John B. Hagany
John B. Hagany [1]
an eminent minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was born in the city of Wilmington, Delaware, August 26, 1808, of Methodist parentage, and entered the itinerant ministry in 1831. His ministry was from the first very successful. During his long career of thirty-four years he filled many of the most important stations of his Church in the Middle States, among them Pottsvllle, Pa.; St. George's, Ebenezer, and Trinity churches, Philadelphia; the Vestry Street, Mulberry Street, St. Paul's, and Bedford Street churches, New York City; Sands Street, Brooklyn, and Thirtieth Street, New York, where he closed his labors with his life, June 28, 1865.
Dr. Hagany was an eloquent preacher. He had a sweet-toned voice, a calm rather than a fervid temperament, a quick, tender sympathy, by which he was readily affected himself, and could readily affect others to tears. His memory was retentive, and enabled him to command instantly all his resources. In the early Methodist literature, and the English classics of the 17th century, he was unusually well read, and his citations from his favorite authors pleasantly spiced his conversation. Withal there was a vein of humor running through his speaking and writing which gave a flavor to both. His literary remains consist chiefly of essays contributed to religious and other periodicals. One of these, on John Wesley, furnished to Harper's Magazine, is one of the most striking characterizations of the great reformer extant. On the last Sunday of his life, June 25th, he preached to his congregation from the text, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his." Not having finished his discourse, he announced that he would conclude it the next time he preached. On the evening of that day he was too unwell to go into the pulpit. On Wednesday afternoon he was sitting in his chair, reading from the sermons of Rev. Jonathan Seed, an old favorite of John Wesley. Meeting in Seed with a passage, which greatly pleased him, he called his wife, and began reading it aloud to her. While reading he was seized with a spasm of pain in the chest; the book was dropped, he leaned his head upon his hand, his arm upon the table before him, and in a few minutes it was all over. He had nearly completed his fifty-seventh year, and the thirty-fourth of his ministry. (G. R. C.)
