John Chambers

ademy of Baltimore began to bend away from certain statements and formul? in the Westminster symbols, as then interpreted to him, which gave the afterwards robust and

tipathy to the idea that the fullness of the Christian life and the message of Jesus could be compre

d call handsome. Indeed, it seemed as though every wrinkle was smoothed out, as a prairie-like smile suffused its whole area. Then, laughing heartily, he said, "Well, I can remember when he had orthodoxy taught him with the sole of a slipper." Evidently then, according to the accepted and supposedly wholesome custom of the times, the future preacher received at intervals[43] what was expected to be a physical ai

is the largest factor of the Divine life toward wrong-doing man. In this the time of his youth, as well as all through his life, he felt deeply rather than thought coolly. Whether we must ascribe most or all of the results to the towering personality of his teacher, John Mason Duncan, and of his long continued training at a most susceptible age under so forceful a master, certainly, whatever our philosophy of the known facts m

them and greeted them from afar". The change of theological climate, the revision of the Westminster symbols and the simplification of theology into which we, in this twentieth century have come, even the work of the General Assembly, that

crossed his path, and who was to be to him his beloved wife, Miss Helen McHenry. She was the first of three noble specimens of womanhood who were to light his household fire, irradiate his home, double and share his joys and sorrows. How often and how tenderly did "our pastor" refer to "the partner of his life", the beloved "companion of his bosom!" What a refining

dy of the Biblical Drama entitle

urch came from Ireland to America and was associated with Gilbert Tennant in the Deep Run, or Neshaminy, churches in Bucks Count

had the lover's "three T's" or elements of success-propinquity, opportunity, and importunity. Those who knew John Chambers in later life will not marvel why he won her, rather might they wonder how any mai

first stadium in his successful career and was an ordained mini

ion, and of her whole-hearted sympathy with her husband's work, but her life was destined to be brief. The first child born of the union was John Mason Duncan Chambers, whom the happy father joyfully named after h

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October, 1851. He died November, 1857, leaving three children, of whom Helen McHenry is the only sur

ett, of Baltimore. Their one surviving child, Helen McHenry Hackett, married George F. Mi

of people living on Thirteenth, or streets parallel and crossing it, were attracted to become worshippers with him as their pastor. As one lady, still lovely in her eighty years of life, tells the story from girlhood's memories, the

r lack of accommodation in the church edifice, the Sunday School was established. On Sabbath aft

, but the utterer of truth. The little ecclesiastical infant, rather foundling, needed much warmth of prayer and devotion, certainly during its first decade. With shakings of the head and emphatic use of the hands in dreadful warning of calamity, the Philadelphia variety of soothsayers declared that in two or three years, the First Independent Church would go to pieces. Both laymen and ministers were loud in declaring that such a church, without a "creed," (though the Bible is a very library

tination" or "election" to eternal life, unless that same man showed the fruits of faith in holy living, he was anything but liberal in his ideas of morals, or

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wo-score years of his ministry no word of disagreement, or of an unpleasant character with his fellow-presbyters, had ever been spoken, wi

the original elders was in the habit of attending theatrical amusements and of taking

a proper one-whether it was the love of Christ which induced him to frequent such places, and if in so doing he was bringing up his children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord by making them his companions on such occasions, I found that he was obstinate in his determination to adhere to his own course of action. I referred him to Second Corinthians, sixth chapter, fourteenth to e

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of the congregation, knowing only too well that their standard of piety was a high one, and that his conduct would meet with their severe displeasure. Consequently he resigned his office of elder i

CHA

ut

inthians which had been quoted, "Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate", was one on which the pastor preached many times in the course of his ministry. His insistence w

o a more spiritual life than was then common. A realistic description of the vice, that openly flaunted itself on Philadelphia's gayest street, would not here be in good taste, or be relished if given; but it was something horrible.[52] Whether the world, on the whole, is getting better or worse, it is quite certain that the houses of ill-fame, the midnight street-walkers and the pictures once visible in public places and in the saloons, inexpre

m about the time of "the war" and until his death, he dwelt at the corner of 12th and Girard street north of Chestnut. Thus his whole pastoral life was s