The Tide Turns

At work with Uncle John Vassar—The Moody meetings of '77— Incidents of the "inquiry room "— " A question of casuistry "—The redeemed men— Communion reform

AMONG all the influences which touched and vivified the Jr\. early ministry at Clarendon Street, none was stronger than that of Uncle John Vassar, a devoted laborer for souls. " Far beyond any man whom I ever knew," wrote Gordon, " was it true of him that his citizenship was in heaven, and so filled was he with the glory and the power of the heavenly life that to many he seemed like a foreigner speaking an unknown tongue. I have never been so humbled and quickened by contact with any living man as with him. Hundreds of Christians, while sorrowing that they shall see his face no more for the present, will bless God as long as they live for the inspiration which they have received from his devoted

life."

For five successive years, off and on, " Uncle John " labored with the Clarendon Street Church in his peculiar work of " spiritual census-taking," going through the streets of proud, cultivated, self-righteous Boston, ringing every door-bell, and confronting every household with the great question of the new birth. He was wont to describe himself as "only a shepherd-dog, ready to run after the lost sheep and bring them back to the Shepherd," and ever refused the honors and emoluments of the ministry. He would literally travail in

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prayer for the unconverted. " The nights which he spent at my home," writes Gordon, " were nights of prayer and pleading for my congregation and my ministry. Again and again would I hear him rising in the midnight hours to plead with God for the unsaved, till I had frequently to admonish him that he must not lose his sleep." And so he wrought and prayed and instructed the young minister, meekly teachable before such a master of spiritual things, in those hard-learned and rarely acquired secrets which open the way to the heart of hearts of sinful humanity.

The inspiration which this faithful man brought with him accrued principally to the pastor of Clarendon Street. The influence of Mr. Moody's meetings in 1877 affected both pastor and people. Indeed, this year was the turning-point, the climacteric which, after seven years of lethargic religious life, opened a new period of spiritual health. When the revival meetings were finished, Gordon realized that the crest of the hill had been passed, and that the crisis in the struggle for a spiritual as against a secular church was over.

These meetings, which were organized and carried on by Mr. Moody with all the executive ability and religious fervor for which he is distinguished, were held in a large Tabernacle

— a great "tent," indeed, of brick and spruce timber, with

nothing about it to attract but the gospel of Christ preached therein. This building stood within three hundred feet of the Clarendon Street Church, which was used from the beginning for overflow and " inquiry " meetings. The Tabernacle was thronged night after night by audiences of from five to seven thousand. People of all ranks and conditions attended. Excursion trains brought in thousands from all parts of New England. Seventy thousand families in Boston were personally visited. Great noon prayer-meetings were held daily in Tremont Temple by business men. Meetings were organized for young men, for boys, for women, for the intemperate— in short, for all classes in the community that were ready to help or be helped.

And at the center of all these operations stood the Clarendon Street Church, like a cemetery temporarily occupied by troops in battle. What a shattering and overturning of weather-stained, moss-grown traditions followed! What experiences of grace, what widening vistas of God's power, what instruction in personal religion, resulted from these six months of revival! A new window was built into the religious life of the church, letting in floods of light. The true purpose of a church's existence began to be emphasized. Drunkards and outcasts were daily reclaimed, and brought into fellowship. Christian evidences of the best sort, evidences which had to do with the present potency of a saving Christ, were multiplied to affluence, strengthening the faith of believers. The duty and opportunity of all in the work of the inquiry-room

were asserted. A great education in methods of practical

religious work resulted.

We get a glimpse of the character of this movement, as it proceeded month after month, in the following reminiscences from Dr. Gordon's own pen

"In 1877, during Mr. Moody's meetings in Boston, there was an inquiry meeting in our church. The house was full, and Mr. Moody sent me around to find workers to help. I came upon a woman with a baby. She was anxious to find Christ; for when I approached her and asked if she wanted to be saved, she said, ' That is what I came here for.'

" I stepped over to a gentleman on the front seat, a finelooking man, and said, ' Are you a Christian? '

" ' Yes, sir,' he answered.

'"I want you to go over there and talk to an inquirer.' " ' I never talked to an inquirer,' he replied.

" ' But you are a Christian? '

" ' Yes.'

