RETRACING THE OLD PATHS
At the sight of the Eternal City, Luther prostrated himself and
exclaimed,--Holy Rome, I salute thee. A graduate of Andover, on
approaching the Sacred Hill, feels a disposition to manifest a like
deference. Before him rises the hallowed ground. Andover is not large
but there are those who love her. She was always a good mother to me.
Andover on the map you can cover with your thumb, but you cannot so
cover Andover. Its vital expansive influence has gone out through all
the world and its words to the end of it. In an outburst of passionate
eloquence, Mr. Webster once exclaimed, "What has America given to the
world? It has given to the world the character of Washington." What has
Andover given to the world? There is the East. There is India. There is
our Western coast, where rolls the Oregon. There are our colleges and
churches at home and over seas. In these she has given the world
immortal names that were not born to die. It is said that no man now
living can read even the alphabets of all the languages through which
her sons have sought to interpret the Word of God to the world. Think
the graduates of Andover out of it at that time, and sacred literature
and religious results would drop immeasurably below their actual
attainments. Andover, the very name is beautiful, especially when you
look at it in the light of the old days. Its memories are delightful.
There I sat at the feet of my own Gamaliel.
_The Land We Love_
It is impossible that any institution living or dead, in this country or
any other, ever gained a firmer hold on the affections of her alumni. If
love is the greatest thing in the world, Andover had it in a sort of
double measure. With some knowledge of the whole field I do not know of
any other place that so takes hold of its students on their affectional
side. To do this, all experience teaches that a place must not be too
large. A country home grows tendrils around a man's heart that a house
numbered with others, in a uniformly brick-faced block, fails to do. A
thoroughly cultivated or built-up country is much less beloved by its
people than an open one that is close to nature. A strictly fenced
locality where all surfaces are exclusively appropriated, leaving only
the dusty highways to the people, does not gain the attachment that we
all feel for Andover, beautiful for situation. When the Creator
prepared the Seminary grounds on that crowning elevation he left little
for the hand of man to do in the way of improvement. In my day, the oak
tree was still standing into which Dr. Pearson climbed to locate
buildings, trace the walks and indicate the settings for trees. Being
located in a county that has more people in it than the entire state of
Vermont and four times as much wealth, a county of cities, it has
afforded great opportunity for students to get experience in pulpit work
and the incidental wherewithal. It gave me no trouble or inconvenience
the last year of my studies to earn eight hundred dollars. Most students
on reaching Andover begin, I began like the rest, by occupying the
little Union Chapel on the slope of the Blue Hill in Readville, on the
edge of Hyde Park. The honorarium was five dollars, and the fares from
Boston. In that pulpit, that has meant so much to under-graduates,
Phillips Brooks preached his last sermon. Rev. Samuel F. Smith, author
of America, was on his way to preach there when death overtook him and
arrested his journey.
_Lines Cast in Pleasant Places_
When I sing America I think of Andover. She is what S. F. Smith thought
of, for in a nature stroke, writing the words in Andover, he sings, "I
love thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills," just as
Whittier so simply depicts other delightful features of Essex County
which were indelibly impressed upon the sensitive plate of his brain. We
discern the scenery behind the words. This the Swiss heart does when it
is pathetically affected in hearing, in music, as if upon bells, "The
return of the Cows." There never has been a nation without patriotism.
There never has been a people without a God. The author of the hymn so
much used in our great revival of national feeling was in Andover to
study theology and produced our most common expression of patriotism.
Andover was well born. She has beauty in her own right. This is evident
since the first time she sat for her picture. My relations have been
such, that it falls to me at times, having visitors from a remote part
of the land, to entertain them and to show them the East. For typical
New England towns I have usually taken them to Plymouth, Concord and
Andover. These three. But in the matter of a large fairly well-trained
and useful progeny, the greatest of these is Andover. Dr. Henry M.
Storrs used to style the place, the mother of his mind.
