SEAVER 
 HACK
 
 
 UCSB LIBRARY
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 OF 
 
 HIRAM WITHINGTON, 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 SERMONS AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 WM. CROSBY AND H. P. NICHOLS, 
 
 111 WASHINGTON STREET. 
 
 1849.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, hy 
 
 WM. CROSBY & H. P. NICHOLS, 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 MET CALF AND COMPANY, 
 
 PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
 
 THIS Memoir has been prepared at the request of the 
 Worcester Association of Ministers, to which Mr. Withing- 
 ton belonged. In preparing it, my design has been to give 
 to his friends and his people as faithful an image as can 
 be preserved, of the character of one who, as friend and as 
 pastor, was equally esteemed and beloved. For the readiness 
 with which material has been furnished me, I return my 
 warmest gratitude ; and for the freedom with which it is 
 used I trust that no apology is needed, and that the delica- 
 cies and proprieties of personal feeling have not been over- 
 looked. 
 
 In fulfilling this service of affection to the memory of a 
 very dear and honored friend, I have endeavoured to present 
 what might give the most complete view of his style of 
 thought and the character of his mind. I have not felt my- 
 self authorized to withhold anything essential to express 
 distinctly his opinions on all subjects of special interest to 
 him. As part of his mental habit, his friends are entitled to 
 expect a record of them ; and, as the judgments of a truth- 
 ful and conscientious mind, they are not wholly without their 
 independent value. 
 
 Trusting that this little volume may be as acceptable to 
 others as its preparation has been grateful to myself, I sub- 
 mit it, with the highest respect, to those who have honored 
 me with the charge of superintending it. 
 
 J. H. A. 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C., April, 1849.
 
 MEMOIR
 
 MEMOIR. 
 
 HIRAM WITHINGTON was born in Dorchester, 
 Massachusetts, July 29, 1818. He entered the 
 Theological School in Cambridge in the summer 
 of 1841 ; was settled as pastor over the First Church 
 in Leominster, December 25, 1844 ; and died, 
 " among his kindred, and at his father's house," 
 October 30, 1848. 
 
 It is rare that a life so brief and fragmentary has 
 left an impression so entire, harmonious, and distinct. 
 The strong devotional tendency which he manifested 
 from his earliest years, the exceeding afFectionate- 
 ness of his disposition, making him singularly dear 
 to those who knew him personally, his frankness and 
 simplicity of manner, and the transparent sincerity 
 of his judgments of himself, the readiness and good 
 faith with which he offered sympathy or counsel, the
 
 4 MEMOIR. 
 
 I 
 
 beauty of spirit which was maintained and matured 
 during the deep and sorrowful experience of his last 
 few years, and the innocent yet very free and mirth- 
 ful humor which so tempered the elements of his 
 character, and made him as cheerful a companion 
 as he was cordial and trusty friend, have all com- 
 bined to strengthen and deepen that impression, and 
 to make us desire that some memorial might be pre- 
 served to us of his character and his life. 
 
 Of his earlier years hardly any record seems to 
 have been preserved, except in the affectionate 
 reminiscence of a few friends, and one or two pass- 
 ing allusions in his correspondence ; and his outward 
 course was the uneventful one of a teacher, student, 
 and pastor. So that his biography reduces itself 
 almost entirely to the inward history and experience 
 of the last ten years of his life ; and the materials 
 for it must be gathered from that delicate border- 
 ground between what is personal and impersonal of 
 his private and confidential correspondence, which 
 has so much more to gratify our sympathy than our 
 curiosity. 
 
 The few traces we have of his school-boy days 
 show the same traits, in the main, which we find more 
 fully developed afterwards. He was amiable and
 
 MEMOIR. 
 
 gentle, a favorite pupil, and especially " remarkable 
 as a good reader," never among the rude and 
 boisterous. When quite a child, his friends were 
 often amused at the grave and mature tone of his 
 conversation. As a proof of early decision and ma- 
 turity of character, he was " often left with the entire 
 charge of the school for a day at a time, and every 
 thing would go on quietly and in an orderly manner." 
 This was before he was fourteen. A year later, he 
 was forward in organizing a temperance society and 
 debating club among the boys, and indefatigable in 
 getting up a library for it; "calling upon almost 
 everybody in Dorchester, and the upper part of 
 Roxbury." In spite of his general sedateness, 
 among his intimate friends he was full of anecdote 
 and fun, and had an irresistible propensity for rep- 
 artee. " He delighted in telling humorous stories, 
 ludicrous incidents, and in repeating poetry, of which 
 he was very fond." Stopping once in a store on 
 the Neck, he overheard some one boasting jovially of 
 his luck in not having fallen once on the ice all that 
 winter. " You know, Sir," says Hiram, " the Bi- 
 ble says the wicked shall stand in slippery places." 
 Withal he was troubled with a certain diffidence 
 and hesitancy of speech, which it cost him no small
 
 O MEMOIR. 
 
 pains to overcome. u He had always lived at home, 
 attended school regularly, and been left to follow his 
 own bent out of school. He was very fond of read- 
 ing, he was also very fond of the beautiful. He 
 loved solitary walks ; he loved poetry. As a boy, 
 he was very little understood, and found almost no 
 sympathy. The remarkable cheerfulness by which 
 he was distinguished in after years was almost en- 
 tirely acquired. When a boy and approaching man- 
 hood, he had a tendency to sadness, which was only 
 overcome by hard struggling." 
 
 Till he was fourteen years old, he attended a 
 common school, and afterwards, for two years, an 
 academy. At the age of sixteen, he " came down 
 to Hanson, and set up his too green and premature 
 manhood," as teacher in a public school. In this 
 he was very successful. A year after this, we find 
 him teaching in one of the grammar-schools at Dor- 
 chester. At this period he u dates the beginning 
 of his religious life" ; and most warmly and grate- 
 fully he responded to the influence exerted by his 
 pastor.* In all the traces that remain of this period, 
 and till we know him more familiarly, the religious 
 feeling is uppermost or exclusive. To the labors of 
 
 Rev. Nathaniel Hall.
 
 MEMOIR.- 7 
 
 the week in the public school, he added the more 
 congenial labors of the Sabbath in the Sunday 
 school. " He bore his full share in the deeper 
 discussions at the teachers' meetings, and when in 
 his turn he came to give the general lesson to the 
 children in the school, so attractive was his little 
 sermon, so simple and beautiful, delivered in a tone 
 so impressive and sweet, that they would cluster 
 around him and hang upon his words, enjoying at 
 once the charm of his stories and the music of his 
 voice." * These are the first distinct impressions we 
 can gain of his mind and character, in perfect har- 
 mony with what was the ground-tone of his after life. 
 Being small in person and gentle in disposition, 
 he seems to have found the care of teaching no light 
 burden. It was not in him to rule a school, so 
 much as to win and instruct single minds. In the 
 course of a half-pathetic, half-humorous exaggera- 
 tion of the miseries of his condition, he says, (Au- 
 gust, 1838): " The heat of the weather and the 
 labors of my profession have completely used me 
 up, so that I have not one spark of physical or men- 
 tal energy left, and might almost answer for a defi- 
 nition of nothing. My flesh has fallen away, and if 
 
 * Christian Examiner.
 
 8 MEMOIR. 
 
 I go on at this rate for a short time longer, my 
 countenance will do to ' split a harpoon upon,' and 
 were I to fall down, I should make a noise like a 
 bundle of clothes-pins." It is thus likely that, at 
 the age of twenty, his constitution was already be- 
 coming permanently injured by too early and severe 
 labor ; and the dread of this, probably, fell in with 
 his natural taste and disposition, and the conscious- 
 ness of growing powers, to lead his thoughts to the 
 profession of the ministry. 
 
 His secret thoughts and wishes on this subject he 
 confided to his pastor, and from him received the 
 most encouraging sympathy. The feeling, being 
 cherished and not suppressed, soon ripened into a 
 purpose. Having " picked up a little Latin here 
 and there, and laid aside the small income of his 
 school," he set his heart steadfastly on following up 
 the course of a suitable education. " His father 
 opposed it a good deal, very kindly, but anxiously. 
 It seemed to him to be running a great risk, to be 
 giving up a certainty for an uncertainty, to be as- 
 piring after something beyond Hiram's ability to 
 reach with any success, even if he had the means of 
 carrying him through the preparatory studies." 
 
 The strong purpose and the conscious power over-
 
 MEMOIR. 
 
 ruled these scruples, and in the spring of 1839 he 
 was established as teacher and scholar in the family 
 of the Rev. Joseph Allen of Northborough. An en- 
 thusiastic delight in country life, strong attachment to 
 pupils and friends, new intercourse and fresh oppor- 
 tunities of learning, made this a very pleasant season 
 with him. The most interesting memorial of it is 
 the close intimacy he formed with one of his pupils, 
 a fine and intelligent boy of fifteen. " From the 
 first night of our intercourse," he says, " we have 
 loved each other without asking ourselves why. It 
 was a mutual feeling of loneliness, an intuitive per- 
 ception of affinity of heart, of deep and fervent affec- 
 tions, which first led to our interest in each other. 
 We have been brothers since." His record of this 
 friendship, contained in a letter to the same young 
 man, five years later, in an interval of the sickness of 
 which he soon after died, is so confiding and beau- 
 tiful, that I transcribe a considerable portion of it. 
 
 August 13, 1844. " From that first night when we 
 lay folded in one another's arms, and pledged ourselves 
 with such happy tears to be brothers to one another, 
 there has never been a time when I have lost my inter- 
 est in you, or been forgetful or unfaithful to that prom- 
 ise. And I know that your love for me has been true 
 and faithful too. But you have not always known the
 
 10 MEMOIR. 
 
 anxious thoughts I have had in your behalf. You know 
 that speculative turn of mind you had at Northborough, 
 that love of argument, and that skeptical spirit, that 
 often raised doubts for the sake of defending them. 
 This cost me many prayers and tears. You remember 
 that unhappy night, and that prayer in the woods on the 
 following morning. I have the whole of our conversa- 
 tion written off, though I never showed it to any one. 
 Well, I saw that dangerous tendency wearing away. 
 Then came a time when you seemed most in danger of 
 fickleness and a want of energy. Then followed a 
 period when the world engrossed you, and your thoughts 
 were all of being rich ; and since that, a time when the 
 earnestness of a manly aim seemed to desert you, 
 when your letters to me grew cold and dull and com- 
 monplace, and I felt that I could do you no good by 
 writing. If you felt that my interest in you grew less 
 at that time, or my love colder, be assured it was not so.' 
 But for a year or so I have felt as if you were growing 
 thoughtful, earnest, and manly. And now I have seen 
 in you that spirit of prayer, that religious sense, which 
 I have always felt the want of in you. And how great 
 a blessing this is, I cannot express. I have felt that 
 now there was that perfect communion between us so 
 long and so earnestly desired. I have prayed with you, 
 with the feeling that our hearts were truly mingling in 
 the offering of praise and the earnest supplication for 
 God's blessing. Dear Edward, unspeakably dearer to 
 me than ever before, let me give you a brother's affec- 
 tionate and earnest counsels Be faithful to the 
 
 vows of your sickness. Live henceforth for God, and
 
 MEMOIB. 11 
 
 let no selfish purposes, no stubborn love of your own 
 way, keep you from subjecting yourself entirely to his 
 will. Read religious books, especially the guide of 
 the religious heart, the lest look, whose perusal you 
 counselled with such earnestness to others, when you 
 thought you were speaking to them for the last time. 
 Your influence over them will be greater than ever be- 
 fore, and imposes upon you a new responsibility. Strive 
 that they may never see you prove untrue to those coun- 
 sels you gave them." 
 
 Again he writes, a few weeks later : 
 
 " Though there are miles between us, it seems as if 
 you were very near to me, and I think I should still 
 write this, even did I know you were in the world of 
 spirits, for still I should have a conviction that you would 
 know it, and it would be pleasant to think and write of 
 you. I am sure when you are gone, the world beyond 
 the grave will seem nearer to me, and who can tell what 
 intercourse we may yet hold ? It is a good thing, Ed- 
 ward dear, to be out of the reach of the temptations of 
 this world, and to live near to God and in communion 
 with him, to keep ever in your soul, what it is so dif- 
 ficult to do here on the earth, a still, calm Holy of Ho- 
 lies, warm with the spirit of devotion, a fair, bright 
 temple where the Infinite deigns to dwell, an upspring- 
 ing fountain,\vhose clear waters no turbid stream of earth- 
 liness, no floating dust from this world's atmosphere, is 
 suffered to defile. And even now, as you lie on your 
 bed of sickness and pain, I doubt not you have many a 
 bright manifestation of God's presence, seasons of tran-
 
 12 MEMOIR. 
 
 quillity and peace, which you would not give up for 
 any thing earthly. God be with you, dearest Edward, 
 as I know he is." 
 
 His stay at Northborough was a little more than 
 two years. During this time his mind ripened and 
 expanded very rapidly. His chief intellectual need 
 seems to have been, to write and talk himself clear 
 on the subjects of chief interest to him. His cor- 
 respondence he especially values " for the opportu- 
 nity it gives of religious intercourse" ; and some of 
 his letters are very long and very earnest arguments, 
 touching some point of speculative belief, such as 
 the presence of God in the soul, and the intuitive 
 knowledge of right and wrong. And in this he was 
 privileged with the intercourse of several near friends, 
 of singularly clear and confident faith. The frequent 
 visiting, too, of sorrow in the families of those he 
 loved, and the frequent exercise of his willing sym- 
 pathy and consolation, did very much to ripen and 
 confirm his mind, and give him the outfit of charac- 
 ter and experience with which he engaged in the 
 more direct business of his profession. 
 
 For mental preparation, he says of himself, " I 
 progress in my studies but slowly, yet with an in- 
 creasing interest ; and though with many doubts and
 
 MEMOIR. 13 
 
 fears, yet on the whole with increasing encourage- 
 ment." Still, he yielded very much to his natural 
 propensity to what was poetic and sentimental ; and 
 I do not think he ever clearly traced the connection 
 between his imperfect knowledge of Greek and He- 
 brew, and the ministerial duties he was looking for- 
 ward to. Periods of distrust and misgiving there 
 were, from time to time ; but on the whole he put a 
 good deal of confidence in that style and method of 
 spiritual culture which accorded most with his taste 
 and inclination. Not without a most serious sense 
 of the greatness of the work in which he was to 
 engage, yet with a determination " to be more of a 
 man than a minister," and never to suffer books to 
 stand between him and the living heart of men, he 
 entered upon the course of study in the Divinity 
 School. 
 
 " It was a very happy part of his life, these three 
 years. He was in an habitually cheerful and busy 
 state of mind, enjoying the present, and full of hope 
 for the future ; becoming more and more conscious 
 of powers adapted to his chosen profession, and 
 more and more desirous of entering upon its work." 
 The tone of his mind became more firm and con- 
 fident ; his capacity of thought was quickened ; and
 
 14 MEMOIR. 
 
 during his Cambridge life there was hardly any 
 abatement to the cheerful courage with which he 
 looked forward to his course. The new discipline 
 was every way advantageous to him. Of his teach- 
 ers he speaks in the terms of affectionate admira- 
 tion natural to one who is thrown for the first time 
 into constant intercourse with men of books and 
 thought. His habits were never those of a student. 
 His method of study was to keep the mind active, 
 and appropriate the food within reach ; to search for 
 the materials of thinking and communication with 
 other minds, yet jealously guarding his own intel- 
 lectual liberty and that of others ; and, when occa- 
 sion demanded, to gather and combine very rapidly 
 what he required for the work in hand. Keeping 
 the main sentiment strong and constant within, the 
 need or the mood of the moment made the only rule 
 he practically acknowledged, and the only theory he 
 knew for fixing the moment's occupation. Of the 
 danger of this he was fully sensible, and he earnestly 
 discouraged it in others ; but with him the habit had 
 been formed almost of necessity. And, with a strong 
 purpose at heart, to work rapidly, faithfully, and to 
 the point was of more account to him than to work 
 ever so methodically.
 
 MEMOIH. 15 
 
 This apparent want of method was controlled, not 
 only by his sense of duty and his sincere interest in 
 the profession he had chosen, but by a strong natural 
 good sense, which his sentimental and speculative 
 tendency was never strong enough to overcome. 
 The position he distinctly chose was that of media- 
 tor or reconciler of the extreme opposites of thought 
 which he encountered. He was jealously sensitive 
 of any supposed curb to the freedom of speculation, 
 ardently espousing the cause and prizing the friend- 
 ship of the "heretics" of the day, and pleading 
 zealously for the right of all men to assume the 
 Christian name, a topic of warm controversy 
 among us then : and, on the other hand, he charac- 
 terizes with a lively impatience "the spiritual mys- 
 tics, who are half Quietist and half Antinomian ; 
 who make religious truth so very spiritual, that you 
 can neither see, nor touch, nor comprehend it ; with 
 whom there are no such things as weans, and but 
 one end ; all motives but the highest are ' diaboli- 
 cal' ; all actions not perfectly spontaneous are false ; 
 all things, spiritual and material, are reducible to 
 ' unity ' ; all questions and controversies are idle ; 
 and all books are a ' humbug.' " Natural good 
 sense and simple, unaffected piety were quite as
 
 16 MEMOIR. 
 
 prominent as any traits of character in all his inter- 
 course with the School. 
 
 The ardent and positive turn of his mind made 
 him also exercise himself busily with his favorite 
 theory of a working church, connected as it was 
 with a natural desire to put it into practice. " If I 
 have a church," he says, " it shall be a society for 
 Christian action and reform ; a peace, temperance, 
 anti-slavery, charity, and anti-wrong society, all 
 united in one." That he meant something positive 
 by this he testified afterwards, by a very zealous en- 
 deavour to carry out his plan in his parish. Prac- 
 tice is a great check on theory ; but as this plan was 
 long maturing, so it was steadily persisted in, and 
 made, perhaps, in his own mind, the most distinctive 
 and prominent part of his life's labor. He gave full 
 expression to it in the most elaborate essay of his 
 composition while in the School. 
 
 And, so far as he looked forward at all, it was 
 always to a country church. He had a shrinking 
 from large towns ; u would rather go on a mission 
 to Kamtschatka " than be shut out from the con- 
 stant presence of natural objects ; and, with a tem- 
 perament very susceptible to the influence of the 
 changing seasons, had a passionate fondness for the
 
 MEMOIR. 17 
 
 glad or pensive intercourse with nature that the sea- 
 sons brought about. Spring was a period of a cer- 
 tain sadness, "of longing and unrest" ; summer, of 
 extreme debility and depression ; autumn, of a sober 
 and quiet joy. The fondness with which he would 
 dwell on the capricious and changeful play of natural 
 things is pleasantly enough shown in this trifling in- 
 cident of a summer's walk : "I passed a large field 
 of grain. The wind blew strongly, and it waved 
 the wheat into undulating billows, like the water of 
 the sea. Then it would cut itself a pathway, and 
 rush down in one direction, a long distance ; then 
 all of a sudden it whirred round and round, and ran 
 zigzag and all manner of ways, like a kitten chasing 
 her own tail, or as if it was playing hide and seek. 
 And all the while the little ears of grain were knock- 
 ing their heads together, whispering and laughing like 
 merry girls at a wedding. I stood and looked at it 
 a long time." And again he says, in a soberer 
 mood, "I love the autumn time, so gentle in its 
 approach, so silent, yet so certain, in its work of 
 decay : and if it brings with it pensive thoughts and 
 associations, they are not of necessity sad ones. 
 The perishing shroud, which falls with the autumn 
 leaf, and with it moulders into dust, is succeeded by 
 2
 
 18 MEMOIR. 
 
 a more glorious vesture ; the spirit is * unclothed,' 
 only that it may be ' clothed upon ' with the unper- 
 ishing and stainless garments of the pure spirits of 
 heaven." 
 
 Among these illustrations of his character and 
 feeling at this period of his life, more will necessa- 
 rily appear of the sober than of the sunny side. Yet 
 it would be too great an omission, to leave out all 
 reference to those other qualities, which made him 
 so cheerful and pleasant a companion. The free- 
 dom and joyous activity of his life here were well 
 fitted to bring such qualities into play ; and they 
 have left a peculiarly pleasant impression on all who 
 knew him then. They will remember (in the words 
 of one of his fellow-students) " his powers of con- 
 versation, always racy, suggestive, and valuable ; 
 his ready sallies of wit ; his childlike mirthfulness 
 at times, when he seemed to give himself wholly up 
 to the exuberance of his feelings ; his quiet humor ; 
 and, more remarkable than all, his inimitable power 
 of telling a good story. It was wonderful what an 
 endless store of anecdotes he had packed away in 
 his brain. No matter what the subject of conver- 
 sation, (if it were not by its character and dignity 
 removed beyond the propriety of such things,) in-
 
 MEMOIR. 
 
 stantly he would illustrate it by some anecdote, so 
 apt, so completely covering the point, that it would 
 seem as if invented for the purpose, but that it came 
 out without the least appearance of reflection, and 
 he was always ready to give the name and place. 
 He seldom repeated the same story ; and yet I have 
 known, in the course of an hour's conversation, an 
 almost constant flow of anecdote, rich, full of hu- 
 mor, and always so pat to the point as to excite the 
 irrepressible laughter of all who heard." 
 
 Of this eager and sometimes wayward and extrav- 
 agant humor, it is in vain, of course, to attempt to 
 preserve any tolerable memorial. Perfect goodness 
 of heart and enthusiastic relish of a joke were quite 
 as marked qualities in him as any of a graver na- 
 ture. He would drive a play on words to distrac- 
 tion. A long and most intimate conversation with 
 him might be half buried in a running accompaniment 
 of laughter, and consist sometimes in a perfect cata- 
 ract of puns ; and withal he had a strange and gro- 
 tesque aptness to parody old lines of sober verse, 
 once making most merry thereby a walk half way to 
 Dorchester. Often did the room ring, " in the dead 
 waste and middle of the night," with the unrelent- 
 ing storm of fun, that his inextinguishable humor
 
 20 MEMOIR. 
 
 would provoke. It is often a thin dividing line 
 that separates mirth and wisdom ; and the gravest 
 conference might find itself unexpectedly pointed 
 with a joke. I well remember the mingled glee and 
 solemnity with which, when I had hunted up his 
 house after a weary walk, he ushered me into the 
 smallest of cells that would contain a single bed, 
 with the grave salutation, 
 
 " Ye mortal men, come view the bed 
 Where you must shortly lie." 
 
 It was part of his entire innocence that he loved 
 just as well to make a joke the second time as the 
 first, and to repeat his own, as well as those of oth- 
 er people. He honestly thought they were too 
 good to be lost, and so they were. Some of his 
 letters riot in this wanton and harmless humor, and 
 a few signs of it will appear, here and there, in the 
 intervals of his saddest experience. His friends 
 treasured up jests for him, like favorite dainties for 
 a child ; and no one thing, perhaps, did more to 
 keep up the genial, open, childlike temper for which 
 he was always remarkable, and so to harmonize the 
 spirit of boyhood and maturity, as this happy and 
 buoyant faculty of mirth. 
 
 Not the least noticeable among his traits of char-
 
 MEMOIR. 21 
 
 acter was his frankness and readiness in giving coun- 
 sel, and this point blank, as he " always despised 
 a hint." Some indications of it have been given 
 before, and many more will appear from time to 
 time. It was no inconsiderable ministry that he 
 had already exercised. The number of persons 
 who were indebted to him for sympathy and advice 
 (probably at "critical periods of their life) is truly 
 remarkable, as shown in his treasured correspond- 
 ence ; and not less so, the warm and cordial return 
 he received of their gratitude and confidence. Some 
 years before, he told a friend that the number of his 
 regular correspondents was fourteen, and he must be 
 punctual in writing, as he hoped to do them good. 
 So that, being the repository of many personal con- 
 fessions and much spiritual experience of others, an 
 uncommonly full and large chapter of the human 
 heart was open to his reading long before he was 
 brought officially into a position which makes such 
 confidence to some more easy. All this, while he 
 was as far as possible from being officious or dicta- 
 torial. " The first advice I have to give you," he 
 writes to a friend, " is never to take any body's. 
 No man can adopt another's experience, so I beg 
 of you never to take any advice of mine, though I
 
 22 MEMOIR. 
 
 assure you I shall give you a good deal. If I 
 thought you would take it on trust, I would not give 
 you a word ; for it is quite as much as I can do to 
 take care of my own soul." And there is a mutual 
 deference and modesty on both sides, which makes 
 the full and frequent correspondence of this period 
 singularly harmonious and beautiful. 
 
 The last winter of his Cambridge life he spent in 
 teaching a public school in Hanson, where his resi- 
 dence was in the household of very dear friends. 
 His teaching was no unimportant part of his liveli- 
 hood (yet even this he was most open and liberal to 
 share) ; and here is the way he proposed to earn 
 the scanty emolument of a small country school : 
 
 " Is there any lyceum, or any materials for one ? 
 If not, can't your people be brought out one evening in 
 the week to social reading meetings, or conversations 
 about education and schools ? I should be very glad 
 to utter my word on education, or, if you have a ly- 
 ceum, give you three or four lectures. I want very 
 much to give some religious lectures, to present an 
 antidote to skepticism and indifference, in a simple and 
 common-sense view of religion. I thought, if I gave 
 some Sunday-evening lectures, I might get some of the 
 Orthodox to hear me. Is there any good place, and is 
 this practicable ? If not, can I have the chance of 
 preaching during the day, of course without any
 
 MEMOIR. 23 
 
 pay ? I may not attempt all this, though I want to 
 make the winter an active one." 
 
 Elsewhere, he speaks of " physiological lectures" 
 as part of his intended course. And all these were 
 incidental labors, in addition to the ordinary cares 
 and details of a common school, part of his the- 
 ory of a suitable training for his profession. Some 
 of the records he has left of this winter's style of 
 thought and work are contained in the following ex- 
 tracts : 
 
 Hanson, February 8, 1844. " What nature is to 
 God, expression is to consciousness. Now, most per- 
 sons live in the barely outward and phenomenal ; they 
 are content with the expression of things, whether there 
 is any reality behind it or not. A few live in conscious- 
 ness, and have no power of expression ; but the true 
 problem is to unite the two ; for as thought is very im- 
 perfect and unsatisfactory without its appropriate dress 
 in language, so the feeling or consciousness of things, 
 however real, demands expression for its full perfection 
 and highest gratification. * The spirit of the living 
 creature is in the wheels also.' Now I know I have a 
 good deal of sympathy with the mass, the great 
 heart ; but whenever I attempt to express it, or to act up- 
 on it, one of two things inevitably takes place, either 
 the expression becomes divorced from the feelings, and 
 so I lose all personal interest in it, or else I cannot 
 reach those whom I would, and so am thrown back up-
 
 24 MEMOIR. 
 
 * 
 
 on myself. I can never carry on a conversation with a 
 social circle, but only with an individual, when I can 
 say I and thou. I am a dunce at gossip, and social 
 parties I hate. What shall I do ? " 
 
 " I have n't studied any since I have been here. 
 Two evenings in the week I have evening schools. 
 Saturday evenings I give a lecture on education in my 
 school-room. Sundays I generally preach ; and the rest 
 
 of the time I visit and give lyceum-lectures One 
 
 incident worthy of recording, which I shall never forget, 
 I must relate. A little boy eleven years old was reading 
 one day from ' The Elder's Deathbed,' when he burst 
 into tears. He cried and sobbed half an hour ; and af- 
 terwards, when I asked him the reason, he said it made 
 him think so much of his dead mother he could not go 
 on. Warm-hearted little fellow, how I loved him for 
 remembering her ! She had been dead two years, and 
 his father had married again. That night I dreamed 
 his mother came to me, and told me to give her little 
 boy three kisses, and tell him she had sent them." 
 
 A retrospect of this laborious winter, and of the 
 period of his life about to close, together with his 
 anticipations and views of the special work for 
 which he should be appointed, will be found in the 
 two following extracts. The first is addressed to 
 a young friend, " once his spiritual son, and now 
 his brother," as he afterwards designates him ; and 
 sufficiently expresses the views he always cherished 
 ,and adhered to.
 
 MEMOIR. 25 
 
 Hanson, February 14, 1844. " Seriously, howev- 
 er, you have no right to make up your mind on the 
 subject of miracles. The question is an historical one, 
 to be determined on historical evidence. It is a ques- 
 tion of comparatively little importance, not at all iden- 
 tified with the truth of Christianity. Still, it is not to 
 be hastily determined. I have once doubted of the mir- 
 acles, but I do not think I ever shall again. However, 
 I have neither time nor disposition to go into an argu- 
 ment on the subject. But let me say to you, for I have 
 learned it from my own experience, Liberty of soul is 
 like the liberty of the press, though infinitely better 
 than restraint, yet not without its perils. When the law 
 of authority is removed from a man, he needs the more 
 
 to reverence the law of his spirit What you say 
 
 of the unity of this world and the next is very true. 
 We live in eternity, in heaven, just as truly now 
 as we ever shall. We call a man one-sided, not be- 
 cause he does any particular thing, but because he 
 takes false and partial views of things. You are not to 
 be considered one-sided because you labor with your 
 head, and not with your hands. 
 
 " When I came down here, I had three specific ob- 
 jects in view: to keep an experimental school, to give 
 lectures, and to try to exert an influence on people by 
 social visiting and general intercourse. I have worked 
 hard, and have got woful tired almost every day ; but I 
 have not accomplished either of the ends I had in view. 
 My school is quiet, tolerably, easy, pleasant, and the 
 scholars are attached to me. Even some who came 
 with the intention, avowed beforehand, of giving me
 
 26 MEMOIR. 
 
 4| 
 
 trouble, are perfectly quiet and docile. My pacific and 
 amiable principles have met with marvellous success ; 
 and I might say, changing the line of the poet a little, 
 that 
 
 ' Dolts remain to learn, who came to play.' 
 
 I cannot quote the other line with equal appropriate- 
 ness, I fear, that 
 
 ' Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway.' 
 
