John W. Taylor Biography This file contains the biography of John W. Taylor from "Who's Who in South Dakota" by O. W. Coursey (1913) Scanning by John Rigdon , final editing by Joy Fisher from a book in the possession of Joy Fisher. This file may be freely copied for non-profit purposes; all other rights, including the right to publish this file in any format is reserved. AN ELOQUENT DIVINE The ministers of the Gospel! good, bad and indifferent, God bless 'em all! They are the most self-sacrificing people that ever trod the earth. True; some of them-even in South Dakota- have missed their "calling," or else had a little piece of flutter- ing wax adhering to one of their tympanums when the" call" came, and consequently misunderstood it. Nevertheless, they are making their sacrifices with the rest, and they deserve even greater blessings for it; for the struggle is just that much the harder. Again they have robbed a lot of other professions to com- plete their own ranks. Seventy-two per cent of all the preachers in South Dakota were formerly teachers. From spanking other people's children for an inadequate salary, they were "called" to a more passive job at a still lighter salary. Hence, the sac- rifice! Some of them, like Reverend Wilber, of Hot Springs, were formerly prosecuting attorneys. While pleading for penal- ties to be pronounced upon accused law violators, before the bar of men, they heard a "call" to plead for forgiveness for the same "bunch," before the bar of God. Unsurpassed in eloquence, in spirituality and in pleading, among this class of men in South Dakota, is the eloquent Dr. John W. Taylor pastor of the First M. E. church of Aberdeen. Taylor is a masculine man-not a "sissy" with a nest bow tie and a girlish voice; abdomen so slender that his very looks sug- gests a herring; hair parted in the middle, and hands well-kept and dainty white. Oh! no; not for a minute!-not for Taylor! He is a rugged; manly fellow with a powerful physique, brawny hands, and a deep bass-voice that can be heard for a mile. Just the kind of a fellow needed for the pulpit,-a man that the "boys" will tie up to and feel that he is their leader, instead of being merely a gaunt, hungry, chicken eater. In the pulpit, Taylor is a power. Why? Well, because he made great preparation for his work; because of his personality and because of his common sense. Regardless of what was taught him in the theological school, Taylor has been out of school long enough, and has rubbed up against the world hard enough, to know that religion is not something to die by, but rather some- thing to live by; that it has as much, if not more, to do with a man this side of the grave than on the other; that while you are pleading with young men for their souls' salvation, you must re- member their bodies' salvation; that the body is the probationary home of the soul; that unless you struggle to save the body, you lose the soul, because the body is returned to dust and the soul passes out of it beyond human control. For this reason, Dr. Taylor has a swimming pool and a gym- nasium in the basement of his church, for the young men of his church, and for any others that care to act decently and who may be influenced by their surroundings and some day become prod- ucts of the church. Some sense to this, surely! So important to him are these physical needs of his young men, that the church over which he presides, maintains a young man at a salary of $100 per month, just to guide the boys -the future elders of the church-in their physical development. Some one said, "When a boy goes wrong a man dies." True! and Taylor's plan keeps them going right, and the man is saved by training the boy. This is what the church is demanding nowadays, a practical preacher, a fellow who hasn't forgot that he himself was once a boy; who knows how to reach boys, how to entertain them, how to attract them to church, how to keep them within his own grasp. Such a man is Taylor. The Reverend Doctor Taylor is one of our adopted sons. He was born at Simcoe, Province of Ontario, Canada, June 10, 1862. Be received his early education in the Simcoe public schools. Later he graduated from Port Rowan Collegiate Institute, and then taught school for two years at Port Ryerse, Ontario. Having united with the Methodist church at the impression- able age of seventeen, he became intensely interested in religious work. The teacher gave way to the preacher and young Taylor drifted over to Otsego, Michigan, where he took up pastoral work, succeeding at that place the learned Dr. Samuel Weir, of Mitchell, who by the way, is also a Canadian product. The silly rules of the M. E. church, which in a more enlightened day have at last been abandoned, and which provided that a pas- tor could only stay on one charge for three years, put Taylor out at the end of this period, so he went to Evanston, entered Garrett Biblical Institute and graduated in 1892 as one of the three stars of the class of that year, - Nicholson, Montgomery and Taylor. Specializing for a short time at Northwestern University, and after preaching for two months at Almont, Michigan, Dr. Taylor accepted a call to First Church, Laramie, Wyoming, - the seat of her state university. By this time younger blood had gotten into the counsels of the M. E. church and the pastorate of a church had been increased to five years. Taylor stayed the limit. He also did work in the university at Laramie and graduated with the class of 1896. In 1904, Dakota Wesleyan at Mitchell, honored him with his "D. D." After leaving Lar- amie, Dr. Taylor went to Utah, where he preached two years at Salt Lake City and two years at Ogden. Coming east- ward again, he accepted a call at another