bwaughAugustus W. Loomis included in his minstry writing books about and for the Chinese immigrants and American Indians. He also emphasized catechesis in his ministry as exemplified by The Profits of Godliness, 1859, which is a brief popular study of questions 36-38 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Loomis explains each of the three answers through exposition of their component concepts. Concerning the doctrine of justification by faith he said,
Joy flows from justification; for he that is pardoned will rejoice. There is ground for his rejoicing. He looks to Jesus as his Saviour, his Surety, who, by his blood, his obedience, his intercession, reconciled him to God. He believes on him, trusts in him, and believing, he rejoices with joy unspeakable, and full of glory (p. 35).
Loomis opens the concepts of increase of grace; perseverance to the end; immediately passing into glory; perfection in holiness; awaiting the resurrection; resurrection in glory; open acknowledgement on the day of judgment; enjoying perfect blessedness; and then concludes the little book with the observation “Surely godliness is profitable; it is a pearl of great price” (p. 120). When the book was published Loomis had just returned home from China for health reasons after a six-year ministry. He would spend the rest of his life working with Chinese immigrants living in California.
Augustus Ward Loomis was born September 4, 1816, in Andover, Connecticut, to Seba Loomis and his wife Jerusha (Brewster) Loomis. His mother was a descendant of Mayflower passengers William and Mary Brewster of Plymouth Colony. Seba had been commissioned an ensign in the Connecticut militia in 1808. When the boy was about eighteen months old the family moved to Cazenovia, New York where his father purchased a farm about a half mile south of the village. At the age of eleven Augustus began preparation for college in the Oneida Conference Seminary in Cazenovia which was associated with the Wesleyan Methodists. As a young man he was not interested in becoming a minister, so he begged his parents to leave school and go into business more than a hundred miles to the east in Albany. Despite Augustus’s interest in the business world, his parents prayed for his spiritual well being. The prayers were answered when he professed faith in Christ at the age of sixteen and united with the Second Presbyterian Church in Albany. The pastor at the time was William B. Sprague. Thus, having his plans changed, Augustus returned to Cazenovia to complete preparatory studies for entry into the sophomore class of Hamilton College graduating in 1841, and he moved to New Jersey to begin theological studies in Princeton Seminary that fall.
He was licensed by the Presbytery of Albany during a meeting in Troy in 1843, and then immediately after his seminary graduation the same judicatory ordained him to the ministry, May 16, 1844. With three of his classmates, he was appointed by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to take the gospel of Christ to China. Just two days after ordination, he married Mary Ann Luce, then just over a month later they sailed for China arriving in Macao on October 22 and lived there temporarily to study Chinese. Their first home in China was the large island of Chusan which is just off the coast from Ningpo. For eighteen months, Loomis conducted a school for boys and preached twice each Sunday to English soldiers and foreign residents. Loomis was busy preaching on the street and in city chapels, organizing day schools, and ministering to communities in the surrounding country. Six years of labor in a climate conducive to malaria resulted in broken health, so in 1850, the couple returned to America.
The spring of 1852 found Augustus and Mary temporarily filling staff vacancies in the mission for the Creek Indian Nation in what is currently the state of Oklahoma but at the time was called the Indian Territory. The superintendent had been compelled by ill health to resign. The Loomis family spent roughly a year caring for a boarding school of Creek boys and girls. He published a collection of his experiences and observations among the Creeks in Scenes in the Indian Country, 1859. They moved northeast to Missouri where Augustus was pastor of a church in St. Charles and supplied other churches in the area.
Responding to an urgent appeal in 1859, they moved west to begin ministry among the more than one-hundred-twenty-thousand Chinese that had settled in California. The couple’s experience and language ability would prove invaluable as they evangelized the many Chinese. He organized Sabbath schools, churches, and evening education programs. He also trained ministry assistants and salesmen of religious books (colporteurs). One aspect of ministering among the Chinese was helping them deal with persecution. Loomis became an advocate for the Chinese with his language skill providing the means to alleviate prejudice. His primary ministry was as the pastor of the First Chinese Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, which had been organized during the ministry of William Speer. The church had been without a minister for about two years when Loomis began shepherding the Chinese flock and some rebuilding of the congregation was required.
Loomis’s life in California had been a busy ministry with only two or three visits back East and one extended trip in Europe for rest and renewal. He was honored by his alma mater, Hamilton College, in 1873, with the Doctor of Divinity. Augustus Ward Loomis died in San Mateo July 26, 1891, of heart failure after thirty-two years of ministry to the Chinese in California. Mary Ann predeceased him in 1867, but then in 1873, he married Mary M. Akers who was a widow and his only survivor because no children were born to either marriage. Rev. Dr. Thomas Fraser, a life-long associate of Dr. Loomis said of his friend that…
a marked and strong feature in the character of Dr. Loomis was thorough conscientiousness. Nature gave him a strong, brave and manly soul. Divine grace and truth had quickened, purified and enlightened his conscience, making it exceedingly sensitive and prompt in its response to the demands of duty. With him the one supreme thing was duty. He sought not pleasure or prominence. He was not ambitious, had no aspirations beyond doing his work, cherishing his faith, pressing toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. His religion before the world consisted in the faithful performance of duty.
Dr. Fraser’s kind words regarding the life, faithfulness, and persistence of A. W. Loomis recall the concluding words of The Profits of Godliness, which were, “Surely godliness is profitable; it is a pearl of great price”.
Barry Waugh
Notes—The map in the header is cropped from “The City of San Francisco, 1878: Birds Eye View from the Bay Looking South-West, 1878,” and is from the New York Public Library Digital Collection. Information about Loomis’s ancestry is from, Emma C. Brewster Jones, 2 vols. The Brewster Genealogy, 1566-1907; A Record of the Descendants of William Brewster of the “Mayflower,” Ruling Elder of the Pilgrim Church which founded Plymouth Colony in 1620, New York: Grafton Press, 1908, 1:274-75. The Loomis side of the family information is from Elias Loomis’s book, The Descendants of Joseph Loomis, who Came from Braintree, England in the Year 1638, and Settled in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1639, 2nd edition, New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1875, p. 10, 118. Loomis wrote a letter explaining his decision to leave China that was published in The Home and Foreign Record of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, Vol. 1, No. 2, February 1850, which is included in the list of his work available on the Log College Press site. In addition to the books already mentioned, Dr. Loomis published Learn to Say No, 1856, Scenes in Chusan, 1857, How to Die Happy, 1858, The Child a Hundred Years Old, 1859, Confucius and the Chinese, 1867, and his book for teaching English to the Chinese, Chinese and English Lessons, 1872. Two sources for California Presbyterianism are James S. McDonald and James L. Wood’s book, California Pioneer Decade of 1849: The Presbyterian Church, San Francisco: The Hansen Co., 1922, which was reprinted in 1981 by Pioneer Printing of Fresno, California; and Edward A. Wicher, The Presbyterian Church in California, 1849-1927, New York: Frederick H. Hitchcock, 1927; however, neither one of these books was very helpful for information regarding Loomis. Most of the biographical information was taken from the Princeton Seminary necrological report published by the alumni association and from the obituary in The Hamilton Literary Monthly, pages 85-86, vol. 26, no. 2, 1891.
