The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-02-06

l be read with interest by thousands l of Alabamians who admired and 1 loved him:
 l Surely that was 8 useful life that
 went out in the closing days of the old year. For him, all things have been made new, where His servants shall serve Him forever. It was g. sad little procession that on Christmas day wend- ed it's way from the railway station to beautiful Hollywood in Richmond, ! the city of his earliest associations. If all his friends could have attended his I funeral or even those who could have
 said, 'He was the best friend I ever had" what a concourse it would have been.
 I John Weldon Stagg was born in Rich
 mond, Va, August r, 1884. His father,
 John Fox Stagg, was connected with the general quartermasters service of the | Confederacy and spent his own for | tune in securing supplies for the sol | diers. His mother was Sarah Ann Bra zeal, devoted member of Dr. Hoge's | church in Richmond. In his veins ran
 the best blood of Virginia and of Eng | land, though no one who ever heard
 him tell of his struggles to make liv- 1 ing and obtain an education wauld have ] associated those hardships with the fact
 of gentle birth.
 1 Certainly in this day of enlarged op- portunfty, no young man, with half the
 determination that young Stagg dis | played, can fail to achieve an educa- ! tion. For while he set type at night
 and went to college by day. snatching little sleep in the pressroom on a | table, with newspapers for a coverlet. He used to illustrate the difficulty | of trying to do more than one thing | well by telling how he once undertook to commit the Shorter Catechism to mem ory, mind flock of sheep and break
 colt at the same time, with the re- ! suit that he broke the colts neck, al- lowed the sheep to devour field of wheat and missed the first question in the Catechism.
 He drifted west in his teens, after having secured the rudiments of an education in his home, attended West
 minister college Missouri, in 1885, and received the A. B. degree, as we'll as 1 that of B. D., at the Southwestern Pres 1 byterian university, Clarksville, Tenn, ! in 1SSS His first pastorate was that | of the old Second church. Nashville, Tenn, where the publicans and sim ners, including the women of the streets, thronged to hear him. He was pastor at Bowling Green, Ky, for five years. of the Second Presbyterian church at Charlotte, N. C., for seven years, of the First church, Birmingham. | for six years. Then he became presi- dent of the Alabama Presbyterian col I lege in 1909, going last to the Orlando | church, Florida, in whose service he died. He was stricken last summer with tuberculosis and went to a sanitarium in the North Carolina mountains His | recovery was hoped for until the last
 week of his life.
 He was always interested in church education. While he was pastor of a small church in Nashville, he heard that Ward seminary could be bought for the Presbyterian church, and he proceeded to interest the Presbyterians of that city in securing the buildings, then took his vacation in drumming up pupils to fill it's halls. In Charlotte, the officers of the First and Second churches were one day debating how they might raise $500 for repairs on the old college building. when he pro- posed raising some hundred thousand dollars for the erection and equipment of new building.
 When he went to Alabama he be- came the virtual founder of the Ala bama Presbyterian college, of which he later became president. He was all ways pastor of the whole community | in which his church was located and l alive to every interest of the communi- was alien to him. He persuaded the cit l ty. Nothing that concerned human life izens of Orlando to build country club and lay off golf links as an added at traction for winter visitors, just as
 he persuaded his church there to en-
 dation of the visitors attracted. It had become the fashion in Orlando for strangers to go to hear Dr. Stagg. He always had more friends outside of his church than within because there were more people outside to be be- friended And no one ever sought of him in vain the offices of friendship, whether comfort or counsel. the stimu- lus to duty or the heartening against temptation, the securing of chance to work or the actual ministering of
 help to the sick or the needy.
 But he was first of all a great preach l have heard most of tho great preachers of our own church and not few of other churches in my time. But I have heard some sermons from pr. Stagg that were equal to any have ever heard. For straight-along iSunday-to-Sunday preaching. I would rather have listened to him than to any man have ever heard,
 Just to take one example that occurs to me, a sermon from the story of the lame man healed at the temple gate pr. Stagg's first division was the Kindness of the World" in which from the fact that the beggar received aims, he made all the admissions that any one could ask. and that some of us would be too theo1ogically timfd to make. concerning the natural goodness and kindness of the point. the sInsuf-