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*' ' Here is a woman just ready to be led to Christ.' " ^* Excuse me. I should not know what to say to her.' " Well, because I could not get him to go, I went over myself and sat down beside the woman. But the baby was so restless that she could not give me her attention. The man kept watching us, and saw the situation. By and by he crept softly down and gave the baby some sweets, and took her in his arms and carried her to the other side of the church and held her for an hour, while I led the woman to Christ. He found that, if he could not lead a soul to Christ, he could hold the baby while some one else did. I think a special blessing rested upon that work; for not only was the mother saved, but that little girl came to Christ when she was twelve years old, and I haven't a more aggressive Christian in my church than that baby has grown to be."

"'Did I tell a lie?'

" It was about as odd a question of casuistry as was ever propounded; and yet, as I thought of it afterward, it seemed to go about as deeply into the heart of redemption as any which could be asked.

" He was a real Irishman, whose brogue would identify him on the first interview. We have frequently noticed that when a genuine son of Erin becomes converted, and attempts to launch out into the language of Canaan, he provokes an irresistible smile on the faces of grave Christians. There is a certain quaintness of conception and expression which belongs peculiarly to the people of this race when dealing with religious experience, of which we might give some very striking examples had we room. For this, however, we cannot now turn aside, but must come to our story.

" Patrick Daley was one of the first to profess conversion in connection with Mr. Moody's recent evangelistic services in Boston. He had been a stanch Roman Catholic by persuasion, but a desperate drunkard by practice. With an overpowering desire to be saved from his evil habit, he so far broke through the prejudices of his religion as to go and listen to the great evangelist. There he heard with astonishment and delight that the chief of sinners and the most hopeless of drunkards might find immediate forgiveness and deliverance through surrender to Jesus Christ. He went into the inquiryroom, and trustingly accepted the Saviour, and entered into great peace and joy in believing. With his conversion, he got rid not only of the heavy burden of his sin, but of the not less heavy burden of popish ceremonies and superstitions. All these he now counted loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord, and descanted in no very temperate terms on the folly and abomination of the things in which he had formerly trusted. Several weeks after his conversion, he approached me at the close of a meeting with his story and his question.

" ' You see, your reverence, I know a good thing when I get it; and when I found salvation, I could not keep it to myself. Peter Murphy lived in the upper story of the same tenement with me. Murphy was a worse drunkard than I, if such a thing could be; and we had gone on many a spree together. Well, when I got saved and washed clean in the blood of Christ, I was so happy I did not know what to do with myself. So I went up to Murphy, and told him what I had got.

"'Poor Peter! he was just getting over a spree, and was pretty sick and sore, and just ready to do anything I told him. So I got him to sign the pledge, and then told him that Jesus alone could help him keep it. Then I got him on his knees, and made him pray and surrender to the Lord, as I had done. You never see such a change in a man as there was in him for the next week. I kept watch of him, and prayed for him, and helped him on the best I could, and, sure,

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he was a different man. Well, come Sunday morning, Joe Healey called round to pay his usual visit. This was the worst yet; for Healey used to come to see Murphy as regular as Sunday, always bringing a bottle of whisky with him, and these two would spree it all day, till they turned the whole house into a bedlam. Well, I saw Healey coming last Sunday morning, and I was afraid it would be all up with poor Murphy if he got with him. So when I went to the door to let him in, and he said, " Good-morning, Pat; is Murphy in? " I said, '* No; Murphy is out. He does not live here any longer/^ and in this way I sent Healey off, and saved Murphy from temptation.'

" Here was the burden of his question; for he continued " ' Did I tell a lie? What I meant was that the old Murphy did not live there any more. For you know Mr. Moody told us that when a man is converted he is a new creature; old things have passed away. And I believe that Murphy is a new creature, and that the old Murphy does not live any more in that attic. That is what I meant. Did I tell a lie?'

" Candid reader, what should I say? In the light of Paul's great saying, ' Nevertheless I live; yet jwt /, but Christ liveth in me,' can it be denied that Patrick Daley was right?

