Matthew Anderson's Rules For Success in the Ministry

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Matthew Anderson was born on this day in history, January 25, 1845, in Greencastle, Pennsylvania. A fifth-generation Presbyterian raised in a devout Christian home and taught the catechism. Determined to succeed in his education in order to best serve the Lord, Anderson studied at Oberlin College in Ohio, graduating there in 1874. He began his preparation for the ministry at Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh before transferring to the Princeton Theological Seminary, where, after his arrival, he first mistaken as a manual laborer, rather than a student. Anderson graduated in 1877, becoming one of the first African-American students to live on campus and graduate from the seminary at Princeton.

He went to lead a very successful ministry at the Berean Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, where he also founded the Berean Savings Association and the Berean Institute to help African-Americans learn job skills and achieve financial success.

In his autobiographical Presbyterianism: Its Relation to the Negro (1897), pp. 186-188, Anderson is careful to ascribe all of his success in the ministry to the good hand of God upon him, and to certain rules that he followed in his pastoral career. Here is the list of rules that guided Matthew Anderson’s ministry:

First. Never to undertake anything without first having studied it in all its different phases, with the Spirit's guidance, and after seeing it in all its relations, and there be given a reasonable assurance of success to undertake it.

Second. After having carefully considered the subject and convinced that the work in question should be undertaken, not to allow any adverse influences whatever to divert us from our purpose.

Third. In presenting the work to others, never exaggerate it with the hope of gaining friends, or money, to assist in carrying it on, but to show it in its true light, even though the truth for the time being would tend to prejudice against the work.

Fourth. When convinced that the work is needed, and that it is the will of Providence that we should undertake it, to make use of all the means at our command temporal, intellectual and spiritual, to secure its success.

Fifth. In all our labors to keep clearly before us not only the present, but the future wants of the people and to work accordingly, even though the people themselves do not see that they are needing such work.

Sixth. That we be guided and regulated by the great and immortal principles of divine truth, rather than by sentiment, which knows no creed, race or color, and which regards all men alike redeemed by one common Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. That while by the accidents of birth and the unholy sentiment of the country, our labors are confined principally to the people of the colored race, we should nevertheless regard ourselves, ministers of Christ, as embracing a wider sphere of labor, since in God's sight there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free, but all related by ties of consanguinity, having sprung from common parents.

Seventh. That we ever hold sacred the great cardinal truths of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and make them the guiding star of our life work in all of our dealings toward our fellowmen.

Eighth. That we be perfectly frank and honest in all our work, never to misrepresent it for the sake of gain, take advantage of the ignorant, but at all times try and carry out the principles of the golden rule.

Ninth. That we fear no man, nor call any man master, but be kindly affectioned towards all men, and under no circumstances to allow an insult to pass unresented which was intended to belittle our manhood, not because of ourselves personally, but because of the race with which we are identified, and which to stigmatize would be the real object of the insult.

Tenth. That we listen to the criticisms and advice of friends, and acknowledge our failures and faults, and be ever ready to apologize to others for injuries done them by us.

These ten rules, though unwritten, embrace the principles which have regulated us in all our work up to the present time, and to which we attribute whatever success may have attended our labors.

In this list, we see a man careful to seek God’s leading, scrupulous to avoid or properly respond to personal conflicts or racial prejudice that would tend to undermine his ministry, and deeply impressed by the value of following the Golden Rule in all his actions and words. Though his social situation is not exactly that of Philadelphia in the 21st century, there is much to be learned from his approach to the pastoral ministry today. Great things can be accomplished for God by first walking in humble reliance upon His Spirit. We thus remember Matthew Anderson, born on this day in history 178 years ago.

Log College Press and the Movies

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For those who enjoy the cinema, there are some interesting ties between American Presbyterians on Log College Press and the movies.

  • The 2003 film Gods and Generals, which tells the story of the War Between the States largely from the points of one military officer from the North and one from the South, features Stephen Lang who played Stonewall Jackson (Presbyterian deacon) and Martin Clark as Dr. George Junkin (Presbyterian minister, and Jackson’s father-in-law).

  • Francis J. Grimké and Matthew Anderson once had occasion to watch a film together - D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). The movie is famous for its positive portrayal of the Klu Klux Klan, which Grimké noted in his review. He vehemently critiqued the film for its apparent effort to excite racial prejudice against African-Americans.

