Recollections of a Long Life: An Autobiography

The necessary limitations of this chapter forbid any reference to many distinguished American preachers whom I have seen or heard, but with whom I had not sufficient personal ac...

When I entered upon the Christian ministry fifty-six years ago, there was no probability that I would live to see four-score. My father had died at the early age of twenty-eight...

"For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming? For ye are our glory and joy."

One of the richest of the many blessings that has crowned my long life has been a happy home. It has always seemed to me as a wonderful triumph of divine grace in the Apostle Pa...

During the first eighteen months after I graduated from Princeton College I was balancing between the law and the ministry. Many of my relatives urged me to become a lawyer, as...

Washington Irving has fairly earned the title of the "Father of our American Literature." The profound philosophical and spiritual treatises of our great President Edwards had s...

An enormous quantity of books, historic and reminiscent, have been written about our Civil War, which, both in regard to the number of combatants engaged, and the magnitude of t...

In attempting to recall my recollections of the eminent preachers whom I have known, I hardly know where to begin, or where to call a halt. I shall confine myself entirely to th...

In a former chapter of this volume I gave my reminiscences of some celebrities in Great Britain sixty years ago. In the present chapter I group together several distinguished pe...

To the laborious pastor of a large congregation some period of recuperation during the summer is absolutely indispensable. The cavalry officer who, when hotly pursued by the ene...

As I look over the changes that half a century has wrought in the social life of my beloved country, I see some which awaken satisfaction--others which are not so exhilarating....

One of the lions of whom I was in pursuit was Thomas Carlyle. Very few Americans at that time had ever seen him, for he lived a very secluded and laborious life in a little bric...

A few months after my resignation, the Lafayette Avenue Church extended an unanimous call to the Rev. Dr. David Gregg, who had become distinguished as a powerful preacher, and t...

As stated in the first chapter of this book, I became a teetotaler when I was a child, and I also stated that the first public address I ever delivered was in behalf of temperan...

Hymnology has always been a favorite study with me, and it has been my privilege to be acquainted with several of the most eminent hymn-writers within the last sixty or seventy...

The year after leaving college I made a visit to Europe, which, in those days, was a notable event. As the stormy Atlantic had not yet been carpeted by six-day steamers, I cross...

The work of the faithful minister covers all the round week. On the one day he teaches his people in the house of God, on the remaining days he teaches and guides them in their...

Washington Irving has somewhere said that it is a happy thing to have been born near some noble mountain or attractive river or lake, which should be a landmark through all the...

I have always counted it a matter for thankfulness that I made my preparation for the ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary. The period that I spent there, from September,...

Printers' ink stained my fingers in my boyhood; for, at the age of fifteen, I ventured into a controversy on the slavery question, in the columns of our county newspaper; and, i...