[Here, patient reader, we take leave of each other, I trust with some
mutual satisfaction. I say _patient_, for I love not that kind which
skims dippingly over the surface of the page, as swallows over a pool
before rain. By such no pearls shall be gathered. But if no pearls
there be (as, indeed, the world is not without example of books
wherefrom the longest-winded diver shall bring up no more than his
proper handful of mud), yet let us hope that an oyster or two may reward
adequate perseverance. If neither pearls nor oysters, yet is patience
itself a gem worth diving deeply for.
It may seem to some that too much space has been usurped by my own
private lucubrations, and some may be fain to bring against me that old
jest of him who preached all his hearers out of the meeting-house save
only the sexton, who, remaining for yet a little space, from a sense of
official duty, at last gave out also, and, presenting the keys, humbly
requested our preacher to lock the doors, when he should have wholly
relieved himself of his testimony. I confess to a satisfaction in the
self act of preaching, nor do I esteem a discourse to be wholly thrown
away even upon a sleeping or unintelligent auditory. I cannot easily
believe that the Gospel of St. John, which Jacques Cartier ordered to be
read in the Latin tongue to the Canadian savages, upon his first meeting
with them, fell altogether upon stony ground. For the earnestness of the
preacher is a sermon appreciable by dullest intellects and most alien
ears. In this wise did Episcopius convert many to his opinions, who yet
understood not the language in which he discoursed. The chief thing is,
that the messenger believe that he has an authentic message to deliver.
For counterfeit messengers that mode of treatment which Father John de
Plano Carpini relates to have prevailed among the Tartars would seem
effectual, and, perhaps, deserved enough. For my own part, I may lay
claim to so much of the spirit of martyrdom as would have led me to go
into banishment with those clergymen whom Alphonso the Sixth of Portugal
drave out of his kingdom for refusing to shorten their pulpit eloquence.
It is possible, that, having been invited into my brother Biglow's
desk, I may have been too little scrupulous in using it for the venting
of my own peculiar doctrines to a congregation drawn together in the
expectation and with the desire of hearing him.
I am not wholly unconscious of a peculiarity of mental organization
which impels me, like the railroad-engine with its train of cars, to run
backward for a short distance in order to obtain a fairer start. I may
compare myself to one fishing from the rocks when the sea runs high,
who, misinterpreting the suction of the undertow for the biting of some
larger fish, jerks suddenly, and finds that he has _caught bottom_,
hauling in upon the end of his line a trail of various _algae_, among
which, nevertheless, the naturalist may haply find somewhat to repay the
disappointment of the angler. Yet have I conscientiously endeavoured to
adapt myself to the impatient temper of the age, daily degenerating more
and more from the high standard of our pristine New England. To the
catalogue of lost arts I would mournfully add also that of listening to
two-hour sermons. Surely we have been abridged into a race of pigmies.
For, truly, in those of the old discourses yet subsisting to us in
print, the endless spinal column of divisions and subdivisions can be
likened to nothing so exactly as to the vertebrae of the saurians, whence
the theorist may conjecture a race of Anakim proportionate to the
withstanding of these other monsters. I say Anakim rather than Nephelim,
because there seem reasons for supposing that the race of those whose
heads (though no giants) are constantly enveloped in clouds (which that
name imports) will never become extinct. The attempt to vanquish the
innumerable _heads_ of one of those aforementioned discourses may supply
us with a plausible interpretation of the second labour of Hercules, and
his successful experiment with fire affords us a useful precedent.
But while I lament the degeneracy of the age in this regard, I cannot
refuse to succumb to its influence. Looking out through my study-window,
I see Mr. Biglow at a distance busy in gathering his Baldwins, of which,
to judge by the number of barrels lying about under the trees, his crop
is more abundant than my own,--by which sight I am admonished to turn to
those orchards of the mind wherein my labours may be more prospered, and
apply myself diligently to the preparation of my next Sabbath's
discourse.--H. W.]