In Memoriam Rev. Alonzo
Potter Diller
The Late Rector of St.
Mark’s Church,
This booklet was preprinted to give those of us living today greater insight in the character of a dedicated Christian leader – Alonzo Potter Diller – rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, who perished in the Johnstown Flood of 1889. It is fitting that we offer it as a momento of our rich heritage on this the 100th anniversary of that tragic event.
Printed by The American Church Press Company,
Streator, Ilinois
In Memoriam
The Calamity at
From Bishop Whitehead’s Convention address
six days after the great flood.
Alas! Alas We assemble with hearts grief-stricken at the
terrible tidings from Johnstown-tidings which mean for us, as a Convention,
that one of our self-supporting parishes, well-organized and equipped, with its
noble self-denying Rector and over two hundred communicates, has been in one
dreadful moment completely blotted out.
We had there a handsome brick church, accommodating two hundred and
fifty people. It was last year
thoroughly renovated and adorned: and by the generosity of a lady in
Just across the street, in a tiny house, which as attractive
as it was small nestled the Rector and his little family-happy in their mutual
love, and in their devotion to the Master’s cause. No one could be more faithful than he
– no one more absolutely wrapped up in his work. His people loved and trusted him, and
willingly followed him in all the Church enterprises. He was particularly loved and honored
among the lowly, and the success of his ministry among them was most
remarkable. I had requested him to
address us at our missionary meeting tonight, that he might tell us the story
of his mission work at Ehrenfeld, where among the coal miners he had make
himself the personal friend of all. And he presented about thirty for
confirmation. Wherever he ministered, the devotion of the people was the same,
and he had many loving friends at Mercer, Pardoe and
Born and nurtured in the Church, he was by his devoted parents consecrated to the ministry from his birth and received the name of Alonzo Potter, in the hope that perchance some measure of the great Bishop’s spirit might be his. This hope was indeed realized in the singular simplicity and thorough goodness of his character, and in his pre-eminent usefulness and a leader of souls to Christ.
No words can express the sense of loss which we fell at the thought of this terrible calamity – a loss which to me, personally, is very great; for in addition to the ordinary ties which bind a Bishop to his clergy, I was a sharer in those great events in his life, his marriage, and the baptism of his idolized boy Isaac, one year old, and the confirmation of another inmate of his house Lola Agnes Dinant, stepdaughter who was very dear to his wife and to himself. Lola was Fr. Diller’s wife’s daughter by a former marriage. Lola’s father was deceased. Fr. Diller’s wife’s maiden name was Marion Theodosia Morrell.
Many times also, have I enjoyed his hospitality; and thus I knew him much more intimately than it is my privilege to know many of the clergy.
I shall never cease to mourn for him and for his household, all so admirable and so amiable; and their example and influence I trust will be a blessing and encouragement in the years to come.
In Memoriam adopted by a unanimous rising vote in the
Diocesan Convention June 6, 1889.
The Rev. Alonzo Potter Diller was born in
In 1879 he graduated from
The
following extract from a letter for Mr. Diller’s sister corrects the date
here named:
Dear
Sir- My brother received the call to
He found the parish disorganized, and the Church building in a deplorable condition. Energy and intense burning zeal for God and the Church were, perhaps, the most striking points in his ministerial character. He went at once to work, and out of the chaos brought forth and restored a beautiful house of prayer, and a parish building of excellent design, and a united and happy parish. In addition to his work at St. Mark’s, he also exerted a decided influence in the country round about. He was a man of unblemished integrity, of humble piety, and a strong faith in God. To know him was to love him, and to be in his company a single was to be impressed with the majesty of simple goodness. When the terrible storm of Friday, May 31st, 1889, came, it found him at his post of duty. With thousands of others, he and his devoted wife and children were swept into eternity. As was Elijah of ancients, so was he called away amid storms and tempest, but Elijah’s God was with him, and the whirlwind is still the chariot in which the Father of all souls takes His children from earth to heaven. Honored and beloved, the Rev. Mr. Diller has gone to his reward; but though dead, he yet speaketh.
