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WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

BOOKS BY WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE, D.D.

PuBUSHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

The Ideal of Jesus. 8vo net $1.50

Sixty Years with the Bible, izmo, . . . net $ .30

The Christian Doctrine of God. (International
Theological Library.) Cr. 8vo, . ... net $2.50

The Use of the Scriptures in Theology, izmo, net $i.oo

A Study of Christian Missions, izmo, . . net $ .50

Can I Believe in God the Father? izmo, . net $1.00

What Shall We Think of Christianity ? izmo, net $1.00

An Outline of Christian Theoloey. Cr. 8vo, nst $3.50

Tl^cZO-c^^ Ti • C^^kVlu .

WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

A BIOGRAPHY

WITH ADDITIONAL SKETCHES BY HIS FRIENDS
AND COLLEAGUES

NEW YORK

CHARLES SGRIBNER'S SONS

1916

Published August, 1916

r--r'

PREFACE

One who was quietly, yet widely, known as preacher,
teacher and author, passed lately into the unseen world.

His books were widely read, not only by students and
masters in theology, but by many other thoughtful men and
women, for whom he had bridged the chasm between the
past and the present, and had made the Christian faith pos-
sible in a time of doubt and transition.

The truth and charm of his first well-known work, An
Outline of Christian Theology, was at once recognized, and
each succeeding book met a hearty welcome from eager
readers.

These books, quiet and clear in style, were evidently
the utterances of one intent on his message and conveying
it in the most direct and simple way; yet they seemed some-
how alive with the personality of the writer, and many read-
ers felt his magnetism so strongly that they wished to draw
nearer to the man himself. From every direction letters
expressive of keen interest and deep gratitude came to him
from persons who knew only his work and his name.

Before he began to write books he had been a minister
of the gospel, a preacher of singular earnestness and power.
Later, he had been a teacher of theology. As a preacher he
had the art of catching the attention of his auditors at once
and of holding it. He saw his congregation as individuals,
and the hstener often felt as if he were being directly ad-
dressed. Something of this is apparent in his books, and
without any effort to do so he established a personal rela-
tion with his readers. His beautiful spirit appeared in all

G92554

vi PREFACE

that he wrote and awakened a warm response in many hearts.
Some who never saw his face felt when he passed away that
they had lost a personal friend.

Doctor Clarke was a quiet, home-loving man. He was
never strong, and the most of his energy went into his work.
His life was uneventful, and with the exception of seven
years in Canada it was spent in country places. He was
deeply interested in public affairs, and his opinions on social
and political questions were clear and decided and freely
expressed. He was in s>Tnpathy with all efforts for the re-
moval of unjust and injurious conditions, and worked through-
out his life for the uplifting of humanity, yet he was never
prominent as the exponent of any movement or cause. In
his case no materials existed for a stirring or picturesque
biography. From first to last he kept the even tenor of his
way, lo\ing the work to which he was called, and doing it
easily and with joy.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Ancestry and Early Life i

In Keene 24

Newton Center 33

In Canada 48

The Years at Hamilton 62

The Last Day 99

Personal Characteristics loi

Personal Recollections 129

reverend william o. stearns.

The Story of a Friendship 136

professor j. w. a. stewart, d.d.

William Newton Clarke 157

reverend edward judson, d.d.

An Appreciation 170

reverend henry h. peabody, d.d.

The "Theology" of William Newton Clarke .... 185
professor william adams brown, d.d.

An American Theologian 201

professor william adams brown, d.d.

vii

viii CONTENTS

FAOE

In the Classroom ..." 211

professor f. a. starratt.
professor john benjamin anderson,
reverend daniel hunt clare,
reverend troward h. m.\rsh.\ll.

As Theologl\.n 228

professor george cross, d.d.

Professor Clarke at Yale 257

professor douglas c. macintosh, d.d,

Index 261

ILLUSTRATIONS

William Newton Clarke Frontispiece

Cazenovia Seminary in 1846 Facing Page 12

WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE

The writer of this biography of William Newton Clarke
consented, with hesitation and dread, to undertake a difficult
task, for the reason that no one else possessed the intimate
knowledge requisite for a true account of that gentle and
secluded Ufe. This record shows the outward environment
and sequence of events. Its account runs parallel with the
story of his inner experiences and theological transitions told
by himself in Sixty Years with the Bible, a book written, as
he says, "in the single character of a student, lover, and user
of the Bible," and in which no names of places and persons
are given.

It seems best, at the outset, to correct a misstatement
which has been widely published, to the effect that Clarke
was of Scotch origin and came in his youth from Edinburgh
to the United States. Scotland has given many theologians
to the world, but Clarke was not one of them. He was as
purely an American as it is possible to be. All of his hereditary
lines run back into the early colonial period of New England.
His ancestors were devout and heroic men of English birth,
who expatriated themselves soon after Laud, with the approval
of Charles I, began his efforts to turn back the Church of
England toward the fold of Rome.

These men, severally, arrived at Massachusetts Bay be-
fore Winthrop, with him, or a few years later. None of them
were Separatists at first, but all became such. Colonial rec-

2 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

ords show something of their part in the making of New
England.

Clarke was born in a typical American village, there he
spent his childhood and youth, and there he received that most
important part of his education which determined his career.

He took his collegiate course and studied theology in the
village of Hamilton, New York, and thither he returned in his
full maturity to give his ripest work to the church and the
theological seminary until the end of his life.

Whoever would understand American life as it was seventy
years ago must know the American village of that time, which
was the active centre of those religious and intellectual forces
that shaped the lives of all and developed men and women
who became leaders in the communities where they dwelt.

The best element in the life of cities was largely recruited
from country places. The foreign element in even the older
cities as yet was small. The majority of householders in the
United States were tillers of the soil who lived independently
upon their own land. For each farming community the cen-
tre of interest and of social life was the \'illage, where the
churchgoers met together and the voters held their town
meetings. The village began its existence, usually, with a
church or a schoolhouse, to which all other good and neces-
sary things were gradually added. Here and there in some
one of the larger villages of a group of townships might be
found an academy or a good denominational school, where
boys could be fitted for college and any who desired it had
opportunity to gain a higher education than the common
schools provided.

The American village was the creation of free, intelligent
men and women whose needs and ideals it expressed. Village
and villager thus in the New World became honorable words,
knowing nothing of villeinage.

In Oldto-mi Folks Mrs. Stowe has depicted the life of a
small New England village and has analyzed and explained

ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 3

conditions as they were in such places toward the end of the
eighteenth century and early in the nineteenth. In the preface
she says :

"My object is to interpret to the world the New England
life and character in that particular time of its history which
may be called the seminal period. I would endeavor to show
you New England in its seed-bed before the hot suns of mod-
em progress had developed its sprouting germs into the great
trees of to-day.

"New England has been to these United States what the
Dorian hive was to Greece. It has always been a capital coun-
try to emigrate from, and North, South, East, and West have
been populated largely from New England, so that the seed-
bed of New England is the seed-bed of this great republic
and of all that is likely to come of it."

At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was a
strong impulse of migration westward. Astute men organ-
ized companies and obtained large grants of land which they
sold to emigrants from New England. There was much
rivalry among these companies and all had agents competing
keenly for settlers to buy and occupy their lands. Thus the
interior portions of New York and Pennsylvania were swiftly
changed from vast wildernesses to prosperous farming regions
dotted with villages.

The foundations of the village of Hamilton, New York,
were laid in faith and prayer. The pioneers of the place were
Samuel Payne and his wife, who came from New England in
1794, and his brother, Elisha Payne, who arrived with his
family a year later. They had the distinct purpose of found-
ing a village.

When Samuel Payne had felled the first tree upon the hill-
side, in the primeval forest of which his farm was a part, he
knelt and consecrated himself and his estate to God. In
1827 he and his wife "gave their farm of one hundred and
twenty-three acres to the Baptist Education Society to locate

4 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

there their theological institution. The whole was made over
to the society by a warranty deed, they reserving to them-
selves the use of one-half of the farm during their lives."

No one knows the precise point where the first tree was
felled, but it was within certain narrow limits near the col-
lege building first erected, which, restored and beautified, is
still in use. Upon this historic spot a sun-dial, suitably in-
scribed, was placed by the graduating class of Colgate Uni-
versity in 191 2, as a memorial to Samuel Payne and his wife,
of whom it was said: "Her kindness to students in sickness
or in need gave her the title of 'The Students' Mother.' "

No less devout, far-seeing, and steadfast were WUliam
Colgate and his wife, who were interested from its beginning
in the theological school and in the college which was its
necessary and inevitable outgrowth. Mr. James B. Colgate,
their son, late in his life, in speaking of his parents, said that
at the morning devotions of the family, led either by the
father or the mother, there were always words of prayer for
the school of sacred learning at Hamilton.

Elisha Payne, true to the traditions of his forefathers,
after building his own log dwelling, proceeded next to build
a schoolhouse. This schoolhouse was, no doubt, used also for
religious meetings, as the church was not built until 1810.

Similar in spirit is the history of many an American vil-
lage, founded by descendants of the early colonists of New
England.

For a clear understanding of Clarke's ancestral heritage,
of those family traditions and innate gifts that made him the
man he was, one must revert to early colonial history in
New England.

In the nineteenth century every educated man was truly
"the heir of all the ages," but this reconciling teacher, who
seemed gifted with a sympathetic comprehension of every
one's point of view, was in an especial manner the heir of the

ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 5

seventeenth century which witnessed the revolution in Eng-
land, the colonization of New England, and the fighting over
again upon new territory of battle after battle for complete
liberty of thought and speech. Perhaps he owed his catho-
licity to those diverse and antagonistic ancestors, whose theo-
logical and political differences, transmitted and modified from
generation to generation, were harmonized in him.

North Brookfield, a town of Madison County, in the State
of New York, received its earliest colonists from New Eng-
land in the last decade of the eighteenth century. Among
the first settlers was Absalom Miner, a descendant of Thomas
]\Iiner, who came from England with Winthrop on the Ara-
bella in 1630. Thomas Miner was the son of Clement Miner,
of Chew Magna, Somerset, head of the elder branch of a fam-
ily, which had held an honorable place among the gentry
of England for well toward three hundred years. Thomas
Miner was associated with John Winthrop, Jr., in his early
colonizing enterprises, and was a delegate to the general court
from each of the several places in which he resided. He
finally settled at Stonington, Connecticut, being one of the
four original colonists of that place. Much that is interesting
is known of Thomas Miner, and a large number of persons
useful and honored in their place and time traced their an-
cestry to him. Among them the names most widely known
are Adoniram Judson and Ulysses S. Grant.

Somewhat later the Clarke family, who were also of good
English lineage, came from Rhode Island to North Brook-
field. They were descended from Jeremiah Clarke, one of the
nine heads of famihes who founded Newport and helped to
create Rhode Island, the first really free commonwealth in
the New World. Jeremiah Clarke was the second president
of "Rhode Island Plantations" under the charter of 1644,
which had been obtained by Roger Williams. The Clarke
and the Miner famiUes were of "the Baptist faith and order."

6 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

They were closely associated in all afTairs of church and com-
munity, and there were three marriages between sons and
daughters of Seth Miner and John Clarke.

The first alliance was that of William Clarke and Urania
Miner, who were married March 21, 1830, at the homestead
in Eaton, near Hamilton, to which the Miner family had re-
moved a few years earlier.

William Clarke was a young man of recognized ability.
He had a clear, comprehensive mind and an unusual degree of
tact and practical wisdom. When, after a period of inner
conflict, he ceased to resist his call to preach, he wished to fit
himself for his work by the best education that he could gain.
A school of theology had recently been founded at Hamilton,
only a few miles distant. His soul thirsted to drink at that
fountain, but his father, like many another good man of his
day, held an old-fashioned prejudice against a "man-made
ministry," and there were other obstacles in his way. So he
went on tilling the soil, "improving his gift" meanwhile by
preaching as he had opportunity and educating himself as
best he could by independent study. He had a good command
of English and a natural ease of expression, which under the
influence of religious feeling became glowing eloquence. His
unfailing good sense and kindly, cheerful nature endeared
him to the neighbors who had known him all his life, and when
the pastorate of the church in North Brookfield became
vacant he was called to fill it. This call was conveyed in a
letter of wonderful quahty which reads like a passage from
John Woolman. He accepted the call with solemn joy.

As a spiritual leader in the conamunity of which he and
his wife were a part, and which they well understood, he was
useful and happy.

When a few years later a call to the church in Cazenovia
came to this quiet, unambitious servant of God, he hesitated,
with the self-distrust of a modest man. He and his wife were
fully content with their lot and would have chosen to spend

ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 7

their days in the place which had always been dear to them.
Yet an inner monition forbade him to refuse this leading of
Providence, as he felt it to be.

North Brookfield was a bit of New England, transplanted,
but Cazenovia was different in its origin. The village hbrary
of Cazenovia is housed in an old residence on Albany Street.
Its parlor is now the distributing-room of the library. There,
above the mantel, hangs a painting that is an interesting re-
minder of the history of the town. It is a copy of an original
portrait of Theophilus Cazenove (Theophile de Cazenove),
which was presented by his grandson, Raoul de Cazenove, of
Lyons. It shows a young man of aristocratic appearance
with a pleasing face, fair complexion, light-brown hair in a
queue, clad in a suit of pale-blue velvet. He does not look
like a pioneer or explorer, nor was he such. He was, in his
maturer years, the first agent in this country of the Holland
Land Company. John Lincklaen (Jan van Lincklaen) was
the explorer of the region and the founder of Cazenovia. He
was bom in Amsterdam in 1768, received his early education
in Switzerland, entered the Dutch navy and attained the rank
of lieutenant. In 1792 he emigrated to America. He was em-
ployed by the Holland Land Company, explored and sur-
veyed some of their lands and was made their agent upon
the retirement of Theophilus Cazenove, who became pos-
sessed of a tract of land bordering upon the lake, and in
honor of whom the town was named.

A dignified colonial mansion was built in 1807-8 by John
Lincklaen upon the upland beyond the foot of the lake, which
facing northward, commands a fine view of the lake in its
picturesque setting of varied shoreland. In the autumn of
1808 this new dwelling was occupied by the owner, his wife
and their adopted son, the youngest brother of Mrs. Linck-
laen, then about fifteen years of age, Jonathan Denise Led-
yard, known in later years as General Ledyard. His son,
Ledyard Lincklaen, Esq., a man of studious and literary

8 WELLLVM NEWTOX CLARKE

tastes, who made valuable contributions to knowledge of
the geology of the region, inherited the name and the abode
of John Lincklaen, which has always been the home of the
daughter of Ledyard Lincklaen, Mrs. Charles S. Fairchild.
This house of fine traditions has been kept externally as it
was at first and, with its simple, restful lines, is one of the
best examples now remaining of the colonial domestic archi-
tecture of the period to which it belongs.

John Lincklaen was a broad-minded, far-seeing, practical
man and he began at once to make the site he had selected
for a settlement habitable and attractive. "He laid out
roads, built bridges, mills, and warehouses," and thus averted
the chief privations and hardships of pioneer Hfe. Also, he
offered land to young householders upon Hberal terms. Some
Dutch names appear in the list of early settlers, although the
larger number are of those familiar in the colonial annals of
New England. The settlement began with this great advan-
tage, that no one class or sect brought thither its own nar-
rowness in sufficient strength to stamp its character upon the
place.

The site of the village was well chosen. The beautiful
lake of which the Lidian name is Owahgena, forms its west-
em boundary.

Lake Avenue intersects Albany Street, and running north-
ward affords views of the lake along its entire length. Parallel,
eastward, is Sullivan Street, now a place of pleasant, mod-
ern houses. Still farther east is Lincklaen Street, with some-
thing of an old-time air and a charm of its own, which like
the others slowly ascends from Albany Street, and reaches
the open country at the summit of the hill to surprise the
newcomer with a fine and extended outlook northward and
eastward.

The water of the lake, welling up from many springs, is
clear and pure. Its outlet is a small stream which meets
another stream near by. Together they become Chittenango

ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 9

Creek, which flows rapidly down through a picturesque valley
and makes a leap of a hundred and thirty-six feet from its
rocky bed, through a gateway of cliffs, into the verdurous
gorge below. Not even in the White Mountains is there a
more charming cascade than Chittenango Falls.

The region around Cazenovia has a varied and singular
attractiveness which every lover of nature feels but cannot
easily define, and it is of unusual geological interest. Perry-
ville Falls, not far away, on another stream now greatly dev-
astated by the blasting away of limestone rocks filled with
ancient marine fossils, was formerly very like Trenton Falls,
having a similar approach along a natural gallery of rock,
though on a smaller scale. Delphi Falls, a few miles west-
ward, with its yellow-brown rocks, golden in the sun, has a
unique beauty.

William Clarke removed to Cazenovia in the summer of
1835 3.nd was cordially welcomed by the church, which had
among its leaders some of the most truly excellent men and
women in the village and upon the farms outside. Among
these were the Litchfields, the Mitchells, the Beckwiths, and
the Newtons.

The power of the new pastor as a preacher, his every-day
goodness and friendliness, won for him the respect and good-
will of the entire community without regard to denomina-
tional differences, which were then much emphasized. His
"wisdom in counsel" came to be highly valued, and his aid
was often sought in settling differences which arose in neigh-
boring churches.

The eldest child had died in North Brookfield. The sec-
ond, Mary Eleanor, was born in 1839, and the third, William
Newton in 1841 in the parsonage on Nelson Street. The sec-
ond daughter, Delia Maria, was born in 1843 '^^ the new par-
sonage on Lincklaen Street, which was almost under the
shadow of the seminary, and very near the Baptist church.

The minister's salary was small and irregularly paid.

lo WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

There were steadfast friends and generous givers in the
church, but the majority had inherited the idea, which they
were only slowly outgrowing, that a minister's service should
be freely given without requital. The early preachers of the
denomination, like Pardon Tillinghast, an ancestor of Wil-
liam Clarke, the early pastor of the First Baptist Church of
Providence, Rhode Island, revolting against a state church
and a tithe system, had preached the Word like the early
apostles, without money and without price, and most of
them, like Paul, had lived by the labor of their own hands.
A "hireling ministry" was as abhorrent to the early Baptists
as to the Quakers.

When there were three children to be cared for these par-
ents felt the pinch of narrow means. Fortunately, both were
good economists, and Mrs. Clarke's excellent early training
stood her in good stead. The small income was made to suf-
fice. "Plain living and high thinking" was their daily, blessed
portion. Plain li\dng, however, was not poor living. The
things most important and necessary could be had. By wise
management the family were well fed, well clad, and in that
climate, arctic in winter, well warmed. But the mother had
to work early and late while the children were young. The
word servant did not exist in the vocabulary of that family,
though sometimes, when the need was great, the old-time
American "help" came to the mother's aid.

In Sixty Years with tlie Bible, Doctor Clarke writes thus of
his parents:

"My father, a minister of the Gospel, was constantly in
communion with the Book, though he talked little of his work.
He was not a highly educated man, but he was a man of
sweet reasonableness, and his theories of doctrine were tem-
pered in application with a fine practical wisdom. I suppose
he must have had some theory of inspiration, but he never
made the value of the Bible depend upon it. He had no need
of the theory for he was building upon the reality. There

ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE ii

was God's own message and for him and for my mother the
Bible was the last word. She, reared in the godhness of an
earlier day, carried the Bible in mind and heart. She was not
always quoting it, but for guidance of her Hfe and ours it was
always with her.

"It is true that she was in unconscious bondage because
the Bible brought her the spirit of Judaism, as well as the
Christian faith, and not until old age did she come out into the
liberty of the children of God, but with a willing loyalty she
held the Bible as her law as well as the Christian faith. Rev-
erence for it was learned from both parents. It was never a
theme for jests and I grew up with almost a horror of joking
on Biblical subjects. About the Bible there was a holy air
which to us children was attractive, not repellent. Bible
stories we easily learned, and they were true. We did not
question as to whether they were easily believed or were
worthy of God.

"I cannot remember when I could not read nor when the
Bible was not in my hands for reading. My earliest remem-
brance of it brings up the picture of family worship. How
clear it is and how calm and beautiful ! "

The three children were nurtured tenderly and wisely.
They had a quietly happy childhood in an atmosphere of
family affection and reverent religion. The key-note of the
life of the family was reality — everything that was said or
done must ring true. One saying of the father has never
been forgotten: "If a boy is obedient and truthful at the age
of twelve he is half brought up."

This boy was naturally docile, reverent, and straightfor-
ward and responsive to the high ideals held up to him. He
was always companionable, but he was not strong and agile
enough to succeed in boyish sports. A severe illness when he
was two years old left his right side partially paralyzed. For
a time he was unable to walk or to use his right hand. Only
the devoted, unremitting care of his mother brought him back
to a normal physical condition. Naturally, the earliest play-
mates of this delicate boy were girls, his sisters and two neigh-

12 WILLL\M NEWTON CLARKE

bors, Louise and Frances, who were much at home in the
parsonage and the garden.

One of the books in wliich they all took delight was Mary
Hewitt's Juvenile Days, in which several of her other stories
were included. This had been given to the youngest child
as a reward for tr}'ing to be careful and helpful while her
mother was seriously ill. After the difficult time was over
her father took her to the bookstore and bade her choose
whatever book she wished. Jiivenile Days was her choice,
and it became a favorite with the family and the neighbor-
hood. The original binding had been worn out and the book
had been rebound. The neat outside contrasted strangely
with the inside. Every page was worn and bore the marks
of ha\'ing been read, as Louisa Alcott says of her own early
favorites, "to an accompaniment of cookies, gingerbread,
and apples."

In this friendly vicinage a genial interchange of good
literature and other good things was kept up.

Li the autumn of 1852, after fifteen years in Cazenovia,
William Clarke accepted a call to a church in Whitesboro.
There William, junior, settled down to regular school work,
and it was soon evident that he had in him the stufi' that
makes a student. The seminary in Cazenovia was a better
place for the Clarke children than any school in WTiitesboro;
and when the church in Cazenovia sent their former pastor
an urgent appeal to return to them, the question was ear-
nestly considered. The church in Whitesboro had been loyal
and generous. While the pastor had ministered faithfully
to them in spiritual things, they had ministered to him liber-
ally in temporal things. To return to Cazenovia meant tak-
ing up heavy burdens again, but Cazenovia was home and
the people were dear, and there was the excellent school for
their children, and thither they returned.

The Oneida Conference Seminary was famous among de-
nominational schools, which were then at the highest point

>
o

ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 13

of their excellence and usefulness. It was one of several
which had been established by the Methodist Episcopal
Church. From the first, its teachers had been men and
women of fine character who had left their impress upon
their pupils and upon the community. As it was a coedu-
cational school, much attention was given to music and art.
In the early days of the seminary a well-trained foreign artist
had taught drawing and painting and had so imbued his
pupils with his ideals and standards that Cazenovia was
rather unusual as to the interest in art diffused among the
younger generation. Love of art nourished the love of nature.
Artists began to visit Cazenovia, and thus the eyes of the resi-
dents were opened to the rarely beautiful scenery close at
hand. The isolated little village developed year by year a
distinction and attractiveness all its own.

In very modest homes in Cazenovia were persons of fas-
cinating individuality and charm. To an impressionable
newcomer who had the good fortune to be welcomed in some
of these little white houses under great elms, the village life
seemed wonderfully bright and amiable. At almost any social
gathering, an impromptu tea or an elaborate entertainment,
there might be good music — there was certain to be good con-
versation. People lived then in a leisurely fashion, they had
time and opportunity to know their neighbors, and friendship,
a plant which cannot be forced, could grow in its own natural
way. On Lincklaen Street, with its green lawns and tall elm^s,
dwelt several of the seminary faculty, and others were not
far away. They lived like the ministers of the place on small
salaries, and the wives of these men, like their neighbor in the
parsonage, had to plan carefully and work untiringly, yet
they filled their places with dignity and did their part in
making the social life noble and beautiful.

The Baptist parsonage was a plain frame house with a
garden at the back. The dwellings on either side were rather
close to the parsonage, which, facing the north, had little sun-

14 WILLL\M NEWTON CLARKE

shine in the rooms most used. Mrs. Clarke, who had been
accustomed through all her early life to a broad outlook over
a beautiful landscape, often felt depressed by the lack of
space and light. There was, however, from the east windows
of an upper room, at the back of the house, a pleasant view,
across an interval to the hills beyond, and when the feeUng
of depression came over her, she would drop the task in hand
for a Uttle while and at one of those windows that looked
toward the morning refresh her spirit with the breadth and
beauty of meadow and hills.

Upon the return of the Clarke family to Cazenovia, Mary
and William entered the seminary. At that time the most
marked character upon the faculty was Ammi Bradford
Hyde, a descendant of Elder William Brewster of the May-
flower. He was a brilliant man, distinguished especially as
a linguist, but versatile in his abiUties. Some stories of his
precocity remind one of similar things recorded of Macau-
lay. In 1846 he was graduated from Wesleyan University.
In the autumn of that year, when he was twenty years old,
he entered Cazenovia Seminary as professor of languages.
Under this stimulating teacher, Clarke studied Latin, Greek,
and German.

There were other scholarly men and born educators in
the seminary, and the atmosphere was full of hope and in-
spiration. Though William was chiefly interested in lan-
guages, he did not do badly in mathematics and he learned a
little of several branches of science. Next, however, to his
classical studies, that which aided him most in his develop-
ment was his work in the Lyceum. The papers that he wrote
and the debates in which he took part, with the habit gained
thus early in life of swift, simultaneous thought and expres-
sion, made an invaluable part of his training.

Mrs. Stowe's description of "Cloudland," the scholarship
and devotion of its teachers, and the eager responsiveness of
its students, was a true picture of the Litchfield Academy in

ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 15

her very early years. Cazenovia was "Cloudland" on a
larger scale. There was a generous freedom as to choice of
studies. Most of the students worked pleasurably at what
they liked, with little regard to marks and examinations. No
question had as yet arisen as to the desirability of coeduca-
tion. It had existed from the first in the public schools and
in the numerous academies and had been the only possible
way to reach and educate the youth of the land.

The school was avowedly and markedly religious, and its
denominational character, while not obtrusive, was in nowise
obscured. The warm and demonstrative qualities of Meth-
odism characterized the place. Teachers worked fervently
for the conversion of students and the upbuilding of all in
the Christian life. Students from various denominations,
meeting here upon common ground, found that they agreed
as to essential points and that their differences were unim-
portant; so, insensibly, they grew more Hberal. No one was
permitted to be a sheep without a shepherd. All were ex-
pected to attend the churches to which they were accustomed,
and if they were unattached they were taken into the Meth-
odist fold. Leading members of the various churches in the
village felt a certain responsibility for the young people who
came to them, and exercised over them friendly care.

Doctor Clarke was invited to give an address at a semicen-
tennial celebration of the Cazenovia Seminary in 1908. He
was unable to be present, but he sent a letter from which ex-
tracts are given.

"Colgate University,

"Hamilton, N. Y., June, 1908.

"My Dear Doctor Blakeslee:

"I am thankful for the invitation to stand as the repre-
sentative of a past age, and recall the memories of fifty years,
and only regret that I cannot present my remembrances in
person. When I look back my memory goes beyond the half
century and sees in 1854 a young boy, not quite thirteen years

i6 WILLIAiM NEWTON CLARKE

old, living at home in Cazenovia, knocking at the door of the
seminary. How puzzled the boy was — and not without rea-
son. I had resolved to begin Latin and study arithmetic.
But the two classes came at the same hour, and both were
too large to be changed, so I was compelled to abandon one
of them. The school gave no advice, and I let the arithmetic
wait. One thing led to another, and in consequence of this
accident the order and succession of my studies for four
years went very strangely, and I was trained in a course such
as no one else ever pursued since the world began. Perhaps
it may have been just as well, but I am glad there is a better
way now.

"That shows how much less regularly organized the
school was than it has since become. There was a published
course of study; there were two, in fact, a three-years' course
and a j5ve-years' course; but the five-years' course did not
cut much of a figure outside of the catalogue. The school
was larger than now, and was especially large in the winter
terms. The chapel was crammed full. I can see the plat-
form now. The teachers looked to us very solemn as they
faced us. Professors Hyde and White, and Doctor Bannister
first, and later Professor Andrews as principal. Professor
Jackson sat in front of the organ with his flute and led the
singing. During a part of my time I used to play the organ.
I was interested in the throng, and knew all the boys by
name, and many of the girls in every term. I remembered
the changing crowd from term to term, and carried much
of the school history in mind. The friendships were short-
lived, many of them, but some lived long, and a few survive
all these years.

"The vision of deepest interest to me in connection with
school work looks in upon the little room over the principal's
office where we met Professor Hyde. Some of the classes
packed it full. There I was started in Latin, Greek, and Ger-
man. There we had to do with a most fatherly, friendly man,
a master of his languages, a teacher of individuals, a wit who
brightened up his work, a living guide and an inspiring ex-
ample. Much as I enjoyed the hours, I used to wonder that
he took the time to tell so many stories and make us laugh so
much. But later, when I realized what a killing number of
hours he spent with his classes in that room, I judged that

ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 17

perhaps he let in the wit in order to keep himself aHve, and
I did not blame him. After I had been out of his room for
almost forty years I went out of my way one day in Colorado
to call upon Professor Hyde and tell him what I thought of
him, which I had never had an opportunity to do.

'' The long mathematical rooms at the north end on Linck-
laen Street witnessed the equally strong and faithful work
of Professor White, continued till the very last days of his
life. I know the place, for I did take the arithmetic after a
while, and ended with surveying.

"As there was no fixed course in use, the graduating class
was made up by collecting those who had done enough to
equal the amount of the course as published. Now and then
there was a graduate from the five-years' course, but there
was none in our year. In 1858 there were twelve graduates,
sLx young men and six young women. My sister IVIary, older
than I, who was a teacher in the seminary for a time, was
among them. I was the youngest of the twelve.

"I have two visions of Professor Andrews as we called
him then, Bishop Andrews in later years. I see him as he
stood addressing us on our graduation day, July 15, 1858, in
the old stone Methodist church with the platform between
the front doors. Handsome, flashing, eloquent, he gave us
wise counsel out of a warm heart, and bade us farewell. I
see him again as I saw him for the last time, in New York,
after he had lived a long life of high service — handsome still,
but far more, a lovely presence, serious, dignified, graceful,
beautiful in a ripe old age.

"I have sweet remembrances of the tender and beautiful
religious revival that occurred in the spring of 1858, in my
last term. My own religious experience then began, in meet-
ings of the young men in the old western building, replaced by
the present Callanan Hall. Very delightful are the memories
of that time.

"Even now I can feel the inexpressibly tender solemnity
of the Saturday evening class-meetings in the chapel, with
Professor Hyde as leader, wise Christian counsellor that he
was. Out of that same spring term of 1858 there came a
rather formal document that Ues before me now. It bears
the signature of twenty-two young men, who have formed
sacred ties of friendship while students in the seminary

i8 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

(Oneida Conference Seminary we called it then), and are
desirous of renewing and perpetuating the same. To this
end they agree to appear in person at the seminary, in the
town of Cazenovia and the State of New York, on the 6th
day of July, 1864, and appoint ten of their number to ad-
dress them on that day of their reunion. Topics for the ad-
dresses are assigned, schoolboy fashion : ' Success,' ' Harmony,'
'Government,' 'Object in Life,' etc., besides opening ad-
dresses, poem, and valedictory. Six years seemed a long
time ahead, but the friendly assembhng of ourselves seemed
not too much to be accomplished by the mature men whom
we expected then to be. Alas, we could not know that the
greatest war of the century would be three-fourths fought
through when the day arrived, or how much the appointed
expounder of 'Events of the Past Six Years' would have to
say. Nor could we foresee our personal destinies. We
pledged our word and sacred honor to meet 'if life and
health permit;' and yet there was no meeting on July 6,
1864.

"Here I must end. It is a pleasant, wholesome circle into
which I look, for our life in the main was sweet and pure and
honorable, and the school was a school of right living. The
living God was training his children up to hfe. The review
has been a pleasure to me, but it does not seem possible that
I am gazing through a whole half century, so clearly do I see
the scenes and forms and faces, and so freshly does the long-
vanished life rise before my sight. As God was with the
fathers, so may he be with the children, and may education
here still be a healthful training for a faithful work.

"With the greetings of the past to the present, I am,
"Sincerely yours,

"William N. Clarke."

At an earlier time Charles Dudley Warner and Robert
Ingersoll had been boys in Cazenovia and students in the
seminary. Warner, after preparing at Cazenovia, entered
Hamilton College at Chnton, New York, where he gradu-
ated. He always loved Cazenovia and sometimes came there
to visit the friends of his youth. His coming was the signal
for a general fete-making. Some of those he valued much

ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 19

were quiet, unfashionable persons who were seldom seen at
large or formal receptions, and those who entertained "Char-
lie" Warner used to take especial pains to bring these old
friends to meet him.

Among American men of letters of his day there has been
no more lovable example of "the gentle life" than Charles
Dudley Warner; and the bright intelligence, the simple, yet
exquisite, living in homes with which he was familiar, the
devout atmosphere in church and school, the beautiful sur-
roundings of the fine old village, where he spent the most
impressionable years of his life, made a congenial environ-
ment for that charming spirit. Some who know and love his
books find in them a flavor of Cazenovia, New Englander
though he was by birth, and by residence through all his
later years.

Robert IngersoU was the son of a Cazenovia minister.
The father spent only a few years in the village, was a clerical
free-lance and was for a time the leader of the Free Church,
a nondescript company made up chiefly of seceders from the
long-established, steady-going churches of the place. Some
of them were excellent persons who had become obsessed by
one idea and felt aggrieved because that which seemed to
them aU-important was not sufiiciently emphasized in the
churches to which they belonged. Some could think of
nothing but the evils of the liquor traffic, some believed that
the Masonic Order was the most dangerous menace of the
time, and some wished to hear of nothing but the sin of slave-
holding. Some were merely discontented or erratic. This
was the church which represented Christianity to Robert
IngersoU in his boyhood. There were benign idealists be-
longing to it, but the cranky, censorious elements were in the
foreground. His mother, who was remembered as a noble
woman, had died early. His father was morose and harsh,
and he was one of several motherless children in a cheer-
less home. What wonder that his keen, clear mind, rejected

20 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

the dogmas that were forced upon him, or that, when he had
become a popular orator, he held up to scorn and execration
a caricature of the religion that he never understood ?

In tlie autumn of 1858 Clarke entered college at Hamil-
ton as a sophomore. He depicted the college life of his day
and paid tribute to the men of his class upon its fiftieth anni-
versary in a charming address at commencement in June,
191 2. His was the class of 1861 and a large proportion of his
classmates enlisted in the Union Army at the first call to
arms, several of whom laid down their Hves early in the con-
flict. His close friend, Arthur Brooks, was one of the first to
die. He was a son of the Reverend Walter Brooks, pastor of
the Baptist Church in Hamilton, and this personal bereave-
ment, for such it was to Clarke, affected him deeply. The
Civil War, in which largely perished the flower of American
youth, both North and South, was a long agony to every
sensitive soul, and the experiences of those four years were
the most profound and pervasive element in the education
of the young men and young women of the time. Those who
lived through it have carried in their iimiost selves something
which the younger generation cannot comprehend.

College life at that period was much the same throughout
the land. The curriculum at Harvard and Yale was a trifle
more exacting than in small and isolated colleges, but the
classic tongues and higher mathematics could be studied any-
where, and also the chief modern languages. As to science,
in most places students could make only a slight beginning.

Louis Agassiz and Asa Gray were doing pioneer work at
Harvard and showing how to investigate. Of the new chem-
istry only vague foregleams had appeared to the most ad-
vanced workers. Personality counted for far more at that
time than it counts for to-day, and some of the smaller col-
leges were blessed with great teachers. At Hamilton, Doctor
Alexander Beebee gave his students good training in logic
and something of philosophy. That remarkable linguist,

ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 21

William I. Elnapp, still a very young man, was teaching mod-
ern languages. Under him Clarke studied Spanish.

The good preparation that Clarke had gained at Caze-
novia enabled him to carry his college work easily and gave
him time for recreation, reading, and good fellowship. The
latter he found cliiefly and most keenly enjoyed among his
confreres of the D. K. E. society. Secret societies were for-
bidden to exist at Madison University, as the college was
then named, but the Mu chapter was created there with the
aid of some members of that fraternity in Hamilton College
at Clinton, not far away. Clarke, social and fun-loving, was
one of the early members and entered heartily into the game
of keeping up the secret meetings and eluding the college au-
thorities, who soon began to suspect what was going on.
The story of the early days of the Mu chapter of Delta
Kappa Epsilon — its apparent extinction, its resuscitation and
precarious life while under the ban of professorial authority,
its final triumph and open recognition and acceptance by the
college faculty — was a Hvely episode in the student life of the
time and made an amusing piece of college history.

At college Clarke made some lifelong friendships. Among
those who entered college upon the same day with him was
Newton Lloyd Andrews, who was made professor of Greek
immediately after his graduation, and who, after fifty years
of service still remains at his post as head of the department
of Greek and lecturer on art. To him it fell to pay a beauti-
ful tribute to his friend and colleague in an address to the
students of Colgate University immediately after the death
of Doctor Clarke became known.

Graduated with his class at the commencement in '61,
Clarke entered the Hamilton Theological Seminary in the
autumn of the same year and finished his theological course
in the summer of '63. He was settled in Keene before he was
twenty-two years old, but was not ordained until January
14, 1863.

22 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

Of this period in his life Doctor Clarke writes thus in
Sixty Years with the Bible:

"Very early in the sixties, near the end of my college
course, I pledged myself in spirit to the work of the Christian
ministry, and before very long I was a student in a theological
seminary.

"I had not been doing much with my Bible during my
years in college, but turned to it with new enthusiasm under
a new influence. This, happily, was the personal inspiration
of a teacher.

"He was a good scholar, though I do not know that he
was an extraordinarily great one. But I do know that he was
a man of strong convictions, of a most beautiful devoutness,
of absolute sincerity, and of perfectly unconquerable indus-
try. His permanent physical condition was such as would
have made many men idle and most men easy, but his holy
resolution held him to an amount of work that put his stu-
dents to perpetual shame. He did not affect every one as he
affected me, but to me he was simply irresistible.

"His Christian character held my love and admiration,
his scholarship commanded my respect, and his industry was
contagious. What I could do I had to do while I was with
him. His influence and example made me a Bible student.
Our outfit of helps was pitifully meagre, but with such as we
had I set myself to the work. He taught us the right use of
commentaries and the like, insisting that whatever helps we
might use, our conclusions as to the meaning must be in an
honest sense our own. We must not shirk the responsibihty
of judging what our Bible means. I learned that lesson early,
to my Ufelong advantage. He made it impossible for me to
shoulder off upon commentators my duty of understanding
the Bible. One of his exhortations abides in memory: 'Let
no word of man come between your soul and the pure word
of God.'

" In such an atmosphere it naturally came to pass that I
was a firm Biblicist. I remember how my feeling toward the
Bible influenced my feeling about systematic theology. My
teacher in that department was a man of different mould
from my teacher in the Bible. He ranged more widely, he
was more mystical in his view, and he was more of a philoso-

ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE 23

pher, thinking for himself and outreaching far and wide. One
was searching in the Bible to discover the truth of God; the
other was using truth that he had found there or anywhere
else in the broad excursions of a reverently exploring spirit.
To this speculative work of the theologian I felt deep objec-
tion because it was not Biblical enough; it was not built on
proof-texts or buttressed by them as I thought it ought to be.
It was too speculative, I thought, and grounded elsewhere
than in the word of God. In this judgment I was sincere but
I was wrong. The theologian was using Scripture as it had
been assimilated by his mind and yielded him its teaching, a
process that I could not then understand. The Bible in-
spired his theology; I thought it ought to dictate it. His
method was legitimate and truly Christian, and to his large,
uplifting influence I am indebted no less than to the influ-
ence that led me at first to be suspicious of it. In my day
his teaching power was comparatively undeveloped, but in
his later years he became a teacher of magnificent inspira-
tion.

''Before the sixties were half spent I was settled in a
quiet parish and using the Bible in the honest and blundering
manner of a beginner in the ministry."

IN KEENE

In the pleasant old town of Keene, New Hampshire,
where he had his first pastorate, Clarke Hved a quiet, labori-
ous Hfe for six years. His congregation was made up partly
of families living in the town and partly of country people,
and he easily entered into a kind of pastoral work already
familiar to him. After two years the parsonage became his
home and his sister Mary came to be his companion, house-
keeper, and parish helper. By her presence his Hfe was en-
riched and brightened. He was by nature as far as possible
from the self-centred recluse.

He has described his Hfe, which left him not much time
for recreation, in an address entitled, "Some Recent Aspects
of the Ministry," given in 1904, in New York, before a min-
isterial association. It begins thus:

"The days come, the years pass, but how much they
bring to us we do not know till afterward. I now know that
I have lived over from one period, almost from one world
into another. The calling of the ministry has not changed,
but the relations and work of the ministry have changed im-
mensely, far more than later comers upon the stage can know.

"For the sake of showing what the ministry is to-day,
what a world it has to deal with, and what it has to do, I wish
to mention some of the great new elements that have come
into its field since my father preached my ordination sermon
on the 14th of January, 1864.

"My parish was a small church in a New England county
seat of four thousand people. A morning sermon, an afternoon
sermon, a prayer-meeting in the evening, one on Wednesday
evening, sometimes another in a dwelling on Friday evening,
visiting my people, marrying, burying, and incidental service —
this was my work. The only burning questions were those
of the Civil War which was then upon us. New ideas of

IN KEENE

church work, theological excitements, social questions in the
modern sense — from these we were free.

*'But I beg my brethren to note what has come to pass
since then. Note first what entered into the daily work of the
church and so of the minister. For several years I made the
list of lessons for my Sunday-school. I have lived through
the entire period of uniform Sunday-school lessons and of the
development of the Sunday-school which has accompanied
them. The importance of the Sunday-school has been mul-
tiplied manifold within my time. Of organizations within
the church we had none except the Sewing Society and the
Social Circle with its fortnightly gathering of people. Mis-
sionary societies for women have all come in since then.
The earliest Baptist Women's Missionary Society was formed
in my second parish, and I had the honor to have a hand in
some of its earliest doings. Through these societies and by
other means the women of our churches have come into a
prominence that was totally unknown when I began.

"What is true of women is equally true of young people.
It was well toward the middle of my forty years when the
first Society of Christian Endeavor was formed. That entire
movement of Christian Endeavor, denominational unions,
junior societies, yes, and primary classes in Sunday-schools
has swept into the life of our churches within my period. All
institutional features in the church are also new. The insti-
tutional church was utterly unknown when I began, and the
very conception of the calling of a church out of which it grew
was yet in a great measure to be developed. Of course there
was nothing akin to settlement work. There were institu-
tions like the Five Points Mission and the Homes for Little
Wanderers, and there were many good works, but the more
recent methods of city work were waiting to be suggested by
a set of ideas not yet developed. The modern Christian in-
terest in sociology is a growth of my time. The idea of soci-
ology as a science was as unknown as the name when J began.
The whole conception has swept in upon us as a novelty within
a httle time. Equally new is the whole idea of training for
lay workers in the church.

"Suggestions of pedagogical methods had not then struck
religious work. As for evangelism, that problem has changed
its form more than once within my time.

26 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

"The Salvation Army was still unknown. When I was
ordained Mr. Moody was unknown. I first saw him two
years later when he was becoming prominent as a local
worker, I remember the change that came in with the Gos-
pel H>Tnns. The great sweep of the Moody movement has
come and gone, and the first generation of successors have
run their course.

*'The Northfield movement has followed with its kindred
establishments scattered through the country.

"I well remember a conversation with Bishop Vincent
when the Chautauqua movement was still young, in which he
enthusiastically expounded to me the idea which it embodied.
The Students' Volunteer movement in missions and the
Students' Christian Associations have also come in since the
beginning of my work.

"Agencies for doing good? A minister has more of them
at his disposal over and over again than forty years ago.
The list of additions is startling to me, who has seen it grow.
But how to use them and how much they are really worth
to him, which among them have lived their life and which
have hold on the future — these are urgent questions for the
minister to-day, and in their present form they are mainly
questions new, unknown when my work began.

"Since I began my work the mental atmosphere in our
part of the world has become permeated by the ideas that are
represented by the name evolution. I do not refer to any
special form of the scientific theory or of the philosophy which
that name may suggest. I refer to the insweeping to the
popular mind of the ideas and modes of thinking that are
characteristic of the system.

"People are coming to think of things as ancient and yet
as ever changing: as having grown to be what they are, one
stage out of another, and as growing still.

"When I was ordained Darwin's Origin of Species had
been published only five years, and the ideas that it suggested
were scarcely even entering as vital forces into the American
religious mind."

"Do not let your love of fun be a snare to you," was his
mother's admonition to this beginner in the ministry, not yet
twenty-two years of age, in a letter written soon after his set-

IN KEENE

tlement in Keene. His time was so filled with study and
parish work that very little fun was possible to him except
that which bubbled up spontaneously from the well-spring
within. If he sometimes missed the sparkhng young life, in
the midst of which he had always dwelt, he was aware of
having the highest compensations. When in midsummer he
took his vacation and was at home with his parents in Water-
ville, New York, to which place they had removed in the
autumn of 1864, or with his sister and his old friends in Caz-
enovia, he was like a boy let out of school, brimming with the
brightest and sweetest good-fellowship, ready to keep the ball
in the air with any one in a lively game of badinage, and
enjoying with the keenest zest the companionship of his
friends.

Much that shows his essential self and foretokens his
later development appears in letters to his future wife between
the summer of 1866 when they first met in Cazenovia and
the time of their marriage in September, 1869.

He writes without reserve of whatever he is thinking and
doing. His love of nature is the background for all else. He
gathers arbutus in early spring to send to his "cousin," as
he calls her in the earlier letters, and describes the south-
ward sloping hillside where it grew. He brings home bits of
moss and Uchen, hardy ferns and budding twigs, in late au-
tumn and early spring, when there are no flowers, and ar-
ranges them in his own way to give a touch of living beauty
to his study table. He drives over the shoulder of Monad-
nock on a bitter winter's day in obedience to some call of
duty and does not fail to note the bleak grandeur of the out-
look. Again, in the following summer, he goes over the same
route with a party of friends, making an excursion to the sum-
mit of the mountain, and writes a charming description and
record of impressions while all is fresh in his mind. He did
not cease to notice pleasant things because they were familiar.
The view from one of his study windows in Keene was an un-

28 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

failing source of delight to him. Again and again in those
letters occur descriptions of this outlook as it appeared under
all its changes of light and color as the seasons passed, on
rainy or misty days, after a snowfall or when every bush and
tree was beautiful with frostwork or sparkling with ice. No
landscape painter ever studied a scene with truer or more
lo\ang eyes. An artist's journal of the round of the year
might have been compiled from these descriptions.

His interest in all sorts of people comes out in those let-
ters in which he tells many incidents of his parish work —
pathetic, beautiful, and sometimes amusing.

Although he is a born student, he is not working for plea-
sure or scholarship, but so shapes his studies as to make them
constantly serviceable to his people. He tells of his effort to
iriduce the whole body of his parishioners to join with him in
a course of systematic Scripture reading, while he aids and
interests them by going over the same ground in a series of
explanatory sermons covering the whole of the Bible. He is
working steadily to master the New Testament in Greek, and
as a means to that end he is comparing the original with
Latin, German, and French translations. The Vulgate he
does not find inspiring, but Luther's translation he feels to
be a work of genius as well as of scholarship, which often
flashes new light upon a passage. The French is useful, be-
cause it is modem in spirit and language, though inferior in
strength and beauty to the King James version.

There is no public Ubrary accessible — town and village
libraries were almost unheard of then — and he has to buy
every book that he needs. Bit by bit he is gathering a Ubrary
of excellent quality, books for his work and the more precious
of English classics. Each time that he makes one of his in-
frequent trips to Boston he brings home a few books. In his
letters he describes and exults over each one. A book new to
him he reads at once and gives a concise review of it. Thus
he tells of Stanley's History of the Jewish Church, which he

IN KEENE 29

finds startlingly fresh and delightful. His copy of Bacon's
Essays was one of these acquisitions and also a beautiful little
copy of Milton's poems bound in red morocco and satisfying
to the eye in every way, which he always kept in the study.
He noticed instinctively the title-page, paper, type, binding
— all of the externals of book-making — and was something
of a connoisseur, yet he almost never bought an expensive
book.

These letters shed a clear light upon a note-book, dated
1868, which contains much that is characteristic. Some pas-
sages reveal a deep searching of his own heart, some are sug-
gested by his reading, some are reflections jotted down for
use in preaching. There is a piece of theological reasoning
growing out of the substitutionary theory of the death of
Christ so much higher and deeper than that theory that it
seems like the bud from which blossomed his latest utter-
ances upon that theme. For one, who by feeling and choice
was conservative, Clarke was then singularly modern in the
attitude of his mind. He did not shrink from looking can-
didly at new ideas.

The writings of Augustine were fascinating and yet irri-
tating to him. One of his new books was Augustinianism
and Pelagianism, the reading of which evidently suggested
a number of notes. At that time, to the ardent Biblical
student, almost all theological differences seemed to grow out
of exegetical questions. He thinks Augustine's exegesis very
faulty and writes:

"It seems wonderful that such exegesis as he deemed al-
lowable should have given him any sound knowledge what-
ever of the Scriptures. Some of the strength of his argument
was dependent upon his small exegetical knowledge, and es-
pecially that which rested on Romans 5 : 12. His inability
to enter into the spirit and language of the East also made
him draw much more from apparently strong expressions in
the Old Testament than was originally in them.

"The transmission of guilt, as Augustine held it, reduced to

30 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

a reductio ad absurdum in Emerson's note, 283 seq., or better,
it is a reductio ad fiorrible."

Eleven pages in the note-book are given to Augustine and
his polemic methods. Some years later he was similarly af-
fected by reading the Life of Jotiathan Edwards. In each case
he was attracted by the man and repelled by his theology.

Doctor John H. Mason of the Theological Seminary in
Rochester, New York, has contributed the following remi-
niscences :

"I remember well the young man on that Sunday of his
first visit to Keene — tall, well formed, with hair and beard
strikingly dark, with an eye which searched you and won you,
and with a smile which made one his friend even before he
had opened his lips in speech. The voice — that most persis-
tent and unchanging gift of nature — was precisely the same
voice with which he spoke to me the last time that I saw him,
some two or three years ago.

"Naturally, I cannot pass upon the quality of the sermon,
but I well remember the manner of its delivery, read from
manuscript, as was the custom in that day. Yet there was a
freedom of utterance and a kind of manly, straightforward
statement and appeal which I have not forgotten. There
was sparse gesticulation, as in later years, and the gestures
were forceful rather than graceful.

"The pastorate began at once and continued for six years
until the call to the pastorate of the church at Newton Cen-
ter, Massachusetts, took him away from Keene. The hazy
reminiscences of boyhood are of small value in the retrospect
of time, but the verdict of history has already been rendered
upon those years in the Christian mim'stry. No better proof
of the quality of the work done in Keene could be cited than
in the call to Newton Center.

"That a church which comprised within its congregation
the professors and students of our venerable New England
Theological Seminary should venture to call a young man of
twenty-seven to its pulpit was an extraordinary circum-
stance. It could only mean that Mr. Clarke's ministry at
Keene had been one of studious devotion and of high ideals.