 On the whole, I have n't kept a remarkably good 
 school ; I cannot flatter myself that my lectures have 
 done any particular good ; and as for visiting, I have n't 
 done any. Thus do a man's ideals vanish and fade 
 away. Before he has had time to do anything, the op- 
 portunity vanishes. Thus at least it always is with me. 
 I long to live a hundred years ; yet every day the 
 haunting thought comes up, that I have as yet done 
 nothing, and that I shall have to die to-morrow, as 
 it were. No thought is so constantly with me, none 
 such a horror and a misery, as this of the rapid flight 
 of time. This evening I came up to Richard's, and 
 thought I would have a good time writing to you ; but 
 the evening is far spent, and I have not written what I 
 would. But I must say good night, and, in conclusion, 
 I feel like giving you this piece of advice. Settle with 
 yourself what your life-work is to be, what you can 
 do, and set about it earnestly and diligently, ' doing 
 with your might what your hands find to do ' ; ' for the 
 night cometh, in which no man can work.' One of the 
 greatest curses of life is the thought of lost privileges 
 and misspent time. Yet there is one thing more to be
 
 MEMOIR. 27 
 
 considered. When we have done our work, we have 
 nothing to do with results. We have no right to calcu- 
 late on them, or to be disheartened when we do not see 
 such as we desire. But sometimes I take a scunner at 
 myself, and come to think that, after all, I am not of half 
 so much consequence in the world as I have been dis- 
 posed to think. I get eaten up with a sense of my own 
 meanness. But these things pass away, and again I 
 come to hope, and to cherish my old ideals. But daily 
 I come to feel more and more strongly that ' we walk 
 by faith, and not by sight ' ; but thanks, all thanks, that 
 we have a faith to walk by. 
 
 " Sarah had left a whole line of clothes out to 
 
 dry ; but about two o'clock the rushing of the wind, the 
 rattling of mingled snow and hail against the window, 
 the muttering of one or two claps of thunder, and the 
 flapping of sheets and shirts, awoke me ; so, bolting on 
 my clothes, I rushed out and gathered up the scatter- 
 ed garments that were flying about in the storm like 
 so many great white gulls. Rather romantic, was it 
 not ? " 
 
 Cambridge, March 11, 1844. "I believe I was wise 
 in not attempting to create a new religious movement 
 there. It would either have failed, or raised a profitless 
 breeze of excitement. I am most sorry that I did not 
 devote more of my time out of school to my two most 
 promising scholars, Calvin and Edward. I am more 
 and more persuaded that my work is not to act strongly 
 on the mass, so much as to do a good deal for a few in- 
 dividuals. It is the most delightful thought of my life, to 
 think that two or three persons trace their moral and in-
 
 MEMOIR. 
 
 tellectual life to my influence. I feel with the mass in 
 the great interests of humanity, but I do not feel as they 
 feel, and I have not yet much confidence in my power 
 either to speak to their feelings, or to make them com- 
 prehend mine. But I had rather tend a few sheep than 
 a large flock ; and I think I can sometimes gather up a 
 straggling lamb whom others have cast off or forgotten. 
 At any rate, I would rather have my small company 
 wandering about over the hill-sides, and through the 
 green forests, than to have them nicely penned up in the 
 close and crowded fold, where they cannot stretch their 
 limbs nor breathe freely. Even such as have had 
 many a wayward ramble in rough and thorny places, the 
 Good Shepherd may lead safely home at last, to lie 
 down in green pastures and beside the still waters. 
 
 " But I am talking of myself as if there were nobody 
 else in the world. But you will not wonder that I think 
 much of myself just now, and of my work in the world, 
 when I am just about to loose from my moorings here, 
 to drift out on the broad ocean. Thanks that there is a 
 pole-star to guide me, and that the helm is in wiser 
 hands than mine ! But between the listlessness of indif- 
 ference and the tremblings of a spirit awed with glan- 
 cing open-eyed at the responsibilities of life, I dread lest 
 these threescore or less years should be lost between 
 inaction on the one hand and uncertainty on the other. 
 But I have no business with the future." 
 
 In July, 1844, he was one of the small class (of 
 four) that graduated from the Theological School. 
 His Dissertation, " On the Mystical Element in
 
 MEMOIR. 29 
 
 Religion," was inserted in the Christian Examiner.;* 
 and, excepting a sermon addressed to children, is the 
 only piece of his writing that has appeared in print. 
 As a preacher, he seems to have become at once 
 popular, and to have displayed all those qualities of 
 fancy, tenderness, devotion, and a gentle earnest- 
 ness, that always characterized his public ministra- 
 tions. A visit in Providence, to the sick-bed of the 
 young friend spoken of before, and preaching in sev- 
 eral country villages, are the only incidents that di- 
 versified the brief interval before his settlement. 
 
 In the early part of the autumn, he was engaged 
 to preach at Leominster, in Worcester county ; 
 and as it is here that the remainder of his life was 
 spent, unless when he was withdrawn from all active 
 duties by sickness, this will henceforth be regarded 
 as his home. His local attachments were strong, 
 decided, and quickly formed. The bold and beau- 
 tiful scenery of that region became very dear to him ; 
 and his personal affections speedily became concen- 
 trated upon a spot that was the scene of so much 
 labor, sorrow, and spiritual experience. Hereafter I 
 shall do little more than follow the course of his in- 
 ward life, as told most fully and touchingly in his 
 
 * November, 1844.
 
 30 MEMOIR. 
 
 correspondence. The thread is almost unbroken ; 
 and there will seldom be occasion to use many other 
 words than his. The next extract is from a letter 
 written to a near friend and fellow-student, during 
 this interval. 
 
 Leominster, September 27, 1844. "I have had very 
 small joys of late. That old feeling has come over me 
 of the smallness and insignificance of life, a certainty 
 that I shall not accomplish what I wish ; and anything 
 short of that seems worthless. I have had a strange 
 feeling, too, quite new to me, a conviction that life 
 was to be very short with me, and a willingness that it 
 should. So strange is it, that, just on the realization of 
 the hopes we have lived on for years, they mock us with 
 their unreality. Something of old times, a halo of child- 
 hood, came over me, as, under a chestnut-tree, I looked 
 far over the surrounding forests, with all their mellow 
 tints, to the blue summit of kingly Wachusett, with his 
 mist-crown, or again, paddling down the Nashua in a 
 little canoe, where nothing but woods, and God's still- 
 ness, and the gentle sunshine were around me, and on 
 the steep bank above old pines shot up their spiry heads 
 a hundred feet, and whispered words of love and re- 
 membrance. 
 
 " Thus much for the passive side of your friend's 
 present character, the floating clouds that leisurely 
 sail over his horizon. These few hieroglyphics, not un- 
 intelligible to you, may serve to show more than lies on 
 the surface. Now for the undercurrent, the still depth
 
 MEMOIR. 31 
 
 over which float azure and rose-colored clouds, and 
 sweeping storms, and the bright sun makes many a rev- 
 olution, but leaves still unchanged. To be, to do, to 
 suffer, these are the means and present aims of life ; 
 the End is not yet. And these are all active, sum- 
 moning the strong man to gird himself for the struggle, 
 and, shaking off the selfishness and sloth of subjectivity, 
 and the poor fancies of a dreaming brain, go forth among 
 ' things common and unclean^ to work, manfully, ear- 
 nestly, even to the soiling of his garments and his hands, 
 even to weariness and disgust and nausea sometimes. 
 It is a comforting thing, when you come to look at it so, 
 that when this poor, sick widow wants our prayers, and 
 that degraded man our entreaties, and that weak young 
 man our counsels, and that stricken, heart-broken 
 mother our sympathy, we shall forget our own Etna in 
 helping to lift Pelion and Ossa from hearts weak and 
 overburdened, and thus perhaps do most to upheave our 
 own heavy load. But none the less is our Etna a reality, 
 that rolls back upon us when we are set free again ; but 
 we, like the Cyclops, forge there in its dark caverns, 
 with sweat and toil, the celestial armour that enrolls us 
 kings and chiefs among the armies of the gods." 
 
 The Christmas of this year (1844) was a bright 
 and happy day for him. His marriage (with Miss 
 Elizabeth Clapp, of Dorchester) had taken place a 
 month before, on the 19th of November ; so that 
 the cheerful cares of hospitality, and the graver 
 ones of ministerial duly, began together. Some of
 
 32 MEMOIR. 
 
 the dearest friends of his youth and manhood were 
 gathered in his new home, to welcome him to the 
 duties and privileges of his office. It was an aus- 
 picious and joyful celebration, this prelude to so 
 brief and laborious and sorrowful a ministry. To 
 the services of the day, (which were afterwards print- 
 ed,) he responded with affectionate gratitude. The 
 simple hospitalities of his household were exercised 
 with his own happy and genial spirit ; and no one 
 would have augured anything but hope in the new 
 course thus auspiciously thrown open. From a let- 
 ter to his former pastor, I transcribe the following 
 account of the commencement of his parish life : 
 
 Leominster, January 6, 1845. " Everything thus 
 far is as fair as possible. Nobody ever began under 
 fairer auspices. Everybody is friendly, everybody 
 is pleased. I invited people to come and see me New- 
 Year's Eve. About two hundred came, from far and 
 near, old and young. Everybody says to every- 
 body, What a turn-out it is ! we never saw the like 
 before. Just so at the ladies' sewing-meeting here, on 
 Thursday. There were sixty-eight or seventy ladies 
 present, the largest meeting ever known. Then on 
 Sundays they have come out like the doves to their win- 
 dows, and filled my great church almost as full as at 
 Ordination. Now don't be frightened, good brother 
 mine, at all this chuckling. I know just as well as you
 
 MEMOIR. 3i 
 
 do how much it is all worth, and how little to be de- 
 pended on L know them a great deal better 
 
 than they know me ; I cannot rely on present popular- 
 ity, and I do not It is a fair field of labor and 
 
 a wide, hopeful and pressing. For myself, I am singu- 
 larly free from exciting feelings, either of expectation 
 or anxiety. I mean to work, I trust to work success- 
 fully. Beyond this I have hardly any feeling about it. 
 But enough of myself. 
 
 " And now let me go back to a review of the past, 
 an experience most singularly blessed, a course not 
 merely to be regarded as providential, but as peculiarly 
 and unusually favored. Let me tell you here, what I 
 think few can say, that I have never had an ideal that 
 has not been realized, except that of personal charac- 
 ter. I have been accustomed for years to feel that 
 everything would happen just as I wished it should, 
 and it always has. You gave me credit the other day for 
 having worked my own way. No, Sir, not a step of it. 
 It has always been made plain and smooth before me. 
 Whatever of uprightness there is in me, whatever of 
 upward aspiration or worthy purpose, is not merely first 
 of all, but solely, by the grace of God. Whatever I have 
 done, or seemed to do, it was not I that did it, but the 
 force of circumstances, ordered by a higher Power." 
 
 To one who had been in the habit of both giving 
 
 and receiving so much of intellectual and religious 
 
 sympathy, there must almost inevitably have been a 
 
 sense of chill and loneliness, at finding himself sur- 
 
 3
 
 34 MEMOIR. 
 
 rounded by comparative strangers. His heart nat- 
 urally turned back to the companions of his thought 
 and study, with a craving for the same intercourse 
 he had so relied on before. " What I want to 
 say is," he says, " that when any thoughts new and 
 precious do deign to flap their wings over my poor 
 brain, I shall be desperately glad to put some salt 
 on their tails, and send them, all picked and spitted, 
 down to you. For alas ! there is no soul here 
 that can digest such rich meats, not a soul that I 
 can talk my own talk to." This is partly the feel- 
 ing he had expressed before, of his want of readi- 
 ness in general intercourse. " This is one of my 
 few troubles. Another, and the greatest, is the 
 immensity of parochial duty, that threatens to frit- 
 ter me into an intellectual atrophy, not leaving me 
 ' leisure so much as to eat,' much less to digest, 
 any fair amount of mental fodder. What you say 
 of your position and experience T thank you for ex- 
 pressing ; yet I think it is rather strange you should 
 need such sort of troubles, while I, who seem to 
 myself to need all kinds of torments and vexations, 
 have never had any to speak of. However, I am 
 hopeful on that point, and begin to look for clouds 
 in the shape of a man's hand. But no poor sinner
 
 MEMOIR. 
 
 was ever favored with having things just right, as I 
 have been thus far." What sort of pressure is 
 here hinted at is perhaps more clearly indicated in 
 the course of the few following extracts. As the 
 burden of actual duty weighed more heavily, and 
 the reaction came after several months' comparative 
 excitement, his health would naturally suffer from 
 the continued tension, and his mind recoil from the 
 vague prospect of foreboding evil. The changing 
 tone of spirits, and the gradual transition to a more 
 sober view of things generally, are sufficiently ap- 
 parent from his own words. 
 
 Leominster, March 2, 1845. "I have got a good 
 deal to say to you. For in good truth I am rather blue 
 and dumpish. I do not know that I can get any help 
 from you, but perhaps I can, and at least you will know 
 how to sympathize with me. I am tormented in vari- 
 ous ways. Here are two bad things at the outset. I 
 have too much to do, and yet don't do half as much 
 as I might. Then here are various problems present- 
 ing themselves to my mind with most appalling distinct- 
 ness. 1. How shall I secure my own intellectual and 
 spiritual culture, with so many things to occupy me, 
 pressing heavily on my hands ? 2. How shall I, with 
 the necessity of thinking and writing constantly for oth- 
 ers, keep my mental freedom ? I am afraid of dying 
 before my body does, which would be a most deplorable 
 thing, don't you think ? I seem to fancy you or some-
 
 36 MEMOIR. 
 
 body else asking me, some few years hence, ' What are 
 you doing ? ' And I imagine myself replying, in dolorous 
 drollery, ' Creeping out of the little end of the horn.' 
 You see I am rather blue, but these are sober ques- 
 tions, very sober. Don't imagine I am slumping yet. 
 I wrote two sermons yesterday, besides making five 
 calls, some two miles distant, and have got some stuff 
 left, though I have preached at home ever since my 
 settlement, except a day and a half of love-labors. But 
 I know that my spontaneous thought is not just the thing 
 for my people. What can be done to secure my own 
 growth and freedom ? 
 
 " There is some good to be accomplished by making 
 men who can't recognize Christianity see and feel some- 
 thing of natural religion ; but it is now a greater work 
 with me, and more pressing, to preach Christ, in 
 whom and through whom we come to realize the relig- 
 ious souls within us, the only name whereby we must 
 be saved. The Bible, too, I want to preach about 
 that ; but I don't know how. I want to urge its claims 
 upon those who regard it with superstitious reverence, 
 perhaps, but lack a living, rational, hearty belief in it. 
 Now to such my belief must smack strongly of unbe- 
 lief; and I dread to weaken what I seek to confirm. 
 Sometimes I grow sick at heart, and think of the charms 
 of a retired cottage under some green hill, with woods 
 and brooks and birds and liberty, liberty from re- 
 sponsibility too heavy, from petty duties and trivial 
 cares, from a multiplication of labors so inefficiently 
 done, liberty ' to wander at my own sweet will,' and 
 think my own thoughts, and do my own deeds. I
 
 MEMOIR. 37 
 
 thought the work of the ministry would always seem 
 great and noble to me, always satisfy my demands ; 
 but sometimes it don't. It comes to be small in its avo- 
 cations and mean in its results. But enough of these 
 things." 
 
 April 27, 1845. " There are three changes in my 
 life-philosophy which will sufficiently show you my 
 present position. 1. Whereas I once had an ideal of 
 growth and culture, I have substituted instead of it an 
 ideal of action for others' sake, and growth and culture 
 only incidentally on their behoof. It is not my work to 
 climb up to the mountain-top that I may see stars, but 
 down in the dusty road, to help this tired man wheel 
 his barrow, and that poor woman carry her bundle. 
 2. Whereas I thought once that God had made people 
 to be happy, I don't believe any such thing. Every 
 man has his burden to carry, and it is about as much 
 as he can lift. A man must do his work and not 
 grumble ; and so cheerfulness, which would otherwise 
 be a thing easy and of necessity, becomes a duty and 
 a virtue. By and by the circle will come full round, 
 and the cheerfulness which was by faith shall be 
 changed into the ecstasy of fruition. 3. Whereas I 
 once thought of shedding abroad some new light in the 
 world, and had some hope of doing something great, I 
 have come to the conclusion that the world was n't 
 waiting for me at all ; nay, I 'm not quite sure I 've 
 got much of anything to say to it, half inclined to 
 think it 's running away from me. 
 
 "Now tell me plainly what, you think of all this. 
 I 'm afraid you '11 call it rather dowdy, and not at all
 
 38 MEMOIR. 
 
 inspiring, this ideal of a country parson. You see it 
 is n't radical, but conservative, and that is true of me. 
 I begin to feel it takes a good deal of a man's time and 
 ability to strengthen the things that remain. If he can 
 build on a wing here or there, or run up a new spire 
 from the belfry somewhat higher than the old, or clear 
 away some of the rubbish that the outer court of the 
 temple is cluttered with, so much the better ; but the 
 first thing is to keep the old corner-stone sound and 
 true. This ideal is almost too practical to be called an 
 ideal, eh ? Well, what can you expect of a country 
 parson ? I have shown you the dingiest side on pur- 
 pose. It doos not lack all inspiration, after all, I assure 
 you. The old pile looks rather quaint in its architec- 
 ture, and seems to be tottering here and there ; but 
 there is a deal of venerable beauty about it, and, chill 
 as it seems, there are good warm embers on the altar 
 that only want a little blowing to burn up into a bright 
 flame. There, what do you think of it> At least 
 it will give you something to write about." 
 
 March 31. "I have made two hundred and fifty 
 calls, and have a hundred families yet to call on. I 
 am delegate to a temperance convention, but can't go. 
 Have ladies' meeting Wednesday, P. M., and teachers' 
 meeting in the evening. Thursday, Fast and a wed- 
 ding, and two sermons to write for next Sunday. Have 
 had a bronchitis these three weeks, which is awful ; but 
 otherwise in good health and spirits. Yesterday a man 
 asked me what I meant by my invitation to the com- 
 munion ; so I told him. I have since spent four or five 
 hours in reading through the church records from be-
 
 MEMOIR. 6V 
 
 ginning to end, and there is not a single by-law, and no 
 restriction to my admitting to the church in any way I 
 think proper. So I shall at least infringe no rule, do 
 what I may. I have been perfectly astonished to find 
 what a weight of authority the minister's voice has 
 here. I never saw such a place in that respect. I 
 fancy, too, I am getting popularity and influence with 
 the young men ; a good many come out to my Sunday 
 evening meetings. 
 
 '* But for all this outward success I feel dull and blue. 
 I am not strong enough to do the work of this great 
 parish ; and in strong, sound, every-day, practical good 
 sense, I do not come up to their demand. However, 
 just now not a dog wags his tail against me. I shall 
 keep a sharp eye to windward, and not take for granted 
 that anything will be to-morrow because it is to-day. 
 At the same time, I think they are about the best people 
 in the world, and I should be sorry to lose them." 
 
 The natural results of over-work and constant 
 anxiety were presently apparent. The bodily sys- 
 tem was debilitated, and the energy of mind de- 
 pressed. Besides the parish labor, there were the 
 very anxious and wearing cares of his family, his 
 wife's feeble health, and the severe illness of his 
 sister. In the multiplicity of things he was " har- 
 assed and perplexed, having a larger portion of the 
 responsibilities of Providence than my weak shoul- 
 ders were able to bear, like the man in Rasselas,
 
 40 MEMOIR. 
 
 who had the superintendence of the weather, and 
 was almost crazy with anxiety." His constitution 
 was not of that sturdy sort to endure the wear and 
 tear of mental labor and over-exertion of the lungs. 
 To speak always with straining and effort, and often 
 in the exposure of cold and damp, was a gradual 
 undermining of his frame, and made him very vul- 
 nerable to the attacks of the disorder he dreaded 
 most. With the heat of early summer these symp- 
 toms were aggravated, as he describes them in the 
 compressed diary style of the following account. 
 Under the garb of forced humor, the brave and true 
 spirit of it is all the more plainly seen. 
 
 June 25, 1845. "I am still in the land of the liv- 
 ing, though you may have begun to doubt it ; but yet 
 in a most questionable mood for a correspondent. A 
 slight history of the past week may serve to show 
 the preparations which have conspired to make me 
 such a correspondent as I am. To wit : Saturday 
 night. Feverish and sick ; throat sore ; stomach disor- 
 dered, &c. Sunday morning. Rode nine miles ; drank 
 tea ; preached. Evening. Fever abated ; voice do. ; 
 strength do. Monday morning. Voice gone to grass ; 
 only able to wheeze through my gills ; breakfasted on 
 senna tea. Tuesday. Voice audible and squeaky ; 
 took ipecac and three leeches, the last externally. 
 Wednesday. Breakfasted on castor-oil ; dined on noth- 
 ing ; took tea and a cold, out. Thursday. This pres-
 
 MEMOIR. 41 
 
 ent. Tolerably comfortable and calm ; yes, very calm ; 
 something like a half-drowned puppy. Still with a 
 feeling that I want to go somewhere, or do something, 
 or see somebody, I don't know where or what or who. 
 I can't talk ; I can't read ; I can't write, as you will be 
 able to testify. I am just like an elephant with one 
 foot tied ; no, not that ; more like those Brazilian spar- 
 rows that they fasten by a hook in their throat. Now 
 I am not blue, I do not think I am anxious, yet it 
 is n't in human flesh to think of leaving these green 
 hills and the best people I shall ever find, with a pros- 
 pect of relinquishing my profession in the end, it 
 is n't in mortal flesh not to squirm a little, let the high 
 ideal of perfect trust and submission be as strong as it 
 will. I do not ask you to pity me ; I had rather you 
 would commend me a little for looking all this calmly 
 in the face, as I do this minute. 
 
 " My plans are definitely formed so far as this : I 
 shall not preach for three months. If then I am well, 
 (as really I have very little hope of being,) resume my 
 duties ; if not, ask my dismission at once, come to Dor- 
 chester, and find some pretty active employment for a 
 year. Then, if my health permits, take a small parish 
 with a small church, and settle very quietly down, ' one 
 of those lesser lights,' that still shed out some feeble 
 rays in a dark place. ..... The probabilities, I have 
 
 hinted before, are altogether against my ever getting 
 rid of this bronchial susceptibility ; and to go on preach- 
 ing with that would be downright suicide. 
 
 " Now pray don't think of me as moping away my 
 gloomy days ' like Patience on a monument.' I don't
 
 42 MEMOIR. 
 
 do any such thing. I ride about and enjoy myself, 
 that is, as well as I can. But as it is my opinion that 
 the Lord, when he sees people making a fuss about his 
 providences, always says, ' Well, they shan't grumble 
 without a reason,' I think that it is best to bear it well 
 from motives of self-interest. Now my ' country par- 
 son' reverence is rather shocked, and bristles up at this 
 last sentence ; but you will know what it means. It is 
 a poor patience that only bears and blubbers : the true 
 victory of faith is to overcome and rise above trials. 
 However, I have n't come to the struggle as yet, and I 
 don't intftnd to set up for a martyr till I find out whether 
 there is any demand, and whether I am able to bear it. 
 Father Taylor said a good thing the other day, " Him 
 that is n't willing to stand by God, naked and hungry and 
 alone, the Lord will leave to stand by himself; but who- 
 soever is willing to trust God being empty, God will 
 trust him to be full." Write me, write me ; I need it 
 now ; I must snuggle close up to my friends now, not 
 as one that dreads the storm, but as one who would 
 both be helped and help others to brave it, and keep 
 warm in spite of it." 
 
 Having left his household in charge of a young 
 friend and relative, he spent a portion of the summer 
 in unwonted quiet and recreation. Of the compara- 
 tively free and wandering life of this period, \vhen 
 the repair of bodily health seemed to be the first 
 duty, there is very little to tell. At one time he is 
 seized with an enthusiasm for hard labor, and con-
 
 MEMOIR. 43 
 
 jectures that Providence may have meant him for a 
 farmer ; at another, he is. giving counsel and direc- 
 tion for the charge of his family, or sending flowers, 
 with a few pleasant words of remembrance, to the 
 children of the Sunday School. In many of his 
 letters he indulges freely in his propensity for what 
 is ludicrous and grotesque, a propensity, he says, 
 which " sometimes besets me even in the company 
 of the non-elect, and I have to struggle against it 
 for religion's sake"; and again his strain is more 
 sober than his wont. Among the more thoughtful 
 and religious meditations of this period are the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 Dover. " In this quiet seclusion I get calmed and 
 strengthened spiritually as well as bodily. I feel that it 
 is just what I need, either as a preparation for renewed 
 duties, or the trial of separation from my people. What 
 lessons of calm trust, of unwavering faith in God's 
 providence, one drinks in from the book of Nature ! What 
 a storehouse has she, indeed, of all celestial arcana, 
 what a ready sympathy for all our states of thought and 
 feeling ! And yet we must not forget that Jesus is the 
 interpreter of Nature's voice. If he had not christian- 
 ized Nature, she would not be to us full of all glorious 
 truth, as she is. Or rather, with the eyes which he has 
 made to see, we discern in all its clear beauty that latent 
 wisdom and truth of Nature, which was but dim and 

 
 44 MEMOIR. 
 
 shadowy before. It does not seem to me that you do 
 justice, I will not say to Jesus, who indeed demands 
 nothing of us, but to the personal relation of the soul to 
 Jesus. The doctrine of life in and through Jesus the 
 old doctrine of atonement seems to me to cover a 
 great truth. The atonement of Jesus, I think, consisted 
 in these two things : First, he brought man to the truth, 
 and so reconciled him to God. By the power of his life 
 and death he brought the affections and desires of the 
 soul to a state of recipiency ; he led men to desire and 
 seek the truth. But how were they to find it ? It lay 
 so far from them, there was such a gulf between them 
 and the Deity, the embodiment of the truth, that they 
 could not even see across the space, much less reach up 
 to grasp that which they could not discern. In the 
 second place, then, Jesus brought the truth dow.n to men, 
 made it actual, living, tangible, in his example. 
 Thus men were able to comprehend it, to seize hold 
 of it and live it out. Thus all religious truth became 
 henceforth Christian truth, and men see it through Chris- 
 tian teaching, and receive it through Christian influences. 
 Thus Jesus might say, with strict propriety, ' I am the 
 door of the sheep. If any man will enter by me, he 
 shall go in and out and find pasture.' Religious truth 
 has a human and a Divine side. Jesus showed its 
 human phase, and thus led men up till they could look 
 upon the splendor of the Divine. 
 
 " But when we have attained to this point, is the hu- 
 man side to be neglected or overlooked ? Does Jesus, 
 having led us as far as he could go, leave us to proceed 
 on our way alone, so that we turn back to bid him fare- 

 
 MEMOIR. 45 
 
 well ? I think not. When we do leave him thus, I 
 think we lose a little of our clearness and certainty, 
 something of the warmth of our devotion and the quick- 
 ness of our conscience, and much of our sympathy with 
 man as man. We cease to be brethren of the race, and 
 become only brethren of a few. The time has been 
 when I thought I saw this result in you. Either I was 
 mistaken, or you have changed your position a little, 
 and come back towards Jesus and man, into closer 
 sympathy with human kind. 
 
 " Somehow, I write laboriously of late. There seems 
 to be a little blur over my faculties, as well as a cloud 
 over my prospects. The freshness of my early inspira- 
 tion has spent itself for a season. But I am conscious 
 of a deeper current in my soul, though it be not appar- 
 ent, and I know that life, like outward nature, must have 
 its seasons. And though the trees are stripped leafless 
 in autumn, and the streams freeze up in winter, it is 
 only a wise provision for the coming spring-time. 
 And I have been left alone of late for the first time for 
 years, alone on a wide, wide sea, and I had wellnigh 
 sunk. But afar off in the East I dimly saw a little boat, 
 and I held up my head boldly, for God was in it. 
 
 " As for me, I am ' walking with God ' here in the 
 bushes, learning submission and tranquillity of spirit. 
 It may not become me to say it, but I should dishonor 
 my Teacher not to hope I am improving. With plenty 
 of leisure to think all manner of gloomy thoughts, 
 with a loneliness that sometimes - makes me shudder 
 with chilliness, with a dismal, dark, drenching rain as 
 you could wish, yet I sit writing in my chamber this 
 afternoon in a state of unusual happiness."
 
 46 MEMOIR. 
 
 Leominster, September 19. " Hard times I have had 
 since I wrote you last. Yet no, the sweet is more 
 than the bitter, thanks to the mingler of life's draught ; 
 and in this time of ' golden leisure ' I have been putting 
 out green leaves, and now I feel as if my flesh was 
 coming to me again like the flesh of a little child. 
 Strangely content and happy, I live a charmed life, 
 my future uncertain, I am afraid dark to fleshly CVLS, 
 yet causing me little solicitude, my garden of souls 
 running to weeds, at least for all culture of mine, yet I 
 have no sense of burdensome responsibilities. Do not 
 suppose these feelings are uninterrupted, or that I have 
 come to them without struggles. If you ask of my 
 health, it is good, my throat scarcely better, yet will- 
 ing to improve when I give it perfect rest You 
 
 have sometimes said I wrote nothing as if I was married. 
 Why should I ? Let that speak for itself. My wife is 
 a white dove. Do you suppose I have been a minister 
 so long without any plans? My old problem of the 
 Church bides with me yet. Something must be done. 
 These things I want to attempt : Free communion, 
 social life, and benevolent action in the Church. What 
 have you to say about this ? I have a definite plan of 
 action, if I am permitted to act again. ' The earthly 
 tabernacle weigheth down the mind that nurseth upon 
 many things ' ; and so, good night. 
 
