Phineas Stowe, and Bethel work

Front matter

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Contents

Chapter Page

Introduction. .... 9

I. The Bethel Pastor. . • . 11

Introduction

It is difficult, if not impossible, to estimate the relative importance of Christian work for different classes of people. To say nothing of the foreign field, vast and dark, with its uncounted millions who know not the Lord, there are many parts of the home field in urgent need of spiritual culture. One cannot name the Indians, the Chinese, the Freedmen, without feeling that much needs to be done for them all. Yet certain circumstances give the Sailors a permanent place among those to whom the gospel should be very freely offered. For, first, men of no other class find it so nearly impracticable, by reason of their way of life, to furnish themselves when on land with fit religious teachers and

8 INTRODUCTION.

places of worship. The sea is their home ; on land they are but visitors ; now in this port, and then in that ; and therefore it is almost impossible for them to establish and sustain public worship, making for themselves a religious home. Secondly, men of no class are beset with stronger temptations to sin than sailors. On shore they are often in strange cities, where vice abounds, and cupidity spreads before them allurements to evil. Nothing less than the fear of God and the sense of eternal things will fortify them against the wiles of the adversary. Thirdly, men of no class are engaged in a service more closely connected with the general progress of mankind. We who live in quiet homes upon land are debtors to those who go down to the sea in ships, and do business in great waters. And, fourthly, men of no class have a better opportunity than sailors to show the excellence of true religion to the ignorant and the sinful. They sojourn in cities where idolatry prevails, and the Saviour is unknown. They can represent Christian life

INTRODUCTION. 9

where the missionary has not yet appeared. Alas, they too often misrepresent that life, and put obstacles in the missionary's path.

The Baptist Bethel has, therefore, from the nature of its work, a claim on the sympathy and co-operation of Christians. And that work has been earnestly and wisely prosecuted for a quarter of a century. No one acquainted with the late Phineas Stowe can doubt his singular fitness to preach the gospel to sailors. His frankness of manner, his warmth of heart, his impulsive, impressive, unstudied eloquence, and his firm grasp of Christian truth, made him the man for the place. It was a joy to meet him ; it was an inspiration to hear him speak. The fire burned brightly in him, and we cannot doubt there will be many stars in his crown at last. But others will speak of him and of his work in the following pages more fully and adequately than the writer is able to do. Yet it may be proper for him to express his deep interest in the service to the kingdom of Christ and to the

IO INTRODUCTION.

cause of temperance and good morals which has been rendered by the Bethel, and his conviction that it deserves the cordial support of our

churches.

ALVAH HOVEY.

Newton Centre, *) March, 1S74. >

AND

BETHEL WORK

CHAPTER I. The Bethel Pastor

BY REV. ROLLIN H. NEALE, D. D.

EV. PHINEAS STOWE was born in Milford, Conn., March 20, 18 12. At the age of fifteen he was engaged as a clerk in New Haven. It was there, at the beginning of my own ministry, that I became acquainted with him. He was baptized by Rev. Elisha Cushman, July 2, 183 1, into the First Baptist Church in that city, of which I afterwards became pastor. The same loving spirit, the same fervency in prayer, sweetness of voice in sacred song, and readiness to every good word and work, which gave such extraordinary power to his ministry in Boston, were apparent at that early period. I have often congratulated myself, and thanked God, that I was enabled to appreciate his worth. Those rare and golden qualities which made him so useful and beloved • as a private church-member, fitted him for eminent efficiency in a wider sphere. Modest and unassuming, he had at that time no thought of entering the ministry, but at my earnest solicitation he left a lucrative business, and entered upon a preparatory course of study, having previously married Emily, daughter of Isaac Smith, Esq., of Southington, Conn. He passed four or five years at the New Hampton Literary and Theological Institution, and was greatly esteemed by the professors and his fellow-students. The late excellent John Newton Brown was one of his teachers, for whom he always cherished a great admiration. There was, indeed, in this case, a remarkable congeniality of spirit between the teacher and his appreciative and loving pupil. Mr. Stowe, after leaving New Hampton, was pastor, for two years, of the Baptist Church at South Danvers.

