Mr. Machen’s protégé

By Barry Waugh

[Barry Waugh, who holds a Ph.D. from Westminster Theological Seminary, lives with his family in Greenville, S.C., where he studies and writes about church history. He dedicates this article to Grace Mullen, archivist of the Montgomery Library of Westminster Seminary where she has served for more than thirty years. Without Grace’s casual comment, “There are many letters in the Machen collection between Hodges and himself,” this article would not have been written.]

In a letter from Mary (Minnie) Gresham Machen to her son J. Gresham Machen she inquired about the welfare of his “protégé.”[1] The letter was written early in Machen’s career at Princeton Theological Seminary, and the protégé might be assumed to be one of his students, a faculty member, or a family acquaintance, but none of these was the case. The protégé, who most often addressed his letters to “Mr. Machen,” was an alcoholic named Richard Hodges. Mrs. Machen’s use of “protégé” to describe Hodges reflects her discreet concern as a lady to keep her son’s association with Richard a private matter between mother and son, while Hodges use of “Mr.” reflects the respect for and social distance he perceived between himself and Dr. Machen. This article will survey their relationship, which spanned more than twenty-two years, by using more than three hundred letters sent between them as well as correspondence with Machen’s family members and other persons involved with Richard’s care.

I. Who Was Richard Hodges?

The little that is known about Richard Hodges is scattered throughout the correspondence between Dr. Machen and himself. Some of Machen’s biographers have mentioned Hodges briefly either by name or description, including N. B. Stonehouse’s pages telling about “R.H.,” and the briefer mentions by D. G. Hart and S. J. Nichols.[2] Richard Hodges was raised in Richmond, Virginia, where as an adolescent he witnessed the War Between the States and the burning of the city in April of 1865. His father was an architect and the family’s religious background was Roman Catholic.[3] In one letter, Hodges mentioned his “army boots,” which may indicate that he served in the military sometime before his acquaintance with Dr. Machen, and his interest in veterans and their gatherings may also confirm an earlier military service.[4] The exact time of his first meeting with Machen is not known, but their relationship developed through the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton and through Richard’s presence in Alexander Hall as he visited with the students. Hodges had become a member of the First Presbyterian Church through the evangelistic work of Princeton Seminary students on the streets of the quaint village. He specifically dated his conversion to 16 January 1911, when “god took all desire for tobacco and all other sinful habits from me.”[5]

II. The Early Years In Princeton And Keswick Colony

Dr. Machen’s first mention of Hodges is in a letter to his mother written 22 May 1910, where he commented that Hodges had “been a drunkard most of his life” and that he was “converted a year or so ago.” The difference between Machen’s date for Hodges’s conversion and that cited by Richard may be due to the protégé’s return to the bottle sometime around 13 January 1911, so it could be that he believed he was really converted following this relapse.[6] Richard spent a lot of time in Machen’s Alexander Hall room reading Pilgrim’s Progress through twice, studying the Bible, chatting, and reading the Baltimore Sun. Dr. Machen described Hodges as an intelligent man who had spent most of his life as a laborer. Hodges used to delight Machen and the students with stories recounting the evacuation of Richmond during the Civil War. As Machen put it, “he is really a good talker when you get him started.” At one point, Hodges is described as struggling to overcome his alcohol addiction, but he recently had a “terrible lapse” when two nice suits of clothing given to him by Dr. Machen were sold in order to raise money for liquor.[7] The ensuing years of their relationship would be marked by many lapses. At the time of this letter to his mother, Hodges was doing well and Machen and some other students were trying to find some kind of employment for him in a community away from his Princeton drinking circle.[8]

As summer drew to a close in 1910, Dr. Machen wrote his mother that he, along with Sylvester Beach, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, were continuing to help Hodges.[9] Richard had made it through the summer “in a very gratifying way, for he has not done a bit of drinking.”[10] Mrs. Machen was interested in Richard’s progress and she responded to one of his lapses to the bottle saying, “I feel personally grieved about it for I have learned to take great interest in him. I do hope he will take heart and try again.”[11] Later in the month, she asked Dassie, “Let me know what news you have of ‘Hodges’.”[12] Dr. Machen commented to his mother that Hodges was doing well and that his assessment was confirmed by Sylvester Beach, who had talked with Hodges about his faith in Christ and believed that Richard had a true and “lasting penitence.”[13] But the alcoholic’s progress against alcohol did not go smoothly. Following one lapse, Mrs. Machen expressed her concern, “I feel personally distressed about Mr. Hodges. But after all he has made a brave effort and deserves more credit than many of us who may think we need no repentance.”[14] Both Machen and Beach believed that it was essential to remove Richard from Princeton because, “The life here is unfavorable for him in his present condition.”[15]

Though Machen was concerned about Richard, he was also concerned that his efforts in the alcoholic’s behalf had taken time from his studies.[16] In order to get Hodges away from Princeton and minimize Machen’s involvement with him, he wanted to take Richard to the Keswick Colony of Mercy in Whiting, New Jersey. It was thought that the isolation would be best for him since it was a private religious institution that helped alcoholics stop drinking. Acting on Machen’s lead, Sylvester Beach applied for and received a letter of acceptance for Hodges. But before the move to Keswick could take place, Richard had to recover from heart troubles that had put him in the hospital. At one point during his long convalescence, Dr. Machen rode his “wheel” (bicycle) the ten miles from Princeton to Trenton to visit the suffering man.[17] Hodges convalesced further but was still too weak to be transferred to the Keswick Colony.[18] A week later, Machen again cycled to Trenton to visit Richard whose recovery time had exceeded five weeks. He noted that when it was time to move Richard to his new home it would mean “the loss of some time for me, but I shall be glad to get it off my hands.”[19] He was continuing to have difficulty balancing time for his studies with his oversight of Richard Hodges; Machen wanted to help, but he struggled between his ministry of mercy and his teaching at the seminary.

When Richard was released from the hospital, Machen took him to his new home in the Keswick Colony. Apparently, it was not an easy transition for Hodges because he commented to Machen that when he first arrived he thought Keswick was “hell on this earth”; however, after some time he believed it to be one of the “greatest places on earth.”[20] Hodges’s health improved and he gained five-and-a-half pounds in three days, but he was concerned about eating because he thought it was “nearly as bad as drink,” thus comprehending a not always grasped parallel between alcoholism and gluttony.[21] Richard wrote to Machen regularly and his correspondence involved requests for assistance in nearly every letter including such expensive needs as replacing broken eye glasses and purchasing medicine.[22]

As the summer of 1911 drew to a close, Hodges grew increasingly disenchanted with his new home. He informed his benefactor that “i certainly intend to go a way from here monday if not before.”[23] One day Hodges took off on foot for Princeton, but concomitant with his journey from Keswick, J. Gresham Machen was on his way to visit Richard.[24] The director had been having trouble with Hodges, so he called upon Dr. Machen for assistance. The busy professor was particularly upset about the wasted trip because traveling to the colony from Princeton involved five transit changes and a considerable amount of time.[25] Upon returning to Princeton, Machen was not able to find Richard until the following Sunday and in short-order Hodges was returned to Mercer Hospital because he was in “a pitiable condition—with a weak heart, bad nerves, and neither eats nor sleeps to any great extent.”[26] Mrs. Machen, writing from Paris while on a European trip, commented to her son that she was “grieved over the trouble with your old protégé, and the interruption to your work without any apparent result to show for it was very hard indeed.”[27] Machen regretted not being able to see Hodges more often, but he felt the risk of getting a cold was too great to ride his bicycle to visit the man.[28]

III. Hodges Is Moved To Vineland

The next year, 1912, would see the United States celebrate its continued territorial expansion with the addition of New Mexico as the forty-seventh state, but it was a year that began with no fanfare for Richard Hodges as he returned to drinking. Hodges continued to binge, and Machen was concerned whether he could survive his recent relapse. Richard’s condition was such a problem that Machen and Beach asked the Princeton police to look out for him since there were times when he could not be found.[29] Machen and Beach agreed that it would be best to move Richard a good distance from Princeton to the southern New Jersey farming town of Vineland.[30] Dr. Machen commented to his mother:

The past week has been dreadfully unsatisfactory, especially on account of trouble with Hodges. He came in drunk on Thursday night, and on Friday morning I got up at 4:30 A.M. to keep him from sneaking off as he sometimes does in the early morning. He did get away about eleven o’clock in the day, but soon returned. Yesterday I went to Vineland, N. J., a town about mid-way between Philadelphia and Atlantic City in order to look up a favorable place for Hodges to stay. I sent a letter to the minister there, and found him very obliging. He is going to see whether he can find a suitable place where Hodges can be boarded. But I was disappointed in not finding an immediate solution of the difficulty.[31]

He finally ironed out the details and took Richard to Vineland via a three-hour journey on public transportation. The minister at the Presbyterian Church in Vineland, David King, agreed to look after Mr. Hodges and help Machen by distributing funds to the man.[32] Richard enjoyed his new home in the more rural area of New Jersey.[33]

The day after the supposedly unsinkable Titanic struck an iceberg and went into the deep, Richard wrote his Princeton benefactor and told him how much he enjoyed his new church, especially its prayer meetings. Hodges attended an adult Sunday school class where he was awarded a pin for faithful attendance.[34] Intermingled with comments about his life were the usual requests for supplies such as “a brush and daber” for shaving, postage stamps, new soles for his shoes, and thirty cents per week to have his laundry done.[35] Machen and Beach faithfully provided Richard’s clothing by filling his closet with a suit, pants, three shirts, and other items.[36] The letters were sent by Richard on a weekly basis, presumably so Dr. Machen could keep an eye on Hodges’s activities— failure to receive a letter was indication that Richard may be drinking again. David King encouraged Machen to visit Vineland following his return to Princeton from his annual Maine trip so he could see how well Hodges was doing, but there is no indication that Machen was able to make the visit.[37]

Richard continued to be involved in the Vineland church and became concerned for the spiritual welfare of those around him. He befriended an elderly man and went with him to religious services in the soldiers’ home in Vineland.[38] Richard also mentioned that he gave a copy of the Gospel of John to a young man he had met recently.[39] Intermingled with these accounts of Richard’s concern for others are requests for such things as new shoes and a celluloid collar.[40] Meanwhile, Gresham was complaining to his mother about the Sunday school “temperance lesson” at the Presbyterian Church, that if anything could drive him “to drink,” it would be these lessons.[41] On the one hand Machen was almost daily dealing with the ravaged life of an alcoholic, but on the other hand he believed the Presbyterian Church to be out of the bounds of its ministry by encouraging involvement in the temperance movement. Within a short time, the rosy stay of Richard in Vineland turned to trouble when he complained about his rooming situation and commented that David King was looking for a new rooming house for him. Though not happy with his home, he thanked Machen for some clothing he just received with a second letter that same day.[42]