 " I think we try to do too many things. Do you 
 know of any minister who seems so far to have realized 
 his ideal as would content you ? What is the reason of 
 this poverty of achievement ? It tempts one to go back 
 to the ideal of self-culture, in which all duty is resolved
 
 MEMOIR. 47 
 
 into living out one's self. My two great aims 
 
 were, to get at the young men, and to awaken the sen- 
 timents of religion. The practical side of Christianity 
 had been well developed ; people needed the spiritual 
 principle, the feeling of the heart. I have had no 
 church accessions, but one baptism. Can nothing be 
 done to save these two precious symbols ? Then in 
 speculation I find no certain or confident resting-place, 
 content even to get an olive-branch 'of promise, tes- 
 tifying that somewhere beneath the turbulent waters of 
 controversy there is dry land enough to rest one's sole 
 upon. I ask my venerable brethren of this and that, 
 and they are uncertain and wavering as myself. Some- 
 times I want to live a Methusalean life ; sometimes, if 
 I only were concerned, I would like to die to-morrow. 
 If I cannot preach this winter, what shall I do ? Can I 
 write for anything to get money ? If I have to give 
 up my profession, what can I do r I am trying to learn 
 to saw wood in case of an emergency. Do you pity 
 me ? I am sorry for that. Doth the Lord 'pity his 
 children ' 1 I trow not ; or if he does, it is as a father 
 pitieth his child, who cries for the red hot poker which 
 he in mercy denies him. Don't suppose I am indiffer- 
 ent to the suspension, or perhaps the destruction, of all 
 my hopes and plans ; but I know that the true man 
 ' shall not much remember the days of his life, for God 
 answereth him in the joy of his heart.' Will my optim- 
 ism serve me when the trial comes ? Do I seem fool- 
 ish ? 1 never felt so wise. Unnatural ? I was never 
 more unaffectedly sincere. These few days past, I have 
 seemed beautiful to myself, like the autumn woods ; or
 
 48 MEMOIR. 
 
 like a glowing coal all alive. Yet I have done nothing 
 but revel in the joy of my musings, questioning all the 
 while if the life that seemed ready to gush out of me 
 ought not to be bestowed somewhere to some purpose. 
 But Nature seemed to say, ' No, let the sponge drink in 
 as it will from this fountain, don't squeeze it.' 
 
 " Then your idea that I had ' derogatory views ' of 
 the minister's work and position. Never did I estimate 
 them so highly, regard them so reverently. Yet I 
 know I am a true minister to not more than a dozen of 
 my people, and how can I be satisfied with this ? Xo, 
 it was not that the aim did not seem to be great and 
 high enough ' to fill an angel's heart,' but the beggar- 
 liness of our poor achievements I was groaning over. 
 
 " My love 'and hopes to . When I see her, I 
 
 think sickness is a beautiful and almost coveted experi- 
 ence. I know the good God never cheats us, but gives 
 us always so much for so much ; and when the poor 
 body pines and aches, and languishes, the spirit is often- 
 times full-fed and developing new energies and more 
 divine powers. Many of the fairest flowers sow them- 
 selves by darting their seeds, arrow-like, into the soil 
 where they germinate." 
 
 September 24. " I do not know that you know from 
 your own experience, as I do, how fresh and real the 
 first spring of a religious life is, a new birth of the 
 soul. But with most, the freshness of that living growth 
 soon passes away, and having brought themselves up to 
 about the average standard of those who are called good 
 Christians around them, they halt there, or ever after go 
 on vacillating between good and ill. But mark, for illus-
 
 MEMOIR. 
 
 49 
 
 tration, the rapid growth of a new-converted man, or 
 say a Washingtonian. If he could go on for a lifetime 
 as in the first year, what a great man he would make ! 
 And in a religious sense, a true man can always find 
 habits as dark, elements that seem as base and low, to 
 emancipate himself from, as that of drunkenness. But 
 our plans of growth and progress have a finiteness 
 about them that spoils us. We get to a certain point, 
 and then our life becomes a thing of custom, fashion, or 
 what not, loses its living, internal character. But if 
 every day's life could be from within, if God could 
 always act through us, and the Divine be a perennial 
 spring within us, what nobleness might we aspire to ! 
 Is it all a dream ? has the fiat gone forth that no man 
 shall realize his plans and aims ? Then were it better 
 to die than live ! For to follow, like the old post-horses, 
 an ear of corn, day in and day out, and never overtake 
 it, or approximate towards it, is a life mean and miser- 
 able, not worth the living. But how to find Him whom 
 neither height, nor breadth, nor depth can reach, but 
 who is never far from every one of us ? Were I to 
 define the process, I would say, First, sift down your own 
 motives, and make them as pure as possible, nay, 
 determine that the great question, the only question of 
 life, shall be, ' Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ?' And 
 secondly, use the means of religious growth, the old- 
 fashioned rules of devotional culture, meditation, self- 
 examination, prayer. Alas that our desire should be, 
 not devotion itself, but the good that comes of it ! I 
 cannot say what another should do, but I would say, Let 
 him rejoice and thank God who in sincerity and fulness 
 4
 
 50 MEMOIR. 
 
 of heart can daily kneel down and commune with the 
 Infinite ; and if any consecrating power of habit, of 
 times and seasons, of thoughtful meditation, can bring 
 to him one truthful, yearning aspiration after the Father, 
 let him cling to that as the dearest portion and joy of 
 his soul, the promise of his progress and prosperity, 
 the talisman of his inward peace." 
 
 Towards the end of September, he resumed his 
 labors at home ; taking the physician's counsel, " to 
 go to preaching, and provoke his throat to get better 
 or worse." He encountered very cheerfully some 
 threatening symptoms, and laid out a large work for 
 the future. His own thoughts and recent experience 
 he Hoped to embody in a series of " Letters to the 
 Sick," doubting only " whether I, who need to 
 fill up the reservoir of thought, and leave the waters 
 to settle into stillness and purity, can afford or shall 
 do well to take off the cover, and let the scanty sup- 
 ply, already too much taxed, evaporate still further." 
 His " great Church movement" he hoped to begin 
 with the opening of another year. And, up to 
 the limit which his state of health allowed, he seems 
 to have been busily engaged in all the ordinary cares 
 of his office. 
 
 But Providence had other things in store for him, 
 and a deeper sorrow than any he had undergone as
 
 MEMOIR. 
 
 yet. The discipline which had compelled him to 
 look sickness and pain, and the prospect of early 
 death, steadily in the face, had been only the prepa- 
 ration for what was yet to follow. On the 3d of 
 December, his wife died, leaving an infant, a few 
 days old, to his sole charge. It was with a peculiarly 
 fond, tender, trusting affection, that he had always 
 spoken and thought of her. Usefulness and a happy 
 home, he had told 1 her long before, were the only 
 two things he had to live for. And, in his affection- 
 ate and sensitive nature, this sentiment formed the 
 invisible centre, about which his thoughts and plans 
 revolved, the silent and gentle constraining power, 
 that maintained the rest in balance. And it could 
 not receive so sudden and rude a shock, however 
 it might be met with manly resignation and Christian 
 trust, without deranging permanently, in some 
 measure, the healthy and harmonious action of his 
 mind. The effect was more deep and lasting, that 
 it was so powerfully controlled, to all outward seem- 
 ing, by conscience and will, and an active religious 
 fancy. And the shadow of this great sorrow deep- 
 ened as time went on, only to be very gradually sup- 
 planted by the later light of hope. 
 
 The few expressions he gave of this early feeling
 
 52 MEMOIR. 
 
 are tender and beautiful. Their long and intimate 
 connection had been to him a precious privilege, and 
 an untroubled dream of love. " You know," he 
 says, " how pure and heavenly our love was, and 
 how her innocence and saintliness had hallowed 
 and refined my more earthly affections. Time and 
 again it made me weep to think how pure she was." 
 Wife of a year, and mother of a week, when dan- 
 ger seemed past, and hope was confident and strong, 
 she, was taken suddenly, and left him sorrowing and 
 alone. From his words of tender and touching res- 
 ignation we gather the appropriate and only needful 
 comment on this mournful chapter of his experience. 
 We see how faithfully he had learned to apply his 
 own words of consolation and trust. 
 
 Boston, December 6, 1845. " The Providence that 
 made me a father has left me a bereaved and deso- 
 late husband. My white dove has flown upward, yet 
 still she cometh again at times, to bring an answer to 
 my prayers, and minister strength to my fainting heart. 
 You will not wonder that I have thus far been calm and 
 strong. I know not yet the heaviness of the trial, and 
 I have felt from the first her presence sustaining me. 
 How I shall bear it I do not know. I hope, with Chris- 
 tian serenity and cheerfulness. I trust to live so high 
 and pure that she shall be to me an ever-living pres- 
 ence. Night before last, when I went to bed, there
 
 MEMOIR. 53 
 
 came strange, wild fancies, and half-delirious images, 
 sometimes harsh voices, and then her gentle and tender 
 tones. I was not asleep, I was not trying to think, but 
 these things seemed to belong to the senses rather than 
 the mind. The last thing I remember, I saw a great 
 harp, and it seemed as if it were my heart, and there 
 stood by two furies and clutched at its strings with their 
 claw-like fingers as if they would tear it in pieces. But 
 then a soft hand was laid across them so gently that it 
 scarcely seemed to touch, and the chords were still and 
 calm as a waveless sea, and I fell asleep. 
 
 " Yesterday was her funeral at Dorchester. I was 
 happy, and could not help feeling grateful for the beau- 
 tiful day. I contrasted it with the bright, clear evening 
 of our marriage a year ago, and it seemed fitting that 
 this should be brighter and more glorious. That was a 
 marriage of earth, this was a bridal of heaven. It 
 seemed fitting that Nature should put on her white 
 robes and her diamond ornaments when so pure a 
 spirit took its flight. I felt that God honored me in 
 calling me thus to give her to him. With reverential 
 joy I could almost say, God taketh her not away, but 
 permits me to give her up, so that I may receive her 
 again ; and thus does he make our affections immortal 
 when he makes their objects immortal. 
 
 "I have no right to complain, all reasons to be 
 thankful. Had I loved her less, I could not bear it so 
 well. But these years of our union have blessed me 
 with more and fuller happiness than often comes in a 
 long life. Blessed be their memory and hers, in min- 
 istering sweet influences and sanctifying hopes, and
 
 54 MEMOIR. 
 
 may God help me to show in my own example the 
 serenity of faith that I have preached to others as the 
 Christian's duty and privilege." 
 
 Leominster, December 17, 1845. "True, I have 
 stood face to face with stern realities, and the angel of 
 'Discipline is bruising from my heart the black blood of 
 selfishness ; but the blessed angel of my love stands by 
 me, also, to pour the oil of healing on the smarting 
 wound. You know I have had all possible consola- 
 tions, the blessed memories of seven years of happi- 
 ness, full and perfect enough to make me all my life 
 thankful to God, bring the future what it may, the 
 very tenderness and fulness of sympathy from many a 
 heart, and what is dearest of all, next to my faith in 
 immortality, a constant sense I was going to say a 
 consciousness of the presence of the departed. It is 
 not sight, nor sound, nor touch ; and yet there are times 
 when I see and hear and feel her presence ; and now I 
 know that I believe what I was not quite sure before 
 would bear such a test. 
 
 " And as at such times one is brought nearer to the 
 spiritual world, and almost comes to feel that its atmos- 
 phere is around him, and a vision only a little more 
 purified would give him actual sight and communion 
 with its inhabitants, the prayer rises from the heart, 
 that he might evermore dwell there ; and so, living 
 henceforth in and for eternity, whatever is merely of 
 time should be indifferent to him, and ' not enjoyment 
 and not sorrow be his destined end and way.' 
 
 " And then the soul does feel it a sort of privilege 
 and glory to be honored with trial, and, gathering itself
 
 MEMOIR. 55 
 
 up in its conscious eternity, feels that neither its love 
 nor the joy it gives can ever die ; and, looking forward, 
 it beholds that coming time when the trials and sorrows 
 of this mortal life shall seem but as clouds that on a 
 summer's day flit over the sun's disk and pass away. 
 And so it is strong. 
 
 " It is very pleasant to me thus to speak to you in 
 the perfect freedom of confidence ; for, kind and hearty 
 as are the friends around me, there is no one who can 
 fully understand my feelings, and what is sometimes 
 spoken for consolation seems trifling or profane ; like 
 the well-meant remark of one man, who told me ' it 
 was a great mercy these things wore off in time,' as 
 if the next best thing to the presence of those we love 
 were to forget them. So I am shut up alone with my 
 own ideal and my ministering spirits. 
 
 " There is one thing that I feel deeply in closing this 
 letter, that, to a stranger's eye, and perhaps to your too 
 partial friendship, it shows me higher than I am ; and 
 a fear, too, cojnes upon me, that I shall fall back from 
 what is only a mount of vision to me, and not the plane 
 of my daily walk." 
 
 December 31. " My health is not very good. Liv- 
 ing the last month in a state of extreme nervous excite- 
 ment, and compelled to do a good deal of mental labor, 
 I have got worn down. I hardly expect to stay here 
 another year. My throat is troublesome again, though 
 I use it as much as I want to. It would be hard to go 
 away, yet you will not wonder that all other trials seem 
 light to me now. And though life still looks cheerful 
 and happy to me, and the world is as far from being a
 
 56 MEiMOIR. 
 
 ' vale of tears ' as ever, yet you can understand how 
 everything but duty should seem almost indifferent to 
 me, everything but duty and death. Sternly beau- 
 tiful stands the former to me, and I feel consecrated 
 anew in the baptism of sorrow ; but O, how welcome 
 at any moment were the latter, how great a privilege 
 if to-night I could lie down in my last sleep, to wake 
 in the light of her smile, and the morning of her eter- 
 nal blessedness ! " 
 
 v January 27, 1846. "I am happy, for everything 
 is indifferent to me. Duty is sacred, life is beautiful, 
 eternity dear, more sacred and beautiful and dear 
 than ever before. I am happy in isolation. What I 
 dread most is that I should wish to live again ; what I 
 desire most is to die. But I am cheerful, joyous even, 
 for I am not alone. The sunlight, with its blessed rays, 
 looks in at my windows, and it is more beautiful than 
 ever, for God's smile and her's are both in it. The fir 
 trees, blossoming in snow-wreaths, wave their branches 
 in the wind, and I love them, because she saw and ad- 
 mired their beauty. Home is dearer to me than ever, 
 because it was 'her home ; yea, it is her home still. 
 And I seem to myself a being better and more sacred 
 and higher, because one who has gone up loves me. 
 
 " I had almost rather my little child, so unspeakably 
 dear to me, were with its mother. I am afraid it will 
 make me wish to live. I am afraid she will want it 
 there. 
 
 " Every body here wonders to see me appear just as 
 I always have. I dare say many suppose I am almost 
 heartless, a very stock. All that is perfectly indif-
 
 MEMOIR. 57 
 
 ferent to me ; yet I wonder at my cheerfulness just as 
 much as other people do." 
 
 " I well remember," writes a friend, " how pain- 
 fully delightful was our visit to Hiram, a few weeks 
 after his wife's death ; how he met us with all the 
 warmth of his nature, and discharged so simply, 
 and so aflectingly, to us, all the offices of host 
 and hostess ; and how anxious he seemed to be that 
 we should find everything as comfortable .as if she 
 could have welcomed us. He lighted a fire in the 
 parlour, saying, as he did so, with a sad but cheer- 
 ful smile, that it seemed almost wicked to light that 
 fire there. Elizabeth had placed the wood in order, 
 ready for kindling, two months before, and he had 
 not brought himself till then to light it. He had 
 hung up in his chamber, just after her safe confine- 
 ment, (as they thought,) a beautiful engraving of the 
 Madonna and Child ; and he said, as we entered the 
 room, that at first he could not bear to have it hang 
 there after her death. It seemed as if it had no 
 business there, and his first impulse was to lay it in 
 the bottom of his trunk, never to be taken out. 
 These are trifling incidents ; but they illustrate the 
 exceeding warmth of his nature, and show how 
 bitter must have been the struggle to maintain the
 
 58 MEMOIR. 
 
 beautiful calmness, and even cheerfulness, that so 
 astonished and charmed us all." 
 
 These little incidents, and the record of so trying 
 an experience, will not be without their interest to 
 those who knew Mr. Withington as a friend. They 
 will know there was nothing overstrained or insin- 
 cere in his transcripts from his own feelings and 
 the interpretation of his life's experience ; and it 
 will be gratifying to them to trace the deep and 
 lasting impression on his mind, of an event so 
 powerfully forcing the tide of hidden affections and 
 emotions from its ordinary channel. Few persons 
 have spoken so familiarly as he, from his early 
 years, of spiritual things as near and present. To 
 few was the boundary between this life and that 
 to come so thin and transparent, or the sentiment 
 so habitual and constant, "I am not to be, but / 
 am, immortal." And so the three great means of 
 human discipline labor, pain, and sorrow were 
 alike sanctified to his willing and receptive spirit by 
 the immediate touch of the breath of Heaven. 
 
 His words, spoken long before, recur in this con- 
 nection with added meaning : " The ideal of pleas- 
 ure is gone ; its successor, the ideal of aesthetics, 
 has vanished also ; and now nothing is left but the
 
 MEMOIR. 59 
 
 ideal of action." To this he now earnestly and 
 manfully addressed himself. His " great Church 
 movement " he had designated as his task for the 
 opening year. His views of it were so large and 
 general, and at the same time so specific and dis- 
 tinct, that he found very few who could give him 
 the aid of an understanding sympathy. To a friend 
 he writes : 
 
 January 28, 1846. "I am particularly desirous to 
 see and to talk with you, now that I have the gift of 
 utterance again ; and the rather, because I found more 
 sympathy and interest in my Church movement, on your 
 part, than any body else had ever exhibited, (except 
 one,) and, of all the brethren, you alone have given me 
 any encouragement, or seemed to have any faith in the 
 attempt. Well, I have plunged in medias res, if that 
 which is so intangible as the Church can be said to 
 have a substantive existence, or a 'midst' to it. I have 
 had two social meetings, at which I conversed, sixty 
 or seventy persons being present ; and we have chosen 
 a committee to report ' on the present condition of the 
 Church, and any measures which may promote its wel- 
 fare and efficiency.' 
 
 " This is the matter nearest my thought at present, 
 so I have written about it. You will know that at heart 
 other things are pressing. And I have no need to say, 
 that, for the many words of kindness that have been 
 most welcome and cheering to its desolateness, I thank 
 God and those who have bestowed them."
 
 60 MEMOIR. 
 
 A part of the correspondence which followed with 
 a friend, who did not enter so hopefully into some of 
 the details of his projected movement, may serve 
 to present more clearly the precise point at which 
 he aimed. 
 
 February 3, 1846. " I take ' the Church ' as Prov- 
 idence and the community find it for me, and speak 
 honestly of every form of Christian influence that comes 
 to us in a regular way, as the Church. Neither do I 
 care to mark out a supposed scheme of duties for the 
 organization called by that name. I follow the tenden- 
 cies of the system of things I find ready to my hand. 
 If benevolent action can be most conveniently and 
 effectively carried on by ' the Church,' very well. If 
 by a ' society,' or ' sewing circle,' or ' benevolent asso- 
 ciation,' very well again. And if the organized body 
 meet (and, so far as I see, can meet) only for religion, 
 meditation, and communion, then I do the best I can in 
 that way, seek to stamp the impression deepest where I 
 can, and am content. If I had a Church to make all 
 new, and its work to prescribe, I don't know how I 
 should prescribe it. Meanwhile, I am thankful to be 
 saved that hazardous responsibility. I confess to a 
 little impatience at having anything put upon me, or 
 even hinted at, else than the quiet gathering up of the 
 threads of religious and moral influence that lie scatter- 
 ed about me, and the patient weaving of them into my 
 fabric of duty and faith. If you ask me what ' the 
 Church ' is, I do not pretend to explain, though I have
 
 MEMOIR. 
 
 61 
 
 my notions. If you ask what the Church is Aere, I 
 know pretty well, at least I think I do, and that is 
 enough for me." To this he replies : 
 
 February 3, 1846. "Your remarks upon the Church 
 are just as unsatisfactory as everything else upon the 
 same topic ; and if I had leisure, I should like to write 
 you half a ream no, I mean a quire upon it. You 
 know it has possessed me a good while, and I cannot get 
 rid of it by prayer or fasting, nor will it be exorcised by 
 any such intangible statements as those in your letter. 
 The ' obfuscation ' remains, and you will not be able to 
 remove it, without an increase of faith. The more I 
 think about it, the more I don't see what the Church is, 
 or what can be done with it. The question is as impor- 
 tant to my mind as this : Are we to labor for the per- 
 petuity of the Church as an organization, Church, or 
 no Church ? It seems to me one who does not see the 
 matter in this light is blind to the signs of the times. 
 Who talks about the Church ? Who pays it any atten- 
 tion ? Who joins it ? If it be worth nothing, then let us 
 'help tear it down as a cumberer of the ground, or at 
 least suffer it quietly to die out. If it have any value, 
 let us see what it is, and how it is to be sustained and 
 made efficient. These seem to me not only practical, 
 but pressing inquiries. I believe I have made you ac- 
 quainted with all my movements till datum. The last 
 thing done was to choose a committee to report on the 
 present condition of the Church, and any measures for 
 promoting its prosperity and efficiency." 
 
 So far as the practical features of his plan were
 
 62 MEMOIR. 
 
 clearly defined, they seem to have been these. 
 Taking advantage of the recognized central Church 
 organization, he would make it the centre and source 
 of all religious and charitable action. There should 
 be as it were a league among all the forms of Chris- 
 tian action, so that each should have a real connec- 
 tion with the Church proper. Thus, a committee 
 was chosen " to seek out the necessitous, and apply 
 the means for their relief." The Board of Direc- 
 tors of the Ladies' Charitable Society should con- 
 sist in part of Church members, selected by the 
 Church itself. The Sunday School should be dis- 
 tinctly understood to be a school of training for the 
 religious character, and with the view of adding 
 steadily to the Church's strength. In the School he 
 was laborious and indefatigable, seeking out and urg- 
 ing reluctant scholars, holding teachers' meetings, 
 addressing the children frequently, and taking an 
 active part in the Sunday School movements of the 
 county. Of this large circle of operations he him- 
 self was, of course, the centre and the head. " He 
 was what I term a live minister ," writes one of his 
 parishioners. His labors in visiting were very great, 
 amounting, the first year, to five hundred and fifty, 
 and, the third, to eight hundred, parochial visits. To
 
 MEMOIR. 63 
 
 the sick and afflicted he was very attentive ; and the 
 nature of his own experience had opened to him 
 avenues of approach to them, and made him pecu- 
 liarly welcome and acceptable as a messenger of 
 consolation. Among other things, he founded a 
 " minister's library" with a donation of fifty dollars, 
 from a bequest made him by one of his parishioners, 
 thirty more being added by the ladies of the soci- 
 ety. Many of the details of his pastoral labors will 
 appear in the course of his letters which follow. 
 Meanwhile, it will be interesting to trace the thread 
 of more personal and private feeling, interrupted for 
 a while by this pressure of external care. 
 
 March 4, 1846. "I am between two fires, which- 
 ever way I look, but am not consumed, scarcely 
 scorched. Do you remember how in the furnace there 
 was a fourth, like unto the Son of Man ? Fable as it 
 is, it has a beautiful significance. Between the pressure 
 of outward duty and inward thought, I am continually 
 exhausted. Yet my security and enjoyment are in ac- 
 tion, and I do more than ever I have done. I long for 
 more quiet and leisure, for I am afraid of being used all 
 up intellectually ; besides, you know partly how delight- 
 ful is the liberty to stop and think, and to have time for 
 study. I would fain seek a quiet and a smaller place. 
 On the other hand, duty binds me here. Never a man 
 had so fine a chance to do good : people all feel more
 
 64 MEMOIR. 
 
 than kindly tenderly toward me. The admiration 
 makes me tremble, for it cannot last ; but the lov e, I 
 think, will. But what I am gladdest to see is the relig- 
 ious interest that is springing up here and there, in a 
 very quiet and natural way, some few young people, 
 too, manifesting it and their confidence toward me in a 
 very pleasant manner. Then, again, here is the dear 
 home, so sacred, so blissful still, my only home : if 
 I should be forced to leave it, I should be an outcast in 
 the world. Everywhere else I am desolate. As I have 
 just written to a friend, 'Dorchester is too populous for 
 me, too thick-peopled with memories ; its very way- 
 side stones are burial monuments of hours of gladness 
 flown ; and not till they have had their baptism in Sor- 
 row's tears can Faith entwine them with the flower- 
 wreath that tells of a resurrection. But I know that 
 spring will come again, and the flowers. And the dewy 
 tears of Sorrow's night shall give a fresher verdure where 
 they fall, a chastened but perennial beauty.' 
 
 " But you see how dear this home is to me, what 
 ties of love and memory it would sunder to leave it. 
 Then, too, I am afraid, if the charm of constrained ac- 
 tivity were broken, I should sink down. But the chances 
 are nine to ten that I must go, and that speedily. For 
 five weeks my throat has been growing steadily and 
 desperately bad. My general health, on the other hand, 
 is unusually good, which makes it more discouraging. 
 One Sunday I preached but half a day, and you know I 
 should not have stopped for a small reason. You know 
 I have always felt, that, if I broke down again, it was 
 better for me and for the people that I should go. Am
 
 MEMOIR. 65 
 
 I not betweert too fires ? But do not think I am distress- 
 ed, or even anxious. The Son of Man is with me, and 
 the Infinite Father. I can go in peace where I am led." 
 
 May 29. "I have had many thoughts, or rather a 
 daily recurring thought, of writing you, from the mo- 
 ment I heard of your new joy and 's safety. It 
 
 awoke in me more of personal feeling than I am wont 
 to experience ; for I have been sensible of late of a 
 paralysis of the heart, and at present dare not say that 
 I love any living being. And could I not remembe^how 
 my heart, so calm and still now, had leaped in the 
 ecstasy of a paradise morning, in the promised fulfil- 
 ment of a hope so strangely prominent and abiding with- 
 me for years, and how, when that new song was put 
 into it, its utterance was, ' O God, I thank thee, that, 
 once and for all eternity, thou hast made me a father ' ? 
 
 " It is inevitable that my thoughts should thus revert 
 to myself, and I thank you that I feel the liberty to give 
 them this free utterance. Be assured my sympathy in 
 your gladness is none the less, perhaps all the greater, 
 that it has called up so vividly my own sorrow. Nor 
 until this moment has any thought of contrast crossed 
 my mind. And it comes now with no painful or repin- 
 ing feeling. For night is beautiful as day, and the 
 cloud, no less than the sunbeam, comes laden with a 
 blessing. 
 
 " I would gladly speak of myself, for scarcely from 
 my deepest life do I utter a word to any man. But I 
 am become a fathomless mystery to my own eye. To 
 others I am a perfect mirror ; and my own introspective 
 glance can discern scarcely more than the landscape 
 5
 
 66 MEMOIR. 
 
 that surrounds me, though in the back-ground dim shad- 
 ows dance, and under my feet I hear faint murmuring 
 echoes, and music soothingly solemn, sometimes of 
 glad melody, and then dying away in a plaintive wail of 
 infinite sadness. But I am in such a whirl of constant 
 and laborious activity, that it is only for a brief moment 
 now and then that I am permitted to enter this sacred 
 sanctuary. For the most part, I live a purely unselfish 
 life. There is no self. I am a mirror, and God holds 
 meii his hand as he walks, and I am gladly conscious 
 of the universe of beauty that is thus reflected back upon 
 itself. I know of nothing that would be so pleasant, 
 and I think so beneficial, as to have you come and 
 spend some days with me. We will ride and walk over 
 our beautiful hills, and through the quiet woods ; and as 
 Elisha put his eyes upon the child's eyes, and his hands 
 upon the child's hands, so you shall bring me back to 
 life and consciousness again. But wherefore ? for is 
 not consciousness susceptibility of suffering ? Only 
 that the fact of speaking as I have seems to show that 
 the time for such return has come. I have no desire to 
 hasten or to postpone it, but am sensible of an uneasy 
 and almost dissatisfied feeling; and a sense of a destiny 
 unfulfilled, and indistinct glimpses of a new ideal that is 
 yet to shape itself, seem to show that there is a future 
 in this life for which I am to gird myself, though I 
 have desired with a passionate longing that it might not 
 be so. 
 
 " Who wrote that article on Immortality in the Ex- 
 aminer ? It struck me peculiarly, perhaps from my 
 state of mind. But there was one thought with which I
 
 MEMOIR. 67 
 
 would have concluded, the greatest of ail thoughts, 
 the consciousness of immortality, the realization that 
 so comes home to the soul at times, ' I am not to be, 
 but lam, immortal.' In the light of this thought, the most 
 beautiful thing in the universe is Duty, and the next 
 most beautiful is Death. Time becomes an eternity, of 
 which man rises to be a king and a god ; and farther 
 off, in a dim glory, is another eternity, in which we are. 
 enfolded in the arms of an infinite love." 
 
 June 25. " Seriously, if you will let me say so, 
 while I do most heartily respect and admire your mode, 
 I can't help thinking that you are doing just what I 
 ought, and I just what you ought. It is I who want 
 ' solidity and depth,' while you, perhaps, need more 
 surface. But logic, I have more natural love of it 
 than you give me credit for, I dare say. But what can 
 it do ? Its sole office seems to me to account to the 
 soul for itself. Of all things in the world, reasoning is 
 the most unreasonable. Your perfect system of things 
 is a dream more visionary than /dare cherish. Is not 
 all life a giving up of old plans and laying out of new, 
 to be themselves in turn relinquished by the time the 
 foundations are laid ? Logic refutes itself in every cor- 
 ner. There is n't a single statement or principle that 
 does not become an absurdity when carried out. Sys- 
 .tem is only an artificial chaos in place of a natural one, 
 and science itself is one of those ' exquisite ironies of 
 language,' whose exoteric significance indeed is knowl- 
 edge, but which, exoterically, can only mean the knowl- 
 edge of one's utter ignorance. I have no doubt, that, in 
 all these things, what does us good is the attempt, rather
 
 68 MEMOIR. 
 
 than the approximation. Your hope of working some 
 day with your ' eyes open ' is my utter despair. The 
 social problem is awful, but not more so than a hundred 
 others. The way to shake off the incubus of one is to 
 find another, I take it 
 
 " I lose at times the faith that I am of the least con- 
 sequence or consideration to any one, and few, perhaps, 
 .can bear that feeling so ill as I. I live a helter-skelter 
 sort of life, that keeps me busy, and almost flurried, and 
 yet^eems to accomplish little and leave the most un- 
 done. Yesterday, for example, I wrote two letters, 
 made three calls, and read children's books for the li- 
 brary, which took up the morning. In the afternoon, 
 rode thirteen miles to call on sick people, and visited 
 four families, till supper. Evening, made one call, and 
 read library books. You must not think I make unnec- 
 essary calls, either. To do my best, I can scarcely 
 visit the sick, infirm, and bereaved. A good many fam- 
 ilies I have never called upon. So I live on, in this 
 run-amuck sort of life, of which little account can be 
 given, and which I have no time to systematize. I am 
 not very well, and almost every day for three months 
 the problem has come up, whether I ought not to go 
 away from here, half a man as I am, physically and in- 
 tellectually, for the people's good and my own. I 
 should almost rejoice at some indication of failure or 
 unpopularity, as opening the way of escape. But to 
 leave now would be to desert duty ; and indeed, if I 
 were strong enough, I would not exchange the place for 
 any in Christendom. 
 
