624 Chronicles of the Cape Fear Rwer

lives upon the bleak moors of Scotland. Your original members
in turn gave liberally of their scanty substance with their lives
of service. There was not one of them whose income for the
support of a large family exceeded fifteen hundred dollars a
year, and there was not then the full blessing of free schools,
which you enjoy; and yet they rejoiced in pinching from their
necessaries of life a liberal share for God’s glory.

I could not tell you without emotion too deep for words, a
memory too sacred for utterance, of the secret personal sacrifice
of a saint of God, who, I believe in my heart, did more than all
others for the upbuilding of this church, and in whose crown
of rejoicing there shines with resplendent glory the gems of
sacrifice and service.

Men and women of St. Andrew’s, take it to your hearts, teach
it to your children, that the foundation of your beloved church
was Christ the Lord in the hearts of His people, who cemented
it with willing service and personal sacrifice and who watered

it with a woman’s loving tears.
he first sexton of the Chestnut Street Church fifty years
ago was Henry Price, who is present and who will now make
his bow to the congregation.

Upon him devolved the duty on Saturday of opening the
windows, sweeping and dusting the church, and making the
fires in the two stoves in the rear of the building, and I was
delegated by my father to assist him, particularly in the ring-
ing of the bell on Sunday. Many a painful quarter of an hour
have I spent in tugging at that bell-rope, when my strength was
not equal to the task, but I recall this experience with feelings
of gratefulness that I was permitted to make some sacrifice in
the cause of a church which has been so blessed of God. My
younger brother, John, had his duty to perform, and a most
unpleasant task it was to him, because his was a retiring and
modest disposition and the duty which my father imposed upon
him made him conspicuous in the morning and evening service.

My father, true to the traditions of his Scotch training, re-
garded instrumental church music with disfavour and advo-
cated congregational singing, which he led with the assistance
of a tuning fork. None of our family thought much of my
father’s gift of singing, and when he broke down in leading the
psalm or hymn by trying to adapt a long-metre verse to short-
metre music, we boys slyly poked each other with unbecoming
levity, for which we were afterwards duly punished.

Peace Restored 625

After my father determined to adopt an old Scotch practice
of exhibiting against the pulpit the name of the tune which
the congregation was expected to sing, when the preacher gave
out the psalm or hymn, my brother John was required to per-
form the duty of putting up the sign, which he thoroughly de-
tested, and I would not like to say how many times he was
corrected at home for insubordination.

In course of time the inevitable choir was formed and John
was relieved of this unpleasant duty, but I think that box of
gilt signs is still in the possession of the family.

In later years, when we were divided between the First

~ Church and the Second, my youngest brother, William, chose

the duty and the privilege of joining his parents in their devo-
tions at the Second Church, to which they had given the serv-
ice of their consecrated lives. For years he sat in the foot of
the buggy and drove them from our home on Ninth Street to
the little building which has since become your lecture-room,
and in time he took up the work which was laid down by his
father when he entered into rest some five and twenty years ago.
How faithfully and how well he has served the Master and
this congregation it is not becoming of me to speak.. But I may
be permitted to say, in all humility, that we are thankful to
God and that we are proud of the record of our father and of
his youngest son in this beloved church of their choice. It is
also of much satisfaction to us that another brother has been in

recent years added to its membership.

This secluded sanctuary has been in peace and in war, in pes-
tilence and in famine, a refuge for God’s people. Only four of
its original members survive; the others have joined that “great
multitude which no man can number” and “which came out of
great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them
white in the blood of the Lamb. They shall hunger no more,
heither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them,

nor any heat; and God has wiped away all tears from their
eyes,”

“Ah, Christ, that it were best
For one short hour to see
The souls we loved,

That they might tell us
What and where they be.”

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