Richard became more involved in his church and informed his benefactor that he was interested in teaching a Sunday school class for boys at the Italian Mission Church in Vineland. South Jersey’s many farms needed workers to cultivate and harvest their fields, and Italian immigrants were filling the void. In response to the new residents, some of the local churches established the mission. As November drew to an end, Hodges taught his first Sunday class at the mission.[43] Teaching the class for boys on Sunday invigorated the redeemed alcoholic. David King commented that Richard’s health had improved in Vineland, he enjoyed his Sunday scholars, and he was enjoying a new home in Mrs. Sloan’s rooming house.[44]

As Christmas rolled around, Richard was doing well and asked Dr. Machen to provide some small holiday gifts for the boys.[45] David King took some of the money from the Hodges fund, at Machen’s request, and helped Hodges buy gifts for the boys in his class.[46] King commented to Machen, “I took supper with Hodges the other evening. It would do you good to see how happy he is.... He does not look like the same man when he came first to Vineland.”[47] Mrs. Sloan, Richard’s landlady, echoed the happy condition of Hodges when she wrote to Machen and invited him to visit Richard any time; she also thanked him for sending the rent checks promptly each week.[48]

The next year, 1913, witnessed Henry Ford’s adaptation of the conveyor belt from the meat packing industry to the movable assembly line for his Model-T, and it was a year that would see Richard Hodges enjoying a particularly happy portion of his life. Events did not fare so well for Dr. Machen, though, because there was a fire in Alexander Hall in January, which caused some damage to his room but fortunately did not consume his library.[49] His busy schedule put him behind in his correspondence including his normally regular “pastoral letter to Hodges.”[50] Hodges’s letters to Machen beamed with happiness as his Sunday class continued to grow. He entered the teaching opportunity with vigor, and he not only gave New Testaments to his students but he also distributed them to other children in the Italian areas of his community.[51] Richard began a Bible memory program with the children of his class and helped them memorize the Beatitudes.[52] All in all, the transformation of the life of Richard Hodges was remarkable, as Dr. Machen noted to his mother:

Mr. Hodges, the man whom I am helping out as you remember, is getting on magnificently at Vineland a town in southern New Jersey. He has a good place to board in a private family, and seems to be doing really fine and useful work as a teacher in the Italian Sunday School, and as a member of the Presbyterian congregation. His letters are really remarkable.[53]

Mr. Machen had been through some difficult times with his protégé. He had spent many hours visiting him when he was ill, purchasing items for his needs, providing funds for his living, hunting him down when he was on binges, and consulting with Sylvester Beach and David King, but he could see the remarkable work that God’s grace was accomplishing in the man’s life. As their correspondence continued, Hodges would mingle—in his disjointed and abrupt fashion—information regarding his Sunday scholars with requests for everything from socks for himself to New Testaments and gifts for his boys.[54]

On March 4, 1913, Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as the twenty-eighth president of the United States, and it was an event that did not go unnoticed by Richard Hodges. With the focus of the nation’s attention on the election of Wilson, the usual publicity and marketing followed. Richard had seen a book by the Presbyterian president advertised in a magazine. He wrote Machen with a request:

I see in my Sunday school times a book advertised written by Woodrow Wilson on church entertainments recommended for parents, Sunday school teachers and pastors the price is ten cents paper bound or fifty cents leather bound now I don’t approve of these church frolics I think gods house should be a place of worship not a place of amusement...[55]

He asked his benefactor for a copy of the book as he told about the progress of his Sunday school class, but there is no indication that he received a copy.[56] He had taught the lads “the old bible” except for the Minor Prophets and he wanted to teach the twenty-third Psalm, but he had not yet received the Psalm books he had requested from Machen.[57] The Princetonian’s past generosity to his charge was once again shown as he provided the Psalm books the following week.[58] Hodges was committed to his young students, and he not only taught on Sunday but he also visited the lads and their families.[59]

As the months passed, Richard continued to tell his mentor about how his Sunday school class was doing. Some weeks the attendance was better than others, but there was some stability and consistency as the boys enjoyed Richard’s teaching and leadership.[60] The boys in the class were occasionally unable to attend because they had to labor with their families in the harvest of berries and peas from Vineland’s many fields. Hodges commented about the situation:

. . . how are we going to blame these poor italians for that [working on the Sabbath] when some of them have families of 10 and 12 in the family and they only Laborers and our own american church people are employing them to do the work on Sunday when a church elder will be at church worshiping and have a gang of little italian boys and girls in his berry and pea patch it seems to look worse for our people than it does for the italians that is doing the work the one is having it done for gain the other is doing it for Bread which is the worst...[61]

One has to recognize a remarkable perception of the situation on the part of this redemptively reformed alcoholic. As he continued to work with the lads, he grew increasingly sensitive to their economic plight and tried to help them as he could.[62] The farm workers that Hodges visited and taught often faced disease and other difficulties associated with their poverty. In October 1913, Hodges went to a funeral for an Italian boy who had died of typhoid fever. The tragic and sad death of the youth led Richard to start a collection for the boy’s family that raised six dollars and seventy-five cents. The lad who died was a brother of one of the boys in Hodges’s Sunday school class.[63] Hodges continued his “mishon work” into the succeeding months and became more concerned about the oppressive poverty of the Italian farm laborers, but he was also frustrated that there was little he could do to help.[64] Richard complained to Mr. Machen that one of the Sunday school class boys had shoes that were in terrible condition and he wanted to help; fortunately, an anonymous donor left some new shoes at the boy’s doorstep.[65]

The Sunday scholars continued to learn from Richard’s teaching, and they were able to memorize the Ten Commandments.[66] David King commented to Machen that the boys of Hodges’s class, now nine in all, did a wonderful job reciting the Ten Commandments and they “did not make a single mistake.” King commented further, “God has done great things for Hodges and I know you are glad that you were led to place him here in the temperance town of Vineland.”[67]

Dr. Machen was having some health problems of his own as he suffered with his digestion. Richard was compassionate towards his benefactor and encouraged him with Bible passages, but then in the characteristic disjointed and abrupt fashion of Hodges’s correspondence, he asked for a broad brim straw hat with a wide black band.[68] As Hodges’s work with the boys continued, he started having monthly meetings with them in their homes.[69] On through these same months, Machen continued to suffer with his digestion problems as well as neck and back pain.[70] Richard encouraged his benefactor in his time of illness and mentioned that his work with the Sunday school class was difficult at times due to the Methodists, who were trying to lead the students to their own church.[71] Despite what Hodges thought was the intrusion of the Methodists, his class was stable and his students were dedicated—one student walked nine miles to attend his Sunday class.[72]

Just five days after J. Gresham Machen’s ordination to the ministry, 23 June 1914, the sequence of events leading to the First World War shifted into high gear with the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand. The Great War would be a significant event in the relationship between Machen and Hodges, and as the political cards were played contributing to the conflict, Richard continued to keep his benefactor informed of the events in his life and requested things he needed, such as a hat and suspenders.[73] August was an eventful month for Europe because Germany declared war on Russia and France, and Austria– Hungary declared war on Russia, but in the isolated Americas there was celebration at the opening of the Panama Canal, which was followed by Japan’s declaration of war on Germany on 23 August. The world was at war, but the United States would try to maintain its isolation even as American citizens visiting Europe sometimes became casualties of the conflict.

As the summer drew to a close and the pressures of the next semester at Princeton approached, Machen visited his parents at their summer retreat in Seal Harbor, Maine.[74] As Richard’s summer was ending, he was continuing to enjoy his ministry with the growing group of ten boys, but as fall arrived, Hodges became ill with a sore throat and coughing that resulted in his missing his Sunday class. As he recovered from his sickness he remembered his impending birthday and commented to his faithful benefactor, “ask some of those millionaires” to send sixty-five dollars to him for his sixty-fifth birthday.[75] This bold request would not have made it to the ears of its targets since Dr. Machen would surely have ignored it as he often had to disregard many other bold comments from Hodges. Richard did enjoy a special gift, though, when his class had a birthday social for him and the lads recited 1 Corinthians 13 as their gift for the aging man’s birthday.[76]

On 3 May 1915, Machen was inaugurated as an assistant professor at Princeton Seminary, and four days later the Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat resulting in the deaths of one hundred fourteen Americans and hundreds from other nationalities. As the situation in Europe deteriorated, Machen’s acceptance of the Princeton position had been preceded by his rejection of a vigorously presented offer by W. W. Moore at Union Seminary in Virginia. Moore had not only written Machen several times, but he also tried to have Mrs. Machen influence her son to go to Union.[77] During this period Richard’s letters continued to express his joy concerning his Sunday class for boys, and he requested funds to pay for transportation to take some friends of the boys to some local evangelistic services.[78] David King recognized that Hodges’s ministry among the Italians was a wonderful work, as he commented to Machen:

He is doing such a good work among the Italians that it would be a pity to hinder him in any way and yet the demand on you for money is quite heavy. There ought to be others to assist you. You ought not to bear the burden alone.[79]

Dr. Machen was paying for Hodges’s rent, food, cleaning, and all the other expenses associated with living as well as funding his ministry with the Italian boys and their families. The three years King kept the Hodges expense fund were, according to King, years that Richard was free from tobacco and alcohol.[80]

Christmas of 1915 would not be a happy one for the Machens due to the death of Arthur W. Machen, J. Gresham’s father, on 19 December. Richard responded to his benefactor’s grief with a consoling letter that said:

. . . it must be a great consolation to you to know your dear father was ready to go and meet our dear saviour in that mansion where he said he had prepared a place for him and to pass so peacefuly a way from this world of trials and sorrow to the land where all is joy and gladness and lean on our dear saviours breast as a little child...[81]

About three quarters of the four-sided letter were dedicated to encouraging and consoling Machen concerning his loss. It must have been some comfort to the New Testament scholar to be encouraged in his grief by the many New Testament allusions he read from the letter of a man whose life had been so dramatically transformed by the work of the gospel. A man of wealth, education, and status, living in the prestigious village of Princeton, was encouraged by an aging and often ill alcoholic with no earthly status, living in a rural farm community, yet both found unity through their common faith in the redemptive work of Christ. About a week after this special letter from Hodges, Machen had to revert to his duty of keeping Richard in line and tell him to stop smoking because he had heard that the man had returned to tobacco.[82] Richard said that he would not smoke any more and that he had thrown his pipe away. Hodges had been addicted to nicotine since he was twelve years old when he began chewing tobacco.[83] This recent return to an old bad habit contributed to Machen visiting Richard in Vineland. After a long and tedious trip by public transportation, he spent some time with Richard and “had positively entertaining” conversation with him.[84] David King commented that the benefactor’s time with Richard had done him a great deal of good and encouraged him in his Bible study.[85] David King was aging, and the weakness of the flesh led to his decision to turn control of the Hodges fund over to a man named Tombleson.[86]

