jpsultaremii I reminiscences of dr. brainerd. I Among the most noted Philadelphia cler gymen, the last twenty-five years, was Dr. Thomas Brainerd, of the Pine Street (H. S.) Presbyterian Church. There are few peo ple in this city to whom he was not known, and by all was he admired and esteemed, as a gifted and eloquent Preacher, a laborious and self-denying Pastor, a sincere and stead fast Friend, a true and devoted Patriot, a ge nial, kind-hearted, public-spirited, Christian gentleman. Than he, the Presbyterian church never had a warmer or more efficient friend, and yet his denominational attach ment happily never dwarfed him into aßigot, nor circumscribed his sympathies within the domain of a selfish and little-minded Secta rianism. Christians of all denominations loved him, for he fraternized with all, loving liis own church none the less. Of the great Union prayer-meetings, held at Jayne’s Hall, and other localities, of blessed memory, his was long an accredited master-mind. Often, when addressing these popular Christian as semblies, as ho alone could address them, did his face shine, like that of Moses after his ‘descent from the Mount, with the reflected glory of God, and yet “ he himself wist not that it shone,” for he was as humble as he was great, and only great because he was humble. We have never known a wiser man—one, whose speech was habitually so characterized by soundest judgment, safest counsel, and sweetest temper. Both in his method of thought and expression he was singularly original, evolving from his well stored mind new and striking ideas, when others thought they had exhausted the sub ject. His originality,too,wasneverfeigned; but always natural as the blowing of the wind, or the sports of a little child. For more than twenty years was it our privi lege to share the Doctor’s personal intimacy, and never did We prize human friendship more, or more deeply mourn its severance by the hand of Death. We have many of the Doctor’s quaintnesses stored away in memory. From them, we eull at random the. following: His Yiew or Preaching. —On a Saturday afternoon, there came to his residence a young Presbyterian Minister, a graduate of Princeton, who had only recently been re ceived into the sacred office. Of course, the Doctor invited him to occupy his pul pit the next day, to which he readily as sented. “And now, Doctor,” asked the j-oung Divine, “ on what subject do you de sire me to preach ?” This was the Doctor’s reply : “it is not my habit, when another fills my pulpit, to prescribe to him, how, or what he shall preach. But, as you have made the request, Iwill tell you what I wish jou to say. I wish you, to-morrow morning, to tell my people, that by nature they are ail sinners, alienated from the life and love ofVJod; that they all need daily to exercj.se repentance toward God, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; that they all need the re newing and sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost. Exhort the brethren to be steadfast in the profession they have made. Entreat the impenitent and unconverted to awake out of their sleep, and flee for safety to Christ, before it be forever too late. And if you are in need of a text, take the words of Christ to Hicodemus: ‘Except a man'be born again of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ ” “ But,” re plied the young Minister, exhibiting signs of embarrassment, “ I am sorry to say, Doctor, I have no sermon on that subject.” “ Then,” concluded the Doctor, “ I recommend to you, forthwith, to prepare one.” The young Min ister came to the Pine Street church, next morning, discoursed ably and earnestly on that very text, and on those identical themes, producing a profound impression, and ever after thanked the Doctor for having, in his own pleasant and effective way, fur nished the key-note to his entire subsequent successful ministry. How true the declara tion of Solomon: “A word fitly spoken, is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” His Practical Benevolence. —During the war, on a Sunday morning, there came to the Pine Street church, occupying one of the front pews, a soldier, who before Charles ton had lost both his arms. The Doctor had previously made his acquaintance at the Volunteer Bcfreshment Saloon, and taken a dorp interest in his history. Without pre concert and quite unexpectedly to the arm less soldier, at the close of his sermon, the Doctor called attention to him; quoted the words of St. James, “ He that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin ;" and the words of Paul, “ As we have, therefore opportunity , let us do good unto all men.” Ho requested his friend, Major 8., in whose pew the armless soldier was sitting, to con duct him through the middle aisle, to the vestibule, and asked a few of the elders to oecupj’’ places at the front doors, and receive donations for him, using their hats as the places of deposit. In this impromptu way, over one hundred dollars were received, suf ficient to enable the brave “Boy in Blue” to begin a newspaper stand, hire an assistant, and maintain himself comfortably. His Patriotism.