"As a philanthropist, Starr King raised for the most beneficent of all
charities the most munificent of all subscriptions." These words were
spoken at the King Memorial Service held in the city of Boston, April 3,
1864. They call our attention to a unique service our Preacher-Patriot
rendered the cause he loved.
It seems almost beyond belief that the North rushed into the Civil War
wholly unprepared to care for the Nation's Defenders, either in health
or in sickness. Transportation facilities were of the poorest! Young men
just from the home, the farm and the college were crowded into cattle
cars as though they were beasts, frequently with no provision whatever
for their comfort. And rarely were proper arrangements made for their
reception in camp. The bewildered soldiers stood for hours under
broiling southern sun, waiting for rations and shelter, while ignorant
officers were slowly learning their unaccustomed duties. At night they
were compelled to lie wrapped in shoddy blankets upon rotten straw.
Under such conditions these brave volunteers suffered severely and camp
diseases became alarmingly prevalent. But the miserable makeshifts used
as hospitals were so bad that sick men fought for the privilege of dying
in camp with their comrades rather than undergo the privations, and
sometimes the brutality of inexperienced and careless attendants in the
crowded and poorly equipped quarters provided by the government.
The largest hospital available contained but forty beds, and not one
afforded a trained, efficient, medical staff. Competent nurses, sanitary
kitchens, proper medicines, means of humanely transporting the sick and
wounded, all were wanting during early months of the war.
This condition which the government did almost nothing to remedy led
to the organization of the United States Sanitary Commission. Strangely
enough the founder of this most necessary and timely organization, Rev.
H. W. Bellows, of New York, encountered the opposition of high officials
who deemed the whole plan quixotic. Even President Lincoln at first
regarded the Commission unnecessary and called it "a fifth wheel to
the coach." Brief experience, however, demonstrated that the government
could not provide all that was necessary for the soldier, either in
sickness or in health, and the Sanitary Commission became often the
only hope of brave men in dire distress. In fact, at this day, it is
difficult to see how the Northern cause would have triumphed at all but
for the widespread and wholly helpful activity of the army of Sanitary
workers.
The greatest difficulty encountered by the leaders of this noble
philanthropy was to provide necessary funds. Again and again it seemed
that the work must stop because the heavily burdened people could give
no more. At sundry critical junctures California came to the rescue,
and made possible the continuance of this "most beneficent of all
charities." But at whose motion, and under whose influence?
Fitz Hugh Ludlow says, "Starr King was the Sanitary Commission of
California." This is but slight exaggeration, for King made it his
peculiar mission to raise money as rapidly as possible for the suffering
soldiers. In the interest of the Commission he traveled to every part
of the Coast, and in the face of the greatest obstacles became the
principal factor in raising $1,235,000, about one-fourth of the entire
sum contributed by the country at large. Under the most favorable
circumstances this would have been a phenomenal achievement, but when we
learn that in 1862 a flood destroyed over fifty million dollars' worth
of property in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys; that California
shipping to the extent of six and one-half millions was also destroyed;
that in 1863 a drought entirely ruined the wheat crop, and made hay so
scarce that it sold for sixty dollars a ton, resulting in a stagnation
in business which threw thousands of men out of employment, in view of
these multiplied disasters, we wonder by what fire of patriotism and by
what charm of eloquence, Starr King drew from the people so large a sum
for use on distant battle fields. Old Californians still remember those
thrilling appeals which few could resist. We are almost led to believe
in the sober truth of such extreme eulogy as we find in "Lights
and Shadows of the Pacific Coast," by S. D. Woods, a venerable San
Franciscan, who vividly recalls King's heroic service in that far off
time:
"King's personality was magnetic and winning. Gentleness radiated from
him as light radiates from the sun. No one could resist the charm and
fascination of his presence. It is hard to make a pen picture of his
face, for there were lines too pure, lights too fleeting to be caught
by words. In the poise of his head there was nobility and power
inexpressible. There was in his face the serenity of one who had seen a
vision, and to whom the vision had become a benediction. At the time of
his death he was the first pulpit orator in America, and without doubt
had no superior in the world."
This large praise might lead to incredulity were it not for the
deliberate judgment of Rev. Dr. H. W. Bellows, that as an orator
"Beecher and Chapin were his only competitors. He was the admirer and
friend of both, and both repaid his affection and his esteem. He had the
superior charm of youth and novelty, with a nature more varied, and
more versatile faculties and endowments than either. He had a far more
artistic and formative nature and genius. His thoughts ran into moulds
of beauty."
The judgment of California as to Starr King's unequalled service to the
State and the Nation was officially rendered when upon the announcement
of his death, the Legislature adjourned for the space of three days
after resolving "that he had been a tower of strength to the cause of
his country."