Dr. Machen again visited Richard late in the spring of 1916. The trip, once again, was a tedious one due to the complexity of connections on public transportation, and it was an especially lengthy visit because Hodges’s landlords invited Machen to stay for lunch and dinner. The trip went well, but Machen was “a little puzzled by Hodges.” He observed that Richard seemed to be not doing as well as he had been, and there were some suspicions about his conduct expressed by the landlords and some of the tenants in the rooming house. But at the same time Machen commented,” Certainly the drink evil has been overcome in a simply marvelous way in his case.”[87] Despite Machen’s reassurances of Richard’s condition, the landlords wanted Richard out of their rooming house, and the burden of finding a place for the man fell solely on Machen because of King’s weakness due to age and Sylvester Beach being unavailable.[88]

Dr. Machen returned to visit Hodges late in July because of evidence that he had returned to the use of alcohol. It seemed to Machen that Hodges had been lying about a year or so about his behavior and he was using his incidental funds “for his own purposes.” This problem in Hodges’s life remains a mysterious one because Machen also commented, “One thing is clear, he has gotten rid of this habit of drinking in a most surprising way.” Despite Machen’s positive assessment of the situation, the landlords still wanted Hodges out, so Machen sought a new residence for his protégé. Machen asked David King, as he was able, to continue to investigate the charges the landlords made against Hodges, but in the meantime, Machen contemplated seeking a new home for Richard. The continued investigation of the accusations about Richard’s conduct suggested that they were “quite groundless,” and it may very well have been that the landlords wanted Hodges out and they used the accusations as justification for his eviction.[89]

Machen’s travel difficulties, whether to visit Richard or make other engagements, were alleviated the following year when he learned how to drive a car and purchased a Model-T Ford. The little car proved to be quite a convenience to him since it released him from the often difficult, tedious, and time-consuming schedules of public transportation. Though he liked the utility of the car, he found the mechanics of automobiles to be somewhat “mysterious.”[90] For Machen, the new automotive technology was a useful and time-saving tool. The use of the automobile would liberate many hours that would have been spent on public transportation and would ease the process of traveling to visit Richard Hodges.

IV. The First World War

The American government had been able to maintain the nation’s uninvolvement in the Great War despite events that justified a response. The Lusitania tragedy, the sabotage of a munitions plant in Delaware, the sinking of United States ships without provocation, and Germany’s encouraging Mexico to invade Texas all contributed to the United States declaring war on Germany, 2 April 1917. As the United States joined the allied combat efforts against Germany, many young men faced the horrors, fears, and deprivations of war. J. Gresham Machen joined the overseas operations in a non-combative role in January 1918, as a secretary for the Young Men’s Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.).[91] His initial duties included serving hot chocolate and selling tobacco products, candies, and snacks to the soldiers. He often found himself with too much time on his hands, which he expressed as being “very busy getting nothing done.”[92] The drone of the primitive wood and canvas aircraft and the explosion of cannon shells crept closer as his presence near the front exposed him to the German advances. In this frightening arena Machen commented that there was a “particular fittingness of the Psalms amid the isolation of war.”[93] Though he served in a rest camp for the soldiers, he commented that “there is little rest about it—especially for the Y.M.C.A. men,” due to gas alarms almost every night and aircraft flying over with their loud engines combined with the rapid staccato sounds of machine gun fire.[94] Sleep, when it could be obtained, was limited to three or four hours each night. He commented further that war life was communal and there was no privacy for anyone.[95] His extended periods of idleness changed into harried and busy days that stretched from dawn until after nine o’clock at night as the transactions at his canteen increased.[96] As his busyness increased so did the danger of his position at the front. At one point, he was so close to the advancing enemy that he withdrew across a bridge to avoid being trapped in enemy territory if the advancing Germans managed to detonate the bridge and break off his route of retreat.[97] Cannon projectiles fell close to the Princeton professor, and he sometimes had to dive into shell craters or descend into wet, debris-filled cellars to be protected from explosions. He had to live continuously in his wet, dirty, wool clothing with limited opportunities to bathe.[98] As his experience of the horrors of war continued, he expressed the situation to his mother saying, “Existence over here is so desperately lonely that it is a comfort to know someone cares.”[99] True to his concern for Scripture and its teaching, he was often frustrated and angered by the great indifference to worship and the gospel; he sometimes held Bible studies with as few as two others in attendance.[100]

As the Great War neared its end, Dr. Machen surveyed the field following one battle and described the scene of destruction and desolation in pallid grays, much like the cinematography that would give many a sense of the horror of war in the 1930 film interpretation of All Quiet on the Western Front.[101] As the last few days of the war passed, Machen assumed the duties of a stretcher-bearer carrying the many mutilated dead and maimed wounded that had to be removed from the field.[102] At this point he may have remembered the prayer for after a battle in the Presbyterian Church’s For Soldiers and Sailors: An Abridgement of the Book of Common Worship, which reads:

Almighty God, who in Thy mercy hast covered our heads in the day of battle and saved us from the hands of our enemies; we give Thee remembrance and grateful thanks, and we give our lives anew to Thy service. Because Thou hast been our help, therefore in the shadow of Thy wings will we rejoice. Because Thou hast delivered our souls from death, we will walk before Thee in the land of the living. Continue to us Thy protection, we beseech Thee, and strengthen our trust in Thee as our God and Father in Christ Jesus. Encourage our hearts as we go forward; crown our arms with speedy and decisive victory: and give to the world the blessing of an honourable and lasting peace. For Christ’s sake. Amen.[103]

The war was for Machen, as for so many of the troops and supporting forces, a life-changing event; the Baltimore-born gentleman and scholar had his perspective on life adjusted by his experience. He saw the horrible sights, smelled the lingering odor of expended gunpowder; heard and felt the deafening explosive concussions, the screams and crying of the wounded and dying; lived in fear of a mustard gas attack; and viewed the dismembered corpses left by incessant shelling and dense, flesh-shredding machinegun crossfire. Though J. Gresham Machen’s Y.M.C.A. job was described as a non-combatant position, he faced many of the same dangers as the weapons-bearing troops—there truly are no noncombatants at the front.

During Machen’s service in France he was kept abreast of the situation with Richard Hodges by Sylvester Beach, who was acting as Hodges’s primary benefactor during the Princetonian’s absence. Not only had Beach taken over as the steward for Hodges, but the financial support that Machen could not readily provide from France was being distributed, in some part, by the deacons of Princeton’s First Presbyterian Church who “most heartily” appropriated funds for the year to help with Richard’s living expenses.[104] Beach also described Richard as “getting on very well,” and arrangements had been made with a “Mrs. Newell” to provide room and board for him.[105] Richard Hodges was doing well and his current living situation surrounded him with Christian influences.

When the war finally ended, J. Gresham Machen did not restrain his excitement and joy in an uncharacteristically exuberant portion of a letter to his mother. He was normally a reserved, careful, and thoughtful person in his letters, with carefully controlled emotion, but three days after the war ceased he was ecstatic, having been overcome with a liberating joy:

The Lord’s name be praised! Hardly before have I known what true thanksgiving is. Nothing but the exuberance of the psalms of David accompanied with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings could begin to do justice to the joy of this hour. “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” It seems as though the bells must break forth into singing. Peace at last, and praise the Lord![106]

Life, before too long, would return to normal, but Dr. Machen remained in Europe for another four months before returning to the comforts of Princeton in March of 1919. As he prepared for the return to New Jersey, he received a letter from Sylvester Beach reminding him of the need for money to cover Hodges’s expenses. Beach also commented:

I want you to know that I consider Richard as one of the most marvelous monuments of grace I have ever known. He is living a consistent Christian life after more than fifty years of dissipation. He cares for nothing so much as the church and the services of it. His whole thought is of the various meetings for religious worship. He is also bent on doing good as he has opportunity. His letters to the soldiers have done much good I have no doubt. The only drawback to that particular service has been the cost of stamps. You would hardly believe it possible were I to tell you the amount I have paid out for postage for him. But this is his mission he believes, and I have not liked to put the money side of it in his way.

What Richard is, under God, we owe to you. The expense of time, thought, labor and money has been large, but I do not believe an investment ever yielded greater dividends to the glory of God. You have saved a man, and one redeemed life is worth more than the whole world, our Lord has declared.[107]

Though the horror and death of the War to End All Wars had ceased, the world would soon forget the devastation of the Great War as Germany would be allowed, through the negligence of many, to rise once again to a well-armed and oppressive world power. In just two decades the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler would lead the Germans into another cataclysmic world war.

V. Machen’s Return To Princeton

Following a trip to Seal Harbor in his automobile, Dr. Machen returned to Princeton Seminary and his duties teaching, but what had been the routines of life before the war were viewed after it with a greater sense of his place in the earthly work of God.[108] He viewed his relationship to Richard Hodges in a different way, and his new perspective induced him to travel and visit his protégé. But the trouble was, Machen could not find Hodges. He and Mr. Ranagan, a man who helped with oversight of Hodges for a brief time, searched unsuccessfully in the places where it was thought Hodges would most likely be hiding. Machen was particularly upset with Richard because he had sold six shirts, an overcoat, and a suit that had been given to him to wear. Not only had Richard misused his gifts from his benefactor, but he also sold a watch and razor graciously supplied by Sylvester Beach. Richard was hiding because he found out that Mr. Machen was looking for him, and he knew that their meeting would be less than a pleasant reunion. At this point, Gresham believed it would be necessary to find an institution for Hodges, but this avenue was not taken because Hodges, once again by God’s grace, mended his ways. Machen’s attitude towards his protégé and his characteristically alcoholic behavior changed following his war experience:

A good many people might think Hodges not worth working for—there is deceitfulness in him as well as his recurrent weakness—but in the providence of God I have been given absolute responsibility (so far as anyone has it) for the welfare of a human soul, and I cannot put the matter out of my mind. Meanwhile my academic work has absolutely gone by the board.[109]

The scholar was still concerned about his studies, but now he grasped more fully his responsibility to Richard Hodges; it was not only providential that Machen enjoyed a great intellectual gift, but also that God had placed Mr. Hodges along the path of his Christian life. Machen’s ministry to Hodges was now a privilege and a responsibility, while before the war, he saw the aging alcoholic as more of a burden and a responsibility. Hodges was no longer an ecclesiastical welfare project, but a fellow Christian in great need of the benefactor God had provided, J. Gresham Machen. Several years after these comments to his mother, Machen wrote in “The Claims of Love” that “service is comparatively useless unless it comes from the heart; true service is not a substitute for love, but the expression of love”—could it be that he was thinking of his changed perspective on Hodges when he penned these words?[110]

