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GEORGE DANA 
 BOARDMAN PEPPER 
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 BY 
 FREDERICK MORGAN PADELFORD 
 
 LEROY PHILLIPS, 
 
 PUBLISHER : BOSTON 
 1914 
 

 
FOREWORD 
 
 IT WAS the desire of my father-in-law, expressed 
 to me many years ago, and expressed again shortly 
 before his death, that I should act as his biographer. 
 Needless to say, I have felt honored in performing 
 this service, but those who knew Dr. Pepper inti- 
 mately will appreciate the difficulty of the task. I 
 could only wish that my sketch were as true to life 
 as the portrait by his son, Charles Hovey Pepper, 
 which serves as a frontispiece. 
 
 FREDERICK MORGAN PADELFORD. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, 
 SEATTLE, MARCH 26, 1914. 
 
A NEW YEAR'S HYMN 
 
 Tune, Bera 
 
 Eternal God, before thee now 
 With grateful hearts we lowly bow; 
 With joyful lips we sing thy name, 
 Thy love, from age to age the same. 
 
 Weeks, months, and years in noiseless flight 
 Speed on, as speeds through air the light; 
 They stay not, rest not, nor can we : 
 Time now, anon eternity ! 
 
 The old year gone, the new begun, 
 New work begins, old work is done ; 
 The past, dear Lord, accept, forgive; 
 With grace new lives henceforth to live. 
 
 Help us, through all the coming year, 
 With thee to walk, to know thee near; 
 In joy or sorrow, good or ill, 
 To do, to bear, to love thy will. 
 
 GEORGE D. B. PEPPER. 
 
GEORGE DANA BOARDMAN PEPPER 
 
 DANA BOARDMAN PEPPER was born in 
 Ware, Massachusetts on February fifth, 1833. 
 He was the son of John and Eunice Hutchinson Pep- 
 per, and was the youngest of their five children. His 
 parents were both of old New England stock, and 
 represented many families that had been in New Eng- 
 land since the early days of the Massachusetts Colony. 
 His father was a sober, hard-working, truth-loving 
 man, a grave man though a kindly, who embodied 
 the severity of the more austere Puritan traditions. 
 " He left no dying message save to the unconverted/ 1 
 reads the account of his death. The mother was an 
 auburn-haired, gentle- voiced woman, who possessed 
 that mystical and poetic religious temperament, 
 Separatist in origin, that for three centuries of New 
 England life has struggled against the hardness and 
 rigidity of Calvinism. " She has a deep affectionate 
 nature whose cravings have not always been satis- 
 fied," wrote her son in 1859. Her people had played 
 no inconsiderable part in the annals of the country. 
 Her father, Samuel Hutchinson, a Revolutionary 
 soldier who had wintered at Valley Forge, was a 
 descendant of the famous Anne Hutchinson, mystic 
 and radical, who, mother of fifteen children as she 
 
was, had sought the new land to enjoy the ministra- 
 tions of John Cotton and had later suffered banish- 
 ment in defence of her Antinomian and democratic 
 principles. Her mother, Sarah Adams, was of the 
 immediate family that gave to Massachusetts its 
 foremost revolutionary leader, and to the country 
 two of its presidents. 
 
 In the son the temperaments and sympathies of 
 the parents were happily blended: stern Hebraism 
 was softened by a glowing sense of the love of Christ, 
 and mysticism was tempered by a grave sense of the 
 reality and awfulness of the divine law. 
 
 For his mother the boy felt an affection most 
 ardent, an affection that glows through many a 
 sentence written in later years, many a sentence im- 
 pressed with the immortal memories of childhood. 
 In one of his letters, he thus recalls her tenderness: 
 "It is a great pleasure to me when I sit down to 
 write you to know positively that you will delight 
 to receive and read what I write. That thought 
 gives the same sort of inspiration that we experienced 
 when little children in gathering large, ripe, red 
 clusters of currants or cups full of sweet strawberries 
 or pails piled with whortleberries for our mother, 
 who, we knew, would smile with real delight at their 
 reception and give us as requital an approving look 
 of the eye, an encouraging word of praise, and a true 
 motherly pat of the head and stroke of the hair, 
 to say nothing of the kiss." 
 
 The family had small means and they were forced 
 to live very plainly. There was little money for 
 
 [2] 
 
books and none for things beautiful. But despite the 
 absence of a library and of works of art, the essen- 
 tials of high and noble living were there; there, because 
 the constant, careful, and loving study of the Bible 
 kept the home life in a continual atmosphere of 
 vigorous thought, sensitive feeling, and spiritual 
 enthusiasm. " What book can compare," he wrote 
 in life's decline, " what book can compare in living 
 interest, in deep, sustained, universal interest, with 
 the Bible? Do you say it is old and hence must lose 
 hold? Ah, but so is the sunshine old. The blue 
 heaven that arches over us to-night, bestudded with 
 stars, is an old heaven. And those stars, we call 
 them everlasting. The green of the fields in these 
 spring days, the flowers, the birds and their songs, 
 all, all are old, and so is God. All are old; we have 
 known them, every one of us has known them, ever 
 since our first infant wail sounded out on the air, 
 just as our fathers and mothers knew them. And 
 yet how young are all these things! And so is 
 the old book as new and fresh and young as though 
 it were of yesterday. 
 
 " I said it was of universal interest, and is it not? 
 For childhood it is a garden of delight, full of sunshine 
 and flowers and songs of birds. We go back as near 
 to the cradle as memory will carry us we old 
 folks and visit ourselves as we were when our 
 favorite chair was mother's lap, and when father or 
 mother or some one else must tell us a story each 
 night before we could go to sleep. We hear from 
 our own young lips the call to father or mother, to 
 
 [3] 
 
auntie or uncle, to tell us a Bible story, another and 
 another Bible story, the same one we have heard 
 full twenty or a hundred times, . . . stories of 
 infancy, youth, manhood, old age; of love, heroism, 
 virtue, religion; clear, sweet, strong, impressive, 
 laying hold of the affections, kindling the imagina- 
 tion, taking captive the heart.'* 
 
 Akin to the influence of the home was the influence 
 of the Church, so akin that the life of one blended 
 into the life of the other. Sixty years later, the mem- 
 ory of a Sunday-school teacher still stood out in Dr. 
 Pepper's mind as one of the great formative in- 
 fluences in his life: " Who of us has not in some silent 
 hour gone back in memory over the years of his 
 school life? Then have we again seen the forms and 
 faces, heard the voices, and felt the hand-touch of a 
 certain few who have wrought for the inspiration 
 and making of our life in a way and to a degree all 
 their own. These are the immortals that stand apart 
 from others and have carried with them even into the 
 eternal world our loyal, grateful affection. That which 
 they had in common and which distinguished them 
 as teachers from all the rest, was the personal element 
 of their teaching. The others were familiar with 
 the subjects taught, had as good methods, and were 
 equally skilled in the art of teaching. The something 
 which they lacked was the personal influence, the 
 power which inspired, impelled, and transformed us. 
 
 " Take, for example, that Sunday-school class back 
 in the southeast corner of the old country meeting- 
 house. It was called the ' infant class/ but the 
 
 [4] 
 
infants were from four to eight years old. Yes, we 
 are there once more as small and young as the small- 
 est and youngest. We see before us now as then 
 one face, one pair of lovelit eyes, one sweetly-smiling 
 mouth, one gracious woman, our teacher. We can 
 remember not one word that she ever said to us. 
 We came to know that she could not have taught in 
 any scientific way or met the demands of modern 
 pedagogics. Nevertheless she somehow placed her- 
 self in the very throne of our heart and life, mastered 
 us, gave tone and direction to our life, and from that 
 day has been one of the supreme forces in building 
 up our manhood or womanhood. This is the suprem- 
 acy of the personal element in teaching. " 
 
 Life in Ware was pioneer in character, for the 
 country was rough and undeveloped. There was 
 work for every member of the household, and, 
 when not in school, the lad was busy on the farm, 
 or busy helping his father in the lumber mill or 
 charcoal kilns. He thus grappled with nature at 
 first-hand, and learned the dignity and the worth of 
 labor. This experience, as well as the inner home life 
 and the influence of the Church, was important in 
 determining what manner of man he was to be, 
 and he showed throughout life the influence of this 
 hard work in his powerful grasp of the fundamental 
 conditions of life, in his stern and massive sense of 
 actualities. 
 
 The village, and especially the frontier village, 
 the haven of the hardy and independent, the forci- 
 ble leveler of society, has ever been the centre of the 
 
 [5] 
 
most vigorous American democracy. Ware im- 
 pressed the spirit of democracy upon this lad and he 
 remained a sturdy democrat through life. " My blood 
 was not good," he wrote to a friend, in explanation 
 of a forced vacation. " Tom says that would go 
 against me in the eye of O. W. Holmes, who believes 
 in blood the codfish, aristocratic humbug ! " Demo- 
 cratic Ware was clashing with aristocratic Boston, 
 just as democratic hamlets had been clashing with 
 aristocratic Boston for upwards of two hundrd years. 
 " The dressing was superlative/' he wrote of a recep- 
 tion in 1860. " Average length of the trails one 
 yard, much to the detriment of locomotion and 
 common sense." The essence of his social creed is 
 contained in the following sentence from his Lin- 
 coln address: " Any aristocracy but that of fairly 
 won and clearly shown merit is hostile to our prin- 
 ciples." 
 
 Despite the work, there was time for the long 
 thoughts of youth and for its dreams, for warm sum- 
 mer revery deep in daisy fields, for walks beneath the 
 winter stars, for hours of silent nocturnal contempla- 
 tion as he tended the slow-burning fire of the kilns, 
 the mystery of silence and darkness without, and 
 within, the dull, deep glow of the flame, and the wood 
 slowly changing to charcoal. 
 
 An intense, poetical love of nature was thus con- 
 firmed in a spirit inherently devout and mystic, and 
 this passion for the beauty and mystery and majesty 
 of the external world never cooled. " You have 
 thought," he wrote his future wife, during his life at 
 
 [6] 
 
Newton, " of a tall, strong man who moves through 
 the halls of this building, and along the paths of 
 this hill, feasting his eyes on the most lovely land- 
 scape, rich beyond expression, in the deep green of 
 its spring attire; its far-reaching forests, its many 
 hills, its lovely lake, and, sprinkling charmingly the 
 whole wide circular sweep, innumerable mansions 
 of various structure, color, and value, while the 
 breath of God stirs gently through and over all, 
 pure and invigorating and transforming. In its 
 blueness the vaulting sky supports the many-formed 
 clouds, which, like the chariots of the Almighty, roll 
 their huge bulk along, or, like the pillows of sleeping 
 angels, rest white and soft, or, like the streaming 
 hair of the sylphs of the sky, stretch far away in 
 fine, delicate fibres of gently waving lines, or as 
 yesterday, like a world-overshadowing sea, from 
 whose bottom, through the opposing atmosphere, 
 continual supplies come sifting or pouring down until 
 our great overgrown mother earth cries out from 
 satiety ' enough ! enough ! * and the tall stout grass 
 bows beneath the excessive burden and worshipfully 
 requests a cessation of future hostilities in the unequal 
 strife." 
 