No marble shaft is needed to perpetuate his memory in the hearts of those who knew him. A life of unselfish devotion, of diligent labors, of quiet, child-like faith in God, is his best and noblest monument. May light eternal shine upon him.
The Late Rector of
My brief acquaintance with Alonzo Potter Diller came about
in this way: Not long after Easter
I happened upon a paragraph in the Standard
of the Cross that told of the practical way in which a young missionary in
the mountain village in
That principles formulated at Chicago and Lambeth should thus find their visible embodiment in a village scarcely known by name, fifty miles away, struck me so forcibly as an illustration of God’s methods of genesis, was so suggestive of certain sayings in both Testaments as to the interdependence of things great and little – breathed, in fact, such a flavor of the Magnificat, that I obeyed a sudden impulse and wrote my young brother a letter of congratulation. His reply, which I think you will be glad to print, both as a revelation of the simple-hearted earnestness that was in the man, and as a stimulus to the charity of those who have been asked to help in the rebuilding of the Johnstown Church, was as follows:
St.
Mark’s Parish Hall,
April 12, 1889
Dear Reverend Sir: - Thank you heartily for your highly appreciated letter of sympathy and encouragement. It brought warm but happy tears of gratitude to my eyes; for I am so alone here in a parish more than co-extensive with the country and forty miles from the nearest clerical neighbor, yet with 80,000 souls in the cluster of boroughs within two miles of the church. And I am so terribly tired, in my inequality to and for my boundless opportunities. Several times I have fainted after one or two extra services, and last week I had to go to bed with a staggering congestive headache, although I am both young and stout. Yours, too, was the first and only line of clerical sympathy. So you will pardon my nervous weakness.
The work at Ehrenfeld is so delightful and easy in itself, and yet it gives me my sharpest present pang, in a way I shall explain. At my first few visits I presented the Church as the one and only rightful spiritual home of them all, and embracing everything good in all of their bodies, which I believed, were every one useful and divinely allowed to emphasize a part of the truth, or rescue it from oblivion. I of course disarmed opposition and shielded the Church from prejudices by extemporizing prayers as well as sermons. Then, first with the services in leaflet form, and then with a good supply of like-paged prayer books (and hymnals, of course), we at once began to hold services with scrupulous and reverence-begetting observance of all rubrics. It would do your heart good to see such a crowd, of men, chiefly, all shining with soap and cleanliness that cost miners a great deal, all attentive to my long services and explanations, and addresses in a hall without a particle of heat, when it was nearly zero and one’s breath looked more like steam from an engine.
There were two fatal catastrophies at the mines, besides a couple of other deaths, since I have been going there, and they were all so grateful for my simple ministries. They endure persecution, too, no nobly; for the Roman Catholic Irish mine-boss puts them off from the work that is their only sustenance so readily, and our hall (the second floor of the mine-store) is given up to the brass band three times a week and to the Romish ”Dramatic Association,” otherwise minstrel troupe, once a week: and these make it so dirty and abuse our organ, and make it absolutely necessary to remove our other furniture, down to chairs even, between every two services.
They are so poor that there is no hope of their building a Church. Besides, I do not want a little contemptible shanty of a church, but I need a beautiful rectory, chapel, with three rooms, suitable for my temperance society and for an anti-saloon, lounging and reading room, additional to the chapel, big enough for our congregation of 125, with six rooms up-stairs that would guarantee proper care of the rest by those to whom it be thus rented. Such a building, will cost $2,000. Where is it to come from? Well, the Lord can send it if He sees best. Being within school limits of Summerhill, a public school was denied the miners, and the parents feared the dangers of the only connection with this older town, one and a quarter miles along the railroad, they were without even a day school till we got a capable Church woman established with seventy day pupils. Our Sunday School numbers over one hundred, and there is no one who was a sectarian Church there.
But I am urgently invited to St. Luke’s Parish,
And the same is equally true of three other yet more hopeful
missions needed at once in the parish.