 " I have been thinking much of Peace lately, and
 
 MEMOIR. 69 
 
 have taken very strong ground in a sermon against all 
 war. Still, I am not insensible of the difficulties attend- 
 ing the position, but for the present stick there with 
 some pertinacity. Colonization, too, has interested me 
 more than ever, (I don't mean Brook Farm, but Libe- 
 ria,) while I have been giving some heed to Free 
 Trade, in which an interest was accidentally called up. 
 Let us know what you think of these things, as also 
 what is your opinion of such a course of thought as all 
 that I have said indicates. You can't think worse of it, 
 for all purposes of healthy personal growth, than I do. 
 "As for my Church movement, we have meetings 
 which are well attended, (from thirty-five to eighty,) 
 and rather increase in interest. I have got a change 
 in the conditions of admission, have appointed a com- 
 mittee, and got a standing fund for benevolent action, 
 and have already distinctly declared the communion 
 free. In one respect, my hopes have been, thus far, 
 but poorly realized, to wit : in the accessions made to 
 the Church. Still, I am hopeful in this. As for the 
 Sunday School, I hope you did not mean to express 
 any doubts of its value or promise. If you did, come 
 up here and we will resolve them. We have weekly 
 teachers' meetings, attended by from thirty to forty, 
 and a School of upwards of three hundred and fifty, 
 including teachers and adult classes. About thirty 
 young men from eighteen to twenty-five. To be sure, 
 I do not estimate our success in this way ; but I am so 
 fully satisfied of the great capabilities of the Sunday 
 School system, that I have had serious thoughts of pro- 
 posing to the people to come to church in the morning,
 
 70 
 
 MEMOIR. 
 
 and all stop to Sunday School, and then have a long 
 intermission, and a second service at half-past five. I 
 have long been persuaded that the world is to be mil- 
 lenniumized by making people talk." 
 
 July 21. " You know I told you that the faith which, 
 in early life, we take upon trust and authority, we come 
 to doubt and question afterwards. We ask ourselves 
 why we believe this and that, and have no reason to 
 give. So we go back and start anew, feeling our way 
 step by step. We answer doubt after doubt, and settle 
 principle after principle, and so by and by we work our 
 way back to our childhood's faith again ; not that we 
 believe on the same grounds, but because we have 
 found a reason for belief. And this, which is at first a 
 faith of reasoning, becomes again a faith of trust. We 
 believed at first tremblingly, as it were ; and continually 
 our doubts were coming up, and we had to answer them 
 over and over again. But at length we have vanquished 
 them so often that they have ceased to come ; and though 
 we know how to meet them if they should, yet we scarce- 
 ly remember that we ever had any doubts. This is what 
 I mean by filial faith ; at least, this is part of it. You 
 will understand now, perhaps, why I so continually cau- 
 tioned you against taking anything upon trust, or sup- 
 posing that I could do anything more for you than put 
 you in the way to resolve your doubts ; because, if you 
 had received anything on my authority, then your fab- 
 ric of belief would some time give way, and, when you 
 thought you had built a firm foundation to stand upon, 
 you would find it giving way under your feet, and be 
 obliged to go clear back and lay the corner-stone anew.
 
 MEMOIR. 71 
 
 I do not think this will ever befall you, but you must 
 not despair if it should ; only the second building is 
 harder than the first, and it is better to go on so slow 
 and sure that there will be no danger of falling back. 
 Then, again, if your faith in goodness rests on man, it 
 will sometimes waver ; for human goodness is a poor 
 thing, after all, very poor. 
 
 " You must believe in truth not from logic, in good- 
 ness not from man ; but the source of belief must be 
 in God. You know the Samaritans said, ' Now we be- 
 lieve, not because of the saying of the woman, but we 
 have seen and heard him ourselves.' 
 
 " I saw on Sunday a beautiful arch of stone, built 
 with great art, over the entrance to the cemetery at 
 Salem. -It fell once, because it had not been well con- 
 structed ; bat now it stands firm, a mere loose pile of 
 stones, without support, or iron bolts, or cement, held 
 together by God's law of gravitation. The woodbine 
 and the ivy have grown up all over it, and will soon 
 hide every vestige of man's art from the eye. So 
 should we build the structure of a living faith in our 
 heart ; and by and by it shall have stood so long and 
 be so natural and entire, so overgrown with all the 
 green, springing beauty and vhrtue and gladness of life, 
 that we shall forget how every stone was laid one upon 
 another with slow and patient toil ; and if we ask how 
 came it so with us, the first answer that should come, 
 spontaneous and unbidden, would be, ' God made it so.' 
 
 " This is what I mean by a natural faith that never 
 questions, a childlike faith that takes God's word 
 and asks no more."
 
 72 MEMOIR. 
 
 Dorchester, August 21. "You speak with regret 
 of the severing of our thread of intercourse. Have you 
 not learned, long ago, that to my ' life, doings, and say- 
 ings ' there is no thread ? They are but as so many fly- 
 ing ends, scattered, ravelling, confused, and worthless. 
 I have neither done, attempted, nor projected anything 
 the last few months. Now, these last two nights, while 
 God and Death and I sat watching my poor suffering 
 sister, I have felt more and lived more. Sometimes, 
 when we think we can do and bear no longer, God 
 shows us how we can both bear longer and more, and 
 makes us strong again by adding to our burden. Self- 
 ish and petulant, Moses says, ' Send by whom thou wilt 
 send, O Lord.' How often do we thus shrink from life's 
 mission, so different from our choice, so at variance with 
 our conviction of what is fitting ! We don't believe we 
 can perform it, even by and with God's help. But we 
 can. 
 
 " I have more and more faith in the Sunday School. 
 Ours is going on beautifully, no thanks to me. I 
 think we must have adult classes. Next winter, I mean 
 to have an adult Sunday School specifically. Ordina- 
 rily, we have had no school in winter. Last year, there 
 were a few voluntary adult classes, numbering about 
 seventy-five, and they went on admirably. 
 
 " I am to be better as soon as it grows cool, and then 
 I shall work, I trust. Every day, these six months, I 
 have been thinking about giving up. But I shall do no 
 such thing. If I am well, I have neither the right nor 
 the motive ; if sick, I lack the energy for such a step. 
 And though it would seem so beautiful to get time to
 
 MEMOIR. 73 
 
 recruit, physically and intellectually, yet is n't this idea 
 of putting one's self in a favorable position for self-cul- 
 ture an absurdity and a humbug, no less than a sinful, 
 devil-invented excuse for shirking duty ? 
 
 " How impossible it is for you to know the utter des- 
 olation of spirit that sometimes comes over me with 
 that word Home ! But my little boy begins to pull at my 
 heart, though I have strangely held back, resolved to 
 have no tie to life. It is dreadful to feel as if God had 
 plucked you up like a weed, and thrown you away. 
 These are not such words as I would fain utter to your 
 brotherly ear, so kind to listen that it makes me won- 
 der. But, God helping, you shall see me strong again 
 for life's labor, and not shrinking from its wisely-ap- 
 pointed mission, but girded as a pilgrim, ready to say, 
 ' Here am I, Lord, send me.' God bless you and yours !" 
 
 October 5. " Through the summer, I was fairly 
 dried up with the heat. The streams of thought were 
 thin and small as knitting-needles, and the wheels of my 
 intellectual factory were all still and motionless as the 
 sphinx, I mean, of course, the sphinx statue. I could 
 no more make a sermon than a tree. Now Caesar is 
 himself again ; and though the streams are still low, the 
 wheels will turn, and make fabrics ' after their kind.' 
 
 " I believe this is the blessedest parish in the world 
 for an inefficient man. It is so large and strong, it goes 
 alone. The Sunday School has got gloriously through 
 the season. Teachers' meetings well attended and sus- 
 tained, people come to church and listen splendidly ; 
 and the best of it is, that I can't claim the least credit 
 for it. I do flatter myself, that it is of some importance,
 
 74 MEMOIR. 
 
 that, nominally, they should have a minister ; but the 
 work does itself. 
 
 " I was riding into Boston in the omnibus, and 
 
 fell into conversation with a friend of mine about wealth. 
 I came out pretty strong on mammon-worship, and the 
 selfish and prodigal luxury of wealth. By and by a 
 man got out who had sat near me, and I inquired his 
 
 name. ' That is Mr. ,' said my friend ; 'just one of 
 
 those men you were berating, and doubtless thought you 
 were uttering strange doctrines.' The next day, I met 
 
 him again. ' I rode out,' said he, 'with Mr. last night, 
 
 and he inquired, the first thing, who you were. " He is 
 a little cracked in his intellect, is n't he ? I never heard 
 such views advanced in my life. It is idle to say a man 
 has no right to spend his money as he pleases. To 
 carry out such notions as his," continued he, " would be 
 to level all to one grade, and reduce society to chaos or a 
 savage state." Why,' says my friend, ' I think you mis- 
 understood him, if you think so. As to his being crack- 
 ed in intellect, when 1 remember that Galileo and Co- 
 lumbus, and a host of such men, were so charged in their 
 day, and St. Paul was thought insane by some, it be- 
 comes a serious question, when one differs from me, 
 whether it is he or I that is cracked.' Soon after, I met 
 a very intelligent and excellent lady, who lives in a 
 small country town, and, in the course of some conver- 
 sation with her, she said, ' It is one of the hardest things 
 in the world for me to define the limits of duty. For 
 instance, our neighbours are all poor, and we have al- 
 ways done without carpets and a good many such things, 
 because we did not want to be suspected of setting our-
 
 MEMOIR. 75 
 
 selves up above them, and because we would not have 
 our example encourage them in expenses they are not 
 able to incur. They do without such things contented- 
 ly, when they find that we do.' 
 
 " But to return. Nothing so impedes the spread of 
 Christianity as these two things : that constancy of La- 
 bor, that takes all a man's time and thoughts, and makes 
 him the merest machine, merely to get money ; and 
 that selfish love of Ease, that reckless and prodigal In- 
 dulgence, after a man has got wealth. The first kills 
 out the intellect, and the last petrifies the heart of a 
 man. It is the minister's office to rebuke both ; and if 
 he lends countenance to the last, how can he with any 
 consistency utter his word against the former ? I might 
 go on to show how the minister stands as a connecting 
 link between these two divided classes, and it is his prov- 
 ince to labor to bring them up side by side on the broad 
 level of Christian brotherhood 
 
 " It seems to me he should say, by word and exam- 
 ple, ' These are not the legitimate uses of money.' It 
 seems to me, that, with a somewhat stern simplicity of 
 living, he should discountenance these tendencies of the 
 times. At least, he should protect himself from the 
 charge of aristocracy, and the love of wealth and ease. 
 I know that an extreme here would fail of its designed 
 influence, and I confess I should n't know where to draw 
 the line for myself, still less for another. But with my 
 radical tendencies, you need n't be surprised to hear 
 that I have taken as literal duty the injunction not to lay 
 up treasures on earth, (thus far from necessity as well 
 as principle,) have forsworn carpets, and changed a very
 
 76 MEMOIR. 
 
 nice portrait-frame my conscience reproaches me for 
 buying last month, to one of plain painted pine ; and 
 made my house (to quote Emerson again) 'a temple of 
 the Furies of Lacedsemon, formidable and holy to all, 
 which none but a Spartan may enter, or so much as 
 behold.' " 
 
 December 2, 1847. " As to the general course 
 which you propose, I have not a word to say about it, 
 except this, that a topic of which you do not choose to 
 speak is not an ' interdicted ' one ; and still I should 
 say for myself, that I would preach nowhere, where by 
 tacit understanding any subject was ' interdicted,' by 
 stipulation or outward pressure, expressed or implied. 
 Your judgment of what is wisest and best is quite anoth- 
 er thing from being bound by others' judgment of what 
 is right or agreeable to them. 
 
 " Certainly I have not, any more than you, great 
 sympathy with N. E. Abolitionism. Still, it has its 
 mission to perform, to wit, the awakening of the 
 community to a sense of the evils of slavery. For it is 
 a fact lamentably true, that there are many here at the 
 North, who are not alive to the fact that it is either an 
 evil or a sin, who care nothing about it. When the 
 moral sense of the North is as decided and strong on 
 this subject as it is in England, its influence must be 
 powerfully felt. The Liberty party, too, is coming to be 
 respected as a political power. The South will be more 
 and more alarmed, more and more indignant, it may 
 be ; but she will discuss and agitate the subject, and the 
 moment discussion begins, then the end is plainly to be 
 seen : every conscientious man will be convinced of the
 
 MEMOIR. 77 
 
 sin, every clear-sighted man will see the inexpediency, 
 of slavery. As to local prejudice, and party acrimony, 
 arid sectional hatred, that is the veriest humbug. What 
 is the North ? or the anti-slavery party ? A mere 
 phantom of imagination, an abstract conception, that 
 (except in the persons of certain leaders) nobody can 
 make concrete. In the beginning of the temperance 
 movement, it was a ' sectarian thing,' a bitter and 
 cruel persecution of the poor drunkard. What has be- 
 come of all that outcry now ? The drunkard says it no 
 longer. So, let the South become interested in Aboli- 
 tionism, and she will thank the most rabid for helping to 
 open her eyes. The sinner converted under Orthodoxy 
 loved the man who painted his sin so darkly, and threat- 
 ened him with awful and endless damnation if he did 
 not forsake it. Say what you will about extravagance, 
 fanaticism, severity of judgment, exaggerated statement, 
 and tyranny of opinion, the world has always been re- 
 formed in this way and by these means ; and, for aught 
 I know, she always will require them. 
 
 " I have little faith in the measures, and still less sym- 
 pathy with the spirit, of Abolitionism. What, then, shall 
 I do, seeing that so much moral life and true feeling in 
 the community runs into that channel ? Shall I throw 
 cold water on it ? That were to injure my own influ- 
 ence, to deaden the moral sense now regnant, and to 
 be identified with the opponents of the whole reform. I 
 will not absolutely identify myself with the party. I 
 will even say that reforms are not the whole of Chris- 
 tianity, and may be conducted in an unchristian spirit ; 
 but I will be cautious how I complain even of the men
 
 78 MEMOIR. 
 
 engaged in this reform. Do not say I wrong the spirit 
 of Christianity by silent consent to such tremendous se- 
 verity of judgment. I do not doubt that many a slave- 
 holder is a better and truer man than myself; but that 
 ought not to lead me to lower my standard of Christian 
 obligation. For his own sake, though he were ten 
 times a Paul, I will say, In the light of Christianity 
 slave-holding is a monstrous crime against God and 
 man. If there are excuses, qualifications, exceptions, 
 I do not feel bound to make them. Still, so far as I 
 am concerned, I would speak of the sin itself, not of 
 the sinner. 
 
 " These are only transient phases of a great 
 
 movement, which will soon pass away. Already old- 
 organization assumes a higher moral tone, and is much 
 less rabid than it was. But the movement will go on. 
 I cannot stop it. God forbid I should hinder or oppose 
 it. I will rather share in it, and go with it as far as I 
 possibly can, for my own sake, lest it should crush 
 me, for its sake, that my more moderate word may 
 be as a rain-drop, now and then, to extinguish the burn- 
 ing grass-blade its lightnings have set on fire. It is n't 
 for you or me to do the dirty work, or fight the bloody 
 battle ; but it must be done and fought. A million of 
 Melancthons would not have brought about the Reforma- 
 {ion. That first company of the Apostles had been in- 
 complete without the Boanerges ; and John must preach 
 repentance before Jesus can proclaim the kingdom of 
 heaven. 
 
 " I am not startled at the idea of immediate, uncon- 
 ditional emancipation. It would probably take place
 
 MEMOIR. 79 
 
 in one State at a time ; why would it be less practi- 
 cable than in the British West Indies ? At any rate, 
 the way will certainly appear when there is a dispo- 
 sition to find it." 
 
 This long transcript of his reflections and mental 
 habits has thus been concluded, with the account 
 of himself with which he prefaces his autumn work, 
 and another, of a year's later date, which seems to 
 belong to the same connection. These very nearly 
 complete the record he has left of what was pe- 
 culiar or strongly personal in his plans of labor, in 
 his professional views, or in his experience. The 
 most full account of the period that succeeded will 
 be gathered from those passages 01 his discourses 
 (mostly belonging to that year) which are given in 
 another part of this volume. A long space will 
 therefore intervene in these memoirs, during which 
 he was slowly maturing the fruits of his brief but 
 crowded experience. With the exception of ill- 
 health and mental depression at intervals, he was 
 henceforth becoming able to receive a more cheer- 
 ful view of life, and the hope of a fresh field of 
 healthy activity and usefulness. 
 
 Meanwhile, busied with professional care, and 
 shrinking, as it were, from the free communication
 
 80 MEMOIR. 
 
 which he had so warmly welcomed and responded 
 to in the first season of his trial, he felt more strongly 
 the loneliness of spirit to which this had condemned 
 him. The weight of care pressed more heavily, 
 and was sustained with a less elastic mind. Some- 
 thing almost stern and ascetic in his idea of the 
 ethics of his profession has been already indicated, 
 very different from the cheerful, buoyant sentiment, 
 in which the aesthetic was largely mingled with the 
 practical, that marked the first period of his course. 
 In part, this change of feeling was deepened, in part 
 worn away, by time. He says of himself, at a later 
 date, " I have grown very old these three years. 
 Trying experience and isolation from sympathy have 
 made me brooding and anxious, habitually sad, and 
 habitually unconfiding and reserved. Crowding la- 
 bor and over-work have left me no time to replen- 
 ish, cramped and bound and smoke-dried me. I 
 have lost the genial vivacity and the fresh flow of 
 spontaneous and living thought, whatever of it I 
 once had. I expect and hope for little. I am a 
 severe judge, yet, after all, am free to confess that I 
 judge none so severely as myself. Yet still I do 
 suspect there is a heart left ; sometimes, agnosce 
 veteris vestigia jlammce. Sometimes over the hori-
 
 MEMOIR. 81 
 
 zon of my winter night flashes up an auroral redness, 
 that I fancy is the glowing morning of spring thought; 
 but that soon seems to pass away, the fitful glare of 
 meteoric or electric flame, cold and transient." 
 The return of hope, and the restored faculty of en- 
 joyment, appear in the description of his first visit 
 to the valley of the Connecticut, in the summer of 
 1847, with the chastened sadness of the retrospect 
 that follows it : 
 
 " The way was charming, and, for about ten miles, 
 along the banks of Miller's river, perfectly enchanting. 
 The road winds between the river and a high hill, run- 
 ning a long distance through thick woods, where the 
 delicate white flowers of the white-wood (not unlike a 
 sweetbrier rose in shape and size, and growing six to 
 ten feet high) mingle with the rich pink of the wild 
 honey-suckle, with which the air is fragrant. But O, 
 the valley of the Connecticut ! you never saw, and 
 cannot conceive, anything like it. The great, still, sober 
 river, moving on its calm, beneficent course, like some 
 noble and divine soul through life, the high hills that 
 swell up, range after range, in the distance, the acres 
 upon acres that make that fertile valley, laid out in 
 square plots, and separated by cart-paths, but nowhere 
 fenced, the fringe of shrubbery that adorns its banks 
 without concealing its beauty, (like a fair face seen 
 through a green veil,) all this passes description. What 
 with this, and the fact that I saw it for the first time, in 
 6
 
 82 MEMOIR. 
 
 the very freshness of spring, what with the beauty 
 and hospitable welcome of a kind and free country 
 farmer's home, what with the new spring buds of hope 
 and promise starting in the wintry heart, these four 
 days were such a paradise as it never seemed that Dearth 
 could bring again to me, and have left a picture in my 
 mind, and a host of memories in my soul, fresh and 
 bright and fragrant as Eden itself." 
 
 December 28, 1847. " It is startling and strange, 
 as one sits down to think of friends, and count over 
 their names one by one, to mark how, year by year, it 
 seems as if the number grew smaller and smaller, of 
 those toward whom you feel a near, and warm, and 
 trusting affection. Some are parted from us by that 
 veil, through which, thin as it is, our mortal eyes may 
 not, and our spiritual vision is not yet pure enough to 
 look ; some have gone away from us, and are lost in the 
 inextinguishable mass of the world's swelling tide, that 
 ebbs and flows around us, so indifferent, and so chill, 
 that very often we forget that it is made up of hearts 
 like our own ; some we ourselves have outgrown ; and 
 toward some we have suffered our affection to grow coid 
 and die out, and now, if we would gladly rekindle it, we 
 know not how. And then, too, it is common experience, 
 though it ought not to be, that, as one grows older, he is 
 less ready to form new attachments ; and what with 
 scanty opportunities of intercourse with a particular in- 
 dividual, and what with his diminished facility of affec- 
 tion, and perhaps an increased distrust and reserve, he 
 really does form fewer and fewer real friendships year 
 by year. I have felt this in my own experience, not so
 
 MEMOIR. 83 
 
 much, perhaps, from advance in life's journey, as that 
 the events these few years have brought have made me 
 more reserved, and shut me out from others. I have 
 been thinking much of this lately, and have felt more and 
 more inclined to fall back upon old friends, and to renew 
 intercourse with some from whom duties at home, and 
 accidental circumstances, have kept me more separated 
 than I should have chosen, or it was well for me to be. 
 And so I have been more drawn towards Dorchester of 
 late than for a long time : the old home memories have 
 been reviving within me, and the faces of old friends 
 have had a more prominent place in my thoughts. 
 
 " I have been conscious of this feeling a great many 
 times during the last few months. And that made me 
 feel very deeply, the other day, the assurance of contin- 
 ued interest, and kind remembrance, implied in your 
 present. I was touched with the thoughtful kindness 
 that remembered me across the waters. And then such 
 a feeling of your long and valued friendship came up in 
 my heart, that it seemed to shoot a bridge over the gulf 
 of a three years' absence, and a throng of past memo- 
 ries rushed into my thoughts that I could hardly repress, 
 and ought not to have tried. If I had been true to my 
 own feeling, I should have put away the picture, and sat 
 down, and looked at the picture of the Past. 
 
 " These three years have been longer than all my 
 life before. Their recollections have crowded the 
 thought of that previous life out of my mind. But more 
 and more the earlier days come back. If your experi- 
 ence is like mine, you have found life made up more of 
 the memory of the past, and the hope of the future, than
 
 84 MEMOIR. 
 
 the enjoyment of the present moment. Yet I can hard- 
 ly think it was meant to be so. It seems to me we 
 ought to strive to live as much as is possible in the pres- 
 ent, for the duty and the action that always put in a 
 claim for now. Still I thank God, whose mercy has 
 given to man this threefold life of memory, of action, 
 and of anticipation. For often, in the weakness and in- 
 ability of the present, we turn our feet backward, and 
 with thankful tears retrace the life of the past. We 
 pause to repose in our weariness on the green and sun- 
 ny slopes of childhood ; we comfort our fainting spirits 
 with memories, which are not the less dear and precious 
 because they are sad. And so there are times when 
 we lean, when we must lean, on the future, when, in 
 conscious weakness or despondency of spirit, our com- 
 fort is, that there is a to-morrow after to-day ; and we 
 turn away from the present, and raise our eyes to the 
 God and the heaven above us. 
 
 " It could not but be, that, isolated from real sympa- 
 thy and companionship, I have lived, in these last two 
 years, very much in the past, more than was right or 
 well, perhaps, and yet I am not sure. Now, I am look- 
 ing forward to the future, not with great confidence 
 or high expectation, but with more of hope than I 
 thought I should ever have in life again. 
 
 " But I trust, if I am permitted to have a home again, 
 I shall use its privileges more faithfully, and less selfish- 
 ly, shall build up in it a divine life, and sanctify 
 it as a school of teaching for the great Home to which 
 we look. And so, to speak truly, I do anticipate more 
 than I have ever anticipated, only in a different way."
 
 MEMOIR. 85 
 
 Another indication of the more firm and hopeful 
 spirit with which he looked forward to the next 
 year's duties, is found in the discourse he preached 
 on the third and last anniversary of his settlement. 
 As a summing up of the past, and anticipation of 
 the future, this seems the fittest place to insert a few 
 passages from it. 
 
 " When I was settled as your preacher, I determined 
 to begin at once by uttering without reserve whatever 
 seemed to me the truth. I determined also to confine 
 myself to no narrow range of topics, but to speak on 
 whatever subject seemed to me important or useful. To 
 my mind, that alone is Christian preaching, above all, 
 useful preaching, which applies Christianity to the 
 thoughts, opinions, and practices of the present day. I 
 have had no temptation to keep anything back. I am 
 inclined to think that the temptation has been the rather 
 to abuse the freedom so willingly granted. If I have 
 seemed to any of you to be severe in judgment, or dog- 
 matic in opinion, or one-sided and narrow in my range 
 of subjects, you have failed in your duty to me, as well 
 as in the maintenance of your own rights, not to re- 
 prove me for it. 
 
 " Next, the other great means of ministerial influ- 
 ence, parochial visiting, a subject which has cost 
 me more labor, more anxiety, and more regret, than 
 anything connected with my public duties. I am per- 
 fectly willing to say, that I have not, in this part of my 
 duty, fulfilled my own intention or expectations ; and I
 
 86 MEMOIR. 
 
 feel that many of you are warranted in complaining that 
 your minister is a stranger. If I have seemed negligent 
 of anybody, it was accidental, and not of design. I will 
 not plead for indulgence, because I have received it ; 
 but I will express my hope of doing more in this respect 
 in the future. 
 
 " And now, in reviewing these three years, I confess, 
 I cannot count up any very tangible results of my min- 
 istry. I have preached much on the institutions of 
 Christianity, but our Church has received few acces- 
 sions ; and the ordinances of baptism and communion 
 areas much neglected, perhaps increasingly so. I 
 have endeavoured to urge you to begin, and to live, a 
 spiritual life ; but very few have spoken to me of spirit- 
 ual purposes and aims, hopes, fears, doubts, or strug- 
 gles. Sometimes, in hours of desponding, I would have 
 given much to have had, from a single soul, the expres- 
 sion of a confiding sympathy, or the assurance that some 
 word of mine had been to it the germ of a diviner life, 
 or the means of quickening influence. It is not possi- 
 ble that I should look back on my three years' minis- 
 try, without finding many things to regret, many duties 
 neglected, errors of inexperience, mistakes of judgment, 
 follies and sins that bring a double penalty, weakening 
 my influence while they retard my own onward prog- 
 ress. I know, too, that, very often, the opportunity of 
 salutary counsel has been lost ; very often the word of 
 sympathy, that I would gladly have spoken, has been 
 withheld, because I knew not how to say it ; very often 
 I have failed through neglect or indolence to minister 
 comfort to the sick, or to cheer the aged with friendly 

 
 MEMOIR. 87 
 
 words. Think you, the minister's conscience does not 
 count up all these things, a longer and darker array 
 than all the gossip or the scandal of a parish could bring, 
 the true and the false together ? 
 
 "But, if I have not done all you might have expect- 
 ed, yet you have excused many things, have borne 
 many deficiencies patiently. If you have not expressed 
 much in words of sympathy and kind feeling, you have 
 given satisfactory evidence that you felt it. If I have 
 come to be personally intimate with few, I stand on 
 pleasant terms with all, and have received nothing but 
 kindness and courtesy from every one with whom I 
 have had intercourse. If I have brought but few to 
 adopt my opinions, I have learned how kindly and toler- 
 antly they are listened to by those who dissent from 
 them. I feel that I am gaining a position among you, 
 and coming to stand nearer to you. You have sum- 
 mered me and wintered me ; and such as I am, you 
 know me, for better or worse. 
 
 " And I will say, that I am looking forward on my 
 future prospects of usefulness with more hope than at 
 any preceding period since I came among you. The 
 first popularity of a young preacher is a dangerous and 
 deceitful thing, variable and treacherous as the wind : 
 no man knows whence it cometh or whither it goeth. 
 I have outlived that dangerous period, and still have rea- 
 son to believe, that, in as great a degree as is ordinarily 
 to be expected, my services are satisfactory to you. I 
 place a reliance upon the fact now, which ought never 
 to be placed on any sudden breeze of popular applause. 
 There are other things to make the first three years of
 
 00 MEMOIR. 
 
 a minister's life peculiarly trying, his own inexperi- 
 ence ; the tremendous pressure of labor, new and ardu- 
 ous ; the crushing demand upon his intellectual re- 
 sources. I believe that I have passed the most labo- 
 rious and trying period of life. Henceforward, I can 
 better meet the demand which custom has inured one 
 to, and shall be able to perform the same amount of la- 
 bor with more ease. 
 
 " And hardly, in the common course of Providence, 
 may the next three years be expected to bring experi- 
 ences so trying, or circumstances so unfavorable. With 
 firmer health, I trust to do more ; with less to make me 
 anxious and desponding, I can labor more successfully. 
 You are less likely to misunderstand my preaching, or 
 my character. I am looking forward, then, to-day, with 
 much hope ; with expectations of greater success and 
 usefulness in the future ; with larger plans of action, 
 and resolutions of greater diligence and fidelity. I have, 
 during the past year, been much more away than my 
 own choice, or my convictions of a minister's duty, 
 would warrant. Partly, I have found this necessary for 
 my health, and partly it was to be attributed to the fact 
 that all my relations of earlier affection and of kindred 
 lay elsewhere. In the future, I hope and mean to dwell 
 more among my own people. I trust to do much more 
 in the coming year, in the way of parochial visiting, 
 more in the course of education, and in behalf of our 
 schools ; and do confidently expect to labor more effi- 
 ciently, to accomplish more and better things, than in the 
 past. You have borne with the first years of greenness 
 and inexperience : you have a right to reap, and to ex-
 
 MEMOIR. 89 
 
 * 
 
 peci the riper fruits. With thankfulness for the past, 
 and with hope for the future, I would dedicate to you, 
 this day, all that God gives me, hereafter, ability to do." 
 