 Indeed, his feeling for nature is almost Words- 
 worthian in its consciousness of the individuality 
 of particular spots and days: ' This morning is 
 clear, warm, and delightful. You ought just to be 
 here to enjoy. The trees, they are splendid, gor- 
 geous. It is charming to walk these broad, tree- 
 bordered streets at this season. Such and so many 
 
 [7] 
 
tints and shades, so blended. And then the leaves 
 come sailing down so pensively one by one, and they 
 rustle as you walk. But most powerful of all over 
 my mind is what can only be expressed briefly and 
 comprehensively as the spirit of Autumn. Every 
 day has its own life. You must get acquainted with 
 it just as you do with a person. You must come to 
 learn its disposition, its little, varying, peculiar 
 moods. Ah, this is grand, this communion with 
 nature. How provoking though to feel that you 
 don't begin to appreciate a millionth of what there 
 is, to know your unfitness to do so, to be aware 
 that as to you such treasures are being squandered, 
 lost! " 
 
 When he had completed the schooling offered by 
 his native town, it was decided that he should have 
 an academy course, and he accordingly entered 
 Williston Seminary. This marked an epoch in 
 his life, for he came under the tutelage of a man who 
 awakened in him a passionate love for learning, and 
 lit the lamp which burned, undimmed, through a 
 lifetime, Josiah Clark. This indebtedness the 
 pupil, when an old man, acknowledged in the following 
 words: " He was an elegant, exact, thorough scholar; 
 his mind] in its processes was quick and sure. He 
 was the very^soul of honor, manly and godly. He 
 knew boys and we boys knew him, and because we 
 knew him we honored and loved him. He made us 
 work, oh prodigiously he could make us work, just 
 because he was he. For him we would do anything. 
 He woke the sleeping; he almost raised the dead. 
 
 [8] 
 
So mightily did he rouse worthy ambition and in- 
 spire to work that sometimes he almost killed the 
 living. How many were they who under him first 
 learned to learn, to study and achieve. What was 
 it in him that wrought this transformation? Was 
 it his scholarship, his method, his drill? Yes, in 
 part, and in large part, but above all and more than 
 all else it was the man, the personal element in his 
 teaching. It was just Josiah Clark." 
 
 So thoroughly did the lad master the Greek and 
 Latin classics of academy days that pleasant echoes 
 of Cicero, Virgil, and Homer linger ever about his 
 writings. Thus, an address before the Bible Society 
 of Maine, written when he was President of Colby, 
 closes with the following words: " And where are 
 not the sons and daughters of Maine to be found? 
 They are in all lands and on all waters. So may the 
 just praises of your work encircle the globe, and even 
 be spoken down from the skies." 
 
 Three years under Josiah Clark and a college 
 course was inevitable. So in the fall of 1853 the 
 young man, then twenty-one, entered Amherst 
 College. Even in those days, when intellectual 
 enthusiasm and scholastic attainment were consid- 
 ered an actual merit and adornment, he was con- 
 spicuous among his fellows and was honorably and 
 affectionately dubbed " Greek Root Pepper." A 
 classmate gives the following testimony of the 
 peculiar esteem in which he was held: " By general 
 consent Pepper was the leader of our Amherst 
 class in honors and achievements, and in essential 
 
 [9] 
 
greatness. He was not simply richly furnished and 
 able intellectually, but he was magnanimous. He 
 was great and good through and through. I have 
 always thought of him as the best all round scholar 
 of his class, and he was so unselfish, so generous, so 
 disinterested, that no one ever thought of envy- 
 ing him. We all admired and trusted and loved 
 him." 
 
 Small wonder that he was thus loved and admired, 
 for if ever a young man quaffed with a relish the 
 pleasant wine of generous friendship it was he. 
 Of a visit from his college chum, Tom Grassie, later 
 his brother-in-law, he writes as follows: " Very wel- 
 come was the apparition yesterday of his broad, 
 genial face and the grasp and shake of his strong, 
 friendly hand. Very fine have been our sleepings 
 and sittings and walkings, our lookings and thinkings 
 and talkings, our sparrings and laughings and 
 balkings." And of another visit from the same 
 friend: " Thomas Tom yes, Tom Grassie did 
 surely, really, and without doubt or fail come in the 
 stage last Thursday to see and visit me. Yes, and 
 I was jubilant to see him and hobbled out to the best 
 of my ability to greet him and take him in and warm 
 and feed him. A great and very glorious time did 
 that same Tom and I have, mutually rejoicing and 
 growing fat at heart. True, I was a cripple, and 
 unable to move save as the snail moves, but we could 
 lie on the lounge and read and talk and laugh, and 
 we could ride in the boat and amuse ourselves, and 
 we could lie out in the great forest temple, grand 
 
 [10] 
 
and noble, watching the shadows of the pillars, the 
 waving of the adornments, the glory of the luminary, 
 the multiplied beauty in majesty of everything 
 around, listening to the many- voiced choir singing 
 to the ceaseless music of the great universal ^Eolian 
 lyre, all in keeping, save perhaps the reading of a 
 sermon by me, as the day (Sunday) seemed to require. 
 It was all too soon that Monday's dawn crept west- 
 ward from the ocean ... to the summit of our 
 great hill just east of us, where it stopped a while, 
 looked down into the valley regretfully, but to the 
 call of Duty leaped full and fair into the window of 
 my father's bedroom, who, obedient, sprang up and 
 called me, as it was time for Tom and me to prepare 
 for a ride to Barre with our noble little Jerry. I 
 left Tom safe in Barre before nine o'clock, glad of 
 his visit, sorry to part with him, and wishing him 
 great success now and always." 
 
 Of an Amherst commencement and a reunion of 
 his class, he wrote in the following vein: " I was 
 on my way to Amherst when I wrote last. What a 
 week that last was! Elisa has told you the general 
 facts respecting it, but she does not know what it 
 was to be a member of the class of '57. Not a minute 
 of rest by day and scarce an hour of sleep by night; 
 - unrest hurry friends to visit lectures to 
 attend class meetings classmates; what unrest, 
 what happy unrest! Old familiar faces smiling a 
 genial welcome and fraternal greeting. Old faces, 
 half recognizable, turned to you courting recogni- 
 tion, hands of unknowns extended for shaking. How 
 
we went through the crowd peering into strange 
 eyes, inquisitively, anxious to find shining there a 
 familiar soul. A strange work, that; so ghost-like! 
 Will it be so in the other world? " 
 
 Amherst College was poor in material equipment, 
 but rich in men, and it gave young Pepper a liberal 
 education, gave him that enlargement of mind, that 
 philosophic habit of thought, that sense of values 
 and of the meaning of life, which result from the study 
 of representative subjects, and of their relations one 
 to another and each to all. It taught him that 
 truth is the great thing and that one must be loyal 
 to it at any cost, and it emphasized the lessons 
 taught by home and by church, that the life of man 
 is infinitely precious, and that material things are of 
 little moment compared with the things of the mind 
 and spirit. 
 
 This loyalty to truth found expression, twenty 
 years after graduation, in the following impressive 
 words: " It is a characteristic of reason that it loves, 
 craves, seeks, grasps, holds truth for truth's sake. 
 Independently of every other consideration, in disre- 
 gard of every other consideration, nay, in sublime 
 defiance of every other consideration, the human 
 mind will know what is. It is of the deepest inmost 
 nature of mind to see and own the kingly authority 
 of truth, and to buy it at whatever cost. Impelled 
 and sustained by this controlling and divine prin- 
 ciple of reason, men have pushed their investigations 
 in every possible direction, into the depths of the 
 earth and the height of heaven, into all the works of 
 
 [12] 
 
nature and of man, into human institutions and 
 human beliefs. They demand that light shine, 
 that whatever is not of the light, however venerable 
 for age, however sacred through association, however 
 precious to the heart, should flee and vanish. The 
 authority that would stop their search for truth and 
 their declaration of truth discovered, they disown 
 and defy, come it from church or state, be it exer- 
 cised in the name of God or man. That it cannot 
 be of God every true man feels, for he is conscious 
 that that in him against which it rises is itself of God. 
 And were it needful to keep in their place and power 
 the Bible and Christianity by stopping the march 
 of investigation and discovery, mind would say, and 
 say rightly, ' Let them go, one' and both. Give 
 despair established in truth rather than hope propped 
 
 on error.' 
 
 Of the worth of man he wrote as follows: " Church 
 and school, each in its own sphere, are working on 
 the same view of man. And what is that view? 
 It is this: that nothing in this world save man 
 possesses intrinsic worth, that this worth of man 
 defies all comprehension or calculation, and that 
 it belongs to him by virtue of that which he can 
 become and be. On this view, property, station, 
 achievement, accomplishment, and the world itself, 
 each and all have worth, not in themselves and for 
 their own sake, but from their relations to men and 
 a genuine manhood. It is a view which equally 
 contradicts the theory, whether consciously or un- 
 consciously held, whether tacitly or openly taught, 
 
whether embodied in customs or institutions, which 
 subordinates man to place, which puts position first 
 and manhood last, which makes the person a tool 
 and the occupation its owner, which regards the 
 raiment as more than the. body, and the meat as 
 more than the life, which degrades human nature and 
 dishonors God's image. . . . That must be regarded 
 as the most practical training which does most for 
 the mind. What if it really were true that a man 
 whose eight or ten years between boyhood and ma- 
 turity had been spent in gaining liberal culture and 
 manly development was, for that reason, unable to 
 make as much money as otherwise he might? Would 
 that prove that those years were spent unwisely? 
 Is money-making the chief end of man? Mammon 
 says yes. Christ says no." 
 
 In like spirit, he was very sensitive to the appeal 
 of nobility and always responded thereto with en- 
 thusiasm. Thus, during a visit at Andover in 1860, 
 he writes: "I have attended two of Professor Phelps's 
 lectures, the one on elegance of style, the other on 
 naturalness of style, and both admirable beyond all 
 criticism. It is an honor to belong to the same race 
 of beings with such men. One thinks better of the 
 human family when he sees or hears a true, noble 
 man. One then feels ashamed of any degradation 
 of his own powers or character, and inwardly vows 
 that he, too, will strive for the excellent. I glory in 
 a true man, wherever he breathes, whatever his 
 name. Let him come and speak and act himself 
 out before men, that the inspiration of sympathy 
 
 [14] 
 
may move to truth and greatness those who are 
 witnesses.'* 
 
 With the cynic who would interpret all endeavor as 
 selfish he had small patience, as the following en- 
 thusiastic report of a youthful encounter illustrates: 
 " My father came out to the hotel and found me 
 earnestly combating the heretical and brutish senti- 
 ments of a bold Universalist, who contended that 
 there was no such thing as self-sacrifice in the world, 
 that every man, Christ excepted and he hardly 
 wanted to except him but did not dare to do other- 
 wise , labors only to promote his own ease, that 
 the ministry is a trade by which to get the easiest 
 and best living, that a minister has only to get up 
 the best and smoothest possible ' story ' to please 
 the people, and that every preacher does this, each 
 in his own way. You see there was quite material 
 enough to draw me out, and I dealt upon the man 
 such blows as his arrogance and miserable folly 
 seemed to demand, or rather upon the sentiments 
 of the man." 
 
