Since out of the Margaret Duncan Church, or "Church of the Vow", have grown, it is believed, at least ten other churches, and since the tradition of her ocean experiences has taken varied shapes and forms in its transmission, we shall give a narrative which is probably the most in accordance with fact.
Mrs. Margaret Duncan, on the death of her husband, a prosperous merchant of Philadelphia, determined to visit old friends in Stewartstown, Tyrone County, Ireland, in which she had been born. She took with her her little grandson, who was to become the famous Dr. John Mason Duncan. Returning across the ocean in the autumn of 1798, the ship sailing from Belfast, Ireland, was loaded heavily with many passengers, most of them poor emigrants, but had little cargo in the hold. It is said that the captain had never crossed the Atlantic. The compass was out of order, and with head winds and wet and foggy weather, the voyage was dangerously prolonged. The passengers were put on short allowance and there was no water. It is even said that in a severe storm the captain and crew deserted the vessel. The people suffered from agonizing thirst. They even talked of drawing lots to see who should be put to death and give his own flesh as food to the others.
Mrs. Duncan was then a woman between seventy and eighty years of age. Late tradition says the lot was drawn and she drew it and expected to be a victim. Mr. Chambers, though often referring to her experiences on the sea, makes no mention of the lot or of this dire extremity. Going into her cabin she gave herself to prayer, and vowed be[26]fore God that if He would avert the impending blow and in mercy save her life and the ship's company she would forever consecrate herself and all that she had to His service; that she would erect a church edifice for the congregation of the Associate Reformed people in Philadelphia with whom she worshipped, and that she would give and educate her little grandson for the Gospel ministry.
Not long after this, rain fell, and the agonizing thirst of those in the ship was relieved. Soon the shout, "sail ho" was heard from the man aloft. A vessel hove in sight and rescued them all. The ship entered the Delaware river and all reached Philadelphia in safety.
True to her vows, Margaret Duncan educated her grandson John Mason Duncan to preach the good news of God. Dying Nov. 16th, 1802, she left her money by will for the erection of a house of worship, which she minutely described, specifying that it was to be of the Associate Reformed communion. By various names, the "Margaret Duncan Church," or "The Vow Church," or "Saint Margaret's Church," the brick edifice on Thirteenth street near Filbert on the west side, stood until some time in the fifties. I can remember as a little boy going to see the debris of the ruins, the piled up old brick partially cleaned of mortar, the dust and the broken bits of lime, and the great hollow place where the cellar had been. In 1875, Mr. Chambers spoke of "the little church where we worshipped so long.... It is a shame that the church was ever destroyed. However it was torn down, and we have nothing more to do with it".
His was the language of affection. As matter of cold fact, the "house was of plain brick, without the least trace of ornament and for many years was one of the gloomiest looking churches in the city. The dimensions were fifty by sixty feet." The edifice was opened for worship on the[27] 26th of November, 1815. The dedication sermon was preached by the son of the vow, and the grandson of her who made it, Rev. John Mason Duncan. As before stated, Rev. James Gray, D.D., then with Dr. Wylie at the head of a classical school in Philadelphia, also took part.
Having been called to be the pastor of this church, Mr. Chambers surveyed his field to see what resources there were for sustaining permanent gospel work. He found no organized effort. There was no prayer-meeting, no Sunday School, not a man to lead in public prayer, and the three elders were all superannuated. The congregation was made up of humble people, poor, hard-working, industrious, with only here and there one among them who might be called rich; nor was there a family in which family worship was held. It was necessary therefore that the young man from Baltimore, who did not know ten people in Philadelphia when he first arrived, should borrow two devout men, Presbyterians, Wilfrid Hall and Hiram Ayres, to help him in meetings for social prayer. He then made application to Mr. Hall for the use of a room on Market street near what is now Seventeenth, in a district of vacant lots. Very few people were then living west of Broad street, and most of the streets now well known were not yet "cut through". He knew not whether any one would come to the meeting called for prayer, but God gave him a gracious surprise. When he arrived near the hour, "there was scarcely a spot for a human being to stand on". There and then began the Holy Spirit's workings which resulted in a whole family of Christian churches.