 Some extracts from a private letter complete the 
 record of the hopes and feelings of this season. In 
 particular, and owing to the circumstances under 
 which he had given religious guidance and counsel 
 to inquiring minds of less experience than his, and 
 of an active, questioning sort, the alternative of radi- 
 cal and conservative tendencies seems to have come 
 before him in a new form, and accounts for the 
 somewhat exaggerated statement of the succeeding 
 passage. 
 
 January 29, 1848. " I cannot but feel the justice of 
 all you say ; but consider, that the public standard of 
 rectitude is one fixed by arbitrary decision, and pre- 
 served by the tyranny of moral indignation. Is there 
 any help for this ? Must not one say, This is right in 
 God's name, and get the majority to shout it, and to put 
 down by force of shouting the dissenting voices ? It is 
 perfectly true, that this is n't resting the public moral- 
 ity on the internal convictions, and the satisfied reason 
 of individuals ; but is n't the world to be ruled this good 
 while to come from without ? It may not be a sin per 
 se to drink a glass of wine, but it were heresy to say so, 
 and a wrong to society too ; so I am thankful that to 
 me it is a sin per se. Where would the temperance 
 movement have been, without the dictation of authority,
 
 yO MEMOIR. 
 
 
 
 the tyranny of public odium, and the penalties of legis- 
 lative enactment, that have helped it on ? You will 
 think me a downright heathen, say so, an you will, 
 but I have lost my faith in the public intelligence and 
 the public virtue. I believe more and more in machin- 
 eries, institutions, despotisms. I am growing con- 
 servative, and almost misanthropic, turning round the 
 first corner of old age, when prejudices stiffen, and 
 opinions fix themselves, and the sidelong course turns 
 the eyes backward more and more. I am sick of liber- 
 ty and individualism, should like in my modesty to 
 dictate laws to the world, and enforce them, am dis- 
 posed to think that the world is a strange place, the 
 worst place I was ever in. 
 
 Sunday Night. " I find among the difficulties of 
 preaching these two : First, a reluctance to dogmatize, 
 and, second, a wish to preserve the authority and influ- 
 ence of truth. Sometimes, in a positive statement, one 
 is conscious that his own faith is not so unquestioning as 
 his assertion, or else he feels that the assertion is not 
 true without qualification and exceptions. On the other 
 hand, if he suggests the doubt, or inserts the limitation, 
 many minds will take it as an entire negation. What is 
 the solution of the difficulty ? 
 
 " It seems sad that all around us is so changing. I 
 am too much impressed with it. I have too little confi- 
 dence in the future. Sometimes I can hardly throw off 
 the feeling that my own life is going to be very brief. 
 It is sad only in this point of view, to think of its being 
 so, that the work of life is not done, nor its aims realiz- 
 ed. I would fain do more, and live better. And so,
 
 MEMOIR. 91 
 
 ordinarily, I really trust, anticipate But I was 
 
 going to say how strong with me, of late, had been the 
 impulse to cling to the friends that are left me, and how 
 I have determined, these months past, to keep up my 
 relations of sympathy and intercourse with all to whom 
 I stand near now. For I woke up, one day, to the fact 
 that I was almost alone in the world, for real com- 
 munion and hearty affection, isolated and desolate, al- 
 most. And so your words could not have come to me 
 more seasonably and welcome. I take them thankfully, 
 in all their exaggeration of my merits, and to all their 
 tenderness of trust and fraternity my heart answers 
 back, ' God love and bless you ! ' " 
 
 His marriage (to Miss Phila A. Field) took place 
 February 21, 1848. " Shall I build again," he says, 
 " the sacred walls of home, whose sudden fall had 
 left me surrounded with a heap of ruin ? Will the 
 old Eden of love and thought and hope come back 
 again ? I feel as if it might. I need not say I am 
 happy, happier than I ever trusted or dared hope 
 to be again." This new light of joy is "his rose 
 of dawn, his star of night, the spring sun smiling 
 over the wintry snow, and lighting it up with beau- 
 ty." And, blended as it was with all his thought 
 and wish and expectation of longer and better cause 
 of duty, it shed a promise on this opening season, 
 as if he had a right to look forward now to the
 
 92 MEMOIR. 
 
 complete fulfilment of a hope so long deferred, 
 " usefulness and a happy home." 
 
 But the tone of his system seems to have been 
 permanently depressed ; and the effort he made to 
 meet the pledge given in his discourse at the open- 
 ing of the year was a vain struggle against physical 
 causes too powerful for him to control. At the 
 same time, too, he was not free from mental embar- 
 rassment and dissatisfaction. The great question, 
 as to the nature and grounds of authority in religious 
 belief, opened more and more deeply before his 
 mind ; and the last letter of his, expressing strong 
 interest in any point of intellectual belief, contains 
 the earnest statement of this, with the hope that 
 others would give the satisfactory answer which he 
 found it so difficult to give for himself. This point 
 of intellectual or speculative dissatisfaction may help 
 account, perhaps, for the morbid and exaggerated 
 tone which may have been remarked in much of 
 what he said during these last few months. True 
 to the sentiment of duty " as the sea's tidal swell 
 to the sovereign moon," this conflict of feelings 
 and sympathies and duties, together with increasing 
 bodily ill-health, would do much to derange the har- 
 mony of his mind, even while his heart went so
 
 MEMOIK. 93 
 
 fondly back to its old affections, and was loyal as 
 ever to its early aspiration. 
 
 May 10, 1848. "In the mystic whirl of life, I 
 am once again brought side by side with you. Trifles 
 light as air rule us, and my little boy, in his simple 
 wonder, is a daily reminder of you. I remember a 
 peculiar tone and manner in which, long ago, you used 
 to ejaculate, ' Why ! ' Insensibly I caught it, and now 
 Willie, whose organ of imitation is large, comes out 
 every now and then with a ' Why ! ' exactly in your 
 way. And whenever he does, it carries me back to 
 Divinity Hall, whose recollections grow dearer as its 
 scenes recede into the background of memory ; and 
 away to you, not at W , but wherever in the spirit- 
 ual world you happen to be. Probably, we are very 
 seldom where we are ; and I, of late, though seeming 
 to be here in Leominster, have been a very Wandering 
 Jew, a Noah's dove, let loose in uneasy, and, as yet, 
 unavailing search of the olive-branch. 
 
 " I want time to settle a multitude of questions, that 
 lie so deep as to render most things that I say in my 
 preaching half a matter of doubt. I am in a transition 
 stage, and, for the present, held in solution. Mean- 
 while, my preaching grows strongly conservative, partly 
 because I have learned to dread for myself the cutting 
 loose from old moorings, and partly from the feeling 
 lhat negations are very poor food. Sincere idolatry is 
 better than bare, cold iconoclasm. But, pray, are you 
 never oppressed with the shame and uneasiness that 
 come of doing what is not true to your own feeling
 
 94 MEMOIR. 
 
 and conviction ? It is a fearful problem to me, how I 
 am to do my work for others, and keep clear of sham 
 and cant. 
 
 " Intellectually, my position is equally unsatisfactory. 
 I have gone on these three years in ruinous mental hab- 
 its, my time frittered, my mind enervated, through 
 the occupation of little things. My preaching has not 
 lost power, that I know of, over others ; yet it seems to 
 me it must, for I am sensible of its growing puerile and 
 stale. The result of my life is bad habits of study, 
 loss of memory, of force of thought, and conversational 
 power. I know I am capable of better things, .that 
 I have in me a higher ministry. I am galled, fretted, 
 unhappy. Still, I don't know how to do anything for 
 myself. ' The field that has fed its owner's guests dur- 
 ing the summer will yield but scanty returns in harvest 
 time.' This retribution of wasted resources is already 
 begun, and growing worse, and harder to bear, every 
 day. Then, both mentally and physically, I am suffer- 
 ing the results of high-pressure work. The inspiration 
 which nature did not give, I have sought to supply from 
 artificial sources. Fed from false fires, its fitful flash 
 is going out in smoke, as devil's gold, kept over night, 
 turns to sulphur in the morning. I suffer, as Prome- 
 theus did, pangs of the liver for stealing the fire of the 
 gods, but have not his compensation, the thought that 
 I have made a man. I need not say, you will have 
 premised it long ago, that I am nervous, dyspeptic, 
 blue. I have made up my mind to write no more ser- 
 mons after next Sunday, till I am better, and, if I can't 
 meet and master the demons, to ask a dismission the 
 first of July."
 
 MEMOIR. 95 
 
 I have preferred to present the whole of this pain- 
 ful and sensitive self-accusation, so as to do entire 
 justice to the state of mind in which he felt himself, 
 at last, forced to renounce the position he had held 
 so long, and through so heavy trial. In his moral 
 judgments he had always included the neglect and 
 violation of physical laws ; and his continued and 
 increasing ill-health he attributed far more to his 
 own fault than any candid judge will allow. His 
 habits were, in general, simple, and not in defiance 
 of the laws of the system, except in case of ex- 
 posure and over-work. The use of tea was the 
 only custom in this regard with which he reproached 
 himself, and that not of the more deleterious kinds. 
 This custom he had deliberately resumed, after a 
 painful effort to discontinue it, with the conviction 
 (right or not) that it was his duty not to refuse the 
 support which he seemed absolutely to need. To 
 show the sort of compulsion that sometimes drove 
 him to over-action and excitement of the brain, may 
 be mentioned an instance, when, after a week's very 
 irritating and harassing care, his second sermon being 
 nearly finished at eight on Saturday evening, a man 
 came to announce that a funeral service would be 
 held in the church next day ; and the whole labor
 
 96 MEMOIR. 
 
 of the writing must be done over again. A cool 
 and dispassionate judgment will, no doubt, censure 
 the kindling of any " artificial fire " ; but where 
 there is consciousness of work to be done, and the 
 painful sense of a system inadequate to meet it, the 
 stronger conscience will crowd the weaker out of 
 sight. This is not meant as an apology for any 
 habit that permanently depresses the bodily and 
 nervous system, but as a vindication of one whose 
 first thought of duty (exacted by the strict standard 
 of his own and the public judgment) is so para- 
 mount and imperative, that he " gives his body to 
 be buried," slowly, by the artificial fire his need has 
 kindled, while yet his other conscience is shrinking 
 and protesting before it all the while. 
 
 The .short remainder of the story is told in the 
 annexed series of extracts : 
 
 June 13. " My present impression is, that I shall ask 
 a dismission. My plan is, to go to Dorchester, and 
 spend a few months in study and work, with such tran- 
 sient preaching as I can find ; then, after this lay-by of 
 from six months to a year, to find a quiet and not too 
 laborious place. Convinced as I am that this is best for 
 me, I am, after all, a little doubtful if I have resolution 
 enough to carry it out. The obvious advantages I need 
 not sum up. If I should stay, the probability is, that
 
 MEMOIR. 97 
 
 I shall lose the best years of life, and cut short my pe- 
 riod of labor, without accomplishing my object after all. 
 I shall be obliged to leave, at last, worn out in body, 
 exhausted and stultified in mental resources and power. 
 But, this is home to me, and I have no other ; en- 
 deared by all sorts of local associations, and sacred 
 memories, and personal attachments. Then, I know 
 the freshness of interest in a place and people can 
 never be quite such again, though the attachment might, 
 in time, become equally strong; and I hate the principle 
 of frequent rupture, so common and so disastrous both 
 to minister and people. Finally, and chief, I will say> 
 in all sincerity, that, feeble and unsatisfactory as my 
 labors are here, I cannot now put my eye upon the 
 available man who would do more or better, on the 
 whole. I will not leave my people to scatter as sheep 
 having no shepherd. I am bound to stay by them till 
 they find somebody to fill my place. By that time, the 
 autumn will have come, and, renewed by comparative 
 rest and cooler weather, I should have strength to work 
 through another winter. You see how vacillating and 
 bothered I am. Yet my judgment is clear that I ought 
 to go." 
 
 June 15. "You have several impressions that 
 false, and that I wish to contradict. First, that I am a 
 martyr to my own devoted labors. If it were so, I 
 should be content to die, though I should not glory in 
 what would still be a folly and a sin. I am simply the 
 culprit of nature, suffering the penalty of violated laws. 
 It is n't that I have done so much, or worked so self- 
 forgetfully, Heaven knows. I cannot lay that flattering 
 7
 
 98 MEMOIR. 
 
 unction to my soul. I have worked on high-pressure, 
 excessively and unreasonably sometimes, to make up 
 for indolence and neglect at other times. Please say 
 to all inquiring friends, that I am neither a saint nor a 
 martyr, but simply a weak and sinful dyspeptic. Then, 
 as to my people, a more generous, liberal, considerate, 
 patient, forbearing, yea, long-suffering parish, Christen- 
 dom does n't hold. You ought to know that, by this 
 time." 
 
 July 3. "I shall probably make no more exchanges 
 this summer. I read my request for a dismission, yester- 
 day. Heaven knows I have no wish to leave Worces- 
 ter county or my own people ; but I was breaking 
 down under the futility of attempting to do what I could 
 not, and what, for all my efforts, was half undone." 
 
 July 7. "I am glad of what you say about the step 
 I have taken. I hope none of the brethren will say 
 anything else. It has cost me enough not to be both- 
 ered by being told that it was a mistake. I, at least, 
 am perfectly clear about it as a matter of judgment, 
 and have no misgivings, saving and except the prob- 
 lem that chiefly haunts us now, where my people are 
 to find a man. 
 
 " The parish will decide the matter on Monday. I 
 have not much doubt that they will let me go, not 
 because they wish me to, but because they know I think 
 it is best. I am not in such sorry plight as to justify 
 the demand from my present condition merely. I shall 
 be in preaching order hereafter, I trust, and well as 
 ever by the first of October. I am gaining strength 
 every day. But this has been my experience now
 
 MEMOIR. 
 
 99 
 
 these four summers, is likely to be for the next four. 
 It is mean and miserable to be disabled thus in the very 
 cream of the year. My plan is, to recruit six months 
 or a year ; then get a smaller place, and, with my 
 stock of sermons, start fairly, with some reserved power 
 and a prudent expenditure of strength." 
 
 Dorchester, July 15. "I suppose you were surprised 
 at my resignation, perhaps hurt, that I had said noth- 
 ing to you about it. The fact is, I had scarcely con- 
 sulted anybody ; partly because it was unpleasant to 
 me to talk about, and partly because it was a matter in 
 which nobody was so competent to advise as I was to 
 decide for myself. It was not, however, a hasty, but a 
 long-meditated, step. My judgment was, and is, per- 
 fectly clear about it, as the best thing to do. Not that 
 my health is more impaired than in former years, but 
 that every summer brings me down ; and thus, for all 
 effective labor, the very best part of the year is lost. It 
 is a serious detriment to the parish, and, what with over- 
 work, and the consciousness of much undone, is wear- 
 ing me out. The parish have thrown the decision back 
 into my hands, and the whole matter is doubtful and 
 undetermined as ever. If my judgment dictates one 
 course, my feelings counsel another. There are a 
 thousand reasons why I should stay, among which these 
 are prominent : my own strong local attachments, the 
 wishes of the people, the difficulty of finding a substi- 
 tute, and the hope that I may be able, after a year or 
 two, to meet the demands of the place better. At pres- 
 ent, the balance in my own mind stands in perfect equi- 
 poise The probability is, that I shall stay till 
 
 next spring."
 
 100 MEMOIR. 
 
 August 14. " It is really too bad. Here I have been 
 pining in solitude and idleness a whole week. What a 
 rare pleasure to have received a visit from you ! Now 
 I must go to Leominster, and to-morrow to Northfield, 
 where my wife has been for a week. I cannot post- 
 pone it, because she expects me.. I stay at N. a fort- 
 night or longer, preaching my farewell at Leominster 
 the first Sunday in September. About the middle of 
 Sept., I expect to be at housekeeping in my father's 
 house here. So I shall expect to see you, I hope a 
 good deal. Can you not be present at the Sept. Asso- 
 ciation at Fitchburg? 
 
 " I am slowly recovering health and strength, and 
 have distinct and brave plans for the future, which I 
 cannot stop to detail. 
 
 " Love to et al. 
 
 " Yours, affectionately, 
 
 " H. WITHINGTON." 
 
 The committee to which was referred his letter 
 of resignation reported, that, in consideration of the 
 enfeebled state of his system, and the little hope of 
 a permanent recovery so long as his connection 
 with the parish should continue, " it would there- 
 fore seem to be the dictate of wisdom and prudence 
 to comply at once with the deliberate judgment of 
 our pastor, who best knows, by experience, the 
 amount of labor required to be done, and the meas- 
 ure of strength required to its full performance." In
 
 MEMOIR. 101 
 
 accordance with this report, his request for a dis- 
 mission was granted, July 31 ; and it was " voted 
 unanimously, to continue his salary to him till the 
 first day of November next." And so ended his 
 official connection with his church. 
 
 As the appropriate conclusion of this record of 
 his personal labors, I transcribe the closing portion 
 of his farewell discourse, delivered on the 3d of 
 September : 
 
 "And now let me counsel you to remember, that, in 
 all that relates to the great subject of which I have spok- 
 en, you have your part to do. The institutions of Chris- 
 tianity depend upon you. If you are called, as I trust 
 you will not be, to pass some months with a changing 
 and uncertain ministry, do not on this account absent 
 yourselves from the Sunday service. Feel rather that 
 the obligation rests upon you more strongly, to be regu- 
 lar and constant in your attendance. It is of mo*re im 
 portance that the fire should be kept burning upon the 
 altar of the sanctuary, than that any favorite of yours 
 should minister at that altar. The institution is more 
 than the preacher. 
 
 " I need not say to you, when again you have settled 
 a minister, give him freedom, attention, power, cooper- 
 ation. I need not say, that all his usefulness depends as 
 much upon you as upon him. But this let me say, for 
 his sake and yours. Give him your sympathy and con- 
 fidence. Open to him your minds and hearts. Entrust
 
 102 MEMOIR. 
 
 him with your spiritual experience, your aims and strug- 
 gles, your difficulties and doubts. You will thus most 
 effectually aid and encourage him in his labors. Thus 
 will he be better enabled to understand and to meet 
 your wants, and secure the best influence over you, 
 when you have come near to him in friendship and con- 
 fidence. Thus you will bestow upon him the greatest 
 pleasure, and the highest reward of his efforts. Do not 
 wait for him to make the first advances, but open your- 
 selves the way to freedom of intercourse, and real com- 
 munion of mind and spirit. 
 
 " There is nothing more disheartening to the minis- 
 ter, than, month after month, and year after year, to 
 have little or no evidence that his preaching is felt. I 
 do not mean that he needs to have it commended and 
 admired. This mere superficial praise of his ability is 
 very often an insult to his motives, and a wound to his 
 spiritual sensibility. It is worth something, of course, 
 to know that his pulpit services are acceptable. It is 
 infinitely more, to know that they are profitable to his 
 hearers. Do not leave him to doubt of this. Do not 
 impose upon him the wearying labor of visiting you at 
 your homes, to watch in vain for an opportunity of com- 
 ing near to you, or of introducing some theme of con- 
 versation more profitable than the iterated trivialities of 
 common intercourse. Not that you are to be always 
 possessed with the idea that he is a minister, and must 
 be treated differently from others because he is. Meet 
 him as a man and a friend. Meet him with freedom 
 and confidence. And, without trying to talk on sober 
 or religious subjects as matters of duty or propriety, (a
 
 MEMOIR. 103 
 
 most constraining and profitless attempt,) if you have 
 any spiritual vitality in you, any difficulty that asks 
 counsel, any sentiment that seeks utterance, any trouble 
 that craves sympathy, give him this proof of your trust 
 and regard, that you be willing to express it to him. 
 
 " I leave you, as I found you, a united, peaceful, and 
 church-going people. I thank God for that. 
 
 " I have said little of my own ministry, but it is not to 
 be supposed that I have been able to forget myself, or the 
 fact that I stand for the last time in this pulpit as its ac- 
 credited organ. Much of past experience, much of 
 deep feeling, much that I would gladly say, crowds 
 upon me. 
 
 " Of my labors and their results I will not speak. My 
 stay has been too short, my work too much broken in 
 upon by experiences of ill-health and trial, to warrant 
 it. I am too sensible of my own deficiencies and fail- 
 ures in duty, to have the right to calculate on great ac- 
 complishments, or even to say I have done what I could. 
 I cannot but feel that mine has been, to some extent, a 
 baffled, a defeated, and an unsuccessful ministry. And 
 yet I should not utter my real feeling, and certainly I 
 should do you injustice, not to speak of it with satisfac- 
 tion and with thankfulness. With all its unrealized 
 hopes, its unaccomplished aims, its unfavorable aspects, 
 and acknowledged imperfections, I do not regard it as a 
 failure. I trust, in your fidelity to the privileges of 
 Christian institutions and the light of Christian truth, 
 that my humble ministrations have not been profitless. 
 What any minister could say of acknowledgment to any 
 people, I can say truthfully to you. Much have I to
 
 104 MEMOIK. 
 
 acknowledge of your generosity as a people and as in- 
 dividuals, your patience, your candor, your charitable 
 allowances for defects, your kindness and regard. 
 
 " To surrender the increased means of usefulness of 
 nearly four years of acquaintance and experience, to 
 leave a home endeared by so many memories of joy 
 and sorrow, to break away from all the personal attach- 
 ments and the local associations that bind me to the 
 people and the place, this, as you know, it has cost me 
 a long struggle to decide upon. Very gladly would 
 I have spent my life here, where in the freshness of 
 hope I began my labors as a preacher of the Gospel. 
 
 " But it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps, 
 nor is it for him to question the wisdom that is leading 
 him. And I leave you not in discouragement, but in 
 faith and hope, hope for myself, that I shall have 
 strength and opportunity to fulfil elsewhere a higher 
 ministry, through the experience and discipline I have 
 had among you, hope for you too, that another, strong- 
 er in health and in ability, may lead you onward to 
 higher attainments in the Christian life of thought and 
 of love, of usefulness and devotion. 
 
 " Wherever we dwell in this world of time, the same 
 heavens are over us, and the same benignant presence 
 is around us, a guide and a protection. However apart 
 our lives may lie henceforth, the sympathy of friendly 
 regard, of common thoughts and aims, and of Christian 
 faith and aspiration, will, I trust, unite me with many 
 among you. In the pleasant memories, and the kindly 
 affections, and the earnest prayers of my heart, you will 
 always hold a place.
 
 MEMOIR. 105 
 
 " And now may all good gifts abound unto you. The 
 faith and the spirit of Jesus abide with you, sanctifying 
 your hearts and your homes. God Almighty keep and 
 bless you, in joy and in sorrow, in time and eternity. 
 FAREWELL ! " 
 
 On Friday, the 15th of September,* he removed 
 with his wife and child to Dorchester. Having an 
 engagement to preach at Taunton the coming Sun- 
 day, feeling unwell, he went to Boston on Saturday, 
 to procure a substitute. Not succeeding in this, he 
 was obliged to set off himself for that place. On 
 Monday he returned, by the cars, as far as Roxbury, 
 and from there, failing of the stage, he was compelled 
 to make his way home on foot, through the wet and 
 rain. On reaching home, he began to complain of 
 increasing illness, to remove which he resorted to his 
 accustomed remedies. The next day, and the day 
 following, being no better, a physician was sent for. 
 His complaints had now begun to assume the appear- 
 ance of fever. From this time he grew weaker and 
 weaker, his stomach refusing almost all nourishment; 
 so that his friends, becoming anxious for his situa- 
 
 * The subjoined account of his sickness and death is taken 
 almost wholly, word for word, from the account given me by 
 one of his near relatives at the time.
 
 106 MEMOIR. 
 
 tion, consulted other physicians, whose opinion was 
 less favorable than had been hoped. 
 
 There were times when he expressed the convic- 
 tion that his Master had yet some more work for him 
 to do. Feeling, however, that the result was uncer- 
 tain, he early embraced the opportunity, from day to 
 day, as he felt strong enough and in the mood, to 
 make his will, and settle his business affairs, so as to 
 leave little to be done by others in case of his death. 
 Being asked, on one occasion, if he would like to 
 know the opinion of his physicians respecting his 
 case, he replied, " Yes." Being told that he was 
 thought not likely to live, he looked up with a smile, 
 and said, " I am ready." Apparently, his mind was 
 much enfeebled during his sickness, his bodily and 
 mental powers very much depressed, and his frame 
 nervously irritable ; but what manifestations there 
 were of mind and feeling showed that all was right 
 within. .He seemed perfectly aware of his condition, 
 and spoke of dying with the utmost composure and 
 tranquillity. One incident afforded him particular 
 pleasure. His former Sunday School teachers and 
 scholars, wishing to give him some token of their 
 affection and respect, presented him with a hand- 
 some, richly-bound Bible. When the gift was hand-
 
 MEMOIR. 107 
 
 ed to him, he looked at it, and said, u They do, then, 
 have some affection for me." 
 
 For three or four weeks from the commencement 
 of his sickness, his friends continued to cherish 
 hopes of his recovery ; but now symptoms of a 
 more alarming character began to show themselves, 
 paroxysms of chill and fever, accompanied on 
 one occasion with delirium, which, in the opinion 
 of his physicians, foreboded a fatal termination of 
 his disease. These attacks, however, were not of 
 long continuance, and gave place at length to more 
 favorable indications. His food digested better, his 
 nights were more tranquil, and his mind less disturb- 
 ed. This apparent improvement in his condition 
 continued nearly up to the day of his death, a period 
 of two weeks ; so that his friends, who had now be- 
 gun to indulge the hope of his convalescence, were 
 taken by surprise by that event. On the morning 
 of his decease, he was observed to be sinking rap- 
 idly, and his wife was called in. This was the first 
 time of her entering his chamber for many weeks. 
 At an early period in his sickness, she had been 
 seized with fever, and separated from him. He 
 smiled upon her, and reached out his hand, but was 
 unable to speak. His death took place on Monday,
 
 108 MEMOIR. 
 
 the 30th of October, at half past ten in the morn- 
 ing. It was afterwards found that his lungs were 
 much diseased ; so that, in the opinion of his med- 
 ical attendants, he could not have lived long, had 
 he escaped the present sickness. 
 
 On Thursday, November 2d, his remains were 
 taken to Mr. Hall's church, where a funeral service 
 was held, and an address made by Mr. Hall. They 
 were then removed to Leominster ; and the day fol- 
 lowing, Friday, a funeral discourse was preached by 
 Rev. Calvin Lincoln, of Fitchburg, to a large con- 
 gregation, whom respect for the memory of the de- 
 ceased had brought together. From the church 
 the body was conveyed to the cemetery, and there 
 deposited in its last resting-place. In the words of 
 one who shared in these solemnities, " It was the 
 noon of a beautiful autumnal day, and the sun, with- 
 out a cloud, was looking down upon a congregation 
 in tears, for he was now preaching to them his last 
 and most impressive discourse. The young pastor, 
 who had come to them in the full tide of life and 
 hope three years before, who had walked among 
 them so holily and unblamably, and won their affec- 
 tions, now led them into the beautiful grove, where 
 he had so often followed to soothe and sustain.
 
 MEMOIR. 109 
 
 There he sleeps beneath the virgin soil, while the 
 spring-flower above him in its early decay shall im- 
 age to the heart his brief life, and the pine-trees, 
 that wave over him in their perennial verdure, shall 
 be the emblems of the influence which he has left 
 behind." 
 
 " Surely," writes a friend, " there was as little 
 of earthly training left for him to carry out, as there 
 could well be for any one. God could use him bet- 
 ter, and has taken him. But for us I can say, that 
 I had no truer friend, none whom I valued more, or 
 could more utterly confide in. My only satisfaction 
 in his leaving Leominster was the hope that he 
 should get better and settle somewhere nearer to me. 
 So, indeed, he is, if one had only the spirit to feel 
 it."
 
 SELECTIONS.
 
 SELECTIONS. 
 
 THE PRESENCE OF THE DEPARTED. 
 
 " Are they not all ministering spirits ? " 
 
 THE sainted Dead ! think you they linger not, 
 Nor e'er to this lone world return again ? 
 
 Say, do they not revisit each loved spot 
 
 Whose sight doth waken such a thrilling strain 
 Within our longing hearts ? O, not in vain 
 
 They came and went, nor severed are those ties 
 That bound them to this life of joy and pain; 
 
 They come, they come, and bid our spirits rise, 
 And dwell in peace with them beneath the heavenly skies ! 
 
 They are about us ; as when Israel's flight 
 God's spirit guided through the desert's sand, 
 
 In cloud by day and fiery lamp by night, 
 And led in safety to the promised land, 
 So round our path these guardian spirits stand, 
 
 To shield us 'mid temptation's fiery heat; 
 In sorrow's night to take us by the hand, 
 
 And lead us gently to that mercy-seat 
 Whence conies celestial light to guide our wandering feet. 
 
 8
 
 114 SELECTIONS. 
 
 They come, where, in life's weary hours of care, 
 
 The fainting heart is burdened, tempted, tried ; 
 Bringing from heaven the strength to do and bear, 
 
 The Father's pitying mercy hath supplied ; 
 
 Beneath our roof at evening they abide 
 Like angel-guests whom Abraham fed of yore, 
 
 Through the night's stillness watching by our side, 
 Giving us visions of the world before ; 
 That world of tranquil rest where partings come no more. 
 
 God's ministers, they watch each step of ours, 
 
 The loved and lost that on life's morning smiled ; 
 Amidst our sleeping and unconscious hours 
 
 They speak within our hearts in accents mild ; 
 
 And as a mother soothes her fretful child, 
 With words of strength and peace our souls they cheer: 
 
 O, could we calm our earthly passions wild, 
 And see this spirit-host for ever near, 
 We ne'er could feel that all alone we wander here !
 
 SELECTIONS. 115 
 
 ORDINATION HYMN. 
 
 THY flock, O Lord, are scattered wide, 
 
 On barren heaths they roam, 
 And shepherdless they wander far 
 
 From their eternal home. 
 Lord, bring thy wandering children back, 
 
 And soothe their mourning cry; 
 Lead them where living waters gush, 
 
 And fair green pastures lie. 
 
