Starting from Thirteenth and Filbert, the site of the old Church of the Vow, and moving through the City Hall buildings and Wanamaker's Grand Depot and big store, I came to Broad and Sansom, where in 1830, towards the setting sun, there were but unoccupied lots, or only a few scanty buildings. Further down Broad Street, near Spruce, I passed, having already studied the interior of, the new and imposing structure, the Chambers-Wylie Memorial Church. Thence southwestwardly, I walked to Bethany Presbyterian Church which, when started, was amid brickyards, vacant lots, and with a great area of the open country stretching to the southwest. I then boarded a Gray's Ferry car and rode past the United States Arsenal and into a region where the streets had only very recently been cut through, and were but partially paved or curbed.
I found the Church of the Love of God, the John Chambers Memorial Church, standing alone in its glory. No human dwellings were nearer than a quarter of a mile, though houses of worship could be discerned rising out of the fringe of dwellings. But this pioneering, "preparing in the desert a highway for our God", was exactly what the First Independent Church people and the Bethany Mission colony of 1858, had done before. It was simply planting the standard for the hosts to follow. What grand faith to go ahead of population and to be literally a forerunner of the gospel! Outwardly the edifice, built of a combination of light brick, Scotch granite, and terra cotta, seemed but little "like a church", yet only, as it were, to impress upon the mind the absurdity of ever calling an edifice—a thing built by masons and carpenters—a "church", which is a company of human souls called to do God's will. Yet for such uses, and for such a company, and intended to be helpful to the education and training of the young in social holiness and for the worship of God, what could be better? In the basement was a gymnasium, with generous facilities for physical exercise, and that which is next to godliness. There were also a great entertainment room, a kitchen, tea room, and apartments for the janitor and his family. Upstairs, on the first or main floor was the great Sunday School room proper, divisible, by movable partitions and curtains, into class rooms and able to hold in unity about twelve hundred people. Offices, reading rooms, places for mothers' meetings, and, oh blessed modern addition—fulfilling at least one pastor's dreams—rooms, where invalids or mothers with small children might come, see the minister but not be seen by the congregation, stay as long as they could and leave, whenever they wished, through a side door without disturbing any one. Kindergarten rooms and also those for the junior classes completed this "modern instance" of consecrated common sense expressed in a building.
After the courteous janitor had shown me about, I went up on the roof, whence projects many feet in the air a rotating star with electric lights showing at night, the red, white, and blue in alternation, while east and west along the ridge pole rises in large letters, electrically illuminated at night, the "Church of the Love of God"—though the corporate name of the completed enterprise is to be the John Chambers Memorial Church. On the roof also is a great bell cast at the McChane foundry, in Baltimore. This is the gift of Miss Kate Wentz, who, with her aunt Miss Cousty, were as I remember, among the most faithful worshippers during many years in the old church. Its silvery tones made the air quiver with melody first on Christmas Eve. Facing the south and the sunny hours is a superb stained-glass window, with the medallion portrait of the great pastor, as he looked in his prime, when his hair was just beginning to turn gray.
Thus, in a southwesterly line, through the city of Philadelphia, from near the spot where to-day stands the great Reading Terminal, has issued a chain of sweet influences, which, like those of the Pleiades, cannot be bound.
The dedicatory services of the John Chambers Memorial Church, erected as a thanksgiving offering to the praise and glory of God, and in memory of the life and good works of his servant, the Rev. John Chambers, were held during the week beginning October 19, 1902, on entering the new house of the Lord. The published pamphlet, which is richly illustrated with portraits and pictures of the church edifices, is a valuable souvenir of both old times and new.
Yet this is not all. On June 9, 1898, some of the Christian workers of Bethany Church began services in a tent in West Philadelphia, near Baltimore avenue and Fiftieth street, and out of that beginning has grown Saint Paul's Presbyterian Church, which flourishes with high promise. Its edifice was dedicated March 24, 1901. Here again the great pastor is commemorated by a superb memorial window which sheathes the light and color that set forth most gloriously the Good Shepherd. It has been reared to the memory of John Chambers by Mrs. John Hunter, the widow of Mr. John C. Hunter, so long the faithful elder in the old Broad Street Church.
The basement of Saint Paul's Church, furnished and fitted up by the Brotherhood of Andrew and Philip, is named Walton Hall and contains a marble tablet in memory of Rudolph S. Walton, which reads as follows:
IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF
RUDOLPH S. WALTON.