Life and letters of Rev. James May, D.D.

Front matter

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Chapter I. Early Life

The virtues of Christians are the riches of the Church. A faithful record of them brings new glory to the Gospel. And the accumulation of such records becomes a history of grace.

When, therefore, a Christian has been moulded by the Spirit to specially near likeness to his heavenly Lord, it seems a duty to photograph, for preservation, the specimen of living Christianity thus given.

Hence this brief memoir of the Rev. James May, D.D. Friends intimately acquainted with the holy beauty of his life, have thought that there was something in it which they could not willingly let die. In hope of blessing to his students and parishioners, perhaps to some besides, that may peruse it, they give a faint sketch of him to the world.

He came, as is usually the case with Christians, of reputable and religious parentage ; for though God can gather jewels where He will. He generally takes for the crown of the Redeemer those polished for his purpose in the households of Christ's people.

His mother, a member of the Potts family, of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, was a communicant in the Protestant Episcopal Church, and an intelligent and faithful Christian. His father was an ironmaster of Coventry, in Chester County, Pennsylvania, — a man of large business and lofty character, — so noted in his neighborhood for calm thought and pure integrity, that he was commonly called on to be settler of estates, executor of wills, guardian of orphans, and arbiter in all disputes. He had prospered in his business, both as farmer and as furnaeeman, and built himself, in the pleasant valley of French Creek, one of the tributaries of the Schuylkill, a mansion that was almost noble for those days. A meadow sloped from it to the level of the stream, and beyond stretched a fair prospect of fields and farm-houses, garden-grounds and woods, filling the valley, and reaching back into the hills. Here young May first saw the light (October 1st, 1805), and here, beneath the care of judicious and kind parents, whose influence did much to mould his character, he spent most happily the first years of his life. So happy was he in those years, indeed, that he always reverted to them with peculiarly fond memories, and seemed to feel that they had had in them some tastes of Paradise.

They were destined, however, to a painful termination. When James was just entering his eighth year, his father one day undertook to break a strong young horse, and had apparently partially succeeded ; but suddenly the animal began to rear and plunge, and, the reins breaking, Mr. May was thrown violently on a stony road. His head struck on a stone, and lie was so much injured, that he never woke again to consciousness. He died November 18th, 1812.

This was a fearful darkening of the sky, which previously had been hardly flecked with any clouds. And the shadow thus thrown over the bright life of the household, left its sad traces long behind it. The sunshine never was as clear again, around the home, as it had been before this sorrow. The large business in which Mr. May had been engaged, was either injured by the war with England, which was at that time just thoroughly commenced, or else fell into hands less competent than his to manage it, and ere long was a wreck, of which the farm and home were almost the only fragments.

Sorrow and vndowhood told, too, upon the health of Mrs. May. Without the strong hand of her husband to assist her, the care of farm and family together became more weighty than she could endure. The seeds of painful and even torturing disease were before long sown deeply in her system, and after a few years of bitter suffering, borne with a patient Christian faith, she went to lie beside her husband in the little graveyard on the farm. Her death occurred January 17th, 1820; and thus the home that had been once so full of happiness was left desolate.

Before this, however, she had taken prudent care for the education of her children, in order to their making their own way in the world. They all were put in the way to some profession, by which they might sustain themselves if necessary. James pursued his studies at the village school near by his home, till December, 1816. At that time he was sent to Pottsgrove (now Pottstown), to study Latin with his elder brother Thomas, a young man of fine abilities and spirit, then a student for the ministry. Beneath the skilful training of this brother, who had previously had some experience as a teacher, he made considerable progress in the language, and became an unusually accurate scholar for his years. The next season, his brother, just ordained, was chosen Rector of St. John's Church, N"orristown, and St. Thomas's, "WTiitemarsh, Pennsylvania. James removed with him to N"orristown, and entered there the Classical Academy, which held almost a collegiate rank. He remained a student at this institution, according to a record made in his own hand, till some time in the year 1821, adding Greek and Mathematics to the studies he had previously been engaged upon. Intensely devoted to these studies, and fired with ambition to excel, a friend that knew him at this time, says it was difficult to detach him from his books and induce him to go forth to play. Perhaps, too, the weight of the sorrows he was passing through, was beginning, even thus early, to depress his spirits, and indispose him for mere frolic sports.

