DR. THOMAS E. THOMAS
"For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep;” (Acts 13:26.)
I cannot have been more than fourteen years old when I last heard Dr. Thomas preach. Of course everything about which he preached has gone quite out of my mind. At fourteen one does not listen with avidity to sermons, nor follow a connected chain of reasoning. Nevertheless, one thing remains with me most clearly, what Carlyle calls "the man speaking." Whatever Dr. Thomas' theology, in whatever language clothed, was nothing to my immaturity; I could neither comprehend nor hold it. But what held me, in spite of myself, was his marvelous facility of language, the sweep of his sentences, his oratorical vigor and passionate conviction. If I had been old enough to appreciate it I should have known Dr. Thomas' preaching to be a product of three things: first, his invincible faith; second, his great Biblical knowledge; and third, his indomitable will. He had the most scholarly mind of any man who has occupied a Dayton pulpit. Add to this a fund of pathos, of irony, of invective; a delivery untrammeled by manuscript or notes; fearlessness in assailing wrong wherever he met it; a graphic vividness in delineation, and you have some of the reasons why Dr. Thomas made the profound impression that he did, an impression that endures still, more than thirty years after his death.
To appreciate this fact one must be frank on the subject of Doctor Thomas' physical limitations. He had not as I remember, a good voice although it was easily heard throughout a large church. Its tone quality was annoying for perhaps the first five minutes of the fifty that he preached. After that it was forgotten. You were swept off your feet, as it were. It was impossible to continue to be annoyed while his message, glowing, persuasive, was coming into your ears. He had not large eyes, nor a tall stature, but the very impact of his address was a proof of how little true oratory is a matter of voice culture, or pleasing personal attributes. When I hear the testimony of people who listened to him thirty years ago; when I remember the impression made upon me as a child, I do not winder that men compared his faith to that of Gideon and Barak, and his proclamation of that faith to the best of modern orators.
Dr. Thomas belonged to a type of theologian that is passing away, in his own denomination and in others. He was a Calvinist of Calvinists; a Puritan by birth, and training. To understand this we must recognize him as the perfect product of family inheritance, and of the training of circumstances. Given a father, (another Thomas Thomas,) too "Independent" in thought as in title to unite himself with any sect; to whom a street corner served as well as a pulpit, and better, since it owed no ecclesiastical allegance; given a mother whose Sabbath lasted from Saturday noon until Monday noon, and who never, even when she was eighty, took a nap in the day-time; given the Welsh-English blood of both parents, blood belonging to the radical type politically, the non-conformist type ecclesiastically, and the crucify-the-flesh type religiously, and you have his inheritance. Given the first sight that met Thomas E. Thomas’ eyes, when a boy of six, he landed from the ship in Baltimore,--the public whipping of a slave; given his life of privation in his youth, and the political ferment of the nation through which his active life was passed, and you have the training of circumstances.
Think of the United States history through which he lived! The great slavery contest, with debates by Calhoun, Clay, Adams, and Webster; the times of riot and mob, of bitter dissension among families, of slavery extension, the insubordination of state authority, of fugitive slaves in one's cellar, and in Ohio prisons, of civil and political ostracism reflected in the church and the home. He saw his own church split in two; he heard the war call, and saw all of loss that followed.
These strident forces made young men old in judgment. The pressure of the contest of great ideals gave out the wine of high idealism.
There were seven children in the Thomas family, all needing food and clothes, but more than food and clothes to a Thomas--education. The boy's education began in his father's school, partly under instruction from his mother. This was really his college preparatory. Both parents were born teachers, a quality still inherent in their descendants.
The difficulty of gaining a college education in those days can be understood best by those familiar with pioneer history. The poverty of everybody was an accepted fact. Any advantage was bought at the expense of bone and sinew, as well as of brain-work and eye-strain. Muddy roads, few books, dim candle-light, insufficiently heated houses, were some of the drawbacks that made education a difficulty. At his father's death, Thomas E. Thomas was a sophomore in Miami University, where, in spite of such unacademic duties I as splitting his own wood and cooking his own meals, he had already established a reputation in debate and a proficiency in scholarship.