" It may be claimed that it is a dangerous kind of theological jugglery which we here encounter. ' What I hate, that I do,' says Paul. Alas! no one who knows the depths of an evil nature can deny that. ' If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.' Yes; certainly that is true. ' Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.' Ah! here is a conclusion which may well startle us. Can we prove an alibi at the judgment-seat? Can we swear the blame of our wrong-doing upon the inbred sin which dwelt within us, and expect to go scot-free ourselves? When the sheriff of the law comes knocking at our

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door to arrest us and hale us away to prison, can we say, ' Old I doesn't live here any more; the new man occupies the house now'?

" It can hardly be denied that Paul's theology is very radical in just this direction. ' Unselfed and inchristed ' is the phrase that has been employed to set forth the great transaction of spiritual renewal; and observe how the apostle encourages us to serve a writ of ejection on the old tenant, our evil self, and to bring in a new occupant of the premises: ' That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;... and that ye //// oti the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.' No betterment or reformation of the depraved tenant, who is always in hopeless arrears with his landlord, but a peremptory order to move out Moreover, the Christian is considered to have done this very thing— evicted his former self, and set its goods and chattels out upon the sidewalk. ^* Seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.' So vividly and strongly did this conception take hold of Martin Luther that he used to say, ' When any one comes and knocks at the door of my heart and asks, " Who lives here?" I reply, "Martin Luther used to, but he has moved out, and Jesus Christ now lives here." ' "

Before the meetings were ended nearly thirty reclaimed drunkards had been received into the Clarendon Street Church. The general opinion was that these men would not stand even to the end of the year. Yet Gordon was able to say some time after, in a Northfield address, " Of those who have continued their residence with us, all have remained steadfast, as consistent, as devoted, and as useful members as we have, a demonstration that God can instantly change a man from

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the vilest and worst drunkard to one in the way to the highest saintship."

After his death a few pencihngs were found among his papers describing the conversion of one of these men. He had started to write an eighth chapter for the fragment of spiritual autobiography which was issued posthumously under the title of "A Pastor's Dream." These few notes were found too late for publication. In the preceding chapters he had described the entrance of Christ into the church where he was preaching, and the effect which his presence had had on him. Continuing, he says:

" Why he visited our sanctuary on that Lord's day morning, and what gracious lessons he taught us concerning his power and his coming, we have learned in the previous chapters. But longing for yet greater blessings, we still press the question, 'But wherefore, O Master, camest thou in thither?' Was he searching, perchance, for a lost sheep? That were a sufficient reason, as he himself has taught us, why he should leave the ninety and nine which are safely sheltered, and go after the one which has strayed. Yes; but this would not seem to be the place to look for straying lambs. A beautiful Gothic church, richly carpeted and upholstered, and filled with a sober and respectable congregation, is not, as a rule, the resort of wretched outcasts. In the miserable slums, amid the reek and defilement of human sewage, we shall find such, and not in this elegant modern sanctuary. Thank God, however, there are exceptions to such a rule.

" No. 40 was the pew where, in vision, I saw the Master seated on that memorable Sunday morning. Directly behind, in the pew next to the door, is where, not in a dream, but in sad reality, I found the lost sheep. He had not strayed in by accident; he had been bleating about the fold for some hours with the vague hope of finding help; but Satan, with the premonition that he was about to be deprived of his prey, had

I02 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON

made a last desperate effort to retain him. Each saloon he had passed in his way to the church had smitten him with a fresh cup of alcoholic poison, till, sore broken in the place of dragons, and covered with the shadow of death, he had crept into this remote corner of the church and swooned away into a drunken sleep. Humanly speaking it was only by the merest accident that I discovered him. The congregation had dispersed after the evening service; the lights, excepting two or three near the door, had been turned off, when, passing down the aisle, I discovered what seemed to be a pile of filthy rags, beneath which, on examination, I found as wretched a specimen of ruined humanity as I ever set eyes on. 'Call a policeman. Take him away to the lockup ' would no doubt have.. ."

Here the pen dropped, never to be resumed.

The " wretched specimen of ruined humanity " became, through the miracle of conversion, a most extraordinary example of the transforming and sustaining power of God's Spirit. For seventeen long years the man here referred to has, in the divine strength, been kept from falling. The slave was freed; his family reunited in Christian fellowship. No testimony has been more eloquent, because of its evident truth and because of its note of thankfulness, than this man's, so unfailingly given in the evening meetings of the church. In season and out of season, at the shop and among the squalid wrecks at mission meetings, has he borne witness to God's presence. And even on Boston Common, where Whitefield preached to the multitudes of an earlier generation with such power that tears might be seen on every cheek, the pitiable drunkard, now clean and whole and in his right mind, may be found on warm afternoons in the leafy months, setting forth the gospel of Christ to the motley crowds about him.