For while he was still at the Academy in IS'orristown, two of the greatest trials of his life fell on him. His brother Thomas, with whom he had been making his abode, had been asked to preach in St. Paul's Church, Philadelphia, and, while there, was called in to see a lady suffering with yellow fever. He took from her the terrible infection of the malady, and died in the full flush of his youthful talents and success, and in the third year of his ministry, September 20th, 1819. And then, early in the next year, came the death of his beloved mother, with the consequent upbreaking of his home. God was fitting him by trial for the tender sympathies of later years. He was darkening the world for him, that he might induce him to seek light from Heaven. What fruit of Christian feeling grew out of these deep griefs, we have no means of thoroughly determining. A record which he kept of the incidents and feelings of those days, has unfortunately been lost, and he was constitutionally too reserved, to let his emotions on such subjects develope themselves before men's eyes, unless they absolutely got the mastery of his firm nerves. It is, however, hardly likely that one so religiously educated as himself, could, twice within four months, part from the dearest Christian relations at the grave-side, without experiencing some drawings of the spirit towards Christ and his kind sympathy — towards Heaven and its peaceful rest. A stream of more than earthly "feeling often fiows from even rocky hearts, when struck thus with the rod of trial. And James May's heart was not a rocky one. It was as full of fine affections and tender sensibilities as human heart well could be, — moved to intense emotion by even such apparently slight things as a bright scene in a landscape, a soft strain of pensive music, or an affectionately warm greeting from a friend. And such a nature must have felt the need of Christian hope and consolation, when first a mother, then a brother, to both of whom he had been tenderly attached, passed from his already broken family circle to the rest of those that " sleep in Jesus." Still we know

2* nothing in relation to it, except that about this time there was a special seriousness of deportment, and a dwelling in some measure upon spiritual themes. His compositions took the cast almost of sermons, and one of them was so deeply religious in its spirit as to awaken much hope respecting him, amongst his friends. The seed of early Christian nurture was probably beginning, even then, its germination, though the fall fruit of a spiritual change was not developed till a later day.

The access of affliction did not diminish in the least his steady purpose to pursue the course of study he had entered on. But, to change somewhat the scenery of life, while still advancing towards the literary culture he desired, we find him the next year, 1821, removed to the house of a half-sister, Mrs. Stevens, the wife of a then ex-governor of Maryland. Their place was in the neighborhood of Easton, Talbot County, on what is termed " the Eastern Shore " of Maryland, i. e., the fertile level region lying between the Chesapeake and the Atlantic Ocean.

There was an excellent school here, under the charge of the Eev. Dr. Alexander Campbell, spoken of as " an eminent Presbyterian divine." In this, our youthful aspirant for education prosecuted still the studies that he had been busy with at ]!^orristown, a son of Governor Stevens, to whom he seems to have been much attached, giving him the encouragement and stimulus of his companionship. "Within a year they were so far advanced as to enter together, October, 1822, Stevens the junior. May the senior class, of Jefferson College, Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania. James was at this time only seventeen years of age ; and his ability to enter, at that period, the highest class of a well-conducted college, while somewhat due to the native vigor of his mind, gives ample evidence of his fidelity in study. Through those five years of narrowing circumstances and depressing griefs, he had, with patient and painstaking diligence, laid deeply the foundations of a thorough scholarship, and of the usefulness which it materially promotes. The child was father of the man.

CHAPTER 11.

CONVERSION AND STUDY FOR THE MINISTRY.

