J. Gresham Machen Bibliography

Transcription

Sam: Sam.

Owen: This is a special production of Presby Cast.

Nick Batzig: This is a reading of the book the Significance of J. Gresham Machen Today by Paul Woolley. It is out of print. It was published by Presbyterian and Reform Publishing Company in 1977. Paul Woolley was a colleague of J. Gresham Machen, in fact was a student at Princeton while Machen was a professor. We’ll begin with the preface.

J. Gresham Machen loved the Bible. He learned its content largely through the teaching of his mother. The wonder of it as a whole was his unchanging passion. It was not a verse here and a section there that entranced him. Instead he found in it what his forefathers had found, a system of truth to which he could give his allegiance as a whole. His life has been well depicted by his colleague, the Reverend Professor N.B. stonehouse, in the book entitled J. Gresham A Biographical memoir, published in 1954. The present slim volume is not designed as an academic contribution but to depict the living man at his work, devoting himself to the end to the cause. He loved the propagation of God given truth. To that end he used the method of a scholar, but he had more than a scholar’s interest in the subject.

Owen: The truth he was concerned to defend

Nick Batzig: involved the salvation of God’s people of every tongue and kindred. Because of that it behooved him to work to the fullest extent of his powers. And so he did. Few if any have been his equal

Jon: in the defense of the system of

Nick Batzig: doctrine of the Scriptures since that day when he died, the first day of 1937. This present book offers some explanation of that fact when it presents suggestions concerning truth which the Church today needs to proclaim.

I am indebted to Phyllis Hybel Rife for suggestions as to form and content, and to S. Susan Truett Foe for her superb typing mistakes of whatever category may not be credited to anyone but myself. Paul Woolley January 1977 Chapter 1 Marquand Chapel in Princeton the ivy on Marquand Chapel was rattling in the wind. The colors in the leaves sank into the luscious strawberry preserve hue of the sandstone walls. It was a satisfying building, except for that beer bottle turret on the northwest angle. Otherwise there was nothing distinctive about it, but it looked in place and matched the tone of Murray Dodge on the right, of Dickinson on the left, of of the Pine Library across the road.

The Christian student, as he was called, still stood on his granite pedestal between Pine and Murray Dodge, with that Victorian combination of an athletic sweater, an academic gown and an armful of books. Victorian allegory was very simplistic. On the second floor in Murray Dodge, where the Christian student could almost look into the window, sat Samuel Shoemaker, the secretary of the Philadelphian Society. He was a young man and he told the freshmen who came in to ask what the Philadelphian Society stood for, that it was an up to date society that had no use for those old Mossbacks over at the theological seminary on the western edge of town. This morning the notice at the foot of the right hand column on the front page of of the Daily Princetonian said that some unknown from the seminary, perhaps one of the Mossbacks, would speak at the chapel service that day. His name was J. Gresham Machen.

According to the notice, Marquand Chapel was brighter inside than out, for the lights were reflected from all the decorative brass and the highly varnished wood. But the audience in mid morning was sparse as usual. The freshman was soon alert. What this unknown was saying was more refreshing than anything he had ever heard before in Marquand Chapel. It seemed to be a forthright and unhackneyed statement of what the Bible had to say. It was clear, vigorous, interesting and directive. The freshman always went to the chapel after that whenever the Princetonian announced that Machen was would be the speaker. Chapter 2 the Benham Club Long before the end of the 19th century, a certain widowed Mrs. Benham had discovered that one of the commodities most valued by theological students was good food.

Owen: Catering to that demand brought in income

Jon: and gave her an opportunity to be

Nick Batzig: a mother to lonely men. The capacity of her dining room did not meet the demand, and Mrs. Benham

Jon: secured another house and added a bay

Nick Batzig: window to its dining room. Ultimately there came to be four dining clubs for Princeton Seminary students.

Jon: There were the Friars on Dickinson street,

Nick Batzig: the Seminary Club on Alexander street, and the Calvin Club at the corner of Mercer and Alexander. But the most famous was the Benham.

Jon: Peculiar antics went on at the Benham Club.

Nick Batzig: The officers bore varied titles of legal,

Owen: biblical and American Indian origin, such as Chief Ezra Judge.

Nick Batzig: Every table was provided with a receptacle for fines imposed by these officers, but subject to appeal and popular veto.

Jon: The most frequent offense was talking shop. Theology was outlawed.

Nick Batzig: There were even some restrictions on the

Jon: female sex as a subject. Hardly a meal passed without at least one fine. The greatest entertainment of all, according to the taste of the early decades of this century, was stunting. This involved the lively recitation of some humorous tale in the prevailing still Victorian manner of the day.

Nick Batzig: Each clubman was expected to have his own repertoire, though inheritance from a member of the previous student generation, provided some of the best alumni members who were on the faculty or in town for

Owen: other reasons were often invited as dinner guests.

Nick Batzig: The chief objective of such an invitation was to extract a stunt, or perhaps several, from the guest.

