Well, it's good to be here this evening. I've been looking forward to this, and I mean that. I've heard of this part of the country for a long time. I had the privilege 11 or 12 years ago of taking my first group of guinea pigs, they really were guinea pigs, on a trip to Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina. And among them were Sonny and Patsy and granddaughter and that gentleman right there, Sam, and a host of others. It was March and it turned out to be a bit nasty in Columbia and Charleston, but we still had a good time. And I got to see Sonny and Dr. John Richard DeWitt. had to renew their long friendship and introduced the Peasters to Mrs. Ann Gerrido Blackburn Fryga, the great-granddaughter of John Gerrido, whom I'll speak to tomorrow morning. She's still alive, 93 years old in December. Still loves the Lord and still serves and enjoys her family history. We had a good time on that trip. Hopefully, I can share just a little bit of that. It's a lot of fun to do that out on site. That's the reason when I teach still for the seminary, I teach three classes, one in the fall, one in the spring, then I do a January class for one week on Presbyterian history. I cover everything from Scotland to Charleston. It's fast and furious. And two days of that are out on the road. We go to Columbia and Dr. DeWitt does a one hour, about an hour and a half session with us to talk about the history of First Presbyterian Columbia. And mostly he talks about Benjamin Morgan Palmer, since he got to preach in that pulpit. And then we go on to Charleston. We spend two days out on the road, and it's a lot of fun. So I'll try to make some of that alive for you. I brought pictures on my computer. I didn't know what the venue would be. I thought I might plug it in, but no. So you won't get to see their faces. I'll try to paint their faces for you in some of those places they preached and did their work. Let me tell you about myself. It's always good, I find, that people know who you are. I grew up on a farm in Alabama. There's a lot of funny stories to tell about that, but that's not for tonight. More importantly than growing up on a farm, I grew up in a godly Christian home. Baptist parents. My dad was my pastor all my young life. I went into banking out of college. I was in banking for seven years. I met one of my colleagues just two or three years ago. We were together and he was my president. I was the vice president of this bank. He was 30 something and I was 25 when I was the vice president. I told him when I saw him a couple of years ago, I said, man, you're crazy. What were you thinking? It was just God, that's all. I had a good time, but God pressed upon my heart to preach the gospel. At LSU one summer, during their Banking School of the South, I just looked around and I realized, this is not what I want to do. I need to do what God wants me to do. Nothing wrong with banking, it's a perfectly good industry, but it was to preach the gospel. So I went back and I announced it to my to my fellow officers of the bank. So I took off for seminary. My then pastor and my dad both said, well, you could go to Southern Baptist Seminary. It's the mother seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention. I grew up Southern Baptist. And you can still pick and choose. There are liberals up there, but you'll be all right. You can work your way through it. So I went up and the opening convocation President Roy Honeycutt declared a holy war against fundamentalism and fundamentalist in the SBC. I took that rather personally. And the next day the Lesbian Gay Forum on campus began recruiting to go to the Southern Baptist Convention. I could go on, it gets worse. That was 1985. I knew by December this was not the place for me. The one course in Greek that I was required to have. I had the one course in Hebrew I was going to be required to have, I would have in the spring, and I knew that was not enough to make me anything but dangerous. And so, long story short, and there's some great stories of God's providence in there, I wind up in Memphis, Tennessee the next year at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary. And there I encountered some Calvinist on the faculty. One was Tom Nettles, who has for years been teaching now at Southern Seminary, the new Southern Seminary I refer to it. And Jimmy Millican and Lawrence Barnard, my mentor and historical theologist, a host of men. But that really wasn't what changed me. What changed me was studying Greek, intermediate Greek. I was given a choice to draw out of a bowl or something, I forget what it was now, the text that I would do my exegetical papers on. The first one was the golden chain in Romans 8, that God had already done all these things for us. I finished the paper and I was trying to think about this. The next text I pulled was Romans chapter 9. Now if you need your memory jogged on that, that's Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. Before they did anything, I had already set my love on Jacob. That's pretty definitive. You know what the third passage was? Ephesians 1, from before the foundations of the world. Now I'm drawing these. The professor's not trying to make me a Calvinist. God