INTRODUCTORY.

IT is about twenty-five years since, at my earnest desire, my father

began to write some of the memories of his own life, of the friends

whom he loved, and of the noteworthy people he had known; and it is by

the help of these autobiographical papers, and of selections from his

letters, that I am enabled to attempt a memoir of him. I should like

to remind the elder generation and inform the younger of some things

in the life of a man who was once a foremost figure in the world from

which he had been so long withdrawn that his death was hardly felt

beyond the circle of his personal friends. It was like the fall of

an aged tree in the vast forests of his native hills, when the deep

thunder of the crash is heard afar, and a new opening is made towards

heaven for those who stand near, but when to the general eye there is

no change in the rich woodland that clothes the mountain side.

But forty years ago, when his church in New York was crowded morning

and evening, and [8] eager multitudes hung upon his lips for the very

bread of life, and when he entered also with spirit and power into the

social, philanthropic, and artistic life of that great city; or nearly

sixty years ago, when he carried to the beautiful town and exquisite

society of New Bedford an influx of spiritual life and a depth of

religious thought which worked like new yeast in the well-prepared

Quaker mind,--then, had he been taken away, men would have felt that a

tower of strength had fallen, and those especially, who in his parish

visits had felt the sustaining comfort of his singular tenderness and

sympathy in affliction, and of his counsel in distress, would have

mourned for him not only as for a brother, but also a chief. Now,

almost all of his own generation have passed away. Here and there one

remains, to listen with interest to a fresh account of persons and

things once familiar; while the story will find its chief audience

among those who remember Mr. Dewey{1} as among the lights of their own

youth. Those also who love the study of [9] human nature may follow

with pleasure the development of a New England boy, with a character

of great strength, simplicity, reverence, and honesty, with scanty

opportunities for culture, and heavily handicapped in his earlier

running by both poverty and Calvinism, but possessed from the first

by the love of truth and knowledge, and by a generous sympathy which

made him long to impart whatever treasures he obtained. To trace the

growth of such a life to a high point of usefulness and power, to see

it unspoiled by honor and admiration, and to watch its retirement,

under the pressure of nervous disease, from active service, while never

losing its concern for the public good, its quickness of personal

sympathy, nor its interest in the solution of the mightiest problems

of humanity, cannot be an altogether unprofitable use of time to the

reader, while to the writer it is a work of consecration. He who was at

once like a son and brother to my father, he who should have crowned

a forty-years' friendship by the fulfilment of this pious task, and

who would have done it with a stronger and a steadier hand than mine,

BELLOWS, was called first from that "fair companionship," while still

in the unbroken exercise of the varied and remarkable powers which

made his life one of such [10] large use, blessing, and pleasure to

the world. None could make his place good to his elder friend, whose

approaching death was visibly hastened by grief for the loss of the

constant sympathy and devotion which had faithfully cheered his

declining years. Many and beautiful tributes were laid upon my father's

tomb by those whom he left here. Why should we not hope that that of

Bellows was in the form of greeting?

ST. DAVID'S, July, 1883.

{FN 1: My father always preferred this simple title to the more

formal "Dr." and in his own family and among his most intimate

friends he was Mr. Dewey to the last. He was, of course,

gratified by the complimentary intention of Harvard University

in bestowing the degree of D.D. upon him in 1839, but he never

felt that his acquisitions in learning entitled him to it.}

[11] AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I WAS born in Sheffield, Mass., on the 28th of March, 1794. My

grandparents, Stephen Dewey and Aaron Root, were among the early

settlers of the town, and the houses they built the one of brick, and

the other of wood--still stand. They came from Westfield, about forty

miles distant from Sheffield, on horseback, through the woods; there

were no roads then. We have always had a tradition in our family that

the male branch is of Welsh origin. When I visited Wales in 1832, I

remember being struck with the resemblance I saw in the girls and young

women about me to my sisters, and I mentioned it when writing home. On

going up to London, I became acquainted with a gentleman, who, writing

a note one day to a friend of mine and speaking of me, said: "I spell

the name after the Welsh fashion, Devi; I don't know how he spells it."

On inquiring of this gentleman, and he referred me also to biographical

dictionaries,--I found that our name had an origin of unsuspected

dignity, not to say sanctity, being no other than that of Saint David,

the patron saint [12] of Wales, which is shortened and changed in the

speech of the common people into Dewi.'{2}

{FN 2: This was the reason why Mr. Dewey gave to the country

home which he inherited from his father the name of "St.

David's," by which it is known to his family and friends.--M.

E. D.}

Everyone tries, I suppose, to penetrate as far back as he can into

his childhood, back towards his infancy, towards that mysterious and

shadowy line behind which lies his unremembered existence. Besides

the usual life of a child in the country,--running foot-races with my

brother Chandler, building brick ovens to bake apples in the side-hill

opposite the house, and the steeds of willow sticks cut there, and

beyond the unvarying gentleness of my mother and the peremptory

decision and playfulness at the same time of my father,--his slightest

word was enough to hush the wildest tumult among us children, and yet

he was usually gay and humorous in his family,--besides and beyond

this, I remember nothing till the first event in my early childhood,

and that was acting in a play. It was performed in the church, as

part of a school exhibition. The stage was laid upon the pews, and

the audience seated in the gallery. I must have been about five years

old then, and I acted the part of a little son. I remember feeling,

then and afterwards, very queer and shamefaced about my histrionic

papa and mamma. It is striking to observe, not only how early, but

how powerfully, imagination [13] is developed in our childhood. For

some time after, I regarded those imaginary parents as sustaining a

peculiar relation, not only to me, but to one another; I thought they

were in love, if not to be married. But they never were married, nor

ever thought of it, I suppose. All that drama was wrought out in the

bosom of a child. It is worth noticing, too, the freedom with sacred

things, of those days, approaching to the old fetes and mysteries in

the church. We are apt to think of the Puritan times as all rigor and

strictness. And yet here, nearly sixty years ago, was a play acted in

the meeting-house: the church turned into a theatre. And I remember my

mother's telling me that when she was a girl her father carried her on

a pillion to the raising of a church in Pittsfield; and the occasion

was celebrated by a ball in the evening. Now, all dancing is proscribed

by the church there as a sinful amusement.

The next thing that I remember, as an event in my childhood, was

the funeral of General Ashley, one of our townsmen, who had served

as colonel, I think, in the War of the Revolution. I was then in my

sixth year. It was a military funeral; and the procession, for a long

distance, filled the wide street. The music, the solemn march, the

bier borne in the midst, the crowd! It seemed to me as if the whole

world was at a funeral. The remains of Bonaparte borne to the Invalides

amidst the crowds of Paris could not, [14] I suppose, at a later day,

have affected me like that spectacle. I do not certainly know whether

I heard the sermon on the occasion by the pastor, the Rev. Ephraim

Judson; but at any rate it was so represented to me that it always

seems as if I had heard it, especially the apostrophe to the remains

that rested beneath that dark pall in the aisle. "General Ashley!" he

said, and repeated, "General Ashley!--he hears not."

To the recollections of my childhood this old pastor presents a

very distinct, and I may say somewhat portentous, figure, tall,

large-limbed, pale, ghostly almost, with slow movement and hollow tone,

with eyes dreamy, and kindly, I believe, but spectral to me, coming

into the house with a heavy, deliberate, and solemn step, making me

feel as if the very chairs and tables were conscious of his presence

and did him reverence; and when he stretched out his long, bony arm

and said, "Come here, child!" I felt something as if a spiritualized

ogre had invited me. Nevertheless, he was a man, I believe, of a very

affectionate and tender nature; indeed, I afterwards came to think

so; but at that time, and up to the age of twelve, it is a strict

truth that I did not regard Mr. Judson as properly a human being,--as

a man at all. If he had descended from the planet Jupiter, he could

not have been a bit more preternatural and strange to me. Indeed, I

well remember the occasion when the idea of his proper humanity first

flashed upon [15] my mind. It was when I saw him, one day, beat the

old black horse he always rode, apparently in a passion like any other

man. The old black horse--large, fat, heavy, lazy--figures in my mind

almost as distinctly as its master; and if, as it came down the street,

its head were turned aside towards the school-house, as indicating the

rider's intent to visit us, I remember that the school was thrown into

as much commotion as if an armed spectre were coming down the road. Our

awe of him was extreme; yet he loved to be pleasant with us. He would

say,--examining the school was always a part of his object, "How much

is five times seven?" "Thirty-five," was the ready answer. "Well,"

replied the old man, "saying so don't make it so"; a very significant

challenge, which we were ill able to meet. At the close of his visit

he always gave an exact and minute account of the Crucifixion,--I

think always, and in the same terms. It was a mere appeal to physical

sympathy, awful, but not winning. When he stood before us, and, lifting

his hands almost to the ceiling, said, "And so they reared him up!"

it seemed as if he described the catastrophe of the world, not its

redemption. Indeed, Mr. Judson appeared to think that anything drawn

from the Bible was good, whether he made any moral application of it or

not. I have heard him preach a whole sermon, giving the most precise

and detailed description of the building of the Tabernacle, without one

word of comment, [16] inference, or instruction. But he was a good and

kindly man; and when, as I was going to college at the age of eighteen,

he laid his hand upon my head, and gave me, with solemn form and tender

accent, his blessing, I felt awed and impressed, as I imagine the

Hebrew youth may have felt under a patriarch's benediction.