 With such an attitude toward life, trained by home, 
 by church, by school and college, that " our proper 
 business is to enrich society, to bring into it truth 
 and grace and goodness, to leave the world better 
 than we found it," trained to believe that " God is 
 man's chief want, the want of all wants, the need of 
 all needs, need most imperative," it was but natural 
 that long before the completion of his college course 
 he should have decided to give himself to the ministry. 
 Accordingly, in the fall of 1857 he entered the Newton 
 
 [15] 
 
Theological Seminary. For the seminary, beautiful 
 in situation, the nurse of piety, he conceived a most 
 ardent devotion: " Home again, " he wrote, at the 
 opening of his senior year, " home again, here on 
 the hill, beautiful in itself, beautiful in its surround- 
 ings, sacred in its associations, the object of hope 
 for the future, green in promise like the very Eden 
 which from every side smilingly and gloriously looks 
 up now to this summit. " 
 
 The three years in the seminary were of the great- 
 est value to him, for they furnished opportunity 
 to classify his theological and philosophical views, 
 to adjust and harmonize the claims of the spiritual 
 life and the life of the intellect, and to test the 
 validity of the Baptist faith by judicial and dis- 
 passionate study of nineteen centuries of church 
 history. While in no way neglecting the routine 
 curriculum, he pursued such lines of more or less 
 independent study in a manner that won the com- 
 mendation of the faculty and commanded the 
 admiration of his less gifted classmates. 
 
 At the conclusion of his course he was approached 
 by the trustees with reference to remaining at 
 Newton, but " I told them my convictions." What 
 those convictions were is clear from the following: 
 " I hope that I am not aiming for worldly distinc- 
 tion, for self-aggrandizement, for the mere outward 
 tokens of success, but for that success which con- 
 sists in the faithful performance of duty, in the con- 
 tinual witnessing for Jesus by deed and by the spoken 
 word, in the parish, by the fireside, in the shop, in 
 
 [16] 
 
the street, and chiefly in the pulpit, that high 
 honor of declaring faithfully the whole counsel of 
 God, withour fear, with decision, with tenderness, con- 
 tinually under trials and in prosperity. Oh, to be a 
 true, worthy minister of Jesus Christ! It is a glory, 
 the greatest honor conferred upon living man/' 
 
 In February of 1860 he had spent three weeks 
 with the First Baptist Church in Waterville, and 
 before the expiration of the visit had been invited to 
 accept the pastorate. Despite the " embarrassing 
 importunity " of the people he refused to decide the 
 matter before graduation. It was then voted that 
 the position be kept open until summer in the 
 hope that he would accept. " Town and college are 
 united upon you with singular and happy unanim- 
 ity," wrote President Champlin, chairman of the 
 committee. For his part, the young divine made a 
 careful study of the leaders of the Church. It may 
 be of interest to the older generation especially 
 of Colby men to know what that estimate was: 
 1 Took tea that Saturday evening with Professor 
 Hamlin. I became much attached to him. He is 
 a modest man, but a man of a rich, fine, genial na- 
 ture, of a clear head, and a pure heart. Mrs. H. is 
 frank, outspoken, artless, sympathetic, good. Of 
 the many friends in Waterville none got a stronger 
 hold of me than these. President Champlin is a 
 strong, practical, up and down, reliable man, win- 
 ning love less than commanding respect. Mrs. C. 
 is a lady, cultivated, quiet, easy, but apparently a 
 little a very little conscious, but I like her. 
 
 [17] 
 
Professor Lyford is a rigid, straightforward man of 
 principle, not excitable, but even, persistent, efficient. 
 Mrs. L. is a woman of a commanding presence, - 
 noble forehead, fine eye, easy but dignified, cheerful 
 but serious, unassuming but intelligent. I like her. 
 Professor Smith is professorial and cordial and sensi- 
 ble. Professor Foster is a man of sandy hair and 
 brown features, not wordy, but thoughtful and 
 gentlemanly, of sterling worth, for a long time 
 editor of Zion's Advocate, Portland. His wife, a 
 small, cultivated, attractive woman, and there is a 
 little John who is a jewel. Deacon Stevens is a 
 good, round, energetic business man, and his wife 
 less in force but greater in culture. Now you have 
 an epitome of those with whom I have eaten, talked, 
 laughed, lived." 
 
 In the summer he accepted the call, and entered 
 upon the pastorate in the autumn, being ordained on 
 September sixth. He entered upon his work with 
 an ardor almost feverish, with a young man's 
 overwhelming sense of the gravity of his work: 
 "The prayer meetings here are a little too cold; 
 I feel very anxious about them. It seems to me that 
 they must be improved. If we could only melt 
 down together in view of our terrible sinfulness and 
 hardness of heart, if we could but be deeply penitent 
 and have the divine spirit within us, how glorious 
 would it be. It is too bad to utter and to hear the 
 words which, if charged with the Spirit, would bring 
 us, surely, infallibly bring us all, just the needed 
 blessing, and yet feel that they lack that spirit. 
 
 [18] 
 
How can I go and preach on the Sabbath unless God 
 go with me! The atmosphere of a literary institu- 
 tion is apt to chill social prayer meetings of this sort, 
 but God is mighty enough to warm everything and 
 break down everything.' 1 
 
 His pastoral work was marked by that fine sense 
 of personal rights that ever characterized the man: 
 " I do not make a practice of forcing religious, and 
 especially personally religious, conversation upon 
 those whom I meet. If opportunity presents I 
 avail myself of it. Medicine loathed does little good. 
 I can do better to get acquainted, learn characters, 
 histories, opinions, events, and thus, when interest 
 is awakened, it may be religiously directed. There 
 is a just horror in most minds of official, perfunctory 
 love and its manifestations. Yesterday I called 
 on a sick man. He was asleep and I did not see 
 him; on a sick, pious, lonely, poor girl and found 
 her happy; on another sick man without hope, 
 young, from thirty to forty, intelligent, genial, 
 going with consumption. I became interested 
 in him and he in me, and that will enable me 
 to direct him religiously. I hope he may be 
 saved/' 
 
 As a preacher, Dr. Pepper was not of the popu- 
 lar type, but to all thoughtful and sensitive souls 
 his sermons, delivered with glowing but restrained 
 earnestness, made an appeal quite singular. It 
 was sometimes remarked by those accustomed to a 
 more sensational style of preaching that his sermons 
 were overintellectual, but in reality they were 
 
always animated by intense, if finely controlled, 
 feeling. The following beautiful passage from a 
 sermon on " The Heart's Thirst for God " illustrates 
 this fine emotional quality, and incidentally reflects 
 the life of a man whose constant study was the 
 imitation of Christ: " We find in Jesus Christ no 
 lack of sensibility, but instead its richest and most 
 copious fullness. Its flow was free, full, and perpetual. 
 It was called forth by all its proper objects, by 
 nature, mankind, and God. To each of these objects 
 singly, and to all conjointly, it was duly responsive. 
 Jesus was delicately and profoundly sympathetic 
 with nature in all her changing moods, as his dis- 
 courses finely show; entered with loving apprecia- 
 tion into all the experiences of men, individual and 
 social, material and spiritual, showing that noth- 
 ing pertaining to man was alien to Him; and was 
 ever in closest fellowship with the eternal God, 
 His Father, in whose bosom was the home of 
 His soul, and in whose love was the spring of His 
 life. 
 
 " This incessant outflow of divine-human sensi- 
 bility gave to His eye, His countenance, His voice, 
 His words, His conduct, now the sweet charm of 
 a quite infinite attraction, and now a singular and 
 awful majesty. . . . The heart of Jesus Christ is 
 the magnet of the rational universe." 
 
 On Thanksgiving Day, 1860, he was married to 
 Annie Grassie of Bolton, the sister of his chum, 
 herself a graduate of Mount Holyoke. Very 
 beautiful are the letters which record that love. 
 
 [20] 
 
' Bolton is a word which to my eyes is surrounded 
 by a halo of golden light. We are neither of us very 
 romantic and skylarky in our temperament, but are 
 we not both susceptible to mellowing influences and 
 twilight feelings? I love to recall my former visits 
 to Bolton. There was a depth of quiet satisfaction 
 enjoyed in these visits which I have never yet 
 sounded with lead and line, and when I review the 
 days I re-enjoy that identical unfathomableness. 
 This was and is the case, even when and where surface 
 winds made surface waves and agitations." 
 
 These letters are joyous, with an abounding sense 
 of youth and of fullness of life ; playful, with the merry 
 abandon of a light heart. Under date of May 31, 
 1859, shortly before his engagement, he writes as 
 follows: " You may remember that I found the 
 birds one morning singing very improper songs, for 
 which they were duly reprimanded. This morning 
 a more terrible instance of depravity came to my 
 notice. Two good, staid, orthodox robins have 
 come to a tree close by my window, attracted by 
 the good influence here and the sound theology of 
 the room, and laboriously and artfully have built 
 their nest like honest people as they are. They 
 have gained much sympathy by their consistent 
 walk, and we had hoped that the righteous would 
 be prospered. But this morning as I first looked 
 out, I found one of our parishioners, a red squirrel, 
 one of a very large family living here, had supposed 
 that the minister would, of course, sleep as usual, 
 and he be unobserved and so escape undisciplined, 
 
 [21] 
 
and hence he wickedly made his way up to the nest 
 and robbed, stole, pilfered, thieved, carried away, 
 while the good honest robins manfully defended 
 their house and home, though unsuccessfully. Imag- 
 ine the consternation of the thief when, on my rais- 
 ing the window, he found himself detected. He is a 
 ruined man. He will be expelled instanter. He 
 has brought disgrace, scandal, infamy upon ' our 
 society/ Total depravity, alas! I would not report 
 this case to you, only as you are a firm friend of our 
 body, and are well qualified to give advice in such 
 matters. Do give us some information respecting 
 the kind of discipline that is best to reclaim the 
 criminal. " 
 
 On July 15, 1859, just after a visit at Bolton, and 
 just after his engagement, he writes a charming 
 letter from which the following are excerpts: 
 
 " I have not been alone since I left Bolton, not 
 since I left South Acton. The same one who went, 
 or rather, came with me to that place, came all the 
 way, and faithful and true stays a real presence, a 
 dear companion, a rich life-heart treasure. . . . You 
 were standing in the depot door when I saw you last. 
 It was too bad for you to take so long a drive alone, 
 and all for my careless negligence, but you know how 
 to drive and I trust had a romantic ride home. I 
 know you were in no great torture while riding to 
 Acton. Pray, what did father Grassie say at noon? 
 What jokes were perpetrated at our, or my, expense, 
 at the dinner table? And Tom, did he laugh at 
 you or us? And did you parry his blows heroically, 
 
 [22] 
 
and defend yourself and the cause, and give him to 
 know that we were well aware where our own interests 
 lay, that we knew what we were about, and all that? 
 