IN KEENE ^ 31

What I best remember is the affection which our pastor
awakened among the young people and especially among the
children of the parish. He drew us not only to himself but
also to his Saviour, and the day which stands out above all
others to me was that first Sunday in September, in the first
year of his pastorate, when he led a group of four or five of
us children down into the shining waters of the Ashuelot and
buried us with our Lord in baptism.

"The old church on Winter Street, now supplanted by a
more modern structure, will always be associated in my mind
with the ministry of Mr. Clarke. I was fond of watching for
his entrance on Sunday morning, and as a boy I especially en-
joyed the long, sweeping stride with which he marched past
our pew and into the pulpit. In the pulpit there was a pecu-
liar gentleness and reverence of manner, and he read the
Scripture as if it were the very word of God.

''The pastor was an inmate of our house for several
months, and it was here that we really came to know him.
Those who have known him well in later years have invari-
ably remarked upon the charm of his personality; that the
members of our household early discovered. In his relations
with the parish he maintained a dignity, some might call it a
reserve, which retarded the progress of friendship, but in the
familiarity of the home life he unbent, and all the rich stores
of his mind and heart were ours.

"I was beginning in a halting way the study of Latin, and
I recall the wonder with which I looked upon a man who
could take up my Latin books and translate them as if they
were written in his own tongue. With Greek it was much the
same, for even at that time he had made great progress
toward the mastery of the tongue which he used so freely in
after years. Some time afterward, when he was no longer a
member of the household, he consented to take two of us
boys in the high school through some special course in
Latin. It was a great privilege to us to be admitted to the
sacred precincts of our pastor's study, and there perhaps more
than elsewhere was generated that love of books which has
followed us down the years. He may have served as a private
tutor in his college days, but if not, I dare say this little class
was the first which he really taught, so it is good to remember
the enthusiasm, the accuracy, the patience, the humor, and

32 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

the general illumination with which he taught us and which
were so marked characteristics of his teaching when his whole
life had been surrendered to that high caUing. He set before
us noble ideals of scholarship and awakened within us earnest
aspirations for the higher intellectual life."

NEWTON CENTER

In May, 1869, Clarke became pastor of the old pioneer
Baptist Church in Newton Center, Massachusetts. On Sep-
tember I, the same year, we were married at my home,
Waverly, Pennsylvania, by Clarke's father, the Reverend
WilUam Clarke, and we were soon established in the Langley
cottage. Samuel Langley and Emily Montague Pierpont, his
wife, were an original, independent, highly interesting pair if
one may judge from the reminiscences regarding them which
survived among their neighbors. They had built this cottage
and occupied it during their last years. Later it had been
the home of their daughter, Mrs. Goodrich. It was a pictur-
esque little abode, and she had beautified the place by her
artistic arrangement of lawn and drive, rustic work and bor-
ders with flowers and shaded walks. The house stood at a
pleasant distance from the street and was screened by a tall
hedge of arbor vitae which bordered the front of the estate.
Along the west side, on Chase Street, ran a low wall of the
worn and rounded stones of the region, adorned with Virginia
creeper, clematis, and trailing brambles. At the back of the
house was a grassy slope with fruit-trees and a long, rustic
arbor covered with grape-vines, following the curve of a path
which it shaded. The cottage had a pleasant veranda extend-
ing along three sides to which French windows gave access
from the parlor and from the sitting-room, which had a bay
window at the south end. This room became the minister's
study.

This cottage has a special interest on account of its asso-
ciation with the brothers, Samuel Pierpont and John W.
Langley, who became eminent scientists, known for their far-
seeing pioneer work. As boys they spent a part of their sum-

34 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

mer vacations with their grandparents, and they fitted up a
workshop in the bam at the east end of the place, where they
exercised their mechanical and scientific aptitudes. In that
workshop they made a telescope, and their cousin, Miss
Julia Faunce, who became Mrs. Stackpole, remembered being
carried one morning by the boys across the dewy grass that
she might look through their telescope.

The old barn, still in use, was upon the verge of the wild,
and a clmnp of sassafras of pungent odor and flavor, with other
pleasant woodland things, grew in a thicket beside the barn.

Perhaps the Langley cottage was, in its way, an epitome of
Newton Center, which although it had become suburban (it was
only eight miles from Boston) with a large number of house-
holders, who went and came daily to and from the city, still
retained many characteristics of the country village. Side by
side stood modern houses, occupied by families from the city,
and old-fashioned houses with old-fashioned people in them.

The narrow highway in front of the Langley cottage, a
little farther eastward, resolved itself into a secluded coun-
try road, passing along a stretch of rough, wild land on the
north, covered with young oaks, blueberry-bushes and other
wild things, among which rose here and there a huge granite
boulder. On the south side was apiece of marshy lowland
full of luxuriant growths, a most fascinating spot for a child
or a naturalist, and beyond was a long border of woodland.
After passing the corner beyond the cottage there was only
one dwelling for nearly a mile and then one suddenly came
upon a primitive settlement where a colony of German labor-
ers had established themselves in habitations not much larger
than the boulders with which they shared the ground. This
was Thompsonville, and here was a small brown chapel be-
longing to the Baptist Society of Newton Center, where a
Sunday-school was kept up for these immigrants and their
children, and where preaching services and prayer-meetings
were held.

NEWTON CENTER

The people were very poor and had seized thankfully
upon this spot where the waste land was cheap. They were
proud to own their little homes for which they had toiled hard,
and they came to love the chapel with all that it stood for.
The mission had been undertaken and was carried on from
purely Christian motives, but it had a social and economic
value which appeared later.

The drives all through the Newtons were delightful.
There were a few broad avenues bordered here and there by
spacious estates, some of which were triumphs of the land-
scape-gardener's art. A few of these estates were so old that
the elms and maples had attained their maximum growth,
and many were perfect specimens of their kind, set in lawns
almost as rich and velvety as one sees in old England. Forty
years ago the trees and shrubs showed a health and luxuri-
ance that does not appear to-day. At that time the insec-
tivorous birds were still numerous and doing their beneficent
work.

No less attractive were the many narrow and ancient
roads, leading in every direction and crisscrossing in an ir-
regular network. These by-roads were adorned with natural
hedges of shrubs and trees growing irregularly on either side
of old stone walls or lichen-covered fences, over which trailed
clematis and brambles. Here and there stood a slender white
birch, and the tangles were all alive with birds.

It seemed strange to find so much wild land and so many
fields once tilled that had reverted to nature, but thus it was,
and the few farms still occupied were falling, one by one, into
the possession of Irish or German immigrants. The indus-
trial and social changes were already well advanced that have
now transformed this old colonial region into something that
those who knew it forty years ago cannot recognize.

Newton (Newtown) had been settled very early, and many
descendants of the original colonists were to be found bear-
ing the names of their ancestors, and in some instances living

36 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

in houses built more than a century earlier. Plain in dress,
homely of speech, hard-working tillers of the soil they loved,
steadfast as granite in their conWctions, these old-fashioned
men and women were to the minister among the most inter-
esting of his parishioners. The Stone neighborhood at Oak
Hill was t>^ical. The chief of the clan, good Deacon Stone,
dwelling in his old age, loved and honored, among his younger
kinsfolk, with his stalwart frame, his fine head, his strong,
weather-beaten face, once seen could never be forgotten. He
was somewhat stern in manner, but to his frail little wife,
sweet-faced and gentle, he was chivalry and tenderness per-
sonified.

The pastor was always welcome in their home. There
would be a little talk about the affairs of the church, the state
of religion, the persons ill or in trouble, and then all would
kneel in earnest prayer. When the pastor took leave he was
always dismissed with fatherly words of encouragement and
benediction.

Newton Center was one of the oldest of the eleven \allages
in the town of Newton. In order to avoid annexation to Bos-
ton the town had recently obtained a city charter. It was a
unique, interesting rural city. The people were as nearly a
homogeneous community as could be found in the vicinity of
a great commercial centre. The majority bore old New Eng-
land names and their ideas and ways were decidedly of the
New England type.

Newton Center was high and healthful and near enough
to Boston in that day of few and slow trains to be a conve-
nient place of residence for professional men and men of busi-
ness. Some who had gained wealth and position lived outside
the village upon pleasant estates, some were struggling for
success, and some were with difficulty making a living. Al-
ready there was a sense of feverish haste in the atmosphere,
but no one could anticipate the wild rush of to-day in com-
mercial and social life.

NEWTON CENTER 37

The teachers in the school of theology were an important
element in the Hfe of the place. The churchgoing people who
made a large majority of the inhabitants were about equally
divided between the Baptists and the CongregationaUsts,
whose church was often mentioned as the ''Orthodox," so
fresh was still the memory of the schism in the established
church of New England which resulted in the division of con-
gregations into Unitarian and Orthodox.

Very friendly and pleasant relations existed among the
members of the two churches. Denominational differences
were seldom mentioned, and only a few in either church
seemed to regard these differences as important.

Doctor Furber, the pastor of the Congregational Church,
one of the truest and most modest of men, gave the Baptist
pastor, at his coming, a cordial welcome and was ever his
friend. Doctor Stearns, Clarke's predecessor, who had be-
come professor of Old Testament interpretation in Newton
Institution, a man of bright, incisive, poetic mind and mag-
netic power in the pulpit, was kind and genial toward his
successor.

Doctor S. F. Smith, an earHer pastor, of world-wide fame,
the author of glowing hymns other than "America," still
had his home in Newton Center. He was a man of scholarly
tastes, one of that famous Harvard class of 1829 immortal-
ized by OKver Wendell Holmes. At that day he was chiefly
interested in linguistic studies and hymnology. Mrs. Smith,
with her fair and rosy complexion, her fine, strong face, her
white curls touched with pale gold, soft and flossy like those
of a httle child, in the harmonious setting of her own home
made a beautiful picture and seemed the very genius of hos-
pitality. Madame Smith, her mother, bright, alert, active,
doing fine needlework when she was past eighty, interested
in everybody and everything, was a marvel. Her husband.
Doctor Hezekiah Smith, a man of note in his day, had been
the friend and classmate at Princeton of Doctor Manning,

38 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

and had given him efficient aid in the founding of Brown
University. He had served as one of Washington's chap-
lains and had entertained Washington in his home. Upon
special occasions, at Thanksgiving, Christmas, or family anni-
versaries, one was ofifered tea or coffee from the same precious
cups that had been used upon that great occasion. Every-
thing thus associated with the father of his country had been
treasured in the family. Mrs. Smith was the child of her
father's old age and it seemed to bring the period of the
Revolution very near to know that she and her mother were
thus closely linked to it.

Another family with which the friendship was close and
lasting was that of George S. Dexter. Mrs. Dexter was a
daughter of the Reverend Duncan Dunbar, a Scotch minis-
ter who had emigrated with his family to America. He was
a noble, large-hearted man and a remarkable preacher.

Mr. and Mrs. Dexter had taken the new pastor into their
home when he first went to Newton, and during the first
months of his pastorate he had been their guest. Their affec-
tionate interest in him, and his love for them and their fam-
ily, never failed.

In the Dexter home one now and then met other descend-
ants of Duncan Dunbar. They were vivid, versatile, warmly
magnetic personalities — every one. Mrs. Chaplin was a fre-
quent contributor to religious periodicals. Her daughter
Christine, afterward Mrs. Brush, was a captivating girl of
many gifts and a devoted daughter and sister. Whatever she
attempted she did easily and well. Once in a while, in her
busy Ufe, she would happen to write a poem or a prose article
that was certain to be welcomed by one of the best magazines.
One of the most impressive of her poems, which appeared in
the Atlantic Monthly, was entitled, "And There Shall Be No
More Sea." Perhaps the most widely read of all that she
wrote was that witty Uttle tale, "The Colonel's Opera Cloak,"
published in the "No Name" series.

NEWTON CENTER 39

There was also a happy intimacy with Doctor and Mrs.
Hovey and their children. Portrait sketches of Doctor Hovey
and of Professor Gould are given in Sixty Years with the Bible,
from which only brief passages can be quoted here:

"I must not fail to mention certain personal influences
that were upon me in those years. Earliest among them, and
latest, too, was that of the theologian to whom I looked up,
almost as to a father. Older than I by a score of years, he re-
ceived me from the first into a warm friendship which re-
mained unaltered to the end of his days. As soon as I knew
him I was attracted by the sweetness of his spirit and also by
his candor, his patience, and his well-balanced judgment. I
did not always agree with him, but in all his work I knew him
as the truest of men."

Of Professor Gould he says:

"The man of my own age who was nearest to me was
teacher of New Testament interpretation. He was a man of
immense force, keen of intellect, deep-seeing and far-seeing.
By patient concentration he developed a rare exegetical
sense and became a very remarkable interpreter of the Scrip-
tures. Many a single passage and many a large meaning
have I worked out with him, and my permanent indebted-
ness to him is very great."

The early associations of Professor Gould and Mrs. Gould
had been with Old Cambridge, and he was a Harvard man.
He had served his country as an officer of the Union Army
in the Civil War. They mingled pleasantly with different
social circles and perhaps touched the hfe of the day at points
more various than any other family of his parish with which
Clarke had an every-day intimacy. The atmosphere of their
house was stirring and stimulating, and among their guests
one might now and then meet persons awake to the import
of certain rehgious and social problems that had already
risen above the horizon and which are looming up to-day in
astounding magnitude.

40 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

It was, however, a time of hope and fearless enterprise in
every direction, and a spirit of optimism ruled. It cannot be
denied that in Newton, side by side with all that springs from
real enlightenment and a prosperity in many cases wisely and
generously used, there was not a little of that stohd satisfac-
tion in material things, that avoidance of the things of the in-
tellect and the spirit, and that imperturbable trust in riches
which Matthew Arnold summed up in the word Philistinism.
Then, as now, Goliath posing as David, fully understood, yet
easily tolerated, was no uncommon figure. With this confus-
ing and demoraUzing force every teacher of reUgion and
ethics had to reckon.

In the autumn of 1869 William Clarke and his wife made
a visit to their son. Upon the second Sunday after their ar-
rival the father preached at the morning service and touched
the hearts of all who listened. This was his text: "As ye
have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him."

The sermon was as old-fashioned, simple, and beautiful,
and as everlastingly true and convincing as a living passage
from Bunyan or Jeremy Taylor.

It was an utterance that belonged to all time and so was
felt to be absolutely timely at that hour. He began by de-
picting the tenderness and humility of the penitent soul,
spoke from a full heart of the new-found peace and chastened
joy that comes with a sense of forgiveness and reconciliation
to God, and then of the impulse of loving obedience that
awakens in the soul that has become aware of its sonship to
God and its brotherhood with Christ. He entreated his
hearers to recall that early experience if it had been forgotten
or had become dim, to consecrate themselves anew to God
and to Hve thenceforth in the spirit of Christ. The congrega-
tion Hstened in a deep hush, with the sense of a great presence
upon them. When the service was over and the preacher
stood with his son at the foot of the pulpit stairs, there was a
movement toward them, from every side, of one and another

NEWTON CENTER 41

coming to grasp his hand and to thank him for the blessing
that had come to them in his message. Even now, after the
lapse of many years, a few faces in the eager group that gath-
ered around this true servant of God come clearly to the
memory of one who was a deeply interested hstener and
looker-on.

Doctor Ripley's delicate face, which could sometimes be
as stern as a Roman mask, was softened and radiant. Dear
Madame Dexter's was tremulous with emotion. There was
Doctor Warren, the veteran secretary of the Missionary
Union, a great man and a great preacher, warmly greeting
his brother in the ministry.

In the congregation were some who recognized in this
unveiling of a soul endowed with that simplicity which is
eternal wisdom, the same spirit which had attracted them at
first to their pastor and were thereafter more closely drawn
to him.

The first visit of William Clarke to Newton Center was
also his last. In the spring of 187 1 he was called to his eternal
home.

Clarke hitherto had never questioned the tenets of his
denomination. The position he occupied was his by inheri-
tance and by acceptance after he was able to judge for him-
self. He held to a mitigated form of Calvinism and believed
baptism by immersion to have been the method used by the
early church, which expressed in its symbohsm a vital truth.
Restricted communion was its inevitable corollary. The whole
question had been exhaustively discussed by able and learned
reasoners, again and again, and he agreed with the conclu-
sions which tallied with his own early training.

Nor did he hesitate over any point in the confession of
faith that had been adopted long before by the church in New-
ton Center, although he saw that it ought to be revised and
modified. This confession was very carefully revised a few
years later, during his pastorate, and many changes were made.

-^-IT-T. IIU ' ■-!■ Ji.

42 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

From the time that he entered the School of Theology at
Hamilton he had been an eager student of the Bible, and espe-
cially of New Testament exegesis. Through the six years in
Keene he had worked conscientiously and ardently, and in
Newton he kept on in the same line under the added stimulus
of daily contact with teachers in the seminary. He tried to
keep pace with all advances in actual knowledge of the Bible,
using always the best texts and the best aids that could be
had. He was not much affected by the destructive criticism
at that time nearing its culmination in Germany. He was
repelled by the spirit of Strauss, then the most prominent
scholar and critic of the radical group, and not until after the
coming of Hamack did he find himself deeply interested in
any of the more modern theologians of Germany. In truth,
his theology with its modifications and profound changes as
the years passed was always his own, as purely the product
of his own experience, study, and reflection as was possible to
an open-minded man who read somewhat widely.

Ever clear in memory is a picture of the study in the Lang-
ley cottage. Between windows reaching to the floor stood a
desk and bookcase, and there the earnest student used to sit,
with his constant companion, the Greek New Testament,
open beside him, his cherished Bengel's Gnomon close at hand,
Meyer's Commentary, then the latest and best, and other
books of reference within easy reach.

There was in the study a little old-fashioned melodeon
of a style long since superseded by larger and noisier instru-
ments. This had been his dear companion and friend almost
from childhood. He confided to it unutterable things, and it
responded with ready sympathy. Often he would leave his
writing and sit down at the melodeon. Perhaps he would play
some of the many church tunes that he knew, perhaps some
tender or lofty passage from an oratorio, perhaps some emo-
tion or revelation in the depths of his soul, inexpressible save
in music, would utter itself in poignant strains.

NEWTON CENTER 43

He was as far as possible from being outwardly methodi-
cal. He never laid out his time according to any schedule,
yet his innate orderliness enabled him to do whatever was to
be done without hurry or worry. Two sermons were sure to
be ready for the Sunday services, though often one was wholly
written on Saturday. On Monday morning he usually went
to Boston to attend the weekly ministers' meeting and the
monthly meeting of a theological club. He liked to drop in
at the missionary rooms at Tremont Temple or at some book-
store, so Monday was really Boston day. On Tuesday morn-
ing after this bit of a change he started, refreshed, upon the
work of the week before him. He worked at his desk during
the morning hours, when he was fresh and fit, if he could, yet
since a pastor, with innumerable calls upon his time, must
work as he can, he was not disturbed even if the morning
proved to be a series of interruptions. He turned easily from
one thing to another, and as he had great power of concentra-
tion he accomplished much without loss of time.

He had not given much attention to philosophy, but if
questioned he would have replied that his philosophy was
that of common sense. He had accepted the system of
thought regarding the problem of existence generally taught
in American colleges — of which Doctor McCosh, at Princeton,
was at that time a distinguished exponent. He might well
have applied to himself the saying of Joubert: "That part of
my head which is made to take in things that are not clear
is very narrow." He could not, as yet, sympathize with the
exclamation of Edward Irving: "I like to see a great idea
looming up through the mist !"

He had a passion for rectitude of thought and definiteness
of statement. There was little in his sermons of that touch
and go and general suggestiveness that is delightful to many
minds. Each point was clearly and strongly stated, the ser-
mon was delivered with a characteristic momentum, and the
effect was convincing, although the argument was underlying

44 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

and implied, never obtrusive. His strength was, however,
not chiefly intellectual. A pervasive glow that came from
the preacher's inmost self was the secret of his power. That
he was essentially a mystic was one of the things that he
learned latest about himself. His philosophy, like his the-
ology, changed profoundly though very gradually, as he ad-
vanced in life.

In Keene he had been overburdened in every way because,
although his people were generous and loyal, there were few
in the church who had the ability and the training to take any
part of the parish work off his hands. The Newton Center
church was rich in men and women accustomed to work
with and for the pastor. Also the members of the theological
faculty stood ready to help him at any time by preaching.
He now had leisure for more reading and broader study, and
the library of Newton Institution was close at hand. He re-
sumed his studies in the field of church history with a mind ma-
ture enough to make such work vital and fruitful. His reading
in this line and his sampling of the church fathers, early and
late, provided much food for thought at that period and later.

While in Keene he had become acquainted with The Vica-
rious Sacrifice of Horace Bushnell, but in his busy and weary
life he had not found opportunity to do it justice. Not long
after his settlement at Newton a professor in the seminary
came one day into his study and began to talk of what was
uppermost in his mind. He had been reading The Vicarious
Sacrifice and was about to write a review in which he took
issue with the author. He pointed out what he regarded as
the fatal error of the book and gave an outline of the argu-
ments by which he proposed to refute this heresy.

A few days later Clarke returned from the seminary li-
brary bringing The Vicarious Sacrifice, and went through it
with critical and yet sympathetic interest. He looked at the
argument candidly from the author's point of view and felt
the power of the book without assenting to it. The genius

NEWTON CENTER 45

and personality of the author impressed him more than his
teaching, yet Clarke could never afterward see the doctrine
of the atonement in precisely the same light as before.

The two men were very unlike. Bushnell was sure of him-
self, ardent, forceful, actively interested in a great variety
of things, secular and religious. Clarke was quiet, contem-
plative, distrustful of himself, and so limited by his lack of
physical strength that he needed to give the greater part of
his energy to his daily work. There was in his nature an out-
reaching, wistful tenderness, especially toward older men
whom he looked up to and revered, which would have ap-
pealed irresistibly to Bushnell. If the two had ever met they
must have loved each other, and Clarke might have become
the disciple of Bushnell. As it was, he was never the disciple
of any man.

In Representative Modern Preachers, Doctor Lewis C.
Brastow says:

"Doctor Bushnell was a theologian and has left behind
him a theology sufficiently distinctive to bear his name. It is
a curious turn in the course of events that our theological
institutions, as a sort of defense of the Christian faith, should
to-day be expounding the theology of a man who spent his
Hfe in enlarging theology and who denied that anything like
a system of theology is possible."

Of Clarke throughout his whole career it might have been
said, as Brastow said of Bushnell:

"He had no theology that he could not preach, and he be-
lieved in none that could not and should not be translated
from the realm of thought into the realm of life."

In Sixty Years with the Bible, Clarke tells simply and dis-
passionately the story of his progress from inherited belief to
a faith wholly his own. In chapter IV he says :

"During the entire decade of the Seventies I was neigh-
bor and pastor to a theological seminary. It would naturally

46 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

be expected that such a period in a young man's life would
provide an important chapter in the story of his relations
with the Bible, and in my case so it did. Under various in-
fluences the story developed very gradually, perhaps more
gradually than logically, but it advanced to results for which
I am profoundly grateful. I was aware of this period largely
as a period of harvest from my earlier Ufe, but afterward I
knew it to be more truly a seed time."

The story of Clarke's life at Newton might be concluded
fitly by free quotations from Sixty Years with the Bible if space
could be given to them. From page 109 to the end of the
Seventies is told the story of the manner in which he was led
to make an independent study of the doctrine of the atone-
ment, and the results at which he arrived are indicated. Of
this experience he says:

"For months I was held to my task by a power from which
there was no escape — from which indeed I had no desire to
escape. It was a great experience ; for now, under an impulse
that I knew to be from God, my best powers were for the first
time grappling with the primal moral facts of existence. I
had been handling divine reaHties all my years, but never
until now had I been under such strong and joyful constraint
in dealing with them. Such labor could not be in vain in the
Lord, and to me it was richly fruitful."

His broader and deeper study of the Bible, as he asserts,
was that which brought to him a conception of the meaning
of the central doctrine of the Christian faith which was in
every sense his own. He had found a satisfactory reality.
He had felt since the hour of his conversion that the heart
of God was truly the heart of a father, and the goodness and
love of God had always glowed in his sermons. His preaching
had become less and less doctrinal as years went on, more
and more vital and practical. In those later years whatever
might be the text — and the preaching did not lack variety —
there stood, luminous in the background, the first and great
commandment, and the second which is like unto it.

NEWTON CENTER 47

The new theology had not yet received its name — a mis-
leading one — but it was on the way, and in Newton Center it
had arrived. It was impossible that all of the older parish-
ioners should Usten Sunday after Sunday to Clarke's preach-
ing without missing a literaHsm in doctrinal statement that
was dear to them or that others should fail to resent the
ethical demands that were made so gently yet so insistently.
There was dissatisfaction and irritation here and there.
Clarke had now spent nearly eleven difficult years at Newton
Center. Evidently the time was at hand for a change. Sure
of that leading of which he had ever been aware, he waited
quietly for a door to open. A request came that he should
visit a church in Montreal, Canada. This opportunity for a
new work in a field very unlike anything that he had known
before was strongly attractive to him. He went to Montreal,
became interested in the church and the place, and a few
weeks later was installed as pastor of the Olivet Baptist
Church.

IN CANADA

An all-day's journey northward in early spring through
a wintry landscape that grew more snowy, hour by hour;
then evening and darkness; then a stop at a small station
near Montreal, where a merry-faced, eager youth entered,
glanced along the car and straightway approached a sur-
prised woman, introduced himself, and explained that he was
playing a small joke upon Doctor Clarke and a number of
friends. They were at the Montreal depot awaiting my ar-
rival on the train from Boston, and he wished himself to be
the first to meet and greet me. There was a burst of hearty
laughter when I appeared escorted by this young knight,
and the group of kindly strangers were strangers no more.

The big sleigh, warm with fur robes, to which we were led,
the bright streets, the rows of substantial stone dwellings, the
much snow everywhere, the low sleighs, some of them beau-
tiful and drawn by spirited horses, suggesting famiUar pic-
tures of Russian scenes, and finally the house in Durocher
Street where we were guests — all was new and exhilarating.
Our Lady of the Snows greeted the newcomer with a radiant
smile. This first glimpse of Montreal and of the cordial, im-
pulsive, outspoken people who had asked Clarke to become
their pastor remained a vivid memory.

What could he do but enter this door which had opened
so widely and so hospitably? Nevertheless, he wished his
wife to see something of the place and the people before a
question so momentous was decided. Americans in Canada
were sometimes misfits. Two months later we were dwelling
in our own home at 219 Peel Street, a Uttle below Sherbrooke.

IN CANADA 49

The house was light, cheerful, and well arranged. A small
room at the back of the hall, opening upon a veranda, already
generously fitted with shelves, was taken for the library, and
one on the second floor, opening upon a balcony over the front
porch, was suitable for a study. Opposite was a large field
used by a riding-master as a training-school for his pupils
and his horses. He was an expert — perhaps a genius — in his
line, and there were interesting activities presented upon this
field.

Not far away, upon Sherbrooke Street, was McGill Uni-
versity with its pleasant garden, of which we had the free-
dom. From Sherbrooke the intersecting streets ran steeply
up Mount Royal, where there were shady forest paths and a
cherished city park which grew more attractive year by year.
Upon Mount Royal several points aflforded beautiful views,
especially over the St. Lawrence River and beyond.

The nucleus of the Olivet Baptist Church was a body of
earnest Christian workers, some of whom were persons of
superior character and intelHgence who had separated from
the First Church a few years before. From the outset they had
engaged in work of an evangelistic and missionary type, of
which, in this the principal port of Canada, there was abun-
dant need. They had gathered a singularly mixed congrega-
tion made up of persons from many parts of the world.
Among the original members and leaders of the church were
Scotch and English elements about equal in numbers and
strength, persons of marked individuaHty and decided opin-
ions, who differed upon some points and were always keen
for an argument; who, however, worked marvellously well
together in religious and philanthropic enterprises. Several
American families had been added to the church and were
among its most efficient workers. Some of the parishioners
were well-to-do though none could be called rich, and the
majority were of narrow means. They were as a body sur-
prisingly liberal and the finances of the church, with which

50 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

the pastor was never troubled, were, apparently, well man-
aged.

Clarke had been interested from his boyhood in the Grande
Ligne Mission founded by Madame Feller, a devout Swiss
lady of extraordinary gifts, and he was pleased to find the
leaders in the First Church and the Olivet working strongly
side by side for this useful mission, to which he at once gave
himself ardently. He already knew and honored the Reverend
Theodore Lefleur, pastor of the French Baptist Church in
Montreal, who was himself one of the finest of the first fruits
of the religious and educational work of this mission which has
aided much in the higher development of French-Canadian
youth.

A kind welcome was given to the newcomer by the minis-
ters of various denominations who stood close together in a
city where Protestants were largely outnumbered by French
Catholics, the ruling force in religious and civil affairs. Among
ministers and laymen throughout the city Clarke found con-
genial and stimulating companionship, and made some friend-
ships that were permanent. Montreal, a small city, was, nev-
ertheless, cosmopolitan, and its social life had much variety
and charm. After a time he became a member of a club made
up of professional men, men of affairs, of letters, and of science,
which had been organized for the promotion of good under-
standing and good-fellowship. This opportunity for a broader
and more intimate knowledge of men of many minds and
pursuits widely diverse, was valued the more because the in-
tellectual associations of Clarke had hitherto been almost ex-
clusively theological and he keenly enjoyed attending occa-
sionally, a§ he was able, meetings of this club, at which good
papers upon topics far apart from theology were read and
discussed.

In this interesting city, where one might hear the country
folks on the street speaking the old French of their fore-
fathers and the educated and elegant using the purest French

IN CANADA 51

of Paris, and to which drifted representatives of almost every
civilized country, were opportunities to learn something of all
classes and conditions of men. To a man with open eyes and
a sympathetic heart it was a new and enlarging experience.

Of his life in Montreal Clarke wrote thus in Sixty Years
with the Bible:

"At the very beginning of the eighties a great change
came to all my mental operations through a change in the
scene of my work. From my pastorate of the seventies I
went to another which was as unlike it as possible in the con-
ditions of life and thought. I carried myself with me, and
all my past, but no man could be the same in two places.
Any man would be changed by such a transfer; that is, to
speak after the manner of the operation of God, he would
be developed, the new atmosphere stimulating in some new
manner the growth of his mind. In my case, changes began
at once. For one thing, I immediately threw off the practise
of reading sermons. That is to say, I threw it off as a regular
practise from the very first day in my new field, and my bond-
age to it, such as it was, fell away. I wrote and read when I
chose, and preached in all ways between that and purely ex-
temporaneous work. This emancipation the spirit of the new
environment brought me, and evidently this was an exer-
cise of freedom that tended to the enlargement of freedom.
This in general was the characteristic of the new Ufe upon
which I now entered, that I found greater liberty in my men-
tal and spiritual movements than before. I stood as a freer
man. I can see plainly now that the experience which I have
just narrated had been leading me straight out into the
larger place in which I found myself; but I did not under-
stand it so well then.

"I was not designing any new methods in the use of the
Bible, but expected simply to go on using it as I had done
hitherto. At first I was doing no special work with it, except
in preaching. But in preaching I felt the new Uberty and
exaltation. Utterance was more and more a delight. With
this new joy came naturally a fresh enjoyment in the wealth
of the Scriptures. Never more than in those days have I en-
joyed bringing out of the treasury things new and old, and at

52 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

no period have I found larger things in the treasury to be
brought forth. But though I was not planning new methods
with the Bible, I was using them. It was impossible that my
experience in searching out the atonement should be without
immediate and valuable fruit in my ordinary work. In preach-
ing now it was impossible that I should refrain from using the
Bible as I had discovered my right to use it then. The by-
gone conditions could never be restored. I was handUng the
Bible now more personally, more as myself, and more as if I
had a right to handle it. I still practised exegesis with un-
diminished fidelity, but the process was further removed from
my sermonizing than before. My message was not so directly
borrowed from the Bible as in former years and was more
suggested or inspired by it. Not the sight of my eyes upon
the page, so much as the experience of mind and heart with
its truths, was placing it at my disposal. Around me were
many who seemed to reverence the Bible more for what it was
than for what it contained; but for my part I was prizing it
now for what it contained, and was using my Christian lib-
erty, as manfully as I might, to make its spiritual message
clear, unhampered, and effective.

"It scarcely need be added that my theology was chang-
ing meanwhile, for neither the outcome nor the method of
my work on the atonement could allow it to stand unaltered,
and in the new atmosphere of liberty I was certain to advance,
the process of change consisting mainly in this same thing,
that I was taking up the great truths of revelation, and using
them for myself as truths, and following them to their appli-
cation and result in doctrine, and allowing them to assimilate
whatever could live with them and expel whatever could not.
This I conceive to be the right way to form one's doctrinal
conceptions. This revolutionary and reconstructive work,
which is the proper work of truth as it is in Jesus, was taking
a place in my life that it had not held before. The time was
a period of enlargement to me, and of enlargement that I felt
to be normal to a child of God. The experience was defec-
tive enough through fault and weakness of my own, but it
was a genuine experience of growth into more abundant life.
And if I were to give it a name, I should call it a passing over
from traditionalism to reality.

"Now it was that the revised New Testament appeared.

IN CANADA 53

The first copy of it that I saw was sent to me by a religious
newspaper, to be read and reported upon. I welcomed it with
all my heart, and used it in public worship from the first
Sunday. One of my men, seeing it in my hand on that first
Sunday morning, said: 'I hate that.' But I was able to con-
vince him that he had not hated wisely or understood the
book that he hated. How glad I was when it came ! I re-
membered back into the days when revision of King James
Bible was discussed among American Christians, and recalled
the bitterness of opposition — opposition grounded largely in
failure to understand the fact that the Bible is a translated
book, and still more in that reverence for the familiar words
which sprang from belief in verbal inspiration. I had had my
hereditary hesitations about revision, but they were long since
vanished. And now, when I was barely in middle age, the
prejudice against revision had already been so far overcome
that the book was actually in my hands, issued with splendid
backing on both sides of the Atlantic. Doubtless it was not
perfect, and it had still to win its way, but the beginning of
improvement had been made, the new conditions had been
established, and the good result was sure. Now, I said to
myself, those things that I had known to be true about many
a passage, but which the people could not know except
through explanations which they might deem pedantic, and
destructive, too, could be known to all readers. Now, when
this book had won its way, the thoughts of the Bible would
be more independent of the words: there was some chance
that people who hung upon the very words of Scripture might
come to glory in the preciousness of the very thoughts and the
very truths. Now was doomed that narrow reverence for
the very words which gathered around the impossible doc-
trine of verbal inspiration. For the coming of this book was
only a part of the great movement of the age toward making
the Bible and Christ and divine religion more real to people,
a movement in which I with joy would bear my little part.
When the revised Old Testament appeared, four years later,
there was less of thrill and glow in the reception of it, but the
welcome was the same in principle. The Bible was now more
ready to my hand for the uses to which I was called to put it.
I grasped the revision as a better weapon for the warfare of
the Lord."

54 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

He had a very busy life in those days. The Americaa
Baptist publication society waS bringing out a Bible Com-
vientary to which he was to contribute a volume upon the
Gospel of ISIark. For some months the nervous clicking of
the typewriter, which he had learned to use when he began
work upon the commentary, could be heard during the morn-
ing hours. In the afternoon he was usually engaged in parish
work. His sermons came largely out of his daily experience
and were all the better for that. The commentary was fin-
ished in 1 88 1, submitted to the committee of the publication
society for examination, approved and published, and the
first edition was in use before the responsible heads of the
society became aware, through protests from here and there,
that a number of conservative persons were finding it to be
heretical. A curious correspondence ensued between Clarke
and the secretary of the society, with the result that in the
next edition, together with the author's interpretation of the
eschatological teachings and implications of the thirteenth
chapter of Mark, there appeared an alternative view con-
tributed by his honored friend. Doctor Hovey. Then and
later, the two scholars agreed to disagree in the most amicable
spirit.

Montreal during the colder months was delightful to those
who had plenty of food, fuel, and furs, and the fame of its win-
ter sports, at that time unique but since widely emulated, was
world-wide. Even those who did not indulge in these plea-
sures felt the stimulus of the keen clear air and shared sym-
pathetically in the gayety around them. But the winters
were long and there were many offsets and drawbacks to the
gayety. The poor had a hard struggle with the rigorous
climate and most persons of moderate means could feelingly
re-echo the exclamation of a city pastor with a large family:
"We burn up in winter all that we can save in summer !"

An exploitation on a large scale of the winter attractions
of Montreal occurred in 1883. Then the first ice palace was

IN CANADA

built. It was in the form of a mediaeval castle, and when
illmninated from within by white electric lights it seemed as
if shapen by invisible agencies from a vast moonstone, and
the effect was indescribably channing.

There were dangers due to the vast accumulations of snow
and ice, and there were many steep inclines on the streets
where it was difficult for the unaccustomed to keep their
footing, and sometimes fatal accidents were caused by the
falling of snow and ice from roofs that were seldom cleared.
When the snow melted streets and sidewalks were impassable
in places. Spring in Montreal was the sad season of sickness
and death. Then a Pandora's box of dire diseases flew open.

Strangely enough the summers were hot, and the lightest
clothing was donned, with amusingly languorous airs, by
loyal Montrealers, who loved to call attention to the lavish
kindness of Mother Nature to favored Canada in respect of
climate, and were fain to exploit their heat as well as their
cold.

In the winter of 1883, in descending the stone steps of a
house where he had been calUng, Clarke shpped on an icy
place, fell, and injured his knee. He was taken home at once
and the best surgical aid was given, but the injury was one
that could not be perfectly repaired. He was confined to
his bed and to his room for many weeks, and when he was at
last able, after using crutches, to walk with only a cane it
was evident that he must always remain partially crippled
and that parish work would thenceforth be difficult. While
he was adjusting his thoughts to this new situation the pro-
fessorship of New Testament interpretation in the Baptist
Theological School in Toronto was offered to him and ac-
cepted. This was an instance of the way in which, with-
out anxious thought or effort of his own, he was so led at
each turning-point in his life that he could not be long in
doubt as to the next step. Not without grief to pastor and
people was this change made, but all could see that it was

56 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

necessary and right. The breaking up was swiftly accom-
plished, the farewells were said, and after several brief visits
at other places and a longer stay at Kennebunkport, Maine,
where the Stackpole family were spending vacation, and
there were other friends, we spent a fortnight in Cazenovia,
and from there went to our new home.

In a diary used for occasional records of events and re-
flections the following entry was made when the packing of
household goods for removal was going on and various manu-
scripts were being destroyed:

"July 17, 1883. What to do with old sermons. Feeling
runs very strongly against them as against things that have
lived their Uttle day and done all that they will ever do. They
seem like fossils without the scientific interest that made them
worth preserving.

"But what if you look into old sermons and find them full
of new theology? Written, too, when you had no idea of
new theology and supposed it to be all as sound and ancient
as any theologian could wish. Some of the sermons of 1869,
September to December, look like that, and on a sudden
there springs up a kind of fondness for them and a desire to
save them in a spirit of self- vindication. Not that they de-
velop anything fresh or modera, in modern forms, but they
innocently enunciate principles that would lead out into the
new country. If the lines were projected then, without my
knowing it, no wonder that they have been followed since.

"Some truths are here, too, that I thought I had not been
preaching until recently; truths that have lately grown vital
and practical, but which I did not know that I had so long
ago uttered. It is a peculiar sensation to find the living truth
young in the mind already existing in an earlier time.

"It was then the preaching of youth, simplicity, unso-
phisticated thought: it afterward came to be the preaching
of maturer and more intelligent thinking, into which the old
truth had returned with its place and relations more clearly
apprehended. I suppose that meanwhile the truth was never
absent: but it was in a kind of retirement, waiting to come
forth in forms better suited to usefulness.

IN CANADA

''August 8. A pause in the record, but not much in the
nature of a pause in fact. The house torn up, the goods
packed and sent away, farewell to Montreal and the ending
of a pastor's life: all those have intervened. Then four days
in the White Mountains and now Kennebunkport. No time
for record when the most is going on.

"Yet this has not been so eventful a time inwardly as
outwardly. There has been Httle of agitation in the changes.
No heart-burnings, no heart-breakings, little strong strain
upon the heart-strings. There was no reason why the change,
if it was to be made, should not be made quickly; and so it
was. Real regrets, but no rebellion: no such clinging on any
one's part as to make it sorely painful: as easy a departure
as any one could have. No one speeded, but no one retarded
the parting friend. All the deep agitation that did occur was
earher, not in the going but in the decision to go, and it was
over before this record was begun.

"August 26. As peaceful a Sabbath morning as ever
dawned upon the earth. God speed the coming of Sabbaths
to all mankind. The greater part of the human race as yet
knows nothing of them, and to many who do know of them
they represent denial rather than permission, cessation of the
necessary and chosen routine rather than freedom for a
necessary and chosen privilege. Sabbaths must come in with
the coming more abundantly of the life that Christ brings,
for they are the best breathing time of that Hfe. So the
prayer for Sabbaths is 'Thy Kjngdom Come.'

''This is the last day of the resting time in Kennebunk-
port. It has not been the ideal resting time in all respects —
the sea has been too far off, not constantly in sight or hear-
ing, yet no vacation could have been more graciously pro-
vided with what was essential to the purpose of the time.
Never was a man partly helpless, really dependent on others
for the movements that were necessary for the regaining of
normal strength, better provided for. Two friends at hand
with boats have kept the means of exercise and pleasure per-
petually near. Without any excess of exertion and with af-
fectionate help at hand in all that was to be done, it has been
possible and easy to do enough, and as much as strength al-
lowed, and to obtain a good benefit from the time.

58 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

" Toronto, September 23. It seems natural to look back
on the pause in work, the interval between two lives.

" Four days in the White Mountains: three weeks in Ken-
nebunkport, four days in Boston, four days in Newton Centre.
Two weeks in Cazenovia, including two days at Hamilton:
that is the outline.

'' A sweet and most loving reunion at Cazenovia of all of
us who remain — a happy season together, whose very happi-
ness, more than any words of remembrance that were spoken,
revived the memory of a true home in early years."

A little before the opening of the Theological School we
reached Toronto and were guests for a fortnight or more in
the home of Doctor John H. Castle, the president, who with
Mrs. Castle showed us the utmost kindness at that time and
ever afterward.

After a dreary and futile experience in seeking a suitable
boarding-place, and in house-hunting, we took a student's
suite of three rooms in MacMaster Hall, furnished them with
our own belongings, and there we remained during the first
seminary year, which was short, as the Divinity School closed
early in order to give the students a long vacation for mis-
sionary work and the supplying of churches.

The following paragraph from a letter dated November 5,
1883, shows a woman's view of their new environment:

"As for the city and the surroundings into which we have
fallen — the city is extremely pleasant, looking, as some one
has said, like an overgrown village. A large proportion of
the houses are detached, with pretty grass plots in front, and
some are surrounded with beautiful grounds. It is emphat-
ically a city of homes, and although it has not the historical
interest or the vivid picturesqueness of Montreal, it is, I be-
lieve, a better place in which to dwell."

After a time we found a newly built house in a good loca-
tion, at the corner of Huntley and Selby Streets, a little be-
low Bloor and only a short distance from Sherboume, where
a street-car line made every part of the city accessible, and

IN CANADA 59

65 Huntley Street was our home while we remained in To-
ronto. It was near Rosedale, an open, park-like region, where
as yet there were only a few residences. It was a pleasant walk
along Bloor Street to MacMaster Hall, and Castle, who lived
on Sherbourne Street, used often to pick up Clarke at his
own door, and the two friends had much intimate conversa-
tion during their morning walk to the Divinity School. Quite
unlike in some respects, both were gifted with the same
broad humanity and serenity of spirit, and were apt to view
things in the same light.

"June 15, 1884. Commencement at Hamilton, New
York, 20th to Cazenovia, 22nd to Waverly. 27th the fall
that has cost me the use of my right elbow. End of August
back to Toronto. September 28th, in our own home."

Much is summed up in the few words which refer to
the accident by which Clarke was now doubly disabled. In
going down the stairs in the house where we were stay-
ing, at Waverly, my old home, he had sHpped and fallen,
striking his right elbow, which was shattered. It was before
the day of X-ray examinations and the daring and brilliant
surgery now possible. The result of such skill and care as
could be given was an imperfect flexion of the elbow-joint
and a consequent disuse of certain muscles. Some move-
ments of the arm were ever afterward less free and some
were impossible. He could never again tie his own cravat or
even handle his knife and fork as before. Physically ham-
pered at every turn, he bore this new limitation of his powers
with quiet heroism, well knowing how much it meant, as the
fall was without doubt due to his weak and stiffened knee,
and this fact was ominous.

As soon as he had recovered a little from the first shock of
the accident he began to write with his left hand, and pathetic
indeed seemed the first scrawls which he sent to his friends,
although he jested easily about the discreditable appearance

6o WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

of these epistles. One of them came to light recently in a
package of letters to his friend Stackpole, which after his
death had been returned to the writer, and it recalled with
painful sharpness the whole train of accidents distributed
through the years that followed that fateful shp in Mon-
treal. After that not a single year passed without some mis-
hap, slight or serious, due to the lame, uncertain knee.

The following extracts from a diary and note-book show
something of Clarke's thinking during the last months of his
stay in Toronto.

"January i, 1887. Believing the Bible was once held
practically as more vital to religion than lo\dng and trusting
Christ, it was thought a part of religion to believe that Ruth
married Boaz.

''January 3. Read on train Lessing's Nathan the Wise.
Awkward translation, disappointing. A lesson of religious
toleration is the main moral of the play, but it is taught in
forms that have only an artificial hold upon the mind and
upon the ordinary conscience.

''January 9. A life enriched with what our Lord calls life
eternal.

"January 17. Address to young people's association of
Bloor Street church on the Glory of God in the Starry
Heavens.

"The vast suggestiveness of the thought of dark worlds.
If a God greater than so great a universe is unthinkable, much
more so is so great a universe without a greater God. The
one is simply too great for us to think ; the latter is absurd.

"January 18. We think we are suffering with Christ
when some one is coming after us with a persecuting spirit.
So we may be, but more truly yet are we suffering with
Christ when we are going after some one, at all cost, with
saving love.

"January 19. Changes are coming as fast as the age can
healthily bear them, and in some things faster. The spirit
of change is in the air and there is Uttle need of putting one's
strength to the work of change. If we can help to keep the
air itself sweet and pure, that will be a better service.

IN CANADA 6i

" January 23. Two ways of preaching; to talk about great
things and to utter them. To tell of the nature of true Chris-
tian appeal and to make it. The former is easy, the latter
hard. The former may seem to render patience superfluous
by going at once to the point. But the point is not really
reached and the appearance of swift success is misleading.
The latter is the only successful way.

^^ March 6. God's gift of heartiness.

^^ April I. In morals, religion, theology, nothing that is
artificial is true. What is artificial may contain much truth
and may approach more or less closely to the truth; but in
so far as it is artificial it bears the marks of human labor and
invention, the sign of effort in discovering and devising, and
lacks the simplicity and naturalness that will finally be found
in truth. To God all that is true must be simple and unla-
bored, free of invention and special application. To say that
something is true is to say that it cannot be otherwise: where-
as whatever is artificial can be other than it is and would be
better for being simpler."

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON

"Semper aut discere, aut docere, aut scribere, dulce habui." — Bede.

In the spring of 1887 Clarke was called to the pastorate
of the church in Hamilton, New York, which had been made
vacant in the summer of 1886 by the death of his friend,
Stephen H. Stackpole.

His seven years in Montreal and Toronto had been busy
and fruitful. His experience in Canada had broadened his
outlook and furthered the development of his powers, but
he had begun to feel a yearning for his own country, and this
call could not be resisted.

Among the first to meet him with a cordial welcome were
some of his old teachers. Dodge was now president of the
university. Andrews was at the head of the department of
Greek. Taylor, a later friend, was already known among edu-
cators as a mathematician. Brooks, a man of deep insight
and flashing genius, who had been pastor of the church dur-
ing Clarke's student days, was now teaching biology in the
university, and a rare teacher he made.

Beebee and Harvey were still in the theological seminary.
Maynard, who had come later, had the chair of church his-
tory. In charge of the Semitic department was Burnham,
who was a student at Newton when Clarke began his work
there.

Nathaniel Schmidt, a young man of unusual linguistic
attainments and acumen as a critic, was soon added to the
Semitic department. He remained at Hamilton until 1896,
when he was called to take charge of a kindred department
in Cornell University.

Another notable addition to the university faculty was

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 63

Albert Perry Brigham, now widely known as a geologist and
geographer.

The village was still charmingly old-fashioned, the typical
secluded seat of the country college. Very sweet and peace-
ful everything seemed after the seven years of city life.

This was the outward aspect during the lovely weeks of
early summer. It was not long before the inherent tragedy
of human existence began to unveil itself. The village, with
the region around it, is an epitome of the experiences that
rack or rejoice humanity. One does not need to dwell in the
city to know life in all its depth and poignancy. Within the
boundaries of this new field of labor almost every kind of
evil-doing had been enacted, and, on the other hand, every
noble trait of human nature had been shown.

Country people know each other and know of all that is
happening, and the tug of S3rmpathy upon one's heart is no
less incessant than in the city. The demands upon the pas-
tor of this country church and his opportunities for service
were unlimited.

In the church were some of his own kindred and many
others whom he already knew. The settlement in Hamilton
was indeed a home-coming. Nothing could have been hap-
pier for a man of his temperament who clung instinctively to
old associations and old ties, and very happy he was, though
often heavily burdened through all the time of his pastorate.
In those days the people generally, young and old, went to
church. His congregation, of which the students made a large
part, was stimulating and inspiring. The best and highest
that he could give met an eager response.

The daily life of the people, very like that of his native
place, which was only a few miles away, he entered into with
understanding and sympathy. There, as elsewhere, he soon
won the confidence and love of the young people, and his in-
fluence lives on in those who were children and youth at
that time.

64 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

The social life had a distinctive charm. In that small
out-of-the-way place were fine minds and delightful person-
alities. There were those whom to meet was as the friendly
clash of flint and steel, and there were dweUings where one
felt at home from the first hour and always.

His power as a preacher was now fully developed. In his
last sermon in Montreal, believing that he was bidding fare-
well to the ministry, he had poured out his soul in lofty eu-
logium upon his office and the work that he was leaving, and
had exclaimed with passion which thrilled the audience: "The
pulpit has been to me as a throne ! "

To that throne he had now returned and he felt an inex-
pressible joy in his calling and his work. He loved every
part of it. His lameness was a serious limitation upon his
ability to do many things required of a settled pastor. He
walked a good deal, but he could not take the vigorous exer-
cise that he needed. There was driving to visit parishioners
upon the hills and in the valleys, and whatever took him out-
of-doors was good, yet his study-table held him for too many
hours in the day. Youthful always in spirit, he was rapidly
growing old in body. At forty-seven years of age he looked
long past fifty. Men older than he took him to be their
senior.

Suddenly he was taken out of the pastorate and placed in
the chair of theology. The death of Doctor Dodge, January
5, 1890, made his place vacant in the seminary, and his col-
leagues requested the church to release Clarke from a part
of his duties in order that he might finish the year of teach-
ing in theology. A sorrowful consent was given, for every
one foresaw the result. At the university commencement in
June he was urged to accept an election to the professorship
in theology, and he consented.