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Knowing him intimately, and feeling stronglyattached to him, I wanted him to work by my side, and persuaded him to come to Boston as a preacher to seamen. He came, and labored most diligently for over twenty years. He pursued his work with an enthusiasm which, in this field of Christian activity, certainly has never, before or since, been surpassed. It may be said of him, as John Foster said of the philanthropist Howard, "The intensity of his zeal was kept uniform by the power of the human mind forbidding it to be more, and the nature of the individual forbidding it to be less." He was adapted to his work, and his work to him. It fitted exactly all the peculiarities of his mind and heart, as the liquid metal the varied features of the mould into which it is cast. It filled his whole soul, and he went into it with all his might. He was constantly devising new plans, such as only he could think of, for benefiting, the sailor. The Soldier's Home, and the Mariner's Exchange, with its library and reading-room, originated with him ; he administered the temperance pledge to over five thousand, accompanied with the gift of the New Testament, and also circulated thousands of antiswearing cards.

There was no end to his conversations with individuals, in the streets, on the wharves, and at his own house. He would take the sailor to his parlor, and talk, and pray, and weep with him there. He would follow him with his influence when he went to sea, telling him to write to him, or, if he could not send letters, to keep a journal, and bring it home, if he should ever return. Not only the sailor, but the suffering soldier, was thought of by our brother. The Soldier's Home, at the south part of the city, was the fruit of his toil and the object of his tender care. The outcast and the criminal also were reached by his warm and noble heart. He often went to the prison at Charlestown, and there was no visitor whose presence was more welcome to its unfortunate inmates. Fie would talk, and pray, and sing, and weep for an hour at the morning devotions, and on a Sunday protract the service to half past twelve ; and no one was tired. The prisoners would pray, and sing, and weep with him ; and not only so, but some of them were converted, and have given evidence, by their good conduct, as the warden has testified, of a thorough change in their heart and life. Mr. Stowe could not be satisfied without success. It was not enough to preach well, and pray well, and sing well, and have a good, comforting, and delightful meeting. There must be conversions. He would go to the hardened sinner, take him by the hand, plead with him with many tears, make him promise to give his heart to God, and then hold on to him till he did it. There was an unction upon him, heavenly and divine, and with it an influence which we all ought to have, but in which Christians, and even Christian ministers, like Christ's primitive disciples, are often sadly deficient, viz., a power to cast out devils.

One of the worst convicts at Charlestown, who had resisted all other means, was subdued and melted under Mr. Stowe's appeals, and is now sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. Most characteristic was his first interview with the late William J. Butler, superintendent of the Mariner's Exchange, whose history, under the name of the " Rover at Rest," has been so graphically delineated by Mrs. Jane D. Chaplin. Upon this wanderer, penniless and alone, a stranger in a strange city, and surrounded by temptations, to which he was beginning to yield, the eye of this mariner's shepherd lighted, and he was enfolded by him as in a mother's arms.

To say that Mr. Stowe was honest in his profession is not enough ; he was enthusiastic in it. He enjoyed his work. It was with him an absorbing passion. He never for a moment imagined that he was humbling himself in preaching to sailors and prisoners, and looking after the poor and the outcast. He was proud of such labor. There was a lofty bearing in his air and manner, as if he would say, " This is glorious ; this is a higher honor than I ever thought of reaching." He composed many an original hymn under the inspiration of his work, and would take his young converts — or " hopeful inquirers," as he called them — to the prayermeetings of the different churches, and talk about them affectionately, and with evident pride, as a fond and doting mother would of her children.

