COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, NEW YORK CITY
The following words are quoted from Professor Hugh Black's introduction to THE RELIGION OF THE THRESHOLDunderline text, a collection of sermons given by the Reverend Donald Sage Mackay, D.D., L.L.D. The introduction is an overview of the career of the former minister of the Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas, New York. It was published in 1908 by A.C. Armstrong & Son, the year Dr. Mackay died.
INTRODUCTION
by Professor Hugh Black, D.D.
Donald Sage Mackay was born in Glasgow on the 20th of November, 1863, and died at the age of forty-four after a full and strenuous life. He came of a Levitical stock and would naturally have looked to the ministry as a sphere of work. His father was the Rev. William Murray Mackay of Glasgow, Scotland, a man of deep piety and great devotion to the duties of his parish. His only surviving brother is also a minister in that city. The main historic interest lies in his descent from his mother's side. The Sages were ministers in Scotland for generations. They came originally from the south of Scotland, but from the Revolution period in 1688 the Sages are identified with Ross-shire, Sutherland and Caithness. Aenaes Sage, born at Kellearnan, Ross-shire, in 1694, entered King's College, Aberdeen, Scotland in 1715, and was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Tain in 1725. From that date onward there was an unbroken succession of Sage Ministers right down to Donald Sage Mackay. Perhaps the most famous of them was the Rev. Donald Sage, A.M., Minister of Resolis who is the author of a charming book of reminiscences called "Memorabilia Domestica", which deals with the history of the Sage family and also with local matters of great interest in Sutherland and Caithness. The account given of the "Evictions" all over Sutherland when the crofters were cleared out, is particularly graphic and of value in the local history of the time.
On entering the University of Glasgow, Dr. Mackay intended to follow the legal profession, and he actually went into a law office. He has told me often that even the short training he had in business was invaluable to him afterwards in understanding the point of view of many to whom he preached. He was impelled, however, to change his mind as to his future work, partly by a religious impulse and partly by his growing consciousness of talents suited to the ministry. His theological training was received at the New College in Edinburgh, and in 1889 he was licensed by the Presbytery of Glasgow and was soon called to a church in Aberdeenshire. This assignment he refused in order to pay a visit to America. He meant to return to Scotland, but during his visit he preached in the First Congregational Church of St. Albans, Vermont, and accepted the pastorate of that church. It was at St. Albans that he met and married Miss Helen L. Smith, daughter of J. Gregory Smith, the "War Governor of Vermont," and president of the Central Vermont Railroad company. How beautiful and happy was his home life as all his friends know.
At St. Albans, Mackay began to make a reputation as a preacher, which brought him many calls to larger churches, but he stayed there for nearly five years and built a new church for his congregation. He then became minister of the North Reformed Church at Newark, where his success was immediate and very great. There was a large Scotch population in Newark, and he often spoke with a full heart of the short years of his ministry there. His preaching grew in power and attractiveness, and his church was crowded. Once more he was bombarded with invitations, and at last, after four years at Newark, he accepted a call to the Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas, New York, where the last eight years of his life were spent. This, the oldest church in the city and the most influential in the denomination, gave him a commanding platform for a very wide influence. The church he served honored him in every way possible, the two colleges of the denomination having conferred degrees on him, — Rutgers College the degree of L.L.D.; and in 1906 he was elected president of the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America, the highest distinction the church has to bestow.
New York City is in many ways one of the most difficult places in the world to exercise the office of a Protestant minister. Some of the reasons are geographical, which compel crowds of the class who are usually the best support of a church to live at great distance from their place of work. Then, owing to the cosmopolitan character of the population, there is little unity of spirit, or even a definite civic consciousness, and still less a common religious standing-ground. No man can speak to the city even in a crisis as he may in a smaller town. Great sections of the community would not understand the speech. There is always a sense of isolation and of scattered effort, which Dr. Mackay felt in comparison with the situation in a more homogeneous town like Newark. Further, the complete Protestant population is in a decided minority. A full quarter of the whole people are Jews, and another quarter are Roman Catholics, and when you subtract the other elements of almost every race under the sun, there is left a submerged tenth of the original Protestant American Christian. The whole presents a situation that cannot be matched anywhere else in Christendom. It is a field which appeals powerfully to the heroic but it kills its heroes by the score.