VI. Hodges Is Moved To Millville

The Princeton professor’s commitment to caring for Richard Hodges was again put to the test in the spring of 1919. Mr. Ranagan informed Machen that Richard was taking it upon himself to move to a new residence near Princeton. This would not be a good location for Richard due to the proximity to his old drinking circle, so a few days later Machen drove to Vineland to check out the situation with the aging alcoholic. In an effort to compromise with Hodges, he agreed to see if he could find a farm near Princeton where Hodges could live and do a little work to earn some income.[111] Dr. Machen’s efforts proved fruitful, though the new home for his protégé would not be closer to Princeton. Instead, Richard was moved to a rented room in Millville, about ten miles south of Vineland and farther from Princeton. Machen had been able to placate Richard’s desire without placing him in a situation that could lead to temptation. Rev. David W. Berry of the Presbyterian Church in Millville became the steward of Machen’s incidental expenses fund for Hodges. Berry was also working on finding Richard “a job in the Bleachery.”[112] Richard was given the job, and he commented that it was difficult for him to work because it was dark when he went to work and dark when he returned home.[113] With his move from Vineland to Millville, Richard stopped teaching his Sunday school class and lost contact with his students. In Millville, he attended the Sunday school class taught by Rev. Berry at the Presbyterian Church.[114] The correspondence from February 1920 through 1925 is limited, but Hodges continued to live in Millville, except for a brief period in the country with a family. By May of 1921, he lost his job in the bleachery and was unable to find any new employment, which was good in some ways because during his employment some of Millville’s less desirable sort befriended him and used his money and drew him back to alcohol.[115] David Berry observed that others were “to blame for his going wrong, and they are not likely to bother him when they know that he has no money.”[116] Hodges commented to Machen that times were hard in Millville and that some men were able to find work for only two or three days a week.[117]

As 1921 was drawing to a close, Machen was honored for his service during World War I with the “me´daille comme´morative de la guerre” by the War Office of France for serving more than six months in the combat zone.[118] The political conflict of the Great War now being sealed in his memory with the French medal, Machen would become more and more involved in the war in the Presbyterian Church exemplified by the battle-toned title of Harry Emerson Fosdick’s sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”119 Meanwhile, Hodges continued to suffer from various physical ailments including kidney and heart trouble, but despite his bodily discomfort, he managed to be in fairly good spirits.[120] The year had seen the loss of a great warrior for Princeton Seminary and the conservative Presbyterian cause when B. B. Warfield died in February. Though Machen and Warfield had not seen eye-to-eye concerning the racial integration of the Princeton dorms, he greatly respected and admired the old Kentucky polymath and would miss his dignified presence and incredible brilliance.[121]

The year of 1923 was particularly eventful for Dr. Machen’s academic life because it saw the printing of his New Testament Greek for Beginners, which firmly established him in the New Testament field of seminary academics as a scholar, and Christianity and Liberalism placed him at the intellectual point in the Fundamentalist–Modernist conflict. As the difficulties in the Presbyterian Church in particular, and American Christendom in general, heated up, the health of Hodges entered one of its declining periods. In particular, his kidneys and heart were causing him to suffer greatly. When his seventy-fourth birthday rolled around in 1923, he was in such a severe condition that the doctors thought he would die.[122] But once again, Richard recovered and was asking Machen for a sweater and some socks for Christmas.[123] The juxtaposition of opposing the intellectual leadership of theological modernism and buying socks for an aging alcoholic seems surreal, but Machen might well have seen the two as opposite sides of the same coin—the theological foundation of the gospel was at stake in the modernist controversy, and it was the gospel that had brought about the redemption of both Richard Hodges and himself.

By the summer of 1924, Berry had moved Hodges from Millville to live with a family in the country outside of town at the same time that Mr. Machen was preparing for his annual trip to Seal Harbor. A few years earlier Machen had purchased a Hudson to replace his ailing Model-T, and for the Maine trip he was changing to a Studebaker with the hopes that the more luxurious interior and accessories would make his mother more comfortable for the long drive.[124] The country residence for Richard was not working out very well in at least one point, and that was he could not get to church in Millville unless he could find someone to give him a ride. Rev. Berry believed that the isolation was necessary for Hodges to keep him away from the alcohol temptation, but the price was high as he was often separated from worship services.[125]

As Machen became more involved in the controversies of the time, he was unable to be as faithful with his responsibilities to Richard as he had been in the past, which sometimes resulted in his letting the incidental account fund fall behind. Machen was an organized and precise person, and the pressures of his efforts against theological liberalism had greatly increased his correspondence, speaking, and writing—his candle was burning at both ends with intense flames. On one occasion, he sent a check for two hundred dollars[126] to Rev. Berry in compensation for funds he had been paying out of his own pocket to Hodges.[127] By June of 1925, the account was overdrawn eighty-two dollars and fifteen cents, and Machen again sent a check for two hundred dollars to cover the overage and provide for future expenses.[128] Machen and Beach continued to supply some of Richard’s needs directly, including a shirt, socks, shoes, sweater, and a suit.[129] During the course of the year, Machen and Hodges exchanged some letters, but they were mostly concerned with health, the weather, and more clothing items for Richard.[130] As the year was drawing to a close, Machen told his protégé that he felt “greatly ashamed” that he had not answered two previous letters sent by Richard, but he told the man that he had “been under burdens too great for me to bear all during this autumn.”[131] He went on to say that his load of work was so great that he could not possibly do it all, but that he had “thought often of” Richard and that he was grateful for God’s “blessing which has been so plainly manifest in your life.”[132] Dr. Machen remembered Richard’s seventy-seventh birthday to himself, though he failed to congratulate Richard precisely on that day.[133]

Charles A. Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight from New York to Paris marked a year that would see limited correspondence between Machen and Hodges. Three days after the flight, Richard commented, “it seems an awful long time since I hear from you.”[134] What Richard did not realize was the increasingly difficult situation for Machen at Princeton Seminary. Rev. Berry had explained the problems and Hodges encouraged Machen in his trials as he wrote, “there is dark days ahead for the church but the church will be victorious in the end the gospel will triumph,” which was followed immediately in the letter by a request for some underwear.[135] Despite the pressures on Dr. Machen, he was able to send some shirts, socks, and underwear to meet Richard’s needs.[136] Struggling to keep up with all his duties, Machen wrote Hodges in August and told him that though things were looking bleak for his efforts in the Presbyterian Church, he was encouraged by the correspondence from Hodges and Berry regarding his work, and he believed Berry was right “that the evangelical cause will triumph in the end, though meanwhile we may have to endure many trials.”[137] Because of the aging alcoholic’s failing health, the expenses for his care had increased due to the need for medicine, and Rev. Berry needed one hundred thirty-eight dollars and fifty-five cents to reimburse the Hodges incidentals account.[138] Machen’s load was again increased when Sylvester Beach’s wife died and the widower moved to California leaving the financial oversight of Hodges exclusively to Machen. Despite the increased responsibility, Machen inquired about Richard’s current needs, which he answered with a request for a winter suit, a couple of wool shirts, and a pair of shoes.[139] As Christmas approached, Gresham Machen once again gave Hodges a gift, this time it included a sweater, ties, and handkerchiefs.[140] The year saw Richard continue to age with failing health, but he did not return to the alcohol abuse that had characterized his earlier years.

The following year, 1928, was marked by economic decline as conditions were becoming more difficult in many areas of the nation and the world, and these distressing difficulties did not go unnoticed by Hodges as he commented that the times were so hard in Millville that about two hundred families were homeless.[141] Richard continued to seek assistance from Machen when he requested new glasses because his eyes had weakened and his present pair was no longer adequate. He could read only two or three verses in his Bible at a time due to the strain on his vision.[142] The benefactor responded by sending Rev. Berry two hundred dollars to pay for the new glasses and reimburse the Hodges fund.[143] During his annual vacation to Maine, Machen sent Hodges some shirts and socks, and then preached the next week at the historic Park Street Church in Boston.[144] Machen managed to supply Richard’s needs, and he wrote to him that the “situation with regard to the control of the seminary is very critical.”[145] By the end of November, another two hundred dollars had to be sent to Berry to supply Hodges’s needs. Richard had recently moved back from the country into a rooming house in Millville.[146]

The year of 1929 would be a particularly significant year not only for J. Gresham Machen, but for the nation in general; Machen and his supporters would found Westminster Theological Seminary, prohibition’s gangster-driven economy would be violently expressed in the St. Valentines Day Massacre, and in October the nation would experience Black Friday’s failure of the banks and the ensuing Great Depression. The first item of correspondence for the year concerning Hodges, once again, declared that the elderly man was at death’s door. Rev. Berry had to have Richard admitted to the Millville Hospital and he commented, “He . . . may rally from the attack, but it is the worst I have seen him have, and I am quite doubtful at times [of his recovery].”[147] But a mere two days later Berry informed Machen, once again, that he was improving despite Berry’s earlier grim assessment.[148] As Machen responded to Berry’s correspondence he commented on the General Assembly and the changes made on the Princeton Seminary board, which Machen interpreted to be ominous for the future of the institution.[149] The same day Mr. Machen wrote his protégé and encouraged him about his sickness and promised prayers for his recovery.[150] By July Hodges was well enough to write his Princeton friend concerning his improved health, though he was not fully recovered, and Machen responded with further encouragement and mentioned his plans for starting Westminster Seminary now that he had resigned from Princeton.[151] By September, Dr. Machen had moved to his new home in Philadelphia and Westminster Seminary commenced its first academic year on the twenty-fifth of the month.[152] Both Rev. Berry and Richard were able to follow the development of the new divinity school through the newspapers.[153] Hodges was happy to hear the news of the successful beginning for Westminster, but he was also concerned to let Machen know that his eightieth birthday was coming and he wanted a new pair of shoes, which his generous benefactor provided.[154] As the Great Depression was in its infancy, Dr. Machen sent his friend some razor blades and a shaving brush because David Berry was too ill at the time to help Hodges.[155] Writing on Westminster Seminary letterhead, Machen asked Richard what he wanted for Christmas, to which he responded—underwear, shirts, socks, sweaters, and a neck tie.[156] As the seminary continued to develop its program, Gresham Machen would find his funds dwindling as he essentially bankrolled its operation; his dedicated and continued generosity to the seminary made it more difficult for him to provide for Hodges’s needs.