is. At the same time, I'm studying through the book of Acts in my New Testament survey. And the professor was using Jay Gressom Machin's model. Every time you get to one of those locations, Ephesus or someplace, you go and study Paul's letters to the Ephesians and what have you. And I'm encountering these elders. And I didn't know what an elder was. So I'd ask, what's an elder? Well, it's kind of like a deacon. I can't be like a deacon. They got separate qualifications over in First Timothy. Obviously, they didn't satisfy me. So by the time I finished seminary, I was a Calvinist, soteriologically, you know, five points. And I was something I believed that the Bible taught that churches, the local churches are ruled by a plurality of men called elders. And that was not fitting my Baptist polity. And I also believe something else from studying the Bible. Because somebody said, well, you're you're going to be a John MacArthur is what you're going to be. Grace Community Church, Elder Rule. I said, no, because that's an independent church. And in this Bible, all these churches are connected. And when when they make a decision in Jerusalem, it seems to matter to everybody. And people receive it gladly. They don't say, well, that's just pious advice. I don't have to follow that. So no, that's not. And so. I didn't know what I was, I just knew I wasn't a Baptist. Now, Baptist are OK if you're Baptist, it's OK. I mean, I love my mama and daddy both died Baptist and I'll see them in heaven and they'll be Presbyterians. My sister is a Baptist. My brother is a Baptist. But I'm a Presbyterian because I believe that's what God is. His book says so. But I don't know what to do. I'll tell you, I finished seminary. If you've ever, some of you fellows, I know Jason, David, others, you get to this point and to think about finishing seminary and not have a clue what you are. Well, I knew, but I didn't know what it was. And so a friend of mine who was in medical school at UT Medical School in Memphis, I played racquetball with him at Bellevue Baptist Church, and I taught him Calvinism. And if he didn't agree, I caught him between the wall and me. Seriously, he would testify to that. And I would convince him one way or the other. He called me one day and said, Nick, there's a guy teaching what you've been teaching me on the racquetball court in the student center and the church he pastors is providing a free buffet every Thursday for the whole month and we can invite friends. Why don't you come?" So I went. Free food and a Calvinist because I didn't know many, you know? I mean, this was like I wanted everyone, I want to know some. So I go and there's this fella with thin hair and an eye. Some of you are old enough to remember Jack Elam, the cowboy actor, you know, had the eye that floated. You never knew which way he was looking. This fella was just like that. And he was good. So when it was over, I went up while they were all eating. I went up and I said, Hi, I'm Nick Wilborn. Metamerica Baptist Seminary, but I'm not a Baptist anymore, but I don't know what I am. But what are you? He said, Hi, I'm Wayne Heron. And I'm at Independent Presbyterian Church, you need to come out and talk to me. So that Friday, no, the next Friday, I went to Walnut Grove, Independent Presbyterian Church, went into his study with his pantheon of R.L. Dabney and James Henley Thornwell. Somebody said I need to convince a wife to name their son Thornwell. Well, you know, that's what Wayne was planning to name his, but he didn't have a son. And so his daughter comes along and he tried Thornwella. True story. And Joyce wouldn't take it. And so he got Dabney out of it. So they have a daughter named Dabney. So Wayne talks to me and he says, man, you're a Presbyterian. I said, really? Oh, I forgot to tell you. Right about this time, I bought a set of books from the Banner of Truth called The Collected Writings of James Henry Thornwall. And I'd read volume four. And I already knew by this time, this is in between graduating and meeting Wayne, I'd figured out, but I hadn't told anyone because I was scared. I hadn't told anyone, I knew I was Presbyterian because I'd read Thornwell. And when I got through with that book and I looked on the dust jacket and it said he was a dead Presbyterian, I panicked. Really seriously, I didn't tell anybody because I didn't know what to do with this. So now I'm with Wayne, and he's convinced too, you know, you're Presbyterian. I said, well, what do I do? He said, I've got somebody I want you to meet. Next Thursday morning, 7 o'clock, be at the Shoney's on Park. We're in Memphis still. So 7 o'clock, I arrive, having this conversation with David earlier. You know where I'm going with this one already. I arrive, and this little short fella about the size of James Henley Thornville driving a 240Z, wheeled into the parking lot with nice stiff pressed collar, nice stiff pressed khakis, penny loafers. That's why I dress the way I do. And he said, hey, I'm Bebo. And I said, I'm Nick. He said, I'm Bebo Elkin. Come on, let's go eat. So Wayne and Bebo They get me. They've got me now. So Bebo said, what are you doing next Sunday? I said, well, I have to preach in the morning. He