The Presbyterian Historical Almanac and Annual Remembrancer of the Church

it by the authorities which he brought with him-all distinguished Southern statesmen and writers, from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas H. Benton. For this reason it was his wish that the new State over the river, Kansas, should be a free State.

Mr. Starr's friends were fired with an enthusiastic zeal to do and dare anything in the cause of public liberty. A public meeting of the citizens of Weston was called, in which Mr. Starr was assured of protection and safety, and resolutions as strong as he could desire were passed by acclamation, denouncing the assumption of civil authority by the association, and forbidding it ever again to exercise its tyranny.

But the Border War was not to be averted. Another association was soon formed, and called the Blue Lodge. In this association every semblance of judicial proceedings and fair trial was abandoned, and the sole reliance was upon deeds of violence. A band of more than a hundred from this association went to Parkville, on the Missouri, about nineteen miles south of Weston, and destroyed Park's press there, because it was advocating the right of Nebraska and Kansas to freedom. About the same time, on a certain Sabbath, the elders of Mr. Starr's church and his best friends informed him that it was the ascertained intention of the Blue Lodge to visit him with their vengeance if he should persist in remaining in the city beyond the coming Thursday. But in making this communication they pledged themselves that if he should determine to stay they would defend him if they could. Since, however, reason and argument had been given up and the resort was to brute force, they on the whole advised him, as our Saviour enjoined upon his first ministers, when persecuted in one city to flee to another. It was wise and faithful advice to one whose weapons were not carnal but spiritual, and he and his family left Weston the next morning to return to his father's house in Rochhester, N. Y., where he arrived in the spring of 1855.

Soon after his return he gave two lectures in the court-house, describing the scenes through which he had passed and giving the public an inside view of life in Missouri and Kansas; his lectures did great good, and aided the great Republican party not only to prevent the spread of slavery into the Territories but to secure the freedom of Kansas, notwithstanding the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.

On Mr. Starr's return he was invited to take charge of the interests of education in Western New York, and to solicit funds for the further endowment of the Auburn Theological Seminary, so that after it had been closed for a year on account of the loss of its professors it might be reopened with sufficient means to ensure its future prosperity. He took hold of these enterprises with his usual alacrity and zeal; and though the work he accomplished in the service of the Western Education Society and the Auburn Theological Seminary was the great work of his life, it cannot be set forth in detail, nor can it be accounted for in definite statements, but it is well understood that the institution is indebted to him for a very large share, not only of its endowments, but of that deep and widespread popular interest in it, without which it could acquire neither funds nor students.

Mr. Starr resigned the agency of the Western Education Society and took charge of the church of Penn Yan, New York, where he was installed June 12, 1862.

He was successful in greatly enlarging and building up the church and in doing good service in the cause of temperance; and as it was during the rebellion-in the cause of liberty and his country-after the war was over he longed to return to the West; and in April, 1865, he accepted a call to the

North Presbyterian church, St. Louis, Mo., and was installed soon after by St. Louis Presbytery. The condition in which the church was placed was desperate. Though the building had been erected for some years, it was heavily in debt. Soon after its completion the congregation was divided on the slavery question, a part seceding and forming another church; the smaller part was left to bear the burden, and when Mr. Starr went among them they were considering the propriety of selling the property; the first thing he did was to devise ways and means for paying off the mortgage of $15,000, as the first step toward ensuring the prosperity of the church; and at the end of his first year, in April, 1866, he was able to announce that the whole amount had been paid or pledged. During the same period not a single communion season passed without additions to the church, and its membership had become fully one-third larger than he had found it. He never allowed the efforts of raising money to interfere with his strictly pastoral duties. Not satisfied with merely delivering his church from debt, he raised enough money to repair the building, so that the audience room, Sabbath-school room, study and parlor were thoroughly renovated, and the surrounding grounds were put in order, making it as attractive a place of worship as any in St. Louis.

He found time to identify himself with every good cause: he took special interest in the freedmen, often preached for them, and established for them a mission Sabbath-school. He was ever ready to plead the cause of temperance, morality, patriotism and the Sabbath, and thus he usefully and unobtrusively labored on until a ministry of less than two years proved him to be a mighty power for good in that great city.

His labors were drawing to a close. In the autumn, a fever, slight at first, was developed in his system, and, though despite of it he was able to go about and preach, it finally overcame him. His last sermons were delivered on Thanksgiving Day-the last Thursday of November, 1867-and on the following Sabbath. The last public address he made was at the Sabbathschool Convention for the city of St. Louis. After that he was obliged to keep his room, though still able to sit up and look over his papers and converse on the affairs of the church, being anxious to have all the contributions for the debt and repairs paid in, so that he could feel that the work he had undertaken was indeed done.

It was hard to convince him that he ought to rest; besides, there was no ap parent danger in his case until the fifth of January. His disease assumed an alarming type and all hope of restoration vanished. Early on the morning of the eighth, his brother, beloved Dr. Nelson, told him that he could probably live but a few hours longer; he calmly said, "As pleaseth God." He declared himself to be at peace with God and all men, possessed with the confidence of faith and the limitation of honesty, his enjoyment of the sustaining and comforting presence of the Saviour; and sent his last message to his people, assembled at the early hour of 7 A. M. to pray for him. The message was borne to them by Dr. Nelson and the family physician, Dr. Barker, who repeated the message, "Tell them to be God's-to be God's— to be God's-every one of them-to stand up for Jesus all the time-to hate sin and love righteousness: that is all I have to say.

