June 23 Today in OPC History

On June 23, 1914, J. Gresham Machen was ordained by the Presbytery of New Brunswick of the Presbyterian Church in the USA. Machen was nearly 33 years old at the time and eight years into his tenure as instructor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary. The delay in his ordination owed to his uncertainty about his gifts for ministerial vocation. In his biography of Machen, Ned Stonehouse quotes from the sermon that Machen preached on that occasion from Psalm 2:

“‘Rejoice with trembling.’ That looks like a paradox. Joy and fear are opposite. At any rate, surely the trembling must limit the joy. Rejoice although you have to tremble. Or, rejoice, but in your joy do not forget to tremble. Or, is the trembling positively necessary to the joy, intimately connected with it? Is the trembling the key to the joy? If we learn to tremble, will the way be open to the joy that we have sought so long in vain? Rejoice, says the modern preacher—but sadness does not seem to flee. Rejoice, says the psalmist—and the Lord put gladness in his heart.”

Ironically, the same Presbytery of New Brunswick, 22 years later (to the very day), pronounced the suspension of Machen from the ministry in the PCUSA on June 23, 1936, because of his leadership in the formation of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. By that time, however, Machen was already a constituting member of the Presbyterian Church of America (later renamed OPC) that was founded on June 11, 1936, and he enrolled in the Presbytery of Philadelphia of the new church at its first meeting on June 30.