These prayer meetings were begun, according to due announcement, on the fourth Sunday in May. Their good influences were seen in the immediate enlargement of the church audience. By the beginning of July, there were[28] four men ready to speak or lead in prayer. By August 1st, over forty persons, many of them young men and women, had declared their faith in Christ, and were ready for Christian work. Mr. Chambers found a friend in Rev. Dr. Stiles Ely, a New England man, the principal founder of the Jefferson Medical College, and editor of The Philadelphian. From 1801 he had been pastor of the old Pine street Church, and was at that time moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly. As Mr. Chambers was not yet ordained, Dr. Ely preached the sermon and administered the Lord's Supper, when the new converts were received.
As Dr. Chambers told the story in 1875, "The next move was for a Sabbath School, and the marvel was with what eagerness they took hold of it ... and carried it on with vigor, procured rooms and Sabbath School scholars and teachers and entered their names, and we went on and on from that very day after the institution of the prayer meeting, and the consequence was that we very soon felt that God was with us".
When the people of the Ninth Presbyterian, or Margaret Duncan Church on Thirteenth street, met together to vote a call to John Chambers, it was under the care of the First Presbytery of Philadelphia. Of course, therefore, the call must be approved at the regular meeting of the presbytery, and only after the usual examination of the candidate. Mr. Chambers came on from Baltimore, having accepted the call, and began his work as pastor and preacher-elect on the 9th day, or second Sabbath, in May, 1825. The presbytery was to meet in October in its semi-annual gathering. By a strange coincidence this was at Newtown, near the Neshaminy stream, in Bucks county, Pa.—the field of the evangelical and revival labors of the ancestor of his betrothed, of whom more anon. Was the young preacher's imagination busy with the scenes of a century before?
[29]
The glories of autumn made lovely the landscape of this affluent agricultural county lying along the bend of the Delaware, rich in fruit, in Pennsylvania Germans, in English Quakers, and in Scotch-Irish people. Its name, that of Penn's county in England, is suggestive of the old world, and it is historically famous for being on the line of Washington's march to his great victory over the Hessians at Trenton, and through it part of Sullivan's men had moved for the chastisement of the Iroquois tribes at Newtown, near Elmira, N. Y., in 1779. Yet the historical associations uppermost in the mind of the young licentiate must have been those with the great-grandfather of his betrothed, who in this very region and near this very house of worship, had labored with Gilbert Tennant in the gospel.
The young minister's call and the letter announcing it, from the hands of the elders of the Ninth Church, Messrs. Ross, Hogg, and Reed, in the name of the congregation, was handed in to the assembled authorities. No doubt the document was on genuine honest rag paper, the only kind then known, and on a letter sheet, folded and dovetailed together and closed with sealing wax or wafer, without an envelope, directed on the outside and carried to him by stage coach. No doubt he himself had to go to the office in Baltimore to get it. In compliance with its request, the young licentiate's journey would be by stage through Elkton and Wilmington to Philadelphia. From Philadelphia to Newtown, twenty-seven miles northeast of Philadelphia, the route would probably be up the well-known road crossing the Neshaminy Creek.
The young licentiate, accustomed to do his own thinking, appeared with clean papers from the Presbytery of Baltimore, and asked that he might be taken under the care of the First Presbytery of Philadelphia, with a view to ordina[30]tion and installation as pastor of the Ninth Church. Nevertheless, although he might be punctual and his papers clean, Dame Rumor had arrived before him. Several of her thousand tongues had declared, and even asseverated vehemently, that John Chambers was that strange, curious, and ever-changing thing called a "heretic." Often that undefined thing is a babe thrust into the cradle, while the orthodoxy of yesterday is turned out. A "heretic," as Saint Paul was once called, even as Jesus was before him, is very apt to be crucified to-day and glorified to-morrow. Indeed, "heresy" is almost as protean and as undefinable as "orthodoxy" itself. We shall see what kind of a "heretic" John Chambers was. His life for fifty years revealed the reality.
