Sunset views : in three parts

Front matter

IN THREE PARTS.

BY BISHOP O. P. FITZGERALD.

"/ am a fart of all that I have met." — Tennyson

PART I.: BACKWARD GLANCES. Blood Will Tell, but Not All 3

An Early Start 9

My First Schooling 1 «

A Sad Night Ride 21

How Methodism Kept Its Hold 27

Taking Shape 33

Formative Influences 30

A Unique Pedagogical Experience 55

A Turning Point 77

Initiated 83

My First Sermon 97

Preaching to the Blacks 103

Sent to Savannah 107

Savannah 113

California As We Found It 135

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xii Contents.

PAGE

A Midwinter Meditation 1 79

A Little Note 180

PART III.: THE PULPIT. Meroz 239

The Sufferer's Secret 310

PART I. Backward Glances

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BLOOD WILL TELL, BUT NOT ALL.

BLOOD WILL TELL, BUT NOT ALL

BLOOD will tell. From Adam and Eve down to this day, this has been an accepted truism. From Abraham to the latest born inheritors of titles or dollars, men have loved to air or invent their pedigrees. Our family was like other families in this respect. The lower the family fortunes sunk — and they sank to a point that was very low at one time — the more they had to say as to what they had been in earlier days. Perspective smoothes genealogies as well as landscapes. Distance lends enchantment to the view where the imagination gilds the summits of vision. It is well that this is so. There is enough that is petty and pitiful in our everyday life to give us cause for thankfulness for the glamour that is on the past, as well as for the glory that through faith and hope gild the future.

My parents — Richard Fitzgerald and Martha Hooper — were both Virginians, and belonged, at least in a chronological sense, to the first families. I could wish that I knew the verity of the tradition that this Virginia branch of the Fitzgeralds was akin to Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who was a martyr for the cause of freedom for Ireland. There is no nobler name in Irish history. This is saying much. The noblest Irishmen are among the noblest of earth's true nobility, whether titled or untitled. A mean Irishman is the meanest of men. Irishmen are extremists, patriots of the first quality or traitors of blackest dye ; martyrs glad to die for truth or ready to sell it to the highest bidder. God bless a Sunset Views.

old Ireland! God bless her children wherever they may wande* to the latest generation !

The families of the Hoopers, the Powells, the Goodes, the Grants were branches of the family tree. My maternal grandmother was a marvel of energy in business and fervor in religion. She had every soul on the plantation aroused at daybreak and ready for work. Her gift in prayer was extraordinary. At a camp meeting her prayers seemed to move heaven and earth. She ran a distillery famous for the quality of its whisky. There is no question of her sincerity as a Christian. At that time members of the various branches of the Church of Christ took their drams as a matter of course, ran distilleries, and "treated" in election campaigns. The stillhouse and "meetinghouse" were owned and managed by the same persons as a matter of course. The Methodists were among the first to make war against whisky in that region, as elsewhere in this land. The fires of that old stillhouse have long since ceased to burn, the very site of it is lost; but the songs of the Methodists are still heard among those Dan River hills. The dear old mother in Israel now sees more clearly what few could see in her day — the sin and curse of strong drink — and when we join in the new song in heaven, she will be there too. The ideas and standards have changed, and changed for the better, during the intervening decades. God is God, and this world is his world.

An illustration of the reign of God's grace in the world may come in just here. Among the negroes on the farm was " UncleLunnon," who in an earlier and darker time came over from Africa as a compulsory immigrant in a British slave ship. He was almost as strong as a gorilla, and very profane and hot-tempered. But he was honest and truthful.

Blood Will Tell, but Not All. S

He lived to be one hundred and twenty years old — the oldest man of any color that I ever saw. The most remarkable fact concerning Uncle Lunnon was his conversion in the last year of his life. By the grace of God he was brought under deep conviction by this thought which came into his mind: " I have been faithful to my earthly marster, but I've been a mean nigger toward my heavenly Marster. I've lived longer than any nigger I ever heard of; in my prime I was stronger than any man, black or white, I ever met. But I've been a cussin' and not a prayin' man all my life. I am a mean nigger." So, to use his own language, Uncle Lunnon put the case to himself. In genuine penitence he bowed before God, and helped by the counsel and prayers of my uncle, Bannister Fitzgerald, Uncle Lunnon was led to lay hold of the hope set before sinners in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us. If any channel is left open in a human soul, the grace of God will flow in.