Brilliant as was the record of King as the champion of the Sanitary
Commission in California it was by no means the beginning and end of
his philanthropic labors. The forlorn condition of the Chinese--as men
without rights of citizenship--stirred his sympathy and he made earnest
effort to secure for them such civic rights as belong to industry. The
cause of labor, seldom thought in those days to come within the scope
of a minister's interest or duty, commanded his eager attention, and
he improved every opportunity to declare his reverence for the world's
workers in earth, and stone, and iron. In a fine passage in a lecture on
"The Earth and the Mechanic Arts," he writes:
"If we were to choose from the whole planet a score of men to represent
us on some other globe or in some other system in a great human fair of
the universe, it would not be kings, dukes, prime-ministers, the richest
men, we should appoint as ambassadors to show what our race is, and
what it is doing here, but the great thinkers, artists, and workers, the
thinkers in ink, the thinkers in stone and color, the thinkers in force
and homely matter, the men who are bringing the globe up towards the
Creator's imagination and purpose; and on this mission the leaders of
mechanic art would go side by side with Shakespeare and Milton, Angelo
and Wren, Newton and Cuvier.
"In England, now, they are preparing statues of Brunel the engineer, and
the Stephensons, father and son, to be finished and erected about the
same time with those of Macaulay and Havelock. The nation is beginning
to bow to the occupations and the genius that have added to her power
ten thousand fold,--is beginning to bow to labor, noble, glorious,
sacred labor."
Not alone in public pleas for unpopular causes but in private charity
King seemed tireless. "He had the rare facility in everything he said
and did of communicating himself; the most precious thing he could
bestow." We are told that a multitude in distress came to this
overburdened man. Ringing his doorbell they found entrance, and always
as they came back, the "step was quicker which was slow before, the head
was up which was down before, and the lips wreathed in smiles that were
sad before."
Thus we can see that it was not solely his eloquent defense of liberty
and justice which caused a San Francisco journal, reporting his funeral,
to say, "Perhaps more deeply beloved by a vast number of our people than
any other who has lived and toiled and died among us." His good deeds
made him worthy of this, one of the most beautiful eulogies ever given
mortal man, "No heart ever ached because of him until he died." This
was Starr King the philanthropist, a friend to all who needed his
friendship.
It would almost appear that in telling the story of "Starr King in
California" we were altogether forgetting that he did not come to the
State to influence its political action, or even to alleviate poverty
and distress. He came as a preacher of Liberal Christianity, and to
build up the church that had honored him with a call to its pulpit. Long
before he left Boston it was written concerning him, "That he loved his
calling, and that it was his ambition to pay the debt which every able
man is said to owe to his profession, namely to contribute some work
of permanent value to its literature." At that early period a
discriminating critic bears testimony, "that his piety, pure, deep,
tender, serene and warm, took hold of positive principles of light
and beneficence, not the negative ones of darkness and depravity,
and--himself a child of light--he preached the religion of spiritual
joy."
It was King's first and chief ambition to be an effective preacher. In a
letter, written in 1855, he says, "How we do need good preaching. Would
that I could preach extempore." A wish that six years later "came true"
in his San Francisco pulpit. In the inspiring atmosphere of his new
field, and under the stress of a great era, King cast his manuscript
aside, and though he made careful preparation, as every man must who
speaks worthily, he never again submitted to the bondage of the "written
sermon." To a man of King's gifts and temperament this was an immense
gain. Indeed, Bostonian Californians were a unit in declaring that
Easterners could have no conception of the man and orator Starr King
became in those last great years of his brief life.
Speedily the little church in which he preached proved too small for the
throng of eager listeners who gathered to hear him, and on the 3d day of
December, 1862, the corner stone of a larger and more beautiful edifice
was laid.
We shall find it no easy matter to analyze the sources of his power
and popularity. Often-times success and failure are equal mysteries.
Doubtless no small part of his triumph arose from the peculiar character
of the new society to which he brought talents that commanded instant
attention. The eager temper of the time fitted his sincere and earnest
spirit. It was a perfect adjustment of the man and the hour, the workman
and his task.