 " I wish I had been there to engage in the conflict 
 with you and defend with you our good and right- 
 eous cause, while yet I have no fears for it, while in 
 your hands. Let them know that we had a good ride, 
 and a good ride is a very good thing and not at all 
 to be despised. A very good ride we had, and I 
 am glad are you? I trust that you had a rest, 
 a good, sound, long, sweet sleep just after dinner, 
 for you must have been prodigiously tired. You had 
 been very imprudent very imprudent. Late 
 hours, loss of sleep, long walks, long rides, long 
 talks, these had been too frequent. You must not 
 do such things, Annie; you will ruin your constitu- 
 tion. I hope you are reforming; keep clear of temp- 
 tations to such things. . . . 
 
 1 I was standing in the door of that poor old milk 
 car when you saw me last. I found it a cool, com- 
 fortable place, for the car had abundance of ice in it, 
 to keep the milk and water frigid, and that proved 
 amply sufficient to make even Pepper cool, strange 
 and unnatural as it may seem, while a good arm- 
 chair and a newspaper rendered my lot easy beyond 
 the common lot of mortals, so that I was not anxious 
 to take the passenger car at Concord, but kept my 
 position. I advise you, Annie, if you ever have to 
 travel on the cars alone, to take care and be left by the 
 regular train, that you may enjoy the aristocratic 
 luxury of a stateroom armchair and accompanying 
 
 [23] 
 
conveniences of a migratory lacteal palace. It is 
 exquisitely exquisite; in fact, almost tolerable. 
 Well, that is a long short story. 
 
 " Arrived at Waltham, I dismounted from my 
 lofty nabobical position to the vulgar earth trod by 
 vulgar feet, and, leisurely moving along the street, 
 surveyed the wonders of the town, looking compla- 
 cently upon the fine Baptist Church where I preached 
 some months since, and, with an unpleasant reflec- 
 tion upon my poor service there, went on, wondering 
 when the omnibus would start for Watertown, and 
 soon came in sight of it. O, alas! Tantalian misery! 
 only to see it move away, leaving ' I 'hind/ the 
 unhappy victim of a strange predestination to 
 trudge on foot for almost five weary miles. It was 
 toe bad; wasn't it, Annie? But how I slept that 
 afternoon! O, all ye little gods and goddesses, did 
 you ever! My room, my bed, my home, all hail! 
 Here is the place for repose, here is the place for 
 thought, here is the place for enjoyment, here is the 
 place for life, here is the place for me. . . . 
 
 " Perhaps you are tired of reading, but I have a 
 new pen and it feels quite ambitious to excel all 
 former pens, and, as I wish to give it a fair chance, 
 I let it run on. It really does finely for one so 
 inexperienced. But it must be a little cautious and 
 not be too prolix, or I will tumble it out of the window 
 and take one that is more wary and cool-blooded. 
 Moderation is the grand conservative principle 
 of the union I mean the universe and woe to 
 the little black tongue that has it not. Woe to the 
 
 [24] 
 
chattering, foolish bit of steel that rattles on and 
 clatters on and dashes on, pouring out Stygian 
 streams of black venom in untraceable whirls of 
 inextricable nonsense." 
 
 Thus ardent with the ardency of youth, thus 
 romantic with its sweet romance, thus tender with 
 a lyrical tenderness, these letters yet show how 
 gravely and with what an eye to God's purposes 
 this union was formed: "We have from the first 
 believed in the fact truly a fact that our 
 union was secured under the guidance of the great 
 Father who cares for us both alike. At times this 
 thought has been to us the source of a deep, strong 
 joy, and in it we have found abundant promise of 
 the highest good in our union, which has brightened 
 the prospect of the future and been to us a great 
 hope." Who that ever knew Dr. and Mrs. Pepper 
 could fail to recognize the correctness of that proph- 
 ecy in the fulfillment of that hope! 
 
 In these early letters one theme is frequently 
 touched upon that is met again and again in later 
 correspondence in fact, a theme that never seemed 
 long to be absent from his thoughts , the con- 
 sciousness of his own spiritual imperfections and 
 the longing for a more complete conformity to 
 Christ. In 1860 he wrote: " My hope is that the 
 ideal man which you have seen in me, the admirable 
 statue which, artistlike, you have seen in the shape- 
 less, uncouth marble may, by the chiseling of divine 
 Providence, at length stand before you visible, not 
 alone to the eye of imagination, but to the eye of 
 
 [25] 
 
sense, the realization of your hopes, the actual ob- 
 ject of your love." In 1867 he wrote: " I think any 
 fortune is good fortune if we inquire for God's will 
 till we find and do it. I wish to be willing to par- 
 take of Christ's sufferings as well as of life's com- 
 forts, to say with him, when he entered into his 
 profound woe, and mysterious horror of death and 
 death of horror, l Not my will, but Thine be done/ 
 Far enough have I been, and still am, from that 
 identification with God, but I have glances at the 
 beauty of the spirit, my eyes sometimes are turned 
 with longing toward it, indeed I think I am increas- 
 ingly conscious of a permanent movement of spirit 
 that way, held in check and often well-nigh over- 
 come by rude and rampant earthliness of disposition, 
 but by the grace of God I hope to triumph, triumph 
 with you, my darling, in God our Saviour." In 
 1902 he wrote, " One life nearly gone, and I still so 
 far from Christ." So far from Christ! and yet, when 
 six little schoolboys in Waterville were asked to 
 write, without consultation, the name of the best 
 man they had ever known, all wrote the name of 
 Dr. Pepper. 
 
 The issues of the Civil War stirred him very 
 deeply and, although not physically qualified to 
 serve, he inspired with his patriotism the goodly 
 company of young Colby men who laid aside Horace 
 and Euclid to take up knapsack and rifle. 
 
 During the winter of 1863-4, ne served for six 
 weeks, the regular period for volunteer service, under 
 the Christian Commission in Alexandria, Virginia, 
 
 [26] 
 
doing pastoral work among the soldiers. It is worth 
 while to follow him in a day's work there, worth 
 while for the light that it throws on the man, and 
 historically worth while as well: 
 
 " My dear Wife: 
 
 I am glad to sit down now for a minute before our 
 little evening soldiers' prayer meeting and write you 
 a word, tell you that I love you heartily, long to 
 meet and greet you when God will, bear you on my 
 heart always. Hope you are well, happy, trustful, 
 loving and serving God, making sunshine for 
 others. This is in many respects a rough world and 
 I have sometimes feared that my spirits would be 
 soured and darkened, but I hope we shall be kept 
 pure, and so glad. 
 
 II And now, darling, I will give you the history of 
 the day. After writing you yesterday, I filled my 
 haversack with books, etc., and after tea started 
 out in the rain, the mist, and the blackness to go 
 nearly a mile to Co. F., 26 Michigan, for a meeting. 
 It was a rough, bad way to get there, but we had 
 our meeting in the barracks, a long room with a 
 board seat running the whole length of one side, and 
 on the other the berths and a seat, rude enough you 
 may guess. The Captain and Lieutenant came in 
 and a very excellent meeting we had. Went from 
 that place at 8 to the Soldiers' Rest, where hundreds 
 of volunteers just from New York City were spending 
 the night. It is a great place to operate at such 
 a time, all nationalities and all characters just 
 
 [27] 
 
from home, with none of the peculiar modifying, 
 and I may say, in a sense, the elevating influences of 
 associated soldier life. Father Taylor and Brother 
 Briggs had been in during the day and collected two 
 thousand dollars of them and sent it on by express to 
 their friends. But there had been gambling and 
 theft before them, and some poor fellows had suffered 
 in consequence. I worked an hour in one of the 
 rooms, and by that time most of them were stretched 
 on the hard floor for rest, tired by the day's 
 duties. 
 
 " This morning I went with Uncle John (Vassar) 
 with a haversack full of testaments and some tracts, 
 and oh, how destitute they seem of the word of life! 
 My stock was soon gone, and home we went and 
 this time filled two haversacks, which Uncle John 
 left me to distribute alone, which I did, German 
 and English, and had not enough even then. 
 
 " Two little incidents occurred worth mentioning 
 to you. A man, Place by name, semi-intoxicated, 
 in answer to my question how he found himself, 
 said, ' I am feeling pretty bad. I have got into this 
 by getting drunk, was in the navy, have lost most 
 of my money. My brother-in-law is a Methodist 
 minister in Providence, R. I.; wish you would write 
 him to get my price money from Reuben Vose, 
 69 Wall Street, N. Y.' I tried to have him take a 
 testament, but no, and I gave him some advice 
 which was as wind against a rock. 
 
 11 The other incident, funny enough, serio-comic, 
 was a military arrest of your humble servant, and 
 
 [28] 
 
consignment to the guardhouse. As my work of 
 distribution was about ended, a Lieutenant, with 
 dangling sword, came up with official bustle and 
 dignity, saying, ' By what authority, sir, are you 
 in this room? ' 'Oh, none in particular, sir; the 
 guard allowed me to pass in/ ' Orderly, take this 
 man and report to so and so at the guardhouse/ 
 So with true military dignity, kinglike, I marched 
 with my servant to said place and officer, asking him 
 meanwhile what all this meant. He said he didn't 
 know, 'twas something incomprehensible to him. 
 Come to the officer in the guardhouse, said he, 
 ' What does this mean? ' ' Don't know, sir, it 
 was done so and so.' 'I don't understand it. 
 What did the Lieutenant mean? Go and tell him 
 to come here at once and explain this matter.' Off 
 went my escort, leaving me in very pleasant company, 
 whom I blessed with edifying conversation and the 
 gift of a few tracts. The officer grew uneasy. Said 
 he, ' If that Lieutenant has any charge to prefer 
 he had better hurry up.' Soon official dignity 
 appears in the distance, coming with somewhat 
 rapid step and dangling sword. He advances. 
 His awful presence approaches. His sublime dig- 
 nity draws near. He has reached the door and 
 your awe-struck, trembling, terrified, pallid, dumb- 
 founded husband is face to face with majestic 
 officiality. Who can endure awful suspense! 
 But lo! miracle of miracles, instead of being blasted 
 and blown up by the breath of terrific indignation 
 and scathing malediction, a dignified and significant 
 
 [29] 
 
bow of the terrific to your astonished humble, and 
 the words are my ears true in hearing? ' I 
 beg your pardon, sir, I am sure I do. I am very 
 sorry this thing has happened, indeed I am. I was 
 told that some one was in the room peddling they 
 come in and sell citizen's clothes , and I took you 
 to be the one and so made no inquiry. Of course 
 we intend to furnish you with all possible facilities 
 in your work. I am very sorry indeed for this/ 
 1 Oh, sir, it's all right. It will pass for a good joke. 
 I didn't understand it, sir, but of course had no feel- 
 ing about it. Good day, sir.' There, wasn't that 
 a joke, a military experience. Oh but, dear, I am 
 working somewhat for the men, and the Lord I 
 think does help and bless me. Brother Moss 
 leaves on Wednesday and then I have the charge 
 of the great work. I hope to have divine strength. 
 