A few hours later he directed the following message to the lambs of his flock in the Sabbath-school: "Dear little children, I want you to be ready to die; I do not know when I shall die. To-morrow I may not be here-to-morrow I may be gone. Be ready that you may go to be with Christ-with Christwith CHRIST! All the children, all the teachers and superintendent-be ready!"

This was his last connected utterance. To his little daughter he had previously said, "Unto God-unto God I give you, my daughter. Blessed be God, and God bless my Minnie. He will never forget Minnie." His strength being then exhausted, he could only look the same loving and trusting commitment of his little son and his wife to their covenant God. Two little ones, too young to appreciate the scene, had been kindly taken under the care of the neighbors. Three other children's graves are in Fort Hill Cemetery, at Auburn, N. Y. He continued to sink until near midnight, January 8, 1867, when he entered upon the saint's everlasting rest. His remains were taken to Auburn N. Y., and buried beside his children in Fort Hill Cemetery.

He married in 1850, Miss Helen S., a daughter of the late Prof. Henry Mills, D.D., of Auburn, N. Y., who with four children survives him.

His death was a public calamity, and people of all classes and creeds in St. Louis paid visible demonstrations of respect to his memory. His own people adopted, as a fitting memorial to the beloved deceased, as a means of preserving his memory ever green in the recollections of the North Church, and to seek that entire consecration enjoined by his dying words-to be God's'-that the 8th day of January, being the anniversary of his death, be set apart by this church, to be observed to the latest generation as a day of solemn worship, when, morning, noon and night, the congregation shall assemble and engage in such acts of devotion as shall best promote the objects herein set forth.

E. A. HUNTINGTON, professor in the Theological Seminary, Auburn, delivered a memorial discourse, March 10, 1867, from which this sketch is mostly taken. He says: In private life, Mr. Starr was one of the most agreeable companions. His arrival at home at any time, day or night, was a season of gladness, the breaking in of sunlight, the advent of the voice of melody. It was his delight to suggest and invent sports for children and youth, and he had the peculiar art of making them feel that it was only fun to help him survey a lot, or set a fence-post, or plant a tree in the seminary grounds or about his church, for the public good. For older folks he had an inexhaustible fund of anecdote and story, so that he was the very charm of home and the social circle; and he possessed the gracious power of weeping with those who weep as sympathetically as he could rejoice with those that rejoice; and he could most happily turn the mind of the mourner to the consideration of the way of life and peace. And it was his uniform habit in conversation, especially with the young, to introduce the subject of religion, and make an effort to convince them of their duty to give their first and most earnest attention to the welfare of their souls. It must be noted that from the moment of his conversion it was his aim to preach the Gospel; and he never made this aim subordinate to any other. He advocated temperance and the abolition of slavery, just as he advocated the cause of Sabbath-schools, of the Sabbath, of ministerial education and of the seminary— in the interest of the Gospel and not in lieu of it. For this reason he loved the Presbyterian Church, the doctrine, order and progressive spirit of which appeared to him best to accord with the divine will and the course of Providence. He loved ministerial parity and a free Church governed by its own elected representatives; and he was opposed to every form of oppression and excess, because he strove right manfully to level mountains and fill valleys and cast up highways for the Prince of Peace; because he would remove all obstacles to any man's becoming a disciple of Christ and an heir of heaven, to whatsoever class or condition he might belong. It was the highest of all objects-a most grand and glorious end-that he consecrated

his life and gave it a sacrifice. It was zeal for the house of the Lord that consumed him. If he was beside himself, it was for God; or sober, it was for God's people. As a faithful minister of the Gospel he is in the enjoyment of that eternal life of glory, honor and immortality which is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. As a true patriot his name, embalmed in the memory and written in the history of his country, shall never be forgotten.

HENRY A. NELSON, D.D., professor Lane Theological Seminary, Ohio, says: "He was one of those men who go about amid the beauties and wonders of nature with which God has filled the world with their eyes open and their minds awake-who 'find books in the running brooks, tongues in the trees, sermons in stones and good in everything.' He was one of the liveliest and most playful natures of which I have ever felt the delightful contact, but perfectly free from any frivolity; and even in his most genial mood I have often been astonished and delighted by witnessing his readiness and earnestness and his tact in introducing the subject of personal religion to those whom we have often met, either journeying or otherwise. He was a burning and a shining light, but by his death it was only withdrawn from our sight; it was not quenched. As on a Northern landscape the daylight lingers long after the sun has set, so the instructive remembrance and the useful influence of a good man continues long after his death. Nay, even as the sun, during the hours of his shining, quickens into fruitful life many germs that will be matured and ripened and propagated in perpetual succession, so shall the influence of a good man's life never cease upon the earth. It is a labor of love, and of usefulness also, to recount and record what we can of the incidents of such a life, and meditate upon the elements of character which they illustrate, and to note how divine grace has wrought upon those natural elements."

Rev. DAVID MAGIE, of Penn Yan, N. Y., says: The most striking feature in his character was his strong conviction of principle and duty. Life was a reality to him, holiness a reality, sin a reality. Hence he had no desire to go round a subject; he simply asked, Is it right, or Is it wrong? If right, it must be done at any cost; if wrong, it must be opposed at any risk. No question involving right and wrong was a matter of indifference to him.

He was a

He was a thorough man: he advocated no halfway measures. fearless man once convinced what duty was, his path was plain. He had untiring energy: work was his element. He was never idle, and while life lasted he worked. He was large-hearted; he felt for others; none were too mean or oppressed or despised to lose his sympathy. He had a sincere desire to do good. If he could teach a slave, he would do it; or rescue a drunkard, or aid his country, or impress a truth, or lead a soul to Christ, he would do it.

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES, FOR 1867, (N. S.)

MINISTERS as follows, viz.: Pastors.......

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