Throngs of people daily pass along two of Philadelphia's most imposing highways. Broad Street spans the entire city from north to south. Chestnut Street is the Quaker City's most brilliant thoroughfare, stretching between the Delaware and the Schuylkill. Those who traverse either may see the great twenty story building wherein is made and published the North American, the oldest daily newspaper on the continent. Northward from Broad and Chestnut, rise the imposing municipal buildings, on the crest of whose mountain of stone and peak of metal is visible the bronze statue of William Penn, founder of the City of Brotherly Love. Though this son of a Dutch mother was the beginner of the City of Homes, yet there have been many other makers of Philadelphia.
Not least among those who have builded the unseen but nobler city, and who have stamped their names indelibly upon human hearts and lives, even unto the third and fourth generation of its citizens, is John Chambers. During forty-eight years he was pastor of the First Independent Church, whose second edifice stood from 1831 to 1899 on the site of the twenty-storied "sky-scraper" at Broad and Sansom streets.
Happily, in the eternal fitness of things, history and sentiment were not ignored in the uprearing of the mighty structure, whose cornice is not far from the clouds. In the two lower stories of the fa?ade is a happy reminder of the old brown stone church of pillared front. Most felicitously does memory find here a sermon in stone and a stimulus in architecture. Indeed, a former worshipper walking on the[2] other side of the street, who chanced to look no higher than the old familiar altitudes, might imagine that the house of prayer, with its Ionic columns, still stood to bless its worshippers. Even of the same hue and tint as in childhood's days, eight columns of fluted brown sandstone renew in verisimilitude the old architecture. Thus the mighty edifice enshrines upon its front, in imperishable masonry, suggestions, at least, of former history.
To be exact, whereas there were in old times six round fluted Ionic columns, resting on high square bases, supporting a simple but imposing pediment, there are to-day eight front columns supporting an architrave, with two mightier upholding pillars within.
At first thought, men might be tempted to see in this colossal structure, whose roof is so much nearer the sky a symbol of "the power of the press," which is alleged to be more influential than the pulpit. One political gentleman whom I knew well—even he who in 1893, raised the stars and stripes over Hawaii—affirmed in my hearing, that "one newspaper was equal to three pulpits". Yes, but that depends on which newspaper and which pulpit. It is certain that in the eyes of some, printing machinery and type, and daily square miles of inked paper, for which whole forests have been destroyed, have more moral potency than worship, prayer, and preaching. Yet against this modern parable of the mustard seed become a tree, phenomenal and imposing, we have happily also the Master's parable of the leaven, or of might unseen, of a kingdom coming "without observation". "Things seen", even when dazzling are not really as potent as those which transform the life. It could add little or nothing to the reputation of John Chambers, to put on paper with ink his words that kindled our souls. Yet, "did not our hearts burn within us" when we heard? Can[3] we forget them? Was not his a life unto life? "He being dead yet speaketh."
So then, whether standing in the shadow of the great edifice—typical of the soaring twentieth century—or setting foot on its roof high in air, many fathoms higher in the deeps of space than where once we sat or stood, and thence gazing upon the sea of humanity beneath, or over the great city set between the two silver streams, and ever fascinating and beautiful with boyhood's memories, let us stop to recall the past. Let us think of that busy and potent life of John Chambers (1797-1875), and of that First Independent Church (1825-1873), which, like a spiritual storage battery, still supplies the power that pulses in many thousand souls. Man and edifice, though vanished from earth, give by their visible potencies or inspiring memories, in churches and Sunday Schools, in hallowed homes and beautiful careers of men and women, even to the fourth generation, the shining and convincing evidence of an earthly immortality, of life unto life. In the ever widening circles of eternity, that unspent influence will be felt.
Let us now descend from the mountain to the plain. Until the first early autumn of the twentieth century, one could see also on the east side of Thirteenth Street, north of Market and within a few feet of Filbert Street, a four-sided, plain gray stone or marble post, in which even a casual passer-by could detect a survival. It was an old-timer, battered, rubbed, and chipped. Evidently it had once been a hitching post. Then, after sundry paintings and daubings, it had served for various advertising purposes, setting forth the changing business carried on in the dwelling place itself, in front of which it stood, or, in the cellar of the same. The Belgian block pavements, the flagstone sidewalks, the great Reading Railway Terminal, not far away, and the lofty business edifices of steel and stone, with a[4] thousand modern suggestions, all seem by their contrast to suggest antiquity in that horse post, and possibly its descent from once more noble uses.
