CHAPTER XLV. ENTRANCE UPON HIS ONE HUNDREDTH YEAR.
The patriarch of one hundred years • 第50章
CHAPTER XLV.
ENTRANCE UPON HIS ONE HUNDREDTH YEAR.
The following description of the celebration of Father Boehm’s entrance upon his one hundredth year appeared in the Christian Advocate, and was copied into many religious journals, not only in America but also in Europe, showing the intense interest that clusters around the hero of a hundred years and the hero of a hundred battles:—
Father Henry Boehm, the old Methodist patriarch, entered upon his one hundredth year June 8, 1874, and the wonderful event was celebrated on Tuesday in Jersey City, at the residence of his son-in-law, Mr. Emley. A number of friends honored him with their presence. It was to the old patriarch quite a surprise. A good supper was provided, with abundance of the delicacies of the season. There was a centenary cake, having on it the figures 1775 and 1874. Flowers of rare beauty and odor were presented to him, and he made a most appropriate reply. On one of the floral offerings, beautifully inwrought in green, were these figures, “99.” The patriarch’s wrinkled countenance was wreathed with smiles; he looked as placid as a summer’s evening, and seemed to have “renewed his youth like the eagle’s.”
Dr. J. B. Wakeley was spokesman for the occasion, and delivered the following congratulatory address. He concluded by dwelling upon the character and labors of Bishop Asbury, and surprised Father Boehm by presenting him with a beautiful likeness of the bishop. Father Boehm took it, looked at it, and said, “Well done!” and then he made a characteristic reply. It was one of those rare occasions that seldom occur in one’s life-time, and can never be forgotten.
Address to Father Boehm.
Venerable Patriarch: This is an auspicious day and a joyful occasion that has summoned us together; we have met to celebrate the almost one hundredth anniversary of your birthday. Ninety-nine years ago, the eighth day of June, in the town of Conestoga, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a child was born, and they called him “Henry.” Few of those who then looked upon that little infant suspected that he would live to celebrate his one hundredth birthday. Venerable man! with your whitened locks, your wrinkled face, you stand before us a representative of the past; you connect us with ages and generations long since passed away.
We congratulate you on having been born in June, not only the loveliest month of the year, but also the birth-month of many distinguished statesmen and holy ministers of the Gospel. Your father, Martin Boehm, the friend of Bishop Asbury and of the “great Otterbein,” was a noble man, and your mother a noble woman. What a eulogium did Bishop Asbury, in preaching your father’s funeral sermon, pronounce on him!
We congratulate you on having been born so early. You are older than our Republic—even than the Methodist Episcopal Church, in its present organic form. When you were born “The Declaration of Independence” was not written. George Washington was then forty-three years old, a man comparatively unknown to fame; Henry Clay was not born till two years after; and Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun not till seven years after. The year of your birth was fourteen years before that in which Washington was inaugurated President of the United States, nine years before the Methodist Episcopal Church was organized, sixteen years before the death of John Wesley, and thirteen years before that of Charles Wesley, the sweet singer of our Methodist Israel. Then Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Boston, now imperial cities, were the merest villages. States as large as empires have been born during your life-time, and kingly cities have sprung into existence. “The wilderness and the solitary place” have been made glad, and “the desert” has rejoiced and blossomed “as the rose.”
There were then no steamboats, no railroads, no telegraphs even on the land, to say nothing of ocean telegraphs. Now we travel by steam, do our correspondence by lightning, and take life-like portraits by sunbeams. We whisper here, and they hear us in London, and answer back; and we cross the Atlantic with the regularity of a ferry-boat.
How the world has moved since you came on the stage of action! Continents have been explored, oceans and islands then unknown have been visited, the source of the Nile has been discovered, Egypt’s hieroglyphics have been deciphered, and Nineveh has had a resurrection! Wonderfully has the world advanced in art, in science, in discoveries, since you were born. It has made more advancement during your life-time of ninety-nine years than in any thousand years previous. The world moves; on its lofty banner “Progress” is written in capital letters. Compare the world as you saw it first, and as you behold it now, and how wonderful the change! The world has also made advances in morals and in religious enterprises. You were born forty-four years before we had a Missionary Society, (it not being organized till 1819,) and thirty-one years before the American Bible Society had a being.
We congratulate you on having witnessed the growth, not only of our country, but also of that of American Methodism, until now it numbers its millions. We congratulate you on having lived under all the Presidents, from Washington to Grant, and on having lived and known all the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, from the first down to the last. We congratulate you on having known the pioneers and founders of American Methodism: Robert Strawbridge, the apostle of Methodism in Maryland; William Watters, the first native Methodist preacher; and Philip Gatch, and Benjamin Abbott, and Bishop Richard Whatcoat, who died on your circuit, (Delaware,) where you heard his dying testimony. You knew Jesse Lee, the apostle of Methodism in New England, the first historian of American Methodism. You heard his last sermons at a camp-meeting, where he was taken sick and died in 1816; you heard his dying testimony, closed his eyes, and laid him quietly to rest. We congratulate you on having heard the great orators and preachers of early Methodism: Nicholas Snethen, Asbury’s “silver trumpet;” Hope Hull, the silver-tongued; Samuel Parker, the Cicero of the West; Leonard Castle, the Summerfield of the Baltimore Conference; Henry Willis, Wilson Lee, and others.