At the borough of “
O, sir, I do want to go away; my people are so kind and foolishly fond of me, and I know they will do more for me than for a stranger; they have increased y salary, spent $2,000 out of their poverty in repairing the Church and putting in a pipe organ; they have built this splendid hall in which is my study, and paid $2,1000 of the $2,3000 charged us for a rectory site, needed, too, for the light of this building. The communicant list has trebled in my four years here, and my work is only beginning to unfold its glorious possibilities. But I shall break down utterly and widow my best of wives if I do not either go or get what I want – and associate rector. I must decide within the next four days now.
If we had a rectory, costing $2,500 in brick, on our lot, wife and I would. O, so gladly and with perfect ease, board the “associate” free, and I could guarantee him enough additional to secure the aid of the very best fellow as I believe, in the graduating class of the General Theological Seminary, and alumnus, too, of my Alma Mater. Without the rectory, rent free and large enough, we cannot do this, as our present rented house costs all we can afford - $275 out of $1,200 of a salary – yet it has but two chambers in it, and one of them is 9 ft. 2in., by 9 ft. 5 in., rents being, like ground, exceedingly high priced in this crowded spot among the mountains. I cannot ask my people for this money; 1st, because I promised them I never would ask them for the rectory when they made the sublime effort of last year that secured the lot, in danger of being to the very objectionable neighbor; and secondly, because in the present depressed condition of coal and iron work, that engage about all, they actually cannot do more than pay running expenses.
O, for one hour’s rectorship of such a wealthy and liberal parish as yours, the confidence and love of your so many almost omnipotent millionaire stewards of my God’s treasures! If any one but knew my field, he or she would be eager for the privilege of investing the whole $10,000 that would build all four rectory chapels, and this – most needed, heart and life as it were of all – parish rectory. Do favor me with another line to let me know if there is any hope you will interest yourself I behalf our one great work here. I am sure of donations of ground for my rectory chapels; if a donor thought me too sanguine he could have a mortgage covering full amount of gift till the success of the work is assured, and a trifle converts them into splendid residences, very salable or rentable here. Pardon length and ill return of a begging letter for such a sweet and helpful one as you wrote. God bless you evermore!
Sincerely yours,
Alonzo Potter Diller
In reply to a subsequent letter of mine that had contained a trifling contribution toward the immediate needs of his work – a contribution so trifling indeed as to make his fervid language of gratitude see to veriest satire upon our average benevolence (though he was far from meaning it to be so interpreted) Mr. Diller wrote –
St.
Mark’s Parish Hall,
April 26th, 1889
My Very Dear Sire: - God bless you evermore for your most appreciated and in my experience unparalleled benefaction, the check for ---. I had the strange rapture of having credited to my name in the bank a few minutes ago. It came last Tuesday night, the very evening that my regular weekly visit to Ehrenfeld for service, sermons, baptisms and calls exhausted my mileage book, and left me to worry how I should get the $20 for another such book that is the only possible means of my making the frequent 22 miles round trip there at only two-thirds the impoverishing full fare. As I am in arrears with my rent nearly three months now, I at once concluded it would be right to buy me a thousand-mile book with a part of this money, provided you assented, and I, of course, use this book exclusively for trips to the mission, in all of whose work you will now have so important a share, now and Beyond. The rest I will hold in the bank against some urgent future need there or at either of the nearer mission points, always liable to arise, especially where explosions and other accidents are so frequent, and now that a horrid reduction of five cents per ton makes the miners so poor.
I had another great joy on Tuesday, for I found awaiting me
a huge box with 393 books, most of them nearly as good as new, sent to
Ehrenfeld with the utmost of kindness and love from my home parish at
Ever gratefully and sincerely yours,
A. P. Diller
Poor fellow! It was not many of that “thousand miles” he was destined to cover in his toilsome journeyings, nor is there much left of that remainder he fancied he had housed so securely in the village bank. The searchers found him so we have been told, with his baby in his arms and his wife at his side.
“These three made unity so sweet,
My frozen heart began to beat,
Remembering its ancient heat.”