said, well, after you preach, come to Jackson. So I drove to Jackson. So we went to First Presbyterian that evening to worship. And I stayed at his house. And the next day, he took me to the circuit to the RUF campuses. We drove 49 to Hattiesburg, to Southern Miss, and went to Bellhaven. The next day he said, well I had planned to send you home today to pack your bags to come to Mississippi to be a Presbyterian RUF campus minister. But you need to go do your Ph.D. So I'm not going to even bring it up. You just need to go do a Ph.D. Well that was really bad. Now I know I'm Presbyterian and I still got nothing to do except go do a Ph.D. Well, in God's providence, I did. And Bebo and Wayne and I have been good friends. That's why I'm Presbyterian. Bebo Elkin. Many of you in this room, I can tell by your faces, even before I named his name, I described him pretty well, didn't I? And I owe him a good deal. He's a good friend and many a good memories from Bebo. That's how I became Presbyterian was as you can see the short answer when somebody says how did you become Presbyterian is my Bible. Because if you go back to where I started that's it really just the scriptures. But that sounds kind of arrogant to some people and condescending so I don't just usually hit people with that one. I wait a while. So I've waited a while now. That's why I'm Presbyterian because I believe it's what the Bible teaches. I'm very indebted to a lot of people. My third child is Ian Boyce Wilborn, named Ian for Ian Murray, whom I've never met. I know you know him. But my prayer for Ian is that he'll grow up to love the great old Puritan and Scottish Presbyterian literature and propagate it. And Boyce is his middle name because I had the privilege of sitting under the ministry of Jim Boyce, James Montgomery Boyce in Philadelphia when I was at Westminster doing my PhD. I learned enough about Boyce to know that he and I didn't agree on everything, but I also learned enough about his pastoral ministry that I was convinced that if this Calvinist can preach on Moody Radio Network to dispensationalists day after day after day and win them to Calvinistic thought I'd love to have a son that could do that. And so I'm praying that Ian Boyce Wilborn will be one of those great men of God. It's not that I not pray that for my other son as well, but you can join me in those prayers. Well, all right. That's who I am in a nutshell. I have a wife, only one. Her name is Carol, and she is a godly lady. I thank her every time she lets me go off on these trips or over the mountain to teach at the seminary, because a lot of wives wouldn't put up with me traveling as much as I do. And a lot of sessions, I bring you greetings from Covenant Presbyterian Church. They're very gracious to let me teach and travel and do these kind of things, and I appreciate them. And they do send their greetings to you as a sister church. Well, I'm here to talk about four. dead Presbyterians who were indeed monumental men. One of the things Bebo Elkin taught me early on was we all have our clay toes. Every church has its clay toes. We all as individuals have one or two. We don't usually know it until they crumble, but we have them. These men had them. I'll point out some of those things. Here tonight, not in an academic setting to critique them as much as to learn from them and hopefully to encourage you to want to know more about them. There are some good books that you can do that. I'll be quoting from some. I'll read from some and encourage you to get those. Let me begin by reading a quote from B.M. Palmer. This is one of those last minute additions to the agenda. This afternoon in the airplane, I thought of something that Palmer wrote in this wonderful little book that's not been republished. Thankfully, I had it in electronic form. I'm a dinosaur, but I do use electronics. This is in his little book called Formation of Character. It was written to young men. In New Orleans in the 1880s, 25 young men of First Presbyterian Church brought him a petition and laid it on his desk asking him to teach them how to be godly men. And so he did that over a course of time. He did this series called Formation of Character. And this is one of the things he says in the first chapter. He says, my young friends, allow me to close this lecture with this pregnant truth that character, character is the condition of success in all our undertakings. Genius, so often lauded to the skies, fails frequently for want of common sense to guide it. The men upon whom society leans for support are those of well-balanced minds, of sound practical judgment. whose solid character gives the pledge of faithfulness to every trust committed to their hands." Now, I couldn't describe these four men, James Henley Thornwell, Robert Louis Dabney, John Gerrudo, and B. M. Palmer, any better than that. These are men of character, and they entered every endeavor of life. with that character. And their faithfulness was based upon it and bore out from it. So with that, let's talk about them. And I'm going to do it this way. I'm going to start with Thornmill. I realize you may have been expecting someone else to start with, but I want to do it this way because I want to just take