Recollections of a Long Life: An AutobiographyCuyler, Theodore L. (Theodore Ledyard)
Religion
Recollections of a Long Life: An Autobiography
Cuyler, Theodore L. (Theodore Ledyard)
Clergy -- United States -- Biography; Cuyler, Theodore L. (Theodore Ledyard), 1822-1909
To those of us who knew Dr. Schaff intimately, one of his most
attractive traits was his jovial humor and inexhaustible fund of
anecdotes. When I made a visit to California--journeying with him to the
Yosemite--his endless stories whiled away the tedium of the trip. How
often when he sat down to my own, or any other table, would he tell how
his old friend, Neander, when asked to say grace at a dinner, and roast
pig was the chief dish, very quaintly said: "O, Lord, if Thou canst
bless under the new dispensation what Thou didst curse under the old
dispensation, then graciously bless this leetle pig. Amen!"
Another eminent scholar who was wont to seek recreation at Mohonk was
the venerable President McCosh, of Princeton University. Since Scotland
sent to Princeton Dr. John Witherspoon to preside over it, and to be one
of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, she has sent no
richer gift than Dr. James McCosh. For several years before he came to
America he was a professor in the Queen's College at Belfast. Passing
through Belfast in 1862, I looked in for a few moments at the Irish
Presbyterian General Assembly, which was convened in Dr. Cook's church,
and said to a man: "Whom can you show me here?" Pointing to a tall,
somewhat stooping figure, standing near the pulpit, he said: "There is
McCosh." I replied: "It is worth coming here to see the brightest man in
Ireland." What a great, all-round, fully equipped, many-sided mass of
splendid manhood he was! What a complete combination of philosopher,
theologian, preacher, scholar, and college president all rolled into
one! During the twenty years of his brilliant career at Princeton he
displayed much of Jonathan Edwards' metaphysical acumen, of John
Witherspoon's wisdom, Samuel Davies' fervor and Dr. "Johnny" McLean's
kindness of heart; the best qualities of his predecessors were combined
in him. He came here a Scotchman at the age of fifty-seven, and in a
year he became, as Paddy said, "a native American."
To my mind the chief glory of Dr. McCosh's presidency at Princeton was
the fervid interest he felt in the religious welfare of his students. He
often invited me to come over and deliver sermons to them, and
occasionally a temperance address; for he was a zealous teetotaler and
prohibitionist, and I always lodged with him at his house. As I turn
over my book of correspondence I find many brief letters from him. In
the following one he refers to the remarkable revival in the college in
the winter and early spring of 1870:
COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY, PRINCETON, Jan. 9, 1873.
_My dear Dr. Cuyler:_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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