In Nevins' Presbyterian Encyclopedia, which contains a brief sketch of the career of John Chambers and a wood-cut portrait of him in his prime, it is stated, that "When Mr. Duncan about this time renounced the jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church into which the Associate Reformed, with Dr. Mason and others had been merged, Dr. Chambers followed his example, from sympathy with his teacher". Was the pupil's "sympathy" stronger than were the preacher's convictions?
Meanwhile the young minister, then twenty-seven years old, returned to Baltimore to meet the Presbytery and seek ordination. Here again another obstacle arose. The theologians on the Patapsco declared that Mr. Chambers was no longer a licentiate under their care, and handed him back his papers. Again was John Chambers preacher of the gospel rejected of men. Was ecclesiasticism good order in this case? Did the true cause of this rather rough treatment lie in this, that he had been a pupil of John Mason Duncan, the independent?
What should the young man do? Disowned of presbyteries and looked at suspiciously by the fathers and lords in the church, where should he go? As he himself wrote on his fiftieth anniversary, May 9th, 1875:
"The prospect, therefore, was rather chilly. I had left my home of many years in the city of Baltimore, where I received all the education that ever was bestowed upon me, and where I sat at the feet of that Gamaliel, the Reverend John Mason Duncan, to whom under God, I am indebted, entirely by His grace, for the position I occupy to-day. My[35] heart had been much interested in religious matters for two or three years before I left Baltimore. There were five or six of us young men, as students of Mr. Duncan, and we had organized some meetings through the city of Baltimore, and God was with us; and the warm heart—if I had any warm heart at all—that I brought to Philadelphia, was kindled at the altar of those dear young brethren. How much we are indebted to God for young men! How much, my brethren, are the eldership, are you, am I, indebted to young men!" Dr. Chambers's last words in this paragraph are especially appropriate, because it is the tendency of most theologians and elderly men to teach that God was, not that he is. With young men, God's existence is more likely to be in the present tense.
The ecclesiastical orphan, thus cast fatherless and friendless upon the wide world, began to inquire whither he should go to seek ordination. Happily there were other bodies of Christians and a living church of Christ, besides the one which had withheld its blessing. Happily too, there were men in the Presbyterian Churches of Philadelphia, warm friends, who were able to direct him wisely, one of them being the large-hearted scholar, James Patriot Wilson, D.D., pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, predecessor of Albert Barnes, and then fifty-six years old. The other was Rev. Thomas Harvey Skinner, D.D., pastor of the Fifth Presbyterian Church in Locust street, and who, twenty-six years afterwards, became the famous professor in union Theological Seminary of New York City. Both of these men were in hearty sympathy with those views of truth afterwards called the "New School". These brethren with Dr. Duncan, advised Mr. Chambers to go into Yankee land and there be ordained by Congregational clergymen. They gave him letters of introduction to the[36] Rev. Nathaniel W. Taylor, the famous exponent of "the new divinity" and then of the theological department of Yale College.
It was not Presbyterianism only that was at this era being rocked on the waves of progress by the gales of the Spirit. About this time, or shortly afterwards, Connecticut Congregationalism was being excited and lifted out of torpor and routine by the breezy discussions of "Taylorism" and "Tylerism". The former expressed the views of Dr. Nathaniel William Taylor, the successor of Moses Stuart, and then holding the Dwight professorship in the Theological Department of Yale College. The young seminary opened in 1822 was therefore but three years old when Mr. Chambers appeared to be ordained. Whatever may be the true label we put upon Dr. N. W. Taylor, he was one of the greatest of America's theologians when the appeal was being taken from Calvin to Christ. He taught a modification of Hopkinsism which many Presbyterians regarded as hostile to Calvinism and many New Englanders as "unsound". As Mr. Chambers had already done, Dr. Taylor repudiated the words "predestinate" and "decreed" and used the word "purposed" concerning God's desire to save men. Before he died, in 1858, he had trained over seven hundred ministers. Ex-President Dwight, in his recent book on Men and Memories of Yale, presents him felicitously in word and picture.
About the time also of rising "Taylorism" the new methods of preaching and revival used by Rev. C. G. Finney, afterwards president of Oberlin College, excited much alarm among the men of the old school. How strange are the variations and how curious is the progress of orthodoxy! Most of the great revivalists of this country were nourished in the Congregational churches; and, from Finney to Moody, they were at first looked upon with suspicion. Later[37] they were welcomed and lauded as the saviors of orthodoxy. Verily the "earthen vessel" is sometimes more in evidence than the "heavenly treasure".
To combat the views of Dr. Taylor, Dr. Bennett Tyler, ex-president of Dartmouth College, and then pastor at Portland, Me., was hailed as the champion by all the leading spirits among the "conservatives", though both of these great teachers had modified the original Calvinism. Of Dr. Tyler it has been well said that "In forming his system he began not with mind, but with the Bible, and he looked for no advances in theology except such as come from a richer Christian experience". Dr. Tyler founded a theological institute at East Windsor, Conn., in 1834, so long and ably presided over by the cultured Philadelphian, Chester D. Hartranft, D.D., brother of Pennsylvania's soldier and governor.
The monuments of these controversies between "Taylorism" and "Tylerism", now forgotten, are seen in the superb theological seminaries of New Haven and Hartford, but the points of difference, as now discoverable only under the microscope of research, are of no practical importance. Hardly any one except the hair-splitting philosophers can state them. They have been forgotten in the larger vision of advancing Christianity. So will it be with most of the controversies of to-day, especially those centering in the "higher criticism".