them as they deceased. And Thornmill died first in this foursome. And then R.L. Dabney. And then John Gerrido and V. M. Palmer, lastly. So with Thornwell. Thornwell was born in the Pee Dee region. My wife asked me, Yazoo City, why is it called Yazoo City? I said, the river. Pee Dee region, it's the Pee Dee River. It's over just south of Charlotte, North Carolina, going toward Florence, going toward Myrtle Beach, if that gives you the geographical context. He was born to a a Baptist family. His father was English, his mother was Welsh, and he grew up in that household. His father died when he was eight years old and left his mother to rear him and his siblings. And that was not easy. Her family, the Terrell family, the Welsh side of the family, took up a lot of the chore and helped her with the children, providing a home for them But that was not enough. And this is one of the great stories and this was not uncommon in those days and still is common today, perhaps even in this community. Three of the wealthy men of the community took up the cause of this widow and her children and helped her. And those three men saw, particularly in young James, a brilliant, capricious little boy. precocious rather. And he ends up being basically their favorite. Long story short, he goes to the College of South Carolina, now called the University of South Carolina, to study on what we call today scholarship from these three men. Two of them General Samuel and James Gillespie, Thornwell named one of his sons Gillespie, and William Henry Robbins, Esquire, a lawyer in that area. They sent him off to study and so he did. He went to become a lawyer. That was what he was planning to do. By the time he finished college, and he had studied there at the college with remarkable men. By the time he finished college, he went into a bookstore one day. This is rather reminiscent of Thomas Boston. But that's another story. But he goes into a little bookstore in Columbia and he picks up this book. He took it home and that night he read it. He devoured it. And by the time it was over, he was a Christian and he was a Presbyterian. And that little book was the Westminster Confession of Faith. And then he started studying the scripture proofs. By this time, he was convinced that his his calling in life was not to be an attorney, not to be in politics, but to be a minister. And so his patrons said fine that's what you you should do that's what we're we're fine with that he was a little concerned as you might imagine these men had paid for him to become a lawyer and now he was he was changing the deal but they were men of character and they understood that a man wouldn't be happy doing something he was not put here on earth to do So they supported him. He went off to Massachusetts. A lot of Southerners did that in those days, to study in the northern states. He went to Andover Seminary, got there and realized, like I did at Southern, this is not a place for learning. This is not good for my piety. So he decided, while I'm up here, let's go to Harvard. I've heard of Harvard. Go over and maybe study the languages some. He went over there and realized they didn't have anything to offer. He already knew it. And that's not him being a prideful man. You have to understand. I don't know if any of you have ever done this. You can probably find them online now. It used to be hard to find them. But have you ever looked at a catalog for a college, university in the 19th century and looked at the requirements? Not just the curriculum, but the requirements for entrance. Jason's nodding. He knows. He's heard me do this before. You have to be able to read Greek and Latin and not just read it, but understand it and translate it. We don't even have to do that to graduate from college anymore. They had to do it to get in. So he already knew all this that they could teach him at Harvard perhaps. So he comes back and is licensed to preach in the Presbytery there and goes on to minister and takes up the calling of two churches in Lancaster County, South Carolina. He was ordained. He had no trouble being ordained. He was a confessionalist. He knew his confession. He knew his Bible. Promising. Expansive intellect. Fervent piety. So there he is, an able preacher. If his intellect was expansive, his activity was was expansive as well. He liked to do things fast. He had a horse named Red Rover. I don't know why, but that was the name of the horse. And of course, traveling that day was by horseback or buggy. And he was also known to hitch the buggy up to Red Rover and go rather fast. In fact, one of his members said that he drove so recklessly that it gave our pastor the appearance of being a little fast. Now that was a concern to the parishioners, that their pastor would appear. That would be kind of like, I had a young friend, he was given a Mustang a few years ago as a pastor of a small church. He asked me on a visit, he said, Dr. Wilborn, do you think I ought to drive this? I said, well if you can't, I did the Spurgeon thing to him, I said, if you can't give it to me, I can drive it to the glory of God. And he said, well, it's kind of sporty and it goes fast. He was concerned how his parishioners perceived it. Thornwell