Page 83 - Heros of the Faith - Textbook w videos short

From there, members of his Sunday school class paid his way to seminary in Atlanta. He graduated in 1931 and
pastored a small church in Covington, Georgia, before returning to preach at Atlanta's Westminster Presbyterian
Church.

His Gaelic brogue, sharp wit, and keen fellowship with the Savior were an engaging combination. The church
overflowed each Sunday, especially with young people. A penetrating humility that readily identified with the
needs of the common working man saturated his sermons.

It was in Atlanta that Marshall met and married Catherine Wood, a student at Agnes Scott College, who later
chronicled Marshall's life in her book A Man Called Peter, later made into a successful movie of the same title.

Catherine quickly realized Peter was not a stodgy preacher, but rather had an innate desire for good fun. He
loved playing board games and was given the honorary title of G.G.P.—Great Game Player.

She wrote: "The day of our wedding saw a cold rain falling...I gathered Peter was rollicking through successive
games of Yacht, Parcheesi, and Rummy with anyone who had sufficient leisure to indulge him. That was all right,
but I thought he was carrying it a bit too far, when, thirty minutes before the ceremony, he was so busy pushing
his initial advantage in a game of Chinese Checkers with little sister Em, that he still had not dressed."

While on their honeymoon, the Marshall's stopped for an appointment with the New York Avenue Presbyterian
Church in Washington, D.C. which had wooed him to fill their vacant pulpit.

Marshall resisted their call, revealing the depths of his humility in a letter declining the invitation.

"I feel...that I am not yet ready for the responsibilities and the dignities which would be mine as minister of the
New York Avenue Church. I am too young, too immature, too lacking in scholarship, experience, wisdom, and
ability for such a high position. Time alone will reveal whether or not I shall ever possess these qualities of mind
and heart that your pulpit demands."

The church persisted, however, and despite his reservations, Marshall sensed God's hand. In the fall of 1937, at
age thirty-five, he moved to the nation’s capital, where his ministry of preaching Christ and His adequacy for
life's demands transcended the city's entrenched political barriers.

In ensuing years, his congregation included numerous special guests such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
But his heart was always with the common man, the bricklayer, the mother, the teacher. Teenagers loved his
youthful sincerity and adults his non-ecclesiastical demeanor.

His zeal for God and unmatched eloquence in expressing His ways and character attracted the interests of the
country's leaders who appointed him Senate Chaplain in 1947 and again in 1949.

It was his intense zest for God and relish for life that perhaps accelerated a serious heart condition. He suffered
his second heart attack only weeks after President Harry Truman's inauguration. When the physician who had
rushed to his home informed him he must go immediately to the hospital, Marshall's Scots' humor still sparkled:
"I take a dim view of that. What a revoltin' development this is!"

He died hours later on the morning of January 26, 1949, at age forty-six. An editorial in the Washington Evening
Star captured the true spirit of Peter Marshall's brief but impassioned ministry.

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