With such an example and teacher of religion before me, whose goodness

I did not know, and whose strangeness and preternatural character only

I felt; and indeed with all the ideas I got of religion, whether from

Sunday-keeping or catechising, my early impressions on that subject

could not be happy or winning. I remember the time when I really feared

that if I went out into the fields to walk on Sunday, bears would come

down from the mountain and catch me. At a later day, but still in my

childhood, I recollect a book-pedler's coming to our house, and when he

opened his pack, that I selected from a pile of story-books, Bunyan's

"Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners." Religion had a sort of

horrible attraction for me, but nothing could exceed its gloominess. I

remember looking down from the gallery at church upon the celebration

of the Lord's Supper, and pitying the persons engaged in it more than

any people in the world,--I thought they were so unhappy. I had heard

of "the unpardonable sin," and well do I recollect lying in my bed a

mere child--and having thoughts and words injected into my mind, which

I [17]imagined were that sin, and shuddering, and trembling, and saying

aloud, "No, no, no; I do not,--I will not." It is the grand mystery of

Providence that what is divinest and most beautiful should be suffered

to be so painfully, and, as it must seem at first view, so injuriously

misconstrued. But what is universal, must be a law; and what is law,

must be right,--must have good reasons for it. And certainly so it is.

Varying as the ages vary, yet the experience of the individual is but

a picture of the universal mind,--of the world's mind. The steps are

the same, ignorance, fear, superstition, implicit faith; then doubt,

questioning, struggling, long and anxious reasoning; then, at the end,

light, more or less, as the case may be. Can it, in the nature of

things, be otherwise? The fear of death, for instance, which I had,

which all children have, can childhood escape it? Far onward and upward

must be the victory over that fear. And the fear of God, and, indeed,

the whole idea of religion,--must it not, in like manner, necessarily

be imperfect? And are imperfection and error peculiar to our religious

conceptions? What mistaken ideas has the child of a man, of his parent

when correcting him, or of some distinguished stranger! They are

scarcely less erroneous than his ideas of God. What mistaken notions

of life, of the world, the great, gay, garish world, all full of

cloud-castles, ships laden with gold, pleasures endless and entrancing!

What mistaken impressions [18]about nature; about the material world

upon which childhood has alighted, and of which it must necessarily

be ignorant; about clouds and storms and tempests; and of the heavens

above, sun and moon and stars! I remember well when the fable of the

Happy Valley in Rasselas was a reality to me; when I thought the sun

rose and set for us alone, and how I pitied the glorious orb, as it

sunk behind the western mountain, to think that it must pass through

a sort of Hades, through a dark underworld, to come up in the east

again. It is a curious fact, that the Egyptians in the morning of the

world had the same ideas. Shall I blame Providence for this? Could it

be otherwise? If earthly things are so mistaken, is it strange that

heavenly things are? And especially shall I call in question this order

of things,--this order, whether of men's or of the world's progress,

when I see that it is not only inevitable, the necessary allotment for

an experimenting and improving nature, which is human nature, but when

I see too that each stage of progress has its own special advantages;

that "everything is beautiful in its time;" that fears, superstitions,

errors, quicken imagination and restrain passion as truly as doubts,

reasonings, strugglings, strengthen the judgment, mature the moral

nature, and lead to light?

I am dilating upon all this too much, perhaps. I let my pen run.

Sitting down here in the blessed [19]country home, with nothing else

in particular just now to do, at the age of sixty-three, I have time

and am disposed to look back into my early life and to reason upon it;

and although I have nothing uncommon to relate, yet what pertains to me

has its own interest and significance, just as if no other being had

ever existed, and therefore I set down my experience and my reflections

simply as they present themselves to me.

In casting back my eyes upon this earliest period of my life, there are

some things which I recall, which may amuse my grandchildren, if they

should ever be inclined to look over these pages, and some of which

they may find curious, as things of a bygone time.

Children now know nothing of what "'Lection" was in those days, the

annual period, that is, when the newly elected State government came

in. It was in the last week in May. How eager were we boys to have the

corn planted before that time! The playing could not be had till the

work was done. The sports and the entertainments were very simple.

Running about the village street, hither and thither, without much aim;

stands erected for the sale of gingerbread and beer,--home-made beer,

concocted of sassafras roots and wintergreen leaves, etc.; games of

ball, not base-ball, as now is the fashion, yet with wickets,--this was

about all, except that at the end there was always horse-racing.

Having witnessed this exciting sport in my [20] boyhood, without any

suspicion of its being wrong, and seen it abroad in later days, in

respectable company, I was led, very innocently, when I was a clergyman

in New York, into what was thought a great misdemeanor. I was invited

by some gentlemen, and went with them, to the races on Long Island.

I met on the boat, as we were returning, a parishioner of mine, who

expressed great surprise, and even a kind of horror, when I told him

what I had been to see. He could not conceal that he thought it very

bad that I should have been there; and I suppose it was. But that was

not the worst of it. Some person had then recently heard me preach a

sermon in which I said, that, in thesis, I had rather undertake to

defend Infidelity than Calvinism. In extreme anger thereat, he wrote a

letter to some newspaper, in which, after stating what I had said, he

added, "And this clergyman was lately seen at the races!" It went far

and wide, you may be sure. I saw it in newspapers from all parts of the

country; yet some of my friends, while laughing at me, held it to be

only a proof of my simplicity.

There were worse things than sports in our public gatherings; even

street fights,--pugilistic fights, hand to hand. I have seen men thus

engage, and that in bloody encounter, knocking one another down, and

the fallen man stamped upon by his adversary. The people gathered

round, not to interfere, but to see them fight it out. [21] Such a

spectacle has not been witnessed in Sheffield, I think, for half a

century. But as to sports and entertainments in general, there were

more of them in those days than now. We had more holidays, more games

in the street, of ball-playing, of quoits, of running, leaping, and

wrestling. The militia musters, now done away with, gave many occasions

for them. Every year we had one or two great squirrel-hunts, ended by a

supper, paid for by the losing side, that is, by the side shooting the

fewest. Almost every season we had a dancing-school. Singing-schools,

too, there were every winter. There was also a small band of music in

the village, and serenades were not uncommon. We, boys used to give

them on the flute to our favorites. But when the band came to serenade

us, I shall never forget the commotion it made in the house, and the

delight we had in it. We children were immediately up in a wild hurry

of pleasure, and my father always went out to welcome the performers,

and to bring them into the house and give them such entertainment as he

could provide.

The school-days of my childhood I remember with nothing but pleasure. I

must have been a dull boy, I suppose, in some respects, for I never got

into scrapes, never played truant, and was never, that I can remember,

punished for anything. The instruction was simple enough. Special

stress was laid upon spelling, and I am inclined to think that every

one of my fellow-pupils [22] learned to spell more correctly than some

gentlemen and ladies do in our days.

Our teachers were always men in winter and women in summer. I remember

some of the men very well, but one of them especially. What pupil of

his could ever forget Asa Day,--the most extraordinary figure that

ever I saw, a perfect chunk of a man? He could not have been five feet

high, but with thews and sinews to make up for the defect in height,

and a head big enough for a giant. He might have sat for Scott's "Black

Dwarf;" yet he was not ill-looking, rather handsome in the face. And

I think I never saw a face that could express such energy, passion,

and wrath, as his. Indeed, his whole frame was instinct with energy.

I see him now, as he marched by our house in the early morning, with

quick, short step, to make the school-room fire; and a roaring one it

was, in a large open fireplace; for he did everything about the school.

In fact, he took possession of school, schoolhouse, and district too,

for that matter, as if it were a military post; with the difference,

that he was to fight, not enemies without, but within,--to beat down

insubordination and enforce obedience. And his anger, when roused, was

the most remarkable thing. It stands before me now, through all my

life, as the one picture of a man in a fury. But if he frightened us

children, he taught us too, and that thoroughly.

In general our teachers were held in great [23] reverence and

affection. I remember especially the pride with which I once went

in a chaise, when I was about ten, to New Marlborough, to fetch the

schoolma'am. No courtier, waiting upon a princess, could have been

prouder or more respectful than I was.

To turn, for a moment, to a different scene, and to much humbler

persons, that pass and repass in the camera obscura of my early

recollections. The only Irishman that was in Sheffield, I think, in

those days, lived in my father's family for several years as a hired

man,--Richard; I knew him by no other name then, and recall him by no

other now,--the tallest and best-formed "exile of Erin" that I have

ever seen; prodigiously strong, yet always gentle in manner and speech

to us children; with the full brogue, and every way marked in my view,

and set apart from every one around him,--"a stranger in a strange

land." The only thing besides, that I distinctly remember of him, was

the point he made every Christmas of getting in the "Yule-log," a huge

log which he had doubtless been saving out in chopping the wood-pile,

big enough for a yoke of oxen to draw, and which he placed with a kind

of ceremony and respect in the great kitchen fireplace. With our absurd

New England Puritan ways, yet naturally derived from the times of the

English Commonwealth, when any observance of Christmas was made penal

and punished with [24] imprisonment, I am not sure that we should have

known anything of Christmas, but for Richard's Yule-log.

