Unknown County GaArchives Biographies.....Crawford, Nathaniel Macon 1811 - 1871
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 February 5, 2005, 6:02 pm

Author: J. H. Campbell

N. M. CRAWFORD.

  In the "Christian Index" of November 2d, 1871, the following editorial article
by Rev. D. Shaver, D. D., appeared:

"REV. N. M. CRAWFORD, D. D.

  "This beloved and revered brother has been taken from us. Perhaps no
announcement of our pen ever carried so keen a sense of pain to so large a
number of hearts as these words must awaken. We share this grief in no common
measure, though our personal acquaintance, with Dr. Crawford lies wholly within
the limits of the last few years. Among the highest privileges of these years,
we reckon the hours spent with him in the quiet of the room where we sit now—to
see him here, alas! no more! The chief charm of our intercourse was, not his
singular balance and poise of intellect, not the thorough learning that gave him
the tread of a master in every field of inquiry, not the strong, ripe judgment
which had wrestled prevailingly with all problems of ethics and theology—it was
the equable temper, the dispassionate spirit, the transparent sincerity, the
stainless sense of honor, the gentle affectionateness, breathing through his
utterances from first to last. More than almost any person whom we have ever
known, he withheld no word which Christian candor demanded, and spoke no word
which Christian charity forbade. Like that queenliest of graces, true greatness
‘vaunteth not itself;' and he was 'clothed upon' with humility, with freedom
from pretension, with childlikeness, as with a garment. There is a sense in
which we may apply to saintly excellence the Hegelian principle: that 'the ideal
is ever striving for realization, but is never realized;' and who among us that
survive more nearly exemplifies the ‘ideal' of this excellence than he whom the
Lord has taken to himself? In whose character is the struggle—the advance
towards its 'realization,' traced in lines more like the Faultless Original than
in his? Not simply to the effect of his instructions when occupying a chair in
the Mercer University, or holding the presidency over it, is the denomination in
the State indebted largely for its present position; the formative and
reproductive influence of his personal piety—of 'the daily beauty of his
life'—wrought still more potently to this end. But he is gone from us—gone, we
cannot question, to enter upon what his own pen, a few months ago, burdened with
the overpowering blessedness of the theme, characterized, through our columns,
as 'that brighter, purer, richer, nobler, sweeter, grander, holier, happier life
in the great beyond!' Let us follow his steps as he followed Christ, that we may
all meet him in 'the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.' "

  " Our readers will review with mournful interest the story of his life as
embodied in the following sketch of the address by Rev. A. T. Spalding, D. D.,
at the First Baptist Church, Atlanta, last Monday morning, in connection with
his funeral solemnities:

  " Nathaniel Macon Crawford was born at 'Woodlawn,' near Lexington, Oglethorpe
county, Georgia, March 22d, 1811. His father, Hon. William H. Crawford, one of
the ablest jurists this country ever produced, was that year re-elected to the
United States Senate without opposition. The boyhood of our brother was spent in
Washington City until his thirteenth year. In his fourteenth year, the family
returned to Woodlawn, and in his fifteenth year he entered the University of
Georgia, where he graduated at eighteen years of age, with the first honors of
his class. He then read law, but never engaged in practice at the bar, though
carrying with him through life the marked benefit of the knowledge of that
science and of the habit of analysis of words and weighing of testimony. (In
1834, at the age of sixty-two, his father died of paralysis, the same disease
that has deprived us of his distinguished son.) Three years later, we find him a
professor in Oglethorpe College, Midway, a faithful servant of Jesus, a member
of the Presbyterian church, a brilliant, gifted young man, who won all hearts to
love him. After the lapse of three years more, he was married, when twenty-nine
years of age, to her who now mourns this the first break in the household bands.

  "We come next to the change in his ecclesiastical relations. His wife was a
Baptist, but the points of difference between the two denominations never became
subjects of discussion or allusion amid the intimacies of household life. On the
birth of their first child, he determined to make the question of right and duty
as to its baptism a subject of candid, thorough investigation, nothing doubting
that he should find the Presbyterian view supported by the scriptures, and
furnish himself with arguments to overcome the scruples of his wife. To his
surprise, however, on the perusal of our English version, and after the critical
study of the original, infant baptism appeared to him utterly destitute of
warrant from the Word of God. With the fidelity to principle which marked his
entire life, he announced to his companion his purpose to be himself baptized;
and this was the first time the subject had ever been mentioned between them. To
the credit of his former religious associates, let it be recorded, that this
change did not in the least deprive him of their love and esteem.