The college wliich our youthful student entered had probably been recommended to him by Dr. Campbell. It was an outgrowth from the Scottish Presbyterianism of Western Pennsylvania, and was pervaded by a healthy Christian influence. It had yet hardly passed its infancy,* and had both the advantages and disadvantages of youth. The number of its students still was small, and its endowment scanty. But there was a fresh and vigorous life about it. It was situated in a charming region. The standard of scholarship that it maintained was good. Its President, Dr. Matthew Brown, was admirably fitted for his post; and, to young May, it was no slight recommendation that it was within his native State ; for while he was a cordially true patriot, and took the whole Union warmly to his heart, he naturally looked with an especial love on the portion of it in which he had been born and nurtured.

Of course, his entrance on the senior class made necessary only one year's residence at Jefierson. It might have been supposed that this would be too short a time for much impression to be made either by him or upon him. Yet both were done.

He made a good impression upon others. His intellec-

* Chartered 1802.

tual ability and patient industry secured him quickly a higli standing in his class. His modest amiability and obedience to law gained him the good-will of the Professors. Before the year had ended, he became "a great favorite" with the President; and, at its close, he shared, with general approval, the highest honors of the college with a young gentleman who afterwards succeeded Dr. Brown in the presidency of the institution.

And the best of all impressions was made upon himself, for he passed here through a decided spiritual change. His college became to him the place of introduction to a new and better birth, — birth into a higher life and a more honorable citizenship. God's chastenings began to yield in him at length the peaceable fruit of righteousness. They had taught him already the uncertainty of earthly good, and the desirableness of imperishable treasures. And now that he was brought into a place where novel Christian influences were around him, and pressing continually on his notice, he heard the voice of the Divine awakener within his conscience as he never had before. The death of a beloved sister, about five months after he had entered college, was blessed as a means of deepening the feelings which were already working in his bosom; and realizing finally his lost condition as a sinner, he began, June, 1823, to cry out, not in vain, for the creation in him of a new heart and a right spirit; for though he had been outwardly blameless to man's view, he now saw that his inward spirit was all wrong, and that he needed, not only pardon for his sins, but also thorough renewal of his nature. It was the voice of Law, however, rather than of Gospel, that had roused him ; and he awoke to the darkness of terrible conviction, with yet but little light upon it from the Cross. Oppressed with guilty feeling, he groped on in this darkness for a considerable time, and only through distressing alternations of faint hope and torturing fear emerged at last into the comfortable trust that his transgressions were forgiven and his sins covered.

The change was real ; but he did not believe afterwards that it was then complete. It satisfied his friends, but did not satisfy himself. He thought — with good reason, as it eventually proved — that there was something richer in religion than he thus had reached; and it was not till more than a year afterwards, when he had returned from college to his friends in Maryland, that the Holy Spirit cleared thoroughly away for him all difficulties, showing him how, through Christ's obedience unto death for us, the means of perfect salvation is provided, and how, through simple faith in this obedience, as answering for us all the claims of law, the precious benefit and joy of the salvation are attained. Then, taldng Christ entirely to his heart as the one only perfect Saviour, he came at length to rapturous enjoyment of the glorious redemption of the Gospel.

God often leads men thus past Sinai to Calvary — subjects them to his government by the brandished rod of Law, and then wins them to his bosom by the opened mercy of the Gospel, — induces first a yielding of the will to him as God, and then a yielding of the heart to Christ as Saviour.

Some think that such a " law-work" is unnecessary. It may not be essential. But it forms Christians of decided type. To those who go thus through

CONVERSION AND STUDY FOE THE MINISTRY. 17

deep darkness to the Cross, "truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to hehold the sun." A long and terrifying consciousness of sin makes Christ, as Redeemer from it, richly precious ; and the soul that has been shaken and agitated with alarms, rests sweetly, and generally steadfastly, in the glorious salvation that secures it peace from them.