There was another class of persons who were frequently engaged to do

day's work on the farm,--that of the colored people. Some of them had

been slaves here in Sheffield. They were virtually emancipated by our

State Bill of Rights, passed in 1783. The first of them that sought

freedom under it, and the first, it is said, that obtained it in New

England, was a female slave of General Ashley, and her advocate in the

case was Mr. Sedgwick, afterwards Judge Sedgwick, who was then a lawyer

in Sheffield.

There were several of the men that stand out as pretty marked

individualities in my memory, Peter and Caesar and Will and Darby;

merry old fellows they seemed to be,--I see no laborers so cheerful and

gay now,--and very faithful and efficient workers. Peter and his wife,

Toah (so was she called), had belonged to my maternal grandfather, and

were much about us, helping, or being helped, as the case might be.

They both lived and died in their own cottage, pleasantly situated on

the bank of Skenob Brook. They tilled their own garden, raised their

own "sarse," kept their own cow; and I have heard one say that "Toah's

garden had the finest damask roses in the world, and her house, and all

around it, was the pink of neatness."

In taking leave of my childhood, I must say [25] that, so far as my

experience goes, the ordinary poetic representations of the happiness

of that period, as compared with after life, are not true, and I must

doubt whether they ought to be true. I was as happy, I suppose, as

most children. I had good health; I had companions and sports; the

school was not a hardship to me,--I was always eager for it; I was

never hardly dealt with by anybody; I was never once whipped in my

life, that I can remember; but instead of looking back to childhood

as the blissful period of my life, I find that I have been growing

happier every year, up to this very time. I recollect in my youth times

of moodiness and melancholy; but since I entered on the threshold of

manly life, of married and parental life, all these have disappeared.

I have had inward struggles enough, certainly,--struggles with doubt,

with temptation,--sorrows and fears and strifes enough; but I think I

have been gradually, though too slowly, gaining the victory over them.

Truth, art, religion,--the true, the beautiful, the divine,--have

constantly risen clearer and brighter before me; my family bonds have

grown stronger, friends dearer, the world and nature fuller of goodness

and beauty, and I have every day grown a happier man.

To take up again the thread of my story, I pass from childhood to my

youth. My winters, up to the age of about sixteen, were given to [26]

school,--the common district-school,--and my summers, to assisting my

father on the farm; after that, for a year or two, my whole time was

devoted to preparing for college. For this purpose I went first, for

one year, to a school taught in Sheffield by Mr. William H. Maynard,

afterwards an eminent lawyer and senator in the State of New York. He

came among us with the reputation of being a prodigy in knowledge;

he was regarded as a kind of walking library; and this reputation,

together with his ceaseless assiduity as a teacher, awakened among us

boys an extraordinary ambition. What we learned, and how we learned

it, and how we lost it, might well be a caution to all other masters

and pupils. Besides going through Virgil and Cicero's Orations that

year, and frequent composition and declamation, we were prepared, at

the end of it, for the most thorough and minute examination in grammar,

in Blair's Rhetoric, in the two large octavo volumes of Morse's

Geography, every fact committed to memory, every name of country, city,

mountain, river, every boundary, population, length, breadth, degree

of latitude,--and we could repeat, word for word, the Constitution

of the United States. The consequence was, that we dropped all that

load of knowledge, or rather burden upon the memory, at the very

threshold of the school. Grammar I did study to some purpose that year,

though never before. I lost two years of my childhood, I think, upon

that study, absurdly [27] regarded as teaching children to speak the

English language, instead of being considered as what it properly is,

the philosophy of language, a science altogether beyond the reach of

childhood.

Of the persons and circumstances that influenced my culture and

character in youth, there are some that stand out very prominently in

my recollection, and require mention in this account of myself.

My father, first of all, did all that he could for me. He sent me to

college when he could ill afford it. But, what was more important as

an influence, all along from my childhood it was evidently his highest

desire and ambition for me that I should succeed in some professional

career, I think that of a lawyer. I was fond of reading,--indeed, spent

most of the evenings of my boyhood in that way,--and I soon observed

that he was disposed to indulge me in my favorite pursuit. He would

often send out my brothers, instead of me, upon errands or chores, "to

save me from interruption." What he admired most, was eloquence; and I

think he did more than Cicero's De Oratore to inspire me with a similar

feeling. I well remember his having been to Albany once, and having

heard Hamilton, and the unbounded admiration with which he spoke of

him. I was but ten years old when Hamilton was stricken down; yet such

was my interest in [28] him, and such my grief, that my schoolmates

asked me, "What is the matter?" I said, "General Hamilton is dead."

"But what is it? Who is it?" they asked. I replied that he was a great

orator; but I believe that it was to them much as if I had said that

the elephant in a menagerie had been killed. This early enthusiasm I

owed to my father. It influenced all my after thoughts and aims, and

was an impulse, though it may have borne but little appropriate fruit.

For books to read, the old Sheffield Library was my main resource.

It consisted of about two hundred volumes,--books of the good old

fashion, well printed, well bound in calf, and well thumbed too. What a

treasure was there for me! I thought the mine could never be exhausted.

At least, it contained all that I wanted then, and better reading, I

think, than that which generally engages our youth nowadays,--the great

English classics in prose and verse, Addison and Johnson and Milton

and Shakespeare, histories, travels, and a few novels. The most of

these books I read, some of them over and over, often by torchlight,

sitting on the floor (for we had a rich bed of old pine-knots on the

farm); and to this library I owe more than to anything that helped me

in my boyhood. Why is it that all its volumes are scattered now? What

is it that is coming over our New England villages, that looks like

deterioration and running down? Is our life going out of us to enrich

the great West? [29]I remember the time when there were eminent men in

Sheffield. Judge Sedgwick commenced the practice of the law here; and

there were Esquire Lee, and John W. Hurlbut, and later, Charles Dewey,

and a number of professional men besides, and several others who were

not professional, but readers, and could quote Johnson and Pope and

Shakespeare; my father himself could repeat the "Essay on Man," and

whole books of the "Paradise Lost."

My model man was Charles Dewey, ten or twelve years older than

myself. What attracted me to him was a singular union of strength and

tenderness. Not that the last was readily or easily to be seen. There

was not a bit of sunshine in it,--no commonplace amiableness. He wore

no smiles upon his face. His complexion, his brow, were dark; his

person, tall and spare; his bow had no suppleness in it, it even lacked

something of graceful courtesy, rather stiff and stately; his walk was

a kind of stride, very lofty, and did not say "By your leave," to the

world. I remember that I very absurdly, though unconsciously, tried to

imitate it. His character I do not think was a very well disciplined

one at that time; he was, I believe, "a good hater," a dangerous

opponent, yet withal he had immense self-command. On the whole, he

was generally regarded chiefly as a man of penetrative intellect and

sarcastic wit; but under all this I discerned a spirit so true, so

delicate and tender, so touched [30] with a profound and exquisite,

though concealed, sensibility, that he won my admiration, respect, and

affection in an equal degree. He removed early in life to practise the

law in Indiana. We seldom meet; but though twenty years intervene,

we meet as though we had parted but yesterday. He has been a Judge

of the Supreme Court, and, I believe, the most eminent law authority

in his adopted State; and he would doubtless have been sent to take

part in the National Councils, but for an uncompromising sincerity

and manliness in the expression of his political opinions, little

calculated to win votes.

And now came the time for a distinct step forward,--a step leading into

future life.

It was for some time a question in our family whether I should enter

Charles Dewey's office in Sheffield as a student at law, or go to

college. It was at length decided that I should go; and as Williams

College was near us, and my cousin, Chester Dewey, was a professor

there, that was the place chosen for me. I entered the Sophomore class

in the third term, and graduated in 1814, in my twenty-first year.

Two events in my college life were of great moment to me,--the loss of

sight, and the gain, if I may say so, of insight.

In my Junior year, my eyes, after an attack of measles, became so

weak that I could not use them more than an hour in a day, and I was

[31] obliged to rely mainly upon others for the prosecution of my

studies during the remainder of the college course. I hardly know

now whether to be glad or sorry for this deprivation. But for this,

I might have been a man of learning. I was certainly very fond of my

studies, especially of the mathematics and chemistry. I mention it

the rather, because the whole course and tendency of my mind has been

in other directions. But Euclid's Geometry was the most interesting

book to me in the college course; and next, Mrs. B.'s Chemistry: the

first, because the intensest thinking is doubtless always the greatest

possible intellectual enjoyment; and the second, because it opened

to me my first glance into the wonders of nature. I remember the

trembling pride with which, one day in the Junior year, I took the

head of the class, while all the rest shrunk from it, to demonstrate

some proposition in the last book of Euclid. At Commencement, when my

class graduated, the highest part was assigned to me. "Pretty well for

a blind boy," my father said, when I told him of it; it was all he

said, though I knew that nothing in the world could have given him more

pleasure. But if it was vanity then, or if it seem such now to mention

it, I may be pardoned, perhaps, for it was the end of all vanity,

effort, or pretension to be a learned man. I remember when I once told

Channing of this, and said that but for the loss of sight I thought I

should have devoted myself to the pursuits of learning, his [32] reply

was, "You were made for something better." I do not know how that may

be; but I think that my deprivation, which lasted for some years, was

not altogether without benefit to myself. I was thrown back upon my own

mind, upon my own resources, as I should never otherwise have been. I

was compelled to think--in such measure as I am able--as I should not

otherwise have done. I was astonished to find how dependent I had been

upon books, not only for facts, but for the very courses of reasoning.