had no concern. Two wheels around the corners, it didn't matter. He was going to get there as fast as possible. Until he met this young lady, Nancy Witherspoon. Nancy Witherspoon. She was the daughter of a prominent, leading citizen of South Carolina. You know what Ian Hamilton says about a preacher taking off his watch? It means nothing. But there it is. So, he meets Nancy and they become engaged to be married after a brief courtship. Her friends made him agree to sell Red Rover before the wedding. They were concerned for her welfare. So he did. And that was Thornville. in his early days. He was a great preacher from the start. He was unusual for the time. He preached about 30 minutes. This is what Palmer said. He preached usually about 30 minutes, although they, the sermons afterwards, stretched to the orthodox 60. So he eventually built up to the 60 minute mark. Except on one occasion. He looked at his pocket watch sometime during the sermon and realized he had been preaching for an hour and a half. And the witnesses say that he stopped and he apologized to everyone. So sorry that he had detained them, kept them so long. And began to put his pocket watch back and they began then, the crowd, the congregation began saying, go on, go on. And so he continued for another hour. And this is what one of the witnesses recorded. My father, a very old gentleman, was present, present for that sermon. A few days afterwards, he sent for me saying, I want to talk to you about that sermon. My son, if you ever had a doubt about the truth and perfection of the plan of salvation, you surely can have none now. I have been studying that subject all my life, but I never saw it before as I do now. Now I am ready to die, that I may enter upon its full enjoyment. So the witness, the young man, goes on to say he never was able again to attend church. Eternity alone will reveal the comfort and instruction which that one sermon gave to this aged servant of God. how it smoothed his pathway to the tomb and lighted up his future with hope. Scores and hundreds of others have been similarly profited as they hung upon the truth from his lips. In Dr. Kelly's Preachers with Power, he refers to Thormell's preaching as logic on fire. It was also referred to by contemporaries of Thornwell is logic and ignition. You get the picture of the flint of a gun and the explosion. Palmer said there is nothing so wonderful as to see Thornwell become lost in preaching the gospel. By that he meant totally preaching in the spirit, no notice to notes or to his audience, but purely preaching for the glory of God. Well, in 1837, at the ripe of an age of 25 years, the prophecies of his patrons began to be realized. He is elected as the chair of Bells and Letters and Logic at South Carolina College. He was a logician. and that didn't make him happy. He didn't stay long at the college this round. He decided, no, I'm called to preach the gospel, and he took the pastor to First Presbyterian Church in Columbia in the building that we will no longer see. Now it's been replaced. He will preach in that building eventually as well. It wasn't long. College needed a professor of sacred literature and evidences of Christianity. When's the last time Ole Miss hired a professor of sacred literature and Christian evidences? Probably been a while, hasn't it? South Carolina, too, by the way. His fellow elders, presbyters, said, you need to do this. So off he went. Left the pastorate again there in Columbia. went back to the college and stayed there for 10 years and is said to have been the teacher of the state. You see, he was not just teaching the affluent children of the state who would come to the college. He was also teaching the seminarians who would walk over a few blocks and sit in his lectures there on the old horseshoe. Rutledge Chapel. If you ever get a chance to go there, visit the old horseshoe portion, the old part of the campus. It's a beautiful campus. But he also had the state legislators right there down the street and they would come and sit in to listen to this young man speak on ethics, on philosophy. Accolades came from as far away as Scotland. Sir William Hamilton, the famous Scottish realist philosopher, wrote him, commending him for his work on ethics. This is remarkable. Thirty-eight years old. In 1851, after a brief hiatus from the college again, He'd gone down to pastor a little church in Charleston. It was amazing to think about, for those few months, Thomas Smythe, James Henley Thornwell being in Charleston together, just down the road. Gerardo had not moved into town yet to pastor, but he was just down the road. He goes back to the college, this time as president and as the chaplain. And the college was at the brink of closing. It was his leadership that brought it out of the depths of its failings and restored it. It became known as the Presbyterian College because of Thornwall and the hirings that he made during that time. But it also became known as the South Carolina College that was going to exist because he had brought back the integrity to it. They lost it under Thomas Cooper, the atheist. There's a great story there, I'll tell you real quickly. Cooper had been Thomas Jefferson's choice