It was so in this case. Young May " rejoiced that he was made acquainted with this way of mercy." He wondered that he had not seen before this method of- salvation, in which wisdom and simplicity are so strikingly combined. He saw " a beauty" that he " never previously had found" in " righteousness by faith." And Christ became to him inestimably dear. "He is to me," says his record of this change, " the shadow of a great rock in a weary land," " the Rock of Ages," " my all in all."

One of the first issues of his spiritual change at college, was a disposition to connect himself immediately with Christ's openly declared disciples. And here came in a demonstratien of Christian generosity and delicacy on the part of Dr. Brown, the President, which it would be pleasant to find oftener exhibited. Our new-converted student, with his nephew, who was borne to Jesus on the same wave of religious feeling with himself, called on the President, to consult him as to union with the Presbyterian Church, in which their awakening had taken place. He knew, however, that they had been trained Episcopalians, and, kindly declining to take advantage of their youthful impulse, advised waiting, sober thought, and consultation with their friends at home. "With May, this was enough. His calmly thouglitfal mind required only such a touch, to readjust the wavering balance of his feelings, and give Church principles an opportunity to operate again. He waited ; saw, upon consideration, that God's awakening of him among Presbyterians did not bind him necessarily to them ; became a member of the Church in which he had been educated ; and though always large-hearted and liberal in his spirit, never afterwards was shaken from his steadfastness of love for it. The more ardent Southern blood of Stevens was not, howeve"r, to be calmed. He pressed his application for admission to the Presbyterian Church ; was eventually welcomed to it ; became finally a minister ; and in West Chester, Pennsylvania, gathered a large and influential congregation, in which he labored, with great acceptance, till his death.

There is little to record respecting Mr. May's remaining college life. Pervaded now by the influences of religion, it quietly progressed to a successful close. On the 25th of September, 1823, he received, with high distinction, the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and went forth to make what mark he might upon the world.

His first intention, influenced by some remaining wish for earthly wealth and honor, was to study law. With this in view, he returned to the house of Governor Stevens, gathered his law-books around him, and prosecuted vigorously his studies in that line for several months. But deepening religious feeling would not let him rest in this seeking of great things for himself. He began to see that there was something higher to be thought about than personal advancement; something nobler to be lived for than a comfortable position, in the world, — that Jesus and the Church had claims which must he met, and only could be fully met, in his case, by his entering the Gospel ministry. A change of aim was not, however, made immediately. Self and the world had still some hold upon his heart. He had not come to see yet the full glory of the Saviour, or to realize, from such a sight, the blessedness of a self-denying life, hidden in Christ with God. Visions of great things to be gained by legal study were painfully contrasted, in his view, with ministerial poverty and ministerial exclusion from all lofty place. And it is not wonderful that there occurred, in consequence, a struggle between conscience and ambition — between the feeling that he ought to give himself to Jesus in the ministry, and the desire which still dwelt in him to gain wealth and fame. I^ature always combats grace in the beginning : well, if it does not do so to the end. In this case the struggle was a sharp, but not a long one. Christianity and conscience triumphed ; and with the feeling that necessity was laid upon him, and that woe was unto him if he preached not the Gospel, he bowed his will to what he thought to be the will of God, gave up his once strong hope of greatness in the world, and resolved, God helping him, to become a minister of Christ.

Such victories of grace bring usually results of comfort. This did, with Mr. May. From a state of distressing inward conflict, which he subsequently spoke of as " the most unhappy period of his life," he passed to an experience of spiritual joy which was like Elim after Marah. He had gone from Maryland to Pennsylvania, to gather books for the study of theology and visit friends residing near his childhood's home. "vV^hile there, " one Sunday, after reading the experiences of some true Christians," he retired, for meditation, to a neighhoring hill, and " suddenly felt all his powers quickened in devotion." " I heheld God," says he, " hy the eye of faith, as a reconciled Father. I beheld an inexpressible loveliness in the character of my Redeemer, and oh ! I thought, how could I oifend so kind a Saviour ! I enjoyed great freedom in prayer, and besought my Redeemer, in consideration of the weakness of my nature and the inefficiency of my resolutions, to grant me grace to enable me to live more near to him, and more devoted to his service. I truly felt joy and peace in believing. At no former period had I enjoyed such a sweetness in religion."

