The National Era
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Contributed by Susan
Description: Obituary
Date: June 26 1851Newspaper published in: Washington, DC
Page/Column: Page 103
Obituary.
Died at his residence in Chester County, Pennsylvania, April 4, 1851, John RANKIN, an Elder of the Old School Presbyterian Congregation of Fagg's Manor, in the 59th year of his age. Permit a friend, Mr. Editor, who knew him well, to say a few words respecting him, that others by his example may be encouraged faithfully to persevere in duty, and, in the face of reproach and discouragements, plead for the dumb. He was noted for his integrity, vigorous mind, sound common sense, and ardent piety. He possessed in an eminent degree the confidence of his friends, while the unusually large and respectable assembly at his funeral testified the respect in which he was held by the community. While carefully and prayerfully attending to all the interests of the congregation, he felt it to be his special duty to oppose the hideous sin of slavery, over which the mantle of the church to which he belonged was thrown. The teachers and people around him were almost wholly on the side of the oppressor. The vast body of the congregations, giving their conscience and reason into the keeping of blind and interested guides, were taught to believe that slavery was no sin.
To depart from and oppose this prevailing evil, and false sentiment, was to make himself a prey. But he hesitated not. He knew his God was with him. And while both pastor and people, who should have strengthened his hands in his labor of love, strove by flatteries to hush him to silence, and by reproaches to brand him as a fanatic, a fool, a disturber of the peace of the Church, he heard, above all, the voice of his Lord and Master, cheering him on in the path of duty. Many instances of the prejudices and bitterness against which he had to contend, might be mentioned. Conversing one day with me about an anti-slavery meeting he had attended, he remarked, that, when assembled, a Rev. Mr.___ of a neighboring congregation, stopped at the door, and inquired what was going on. Mr. Rankin invited him to come and meet with them. He refused, by saying "that there was nothing he hated so much as Abolition!"
But he has entered into rest. His end was peace. And his dying testimony was, that so far from regretting his course in pleading for the oppressed, and opposing the corruptions of apostatizing churches, he felt he had done too little for the down-trodden; had been too cold in denouncing the abominations done in the land. The reproof of the prophet Isaiah, lviii, 1-7, he viewed as justly applicable to our own guilty land and nominal churches. And in view of that dread tribunal, where the master and the slave are equal, will it not be a fearful thing to head from the lips of the Judge the appalling sentence- "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me."- (Matt. xxv, 45).