Page:Robert Carter- his life and work. 1807-1889 (IA robertcarterhis00coch).pdf/210

194 resolved to attend the Presbyterian Convention in a body the next morning, and be present while Bishops McIlvaine and Lee and others presented their salutations. A most striking and interesting scene in this reception was when the venerable Bishop Charles McIlvaine and the equally venerable Dr. Charles Hodge sprang to each other’s embrace upon the platform, each greeting the other as “Charlie,” as in the old familiar days when they were together in Princeton College and Seminary.

Afterwards Dr. Hodge said, “I hope this audience will pardon a reference which might seem personal under any other circumstances than the present. You, Bishop McIlvaine, and Bishop Johns, whom I had hoped to see on this occasion, and I were boys together in Princeton College fifty years ago. Evening after evening have we knelt together in prayer. We were baptized in spirit together in the great revival of 1815 in that institution, we sat together year after year in the same class-rooms, and we were instructed by the same venerable theological teachers. You have gone your way and I mine; but I will venture to say that I do not believe that in all that time you have preached any one sermon which I would not have rejoiced to have delivered. I feel the same confidence in saying that I never preached a sermon which you would not have cordially indorsed. Here we now stand, gray-headed, side by side, after more than fifty years, the representatives of these two great bodies, feeling for each other the same intimate and cordial love, looking not backwards, not downwards, at the grave at our very feet, but onward to the coming glory. Sir, were not your Church and ours rocked in the same cradle? Have they not passed through the same Red Sea of trial?