I have two reasons why I chose the
subject of Robert Louis Dabney for this morning's
session.
The first is that his life gives us
the most impressive example that I know of
courage and heroism in the Christian ministry.
I mean, of course, outside the pages of
scripture, but outside the pages of scripture, I
do not know a life which is more
moving in terms of the quality of courage
and endurance than the life of Robert Dabney.
And it has been my experience over the
last year or so, as we look upon
the situation in which we are found today,
that these qualities of courage and true Christian
heroism are very greatly needed.
And, therefore, I was led to this subject
with that in view.
Dabney was truly a Caleb.
He wholly followed the Lord.
Or, in the language of the New Testament,
he was a man who endured hardships as
a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
His biographer said he was at war with
much in his age.
When he was 72 years of age, his
friend C.R. Vaughan wrote to him a
beautiful letter, but he, at the close of
the letter, said, pray on, dear old soldier.
This is how his friends thought of him,
and this is what he was.
The second reason, then, is that I wanted
to say something which perhaps would encourage more
reading of Dabney's theological writings.
And, to that end, we've brought with us
from London quite a number of Dabney's discussions,
but they are already sold.
So, if you have not already bought them,
you won't be able to do so, I'm
afraid, after this morning's session.
But, we've been selling them at a somewhat
reduced price, and if you'd like to have
a set of Dabney's discussions, and give us
your name, we'll see that they're sent to
you at the same turn.
Now, when one first comes to Dabney, and
let me remind you at once that his
dates 1820 to 1898, 1820 to 1898, when
one first becomes acquainted with him, one is
struck by two facts, and these facts are
in contrast to one another.
The first fact is the evidence which exists
of the remarkable gifts which he had as
a Christian leader.
It was the opinion of Archibald Alexander of
Princeton, which he often made known that Dr.
Dabney is the best teacher of theology in
the United States, if not in the world.
In 1860, when Joseph Addison Alexander of Princeton
died, reputedly the most learned man on the
American continent, when Alexander died in 1860, Charles
Hodge wrote to Dabney and literally begged him
and prayed him to accept the professorship of
church history at Princeton.
Dabney did not accept, as perhaps we'll mention
a little later, but this was Hodge's view
of the man's value.
And he was not only a theologian and
a teacher of theology, he was a great
preacher.
In fact, it was said that next to
J.
H.
Thornwell, who died in 1861, next to Thornwell,
or rather after Thornwell, Dabney was the most
powerful preacher to ministers in the United States.
Let me just give you at the outset
one illustration of his preaching when he was
an old man.
When he was in his late 60s, he
was preaching in Baltimore, and the church in
which he was preaching, a man had come
as a visitor expecting to hear the local
minister, and found Dabney in the pulpit.
Well, he did not know Dabney, that is
to say he'd never seen him, although of
course he knew his name, and of course
he was unaware of who the preacher was.
And this is what this visitor wrote.
He says the stranger in the pulpit read
the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, and his subject
was vicarious atonement.
The method was to state and refute the
false or incomplete theories of the atonement, and
then to establish the truth.
The discourse lasted an hour or more.
I was soon listening with profound interest.
I abandoned my previous conjecture concerning the identity
of the speaker.
He thought he was some local man who
had just been called in to supply.
I abandoned, he said, that conjecture.
When he had been speaking perhaps half an
hour, stating with the clearness of light false
theories and crushing them to powder under logic,
I came to the conclusion that he must
be Dr. Dabney.
I had never seen him or his picture,
but had heard his students talk of his
teaching, and was familiar with his writing.
And I saw in the giant reasoner a
flame with scorn of error and of subterfuge,
yet bowing with meekness of the cross, one
so like our great Dabney that Dabney it
must be.
And so it turned out to be.
Since that day I have understood his great
influence upon his pupils.
Such a teacher is a rare gift to
any church.
Well, that is simply one of many testimonies
that could be taken, and his biographer, speaking
of Dabney as a spiritual Christian, comes to
this conclusion.
As a holy man he deserves to be
ranked with Augustine and Calvin, Owens and Baxter
and Edwards.
Dr. Dabney was a great man.
We cannot tell just how great yet.
One cannot see how great Mount Blanc is
by standing at its foot.
One hundred years from now men will be
able to see him better.
Well, this then is the first fact that
strikes one when one turns to Dabney.
The amount of evidence that exists concerning his
power and his greatness as a Christian leader
and preacher.
The second fact, in contrast, is how comparatively
little Dabney was regarded, even in his own
day, and how speedily he was forgotten after
his death.
That is equally striking.
Take an illustration of that.
Dabney came over to Britain in 1880.
He was on a visit, really, for the
sake of his health.
He spent three weeks in London.
Friends who he hoped to visit were absent
from the city.
He worshipped at Spurgeon's Tabernacle.
He went to Westminster Cathedral.
He did not apparently meet one person who
knew him or who recognized him.
He says how he left London a lonely
man and determined that he would never again
tour as an individual.
And he was no better in Edinburgh.
