In John Chambers, sanctified common sense was combined with spiritual fervor. As a young pastor, he had right ideas about finance and the honest support of a church. Money was needed for the salaries and expenses of keeping the edifice comfortable and in repair. Before the first year had passed by, it was evident to the "Chamberites", that a new building would be necessary, even if the law suit had gone in their favor. The voices of the croakers and prophets of evil, at first loud and thunderous, had sunk to the "peep and mutter" stage and were rapidly approaching silence.
In a new field, larger financial resources would be necessary, but from the first, only manly, honorable, and truly scriptural methods of providing revenue were employed. Never in all the history of the First Independent Church was there a fair or supper to which admittance was charged. Those methods of raising money, too often associated with religious societies, to the scandal of faith, the equipment of the jester, and the furnishing of the ungodly with excuse for self-righteousness, were tabooed by Mr. Chambers. He believed both that the laborer was worthy of his hire, and that men ought to pay for their religious privileges. He was so successful in this policy that within six years, having paid all debts, his people in the spring of 1830 bought at Broad and George (now Sansom) streets, that lot of land for four hundred dollars, which afterwards was sold for over four hundred thousand dollars. The land and house of worship, the subsequent enlargement and repairs, as well as the running expenses of the church, so long as it[64] was independent, were paid for by subscriptions. "We have never in our lives," said John Chambers in 1875, "gone abroad for means to help us."
The region west of Broad street was then "out in the country". Green fields, or vacant lots, stretched to the Schuylkill River. At Broad and Market were the Water Works. When afterwards these were removed and the pumps and reservoir were established at Fairmount, four small parks, with their trees and green sward, made one of the city's breathing spaces. Even then Broad Street was considered the western boundary of the city of Philadelphia.
Bright and happy was that February morning of 1830 when the young pastor, with many of his flock around him, took his place on the green sward at Broad and Sansom streets. With his long hair brushed into lively motion by the matin breezes, he poured out a prayer to Heaven for the blessing of the triune God. "Like all Irishmen, John Chambers knew how to handle the spade", and handle it well he did on that day when he turned up the first spadeful of earth. After the diggers came the masons, who built honestly a solid foundation, and then the corner-stone laying in March, 1830, and finally the dedication in June, 1831. Dr. John Mason Duncan preached first in the new house in the morning and the sermon was royally long. One little boy, now an honored pastor of eighty, remembers that it ended at half-past one! Alas, that Saint Paul's faults, like that at Troas, should be more imitated by us preachers than his virtues! In the afternoon Rev. James Arbuckle preached. "The house was crowded to excess all day."
How one family, and indeed a group of families allied by blood or marriage, came to be life-long supporters of and worshippers in the First Independent Church, we must now tell. We shall speak of one member named Mary.
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It was in 1832, the winter in which the famous English actress, Fannie Kemball, sister of Mrs. Sartoris (whose grandson, in our day, married Nellie, the daughter of General Grant) was starring in Philadelphia in the old Chestnut street theatre, on the South side of Philadelphia's most fashionable street, above Sixth. Mary had spent a winter of great gaiety, revelling in the joys of the dance, the theatre and every sort of worldly amusement—much to the grief of her mother, a woman of unaffected piety, who was praying that her daughter might look less at things perishing and more at the eternal.
Yet no message from the Unseen, sent through a human preacher, had yet reached the ears of Mary's inner being. It was while the anxious mother was most earnestly praying, that Mary was invited by a maiden friend, whom she had met at a picnic and with whom she had formed a warm friendship, to visit her and go to hear the new minister on Thirteenth street. Mary came, and saw, and heard, and was conquered. At the first sermon she hung spell-bound on the lips of the emotional and electrifying young orator, who during all his ministrations had also that peculiar unction, without which, preaching, however logical and learned, avails little.
On coming home, after the service in the new church on Broad street, Mary told her mother that she would never go to the theatre again; she had heard the grandest speaker that she had ever looked upon in her life; who outshone every actor she had ever seen, and whose message had more charms for her than the theatre itself. Soon after this Mr. Chambers with his wife made his first pastoral call at Mary's home.
About this time, late in the winter and toward the spring, there was a revivalist assisting Mr. Chambers, who to elo[66]quence and magnetic power, added the power of the draughtsman. He was an artist in words and with the chalk also. He drew a cross on the blackboard, and without the element of color, but with the aid of music moved the emotions mightily. He called upon the congregation, led by sweet voices, to sing, "Alas! And Did My Saviour Bleed". His appeals, tender and powerful, were responded to. Many were brought "under conviction" and declared themselves from that time followers of Jesus Christ. On the day that Mary united with the church, one hundred persons were received at the communion table and into membership.
This is one sample picture of many of dissolving views of souls in Mr. Chambers's ever enlarging congregation. His ministry was from the first one of direct appeal. It was emotio............