No small part of his popularity arose from the fact that he insisted
upon his right and duty as a minister to discuss great questions of
state in the pulpit. The vicious gulf churchmen discover between the
sacred and the secular was hidden from his eyes. All that affected the
humblest of his fellow men appealed to him as part and parcel of the
'gospel of righteousness he was commissioned to preach. In the old
Boston days he had discussed freely in the pulpit such themes as the
"Free Soil Movement," "The Fugitive Slave Law," and "The Dred Scott
Decision." Burning questions these, and they were handled with no fear
of man to daunt the severity of his condemnation when he declared
that in the Dred Scott Decision the majority of the Supreme Court had
betrayed justice for a political purpose. It was not likely that such a
man would remain silent in the pulpit upon the so-called "war issues" of
1861. Early in that memorable year he boldly informed his people as to
the course he intended to pursue so long as the war lasted. He would
not equivocate and he would not be silent. Henceforth stirring patriotic
sermons, as the demand for them arose, were the order of the day in the
congregation to which he ministered. The character of these discourses
may be partly determined from such titles as, "The Choice between
Barabbas and Jesus," "The Treason of Judas Iscariot," "Secession in
Palestine," and "Rebellion Pictures from Paradise Lost." "After the
lapse of more than sixty years," so the Hon. Horace Davis assured
the writer, "I can distinctly remember the fire and passion of those
terrible indictments of treason and rebellion."
"Terrible indictments" truly, and in the storm and tempest of the time
irresistibly attractive to men and women whose sympathies were on fire
for the Northern cause. King's patriotism won for him a liberal hearing
on subjects that otherwise the people would have declined to consider.
But we must not forget that "our preacher" was endowed with that rare
and radiant gift, an altogether charming and persuasive personality.
Appearance, manner, voice, were all instruments of attractiveness,
fitting modes of expression to a gentle and noble spirit. When a friend
and comrade of King's earlier ministry was asked to name the preacher's
preeminent gift, he immediately answered, "his voice." The reply seems
trivial. Yet it was seriously spoken by one whose knowledge of King
during his Boston ministry was close and personal. William Everett, who
had listened to New England's renowned orators, to Emerson's sweet and
satisfying voice, and to the music of Wendell Phillip's speech, said
of King, "His was one of the noblest and sweetest voices I ever heard."
Edward Everett Hale once wrote, "Starr King was an orator, whom no
one could silence and no one could answer." Says another, "There was
argument in his very voice. It thrilled and throbbed through an audience
like an organ carrying conviction captive before its wonderful melody."
If it is true that William Pitt once ruled the British Nation by his
voice, as good authority affirms, if it is true, that Daniel O'Connell's
voice
Glided easy as a bird may glide,
And played with each wild passion as it went,
may it not also be true that Starr King's clear, penetrating, musical
voice, answering to the moods of the soul as a loved instrument to the
hand of the player, was in itself a kind of gospel of good will to men?
Horace Davis, Starr King's son-in-law, was accustomed to insist that
writers had wholly failed to note one element of the great orator's
power, namely, his humor. Not wit, Mr. Davis would remark, but a most
genial and kindly, and at the same time illuminating humor. A careful
examination of King's published sermons, speeches and lectures gives
but slight evidence of this gift, owing doubtless to false ideas of what
constitutes decorum in the work of a preacher. Occasionally satisfying
evidence is found of the truth of Mr. Davis' judgment, as in the
following:
"On many a tombstone where it is written, 'Here lies so and so, aged
seventy years', the true inscription would read 'In memory of one who in
seventy years lived about five minutes and that was when he first fell
in love.'"
Writing of his lecture work in California which he called "detestable
vagrancy," he says:
"There is a great flood in the interior. California is a lake. Rats,
squirrels, locusts, lecturers, and other like pests are drowned out. I
am a home bird, and enjoy it hugely."
King greeted the mention of his name as candidate for United States
Senator with the statement, "I would swim to Australia before taking a
political post," and added, "a dandy lives from one necktie to another,
a fashionable woman from one wrinkle to another and a politician from
one election to another."
Certainly there is a smile, as well as a truth, in the following:
"Our popular definition of a ghost is just the reverse of truth; it
makes one consist of a soul without a body, while really a specter, an
illusion, a humbug of the eyesight and the touch, is a human body not
vitalized through and through with a soul."
"King was the best story teller of his time," thought Dr. Bellows.
"Gifted with an exquisite, a delicious sense of the ludicrous, and
given to bursts of uncontrollable merriment, happy as childhood and as
innocent," this is the verdict of one of his earliest biographers,--E.
P. Whipple. That sunny mirth and infectious laughter was no mean element
of his power over the people, we can readily believe.
Another explanation of his far reaching influence both in the pulpit
and on the platform, is found in the rare skill with which he made the
discoveries of science, and the beauties of nature, serve his need as
a teacher of morals and religion. And here, again, he was helped by the
spirit of his age. Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published in 1859, a
kind of crown and culmination of a half century of brilliant progress in
science. Starr King but shared the temper of his time as he turned with
delight to the writings of the masters and reveled in the new universe
there revealed. Modern science, which troubled the faith of many, only
deepened and strengthened his own, as he idealized and spiritualized
each new wonder of earth and heaven. The comet of July, 1861, gave
noble opportunity to enforce in his pulpit the religious lessons of that
mother of all the sciences, Astronomy. "I am glad," he began, "at every
new temptation to consider in the pulpit and the Church the wonders and
laws of modern astronomy."