Owen: Charles R. Erdman, professor of English Bible, was a frequent guest, and so was

Nick Batzig: J. Gresham Machen, holding an assistant professorship in New Testament, who taught the Greek classes in the seminary as well as some elective courses. Machen was recognized by all as the greatest stunter of the generation. He had an extensive repertoire, and he knew how to collapse the house into laughter with every one. The one that topped the list was how Bill Adams won the Battle of Waterloo. But Horace and every pig his own stuffer were also in great demand.

Some time after Machen had left Princeton, the Benham Club dissolved at the advent of a seminary Dining hall on the campus. Chapter 3 Alexander Hall Alexander hall on the Princeton Seminary campus, with its tan stone and cream colored cupola, looks not unlike Nassau hall, the heart of Princeton University. Although the first building of Princeton Seminary, it is some 60 years younger than Nassau hall and did not have to weather the violence of the American Revolution.

Owen: Originally it supplied room for all of

Nick Batzig: the activities of the seminary, but by the time it passed its hundredth anniversary it was exclusively a dormitory.

Jon: There remained, however, in the center of

Nick Batzig: the second floor, a somewhat larger room than average called the parlor.

Jon: Once a year every square inch of it was covered with human bodies. On the occasion of the annual seminary stunt night, a series of skits were mounted, though the performers usually found it almost impossible to get into the room, and fresh air found it even more impossible to enter. Ice cream completed the evening.

It was said, and doubtless correctly, that in the days before the seminary had

Nick Batzig: a Sunday morning chapel service of its

Jon: own, the parlor had been used for the Sunday afternoon conferences. By the third decade of the 20th century these were extinct. They had been occasions going right back to Archibald Alexander, the first professor, when students and faculty gathered for a time

Nick Batzig: of common devotional worship.

Jon: At first, perhaps, there was a somewhat general participation, beginning with students and closing with faculty, but in due time the main feature came to be an address by a faculty member directed particularly to the welfare and development of the students. Some of these addresses even found their way into print.

Alexander hall was built in stages, but when finished was four stories in height. In the twenties each student had an ample bedroom and a large writing and study room with a high ceiling, except for the fourth floor where the ceilings were lower in One of these two room suites lived J. Gresham Machen, although he was a faculty member and not an ordinary student. His two rooms were on the fourth floor, however, which meant three long flights of steps to climb.

Nick Batzig: He used to labor, or better, pretended to labor up these flights, murmuring loudly so that any student within earshot could hear, poor old Dossie. Poor old Dossie. Doss was his universal nickname. No one ever called him anything else in conversation with others. It derives simply from the fact that the English family name Machen is practically indistinguishable in pronunciation to an American ear, from the German noun Madchen that was always recited with its proper article Das in front of it, so the German article became his name.

Warmly loved by all his friends, Machen was away from his room frequently on weekends because of preaching engagements. But on those weekends when he was going to be home, he would pass the word among the students that there was going to be a session of the Checker Club on Saturday evening. The first time a new student heard this, he was mystified. He had never seen an official notice of the existence of the Checker Club, but it soon turned out that there was nothing formal about the Checker Club.

The announcement meant that Machen’s study would be filled with bags of fruit, bowls of nuts, plates of cookies, bottles of soft drinks, that amidst the confusion, there would be a number of checker and chess boards in operation, and that the door would be wide open.

Jon: Students wandered in and out at will.

Nick Batzig: You could stay five minutes or three hours. Machen would usually be winning a chess or checker game. He never lost, and that was not due to the courtesy of the guests. Every five minutes or so, his voice would boom out, don’t be a tightwad, boys. Don’t be tightwads. This was an extraordinary usage, since it meant that the students were not eating and drinking enough and that they should attack the food more vigorously. Everybody enjoyed Das Checker Club. Chapter 4.

Owen: Machen’s Spirit Men who do not take God seriously usually take themselves too seriously. The man who sees the world going to its destruction with constantly increasing speed is pretty sure to be glum about it. But the man who knows that God controls the whole existing universe is filled with a joie de vivre.

Nick Batzig: He may not like the looks of things. He may see a lot of waves

Owen: ahead, but his heart rests in God, and he enjoys every minute of life that God has given him. Such a man feels like a child in the hands of a loving heavenly Father. He sometimes expresses his joy by playing in God’s world as a child does. Such was Das Machen.

J. Gresham Machen was almost certainly the most effective teacher on the campus of Princeton Theological Seminary in the middle 1920s. He gave all of the instruction in elementary Greek. Even here the students recognized his great talents as a teacher. They flocked to his elective classes where he could present the results of his own research in a completely captivating manner.

The Greek classes would be intensely boring to the average teacher in the volume of them with which Machen had to deal, but he never allowed his love of life to be dampened. He balanced a book on his head for fun as the class went on. If a student was called on to recite a paradigm, he would read his correspondence and listen to the paradigm at the same time. If the student slipped, he was unerringly called to account. Machen’s favorite doodle was writing the Alphabet in German script. He would do it with great rolling waves of his arm in the exaggerated style which with which the so called Spenserian method of handwriting used to be taught. He was always enjoying the life that God had given him.

Nick Batzig: Thus ends chapter four of the Significance of J. Gresham Machen Today by Paul Woolly. Stay tuned to Presbycast for future sections of the book which will be presented in its entirety.

Owen: Thank you.