He went to Edinburgh looking forward to the
Pre-Church General Assembly which was meeting.
It was in the month of May.
When he got to the door he found
that he was not able to be admitted
without a ticket.
Tickets were not to be had, and though
the name that he bore should have admitted
him to any church assembly in the world,
he was not able to enter the Pre
-Church General Assembly in Edinburgh.
These are little details, but they are indicative
of something larger.
Dabney's works have never been printed in this
country.
It's, I should think, practically impossible to buy
any Dabney books in our second-hand bookshop
for that reason.
So, you see, you have this extraordinary contrast
between the opinion of men like Archibald Alexander
and the fact that he was so little
known, and then, after his death, so soon
forgotten.
And what was the reason, then, why he
should not have been more widely known?
In a nutshell, I think the reason was
this.
He was found, as it were, on the
losing side.
I mentioned a little earlier how he declined
a call to Princeton.
He was conscious that if he went to
Princeton, which had then 179 students, that his
name would immediately come to the attention of
the whole Christian world.
But he didn't go to Princeton because, primarily,
he was a Virginian.
That was the country of his birth, and
it was in the South, and for the
needs of the South, that Dabney was pre
-eminently burdened.
He felt the North was comparatively well-supplied
with gospel ministry and with seminaries, but that
he as a Southerner had been called to
minister in the South, and especially in Virginia.
Well, it was only one year after he
had made that decision that the great Civil
War of 1861 broke out, and Dabney was
on the side of the South, and the
whole world, it's true to say, was on
the side of the North.
That was one losing cause with which Dabney
was bound up.
Secondly, and more important for our purposes, he
was on, humanly speaking, the losing side in
terms of his theology and his old orthodoxy.
I do not know of any American a
theologian of the latter half of the last
century, including any of the Princeton men, I
do not know of one who was more
discriminating and discerning with regard to the weakening
of American evangelicalism by the new measures, by
the influence of the Plymouth Brethren, by the
influence of the new evangelism which Moody and
with others were popularizing.
Dabney was the one, pre-eminently, who sounded
a warning, who believed that that type of
evangelism in the end would lead to desolation.
For doing so, he was highly unpopular, and
he lived, sadly, to see the ground being
taken away from them, even in the South.
That was another thing.
Then, or thirdly, in general, he was on
the losing side with regard to the whole
range of biblical principles which he upheld.
If you read Dabney, I do not think
you will find a single emphasis in him
which remained an emphasis in this century.
Every single belief which was supremely precious to
him was well nigh obliterated by the earlier
part of this century.
Indeed, at one time, Dabney said he felt
like a man who was working and walking
on the sand, and when the tide shortly
came in, there would be no marks left
in this world of the work he had
done.
As for eternity, he said he knew that
fruit had been born, but as for what
would come in this world, this was his
temptation to feel that it was all to
be blotted out.
So, you see from these few words that
he was a man in the eyes of
so many of his contemporaries behind the times,
and his name was associated with principles which
were fast fading from the consciousness even of
the Protestant churches.
That, I believe, is the greatest reason why
Dabney soon passed out of sight.
Now, I want to, in a formal way,
informal way, go through Dabney's life, just some
of its main salient features, and then perhaps
to draw a few conclusions.
He was born, as I said, in 1820,
March the 5th, in Louisa County in Virginia.
His father was a local magistrate, farmer, colonel
of the militia, a man who owned a
farm where there were sweets and corn and
tobacco, and in that environment, a country environment,
Dabney grew up.
It was, of course, a typical southern farm
with Negroes in the family, with the structure
of society that existed before the Civil War
still in force, and in that setting, as
I say, Dabney grew up.
He went to a log college school nearby,
and then, when he was 13, his father
died.
He was the eldest son, so he had
the primary responsibility for the family.
He was a great all-rounder.
He could use stones, he could build houses,
he learned architecture, and he was a man
of great ability.
Six foot in height, slender at first, and
then later on more heavily built.
A very strong man, and a man of
very great breadth of interest.
He went first to college at Hampden, Sydney,
at Prince Edward in Virginia.
He was there for two years.
He returned home to help his mother, who
had fallen into debt.
He helped her for a further two years,
and then, about 1840, he went to the
University of Virginia.
One of the remarkable things which happened while
he was studying there was that one of
the teachers, the professors in the university, was
actually murdered by one of the students, and
it seemed to be a portent of Dabney's
future career that he was the one appointed
to arrest the murderer.
Well, so he did, and that is characteristic
of the man.
I don't want to dwell on this side
of his life.
It's the earlier part, and it's the later
part that we want to move on to.
He was, while at college in Hampden, Sydney,
one who experienced, as he says, a powerful
and genuine awakening.
There was a revival of religion in the
college, and at that time he made first
procession of his faith in Christ.
In 1844, then, following that procession, indeed several
years later, he attended Union Theological Seminary, which
was also at Hampden, Sydney, in order to
prepare for the ministry of the Presbyterian Church.
He went there because Francis Sampson was the
Professor of Oriental Languages, and a saintly man
whose reputation as a preacher was so well
known in the South.
