The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1869-12-01
THE LATE. HON. C. A WICKLIFFE AS A
fHCHURCH OFFICER.

inCHURCH OFFICER.
| Tos litor of the Courier Journal.
l have ratified to notice the very special
honors pa memory OF the venerable Charles
A. Wickli fellow citizens, by the press, and,
| particular courts and bar of the Common
wealth of has so long been great light
His public as citizen have been eloquently
commemoi om the period-more than fifty
years ago lhe young soldier of the war of
1872 entere national councils to become the
peer of the !bours, the Randophs, the Clays,
and others kindred genius and spirit, in that
golden age Of American craftsmanship, onward to
his last public political service in the Peace Confer
earnestly to quench the flames of civil discord and
to preserve the union of the States.
Of these things have nothing to say that has not
been better said by Others to express my hear
y concurrence as citizen in the general eulogy OF
Governor Wickfe's eminent public services and his
exalted character as statesman and patriot But
allow me to offer my humble tribute to the as
knew him best-after he had in great measure re-
tired from political life. And this desire the more,
since, while the secular journals have been eloquent
in eulogy of his public services, have not found in
the religious journals any reference to his eminent
services and character as a Christian and church
officer l knew him best as Charles a. Wicklihe,
the venerable ruling elder of the Bardstown church,
whose name was found almost as regularly on the
roll of those present at Presbyteries and Synods as
that of any minister in the State, and with whom
a. Il A., no day
of darkness and trouble in our Church. Nor were
his counses less reverently received in the church
courts. For, blind and lame as he was, and bear
ing the weight of near eighty years, neither his
mental vision dimmed, nor his silver tongued elo-
quence Jess persuasive than when, in the full vigor
of ma Spd, courts and senates did homage to his
remaI tpowers of thought and uttersnce.
Th politically Unionist of the intensest
type, yet he was among the foremost to per-
ceiy liable tendency of the political deliv-
era General Assembly in that year toward
the and apostacy and the final dissolution
of led Northern remnant of Old School
Pm sm which has recently occurred His
pa Il experience, and the profound know
lei man nature thereby acquired, rendered
b n Kentucky as to the extent to which the
fa and treacherous fanaticism at the North
We run riot now that, by the action of 1861 1t
had freed itself from the restraining influence of the
Southern Synod, which had long held it in check
That experience and knowledge of human nature
also preserved him from the Elusive hopes of many
of his brethren that the men OF reason and con
science in the North would yet successfully resist
and gain the ascendency over the blind, creedless
and brainless fanatcism which had trampeed under
its feet both them and the Constitution He had no
faith in the further capacity to resist the usurpaton
and tyranny either of monarch mob civil or &C.
cesiascal, of the who have already once, twice
and thrice bought their peace by tame submission
and thereby conceded to the usurpers and tyrants
sort of prescriptive right, by usage, to
"Play such fantastic tricks before high heaven
AS make the angels weep"
He had learned his method of conserving consti
tutional liberty in the school of the American Revo
luton, whose first principle was obsta principiis,
and that submission to usurpati n in threepenny
tax is yielding the whole question
~i1ehce, Mr. Wickffe among the readiest to
utter the manly protest of the "Declaration and
Testimony in 1866, against the subsequent devel-
opment of the act of 1861 in the atrocous orders of
the Pttsburg Assembly. 1t was this protest which
at once alarmed the conspirators who were negotia-
ting the betrayal of the Church into the hands of the
Northern adversaries, whom it had driven out in
1885, and which determined these conspirators, as
necessary means to their reasonable ends to thrust
out the Synods of Kentucky and Missouri, also, as
they had already thrust out the Southern Synods in
1861. In this determination originated the infamous
proceedings which followed in '66 and '67.
Mr. Wickliffe was one of the four commissioners
from the Presbytery of Louisville to the St. Louis
Assembly of 1866-an ecclesiastical council to be
held ever memorable in church history, as Court
of Christ met simply to register the DEGREES of a
selfconstituted caucus which gathered, on the eve
of the Assembly, in secret conclave, to determine
what the Lord Christ should be allowed to say by the
mouth of His court about to convene! And when,
atne opening of the Assembly, by the caucus.de-
&combination of gag-l -law and mob law in the
resolutions, introduced and at once passed
e previous question, these commissioners
Presbytery were magned in the most
manner, and thrust out in contempt of
a worthy the pencil of West. AS the
Vi but still erect and majestic form of Mr..
" vas observed slowly passing out of the AS
81 lth his equally venerable kinsman and CO
cd 6ner, Mark Hardin, Esq, every eye in the
in, congregation was fixed upon them. And
up any countenance among those who had
bea trcked into the vote for expulsion, there sat
the sort of expression which imagines sat upon
the countenances OF those of old who heard the mys
terious voice proclaiming, "The gods are departing
from the temple" Upon the calm and beautiful
countenauce of Mr.. Wicklife sat the expression-to
which in part indeed he gave articulate uterance-
of the blind old Jacob, as on his death.bed he ex
claimed concerning the murderous recklessness of
his two sons: 80 my soul, come not thou into their
secret (the Hebrew is "beSodanl," their 'caucuS;"
unto their assembly mine honor be not thou
unitedl'
In regard to the subsequent treacherous effort of
renegadeS in Kentucky under guise of loyalty to the
Church, to enforce the murderous edcts of the AS
sembly, and thereby first rend the Church in pieces
and then despoil her of her temporalities through
any and every species of legal chicanery, Mr. Wick
life was among the foremost again to urge upon his
brethren prompt positive, and decisive action He
from the first predicted as alawyero rather point
ed out as the inevitable results of law in the hands
of trained urists-the re ults which are arrived at
in the opinions of Hardin, Robertson, Barnett, and
Jam -. And fully persuaded that men who could
atte enforce against their brethren the muir
der, which they themselves had denounced as
mo tous, must be utterly unreliable and reck-
less al honor and plighted faith, he saw from
the nothing was to be gained by attempting
to peace with them, while much must be