Heredity is a potent factor in every human life. Free agency is also a fact. Heredity may give a trend upward or downward, but free agency determines the movement. Not fatality, but free agency, fixes destiny. The rule of judgment is equitable. The Judge is infallible. Where little is given, little is required; and where much is given, much is required. Lack of effort is the only ground of condemnation of any human soul. The slothful servant, not the one less gifted, is the one who went into outer darkness — not only by the sentence of the Judge, but by the drift of his own indolence, or by the perversity of his own will. No soul ever perished in any other way.

AN EARLY START.

AN EARLY START.

WHEN two days old, I came into the Church of Christ in a sense good and true, and have been in it in some sense until now. Membership with me means membership forever. The Church militant merges into the Church triumphant. The Church is the one organization on earth in which membership never lapses. The reader understands my meaning when I say that I came into the Church when two days old — that is to say, I was then dedicated to God in baptism. Dr. Abram Penn, of the Virginia Conference, was the administrator. The second member of my "given" or Christian name is Penn, and was given for that man of God, whose memory is blessed. After pouring or sprinkling upon my head the crystal drops that symbolize the promised grace that cleanses the soul through the atoning blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, he knelt at the bedside and prayed that the man-child might live before the Lord ; that he might be a disciple of Jesus; that he might be a Methodist preacher. "I felt the answer," said my mother to me with wet eyes in a low voice that I seem to hear now as I write the words. She felt the answer — and so have I all my life. Christians used to talk that way in those days concerning prayer. They believed that the prayer of faith touches God, and that God can and does touch the petitioner and the subject of the prayer at the same moment. The old Book seems to put it the same way. Many Christians reach this level at times in their lives. It is a high io Sunset Views.

plane : up there the air is very pure and the light is clear-shining*. My mother had that sort of faith. According to her faith it was done unto her: she lived to know that the boy-child she gave to God in the baptismal covenant was a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. My dear, Christian mother ! She was said to be wonderfully beautiful in her youth. To me she was always beautiful. She was a woman of many sorrows. The last time I saw her the marks of age and pain and grief were on her face. I shall see her again, clothed in beauty greater than that of her bridal morning, up yonder in that land where the weary rest. She was a sweet singer, and her songs were mostly in the minor key. She had sorrows of her own, and was touched by all the sorrow of the circles in which she moved, from the highest to the lowest. She ministered to all, and was loved by all. These many years she has been within the vail. I shall know her when we meet, and the rest of the city of God will be completer when once more I feel the clasp of her arms.

Yes, I came into the Church when two days old, and the tie was never wholly broken. The relation of the baptized children of the Church to the Church and its Head is very sacred to every parent who knows and feels what is meant by the baptism of children. Many show that they neither know nor feel its solemn and blessed significance. There will be an awakening and a reform in the brighter day that is coming in Christendom. Then will be understood the fullness and sweetness of the meaning of the Master's words: "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." What do the words mean ? We may be sure that they do not mean

An Early Start. n

that our children are farther from God and lower in privilege in the New Testament Church than under the old dispensation. We maybe sure that they do not mean that our children must of necessity go into sin and be stained and maimed and stunted in their spiritual development by it. We may be sure that they do not mean that they are to be turned loose in the world and branded by the devil, afterwards to be lassoed and tamed if possible by special effort. No, no! The Master's words must mean at least this much: that the baptized children of the Church belong to him; they are initially inducted into his kingdom ; they have the promise of prevenient grace and guidance up to the line of moral accountability. Then what? Just this: they may and ought to tide right over by faith into the conscious salvation of the gospel. Faith is choice — the choice of the parent at first, the choice of the child when choice for it is possible. My mother felt the answer to her prayer of faith at my baptism: I feel it now.

The millennium cannot come until the Church shall have assumed its proper relation to the children of the Church. If it were to come, it could not stay with a Church that allows a wall of ice to shut off her children from her communion. Question : May not the lapse into sin of so many children in the families of ministers of the gospel and other good people be owing to their error at this point? The religious natures of their children bud into initial life normally at an early age, and are killed by the frosts of neglect and delay. They may not have a second budding time: if they do, will not the growth be a stunted growth? The promise is to you and your children in the present tense for all. Let him and her that readeth understand.

MY FIRST SCHOOLING.

