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MY PORTFOLIO 
 
 A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS 
 
 BT 
 
 AUSTIN PHELPS, D.D. 
 
 LATE PROFESSOR IN ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, AUTHOR 
 
 OF *• MEN AND BOOKS " AND " THE THEORY 
 
 OF PREACHING" 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHAELES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1882 
 
Copyright et 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 
 1882. 
 
 iFranfilin |&rc?^ : 
 
 RAND, AVERY, AND COMPANY, 
 BOSTON. 
 
PrillTGE' ■' 1.^ 
 titC. OCT loo/ 
 
 THSOLOGIdW 
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 The papers here republished are a selection of arti- 
 cles printed during the last few years in the columns 
 of "The Congregationalist," "The Independent," 
 "The Christian Union," and "The Sunday School 
 Times." The reception which has been given to them 
 encourages me to believe that then- usefulness may be 
 extended in their present form. 
 
 A minister who is the son of a minister finds no 
 other element in his professional training so valuable 
 as the influence, obvious or latent, of his father. The 
 mental life-stream flows from father to son with a 
 more electric continuity than is often realized in any 
 other profession. The consequent sense of filial obli- 
 gation grows more profound with increasing years. It 
 is with this consciousness of the very large place held 
 in my own professional life by the colloquial instruc- 
 tions of my father, that I have given to his remarkable 
 ministry the first portion of this volume. 
 
 AUSTIN PHELPS. 
 Andover Theological Semenaby. 
 September, 1882. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. A Pastor of the Last Genekatioist. I. . 1 
 
 II. A Pastok of the Last Generation. II. 14 
 
 III. A Pastoe of the Last Generation. III. 26 
 lY. The Eights of Believers in Ancient 
 
 Creeds. 1 38 
 
 V. The Rights of Believers in Ancient 
 
 Creeds. II 47 
 
 YI. The Biblical Doctrine of Retribution . 58 
 YII. The Puritan Theory of Amusements . GQ- 
 YIII. The Christian Theory of Aiviusements . 74-" 
 ^IX. Is Card-Playing a Christian Amuse- 
 ment? 80 
 
 X. The Question of Sunday Cars ... 88 
 SI. Woman-Suffrage as judged by the 
 
 Working of ISTegro-Suffrage . , . 94 ' 
 XII. Reform in the Political Status of 
 
 Women 105-- 
 
 XIII. The Length of Sermons . . . .117 
 ' XIY. The Calvinistic Theory of Preaching, 123 ' 
 XY. The Theology of "The Marble Faun," 130'^' 
 7 XYI. The Debt of the Nation to New Eng- 
 land 140 "^ 
 
 V XYII. Ought the Pulpit to ignore Spiritual- 
 ism ? 150 
 
 V 
 
yi Contents. 
 
 ^HAPTER PAGE 
 XVIII. How SHALL THE PULPIT TREAT SPIRITU- 
 ALISM ? IGl 
 
 >/^XIX. Foreign and Home Missions as seen by 
 
 Candidates for the Ministry . . 172 
 
 '' XX. Foreign Missions, their Eange of Ap- 
 peal for Missionaries limited . . 181 
 XXI. Congregation ALiSTS and Presbyterians: 
 
 A Plea for Union 191 
 
 XXII. Congregationalists and Presbyterians; 
 
 Methods of Union 199 
 
 XXIII. The Preaching of Albert Barnes . . 205 
 
 XXIV. A Vacation with Dr. Bushnell . . 219 
 XXV. Prayer viewed in the Light of the 
 
 Christian Consciousness .... 230 
 
 XXVI. Intercessory Prayer 239 
 
 XXVII. Hints Auxiliary to Faith in Prayer . 244 
 
 XXVIII. The Vision of Christ 250 
 
 XXIX. The Cross in the Door .... 254 
 '^ XXX. The Premature Closing of a Life's 
 
 Work 25S' 
 
 XXXI. What do we know of the Heavenly 
 
 Life? 271 
 
MT POETFOLIO. 
 
My Portfolio. 
 
 I. 
 
 A PASTOR OP THE LAST GENERATION. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 When a man of God, who has been blessed' 
 in his work above the average of ministers, out- 
 lives his own generation, and the "cloud" of 
 extreme old age has " received him out of our 
 sight," may not filial reverence be pardoned in its 
 desire to tell the living, and specially the youthful, 
 ministry what manner of man he was? Thus 
 would I pay my last earthly tribute to my vener- 
 able father, by speaking of him to my younger 
 brethren and my late pupils. 
 
 The Rev. Eliakim Phelps, D.D., died on the 
 twenty-ninth day of December, 1880, at the resi- 
 dence of one of his sons in Weehawken, N.J., at 
 the age of ninety jems and nine months. He 
 was of English Puritan descent through both 
 father and mother. His was the seventh genera- 
 tion of the family name in this country. The 
 
 1 
 
2 My Portfolio. 
 
 first, the Hon. William Phelps, emigrated only 
 ten years after the sailing of " The Mayflower." 
 That Hon. William the family hold in great rev- 
 erence. He was one of the leaders of the colony 
 which marched from Dorchester through the un- 
 broken wilderness to found the town of Windsor 
 in Connecticut, in 1635. There he became a man 
 of mark, as Stiles's "- History " says, in both Church 
 and State. He was one of the eight, who, by 
 authority of the Massachusetts Legislature, con- 
 stituted the first legislative and judicial body of 
 the infant settlements of Connecticut. 
 