The Virgin Birth of Christ was published in 1930, and its massive defense of this foundational doctrine of Christianity brought even more pressures on Machen as he defended the faith. As Rev. Berry suffered with health problems, Machen took up more of the responsibility for Richard’s direct care at a time when the days were not long enough to accomplish all he had to do.[157] Hodges’s health, again, took a turn for the worse, but fortunately Berry had recovered enough from his sickness to assist Richard, and once again, Machen sent a check, this time for two hundred fifty dollars, to replenish the Hodges incidentals account.[158] He continued to provide the more expensive items to Hodges directly, as in the case of the pair of shoes he sent in the fall.[159] Richard was doing much better as he commented that he would be eighty-one years old in two weeks and he thought that he might make it to eighty-two. He commented to Machen, “may god bless and Keep you to se your 82nd too.”[160] But another downturn in Richard’s health occurred in October, and Berry was giving Hodges an additional dollar each week so he could purchase buttermilk to help his digestion.[161] Machen again provided some new shoes for his protégé, which Richard thanked him for with a brief and scrawled note.[162] Dr. Machen did not forget his friend at Christmas time when he gave him some shirts, a tie, socks, and a flashlight.[163]

Richard’s rollercoaster ride through the ups and downs of his aging constitution continued through 1931. In February he was feeling fine and attended services at Rev. Berry’s church, but by summer Berry informed Machen that Hodges looked very bad and was quite weak, thin, and had a hacking cough, but by August Berry could tell Dr. Machen that Hodges’s health had improved greatly.[164] As fall rolled around, Richard received a wonderful surprise when four of his former Sunday school students visited him because they had heard about his illness. Three of the four had graduated high school and the other one played professional baseball.[165] The boys promised Richard that they were going to get all the members of their class together for Richard’s birthday and take him for a ride in the country.[166] One of the boys gave the elderly man a watch for his birthday.[167] This news was particularly significant for Mr. Machen as he commented, “Wasn’t that perfectly splendid about your meeting with members of your old Bible class. It just does my heart good to hear about it, and I am so glad that you have had this joy.”[168] But as Richard was enjoying this reunion, Machen was confronted with the death of his mother, 13 October 1931. The sadness caused Machen by the death of his mother could not be fully grasped by him due to the intensity of his work schedule and the increasing pressures from Westminster Seminary and the Presbyterian Church. His financial situation continued to be a source of concern, but despite his short funds, he continued to help Richard. Machen candidly commented to Hodges that he had not purchased a new suit in two years due to his economizing as a result of the loss of his Princeton Seminary salary.[169] As Christmas rolled around and Richard’s health ebbed and flowed, he asked Mr. Machen for a good sweater but he received a suit instead because his request was mailed just after Machen had shipped the suit.[170]

Machen would visit Hodges for one last meeting of the two friends in January of 1932. It was a good meeting according to the description provided by Hodges:

I cant find words to explain my self dear mr machen my soul has been rejoice with the asperation it gave me to meet my dearest earthly friend I hope we will meet a gain if it is the masters will if not praise his name I know wee will meet in that happy where there is no sickness or sorrow.[171]

He concluded this letter commenting that he was not doing very well and could hardly write. Machen’s literary response was candid about his concern for Richard’s well-being and he expressed his gratitude for their friendship:

It is a great comfort to me that you speak in such a warmhearted way about our little meeting at Millville, and I, in turn, want to tell you how delighted I was to see you after so long a time. It seems strange that although I have known you so well, and we have been such good friends, so many years did elapse since we saw each other. I am so glad to learn now that you are feeling better, and I rejoice with you in the blessing of God that has been given to you. Most of all do I rejoice in your assurance of salvation and the certainty of your Christian hope.[172]

Richard’s health continued to decline on through the year and into the next. He was having particular trouble with his eyes, and his heart and kidneys were not doing much better.[173] As 1933 began, David Berry wrote to Machen:

. . . I want to say that the praise for the care of Mr. Hodges most all belongs to you. You are the one who has made it possible for him to be in comfort, and to receive any ministrations from me. I have found a real pleasure in doing anything I have been able to do for him, as I am sure you have found in doing the great service you have done. And it is a real joy to see his strong faith and delight in the Lord. I have seen these growing beautifully in the more recent years.[174]

Machen’s answer to Berry’s kind words reiterated his continued desire to help Richard with any further medical treatment, which he exhibited by enclosing a check for three hundred dollars to cover the one hundred seventy-three dollars and thirty-five cents that the Hodges account was overdrawn and to provide funds for future expenses.[175]

By the time the South Jersey summer heat wave of 1933 rolled around, Hodges’s health was deteriorating. At the time, according to the Millville Daily Republican, August began with temperatures approaching 100 degrees.[176] On the front page of the newspaper for Monday, 7 August 1933, one article was titled, “Heat Victim Was Fatally Stricken.” The victim was Richard Hodges, who had died the previous evening at 9:30 in the Millville Hospital.[177] Rev. David Berry conducted the funeral service, and Richard Hodges was interred at 10:20 on the morning of 9 August.[178] Once again and for the final time, J. Gresham Machen would finance the expenses of Hodges as he paid for the one hundred thirty-three dollar burial costs in the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Millville.[179]

The controversy in the Presbyterian Church continued to weigh heavily upon Dr. Machen. His relationship to the denomination continued to deteriorate as the opposition pressed for discipline of the former Princeton professor. On 29 March 1935, he was found guilty of violating his ordination vows, and he appealed to the General Assembly. The 1936 General Assembly rejected his appeal and he was defrocked. Almost immediately, he was elected the first moderator of the Presbyterian Church of America, which became the Orthodox Presbyterian Church a few years later. Dealing with the events of the twenties and thirties had worn down Machen’s physical constitution. When he visited his brother for Christmas 1936, Baltimore was enjoying a comparative heat wave as temperatures were in the sixties rather than the usual thirties or forties, and Christmas Day “saw the temperature soar.”[180] Arthur W. Machen, Jr., recollected that his uncle Gresham, in the room next to him during the holiday, was “coughing throughout the night.”[181] The cough worsened and Machen’s sister-in-law tried to convince him to abandon a trip planned to North Dakota, but he was intent on completing the trip. Bismarck had seen an average high of 9 degrees and an average low of about minus 4 for the week ending 1 January, and New Years Day itself could only muster a high of 3 and a low of minus 5.[182] Into this frigid weather he arrived about noon on Tuesday, 29 December, to fulfill his speaking engagement.[183] The combination of his exhaustion, the bone-chilling cold, and his fulfilling his speaking engagement despite the doctor’s warning all contributed to his death. According to the Bismarck newspaper, he died as his brother Arthur was arriving by taxi at the hospital door.[184] J. Gresham Machen died of double pneumonia at the fairly young age of fifty-five in Bismarck, North Dakota, on 1 January 1937. His death made it to the top of the front page of The Bismarck Tribune for 2 January 1937, “Gresham Machen Dies of Pneumonia: Presbyterian Fundamentalist Leader Succumbs Friday in Bismarck.”[185] After a life of hard work, graciousness, discipline, and faithfulness unto death, he was buried in his hometown of Baltimore.

VII. Machen’s Other Acts Of Assistance

Dr. Machen was not only gracious to Richard Hodges, but as Stonehouse has so well put it, he was a “man of compassion,” “generous without calculation,” “could hardly turn away any one who came to borrow,” and did “almost inexhaustible acts of mercy.”[186] It might be added that if he had a fault concerning his generosity it was that he may have been a soft-touch, as some of the following examples might confirm. It should be remembered that as the calendar passed 1929, the depression moved into full swing and financial shortages became a way of life for many. During the Great War, Machen somehow made the acquaintance of a wounded soldier, Serafino Manfredi. The specifics of how they knew each other are not mentioned, but Machen had given the man some money to help him during his time of recovery. Serafino commented that he “needed it very much” and he was appreciative and he would repay Machen when he returned to the States. B. T. Manfredi, a relative, wrote Machen and thanked him for helping Serafino, and he added that the veteran would repay the roughly thirty-four dollars as soon as he was able to get back to work.[187] Dr. Machen was particularly fond of students, whether they were at Princeton Seminary or not. In one case, he helped a Japanese student with his living expenses while he was in Philadelphia studying at the University of Pennsylvania, and the student, once he returned to Japan, expressed his gratitude for Machen’s generosity.[188] Another Japanese student sought his help, but this person was studying in Berlin at the time. Machen helped him with some funds, and when the student returned to Japan he wrote from Kobe expressing his gratitude for the loan and promised to pay him back soon.[189] A student at the Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, thanked Machen for fifty dollars given to him for his return to Korea from Kentucky. Once he arrived home he sought additional help due to his having to support his parents, and Machen encouraged him to continue his ministry and sent him two hundred dollars with the promise of another one hundred later. Park responded with thanks and asked whether Dr. Machen could continue to support him annually, but Machen said that due to the situation at Princeton, he could not make that commitment.[190] A student in Princeton was helped by Machen with his school expenses, and then the student’s father sought a loan of three hundred dollars. Instead of burdening the man with a loan, he just gave him the money outright because of the faithful gospel labors of both the son and the father.[191] Then there were some student workers in Germany he aided, including a professional nurse, an administrator of a student organization, a minister in a Thuringian town, and a woman in Eisenach who worked among the poor.[192] In the summer of 1925, eleven Princeton Seminary students, including the future missionary Bruce Hunt, went to Canada to do church work, and Machen gave fifteen dollars to each one to help them with their expenses.[193] A few years later some other students went to Canada for ministerial experience, and both wrote to him the following fall to tell of their intention to pay back the thirty dollars each had received to assist them with their missionary expenses.[194]

Dr. Machen was hit particularly hard financially due to his cosigning some loans. As a guarantor he suffered three times. In the first case he had to pay the note, interest, and fees of four hundred forty-one dollars and seventy-nine cents for one man who failed to repay the loan; the second case involved considerable correspondence and attempts to get the recipient of the loan to pay, but Machen eventually had to cover the man’s more than two hundred dollar debt; and the third case involved cash collateral given to the trust company, and when the loan recipient defaulted, Machen told the holder to keep the collateral to cover the debt of three hundred six dollars and sixty-five cents.[195] Each of these three defaults occurred in the early years of the Great Depression when many people were unable to repay their loans, but despite the dismal financial picture of those years, the camaraderie of loss Machen might have felt would have been little comfort to him in light of losing nearly one thousand dollars due to these three cases.

