3. If He be not truly God, the accounts which the Scriptures give of
Him are self-contradictory.
4. If He be not truly God, there is no evidence from Scripture that
there is a God at all.
This was a massive and compact argument for the Divinity of Christ. It
occupied upwards of an hour in the delivery, and was read.
In the afternoon I took care to be in the pulpit five minutes before
the time. The Doctor shortly after came, and took his seat behind me.
This to me is always an annoyance,--I would almost as soon have a man
with me in bed as in the pulpit;--and in this instance it was
peculiarly so, as towards the close, although I had not exceeded forty
minutes, I felt quite persuaded that the Doctor was pulling at my
coat-tail, which led me rather abruptly to conclude. In this, however,
I was mistaken; and the Doctor assured me it was what he had never done
in his life, except in one instance,--and that was when the preacher,
having occupied two hours with his sermon, was entering upon a third.
In the evening of the 27th of April I heard, at the Tabernacle, New
York, the celebrated Gough deliver a lecture on Temperance. It was to
commence at 8 o'clock; but we had to be there an hour before the time,
in order to get a comfortable place. That hour was a dreary one. The
scraping of throats and the spitting were horrible. It seemed as if
some hundreds of guttural organs were uttering the awfully guttural
sentence, _"Hwch goch dorchog a chwech o berchill cochion."_
At last Gough made his appearance on the platform. He is a slender
young man of three or four and twenty. He told us he had spoken every
night except three for the last thirty nights, and was then very weary,
but thought "what a privilege it is to live and labour in the present
day." He related his own past experience of _delirium tremens_,--how an
iron rod in his hand became a snake,--how a many-bladed knife pierced
his flesh,--how a great face on the wall grinned at and threatened him;
"and yet," he added, "I _knew_ it was a delusion!"
A temperance man, pointing to Gough, had once observed to another,
"What a miserable-looking fellow that is!" "But," replied the other,
"you would not say so, if you saw how he keeps everybody in a roar of
laughter at the public-house till 1 or 2 in the morning." "But I _was_
miserable," said Gough; "I _knew_ that the parties who courted and
flattered me really _despised_ me." He told us some humorous
tales,--how he used to mortify some of them by claiming acquaintance
with them in the street, and in the presence of their respectable
friends. He returned scorn for scorn. "Gough," said a man once to him,
"you ought to be ashamed of yourself to be always drinking in this
manner." "Do I drink at your expense?"--"No." "Do I owe you
anything?"--"No." "Do I ever ask you to treat me?"--"No." "Then mind
your own business," &c. He introduced this to show that that mode of
dealing with the drunkard was not likely to answer the purpose.
"Six years ago," said he, "a man on the borders of Connecticut, sat
night after night on a stool in a low tavern to scrape an old fiddle.
Had you seen him, with his old hat drawn over his eyebrows, his swollen
lips, and his silly grin, you would have thought him adapted for
nothing else. But he signed the pledge, and in two years became a
United States senator, and thrilled the House with his eloquence."
In one place, after Gough had delivered a lecture, some ladies gathered
around him, and one of them said, "I wish you would ask Joe to 'sign
the pledge,"--referring to a wretched-looking young man that was
sauntering near the door. Gough went up to him, spoke _kindly_ to him,
and got him to sign: the ladies were delighted, and heartily shook
hands with Joe. A year after Gough met Joe quite a dandy, walking
arm-in-arm with a fine young lady. "Well, Joe, did you stick to the
pledge?" said Gough to him. "Yes," said Joe with an exulting smile,
"and the lady has stuck to me."
For more than an hour Gough kept the vast audience enchained by his
varied and charming talk.
On the 29th I went over the Tract House in New York, and was delighted
to see there six steam-presses,--four of which were then at work,
pouring forth in rapid succession sheet after sheet impressed with that
kind of literature which in my judgment is admirably adapted to meet
the wants of this growing country. They were then printing on an
average 27,000 publications, including nearly 2,400 of each kind, _per
diem!_ and employing sixty women in folding and stitching. During the
last year they printed 713,000 volumes, and 8,299,000 smaller
publications, making a total of 217,499,000 pages, or 58,154,661 pages
more than in any previous year! Of the _volumes_ issued, I may mention
14,000 sets of four volumes of D'Aubigné's History of the Reformation,
17,000 of Bunyan's Pilgrim, 10,000 of Baxter's Saints' Rest, 9,000 of
Doddridge's Rise and Progress, 7,000 of Pike's Persuasives, 13,000 of
Alleine's Alarm, and 41,000 of Baxter's Call! The two Secretaries,
whose business it is to superintend the publishing department and
matters relating to the raising of funds, the Rev. Wm. A. Hallock and
the Rev. O. Eastman, are enterprising and plodding men. They told me
they were brought up together in the same neighbourhood, and had both
worked at the plough till they were 20 years of age!
The 1st of May is the great moving day in New York. Throughout the city
one house seems to empty itself into another. Were it to the next door,
it might be done with no great inconvenience; but it is not so. Try to
walk along the causeway, and you are continually blocked up with
tables, chairs, and chests of drawers. Get into an omnibus, and you are
beset with fenders, pokers, pans, Dutch ovens, baskets, brushes, &c.
Hire a cart, and they charge you double fare.
One day at the water-side, happening to see the steamer for Staten
Island about to move off, we stepped on board, and in less than half an
hour found ourselves there. The distance is 6 miles, and the island is
18 miles long, 7 miles wide, and 300 feet high. Here are a large
hospital for mariners and the quarantine burying-ground. It is also
studded with several genteel residences. In 1657 the Indians sold it to
the Dutch for 10 shirts, 30 pairs of stockings, 10 guns, 30 bars of
lead, 30 lbs. of powder, 12 coats, 2 pieces of duffil, 30 kettles, 30
hatchets, 20 hoes, and one case of knives and awls.
Several emigrant vessels were then in the bay. On our return, we saw
with painful interest many of them setting their foot for the first
time on the shore of the New World. They were then arriving in New
York, chiefly from the United Kingdom, at the rate of one thousand a
day. The sight affected me even to tears. It was like a vision of the
British Empire crumbling to pieces, and the materials taken to build a
new and hostile dominion.
I should draw too largely upon your patience, were I to describe many
objects of interest and many scenes of beauty I witnessed in New York
and the neighbourhood. The Common Schools; the Croton Waterworks,
capable of yielding an adequate supply for a million-and-a-half of
people; Hoboken, with its sibyl's cave and elysian fields; the spot on
which General Hamilton fell in a duel; the Battery and Castle Garden--a
covered amphitheatre capable of accommodating 10,000 people; the Park,
and the City Hall with its white marble front; Trinity Church; and its
wealthy Corporation; Long Island, or Brooklyn, with its delightful
cemetery, &c., &c. Suffice it to say that New York has a population of
about 400,000; and that it has for that population, without an
Established Church, 215 places of worship. Brooklyn has also a
population of 60,000, and 30 places of worship.