OBITUARY DEACON HUGH GURLEY

Brother Beebe

I send you the following notice of the death of our esteemed friend and brother, Deacon Hugh Gourley. If a more particular biography of him, has been prepared by anyone, this may be laid aside. What I have prepared, embraces a general notice of those circumstances in his religious life, which are peculiarly interesting to your readers, but it is from memory I have written, without having at hand those means of information which would enable me to be more particular as to age, dates Etcetera.

Brother Gourley died at his residence in Union Street Philadelphia, November 9th 1833, after having passed the extreme bound of four score years, during many of which he was an orderly and much respected member of the Baptist Church. He joined the first church in Philadelphia and appeared when the Philadelphia confession was not a mere password. His profession of the doctrinal sentiments contained in that confession was not an indifferent assent to them because others held them; but it was a candid declaration of what he has been taught by heartfelt experience of God's method of saving sinners. He was one of the minority which separated from the first church and 2nd St. several years since, and being one of the former deacons of that church his name was conspicuous in this division. Whatever motives may have induced others to withdraw, after events demonstrated that in leaving the house, where he had been accustomed to resort for worship, the congregation with whom in former days he had with pleasure assembled; in abandoning his seat to strangers, who had recently come in to crowd him and others of the old standards out, and him becoming an alien, to the graves of the former wife, and of all the children, ( 5 in number) which God had given him, brother Gourley Created by a conscientious regard to the gospel he had received. When this minority had been recognized by the Philadelphia association as the first church, and they had concluded on building them another house for worship, brother Gourley was found one of the foremost in furthering the building, and in contributing for its erection. But here again he was to be disappointed; after expending much money on this new house, a sufficiency to have built what would be considered a comfortable House of many of our country churches, he had not enjoyed the privilege of meeting in it but a few months, before a majority of this minority which had separated from the 2nd St. meeting professedly from love to the truth, brought in over his head another gospel, equally corrupt, to that they had separated from. With brother Gourley truth was truth, an error or, error, what therefore he had condemned as error in 2nd St. He could not sanction his truth in spruce St. But in this case, as all who had come out of Second Street with him, with the exception of two of the deacons, who had received our release from the troubles of this life, and a few perhaps who were not in the city, and his amiable consort, sister Gourley, ultimately settled down in acquiescence with this new gospel and as there was no other church within reach of him, in his infirm state, which had that gospel, clearly and discriminatively preached to them, on which his soul rested her hope, the second Church of which brother Kitts Is pastor, and on whose ministry he would have been delighted to attend meeting in a distant part of the city; he did not formally withdraw his name from the church in spruce St. He contented himself, with withholding his assent to that, which he could not receive as the gospel of Christ, by his non attendance upon it. Hence for the last three or four years of his life he remained secluded from the privilege of public worship.

 

Those who are accustomed to think, it better to attend with any professed worshippers, and to give countenance to anything which may be preached for gospel, or to any ceremonies which may be practiced for religion, however discordant with their religious views, then not to have the name of attending meeting; Will no doubt blame brother Gourley for the course he pursued. But he did not reason like them. It was not to him, a vain, indifferent thing, that the apostle had said, “if any man preach any other gospel unto you that you have received let him be accursed.” The knowledge of salvation which had been communicated to him in experience, he received as taught him of God, and therefore upon divine authority. Hence had he sanctioned any other system of salvation, as the gospel of Christ, however plausible such system might be made, or however eloquently preached, or strongly sustained by human reasoning, he would have received the testimony of men as greater, then the witness of the Holy Ghost. But he had been taught that God was true though every man should be a liar. Again, he had been informed by the word, that the Church of the living God is the pillar and ground of the truth; therefore any congregation of people, however many Christians might be among them, which did not bear inscribed upon them, that is, in the public administration of the word and ordinances among them, that the gospel and that order which had been delivered by the apostles; And which did not bear up the same, by fateful testimony, he could not acknowledge as a Church of Christ, by assembling with them, and partaking of the ordinance of the supper among them. I do not say that brother Gourley expressed his thoughts on this subject in the words I have used, but this, I say, was in substance his view of it. All the work conversant with him, were convinced that his non attendance upon public worship, did not arise from his having sunken into a cold backslidden state. His debarring himself from assembling with those he had been used to fellowship as brethren, was evidently a sacrifice of feelings; but a sacrifice which he freely made from a conscientious regard to the truth of God. This being the case, the Lord did not leave him without a witness of his approbation. Brother Gourley repeatedly assured me, that in spending his Lord's days at home, in reading in private worship, he enjoyed as much comfort as he had been accustomed to from attending on the preaching of the word.

 

In the course of a kind Providence, it was my privilege to be with him, for the last two or three days of his life, till within a few hours of his decease. It was to me a matter of pleasing astonishment, to witness in one so much exhausted by disease such as strength of his intellectual faculties, his recollection and judgment so clear, and his senses in such lively exercise, remarkable in one of his age, even in health, accepting where some intervals of flightiness; and this until the morning I left him, when his senses seemed closing, preparatory to the departure of the soul from her clay tenement. He appeared fully sensible of his situation, and calmly waited for his departure. No anxious cares attaching him to the earth, no fears causing his mind to draw back from the prospect before him, no distressing doubts, disturbed the peace of his mind. He informed me that the text, Jeremiah 31.3, “I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you” had been so applied to him during his sickness, as to afford him great consolation in his support.

To his death, and to most of the surrounding multitude of professors, in the city where he dwelt, his apical the words of the prophet, the righteous perishes and no man lays it to heart, the merciful men are taken away, none considers that the righteousness taken from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace; they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness,” Isaiah 57.1, 2.

His excellent, but now bereaved partner, who was his companion in faith, in hope and in his deprivations of religious privileges, is left much alone, amid surrounding religious societies. May the Lord be manifestly her confidence and support; May his grace sustain her in a steadfast adherence to the truth and order of the gospel, as she has hitherto received them.

S. Trott

Fairfax Courthouse, Va. December 23, 1833