 Good night, dear, 
 
 Your own George." 
 
 His resemblance to Lincoln at that time was so 
 striking that he was frequently mistaken for the 
 President. The resemblance, indeed, was more than 
 merely physical; they were alike in the beautiful 
 gentleness of character, in their quiet self-possession, 
 in their quaint humor, in the profound simplicity 
 of their lives. Upon the death of the President, 
 Mr. Pepper preached an impassioned sermon. So 
 vivid was the impression made by this sermon that 
 he was asked to preach it again on the occasion 
 of the Lincoln centenary. There needed not the 
 
 [30] 
 
change of sentence or word, so well had he divined 
 the spirit of the great martyr. 
 
 In 1865 Dr. Pepper was called to the chair of 
 Church History in Newton. Dr. Hovey visited him 
 in August, that the two friends might discuss the 
 proposal, and, as a result, Dr. Pepper came to feel 
 that it was now his duty to accept. Not the least 
 of the attractions at Newton was the companion- 
 ship of Dr. Hovey, the man whom he loved most 
 dearly of the friends of middle life. This noble 
 friendship, so generous, so self-effacing, was a trib- 
 ute to each of them. 
 
 Dr. Pepper first mentions his friend in a letter of 
 May 7, 1859: " Now for the Professor. His name 
 is Hovey Alvah Hovey , a thick, not tall, black- 
 haired, slow-motioned man; warm-hearted, clear- 
 headed, pious man. He is a true friend to me and 
 I love him. I know him to be a true friend. I 
 wonder why he is! " 
 
 Dr. Pepper could never mention Dr. Hovey 
 without manifest enthusiasm, and the society of his 
 friend put him into high good humor. On the 
 Sunday of the visit alluded to above, Dr. Pepper 
 wrote to his wife, ' The ponderous Prof. Hovey 
 is still silent in his room and probably horizontal 
 
 in posture." On the following day he wrote, " H 
 
 preached at the Congregational house yesterday. 
 I judge that some, indeed many, went to hear him 
 yesterday instead of Hovey, the child's mistake: 
 it is the thunder that splits trees and knocks down 
 men and chimneys, not the lightning. Well, all 
 
 [31] 
 
things adjust themselves; I was glad to have present 
 only such as would appreciate that very great and 
 lovely man." 
 
 It was characteristic of Dr. Pepper that he kept 
 his friendships through life, and upon the resignation 
 of Dr. Hovey over forty years later, he spoke with 
 the same hearty affection and admiration. On that 
 occasion he concluded his magnanimous tribute 
 with these words of glowing praise: " And so, at 
 this time, on this great and grand anniversary, with 
 the beautiful seminary hill crowned with buildings 
 adequate and adapted for their purposes, with endow- 
 ment and every material equipment far advanced, 
 with the curriculum immensely enriched, with a 
 yearly succession of graduating classes larger by 
 far and more thoroughly educated than any before, 
 with the name and fame and influence of Newton 
 recognized everywhere as a glory to the denomina- 
 tion, all unmistakably due in large measure to the 
 quiet, steady, strong, wise management and influence 
 of the one man whose name we love and venerate, 
 we say what we do not need to say, that as friends 
 and sons of Newton, there is nothing for which 
 we have more reason to be thankful than that 
 God gave to Newton as President our beloved Alvah 
 Hovey." 
 
 After two years at Newton, Dr. Pepper accepted 
 the chair of Systematic Theology in the new Crozer 
 Theological Seminary, thus turning to a subject 
 more congenial to his philosophical type of mind. 
 For fifteen years he held this position, and played 
 
 [32] 
 
a leading part in directing the current of Baptist 
 thought. His essays at this time, which are numer- 
 ous, are upon such subjects as " Baptist Doctrine 
 and the Pulpit/' " The Mutual Relation of Bap- 
 tism and Communion," ' The First Resurrection," 
 ' The School and the Church." The fundamental 
 ideas of his theology are packed into the follow- 
 ing graphic sentences: " The world is the dwelling 
 place of man, man's home. It is a great, grand, 
 beautiful, wonderful house. But it neither is nor 
 can become our home. And if atheistic scientists 
 could succeed in their attempts to warn Almighty 
 God off these premises, and to banish him from the 
 universe, the human heart would soon find and feel 
 itself an orphan homeless, a prisoner imprisoned, 
 around it only the cold masonry of natural law, of 
 physical force, eternally blind, deaf, dead, immovable. 
 The universe is our home while the presence of the 
 holy, heavenly, eternal Father fills it, and the child 
 everywhere feels that presence. Lose this and it 
 ceases to be home. God knew and knows that no 
 man can climb up into the heaven of heavens to his 
 secret dwelling place on the ladder of his own good 
 works, or on the stairway of the stars, and so he 
 came down by his Spirit and his Son, speaking to us 
 face to face, making his presence to shine upon us 
 through all the pages of holy writ, and there joining 
 his life to ours for time and for eternity." 
 
 His conception of the genius of the Baptist Church 
 as the faithful embodiment of the ideals of the 
 Apostolic Church, as a matchless synthesis of 
 
 [33] 
 
individualism and of communism in the Christian 
 life, is presented in the following: 
 
 ' The prominence given by Christianity to the 
 individual element in man can escape no careful 
 observer. It appears in the emphasis laid upon the 
 worth of a single soul, and upon the exclusive, un- 
 divided responsibility of each soul for itself; in the 
 doctrine of the final judgment, where each shall give 
 account of himself to God, and be judged for his own 
 deeds only; in its doctrine of the new birth, in which 
 one by one God gathers his elect; in its doctrine 
 of repentance and faith, which are never the acts of 
 a corporate community; in its doctrine of walk with 
 God in personal communion and personal service. 
 The same prominence is given to the individual in 
 the forms of speech by which inspiration addresses 
 men, speaking as it does either singly to each by 
 himself, or to the many as made up of individuals. 
 Thus does revelation address the conscience which 
 exists and acts only in separate personalities. And 
 most clearly Baptist doctrine presents the church of 
 Jesus Christ as a matchless provision for the Chris- 
 tian life in this element of it, because it is also a perfect 
 embodiment and expression of it. The general con- 
 stitution of the church leaves in its integrity, and 
 stimulates to activity, that general sense of immediate 
 personal responsibility to God only, as Sovereign 
 Head, which is the very foundation of right religious 
 development, while the ordinances, in their nature, 
 their design, and their administration, each separately 
 and both conjointly make their demand first and 
 
 [34] 
 
fundamentally upon the individual. But holy Scrip- 
 ture also and not less brings to its rights the social 
 nature of man. Consider that its great law is the 
 law of love, and so of communion, fellowship, inter- 
 course, society ; and that the headship of Jesus Christ 
 involves the brotherhood of his disciples. And so 
 the great burden of the intercessory prayer is for 
 the realized and completed oneness of Christians, 
 and the final apocalypse of heaven presents it as a 
 city, whose social and corporate life is so perfect that 
 all voices, and sounds, and movements, and heart- 
 beats, and breathings, and most silent secret musings, 
 flow and mingle and commingle and harmonize 
 together as a divine song, eternally upborne in an 
 airy flood of music, enrapturing even to Jehovah's 
 ear. Now were it true, as has been sometimes 
 alleged, that the Baptist theory of the Church makes 
 individualism supreme, to the detriment and even 
 destruction of corporate life, we should scarcely 
 need another argument to show that the theory, 
 whatever its favoring evidences, is false, for it is 
 antecedently certain that Jesus could not have 
 instituted such a subversion of his own kingdom. 
 It is true that the Baptist theory presents little of 
 merely external organization. It does not provide 
 an elaborate system of rules, which shall serve as 
 hoops to hold together the vessel against all internal 
 pressure outward. It is no system of cooperage. 
 Were it such, it would be thereby convicted of 
 spuriousness, for God's people are bound together 
 by inward bonds alone, which inwardly constrain, 
 
 [35] 
 
not outwardly compel. And so when this inward 
 constraint of love fails, the greater of readiness of 
 separation the better, the more of obstruction to 
 separation the worse. The sooner a body dissolves 
 after its vital principle has failed, the better. The 
 fellowship of saints is a fellowship of heart, and an 
 embodiment must so present it. The simplicity of 
 organization, therefore, if organization we call it, 
 which characterized the apostolic churches, and 
 characterizes Baptist churches, was not something 
 accidental and temporary, arising not from a perma- 
 nent principle of the divine life but from a transient 
 impossibility of expressing the principle, but instead 
 it was the fit and full realization of the inmost and 
 abiding nature of that life. In these churches, the 
 apostolic and Baptist, communion the most close 
 and tender goes hand in hand with individualism, 
 from the first step to the last, though always recogniz- 
 ing the natural antecedency of individualism, and 
 the impossibility of a genuine fellowship without 
 such antecedency. Thus the command to be bap- 
 tized is addressed to him to whom baptism must be 
 administered, but that command is conjoined with 
 the command, Go ye and baptize. The former 
 implies the latter, and the latter must reverence the 
 former. There is communion of the receiving with 
 the receiver in the reception, while in the coordinate 
 and completing ordinance so manifest is the fellow- 
 ship that its very name is the Communion. Both 
 ordinances, it is true, relate immediately and chiefly 
 to Jesus, for into him is the believer baptized, and 
 
 [36] 
 
with him is the communion, but none the less truly 
 are we baptized into the body and partake of ' the 
 one loaf.' And as these ordinances set forth the sole 
 leadership of the Lord, and the common life of his 
 saints, so do that sole leadership and that common 
 life come to fullest recognition in the whole theory 
 of church order and practice. No human headship 
 or legislation, judicial or executive, is recognized or 
 allowed, while the very existence, to say nothing of 
 the growth and conquests of the Church or churches, 
 implies hearty and general cooperation. And if we 
 turn from the testimony of Scripture and the nature 
 of Christianity to the facts of history, an impartial 
 view can hardly fail to give full scope to the social 
 element of Christian life." 
 