It is said that when Dabney preached his
first class sermon, that Sampson made this criticism
of it.
He said, it is true that we all
see that Mr Dabney is animated himself, but
he is unable to express that animation to
his audience.
He is animated himself, but he is unable
to express that animation to his audience.
And the whole emphasis in the school of
preaching to which Sampson belonged, and to which
Dabney came to belong, was this.
In Dabney's own words, he says, the business
of the preacher is simply to make the
people see and feel what is the word
of God.
In 1847, then, he went to his first
pastorate at a little place called Tinkling Spring,
in the valley of Virginia, the northern side
of Virginia.
His congregation was drawn over an area of
about 50 square miles, and they were made
up largely of Scotch Irish, and that didn't
altogether ease his problem sometimes.
Before he had been there two years, there
was a difference of opinion in the church
about the building of a new church, and
Dabney said, the Scotch Irish are the most
inflexible people in the world when they are
right, and the most vexatiously pig-headed and
muleish when wrong.
Well, he had only been there a year
when he married Lavinia Morrison, the daughter of
a minister who lived not far away.
He tells us how it was love at
first sight.
The very day that they met, they fell
in love with each other, and this was
a lifelong happiness to them.
She outlived him by a few years, and
one could speak at some length on the
beauty and the love of the home that
grew up.
In 1850, when he had been there just
three years, they were blessed with a true
spiritual awakening.
About 33 persons were added from these muleish
Scots and Irish.
There was a glorious work of the Spirit
of God.
Just a little before it happened, he had
a letter from his friend C.
R.
Vaughan about his preaching.
Dabney was concerned that his preaching was erring
on the harsh side, and he was asking
counsel from his friend about this, and he
spoke to Vaughan also of his burden for
revival in his church, and this is what
Vaughan wrote back.
He says, for months before there was an
expression of interest in my church, my own
heart was bursting with the burden of my
people's welfare, and to gain relief I was
obliged to pray, and the effect of that
told upon my preaching with wonderful effect.
And then speaking of his manner of preaching,
he says cultivate a single- earnestness, and
don't be concerned for anything else.
I assure you that the very best way
I have ever tried to break into the
conscience is to strike straight at it with
a deep consuming feeling that all is at
stake, and that there is no time to
stop to calculate the degree of offense that
may justly be taken as to mere manner.
It's a very fine letter, I mustn't read
more of it, but just a month or
two after that letter came, the awakening was
present in the church at Tinkling Spring.
Well, he stayed there for six and a
half years.
One summer's day he was working in the
fields as he liked to do, and his
wife called him from the house with the
news that a new professor had been appointed,
or rather called, to the theological seminary at
Hampden-Sydney.
He asked who it might be, and she
told him it was himself.
So, from 1853 Dabney began his very lifelong
work of theological training.
He remained at the seminary, Union Seminary, for
30 years from the age of 36.
Then to the age of 66 he gave
to that work the best years of his
life.
Now there's a great deal that could be
said about Dabney as a theological teacher, and
I'm not able to do that this morning,
but he was a man who believed that
students needed to be inspired to study.
He believed that the prerequisite for all theological
instructors was enthusiasm with regard to the subject,
and preaching and biblical studies formed the great
heart of the curriculum at Union Seminary.
He had a long letter on the course
of studies, and he gave this warning against
the over-placing of polemics and apologetics.
He says, when this is done, when there
is an over-emphasis given to that side
of training, it does not promote orthodoxy.
It produces a type of pastor dry, bitter,
and barren in spirit.
One of the most memorable experiences of his
early days at Hampden-Sydney was the death
of their two youngest sons, and there are
in his letters many reflections upon this, and
those who heard his teaching saw how it
influenced him.
There was a new tenderness and a new
softness about Dabney's preaching from the death, the
time of the death of his two children,
a little time after he lost a third
child, and I just read you one verse
that he wrote.
Dabney wrote quite a good deal of verse,
but I read you this.
Oh, that poor one, mine ear might hear,
that tiny voice, so high, so clear, singing
Emmanuel's name among those loudest strains, that mightier
throng.
He says, with regard to his son's death,
after one of them had died, he says,
at any rate, it is in Christ's heavenly
house, and under his guardian love, he says
it, he means his son.
Now I feel, as never before, the blessedness
of that redeeming grace and divine blood, which
have ransomed my poor babe from all the
sin and death which he inherited through me.
And one of the student's writing of this
period says, in a little while after this
affliction, for the good of us all, he
emerged from the gloom of this afflictive dispensation,
and resumed his duties with quickened zeal and
impressive unction.
In his prayers thereafter in the classroom and
chapel, his pupils felt and saw what is
to be but rarely seen, how one of
the most imperial of human wills may humbly
bow, pass under the rod, and caress with
filial affection the fatherly hand that chastises.
And he goes on to speak of Dabney's
classroom prayers following this period.
There is also in his biography a number
of letters which Dabney wrote at this period,
and they give you a tremendous impression of
the earnestness of the man.