MY FIRST SCHOOLING.

THE image of my first school-teacher rises before me as I begin this chapter — that of a sweet-faced, sweet-voiced, holy woman, who opened the daily sessions with a prayer that made us feel that she was talking with God and that he was there. The discipline of her school was strict, but it was the strictness of a constraining and pervading personal influence rather than a code of rules or fear of punishment. A boy about my own age one day was detected in a falsehood, and was told to stand in a corner and think of his sin against God. All the corporal punishment I ever felt or witnessed in all my life never impressed me with the guilt and shame of falsehood as did that object lesson. She somehow made us feel that all sin was sacrilegious as well as mean. We all loved her. The image of Rebecca Field — that was her name — keeps its place in my heart undimmed. > She was what coarse people call an old maid — one of those sweet-souled and finely-tuned women who, making no homes of their own, bless every home they touch; one of those Christlike spirits that, with a self-abnegation incomprehensible to lower natures, live for others, sweetening this dull, sordid world and ripening for that other world beyond where, with that other Mary whom Jesus loved and a blessed company of such elect souls, they will find their reward and fit companionship .3 That long sentence grew upon me, but its length will be excused when the reader is told that this holy woman, my first teacher, gave me a love for all such that I can never lose.

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My next teacher was a man — a man to be remembered. He was a good man, but severe, with notions of school government and discipline quite in contrast with those held by my first teacher. He did not spoil his pupils by sparing the rod. He whipped them with apparent enjoyment and extraordinary energy and frequency. Those gum and hickory switches, four or five in number, were placed above his desk, not for ornament, but for use. I heard him say more than once that I was his favorite scholar: he exhibited his favoritism by whipping me more than the others. Under the circumstances I was not very proud of the distinction. Fear and force ruled his school. The boys hated and feared him, and loved to annoy him as much as he seemed to enjoy flogging them. It was a hard time for both teacher and pupils. Once during the term we "turned him out ' ' for a holiday, and it was done by main force : a big boy asked for a holiday, and was refused; and then the irate pedagogue was thrown to the floor and held down until he agreed to the demand. We went away triumphant and rejoicing. But when we came back after the holiday was over, he "got even" with us, and more. Those gum and hickory switches made up for lost time. It is needless to say that to me the memory of the teacher that prayed and ruled by love is sweeter than that of the one who whipped and ruled by fear.

My third teacher was a quaint old Irish-American, a fine scholar, a gentleman of the old school, whose passion was mathematics and whose special abhorrence was faulty syntax. He was not averse to the use of the rod in dealing with boys, but he never gave a blow to a girl: the chivalry of his race on its upper side was in his blood and breeding. An Irishman's best, let me again say, is as

My First Schooling. 17

good as the best to be found anywhere on earth. He would show a partiality toward the girls that made the boys angry sometimes. At this distance this trait lends a grace to his memory. His weakness leaned in the direction of a chivalrous sentiment that has made half of the poetry of the world and a large part of its blessedness. It is a pleasant fact to record that my old Irish-American schoolmaster became a Christian man. He was converted at a Methodist camp meeting, and was quaintly demonstrative on the occasion. On the camp ground he had an enemy, a man named Kemp. Glowing with his first love as a Christian he sought his enemy, and finding him in the midst of a group of men, he grasped his hand, saying impulsively: "Kemp, give me your hand — I feel humble enough to shake hands with a dog ! " The old man kept the faith unto the end of his life.

My next and last teacher was a small man, quick of motion and speech, with a big head covered with black bushy hair, spotless in his apparel, jealous of his dignity, with a passion for work and genuine good will toward all his pupils. He was what many would call a fussy man, ready to take sides in all personal quarrels, a hot partisan in politics, and perpetually entangled in mild love scrapes. But he had the pedagogical gift beyond question, and was at bottom a true man. There was a streak of romance in his life, but the pathos of grief and death crowd it out of this record.