  • J.G. Machen was a Charlie Chaplin fan, according to D.G. Hart, who commented, writing in Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America, pp. 164, 207:

The final issue that split fundamentalist and traditionalist Presbyterians concerned personal morality. In [James Oliver] Buswell's estimation this was the proverbial straw that would break the camel's back. Those in the church who sided with him, Buswell wrote (in what turned out to be his last letter to Machen), were concerned about reports that Westminster students used liquor in their rooms "with the approval of some members of the faculty." The use of alcohol, even in the celebration of the sacrament, he added, was "far more likely" to divide the church than "any question of eschatology." Buswell and other fundamentalists in the church were also "shocked" by leaders of the new denomination who defended "the products of Hollywood," a "useless,...waste of energy." Machen never responded to Buswell but his opposition to Prohibition provides a clue to his views on alcohol. In addition to opposing the expanded powers of the federal government that the Eighteenth Amendment granted, Machen also thought the Bible allowed moderate use of alcohol. This was also the position of the majority of faculty at Westminster who came from ethnic churches were the idea of total abstinence with American evangelicalism was foreign. As for Buswell's reference to Hollywood, Machen did enjoy going to the movies and commented favorably on Charlie Chaplin but did not make any remarks about film in his published writings.10

10. Buswell to Machen, December 4, 1936, MA. On Machen's fondness for movies, see, for example, his letters to his mother, May 14, 1913, March 11 and August 23, 1914, MA.

These are a few of the curious and fascinating connections between Hollywood and American Presbyterianism to be found at Log College Press. As we say here, even in regards to culture:

THE PAST IS NOT DEAD. 
PRIMARY SOURCES ARE NOT INACCESSIBLE.
18TH-19TH CENTURY AMERICAN PRESBYTERIANS ARE NOT IRRELEVANT.

The Underground Railroad at Log College Press

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Reformed Presbyterian minister William Sommerville once wrote that “The Bible does not discourage the slave from making his escape; and the underground railroad is built in the very spirit of God's counsel” (Southern Slavery Not Founded on Scripture Warrant, p. 5). The Underground Railroad — an informal system whereby “agents” and “stations” comprised an avenue of escape for American slaves in bondage — was a tool employed by many in the North to aid slaves seeking freedom, including Presbyterians, and very often, Reformed Presbyterians (Covenanters).

Among the resources found here at Log College Press, there are many perspectives on the slavery issue which were held by 19th century century Presbyterians in various parts of the country. Today’s post focuses on those who were supportive of, active on, or otherwise connected to the Underground Railroad. We highlight a few here in alphabetical order, although more could be mentioned.

  • Caroline Still Anderson — Caroline was the wife of Matthew Anderson, pastor of the Berean Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, and daughter of William Still, whose book on the Underground Railroad is a valuable record of material Caroline’s father is sometimes known as “The Father of the Underground Railroad,” and he helped over 800 slaves escape to freedom.

  • Titus Basfield — Basfield, a former slave, studied at Franklin College, New Athens, Ohio, an institution founded by John Walker, Presbyterian minister and abolitionist, which was a haven for those traveling on the Underground Railroad. A friend and classmate of his, John Bingham, was the principal author of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

  • Philo Carpenter — Carpenter was a Chicago pharmacist and abolitionist. His home was a station on the Underground Railroad, and it is reported that he helped approximately 200 slaves reach freedom, often by rowing them across Lake Michigan to Canada by night.

  • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler — Cuyler was an outspoken abolitionist, and it is reported that his Brooklyn, New York congregation — the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church — was a hiding place for escaped slaves seeking freedom.

  • Alexander Dobbin — Dobbin was a Covenanter who helped found the first Presbytery of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America, and later, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. He died in 1809, but his house, located at the site of the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg, endured, serving as a waystation along the Underground Railroad.

  • James Faris — A Covenanter minister from South Carolina, he attempted to have the South Carolina legislature pass a law which would encourage emancipation, but failed. After moving to Bloomington, Indiana, his home became a waystation on the Underground Railroad.

  • Amos Noe Freeman — Freeman was an African-American Presbyterian minister, who was also a conductor along the Underground Railroad at his congregation in Portland, Maine.