_Andover is Different_
It is Acadian. In other residential localities it is their custom not to
point out any celebrities except millionaires. Everything in the
community is leveled to its cash basis and a habit of doing it is
ingrained, and unconsciously money slips into the conversation and out
of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaks. But in Andover names do
not stand just for mere crude wealth. The homes of the professors were
never handled as a commercial proposition. Everything was not computed
in terms of bankable wealth. Prosperity was only one word, another was
welfare. That noun of all nouns, dollar, was not so often heard as the
name Andover. The teaching force is as uncommercialised as Agassiz,
Lafayette, or John Brown. Their wealth is their learning and their
character. "Now how much is he worth?" He is worth a lot to his pupils.
Here is a community which every member belongs to with a conscious
pleasure and pride. All the ideals bounded by the dollar are replaced.
She had an entirely different code of values, which were not pecuniary.
_Where Every Prospect Pleases_
I felt that I was exalted to heaven in point of privilege to be there at
all. Here I had my first view of acres of girls. At the end of the study
hours they would throng through the gates of the Abbott Female
Seminary--"The Fem Sem"--and spread out over the town, young, joyous,
carefree, fresh-faced, handsomely dressed. It was a delight to see them
about.
"The hill of Zion yields
A thousand sacred sweets
Before we reach the Heavenly fields
Or walk the golden streets."
So many of the books in the library with which I was most familiar, my
father's, were published at Warren F. Draper's in Andover that on
reaching the town, which my imagination had always placed in Class A, I
sent my baggage to the Mansion House that I might not deny myself two
things, to go on foot with much feeling up the long hill, also to get a
first preliminary glimpse of Draper's. Could so much that is good come
out of that Nazareth? It was a travesty on my expectation. I was looking
for a book store like Appletons' or Revell's, or Harpers'. When my
father graduated, there were thirty different parts on the Commencement
programme and I was looking for things on an immense scale like that.
_A World of Tender Memories_
Andover develops the "We" feeling. The students constitute a
brotherhood, while with the years the word grew greatly yet it never
outgrew its original manifestation. That little word We is the talisman
that awakes the consciousness that there must be sympathy, fellowship
and co-operation among students, among those in the same high calling
between pastor and people, as there must be for good results between
teacher and pupil, between physician and patient. The Seminary gave to
us that soul of kindred, which so few understand. It is an essence which
perfumes life. Its influence is nothing less to me than sacred, and the
benefit received is beyond any estimate I compute. In anticipation of a
recent particular visit to that shrine of the heart, for no other
purpose than to express my admiration amounting even to reverence, also
my indebtedness, to that far famed and justly distinguished seat of
learning, I arranged with that useful, unselfish, helpful resident,
Charles C. Carpenter, that we should canvass together the sacred
precincts. Among holy places none is holier than this. My errand there
was to see a great deal and to feel a great deal. I bow with deep
veneration at the remembrance of each one of the ornaments of the place.
We walked about among the friends whom we had known who were resting in
God's acre. The inscriptions made for us a book of remembrance. Some
personality lingered about the most far-away name. We lingered long
where sleep the great who made themselves a record among the mighties.
No other spot in the land, of equal space, contains the dust of so much
eminence. By one of the ironies of history those who differed most,
where the contention was so sharp between them, like Barnabas and Paul,
that they departed asunder, one from the other, come close together in
their burial.
_Andover's Crowning Glory_
When Oliver Alden Taylor, late of Manchester, was graduating from Union
College his biographer says:[1] "We find him deliberating where he
should resort for his theological education. His thoughts were turned
toward Andover, but he says, 'I am afraid of the dislike of elegant
speaking which is said to characterize the faculty.' He was reassured
however with very faint praise, for he writes, 'Dr. Nott tells me that
Andover is not opposed to good speaking, though the graduates are too
generally poor speakers.'" We wish that he could have heard Richard
Salter Storrs, father and son, Horace Hutchinson, Leonard Swain, George
Leon Walker, or either of the brothers, Walter M. or John Henry Barrows,
or as he was speaking of the faculty, Professor Park, or his very close
second, a very different man but highly distinguished for brilliant
uniform work, Austin Phelps.
