Chapter XLV: Entrance Upon His One Hundredth Year

The following description of the celebration of Father Boehm’s entrance upon his one hundredth year appeared in the _Christian Advocate_, and was copied into many religious journals, not only in America but also in Europe, showing the intense interest that clusters around the hero of a hundred years and the hero of a hundred battles:—

Father Henry Boehm, the old Methodist patriarch, entered upon his one hundredth year June 8, 1874, and the wonderful event was celebrated on Tuesday in Jersey City, at the residence of his son-in-law, Mr. Emley. A number of friends honored him with their presence. It was to the old patriarch quite a surprise. A good supper was provided, with abundance of the delicacies of the season. There was a centenary cake, having on it the figures 1775 and 1874. Flowers of rare beauty and odor were presented to him, and he made a most appropriate reply. On one of the floral offerings, beautifully inwrought in green, were these figures, “99.” The patriarch’s wrinkled countenance was wreathed with smiles; he looked as placid as a summer’s evening, and seemed to have “renewed his youth like the eagle’s.”

Dr. J. B. Wakeley was spokesman for the occasion, and delivered the following congratulatory address. He concluded by dwelling upon the character and labors of Bishop Asbury, and surprised Father Boehm by presenting him with a beautiful likeness of the bishop. Father Boehm took it, looked at it, and said, “Well done!” and then he made a characteristic reply. It was one of those rare occasions that seldom occur in one’s life-time, and can never be forgotten.

ADDRESS TO FATHER BOEHM.

VENERABLE PATRIARCH: This is an auspicious day and a joyful
occasion that has summoned us together; we have met to celebrate
the almost one hundredth anniversary of your birthday.
Ninety-nine years ago, the eighth day of June, in the town of
Conestoga, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a child was born, and
they called him “Henry.” Few of those who then looked upon that
little infant suspected that he would live to celebrate his one
hundredth birthday. Venerable man! with your whitened locks, your
wrinkled face, you stand before us a representative of the past;
you connect us with ages and generations long since passed away.

We congratulate you on having been born in June, not only the
loveliest month of the year, but also the birth-month of many
distinguished statesmen and holy ministers of the Gospel. Your
father, Martin Boehm, the friend of Bishop Asbury and of the
“great Otterbein,” was a noble man, and your mother a noble
woman. What a eulogium did Bishop Asbury, in preaching your
father’s funeral sermon, pronounce on him!

We congratulate you on having been born so early. You are older
than our Republic—even than the Methodist Episcopal Church, in
its present organic form. When you were born “The Declaration
of Independence” was not written. George Washington was then
forty-three years old, a man comparatively unknown to fame; Henry
Clay was not born till two years after; and Daniel Webster and
John C. Calhoun not till seven years after. The year of your
birth was fourteen years before that in which Washington was
inaugurated President of the United States, nine years before
the Methodist Episcopal Church was organized, sixteen years
before the death of John Wesley, and thirteen years before that
of Charles Wesley, the sweet singer of our Methodist Israel.
Then Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Boston, now imperial
cities, were the merest villages. States as large as empires have
been born during your life-time, and kingly cities have sprung
into existence. “The wilderness and the solitary place” have been
made glad, and “the desert” has rejoiced and blossomed “as the
rose.”

There were then no steamboats, no railroads, no telegraphs even
on the land, to say nothing of ocean telegraphs. Now we travel
by steam, do our correspondence by lightning, and take life-like
portraits by sunbeams. We whisper here, and they hear us in
London, and answer back; and we cross the Atlantic with the
regularity of a ferry-boat.

How the world has moved since you came on the stage of action!
Continents have been explored, oceans and islands then unknown
have been visited, the source of the Nile has been discovered,
Egypt’s hieroglyphics have been deciphered, and Nineveh has had
a resurrection! Wonderfully has the world advanced in art, in
science, in discoveries, since you were born. It has made more
advancement during your life-time of ninety-nine years than in
any thousand years previous. The world moves; on its lofty banner
“Progress” is written in capital letters. Compare the world as
you saw it first, and as you behold it now, and how wonderful
the change! The world has also made advances in morals and in
religious enterprises. You were born forty-four years before we
had a Missionary Society, (it not being organized till 1819,) and
thirty-one years before the American Bible Society had a being.

We congratulate you on having witnessed the growth, not only of
our country, but also of that of American Methodism, until now it
numbers its millions. We congratulate you on having lived under
all the Presidents, from Washington to Grant, and on having lived
and known all the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
from the first down to the last. We congratulate you on having
known the pioneers and founders of American Methodism: Robert
Strawbridge, the apostle of Methodism in Maryland; William
Watters, the first native Methodist preacher; and Philip Gatch,
and Benjamin Abbott, and Bishop Richard Whatcoat, who died on
your circuit, (Delaware,) where you heard his dying testimony.
You knew Jesse Lee, the apostle of Methodism in New England, the
first historian of American Methodism. You heard his last sermons
at a camp-meeting, where he was taken sick and died in 1816; you
heard his dying testimony, closed his eyes, and laid him quietly
to rest. We congratulate you on having heard the great orators
and preachers of early Methodism: Nicholas Snethen, Asbury’s
“silver trumpet;” Hope Hull, the silver-tongued; Samuel Parker,
the Cicero of the West; Leonard Castle, the Summerfield of the
Baltimore Conference; Henry Willis, Wilson Lee, and others.