 " For him who sat by Sychar's fount 
 
 Beneath the noontide beam," 
 Who brought for every thirsting soul 
 
 The pure, refreshing stream, 
 For him, " the shepherd of the sheep," 
 
 Our thanks to thee we raise ; 
 The hearts thy truth doth sanctify 
 
 Are vocal with his praise. 
 
 Clothe with salvation all thy priests ; 
 
 Their minds with truth inspire ; 
 With power and grace anoint their lips, 
 
 ^s from the altar's fire ; 
 Till in each dark waste-place of earth 
 
 A gladdening fount shall spring, 
 And with the voice of joy and praise 
 
 The wilderness shall sing. 
 
 LEOMINSTER, 1846.
 
 116 SELECTIONS. 
 
 I. 
 
 " Are they not all ministering spirits ? " 
 
 SOMEHOW and somewhere, the Infinite Being that 
 surrounds and overshadows us will meet us by the 
 way, when we flee from danger starting up in our 
 path like the burning fire of Horeb ; or, when we 
 have chosen the desert of wordliness for our resting- 
 place, and a stone for our pillow, coming in a night 
 vision to tell us of his presence though we knew it 
 not, and showing us how we might have lain down on 
 the pillow of God's peace with a blessed sense of 
 the angelic guardians that watch our slumbers still, 
 despite our cold unthankfulness. 
 
 In some startling or afflictive dispensation, God 
 makes himself known to every man; in the earth- 
 quake that prostrates our hopes ; in the fire that 
 consumes our idolized treasures ; or, it may be, in a 
 still small voice, coming we know not whence or 
 how. So have some hearts been turned to God by 
 the serene influences of nature ; and some, long 
 withstanding his love, have sought him first when 
 danger threatened on the mighty deep, and hope 
 was failing in the heart, and there was nothing left 
 but to cry unto him, " Save us, or we perish " ; and
 
 SELECTIONS. 117 
 
 sometimes the Divine presence is felt first when 
 sickness makes the strong man as a little child in his 
 weakness, or death stares him in the face, or the 
 agony of a bereavement tmcheered by faith wrings 
 his heart. But, come how or come when it will, it 
 is a mercy when we are thus recalled to ourselves, 
 and, like the prodigal son in a strange land, are made 
 to feel that we are exiles and starving, yet in our 
 Father's house there is bread enough and to spare. 
 
 Nor am I speaking only of those whose lives are 
 grossly vicious and estranged from God ; but of you 
 and me, of all of us, it is true, too true, that our 
 faith in the spiritual world is not the reality that it 
 should be, that it might be. And I would vindi- 
 cate the providence that crosses our path so often 
 with a shadow of evil. It is not evil, if it bring to 
 us the light and the growth it is designed to minis- 
 ter. At whatever price we may purchase a living 
 sense of these great realities, let us pay it gladly. 
 They are ministering spirits, these providences, sent 
 to open our eyes, to warm our hearts, to show us 
 higher truth, and help us live it out. 
 
 But never perhaps are we made to feel this sense 
 of spiritual realities more impressively, never comes 
 so clear a revealing of the feebleness of our faith, 
 than when Death enters our dwellings, and calls 
 away some object of our affections and our hopes. 
 In the first shadow of our great affliction, the soul 
 sits dumb ; and oftentimes it seems that the very
 
 118 SELECTIONS. 
 
 force and suddenness of the shock have paralyzed 
 our power to feel it. And when the power conies 
 rushing back, does it seem as if our very being had 
 lost itself in the past, and we live over again its glad 
 and happy hours, and start if present realities force 
 us to a consciousness of our loss and our loneliness. 
 O, in that sea of the Past what memories and joys 
 like shining pearls lie buried ! We behold them 
 glistening in the clear depths ; we seek to grasp 
 them again, but they come not back ; and slowly, 
 slowly, with many a longing, lingering look behind, 
 we turn to the duty of the Present, and the hopes 
 of the Future. But the night is over us, and the 
 soul is wakeful, watching for stars to light its path- 
 way. And thausolemn night of sorrow is holy, and 
 the stars that cheer it are those that never set. 
 
 At such seasons, the great mystery of life presses 
 heavily on us, and a sense of our ignorance comes 
 over our soul, and many questionings and doubts 
 come upon us. Some of these questions I would 
 attempt to answer. 
 
 And perhaps the first thought that rises in the self- 
 ishness of our grief, if it be not a murmur, is at least 
 a question. Why should this trial come upon me ? 
 Why should I be singled out for this affliction ? 
 And to this there is but one answer, the answer al- 
 ready given, that the wise discipline of life, incom- 
 prehensible to our short-sightedness, is designed to 
 promote our highest good. We must believe this. 
 The law of life is a law of faith.
 
 SELECTIONS. 119 
 
 But perhaps to the humble heart the question may 
 assume another form. Was it as a judgment that 
 this trial came ? a just retribution for my sinfulness ? 
 Had I loved my friend too well, and so God, dis- 
 pleased at my forgetfulness of Him, hath taken 
 away my dependence ? No, no. Let no such 
 thoughts as these make the night of sorrow darker, 
 the burden of bereavement heavier. Doubtless 
 thou didst need the discipline of trial, else it had 
 not come. Thou doest well in seeking to learn its 
 lesson. But not in anger, but in gentlest mercy, in 
 tenderest love, was it sent to draw thee near to God, 
 not to increase thy fear, but thy trust. And lea^t 
 of all because God was jealous of thine earthly love 
 did he remove its object. Can we love our friends 
 too well ? We may love them too selfishly, and so 
 not well enough. We may love God too little ; but 
 it is not because we love our brethren here too much. 
 For if it be true that no man can love God whom he 
 hath not seen, except he love his brother whom he 
 hath seen, it is also true that the more we love God 
 the better we love our earthly friends. 
 
 And next to these inquiries for ourselves come 
 questionings for the departed. Why passed they 
 away when we seemed most to need them ? Why, 
 when their hopes were brightest, and their promise 
 of usefulness was fullest, should they be called from 
 us ? And perhaps the only answer that can be given 
 is that which bids us trust and be still. And yet,
 
 120 SELECTIONS. 
 
 even to our sight, there are considerations which may 
 throw light on these, which we call God's mysteri- 
 ous dispensations. Remember first all that thy 
 friend hath done for thee while yet you walked to- 
 gether here. Will not the remembrance of the ten- 
 der affection and the virtuous example thou \vert 
 privileged so long to share and to see, will not that 
 have new power over thee now ? Perhaps the 
 memory of the dead may bless thee more than the 
 presence of the living. Live they not, those who 
 have left us, live they not still, in all that made 
 their life pleasant to us, all that makes their memory 
 dear ? They have not ceased to act upon us, so 
 long as we remember them. Are they not minis- 
 tering spirits, when the thought of them keeps us 
 from evil, or helps us to live higher and purer ? 
 
 But is this all ? Is there not something more than 
 the reflected influence on our character of the lives 
 that have closed ? Is there not an actual presence 
 of the departed ? No word of revelation hath dis- 
 tinctly spoken it ; but it is a theory that springs up 
 spontaneously in the mind ; it is a faith natural to 
 the heart. Somewhere, the spirits of the blessed 
 find scope for their powers, and exercise for the 
 soul's benevolence and activity. And why not 
 here, where their thoughts and affections most nat- 
 urally turn ? Why may they not descend to bring 
 an answer to our prayers, in holy and healing influ- 
 ences ? Why may they not be near to strengthen
 
 SELECTIONS. 121 
 
 us in 'the time of duty, to watch about our path, and 
 shield us from impending danger, and help us to re- 
 sist temptations else too strong for our feebleness ? 
 May they not thus be ministering spirits, to watch 
 our sleeping and to shield our toiling and tempted 
 hours ? The strength that so often comes with be- 
 reavement, a strength and calmness that seem mar- 
 vellous and superhuman to ourselves, it is almost 
 inevitable that we refer it to the ministration of one 
 whose visible presence is with us no longer. That 
 we should ever deem this to be a visionary faith, 
 comes of our material temper, and our little convers- 
 ance with spiritual things. 
 
 Shall we know the friends from whom we have 
 been separated by death ? Shall we meet them 
 again in heaven ? How eagerly the heart answers 
 this question ! Yes, we shall, we must. It is a 
 necessity for us who live to believe it. It must be, 
 or they who have gone from us would miss the peace 
 of their heavenly home. If we believe in immortal- 
 ity at all, then must our affections be immortal. And 
 surely that joy which eye hath not seen, nor ear 
 heard, nor the heart of man conceived, must com- 
 prehend a restoration to those who, though long un- 
 seen, are not forgotten. Reason says this, and the 
 heart demands it ; and we must confidently believe 
 it, if this were all. But not only does the spirit of 
 Christianity imply this of necessity, but Jesus has 
 expressly affirmed it. " Father, I will also that
 
 122 SELECTIONS. 
 
 I 
 
 they whom thou hast given me be with me wttere I 
 am." And if they are present with him, then also 
 with one another. And if, indeed, we could con- 
 ceive of an isolated heaven, where we should be shut 
 out from the society of our brethren, if of an im- 
 mortality that annihilated this life and its affections, 
 then would heaven be a worthless gift, and immor- 
 tality the most shadowy delusion. 
 
 December 13, 1845.
 
 SELECTIONS. 123 
 
 II. 
 
 "The spirit of the living creature was in the wheels." 
 
 ALL thought takes form in one way or another. 
 Hence we learn the attributes of God through the 
 material universe. We know a man's character by 
 the dress he wears, the house he builds, the work 
 he follows. The tendency of everything spiritual is 
 to embody itself in some outward shape ; and the 
 institution is the shadow of the thought it embodies, 
 and shows plainly enough the principle it is founded 
 on. 
 
 But if institutions show the character of individu- 
 als and societies, it is no less true that they go con- 
 tinually to form and mould that character. Every 
 outward form is the sign of an inward thought or 
 feeling ; and as it grew out of that thought or feeling, 
 so it has a tendency to cherish and foster the same. 
 Cruel laws tend to make a cruel people. Wicked 
 rulers reflect back their own character in those 
 whom they govern and influence. A foolish custom 
 perpetuates folly in those who practise it. 
 
 Once more : when you do away an institution, you 
 do away also in degree the spirit or doctrine or 
 thought which it embodied and represented. If you
 
 124 SELECTIONS. 
 
 could do away common schools, you would also less- 
 en greatly the general interest in education ; for 
 while the institution exists, men cannot very well 
 forget the thing it stands for. So, if the temperance 
 organization were disbanded, everybody would infer 
 that the interest in the cause had subsided ; and the 
 presumption would be its own fu!61ment. 
 
 There has been amongst us of late years a mark- 
 ed impatience of restraint ; a clamorous demand for 
 individual freedom ; a great dread of organized pow- 
 er in any form. This tendency is observable in 
 church and in state alike, designated by such max- 
 ims as, That is the best government which governs 
 least, a statement of very doubtful truth ; indi- 
 cated by the numbers that forsake our churches, and 
 would fain make the whole week sacred by taking 
 away the sacredness of the Sabbath. The times 
 call, as I think, for a strongly conservative move- 
 ment in these respects. We must have some out- 
 ward machinery to do the work of society. Let us 
 not be in a hurry to destroy that which exists, but 
 rather strengthen the things that remain. At least 
 let us hold to that which is, until something better is 
 offered us. 
 
 The Christian Sabbath has come down to us as a 
 time-honored and time-hallowed institution. We 
 were taught to keep it reverently, strictly. It has 
 done us good so to keep it. It is a sacred trust, 
 transmitted to us from our ancestors, and woe to us
 
 SELECTIONS. 125 
 
 and our posterity, if we do not guard its sanctity 
 from desecration ! And the same thing we may say 
 of public worship. If any man believes it a cus- 
 tom which promotes the public good, he is bound, 
 whether he supposes himself to be benefited or not, 
 to give it his countenance and support. He does 
 not stand alone in this matter. It is no question of 
 simple individual advantage. It concerns the public 
 good ; and a man who would discharge his duty to 
 society cannot hold in regard to it a neutral position. 
 These things are not duties written on man's nature, 
 
 not to be put on the same standing with the law 
 of honesty, truth and devotion ; but they grow out 
 of our existing condition ; and to neglect them is to 
 sap the foundations on which the public integrity and 
 public devotion rest. Do away with everything that 
 is reverenced, and you do away with the sentiment 
 of reverence ; it has nothing to cling to or act upon. 
 The spirit of the living creature is in the wheels ; 
 and you cannot destroy the outward form without 
 marring the inward spirit. 
 
 The Christian rites of Baptism and Communion, 
 
 I rest these on the same ground, as claiming re- 
 spect for the individual's welfare, and alike for the 
 public benefit, because they enshrine and represent 
 the public sentiment of veneration. I claim for 
 them no Divine authority, I do not believe they 
 have any, but I do claim for them the sanctity of 
 centuries of hallowing associations, the sanctity of
 
 126 SELECTIONS. 
 
 Christ's own participation. I do marvel that the 
 parent's heart, into which God hath put a new 
 song, doth not rejoice to bring to this temple of his 
 praise the little one he hath given, and dedicate it to 
 him. Nor to the parent alone doth it bring a bless- 
 ing, but to many a heart beside ; for there is an in- 
 fluence in the hushed stillness of the baptismal hour 
 that ofttimes makes the old man weep and the little 
 child hold down his head to hide the gushing tears. 
 Bring them hither, the infant ones, that their 
 purity may hallow the air we breathe, that their in- 
 nocent presence may waft to our hearts a benedic- 
 tion. I wonder, too, that our commemorating rite of 
 discipleship is not felt to be a greater and more ob- 
 ligatory privilege. It has no mysterious efficacy, 
 but it is a strength and a help. It enshrines a sacred 
 memory. Why should not the disciple thus remem- 
 ber the Master ? For thus it becometh us to fulfil 
 all righteousness. 
 
 March 7, 1846.
 
 SELECTIONS. 127 
 
 III. 
 
 " A wheel in the midst of a wheel." 
 
 THE distinction of body and spirit is universal. 
 Everything has an outward form, which is not the 
 thing itself, but only the appearance of the thing. 
 Everything has also an inward spirit. Thus we call 
 our laws and rulers the government, although in strict 
 truth they are only the shadow or form of the gov- 
 ernment, the real power, the soul of government, 
 so to speak, being in the people, from whom these 
 laws and rulers derive their authority. 
 
 So what we call the course of nature, or the oper- 
 ation of material laws, is nothing more than the way 
 in which God chooses to act, the outward form in 
 which he manifests himself. The stars revolve, the 
 wind blows, the flowers blossom, because God is in 
 the stars, the wind, and the flowers. 
 
 There is nothing perhaps of which we may not 
 say, that it has a body and a soul. Especially is this 
 true of everything with which man has anything to do. 
 He is always a wheel within a wheel. Yet some 
 men do not perceive this. They never see God in 
 nature, nor ever get deep enough to see the soul in 
 other men's actions, or to put any soul into their
 
 128 SELECTIONS. 
 
 own. Have patience with me, and I will show you 
 what I mean. 
 
 You are going out to ride, I will suppose. You 
 go for your own pleasure alone. If you have no 
 higher duty claiming your time, that is very well, 
 innocent and right. But it occurs to you that your 
 neighbour has a sick child, and so you take him with 
 you, and try to amuse him and make him happy by 
 the way. Now is it not plain, that your ride be- 
 comes a very different matter ? The act is the 
 same ; but whereas, in the one case, you would soon 
 have forgotten the whole thing, it will remain with 
 you now a pleasant recollection. You have em- 
 balmed it, put a soul in it ; and in the mirror of 
 eternity it is reflected back upon you a thousand 
 times, making you better and happier when you 
 think of it. 
 
 Or you are going out into your field, I will sup- 
 pose you are an irreligious and selfish man, and while 
 you are at work you are thinking of the drudgery of 
 labor, and wondering why you were not born to 
 riches and ease, perhaps with an envious spite call- 
 ing to mind those whose lot in life seems brighter 
 and more favored than your own. The sun beats 
 hot on your head. Perhaps you are impatient at 
 the heat, not remembering it is sent as a blessing. 
 Yes, indeed, you are a poor, pitiful drudge. Your 
 lot is hard. But it is you who make it so. The 
 hardest work a man can do is to quarrel with Provi-
 
 SELECTIONS. 129 
 
 dence. The heaviest burden a man can carry is a 
 thankless heart. 
 
 But now suppose by God's grace your hard heart 
 melts down under that summer sky. A sudden 
 sense of your ingratitude and of God's goodness 
 comes over you ; and sitting down, you muse upon 
 the past, how much God has done for you, how 
 little you have done for him. Conscience, long dor- 
 mant, awakes in your breast. You grow humble, 
 contrite. Penitence comes over you like a flood. 
 Your spirit becomes soft and gentle as a little child's ; 
 and kneeling there in the shade, with tearful eyes you 
 ask God to forgive and bless you, to help you to 
 live no longer for yourself, but for him, to strength- 
 en you to keep the new resolutions that are springing 
 up within you. You go to your work again, a sad- 
 der and a wiser, ay, and, strange as it may appear, a 
 happier man. And now, going on day by day in 
 the new life you have begun to live, everything is 
 changed to you. You see that labor is God's ap- 
 pointment, idleness not a blessing, but a curse. 
 You are willing to work when you feel it is in God's 
 service, and for the sake of the dear ones he has 
 given you. You go to your field with a heart full of 
 thankfulness, and your very labor is transformed by 
 the change in yourself. You have new thoughts, 
 and many more than before. You wonder how you 
 could have been deaf and blind to so many things. 
 God comes and works with you in that furrowed 
 9
 
 130 SELECTIONS. 
 
 field. His smile is in the sunbeams that make the 
 earth fruitful, and warm your heart with a sense of 
 his bounty. You hear his voice of love in the song 
 of birds, and the soft rustling of the corn-field that 
 sways gracefully in the summer wind. You look up 
 at the clear blue sky, and think of the peaceful world 
 your childhood was taught to believe lay beyond it ; 
 and its purity and peace are reflected back in your 
 own soul, filling it with an unspeakable joy. . Mar- 
 vellous change ! And ah 1 this is not a fancy picture, 
 but, thank God, a great and blessed reality borne 
 witness to in many a man's experience. This is 
 what I mean by putting a soul into things. This is 
 the wheel within a wheel. O, my brother, have 
 you got beyond the outward husk of things ? Have 
 you found the inner soul that makes them living ? 
 
 March, 1846.
 
 SELECTIONS. 131 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE CHILD'S MISSION. 
 
 THERE is a mystery about that new life, which 
 impresses us almost with a sense of awe. We 
 scarce can think of it as new ; and, tracing back the 
 spirit to its author, God, we follow it in fancy to the 
 world of God's more immediate presence, and while 
 we speak of it as heaven's gift, we half believe it had 
 a preexistence there. 
 
 And if we thus follow back in fancy the young 
 spirit to its source, speaking of heaven as its first 
 home, we follow it also into the future, and wonder 
 what its life shall be there. " The child is father of 
 the man"; and we wonder what sort of man. All' 
 the possible varieties of character and fate appear for 
 the moment to be collected into that diminutive con- 
 sciousness. That which may be the germ of any is 
 felt as if it were the germ of all. The thread of 
 life, which from our hand that holds it runs forward 
 into instant darkness, untwines itself there into a 
 thousand filaments, and leads us over every track 
 and scene of human things ; here, through the 
 passages where poverty crawls, there, to the fields 
 where glory has its race; here to the midnight lake,
 
 132 SELECTIONS. 
 
 where meditation floats between two heavens, 
 there to the arid sands, where passion pants and 
 dies. We wonder, almost tremblingly, what its life 
 shall be. 
 
 To the Christian, the being of the little child is 
 not the wreck, but the elements, of a heavenly exist- 
 ence, its better life lying before it, not behind. It 
 is not the ruin, but the design, of a temple not made 
 with hands. Its glory is not of the past, but of the 
 future ; its experience here not a loss, but a gain, of 
 truth and goodness ; this earthly life not the extinc- 
 tion of, but the preparation for, a spiritual one. It 
 were a sadness to take up the infant life as if it were 
 the fallen petals of a celestial flower, borne to our 
 feet by the stream of things, and every moment fad- 
 ing more ; but it is a task of gladness to accept it as 
 the seed and germ of an everlasting growth, which, 
 planted in the rock, and strengthened by the storms 
 of earth, shall bloom at length in the eternal fields. 
 
 To nurture the faculties of conscience, love, and 
 devotion, to guide the inquiring spirit of childish cu- 
 riosity to fields of useful knowledge, to form habits 
 of virtue and holiness, to give right ideas of God and 
 man, of duty and sin, of life and death, of time and 
 eternity, this is a responsibility so solemn as to in- 
 vest every parent's life with the sanctity of a divine 
 mission. When you consider that your ignorance is 
 so much loss of knowledge to the child you teach, 
 that your failure to see what the best course of guid-
 
 SELECTIONS. 133 
 
 ance is may be fraught with perilous consequences 
 to his present and eternal weal, when you remem- 
 ber that the atmosphere of home, whatever it is, 
 whether of jarring discord and harshness or of quiet 
 and gentle love and peace, will stamp itself on that 
 yet unstained soul entrusted to your charge, that 
 all your faults will almost inevitably be translated and 
 reproduced there, that thus your discontent, your 
 repining, your fretfulness, your neglect of life's du- 
 ties, your love of ease, your worldly engrossment, 
 your forgetfulness of God, all your follies and vices 
 and weaknesses, will be reflected in the countenance 
 and the character of one so dear to you, is not 
 the gift of a little child a new call to purity of life, 
 and a fresh consecration to duty ? And as Jesus 
 said of his disciples, " For their sakes I sanctify my- 
 self," so should the parent's heart, with a solemn 
 sense of the high commission entrusted to it, and the 
 great responsibility of its office, on the altar of its 
 thankfulness dedicate itself afresh to God. 
 
 It is a blessed thing, that, as so many drop away 
 from life, and of those who started with us in its 
 morning freshness so few remain, these new beings, 
 in God's merciful providence, are sent to make life 
 still a thing of beauty and pleasantness ; to save the 
 heart alike from selfishness and misanthropy ; to 
 quicken, as by the bestowal of a second youth, its 
 own kindling aspirations ; to warm the affections into 
 a new life ; to give new vigor to the mental ener-
 
 134 SELECTIONS. 
 
 gies ; to bind the heart anew to man ; to kindle it 
 afresh with a devout gratitude to God ; to conse- 
 crate it again in the vow of a truer fidelity. The 
 little child is quite as much the teacher as the taught, 
 and, I had almost said, forms the parent's character 
 in as great a degree as the parent influences its own. 
 And think not that the mission of the little child 
 ends with its life. The parting spirit, as a caged 
 bird let loose again, may early fly home again to its 
 native heaven. But its death was not premature. It 
 has done its work ; nay, it is doing it still. The 
 light of its love hath not departed, nor the influence 
 died out. The heart once blessed with a parent's 
 joy is for evermore so blessed. The child no long- 
 er present is yet in store for thy weeping eyes and 
 thy longing heart. It waits there in that upper man- 
 sion to welcome thee, its love unquenched, its 
 innocence unstained. And shrined as its memory is 
 in thoughts of purity and holiness, is not such a 
 memory a preacher and a benediction ? Does it 
 not call thee to a purer life, and keep thee near to 
 God ? Therein, perchance, its death may bless thee 
 more than its life could have done. There is noth- 
 ing innocent or good that dies and is forgotten. An 
 infant, a prattling child, dying in its cradle, will live 
 again in the better thoughts of those who loved it, 
 and play its part through them in the redeeming ac- 
 tions of the world, though its body be burnt to ashes, 
 or drowned in the deepest sea. There is not an
 
 SELECTIONS. 135 
 
 angel added to the host of heaven, but does its bless- 
 ed work in those that loved it here. Forgotten ! O, 
 if the good deeds of human creatures could be traced 
 to their source, how beautiful would even death ap- 
 pear ! for how much charity, mercy, and purified 
 affection would be seen to have their growth in 
 dusty graves ! 
 
 September 13, 1846.
 
 136 SELECTIONS. 
 
 V. 
 
 " So that I come again unto my father's house in peace." 
 
 IT is not possible, that, speaking to you on this 
 day and on this theme, you should have forgotten, 
 or I should have been able to keep out of mind, my 
 own experience. I had shrunk from addressing you 
 to-day. I had spoken to another to stand here in 
 my place. It seemed that I could not do it. But 
 I felt as if the associations of the day, full of home 
 as they are, would be broken in upon by the voice 
 of a stranger, instead of his whose highest happiness 
 it is to feel, that he speaks to those who acknowl- 
 edge his claim as friend and brother, who have 
 shown themselves ready to \ejoice in his joy, to sor- 
 row for his sorrows. I felt that you had a right to 
 my poor words, and that they would be more wel- 
 come than those of another. Pardon me, then, that 
 for one moment I thus call for your sympathy in al- 
 luding to myself. It is not to cast a shade over the 
 hopes and the gladness of the day, but to deepen the 
 sense of your own blessings, to urge you to a 
 more thankful recognition of them. And there is a 
 word, that is pleading so strongly in my heart for ut- 
 terance that I cannot but speak it.
 
 SELECTIONS. 137 
 
 A year ago, the joy of a new hope made more 
 dear and sacred to me the name and the thought of 
 home. The shadow of desolation that fell so sud- 
 denly upon me was not a starless night. God give 
 unto you, if any similar affliction awaits any of you, 
 the strength and the consolation that his mercy has 
 bestowed upon me. The early blight of my own 
 hopes has not taken away, perhaps it has strength- 
 ened and deepened, the interest and the sympathy 
 with which I regard the happy family circles around 
 me. And that interest has been immeasurably in- 
 creased by the hearty welcome you have given me 
 there, and the kindly sympathy you have shown me. 
 Greatly have I been cheered and strengthened by 
 the many kind attentions I have received. Very 
 deeply has it moved me, to know that so many 
 hearts were feeling for me, and turning toward me 
 the softness of a gentle and forbearing friendliness, 
 as one who needed to be dealt with tenderly. I can 
 do no less than to thank you for it all to-day, to 
 thank you from a full heart. You have been willing 
 to share in my grief. I, too, am able to rejoice in 
 your prosperity. Can I do less than invoke a bless- 
 ing on the many homes, to which you have wel- 
 comed me all the more affectionately because you 
 remembered that my own home had been made 
 desolate ? 
 
 God Almighty bless you, my people ! Long be 
 the circle unbroken that gathers to-day about the
 
 138 SELECTIONS. 
 
 firesides of home ! Long may it be, ere one of those 
 voices be missed that make up its music to-day ! 
 
 But God knoweth best. I have no dearer prayer, 
 than that those homes may be Christian homes ; 
 and then, come joy or sadness, they shall still be 
 blessed. 
 
 I have no better wish to bestow upon you, than 
 that, to your other blessings, manifold and great as 
 they are, God may add this day the greatest and the 
 best of all, the blessing of a thankful and trusting 
 heart. 
 
 November 23, 1846.
 
 SELECTIONS. 139 
 
 VI. 
 
 " Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones." 
 
 THE actual results of the Sunday School, I am 
 inclined to think, have been exaggerated ; but its 
 real importance and its possible results are still, as I 
 believe, far from recognized, and greatly under-esti- 
 mated. If it had as yet accomplished nothing, if it 
 were doing no good at present, it would still claim 
 support from every true mind from what it promises, 
 for the prospects it holds out, for the hopes that are 
 garnered in it. 
 
 The Sunday School has become an institution. 
 It is established over a large part of Christendom. 
 It has gained a strong foothold. An interest is felt 
 in it. It has enlisted, more or less warmly, the sym- 
 pathies of thousands of parents and children and 
 teachers. Now grant, that, through unskilful modes 
 of operation, or the incompetence of teachers, grant 
 for a moment, that at present it is doing little, if 
 you will, that it is doing nothing, and then it 
 would challenge support for what it may do, what 
 it is likely to do hereafter. The machinery is there, 
 ready to be put into more advantageous operation, 
 when better and wiser modes of action shall be found.
 
 140 SELECTIONS. 
 
 The children are there, ready to be acted upon. 
 For the most part, the battle with prejudice and 
 opposition has been fought, and parents look upon 
 it with a considerable measure of hopefulness and 
 confidence. Suppose, now, that it were every- 
 where to be given up ; how long do you think it 
 would take to reestablish it in its present extent and 
 strength ? You could not reconstruct it in half a 
 century. The spirit of opposition would spring up 
 again. The old obstacles would have to be sur- 
 mounted. Slowly and laboriously the children must 
 be gathered in. Confidence must be reestablished. 
 The charm and excitement of novelty no longer 
 operate in its favor, and prejudice strengthens itself 
 immeasurably by asserting that the experiment has 
 been tried, and proved a failure. 
 
 So long as the Sunday School engages the inter- 
 est, and secures the support, of a community as such, 
 it will have strength and vitality. When it ceases to 
 be popular, and is the movement of the few, and not 
 of the many, then it will dwindle into a weak and 
 sickly inefficiency. Therefore it is, that every child 
 who is an absentee from the School is an enemy to 
 its existence. He becomes the centre of an influ- 
 ence hostile to its life and growth. Therefore it is, 
 that I have so repeatedly urged upon all to whom 
 it was practicable, the old and the young, a connec- 
 tion in some way with the Sunday School. The 
 question is not, simply, whether it can do you any
 
 SELECTIONS. 141 
 
 good, but also whether you can do it any good. 
 It has claims in and of itself. If you regard it as a 
 beneficial and valuable institution, then you ought to 
 consider, that, of the public sentiment and sympathy 
 which is its strongest support, you, as an individual, 
 make up a part. You are responsible for the way 
 your influence goes, and for the degree in which it 
 is exerted. 
 
 Religious teaching always implies this danger to 
 the taught : if it does not make them better, it will 
 render them more callous to good influences ;. it will 
 chill and harden the soul ; it will take away the force 
 of truth, and the power of moral appeal. There is 
 nothing, in fine, which is more deadening in its in- 
 fluence than the hearing the most sacred and inspir- 
 ing truths without being moved by them. Your 
 great object, remember, is not to instruct, not to 
 impart knowledge, but principle ; to strengthen the 
 sense of duty ; to make the life righteous and pure ; 
 to sanctify the spirit. You cannot give a spiritual 
 life you do not yourselves possess. 
 