With this sweetness still upon his spiritual taste, he prosecuted for some months his studies in theology, partly while yet with friends in Pennsylvania, partly afterwards at Governor Stevens's, in Maryland. In October, 1825, he entered the Theological Seminary at Alexandria, D. C, and was found, upon examination, so well grounded, that he was admitted to the Middle Class.

The Seminary thus selected as his school of training for the ministry had been established but three years before, under the auspices of the honored Bishops of Virginia, the Rt. Rev. R. C. Moore, D.D., and his subsequent assistant, the Rt. Rev. William Meade, D.D. It was especially designed to furnish mi-nisters for the Southern portion of the Church, and its aim was to train these not only to a pure and evangelical theology, but also to an elevated Christian character. There were yet only two resident professors, the Rev. Ruel Keith, D.D., and theliev. E. R. Lippitt ; the latter of very respectable attainments in Church history ; the former eminent alike for holy spirituality, theological acquirements, and peculiar aptitude to teach.

Mr. May entered this afterwards celebrated school in thorough sympathy with its great objects, writing, as he began his seminary course, " I have come here to make preparation for the work of preaching the everlasting Gospel. I trust God has called me to labor in his cause ; and if so, I may rest assured of his blessing on my preparatory studies. My acquirements are comparatively very limited, and I have need for great diligence and close application. Besides human wisdom, I need deep experience in religion, and a heartfelt acquaintance with the truths of the Gospel." " I desire constantly to bear in mind the high vocation wherewith I am called. And since there is in me no good thing, and no sufficiency to do anything of myself, I desire that all my sufficiency may be of God through Christ."

And as he thus begun, he seems to have continued, making Luther's maxim essentially his own. Bene orasse est bene siuduisse, and laboring to institute a holy union of learning and devotion, knowledge and heavenly grace. He gave himself at once devotedly to study, allowing little time for recreation, and almost none for those enjoyments of society which often form the snare of student-life. And as devotedly did he consecrate himself to effort for steady advancement in the graces of the Gospel, aware that learning will not make a minister, unless associated and interpenetrated with true holiness ; that one must be in sympathy with sacred truth, in order to a thoroughly effective presentation of it ; and must be purely and heartily Christ's follower, in order to win others to his Lord.

A record of the experiences of his Seminary year, shows earnest cultivation of a Christian spirit. Sometimes there are the traces of a conflict amounting almost to an agony, as, laboring to subjugate some special evil in himself, he cries out for divine assistance : " Oh God ! have mercy ! Leave me not to my own heart ! Grant me grace to resist temptation ! Deliver me from the dominion of all sin !" And sometimes there are evidences of a clear selfconquest, through the grace which he has thus implored ; as when, the old ambition vanishing, he writes, " Dear Saviour, help me to thank thee that thou hast mercifully denied, me the splendors of this world ! I feel ashamed that I should ever have indulged a wish for the distinctions of it, when thou, who boldest the sceptre of eternal power, didst live despised on earth."

Upon the whole, the progress made upon this field of inward strife appears to have been quite fair for a youthful soldier of the Cross. For though there are no boasts of splendid victories, no vauntings of great spiritual success, we plainly see upon the pages of the journal a deepening humility and growing faith. Sin evidently came to be more dreaded and detested; Christ, to be more trusted in, more honored, and more loved.