  • Henry Highland Garnet — Garnet was an African-American Presbyterian minister who was born into slavery, but escaped with the aid of others, including Underground Railroad stationmaster Thomas Garrett.

  • William Hayes — Hayes was a Covenanter layman who aided slaves in Illinois who were escaping to freedom. He was successfully sued in 1843 by a neighbor, who objected to Hayes’ role in the escape of his slave, Susan “Sukey” Richardson. The well-documented story of that lawsuit and Hayes’ heroic role in the freedom of many slaves is told by Carol Pirtle, Escape Betwixt Two Suns: A True Tale of the Underground Railroad in Illinois (2000).

  • Erastus Hopkins — Hopkins was a Presbyterian minister who was active politically in the Free-Soil Party. His home in Northampton, Massachusetts has been documented as a waystation along the Underground Railroad.

  • John Black Johnston — A Covenanter minister, Glasgow reports that Johnston “was a fearless advocate of the cause of the slave, and was a distinguished conductor on the ‘Underground Railroad.”

  • James W.C. Pennington — Pennington was a “fugitive slave” who escaped by means of the Underground Railroad before later becoming a Presbyterian minister and an outspoken abolitionist.

  • John Rankin — Rankin was a Presbyterian minister and an active conductor on the Underground Railroad in Ohio. It was Rankin’s account — given to Calvin Stowe — of Eliza Harris’ 1838 escape to freedom that inspired the character Eliza in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (see below). It is reported that when “Henry Ward Beecher was asked after the end of the Civil War, ‘Who abolished slavery?,’ he answered, ‘Reverend John Rankin and his sons did.’"

  • Thomas Smith — Smith was a Covenanter layman who Bloomington, Indiana home was a station on the Underground Railroad.

  • Calvin & Harriet Beecher Stowe — Calvin was a Presbyterian minister, and his wife Harriet achieved fame with the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), a fictionalized account of a slave who escaped on the Underground Railroad. The Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Brunswick, Maine is officially part of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

  • Theodore Sedgwick Wright — Wright was an African-American Presbyterian minister who studied (and suffered — see his 1836 letter to Archibald Alexander) at Princeton. His home in New York City was a waystation for the Underground Railroad.

These connections to the Underground Railroad at Log College Press may serve to whet the appetite for further study of a fascinating and heroic chapter in American history, and shows how passionately some Presbyterians felt about the cause of freedom for those bondage.

John B. Reeve: A man of many books, and *the* Book

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Visit many good books, and live in the Bible. — Charles H. Spurgeon

Beloved to many, pastor and professor John Bunyan Reeve was especially dear to Francis James Grimké. It was Reeve who presented Grimké to the Presbytery of Philadelphia as a candidate for the ministry. The two remarkable ministries of these men were intertwined in God’s providence in many ways and over many decades. Three addresses by Grimké testify to the profound impact that Reeve had on his own life, and that of many others. These include: 1) “Remarks at the Semi-Centennial of the Ordination to the Ministry of the Reverend John B. Reeve, June 4, 1911;” 2) “Rev. John B. Reeve, January 20, 1916;” and 3) “A Short Address delivered at Howard University, November 11, 1930, in Connection with the Presentation of a Portrait of the Rev. John B. Reeve” [all found in Vol. 1 of Grimké’s Works].

Although Presbyterian by conviction, it is perhaps not surprising that a man named after John Bunyan, would take to Spurgeon’s maxim noted above. Reeve was an avid reader. Grimké describes him as '“an omnivorous reader.” A man knowledgeable in the Word, a man of prayer, a remarkable preacher - but a man who labored to bring that Word to the flock under his care.

As the under-shepherd of the flock, he realized that his great mission was to lead the flock into green pastures and by the side of still waters. And he knew that these green pastures and still waters were not stumbled upon, but had to be searched for, came as the result of careful, diligent, persistent effort. The scriptures must be searched; the truth must be digged for; waters out of the wells of salvation must be drawn out; there must be effort put forth, constant, persistent painstaking effort.

Reeve knew that after all the planting, watering and effort, “the increase comes from God.” But he did his job, searched the Scriptures, and studied to bring forth the Word faithfully. It is apt that such a man would help, along with Matthew Anderson and others, to establish the Berean School of Philadelphia (as well as the Department of Theology at Howard University).