He wrote to his brother, who had a
family and children, and in the most moving
terms exhorted him to make use of every
opportunity to teach his children, and to lead
them to Christ while they were still young.
Having, he says, having received such warnings of
sin and death, and being brought so near
to eternity, it is no time for me
to be remiss in duty, or self-indulgent
in the employment of my time.
So, his earnestness increased.
In 1856, he visited New York for the
first time, and then two years later, in
58, he was asked to go back to
preach the famous annual missionary sermon.
Dr. Broadus, one of the last century authorities
on preaching, who has that book on homiletics
that many of you will know, was present,
and spoke of it as one of the
most powerful sermons he ever heard.
It's printed in the volumes of Discussions.
The world, white for harvest, reap or it
perishes.
This was in 1858, and it made him
far more widely known in the North.
Then, as I mentioned, in 1860, he was
given the call to Princeton, which he declined.
The shadow of the Civil War was now
hanging across the whole land, and Dabney, in
these years prior to the war, with many
other ministers, worked as peacemakers, and this was
their burden, that they had a duty to
pacify the agitation which was growing in the
country.
You perhaps remember how, when the 13 American
colonies gained their independence in the 1780s, those
13 colonies were a separate entity.
Then, by the constitution of 1788, they formed
themselves into an association, a union, but there
existed, in the years that followed, considerable tension
between their loyalty to their own identity as
states, and their loyalty to the union, and
this tension was at the heart of the
troubles which led up to the Civil War
in 1861.
You, of course, do not expect me to
enlarge upon that, but that is the the
heart of the story.
There were those who believed that their first
loyalty was to their state.
There were others who believed that state loyalty
had been superseded by loyalty to the union.
The southerners adhered to the view that state
loyalty was the primary loyalty, and Dabney was
quick to point out that, by the constitution
of 1788, Virginia had maintained her right to
secede from a union, if she so willed.
However, this was at the center of things,
and then there were many other aggravating factors.
There was the growth of America westwards, the
new territories, and then supremely, I say supremely
as a cause of agitation, certainly the question
of slavery.
There was an abolition movement in the north
which increased in strength and power, and by
the 1850s the agitation in the north for
the total abolition of slavery in the south
was very strong.
You understand that slavery did not exist in
the north, that is to say in the
northern states, but in the southern states, in
the 11, I think it was, southern states,
slavery still existed.
Not the slave trade, mind you, but slavery
as an institution still existed in the south.
Well, Dabney's version was to seek to pacify,
and he wrote several moving pieces at this
time, one of them called Christians Pray for
Your Country.
He foresaw, as clearly as anyone did, the
horrors which a civil war would bring.
Let me just perhaps read you a word
or two on that.
He believed that there was a great deal
of misunderstanding between the north and the south.
He says this miserable game goes on until
at last blood breaks out, and the exhausted
combatants are taught in the end that they
are contending mainly for a misunderstanding of each
other.
There were at this time, according to Dabney's
reckoning, about 28 million people in America, and
of those, by his conservative estimate, there were
at least four million Christians, and he took
the view that if these four million in
the north and south could maintain their unity,
then the whole country could be preserved from
war.
But, as you know, that did not happen.
Then he speaks of what would come if
war broke out.
Is disunion, is civil war before us?
A civil war whose atrocities may appall the
world, the wiser tarts admit the fear.
Let each man then place himself now, before
it is too late, in the midst of
the possible horrors of that fratricidal war.
Let him bring before his mind a country
ravished, ravaged, its fields late, smiling with plenty,
stained by blood, and the carnage of fellow
citizens and brethren of a common Christianity, its
cities sacked or deserted, its peaceful homes desolated,
and its order displaced by fierce anarchy.
And let him ask himself whether, as he
stands amidst the ruins, he will be able
to take heaven to witness that none of
its guilt is in his skirt.
Let each man remember that he must answer
at the judgment seat of Christ for his
conduct as a citizen, and see to it
that when he meets there, the spirits of
all that shall be slain, of all the
wives that shall be widows, of the children
that shall be consigned to orphanage and destitution,
of all the hoary parents that shall be
bereaved of their sons in this quarrel, and
of all the ignorant damned through our neglect
while we were waging the work of mutual
destruction, he shall be able to appeal to
the searcher of hearts that none of it
was his doing.
Let us see, he says, that he must
answer that question when that day comes.
If brethren, we can do this, it will
be well with you, however ill it may
be with our miserable country, but if not,
who can estimate that guilt?
Well, the war at length came in the
spring of 1861, the great civil war, certainly
one of the most terrible wars that was
ever fought.
It continued through those long years until 1865.
It began, of course, partly through the possession
of South Carolina, who Dabney spoke of as
that little vixen, which is interesting because, you
see, the South was not united originally.
South Carolina was, as he believed, precipitate in
their action, and they did not get the
support of Virginia, but then it became apparent
that the Northern states intended to coerce the
South, and at length the war broke out.