for the University of Virginia. But John Hope Rice, the great Presbyterian of Richmond, took up the pen against this atheist. And Jefferson had to dismiss him because the Commonwealth of Virginia was against it because of this Presbyterian minister, John Hope Rice. It's a good story, isn't it? Well, South Carolina took Cooper, unfortunately, and he just about ruined the college at Thornwell. In addition to bringing stability to the college during this time, he actually gave this series of lectures called Discourses on Truth. It's some of the best ethics you'll read. It's contained in volume two of the Banner of Truth edition of Thornwell's collected writings. It's also recently been republished in a paperback edition in a monograph, so you can just buy the Discourses on Truth from Mike Gaydosh and Solid Ground Christian Publishing over in Birmingham, Alabama. Let me read you how he concludes. When Bonaparte animated his troops in Egypt, it was enough to point to the pyramids beneath whose shadows they stood and say, From yonder heights, forty generations look down upon you. That thought was enough. The same great motive may be applied to you. The general assembly of the great and good and learned and glorious of all ages and of all climes look down upon you and exhort you to walk worthy of your exalted calling. Quit yourselves like men. Make this venerable seat of learning a joy and a praise and all the earth. Let truth be inscribed on its walls. Truth worshipped in its sanctuary and the love of truth, the inspiration of every heart. That's how he closed this series of lectures at the State University. A call to exalt truth. And what was truth for Thornwell? Well, Christ Jesus is the personification of truth and the way the truth and life. Jesus said. Asking the father sanctify. With your truth, your word is truth. Christ, of course, is the giver of that truth, so Thornwell, the educator, Thornwell, the preacher, he's a political man. While at college, under Thomas Cooper, he had opposed Cooper. Cooper was a pro-nullification man, and Thornwell was not. He was a Union man. And you find that in almost all the Southern Presbyterian leaders. Palmer, very much a Union man. Gerardot, right up to the end, right up until the war is declared, until the shots fired, they all were trying to keep the Union together. Why? Because they were constitutionalists. Now that's going to change once the war starts because they're constitutionalists of a Republican type, not a democracy type. They believed in the state's rights. They believed that states were the the dominant civil fixture. And so you find with him, you find with Dabney, a great devotion to the state once the war begins. By 1860, as I said, he's abandoned his hopefulness. He's asserted himself in the cause toward establishing a separate republic. And he's going to do it on the grounds of the Constitution. It's important, I think, and this is a hard conversation to have with a lot of people, but it's important to help people understand that for the Southerners, like Thornwell and Palmer and Dabney and others, this whole issue of constitutional republicanism was the driving force. They understood slavery was a very emotional issue. They understood it was an important issue, but it was not the issue. And you find that in Thornwell throughout. Let me talk about some of his theological emphases, because that's important. And I find them to be abiding importance for us today. Our book of church order in the PCA is largely indebted to James Henley Thornwell. He died in 1862, just shy of his 50th birthday. And it's amazing. I feel like a bum when I think of all that Thornwell accomplished. I think of Samuel Davies. Davies died just shy of 37 years of age. Another man for another series sometime. You think of Calvin. Calvin didn't live all that long. Robert Murray McShane, a young man. We need to be about the word. But enough guilt trip. Thornwell's adult life and ministry was established on the same bedrock foundation that the Reformers' ministries were, and that was the fount, the spring. The cry of the Renaissance, of the humanist Renaissance, was ad fontes, back to the source, to the fountain. That was Thornwell's. essentially a biblical theologian, he was very philosophical, but he was essentially biblical theologian. And that's part of the beauty of Thornville. There are times in the Charles Hodge, James Henley Thornville debates between 1840 and 1860, when Hodge has history on his side. I've written about this. And as a historian, you know, that's good. It's good to have history on your side if it's right, if it's correct. But Thornwell, though he knew history, if he saw the scriptures teaching to differ with the historical teachings of the church, he was a man that was satisfied with the word. And you find this on a number of issues. He was convinced. You're a to win or used to win a Presbyterian. Now, that's Latin for divine right. In other words, let me simplify it. Some of you don't need it simplified, but others. It just means he believed if we were to believe it, if we were to practice it, it needed to be in God's word. that we had no right to do for God according to our own imaginations. And so he set out