The man that Grimké describes in his addresses is a man who loved God’s Word, and valued the study of good books to aid in the understanding and preaching of that Word.

He was a man of scholarly attainments. He never ceased to be a student; he never lost his taste for study; he never allowed himself by pressure from the outside to deprive him of his study hour. He was always delving; always seeking to enlarge the stores of his knowledge, to get a broader vision of things, and a greater store of information from which, not only to enrich his own intellectual and spiritual life, but also from which to draw supplies for his pulpit ministrations. He was an omnivorous reader. I don’t know any man among us who was as widely read as he was, who, during his lifetime, read as many books as he did. He was reading, always reading, and reading in many directions — history, poetry, philosophy, fiction, books of travel — books religious and books secular.

Very early in his college and seminary life he came to realize with Milton the value of good books. “As good almost kill a man as a good book;” you remember is what Milton said; “who kills a man kills a reasonable creature God’s image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.” “A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond.” Yes, good books; and he knew what the friendship of good books was; and that friendship was sedulously cultivated — continued to the very end.

The last time I was with him, we talked about books; and when I was coming away, he spoke about the sermon he had heard me preach just the day before, and of the interest which he felt in the line of thought discussed in it, and handed me a package containing two books, which he said, he wanted me to accept, and which dealt with one aspect of the same subject which I had treated in my sermon. He was able to put his hand, at once, upon books bearing upon the subject discussed. I mentioned this incident to show how wide was his reading, how he kept in touch through the printed page, with almost every phase of thought. And here, too, the younger men who are coming up, and are just forming habits, and the older men also, in many instances, might learn an important lesson from him as to keeping up their habits of study, and of cultivating an ever-growing friendship for good books.

Whether to the young or to the old, Grimké’s words — and Reeve’s example — ring as true today as they did over a century ago. The friendship of good books, in right proportion and for the right ends, is a valuable support to the study of the Good Book, the Holy Scriptures. That is the Berean way.

What did a 19th century African-American think of Presbyterianism's relationship to African-Americans?

Matthew Anderson entered Princeton Theological Seminary in 1874, and was the first black student to reside in the main seminary building. He became the pastor of Berean Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, PA, and in 1897 he wrote Presbyterianism: Its Relation to the Negro. As the 21st century church seeks gospel peace and harmony among various ethnicities, this book would be an interesting and important source from which to learn how our heritage has thought through these issues in years gone by.

In the preface to his work, Anderson remarks, "We have always thought, and we believe rightly, that the Presbyterian Church has an important mission to perform among the colored people of the United States. The doctrines held by the church are the best calculated to correct the peculiar faults of the Negro, his legacy from slavery, and thus give him that independence and decision of character necessary to enable him to act nobly and well his part as a man and a citizen of our great republic" (7-8). In spite of what from our vantage point could be viewed as a paternalistic tone from Anderson toward his own people, yet his conviction is sound: the Presbyterian Church does indeed have a great and important mission to perform among - and the doctrines of our church are best calculated to correct the faults of - white, black, brown and every other color of skin under the sun. 

Ed. note: This post was originally published on July 8, 2017, and has been only slightly edited.

What Did a 19th Century African-American Think of Presbyterianism's Relationship to African-Americans?

Matthew Anderson entered Princeton Theological Seminary in 1874, and was the first black student to reside in the main seminary building. He became the pastor of Berean Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, PA, and in 1897 he wrote Presbyterianism: Its Relation to the Negro. As the 21st century church seeks gospel peace and harmony among various ethnicities, this book would be an interesting and important source from which to learn how our heritage has thought through these issues in years gone by.

In the preface to his work, Anderson remarks, "We have always thought, and we believe rightly, that the Presbyterian Church has an important mission to perform among the colored people of the United States. The doctrines held by the church are the best calculated to correct the peculiar faults of the Negro, his legacy from slavery, and thus give him that independence and decision of character necessary to enable him to act nobly and well his part as a man and a citizen of our great republic" (7-8). In spite of what from our vantage point could be viewed as a paternalistic tone from Anderson toward his own people, yet his conviction is sound: the Presbyterian Church does indeed have a great and important mission to perform among - and the doctrines of our church are best calculated to correct the faults of - white, black, brown and every other color of skin under the sun.