  "It pleased the Lord to call our brother to the ministry of the gospel while
living at the old 'Woodlawn' homestead, and for a year he served the church at
Washington, Georgia, as pastor. He was then transferred to a larger field,
succeeding the senior Dr. William T. Brantly in the pastorate of the First
Baptist Church at Charleston, South Carolina. After a ministry here of two
years, he was elected to the chair of theology in Mercer University, which he
filled with ability and acceptance for ten years, from 1846 to 1856. During this
time, his Sabbath preaching was never intermitted when able to occupy the
pulpit. He was pastor of Friendship church, Greene county, afterward at
Penfield, at Greensboro, also, and at one time at Shiloh. A great revival, with
more than forty conversions, grew out of a graphic sermon which he preached at
Penfield.

  "The first illness of Dr. Crawford occurred in 1851 or 1852, twenty years ago.
While preaching at Lexington, Georgia, he suffered a stroke of paralysis in the
midst of his discourse, and recovered from its effects only after a long time.
From that period he never allowed himself to throw out his full strength in
pulpit labor.

  "On the resignation of the venerable J. L. Dagg, D. D., our brother was
elected to the presidency of Mercer University, but soon retired from the
position and accepted the professorship of moral philosophy in the University of
Mississippi, Oxford. After a residence of nearly a year at this point, in the
fall of 1857 he became professor of theology in Georgetown, Kentucky. In the
summer of 1858 he was re-elected President of Mercer University, and returned to
spend seven years at the head of that institution.    In 1865, the war having
closed, and there being great depression in the funds of the University, he
accepted the presidency of Georgetown College, Kentucky, a post which failing
health compelled him to relinquish in June of the present year, when he came,
'with untraveled heart,' to Georgia again, the State of his life-long love, and
the people for whom, through nearly forty years, he never ceased to pray and labor.

  "On the 20th of September last, at the house of his son William, near Tunnel
Hill, he was stricken a second time with paralysis. He fainted at the breakfast
table, but rallied, and at the end of a week was better again. About the middle
of October, however, he grew worse, and for four days was unable to speak. His
brother, Dr. Bibb Crawford, of Madison, was summoned to his side; but the Angel
Messenger had called! He breathed his last on Friday, October 27th, at half-past
three o'clock p. M., in the bosom of his family, and at peace with God and men.

  "Dr. Crawford was a man of surpassing talents. His knowledge of history,
philosophy, mathematics, law, ethics, religion, and ecclesiastical history, was
clear and profound. His wisdom made him a valued counselor in our Associations
and Conventions. His mind was brilliant, his fancy luxuriant, and his oratorical
powers of the first order. His productions as an author have the savor of the
old English works. He was a man of highest moral excellence, which shone with
peculiar brightness in all the relationships of life. His Christian character
was not only without a blemish, but was exalted in an eminext degree.
Consecration to Jesus reigned through his life of untiring industry, of profound
humility, of childlike simplicity, of wide-spread benevolence, adorned withal by
a genial flow of pleasant humor. While we mournfully bend over his sacred dust,
his sanctified spirit has gone to that land of everlasting bliss, of which he so
often and so eloquently spoke. He is now enjoying the rest of the saints under
the shadow of the Great White Throne—nay, let us rather say, on the bosom of the
Redeemer, his and ours."