There surely never was a man of a sweeter spirit than the late pastor of the Mariner's Church. He was the most guileless, unsuspecting, trustful man I ever knew. He was so good that he seemed to make everybody else good around him. You could not do or think anything wrong in his presence. Nor could any evil come nigh him. He could tread on scorpions, and take up serpents, and eat the deadliest thing, and it would not hurt him.

Mr. Stowe, though strongly attached to his own denomination, yet sympathized with what was good and true everywhere. He mingled freely with all classes of Christians, and was accustomed to say, " There is a great deal of the spirit of Christ among what are called 'the world's people.' " His presence was welcome on all occasions. People loved to see him walking the streets, and always knew that he was on some good mission.

The esteem in which Mr. Stowe was held in Boston was shared by the commonwealth, and indeed extended throughout New England. He often visited churches, associations, and state conventions, to present his cause, and plead for the sailor, and everybody loved to see him. His open countenance was sunshine ; his clear, sweet, sonorous voice in prayer and spiritual song gave new life to religious meetings. He was chaplain of the Massachusetts legislature in 1862. The 2 members became greatly attached to him, and always invited him to be present at their reunions, which continued for several years.

Amid these signs of public respect for our brother, of confidence and love cherished for him by all classes in the community, it is delightful to remember that he was known everywhere as a Christian. He was never so happy as in preaching Jesus. His soul reached its highest enthusiasm under the inspiration of the cross. His face would shine with a new light, and his voice warble forth its most charming melodies, when incarnate and restoring love was the theme. I have known him for many years, and have been with him at all seasons, amid scenes of sorrow and of joy, and always to be only the more deeply impressed with the reality of heart-religion, and with the power and glory of the Christian faith. I remember his interest in religious revivals, the thrill of joy which pervaded the assembly, and the rays of hope which seemed to fall for the first time on many an anxious, tearful countenance, as he sang, —

"I do believe, I now believe, That Jesus died for me."

AND BETHEL WORK.

During the last year of his life, for twenty-six Sabbaths in succession, with but a single exception, he led willing, rejoicing converts into the baptismal waters. He wished for no vacation, finding his highest pleasure in his work. At the urgent solicitation of his friends, however, he went away from Boston a few weeks in the summer ; but he was soon heard of among the sailors in New York and the miners of Pennsylvania, praying with them, and preaching to them the word of life ; and he thus brought on the unnatural excitement which resulted in his premature death.

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CHAPTER II. The Bethel Pastor

(Continued.)

T seems sad that so good a brother, whose spirit was so genial, gentle, and loving, should have to be put, in his last days, under restraint, and separated from familiar voices and familiar countenances. " Not one of all the many whom he loved, nor she whose name was woven with all the fibres of his heart, which was breaking within him then, was allowed to come and speak peace unto him." This restriction was imposed, as I happen to know, against the entreaties of his wife, who pleaded tearfully to see her husband once more. It was imposed by the attending physician, and in judicious kindness, no doubt, from a fear that the excitement of the interview might endanger his patient's life, which he hoped to save. To him, however, in his illusion, it was a Gethsemane experience, like that in the history of his Master, of which he plaintively sang, —

"'Twas midnight, and from all removed The Saviour wrestles lone with fears ; E'en that disciple whom he loved

Heeds not his Master's grief and tears."

In those scenes of suffering, however, we should reverently recognize the hand of God. From that asylum has gone forth a voice which shall continue to echo forever over land and sea. The scene of his death was a pulpit of power. The sailor on the ocean, the prisoner in his cell, the sons and daughters of want everywhere, will drop a tear, and offer prayer, and make a solemn vow of consecration to God, as they hear of it.

The brain of our brother gave way under the pressure of his incessant labors, but his heart was sound to the last. In his lone room he continued to offer prayer for himself, his wife, his child. He thought tenderly of his church, and sent to remembered personal friends messages of love. To the last moment of life he imagined himself still on his chosen field of toil, with his harness girded on, and he died with those characteristic words on his lips, "Doctor, I have a mighty work to do."