 The religious and political heritage of the fam- 
 ily may be inferred from the fact, that several of 
 them received grants of land from Oliver Crom- 
 well, and that John, a younger brother of the 
 pioneer William, was secretary to the Protector 
 in 1654. At the Restoration he fled to Connecti- 
 cut, where he lived in hiding, as the family legend 
 reads, with the regicides Whalley and Goffe. 
 Afterwards he went to Switzerland, and died at 
 Vevay. Such were the ancestral memories which 
 pervaded the home of my father's childhood. They 
 gave him an almost intolerant antipathy to prelacy 
 in all forms. Grim ancestors from the bar of Lord 
 Jeffreys looked out through all his opinions of 
 church government. He took great satisfaction 
 in the fact that the blood of men persecuted by 
 Laud and Strafford ran in his veins. 
 
 His father was a plain farmer in Hampshire 
 County, Massachusetts; but he was one of the 
 
A Pastor of the Last Generation. 3 
 
 natural cliiefs so often found in New-En al a iul 
 towns, whose force of character lifts them into 
 leadership in all local affiiirs. He was the per- 
 petual selectman, moderator, counselor, referee, 
 representative in the " Great and General Court," 
 as the Legislature of Massachusetts was then re- 
 spectfully entitled in the nomenclature- of the 
 hills. He represented Belchertown in that body 
 for sixteen successive years. He bore striking 
 resemblance in person and character to the Hon. 
 Jeremiah Mason, late of the Boston bar. 
 
 One of the earliest and latest impressions I 
 received of my father was that of his pardonable, 
 though sometimes amusing, pride of family. Par- 
 donable, because their knightly escutcheon, so 
 dear to English blood ; and their descent in the 
 shadowy past from the Italian "Welfs," — the 
 German " Guelphs " of historic fame, — and their 
 connection thus with the regnant house of Hano- 
 ver on the throne of Great Britain ; and the peril- 
 ous service of one of them in high office near the 
 person of Cromwell; and their kindred, in the 
 person of my father's grandmother, with Lady Jane 
 Grey, whose name she bore, — were all merged 
 and submerged, in his thoughts, in the one more 
 than royal distinction, that, as far back as the 
 family name could be traced in historic record, 
 every one in his own branch of it had been either a 
 minister or other dignitary of the Church of Christ. 
 It was a life-long cause of gratulation to him 
 that he inherited the blood of eight generations 
 
4 My Portfolio, 
 
 of Christian ministers and deacons. This fact I 
 have known ever since I can remember. The gew- 
 gaws of ancestral fame before mentioned I did not 
 
 o 
 
 hear of till I was near manhood ; and some of them 
 I then learned not from him, but from the comments 
 of an English visitor on our family door-plate. 
 
 I have never known a man — I have known a 
 few women — who had a more profound reverence 
 than he had for the office and work of a Christian 
 pastor. To him they were above all other digni- 
 ties on earth. He honestly believed that the pas- 
 toral office had no superior. He refused to advise 
 my exchange of a pastoral pulpit for a professor- 
 ship at Andover. When he called on Gen. Jack- 
 son, then President of the United States, his 
 associates were amused at the stately repose with 
 which he greeted the nation's head. To be a 
 preacher of the gospel was a loftier honor than to 
 be a prince of the blood-royal. So pervasive was 
 this conviction in the atmosphere of his household, 
 that I distinctly remember my resolve, before I 
 was four years old, that I would become a minis- 
 ter ; not so much because the ministry was my 
 father's guild, as because he had taught me noth- 
 ing above that to which ambition could aspire. 
 Was not ours the house of Aaron, and ours the 
 tribe of Levi? 
 
 In a New-England inland town three-quarters 
 of a century ago, it was a decree fore-ordained, 
 tliat such a youth as he was should find or make 
 his way to the college and the pulpit. It was one 
 
A Pastor of the Last Generation, 5 
 
 of the prerogatives of a Congregational pastor 
 to foresee the predestined clergymen among the 
 youth of his charge. It was in the religious faith 
 of a New-England family that such a predestina- 
 tion must be executed, at whatever cost to them. 
 My father's pastor set the prophetic eye on him 
 at the " spelling-bees," which were the climax of 
 the examinations at the village schoolhouse. My 
 father commonly led off one of the contending 
 battalions, under the pastor's imperial review. 
 Samuel to the sons of Kish was hardly more 
 authoritative. 
 