He was also experiencing a religious awakening, which is described by one of his early friends:
“Suffering," he says, "from deep spiritual distress, Thomas became the subject of prayer on the part of fellow-students. He saw the truth of God's justice, and the criminality of sin, but he could not see the infinite mercy of Christ as applied to his own soul."
During these self-questionings, the young student walked day and night in the grove about the college, wrestling like Jacob at Peniel, and praying for the light of God's countenance. At last it came, and with it the exultant Christian faith, that endured all his life.
In 1833 the cholera swept over the Western States, and the story of its havoc is a dreadful one. It was a time of indescribable panic. Old letters and documents of that time are full of it; a trial by fire, as it were, of people's courage. It developed unexpected heroes and unexpected cowards. T. E. Thomas was one of the former. The majority of the students voted to abandon the university and their duty; he stayed, worked, and supported the faculty. Doctor Robert Bishop was at that time President of Miami, and his affection and kindness had much to do in shaping his pupil's character.
After his graduation, which was accomplished in a suit of blue jeans, Dr. Thomas taught school at Rising Sun, Indiana, then at Franklin, Ohio; meanwhile having studied for the ministry, was ordained, and began preaching in the Harrison Presbyterian Church. In 1840 he became pastor of the First Presbyterian Church at Hamilton, where he remained ten years, and in 1849, was offered the Presidency of Hanover College, near Madison, Indiana.
A. A. Thomas writes of this period of his father's life:
"My father told his wife he was tired 'of crossing the street to avoid passing persons whom he owed and could not pay.’ He accepted, and there removed his family in 1849. Here his surroundings were different, but his studies and efforts were not. In this sphere his success was never questioned. I think he always enjoyed teaching more than preaching. He built a new and commodious college building on a magnificent site, on a bluff of the Ohio River. My earliest recollection is of Hanover. I would often accompany my father on long rides, sitting bare-back behind the saddle, and trying with my little arms to hold on to his broad back. Riding thus, he would often point out to me, on the bluffs along the river, an eagle soaring overhead, in great circles, which from distance appeared to grow smaller and smaller, until he disappeared, a dark speck in the blue zenith above."
In 1854 Dr. Thomas accepted the chair of Biblical Literature and Exegesis in the New Albany Theological Seminary. If the united opinion of the pupils and colleagues is of value, Dr. Thomas stood second to none as a teacher in the Presbyterian Church. It was said of him:
"The rich furniture of his mind, the sharpness of his intuition, his power of induction and deduction, his logical precision and comprehensive grasp his exhaustive treatment and ability to impart instruction to others, ranked him as an educator of the first degree. ---
"As president, he commanded respect and obedience; as Professor, an attachment that was simply romantic." * (* Doctor Nathaniel West)
Dr. Stevenson, of New York, his classmate and colleague wrote :
"His skill in imparting his wealth of knowledge was equaled only by his ability to set his students upon independent lines of study for themselves."
One of the students in Lane Seminary wrote:
"There is not a young man in the seminary who would not prefer losing his dinner rather than miss one of Dr. Thomas' lectures."
We must now turn from personal to national history. All students know the seething conditions in the United States in the twenty years preceding the Civil War. Just this time was a crisis in both state and church. The National Fugitive Slave Law had been passed, and the struggle of the South for domination in the church was as intense and violent as the battle for control in the Government. Both Congress and Legislature boiled with debates. The Presbyterian Church split in two; the Bible proving either side right, according as arguments were taken from the Old and the New Testament. It is astonishing at this day to read how far north southern sentiment prevailed, and how7 bitter the opinion against the abolition movement. When the Seminary was moved to Chicago Dr. Thomas lost his professorship at New Albany on account of his anti-slavery opinions; opinions which he never was at a loss to formulate, or diffident in expressing. It has been stated, though it cannot now be verified, that the first Abolitionist Society, west of the Alleghenies, was organized in his mother's kitchen in the parsonage at Hamilton. At any rate, from the year 1834, Dr. Thomas was an active Abolitionist. Dr. West said of him:
"Careless of what men objected if only God approved, and willing to face the intrenched carnal expediency of the hour, the ideals he placed before him to inspire his purpose were: Socrates before the Judges, John the Baptist before Herod, Stephen before the Sanhedrin, Paul before Felix, Luther before the Pope, and the Master before Pilate."