It is a great tribute to Donald Mackay that he stood the test of a post in the very heart of the difficult field and met the overwhelming problems of a pastorate in that cosmopolitan city. They were strenuous years, in which he sought to fulfill the social and public claims on him as well as the particular duties of his congregation. He might have saved himself many a time and withdrawn from many a task, but he loved the burden and bent to it with joy. He was a man of overbounding vitality, and of a temperament that is ever tempted to undertake heavy loads. When the news came to us in New York not long ago of the death of "Ian Maclaren", I remarked to Dr. Mackay, who knew him well, that it was difficult to associate the idea of death with him. Since then it has often come to me that the same thing is true of Mackay himself; for he too had such an exuberance of vitality that it is hard to accustom oneself to the fact of his death. In all sorts of ways he was giving himself out, and as we now know wearing himself out also. He used to speak with a half-humorous note of the folly of giving in to the strain of New York life, but he was ever ready for the new demand on him. In one of his sermons he says that many of us think we are living the strenuous life when we are really living the strained life. "The strenuous life is living up to the measure of our strength, but the strained life is living beyond the measure of our strength." The trouble is that it was easy for a man of his intrepid nature to overstep the thin line between attempting enough and too much.
His social gifts and genial personality, which gave him such a wide influence and opened his way to many quarters usually shut to the ordinary minister, only increased the danger of a breakdown. He was in great request as an after-dinner speaker at public banquets and societies. He valued the opportunity it often gave him to interest men in wider social duty and in religious service. No one in New York had the ear of leading business men for any good project as he had. But while he took more than his share of outside public work, he put the full weight of his powers into preaching. He had many natural gifts which go to make a preacher, gifts of voice and presence and manner, with a native eloquence and fervor of utterance, something of the "perfervidum ingenium Scotorum". He had the Celtic temperament and seems to have poured himself out in his preaching, expending great nervous force, which often left him exhausted at the end. His style was often vividly dramatic, with the surge of real passion which saved it from being theatrical.
The sermons in this volume have not had the benefit of his selection or revision. They do not do justice to his preaching, as the written report rarely does to a great preacher. In this case this is all the more true because of the preacher's method of preparing. They were usually dictated and preached afterwards without manuscript, often actually unfinished, trusting to the spur of the moment for the final inspiration. It is probably the defect of the quality of the Celtic temperament that it makes so little of method. Perhaps more method of work would have saved Dr. Mackay from much of the strain of his work, but, on the other hand, it more likely was this which made him a great preacher even if he paid the price of a short life.
His bent was not so much that of a close thinker or exact scholar—the practical demands of his position as well as his own inclination developed other qualities. He was probably also too much interested in life, and certainly he had an eye to the striking things of life; and was open to the big impressions that life can make. With all the passion and fervor which helped him to sway his audience, there was a genial outlook that attracted all sorts and conditions of people. Often a touch of genial humor comes out in his sermons, as in his discription of the people who return from abroad and complain that at an altitude of five thousand feet in the Alps "they did not find the delicacies which they enjoyed six months before their season in their own New York homes." His preaching too was full of shrewd and fearless judgements from a man who looked broadly and deeply at life as it is seen in a great city; as, for example, the remark that "the two most illiterate classes in society today are the abject poor who by necessity must think of the needs of the body and therefore can think of nothing else, and the idle rich who by choice devote every hour of the day to the trivial problem of what they shall eat and what they shall drink and wherewithal they shall be clothed." It is easy to see with which class he has most sympathy.
His interests were ethical rather than theological. He evidently took the theology in which he was trained and used it as a convenient basis of thought to enable him to make his ethical and practical applications. At the beginning of his ministry he presented a statement of his belief, as is customary in the Congregational Church, and in it he took the traditional Protestant theology, division by division, with always this modern practical outlook. When speaking of his conception of the Divine nature, he finishes with this remark, "But indeed the Trinity has always presented itself to me less as a theological dogma than as an ethical truth, a vivid manifestation of the divine nature adapted to human needs." The statement of belief which Dr. Mackay gave as a young minister taking up his work would be substantially the statement he would have given at the end, with of course many amendments of the place of emphasis and changes of the relation of various parts of his creed; for he had a vital interest in the intellectual statement of the faith and brought a fresh mind to its problems. A phrase he used in that same early statement of his faith in connection with one of its doctrines is, "I accept the doctrine in its less rigid and arbitrary form." But it is evident to an intelligent reader of these sermons where he laid the stress.