No one knows as well as Dr. Gordon's most intimate friends the complete and triumphant satisfaction which the conversion

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of these ruined men gave him. No one else knows how tender was the sohcitude with which he watched their lives, even as the Good Shepherd himself. The ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance—who are busied with literature, social life, and what not— doubtless felt how little this man sympathized with their life, and how languid was his interest in their enthusiasms. He was no social pet, no reverend idol! His enthusiasm was for the poor, wretched, submerged, helpless, and hopeless sinner. To such he gave his heart and his time and his strength. The "redeemed men " were to him the jewels of his church. In reclaimed sinners he saw the flowering of the truth. They were as the lotus growing out of the mud. We well remember his sigh of relief on coming from the death-bed of one of these men at the City Hospital. MacNamara was a miserable, drunken beggar, with hardly three garments on him, when he first appeared at the pastor's home; but he was not beyond the reach of Christ. Poor, weak man! though strong in the new strength, falling, yet ever rising, and dying, finally, a triumphant death! " MacNamara is safe now," were the words on Gordon's lips as he returned from the hospital that day. No more anguish, no more heart-sorrow, for this child of his. He, the under-shepherd, had passed him on to the great Shepherd of the sheep, who carries the lambs in his bosom, and gently leads them that are with young. MacNamara is safe!

The entrance of so many reformed men into the church necessitated changes in the administration of the communion, which have now become general. The cup of dragons could not be offered to men whom it had tortured and poisoned. Nor could it represent the perfect Sacrifice, the untainted Passover. The first consideration was forced upon the church by the presence of these members, newly emancipated from the bondage of alcoholism. The second was the result of a careful exegetical study, which led finally to the abandonment of fermented elements altogether, and the substitution therefor of the pure juice of the grape and of unleavened Passover bread. In justification of this supplanting of " that fallen angel of creation, that right-hand minister of the evil one," an exhaustive study of the whole subject was published. From this we can draw only a brief extract.

After commenting on the fact that the only two terms used in Scripture in this connection are " the cup " and " the fruit of the vine," and that the word "wine " is nowhere employed to describe the symbolic blood; and after noting that the term " fruit of the vine " could hardly signify fermented wine, since the usages of the Jewish Passover, out of which the communion sprang, seem to forbid its employment by the rigid exclusion of leaven; and after quoting statements of living rabbis which interdict the use of wine in the Passover service of to-day, he says

"The use of fermented wine seems to mar the symbolism of this divine ordinance. The crimson wine poured out brings graphically before us Christ's blood which was shed for the remission of sins; the drinking of the cup tells plainly of our nourishment through the imparted life of Christ. But there is another idea which should be suggested by this sacrament, the immaculateness of the Redeemer's blood.

" The Passover loaf was typical of Jesus Christ. It is important, therefore, that the symbols which point back to Christ should be as significant as those which pointed forward to him. The unleavened bread was rigidly insisted on as the ceremonial prophecy of Christ; the unleavened bread was used in instituting the memorial sacrament of Christ; and we hold that the unleavened bread meets the typical requirements

and therefore should still be retained in the eucharist. We

apply the same principle to the cup. It is the symbol of ' the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.' Here is the one blood in which there is no

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taint of hereditary sin, no trace of natural or acquired depravity. What can adequately symbolize the holy blood of him who, ' through the eternal Spirit, offered up himself without spot unto God? '

" Scripture declares that leaven signifies corruption; chemistry pronounces that fermentation is death. How then can this element typify Christ? Can corruption stand as the similitude of the Incorruptible One? Can death show forth him who is the Life? It may be fitting that those who are 'the degenerate plants of a strange vine'— the deniers of Christ's spotless humanity— should symbolize their faith by the cup in which the depravity of alcohol is working to produce all manner of concupiscence; but let the branches of the True Vine, who rejoice in the holiness of their Head, contend for the true fruit of the vine, and so keep the cup of the Lord innocent and undepraved till they drink it new in the kingdom of the Father."