Receipts from various organizations indicate that J. Gresham Machen’s generosity was extended predominantly to Presbyterian ministries, but he also gave to more generally evangelical and inter-denominational groups as well.[196] He contributed twenty-five dollars to the Westminster Bible Conference in 1921.[197] The National Bible Institute of New York received two gifts totaling seventy-five dollars along with an undisclosed amount for its headquarters building fund.[198] The Near East Relief organization was given ten dollars on two separate occasions.[199] Machen was concerned for evangelism, and he expressed it in part by donating funds totaling seventy-five dollars to the Old Tent Evangel of New York City.[200] The West India General Mission asked Machen for a donation of books for its library, and he sent six of his own titles along with five titles by his colleagues at Princeton.[201] A five-dollar gift was made to the American Tract Society, while the Christian Ambassadors’ League received a fifty-dollar donation.[202] His contributions to the Presbyterian Church (P.C.U.S.A.) included two fifty-dollar donations to the Board of National Missions,[203] and the Board of Foreign Mission of the P.C.U.S.A. received two hundred twenty-five dollars and then one hundred fifty dollars for a special gift to purchase equipment for Pyengyang College in Korea.[204] Hampden-Sidney College’s building fund was enhanced by a hundred-dollar gift from Dr. Machen.[205] Some gifts totaling two hundred fifty dollars were given to the League of Evangelical Students, which was an organization that Machen was involved in founding and which particularly interested him.[206] The Salvation Army was given a gift of one hundred dollars in 1933.[207] He gave gifts of five hundred dollars and three hundred dollars to the Independent Board of Foreign Missions.[208] But by far, the largest amounts given, according to the records surveyed, were to Westminster Seminary, which according to two cancelled checks totaled sixty-five hundred dollars.[209]

Dr. Machen’s support of Richard Hodges involved a considerable number of financial disbursements for health related needs, but Hodges was not the only recipient of medical assistance. Machen helped the Reverend S. Earl Orwig, who was a former student of his, by being willing to pay up to one hundred fifty dollars towards the surgery he needed. Rev. Orwig lived in Pittsburgh and Maitland Alexander served as an intermediary.[210] Another man, named “Henry,” was provided financing for an operation that he needed to have done in Kentucky.[211] Stonehouse notes that Machen financed the cataract surgery of Charlie Wykoff, the janitor of Alexander Hall, at the Mercer Hospital where Richard Hodges had spent so much time. Machen described Charlie as an “old friend” and mentioned that the janitor had been at Princeton Seminary for over thirty years.[212]

VIII. Concluding Thoughts And Observations

The relationship between J. Gresham Machen and Richard Hodges is one of contrasts. One of the great ironies of the whole story is seen in the deaths of these two men. Machen lived, for most of his years, a privileged life enjoying the finest in food, clothing, education, and recreations, while Hodges basically lived hand-to-mouth with the ghostly specter of returning to the bottle ever before him. Richard’s outdoor activities consisted of walking to church and his other appointments. Machen, who was an avid cyclist, hiker, and enjoyed sporting events, died at middle age. Hodges was a man whose body was ravaged by the effects of alcoholism, was chronically ill, at death’s door at least three or four times, and yet he lived into his eighties. Machen died in the frigid winter of North Dakota of pneumonia, while Richard died of heat prostration in a South Jersey heat wave. Hodges was buried in the public section of the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Millville in an unmarked grave with the casket and burial costs being provided by the generosity of J. Gresham Machen, while Dr. Machen was buried by his family in their section of the immaculately manicured Green-mount Cemetery in Baltimore. The grave is marked by a massive horizontal stone slab with a large cross covering its center and the stone’s perimeter is engraved with his name, vital dates, and “Faithful unto Death” in Greek (ΠΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΧΡΙ ΘΑΝΑΤΟΥ).

Dr. Machen was against prohibition.[213] He was the only minister of eight commissioners remaining late in the day at the meeting of the New Brunswick Presbytery who voted against the church’s support for prohibition.[214] It might be thought that anyone who was at the most an occasional drinker and had to deal constantly with a person who was a slave of alcohol would necessarily support prohibition, but for Machen there were problems with the push toward prohibition and particularly with the church’s involvement in the movement.[215] First, for the federal government to require the prohibition of alcohol in all its states was, for Machen, a usurpation of the powers and rights of the states. Second, prohibition was an unconstitutional infringement on the right of the individual to choose. Third, with respect to the church, the Presbyterians were stepping over the line between what was the responsibility of the church into the responsibility of the state by making a declaration regarding prohibition. The issue for Dr. Machen involved fundamental principles concerning the political government and the duties of the church. It might be thought that he would have hopped on the bandwagon with the other anti-alcohol people due to his having seen what alcohol-to-excess had done to Hodges—remember that Machen had hunted for Richard when he was on his binges, traveled several times to visit him and to help him get situated in new residences, and expended a significant amount of his estate supporting him—but this was not the case. Where fundamental and essential principles were involved, Dr. Machen knew he had to take a stand.

Another curiosity of these events was Dr. Machen and Sylvester Beach’s concern to have Hodges in a dry town or county. This point might appear inconsistent with Machen’s anti-prohibition stance, but upon further consideration it was consistent with his anti-prohibitionism as well as his republican values. Prohibition would require all communities to ban the sale of alcohol, but without prohibition, each community would have the right to choose for itself. Consequently, each state might have particular municipalities or counties that were dry, which could be used as places where alcoholics could be kept from temptation. At this point the temperance folk would contend that eliminating alcohol period would eliminate the problem of alcoholics, but it should be remembered that Hodges managed to binge during prohibition in communities that had even been dry before prohibition. Machen had nothing against local communities deciding that they wanted to be dry municipalities, but he opposed the federal bureaucracy, as he saw it, treading on the United States Constitution and compelling the nation to end the production of alcoholic beverages—according to Dr. Machen, the federal government had overstepped its bounds. The lower levels of government should not be unnecessarily restricted by the higher levels from determining their own laws.

Dr. Machen’s care and interest in Richard Hodges reflects not only his concern for a fellow Christian, but also his concern for the republican system of government and the importance of individual responsibility in a constitutional system. For Machen, those in need were not to receive their assistance from a burgeoning bureaucracy, but should instead be aided by responsible, individual citizens and voluntary organizations designed for such purposes. As he took on the responsibility for Hodges in the context of the church, he took on his duty as a Christian citizen and member of the same church as Richard. As has been seen in this article, Machen’s maturing understanding of his Christian life helped him to view Richard through lenses adjusted by his Great War experiences, but regardless, Machen believed that as a citizen, he and other citizens needed to help those who required aide. If J. Gresham Machen were alive today he might be appalled at the ever-growing federal bureaucracy, and likewise aghast at the way in which many of the citizens of the nation have pursued pleasure and abandoned civil duties. The foundational building stones of republican government are responsible and concerned citizens united together in submission to a constitution; without such a foundation, a constitutional republic cannot continue—any law or any government is only as good as those who govern and those who are governed.

Another striking thing about Dr. Machen is his incredible faithfulness to respond to correspondence. He corresponded so often that about seventy-two of the ninety-five six-inch-wide archival boxes in the Machen collection contain his correspondence—over thirty-five linear feet, or seventeen-and-a-half cubic feet of letters sent and received. Once he purchased a typewriter, the stacks of letters increased because he was able to keep carbon copies of what he sent, whereas before he learned to type, examples of his sent correspondence are fewer. Today one might wonder how one could be such a prolific writer with the comparatively ancient technology of a typewriter, but Machen’s faithful handling of correspondence was due to his commitment to do it.

The study of the relationship between J. Gresham Machen and Richard Hodges should stimulate some reflection on how historical/theological/ biographical studies are done. Is the study of an ecclesiastical, or for that matter, any historical personality adequately achieved when the scholarship limits its resources to that person’s intellectually or scholarly acceptable works? That is, is an accurate picture of a person’s life and thought presented when his personal relationships, church work, and family relations are not fully incorporated into the drama of his or her life? Certainly, the greater influence exercised by a scholar would come through academic writing and teaching, but is it fair to characterize a person by what she or he has written? Where would the church be in its understanding of the life and thought of Martin Luther without his shoot-from-the-hip, blunt, and sometimes crude comments recorded in his personal writings? How about his marriage and his colorful correspondence with Katherine? James M. Kittelson has said with respect to students of Luther that they “treat him almost as if he were a theological mind that floated unconcernedly above the real world in which he lived.”[216] Though not often noted, the correspondence of John Calvin shows a man who was sensitive to the problems and persecution faced by others and willing to help those in need; Calvin’s published letters show not only a massive intellect but also a soft and generous heart.[217] Could it be that the image the casual student has of a hard and stringent Genevan tyrant has been propagated due to the work of church historians and biographers who have neglected the published sources that are not polemics, commentaries, or the Institutes? For many in this world Luther was an anti-Semitic, misogynist buffoon, who was also insane. Calvin is known as the murderer of Servetus and the iron-fisted tyrant of Geneva whose chief end in life was to take away fun. Of course, some of the misinterpretation of people of the past is due to revisionist or politically correct historiography, but how much of it could be due to writers simply not thinking of their subjects of study as people and not just intellects? Hopefully, this article has shown that J. Gresham Machen was patient, generous, humble, and that he had a bull-dog tenacity when it came to doing what was right, whether it was caring for Hodges or being an apologist for the historic Christian faith in the ecclesiastical controversies of the nineteen twenties and thirties. There was more to Machen than his books, his seminary teaching, and his work in the church judicatories; the complexity of a person necessitates an analysis that endeavors to cover the breadth of the individual as well as the depth in any particular area. Those who bear the imago Dei are complex, and complexity involves endeavoring to understand the fullness of a person’s life and thought and not just an intellectual dissection of disembodied gray cells.

