"I remember when I was a little boy attending school at the West Chester Academy, an announcement was made at one time that a great temperance meeting was to be held in Everhart's Grove, a little piece of woods about half a mile from the end of the town. The meeting was held on Saturday afternoon, and going down, with a few of my schoolmates to attend the meeting, upon reaching the outskirts of the town, when yet more than a quarter of a mile distant from the place of meeting in the woods, I heard Dr. Chambers' clarion voice most distinctly, as he was engaged in speaking.
"He was for many years a leader in aggressive movements in the temperance cause, and by his faithfulness in denouncing those who were engaged in the traffic he did much to promote the interests of that great reform. He was also exceedingly faithful as a pastor in looking after the absentees from worship. It was said that he could always mark those who were absent from the House of God on the Sabbath, and that his rule was on Monday to look them up and ascertain the reason of their absence. He was an earnest and faithful and aggressive worker in the cause of his Master, and by his eloquence and fervor succeeded in retaining his hold upon the large congregation that worshipped in the old church at the corner of Broad and Sansom streets".
I can add to Dr. Crowell's testimony my own as to Mr. Chambers's inspiring presence at the Union prayer meetings in the Sansom Street Baptist Church for I attended many of them. Once when the hymn "Oh for a thousand tongues to sing" had been finished he rose up and told us in a few burning words that we need not pray for "a thousand tongues", but that one tongue was enough, if each used his aright. His knowledge of the presence or absence of his parishioners was nearly infallible. Once when a very useful lady member had been absent during several weeks at "revival" meetings in another church, her pastor said to her of her absence: "It was like pouring melted lead down my back". Mr. Chambers did not believe in extra meetings, but in live ones all the time.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE CIVIL WAR.
The great Civil War, which divided the nation and the states, families and households, struck the First Independent Church like a hurricane. In a sense, the Scripture was fulfilled as to the smiting of the shepherd and the scattering of the flock. The result was to be a distinct lessening of John Chambers's influence upon the city of Philadelphia, at least, and his relegation to a comparatively limited sphere of influence. One of his alumni writes: "If he had been in sympathy with the North in the Civil War, I believe he would have attained a national reputation. As events turned out, his Southern affiliations and sympathy displaced him somewhat from his niche of peculiar influence in Philadelphia, and relegated him to a work of lessening circumference". The biographer would gladly pass over the whole subject, but true history requires that a just statement of the facts should be given. Whatever be the judgment, all acknowledge that John Chambers acted with a good conscience. Deo Vindice.
Despite his passionate love of liberty and his democratic sympathies, he had imbibed in Baltimore and held in Pennsylvania the general ideas of the South concerning slavery. This "institution" was considered as orthodoxy itself. It was defended from the pulpit and set forth as divinely ordained. Mr. Chambers sincerely believed that the black man must ever be "a servant of servants unto his brethren". His passionate appeals to the supremacy of the Constitution as against the "higher law", and his hearty profession of admiration for the law-abiding citizen were all on the side of upholding and protecting slavery as an American "institution" to be sacredly safe-guarded. Just before the war, when calling at our home and finding the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin" lying upon the sofa and bearing evidences of being well perused, he condemned the reading of such a "vile" work in no measured terms.
By nature a sincere man of peace and in practical life a consummate peacemaker, our pastor professed great abhorrence of war. Nevertheless, these denunciations of slaughter and his oft-expressed horror of "brethren imbruing their hands in each other's blood", were discounted in the minds of those who knew his bitter denunciations of all things British and monarchial, and remembered his keen interest in the Mexican war. Some hostile critic of our national policy with Mexico, on seeing the Philadelphia recruits marching away to serve under General Scott, called them "dough faces". Mr. Chambers heard of this and, on the contrary, praising warmly the bold soldier boys of 1846 said that "if the body of the man who had called such soldiers 'dough faces' were made into bread, there wouldn't be a dog in Philadelphia that would eat a pound of it".
The slow coming events cast long and great shadows which rapidly shortened as the year 1861 drew near. The situation was critical and the political sky was fast gathering blackness. In politics John Chambers was a strong Democrat, sympathizing strongly with the president, James Buchanan, "Pennsylvania's favorite son", with whom he was personally acquainted, as well as with his niece, Harriet Lane, of whose decease I read in July, 1903. He spent several summers with the president at Bedford Springs, was often a guest at Wheatland, and at Washington was known at the White House, and once, at least, opened the House of Representatives with prayer.