E. J. Forrester

Eldred John Forrester served as pastor of the Washington church from October 1902 to December 1905. He served as a messenger from the church to the association at its meetings at Greensboro, Oct 14-16, 1902; at Carters Grove, October 13-15, 1903; at Beaverdam, October 11-13, 1904; and at Kiokee, October 10-12, 1905. Dr. Forrester preached the dedication sermon of the new building for Rehoboth Baptist Church in October 1903. Upon the creation of a minister's conference of the Georgia Association in the Washington church on January 10-11, 1905, Dr. Forrester was elected chairman. He resigned his pastorate effective October 1, 1905, having accepted a call to the Chair of Theology at Mercer University.


ELDRED JOHN FORRESTER.

Eldred John Forrester, A. B., D. D., is widely known as an eminent and scholarly theologian and educator, a successful and greatly beloved pastor, an able writer and critic, a profound logician, a constructive thinker and organizer, and a Christian gentleman. He was born of distinguished parents in Beaufort District, South Carolina, November 14, 1853. His father, John James Forrester, was of Huguenot ancestry, and his mother, Letitia Jemimah Fitts, was of English ancestry.

When Eldred was in his fourth year, his father died at the age of twenty-six, leaving his wife a widow, at the age of twenty-three, with four children. After about three years his mother was again married, and the estate left by his father, consisting of land, slaves, and gold, was distributed between the mother and her children by a commission appointed by the Superior Court—the mother electing to take a child's part. The slaves were held in severalty and hired out to support the children. The commission ordered the land sold for distribution. The stepfather purchased the land, and the administrator, the father's brother, invested the proceeds in Confederate bonds, which, with the slaves, were lost by the issue of the war.

From six to eleven, Eldred went to school to his mother's brother, who was a teacher and incapacitated for service in the army. At the age of eleven, Eldred went to work upon the farm with his stepfather, who returned at the close of the war, broken in health, and all means of support destroyed.

From eleven to seventeen, he worked upon the farm and studied at night by the light of a pine-wood fire. He united with the Baptist church at Beech Branch, his home church, when fourteen, and was ordained in this church at twenty-three, May, 1877, by a presbytery consisting of Joseph A. Lawtou, Joseph M. Bostick, Henry C. Smart, and Edwin W. Peeples. His beloved mother, who, by a gracious Providence, was permitted to be present at the ordination of her son, was suddenly called, just two weeks afterward, to her reward in heaven.

From seventeen to eighteen, Eldred studied privately in preparation for college with his pastor, Joseph M. Bostick, who had studied at Furman University and graduated at Princeton Theological Seminary. When eighteen, his uncle, the administrator, who had so invested the two thousand dollars in gold left bj Eldred's father that the share of the nephew was one thousand dollars, reposing full confidence in him, gave to him his share, that he might enter college. This amount, supplemented by gifts of generous friends, money earned during vacation, and borrowed, enabled him to pursue his education without interruption. At eighteen, he entered Furman University, graduating four years later, with "A. B."

At twenty-four, he graduated with the full diploma of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He commanded the admiration of the professors and students of these institutions by his intense purpose, his strong character, and his intellectual mastery. He never failed on an examination. In his New Testament Greek Dr. Broadus gave him one hundred.

One week after graduating at the seminary, he was married, May, 1878, at Darlington, South Carolina, to a young lady of rare culture and grace, Miss Elizabeth Pugh Dargan, a daughter of the distinguished Rev. J. 0. B. Dargan, D.D., of South Carolina.

This young graduate, so splendidly equipped, declined, because of inexperience, to consider two town churches in his native State, to which he had been recommended by Dr. Broadus, and served a group of churches as pastor, 1878-1882, in Wilcox, Dallas, Hale, Marengo, and Lowndes counties, Alabama.

He became pastor at Selma, Alabama, 1882, succeeding Dr. W. C. Cleveland. While pastor there, in November, 1883, his wife died, leaving two little girls, the youngest only twenty days old. In January, 1884, he accepted a call to Hartsville, South Carolina, in order that these children might be in care of their mother's mother, under conditions best suited to her.

In January, 1885, he was married to Miss Margaret Lydia Dargan, a sister of his former wife, dowered with those excellencies of mind and heart which characterize this distinguished family.

After a very happy and successful pastorate at Hartsville, he accepted the pastorate, October, 1891, of the church at Greenwood, South Carolina, which was in a disorganized condition, but contained large possibilities. His pastorate there lasted eleven years and was fruitful and triumphant. It gave the church a home for the pastor and a modern church building and equipment. The membership of the church was increased threefold, and that of the Sunday-school more than threefold. Under his pastorate this church grew from third place to the foremost among the churches of the town and became one of the strongest and most liberal churches in the State. Here was, perhaps, his greatest pastorate. It was while here, that his alma mater, in 1893, conferred upon him the degree of "D. D.," a richly merited honor. From this pastorate, growing in fruitfulness and power, Dr. Forrester was led, in 1902, by a remarkable series of providences, to a very much smaller and less potential pastorate at Washington, Georgia, where he spent three most happy years, winning with remarkable rapidity a unique place in the confidence and affection of the people.

From Washington, by a movement of Providence scarcely less striking than the other. Dr. Forrester was called, in 1905, to the chair of The Bible in Mercer University.