Dr. "William T. Brantly of Baltimore, says:

  “My acquaintance with Dr. Crawford began in 1844, shortly after my first
pastoral settlement, and shortly after Dr. Crawford had connected himself with
the Baptist church. Thrown together at an Association in the country, and
occupying the same room and the same bed, we had the opportunity of exchanging
views on a great variety of topics. I must confess to feeling, at the time,
considerable pride in the acquisition to our ranks of the son of man who, in his
day, had been the most distinguished citizen in the State (the Hon. William H.
Crawford,) especially when the son was as distinguished as a scholar as the
father had been as a statesman. In early youth, Dr. Crawford connected himself
with the Presbyterian church. When, however, he became the father of children,
he determined to examine the scriptures, with the view of ascertaining whether
these sanctioned those articles of his church which required the baptism of
infants. He brought to the subject the whole force of his keen and
discriminating intellect; but he could discover no thus saith the Lord for
poedo-Baptisra. Pushing his inquiries further, he became convinced that nothing
is baptism but a 'burial with Christ.' Acting out his convictions, without
conferring with flesh and blood, he presented himself for membership in the
Baptist church most convenient to his residence. At this time, no layman in the
Presbyterian church in Georgia was more esteemed than he. Professor of
mathematics in their college, in high repute for learning and moral worth, he
could have commanded any office in their gift. But, constrained by principle, he
joined a Baptist church in the country, and thereby relinquished all these
prospects.

  "Dr. Crawford was soon licensed, and then ordained. He was a pastor for on©
year in "Washington, Georgia, and the same length of time in Charleston, South
Carolina. He then identified himself with Mercer University, where, as professor
of theology, and subsequently as President, he passed many years of his life.
Prior to the war, he was a professor for one year in a college in Mississippi,
and for about the same time in Kentucky. In 1865, he became President of
Georgetown College, Kentucky, where he remained until last summer, when he
resigned and returned to his native State.

  "Dr. Crawford's scholarship was accurate and extensive. Connected with the
class in which he graduated, in the University of Georgia, there were young men
of decided mental power, and they subsequently made their marks on their age;
but at college he led them all, bearing off the first honor. The President of
the University remarked to the writer that no young man had ever been connected
with the institution who possessed such remarkable powers for the acquisition af
knowledge as did our departed brother. This scholarship he maintained through
life. While president of the college he could take the post of any professor who
was temporarily absent, hearing a recitation in the higher branches of
mathematics, or chemistry, or natural philosophy, or Latin, or Greek, with as
much facility as though it had been the department specially confided to his care.

  "As a preacher, Dr. Crawford did not, ordinarily, equal the expectations which
his acknowledged talent and scholarship had awakened. There were times, indeed,
when he spoke with commanding eloquence and the most melting pathos. His
discourses, too, were uniformly sensible and instructive. With his piety and
attainments they could scarcely have been otherwise. But his mind did not seem,
as a general rule, to grasp and elucidate his theme with that masterly force
which one would expect from its native vigor. He was often defective in
analytical power; he needed what Horace so aptly terms the lucidus ordo, the
shining order, which invests even common-place thoughts with interest, and
without which the best thoughts produce but little impression. Still, he was
always heard with interest, and must be ranked among the most popular and
effective preachers of his day.

  "There was one trait of character for which our brother was remarkable, and
that is candor. No man despised more than did he misrepresentation or flattery.
To his most intimate friends he was perfectly outspoken on the subject of their
faults. When his opinion was sought about men or things you might be assured
that nothing was exaggerated or suppressed. Correct or incorrect, you heard his
honest sentiments. Charity, too, went hand in hand with his frankness. Without
guile himself, he suspected none in others, unless the proof of its existence
was too obvious to be resisted. His heart was tender and sympathetic. He was
readily touched by the sufferings of others, and he was always ready to relieve
them, so far as his circumstances permitted. Failing to see him, as had been
expected, at our Southern Baptist Convention in Baltimore, in 1868, I asked him
subsequently why he was not present? 'I fully intended to go,’ he replied, 'and
had put away fifty dollars to pay my traveling expenses; but a day or two before
the time of leaving, I received a letter from a friend in distress, begging me,
if possible, to help him a little. So I sent him the fifty dollars saved for
Convention expenses, and I remained at home.' Here was an act of charity which,
but for my question, would never have transpired. Many such, I have no doubt,
would be disclosed, were the secret history of our brother's life given to the
world. Strangers and slight acquaintances might think our brother reserved and
reticent, but those who knew him better found in him a companion most genial and
communicative. His memory was peculiarly tenacious. He seemed always to have at
command everything .he had ever read or heard. Though far removed from levity,
his conversations abounded with humor, and he seemed to have an inexhaustible
fund of anecdote or of incident with which to illustrate a truth or to entertain
a friend. When, at some future day, the historian takes up his pen to do for
Georgia Baptists what Dr. Taylor has done for those of Virginia, Crawford will
be remembered as one to whom God gave intellectual endowments of the first
order, and who improved his talents by assiduous culture, adding to mental
qualities moral excellencies which made him a man of generous soul, of
unswerving integrity and conscientious devotion to the truth as it is in Jesus."