We congratulate you on having been acquainted with the fathers
of the fathers of American Methodism. Strange as it may seem,
you knew the father of Bishop M’Kendree, James M’Kendree, and
have been his guest. You were acquainted with the father of Henry
Smith, who for a while was the oldest Methodist minister in the
world. You knew Judge Emory, the father of Bishop Emory; and the
father of Dr. Shadrick Bostwick, whom Bishop Hedding called a
“glorious man.” How this takes us back to the former age!

We congratulate you on having attended so many General and
Annual Conferences, where you became acquainted with the great
preachers of early Methodism. You attended the General Conference
in Baltimore in 1800, where you dined with Dr. Coke, heard
him preach, witnessed the election and ordination of Richard
Whatcoat, and the wonderful revival of religion, such as has
never occurred at any other General Conference; then the one in
1808, where you beheld the ordination of Bishop M’Kendree; you
were also at the first delegated General Conference, held in the
city of New York in 1812.

We congratulate you on attending so many camp-meetings in
different States, “for the groves were God’s first temples,”
and also on being acquainted with John M’Gee, the founder of
camp-meetings in America. What a privilege to attend these
meetings, and hear such sons of thunder as Bishops Asbury and
M’Kendree, Dr. Chandler, John Chalmers, John M’Claskey, Solomon
Sharp, and hundreds of others, immortal names that cannot die!
We congratulate you on being acquainted with the great laymen
and women who helped to give character and stability to early
Methodism.

We congratulate you on preaching in so many of the early chapels
of American Methodism. How those humble chapels contrast with the
beautiful edifices that are now being erected all over the land!

We congratulate you on being the intimate friend and traveling
companion of Bishop Asbury, the great apostle of American
Methodism. For five years you accompanied him around his large
diocese; you climbed the mountains with him; you forded the
rivers; you nursed him when sick; you carried him in your arms;
and such confidence did he repose in you that he made you one of
the executors of his last will and testament.

We thank you for your “Reminiscences, Historical and
Biographical,” which contain the purest history and the truest
biography; in which you give us the best portraiture of Bishop
Asbury that has ever been given. The Church will thank you
for those “Reminiscences” when the sun shines on your grave.
We congratulate you for being such an itinerant; on having
traveled over one hundred thousand miles on horseback to preach
the Gospel—more than sufficient to circumnavigate the globe
four times. We congratulate you on having been so happy in your
domestic relations. You had one of the best of wives; “her
children rise up and call her blessed, her husband also, and
he praiseth her.” You have been blessed with kind children.
Your daughter Elizabeth has been remarkably affectionate and
attentive, which must have been a great consolation to you as
time has shaken you by the hand, and the shadows of the evening
are gathering around you. We congratulate you for having kept up
with the times, and for feeling an interest in every thing that
is going on both in Church and State; for not only living, but
being a live man. We rejoice that you have been no croaker; that
you made no invidious comparisons between the present and the
former times. You have never inquired, “Why were the former times
better than the present?”

We thank you not only for living so long, but for living so
well. Your age is wonderful! Remember how much longer you have
lived than many whom the world called old men. Washington was
considered old when he died, and you are thirty-two years older
than was he. John Wesley is spoken of as aged, but you are
eleven years older than was John Wesley. Charles Wesley was also
considered old, but you are nineteen years older. Bishop Asbury
was considered old—you are twenty-eight years older than was
Bishop Asbury, thirty-two years older than was Bishop M’Kendree,
and forty-one years older than was Jesse Lee, when they severally
ended their lives.

We congratulate you on having been so long in the
_ministry—seventy-three years_; you are to-day the oldest
Methodist minister in America, if not in the world. Sir, all who
were in the ministerial work when you commenced have yielded
to the conqueror of conquerors! “The fathers, where are they?
and the prophets, do they live forever?” You can say as one of
old, “And I only am left alone to tell thee.” You stand alone,
occupying a position no man ever has, no man ever can. You have
seen what no other eyes can ever see; you have heard what no
other ears can ever hear. Yours has been a wonderful life, as
well as a long one; you are a history in yourself; you are a
splendid representative of the former generation of Methodist
ministers.

We congratulate you on having kept your garments so clean. For
over seventy years they have asked in conference: “Is there any
thing against Henry Boehm?” The answer has always been, “Nothing
against Henry Boehm.” Your hoary head is a crown of glory, being
found in the way of righteousness. May your sun go down without
a cloud, to rise in fairer heavens, and the twilight of your
evening melt away into the twilight of the morning of an eternal
day! May you be found among the number who, “having been wise,”
and “turned many to righteousness,” shall shine in brilliancy
that is cloudless and eternal! May you, when the voyage of life
is o’er, meet Wesley, Asbury, M’Kendree, and the multitude who
have gone before, where

... “all the ship’s company meet,
Who sailed with the Saviour beneath;
With shouting each other they greet,
And triumph o’er sorrow and death.”