Hampden Sydney College - Kaleidoscope Yearbook (Hampden Sydney, VA)

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:fr . 1 - i if 1 fi' Q if 3 'Ii I XX X . Y I ii . , Nik. 'ff A 4, - ' V, X I I Y lj' I .., ,max I sbp! .5 , - I i ' 'I i v ' ' ' is -' - f'-fi' eip, Q i ,H e' o , e -- ' ' -4-:ini lf' . fe, V 2: f f o , f vlf' A-f-sirens 2 t xf ififaf' H f 1' ' 'V '- Y ' f i ' 'Rf Xp r 3 fi' 1, ij 4 ,sg testis' W 1 f , a t . A if llbbilip . !IDc1kimieQ. CBOVCIIIIOII of Ulrglllia, 18902159-I. BY Trionxs J. G.xRIniN. IXCIQ the death of Dr. Hoge thcre was left perhaps no citizen of Virginia whose death could have produced a more profound impression upon thc people than that of ex-Governor Philip XYatkins McKinney. That he was deeply beloved and highly honored throughout the length and breadth of the Commonwealth and beyond its confines is attested by the great number of editorials and contributions to the public press, deploring his loss, and setting forth his life and character as a model for imitation. To say that he was born May Ist, 1832, and died March lst, 1890, is all that he would wish to be said about him. such was his aversion to praise, and so retiring was he in the sweetness of his nature that he shrank from any demonstrations of display made in his honor. llut there is a duty the living owe to the generations to come. As the subject of this sketch was inspired by the noble examples of great men who had gone before him, so the children of the present age and of future ages should be taught to emulate the example of one, who, though dead, speaketh through his life-both public and private-of devotion to duty, of the love of right, of temperance, of morality, of love for his fellow man, of genuine true politeness, the beauty of his domestic life and the consecration of his heart to his God. It is not often that a child born in a community grows up to eminence in the neighborhood in which he has been reared. and long after he attains the age of 24

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much, but Grace had done most of all. He preached from a true and profound experience of the mercy and power of God. He knew the deadly evil of sin. He knew the saving grace of Christ. He knew the brooding sorrows of the human heart, He knew the comfort of communion with God. He knew that the Gospel was God's supreme answer to man's supreme need. And the crowning glory of this pulpit is that, from the first day of its occupancy to the last. it rang true to that evangel: Behold the lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. There was never a day in all these fifty-four years when men could not have pointed to him as the original of Cowper's immortal portrait: .4 There stands the messenger of truth: there stands The legate of the skies! His theme divine, His office sacred, his credentials clear. By him the violated law speaks out, Its thunders: and by him, in strains as sweet As angels used. the Gospel whispers peace. He stablishes the strong. restores the weak, Reelaims the wanderer, binds the broken heart, And, arm'd himself in panoply complete Of heavenly temper, furnishes with arms Bright as his own. and trains, by every rule Of holy discipline, to glorious war, The sacramental host- of God's elect! 23

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manhood the prophet is considered without honor in his own country. These difficulties K' Phil. as everybody called him, had to contend with and successfully overcame. Educated at an old-field school at New Store, his home and native place in Buckingham County. Virginia, by good instructors he early was prepared for college and it was at Hampden-Sidney that the writer had the privilege and the honor of first knowing his classmate Phil XY. McKinney.-a difhdent blushing youth of seventeen, gentle in manner, courteous to all, Huent and attractive in conversation, a good speaker and such were his oratorical gifts that he easily carried off the prize as best speaker in our graduating class of ISSI. Wihile at college, I had the best of opportunities to know Phil McKinney. XYe often N prepared our recitations together, took long walks in the groves and around the campus grounds, and after we left college he induced me to take a school at New Store and I lived in the same room with him for years and I can say neither at college nor during all these fifty years that have passed in which we have been thrown frequently together i I have never known him to take even a drink of ardent spirits or utter an oath, or bet at a game of chance, and his lan- guage has been always chaste and refined. Cf how many public men of I these days can this truthfully be said? As a member of the legislature from Buckingham County he distinguished himself as a man of ability. and as a member of the legal profession, even in his early career, his reputation became established as a champion in criminal prosecution. and I well remember how the'older members of the bar took pride in the rising star of Buckingham and also on one occasion how United States Congressman. the Hon. E. XY. I-lubard. against whom he was pitted in a political discussion, complimented the noble effort of one so young and so promising. It was his scathing denunciations of wrong that sometimes fired him to flights of oratory and invective that would do credit to men of national reputation and while he was Commonwealth's Attorney for Prince Edward County in those dreadful times of reconstruction, in his mas- terly efforts in this direction, put the people of the county under lasting obliga- tions to him for driving out the carpet-baggers that controlled all the local offices. PHILIP W. MCKINNEY 25