[Footnote 1: Page 104.]
_A Man of Noble Parts_
While in the Himalaya Mountains they have many exalted peaks, still
there is one that towers above the rest, Mt. Everest, the highest
ascertained point on the surface of the globe. So at Andover there was
a high general range of intellect, yet there existed one master mind
that dominated the whole sphere. The pulpit was his throne. I had never
seen a man take so high a position on the mount of God as Professor
Edwards A. Park, at the crest of his popularity and power, did as he
rose to his own high level in his masterpiece, the Judas sermon. I
remember my delight and wonder. He magnetized his audience. I was
greatly drawn to him. The heart of the congregation touches his. Deep
calleth unto deep. There are those who testify that he became the first
vigorous intellectual presence they ever encountered, and they gained
much from the relation to so great a man. Of larger than ordinary mould,
I suppose no real credit or desert fell to him for rising to his work
like a giant refreshed, any more than belonged to Goliath for wielding a
spear like a weaver's beam in his mighty hand instead of a weapon of
ordinary size. He was one of those rare men who are scarcely ever
duplicated. He was not classed with any one in his own or in previous or
in subsequent times. His appeal was such that one's own moral sense
confirmed all his teachings. The mark of talent is to do easily what is
difficult for others. His imposing almost majestic presence, his
powerful and brilliant intellect, his great learning, his genius, his
uncommon gift of eloquence, his fervor, I do not now describe, after my
memory of it, which shines to me like a star, but according to my idea
cf what now it will seem to a stranger. It is impossible to reproduce
his work in cold type. To attempt it is to spoil it. When we have seen
him reported verbatim--that was not his sermon, only its ghost, its
shade, its tenantless remains. The air about him became electric as he,
having located Judas for a time nearly in front of him, a little to the
right, dealt with him as one of the foes of the household. He considered
his case past praying for. After he had his picture well drawn he put on
more color and the moment he had him well blacked, with sudden great
dramatic effect he swung a perfectly knock-out gesture, saying, "Woe to
that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! Good were it for that man
if he had never been born." It needs the Sinai voice to get the effect.
_A Soul Melted Into a Voice_
Passion, unabated emotion pervaded the great effort from the beginning
to the end of the masterpiece. Every sentence, every word had been
pruned of every ineffective syllable, like changing "penetrate" to the
word of one syllable, "pierce". Every idea went to its mark like a
bullet. There was not a cold or weak passage in it. In preparing his
direct discourse he did not stick a stake and cart material to it. His
great thoughts were not drawn from without but from his subject which
he fathomed. He had depth, as someone said, for elephants to swim in
and places for lambs to wade. He seemed from the first to be starting a
great offensive. I took occasionally great delight in a few moments of
his company and I always have congratulated myself that I lived for
three years in the same town, and at the same time with so illustrious a
person.
* * * * *
He is one of the stars, a planet I should say, in the firmament of the
pulpit. "Go and feel his power" I used to say; no one can describe it.
Everything seemed to conspire to make my life exceptionally happy and
fortunate at Andover, knowing him at the zenith of his glory. Professor
Park's work had the element of nicety about it. It was fascinating. We
were spell-bound, lost in admiration, even in amazement. His elegance in
diction would make one's sense of beauty ache. "Honor is the substance
of my story," said the imposing, uplifting man starting on his moving
recital, told in his unique, felicitous style, with utterance broken by
emotion, of the life and death of Miss McKeen of Abbott Academy, of
whose board of trustees he had been president for thirty years. That
trinity of qualities, wisdom, eloquence, and pathos, swept everything.
Rhetoric cannot be shut up in a book. Its play of words, even in a
sympathetic auditory, and among vibrant hearers, while it sparkles,
dies.