The South opened fire on Fort Sumter in
South Carolina, the armies of the North began
to march, and of course the South was
thrown at once on the defensive, and the
most bitter battles of the war were fought
in Northern Virginia.
I don't know that you recall, but Virginia
is divided in the North from Washington and
Maryland by the Potomac, and it's quite a
narrow strip of land.
The distance between Richmond, the capital of Virginia,
and Washington is a very short distance, and
in that comparatively small area of land, thousands
upon thousands were slain in the great battles
which would have followed.
Well, in the summer of 1861, Dabney acted
as a chaplain to the Virginian army, and
there are sermons that you will read in
his discussions that he preached in the open
air to the army at that time.
One of them is the Believers Born of
Almighty Grace.
Another one is Our Comfort in Dying.
Then, in the autumn, he went back to
Hampton-Sydney, and his opening lecture to his
students was on the necessity of deep personal
piety in the work of the ministry, and
you see it anyway in Dabney's mind.
There was no conflict of loyalty between defending
their country and the piety which they believed
was so essential for the church.
That was his judgment of the situation.
In 1862, Dabney went back to the army,
and he went back on the special plea
of Thomas Jonathan Jackson, famous Stonewall Jackson.
Jackson was the commander of what became known
as the Stonewall Brigade, the army of northern
Virginia, probably the greatest general that the southern
army had, and certainly one of the greatest
generals in history.
Jackson knew Dabney as a preacher and as
a chaplain, but he pleaded with him to
come and to join his staff as an
officer, and Dabney did so.
He did so on the grounds, he said,
that he believed that the destruction of his
country was so imminent that it behoved every
Christian to stand to arms in her defense.
Interestingly enough, Dabney and Stonewall disagreed strongly with
Merle Daubigny in Daubigny's assessment of Dwingley's death
at Zurich.
You remember how perhaps some of you have
read Daubigny, and Daubigny speaks very movingly of
Dwingley's mistake in going out to the battlefield.
Well, Dabney and Stonewall certainly did not hold
that view, and Dabney became the staff officer
of Stonewall Jackson.
He was his senior staff officer, much to
the surprise of the other officers, seeing this
chaplain arrive in the camp in ordinary dress,
carrying, I think he was, an umbrella, and
they said, these men, of course, a number
of whom were not Christians, they said, he's
not afraid of Yankee bullets, and he preaches
like hell, they said.
Well, Dabney did become an extraordinary staff officer
under Jackson.
He was with Jackson in the Great Valley
Campaign of 1862, when Jackson utterly demoralized the
Army of the North.
You know the story, perhaps, of how the
North had to keep putting up new commanders
in the field, and each one in turn
was defeated by Robert Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
Jackson's tactics were along this line.
The Confederate Army of the South was always
inferior in numbers to the Northern Army.
I don't think that was ever not the
case.
Often it would be something like 50,000
men fighting 120,000 men, and Jackson's tactics
were generally, in the face of 120,000
men, he'd split his 50,000 into 25,
and he'd take, he'd leave one 25,000
in the front of the battle, as it
were, taking an enormous risk.
The other 25,000 he'd take right round
the flank.
They could march as no men ever marched,
barefooted, often in rags.
They would suddenly strike the Union Army of
the North in one of their rear flanks,
and he did this time and again.
Well, I'm not here to speak about the
battle.
It's a very interesting subject, and I don't
really care to read it.
Well, I must say something, however, on the
Christianity of Stonewall Jackson.
Robert Lee and Jackson were both outstanding Christians.
There's no, I think there's no one who
questions that.
Let me just give you this one quotation.
A letter from Jackson to his wife, it
was in 1862, after some of their great
victories, and Jackson's name was being heralded abroad,
and this is how he wrote to his
wife.
He says, don't trouble yourself about these representations
that are made of your husband.
These things are earthly and transitory.
There are real and glorious blessings I trust
in reserve for us beyond this life.
It is best for us to keep our
eyes fixed upon the throne of God, and
the realities of a more glorious existence beyond
the verge of time.
It is gratifying to be beloved, and to
have our conduct approved by our fellow men,
but this is not worthy to be compared
with the glory that is in reservation for
us in the presence of our glorified Redeemer.
I would not relinquish the slightest lessening of
that glory for all that this world can
give.
Then again, a little while later, he writes
to his wife, speaking of one of the
Sunday services in the camp.
He says, Dr. Stiles' text was 1 Timothy
2, 5, and 6, who gave himself for
all a ransom to be testified in due
time.
It was, he said, a powerful exposition of
the word of God, and when he came
to the word himself, he placed an emphasis
upon it, and gave it a force which
I never felt before.
And I realize that, truly, the sinner who
does not, under gospel privileges, turn to God,
deserves the agonies of perdition.
It is a glorious thing to be a
minister of the gospel of the Prince of
Peace.
There is no equal position in this world.
Well, Stonewall Jackson's many lies of him, one
by Frank Vendiva, the mighty Stonewall, which was
just published a few years ago.
One other letter from Jackson to Dabney.
Dabney was absent from the army at this
time, and this is how Stonewall writes to
him.
