solid foundation, and then the corner-stone laying in March, 1830, and finally the dedication in June, 1831. Dr. John Mason Duncan preached first in the new house in the morning and the sermon was royally long. One little boy, now an honored pastor of eighty, remembers that it ended at half-past one! Alas, that Saint Paul's faults, like that at Troas, should be more imitated by us preachers than his virtues! In the afternoon Rev. James Arbuckle preached. "The house was crowded to excess all day."
How one family, and indeed a group of families allied by blood or marriage, came to be life-long supporters of and worshippers in the First Independent Church, we must now tell. We shall speak of one member named Mary.
It was in 1832, the winter in which the famous English actress, Fannie Kemball, sister of Mrs. Sartoris (whose grandson, in our day, married Nellie, the daughter of General Grant) was starring in Philadelphia in the old Chestnut street theatre, on the South side of Philadelphia's most fashionable street, above Sixth. Mary had spent a winter of great gaiety, revelling in the joys of the dance, the theatre and every sort of worldly amusement—much to the grief of her mother, a woman of unaffected piety, who was praying that her daughter might look less at things perishing and more at the eternal.
Yet no message from the Unseen, sent through a human preacher, had yet reached the ears of Mary's inner being. It was while the anxious mother was most earnestly praying, that Mary was invited by a maiden friend, whom she had met at a picnic and with whom she had formed a warm friendship, to visit her and go to hear the new minister on Thirteenth street. Mary came, and saw, and heard, and was conquered. At the first sermon she hung spell-bound on the lips of the emotional and electrifying young orator, who during all his ministrations had also that peculiar unction, without which, preaching, however logical and learned, avails little.
On coming home, after the service in the new church on Broad street, Mary told her mother that she would never go to the theatre again; she had heard the grandest speaker that she had ever looked upon in her life; who outshone every actor she had ever seen, and whose message had more charms for her than the theatre itself. Soon after this Mr. Chambers with his wife made his first pastoral call at Mary's home.
About this time, late in the winter and toward the spring, there was a revivalist assisting Mr. Chambers, who to eloquence and magnetic power, added the power of the draughtsman. He was an artist in words and with the chalk also. He drew a cross on the blackboard, and without the element of color, but with the aid of music moved the emotions mightily. He called upon the congregation, led by sweet voices, to sing, "Alas! And Did My Saviour Bleed". His appeals, tender and powerful, were responded to. Many were brought "under conviction" and declared themselves from that time followers of Jesus Christ. On the day that Mary united with the church, one hundred persons were received at the communion table and into membership.
This is one sample picture of many of dissolving views of souls in Mr. Chambers's ever enlarging congregation. His ministry was from the first one of direct appeal. It was emotional, the personal element being powerful always, but there was no leaving of the converts to themselves or to neglect. Behind and above the Celtic fire and enthusiasm of John Chambers, was the life of the Spirit moving them through him. The converts were looked after. They were personally warned, exhorted, instructed, and taught. During this first year, yes, during fifty years, John Chambers seemed an incarnation of Paul's scripture: "Whom we preach, warning every man and teaching every man that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus". No extra or special meetings were held in these early years, and none that we can recall in the later days, but the regular services were steadily "the occasions of converting power."
I have intimated that the secret of the great preacher's power cannot be discovered by mere logical analysis. One might as well try to explain John Chambers's influence over human hearts and lives by his printed words alone or through mere description, as to attempt to show, by a simple knowledge of the properties of lead alone, the astounding effects of a Krag army rifle. The venerable Dr. Henry Clay Trumbull, veteran editor of the Sunday School Times, writes under date of June 11, 1903:
"An orator's or a preacher's power sometimes depends largely on his intensity of utterance or of manner. He can actually throw himself into his hearers so that they will, for the time, think or feel as he does, even beyond the meaning of his words. Thus it was said of Whitefield as a preacher that he could move an audience to tears by saying the word 'Mesopotamia'. One who has felt the power of some preachers can understand the force of that statement.