 Thus called, "as if a man had inquired at the 
 oracle of God," he saw only a question of time. 
 He went through the hardships of poverty, which 
 have made so many of our New-England clergy 
 self-reliant and original theologians. Being one 
 of nine children compelled to hatchel a living 
 from a Hampshire County hill-farm of about two 
 hundred acres, rocks and whortleberries included, 
 he could receive but little aid from his father. He 
 worked at the rocks and the whortleberries till he 
 was nineteen years of age. He has often pointed 
 out to me the bowlders which he blasted to make 
 a rude mountain-road from the homestead to the 
 turnpike. That road was like the road to Jeru- 
 salem. It was the only avenue from the farm to 
 the two chief essentials of existence to a Yankee 
 family, — the schoolhouse and the church. 
 
 In summers he reaped the rye-field with a hand- 
 sickle ; wheat being a rare luxury, reserved for 
 
6 My Portfolio, 
 
 the honor of hospitality, or as the honest mother, 
 not adroit of speech, used to express it, "for /ear 
 somebody should come." He either attended or 
 "kept" the district school three months in the 
 winters. He held the plow with a Latin gram- 
 mar tucked under his waistband, and conjugated 
 " amo " while the oxen rested at the end of the 
 furrow. One of the first tokens which his father 
 detected of the son's destiny was the discovery 
 that "Eliakim," with the same yoke of oxen, 
 could not plow as large a patch of ground in a 
 day as his younger brother. He did not overwork 
 the oxen. Twice a week he walked three miles 
 and a half, after his day's work was done, to recite 
 to his pastor in the evening, trudging back again 
 in the moonlight or the storm, as it might happen. 
 In his twentieth winter, after chojDping wood 
 with his brothers from dawn to twilight, he read 
 a second-hand Virgil at night, lying flat on the 
 kitchen-floor, before the huge old-fashioned fire- 
 place, while liis brothers and sisters were hatchel- 
 ing flax around him. They were too thrifty to 
 burn other lights than that of the pine-knots which 
 they had providently saved from the wood-pile of 
 the summer before. He thus created a perpetual 
 weeping of one eye, which discouraged scholarly 
 tastes in him through life, and became the theme 
 of friendly banter, when, thirty years later, he 
 used to address the General Assembly of the 
 Presbyterian Church. His introductory gesture 
 was usually a comical slap at his weeping eye. 
 
A Pastor of the Last G-eneration, 7 
 
 He went to college in a homespun suit from the 
 fleece of the sheep he had washed and sheared; 
 he wore stout brogans made by an itinerant cob- 
 bler from the hide of the cow he had milked and 
 fatted ; having made with his own hands, of boards 
 from the tree he had felled, the paper-lined trunk 
 which contained his scanty wardrobe and more 
 scanty library. 
 
 In such privations, not thought of as self-deni- 
 als, the foundations of the man were laid. Words- 
 worth's "plain living and high thinking" are 
 seldom more grandly illustrated than in the un- 
 conscious heroism of many of our New-England 
 3^outh on their way from the plow to the pulpit. 
 Dr. Sprague's " Annals of the American Pulpit " 
 indicate that a large majority of the successful 
 ministers of the last generation went through the 
 discipline of the straitened purse and the frugal 
 home. We who have never known any other 
 than homes of ease and culture know very little 
 of the cost of our inheritance. They were great 
 men, who amidst the adjuncts of manual labor 
 only, and the talk about beeves and swine, with 
 scarcely an intellectual stimulus in their homes, 
 except the report from the town-meeting, and the 
 daily prayer, and the word of God, began the line 
 of culture in their families. That is a costly heri- 
 tage which they have transmitted in gentle blood 
 to their children and their cliildren's children. It 
 may take, as wise men tell us, three generations 
 to turn out a scholar thoroughbred ; but all honor 
 
8 My Portfolio, 
 
 to liim, who, in obedience to the cravings of an 
 aspiring spirit, heads the trio. 
 
 My father entered, well fitted for those times, 
 the sophomore class of Brown University in 1811. 
 After two years of study he was attracted, by the 
 then splendid fame of Dr. Nott, to Union College, 
 where he graduated, with an honorary oration, in 
 1814. Among his collegiate associates were the 
 Rev. Benjamin B. Wisner, D.D., of the Old South 
 Church, Boston; the Rev. Francis Wayland, D.D., 
 president of Brown University; the Rev. Joel 
 Hawes, D.D., of Hartford ; and the late President 
 of the United States, Martin Van Buren. 
 
 He was one of a class of sixteen, formed as the 
 nucleus of a theological seminary at Schenectady, 
 but which was soon transferred, and became the 
 well-known seminary at Auburn, N.Y. His chief 
 theological training he received from Dr. Nott and 
 Dr. Yates of Union College. The theology of Dr. 
 Nott was — what it was. To his pupil it seemed 
 very slippery : he could not grasp it. That of Dr. 
 Yates was the Confession of Dort pure and sim- 
 ple. With him the young theologue held stout con- 
 troversy in the " Conflict of the Ages." He could 
 repeat the Westminster Catechism by heart when 
 he was twelve years old. But the theology of his 
 manhood, both of heart and head, he fashioned 
 for himself in those friendly jousts with Dr. Yates. 
 It was New England grappling with Old Holland. 
 The young Puritan fought it out as if nobody had 
 ever crossed swords in the same fight before. He 
 
A Pastor of the Last Generation. 9 
 
 built his theology as if he were laying the founda- 
 tions of the world dc novo. In temperament, and 
 by necessity of original make, he was a " New- 
 School man." If he had been trained to an ada- 
 mantine interpretation of the Confession of Dor- 
 drecht, before President Edwards was born, he 
 would have floundered out of it, in some way, into 
 some equivalent of the " New-England theology." 
 He was to that " manner born." Yet to his con- 
 sciousness every iota of it was a discovery of his 
 own. That which Froude says of Latimer was 
 true of him, — " He was not an echo, but a voice." 
 