He says, I am very thankful to God
for having permitted me to have the privilege
of being blessed with your Christian and military
labors as long as he did.
Then he goes on to speak about what's
been happening.
While we were near Winchester, it pleased our
ever merciful Heavenly Father to visit my command
with the rich outpouring of his spirit.
There were probably more than a hundred inquiring
the way of life in my old brigade.
It appears to me that we may look
for growing piety and many conversions in the
army, for this is the subject of prayer.
If so many prayers were offered for the
blessing of God upon any other organization, would
we not expect the answer of prayer to
hear the petitions and send a blessing and
so on?
Well, it's a great thing, whatever you think
of the Civil War, that men in the
agonies of that struggle, like Jackson, were preeminently
concerned with the salvation of their men.
And you may read in Dabney and other
biographies of the time that when battles were
fought and the prisoners were taken and the
wounded were dying, how, whether the men were
northerners or southerners, how these Christians went amongst
them, speaking to them of the gospel of
Christ.
There can be no doubt that hundreds, perhaps
thousands, were brought to Christ on the verge
of eternity and prior to their death.
How, whether the men were northerners or southerners,
how these Christians went amongst them, speaking to
them of the gospel of Christ.
There can be no doubt that hundreds, perhaps
thousands, were brought to Christ on the verge
of eternity and prior to their death.
I mention Jackson a little more because he
figures largely in Dabney's life.
Dabney was the biographer of Stonewall Jackson, the
first biographer, and the two men were very
close to each other.
The story of Jackson's death is a very
tragic one.
The battle was being fought in May of
1863 at Chancellorsville.
Jackson was doing his usual tactic.
He was way out on one of the
flanks himself.
He was ahead of his own troops and
having made a reconnaissance, he returned to his
own lines in the evening twilight and returning
to his own lines, he was shot by
his own men.
He was very severely wounded.
His arm was amputated.
He was carried to a little house in
Guinea and there he hovered between life and
death for a number of days.
His wife brought their little child to see
him.
The account of Stonewall Jackson's death is a
very moving one.
How they sang the praise of Christ on
his deathbed and then at last collapsed into
delirium.
He ordered up AP Hill to the front.
He was imagining he was back in the
conflict and then his last words were, he
said, let us cross the river and rest
under the shade of the trees.
And just a few weeks ago, Ernie Riesinger
and I were at the spot where that
happened.
We visited this little house in Guinea where
Stonewall Jackson died and to me and to
Mr. Riesinger it was a very moving experience.
Jackson is certainly a glorified saint now.
Well, after the death of Jackson, the Battle
of Gettysburg followed.
In July, the fortunes of the South began
to turn.
The mass of men and equipment against them
was overwhelming and at last the South was
reduced and utterly exhausted, surrendered in 1865.
It was a tremendous conflict and certainly one
of the greatest tragedies that had ever taken
place.
Before I leave it and I'm afraid time
is beating me all together.
I had wanted to say something on the
attitude of these men to the Negro question
and the slavery question because of course it
was the great propaganda of the North and
propaganda that was accepted by the world that
the Civil War was fought simply for the
abolition of slavery.
I think I can give you sufficient evidence
to show that that simply cannot be true.
For these reasons, men like Dabney in the
course of the war, they were advocating the
emancipation of slaves and yet they believed that
the war was just.
They were not fighting to preserve slavery.
They were willing before the end of the
war certainly to give up slavery and then
before the war had even scarcely begun, Robert
E.
Lee, who was the commander-in-chief of
the Southern Army, he held no slaves at
all.
A man such as Lee had no axe
to grind in the slightest in regard to
slavery.
Then one must bear in mind of course
that there were great differences and discrepancies in
the way that slaves were treated in the
South.
Slaves in Christian homes were almost always as
much as it were a part of the
family as anyone else.
They were born in the home, they lived
there, they were nursed there, they were cared
for, they died there.
One of Dabney's reasons why he could not
go to Princeton was that it would break
up his family and by his family of
course he included the slaves.
Some of you are aware that Dabney, like
us all, sometimes spoke ill-advisedly with his
lips and there are on record certain words
spoken on the color issue by Dabney which
had better not have been spoken.
Nevertheless, I am quite convinced that in the
heart of these Christians in the South, I
say Christians in the South, there was very
great regard and love to their colored slaves
and servants.
You see this in many ways.
There was an architect who wanted to rebuild
Dabney's church.
I didn't tell you that when Dabney was
Professor of Theology he was also a preacher,
a co-pastor in the college church at
Hampden-Sydney.
This architect wanted to rebuild the church but
numbers were growing and he said well the
only way to do this properly, to build
a pleasant comfortable church, is to exclude the
Negroes from the church.
Dabney simply would not hear of it.
Stonewall Jackson, before the war began, sent all
his Christian service amongst the Negroes.
He had a Negro class of a hundred.