To sit down solitary and silent for hours, and to pursue a subject

through all the logical steps for myself,--to mould the matter in my

own mind without any foreign aid,--was a new task for me. Ravignan, the

celebrated French preacher, has written a little book on the Jesuit

discipline and course of studies, in which he says that the one or two

years of silence appointed to the pupil absolute seclusion from society

and from books too were the most delightful and profitable years of

his novitiate. I think I can understand how that might be true in more

ways than one. Madame Guyon's direction for prayer to pause upon each

petition till it is thoroughly understood and felt had great wisdom in

it. We read too much. For the last thirty years I have read as much as

I pleased, and probably more than was good for me.

The disease in my eyes was in the optic nerve; there was no external

inflammation. Under the [33] best surgical advice I tried different

methods of cure,--cupping, leeches, a thimbleful of lunar caustic on

the back of the neck, applied by Dr. Warren, of Boston; and I remember

spending that very evening at a party, while the caustic was burning.

So hopeful was I of a cure, that the very pain was a pleasure. I said,

"Bite, and welcome!" But it was all in vain. At length I met with a

person whose eyes had been cured of the same disease, and who gave me

this advice: "Every evening, immediately before going to bed, dash on

water with your hands, from your wash-bowl, upon your closed eyes; let

the water be of about the temperature of spring-water; apply it till

there is some, but not severe, pain, say for half a minute; then, with

a towel at hand, wipe the eyes dry before opening them, and rub the

parts around smartly; after that do not read, or use your eyes in any

way, or have a light in the room." I faithfully tried it, and in eight

months I began to experience relief; in a year and a half I could read

all day; in two years, all night. Let any one lose the use of his eyes

for five years, to know what that means. Afterwards I neglected the

practice, and my eyes grew weaker; resumed it, and they grew stronger.

The other event to which I have referred as occurring in my college

life was of a far different character, and compared to which all this

is nothing. It is lamentable that it ever should be an event in any

human life. The sense of religion [34] should be breathed into our

childhood, into our youth, along with all its earliest and freshest

inspirations; but it was not so with me. Religion had never been a

delight to me before; now it became the highest. Doubtless the change

in its form partook of the popular character usually attendant upon

such changes at the time, but the form was not material. A new day rose

upon me. It was as if another sun had risen into the sky; the heavens

were indescribably brighter, and the earth fairer; and that day has

gone on brightening to the present hour. I have known the other joys

of life, I suppose, as much as most men; I have known art and beauty,

music and gladness; I have known friendship and love and family ties;

but it is certain that till we see GOD in the world--GOD in the bright

and boundless universe we never know the highest joy. It is far more

than if one were translated to a world a thousand times fairer than

this; for that supreme and central Light of Infinite Love and Wisdom,

shining over this world and all worlds, alone can show us how noble and

beautiful, how fair and glorious, they are. In saying this, I do not

arrogate to myself any unusual virtue, nor forget my defects; these are

not the matters now in question. Nor, least of all, do I forget the

great Christian ministration of light and wisdom, of hope and help to

us. But the one thing that is especially signalized in my experience is

this, the Infinite Goodness and Loveliness began to be [35] revealed to

me, and this made for me "a new heaven and a new earth."

The sense of religion comes to men under different aspects; that is,

where it may be said to come; where it is not imbibed, as it ought to

be, in early and unconscious childhood, like knowledge, like social

affection, like the common wisdom of life. To some, it comes as the

consoler of grief; to others, as the deliverer from terror and wrath To

me it came as filling an infinite void, as the supply of a boundless

want, and ultimately as the enhancement of all joy. I had been somewhat

sad and sombre in the secret moods of my mind, read Kirke White and

knew him by heart; communed with Young's "Night Thoughts," and with his

prose writings also; and with all their bad taste and false ideas of

religion, I think they awaken in the soul the sense of its greatness

and its need. I nursed all this, something like a moody secret in my

heart, with a kind of pride and sadness; I had indeed the full measure

of the New England boy's reserve in my early experience, and did not

care whether others understood me or not. And for a time something

of all this flowed into my religion. I was among the strictest of my

religious companions. I was constant to all our religious exercises,

and endeavored to carry a sort of Carthusian silence into my Sundays.

I even tried, absurdly enough, to pass that day without a smile upon

my countenance. It was on the ascetic side only that I [36] had

any Calvinism in my religious views, for in doctrine I immediately

took other ground. I maintained, among my companions, that whatever

God commanded us to do or to be, that we had power to do and be.

And I remember one day rather impertinently saying to a somewhat

distinguished Calvinistic Doctor of Divinity: "You hold that sin is an

infinite evil?" "Yes." "And that the atonement is infinite?" "Yes."

"Suppose, then, that the first sinner comes to have his sins cancelled;

will he not require the whole, and nothing will be left?" "Infinites!

infinites!" he exclaimed; "we can't reason about infinites!"

In connection with the religious ideas and impressions of which I have

been speaking, comes before me one of the most remarkable persons

that I knew in my youth, Paul Dewey, Uncle Paul, we always called

him. He was my father's cousin, and married my mother's half-sister.

His religion was marked by strong dissent from the prevailing views;

indeed, he was commonly regarded as an infidel. But I never heard

him express any disbelief of Christianity. It was against the Church

construction of it, against the Orthodox creed, and the ways and

methods of the religious people about him, that he was accustomed

to speak, and that in no doubtful language. I was a good deal with

him during the year before I went to college, for he taught me the

mathematics; and one day he said to me, "Orville, you are going to

college, and you will [37] be converted there." I said, "Uncle, how

can you speak in that way to me?" "Nay," he replied, "I am perfectly

serious; you will be converted, and when you are, write to me about

it, for I shall believe what you say." When that happened which he

predicted,--when something had taken place in my experience, of which

neither he, nor I then, had any definite idea, I wrote to him a long

letter, in which I frankly and fully expressed all my feelings, and

told him that what he had thus spoken of, whether idly or sincerely,

had become to me the most serious reality. I learned from his family

afterwards that my letter seemed to make a good deal of impression

on him. He was true to what he had said; he did take my testimony

into account, and from that time after, spoke with less warmth and

bitterness upon such subjects. Doubtless his large sagacity saw an

explanation of my experience, different from that which I then put

upon it. But he saw that it was at least sincere, and respected it

accordingly. Certainly it did not change his views of the religious

ministrations of the Church. He declined them when they were offered

to him upon his death-bed, saying plainly that he did not wish for

them. He was cross with Church people even then, and said to one of

them who called, as he thought obtrusively, to talk and pray with him,

"Sir, I desire neither your conversation nor your prayers." All this

while, it is to be remembered that he was a man, not only of [38]

great sense, but of incorruptible integrity, of irreproachable habits,

and of great tenderness in his domestic relations. Whatever be the

religious judgments formed of such men, mine is one of mingled respect

and regret. It reminds me of an anecdote related of old Dr. Bellamy,

of Connecticut, the celebrated Hopkinsian divine, who was called into

court to testify concerning one of his parishioners, against whom

it was sought to be proved that he was a very irascible, violent,

and profane man; and as this man was, in regard to religion, what

was called in those days "a great opposer," it was expected that the

Doctor's testimony would be very convincing and overwhelming. "Well,"

said Bellamy, "Mr. X is a rough, passionate, swearing man,--I am sorry

to say it; but I do believe," he said, hardly repressing the tears that

started, "that there is more of the milk of human kindness in his heart

than in all my parish put together!"

I may observe, in passing, that I heard, in those days, a great deal

of dissent expressed from the popular theology, beside my uncle's. I

heard it often from my father and his friends. It was a frequent topic

in our house, especially after a sermon on the decrees, or election,

or the sinner's total inability to comply with the conditions on which

salvation was offered to him. The dislike of these doctrines increased

and spread here, till it became a revolt of nearly half the town,

I think, against them; and thirty years ago a Liberal [39] society

might have been built up in Sheffield, and ought to have been. I very

well remember my father's coming home from the General Court [The

Massachusetts Legislative Assembly is so called.--M. E. D.], of which

he was a member, and expressing the warmest admiration of the preaching

of Channing. The feeling, however, of hostility to the Orthodox faith,

in his time, was limited to a few; but somebody in New York, who was

acquainted with it,--I don't know who,--sent up some infidel books. One

of them was lying about in our house, and I remember seeing my mother

one day take it and put it into the fire. It was a pretty resolute act

for one of the gentlest beings that I ever knew, and decisively showed

where she stood. She did not sympathize with my father in his views of

religion, but meekly, and I well remember how earnestly, she sought and

humbly found the blessed way, such as was open to her mind.

As my whole view of religion was changed from indifference or aversion

to a profound interest in it, a change very naturally followed in my

plan for future life, that is, in my choice of a profession,--very

naturally, at least then; I do not say that it would be so now.