univer- sity town, Vermillion, South Dakota. His scho- lastic preparation and his oratorical powers make him a great favorite in a [photo - DR. JOHN W. TAYLOR] city wherein there is lo- cated an institution for higher education. At Vermillion he made good, and his ser- vices were everywhere in demand. Churches made bids for him. Aberdeen, with the same nerve that has characterized her commercial life, outbid the rest and got him. Wise city! She never made a better invest- ment. The church has at last removed its "tenure of office" and Taylor has already stayed by his present job for eight years, although offered the presidency of two universities, meantime. He started in at Aberdeen with a membership of 250 and an audience of 150. Today his membership is 700. The old church has been superceded by an $85,000 structure, with a seating ca- pacity of over 1,200. By reason of the details of its arrangement, and because of its elaborate equipment, this church is regarded as the best in the central west. When it came to dedicate it, so we have been told, Taylor did not desecrate the Sabbath by running a commercial bluff of beggars' humiliation; but quietly and patiently and effectually, he went about the city, in advance, secured sufficient pledges for the liquidation of the entire debt, and when the hour for dedi- cation came, it was spent as God would have it-in prayer and song and thanksgiving. Splendid example! RELIGIOUS BELIEFS Going into the details of Taylor's beliefs along theological lines, as we have been permitted to conclude (possibly from some view-points, erroneously) from the few times we have heard him preach, we think he feels as did Cowper when he broke loose in a fit of poetic rage and declared: "Of all the arts which sagacious dupes invent, To cheat themselves and get in the world's assent, The worst is Scripture warped from its intent." He believes with McCauley that, "Whosoever does anything to deprecate Christianity is guilty of high treason against civili- zation and mankind." Personally, we have always felt that you cannot have true morality without religion; that mere negative badness ends only where positive goodness begins; that morality, divorced from re- ligion, is a satanic humbug. Taylor is in exact accord with these views; hence, we like him. We reinforce them with a quotation from Daniel Webster's great Fourth of July oration: "To preserve the government we must also preserve morals. Morality rests on religion; if you destroy the foundation, the superstructure must fall." And again we add the words of Washington in his immortal farewell address: "Of all dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. * * And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. * * Reason and experience doth forbid us to expect that national moralization can prevail in the exclusion of religious principle." FATHERLAND OF ANGELS One beautiful Sabbath evening, in the springtime, a few years since. Dr. Taylor announced at his morning service, as well as through the Aberdeen papers, that his subject for the evening address would be "The Fatherland of The Angels." A large number of traveling men, (among them the writer) went to hear the discourse. Here was a theme to Taylor's liking. Nature had fitted him with an imagination and equipped him with a vocabulary suffic- iently adequate to handle it. He rose to the occasion. After an eloquent prayer that seemed to surcharge the very ether with spirituality, Taylor, in a tragic attitude, with upturned face, and with uplifted arms, gracefully inclined, took hold of the curtains of heaven, pulled them gradually apart, pinioned back their tapering folds with the stars of night, and gave his sym- pathetic audience a glimpse into spirit realm. Using his brush-tipped tongue he painted against the king- dom's sky images of stately colonnades dividing spacy corridors on whose walls hung highly-colored paintings of the Saints of Old; streets of gold enclosed with jewel-laden curbs of silver; on and on he carried the angelic scenery up a succession of heights that steepened as they ascended until at last, in the perspective on the far distant horizon of peace, he unveiled the illumined cross. Above and around it the gifted orator, while his breathless hear- ers sat spell-bound with expectancy, painted silvery-hued pictures of white-winged, hovering angels in myriad numbers. Oh! Taylor! Taylor! at this trying moment, lend us your powers of imagery, your classic verbiage, and your artists' pen! Then! and only then! can we rise above self and do you justice. GROWTH One of the great things that enhances the value of Taylor's sermons, particularly to a student body, is his unlimited indul- gence in literary, rather than historical, illustration. He never lets a week go by without committing a new poem, and he never preaches a sermon without weaving in from one to three of them. He selects those that exactly fit his discourse and uses them with telling effect. This mode of preparation keeps him growing. While other preachers' cerebral convolutions are fading away or rusting out, Taylor is wearing his deeper. A preacher of such interesting commendable studious habits, is an asset to any community, par- ticularly so to Aberdeen, wherein is located the state's large and growing industrial school. Dr. Taylor is literary, classical, oratorical, dignified, spirit- ual; a good "mixer," an able preacher, a general favorite and a prince of Christian gentlemen. We hope South Dakota will never permit him to move beyond her borders. STAY! Live! Die! and be buried among us, Taylor,-we love you! (Later.-Since the above was first published, Dr. Taylor has been called to Hamline Church, St. Paul. Regrets! - 0. W. C.)