Wrote a poet, touched by the sight of a not dissimilar group. Were I to be asked for an inscription for Diller’s tablet in the memorial Church presently to be built on the spot swept by the flood, I should waive originality of the preference for those old words, MANY WATERS CANNOT QUENCH LOVE
* * * * * * * * * * * *
From a sermon by Bishop Whitehead preached in the temporary chapel
At
“Though the righteous be prevented with death, yet shall he be in rest. For honorable age is not that which standeth in length of time, nor that is measured by number of years: but wisdom is the gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age.” Wisdom IV: 7, 8, 9.
It is impossible, in making my visitation of this parish, not to have somewhat to say concerning the vast change that has come over this whole community, and especially this congregation, since last I came to make my official visit. Surely if the phrase so often on our lips, “the changes and chances of this mortal life,” never had much significance before, it has been filled with most direful meaning in our experience of the past year. So rapid and so great have events been, that is seems more like five years than ten months since I came to lay hands of the class last presented here. What could have been more peaceful, and more suggestive of stability and security, than the Church so well-ordered, and in such good repair, the parish house and Sunday School chapel in such constant use, and so appreciated as a home and center for all parish work. The Rector so absorbed in his priestly functions, thinking always how best to unite the people in Christian activity, and how best to make the services attractive to men, and acceptable to God.
Well do I remember the congregation assembled here on Sunday night, the 24th of March, last year, and the goodly class that came forward to be Confirmed; amongst them that bright-eyed inmate of the Rector’s family, whose young heart had desired the added Gift. Well do I remember the presence here of some from Ehrenfeld, who having, for some reason, missed the opportunity on the Tuesday night preceding, had come with quite a number of their friends, that they might attend the services here on Sunday night. I remember the cordial greeting given them by the Rector and his wife. I remember the hospitable entertainment furnished them from the little house across the street. I remember the genuine pleasure they gave, by their presence, to him who heart was so engaged in their behalf.
I remember with more than ordinary pleasure, the delightful service held next morning, the Feast of the Annunciation, when, contrary to our expectation, and certainly contrary to the natural custom of many, the attendance at Divine service was so gratifying, and forty Communicants came to the Eucharistic Feast. The Rector’s heart was glad, and the Bishop was filed with grateful surprise.
Still another pleasure awaited me at that visitation, for finding the train to Meyersdale withdrawn, I remained yet longer with my brother, and helped to read Evening Prayer, which was the customary service during Lent.
Little did I think that I stood for the last time within those walls; and that when next my eyes should rest upon this valley, there would be little else than a waste of sand, where stood that goodly building. And still less did I suppose that when I came again to Johnstown, my dear devoted brother would be no more, the pulses of his loving heart stilled in death, and his happy home gone from earth forever. And even if this had been within the possibility of my conception, it surely would not have entered my mind, that of those upon whom I had laid my hands, should have been snatched away from earth, so large a proportion. Here with us one moment, and the next hurled to death, with no hope of escape, nor any possibility of rescue.
It ill befits one of this community, and on the very spot where the great disaster exerted its wildest fury, to attempt to describe, in poor human words, the horrors of that day. Nor is this the proper time, nor is this the fitting place in which to recount the virtues of all those our brethren and sisters in the Faith, who were, on that dreadful day, taken from our sight. Not is it the most fitting time to exalt the character, the attainments, the labors, of our dear brother departed, and the loveliness of the members of his household. When a suitable temple is erected upon this hallowed site, when new walls have risen, dedicated to God’s glory, and set apart as memorials of those whom God has snatched away, then will be the fitting time for eloquent lips to portray the beauties of their characters, and, in glowing words, set forth the lesson of their lives.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
I know not a better example to illustrate these words of Solomon than is afford by the life of the Rev. Rector, who so early finished his course. He truly and undoubtedly “finished his course.” Cut short to our eyes, it had reached its turning, and come back again in its complete round of duty. In God’s sight it was perfect as the course planned our full, and complete. Consecrated to God, like the prophets of old, even from his mother’s womb, dedicated by loving and devoted hearts to the Ministry of His Church, given by his mother, as was little Samuel, to serve before the Lord in His Temple, brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, his infant lips early taught to breathe words of prayer, his child-like heart trained always to do right, and to account duty the highest aim in life, esteeming God’s service the only true aspiration – such he was in his childhood.