When, however, to the evidence of eyesight, was added the play of memory and imagination, then there rose upon the mind's vision the little brick church, the Church of the Vow, that stood directly opposite, where John Chambers, master of hearts and transformer of human lives, wrought and taught. Within its now vanished walls the sunny pastor, the shining ornament in social life, the soul-stirring preacher, the unquailing soldier, who fought evil in every form, prayed, preached, and labored with men. Here he communicated quickening impulses not yet spent, but ever urging on to vaster issues. Yes, there is where the old church stood.
But this old battered horse-post,—so close by the curb stone as to wear ever fresh marks of tar and grease from passing wagon wheel hubs—what has it to do with John Chambers and the First Independent Church of Philadelphia, which is almost forgotten before a brood of lusty children and vigorous grandchildren that now train thousands in the ways of holiness? Especially may we ask the question, since the church and the post were on opposite sides of the street, here a few feet wide.
Well, hereto hangs not only a tale, but literally, there hung a chain, with associations. Before the First Independent Church—that church which, according to scripture and reality, though not in common parlance, is not an edifice, but a company of believers—was formed, in 1825, there stood at Thirteenth and Filbert streets, a comparatively new building. It had been reared in fulfilment of a vow made during a storm on the Atlantic by a holy woman of prayer, whose life was saved. Those who carried out her purpose were Irish refugees, seeking freedom in America.[5] Being intense Sabbatarians, they would have no sound of passing wheel or hoof on the Lord's Day, for theirs was the age, also, of Delaware river cobble stones, and of iron tires. No pneumatic or sound deadening rubber-swathed wheels existed then. Hence, to warn off all matutinal disturbers of the solemnity of worship, and evening passers on wheels, an iron chain was stretched across the street, guarding either side, north or south, of the holy edifice. Thus, in quiet, the people within could worship God. The same rule held in other neighborhoods as in this congregation, and in front of the Presbyterian church edifice at Fourth and Arch, as the pictures show, a similar stout iron chain was stretched. It was the rule in Sabbath-keeping Philadelphia, according to the vigorous law of 1798.
Philadelphia was, early in the last century, a little place, of only tens of thousands, and so long as there were but few churches, the chains seemed appropriate. As the city grew, the problem for the firemen, mail wagons, and ambulances increased. In time not a single street running north or south, even in case of a fire, was open to the firemen, who were apt to make quick work in removing obstacles. A snow storm of petitions, for and against the repeal of the Acts of 1798 and the removal of the street chains, fell on the legislature and the law ceased to be operative, March 15, 1830. The old stone posts remained and occasionally one may be recognized by the keen-eyed antiquarian in dear old Philadelphia.
Both the first and second edifices, in which John Chambers labored in the Gospel, have been levelled and their sites built upon. That old post, effective Sabbath guardian, has gone; the First Independent Church, in edifice or organization, is no more. Nevertheless, its spirit lives. Like Huldah's home, our old church in its "second quarter" was a "college," and, fellow alumni, we shall try to tell the story[6] of our Alma Mater, "mother of us all," and sketch the life and work of the great and good man, with whom the First Independent Church began, continued, and ended. Both church and pastor have become as leaven that transforms, and in leavening is itself transformed,—lost to form and view, while yet potent. "The eagle's cry is heard even after its form disappears behind the mountain," says the Chinese proverb.
The "three measures of meal" still abide. From them is still supplied the bread of life to thousands. To change from metaphor to facts that are as hard as stone, and as enduring as human character, there are, first in point of time, the Bethany Mission Sunday-school and the Bethany Presbyterian Church; the John Chambers Memorial Church, an offshoot and outgrowth from the Bethany Church; the Presbyterian Church at Rutledge, Pa.; the St. Paul's Presbyterian Church in West Philadelphia; and the magnificent edifice and active congregation of the Chambers-Wylie Memorial Church on Broad below Pine Street, which enshrines the name not only of John Chambers, but of T. W. J. Wylie—two noble preachers of the gospel, sons of thunder and also of consolation.
Shall we attempt to measure influence, by even suggesting how three churches, one Presbyterian, one Baptist, and one Lutheran grew up out of the early prayer meetings before 1840, sustained chiefly by John Chambers' young men? Shall we hint at the missionary and educational impulses given at "the ends of the earth" by missionaries, or of lives nourished or transformed in our home land by the forty or more ministers of the gospel, who call John Chambers their father in God?
Nay, our dear under-shepherd himself, were he with us, would say, "Not unto us O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy and thy truth's sake."
Nisi Dominus Frustra.