  The following letter, addressed to the author, was written in response to an
appeal to him, through the same medium, that he would write more frequently for
the press—urging, among other things, that he had seen a picture of Dr.
Crawford, which showed that he was "getting old," etc.

"A LETTER FROM DR. CRAWFORD.

  "Brother Campbell: I have noticed your request in the 'Index,' and in
compliance, I send this letter to the 'Index man,' with instruction 'if not
delivered in ten days,' to forward to Rev. Jesse H. Campbell, Thomasville, Georgia.

  "You say I am 'getting old.' In all your preaching you never said a truer
thing. Yet there is one part of me, at least, that has not experienced the
effect of age, and if you could see a faithful photograph of my heart you would
surely 'recognize' it, for its affections are as fresh, full and warm as 'in
childhood's happy hour.'

  'I have, indeed, grown old, and this day week (22d) I celebrated my sixtieth
anniversary, on a Kentucky dinner of fish, closing with the favorite dessert of
the season: pancake and molasses. But how mistaken are those who consider age an
evil! 'Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand, riches and
honor.' 'With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.' Yet,
while God promises long life as a blessing, and most men desire long life, there
is, with many, a feeling that old age is an evil and a pity for old people. Now,
I know of no reason for such feeling, but the undeniable fact that old age is
nearer death than youth. But does that make old age an evil? If it is truth as
well as poetry, that

       'Death is the gate to endless joys,'

why should its nearness to the old make age an evil?

  "On a delicious May evening, ten years ago, as I was sitting in my verandah at
Penfield, my colleague and friend, H. H. Tucker, came in. After he was seated, I
said, 'I have just been reflecting that I am now fifty years old, and I would
not be a day younger if I could. For now, even if my life should be extended to
the Psalmist's three-score and ten, I am safely over two-thirds of the
pilgrimage. If I should die now, I would leave my children a name which they
could bear without reproach, and an example which they might follow without
shame. And I have no fears that the good providence, which has hitherto
protected me amid dangers, sustained me in trials and saved me in temptations,
will forsake me till I enter the blessed life.' Such was my feeling and such my
trust then. Since that pleasant evening, ten years have elapsed. How slowly, yet
how swiftly have they passed. A decade unsurpassed in its momentous history by
any equal period since Christ died upon the cross. In this hemisphere, a
territory of near half a million of square miles trampled by the iron heel of
war for four years, and six millions of people smitten by the iron hand of
despotism for six years, and all in the name of fraternity; while on the other
hemisphere, the oldest nation of Europe, of the proudest history in the past,
and which, for eighty years, has done more for liberty than any other nation of
the continent, was, in six months, devastated and subjugated by the most
thoroughly organized despotism of the old world. The decade has brought me to
sixty—a decade full of wretchedness and woe in our national affairs, yet how
tempered, especially to me, with mercies and blessings! And now that I am a
presbuteros in years as well as in office, this bleak March day, sitting by my
comfortable coal fire in Kentucky, I repeat to you what, ten years ago, in the
shades of a May evening, breathing the sweet odor of roses, I said to brother
Tucker: ‘I would not be a day younger if I could.'

  "Ten more milestones have been marked off in my journey of life, and ten
stations nearer to the city above. And if these ten years of war, and blood, and
cruelty, and tyranny have, after all, by His grace, been years of so much
enjoyment here, what may we not hope in the blessed hereafter. We have not lost,
but passed, ten years of life here, and are so much nearer that brighter, purer,
richer, nobler, sweeter, grander, holier, happier life in the great beyond.
These are feelings, hopes, confidences common to you and me, and many others,
whose forms and names come rushing to my eyes and heart. Can that old age be an
evil which fills the mind and heart with thoughts and emotions like these?