Rev. Dr. Stevenson wrote:
"Dr. Thomas was almost the first in time and ability in our church in the West who thoroughly studied and manfully defended the right of the slave of freedom."
A. A. Thomas writes:
"This course surrounded him with enemies, and closed or obstructed the avenues of promotion to him for twenty-five years. At this time, but one pulpit in Cincinnati was open to him, and we have his letter written to Dr. Jewett, of Dayton, asking his help to get permission to preach for some service at the First Presbyterian Church here; and authorizing him 'to promise the trustees that he would say nothing not proper to be said in a place of worship.' There was much proper to be said, or said anyhow, on this topic of slavery, in my father's own pulpit in Hamilton. There he preached two sermons against the Mexican War, which were printed and widely read. They were not properly sermons, but political discourses, able and learned investigations of the history and growth of the system of 'African Slavery in America.'"
The longest and ablest of Dr. Thomas' publications in the anti-slavery cause was a "Review," following a heated controversy in the Presbyterian Synod with Rev. Dr. George Junkin, who maintained that the Bible sanctioned slavery. Dr. Thomas slayed his adversary with quotations from the New Testament, and from Patrick Henry, coupled with his own inimitable rhetoric. The address was printed, and gave him a standing reputation in the church and in the West, and was the motive for the offer of the Hanover presidency.
A. A. Thomas writes:
"In all his public controversies, the custom of T. E. Thomas was to begin with a throwing of his that up and in the ring. This habit did not fail to be complained of by his opponents; but he came of a sect and of a race who, their historian has said, 'were accustomed to rejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy.’"
In April, 1858,. Dr. Thomas accepted the call to be pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, and moved to Dayton with his family. If the twenty years antecedent to the rebellion had been years of accelerating agitation, the three immediately preceding it were more so. Dayton, almost on the border between North and South, felt it acutely. War talk was in every mouth. As a matter of course, it also was a pulpit question. There was no longer the fear that things "not proper to be said in a place of worship" would be uttered in the First Presbyterian Church. By this time the condemnation of slavery elicited neither stones, nor verbal condemnation. Some people said Dr. Thomas should keep away from politics, and preach only the gospel. When he preached against slavery, Doctor Thomas thought he was preaching the gospel. It would be interesting to know how much of the change of opinion in Dayton and thereabouts on the slavery question was due to a fearless man, with granite convictions, who preached them in and out of season to willing and unwilling ears.
At this day, slavery a dead issue, and the devil massing his forces in other fields, we can imagine Dr. Thomas, if living, to the front as was his custom; facing the "intrenched carnal expediency of the times," and sounding his slogan in the very camp of the enemy; careless of whether he made foes out of his best friends or earned the grudging assent of a half convinced world. He always took sides. He was not the judge, but the advocate. If he sometimes, as it is conceded, made up his mind wrong and held to it with inflexibility, why,-- so did Cromwell. Of Dr. Thomas' ascendancy in affairs, the Dayton Journal said:
"During his residence in Dayton, Dr. Thomas' influence on all great public occasions was invoked, and he always gave to any cause with which he cooperated great strength; that which he opposed was apt to break down under his frown."
When in 1861 the war broke out and threatened to be at our very door, the following call to arms was written by Dr. Thomas. It was when a southern guerilla force of some thousands lay camped upon the hills opposite Cincinnati, ready for invasion.
THE ENEMY AT OUR DOOR.
"Men of Montgomery County:
"An audacious and desperate Rebel army is rapidly concentrating on the southern border of Ohio, which threatens even our immediate neighborhood. It comes not to attack a hostile army, for none such has existed here; but to rob and murder, to ravage and burn, to spread havoc, desolation, and death over our homes and firesides. ---
"Will the hundreds of thousands of men, who fill the rich Miami Valleys, suffer a few thousand marauding rebels and traitors to carry fire and sword amongst them? --- Every moment is precious. ---
"Let every man who loves his country, his family, or even his property, and who is capable of any military service, secure such weapon as may be available, and hold himself in readiness for marching orders. Assemble with the rifle, or without it, in each school district; form yourselves into companies. Elect your officers, and report instantly your numbers and equipments to the Military Committee, at Dayton. Prepare ammunition.' Lose not an hour!
