CHAPTER XI.

MEMOIR OF THE REV. SAMUEL DAVIES, FOURTH PRESIDENT OF THE COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY.

PRESIDENT DAVIES was born near Summit Bridge, New Castle County, Delaware, November 3, O. S., 1723. At that time Delaware was a part of Pennsylvania. The year here mentioned is given upon the authority of a table in President Davies's handwriting. The Bible, upon a blank leaf of which this table was written, was in the possession of some of President Davies's descendants, residing in Petersburg, Virginia, as late as the year 1853, as appears from a sketch of his life in the "Presbyterian Magazine" for that year. This sketch, although very brief, is very valuable, as it contains information previously published nowhere else, except in Dr. Foote's "Sketches of Virginia." The year of his birth, as given upon his tombstone, is 1724; and this has been doubtless the occasion of a like error in several of the biographical notices of him. He was of Welsh descent, and his parents were of humble origin, but persons of good character and fervent piety. The mother is said to have been a woman of uncommon powers of mind, and also eminent for her faith and zeal. He was named Samuel, after Samuel the prophet. The mother of the prophet called him Samuel because she had asked him of the LORD; and for the same reason the mother of President Davies called her son Samuel, thereby expressing her belief that God had heard her prayer, as, ages before, he had heard the prayer of Hannah. Like Hannah, we have reason to believe, she had solemnly vowed that if the LORD would give her a man-child she would devote him to the LORD all his days; and from the birth of her son she seems to have regarded him as a child given to her to be trained for the gospel ministry.

In a letter to his friend Dr. Gibbons, of London, after speaking of these things, President Davies adds, "This early dedication to God has always been a strong inducement to me to devote myself to Him by my own personal act; and the most important blessings of my life I have looked upon as immediate answers to the prayers of a pious mother. But, alas! what a degenerate plant am I! How unworthy such a parent and such a birth!"

In his early childhood he was taught by his mother, and when ten years of age he was sent to an English school some distance from his father's residence, and remained there two years. At this school he is said to have made rapid progress in his studies. For want of the religious training which he enjoyed at home, he became somewhat careless in his attention. to his religious interests; but he still made a practice of secret prayer, especially in the evening. And it is worthy of note that in his prayers at this very time he prayed more earnestly that he might be a minister of the gospel than for any other thing. In the fifteenth year of his age he made a public profession of his faith in Christ, and entered upon a course of study preparatory to the ministry. Two or three of his biographers speak of his uniting with the Church, forgetting that in virtue of his birth he was a member of the Church and that by his baptism in infancy he had been recognized as a member.

His classical studies were begun under the tuition of the Rev. Abel Morgan, a Baptist preacher of much note at that time; but he was afterwards sent to the school of the Rev. Samuel Blair, at Fagg's Manor, Chester County, Pennsylvania. Under the guidance of this learned and eloquent divine he was trained for the gospel ministry, and on the 30th of July, 1746, being in the twenty-third year of his age, he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of New Castle. By this same Presbytery he was ordained as an evangelist, February 19, 1747, O. S., with a view to his visiting the Presbyterian churches in Virginia. On the 23d of October, 1746, he was married to Miss Sarah Kirkpatrick, who, with her infant son, died on the 16th of September, 1747. At the time of his licensure his health was quite feeble, and it continued so for some years: still, he was resolved that

while life and sufficient strength remained he would devote himself earnestly to the work of preaching the gospel; and this he did with eminent success. His going to Virginia was not of his own motion, but in compliance with the advice and desire of the Presbytery.

Before visiting Hanover, which was more especially to be the field of his labor, he visited Williamsburg, the seat of the Colonial Government, and petitioned the General Court to grant him "a license to officiate in and about Hanover at four meeting-houses." The court hesitated; but the Governor, the Honorable Wm. Gooch, favoring the application, the license was granted.