Notes

1. Minnie Gresham Machen (MGM) to J. Gresham Machen ( JGM), 17 Feb. 1911.
2. Stonehouse described Richard Hodges (RH) as “ane’er-do-well, illiterate drunkard,”in J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954; repr., Willow Grove, Pa.: Committee for the Historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2004), 127, but then in the section of the book titled, “The Story of R.H.,” he shows a more benevolent attitude towards the old alcoholic, 136-42. (Note that the pagination of the first and reprint editions differ; all citations of Stonehouse in this article will use the reprint pagination.) D. G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), mentions Hodges on 142; Stephen J. Nichols comments on him in J. Gresham Machen: A Guided Tour of His Life and Thought (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2004), 148.
3. RH to JGM, 1 June 1911.
4. RH to Sylvester Woodbridge Beach (SWB), 2 Oct. 1912; RH to JGM, 8 Oct. 1912.
5. RH to JGM, 19 June 1911. In this article quotes from Richard Hodges’s letters will be written exactly as he wrote them, thus the lower-case “god” is as he wrote it. His letters are characterized by a lack of punctuation and a near absence of upper case letters; one thought simply rolls into the next. He always wrote with pencil in a cursive hand that looks like that of a fifth or sixth grader (if fifth or sixth graders still learn cursive).
6. MGM to JGM, 13 Jan. 1911; Mrs. Machen commented that “Mr. Hodges backslid so sadly ...”
7. JGM to MGM, 22 May 1910.
8. Ibid.
9. JGM to MGM, 24 Aug. 1910.
10. Ibid.
11. MGM to JGM, 13 Jan. 1911.
12. MGM to JGM, 20 Jan. 1911. Some of J. Gresham Machen’s friends and family called him “Das.” It seems that “Dassie” was used more by his near kin.
13. JGM to MGM, 19 Feb. 1911.
14. MGM to JGM, 4 Apr. 1911.
15. JGM to MGM, 9 Apr. 1911.
16. MGM to JGM, 13 Apr. 1911.
17. JGM to MGM, 23 Apr. 1911. Maybe the term “wheel” for a bicycle refers back to the Victorian cycles with the large front and diminutive rear wheels?
18. JGM to MGM, 7 May 1911.
19. JGM to MGM, 14 May 1911.
20. RH to JGM, 29 May 1911.
21. RH to JGM, 1 June 1911.
22. RH to JGM, 5 June 1911; 13 June 1911; 19 June 1911; 14 July 1911; 15 Aug. 1911; etc.
23. RH to JGM, 24 Aug. 1911; quote appears in RH to JGM, 30 Aug. 1911; RH to JGM, 1 Sept. 1911.
24. JGM to MGM, 3 Sept. 1911.
25. JGM to MGM, 3 Sept. 1911.
26. JGM to MGM, 9 Sept. 1911.
27. MGM to JGM, 15 Sept. 1911.
28. JGM to MGM, 24 Sept. 1911. Machen was very susceptible to colds and lung problems.
29. JGM to MGM, 21 Jan. 1912.
30. The reader should remember that a “good distance” in 1912 was shorter than the same today. Vineland is about sixty miles from Princeton, as the crow flies.
31. JGM to MGM, 11 Feb. 1912.
32. MGM to JGM, 16 Feb. 1912; JGM to MGM, 17 Feb. 1912. David Hammond King (DHK) had been at the Vineland Church since 1887. He was born 8 Dec. 1843 in Tom’s Run, Pa., and his religious background, education, and pastoral experience had been in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church until he went to the P.C.U.S.A. Church in Lonaconing, Md., 1880-1887; see E. S. Robinson, The Ministerial Directory of the Ministers in the P.C.U.S. and in the P.C.U.S.A.... [etc.] (Oxford, Ohio: The Ministerial Directory Co., 1898), 345.
33. RH to JGM, 10 Apr. 1912.
34. RH to JGM, 11 June 1912; RH to SWB, 14 June 1912.
35. RH to JGM, 16 Apr. 1912; 24 Apr. 1912; 14, 28, and 31 May 1912. Richard was never shy about asking for things; the “brush and daber” were for wetting and whipping shaving soap into a lather for application to a beard for shaving (this is before the days of aerosol shave cream and electric razors).
36. RH to JGM, 25 June 1912; 1, 9, 12, 16, 23, 27, 29 July 1912; 7, 20, 22 Aug. 1912.
37. DHK to JGM, 23 Aug. 1912. Sometimes the correspondence is incomplete and thus the discussion comes abruptly to an end and all the loose ends are not tied up.
38. RH to JGM, 8 Oct. 1912.
39. RH to SWB, 18 Oct. 1912.
40. RH to JGM, 18 Oct. 1912; 29 Oct. 1912.
41. JGM to MGM, 10 Nov. 1912.
42. RH to JGM, 12 Nov. 1912 (two letters); see also DHK to JGM, 14 Nov. 1912; and RH to JGM, 19 Nov. 1912.
43. RH to JGM, 20 Nov. 1912; 26 Nov. 1912.
44. RH to JGM, 24 Nov. 1912; DHK to JGM, 27 Nov. 1912.
45. RH to JGM, 10 Dec. 1912.
46. RH to JGM, 13 Dec. 1912; DHK to JGM, 13 Dec. 1912.
47. DHK to JGM, 13 Dec. 1912.
48. Mrs. Sloan to JGM, 25 Dec. 1912.
49. RH to JGM, 8 Jan. 1913. The fire is also mentioned in a 16 Jan. 1913 letter from “L. Chevis McC. Smyltie” of Charleston, S.C.
50. JGM to MGM, 26 Jan. 1913.
51. RH to JGM, 29 Jan. 1913; RH to JGM, 6 Feb. 1913; RH to SWB, 10 Feb. 1913.
52. RH to JGM, 12 Feb. 1913.
53. JGM to MGM, 13 Feb. 1913.
54. RH to JGM, 19 Feb. 1913; 25 Feb. 1913.
55. RH to JGM, 5 Mar. 1913. These comments reveal keen insight for such a young Christian.
56. Richard was a bit like a kid in a candy shop, he wanted nearly everything he saw. Machen had to balance the value and necessity of the things Hodges asked for and decide whether he would fulfill the request.
57. RH to JGM, 5 Mar. 1913.
58. RH to JGM, 12 Mar. 1913. These might have been metrical Psalm books.
59. RH to JGM, 17 Mar. 1913; RH to JGM, 19 Mar. 1913.
60. RH to JGM, 30 Apr. 1913; RH to JGM, 14 May 1913.
61. RH to JGM, 28 May 1913.
62. RH to JGM, 10 June 1913; DHK to JGM, 11 June 1913.
63. RH to JGM, 14 Oct. 1913; 22 Oct. 1913.
64. RH to JGM, 28 Oct. 1913; RH to JGM, 5 Nov. 1913.
65. RH to JGM, 10 Nov. 1913. There is no evidence that the mysterious donor was Machen, but he could easily have asked David King to buy the shoes and secretly place them at the home.
66. RH to JGM, 22 Dec. 1913.
67. DHK to JGM, 7 Jan. 1914.
68. RH to JGM, 27 Jan. 1914; RH to JGM, 17 Feb. 1914. These straw hats were the fashion along with the celluloid collars mentioned earlier.
69. RH to JGM, 3 Mar. 1914; RH to JGM, 17 Feb. 1914.
70. RH to JGM, 10 Feb. 1914; 10 Mar. 1914; 16 Mar. 1914; 7 Apr. 1914.
71. RH to JGM, 2 June 1914.
72. RH to JGM, 16 June 1914.
73. RH to JGM, 30 June 1914.
74. RH to JGM, 9 Sept. 1914.
75. RH to JGM, 9 Sept. 1914; 15 Sept. 1914; 22 Sept. 1914; 29 Sept. 1914.
76. RH to JGM, 14 Oct. 1914.
77. Walter W. Moore to JGM, 29 Mar. 1915; 1 Apr. 1915; 8 Apr. 1915. Machen reaffirmed his rejection of the offer, 8 July 1915; then Moore sought the influence of Machen’s mother, 8 July 1915. Note that Moore pursued this until after Machen had already accepted the Princeton position.
78. RH to JGM, 4 May 1915.
79. DHK to JGM, 19 June 1915.
80. DHK to JGM, 15 July 1915.
81. RH to JGM, 28 Dec. 1915.
82. DHK to JGM, 6 Jan. 1916.
83. RH to JGM, 11 Jan. 1916.
84. JGM to MGM, 20 Jan. 1916.
85. DHK to JGM, 25 Jan. 1916.
86. Tombleson to JGM, 11 Mar. 1916.
87. JGM to MGM, 17 May 1916. The nature of Richard’s problem is not specifically stated. Since Machen said he seemed sober, it must not have been drinking.
88. JGM to MGM, 27 July 1916.
89. JGM to MGM, 29 July 1916; JGM to MGM, 2 Aug. 1916; JGM to MGM, 19 Aug. 1916.
90. JGM to MGM, 17 June 1917, written on Ritz-Carlton, Philadelphia, stationery; JGM to MGM, 8 July 1917.
91. JGM to MGM, 22 Jan. 1918; 23 Jan. 1918; 29 Jan. 1918.
92. JGM to MGM, 5 Feb. 1918.
93. JGM to MGM, 24 Feb. 1918.
94. JGM to MGM, 4 Apr. 1918.
95. Ibid.
96. JGM to MGM, 1 Aug. 1918.
97. JGM to MGM, 29 May 1918; this letter is particularly lengthy at 23 sides.
98. JGM to MGM, 29 May 1918.
99. JGM to MGM, 4 July 1918.
100. JGM to MGM, 8, 10, 16 July 1918; 5 Aug. 1918.
101. JGM to MGM, 3 Oct. 1918; 21 Nov. 1918. The armistice was signed by Germany on 11 Nov. 1918.
102. JGM to MGM, 7 Nov. 1918.
103. For Soldiers and Sailors: An Abridgment of the Book of Common Worship Published for the National Service Commission of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1917), 41. This is speculation; there is no indication that Machen owned this book, but it is quite possible he would have as a Presbyterian minister.
104. SWB to JGM, 27 June 1918.
105. Ibid.
106. JGM to MGM, 14 Nov. 1918.
107. SWB to JGM, 5 Dec. 1918. Machen’s address at this time is in Paris, France.
108. JGM to MGM, 27 May 1919. In a letter of 11 June 1919 to the state of Maine applying for a driver’s license, Machen described himself as being five feet eight inches tall, weighing one hundred fifty pounds, and having brown eyes.
109. JGM to MGM, 22 Apr. 1919.
110. The Brooklyn Eagle, March 7, 1927; reprinted in J. Gresham Machen, God Transcendent and Other Selected Sermons (ed. Ned B. Stonehouse; Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1982), 68. Stonehouse notes in his memoir that Machen may have been thinking of Richard in Christianity and Liberalism when he commented on how the Golden Rule relates to the life of an alcoholic (Machen: A Biographical Memoir, 135-36).
111. JGM to MGM, 29 Apr. 1919.
112. RH to JGM, 1 July 1919.
113. RH to SWB, 26 Jan. 1920.
114. RH to JGM, 12 Feb. 1920.
115. RH to JGM, 25 June 1920; DWB to JGM, 10 May 1921; DWB to JGM, 16 May 1921; RH to JGM, 16 Oct. 1921.
116. DWB to JGM, 16 May 1921.
117. RH to JGM, 16 Oct. 1921.
118. E. M. Sautter to JGM, 23 Nov. 1921.
119. Preached on 21 May 1922, and published repeatedly thereafter.
120. DWB to JGM, 6 Dec. 1921.
121. Warfield died 16 Feb. 1921; JGM to MGM, 17 Feb. 1921. For Machen’s thoughts on the integration see JGM to MGM, 5 Oct. 1913; 12 Oct. 1913.
122. DWB to JGM, 29 Oct. 1923.
123. RH to JGM, 11 Dec. 1923.
124. JGM to MGM, 4 May 1924.