 The rite of baptism was to him no mere objective 
 formula, no mere external requirement, no mere test 
 of obedience and passport to membership in the 
 Church of Christ, but a beautiful and mystic symbol, 
 fraught with the sweetest thoughts. It is interesting 
 to see how much of that mystical passion which 
 endears to us the expression of medieval saint or 
 artist was thus present in the religious thought of a 
 man apparently so far removed from the creed and 
 traditions of the Catholic Church. A discussion of 
 baptism, contributed to a manual of the Church, is 
 introduced in the following noble words: " But to 
 me it has fallen to address you concerning the rite 
 known as baptism. And is not baptism an exter- 
 nality? It is, and it is not. It is; but it is also more. 
 It is an externality, as human language is. The 
 
 [37] 
 
words which we utter what are they but vibrations 
 in the air, caused by certain movements of the vocal 
 organs? These words written what are they 
 but forms traced in ink upon paper for the eye? 
 The highest attainment of language in discourse 
 is it anything more than combinations of these words? 
 Is not language, then, an externality? What is it 
 in our galleries of art which draws to them the sons 
 of genius and the daughters of taste, and there holds 
 them charmed and enchained? Do you say it is the 
 pictures and statues, creations of immortal mind? 
 But what are pictures but paint upon canvas? And 
 what are statues but marble quarried and chiseled? 
 And surely paint and marble are external and ma- 
 terial things. Many a strong man in our army during 
 the last four years, in hours of crisis and encounter 
 has been thrilled with intensest enthusiasm as his 
 eyes have seen, waving above the embattled host 
 and moving toward the rebel array, a certain old, 
 familiar, starred and striped flag, and in that 
 inspiration has been a courage which mocked at 
 fear and courted death. There is no American 
 heart which has not shared this noble enthusiasm, 
 within which the sight and even thought of our flag 
 has not kindled a glow of patriotic emotion, and 
 wakened all its latent poetry. But that flag, lauded, 
 loved, and sung, what is it but a piece of bunting, 
 red, white, and blue? Far enough that, surely, from 
 the spiritual. Language an externality! Yes, save 
 when charged and vitalized with human thought and 
 human emotion. Then it is life and spirit. The 
 
 [38] 
 
statue and the painting, when embodying great 
 ideals, have ceased to be material. Our flag, as 
 symbol of national character, national history, 
 national all, is no longer a piece of bunting, but a 
 glory, almost a protecting divinity. Baptism, which, 
 viewed in one way, is baldly outward, a mere rite 
 and ceremony, viewed otherwise and truly, is at once 
 a language intensely charged with God's richest 
 thought and sweetest affection; an incarnation of 
 our Redeemer's fondest, brightest ideal; and the 
 symbol of all that makes existence glorious. We 
 are not, therefore, led away from the central, moving 
 realities of our holy religion by a discussion of bap- 
 tism. We rather stand for an hour in the presence 
 of that form which best reveals to the eye those 
 realities, and most naturally and effectually leads 
 to them our spirits. Most unbecoming, therefore, 
 would be an apology for speaking to you upon bap- 
 tism. Most unjust to you would be the suspicion 
 that you would not listen with closest attention 
 to whatever would place the subject in its true 
 light." 
 
 Dr. Pepper had little sympathy with the often- 
 expressed idea that it makes little difference what one 
 believes, provided that his heart is right. He held 
 that in large measure what we believe determines 
 what we are, and he could accordingly write of another 
 sect: " If they are right, we are wrong. Either they, 
 by their church doctrine and practice, or we by ours, 
 are not in harmony with the great system of Christian 
 truths as a whole, but instead have a hold somewhat 
 
 [39] 
 
that is spurious, incongruous, contradictory, and 
 therefore obscuring and corrupting." He accord- 
 ingly gave himself with great devotion to the task of 
 inculcating what he believed to be correct theological 
 views in the minds of his students. 
 
 The formative influence which he exerted in shap- 
 ing the policies and determining the character of 
 the new seminary may be gathered from the memo- 
 rial adopted by the faculty upon his death: 
 
 " In view of the death on January 3Oth, 1913, of the 
 Rev. George Dana Boardman Pepper, D.D., LL.D., 
 the Faculty of Crozer Seminary enter upon their 
 records the following minute: 
 
 " Dr. Pepper was Professor of Systematic Theol- 
 ogy in Crozer from its opening in 1868 until he 
 resigned to become President of Colby University 
 in 1883 [1882]. During these first fifteen [fourteen] 
 years of its history there was afforded an unusual 
 opportunity to aid in determining and in attaining 
 the ideal of the Seminary. No man on the faculty 
 in these early days did more than Dr. Pepper in 
 helping to make Crozer an inestimable force for the 
 advancement of the cause of Christ. His naturally 
 strong intellectual powers; his broad, comprehensive 
 grasp of theological doctrines; his keen, analytical 
 insight into the problems that confronted him; his 
 exceeding candor and fairness in considering views 
 that were opposed to his own; his deep, invincible, 
 simple faith in Jesus Christ as his Saviour, and his 
 cordial, unselfish, sympathetic friendship, not only 
 made all who knew him esteem him, and those who 
 
 [40] 
 
knew him intimately love him, but especially made 
 an indelible impression upon the thought and charac- 
 ter of those who were privileged to be his pupils. 
 In the memory of these Dr. Pepper will ever remain 
 an object of mingled reverence and love." 
 
 In 1882, Dr. Pepper was called to the Presidency 
 of Colby. His five years of residence in Waterville 
 had endeared him to many of the alumni and friends 
 of the college, and as an educational theorist he was 
 favorably and widely known by his essay on " The 
 School and the Church," an able and masterly defence 
 of the policy of the church school. The trustees 
 felt that the college could well be intrusted to a 
 scholar who had thus wisely defined the relation of 
 church and school: l This shows that we must 
 keep the Church in the schools. We must continue 
 for the next century, and for every succeeding cen- 
 tury, to do what our fathers of the closing century 
 have done, make our academies and colleges centres 
 of gospel light as well as of general culture, turn upon 
 them distinctly religious influence, put them in 
 charge of godly men, keep them in charge of godly 
 men, keep them in contact with the Christian 
 heart of the Christian brotherhood, and flood them 
 with unceasing prayers. Doing this, these institu- 
 tions will be as they have been, the safest of all 
 places for our children. Failing to do this, they must 
 and will become places of swarming perils, and multi- 
 tudinous ruin. They will become the stronghold of 
 infidelity, impiety, and atheism, graduating culti- 
 vated sinners, disciplined heathen, and gigantic 
 
destroyers. It is easy to see that this both has been 
 and must be. Discipline does not stand to piety as 
 identical with it, as a form of it, as a substitute for 
 it, as a cause producing it, or even as immediately 
 instrumental to it. We have ventured to call one's 
 discipline the supplement of his piety. That this 
 somewhat loosely, but correctly, characterizes the 
 relation may perhaps be made to appear. The 
 Church in her distinctive function is the immediate 
 instrument in the production and promotion of 
 piety. This is her high prerogative, divinely conferred 
 and forever inalienable. The Church as church is 
 God's prophet, speaking for him to man, taking and 
 interpreting his word, and thus serving as a sort of 
 channel for the communication of life and salvation. 
 In a word the Church gives to a man his God. So also 
 in a word the school gives to a man himself. It 
 is only as a man has both, his God and himself, 
 that he is fully a man, a man complete. His God 
 is his chief want, the want of all wants, the need 
 of all needs, need most imperative. Himself is also 
 a mighty need, second only to his need of God." 
 
 The inaugural address is a definition and defence 
 of the liberal arts college which is hardly to be sur- 
 passed, challenging comparison with Newman's fa- 
 mous chapter on " Knowledge Viewed in Relation to 
 Learning " and St. Basil's " Address to Young Men 
 on the Right Use of Greek Literature." In the 
 writer's opinion there has been no other document 
 written in America which discusses the subject more 
 ably, a document which ought to be in the hands of 
 
 [42] 
 
every teacher who is endeavoring to maintain the 
 validity of the historical American college. 
 
 The informing life of a college is thus eloquently 
 denned: " It is worth our while to pause a little 
 and fix more definitely our notion of a college. We 
 speak of a college sometimes as impersonal, and some- 
 times as personal. The college is an institution, and 
 also a cherishing mother is it, and also she. Both 
 views are literally true, and both conceptions must 
 unite to give us the full truth. As institution solely, 
 the college is merely instrument or tool, which 
 living men have fashioned to be used by living men 
 for living men, an unthinking, unfeeling, non- 
 willing, soulless thing, consisting of charters, and 
 chartered privileges, and laws, and endowments, and 
 real estate, and all that and all that. This is life- 
 less provision necessary, invaluable, but by itself 
 powerless, inoperative, worthless. This neither 
 loves nor is loved. Make all this as ample and per- 
 fect as you will, it can never alone become and be a 
 college. For a college there must be a personal life, 
 a life single, indivisible, continuous, multiplex, a 
 life consisting of a solid unity of individual lives, 
 each fitting and filling a needed place in the great 
 total of the rounded and integral college life, and all 
 incessantly, untiringly, harmoniously, effectively, 
 working together for the common end. The college 
 in its institutional element is the indispensable form 
 or body conditioning the existence, the action, and the 
 sure achievement of this great corporate, personal 
 life. Without such embodiment the designed work 
 
 [43] 
 
of such a life never was done and never will be, 
 because without the embodiment the life itself 
 cannot exist. Into this institutional life enter all the 
 lives that cooperate in making the college what it is 
 and ought to be, whether outside or inside, not alone 
 faculty and students, not alone founders and trustees 
 and graduates, but friends and fellow-helpers, one 
 and all, in the denomination and out, in Maine and 
 everywhere else. On this personal side the true 
 college has wisdom and will, works and wins, loves 
 and is loved, is indeed a mother cherished and cher- 
 ishing, proud of her children, and the pride of her 
 children, growing beautiful and powerful and fruit- 
 ful from generation to generation, from century to 
 century." 
 
 His conception of what the faculty of a college 
 should be is thus expressed: "A second, and, if 
 possible, more indispensable condition of organic life 
 is life in the corps of instructors and the course of in- 
 struction. The faculty of a college are not only to 
 be the faculty but also to have the faculty. And, too, 
 it is faculty, not faculties, a unity and not a discord, 
 unus in pluribus. It is a college faculty, having 
 existence for the college and its legitimate business, 
 and not for other and outside ends. It is faculty of 
 education and instruction, not simply to cram words 
 and sentences into hollow skulls, as dentists hammer 
 their gold or baser metal into our hollow teeth. Nay, 
 not that, but to make the mind, direct the reason, 
 and give, together, truth and the power to investi- 
 gate and use it, to evoke manhood by manly power 
 
used in manly ways, in the classroom and out of it, 
 incessantly pouring a rounded and cultured life into 
 the lives of those gathered for the very purpose of 
 receiving it, and so living in them and through them 
 in others, on and ever on, a living and life-giving 
 faculty, living and acting in the present, for the 
 future, fronting and moving forward, not dwelling 
 among the tombs as a kind of corporate old mortality, 
 with no destiny but to make legible again tombstone 
 inscriptions, half of them worthless when made, and 
 all of them worthless or worse now, not thus 
 of the past, yet not unmindful of the past, drawing 
 from it lessons of wisdom for future guidance and 
 inspiration to do and achieve, keeping step with all 
 progress that is progress, and resisting all progress 
 that is regress, steady and sure in movement, 
 like the earth in its orbit, like the stars in their 
 
 courses." 
 