The funeral services were held at his church, corner of Hanover and North Bennet Streets, on

Monday, November 1 6, 1868. The ministers of the city were present in a body, and walked in procession from the house to the church, not as a professional service, but as real mourners. Among them was the venerable Father Cleaveland, who had nearly reached his hundredth year. All felt that they had sustained a personal bereavement, and each seemed to say, as he looked upon the countenance of the dead, " I am distressed for thee, my brother. Very pleasant hast thou been unto me." Crowds were unable to gain admission to the church, already filled to its utmost capacity. They remained patiently standing in the streets for three and four hours, hoping, if possible, to get one more look at their dear friend. The funeral was conducted by his early pastor, but others took part in the services — Baron Stow, William Hague, J. D. Fulton, George W. Gardner, William V. Garner, George J. Carlton, D. C. Eddy, S. W. Foljambe, and O. T. Walker, and also Father Cleaveland, whose words of personal friendship for the deceased touched every heart. Rev. R. G. Toles was also present, with a class of his " Little Wanderers," who sang sweetly, yet plaintively, on the occasion.

The sailor and the soldier, many a widow and orphan, were present, each having a story to tell of kind words uttered, or of some timely help they had received from him whom on earth they could see and hear no more. I noticed in the assembly, and very properly among the mourners, the good, faithful colored woman who had for some time lived in his family. She loved him as a friend and pastor, and expressed her devotion strongly. She still lives, and cherishes his memory most tenderly. She often says, and says truly, " He was a saint, if there ever was one." Blessings upon her. I remember her care of him in his weakness, her anxiety during his unnatural excitement, and how, before his removal to the asylum, she kept up nightly vigils, lest harm should come to him.

The members of the Bethel Church were deeply affected. They were bound to their pastor by an almost idolatrous attachment. Nor was he less esteemed and beloved by other churches in the city and vicinity, whom he often visited, and who contributed liberally, and always most cheerfully, to the cause so dear to him. Mercantile firms, upon whom his calls for charity were ever welcome, and promptly responded to, gratuitously supplied the material for draping his church in mourning, and many of them closed their stores during the funeral ceremonies. The pulpit, organ, and galleries were arrayed with the insignia of sorrow. Tender memories and impressive mottoes were conspicuous in different parts of the dimly-lighted sanctuary, such as, " Jesus wept ; " " There is sorrow on the sea ; " " He judged the cause of the poor and needy ; " " In duty's strife his spirit passed away ; " " Blessed is he that considereth the poor;" "We miss him ; " " He rests from his labors, and his works do follow him ; " not omitting those last memorable words, which, though uttered under a mental illusion, were in reality the vital and inspiring sentiment of his whole life, " Doctor, I have a mighty work to do."

CHAPTER III. Extract from a Sermon

BY REV. D. C. EDDY, D. D.

R. STOWE entered upon his work in Boston with very different views from those which had been entertained by his predecessors. 'The son of a sailor, and the brother of a sailor/ as he often used to say, he entered with the most unselfish zeal into the great enterprise to which, henceforth, his life was to be devoted. His theory was, that the sailor was a man ; to be treated as a man ; reasoned with and convinced as a man. He despised the clap-trap devices often used to win the sons of the sea. On entering the Bethel, he found for a pulpit the stern of a boat, over which the minister had been accustomed to address the people. He had it removed, and a neat desk put in its place.

From the outset, he acted on the conviction that sailors wish to be treated like other human beings. To allure blacksmiths, we do not have an anvil in church. To draw coopers, we do not preach out of a barrel. To win shoemakers, the pulpit is not made in the form of a shoe. The sailor at church does not wish to be reminded of the quarter-deck, nor of the forecastle, nor does he desire to have a discourse interlarded with sailortalk. Mr. Stowe acted on this idea. He put the emblem of the cross and the devices of religion where his predecessors had put the symbols of the sea.