125. DWB to JGM, 28 May 1924; DWB to JGM, 13 Dec. 1924.
126. One dollar in 1925 was equivalent to about ten dollars in 2001, according to the “Composite Commodity Price Index (1860),” in John J. McCusker, How Much Is That in Real Money? (Worcester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, 2001). Cf. values on pp. 57 and 60, but note that comparisons of the value of the dollar in history are difficult since certain commodities may have had a disproportionately higher or lower value when compared to today (e.g., simple radios are much less expensive today than when they were first produced).
127. JGM to DWB, 16 Dec. 1924.
128. DWB to JGM, 18 June 1925; DWB to JGM, 26 June 1925.
129. RH to JGM, 27 Oct. 1925; RH to JGM, 5 Nov. 1925; JGM to RH, 5 Dec. 1925; JGM to RH, 15 Dec. 1925; RH to JGM, 22 Dec. 1925; DWB to JGM, 9 Jan. 1926.
130. RH to JGM, 25 Mar. 1926; JGM to RH, 26 Mar. 1926; JGM to RH, 22 Apr. 1926; RH to JGM, 17 May 1926; JGM to RH, 20 May 1926; RH to JGM, 6 June 1926; JGM to RH, 9 June 1926; RH to JGM, 20 July 1926; RH to JGM, 4 Aug. 1926; DWB to JGM, 30 Oct. 1926.
131. JGM to RH, 26 Nov. 1926.
132. Ibid.
133. Ibid.
134. RH to JGM, 24 May 1927.
135. RH to JGM, 27 June 1927.
136. RH to JGM, 19 July 1927. Machen purchased items for Hodges in different ways—some-times he had a secretary take care of the purchasing and shipping; on other occasions he called the store and ordered the items himself, and the store mailed the package; while at other times, such as Christmas, he went shopping and selected the items and then had the store ship the goods to Richard.
137. JGM to RH, 30 Aug. 1927.
138. DWB to JGM, 12 Sept. 1927.
139. JGM to RH, 15 Oct. 1927; JGM to RH, 15 Oct. 1927; RH to JGM, 18 Oct. 1927.
140. JGM to RH, 8 Dec. 1927; RH to JGM, 21 Dec. 1927.
141. RH to JGM, 15 Feb. 1928.
142. RH to JGM, 9 Apr. 1928.
143. JGM to DWB, 16 Apr. 1928; DWB to JGM, 23 Apr. 1928; RH to JGM, 25 Apr. 1928; JGM to RH; 4 June 1928; RH to JGM, 5 June 1928.
144. JGM to RH, 6 July 1928; RH to JGM, 9 July 1928.
145. JGM to RH, 2 Oct. 1928.
146. DWB to JGM, 28 Nov. 1928.
147. DWB to JGM, 21 May 1929.
148. DWB to JGM, 23 May 1929.
149. JGM to DWB, 31 May 1929.
150. JGM to RH, 31 May 1929.
151. RH to JGM, 3 July 1929; JGM to RH, 9 July 1929.
152. JGM to RH, 18 Sept. 1929.
153. DWB to JGM, 13 Aug. 1929; RH to JGM, 27 Aug. 1929.
154. RH to JGM, 3 Oct. 1929; RH to JGM, 11 Oct. 1929; JGM to RH, 16 Oct. 1929.
155. RH to JGM, 11 Dec. 1929; JGM to RH, 18 Dec. 1929.
156. JGM to RH, 18 Dec. 1929; RH to JGM, 19 Dec. 1929.
157. RH to JGM, 22 Jan. 1930.
158. RH to JGM, 4 Apr. 1930; DWB to JGM, 9 Apr. 1930; 11 Apr. 1930; JGM to RH, 20 May 1930; RH to JGM, 23 Aug. 1930.
159. JGM to RH, 18 Sept. 1930.
160. RH to JGM, 24 Sept. 1930.
161. DWB to JGM, 28 Oct. 1930.
162. RH to JGM, 12 Dec. 1930.
163. JGM to RH, 15 Dec. 1930; RH to JGM, 17 Dec. 1930; JGM to RH, 23 Dec. 1930; RH to JGM, 3 Jan. 1931. The flashlight helped Richard to find his way to the bathroom at night.
164. RH to JGM, 26 Feb. 1931; DWB to JGM, 1 June 1931; RH to JGM, 2 July 1931; DWB to JGM, 7 Aug. 1931; RH to JGM, 14 Aug. 1931; JGM to DWB, 22 Aug. 1931.
165. The baseball player was named “Phillips” and he played for a Pittsburgh team; his first name may have been “Ambrose” (RH to JGM, 4 Nov. 1931).
166. RH to JGM, 18 Sept. 1931.
167. RH to JGM, 16 Oct. 1931.
168. JGM to RH, 28 Sept. 1931.
169. JGM to RH, 5 Nov. 1931. The suits must have been getting worn, because nearly every picture of Machen the present writer has seen, including his brief video, shows him in a suit.
170. RH to SWB, 2 Dec. 1931; RH to JGM, 2 Dec. 1931; JGM to RH, 16 Dec. 1931; RH to JGM, 19 Dec. 1931; RH to JGM, 21 Dec. 1931.
171. RH to JGM, 27 Jan. 1932.
172. JGM to RH, 14 Mar. 1932.
173. RH to JGM, 28 Mar. 1932; JGM to RH, 11 May 1932; RH to JGM, 31 May 1932.
174. DWB to JGM, 28 Jan. 1933.
175. JGM to DWB, 1 Feb. 1933.
176. “Predict Cooler Weather Soon,” Millville Daily Republican, Tuesday, August 1, 1933. Copies of the Republican printed from microfilm were graciously provided by Grace Stineman of the Millville Public Library.
177. Millville Daily Republican, Monday, August 9, 1933.
178. Ibid. Information was provided by correspondence with James F. Reeves, Superintendent, Mount Pleasant Cemetery, 28 and 30 Apr. 2005.
179. DWB to JGM, 14 Sept. 1933.
180. Letter, Arthur W. Machen, Jr., to Douglas Roise, M.D., 29 Dec. 1993, in the Archives of the Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary.
181. Ibid.
182. The temperatures are taken from an unpublished paper, “J. Gresham Machen,” by Douglas Roise, M.D., p. 4, in the Archives of the Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary.
183. “Gresham Machen Dies of Pneumonia,” The Bismarck Tribune, Saturday, January 2, 1937. A copy of this article has graciously been provided by Greg Wysk of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, Bismarck.
184. Ibid.
185. Ibid.
186. Stonehouse, Machen: A Biographical Memoir, 126-27.
187. S. Manfredi to JGM, 3 Mar. 1919; B. T. Manfredi to JGM, 15 May 1919.
188. R. Takahashi to JGM, 24 Oct. 1909 and 30 Aug. 1911.
189. K. Hiromasa to JGM, 23 Feb. 1912; 24 Apr. 1912; 22 May 1912; 11 June 1913.
190. H. N. Park to JGM, 8 May 1927; HNP to JGM, 22 Oct. 1927; HNP to JGM, 5 Nov. 1927; JGM to HNP, 8 Dec. 1927; HNP to JGM, 30 Jan. 1928; JGM to HNP, 23 Feb. 1928.
191. The student was aided anonymously, so he shall be known as JWI; JMI (possibly wife of JWI) to JGM, 10 Feb. 1927; 1 Apr. 1927; 14 Apr. 1927; JI (father of JWI) to JGM, 26 Oct. 1927; JGM to JI, 27 Oct. 1927. Though it was a gift, JI sent an interest check to JGM 16 Feb. 1928. Other letters from JI request additional funds, but Machen wrote saying he had done all he could ( JGM to JI, 18 Nov. 1927).
192. George M. Priest to JGM, 15 Feb. 1923.
193. JGM to A. S. Grant, 14 May 1925; JGM to D. MacOdrun, 28 Apr. 1925.
194. O. E. Minta to JGM, 4 Oct. 1929; Robert H. Wood to JGM, 4 Nov. 1929.
195. (1) Princeton Bank and Trust and JGM, a series of letters, from 13 Feb. through 4 June 1930; (2) Princeton Bank and Trust and JGM, series of letters from 23 Sept. 1929 through 30 May 1933; (3) Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Company to JGM, 9 May 1932, JGM to Fidelity, 13 May 1932, and bill from Fidelity showed Machen was out $306.65.
196. The gifts listed in this article are, of course, based only on those receipts, letters, and canceled checks in the Machen collection at Westminster Seminary. Certainly, he would have given other funds of which there is no record. Anybody who contributed as much as Machen did according to his records probably also distributed cash out-of-pocket as well.
197. Westminster Bible Conference, J. Robert Lory to JGM, 20 June 1921; and J. G. Noordewier to JGM, 23 Nov. 1921.
198. Receipt, 4 Dec. 1925; receipt, 23 Jan. 1928; letter to JGM, 27 Jan. 1929.
199. Receipt, undated; receipt, 4 June 1928.
200. G. W. McPherson to JGM, 18 Aug. 1926; receipt, 13 May 1927.
201. Letter, West Indies to JGM, 6 July 1929; JGM to West Indies, 1 Aug. 1929.
202. Receipt, 6 Sept. 1927; receipt, 23 Jan. 1928.
203. Receipts, 2 Mar. 1925; 14 Mar. 1928.
204. Receipt, 8 June 1926; cancelled check, 15 Mar. 1927.
205. Receipt, 6 May 1929.
206. Receipts, 19 July 1928, 15 Mar. 1934.
207. Receipt, 2 Sept. 1933.
208. Cancelled checks, 31 Jan. 1934, 3 Feb. 1934.
209. 28 Mar. 1934 and 26 Feb. 1934.
210. JGM to Maitland Alexander, 24 May 1923.
211. Lawrence Gilsmore to JGM, 5 Dec. 1926.
212. Stonehouse, Machen: A Biographical Memoir, 136.
213. Hart’s book brings out the anti-prohibition stance of Machen (Defending the Faith, esp. 13537). Hart’s preface (ix-x) sets forth Machen as a man of anomalies, and that perspective has influenced the writing of the present article. The timeline in Nichols’s book (Machen: A Guided Tour, 74-75) is helpful for getting a general overview of the key events in Machen’s life, and his book as a whole is very helpful for those who do not wish to delve into some of the deeper things of Hart’s book.
214. Stonehouse, Machen: A Biographical Memoir, 336. The minutes of the New Brunswick Presbytery meeting were not consulted to verify the eight remaining commissioners, but whether six, eight, or ten, Machen’s single vote was not as dramatic as one might think in terms of the whole presbytery, but maybe a man voting alone is always fairly dramatic?
215. See, Stonehouse, Machen: A Biographical Memoir, 340, where Machen’s friend and colleague commented that Machen “virtually practiced total abstinence, at least during his career as a minister.”
216. James M. Kittelson, Luther the Reformer: The Story of the Man and His Career (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986), 16.
217. For a wonderful picture of a personal Calvin hear Frank James, “The Calvin I Never Knew” (cassette tape; Reformed Theological Seminary). For some illuminating reading find the four volumes of Calvin’s letters in Selected Works of John Calvin, Tracts and Letters (ed. Henry Beveridge and Jules Bonnet; 7 vols.; Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publications, 1858; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), and then determine if Calvin was a tyrant. The writer of this article purchased his set of Calvin’s letters from a seller who wanted to sell them while keeping the other three volumes on Calvin’s treatises, because, “They are letters and they are not very interesting.”