I had other schooling all along, of course — the schooling of my environment, which was mixed and peculiar. Our home was a frequent stopping place for the Methodist preachers. When farthest from religion in his daily life, my father never lost his respect and regard for the Methodist Church and its ministry. Her Church life was for my mother the golden thread that ran through all the tangled web ef her life. So in my boyhood I heard (as a boy hears) the sermons of such pulpit giants as Peter Doub, James Reid, and William Anderson ; the tremendous exhortations of Father Dye; the seraphic songs of Jehu Hank. I was saturated with the spirit of that time of mighty revivals, polemical controversy, and sharp hand-to-hand fighting with the world, theflesh, and the devil. And the fighting was indeed sharp. The whisky distillery, the cross-road doggery, the cockfight, the horse race, the card table, were all around. I saw and heard much that I would be glad to forget forever. It was largely a duel between the Methodist Church and the whisky devil during this period. When in 1866 my father, then an old man, told me that he went alone once every day to pray in the little Methodist chapel in sight of his home, and that he had found peace with God, and was waiting for the call to go up to meet my mother, I thanked God for the Methodist Church that has made the desert places of America blossom and its wildernesses to rejoice.

The life and death of my brother William, two years older than myself, was a graciously educative influence of my boyhood. He was frail in his physical constitution from the start, and there was something about him that seemed to indicate that he was destined for another and higher sphere than earth. He was never known to utter an evil word, or to show a wrong temper, or to strike an angry blow. There was a spiritual beauty about him that awed and attracted both the old and the young. He died in his teens, lying in our mother's arms, his face shining rapturously as he said with upward look, "Lift me higher!" That death and the life that went before it were part of my schooling.

A SAD NIGHT RIDE.

WAS a sad-hearted boy that winter day when I left home to go out into the wide world alone. My mother's hot tears fell on my face as she gave me a parting kiss. I feel it all as I write these lines to-day, more than fifty years afterwards. I was under fourteen years old. The family fortunes had sunk to a point where it became imperative that I should become self-supporting. From that day to this I have fought this battle. The record of the struggle would be a record of my gropings in the dark and sinnings in the light on the one side, and of the patience and mercy of my God on the other. (That last sentence might be taken as an epitome of my whole life.) Blessed be His name !

My destination was Lynchburg, Virginia. It was twelve miles to Danville, where ended the first stage of my journey. I felt like one in a dream as the four-horse stage wheeled me along. The winter sky looked cold, and there was a heaviness about my heart and a lump in my throat. I had no appetite for the hot supper set before me at Williams's Tavern. When a boy in his early teens loses his appetite, there is something serious in the case. At two o'clock in the morning I was roused and told that the stagecoach was waiting for me. That ride ! It seemed a long, long time from two o'clock to daybreak. The weather was very cold, the very stars glittering coldly in the sky, the horses' hoofs making lively time on the frozen roadbed. The jolting of the stagecoach and the sadness of my heart kept me wide awake during the long hours. The sense of loneliness was then first felt, 'not for the last time. There are souls that feel it all their lives — orphaned at the the start, isolated all along. To such heaven will be sweeter, if possible, than to all others — the heaven where the family of God shall meet and mingle in fellowship unrestrained, with love unmixed and unending. Blessed are the homesick who shall reach that home ! I was too heartsick to realize how cold it was. When at sunrise we drove up to the tavern at Pittsylvania Courthouse, I was so nearly frozen that I had to be lifted out of the stagecoach, taken into the house, and set by the big log fire to thaw. The landlady gave me a kindly look, and spoke kindly words that touched my boy-heart. But I thought of the home I had left on the other side of Dan River, and again there was a lump in my throat. It all comes back — that long cold night ride, the all-day ride that followed, and the heartache that never left me for a moment. Over the hills of Pittsylvania and Campbell counties, crossing Staunton River, which then looked big to my boyish eyes, the wintry wind whistling through the forest trees, the smoke curling upward from mansions or cabins in the clearings, the Blue Ridge outlined northward in the sky that looked so far away and so cold — it all comes back with a rush upon my memory, my first day alone in the world. There was a sort of semi-orphanage in my consciousness that day that has given me sympathy for orphanage all my life. And I do not wonder that the Book that tells us what is in God's heart toward his creatures says so much about the children that are motherless and homeless. The heavenly Father may not be seen by the natural eye in the order of the natural world, but the throb of his heart is felt in the

A Sad Night Ride. 23

Word that tells us what he is and how he feels. The heavenly Father! — that is what he calls himself. Our Father, who art in heaven, thy kingdom come in our hearts, in our lives, in our world, is the prayer that rises from my soul in penning the closing words of this short chapter! Amen.

HOW METHODISM KEPT ITS HOLD.

HOW METHODISM KEPT ITS HOLD.