 O, I would rather send a child out to spend the 
 blessed Sunday in the fields, than have him here to 
 listen to the cold and idle mummery of words to 
 which the teacher's heart lends neither life nor love ! 
 There, as he wandered, with God's loving sunlight 
 shining round him, and the spring breeze kissing his 
 cheek with a gentleness like that paternal presence 
 that enfolds him, the glad melody of birds sounding
 
 142 SELECTIONS. 
 
 in his ear, and the flowers of an Almighty Benefi- 
 cence upspringing in his path, there his spirit 
 might be softened and his soul made better, his 
 heart attuned to purer influences, and drawn upward 
 with a reverent gratitude, while all around the un- 
 sentient universe hymned the great Creator's praise ! 
 At any rate, he would be saved from the crushing 
 and paralyzing chill and torpor that must come from 
 a heartless teacher, in whom a child, training for im- 
 mortality, awakens no thrill of affection, no kindling 
 inspiration, and from whose lips the words that 
 Jesus spoke fall coldly and listlessly as the current 
 rumor or the trivial tale. 
 
 But I know, Teachers, that you must come anx- 
 iously, distrustingly. So you ought. Take it as a 
 hopeful token if you do. And yet you should come 
 in confidence ; for, be sure, whatever want of com- 
 petence you may feel, with whatever consciousness 
 of unworthiness you may assume the office, yet the 
 faithful effort brings God down to help you, and the 
 true spirit gives power and inspiration to the feeblest 
 words, as the fire of Pentecost touched the lips 
 of those illiterate Jewish fishermen with a baptism 
 of eloquence that none could gainsay or resist. 
 
 May, 1847.
 
 SELECTIONS. 143 
 
 VII. 
 
 DUTIES OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 
 
 THE question is often asked, how much good 
 preaching does ; and very often answered, to the 
 preacher's own mind, in an almost utter despair of 
 its efficacy. Considering its necessary and inevi- 
 table deficiencies, " the foolishness of preaching," 
 as the Apostle terms it, considering the state in 
 which the hearer's mind often is, and how many dis- 
 miss all thought of it the moment the service is 
 over, one cannot but feel, sometimes, a doubt 
 whether it does accomplish much. And, certainly^ 
 considering the topics discoursed upon, the labor of 
 preparation, ordinarily but poorly appreciated, and 
 the solemn interests involved, one may be pardoned 
 for saying that preaching, with all its imperfections, 
 does deserve a great deal more attention than it re- 
 ceives. 
 
 Brethren, I am free to confess it, there are sea- 
 sons when preaching seems to me a trivial and insig- 
 nificant thing, when I shrink from it with a strong 
 repugnance, and a sickening doubt of its utility. But 
 these are the times when I am thinking of my own 
 powers, and looking about for outward results of my 
 own efforts.
 
 144 SELECTIONS. 
 
 But there are other times, when I am impressed 
 with admiration and a solemn awe as I reflect upon 
 rny office. Then, it is the preacher that is insig- 
 nificant. Preaching becomes invested with a sa- 
 credness and a grandeur such as belong to no other 
 work of man. I look back to the early days of the 
 race, when the voice of the prophet, solemn and 
 stern, swayed the rude nations of warlike men as 
 the tempest's breath makes the oaks of the mountain 
 tremble. I see the haughty Saul quailing before the 
 presence of i Samuel, and David bowing down upon 
 his kingly throne as the words of Nathan sank into 
 his heart with the weight of conviction, " Thou art 
 the man ! " 
 
 I glance onward in the records of history to later 
 times, when the loud voice of Luther rang through 
 all Europe, and shook the grim walls of that impe- 
 rial palace at Rome, where the delegated Hierarch 
 claimed to hold the keys of heaven, and put his foot 
 upon the neck of prostrate kings. Few years have 
 passed away, and Luther's truth has filled the world. 
 
 I look over -the earth, and see the nations that 
 rejoice to claim the name of Christian, and the 
 countless streams that flow from the sacred fount of 
 revelation. I look back to the origin of all in those 
 eleven men of Judea, who, with death before them 
 and the world against them, went forth to preach in 
 the name of Jesus. I call up to mind his venerable 
 image, as he walked about his native land, an humble
 
 SELECTIONS. 145 . 
 
 man among the humble, teaching by the well of Sa- 
 maria and in the fisher's boat. Then it is that I 
 learn to estimate the dignity of preaching, when I 
 contemplate the results it has effected, when I re- 
 member who have borne its office. 
 
 Then I no longer look upon my work distrust- 
 ingly, or as trivial. I tremble before its majesty. 
 I am amazed at my own presumption in assuming it. 
 Then, when I think of the materials to be wrought 
 upon, the wondrous mechanism of human souls, 
 the thinking mind, the beating, sensitive heart, mys- 
 teriously responding to the touch that sweeps its 
 thousand chords, the godlike energy of intellect and 
 will that lie concealed in man, constituting him the 
 image and the child of the Infinite ; when I think 
 of the themes on which the preacher speaks, the 
 soul's eternal weal, the heaven within, the immortal 
 life to come; when I think of the instrumentali- 
 ties put into his' hand, the truth, the words, the 
 life, of that divine Brother, who was God's Messiah 
 sent to save the world, then it seems to me an 
 unspeakable privilege if I may be the humblest ser- 
 vant ministering at the altar of God to such beings, 
 in such a rTame, and for such ends. 
 
 Then, too, I remember that the preacher, to fulfil 
 his high commission, ought to come heaven-ordained ; 
 knowing the everlasting relations between God and 
 man in his own experience ; his soul really com- 
 muning with the Infinite, and filled with His holy 
 10
 
 146 SELECTIONS. 
 
 spirit ; burning to impart the same godlike con- 
 sciousness to others, and, by the vivid light of his 
 own faith, creating it in those who feel his influ- 
 ence ; drawing out and freshening the faded colors 
 of the divine image in their souls, till they, too, be- 
 come the prophets and the sons of God. 
 
 If, indeed, one might come thus consecrated to 
 his work, then would preaching be no longer the 
 cold and powerless thing it is. Not one of you but 
 would go home wondering at the divine capacities 
 God has poured into the souls of men, melted 
 into mingled .gratitude and penitence at God's ex- 
 ceeding love and your own conscious guilt, and 
 making in your inmost soul vows sanctified by 
 prayer, that the revelations you had heard should 
 not be lost upon you, but bring forth fruits manifest 
 to God's all-seeing eye, in holy hearts and lives de- 
 vout and true. 
 
 August 22, 1847.
 
 SELECTIONS. 147 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone." 
 
 THERE is another class of errors which it was 
 my purpose to speak of more particularly. It con- 
 sists in cutting off from Christianity this or that fea- 
 ture or element as neither essential nor important. 
 For example, there are many who speak of devo- 
 tion as mere cant, or, at least, as an entirely super- 
 fluous and delusive thing ; whose language is, "God 
 does not need or ask* our prayers ; we can do noth- 
 ing for him ; the best service we can render him is, 
 to do good to our fellow-men." I do not censure 
 these persons. They do but express their own 
 sincere conviction. But I cannot but pity them. 
 For to lose the faith in God as ever present, and as 
 drawing near to the soul in answer to its prayers, to 
 lose the spirit and forego the privilege of devotion, 
 seems to me a loss greater than any earthly loss can 
 be. To me, life would be of small account, nay, 
 it would be an intolerable burden, if 1 knew that 
 never again I could lift my soul to God in thankful- 
 ness or petition, with a real faith that he would hear 
 me. Yet I know that many of those of whom I 
 speak may be better men than myself. It takes a
 
 148 SELECTIONS. 
 
 \ 
 
 great and an uncommon virtue to be just and be- 
 nevolent and faithful towards man when this spirit- 
 ual faith in God is lost. And I cannot help it, that, 
 while I honor in all sincerity the philanthropy I see 
 in such persons, I am led to doubt the permanency 
 of its foundation. I know that sympathy for man 
 will do much, that the love of justice is a principle 
 inherent in the human heart ; and yet, to separate 
 humanity from devotion, the love of man from the 
 love of God, I confess human virtue seems too 
 weak, human nature too frail and dependent, to bear 
 the fruit of a sound morality and a self-sacrificing 
 benevolence that has not its root in love and trust 
 towards God. To take away from Christianity its 
 devotional element is to rob it of its spirituality, and 
 (to my own conviction) to take away the main source 
 of its power. 
 
 There is another class, who consider the belief in 
 the history of the Gospel to be of very small account. 
 The miraculous claims and the infallible authority of 
 Jesus seem to them not important to make one a 
 Christian. Christianity is a spiritual thing ; it be- 
 longs to the heart. If they have the truth, it is no 
 matter how or whence it comes, or whether attested 
 by miracles or not. I cannot judge for others, but, 
 for myself, I must say, that, if Christ's words were 
 not to me of the most certain and undoubted au- 
 thority, there are many questions of duty, now clear 
 as the sunlight, that would be involved in the dim-
 
 SELECTIONS. 149 
 
 mest uncertainty. There are many doctrines, most 
 precious and consoling, that, to say the least, would 
 become vague and doubtful. I should hardly tfust 
 in prayer. I should hardly feel confident of a per- 
 sonal immortality. There would still be a God ; 
 but I cannot but feel the tender and blessed name of 
 a Father would be one I should not venture to give 
 to a Being so infinitely removed from my compre- 
 hension. In fine, if the miraculous claims of Jesus 
 are denied, I could give but little weight to what 
 remains of the gospels, coming as it does from men 
 singularly deceitful, or singularly capable of being 
 deceived. 
 
 Again, there are those who, disgusted with the 
 tenacity with which the sectarian has clung to doc- 
 trines the most unimportant, and the exclusiveness 
 he has manifested toward those who dissented from 
 him, have come to regard the whole matter of doc- 
 trine as a thing of small importance. It is no mat- 
 ter, say they, what a man believes, if his life be 
 upright and pure. Certainly, this statement is per- 
 fectly reasonable, if his life be upright and pure. 
 But when you have told me what a man's doctrine 
 is, I know what his life will be, if he sincerely be- 
 lieves it. The one grows out of the other, as a 
 plant from the seed. A man who believes God to 
 be revengeful, will feel warranted in being so him- 
 self. He who thinks there is no difference in the 
 condition of men after death, will lose one of the
 
 150 SELECTIONS. 
 
 great sanctions and safeguards of virtue. He \vho 
 thinks human nature totally depraved, may well ex- 
 'cuse many corrupt and wicked actions, charging 
 them to the account of Adam's fall, and not his 
 own sin ; while one who has half persuaded himself 
 that man has no free-will, and cannot do otherwise 
 than what he does, will not strive much to resist 
 temptation, unless he sees the penalty very close at 
 hand, and very certain. 
 
 September 5, 1847. 
 
 >*K> 
 
 !
 
 SELECTIONS. 151 
 
 IX. 
 
 " A cloud of witnesses." 
 
 THE simplicity and the commonness of the state- 
 ment finds its abundant excuse in its necessity. A 
 cloud of witnesses, yes, there are, visible and 
 invisible, beholding our sins and our unfaithfulness, 
 and bearing testimony before God to every act. 
 Suppose any one of us to pass at this moment into 
 the solemn realities of the spiritual world. Imag- 
 ine that, having left behind your fleshly vestment, 
 you stand in the midst of God's universe, a soul 
 undisguised, unshielded, and perfectly open and 
 transparent to the pure eye of God and all spiritual 
 beings. It must be that at that very moment the 
 dread account of life should begin, the judgment 
 of Heaven's retributive tribunal. And who are the 
 witnesses ? Let us, in imagination, conceive of 
 them as they rise up before us. 
 
 First, there is the inward consciousness of guilt, 
 an all-sufficient witness. Conscience, no longer 
 blinded by the mists and delusions of sophistry, no 
 longer silenced by the refusal to hear its voice, sees 
 clearly, and speaks plainly. The soul's eye is 
 opened and cannot be shut, but, by an irrevocable
 
 152 SELECTIONS. 
 
 doom, must look in upon itself. The tablets of 
 memory, from which the hand of death has brushed 
 away the oblivious dust that gathered beneath the 
 body's wrappages in the soul's journey through 
 time, shall display now the secrets of a life, the 
 sins of youth, forgotten in after years ; the hidden mo- 
 tive, skilfully concealed before ; the secret thought, 
 over which, it had been fondly deemed, the mantle 
 of forgetfulness was for ever thrown ; the deed done 
 in darkness, when no mortal eye beheld. Written 
 there, in eternal chronicles on the soul's imperish- 
 able being, all shall stand revealed ; and not a word 
 spoken, or a deed done, or a thought conceived, 
 but we shall read it there. 
 
 Nor these alone will memory summon up ; but 
 there shall rise the long catalogue of wasted hours, 
 and misused privileges, and opportunities neglected, 
 and resolutions broken, and vows unfulfilled ; the 
 countless blessings of Heaven, winning us to the 
 love and service of God ; the words of counsel and 
 entreaty to which we have turned a deaf ear, per- 
 haps a father's anxious warning, perhaps a mother's 
 tearful prayer, despised. 
 
 Then, too, the crushed and neglected powers of 
 the spiritual nature shall assert their claims. And it 
 shall need no outward voice of reproof, but it shall 
 feel within itself the voice of God, saying, " I gave 
 thee a capacity and a thirst for knowledge, how 
 hast thou neglected and despised the gift ! I gave
 
 SELECTIONS. 153 
 
 thee a sense of truth, a nature of affection, how 
 hast thou crushed the one and profaned the other ! 
 I gave thee a spiritual aspiration, an inborn thirst 
 for holiness, how hast thou corrupted and de- 
 based the immortal soul, to do the bidding of the 
 body's lusts ! Thou mightest have been an angel 
 of light in wisdom, in virtue, and in love. How art 
 thou fallen, to be a grovelling worm of the dust ! " 
 
 But the witnesses shall not be all within. The 
 soul shall summon them from the east and the west, 
 from the north and the south ; yea, into things in- 
 animate will a voice be put. For who has not 
 known the strange and mysterious conviction of sin 
 that sometimes even here forces itself upon the 
 guilty from everything around him, and how, some- 
 times, after a deed of evil, a man trembles at every 
 rustling leaf, and fears to look up lest he should read 
 the doom of punishment in the first object he be- 
 holds ? He feels that his dreadful secret is betrayed 
 in his countenance. The stars, the moonlight, glance 
 a lightning reproof. The still water, as he looks into 
 it, glows back upon him the reflection of his own 
 haggard face, and he trembles like one who sees 
 some horrible phantom. He shrinks from the eye 
 of his fellow-man, feeling that it will look into liis 
 dark breast and read the history that he reads there 
 so plainly. And how much more vivid will all this 
 be, when the unveiled soul can by no possibility find 
 a hiding-place from itself, or cover up from others' 
 sight its inward vileness !
 
 154 SELECTIONS. 
 
 There shall gather round us, in imagination, in 
 that awful hour, those nearest in kindred, the 
 little circle of home. O, if then a parent bears the 
 unwilling testimony to the child's disobedience, 
 if then the consciousness is forced home upon the 
 soul, that a parent's gray hairs went down in sorrow 
 and in shame to the grave for its unfaithfulness, 
 if then comes the bitter thought, that the child, God's 
 mercy gave, lived dishonored and died despairing, 
 through a parent's neglect or a parent's example, 
 then what untold agony shall roll in floods of bitter- 
 ness upon that soul ! 
 
 But there are other things for which retribution 
 comes, sins of omission, as well as commission, 
 of neglect, as well as positive wrong. 
 
 Methought I stood, a disembodied soul, before 
 the throne of God. And, lo ! the countless nations 
 of men, all who have lived, were summoned there. 
 Slowly, and in successive trains, they passed before 
 that throne of God, and I beheld them all. 
 
 And first there came a spectre, hideous and pale, 
 and following with slow and feeble steps the children 
 of Want. And from their lips arose a feeble, plain- 
 tive cry that smote the heart with a desolate sad- 
 ness ; and that infinite eye turned full on me its 
 searching glance, and I felt it say, "What hast 
 thou done for these ? " 
 
 And then there came one riding on a black horse, 
 an iron sceptre in his hand. And him there followed
 
 SELECTIONS. ' 155 
 
 the millions, on whom he had laid his bloody scourge, 
 clanking their chains, and crying with a wail that rent 
 the very heavens. And then a noise of many thun- 
 ders, and I heard a fearful voice which said, " Woe 
 to him that hath beheld Oppression in the earth, and 
 hath not pleaded for the oppressed that had no ad- 
 vocate ! " 
 
 And then I saw one rushing swiftly past, with 
 maniac stride, and in his bosom burned a fire of 
 glowing coals. And, as he went, he scattered fire- 
 brands, arrows, and death. Him there followed, with 
 a riotous shout, a multitude that no man could num- 
 ber, and on every face the curse of Drunkenness 
 was writ. And yet again I felt that awful eye, and, 
 as I looked, I saw one there whose face I knew, 
 and my heart sank down within me ; for I had seen 
 him, a young man, going down that fearful road to 
 death and hell, and had not warned him ! 
 
 Again came one fearful to look upon, and bearing 
 in his hand a bloody sword. He rode upon a white 
 horse, which, as he trod, mangled and crushed at 
 every step the bleeding forms of men. And him 
 there followed Death and Pestilence ; and his mur- 
 dered victims a tenth part of all that ever peopled 
 the broad earth came after, and from their blood- 
 less lips there rose a groan, that, like the roar of 
 many waters, shook the sky, and called for mercy 
 and for justice ! 
 
 Yet once again my eye pierced through the infinite
 
 156 SELECTIONS'. 
 
 space, and, at a glance, I saw the gathered myriads. 
 Yet once again the famished children's wail broke 
 on my ear, yet once again I heard the drunkards' 
 mocking shout, the clank of heavy chains, and the 
 loud groan that spoke War's horrible woe ; and then 
 a voice from every soul among that infinite host, that 
 shook the throne of God, and said, " We are the 
 witnesses /" And I heard another voice say, " In- 
 asmuch as ye have not done it unto the least of these 
 my brethren, ye have not done it unto me." 
 
 September 5, 1847.
 
 SELECTIONS. 157 
 
 X. 
 
 
 
 " No man liveth to himself." 
 
 EVEN when one's opinion is perfectly clear and 
 sound to his own mind, it does not follow that he 
 has a right to preach, to print, or to promulgate it. 
 He ought first to judge concerning the probability of 
 its being rightly understood, and having a good influ- 
 ence in the world. There is a great deal of foolish 
 talk about the safety of speaking the truth. " Is not 
 a man bound to utter the truth ? The truth can do 
 no harm." There is a great deal of truth, that is at 
 present of very little value ; as, whether Methusaleh 
 lived as long as he is said to have done, whether 
 Cephrenes built the pyramid that bears his name, or 
 whether (as Christians have fiercely contended) the 
 light that shone around our Saviour at his transfigur- 
 ation was created or uncreated. Nor is one, though 
 always bound to speak the truth, if he speak at all, 
 always bound to speak. There is great virtue in 
 speech, and we are apt enough to forget our obliga- 
 tions to utterance. But there is often as great 
 merit, and as strong an influence, in silence. It is 
 yet again to be considered, even though we were 
 to admit that truth can do no harm, whether one is
 
 158 SELECTIONS. 
 
 quite sure he has the truth ; and, if it should turn out 
 error after all, how far he will be held responsible 
 for its results. 
 
 - Finally, I deny the main principle contended for, 
 that the truth must always do good, and can nev- 
 er do harm. Under certain circumstances, and in 
 certain states of mind, you would not tell a person 
 of his faults, though it might do him good to know 
 them. Jesus did not controvert many popular de- 
 lusions, as the ascribing of insanity to the influ- 
 ence of evil spirits, and often taught truth in para- 
 bles, on purpose to render it obscure. Paul fed his 
 converts with milk, and not with meat, because they 
 were not able to bear it. Certain truths may be 
 clear enough to you, may even be a blessing and a 
 comfort to you, which another would receive so par- 
 tially, or so entirely pervert, as to render them abso- 
 lutely harmful to himself. Some truths are more 
 important than others ; and the lesser must be learn- 
 ed, oftentimes, before the greater can be fairly appre- 
 hended. You would not try to teach a child flux- 
 ions, before he had mastered simple addition. And 
 sometimes, the pure, simple truth would do great 
 harm. If the slaves could see the injustice of their 
 masters, and feel the evils of their oppression, as 
 you and I see and feel them, they would not be re- 
 strained by moral or Christian principle from rising 
 in mutiny and violence to redress them, themselves. 
 I would not proclaim to them my sense of their
 
 SELECTIONS. 159 
 
 wrongs, if I had the opportunity. So I would not 
 speak in the hearing of children of what I consider- 
 ed the faults or mistakes of their parents. 
 
 There is great looseness in the popular view of 
 responsibility for opinions. All wrong action grows 
 out of false principles of action, or at least, the ab- 
 sence of true principles. Want of truth makes want 
 of goodness. Slavery owes its existence to false 
 ideas of liberty ; war, to false views of national mo- 
 rality and honor. The Inquisition was sustained by 
 the doctrine that it was just and right to sustain 
 God's true Church by violence, and to save men's 
 souls by punishing them for heresy. There are 
 some persons now, who deny the sanctity of mar- 
 riage, the right of private property, the obligation to 
 obey laws, the existence of any retribution beyond 
 this life ; doctrines, whose prevalence would, I 
 think, be in the highest degree pernicious. The 
 fact is, one is just as responsible for the formation 
 of his opinions as of his habits, for the influence of 
 his words as of his actions. There is no separat- 
 ing the two things. There can be no distinction 
 between them. Truth is the foundation of goodness. 
 Our actions grow out of our belief. And he who 
 forms his opinions without thought, and recklessly 
 promulgates them without regard to their influence, 
 is as one "that casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, 
 and saith, Am I not in sport ? " 
 
 Let it not be supposed, that, in thus uttering my
 
 160 SELECTIONS. 
 
 view of duty, I am condemning any man's opinion or 
 conduct. No Scripture is of private interpretation, 
 nor would I be thought to deny to another the liber- 
 ty I claim for myself. But, as I had stated the 
 duty of Christian non-conformity, it seemed fitting 
 to state also its limitations. 
 
 The true reformer never assumes to be a saint, 
 or proclaims himself the only faithful man in the 
 world. He quietly speaks out, and lives out, his own 
 conviction, calling upon other men to speak and to 
 live out theirs. Nor is the Christian non-conformist 
 troubled or angry at the misunderstanding or abuse 
 of others. He is no martyr who is always calling 
 upon the world to see how, he is persecuted, and 
 how well he bears it. Of all things, this is the last 
 he thinks of. He is too much concerned for the 
 truth to think of himself. And noble Stephen, when 
 he dies, says nothing of the stones, but is rilled with 
 the glory of the heaven above him, and only remem- 
 bers his murderers with a prayer. 
 
 March 25, 1848.
 
 SELECTIONS. 161 
 
 XL 
 
 " Yesterday." 
 
 I ADDRESS this sermon to the young. My text, 
 children, is " Yesterday." You can all remember 
 it, " Yesterday." 
 
 Children are generally thinking -so much of the 
 future, of what they are to do to-morrow, or when 
 they grow up to be men and women, that they do 
 not often stop to look back. I remember, that, 
 some years ago, passing through a piece of woods, I 
 walked hastily on, looking only before me, till, after 
 half an hour, I was surprised to find myself almost 
 at the very spot from which I had set out. I had 
 started to go to my father's house ; but had strolled 
 along so heedlessly, that I had actually turned about, 
 and was walking in an opposite direction. I have 
 often thought of this since, and it has seemed to me 
 a good illustration of the way in which many live. 
 For life is a journey, and it ought to be a journey 
 towards our heavenly Father's house, the home 
 of the good and faithful. But is it not often so, that 
 many, who set out with their faces turned towards 
 that home, suffer themselves to wander heedlessly, 
 till their steps lead further and further away from it ? 
 11
 
 162 SELECTIONS. 
 
 
 
 If we would know where we are, and which way we 
 are travelling, we must sometimes stop and look 
 back. 
 
 What should you think, if, this spring, some farm- 
 er should neglect, week after week, to plant his fields, 
 and should say to his neighbours, when they asked 
 him about it, " O, I intend to have as fine a harvest 
 as any body, but you see I have not made up my mind 
 yet what to plant " ? You would say he was either 
 foolish or crazy. But how is it with you ? This is 
 your spring-time of life. What did you plant yes- 
 terday ? You know what I mean, what kind of 
 words and thoughts and actions, that will bring their 
 harvest years hence. Do you not know ? Then, 
 are you not the foolish person, who has not made 
 up his mind what to plant his field with ? If the 
 field is left unplanted all spring and summer, then 
 nettles and thistles and weeds will spring up and 
 grow of themselves, and that is what he will have to 
 gather in when harvest-time comes. 
 
 One of the things you want to learn is, to be in- 
 dustrious, to make a good use of time. I dare 
 say that many of you have looked often towards the 
 top of Wachusett, and wished you could be there 
 for a little while. But it is tiresome to climb up the 
 mountain ; and what if some boy, who wanted to see 
 the view, should go and sit every day at the foot, 
 and wish he could be at the top, but never take one 
 step toward ascending, because the way is steep and
 
 SELECTIONS. , 163 
 
 hard ? Now growth in goodness is like climbing a 
 mountain. We must go on, step by step, with la- 
 borious effort. Well, how was it yesterday ? You 
 want to learn to make a good use of time. Were 
 you any more industrious than before, or did not you 
 try, because it was so hard ? 
 
 Do not suffer yourself to think, that yesterday was 
 only a small part of life, that it is of no conse- 
 quence if it was lost. Life is all made up of min- 
 utes, and unless you use the minutes well, it will all 
 be lost. On the tops of high mountains you will see 
 little streams starting and flowing down the rock. At 
 first, they are fine and small almost as little threads ; 
 you could stop them with your finger ; but they flow 
 on, and soon others join them, and, as they descend, 
 more and more unite, till at length they make a 
 brook ; and then several of these brooks running to- 
 gether make small rivers, and these make large ones ; 
 r so that, when you trace back the great river that 
 is miles across, -whose rapid current sweeps along 
 hundreds of boats and great vessels, you find it all 
 beginning in the little silver streams on the top of the 
 mountain. 
 
 Do not think, of any bad action, " It is only 
 once, it cannot do much harm, I will never do 
 it again." You have seen boys in the winter slide or 
 coast down a steep hill. They move slowly at first, 
 but all the time the motion becomes swifter and 
 swifter, till they reach the foot, and then it costs
 
 164 SELECTIONS. 
 
 much more time and effort for them to get back to 
 the top again. Is not this like one who is growing 
 worse every day ? He is going down hill faster and 
 faster, though he does not know it. Is it true of 
 any of you, that yesterday you became worse and 
 not better, went down the hill instead of ascending 
 it? 
 
 I have read, that, as two men were building a ship, 
 they came to a piece of timber that had a worm-hole 
 in it. The question was asked, "Shall we put it in ?" 
 "It is but a single hole," says one, " and a small hole 
 too." So they made use of the timber. The ship 
 went to sea ; but the worm was still there, gnawing ; 
 and at length, through this unsound timber, the ship 
 sprung aleak, and went to the bottom. So it is 
 with your character. Every bad word you speak, 
 every wrong act you do, may be likened to the worm 
 in the ship. You may think it is but one, and a 
 little one ; but it will eat up the purity and soundness 
 of your character, and in the end you may learn, 
 when it is too late, what a dreadful mistake it was 
 to suppose that any wrong thing could be of little 
 consequence. Was there some such thing in your 
 experience yesterday, something which conscience 
 told you was wrong, but which you excused because 
 it was a little thing ? If you can think of such a 
 case, then remember how the little worm at last de- 
 stroyed the great ship. 
 
 Once, as a child sat, on a summer's evening, under
 
 SELECTIONS. 165 
 
 a shady tree, he fell asleep. And he dreamed that 
 three bright and beautiful angels stood over him. 
 And while he wondered at the sight, one of them 
 spoke to another, and said, " I have brought this 
 garment of pure white, and this white lily that will 
 never fade, to bestow upon him who is spotless and 
 good." And the boy saw that on the angel's fore- 
 head was written its name. It was Innocence. 
 Then the other angel spoke in reply, " Look in 
 this glass, which I hold in my hand, and you will see 
 the picture of this sleeping child's life to-day. See 
 how he has been disobedient and thoughtless and 
 passionate, and has forgotten God and* his prayers. 
 I, too, would have given him this basket of precious 
 jewels, but I cannot bestow them on such a one." 
 Then the boy read the angel's name in her fore- 
 head. It was Memory. Then spoke the third 
 angel, " I, too, would have given him this golden 
 crown, if he had been true and good." And her 
 riarne the child read. It was Hope. Then the 
 sleeper trembled when he remembered how he had 
 spent a wicked and thoughtless day. And the an- 
 gels bent their bright eyes sadly upon him, and Hope 
 said, " We will meet here again in a year from this 
 night." Then they suddenly vanished, and the 
 sleeping boy awoke. 
 
 Very sadly he thought of his dream. But he re- 
 solved to live from that time a better life. And
 
 166 SELECTIONS. 
 
 every night he went and sat on the same green bank, 
 and called up all he had done during the day, and 
 repented when he remembered that he had done 
 wrong. Winter came, and he could no longer go 
 to the shady bank. But as soon as the ground was 
 bare, and the grass began to spring, and the violets 
 blossomed, he would go again at evening, and sit 
 under the tree. And so the year came round, and 
 again he fell asleep there of a summer's night. And 
 in his dream the three angels came again and smiled 
 on him. " Now," said Memory, " I can give him 
 the box of jewels, the precious gems of virtue, 
 and the recollection of good deeds, of kind and pure 
 words and happy thoughts, better than all the wealth 
 in the world." " And I," said Innocence, " will give 
 him now the lily that never fades, the spirit of cheer- 
 ful gladness, and the white robe of purity, such as 
 the angels wear." " And I," said Hope, " have 
 brought for him now the golden crown." Then the 
 sleeping child thought he beheld himself lying there, 
 with the golden crown on his head, and the lily in 
 his hand, and he was clad in the white robe of Inno- 
 cence and the jewels of Memory ; and in the sky 
 above him he heard the sound of music, and, look- 
 ing up, he saw many bright ones with harps in their 
 hands. The stars rose in the sky, and the moon 
 shed its light on the child's face, and still he slept 
 on. And they found him in the morning, a sweet
 
 SELECTIONS. 167 
 
 smile on his lips, as though he were in a pleasant 
 dream. But his eyes never opened on this world 
 again. His spirit was not there. That had gone 
 up with the angels. 
 