Thomas E. Thomas, John G. Lowe, Rufus King, Theodore Barlow, Daniel A. Haynes
"Committee appointed by citizens of Dayton.”
The response was instantaneous and universal. Nearly every man in Ohio armed himself, and the State was saved.
During the years following the outbreak of the war, Dr. Thomas continued to be a force in Dayton Members of his church will recall, some one sermon, some another, in which the sins of society were pilloried with a combination of oratorical invective and of that pointed common sense which he knew so well how to use. Among his memorable addresses, was a Thanksgiving sermon in 1863, when he preached from Esther, describing the Feast of Purim, and his thrilling half-hour address, uttered on the steps of the Court House, on the day of the assassination of President Lincoln, a speech which has been characterized as "an involuntary burst of eloquence never exceeded by any orator."
In a sermon preached to the people of his church, in 1868, Dr. Thomas attacks the immorality of the time. As a Christian minister, the sins of society made his blood boil. Intemperance, licentiousness, gambling, extravagance, self-indulgence were a part of his theme; but incorporated with these were other sins which he considered equally venial; they were: "the theater and the circus, the ball-room and the masquerade, the negro minstrel show, the Sunday concert, card parties, and dancing clubs. All these amusements, he held, "corrupt the body and soul." This sermon reveals a natural attribute of Dr. Thomas religion. He had the strength of Puritanism, and he had also its weakness; both its bravery and its intolerance. It is true, as stated, that wealth should be held as a stewardship from God; true also that self-indulgence is the ruin of vast numbers, and yet no one would now go as far as he did in denouncing some of the amusements of good society. Puritanism lacked the appreciation of the function of beauty and pleasure as a rational element in a life. It was the Puritan conception that pleasant things are wrong, not so much because they are wrong as because they are pleasant. And, if wealth be no longer held as a stewardship from God, is it not, in part, a reaction from that virulent morality of the last century which held enjoyment and true piety impossible of association?
Dr. Thomas was unassailably right in his insistence upon the moral law, upon the worship of God, upon the study of the Bible; right when he maintained the prerogative of the pulpit to speak out on public questions; right when he demanded uniformity in public and private righteousness; but wrong, according to more liberal standards, when he placed innocent social amusements in juxtaposition with bacchanalianism or classed religious doubt with the breaking of the decalogue.
In this connection it is interesting to remember a controversy which was a matter of absorbing concern at the time, not only to the First Presbyterian Church people, but to the public in general. It was in 1866, at the time that Turner's Opera House was built and opened, that Dr. Thomas preached a sermon against the theater which attracted wide attention. Among other things, he said:
"The theater, then, has been tested by time. Its matured fruits are familiar to the world. It has been tried by the impartial judgment of the wise; and good for many ages. The judgment which they have pronounced against it will constitute my argument against theatrical amusements, which may be stated thus: The wisest and best of men of every age--heathen and Christian legislators, philosophers, divines, the Christian church, ancient and modern, have with one voice, from the very birth of the drama condemned, opposed, and denounced theatrical exhibitions as essentially corrupt and demoralizing both to individuals and to society."
Mr. John A. McMahon replied to it in a published pamphlet, entitled "A Lay Sermon in Favor of the Drama." Doctor Thomas followed, in the daily papers, attacking Mr. McMahon's reasoning; there were arguments and counter arguments. The whole, when published in book form by the people of the church, made a very readable volume upon the theater; for the opponents were exquisitely matched in intellectual strength, in controversial skill, and in historical knowledge. Those who believed the theater to be a wicked institution thought Dr. Thomas gained the victory; those who enjoyed going to the theater pointed out with pride that the lawyer had won his case.
Mr. A. A. Thomas wrote:
"The proposition of Dr. Thomas was too broad. McMahon showed it to be so. All good and wise men have not condemned the theater. Washington and Walter Scott and Lincoln were great and wise and good men, who approved and did not condemn the theater. It is astonishing, however, how nearly the proposition was made good; and in the exposure of the worthless character of most of the witnesses cited by McMahon to testify on a moral question, his antagonist displayed a learning and skill seldom excelled in a public controversy. One thing is certain--no friend of the theater, to prove its history and tendency for purity, ever circulated that discussion."