 In this, as in some other things, he strongly 
 resembled the late Rev. Dr. Finney of Oberlin. 
 The theological elements were so compacted in 
 the intellectual make of both of them, that no 
 drill of the schools, and no authority of council 
 or synod, could ever have made a high Calvinist 
 of either. In those conversational encounters with 
 Dr. Yates, Dr. Phelps was unconsciously prepar- 
 ing for the part he afterwards acted in opposition 
 to the disruption of the Presbyterian Church in 
 1837-1838. 
 
 He read theology also, for a while, with the Rev. 
 Dr. Wittar of Wilbraham, Mass. I am unable to 
 find traces of the influence of that estimable pas- 
 tor in the subsequent life of his pupil. I suspect 
 that the magnet which drew him secretly to Wil- 
 braham was, that, in the choir of the village church, 
 the young and beautiful one was waiting for his 
 coming, who became the helpmeet of his ministry 
 
10 3Iy Portfolio, 
 
 for nearly thirty years, and whom he gratefully 
 recognized as his superior in power with God. Of 
 her, not long before his death, when memory, dying 
 to other things, grew young again to that golden 
 age, he said, " Nine and twenty years we walked 
 together, and I never knew her to do a wrong 
 thing, or to say an unwise one." 
 
 A son is a less impartial judge of a mother's 
 character than of that of a father. Are there any 
 mothers who are not Madonnas? But disinterested 
 observers of this one have told me that her re- 
 markable judgment, her reticence of speech, and 
 her pre-eminent religious culture, well deserved 
 her husband's tribute. The promise, " He shall 
 give his angels charge over thee," was fulfilled to 
 him in the presence of one ministering spirit in 
 earthly form. He was one of the many successful 
 pastors who owe their success largely to prudent 
 and godly wives. He was one of the few who 
 have grace to see and acknowledge the obligation. 
 
 He was licensed to preach by the Congregational 
 Association of ministers of Windham County, 
 Connecticut. It was his purpose to seek a settle- 
 ment in the then destitute regions of " the West." 
 This probably meant Western New York, which 
 was then rapidly filling up with families from New 
 England, or, at the farthest, Ohio, where explor- 
 ing missionaries were then traversing forests by 
 the aid of blazed trees. But by one of those 
 minute providences which turn the little rill of a 
 man's career far back near its trickling springs, 
 
A Pastor of the Last Generation. 11 
 
 he was invited to supply the pulpit of the church 
 in West Brookfield, Mass., for two sabbaths, while 
 another man, to whom a '' call " had been given, 
 should deliberate and decide upon his answer. 
 The result was, that he became the pastor of that 
 ancient church, as colleague with the Rev. Dr. 
 Ward, in 1816. 
 
 That church was then composed, to a consid- 
 erable extent, of members who had been admitted 
 under the "Halfway Covenant." The youthful 
 pastor gave unmistakable token of his future by 
 making it a condition of his settlement that that 
 disastrous usage should be abolished. The change 
 could not be achieved by a vote. It encountered 
 bitter opposition, and was a long process. But he 
 was sustained by the best element in the church, 
 at the head of which he reckoned his powerful 
 and constant friend, the Hon. Judge Foster, grand- 
 father of the Hon. Dwight Foster, late of the 
 Supreme Court of Massachusetts. The private 
 counsel, as well as the public support, of Judge 
 Foster, was of great value to him in that perilous 
 beginning of his career. We of this generation 
 have little conception of the difficulty in those 
 times of making an orthodox faith and an active 
 spiritual religion seem intellectually and socially 
 respectable. One man of high culture and equal 
 piety in a community was a tower of strength to 
 a young preacher of the despised faith. 
 
 One word expresses in miniature his character 
 as a preacher. He belonged to that class of 
 
12 My Portfolio, 
 
 preachers, wlio by temperament, as well as by 
 theological conviction and providential opportu- 
 nity, are revivalists ; not itinerant evangelists, 
 but pastoral leaders of spiritual reformations. 
 Certain men in the ministry seem created by God 
 for that service. The best of them are found in 
 the pastoral office. They are not only profound 
 believers in the reality of such works of divine 
 grace, but they possess natural gifts and tastes 
 which make them a power in popular awakenings. 
 They are prophets in their discernment of the 
 conditions in which such awakenings are practi- 
 cable. They foresee them in their coming. They 
 have electric affinities with the heart of live audi- 
 ences. With such gifts is combined a certain 
 power of " natural selection " in their choice of 
 homiletic materials and methods. I call it " natu- 
 ral selection," because it is much more the work- 
 ing of the oratorical instinct, moved by the grace 
 of God, than of any scholastic teaching, or of 
 conscious deliberation. The result is a marvelous 
 power of quickening, and of command over great 
 assemblies. . 
 
