History of Randolph-Macon College, Virginia: The Oldest Incorporated Methodist College in AmericaIrby, Richard
History
History of Randolph-Macon College, Virginia: The Oldest Incorporated Methodist College in America
Irby, Richard
Randolph-Macon College; Randolph-Macon Woman's College
"At Haslup's Grove, in the seventies, in a great sermon, the rush to the
altar was so great that the enclosure had to be torn down. It was
pentecostal.
"I heard him on two great occasions. In 1876, along with Dr. Landon C.
Garland and Lovick Pierce, he was fraternal delegate from our church to
our sister Methodism at the General Conference in Baltimore. After years
of estrangement the two Methodisms were meeting again. It was an
occasion. You could feel it. The great building was thronged. When the
time came for Duncan to speak he threw his soul into the 'God speed
you!' of seven hundred thousand Southern Methodists. The audience for
awhile it seemed would go wild. The day was a great triumph.
"During that same Conference the princely 'Jeff. Magruder' organized a
great mass-meeting of the Sunday-schools of the Southern Methodist
churches in Baltimore. Bishop Vincent, Secretary of the Sunday-School
Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church, then in the prime of his
powers, General Clinton B. Fiske, and Dr. Duncan were to speak. The
speeches of Vincent and Fiske had been so superb that a gifted minister
remarked to me, 'I am sorry for Duncan.' I responded, 'I am sorry for
any man who has to follow two such speeches.' But I found that I did not
yet know him. He pulled out new organ stops in his great soul that
afternoon. His speech was a brilliant improvisation. The audience was
captured. Southern Methodists who gloried in the flesh were radiant.
"When going to New Orleans, in 1877, I met him going to Washington City
to preach the first sermon to the President-elect, R. B. Hayes. It was
not long before wires flashed to me the startling news of his death.
Duncan, Marvin, A. T. Bledsoe, Doggett, in a single year. Heaven was
drawing heavily upon our beloved church. Duncan's old pupil, President
Smith, took up the work he and the sainted Bennett laid down.
"The Randolph-Macon System of Schools and Colleges is a worthy monument
to the memory of our dead Duncan. May the graduates of these schools be
living stones in the living shaft, ever rising higher and higher to the
memory of Olin, Garland, Smith, and their successors, who spent their
best days for the advancement of Christian education at our alma mater."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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