Mention has been made of Dr. Thomas' love of study. This study included, in addition to theology, history, biography, poetry, botany, geology, and chemistry. He was said to have been "a library in himself." "Shelves were in his capacious memory, laden with volumes of solid learning." * (*Dr. West.) Most ardent was he in the study of the classical languages. He believed, as Luther did, that it is a part of religion to learn and to teach Hebrew and Greek. The Reformation, he said, rested on that fact. "The Magna Charta of Christianity and the church is in them." Dr. Thomas thought the dead languages not only greatly superior to modern languages, but the basis of the best culture; better than the discipline of all the natural sciences together. Latin he could speak, and Greek and Hebrew he could write with ease. He made modern languages of them. This love, this possession, was not mere literary pursuit; it was, in his own words, "to be able to reach with certainty the heart of divine truth." A copy of the Psalms in the original Hebrew, his working copy, was found marked from the beginning to end, margin, fly-leaves, covers, with his own annotations--not so much theological and didactic, as affectionate and human.
Two things are to be noted regarding Doctor Thomas' religious temperament; one was that he disclaimed speculative theology. Once he was asked, "Doctor Thomas, where did you get your theology?"
"I found it in the Bible,” was his reply.
"I meant who was your theological teacher."
"My chief theological preceptor," said he, "was Professor Paul, who was brought up at the feet of Professor Gamaliel, and was a better teacher than his Master."
"Ah, yes, but I was inquiring, in what seminary you were trained."
"I never saw a theological seminary," answered Doctor Thomas, "until after I was ordained."
This was the truth. It was not that he undervalued seminary training, only he had been forced to do without it. He did so by making himself master of the original Bible text, and then making it his sole and supreme authority in faith and practice.
The second point in Dr. Thomas' temperament was an astonishing aversion to sectarianism. I say astonishing, but it must be remembered that two generations ago there flourished a hostility between the churches such as we can but dimly imagine. In 1840 it was with the greatest difficulty that a liberal Presbyterian could be brought to admit that a Methodist had as good a chance toward heaven as himself. When the Puritans, of Massachusetts whipped Baptists at a cart's tail, through the street, it it not surprising that it took more than one generation to persuade Baptists that Presbyterians were governed by the same spirit of brotherly love as themselves. It was the reactive wave of the Reformation that scattered forth sect after sect on any slight variation of doctrine, splitting the family of the faithful into little jealous cliques, as it were, the absurdity of which is just beginning to be seen plainly as each church seeks to extend its influence in the field of foreign missions. Dr. Thomas always hated denominational lines. At a meeting of the Evangelical Association, in Cincinnati, where the subject was Christian Union, he said that the first fact to be considered was, "the utterly abnormal condition of the church of Christ in the world." Reviewing the different branches of the church, he continued :
"This, then, is the situation in the church to-day; as an army, it was as if every regiment had its flag and its separate organization, every regiment fighting against every other. Is this the condition in which Christ would have His church body?"
The anomalous thing is, that whereas Doctor Thomas in his youth braved, nay invited obloquy, because of his radicalism upon public questions, in his later years he underwent criticism because he was held not to be advanced enough for modern methods. He disapproved utterly of the "Crusaders," those bands of women who went about, praying in saloons and pouring out whiskey into the gutters. Revivalism, as an engine of evangelization, he repudiated. Masonry he objected to, and was know to wax sarcastic when one of his parishioners appeared in cap and uniform. Sunday papers excited his ire. He was not friendly to the Young Men's Christian Association, upon its, inception in 1870, and preached a sermon against it, which was regarded by his own people as a somewhat regrettable blunder; a lapse of judgment in a man usually wise. However, Doctor Thomas' position was not unreasonable. The Y. M. C. A. did not, at its beginning, stand for the things it does now. Primarily it was not an educative, but an evangelizing movement, confining its activities to meetings of a missionary character, held in factories, and conducted by laymen. Presbyterians were proud of the fact that theirs was the first church in the new West that had an educated ministry. Dr. Thomas felt it a wiser course to keep preaching and teaching in the church, rather than let it drift into the hands of those who were irresponsible theologically. It cannot be thought that Dr. Thomas would ever have opposed the magnificent work of the Association as it now stands.