It was natural that he should strive to make his church realize its responsibility toward the poorthe outcast, the suffering among the vast population of the great city. Through his inspiration, his church undertook work in poorer parts of the city, and he was ever seeking to extend their sympathy and help. They supported a cosiderable staff of missionaries, not only at home but also on the foreign fieldin India and Arabia abroad; in Kentucky and Porto Rico nearer home. This wide interest entailed increasing work on himself; for he served on the Board of Foreign Missions and on the many important boards and committees which represent the city's great charities. His practical interests and social enthusiasm made it difficult for him to refuse any office which was tendered him or any duty laid on him.
It is in keeping with this whole bent of his life that his sermons should be practical in the best sense, seeking ever to bring religion into contact with life and the whole of life. The very titles in the list of contents of this volume show the place of emphasis. One of these, "Religion in Homespun", would be a fitting designation of what Dr. Mackay tried to do. He worked hard to make the religious truth he preached simple, and to bring it to men's hearts and hearths. It had something to say to a man's business and to his pleasures, to every region of his private life, his civic life, and all his social relations. Sometimes with prophetic passion he denounces ostentatious display, luxury and extravagance; sometimes he asks for a candid examination of business methods; sometimes he seeks to arouse and educate the social conscience; and always he has his eye on the city in which he lived.
The fearless courage of many of his utterances is characteristic of the man. The twenty-third sermon of this volume is a plea for a simple life, and in it he speaks of the menace to the state in the luxury and extravagance of the city, in the fashionable heart of which he lived and worked. It was preached in 1903, and almost with a prophetic certainty he foreshadowed the panic, which was long delayed but which visited America in 1908. "Everywhere the drags are off and the wheels of commerce and society are running wild. When the stoppage will come, as come it must, or how it will come, no one can tell; but that this extravagance in living which New York has been following especially for the last five years is bound to end in catastrophe, moral and social, unless sanctified common-sense interposes, it needs no prophet to predict. Already the shrewd, hard-headed men in Wall Street are scenting the approaching danger from the commercial standpoint. They tell us that the limit of over-capitalization and headstrong speculation is reached, and the reaction will spell panic from the Atlantic to the Pacific. How true that may be as a commercial prediction I do not know, but from the standpoint of morality the evil results of this over-elaborated mode of living, common even among the poor as well as the rich, are already with us."
Not that he spent himself scolding and protesting. Rather, the secret of his success with men lay in his great sympathy and tender touch and insight into the needs of life. There was nothing sour or crabbed about his point of view. He had a large heart for the lonely, the broken of fortune, the man who is down and out. This because he had such healthy faith in human nature. He never seemed to despair of any man even when others gave him up. The result was that he often inspired hope in a hopeless man and put fresh courage in him to face life once more. He spared no pains and grudged no trouble to help put a man on his feet again. His patience and sympathy with the people who crowded him for advice and assistance were a constant marvel to all his friends. Every broken down Scot in the city came to him, and many other than Scots. His pastoral work was far larger than ever his congregation knew. I know cases where he kept on trusting and hoping and bearing, when another would have given him up and when the men themselves had given themselves up, but where he won out and saw the fruit of his travail in renewed manhood and self-respecting life. This was the most wonderful thing about him, that he warmed people by his own generous large-hearted nature and gave them new hope for the future.
Typical of his generous chivalrous nature is a passage from a sermon of this volume, asking his people when they leave the city for the country to give their support and encouragement to the small and struggling causes. "Do not flock to the fashionable church wherever you are. We can give you all the fashionable religion you want in New York. Think of the country minister to whom your coming, your gifts, and your attendance will be like a rift of sunlight in his lonely pastorate. Think of his struggle through the dark winter months, and the discouragements which so often beset the country ministry. Do not make that burden heavier by letting him see you drive past his church door on a Sunday morning, when you might be and ought to be worshiping in that quiet country temple amongst the hills…That is the church you should support. There is where your duty lies. Do not let vulgar snobbishness switch you off to conventicles of fashion that have neither right nor place to be." It was the sympathy of the strong for the weak.
