people I tender hearty congratulations on this interesting anniversary. May Heaven's richest blessings be upon them in the coming years, and upon the work that is to be done in this part of the Lord's vineyard. Address BY JAMES I. BROWNSON, D.D., LL.D., Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Washington, Penn. The Rev. Dr. James I. Brownson spoke in substance as follows: * Having declined to deliver one of the formal addresses of this most interesting occasion, for reasons wholly personal, I come the more gladly, under a modified invitation, to unite my warm congratulations with those of the brethren who have preceded me. If I may not rival their eloquent utterances, I can promise not to be behind them in fervent sincerity. With each of them I can heartily say: "Blessed is the church and happy must be its officers and members who can recount the mercies of a covenant-keeping God which have crowned the fidelity of nearly three generations of Christian believers." I am not a stranger to the history which has been passing so richly in review before us to-day. I knew the founder of this church, Mr. Hoge, as a college boy gets to know a venerable leader in society. I was a fellow-student with Mr. Gordon, who for a time supplied the pulpit here. The Rev. Peter Hassinger and myself for several years occupied contiguous pastor* Because of the lack of time this address was delivered only in part. ates in Westmoreland County, after his service in this field. And I sat at the feet of Dr. McConaughey, my revered college president, for nearly four years. Of course, therefore I can add my testimony to their characters, and to what I know must have been their excellent work in the early upbuilding of this church. The fruits of their evangelical labor still abide and will ever, though they sleep. Besides the immediate good accomplished by each in his own time and way, they were joint contributors to the subsequent stability and growth of the memorable pastorate of the late Dr. Alexander McCarrell, so admirably portrayed by the historian of to-day and other speakers. At my entrance as a co-presbyter and pastor in 1849, I found this faithful servant of the Lord in the middle of his service as stated supply, which ripened into the responsibilities of a pastor in 1852, and as such he continued under manifest blessing from Heaven until death took him to his reward in the spring of 1881. It was his habitual delight to "feed the flock of God, over which the Holy Ghost had made him overseer." It was his holy passion to "preach the Gospel both publicly and from house to house." The material of his official and private ministration was just that provided in the divine Word for souls made hungry and thirsty for the bread and water of eternal life by the Holy Spirit. His centre of Sabbath proclamation was the cross of Christ, and through the week, whether upon the street or in the homes of his people, as opportunity offered, this great theme inspired his tongue and was radiant from his face. With the fullest sympathy of a godly wife, his was a model Christian home, History of the Claysville Presbyterian Church to which troubled souls resorted for spiritual counsel, and from the altars of which his own children went forth in like spirit to be living epistles of the same grace. Written upon many human hearts, as well as in the Book of God, are the indelible records of that personal, family, and pastoral consecration. The witnesses thereof shall never die. But, after all, death does remove even the saints of God from mortal sight. "The fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever?" Where now are your Hoges and your McCarrells; your Donaheys and Brownlees; your McLains and your Craigs, and your long line of officers and unofficial members of this church; your good men and good women who filled these seats in the past generations? Yet the church is still, as ever, the living "body of Christ," with its "members in particular." And this body, by vital union with its head, shares his perpetual life. Newer methods await younger hands and fresher blood for their execution. Rev. James L. Leeper has carried with him to his successful Indiana pastorate the record of four years of very active and prosperous labor here, and the Rev. Frank Fish, taking up the mantle of the long succession in 1886, has, with ability and zeal, brought down the history to this completed period of three-quarters of a century. Let now the congratulations of his brethren intermingle with those of his people upon his attainment of the Lord's best earthly gift to a pastor-a prudent wife! Long may they live in joyful union, and large may the company be who shall hail them as instruments of their salvation in the day of the Lord Jesus! |