In touching upon Doctor Thomas as a pastor, the outsider feels like pausing. That most strong and touching of human relationships, the pastor and his people should be dealt with only by a familiar and a permitted pen. I am grateful that some glimpses have been given me which afford, as no account of his official life can do, a better understanding of this side of Dr. Thomas' character. One of these presents him in a dressing gown and slippers, walking the floor at night with a next-door neighbor's fretful baby. He had a soothing way with children, and a rhythmical walk which, when accompanied by a hymn tune, and punctuated with little jars of foot-fall, proved most efficacious. This walk and this crooning to tired little bodies has come down in the family, together with his genius for teaching, his love of poetry, and his sense of humor. To illustrate the latter, (a most characteristic trait of his,) it is told that at an evening prayer-meeting at the home of one of his parishioners, the coal-oil lamp upon the table suddenly flared up and startled everybody. Dr. Thomas was standing, hymn-book in hand, ready to begin. When the lamp had been admonished and quiet restored, Doctor Thomas said, "Let us sing, 'Sometimes a light surpriseth the Christian while he sings!' " A quaint philosophy once led him to observe that it was "hard sometimes to distinguish between a call of Providence and a temptation of Satan."
A bride of the "Sixties" remembers that he was said always to tell a "bear story" to the young couples he married. At her own wedding they were called aside, immediately after the ceremony, by Dr. Thomas, who said, "My dear friends, remember in the new life that you are now beginning that there should be always two bears--bear and forbear."
Another tells me of one of the first funerals of the war-time, a funeral that brought anguish to many hearts outside the immediate family. Sundown at Woodland Cemetery, the dead march, the flag, the tender impassioned words of the preacher, lifting the hearers into tumultuous planes of faith and solace. They tell me of his love of music, his vein of poetic composition, his stories to children, the twinkling of his eyes over a good joke. All these I must give second- hand, because I was born too late, and in the wrong place.
Of Dr. Thomas as a letter-writer, his son says:
"The letters of my father were always a delight to his children and a large circle of his friends. He wrote frequently and with ease, in a style of terse vigor, and in a chirography which was odd yet uniform, condensed, and clear and legible as print. I suppose a collection of his letters would now convey the best impress of his mind. I cannot bear to re-read those written to me at college, so full are they, incidentally, at times, of the denial and economy at home to pay my way, and always of his loving kindness and watchful care."
There can be no fitter end to this imperfect sketch than an extract from one of his last sermons, preached at the First Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati. His text was 1 Corinthians 15:24.
"This is a spiritual body."
"When the idea of a new world beyond the western waters had once dawned on the mind of Columbus, how completely it took possession of his soul! Doubtless it haunted his waking and his sleeping hours, and henceforth it was the business of his life to realize this glorious vision. But yet how little he knew--how imperfectly and erroneously he must have conceived that undiscovered land! What islands and continents lay beyond the wide ocean! What mountains and what inland seas, what mighty rivers, what vast and varied vegetable productions; what forms of hidden and inexhaustible wealth; what new and strange forms of animal and human life; above all, what a priceless boon to mankind lay concealed in the future of that unrevealed world in the West, none could tell him, and even he could not conceive. No traveler had reached its shores to return with tidings; no messenger and no rumor had crossed the trackless ocean. Did this utter darkness confound our adventurer? Did he abandon the seemingly hopeless task of penetrating so profound a secret? Not at all. Urged by sacred enthusiasm, he collected in long years of patient toil every stray fact--every fragment and atom of truth which might assist in reaching the grand conclusion, the goal of his earthly hope. Every strange bird wafted by the western breezes; every broken trunk or branch, or splinter of a tree washed upon the western shores of Europe was treasured up into a disjoined mass of facts, out of which he might construct a chain of reasoning that should one day secure the cooperation needful for the discovery. ---
"Not far from us, there lies a bright and blessed land, better country--even heaven. A solitary messenger--but He how trustworthy! The loved Son of God has brought tidings of its glory and its bliss. These tidings do not wholly dispel our ignorance. Enough remains to arouse a holy curiosity; for the things of that world are unspeakable; but if we will collect the sum of his message, and put together the facts that are disclosed, enough has been told us to satisfy the wants of faith, and to fill us with longings for heaven."
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