Within that little company gathered at Newtown there was, in the language of old times many a "heresio-mastix" or scourger of heresy, and a majority of the ministers present were already pre-determined to "hereticate" the young licentiate, who had already made the bounds of the little brick church on Thirteenth street too small to hold his hearers. Nevertheless our sympathies go out to all church bishops, whose duty it is to show that sudden popularity is no proof of fitness or character.
It developed during the examination that the head and front of the young man's offending was his belief in the Bible as an all sufficient rule of faith and practice. In this position, he was confirmed by the fact that the Westminster standards, the Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, teach that the Bible is the only infallible rule of faith and obedience. These all unite in declaring that the Scriptures are "given by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life", "the rule of worship", the only rule of faith and obedience; which teach "what man is to[31] believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man", and form "the rule given us of God to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him."
In a word, to an independent thinker, loyal to the Bible as the word of God, as John Chambers was, the Westminster standards contain their own reductio ad absurdum to any one who puts creed, catechism, or confession above the Holy Scriptures, or who makes certain parts, or even a collection of parts, greater than the whole. Mr. Chambers, using his own words, believed that nothing could exceed infallibility, and was therefore satisfied with the infallible rule of the Scriptures. There was not then the freedom of faith, and the liberty of private interpretation of Holy Scripture and the Westminster symbols that is now happily the rule in the Presbyterian churches. The fault, if fault it were, was not solely on the young man's part.
The eyes of the "fathers and brethren" were opened and the "heretic" stood revealed. One of the members, the Rev. Dr. Ely, then proposed that the moderator should ask Mr. Chambers whether at the time of his licensure he subscribed to the Confession of Faith. He answered that he did not. When the second question was proposed, "Are you prepared to do so now?" he answered firmly, "I am not".
A motion was then made by Dr. Ely that Mr. Chambers and his papers be referred back to the Presbytery of Baltimore, and that the pulpit of the Ninth Church be declared vacant. Rev. Messrs. Patterson and Hoff were appointed a committee to perform the duty.
On Thursday evening of the same week, which was the regular evening for the weekly lecture, the committee of the Presbytery, which had met at Newtown, appeared at the church.
[32]
Although there were no telegraphs in those days, it was quickly known in Philadelphia, and to all the people of the Ninth Church, that Mr. Chambers, the man whom they had learned to love, had been rejected by the Presbytery. The preaching of the young minister had already resulted, under God, in a deep and strong religious interest. Consequently there was a large attendance and not a little excitement in the little brick edifice, so much so, indeed, that some of the congregation had quietly resolved to put the committee out in the street should they attempt to go into the pulpit.
Punctuality with the young pastor had already settled into what proved to be a life-long habit. He was at the church in good season. Finding the committee already there, he explained to the two men the situation and told them what the consequences would be if they attempted to fulfil their mission. Happily, however, both gentlemen being more concerned with the coming of the kingdom of God than about obeying the letter of their orders, did indeed go into the pulpit, but it was at the request of Mr. Chambers, who made them his firm friends for life. When there they co-operated with him, assisting to conduct the services, and not a word was said about the pulpit being vacant. Thus God, through his servant, quieted the Irishmen, and then and there magnified this man who had a genius for friendship and was an expert peacemaker; all of which was for the coming of the kingdom and the good of souls.
As days passed by, the people of the congregation, realizing that if they wanted to have a minister they would have to be an independent church, took prompt action. After due notice had been given, a congregational meeting was held. By a vote of four to one the people declared themselves independent of all church courts, with only Christ as their Master. By another vote, equally large, they resolved to retain John Chambers as their minister.
[33]
The minority, led by Mr. Moses Reed, one of the elders, withdrew, and in a room on Race street organized themselves as the Ninth Presbyterian Church. In the law suit that followed, the seceders won their case. With the edifice, given up in 1830, went the possession of the small burying ground on Race street, above Nineteenth, in which sleeps the dust of the Ross family and the father of the renowned soldier's friend, Miss Anna Ross, whom defenders of the union from 1861 to 1865, and the survivors of the Grand Army remember so well. In the writer's memory her name and face are not forgotten, for she was his Sunday School teacher.