to do that. And you see it in the debates he had with Charles Hodge. The practice of the church of the day was to have for the carrying out of the mission of the church to have these separate boards that would function with self-perpetuating board of directors. Yes, they answered to the General Assembly of the church, but they didn't have to. We see how bad this became when, in the 1920s, the issue comes up in the church again, and J. Gresham Machen ultimately has to leave the church because the church can't get the boards to answer for any of the bad things they're doing. Thornwell saw this. He saw this way before his time. He saw this was going to be the outcome of it. Hodge never saw it. Sometimes I'm amazed. We don't learn from the past. Years ago at a General Assembly, we were trying to deal with the issue of women in the pulpit. Some of you will remember when that came up. A very large, prominent church in Knoxville, Tennessee was at the very epicenter of this controversy. They ended up leaving and going to the EPC, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. It was on the floor of the assembly that one of the fathers of our church stood up and said, speaking against us, taking a hard stand on this issue requiring that only men should stand behind the sacred pulpit. to preach in the corporate worship services of his church. One of the fathers of our church stood up, who had been through the PCUS years, who had seen the women of the church take over large portions of the church. Some of you lived through those days. This brother stood up and said, none of our women want to take over the church. Let's leave them alone. I thought, how soon will we forget? How little do we remember? I'm sure in 1960, Rachel Hinderlight's husband probably said, my wife's a good godly woman. She doesn't want to take over the church. And then she was the first woman ordained as a minister in the PCUS. Well, Thornwell saw it coming, and he begged with the church on the grounds of scripture that only the church has been given the right and the privilege to do the work of the church. Matthew 28, go make disciples. Now that's not a commission to every individual. If we stood here and did the biblical theology of it, we would see that's a commission to the church, corporately. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, when Paul says we are ambassadors for Christ, that we there are the apostles. We are to go and make disciples. Now. God calls people. Vision for speaks to this issue, Thornwall is convinced, no, it's the church, the church only. Should be doing the mission work of the church. And it should be done through the Presbyterians, largely. We don't need a bureaucracy built up around this thing. Something else that he got out of this from his biblical theological approach to ecclesiology was that there's only one teaching elder in the church. I don't mean one numerically, but one office that's to be teaching, and that's the elder. And those elders come in two classes, teaching and ruling, but there's not a pastor And then an elder and then a deacon. Here's the beauty of Thornwell's idea. And here's where Hodge said, well, historically, we've had boards. Well, historically, we've had ministers, the Scottish church did ministers and elders and deacons. And Thornwell said. And you kind of see the sense of this, he said, OK, well, where are the qualifications for the elder? Well, first Timothy chapter three. verses 1 and following. Where are the qualifications for the minister? Well, 1 Timothy chapter 3 verses 1 and following. So where do you get two out of that, Thornwell said? I see one. Then we go over in chapter 5 and we see that yes, some rule. The preponderance, the weight of their work is to rule. And then this other one, the weight of his work is to teach, but it's just one office. my personal, humble, yet accurate opinion, Thornwell is right. And he saw the beauty of this. Once you do the minister, elder, deacon thing, you can't help but create a hierarchy. But when you do the elder, deacon thing, you have a complement. Because he also did a little work on the deacon, which his student Gerardo is going to pick up and really work on. We'll see much of this later. But all of a sudden you realize that the elders have the work of the spiritual concern of the people. The soul is taken care of. And with the deacons, the body is taken care of. That's the complete man. That's the bipartite view of man that the church has historically held. Body and soul. elder and deacon. He was eminently a biblical theologian. All of this, well one other area is the spirituality of the church. We were talking about this at the table earlier. What is the work of the church? Go make disciples, baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and teach them all I have commanded you. That's it folks. It's too easy, far too easy for us to get so distracted doing all sorts of other things that are good things. Thomas Chalmers, the great Scotsman, another series another time. Chalmers, this wonderful work in Glasgow, he took on to Edinburgh later with him and he said, Here's what we want to do. We want the church to do what the church is supposed to do. And then we want