This was his Christian work before the Civil
War and one of the very greatest of
the Southern preachers, Gerardo, whose life I have
here, he preached in a congregation with about
500 Negroes and 100 whites.
And when some less spiritually minded whites asked
him why he didn't go to a white
congregation where he could earn much more money
and so on, he had only one reason.
That is that God had called him to
serve his colored brethren.
And there are beautiful things in the life
of Gerardo, of his work amongst the Negroes
before the Civil War.
I mustn't give you one but let me
just mention two instances he gives us of
Negroes that were dying.
I'm missing out the longer quote.
He said he went into the house of
this man who was a servant of a
distinguished judge.
He was dying.
As I entered his room he rubbed his
hands together, chuckled with hilarious delight like that
of a boy going home on Christmas Eve
and exclaimed, I am going home.
Oh how glad I am.
So he passed away.
This was one of his colored members.
The other was a woman, a mother, and
when she died Gerardo was away as a
chaplain in the war but she was delirious
and she kept calling for him.
She kept calling for me till the time
that she expired.
Tell me, he says, that there was no
true deep affection of masters to slaves and
slaves to masters.
It was often like that between near relatives.
Well, the end of the war.
I must hasten on.
More.
Well Dabney went back to his work at
the Theological College.
He had these very moving descriptions of how
this work that had been building up so
well, how it was as it were reduced
to nothing.
Some of the students came back, many of
them never did.
Those who came back often had an empty
sleeve hanging where their arm had been or
they were without a leg.
They had no proper clothes.
They had their old army uniforms with the
buttons covered because the rebel confederate buttons were
not allowed to be seen and you can
imagine these men gathering again to begin where
they had left off five years before.
Dabney went on teaching then at Hampden-Sydney
till 1883.
And by that time there was this growing
movement in Virginia with which or yes with
which Dabney was not really in sympathy.
He was already being regarded by a number
of the ministers as an old fogey and
a pessimist and so on.
He opposed closer connections with the northern Presbyterian
Church.
The church had split at the time of
the Civil War in 1861.
There was a move to bring the churches
closer together but Dabney opposed that move on
two grounds.
I mention only one of them.
This one ground was that the northern church
had accepted in large measure the invitation system
theology, the new measures of sinning and so
on and Dabney stood out against unions because
of that.
That did not make him popular even in
the south at that time.
So really he was isolated increasingly.
He was not wanted even in the seminary
where he had spent 30 years.
So he took up a new appointment at
the age of 66 at Austin in Texas.
He had incredible endurance and strength.
He took up this position in the chair
of philosophy in Texas at the same time
with his own money and his own time
he started a theological school in Texas.
He went on teaching there and preaching until
1894.
The last 15 years of his life were
spent in great pain.
He had a urinary infection a cystitis.
Yes that's right which was operated on and
instead of improving it got worse and he
was in daily pain and suffering.
Then not long after that his eyesight began
to fail.
In 1886 it was becoming very dim he
couldn't tell whether the sun was out or
not.
He went north to be examined by a
doctor.
He was told that there was no hope
for his eyes.
The last 11 years of his life were
spent in complete blindness.
Before he lost his sight he had great
struggles.
Struggles to as we were hearing yesterday to
bear the will of God.
A man with such energy and life to
be reduced to such a condition.
Nevertheless he went on with his work.
You know on the very day that he
died he was still working and writing to
a secretary.
But the last 11 years were very hard
years.
There's a fine description how in the last
General Assembly that he attended in 1897 I
should really read it to you how when
Dabney came up on the platform he had
to be taken by the hand and led
forward to pray at this meeting which he
did.
The most interesting and touching feature of the
service was the presence on the platform and
the introductory prayer of Dr Dabney.
As he was led forward in his blindness
to the moderator's table feeling with trembling hands
for its support it was a sight pathetic
in the extreme.
It may seem hardly proper to comment on
such a prayer but this was so full
and fitting and carried us in such humble
gratitude to the splendid past and in such
hopefulness and trust to the future and so
voiced the present feelings and longings of the
great audience that we could not help noticing
it.
And a little later one of them one
of these men records something of the content
of that prayer how he prayed that they
would be given a martyr's suit.
Then at that time he gave an address
on the Westminster Confession of Faith speaking of
course without any note and one of his
colleagues also spoke at the same time and
this is how he referred to Dabney.
I think it's very beautiful.
Speaking of his old companions this man Moses
Hodge.
One of these he says one of these
old companions now sits on this platform in
view of this great audience unseen by him
my classmate and lifelong friend.
I am comforted by the assurance that the
darkness which envelops him is but the shadow
of God's wing beneath which he is all
the nearer to his father's side and heart
and he may say in words ascribed to
another dear lord upon my bended knee I
recognize thy purpose clearly shown my vision thou
hast dimmed that I might see thyself thyself
alone.
Just before he died Dabney wrote a last
letter to his sons and to his daughters.
My dear sons and daughters and their children
I desire before I leave the world as
my best legacy to my family my serious
solemn advice to make choice of God for
their God.
He has been my father's God and the
God of your mother's predecessor.
I solemnly charge you to make it your
first care to seek after peace with God
and being reconciled to make it your study
to please God in all things.
