It is certain that our pastor suffered greatly in his mind over the thought of a disruption of the Union. Thanksgiving day was the elect season at which preachers discussed political themes, and Dr. Chambers's sermon of November 24, 1859, was printed in a pamphlet.
I remember the occasion as if it were yesterday. His rendering of the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy was with such impressive power that to this day I feel as if no other chapter ought to be read on similar occasions. He also read the second chapter of First Timothy, after which he offered his fervent prayer. As I peruse again the printed discourse I can hear his ringing voice and see the superb and graceful gestures. This was his opening sentence:
"I have announced to you my purpose to relieve my heart of a burden that has long oppressed me. As an American citizen, an American minister of the Gospel, I love this Bible; and the God of the Bible. My country, its constitution, and its laws, I love. As a man of peace I have a heart for the nation.... I love it as a unit. I am ready to live by it as a unit; and am ready to put the blood of my heart fresh upon its altar rather than see it anything else than a unit". He then went on to dwell on the worth of the Union to ourselves and the world of mankind, and upon the jealousy which European nations, especially the monarchies, and more particularly England, had of us. Their hope of "triumphing over this Western continent was by triumphing over us".
He then dwelt upon the importance, solemnity and value of an oath, declaring that one of the most alarming signs of the times was the utter indifference to the value of an oath.
"Now, for example, the Constitution most positively and absolutely, in the plainest and most unmistakable manner provides that a fugitive from labor escaping from one state to another shall be delivered up. This is the Constitution. I am not to-day touching slavery right or wrong. I am looking as a practical man at things as they are." Every citizen who winks at its evasion, "if he aids or abets the fugitive in his flight, he is before heaven a perjured man and the waters of the ocean could not wash out the stain."
The fugitive slave law had been often resisted in Philadelphia, as I remember well. In the same city, the first anti-slavery society had been formed, and within its present limits the first ecclesiastical protest ever raised against slavery was signed in the Mennonite meeting house in Germantown, where in summer I sometimes worshipped. The agitation of the abolitionists, and the burning down of Pennsylvania Hall were all matters of fresh memory to adult listeners in 1859.
"I now take up that question of questions—can this Union be perpetuated? I answer 'yes'. Take the Bible for our rule and guide. Let it be the sheet anchor of our hope.... No tempest that crowned heads or despotic sceptres can invoke will ever throw our ship upon the lee shore or put out the light of this American Union".
After a fling, by the way, at the divine right of kings, "a right which God gave in his wrath", he quoted the legend of Franklin's calling for prayer in the constitutional convention, noted the incident of Jesus and the tribute to Cæsar, and then dwelt on the necessity of the adopted citizen, especially, keeping his oath. He intimated that those immigrants who did not like our constitution "had better pack up and go home.... The constitution and laws of this country are our Cæsar and on us rests the solemn duty of obedience". He then passed to the duties of husbands and wives, of children to their parents, and to the duty of training the youth to speak with respect of rulers and laws. His final exhortation was to the sacred obligation to obey the constitution and the laws. He pointed out the danger of the dissolution of the Union, showing that the peril was great "unless our pulpits cease their clamor against the constitution and the laws". Ministers must not urge "the higher law (as they call it) of instinct, but preach God's revealed word, and cease, too, from declaring from the altar that it is better to put into a man's hand a rifle, a death weapon, rather than a mother's Bible". He urged that we cease the agitation and abuse, that arrays state against state, and that sectionalism be abandoned. The conclusion was made with tremendous effect. "If I were on the banks of the Potomac, standing by that vault at Mount Vernon, I would say it over the sacred dust of the immortal Washington, the man that would labor or would wish for the dissolution of the American Union, let him be "anathema, maranatha".
But neither rhetoric, nor eloquence, nor professions of loyalty to the constitution could prevent secession, or that firing of the shot on Sumter which unified the North. The news of this overt act of hostility at once sharply divided the congregation, and a number of the very best men and women in the church, some of them Mr. Chambers's oldest and warmest supporters, withdrew into other churches, mostly Presbyterian, or united themselves with the Central Congregational Church, where they and their children and grandchildren form a notable element in that honored church. Others, like Anna Ross, the soldiers' friend, became actively identified with patriotic measures. The loss to the First Independent church was a rich gain to other churches. Four out of six of his elders, Daniel Steinmetz, Joseph B. Sheppard, Rudolph S. Walton, and John Yard, Jr., among his ablest laymen, withdrew into Presbyterian churches to help build them up with their talents, generosity, and consecration, or initiated new enterprises. Others, though they did not take away their letters of membership, never again or rarely, worshipped in the church edifice. Probably the number thus lost to the congregation ran into the hundreds, but the break was because of conscience and conviction.
Nevertheless God was glorified and Christ honored even in farewells. The partings were in friendship. These were not personal quarrels, and the relations between man and man for Christ's sake were always maintained. John Chambers's own testimony on this point is clear. In 1875 he said "We did not dispute. They treated me and they have always treated me with the greatest respect and they were among our most useful men ... and we have been on the terms of the most perfect friendship since.... We did not have any trouble with each other—we parted in peace."