I expected to be a lawyer; and I have sometimes been inclined to

regret that I was not; for courts of law always have had, and have

still, a strange fascination for me, and I see now that a lawyer's

or physician's life may be [40] actuated by as lofty principles, and

may be as noble and holy, as a clergyman's. But I did not think so

then. Then, I felt as if the life of a minister of religion were the

only sacred, the only religious life; as, in regard to the special

objects with which it is engaged, it is. But what especially moved me

to embrace it, I will confess, was a desire to vindicate for religion

its rightful claim and place in the world, to roll off the cloud and

darkness that lay upon it, and to show it in its true light. It had

been dark to me; it had been something strange and repulsive, and even

unreal,--something conjured up by fear and superstition. I came to see

it as the divinest, the sublimest, and the loveliest reality, and I

burned with a desire that others should see it.

This "divine call" I had, whether or not it answers to what is commonly

meant by that phrase, and I am glad that I obeyed it.

But now, how was I to prosecute this design? how carry on the

preparatory studies, when my eyes did not permit me to read more than

half an hour a day? I hesitated and turned aside, first to teach a

school in Sheffield for a year, and next, for another year, to try

a life of business in New York. At length, however, my desire for

my chosen profession became so irrepressible, that I determined to

enter the Theological Seminary at Andover, and to pursue my studies

as well as I could without my eyes, expecting afterwards to preach

without notes. [41] At Andover I passed three years, attending to

the course of studies as well as I was able. I gave to Hebrew the

half-hour a day that I was able to study; with the Greek Testament I

was familiar enough to go on with my room-mate, Cyrus Byington, {3}

who since has spent his life as a missionary among the Choctaws; and

for reading I was indebted to his unvarying kindness and that of my

classmates and friends. Still, I was left, some hours of every day, to

my own meditations. But the being obliged to think for myself upon the

theological questions that daily came before [42] the class, instead of

reading what others had said about them, seemed to me not without its

advantages.

{FN 3: Byington was a young lawyer, here in Sheffield, of

good abilities and prospects, but under a strong religious

impression he determined to quit the law and study theology.

He was a man of ardent temperament, whose thoughts were all

feelings as well, which, though less reliable as thought,

were strong impulses, always directed, consecrated to good

ends. A being more unselfish, more ready to sacrifice himself

for others, could not easily be found. This spirit made him

a missionary. When our class was about leaving Andover, the

question was solemnly propounded to us by our teachers, who

of us would go to the heathen--I well remember the pain and

distress with which Byington examined it,--for no person could

be more fondly attached to his friends and kindred,--his final

decision to go, and the perfect joy he had in it after his

mind was made up. He went to the Choctaw and Cherokee Indians

in Florida, and, on their removal to the Arkansas reservation,

accompanied them, and spent his life among them. He left,

as the fruit of one part of his work, a Choctaw grammar and

dictionary, and a yet better result in the improved condition

of those people. Late in life, on a visit here, he told me

that the converted Indians in Arkansas owned farms around him,

laboring, and living as respectably as white people do. Here

was that very civilization said to be impossible to the Indian.}

Andover had its attractions, and not many distractions. I liked it,

and I disliked it. I liked it for its opportunities for thorough

study,--our teachers were earnest and thorough men,--and for the

associates in study that it gave me. I could say, "For my companions'

sake, peace be within thy walls." I disliked it for its monastic

seclusion. Not that this was any fault of the institution, but for

the first time in my life I boarded in commons; the domestic element

dropped out of it, and I was persuaded, as I never had been before, of

the beneficence of that ordinance that "sets the solitary in families."

It was a fine situation in which to get morbid and dispirited and

dyspeptic. On the last point I had some experiences that were somewhat

notable to me. We were directed, of course, to take a great deal of

exercise. We were very zealous about it, and sometimes walked five

miles before breakfast, and that in winter mornings. It did not avail

me, however; and I got leave to go out and board in a family, half a

mile distant. I found that the three miles a day in going back and

forth, that regular exercise, was worth more to me than all my previous

and more violent efforts in that way. But I imagine that was not all.

I had the misfortune to scald my foot, and was obliged for three weeks

to sit perfectly still. [43] When I came back, Professor Stuart said

to me, "Well, how is it with your dyspepsia?" "All gone," was the

reply. "But how have you lived?" for his dietetics were very strict.

"Why, I have eaten pies and pickles,--and pot-hooks and trammels I

might, for any harm in the matter." Here was a wonder,----no exercise

and no regimen, and I was well! The conclusion I came to, was, on the

whole, that cheerfulness first, and next regularity, are the best

guards against the monster dyspepsia. And another conclusion was, that

exercise can no more profitably be condensed than food can.

As to morbid habits of mind, to which isolated seminaries are exposed,

I had also some experience. What complaints of our spiritual dulness

constantly arose among us! And there was other dulness, too,--physical,

moral, social. I remember, at one time, the whole college fell into a

strange and unaccountable depression. The occasion was so serious that

the professors called us together in the chapel to remonstrate with

us; and, after talking it all over, and giving us their advice, one of

them said: "The evil is so great, and relief so indispensable, that I

will venture to recommend to you a particular plan. Go to your rooms;

assemble some dozen or twenty in a room; form a circle, and let the

first in it say 'Haw!' and the second 'Haw!' and so let it go round;

and if that does n't avail, let the first again say 'Haw! haw!' and so

on." We tried it, [44] and the result may be imagined. Very astonishing

it must have been to the people without, but the spell was broken.

But more serious matters claim attention in connection with Andover. I

was to form some judgment upon questions in theology. I certainly was

desirous of finding the Orthodox system true. But the more I studied

it, the more I doubted. My doubts sprung, first, from a more critical

study of the New Testament. In Professor Stuart's crucible, many a

solid text evaporated, and left no residuum of proof. I was startled

at the small number of texts, for instance, which his criticism left

to support the doctrine of "the personality of the Holy Spirit." I

remember saying to him in the class one day, when he had removed

another prop,--another proof-text: "But this is one of the two or three

passages that are left to establish the doctrine." His answer was: "Is

not one declaration of God enough? Is it not as strong as a thousand?"

It silenced, but it did not satisfy me. In the next place, I found

difficulties in our theology from looking at it in a point of view

which I had not before considered, and that was the difference between

words and ideas, between the terms we used and the actual conceptions

we entertained, or between the abstract thesis and the living sense of

the matter. Thus with regard to the latter point, I found that the more

I believed in the doctrine of literally eternal punishments, the more

[45] I doubted it. As the living sense of it pressed more and more upon

my mind, it became too awful to be endured; it darkened the day and the

very world around me. At length I could not see a happy company or a

gay multitude without falling into a sadness that marred and blighted

everything. All joyous life, seen in the light of this doctrine, seemed

to me but a horrible mockery. It is evident that John Forster's doubts

sprung from the same cause. And then, I had been accustomed to use the

terms "Unity" and "Trinity" as in some vague sense compatible; but

when I came to consider what my actual conceptions were, I found that

the Three were as distinct as any three personalities of which I could

conceive. The service which Dr. Channing's celebrated sermon at the

ordination of Mr. Sparks in Baltimore did me, was to make that clear

to me. With such doubts, demanding further examination, I left the

Seminary at Andover.

We parted, we classmates, many of us in this world never to meet again.

Some went to the Sandwich Islands, one to Ceylon, one to the Choctaw

Indians; most remained at home, some to hold high positions in our

churches and colleges, Wheeler, President of the Vermont University,

a liberal-minded and accomplished man; Torrey, Professor in the same,

a man of rare scholarship and culture; Wayland, President of Brown

University, in Rhode Island, well and widely [46] known; and Haddock,

Professor in Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and recently our charge

d'affaires in Portugal. Haddock, I thought, had the clearest head among

us. Our relations were very friendly, though I was a little afraid of

him, and with him I first visited his uncle, Daniel Webster, in Boston.

I was struck with what Mr. Webster said of him, many years after,

considering that the great statesman was speaking of a comparatively

retired and studious man: "Haddock I should like to have always with

me; he is full of knowledge, of the knowledge that I want, pure-minded,

agreeable, pious," I use his very words, "and if I could afford it,

and he would consent, I would take him to myself, to be my constant

companion."

I left Andover, then, in the summer of 1819, and in a state of mind

that did not permit me to be a candidate for settlement in any of

the churches. I therefore accepted an invitation from the American

Education Society to preach in behalf of its objects, in the churches

generally, through the State, and was thus occupied for about eight

months.

Some time in the spring, I think, of 1820, I went down to Gloucester

to preach in the old Congregational Church, and was invited to become

its pastor. I replied that I was too unsettled in my opinions to be

settled anywhere. The congregation then proposed to me to come and

preach [47] a year to them, postponing the decision, both on their part

and mine, to the end of it. I was very glad to accept this proposition,

for a year of retired and quiet study was precisely what I wanted. I

spent that year in examining the questions that had arisen in my mind,

especially with regard to the Trinity. I read Emlyn's "Humble Inquiry,"

Yates and Wardlaw, Channing and Worcester, besides other books; but

especially I made the most thorough examination I was able, of all the

texts in both Testaments that appeared to bear upon the subject. The

result was an undoubting rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity. The

grounds for this, and other modifications of theological opinion, I

need not give here; they are sufficiently stated in what I have written

and published.

And here let me say that, although I had my anxieties, I had none about

my personal hold upon heart-sustaining truth. It was emphatically a

year of prayer, if I may without presumption or indelicacy say so.