— On a Thanksgiving Day, during the war, at the close of a delight ful discourse, combining fervent piety, with purest patriotism, the Doctor remarked, “ Before I dismiss the audience, I have a re quest to make of the choir,, which is, that they will sing the Star Spangled Banner , and if there be any one in the audience, to whom it is an offence, he is at liberty now to retire.” The grand national anthem was performed by the organist and choir with thrillingeffeet, the entire audience remaining, and rising to their feet. Let it not be supposed that a solitary worshipper went away offended, for the Doctor had a way of saying and doing things, that nobody else has, and doing them with entire impunity. —Lutheran Observer. THE AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1867. EEVIYAL IN THE MINISTRY. The infusion of new life into the ministry ought to be the object of more direct and special effort, as well as of more united and fervent prayer. To the students, the preachers, the ministers of the Christian church, the prayers of the Christians ought more largely to be directed. It is a .living ministry that our country needs; and with out such a ministry it cannot long expect to escape the judgments of God. We need men that will spend and be spent —that will labor and pray —that will watch and weep for souls. “When do you intend to stop?” was the question once put by a friend to Rowland Hill. “Hot till we have carried all before us,” was the prompt reply. Such is our answer too. The fields are vast, the grain whitens, the harvest waves; and through grace we shall go forth with our sickles, never to rest till we shall lie down where the Lamb himself shall lead us, by the living fountains of water, and where God shall wipe off the sweat of toil from our weary foreheads, and dry up all the tears of earth from our weeping eyes. Some of us are young and fresh; many days may yet be, in the providence of God, before us. These must be days of strenuous, ceaseless, persevering, and, if God bless us, successful toil. We shall labor .till we are worn out and laid to rest. Many of our readers have seen, we doubt not, a small volume of Vincent, the non conformist minister, respecting the great plague and fire in London. Its title is “ God’s Terrible Voice in the City.” In it there is a description of the manner in which the faithful ministers who remained amid the danger discharged their solemn duties to the dying inhabitants, and of the manner in which the terror-stricken multitudes hung with breathless eagerness upon their lips, to drink in salvation ere the dreaded pesti lence had swept them away to the tomb. Churches were flung*open, but the pulpits were silent, for there was none to occupy them; the hirelings had fled. Then did God’s faithful band of persecuted ones come forth from their hiding-places to fill the for saken pulpits. Then did they stand up in the midst of the dying and the dead, to pro claim eternal life to men who were expect ing death before the morrow. They preached in season and out of season. Week-day or Sabbath was the same to them. The hour might be canonical or uncanonieal, it mat tered not; they did not stand upon nice points of ecclesiastical regularity or irregu larity; they lifted up their voices like a trumpet, and spared not. Every sermon might be their last. Graves were lying open around them; life seemed now not merely a handbreadth, but a hairbreadth; death was nearer now than ever;' eternity stood out in all its vast reality; souls were felt to he precious; opportunities: were no longer to be trifled away; every hour possessed a value beyond the wealth of kingdoms; the world was now a passing, vanishing, shadow, and man’s day on earth had been cut down from threescore years and ten into the twinkling, of an eye! Oh, how they preached 1 Ho polished periods, no learned arguments, no labored paragraphs, chilled their appeals, or rendered their discourses unintelligible. Ho fear of man, no love of popular applause, no over-scrupulous dread of strong expressions, no fear of excitement or enthusiasm, prevented them from pour ing out the whole fervor of their hearts, that yearned with tenderness unutterable over dying souls. “ Old Time,” says Vin cent-, “seemed to stand-at the head of the' pulpit, with his great scythe, saying, with a hoarse voice, ‘Work while it is called to day; at night I will mow thee down.’ Grim Death seemed to stand at the side of the pulpit, with its sharp arrow, saying, ‘Do thou shoot God’s arrows, and I will shoot mine/ The grave seemed to lie open at the foot of the pulpit, with dust in her bosom, saying,— ‘ Louden thy cry • To God, To men, And now fulfil thy trust: Here thou must lie — Mouth stopped, Breath gone, And silent in the dust. “Ministers had now awakening calls to seriousness and fervor in their ministerial work; to preach on the side and brink of the pit into which thousands were tumbling. Now there is such a vast concourse of peo ple in the churches where these ministers are to be found that they cannot many times come near the pulpit doors for the press, but are forced to climb over the pews to them; and such a face was seen in the assemblies as seldom was seen before in London; such eager looks, such open ears, such greedy attention, as if every word would be eaten which dropped from the mouths of the min isters.—Dr. S. Sonar. SECBET IHTLUENCES. The new birth of the soul, manifest as it is in its outward accompaniments and im mediate results,is among those secret opera-' tions of God of which the origin, process, and final result remain a sealed book to man. If hidden things belong to God, se crecy and impenetrableness are attributes of his operation. Not only in religion, but in physics, the action of God is always marked by obscurity. What in the universe is the special sphere assigned to God but the causes of things? Him we regard as the cause of causes, the great, perhaps in the strict sense of the term, the sole cause. Now the sphere of causation is the sphere of darkness. Be sults you know; of causes, properly so called, you are ignorant. Like that foun tain whose sources are deep below the ground or imbedded far in the hill-side, you see its bubbling water, you are refreshed by its delicious coolness, your eye rejoices in the lovely lines and delicate shapes of the surroiinding flowers, but you see not, you cannot penetrate to, the source. You know not where that source exactly lives, you know not how it is fed, you cannot calculate its resources, nor predict its ebbs and flows. So with ever j opei’ation that is truly divine: the moment you get beyond those secondary causes which are more properly a succes sion of effects, the moment you pass from the outer and benign results, and seek to advance into the divine workshop, the sphere of causation, you are stopped, your efforts become fruitless, your feet are as if riveted to the ground, your eyes become dim, even by efforts to strain into the thick darkness before them. God is there, and man cannot enter. feifniitif. VERY LITTLE THINGS. The watch-maker cleaned and oiled my watch, and I paid him his money, and put the watch in my pocket and walked off. Two days afterward I found that my watch had gained just a minute and two-thirds, by the clock at the watch-maker’s —just one hundred seconds ahead, of the clock, was my watch. So then I must touch the regulator just a tiny bit. I did so, and now my watch, in two days, gains just four seconds. That’s close enough for any man; and so I began to think about the tick and the regulator. The watch ticks: — In a second . . . ... 4 times. ■ In 'a minute 4x 60 . . . 240 ” In an hour 240 x6O . . 14,400 ” In a day 14,400 x 24 . 345,600 ” In two days . . . . 691;200 ” Have I got these figures right, boys? But my Watch made 400 too many, at first; and after I touched the regulator, it made each tick a wee grain longer; how much longer, think yon? Can any of you cipher it out? How I will only tell you that I lengthened each tick less than the fifteenth-hundredth part of a tick, or the six-thousandth part of a second. That is very small time, indeed, and yet my regulator measures it. It is wonderful how small some things are, and yet men can see them and measure them. Do you know what a “hair’s breadth” is? I heard a man say that a bullet “came with in a hair’s breadth of his nose,” How close is that? That depends upon how coarse the hair is. About thirty coarse horse-hairs, laid side by side, will cover an inch broad. Fifty hairs of mine will not quite cover an inch; And a thousand spider threads of the finest kind, will not be an inch broad, if laid side by side. How any of us can see a spider line, and so we know that our eyes can see the thousandth part of an inch without help from a microscope. Sharp eyes we have got, to be sure. But I once saw a man measuring off ac curately the hundred thousandth part of an inch! The finest spider line split into one hundred separate strands! He eould not see one of them, but he eould measure them. I saw him do it, .but I cannot tell how he did it, in words that you can understand. A young lady came into the room, a large room, and there was a pleasant perfume filled the whole room, from her handkerchief: Then she went out to another room, and perfumed that. She rode in a carriage, and the air was fragrant for a mile, as she rode along. Yet she had put only three drops of sweet-smelling stuff on her handkerchief? And I began to think, what a little, very lit tle part of one drop it takes to fill a room full of