IT may be worth while for me to pause in this straggling narration, and tell how it was that Methodism held its grasp upon me. The solution seems to be very simple : Methodism went everywhere that I went. There was always within my hearing a Methodist voice that would expose the sophistries of infidelity, and I was never beyond the sweep of a revival wave that bore me back toward my mother's Church. No matter how high might rise the tides of worldliness, passion, or unbelief, the tides of spiritual life in Methodism rose higher still. The Methodist idea then seemed to be that the mission of the Church was to save sinners in a sense more explicit than is now understood by many. The great revival out of which Methodism was born was still sweeping over the land. Through Methodism and other evangelical agencies God was commanding all men everywhere to repent. The kingdom of heaven was at hand in a sense that was special. To save sinners, not to build up the Church, was the Methodistic idea. The continent shook beneath its tread. This is the gospel that was needed. The Church was built up, of course, wherever souls were born of God into new life under .her ministry. There never was seen anywhere else such rapid growth in Church membership as there was in Methodism in the flush time of its revival power. Has a change come over it? Is a change desirable? Is a change to be expected ? No ! Let us have no radical change in our convictions as to what are the true functions

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of the Christian Church. Let us have no radical change of opinion or practice as to what is the special mission of Methodism. Methodism is not a sacerdotalism. When it becomes thus mummified, it will be ready for its shroud of formalism and for burial. It is Christianity in earnest — in the present tense. (Dr. Chalmers would not object to the added clause, even if it does seem tautologous. ) Methodists when saved become soul-savers in some form of Christian service. All are to be at it, and always at it, as long as they live on earth. To build up the Church in the true New Testament sense of the word is not only to polish its living stones, but to work in new material. The saints fall on sleep every generation, and others must take their places in the militant Church. The baptized children of the Church come to the point when they should ratify the baptismal covenant made by their parents, and make covenanted blessings theirs by choice. Shall we wait for a revival to take them into full fellowship ? Not necessarily. But the right sort of a revival, at the right time, raises a gracious tide of spiritual power that sweeps them over the bar into the port — the bar of worldliness, or doubt, or indecision. Thus a large percentage of our membership came into the Church; how large, the reader may be astonished to learn if he will make inquiry. And for backsliders, the periodical revival is the reopening of the gates for their return to the fold they have left.

This is the true history of the revival in Methodism, and it is largely the same in other evangelical bodies. It is not a question of theory, but of facts- -facts all pointing to the same conclusion, namely, that this is the method owned and blessed by the Holy Spirit. Its development among us

How Methodism Kejpt Its Hold. 29

was providential beyond question: its maintenance is demanded by every consideration affecting the salvation of men and the glory of God. All that can be truly said as to false methods and false revivalists may be assented to freely without any discount upon the value of genuine revival work. Satan never fails to counterfeit as far as he can any good work he cannot stop. The lying wonders of Simon Magus counterfeited the gracious miracles of the true disciples of our Lord. This short chapter, which came in of itself, so to speak, as a reflection on a personal statement, may end here with this remark: The time may come when Methodist and other evangelical bodies can afford to dispense with revivals, truly so called; but the child is not born who will live to see that time.

TAKING SHAPE.

M

TAKING SHAPE.

Y life in Lynchburg began at the age when a boy grows fastest and is most impressible. He takes shape in body and soul between his first teens and early manhood. I learned to set type in the printing office of the Lynchburg Republican, and acquired a taste for journalism that has never left me. That part of my schooling, in the order of divine providence, was destined to have a very positive influence upon all my after life. That was a time of intense political feeling and sharp political debate. It was also a period during which religious controversy ran high. Political discussion and denominational debates were carried on earnestly by a people who had strong convictions and much loquacity. The Whigs and Democrats, nearly balanced in numbers, contended for political supremacy. Virginia was always at the front in those days; every voter was also a propagandist, and every youth an incipient statesman, at least in his own estimation. My naturalization was rapid, though not without friction and tribulation. Lynchburg boys of that day were like all other boys of all other times and places. They were of the normal type, and loved to wrestle, box, swim, and shoot. Being a new boy, I had to run the gantlet — that is to say, to fight every boy of my own age and size, or back down when challenged. My blood and my home teaching did not incline me to nonresistance. In fact, I always had a relish for fighting. It is certain that I had all the fighting I wanted. The names of Kirkwood Otey, 3 (33)