"Does it ever occur to you, brethren, how we waste truth? Have you ever
felt what a sad thing it is that so little of the vast accumulation of
inspiring knowledge should reach our deepest, our religious sentiments,
to kindle and feed them? The most certain knowledge which men now hold
is that which is gathered from the sky. Astronomy, dealing with objects
thousands of millions of miles away, and with forces that rule through
limitless space, is the most symmetrical and firm of all the structures
of science which have been reared by the human mind. Immeasurably
more than David could have known, the heavens, as Herschel reads them,
declare the glory of God. Yet how seldom do we think of the splendors
and harmonies which a modern book of astronomy unveils as part of
God's appeal to our wonder; how seldom does the solemn light from the
uppermost regions of immensity, the light of nebulae which science has
broken up into heaps of suns, converge upon a human soul with power
enough to stimulate devout awe and make the heart bend before the
Creator of the universe."
A few days at Lake Tahoe, when not a hundred white men had visited its
shores, inspired a sermon long remembered by those who heard it,
and today, after numerous nature-sermons by the world's most gifted
preachers, this discourse remains an almost perfect example of what such
a sermon should be. The following single excerpt must suffice to suggest
its beauty:
"I must speak of another lesson, connected with religion, that was
suggested to me on the borders of Lake Tahoe. It is bordered by groves
of noble pines. Two of the days which I was permitted to enjoy there
were Sundays. On one of them I passed several hours of the afternoon
in listening, alone, to the murmur of the pines, while the waves were
gently beating the shore with their restlessness. If the beauty and
purity of the lake were in harmony with the deepest religion of the
Bible, certainly the voice of the pines was also in chord with it.
"The oracles of Greece are connected with the oak. And the lightness,
the gaiety, the wit, the suppleness, of the Greek mind find in the voice
of the oak their fit representatives; for the oak, though so stubborn
and sinewy in its substances, is cheery and gay in its tone when the
wind strikes it. But the evergreen trees, though so much softer in their
stock, are far deeper and more serious in their music; and the evergreen
is the Hebrew tree. The Cedar of Lebanon is the tree most prominent
when we think of Palestine and the clothing of its hills. As I lay and
listened to the deep, serious, yet soft and welcome sound of those pines
by the lake shore, I thought of the inspiration of old which had wakened
such lasting and wonderful music from the great souls of Israel. When
we want knowledge or the quickening of intellect, we enter the groves of
Greece; when we would find quickening, when we would feel the deeps
of the soul appealed to, we enter the deeper and more sombre woods
of Palestine. The voice of the pine helps us to interpret the Hebrew
genius. Its range of expression is not so great as that of the oak or
the elm or the willow or the beech, but how much richer it is and more
welcome in its monotony! How much more profoundly our souls echo it! How
much more deeply does it seem to be in harmony with the spirit of
the air! What grandeur, what tenderness, what pathos, what
heart-searchingness in the swells and cadences of its 'Andante
Maestoso,' when the wind wrestles with it and brings out all its soul."
To the graces and gifts we have mentioned it is but necessary to add
that King's gospel of religion was in itself a veritable glad tidings to
the people. Not a mere deliverance of doubt, or morality veneered
with icy culture, but faith clear, strong and radiantly beautiful.
His thought of God, of Man, of Immortality, was full of comfort and
inspiration. "God is the infinite Christ," he was wont to say. "Jesus
revealed under human limitations the mercy and love of the Father."
King rivalled Theodore Parker in the strength and tenderness of his
faith that "man is the child of God." Saint and sinner, master and
slave, learned and ignorant, rich and poor, all are children of the
Infinite God,--born of His love ere the world was, certain of His love
when the world shall have passed away. He felt that if this is not true,
there is not enough left of religion to so much as interest an earnest
soul. Religion is everything,--the sun in the heavens,--or it is a
star too distant, faint and cold, to cast upon our path a single ray of
light.
And the unseen world! How very real it was to this man of faith and
prayer. The immortal life is the life. These earthly years but lead us
thither. Such was his faith. In excess of world-wisdom we say,
"Eternity is here and now." Well and good. But if we lose for a kind of
technicality the dear old trust in a higher and nobler life beyond
the swift-coming night of death, what have we gained? Said our beloved
preacher, our "Saint of the Pacific Coast," as he lay dying, "I see
a great future before me." Without that vision he would not have been
Starr King.