The obituary of the Rev. Doctor David Murdoch

He was unostentatious, unwearlying and remarkable successful in his labors. The records of the Geneva Synod show his church, the First Presbyterian Church in Elmira, to have been during his pastorate the most successful and prosperous church (in point of additions by profession) in the Synod.

To his more intimate friends, who knew of his faithful and unobserved labors in visiting from house to house among the poor, of his tender fatherly care over the young of his flock, of his lively interest in the success of the Young Men’s Christian Association, and of the zeal which bent his great energies entirely to his work, he appeared the true and model pastor.

During the great revival of 1857, when the eight o’clock morning prayer meeting was kept up for nearly or quite a year, through summer and winter, those Christians whose slumbers were disturbed on cold winter mornings by the solemn bell at eight o’clock, did not know that the fires were made for these meetings and the bell rung every morning by a white haired pastor nearly sixty years of age. The success of those meetings, when souls flocked to Christ as clouds and as doves to their windows, was attributable by the blessings of God to the persistent labors of Dr. Murdoch. At the ingathering he shall bring his sheaves with him.

It was said by Goethe that “the man bro’t up beneath the vine is not like the man reared beneath the oak.” Dr. Murdoch’s character partook of the peculiarities of his nation. – He was born and reared beneath the shadow of Ben Lomond, and he had an oaken heart for Justice, for God and the Right. That great stout heart is still, but it is one of those “that rule our spirits from their urns.” The good he has done endures, and many years to come, if his spirit visit us, it will whisper the words of the dying Webster – “I still live.”

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The obituary of the Rev. Doctor David Murdoch

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The obituary of the Rev. Doctor David Murdoch

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