Then a letter follows I can't read it
wait upon the means of grace beware of
mere form after duty cry to the Lord
for communion with him so you worship him
in spirit follow God fully without turning aside
and then he then the sum of the
gospel is Christ crucified I commit my body
to the dust hoping and expecting the spirit
will in due time quicken my mortal body
my spirit I commit to my Lord Jesus
Christ to him I have entrusted it long
ago your devoted father R.L. Dabney then
appears two verses of scripture be kindly affectionate
one to another remember a Sabbath day to
keep it holy.
Well I had promised to make some general
comment and I don't really think we have
time to do that let me just give
you the outline if you can bear a
few more minutes.
There are two great emphases in Dabney's writings
I take these.
The first is that he is very strong
against a false anti-biblical secularism a philanthropy
which was not Christian.
This comes in his writings a great deal.
He was concerned at the whole influence of
the French Jacobin school Rousseau who and Benjamin
Franklin who was influenced by them the kind
of ultra-democracy which was being moved in
the north.
Now Dabney says very clearly that it's not
the business of the church to be engaged
in politics.
The church has no commission to advocate or
to oppose any political doctrines logical or illogical
Jacobinical Republican or Royalist as such.
It is only when they are so advanced
as to taint the integrity of her divine
rule of faith that they concern her and
then her concern is only to defend the
testimony of her Lord committed to her.
This she must do.
Now if you read Dabney you will find
a great say great deal a good deal
on the question of secular rights on women's
rights on education on philosophy and so on
but it all comes back to this that
he believed that there was a movement on
foot in the 19th century a movement which
was contrary uh in various respects to a
word of God.
If you read him on women's rights for
example you will find a most uh heart
-stirring appeal.
He believed that it was not only woman's
duty to be in the home but that
was her highest privilege and the movement for
the uh the vote to be given to
woman and for woman's place in society to
be equal to man that movement he saw
as one of the greatest perils to the
United States and I haven't time to read
from him but you'll feel that if you
read him that is a whole area of
Dabney which is very relevant for the present
time.
There's an anti-biblical theory of rights and
it is that which he is concerned to
oppose whether he always does it exactly and
vividly I do not say but he certainly
is speaking very relevantly to our times at
that point.
Then secondly and lastly his great warning near
the end or indeed for many years towards
the end was against the motive of using
self-advantage and self-interest in evangelism and
in the whole Christian life.
This quotation will make it clear to you
just what I mean.
Speaking of those who are doing this he
says redemption is presented to the soul not
as a moral good but simply as an
advantage.
The cross is to be prized and sought
not for any purpose or desire of holiness
but for its utility to an endangered selfishness.
The savior is degraded to subserve a function
precisely similar to a life preserver or a
lifeboat or a fire extinguisher or a dentist's
faucet or an anodyne or a dose of
other medicine.
There is no real faith no real coming
to Christ except that which embraces him in
his three offices of prophet priest and king.
Hence there is no real coming to Christ
until the soul is so enlightened and renewed
as truly to view not only its danger
but its ignorance and pollution as intolerable evil.
So this is a tremendous emphasis in Dabney
and when he writes on the decision sort
of structure of evangelism that was coming in
and the Arminianism which lay behind it his
words really burn.
But he foresaw what was coming as I
believe perhaps nobody else did and you find
that very fully in his work.
So take his defense of the fourth commandment
the Sabbath day.
The idea that we should preach the necessity
of observing the seventh day in terms of
its benefit to man.
You've heard that of course said and of
course it is true that a day of
rest is a benefit to man but that
is not the ground upon which the commandment
is to be preached to men's consciences.
It is that God has commanded and that
loyalty to God then is the overriding duty.
This quotation I think will summarize Dabney's whole
life and work.
He says if the question is raised why
the church does not grow faster we are
persuaded that the real answer which most needs
looking to is the one which our author
that he's reviewing dismisses most hastily.
The fault he says is not ecclesiastical but
spiritual.
The real need is not new methods but
fidelity to the old.
A true revival in the hearts of ministers
and Christians themselves.
A faith that feels the power of the
world to come.
A solemn and deep love for souls.
What we most need is repentance and not
innovation.
That is Dabney's life's message.
A message not heeded in his day but
he believed as his biographer said that a
day would come when the old Calvinism would
be re-vindicated.
Though Calvinism, pure and simple, had been on
the wane in his day he knew that
Augustinianism once waned, died and was buried for
a thousand years but was resurrected at the
reformation because it was largely God's truth.
He expected confidently in God's own time the
re-vindication of Calvinism and then he would
say therefore that the hope of the church
was in the Holy Ghost and though he
collided as he did and fought such a
fight and died in comparative obscurity, in blindness
physically but with the eye of faith illuminated
so powerfully by the scripture he died in
hope and in assurance that this truth would
live again in the earth.
Let me then commend these precious volumes to
you.
Two volumes and if you have got sons
you should buy copies so that they'll have
them too and another generation will not forget
this man as our fathers forgot him.