The only meetings of the Presbytery and Synod he had failed to attend were those held at New Albany a few weeks previous to his death. He wrote to his brethren apprising them of his feebleness, and assuring them that his work was nearly done. Synod appointed a committee to suggest a suitable repły, on the reception of which Mr. Dickey was deeply moved, at the family altar with choked utterance giving thanks to God that the lines had fallen to him in such goodly places, among such loving and faithful brethren, and praying that God would greatly prosper them. Suffering intensely in the closing hours, his peace was great. Although for twenty-five years afAicted with a pulmonary disease, his endurance was remarkable. He finally fell asleep November 21, 1849. The Rev. Philip Bevan, a licentiate of Cincinnati Presbytery, at this time supplying the New Washington Church, officiated at the funeral. On the following Sabbath the Rev. Dr. Harvey Curtis, then pastor of the Second Church, Madison, preached in the New Washington Meeting-house, a commemorative discourse from the text descriptive of Barnabas: "He was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost, and of faith."--Acts xi: 24.

Mr. Dickey's remains lie buried beside his second wife and three of his children, in the cemetery of the Pisgah (now New Washington) Church. His tombstone is a plain marble slab, inscribed with his name, age, the date of his death, and the text of the commemorative discourse.*

Of the man who so wisely and laboriously laid the foundations of Christian society in Indiana, the best estimate is pre

as the date of the organization of Evansville Church; page 11, for James Balch, substitute Nathan B. Derrow, the name of the "New Hope" Church, having been originally, and until 1825, “Hopewell."

There are such typographical errors as Samuel B. Robinson for Robertson, and Martin B. for Nathan B. Derrow.

It is also to be observed that Dickey makes no allusion to the organization of Concord Church, Orange County, Sept. 27, 1818 (by Orin Fowler), nor to the use. ful labors of Samuel Baldridge (1810-12), Samuel J. Mills (1814-15), William Goodell (1822), Lucius Alden (1825), and John Ross (1822-1876).

* On the announcement of his death in Synod, a movement was made to erect a monument to his memory at the expense of his brethren. The motion was opposed by Samuel Merrill, Esq., who said that he knew Mr. Dickey well enough to be sure that such display would have offended his modesty. Mr. Merrill suggested instead, that funds be raised for a hall in Wabash College, to be known as " Dickey Hall."

The suggestion met with cordial approbation, but was never carried out.

sented in the simple record of his career. It is, however, to be observed, how sagacious and determined he was in the advocacy of views which then were new, but now are generally accepted among good men. In his personal appearance, most unostentatious, his dress was usually homespun. Though in his later years he wore broadcloth in the pulpit—his every-day garb was of the jeans provided by the hands of his wife and daughters. Doubtless, the necessity of economy determined this habit, but there was also still remaining among the plain people of the frontier that prejudice against imported stuffs, which, during the Revolution, had been so violent.* Beneath such an unassuming exterior, however, dwelt a singularly broad and self-reliant mind.

The character of the man was indicated in his early and bold advocacy of the temperance reform. It has been asserted that he preached the first sermon in Indiana against intemperance.† A lady, who became his daughter-in-law, relates, as illustrating the propriety of such preaching at the time, that on one occasion, when a child, she was put out a back window by her mother, and sent with great haste to one of the neighbors for whiskey, “because they saw Mr. Dickey, the preacher, coming." One of his son's earliest recollections is of a stormy onset upon him by four of his parishioners, all distillers, as they were gathered under a spreading beech, after one of his discourses against the prevailing vice. "I expected," says the witness, "that he would give them a severe castigation, and was indignant, when afterward, with reference to the affair, he merely said, 'Why, I didn't suppose they would like the sermon.' And yet, so great was the influence of his teaching, that two of these men never distilled whiskey afterward. One of them would not even sell his distilling apparatus, but let it

*The Rev. James Dickey, of South Salem, Ohio, a cousin of "Father Dickey," went to the General Assembly at Philadelphia, dressed in homespun, and on a Sabbath was invited to fill one of the city pulpits. After ascending the pulpit the sexton first came to him, and subsequently the elders, to offer him a pew, as he was now occupying the clergyman's place. But they were soon surprised with a good sermon from the intruder. The next day the ladies of the congregation presented him with a clerical suit, but he gently declined it, saying, that where he lived the people would not hear him preach in such clothes.

The honor seems to belong either to him, or to "Father Cravens," of the Methodist Church.

New Series, No. 21.

6

stand and rot. In a few years, public sentiment, aided by a fire which destroyed one of the establishments, closed the other stills, so that intoxicating drinks were not manufactured within the bounds of his congregation." He met the neighboring ministers in argument upon this subject, and so ably and with such good humor did he maintain his cause, that largely owing to his influence, the region where he lived and labored banished intoxicating liquors from use as a beverage. His reputation as a debater in behalf of total abstinence was so assured, and the unpopularity of opposing him so well known, that a young man who had represented the district in Congress, and was an aspirant again for the position, declined to debate the question with him, though he had issued a challenge to any one who would meet him.