 And what of the students, a question that is so 
 perplexing educators in this day of swelling, not to 
 say bursting, enrollments: " A third condition of 
 organic life is the requisite material from which and 
 in which to form it. There must be a material pre- 
 pared for such fashioning, something above the 
 condition of babyhood and childhood. The college 
 is not a kindergarten. Disciplined youth must, 
 then, be well and thoroughly disciplined. The 
 college cannot be an academy or high school, nor 
 do the work of academy or high school. Better 
 ten students that are college students than a thousand 
 amorphous nondescripts. It must have students, 
 
 [45] 
 
youth with power and disposition to do the work and 
 receive the benefits of the course. A college is not a 
 training school for the feeble-minded, a hospital for 
 the sick, a retreat for the lazy, a reform school for 
 the vicious, a jail or prison for criminals. All such 
 characters can be spared from the college. None 
 such are welcome. Any such that creep in un- 
 awares will have speedy leave of absence from 
 Colby, and no request for their return. If there is 
 any place in this world for them it is outside 
 college precincts." 
 
 The main body of the address is an exposition of 
 liberal education as possessing the three fundamental 
 characteristics of catholicity, symmetry, and vitality ; 
 a catholicity which embraces all fundamental fields 
 of thought; not leaving it to the student to choose 
 merely that which appeals to his taste, which his 
 leisure, or his whim, dictates, as was then so fatally 
 advocated by " a brilliant reorganizer (or ought we 
 to say disintegrator) "; a symmetry which develops 
 the whole man, not forgetting, as was too often done 
 in the earlier periods of American education, the 
 physical man, since it was not the true " badge and 
 glory of a student to be pale-faced, hollow-cheeked, 
 sunken-eyed, ' lean and ill-favored/ like the kine 
 of Pharaoh, a perpendicular, slightly animated, and 
 very insignificant corpse, as though a huge Corliss 
 engine could be run at full power on a scarecrow 
 frame, rocking and creaking and ready to tumble to 
 pieces; " a vitality which resides in living men 
 teaching living subjects to living men. 
 
 [46] 
 
The keys of the college were accepted with the 
 following words of quiet strength, grounded in 
 humility: " I accept from your hands these keys, 
 the office which they signify, the sacred trust which 
 the office constitutes, the duties, responsibilities, 
 sacrifices of the office. The confidence reposed in 
 me and expressed to me by you, sir, and through 
 you by the Board of Trustees, at once humbles and 
 encourages me. To prove that it has not been 
 misplaced will be my constant ambition and en- 
 deavor. Still, you and I and all must place our ulti- 
 mate hope not in man, but in the living God. To 
 him we now turn our eyes, to him we make our appeal 
 for blessing and success. If he go with us, well. 
 If he go not with us, may he keep us from going. 
 That he will bless and help us is our assured con- 
 viction and our vital encouragement." 
 
 That the temper of the inaugural was the temper 
 of President Pepper's administration, no one ac- 
 quainted with the history of the college will question. 
 For seven years he directed its activities during a 
 period of substantial growth. It was one of the most 
 constructive administrations that the college has 
 enjoyed. The character of his leadership may be 
 gathered from the tribute of the eminent scholar 
 who succeeded him in the Presidency: "During my 
 seven years as one of his lieutenants, his magna- 
 nimity was the quality which impressed me most. 
 There was never a suspicion of the disposition 
 which I have seen in so many more than average 
 men, to be fearful that his own merit might be masked 
 
 [47] 
 
by the merits of others. It was impossible to asso- 
 ciate with him the idea of self-seeking. A more 
 utterly generous spirit I have never known. His 
 purity of purpose was lighted up by such boundless 
 kindliness and unfailing cheer that he was constantly 
 communicating his own courage." 
 
 But the strain of executive work proved too great, 
 and, although he had assumed the Presidency an 
 apparently strong man, he left it in 1889 shattered 
 in mind and body. 
 
 A year or more of travel at home and abroad 
 restored him to a measure of strength, and in 1891 
 he was able to accept the pastorate of the church in 
 Saco. A year later, he was recalled to Colby to fill 
 the newly established chair of Biblical Literature. 
 It was called, indeed, the chair of Biblical Literature, 
 but in Dr. Pepper's characteristic phrase it was in 
 reality a " Professorship of Holes," as courses in 
 Philosophy and Hebrew, as well as the direction of 
 the college during the frequent absences of President 
 Butler, were assigned to him. For this executive 
 service he was officially denominated Dean, but the 
 title was little to his fancy, unassuming man that 
 he was, as little as the accompanying mortar 
 board, which he never could doff without drastic 
 measures. 
 
 These were happy years for Dr. Pepper, as he was 
 able to return again to the more or less untroubled 
 life of the student, and had leisure for the enjoyment 
 of his family and of the many-phased social life 
 which centered in the home. During this period 
 
 [48] 
 
he was regularly engaged in the reviewing of theologi- 
 cal works for the Journal of American Theology, and 
 was involved in several controversies. So broad was 
 his scholarship, so keen his analysis, so rigorous his 
 logic, that he was an opponent to be feared. His 
 controversial keenness, and incidentally his graphic, 
 homely power of telling illustration, may be popularly 
 illustrated in his reply to the strictures of The 
 Watchman upon the occasion of the request of the 
 college to the Legislature for aid, incident to the 
 loss of a dormitory by fire: " But The Watchman, 
 in its article on ' Religious Liberty,' assumes what 
 it has elsewhere asserted, that schools of liberal cul- 
 ture, supported predominantly by members of any 
 given denomination, not only specially benefit each 
 one that denomination with which it is thus con- 
 nected, but that such benefit was at the first and 
 from the first intended. It is urged that this puts 
 the college on the same footing as the theological 
 school as to state aid. But does it? The Shakers 
 are a denomination or sect with a very definite 
 religious faith and practice. They have a commu- 
 nity life, and for the advancement of their denomina- 
 tional interests they are wont to cultivate the soil 
 and prepare for the public market seeds of garden 
 vegetables. Let us suppose what is perhaps true, 
 that the agricultural department of the national 
 government were to buy a part or even all of its 
 seeds of the Shakers, because it could thus get for 
 its money the best possible and the most of that 
 best, would the great principle of ' religious liberty,' 
 
 [49] 
 
and ' the involved principle of the separation of 
 church and state/ and that ' important application ' 
 of this involved principle which consists in ' the 
 denial of the right of the state to use the power of 
 taxation to aid any class of believers/ be then 
 violated? Will the editor of The Watchman head 
 a petition to the President of the United States to 
 use his whole influence to secure the passage of a 
 law by Congress prohibiting the use of government 
 funds for the purchase of seeds from Shakers, in 
 order to serve the glorious inheritance of our religious 
 liberty? That Baptists seek and find a denomina- 
 tional advantage in supporting schools of liberal 
 culture does not make it unfit that the state should 
 contribute to that general culture. " Though so 
 doughty an opponent, the gentleness and humility 
 of his spirit left small occasion for bitterness or 
 rancor. It was characteristic of the man to con- 
 clude a series of criticisms of an important theologi- 
 cal work with the reflection that, " All thought and 
 discussion as to such questions, whether by men or 
 angels, by the profoundest man or the sublimest 
 archangel, are, and must be, superficial. We may, 
 therefore, bear with patience the inevitable super- 
 ficiality of each other and be ' tenderly affectionate 
 one to the other/ ' 
 
 Indeed, his attitude toward other men, whether 
 he approved or disapproved of their conduct or their 
 views, was ever one of respect and consideration. 
 This was not so much an expression of temperament, 
 at least originally, as a result of his philosophy: on 
 
 [50] 
 
the one hand, he was humble because he measured 
 himself by a divine standard ; on the other, he had 
 respect for every human being, because, however 
 superficial or weak, yet made in the image of God and 
 capable of infinite attainment. 
 
 In 1900, his failing health made it seem best for 
 him to resign. The remaining years of his life were 
 spent mainly in Waterville, with occasional visits 
 to the homes of his children. Feeling that his own 
 constructive work was largely done, he assisted Mrs. 
 Pepper in the promotion of the many social, civic, 
 and religious interests of which she was an animating 
 spirit. His last public appearance was at the Com- 
 mencement dinner of 1912, when he was given an 
 ovation. Though his step was feeble, and though 
 the light was gone from his eye, friends and former 
 students saw the same dignified and gracious bearing 
 as of old, which showed how ingrained was the nobil- 
 ity and elevation of his character. 
 
 In the prime of life he had written as follows: 
 " Wherever the Bible goes, there springs up and grows 
 the filial trust in God as revealed in Jesus Christ. 
 There is heard in the family and in the social circle 
 the song of praise and of hope, from hearts full of 
 unspeakable peace and joy. The voices of little 
 children, of those bowed and furrowed with age, 
 and of all between, join together in a common fellow- 
 ship of a common life and love. And there, too, 
 when death comes, in whatever form, the eyes of the 
 dying have in them a light not of earth, and death is 
 conquered even before it is encountered, for, saith 
 
 [51] 
 
Jesus, ' Whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall 
 never die/ " 
 
 This passage tells the story of his death, as the 
 story of much of the rest of his life. He did not die, 
 but awoke to renewed strength and liberated powers 
 on January 3Oth, 1913. The playfulness which soft- 
 ened his domestic life and charmed every one who 
 knew him as a friend was present to the last. On 
 the day of his death, in one of the wakeful moments, 
 he remarked to a friend : ' They say I have harden- 
 ing of the arteries; I am glad it is not hardening of 
 the heart. " 
 
 Dr. Pepper received in life abundant evidence of 
 the esteem in which he was held. Friends could not 
 conceal their admiration of his brilliant mind and 
 his great humanity, and colleges vied with one 
 another in honoring themselves by bestowing honor- 
 ary degrees upon him. Thus he received the degree 
 of Doctor of Divinity from Colby, Amherst, and 
 Brown, and the degree of Doctor of Laws from Colby 
 and Bucknell. His death called forth tributes of 
 affection and praise from scores of friends, from men 
 prominent in the affairs of the nation or conspicuous 
 in religious and educational life, as well as from 
 folk in humbler station. 
 
