Today we pay our tribute of friendship to Jospeh Hastie Odgers. As a company of fellow ministers and of former parishioners, we join with his children and his children's children in a chapter of love and memory.
On the one hand, I feel the urge of thirty years of friendship prompting me to speak freely and fully out of mingled emotions. On the other hand, I have his written admonition against words of praise or eulogy. Let me try as I may to reconcile these two points of view.
The outward record of his life is soon told. Jospeh Hastie Odgers was born July 21, 1863, the child of deeply devout parents, the father being a Methodist minister, a member of the River Rock Conference for many years. The boy as given every educational opportunity offered in the communities served by his father. In due season he found his way to Evanston where he graduated from Northwestern University in 1890. Having grown up in the vigorous religious atmosphere of such a parsonage home, it was quite natural that Hastie Odgers should think of the ministry. After the customary period of trial he was received into his father's Conference in 1891. In view of the fact that he was to give over forty years of active service to the Conference, it is interesting to note that he cut short his academic preparations, because of certain health limitations which as he then felt would shorten his ministry to a few brief years at most. Fortunately, his health improved and by his own diligent study he more than offset any shortening of the period of training.
His own qualifications for a successful ministry were supplemented by the sympathetic companionship of the like-minded and like-hearted woman who joined him in the task. Their fellowship, enriched by the birth of children, and refined by life's sorrows, contributed much to the fruitfulness of his pastorates.
These pastorates, if they should be listed in their chronological order, would appear in an ascending scale of responsibility and opportunity. The long years of his pastoral service were interrupted by a six-year term as district superintendent, a period during which he did much for the ministers and people of his district, and an experience which brought to him, as he often told me, a new freedom and joy in his preaching and a wider insight into the work of the whole church.
Only five years were given to him in his retired relation. These years he spent in California where he supplied churches from time to time, living quietly and happily until last spring, where the dear companion of the years slipped away - preceding him in that experience whereby mortality puts on immortality.
Two words seem to me to characterize the ministry of J. Hastie Odgers. The first of these was pastoral. He liked people - one might say he loved people. The men and women and the children in the churches to which he was sent became his people, he carried their burden in his heart. He was responsible for them. I remember once when he came in an hour late to give an important report at conference. No one quite understood until he came and explained. Then we learned that sudden death had visited one of his homes, and he needs must go and comfort the broken hearted. So it always was - the call of the people to whom he was pastor never went unheeded. He trained the children, guided the youth in their work ad in their education. He was a wise and trusted counselor to young and old, ever revealing the spirit of Him how came to minister and not be ministered unto.
The second word is that of teaching. He was a teaching ministry. He grew up in a day when the church did not utilize the educational method. The revival was the quicker and more direct method though even then it was operating according to the law of diminishing returns. While other fretted about the changing situation, he moved toward another type of evangelism. So he became a teacher in the pulpit and elsewhere. Steadily he sought to undergird them to new frontiers - he widened their horizons and enriched their understanding of life. Inevitably it came about that his churches grew stronger and were built up in the essentials of our faith. This teaching ministry he carried forward by precept and example. Like all true teachers he himself was steadily growing. About him it might be said, "First he wrought and afterward he taught."
Shortly after Dr. Odgers retired, I wrote him saying that few men in the ministry ever lived to see so many of the things they stood for come to pass. I mentioned three of his dreams which he had seen come true.
The first I have already referred to as a ministry based educational approach. This was an ideal at which some scoffed and only a few remained to pray in the days of his early ministry. The years, however, have justified his conviction.
A second dream for which he worked appears in the conduct of worship. Quite naturally the Church services of earlier days were marked by a hearty spontaneity that left much to be desired from the standpoint of order and dignity. In the face of no little criticism, our friend moved toward a service of worship that was at once more orderly and helpful. He utilized more fully music and the other arts. He drew upon liturgies of the Church, and made all of them vehicles by which seeking souls might find their way to God. We need to remember the lovely dignity by which most of our church services are marked today came to us because of such men as our friend created that heritage for us. In passing, it might be noted that with a friend, he wrote one of the earliest and one of the best books on the conduct of worship for our Church.
One other and only one other of his dreams do I mention. He was anxious that our ministry be marked by a richer, cultural background. To that end, he set himself early in life to read widely. He ranged far afield - much beyond the reading of the ordinary minister. He developed a wide catholicity of taste and appreciation. He laid under tribute all fields of literature. As a result when he spoke, listeners felt the power of the immediate word, but sensed that it came from one with a rich and varied background which gave to the word spoken the accent of understanding and authority.
Dr. Odgers was anxious not to gather his treasure trove for himself alone, but that his brother ministers might share it also. To that end he sought to stimulate the younger ministers, especially, to read more widely. Some of us have been in groups where he was the guiding spirit. During the days of his superintendency, he turned aside again and again from the purely administrative tasks to set the feet of some of his younger men on the path that leads to a ministry that escapes thinness, and grows broader and deeper as the years pass.
He wrote out from his memory, so richly stored with great things, part of Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra. What he thus wrote contained such passages as
"All I could never be,
All men ignored me
This was I worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped."
"My times be in thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!"
And so as the spokesman for many a minister, and I feel for many a layman too, I join with you in this service - Which I shall call a celebration of the richness and goodness of this long life, dedicated and devoted to the highest. His going means for all of us that there is another "lonesome place against the sky."
In the word of one who saw his spiritual father go up in a chariot of fire - I can only say, "May a double portion of thy spirit now fall on me."