John Chambers used to boast of his three big W's—Walton, Wanamaker, and Whitaker. The two first-named are known to most of my readers. The third, who made a vow to give to the Lord all he had or made over the amount of sixty thousand dollars, was a generous helper of the pastor.
The first great offshoot from the mother church on Broad Street is the Bethany Presbyterian Church, in which Messrs. Wanamaker and Walton, were generously interested and unceasingly active.
In 1875 Mr. Chambers said, "Connected with our movements as a church, no single event in our history exceeds in point of grandeur or importance Bethany mission, ... A very few, some thirty, of the young workers of our church headed by that remarkable young man, John Wanamaker, left us and after there being a selection made in the southwestern part of the city, they started a Sabbath School in the working room of a little Irish shoemaker, with some ten little ragged children to begin with, and in the course of a very few weeks they had to take all the room in the little Irishman's home, pretty much, and then they had not enough. A tent was erected that would contain some four or five hundred, and then the congregation agreed that there should be a house put up, and a one-story house was put up that would contain some five or six hundred".
It seems almost like a fairy tale when one contrasts the condition of things in the Bethany neighborhood, as I first saw it in 1855, and as it is now. After our family had moved from Girard Avenue to the house on 20th street four doors below Chestnut on the east side, my mother took me[147] one day to enter the public school situated, I believe, at 22nd and Shippen. Just as we turned the corner at Twentieth and Pine Street, I looked across to the southwest. For many hundred of acres, there was an expanse of vacant lots occupied here and there with squatters' cabins, goose pastures and roaming cows, the streets not being yet "cut through". Still in the days of the volunteer fire company, with all its lawlessness and also of abundance, yes, superabundance, of liquor saloons, it seemed one of the least promising portions of the city. Now, it is densely built up with elegant homes and is the center of wealth, comfort, and culture.
I remember well, too, when the first band of workers went out from the mother church and on the 14th of February, 1858, in two second story rooms of the house at No. 2135 South Street, began a Sunday School, with twenty-seven scholars and two teachers, the seating capacity being eked out, if I remember rightly, with rough scantling brought up out of the cellar and laid upon bricks. Long before hot weather, the rooms, halls, and stairway were crowded, so on the 18th of July a tent was set up on the North side of South street. After a summer under canvas, the corner stone for a chapel was laid on the 18th of October, Dr. Chambers with his brethren, Leyburn, Brainerd, and McLeod making addresses. The chapel which measured 40 by 60 feet was dedicated on January 27th, 1859, and on January 4th, 1862, Rev. Augustus Blauvelt began his labors as city missionary, becoming after a year a missionary to China. I remember him as preaching a remarkable sermon on the kingdom of Satan. He died in April, 1900.
The growth of Bethany was continuous and surprising. I remember how those most interested conversed with each other about the name of the child now fully born and ready[148] for its clothing and christening. The walks and talks and experiences by the way, in going from the old home to the new enterprise, called up the words of the Scripture: "He led them out as far as Bethany and lifted up his hands and blessed them". So the name of Bethany was decided upon.
On September 25, 1865, the enterprise was organized into a Presbyterian Church under the care of the Presbytery of Philadelphia, Old School. The lot at the southeast corner of Twenty-second and Bainbridge streets, 112 by 138? feet, was purchased, and on February 13, 1870, the new and commodious edifice was dedicated.
To-day, with its large eldership, boards of trustees and deacons, its doormen and tithemen, its leaders of Christian bands, its college established in 1881—the first of its kind in Philadelphia, and of which for many years its vice-president, Rudolph S. Walton, was chief friend and benefactor, Bethany is a center of blessing to thousands. Of the Deaconesses' Home, the Men's Friendly Inn, and other details of the great work we have not space to speak. At his decease in November, 1900, Mr. Walton left about $200,000 for the erection of a new college building.
No sooner was Bethany Church grown to adult life than it began to send forth colonies. The Bethany Mission was its first namesake. By this time, in the twentieth century, the boy that I once knew as no richer or poorer than the average, had become one of Philadelphia's princely merchants, with hand ever open for gifts and help. A lot at the northeast corner of Twenty-eighth and Morris streets, measuring 114 by 136 feet, was secured. It was far away from any human dwelling, but it was in the direction of growth. The skilled fishers of men let down the net just where they knew the fishes would be in shoals—a method and policy following out that of their great teacher, Jesus[149] Christ, and of their earthly exemplar, John Chambers. On this lot Mr. John Wanamaker and Mrs. Wanamaker (at whose wedding I remember being present, as a boy), in gratitude to God for the wonderful preservation from fire of the great Wanamaker store, have erected, since the streets were opened, a superb edifice with all modern equipments and furnishing. This, at the present time, serves as a church and Sunday School and for social gatherings. The main church edifice is to be erected later on the southern portion of the still unoccupied lot.
How gratifying this was to the Presbytery of Philadelphia is seen in the records given below. From the minutes of October 30, 1901, we make extracts of the
PROCEEDINGS OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE PRESBYTERY OF PHILADELPHIA.
Mr. Robert H. Hinckley presented the following preamble and resolution:
"As a member of the special committee who reported June 1, 1899 (see folio 228) on the proposed location of a church at 28th and Morris Streets, I desire to report that in accordance with the permission therein granted, Mr. John Wanamaker has erected and dedicated to the memory of the late Rev. John Chambers a church building on the North East corner of 28th and Morris Sts., which affords ample space for a congregation of fifteen hundred worshippers, also for a large Sabbath school and several large rooms suitable for reading rooms and for the general purposes of an institutional church. The ground and building cost Mr. Wanamaker over eighty thousand dollars, all of which has been paid and the building was dedicated during the third week of October, free of debt, as The John Chambers Memorial[150] Church. I suggest, therefore, that we recommend to Presbytery the following Resolution:
Resolved, That a special Committee of three members of this Presbytery be appointed to wait on Mr. John Wanamaker and extend to him the thanks and appreciation of the Presbytery for his princely liberality and his magnificent recognition of the work and services of one of our most devoted ministers who has long since been called to his reward".
This was unanimously agreed to and the Committee appointed.
In the above record, the name of Robert H. Hinckley is that of the surviving elder of the Chambers Presbyterian Church and still an indefatigable worker in Christ's name. On Saturday afternoon early in May, 1901, in the presence of a large gathering of Bethany Church people and about five hundred children, ground was broken at Twenty-eighth and Morris streets. Besides addresses from John Wanamaker, Rev. Messrs. Wm. Patterson, John Thompson, George Van Deurs, and the laymen Edwin Adams, Robert Boyd, and R. M. Coyle, there were prayer and singing.
I visited this as yet unbuilt portion of the city on Friday, Jan. 23rd, 1903, which, besides being the 324th anniversary of the union of Utrecht, our great national precedent for federal government and the date of the dinner of the Holland Society of Philadelphia, was for me a veritable John Chambers day.
Starting from Thirteenth and Filbert, the site of the old Church of the Vow, and moving through the City Hall buildings and Wanamaker's Grand Depot and big store, I came to Broad and Sansom, where in 1830, towards the setting sun, there were but unoccupied lots, or only a few scanty buildings. Further down Broad Street, near[151] Spruce, I passed, having already studied the interior of, the new and imposing structure, the Chambers-Wylie Memorial Church. Thence southwestwardly, I walked to Bethany Presbyterian Church which, when started, was amid brickyards, vacant lots, and with a great area of the open country stretching to the southwest. I then boarded a Gray's ............