BRIGGS, Albertus Theodore - Putnam

More than 50 preachers from the Northwest Indiana Conference attended the services for Dr. AT Briggs held at the Gobin Memorial Church at 3 p.m. Wednesday. The services were in charge of Rev. QM McClure and Rev JE Porter. Talks were given by Dean WM Blanchard; Dr. Will G Seaman and Bishop Edgar Blake. Prayers were offered by Dr. JG Campbell and Dr. George G. Switzer. Professor Jerome Hixson a member of the official board of the Gobin Memorial Church prepared the following tributes to Dr. Briggs.  The close and active relationship of Dr. Briggs to the Gobin Memorial Church cannot at this time go unnoted. Though he served the church at large for many effective years, it was here that most of us knew him. It was here that we saw him practice what he had so long preached. It was this relatively small segment of his life that we came to esteem him.  Long after his student days when with Lemuel Murlin he served student charges at Knightsville and elsewhere he came back to the Greencastle District as superintendent After 50 years he could still appreciate the problems of the student pastor whom he called his “boys.” With all the unction of the older so-called presiding elder, he combined the efficiency connoted by the newer title of “district superintendent.”  This church owes a debt to the district superintendent that Dr. Briggs was from 1925-1931; for in the difficult days of transition in the often discouraging enterprise of building the new church, the wisdom of Dr. Briggs experience and the tact of his kindly nature were of great help.  It is not unlikely that without his leadership on the district at that strategic time., the church we know might not have been realized. For this church which owes him so much, Dr Briggs must have had an affection, for it was her ein Greencastle that he chose to retire. Without in any sense being intrusive and meddlesome, he became an active member such as we cannot forget.  Probably he could not have been otherwise. There was not a canvass nor a campaign we all know, in which he did not work early and late. The generosity of his support of the church shamed all the excuses we commonly hear. Though retired, he showed no inclination to stop working for the Lord. He could step gracefully from the pew to the pulpit to render the service which, with increasing frequency, were thrust upon him in his retirement. But though we had known Dr. Briggs as he had presided over our quarter conferences I his days as district superintendent, and though we thought we had known him as an energetic fellow-member.  Gobin Memorial Church did not really know him until in its hour of need, he filled the position of its acting pastor. When the illness of a former pastor Dr. Monger made our pulpit suddenly vacant, it was Dr Briggs who rose to the occasion. In his devoted, efficient service, he made hundreds of calls upon the sick and the disinterested. The remarkable quality of this man who had already served the church for a lifetime became apparent in the appropriateness of his messages from the pulpit. Not less than at any time in his long career was his his message adapted to this university church, a captious time and place. Challenging in thought, clarity and vigor, he soon won the admiration of faculty, students, and townspeople alike. His prayers were holy mantle that covered all, old and young, in one common petition and protection.  Always he had a friendly smile, a cheering word. He did not dislike men but the evil in them. He was fearless of wrong. He spoke evil of no man. His silence, like his discourses, proclaimed his character. And because we had known him as a fellow worker and an active fellow citizen, his short ministry in Greencastle here carried the weight of example, for, like Chaucer’s parson, Dr. Briggs first wrought then taught. Into any home where sorrow or trouble were he was quick to find his helpful way.  Surely, if there is any truth in Plato’s statement that people grow to be like their names, we have an example in the nobility of Albertus Briggs. We are told that Albertus means, “illustrious through nobility.” Old friends and particularly colleagues, of Dr. Briggs sometimes jocularly called him ”Albertus Magnus.”  It was not inappropriate. All who knew him understood that like the Albertus Magnus of old, he loved his books and his study.  His utterances showed that. But more than his distinguished namesake of the 13th century who interpreted ancient learning, our Albertus Magnus interpreted the gospel and Book-land to Folk-land. He made his books do something for people. We who have known him, then in the pew and in the pulpit, we who have known him as he has been in our homes and walked these streets, shall best cherish his countless “Little unremembered acts of kindness and of love,” which Wordsworth says are “that best portion of a good man’s life. Greencastle will be lonesome without him.  Gobin Memorial Church will miss him more than it can here express. We thought we needed him for a while yet. But God, who does all things for the best has other plans for Albertus Briggs. He cannot cease to serve the Lord he has served so long. He may be needed as a member – or helper in the great Church Triumphant. What Matthew Arnold wrote in “Rugby Chapel,” regarding his own father, we might have written no less appropriately for this good man whom Gobin Memorial Church would honor: …