 They are not merely direct and pungent preach- 
 ers, whose aim is to convert souls. Other men 
 are all that who have not their success. Often, 
 indeed usually, they are not men of accomplished 
 scholarship ; nor are their successes necessarily 
 evidence of uncommon spiritual attainments. Men 
 not eminent in these respects often possess the 
 revival temperament, and its cognate gifts, in such 
 
A Pastor of the Last Generation. 13 
 
 large development as to give character to their 
 whole ministry. Wherever they go, they are 
 awakening powers in the pulpit. To the uncon- 
 verted their voice is as the trump of judgment. 
 Dead churches are quickened at their summons. 
 Torpid communities groveling in worldliness are 
 lifted into an upper atmosphere. 
 
 Religious inquirers find in these men a wonder- 
 ful insight into spiritual conditions, and tact in 
 meeting spiritual wants. Though not learned 
 men, they have " the tongue of the learned." They 
 speak the word in season. Common people hear 
 them gladly. A certain power to steady in the 
 very act of arousing, and so to hold well in hand, 
 the emotions of packed audiences, enables them 
 to achieve a wise economy of the moral forces, so 
 as to promote great results in brief time and with 
 the minimum of waste of sensibility. This is the 
 look of their work to critical observers. For the 
 most part, they are themselves unconscious of 
 the profound and complicated art which they 
 practice. Like other chosen builders of great 
 things, they build better than they know. 
 
II. 
 
 A PASTOR OP THE LAST GENERATION. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 The providence of God works with its chosen 
 instruments. Men of the revival temperament 
 described in the preceding pages, God commonly 
 calls, by obvious opportunity, to leadership in great 
 awakenings. For this cause came they into the 
 world. Sometimes, like the elder Edwards, they 
 are men of, in one sense, profound learning and 
 eminent piety ; but they are not necessarily such. 
 Nor are their temperament and their providential 
 work very friendly to either the tastes or the 
 habits of eminent scholarship. The combination 
 of all these elements in one man is very rare. 
 When has a second Edwards appeared in our 
 American churches? Indeed, was even his learn- 
 ing, in the sense of knowledge of libraries, any 
 thing burdensome? The providence of God ap- 
 pears often very daring in its choice of imperfect 
 instruments to do marvelous things. 
 
 Such preachers as the Rev. Dr. Davies of Vir- 
 ginia, the Rev. Gilbert Tennent of New Jersey, 
 the Rev. Dr. Nettleton of Connecticut, the Rev. 
 
 14 
 
A Pastor of the Last Generation. 15 
 
 Lyman Beeclier in Boston, the Rev. Dr. Taylor of 
 New Haven, the Rev. Dr. Finney of Oberlin, the 
 Rev. Dr. Bhickburn of Missouri, and the Rev. Dr. 
 Kirk of Boston, were representatives of this class 
 of preachers. In the direct work of converting 
 souls, and augmenting the numbers of the church, 
 these men had no superiors. Such men do not 
 execute as well, nor do they often estimate at its 
 true value, the work of educating churches up to 
 the more mature experience of a sanctified culture. 
 To this class of preachers the subject of this 
 sketch belonged. Almost immediately after his 
 ordination at West Brookfield, that venerable 
 church began to quake as it had never done 
 before since the Pequot war. His voice was that 
 of one crying in the wilderness. Professors of 
 religion under the " Halfway Covenant " were 
 shaken out of their dreams. As usual, the 
 awakening of men and women of blameless lives 
 roused opposition. Some of the honored leaders 
 of the church feared such an unwonted ado about 
 religion. It was not comfortable. Things were 
 not as they used to be. What was that but 
 fanaticism ? Evening meetings were objected to. 
 Their fathers had not been guilty of evening meet- 
 ings. Tallow candles — and the ancient church 
 edifice contained no provision for any thing better 
 — were not a churchly means of illumination in 
 divine things. It was denounced as a disorder, 
 if not a sin, to carry public worship into times 
 and places which God had not consecrated to the 
 
16 My Portfolio. 
 
 purpose. Did not the Lord know how much time 
 could be wisely given to public praying? The 
 danger of nocturnal meetings to the youth of the 
 two sexes was dreaded with pious horror. Un- 
 usual anxiety was felt for the overworked sexton. 
 All things considered, what was the world coming 
 to? The headstrong young preacher who was 
 turning it upside down was threatened with a 
 short pastorate. 
 