odor. "Why, I can smell the tenth millionth part of a single drop! That’s al most too small to think about. And my tongue and mouth can taste very little things. You have heard of strychnine, to kill dogs with. Sometimes it gets into whisky and kills men. It is very bitter and very poisonous. It is a pretty, clean, snow white powder, every grain a beautiful little crystal. Now, if you should take about as much Of it as will lie on half of a penknife blade—one grain—and throw it into a barrel full of pure water, and stir it thoroughly, and then bring me a glass of the water, I could taste the bitter! One grain in twenty five or thirty gallons of water, and you can taste it. And if you should put only nine grains—which is less than the fiftieth part of an ounce—into the .barrel full of water, and then put a little frog in, too, the poor little creature would have spasms, and kick around and die! So we see what a little, lit tle, very little poison can be tasted, that is strong enough to kill a frog. And we can feel with our fingers things that are too small to be seen. If your sis ter or mother, who has long hair, will give you just one hair from her head, you may look at it, and it seems all smooth and even. But shut your eyes, and take the hair be tween your thumb and finger, pinch it tight, and then pull it through from end to end, back and forth. As you pull one way, the hair slips along smooth as oil. But pull it the other way, and it feels rough and sticks. So you can tell by the touch which is the end that grew nearest to the head. Pull the hair through from the point toward the root, and it is rough; but pull from root to point, and it is smooth. And when a barber has whetted his razor till the edge is so fine that he cannot see it at all, he feels of it by drawing it over the edge of his thumb nail; and if the edge is the least atom rough, he can feel it, though he cannot see it. So the sense of touch is finer than eyesight. And the ear can hear very, very little things. Two musquitoes come and sing by my ear. The song of one is high and fine, that of the other is lower. One is a little fellow, and the other is larger. But they are both of them very hungry. The noise I hear is made by their wings, which move so fast that, no eye can see them at all. But my ear can tell that the litile fellow moves his the faster. And sometimes, when a little gnat comes squeaking close by my ear, I can hear his wings making a noise away up higher than the little hungry musquito. Some of you have a piano or melodeon in your house. Go to it and sound the letter C, in the middle of the keyboard. To make that sound, the piano string vibrates 261 times in a second. The C above that, on my melodeon, sounds like a big musquito, to me, and that tone comes from 522 vibrations. Go up to the next C, and the sound is just like a tiny gnat, right in my ear; and so I know that the gnat makes 1,044 flutters with his wings every second! and my ear hears them. If he gets fat and tired, or lazy, my ear knows it, because he don’t sing so high then. And it is very easy to tell the difference between a lazy gnat, moving his wings 950 times a second, and a brisk, hungry little fellow, fluttering a thousand times a second. By my ear I can hear a very, very small part of a second. And here I am back again to where I began, about seconds. My watch measures less than a fifteen-hundredth part of a se cond. My eye can see a spider line less than a thousandth of an inch broad. My nose can smell the. ten-millionth part of a grain of musk. My tongue , can taste the millionth part of one grain of strychnine. My fingers can feel smaller things than I .can see. And my ears can catch the pitch of a gnat’s wings, when they go a thousand times a second! We can detect things that are small enough to be “next thing to nothing.” But who of you all will answer my question ? I’ll put it again, in a few words: My wateh ticks four times a second. In two days it gained a hundred seconds. I touched the regulator, and now it gains, in two_ days, only four seconds. How much did I lengthen each “tick,” when I moved the regulator? — Thos. K. Beecher, in Little Corporal. HOW MOSAICS ARE MADE. A correspondent of the Morning Star, des cribing sight-seeing in Home, says : “ But the Mosaics seem to absorb the most time and money in the least space, unless it be the solid gold decorations. We saw a ta ble last week less than six feet in diameter, said to have cost two hundred thousand dol lars, requiring the labor of a large number of men for fifteen years. Upon entering the halls where this kind of work is done,. I could not doubt these enormous figures. Suppose for instance, a thousand of the hard est and most expensive stones, which will take on a high polish, to be cut into pieces three-eighths of ah' inch thick. These pieces are cut the other way into small pieces like shoe pegs, and