In the more intimate relations of life, naturally known only to a few, Mackay had a genius for friendship as not many men have. Somewhat reticent and even bashful in offering his friendship, no man was more loyal and more reliable. His generous and open-hearted nature expanded in the atmosphere of friendship, and nothing was too much to do for those within that circle. He demanded much of them, but he gave more. One of them writes to me, "Once a friend of Mackay, one was bound with hooks of steel, and it was a bondage devoutly to be wished for: in it was the most delightful and satisfying fellowship." Another wrote of him: "He laid hold on his special friends with a grip that was almost too tenacious. They could not visit him too often; they could not stay with him long enough; he could hardly bear them out of his sight. But on them he lavished all the unstinted wealth of his generous and affectionate and large-hearted nature." It was a remarkable trait in the character of a man of so many and varied interests, whose life was so full of occupations and whose work was so successful. There are some who will miss him as long as life lasts. All who were privileged to know him closely realize how great must be the desolation in the more intimate relation still of wife and family.
Dr. Mackay was and remained a true Scot with a passionate love of his native land, and never felt that a summer was complete without a sight of the dear land of the heather and hill. During the last months of weakness, when he began to fear he might never be fit for his arduous work again, he sometimes spoke of his dream to go back and die in the old land; and yet it is fitting that he should have been buried in American soil. He loved the land where he did his work. He was, like many another true Scot, a true American also. He threw in his whole lot here, and sincerely loved the land of his adoption, and like a genuine patriot desired the best for her. Here is a characteristic passage of a sermon: "We all love our country. We believe in it, love its flag, and surely would count no sacrifice too great to defend its honor. What, then, is the best thing you could wish for your country today? Not more prosperity, for we are well-nigh drunk with material wealth. Not more territory, for the vast spaces of this great land are enough to tax our energies. Surely that which we would crave most for our beloved land would be the development of men and women of Christian character and life. What we desire is to see the new generation growing up in the inspiration of those principles of integrity and honor and honesty which alone exalts a nation."
It is not hard for a man to naturalize in a land which gives a congenial sphere of work to one who seeks the first Kingdom of God and His righteousness. This pre-eminently did Donald Sage Mackay, and the land he served crowned him with much love and honor.
REMINISCENCE OF REV. DSM BY HIS DAUGHTER ANNETTE
(Courtesy of her daughter, Julie Pyle Nicholson)italic text
Annette Mackay Pyle Ely's description of her father.
Dr. Donald Sage Mackay, Minister ot St. Nicholas's church in New York City
Written circa 1899-1900
Many of his parishoners have Problems, especially the rich and lovely ladies of his Parish. After a first meeting these problems (and Ladies) are firmly transferred to his assistant. Patience is not one of Dad's virtues.
Not so with the Bowery Mission.
The Bowery is a part of New York. It is where the Bums live; the down and Outers who sleep in gutters; their home is a park bench; they shelter in empty door ways from rain and storms. The Bowery is a place unfamiliar to Dad's parishioners. For Organized Welfare is as yet unknown. Help is brought to impoverished families and the sick and needy by well meaning groups, donated, you might say, at arm's length. Poverty is deplorable. But boring.
Dad discovers the Bowery after one visit. Nothing stops him. His chuch, Wall Street and Business Politicians and Society are called, informed, exhorted. Money is raised. The Bowery Mission is born.
It exists, It is Dad that gives it life. He gives time; he gives nights for that is where they need him. Boiwery "Mission"? Wrong. Dad is no "missionary". This is not giving. This is participation. He is tough, rough with their despair. He can make them laugh. And he gives them hope.
Profligate of vilolity (vitality?), he gives and gives. His eloquence which his church asks for; civic duties; Public speeches, addresses. He gives too much, and as you have seen, paid with his life. Which ended when he was 44.
(//Submitted by Julie Pyle Nicholson, Annette Mackay's daughter on going through her papers when she came upon the familiar hand of her mother and retyped it for easy reading.)