 On one occasion his spirit was stirred within 
 him at seeing a crowd of the young men surround- 
 ing his own door at the hour he had appointed 
 for a meeting of religious inquiry. Their hope 
 was to intimidate the young women from attend- 
 ing it. As he approached, they fell back to the 
 right and the left ; and, as he walked up between, 
 he cheerily invited them all to enter with him. 
 " Whales in the sea God's voice obey." Laughing 
 and jesting, the crowd followed him in. The 
 dignity and beauty of the young wife awed them. 
 Some of them were soon weeping; and before 
 the winter was over the majority of them were 
 converted. 
 
 His was one of the earliest Sunday schools es- 
 tablished in this country. At the time, he knew 
 of but one other. He organized his own on the 
 very next day after he heard of one. Some of 
 the best members of his church thought it a dese- 
 cration of the sabbath. They refused to send 
 their children. He might have been overcome in 
 the controversy, had he not been supported by the 
 
A Pastor of the Last Generation. 17 
 
 wise counsel of Judge Foster. Said the judge to 
 the opposers, ''If you know your own interests, 
 you will not drive this young man from you by 
 refusing to let him work in his own way. Every 
 captain must be master of his own ship. Give 
 him time, and see what comes of it." Time 
 showed that the Lord was Avith the young man. 
 
 On another occasion, a party of rude fellows 
 sent to him a beautiful but notorious woman, who 
 had been the ruin of some of them, persuading 
 her to represent herself as an inquirer, anxious 
 for her soul's salvation. They hoped to entangle 
 him in some indiscretion. He detected the sham 
 the instant she made known her errand. He 
 turned, and invited his 3'oung wife to remain at 
 the interview ; and, after kneeling in prayer, he 
 gave to the poor creature an admonition of such 
 caustic fidelity, that she went back to the sons of 
 Belial, and told them that she had been on a fool's 
 errand, and that it would take longer heads than 
 theirs to " catch the parson." 
 
 The revival advanced with increasing power, 
 till the visible fruits of the " Halfway Covenant " 
 were nearly eradicated from the church, and the 
 whole town was pervaded by a new spirit. The 
 work extended also into surrounding towns. He 
 was sent for from far and near to labor in similar 
 scenes. He was not partial to " evangelism " in 
 the conduct of revivals in the older settlements of 
 the country. His theory was, that mutual pastoral 
 help was more effective, and less dangerous to the 
 
18 My Portfolio, 
 
 unity and good order of the churches. On this 
 theory he acted. Bramtree, Spencer, Somers, 
 Warren, Sturbridge, Ware, Worcester, Northamp- 
 ton, Boston, and other places, witnessed the suc- 
 cess of his preaching, especially in arousing the 
 impenitent, and leading them to Christ. Thirty 
 years afterwards I found traces of his work still 
 remaining among the older members of the Park- 
 street Church, in which he preached six weeks in 
 the midst of a revival. Deacon Proctor, a well- 
 known officer of that church, if I mistake not, met 
 the decisive crisis of his religious life at that time. 
 
 The spirit of progressive enterprise led the 
 country minister to organize a temperance society 
 at West Brookfield, on the principle of total absti- 
 nence, when only one other member, even of the 
 Brookfield Association of Ministers, supported 
 the movement. He was the first clergyman of 
 the county to remove the liquor-bottles from his 
 sideboard. He bore calmly the charge that he 
 did it from parsimonious motives. An aged cleri- 
 cal associate, who had more than once been seen 
 to stagger up the pulpit-stairs on a Sunday after- 
 noon, begged of his young brother not to be 
 wiser than his fathers, nor more temperate than 
 his blessed Master. For one, he wanted no better 
 example than the Lord Jesus. 
 
 The mind of the young pastor was at that time 
 on the alert to discover and to welcome any good 
 cause. Foreign missions were a novelty to the 
 American churches. Edward Everett satirized 
 
A Pastor of the Last Generation. 19 
 
 tliem in rhetoric unequaled. They found in my 
 father a congenial spirit from the first. It was 
 one of the entertainments of my childhood to 
 teach the alphabet, when I knew little more my- 
 self, to the heathen youth whom he took into his 
 family. The first missionary mechanic sent to the 
 Hawaiian Islands was a member of his cono^resja- 
 tion. At the same time he was one of the most 
 active friends of Amherst College, and one of the 
 clerical donors to its treasury when its existence 
 was imperiled. It was once my privilege to 
 count the pile of silver-pieces on his table, which 
 he had collected, in response to the appeal of 
 Professor Stuart, for the library of Andover Semi- 
 nary, — so varied and broadcast were the sympa- 
 thies of the country parson. 
 
 The initiation which he received to the work of 
 the pulpit by a powerful work of divine grace, 
 wrought an effect on him which is often witnessed 
 in the experience of pastors of the revival tem- 
 perament. He fell into a snare. When years 
 passed, and the revival was not repeated, he be- 
 came restless and dissatisfied. They seemed to 
 him years of waste. Theorize as he might about 
 it, and his theory was correct enough, yet it 
 was not in the nature of things that he should 
 find in the slow education of the church the same 
 bounding pulse of activity, and the same sense 
 of achievement and of conquest, which exhilarated 
 him when the tide of the religious awakening ran 
 high. This is one of the re-actionary evils of re- 
 
20 My Portfolio. 
 
 vivals of which pastors need to take wise account. 
 He, in liis youthful and impatient zeal, did not. 
 Like the rest of us, he read providences through 
 the lens of temperament and prepossession, and 
 at length persuaded himself that God called him 
 elsewhere. He resigned his charge, and became 
 the principal of the "Ladies' High School" at 
 Pittsfield, Mass. 
 