He had often congratulated himself while he was teach-
ing New Testament interpretation that he did not have to
teach theology. The great problems with which the theolo-

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 65

gian has to deal had long been before him. He had faced
them many times in his study and he had not hesitated to
give utterance in his sermons to any truth that he plainly
saw, but there were doctrinal points upon which he was not
decided. He did not need to "preach his doubts," but things
held in abeyance while he was seeking fuller light would have
to be discussed in a classroom. Why should he, a lover of
peace, leave the pastorate to enter upon a lifelong warfare?
Every argument seemed in favor of his remaining where he
was, but in his inmost self he felt a constraining necessity to
enter the door that was set open before him.

When the autumn term opened he began the work for
which the whole tenor and experience of his previous years
had been preparing him. In carrying along the unfinished
work of the year before he had used the text-book prepared
by Doctor Dodge, but the supply of these books had been
exhausted, and in any case he must do his work in his own
way. So he wrote and manifolded day by day, and gave his
students, piece by piece, the course in theology as it took
shape in his mind. This he did for several years.

In February of 1890 in walking along an icy pavement I
had fallen and had broken my hip. The injury, too lightly
regarded and wrongly diagnosed, was only understood a
month later and the expert treatment given then came too
late. A long train of painful results followed, with a general
physical decline so serious that the physician advised a win-
ter in a mild climate. By an exchange of time with a col-
league in the seminary, Clarke was enabled to spend three
months in 1892 in California. We went to Los Angeles,
where we were met by my nephew and my niece, already
there in search of health, and together we occupied a house
in a pleasant locality. The experiences of the winter were
interesting and the climate proved beneficial to all. Dur-
ing the following year I was able to remain at home, but a
second more alarming failure of health followed, and at the

66 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

beginning of December, 1893, we were again in California,
after spending two months at Colorado Springs. Having
heard of Pomona as a good place for quiet people, we tried
Pomona and the Palomares Hotel for a week and decided to
spend the winter there. It was early in the season and the
Palomares was almost empty of guests, so the manager gave
these first comers the most delightful room in the house. It
had a large window facing the east, a bay window looking
upon the lawn and northward, and a fireplace. The east
window gave a wonderful view of the valley and the moun-
tains. Far away rose San Bernardino and San Jacinto, look-
ing like near companions, though each stood solitary and
magnificent in its own expanse of desert. San Jacinto with
its colossal architectural forms, at morning and evening re-
splendent in light and color, seemed like Jerusalem the
Golden. Farther north the Cucamonga Range ran in a north-
westerly direction, reaching the sea near Santa Barbara.
These mountains lay in the sunshine all day long, catching
the first rosy tints of morning, changing in light and hue as
the hours advanced, and glorious at eventide. For two
months the travellers had been watching Pike's Peak, which
lies westward from Colorado Springs, and, rich in color early
in the day, loses the glory of sunshine and is sombre in the
afternoon.

For comfort was the fireplace, much used morning and
evening, and for order an ample closet. Clarke added a type-
writer and its table and a small bookcase to the equipments
of the room. Some adornments came out of trunks, and there
we were in a little home of our own that was always pleasant
to remember.

Clarke settled down happily to the revision of his work
in theology and carried it to completion. In Pomona we
stayed from the 2d of December to the middle of April.
A comfortable buggy and a good horse were found at one of
the stables, and long mornings were spent in driving over the

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 67

country with little regard to roads, which were mere wheel
tracks running every way through the sage-brush, and in ex-
ploring the canyons. From a cottage at San Dimas, where
we sometimes stopped, was a most entrancing view of the
Cucamonga Range.

There was something new to see each day as the season
advanced and vegetation awoke from its brief winter sleep
and unfolded leaves and flowers. Many incidents, delight-
ful at the time, were treasured in memory. We were driving
one day along the entrance of a canyon, where in an open
space stood three large, live-oaks with wide-spreading branches
that held masses of mistletoe which had grown into great
green balls. As we approached we heard a purling and rip-
pling music and saw that the trees were alive with larks.
Each was piping quite independently of the others, and the
effect of this rain of sweet notes was something like the sing-
ing of a mountain brook rippling over stones and falling here
and there in tiny cascades.

We sat for a long time listening to this strange music,
knowing well that it was a unique episode in our life. We
never heard the like again.

There was a tiny, sparkling mountain stream which we
loved and often visited in the steep, shady canyon that was
its home. We used to greet it joyously with "Good morning,
little stream," as it came singing and dancing to meet us like
a friendly mountain sprite.

*'Carpe diem'''' was our motto, and there were days of
glorious sunshine when to be out beneath the open sky of the
South, cloudless, deeply, wonderfully blue and far away, was
almost too much joy. We came to know some of the ranchers
in their rose-covered cottages, set in the green and gold of
orange-groves, and sometimes we would stop and sit for a
while on a veranda, chatting with our new acquaintances,
and thus these days of health-seeking were touched with
human interest and sympathy. Most of the families on those

ijMi'iiinrtif;

68 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

small ranches had come from distant homes for the sake of
some one's health, and pathetic histories were sometimes told.

Friendly relations early grew up with the townspeople.
After Clarke had preached once, the pastors of one and an-
other church asked for his aid, and so it came to pass that
during his stay in Pomona he preached to almost every con-
gregation in the town. He became interested in Pomona Col-
lege, then in its early youth.

Here are a few extracts from Clarke's diary:

^'December 2. (His birthday). Left the train at North
Pomona and were brought to the Palomares at Pomona. Let-
ter writing by both in the afternoon, sitting bareheaded on
the veranda, on the shady side.

^^ December 15. Obtained a Remington typewriter on
rental after vainly working with a borrowed caligraph a few
days. Afternoon drive to Lordsburg and to Mr. Howland's
olive orchard where we saw the making of oHve oil. Reading
in Lowell's poems.

*^ December 2,0. One of the finest of days. Drive forenoon
to Mr. Firey's ranch, oranges from the trees. Each day at
work on my Tlieology.

^^ January 26. A fine day at home, afternoon walk, 6
pages. Have read this week 'in the Naturalist in La Plata
and, aloud, Miss Dougall's What Necessity Knows. Pages
finished in Tlieology, 130."

The book mentioned was the latest of a succession of
fine and curiously original novels, which had a double inter-
est for us by reason of a valued friendship with the Dougall
family in Montreal.

Clarke's diary of this period, beginning July 17, 1893,
and ending May 24, 1894, upon our arrival at home, recalls
everything so xividly that it has been difficult to write briefly
of those months in California. At the end of the diary is a
list of dates and places of preaching by which it appears that
he gave eight sermons in Colorado Springs, and twenty-three
during the five months and a half in Pomona and also several

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 69

addresses. This was work by the way. The real business of
the time was rest and health-seeking for two, yet the The-
ology was wholly rewritten, sent to the press in sections, cor-
rected and finished except the final revision of page proofs,
which was done at home. It was printed for the author, not
published, by the University Press at Cambridge, Massa-
chusetts, and began to be used by the students at the open-
ing of the fall term in 1894. Clarke sent copies of it to his
most intimate friends and to some others modern in spirit,
who, he had reason to believe, would give it a welcome.

The book made friends for its author of those who had
been strangers before, and letters of cordial appreciation came
from all who had received it. Through these early readers
the book became known to one and another of kindred s>Tn-
pathies, and pastors and teachers began to apply to the author
for copies. The writer of this memoir has examined a copy of
the Outline, which bears significant and touching marks. It
was used during that first year by a student who is now a
teacher in the Theological Seminary of Colgate University.
Upon the title-page, by request, the author had written his
name. Upon the blank page opposite is the following quo-
tation :

"The spiritual reality that constitutes the heart of Chris-
tianity is a divine, holy life in the soul of man, making him a
new creature in holy love and godhness."

Scattered through the book are sayings of the teacher
jotted down upon the margins of the pages under discussion,
as they flashed forth in the classroom. Some pages are bor-
dered on every side with those quotations of apt, incisive,
luininous utterances. Other students marked their copies of
the text-book in a similar way. If all those hasty notes were
gathered together a volume could be made of rich, epigram-
matic expressions upon the highest themes.

During the winter of 1898 Clarke made a careful revision

^MShshsaaiS

70 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

of the book and it was published by Charles Scribner's Sons.
Ofifered now to the public, it at once attracted attention and
soon became widely known.

The following paragraph, from a review by Doctor Mar-
cus Dods, seems almost too familiar to be used here, yet it
expresses better than any other the surprise and deUght of
many readers:

"Has it ever happened to any of our readers to take up
a work on systematic theology with the familiar divisions,
God, Man, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Church, the Last
Things, and open it with a sigh of weariness and dread, and
find himself fascinated and enthralled and compelled to read
on to the last word ? Let any one who craves a new experi-
ence of this kind procure Doctor Clarke's Outline."

The following extracts are from Chapter VIII of the life
of Bishop Edward Gayer Andrews, by Francis J. McCon-
nell:

"According to the bishop's own statement, the turning
of a new comer in his thinking came with the publication
of Professor William Newton Clarke's Outline of Christian
Theology, in 1898. Bishop Andrews had had some acquain-
tance with Professor Clarke in early days at Cazenovia, and
the personal interest in the professor led to the reading of the
book. Perhaps a knowledge of the character of the author
predisposed the bishop to a favorable attitude. In any case,
the book, by the symmetry of its method and the charm of
its spirit, influenced the bishop profoundly. The following are
extracts from correspondence which passed between the bishop
and Professor Clarke:

"New York, March 27, 1899.
"Professor W. N. Clarke,

"My Dear Brotlier: Though holding through many past
years a very pleasant remembrance of yourself and of your
most estimable father, mother, and sister, I had in my many
movements through the country lost sight of yourself and
your work.

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 71

''But last summer, being in the study of a young minis-
ter, I found that he had read with great pleasure and profit
An Outline of Christian Theology, by Professor W. N. Clarke,
of Colgate University. ... I bought the volume and during
the summer vacation read and reread it with great interest
and with thankfulness for this new and most admirable set-
ting of Christian truth.

"My wife also has read it with equal pleasure and also my
daughter, Mrs. Ingraham. . . . And I have often recom-
mended it to ministers who seemed to be in a posture and of
a quality of mind likely to be profited by it.

"I may be permitted to say, without fear of suspicion
that I attempt flattery, that a nobler combination of freedom
and conservatism, of clear intellectual processes with the
sweetness and fervor of devoutness, of strength of material
with grace of form, has rarely or never come to my hbrary.

"I am greatly pleased to think that I knew in his early
years the author, and among other things to note in this case
how the godly home of a pastor has yielded such admirable
fruit.

"Sincerely yours,

"Edward G. Andrews."

Professor Clarke replied in a letter largely personal, from
which the following excerpts are made:

"Hamilton, N. Y., March 30, 1899.

"My dear Bishop Andrews: Your letter was equally sur-
prising and delightful. That you should enjoy and approve
my book could not fail to gladden me, and that you should
take time to tell me of it, and welcome me so warmly to your
circle of thought and friendly feeling — how can I fail to thank
you lovingly for this? You have always been a fixed point
for admiration and approval in my mind, and I have thought
with constant pleasure of your strong and honorable service
in a laborious office for the good of the church.

"I have been preaching most of my life, and in 1890, most
unexpectedly, I found myself teaching theology — the last
thing I had ever looked forward to doing. But it has been a
perpetual delight and an unspeakable privilege. The book
is tie outcome. I printed it privately in 1894, and in 1898 I

/-'

WILLL\M NEWTON CLARKE

revised and published it, as you know. It seems to be doing
good, for I am constantly hearing of it in unexpected quar-
ters as welcome. Bishop Vincent became interested in it
in the earlier form and commended it here and there. . . .
I seem to have spoken somehow to the unuttered thoughts
of many, and that is the surest way to get a hearing. . . .
''Sincerely yours,

"William N. Clarke."

During all the years in Hamilton it was a source of hap-
piness to Clarke that he was near Cazeno\da, where his
younger sister, Mrs. Goff, had always remained. She was the
wife of a self-sacrificing, untiring country physician, whose
life she shared with wonderful comprehension and sympathy.

Mrs. WiUiam Clarke had her home with her daughter.
She was a typical gentlewoman of the old school, and such
were even then becoming few. She had always at hand some
piece ot useful needlework or knitting, and yet she seemed
to be at leisure at any time for the casual visitor or for one of
the household. She was immaculate in person and attire,
wearing old-fashioned caps of snowy muslin or lace and folds
of the same soft fabric about her neck. Devout in habit,
dignified in mien and speech, she grew more beautiful in her
declining years. In 1887, when Clarke went to Hamilton,
she was in her eightieth year, very frail in body, yet men-
tally strong and bright. She passed away IMay 6, 1888.

There were two children in the home, Robert Judson
and Marian Ruth. Robert Goff entered Colgate University
and spent four years in the home of his uncle. He gradu-
ated in 1902. Marian became the wife of Theodore Han-
ford Pond, son of Theodore S. Pond, missionary in Syria
under the American Board, and later in Venezuela. Robert
was married March 22, 1904, to Sarah Humphrey Wells,
daughter of W. Delos Wells and Sarah Humphrey Torrey,
and granddaughter of Doctor David Torrey, a former pastor
of the Presbyterian Church in Cazenovia. Their only son

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 73

is thus the great grandson of two pastors, settled long over
churches in Cazenovia, who were typical of their time and of
their respective denominations, and both eminently useful in
the community they served. Many old colonial lines of de-
scent converge in that quiet home in Cazenovia, where the
best traditions of an excellent inheritance are honored and
cherished.

Miss Mary, Clarke's devoted older sister, and good com-
rade always, after retiring from her work in Boston as sec-
retary-treasurer of the Women's Baptist Foreign Mission-
ary Society, spent some time in Hamilton. She was married
in September, 1896, to her long-time friend and associate,
Doctor J. N. Murdock, foreign secretary of the Baptist Mis-
sionary Union, who lived only a few months. After his death
she returned to her brother's home and spent there the brief
remainder of her life. Her death was on July 3, 1897.

In the summer of 1899 Clarke was one of the lecturers in
the Harvard Summer School of Theology. The work given
there was published under the title, Can I Believe in God
the Father. Later in the same year he gave the Levering
Lectures at Johns Hopkins University, and those lectures
made a book called. What Shall We Think of Christianity?
In addition to his work in theology, Clarke gave several
elective courses to his students. There was one in Chris-
tian Missions, one in Comparative Religions, one in Ethics,
and one in Apologetics. These courses were given in alter-
nation, two in each year. Out of the first grew A Study
in Christian Missions, published in 1900, which has been
widely read and used as a text-book. Clarke's interest in
foreign missions might be said to be an inheritance, yet it
was deeply personal, unsectarian, and practical. He had al-
ways known missionaries and came early to have mission-
aries among his friends. His residence in Newton enlarged
the number of these. Hamilton, from the first, had been a
training-school and home of missionaries. After he became a

74 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

teacher of theology, and year by year one or more of his stu-
dents joined the army of workers on the foreign field, his
knowledge of missions became even more intimate.

He felt the need of a course in comparative religion for all,
and especially for those who were to be missionaries. His
work in this department he gathered up for his students in a
typewritten and manifolded monograph, entitled "The Great
Religions on the Great Questions." He never planned to
publish this, yet it has decided value.

In the summer of 1900 he received the degree of Doctor
of Divinity from Yale University. From New Haven he
went to Haverford College to give an address at a Friends'
Summer School of Theology.

For me, lameness and lack of strength made journeying
difficult and I seldom attended large meetings, but I felt a
strong desire to go to this one because I had long been aware
that my deepest beliefs and affinities were those of the Friends.
I went with Clarke to New York, and while he diverged to
New Haven I kept on to Philadelphia. At Haverford I had
a new and charming experience among the Friends.

"What is thy first name?" was asked at once in the gentle
voice of one who had kept the plain language and the plain
garb, and the newcomer, introduced as Emily Clarke, was
addressed thus during her stay in Haverford, and quite fell
in love with her own name from hearing it so sweetly spoken.
Quite proudly she acted as cicerone for her husband when he
appeared among strangers who were already her friends.
Among those whom he knew were Doctor J. Rendel Harris
and Doctor Barton. Among those met for the first time were
J. Wilhelm Rowntree, Miss Irene Ashby, the Cadbury fam-
ily, Madame Nitobe, the American wife of that eminent
Japanese scholar and educator. Doctor Inazo Nitobe, several
of the Garrett family, and also various members of the facul-
ties of Haverford and Bryn Mawr. There were earnest men
and women from distant parts of the country and from near

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 75

by, drawn to Haverford upon a spiritual rather than an intel-
lectual quest. Not least among the impressive experiences
was a Friends' meeting at the end, a silent waiting with pas-
sive minds and receptive hearts for the breath of the Spirit,
broken once or twice by a few words or a prayer, and ending
with prayer and thanksgiving.

Clarke's address on "The Work of Christ for Our Salva-
tion," simplicity and clearness itself in thought and expres-
sion, was a piece of work as noteworthy as anything he
ever produced. It was a closely condensed study in church
history and theology. The much-mooted question as to his
actual belief regarding the atonement is there plainly and
briefly answered. For this reason it is to be regretted that it
has never been published in this country. It appeared in
Present Day Papers, a small periodical, of which J. Wilhelm
Rowntree was the editor, circulating chiefly among English
Friends.

This address, given in the chapel of Haverford College,
met with a highly intelligent and cordial response from that
earnest audience.

In 1901 he gave, at Oberlin, an address, entitled "Hux-
ley and Phillips Brooks," which he repeated a little later
before the alumni at the university commencement at Ham-
ilton. It was published in the Bihliotheca Sacra and some
reprints were distributed here and there, but it was never
widely known in the United States, although it made a pro-
found impression upon those who heard it or read it. It was
published in England by Allenson and made an attractive
little book.

In the summer of 1901 Clarke received the degree of
Doctor of Divinity from the University of Chicago. In Au-
gust we went abroad for the first and only time. We had
both been for years in precarious health, and would not have
regarded this year of journeying as possible had not my two
nieces been at that time resident abroad. One, Mrs. John-

76 WILLL\M NEWTON CLARKE

ston, was the wife of a Presbyterian minister in Dublin, the
other, Mrs. George, was the wife of a Scotch Canadian, Kv-
ing temporarily in England.

The voyage on the little old Germanic, stanch still, de-
spite several almost fatal mishaps in the past, was very pleas-
ant. There was a good deal of wind, but the weather was
clear most of the time. We were both good sailors and did
not mind the tossing and rolling that sent some of the pas-
sengers to their staterooms. We were on deck nearly all the
time and were much the better for those long days in the
bracing sea air.

Clarke kept a journal during his stay abroad, and this is
the first entry.

"1901, 15 August, 8 P. M. Disembarked from the Ger-
manic, Liverpool low-lying, Birkenhead arched, with the
glow of a lovely sunset upon it. Off for London at 8.40. Ar-
rived at 12.40 A. M.

"16. Euston Hotel in a room graced with the English
air and sense of comfort. To Richmond with Grace (Mrs.
George) at midday. Drive across town, first glimpse of West-
minster Abbey and the houses of Parliament, St. Paul's cathe-
dral, and many lesser places familiar. Placed at Richmond
in a typical Enghsh house with characteristic quahty in
every part and outlook.

" ly. Two walks in Richmond, one through the trade
streets, and one to the Terrace Gardens which overlook the
Thames, and to the entrance of Richmond Park, where we
sat long and talked, watching the people. At last a ramble
alone through lawns and alleys. Quaint and characteristic
scenes all day. English architecture and street making.
The ancient parish church at Richmond, part of it four hun-
dred years old, beside a lane. Queen EHzabeth's almshouse
and Bishop Deppo's almshouse of the seventeenth century.
A dissenting chapel, small, obscure. The winding Thames
dotted with boats seen afar from the lovely terrace above.

^^ Sunday, 18. To London for morning service at St. Paul's.
A noble and impressive place with long, unbroken \dstas.
The service scarcely audible at all, the music fine. The ser-

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 77

mon of Prebendary Tucker heard rather better, though not
well — an earnest sermon but in the familiar phrases and re-
mote from life. To the audience, largely of strangers, the
whole can have meant almost nothing beyond the form.
Their faces showed it, they could not hear, and most of them
were wholly detached. Home to Richmond by bus, a long
and wearisome ride in the heat, yet interesting in many parts,
through streets and regions long known by name.

^'Monday, August 19. Afternoon at Westminster Abbey.
The sense of ancientness, the splendor of architecture, the
impression of vastness, the fulness of detail, the building-in
of reverence, the feeling of association with the noble army of
the great and good and useful, the innumerable reminders
of past endeavor and struggle and of vanished forms and
practises, the ghostly return of life long faded. The wonder-
fulness of the existence of such a building. We saw the
greater part of the items that are described, but only in
rather hasty fashion, but it was unspeakably uplifting and
satisfying.

"23. At Egham, thirteen miles up the Thames near to
Windsor, where the F. family have a house three hundred
years old and perhaps older, with a typical English garden,
perhaps as old as the house. There the free, cheerful, hos-
pitable life of an English household into which we have been
welcomed for the day. Afternoon on the Thames — boating
— quiet beauty everywhere. We walked across the plain of
Runnjrmede, we had tea in the boat against Magna Charta
Island. There stood an ancient fir-tree. In the Fordham
garden an ancient maple.

'"An Englishman's house is his castle.' House walled in,
the beauty invisible from without, as far from the outside
world as if it were miles away."

Seven weeks were spent in Richmond with Mr. and Mrs.
George, and under their guidance very much more was seen
in London and in the surrounding region than could possibly
have been attempted had we been alone. There were the
pleasant house and garden to return to, the summer-house
where tea was made in pleasant weather, and the cheerful
fireside on cool evenings.

78 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

On the 2oth of September we bade adieu to Richmond
and went to Oxford.

The reading again of this diary makes it difficult to write
briefly of the year abroad. Memory fills these brief daily
notes with visions of life and color. How impossible to give
a readable outline of the weeks in Oxford, so crowded were
they with vivdd impressions! Only very sparingly can one
even quote from the diary, so small a space in the memorial
can be given to his recreations in the story of Dr. Clarke's
life. Yet no one knew better how to play than he, or could
be a better playmate.

The charm of those seven weeks in Oxford can never be
told. It may be suggested by a few excerpts from the diary.

"22. Sunday. A glorious day throughout after the rain.
Morning services at the church of St. Mary the Virgin, as-
sociated with memories of Cranmer, Newman, and many
more. Service and sermon by Mr. Lake, a curate whom I
afterward met most pleasantly. Then a walk with E. through
the region above the church. Later another walk with E.
through the region below High Street as far as Christ church
meadows. Beauty beyond expression in the fine light about
Merton College chapel and Corpus Christi, especially the
view of Merton looking north, from the walk known as the
grove. Then alone to the service at five o'clock in the cathe-
dral at Christ church. A little time to look about the place
which is extremely fine. Evening service with good music,
without sermon. A full, great day.

" 23. Morning. Engaged lodgings at 98 St. Aldate's
Street, and afterward moved into them. Two large rooms
well furnished, just opposite the north of Christ church
buildings and Bishop Randall's garden, with a clear view of
St. Mary's spire from the front window. A little ramble
afternoon with a look in at Merton, seeing the fijie chapel
and the ancient library."

Life at the hotel had not been such as we preferred, and
lodgings in St. Freda's Hall seemed almost homelike. It was
near enough for convenience to all of the older colleges and

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 79

churches. We went to the market every morning — that won-
derful Oxford market — and our meals were neatly served in
our own sitting-room.

Christ church and Christ church meadows were so near
that we soon knew them well. We used to walk along the
Isis to Magdalen, and in those soft autumnal days the shad-
ows and colors were full of alluring mystery. We came to
know and love the old colleges and gardens.

At Oxford, Clarke began work upon The Christian Doc-
trine of God in the International Theological Library Series.
He went sometimes into Doctor Sanday's classroom and be-
came acquainted with a few scholars in the various colleges.

An entry in the diary notes the coming of Mr. and Mrs.
George, who spent a fortnight with us at St. Freda's Hall.
They had a tandem-bicycle and did some exploring of the
region around Oxford, returning with reports of things really
worth making an effort to see. One evening they brought an
enthusiastic account of Abingdon, which the uncle and aunt
must surely see. Comfortable, four-wheeled vehicles for two
persons appear to be almost non-existent in England, but a
horse and trap was engaged, with some misgivings, and on
the next morning we set forth, with the young folks attending
on their tandem. Abingdon was beautiful, interesting, and
surely worth seeing, but we never wished to try a trap again.

There were delightful rambles in and around Oxford
which the entries in the diary recall vividly. On the 20th
of October the nephew and niece returned to London and
were sadly missed. The year was waning, the weather grew
dull, there was less of outdoor life for them. It was time to
be turning southward.

Clarke did some work upon the book, but the beauty
and inexhaustible interest of Oxford so dominated his mind
that writing was difficult, and he gave it up.

A visit to Cambridge had been planned, but the fogs and
the chill led us to defer it. Upon the 7 th of November we

So WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

returned to London, where Mr, and Mrs. George were now
established for the winter, and were with them in Kensing-
ton. My sister, who had been \asiting our niece in Dublin,
was also there, and she was our travelling companion on the
Continent.

On the 1 6th we crossed the Channel to Calais and ar-
rived in Paris the same evening, going directly to a pension,
not far from the Bois de Boulogne, where rooms had been
engaged for us by Richard Atwater, a Quaker cousin of
Clarke, who with his family lived near by. The Atwater
home was genial and attractive and the young people, who
were students at the Sorbonne, were no less kind and helpful
than Mr. and Mrs. Atwater to this party of three semi-in-
valids, at whose service the whole family placed their knowl-
edge of Paris, and thus enabled us to see and do much that
would otherwise have been impossible.

A former college student at Hamilton, Mr. Clarence
Butler, an artist then resident in Paris, came at once with
his wife to greet us with offers of all possible aid. Mr. and
Mrs. George came to Paris for the holiday season, and thus we
were surrounded with affectionate care during our entire stay.

Upon the morning of January 2 our nephew and niece
accompanied us to the Gare de Lyon and sped us on our
southward way. We had been ambitious as to our itinerary
and had meant to stop at Aries and at Carcassonne, but our
courage waned under the weariness of a long journey and we
saw not Aries nor Carcassonne but kept tamely on to Avi-
gnon, which was indeed well worth the seeing. From Avignon
we went to Marseilles on the evening of the 4th and upon the
5th saw the first inspiring view of the Mediterranean. Upon
the 6th we were off for Hyeres. It was a radiant day, and
Clarke gives in the diary a page of vivid description to the
journey. At Hyeres we settled down for a restful stay at the
Hotel des Isles d'Or, in a room looking straight to the sea and
the Golden Islands. The repute of Hyeres as having the

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 8i

mildest climate of any resort along the Riviera, a melange of
romantic history and legendary lore absorbed in early youth
by one of the party, together with interest in the recent
achievements of the Felibres, had led us to Hyeres, and we
were richly repaid. One is tempted to give a page or two
from the diary.

"January 7. Another glorious day after a cool and bril-
liant night. A great day for walking for us. Morning through
the old town of Hyeres on the steep hillside. A mediaeval
town evidently altered not very much for ages: steep, nar-
row streets, ancient dark houses now but thinly peopled,
but all cleanness itself in comparison with Marseilles and
Avignon. Prominent on the slope is the St. Paul church
of the twelfth century. It stands high up from the land be-
low with a square tower, and on the top is an open, iron frame.
Beside it is an open place from which there is a fine outlook.
Here, too, is the ancient iron cross, the story of which is given
in a book by Anna Mary Howitt — her ancient legend tells,
but whether history knows I am not sure. The inscription
says it was erected by the magistrates of the first city of the
Isles of Gold. Then we climbed a little farther up the hill
and came home by another way. After luncheon we went
out again. The back ground of Hyeres is a hill, said to rise
eight hundred and seventy feet, steep, splendidly rocky,
crowned by remains of ancient fortifications. We started
without definite purpose, but finally made our way by road
and path around the hill, our way near the top skirting the
way of the old defenses. Part of the way it was a climb over
stony paths. Splendid outlooks all along upon plain and sea
and rocky hills, the clear air beautifying all. There is a
fine round tower built out of a rock, and there are several
square towers, less well-preserved but rising finely. The
hill is partly wooded and the lovely foliage contrasts beauti-
fully with the rocks. There is a way within the ruins, but
we were content with our labors and did not undertake that.
It was a charming walk, one of the finest that we have ever
made together and the hardest that we have had since the
days of our lameness; not so very long in measurement, but
a real walk for travellers."

82 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

In the vicinity of Hyeres we saw for the first time large fields
of narcissus, violets, and other spring flowers, grown for the
Paris and London flower markets. One day we came upon
an old-fashioned pottery where two men were busy, one shap-
ing flower-pots rapidly upon a wheel kept in motion by one
foot while both hands were busy in modeUing the clay. We
fell into conversation with the man at the wheel and he, see-
ing that we were genuinely interested, shaped a vase or two
in graceful classic forms which showed an innate sense of
beauty, together with traditions derived from Greek art.
Then we remembered that all along the Riviera there had
existed Greek colonies in early times, and that many of the
people must be of Greek descent, as indeed, their faces indi-
cated.

Flowers, and oranges, chiefly tangerines, fresh from the
trees, were brought to the hotel every morning, and the
bright air, the deep blue sky, the sea and the rocky heights
were all suggestive of the only other southern climate we
knew, California, but how unlike were the associations!
Entry in the diary of January lo closes thus:

"Last night and to-day writing was resumed, first since
leaving Oxford. As to the history of Hyeres, it is said that a
Roman settlement here bore the name of Castrum Aracarum.
Query, whether the name Hyeres is a corruption of this. It
looks likely."

A book of dear remembrances might easily be written
about Hyeres, a quiet, gentle, remarkable little town which
made one desire to stay on indefinitely and learn to know
some of the people met day by day in walking or driving, at
the churches and the little public library. In the latter place
was shown with pride perhaps the most beautiful collection
of butterflies in the world, for, strange to say, Hyeres seems
to possess a peculiar attraction for butterflies, which find their
way thither from many distant points and are fated to enrich

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 83

that rare collection. There was also a collection of birds of
Provence.

Again, more than a page of the diary is given to the ac-
count of a second visit of exploration to the alluring ruin on
the hill which proved to be as interesting within as without.

Upon the 21st we regretfully bade adieu to Hyeres and
went to St. Raphael by the South of France Railway which
follows the coast-line somewhat closely, affording varied and
charming views. The journal depicts St. Raphael, Valeriano,
and the ruins of Frejus, and a drive along the shore where
lines of strong-armed fishermen were drawing in their nets.

St. Raphael was interesting but not the place for our party
to settle down in. On the 29 th we went to Nice, a place too
well known to linger upon here.

From Nice to Genoa, and from Genoa to Pisa. All felt
the unique charm of Pisa and would willingly have stayed
longer. From Pisa to Rome, and from Rome to Naples, where
we settled down placidly at Parker's Hotel resolved to see
things in leisurely fashion, even though that should mean
seeing comparatively little. After rain and chill in Rome
and on the southward journey, the travellers awoke to bright
sunshine in Naples and with something of the joyousness
they had felt at Hyeres. Seeing a little each day, in the end
we had seen much without haste or overexertion.

Clarke did a good deal of walking alone, and the diary
shows how keenly alive to the picturesque, the comic, the
pathetic, in the passing show, was this sympathetic looker-on.

We had planned to go to Sicily, but the time never came
when all of the three had courage and enterprise to under-
take the journey. We thought we could go to Capri any
pleasant day, but we saw Capri only as it appeared, ever al-
luring, in the glamour of distance. We went to La Cava in-
tending to take the trip to Paestum, but at La Cava we learned
how much of effort and fatigue that journey would entail,
and so we gave up Paestum. From La Cava we made the

84 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

carriage journey to Amalfi upon a heavenly day when sky
and sea were at their bluest and the mountain cascades, leap-
ing down the gorges, were at their fullest and brightest. The
glory and the joy of that journey were too wonderful for
words. We stayed at the old monastery and felt all the charm
of the place, so well known, so often described. We had little
rooms that had been cells of monks and sat beneath the star-
lit sky in a balcony far above the sea with the white town
gleaming dimly in the distance and the sea murmuring softly
below. It was like an idyllic dream.

The drive from Amalfi to Sorrento was beautiful, the stay
in Sorrento full of interest, and the drive to Castellammare
a new delight.

After seven weeks in Naples our party turned northward
upon a summer-like day when all was beautiful.

"The mountain scenery, the abbey upon Monte Cassino,
Aquino, the home of Thomas, a beautifully placed town on a
rounded hill, many other towns picturesquely situated.
Ruined castles appeared on the heights here and there. It
was a most lovely journey and we grudged the latter part of
it to the night. Very different from the going to Naples in
the rain."

We reached Rome on the 13th, and the entries in the diary
recall clearly all that filled the days between the 13 th and
the 26th.

Rome is so vast, so varied, so overpowering that the mem-
ory of it is chaotic and wearying, but the clear, well-arranged
account of each day's doings, given in the diary, is pleasant
reading.

"The most interesting object noted on the way to Flor-
ence is *Orvieto, a great natural fortress, picturesque and
beautiful.' The first hotel, though it faces the Amo, is not
right, but the party soon found out the Villa Trollope which
suits better."

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 85

From our front window we look out into a walled garden
opposite, where nightingales sing, and up the street, to Fie-
sole. Florence is restful after Rome, the weather is spring-
like and we go about freely. The Villa Trollope was once the
home of the Trollope family, and the room is shown in which
George EKot wrote Romola. It is a cheerful house in a pleas-
ant, airy situation that seems healthful. We take life easily
and see a great deal.

From Florence to Venice and thence to Milan and on to
Lucerne, to Heidelberg and down the Rhine, to Brussels and
Ostend and across to England, through the fields of Kent,
green and blossoming, to London, to Manchester to see
Doctor Maclaren, to Cambridge, where we had glimpses of
certain colleges and were under the delightful tutelage of
Doctor J. Rendel Harris, across the fen country, on a misty,
glimmering day, where we seemed to be pursuing the wraith
of Hereward, to Ely, which gave us wonderful things to
remember! To Dublin, the home of our niece, where we
spent a fortnight full of interest and charm, then to Belfast
for Glasgow. We had a long-cherished dream of seeing
lona, but in Glasgow it rained as if it would rain forever.
Columba's Isle remained unvisited, and through the dimness
of pouring rain we sped on to Edinburgh, where the sky
cleared and we saw much. From Edinburgh, southward
through green hills dotted with flocks, to the Lake country,
a little stay at Windermere, a few hours at Grasmere, to
Chester, to Liverpool, and then the homeward voyage.

In June, 1902, Clarke was again in his own home on
the college hill. The trip abroad, although it had been for
the most part without hurry or excessive fatigue, and had
been a mentally enriching experience, had not improved his
health, and while devoting himself as fully as ever to his work
in theology he declined the many invitations that he received
to give addresses, to preach, or to aid in summer schools.
The seminary, the church, the village which had been the

86 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

scene of his happiest pastorate — to these he still gave himself
freely. The Christian Doctrine oj God, which would require
the utmost exercise of his mature powers, was yet to be writ-
ten. The beginning made at Oxford, and some further work
done at odd times while he was abroad, did not satisfy him.
He threw it aside and began anew, using a different method.
This book was always in mind and he worked upon it from
time to time as he was able. It was a gradual growth. He
had little strength and looked so ill that his friends were
shocked and alarmed, but he made light of his disabilities,
remaining at home through the bitter winters of 1902 and
1903. In 1903 he began to rally and to look like his old self.
Even during those difficult years no one — not even those
nearest to him, ever heard him complain of overwork. His
active mind supplied energy for his frail body and kept him
up. The only pieces of outside work, of especial interest,
dated in 1903, are two addresses, one given before the Mis-
sionary Society of Andover Theological Seminary, called
**The Young Minister's Outlook," and the Dudleian lecture
at Harvard University given in the Phillips Brooks House,
of which the subject is always "Revealed Religion."

The two long winters at home in a severe climate, which
kept me a house prisoner, prevented Clarke from taking the
open-air exercise that he needed, as his lameness made him
Hable to slip and fall whenever the ground was icy. It
was certain that we must seek a milder region for the win-
ter of 1904. We fixed upon Pinebluflf, a small, quiet place,
near Pinehurst, North Carolina, which we already knew.
Clarke had engaged to give a course of lectures before the
Divinity School of Yale University, in April, 1905, and he
wished to be able to work without interruption. My nephew
with his wife and little daughter were already there, and
Clarke took the cottage next to theirs, so we had beside
us young kinsfolk and helpers, and life in both cottages
was thus made easier and happier. The winter was excep-

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 87

tionally cold, there were several slight snowfalls and one
snow-storm followed by rain and freezing which made the
streets so icy that for several days Clarke did not venture
out. Yet we were in the mild, middle South, and the sandy
soil was dry and warm beneath our feet nearly all the time.
For the most part we lived wdth open doors and windows,
and our cottage had a little porch where we could sit in the
sun or in the shade. In and around Pinebluff there were
pleasant walks, there were fine, vigorous young pines to look
at, and old, gnarled, picturesque ones, and although the cot-
tage was primitive and inconvenient and the household ser-
vice poor and uncertain, the climate seemed to be good for
all and we grew stronger from week to week.

The lectures for Yale were written easily — spun wholly
from inward resources. Clarke had with him almost no
books except the Bible and the Greek Testament, and he
needed nothing else. These lectures on "The Use of the
Scriptures in Theology" made a small book which appeared
soon after they were given. In The Modern Pulpit, by Doc-
tor Lewis O. Brastow, of the Yale Divinity School, pub-
lished in 1906, the author gives his impressions of Doctor
Clarke. After commending the Outline of Christian Theology
he goes on to say: "His Use of the Scriptures in Theology is
even more valuable, if possible, to ministers and laymen
alike. It is a greatly needed and most valuable contribution
to a difficult and supremely important subject, and in its
skill and courage is successful to a degree that seemingly
would have been impossible to any other theological teacher
in the country."

Of Clarke as teacher and preacher he says:

"One of the most successful teachers of doctrinal theol-
ogy in this country is the Reverend Professor William N.
Clarke, D.D. But the preacher is behind the lecturer. No
intelHgent person can have listened to his lectures without
recognizing this. Those twenty-three years of pastoral ex-

88 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

perience, chiefly in exceptionally intelligent communities in
the United States, have been richly tributary to his work as
teacher of doctrinal theology. On the other hand, it is equally
evident to those who have heard him preach as well as lec-
ture that his preaching is proportionally tributary to his
teaching. His power of lucid statement, his skill in repre-
senting occult theologic thought in readily apprehensible
terms, and his straightforvvardness and courageous sincerity
are qualities that are prominent in this most interesting and
convincing of theological teachers in our day.

"All those qualities that have given him eminence as a
teacher he carries into the pulpit, and he is not less inter-
esting and successful as a preacher. His discourses are al-
ways thoughtful, frequently striking, and fresh in sugges-
tiveness, readily apprehended, orderly in method, practical
in aim, and pungent and direct in statement. They have the
carrying power of the preacher's sincerity, fearlessness, and
frankness. In a straightforward, colloquial, unimpassioned,
prevailingly reflective, serious, and sincere manner, wholly
without oratorical arts or affectations of oratorical style, he
speaks straight on."

Clarke had preached in the university chapel at Yale,
and Brastow had no doubt heard him elsewhere, but if he
had listened to one of his sermons at Hamilton or to such
preaching as he gave in the little church at Pineblufif, or
wherever his help was needed, he would have omitted that
word "unimpassioned." A constant characteristic of his ser-
mons in places where he felt at home and knew his audience
was the glow of feeling which pervaded them. His sermons
were alive with strong and noble thought and often rushed
swiftly forward in "impassioned and passion-moving utter-
ance"— to use one of his own rich phrases. He knew the
heights and depths of emotion, and sudden raptures of illu-
mination, of the great preacher.

The teacher did not forget his students after they had
gone out into the world. He knew where each one was and
wished to know what he was doing. In September, 1905, he

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 89

sent out the following letter, and few things ever gave him
more pleasure than the answers he received from far and near.

"Dear Pupil and Friend:

"Forgive me for sending you a printed letter. My excuse
is that I am seeking information from my students gener-
ally, and have neither strength nor time for the personal
letter that I should so gladly write to each.

"I should be glad to know your judgment as to some of
the conditions in which religious work is done at present.
Do you find reUgious interest among the people? If so, of
what kind is it ? In what parts or aspects of Christian truth
are the best people in the church interested ? Is there a high
sense of the glory of the Christian faith and Hfe? Are the
people outside the churches thinking of reUgious subjects?
and if they are, of what? Do you meet many persons, or
any, to whom any religious or theological questions are of
absorbing interest? Do you find religious consolation sought
and welcomed in time of trouble? Do you find the ethical
questions of Hfe brought into connection with religion? Are
struggles of conscience frequent? Do you see in the young
people a religious interest that gives promise of strength in
the church hereafter? Is the best and most religious work
that you can do reasonably welcome in the church and in the
community? Do you discover any new forms of reHgious
interest, or manifestations of reHgious activity? Do you
observe any growth of Christian principle or Hfe outside of
the church ?

"Not that I wish to catechise you on all these points:
these questions indicate the field in which I desire informa-
tion, and anything that your experience may lead you to
write me, at your convenience, upon any of them will be wel-
come to an old friend, who is less in touch than you with the
active world.

"With a greeting as cordial as if it were written with my
own hand or uttered face to face, I am,

"Sincerely yours,

"Hamilton, N. Y., September, 1905."

By an exchange of time with a colleague Doctor Clarke
was enabled for several years to compress his work in theol-

90 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

ogy and his electives within the limits of the spring and faU
terms. He made few journeys except to and from the South,
and was content to spend the summer vacations chiefly at
home. His house on the college hill looked out upon a broad
view over the valley, of which he never tired. A visit of a
few days was made now and then at the home of his sister,
in Cazenovia, where some old friends still remained, or at my
native place in Pennsylvania, and sometimes we went to
Boston, but both were for the most part kept at home by
lameness and lack of strength. Our chief recreation, as in
youth, so in those years of decline, was found in driving, es-
pecially along the less-frequented roads. When we struck
into one of the shady bypaths, often Clarke would uncover
his head with a joyous abandon, as if surrendering his whole
being to earth, air, and sky. No one ever felt a more spon-
taneous and full delight in nature. He was not precisely
far-sighted, but he had excellent normal vision. Through
all his life he had been garnering "the harvest of a quiet eye."
The flight of a bobolink over a June meadow and its ecstatic
song, the grace of an elm beside a stream, a clump of elder in
its milk-white bloom, a tall mullein by the roadside — these
familiar things never lost their charm. There were places
where we always stopped. One was a bridge over the little
river near Poolville, which gave enchanting views, up-stream
and down. There was another bridge over the outlet of a
clear, spring-fed pond from which comes Hamilton's bountiful
supply of water. Upon one side of the way was a remnant
of woodland, the refuge of many birds. Upon the other one
could look down into the bright stream and follow its course
a little way. The chief charm of this stream was its melo-
diousness. We could have lingered there for hours to listen.
Sometimes we tried to discover which tiny waterfall, or ob-
structing stone, or curve in the brook making an eddy gave
voice to some distinguishable note among the "little sharps
and trebles" or silvery trills against the background of soft

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 91

murmuring. After our return from the South each year we
would wait and watch for that day in May that was perfect
for an "apple-blossom drive" over the hills and among old
orchards. There was another much-loved drive in early
autumn toward Eaton, past the site of Underbill Cottage the
childhood home of Fanny Forrester, whose early writings
charmed the grandparents of some of the young folks of to-
day. Near that point is a broad, meadowy lowland, with
goldenrod, asters, and Joe Pye weed. Our wedding-day,
September i, we used to celebrate by a drive if sky and air
were propitious.

About the middle of September the seminary opened,
and from that time until the midwinter vacation Clarke
was steadily at work and using his strength to its utmost
limit. Indoor life and winter cold had told upon the health
of both, and we decided to go to a really warm climate.
At the beginning of 1906 we were in Florida. In furnished
rooms where something of home Ufe was possible, we kept
house in a small way. Charmed by the mild and deUghtful
climate, we thought it best to end uncertainty and make a
winter home in De Land. Without much ado we purchased
a lot on the Boulevard, north of the college, and arranged
for the building of a small house during the summer.

We were at home for the opening of the spring term, and
the summer and autumn passed in the usual quiet way. Our
chief excitement had been directing, from afar, the building
of the Florida house, which was yet not ready to be occupied
when we reached De Land, about the beginning of 1907.
Waiting only for the most necessary rooms to be habitable,
we took possession at the earliest day, hoping to hasten the
completion of the whole, and this plan proved efifective. The
winter was so warm and bright, most of the time, that we
might almost have lived in a tent, and our picnicky style of
housekeeping during the few weeks that it was necessary
was not unpleasant. Stimulated by the presence and over-

92 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

sight of the owners, the builder spurred his workmen on, and
at last we found ourselves in full possession of our little home
which we had planned ourselves. It faced the east, and its
longest extension was on the south side. It had a double
veranda across the front, and the upper one proved the most
delightful feature of the house. For the rest, all was con-
venient, cheerful, and homelike. When it was time to go
North we felt thankful in the prospect of returning, year by
year, to our own abode.

But before our return to the North, Clarke, whose serious
lameness had given him many a fall, was injured again by
a fall, occasioned by the thoughtlessness of a workman in
leaving an obstacle where it was sure to be stumbled over.
His already disabled right arm bore the brunt of the blow
and was again broken and bruised in such a way as to cause
a partial paralysis of the forearm and hand. He rallied he-
roically and in a few days was writing cheerful letters with his
left hand. A month later we made the homeward journey.
Under skilful treatment the injured arm slowly improved, the
severed nerve repaired itself, and the paralyzed muscles grad-
ually came to Hfe, yet the right arm and hand were never
quite as useful as before this second injury.

Another quiet summer passed with much of happiness in
fruitful work, the society of friends, and the never-failing joy
in natural things which the home on the hill, with each win-
dow looking out upon some beautiful object, made possible
at every moment in the day. The most satisfying thing upon
which the eyes could rest, except the view up the valley, was
a large elm upon the green slope of the president's lawn, just
far enough away to show in full perfection against its back-
ground of turf and sky. A more graceful tree never grew. It
was a joy forever, changing with the changing mood of wind
and sky and the round of the year, yet keeping always its in-
dividual loveliness. Its serene charm seemed in natural affin-
ity with the serene soul that lived in its presence year after

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 93

year and who cared now for no more active vacation than his
veranda and an occasional drive could give.

In the autumn Clarke had a sudden and alarming illness
and it seemed as if his work had come to an end, but his
great reserve of recuperative power brought him up, and he
was able to go to Florida when the time came. His sister,
Mrs. Goff, always brave and cheerful, accompanied us, and
remained during the winter. Life in a mild climate very
soon brought Clarke back to sufficient strength to resume
his ordinary life except that he was forbidden to preach or
speak at all in public. He worked, however, upon The Chris-
tian Doctrine of God and upon an elective course which he
was to give his students during the spring term, walked each
day as usual, and now and then took the family for a drive
among the orange-groves and the pines.

One of his great resources in De Land was the library of
Stetson University which he passed daily. It had some of
the best periodicals, and its reference department was good.
He looked in at the hbrary nearly every day and was always
welcome.

We had neighbors now in a new house a little farther
north, which had been built for Mrs. Hyde who lived there
with her daughters. Miss Hyde and Mrs. Peek, and her
grandson, Medwin Peek. Mrs. Hyde was a sister-in-law of
Doctor Ammi Hyde, the loved and revered teacher of Clarke
when he was a boy in Cazenovia. This fact had led to a
pleasant acquaintance and then to a cordial friendship be-
tween the families now living side by side. With Professor
Frost, a kind friend, on the south side and the Hyde family
on the north, the dwellers in the cottage between felt finely
supported.

There were other neighbors and friends, loyal and dear,
at the university and scattered through the town. These
friends at the time of direst need sprang with instant sym-
pathy and personal grief to the aid of the one who was

94 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

suddenly left alone, and did everything when she could do
nothing.

The winter of 1907-8 passed very quietly. Upon his re-
turn home Clarke found himself stronger and he did his full
amount of work during the spring term. Yet he had warn-
ings that he must either do less or cease altogether from work,
and at the meeting of the trustees of Colgate University at
commencement he offered his resignation from the chair of
theology. It was accepted and another position was created
for him and offered with the understanding that he should
attempt only as much work as he felt fully able to do. It
was, in effect, a kindly retiring of the veteran upon half pay.

The summer of 1908 was a trying time, as we were both ill,
week after week, until the weeks grew into months. The strug-
gle of both at the same time with serious illness would have
been utterly depressing but for Clarke's cheerful nature and
unfailing trust in God. Eternal things were more real to him
than the things of time. Those hard weeks and months were
lived through, and in December we were again in De Land.

There, at last, Clarke finished The Christian Doctrine of
God. He sent the work for criticism to the American editor
of the series to which it belonged. The International Theo-
logical Library, and received a most appreciative letter.
"You have written a great and noble book," wrote Doctor
Briggs, with other cordial expressions. This book, the ripe
fruit of a lifetime of thought and experience, was the cul-
mination of Clarke's work in theology. He had feared at
times that he should never finish it, nor could he have fin-
ished it if he had not resigned the chair of theology and
thus become free to give more time and strength to this
large work. It was published in May, 1909.

This book had overshadowed and commanded him for
ten years, as any great task does for which one has little
time. He began at once upon another book, which he wrote
con amore and rapidly. Indeed he had only to put pen to

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 95

paper and let the story flow which Hved so clearly in his
memory. Sixty Years with the Bible was written in De Land
and appeared in September, 1909.

The year 1908 was saddened for Clarke by the lingering
illness and death of his friend of many years, Doctor George
E. Merrill, who had been president of Colgate University
since 1899.

The president's house and Clarke's were separated only
by a quiet road and two green lawns, and each was wholly
at home on the other's domain. The friendship begun at
Newton Center, where Merrill took his course in theology,
had Uved through all the intervening years, and during the
presidency of Doctor Merrill, with their clo^ association,
the relation between those two pure, refined, scholarly men
grew more intimate and dear.

During the winter of 1909-10 the quiet round of life in
De Land went on as usual. Doctor Clarke had now as actual
duties only the work for his classes in ethics and apologetics,
but he did not cease to do his utmost and his best. Into these
subjects he went more deeply. There was taking form in his
mind a book which should embody the results of his lifelong
study and practical application of the ethical teachings of
Jesus, This book was written a year later.

The summer of 1910 he spent quietly at home, except for
one brief journey. He was called to New York to receive
the honorary degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology, conferred
upon him by Columbia University.

He had met with another serious accident in the spring
of 19 10, having fallen, in an inexplicable way, close beside
his own house in De Land, and his already badly crippled arm
was bruised and sprained, though not broken. The shock
and discouragement of this injury told upon him, although
he soon recovered from the immediate effect. His lameness
and his ill-fated right arm limited his activities far more than
any one understood except those who knew him intimately.

96 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

Even to them he did not talk of his disabilities. He was so
liable to fall unless he watched his steps very carefully that
it was not safe for him to take a journey alone. Hamilton
and its environs, and chiefly his own study and veranda, held
him with a short tether, yet he was always cheerful. His
daily trip to the village, his books, his writing, his piano,
the visits of friends, the beautiful environment of his home
were enough. From youth to age he never knew what ennui
meant. He always felt that his life was rich and full.