At Mercer, his pre-eminent exegetical ability, profound scholarship, wide learning, prudent counsel, and splendid executive ability have enabled him to render invaluable service to the University and to his denomination in a large way. He has not only filled the chair of The Bible in Mercer, but has also taught with his unfailing excellence American History, Parliamentary Law, end Argumentation, while almost every Sunday he has filled some pulpit in our State. He served Mercer also as Treasurer, 1910-1914, with distinguished ability, having for two of those years so managed its finances that the income exceeded the expenses.

Here in April, 1911, in the midst of his arduous duties, a profound sorrow was visited upon him. The beloved companion of his life for twenty-six years was taken to her rest in heaven. His accomplished daughter, Miss Elizabeth, now presided over his home, until in June, 1912, he was married to a lady of exceptional talent and refinement, Miss Mary Rebecca Duggan, Director of Vocal Culture at Bessie Tift College, a daughter of John C. Duggan, of Washington county, Georgia, a distinguished Georgian.

Dr. Forrester has been generous of his means and unsparing of energy in his great life work. A liberal contributor to general benevolence through our churches, a very liberal contributor to the endowment of Mercer and of our other educational institutions and to private charities, he has often given liberally of his means to educate worthy young men. He has not sought wealth, nor conspicuous position. His life's ambition has been to be of service and to excel in whatever he undertook. He is modest yet firm in his convictions, and while his views are generally accepted, he is not aggressive in having others accept them, but is uncompromising in his refusal to accept what he regards erroneous. With a keen sense of honor and responsibility, and with devoted loyalty, the great powers of his capacious mind and heart are employed to serve truth and right and to oppose falsehood, hypocrisy, injustice, and error. As a writer, his style is vigorous, terse, analytical, didactic, incisive, lucid and logical.

These dominant characteristics of his great mind are manifest in debate. There is no striving after rhetorical effect, no evasiveness, no cloudiness of thought. Irrelevant detail is swept aside, the issues clearly defined and logically solved. This strong and direct approach to truth, severely analytical and logical, the exaltation of Christ, instruction in the Word of God, denunciation of byprocrisy and all unrighteousness, the illustration of the beauty of holiness, and the human sympathy and appeal in his sermons constitute in large part their great power.

Dr. Forrester's services to the denomination in a larger way began early. When a young pastor, he originated and promoted a general movement for organization of Woman's Missionary Societies in Alabama, and was one of a small group of pastors, who began the organization of Young People's Societies in the churches of the South. He made to Dr. J. B. Hawthorne the suggestion that led to the call by the Georgia Baptist Convention for a conference of Southern workers in Atlanta to organize the Southern Baptist Young People's Union, was a member of the committee that drew the constitution of the organization, and suggested the name that was given to it.

While Dr. Forrester was the pastor of Major J. L. Coker, at Hartsville, South Carolina, he made to him the suggestion upon which that great layman acted in establishing the Welsh Neck High School, later superseded by the magnificent Coker College for Women, the recipient of more than two hundred thousand dollars from its great and genenms patron.

For ten years Dr. Forrester served as trusteo of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and was, for a like term, a member of the Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. For three years he was a trustee of Mercer University, and has been the Treasurer of the Georgia Baptist Convention since 1906.

Beginning with 1878, for thirty-eight years he has never failed to attend the Baptist State Convention of the State in which he was living at the time of meeting, and he has served on various committees and boards of these conventions and of the Southern Baptist Convention, which he never failed to attend during his long service as pastor, except when, on rare occasions, he was prevented by illness of some one of the members of his church.

Dr. Forrester is well known as a contributor of many valuable articles to the Baptist Courier, and, for many years prior to moving to Georgia, was a regular contributor to The Christian Index. He is the author of his own text-books for his Bible courses in Mercer University, which he had printed especially for his students. He is also the author of The Baptist Position, an authoritative work on Baptist doctrine and practice. He was one of the founders of The Baptist Review and Expositor, published by the Southern Baptist Seminary, to which he has made valuable contributions.

A distinct honor came to him in recognition of his splendid scholarship when he was invited by the editors to contribute several articles to the new International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, published, 1915, by the Howard-Severance Company, of Chicago, edited by Dr. James Orr, of Glasgow, Scotland, Dr. John Nuelson, of Zuerich, Switzerland, and Dr. Edgar Y. Mullins, of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Articles upon Church Government, Esau, Innocence, Reverence, and others were contributed by him for this splendid work.

While Dr. Forrester has entered more largely into the work and the counsels of the Baptists, he has also participated actively in the municipal and civic life of his fellow citizens. His work and the esteem in which he is held by all who know him stand as a monument to the greatness of the man.

An active pastor for twenty-seven years, for eleven years a professor of Mercer University, possessed of intense energy of mind and body with great power of concentration and sustained effort, may this gifted scholar and Christian gentleman be spared yet many years to the great, comprehensive service to which his life has bt'en devoted.

Biography of E. J. Forrester:

He was born November 14, 1853 and died November 11, 1932. On May 30, 1878, he married Bessie P. Dargan, daughter of Rev. J. O. B. Dargan, in a service performed by Rev. R. W. Lide. After the death of his wife Bessie he married her sister Maggie L. Dargan on January 22, 1885, in a service performed by Rev. Lide and Rev. John Stout. He served as pastor of the Washington Baptist Church of the Georgia Baptist Association from 1902 to 1905. He was a professor of Bible at Mercer University from 1905 to 1918. In May 1915 the pastoral committee of the Washington church conferred with him about serving the church again, but Dr. Forrester declined and the committee reported that he was not available. After this he served as pastor of the Sparta Baptist Church of the Washington Baptist Association from 1918 to 1920.