Page images
PDF
EPUB

ASSOCIATE SYNOD OF NORTH AMERICA.

WHEN The Associate Presbyterian Church and The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church agreed upon a basis of union in 1858, and organized The United Presbyterian Church of North America, certain persons declined entering upon the arrangement, and continued the organization known as The Associate Synod of North America, which has met annually. It consists of 4 Presbyteries, 14 Ministers, 40 Congregations, 1221 Communicants. The ministers reside as follows: Canada, 1; Illinois, 1; Indiana, 3; Iowa, 2; Pennsylvania, 4; Ohio, 3. Total, 14. Divided as follows: Six are Pastors, eight without charge, as follows:

[blocks in formation]

"PRECIOUS IN THE SIGHT OF THE LORD IS THE DEATH OF HIS SAINTS."Psalm cxvi. 15.

DICKSON, JAMES-The son of John and Martha (Glendenon) Dickson, was born near Newville, Cumberland county, Pa., December 29, 1804.* He was from his birth a very delicate child. When about one year old, the family removed west of the mountains, and settled at Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland county, Pa. Some years after this, his uncle, Andrew McMonigal, then engaged in merchandising in Wooster, Ohio, when on the way to procure a stock of goods from the East, called with his father, and was very desirous to procure James' service as a clerk in his store. It was not found

* This Memoir was prepared by Rev. S. G. McNeel, of Pittsburg, Indiana.

[graphic][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

convenient, however, to accept the offer at this time, and he still remained at his father's house.

At about sixteen years of age the youth bade adieu to his paternal roof and the scenes of early life, and turned his steps toward his uncle's, at Wooster. He performed the wearisome journey on foot, working by the way for means to carry him through. On reaching Wooster, he found his uncle had given up merchandising and had retired with his family to his farm. Here he remained for some time; but, as he was small of stature and of delicate frame, his uncle concluded that farm labor was too hard for him, and procured a situation for him in a store in Loudonville, Ohio. How long he remained here is not precisely known. It was during his sojourn with his uncle McMonigal that he first became acquainted with the principles of the Associate Church, of which he was afterward to become so zealous a defender. Whatever he engaged in, even at this early period, he did it with his might; and it serves to illustrate his earnestness, as well as his quickness of memory, that here, in two Sabbaths' time, he committed to memory the Shorter Catechism. It was here that he had the first opportunity of hearing Seceder preaching, having attended on the ministry of Rev. Samuel Irvine, at that time pastor of Wooster congregation.

During the period of his clerkship in Loudonville he was taken sick, and returned again to his uncle's. Subsequently he taught school for two or three years in that neighborhood, during which time he studied the English and Latin grammars, reciting to Mr. Irvine. Having thus formed an acquaintance with Mr. Irvine and some other ministers of the Associate Church, who were led to a high esteem of him for his natural talent and gentlemanly bearing, they advised him to enter upon a regular course of study. Consulting with his uncle and meeting with some encouragement, he decided to enter college, and accordingly set out for New Athens, Ohio, where he entered Franklin College in the fall of 1825. His father was opposed to his attending college with the view to enter the ministry-not, it would seem, from opposition to religion, but because such employment was not lucrative -and on this ground withheld from him all pecuniary aid. Being thus thrown upon his own resources, he was compelled to teach school in the summer, while his winters were devoted to study.

Rev. J. M. Henderson, in reference to this period of his life, writes as follows:-"My first acquaintance with Mr. Dickson was about forty years ago. He came to New Athens, bearing a letter of recommendation to me, written by Rev. Samuel Irvine, then of Wooster. I was rooming alone, and took him as a room-mate. For some time he appeared to have no religious impressions of a decided character; he would sometimes come from our room to attend on family worship, and sometimes not. It was but a short time, however, until there was a marked change upon him-a change which I always believed was wrought by the Spirit of God. I think it was the next summer-the summer of 1826 or 1827-that he applied for admission to the privileges of the church; was admitted and baptized by the Rev. John Walker, for whose opinions he ever cherished a profound regard. He was licensed in the summer of 1835, and his first appointment from Synod was in the city of New York, in the month of October of that year.

The particular circumstances which brought about a change of heart in Mr. Dickson have not transpired. A characteristic modesty prevented him at all times from speaking much of himself, and this was true in his intercourse even with his dearest and most intimate friends. But whatever may have been the external impulses, we see that God was leading him in his inscrutable providence by a way which he knew not, in order to qualify him

for the great work of an ambassador for Christ. Having at length acquired a respectable literary education, he was admitted to the study of theology in the autumn of 1831. During the four subsequent years he pursued his studies regularly at the Associate Theological Seminary, Canonsburg, Pa., and was licensed to preach the everlasting gospel by the Presbytery of Muskingum in October, 1835. In the minutes of Synod for that year we have the following record: "On motion, Resolved, That a preacher be appointed to officiate as a stated supply in the second congregation of New York till otherwise ordered.' He labored in this congregation from October until the first of February, and in the bounds of the Presbytery of Philadelphia until the ensuing meeting of Synod, in May, 1836.

The following year Mr. Dickson was sent to labor as a missionary in the bounds of the Presbytery of the Carolinas, his appointment extending from August until January inclusive. The public mind had been for some time awakening to the heinousness of the sin of slavery, and thoughtful men were casting about for a remedy for this crime of crimes. While most of the churches were either shamelessly countenancing this iniquity, or excusing themselves on the ground that the subject was merely civil and did not lie within the limits of ecclesiastical action, the Associate Synod, as far back as 1811, had adopted an act condemnatory of the system, and requiring its members to mianumit their slaves. The act, however, did not prove very efficient, and as the Church increased the number of slaveholders in it also increased. Another act was adopted in 1831, declaring the sinfulness of slavery, and that no member of the Church, "from and after this date, shall be allowed to hold a human being in the character and condition of a slave." So long as the system was not directly opposed, slaveholders seldom attempted to justify the principle, and contented themselves with excusing the practice. They would speak very feelingly of the evils growing out of the system, especially those which affected the master. It was, they said, an evil entailed on them by the mother-country, and all they desired was a feasible method for removing the evil. But so soon as it became manifest that men in the North were in earnest in endeavoring not merely to devise a course to abolish the system, but to carry it out practically, then they were at once aroused to violent opposition, and justified the principle more strenuously than they had ever before plead for the practice. Those who were then members of the Associate Church were not less inflamed with zeal in behalf of the peculiar institution than their fellow-slaveholders.

66

[ocr errors]

As illustrative of the spirit which pervaded slaveholding professors, we quote a resolution, adopted, among others of similar bearing, by the Presbytery of Harmony, S. C., subordinate to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (o.s.), the same year that Mr. Dickson labored in the Carolinas: Resolved, That as the relative duties and obligations of master and slave are taught in the Scriptures in the same manner as those of parent and child and husband and wife, the existence of slavery itself is not opposed to the will of God; and whosoever has a conscience too tender to recognize this relation as lawful is righteous over much,' is 'wise above what is written,' and has submitted his neck to the yoke of man, sacrificed his Christian liberty of conscience, and leaves the infallible word of God for the fancies and doctrines of man. It had at this time become dangerous to give utterance to anti-slavery sentiments, especially in public, and the spirit was now at work which culminated a few years afterward in the application of a coat of tar and feathers to Rev. T. S. Kendall, for urging the necessity of enforcing Synod's act on slavery in the Presbytery of the Carolinas. After Mr. Dickson's departure from the bounds of that Presbytery, he learned that he

« PreviousContinue »