Even the accidents that befell him seemed to make a
deeper impression upon his wife than upon himself, though
he doubtless had forebodings that he did not express. She
came to fear and even to expect that one day a fall would be
fatal, and this fear began to seem almost like a presentiment
and really cast a shadow upon her life. Also, the long jour-
neys to and from Florida were increasingly wearisome to this
pair of invalids and we became convinced that it would be
wise to change our winter abode to some place easily ac-
cessible in the middle South, although the thought of giving
up our pleasant little house and leaving our friends in DeLand
was painful to us. We had looked in vain at Augusta and
Aiken for a suitable place, so we resolved to try Columbia,
South CaroUna, where there was a friend in the person of
Doctor Mitchell who was then president of the University
of South Carolina. Perhaps in Columbia we might find what
we needed.

However, in December, 1910, we went to Florida as usual.
During the winter Clarke gained slowly but surely in health
and he ventured to preach two or three times. He worked
steadily upon his book. The Ideal of Jesus, and so was happily
occupied. We planned to make a detour upon the homeward
journey and go to Columbia, but Clarke was slightly ill when
we nearcd the junction where we should change, so it seemed
wise to go through to New York.

All through the summer of 191 1 Clarke was in somewhat

THE YEARS AT HAMILTON 97

better health and went about a little more freely. He
preached several times in the village churches, and at the
university commencement, when the semicentennial of his
class occurred, he gave the alumni address, in which he de-
picted the college as it was at his entrance, his classmates,
the outlook of the Civil War, the men who enhsted, the
heroes who gave their lives, and the spirit of college Hfe half
a century before. He poured out his heart in that vivid, ten-
der, sparkling address, which charmed every listener. During
the commencement season he seemed to have renewed his
youth. He was inexpressibly happy to be doing things once
more.

He was invited to give an address at the Divinity School
of Yale University in November, and did so. The visit at
New Haven was a fresh inspiration to him.

A fortnight was spent with our niece in Nev/ York, which
included Thanksgiving and Doctor Clarke's seventieth birth-
day, December 2. A little later we started on our journey
southward and, according to our plan, stopped at Columbia.

Doctor Mitchell was our kind helper in the search for a
house and put us in the way of finding whatever might pos-
sibly serve our purpose, but there was then no small house
and no apartment even that suited our needs. We did not
despair but promised ourselves to look again at Columbia
upon our return in the spring. We seemed destined to spend
another winter in De Land, so thither we would go and be
content.

After a slow, exhausting Journey in heat and dust, we
reached De Land upon the evening of a summer-like day.
The Uttle house had never seemed more homelike and in-
viting, and we were thankful and happy to be safely there.

The next morning, eager to be at work. Doctor Clarke
had his typewriter unpacked and placed upon its stand be-
side the study table, together with a pile of typewritten
papers containing the work in apologetics which he had given

98 WILLIAiVI NEWTON CLARKE

to his class during the fall term, upon the general topic of
belief, beginning with its lowest forms, ascending by suc-
cessive steps, and culminating at the highest, wholly in the
spiritual realm and self-evidencing. A fruit of this work had
been the address, "Immortality a Study of Belief," that he
had recently given at Yale. He intended to use this material
in a book which should be his final work. He wrote almost
every morning, and being at work made him very happy.
Several times when his wife entered the study he looked up at
her wdth a joyous expression on his face, blended with a half-
deprecating amusement at his own boyish delight, and said:
"This is going to be a book by and by." Alas! that book
was destined never to be.

THE LAST DAY

Sunday, January 14, was cold and clear. Doctor Clarke
did not feel ill but he had not quite his usual strength and he
decided to remain at home. He spent the morning quietly
alone in the study.

Mr. and Mrs. Bishop, friends who had lifelong associa-
tions with Hamilton, and who were near neighbors for the
winter, came to dine. Doctor Clarke was cheerful, as were
all the little company of four, at the table and in the study,
where they sat afterward. There was no forewarning that a
thunderbolt from a clear sky was to shatter that peaceful
home before the day was spent. When the guests were gone
Clarke and his wife sat together, one by the fireside and one
at his writing-table, conversing and reading a Httle. At that
serene hour it seemed as if Hfe might flow on in the same way
forever, though both were ill and frail and there had been
many a warning that the time of parting could not be far
away. By and by they heard the whistle of the train, bring-
ing the mail from the North, and soon Clarke started for his
evening walk to the post-ofl&ce.

It began to be chilly and the fire was dying, so more wood
was added and the room made warm and bright. The wife
sat alone in the house, under no shadow of dread, happier
than usual, listening to catch the first, faint tapping of a lame
man's cane upon the sidewalk and to hear it grow near and
more distinct. He came in somewhat tired, but bright, as
always, with letters which he read aloud. There was a little
talk suggested by the letters and especially by one, which was
very characteristic, from Doctor Crane, an old friend. Then
he asked: "Would you like to have me read to you?" He
took up the Life of Louis Pasteur, a recent Christmas gift.

loo WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

They had been reading the book, bit by bit, and had reached,
and read a part of, the seventh chapter, which tells of the
crushing of France by Germany in 1870, a chapter packed
full of the endurance, anguish, and despair of Pasteur's heroic
soul and not to be read without deep feeling. The reader
paused from time to time at some great point, or as he was
checked by an exclamation from the listener. With Pasteur
they lived through that heartrending drama and when the
chapter ended the spell was not broken at once.

Suddenly, a little later, came the stunning blow. While
his wife was absent from him briefly, Clarke fell from the
back veranda. When she returned and he was not in the
house she felt an instant alarm. She found him lying at the
foot of the steps. He spoke reassuringly in a clear, strong
voice, but the shock, or some injury, proved fatal in a few
moments.

Let the story end with the glorious hope expressed in his
own poem, dear to many hearts, in the spirit of which he
had long been living:

"Gone they tell me is youth.
Gone is the strength of my life;
Nothing remains but decline,
Nothing but age and decay.

Not so: I am God's little child.
Only beginning to live.
Coming the days of my prime.
Coming the strength of my life.
Coming the vision of God,
Coming my bloom and my power."

Amen.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

All around him Patmos lies
Who hath spirit-gifted eyes,
Who his happy sight can suit
To the great and the minute;
Doubt not that he holds in view .
A new earth and heavens new;
Doubt not but his ear doth catch
Strains nor voice nor reed can match.
Many a silver, sphery note
Shall within his hearing float.

All around him Patmos lies
Who hath spirit-gifted eyes;
He need not far remove,
He need not the times reprove,
Who would hold perpetual lease
Of an isle in seas of peace."

— Edith M. Thomas.

To those who knew him in the intimacy of his home it
seems strange that one so spontaneous, free, and natural
could ever need to be explained, yet Doctor Clarke was some-
thing of a puzzle to various persons of temperament and
training unlike his own. His close friends and those of his
own household understood that he was what he was and did
what he did by virtue of his innate gifts. He was born not
made.

While he was an industrious worker all his life, he was
never an anxious toiler. His mind was habitually alert and
active but he could not go beyond his physical limitations.
When his day's work was over he slept like a child and awoke
in the morning refreshed and ready to begin anew.

When in sincere humility he spoke of himself as a "plod-
der" he was sometimes misunderstood. At the time when he

I02 V/ELLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

entered the ministry, "a firm Biblicist" and a young man of
scholarly tastes and aptitudes with an old-fashioned train-
ing in "the humanities," it seemed to him a prime necessity
to become a good exegete. He spent so much time over his
exegetical studies, as he narrates in Sixty Years With the Bible,
that it is not strange if in his later years it seemed to him in
looking back that he had spent the best part of his life in
close, plodding study of the Bible. To sit at his table pon-
dering and judging as to the correct reading and exact mean-
ing of single texts and longer passages of Scripture was not
the occupation best suited to his naturally constructive,
swiftly working mind. Yet he never regretted the time spent
in exegetical work. It was important and necessary, and it
gave him the best possible preparation for the crowning work
of his Ufe — the teaching of theology.

There was in him a rare and happy blending of the ideal
and the practical. He had also a sympathetic understanding
of human needs and the breadth and glory of his horizon did
not prevent him from taking note of important things in the
immediate foreground. It was these qualities which enabled
him in his books, as in his teaching, to hit the mark with a
sure and easy hand. His aim was to make his work immedi-
ately serviceable to the spiritual needs of all whom he could
reach by showing in the strongest light the eternal realities
which he clearly saw. He spoke with fearless and charming
directness to the inherent reason in man and met with an
instant and grateful response.

A Ufelong friend of B^jtor Clarke, Frances, the playmate
of his childhood, said recently: "I hope the biography will
not be too reserved — that it will contain a good many of the
Uttle personal touches that reveal the man. If they are left
out his old friends will miss them, for they cared a great deal
more about what he was than for all that he ever did."

This chapter is devoted chiefly to expressions from those
who knew Doctor Clarke, made either in letters or in pub-

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 103

lished notices and articles which appeared soon after his
death. A little space may be given, however, to the per-
sonal tastes and traits in his life at home and among intimate
friends.

Not long ago the writer looked through a collection of old
books, some of which had belonged to the Clarke children
during their early years in the Cazenovia parsonage. Among
them was a boimd volume of The Yoicth^s Cabinet which
looked strangely fresh and unused. Indeed, it proved upon
examination to be almost unreadable, made up of dreary
didactic essays, uninteresting articles upon natural history,
and poor poetry. The editor, however, made much of the puz-
zle pages, which were the only interesting part of the book.
The explanation was this: The subscription to the magazine
had been made for William's benefit, and when a new number
arrived he would sit down with it at the table with pencil
and paper, turn at once to the puzzle department, crack all
the nuts, and then throw it aside.

His liking for all sorts of puzzles, letter and word games
lasted throughout his life. He usually carried a pencil and a
small pad of paper, and his wife not seldom found, in going
through a coat that was to be put away or given away, pieces
of paper covered with combinations of letters and transfor-
mations of words, sometimes droll, with which he had occu-
pied his spare moments, perhaps on a train or while waiting
at a railway- station. Language was fascinating and delight-
ful to him. Had he given his life to linguistic studies he
might have gone deeply into philology. He had upon his
own book-shelves a good deal of philological literature. When
absent from home, as in De Land, he would sometimes begin
to query as to the derivation of a word and would note it
upon that ever-ready pad of paper to be looked up in the
college library, which he visited almost every day. He was
finely sensitive to the precise value of words, yet without a
trace of dilettantism. He was a ready rhymester and now

I04 WILLL\M NEWTON CLARKE

and then made an ingenious and amusing limerick, under the
challenge and stimulus of a word or phrase seemingly impos-
sible to mate with a rhyme. ''The Poet to His Cat," an off-
hand piece of doggerel which appeared long ago in St. Nicholas,
shows how easily and aptly he coined expressions to meet the
exigencies of rhyme and rhythm.

He was quick to see the possibiHties in a word or phrase
and once made a series of anagrams from titles of Anthony
Trollope's novels, all of which were odd and suggestive and
some very funny. The only one of those transformations
which now comes to mind is "The Last Chronicle of Barset,"
which became " Chattlechafe's Iron Lobster." These ana-
grams were published somewhere, perhaps in the Youth's Com-
panion.

EUs innate vein of drollery found vent in various small
ways. At one time he liked to make "Angular Saxons," fol-
lowing out an idea found in the life of Charles Kingsley. He
could not draw a picture of anything, but as he sat, pen in
hand, at his table, he would rapidly sketch a series of laugh-
able little impish figures in the most expressive attitudes. He
would drop a little ink upon a slip of paper, fold and press
it, and the effect was almost always something droll and
suggestive. The results were quite tame whenever his wife
tried it, and she used to accuse him of ha\dng a "familiar,"
a Puck-Hke sprite, who possessed his hand and was the real
creator of these follies.

Naturally, he liked games. During his first year in col-
lege he did a little card-playing, but soon abandoned cards
forever. He learned something of chess but was too busy to
follow it up. In an idle hour he liked to play backgammon
if he had an antagonist as rapid as himself. In the sixties
everybody played croquet, and he liked to loiter with con-
genial companions over a croquet ground, though his right
arm was never very sure or strong, and games of skill were
not for him.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 105

He was interested in the various temperance movements.
Some years ago there was a convention of the W. C. T. U. at
Cazenovia. At one of the meetings Doctor Clarke's sister
and the playmate of their childhood were sitting side by side
while a delegate from Hamilton was giving her report. In
mentioning the persons who were always ready to help, she
spoke of Doctor Clarke and said that he was accustomed to
attend the annual picnic of the Prohibitionists and to speak.
At this Frances, beaming with mirth and the memory of in-
numerable good times alfresco, turned to her companion with
the exclamation: "I should like to know what earthly thing
could ever keep Will Clarke away from a picnic ! "

Certainly his love of outdoor life was one of Doctor
Clarke's marked characteristics. A veranda was good to sit
on, but he liked best of all to be under the open sky. His
wife was as truly a child of earth, air, and water as himself.
One summer vacation was spent in Franconia, New Hamp-
shire, a region of exquisite natural beauty which has since
become pitifully marred. We had many drives through the
valley toward Mount Lafayette, and to us the most beautiful
spot of all was the Flume, which a few years later was ravaged
and almost ruined by a freshet and landslide caused by the
deforesting of a large area on Mount Lafayette. We visited the
Flume again and again, gazed at it, studied it, and carried
away a lasting impression of its unique perfection as a piece
of nature's patient, age-long artistry. We were in a cottage
a little apart from the hotel, and close at hand was a bit of
woodland sloping down to the Pemigewasset River, a bright,
rapid, melodious stream. There we found a charming spot
where we spent memorable hours. This place was the native
home of many species of delicate wild growths, now almost
exterminated everywhere. One day as we sat among the
mosses and creeping plants we noticed a small flat stone
that had been split in twain by the action of frost. A fern
had germinated in the crevice between the two halves of the

io6 Wn^LIAM NEWTON CLARKE

stone and by its vigorous growth was forcing them apart to
make room for itself.

There was in this tiny plant a suggestion of purpose and
persistent will, almost of personahty, which impressed them
\avidly. As we spoke together of this, and thought developed
out of thought, a new and revealing light shone upon the visi-
ble world. In one of Doctor Clarke's note-books was found
recently an allusion to this experience and the thoughts which
it awakened regarding the freedom of the human spirit, in
opposition to the doctrine of determinism.

Upon another day, in the same place, the tiny evergreen
leaves and snow-white fruit of the creeping snowberry, grow-
ing amid mosses and tiny ferns, caught our attention. It is
a fairy-like species of wintergreen, possessing the same aro-
matic flavor, and this led to a talk about the contrast as
to flavor between the snowberry and its insipid neighbor,
the bright-red partridgeberry, and the inherent affinities of
plants by which they draw, or create, unlike properties from
the same soil. We did not then know how potent is the
healing virtue of wintergreen. The months in Franconia un-
folded, day by day, new gifts of beauty and delight, enough
for a lifetime, as it seemed in the retrospect.

Those who knew him best can hardly think of him apart
from his love of music and his rare gift of musical expres-
sion. He had no instruction in music until his fourteenth
year, but happily his teacher, knowing that he had a bom
musician to deal with, began at once to unfold to him the
principles of music. As he understood thus the meaning of
what he was learning, at every step, he advanced rapidly in
his mastery of the keys. He had not only a fine sense of har-
mony, but of absolute pitch also, and often surprised musi-
cians more highly trained than he by hjs instant recognition
of the key in which any piece of music was being rendered.
He was suddenly set at playing the organ in his father's
church on a Sunday morning when the organist was absent

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 107

on account of illness. As he did not wish to return to his post,
William became his successor and was soon transposing tunes
to suit the voices of the choir and otherwise sympathetically-
adapting his accompaniments to their needs in ways that
they had never supposed to be possible.

His love of music was, however, never largely indulged.
It was to him only a recreation to which he could not give
much time. This early acquaintance with church music led
to an ever-enlarging interest in hymnology. He made tunes
for many of his favorite hymns, but only three of these were
ever written down. One day a boy friend, Pierpont Stack-
pole, made an appointment and appeared at the parsonage
in Hamilton with music-paper and pen, and captured these
three tunes, two of which were used in a collection called
^'Sursum Corda." One of these, called "St. Vivian," was
set to Faber's hymn, "There's a wideness in God's mercy,
like the wideness of the sea." The other, set to the hymn
beginning,

"Dear God and Master mine,"

Doctor Clarke named "Emiha." He never had a piano of
his own until he was settled in Hamilton. Then he was per-
suaded to indulge himself and his friends thus far. This
piano, which he chose very carefully, was a sweet-toned
Weber, and it was always a delight in the home.

His innate sense of the beautiful and the picturesque in
nature was developed and fostered by his early environment.
Cazenovia has its setting in a region interesting at every sea-
son of the year, and charming from May to November. And
the boy who rowed with his comrades upon the blue lake, ex-
plored the fields and the woods, and drove with his father over
the hills and among the valleys, in the verdure of summer
and the snows of winter, was unconsciously garnering an in-
finite store of impressions which enriched his whole life. He
lived in a quietude and unity within himself, which may be

io8 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

incomprehensible to a young student of the present time.
The gentle habitudes of those early years seem to have woven
a garment of peace around his soul which could never be
torn away.

The kind of life into which he was bom was truly con-
genial to him, although it had its limitations, of which he
became aware as he passed from youth to manhood; but he
never ceased to be thankful for the "tender grace" of his
early experiences.

Enfolded as he was by the strong and loving care of a
devout, broad-minded, wise father, it was easy for him to
believe in a heavenly Father and, when the time for decision
came, to commit himself wholly and irrevocably to the God
in whom he lived and moved and had his being.

There is a little book in which, many years later. Doctor
Clarke noted the dates of a number of important ancestral
and personal events. In this list he wrote, under the date of
April 21, 1858: "The personal religious experience began in
my life." This was a clearly marked epoch in his career. In
the act of faith and self-surrender there came to him a \i\nd
con\action of the actual presence of God and an inexpressi-
ble peace and joy. All things were made new to him. Long
afterward, in writing of this profound experience, he says:
"I know the year, the day, the hour, and yet it was but the
unfolding of what had been begun long before." He deeply
felt that he owed everything to that Christian nurture which
had been to his inmost self as dew and sunshine to a tender
plant. In contrasting the lives of two Cazeno\-ia boys, each
of whom was widely influential in spheres far apart and yet
akin, one cannot but wonder what Robert Ingersoll might
have been if his mother had lived and he had developed in
the sunshine of a happy home. He might, perhaps, have
preached the faith which he denied and bitterly denounced.

In the same note-book, a little farther on. appears another
entry, December, i860: "I decided to give my life to the work

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 109

of the ministry." This decision was the reverse of what he
had planned to do. Although his parents took their daily
Ufe quietly and heroically, their long struggle with an insuffi-
cient income, and other trials in their Hfe, had made a deep
impression upon the boy, who felt and noted aU, and he was
resolved not to repeat their experience. He was always an-
noyed when good people who came to the parsonage took it
for granted, in their remarks, that he was to foUow in the
footsteps of his father. He would Hsten in silence, but when
the well-meaning but tactless brother or sister had departed
he would relieve his pent-up feelings by exclaiming hotly
and vehemently: "I will mver preach!" His tastes natu-
raUy led him to think of becoming a teacher of languages, and
preferably of the classic tongues, but as his views enlarged
he saw the greatness and the glory of the Ufe of a truly de-
voted Christian minister and he knew that nothing less could
satisfy him. More than this— he heard within his soul a
voice that called him to this service, and in the end he yielded,
with most filial love and trust.

He worked untiringly in his first parish, as the record
shows, and had Httle time to ponder theological problems;
yet a note-book of that period, in which a number of pages
are devoted to a close questioning of the determinism of St.
Augustine, shows that he had already entered upon a career
of independent thought.

The years at Newton Center were difiicult from first to
last, yet they were great in their opportunities and demands,
and the heroism which enabled him to hold on, to be his true
self always and to utter his message as it came to him, "with-
out fear or favor," could only be understood by the few who
knew his Hfe intimately. Amid the wilderness of doubts and
perplexiries through which he was winding his heavenly clew
and threading his way upward to a place of sure footmg and
broad outlook, he never lost his cheerfulness and serenity.
This cheerful and serene spirit was, perhaps, his most dis-

no WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

tinctive trait. Certainly it was generally recognized. His
sunny spirit radiated light and joy within his home and made
him welcome wherever he went.

He knew how to rest in vacation time, and at the seashore
or the mountains he always seemed care-free. He entered
heartily into whatever was going on and quickly dropped into
his own place. He was good sailor and loved the ocean.
Happily, his wife also could keep a steady head in a choppy
sea. At Nantucket, East Gloucester, or Mount Desert, in
the days when those places had their primitive flavor, they
liked to go out in a sailboat on a breezy morning, when the
waves wore whitecaps, with some careful, experienced, old
"sea dog," like Captain Kenney of Nantucket, with his alert,
efficient son. Many such hours were spent, here and there,
along the New England coast. And the mountains — those
glorious White Mountains, not yet despoiled — and later the
Adirondacks.

There were little, unknown places, too, to which we were
sometimes led, which we remembered even more lovingly
than the famous ones. We once spent a week beside Lake
Winola, late in the summer of 1886. There was a small hotel
in a remnant of woodland where ferns and wild flowers still
lived and birds sang. We were domiciled in a tiny cottage.
It had a veranda below and an open balcony above, from
which there was a pleasant \dew toward the lake, glimmering,
partly hidden, through trees. One afternoon, when the
shadows were long, we had been rowing on the lake and were
resting near the east shore when a group of cattle came down
the wooded slope into the water, stood there and drank,
making a picture at which both exclaimed with delight.
Some years later we came upon a fine etching, by Moran, of
cattle in a stream, which so resembled the picture cherished
in memory that it could not be resisted. We made it our
own and it was hung over the piano in the house on College
Hill, which was our home for seventeen years.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS iii

From that idyllic spot by Lake Winola Doctor Clarke was
hurried away by a telegram announcing the death of his
friend Stackpole, and thus a beautiful memory was made sad.

Doctor Clarke had "a genius for friendship," and it is a
matter for regret that no space can be given here for an ac-
count of some of the friendships that were a large and precious
element in his Ufe. The delightful relations with Mr. and
Mrs. Stackpole and their sons were always cherished; and
there were others, almost lifelong friends and later friends,
who were very dear. His constancy, even to things, which
had served him well and had dear associations is illustrated
by something which came to notice recently in going through
the many books which had accumulated in bookcases and
in closets in spite of the occasional gathering out and send-
ing away of books disused, to which the owner nerved him-
self when space was needed for newer books. He had a Rob-
inson's Greek and English Lexicon, in which his name was
written, with the date, 1861, the year of his graduation from
college and entrance into the theological seminary. He used
this lexicon and kept it at hand during all of that period in
which his principal study was New Testament exegesis. He
had his Clavis and added to his stock of exegetical tools
the newest and best as years went on, but this old familiar
lexicon was dear to him. The time came when he knew his
Greek Testament so well that he needed neither lexicon nor
concordance. Meanwhile, the exigent questions of theology
had claimed him. The old, worn lexicon, with other books
that had been indispensable in their day, he put away in a
closet in the attic which gradually became crammed with
books. There it was found, against the wall, flanked by
Ellicott, Trench, and Stanley, and with a rampart of other
books in front running from end to end of the broad shelf.
It was as if he had tenderly entombed those old friends,
knowdng that he should never look upon them again. Fast-
ened upon the blank leaf of the lexicon was a printed me-

112 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

morial notice of Doctor Clarke's father, who had died, on
March 6, 187 1, at the age of sLxty-two years. This char-
acterization, written by an old friend and associate in the
ministry, Doctor Clarke had accepted as a true estimate of
his father and had placed in the book which was in daily use
and always at hand. No act could have been more character-
istic. Some sentences in this brief article are in tone and
in expression almost precisely the same as many which ap-
peared lately in reference to himself. "As a man he was
gentle and genial as a child in all the relations of life."
"Though firm and unyielding in principle, he was governed
by a broad charity toward those who differed from him."
"Incapable of double-dealing himself, he could not tolerate
it in others." "Lucid in thought, clear in expression, and
sincere in manner, he always commended himself to every
man's conscience in the sight of God."

Among the books in Doctor Clarke's library which were
indeed his book friends, and which he never parted with,
while others came, served their purpose, and disappeared,
was a copy of Tliortidale, or the Conflict of Opinions, by Wil-
liam Smith, an English writer of the mid-Victorian period.
This book was republished by Ticknor and Fields in 1859.
Both in England and America it found "fit audience though
few."

Upon the fly-leaf Clarke had written his name with the
date, Newton Center, 1869. His wife remembers his bring-
ing the book home, his reading and remarking upon it, and
her own dipping into it here and there. She never saw the
book in his hand in later years and probably he never read it
more than once, yet he kept it in a prominent place during
all the years at Newton Center, in Canada, and through most
of the years in Hamilton. In 1889 The Story of William and
Lucy Smith appeared. It was read with deep appreciation
and given its own place beside Thorndalc. When Thorndale
finally vanished from the bookcase it did not go into exile.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 113

but into an honorable retirement in the study-closet close
at hand.

There was a certain significance in the way he treated
this book which sheds Hght upon his own personality. Thorn-
dale is a profoundly earnest, sympathetic, and clear discus-
sion of philosophic, religious, and social problems as they ap-
peared sixty years ago to a discriminating and noble mind
which was at once poetic and practical.

The plan of the book is most engaging. Through it runs
a thread of tender and picturesque narration by means of
which various characters appear who take part in the dis-
cussions and freely and vividly express their widely differing
views. The production as a whole is as charming as it is val-
uable, and, read to-day, its prophetic character is startling.

It was, no doubt, the warm response in Clarke's nature
to the personality of the author which led him to keep the
book in sight. In WilKam Smith, William Clarke had found
a kindred spirit.

On January i, 1903, Doctor Clarke gave to his wife a book
in which he had written a page made up of selections and of
thoughts and prayers of his own, for each day in the year.
The quotations are chiefly, but not wholly, religious and are
of the widest range as to authorship and time.

The selection from Jeremy Taylor: "It is a great source
of calm and repose in our religious life always to turn from
small things to great, from things far away to things near at
hand, from the foolishness of controversy to the truths which
are simple and eternal, from man to God."

From Augustine: "With that face will he come to the
home land, who has not longed for it when absent? "

A word of his own: "Live in only one world at a time?
Impossible. There are but two worlds, the material and the
spiritual, and we always live in both. To withdraw into the
material alone is beyond our power. It would be the extinc-
tion of our highest present life. All love, all education, all

114 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

thought belong to that spiritual world which is invisible, in-
deed, and yet is a part of our native element even now."

From Margaret Deland: ''The sense of sin in the human
soul is the apprehension of Almighty God."

Last words of John Woolman: "I believe my being here
is in the ^^^sdom of God; I do not know as to Hfe or death."

From George Fox: "And one morning, sitting by the fire,
a great cloud came over me and a great temptation beset
me. And it was said, 'All things come by fiature': and the
elements and the stars came over me. And as I sat still and
let it alone, a living hope arose in me, and a true voice which
said, 'There is a living God, who made all things J And imme-
diately the cloud and the temptation vanished, and life rose
over all, and my heart was glad and I praised the living God."

A page is given to Longfellow's poem on Amalfi, begin-
ning

"Sweet the memory is to me
Of a land beyond the sea."

From Charles Kingsley: *'I don't want to possess a faith;
I want a faith that will possess me."

From John Woolman: "Baptized into a sense of human
conditions."

From Dora Greenwell: "The intellect has many illusions,
but the dreams of the heart come true, because the instinct
of the heart is prophetic."

The book contains stanzas from familiar hymns, passages
from well-known poets and from Scripture, prayers, and
brief sayings, gathered from all ages and all lands.

This last is Doctor Clarke's own prayer:

"O Thou the Way, help me to walk in thee to the true end and

home;
O Thou the Truth, help me to see thee, feel thee, think thee,

have thee, love thee;
O Thou the Life, live thou in me and make me live by thee."

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 115

The following passages are from an article upon Doctor
Clarke, published in March, 191 2, in the Colgate Alum?ii
Quarterly, by the Reverend Markham W. Stackpole, the son
of his friend and predecessor in the pastorate at Hamilton:

"Doctor Clarke's mind was fresh and alert, and he de-
hghted in freshness of thought and form. The very titles of
his books reveal this trait of his mind. His intellectual in-
terests were varied and he read widely. A student of po-
etry and hymnology and lover of music, he was also keenly
alive to the scientific and humanitarian interests of the day.
It was significant that in his last book he should have dealt
with some of the great social questions of our time.

** Doctor Clarke loved his work. Whether it was preach-
ing, teaching, or writing, he entered into it with zest and he
performed it with apparent ease. It was natural, then, that
he should be an optimist. Though a fearless progressive in
his thinking, he had a sweetness of nature and a devoutness
of spirit that forbade the bitterness of controversy. He kept
himself above factions. He preserved personal friendships
in spite of theological differences, and he was too large of
mind and heart to confine his interest or friendships to a
single party or denomination. He belonged to the 'Chris-
tian Brotherhood.'

"Few leaders among men are so utterly lacking in self-
consciousness as Doctor Clarke was, and no man wore his
honors more modestly. Yet with that fine honesty that
ruled his mind and his word he acknowledged that the hon-
ors were grateful and his work was good.

"For many years Doctor Clarke had stood in the inner
councils of the university. He was interested in every phase
of its life. He was a loyal fraternity man and a familiar fig-
ure at fraternity gatherings. He was an interested spectator
at athletic contests. He enjoyed the merriment of college
reunions. He served as chaplain or historian or orator upon
notable academic occasions. One generation of students
praised him to another, for his presence was a power for
good in the life of the university.

"He was happily a prophet honored in his own country.
Hamilton was proud to claim him as her own, and he was
her own indeed, a man beloved by his fellow townspeople.

ii6 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

The people of Hamilton saw that fame could not rob him of
his simplicity and friendliness. He knew them by name
and he knew about them. He never lost the pastor's feeling.
When he came back from his year abroad no welcome was
more hearty, or to him more grateful, than that of the busi-
ness men of the town. It will be recalled that they arranged
a banquet in his honor. One of their leaders remarked that
while he himself knew Httle about theology, if the 'new
theology' made men like Doctor Clarke, that was argument
enough for him. Doctor Clarke loved the place, too — the
cool, quiet streets, the lofty trees upon his hillside, the shaded
village, and the noble valley sweeping northward between
the great hills.

"But to Doctor Clarke as a friend, one's thoughts turn
with special tenderness. As a young boy I sailed with him
at the seashore and drove with him among the Vermont
hills, and I felt then the charm and heartiness of his nature.
He was ever an eagerly welcomed visitor as our dear friend,
our pastor, and our fatherly counsellor.

"His quiet, charming home carried the atmosphere of
culture and of friendship. He loved to listen to music, and
sometimes we would persuade him to play hymn-tunes of his
own composing. Again we would sit in the twiUght of his
study or upon his hospitable veranda talking of common
friends and interests and of the deep things of life.

"His youthfulness of spirit, his wit, his candor, his hearti-
ness attracted young people to him. Without children of
his own, he loved 'his boys' and to them he was indeed a
father, always interested, sympathetic, and encouraging.
Accident and infirmity could not diminish the cheerfulness
of his nature. His talk sparkled with quiet repartee; beloved
good stories and 'clean mirth.' Some of his letters were in-
imitable. New friends were quickly drawn to this true and
kindly man. But he did not forget his old friends scattered
far and wide. Hamilton is not quite like Hamilton since he
died, and his old boys will sorely miss his friendly look and
hearty greeting at the piazza steps."

From an editorial in The Congregationalist, by Doctor
Bridgman, dated January 27, 191 2:

"The modest Christian scholar who last week passed into
the realm where the partial revelation gives way to the clear,

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 117

full vision of God, had served the Christian church in two
continents as only those can serve it who devote many years
and rare gifts of insight and persistence to the study and in-
terpretation of human life, in the light of God's disclosures
of himself, in his work, his word and in his Son. From his
classroom in the Theological Seminary at Hamilton, New
York, and through his books, which have gone throughout
Christendom, Doctor Clarke has exerted a mighty influence
upon members of numberless religious bodies, and even upon
those outside the church. So quietly has his work been done,
so disposed has he been to stand in the background, that few
understand to what extent the church as a whole is indebted
to him as an expounder and defender of the faith.

''A mediating theologian Doctor Clarke has been during
these last twenty-five years of uncertainty and transition.
His books reveal, as in a glass, his own progress from earlier
conceptions into the larger, truer views of God, Christ, the
Bible, missions, and the Christian life. This growth is par-
ticularly shown in his Sixty Years with the Bible, and so be-
cause his writings have reflected not only his thought on the
things of God, but his actual personal experience, they have
had, to a pre-eminent degree, the note of reality, and have
been charged with an uncommon measure of helpfulness on
every page. The task which he boldly undertook of relating
the old to the new is never an easy one in any age. The effort
subjected him to misunderstanding and his way was not al-
ways smooth, but he never faltered, and in the end he retained
the confidence and grew in the confidence of the conservative
wing of the church.

*'We have had in America few theologians so simple, hu-
man, and companionable as William Newton Clarke, a strong
preacher, a poet and hjmin- writer, a musician, intimately
acquainted with classical and current literature, maintain-
ing to the last an eager interest in world happenings and
holding stanchly his carefully matured opinions concerning
questions of public policy. A dehghtful conversationalist, a
stanch friend, he was a man who, in any calling or station,
would have won distinction and made the world his debtor."

From an article by Doctor Harry Emerson Fosdick:

'^The Examiner has asked me to write briefly my recol-
lections of Professor William Newton Clarke in the class-

ii8 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

room. I give myself readily to the task, for my heart is
deepy engaged whenever I recall those wonderful hours on
Colgate Hill, presided over by the spiritual genius of the great
teacher. There are doubtless many who can say, as I can,
that but for Doctor Clarke they would not be to-day in the
Christian ministry. When the old theology was clashing \\ith
the new, and bitterness was deeply felt upon both sides;
when, watching the conflict, the young men of undergraduate
years saw clearly that for them it was no longer a question
of old or new theology, but of new or no theology. Doctor
Clarke stood as the proof to us that it was possible to be a
Christian and reasonable, a disciple and a modern man, at
once devout and intelligent. How many of us came to look
to him as our spiritual godfather ! How many of us are
chiefly thankful for this, that he did not leave us to be driven
from faith and the church by reactionaries, but made it pos-
sible for us to become in the new generation preachers of the
Gospel of Christ.

"The closing paragraph in Doctor Clarke's Outline of
Christian Theology interprets beautifully the spirit of the
classroom; those who have experienced it will remember and
understand. To those who never sat at the feet of this great
teacher of religion I can only indicate a few of the charac-
teristics of his work.

"Doctor Clarke was far more a teacher of religion than of
theology. He clearly distinguished between the two, to be
sure, and set himself with earnest intellectual application to
formulate the mental categories of faith, but always the
clothes of his thought fitted so closely the vital, moving spirit
of his faith that one was aware of that rather than of the gar-
ments. Many a time I have gone from his classroom to my
couch for a long rest, because I was exhausted, not with
intellectual labor, but with the attempt spiritually to catch
his vision of God, and sympathetically to enter into his ex-
perience of peace in believing. No prayer meeting ever af-
fected me so deeply as his talks to his classes on the great
themes of faith. He often forgot himself in his personal tes-
timony to the meaning of some Christian truth in practical
living. The end of every lecture was: 'Come and taste and
see.' If a man wanted a thorough history of doctrine, after
the fashion of Hamack, Doctor Clarke would have disap-

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 119

pointed him. If a man were a metaphysician, demanding a
well-articulated system, with provision made for every 'if,'
'and,' and 'but,' Doctor Clarke never could have satisfied
him. If, however, a young man, confused by conflicting
theories, jnystified as to the real meaning of rehgion, dubious
as to the gospel he was expected to preach, wanted poise
and insight, breadth of vision and sanity of thought, and
with it all a passionate devotion to the Master, and a clear
perception of the world's need of him. Doctor Clarke was
pre-eminently the one to fit his case. He was a teacher of the
old school — God give us more of them ! — who gave his classes
his personality and breathed his spirit into them.

"As to his practical method, it was as simple as the man
himself. In the main it consisted in reading over the text
with running comments. The running comments were the
best of it. Sometimes they were keen with wit. 'Many a
man considers himself a stream of tendency,' he said once.
Sometimes they were fiery and indignant, as when a fresh
student ventured to question his loyalty to the Master;
sometimes they were personal confessions, charmingly made."

From an article in The Congregationalist, by Reverend
Frederick W. Raymond:

"A friend, who loved and was greatly loved by Doctor
Clarke, has written me how he has taken down his copy of
Doctor Clarke's Theology and has been going over such utter-
ances as he had recorded on the margin of the book in his
classroom days. Like him, I have also been moved to review
the margins of my copy. Among the many sentences writ-
ten there I find no duplicates of those my friend reports.
This suggests the great wealth of his unpubHshed but mem-
orable utterances. Here are some of these gems from the
margin of my book, which I venture to pass on in loving mem-
ory of my friend, counsellor, and spiritual father. Though
unrelated to each other and stripped of their association on
the page, they are suggestive in themselves and worthy to
stand alone as herewith printed:

" ' The New Testament throws more light backward than
the Old throws forward.'

" * If Paul had been told that he would be talked about as

120 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

being of equal authority with the Lord, he would have burned
his letters.'

" ' If we know God better than Paul did, Paul would have
been very glad of it, and so would the Lord.'

" ' Christian faith has been built largely on the Bible in-
stead of on God and Christ.'

" ' ;Moving in the line of the best that he knows, a man
moves toward God.'

" ' The eflfect of denying the personality of God can be
learned only in India.'

" ' Permanently, you will not hold any doctrine of Chris-
tianity that is inconsistent with your conception of God.'

" ' While there is a soul, there are the possibilities of a soul.
Whether God can gather in all the souls is the problem on
which we wait.'

"In one of his last letters to me, written in most genial
mood less than a month before his death, he wrote: ' I have
had a good autumn, teaching a course in Christian belief,
with high enjoyment and aware of really conveying a good
deal to my men. Things never went better. On Decem-
ber 2 I crossed the line of seventy years, reputed among the
young and callous to be the line of old age, but in reality a
very innocuous chalk mark, scarcely perceptible when you
really arrive. It reverses natural optics by looking larger
from a distance than near at hand. As a matter of fact, I
have felt younger than usual of late, and am inclined to be
a heretic as to the almanac anyhow. My good term of teach-
ing has juvenated me somewhat, I think, and I am hoping
to have enough in me to put the term's work, which is new,
into a book.'"

Near the end of his life, in speaking of the difficulty
which teachers in theological schools find in overcoming the
prejudices and false ideas regarding the Bible which many
students bring with them to the seminary, Doctor Clarke
said: "If I were arranging the work of a theological school,
I would put first of all, for beginners, a course in — What the
Bible Ts.^' He had spent much time in patient and often
futile efforts to convince his students what the Bible is not.

While at Newton Center he read the sympathetic and

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 121

beautiful Life of Edward Irving, by Mrs. Oliphant, and was
deeply touched by it. Edward Irving was a man of rare per-
sonal attractiveness and extraordinary gifts, who had been
the fellow student and close friend of Thomas Carlyle and
was perhaps the only one of his early associates whom Car-
lyle regarded as his own intellectual peer.

Irving was fervidly devout and gave himself to his work
as the minister of a congregation in London with astonishing
ardor. His eloquence, his tenderness, his "apostoHc faith,"
his magnificent personaHty made him for a time the wonder
of London. "All the world flocked to hear him." He staked
his all upon what he deemed to be a supreme test of faith
and seemed at first to win; in the end to lose. He died while
still a young man, broken-hearted, in agonies of doubt as to
the real meaning of strange phenomena which he had wel-
comed at first as answers to prayer and evidences of the pres-
ence and favor of God, exclaiming at the last: "Though he
slay me yet will I trust in him !"

Soon after reading the pathetic story of Irving, Clarke
was asked to give the alumni address at Hamilton. Irving's
failure and the causes of it seemed to him to contain a lesson
of deep import for young men, and his address upon that
occasion was upon Edward Irving, whose absolute literahsm
in interpreting the Bible had led him and many of his congre-
gation into things which the more thoughtful and sane in his
church and among his friends regarded as wild delusions.

This presentation of Irving's career made a lasting im-
pression. One of the listeners was then a young student at
Hamilton, now Doctor Clarke's successor in the chair of
ethics, Doctor William M. Lawrence, who tells in the follow-
ing letter how it affected him:

"It is a good many years since Doctor Clarke delivered
his address on Edward Irving at Colgate. So many, that I
am not sure that I can be just, either to him or myself. I
think it was about 1875. At that time, it was the custom of

122 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

the college to have its baccalaureate on Sunday morning, and
sermon Sunday night, and on Monday night an address before
the alumni or the Education Society.

"It was the first time I had ever seen Doctor Clarke, but
I had already heard enough about him to make me feel very
desirous. I recall distinctly the surprise I had when he an-
nounced his subject. It was not named in the formal way.
He began in that conversational manner, which is fatal to so
many men, but was so attractive in him, and led up to the
announcement of his theme by some general remarks, not in
any way of apology or explanation, but taking it for granted
that every one would be interested in the selection which he
had made.

"His way of dealing with the subject was most intimate.
We were not presented to Edward Irving after the manner of
biographies or sketches, but we seemed to move in the same
atmosphere and to be looking out through Edward Irving's
eyes upon the times in which he lived, and to be permeated
with sympathy for him and with him and with the way in
which he dealt with those times.

"The manner of Doctor Clarke at this time made a great
impression upon me; but while I was so impressed, at the
same time I was more so by the wonderful ability which
Doctor Clarke displayed in disclosing to us the many-sided
character of Irving. I could not help but feel at that time
that the impression that Edward Irving had made upon Doc-
tor Clarke was to be a vital part of Doctor Clarke's mental
and spiritual possession. It is true that he did not hesitate
to criticise freely, when and where he differed from Edward
Irving, especially with reference to the supposed influences
and manifestations that Edward Irving claimed to be real;
yet, as I have just said, there was a profound sympathy in
Doctor Clarke's address with the spiritual life that Edward
Irving stood for. The effect of that address never left me.
As I write these words, I can see him as he stood in the church
that night, his quick, short sentences, his enunciation rapid
at times, his peculiarity, or rather individuality of style, that
awakened and sustained interest in what he had said or was
saying, and in expectation of what he was about to say.

"I may be permitted in this connection to say, that years
afterward I heard another address by him at the Baptist

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 123

church, on one Sunday morning, which made ahnost as
strong an impression as the one to which I have referred. It
was on George Fox, and as I Listened I could not help but
recall the one on Edward Irving, nor could I escape connect-
ing the two in my mind. As I look back over the years that I
have known Doctor Clarke, and consider the work he has
done, and reflect upon his writings, I can readily understand
how such spiritual forces as those represented in the lives of
Edward Irving and George Fox should have had great influ-
ence upon him. I should not like to say he was consciously
influenced by them, but he recognized and appreciated their
religious values."

The practical value of Doctor Clarke's books was soon
recognized by persons engaged in various lines of religious and
social work, and each as it appeared was appropriated to use
as a text-book. An instance of this is given in the following
extract from a letter of Mrs. James C. Park, a daughter of
his early friend, Frances:

"The Reverend Alfred Burr, pastor of the Jefferson Ave-
nue Presbyterian Church, came to our Home and Education
Department of the Twentieth Century Club, one day, to tell
us about the work of his church among the fifteen thousand
Italians in Detroit.

"One feature was the night-school, and the book used as
a text-book at that time was Doctor Clarke's Can I Believe in
God the Father? One of the pupils was the son of a man for-
merly a professor in the University of Padua. This young
man had broken with the church and was drifting in atheism
when Doctor Clarke's book answered his questions and
brought light and courage to his soul.

"I had the great pleasure of speaking to Doctor Burr
after the meeting and telling him I knew Doctor Clarke and
would let him know of the work he was doing in Detroit.
They used the book partly because of its short words and
clear meaning."

Of Doctor Clarke's last address she wrote:

"I cannot tell you how rejoicing and helpful the beautiful
address on 'Immortality' was and is to me.

124 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

"When it came I sat down and read it through, and it
was the greatest comfort to know that Doctor Clarke believed
so thoroughly in immortality. It has made such a differ-
ence in my life that I feel as if I must tell everybody I know
the good news.

"W^hen Sophie and I were spending those beautiful days
with you and Doctor Clarke in Hamilton, we walked down
with him to the post-office. He was on his way to the train,
but looking at his watch found he had time to inquire after
a sick friend. He threw his travelling-bag at the foot of a
tree in the park with the most trustful and nonchalant air in
the world, and when we laughingly suggested that it might
not be there when he returned, he said he did not think any
one in Hamilton would take it."

From Mrs. Louise Palmer Smith:

"In the family connection Doctor Clarke, to the young
folks, was 'Uncle Will' — true native American, quaint New
Englander, alive to the humor that underlies life, able to en-
joy it and show it forth in his home circle. Nephews and
nieces were rife there, and they loved to linger beside him.
A letter from Uncle Will was bright hterature, and every
line worth keeping. As a model of quiet good company for
all ages he had few equals.

"Immortality was the theme of Uncle Will's last pub-
lished message, but to us of the family nothing written or
spoken could convey the certainty of that vast truth like his
own presence as he neared the end of his stay. The old
house of the soul, worn to the uttermost, showed the spirit
within of such strength unabated — so shining that the as-
surance rose in all our minds: 'Here is an immortal.' "

From Doctor Walter Rauschenbusch :

"Pauline and I have often spoken of you since we learned
of the passing of our dear friend. He will be a dear, warm
memory all our life, one of the high peaks in our horizon of
life. Such a sincere, genuine, beautiful human soul ! I am
not aware of thinking of him at all differently than formerly.
I can imagine him walking along in heaven with the same

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 125

smile and the same gentle limp, and an ornament to the place
just as he is."

From a letter from Mr. Charles Scribner:

"Among all the authors for whom it has been my privi-
lege to publish I can remember none who has left a clearer
impression, and I think this was due to a certain simplicity
of nature and character. He evidently cared little or noth-
ing for the material result of his work but did enjoy givmg
expression to what he hoped might prove useful and profit-
able to others. His noticeable courtesy and consideration
also gave distinction to every interview."

From President John M. Thomas of Middlebury College:

"One summer in the nineties I took passage on the old
White Star Germanic for Liverpool. On the passenger-list I
noted the name *W. N. Clarke'— no reverend, doctor, or pro-
fessor. I surmised that my fellow passenger might be the Col-
gate Seminary professor of theology, whose Outlitie of Christian
Theology had won wide approval in the religious world and
which had been exerting a much-needed steadying influence
on my own thinking and preaching. Not many hours out I
verified my suspicion and was met most graciously and gen-
erously. We becam^I felt— close friends, and on the roll-
ing Httle ship held many hours of real fellowship. He in-
creased my confidence in myself and made me feel strong and
hopeful. One day we talked of sermon topics, and he said it
was a surprise to him that ministers chose so many subjects
people did not care anything about, when there were so many
religious matters in which they were keenly interested. I
got out my pencil, and the result was a series of sermons all
through the next winter on 'Questions People Are Inter-
ested In ' This proved to be a very stimulating point ot
view, and I am sure Doctor Clarke's suggestion did much to
give reality and definiteness to my preaching. ^

"That was just like him— always helping some beginner
with sane and sensible advice. Before that voyage was half
over he was chaplain of the ship. I can remember his address
Sunday evening, holding on to a column as the old Germanic

126 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

rolled — we were all on a greater voyage, in a good ship, and
would be likely to make port safely if we attended strictly to
our work.

"Our friendship was renewed from time to time — in New
York, in Florida. Always he was the same kind, stimulating
adviser, never claiming superior u-isdom, getting at the heart
of a problem and advancing to the right solution by fair esti-
mate of every consideration. I reviewed several of his books
for various publications and kept in touch with everything
he wrote. He advised me kindly and generously from time
to time.

"Doctor Clarke performed a unique service in American
theology in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the
first years of the twentieth. On the one hand, he promoted a
cordial attitude toward the newer forms of faith, and on the
other he exerted a patient, restraining influence on those
who were inclined to go too fast and too far. I know of no
English-speaking teacher of religion who in this particular
field did so much to steady men in the essentials of evangeli-
cal faith."

From a letter of J. Brierly to T. H. Marshall this para-
graph is quoted as an illustration of the way in which Doctor
Clarke's personality was felt by many of his readers.

"As to Doctor Clarke one felt the man all over in his
books. One might, I should think, say of him: 'In jeder
Aeusserung steckt der ganze Mensch.' He must have been
entirely lovable."

The same feeling is expressed in a letter to a missionary
from Lieutenant Masuro Kako of the Japanese Imperial Navy.

"I have already read more than two-thirds of Clarke's
Theology, which has proved extremely interesting to me. It
is a source of profound satisfaction to me that I could find a
genuine friend in Doctor Clarke. He seems to express what
I feel and experience, though I am greatly inferior to him in
many respects. Sometimes I forget that I am reading that
book and feel the direct warm touch of two hearts in the
depths of my soul."

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 127

When the breaking up of the house on College Hill in
Hamilton, in October, 19 13, had reached the chaotic stage
a box with the cover nailed down came to light. In this box
were letters from Doctor Clarke to his wife, before their mar-
riage, which had been hastily placed there when closets and
drawers were being emptied for the use of temporary occu-
pants of the home, and also some letters from Doctor Clarke
to his sister Mary, written at various periods in his life.
These letters have proven of the utmost value in determin-
ing dates and in recalling half-forgotten events. Many let-
ters which Doctor Clarke had written to his wife and her
letters to him had been destroyed long before. During the
years spent in the house on the hill a large and growing accu-
mulation of Doctor Clarke's sermons, addresses, published
writings scattered through various periodicals, pamphlets,
clippings, interesting letters from men engaged in lines of
work bearing upon theology, and letters of friendship, lay in
a low closet under the attic roof. Now and then this closet
was emptied for cleaning and the contents dusted and re-
turned to their resting-place. Upon such occasions Doctor
Clarke sometimes became aware of what was going on, made
his way to the attic, handled and examined things a little,
and ended by saying that those old sermons and addresses
ought to be burned.

Doctor Clarke did not intend to leave behind him data
of any kind which might one day be exploited as material
for a biography, perhaps by some one who never knew him
and could not possibly use it understandingly. He had seen
in notable instances how false an impression can be made
by letters and diaries, even when handled by intimate friends,
honestly desiring to present an exact and truthful record.
For this reason he had requested his sister to bum all of his
letters to her and she had done so.

There came a day in the summer of 19 10 when it was de-
cided that these things ought to be destroyed at once. The

128 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

closet was emptied and its contents burned. Only a few
note-books, brief diaries, and such notes and tjpewritten
work as were likely to be of use later, which were kept in the
study and the closet adjoining, were retained. All of the
unpublished work of his earlier years and of his middle life
vanished in an hour.

This biography is, therefore, of a different character from
that which might have been made had the data been kept
which showed almost the whole of Doctor Clarke's history as
a student and his personal relations with other writers whose
spirit and aims were akin to his own.

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS

By Reverend William O. Stearns

As I look back over the past I realize afresh that my re-
lations with Doctor Clarke were almost entirely of a per-
sonal nature. Only once did we come into ofi&cial relations.
What I would like to record therefore must be necessarily
in the realm wherein the personal atmosphere presides. For
that reason to some readers, especially those who seek for
the origin and growth of his theological behefs, there will be
but little of interest in my contribution; while to others,
the story of a personal friendship will be the more attractive.

One of my memories is associated with the closing service
of my father's pastorate of the Newton Center Baptist
Church. It was held in the old wooden structure long since
displaced by the impressive pile of stone in which the con-
gregation worships to-day. It must have been in the year
1869, and I was in my thirteenth year. A little later, one
Saturday afternoon, a tall man came to stay with us over
Sunday. He was somewhat spare, bright-cheeked, clear-eyed,
with black, wavy hair. To my boyish fancy, his tallness,
fresh cheeks, wavy black hair, and clear eyes form that first
picture of Doctor Clarke. I do not recall very much about
his pulpit presence then, except his personal appearance.
What he said, how he preached, and how his pastorate pro-
gressed have left only vague impressions. What it really was
may be simimed up in one of the statements that have been
retained in memory when overhearing Doctor Hovey say to
my father: "Mr. Clarke gets out of a text about all the
meat there is in it." Those were days when people were sup-

129

130 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

posed to do just that if they could. People went to church
to hear the gospel preached, as expounded by a text of Scrip-
ture. Preachers were judged by their exegetical ability.
Exegesis was a sine qua non in efficiency. Men were con-
verted according to the exposition of the Scriptures and the
obedience rendered to the truth. The discussion of ques-
tions of the day, political, social, or moral, was quite foreign
to the scope of the preaching. Reading occasionally one of
my father's sermons, I am struck by this characteristic of
the preaching.

His pastorate moved quietly and steadily on at Newton
Center until the winter of the great revival. This was the
crisis in my own life, and brought me with a great many
others into the personal relation of shepherd and sheep. It
was occasioned by a fatal accident during the midwinter
college vacation of 1873. The oldest son of Professor Heman
Lincoln was at home from BrowTi University, and the coast-
ing on Institution Hill, crowned by the seminary buildings,
was exceptionally fine. The narrow coasting track at the
side of the road was very hard, and icy in places. The sled
slewed while going at Kghtning speed and the boys were
hurled off, Allan Lincoln being thrown against a tree and
instantly killed. He was the only one of the four young men
on the sled who was a Christian, both by profession and life.
This fact was so used by the divine Spirit that the whole com-
munity was moved as it never had been before nor has since.
There was no excitement in the meetings held, nor in the tone
of the preaching. There were no sensational efforts to secure
conversions, but there was not a home unvisited. Men,
women, young men, young women, and children came to
Christ. Nearly every one in the village and vicinity not
identified with the churches, our own Baptist Church and
the Congregationalist, of which the well-loved Doctor D. L.
Furber was pastor, found the Lord, and found the way into
the fellowship of the church, and a beginning was made for

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 131

what is now a prosperous Methodist church. Doctor Clarke
was indefatigable in his faithful efforts. The quiet, scholarly-
life found a new avenue for expression. Those of us who
were baptized at that time, the spring and summer of 1873,
will never forget what he was to us. We were of all walks
of life, of all grades of educational advantages, and I had al-
most said, of all ages (and I believe that is true, too), yet our
relations, moulded and developed by him, were of an absolute
equality in Christ. A young people's meeting was organ-
ized, not as a society but as a meeting of young Christian
converts, working thus together to gain Christian experience
themselves and to help other young people to know and
serve the Lord. In all this work of preparation for a growing
Christian life. Doctor Clarke's hand was plainly felt, while
he quietly kept himself in the background, leaving the young
Christians to lead on, while he led himself unknown to them.
There are only a few remaining now in the membership of the
Newton Center Church, who crowded its gates in those days,
but those few have ideals of Christian reality that were sown
in the years from '73 to '76 under Doctor Clarke's preaching
and leadership.

It is unnecessary to describe his relations with the faculty
of the institution, his acquaintance with brother pastors in
the neighboring city of Boston, his delight in the fellowship
of all students of the Scriptures, and the effect upon himself,
for he has told us of that himself in his Sixty Years Willi the
Bible. These relations were brotherly in the truest meaning
of the word. My feeling for him was that for a lovable Chris-
tian pastor, not far away from me nor yet very near. That
closer relationship was still in the future. Our pastor was
our pastor — never hail-fellow-well-met, nor one of the boys,
as the ideal of to-day demands, but our pastor, our religious
teacher and friend toward whom we looked with respect and
reverence. We never dreamed of criticising him nor of ques-
tioning his opinions. We sat at his feet as learners in the

132 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

great book of God's love, and he, as the good scribe, brought
forth for us ** things new and old" for our ''edification."

A dozen years later it was my privilege to be ordained to
the Christian ministry, and to serve as pastor of the Caze-
novia Village Baptist Church at Cazenovia, New York.
This was the church which Doctor Clarke's father served as
pastor for twenty-five years. It was the church into whose
membership he had been baptized by his father; the church
in which his own Christian life had begun growing; the
church which Hcensed him to exercise his gifts in preaching
the gospel; the church from which he had gone to college
at Hamilton, New York, then Madison University. Singu-
larly enough, I had never heard him mention his home in
New York State, and until I went to Cazenovia to supply
the pulpit for a few Sundays in July, 1884, 1 did not know that
Doctor Clarke had ever seen Cazenovia, nor that there was
such a place upon the map. It was not, therefore, through
his influence that I became his mother's pastor, for Mrs.
Clarke was still living, at a good old age, his father having
died a number of years before this. He was wont to refer
to this singular relation, he having been my father's pastor
and now I had become his mother's pastor.

He came and spent a good portion of the next summer
with his mother, in his sister's home, and often after that,
during the nine years of my stay in Cazenovia, he was there
for visits of varying length. Of all that period I want to say
that the one word, "encourager," covers the full relation.
He never imposed his opinions, his views, his decisions upon
mine. He always encouraged. Once he said: "I never
could have preached a sermon like that you preached this
morning when I first went to Newton Center. People were
not ready to listen to that view then." Once I had written a
sermon on the "Resurrection of the Dead," and he asked me
to read it to him. I did so, and his comment was: "Try
again ten years from now. It will do to keep and revise."

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 133

Gradually I came to refer any extra writing in the way of
addresses, essays, or expositions of Scripture to him, and sev-
eral lectures prepared for the theological students at Ham-
ilton were offered for his approval before being read. The
reason for it all is plain. He always encouraged, never dis-
couraged. The quality of his friendship placed us in the
same group of workers. We were together, working out the
same problems, possessed of the same spirit. The only dif-
ference was length of service. Seeking the same ends, only
encouragement was worthy of his delicately tempered spirit.
"What is new? What is fresh? " was the first question with
him. It mattered but little from what source the informa-
tion came. It is God's universe. We are in it with him.
Hence news from Him is always first and foremost in impor-
tance. To encourage the seeker; to inspire him to seek, and
to seek and report his findings — this was the spirit of his
friendship. Of what use to tell of one's failures, one's feeble
efforts, one's infantile attempts? He knew well that most
of them were such; but he never even intimated the fact.
He was too great-hearted to do so. The mark of true great-
ness is known — to uplift. Doctor Clarke possessed this
p)ower in a remarkable degree. His power of encouragement
was such that discouragements were lost sight of in the en-
couragement with which one left his presence. I can give
no better illustration of this dominating characteristic in his
personality than this quotation from his last letter to me,
dated De Land, Florida, December 31, 191 1. "Your Bible
card has come to hand and tells a good story of endeavor on
your part. May it prove a great help to all concerned, and
may the new year bring you strength to labor and a clear
head to see your way, and a brave heart for bright days and
dark, and success in your life undertaking that will satisfy
your best desires. Isn't that a wish that covers a good share
of the ground? " That was the last message, and it covered
not only all the future of the year of which he was thinking,

134 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

but also was typical of his feeling during all the past. He
was one of God's own apostles whose benediction abides with
one always, and makes appropriate the closing sentence of
this last letter — ''Grace be with you and mercy and peace.
Amen."

It has been a privilege unsought, but very much appre-
ciated, to have known personally, and through the friend-
ship of my father's contemporaries, many of the leading
thinkers, preachers, educators, and missionaries of our de-
nomination. The home at Newton Center was always open
to them, and they failed not to enjoy its hospitahty. The
anniversary seasons of the Theological Institution brought
them together. Most of them have slept under our roof
and have been entertained at our table. There could be
seen Martin B. Anderson, George D. Boardman, Rollin H.
Neale, Doctor J. G. Warren, and later. Doctor Murdock,
Doctor G. D. B. Pepper, Doctor Ebenezer Dodge, Thomas
D. Anderson, Doctor J. T. Champlin, and many returning
alumni. Our side piazzas furnished splendid opportunity
for renewing cherished memories of the old days of New-
ton. As I call the roll to-night, in memory I see those
men to whom our denomination owes much, and bring to
mind their faces, as they came in with one or more of the
professors of the institution: Doctor Hovey, Doctor Lin-
coln, Doctor Galusha Anderson, Doctor E. P. Gould, or
later Doctor S. L. Caldwell. There was a quality in their
fellowship which owed its origin to the controlling presence
of a great purpose. They were engaged in a great work, the
greatest of all endeavor. No one of them had the least doubt
that the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ was the greatest
work in the world. No other calling was to be compared with
it. It overtopped them all as Mount Washington rises above
all surrounding summits. They were idealistic. The blight
of materialism had not injured their sensitive appreciation
of high and holy purposes. To think high thoughts of God

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS

135

and of the redemption wrought by God in his Son, Jesus
Christ, for the world; to present these thoughts in the clear-
est and most finished forms of language, for most preachers
read their sermons then; to teach other men to improve on
the best they had done, was their life. The preacher was a
king. His pulpit was his throne, from which he declared
the truths made known to him by the King of Kings, The
preachers of that time considered no comparison between
themselves in their work and the lawyer, the physician, the
officials of the government, not even the President in the
White House. It was an atmosphere of idealism, so differ-
ent from the atmosphere of the present day that the contrast
should be noted. Those days have passed away, and with
them the sensitiveness to such great and compelling ideals.
The idealism of the present appears in other forms, perhaps
more practical, certainly not so upHfting. Doctor Clarke
was the finished product of the best of them all. In him
their best thoughts came to their more perfect expression.
Their experiences of Christian minister and teacher united
in his, and he worked them out under the larger life experi-
ence possible in a later period. Some one has called him a
great mystic — a true description when considered not in the
technical sense of the word. He was a great mystic as the
apostle John was. The thoughtful mind that studies the
face, and catches the meaning in the eyes of the wonderful
portrait with which his friends at Hamilton are so familiar,
reverently, yet gratefully feels that to know him was to
know one who knew God, whom God knew so well that he
could make him the mouthpiece of his great message of love.

THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP

By Professor J. W. A. Stewart, D.D.

In inviting me to contribute to this volume Mrs. Clarke
has requested that I tell something of Doctor Clarke's ca-
reer in Canada, and still more of what he was to me as friend
and helper. Out of the correspondence between Doctor
Clarke and myself I preserved twenty-six letters, which are
still in my possession. The first of these letters is dated
February 28, 1881. Doctor Clarke was at that time pastor
of the Olivet Baptist Church, Montreal, Canada. I have
read these letters again and I am greatly impressed by them.
Probably all of Doctor Clarke's correspondents would agree
that he was one of the best letter-writers of this modern
time. In his letters he gave himself and the best that was
in him without stint. One letter after another of those in
my possession might be printed almost as it stands, and
many would read it with eagerness. A letter from him was
no merely conventional affair. By his letters he made you
live and talk with him and read his very heart. The same
atmosphere of reality, of high purpose, of unwavering faith
which was felt in his preaching and is manifest in his books
is here in his letters; and, in addition, there is always the
glow of warm personal friendship. I need not speak of his
style, for every friend of his and every reader of his books
knows the quality and charm of it. Nowhere does that
quality appear to better advantage than in his letters, and
certainly in his case "the style is the man."

It is time now to say something about the beginnings of
our friendship and the cause of this (to me) so valuable
correspondence. Here I must be forgiven for a personal ref-

136

THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP 137

erence. This reference is necessary to an understanding of
what Doctor Clarke was to me. The simple truth is that,
like many another young minister, I had gotten into great
trouble of mind. As I look back through a little more than
thirty years, the causes for this trouble were three in number.
For one thing, in the middle seventies, while I was pursuing
my course in the University of Toronto the materialistic phi-
losophy seemed to dominate the field. Professor Tyndall gave
his famous Belfast address in 1874, and one could hardly
take up a leading review in those days without coming across
an article which cut away the roots of religion. For a young
person who read and tried to think, faith had a difficult
time. I was held to a theistic belief and the freedom of the
will and the eternal reality of moral distinctions by a profes-
sor of philosophy of quite unusual power, the late George
Paxton Young, but many interrogation-points dotted my
field of vision.

For another thing, I had been reared in a pretty stiff type
of Calvinism and a rather narrow type of evangelicalism.
As I view it now, the dogmatic interest was paramount all
through my early training. The ethical interest, so far as
doctrines were concerned, was not denied; it was ignored.
Strong doctrines concerning the relations between God and
man could be discussed and afl5rmed with little or no refer-
ence to the bearing of those doctrines upon the character of
God or the actual moral agency of man. I recall discussions
about election which simply meant that God was a despot
and man a mere tool or thing. A doctrine of future punish-
ment was held which was, to say the least, immoral. The
doctrine of the atonement was mechanical. The whole
scheme of doctrine, so far as my apprehension of it went, was
mechanical, external, arbitrary; it lacked reality; it did not
appeal to the reason and the conscience. This tremendous
moral interest which we feel to-day, this significance of the
human personality — these were not in the atmosphere which

I3S WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

surrounded me in my earlier years. I freely admit that this
judgment may need some qualification, that it is due in part
to my own immaturity at the time to which it refers, my
inability to estimate and to appreciate the teachings to which
I listened and under whose influence I came. In the later
seventies an earnest and wide-spread discussion arose con-
cerning future punishment. Farrar's sermons on "Eternal
Hope" had been preached; an extensive literature on the
subject sprang into being; one might hear learned discus-
sions on it an hour, two hours, in length. Meanwhile my
o\Mi ethical interest had been awakened. And so I got into
trouble. It was the not uncommon experience of a young
minister whose training in theological thinking had been
limited finding himself unable to make doctrines he was sup-
posed to hold harmonize with what he felt to be the ethical
demand. And of course the ethical demand is supreme.
No doctrine can be held in face of the protest of the moral
nature.

A third factor entered into the situation. I had already
been ordained and was pastor of a church. I now supposed
that a Baptist minister was in honor bound to stand not only
for certain doctrines but also for certain modes of presenta-
tion of those doctrines which I felt I could not stand for.
No one can complain that there is any excessive restraint of
liberty in Baptist pulpits to-day; some one might suggest
that there is danger that Hberty may be abused. But thirty
years have witnessed a change. At the time to which I refer
the roominess was not so manifest. And so I thought that I
must leave my church and my pulpit.

And now it was that my acquaintance and friendship
with Doctor Clarke began. A parishioner of his and friend
of mine who had learned of my trouble and had recognized
something unusual in his pastor asked him to write to me.
This he did, and so before we had met we were already in
the midst of a lively correspondence. I do not propose to

THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP 139

give here a detailed account of our correspondence, but only
to tell how Doctor Clarke helped me, and to quote here and
there a seLf-reveaHng sentence from his letters. To this I must
add something more about him as friend and companion,
and I must tell of his work and influence in Canada.

Already I had begun to feel that the fundamental ques-
tion in all religious thinking is the question as to the char-
acter of God. In this feeling Doctor Clarke at once con-
firmed me. I never knew a man who seemed more sure of
God and of his ethical quality or who rejoiced more in the
thought of God. The character of God was dominant in all
his thinking; that character could never for a moment be
compromised; whatever became of this doctrine or that, at
any rate "God is hght, and in him is no darkness at all" ;
"God is love." He helped me to beheve these things about
God once for all. As it seems to me now, it was my first
genuine, vital, intelligent faith in God. I can never forget
what it meant to me. The nightmare of a divine despot
was gone. The heart of the universe is sound. God can do
no wrong. I was emancipated, out of prison, under the Hght
of the sun, breathing the pure, open air. Always with the
thought of God which I cherish, Doctor Clarke must be
closely associated as the one who helped me to that thought.
In addition to this he greatly encouraged me in the belief as
to the right of the individual mind to do its own thinking.
It had appeared to me in my still earlier years that there
stood a fixed body of doctrine, and that to bring one's own
mind to bear upon it and to hesitate or to call in question any
part was a serious, if not dangerous, thing. Indeed, there were
those who suggested that it was a sort of calamity for one to
get into an inquiring mood. Already, however, besides Pro-
fessor Young, I had had at least one friend and teacher who
beheved in mental independence. And now Doctor Clarke
came to my help, and instead of hinting that the inquiring
mood was to be shunned he represented it as a pressing duty

I40 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

and as the mood that was alone worthy of a man constituted
as God has made us. Never for one moment did he lose sight
of the serious interest of truth; none could be more reverent
than he. But truth could vindicate itself, and the freest in-
quiry could only result in clearer apprehension and increased
conviction. No individual or set of individuals of the past,
much as we owe to them, had ever been commissioned of God
to do our thinking for us. The New Testament, instead of
closing the door against thought, really opens it. "Come
and see" is the Master's summons. In encouraging me to
independence of mind, Doctor Clarke did not mean that I
should think as he thought; he was too true for that; he really
meant that I should think for myself and trust my own work.
No man could have a truer conception of personal liberty.
Through my acquaintance with him I learned the joy of intel-
lectual freedom. To mention one thing more, he helped me
to see that the Baptist denomination affords more room for
the individual mind than I had supposed, that personal free-
dom is of the very genius of the Baptist Churches. Let this
not be misinterpreted. There is not a single radical or destruc-
tive sentence in all these letters. Edification, clearer apprehen-
sion of truth, loyalty to Christ are in every line. This man
was in dead earnest. His sweat, his life's blood went into his
work. Truth was his queen. With what chivalry and devo-
tion he served her ! Had I been an unbeliever he would have
told me at once that I was out of place in a Baptist pulpit;
but because I believed and was seeking more light and was
striving after reality he told me to stay where I was, that
the Baptist Church was my proper home.

And now for the letters themselves. In the first of them
that I preserved (February 28, 1881) he writes: "I have been
harder at work, I think, than I ever was before in my life."
Again: "Your letter was sweet to my soul. Any thought of
God as acting out himself, his own right, natural, lovable,
eternal self, in the work by which he approaches us, is

THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP 141

precious to me." As to future punishment, he has this to
say: "The principle of hyper-Calvinism is the only valid
foundation for a doctrine of universal salvation. Calvinism
in its extreme form reduces all the action of the universe to
action of God himself, and leaves room for only a single will.
Now if I could feel that to be true, I could expect that
one all-embracing will to sweep all inferior wills along to the
voluntary fulfihnent (so far as such fulfihnent could be vol-
imtary) of its own restorative purpose. . . . For myself I
believe in the freedom of men, and so I see my way clear to
the natural possibility of the eternal loss of the soul." He is
very emphatic about man's natural constitution as being in
the image of God. And here is a guiding principle of his
Theology: "True living is imitation of God (Eph. 5 : i).
The principle of imitation of God authorizes us to judge of
what God is, in part at least from what he has commanded
us to be. . . . I conceive that we are entitled to bear this
truth as a torch in our searching for the meaning of what God
has done for us. It cannot serve as our only light, but it will
help us in understanding his saving work." Here follows a
paragraph which I must transcribe in full; it is so true a reve-
lation of the man. "When I come to that work itself, the
work of Christ, I cannot help you as much as I wish I could,
but my own thinking on the subject has not been in vain as
it seems to me. After having always had an unexplored
region in the heart of that great continent, I was most unex-
pectedly compelled to go exploring a year or two ago. One
day I was sent in, in spite of myself, to find what I could in
that great and dimly known region. For months I was at it
and could not get away. I was not in a revolutionary mood,
most happily. My expedition was not warUke. As I went
on, truth after truth seemed to open to me, and mistake
after mistake of my previous thinking seemed to be left be-
hind. If I had been fighting I might have come out with many
a wound; but this was a work of discovery and I saw so much

142 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

that was glorious that what had to be rejected fell away
easily as unworthy to remain beside the newly apprehended
truth. Perhaps I have reached wrong conclusions in some
things — if I have I pray that I may know it — but as to the
general principles and the Hne of thinking I am as well as-
sured as I can be in this world that if I am the Lord's I shall
go on thinking in the same way forever. I have no complete
theory, but that my general view of the work of Christ is
grounded in eternal principles I am entirely sure." He then
proposes to send me an essay he had written on "The For-
giveness of Sin." A little later the essay came, and I took a
copy of it. That essay had in it nearly all the roots of his
Theology, and his Theology is well known on both sides of
the Atlantic. This notable letter ends thus: *' God bless you,
dear brother, and enrich your soul with his life-giving truth.
If I tell you anything wrong may he forgive me, and keep
your soul safe from my errors. Write again and often." In
the next letter (April i8, 1881), he is hard at work on the
Commentary (Mark). He refers to a letter of F. W. Rob-
ertson's in which he (Robertson) said "that without doubt
he should make progress in the apprehension of truth and
should so alter and correct his views, but he felt sure that all
future progress would be in the general direction in which
he had already been moving." Doctor Clarke goes on: "I
have had the same feeling very strongly about my own
thinking, that in obtaining clearer and more inspiring \aews
of the nature of God and his relations to men I had gained
something of the permanent light and even, as I felt, of the
eternal light; and that though I might go on learning for-
ever I should never have really to unlearn some of these
truths that have been made plain to me. ... I hope to see
far more clearly and more truly, but I trust that I see." He
tells of a sermon of his on " God is Light." He is anxious not
to be regarded as heretical because he wants his people to
know the glorious character of God "even in the poor degree

THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP 143

in which it is present to my mind." He fears that a Cana-
dian council (he was now in Canada) might refuse to ordain
him but he does not know "by what divine oracle or inspired
Scripture ' the denomination ' was constituted the infallible
guide for your thinking or mine." "About full and minute
agreement with other Baptists I do not trouble myself as
much as some might think I ought, for I know that any re-
ligious body in which any genuine thinking is done will have
its divergences and must expect them. ... I do not regard
myself as a champion of denominational orthodoxy, but I do
regard myself as a Baptist and as a humble champion of my
Master's truth." Referring to the doctrine of election, he
writes: "Of one thing, however, I am certain — that the
truth concerning the character of God, and the relation of
that character to man and to redemption, outranks all special
interpretations of doctrine. Truth concerning him is fun-
damental, and all true doctrine rests upon it." This letter
is full of weighty material and ends with these warm words:
"Now do not be offended because I have punched this let-
ter out on a machine. There is nothing of the machine vari-
ety about the interest I feel in your questionings and your
progress in the knowledge of truth. . . . My heart is with
you, and if any experience of mine can make me of any use
to you I am only too glad. Let me know how you fare. I
wish I could talk with you. But some day we shall have our
opportunity face to face. Meanwhile may our Lord lead us
both nearer to himself and further into his own truth.
Yours with all my heart."

Later on a letter comes discussing the question of the
existence of evil, immortality, atonement. His \'iews diflfer
somewhat from those ordinarily held, and he adds: "I hope
I am not intellectually proud in these matters — or at least I
pray that I may not be so. I desire to think and learn in the
spirit of a little child. But I can see some things in only one
way and I am well convinced that in some matters I shall

144 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

not see differently in another world, excepting more clearly
and more truly. Some things that you and I were brought
up on are destined to pass away, and are already in the proc-
ess, and more rational and profoundly scriptural ideas are
coming in their place. The process is inevitable, but I want
to hold the right place in it, chnging to all that is true and
yielding quickly to truth, as Augustine says {'cede cito veri-
tati'), in all matters in which truth is presented to me." His
letters show how unsatisfied he is with any presentations of
Christian doctrines which are only formal, or external and
mechanical, how bent he is on reality, how Christianity must
be all personal between God and man, how all must be viewed
in the light of God's moral perfection. We had not yet seen
each other, but the meeting of the Baptist Convention in
Montreal in October, 1881, at last brought us together.

In subsequent letters Doctor Clarke sometimes tells about
his sermons and his enjoyments in preaching, and there is
often a suggestive or stimulating sentence in what he writes.
There must have been a large amount of freshness and vital-
ity in his preaching, a total absence of platitude and of
anything stale or hackneyed. For example, he gives a most
practical sermon on ''Leaving the Church," showing why in-
dividuals should not leave it for insuJ05cient cause. Again:
"I am going into some sermons of instruction on less-studied
parts of the Scripture — ^Job, Habakkuk, Malachi — and I know
not what else. I am also going to preach a sermon or two on
some aspects of the question of amusements. I am full now
of one on the horribleness of amusing or gratifying oneself
at the expense of degradation to one's fellow beings, a sub-
ject that carries a wide and searching application." "I had
a royal time Sunday night, in the rain, before a handful of
people, with a sermon that cost no special expenditure of
time whatever. I had got the theme, and then on Saturday
I was three-quarters sick and had all I could do to get through
my other sermon. So this was ex tempore in the redeeming

THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP 145

sense that it sprang from a long course of time and thinking,
and sprang up quickly. Such an experience is not unpleas-
ant now and then." His sermon on amusements made a deep
impression. A most interesting letter has this paragraph,
which reveals the man of God: "I am sending you a wretch-
edly poor letter, no line of which, as far as it has to do with
our Master's truth, approaches to satisfying me. How far
above me does his truth appear when once I endeavor to
give it form in word ! . . . The real truth is of a high and
comprehensive kind and is to be reached not so much by
close analysis and exclusion as by a process indescribable,
with which the heart has quite as much to do as the intellect.
... It is an experience of God, and the more fully the whole
being of man is involved in that experience . , . the more
truly and justly shall we know the truth of God." I preached
to my people three or four sermons on the atonement. The
manuscript of one of them I sent to Doctor Clarke. This
brought from him a letter of four typewritten pages of large
letter-paper with a postscript of two pages more. The views
he expressed are well known, but I call attention to the sig-
nificance of this letter as an evidence of the generosity and
brotherHness of Doctor Clarke. How many of one's dearest
friends would take the time and trouble to write such a let-
ter! The essay on "The Forgiveness of Sin" already re-
ferred to he at last sends. (It had been doing missionary
work elsewhere.) "I send you my essay with this condition
expressed, that you will show it no mercy. If I thought you
had the faintest idea of accepting it as in any sense an author-
ity to your mind, or as anything else than an essay, an en-
deavor after truth, not complete, and faulty enough, you
should never lay hands on it. Criticise it, and cut it to pieces
and reject as much of it as you must, and use it as a help to
your own thinking."

In the letters which follow there is material of deep in-
terest regarding books, institutions, church work, doctrinal

146 WILLIA^I NEWTON CLARKE

subjects, men; but it must be passed by. Brief sentences
here and there are self-revealing. Referring to another's ex-
perience he writes: "This is a queer world, and sometimes it
seems as if, in proportion to the space it contains, there was
but very little room in it." Again: ''I have come to feel more
and more that 'what is true is safe,' and that what I can spir-
itually trust as true will not lead me astray." And again:
"But it grows upon me that the subject (the work of Christ)
is to be more or less obscure to the logical understanding
through this life and perhaps forever. ... But of this I am
sure — that as soon as we do see with the clearer Hght of a
higher realm, we shall see the work of Christ for us as the
clearest, simplest, most necessary of things — free from all
plans and devices — the thing that God's heart must have
done. Then we shall wonder at many of our perplexities
about it. Possibly we might even now begin to feel them
needless, aside from the point, if we were more deeply spir-
itual." And here is a morsel worth throwing in: "I don't
think I have been lately in one of my high swinging times, as
to preaching, and yet I have lately had some of the best of
seasons in the pulpit. It is rarely that I have a really poor
time. The pulpit is very dear to me." He is working on the
First Epistle of John; it is one of his favorite parts of Scrip-
ture. "Be of good cheer, dear brother, for the Lord is lead-
ing us with his own hands and putting us through the course
of training, sometimes painful and perplexing, by which he
will qualify us for eternal service. It is good to be in his
hand. Oh, for grace to learn his ways faster !" Another let-
ter has this: "It is true that ideas of a new kind are leaven-
ing the preachers and the churches. ... I believe in the
general principle that what is true is safe. But it has been
very truly said that truth may be hurtful if its way has not
been prepared and it is received into a mind that is not ready
to give it the place due to truth. Such considerations make
me anxious to be absolutely faithful both to truth and to

THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP 147

men as the Lord's steward, and to dispense what he has
given me with goodly care. I believe I do try to use all pos-
sible caution, justice, and discrimination, as far as I have the
power. But when I ask myself whether I can take another
tone and preach another style of doctrine than that which I
have preached I feel Hke Luther at the Diet of Worms and
can make his utterance my own. And my faith is full and
strong that * the present truth ' will in the end be a boundless
blessing to mankind, because I feel that its vital element is a
higher and worthier conception of God. There will be misap>-
prehensions and misuses, of course, as there are of all other
truth, but the final beneficence of a more profoundly ethical
and spiritual conception of God is surer than the brightness
of noonday when the sun rises." This last extract is from a
letter written in bed, where he had already been for four
weeks on account of an injured knee, and where he was still
to be for a few weeks longer. He bore this affliction like a
philosopher and a Christian, and never for a moment lost
his cheerfulness or his optimism. His next letter soon fol-
lowed, and it was all occupied with an invitation which had
come to me to take a chair in a divinity school. It was a let-
ter of great wisdom and helpfulness. Referring to the same
matter in the letter which followed this one, he writes: "More
and more it seems to me that such an office is a spiritual
trust, and that without the best spiritual life a man cannot
do his work as he ought. But it is a noble trust — an oppor-
tunity to sit down with a little child's humihty at the Mas-
ter's feet and learn his truth from himself, and then in the
confidence that comes of such humble learning to speak it
so that others may speak it also." He comments upon the
"surprising thing that the disturbed young man whom I met
two years and a half ago" should now be invited to take a
professorship in a divinity school among the people whom
he had almost thought he must leave for conscientious rea-
sons. I mention this in order to say that those two or three

148 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

years were notable years to me, and that my acquaintance
and commmiication with Doctor Clarke was one of the most
influential factors in making them so. I think now with a
sort of wonder at the way he gave himself to me, his affection
and sympathy, his faith and hope, his deepest convictions,
his best thinking, his highest wisdom. He is still in bed, but
the broken limb is progressing favorably. He exclaims:
"How I do preach ! Probably it is because I am just getting
my hand in. Last week I wrote a sermon and it was read in
the pulpit Sunday morning, and I heard it all through my
telephone. It is going into the Witness and I will send it
to you. It seemed good to preach again even at second-
hand." He looks forward eagerly to the time when he can
go to church and preach again from his pulpit. He has
enough to say and he loves preaching. But there are still
some weeks of weary waiting. This is in May, 1883. The
following letter tells more of his broken limb and the mend-
ing process: "If I have a good leg in a year from the break-
ing, it is all that I look for; and I am not so sure that it will
ever be perfect, though I think it will be good for most ordi-
nary uses." And now the prosposal is made to him that he
leave the pastorate and take a chair in what is now the Theo-
logical Department of McMaster University, Toronto. Much
as he loves his people and his pulpit, he incHnes to the work
of teaching. "There are strong reasons against leaving here
at present, and they may prevail. But I have always thought
it would be hard to decline a fairly promising invitation to
work of this kind, and I do not wish to decHne it now if it is
right to go." Here is another sentence from this letter: "I
haven't been very fond of the address 'Almighty God' in
prayer, but I have been thinking lately of spiritual omnip-
otence. Isn't that the highest and only true? I don't
know but that 'Ahnighty' may yet be a favorite word with
me." It need hardly be added, regarding the proposal to
take a professorship, that with the one who came to him to

THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP 149

make it he was perfectly frank, "telling him all that is in my
heart. He knows my convictions as faithfully as one can
who does not altogether share them."

On July 9, 1883, he writes: "The deed is done and to
Toronto I go. . . . So the die is cast and I am to be a theo-
logical professor. I had a hard fight last week and spent a
few days as blue as any days that ever refused to shine. The
people here . . . acted throughout in a rational and Chris-
tian way. But the strife was mainly within, partly on ac-
count of my love for the pulpit and the pastorate, and partly
in view of the outlook here. . . . There was no reason here
for a change, and the whole burden of making one came upon
me. . . . But although I was at one time strongly inclined
to give it all up and settle down to stay, I am now quite sure
that I have reached the right conclusion and am quite happy
in the result. I expect to enjoy the new work, and I think I
may reasonably hope to be useful in it." In reply to a ques-
tion he adds: "Don't I know T. Erskine (of Linlathen)? I
don't like some of his ways of interpretation, but his letters
are great and noble and Christian. Few men have ever
written so truly to the Christian purpose."

The letter from which I have just quoted was the last one
I received from Doctor Clarke from Montreal. He now lays
down the work of the pastor and, removing to Toronto, takes
upon him the work of a professor. This change brought him
near to me, my pastorate being in Hamilton, Ontario. Ac-
cordingly, in place of correspondence, we now had visits to
each other's homes, and frequent meetings in various ways.
Doctor Clarke came occasionally to preach for me, and be-
fore long he became one of our family institutions — I was going
to say, one of our household divinities. Of course I received
other letters from him and I add a few more quotations.
From Cazenovia, in July, 1884, after he had broken his arm,
he writes: "Don't you think I am improving in my Telegu?
You wouldn't believe how thoroughly against nature it is to

ISO WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

push the pen from the left. If it were not the age of pads of
paper I don't see how I could make the page lie still." In
December, 1886, a letter came about my possible removal
to Rochester. It was the kind of letter to expect from him,
but I shall not quote from it. After four years of teaching
in Toronto he was called to the pastorate of the Baptist
Church in Hamilton, New York. A letter from Hamilton
in October, 1889, tells of his work there, especially of his
work in the pulpit. He must have been doing some noble
work as a preacher at that time. He anticipated then some
of the ideas that are in the rural-church movement of to-
day, and he revealed his interest in the great social move-
ment which was only just beginning. "I have most grati-
fying attention from the young men (of the college), and am
glad of the opportunity to hammer away at them with truth
that many a man would never think of giving them. Once
last spring I chanced to get a mail one day that was extraor-
dinarily rich in philanthropic and beneficent matter, and I
reported it on Sunday evening, under the title: 'One day's
tidings from the new world.' " He did this sort of thing more
than once in the pulpit, and he adds: "My people delight in
hearing it." He is doing a good deal of most fruitful read-
ing, and his observations on some passing events are of inter-
est and value. On January i, 1890, he sends a New Year's
letter. His idea of friendship and of its survival beyond the
confines of time was a beautiful and cheering one. "I am sure
that our lives have flowed together in such a way that in
spirit they will never be separated in any world." He prizes
the opportunity which a preacher has in a college town, and
though he sometimes feels dull, it is evident that his mind is
constantly alert to an unusual degree. By March 18, 1890,
according to a letter of that date, he is teaching again. Doc-
tor Dodge had passed away, and Doctor Clarke is drafted in
to teach theology in the Theological Seminary. He teaches
four mornings in the week as a temporary supply, still re-

THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP 151

taining the pastorate of the church. He devotes a full page
of this letter to tell of his enjoyment of the work, of his
method of teaching, of his relation to the students, of the
freedom of his lecture-room. Already the suggestion has
been made that he keep the work of teaching theology, but
as to this he is hesitating and cautious, for he is "a more
modem theologian than many men — and would not wish to
get the institution into trouble." There are still some most
interesting things which I might add from subsequent let-
ters, regarding his teaching and the preparation of his Outline
of Christian Theology and other matters of importance. Let-
ters came from him from Hamilton, Waverly, Colorado
Springs, Pomona (California), and again from Hamilton.
They were for the most part letters of personal friendship.
Those whose privilege it was to count him among their dear-
est and most intimate friends can readily imagine the char-
acter of these letters. Referring to interchange of letters, he
says: "Speech and silence are alike, except that speech is de-
lightful and silence is delay of delight; and it is certain that
nothing will ever interfere with the solid affection which is
not grounded in any accidents of time, but in what abides
forever." I have hesitated to give this quotation, but the
last letter of this series ends with an expression of remem-
brance and affection which I must not transcribe but must
leave just where he wrote it.

And now as to Doctor Clarke's work in Canada. He was
called from Newton Center, Massachusetts, to the pastorate
of the Olivet Baptist Church, Montreal, in May, 1880. He
was preceded in this pastorate by Doctor John Gordon, who
had laid well the foundations of a new, and what has proved
to be, a strong and influential church. Doctor Clarke's min-
istry in Montreal was peculiarly fitted to develop and solid-
ify the Christian character of those who constituted this
church. One of its deacons, Mr. W. K. Grafftey, testifies
that "his noble, dignified, and sincere Christian bearing pre-

152 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

sented a great ideal to many of the best men in his parish.
His preaching, so profound in thought yet so lucid in expres-
sion, left a deep impression on the minds and lives of many:
God became more real and more near in the daily life. His
was a ministry of teaching the deepest theological truth in
the most practical form." It was here that he met with a
serious accident, the breaking of a kneecap. ^Ir. Grafiftey
adds: "It was during the time that he was laid aside by this
accident that a few of his more intimate friends were called
upon to minister to him, and in the night-watches as we sat
by his bedside the most potent thoughts entered into our
very being and made God's will and God's interest in the
common affairs of men very plain to us. His prayers during
those nights of pain, as he quieted himself to rest, became a
lasting benediction."

Another of Doctor Clarke's Montreal parishioners and
close friends, Mr. John TumbuU, writes:

"I have never known any man more lovable than Doctor
Clarke, and for many years and now this is the thought that
exists most deeply in my heart. Had he hved in the days of
our Lord he would, as he exists in my thoughts, have been
the beloved disciple. He was humble; his humility made
him thirst for knowledge of God and he attained that knowl-
edge in such measure that I do not hesitate to say that I re-
garded him as one of the inspired ones of earth. He aimed
to impart, and to ennoble those with whom he had to do and
his preaching was of that character always."

Doctor Clarke's influence in Montreal was not limited to
his own congregation. This influence was specially mani-
fested in the meetings of the Protestant ministers of the city,
where he occasionally read a paper and where he participated
freely in the discussions.

In the autumn of 1883 Doctor Clarke began his work as
professor of New Testament interpretation in what was then
Toronto Baptist College. Regarding his work while holding

THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP 153

this professorship, I quote at length from two of his students.
One of them writes: "To me, Doctor Clarke was, in many
respects, the most satisfactory teacher of my student days.
His interest in his students was tenderly sympathetic and
was calculated to engender in them the utmost desire to do
the best possible work. He worked with his students. Any
exercise, for example in New Testament exegesis, assigned
to his classes, was prepared by himself as carefully as if he
were the student instead of the professor. His thought and
language were clear, and he was never satisfied until his
students could put in their own language and without ob-
scurity their exegesis and interpretation of the passage under
consideration. Very anxious was he always that his students
should love and seek the truth even though the finding of it
might be the end of certain prejudices and traditions. As a
preacher Doctor Clarke was eminently Biblical, and whether
he preached from one verse of Scripture or many his preach-
ing was expository. He had the art of putting himself in
the other man's place, and, consequently, he made BibHcal
pictures and teaching most vivid. His imagination fairly
glowed in his preaching, and head and heart and will, on the
part of the hearers, were touched and influenced in a pecu-
liarly powerful way. Spiritual things were very real to Doc-
tor Clarke, and this was never more manifest than when he
was in the pulpit. In preaching or in teaching he was so sug-
gestive that thoughtful people, especially students, found it
impossible to remember all the channels of thought opened
in their mmds in the course of a sermon. Though always in
demand among the churches, Doctor Clarke was not a leader
in the denomination— his bent was not that way, though his
interests as a Baptist were undivided. His personal influ-
ence was gracious and magnetic. All kinds of men were at
home in his presence, and he could easily adapt himself to
all conditions of society. No students, m particular, ever
came near him without wishing to be more like him and more

154 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

like his Saviour, whom he so well represented. As one who
knew Doctor Clarke pretty intimately I can freely say that
he was the most Christlike man I ever knew." The other
of his students whom I quote writes: "As a teacher the stu-
dents of my time admired and loved him greatly. He was a
fine Greek scholar and a thorough, painstaking exegete.
Besides, he was apt to teach. His incisive, flexible thought,
his perfect lucidity of expression, his keen, joyous interest
in the work of the hour awakened responsive interest in the
class and ministered unfailing profit. Best of all, there was
in him a deep reverence for truth, a joyous readiness to fol-
low wherever it might lead, and a contagious consciousness
of the reality of spiritual things. His students always re-
membered him with a sense of great indebtedness. As a
personal influence, he was almost unique among the men I
have known. The freshness of his thinking, the Christlike
purity of his spirit, his simplicity, his joyousness, his unselfish
interest in life and in people near and far — from all of these
combined there radiated a powerful and gracious influence
of the most potent, far-reaching, and ennobling kind."

To the testimony of these who were his students little
needs to be added regarding this period of his life and work.
It goes without saying that in Toronto he soon won to himself
many friends who prized his friendship exceedingly. They
realized that a rare spirit had come among them. In the case
of those from whom he differed most widely in theological
thinking, their criticism was almost completely disarmed
by the wonderful quality of the man: there was that in him
which well-nigh made it impossible for any who knew him
to contend with him. To Doctor John H. Castle, president
of Toronto Baptist College, his counsel and friendship were
invaluable. He took great interest in the affairs of the col-
lege and in the home and foreign mission work of Canadian
Baptists. He was always ready to help with a sermon, or an
address, or in any way that he could; and everywhere he

THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP 155

went he made friends, left some noble truth to think about
and commended the cause of his Master.

Brief reference to a few things which linger in the memory
will give a fit ending to this paper. When he came to our
home the pleasure of his visits was shared not alone by Mrs.
Stewart and myself but by our children as well, and with
them he soon became a great favorite. He found time to
correspond with at least one of them, a little fellow five or
six years old, and that there was nothing merely conventional
in the interest he felt in every one of them he soon put beyond
all question. As our children were growing up his name was
one of the most familiar in our family intercourse, and I am
happy to believe that his influence upon those dearest to me
abides. In his visits to the home it did not take long to dis-
cover his love for music, and especially for sacred music.
He was deeply interested in hymns and tunes for congrega-
tional use, and his judgment in these matters was unerring.
It would be difficult to name a really good hymn or a noble
tune that he did not know. He played church tunes with
rare skill and with great pleasure to himself and to the lis-
tener. His ear for harmony was so sensitive that it was im-
possible for him to produce a discord. Coming down in the
morning a little before the breakfast hour, he would sit at
the piano and play one tune after another, filling the house
with the sound, to the delight of all. The morning hymn,
"Come, my soul thou must be waking," is known in my
home as Doctor Clarke's hymn. He played it to the tune
"Edna," and after playing it two or three times in succes-
sion he would turn around and say in his cheery way: "Now
the day may begin." For hymn and tune lovers it was a
rare delight to gather around the piano with him at the key-
board. One other thing I recall with distinctness: Twenty-
five years ago, when we heard practically nothing of the
social movement as we now know it, he was deeply inter-
ested in the social question. I remember a visit to his home

156 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

soon after he settled as pastor in Hamilton, during which
there was much earnest talk on this question. His sympa-
thies were with the toilers and the unprivileged. Though
his life was spent in the schools and in the atmosphere of books
and ideas and in the work of the pastorate, he nevertheless
carried in his heart somewhat of the burdens and sorrows of
mankind. If the lines,

"Desperate tides of the whole great world's anguish
Forced thro' the channels of a single heart"

seem a little too strong to apply to him, he at least could well
understand what those lines mean. He was a genuine fol-
lower of the Master and he looked out upon life with eyes
trained in the school of Christ. There was in him a deep seri-
ousness, a deep sympathy, a warm love for man.

How shall I conclude this tribute to my friend ? So much
of what he was to me has already found expression in what I
have written that I shall attempt no final summing-up, but
shall content myself with these lines of William Watson's:

" 'Tis human fortune's happiest height to be
A spirit melodious, lucid, poised, and whole;
Second in order of felicity
I count it to have walked with such a soul."

WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

By Doctor Edward Judson

Two or three years ago, in the little apartment-hotel, where
I make my home in New York, I was standing one day in the
elevator, just as it was about to begin its ascent, when I saw
Doctor Clarke approaching me, apparently with the inten-
tion of going up to my rooms. It was one of those gray days,
when, in the middle of the afternoon, a slight touch of depres-
sion is apt to rest upon one's spirits, and I was so surprised
and dehghted by his sudden appearance, his friendly look, and
the tone of his voice, that I seized him by his two arms and
drew hun into the elevator with the words: "I would rather
see you than any one else in the world." There chanced to
be in the elevator at the time a middle-aged lady of intel-
lectual cast, rather cold and unemotional, with whom I had
but a very sHght acquaintance, though we had Uved for
many years under the same roof, who said to me a few days
later: "Who was that gentleman whom you said you would
rather see than anybody else in the world?" IrepUed: "That
was Doctor William Newton Clarke." "WeU," she said, ''he
had the most angelic face I have ever seen." Who of us that
knew Doctor Clarke could fail to appreciate this casual im-
pression which his personality made upon the mind even of
a perfect stranger !

In a room full of people one would instinctively single him
out as a man of mark. He possessed distinction and social
charm. The broad brow with its fringe of iron-gray curly
hair, the strong mouth, the eyes that always looked you full
in the face with a kindly and comprehending gaze, the large,
spare frame, the sUghtly halting but vigorous gait, the music
of his cane touching the stone sidewalk as he approached

157

158 WILLIAM XEWTON CLARKE

your house, the cheery greeting, the large and expressive
hands, like those painted by Albrecht Diirer, hands of which
he unconsciously made marvellous use in elucidating his
thought in conversation or in the lecture-room, the faultless
dress exactly suited to his person, the eternal youthfulness
of the man, making him, even in his declining years, always
the friend and pla>Tnate of the young — all these make up a
picture in our minds that will not easily fade away. Indeed I
sometimes think that when our friends are parted from us,
their influence is even more penetrating and compelling than
when they are by our side. Being dead they yet speak with
persuasive tones. And yet how profoundly we miss them
here ! How impoverished our atmosphere here through the
withdrawal of such mighty spirits ! How often since his de-
parture have come to my mind Browning's great lines about
the Death in the Desert !

"We shall not see him any more
About the world with his divine regard !
For all was as I say, and now the man
Lies, as he lay once, breast to breast with God."

Some of Doctor Clarke's personal traits were so obvious
as to escape notice. Candor was written on his forehead. He
had set himself to the task of attempting to readjust Chris-
tian theology to the changed conditions of the modern world.
He strove to restate the faith so as to bring it into harmony
with the best thinking that is done in other realms of knowl-
edge. He felt the force of Frederic Harrison's remark, as
quoted by Henry Drummond: "When you confront us with
hypotheses, however sublime and however affecting, if they
cannot be stated in the terms of the rest of our knowledge, if
they are disparate to that world of sequence and sensation
which to us is the ultimate base of all our real knowledge,
then we shake our heads and turn aside." Doctor Clarke be-
lieved that the faith could be restated in modem terms. He

WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE 159

took no delight in tearing down. His method was always
constructive. His attitude was furthest removed from the
bellicose. He took no delight in wounding the sensibihties of
the conservative. He did not remove from beneath weak
human nature the smallest and most crumbling prop, before
seekuig to replace it with some enduring reahty. He did not
seek to attain a cheap and ephemeral reputation for intel-
lectual smartness by denying and deriding errors that have
become venerable through age, and upon which longevity
has bestowed a pecuHar sanctity. While much was dissolved
in the crucible of his powerful and analytical mind, the resid-
uum was infinitely precious in his eyes, and shone like re-
fined gold.

Apologists like Doctor Clarke and Lyman Abbott are apt
to be misunderstood by their brethren. Such defenders of the
faith do not think it wise to carry into battle the impedimenta
of Christianity, however useful in camp. It seems futile to
them to try to swing Christianity into the mind of the mod-
ern man the least reasonable end to. So, venturing far out
on the skirmish line, they incur the danger of being shot in
the back by their comrades.

"Friend slew friend, not knowing whom he slew." As
Goethe has it: "The few who have really known the human
heart, and who could call it by its right name, and foolishly
have not kept the secret to themselves but have disclosed
to the populace what they saw and felt, have been from time
immemorial crucified and burned." The seminal minds out
of which all reforms emerge are proverbially cautious and re-
served. Like Erasmus, they are apt to say: "Let others
affect martyrdom; as for me, I do not consider myself worthy
of the honor." Doctor Clarke had little of that caution and
diplomacy possessed by his great forebear, Ebenezer Dodge,
who seemed to think that, even though he held the whole
truth in one hand, he would have the right to open only one
finger at a time.

i6o WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

But Doctor Clarke believed that the time had come to
speak plainly. You never could mistake Doctor Clarke's
position. In cold, frank, and unambiguous phrase, he has a
way of bringing into clear perspective his divergence from
the current \iew, however offensive it might be to that ele-
ment in human nature that not only never has a new idea
but hates one when it sees it. The true orthodoxy consists
not in trying to hold with limp and trembling hand a whole
vast system of tenuously articulated dogmas, but in realizing
for oneself in a deep and personal way the few essential truths
that lie at the very centre of Christianity, leaving the rest to
come along in time as corollary. Faith is not cast; it grows.
It was the great vital principles of Christianity that Doctor
Clarke strove to grasp and realize in his personal character
and to set forth in enduring literary form. The dynamic of
his life was due to his intense faith in these ideas. What he
believed and reahzed in his own life he stated with clearness
and candor. And the same candor that characterized his
handUng of religious themes persisted in all practical mat-
ters. He never weakened his case by overstatement. In
recommending even a friend, his word never went beyond
the fact.

It was the intensity of his own faith as well as the candor
of its expression that made him, like Daniel of old, a dissolver
of doubts, and gave him control over the troubled spirits of his
generation. It was the intensity of his conviction that gave
Doctor Clarke something of the influence which Carlyle de-
scribes in the words he is said to have spoken to the new rec-
tor of the parish in which he lived: "It is my firm belief that
if these turbulent people could once be brought to know some
one who really believed for himself the eternal veracities, and
didn't merely tell them of some one else who in old time was
thought to have believed them, they would all be reduced to
speedy silence. It is much, no doubt, to have a decent cere-
monial of worship, and an educated, polite sort of a person to

WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE i6i

administer it. But the main want of the world, as I gather,
just now, and of this parish especially, which is that part of
the world with which I am altogether best acquainted, is to
discover some one who really knows God otherwise than by
hearsay, and can tell us what divine work is actually to be
done here and now in London streets, and not of a totally dif-
ferent work which behooved to be done two thousand years
ago in Judea."

But besides his candor Doctor Clarke possessed the grace
of imperturbabihty. All reconstruction requires patience.
Reform, they say, goes through three stages: First, it is
laughed at; secondly, it is said to be contrary to religion;
and thirdly, everybody knows it.

Doctor Clarke did not deal in splendid negations. He
had a positive message, which saved to the Christian church
many who had begun to lose faith in the ancient theologies.
He was not a prophet of doubt and misgiving. The time had
gone by, he thought, for indolent acquiescence in theological
statements, however venerable. According to an English
publicist: "The world is grown saucy, and expects reasons,
and good ones, too, before they give up their own opinions
to other men's dictates, though never so magisterially deUv-
ered to them." While Doctor Clarke sympathized with the
doubter, he did not leave him in his doubts, adding to them
his own. He undertook to construct a reasonable theology.
It was the constructive note in Doctor Clarke that made
him a healing force in a troubled time. He made it possible
for many a young preacher to go on preaching. What was
said to Martineau, with whom he had much in common,
could be truly said to him: "You have given rest to the
minds of many." The story is told of an eminent preacher
in the decline of life to whom a friend remarked: "What a
comfort it must be to you to think of all the good you have
done by your gift of eloquence." The old man's eyes filled
with tears, and he replied: "You little know; you Uttle

i62 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

know. If I ever turned a heart from the ways of disobedi-
ence to the wisdom of the just, God has withheld the assur-
ance from me." The eminent preacher died, and had a
splendid funeral. The friend was there to whom he had
sadly disclaimed the knowledge that he had ever turned any
one to righteousness. By his side stood a stranger, who was
so deeply moved that, when all was over, the friend said
to him: "You knew him? I suppose." "Knew him?" was
the reply. "No, I never spoke to him; but I owe to him my
soul."

It could have been said of Doctor Clarke, as of an emi-
nent English clergyman: "He was one of those ministers
whose congregations are outside as well as inside chapel
walls." Matthew Arnold's "Rugby Chapel," a favorite poem
of Doctor Clarke's, is finely expressive of his own sacrificial
service and vitalizing influence:

"But thou wouldst not alone
Be saved, my father, alone
Conquer and come to thy goal.
Leaving the rest in the wild.
We were weary, and we
Fearful, and we in our march.
Fain to drop down and to die.
Still thou turnedst, and still
Beckonedst the trembler, and still
Gavest the weary thy hand.
If in the paths of the world.
Stone might have wearied thy feet.
Toil or dejection have tried
Thy spirit, of that we
Saw nothing, to us thou wast still
Cheerful, and helpful, and firm.
Therefore to thee it was given
Many to save with thyself;
And at the end of thy day,
O faithful shepherd ! to come
Bringing thy sheep in thy hand."

WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE 163

But such a message was bound to incur bitterest oppo-
sition from various directions. Many of the friends of Chris-
tianity felt that in giving up much that seemed to them
vital Doctor Clarke was undermining the faith once deliv-
ered to the saints. There is hardly any mental pain so ex-
quisite as to feel long-cherished behef slipping out of your
grasp. Many Christians could not but think that the sur-
render of the outworks behind which they had so long fought
carried with it the loss of the fortress itself. This misgiving
stiffened down with some into a prejudice that prevented
their even trying to comprehend his position. They resem-
bled the minister who, glancing at a copy of Darwin's Origin
of Species lying on the counter of a bookstore, remarked to
a friend: "There's a man to whom I have given many a
hard hit in my sermons and, thank God, I have never read a
line of him." But it is only by sympathetic comprehension
even of what we think erroneous that we become the least
bit qualified effectively to oppose it. A friend of mine thought
that John 3 : 16 was not one of the great texts of the Bible
because it was one of Doctor Clarke's favorite texts.

On the other hand, the enemies of Christianity have lit-
tle use for those who endeavor to harmonize it with the best
modern thinking. It causes them chagrin to see ancient dog-
mas restated in modern and reasonable terms, and clothing
themselves in appealing and engaging forms. Especially pain-
ful is the lot of those who, like Doctor Clarke, undertake
to translate the phraseology of the schools into language
comprehensible by the plain people. It is said that a vote
of thanks was given to Lord Macaulay for having written a
history that the working man could understand. A pretty
story is told of the eminent French naturalist Figuier, who
was one of the first of the scientists who tried to popularize
science. His books were profusely illustrated, and his facts
were stated in such simple terms as to be intelligible even
to a child. This method proved unpalatable to some of his

i64 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

professional brethren, and they nicknamed him Vulgarizer
of Science. One day when he was at a reception a Httle girl
innocently asked him: "Why do they call thee Vulgarizer
of Science?" He was at a loss what to say in reply. But a
little later she gathered some roses which she distributed
among the guests, her fingers in the meantime being pricked
by the thorns. Figuier called her to him and said: "Thou
too, my child, art a vulgarizer; for thou givest roses to others,
but keepest the thorns to thyself."

But in all the mental pain of being misunderstood and
opposed. Doctor Clarke never seemed to wince. He kept
sweet and imperturbable. He

"Never doubted clouds would break;
Never dreamed, though right
Were worsted, wrong would
Triumph."

Indeed Doctor Clarke's own serenity of spirit commended
his theory of life. Character is the only perfect conductor
of truth.

"The dear Lord's best interpreters
Are himible human souls."

A learned professor of the conservative school, himself
one of Doctor Clarke's colleagues, remarked to me once:
"There are a good many of us that do not agree with Doctor
Clarke's doctrinal views, but we are all of us trying to live
up to his level of religious experience."

The minister is a kind of artist. The plastic stuff used by
the minister is the humanity that lies about him. The ideal
in his mind is the lovely image of Christ. His task is to con-
form human individuals to that ideal. The secret of his
method is that he first realizes that ideal in his own charac-
ter. Christ must be formed in him the hope of glory. Some-

WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE 165

how, without this, his pious homilies seem futile. What you
are, as Emerson puts it, thunders so loud that I cannot hear
what you say. Doctor Clarke's character gave a carrying
quality to his doctrine.

And yet he was always charmingly devoid of self-con-
sciousness. He himself was least aware of his moral great-
ness. As with the redeemed in heaven, the Master's name
was written on his forehead, where others could see it, but
not he. He was furthest possible removed from George
Eliot's bitter caricature: "Practically, I find that what is
called being apostolic now is impatience of everything in
which the parson does not cut the principal figure." The
best Christians in the churches are those who do not know
it. It is absence of self-consciousness that makes children
such agreeable companions. They are self-forgetful. They
have the gift of the outward gaze. The quiet charm of trees
and flowers is that they are not, like ourselves, self-conscious.
The silent and symmetrical unfolding of Doctor Clarke's
character proceeded without any painful effort. It is the
little things in hfe that we gain by hot chase. The great
tilings come to us, as it were, around a corner, while we are
looking for something else. There was discoverable in him
no ambition to be great. No one was more surprised than
he that he achieved a world-wide reputation as a religious
thinker. He simply stepped one side from his chosen career
as pastor of a little village church, and finding himself in a
footpath leading through the fields, he followed it to the
treasure at the end of it. I remember his first year of teach-
ing theology, when he made use of Doctor Dodge's text-
book, at the same time silently building up a system of his
own. There could have been no conscious purpose to become
great. He was like a tree that bears fruit not by trying, but
because it has so much life that it does not know what to
do with it and so turns it into fruit. Doctor Clarke lived
his silent and crescendo life for the most part in auiet coun-

i66 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

try places in close contact with nature in her simplest forms.
In making an inventory of his Httle world, he could only say:

"There is best living here loving and serving,
And quest of truth, and serene friendships dear."

Doctor Clarke's studies in theology did not segregate
him from a life of sympathy, not perhaps with all sorts and
conditions of men, but especially with spirits touched to
finer issues. This is why Hamilton seems such a lonely place
without him, and why one feels as never before the pathos
of Tennyson's lament over Arthur Hallam:

"For this alone on death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart,
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak."

His sympathy gave a pecuUar charm to his conversation.
Like Richard Cory, "He was always human when he talked."
He makes one think of Doctor Johnson's friend, who gave
up studying philosophy because cheerfulness was always
breaking in. He knew the secret of kindling into fruitage
the minds of others. He was a good hstener. Like the
women of the French salons he had the art of intellectual
stimulation. He drew out of you your best thought, like
the eminent pedagogue, who said: "I teach not; I awaken."
He took the impress of your thought, without urging his
own. This sjnnpathy of his was the secret of his success in
apologetics. He always felt the full force of an opponent's
objection. He could put himself in the place of the doubter.
The influence of such men as he and PhilUps Brooks is due
not alone to the big, positive truths they project into the
mind, but more still to the fact that they sympathize with
your profoundcst doubt and yet remain brave and true.

One of the richest assets in the community Ufe of our
little village of Hamilton, where Doctor Clarke spent many

WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE 167

of his most fruitful years, is the presence in it of various peo-
ple who, having found life somewhat hard and disappoint-
ing, have come here as to a refuge for their declining days.
They have been attracted perhaps by the village church with
its deep religious consciousness, and in it many a heart "at
leisure from itself to soothe and sympathize," and partly by
the university which naturally yields a cultured social at-
mosphere peculiarly congenial to those who are walking in
a solitary way. I hardly know any stretch of shore of equal
length upon which there have been cast up so many pa-
thetic specimens of human flotsam and jetsam. They are like
the Persian sage who, when he was asked what his aim in
life was, rephed: "I have no aim; I have fired." Many of
them are not Uving any longer; they are existing. They
remind you of the voiceless about whom Oliver Wendell
Holmes so pathetically sings:

"O hearts that break and give no sign
Save whitening lip and fading tresses,
Till Death pours out his cordial wine

Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses."

It may be some old missionary or retired minister with

"Heart worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot stars"

or some physician who has retired from practise in a distant
city, and himself broken in health has come here to die, or
some lady teacher of advanced years with mind eager and
alert, but halting step unequal to the quick pace of the mod-
em educational procession. Such people remind you of the
haunting music of George Eliot's sentence: "The feelings
that gather fervor from novelty will be of httle help toward
making the world a home for dimmed and faded human
beings, and if there is any love of which they are not wid-
owed it must be the love that is rooted in memories and

i68 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

distils perpetually the sweet balm of fidelity and forbearing
tenderness." It is easy for us to forget that such people
exist at all. They have learned to be very shy and unob-
trusive. Now these were the people of whom Doctor Clarke
was in search, like a good shepherd. He found his way into
their homes. He ministered to them out of the resources of
his own rich nature. His sympathy was of the kind that
follows up suffering. It seemed never to tire. It made
you think of the good Samaritan who, having become once
involved in a procedure of kindness, found there was no end
to it. I call that story the Parable of the Holy And. The
whole of it bristles with that little conjunction. Doctor
Clarke's sympathy had no use for the proverb: "Out of sight,
out of mind." He followed you with letters which braced you
up to go on bearing the struggles of the soul with renewed for-
titude. A young minister who after his graduation at Yale
University was pastor for four years of the Congregational
Church in Hamilton, and while there used faithfully to at-
tend Doctor Clarke's lectures, told me that he had a num-
ber of letters from Doctor Clarke which he kept bound up
in a little volume by themselves for perusal when lonely and
perplexed. Who can measure the outreach of such letters,
written, many of them, not on the cold t3^ewriter, but with
the warmth of his own hand, and the influence they will
exert for years to come upon the serious and alert minds of
the rising ministry !

[The above tribute to his friend, long delayed by the count-
less exactions of the Adoniram Judson centennial year, was
written by Doctor Judson shortly before the death of his wife,
while he was watching over her in anxiety and extreme physical
weakness, and keeping up only as his almost exhausted heart
was spurred on by the use of a powerful stimulant. In a
letter which accompanied the article he said: "I am going
about my work with leaden feet!"

Four weeks after the passing of the brave, true spirit that
had been nearest to him from youth to age, a spirit that

WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE 169

shone diamond bright to all who really knew her, the door into
the unseen was opened to Edward Judson.

Doctor Judson had almost hfelong associations with Ham-
ilton, whither he had been brought as a boy of six years, after
the death of his father, the great pioneer missionary of Bur-
mah. His place of summer rest, if indeed he ever rested,
was the pleasant house in the heart of the village, with its
lawn and garden which he never tired of beautifying, and
which Mrs. Judson made wonderfully charming within. It
seems impossible that the rich and sparkling life of that be-
loved home is now only a memory,]

AN APPRECIATION
By Reverend Henry H. Peabody, D.D.

In these days when the creedal path is proving so crumbly
to the feet of the pilgrim, now and then a reUgious teacher
or preacher dies whose creed has radically changed, yet whose
religious followers on being so told are both surprised and
indignant. His friends rise in resentment and look wither-
ingly upon the accuser as one who would slander the dead.
Not that this teacher or preacher, wherever found, has one
creed that he gives and another that he withholds, but that
as his doubt has deepened into certitude he has inclined
less and less to theological preaching, given himself over to
the ethical demands of the pulpit, and allowed the assump-
tion that he accepts the creed as of yore to hve on undenied.
The coming of the light is a flicker to his intellect alone and
has never forced him out of the protecting silence into the
sunlit spaces. This light has impelled him timidly to the
cellar instead of to the housetop. There came a prompting
that he did not meet. He declined the guidance and the
service of the highest and morally held his will in leash. Un-
like Luther, his conscience "would allow him to leave the
truth in the lurch." The trees growing in a soil of ashes
are wrinkled and gray. The teacher whose symbol is the in-
verted bushel, misled by what he calls his Christian policy,
leaves a mark dim, blurred, and unworthy. He denies the
power of the open life to transfigure us. He dies with the
guilt of quietism upon him, apparently unrepented of and
certainly unconfessed, and leaving the few who knew him
and the many who knew him not with devious and conflict-
ing estimates of his character and influence. He deliber-
ately declined to enter the good fight.

170

AN APPRECIATION 171

Not many months since, the writer sat under the shadow
of "Salvation Inn" in the Uttle Devonshire village of Clo-
velly and conversed with an old-time parishioner of Charles
Kingsley, whose spirit grew hot at my intimation that his
pastor had largely broken from the doctrinal standards of
the Church of England. He declared that I must be the first
to utter the charge. The liberality of the literary Kingsley
was too nebulous, his mark too indistinct to be other than
quickly rubbed out, leaving him now in things of belief prac-
tically an unknown factor.

Professor William N. Clarke, who has during the past
year passed over the "gray ferry," left no such confusion
behind him. His mark is too distinct for contradiction. He
was the enemy of many false things in religion and has writ-
ten a book. He was unmistakably an unorthodox saint and
believer. God so greatened to him that many false things
in belief just fell away and could no more be retained. He
walked out and out in the simplicity of Jesus and sought as
persistently to reveal as did many to conceal. He respected
too profoundly his own spiritual nature to gain other than
an added clinch to duty in his changed convictions. He had
an Emersonian self-reliance and could say with the monk
of Wittenberg: "In the beginning of my course when I wrote
against indulgences and their abuse, I received from heaven
the gift of depending upon myself instead of others." Under
his clear vision the impulse to Hve the open life strengthened
upon him. As Huxley said of his friend may we of ours:
"He had intellect to comprehend his highest duty distinctly
and force of character to do it." Son of a minister, in turn
did he seek to discharge the ministerial function, only to find
in the coming on of his first prophetic days that his creedal
heritage was faulty, and that he must be about the recon-
struction of his house of faith. He saw others in his profes-
sion hard floundering in the midst of a like creedal wreckage,
to differ from him, however, in that the truer thought made

172 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

him at once its quiet champion, while with them there was a
falling away into the still pool of quietism, where the fear of
man became the one directive force. To him, as to Paul,
the \dsion was heavenly, to make him more than ever a child
of obedience. The glory of our man was not that he came
into new light but into new duty that he did not despise.
Charles Kingsley, we say, dechned the good fight for nobler
human faith, which our professor did not do. Many and most
plausible were the argxmients to lead him down the quietis-
tic path, so sure and safe, but to him impossible of accep-
tance. He could not be made to think that to speak openly
was other than the best policy; or if not that, then a law of
everlasting life. Silence to him was a poisonous glade charged
with moral miasma. The open life could not prove destruc-
tive, but to him brought wondrous growth. He said to me
once: "I do not think of myself as at all a genius, only a
plain man to get on slowly." He was not, perhaps, pro-
foundly intuitional — one whose nature, that is, flashed out
quickly broadside pictures of truth — but studious, patiently
brooding, experimental, a step-by-step student, a rising
"pyramid of stone." Not slow, however, but rapid was his
unfolding. Whatever the celerity of his progress, the marks
of growth were ever multiplying upon him. And this be-
cause he was the true man walking a straight Hne. As Ste-
venson said, so might this unwearied toiler: "I still see
God in the inch and cUng to that." And every inch of gain
to him brought more than light to the intellectual side of
religion, but added more than an inch to the acre of his ear-
nest tillage. So he began to write his books, not from a flam-
ing ambition, but feeling that what had come to be his the-
ology was a form of humanity, and his plain words were for
the healing of sore and aching hearts. The wide fame that
came to him made him the most distinguished son of cen-
tral New York and the widest read of all American theolo-
gians. And this all came from his lowly walk in the light.

AN APPRECIATION 173

He did not thrust himself above his Master or deem himself
too good for human service. This walk freshened his mes-
sage, strengthened him at the centre, freed him from the
"demon of the commonplace," and made him a preacher
and a writer of power.

How came our friend in the light and not another? Why-
Luther and not Tetzel? Why does one man gravitate to
the truth and his next-door neighbor just as certainly pass
under a delusive spell? In every community there are
those who, sooner than others, will become the easy victims
of any prevalent superstition or sophism, will be the last to
welcome an incoming truth or the last to let go an outgoing
error. In every community, too, the herald, the catcher of
the foregleam. And who more quick than Jesus to see the
light-seeing mind as an outcome of the clarified heart? To
the pure in heart life tends to become a voluminous beati-
tude, with the darkness ever waning. It is the truth-loving
who gravitate this way, not that, to whatever point truth lies.
It is the pure in heart, not the weak children of passion whose
hearts muddy the stream of their life, whose creeds are clari-
fied in the Hght, and to whose lives direction is given. The
"inner light" of the Quaker — to follow that is the supremest
test to which we can be put, since this it is which grips the
will afresh to duty. Doctor Clarke had great purity of
heart. The great stumbling rocks in the mental stream-
way, the vulgar prejudices and unyielding antipathies that
so belittle the common life, were not his, could not gain
lodgment in his stream. God made him to love truth with
a holy passion, and this he did. No one can interpret this
man's life but by taking the measurement of his sympathy.
He was so tenderly human that a bad piece of theology
seemed to him utterly cruel. He was a profoundly loyal
soul and when caught between two loyalties — the cardinal
and the superficial — the lower must give way. He had the
vision which is ever joined with purity of heart. He was

174 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

thought to be disloyal to his denomination, yet so loyal to
the spirit was he as to be constantly proving its best friend.
There is no good fight without loyalty to that which bums
deepest within, no loyalty to another when false to oneself.
For Doctor Clarke to be loyal to his denomination was just
to write his books. The loud-voiced loyalty that deals with
life's externalities and satisfies so many fell short in his es-
teem. Carlyle's definition of the sectarian, as one who mis-
takes the sleazy umbrella over his head for the whole sky's
broad canopy, would lead to a grade of loyalty impossible to
him.

His recoil from a theological brawl and his quiet and per-
sistent continuance in the good fight into which must enter
both the active and the passive elements of courage were
equally marked. He was a fine economizer of power and of
his opportunities. Among the well-poised men of any large
grouping he was well-nigh the most so, and this in mind and
heart kept him free from wastefulness. He was careful of
what he said, careful, too, that he said it, and that no fog-
bank of sophistication eclipsed or abbreviated his message.
He caught at once the difference between a patched-up
statement, the victory of which is transient, though the con-
ceit of the patcher may lead him to think it final, and a con-
clusive proof sharing largely in the permanent. Duty came
to him and extended the hand of responsibility, and he took
it. Here at this Hamilton scholastic shrine he lived the most
of his life of protest and fought out the good fight, mellow-
ing in his saintliness and coming through at last with soul
sweetly beaming. He had no relish for martyrdom and per-
haps felt that the word did not belong to this generation,
and yet when duty and all kinds of disagreeable experiences
intersected, not a shadow of hesitation passed over him.

This crisis in his spiritual history of which we have spoken
brought a deep trial of his faith. The most subtle of all
tyrannies and the least pungent, that of friendship — from

AN APPRECIATION 175

this he felt a strong pressure. Voices — good, mothering
voices without number, coming from a kindly though a
worldly prudence — bid him be loyal, though back of their
warnings was the subconscious fear that he might be, and
by their loyalty meaning something quite unlike that of the
spirit inly speaking. He was dreaming of a higher service
to his church than that his friends would hold him to. What
Theodore D. Bacon has recently written, "that of all Prot-
estant bodies the Baptists were in the profoundest dog-
matic slumber," Doctor Clarke felt to be true, and to awaken
his denomination from this slumber became tlie strongest,
most central purpose of his Hfe. But more, I believe, may
be said, what this author has indeed said in part, that of all
Protestant bodies during the last quarter of a century none
has come to a more profound spiritual awakening than the
Baptists. During this quarter of a century our evangelism
has taken on more of what it previously lacked — the pro-
phetic spirit and aim. We have come to see that the time is
at hand when we shall cease to be known as always fatally
conservative in theology. And in the line of this deep stir-
ring whose voice has been so potent as that of the Colgate
professor? In him theology has had well-nigh a revival of
no mean proportions the Christian world over; yes, to thou-
sands of readers it has regained its lost charm and interest
through the rare persuasion of our friend's personality. To
him religion was not a certain fixed quality beyond addi-
tion or subtraction, but as truth, beauty, power, was to en-
large and deepen, take on and cast off, and the change that
had come to his faith was so life-giving as to send him forth
as its champion. No policy of silence could be allowed to
take the place of open speech. To him the greatest and most
subtle of all policies was the policy of perfect truthfulness.
To him the opposite, the belief that the cause of religion is
well served by trimming down the truth, clipping its fringes,
was a heresy, an ethical heresy piercing to the very heart of

176 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

Christ. The honey of the demagogue is in reality poison.
Trimming down the truth may prove a passing comfort to
some but brings no abiding paraclete to any.

The spirit, too, in which he waged his battle made his
fight good. There was nothing harsh in his emotional make-
up. Over the fields of his personality the harrowing winds
never blew. His was not the instinct of the gladiator in
which he loved to measure himself with an opponent and
glory in his overthrow. It seemed a profanation to those
who might attack him and was always done, it seemed to me,
in pain or extreme reluctance. In fact, men who under like
conditions would have been fierce and violent to others, to
him were, as a rule, in their protest gentle, quiet, tmsevere.
If our professor was the occasion of a storm, their hearts,
not his, were that storm's humming centre. He was so ideal
in spirit as to keep within moderation the battle all along
the line. He never created the waste of a useless antagonism.
The endless agitation of thought with thought in human
life was to him normal and desirable; without it there was
no getting on and up to the better and truer things of faith.
He was tolerance itself to the friends of the old faith and
would have defended them valiantly from the hot breath of
any liberal's intolerance. He did enjoy a frank interchange
of the most interior thought, but when the tongue grew
edgy and the heart's waters roiled, unfit for the use of the
sheep, he drew into the covert of silence. The proverbial
chip so common to the human shoulder was never seen on
his. In the theological attitude he had assumed he was too
keen in his knowledge of men to be surprised at what came
his way, and took willingly, though not gladly, his measure
of the heretic's odium. He who criticised him was, to his
mind, doing no more than he should — a criticism that gen-
erally ended in praise of his Christian character. So gently
impersonal was his word that the retort came back shod in
the velvet of his own mildness. He was easy to converse with

AN APPRECIATION 177

but hard to quarrel with, so one-sided must the quarrel be.
His nature was so keyed that radicalism was possible with-
out the iconoclastic. In Japan, we read, the sword-maker
works in priestly garb and eats only of food cooked with holy
fire. The sword of the spirit was our friend's; he fought
his good fight and won by that aggressive force that, sword-
like, flashes in and out from character. Longfellow was pure
in spirit, but then he fell further below the prophetic than
any other of our leading poets. Carlyle rose into the pro-
phetic, but in his rudeness and morbid sensibility lost the
grace and serenity of Longfellow. Our professor walked
nearer the ideal, walked well the even trail that makes the
morally beautiful prophetic and the prophetic radiantly
beautiful. ''Walk with a crowd," said Lafcadio Hearn, "and
you will never do anything great," yet our friend's heart
kept him, which is better, to the great crowd of his denomi-
nation— not in bondage to it, but by his freedom seeking to
bless all who walk within it, this as a theologian plainly on
our level, concerned with questions more practically religious
than transcendentally theological.

I say the light that came to our teacher brought its test.
Till its pressure to divide his ways he did not know how
strong or weak he was. Then his honesty lost the common-
place, became the deepest attitude of his soul and opened out
upon the path that led to his cross. Jesus saw no clearer
path of pain and sorrow than may the young man of to-day
who, " Queed "-like, walks in the light of his ideal. There is
an honesty, one with a successful pohcy and joined with no
cross. There is, too, an honesty that never yet has led to
what men call success, but always to condemnation and loss,
and unfailingly injects to the honey of life a bitter tang. Our
professor knew what it was to have his heart melt under the
stirring romance of the heroic life, and the time came when
that Jerusalem cross seemed of value only as it led him to
push his shoulder under one of his amid present issues, and

178 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

to know his own bitterness. And this individual cross was
incident to the plain speaking of his message. How much
more dishonesty means now under the deepening of duty, as
he joined the disciples of old in being the light of the world.
The conservative asks: "Am I not, too, an honest man?"
"Is the radical the only one to be called honest?" But have
you never asked why the truer man suffers what the moral
floater does not? A radical zone stretches between them.
The morally venturesome goes with one and not with the
other. True, the way of the transgressor is hard; that of the
idealist also. The difference between the conserver and the
bringer in, the daring scout on the field of human advance,
is that one walks with the many, the other with the few, the
one to retain the spiritual deposits of the past the other to
add thereto. The conservative never stands for a truth that
has not already won its way out of the zone of danger, its
day of cross, into the peaceful clover-field of blooming secur-
ity. We live in a life in which truth is in perpetual flux,
with enough coming to every generation to focalize its aims
into earnest issue and divide thinking minds into what we
call conservative and radical the world over. Unless a man
enters into this ceaseless contest in furtherance of the truth
of God, he remains untested and knows not whether he be
honest or not in any radical meaning of the word, and we
know not with what alacrity or lack of the same he would
decUne the prophet's call or rise to its demand.

Doctor Clarke was a tested prophet of the soul. The
message that had come to him was so strong as to sweep
him without disguise to its utterance. Like his Master, he
overcame the world. He helped men in that he would speak
out. There was a small multitude of those who in a measure
had the light to the one who made it an open word. With-
out prating of sincerity he simply was sincere. God was the
guest in his own breast and he would not dismiss him. He,
in the household of faith, was a great servant of the truth.

AN APPRECIATION 179

He was a friend in the spirit, the religious helper always
needed, and in his inreach profoundest of all. His feet were
clear of the clay that sticks to the shoes of the clumsy politic,
and his break from us was not merely a slight perfume of
unorthodoxy on the one hand nor a pretentious and extrava-
gant heterodoxy on the other, but a quiet message void of
extremes, spoken in a style that betrayed the moral realism
of his nature, such as came from out the deeps of old Hugh
Latimer, who at thirty years of age began " to smell the word
of God." Yet, unlike the priest's manner of speech, our
friend's was far removed from the rough and uncouth and
always touched with a gentle spirit and a simple beauty.

We have called our prophet mild of spirit. Yet he who
conceives of htm as gentled out of all capacity for anger
would seriously mistake. He had at times a Pauline wrath,
or that high grade of anger quickly here and gone that we
associate with the apostle. It was royal in its type, such as
a high moral nature would discharge in its most explosive
mood. He had an effectual gift for reproof, not always used
and when at all with reluctance, yet crushingly effective be-
cause so pure in quality and so free from any inconsistency
to dull its edge. Many men make easy ventures in this line,
whose reproof carries no sting, so entangled are they in this
inconsistency and that; for them to attempt the language
of rebuke is to fail. But the saintly Clarke — to him we in-
stinctively yielded the right to discharge this function, and
once hearing it administered, would shrink from a possible
application to ourselves. It was wrath pontifical indeed, yet
rising from such pure depths as to appear what it was, but
a form of friendly ministration. This teacher of ours sought
to cultivate reverence in his students. He would impress
upon them the centrality of reverence to the pulpit function.
He himself was profoundly reverent even in his most humor-
ous moods, and when in this story- telling generation the
young pulpiteer cut the fine thread that runs between the

i8o WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

reverent and the humorous, our professor would cringe for
him and in tones of loving severity call him to his better self.
It was quickly done, never degenerating into what we call
the nagging. It was so easy for many to pass this line. Yet
so finely attuned was he himself to the key of the reverent
as never to break through it. He saw nothing irreverent in
the merriest mood, yet too sudden a transition from the one
to the other betrayed the latent defect and his reproof was
likely to flame out. I never knew him to say the laughter-
provoking thing in the pulpit, simply for the reason that to
one of his nature the worshipful impulse and the fun-loving
could not so quickly blend. He could never translate his gos-
pel into the terms of the comic almanac. To him the humor-
ous and the prayerful could not dominate the heart at the
same moment, but must for the time exclude each other.
He was that rare thing, a reverent humorist.

The English essayist Christopher Benson, writes of a
lack of great men in our time and claims that the passing age
is unfavorable to greatness. Surely the type our professor
stands for is large, wondrously so, in its adaptation to these
religious times. He dominated men intellectually his supe-
riors. As we stood before him his fine gifts gave way in our
attention to the finer glow of his character. He was not a
great metaphysician, simply one transcendental in his radi-
ant common sense, with his theology so largely the simple
history of his own heart. What a broad nature was his, tested
by growth which continued to the end. If, as has been said,
"all minds of the first quality move and grow and cannot
remain in a stone fixity," then indeed we dare pronounce him
great. How great he was in what he had not as in what he
had ! If he nurtured any personal aim, it was most success-
fully hidden away and had no unconscious escapes. Ambi-
tion with him was so gentle as to elude detection. As far as
appeared, his marked measure of success left uninflamed his
approbativeness, with his spirit unmarred. How blessedly

AN APPRECIATION i8i

simple he was, like a spreading tree both lowly and lofty, and
meeting to a finish the great Scotchman's definition of sin-
cerity: "to be free from all manner of affectation." Who
could detect in his moral temperature in his controversial
days — occasional only with him — any malign heat, or in his
stream of endeavor any muddy sediment? How gloriously
he improved his time, bringing book after book out of those
invalid years ! How fair he was in debate, how kindly patient
and wilhng to go as far as he could with an opponent, holding
himself in, not sensitive to contradiction, unshowy of power,
appreciative of every glint of wisdom in that opponent's
argument, never seeking to gain an adherent by the pressure
of any dogmatic authority, but only by a legitimate persua-
sion ! How tactful he was, with no impression from him of
the merely shrewd and of the serpent's cunning ! Too sane
was he for any wild extremes, with fanaticism as impossible,
intellectually lowly and mellow as a golden leaf, with no dis-
position to compromise, yet blending with you to his utmost,
self-insisting and self-asserting, with an unsophisticated heart
in his breast, chivalrous, sweetly cheerful, joyful of spirit,
with a heart full to the brimming of the companionable, and,
last of all and most fundamental of all, with a transmissive
purpose vigorous enough to secure the giving of his message
and the taking back into his own breast whatever of pain
and sorrow must be his portion. Surely here is greatness the
world has ever lacked and is lacking. Rare as he was in his
endowment, still rarer in that lofty character from which
arise our inspirations and renewals to keep us steady to our
duties on the dusty highways of Hfe.

This great character of Doctor Clarke came to be grounded
more and more in the greatness of his God. To worship the
Httle God was impossible for him. Were I asked as to the
point where he helped most his spiritual friends, I should say
that of God. I link this great nature with his great God.
This would harmonize with what has come to us from out

i82 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

this generation as a whole. Wherein did Jesus and the Jews
most differ but in the varying Gods worshipped? In the
thoughts of God in Jesus the whole world over was to greaten
away from Yahweh. In most of defective religious educa-
tion, the chief or central defect, that which sustains and
keeps from falling away much of the creedal fictitiousness, is
that the God and the creed accepted are in agreement to sus-
tain each other. Reconstruct your defective thoughts of the
power that rules over us — the false bottom in all your re-
ligious thinking — and the creed as you have carried it begins
to slacken in its hold. The better God cannot enter if the
old-time worship be retained. It was so with Professor
Clarke himself, that to retain his olden faith after the beam-
ing out upon him of his newly greatened Father was impos-
sible. Luther claimed at one time, because of the Reforma-
tion light, that the quality of worship in Germany had im-
proved. This monk as the friend of G^d won the people to
a less crude worship. Fresh joy, hope, and cheer came in
the light of God's now glorified features, the hold of the ritual
lessened, God tended to become the burning centre of the
people's praise. Let us once admit the progress in the idea of
God and there is an inevitable lifting up all along the devo-
tional line. In this greatening of God come all strengthening
impulses of our faith. To change in this high altitude tells
in every movement on the human level. Half-paganized con-
ceptions of God come up to us out of the early ages and lodge
in our creeds and Uturgies, and to remove them means long
and earnest battle. Theology is in the main a matter of God,
and there is no progress in one save as we ascend in the other.
Much of the atonement philosophy of the past has now fallen
away before the rounded conception of the Infinite nature,
till, with Browning, we can see Christ in God, or, with Heine,
we can speak of him not as delighting in costly ceremonies
but as "a God of the people, a citizen God." In our absent
teacher the deep, true showing of the Father blossoms in

AN APPRECIATION 183

theology Into an added mercy and beauty, renders our wor-
ship less crude and reluctant, and more spontaneous and
free. " Poor, poor, pitiable, pitiable are his low- toned thoughts
of God," he would say in tremulous tones, speaking of some
writer under discussion.

Death bore him home to the hearts of many. In the day
of his passing, wherever two or three of his friends had gath-
ered, there was this professor in their midst. The event of
his death fell silently but thoughtfully. Those who spoke of
him were few to those who quietly took in again the measure
of his life and called it good. Those who had differed could
not by force of this event become praiseful, yet felt sure that
a character of large and beauteous proportions had passed
on. The number of those who loved him and are thankful
for the simple moral splendor of his manhood are very many.
We are grateful that when the Hght came and his orthodox
days had passed, he did not say, "No creed," and so turn
away from theology, the common mistake of the liberal, but
"A better creed," with years of devotion to its reconstruc-
tion. In him we feel anew the power and immortal charm
of the Christian Hfe, as in him it fell away so completely
from the weariedly commonplace in rehgion. In him many
of his students gained the first sweet taste of the open Ufe
and still feel the friendly fascination of his spirit. He was a
friend of God and came to his defense, and through him a
multitude found the Father afresh. I am glad of heart that
this man went through the gateway of death not under the
cloud of the self-hidden life and with Hps stoutly sealed. He
gave the world what it wofully needed, an open word in re-
ligion, and we are thankful for it. No devotee of the clod
was he; to him "duty was twin to adoration." In the things
in which he broke from us he drew nearer to us, was in the
line of advance, yet in certain elements of his nature he was
simply great, whether true or mistaken in his cleavage. So
the silence of many, which must be, shall not trouble us or

i84 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

make us impatient for the coming of the more general ac-
claim. Bunyan says, writing of "Mr. Valiant for Truth,"
as he merged into the shadow of the celestial city: "So he
passed over, and all the trumpets sounded on the other side."
On this side, with our friend, not all the trumpets sounded;
in many cases not even an oaten straw was blown. Here,
single voices, but there, we must believe, the full orchestra
of praise. The memory of this helper in the spiritual Ufe will
grow great with years; there is nothing fictitious in his fame
to fade, while much to broaden into lasting appreciation.
And as he passed over, however quiet the instruments of
praise here, I will think like Bunyan with the hero of his
allegory, that on "the other side" there was a great out-
burst of glad acclaim that our St. William with heart ever
valiant for truth had at last come to his eternal home to
receive his lasting citizenship in the city of God.

► >' "-^"-^--^ ^-^r- -r.^-^^

THE "THEOLOGY" OF WH^LIAM NEWTON CLARKE^
By William Adams Brown, Union Theological Seminary

Fifteen years ago there appeared a volume of some four
hundred pages, which bore the modest title, An Outline of
Christian Theology. It had originally been prepared by the
author, a professor in Hamilton Theological Seminary, for
the use of his seminary classes, and, after circulating for
some time in the form of typewritten notes, was privately
printed for the greater convenience of the users. No at-
tempt was made to advertise the book, but in due time it
found its way into the hands of one and another who was
interested in theological questions, and when in 1898 it was
issued by the author through the ordinary channels, it re-
ceived from the pubUc an instant and hearty welcome.

Three quaUties explain the success of Doctor Clarke's
Theology. In the first place, it was written in a clear and
simple style. Technical theological terms were as far as
possible avoided. While it gave evidence of wide and care-
ful reading, there was no parade of learning. The author
was evidently concerned to tell his story in the most direct
fashion possible, and content to rely for his appeal upon the
inherent interest of his subject-matter.

The spirit in which the book was written was moreover
one of singular serenity. The author approached the vexed
questions of theology with a quiet confidence which at once
disarmed criticism and allayed fear. He contemplated the
changes wrought in our view of the world by modern science
with calmness, as if they were a matter of course. He was
untroubled by Biblical criticism. The theory of evolution
was accepted without question; the traditional eschatology

'Reprinted from The Harvard Theological Review, vol. HI, April, 1910.

185

i86 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

so courteously dismissed that one scarcely realized that it
was gone. Where many writers, like the chief captain in
Acts, had obtained their freedom with a great price, Doctor
Clarke wrote as one free born. He seemed as much at home
spiritually in the modern world as he had been when a boy
in his father's house.

And yet he was none the less Christian. Indeed, the
striking thing about the book was its militant and aggressive
Christianity. The author was evidently one who had com-
muned deeply with Jesus, and had drawn from his commu-
nion convictions which had so laid hold upon his spirit as to
demand utterance. He believed that the gospel of Christ
was a message which the world had not yet outgrowTi, and
it was his endeavor to justify this faith by showing its adap-
tation to the present needs and problems of men.

A book wliich presents a positive message in a form
which is at once lucid and convincing is sure to find readers,
but these quaUties alone would not have explained the suc-
cess of Doctor Clarke's Theology. It appeared at an oppor-
tune time and met a want which was widely felt by laymen
as well as by ministers. Many who had broken intellectually
with the doctrinal statements of the past still felt themselves
at home emotionally in the religious values which they sought
to express, and they welcomed this new statement of old
truths because it made it possible for them to preserve their
continuity with the Christian past, without the sacrifice of
intellectual consistency. This fact gave the book a repre-
sentative character. It was an index registering the pres-
ence of deep currents in the religious life of our time, and, as
such, it deserves the attention of all who are interested in
the study of contemporary religion.

In the present article we propose to review Doctor Clarke's
theology with a view to discovering wherein its representa-
tive character consists. We shall take for the basis of our
discussion his most recent book, the Christian Doctrine of God.

THE "THEOLOGY" OF DOCTOR CLARKE 187

In this closely printed octavo of some four hundred and
seventy-five pages, he gives a systematic exposition of the
fundamental principles of his theology. The same quaUties
which we noted in his earlier work reappear here. The book
is at once lucid, modern, and Christian, but the treatment
is fuller, and the reasoning more rigorous. Much that the
earlier discussion implied is here fully developed. More than
one untenable position has been abandoned. No recent book
by an English-speaking theologian reveals more clearly the
prevailing tendency and controlling spirit of modern theo-
logical thought.

The aim which the author sets himself can be stated very
simply. It is to present a conception of God which shall be
at once Christian and credible. This is indeed no new thing;
it is what Christian theology has always been attempting.
The originality of Doctor Clarke's treatment consists in the
way in which he solves his problem in detail.

In the first place, then, the idea of God which- he presents
is Christian. By this he means that it is consistent with the
spirit and teaching of Jesus, the founder of Christianity. It
is not an idea of God which we gain through modern science
primarily and then baptize with the name Christian for the
purpose of convenience. It is an idea which in its essenrial
features grows out of the historic revelation recorded in the
Bible and which, as such, can be scientifically defined and
tested. A considerable part of Doctor Clarke's introduction
is devoted to the study of the historic sources of the Chris-
tian doctrine, as they are found in Jesus' life and teaching.
This does not mean that our author undertakes to reproduce
Jesus' teaching concerning God in detail. Such an attempt,
even if successful, would not accomplish the purpose which
he has in mind, which is to present an idea of God which
shall be intelligible to modern men. The language in which
Jesus expressed his faith in God is very different from that of
Doctor Clarke's Theology. - It is the language of popular re-

i88 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

ligion, not of scientific thought. It has for its background
the world-view of the older Judaism, a view in which the
earth was regarded as the centre of the universe; where the
existence of spirits, good and evil, was everywhere assumed;
where human history was compressed within a few thousand
years, and the final catastrophe with which it was to close
was believed to be imminent. This view of the world neces-
sarily affected Jesus' method of stating his doctrine; but it
must not be identified with it. Jesus does not give us a meta-
physical theory of God which stands or falls with a particu-
lar philosophy of the universe. He describes him in moral
and religious terms, capable of appHcation to very different
intellectual surroundings and needing to be constantly rein-
terpreted, in view of the changes in contemporary science
and philosophy. Such an interpretation Doctor Clarke un-
dertakes to give. "By the Christian doctrine of God," he
tells us, "is meant, in the present discussion, the conception
of God which Christian faith and thought propose for the
present time, in view of the Bible and of history, and of all
sound knowledge and experience, interpreted in the light of
Jesus Christ, the revealer. It is a doctrine concerning which
we can say at the point at which we now stand, that it is true
if Jesus Christ does reveal God truly" (p. 4).

The position here assigned to Jesus illustrates a prevailing
tendency in contemporary religious thought. In a sense far
higher and truer than was the case with the older theology
modern theology makes the person of Jesus normative for
its thought of God. The old theology constructed its doctrine
of Christ's person in the light of a preconceived conception
of God. Jesus was two persons in one nature, a God who
for the time had assumed the form of man, but whose real
nature was unaffected thereby. Modern theology thinks
of Jesus as a man, but a man through whom God's spirit has
found such complete expression that it is possible to see in
his character the perfect revelation of the heart of God. To

THE "THEOLOGY" OF DOCTOR CLARKE 189

believe in God, as modem theology conceives of him, means
to extend throughout the range of universal experience that
same gracious purpose and consistent character which Jesus
has revealed within the conditions of a human hfe.

Two consequences follow from this principle. The first
is, that theology must take its departure from the character
of God rather than from those metaphysical attributes which
express his relation to the universe, and which are therefore
necessarily affected by changes in contemporary thought.
The second is, that it must seek to conceive this character
in a way that is consistent with the moral and religious
teaching of Jesus.

Both these conclusions Doctor Clarke draws. Unlike
the older theologians, he begins his exposition of the idea of
God by a description of his character, and then goes on to
develop God's relation to men and to the universe. In his
picture of the divine character he gives the central place to
the qualities which Jesus himself made central in his own
thought of God. Like Jesus, he emphasizes the outgoing
love of God, the Father who is ever ready to receive the
prodigal, and whose gracious purpose anticipates the need
of his children. Like Jesus, he emphasizes the extent of
God's mercy, a mercy which reaches the outcasts whom the
law has rejected, and finds more joy in the repentance of one
sinner than in ninety and nine just persons who need no re-
pentance. Like Jesus, finally, he emphasizes the consis-
tency of God's character, the God who maketh his sun to rise
on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the unjust
and the just.

I say, he emphasizes the consistency of God's character.
It is at this point that his departure from the older theology
appears most clearly. The terms which Doctor Clarke uses
are those familiar to historic Christian theology, holiness,
wisdom, and love, but the meaning which our author puts
into them is in many respects new, and the relations which

I90 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

they sustain one to another have undergone significant
change. To the older theology holiness and love represented
independent elements in the divine nature, each requiring
its own appropriate gratification. The former expressed tlie
opposition of the righteous God to sinful man, an opposition
which required the punishment of all unrepented sin; the
latter expressed his gracious purpose to redeem his elect
through the forgiveness of their sins. Here we have to do
with two apparently inconsistent, if not contradictory, im-
pulses, and the chief problem of the theologian was to dis-
cover the way in which this inconsistency could be overcome,
and the love of God gratified, consistently with his holiness.
This, as we all know, was accomplished through the atone-
ment of Christ.

Doctor Clarke is conscious of no such problem. To him
holiness denotes simply the moral excellence of God, and love
is the method in which this moral excellence comes to its
completest expression. There is no inconsistency between
them, for there is no independent end which the holiness of
God sets for itself, as distinct from his love. God is not holy
when he punishes and loving when he forgives, as in the older
Calvinism. God is holy in his love, and loving in his holiness.
He is not gracious to some men and just to others, but always
and everywhere both just and gracious. His attitude toward
every man is that of the father in Jesus' parable of the prodi-
gal. As man's father, truly akin to him in spirit, it is his
supreme desire to conform his child to himself, and this de-
sire is the explanation of all that he does. Whether he pun-
ish or forgive, it is but a step in his supreme purpose of re-
demption.

This conception of God's character gives unity to Doctor
Clarke's theology. It frees it from the inconsistency and ex-
ceptions which meet us so frequently in the theology of the
past. The dualism which was so characteristic a feature of
the older Calvinism, and which expressed itself in the con-

THE "THEOLOGY" OF DOCTOR CLARKE 191

trast between reason and revelation, nature and the super-
natural, law and grace, has disappeared for Doctor Clarke.
To him revelation is not the disclosure of an aspect of God's
character, otherwise unknowable, but only the clearer mani-
festation of that which God has always been and of which,
from the first, men have had more or less clear anticipations.
As a spiritual being, man is fitted by nature to receive the
divine revelation. Revelation is not the impartation by
supernatural process of mysteries transcending the reason of
man; it is the manifestation of spirit to spirit, and the recip-
ient recognizes in the disclosure which comes to him from
God not simply the revelation of the divine nature, but also
the complete satisfaction of ideals of which he has long been
conscious within himself. As the book which gives us the
revelation of Jesus, the ideal man, God's complete self-mani-
festation in humanity, the Bible is indeed a unique book.
But it is not God's first or only revelation, even on the side
of God's love. From the beginning God has written his
gracious purpose in the heart of man, and the disclosure
which he has made of himself in Christ is recognized by
those to whom it comes as the fulfilment of their own inner
prophecy.

Redemption, in like manner, is not to be conceived as an
exception to God's ordinary working, but rather as the nor-
mal method of his activity. It is not confined to a group,
larger or smaller, whom God has arbitrarily chosen from the
rest, that he may make them the subjects of his redemptive
activity, but concerns all mankind alike, though in different
order and degree. All history is part of a single process, in
which God is training men for membership in his kingdom.
In other words, all history is the history of redemption.
Doctor Clarke does not indeed explicitly state that all in-
dividuals will be saved, but that is the natural implication
of his discussion. If any one is lost, it will be because of his
own free choice. But the fiber tarian fimitation which alone

192 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

can avoid the conclusion of universalism is unacceptable to
the author. Hard as it may be for us to understand, man's
freedom must somehow be consistent with the divine deter-
mination. By moral means, to be sure, yet in the end, God
must control, and we may be certain that he will have his
way with every child of man.

This desire for ethical consistency appears instructively
in Doctor Clarke's treatment of the trinity. To the older
Protestantism, as is well knowTi, the trinity had to do with
inner distinctions in the nature of God himself, distinctions
rendered necessary in order to overcome the fundamental
ethical dualism to which we have already referred. Accord-
ing to Calvin, God is able to harmonize the conflict of the
claims of justice and mercy in his own character, because as
the second person of the trinity, the representative of mercy,
he is able to bear the penalty inflicted by himself as the first
person, the representative of justice. These ontological dis-
tinctions have lost their meaning for our author. The trinity
is a truth of the Christian experience. The distinctions with
which it deals concern man rather than Gk)d. They express
different aspects in which God manifests himself to us as we
contemplate the diff'erent phases of his redemptive activity.
He manifests himself in the order of nature, the natural proc-
esses which are the necessary presuppositions of the re-
ligious experience. He manifests himself in historical reve-
lation and supremely in Jthe person of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
He manifests himself, finally, in that personal experience
through which we apprehend Jesus as the revelation of the
God of all the world. Here we have three types of religion
which correspond in a measure to the three historic doc-
trines: natural religion, "or the religion of God as he is known
in the order of the world; historical religion, or religion which
finds its support in the historical manifestations of God in
events of time; personal religion, spiritual, experimental,
mystical, that knows God in the soul" (p. 247). In all three

THE "THEOLOGY" OF DOCTOR CLARKE 193

aspects, it is the same gracious God who is revealed. The
tragic contrast between the demand of justice and the appeal
of mercy, which gives dramatic interest to the older doctrine,
has completely disappeared.

Such, then, is Doctor Clarke's God, a God ethically con-
sistent in all that he does, committed with all the intensity
of his moral nature to the redemptive purpose which Jesus
has revealed, and strong enough and wise enough to insure
the realization of this purpose in spite of every obstacle.

I say strong enough to insure the reahzation of his pur-
pose in spite of every obstacle. With this we touch a second
aspect of Doctor Clarke's view, which needs emphasis, namely,
the fact that he attributes to this idea of God universal va-
lidity. According to our author Jesus' God is the God of the
universe. When we raise philosophy's ancient question as
to the ultimate explanation of the varied phenomena of the
world, we find the only satisfying answer in the Christian
idea of God. The so-called metaphysical attributes of God
— infinity, eternity, omnipresence, and the like — are only so
many different ways of asserting this simple truth.

Doctor Clarke's proof of this thesis occupies the last two
sections of his book. The first, which treats of God and the
universe, is expository in nature. It explains in detail what
is the relation between God and the world which Christian
faith assumes. The second gives the reason for believing that
this faith is justified in fact.

It is not possible for us to follow the argument in detail.
In substance, it reduces to this, that the quaUties which we
find essential in the Christian idea of God are so inwrought
into the structure of the universe that it is natural to assume
that it has the Christian God for its author. The universe
is not something alien to man with which he connects him-
self, as if it were an existence of a different kind. "The
human race is part and parcel of the universe, for it has grown
up out of the life which was before it on the earth. . . . We

194 WILLL\M NEWTON CLARKE

have to do not with a late-born race planted from the out-
side in a Httle world, but an ancient race which is of one sub-
stance with the universe, while its true life is in the powers
of the spirit which reach out to that which is above" (p. 371).
"It is plain that if this conception of the relation between
man and the world be true, no partial idea of God can satisfy
humanity. We cannot think of him except as universal in
his relations. He must be one God equally related to all
souls and to all existences" (ibid.). Clearly, then, if the
Christian idea of God be true, we should expect to find evi-
dence for it not only in the spiritual nature of man, but in
the universe, which is at once its home and its school.

Such e\'idence Doctor Clarke beHeves that we find. It is
of two kinds, rational and spiritual. The former consists in
the response which the universe makes to our efforts at ra-
tional explanation. The second, in the satisfaction which it
yields to the demands of our moral and religious nature.

These arguments have a familiar sound. They seem to be
only the well-known teleological and moral arguments in a
new dress. But closer examination shows that this is only in
part true. The older theologians used the evidence from de-
sign and the argument from conscience to estabhsh the exis-
tence of a rational and a moral God, but they were persuaded
that these arguments alone were inadequate to establish
faith in a God of love; hence they supplemented the rational
arguments by supernatural revelation. The dualism al-
ready referred to in connection with the idea of God reap-
pears in the proof of his existence. Doctor Clarke, as we
have seen, is unwilling to accept this limitation. Since the
God in whom he believes is everywhere loving as well as holy,
we should expect to find evidence of his love wherever his
activity extends, and this Doctor Clarke believes to be the
case. The argument from reason does not lead us to the
door of Christianity and then stop; it is valid all along the
line. The demand which we find within ourselves for a ra-

THE "THEOLOGY" OF DOCTOR CLARKE 195

tional explanation of things finds its satisfaction only in the
kind of God that Jesus Christ reveals. When we have come
to think of God as Jesus did, and turn back to the universe,
we find that all its elements fall into place as parts of the
consistent plan, and mysteries which would otherwise baffle
our reason find in him their solution.

The uniformity of nature, with its results in undeserved
suffering becomes the means which the Father uses for the
training of his children in courage and faith. The spiritual
aspirations of man which seem so often in irreconcilable con-
flict with reality are to the Christian evidences of a divine
sonship which finds in God, and in God alone, its complete
satisfaction. So the Christian idea of God proves every-
where a unifying conception. It harmonizes all the unre-
lated elements in our thinking and in our feeling. It gives
us, for the first time, a consistent universe, and there is no
other idea which does this with the same success.

Here, too, the position taken by Doctor Clarke is typical.
In rejecting the dualism of the older apology, and relying
for his proof of the Christian God upon evidence similar in
kind to that of which we make use in other fields of experi-
ence, he is in touch with the prevailing spirit in contempo-
rary theology.

But at this point our author is confronted with the fact
of evil, that bafi3ing and mysterious experience which has
made shipwreck of so many philosophies. The test of every
theology is its treatment of this problem, and Doctor Clarke's
method is characteristic of the man. There are three possi-
ble attitudes which one may take to the problem of evil, no
one of which satisfies our author. One may minimize its im-
portance, question the account which it gives of itself, explain
away its apparent harshness and cruelty, cloak its seeming
vice in the garb of an unsuspected virtue, and thus by a proc-
ess of ingenious reinterpretation bow it politely out of the
world. Or one may recognize evil for what it seems to be,

196 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

something real and terrible, and account for its existence
through the hypothesis of a rival power, limiting and — to a
greater or less degree — thwarting the purpose of a good God.
Or, finally, still taking it at its face value, one may yet sub-
ject it to God's power and find place for it within his pur-
pose. This was the method taken by the older Calvinism.
Calvinism, as is well known, saw in sin the means through
which God's justice found an expression possible in no other
way, and because the manifestation of justice was inherently
excellent, whatever was necessary to make this manifesta-
tion possible could be ethically justified. This is the phi-
losophy of Jonathan Edwards's famous sermon on "Sinners
in the Hands of an Angry God."

No one of these solutions satisfies our author. Evil in
each one of its three great forms, pain, sin, and death, is to
him something real and terrible, something to be shunned
and fought and ultimately overcome, but it is not indepen-
dent of God, nor an intruder in the universe which he has made.
Ev-il is a part of the structure of the world. It is inwrought
into the nature of things. It will have its place in the life to
come, as well as the life here, for it is here with a purpose,
and, as the older Calvinism rightly affirms, it ministers to the
glory of God. But the purpose, as Doctor Clarke conceives
it, is very different from that discovered by Jonathan Ed-
wards. It is a purpose of redemption. Evil is here because
without it man cannot be trained in the highest moral excel-
lence. A world in which evil had intruded against the will of
God would be intolerable to Christian faith, but a world in
which God uses evil for his wise and beneficent purpose is a
world in which the Christian can feel at home. Our diffi-
culty consists in the fact that the training is so incomplete.
There is so much evil which seems to yield no outcome in
character. If every cross were a Calvary, the burden would
be lightened, for we should see then what we only suspect
now, the end which it is designed to serve. "If we could

THE "THEOLOGY" OF DOCTOR CLARKE 197

confidently include the vast movement of sin between a God-
worthy origin and a Godworthy outcome we might still sadly
wonder on the way, but we could rest in hope" (p. 461).

It is at this point that Doctor Clarke's position is most
certain to be attacked. Most readers will be ready to admit
that the idea of God which our author presents is Christian
in the sense in which he makes the claim. The difficulty
arises when we attempt to reconcile the idea of such a God
with the facts of fife as we find them. Those who demand
logical demonstration before they are ready to beUeve will
naturally find the evidence for Doctor Clarke's thesis uncon-
vincing. Calvin's doctrine of God was easy by comparison.
He saw all things in the worid tending to a double issue, and
he affirmed what he saw to be final truth. But to believe that
our entire universe, filled as it is with countless miseries,
with ruthless cruelties, with diabolical perversities, is really
under the control of a being in character Hke Jesus; that this
supreme power will some day guide it to an end which is good;
that some day all mankind shall be organized into one great
brotherhood; that service shall be the universal law and
ministry the test of greatness— this is indeed to make an
heroic venture of faith. "Doctor Clarke," caustically re-
marks a recent reviewer, "has succeeded in drawing a picture
of God to which we feel no moral repugnance. But there is
one most important attribute which he has omitted from the
sketch, and that is the attribute of non-existence. Experi-
ence of the worid does not lend the slightest plausibility to
the theistic hypothesis as to its origin."

Such an objection altogether misconceives the kind of
evidence upon which religion relies for its proof. Religion is
the child of faith, and faith is never confined to the present.
It reaches out for that which is not yet, and affirms that it
shall yet be true. Heroism is its native atmosphere, adven-
ture its vital breath. To believe in God means ever>'^vhere
and always to identify one's own highest ideal with ultimate

198 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

reality. It means to rise above sense to the spirit, which is
only in part revealed through it, and to be persuaded that this
partial revelation shall some day be complete. Every man
who has really believed in God has made such a venture. He
has assumed the reaUty of the ideal and lived in anticipation
of a future only in part revealed. He has dared to believe
that the world that now presents only the raw material of
goodness and truth shall become a fit habitation for reason-
able and moral beings. He has done it because he could not
help it, because without such an assumption life would not
have seemed worth living, and because, when it was made,
facts otherwise inexplicable fitted into place and the world
became unified and consistent.

Is it reasonable to do this? From the individual point of
view it is certainly most reasonable. Those who, like our
author, hold the Christian idea of God because it satisfies
the deepest needs of their own souls have no option but to
assert its ultimate validity. Such a faith brings harmony
into life where it would otherwise be discordant by promising
ultimate victory to those ideals which seem supremely worth-
ful. It assures those who are giving their lives to minister
to human need in all its various forms that their labors will
not be wasted or their energies misspent. If the Calvinistic
idea of God satisfied those who held it, it was because the age
in which they lived was an age of battle, when men were on
trial for their lives and for that which they held dearer than
life, the truth of God. If this idea no longer satisfies us, it is
because other virtues hold a more prominent place in our
horizon. Our ideal is one of peace, not of war. We are less
concerned to conserve than to impart, and the God who cares
for the downcast and oppressed of every race and tribe is the
only God who can satisfy an age which has witnessed the
birth of modern philanthropy and of modern missions.

Are we, then, shut up to purely subjective e\adence?
Can nothing be said for this idea of God but that it satisfies

THE "THEOLOGY" OF DOCTOR CLARKE 199

the individual need? Is there no objective standard by
which it can be judged, no social argument in favor of its
vahdity?

The missionary activity of the Christian church is the
best answer to this question. It is the expression of the con-
viction held by every sincere Christian that the response
which the Christian idea of God calls forth in his own soul
is not a purely individual matter, but is the answer to com-
mon social needs which can find their satisfaction in no other
way. To the extent to which this faith shall prove justified
in fact, the weight of the argument for the Christian God will
be transferred from the experience of the individual to that
of the race.

For those who look at the subject from this point of view
there is much in the outlook that is encouraging. In spite
of all that is dark and selfish in human life, it is yet a fact that
the altruistic virtues are being more and more developed,
and the ideals of war yielding place to those of peace. The
Christian message of brotherhood and service is, as a mat-
ter of fact, finding response in the hearts of men. The very
dissatisfaction that we feel at our shortcomings, the serious-
ness of the criticism to which our social order is being sub-
jected, is the best evidence of the fact that the old selfish and
particularistic ideals of an earlier age no longer satisfy us.
The subjective response which the Christian idea of God
calls forth in individuals is itself the result and evidence of
a far-reaching social change which constitutes no small argu-
ment for its objective vahdity. It is, of course, always possi-
ble that this faith may prove mistaken. It is possible that
Calvinism is right in its conception of a divided universe,
and that we may be obliged to renounce as an idle dream our
faith in the good God whose love embraces every child of
man. But, if this be true, it will introduce an irreconcilable
discord into our inner hfe. If our ideals are to be justified
in the real world, it can only be through the Christian idea

200 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

of God. It is reasonable, therefore, in default of convincing
evidence to the contrary, to act as if it were true.

And when we decide so to act, we find that reality answers
our expectation. It is not simply that we ourselves find satis-
faction in our faith, although that is true, but that the action
which results from that faith changes the social en\droimient
for the better. Every man who believes in the Christlike
God and who acts out his conviction is increasing the amount
of altruism in the world and making faith in such a God
easier to those who have not yet believed. In other words,
he is increasing the sum total of evidence in favor of the
truth of the Christian view.

AN AMERICAN THEOLOGIAN ^
By Professor William Adams Brown, D.D.

My acquaintance with Doctor Clarke began in 1893, the
year in which my own work as a teacher of theology began.
He was then fifty-two years old and had been teaching at
Hamilton Theological Seminary for three years. I was a
yomig man of twenty-seven, fresh from Germany, where I
had been studying under Harnack.

Our acquaintance, began through the loan of a volume of
typewritten notes which he generously placed at my dis-
posal, soon ripened into friendship which continued without
interruption and with increasing intimacy until Doctor
Clarke's death. For more than fifteen years we carried on a
regular, and at times, a lengthy correspondence. During
his visits to New York — less frequent than his friends would
have wished — he was often at my home, and many a day
lives in my memory that was consecrated to high debate
about the great themes of theology, or rendered notable by
some fresh revelation of a character as winning as it was
\drile and commanding.

There are men into whose intimacy one penetrates slowly
and only after surmounting barrier after barrier of reserve.
Doctor Clarke was so transparent and generous in his gift of

* Five years ago I contributed to the Harvard Theological Review an article
on the theology of Doctor Clarke, in which I tried to sum up the leading points
of his teaching and to estimate their significance for the religious life and think-
ing of his time. His thought was at that time so mature, and his expression of
it so ripe and balanced that little remains to add to the judgment then ex-
pressed, and I have therefore willingly given my consent to the request of Mrs.
Clarke that the essay should be reproduced here. But Doctor Clarke was
more than a theologian. He was a character of singular originality and fresh-
ness, and one who was privileged during many years to be admitted to his
intimacy may be pardoned for wishing to add to the theologian's estimate
of a colleague a few words of personal reminiscence.

202 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

self that from the first one felt oneself at home in his pres-
ence. "I cannot tell you," he writes in the first letter that
came to me from his pen,^ "how glad I am that you have
found my notes suggestive and helpful, or how free you are
to make all the use of them that you may desire. I hereby
place at your service all the good there may be in my pages.
It would be a pity if one teacher could not help another."

This note of generosity was characteristic of all his rela-
tionships. With a mind constantly open to new truth, he was
ever eager to share what he received. "Moral copyright in
theology," he once wrote,^ "is a hard thing to get hold of, and
I make small claim to it."

He had the friend's gift for receiving as well as for giving.
He was never too busy to be accessible to your interest.
Even when you did not hear from him you knew that you
were in his thoughts. Apologizing for a letter which he had
failed to write, he adds: ' "But I did welcome you home in
my heart." And again referring to a friendly impulse unex-
pressed:^ "You may as well forgive me first as last. I am
sure I don't know," he adds plaintively,^ "why I do not learn
wisdom. I am quite familiar with the fact that the past is
farther off than I then thought it was, but why I am so slow
to perceive that any right deed of mine in the future is far-
ther away than it seems is beyond my understanding."

Much of our correspondence deals with matters of techni-
cal interest. The early loan was the first of an exchange of
manuscripts which continued for many years and led to de-
tailed and often voluminous correspondence. Long before
my own books found their way into print the rough drafts
which were their predecessors had the benefit of his sympa-
thetic and highly intelligent criticism. Nothing could be
kinder or wiser than the advice which came to me from his
more experienced pen, and no father could have rejoiced

•December 21, 1893. * September 26, 1896. 'February 19, 1905.

• February 3, 1906. » April 9, 1897.

AN AMERICAN THEOLOGIAN 203

more whole-heartedly in the progress of his son than he in
any evidence of deepening insight and maturing judgment
on the part of his younger colleague.

When he did not like a thing he told you so frankly, sof-
tening his dissent with a saving touch of humor. Of a defini-
tion of inspiration he wrote:* "It shows traces of medita-
tion. It did not grow up in a night like Jonah's gourd."
And again: ^ "You tend to put too much into a sentence —
a tendency that specially appears in sentences beginning with
'while' — where you sometimes pack in two philosophies."

Frank in his criticism of others, he was unsparing with
himself. All his work was a report of progress. In a letter
asking for suggestions while his Theology was passing through
the press, he said: ^ "They will come too late to benefit the
book, but the book is not the end but only the beginning."
To all criticism he turned a hospitable mind, but he weighed
each suggestion well before he adopted it. He was not too
proud to learn from men younger and less experienced than
himself. Indeed there was a buoyancy in his nature which
rendered him peculiarly at home in their company. He
liked their optimism, their self-confidence, the forward look.

From vanity, in the conventional sense, and indeed from
self-consciousness in any form he was of all men I have ever
known the most free. He knew his limitations and was not
ashamed to confess them. One of his last letters^ speaks
with a certain wistful regret of a training to which he was a
stranger, the lack of which made many things impossible to
him. But withal he was too truthful to depreciate himself.
He felt that he had a contribution to make to the thought of
his generation, a message given him to speak. "I am sure,"
he writes,^ "that you will find enough to dissent from in
the first draft of the Theology, and you will find much that I
intend to make better before I use the matter again. But I

'March 14, 1899. ^ ^pril 22, 1897. » May i, 1894.

♦November 18, 1906. ' December 21, 1893.

204 WILLIAIM NEWTON CLARKE

know that the work in its present form, with all its defects,
is the fruit of honest thinking, in view of some at least of the
present conditions." The consciousness never failed him.
Rather it intensified with the ripening years. Speaking of
his Christian Doctrine of God, he says:' "It has lately
seemed to me that I have something to say on the great
theme, and sometimes I have said to myself that if I could
successfully work out what I have in mind I could make an
epoch-marking book. Note that I put the *r' in that word,
not leave it out."

He was a slow worker. He preferred to let his thought
ripen naturally under the enriching and fertihzing influence
of the years. Hurry he abhorred as a deadly sin. "I have
no very rigid plan," he writes on one occasion,^ "but intend
to let the work develop as it goes." And again: "I am in-
cKned to approve your point. Still I cannot hurry to find
the connection." Often he had to wait long before the assur-
ance came. This was due in part to the bodily infirmity
from which he suffered increasingly in later life. "So much,
which is quite enough, about myself regarded as mortal," he
writes.^ "My immortal powers are not idle, for I am bend-
ing as best I may to the theme that is worthiest of them, the
Christian Doctrine of God.'" After referring to the difficulty
he had found in coming to the place where he could work
with ease and fluency, he speaks of his joy in the renewed
freedom which had recently come to him. "Somehow," he
goes on,'' "I have not felt Hke talking it over much or dis-
cussing it with any one, but have felt that I must work it out
myself."

This independence was eminently characteristic. Like
Paul, he was not comfortable on another man's foundation.
Speaking of his book on God, he said:^ "It will be a dif-
ferent book from what any one else would make." Like Paul,

' February 3, 1906. ' September 21, tSgy. ' February 3, 1906.
* February 3, 1906. * November 18, 1906.

AN AMERICAN THEOLOGIAN 205

too, he felt little need of, and little taste for, letters of com-
mendation. "I was a little ashamed and sorry," he writes
apropos of the publication of his Theology,'^ ''that the Scrib-
ners put into the initial announcement the names of some
good men, including your own, as a kind of sponsors or guard-
ian angels to the enterprise. It looked a little like roping
you all in, in the presence of the public, in support of the ven-
ture. After a little, no doubt, they will find other matter to
insert and will set you free."

This independence had its roots in a religious experience
of singular freshness and originality. He was a man who
walked with God consciously and easily as a man might walk
with a familiar friend. He had the prophet's gift of vision
married to the mystic's sense of certainty. If he had wished
to define God in a sentence, he would have said: "God is
light, and in him is no darkness at all."

This immediate consciousness of God, carrjdng with it its
own certitude, was the alpha and omega of his Theology. It
explains some features of it which perplexed his students and
were the frequent subject of criticism by his friends. It ex-
plained, for instance, his indifference to the critical apparatus
which fills so much space in most current text-books. This
indifference was not due to failure to recognize the impor-
tance of wide reading and accurate scholarship: still less to
the absence of these qualifications on his own part, but
rather to a deliberate conviction that his own gift lay in
another direction. He conceived it as his message to his
generation to cultivate in them by every means in his power
the gift of sight. "If I can make them see what I see," he
used to say, "they will have the main thing; the rest they
can work out for themselves." External authority he rated
so lightly that in his book on the Ideal of Jesus he would not
even print chapter and verse of the passages which he quoted
in the text.

1 May 13, 1898.

2o6 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

This explains his attitude toward history. While he
was interested in the past and followed with attention the
researches of the critics, he made Httle use of their results in
his teaching. He did not feel it incumbent upon him to
mediate in detail between the present and the past. God
is here to-day, at work in the world and in our lives. Why
take a roundabout way into his presence, when we have only
to open the door and enter in?

This explains, too, his attitude to the Bible. The Bible
was to him the book of books because it speaks to us of God
to-day, but as a record of God's dealings in the past, it was
a book Kke other books, to be tested by the same methods
and judged by the same canons. Early in his teaching he
proposed this theme for his students:^ "What would be the
consequences if the books of the Bible regarded as writings
should be proved to possess only such qualities as belong to
other books generally?" Everywhere he sought simphcity,
immediacy, the direct contact between the soul and God. Of
the means of grace he wrote i^ "The word is simply vital
truth which the Spirit helps to exert its proper influence upon
the human powers. The sacraments are of another kind."
Of a creed submitted to him for criticism, he wrote i^ "I hardly
think any denomination would take it just as it stands as a
complete s3mibol, for they all want to add something to the
gospel of the good Lord, which seems not quite complete
after all. But the additions detract rather than improve the
original blessing, and we are better off without them in our
creeds."

He was a bom teacher, and he loved his work to the end.
Passage after passage in the correspondence deals with his
experiences in the classroom. In 1898 he writes:^ "I have
begun my work this year with unspeakable gladness. I have
never had so joyful a sense of liberty in uttering what I think.

' September, 21, 1897. ' December 30, 1901.

' December 30, 1901. * October 9, 1898.

AN AMERICAN THEOLOGIAN 207

My heart has gone out to you and to all the men who are en-
gaged in the teaching of theology with a warm sense of fel-
lowship and affection, and I have most sincerely invoked
upon the whole group the abundant blessing of God in the
year's work." And again a year later: ^ "I have done one
week's teaching and find the old fulness and flavor unchanged.
The freedom is all there, and the luxury of utterance and
influence is undiminished. . . . May you find the same
good experience when you get your classes before you. How
good it is to have the great things grow in our minds even
while we are uttering them, so that one would be glad to
begin again at once and say it over on a larger scale."

Like most teachers, he had his discouraging experiences,
but he was helped over them partly by his sense of humor,
partly by the pastoral spirit which saw in the dullest pupil a
character to be trained and an immortal spirit to be enfran-
chised. After one particularly trying experience in which a
student had shown evidence of a precocity in misunder-
standing which amounted almost to virtuosity, he writes r^
" Sometimes I think theology should be written in words of
one syllable. If you can hit the dullest man, I would like
you to shoot up this way."

Insincerity was his bete noir. To command his respect
there must be an idea for every word. In its simplicity, its
clarity, its sincerity his style was the reflection of the man.
As you read him you had the impression of a transparent
truthfulness and withal of a catholicity possible only to one
who had entered sympathetically into Kfe in all its phases.
It was the style of a seer who had learned to be a comrade.
To the man in quest of reality, it was like a draft of cold
water on a sultry day. It is more than twenty years since I
first received the manuscript of the Theology, but the im-
pression is as vivid as if it were yesterday.

This mastery of expression did not come of itself. A long

» September 24, 1899. ' April 22, 1897.

2o8 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

discipline lay back of it. To some of its elements I have
already had occasion to refer. Fundamental was the dis-
cipline of thought which was the result of the unceasing
quest of reahty. Scarcely less important in its contribution
to his style was the necessity of impartation. A teacher of
the highest themes to men of imperfect training and limited
experience, he was obliged constantly to simpHfy. He worked,
as he expressed it himself, at least he tried to work, in words
of one syllable. But his thought found its way the more
surely to the hearts for which it was designed.

Back of all lay the discipline of character that came from
the acceptance of a task not chosen, and the surrender of
plans that would have led him into other work. He did not
often refer to the past, but when he did, it was with a clear
insight that he had been led, in ways he could not have fore-
seen, to the place God had planned for him from the first.
One of his first letters lifts the curtain, ''You do not know,"
he writes,^ ''how welcome is your appreciation of my pages.
I have taught before in the New Testament department,
but from that work I was drawn back to the pastorate and
was settled in Hamilton. Of teaching in theology I had abso-
lutely no thought, except that no one would ever want me
to do it, and that I was very glad, because never in any cir-
cumstances would I be willing to do it. I knew that I was a
heretic, and was thankful that other men were to have the
burden of framing theological thought for the schools. But
Doctor Dodge, my predecessor, died suddenly at the open-
ing of the second term of the year, and I found myself in his
chair to carry his class to the year's end, and the result was
that I remained there. I have done what I could. Only by
you among teachers has my work been tested, or even seen,
and you can well understand how glad I am that you see good
in it and find it useful." -

But for the most part his face was turned forward. The

1 May I, 1894. ^Ibid.

AN AMERICAN THEOLOGIAN 209

word already quoted was characteristic. "It is not the end,
but the beginning." Hope was his native breath, immortal-
ity his assured and joyful conviction. That God would have
all souls at last he dared to believe. One of the first sentences
he wrote expresses a conviction which he cherished with in-
creasing confidence as the years went on. "The tendency
of all our theologizing is toward larger hopes. To ground sal-
vation in the character of God is to see that he is eternally a
saviour. There is no escape from it, if one desired escape
from so glorious a reality."

The final impression is of a certain massiveness, a strong
man with the serenity of strength; a man four-square in his
thinking as in his living; seeing things in the large. His the-
ology could be summed up in a few simple principles, but
they had reach and breadth ample enough to span the uni-
verse of God. "I agree with you," he writes,^ "that the
Christian conception of God has its only adequate support
in the Christian experience. I love to think, however, that
that experience presupposes, utilizes, combines, and glorifies
all the other evidences of the existence of God, so that nature
and fife in all their forms find their places in the system of
proof that is distinctively Christian, and support for a Chris-
tian a higher conclusion than by themselves they would ever
attain to. So, for that matter, does philosophy. All good
thoughts of what God is, and all that helps to prove his exis-
tence come to maturity and glory in the Christian argument."

Among my letters I find this greeting ^ which came to
me on the first day of the new century: "Here I greet you,
theologian to theologian, for the birthday of the twentieth
century. May your head be clear and your heart be strong
and your grasp be vigorous all the days of the new century
that you live among the mortals, and may your best force
move forth graciously to help the life that is to be. It is a
great time, a hard time, and a noble time to be at work, and

* May I, 1894. * December 30, 1900.

2IO WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

I hope you are to have a long and useful time of service to
the holy faith. A good New Year to you, and good years
many."

A different note is struck by the following, the last letter
I ever received from him,^ but one no less characteristic. It
is from the Southern home in De Land, Florida, where Mrs.
Clarke and he had gone to escape the rigors of a Northern
winter: "The active world seems a long way off, as I sit
here and hear the wind in the pines, but I know it is going
right on — the spirit moving on the face of the waters, and
men responding. You are in the midst of it, and I am glad."

"You are in the midst of it, and I am glad." It is the
epitome of a life that had mastered the secret of universal
sympathy, because the man who lived it dared to take with-
out qualification or reserve the most audacious words that
ever fell from the lips of man: "God is love."

» January 19, 1908.

DOCTOR CLARKE IN THE CLASSROOM

By Reverend Doctor F. A. Starratt, Professor of Theology
IN Colgate University

The unique influence of Doctor Clarke in the classroom
can only be appreciated as one realizes clearly the peculiar
demands of the situation which confronted him there. We
need to remind ourselves that the years of his activity as a
teacher were years of great disturbance in the field of the-
ology. A new world-view was breaking upon the minds of
men, and its acceptance demanded a reconstruction in all
departments of human learning. No field of thought was
more directly affected by this new world-view than that of
theology.

Historical criticism had laid its hand upon the Bible and
raised the whole question of authority in religion. The evolu-
tionary theory offered a new account of the origin of man, as
well as a reconstruction of the doctrine of sin as found in his-
torical theology. Because the new view demanded such a radi-
cal reconstruction of theological views it was met with em-
phatic and violent opposition. To many it seemed as though
the new view had arisen outside of the religious field, and to
be making its way as a foreign element into the realm of
things made sacred by memories of the past and by their inti-
mate relations with the deepest things in human life; and
so it was met as an intruder, to yield to which would be dis-
loyalty to truth verified in experience. On the other hand,
there were those who felt that the new world-view was so
strongly supported by evidence, furnished from many fields
of research, that it must be reckoned with. They also felt
that truth was one, and that some way could be found to
harmonize the truth of religion with that which was found

212 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

to be true in other parts of God's universe; and they set
themselves to this task.

Now the classroom of theology is a little world in itself.
In it are found representatives of the various types of thought
in the world outside. The various influences that operate
in the outside world to confuse the issue and to prejudice
the judgment are at work here with even more intensity
just because the attention is concentrated upon these prob-
lems. Doctor Clarke, as he faced this situation, had two
definite things to do. He must construct his theology in
such a way as to harmonize religious truth with the new
world-view which he had frankly accepted. His contribu-
tion to the task of the reconstruction of theology has been
given to the world and has been recognized as of distinct
value. He had also to deal with the men before him in such
a way as to be helpful to all, whatever their attitude toward
their problems might be. There were those whose minds
were sensitive to the "new-thought movements" of the world,
but who were filled with doubt and perplexity as they tried
to relate these to their religious conceptions. There were
also those to whom the new point of view made little or no
appeal, and whose theology in its general outlines was fixed.
To both types of men the questions discussed were not aca-
demic ones, but were questions touching matters of vital per-
sonal concern. To them the cause to which they had dedi-
cated their lives was intimately and fundamentally involved
with the settlement of these problems. On the one side were
men who could not pursue their calling as Christian minis-
ters unless a way could be found to harmonize what seemed
to be two mutually contradictory ways of conceiving the
world. To others the future of Christianity depended upon
the success of the effort to keep these two world- views apart,
to defend Christianity from contact with a conception which
seemed to them to be wholly foreign to its spirit and destruc-
tive of its most cherished beliefs. Furthermore, Doctor

DOCTOR CLARKE IN THE CLASSROOM 213

Clarke's general position was well known. Many among
those who knew him and loved him believed that he was ad-
vocating views which, if they prevailed, would transform
Christianity in such a way that it would lose its distinctive
features and its vital saving power. Many a young man, be-
fore he entered the classroom, had been solemnly warned
by his pastor or by some godly and Christian man, against
what were honestly conceived to be the pernicious views of
the teacher whom he would meet there.

This was the situation which Doctor Clarke met day
after day in his work — this world in miniature that reflected
in detail passing religious thoughts of the great world out-
side, the whole pervaded with an earnestness born of close
personal interest. The future careers of many young men
were to be decided in that classroom. Would the teacher
be able to lead some of them through to the place where the
conflicting views of science and religion could be reconciled,
and at the same time do something for the faith and the en-
lightenment of those to whom such a solution was impossi-
ble? How could he be helpful at the same time to two types
of men who were destined from the first to go out from the
classroom with differing and, in large measure, opposing con-
ceptions of God, man, and the world?

Li that Doctor Clarke was able to do this difficult and
delicate thing, and to do it so well, consisted his pecuHar great-
ness as a teacher and as a Christian man. If one asks how
he did it, how he was able to be so helpful to students in this
period of transition, the answer is to be found in the man as
man, not merely the teacher. It was his sincerity, open-
mindedness, frankness, sweetness. Christlike personahty. He
was true to himself in the classroom as elsewhere. In his
transparent life men with all kinds of views could see the
spirit of Christianity reflected. There was a common bond
of sympathy between himself and men of the most differing
theological views. Each one could see in his teacher that

214 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

after which his own soul longed — a sure grasp of unseen
things. The man beset by doubt suggested by the findings
of science and philosophy could see in one who frankly ac-
cepted these findings the same certitude concerning spiritu-
alities that has been the sure possession of great Christian
souls of all times. Thus he was assured that for him, also, it
was possible to be true to what he was compelled to believe
as to the world as known by science, and at the same time
retain his faith in God and in the verities of the Christian
religion. The man whose interest lay in another direction,
who was anxious above all else to keep Christian doctrine
uncontaminated by what was conceived foreign to it, also
saw in the teacher before him a high type of the Christian
man whose soul was nourished by communion with God and
whose spirit was held in loyal subjection to the spirit of Christ.
And thus there was felt to be a distinction between the life
of Christianity and the forms in which that Christianity
might be doctrinally conceived at any particular time or
under the influence of any particular world-view. In this
manner a way was opened for the teacher to help both types
of men as he pointed out to them the significance of the
great life experiences of the Christian.

That which Doctor Clarke was able to accomplish in the
classroom as a teacher among his students illustrates the
place which he occupies in the larger world of Protestant
Christianity, in which he was so well known. It is my own
con\action that when more years shall have passed and we
look back over this bit of history which is now in the making,
he will appear as one of the men who, perhaps in a larger
degree than any other, have been able to help men of the most
divergent views theologically to maintain their hold on re-
ligion and their faith in each other through this period of
transition.

At the close of his Outline of Christian Theology, a book
which grew up in the classroom, there is added a personal

DOCTOR CLARKE IN THE CLASSROOM 215

word to the student, which so fully expresses the spirit and
method of the teacher that I quote it in full,

"Of the many things that ought to be said about theology
but are not said in this book, some, I trust, may be spoken
in the discussions of our pleasant classroom on the dear old
hill. There, with our windows open to the morning light,
teacher and pupils all students together, we talk without
reserve of all things in earth and heaven that bear upon our
high theme. It is always the light of the present day that
shines in through our windows; past suns have set, and the
suns of future days have yet to rise. But all days are the
Lord's, and we are as sure that God is with us in our work
as that he was with our fathers, or that he will enlighten
those who shall come after us. Indeed, his spirit has often
refreshed our hearts there while we have talked together of
him and gazed upon his glory in the face of Jesus Christ, and
our quiet room has been to us the house of God. We do not
find all the questions that were present to our father's press-
ing upon us, their children, nor do we feel ourselves required
to settle all the questions that we see rising, to engage the
thoughts of future students. We are willing that our suc-
cessors shall leave our perplexities and our solutions of them
and answer their own questions in the clearer light of coming
time. Sufficient unto the day are its own magnitudes and
mysteries. It may well suffice us if we can justify to mind
and heart the vital faith, the ardent love, and the sustaining
hope that our generation needs; and this, through the grace
of him who is the same yesterday and to-day and forever, we
beHeve it is given us to do. If all men knew the God whose
light shines through our windows, and knew him not only
in study, but in life and love, the murmurs of the world would
surely sink into silence, and the troubled heart of man find
peace. To know and love such a being as the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ is to find our questions answered
and our strength renewed. His eager and unsatisfied world
needs a thousand applications of the good tidings of him to
its manifold Hfe and activity, and it needs a faith clear
and simple, a faith that heals doubt, and awakens love, and
breathes wisdom, and imparts spiritual power. The work of
our classroom will have accomplished its purpose if young

2i6 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

men go out from it with the true secret of the Lord in their
hearts, with a faith that cannot be perplexed, a love that
burns in fellowship with him who gave himself for men, and a
hope unquenchable. This is much to ask and seek; but for
what lower end than this has our Lord given us our seminary,
our time, and our Bibles? May he always be the teacher
whose presence glorifies the room !"

DOCTOR CLARKE IN THE CLASSROOM

By Professor John Benjamin Anderson

If indirect contact with Doctor Clarke through reading
his writings had been prized by thousands as a help to Chris-
tian thinking and an inspiration to holy living, surely thrice
fortunate were we who came in daily personal contact with
the great teacher in his classroom. To sit at his feet and re-
ceive instruction in some of the profoundest themes of hu-
man thought was a privilege and an opportunity rare indeed.
What Doctor Clarke was in the classroom is largely incom-
municable to others. We saw the shining of a great light,
and no analysis or description in cold type can do more than
hint at the reality.

Doctor Clarke's physical presence, at once pleasing and
impressive, counted for much toward his success as a teacher.
It was a joy just to behold the man. As long as life shall
last will abide the memory of the familiar and beloved figure
seated behind the desk. Doctor Clarke was of rather large
frame. His noble head with its length and breadth and with
its height of brow seemed the fitting seat and symbol of a
great mind. His fine features and his sensitive hands were
in keeping with the aesthetic quality of the man and were
expressive of the refinement and spirituality of his nature.
And who could ever forget the light radiant in those wonder-
ful eyes ! It was at times as if his glorious soul were shining
out upon you. He always sat to teach. He never raised his
pleasant voice to a shout or to the high pitch of heated em-
phasis, although he could on occasion speak emphatically
and effectively in strong, firm tones. The young men felt
that he was their mentor, friend, and father; they loved to

217

2i8 WILLL\M NEWTON CLARKE

be near him, and the hours spent in his presence were golden
hours, not alone of profit, but equally of happiness.

Doctor Clarke was a prophetic teacher. He spoke "as an
oracle of God." At the close of a class hour I asked him how
he knew that a certain momentous statement he had just
made was true. He looked me straight in the eye, as if to see
whether I was able to bear his answer or not, and said: "Be-
cause I know God." Consonant with this was his epigram:
"The only safe way to walk without crutches is to be able
to walk; the only safe way to get along without external
authority is to live with God." This was the atmosphere
which came with him into the classroom, and to most of us
it was a highly rarefied atmosphere. Students who had been
brought up to live and move only within the boundaries of
Biblical and ecclesiastical authority in religious belief could
not accompany the teacher in his free ranging over the realm
of religious thought, but could only follow him with their
eyes, now fascinated at his boldness, now shocked at his dis-
regard of their cherished limitations, now wondering if, after
aU, he was not enjoying the legitimate freedom of the sons
of God.

Under such leadership the student learned to think for
himself, to examine his traditional stock of ideas, and to
criticise freely the views of his teacher also. "Don't take
any idea until the idea takes you," he said to us in his char-
acteristically epigrammatic way. Again, "No doctrine has
a good chance so long as people are afraid of it," and, "If
you can reject any idea of mine, I want you to reject it." I
never knew a man who seemed to be more open-minded. He
desired to do justice to ideas from every source, even the
most alien to himself. He tried to see things through the eyes
of other people as well as through his own. This general
habit and temper of mind made him patient and sympa-
thetic with us all. He seemed to be able to divine the con-
sciousness of the student and often to understand better than

DOCTOR CLARKE IN THE CLASSROOM 219

the man himself what the difficulty was, and would restate the
student's bungling question so clearly that the sense of relief
and the expectancy of hope lit up the face of the learner.

Doctor Clarke was what might be called an overflowing
teacher. His text at the writer's ordination was, "Out of
the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," and his
theme, "Full soul, full utterance." The preacher himself was
a fine exemplification of his text and theme. He nourished
his mind and kept it strong and supple by the reading of
numberless books of the highest quality and of the greatest
variety. In a remarkable measure he kept up with the best
periodical literature. He was profoundly interested in con-
temporaneous thought and life on many sides. His mind
was brimming over with the results of all his thoughtful and
discriminating reading and also of his contact with an unusu-
ally wide circle of acquaintance, to say notliing of the intel-
lectual resources coming from many years of experience in
the pastorate, and the full mind and heart overflowed day
by day into the lives of his students.

Marvellously rich as he was in his resources, our teacher
nevertheless used self-control in their employment. He did
not crowd his treatment with endless details. He observed
perspective and proportion in the selection of materials for
classroom use. It was the habit of his mind to put first
things first, to dwell upon great principles and their chief
applications. "Anything," he said, "that is not necessarily
and eternally true is only a side issue. The eternal verities
are the heart of Christianity. If not, Christianity will not
do for the fortieth century," Another day he said to us,
"Your idea of God will sweep everything before it," a say-
ing of cardinal significance for the understanding of the work
of Doctor Clarke as a teacher and as a theologian. The im-
pression of the student as he recalls the teaching process of
Doctor Clarke is that of a deep, broad, shining river moving
onward through the mighty continent of theology.

2 20 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

Doctor Clarke was pre-eminently a religious man. There
was an atmosphere of spirituality about him. One felt that
he was at home among the eternal realities. To him God was
a real presence, and in him he lived and moved and had his
being. Fortunate were the men who lived in the effulgence
of his radiant life. Many have been their testimonies to a
new vision of God and a closer walk, with him. The religious
influence of Doctor Clarke in the classroom streamed forth
from his personality in an unde&nable way. It came also
through what he said, but above all the prayers with which
the class hours were begun brought us very close to God. It
sometimes seemed as if God were breathing his holy spirit
upon us. What a beginning each day for the study of theol-
ogy! We commenced our study about God each day by
being led into his presence, by being made sure of him anew,
and by a real outgoing of our souls to him.

Let me give one more illustration of this religious influ-
ence. In all our classrooms the freest and frankest discus-
sions are not only permitted to the students but are encour-
aged, and this was true nowhere more than with Doctor
Clarke. The result was that the sessions in his room were
often very animated and sometimes (though rarely) almost
stormy. One day stands out with sharp distinctness in my
memory. Some of the students were objecting strongly and
excitedly to certain views of their teacher. The situation
became tense and even painful, and he manifestly felt the
strain. The bell closing the hour rang out, and we expected
to leave the room immediately. Doctor Clarke, however,
beckoned us to remain, and his great heart poured itself out
in an act of communion with God, and we were borne on the
tide of his prayer far out beyond our controversial atmos-
phere into the presence and the greatness of the Infinite. We
quietly left the room, hushed and reverent, and with some
eyes wet with tears. Such was the religious spirit and power
of our great teacher in his classroom. How true to his own

DOCTOR CLARKE IN THE CLASSROOM 221

experience were the words he uttered one day in our class:
"The spiritual reality that constitutes the heart of Chris-
tianity is a divine, holy Ufe in the soul of man, making him a
new creature in holy love and godliness."

Alert, witty yet gentle in repartee, gifted with a keen
sense of humor, smiling and laughing with us at his not in-
frequent salUes of purest fun, the sparkling scintillations of a
diamond intellect, having a wonderful power of extempo-
raneous epigram, ready with illustrative anecdote, quick to
take the student's standpoint and to put the latter's case
fairly and often more cogently than he himself could, speak-
ing always the pure, Umpid English so well known to his
readers, unconventional yet dignified, genial, kindly, pater-
nal, possessed of the rarest charm of personaUty, and in and
through all revealing the man who walked with God, is it
any wonder that his students thought of Doctor Clarke as
one of God's supreme gifts to them, and that the hours spent
in his classroom are among the happiest and brightest mem-
ories which any students could ever cherish of any teacher!

DOCTOR CLARKE IN THE CLASSROOM

By Reverend Daniel Hunt Clare

"Otjr pleasant classroom on the dear old hill." The at-
mosphere of the room is revealed in the exquisitely beautiful
conclusion of the Theology. This spirit of companionship
gave to the room its unfailing attraction. We felt we were
not there to receive instruction in theology, but to talk with
a gracious and inspiring personality, to share with him the
results of his meditation and study and spiritual experience
in order that we might be able to shape our own thoughts
and convictions concerning the great realities which were to
be the substance of our preaching.

With his characteristic habit of leisurely punctuahty, he
was always in his place at the desk when we entered, greeting
us with his smiling eyes, while with one hand he toyed with
the small clock which stood there. Exactly upon the sound
of the gong in the hall a hush would fall over the room as he
read a few words from Scripture, a choice bit of verse or an
apt prose quotation bearing on the thought of the hour. He
then closed his eyes and in a brief prayer lifted us into the
presence of Him whose character and purposes we were seek-
ing to understand. There was always an air of expectancy
in the room. We gathered like hungry men around a well-
filled table. Little time was spent in reciting the assigned
lesson. He desired to see if the student had acquired the sub-
stance of the thought. The text-book was then read sen-
tence by sentence, and quiet comments were made upon the
portions which needed special elucidation. He rose to his
greatest heights as a teacher when the stream of questions
poured forth. His intellectual and spiritual resources were

DOCTOR CLARKE IN THE CLASSROOM 223

marvellous. He had no stereotyped expressions; his utter-
ances were always freshly coined. He spoke with transpar-
ent sincerity and he kept back nothing. His face glowed as
if inwardly illumined. He did not argue. He did not raise
his voice. He conversed with us. We were not afraid to ask
him anything. We were so sure of his insight and sympathy
we knew he would understand. There was no haste, but
not a moment was wasted. He kept us close to the great
themes. "Learn to give principal stress on principal things,"
he said. He tried to get to the heart of our difficulties. When
answering our questions his thoughts fell at times like a
shower of pearls. Crystal-clear sentences, equal to any in
the printed page, fell from his lips with the opulence of a great
soul. The margins of our text-books are covered with notes,
making the volumes doubly precious. We never doubted
his sympathy with us in our perplexities, but we were led to
feel that we were passing through a wholesome experience.
"I should feel I had done a good year's work," he said, "if I
could make every one of you believe that you can trust
your own thinking when you seek to do the will of God." He
felt that the classroom was the place for doubt, that the pul-
pit might become the place for conviction. "If I give you
anything in my career," he said, "I shall try to give you
something that cannot be taken away from you." He wanted
no self-delusion. He would not have us make our Judgment
blind. If a man complained that he did not know what to
preach because his former views were failing him, the answer
was: "Let it drive you to your verities." In our spiritual dis-
tress, when struggling to readjust our vision as we passed
through the clouds toward the high table-lands to which he
was leading us, a glance at the teacher's radiant face told us
that light and peace awaited us on the upward side.

He made no attempt to formulate conclusions for us.
He wanted us to know the truth by feeling its authority in
our own souls. He disliked unthinking assent to his state-

224 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

ments, and it appeared to invigorate him when men pre-
sented other views which were reaUties to them. *'I want
you to reject anything of mine you can," he said, *'but, of
course," he added with a smile, "I want to fix it so that you
can't." He ahvays made us feel we were fellow seekers after
truth. He was a marvel of patience when what appeared to
some of us as wilful obtuseness was manifested by any mem-
bers of the class who resented any disturbance of their be-
liefs. His serenity was never dimmed; he rarely uttered a
rebuke. We knew, of course, of the storm of criticism through
which he was passing. It was hard for us to realize that our
beloved teacher with his benignant face, his quiet manner,
and with the heart of a little child could be the cause of such
violent controversy. We never heard him make a single ref-
erence in the classroom to the trial through which he was
passing. Amid all the reconstruction taking place in the
thoughts of the men of the class, the note of faith was domi-
nant. Our rehgion was even greater than we thought. The
message we had to deliver was more glorious than we had
believed. Each day we were led to feel that we were better
acquainted with God. "Indeed, his spirit has often refreshed
our hearts there while we have talked together of him and
gazed upon his glory in the face of Jesus Christ, and our
quiet room has been to us the house of God." The hour in-
variably passed too quickly, and the bell always sounded
upon reluctant ears. Many times we came forth as from a
service of worship. We felt that the "teacher whose presence
always glorified the room" was seen in the eyes of him who
talked with us.

A member of the seminary class of '96 was fatally stricken
with typhoid fever just as he was about to assume his first
pastorate. A few days before the end he asked his sister for
paper and pencil, and amid great weakness he wrote: "To
have studied theology under Doctor Clarke is to lose all fear
of death."

DOCTOR CLARKE IN THE CLASSROOM 225

Not only did it mean to lose all fear of death, but it meant
to go forth from the pleasant classroom, as our great teacher
has expressed his hope and aim, "with the true secret of the
Lord in their hearts, with a faith that cannot be perplexed,
a love that burns in fellowship with Him who gave Himself
for men, and a hope unquenchable."

DOCTOR CLARKE IN THE CLASSROOM

By Reverend Troward H. Marshall

Perhaps nothing went further to win the student's rev-
erence for Doctor Clarke than the prayers which we heard
from day to day in the classroom, and, occasionally, in the
chapel. To me they were the highest source of my spiritual
joy during the days of seminary life. When the classroom
door was closed, Doctor Clarke would read some few words of
spiritual import from among the gems of truth he had learned
to make his own. One that I have before me now is on the
slip of paper which Doctor Clarke gave me after class one
morning. It is from Lucy Larcom, and reads: "I awoke
with a strange joy as of some new revelation, that seemed
sounding through my soul, with the words, 'Lift up your
heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and
the King of Glory shall come in ! ' Is it a new entering in of
life and love at all the doors of my nature? Doors that I
have left closed and overgrown, perhaps? Come in, O Life,
O Truth, O Love, by whatever gate thou wilt, in whatever
form thou wilt. Only make me ready to receive thee, and
to go with thee through the gates into the freedom of thy
universe."

Having read these words (they might be from Tennyson
or Augustine or Isaiah), he would move over, with hardly a
change of tone, into the realm of prayer. Many of us tried
to write the prayers as they were spoken. I never knew of
any one succeeding in doing so. They made writing impos-
sible, so much did they lift the spirit out of time into the
timeless. These prayers were the expression of the passion
for "all good" to which Emerson refers as the criterion for

226

DOCTOR CLARKE IN THE CLASSROOM 227

true prayer. The specific, the accidental, the local — these
were left behind. We heard such words as these: "O Spirit
of Truth," . . . but the best efforts of memory will not
bring them back. They were not in the so-called "grand
style," but were the hushed breathings of a passionate and
intimate converse with God. They shamed us, they in-
spired us, they urged us on. Of all the memories of this holy
man of God, these are inestimably the most precious.

AS THEOLOGIAN
By Professor George Cross, D.D.

The mention of the name of William Newton Clarke
arouses in the mind of one who has known him for many
years not so much at first the idea of the theologian as the
image of the man. When we do think of him as theologian
it is, nevertheless, the man in the theologian — the great, keen-
witted, broad-minded, warm-hearted, wholesome man — that
permeates his theology for us with its most distinctive char-
acteristics. When his works are read this impression con-
tinues uppermost. The man never disappears in the theory.
For theology to him was less a vocation than a mode of self-
expression. The inimitable charm which his books have for
all readers, whether experts or laymen, is owing to some-
thing more than the smooth and well-rounded style or even
the mellowTiess of the thought, for these are simply the reflex
of his personality. It is owing to the richness of the spiritual
life that is revealed there. It is because a spirit that pos-
sessed great individuality held at the same time in its inner
chamber the wealth that was gathered from a universalistic
S}Tnpathy. The reader feels as if his own deepest ex-periences
were finding utterance in the words before him and he finds
himself embraced in a larger life.

This is entirely in keeping with Doctor Clarke's concep-
tion of the nature of theology. His watchword is: Theology
is made in life. It is an expression of the experiences of the
human spirit, and were it not so it would be empty and pro-
fane. A man's theology is a transcript of his personal activi-
ties in their highest interpretation. The factors that enter
into the formation of it are the complex relations, inner and

228

AS THEOLOGIAN 229

outer, into which he has been brought as a self-conscious
being. If his theology is natural to him — as it must be if it
is his own — then it gathers up into itself his whole personal
history. He is making it every day. Not only so, it also
arises as a formulation of the meaning of the life he hves in
the presence of the imperative necessity of living still. A
man must theologize because he must live.

The Approach to the Problems of Theology is herewith given.
It is guided by the view that these problems arise less from
the intellectual demand for a formal system of given truth
than from the practical demand for direction in our activi-
ties. The authoritative approach is set aside. Supposing
there were a sum of truths objectively given and to be re-
ceived submissively, the system of these "truths" which one
might organize would not be his theology, for it would still
remain alien to his Hfe, something still external to those
activities of the soul by which its own truth is made for it.
The speculative approach is also set aside. The dialectical
development of a system of abstract conceptions from some
given universal concept, no matter what name is given to
these concepts, is something different from the interpreta-
tion of the actual past experiences as a guide to those coming
experiences which grow out of them. In the long and in-
volved course of human experience great spiritual reali-
ties have come into being. These are the most precious pos-
sessions men have. The experience of them we call our re-
hgion. If they are to be preserved in their full value and to
be also enhanced in value in the future activities into which
we are to enter, it is necessary that we learn the attitude we
are to assume toward our own personal existence and all
other existences in order that the issues of Hfe may be solved
and that we may live it more fully.

There must be a Christian theology because there is a dis-
tinctively Christian religious life. It has come down from the
past through many generations as a spiritual force of ever-

230 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

increasing magnitude. It is in the world as a great present
fact. If it is to continue here it is necessary that we know
its nature. The circumstances under which it came into dis-
tinct existence, the course by which it has been perpetuated,
the influences that have affected its course, it is the business
of history to describe. But the meaning of this distinctive
kind of life, the relations into which it brings those who pos-
sess it with the unseen Being whom they worship, it is the task
of theology to expound.

Great assumptions are here admittedly made. It is as-
sumed that the human spirit is capable of distinguishing,
^\^thout outer determining information, those experiences
which are of the greatest value to it. It is assumed that it is
capable of supplying from within itself, by using whatever
material it may have to hand, the solution of the problems
which these experiences raise. It is assumed also that the solu-
tions arrived at are of temporary vaHdity and partake of
progressiveness. For the religious life is never static. It is
continually developing into greater fulness. Hence theology,
to be true to life, must be equally progressive. The theology of
yesterday cannot be the theology of to-day, nor the theology
of to-day the theology of to-morrow. Let there be no expec-
tations of finality in the doctrines of theology, because we
never reach finality in life.

Theology so viewed becomes extremely hospitable. The
religious life is natural. It is the normal human life. Chris-
tianity as the highest type of religion is the Ufe that is normal
to humanity. If the life of men here can be normal, then
the religious man is not an alien to the universe, but finds
all its forces contributing factors to his life. Hence the wide
range of interest which Doctor Clarke's theology takes. The
Christian religious life is placed in a positive relation to the
religious life of men in all ages. The universal religious life be-
comes a contributing influence in the formation of the Chris-
tian life and finds in the latter its fulfilment and its tempo-

AS THEOLOGIAN 231

rary justification. The religious life stands in positive relation
to all the other elements that constitute our human Hfe in
its entirety. It becomes necessary for theology to exhibit
the unity of the life of men in their religious experiences.
Similarly the whole material universe becomes a sustaining
power in the religious life, and the most friendly view possible
is taken of the processes and methods of scientific and philo-
sophic investigation. Thus the Christian thinker, commenc-
ing with the consciousness of those worthful experiences we
call "religious" within himself, reaches out to the inner life
of other men and finds his own enlarged thereby, then goes
out to the remotest ages and races to discover the underlying
unity of his hfe with theirs, and finally discovers himself at
home in the universe, and both reads the meaning of his ex-
perience in the Hght it offers and at the same time reads its
meaning in the light of those experiences which have come to
him. This is the range and order of the theological process.

The Materials of Theology and the use of them are hereby
discovered. To the question, Where shall Christian theology
find its materials? the sweeping answer is forthwith given:
"Anywhere. ... Its field for materials is as wide as God's
creation." It does not follow, however, that this boundless
material is to be used without discrimination. For the car-
dinal principle is that God's truth for men "is made in life
and action." Hence the various sources may be distinguished
and estimated according to the immediacy of their relation to
the human Hfe.

First of all to be named is what we have become accus-
tomed to call the religious experience. The psychical Hfe, the
reHgious self-consciousness, has the first and last word.
VvTiether men have come into possession of the better way,
whether they have entered upon the higher Hfe, whether they
have apprehended the heavenly, spiritual world, whether
they have come to know God, can be decided in the final
analysis by no other way than by interrogating their personal

232 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

consciousness. As a religious man the theologian finds his
first-hand material within his own spirit. If he does not find
it there he cannot take the first step in theology. Theology
is necessarily individualistic. An almost infinite variety of
theological views is to be admitted as a possibility. This
does not mean, however, that a man's theology is to be only
his own subjective interpretation of a merely subjective ex-
perience. For his fellowship with his fellow men brings him
into a communion of spirit with them and thereby opens to
him the vast field of the whole inner life of religion as far as
men have been able to give expression to it. He will turn at
once to that portion of the field which is most akin to his
o^vn and most excites his own. The Christian instinct may
be trusted to find its way here.

This estimate of the religious experience leads at once to
the Christian Scriptures. The high estimate to be placed on
them as sources of theological material does not repose pri-
marily on a knowledge of the circumstances of their composi-
tion or of their authors, or upon a knowledge of some unique
manner in which the thoughts expressed in them were given
to men. Much less does it arise from the fact that they were
collected into an ''authoritative" canon. It does arise from
the supremely important fact that the spiritual life into
which the theologian has entered has derived its character
and obtained its chief nourishment from the impression which
the utterances of the Scriptures have made upon him and
those whose spiritual life is akin to his. He draws his ma-
terials from the Bible because he is in a holy fellowship with
the men whose life experiences have made it what it is. Lay-
ing aside the vague and confusing term inspiration, which
tends to clothe the Scriptures with mystery and shut us out
of their secret, we are brought to the fact that "The authority
of the Scriptures is the authority of the truth they convey,"
and the truth is constituted by the quality of the life in
them. It is the peculiar quality of the Scriptures as utterances

AS THEOLOGIAN 233

of the spiritual life, and not the "proofs" of their extrahuman
origin through the attestations of miracle and prediction,
that gives to them their distinctive place. This peculiar
quality is not of an indefinite character but consists ulti-
mately in the power of the personality of Christ as he is set
forth there to bring the heart into a higher and purer moral
realm. He is the secret of the Book, and every part of it that
participates, in the character of Christ has to a corresponding
extent power over the souls of Christian men. Thus every-
thing in the Scriptures that can be viewed as participation,
before his personal advent, in his holy character, and every-
thing in them that can be viewed as the product of his per-
sonal influence on men, is material for Christian theology. It
is this and this alone that makes the Bible the Book of books.
It is evident that this material can be gathered from the
Scriptures only by a discriminating choice. Our material
for theology must be gathered by means of a critical process.
Doctor Clarke fully accepted and advocated the right and
the necessity, on the one hand, of the hterary and historical
criticism, and on the other hand, of the religious criticism
of the Scriptures. The stern methods of criticism had no
terrors for him. The far-reaching effects of their methods
on the common view of the historicity of many of the narra-
tives of the Bible were clearly perceived by him at an early
date and the consequences accepted without hesitation. The
reason is plain: it cleared the way for a better view of the
significance of the career of Jesus Christ and enabled the
theologian the better to apprehend the true character of his
personaHty. This was the greatest positive outcome. Nega-
tively, it enabled the theologian to set aside some doctrines
that were based on a view of the equal authority of all parts
of the Bible, such as the legalistic view of salvation, fatalis-
tic predestinationism, millenarianism, the Catholic-Protes-
tant doctrine of original sin, and the doctrine of atonement
by a sacrifice to the divine wrath.

234 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

The religious criticism of the Scriptures proceeds by an
equal right with the literary and historical criticism. We
have a right to use and to trust what he finely calls "the
Christian selective sense" in discerning those elements of
both the Old Testament and the New Testament which are
truly Christian. For the men who have come under the
transforming power of the personality of Jesus Christ have
obtained "a living gift that [for them] transfigured all their
dealings with God, and transformed even God himself."
Christ as he impresses himself on the spirit of the believer
becomes the principle by which we distinguish the Christian
material from the non-Christian materials, no matter where
it may be found. To the "obvious criticism upon this pro-
posal that it leaves much to the judgment of him who under-
takes to construct the doctrine," the answer is made: "This
is true, and one could easily wish for a less exacting method.
But this seems to be God's way with the free spirits whom
he has gifted with the powers of hfe — he bids each and all of
them turn their faces toward him, and report to one another
what they see." In their communion with one another in the
spiritual Hfe and in their inner relation with the course of this
life as it has developed in history is found the corrective of
mere subjectivism. Christ as he reveals God to the soul
must be the supreme standard by which to test all that pro-
fesses to be Christian.

Doctor Clarke's confidence that the truth of Christian-
ity would be by no means detrimentally affected by the proc-
esses of criticism did not spring from the mystic's view that
the spiritual and eternal so completely transcend the physi-
cal and temporal that the former may be separated from the
latter and go its way independently. In the distinctive sense
of the term he was no mystic. The earthly, the temporal,
and the physical were of profound interest to him because
they bore in their bosom the presence of the heavenly and
eternal. His free and confident attitude toward the work of

AS THEOLOGIAN 235

the higher criticism rested on his trust in the worth of the
historical. Christianity was to him a historical faith — not
in the sense that its truth depends on the historicity of cer-
tain presumed events, but that it lies at the heart of all his-
tory, is one with the historical progress of humanity and dis-
plays the true meaning of this process. This faith becomes
to him who receives it the revelation of the one purpose of
all human life. The critical discovery of the actual facts
connected with the origin of Christian faith is of great im-
portance, because in them the peculiar genius of the new
faith was embodied, but the supremely important facts in
this connection were not the external occurrences as such
but the spiritual events that came to light in the accounts
of the occurrences. Similarly the equally inevitable relig-
ious criticism of the Scriptures cannot be wanton or ulti-
mately destructive, since it proceeds from no scepticism but
from the conviction of the irrefragable worth of the individ-
ual's religious experience. The Christian's religious experi-
ence flows from the influence of the figure of the Christ as
he is set forth primarily in the Scriptures of the New Testa-
ment. Thus the Christian Scriptures themselves supply the
principle of their own religious criticism.

It follows from what has been said that Doctor Clarke
emphasized the contribution which the science of history
makes to the material of theology. All history is interpret-
able as the history of religion, for it brings to light the way
in which the spirit of men has come to find its higher ends;
or, which is the same thing, history, culminating in the his-
tory of religion, exhibits the manner in which God has put
men in ever-growing possession of his own blessed life of
holy love. For a similar reason the natural sciences and phi-
losophy are treated with profound respect as regards both
their methods and their results.

The Theological Method which results from this use of
materials is simple. There is nowhere in his writings a la-

236 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

bored exposition of the technic of theology, while yet there
is care taken to be faithful to the full demands of a scien-
tific treatment of the subject-matter of theology. It is plain
to every reader that his aim throughout was consciously
practical — to enable the thoughtful believer to live out his
life of faith in the whole realm of possible experience and to
propagate this life in others. Theology was to him the
science of the religious life.

The method might be called the psychological-historical.
Setting aside the traditional method of collating and organ-
izing the great "authoritative" declarations of doctrine sup-
posedly given by inspiration, certified by supernatural events,
and built up by logical inference into an unalterable system
of abstract truth, he lays down as the basis of all rehgious
doctrine the fact of a conscious, experiential religious Hfe in
the heart of the theologian himself. The story of the course
of this life as experienced to-day and yesterday by all those
in whom we can trace it suppUes the material for an induc-
tive study of its character. The qualities and convictions
of the faith that permeates this life are thereby disclosed.
The exposition of these convictions or possessions of faith
presents the meaning of the faith in relation to history and
the nature of the universe, and thus precedes and grounds
the attempt to justify them as truth. Dogmatics precedes
apologetics.

The exposition of the nature of the Christian faith as ex-
hibited in its history leads to its fountainhead in the teach-
ings and career and character of Jesus Christ as these ap-
pear in the Gospels and the Epistles of the New Testament.
It is the firm conviction of the present writer that the chief
secret of the power and beauty of Doctor Clarke's exposi-
tions is to be found in his prolonged, thorough, and devout
study of the New Testament. His free attitude toward it
enabled him to imbibe its spirit without suffering from the
fettering influence of an inherited cast-iron system.

AS THEOLOGIAN 237

The special themes that come in for discussion are se-
lected more or less by reference to the historical course of
theology and the forms of the historic creeds. These are
treated with reverence as formulations of the character of
the evolving Christian spirit. Portions of their language are
retained and other portions are quietly set aside. In his
earlier writings considerable attention is paid to their ter-
minology, and speculation is resorted to in support of it. A
notable instance is the attempt to interpret the doctrine of
the incarnation by speculations respecting the nature of
deity and the nature of humanity. In his later writings the
influence of metaphysical speculation is a diminishing quan-
tity. Much more attention is given to the movements of
the human spirit to-day as it seeks to explore all realms of
fact and to discover the course of personal activity and com-
munity life which they disclose to the inquirer. The ethical
overshadows the metaphysical. It is from this point of view
that the results of historical investigation and scientific re-
search in the physical realm are appropriated and inter-
preted in their ethical-religious bearings.

Thus, then, it appears that the theological method of
Doctor Clarke is determined finally, not by the necessity of
arriving at a knowledge of static truth, but by the impera-
tiveness of obtaining guidance in the way to the perfect
active life, which is the way to God. While, therefore, his
theology necessarily became systematic in its method it did
not pretend to arrive at a final system of truth. He was as
suspicious of wrought-out systems as he was of disorder, say-
ing: "A theology too systematic is sure to be distrusted for
that very quality and with good reason." "Incompleteness
is far better than a misleading appearance of perfect sys-
tem." The reason for this attitude is plain. It flows from
that view of existence, and of human existence in particu-
lar, which interprets it as in course of evolution toward per-
fection. No doctrine can be a perfectly true expression of

238 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

the supreme realities known to us, because these realities are
in incomplete evolution and because our apprehension of them
is also in process. The method is deeply dependent on the
aim. The aim is to produce such an interpretation of the
Christian life in the whole sphere of its existence as will serve
to forward our spiritual progress. As the lower stages of
life are transcended the doctrines that grew out of them are
transcended also. We carmot rest content with the doc-
trines of our fathers because we cannot live our lives within
the limits of theirs, and in their turn our doctrines will be
transcended by our sons who will live a larger life than ours.

This characterization of Doctor Clarke's theology would
be unsatisfactory did we not illuminate it by references to
his interpretation of some of the great commonplaces of
theology. Of course, nothing beyond mere suggestions of
his full views on the points touched can be attempted here.
I select the following:

I. Revelation. One misses in Doctor Clarke that whole
view of things which represents heaven and earth, God and
man, as unlike in ultimate nature, separated by a gulf so
deep that we may simply say heaven is not earth and God
is not man, and then add that the gulf has been bridged at
points for a time by an activity from the higher world mak-
ing itself manifest here and giving us ghmpses of that other
world, or that communications have been delivered across
the gulf informing us of the higher world and our relation
to it. This dualism disappears. Instead, the relation of
heaven to earth and of God to man is immanent and as such
normal to our existence here. God is forever uttering him-
self to our spirit and we are forever apprehending his self-
expression. For revelation is just self-expression. This
revelation is not to be identified with the dictation of a for-
mula but with the impartation of a higher self-conscious life.
In the Scriptures the expression Word of God, "always de-
notes a living communication from God to men." God re-

AS THEOLOGIAN 239

veals himself "Immediately in the communion that holy
souls have with him," in their inner experience, not before
this experience or as a prior condition of it, but in it. This
experience is uplifting and purifying, and nothing that comes
short of that can be called revelation.

As Christians we believe that, "In Jesus we have true
revealing of God. This does not mean something technical,
as if in Christ we had received a formula concerning the
divine nature. It means that Jesus and his life and work con-
stitute a great expression of God and exhibition of his char-
acter." Where he says, "The direct revelation of God in
human hfe was made once for all in Christ completed," we
are not to understand the words "once for all" in a merely
empirical sense; for Christ's gift to the world is filling the
hfe of men more and more and putting constantly a new
meaning into the discoveries made by human research.
"When the entire conception of God has been unified, and
harmonized with the thought of Jesus as its centre and key-
note, God will be known as he is. The character that Jesus
opened to us is the real character of God, not to be trans-
formed for us by any future discoveries or experience."
"This character is the same in his relations with all beings,
because the same in himself the eternal God." Thus the
course of human history and the laws of the universe as dis-
closed to us by science and philosophy become to us a Chris-
tian revelation, even though these discoveries may have had
no historical connection with Christianity, because they help
to make plain to us the sphere and the manner in which the
Christian spirit is to fulfil its destiny.

We are to beware of limiting the revelation of God to the
portion of the human race connected with the formation of
our Bible. "God has always been in communication with
all spirits of the human race." "It is he who brought it to
pass that man advances from the life of the beast to the life
of the spirit. The life that moves from the animal to the

240 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

spiritual realm is of his giv'ing and of his designing. The soul
da^vning in man is his self-impartation." Thus, then, "that
which he has done in Christ can be nothing else than the
culmination of a work of God as God upon man as man."
This can mean nothing less than that revelation is continu-
ous with the growing spiritual Hfe of men and that it is just
God's gracious saving will experienced in the life of self-con-
sciousness.

2. Salvation. In this subject, no less than in the ques-
tion of revelation, one misses much to which he has been
accustomed. In the first place, he misses the systematic ar-
rangement of a body of concepts, each one of which is sup-
posed to have a distinct connotation and to correspond with
a distinct spiritual fact, the whole presenting the appearance
of a wrought-out science, and representing stages and sepa-
rate processes in the work of salvation. Thus we have had, on
the one side, such concepts as illumination, regeneration,
justification, adoption, sanctification, glorification, as de-
scriptions of distinguishable acts of God in salvation; and,
on the other side, repentance, faith, conversion, consecra-
tion, as different acts of man in the process of receiving sal-
vation. The whole represents, then, a spiritual programme
followed in the saving work of God and experience of men.
These terms are not discarded as useless, but the scheme as a
whole is discarded and in place of it appears the account of
the inception and growth of the new moral life in the Chris-
tian, to be regarded from one point of view as God's one
continuous saving act, and from another point of view as
man's inner progress from the lower to the higher life of the
spirit.

Similarly we miss the representation of the work of sal-
vation that endeavors to make it harmonize with the Catho-
lic theory of the godhead by assigning different parts of the
work to the different persons of the Deity, as, for example,
condemnation and justification to the Father, atonement to

AS THEOLOGIAN 241

the Son, and the application of the atonement to men by the
Spirit, or, again, the provision of salvation by the Father,
the securing of it by the Son, and the impartation of it by the
Spirit. Instead, with a reverent acceptance of the triunity
in God (of which more will be said presently) there is the sim-
pler and more natural view that the saving activity of Christ
the Son is the very act of the Father himself, who does not
stand over against the Christ in his redemptive act, but is
wholly one with him. Similarly the renewing and purify-
ing activity of the gracious Spirit is the eternal activity of
the lixdng Christ. In like manner the distinctions between
the different portions of Christ's work, as his teaching, his
penal sufferings, his intercession, his gift of the Spirit, his
government of his people, while recognized as having value
for the sake of fulness of conception, are nevertheless re-
stored to their proper informal use as complementary figura-
tive representations of the one saving act of Christ in his
infinite Hfe. Here scholasticism disappears.

With the pseudoscientific construction of the subject dis-
appears also the pseudohistorical view that conceives it as
a "plan of salvation" according to which events occur in an
order and relation preordained. Reposing on the "divine
decrees" there occurred the events of the creation, the fall,
the selection of a portion of the race to be the exclusive recip-
ients of a definitely given law, the definite event of the in-
carnation, the atonement, the end of the world, and the judg-
ment day. Doctor Clarke is far from belittling the use of
these terms as efforts of the human mind to construe the his-
torical process of salvation, but the mechanical character of
the view repels him. Instead, he turns to a much less pre-
tentious attempt to see in the progress of human history as
an immanent process the unfoldings of a gracious redemp-
tive purpose that runs through all the ages and is destined to
fulfil itself in eternity. Salvation ceases to be viewed as ulti-
mately a securing of a safe transition from earth to heaven,

242 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

but the fitting of the earthly life with a heavenly goodness
and power.

It is not surprising, therefore, to find that the legalistic
view of the atonement is not acceptable to him. Its depen-
dence on a body of juridical ideas mostly outgrown in the life
of the nations is seen, and with this is seen also the impera-
tiveness of recognizing that this representation of the matter
must fail to appeal to the enlightened to-.day. Instead, it is
attempted to replace this defective view with one that cor-
responds with the deepening moral consciousness of the
times, the progress of the aim and methods of social better-
ment, and the broader and more humane views of the nature
and means of government. The atonement becomes a living
experience definitely related to the personality and career of
Jesus Christ and a hberating and purifying process in the
individual and social consciousness.

It need scarcely be added that since Doctor Clarke pre-
serves the fully ethical character of salvation as against the
metaphysical interpretation, there is no place in his theology
for the saving effect of sacraments or any other view of it
that finds its locus anywhere but in the living, conscious
spirit of the man.

A little more positively and very briefly — salvation is a
fact of the personal experience and a fact of history know-
able to any one who gives himself to the study of the course
of men in the world. A doctrine of salvation depends on
this fact and attempts to expound it. Salvation is a relig-
ious experience — the pious mind sees its origin in God. It is
a moral experience — it is a deliverance from sin unto right-
eousness, or rightness. The Christian salvation is a historical
fact — the Christian traces it to Jesus Christ. It is a reality
of the spiritual realm unfolding itself progressively in the
course of time and, so we believe, destined to come to perfect
achievement in eternity.

The glory of Christianity is salvation. It is not merely

AS THEOLOGIAN 243

something secured by Christianity but, truly understood,
it is Christianity. That is to say, a new order of life personal,
social, racial, and, in its intent, universal, has come into being
among men through Jesus Christ. Many accounts of it have
been given but none of them has yet become the one account
of the matter or is likely to be, because the fact is so unut-
terably rich in meaning. But this we can say: "Straight
out from Jesus Christ, as a normal and congenial outcome
from his work, came that ethical and religious order of life
which we call the kingdom of God." Now "the central
truth of Christianity" is that which can be truly called the
kingdom of God is "a reign of mutual service and help with
an unselfish devotion to others for its indwelling power."
To produce this new order of life, to bring men into the fel-
lowship of it, to impart to them the experience of the graces
which flourish in it, such as trust in the Infinite Goodness,
humiHty, meekness, and gentleness of spirit, graciousness
and mercy to men, purity and unselfishness of heart, undy-
ing confidence and courage in the presence of the universe,
is to save them. "For about two thousand years Jesus Christ
has been the living source of this experience" and this order
of Hfe among men. How great this fact may yet turn out to
be and how Jesus Christ has brought it into being we may
never altogether succeed in telling. Meanwhile we can say
that it does consist in the increasing penetration of the hearts
of men and the Hfe of humanity with his personal conscious-
ness in its attitude toward God and men and the world.
Historically and actually Jesus is saving the world.

The salvation is ethical. It comes through the appeal
to the moral consciousness. The whole of Jesus' teaching
is permeated with the ethical ideal as his life is permeated
with the ethical motive. He never distrusted the supreme
value of the moral judgment as a court of appeal. He never
forgot that men are made or marred by moral action. He
never sought to withdraw his followers from the mass of man-

244 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

kind or from the challenge of the universe, but sought to en-
able them to fulfil the Kfe of the highest fellowship with all
within this natural world. His power over them through
the centuries has been working in the same direction, the
establishment of a right order of life among men. It is ethical
in a broader sense than that it concerns itself with the indi-
vidual conscience. While the question of the well-being of
the individual is of abiding importance, the inquiry, Are
there many saved ? loses itself in the larger question of the
coming of a universal reign of the heavenly Father. Hence
also the apocalyptical view of a world-assize by which each
is assigned to his final abode has, in accordance with the aim
of Jesus, been displaced by the hope of a time when the whole
creation shall be the home of the love of God.

The ethical is carried up into the religious. Unrightness
is sin, and sin is not to be understood according to the terms
of a given law, but according to the character of the supreme
and infinitely holy Person. It is the love of this holy Being
and not the terms of a law that gives to sin its unworthiness
and damnable character. With this interpretation the whole
legalistic interpretation of the means of salvation drops
away. Not that the juridical language in which the Chris-
tian salvation has been set forth is without value, but that
value is temporary and this formal interpretation must yield
to the conception of salvation as effected by one's being
brought into right personal relations. The salvation of
Christ is no part of a legal arrangement. No difficulty is felt
to be in the way of saying: "It is righteous to forgive those
who confess." There is no impediment to forgiveness in God.

Hence Doctor Clarke feels that of all the scriptural and
theological terms that have been used to express the great
fact of salvation as the bringing of men into a better rela-
tion with God the term "reconciliation" is the best. For
the baseness of sin, its abnormality for men, its violation
of the standard of duty, its selfishness, its opposition to the

AS THEOLOGIAN 245

moral government of the world — all these are comprehended
in the rejection of a God who is love. It is "not a matter of
relation to law or to government," but a personal relation.
The relations of men to one another and to the universe are
all comprehended in their relation to God.

3. Christ. It is not to be doubted that the doctrine of
the person of Christ one may hold will depend in some mea-
sure on his doctrine of salvation, for if Jesus is to him in any
sense Saviour the effect of such an experience or estimate
of his significance is sure to be manifest in the interpretation
of his career. It has always been so and is likely to con-
tinue. Doctor Clarke's doctrine of salvation prepares us
for his doctrine of Christ. This does not hinder that his
method of approach be of great importance or detract from
the value of his views.

At the outset we are struck by the absence of those meta-
physical premises that play so large a part in the most widely
known christologies at the very opening of the discussion.
There are no a priori assumptions as to the essence of deity
and of humanity or of the necessary relations between them
as a foundation of his interpretation of Christ, and, accord-
ingly, there is an absence of the effort to fit the historical
Jesus into the speculative scheme, which has been such a
great obstacle to the traditional christologies.

The historical consideration occupies the first place. The
facts of Jesus' career are to be ascertained by the strictest
application of the critical methods. The facts are what they
are, no matter how our preferences may affect our appre-
hension of them. Some portions of the accounts are of such
a character as to leave some alleged events in doubt, but the
general representation of the facts is reliable and the outcome
of the critical study is to clarify the picture and allow the
actual living personality to stand out in his uniqueness and
grandeur. Such a one as the Jesus set forth in the Gospels,
especially the synoptics, actually lived. Such a person actu-

246 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

ally made his advent into the movement of human hfe on
earth and became a distinctive spiritual force in it. There he
stands before us — just, pure, sinless, loving, gracious, lowly,
courageous, faithful, commanding, and moving upon men
with a marvellous attraction. The expositions liis first fol-
lowers offered of the character of his life and even the addi-
tions that they were led to make to his real sa}dngs become
an important part of the testimony to his actual achieve-
ment. They are included in the means by which he has been
able to perpetuate the power of his life through the ages.
Here, then, and not in an assumption of the nature of sin
and salvation supplied by a moral philosophy or by the
Mosaic legislation, is the basis of the doctrine of his saviour-
hood. The salvation he brought is to be described by refer-
ence to the actual fruits of his career in human lives, includ-
ing the life of the theologian himself.

What was it that Jesus gave to the world? He gave an
ideal of life, an ideal that he was in his own personality. It
was not merely a picture of the perfect life, but he sowed
that life in the earth in the career that culminated in the su-
preme act of self-sacrifice in death and thereby he was able to
communicate to men the spirit of his life in such a degree that
it became their very life also. Thus he became their sal-
vation.

The place that Jesus has gained in the hearts of men is
not due to any demonstration ah extra of the truth of the
claims h*e may have made or of the authority he possessed.
It flows from the actual power he has exercised to bring them
into the fellowship of his spirit with the conviction that they
are thereby brought into fellowship with God. The ques-
tion of the reliability of the accounts of miracles performed
by him as sensible matters of fact, the question of the reality
of the virgin birth, or the question of the reality of the
physical resurrection (Doctor Clarke points out that the idea
of the resurrection became greatly carnalized in the early

AS THEOLOGIAN 247

centuries) has no decisive place in the determination of the
greater question, Who was he ? These accounts, on the other
hand, are of great value as showing what men were able to
believe of him through what they had found him to be to them,
but they drive us back to the more fundamental question of
the quality of the power he exercised on men in the experi-
ences of religion. The response to this question is clear: The
"simple faith and straightforward love" of the early Chris-
tians and of multitudes since those days "found him more
than human, and it came to pass that they adored him as God,
and God by means of him." "The New Testament does not
connect this divine honor to Jesus with belief in his supernat-
ural birth. It sprang, rather, from the recognition of divine
qualities in him, and from a sense of his living and reigning as a
Saviour." Without previous theories of divinity and human-
ity men have felt the spiritual power that came forth from
him, and identifying this with the action of God upon them
they have spontaneously affirmed that God must be as he is if
v/e are to love and obey and worship God, and he must be as
God since he has such power over men. "We behold in him
a relation to God that we find nowhere else. . . . God was
in him as never was or will be in any other man." While
many still affirm that the divinity of Christ as an article of
faith is dependent on the belief in the historicity of the virgin
birth and the physical resurrection of Jesus, Doctor Clarke
places these in the reverse order, saying: "It is his divinity
alone that justifies belief in his miraculous conception. If
we follow the example of the apostles and early Christians
we shall not build a doctrine of his person upon this event,
but upon the character and personality that became mani-
fest in his life and his saviourhood."

With regard to the question of the incarnation, or how
God became man, so far as Doctor Clarke permitted him-
self to speculate on this question in the Outline, he favored
the kenotic theory — "voluntary self-limitation" — but in the

248 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

Ideal of Jesus he seems content to say that the sum and
substance of Jesus' career is that he revealed God, in his suf-
ferings reveahng the God who suffers for our sins. Reflect-
ing on the attempted explanations of the person of Christ,
he says: "Theology has its metaphysical doctrines of the
person of Christ to account for the sonship of Jesus to God;
but doctrine, after all, is only the expression of fact, and no
analysis of his person can ever afford such proof and illus-
tration of his sonship as resides in the life that he lived and
the death that he died."

We leave this great subject here. One thing is certain,
that while Doctor Clarke was profoundly interested in the
theological problem, he was much less interested in present-
ing a fully formed and satisfactory doctrine of the person
of Christ than in securing his reader's interest in the effort
to become ChristHke.

4. God. On taking up the author's volume. The Chris-
tian Doctrine of God, the present writer involuntarily asked
himself. Can anything be found here that has not been al-
ready written by others? and then proceeded to read the
book through, for there was no stopping. It is the ripe fruit
of Doctor Clarke's finest thought and quite beyond the pos-
sibility of being characterized in a few paragraphs. How-
ever, a few statements may be made in the hope that read-
ers may be stimulated to read the book for themselves.

One notices the wide range that is covered in the search
for material for the formulation of the doctrine of God, and
also the point of departure. It is not sufficient to collect
and construe the biblical material, "for the Christian doc-
trine does not inherit solely from the Bible," inasmuch as
the Christian life is greater than the Bible and in a large
sense the source of it. Nor are we to rest with the historic
creeds or their terminology, for the process of forming a
Christian doctrine of God is not yet completed, nor will it
ever be, since the Christian life must ceaselessly expand.

AS THEOLOGIAN 249

Nor shall we be satisfied to discover the element common
to all Christians and persistent through all the Christian
ages, for this has been subject to the limitations of our im-
perfect experience. The present Christian doctrine of God
must be the expression — and cannot be more — of such Chris-
tian Ufe and knowledge as surround us now. "An unchanging
deposit of truth is an impossibility." There can be no final
orthodox doctrine of God. An evolving divine fife in men
must ever broaden and deepen the doctrine. This remains
true, not in spite of the fact that the personality of Jesus
Christ will always supply the inner spirit of the Christian
doctrine, but because of that fact. For the God he gave us
is a " God of reality and of spiritual life," and for this reason
the Christian experience since the days of the historical
Jesus has contributed an indispensable factor of the doc-
trine. For we live in him. This does not eliminate the need
of employing the speculative factor in the formulation of the
doctrine. The speculative activity is itself an essential part
of our spiritual life and inevitably the metaphysical element
in our doctrine of God will appear. This latter phase of
the doctrine naturally develops in the apologetical treatment
of the subject where he treats the question whether the
Christian view of God derived from the influence of Christ
upon our own personality and growing out of our religious
life is tenable in view of the nature of the world in which
our lives are necessarily lived. The Christian doctrine of
God does not begin with a proof but with an assumption.

We are not surprised, therefore, when we read the words,
"Christianity does not approach God first as Creator, or as
the great First Cause, or as the Almighty," but as ethical
personality with whom we have fellowship in spirit. We
see how unhesitatingly the author accepts the human self-
consciousness as that which determines fundamentally the
form in which the existence of God shall be construed. "Spir-
itual anthropomorphism is the true key to right knowledge

250 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

of God." God is spirit, that is, God is a person, "A person
is a being in relation with others, who is aware of himself
and has power of directing his own action." This is not
ofifered as a final definition. Such definition may be impos-
sible for us because our personality is incomplete. There
is a diflSculty, of course, in ascribing personality to God.
The true source of the difficulty lies not in the limitations
which may seem implied in the term but in the fact that we
are not ourselves perfectly person. We do not perfectly
know ourselves or direct our action. True personality is
found in God. God is a person. This is the basis of our
estimate of our human personality.

We find, as we should consequently expect to find, that
instead of the "attributes" of God standing in the forefront
of the doctrine, goodness, personal goodness, is said to be
the fundamental character of God. Goodness in God must
be the same in nature as goodness in men, or we use words
without meaning. "Goodness means the same in all moral
beings." "It is the normal fulfilling of one's relations."
The theology that lays its basis in faith in the divine good-
ness must work out very differently from the theology that
reposes on the abstract idea of justice. The whole view of
man and the world must be a hopeful one when the theolo-
gian can say: "Goodness lies back of all existence." The
goodness is moral goodness, positive, personal love. Holi-
ness and retribution cannot be the opposite of love, but are
embraced within it. The atonement cannot be a way of
reconciling God with himself. "Holiness and love do not
need to be brought together and reconciled before they can
kiss each other. They are of one spiritual kindred." We
know now how it is that Doctor Clarke's theological discus-
sions move onward with such a confident tread and are so
heartening to many who have been tempted to shun all
theological works.

The secret of this view of God is his estimate of Jesus.

AS THEOLOGIAN 251

Ignoring the common distinction between the person and the
work of Jesus Christ, Doctor Clarke sees in the personality
of Jesus a revelation of the moral nature of God. The dis-
tinction between God in Christ and God out of Christ as re-
gards salvation is a false distinction and misrepresents God.
''The God who is in Christ is the only God there is." "What
he does God is doing, and such as he is God is." "What is
manifested in Christ goes on eternally in God." Saviour-
hood pertains to the essence of God. He must be creator
because he is saviour and the creatorship gets its charac-
ter from saviourhood. No other kind of God could the
Christian worship. Hence "the divine saviourhood is a
necessary part of the true doctrine of monotheism." That
there are difficulties for this \dew when we approach the
question of the judgment for sin is not denied, but these
must not be acknowledged to subvert the doctrine. What-
ever judgment may work it must be such judgment as pro-
ceeds from saviourhood.

A hopeful view of the world is an outcome. "Since he
is saviour there is redemptive significance in the Hfe of the
world." The common theological doctrine of God's relations
to the world come in for modification. From the transcen-
dence of personality in relation to the physical we proceed
to the affirmation of God's transcendence over the world.
This transcendence is not separation. Immanence is af-
firmed—not, however, as a counterpoise (which is the com-
mon representation), but as the fulfihnent of transcendence.
It is in transcendence that immanence gets its meaning and
its reality too. The interest in this matter does not arise
from the necessity of speculation in our apprehension of the
nature of the universe. The interest is religious. If both
science and philosophy lead to the view that the world is
controlled from within, by affirming the immanence of the
Christian's God in the worid, it is affirmed that the ultimate
significance of the immanent law of the universe is found in

252 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

the supremacy of the principle of holy personal love. The
world is being made a habitation of personalities whose
inner life is governed by this love. Love has made it, love
constitutes it, love can be fulfilled in it.

The so-called natural attributes of God come to have a
new meaning. Their character is moral and our interest
in them is moral. Omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence
become unipresence, uniscience, unipotence, and what we
mean by these terms is that in all places and conditions, in
all knowledge, in all activity, it is open to us to believe that
we are in the presence of, enjoying spiritual communion
with, and being ever upheld by the one holy Being, whose
love is revealed to the hearts of men by Jesus Christ. This
great faith surely is the explanation of the fact that in all
Doctor Clarke's writings we find no pessimistic note, no for-
bidding word, and it is the secret of the revival he has helped
to produce in the interest in theology in the minds of thou-
sands of young men.

It would be scarcely proper to close this discussion with-
out some reference to Doctor Clarke's attitude toward the
traditional doctrine of the trinity. For that doctrine he
had profound respect. He even indorses it, but only with
the understanding that it needs reconstruction according to
the wider experience and peculiar needs of the present day.
Full value is given to the religious and intellectual considera-
tions that first led to the formulation of it. Beginning with
the informal but profoundly expressive utterances of New
Testament writers as they sought to set forth the richness
of the religious life into which they were brought through
Christ, it was later developed in a formal way in an endeavor
of the church "to understand and justify her Christian ex-
perience," particularly, "to justify her adoration of her
Saviour and to ground his salvation in the eternal reality of
God." There was an attempt to retain a true monotheism
while maintaining the full significance of the redemption of

AS THEOLOGIAN 253

Christ and the consciousness of participation in the sancti-
fying power of the Spirit he gave. The presuppositions
under which they defended it, namely — that the personality
of Jesus is to be understood by analysis of his being and the
discovery of its ultimate essence (about which after all we
know nothing) and that the human nature and the divine
nature are essentially unlike — are no longer tenable and make
no appeal to our faith. Yet the doctrine in its true intent is
thoroughly and gloriously Christian.

The significant thing about our theologian's approach to
the subject is that he treats it under the relations of God
with men, and not as a statement of relations within Deity
communicated to men by authority. The reason for this ap-
proach is "that it is a doctrine of religion." It can be held
by any man only in so far as it ministers to his spiritual life
and expresses it. The relations which it describes are not
abstract but practical. The adjective "holy" applied to the
Spirit indicates this. "The Spirit existing in the eternal
Godhead no one would ever dream of calling holy: that
epithet requires the atmosphere of an unholy world to be
born in." To hold the doctrine as if it were a statement of
truth settled for us apart, or in advance of, our religious ex-
perience is to place us in a relation to it altogether different
from that of those from whom it emanated.

The traditional form of the doctrine comes short of the
Christian monotheistic faith. The terms of the doctrine have
largely lost their original meaning. "Person," for example,
means something quite different now. The term "trinity"
is also defective. It affirms the Christian recognition of the
threeness of God in relation to his children and the universe,
but it obscures the unity. In consequence it has frequently
led to a tritheism that confuses faith, Father, Son, and Spirit
being separated and assigned separate activities. It must
not be forgotten that God is personal in the modern sense
of the term. There is one God. He is threefold in his self-

254 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

revelation to his people. Hence in order to maintain the one-
ness of God and at the same time to express his threeness of
redemptive acti\dty, it would be better in place of the term
"trinity" to use the term "triunity." In any case and at all
costs, God must be to us the living God.

This characterization of Doctor Clarke's theology may
fitly conclude with a brief statement of the service he has
rendered as theologian to the rising ministry and students of |

theology of the present day: First, he has helped to deliver |

theology from the benumbing effect of bearing the yoke of a |

stiff traditional terminology and enabled it to speak the Ian- f

guage of living men. Second, he has permeated theological
discussion with the spirit of a living faith and kept it in its 4

true sphere as a servant to this faith. Third, he has con-
tributed to the establishment of the historical rather than
the authoritative or speculative method of approach to re-
ligious questions, and encouraged men to believe in the pos- i^
sibility of being absolutely true to fact and fearless in the |
discovery of it without departing from the soul of faith. ,|
Fourth, he has succeeded in awakening in the minds of mul- \
titudes of serious and intelligent laymen a new interest in
the questions of theology as a matter of personal concern
and edification. Fifth, he has thus helped remarkably in j
preparing the way for a richer rehgious life and a revival of
theology as a handmaid of faith.

The following quotations from a letter to the writer, under
date of April, 1913, by Professor Thomas Trotter of Toronto,
Canada, a former pupil of Doctor Clarke's, will illustrate
the statement as to our theologian's influence on intelligent
laymen :

"I had an engagement to preach in a distant city for
three successive Sundays. On the first Sunday, at the eve-
ning service, there came into the congregation, without
knowing that I was the preacher of the day, a former friend
who, thirty-seven years before, had been my chum and

AS THEOLOGIAN 255

student-rival at Woodstock College. He passed on to To-
ronto University years before domestic circumstances per-
mitted me to go to that institution. He took a brilliant
university course, then a course in law, and became a promi-
nent barrister. For a number of years past he has occupied
a responsible legal position in the employ of the Dominion
Government. Until I met him on the Sunday in question I
had not seen him for thirty years. It was with unfeigned
delight that we met again and greeted each other at the close
of the service.

''Learning that I was to return to the city for the two fol-
lowing Sundays, he and his wife insisted that I must make
my billet with them. This was richly to my liking. What
a time we did have reviewing the charm of the days of long
ago and opening to each other the pages of our subsequent
years !

"I found him a highly intellectual, broadly cultured man,
the author of a list of important legal books, widely read in
general literature, and an authority on Roman antiquities,
a man also of great social warmth and charm. Naturally,
in opening my life to him, I talked freely of my religious ideals
and activities, and we got into open intimate talk about
the supreme things. He had confessed Christ at Woodstock
College when we were quite young men together, and he had
maintained at least nominal relations with the church ever
since. It was manifest, however, that religion was not a
first-class interest with him, and that he was intellectually
in revolt against conventional conceptions. There were no
representative religious books in his Hbrary, nor did he seem
to have any acquaintance with Christian thought intellec-
tually conceived and stated. I gathered that he had nu-
merous friends of the intellectual breed, in all sorts of high
positions, who were virtually in his own attitude toward
reUgion — regarding it as unreal and finding no living interest
or satisfaction in it.

"When we had got on to terms of perfect freedom and
comradeship I rallied him that he should have devoted so
much time and travel to the study of Roman antiquities,
and should never have turned his attention and his intellect
onto Christianity. I hinted that there was no finer intellec-
tual output in the literature of our day than that represented

256 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

by the characteristic religious books of the times — books
written by men fully aware of the time of day and abreast
of the most recent findings in every department of knowl-
edge. I assured him that his intellectual best would find a
challenge in scores of books that I could name.

''It happened that, without the thought of making use
of it in my relations with my friend, I had slipped into my
grip for reading on the train Doctor Clarke's Ca?i I Believe
in God tJie Father? I had never read it, though I had
bought it some time before. I was greatly blessed and stimu-
lated in the reading of it. It seems to me that Doctor Clarke
never did anything finer or more effective.

"On the Sunday, having had the talk just narrated about
Christian books, and having to withdraw to make my prepa-
ration for public service, I fetched from my vahse the little
book and, throwing it down, said lightly: *If you want to
taste the kind of thing I've been talking about, dip into that
while I'm away at my sermon.'

"I returned an hour and a half later to find my friend all
aglow. The book had uttered an effective challenge to his
slumbering faith. The sympathetic spirit of its approach,
with the intellectual sincerity and thoroughness of the argu-
ment, had deeply moved him and introduced him to a new
religious atmosphere. We had some more interesting talk
at night, and on the Monday morning I left the book with
him that he might finish it before the next Sunday.

"Returning for the next Lord's Day, I found him eager
for talk about religious things and full of praise for the book
which had so stirred him. He asked me, as soon as I should
return to Toronto, to select and purchase for him a dozen
or twenty books of like intelligence and spirit. These he
purposed to put into a library where professional men like
himself would find them available and discover a new world
of interest. I gladly executed my friend's commission and,
among the books, I sent him four of Doctor Clarke's.

"I have not had the pleasure of seeing my friend since.
A few weeks after the books reached him I got a warm letter
telling me that he was working through them and that he
found them 'immensely illuminating and stimulating.'"

PROFESSOR CLARKE AT YALE
By Professor Douglas C. Macintosh, D.D.

Very vividly does the writer remember the impression
made upon him during his undergraduate days by his first
acquaintance with the works of our most humane theologian,
William Newton Clarke. It was during that "storm and
stress" period of the college course, the sophomore year, with
its logical and psychological studies and its revolutionary
displacement of dogmatism by the empirical method, that
he chanced to discover in the college Hbrary that unassum-
ing little book. What Shall We Think of Christianity ? It
was to the reader a never-to-be-forgotten message that he
found there — that the validity of the Christian religion rests
fundamentally upon the fact that the experiences of which
it speaks are actually experienced and experienceable to-
day. The way was logically open for a Christian empiricism;
the reader was conscious that he had found a friend indeed.
Forthwith he secured a copy of the fascinating Outline of
Christian Theology, and eagerly devoured its contents dur-
ing the ensuing summer vacation.

When afterward that same student found himself teaching
theology in an Eastern school, he was very glad indeed of
the opportunity given him of entering into an occasional
correspondence, personal and theological, with his senior
fellow worker in the field of Christian doctrine. Finally he
ventured to suggest the satisfaction it would give not only
himself but the faculty and students of the school (Yale
Dix-inity School), if Doctor Clarke could find it convenient,
on his way from Hamilton to his winter home in Florida,
to visit Yale and address the George B. Stevens Theological

257

258 WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

Club on some theological topic. The reply was immediate
and to the effect that it would be a great pleasure to revisit
Yale and to renew old friendships and form new ones. Ar-
rangements were accordingly made for a meeting on the
29th of November, 191 1, and on Doctor Clarke's arrival at
New Haven he was taken to the home of Dean Charles R.
Brown, where he was entertained during his stay in the city.

During this visit, among many other topics, Professor
Clarke's conversation was on such subjects as the measure
of individual responsibility, the assurance of immortality,
theological method, the relation of theology to philosophy,
and the relation of his own theological system to the work
of the Ritschlian school. On this last point it was interesting
to learn that, while admitting the extensive similarity be-
tween his own point of view and conclusions and those of
the Ritschlians, he was not conscious of having been greatly
influenced by German theological thought; his own final
position was reached by largely independent processes, as
described in his little book, Sixty Years with the Bible.

What he had to say as to his own assured consciousness
of immortality, of being in possession of an eternal Hfe, was
of special interest in connection with the topic which he
chose for discussion before the Theological Club, viz., "Im-
mortality: A Study of Belief." Throughout the evening of
the meeting there was a heavy rainfall, so that comparatively
few from outside the school were able to be present; but
there was a practically full attendance of the professors and
students in Marquand Chapel, and it was generally felt that
the meeting was by all odds the best that had been held in
the history of the club. Most lucidly and with character-
istic catholicity of spirit he showed how there are more ways
of arriving at beUef in immortality than one. Sometimes
the belief comes chiefly through ancestral influence; some-
times it is made to rest upon a word of authority, or upon
testimony of the senses, or upon philosophic reasoning; or

PROFESSOR CLARKE AT YALE 259

finally and most safely, it is with many grounded mainly
upon spiritual insight and moral conviction. So energetic
of body and alert of mind did the speaker appear, so youth-
ful of spirit and so ready and incisive throughout the discus-
sion, that it was very far indeed from our minds that within
a very few weeks he who was able to speak so assuredly of
the Hfe beyond would himself be called to enter upon the
exploration of its secrets. When the news of his passing
reached us, it was with renewed impressiveness that the
words of this, his last public address, came to us: "Man
aspiring to immortality is aspiring into the bosom of his
Father, and his Father is there to receive him. God taking
hold upon man to bring him to his true self and service is
undertaking a task unlimited. But for the task he has un-
limited room and opportunity, for man is a being whose
range runs on through all the duration that God can need.
... In immortality God will bring man to the end for which
he first designed him, and will use him for all the high pur-
poses to which his nature is adapated." ^

The revered teacher's so early demise was not anticipated
either by himself or by us; but we may well believe that,
even had it been, he would have been glad to come to us as
he did, with his message of faith and inspiration. His rela-
tion to the Yale Divinity School had been at times intimate,
and was at all times most cordial. The late Professor Stevens
had been one of his closest and most understanding friends.
From the time of their appearance constant use had been
made of his books, especially the Theology, by successive classes
in systematic theology. In 1905 he had delivered, as a much-
appreciated course on the Nathaniel W. Taylor foundation,
the lectures afterward published under the title. The Use
of the Scriptures in Theology. Moreover, in 1900 the uni-
versity had honored itself as well as the recipient by confer-

' The address was published entire in the Yale Divinity Qttarterly for Janu-
ary, 19 1 2.

26o WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE

ring upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. His thought
will long continue to deeply influence the students for the
Christian ministry at Yale, as in many other places, and
through them to shape the religious convictions of ever-
widening circles of the Christian people of this and other
lands.

INDEX

Agassiz, Louis, 20.

American village, 2.

Ancestors, 1,4.

Andrews, Edw. Gayer, 17, 70, 71

Andrews, Newton Lloyd, 21.

Avignon, 80.

Baptist Education Society, 3.

Baptist parsonage, 13.

Baptist Theological School in To-
ronto, 55.

Baptist Women's Missionary Soci-
ety, 25.

Beebe, Doctor Alexander, 20, 62.

Birth, 2, 9.

Bridgman editorial, 116.

Brigham, Albert Perry, 63

Brooks, Reverend Walter, 62.

Bumham, Professor S., 62.

Bushnell, Horace, 44.

California, winters in, 65.

Cazenovia, 6-9, 12, 13, 56, 132.

Chautauqua movement, 26.

Childhood, 11.

Chittenango Falls, 9.

Christian Doctrine of God, The, 79,

86, 93, 94, 186, 204, 248.
Christian Endeavor, 25.
Clarke, Jeremiah, 5.
Clarke, William, 6.
Colgate, James B., 4.
Colgate University, 4.
Colgate, WilUam, 4.
College days, 20, 21.
Colorado Springs, 66-68.

Death, 99-100, 183, 258.

Death of father, 41.

Death of mother, 72.

De Land (Fla.), 91.

D. K. E. Society, 21.

Doctor of Divinity conferred by Yale

University, 74; by University of

Chicago, 75.
Doctor of Sacred Theology conferred

by Columbia University, 95.
Dodge, President Ebenezer, 62, 64,

65, 150.
Dublin, 85
Dudleian Lecture, 86.
Dunbar, Duncan, 38.

Edinburgh, 85.
Ely, 85.

Father's visit to Newton Center, 1869,
40. _

Favorite books, 12, 112, 113.

Florida, 91-94, 96.

Fosdick article, 117.

Franconia, 105.

Friendships, 1 11, 150; in Cazenovia,
18, 19; in Florida, 93; in Hamil-
ton, 20, 21, 62; in Haverford, 74;
in Newton Center, 37-39.

Gould, Professor E. P., 39.
Grant, Ulysses S., 5.
Gray, Asa, 20.

Hamilton, 2, 3, 20, 62-98, 150, 208.
Hamilton congregation, 63.
Hamilton Theological Seminary, 21,

42, 201.
Harris, J. Rendel, 85
Harvard Summer School of Theology,

73-
Harvey, Hezekiah, 62.
Haverford, 74.

Huxley and Philip Brooks, 75.
Hyde, Professor Ammi, Bradford, 17,

93-
Hydres, 80

Ideal of Jesus, The, 96.

261

262 INDEX

Imperturbability, i6i, 174, 224.
Immortality, 98.
Independence, 204.
Ingersoll, Robert, 18, 19.
Irving, Edward, 121.

Judson, Adoniram, 5.
Judson, Edward, 157.

Keene, 21, 24, 30, 44.
Kennebunkport, 51.
Knapp, W. I., 21.

Langley cottage, 33, 34. 42.
Lefleur, Reverend Theodore, 50.
Lincklaen, John, 7, 8.
Love of music, 106, 107. 155.
Love of nature, 26, 67, 107.
Loyalty, 173, i74-

Madison University, 21.
McGill University, 49.
Merrill, George E., 95
Method as teacher, 215, 216.
Miner, Absalom, 4.
Miner, Thomas, 5.
Miner, Urania, 6,
Montreal, 47, 48.

Naples, 83

Newton Center, 30, 33, 35, 36, 44, 47,

109, 120, 131, 134-
North Brookfield, 5, 6, 7.

Oberlin, 75.

Oldtoum Folks, 2.

Olivet Baptist Church, 47, 49, 136.

Oneida Conference Seminary, 12.

Optimism, 59, 92, 252.

Ordination, 21, 24.

Outline of Christian Theology, The, 68-

71, 118, 126, 141, 142, 151, 185, 205,

207, 257.
Oxford, 78

Pasteur, Louis, 99.

Pastorate, first, 24; second, 33; third,

62-64.
Payiie, Elisha, 3, 4.
Payne, Samuel, 3.
Philology, interest in, 103.
Pinebluff, N. C, 86.
Prayers, 220, 226.

Raymond article, 119.
Richmond, 76.
Rowntree, J. Wilhelm, 75.

Schmidt, Nathaniel, 62.

School-days, 14-18.

Self-forgetfubess, 165, 203.

Separatists, i.

Sincerity, 171, 181, 207.

Sisters, 9, 172, i73-

Sixty Years With tJte Bible, i, 10, 22,

45,51,53,95,102,117,131-
Smith, Samuel Francis, 37-
Some Recent Aspects of tlie Ministry, 24.
Stackpole article, 115.
Stetson University, 93.
Sunday-school work, 25.

Thomas, President John M., 125.
Thomdale, 112.

University of Chicago confers degree

of Doctor of Divinity, 75.
Use of the Scriptures in Theology, The,

87.

Value of Doctor Clarke's books, 123,
124, 185, 228, 259.

Warner, Charles Dudley, 18, 19.

Waterville, N. Y., 27.

White, Professor Aaron, 16, 17

Whitesboro, 12.

Work of Christ for Our Salvation, 75.

Yale University confers degree of Doc-
tor of Divinity, 74; lectures in, 86,
87, 97. 98-

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