We congratulate you on having been acquainted with the fathers of the fathers of American Methodism. Strange as it may seem, you knew the father of Bishop M’Kendree, James M’Kendree, and have been his guest. You were acquainted with the father of Henry Smith, who for a while was the oldest Methodist minister in the world. You knew Judge Emory, the father of Bishop Emory; and the father of Dr. Shadrick Bostwick, whom Bishop Hedding called a “glorious man.” How this takes us back to the former age!
We congratulate you on having attended so many General and Annual Conferences, where you became acquainted with the great preachers of early Methodism. You attended the General Conference in Baltimore in 1800, where you dined with Dr. Coke, heard him preach, witnessed the election and ordination of Richard Whatcoat, and the wonderful revival of religion, such as has never occurred at any other General Conference; then the one in 1808, where you beheld the ordination of Bishop M’Kendree; you were also at the first delegated General Conference, held in the city of New York in 1812.
We congratulate you on attending so many camp-meetings in different States, “for the groves were God’s first temples,” and also on being acquainted with John M’Gee, the founder of camp-meetings in America. What a privilege to attend these meetings, and hear such sons of thunder as Bishops Asbury and M’Kendree, Dr. Chandler, John Chalmers, John M’Claskey, Solomon Sharp, and hundreds of others, immortal names that cannot die! We congratulate you on being acquainted with the great laymen and women who helped to give character and stability to early Methodism.
We congratulate you on preaching in so many of the early chapels of American Methodism. How those humble chapels contrast with the beautiful edifices that are now being erected all over the land!
We congratulate you on being the intimate friend and traveling companion of Bishop Asbury, the great apostle of American Methodism. For five years you accompanied him around his large diocese; you climbed the mountains with him; you forded the rivers; you nursed him when sick; you carried him in your arms; and such confidence did he repose in you that he made you one of the executors of his last will and testament.
We thank you for your “Reminiscences, Historical and Biographical,” which contain the purest history and the truest biography; in which you give us the best portraiture of Bishop Asbury that has ever been given. The Church will thank you for those “Reminiscences” when the sun shines on your grave. We congratulate you for being such an itinerant; on having traveled over one hundred thousand miles on horseback to preach the Gospel—more than sufficient to circumnavigate the globe four times. We congratulate you on having been so happy in your domestic relations. You had one of the best of wives; “her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praiseth her.” You have been blessed with kind children. Your daughter Elizabeth has been remarkably affectionate and attentive, which must have been a great consolation to you as time has shaken you by the hand, and the shadows of the evening are gathering around you. We congratulate you for having kept up with the times, and for feeling an interest in every thing that is going on both in Church and State; for not only living, but being a live man. We rejoice that you have been no croaker; that you made no invidious comparisons between the present and the former times. You have never inquired, “Why were the former times better than the present?”
We thank you not only for living so long, but for living so well. Your age is wonderful! Remember how much longer you have lived than many whom the world called old men. Washington was considered old when he died, and you are thirty-two years older than was he. John Wesley is spoken of as aged, but you are eleven years older than was John Wesley. Charles Wesley was also considered old, but you are nineteen years older. Bishop Asbury was considered old—you are twenty-eight years older than was Bishop Asbury, thirty-two years older than was Bishop M’Kendree, and forty-one years older than was Jesse Lee, when they severally ended their lives.
We congratulate you on having been so long in the ministry—seventy-three years; you are to-day the oldest Methodist minister in America, if not in the world. Sir, all who were in the ministerial work when you commenced have yielded to the conqueror of conquerors! “The fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live forever?” You can say as one of old, “And I only am left alone to tell thee.” You stand alone, occupying a position no man ever has, no man ever can. You have seen what no other eyes can ever see; you have heard what no other ears can ever hear. Yours has been a wonderful life, as well as a long one; you are a history in yourself; you are a splendid representative of the former generation of Methodist ministers.
We congratulate you on having kept your garments so clean. For over seventy years they have asked in conference: “Is there any thing against Henry Boehm?” The answer has always been, “Nothing against Henry Boehm.” Your hoary head is a crown of glory, being found in the way of righteousness. May your sun go down without a cloud, to rise in fairer heavens, and the twilight of your evening melt away into the twilight of the morning of an eternal day! May you be found among the number who, “having been wise,” and “turned many to righteousness,” shall shine in brilliancy that is cloudless and eternal! May you, when the voyage of life is o’er, meet Wesley, Asbury, M’Kendree, and the multitude who have gone before, where