Humbly and earnestly I sought to the God of wisdom and light to guide

me; and I never felt for a moment that I was perilling my salvation.

I had a foundation of repose, stronger than mere theology can give,

deep and sure beneath me. I had indeed my anxieties. I felt as if I

were putting in peril all my worldly welfare. All the props which a

man builds up around him in his early studies, all the props of church

relationship and religious friendship, seemed to be suddenly falling

away, and I was [48] about to take my stand on the threshold of life,

alone, unsupported, and unfriended.

I soon had practical demonstration of this, not only in the coldness

and the withdrawal of friends, all natural enough, I suppose, and

conscientious, no doubt, but in the summons of the Presbytery of the

city of New York, from which I had taken out my license to preach,

to appear before it and answer to the charge of heresy. The summons

was made in terms at war, I thought, with Christian liberty, and I

refused to obey it. The terms may have been in consonance with the

Presbyterian discipline, and perhaps I ought not to have refused. What

I felt was, and this, substantially, I believe, was what I said, that,

if "the Presbytery propose to examine me simply to ascertain whether

my opinions admit of my standing in the Presbyterian Church, I have no

objection; I neither expect nor wish to remain with it; but it appears

to me to assume a right and authority over my opinions to which I

cannot submit."

At the end of the year passed in Gloucester, it appeared that the

congregation was about equally divided on the question of retaining me

as pastor; at any rate, the circumstances did not permit me to think

of it, and I went up to Boston to assist Dr. Channing in his duties as

pastor of the Federal Street Church.

But I must not pass over, yet cannot comment upon, the great event of

my year at Gloucester, the greatest and happiest of my life, my [49]

marriage. {4} It took place in Boston, on the 26th day of December,

1820, the Rev. Dr. Jarvis officiating as clergyman, my wife's family

being then in attendance upon his church. As in the annals of nations

it is commonly said that, while calamities and disasters crowd the

page, the happy seasons are passed over in silence and have no record,

so let it be here.

My going up to Boston, to be acquainted with Channing, and to preach

in his church, excited in me no small expectation and anxiety. I

approached both the church and the man with something of trembling.

Of Channing, of his character, of his conversation, and the great

impression it made upon me, as upon everybody that approached him, I

have already publicly spoken, in a sermon {5} which I delivered on my

return from Europe after his death, and in a letter to be inserted in

Dr. Sprague's "Annals of the American Pulpit." In entering the pulpit

of Dr. Channing, as his assistant for a season, I felt that I was

committing myself to an altogether new ordeal, I had been educated in

the Orthodox Church; I knew little or nothing about the style and way

of preaching in the Unitarian churches; I knew only the pre-eminent

place which Dr.

{FN 4: To Louisa Farnham, daughter of William Farnham, of

Boston. M. E. D.}

{FN 5: This sermon, a noble, tender, and discriminating tribute

to Dr. Channing, was reprinted in 1831, on the occasion of the

Channing Centennial Celebration at Newport, R. I.--M. E. D.}

[50] Channing occupied, both as writer and preacher, and I naturally

felt some anxiety about my reception. I will only say that it was kind

beyond my expectation. After some months Dr. Channing went abroad, and

I occupied his pulpit till he returned. In all, I was in his pulpit

about two years. On my taking leave of it, the congregation presented

me with a thousand dollars to buy a library. It was a most timely and

welcome gift.

During my residence in Boston, I made my first appearance, but

anonymously, in print, in an essay entitled "Hints to Unitarians." How

ready this body of Christians has always been to accept sincere and

honest criticism, was evinced by the reception of my adventurous essay.

My gratification, it may be believed, was not small on learning that

it had been quoted with approbation in the English Unitarian pulpits;

and Miss Martineau told me, when she was in this country, then learning

that I was the author, that she, with a friend of hers, had caused it

to be printed as a tract for circulation. She would say now that it was

in her nonage that she did it.

The most remarkable man, next to Channing, that I became acquainted

with during this residence of two years in Boston, was Jonathan

Phillips. He was a merchant by profession, but inherited a large

fortune, and was never, that I know, engaged much in active business.

He led, when I knew him, a contemplative life, was an assiduous reader,

and a deeper thinker. He had [51] a splendid library, and spent much

of his time among his books. If he had had the proper training for

it, I always thought he would have made a great metaphysician. His

conversation was often profound, and always original, always drawn

from the workings of his own mind, and was always occupied with

great philosophical and religious themes. It was born of struggle,

more, I think, than any man's I ever talked with. For he had a great

moral nature, and great difficulties within, arising partly from his

religious education, but yet more from the contact with actual life of

a very sensitive temperament and much ill health. He had worked his way

out independently from the former, and stood on firm ground; and when

some of his family friends charged Channing with having drawn him away

from Orthodoxy, Channing replied, "No; he has influenced me more than I

have influenced him."

In London, in 1833, I met Mr. Phillips with Dr. Tuckerman, well known

as the pioneer in the "Ministry to the Poor in Cities," about to take

the tour on the Continent. He invited me to join them, and we travelled

together on the Rhine and in Switzerland. It was on this journey that

I became acquainted with the sad effect produced upon him by great and

depressing indisposition. His case was very singular, and explains

things in him that surprised his acquaintances very much, and, in

fact, did him much wrong with them. It was a scrofulous condition of

the stomach, and [52] when developed by taking cold, it was something

dreadful to hear him describe. The effect was to make entirely another

man of him. He who was affluent in means and disposition became

suddenly not only depressed and melancholy, but anxious about expenses,

sharp with the courier upon that point, and not at all agreeable as a

travelling companion. But when the fit passed off, which seemed for

the time to be a kind of insanity, his spirits rose, and his released

faculties burst out in actual splendor. He became gay; he enjoyed

everything, and especially the scenery around him. I never knew before

that his aesthetic nature was so fine. He said so many admirable things

while we were going over Switzerland, that I was sorry afterwards that

I had not noted them down at the time, and written a sheet or two of

Phillipsiana. His countenance changed as much as his conversation,

and its expression became actually beautiful. There was a miniature

likeness taken of him in London. I went to see it; and when I expressed

to the artist my warm approval of it, he said: "I am glad to have you

say that; for I wanted to draw out all the sweetness of that man's

face." {6}

One of the most distinguished persons in Dr. Channing's congregation

was Josiah Quincy, who, during his life, occupied high positions in the

country, and of a very dissimilar character,--

{FN 6: the point in this is that Mr. Phillips' features were

of singular and almost repellent homeliness till irradiated by

thought or emotion. M. E. D.}

[53] Member of Congress, Mayor of Boston, and President of Harvard

University, all of which posts he filled with credit and ability;

always conscientious, energetic, devoted to his office, high-toned, and

disinterested. He was a model of pure and unselfish citizenship, and

deserves for that a statue in Boston.

When Mr. Quincy was a very old man, I asked him one day how he had come

to live so long, and in such health and vigor. He answered: "For forty

years I have taken no wine; and every morning, before dressing myself,

I have spent a quarter of an hour in gymnastic exercises." I adopted

the practice, and have found it of great benefit, both as exercise, and

inuring against colds. It is really as much exercise as a mile or two

of walking. President Felton said: "After that, I can let the daily

exercise take care of itself, without going doggedly about it." I find

that a good many studious men are doing the same thing. I asked Bryant

how much time he gave, and he said, "Three quarters of an hour." After

that, at least in his summer home, he is upon his feet almost as much

as a cat, and about as nimbly. With his thin and wiry frame, and simple

habits, he is likely to live to a greater age than anybody I know.

[Mr. Bryant and my father were about of an age. They had known each

other almost from boyhood, and their friendship had matured with time.

The sudden death of the poet in 1878, from causes that seemed almost

accidental, was a great and unexpected blow to the survivor, then

himself in feeble health. M. E. D.]

[54] I shall add a word about the healthfulness of these exercises,

since it is partly my design in this sketch to give the fruits of my

experience. It is true one cannot argue for everybody from his own

case. Nevertheless, I am persuaded that this morning exercise and the

inuring would greatly promote the general health. "Catching cold" is

a serious item in the lives of many people. One, two, or three months

of every year they have a cold. For thirty years I have bathed in cold

water and taken the air-bath every morning; and in all that time, I

think, I have had but three colds, and I know where and how I got

these, and that they might have been avoided.

But I have wandered far from my ground, Boston, and my first residence

there. I was Dr. Channing's guest for the first month or two, and then

and afterwards knew all his family, consisting of three brothers and

two sisters. They were not people of wealth or show, but something

much better. Henry lived in retirement in the country, not having

an aptitude for business, but a sensible person in other respects.

George was an auctioneer, but left business and became a very ardent

missionary preacher; and Walter was a respectable physician. William

was placed in easy circumstances by his marriage. Their sister Lucy,

Mrs. Russel of New York, told me that she was very much amused one day

by something that her brother William said to Walter. "Walter," he

said, "I think we are a very [55] prosperous family. There is Henry, he

is a very excellent man. And George, why, George has come out a great

spiritual man. And you, you know how you are getting along. And as for

me, I do what I can. I think we are a very prosperous family."

Mrs. Russel was a person of great sense, of strong, quiet thought

and feeling; and some of her friends used to say that, with the same

advantages and opportunities her brother had, she would have been his

equal.