" As he labored on, his great heart seemed to expand with projects for the good of seamen. He was ever thinking up some plan to benefit them. He was restless, impatient to save them, to save their families, to make them comfortable here, and happy hereafter. His mind seemed to be a field out of which, in every direction, were springing up projects to advance the interests of his seafaring charge.

" The idea of a sailor's burial-ground sprang up in that soil, and culminated in that sacred spot, that ' God's acre,' at Woodlawn. He found men dying in the city, with no friends to bury them, and he said, 'The sailor shall have a resting-place for his poor body "when the voyage of life is over.' He first purchased a receiving tomb on Copp's Hill, where the bodies could be interred until their friends could claim them Then came the lot, in which his own monument now stands, put there by pious hands, with the bodies of seamen sown all around it. Many a dying sailor has had reason to bless his name, and to be thankful that when he should cease to breathe, his body would not be hurried into some pauper lot in a city graveyard, nor lowered into the pathless sea, to remain until the resurrection in his undistinguishable resting-place. That sailor lot at Woodlawn grew in the heart of Phineas Stowe.

Then came the idea of a mission ship he called the " Adoniram Judson," to be manned by Christian sailors, and to ply between Boston and foreign ports, bearing missionaries of the cross to distant lands. It was to be a combination of the " school ship " with the " mission ship." The denomination did not see as he did, and the ship was never launched. The project was deemed absurd by us, but government took up one end of his idea, and it exists in the u school ship " in our harbor ; and the Congregationalists took the other end of the idea, and wrought it into the " Morning Star." The mind of Mr. Stowe combined the two, and no one now but must regret that he did not have encouragement to try the experiment, and test the project.

The little old Bethel on the corner of Lewis Street was a little heaven below to many who were converted there. To Mr. Stowe himself it was a paradise on earth. Dingy, dark as it was, it glowed like Tabor's top to him. But a church was needed, and the old Universalist building on Hanover Street was for sale. It was an old historic spot. On it Samuel Mather preached, more than a hundred years ago. By several changes it had come into the hands of the Universalists, under John Murray, Edward Mitchell, and Paul Dean. The house now standing was built for Sebastian Streeter, in those days when it was supposed that Universalism would grow to something great. It was in collecting money to purchase that edifice that Mr. Stowe undermined his constitution, and contracted those diseases from which he never fully recovered. The long walks from house to house, the tedious stairclimbing to find the offices of merchants, and the frequent exposure necessary to secure his object, told upon his physical nature. But he succeeded. The house was bought, paid ' for, dedicated, and filled with sailors, and from that day to this there has been no Bethel enterprise in Boston with success comparable with this.

On leaving the old Bethel, he desired that his " old battle-ground," as he termed it, should not be abandoned ; and opening it as " The Mariner's Exchange," with library, reading-room, and colporterage, he sustained it until the last. He must have collected at least fifteen hundred dollars per annum, outside of the boundaries of his own denomination. Some of his best friends urged him to abandon the " Exchange," but he saw the good it was doing, and would not yield. Not one of those friends would now have the benign work of that institution undone.

Then up grew another plan of usefulness. His active mind saw another work — an institution to take young transgressors out of the hand of the law, and reform them ; a place to which the victim of inebriation would be taken, instead of being carried to the station-house ; a refuge for any young girl who should escape from a den of infamy ; the temporary home for any person who had broken law, but who, in the opinion of the judges, needed reformation more than punishment. The " Quincy Home" was- the result of that idea. A house was secured, fitted up, and a good work carried on. The idea was a noble one ; and could he have had the requisite aid, it would have become one of the grandest institutions Boston ever had. It went down after some years, not because it had proved a failure, nor because Mr. Stowe was weary of it, but because his helpers failed him. He ever felt that the abandonment of it was a serious mistake.

When war broke over our land, a new field of usefulness was opened to him. As the soldiers came home, wounded, bleeding, and dying, from the field' of battle, he thought of a " Soldier's Home," and at once set to work to secure one.