 Such, in brief outline, is the story of Dr. Pepper's 
 life, with primary heed to his professional career. 
 But how much is left untold! How unsatisfying to 
 those who knew him as a friend, who enjoyed his 
 kindly greeting, his quaint wit, the light of his in- 
 comparable smile, his conversation, pleasantly flowing 
 
 [52] 
 
like a meadow stream, his gentle reproof, his sane 
 and helpful counsel, his sustaining sympathy and 
 tranquilizing faith when the black waves of bereave- 
 ment broke over the soul. We think of these things, 
 and we are aware that we shall never know another 
 such as he. 
 
 Dr. Pepper was a picturesque and a noble figure. 
 He was tall, lanky, angular. His head was large, 
 with straight, fine-set nose ; a mouth both tender and 
 strong, the broad upper lip irregular and constantly 
 in play; very heavy eyebrows that overhung gray 
 eyes, eyebrows that, craglike in repose, in conversa- 
 tion were mobile as a wave, gathered their full 
 volume, hung suspended, and crashed; a high fore- 
 head, surmounted by thick hair that was usually 
 a tangle of intense thought. His hands were large 
 and conspicuous, though most interestingly modeled; 
 his legs were persistently out of place; his clothes, 
 though always neat, showed little consciousness of 
 the ebb and flow of fashion, and his walk was a 
 picturesque drift; rusticity that set off to advantage 
 the essential gentleness and fineness of his nature. 
 When a little grandson of four years returned from 
 two years in Paris, he propounded to his father the 
 question, " Papa, is grandpa a preach man or a 
 farmer? " No one, by the way, was more amused 
 by this remark than the object of it. 
 
 His wit was distinctive and lent grace to every 
 appropriate occasion. One evening in prayer 
 meeting the pastor suggested, after a somewhat 
 
 [53] 
 
long pause, that the first stanza of the hymn, 
 " Father, whate'er of earthly bliss " be sung. 
 The stanza runs as follows: 
 
 " Father, whate'er of earthly bliss 
 
 Thy sovereign will denies, 
 Accepted at thy throne of grace 
 Let this petition rise." 
 
 The singing was followed by another pause, which 
 Dr. Pepper then broke by saying: " Don't you think 
 we had better let that petition rise? " 
 
 He was very fond of playing upon words, punning 
 upon them with the merriest abandon, viewing 
 them at fresh angles, and throwing them into juxta- 
 position, getting a great deal out of words by putting 
 a great deal into them. This added charm and fe- 
 licity to his lighter address and lent piquancy and 
 freshness even to the most weighty discourse. 
 " Beneficent," he says, in the Inaugural Address, 
 u Beneficent the reaction which gives not only the 
 praise of sound bodies, but the sound bodies to 
 praise." In the easy and familiar atmosphere of 
 the home this merry waggishness was never laid 
 aside. When Mrs. Pepper concluded an interrup- 
 tion of study hours with the interrogation, " But 
 George, do you still love me? " he replied with mock 
 gravity, " Yes, Annie, I love you still.' 1 
 
 As a correspondent he was inimitable. Who that 
 has ever received them does not prize his merry, 
 tender letters! From many I quote first a lette 
 contributed to a Christmas symposium: 
 
 [54] 
 
" Merry Christmas, 1899. 
 
 1 This is a symposium. Now's my time to pose, 
 I 'spose. What times you have! What, and how 
 many! My! Lucky your pa didn't go west; would 
 never have filled the bill: too little go, not brain 
 enough, couldn't stand the social stir, mother and I, 
 - providential, narrow escape for us; just the thing 
 for you youngsters, frisky, tough as well, or before 
 this you would have gone to fragments, many 
 baskets of fragments, long, narrow fragments. We 
 will stay East awhile, perhaps in Waterville, or in 
 Saco, or in Newton, or somewhere else, or perhaps 
 nowhere. We will wait. Folks talk; sweet things 
 said to us, t'other sort too? Can't say. 
 
 " We are in clover here (Concord). Air thick 
 with metaphysical and literary odors of the past; 
 shades of the mighty so thick as to make darkness at 
 noonday, need a lantern when you go to walk. 
 Great place, great memories, great grandchildren 
 of great grandfathers and great grandmothers; 
 illustrious fore fathers and four mothers. We are 
 in sunlight all the same when we look out of our 
 natural eyes, day delightful, incomparable for the 
 season, games indoors, walks outdoors, a ride Satur- 
 day, Church yesterday. S. spoke his little piece last 
 evening at Church S-S concert; a manly im- 
 perturbable body and soul. Doubtless all the rest 
 have told this and the other news, but just the same 
 we think ' favorably ' of you two. 
 
 " Christmas tree up, fruit growing on it, harvest 
 to-night; fair crop anticipated. Wish you were here 
 
 [55] 
 
to hear, and see. But we are always glad to get 
 your letters. We expect to keep right on loving you. 
 We all do so, and will. 
 
 " Your owriy, dony Pa Pepper. " 
 
 One of the very last letters that he wrote was a 
 message of welcome to a little grandson newly-born: 
 
 " Dear Little Philip: 
 
 " You are a wee baby, but we think a big heap 
 of you. You make us all do just as you please, a 
 little tyrant we call you. Do you think that is fair? 
 Is that democratic? You have started wrong 
 a little too high notions. You will have to come 
 down a peg or two. You are thinking you are an 
 absolute monarch. Try it for a few years and see 
 if you don't change your high notions. But I am 
 not sure that yours is not the easiest plan to work for 
 a while. But, my boy, mind this, it will not work 
 long. It is made for a world of short babies; so 
 you must give up the attempt to be a tall monarch. 
 Try it and see. Be one of the plain people like the 
 rest of us. We bid you welcome to the Lincoln 
 Abraham Lincoln aristocracy. 
 
 " Dear little Boy, be good and grow better. Why 
 not always better? We will give you a good chance, 
 will love you and cheer you on. 
 
 " Cheer up little boy. Grow as fast as you can, 
 be as good as you can. We want you to be good 
 and great. The best little boy, and then the best 
 little man, and then the best man in the world. 
 
 [56] 
 
Good-bye, Philip, this is enough until next time. 
 Dear boy, good-bye. Your grand Pa Pepper." 
 
 Many a man of to-day, in the grim stress of things, 
 realizes himself professionally through the subordina- 
 tion or neglect of the social and domestic life. But 
 this is the very part of Dr. Pepper's life that his 
 friends cherish the most. He exalted the sacred 
 relations of the home and lived the domestic life 
 with sympathy and joy. His children could never 
 imagine him to have said an unkind word, to have 
 had an ungenerous thought, or to have done a 
 thoughtless or unjust act. He and Mrs. Pepper 
 and how unbalanced does a sketch of Dr. Pepper's 
 life seem that does not consider equally his brilliant 
 and, to use his own word, his muUipotential wife! 
 he and Mrs. Pepper supplemented one another ad- 
 mirably, and their home life, unconventional to a 
 degree, but radiant, and manifold in its interests, 
 attracted all classes of people. To enter the door 
 was to enter right into the interests of the home and 
 for the time being to become a member of the house- 
 hold. A student of over twenty years ago recalls 
 his impression of that home in the following words: 
 " I can never forget your fatherly and motherly 
 kindness when I first entered Colby in the fall of 
 
 1 88-, and I often think of the first thing P and 
 
 I did to help earn our way, and that was to clean up 
 your little garden spot. And you invited us into 
 the house, and we shared your family devotions one 
 morning. How at home you made us feel! M 
 
 [57] 
 
Dr. Pepper had a strong sense of civic obligation, 
 and was constantly working for the betterment of 
 the community in which he chanced to live. Thus 
 he was for several years President of the Maine Civic 
 League. So general was the recognition of his 
 high-minded public spirit and of his fairness in a 
 fight that he actually enjoyed the good will, if not 
 the affection, of the very men whose occupations 
 were the object of his attack. 
 
 Though he was so careful to place spiritual things 
 first, he rejoiced in prosperity and material welfare: 
 " We love," he said on one occasion, " we love to see 
 enterprise and thrift. We are glad when business is 
 brisk and sad when it is dull. We each want to 
 succeed in our own business and if we are not meanly 
 selfish we just as much want to see the success of 
 our neighbor. As citizens of Maine, we rejoice in 
 Maine's prosperity and sorrow in her adversity. 
 Her great interests are dear to us, every one of them, 
 the shipping interest, the fishing interest, agricul- 
 ture, manufactures, commerce, even the summer 
 visiting industry. When Aroostook shoots forward, 
 York is glad, and when the lumbermen prosper the 
 fishermen are happy. It is a great thing to ' get 
 on ' well in the world, to have the comforts and 
 luxuries of this life, good farms and farmhouses and 
 barns and stock, a good bank account, plenty of 
 money laid up for a rainy day, elegant homes in the 
 city, everybody making a living, and the wolf a 
 long way from the door. A man may affect to make 
 light and little of this, may so represent his religion as 
 
 [58] 
 
to slur and belittle this world and its good. Usually 
 this is only affectation, and always a mistake. It is 
 not less a mistake than they make who will know 
 only this world and nothing of another. Both are 
 wrong, both at war with their own natures, common 
 sense, and the Christian religion. Truly this is God's 
 world. He made it, he owns it, he cares for it. We 
 are in this world and of it. We are here to use it 
 and to make of it the most and best possible. We 
 could be sure beforehand that a revelation from God 
 would put honor upon industry, enterprise, thrift, 
 business, push, pluck, and success. God denies 
 himself, if he denies that nature which he himself 
 has given us. But he does not deny it." 
 
 In fact, from whatever point of view we survey 
 his life, we find it beautifully sound and balanced, 
 no one of the fundamental appeals which life makes 
 to a man neglected. The professional appeal, the 
 civic appeal, the domestic and social appeal, the 
 appeal of things material, the appeal of things 
 spiritual, all of these were heeded and mutually 
 adjusted, a man great in body, in mind, in spirit. 
 
 As I sit this morning upon the porch of my summer 
 cottage on the west shore of our beautiful Puget 
 Sound, the sun is just bursting over the distant 
 mountain ridge, set in glorious amber light. Before 
 me and at my feet stretch the quiet waters of the 
 sound. Here and there a craft is leaving an early 
 port or making a late one. Beyond the sound are 
 fir-clad shores, and towering over these the broken 
 
 [59] 
 
line of the snow-capped Cascades. But far above 
 all other peaks soar Mt. Baker and Mt. Rainier, 
 domes of purest white. Even as I write, the morning 
 mist envelops one of them, and for the time it 
 vanishes from view. Those two peaks are the 
 subject of this sketch, and my aged father who 
 sits beside me as I write, fit companions for eternity 
 as they were dear companions upon the earth, the 
 purest, loftiest spirits that I have known among the 
 sons of men. 
 
 [60] 
 
LOAN DEPT. 
 
 T T 91 A 50wi-8,*61 
 L (?1795slO)476B 
 
YC 03719 
 
 34051 1 
 
 ITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY