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FROM THE LIBRARY OF ROBERT ELLIOTT SPEER
BX 5995 .C53 A3 1895 Clark, Thomas M. 1812-1903. Reminiscences
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THOMAS M. CLARK, D. D. , LL.D., BISHOP OF RHODE ISLAND.
REMINISCENCES
BY
THOMAS M. CLARK, D. D., LL. D,
BISHOP OF RHODE ISLAND
SECOND EDITION
COPYRIGHTED AND PUBLISHED BY THOMAS WHITTAKER, 2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE, IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK, MDCCCXCV
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JiibiiUr OF KtiKjUi, ISLAND.
REMINISCENCES
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BY
THOMAS M. CLARK, D. D., LL. D.
BISHOP OF RHODE ISLAND
SECOND EDITION
COPYRIGHTED AND PUBLISHED BY THOMAS WHITTAKER, 2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE, IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK, MDCCCXCV
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Early Days, i
II. College Life, . ii
III. Seminary Lifk, 20
IV. The Episcopal Church Sixty Years Ago, . 32 V. Change in the Outward Aspect of the Church, 40
VI. Change of Tone in the Church, ... 53
VII. Life in Boston, 66
VIII. Removal to Philadelphia, .... 77
IX. Return to Boston, 93
X. Four Years in Connecticut, .... 108
XI. Removal to Rhode Island, .... 120
XIL* The Richmond General Convention, . . 124
XIII. The Late War, 138
XIV. The First Pan- Anglican Conference, . . 153 XV. My Experience Abroad, 160
XVI. A Few Notable Men, 173
XVII. Miscellanies, 190
XVIII. Bishop Brooks, 206
lU
REMINISCENCES.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY DAYS.
I HAVE been asked to note down some of the reminiscences of a life already protracted beyond the four score years allotted to man, but have shrunk from the task, because it is impossible to impart a living interest to the record without seeming at times to trespass upon the confidence of private friendship. There are few persons, of whom we care to know anything, who do not in the course of their lives say and do some harmless things which they might not care to publish to the v/orld, and yet these may be the very things that give tone and color to their character. I once asked the dis- tinguished biographer of one of our most eminent bishops why he had left out of the narrative the brightest and most salient features of the bishop's character, and he said that the introduction of these peculiar traits would not harmonize with the pur- pose for which the book was written. When Whit- field's body servant and confidential attendant, Cor- nelius Winter, published his sketch of the great preacher's daily life, and told, among other queer things, how the good man once threw the hot water
2 REMINISCENCES.
in his face because something happened to irritate him while he was shaving, many excellent people were very much shocked ; but, after all, the honest narrative only showed that Whitfield was human. Many a tempestuous Christian has been comforted and relieved by the vigorous outbreak of St. Paul when, amid the loving salutations he was sending to his distant brethren, the thought of Alexander the coppersmith occurred to his mind, indicating that, after all, the inspired apostle was not altogether beyond the reach of our ordinary human infirmities.
The sale of the biographies of certain distinguished divines whom I happened to know somewhat inti- mately would be much enlarged by the introduction of a few marginal notes here and there, relieving the somewhat over-rounded symmetry and grace of the saintly figure delineated in the memoir. No one would care to expose the weaknesses of those whom he loved and revered, and yet out of these very weaknesses they may have been made strong, and their grandest achievements may have come of the fiery passion which, if it had been allowed to range without restraint, might have desolated the soil in- stead of making it fruitful. Some men are counted good simply on the ground that they have never said or done any imprudent things, but they are not the kind of people whose lives are likely to attract at- tention. It is the man who has had battles to fight that the world knows not of who achieves the noblest triumphs on the great public field of strife, and his name is not one of those which are " writ in water."
I did not intend to make any allusion in these papers to the period of my childhood, until I heard a
EARLY DAYS. 3
distinguished clergyman of our Church, and one of the keenest critics in the land, say that when he read anything in the form of a biography he was always more interested in what the man did when he was a boy than in any other part of his career. This must be my apology for occupying a few pages with some reminiscences of that period of life which, after all, leaves the most vivid impression upon the memory. When we have reached maturity and settled down into the well-worn grooves of existence, there usu- ally comes a series of years very much alike in their routine, and unless the monotony is broken by some striking event there is little to distinguish one year from another. The decades between the ages of thirty and sixty may be the most eventful portions of our life, because it is then that our most impor- tant work is done, but in the retrospect this is the most vague and indistinct part of our existence. It is not strange that the first fifteen or twenty years should be the period to which our memories cling most tenaciously, for it was then that the plastic clay took form and the associations were enkindled which determined the quality of our being. It was then that nature first touched us with her brilliant coloring and wakened our souls with her varied har- monies. Are we ever moved in after life as we were when, in our childhood, we saw the bursting of the leaves and blossoms in spring, and caught the per- fume of the summer fruits and flowers, and looked with sadness upon the decaying glories of autumn, and our young hearts leaped at the sight and touch of the icy crystals of winter ? The poetry of nature was revealed to us before we knew what poetry
4 REMINISCENCES.
meant — in the sunset clouds, with all their coloring of gold and vermilion and ever-changing forms, and the diamond stars glistening in the dark and impene- trable concave ; in the sighing of the breeze as it sifted through the needles of the pine on a raw and gusty autumn night ; the patter of the rain on the roof ; the howling of the storm, the solemn roll of the thunder, and the distant moaning of the sea, as I used to hear it in my childhood, all through the night watches. What a strange romance there was about everything then ! I can hear again the cry of fire at midnight, and the clang of all the church bells, and the rattle of the engine through the streets, and the roaring of the flames, and the shouts of the firemen ; I can see the boys rushing down to Plum Island to see the wreck that had been driven on shore in the last tempest; I recall the feeling of awe and dread, relieved by a tinge of wild adventure, when we found ourselves lost in the woods ; and what is there in after life to compare with the sensations we had when we saw the first great military display, and heard for the first time the roll of the drums and pealing of trumpets and clang of cymbals, and all the softer notes that tem- pered the cataract of sound ? I have never felt the peculiar sensation which comes from contact with the rich treasures of song and stately words and eloquent periods that I was conscious of when, in my school days, I turned away from the dry pastures of "Enfield's Speaker" and "Scott's Lessons," and other books of the sort, which up to that period had been used as text-books in the schools, to revel in the luxurious fields of Mr. Pierpont's " American First
EARLY DAYS. 5
Class-Book," where we found the best material from the best authors who had ever written. Seventy years ago we had no such embarrassment of Hterary riches as is now furnished to the young, but we had good mental appetites, unimpaired by excess of stimulants and superabundance of intellectual luxuries.
My early days were passed in a small maritime town — the smallest territorially in Massachusetts — which had been built up entirely by foreign trade, which in former days had a flash of romance, as the ships that went out were expected to traverse a large portion of the globe before they returned, and bring back with them the spoils of many climes. The barriers which now obstruct the free inter- change of commodities, and have reduced the exports of the United States to a lower rate per capita than those of any other civiHzed nation, did not exist then, and trade was allowed for the most part to regulate itself. I well remember what a delight it was when one of my father's vessels arrived from Russia or Antwerp or the West Indies, or some other land, with its rich furs and strange wooden shoes and cocoanuts and yams and plantains, guava jclHes, limes, and tamarinds.
There was a famous ship in Newburyport called the Golconda, and I once wrote about her in a New York paper, expressing my wonder as to what had become of her at last ; for I had the same interest in old ships that most people have in the fate of a favorite horse who has outlived his usefulness. In a few days I received a letter from a gentleman in Boston, informing me that he knew what had
6 REMINISCENCES.
become of her, as he was an officer of the vessel when she made her last trip to San Francisco, and she was lying to-day under one of the paved streets of that city. Having become unfit for further serv- ice at sea, she had been converted into a warehouse at a time when anything that could be used for such purposes was in great demand, and as the city gradually encroached upon the water front the vessel became submerged in the soil, and is now buried there — an appropriate burial place for the Golcoyida. In my boyhood the town had become a very quiet place, and the days of its prosperity were ended. A devastating fire, the war of 1812, the embargo that followed, and the general tendency of foreign com- merce toward the great cities, combined to destroy the business which had created the town. There was no building going on, the grass grew in the streets, the people were living frugally upon what they had already acquired, and I grew up with the impression that the world was finished just before I was born, and that nothing more would ever be done to it. At that time there was no indi- cation of the wonders that were to be wrought in the nineteenth century. The old curfew bell rang every night at nine o'clock, as, it still continues to be rung, and all the people in the winter time care- fully covered up their fires against the morning, when, if the embers had gone out, no fire could be had until the flint and steel had been brought into operation ; for there were no self-igniting matches in those days, and, indeed, nothing else in the way of modern invention and improvement. We had nothing to burn but wood, no furnaces, no grates,
EARLY DAYS. 7
no gas, no water but that which we drew or pumped from the well, no ice chests and no ice in summer, no lights in the streets, no railways, no telegraphs, no telephones, no agricultural machinery, no anaes- thetics, no photographs, no street cars, no electric inventions, no ocean steamers, and very few steam- boats anywhere, and a hundred other inventions familiar to us now had never been dreamed of then. There was hardly a millionaire in the land ; our huge cities were then only large-sized towns ; the finest houses in my native town — and some of them were very fine — could be hired for a little more than a hun- dred dollars per annum. The highest salary paid to any clergyman in Newburyport was nine hundred dol- lars ; very few people ever thought of going thirty miles away from home ; and so things floated on, while the elements were brewing to produce the social cyclone which has been raging ever since.
The first public event that I remember was the reception given to President Monroe when he visited New England seventy-six years ago, and I stood in a line with all the other schoolboys to see him ride by on his great black horse. Six years later I was admitted to General Lafayette's bedroom in the morning, — my father being one of the committee to entertain him, — and I distinctly remember how kindly he drew me to his side and, taking my hand, talked for a while, closing with saying that if I lived to grow up I must love my country and be a patriot.
Sunday was not a very enlivening period for the children of those days, not, at least, for those who were brought up as I was, in the straitest fold of the Presbyterian Church — the only real Presbyterian
8 REMINISCENCES.
Church at that time in the State of Massachusetts. Sunday school at nine in the morning ; public serv- ice at half after ten ; a short sermon read aloud at home after dinner — and a very frugal meal it was ; second service at two or three in the afternoon, according to the season of the year ; liberty to stroll in the garden a little while after service, provided we did not touch a flower or pluck an apple from the tree, which would have been regarded as sinful in those days. Then came the recitation of the Assem- bly's Catechism, — known as " The Shorter Cate- chism,'* there being an amplification of the same in the Presbyterian Confession of Faith covering two hun- dred pages, which few persons would be competent to commit to memory, — with its subtle definitions of Adoptioft and Effectual Calling, and other techni- calities, which never enkindled in our minds any great amount of spiritual fervor, as we had no con- ception whatever as to what it all meant. Last came the singing of hymns, and a little good, plain, simple talk, that came direct from the heart and free from all the mystification of theology, and this went to our childish hearts and did us good, and made the tears start as we all stood up together to pray (no sound Presbyterian ever knelt in prayer at that period); and so the love of Jesus reached our souls through the hearts and not the intellect of those who led us to the cross. The provision for Sunday reading, outside of the Bible, was not very ample in those days. All that I can remember in the way of books which we were allowed to read were a volume of religious anecdotes, not over-cheerful ; Foxe's " Book of Martyrs," still less so with its terrific pic-
EARLY DAYS. 9
tures ; Hannah More's tracts and narratives ; " The Pilgrim's Progress," which we accepted as authentic, although it contained some anachronisms which puzzled us ; and the New England Primer, which we did not devour with much avidity. There was a degree of gloomy satisfaction in the picture of John Rogers at the stake, with his wife and numerous progeny surrounding him, as they all looked quite comfortable, but the little poem which followed, beginning with the words:
" In the burying ground I see Graves there shorter than I,"
illustrated by the view of a graveyard crowded to its utmost capacity with children's graves, did not serve to inspire us with any sentiment but horror and fear, and this was intensified by an awful dialogue between ''Youth, Death, and the Devil," which it was an outrage to put into a little child's mouth.
This was just at the dawn of Sunday schools, but as there were no parochial schools, the children of the various religious bodies in the town assembled in the large court house on Sunday mornings to re- ceive such instruction as might be vouchsafed them, and then at the close of the session they filed off in procession to their respective places of worship. I cannot honestly say that the exercises did me much good, or excited any feeling but that of extreme weariness. Our superintendent was an aged gentle- man who had in his earlier days run a distillery — a very good sort of man in a very dry way, but with- out the faintest comprehension of a child's nature, and, indeed, it was difficult to conceive of his ever
lO REMINISCENCES.
having been a child himself. My own teacher was a very exemplary and quiet maker of blocks and pumps, who, after we had recited out texts of Scrip- ture and the hymns assigned us, having nothing special to say, very prudently left us to ourselves for the remainder of the hour. The children of this generation have occasion to congratulate themselves upon the change that has come to them, with their Sunday-school libraries and periodicals, and proces- sions and banners and entertainments, and all of the other accessories intended to make the school both edifying and attractive.
CHAPTER II.
COLLEGE LIFE.
I WISH now to say something about the four col- lege years that followed the period of childhood. More than fifteen generations of students have be- gun and closed their college curriculum since I took up my abode there, and what has been the fate of my own classmates ? Very unlike, in many cases, what might have been anticipated. Some achieved distinction, some relapsed into obscurity, and not a few died before their sun had reached its meridian.
There was in my class a youth from the country — a quiet, modest boy, who never did or said any- thing very brilliant ; an excellent scholar, although he did not take the very first rank ; noted especially as a thorough mathematician ; exemplary in all his ways, and one who never had an enemy ; gifted with no special personal attraction, and yet finding a place in the hearts of all who knew him well, but not by any means the 07ie man in a class of more than eighty members whom we supposed was destined to outrank them all. This man was Noah Porter, for many years the honored president of Yale University, the American expounder of meta- physics and philosophy, the inspirer and director of thoughful minds, one of the most versatile and copious writers in the land, the list of his produc- tions forming a fair-sized pamphlet.
12 REMINISCENCES.
There was another man in the class who sur- passed Porter in what we regarded as the fire of genius — a hard man to look upon, but capable of wonderful scintillations of thought ; an ascetic in his habits, reveling in the delights of Attic song and Hellenic eloquence ; one whom we all thought was destined to make his voice ring through the ages to come ; but for want of any clearly defined object in life he floated about in the void for a while, gradually exchanging his old ascetic ways for a freer and more perilous style of living, and ended with identifying himself with the Charleston Mercury as one of its editors, dying prematurely long before his work was done. This man was John Milton Clapp, and I well remember how for a season his sharp, incisive words in the nullification days cut their way through the land, when suddenly they were heard no more.
Another young man comes before me, and yet he was rather an old man for a college student, — at least he seemed so to most of us, — a man of a ponderous build and by no means of a graceful mold, with an elephantine tread, and hands that would not seem to be fitted for very delicate work ; one who was not eminent as a scholar in any depart- ment, but most eminent for his holiness and devout- ness, and especially for his earnestness in trying to save the souls of his companions ; and this was the man who, having gone out as a missionary to China, at last established himself there as the great oculist of the empire, performing the most delicate opera- tions with an unsurpassed skill, and was afterward appointed United States Minister to China, return-
COLLEGE LIFE. 1 3
ing home in his advanced age to pass the sunset of his days in Washington, as a gentleman of fortune might be expected to do. The name of Peter Parker — Sir Peter we used to call him — will not soon be forgotten in the flowery land.
Some men found the niche which we supposed they were meant to fill, and others did not. The late Professor Lyman H. Atwater of Princeton Col- lege belonged to the former class. He was pre- ordained to fill just this position — an able man, well versed in metaphysics and theology, always on the safe side, never driven from his course by any side winds, never eloquent, but always sensible, never enthusiastic, and always earnest, a good-hearted man who never gushed and never allowed his feelings to take the reins. He went by the name of Jupiter Maximus in college ; his bulk of body may have suggested this, and also his somewhat lordly manner.
Some of my classmates became eminent in ways that we should not have anticipated. A youth of high accomplishments, a true gentleman and a most earnest Christian, with a poetical temperament that gave a peculiar charm to his writings, will live in posterity as the inventor of Langstroth's improved beehive, and as the best authority in all matters pertaining to bees.
Another man of a very different mold lived long enough to make himself famous in his own land and abroad as the Prince of Dudes, the patron of dancers and actresses, publishing a book in which he revealed himself to the world without reserve. I will not give his name, but those who remember
14 REMINISCENCES.
anything about Fanny Ellsler's career will readily recall it.
We have had among our number governors, judges, generals, members of Congress, but many of whom we expected great things died and left no record behind.
Good Bishop Kip, so long identified with the Church in California, was one of my classmates — a model of gentlemanliness and grace, and also a chevalier without reproach, but giving no premoni- tion in former days of the work he was to do in the world. A lady in New York informed me a while ago that she had in her possession an invitation to the Junior Class Yale ball in 1830, printed on satin paper in elegant copperplate, with the names of William Ingraham Kip and Thomas March Clark as managers. It should be remembered that this was sixty-four years ago, and there has been abundant room for change since that time.
It is a noticeable fact that on the average about one-third of the Yale graduates entered the ministry in one denomination or another sixty years ago, while at the present time only four or five out of a hundred become clergymen.
It would take a large amount of space to sketch, in the most cursory manner, the of^cers who pre- side over that institution to-day ; there are enough of them to make a respectable college by themselves. In my day there were in the academical depart- ment but six permanent teachers and four temporary tutors.
President Jeremiah Day, the compiler of a well- known algebra, was one of the best men that ever
COLLEGE LIFE. 1 5
lived — wise, prudent, cautious, and yet liable to be imposed upon by the students when his judgment gave way to his kindliness of feeling. He was al- ways ready to repair with promptness any wrong that might have been done, of which I have in mind a notable instance. An outrage was committed one night by some of the students, and the supposed culprits were solemnly expelled — always a very im- pressive sentence, as it was read out in chapel after evening prayers. One of the students thus expelled was a townsman and personal friend of mine, and I knew that he could have had nothing to do with the offense. Accordingly I waited at once upon the president and stated the case in detail. He listened with great attention, and then said : " I will call the faculty together to-morrow morning and you may appear before them and tell your story." I trembled a little at this prospect, but there was nothing else to do, and when I appeared before the formidable tribunal, in my verdant simplicity I sat down in a chair like the rest of them, when Professor Silliman told me to stand up, which of course I did with alacrity. I then laid the case before them as clearly as I could, and after having passed the ordeal of their questionings I retired. On that evening the sentence of expulsion was revoked.
President Day's case is a very encouraging one to young men who may suppose themselves to be afflicted with an incurable disease. In early life he returned to his native town to die there, as the con- dition of his lungs was such as to threaten him with speedy death. At the age of seventy he resigned the presidency of the college, which he had held for
l6 REMINISCENCES.
about thirty years, and when I once called to pay my respects to him in New Haven, twenty years later, I was informed by the servant that President Day was not at home, but had gone to the club. This was not an ordinary fashionable club, but an assemblage of emeritus men and retired veterans, who met together to talk over the past and keep their blood warm.
Professor Silliman was distinguished as one of our foremost chemists and geologists at a time when such men were scarce. He was an accomplished and able lecturer, and always carried himself with great dignity, which I remember on one occasion was severely tested. In the course of his lecture he happened to say something which offended a few of the students, who gave vent to their feelings by hissing him. This was altogether a new experience to him and to us all, and there followed a dead silence which seemed as if it might last forever. At length, almost in a v/hisper, the professor said : " Young gentlemen, is it possible?" and then quietly proceeded with his lecture. There was no more hissing in his presence after this. He was in his day a pioneer in certain departments, at a time when geology was not in very good repute with con- scientious people, and it required some courage for a man in his position to express himself freely. I remember, an evening when I returned home just after hearing his lectures and found there a vener- able but somewhat seedy orthodox divine, who was accustomed to frequent my father's house for the sake of a little extra bodily nourishment, which he greatly needed, and as I proceeded to detail with
COLLEGE LIFE. l7
boyish impetuosity the doctrines which Professor Silliman had been teaching us about the process of creation and the proper interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis, I shall never forget the horror with which they listened — the idea of such a thing as 2. process being abhorrent to their minds.
Of the others I must speak more briefly. Pro- fessor Kingsley held the department of ancient lan- guages, Hebrew included, which nobody studied, and, in fact, most of our instruction in Greek and Latin came from the tutors, if time consumed in recitations and nothing else can be called instruction.
Professor Olmstead led us through the flowery paths of mathematics and natural philosophy, of which I have no very distinct recollection, except that I was once shut up with him all the forenoon for the purpose of calculating an eclipse in his pres- ence, a problem which, I regret to say, remains un- solved, so far as I am concerned. He was a noble man and an edifying lecturer, but not very skillful in the conduct of his experiments, of which he was so conscious that he formed the habit of saying: " I will now proceed " to do so and so, " unless the experiment fails."
Professor Goodrich taught us rhetoric and Eng- lish literature. In preparing for our public perform- ances on the platform he took gt'eat pains to teach us how to make the elaborate old-fashioned bow, and it always struck me as somewhat incongruous to see the man who was more of a spiritual father to the student than a-ny other member of the faculty assuming the postures and movements of a professor of calisthenics.
1 8 REMINISCENCES.
Dr, Fitch was our chaplain, and preached to us every Sunday, out of his abundant treasures of theology, magnificent discourses which, in their majesty of diction, always reminded me of Milton's "Paradise Lost." He dealt but little in that class of subjects which were most likely to interest the young, and, indeed, this was not the custom of the times in any quarter, and the mahogany hue of his manuscripts showed that it was not their first appearance in public. He was too bashful to deal with the students in any private way, and I was greatly surprised, in meeting him on a journey, to find how affable he could be away from home. The only imputation ever brought against him was a rumor that he raised tobacco in his garden, but this was probably only as a horticultural experiment.
Peace to their ashes ! They were all good men and true, if they did not screw us as hard as the college boys are screwed now. The students of this generation may be obliged to study harder than we did, but they do not have to get up in the cold winter long before daylight, and go through the procees of attending prayers in a cold chapel, then pass an hour in the recitation room, and then go to a very frugal breakfast in common, and all by candle-light or lamp-light. We had no gas or elec- tric lights in those days.
Some privileges they have of which we were destitute. We had no periodical opportunities of having our heads ground into the earth and our faces mangled and our limbs broken and our lives thrown away in pursuance of the noble game of football. Great advance has been made in athletic
COLLEGE LIFE. 1 9
training, for which the youth of this generation have reason to be thankful, but it may be possible to carry this improvement to excess, and the culture of the body may sometimes encroach upon the culture of the mind. A professional trainer, when one of his pupils complained that his strength seemed to be falling off, said to him : '* You must have broken some of the rules. Have you been drinking any intoxicating liquor?" *' I have not." " Have you used tobacco in any form?" " I have not." " There is only one thing left ; you must have been studying." '* Well, I acknowledge that I have looked into my books occasionally." " This ac- counts for your debility. You must stop that if you want to succeed in my department." This of course is a caricature, for many of the athletes are also first-class scholars, and yet somehow that does not seem to be the most direct road to eminence in these days.
I began this paper without the slightest thought of saying anything that I have said, and may have •been impelled to roll along as I have done from an instinctive desire to keep away from debatable ground as long as I can ; for in the course of these reminiscences I may sometimes feel obliged " to walk tenderly." It is, however, a comfort to know that with the lapse of time party spirit loses much of its sensitiveness, and also to feel as the cautious divine did when, in preaching about Dives, he said that " he spoke the more freely of his character as he presumed there were no surviving relatives whose feelings would be likely to be wounded."
CHAPTER III.
SEMINARY LIFE.
No one can have failed to notice that scenes once familiar to us, which have become remote by the lapse of time, will in certain aspects appear to be almost as fresh and sharp-lined as they were long years ago, and then again the mist settles down upon them and they have all the vagueness of a dream. Sixty years ago I had my abode in the theological seminary at Princeton, and some- times, as I catch a glimpse of the old belfry in whirling along the railway from New York to Philadelphia, it all comes back so distinctly — the plain, unadorned chapel, the recitation rooms, the dining halls, the dignified professors, the throng of students, the long service on Sunday morning, the Calvinistic lectures, the marvelous exegesis of Scripture, the half-hatched essays of the young men, and the searching criticisms of the teachers — I seem to see and hear it all as if it were a thing of yester- day. Then comes a cloud, and, looking through that cloud of time, everything becomes indistinct and ghostly. All the good professors long ago took up their abode in some higher realm, most of my companions have closed their accounts here, and the few who survive are no longer young, but they are all old — waiting for their summons. I pre- sume that the buildings and surroundings remain
SEMINARY LIFE. 21
much as they were, and it is said that the same old doctrines continue to be taught. Princeton Seminary is just as sound as it ever was, still clamped to the rock of eternal, immutable, uncon- ditional decrees, in conformity with the declaration of the Confession of Faith : *' By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed ; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished." All this is done, as we are further informed, " out of His mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature as conditions or causes moving Him thereunto ; and all to the praise of His glorious grace."
I can say this in behalf of the Princeton teaching, that it was always consistent with itself, and set forth its doctrines without reserve or equivocation, shrinking from no logical conclusions on the ground that they seemed to conflict with the fundamental principles of ethics, or the attributes of love and mercy and impartial justice in the Creator, or with the freedom of the human will. We were taught that the doctrine of limited atonement is the foundation of the Christian creed ; that all the free- dom we possess is liberty to do that which upon the whole we prefer to do ; that our moral obligations are in no sense determined by our ability — in other
22 REMINISCENCES.
words, that we are bound to do that which we are incompetent to do ; that there is nothing in the nature of man to which the motives of the Gospel can effectually appeal until a supernatural change has been wrought by the direct action of God ; that we are not as individuals living in a state of proba- tion, as we have all had an actual probation in Adam ; that as we are lost by the imputation to us of Adam's sin, so we are saved by the setting to our account of Christ's righteousness, the moral qualities of the one personality being attributed to another; that the atonement consisted in the ac- ceptance of the sufferings of Christ in place of our own, and the transfer of the penalty incurred by us to him as our substitute ; and, finally, that all in whose behalf this penalty is paid must be saved, and no others.
This is, in the plainest language at my command, the substance of what we were taught, although it may be observed that as soon as this doctrine is ren- dered into plain, intelligible English the presenta- tion is regarded as a caricature — and no wonder !
The Princeton theologians were wise enough to see that this " scheme of doctrine " admits of no modifications or qualifications any more than the problems of Euclid admit of them, and that the removal of any one stone from the arch would send everything tumbling down.
I recall among the text-books recommended for us to study were the writings of Witsius, Char- nock, Turretin, Owen, Fuller, Howe, and the like — rather dry food, however nutritious it may have been.
I do not wish to speak disrespectfully of a the-
SEMINARY LIFE. 23
ology under whose banner so many grand and saintly men have been trained for their work, but how much grander their work might have been if they had carried about with them some better con- ception of the love of God, — the God and Father of all men, — and some truer apprehension of the saving work of Christ, who can tell ? It was because their better nature asserted itself, in spite of the dogmas which they supposed themselves to believe, that they were able to attain the spiritual height which they reached ; for, after all, they could not really believe that God is actuated in all His designs by a mere regard for His own glory, and is calling into being every hour, or allowing to come into being, countless millions for no other end but to furnish fuel for everlasting burnings.
I cannot say that we were ever much enlightened as to any other system of theology, and I well remember the consternation produced on the occa- sion when I ventured to say a word in mild defense of a science which at that time was not in very good repute. It was well understood that we were there not to investigate, but to be taught. The trouble is, with such a system and such a style of instruction, that in after years, when one is ripe enough to detect the weak points and fallacies of the system, there is great danger of swinging off into utter and absolute unbelief. Tell a man, as Dean Burgon does, that if he can lay his finger on a line in the Old or the New Testament that is not inspired of God, he may as well abandon his belief in revelation altogether, and you are likely to do him more harm than any infidel could do.
24 REMINISCENCES.
And now I come to a more agreeable part of my reminiscences. Dr. Archibald Alexander was, at the time of which I write, the leading man of Prince- ton. He was the father of many Alexanders, all distinguished in their way, but he continued to be Alexander the Great, the noblest Grecian of them all, to the end. He was something more than a cast-iron dogmatist; he had a living soul in him, a quick and keen mental apprehension, a rich imagi- nation, and a caustic gift which he was slow to exer- cise, but which did its work thoroughly when it was exercised. It was a great luxury to those of us who did not happen to be the victims when the time came for him to sit in judgment upon the essays, which, in turn, we were all obliged to read in his presence. If there was a defective spot in the com- position, a disordered metaphor, or any attempt to spread the eagle unduly, the surgical knife was applied with a discrimination and a skill which we could not help admiring, even when we were the unhappy subjects under treatment.
On one occasion a young man read a production so full of absurdities and bombastic imagery that we all anticipated the richest treat when the time arrived for the good doctor to operate. While we were reading he usually sat with his spectacles on the top of his head, his eyes closed and hands folded, jand his chin resting on his breast ; and when the reading was over, after a short interval he would slowly raise himself and, adjusting his glasses, lei- surely open the campaign. This time it was a long while before he roused himself, and he seemed to have become deeply absorbed in thought, and we
SEMINARY LIFE. 2$
supposed that he must be getting his batteries in order, preparatory to the critical job before him. At last he rallied, and after fixing his eyes for a moment upon the complacent youth who had just taken his seat, he turned away with a bewildered sort of sigh, and said in his quick falsetto tone, and with a peculiar emphasis, " T/ie next " — as if this was a case altogether beyond him. We were of course disappointed, but not altogether so ; the scene was worth something.
I have preserved to this day copious notes of his Sunday discourses, and they never lose their charm. I have at times been tempted to make some per- sonal use of them — it seemed to be a pity to keep such golden treasures out of circulation ; but, in addition to the impropriety of stealing other men's thoughts, the contrast between the gold and the pinchbeck would have been certain to betray miC.
Dr. Samuel Miller was the pattern of an old- fashioned gentleman from the crov/n of his head to the sole of his foot ; with his venerable locks and courtly visage, his gold spectacles and gold-headed cane, his rich and spacious cloak, his scarlet mufiler, and his perfect costume, there seemed to be nothing wanting externally. It was an object lesson in good manners to see him enter the recitation room and lay aside his outer habiliments, and he took his seat with a dignity that would become a king. He published a famous book — famous in its day — on '* Clerical Habits and Manners," in which he told the clergy how to conduct themselves at home and abroad, in public and in private, with a minuteness of detail that reminds one of the more elaborate
26 REMINISCENCES.
directions of a high rituahstic service. I have not seen the work for fifty years, and therefore cannot enter into particulars. In some respects he was the antipodes of Dr. Alexander, who never cultivated the graces of manner to any great extent, and he was also unlike him in the construction of his mind. Dr. Alexander's work grew under his hand ; Dr. Miller's was constructed with, the greatest care. He once described to me, as I sat with him alone in his study, the process by which he prepared his ser- mons, and it was in this way, so far as I can recall his words : " After I have selected my text I write down the leading heads on separate sheets of paper, and then I introduce at proper distances the minor divisions under each head. Then I proceed to fill up one of these spaces, and when I have finished writing out one of the divisions, I usually take a short nap to refresh me, and so on to the end." I have in my possession a tolerably full synopsis of the doctor's sermons, and I think I can see where the naps came in.
Dr. Miller was a most devoted Christian and also a very High-Church Presbyterian. He was a strong advocate of three orders in the ministry — bishops, elders, and deacons ; the difference between him and Bishop Hobart being that he put the three orders one notch lower down than our bishop. He accepted without reserve the article in the Presby- terian Confession of Faith which, after saying that " the Lord Jesus hath appointed a government in the hand of church officers," enlarges upon it as follows: *' To these officers the keys of the kingdom of heaven are committed, by virtue whereof they have
SEMINARY LIFE. 2J
power respectively to retain and remit sins, to shut that kingdom against the impenitent, both by the Word and censures, and to open it unto penitent sinners by the ministry of the Gospel and by abso- lution from censures, as occasion shall require." There is not much tinge of Low-Churchism here. I recall an occasion when the good doctor found him- self in rather a tight place. He had been telling us about the Synod of Dort, and before closing said that he wished to direct our special attention to the fact that this Synod, in which all the prominent Reformed Churches were represented, after a most thorough and protracted consideration of the whole subject, before their adjournment had come to an absolutely unanimous verdict in favor of the Supralapsarian system of doctrine. A troublesome little man in my class rose in his place and asked if he might be permitted to put a question to the doctor. With the greatest courtesy, he replied, " Certainly. It always gives me great pleasure to have the young gentlemen show their interest in all matters brought to their attention." " Well, then," said the pestiferous youth, " was it so very remark- able that the Synod should be unanimous in taking the final vote when all the members who differed from the majority had either been expelled from the Council or left it in disgust?" Of course we all felt very bad for the doctor, but we could not see any way of helping him out.
With the veneration I have always cherished for the memory of Dr. Miller, I have hesitated as to the insertion of this incident, but history would be of little value if all the frailties of great and good men
28 REMINISCENCES.
were concealed, and I have recorded it as an illus- tration of the tendency which often manifests itself in high ecclesiastics, when the interests which they regard as sacred are concerned, to be somewhat eco- nomical of the truth. Nowhere is this tendency more conspicuous than in religious biographies, and sometimes it appears even in religious autobiogra- phies. In this respect the contrast is striking when we turn to the history of the Old and New Testa- ment saints, as recorded in the Bible.
Dr. Miller had a strong prejudice against the Episcopal Church, and when an edifice of this description was built near his own home, he was a little disturbed. At the same time he contributed toward its erection, and when he was asked what induced him to do it, he replied that he protested as a clergyman and subscribed the money as a citizen.
At the time of which I write Dr. Charles Hodge was so lame and feeble that we were obliged to go to his study for our lectures and recitations. He did not have the appearance of one destined to a long earthly career, and yet it is not many years since I was accustomed to see him day after day breasting the waves on the beach at Narragansett Pier, and seeming to enjoy the sport as much as any of the young men and maidens about him. I may also remark, in passing, that at the same period I had Dr. Hodge for an auditor during the summer season, as the Presbyterians, having no church of their own, were then worshiping with us, and of course I had to speak cautiously as long as he had me in his eye. I had not the vanity to suppose that I could teach him anything.
SEMINARY LIFE. 29
There was very little of the flavor of Calvinism in the man himself, for a more loving and tender- hearted being never existed, but whenever a princi- ple of importance was involved, he could be as true and hard as steel. Of course he must have believed, or believed that he believed, all the rigid dogmas that he taught, but how he could have done so is one of the mysteries. In the exegesis of Scripture he never flinched when he came in contact with a text that seemed to conflict with the doctrine of limited atonement, or any other dogma of the sort ; and I was very much impressed with his disposal of the words, "And He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world," which he told us must be interpreted, " Who died not merely for the elect Jews, but also for the elect among the Gentiles." The New Haven divinity school was never in much favor at Prince- ton, and when a student from that institution once came to Princeton to be enrolled there, it is said that the doctor questioned him somewhat carefully as to what he understood to be the Princeton view of the atonement, and the answer proving to be quite satisfactory, the doctor said : '* And now please to tell me wherein does the New Haven doctrine differ from our own ? " to which the young man innocently enough replied : " In New Haven they teach that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
We had still another teacher. Professor Addison Alexander, a son of the president, who did all that he could to make our Hebrew attractive — a man of
30 REMINISCENCES.
wonderful parts and great acquirements, but reserved to a fault and living a life of great retirement. His prayers at the opening of our Hebrew recitations were models of brevity, one of which impressed itself indelibly upon my mind : *' O Lord, pardon our sins, and save the Church from the disgrace of a ministry who are not able to read the Scriptures in the original." I presume that in his view this seemed to cover the whole ground. He died before the great work was done for which he seemed to be destined, and the world was much the loser.
The Episcopal church of which I have spoken was built during my time, and no one being found to play the organ at the consecration, I volunteered my services, and all that I have to say about it is, I was never asked to repeat the operation. The late Rev. Professor Hare, the father of Bishop Hare, was the first rector, and as there was no afternoon service in the seminary chapel, some of us formed the habit of attending the new church, where the simplicity of the service and the liberal fervor of the preacher combined to impress us very favorably. At this time I passed a Sunday in Philadelphia and went to St. Andrew's Church, of which Dr. Bedell was the rector, attracting great crowds by his eloquence and earnestness. I was deeply impressed by the whole scene, as all I had known before of the Episcopal Church was in a very small way, and I remember thinking on my way home that if I thought I could ever have any church like that I should be inclined to enter the Episcopal ministry. In less than ten years I became the rector of St. Andrew's Church.
There are some advantages and some disadvan-
SEMINARY LIFE. 3 1
tages in being educated under the auspices of another communion than that in which one's lot is finally cast. Those who are born in the Church are there by inheritance ; those who enter it from with- out are there by choice. One of our most positive ritualistic clergymen said to me a while ago that he was very thankful for having been bred as a Unita- rian, because it had opened to him the humanitarian side of man's nature. It may be of some service to have been brought up as a Presbyterian, provided the reaction is not too great when you break loose. There are all-important elements in that body in which in days past we have been deficient, although there is a great change for the better now — a per- sonal zeal and self-denying spirit, a sense of the solemn reality of spiritual things, a consciousness of the divine presence, an experimental piety — using the term in the sense of a religion resting upon per- sonal experience, of which the Episcopal Church in times gone by had no occasion to boast. It is a combination of elements that makes a wholesome atmosphere, and too strong an infusion of exciting oxygen or neutralizing nitrogen disturbs the equi- librium. It is the union of order and beauty with earnestness and zeal that makes the perfect Church.
CHAPTER IV.
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH SIXTY YEARS AGO.
The Episcopal Church in this country was a very small affair at the time of my ordination, in 1836, reporting less than 600 parishes and 763 clergy. The General Convention had just declined '' to enter upon a measure involving consequences so momen- tous " as the nomination of a bishop for China, and the Domestic missionary field remained for the most part a moral v/ilderness. Bishop Kemper had been appointed to break ground there, and I remember dining with him in Boston just before he went out ^' to exercise Episcopal functions in the States of Missouri and Indiana," and wondering that such a high-bred gentleman should be willing to exile him- self in the far-off regions of the West.
During the decade between the years 1830 and 1840 the Episcopal Church made such an advance as it had never known before. The number of clergy doubled during this period, and for the first time in its existence its influence began to be felt somewhat generally in the community. Several causes com- bined to excite an interest in the Episcopal Church, especially in New England, where the breaking up of the established ecclesiastical regime was more conspicuous than anywhere else. The rigid yoke of New England Puritanism had become intolerable, but in seeking relief from the iron bonds of Calvin-
32
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH SIXTY YEARS AGO. 33
ism a large portion of both ministers and people had cast aside some of tlie fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. There ensued a movement toward the Episcopal Church by those who wished to throw off the shackles of a harsh and complicated creed, and by others who, having sought for freedom in their own inherited domain, found themselves float- ing off into the wide sea of indifference and unbelief, and still were not prepared to deny entirely the divinity of the Being from whom the Christian Church takes its name. The breadth of this Church attracted the former, and its stability gave confidence to the latter.
The simple service of the old Puritan worship was becoming barren and wearisome, as the original fervor which inspired it died out, and the short prayer and the long prayer, with two or three of Watts' hymns, and perhaps a chapter from the Bible once on the Sunday, did not quite satisfy the aver- age worshiper. There was a growing desire on the part of many persons to participate in the forms of worship that had existed in the ages all along, strengthened by the feeling that it did not seem ex- pedient to depend entirely upon the intellectual abil- ity or the spiritual mood of the minister to formulate the devotions of the congregation. I supplied the pulpit of the Old South Church in Boston for a little time in 1835, and my entrance into the Episcopal Church was precipitated by consciousness of my unfitness to express in extemporaneous prayer the sentiments of an intelligent congregation whose Christian experience had in a great many cases been matured before I was born.
34 REMINISCENCES.
The organization and government of this Church attracted considerable attention, not so much because of its conformity to early usage and the analogies of Scripture, but because of its inherent fitness and conformity to the general order of things — the con- stitution of civil government and of all other socie- ties and corporations. The institution of new terms of communion in many religious bodies — Anti- masonic, Anti-slavery, Total Abstinence, and the like — induced a certain amount of emigration toward the Episcopal Church, while some of the ministers of various denominations looked thitherward as a field for greater independence and freedom.
In the earlier part of the century the Episcopal Church made slow progress, and its influence was not felt very seriously in society. The impression prevailed that it was an aristocratic fold, of limited extent, for the accommodation of respectable persons who wished to get to heaven by an easy road and without much disturbance from any source. It is related of the Rev. Dr. Gardiner, rector of Trinity Church, Boston, that when he was asked to contrib- ute toward the erection of an Episcopal church in a village some ten or fifteen miles away he declined, on the ground that this Church was designed for ladies and gentlemen, and they did not live in the country. When someone remarked to a Methodist bishop that the Episcopal Church was a very respect- able Church, he replied : " I know it is. The Lord deliver the Methodists from ever becoming respect- able." They have become respectable, notwith- standing this protest, and with the usual results. I have heard good old-fashioned ladies in my native
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH SIXTY YEARS AGO. 35
town complain of the intrusion of a few '' Dis- senters " into old St. Paul's, partly on the ground that their presence intercepted the view.
In those days the Episcopal Church stood very much aloft from all forms of organization outside of her own borders, and kept on the even tenor of her way, undisturbed by any matters pertaining to secular affairs. If " a good Churchman " of that period should come back to-day and hear some of our sociological discourses, and look in upon a few of our parish houses, with their reading rooms and amusement rooms and coffee rooms and gymnasiums and bowling alleys, he might think that he had got into a new world, which would not be far from the truth. The current style of preaching in our pulpits was not, as a general rule, very severe in its draft upon the intellect, or likely to enkindle any excessive amount of enthusiasm.
At the time of my admission to Orders the Rev. Dr. Bedell and the Rev. Dr. Hawks were perhaps the most widely known as " pulpit orators." It is very evident, however, from a perusal of Dr. Bedell's published sermons, that the charm of his manner and the sincerity and earnestness of his utterance must have conduced very much to the high reputa- tion he attained as a preacher. The holiness of his life gave special power to his words, and that he had a singular faculty in searching the hearts of men is illustrated by a little incident in his career. On the Monday after he had preached one of his most faithful sermons a gentleman of the congregation waited upon him to express his surprise that his good pastor should have selected him as the subject
36 REMINISCENCES.
of discourse on Sunday, when the doctor assured him that it was not a new sermon, and the thought of anyone in particular had not entered his mind. This of course was enough, and the aggrieved parishioner started for his home. On the way he met a friend, who stopped him on the sidewalk and observed that he was going to Dr. Bedell's house to remonstrate with him for his ill-bred personalities the day before. *' Did you, then, observe it ? " said the former. " No one could help observing it." " Well, then, this confirms my original impression, but I have just called upon Dr. Bedell, and he assured me that he did not have me in his mind at all." " I never supposed that he was talking about j/oUj and I was on my way to call him to account for having selected me as his target." It is not necessary to add that the second call was not made. Dr. Bedell had unconsciously brought down two sinners at one shot.
So far as I know. Dr. Hawks never printed any of his sermons, and we have no means of estimating his pulpit gifts except by tradition. I may have further occasion to speak of him as a platform orator, where he was unrivaled, but as a preacher he was greatly indebted to the musical instrument that he carried in his throat. To hear him preach was like listening to the harmonies of a grand organ, with its varied stops and solemn sub-bass and trem- ulous pathetic reeds. The rector of one of the Washington churches, where Daniel Webster was an attendant, told me that after Dr. Hawks had preached for him on a Sunday morning, Mr. Web- ster said that it was the greatest sermon he had
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH SIXTY YEARS AGO. 37
ever heard. The rector made no reply, but took occasion to borrow Dr. Hawks' sermon, and during the week took it round to Mr. Webster's house and told him that, as he was so much impressed by the discourse on Sunday, he thought he might possibly like to hear it again. Mr. Webster replied that he should be delighted to do so, but when the reading was over, he remarked, " That is not the sermon I heard at your church last Sunday." '' Here is the manuscript," was the conclusive rejoinder. The musical accompaniment was wanting, and that was the trouble.
We are all familiar with certain ordinary hymns which are simply glorified by the music. I do not think that *' The voice of free grace cries escape to the mountains," or " How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord," would ever be selected as models of poetical composition, and yet I was told, when we were preparing the old Hymnal, that it would be fatal to the Hymnal in Virginia if " The voice of free grace " was not there.
I would not be understood to say that Dr. Hawks was not a great preacher. I shall never forget the delight with which we listened to him in our college days, sixty or seventy years ago, when he was the assistant to good old Dr. Croswell in Trinity Church, New Haven. I would simply intimate that almost anything would be made impressive if it were spoken by Dr. Hawks.
Sixty years ago little had been written by Church- men in this country likely to attract very general attention or deeply impress thinking minds. Dr. Chapman's " Sermons to Presbyterians," Dr. Mines'
38 REMINISCENCES.
" Presbyterian Looking for the Church," Dr. John A. Clark's " Walk about Zion," and a few other books of a more general character were read some- what extensively within the borders of the Church, if not without the pale ; but nothing had' been pro- duced to arrest the notice of scholars and teachers of thought, like Professor Allen's '* Continuity of Chris- tian Thought," Professor Mulford's " Republic of God," Dr. Washburn's profound papers, and Phillips Brooks' *' Lectures on Preaching " and miscellaneous sermons. It was not regarded as incumbent upon a Church clergyman to concern himself with matters that pertained to the region of economics or soci- ology or civil reform, and such a man as Professor McCooke of Trinity College, who has sounded the depths of those great subjects, would have been regarded in former days as a most extraordinary phenomenon.
I shall have occasion, before I close, to show how the Episcopal Church, though it continues to rest on the same old foundations, and has retained its ministry, creeds, and services substantially undis- turbed, is not in many of its aspects the same Church that I knew when I first sought shelter within its borders. The same imperishable stones support the edifice, the same strong oaken frame- work retains its place, the general proportions of the building are the same ; but the building has taken upon itself a new tone of color, annexes of various sorts surround it, ornamental appendages have been added, the windows have been enlarged, the doors move more readily upon their hinges, the Church will hold more people than it did, it is more likely
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH SIXTY YEARS AGO. 39
to attract people, it seems to belong to our own age and our own land more than it once did, and, if I may be allowed to change the metaphor abruptly, it is no longer regarded as an exotic — it has become acclimated, and can live and flourish out of doors all through the season.
This is, upon the whole, a change for the better. The Church is moving, and that is a sign of life. It may not always move just as we would like to see it move, but this is better than immobility, which is another word for death. Novel doctrines and novel usages may somewhat disturb our peace, but if they are not in accord with the great irresistible tide of human progress, with the noblest and pro- foundest thought of the age, their influence will be temporary. There may be some elements of good even in these extremes, and after the turbid waters have been allowed to run for a while, the particles of gold will be deposited and the mud swept away.
CHAPTER V.
CHANGE IN THE OUTWARD ASPECT OF THE CHURCH.
The outward aspect of the Episcopal Church in the year of my ordination, 1836, was different from what it is now. There were very few church edifices of which we had reason to be proud, and it was unfortunate that the period when the Church began to enlarge its borders should have been so lamen- ably deficient in any true conception of ecclesias- tical architecture. We had inherited a few impress- ive specimens of the old Christopher Wren school, like St. Paul's, New York, and Christ Church, Phila- delphia, and there might be seen here and there a Gothic edifice of some respectable pretensions, like Christ Church, Hartford ; but the prevailing style of building was utterly destitute of beauty or any dis- tinctive religious character. I may select as an illustration St. Andrew's Church, Philadelphia, of which I should be sorry to say a disparaging word, with all the tender and hallowed associations con- nected with the structure, and yet it was more likely to be taken by strangers for a bank than a church when the doors happened to be open in the week- time, as, indeed, it sometimes was by persons who wished to get a note cashed. The church was modeled after the temple of Bacchus, with heads of Medusa, indefinitely multiplied, adorning the iron
40
OUTWARD ASPECT OF THE CHURCH. 41
fence in front. Two large bronzed globes flanked the chancel rail, representing the tanks in which wine was wont in ancient times to be kept, with a lofty pulpit in the center, fashioned like an Egyptian cenotaph, with outstretched gilded wings adorning the front — the pulpit being entered by a flight of stairs from the vestry room in the rear. A reading desk, large enough to accommodate a respectable number of clergymen, stood before it, with a recess in front holding a marble slab, which served for the administration of the Holy Communion. The organ was built in the shape of a harp, with gilded strings in front instead of pipes. All these interior decora- tions and furniture are to be seen no more, while the exterior of the church of necessity remains as it was, and it is certainly a more seemly structure than some of the neighboring churches, built at about the same period. Such a thing as a cross on the inside or outside of a church was not to be seen fifty years ago, and all the interior coloring and decorations with which we are now so familiar have come into use within a recent date.
If such " good Churchmen " as I knew in my early days should return to the earth, they would miss some things to which they had been accus- tomed, and see a great many things that would strike them with astonishment. No more *' three- deckers " in the chancel, no more black gowns and muslin bands and black silk gloves in the pulpit, no more Collects before the sermon, veiy few old- fashioned choirs up in the gallery, no obligatory singing of a Psalm in meter whenever a hymn is to be sung, no more exhortations after sermon, no
CHAPTER V.
CHANGE IN THE OUTWARD ASPECT OF THE CHURCH.
The outward aspect of the Episcopal Church in the year of my ordination, 1836, was different from what it is now. There were very few church edifices of which we had reason to be proud, and it was unfortunate that the period when the Church began to enlarge its borders should have been so lamen- ably deficient in any true conception of ecclesias- tical architecture. We had inherited a few impress- ive specimens of the old Christopher Wren school, like St. Paul's, New York, and Christ Church, Phila- delphia, and there might be seen here and there a Gothic edifice of some respectable pretensions, like Christ Church, Hartford ; but the prevailing style of building was utterly destitute of beauty or any dis- tinctive religious character. I may select as an illustration St. Andrew's Church, Philadelphia, of which I should be sorry to say a disparaging word, with all the tender and hallowed associations con- nected with the structure, and yet it was more likely to be taken by strangers for a bank than a church when the doors happened to be open in the week- time, as, indeed, it sometimes was by persons who wished to get a note cashed. The church was m.odeled after the temple of Bacchus, with heads of Medusa, indefinitely multiplied, adorning the iron
40
OUTWARD ASPECT OF THE CHURCH.
41
fence in front. Two large bronzed globes flanked the chancel rail, representing the tanks in which wine was wont in ancient times to be kept, with a lofty pulpit in the center, fashioned like an Egyptian cenotaph, with outstretched gilded wings adorning the front — the pulpit being entered by a flight of stairs from the vestry room in the rear. A reading desk, large enough to accommodate a respectable number of clergymen, stood before it, with a recess in front holding a marble slab, which served for the administration of the Holy Communion. The organ was built in the shape of a harp, with gilded strings in front instead of pipes. All these interior decora- tions and furniture are to be seen no more, while the exterior of the church of necessity remains as it was, and it is certainly a more seemly structure than some of the neighboring churches, built at about the same period. Such a thing as a cross on the inside or outside of a church was not to be seen fifty years ago, and all the interior coloring and decorations with which we are now so familiar have come into use within a recent date.
If such " good Churchmen " as I knew in my early days should return to the earth, they would miss some things to wliich they had been accus- tomed, and see a great many things that would strike them with astonishment. No more " three- deckers " in the chancel, no more black gowns and muslin bands and black silk gloves in the pulpit, no more Collects before the sermon, very few old- fashioned choirs up in the gallery, no obligatory singing of a Psalm in meter whenever a hymn is to be sung, no more exhortations after sermon, no
42 REMINISCENCES.
more depositing of the alms on the floor at the head of the aisle ; everything is now converted into a function, the oblations are literally oblated, lifted tip ^ and even the entrance and exit of the clergyman forms a part of the ceremonial. In many of our churches, in place of the simple old Anglican Holy Table, with the Creed, Lord's Prayer, and Ten Com- mandments inscribed on the wall, he would see a high stone altar with elaborate carvings and orna- mentations, with its retable and gilded cross and beautiful flowers and candles and reredos and balda- chino and triptych and pyx and cruse or corporas case and cruets and chalice veil and ciborium and superfrontal, and other novelties too numerous to mention. If opportunity offered, he might be told that the proper eucharistic vestments are the amice, alb, girdle, stole, maniple, tunic, dalmatic, and chasuble, and that all these things have a symbolical significance — the amice representing the linen rag wherewith the Jews blindfolded our Saviour, the alb and surplice emblematic of purity, the girdle em- blematic of the work of the Lord, — to perform which the ministers gird up their loins, — the stole repre- sents the yoke of Christ, and is therefore to be reverently kissed before it is put over the shoulders, and so on. If the same " good Churchman " should remain through the entire service, he might see and hear some other things that would astonish him, in the way of clerical dress and genuflections and bow- ing to the altar and changes of position and manipu- lations with the hands and fingers and crossings of the breast and various ablutions and intonations of the prayers.
OUTWARD ASPECT OF THE CHURCH. 43
No one can doubt that all this would startle an old-fashioned Churchman ; we have become accus- tomed to these changes gradually, and therefore they do not strike us so strangely. It is to be hoped that there will be some limit to these innovations.
We cannot help admitting that in many respects there has been great improvement in the outward aspect of our public services. The music is of a higher order and better rendered, our Hymnal is richer and more copious, there is more variety and flexibility in our worship and less of monotony and tediousness, both ministers and people are more reverent in their demeanor ; but it is deeply to be regretted that the improvement should be associated with practices that are foreign to the genius of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and sometimes even ludicrous and repulsive. It is difficult to conceive of St. Paul, or any of the original Apostles, indulg- ing in certain osculatory and other puerile demon- trations, which seem to have a charm for some of our wise and venerable brethren. It is to be hoped that, after a while, the reign of common sense will return, and the Church be no longer distracted by these follies.
With changes of custom there must of necessity come changes in diction. New words must be invented and new terms come into use. A great deal that we read in the newspapers to-day would be unintelligible to our ancestors. In some cases there is a special significance in the general introduction of new terms, as, for instance, in the popular substi- tution of the phrase '* celebration of the Holy Com- munion," instead of ** the administration," as we
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usually have it in the Book of Common Prayer. There can be no objection to this term, unless it is intended to signify that the administration and reception of the sacred elements is not an essential feature of the Sacrament, and that the priest may celebrate and receive alone, as the proxy or repre- sentative of the communicants. The same may be said of the use of the word altar, in place of the Table, or the Holy Table, as we read in the Office of the Prayer Book. As a figurative expression it is unobjectionable, but if it is meant to imply that there is a perpetual repetition of Christ's sacrifice by the ministration of an earthly priesthood, we have no right to say, as we do in the Prayer of Consecra- tion, ''All glory be to Thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that Thou, of Thy tender mercy, didst give Thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption ; who made there (by His one oblation of Himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world; and did institute, and in His holy Gospel command us to continue a perpetual memory of that. His precious death and sacrifice, until His coming again."
It would have startled a " Bishop Hobart Church- man " to have been told that the time would come before long when it would be regarded as irreverent to receive the Sacrament of the Stipper without having fasted for some hours before, and it would have more than startled a Churchman of that school to be told that the day was not very remote when a portion of our clergy would request their people to
OUTWARD ASPECT OF THE CHURCH. 45
go to them for private confession and absolution before coming to Confirmation or the Communion. An eminent and excellent Roman Catholic bishop once said to me that he regarded the Confessional, as it was practiced among us, as a very dangerous insti- tution, and that his own Church would never allow it under the conditions existing in the Episcopal Church. If private oral confession to the priest is to become established in our borders, it is very important that it should be brought under proper regulations and restrictions, both as to the proprie- ties of time and place and the fitness of the person who presumes to take into his hands the direction of other people's consciences.
The multiplication of bishops and dioceses has been going on at a rapid rate during the last few years, and this not merely by the opening of new fields, but also by the division and subdivision of dioceses, and the appointment of assistant or co- adjutor bishops. At the time when I entered the ministry there v/ere only four bishops in all New England and New York, where there are now eleven. Four years elapsed from the date of my consecra- tion before another bishop was elected, and of late it has not been uncommon to have five or six new bishops consecrated in a single year. Formerly it was assumed that there must be a diocese in exist- ence, or at least a certain amount of material for the formation of a diocese, before a bishop could be secured, but in these days in many cases we send out our bishops as pioneers to construct the diocese.
This multiplication of small dioceses has an im- portant bearing upon the general legislation of the
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Church, and in fact it enables a minority to deter- mine what that legislation shall be. Any one of eighteen dioceses, the aggregate statistics of which are outnumbered by the diocese of New York alone, has the power to nullify the vote of that large dio- cese in the General Convention. This anomalous state of things must be founded upon the presump- tion that the diocese is the norm of the Church, and this being so, for some unknown reason all the dio- ceses, great and small, must stand on the footing of perfect equality. The failure to rectify this one- sided legislation has been so signal as to discourage any further efforts in that direction. A franchise once conferred is not readily withdrawn, especially where the balance of power rests with those upon whom the privilege has been bestowed. Universal suffrage, having been established by law, is irrevo- cable, no matter what the consequence may be. Before the establishment of the Federal Constitution, under the original Federation, all the States were allowed an equal representation, and it required a radical change in the entire civil organization to rectify the mistake. It is easy to imagine what would be the political aspect of the country to-day ^ if Rhode Island and New York sent the same number of representatives to Washington.
It is to be lamented that the pastoral relation should of late have become so much more transitory and uncertain than it was in days gone by. In the town where I was brought up there were eight or nine ministers of various denominations, all of whom died in the place where they were first settled — only one of the number resigning his parish, and he went
OUTWARD ASPECT OF THE CHURCH. 47
off to become President of Dartmouth College, re- turning, however, after a little time — not to resume his ministry in his old church, but, singularly enough, to take charge of a congregation who seceded from the church where his pastorate began, on the ground of their dissatisfaction with his settlement. One of these ministers, when he was between sixty and seventy years of age, but still in his full bloom and vigor, surprised his people on one Sunday morning by the announcement that his term of service ended on that day, inasmuch as at the time of his settle- ment, instead of entering into an engagement for life, as was then the general custom, he had con- tracted to serve the parish for forty years, and this period terminated on that day ; adding that he had taken this step because of the fear that he might persist in preaching when he was no longer fit to do so. He continued, however, to teach a Bible-class for about a score of years longer, and when I called upon him, some time after he had passed his nine- tieth year, his mental faculties seemed to be clearer than those of some of his younger brethren.
The number of our clergy who live and die of old age in the same parish is now comparatively small. The frequent migrations from place to place seem in a great degree to grow out of the necessity of the times. The enormous multiplication of feeble parishes, which must struggle hard to give their ministers anything like a decent support, obliges many of our clergy to be constantly on the lookout for some stronger and more lucrative position. It is a serious question, whether, in our efforts to increase the number of our churches, we are not
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''watering the stock" in an injudicious degree — diffusing our strength, instead of concentrating it. The self-denial and suffering which many of our clergy are called to endure is very great, and this comes in a great measure from the planting of half a dozen little parishes, of various sorts, in towns and villages that are just about strong enough to sustain one respectable church. There is such a thing as "multiplying the nation " without ''increasing the joy." There is such a thing as drenching the Church with ministers, who v/ill always find it diffi- cult to earn their bread. A poor old presbyter, on his way from a little church which he had just resigned under pressure, sat down in my study some years ago and said with a long-drawn sigh, " It is a most mysterious providence that every parish I have had has died on my hands." It was not much of a mystery to anyone but himself.
The Brotherhoods, Mission Priests and Sister- hoods, which have found a place in our borders, are a striking innovation and were not dreamed of in former times. They have probably come to stay, for there is a class of people who can work to better advantage in a community, and somewhat apart from the ordinary course of things, than they could as individuals. A tinge of romance tends to re- lieve the monotony that is apt to attend any form of communal life, and the feeling of separateness from the common throng has its charms. The men and women who are willing to surrender the com- forts and delights of a private home, in order to devote themselves to works of charity, deserve to be honored, but there are certain features of this
OUTWARD ASPECT OF THE CHURCH. 49
system that ought to be seriously considered. One of these is the lawfulness and expediency of bind- ing one's self in early life to perpetual vows, which, after a time, may become a burden too grievous and heavy to be borne, and perhaps embarrass the man's actions where freedom is greatly to be desired, of which we have recently had a notable instance in the Church. It is a very grave question whether men and women have the moral right to put their destiny in the control of a superior, and in so doing abjure forever the exercise of their own freedom. Still further, the lawfulness of establishing clerical orders in the Church, claiming the right to act independently of the constituted authorities, strikes at the foundation of our whole system of govern- ment. We all know how this assumption has operated in former ages, and there is no reason why it should not work in the same way hereafter. Things have come to a strange pass when a bishop directs one of his presbyters to comply with the requisitions of a canon or a rubric, to have him say that he cannot tell whether he will do so or not until he has had time to hear from his superior.
Among the new agencies that have come into being for the quickening of spiritual life, we cannot fail to notice the introduction of what are known as Retreats and Quiet Days and special Parochial Missions, indicating, as we have reason to hope, the growth of a higher life and a more devout spirit in the Church. Men of great experience, wisdom, and piety are needed for the direction of such services, and for the public missions we want
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a style of preachers endowed with the quickening, penetrating, searching power which characterizes the Paulist Fathers in the Roman Catholic com- munion and the old-fashioned Protestant revivalists. There are men of this description now in the field, who are doing a noble work, not only in looking after the desolate and abandoned in their wretched homes, but also in preaching the Gospel with fiery tongues to the multitudes who are gathered into these Parochial Missions, and we may well bid them God-speed, even if some of their modes and accessories do not altogether suit our taste.
The establishment of guilds and innumerable societies and orders of various sorts is another not- able feature of the times. In a multitude of ways the Episcopal Church is reaching out its hands to gather in the neglected classes, the men by the way-side, the strollers in our streets, the non-church- goers. The parish house, which is now becoming in so many quarters an appendage to the parish church, with all its novel equipments, shows how the range of our work is extending. We are begin- ning to recognize the fact that we must save the bodies of men if we would hope to save their souls. We are teaching them lessons of cleanliness, taking them out of their rags and clothing them decently, trying to provide for all the departments of their being — the intellectual as well as the moral, the craving after amusement as well as the thirst for knowledge ; teaching them how to care for them- selves, and so become good workmen, good citizens, as well as good Christians. This is perhaps the most significant feature of our Church-work to-day,
OUTWARD ASPECT OF THE CHURCH. 5 1
and it is reconciling the community at large to the Episcopal Church as no argument could do. It is the introduction of the humanitarian element which is giving us our headway.
As a matter of course the duties of the clergy are very much increased by all this, and the traditionary quiet of the parson's study is fast becoming a myth. I can remember when the parish minister was sup- posed to have discharged his out-of-door duties if he made a yearly call upon his parishioners, with a few extra visits to the sick and afflicted, read the service and preached twice on the Sunday, opened his church for Morning Prayer on the Saints' Days, if he were a High Churchman ; or delivered a weekly lecture and held a prayer meeting, if he were a Low Churchman ; and perhaps served as a visitor in the public schools. Men of an active tempera- ment might find something else to do, but this was the ordinary routine, and we had no Guilds and Women's Auxiliaries and Girls' Friendly Societies and White Cross Societies and St. Andrew's Brotherhoods and Parish Houses and Relief Houses and Temperance Orders and Missionary Conferences and Ecclesiastical Coffee-houses and Boys' Clubs, and perhaps a dozen other concerns to look after. The array of notices read in many of our churches on Sundays would have sounded as strange in my early days to the men of that generation as it would to the ears of an advanced Puritan, if he should hear repeated on a Sunday morning in the old South Church, Boston, the same notice that was occasion- ally read there in early times, when the clerk rose in his place on the Lord's Day to announce the fact
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that a certain number of swine were missing, with a minute description of their build, and a statement of the reward offered for their recovery.
There are some who think that we are pushing this extra work to an extreme, and that it would be well to give our clergy a little more time for study and preparation for the pulpit, and the good mothers in Israel a little more time for the discharge of their domestic duties. This may be, and still all this extraordinary liveliness is only the effervescence of a fresh zeal that has come into the Church, for which, of course, we ought to be grateful. After a while things will settle down to a more moderate temperature.
CHAPTER VI.
CHANGE OF TONE IN THE CHURCH.
I NOW propose to speak of some of the more vital changes that have taken place in our com- munion during the last half century. There are a few great foundation truths which cannot be dis- placed without destroying the fabric of the Church. They are what the Church stands for, — that which makes it a Church, — and if they are removed, the structure may continue to exist as a school of ethical culture, as a self-organized club, or as a humanitarian society, but not as the Church of Christ.
The fundamental doctrine of the Church is embodied in the Apostles' and the Nicene creeds, and in our tests of orthodoxy we have no right to go beyond these symbols and that which is neces- sarily involved in them. The baptismal ofifice assumes that they contain '' all the articles of the Christian Faith " which are essential. These formularies have not been in any way impaired, or their validity seriously questioned within our bor- ders, since the establishment of the Church in America. Individual clergymen and laymen may have denied them, but there has been no tendency in the direction of unbelief. Wise men may have gone deeper into the analysis of dogma, tested its authority more rigorously, dug deeper down in
53
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examining the foundations of truth, and attained a truer and more reasonable conception of God. They find in the "realms of science and philosophy wonderful confirmations of the essential truths of revelation, and the supernatural is no longer in con- flict with the profoundest thought of the age. It is no longer necessary to harmonize science and religion — they give each other mutual support. The one is the complement of the other, and neither is conceivable alone. The spiritual finds its terms of expression in the material, and the material is the outgrowth of the spiritual. Professor Fiske, the distinguished defender of evolution, well says, " Atheism is the denial of anything psychical out- side of human consciousness," and atheism has received its. death blow. "If it takes mind to con- strue the world, how can the negative of mind suffice to constitute it?" Not many years ago Frances Power Cobbe said, " It is a singular fact that whenever we find out how a thing is done our first conclusion is that God did not do it." I hardly think she would repeat this to-day.
But while the foundations of our belief have not been seriously disturbed, it is impossible to deny that there has been during the last fifty years a marked change in the style of preaching. Some familiar topics have dropped out of sight and others come to the front. Certain things, which once looked to us very large, have been dwarfed by the distance of time, and others, as we have come nearer to them, appear much larger than they once did. It is a change in the proportions of doctrine, or rather in its perspective.
CHANGE OF TONE IN THE CHURCH. 55
The style of preaching which satisfied our grand- fathers, and did them good, does not altogether meet our wants. It was earnest, impressive, search- ing the conscience to its depths, and yet it seems to have been somewhat thin and inadequate in the expression of truth, dealing too much in a conven- tional phraseology ; not unfrequently inconclusive in argument and lacking in comprehensiveness and breadth ; appealing to one department of our nature and to one class of motives, and those not always of the highest order.
There was another kind of preaching, which dealt prominently with the moralities and proprieties of life, always insisting that ^' virtue must be encour- aged and vice discountenanced," warning the hearers with great fervency and frequent reiteration against *' Rome on the one hand and Geneva on the other," and very earnest in denouncing the heated atmos- phere of enthusiasm.
I do not mean to question the fact that there was, in the time of which I speak, a fair amount of intelli- gent, solid, profitable preaching; but if I had space enough to reproduce a few specimens from certain ancient sermons that were thought worth publishing, I think the reader would say that I have not over- stated the case. It has been said that when a doc- trine ceases to be habitually preached, it indicates that the doctrine is dead. This may not always be true, but any general change in the tone of preach- ing is a token of some corresponding change in the Church at large. The pulpit represents the popular sentiment, as it also to some extent controls it.
It is worthy of notice that the theological disputes
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of one age generally cease to be of much interest to the next, or, at any rate, they assume a new form. I can recall the time when the doctrine of baptismal regeneration was a very prominent subject of con- troversy, and incidentally it was the occasion of a somewhat limited secession from our communion, but since the House of Bishops unanimously declared that, in their opinion, it did not involve any moral change, we have heard very little about it. It is no longer worth while for us to waste our strength in the defense of forms of prayer, as the tendency in almost every quarter is toward a liturgi- cal worship, and where that tendency is to stop nobody can tell. Some years ago a distinguished doctor of music in the Congregational Church said to me that, when the time came for a ritual in their ranks, they would have an advantage in not being restricted as to the use of Latin in their services. A prominent Ritualist of our communion once re- marked, in my presence, that we need not be afraid of their going to Rome, for they would not be will- ing, so far as ceremonial went, to stop there ; so it may be that our outside friends will in process of time, go far ahead of us in their forms and ceremonies.
Not long ago we had two well-defined parties in the Church, and there were few who did not hold allegiance to one or the other of those parties. They are now as parties well-nigh extinct, and I have lived long enough to see the whole process of extinction. It was very gradual, almost impercepti- ble, but it was inevitable, for the simple reason that we had lost our interest in the points at issue. The
CHANGE OF TONE IN THE CHURCH. 57
great line of distinction was supposed to be the doc- trine of justification, and the technical statement of ''justification by faith alone " was undoubtedly- made most prominent by what was known as the Evangelical party, but no High Churchman ever claimed that he was entitled to salvation on the ground of his own personal goodness — he must have been a very conceited creature if he did — and no Low Churchman would be likely to say that he expected to be saved without possessing some ele- ments of personal goodness. The Low Churchman of the present century was very unlike the Erastian Gallios of a former age, who were called by the same name, and at the time of my entering the ministry the growth of the Church was very much in the Evangelical direction, and it looked as if this party might soon attain a decided ascendency. The re- strictions which it had drawn around itself, both in its range of work and its codes of doctrine, its want of sympathy with the tide of thought that was be- ginning to flow, and the tendency to exclusiveness which is liable to possess all parties, political and secular as well as religious, operated to arrest its growth.
All great truths, in order to be effective, must adapt themselves to the age upon which they are brought to bear, and in some way recognize its pre- vailing modes of thought, its tendencies and necessi- ties. Christianity is always the same and is always changing. Some people seem to regard the Church mainly as a place of deposit for the preservation of truth — a cistern constructed to hold a certain amount of water, and if we can manage to keep the
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level at the right gauge we should be content. They ought to remember that the Church which Christ established was meant to be a living stream, for the renewal and refreshment of the world — never at rest, and gathering volume and strength from all the affluents of science and art and culture.
There will always be differences of opinion in the Church, as long as men continue to think. One of our leading theological schools was recently de- nounced because, instead of being told by the pro- fessors authoritatively what they ought to believe, the students, after having been shown all sides of the doctrine and having the argument in its favor presented in the strongest possible light, were left to the exercise of their own individual judgment. It hardly needs to be said that a faith which is re- ceived on prescription indicates nothing, except it be implicit confidence in the doctor who gives the prescription.
There is a dividing line in all enlightened Christian bodies, a right and a left in every Church that has any life in it, whether it be Protestant or Roman, Non-conformist or Anglican. At the basis of this division stands the ground of authority — in other words, the question whether the final arbiter of doctrine is the witness of our spirit to the spirit of God, in accordance with Christ's declaration that if we will do His will we shall know of the doctrine, whether it be true or not, or the assumption that it rests primarily, if not exclusively, upon the accuracy of a book or the infallibility of a man. The author- ity of the Bishop of Rome in matters of faith is not as yet recognized in our communion, while the
CHANGE OF TONE IN THE CHURCH. 59
Bible continues to be received as the fountain of moral and spiritual truth, the record of the mind and will of God, as it always will be. But still the ques- tion remains, whether we are to accept the doctrine on the ground that it is found in the Bible, or whether the Bible is to be accepted because the doctrine is found there. Of course our private judg- ment comes in somewhere, and we must accept the truth, either because zue find it or because it finds us : appeals to all that is purest and noblest in our nature, provides for our direst necessities, and lifts us heavenward. This is the great issue to-day in every quarter, and it is a fundamental issue — some- thing that is worth fighting for.
At first it may startle some of our readers when we say that there has been a change of view during the last generation in regard to the purpose for which Christ established His kingdom on earth. We still believe that it is our great commission ^' to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified," to do all that we can to bring sinners to the knowledge of themselves, to convict them of sin and make them loathe and abhor their sin, and then lead them to the Cross for pardon and salvation and cleansing ; but we begin to see that really '' to preach Christ " involves some- thing more than the plucking of a sinner here and there out of the jaws of hell. We are more and more impressed with the thought that there are multitudes of human beings all around us, who can never be reached by the Gospel so long as their conditions of existence remain as they are. Their bodies must be looked after, as well as their souls. They need a literal baptism of water, as well as a
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baptism of the Holy Ghost. They must be clothed and fed and brought out of the dreary holes in which they burrow, into the sunlight, where they can breathe the pure air that God made for them to breathe ; they must be taught to respect themselves, in order to become respectable, and made to feel that there is something worth living for, and that God had a purpose in their creation and cares for them and loves them and follows them with His eye, in spite of all that may appear to the contrary.
And so, as I have said before, we have extended the range of our work and are now adjusting the mechanism of the Church in order to meet the emergency. We are beginning to recognize the fact that the Gospel must be brought to bear directly upon society, as well as the individual — its habits and institutions, its modes of doing business, its politics, its amusements, and everything else that pertains to the moral side of our nature.
I have this moment taken up the Year-book of St. George's Church, New York, and nothing could more strikingly illustrate the change of which I am speaking. The contents of this book would have been a puzzle to the members of old St. George's in Beekman Street, and I am afraid that good Dr. Milnor would have shaken his head somewhat ominously if it had fallen under his inspection. I am sure that he would not, if he had lived to see how the change came about, and what has been the result. These are some of the " Ecclesiastical Insti- tutions " carried on under the auspices of our Epis- copal Church : '' Gymnasium, Athletic Club, Tennis Club, Baseball, Cricket, Bicycle Section, Brother-
CHANGE OF TONE IN THE CHURCH. 6l
hood of St. Andrew, Breakfast Battalion, Literary and Dramatic Clubs, Chinese Sunday-school, Dea- conesses' House, Free Circulating Library, Girls' Friendly Society, Industrial Trade School for Boys, Kitchen Garden, King's Daughters, Church Parochial Club, Girls' Missionary Guild, Employment Society, Mothers' Meetings, Relief Department, Sea-side Work, Penny Provident Fund, Tee-To-Tum and Community House, Women's Baths," and so on, in- cluding many other matters more distinctively churchly and religious.
We believe that in recognizing these things as pertaining to the kingdom of God, we are not only following the example of Christ and obeying His precepts, but we are breaking down the old distinc- tion between the secular and the religious — not by making our religion secular, but by trying to bring all things into conformity with the mind of God. We cannot believe that He is interested only in our Sunday work, our church-going and prayers and sacraments, and has no concern with anything else that pertains to the welfare of the creatures whom He has made.
With all this we are getting to have a broader view of what is meant by the term salvation, believ- ing that it includes the idea of salvation in this world as well as in the next. It is impossible to estimate the evil that has followed the teaching which led men to suppose that they might go on sinning all their lives, and then by some magical process, on the verge of their mortal existence, be- come suddenly transformed and made fit for the abode of the blessed. I was brought up with the
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idea that my destiny had been determined by the will of God from all eternity, and accordingly, in my boyhood, when I was tempted to do something that was wrong but very attractive, I would say to my- self, " I am preordained to be converted, or I am not. If I am to be converted, everything that I have ever done will be forgiven, and if not, this particular transgression will make no great differ- ence." It will be a great gain when young people, and men and women also, can be made to appre- hend the fact that destiny must be according to character, and that, if they continue in sin, the law of retribution is as inevitable as the law of gravi- tation.
I was once called to visit a venerable Congrega- tional minister, who, after having led a long life of usefulness and singular sanctity, had in his old age fallen into the delusion that he was not after all one of the elect, and therefore must be destined to ever- lasting torment. There was a mournful picturesque- ness in his appearance, lying there in bed with his white locks resting on the pillow and his sad saintly face, on which were written the marks of sorrow and despair. I encouraged him to tell me everything, all which I heard without a word of comment, know- ing that it would be useless to reason with him, and unwise to express much sympathy with his sorrow. At last, after he had said, with the tears rolling down his cheeks, " And now the end is near, and there is nothing before me but the prospect of being shut up in hell forever," I replied in a somewhat in- different tone, " And how do you propose to occupy yourself after you get there ? " He answered that
CHANGE OF TONE IN THE CHURCH. 63
he had not thought about that. I then went on and quietly asked him, *' If you could find a few gentle- men down there in sympathy with you, and could get off with them into some out-of-the-way corner and sing a few of the good old hymns and talk about the love and mercy of Jesus, and have a kind of old-fashioned prayer meeting, would not that be a relief?" His face brightened as he replied with great earnestness, *' Nothing could give me more happiness than that anywhere ! " " Well, then," I said, '' if that is so, I don't think you need be con- cerned. If you should present yourself at the gate of hell and they knew who you were, they wouldn't let you in; and if you should get in by accident and the devil should find you getting up prayer meet- ings on his premises, he wouldn't let you stay there very long." The good man burst into a laugh and said, "Surely, it must be so." ''Of course it is," I replied. ''You couldn't get into hell, because you are not fit to go there, and you wouldn't know what to do with yourself if you got in." The cloud lifted, and the good soul was at peace. How long it lasted I do not know, but he was comforted for the time. Of course, his brain was affected, and " there is no medicine for a mind diseased."
It is thought by many that the change of tone in the religious life of the age indicates a general decay of spirituality and a growing indifference to the fundamental truths of the Gospel. If this is so, we are in a very bad way, and it is certainly difficult to account for the wonderful increase in our mis- sionary work and greatly enlarged contributions for the extension of the Church of Christ into so many
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dark quarters where its influence has never been felt before ; for the advance in our religious literature, and the increasing hold that the Church has upon the community ; and no one with his eyes open can help seeing that the interest in religious things was never more extended and real than it is now.
No doubt there is a good deal of loose thinking, but that is better than no thinking at all. The man who is groping around in a half-blind way to find the road is more likely to get there than the man who sits still and does not move in any direction. There is nothing more to be dreaded than indiffer- ence. When was it seen before in the history of the land that Wall Street in New York and State Street in Boston were deserted for an hour at noon- day, to allow the merchants and bankers and all sorts of men to go and listen for a while where they could hear something about God and their souls ?
I have lived through a great many crises, political and ecclesiastical. I have seen the Church " shaken to its center " more than once, but somehow it rights itself and so goes on its way. There is a great deal of sound common sense still left in the Church. The Church is not going over to Rome to be wedged there, neither is she destined to float off into the shoreless sea of heresy and unbelief. Our clergy and laity are for the most part moving on in the quiet discharge of their duties, undisturbed by any pessimistic predictions of general decay and ruin. They do not beHeve that the Church is going to destruction because this man wears a colored stole and intones his prayers, or because another
CHANGE OF TONE IN THE CHURCH. 65
believes that there is some discrimination to be used in the interpretation of Scripture. It does not fol- low that either section of the Church is absolutely sounds or either absolutely unsound. Things are a little mixed in this world. If the Church is the Church of God, it will be saved from ruin ; and if it is not, the sooner it goes to pieces the better.
CHAPTER VII.
LIFE IN BOSTON.
I HAVE just received a copy of the Journal of the Massachusetts Diocesan Convention for 1894, a volume of 382 pages, and I find reported there 225 clergy, 31,036 communicants, and contributions for rehgious purposes, irrespective of parish expendi- tures, amounting to $150,525. In the first Conven- tion that I attended there were only 31 clergy- men in attendance, 191 3 communicants reported, and contributions amounting to $8724.
It is fifty-nine years since I took my seat in that body, but the whole scene stands before me very distinctly. I recall the quasi Gothic edifice, just consecrated, and in which I began the exercises of my ministry ; Bishop Griswold, who retired at the close of the opening service, as he was not expected to attend the meetings of all the State conventions, for this was not a diocesan council, but only a gathering of one of the bodies grouped in the Con- vention of the Eastern Diocese, of which I shall have a word more to say; the quiet, sensible, old- fashioned High-Church sermon preached by the Rev. Samuel B. Shaw, who came back in his old age to die in Rhode Island, his native State — a most excellent man, who did not appear to need as much religion to keep him straight as most others, and
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who died at the age of eighty-six, mourning over the fact that he could not hve to the year 1900, because, as he told me with much feeling, '' If I could only do that, I should be able to say that I had lived in three centuries," he having been born in 1799. A short time before his death I saw one of his sermons lying on the table in the vestry-room of a church where he had officiated the Sunday before, and my eye falling upon the text, '' The days of our age are threescore years and ten," — he had omitted the remainder of the passage, perhaps from the feeling that it did not apply to him per- sonally,— I had the curiosity to look at the fly-leaf in order to see how old the sermon was, and found that it was first preached in 1823. I asked him soon afterward if he had the same emotions, after an interval of more than sixty years, that he had when it was first preached ; but he said that he had no distinct recollection of his state of mind the first time he delivered the discourse.
The first Bishop of Massachusetts died in 1803, and his successor lived but a little more than three months after his consecration and never performed any Episcopal duty. In 1811 the Rev. Dr. Griswold was elected Bishop of the Eastern Diocese, which at the time of its formation comprised all the New England States except Connecticut. It was a some- what anomalous condition of things — the annual address of the bishop was delivered at the meeting of the Diocesan Convention, while the State Con- ventions were at liberty to elect their own presiding officers and conduct their affairs without the pres- ence of a bishop. For twenty-four years no provi-
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sion whatever was made for the support of the bishop, when the moderate sum of five hundred dollars was levied upon the States represented in Convention, for the purpose, as stated, of providing for the supply of the bishop's church whenever he might be absent on diocesan duty. This money the bishop is said to have appropriated to the support of a missionary in Maine.
After Bishop Griswold ceased to be supported by a parish as its rector, he never received more than a thousand dollars a year from the Eastern Diocese, and it is not easy to see how he could manage to live as comfortably as he did for a long time upon such a salary. In his address to the Convention in 1839 ^^^ states that when the Eastern Diocese was formed, in 1811, there were only 15 clergymen in the whole jurisdiction — not a single church-edifice in Vermont, but 4 churches in Rhode Island, in Massachusetts but 13, in New Hampshire 5, and 2 in Maine. During the first eighteen years of his Episcopate he admitted 148 to the order of deacons, and III to the order of priests, traveled 70,000 miles, and confirmed 9853 persons. For many years he continued to serve the church in Rhode Island of which he had been the rector, without anyone to assist him ; at the same time presiding over a theo- logical school in his own house, to which young men came for their education, and where the good Dr. Shaw, of whom I have just spoken, roomed with the Rev. Dr. Tyng (neither of them were doctors then), and they are said to have lived together in the greatest harmony, partly perhaps because they were so entirely unlike in their temper
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and disposition, the one being very combustible and the other incombustible.
It must have been a toilsome life for the good bishop, in addition to all his work at home, to journey periodically over nearly all New England at a time when the facilities for travel were so poor and the roads so abominable, but he went through it all quietly and without complaint, always on time — unless the coach broke down — shirking no duty, jogging about silently with his pocket Homer in his hand, always ready to read but never over- ready to talk, and usually making it his first inquiry, when he arrived at his place of destination, " how soon he would be able to leave" — not because he wished to slight his work, but from the fear that his conversational resources might not hold out. It was my privilege to be an inmate of his family for some time after my ordination, and I had the oppor- tunity of knowing him as you know another by liv- ing with him. After breakfast, as we sat for an hour by the parlor fire, he would sometimes unbur- den himself with considerable freedom, and I wish that I had kept a record of his curt, pithy sayings, many of which were worth remembering. Humble and modest as he was, he had a very becoming sense of what was due to his dignity and office. At a time when one or two rather high-flying clergy- men annoyed and irritated him, he said to me, '' I have observed that the men who magnify my office most persistently in public are apt to give me the most trouble in private."
A prominent rector in Boston, having called to consult him about some parish matters, asked him
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incidentally if he did not think it might be well to get Bishop Hobart's opinion on the subject; a remark which the good man treasured up, as he was wont to do in such cases, until the time came for a settlement. After a while the same clergyman came to confer with him on some other matter, when the bishop quietly suggested that he had bet- ter consult Bishop Hobart.
There was a young deacon in the diocese, an ignorant and conceited person, who got into the ministry by one of those side-holes through which too many are allowed to crawl, and on the occasion of the bishop's visiting the town where the young man lived, he called upon him to pay his respects. It happened that there were several gentlemen of distinction who had called for the same purpose, and for an hour or two the young deacon monopo- lized the conversation, dilating upon his own affairs and airing all his grievances, until at last the bishop's patience gave way, and with a quick, sub- dued sharpness, which no one could appreciate who never heard him speak, he turned to him and said : '' Mr. C, you talk like a fool." This did not at all restrain him, but he went on as before, and then added : " And now, after all this, my bishop has called me a fool." " I didn't call you a fool," re- plied the bishop. *' I said that you talked like one."
At a little clerical dinner at the bishop's house, where of course there was abundance of talk, although as usual the bishop himself was very silent. Dr. Tyng turned to him and said : " Bishop, why don't you talk more ? " The defect of silence could not often be charged against the doctor. '' I
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talked a great deal when I was young," was the reply, '' and said a great many foolish things, but I have never been sorry for anything that I had not said.
After his delivery of the sermon before the General Convention he was told that it suited every- body. " If everj/hody liked it, there must have been something wrong about it," was his reply. I remem- ber that the discourse treated of the somewhat familiar doctrine of "justification by faith." At that period this was the watchword of a party, but as there was really no special difference of opinion about it in the Church, the bishop's reasonable presentation of the matter was of course acceptable to all.
The black silk gowns that we always used to wear in the pulpit were fastened or looped up under- neath, above the elbow, and as I was once helping him on with my gov/n I said to him pleasantly, " I hope that when you get excited in your sermon and begin to thrash about in the pulpit" — the bishop was never known to have made a gesture in his life — " the sleeves will not tumble down," and he answered, with a faint smile, " I don't preach with my arms."
As an illustration of the sensitiveness of the period in regard to any changes in the chancel arrange- ments, I must be allowed to give the following extract from the bishop's address in 1841: "It is pleasing to see the improvement which is generally being made in the construction of our churches. St. Stephen's, in Providence, is a beautiful, and, for the most part, a convenient church. But I was pained
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in noticing the uncouth and inconvenient arrange- ment of the chancel." I may here remark that the innovation consisted in the substitution of a lectern in place of a reading-desk, and the use of the Holy Table for the reading of the prayers — an arrange- ment adopted, I presume, for want of room. The good bishop then proceeds : " I trust that none in this convention need being reminded of the absurd- ity of going back to the dark ages of Christianity for the models of our churches, or for the manner of our worshiping in them, or of adopting any of the fooleries of ignorance and superstition. God re- quires us to act as rational beings, and not as idola- trous heathen. All the services should be performed in a place and manner the most commodious to the minister and people. Whether he preaches, or prays, or administers the ordinances of Christ, he should be in the view of each and all of the congregation present ; and in prayer it is quite as fitting that he should face them as that they should face him. To turn from them to the communion table implies the supposition that God is particularly present there, and sanctions the abominable doctrine of transubstan- tiation." This was the old St. Stephen's Church; if the bishop could look in of a Sunday morning upon the new St. Stephen's of 1894, he might open his eyes a little wider than he did in 1841.
With a feeble voice and a very quiet manner, it was wonderful that he could make his sermons so impressive, but the substance was there, the thing that men needed — '' the truth as it is in Jesus." The last sermon that I heard him preach was from the text, " Gather up the fragments which remain,
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that nothing be lost," and it will never be obliter- ated from my memory. On an afternoon not long after this someone rushed into my house and said that Bishop Griswold had just died on Bishop East- burn's door-step. I lived close by, and in five min- utes I was looking upon his prostrate form lying on the floor, wrapped in his dark blue cloak, noble in death, placid and peaceful as if he were an angel asleep ; and when the shades of night came on I took his body to his home, and with my own hands arranged him for the bed from which he was to rise no more.
If there ever was a good man, a true man, an honest disciple of Christ, Bishop Griswold was that man. He had accomplishments, and he may have had weaknesses, of which the world knew little, but his goodness was always conspicuous to all who had an eye to discern it. He was not likely to shine on festive occasions, and was not much tempted in that direction. When he was requested by the diocese to take up his abode in Boston, he told me that he hesitated a little, from the fear that his health might be impaired by too frequently dining out; ^'but," he added, '' I have never suffered from that cause, as I have never been invited out to dine but once, and that was by one of our own clergymen." I have dwelt the longer upon the character of this excel- lent man, as he was the only bishop whom I knew in the earlier part of my ministry. I was confirmed, admitted to the diaconate, ordained priest, and mar- ried by him, and it was by his nomination that I was called to my first parish — Grace Church, in the city of Boston.
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There were but three other Episcopal churches in Boston proper when Grace Church was built, and their influence was not much felt by the community at large. Unitarianism was at that time in the height of its prosperity. The historical Old South Church was the only one of the parishes founded by the early settlers which had remained true to the old faith, and such men as Channing, Gannett, Frothing- ham, Young, Pierpont, Putnam, Walker, the Wares, and the Peabodys represented the highest culture and the strongest social influence. The Episcopal communion was regarded as a respectable scion of the old Anglican stock, which, under the adminis- tration of the Colonial Governors, forced itself upon the town and took arbitrary possession of some of their meeting-houses for the English services. King's Chapel had also gone over to what was called the Arminian faith, although it still retained all the outward emblems of the original edifice — as indeed it does to this day, even to the wooden latch on the pulpit-door and the Creed over the altar, continuing also to use a disembowelled Book of Common Prayer, which, at the first glance, might be supposed to be the same liturgy that was used in the beginning.
There were but three of our clergy having paro- chial charge in Boston at the time of my settlement there. The Rev. William Croswell was the rector of Christ Church at the north end, which is now the oldest church standing in the city, while the region surrounding it has become for the most part the abode of Jews, Germans, Irish, Portuguese, Spaniards, and Italians, and the old glory has departed. Dr.
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Croswell was a very accomplished and attractive man, simple and quiet in his habits, a sort of George Herbert in the style of his religion, but very fixed and firm when he saw fit to be so ; the writer of a few exquisite poems, and one of the prominent leaders in the new movement from Oxford, whose first waves were just beginning to strike our Ameri- can shores. He was not intended to play the part of a combatant, but when the trumpet sounded he was found in his ecclesiastical saddle, with his armor on. He fell suddenly at his post in the chancel, just as he would have wished to do, and was borne away insensible, to be seen no more.
Dr. Wainwright was the rector of Trinity Church, afterward made provisional bishop of New York, an office that was very congenial to him, and the duties of which he discharged with great fidelity and zeal. In less than two years after his consecra- tion he was removed by death, unable to endure any longer the experiences and exposure of his new mode of life.
Dr. John S. Stone was the rector of St. PauFs Church, one of the strongest leaders of the evan- gelical school, a profound thinker, clothing his thoughts in singularly forcible words and adorning his discourse with beautiful illustrations and elo- quent appeals. He was an absent-minded man, as men of his style are apt to be, and, like Isaac New- ton, was Hkely to forget whether he had eaten his dinner or not. A very near friend of his, much given to facetious things, once dropped in upon him just after dinner-time, expressing his regret at hav- ing been so late in arriving, when the simple-hearted
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doctor, with some embarrassment, intimated in the most delicate way that he had entirely forgotten inviting him to dinner on that day ; adding that he was just then keeping bachelor's hall, and did not really know whether there was anything in the house to make a dinner of or not. " Never mind about that," said his friend, " there is a shop close by, and we can extemporize a little dinner easily enough." This much relieved his heart, and a very respectable repast was soon provided. After it was all over, the doctor was quietly informed by his guest that he had not been invited at all. He was too kind-hearted to take offense.
It seems to me very strange that this little band should have comprised the whole Episcopal clerical force in Boston, which to-day abounds with priests and deacons of all shades and degrees.
CHAPTER VIII.
REMOVAL TO PHILADELPHIA.
In the year 1843 I found myself in Philadelphia, often spoken of in those days as the "Paradise of Ministers," and not entirely without reason. The clergy were an influential element of society, and it was the custom of the people to go to church regu- larly, morning and afternoon ; they looked after their rector carefully, and kept him well supplied with the comforts and sometimes with the luxuries of life, occasionally stocking his cellar with live terrapin — which it would be ruinous to do in these days — fill- ing the house on Christmas Eve with the best speci- mens of their domestic cooking, and testing his powers of digestion by perpetual tea parties, which, during the first part of my sojourn in that city, filled up nearly every vacant evening in the week. The good people also kept a strict watch over their pas- tor's behavior and habits, of which I had a striking illustration soon after I was settled in St. Andrew's Church. I went one afternoon very innocently to a concert of music, when, to my surprise, the Rev. Dr. Bethune, a distinguished minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, crossed the hall, and taking me by the hand, thanked me very heartily for my ap- pearance there. I asked him what he meant, and he replied that he was glad to see me because it kept him in countenance; "for, do you not know
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that you are here at the risk of your reputation as a Christian minister?" In connection with this I may remark that in the Life of Dr. Bedell, the first rector of St. Andrew's, it is stated that he was very fond of music, and especially of sacred oratorios, which he was in the habit of attending until he found that it gave offense to his parishioners, "when," as his biographer says, "he wisely abstained from going any more."
During the early part of the century the Episcopal Church in Philadelphia had large accessions from the Quaker fold, as was evident from the Friendly aspect of the congregations, the plain bonnets and drab colors being very conspicuous in some of our churches. The intelligence and social standing of the Friends gave new substance and strength to our communion, and it did not require a long time to convert the peaceful and orderly Quaker into a thorough and consistent Churchman.
The party lines in our borders were at that time very clearly defined, as was always apparent in a contested election or the discussion of a controverted topic; and the delicacy of balance in the two parties was more than once illustrated by the election of a new bishop turning upon a single vote. The personal and social relations of the clergy and laity were not seriously disturbed by this difference of sentiment, neither were the outward and visible tokens of dis- tinction very numerous or striking. No one, how- ever, could expect to be called to an Evangelical church if he bowed in the Creed, and no Low Church rector was regarded as faithful to his trust unless he cultivated the informal prayer meeting.
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The chapel of St. Andrew was a large building, and it was well filled on Saturday evenings, when the prayer meeting held its high function, always beginning, from the days of Dr. Bedell onward, with the hymn
Far from my thoughts, vain world, begone,
followed by the minister's reading a portion of Scripture and offering an extempore prayer, the remainder of the time being occupied by the sing- ing of hymns and prayers offered by a few elderly men of high repute for piety, who rarely, if ever, violated the laws of propriety and good taste, although there might be some degree of sameness in their petitions. Occasionally a younger person, more inflamed by zeal, would take occasion to lay the supposed short-comings of the rector in word and doctrine before the Lord, and implore that he might be directed from above to improve his ways, but this was a very rare occurrence. I was once tossed about in prayer on a sea of extraordinary metaphors by a recent convert from the Quakers, whose good mother told me that she wished her son would reserve some of his religion for home con- sumption, or words to this effect. A crisis did occur at a certain time when I was put in some peril, and that was occasioned by the introduction of the responsive reading of a portion of the Psalter, which resulted in my receiving a paper, signed by a large number of excellent ladies, protesting against the innovation. It was a great relief when our meetings were brightened by the presence of distinguished clergymen from abroad, among whom I recall most distinctly and pleasantly the late Bishop Johns and
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the Rev. Dr. Sparrow. At that period the Sunday- could hardly be regarded as a day of rest, with the usual order of duties allotted to the day — Sunday- school at nine o'clock, Morning Service and sermon at ten and a half, second session of the Sunday- school at two, afternoon service at three or four, and very possibly another public service at night. This is what Robertson called "The Religious Non-observ- ance of the Sabbath." The sermons written and preached in Boston were not in all respects adapted to the spiritual atmosphere of Philadelphia. Some time after I was settled in St. Andrew's, an intelli- gent woman said to me, "Why do you consume so much of your time in trying to prove things? We have no doubts." What the people wanted was to have the truths of the Gospel set before them in a clear, intelligible light, and then pressed home upon the conscience as strongly and earnestly as possible. Sermons on controverted points, ecclesiastical or polemical, they cared little about. Some of the most successful and useful preachers of the period were far from being scholarly men, or endowed with any pre-eminent intellectual gifts, but they replen- ished the kingdom of God and brought many to Christ. I
I have some hesitation in venturing to speak of my clerical contemporaries in Philadelphia. They have all departed this life but one, the Rev. Dr. Spear, who still lives, although his work is done. They were good men and able men in their several ways — some of them very good and able.
The Rev. Dr. Morton was the last to leave us, continuing to the end in the parish which he had
REMOVAL TO PHILADELPHIA. 8 1
served so faithfully for a long period of years, with- out ever having said or done anything to give offense ; a most courteous gentleman and irreproach- able Christian, with a mind attuned to poetry and music, and who might have attained eminence as a painter if he had given himself to artistic pursuits. His smile and his voice were enough to win one's heart, and yet, behind all this, there ran a vein of humor that might have made mischief, if it had not been under such perfect control. I recall an article from his pen in one of our Church papers, written many years ago, purporting to describe, after the fashion of the day, the visitation of a bishop, his re- ception at the station, the sumptuous entertainment provided for him, the sermon on Sunday — the open- ing portion being read by the Rev. Mr. A. — the Lessons by the Rev. Dr. B., distinguished for his admirable elocution — the Prayers and Litany by the Rev. Mr. C. — the Ante-Communion office by the rector, who also announced the Hymns with his usual distinctness; and the sermon preached by the bishop, able and eloquent as he always is, moving many to tears. Then followed a marvelous descrip- tion of the church edifice in which the service was held, with its brilliant windows, well-cushioned pews, chancel decorations, which in those days were not conspicuous, and so on at some length. This, however, was a gift rarely exercised by Dr. Morton ; his real work was always serious and stately.
The Rev. Dr. Richard Newton comes next to mind, of a different type of churchmanship — an earnest, godly, rousing preacher, with a tinge of Calvinism still lingering about him — almost to the end, impatient
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of what he considered vital error, but personally kind and charitable to all. He was one of the few men who know how to preach to children ; he never talked to them about "nascent institutions," and "jubilant occasions," and "drawing inferences," but he used the language that was familiar to them, and, as might be expected, he was in demand everywhere when they wanted to have a rousing time for the children. His stock of anecdotes and illustrations was absolutely inexhaustible, and he could find "ser- mons in stones," as everybody knows who ever heard his discourse on the stones mentioned in Scripture. He left behind him two sons in the ministry, both of them marked men, although in somewhat different ways, who can be said to have the courage of their own convictions, and not merely "the courage of other men's convictions."
The Rev. Mr. Odenheimer, afterward the Bishop of New Jersey, was just coming upon the scene, and very early began to indicate the place which he was destined to take in the Church. He belonged to the advanced guard of the ecclesiastical school, as it then stood, although he never went to any vicious extremes, and never lost the spiritual fervor which his Presbyterian training gave him. He was as kind and amiable as a man could be; indefatigable in the discharge of his duties, and never seeming to need any rest. I have had a special interest in Bishop Odenheimer, partly perhaps because I have so often been mistaken for him, and on one occasion found it difficult to convince a stranger that I was not the Bishop of New Jersey ; he insisting upon it that I must be, saying with rather an angry emphasis that
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he knew Bishop Odenheimer well enough to identify him.
The Rev. Dr. Duchachet was a prominent man in his day, his Gallic exuberance testifying to the French blood that ran in his veins. I heard the bishop of the diocese say that he would show all the symptoms of inebriety after drinking an ordinary cup of tea. He was an active, brilliant, attractive man, quick in retort and with a special gift in the "art of putting things." I once told him that I had, under the same cover with the sermon that I preached before the Pennsylvania Convention a while before, the printed copy of a charge recently delivered in a country town at a Presbyterian ordination, which was a transcript of my own discourse, with a few phrases altered here and there to suit the occasion. He asked me if I would let him have the two docu- ments for publication side by side in the Ba?iner of the Cross, a paper with which he was connected, and I declined, saying that I would never expose a man to reproach who had discrimination enough to make use of my thoughts in public. He hesi- tated a moment and then said very seriously : "Well, this only confirms my first impression, that you must both have stolen from the same source."
Dr. Tyng was altogether the most conspicuous man in our ranks, and the one whom I had best known, as we were townsmen, and I could not remember the time when his name was not a household word. When he came to preach in Newburyport the whole town was stirred, and for once in the year old St. Paul's Church was crowded. His preaching was in a different strain from that to which the people were
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accustomed, and not altogether acceptable to some; his own father, a Churchman of the old school, not being over-fond of his son's doctrine. Of Dr.Tyng's general characteristics and career it would be super- fluous to speak; we have all recognized him as one of the most prominent features in the history of the Church — a man who has brought multitudes into the fold of Christ and wielded an influence on the plat- form which has never been surpassed. He had his peculiarities, as everybody knows, and when he touched an explosive bubble with his lighted candle there was not much left. He was not over-patient in dealing with sentimental sorrows, but if a person went to him with a real burden and actually desirous to find the way of truth, no one could be more ten- der and considerate and sympathetic. His life has been twice written — once by himself, after he had apparently forgotten some things in his early career, and again by his friends with much care and dis- crimination. There were features in his life which some staid persons might think it derogatory to his memory to perpetuate, but not by any who would like to know just what a great man was, and not what we think he ought to have been. I shall try not to violate the confidence of friendship or infringe upon the proprieties of social life, although this may be questioned when I say that I shall begin with a little sketch of Dr. Tyng as the supposed conductor of a circus.
Between fifty and sixty years ago, when we were passing our summer vacation together in Newbury- port, the doctor proposed that we should make up a party on horseback, and ride over in the afternoon
REMOVAL TO PHILADELPHIA. 85
to Amesbury, a little town a few miles off, which is noted as the residence of the poet Whittier. With our two families united we made up quite a respect- able display, the female portion of the group being in the majority, and so we started for Amesbury. It happened to be the day preceding the Fourth of July, and as they were expecting a circus to visit the place at that time, the boys, who were on the lookout, when they saw this strange cavalcade approaching — women on horseback being an un- wonted sight in that region — cried out at the top of their voices, "The circus is coming!" As soon as these sounds were heard the doctor said : "We must carry out this thing for a while, and I will ride in front, while you form in line and obey my orders." This we did with great success, our captain conduct- ing himself with more than ordinary gravity, and before the performance was over we found ourselves in the midst of a dense crowd, and word was given to halt. Dr. Tyng then improved the occasion, after informing them that we were not the real cir- cus, by stating that there was to be a service in St. James' Church on the next Saturday evening, and they must all be there and bring everybody else with them ; and now he said, "Give us three round cheers and we will be off!" and so amid the cheer- ing we galloped away. I presume that the beneficial results of the circus performance appeared on Satur- day night.
On another occasion there was a great gathering in the Academy of Music in New York, for the benefit of the children of the various city societies, who were assembled on the stage in crowds, and I
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was one of the speakers appointed to address the meeting. The little life that I had in me at the beginning was pretty thoroughly extinguished by the weary speeches to which we were obliged to listen, and feeling that I had no capacity left to rise above their level — and I was to close the meeting — I whispered to the chairman that the whole thing was killed unless he could induce Dr. Tyng, who was on the platform, to say something. He replied that he had been entreating him to do so, but he utterly refused. I then told him that I thought I could bring the doctor to his feet, and accordingly, after saying a few stupid words to the fashionable audience, I turned to the children and told them that as this was their affair, I thought something should be said to them. "And now," I began, after the accredited form, "I am going to tell you a story. In the town where I was born and brought up there was once a remarkable little boy, who always wanted to be doing something, and when the vacation came he was very miserable because he had to be idle. So one morning he went to his aunt, who had charge of him, and said : 'Aunt Becca, I don't know what to do with myself!' and she replied: 'Stephen, take a case-knife and go out and scrape one of the old apple trees in the orchard.' Well, not to make the story too long, before he got through — and he was a week about it — he had scraped all the trees in the garden and entirely wore out the case-knife. This little boy grew up to be a man, and kept on scraping things all the time, try- ing to make them look brighter and better, and he is still alive, and he lives in this city, not far from
REMOVAL TO PHILADELPHIA. 8/
this place, and he is in this house to-night, and he is on this platform, and his name is Dr. Tyng, and I am sure he will not let you go home to-night without saying something to you." This brought him to his feet, and he began, as I supposed he would, by settling accounts with me, telling them what I used to do when I was a tadpole minister, as he expressed it, drawing somewhat copiously upon his imagination for his facts, and then going on in his wonderful way to make them all laugh and all cry; in short, he "saved the meeting."
The reply that he once made to a mild-mannered parishioner, who took the liberty of saying to him that his people would be very much gratified if he would restrain his temper a little, is probably familiar to the reader: "My dear sir, I have restrained more temper in half an hour than you ever did in your whole life." After a somewhat lively scene, when he had begun to cool off, I observed that "I could account for these occasional ebullitions of feeling, because I knew how much quicksilver there was in his veins, for which his ancestors were responsible," when he broke in, "Don't call it quicksilver, call it sin — that is what it is ; but no one knows how I struggle and pray and fight to keep my temper in subjection."
The election of Professor Alonzo Potter to the Episcopate of Pennsylvania occurred in 1845, ^"^ was a notable event. After the accredited candi- dates of the two great parties were defeated, of which number I happened to be one — although, in the event of my election, I think that I should have had sense enough to decline — the name of Dr. Potter
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was presented to the Convention, and to my great delight he was elected, but only by a majority of one on the part of the clergy — a nomination which at once was unanimously confirmed by the laity. It was a great event in the history of the diocese and the Church. A man of noble presence, he at once im- pressed you as one born to rule — as a leader of men, z. jure divino leader. He had had large and varied experience of men, and had accustomed himself to look closely at whatever subject might be submitted to his inspection, and to look at it on all sides. He regarded the Church as having other functions besides the preservation of dogma and the perpetua- tion of ecclesiastical institutions; he regarded it as God's instrument for the elevation and redemption of mankind, and directly concerned with everything that pertains to the moral elevation of the human race. For this reason he took great interest in the establishment of educational and humanitarian institutions, and was very active in what was known as the Memorial Movement, which had for its object the removal of some of the fetters which in days past shackled the Church and impaired its useful- ness. He longed to see the standard of theological training lifted to a higher plane, and such text- books introduced and such modes of teaching as are demanded by the necessities of the age in which we live. His whole mental tone was in striking con- trast to that of his great contemporary, the late Car- dinal Newman, who would have the universe revolve around one or two centers of thought, and cared for nothing that could not be brought within that orbit. Bishop Potter never stultified his reason in order to
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bring within the range of his belief silly stories of winking Madonnas, and miraculous liquefaction of blood, and all the other foolish things which, by some strange twist of his mind, Dr. Newman man^ aged to accept. Bishop Potter addressed himself to the real wants of humanity, its actual spiritual and moral necessities. He found a place for Christian truth in the domain of philosophy and science, and feared no contest with either. He accepted as divine the revelations of God, wherever they were to be found and however they might be disclosed, and so he has left his mark upon the Church and upon the world in a way that can never be obliterated. I shall never forget the debt I owe him, when, in a period of such perplexity and doubt that the found- ations seemed to be sinking under my feet, he came to my rescue and showed me v/here the rock was to be found that could never be shaken. His life was too short. We need such men sorely in these times. One of the most important sessions of the General Convention that we have ever had met in St. Andrew's Church during the period of my rector- ship. It was distinguished by the presence of a great many eminent laymen, who took a very active part in its proceedings — such men as Edward A. Newton of Massachusetts, Samuel H. Huntington of Connecticut, Julian C. Verplank and David B. Ogden of New York, Horace Binney of Pennsyl- vania, Judge Chambers of Maryland, Isaac B. Parker of New Jersey, William H. Macfarland of Virginia, Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire, John M. Ber- rien of Georgia, E. G. Memminger of South Caro- lina, and many others of high rank and influence.
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The opening sermon was preached by Bishop Ives of North Carolina, who soon after entered the Roman Church; it was not a discourse that made any special impression, and the bishop did not appear to be in very good humor that morning, for when I conveyed to him some slight message from the presiding bishop, he replied in a rude way that he understood his business and did not need advice from any quarter.
The House of Bishops, twenty-five in number, were comfortably accommodated in the vestry-room of St. Andrew's Church, which at the present time would furnish very inadequate quarters for the crowd.
It was about the time of Dr. Newman's abandon- ment of the English communion that the Conven- tion met, and the Church was agitated to its center by the hopes and fears incident to the Oxford revival, as it is now sometimes called. The discus- sions of the Convention with all the resolutions pro and con debated, amended, modified, and all at last laid on the shelf, ended with the conclusion that the only thing to be done was to do nothing, and trust to the conservative and recuperative power of the Church to right itself and keep its head above water. The ReVo Dr. Forbes, who had been suspected of unsoundness to the Protestant faith, made an elab- orate speech in his defense, and shortly after gave in his adhesion to the Church of Rome, from which, after a fair experiment, he returned to his old home, * 'discharged — ciircdr
The contest waged fierce and strong and fasci- nated the gallery visitors, mostly of the gentler sex,
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to such a degree 'hat they brought their dinners with them, in order to retain their seats for the day. At that time no one could foresee the form which things were destined to assume: the wiping out of the party lines which then divided the Church, the new issues that have come to the surface, the extra- ordinary changes in the aspect of our churches and the style of our services, the ripening of Evangelical fervor in quarters that once bore the label of "high and dry," and the melting away of the sharp-lined doctrinal lines that distinguished the other section of the Churchc
The grand dramatic feature of the Convention was the arraignment and defense of the Rev. Dr. Hawks, who had been elected Bishop of Mississippi, and on the presentation of his papers to the Conven- tion for approval was vigorously assailed on the charge of gross irregularities in the conduct of financial affairs in the great school which he had started, and which proved to be a lamentable failurCc I shall never forget the scene when Dn Hawks rose to make his defense. The church was crowded to its utmost capacity, the bishops filled the chancel, and the hush of death pervaded the edifice, as the doctor left the pew and took his place in the aisle facing the crowd, to plead for his life, or for that which to him was dearer than life. Always grand and eloquent, it is easier to understand how eloquent he must have been with such an issue as this before him. Hour after hour his majestic voice resounded through the church, sometimes trembling like the deep sub-bass of the organ, then quivering with a gentle pathos that brought tears to many an eye.
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striking chord after chord as only a master of speech could do, and all the while avoiding as far as pos- sible all discussion of the actual merits of the case. It was late in the evening when he closed his touch- ing and powerful appeal, and instantly the Rev. Dr. Strong of Massachusetts, with the tears rolling down his eyes, moved that the Convention proceed at once to sign his testimonials. If the vote had been taken immediately, it is very probable that the doctor's motion would have passed by acclamation ; but Judge Chambers of Maryland, who never lost his head, rose and said that, judging from his own feelings, he did not think the Convention was sufifi- ciently composed to act at once, and moved an adjournment. The next day, when the vote was taken, good Dr. Strong voted against the confirma- tion. It all resulted in referring the whole matter back to the diocese of Misssisippi, and there the matter ended.
CHAPTER IX.
RETURN TO BOSTON.
After a few years I found myself again in Bos- ton, a city to which men are much inclined to return after they have once had a residence there. The clerical atmosphere differed somewhat from that of Philadelphia; the clergy were not as prominent an element as in the old Quaker city ; they were not treated with as much deference or so likely to be spoiled by attention. The code of clerical proprieties was not precisely the same ; it did not damage a minister's reputation to go to a concert, or even to attend the Sunday night Handel and Haydn ora- torios, which the best Christians patronized without scruple. Conventional morality changes color, like the chameleon, with the change in the atmosphere.
The Episcopal Church in Boston was creeping slowly along when I returned in 1847; the Church of the Messiah and St. Matthew's Church in South Boston were struggling with the trials of childhood ; St. Stephen's, a free church for the poor, had been started by the Rev. E. M. P. Wells, a man who sacrificed all his personal comforts for the good of others, keeping open house night and day for all the wretched tramps who might turn up ; and a chapel for seamen had also come into being. Dr. . Croswell had removed to Western New York, but, in accordance with the instinct of which I have just
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spoken, had returned to Boston and become the rector of the Church of the Advent, destined to make an important change in the ecclesiastical atmosphere. Dr. Wainwright had gone to New York, soon to become the bishop of the diocese, and Dr. Stone had removed to Brooklyn, after a v^^hile to come back to Boston, as Dr. Croswell did, and as I did, and as Dr. Alexander H. Vinton a few years later did.
It is of this distinguished presbyter that I now propose to speak. He was a ponderous man, not only in his physical frame, but in the spiritual power manifesting itself in his countenance and in the tones of his majestic, resonant voice. In many respects he had no superior in the ranks of our ministry. His mind was well stored in every depart- ment, and with all its furniture orderly arranged. He may not have been a very erudite scholar in any one department, but he knew all that one needs to know in order to the discharge of the highest duties of life. What he read he digested, and what he had digested he remembered, and his knowledge was always at his command when it was needed. This was particularly evident when he was called to speak without any time for preparation, especially if he spoke under the impulse of righteous exaspera- tion, when his words came like the irresistible move- ment of a cataract. Singularly enough, even in such a case as this, you were conscious of an amount of reserved power, resources that had not yet been drawn upon ; the waters seemed to flow like a foun- tain that could never be exhausted. There are those living who will never forget how his voice
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thundered and his eye flashed when, in the General Convention, a measure was brought forward which he felt deserved to be treated with scorn and against which all the noble elements of his nature rose in opposition. At such times it was a dangerous thing to come within reach of his saber, which did terrible execution wherever it fell.
As a preacher he united in the most harmonious manner the elements of thoughtfulness, rigid reason- ing, rich and varied illustrations, tenderness of feel- ing, and unsparing faithfulness. I remember with much distinctness sermons that I heard him preach more than half a century ago ; they were of the kind that are not merely painted on the memory, but bicrned in, so that they became indelible.
His gifts in familiar conversation were perhaps more remarkable than his public utterances, and I have often thought that he was at his best when, seated in his study chair, with his inevitable pipe in hand, he poured himself forth as if talk were with him one of the fine arts. He enjoyed this sort of intellectual exercise more than he did platform speech-making, and far more than he did the task of writing; for, although he gave his whole heart and mind to it when he did write, it was an effort for him to sit down and deliberately address himself to the task. For this reason he would sometimes make one piece of composition serve several purposes, and I have read one of the sermons that I heard him preach as a magazine article, which had also been delivered as a lyceum lecture. Active as he was, so far as the operations of his mind were concerned, there was a natural inertia in his constitution which
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sometimes made it hard to keep him to his work. I recall a missionary meeting in my own church, for which I relied almost entirely upon him, and just before his time came he whispered to me that he could not say anything, as we were at that moment enduring one of those wet-blanket addresses which take the warmth out of everything. In my wrath I told him that if he failed me that night I would never have anything more to do with him, and this settled the matter.
It was not very generally known that he had a great passion for mechanics, and excelled particularly in the manufacture of fishing-rods. His patient endurance as a fisherman was never exhausted, and he would toss about on the waves all day, content with a few respectable nibbles and one or two minia- ture fish.
During one winter I passed all the Monday morn- ings with him, when we read aloud, each in his turn, a synopsis of the various forms of modern philosophy ; after which we went to dinner and entertained the ladies with such technicalities as "The potence of subsumption," "The intuitional consciousness," "The categorical imperative," and so on, introduced where they would be most inappropriate. The ele- ment of humor was not at all conspicious in Dr. Vin- ton, but it lay coiled up in its place, ready for a spring when the occasion offered.
Beginning his career as an unbeliever, his mind was for the first time seriously impressed by the sweet patience and placid resignation of a young woman whom he was visiting as a physician, and he could not help saying to himself, "There must be
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something worth looking into in a Christian faith that is able to inspire such a sufferer as this with so much quietness and peace," and after her death he took in hand the reading of Butler's Analogy, and this determined the whole tenor of his life ; he gave up his practice as a physician, and entered upon his great career as a minister of Christ. From that time his faith never faltered; sustained and stimulated by a deep and real Christian earnestness, he was ready on all occasions to vindicate the honor of his Master and press His claims home upon the careless and unbelieving, and at last, when the end came, he sank quietly to rest in the arms of the Saviour, in whom he had trusted for many a year.
During my stay in Boston as his assistant in Trinity Church, my relations to Bishop Eastburn were of a somewhat delicate nature. It was pre- scribed by the terms of the foundation upon which the assistantship was based, that the assistant should read the service once and preach once on every Sunday, and also read Morning Prayer on every alternate Saint's Day, and here his duties ended. I was never asked to preach in the mornings when the regular congregation were presumed to be present, except on one occasion, when the Bishop told me that as he had used up all his ordination sermons, he was obliged to ask me to preach on the next Sunday morning, when a young man was to be admitted to deacon's orders.
If there ever was a man who never covered up things, or did anything under false pretenses. Bishop Eastburn was that man. The Rev. Dr. Clement M. Butler told me that on the morning of a Sunday in
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midsummer he dropped into the vestry room of Trinity Church just before service, and to his sur- prise the bishop asked him to preach. "I am astonished at this," said the doctor; "I thought you never invited anyone to preach in the morni7ig.'' "That is my rule," was the reply, "but this is" a very hot day and there will be hardly anybody there, and I think you had better preach."
Few men ever have a stronger hold upon his people than Dr. Eastburn possessed when he was the rector of the Church of the Ascension in New York. He was regarded as the model pastor, and all his ministrations were most acceptable to the people of his charge. It was a parish which he had formed and fashioned after his own model, and from the beginning there had always been the most entire confidence and sympathy between him and his con- gregation. It was the reputation which he had thus acquired in New York, and the very favorable impression made by a brief missionary address delivered in Boston, that led to his election to the bishopric of Massachusetts. That election was absolutely unanimous on the first balloting, with the exception of one blank vote, and the bishop entered upon his new career with the hearty support and full confidence of all sections in the Church. Every- thing went very smoothly at first, or would have done so but for the apprehension of some persons that the bishop was inclining rather too favorably toward the High Church party — an anxiety that was soon relieved by very decided demonstrations in the opposite direction. Another cloud appeared in the horizon when those who had been most active in
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securing him the rectorship of Trinity Church began to wince under his direct and searching sermons and the undiluted evangelical doctrine that he persis- tently preached, and they were accustomed to say that he did not seem to understand the tone and temper of the region to which he had been called. It is very true that the atmosphere of Massachusetts was not altogether congenial to him, and it never became so; neither was the ecclesiastical tone of some of the clergy entirely satisfactory to his mind. It was said, at the time of his death, that his loss was much deplored by one or two of the more gladiatorial clergy of the diocese, because they had always regarded him "as a foeman worthy of their steel."
In his way, Bishop Eastburn was a very strong churchman. In the administration of affairs he was rigid and scrupulous, sometimes a little over-scrupu- lous. Under no circumstances would he administer confirmation privately, on the ground that it was recognized by the Church only as a public ordinance, and for similar reasons he would never read the Burial office in a private house. If, in visiting a church, he observed that the minister did not bow in the Creed, he was sure to reach him when the time came for the bishop to address the Sunday-school. "Children," he would say, "do you bow reverently when you repeat the blessed name of Jesus in the Creed?" and it is easy to imagine what would be likely to follow. He once rebuked me for catechiz- ing the children from the chancel in my black gown, after I came down from the pulpit, and said that he wished me hereafter to go back to the vestry room
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and put on my surplice again, as the chancel should never be entered in any other garb.
It was enough for the bishop that a thing was already established, and that was a sufficient reason for its continuance. The suggestion of any change in the Book of Common Prayer was to him intoler- able. When the expediency of modifying the preface to the Confirmation office was under discussion in the House of Bishops, he opposed it with all his might, declaring that to him it was one of the most precious things in the book, and that he had found it invaluable in stemming the tide of heresy and unbelief in his own diocese.
His love for the Church was in some degree attrib- utable to its having been imported from England. He happened to be born there, and never entirely recovered from it, continuing to the end of his days always to drink Her Majesty's health on the recur- rence of the Queen's birthday.
The introduction of any novelties in the Church disturbed him very much, whether pertaining to doctrine or usage. If a flower was to be seen in the chancel, nothing would induce him to enter it. When a member of the House of Bishops was once pleading, in behalf of certain new usages, that we should soon get used to them, saying that the time was when flowers Vv^ere ofi'ensive to some persons, "but," he added, "who cares for flowers now?" "I care about flowers," cried the good bishop at the top of his voice, and without rising from his seat.
I was present at the consecration of a church in Boston, when one of the oldest clergymen present, as his turn came, began to read the Creed, stand-
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ing between the reading desk and the communion table, with his face turned toward the altar, when the bishop in a whisper said, "Turn round," of which the aged presbyter took no notice. The bishop then repeated the mandate in a louder tone, but to no purpose, until he insisted that his direc- tion must be complied with, or someone else would be called to go on with the service, when, by the gentle compulsion of one of his friends, the vener- able but somewhat obstinate clergyman took his place in the desk and the service proceeded. It was not an edifying scene.
It may be remembered that the bishop refused to visit the Church of the Advent, which, in his time, represented the most advanced school of churchmanship, until, in order to meet this case, the General Convention enacted a canon, making it obligatory upon the bishops to visit every church within their jurisdiction as often as once in three years. With this law the bishop, of course, felt himself obliged to comply. A tolerable high func- tion had been prepared for him, on the occasion of his first visit at the Church of the Advent, which he endured as well as he could, and then preached his usual sermon with no allusion to what was going on around him. The candidates were duly presented and confirmed, from one of whom I had this account, and then the bishop's turn had come, of which no one who knew him would hesitate to believe he would fully avail himself. In the address which followed he had full swing; the details have for the most part escaped from my memory, but I remem- ber that the opening was much like this: "I have
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now, in compliance with the usages of our Com- munion, laid my hands upon you, and you have been confirmed. To what extent you comprehend the real nature of this act of dedication, and what instructions you have received respecting it, I do not know. I think it possible that you have been taught that this table is an altar, but it is not so, inasmuch as no sacrifice has ever been offered here or ever can be. You may have been told by those gentlemen in the rear that they are priests in the Church of God. In any real sense you are as much priests as they are, for we are taught in the New Testament that all the faithful are alike priests in the kingdom of Christ. I made them what they are with a breath, and I can unmake them with a breath. They may have told you that it is your duty to confess your sins to them. You have as much right to insist that they should confess their sins to you. There is but one Being to whom we can go with our transgressions with any hope of being absolved," and so on, when, before there was time for anything further, he said abruptly, "Let us pray," gave the benediction, and was off in his car- riage without further delay.
Bishop Eastburn's characteristics as a preacher may be readily described. His extempore addresses were usually more interesting and impressive than his written discourses. In the pulpit he seemed to be restrained by certain conventional ideas as to the style and setting of a sermon, which gave his dis- course an air of artificialness and stately pomp. The construction of his sermons was very uniform, and they were always just thirty minutes long. In
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the great majority of cases "man's fallen state by nature," "justification by faith alone," and some general remarks on worldliness and the various temptations of human life, constituted the staple of his discourse. His style was ample and flowing. I remember his speaking of the broad road as "that vast arena frequented by far the largest numerical majority." It was his favorite habit to speak of man as "a denizen of earth," or again as "a worm of the dust," and of Europe as "a foreign strand." "Our inimitable Liturgy" was a phrase with which we became very familiar. He rarely gave offense by the introduction of novel thoughts, or overtaxed the mental powers by abstruse arguments. In fact he was not accustomed to argue at all, but con- tented himself with delivering the truth, as he received it, clearly, forcibly, earnestly, and with some degree of reiteration, and then saying in effect, "There it stands, just as I have shown you. Reject it at your peril!" An intelligent English woman, after Dr. Vinton had preached one of his great sermons, told me that she was much more profited by the bishop's discourse, because she could not help listening while Dr. Vinton was preaching, and so she lost the benefit of the disci- pline which she had in trying to follow the bishop. With all these drawbacks, I do not doubt that his preaching was very profitable to many and met all their spiritual wants, which is, after all, the great thing. He never kept back any part of the counsel of God, from the desire to win popular favor; he was as true and sincere in his preaching as he was in his life, and that is saying a great deal. His theology
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was of the strictest and straitest "Simeon and Carus" school, a moderate dilution of Calvinism, with a few familiar evangelical formulas always prominent, and always enforced with all the might at his command. For all modern phases of thought he had an unmitigated contempt, and what is now known as the Higher Criticism would have been to him an absolute abomination. He never had any doubts of his own, and could not understand how any other human being could possibly doubt or honestly differ from him in his opinions, and yet he was an humble-minded man, and I do not believe that he over-estimated his own abilities. He once said that he had never changed his religious views since he was seven years of age — a remark which is suggestive. That he was honest and earnest no one could ever question, and he was as transparent as a clear cube of crystal, and as hard, where opinions were concerned. He was a simple-hearted Chris- tian, and very lovable and affable, when there were no theological obstructions in the way.
It was somewhat noticeable, that while he did not seek the company of his own brethren who hap- pened to differ from him in non-essential matters, he was on excellent terms with some with whom he could have had no theological sympathy whatever, and when Bishop Fitzpatrick, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Boston, died, he pronounced a beauti- ful eulogy upon him before the club of which they were members. Like some of the ancient prophets and John the Baptist, he may have worn a rough garment, but never to deceive — there was a generous heart beating underneath his bristling panoply. He
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was a devout man and lived in habitual communion with his Saviour. It is impossible to conceive of his ever doing anything against his conscience. He always stood uncovered before God.
The three original Episcopal churches of Boston continued to hold certain bequests and funds in common, after King's Chapel had relapsed into Unitarianism, and for a long time the Lent lectures continued to be preached there, although they were established for the maintenance of orthodox doctrine.
The Episcopal Charitable Society was another old association, the funds of which pertained to the three churches and could not be alienated. It fell to my lot to deliver the sermon in King's Chapel on the hundred and fiftieth aniversary, when the entire service of our Church was read. I had strange emotions as I stood in that venerable pulpit and remembered that it was on that spot the old Colo- nial governors insisted upon intruding the Episco- pal service upon the Puritan Commonwealth, and that this was the church which the Tories deserted in the troublous times of the Revolution, leaving their pews to be occupied by another generation, destined to repudiate the faith of their fathers.
There is a military company in Boston, known by the title of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, which has been in existence about as long as Boston itself, and they have always been accustomed once in the year to go to church and hear a sermon. I was once called to deliver this discourse and I took for my text, Isaiah ix. 15: "The ancient and honorable, he is the head." Some
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surprise was expressed that such an appropriate text had never been lighted upon before, but the problem was solved the next morning when a news- paper, devoted to the extermination of everything in the line of military preparation, in allusion to the text, observed that the preacher had quoted only the first part of the passage, but his discourse amply vindicated the truth of the latter portion, the entire text being, "The ancient and honorable, he is the head ; and the prophet that speaketh lies, he is the tail." I anticipated something of this sort, but could not resist the temptation to make use of the passage.
The great and good Dr. Sparrow visited me just before the capstone was placed upon Bunker Hill monument, which was at that time carried up to its full height, but still remained open at the top. I enticed the doctor to climb with me to the sum- mit, and there we seated ourselves, with a wonderful expanse of sea and land open to our view. As we sat there something unlocked the good man's Hps — it may have been the beauty of the prospect, or it may have been the feeling that he was so high up in the air and therefore so much nearer heaven; but there he sat, pouring forth a flood of thought, rich and rare, and if he had had his way, might have gone on in the same strain until the going down of the sun. He probably never spoke "from a higher point of view," and those who were accustomed to hear him talk on the ordinary level of the earth can judge what his talk must have been away up there in the clouds. Bunker Hill will always be asso- ciated in my mind with the name of Dr. Sparrow.
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He was a strong man, and has left his impress upon many of our strongest and best ministers, who were so favored as to enjoy the benefit of his theological teachings. He could put as much material into a single discourse as would supply the wants of a dozen ordinary preachers for a month. He had all the simplicity of a child and never seemed to know how great a man he was.
CHAPTER X.
FOUR YEARS IN CONNECTICUT.
After four years of mossy quietude as an assis- tant minister in Trinity Church, Boston, I began to feel that it would be well to look for some more vigorous employment, and accordingly I accepted a call to Hartford. There I found myself breathing an ecclesiastical atmosphere in some respects differ- ing from both Boston and Philadelphia. As might be expected in the land of steady habits, the dio- cese of Connecticut has been conservative from the beginning; it runs to no extremes, leaning neither toward Geneva or Rome, unmoved by the doctrine of the one or the blandishments of the other. The Low Church party can hardly be said to exist in Connecticut, and there is no large diocese in the Church where there is to-day a less amount of ram- pant and excessive ritualism. It has no extremes of climate and is content with such fruits as can be ripened without forcing. Episcopacy in that State is in a great degree a plant of native growth and not an exotic, as in the neighboring diocese of Massa- chusetts. In proportion to the population, the number of communicants is greater than in any other diocese, and they are distributed somewhat evenly over the State, and not concentrated in one or two large cities.
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Bishop Brownell, who presided over this diocese for the long space of forty-six years with a gentle- ness and dignity that could hardly be surpassed, was born and bred a Presbyterian, and at the time of his marriage held the office of Professor of Chem- istry in Union College. His wife used to tell me how they would start off together on Sunday morn- ings and walk on until they reached a certain corner, where they would separate, and he go one way to the Presbyterian church, while she wended her solitary walk to the Episcopal. It was not long, however, before he followed in her footsteps, as anyone might have predicted who knew Mrs. Brow- nell— a most attractive and winning woman, and as full of quaint and quiet humor as she was of good- ness, and so continued to the very end. Aged people would be more in demand if they were always as considerate and cheerful as those two persons were. In the time of a high "revival of religion" someone informed the bishop that they were pray- ing very hard for his conversion. "Well," he replied in his gentle way, "the prayers of good Christians will do me no harm." In his earlier days he did a great deal of missionary work in the South and West, and in those days of rough traveling must have endured no little hardship and fatigue. But later his life flowed on in a calm and placid way, never lashed into a tempest, and never dashing rudely against the rocks. His kindliness manifested itself in the lines of his countenance and the tones of his voice, and as he sat unmurmuringly under my preaching for several years, he must have been a singularly patient and long-enduring Christian.
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Whatever may be thought of the doctrine of the Apostolic Succession, apostolic grace certainly sur- vived in him. We trust that a kind Providence will send us a few more such moderate bishops — they may be needed before long.
The Episcopal Church in Hartford has always had to contend with a strong array of ministers outside of our fold; or, as I would prefer to put it, has had the benefit of a wholesome stimulant, growing out of their great attainments and influence. The Rev. Dr. George Burgess, the rector of Christ Church and afterward Bishop of Maine, was competent to hold his own in any community. In the range of his acquirements, the unfailing accuracy of his memory, the fairness and discrimination of his judg- ment, the honesty and transparency of his soul and inflexible devotion to his high calling, he stood with- out a superior in the ranks of our ministry. In the region of thought he had his limitations, but within those boundaries he seemed to be all-seeing and all- knowing — the defect of his mind consisting in the gathering in of too much material, more than could be used — more than could profitably be used. I once expressed my wonder at the enormous amount of matter crowded into one of his books, and he said that it was but a small proportion of the material he had collected.
I have never thought that he did himself full jus- tice in the pulpit. In the last sermon that I heard him preach he undertook to say something about every person mentioned in the New Testament who had any personal communication with Christ, and this did not leave time for saying much that was worth saying.
FOUR YEARS IN CONNECTICUT. Ill
He was always at work — visiting his parishioners three or four times a year, keeping on hand forty or fifty sermons ahead of the demand, reading every- thing worth reading that came in his way, exploring all sorts of out-of-the-way subjects, publishing a wonderful book about the old New England Puri- tan life which took everybody by surprise, penetra- ting the strange ins and outs of Swedenborgianism, composing exquisite poems, having such a memory that he could repeat the names of all the archbishops that ever lived in England, and examine candidates in all the minutiae of church history without a book, taking no out-door exercise, and never indulging in any form of recreation, always carrying a book with him when he traveled, and which absorbed him in the midst of the grandest scenery, and so dying early, dying prematurely, before he had reached his fifty- seventh year. He died abroad and I went down to Gardiner, Me., to preach at his funeral. No other bishop was there, and no crowd of clergy — for want of time to notify them, and not for want of respect for his memory, for everybody that knew him loved him and everybody revered him. At last he rests from his labors, unless there is work to be done in Paradise, in which case he may be as busy as ever.
The Rev. Dr. Edward A. Washburn was one of my contemporaries in Hartford. He also was a very remarkable man. A graduate of Harvard, and a student of Andover and New Haven, he was from the beginning a careful reader and a thorough scholar. He plunged early into the depths of phil- osophical study, and lived for the most part among books, and seemed to have none of the ordinary
112 REMINISCENCES.
foibles of youth ; while, at the same time, he was distinguished as an athlete, and, with his temperate habits and abundant bodily exercise, it might have been expected that a long and vigorous career would await him. His temperament was sunny and cheer- ful, and he enjoyed existence to the full. After a short ministry among the Congregationalists he was induced to enter the Episcopal Church, which he regarded as at once evangelical and catholic — posi- tive in asserting fundamental truths of the gospel and yet allowing much latitude in non-essentials — anchored securely to the old creeds and the Bible, but with sufficient play of the rope to allow for the rising of the tide and the occasional surging of the elements.
He was first settled in St. Paul's Chuch, Newbury- port, a parish that had long been in existence and accustomed to move quietly in the grooves worn by the fathers. An event connected with his ordination to the priesthood occasioned much remark at the time. The bishop and clergy had assembled, the church was opened, and the bell was tolling, when, to the amazement of all, it was announced that the ordination of Mr. Washburn would be deferred. The bishop expressed his readiness to ordain an- other young candidate who was present ; he, how- ever, declined to receive orders except in the company of his friend ; while the vestry refused to allow the use of the church for a public service if their own minister was to be excluded. The expla- nation of the extraordinary proceeding was this: on the previous Sunday morning the news came of General Jackson's death, and Mr, Washburn, who
FOUR YEARS IN CONNECTICUT. II3
was not at the time very familiar with the customs of the Church, asked one of his parishioners if there was any Collect in the Prayer Book that might be appropiately used in recognition of the ex-presi- dent's death. He referred the young minister to what is known as the commendatory prayer in the office for the Visitation of the Sick, which he accordingly introduced at the appropriate time, without the slightest suspicion that he was doing anything out of the way, least of all that he was laying himself open to the charge of heresy. The repetition of the offense in these days might not occasion the same uncomfortable comment. As soon as the matter was understood and Mr. Wash- burn was disposed to present himself again to the bishop, priest's orders were given him, and I never heard of his being charged with a tendency to the Church of Rome afterward.
We have never had a man in our ranks who, in dealing with the great problems of thought which pertain to our time, struck nearer the heart of things than he. His learning was so profound that he could at a glance detect any attempt to revive exploded errors and impose them upon the world in the garb of a new uniform; and whenever he encountered any formidable obstruction vv^hich seemed to block the progress of Christian truth, the lightning did not merely play about the surface, but it shivered the rock to atoms. He brought to bear upon the most perplexing questions of the day the full power of a well-informed mind, a keen phil- osophic insight, and a fair and generous judgment. He said all that the argument required, and left
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unsaid all that was superfluous. He could write with rapidity as well as accuracy under very unpro- pitious circumstances, and his familiar talk was in many cases as profound and clear-cut as his most elaborate writings. He had his resources at com- mand, and one who ventured rashly to cross weapons with him was likely to suffer in the end. Not that he needed the stimulus of an opponent to rouse him ; once started upon a line of thought that interested him, he could talk on eloquently and interminably, without any rejoinder.
A more fearless preacher never stood in an American pulpit. It was not that kind of faithful preaching which consists in a vehement reiteration of dogmas already known to be acceptable to the congregation ; if he felt that he was right, it did not matter whether the hearer agreed with him or not. It was his business to press home the truth, and if the people would not, or could not receive it, so much the worse for them. He was a discriminat- ing preacher, and did not content himself with the repetition of time-honored formulas, without regard to the fact that they conveyed no distinct meaning to the mind of the hearer. He was as skillful in handling the plainest and most practical subjects as he was in the discussion of the most abstract topics, and when he expounded the Ten Commandments, everybody knew what he meant. He was not accustomed, using the well-known illustration of Dr. Hawks, his distinguished predecessor in Calvary Church, "to fire broadsides into Christianity," but took careful aim at the mark, as he once did with his pistol in the desert, in order to let the Arabs
FOUR YEARS IN CONNECTICUT. II5
know what they might expect from him in any special emergency. He was not a sensational preacher, but I remember to have heard him, after delivering a long and very elaborate discourse, pro- duce a profound and solemn impression by repeat- ing at the close, in the most deliberate manner, the whole of the Apostles' Creed.
His translations of some of the best old Latin hymns, and his own original poetical compositions, were of the highest order, and show what he might have done if he had devoted himself to literary pur- suits. I recall one striking line in his poems, and wish that I had room for more :
" For the seeker of the Perfect, To be satisfied is pain."
He wrote some exquisite humorous verses, for although he was regarded by some as rather a stern and imperious person, he was by no means deficient in that element of humor which is so essential to a complete and well-rounded intellect. If John Cal- vin had been endowed with a little of this quality, it would have been a great relief to him and to the world after him.
My eye has fallen upon a tribute to his memory so much greater than anything it is in my power to say, that I cannot refrain from copying it in full:
" Go ! great Crusader, now thy lance is lowered,
Leave us to bear the burden and thy loss ; Fold now thine arms upon thy trusty 5Word,
Its gleaming hilt, a cross. Thine the Crusader's temperament, to fight
The Paynim's error, where his tents were found.
Il6 REMINISCENCES.
Did there come need for help of Christian knight,
Thy white cloak swept the ground. Strong were the notes thy clarion rung out,
Fierce was the onslaught from thy vigorous arm ; And idle ease and comfortable doubt
Took sensible alarm. Yet in that eloquence a sad refrain,
A passionate wit, a delicate tender thought — These were the gems that sparkled in the chain
Thy splendid genius wrought. Like the Crusader, turning toward the East
Those learned eyes (which saw what others sought), A pilgrim often at the sacred feast
Where knelt Sir Launcelot. They should have placed thee in that ancient church
At Cyprus, where the Christian knights are lain ; Or in that sunny square where sparrows perch
On bust of Charlemagne. Filled with their names on later sands of Time
Mark thee as worthy to be grouped with them ; No nobler hero known to book or rhyme
Marched to Jerusalem. For thou wert of that company, the men
Born to be leaders, knowing not doubt or fear, Who, when the Angel called, or now or then,
Could answer, " Here ! " Great dreams, great sorrows were thy bread and wine ;
God o'er hot deserts led thy suffering feet ; The sepulcher is won, the victory thine,
Go ! thy old comrades greet ! "
I wish now to say a few words in memory of an- other man, not of our communion, with whom I had some degree of intimacy during my residence in Hart- ford. The name of Horace Bushnell will be familiar to the world long after most of us are forgotten. No one could be brought into contact with him without feeling that he was in the presence of a man born to lead and not to follow the thought of his time.
FOUR YEARS IN CONNECTICUT. II 7
While he was writing his great work on The Super- natural, I used to visit him in his study on Monday mornings, for the purpose of hearing him read the chapters he had written during the previous week, and I wish that I had noted down the comments he made from time to time upon his work. I also wish that I could have sketched his picture as he sat there in his chair, rather uneasily, as was his wont, with his flashing dark eye and luminous face, that responded so vividly to the thoughts which were working in his brain. By some he was regarded as a subverter of old ideas and even as a reckless inno- vator and heretic, but he was really very tender of all received dogma, and never broke away from the standards except under the force of moral compul- sion. I once told him that I thought of preaching on a topic, which, forty years ago, we had not learned to handle as intelligently as we do now, and I shall never forget how he brought down his hand and said, "I would not preach a sermon on that subject for ten thousand dollars!" — not that he was afraid to do it, but he thought the time had not come for its thorough ventilation, and if he once threw open the doors of his mind, it must be to let the wind circulate freely. He was a man of marvel- ous versatility. Those who knew him only by his theological writings have no conception of the range of his mind and the various works of which he was capable. The house in which I once lived was warmed by a furnace of his invention, and he could lay out a park or drain a city much better than an ordinary expert. He was as much at home in talk- ing with the rough guides in the Adirondacks as he
Il8 REMINISCENCES.
was in discussing metaphysics with learned the- ologians in council. If he had gone into civil life he would have taught our public men some lessons in political economy which they greatly need to know. If he had been a medical man he would have struck at the roots of disease and discovered remedies as yet unknown.
Dr. Bushnell had a great deal of individuality. The man impressed you, and it would have required an effort to insult him or trifle with him. I should never have thought of addressing him as Horace, and while he could be very playful when he felt like it, to some persons he seemed rather unap- proachable. There was nothing in his manner that seemed to claim veneration, as is sometimes the case with "distinguished divines" — no majestic sweep of the hand, no oratorical proclamation of "wise saws and modern instances," no assumption of superiority in any form ; but you felt yourself to be in the presence of a man, a real man, and a man of bulk — not large in stature, but in spirit.
He was a devout believer — not one who merely speculated about religion, but he received it into his heart and lived accordingly. He had all the spiritual fervor, as well as the far-sightedness of a prophet ; everything pretaining to God and Christ and immor- tality glowed under his touch. It was a live coal that he laid upon the altar. However he might speculate he never allowed anything to come as a veil between him and his Saviour; he saw eye to eye and knew whom he believed.
It shows how "the whirligig of time brings about its revenges," and is also a striking illustration of
FOUR YEARS IN CONNECTICUT. 119
the Other old saying, "the heterodoxy of to-day is the orthodoxy of to-morrow," that the Hartford Theological Seminary, which was estabhshed for the purpose of combating the tendency of thought in Dr. Bushnell's direction, should have recently adopted his treatise on Christian Nurture — originally rejected by the Congregational Board of Publica- tion— as one of the text-books in that institution.
CHAPTER XL
REMOVAL TO RHODE ISLAND.
Christ Church, Hartford, seems to have been one of the cradles in which bishops were rocked in their earlier days. Bishop Philander Chase started from this church in his pioneer pilgrimage to the West; Bishop Wainwright was nurtured there for a milder work; Bishop George Burgess and Bishop Nichols were both rectors of this parish. Bishops Brownell, George W. Doane, Horatio Potter, and John Williams were all at some period attendants at Christ Church and frequently ofificiated there, and so in the natural order of things my turn came in 1854.
I had just moved into a new house and was stand- ing on the top of a flight of steps, assorting my books on the upper shelf, when a telegram just received by Bishop Brownell was handed me, announcing my election as Bishop of Rhode Island. I was somewhat startled, as I had never heard that I was thought of for the place, and indeed was not aware that the Convention of Rhode Island was in session. But so it was, and after a parochial ministry of eighteen years I found myself suddenly called to a new sphere, and the discharge of new offices, in which I have now been engaged forty years longer. I have not much to tell in the way of incident in this
REMOVAL TO RHODE ISLAND. 121
new relation. I have dwelt in a quiet habitation, and have had no such romantic experiences as our western brethren are familiar with ; I have been called to take no long journeys through waste lands and unexplored forests, and sleep night after night in the snow, and drive alone over interminable prairies in midwinter with nothing to indicate the way but the slight indentation in the snow made by the Indian trail, and levy upon the gambling saloon for the purposes of worship, and take up a collection in poker chips, while the rifles, by special request, are deposited in the outer entry, or run a cathedral on wheels or in a steamer — of all this I know noth- ing. The western brethren have smiled when I spoke of the interior of my diocese, intimating that they did not suppose it had any interior, which is to some extent true, as so large a portion of the little State is underwater. I do not get much sympathy even when I tell them that I have to go off a long way on the ocean to visit some of the churches, and that on land, on account of the water obstructions, I often find that the longest way round is the only way there.
There are some advantages in small dioceses — I mean small territorially. But little time is con- sumed in traveling, it is easy to become familiar with the whole region and know what are its neces- sities and just when it is desirable to start a mis- sion, and as a small farm may be more thoroughly cultivated than a large territory of a thousand acres, so a small diocese may be spaded over, in- stead of being rudely plowed, and made to yield a larger proportionate harvest. The results of this
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may be seen in Rhode Island. There is scarcely a settlement of any considerable size in which our Church is not established, and there are but one or two other dioceses where the proportion of communicants to the population is as great as it is there, and if the Roman Catholics were not counted in, this proportion would be doubled. As an illustration of the hold which they have obtained in this vicinity, I may mention that the city of Woonsocket, with a population of about twenty- three thousand inhabitants, contains seventeen thousand Roman Catholics, and in an adjoining village, where for years we had undivided posses- sion, there being no other place of worship there, a French Roman Catholic Church has been built, large enough to swallow up two or three such churches as ours. There is one further advantage in a small, compact diocese. The clergy are able to meet each other freely, for the discussion of con- troverted questions and the clearing up of mistakes and prejudices, and also for the occasional discharge of ecclesiastical porcupine quills, which it may be a relief to the porcupine to be rid of, while they do no special damage to others. The result of this frequent interchange of thoughts and crossing of weapons is the establishment of as much harmony as can be expected in the present fallen condition of humanity, and the acids and alkalies mingle together without any excessive effervescence.
During my residence in Rhode Island there have been more than two hundred and forty clergymen in the Diocese, and not one has ever left us to join any other Protestant denomination. Three have
REMOVAL TO RHODE ISLAND. 1 23
taken refuge in the Church of Rome, one of whom simply went back to his first love, having been edu- cated by the Jesuits; another looked over the fence longingly into the Roman pasture before he was ordained and also went where he belonged, and the third I had deposed before he thought of seceding. In the forty years' administration of a diocese it would be strange if there had not been some cranky deacons and presbyters to deal with, and possibly here and there a troublesome layman. Entangle- ments will sometimes exist, which require very deli- cate handling in order to untwist the snarl without breaking too many threads. But, upon the whole, I have had very little to complain of, and it is my general impression that it is unwise for a bishop to interfere with what is going on in the diocese any further than is necessary in order to keep the peace and protect the Church from the intrusion of actual heresy and mischievous practices.
CHAPTER XII.
THE RICHMOND GENERAL CONVENTION.
The House of Bishops at the time of my admis- sion was composed of older men than the average as it now exists. Six of the number fulfilled their fourscore years, the eldest being nearly ninety years old when he died, and the youngest fifty-three. Seventy-one bishops have died since the date of my consecration, thirty-two of whom were my juniors in office, and thirty-eight have been born into the world since I was admitted to the priesthood. I have no distinct recollection of the first meeting of the House of Bishops that I attended, but the Con- vention of 1859, h^^^ i" Richmond, is strongly im- pressed upon my memory. The train from Wash- ington reached that city at about three o'clock in the morning, and not caring at that unreasonable hour to disturb the good people to whose hos- pitality we had been consigned, I strolled about the city until daylight with the Rev. Dr. Littlejohn for a companion — now the distinguished Bishop of Long Island and at that time a deputy from Connecticut, whose genial talk made it all very pleasant, although it was an hour when people do not usually appear to the best advantage.
When the Convention opened, thirty-three bishops responded to the roll-call, all of whom,
124
THE RICHMOND GENERAL CONVENTION. 1 2$
with the exception of our presiding bishop and my- self, now sleep with their fathers. Bishop Meade of Virginia took the chair as the senior, and the picture of the bishops, as they sat there in council, is still very distinct and vivid in my recollection. Somehow it seems as if they were not formed as much after the same pattern as they are to-day; but this may be because there were so few of them. I will try to give a sort of silhouette likeness of some of the more prominent of these men.
Our presiding officer. Bishop Meade, was in some respects a man of the Roman type — I hardly need to say, not in his ecclesiastical sympathies; but he had the stern, inflexible, regal type which we asso- ciate with Julius Caesar. His demeanor was serious and earnest ; he was not a man of compromises — • always rigid and always just, never carried away by his sympathies, and yet always kind and generous of heart. I never heard of his venturing upon the humorous but once, and that was when he was told that an edition of Webster's Dictionary had just appeared, which contained twenty-two thousand new words; upon hearing which he replied, "I hope
it will not fall into the hands of my Brother ,"
who was somewhat distinguished for his "gift of continuance," and of whom the venerable bishop who sat next to me in the House used to whisper, as he saw his fluent brother rise to speak, "Oh, dear! the plug is out again!" I must, however, acknowledge that I have seen Bishop Meade unbend himself gracefully at the house of Dr. J. K. Mitchell, in Philadelphia, whose guests we were at a meeting of the General Convention, and where he was very
126 REMINISCENCES.
intimate. The children induced him one evening to be blindfolded and try to walk in a straight line across the room and blow out a candle on the opposite side ; it was really refreshing to look upon the scene, and although he was more than once unsuccessful, his failure did not in the slightest degree diminish our reverence for the man.
Among other trifling peculiarities, he was very antique in his notions, and could not be induced to use a modern four-pronged silver fork at his meals, and an old-fashioned two-pronged steel fork had to be provided for him. He was a perfect gentleman in his tone and breeding, with something of the feudal flavor about him, and yet he would go about with his robes under his arm, done up in a bandanna silk handkerchief, and write his official letters on a scrap of brownish paper, sealing them with his thumb when a seal was required.
Firm as a rock where principle was concerned, he could neither be dragged nor enticed from his position. I doubt whether he would have denied his Master, as Peter did, and if he had been impelled to walk upon the water to meet his Lord his faith would not have been likely to give way.
After his strength began to fail and he had been prohibited from preaching any more, it was hard for him to keep silence when he found himself in the chancel. It once happened that he was present on the occasion of my preaching a missionary sermon in Alexandria before the students of the seminary, and at the close he said that he would "make a few additional remarks" — which I have no doubt he felt to be much needed — and he continued to talk on in
THE RICHMOND GENERAL CONVENTION. 12/
his solemn, impressive way, until we had had two tolerably long sermons instead of one. The old fire was burning, and it kept on burning to the end, without his being consumed. He now rests in peace, although I do not believe that his voice is silenced. He was one of the grandest men we have ever had in our Communion.
Next appears the patriarchal face of Bishop Hop- kins, with his majestic locks and copious white beard, looking as if he might have stood before the altar of Abraham and with him there offered sacri- fice. Such a figure as his could never have been in keeping with any other than the clerical profession, and yet he began life as a lawyer, and was more versatile than any other of his tribe, and could do a great many things which no other bishop could do. He could design a church, superintend the building, construct the ornamental designs with his own hands, execute the more elaborate parts of the painting, and then take charge of the organ, compose, direct, and lead the music. He could preach on any con- ceivable subject without the slightest preparation, and would often ask the rector of the church, as he was putting on his robes, what he would like to have him preach about. He was a fluent debater, and never lost his self-possession or seemed to know when he had been beaten. He wrote voluminously and on a great variety of subjects. His "End of Controversy Controverted" was a most servicable book to put into the hands of one inclining to Rome, and his treatise on "The Novelties which Disturb our Peace" was vigorous and strong — more so than the pamphlet which he afterward published on the other
128 REMINISCENCES.
side. His defense of American slavery did not appear at a time when it was likely to be very popular at the North, and of his History of the Church i?t rhyme, beginning with Adam and ending with Bishop White, it is not worth while to speak. Many other works came from his pen, showing great research and having considerable value. With all his versatility and variations of opinion, he was thoroughly sound and honest at heart, and firmly believed everything that he said, however it might conflict with what he had said before; for it was impossible for him to be disloyal to that which, at the time, he received as the truth. His opinion might change, but his faith never faltered, and we doubt not that he now shares with the saints in Paradise the blessings and felicities of the redeemed.
Bishop Mcllvaine was a conspicuous figure wherever he appeared. His resemblance to the pictures of Washington was very striking and he once told me that he had been often spoken to on the subject, and that strangers had stopped him on the street to inquire if he had any of the Washing- ton blood in his veins. His voice was peculiar, and had that deep, orotund, and somewhat artificial quality that makes ordinary words impressive and solemn, while it may not be so well adapted to trivial conversation. In fact there was nothing trivial about the man ; his whole demeanor wore an ofificial aspect, and he rarely, if ever, appeared to be off duty. On one occasion, when the bishops arrayed themselves in a sort of pyramidal group for the purpose of being photographed, and he happened to place himself at the summit of the pyramid, he
THE RICHMOND GENERAL CONVENTION. 1 29
took it kindly as I remarked that he had done this with the consciousness that he was the ornamental member of the House, as he really was. His aspect was that of a man who could not help being con- scious of his own superiority, and there was a dignified reserve in his demeanor which would repel anything like undue familiarity. My brother, the Rev. Dr. Samuel A. Clark, once tried him a little, by asking in the presence of his brethen, just after his return from England, if he had had a pleasant voyage, and if this was his first trip abroad. The bishop's familiarity with English life made the inquiry somewhat impertinent.
After the publication of his famous defense of Episcopacy, Dr. Tyng said to me that he would never again vote for a low churchman to fill a bishopric, although it may be remembered that the good doctor himself preached a very conciliatory sermon from the text, "Sirs, ye are brethren," just before the Pennsylvania election.
Perhaps the most useful part of Bishop Mcllvaine's life was the early period when he served as chaplain at West Point, where, by his powerful appeals and strong personal influence, he brought so many young men into the fold of Christ. For some reason the diocese of Ohio did not make very great advance under his episcopate, and a man of weaker mold and more devoted to the routine duties of the office might have established the Church in Ohio more firmly than he did.
His published writings on the "Evidences of Christianity," "The Oxford Divinity," "The Holy Catholic Church," "The Sinner's Justification," and
130 REMINISCENCES.
a variety of other topics, were widely circulated at the time of their appearance and attracted much attention, as well as occasioning no slight amount of controversy. They are much of the same type, somewhat diffuse in style, and for the most part able expositions of familiar truths, rather than suggestive of new thoughts. He was very positive in all his opinions and not very tolerant of those who differed from him. When they undertook to erect stone altars in his diocese, he insisted upon their being "hewed down with hammers," and "the novelties which disturbed our peace," had little favor in Ohio. No crosses or flowers were allowed to encumber the Holy Table, and on one occasion, in the House of Bishops, he expressed his dissatisfaction at hearing the Te Deum chanted, in place of being read. How he would have endured all the innovations which have, since his time, penetrated almost every section of the Church — the boy-choirs, the choral services, the colored stoles, the profuse floral decorations, to say nothing of all the more elaborate display of our more advanced parishes, it is not easy to determine. Perhaps, if he had lived as long as some of the rest of us, he might have become reconciled to many innovations which would once have filled him with horror.
Bishop Whittingham was always in his place, tak- ing note of everything done or said, ready to spring to his feet, whatever might be the subject of debate, and appearing to know all about it, whatever it might be. I once undertook to keep tally of the number of speeches made by him in a single fore- noon, but had to give it up. He was thoroughly
THE RICHMOND GENERAL CONVENTION. I31
posted in everything pertaining to the Church in his own generation, or in any past period of its his- tory, desperately in earnest, seeming to rely upon Church legislation for the reform of all the evils in society, — as if the morals of the world could be regu- lated by canons, — and always disposed to make thorough work in dealing with all the infirmities to which humanity is heir. Bishop Whittingham was not a man of one idea; he had a multitude of ideas, but they all revolved around one common center, and were viewed from one standing-point — the ecclesiastical. If he had been brought up from the beginning in a little closer contact with the more frail and brittle men and women of the world and looked over the fence to see what was going on outside of the Church, if he had not clung so closely to his books and taken a little wholesome recreation, it would have been better for him and more com- fortable for others. He told me that at one period of his life he worked steadily seventeen hours every day, and this did not leave much time for any- thing else. The marvel is how he managed to live at all.
For many years I was associated with him as a member of the Standing Committee on Constitu- tional Amendments, and I can testify that in private conference he was considerate, brotherly, reasonable, and patient, while he was not always so on the floor of the House. To say that he was a very learned man would be an exceedingly moderate way of put- ting the matter, and to say that he was endowed with an enthusiastic temperament would be super- fluous. He liked to have his own way when he felt
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certain that he was right, and that was a conviction which did not often fail him.
When we first began to break in upon the old routine, a clergyman in Baltimore — now one of the most honored and eloquent of our bishops — adver- tised that noonday services would be held in his church on certain days in Lent for the benefit of business men, and that those services would not exceed thirty or forty minutes. When the bishop read this startling announcement in the morning papers, he at once sent for the clergyman to know what it all meant. He was informed that it was intended to read the Litany or some abbreviated form of the Morning Service — to be followed with an address ten or twelve minutes long. "I forbid the thing entirely I" said the bishop; "I will allow nothing but the reading of the entire Morning Prayer as it stands in the book." "Well, then," was the reply, "I must abandon the whole thing. On these terms it would be impossible to accomplish the purpose designed by this short service, and I will give it up altogether, assigning the reason for so doing." This did not suit the bishop, and at last he compromised matters, on the condition that the clergyman should read the entire Morning Prayer in private, before holding his attenuated public service. It is to be feared the devotional element was not very prominent in the good pastor's heart when the hour came for him to address him- self to his solitary matins.
Of Bishops Eastburn, Alonzo Potter, and George Burgess I have already written, and there are others of whom I would like to say something, if the space
THE RICHMOND GENERAL CONVENTION. 1 33
allowed. I can see, with my mind's eye, the picture of the stout and sturdy Bishop Otey, most honest and transparent of men, with a muscular intellect toned down by a most tender and generous heart; Bishop Kemper, equally at home in the refined circles of St. Peter's and St. James', Philadelphia, where he labored faithfully for twenty years, and in the wild Indian settlements of the far West, where he laid the foundation of six or seven dioceses, dying at last as the Bishop of Wisconsin, after traveling about as missionary bishop twenty-four years longer; Bishop Polk, a true and earnest believer of the ancient type, of whom no one, what- ever may be thought of the wisdom of his course, can hesitate to say that he had the courage of his own convictions, and died as a martyr to what he believed to be true and right ; Bishop De Lancey, of whom I think I have already spoken, an old-fashioned churchman of the Bishop Hobart school, courteous and attractive in his demeanor, an accomplished scholar, a winning and interesting preacher, and a true man; Bishop Elliott, father of another bishop, whose praise is in all the churches, a genuine Southern gentleman, also of the ancient type, his stately form and impressive face giving a peculiar charm to the words he uttered and the truths he enforced ; Bishop Johns, the saintly and gentle Cal- vinist, who won many hearts to Christ by the per- suasiveness of his appeals, while he rarely repelled any seeker after truth by the rigidity of his doctrine ; Bishop Davis, whose presence was a benediction, making the world — from the sight of which he was cut off by the visitation of God — always brighter
134 REMINISCENCES.
and better by his beautiful example and holy influ- ence; Bishop Atkinson, a man always to be trusted, of calm and solid judgment, quiet and earnest con- victions, endowed with a legal clearness of concep- tion and a straightforward utterance which was almost sure to carry conviction to the minds of those whom he addressed ; Bishop Kip, the city-bred rector, nursed in luxury, who gave up all that the world had to offer him and became the pioneer bishop in California, laboring patiently there for fort}'- years amid many trials and discouragements; Bishop Henry W. Lee, whom I knew in his youth, and followed all along until the sun reached his meridian, and never hearing a breath to his dis- credit or knowing him to slight a duty. I received by mail a few touching lines dictated by him just before his death, to which I replied at once, but before my letter reached him he had departed. If there ever was a genuine disciple of Christ, he was one. Bishop Alfred Lee was just as good and holy a man as he, and was also endowed with singular intellectual gifts, and his early legal training was of great service in the disentangling of difficult theological problems, and however he might be criticized, it was not an easy task to refute his argu- ments. There remain only two others of whom I have room to write — the venerable Bishop Smith, whose episcopate exceeded in length that of any other American bishop, and who, if he had lived nine days longer, would have reached his ninetieth year, and Bishop Horatio Potter, who also attained a good old age, after a useful and blameless life. The mention of these two names reminds me of a
THE RICHMOND GENERAL CONVENTION. 1 35
noticeable incident that occurred on the occasion of a special meeting of the bishops in New York, when all business was delayed for several days for want of a quorum. In this emergency it was suggested that if by any process the presence of these aged men could be secured, the House might be organized and then proceed to the work for which we had assembled. Accordingly an hour was fixed for the bishops in attendance to assemble at the residence of Bishop Potter, who was unable to leave his chamber, and good Bishop Smith was brought down from his house, in the upper part of the city, and deposited in the lower entry of Bishop Potter's residence. The bishops then arranged themselves in the stair- way so as to form a connecting apostolic link be- tween the two venerable prelates, and the roll was called. A majority of the House of Bishops answer- ing to their names, it was declared to be duly organized, and the members, who were capable of so doing, adjourned to the appointed place of meeting, while the senior bishop was carefully taken back to his house, and the Bishop of New York left to enjoy the quiet and privacy of his chamber undisturbed. As it turned out, the meeting resulted in nothing of any special account, and no one was inclined to question the legality or propriety of its proceedings.
There were other bishops of whom kind words might be said, but my personal knowledge of them was slight, and in these reminiscences it is my inten- tion to confine myself for the most part to such matters as fell under my own observation.
I was one of a committee of three, appointed in the Convention of 1859, ^^ suggest d^ practical sub-
136 REMINISCENCES.
ject for the Pastoral Letter, the House having failed to agree upon either of the letters which had been presented. We labored over the matter diligently, but could not decide upon any one topic which it would be expedient to bring before all our churches, certain evils being rampant in some regions that were altogether unknown in other quarters. Lot- teries, card-playing, dancing, horse-racing, theatrical performances and some other things were suggested ; but just how to discriminate in dealing with these evils — if they were evils at all — did not appear, and to proclaim a crusade against certain customs which exist in our large cities, but are never heard of in our little country parishes, did not seem expedient. The result was that the Church was blessed with no pastoral that year. It is possible that a gentle sug- gestion of mine as to the matter of slavery may have tended to produce this result.
When we separated at the close of this pleasant convention at Richmond, we little dreamed that a crisis was impending during which our Church would be temporarily sundered, and at our next gathering there would be so many vacant seats in the House of Bishops. I have no disposition to dwell upon that trying season at present, although I may subse- quently have something to say about it ; but the irre- sistible tendency to union in our ranks was shown in the fact that, when the crisis had passed, without any formal action on the part of the General Con- vention, and even without any formal negotiations, those who had left us came back quietly and took their seats as if nothing had happened. There was not even a scar to show where the cleavage in the
THE RICHMOND GENERAL CONVENTION. 1 3/
Church had occurred. The only allusion to the War that I have ever heard in the House of Bishops was made by good Bishop Lay, at that time Bishop of Arkansas, who pleasantly suggested on one occasion that there was a knot of ''old Confederates off there in the corner that ought to be broken up" — some four or five of the Southern bishops happening to be conferring together.
I find it hard to realize that a whole generation has passed away since that gathering in Richmond. I thought at that time that the larger part of the bishops were aged men, who had about filled up their term of years, while in fact there were only three of the number who were at that period as old as I am to-day. It is wisely ordered that none of us should live very long. A new generation is needed to take up the work where the old genera- tion left itc But for the change of actors on the stage the world would make little progress, and it ought to grow wiser as it advances. What we call the ancient times were indeed the immature youth- ful times ; as Lord Bacon puts it : ''Antiqiiitas seculi^ juventus mundi. These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retrogrando, by a computa- tion backward from ourselves."
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LATE WAR.
These reminiscences would be incomplete if I did not say something of what I saw and heard dur< ing the War, that followed so soon after the pleasant Convention at Richmond. My personal experi- ences of that period are all of which I intend to speak, and they are connected mainly with the Sanitary Commission, of which I was a member, and which met at intervals in Washington during the entire period of the War. It consisted of ten or twelve members, among whom were three dis- tinguished physicians, Drs. Van Buren, Agnew and Newberry, Professor Wolcott Gibbs of Harvard, Mr. Horace Binney, Jr., the well-known Dr. Samuel G. Howe, Professor Bache, Professor Stille, Mr. George T. Strong, with the Rev. Dr. Bellows of New York as president, and Mr. Frederick Law Olmstead as secretary.
It was the most gigantic charity the world ever knew, the cash receipts being a little less than five millions of dollars, the estimated value of the sup- plies fifteen millions, and the expenditures of local branches more than two millions — in all about twenty-two millions. A fair was held in its aid in New York and another in Philadelphia, each of which netted about a million of dollars. Spontane- ous contributions of all descriptions poured in from
138
THE LATE WAR. 139
every quarter, and, as might be expected, some of the articles forwarded were not of much practical use — gigantic knit stockings that might have fitted Goliath very well, if he wore stockings, domestic preserves of various sorts and different degrees of merit, lint beyond measure, haversacks in profusion, which in our climate proved to be of little service, incomprehensible garments, which it would be hard to assign to either sex, an occasional almanac and city directory of ancient date, a few volumes of well-thumbed sermons, and a multitude of little contrivances and comforts, with a tinge of pathos about them, and all indicating the kindness and good will of the contributors.
In the distribution of its stores and in the services rendered to the sick and wounded, the Commission made no distinction between friend and foe — a press- ing need was all the appeal required, no matter where it existed. A very beautiful and impressive letter was once read to the Commission, written by General Lee of the Southern army, acknowledg- ing the various kind offices which had been rendered to the men under his command in the hour of pain and sorrow.
There is not much to tell of the working of the Commission which is not already familiar to the public. The meetings in Washington were always very pleasant, and occasionally something would occur to give a little variety to the occasion. A request was made by the Massachusetts branch, that a delegate sent by them might be allowed to sit with the Commission and report its proceedings. It was not thought expedient to deny the request, when,
140 REMINISCENCES.
to the surprise of all, an accomplished and high-bred lady from Boston appeared with her credentials and took her seat with the Commission. Of course there was no help for it, and still further, the delegate from Massachusetts usually accompanied us in our visits to the neighboring camps, undeterred by any of the disagreeable things that might be encountered. No woman could possibly conduct herself with greater propriety and consideration, but occasionally matters would come forward for discussion which it would be unpleasant to handle in the presence of a lady, and still worse, the members of the Commission who had been accustomed to while away the weary hours by the solace of a cigar suddenly found them- selves cut off from this privilege. In order to meet the double emergency, it was resolved with all due solemnity, in the presence and hearing of our female friend, that whenever the Commission went into executive session — whatever that might mean — it should be understood that the doors were to be closed against visitors. The operation of this rule, which was adopted not unfrequently, relieved the members of their embarrassment, but I am bound to say in all truthfulness that the "executive session" sometimes continued long after the delicate matters under discussion had been disposed of. It hardly needs to be added that the majority of the Com- mission were more or less addicted to tobacco.
During my stay in Washington I had occasional opportunities of seeing President Lincoln in the White House and elsewhere, and a few of my reminiscences of the man may be of some interest. In the spring of 1861 I called by appointment at
THE LATE WAR. I4I
his private office soon after breakfast, and found him at his writing-desk with a loose dressing-gown about him, and after one or two general remarks he said : "I can hardly tell you how relieved I am this morn- ing. I have just finished my message to Congress, and now that is off my mind." I replied that I was sorry he had called this extra session of Congress, for nobody could tell what mischief they might do, and I wished he would take the whole responsibility into his own hands, for I was sure the nation would stand by him if he did. "I have called this Con- gress," he said, "because I must have money. There is Chase," referring to the Secretary of the Treasury ; "sometimes he calls for a million of dollars in the course of twenty-four hours, and I can assure you that it is not an easy matter to raise that amount in a day." I replied that I had never found it very easy. He then continued, "The result of this war is a question of resources. That side will win in the end where the money holds out longest; but if the war should continue until it has cost us five hundred ■millions of dollars^' dwelling upon this sum with much deliberation, as if it were the largest amount that could well be conceived of, "the resources of the country are such that the credit of the Govern- ment will be better than it was at the close of the War of the Revolution, with the comparatively small debt that existed then." Suppose someone had whispered in his ear, "This war will go on until it has cost the nation nearer five thousand millions than five hundred, and after it is all over, instead of its taking half a peck of government paper to buy a hat, the credit of the United States in a few years
142 REMINISCENCES.
will be so strong that its bonds at two or three per cent, will be at a premium," what would have been the aspect of Mr. Lincoln's expressive countenance? Some time after this I called upon him as a member of the Sanitary Commission, to see what could be done for the exchange of prisoners. He heard me very patiently and then said : "I feel just as you do about this matter. I don't like to think of our men suffering in the Southern prisons, neither do I like to think that the Southern men are suffer- ing in our prisons; but you don't want me to recognize the Southern Confederacy, do you?" I said of course not at present. "Well," he went on, **I can't propose an exchange of prisoners without recognizing the existence of the Confederate Govern- ment." "Why is this necessary any more than it is when you send in a flag of truce?" "I never sent a flag of truce ; the Government has nothing to do with that. It is done by the officers of the army on their own responsibility." "If this is so, why could not the matter be accomplished in another way ? A while ago the Southern authorities sent back fifty-seven of the sick and wounded prisoners in their hands, whom of course they were glad to get rid of, and someone at once sent back the same number of men whom we held in confinement." "That was my idea." "It was a very good idea; now why cannot that thing be followed up, until the board is cleared? If you send a hundred or five hundred of their men to the South, they will be certain to return the same number, and so in a short time the whole matter can be managed without any negotiation at all." "I will tell you why it can't be done at present ; I haven't
THE LATE WAR. 1 43
capital enough on hand to discount." This was his way of putting things.
On a great occasion in Washington, when the foreign ministers, the members of the Cabinet, and other notable persons were present, I said to Mr. Lincoln that it would gratify the curiosity of the bystanders if these great people would be willing to wear a label on their back, indicating their names and titles, as Corsica Boswell did. "I do not think," he replied, "that I should need any label — they would know me by my height. Here is Stanton," who stood by his side — a rather short, thick-set figure; "he supposes that he has more weight of character than I have, but I stand much higher in society than he does."
It was a sad day for all of us when Abraham Lincoln was taken away; if he had any frailty, it was in excess of tenderness. I never saw him show any marks of irascibility but once, and that was when our Commission were crowding him in a direc- tion he did not fancy, and he turned and said, with some little asperity, "It looks to me as if you would like to run this machine."
This talk about the labeling suggests a little domestic incident connected with the War, which I may be pardoned for mentioning. One of my brothers, the Rev. Dr. George H, Clark, who wrote the life of Cromwell, was the rector of St. John's Church, Savannah, at the breaking out of the War, and, desiring to visit England for a few months, he availed himself of a blockade-runner, and having accomplished his purpose, returned by the way of Canada, intending to go back at once to Savannah
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For more reasons than one he found this to be im- practicable, but meanwhile he had left his little boy, some four or five years old, in charge of a friend in Savannah, and now the question was, how to recover possession of him. By some negotiations with the authorities on both sides, an arrangement was made by which he was to be forwarded to Fortress Monroe, passing from hand to hand with a label attached to his clothes, indicating his name and destination. Meanwhile my brother took up his abode at Fort- ress Monroe, awaiting the arrival of his son ; but the days passed by without his appearing, and at last the flags of truce were suspended and all inter- course between the two sections cut off. There was nothing to do but wait for a change in affairs, and at last there were some movements on the water indi- cating that communication had been opened, and in an hour or two a small boat appeared, and as it neared the shore a cry was heard, ''There is papa!'' and the little boy, with the label on his back, had reached his destination in safety.
In the beginning of the War, as might be expected, there was very little economy in the conduct of affairs, and a French or Russian army might have ? been comfortably sustained by the food that was wasted in our camps. I have seen barrels of good bread, where some of the loaves had hardly been broken, and other excellent material, thrown away as garbage, while the impositions practised by those who are always on the lookout to make money, what- ever happens, were enormous. A complaint was once made of the tea served in certain hospitals, that turned the cups black and was nauseous to the
THE LATE WAR. 145
patients, and a package of this tea was sent to the Sanitary Commission for inspection, when it was found upon examination that there was not a leaf of tea in the compound. It seemed also as if all the worn out, rickety horses in the land had been sent to Washington for the use of the Government. One of these animals was put at my disposal, and the first time I had occasion to use him I found that he could hardly move without stumbling, and, after trying him in every other pace, I thought that if I could get him started on a full gallop he might not have time to tumble down ; but in a minute or two we parted company, and I went over his head into the road, somewhat to my discomfiture and mortification.
All sorts of inventions and contrivances were sub- mitted to the attention of the authorities in Wash- ington. The grounds of the War Department were filled with tents of every conceivable design; all kinds of novel cooking apparatus were offered for trial, and the more elaborate they were the more certain was the return to the old simple way of doing things. I was made the bearer of the small model of a gun, to be used on shipboard, so constructed that it would take care of itself and do almost every- thing automatically, but I never heard of its being used. I was once present at the trial of a triple shell, which, when discharged from the mortar, was intended, after the first explosion, to go on a little further and then explode again, and after that explode a third time, it being constructed on the principle of a Chinese carved ivory ball — of three separate shells enclosed. It fulfilled its promise
146 REMINISCENCES.
tolerable well, but as it was a very costly thing to make, and of not the slightest use after it was made, nothing more was ever heard of it.
An ingenious townsman of mine took it into his head that a great deal could be accomplished by a fire-balloon of his invention, and means were fur- nished him at Washington to test his experiment. Accordingly he selected a large vacant hall and set a score or two of women to work on his gigantic balloon, and then took it out, accompanied by a few friends, into a retired place in the country, to test the machine. The inventor had relied upon a multitude of wicks in an enormous kerosene lamp to fire and raise the monster, but with all that he could do it was impossible to induce the concern even to stand upright, much less to rise in the air, and of course that was the end of it. He was, how- ever, one of those men who are never discouraged, and whose inventive powers never fail, and his next contrivance was a plan for arming the soldiers with metallic mirrors, by the concentration of which upon one spot, provided the sun was in a favorable position and the enemy were willing to let them alone while the mirrors were adjusted, the most dis- astrous results might be obtained. There was never any appropriation by the Government for testing this scheme.
During a later stage of the War, vessels suddenly appeared in Narragansett Bay loaded with more than two thousand sick and wounded and invalided men, with their attendants, for whom provision had to be made on shore at short notice, and a site was at once selected for their occupation on the island
THE LATE WAR. 147
of Rhode Island, a few miles north of Newport, where a house had been erected some time before for the accommodation of summer visitors. It was an attractive place, fronting on the broad expanse of the bay, and here in a short time as if by magic a village sprung into existence, with its long wooden shanties and underground water pipes and post-office and express office and church and library, and every- thing else that is needed for comfort and convenience in a new settlement. All at once this retired spot became a center of life and animation — the sick and wounded had for the most part rallied sufficiently to allow them to stroll about the grounds and amuse themselves, or go off fishing in the little boats and go to church on Sundays, and listen to the music of the band, so that for the time being it could truly be said :
" Grim-visaged war hath smoothed its wrinkled front."
To-day there is not a vestige to show that human beings were ever seen there — even the old hotel is wiped out of existence, and silence reigns, undis- turbed by nothing but the cry of the fish-hawk and the rumble of waves on the shore.
As a member of the Sanitary Commission I had a kind of oversight of the place, and everything was done to make things cheerful to the guests who had come upon us so unexpectedly. Arrangements were made to furnish the whole crowd with a sump- tuous dinner — I have forgotten whether it was on Christmas day or Thanksgiving — and innumerable Rhode Island turkeys were obliged to sacrifice themselves to meet the emergency, and everything
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usually associated with the consumption of the American bird was furnished without stint. I offici- ated in their chapel as often as I could, and printed a short collection of hymns for general use.
Among the inmates of the hospital there were a number of Confederate prisoners, although there was nothing to distinguish them from the rest of the inmates ; they went about with the same freedom, and off on the bay to fish if they chose, but of course they were anxious to go back to their own homes, and asked me one day whether I could not do something to bring this about. I told them that I was going to Washington in a few days and would attend to the matter. I accordingly waited upon the authorities in Washington, and, having laid the case before them, I was told that they were anxious to find as many prisoners as they could for the pur- pose of exchange, but did not know that there were any in Rhode Island, and before I left the office I had the satisfaction of hearing the order given by tele- graph for the immediate transportation of those men to headquarters, and when I returned they had all vanished. Before leaving they published an article in our local papers, written by an accomplished actor from New Orleans, expressing their grati- tude for the kindness with which they had been treated.
I cannot resist the temptation to record one little incident, which had its humorous as well as its pathetic side. I was looking one day upon the little cemetery where the bodies of those who had died were buried, and I observed that a certain number of the graves were adorned with three large quahog
THE LATE WAR. 149
shells, gathered on the neighboring shore, while the other graves were ornamented with only one shell. I asked the veteran who had charge of the place what this meant, and he replied, "Them graves with only one shell are the Confederates," and I after- ward found that he supposed himself to have had some special grievance and relieved his mind by making this somewhat invidious distinction.
The War is over, the old issues are dead, and a new era awaits us. It has ended with no imputation of cowardice or insincerity on either side — ended, as President Lincoln said it would, by the prepon- derance of resources. The honor of the nation is undisturbed. The War was inevitable, sooner or later, and we may all be thankful that the storm has spent itself and sunshine has returned.
I once asked General Sherman if he had ever met with Bishop Polk, and in reply he said that he never saw him but once, and then proceeded to give the story of his death, substantially as it appears in the life of the bishop, recently published by his son. "While the hostile camps were quite near each other," he said, "and we were taking observations of the movements of the forces, I saw three men standing together on an eminence, and I told the gunner by my side to send a shot into the midst of the group. As soon as the ball struck the ground, two of the persons retired from the scene, while one man remained quietly standing in his place. I then ordered another shot to be fired, and he fell. In the afternoon I learned from the telegraphic signals — 'Send coffin for General Polk's body' — whom it was that I had killed."
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It would seem as if the time ought to have arrived when every conceivable issue that could arise be- tween differing nations, or differing sections of the same nation, might be settled by some other process than the rude hand of war. In a war it is the strongest that win, and might is not right. A tor- nado may clear the atmosphere, but it is done at a terrible cost.
It is a comfort to know that one great cause of strife will trouble us no more, and yet the days of storm may not have ended. Dark clouds still linger in the horizon, and no one can tell how soon they will discharge their fiery bolts. The questions at issue to-day concern the great multitude, who will control legislation as soon as they learn how to exercise their power, and who can tell what may be the result?
It is our boast to-day that we are the richest country on the face of the earth, and yet at periodi- cal intervals there are terrible financial crises, which arrest the processes of trade, stop the wheels of our factories, reduce the millions of workingmen to want, destroy the value of investments, rob the farmer of his markets, ruin multitudes of helpless widows and orphans, while, at the same time, the earth continues to yield abundant harvests and the warehouses are glutted with products for which there is no sale. All forms of excess are followed by a correspondent reaction, and that is the trouble now in the finan- cial world. The nation is not rich because it con- tains a handful of very rich men. According to the most reliable estimates, "the average annual income of the richest hundred Americans cannot be less than
THE LATE WAR. I5I
$1,200,000, and probably exceeds $1,500,000. It may safely be estimated that two hundred thou- sand persons control seventy per cent, of the national wealth. That is, three-tenths of one per cent, of the population control seventy per cent of the property." Is this a desirable condition of things? Does it accord with the teachings of Christ? Is it what might have been expected as the result of those teachings?
"In New York city, where, according to the New York Tribune, there are 1103 millionaires, worth from one to one hundred and fifty millions each, more than two-thirds of the population live in tene- ment houses." If, in these "piping times of peace," things continued to drift as they are now drifting for another twenty-five years, when the millions will have become billions, the mountains rising all the time higher and higher, while the dead-level below remains immovable and perhaps sinking, instead of rising, what must we expect? The reign of anarchy means a reign of ruin, and it can be averted if Christians, or if all who profess and call themselves Christians, will obey the precepts and follow the example of their Master. Absolute social equality is a dream that has never been realized, and never can be realized and never ought to be, but the enormous inequalities in the temporal condition of God's children are a libel upon Christianity. Those inequalities were never so stupendous as they are now. "The wealth of Croesus was estimated at only $8,000,000, while there are seventy American estates which average $35,000,000 each. The nabobs of the later Roman republic became famous for their
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immense fortunes, but the entire possessions of the richest were not equal to the annual income of at least one American."
If it is true that things alter for the worse inevi- tably, unless they are altered for the better de- signedly what must we look forward to in the future if we sit down inertly and just let things slide?
CHAPTER XIV.
THE FIRST PAN-ANGLICAN CONFERENCE.
Twenty-seven years have passed since the first Pan-Anglican Conference was held in Lambeth Palace, and very few of the bishops who assembled there are now living. Some little time before the meeting was held, I was standing with the arch- bishop on the steps of the palace, and as an elderly man in episcopal attire approached, he said with a smile, "Here comes an Australian bishop, who lives nearly opposite to you," and on my introduction to him I remarked that we were "ordinarily accustomed to stand with our heels opposed to each other." Although the results which attended this gathering of representative men from all quarters of the globe were not very striking, many pleasant and life-long friendships were formed, and upon the whole it may have been as profitable as some other Church councils where a great deal of ecclesiastical business was done. I had the honor of being the guest of Archbishop Longley during the session, and it was a great privilege to be brought into such pleasant relations with a man of his lovely and attractive quali- ties. Most refined and venerable in appearance, and full of dignity and grace, he had the look of an archbishop with no air of pretension and nothing in his manner or speech that indicated any conscious-
^53
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ness of the high dignity bestowed upon him. Although he was quite alone and his daughter was the only one left to dwell with him, it was a cheerful household and the rooms were filled with pleasant things — pictures and books and domestic games, such as are not ordinarily associated in our minds with an ecclesiastical domicile. One day I took a copy of Trollope's "Barchester Towers," which, with its vivid description of Mrs. Proudy and her poor henpecked Episcopal husband, seemed to be rather an odd thing to find in such a place, and I asked the archbishop's daughter if they really read such books as that in ecclesiastical circles, and she said, quite earnestly, "We devour them." I ventured one day to suggest to the archbishop that, if he would come over to America, he would find that we were in the same condition with Sydney Smith, who once said that "he had outgrown all his early super- stitions except the Archbishop of Canterbury." It was very delightful to wander about Lambeth Palace under his guidance, and I well recall the expression of his face as he said, while we were looking at the portraits of the old archbishops in the armory room, "You will observe that there is room left for only one more picture on these walls."
Nothing could be more simple than the opening service of the Pan-Anglican in the ancient chapel of Lambeth. It consisted simply of the office of the Holy Communion and the sermon. The Arch- bishop of Canterbury, out of respect to the Ameri- can branch of the Church, had invited Bishop Hop- kins, at that time our presiding bishop, to preach the opening sermon, and he accepted the invitation ;
THE FIRST PAN-ANGLICAN CONFERENCE. 1 55
but fearing that when the time arrived he might not find himself strong enough to discharge the duty, he asked the Bishop of Illinois to be ready for the emergency, and, if necessary, take his place. At the opening of the Conference, however, Bishop Hopkins found that he was in sufficiently good con- dition to fulfil his appointment, but Bishop White- house, having prepared himself for the occasion, did not think it expedient to retire from the field. The text selected by the preacher is to be found in the Epistle to the Colossians, chapter first, at the twenty- fourth verse, "Who now rejoice in my sufferings for, you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflic- tions of Christ in my flesh for His body's sake, which is the Church," and the substance of the discourse was to the effect that it is the special province of the Episcopate to fill up that which remains of the sufferings of Christ. No action was taken in regard to the publication of the sermon, and the reason for this omission is given in the life of Archbishop Tait, recently published, and is also indicated in Bishop Wilberforce's diary.
The meeting of the Conference originated with the Colonial bishops, and not with those resident in Great Britain, and the Archbishop of York, with the bishops of the Northern Province, declined to attend. One of the objects which the Colonial bishops wished to accomplish by this assemblage was to secure the approval of the representatives of every branch of the Anglican Communion to the action of Bishop Gray, the MetropoHtan of Southern Africa, in his condemnation and deposition of Bishop Colenso; but inasmuch as the condemned bishop
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continued to retain his office with its emoluments, under the authority of the State, any interference on the part of the English bishops would of neces- sity involve many delicate questions incident to their own tenure of office, and so, not because of any special sympathy with Bishop Colenso, but as a matter of general policy, it was not thought desir- able to interfere with the matter at all. Accordingly a programme was prepared and printed, assigning a special subject for each portion of the few days that the Conference was to be in session, hoping that this might prevent the introduction of the Colenso business altogether. Of course there followed a great deal of talking against time, and, among other things, a long and dreary discussion of the question whether the first six General Councils should be declared to be of authority, or only the first four, the tedious talk being interrupted for a moment by an emphatic cry from the irrepressible Bishop East- burn, "Who really cares anything about those old councils?" — and so it went on until the contested question was disposed of by the decision that the ^'undisputed General Councils" should be regarded as authoritative, leaving it with every individual to determine for himself how many such councils there were. At last, however, by some side issue the dreaded explosive was introduced, and this, like a bag of dynamite, required to be handled tenderly. The members of the English bench wished to get rid of it as quietly as possible, and the American bishops, with the exception of Bishop Hopkins, took little part in the debate — not regarding the matter as specially concerning them, while the African
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Metropolitan, the so-called "lion-hearted Bishop Gray," advanced to the fight with all his armor on.
On the one side Bishop Tait, with his skillful rapier, did his best to parry and turn aside with quiet persistency the attacks of the lion-hearted Metropolitan — Bishop Wilberforce, of whom Charles Sumner once said that if he had not unfortunately been an ecclesiastic he might have been Lord High Chancellor of England, steering the ship carefully between Scylla and Charybdis, so that the church might not touch the rocks on either side — Bishop Thirlwall, greatest man of all, whose carefully chosen words fell like a ponderous trip hammer upon the anvil beneath, and a man endowed with just that absence of oratorical grace that sometimes gives one peculiar power — those were the three most promi- nent speakers on one side; while Bishop Gray, "the lion-hearted," rising above all questions of expedi- ency, maintained his cause unflinchingly and with a fiery earnestness and ferocity of virtue, indicating that he needed no help from others, but was entirely competent to fight his battles alone. The result of the whole controversy was the refusal on the part of the Conference as a body to take any official action in the premises.
This allusion to Bishop Gray reminds me that on one occasion subsequent to this, when the members of the Pan-Anglican Conference were entertained in St. James' Hall by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the bishop indulged himself in a vio- lent and ill-timed address, in the middle of which I left the hall and on my way to the street encountered Bishop Tait, at that time Bishop of London, who
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seemed to be in a state of great irritation, and pro- ceeded to comment upon the address which was then in the process of delivery after a fashion which startled me a little, considering the position of the speaker, and I observe that in his diary, under date of the same day, the good man expresses his regret that he should have been tempted to say some unwise and imprudent things. There was really nothing wrong or untrue in what he said, but the flavor of the words was not distinctively Episcopal.
The general results attained by the first Pan- Anglican Conference, as I have already remarked, were not very striking — no great subject bearing upon the necessities and peculiar perils of the age was considered, and nothing that was likely to bring out the best powers of the men who sat in council, in which respects it was in marked contrast with some of the sessions which have followed. It was a delightful family party, allowing for the little jars incidental to domestic gatherings, but it left no great impression on the world at large, and the results hardly seemed to warrant the expenditure of time and money required in gathering together such a large body of men from every quarter of the globe.
A somewhat novel series of services was held at noon-day, during the week preceding the session of the Conference, in old St. Lawrence Church, in the Jewry, for the benefit of business men, and the crowds in attendance were so great as to lead the London Times to protest against the blocking of the streets in business hours by these gatherings. I was appointed to take my turn on Thursday, and
THE FIRST PAN-ANGLICAN CONFERENCE. 1 59
informed that a carriage would be sent in due season to bring me to the church. I was staying at Prince's Gate in Hyde Park, several miles from the church, and after waiting for the carriage as long as I dared, I called for a cab and told the driver that he should have double fare if he would put me down at the church before twelve o'clock. As he had to drive through the busiest streets of London, it required all the skill of a London cabman to do this, and when I reached my destination it was some time before I could penetrate the crowd and reach the vestry- room. After this experience I was not in a very good condition for the work before me, and as I had written nothing, of course I was in an anxious and uncomfortable frame of mind. There was no pre- liminary service but the Te Deum, and when I looked down from the pulpit upon the crowd of men assembled in that ancient temple, my heart sank within me. However, I did the best that I could to rally my poor scattered faculties, and at last, when I struck the right key and began to tell the laymen how indispensable it was for them to take hold and do their part if they wished to save the old ship, I had no further cause for embarrassment, and the manifest sympathy of the audience helped me on comfortably to the end.
CHAPTER XV.
MY EXPERIENCE ABROAD.
I HAVE already alluded to my experience in find- ing the way from Prince's Gate to St. Lawrence Church in Jewry, and not long after I was invited by one of the large church societies in London to preach on a Sunday morning in a remote part of the outskirts of the city, with the view of making a col- lection in its behalf. The congregation was large and apparently very intelligent, and if all of the five hundred people who were present contributed the same amount that I was obliged to pay for the privilege of addressing them the offertory must have been a generous one.
I had another experience in London a little later on that was somewhat peculiar.
I had engaged to preach in a large church near Hyde Park on a Sunday morning, and I took with me a sermon that I thought was suitable for the occasion, when, at the close of the Nicene creed, and the time came for me to enter the pulpit, the rector gave out Heber's missionary hymn. I crossed the chancel and asked him if he had selected that hymn for any particular reason, and he said, "Of course; you are to preach this morning in behalf of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel." I told him that I had never been in formed of this, and it
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would be impossible for me to do so without some preparation, He replied that I had been posted all about the city, that the people had come there for the special purpose of hearing me on that subject, and a collection was to be made accordingly, and I must do it, whether I could or not. I saw that there was no alternative, and crawled up the pulpit stairs in a most forlorn condition of mind, and trust- ing that some higher power might come to my rescue. While they were singing the last verse of the hymn it occurred to me that the best thing I could do was to inform the congregation just what had happened and throw myself upon their mercy, telling them, at the same time, that they knew about as well as I did what I was going to say. I then gave the first start to the engine by remarking that if anyone from the other side of the water ought to be able to speak in behalf of this society without much preparation, I supposed that I was the man, as I represented a diocese which was founded by that society in the second year of its existence, and all the churches in Rhode Island were aided by the same during the larger part of the last century. I then went on to tell them in detail just what had been done there, and spoke of old Trinity in New- port, where Berkeley used to preach, with the organ still standing in the gallery, surmounted by the crown and miter, which was his gift, and everything about the building, just as it was in the beginning, nearly two hundred years ago. Then I took them across the bay, and showed them the old Narragan- sett Church, with the date of its erection, 1707, over the door, the oldest Episcopal church now standing
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in the Northern States, and where we still hold services on pleasant summer afternoons, although a new church has been built close by. Then I told them of the arrival of their missionary in Bristol on a Saturday evening, before the church was finished, and how he started the people off to get benches and put the church in condition for service on the next morning ; and then I had a few words to say about the old King's Church in Providence, now known as St. John's, and told them how much these churches were doing for missions and how the seed which the society had sown had multiplied a hun- dred-fold, and so on to the end, and upon the whole I am inclined to believe that the offering that day was as large as it would have been if I had delivered what is commonly known as "an able and eloquent discourse."
I saw one of the big posters on which the rector of the church had relied to give me information of the fact that I was to preach on behalf of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and it would have done credit to Mr. Barnum, both in its size and bril- liant coloring, but it did not happen to attract my attention in time for the Sunday service.
I have one further experience to relate of the trials which befell me abroad. On a certain anniversary occasion I preached in Winchester Cathedral, in the presence of Bishop Sumner, who has had three suc- cessors in office since that time, and to my amaze- ment, among those who occupied the chancel was Canon Carus, Simeon's Curate in Oxford, and whom I associated with a former age — just as I once told Bishop Short of St. Asaph's, whose history of the
MY EXPERIENCE ABROAD. 163
Church of England had been on my shelf nearly as long as I can remember, that I had always thought of him in connection with the period of the "ju- dicious Hooker." And there was also, at the time of which I speak, another clergyman in the chancel, more than ninety years old and entirely blind, who intoned the prayers by memory. Everything went off very pleasantly during the day, and my trials came in the evening. Bishop Wilberforce, hearing that I was to be in Winchester on that day, had written to ask me if I would meet him at night in the City Hall, where he was to deliver an address on missions, and say a few words relative to the condition of the Church in the United States. I replied that I would do so cheerfully, and in the evening, on my arrival at the Hall, I found a large assemblage of the best people in Winchester, the school and cathedral professors and canons on the platform, with the Mayor and Aldermen of the city, and the member of Parliament in the chair. Just as the hour for opening the meeting arrived, a tele- gram from Bishop Wilberforce was placed in the chairman's hands, stating that he had been suddenly taken ill and could not be present. After reading this message to the audience and expressing his regrets, the chairman said that as but one other speaker had been engaged, he must request the Bishop of Rhode Island to occupy the entire even- ing, adding that carriages had been ordered for half after nine o'clock. In our land, of course, there would have been at least half a dozen speakers ready to meet the emergency and talk at any length, but it is not so in the mother country. For a
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moment, as might be expected, I was in great per- plexity, when a happy thought came into my mind, which brought relief. I began my remarks by say- ing that it would have been somewhat trying to supplement an address from the Bishop of Oxford, and it would be impossible for me to take his place, especially as I had made no preparation except to think over a few points, which I could dispose of in half an hour, but, I added, "If those who are pres- ent, while I am talking, will charge their minds with questions pertaining to the subject in hand, I will do what I can to answer them." Accordingly, after the thirty minutes were over, 1 said, "I will now wait for the audience to respond," and the questions came fast and thick, some of which I was able to answer, while others were beyond my depth, as I honestly confessed. The result was that we had a lively time, and much more agreeable than it would have been if I had gone on droning for another hour. In resorting to this device, I presumed very much upon the intelligence and good breeding of my auditors; in some cases it would not be likely to work very well.
Some murky associations were revived at 2, purple dinner at Fulham, the residence of the Bishop of London — not by the purple color of the clothes worn by English bishops on state occasions, but by the surroundings of the table. Everything had a flavor of the past — the bishop's chaplain in gown and bands to say grace, as we see in Hogarth's pic- tures, the more honored guests occupying the raised dais, with the high minstrel's gallery at the opposite end, and as I looked about the stately hall I asked
MY EXPERIENCE ABROAD. 165
the bishop if he was accustomed to dine there when he was alone with his family. He said with a smile that the dining-hall came into use only on special occasions, remarking that this room was fitted up and furnished by Bishop Bonner, and had never been altered since his time. All at once there came to me the recollection of the long Sunday hours, when in my boyhood I used to linger over the pages of Fox's "Book of Martyrs," and read about the awful Bishop Bonner, and look at the pictures of the poor wretches put to death under his instigation, and it was this which made the atmosphere of that dining- hall seem so ghostly and gruesome.
I recall one or two other dinners later on at Lam- beth, after Bishop Tait was elevated to the See of Canterbury, one of which was said to be the largest gathering of bishops ever assembled at a dinner table in London, conspicuous among whom was an African bishop, in full Anglican costume, and no one was treated with greater deference than this sable ecclesiastic. The other dinner was a small affair, the most conspicuous guest being the famous Trojan explorer Schlieman, who to a great extent monopolized the talk with interesting stories of his adventures and discoveries, as it was hoped he would do, and after the guests had gone and we were sitting by the parlor fire, talking over the dinner, the archbishop said: "It is a great relief, when you ask a lion to dine with you, to find that he is willing to roar."
The character of Archbishop Tait is so familiar to us all that it might seem to be superfluous, if not impertinent, to say a word in'his praise, but I cannot
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deny myself the satisfaction of expressing my own deep sense of his kindness to one who had no claim whatever upon his attention, and could have no opportunity of returning that kindness. He was a man of many sorrows, but he made many others happy.
I also wish to say a few words of the late Arch- bishop Thompson, to whom I was indebted for the most abundant hospitality, and under whose roof at Bishopsthorpe I passed some of the most delightful days of my life. Since his departure I have seen him spoken of in the public papers as cold and repellant, but my own experience was that no one could be more approachable and agreeable. I remember how he used to come into my room in the forenoon and talk by the hour, and laugh over the letters that I received from home. One evening at dinner, as we were discussing some historical event, he pointed to a picture on the wall, which was lined with portraits of the archbishops of York, going back to a very remote period, and said, pleas- antly, "This event must have occurred in the time of tJiat old chap up there in the corner," pointing to one of his illustrious predecessors.
I was requested by some of the canons of York Minster to ask the archbishop if he would not favor certain changes in the interior arrangements of the edifice, and he told me in reply that it would be worse than useless for him to interfere. This free- dom of the abbeys from Episcopal control seems to be a singular anomaly. At the meeting of the Pan- Anglican it was desired to hold the closing services in Westminister Abbey, but the Bishop of London
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said that he had no rights there, and the service was not held. In some ways the old dead monks still have their way.
Archbishop Thompson was a learned man and a profound thinker, and the author of a few excellent works. He told me that one of the most satisfactory things in connection with his literary efforts was the introduction of his book on Logic in our American schools. He was a man of commanding appearance and looked the archbishop, but I never saw any vestige of the pomp of manner which has been attrib- uted to him. He had his own opinions, and was not likely to give them up very readily, but he had no fond conceit of wisdom and none of that show of magnificence in which some ecclesiastics indulge. He was a true and a good man.
I must not fail to record the attractiveness of Bishop Wilberforce, as I saw him in the privacy of domestic life, where he always had so much to occupy him, being obliged, as he told me, to send off on the average fifty letters a day. He was re- fulgent at his own dinner table, especially as he appeared one evening when he had invited a few of the Oxford men to dine with him, including the Vice Chancellor of the University, Dean Mansell, Dr. Liddon, and others. It was a very lively dinner, and Dean Mansell was particularly occupied in putting strange conundrums. Toward the close of the entertainment I told him that I had read some of his books, although I was not sure that I really understood them, and I had expected that we should have something in the same line from his lips on the present occasion, but I had been disappointed. He
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laughed and said that the dinner table was not the place for that sort of thing. I then thought that I would try him on a question of ethics, and asked the very commonplace question, "Do you think it is ever right to tell a lie?" "Never!" he replied with great emphasis. I then went on, "Suppose that you were captured by a pirate and your life had been spared on the condition that you would never betray him, and subsequently to this you found that if you did not betray him your wife and children would be captured and killed, what would you do?" "I would betray him, whether it was right or wrong," which showed that after all Dean Mansel was human. Dr. Liddon was the only silent man at the table, and he appeared as if his thoughts were revolving in some higher sphere.
Bishop Wilberforce's untimely death recalls an incident that shows how fond he was of horse-back riding, although it has been said that he never knew how to ride. We were going into Oxford one morn- ing and he said that I might take the carriage and he would join me at a fork in the road, as he always preferred to ride as far as he could, and when he appeared and took his seat in the carriage, I observed that he was a good deal spattered with mud and hardly in proper condition to go to London, whither he was bound. Presently he said, "You don't mind my closing the windows," and proceeded to extract a fresh suit of clothes from under the seat, in which he arrayed himself as a gentlemen should for the metropolis. And yet it was by a fall from his horse that he eventually lost his life.
Judging from what I saw and heard I should infer
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that there is greater liberty of speech in England than we should be willing to endure in our land. While I was a guest of the Archbishop of York I attended a missionary meeting, with the archbishop in the chair, when it was arranged that there should be four speakers, representing the four quarters of the globe, and after we had concluded our talks a gentleman in the audience arose and proceeded to read the clergy of the cathedral a terrific lecture on the neglect of duty, saying, among other things, that they were shut up in their aristocratic retire- ment, with every luxury about them, and never troubling themselves about the wants and sufferings of the poor neglected classes in York, and closing with the remark that he intended to put a hundred- pound note on the plate when it came around. I afterward inquired who it was that had introduced himself in this way, and was told that he was one of the most prominent lawyers of the city. His remarks did not appear to cause any excitement, and I heard no comments made upon the scene afterward.
Later on I had a somewhat similar experience in Cambridge. I arrived there about noon, and know- ing no one I strolled off by myself to see the sights, and soon encountered a stranger in the street, who stopped and said that he had recently heard me preach in London and I might be pleased to know that the Archdeaconry was in session and were at that time lunching at a tavern which he pointed out, add- ing that they would be glad to see me there. I at once acted upon this suggestion, and, having sent in my card, was cordially received and given a seat at
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the table. It seemed that the subject of debate was the co-operation of the laity in church work, and as I entered a lay delegate had the floor, who certainly was gifted with great plainness of speech. I listened with wonder and almost with consternation as he went on to arraign the clergy for their manifold deficiencies, making his own rector the special sub- ject of criticism ; but no one appeared to be at all disturbed. When he took his seat I was asked to tell them how the whole thing worked in the United States, where the laymen are so prominent in church affairs, and what counsel I had to give. I began by saying that from what I had seen and heard I should advise them to begin with breaking in the laity gradually, as colts are broken, by giving them a double or triple load to carry at first, and then, when they were sufficiently subdued, to put them into harness — remarking that in my first parish it was said that while I was the Rector^ the Warden was the Director, and the Warden's wife the Corrector, What more I said I have forgotten, but the result was a favorable one for me, as one of the Fellows who sat by my side at once asked me where I had left my luggage, saying that I must be his guest while I remained in Cambridge.
I had another pleasant experience in Oxford, where at the time I had no acquaintance and carried no letters of introduction. On my arrival at the station a young man accosted me, saying that his father was the Dean of Winchester, and had informed him that I was to arrive by that train and that I must regard myself as in his charge. This of course opened to me all that I cared to see and hear in
MY EXPERIENCE ABROAD. I /I
Oxford, and I have never had the opportunity to thank the young man for his kindness until I met a middle-aged and somewhat portly English clergy- man on the street in Baltimore, at the meeting of our last General Convention, who stopped and asked me if I remembered the youth who met me in Oxford at the railway station, and then told me that he was that young man. I was rejoiced to see him, and pleased to hear that he was occupying posts of great importance and influence in the Church of England.
I have many other reminiscences of life abroad, of which I might speak, if it were not for the fear of becoming tedious. I recall with much interest the memory of a plain, rough church in doleful East London, with its unplastered brick walls, but still made bright and cheerful by its attractive ritual and chancel adornments, where the humble people crowded round after service to ask after their friends and relations in America, some of them in one part of the continent and some in another, and yet whom they could not help feeling I must have met some- where; and another little stone church in the Scotch Highlands, tucked away in an obscure corner among the hills, where the high and mighty lairds came in full costume, and where we had a service of marvel- ous length, with full Morning Prayer and Litany, the Holy Communion and sermon. Baptism and the Churching Office, and the Lord's Prayer repeated indefinitely, and where the good Scotch critics com- plained of my brogue in the pulpit. I would also like to tell of the delightful days spent under good Dean Ramsay's roof in Edinburgh — the Scot of
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Scots — whom the cabmen of Edinburgh adore, for when they found that I was going to his house they seemed inclined to take me there on their shoulders. I would also like to say a little about our American churches on the continent of Europe, all of which I have visited, and some general experiences in various foreign regions, but my space is limited, and for this my readers may possibly feel they have reason to be thankful.
CHAPTER XVI.
A FEW NOTABLE MEN.
There were a few notable men whom I knew, and of whom I have not yet spoken, who had certain marked characteristics that distinguished them from the rank and file of the clergy. Seventy-four years ago the Rev. Philander Chase resigned the rectorship of Christ Church, Hart- ford, and went off as a missionary into what was then regarded as the Wild West. He could have had but one motive for doing this, mak- ing some allowance for the spirit of adventure that always had possession of him, and off he started to do his own work in his own way, without much regard for the formalities of ofifice or opinion of others. The general incidents of his career are so well known as to need no recital here. Kenyon College, in Ohio, stands as the monument of his first great adventure, for the building of which he ex- tracted liberal donations abroad, at a time when it was considered presumptuous to make such an application, especially in England. When "the force of circumstances" — which is accountable for so much in this world — drove him from Ohio, he started again in Illinois and toiled hard for the establishment of another institution, which he called, somewhat prematurely. Jubilee College, but, after
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a precarious existence, it has passed into oblivion. He had a genius for begging, and this with him was one of the fine arts.
On the occasion of a visit to New York, on one of his eleemosynary expeditions, while at dinner in the company of a little circle of rich men, he was observed to be uncommonly silent and sad, when one of the company asked him if he had anything special in his mind that disturbed him. He replied that he had, but did not like under the circum- stances to make any allusion to the occasion of his trouble. As soon, however, as they began to express their sympathy, his mouth was opened, and he said with many groanings and sighs that he was wonder- ing how he could get home, as he had no wagon and no money to buy one. At once the gentlemen present begged him to give himself no anxiety on that score, as it would give them the greatest pleas- ure to furnish him with a carriage. Upon this he rallied, and for a time w^as as buoyant as ever, but soon relapsed into his previous melancholy con- dition. Of course the inquiry then came, if there was anything further that disturbed him, and after a reasonable amount of urging he said it had just occurred to him that a vehicle would be of no ser- vice if he had no horse to attach to it, and again his mind was relieved and he became once more a very attractive companion.
He was a man of indomitable courage, and where the occasion demanded it he could storm and threaten like a king. When he was once called to cross a very tumultuous and dangerous pond, the Indian in whose canoe he proposed to make the
A FEW NOTABLE MEN. 1/5
passage declined to run the risk, when the bishop, who was of ponderous dimensions, drew himself up to his full height and cried in a voice of thunder, "Launch your canoe ! JehovaJijireh!''' The terrible cabalistic word had its effect, and the burly bishop, with his frightened pilot, crossed the stream in safety.
The late Bishop Henry W. Lee of Iowa, who was very thin in his youth but grew to be uncomfort- ably stout in advanced life, told me that he some- times felt inclined to attribute his excessive growth to an anathema once pronounced upon him when he unintentionally laughed at the aged prelate as he was trying to help him out of a carriage and he got stuck on the way, when the bishop turned upon him in his wrath, and doomed him to become as fat as he was before he died. A man of his temperament could hardly help becoming the victim of strong prejudices, of which I had a signal illustration when the Rev. Dr. Dorr and myself waited upon him, as a Committee of the Pennsylvania Convention, to arrange the order of services for Bishop Potter's consecration. Dr. Dorr, who conducted the whole matter, was an intelligent high churchman, and knowing something of Bishop Chase's peculiarities, he proceeded to suggest, with great discretion, one by one, the names of the bishops who were expected to officiate, and as long as he kept along the line of the low churchmen, it was all very lovely and the good old gentleman would interrupt him with such exclamations as, "Good Bishop Lee!" and "God bless saintly Bishop Eastburn !" "Yes, yes, put his name down !" and so on with a gradual diminuendo
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in the musical scale as he approached the other line in the apostolic succession, when there was a change in the atmosphere, and when the last name was mentioned — most obnoxious of all — the presid- ing bishop rushed from the table with an exclama- tion which it is not worth while to repeat, and so he continued to stalk up and down the room, until he had time to cool off. The whole thing did not mean much ; it was only the effervescence of the man's nature — everything went on smoothly enough after he had relieved his mind. He was a true, genuine, earnest, self-sacrificing man, and if he did nothing more than the clearing away the underbrush in the woods to make way for those who were to succeed him, he certainly did not live in vain.
The Rev. Dr. George T. Chapman was a noted man of the same period ; like Bishop Chase, a pon- derous person, with large features, large feet, large hands, a deep, sonorous voice and a general air of one born to command. A volume of his, entitled "Sermons to Presbyterians," had a wide circulation and made many converts to Episcopacy. He had not a very wide range of acquirements, but what he did know he knew thoroughly and believed im- plicitly. He had a strong gift of assertion, and always spoke ex cathedra in public and private, His ordinary talk was in the style of declamation, and he enjoyed in the highest degree a gladiatorial contest with an earnest adversary. He never made any compromises, never made any nice distinctions, was never influenced by sentiment or carried away by his feelings. It was with him an occasion of great lamentation that the doctrine of eternal dam-
A FEW NOTABLE MEN. 1 77
nation was not preached more persistently, and to this neglect he attributed most of the errors and evils of the time. It was not worth while to argue with him about anything; he had made up his mind and that was the end of it. He re- tired from active duty some time before his death, and closed his days peacefully in Newburyport, my native town.
The Rev. Dr. Hallam, of New London, Conn., was always an object of interest in the circle where he moved, and those who knew him most intimately had the greatest admiration of his powers. He was sharp-sighted and read men and things very keenly, and was specially gifted in sententious criticism. I once asked him what he thought of a certain sermon preached on a great occasion, and he replied that it had considerable merit and contained some things that were new and some that were true, but the new were not true and the true were not new.
He was noted for his extraordinary texts. Hav- ing been invited to preach the sermon at the conse- cration of a little church in a rocky town, he selected for his text Proverbs xxx. 26: "The conies are but a feeble folk, yet made they their houses in the rocks." He was, however, induced to change the text before delivering the discourse. He once preached a sermon in my church at Hart- ford from Hosea vii. 8: "Ephraim is a cake not turned." Then going on to say, "Like some Christians of an uncertain sort — half dough, half charcoal," and a wonderful sermon it was, full of pithy thoughts and wise suggestions. He was very absent-minded, and his wife told me that
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she would not venture to send him to buy any- thing without furnishing him with a written order, as, if she asked him to send home a bag of flour, he was just as likely to order a gallon of molasses. He once took his hat with him into the pulpit instead of his sermon, and after rising from his pri- vate devotions, according to the custom of the times, it was an awkward matter to convey the hat back again to the vestry-room and bring back the sermon in its place. He was a noble specimen of a some- what obsolete type of clergymen, and died quietly in his nest after having secured the erection of a beautiful church, and leaving behind him the record of a true and most exemplary life.
The name of the Rev. James Cook Richmond was once very familiar in the Church, and probably no clergyman ever lived in this country who founded as many parishes as he did. It was not in his nature to remain long in any one place, and he went up and down the land, doing all sorts of novel things, and electrifying the people by his earnestness and eloquence. I remember in my early life how we would sometimes hear the church bell ring out unexpectedly on a week day, and then we knew that Mr. Richmond must have suddenly turned up and there would be a public service in the evening. He once lighted upon me at an evening chapel service in Boston, and insisted upon preaching, to which I reluctantly consented on the condition that he would limit himself to twenty minutes, and thus give me time to say a few words which I had pre- pared for the occasion. After he had far exceeded the time allotted him I pulled his skirts, as I sat
A FEW NOTABLE MEN. 1 79
behind him in the chapel desk, to indicate that his time was up, but, instead of quietly taking the hint, he told the congregation what I was doing and what it meant ; but, he went on to say, "as I have already broken over my limits, I may as well occupy the entire evening," and I had no opportunity of adding any words of my own.
During a time of high political excitement in Aus- tria, Mr. Richmond's peculiar movements excited the suspicions of the authorities, and an ofificer was detailed to track his footsteps. He told me that he soon found this out and was determined to test the man's power of endurance, which, with his long legs and wonderful physical vigor, would be to him a comparatively easy task. Accordingly he led the poor detective all day long, upstairs and downstairs, and through the streets and alleys and parks, until he retired from the scene utterly exhausted. Mr. Richmond was arrested at last on suspicion, but escaped by declaring himself to be a Catholic priest, which with his church views he could do honestly enough.
In the latter part of his career he had charge of a church in Milwaukee, where he drew crowds by his fervent preaching, but at last his eccentricities became so marked that the doors of the church were closed against him. When Sunday came he col- lected a number of his friends, and standing before the door with a heavy ax in his hands he repeated, with deep solemnity, "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," striking the door with all his might three times, when it gave way and the usual morning service proceeded. It hardly
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needs to be added that this was his last appearance in that church.
As a specimen of Mr. Richmond's "great plainness of speech," I give the following extract from a "Palm Sunday sermon," preached by him in St. Paul's Church, Milwaukee.
"As the rector of this church, and having the care of immortal souls, I wish also deliberately to apologize to some of the communicants of this church, for having been so thoughtless as to appoint a service in the Church of Christ, on a fast day in Lent, at the same hour when a celebrated play actor was to mimic a fat man on a stage in a hall.
"The great De Tocqueville, in his immortal work on the Democracy of America, says: 'Behold a nation rotten before ripe !' and since it is here thought to be the duty of an American preacher, in a free country, to keep back the truth, lest it should not tickle the ears of some of the people who pay his salary, and lest, being offended when their sins are reproved, they should remove their custom to another meeting-house, I do think it would be a profitable and popular po/icj/ in me, and wicked and condemned by Christ for me, to sacrifice my feel- ings, try to be popular, veer about like a weather- cock with every breath of the dying people, and try my hand at a new business — viz., preaching to order and to suit.
"The Holy Week is begun. There will be morn- ing prayers every day at 10:30. As to the evening, I wish to compromise with those communicants who allowed the church bell to toll them to the funeral of their souls — the play house, on a fast-day — last
A FEW NOTABLE MEN. l8l
Friday evening, in Lent ; but as I do not yet know what very popular and favorite play-actor may intend to come out in some pleasing farce next Holy Wednesday evening, I will omit, for the sake of my play-going communicants, the intended Holy Wednesday evening service. {This did Jiappen}j
"But I promise you, truly and dearly beloved, that I will preach more plainly, more closely, more boldly, and most truthfully, hereafter; so that when I am removed by your anger, or by death, some man shall stand up over my sepulcher, and say : 'Here lies a priest, once beloved and well beloved up to the time when he told the truth and the whole of it ; not with much force, indeed, nor any great ability, but with a good degree of straightforwardness, humbly striving to follow the example of Him who once went into the Temple of God and overthrew the tables of the money changers, interfering with business, heavy profits, rapid sales, and quick returns.' "
During his ministrations in Rhode Island he was accustomed to hold services under the shadow of an ancient oak near the place where Mr. Blaxton lies buried, and to this time it has been known as "the Catholic oak." It is proposed to hold occasional services in the same place during the summer.
I knew another clergyman of the olden time who deserves to be commemorated — the Rev. John Bristed, for many years the rector of St. Michael's Church, Bristol, R. I. He was an Englishman who came to this country as a lawyer, and wrote one or two readable books. Although he was not the material of which ministers of the gospel are usually
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made, he possessed certain peculiar attractions which were likely to make him prominent in whatever pursuit he might see fit to engage, and in process of time presented himself to Bishop Griswold for ordination, whose successor he became as the rector of the Bristol church. Previous to this he had married a daughter of Mr. John Jacob Astor on the condition that he was to derive no pecuniary benefit from the connection, but after a while the contract- ing parties, finding that they were not altogether congenial, agreed to live apart for the remainder of their days. As an evidence, however, of there being no feeling of hostility between them, they were accustomed to dine together once in every year at Mr. Bristed's residence in New York. It would have been interesting to listen to their conversation on such occasions, when they were obliged to concen- trate the talk of a whole year within the space of a few hours. They had one son, Mr. Charles Astor Bristed, well known in literary circles and a distin- guished scholar at Oxford.
Mr. Bristed was very unconventional in his habits and expressed himself without reserve. The first time that I met him was at a meeting of the Con- vention of the Eastern Diocese, fifty or sixty years ago. An effort had been made to elect an assistant bishop, and Drs. J. W. Wainwright and John S. Stone were the rival candidates. A few of us bolted and cast our votes for Professor Alonzo Potter, and this defeated the election, much to the chagrin of Mr. Bristed. I happened to sit at the same table with him at tea that evening, when his eye suddenly fell upon me, and without waiting for an introduction
A FEW NOTABLE MEN. 1 83
he exclaimed with vehemence, "You are one of the men that tried to sit down on two stools this morn- ing," and then he went on to administer discipline to his heart's content. I bore it all meekly, as I knew that it gratified him and did me no special harm. At the close of another Convention he said to me, "I am so deaf that I have not been able to hear one word that has been said to-day." "But you voted every time," I replied, "how did you know which way to vote?" "Oh, I never have any trouble about that, I just watch the Philistines, and when they vote one way I vote the other way, and then I am sure to be right."
A young man was once reading the service for him in his chapel, and not having a very clear under- standing of the Scripture, he read the passage, "Go to 710ZU, ye rich men," with a strong emphasis on the now, when Mr. Bristed interrupted him by saying in a loud tone, "Go to where?"
There was a large influx of the Methodists into the Episcopal Church during his ministry, bringing their prayer-meetings and many other peculiar insti- tutions with them, and he welcomed them all and rather encouraged their ways and doings. The Rev. Dr. Milnor of St. George's Church, New York, was in Mr. Bristed's study one Sunday morning, when he was startled by a tremendous sound from the neigh- boring chapel, and rushing after Mr. Bristed, he asked anxiously what it all meant, "Oh, that is Brother A. at prayer." "Does he always make as much noise as this?" "Well, he runs the ferry between Bristol and Rhode Island, about a mile or two across the.water, and when he asks a blessing at
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the table, he can be heard distinctly over on the island."
The race of strongly marked, eccentric men seems to be dying out — the constant attraction to which we are all subjected wears off the rough edges and polishes human beings down to a smoother and rounder surface, just as ordinary stones are reduced to the form of round marbles, after being rolled long enough in a barrel. We have lost something of archaic picturesqueness by this process, but I sup- pose there is no help for it. Good Bishop Latimer and Dr. South, and other divines of their stamp, would astonish a modern congregation by their utterances but they would be sure to keep the people awake.
I did not intend to speak of my brother, the Rev. Dr. Samuel A. Clark of New Jersey, but so many of his old friends have earnestly requested me to say something about him that I feel constrained to make a brief allusion to one whose departure from earth made it a darker place for me than it ever was before. One who met him casually and when it was high-tide with him might be inclined to say : "This is a very amusing and humorous man and his talk borders upon frivolity," but let the same person see him in the pulpit, or engaged in any religious service, and he would say : "This is a very earnest and serious man ; he believes from his heart every word that he utters; he is trying to save the souls of these people whom he addresses." Or again, if he were overheard dealing with a wealthy parishioner in private who had fallen into evil habits, or with one of his communicants who Avas leading an inconsis-
A FEW NOTABLE MEN. 1 85
tent life, the same observer would be likely to say : "This is a most courageous man; he has no fear of rank or station or outward profession ; he is a very plain talker and yet he knows how to rebuke with- out giving offense — he must have a very clear con- science of his own or he would not dare to talk in this style."
But, in his ordinary life and when there was no duty pressing upon him, he bubbled and sparkled continually like a fountain, and having no fear of death before his eyes — his faith never failing him — through a long and painful illness he sustained and comforted the household with bright and cheerful talk to the very end.
As a specimen of his adroitness in managing affairs, after the new and costly church in Elizabeth was completed it was found that a debt of twenty or thirty thousand dollars remained unpaid, and my brother addressed a note to his wealthier parishion- ers, asking them to meet on a certain evening and see what could be done to free the church from en- cumbrance, adding that any person who might be unable to attend, would be assessed according to the best discretion of those who might be present. The next morning after the meeting he met his richest parishioner on the sidewalk and said, "you were not present with us last evening, but we assessed you." "I presumed that you would do so from what you said in your note. How much did you assess me?" "Well, we talked you over pretty thoroughly, and as you are our richest man, we all thought that ten thousand dollars would not be an unfair proportion to lay upon you." "That is absurd ; I will not give
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such an amount as that." "What, then, are you willing to give?" "I will give five thousand." *'Very well, it is all right; that is just what we con- cluded to assess you."
Again, to show his tact and readiness in an emer- gency, at one of the sessions of the Diocesan Conven- tion a venerable clergyman lost the thread of his talk in the middle of his speech, and being unwilling to sit down, hoping that he might recover himself after a while, he stood in silence, until it seemed as if the pause would be interminable. At last, while everybody was suffering under the long suspense, my brother rose in his place and, addressing the Chair with great deliberation and solemnity, said : " Mr. President, I trust that our reverend brother will be allowed to proceed without any further interrup- tion." This at once broke the spell and restored the equilibrium to the embarrassed speaker and he went on without any further trouble.
My brother was not in any sense a raco7iteur ; he never repeated facetious anecdotes, or indulged in ordinary witticisms, but he seemed, as it were, to be charged with carbonic acid gas, which kept him foam- ing all the time. This was so much a part of his nature that it is hard to conceive of him as entirely freed from humor even in another state of existence, and if it is true, as an eminent Presbyterian minister once said to me he believed it would prove to be, if we were ever so happy as to find ourselves in iieaven, we would probably be surprised to find the Almighty so genial. Certainly there is nothing derogatory to the character of our Heavenly Father in such a supposition as this. It is hardly suppo^
A FEW NOTABLE MEN. 18/
able that the element of incessant humor was im- planted in our nature by the great Adversary of souls.
I wish that the reminiscences of Bishop Wilmer of Louisiana had been recorded — "We ne'er shall look upon his like again." He could do and say things with profit and impunity which no one else would think of doing or saying. In visiting one of his parishes he was told that the Roman Catholic priest in the town, otherwise a worthy man and capable of doing much good, was impairing his in- fluence by the use of stimulants. At once Bishop Wilmer waited upon the gentleman and said that in the absence of his own bishop he had taken the liberty to call and talk things over with him, and before he left the heart of the good priest was melted, and thanking the bishop for his kindness, expressed his intention to profit by it. There are not many of our bishops who would have ventured to do that, or who could have done it to any good purpose. On another occasion he wormed his way into the confidence of Mr. Stewart, the great New York merchant, in a most felicitous style, and it was a rich treat to hear him describe the opera- tion, as I once heard him tell the story at full length.
While the General Convention was in session in Boston, the bishop visited Providence on one of the Sundays, and in an address gave us the following narrative. "One morning last week I bought a few articles in a shop on Washington Street in Boston, and on my way in the afternoon to get the bundle and pay the bill, I saw a boy on the Common whose
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looks I fancied, and it occurred to me that I might as well send him to do the errand. Accordingly I stopped the lad and said: 'Are you a good boy?' After a little hesitation he replied, *No.' 'What do you do, that is bad?' 'Why, I swear a little.' 'What else?' As the youth did not appear at that moment to remember what his other failings were, I asked him if he was honest? Upon the whole, the boy appeared to think that he was honest. 'Well, then, I am going to trust you with $io to pay a bill for me in Washington Street,' — mentioning the name and number of the shop — 'and you must bring back the receipted bill and bundle to the Brunswick Hotel as soon as you can, and here is half-a-dollar to pay you for your trouble.' The boy started on his errand, and when I told my friends at the hotel what I had done, they said I had done a very foolish thing, as nothing more would ever be seen of the money or the bundles. In due time, however, the boy returned, and when I looked at the bill, I found that the charge was $10.50 instead of $10, and I asked the boy how he managed to pay it in full, as I had given him only $10 for this purpose, and the reply was 'I took the half-dollar that you gave me. I thought I could trust you for fifty cents.' "
On a certain occasion when the bishop was in imminent danger of foundering in a steamer in the Mississippi River, it greatly disturbed his mind to think that he might be lost in the waters and so be deprived of the privilege of Christian burial. In order to get relief on this point he retired to his stateroom, and after adjusting himself properly at
A FEW NOTABLE MEN. 1 89
full length in his berth, he read the entire burial service over his own remains, and was content.
It was a great comfort, after a long and dreary debate, to see Bishop Wilmer quietly emerge from his seat, and after having taken his usual place in the center of the House of Bishops and adjusted himself after his customary fashion, bring things to a summary conclusion with a few quaint and irre- sistible words, which no man in his senses would ever venture to criticize. I wish that I felt at liberty to give a few illustrations of this, but I am told that it would not be "in good form " to do it. It was a gloomy day for the House of Bishops when Bishop Wilmer's light went out.
CHAPTER XVII.
MISCELLANIES.
I HAVE often found much pleasure and profit in cultivating the acquaintance of persons representing various forms of belief, and in this way have been brought into agreeable relations with some of my Roman Catholic brethren, as well as with many emi- nent leaders in the Protestant churches. Not unfre- quently the letters addressed to the " Bishop of Providence" fall into my hands, and my correspond- ence comes into his possession, and this opens the way for material apologies and explanations.
My relations with the Roman Catholic Bishop of Boston many years ago were very pleasant, and on one occasion, at the close of a somewhat stately dinner, after the guests had left the table, he said to me: "Now let us go aside and talk over Church matters." I told him that I was at his service, and he began with asking "Why we called the body to which I belonged a Church?" I replied, "Because we have the primitive creeds, the primitive form of government, and substantially a primitive liturgy." "But, then, you have no fixed standard of faith and no authority to enforce the faith. Bishop Mcllvaine teaches one thing and Bishop De Lancey another; how are you to know which is right?" "The opinions of individual bishops are not of authority. If you
iqo
MISCELLANIES. I9I
wish to know what we believe, you will find it in the Book of Common Prayer. And now let me ask, what is your authoritative standard of faith?" "The Church, of course." "Do you mean by this, the decrees of the Council of Trent?" "No." "Do you mean the decrees of the early General Councils?" "No; the Church speaks through the Pope, and his official decision is final." "But Moehler, your great theologian, says that some of the Popes were very bad men, and hell has long since swallowed them up." "I am afraid it has; but you know well enough that the final decree of an official is one thing and his personal character another, and after all these few bad men were no worse than the sur- rounding circumstances were likely to make them.** "I entirely agree with you in that. The Pope, then, is final authority in matters of faith. Well, a while ago you had a letter from the Pope, asking your opinion as to the expediency of declaring the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary to be an article of the faith. I presume, there- fore, that it is not so at present," "It is not." "If, then, a gentleman should call upon you this evening and ask whether he is bound to accept that doctrine as a true Catholic, what would you tell him?" "I should tell him that he is not so bound." "Now, suppose that when the mail arrives to-morrow morn- ing, you should receive another letter from the Pope, stating that he had concluded to declare this doctrine to be of the faith, and a second gentleman should wait upon you in the evening and ask the same question, what would you say?" "I should tell him that it is an article of the faith." After he
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had paused for a moment over this suggestion, which seemed to make the great question of authority rather a variable quantity, it being dependent upon the arrival of the United States mail, he said : ''Let us drop this general subject and talk about some- thing a little more specific. Do you believe in the real presence in the Holy Sacrament?" "Certainly I do. The presence is either real or unreal, and an unreal presence is no presence at all. I believe in a real spiriUial presence." "But Christ says. This is My body. This is My bloods "Suppose, then, that Christ, instead of giving the bread and wine to His disciples, had cut small pieces of flesh from His arm for them to consume — in which case there would have been no need of any act of transubstantia- tion — can you tell me in what way they would have been benefited by this? In other words, can you inform me how a spiritual substance can be nour- ished by a material substance?" All that the bishop had to say in reply was that he had nothing to do with the philosophy of the subject. So we went on in a kindly way from one thing to another, and I have nothing more to say, except that if I did not convert him, he certainly said nothing to convert me.
This recalls another interview, of a very different character. During the session of the General Con- vention in New York, four or five years ago, a committee was appointed to confer with another committee from the General Assembly of the Pres- byterian Church on the restoration of Christian unity. We met at the residence of Mr. Pierpont Morgan, about ten or twelve persons in all, includ-
MISCELLANIES. I93
ing our own presiding bishop and the moderator of the General Assembly, and passed a very delightful evening. Nothing was said in a general way about Christian unity, or anything else, but I had a nice talk with the Princeton professor and gathered from him in a private way that there was not much prospect that the Presbyterian Church would relin- quish its distinctive name in favor of the Historic Episcopate any more than we are likely to modify our standards of doctrine to accord with the West- minster Confession of Faith. As the evening drew to a close, our presiding bishop rose and with his usual grace of manner said that while we might not as yet be prepared to labor together, we could cer- tainly pray together, and he would ask the Moder- ator of the General Assembly to lead in prayer. We all knelt down and the learned divine offered an excellent and appropriate petition, and immediately good Bishop Whipple, our apostle of love, of his own motion made another extempore prayer, some- what longer and more fervid than the former, closing with the Lord's Prayer, in which we all joined, and then Bishop Williams gave us the benediction of peace. This was all very refreshing and in the spirit of love and unity. A very satisfactory repast awaited us in an adjoining room, and when I left I saw our venerable Primate and the venerable Pres- byterian Moderator joining in the calumet of peace, so that in one sense the interview may be said to have ended in smoke. It is a familiar saying, Ex fiuno Iticcm, and so it may prove to be in this case; but the general impression left upon my mind was that the return of the Church to its
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original unity is not to be brought about by official conferences.
I have attended a great many public meetings in the course of my life and delivered an indefinite num- ber of orations and speeches, and do not hesitate to say that, on two occasions, I gave great satisfaction. Many years ago I had agreed to deliver the Fourth of July oration in Providence, and it was an hour or two past the time before the interminable proces- sion reached the hall. There followed, as usual, a series of introductory exercises, including a long prayer, the reading of the Declaration of Indepen- dence, and the customary assortment of tedious music, and as it was an intensely hot day, before my turn came the audience was thoroughly worn out and weary, and longing to have the whole thing over. With this feeling I was in most thorough sympathy, and so after repeating the introduction to my oration, which occupied some three or four minutes, I told the people that I knew just how they felt, and how much obliged they would be to me if I would save them from listening to my address, and as they would be able to read it the next day in the newspapers, if they saw fit to do so, I would not detain them any longer. The demon- strations which followed showed that I had struck the right chord.
My experience was somewhat different on the second occasion, but the result equally satisfactory. There was to be a great missionary meeting in New York and four bishops were appointed to speak on as many different subjects. The opening services were not very long, and after they were closed the
MISCELLANIES. I95
first speaker, who was to address us on the African mission, took the floor. His faculties appeared to be in a somewhat chaotic condition, and he wandered about the universe in a general way, alighting almost everywhere except in Africa, to which, however, he made a brief allusion before closing his speech, but it seemed as if that close would never come. The clock struck nine and the hands "crept on in petty pace," as if they were doomed to do so, "to the last syllable of recorded time." After the whole con- gregation had been reduced to a state of utter des- peration, it was my turn to come in and take up the next topic; what it was I do not remember, inas- much as the speech was never delivered. I rose and simply said that as two other speakers were to follow me, who, I felt sure, would have something interesting to tell the people, I did not think that I should be justified, at that late hour of the night, in consuming the time which really belonged to them, and so took my seat. This was the second occasion in which I gave satisfaction.
I have just taken from the drawer a dingy old manuscript, which has been lying there for more than forty years, which I find by the dates in the margin was delivered as a lyceum lecture on fifty different occasions. It is entitled "The Next Fifty Years," and is of the nature of a prediction. I will give a few extracts from this ancient document, reminding the reader that when it was written there had been no scheme of a railroad to the Pacific, or talk of the Pullman cars, or any of the modern marvels of electricity. Some things which I fore- told have not yet come to pass, but there still
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remains nearly a decade for their fulfillment, while innumerable other discoveries and inventions have come to light which the wildest enthusiast could not have dreamed of forty years ago.
This reading over for the first time of one's own writings, produced scores of years ago, excites some singular sensations. It may be difficult to identify the work as your own. A lady once took one of the old-fashioned Annuals from the shelf and showed me an article with my name attached to it, which I presume I must have written, as I was in the habit of contributing to these ephemeral books, but if the name had not been there I should never have recognized the paper as my own. Many men of marked ability have begun life with the publication of works which they afterward were glad to suppress, while others who wrote well from the start had to wait for years before their merits were recognized. Hawthorne, in speaking of his "Twice-told Tales," says "that these stories were published in maga- zines and annuals, extending over a period of ten or twelve years, and comprising the whole of the writer's young manhood, without making (so far as he has ever been aware) the slightest impression on the public," and Dr. Holmes recently told me that he was not much known until his "Breakfast Table Talk" appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. Here and there men are found in the clerical profession, like Bishop Brooks and Dr. Alex. H. Vinton, and some few others, who struck twelve in the beginning, and went on striking twelve to the end. I began in a small way many years ago, but it does not follow that I have made much advance since.
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The invertebrate character of the work in which I am now engaged must be my apology for so often sJinnting off upon some side-track, and I return to the snuff-colored lecture lying before me. It begins with saying that "The history of the next fifty years is already determined by causes which have been operating during the first half of the century, and if we understand these causes thoroughly we could tell what the world will be in the year 1900. Since the clock of the Reformation struck the hour of sunrise in the moral world there has been no national change of creed, and no important alteration in the comparative strength of different religions. No re- spectable power has declared itself republican and been able to maintain its freedom since the day when our fathers signed the Declaration of Inde- pendence. And still all wise men feel that we are living in a critical period of history. Forces which have been slowly gathering for centuries will soon reach the point of explosion. One heavy jar of the atmosphere and the clouds will break. The next fifty years will have a history, and it will not be the dull repetition of former history. The waters will run in fresh channels. Elements of influence will afflict society which have hitherto been faintly recognized." Here I turn aside for a moment to remark that the last time I saw Charles Sumner, he predicted that in the course of ten years every mon- archy in Europe would be overturned except that of England, following me to the door, as I well recol- lect, and saying with extreme earnestness: "Don't forget the prophecy I have made to-night!" Mr. Sumner has been dead for more than ten years, but
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thus far France is the only country where his pre- diction has come true. "Great men are not always wise." — Job xxxii. 11.
Returning once more to my own attempts at prophesy as recorded in the lyceum lecture, I said, "We have made wonderful progress in traveling facilities within half a century, such as the highest scientific authorities declared to be utterly imprac- ticable just before they went into operation. But these improvements will not stop at the present point. Posterity will not be content to travel at the rate of thirty miles an hour, seated in these narrow cars, stifled with dust and distracted by noise, some- times blocked up by the snow and occasionally pitched over a precipice into destruction. It costs no great effort to imagine that there will be, fifty years hence, splendid locomotive hotels, with spa- cious parlors, dining-rooms, and dormitories, mov- ing gently as the bird flies over a road, carpeted with turf and bordered with shade trees and sweet shrubs, heralding its approach with jubilant music, instead of the hoarse screams which now make night hideous — through from Boston to San Francisco in six days." This prediction is not entirely fulfilled, but it may be before long. Again, "The language of telegraphic signs will be so improved that men will communicate through the wire as rapidly as they could by the tongue," but of course I never dreamed that they would actually talk through the wire. Once more : "This electric battery, which, in some of our cities, sounds the alarm in our steeples, may also be made at evening to light all the street lamps at one flash, secure perfect uniformity of time in
MISCELLANIES. 1 99
all our public clocks, kindle the beacon light on those dreary rocks in the sea, where human beings now endure a melancholy and dangerous solitude — Heavens only knows what it may not do !" Again : "How difficult it sometimes is to make the ink flow as fast as the thoughts! Now imagine the honored gentleman, invited to address your association, sit- ting down to prepare his lecture in the year 1900, with the last improved Chirographical machine on the table before him." Type-writer is a better name, but it had not been thought of then. "He opens the keyboard and begins to think. The order of his discourse having been methodized, his facts arranged, and his subject duly digested, the inspira- tion comes upon him, and he lays his fingers pn the ivory keys. Unconsciously as the accomplished musician strikes the note, which the harmony and melody require, does his hand sweep the Phono- graphic scale, and fast as he can think are his concep- tions transferred to paper." I find that I here used a word which suggests to the mind Mr. Edison's marvelous invention, but any one who could have predicted the phonograph would have been compe- tent to invent it. Bishop Brooks at one time kept one of these phonographs in his study, and once told me that on a Saturday evening, after he had finished his sermon, he thought that he would rehearse it in full to the phonograph, and the next morning, before going to church, it occurred to him that he would like to know how his sermon was going to sound, and taking his seat at the table, for this purpose, ground it all out again. The effect, as he said, was most depressing, because the terrible
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machine brought out into full relief all the coughing and other disagreeable sounds that often accompany preaching.
I will make but one further extract from my old lecture: "During the coming fifty years, all branches of science are destined to make immense advances; observation, analysis, exploration, will bring to light multitudes of new facts in every department of nature. No one can foresee the vast improvements that will be made in the instruments which the phil- osophers will use in their experiments. Every month some mechanical difficulty is overcome, and he must be a foolish man who ventures at this date to pronounce any physical problem insolvable." It required no great amount of wisdom to say this, and now my lecture must go back to the drawer, where it has so long reposed, never to be disturbed again, until it is laid with its numerous associates on the funeral pyre. Before that comes, I will take one final look at the other manuscripts of the same sort which lie in the same drawer, and here is a list of them, as they happen to lie: "Improvement and Adornment of Cities;" "Laws of Periodic Rest;" "The World Moves;" "The Seen and the Unseen;" "Inventions of the Age;" "Analogy of Mechanics and Morals;" "Washington and Military Arma- ments;" "University Life;" "African Coloniza- tion;" "Female Education;" "The Problem of Evil;" "The Wars of Peru;" "Words Expressive of Motion in Space;" "The National Crisis;" "Habits of American Life;" "Tendencies of American Thoughts;" "Life in Boston Two Hundred Years Ago;" "Photographs of Europe, or, the Old World
MISCELLANIES. 20I
and the New;" "The Living Machine." The last lecture was delivered 350 times. I have no record of addresses, sermons, reviews, etc., which have appeared in print. So far as I know, they have "vanished into air — thin air," from whence most of them came.
Nearly all the material improvements in our domestic and social life, which characterize the age, have come into being within my memory. They are very familiar and a recapitulation of these changes in detail would be dull reading. A few personal reminiscences, however, may serve to give a little freshness to a very trite subject.
During my college days the easiest and' shortest way of getting from Boston to New Haven was to take the five o'clock morning stage-coach to Provi- dence, where we arrived about noonday, and were transferred to one of the primitive steamboats that plied on the Sound. I wish that one of these vessels could have been preserved, so that the people who have recently come upon the stage could see what, at the time, we supposed to be the grandest maritime structure that could be imagined. The next fore- noon we took another steamer back to New Haven, reaching the city toward night. The only alternative was a three days drive over a rough road, stopping over night at Worcester and Hartford. The journey is now accomplished in four hours.
I well remember the first box of the new matches that I bought, with a little bottle in the bottom, in which the match was to be dipped and suddenly withdrawn, whether it ignited or not, as it might hap-
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pen. I remember going to see the wonderful sight of a hall lighted with gas — admission twenty-five cents, and have read the petition of Mr. Horace Binney and other distinguished citizens of Philadel- phia, addressed to the city authorities, protesting against the introduction of gas, as it would be almost certain to breed pestilence, destroy vegetation, kill the birds, and prove in various other ways to be a nuisance. I can also recall the day when the first load of anthracite coal made its appearance, and how I carried home a few pieces to test them in the wal- nut fire and see if they could really be made to burn, and then how after a while the cheerful old wood fires went out and much of the poetry of life went out with them, or at least the material of poetry, for even Browning could not sing of grates and registers and furnaces and steam heaters as the old poets used to sing of the hearthstone and the household fires, and the cheerful evening blaze and the solemn curfew.
Many years have passed since I went to the Tre- mont House one morning to see a few strange pic- tures on metal plates, sent over here for exhibition from France by a Monsieur Daguerre, said to have been made by the sun itself, rather faint and indis- tinct but still indicating the dawn of a new and most wonderful art. The introduction of water into our houses reminds me of the cold mornings, when I had to go out with my birch basin and break the ice in a pond for water to wash with, and this when I was only ten years old ; not, I would say, in my own father's house, but at one of those awful boarding schools, to which even Dickens has hardly
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done full justice, for I could tell of horrors as great as those which he describes.
It was a day of rejoicing when the first India- rubber shoe appeared, clumsy and ugly enough, but true solid rubber, and not a second-hand coating as we have them now. All that we knew of India- rubber before that was the two cent bits that are bought at the stationers for the purpose of rubbing out pencil marks, which I presume accounts for the singular name given to this extraordinary substance.
The storing of ice for consumption in the summer was another interesting event of the same period. Mr. Tudor of Boston was the pioneer in the busi- ness of exporting ice to other countries, and having heard what I considered a very absurd story in con- nection with this, I once asked him if there was any foundation for it. He said that the facts were these : "One summer he had a contract to supply some of the West India Islands with ice, and on account of the mildness of the winter the supply had failed. One of his enterprising captains suggested the thought of laying siege to some accessible iceberg and transferring such portions of it as might be needed to his vessel. Mr. Tudor told him that if he saw fit to try the experiment he was welcome to do so. Accordingly the captain started off, and after sailing about for a while found a small berg, which he thought would serve his purpose, and having moored his vessel at the side, proceeded to transport the blocks of ice to the hold. Everything went on smoothly enough until one day when the iceberg shifted its position, having lost its equilibrium in consequence of the inroads by the ice cutters, lifting
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the vessel a little out of the water as it went over, but doing no great damage. After this the captain took his position a little further off, and transferred the remainder of the cargo in longboats. The adven- ture did not prove to be very profitable, as the ice turned out to be of little value.
Of the marvels which have come into being dur- ing the present generation, I have very little to say. Gunpowder, alas! has given way to dynamite; whale oil and tallow to electricity; trees are made into paper; horses superseded by dynamos — rail- ways run underground and up in the air; a city rivaling Athens in its outward splendor springs up in a day and vanishes by fire in a night ; Niagara is subsidized to furnish a new motive power; pins, and screws, and horseshoes, and files, and watches, and all sorts of fabrics manufacture themselves; clay is converted into a magical metal, impervious to rust, and light as wood ; coal-tar into perfumes and flavors and aniline colors; a little box on the table will talk and sing and give concerts and toll midnight chimes ; flash lights brighten the horizon scores of miles away; mean little torpedoes creep under the water and send noble frigates flying in the air; the most frightful operations in surgery are performed while the patient is in elysium — gigantic presses throw off the printed sheets as fast as the leaves fall in autumn ; conversation goes on without regard to distance in space ; sad and joyful messages are all the while traveling with lightning speed across the bottom of the ocean ; storms are predicted before their time; farming is done by machinery; columns of descending water are so directed as to
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scatter the hills and reveal the precious gold hidden there; suns and planets are analyzed; the photo- graph brings stars to light, never looked upon before ; the microscope shows us where our diseases come from ; the telescope brings us almost within hailing distance with the moon, and the end is not yet.
CHAPTER XVIII.
BISHOP BROOKS.
I HAD no intimate acquaintance with Phillips Brooks until the last six or eight years of his life, but during this period his house has been to me as a home, and the last words that I heard him say were these: "Now solemnly promise that you will never again go anywhere else to stay, when you come to Boston, as long as you live." I little thought that within a month from that time he would have found his home in another world. Many and many a time have I sat alone with him "in the dead waste and middle of the night," which he made full and bright with his instructive talk, telling of the strange things he had seen in foreign lands, his experiences in the remote regions of India, his visits to the various missionary stations of the English and American Churches — which, he said, had impressed him most deeply with the conviction of their importance and usefulness, discussing men and books and church affairs — rarely, if ever, allud- ing to himself personally, and never in any way indicating that he had any consciousness of being separate from his brethren, as a leader and com- mander of the people. It was necessary to know him somewhat intimately before he was inclined to give free vent to his thoughts, and for this reason
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some persons regarded him as reserved and uncon- genial. He was not a man whom it was easy to praise to his face, but I have more than once said to him that I did not think he deserved much credit for what he did, because it seemed to cost him no effort, and he could do spontaneously that which would cost another man much toil and study. He has told me, however, that he never liked to speak in public unless he had some time for preparation, and that while he wrote his sermons — if he did write them — as rapidly as his pen could move, he was accustomed to carry the sermon around with him in his mind and brood over it for several days. So far as the style of his composition was concerned, I think it was entirely spontaneous and took care of itself.
It was always a mystery how he could manage to accomplish the vast amount of work that he did with his pen, in view of the incessant interruptions to which he was subjected. He made it a rule to answer every letter that he received, let it come from whatever quarter it might, and let the subject be what it might — even all the begging letters which poured in upon him like a flood — not always favor- ably of course, if they had been there would not have been much left for him to live upon. An elderly Quaker in a Rhode Island village once showed me a letter he had received from Bishop Brooks, in reply to one that he had written asking for the bishop's views as to the future state, in which the writer was advised to do all that he could to prepare himself for the next stage of existence, instead of speculating about it. On the morning after his
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election to the bishopric a single mail brought more than a hundred letters, and I presume they were all answered in the course of three or four days. From morning till night, and sometimes late into the night, his house was thronged with visitors, and he never turned any one away, although at times he may have resorted to innocent devices to abbreviate the visits of those persons, who, when they are once seated, appear to find it very difficult to get up again, and sometimes continue until it seems to be impossible that they should ever leave.
Bishop Brooks was a rigid judge of men, and some- times expressed himself with great freedom in regard to certain persons whom he regarded as unreal and untrue, — defects of character for which he had little forbearance, — while he spoke with great respect of some of his brethren who had crossed his track, on the ground that he believed in their sincerity and could not deny them the same freedom of opinion that he claimed for himself. In the midst of the fiery battle that assailed him after his election in Massachusetts, he said to me one day: "After all, they have let me off pretty easily; as yet I have never been charged with breaking either the sixth ^ or seventh or the eighth commandments." He rarely alluded to the attacks made upon him in the Church papers, some of which were very insolent ; they "passed by him like the idle wind which he esteemed not." Although he was not a regularly trained ecclesiastical pugilist, he could hold his own in an extremity, and it is easy to conceive of him as talking to St. Peter very much as St. Paul did when he thought he was to be blamed.
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In all the details of life he was singularly scrupu- lous, and never allowed any duty to be slighted or deferred, however trifling it might be. Whatever could be done to-day must not be put off till the morrow. He never seemed to forget anything, and was at the beck and call of everybody for every sort of thing, and he was ready to do a great many things which he was not under the slightest obliga- tion to do. He was careful in regard to all the little attentions that people expected of him, and never inclined to transfer a disagreeable thing to others in order to save himself trouble. Some years ago, while he was abroad, I took his place in Trinity Church on a Christmas day, and just before the hour of service a message of Christmas greeting from the rector to his congregation was handed in, dated that morning in some remote Asiatic town. He told me afterward that it was a genuine thing; find- ing that he had the advantage of several hours on account of the difference of longitude, he was up early enough in the morning to send that message by the wires to Boston in season for the service, and it was accordingly read to the people before the sermon. This certainly was a novel event in the history of the world, and of course a few years ago it would have been simply unbelievable.
The extraordinary hold he had upon the com- munity was attributable to his personal qualities, as well as his intellectual face. He might have swayed the minds of men by his marvelous words, but he could never have got the hold he had upon their hearts if he had been nothing but a great preacher. His influence reached all classes and con-
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ditions of men, and was as strong outside the pale of the Church as it was within. It has been said by one of the great writers of the age that "theology is singularly tardy in its justice, and a fame locked up in theology is scarcely more hopeful than an estate locked up in chancery." This was not true in the case of Phillips Brooks. In a letter received from Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, dated March 31, 1893, referring to the text of the memorial sermon that I preached at Cambridge soon after the bishop's death, he writes: "In all the riches of the Scripture treasury you could hardly find another so appro- priate." This was the text, taken from the prophecy of Jeremiah : "All ye that are about him, bemoan him ; and all ye that know his name say, how is the strong staff broken, and the beautiful rod !" Dr. Holmes then goes on to say : *Tt was a very seri- ous office to which you felt yourself called, for you had to deal with a character which I believe is to stand as the ideal minister of the American gospel, which is the Old World gospel shaped — as all gospels are by their interpreters — by the influences of our American civilization. If now St. Gaudens will give us a statue worthy of the great preacher and noble man, our country type of a religious ideal will be completed for the ages which are to follow us." During the time of his great trial, when the ques- tion was pending whether such a man as Phillips Brooks was worthy to have a seat in the House of Bishops, I was frequently at his house and in some- what active correspondence with him, and although he must have had his anxious hours, there was some- thing wonderful in his calm serenity and faith
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through it all, and the noble persistency with which he always held me back from saying anything to refute the charges of unsoundness in the faith urged against him I have since learned to admire, although I was restive under it at the time. On the morning when the Massachusetts Convention were to elect their bishop, I said to him that there was little prospect of his having a majority of the votes, and he replied that he had no doubt about it, "but," he added, "if I am not elected this morning, I am ready to go into the Convention this afternoon and vote for the other candidate. Dr. Satterlee will be entirely satisfactory to me." It may be that it is a violation of confidence to mention this, but I am impelled to do so because it shows how free from anything like party prejudice the man was.
Phillips Brooks had a passion for city life, and liked to be surrounded by his fellow-creatures and see them in crowds, as he was accustomed to do, while he took no great interest in country life. This might have been because he had no experience of such a life in his earlier years, and still he must have been in very close sympathy with nature in all its varied aspects, as may be seen in his abundant illus- trations drawn from natural objects. When he was in the country he liked to see things in their natural state and did not care much for ornamental garden- ing. As we were sitting one day on the piazza of the old family mansion in North Andover, a profes- sional artist made his appearance and began to com- ment upon the rude condition of the grounds and suggest what an improvement it would be to remove this and that old tree and introduce flowers and
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shrubbery here and there, and it was amusing to see how resolutely the bishop resisted him step by step, declaring that he preferred the old stumps and the tangled bushes and everything else that was old about the place to any of these modern improve- ments, until the crushed man gave it up in despair and retired. Phillips Brooks was certainly very con- servative in this direction.*
It is as a preacher that Bishop Brooks holds the most conspicuous place. I shrink from the attempt to describe his preaching. It is as difficult to do this as it would be to reproduce in words the varied impressions made by the harmonies of a grand orchestra. I was once asked to write a chapter for a book and give "the bottom line" of his theology. I would as soon think of trying to fathom the bottom line of the ocean, or to analyze the highest strata of the atmosphere. He was not a man to be measured by any conventional rules. There is no other preacher with whom he can be compared. He copied no one, and no one could copy him to advantage. Few preachers have ever drawn upon themselves as persistently as he did ; and so some have said that he was not a learned man, because his sermons were so free from technicalities, and so sparing in citations from the Fathers and other ancient authors.
It is easy to say in what he was deficient. He dealt little in the logical analysis of doctrines and
* The remainder of this article is taken from a discourse delivered in Cambridge, soon after the death of Bishop Brooks, before the officers and students of Harvard University and the Episcopal Theo- logical School.
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took no special interest in taking intricate dogmas to pieces and then putting them skillfully together again. There was not much of formal argument in his discourse ; he could reason very ably when he had occasion to do so, but in his ordinary preaching he seemed to feel as if he had more important work to do; he did not think that the kingdom of heaven could be taken by logic. To all appearances, he was not so much bent upon communicating his own thoughts to others as he was in trying to kindle into a blaze the latent sparks of good which he believed existed in every man's heart.
He was not by any means what is popularly under- stood by the term an eloquent speaker. He had no arts of elocution, but rather trampled them under foot — his great desire seeming to be just to get his thoughts uttered and brought home to the apprehension of his hearers; for which, however, he hardly allowed sufificient time. He did attain that at which eloquence aims — the rapt attention of crowded congregations, the quick response of hearts, which could not help vibrating with his heart, what- ever key he struck — the rousing of dormant suscepti- bilities, drowsy resolutions, exhausted spiritual forces — unlocking doors in the soul which had long been closed and which the man did not wish to have opened, because of what might be revealed — con- vincing men of sins which they had never fairly apprehended before, and at the same time disclosing to them capacities for good which had never been quickened into action.
Some have thought that he was not, in the old- fashioned sense of the term, a searching preacher.
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However this may be, he certainly threw a flood of light into recesses of the human heart that are not often disclosed, bringing into terrible relief a multi- tude of errors and weaknesses and dishonesties and meannesses, of which little note is usually taken. The building up from the beginning of a holy, healthy, vigorous, well-balanced Christian character was the great end at which he aimed. He once said to me that he thought we had very defective views of what salvation means. With him, it meant the saving of the soul from sin, rather than deliverance from the punishment of sin ; and in order to the establishment of a wholesome Christian life, he relied more upon a sound spiritual regimen than he did upon the administration of medicine.
If Bishop Brooks did not dwell upon the terrors of the law as fervidly as Jonathan Edwards was accus- tomed to do, it was not because he shrank from declaring the whole counsel of God. No one could be bolder in denouncing the sins which are most likely to be lost sight of and condoned, the sins of which the persons he addressed were most likely to be guilty. Every sermon seemed to have for its object the awakening of some higher aspiration in man, accompanied by the necessary extinguishment of some debasing tendency. He may not have occupied himself as much as some others in the por- traiture of sin and its terrible results, it was his way to exterminate the noxious weeds by such careful culture and preoccupation of the soil as would leave no room for the weeds to grow.
He dealt almost exclusively with positive truths, and had little to say in the pulpit about heresies
BISHOP BROOKS. 21$
and biblical criticisms and disputed dogmas and ecclesiastical expedients. He went directly to the reason and conscience and hearts of those whom he addressed, revealed them to themselves, making them shudder at some things which were disclosed, and long to find some way of escape. It was thus that he preached Christ to them — not always per- haps in the accredited form, but he brought the Saviour close home to them, so that they could see Him and feel the touch of His healing hand and apprehend the power of His cross, in such a way as to lead them to take up the cross and follow Him. And all this time we could not help feeling that he was not discharging a new official duty, repeating something what had been prepared to order, but that he was uttering himself, giving you the spon- taneous impulses of his own being. How often I have heard him say, "I love to preach I " and no wonder that he did, the wonder with the listener was, where all these thoughts came from; for there was such a spontaneity in his utterance as to make it seem as if he couldn't help himself. There was a profuseness in the freedom with which he scattered his thoughts and threw off his illustrations which seemed to be almost wasteful.
It was often very difficult to guess what was com- ing when he gave out his text, but as he went on he would extract meanings from it and find suggestions in it of which no one else would have dreamed ; and yet, as he proceeded, the hearer felt as if these suggestions were natural and obvious enough. It hardly needs to be said that he presented few color- less thoughts. He was not specially rhetorical, his
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sermons were not overburdened with imagery — he never dragged in an image for the sake of exhibiting its beauty; but all that he said was iridescent, so that his discourse, although it might not be distinctly pictorial, left the vivid impression of a picture on the mind. His illustrations were drawn almost en- tirely from nature, rarely from history, hardly ever from science, and never from the old patent stock of figures which is such an unfailing resource to most of us. For the drapery of his thoughts he found his material in the ocean, with all its suggestions of majesty and might — in the sky, with its ever-shut- ting clouds and radiant sunsets — in the earth, with its hills and valleys and silver streams and nestling hamlets. Every sound in nature helped to give some musical tone to his thoughts, — the thunder and the storm, the sighing of the breeze, the singing of the birds in spring-time, the rustle of the corn-field, — all were to him God's symbols, God's language, and he used them all to give life and freshness to the mighty spiritual truths which he was called to proclaim.
His teachings revolved invariably about this as their center: "We are all God's children, and God cares for all the creatures that He ever made, and is waiting for those all to come to Him. He is ready to receive them whenever they are willing to return. He took upon Himself our nature and appeared in the form of a man, in order to show us what sort of a life we should lead, and He died upon a cross to secure our salvation." This was, in a word, the substance of his theology, and somehow he managed to make it equally impressive whether he
BISHOP BROOKS. 21/
was addressing the rudest or the most cultivated audience, whether he was preaching to the scholarly- elect in Harvard or to the Sunday night grimy crowds in some public hall. He never preached a grander sermon than one that he delivered in Boston years ago to a great mass of men and women, gathered from the slums and all the dreariest parts of the city, to hear what he had to tell them about God. They must have felt, for once in their lives, that there was someone in the universe who cared for them.
If Bishop Brooks had been called upon to define in a word the basis of his belief, he might have said, "I believe that the life is the light of men, that the final argument for Christianity is to be found in the witness of our spirits to God's Spirit, the conformity of the Gospel to our spiritual needs — our best and highest instincts; and when we come to feel that we cannot live to any good purpose except as we live in Christ, that is enough — then we can say 'One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see; the light has come to me, and it could have come only from a divine, superhuman source.' "
From the beginning, Phillips Brooks has stood as the most conspicuous leader of what may properly enough be called the experimental school of thought — in other words, of a religion founded upon experi- ence. He was an apostle of light and love and liberty, and it was his great aim to bring men into such actual sympathy with Christ as to make it impossible that they should ever be disturbed by any open or covert attacks of infidelity, any ques- tionings of biblical criticism, or any false assump-
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tions on the part of the proposed defenders of the faith. He wished that men should know the truth by experiencing the truth, which, as I have already said, is what is meant by experimental religion ; and that is the kind of religion which gets the strongest hold upon the soul, and lifts it most effectually out of the reach of heresy and unbelief.
The general impression left upon the mind by his preaching was somewhat peculiar. There is a style of preaching, with which we were once very familiar, that seemed as it were to have the soil burned over; it scorched the sinner, very possibly to his advantage, just as the rank grass and stubble in a field must be destroyed by fire before the ground is fit to be plowed and sown. This, however, was not his special mission. He did not wring the soul, as our severer preachers were wont to do ; with him " the consuming fire," of which we read as one of the attributes of God, was the fire that burned out the dross, purified the soul, and consumed the evil that dwelt there. The feeling that impressed itself upon the mind most forcibly, as we heard him preach, was something like this : *' What a great thing it is to exist ! What a grand thing existence may be made ! What capacities for good I must have which have never been developed ! How much I must have lost ! I never knew before how much I owe to God. I never felt before how much Jesus has done for me. Is it too late for me to turn? The preachers say that God is waiting for me. 1 will arise and go to my Father, and tell Him I have sinned and ask Him to take me home." Thousands upon thousands have felt all this, and it is only in
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eternity that we shall know what the harvest is. And he keeps on preaching in this fashion, now that his body sleeps in silence, and multitudes of people find in his sermons the food that nourishes them. They do not go to these sermons for the solution of critical difficulties, or the exposition of controverted doctrines, or for information in Jewish history ; but they go to be fed, to be built up in faith and love and devotion and holiness, to find out what the mean things are that are to be avoided, and what the grand things are which are to be sought after — they go there for their daily bread.
Bishop Brooks was not in any sense a partisan. He could see the good in every system of theology, if there was any good there, and also the bad, if there happened to be anything bad there. It would have been impossible for him to move within narrow lines — in a road so narrow as not to allow room enough to turn aside in order to allow one to pass who happened to be going the other way. In his view the value of truth was to be estimated by what it could do for man. The nature of his mind was such as led him to look upon forms and institutions with reference to the spiritual work which they were likely to accomplish. He loved the Church because it was Christ's great instrument for the elevation of humanity. He loved the Episcopal Church because of its breadth and comprehensiveness, because of its sedate and solemn services, because of its simple and efficient discipline, because it rests *' upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone." His views of the Christian ministry were, in the main,
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those which prevailed in the earlier days of the Anglican communion, and also, for the most part, in the earlier days of the American Episcopate. He believed in the Episcopal office, or he would never have consented to assume the vows of the Episco- pate ; he was too honest a man for that. It does not follow that he believed in it on the ground which some of his brethren regard as indispensable to its existence. It is hardly conceivable that a mind like his could have been very much absorbed in certain matters of ritual and ceremonial which have such a singular interest to minds differently constituted.
This great man had all the tenderness of a child ; there was no personal sacrifice that he was not ready to make, no humblest office that he was not willing to discharge whenever he saw that his services were needed. I would want no gentler hand in sickness, and no softer voice to soothe me in the hour of sor- row. His heart and his hand and his house were open to all, and into how many a humble dwelling he brought light and comfort and peace ! The world at large knew little of his work among the poor and solitary. He has kindled the fire on many a cold hearthstone, lighted the lamp in many a darkened dwelling, clothed many a poor shivering child, and poured oil and wine into many a bleeding soul. The poor man cried when he heard that Phillips Brooks had gone, and the desolate widow felt that there was nothing left for her but God.
In speaking more directly of his religious charac- ter, I am reminded that he would probably say there is no such thing as separating one's Christian life
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from the rest of his life ; which is, in a certain sense, undoubtedly true. At the same time he would allow that there are certain qualities in our lives which are more distinctly religious than others.
He was a very transparent man, and you could see through him without seeing anything to offend your eye. As we were once conversing con- fidentially in his study, the case of one of our clergy was alluded to who had exposed himself to public censure, when, after a momentary pause, he said with a great deal of solemnity, " How wretched I should be if I felt that I was carrying about with me any secret which I would not be willing that all the world should know ! " The man who could say that must have always walked very close to God. I think that his singular optimism and habitual cheerfulness may be attributed in a great measure to his having had from the beginning but little actual experience of sin.
No one can tell what precise form his personal relation to God assumes, but it is not probable that he was ever called to undergo any of those severe ordeals and terrible agonies of conscience which some endure. It would rather seem as if he had left himself in God's hands, without much concern as to his own personal salvation, and given his thoughts almost entirely to the salvation of others. His devotion must have been instinctive, rather than formal ; he needed no outward accessories in order to find his way to God. There was not a tinge of asceticism in his nature ; he was simply *' temperate in all things," enjoying to the full all the good things that God had provided for him in this world,
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but never allowing anything to come between him and the better things hereafter. His career was one of unbroken prosperity from the first, rising steadily higher and higher all the time — not the sort of career that one might think would be favor- able to the cultivation of some of the Christian graces ; and yet these graces grew and flourished in spite of all — the grace of humility, and unselfish- ness, and unworldliness, and restfulness.
How many souls he has comforted ! How many wandering sheep he has brought back to the fold ! How many perplexities he has relieved ! How many souls he has lifted up into a purer and serener atmosphere, and rescued from the contaminations of the world and the flesh ! How many he must have found waiting for him in Paradise !
And now his last word has been spoken, and he sleeps in silence. Sleeps in silence, so far as our apprehension goes, but he was never so living as he is now. Such a man could not die. He has only gone to some grander work in a higher sphere — that is all.
** Death came unheralded, but it was well ; For so thy Saviour bore Kind witness thou wast meet at once to dwell On His eternal shore ; All warning spared, For none He gives whose hearts are for prompt change prepared."
THE END.
INDEX.
Advantages and disadvantages of being educated in another com- munion, 31 Alexander, Dr. Archibald, 24 Alexander, Professor Addison, 29 Altars, Stone, in Ohio, 130 Anarchy, Danger of, 150 Ancient and Honorable Artillery
Company, 105 Architecture, Church, in 1836, 40 Assistant to Bishop Eastburn, 97 Atkinson, Bishop, 134 iVtmosphere of Connecticut, Con- servative, 108 Atwater, Professor Lyman H., 13 Authority, The ground of, 58
Bedell, Dr., 35 Bishops, Multiplication of, 45 Boston, Life in, 66 ; Return to, 93 Bristed, Rev. John, 181 Bristol, Prayer meetings in, 183 Brooks, Bishop, 206 ; Amount of work accomplished by, 207 ; As a preacher, 212 ; Election of, 211 ; Memorial discourse, 216 ; Per- sonal characteristics of, 209, 210, 211 Brotherhoods, 48 Brownell, Bishop, 109 Burgess, Rev. Dr. George, no Bushnell, Dr. Horace, 116 ; Char- acteristics of, 118 ; Versatility of, 117 Butler, Dr. Clement M. , and Bishop Eastburn, 97
Cambridge, Experience in, i6g Ceremonial, Changes in, 41
Change of tone in the Church, 53
Chapman, Rev. Dr. George T., 176
Chase, Bishop, 173 ; Character- istics of, 174
Childhood, Impressions of, 3
Christ Church, Hartford, Rector of, 120 ; Cradle of bishops, 120
Christian Unity, Committee on, 192
Church, Destiny of the, 64 ; In Philadelphia, party lines in, 78
Church of the Advent, Boston. loi; Bishop Eastburn's visit to, lOl
Clapp, John Milton, 12
Clark, Rev. Dr. George H., 143
Clark, Rev. Dr. Samuel A., 129 ; Characteristics of, 186 ; Humor and piety of, 185
Clergy, Social Relations and re- strictions of, in Philadelphia, 77
Clerical contemporaries in Phila- delphia, 80
Colenso, Bishop, 155
College life, 11
Conference, First Pan-Anglican,
153 .
Committee on Restoration of Chris- tian Unity, 192
Confessional in our Church, 45
Connecticut, Four years in, 108
Contemporaries, Clerical, in Phila- delphia, 80
Cradle of bishops, 120
Crises, Periodical, 150
Croswell, Rev. Dr. William, 74, 93
Daguerreotypes, First, 202 Davis, Bishop, 133
223
224
INDEX.
Day, President Jeremiah, 14 De Lancey, Bishop, 133 Destiny of the Church, 64 Diction, Changes in, 43 Diocese, Best mode of handling a,
123 Dioceses, Multiplication of, 45 Dives and the cautious divine, 19 Doctrines, Fundamental, unim- paired, 53 Duchachet, Rev. Dr., 83
Early days, i
Eastburn, Bishop, 97 ; Anecdotes of, 98, 99, 100 ; As a preacher, 102 ; Characteristics of, 99
Election to Bishopric of Rhode Island, 120
Episcopal Charitable Society, Ser- mon before, 105
Episcopal Church, in Princeton, 30; Rapid advance of, 32 ; Sixty years ago, 32
Evangelical party, 57
Exchange of prisoners, 142, 148
Experience abroad, 160
Fasting Communion, 44 Fitch, Dr., 18 Forbes, Rev. Dr., 90 Fourth of July oration in Provi- dence, 194 Fulham, Purple dinner at, 164
Gardiner, Dr., 34
General Convention in St. An- drew's, Philadelphia, 89 ; at Richmond, 124, 135
General Councils, Authority of, 156
Generations, Passing away of, 137
Golconda, Fate of the, 5
Goodrich, Professor, 17
Gray, Bishop, 155, 157
Grace Church, Boston, 73
Griswold, Bishop, 66, 67 ; Char- acteristics of, 73 ; Death of, 73 ; Habits in travel, 69 ; Sharpness in rebuke, 70
Ground of authority, 58
Guilds and societies, 50, 51
Hallam, Rev. Dr., 177
Hare, Rev. Professor, 30
Hartford, Accepts a call to, 108 ; Episcopal Church in, no
Hawks, Dr., 35 ; Arraignment and defense of, 91
Highlands, Service in Scotch, 171
Hodge, Dr. Charles, 28
Hopkins, Bishop, 127 ; at Pan- Anglican Conference, 154, 156
House of Bishops, 124
Interview with old Congregational
minister, 62 Inventions, Curious, 145 Ives, Bishop, Sermon at General
Convention, 90
Johns, Bishop, 133
Junior class ball in 1830, 14
Kemper, Bishop, 32, 133 Kenyon College, 173 King's Chapel of Boston, 74 Kingsley, Professor, 17 Kip, Bishop, 134 ; College life of, 14
Lafayette, Visit to, in 1823, 7
Lay, Bishop, 137
Lecture on " The next fifty years,"
Extracts from, 197 Lectures, Titles of, 200 Lee, Bishop Alfred, 134 Lee, Bishop H. W., 134, 175 Lee, General, Letter of, 139 Lincoln, President, 140 ; Conver- sations with, 141, 142, 143 Literature of the Church, 37 Littlejohn, Rev. Dr., 124 Langley, Archbishop, 153, 154
Mansel, Dean, 167
Massachusetts Diocesan Conven- tion, 1836, 66
Matches, First, 201
Material Improvements, 201
Mcllvaine, Bishop, 128 ; Chaplain at West Point, 129 ; Writings of, 129
Meade, Bishop, 125
INDEX.
225
Memorial Sermon, Bishop Brooks', 210, 212
Miller, Dr. Samuel, 25
Minister, Interview with old Con- gregational, 62
Mission Priests, 48
Monroe, President, Reception of, 7
Morton, Rev. Dr., 80
Newton, Dr. Richard, 81
Next fifty years, Lecture on, 195
Odenheimer, Bishop, 82
Olmstead, Professor, 17
Otey, Bishop, 133
Outward aspect of the Church,
Changes in, 40 Oxford, Experience in, 170 Oxford Movement, Discussion of,
90
Pan-Anglican Conference, First,
153 Parker, Peter, 13 Parochial Missions, 49 Parties, Extinction of old, 56 Pastoral Letter, Committee on, in
1859. 135 Pastoral relation. Length of, 46 Philadelphia, Removal to, 77 ;
Prayer meetings in, 79 Polk, Bishop, 133 ; Death of,
149 Porter, Noah, ii Potter, Bishop Alonzo, Election of,
87 ; Characteristics of, 88 Potter, Bishop Horatio, 134 Prayer Meetings, 79 ; in Bristol,
183 Princeton, Seminary life in, 20 ;
Teaching, 21 Private confession, 45 Puritanism, Reaction from, 32 Purple dinner at Fulham, 164 Purpose of biography, i
Quahog shell distinction in grave- yard, 148 Quiet days, 49
Ramsay, Dean, 171
Reaction from Puritanism, 32 Removal to Rhode Island, I20 ;
To Philadelphia, 77 Retreats, 49 Reunion of bishops after the War,
136 Richmond, Rev. James Cook, 178 ;
Extract from sermon of, 180 Roman Catholic bishop of Boston,
190 Rome, Secessions of clergy to, 122 Routine of clerical life, Changes
in, 51
Salvation, Broader view of, 61 Sanitary commission, 138 ; Dis- tinguished members of, 138 Schliemann, Dr., at Lambeth
Palace, 165 Seminary life in Princeton, 20 Sermon in Hyde Park, London,
160 Sersdces, Changes in, 41, 43 Shaw, Rev. Samuel B., 66 Silliman, Professor, 16 Sisterhoods, 48 Smith, Bishop, 134 Society for Propagation of the
Gospel, Sermon before, 160
Sparrow, Dr., on Bunker Hill, 106
St. Andrew's Church, Philadelphia,
30, 40 ; General convention in,
89 ; Prayer meetings in, 79 ;
Rector of, 77
St. George's Church, New York,
60 ; Societies in, 60 St. Lawrence Church, London, 158 St. Paul's Church, Boston, 75 St. Stephen's Church, Providence,
71
Statistics of diocese of Massa- chusetts, 1836, 66; 1894, 66 Stone, Dr. John S., 75, 94 Style of preaching. Changes in, 54 Sumner, Charles, 197 Sunday in the olden time, 7 Sunday school. The ancient, 9 Sunday services at St. Andrew's,
Philadelphia, 80 Synod of Dort and Dr. Samuel Miller, 27
226
INDEX.
Tait, Bishop, 165 Text-books at Princeton, 22 Thirl wall, Bishop, 157 Thompson, Archbishop, 166 Titles of lectures, 200 Town, The old maritime, 5 Tribute, Poetical, to Dr. Wash- burn, 115 Trinity Church, Boston, 75, 97 Tyng, Dr., 68, 70, 129 ; Anecdotes of, 84, 85, 87
Vinton, Dr. Alexander H. , 94 ;
Characteristics of, 95, 96 Vows, Perpetual, 49
Wain Wright, Dr., 75 War, The late, 138 War hospital on Narragansett Bay, 147
Washburn, Dr. E. A., m ; Re- fused ordination by Bishop Eastburn, 112 ; Preaching of, 114 : Poetical tribute to, 115
Wealth, Dangers of, 150
Webster, Daniel, 36
Wells, Rev. E. M. P., 93
Whitehouse, Bishop, 155
Whitfield and Cornelius Winter, i
Whittingham, Bishop, 130 ; Char- acteristics of, 131
Wilberforce, Bishop, 157, 163 ; Private traits of, 167, 168
Wilmer, Bishop, 187 ; Reads burial service over himself, 188
Winchester Cathedral, Preaches in, 162
Woonsocket, 222
Yale College in 1827, 11
York, Missionary meeting in, 169
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