At this very time there were pending in this court suits against sundry members of the Presbyterian Church, for attending religious assemblies at unlicensed houses and listening to preachers who had not obtained from the General Court permission to preach. From an early date Episcopacy was established in Virginia, and the Church in this Province had been placed under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, whose Commissary resided at Williamsburg, and was a member of the General Court, and also Rector or President of William and Mary College. The first Commissary, the Rev. John Blair, may be regarded as the founder of the College, as he more than any other person was instrumental in obtaining for it a royal charter, and also important grants both from the King and from the Colonial Legislature. Dr. William Dawson, the Commissary when Davies applied for his license, was a liberal-minded man, for those times, and he is believed to have voted in favor of granting the license sought. Yet it would seem from some of his correspondence with the Bishop of London that even he was somewhat disturbed at the success of Mr. Davies, and at the numerous additions to the Dissenters from the ranks of the conformists. Mr. Davies's labors were most arduous, and no one but a man of resolute will and of great natural resources could have done what he by the grace of God was stirred up to undertake and enabled to accomplish.

Having obtained his license, Mr. Davies went to Hanover, and was received with outbursts of joy. "His coming," says

Dr. Foote, "with his license was like a visit from an angel of mercy. His ardent sermons refreshed the congregation, and his legal protection turned the enmity of his opposers to their own mortification." He continued at Hanover several months.

Of his mission Mr. Davies thus writes: "I preached frequently in Hanover and some of the adjacent counties, and though the fervor of the work was considerably abated, and my labors were not blessed with success equal to that of my brethren, yet I have reason to hope they were of service in several instances. The importunities they used with me to settle with them were invincible; and upon my departure they sent a call for me to the Presbytery."

The death of his first wife, which occurred about this time, greatly depressed him: this, together with feeble health and threatening consumption, disinclined him to settle anywhere permanently as the pastor of a church; and he continued to travel and preach wherever a favorable opportunity presented itself. Dr. Gibbons, narrating the circumstances as he received them from Mr. Davies, says, " Finding himself upon the borders of the grave, and without any hopes of a recovery, he determined to spend the little remains of an almost exhausted life in endeavoring to advance his Master's glory in the good of souls. Accordingly, he removed from the place where he was to another about an hundred miles distance, that was then in want of a minister. Here he labored in season and out of season. And, as he told me, he preached in the day and had his hectic fever by night, and that to such a degree as to be sometimes delirious and to stand in need of persons to sit up with him." (See Dr. Gibbons's "Two Discourses, occasioned by the Death of President Davies." London, 1761.)

In the spring of 1748 " he began to recover, though he looked upon it only as the intermission of a disorder that would finally prove mortal. Many earnest applications were made for his pastoral services. The one from Hanover, signed by about one hundred and fifty heads of families, came with renewed importunity, and, aided by the voice of the living messenger despatched by the people to urge their call, moved his heart."

He accepted their call, "hoping," as he himself expresses it, "I might live to prepare the way for some more useful successor, and willing to expire under the fatigues of duty rather than in voluntary negligence."

"It is scarcely possible," says Dr. Foote, "for a missionary to have gone to Virginia in circumstances better calculated to make an impression in favor of the gospel which he preached. In his domestic afflictions and bodily weakness Davies felt the sentence of death gone out and already in execution. His soul burned with the desire of usefulness, and his tongue uttered the earnest persuasions of a spirit that would reconcile man to God, and lay some trophies at the Redeemer's feet, before his lips should be locked up in the grave. He longed to carry with him to the heavens some gems for the eternal crown. The people of Hanover were ready for an elevated spirit to lead them on through common and uncommon difficulties, through trials incident to all men, and the trials peculiar to their situation from the laws of the province, complaints, ridicule, indictments, fines, and heavy costs of court, to virtue and eternal life." (Foote's "Sketches of Virginia," page 163.)

In his second visit to Virginia he was accompanied by his fellow-student and earnest friend the Rev. John Rodgers, who later in life was minister of the Presbyterian churches in New York. But, not being able to obtain a license from the General Court, Mr. Rodgers tarried only for a short time, and Mr. Davies was left alone to minister to the Dissenters in Hanover and the adjacent counties. The different congregations or assemblies to which he ministered were scattered over a large district of country, not less than sixty miles in length, and the licensed places for preaching, of which there were seven, were, the nearest, twelve or fifteen miles apart. A license for Mr. Davies to preach, at a house to be erected for the purpose in the county of New Kent, granted by the court of that county, was revoked by the General Court, which claimed exclusive jurisdiction in this matter. The vexations to which Dissenters in Virginia were subjected at this time-a hundred and twentyfive years ago-would seem incredible were it not a thing of unquestionable record. As the religious teacher of his people,