APPENDIX. 48 1 



Washington. After speaking of him as "a man of large fortune, fine 

 appearance and singularly pleasant temper and manner," he says: 



He was " a scholarly and sensible preacher of Ihe English University cast. His 

 sermons, of the homiletical kind, were, like those of the higher classes of the English 

 clergy in the last century, calculated for educated hearers more than to arouse an in- 

 different or slumbering congregation." 



Dr. Griswold adds : 



Being withal a man of unquestioned piety and great propriety of life, he maintained 

 a dignified position, and was extensively deferred to by an opulent ^nd worldly class, 

 who would probably have deferred to no one else less blessed with adventitious 

 influence. 



At the distance of near a century since Dr. Blackwell was called to 

 minister in them, and of more than fifty years since he has been lying 

 in the grave beside St. Peter's, it is interesting to look at the condition 

 of the United Churches. It is a condition which testifies in part of his 

 work, and of what sort it was. 



While almost all the Protestant churches which existed in his time in 

 the eastern part of Philadelphia have been demolished, or delivered over 

 to secular and sometimes to impious uses, the old United Churches re- 

 main in strength and usefulness, and are likely to remain. Their ancient 

 worshippers have disappeared; but worshippers in lines of straight suc- 

 cession still crowd their sacred aisles. The congregations of these old 

 churches at this day are as active as were those of earlier days in works 

 of charity and usefulness ; and as active in such works as any anywhere, 

 or of the newest. 



Nor did this venerable gentleman confine his labors to offices sacer- 

 dotal or clerical only. In every department of religion — indeed in 

 every sphere of humanity or science where he moved — he verified, un- 

 consciously, the prediction which, A. D. 1770, in his early life Dr. 

 Auchmuty made of him, that he would be "useful." 



He was among the first persons who set themselves at work to re- 

 establish the Episcopal Church after it had been prostrated by the war 

 of the Revolution ; one of those ten clergymen who, with six laymen, 

 met May 11, 1784, at New Brunswick, N. J. — he having been the per- 

 son to propose that time and to approve that place,* by whom were set 

 a-going measures for the purpose of forming a "Continental Represen- 



* In a letter I received from Mr. Blackwell some time ago, he proposed Tuesday, 

 Ilth May, as a proper time for the meeting, and acquiesced with my jjroposal of 

 Brunswick for the place. — [LcUei- of ihe Rev. Abraham Beach to ihe Rev. Dr. While 

 of March 22d, 17S4, in Bishop IV. S. Perry's "Half Century of Legislation of ihe 

 American Church,'^ Vol. Ill,, p. ^.) 



31 