*

"Father Dickey" was always an earnest anti-slavery man. For several years he cast the only ballot in his township for free-soil principles. By and by, his convictions became so strong that, though he never introduced politics into the pulpit, privately and in debating societies he discussed the question, and ultimately won over nearly all his people to antislavery sentiments.† Living on the border where runaway negroes were numerous, he fearlessly preached from such texts as "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee" (Deut. xxiii: 15); and under his instructions the better men of the community ceased the lucrative business of hunting fugitives, although the prac tice had been thought innocent and necessary. The name of "the old Abolitionist," which those "of the baser sort" gave him, rather pleased him. He said it would one day be popular. "I remember Father Dickey," writes Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, chiefly through the warm praises of my brother and

* See Mrs. Stowe's Men of Our Times, p. 548; Cf. Reed's Christian Traveler, p. 152; Johnson's Forty Years in Indiana, pp. 12, 13, 15, and 17; and Crowe's Abolition Intelligencer.

† I have before me a thick, yellow manuscript, in the careful handwriting of Father Dickey, and entitled, An Address to Christians on the Duty of Giving Suitable Instruction to Slaves. The argument is tender and convincing. It is dated December 20, 1822-a very early period for such an argument upon the Kentucky border.

From Mandarin, Florida, February 5, 1876.

my husband, who used to meet him at Synods and Presbyteries. They used to speak of him as an apostle after the primitive. order-poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing all things.' He advocated the cause of the slave in the day when such advocacy exposed one to persecution and bodily danger. My husband, to whom I have appealed, says he remembers him well and loves his memory, but that he was a man that didn't make anecdotes;' always constant, steady, faithful, he inspired younger ministers by his constancy and faith, and the simplicity of his devotion to Christ. In my novel of Dred, now changed in title to Nina Gordon, the character of Father Dickson was drawn from my recollection of this good man, as described to me." +

The services Mr. Dickey rendered to the cause of education were also important. His own early opportunities for study had been secured amidst manifold difficulties, and he sought the more earnestly to provide for his children, and his neighbors' children, an easier and better way. In his first parish in Davies County he taught school. Until the division of the Presbyterian Church in 1837, he was an active trustee of Hanover College. Chiefly through his influence a wealthy Englishman, Mr. Thomas Stevens, was induced to establish and maintain a female seminary on the Ohio River, near Bethlehem, In a suitable brick building, erected by Mr. Stevens for that purpose, Mr. Dickey resided several years, providing a home for the teachers, and securing educational privileges for his children. The first principal of the school was Miss Longly, who, after two years in the seminary, became the wife of the Rev.

A clergyman, who was at one time a pastor in southern Indiana, and went back to New England after a few years' trial of the frontier, relates that on a certain occasion he saddled his horse and rode fourteen miles to lay his discouragements before Mr. Dickey, and obtain advice and sympathy. But when he observed how the latter was supporting a large family, without a thought of faltering, though in the midst of difficulties compared with which his own were trifling, he returned home without even mentioning the object of his visit.

† See Stowe's Nina Gordon, vol. i: pp. 300, 301, and passim.

The Presbyterian minister was almost inevitably the schoolmaster in the early days at the West. Scott, Baldridge, Robinson, Todd, Martin, Crowe-nearly all of the earliest settled ministers taught schools.

§ It is evident that in all the first struggles of the school at Hanover, he, with Johnston, was Crowe's "brother beloved."

Dr. Riggs, of the Sioux mission. Much was accomplished by the school for the whole surrounding region.

It is not surprising that a life so variously useful, and a character so strikingly symmetrical, have elicited affectionate eulogies. "He was always spoken of with great reverence by my mother," says one who in childhood was accustomed to see him at her own home. "I met him first in Presbytery," wrote another, "and I well remember that the impression of his goodness derived from others was heightened in me by the first day's observation. . . I was never with one whose flow of feeling savored so much of heaven." * "He has left a name," said Dr. Martin M. Post, "which suggests a wise counsellor, a true worker, a thoroughly honest and godly man. May a double portion of his spirit rest on his successors in the Synods of Indiana."

Art. V. THE SABBATH QUESTION.†

By REV. BYRON SUNDERLAND, D. D., Washington, D. C.

66

ONE of the latest expositions of the Sabbath ordinance is the paper of Rev. S. M. Hopkins, D. D., Professor in the Auburn Theological Seminary, read before the Evangelical Alliance, at Pittsburgh, last year. He concedes à Christian consensus as to the duty of consecrating one day in the week to the ends of physical rest, and moral and religious culture." 'But," he continues, "at that point the agreement ends. As respects the grounds of the obligation and the manner of performing it, there prevails a wide difference of opinion." He speaks of it as "the Sunday observance," and, beginning with the Sabbatarian Pharisees, in the time of Christ, he alludes to the dispute which then arose, and recalls the views and practice existing from that day to the present. He argues the

* Henry Ward Beecher, in Sprague's Annals, vol. iv: p. 519.

Published at the special request of a large number of the clerical and lay members of the Baltimore Synod.