It was to Dr. N. W. Taylor, that Mr. Chambers had letters, as well as to Dr. Leonard Bacon, afterwards the famous opponent of slavery, and author, in 1833 of the hymn,
"O God beneath thy guiding hand
Our exiled fathers crossed the sea,
And when they trod the wintry strand
With prayer and psalm they worshipped thee."
[38]
For over twenty years Dr. Bacon was pastor of the First Congregational Church in New Haven, one of the professors in Yale Divinity School, and the progenitor of a remarkably intellectual family. Until his death, the day before Christmas of 1881, he was a commanding figure in American history. Of the council which ordained Mr. Chambers he was the scribe. It will be seen at a glance that the ecclesiastical exile from Philadelphia and Baltimore was to stand before giants. If these mighty men of God could give him ordination, why need he mourn the loss of clerical favor nearer home?
Thus armed with letters of commendation, the young Irish-American proceeded to the City of Elms, in the opening week of December, 1825. It was the first year of John Quincy Adams's administration, and the Erie Canal had joined the waters of the great lakes with the Atlantic. It was an era of mighty conquests over nature, and the heart of the young man who was thrilling with the spirit of the age and of the ages, beat high with hope. He, too, wanted to do great things for God and help in making the world better. He sought out those addressed, and handed to them his letters. Two days afterwards, the Association of Congregational ministers of the Western District of New Haven County was called together by the Moderator, and eight ministers were present in the assembly which was held in the Centre Church.
Of the meeting, the following official record was copied out for the biographer, at the request of Rev. Dr. T. T. Munger, author of The Freedom of Faith, and through the courtesy of Rev. Franklin Dexter, librarian of Yale University.
"At a Special Meeting of the Association of the Western District of New Haven County, convened by letters from the Moderator and holden in New Haven, December 7th, 1825.
[39]
Present—Messrs. S. W. Stebbins, J. Day, D.D., E. Scranton, S. Merwin, J. Allen, E. T. Fitch and L. Bacon.
Mr. Stebbins was chosen Moderator, and Mr. Bacon, Scribe. The session was opened with prayer.
Mr. John Chambers, a licentiate of the late second Presbytery of Philadelphia, now dissolved, being introduced to the Association by Mr. Merwin, requested to be ordained to the ministry of the Gospel, and producing proper testimonials of his standing as a member of the church of Christ; of his regular license to preach the Gospel, and of his having passed through a period of probation, with proper acceptance, the Association, after examining him as to his belief in the doctrines of the Gospel, his experimental acquaintance with religion, and his motives in desiring the work of the ministry,
Voted to proceed to his ordination this evening at half-past six o'clock.
Voted that the parts be performed as follows: The introductory prayer to be offered by Mr. Scranton; the sermon to be preached by Professor Fitch; the ordaining prayer to be offered by Mr. Merwin, during which Messrs. Stebbins, Fitch and Merwin to impose hands; the charge to be given by Mr. Stebbins; the right hand of fellowship by Mr. Bacon; the concluding prayer to be offered by Mr. Allen. Adjourned to meet in the Centre Meeting-house at half-past six o'clock.
Met according to adjournment. The ordination took place according to the preceding votes.
Mr. Chambers, at his request, was admitted a member of the Association.
The minutes were read and accepted.
Leonard Bacon, Scribe."
[Test]
The ordination sermon was duly preached in the evening by the Rev. Professor Eleazer T. Fitch, D.D., Livingstone[40] Professor of Divinity in Yale College, and then Mr. Chambers was ordained by the laying on of hands of the three appointed ministers of the Association.
According to Congregational usage an Association of ministers does not ordain to the ministry, but a Council does. The Association may transform itself into a Council for the time being. In Connecticut the Consociation, or standing council, performed this function. In any event, John Chambers was properly ordained to the Gospel ministry according to due Congregational call, form, and precedent.
Furthermore, by his own request, he became a member of the Association. This did not make him a "Congregationalist", but it showed his hearty sympathy with the principles and ideas of his fellow members. For forty-eight years, his only ministerial standing and connection was in the Congregational body as an independent minister, though his church was governed according to Presbyterian form and usage. So strong and deep was his faith in the validity of non-Episcopal and non-Presbyterian ordination that he showed it all his life by his works. He ordained during the course of his ministry several young men to the work of the gospel. One of these impressive ceremonies I myself witnessed, probably about 1859. After preaching a sermon and reading the papers or certificates of the candidate, Mr. Chambers called his elders, those grand men of God, Burtis, Luther, Steinmetz, and Walton around him. Then upon the head of the kneeling young man he and they laid their hands, solemnly ordaining him to the gospel in true apostolic style.
Years afterwards, in 1892, one of his own boys, even the biographer, delivered the Dudleian lecture at Harvard University in Appleton Chapel on "The Validity of non-Episcopal Ordination", or, more exactly, the validity of[41] ordination by the congregation, according to the method of the primitive Christian Churches[5]. By a strange coincidence, it was on the same night, Dec. 7, on which Mr. Chambers was ordained, and thus the sixty-seventh anniversary of his ordination.
[5] See the Bibliotheca Sacra, for October, 1893.
Mr. Chambers left New Haven the next morning, Dec. 8th, 1825. The elms were leafless, but his heart was happy and his face radiant with joy. Coming back to minister to his constantly increasing flock, he baptized on the first Sunday in January, 1826, several new communicants and administered for the first time the memorial supper of Jesus. It was a day long to be remembered, for between seventy and eighty souls were on this occasion added to the church, and the young pastor, in the joy of his initial service, baptized the first child that ever received the dedicating waters from his hands, John Chambers Arrison, the first of a mighty host.
In 1875, the white-haired pastor who had welcomed 3,585 members into his church, said: "Thus it seemed that the tide of God's favor was taken at the flood, and it has brought us to where we are to-day".