  "But though age is no evil, sickness is; and I have been sick, and am not well
yet. In December, a cold and cough caught me. As the winter advanced, the cough
became worse, and I was confined to the house all the month of February. I am
now better. Happily, the spring has been milder than usual, and the season is
three weeks in advance of what is common. Every pleasant day improves my health.
'Doctor's truck,' as the 'beloved physician,' (Dr. W. B. Crawford, his brother)
calls it, does me no good. Instead of cod liver oil, I have been, and am still,
taking (for-dinner) broiled middling, (streak of lean and streak of fat.) Under
this regimen, with pretty weather, I am gaining strength rapidly, and my cough
does not trouble me at all when quiet, though a little exercise brings it on. It
is nearly four months since I preached, and I have thought that, perhaps, my
preaching days are over. I recollect that Dr. Olin, the greatest man the
Methodist church ever produced in this country, said that he had two great
struggles in this life. The first was, when he got his own consent to give up
the world to be a preacher for Christ, and the last when, in consequence of
broken health, he could yield to the providence which silenced him in the
pulpit. I had no such trials in entering the ministry, having glided into it so
insensibly that I was a preacher almost before I knew it. Nor, if it is God's
will to silence me, shall I have any struggle in submitting. I have never felt
any anxiety or uneasiness about a field of labor, confident that, if the Lord
had work for me to do, He would send me where it was to be done. Under this
conviction, I have lived and labored. "With this conviction, I shall still
labor, if called to labor, or be still, if called to be still. The Lord knoweth.

  "So, my dear brother, I have complied with your request. My communication is
all about myself; yon will read it with no less interest on that account. If the
'Index men' think it unsuitable to their paper, they will forward it to you.

  "To all who may read it, I beg leave to sign it as their friend and brother in
Christ Jesus,

                                      "N. M. CRAWFORD.
  "March 29, 1871."

  The foregoing letter is believed to be the last article from the pen of Dr.
Crawford that was ever published. His health soon grew worse, and he "ceased
from his labors."

  A few additional remarks by the author, and this brief sketch must be closed.
Dr. Crawford ever seemed to preach under restraint, owing, doubtless, to his
consciousness of danger from paralysis, an attack of which he had in carry life,
and from a renewal of which he finally died. On a few occasions, however, the
author heard him when this habitual restraint was overcome. In a sermon
delivered at Albany during an Association, a large congregation was swayed,
melted, overwhelmed by his eloquence in a manner that he has seldom seen
equaled, and never surpassed, by any preacher. During a session of the Georgia
Baptist Convention at Newnan, he followed the missionary, Buckner, in an appeal
for the Indians of surpassing power and pathos, though he spoke only about
twenty minutes. The effect was such that, before he closed, his hearers, almost
en masse, rose from their seats and, pressing towards a table near which he was
standing, threw their contributions upon it, amounting to about fifteen hundred
dollars. He had all the elements of a powerful speaker, but dared not give them
free scope.

  Dr. Crawford was "of a meek and quiet spirit." A newspaper correspondence, on
an exciting subject, was progressing between him and a distinguished brother of
an imperious and fiery temper. A friend wrote to Crawford, cautioning him.
against being provoked to bitterness or undue severity. He replied in a spirit
of meekness, thanking his friend for his faithfulness, and adding, in substance,
"I am guarding the point upon which you warn me; and, as you are such a wife-man
yourself, I will tell you how: I have promised my wife to submit all my articles
to her for revision, and, of course, there is no danger of my publishing
anything harsh." And so it turned out. By the use of soft words and hard
arguments, he fairly demolished his antagonist.

  He delighted in the company of his friends, and entertained them with princely
hospitality. Who-ever felt otherwise than welcome and at ease in. Crawford's
house? And as a guest among his friends, he was one of the most agreeable and
fascinating of men. In his manners, there was familiarity without bluntness,
dignity without pretension, and gravity without austerity. He was, indeed, "a
gentleman of the old school," ever more concerned for the enjoyment of others
than for his own. The author can safely affirm that he has never known a more
perfect character. In stature, he was below the medium height, of symmetrical
form, full head of black curling hair, and sparkling dark eyes.


Additional Comments:
From:

GEORGIA BAPTISTS: HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL
BY
J. H. CAMPBELL,
PERRY, GEORGIA.


MACON, GA.: J. W. BURKE & COMPANY. 1874.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by
J. H. CAMPBELL,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.


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