 But scarcely was he inaugurated to his new 
 office, when he discovered that he had committed, 
 as he always afterwards called it, the great mis- 
 take of his life. He had left his heart, and the 
 best capabilities of his nature, behind him, in the 
 pulpit which he had abandoned. God had called 
 him from the sheepfold to preach, not to teach. 
 He reproached himself with ascetic severity for 
 having allowed himself to be allured or driven 
 from the true work of his life. But, at that 
 humiliating juncture, his life illustrated signally 
 the magnanimity with which God often overrules 
 the mistakes of his chosen ones. 
 
 It happened that the pulpit of the First Church 
 in Pittsfield was then vacant, by reason of the 
 absence of its invalid pastor on a long furlough.- 
 My father was invited to be its pastor jjro tempore. 
 He engaged in the work with the humility of a 
 penitent prodigal. The result, under God, was a 
 revival of marvelous power, even for that favored 
 town, which had but recently enjoyed the ministry 
 of the Rev. Dr. Humphrey. In a few months, 
 more than three hundred converts were admitted 
 
A Pastor of the Last Generation, 21 
 
 to the cliurclies, the majority of them attributing 
 their conversion to my father's labors. He was 
 once more in his natural element. Night and day 
 he labored for souls, and God gave him his heart's 
 desire. 
 
 His longing to return permanently to pastoral 
 office was deepened. As soon as his engagement 
 with the trustees of the High School would per- 
 mit his honorable retirement, he resigned the 
 position, though his success in it had been un- 
 doubted, and it had begun to be pecuniarily 
 profitable. He resumed his original purpose of 
 seeking a pulpit in Western New York. In 1830 
 he succeeded the Rev. Henry Axtell, D.D., as pas- 
 tor of the First Presbyterian Church at Geneva, 
 N.Y. On his way there, he preached with success 
 in a revival in the city of Rochester. 
 
 At Geneva he remained six years. Again his 
 ministry was attended with rich results in the 
 conversion of the impenitent. At that period he 
 'vV^as one of Dr. Finney's pastoral coadjutors. 
 Though not friendly to the employment of evan- 
 gelists in churches well provided with the agencies 
 of churchly work, yet he recognized cordially 
 providential exceptions. Of these he believed Dr. 
 Finney to be one. This, it should be remembered, 
 was long before Dr. Finney had gained that con- 
 fidence of the churches which he enjoyed at Ober- 
 lin. My father, though he did not approve all his 
 methods of procedure, yet was his stanch friend 
 and supporter. His recognition of that remarka- 
 
22 My Portfolio, 
 
 ble man as one chosen of God to a great work, 
 was an instance of rare foresight of coming history. 
 
 More than four hundred persons were added to 
 the churches of Geneva who traced their conver- 
 sion to my father's ministry. Among them were 
 many cases of overwhelming conviction of sin. 
 Conversions like those of Edwards and Brainerd 
 were frequent. He used to be summoned at 
 midnight to souls in despair. Some cases also 
 occurred which looked fearfully like instances of 
 the unpardonable sin. The narrative of one such 
 he published, and it had a circulation of nearly a 
 hundred and fifty thousand copies. The culmina- 
 tion of his life's usefulness probably occurred in 
 that revival. 
 
 I well remember the debates in the parsonage 
 between him and those of his clerical brethren 
 who distrusted Dr. Finney. He had little to say 
 of clerical theories, for or against. He used to 
 appeal to the facts known and read of all men. 
 There were the dead churches before Dr. Finney's 
 advent, and there were the same churches teem- 
 ing with life afterwards. What more need be 
 said? For many years he kept himself informed 
 as to the permanence of Dr. Finney's work. The 
 statistics he collected from the churches of West- 
 ern New York confirmed his judgment of those 
 revivals, that they were the genuine work of God. 
 It was no small part of an education for the min- 
 istry to listen to those clerical discussions about 
 the great evangelist. One of my father's axioms, 
 
A Pastor of the Last Generation. 23 
 
 I remember, impressed me deeply : " Better do 
 some things wrong than do nothing." Few things 
 illustrate the adventurous spirit of his life better 
 than that proverb. It covers, also, a very large 
 portion of the debatable ground between the 
 friends of revivals and those good men who are 
 more keenly sensible of the perils of them than 
 of their benefits. 
 
 Rochester, Lockport, Lyons, Penn Yan, Canan- 
 daigua, Ovid, Buffalo, Auburn, Utica, were among 
 the localities in which he preached with marked 
 success. In those years he rarely, if ever, preached 
 sermons which were not apparently the means of 
 immediate and visible usefulness. To my boyish 
 judgment he seemed to live in one continuous 
 revival. Such was the atmosphere of the parson- 
 age. Such was the spirit of all his preaching. 
 His days were spent, when not in his study, in 
 the work of conversation with men upon the reali- 
 ties of eternity. 
 