On a day's visit which Henry once made me in New Bedford, I remember we

had a long conversation on hunting and fishing, in which he condemned

them, and I defended. Pushed by his arguments, at length I said, "for

I went a-fishing myself sometimes with a boat on the Acushnet; yes,

and barely escaped once being carried out to sea by the ebb tide," I

said, "My fishing is not a reckless destruction of life; somebody must

take fish, and bring them to us for food, and those I catch come to

my table." "Now," said he, "that is as if you said to your butcher,

You have to slay a certain number of cattle, calves, and sheep, and

turkeys, and fowls for my table; let me have the pleasure of coming and

killing them myself."

Of Dr. Channing himself, I should, of course, have much to say here,

if, as I have just said, I had not already expressed my thoughts of

him in print. His conversation struck me most; more [56] even than any

of his writings ever did. He was an invalid, and kept much at home and

indoors, and he talked hour after hour, day after day, and sometimes

for a week, upon the same subject, without ever letting it grow

distasteful or wearisome. Edward Everett said, he had just returned

from Europe, where doubtless he had seen eminent persons, "I have never

met with anybody to whom it was so interesting to listen, and so hard

to talk when my turn came." There was, indeed, a grand and surprising

superiority in Channing's talk, both in the topics and the treatment of

them. There was no repartee in it, and not much of give and take, in

any way. People used to come to him, his clerical brethren, I remember

Henry Ware and others speaking of it, they came, listened to him, said

nothing themselves, and went away. In fact, Channing talked for his own

sake, generally. His topic was often that on which he was preparing to

write. It was curious to see him, from time to time, as he talked, dash

down a note or two on a bit of paper, and throw it into a pigeon-hole,

which eventually became quite full.

It would appear from all this that Channing was not a genial person,

and he was not. He was too intent upon the subjects that occupied

his mind for that varied and sportive talk, that abandon, that

sympathetic adjustment of his thoughts to the moods of people around

him, which makes the agreeable person. His thoughts [57] moved in solid

battalions, but they carried keen weapons. It would have been better

for him if he had had more variety, ease, and joyousness in society,

and he felt it himself. He was not genial either in his conversation

or letters. I doubt if one gay or sportive letter can be found among

them all. His habitual style of address, out of his own family, was "My

dear Sir," never "My dear Tom," or "My dear Phillips," scarcely, "My

dear Friend." Once he says, "Dear Eliza," to Miss Cabot, who married

that noble-minded man, Dr. Follen, and in them both he always felt

the strongest interest. Let any one compare Channing's letters with

those of Lord Jeffrey, for instance. The ease and freedom of Jeffrey's

letters, their mingled sense and playfulness, but especially the hearty

grasp of affection and familiarity in them, make one feel as if he were

introduced into some new and more charming society. Jeffrey begins one

of his letters to Tom Moore thus: "My dear Sir damn Sir My dear Moore."

Whether there is not, among us, a certain democratic reserve in this

matter, I do not know; but I suspect it. Reserve is the natural defence

set up against the claims of universal equality.

In the autumn of 1823, on Dr. Channing's return to his pulpit, I went

to New Bedford to preach in the Congregational Church, formerly Dr.

(commonly called Pater) West's, was invited to be its pastor, and was

ordained to that charge [58] on the 17th of December, Dr. Tuckerman

giving the sermon. An incident occurred at the ordination which showed

me that I had fallen into a new latitude of religious thought and

feeling. After the sermon, and in the silence that followed, suddenly

we heard the voice of prayer from the midst of the congregation. At

first we were not a little disturbed by the irregularity, and the

clergymen who leaned over the pulpit to listen looked as if they would

have said, "This must be put a stop to"; but the prayer, which was

short, went on, so simple, so sincere, so evidently unostentatious

and indeed beautiful, so in hearty sympathy with the occasion, and in

desire for a blessing on it, that when it closed, all said, "Amen!

Amen!" It was a pretty remarkable conquest over prejudice and usage,

achieved by simple and self-forgetting earnestness. Indeed, it seemed

to have a certain before unthought-of fitness, as a response from the

congregation, which is not given in our usual ordination services. The

ten years' happy, and, I hope, not unprofitable ministration on my

part that followed, and of fidelity on the part of the people, were

perhaps some humble fulfilment and answer to the good petitions that

it offered, and to all the brotherly exhortations and supplications of

that hour.

The congregation was small when I became its pastor, but it grew; a

considerable number of families from the Society of Friends connected

[59] themselves with it, and it soon rose, as it continues still, to be

one of the wealthiest and most liberal societies in the country.

My duties were very arduous. There was no clergyman with whom I could

exchange within thirty miles; {7} relief from this quarter, therefore,

was rare, not more than four or five Sundays in the year. I was most

of the time in my own pulpit, sometimes for ten months in succession.

In addition to this, I became a constant contributor to the "Christian

Examiner," for some years, I think as often as to every other number.

It was not wise. The duties of the young clergyman are enough for him.

The lawyer, the physician, advances slowly to full practice; the whole

weight falls upon the clergyman's young strength at once. Mine sunk

under it. I brought on a certain nervous disorder of the brain, from

which I have never since been free. Of course it interfered seriously

with my mental work. How many days hundreds and hundreds did one hour's

study in the morning paralyze and prostrate me as completely as if I

had been knocked on the head, and lay me, for hours after, helpless

on my sofa! After the Sunday's preaching, the effect of which upon me

was perhaps singular, making my back and bones ache, and my sinews as

if they had been stretched on the rack, making me [60] feel as if I

wanted to lie on the floor or on a hard board, if any one knows what

that means, after all this, it would be sometimes the middle of the

week, sometimes Thursday or Friday, before I could begin to work again,

and prepare for the next Sunday. My professional life was a constant

struggle; and yet I look back upon it, not with pain, but with pleasure.

{FN 7: This distance, which now seems so trifling, then

involved the hire of a horse and chaise for three days, and two

long days' driving through deep, sandy roads. M. E. D.}

Besides all this, subjects of great religious interest to me constantly

pressed themselves upon my attention. I remember Dr. Lamson, of Dedham,

a very learned and able man, asking me one day how I "found subjects

to write upon;" and my answering, "I don't find subjects; they find

me." I may say they pursued me. It may be owing to this that my sermons

have possibly a somewhat peculiar character; what, I do not know, but

I remember William Ware's saying, when my first volume of Discourses

appeared, "that they were written as if nobody ever wrote sermons

before," and something so they were written. I do not suppose there

is much originality of thought in them, nor any curiosa felicitas of

language, I could not attend to it; it was as much as I could do to

disburden myself, but original in this they are, that they were wrought

out in the bosom of my own meditation and experience. The pen was

dipped in my heart, I do know that. With burning brain and bursting

tears I wrote. Little fruit, perhaps, for so much struggle; be it so,

though it could not be so [61] to me. But so we work, each one in his

own way; and altogether something comes of it.

Early in my professional life, too, I met certain questions, which

every thinking man meets sooner or later, and which were pressed upon

my mind by the new element that came into our religious society. The

Friends are trained up to reverence the inward light, and have the less

respect for historical Christianity. The revelation in our nature,

then, and the revelation in the Scriptures; the proper place of each

in any just system of thought and theology; what importance is to be

assigned to the primitive intuitions of right and wrong, and what to

the supernaturalism, to the miracles of the New Testament, these were

the questions, and I discussed them a good deal in the pulpit, as

matters very practical to many of the minds with which I was dealing. I

admitted the full, nay, the supreme value of the original intuitions,

of the inward light, of the teachings of the Infinite Spirit in the

human soul; without them we could have no religion; without them

we could not understand the New Testament at all, and Christianity

would be but as light to the blind; but I maintained that Christ's

teaching and living and dying were the most powerful appeal and help

and guidance to the inward nature, to the original religion of the

soul, that it had ever received. And I believed and maintained that

this help, at once most divine and most human, was commended to the

world by miraculous [62] attestations. Not that the miracle, or the

miracle-sanctioned Christianity, was intended to supersede or disparage

the inward light; not that it made clearer the truth that benevolence

is right, any more than it could make clearer the proposition that two

and two make four; not that it lent a sanction to any intuitive truth,

but that it was the seal of a mission, this was what I insisted on. And

certainly a being who appeared before me, living a divine life, and

assuring me of God's paternal care for me and of my own immortality,

would impress me far more, if there were "works done by him" which no

other man could do, which bore witness of him. And although it should

appear, as in a late work on "The Progress of Religious Ideas" it has

been made to appear, that in the old systems there were foreshadowings

of that which I receive as the most true and divine; that the light

had been shining on brighter and brighter through all ages, that would

not make it any the less credible or interesting to me, that Jesus

should be the consummation of all, the "true Light" that lighteth the

steps of men; and that this Light should have come from God's especial

illumination, and should be far above the common and natural light of

this world's day. Nay, it would be more grateful to me to believe that

all religions have had in them something supernaturally and directly

from above, than that none have.

[63] But time went on, and work went on, reason as I might; though time

would have lost its light and life, and work all cheer and comfort,

if I had not believed. But work grew harder. I was obliged to take

longer and longer vacations, one of them five months long at the home

in Sheffield. After this I went back to my work, preaching almost

exclusively in my own pulpit, seldom going away, unless it was now and

then for an occasional sermon.