where' the-shading, from one color to another is sudden, these pegs must not be larger than a needle- Mow the artist cuts and puts in these little pieces, selected according to their color, so as to give the coloring wanted as distinct as though paint ed. These pieces or pegs must be fitted so closely that lines of separation will not show, and set upon end side by side like types. They claim that ten thousand different shades, of Color are necessary; and in order to do this kind of work a man must be skil led in colors and shades as a painter, in oi'- der to place the colors properly, and theii.be the most careful and accurate of mechanics in order to fit the pieces, and then he must have patience enough to work oh the cheap est and coarsest pictures one year, and upon a fine one from ten to twenty years.” NATIONAL BANK OF THE REPUBLIC, 809 and 811 Chestnut Street, PHILADELPHIA. Capital, $500,000. Fully Paid. DIRECTORS: JOSEPH T. BAILEY, Of Bailey & Co., Jewelers. EDWARD B. ORNE, Of J. F, & E. B. Orne, Dealers in Carpetings. NATHAN HILLES, * President of the Second National Bank. WILLIAM ERVIEN, Of Myers & Ervien, Plonr Factors. OSGOOD WELSH, Of S. AW. Welsh, Commission Merchants. BENJAMIN ROWLAND, Jr., Of B. Rowland, Jr., & Bro., Coal Merchants. SAMUEL A. BISPHAM. Of Samuel Bisphain & Sons, Wholesale Grocers. WILLIAM A. RHAWN, Late Cashier of the Central National Bank. FREDERICK A. HOYT, Of'F. A.-Hoyt & Brother, Clothiers. PRESIDENT, WILLIAM H. RHAWN. CASHIER, JOSEPH P. MUMFORD. SAMUEL WORK, STOCKS, LOANS, COIN, AND GOVERNMENT SECURITIES, Bought and Sold on Commission, No. 129 SOUTH THIED STEEET, (Second Floor, Entrance on Dock Street,) PHILADELPHIA. GREEN« move • INSURE YOUR LIFE IN YOUR OWN HoiliANY AMERICAN OP PHILADEIiPHIA, S. E. Cob. FOURTH & WALNUT Sts. Insurers in fbis Company have the additional guarantee of the CAPITAL STOCK all paid up IN CASH, which, together with CASH ASSETS, now on hand amount to $1,516,461 81. Income fob the Yeab 1866, $766,537 80 LOSSES PAID DURING THE TEAR AMOUNTING TO $228,000 00. Losses Paid Promptly. DIVIDENDS MADE ANNUALLY, thus aiding the insured to pay premiums. The last DIVIDEND on all Mutual Polices in force January Ist, 1867, was Fifty id ox* Cent. of the amount of PREMIUMS received during the year 1566. Its Trustee are well known citizens in our midst, entitling it to more consideration than those whose managers reside in distant cities. Alexander Whllldin, J. Edgar Thomson, George Nugent, Hon. James Pollock, L. M. Whilldin, P. E. Mingle, Albert C. Roberts. ALEX. WHILLDIN, President. GEO. NUGENT, Vice-President. JOHN C. SIMS, Actuary. JOHN S. WILSON, Secretary and Treasurer. CHARLES G. ROBESON, Assistant Secretary. INDEMNITY FOR LOSS OF LIFE OR INJURY ACCIDENTS OF EVERY DESCRIPTION. TRAVELERS’ INSURANCE COMPANY HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT. Gash Capital and Assets, December 1, 1865, |396,858 13. PHILADELPHIA BRANCH OFFICE, 409 WALNUT STREET. The Pioneer Accident Insurance Com- pany in America. Where policies are issued covering all and every description of accidents happening under any circumstances. An institution whose benefits can be enjoyed by the poor man as well as tho rich. No medical examination required. Policies issued for amonnts from $5OO to $lO,OOO in cases of death and from $3 to $3O weekly compensation in case of disabling injury, at rates ranging from $3 50 to $6O per annum, the cheapest and most practical mode of Insurance known. Policies written for five years, at twenty per cent, diseount on amount of yearly premiums. Hazardous risks at hazardous rates. Ocean Policies written, and permits issued for travel in any part of the world. Accident Insurance to persons disabled by accident is like the Sanitary Commission to wounded soldiers in the field, providing he means for comfort and healing and supplying iheir wants while prevented from pursuing their usual employment. The rates of premium are less than in any other class of insurance, in proportion to the risk. No better or more satisfactory investment can be made of so ’mali a sam. Therefore —insure in the Travelers. OLDEST ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY IN AMERICA. J. G. BATTERSON, President. RODNEY DENNIS, Secretary. HENRY A. DYER, General Agent. WM. W. ALLEN & CO. General Agents for Pennsylvania, 409 WALNUT STREET. PHILADELPHIA. Removal. THE GIRARD FIRE AND MARINE INSURANCE COMPANY ' HAVE REMOTE® TO THEIR 3\ruW OFFICE, North-east Comer of Chestnut and Seventh Streets, PHILADELPHIA. GEO. W. JENKINS, Manufacturer of choice Confectionery. Every variety of Sugar, Molasses and Cocoanut Candies. Wholesale Dealer in Foreign Emits, Nuts, 4c., 4c. GEO, W. JENKINS, 1037 Spring Garden Street, Union Square, PHILADELPHIA. William J. Howard, Henry K. Bennett, Isaac Hazlehurst, George W Hill, John M. Chestnut, John Wanamaker.
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