Study and silent conflicts with himself were not, however, his sole occupations at the Seminary. The grace that was growing in the student's heart bore fruit of exertion for the Saviour in his life. Besides steady engagement, twice every Lord's day, in the

Sunday-school of Christ Church, Alexandria, we find frequent notices of visits to the prison, to tell those confined there (mostly slaves) of the Redeemer who has preached " deliverance to the captive ;" visits to houses of the suffering poor, to administer to them in their afflictions the consolations of the Gospel ; and visits to the heds of the aged and the sick, to commune with them in the sacred ordinances of religion, or talk with them of the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. And when, about the middle of the spring in the next year, he found it necessary to remove to Philadelphia, to study more immediately under the direction of the ecclesiastical authorities in Pennsylvania, he had grown from a diffident, shy, shrinking student, into a well-experienced Christian, and a workman needing not to be ashamed.

In Philadelphia, where he resumed his studies, after a vacation of about a month, he came, with the consent of Bishop "White, under the guidance of the Eev. George Boyd,* Rector of St. John's Church, in the l^orthern Liberties, a minister of considerable learning, and a very faithful preacher of the Truth. Mr. Boyd was occasionally sent by the Missionary Association of the Diocese on preaching tours through the northern counties of the State, and, knowing thus the wants of the infant churches of that region, was qualified to train his student up for useful missionary labor. The profiting of Mr. May from his instructions in this line eventually appeared to all.

His special object in establishing himself with

* Subsequently D.D. 3*

Mr. Boyd in Philadelphia was to prepare himself, by earnest diligence in study, for admission to the Diaconate in the latter portion of the fall. This compression within six months of the studies usually occupying nine, was not infrequent in those early days, when ministers were few, and calls for them often urgent. It involves, however, considerable danger ; with careless students, of going slightly over subjects; with conscientious ones, of injury to health from the exhausting application it requires. Mr. May, belonging to this latter class, bent himself down with resolute determination to full and thorough accomplishment of the whole work. And by economy of time, by careful system, by giving up himself to it entirely, almost to the exclusion of everything besides, he did complete his wearing task, though not in six months, in a little under seven. But he paid for his success the almost inevitable price, in weakened health- He did not, however, so attend to study as to neglect the cultivation of the heart. The journal still kept of his daily progress gives token of less conflict with temptation, it is true, but evidently because grace was getting gradually the victory, and Christ was putting all enemies under his feet. He was growing in acquaintance with the great salvation of the Gospel, and getting nearer to that happy state in which, reposing thoroughly upon Christ's fulness, faith yields itself to no agitating doubts. The Sunday after his settlement in Philadelphia, there is the record, " Attended at St.

John's Church, where I partook of the communion. I found God present with me. I felt the preciousness of Christ. Alas ! felt, also, the evil of my own heart. Oh ! that my thoughts were all subjected to my Saviour. Of myself I am nothing ; Christ is all in all. My darling theme now is salvation by faith in Christ, through God's free grace. When my sins cause me to mourn and weep, here I look for pardon. Oh ! I love my Saviour; he has done so much for his vile and sinful creature." And again, shortly after, " Salvation by grace, how precious ! My soul, art thou weary ? Christ is ' the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.' Art thou tossed on the mountain billows? He is ' the Rock of Ages,' against which the tempest beats in vain. Art thou thirsty ? Christ says, ' He that is athirst, let him come unto me and drink.' Art thou hungering ? He is ' the living bread that came down from heaven.' Art thou weak? He is thy ' strength.' Art thou sinful ? He is ' the Lord our righteousness.' Art thou complaining of sickness? He is 'the balm of Gilead, and the great Physician.' Art thou wandering? He is 'the way.' Art thou in darkness ? He is ' the bright and morning star;' 'the sun of righteousness.' What more dost thou want ? ' Christ is all in all.' " Still further, in the autumn, we find the declaration, " There is nothing so edifying as the company and conversation of Christian friends. The mutual communication of each other's experience, and talking of the love of Christ, tend to inflame the heart, and quicken and encourage in religion. Since I have been in Philadelphia, I have enjoyed Christian society more than at any former period of my life. I have found some who are truly humble and devoted followers of Jesus. And I love all who love him."