 April, 1848.
 
 168 SELECTIONS. 
 
 XII. 
 
 THE UNPARDONABLE SIN. 
 
 WHOSOEVER SPEAKETH AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST, IT SHALL 
 NOT BE FORGIVEN HIM, NEITHER IN THIS WORLD, NEITHER 
 IN THE WORLD TO COME. Matt. xil. 32. 
 
 THESE words of Jesus have given rise to much 
 speculation ; and many a tender and sensitive con- 
 science has applied to itself the guilt and the con- 
 demnation of the unpardonable sin. Is there, then, a 
 sin so heinous, that God refuses to pardon its com- 
 mission, even when repented of ? Can man incur 
 such a measure of guilt, that the infinite Father shall 
 turn his face for ever away from him, and, unsoftened 
 by his penitence and deaf to his pleadings, exclude 
 him hopelessly from the joy of his blessing and the 
 heaven of his presence? Neither in nature, in rea- 
 son, nor in Scripture, does such a statement find 
 support. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is an unpardonable sin ; un- 
 pardonable, not because God will not forgive it, but 
 because, in the nature of things, he cannot ; unpar- 
 donable, not because the Divine mercy is ever 
 refused to the penitent, but because it implies a con-
 
 SELECTIONS. 169 
 
 dition of soul which will not repent. The obstacle 
 is not in God's implacability, but in the sinner, 
 the obstinacy of man himself. The forgiveness of 
 the Deity is infinite as his being. It is not limited 
 by human transgression, or the years of mortality. 
 There can be no sin that is greater than God's mer- 
 cy ; there can be no period, in time or eternity, 
 at which the possibility of forgiveness ceases. God 
 is committed by his justice, as well as his mercy, 
 bound by his immutability, as well as his love, 
 pledged, by all his attributes, to forgive sin, when- 
 ever forgiveness is made possible by compliance 
 with the only condition of forgiveness, a sincere re- 
 pentance. But there is a state of mind which, while 
 it exists, makes forgiveness an impossibility, because 
 repentance is an impossibility. 
 
 The narrative in the gospels makes it very clear 
 what this sin is. The Jews, wilful in their blind- 
 ness and prejudice, misrepresented the doctrines, 
 and impugned the motives, and derided the claims, 
 of Jesus. They heaped upon him obloquy and 
 abuse ; they assailed him with invective and ridi- 
 cule. And when they could not deny the reality of 
 his miracles, they endeavoured to invalidate their 'tes- 
 timony and destroy their influence by ascribing them 
 to the agency of evil spirits. " He casteth out 
 demons by Beelzebub, the prince of the demons." 
 It was this malicious .charge that gave rise to the 
 words of Jesus. It was a small thing to him that
 
 170 SELECTIONS. 
 
 they should treat his person with contempt, and turn 
 his words to a mocking jest ; but when he saw them 
 resisting their own convictions, and denying the mani- 
 fest agency of God, he felt that they were shutting 
 themselves out from the last appeal that could be 
 made, resisting the only evidence that remained 
 to be brought in support of the truth that would 
 save them. Then he says, Say what you will about 
 me, the Son of Man, treat me as your passion 
 and prejudice counsel ; all that I do not heed, 
 in that you act blindly, and may be forgiven. But 
 when the finger of God heals the sick in a moment, 
 and restores reason to its throne in the mind of rav- 
 ing insanity, and touches your own hearts with a re- 
 sponsive throb of conviction, then if you resist the 
 evidence, if you blasphemously say it is not the 
 finger of God, but the work of a demon, then 
 are ye hopelessly lost in your unbelief and your 
 hardness of heart. While you are in such a con- 
 dition, there is no pardon and no salvation for you. 
 
 It is plain that the condemnation cannot apply to 
 any soul, however guilty, that is conscious of guilt, 
 and sincerely seeking deliverance. It is applicable 
 only to a state of utter hardness,. that has no feeling 
 of guilt, of wilful blindness and indifference, that 
 neither desires nor asks for the way of salvation. 
 
 Nor is it in relation to simple unbelief that Jesus 
 is speaking. It was not strange that the Jews re- 
 jected his claims. They saw him as a stranger, and
 
 SELECTIONS. 171 
 
 could not know the lofty, virtue and divine purity of 
 his life. They knew him only as the humble Naza- 
 rene, and could not easily be brought to regard him 
 as the princely Messiah. The prejudices of long- 
 cherished opinion, the strong associations of early 
 education, national pride, and superstitious venera- 
 tion, everything in their mental condition, and in 
 their external circumstances, was most unfavorable 
 to their reception of the truths he taught. To be 
 sure, they were witnesses of his wonderful works of 
 healing ; but it is to be remembered that multitudes 
 among them laid claim to the same miraculous 
 power. So that, when we come to lake all this 
 fairly into account, we shall see that unbelief in 
 Christ was neither so strange nor so criminal then 
 as now. The Jews had noX a tenth part of the 
 evidence in support of his claims that we have. 
 And, in our day, the fact of unbelief in Christianity 
 may imply little or no positive guilt in the skeptic. 
 A man's convictions cannot be forced. They are 
 not subject to his will. Christianity may never have 
 been presented to him in its true form, but only a 
 distorted and repulsive view of it. The arguments 
 by which it is sustained may not have been brought 
 before his mind. Early associations and opinions, 
 the influence of which he cannot at once throw off, 
 may keep him long in a state of wavering doubt or 
 positive rejection. Or, again, and the case is a 
 very common one, a person may consider himself
 
 172 SELECTIONS. 
 
 an unbeliever in Christianity, simply because he re- 
 jects the common statement and the popular form of 
 Christianity ; when, all the while, he has thought 
 more and not less about it than most men, and, if 
 he only knew it, really believes in Christ more 
 heartily, and has a purer conception of Christianity, 
 than the great majority who boast the name. With 
 all such persons, unbelief is a misfortune and not a 
 sin, an incalculable loss, but scarcely implying 
 guilt. Their position demands of us pity, but not 
 censure, to convince, but not to condemn. 
 
 But there is a state of unbelief which is not to be 
 spoken of so leniently. It is the most unpardonable 
 and the most hopeless condition into which the soul 
 of man can sink. It is that to which Jesus plainly 
 refers. It has three distinguishing characteristics, 
 a false life, an indifference to truth, and an irreverent 
 spirit. 
 
 It is denoted, first, by a false life. I do not mean, 
 simply, a life that falls below the Christian standard, 
 or below the standard of any other person ; but a 
 life that is false to the convictions of the individual 
 himself. We have no right to judge an unbeliever 
 in Christianity by the standard of Christianity ; we 
 have no right to judge any man by our own standard. 
 But we have a right to pronounce him a false man 
 who does not live up to the standard he himself ac- 
 knowledges. God demands this of every man, 
 Pagan no less than Christian, that he shall be true
 
 SELECTIONS. 173 
 
 to his own felt convictions ; that he shall do the duty 
 whose obligation he clearly sees. The law of prog- 
 ress and growth is written on man's nature and con- 
 stitution ; and progress and growth can only follow 
 from fidelity to duty, obedience to conscience. 
 When, then, one fails to obey his own moral sense, 
 and so do the highest and best thing he can see as 
 obligatory upon him, all growth must cease. Worse 
 than this, the soul must retrograde, and this fearful 
 penalty must follow. The duty neglected will no 
 longer be seen clearly as a duty. The conviction 
 disobeyed will cease to be a conviction. Gradually 
 the sense and conviction of duty in such a soul will 
 utterly cease. Conscience will die out. 
 
 The second feature of the unpardonable sin 
 the condition of hopeless unbelief is, an indiffer- 
 ence to truth. Clearly as God has written the law 
 of progress on the moral nature of man, has he im- 
 pressed it, also, on his intellectual nature. The 
 mind seeks knowledge, as the soul seeks goodness, 
 as the aliment of its growth. The condition of a 
 true man implies that he is always seeking higher 
 truth. But if he will not receive that which com- 
 mends itself to his reason and understanding, be- 
 cause it conflicts with his prejudices or condemns 
 his practice, then to him it shall cease to be a truth. 
 From the moment when such a state of wilful blind- 
 ness begins, no more light shall enter that mind. 
 Such a person has excluded the truth, has shut
 
 174 SELECTIONS. 
 
 the door and barred the windows against her. He 
 has closed his eyes, and refuses to see. He is no 
 longer a seeker after knowledge or truth, and can 
 therefore receive none. There is more to be 
 said. The truth he has will go away from him. 
 That which he saw before will be less clearly dis- 
 cernible day by day. Knowledge will lose its value, 
 and truth her royal splendor, in his esteem. The 
 result will be, a state of utter indifference to all 
 truth. The intellectual faculty, like the moral, will 
 be lost. Reason, like conscience, will die out. 
 
 The third feature in this condition of mind is, that 
 it has lost all love of that which is holy, and all ven- 
 eration for that which is sacred. The native admira- 
 tion of heroic virtue and sublime self-denial, which 
 God implanted in every soul, it has smothered and 
 crushed. It acknowledges nothing as venerable, 
 it bows before nothing as lofty, it reveres nothing 
 as pure. The abounding goodness of God awakens 
 no grateful piety. The self-devotion of human love 
 incites to no genial return. It laughs at affection, 
 it despises truth, it mocks at piety and ridicules 
 saintliness. Far from prostrating itself before the 
 moral nobility of Jesus, it treats his person with 
 deriding scorn. The sublime truths he declares win 
 it to no obedient homage, but only provoke a bit- 
 terer hate. When God works miracles by his hand, 
 it turns them to an impious blasphemy. When he 
 hangs bleeding on the cross, it shakes its head and
 
 SELECTIONS. 175 
 
 points its finger in derision. To such a condition, 
 where conscience is silent, and reason extinct, and 
 the heart callous, what moral influence can bring 
 salvation ? What avenue is left open by which the 
 renovating power of religion can be brought to bear 
 upon the character ? It has lost the power to feel 
 the obligation of duty, the beauty of truth, or the 
 divinity of love. This is the state of unpardonable 
 sin. What shall we say of it ? What but the 
 solemn language of Jesus, that it "hath never 
 forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation " ? 
 
 Shall we venture to go beyond the declaration of 
 Jesus, and believe that, at last, having served out 
 the time of its punishment, it shall be driven through 
 suffering to fear, and through fear to belief, and 
 through belief to supplication and to seeking, and 
 so, at last, be brought to penitence and pardon ? So, 
 in God's mercy, I hope and trust. But Jesus no- 
 where affirms it. 
 
 And what, then, is the practical lesson of our sub- 
 ject ? This, the danger of trifling with duty, of 
 resisting truth, of hardening the heart against the 
 appeals that are continually made to its affection, its 
 piety, and its reverence. Every faculty unused is 
 lost. The unfaithful soul parts, gradually, with con- 
 science, reason, and reverence. And when these 
 are gone, what is there left to save it ? Conscience, 
 which should have sat at the helm to guide its course 
 over the perilous ocean of time, has fallen asleep at
 
 176 SELECTIONS. 
 
 its post. Reason, the pilot of its voyage, sits with 
 closed eye, and is blind to the pole-star, Truth, 
 whose steady light is shining in the heaven over the 
 dark waters. The heart, which God's love should 
 rule, and his wisdom enlighten, that still, like the 
 compass, it might be an unerring guide, though rea- 
 son and conscience both should fail, the heart has 
 lost its reverence, and owns no homage to the mag- 
 net-sway of that great central Heart, from whose in- 
 finite fulness flows out the life of a universe, and to 
 whose mighty throbbings all loyal hearts respond in 
 the pulsations of life and love. The needle has 
 rusted to its pivot. The dead heart vibrates not 
 with the heart of God. For such a soul, what is 
 there left to save it ? 
 
 There is a solemn truth underlying that old doc- 
 trine of the Church, that a man might sin away the 
 day of grace, might resist the pleadings of God's 
 spirit, till, grieved and angry, it should depart from 
 him for ever. Beyond a certain point, he who 
 stifles conscience, and resists truth, and crushes 
 reverence, shall lose them all. 
 
 And so we are prepared to understand the con- 
 clusion of that touching address of Christ, "O, 
 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, 
 and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often 
 would I have gathered thy children together, even 
 as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, 
 and ye would not ! Behold, your house is left unto
 
 SELECTIONS. 177 
 
 you desolate. And now I go my way, and ye shall 
 seek me, and shall not find me," shall not find 
 me, he might have said, not because I am far off, 
 but because of your own moral blindness, that can- 
 not see me, because of your inward corruption, 
 that will not receive me. " But ye shall die in your 
 sins," the divine powers God gave you shall die 
 out, because of your falseness. " Ye shall not see 
 me henceforth, till ye shall say," and say it in the 
 anguish of your hearts, because you have drunk deep 
 of the cup of iniquity, and have tasted the bitterness 
 of its dregs, ye shall see no Saviour till ye shall 
 say, " Blessed is he that cometh in the name of 
 the Lord ! " 
 
 January, 1848. 
 
 12
 
 178 SELECTIONS. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 THOUGHT. 
 
 A HEART SETTLED UPON A THOUGHT OF WISDOM. EccleS. 
 
 xxii. 17. 
 
 THOUGHT and Time are the web and woof of 
 life, and the woven fabric is Eternity. Without 
 thought, time were not, nor action, nor sense of 
 being. Thought is consciousness, and what we 
 call now is only the reflection of a thought upon it- 
 self. All that there is in what we call To-day, is 
 in the life of thought : thought is the spirit's breath. 
 To think is to live ; for he who thinks not has no 
 sense of life. Wouldst thou make the most of life, 
 wouldst thou have the joy of the present, let 
 Thought's invisible shuttles weave full in the loom 
 of time the moment's passing threads. To think is 
 to live ; but with how many are these passing hours 
 as so many loose filaments, never woven together 
 nor gathered, but scattered, ravelling, so many flying 
 ends, confused and worthless ! Time and life, un- 
 filled with thought, are useless, unenjoyed, bringing 
 no pleasure for the present, storing no good for fu- 
 ture need. To-day is the golden chance, where-
 
 SELECTIONS. 179 
 
 with to snatch Thought's blessed fruition, the joy 
 of the present, the hope of the future. Thought 
 makes the time that is, and thought the eternity to 
 come. 
 
 " O bright presence of To-day, let me wrestle with thee, gra- 
 cious angel, 
 
 I will not let thee go except thou bless me ; bless me, then, 
 To-day ; 
 
 sweet garden of To-day, let me gather of thee, precious 
 
 Eden, 
 
 1 have stolen bitter knowledge, give me fruits of life To-day ; 
 
 true temple of To-day, let me worship in thee, glorious 
 
 Zion, 
 
 1 find none other place nor time than where -I am To-day ; 
 
 living rescue of To-day, let me run into thee, ark of refuge, 
 
 1 see none other hope nor chance, but standeth in To-day ; 
 
 rich banquet of To-day, let me feast upon thee, saving 
 
 manna, 
 
 1 have none other food nor store but daily bread To-day." 
 
 But what but thought maketh To-day ? He who 
 thinks not has murdered To-day. 
 
 Thought is Memory ; and all the garnered past 
 is but the picture of this faithful limner, the clear 
 reflection of Thought's magic mirror. The Past, 
 he who thinks not is a stranger to its rich and fair 
 domain. It lieth behind him, a cool, still grotto, hung 
 with sparkling gems, and gorgeous with marble sculp- 
 ture. Wouldst thou not some time retreat from the 
 dusty street and the noontide's scorching beam ? 
 Retire, retire with Thought, thy better angel, to 
 this the treasure-house and mausoleum where all thy
 
 180 SELECTIONS. 
 
 life is sacredly embalmed. Hast thou not learned 
 how holy is the place, fragrant with the breath of 
 other days, with joys long fled, and childhood's 
 morning flowers ? Art thou poor ? Behold here 
 thy good deeds laid up, an incorruptible treasure. 
 Art thou alone ? Yet here the light of other days 
 shall shine around thee, and faces thou no more shalt 
 greet smile oh thee as of old. The Past is thine. 
 It is not dead to thee. Thou hast purchased it by 
 labor and struggle, by love's vow and sorrow's tear. 
 Enter in and possess it. It is thine. 
 
 But hast thou not made Memory thy friend, and 
 shrinkest from the Past, because the Past is evil ? 
 Dare not to shut it out, for the time is coming when 
 thou must look upon it, must live in it. Though 
 few remembrances of good are there, and spectres 
 of evil thoughts and deeds affright thee when thou 
 enterest, yet is it needful for thee to dwell therein, 
 and learn to bear the sight. 'T is Heaven's appoint- 
 ed retribution. Thinkest thou to escape it ? 'T is 
 Heaven's medicine of mercy to fright thee back to 
 virtue. Refuse it not, for thy welfare, thy salva- 
 tion, is in it. 
 
 And what is anticipation, what is hope, what is 
 faith, but Thought ? When the past is chill and 
 lonely, and we turn from its twilight remembrance 
 and its shadowy forms, when the present is deso- 
 late, and duty is stern, and the flesh is weak, and the 
 burden is heavy, and the dream is frightful, cometh
 
 SELECTIONS. 181 
 
 Thought's angel with the redemption of to-morrow's 
 hope, with the prophecy of better to come. The 
 cloud is dark over our heads ; but before, in our 
 horizon, the sun is still shining, and a rainbow be- 
 girds it. The waves overwhelm us ; but a fairy skiff 
 with a gentle pilot is sailing towards us, and still, 
 when sinking, we look for deliverance. 
 
 " The painful Present is comforted by the Future, 
 And kind To-morrow beareth half the burdens of To-day." 
 
 Let the young heart of wild imaginings curb the 
 ^too luxuriant fancy, that it be not deceived by a 
 halo ; but let the burdened and the sorrowful take 
 counsel of anticipation, and remember the wisdom 
 of hope. 
 
 Immortal Thought, how vast is thy domain ! Thou 
 givest us power to bring the mighty orbs of heaven 
 within our reach, and find a world of wisdom in an 
 insect's wing. Thou takest us up, and bearest us 
 away to distant climes and distant ages. Through 
 thee we hold converse with prophets and wise men 
 of old time, and drink in the sacred lessons of the 
 past. We soar still higher, above the stars, and 
 even to God's ancient throne, and read his glory and 
 see the image of his face. We learn the sweet les- 
 sons of his wondrous love, and hold communion with 
 his spirit, infinite and vast. 
 
 The obligation to think, that is my next point. 
 I say the obligation to think, for thought is a duty.
 
 182 SELECTIONS. 
 
 Nor let it be supposed that it is a duty easily dis- 
 charged, or one that may be left to take care of it- 
 self. It may indeed be true, that, in our waking 
 hours, the mind is always occupied ; but we are all 
 sensible with how much more vigor, and to how 
 much more profit, at some times than others. But, 
 wasteful as we are of many things, of what else are 
 we so prodigal as of time and thought, the most 
 precious of all ? The Koran relates, that there are 
 angels in heaven, who think as much in half an hour 
 as we do in a thousand years ; and it may be so, 
 for there is no limit to the rapidity of thought. This 
 much is certain, that he lives longest who thinks 
 most thoughts ; and in this .sense it may be true, 
 that "the child shall die, a hundred years old." 
 And do not a large proportion of the ignorance, the 
 omissions, and the sins of life come of the failure to 
 think ? Our plans are not matured, and so they 
 fail. Our resolutions are forgotten, and so unfulfilled. 
 The whole universe of God's majestic handiwork 
 lies around us, a still more wondrous universe with- 
 in ; and we are wellnigh strangers to it all. The 
 words of earth's wise and gifted ones are written 
 out for us ; for us science unfolds its mystic lore ; 
 and we heed not their lessons. Great and high 
 privileges of usefulness and progress are ours ; and 
 we do not use them, for want of thought. 
 
 It is not only a man's duty to think, but to think 
 about the right things. In the next place, then, he
 
 SELECTIONS. 183 
 
 must have habits of thought ; that is, he must have 
 set times and seasons which he devotes to strong and 
 worthy thought, reflection on the greatest and 
 highest themes. Unless he does this, he must fail 
 of all vigorous and high exercise of his mental pow- 
 ers. His mind becomes like a floating chip on the 
 river's current, with which every circling eddy plays 
 fast and loose, the merest weather-vane, which 
 every idle wind of circumstance may blow about as 
 it will. He has no settled opinions, he has no 
 fixed principles. Such a man's life must fail of all 
 high ends. Here is an infinite field of knowledge ; 
 and it ought to be part of every one's plan of life to 
 make daily some useful acquisitions in it. Here are 
 boundless capacities of growth ; and surely it should 
 be part of every one's ideal to make daily progress 
 in virtue and holiness. Here are many opportuni- 
 ties of usefulness, the sufferings and wants of our 
 brethren importuning us for solace and alleviation ; 
 and who would not gladly do something to answer 
 this claim ? But he must fail of wisdom, of prog- 
 ress, and of usefulness, who does not think. 
 
 But is a man responsible for his thoughts, then, 
 and to what extent ? To this question I reply, 
 that the responsibility for our thoughts and our con- 
 trol over them is far greater than is generally con- 
 ceived. He who does not take pains to fill his mind 
 with worthy thoughts may well expect that base and 
 wicked ones will take their place. The field un-
 
 184 SELECTIONS. 
 
 watched will surely be sown with tares, while the 
 owner is sleeping ; how much more, if it be not 
 only unwatched, but unsown! Into the house that is 
 left unfurnished and empty the spirits of evil will 
 enter, and take up their abode there. So it is \vith 
 a man's thoughts. If they are not constrained to 
 pro6table themes, they will fix upon those which are 
 contemptible or vile. And it is impossible that the 
 thought should be habitually evil, and the character 
 remain uncorrupted. Can a man touch pitch and 
 not be defiled therewith ? In some parts of our 
 country are beds of coal, formed by the gradual ac- 
 cumulation of leaves, that lie now preserved in solid 
 mass, with every tiny line and fibre perfect and un- 
 changed. So does thought petrify into character. 
 Into the soul's still depths fall silently the leaves of 
 thought ; yet in a coming eternity they shall all be 
 found embalmed there, the imperishable chronicles 
 of the spirit's history throughout the forming life of 
 ages. 
 
 And beside, every action has its root and begin- 
 ning in thought. Long before the evil deed is com- 
 mitted which sets the seal to a man's character, the 
 thought of evil has become habitual to him. Watch 
 narrowly your own thoughts, for they are parents of 
 your deeds, good or evil. Watch your own thoughts. 
 They are forewarning messengers to put you on 
 your guard against coming temptation, the dark 
 clouds, preshadowing the gathering tempest. I
 
 SELECTIONS. 185 
 
 know that a bad thought does not of necessity imply 
 guilt in the thinker. 
 
 " Evil into the mind of man 
 May come and go, so unapproved, and leave 
 No spot or blame behind." 
 
 But it must not only be unbidden and unapproved, 
 it must be resisted and driven out. When Eve's 
 ear was won to listen to the seducing voice of the 
 serpent, the tempter's victory was wellnigh gained. 
 He who parleys with an evil thought will ere long 
 give it full and free possession of his heart, and then 
 the evil deed is not far off. 
 
 If you would know yourself, your real conditions 
 and tendencies, watch well what thoughts they are 
 that come up most naturally and readily when your 
 mind is free from its habitual engrossments, and left 
 to fall back upon itself. What guests plead most 
 for entrance then, and find most ready welcome ? 
 The knowledge of this single point will shed a flood 
 of light upon your character. What thoughts are 
 they, my brother, that most frequently come up in 
 your leisure and unoccupied moments ? Does some 
 scheme of aggrandizement, some vision of wealth, fill 
 up these interstices ? Are your thoughts of gain, of 
 hoards, of luxurious ease and splendid show ? Be- 
 ware, beware ! for Mammon is clutching at your 
 heart, stealthily sapping the foundation of your 
 principles and paralyzing your best affections, and
 
 186 
 
 SELECTIONS. 
 
 robbing your soul of its noblest aspirations and its 
 better portion. 
 
 Or is it the wild dreamings of youthful passion, 
 the temptings of voluptuous imagining, that crowd 
 upon the mind released from constraint ? In God's 
 name take heed to thyself, then, for the demon of 
 sensuality is luring thee to destruction. Thou art 
 fostering a serpent in thy bosom that shall wind its 
 scaly folds about thine heart, to crush all purity and 
 nobleness out of it. Give not thyself up to the most 
 loathsome of all the spirits of evil, that he should 
 enter in to possess thy soul, to hold mad riot's 
 rule awhile, and leave a wreck of shame. 
 
 A thought ends in a habit, and habit fastens its 
 chains resistlessly upon us. He who is wise will 
 crush the thought in its weakness, and not nurse and 
 foster it into an enemy he cannot subdue. For a 
 bad thought cannot be annihilated, any more than the 
 soul into which it enters. It has been there, and 
 has left its footprint ; and if we have not driven it 
 out, it will come again. And who can measure the 
 influence of an evil thought ? If it come often, it 
 will mould the character to its likeness ; yea, it will 
 write itself upon the countenance, so that, though 
 the deed it leads to may be kept secret, or remain 
 uncommitted, yet men shall read its handwriting on 
 the face, and turn away from him who cherishes it, 
 they know not why. Let no man think he can es- 
 cape the contagion or the consequences of an evil
 
 SELECTIONS. 187 
 
 thought. It will cling to him like his shadow. It 
 will reveal itself in careless speech, or in some un- 
 conscious look and gesture. It will set its seal upon 
 the whole man, and go to fix his reputation in the 
 world. It will confirm its dominion over him till 
 he is its victim and its slave. 
 
 A single thought of evil, it will eat the heart 
 like a gangrene till all its soundness and purity are 
 gone, and nothing but corruption is left. It is a 
 consuming fire, whose relentless heat burns unap- 
 peased till all has crumbled to ashes. The world 
 is full of such warning wrecks. 
 
 So have I seen a fair spring bud, that swelled with 
 promise in morning's dew and sunshine ; but when I 
 looked, at evening, it had withered, for a worm was 
 consuming it within. 
 
 So have I heard of a noble vessel, that had out- 
 ridden many a storm, but in the calm stillness of 
 a summer sea sank down beneath the engulphing 
 waves. There was an unsound plank, and the leak, 
 unobserved till the moment of danger, could not be 
 stopped then. So is an evil thought in a man's 
 heart. 
 
 But a wise, a good thought, who can tell its 
 power ? It fills and satisfies the soul. It shines out 
 in the countenance. It speaks from the lips. It 
 goes kindling from heart to heart, and the strain of 
 its music goes round the world. 
 
 There will be some ruling principle, some lead-
 
 188 SELECTIONS. 
 
 ing thought, in every man's mind. It will be the aim 
 of the life, the key-stone to the whole character. 
 And what shall that thought be ? 
 
 But one thing is fit to be such a ruling and central 
 principle. But one thing is worthy to be an aim of 
 life to a reasonable and immortal being. It is "a 
 heart settled upon a thought of wisdom," a heart 
 and a life consecrated to God, to truth, to spirit- 
 ual things. 
 
 Till thou hast found this thou art not living the 
 life of a man, but of a beast. 'T is as if a bird should 
 forego his wings, as if the sun should renounce 
 his light. 
 
 This is the crown of thy manliness, the seal of thy 
 nobility, the talisman of thy peace. Come, if thou 
 hast not done it, and pledge thy life to truth and ho- 
 liness and love. Come, kindle on thy heart's altar 
 the flame of a consecrating purpose. Come, fix thy 
 heart upon a thought of wisdom, and bend thy no- 
 blest energies to the service of Almighty God and 
 his law written on thy heart. 
 
 Then round this living principle shall all pure 
 thoughts, as round a central crystal, arrange them- 
 selves in fair and perfect symmetry. A new and 
 higher wisdom shall inspire thee ; for the heart 
 sends tides of life to the head. New light shall shine 
 upon thee, and thine eye shall see truths unperceiv- 
 ed before ; for the pure in heart see God and all 
 things. New peace shall be thine, and holy hopes,
 
 SELECTIONS. 189 
 
 and a sense of greatness and dignity hitherto unrec- 
 ognized shall pervade thy being. Life shall be en- 
 nobled, and a high and divine mission set before 
 thee. And this kindling thought shall shine out in 
 thy life, shedding beauty and healing upon others' 
 pathway. It shall write itself in lines of inspiration 
 on thy forehead, as on the face of Jesus glowed the 
 light of God's love. It shall dwell within thee, 
 a sanctifying light, to purify thy heart from every 
 stain of evil, and fill it with heaven's exceeding 
 peace. 
 
 In the darkness of night, the cloud-begirt earth 
 seems to lie dumb in the awful gloom. The birds 
 hush their song, and hide themselves in the leafy 
 covert. The shrinking flowers close their delicate 
 petals, and the verdure and the beauty of the land- 
 scape is changed to a funeral pall. 
 
 But mark how the first beams of day dispel the 
 darkness, and create all things anew. The flowers 
 open at the gentle touch of the sunbeam, and shed 
 their fragrance on the grateful air. The birds wake 
 their jubilant song, the tree-tops wave in the morn- 
 ing breeze, the dewy grass-tips glisten in the light, 
 and the wide landscape smiles a welcome to the king 
 of day. So is the light of a religious purpose in the 
 heart. 
 
 My brother, have you not found the true end of 
 life ? Are you still dissatisfied, and looking to some 
 anticipated good the future shall bring ? Be sure the
 
 190 SELECTIONS. 
 
 good you seek lies in this alone, the consecration 
 of yourself to God and duty. This is your want 
 if you have it not, your exceeding blessedness 
 if you have, a heart settled upon a thought of 
 wisdom. 
 
 June, 1846. 
 
 THE END.
 
 UCSB LIBRARY
 
 A iiiiiiiiiiii