As the years went on, the childhood merged into youth, his purpose strengthened, his habit of doing right became second nature, and his life fulfilled its early bent, and matured in the one line of serving as God’s Minister. As far as I know, it never wavered from that purpose, and all his thoughts and aims crystallized around that purpose. There was no wandering away from the Father’s House into forbidden paths; there was no years of careless and indifferent dalliance with the world. Of him it could be said, as of the elder brother in the parable: “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.” Helped, no doubt, by the honored name which he bore, the name of the great and holy Bishop of Pennsylvania, whom no man ever mentions but with reverence; and helped much more by the example of Him whom that Bishop followed most humbly as a disciple, the youth matured into manhood, and the self-consecration became complete.
He entered into the Holy Ministry with devotion and zeal, and with persistency of thought and labor he proceed to fill, in the lower grade of the Diaconate, and then in the higher grade of the Priesthood, the service for which though all the years he had been preparing. He lived in his work as too few of us do. Surely his devoted life declared as his Master had done: “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work.” In season and out of season, in the elegant abode of luxury, in the humble dwelling of the laborer, in the still humbler house of the poor, he was equally at home, equally well beloved, and equally well accounted as being singularly pure-hearted, and as given unreservedly to the service of God. Everywhere he went he made hosts of friends; and even if some were not always friendly, their lack of friendship came simply from misappreciation or perhaps irritation at his very evident earnestness of purpose s God’s ambassador to men. He had a singular power of bringing plainly to the convictions of men their personal duty, and claiming from them the fulfillment of that duty in consecration of themselves to God.
Many did he present for confirmation; to many others did he
speak most earnestly in private about their individual lives and needs. Some, no doubt, who hear mean, can
remember how he has plead with them, lovingly but always most urgently, that
they would follow the plain directions of their conscience and God’s
word. He accomplished much in many
ways, wherever he labored; and we who knew his ministry here in this community,
can testify how much he gained for the Church and for Christ by his
self-forgetful and untiring labors.
We seem to say that he came too soon to an end in the work that God had
given him to do, but how truly the problem is solved and the difficulty
unraveled when we come back to the word of our text: “Though the
righteous come early to his death yet shall he be in rest; for honorable age is
not that which standeth in length of time, nor is measured by number of years;
but wisdom is gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age.” God measures man’s work not so
much by quantity
As by quality; not so much by length of time as by earnestness and fidelity, and the consecration to the highest and best.
“We live in deeds, not years; in
thoughts”; not breaths:
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs.
He lives most who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.”
So, in God’s holy sight, he, and all those who with true devotion spent their lives in serving God, though passing hence in what seemed their earthly prime, have fulfilled their course, and gained the true reward which comes to wisdom and old age. They have learned the lesson soon, and gained the crown for which we still must struggle; and, as seen from God’s standpoint, their years were most complete and perfect, though few in earthly estimate. Let us than lay this truth deep within our consciences, that all life will be a riddle, and a most humiliating failure also, unless we put self in the lower place and exalt God highest of all. Herein is true living, true philosophy, true happiness in this world, true success, as measured by the Divine standard, and herein also the only assurance of the heavenly reward. Would that we might all learn the lesson contained in these verses in which I close---
“O! The bitter shame and sorrow,
That a time should ever be,
When I let the Saviour’s pity
Plead in vain and proudly answered,
“All of self and none of Thee.”
Yet He found me, I beheld Him
Bleeding on the accursed tree,
Heard Him pray, “Forgive them, Father.”
And my willful heart said faintly,
“Some of self, and some of Thee.”
Day by day His tender mercy,
Healing, helping, full and free,
Sweet and strong and O, so patient,
Brought me lower while I whispered,
“Less of self, and more of Thee.”
Higher than the highest heavens,
Deeper than the deepest sea,
Lord, Thy love at last hath conquered,
Grant me now my spirit’s longing—
“None of self, and all of Thee.”