I went over to Providence in 1832, to preach the sermon at Dr. Hall's

installation as pastor of the First Church. Arrived on the evening

before, some of us of the council went to a caucus, preparatory to

a Presidential election, General Jackson being candidate for the

Presidency and Martin Van Buren for Vice-President. Finding the

speaking rather dull, after an hour or more we rose to leave, when

a gentleman touched my arm and said, "Now, if you will stay, you

will hear something worth waiting for." We took our seats, and saw

John Whipple rising to speak. I was exceedingly grateful for the

interruption of our purpose, for I never heard an address to a popular

assembly so powerful; close, compact, cogent, Demosthenic in simplicity

and force, not a word misplaced, not a word too many, and fraught with

that strange power over the feelings, lent by sadness and despondency,

a state of mind, I think, most favorable to real eloquence, in which

all verbiage is eschewed, and the burden [64] upon the heart is too

heavy to allow the speaker to think of himself.

Mr. Whipple was in the opposition, and his main charge against Van

Buren especially, was, that it was he who had introduced into our

politics the fatal principle of "the spoils to the victors," a

principle which, as the orator maintained, with prophetic sagacity,

threatened ruin to the Republic. Still there was no extravagance in his

way of bringing the charge. I remember his saying, "Does Mr. Van Buren,

then, wish for the ruin of his country? No; Caesar never wished for

the glory of Rome more than when he desired her to be laid, as a bound

victim, at his feet."

We have learned since more than we knew then of the direful influence

of that party cry, "The spoils to the victors." It has made our

elections scrambles for office, and our parties "rings." Mr. Whipple

portrayed the consequences which we are now feeling, and powerfully

urged that his State, small though it was, should do its utmost to ward

them off. As he went on, and carried us higher and higher, I began to

consider how he was to let us down. But the skilful orator is apt to

have some clinching instance or anecdote in reserve, and Mr. Whipple's

close was this:

"There sleep now, within the sound of my voice, the bones of a man who

once stood up in the revolutionary battles for his country. In one of

them, he told me, [65] when the little American army, ill armed, ill

clad, and with bleeding feet, was drawn up in front of the disciplined

troops of England, General Washington passed along our lines, and when

he came before us, he stopped, and said, 'I place great confidence

in this Rhode Island regiment.' And when I heard that," said he, "I

clasped my musket to my breast, and said, Damn 'em; let 'em come!" "The

immortal Chieftain" [said the orator] "is looking down upon us now; and

he says, 'I place great confidence in this Rhode Island regiment.'"

And now, on the whole, what shall I say of my life in New Bedford?

It was, in the main, very happy. I thought I was doing good there;

I certainly was thoroughly interested in what I was doing. I found

cultivated and interesting society there. I made friends, who are

such to me still. In the pastoral relation, New Bedford was, and long

continued to be, the very home of my heart; it was my first love.

In 1827 I was invited to go to New York. I did not wish to go, so

I expressly told the church in New York (the Second Church); but I

consented, in order to accomplish what they thought a great good,

provided my congregation in New Bedford would give their consent. They

would not give it; and I remained. I believe that I should have lived

and died among them, if my health had not failed.

But it failed to that degree that I could no longer do the work, and I

determined to go abroad and recruit, and recover it, if possible. [66]

This was in 1833. The Messrs. Grinnell & Co., of New York, offered me

a passage back and forth in their ships, one of the thousand kind and

generous things that they were always doing, and I sailed from New

York in the "George Washington" on the 8th of June. It was like death

to me to go. I can compare it to nothing else, going, as I did, alone.

In London I consulted Sir James Clarke, who told me that the disease

was in the brain, and that I must pass three or four years abroad if I

would recover from it. I believe I stared at his proposition, it seemed

to me so monstrous, for he said, in fine: "Well, you may go home in a

year, and think yourself well; but if you go about your studies, you

will probably bring on the same trouble again; and if you do, in all

probability you will never get rid of it." Alas! it all proved true.

I came home in the spring of 1834, thinking myself well. I had had no

consciousness of a brain for three months before I left Europe. I went

to work as usual; in one month the whole trouble was upon me again, and

it became evident that I must leave New Bedford. I could write no more

sermons; I had preached every sermon I had, that was worth preaching,

five times over, and I could not face another repetition. I retired

with my family to the home in Sheffield, and expected to pass some

years at least in the quiet of my native village. [67] I should like

to record some New Bedford names here, so precious are they to me.

Miss Mary Rotch is one, called by everybody "Aunt Mary," from mingled

veneration and affection. It might seem a liberty to call her so; but

it was not, in her case. She had so much dignity and strength in her

character and bearing that it was impossible for any one to speak

of her lightly. On our going to New Bedford, she immediately called

upon us, and when she went out I could not help exclaiming, "Wife,

were ever hearts taken by storm like that!" Storm, the word would be,

according to the usage of the phrase; but it was the very contrary,

a perfect simplicity and kindliness. But she was capable, too, of

righteous wrath, as I had more than one occasion afterwards to see.

Indeed, I was once the object of it myself. It was sometime after I

left New Bedford, that, in writing a review of the admirable Life of

Blanco White by the Rev. J. H. Thom, of Liverpool, while I spoke with

warm appreciation of his character, I commented with regret upon his

saying, toward the close of his life, that he did not care whether he

should live hereafter; and I happened to use the phrase, "He died and

made no sign," without thinking of the miserable Cardinal Beaufort, to

whom Shakespeare applies it. Aunt Mary immediately came down upon me

with a letter of towering indignation for my intolerance. I replied

to her, saying that if ever I should be so [68] happy as to arrive at

the blessed world where I believed that she and Blanco White would

be, and they were not too far beyond me for me to have any communion

with them, she would see that I was guilty of no such exclusiveness as

she had ascribed to me. She was pacified, I think, and we went on, as

good friends as ever. Her religious opinions were of the most catholic

stamp, and in one respect they were peculiar. The Friends' idea of the

"inward light" seemed to have become with her coincident with the idea

of the Author of all light; and when speaking of the Supreme Being,

she would never say "God," but "that Influence." That Influence was

constantly with her; and she carried the idea so far as to believe that

it prompted her daily action, and decided for her every question of

duty.

Miss Eliza Rotch had come from her English home shortly before my

going to New Bedford, and had brought, with her English education and

sense, more than the ordinary English powers of conversation. She,

like all her family, had been bred in the Friends' Society; and she

came with many of them to my church. She was a most remarkable hearer.

With her bright face, and her full, speaking eye, and interested

especially, no doubt, in the new kind of ministration to which she was

listening, she gave me her whole attention, often slightly nodding her

assent, unconsciously to herself and unobserved by others. She married

Professor John Farrar of Harvard, and [69] able mathematician, and one

of the most genial and lovable men that ever lived.

Life, in our quiet little town, was more leisurely than it is in

cities, and the consequence was an unusual development of amusing

qualities. There was more fun, and I ventured sometimes to say, there

was more wit, in New Bedford than there was in Boston. To be sure, we

could not pretend to compare with Boston in culture and in high and

fine conversation, least of all in music, which was at a very low ebb

with us. I remember being at an Oratorio in one of our churches, where

the trump of Judgment was represented by a horn not much louder than a

penny-whistle, blown in an obscure corner of the building!

Charles H. Warren was the prince of humorists among us, and would have

been so anywhere. Channing said to me one day, "I want to see your

friend Warren; I want to see him as you do." I could not help replying,

"That you never will; I should as soon expect to hear a man laugh in a

cathedral." I never knew a man quite so full of the power to entertain

others in conversation as he was. Lemuel Williams, his brother lawyer,

had perhaps a subtler wit. But the way Warren would go on, for a whole

evening, letting off bon-mots, repartees, and puns, made one think

of a magazine of pyrotechnics. Yet he was a man of serious thought

and fine intellectual powers. He was an able lawyer, and, placed upon

the bench at an uncommonly, early [70] age, he sustained himself with

honor. I used to lament that he would not study more, that he gave

himself up so much to desultory reading; but he had no ambition. Yet,

after all, I believe that the physical organization has more to do with

every man's career than is commonly suspected. His was very delicate,

his complexion fair, and his face, indeed, was fine and expressive

in a rare degree. The sanguine-bilious, I think, is the temperament

for deep intellectual power, like Daniel Webster's. It lends not only

strength, but protection, to the workings of the mind within. It is

not too sensitive to surrounding impressions. Concentration is force.

Long, deep, undisturbed thinking, alone can bring out great results. I

have been accustomed to criticise my own temperament in this respect,

too easily drawn aside from study by circumstances, persons, or things

around me, external interests or trifles, the wants and feelings of

others, or their sports, a playing child or a crowing cock. My mind,

such as it is, has had to struggle with this outward tendency, too much

feeling and sentiment, and too little patient thinking, and I believe

that I should have accomplished a great deal more if I had had, not the

sanguine alone, but the sanguine-bilious temperament.

Manasseh Kempton had it. He was the deacon of my church. I used to

think that nobody knew, or at least fairly appreciated, him as I

did. Under that heavy brow, and phlegmatic aspect, [71] and reserved

bearing, there was an amount of fire and passion and thought, and

sometimes in conversation an eloquence, which showed me that, with

proper advantages, he would have made a great man.