For a season he labored almost alone in this noble work. He first opened a refuge for the weary ones at the North End ; and there the soldier, wounded in the fight, and friendless, came to be blessed by his warm sympathy and his pious instructions. But a work so grand could not long remain unknown. The public attention was turned to it. The charitable people of Boston came to his assistance, Governor Andrew and Mayor Lincoln gave him their approbation, and at length the building, long used for a Female Medical College, on Springfield Street, was secured and employed for that purpose. Whether any other man would have succeeded in calling attention to this subject, we do not know ; but we do know that no other did, and all the good done in that Home can be traced to the active brain and loving heart of Phineas Stowe. He ought to have the credit for it ; and when in future the history of Boston's part in the war is written, his name shall be inserted among those who at home had a heart as loyal, a zeal as true, and a fidelity as active, . as those who used the musket and the sword.

But we must pass over much that was noble and grand in his life ; over his great temperance work — he was a temperance alliance in himself; over the particulars of his sufferings and

32 PH1NEAS STOWE

death ; over that sad winding up of a glorious career ! Glorious, I say, for to Mr. Stowe Boston is indebted for its public charities more than to any other man of this generation.

His last words are said to have been, a I have a mighty work to do." It was this mighty work that crushed him. His was a completely exhausted organism. Brain and body were alike worn out. He gave himself no time for recuperation, no time for rest, no time to improve wasted resources. It was tireless devotion to "his work, not his duty, for duty did not require so much. He did what thousands of others are doing — worked without rest, without sleep, without proper regard to physical needs, and the result we have in his untimely death.

Brother Stowe had contemplated a visit to the Holy Land. He had worked for more than twenty years, and thought himself entitled to some relaxation of this kind, and his mind for a year or two had been wrought up to the point of asking the Bethel Board to grant him a furlough of five or six months for this purpose. He wanted to travel in Ireland, and go and look upon the shore that received the dead body of Helen when she was washed up from the infuriate deep ; to walk through that noble Sailor's Home in Liverpool ; to go to London, and listen, with six thousand others, to the wonderful man of the Metropolitan Tabernacle ; to stand among Alpine glaciers, and admire great and interesting scenes ; to see Rome, and gaze upon the glory and shame of St. Peter's ; to visit Palestine, and kiss, as the Crusaders did, the soil made sacred by

" Those blessed feet, which eighteen hundred years ago Were nailed for our advantage To a cross ; "

to stand on Olivet, and gaze on the doomed city of God ; to find Gethsemane at its base, and bow where Christ bowed, and weep where he wept ; to cross the Kedron, and enter Jerusalem ; to find Calvary, where stood the cross, and linger there until he himself was crucified with Christ. And when insanity settled upon him, the idea seemed uppermost in his mind. He wanted to go to Jerusalem !

And he has gone — not to God-cursed Palestine, but to the New Jerusalem, to the innumerable company of angels, to the church of the first born. He has seen Christ ere this. He knows 3 what that saying means, " the New Jerusalem which cometh down from God out of heaven." The city of Boston misses him. He was one of the largest hearted philanthropists, but in heaven he will have his home.

Some blamed Brother Stowe, because he engaged in so many enterprises. Some thought, and said, that he had better attend to his pulpit work and let the outside schemes alone. When he gave so much time to the Washingtonian Home, of which he was a prime mover, — an institution concerning which the superintendent remarked emphatically, that " there are to-day merchants and business men in this city whose yearly taxes are larger than the entire expense of the Home, of which they were once the inmates, and by whose instrumentality, under the blessing of God, they have been made what they are," — and when he labored so hard at Globe Hall, where he did so much good among a class shut out from church privileges, — some thought, and said, that he had better attend to his church, and let these side movements go. And as each successive plan was broached, there were those to say to him, " Stay at home, take care of your pulpit, attend to your church, and let these things fall on others."