Christian philanthropists to do the work they're supposed to do. In other words, encourage the Christian men of the church and the Christian women of the church to take up their calling on their street with their neighbors. I can illustrate this. A young student years ago, a little church in a Kentucky depressed area, had the opportunity to buy this building. They were going to use the main level, the street level, for worship. The second level, third level, had some apartments. They were occupied. And he called and he said, here's what we're thinking, but I don't feel real comfortable with this. What do you think? We're thinking, we'll let the tenants stay and we'll make money off the rent. And that'll help the church. I said, well, first, my question would be, if we're in the Bible, do you find that the church is supposed to be a landlord? I said, now, practically speaking, what's going to happen when they don't pay? And the Bible says those who don't, don't work, don't eat. I said, we can principle that if they don't pay their rent, they shouldn't get a free ride. What's going to happen when you put them out on the street? You evict them. And then you try to preach the gospel to them. The stumbling block is no longer Christ. The stumbling block now is, oh, you're not very nice to us. You weren't being merciful to us. We can never, John Hope Rice argued this so well with the church in 1831. He said, please, in this case, don't let the slavery issue become such an He did issue that it's the divisive point. Christ must be the stumbling block. We must always preach the gospel. That must always be in the forefront. Christ must be in the center so that if people stumble, they stumble over Christ, not over education practices, not over the color of the walls, not over... you understand. And that was Thornwell. One of his great developments. He didn't invent it. He's been accused of that. The Scots practiced it. The Apostle Paul taught it. Jesus Christ is the inventor of it. The spiritual doctrine of the Church. All this came from his high view of Scripture. He had some great debates with Roman Catholics over this. The supremacy of Scripture. The sufficiency of Scripture. The church recognized the immanency of this man. When he was 35 years old, he was elected moderator of the General Assembly. This is usually something that we wait several years. This was his fourth General Assembly to attend, and they elected him as moderator because of all of these things. In the last year of his life, which culminated in August on the first day, 1862, he gave his son to serve under Wade Hampton in the Confederate Army, Gillespie, who would eventually die after his father, thankfully. He devoted himself to teaching theology at the seminary to the upcoming generation of Presbyterian ministers. He preached grace in the church there to sinners. He encouraged Confederate citizens and soldiers through a daily press and tracts that he published. He defended his beloved South Carolina on constitutional grounds. And he had a hand in establishing the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America. December 4, 1861, in very poor health, just almost a year before he died. He was there too weak to preach. They chose Palmer then. We'll talk about Palmer and the great sermon he preached on the cuff. Everybody was expecting Thornwell to preach and Thornwell got there and he couldn't. He always suffered from weak health. They called it consumption. It was tuberculosis that finally killed him. bring a letter called addresses to all the churches of Christ, which was read because he was too weak to deliver it. And they adopted it and then sent it out in the press to all the churches to read why they were established, what their business was about. I could give you a lot of examples of his devotion to his family, letters to his children, pleading with them to trust Christ. beautiful letters contained in the Life and Letters of James Hindley Thornwell that B. M. Palmer wrote, Banner of Truth is published. But probably none tell us as much about Thornwell as this account, 1859. He is returning from Indianapolis where he has attended the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA. Remember this is before the division. He's hurrying back because he's supposed to do the wedding for his daughter Nanny, named for her mother, Nancy Witherspoon. When he arrives, she's sick. Let me read some of this. Thornwell returned home from Indianapolis to encounter a great sorrow. His eldest daughter, he'd already lost one daughter in infancy. Nanny was 22. She had been taken ill two days before and within a week was laid in the tomb. His first meeting with her upon his return was affecting in the extreme, but as it simply said in the account from which we draw it, was too sacred for any eye, save those bound to him by ties of blood. It tells about the progress of the disease and how he would kneel beside her and read and pray and how He was dying. You have daughters. I have a 22-year-old Sophie. She's going to be married this June. I have to say, all of this I'm doing this weekend is new, not new to me, but I'm kind of like that. I have a lot of old stuff, but I do all new stuff every time.