 I remember once riding with liim six miles into 
 the country in search of a man, not one of his 
 congregation, but who professed to be an infidel, 
 and whom my father claimed on the principle 
 which he often affirmed as the rule of his pastoral 
 labors, — " The man who belongs nowhere belongs 
 to me, and I must give account of him." On the 
 occasion referred to he spent the whole afternoon 
 in argument and friendly admonition to the un- 
 believer. I could not judge of his success : I only 
 knew that he seemed to have made the man his 
 
24 My Portfolio, 
 
 friend. One of the wealthiest men in his parish 
 was believed to be unapproachable on the subject 
 of religion. The pastor, not daunted by the 
 report, called upon him, followed him into his 
 magnificent garden, and, after discussing the fruits 
 of the season till his host seemed to be in good 
 humor, sat down with him on a bench in the 
 arbor, and told liim his errand. The old man 
 drew himself up, and said, in hackneyed pride, 
 " Sir, my religion lies between me and my God. 
 When I feel the need of other aid, I will send for 
 you." The pastor grasped his hand, and replied, 
 " My friend, you and I may both be in eternity 
 long before that time. I can not afford to wait, if 
 you can." In three minutes the sinner of sixty 
 years was weeping like a child. He confessed 
 that for weeks he had been contending with the 
 spirit of God. 
 
 In this matter of personal fidelity to the souls 
 of men, I must regard him as a model pastor. He 
 had little confidence in the usefulness of a pastor 
 whom his people saw only or chiefly in the pulpit. 
 Volumes would be required to relate the narrative 
 of his pastoral faithfulness and its reward. The 
 staple theme of conversation in his home was the 
 salvation of men. I well remember the novelty 
 of the discovery to me when I left home, and 
 learned that there were clerical families in which 
 this was not true. The home-life of my father for 
 years led me to interpret literally the apostolic 
 injunctions respecting " holy conversation." He 
 
A Pastor of the Last Generation. 25 
 
 read little in those years of revival : he had no 
 time for it, outside of the work of his pulpit. Yet 
 I remember heavy additions to his library made 
 at that time. His first purchase of a copy of 
 Shakspeare occurred then. But his life's work 
 was that of preaching Christ publicly, and from 
 house to house. The " Apostle to the Gentiles " 
 could scarcely have given himself ^more devotedly 
 to that one thing. 
 
 Still his life did not make on an observer the im- 
 pression of professional routine. It had the look 
 of the natural adjustment to the conditions of his 
 calling. It was not the contraction of a narrow 
 mind ; it was the intensity of a concentrated 
 mind. Whatever may be true of other professions, 
 that of a Christian pastor, whose work God may 
 at any time cover with foreshadowings of the day 
 of judgment, by a mysterious awakening of the 
 popular conscience, must command these two ele- 
 ments of executive force, — mental intensity and 
 mental unity. A cooler temperament, or a more 
 complex and reticulated life, can not meet the de- 
 mands of the situation. The successes which 
 great awakenings indicate are never achieved by 
 such a life. 
 
III. 
 
 A PASTOE OF THE LAST GENEEATIOK 
 
 PAET III. 
 
 The results of my father's labors were much 
 beyond those which are commonly appreciable 
 and tangible in the experience of pastors. It is 
 the life-long trial of some good men, that their 
 life's work is so absorbed in general currents of 
 influence, that they can not lay their hand upon 
 this thing or that, and say, " This is my reward." 
 His work was not thus buried from his own sight. 
 He modestly estimated the number of those who 
 attributed their conversion directly to his words 
 as about one thousand. Those who knew better 
 than he did the fruits of his work outside of his 
 own churches doubled that number. 
 
 In one respect his work strikingly resembled 
 that of Dr. Finney, though it was not nearly so 
 extensive. Multitudes of church-members who 
 had lived under fatalistic conceptions of divine 
 grace believed themselves to have been enlight- 
 ened, and first really converted, by the blessing 
 of God upon his preaching. The cases were con- 
 stantly occurring of men and women who were 
 
 26 
 
A Pastor of the Last Generation. 27 
 
 relieved from life-long bondage or from skepticism 
 by his methods of presenting the Calvinistic type 
 of theolog}^ Persons from distant places used to 
 seek his counsel, under awakenings of conscience 
 produced by casually hearing a sermon from his 
 lips. Methodists and Quakers came to him with 
 their denominational objections to high Calvinism, 
 and left him, saying, that, " if he was not right in 
 his theology, he was a most dangerous man ; for 
 he had a marvelous power to make the wrong 
 seem right." Cases of conscience were brought 
 to him in large numbers for adjudication. Many 
 infidels, also, were first silenced, and then appar- 
 ently converted, by their first hearing of the 
 gospel, in the New-England methods of interpre- 
 tation, in his pulpit or at the parsonage. Thus 
 presented, it seemed to them for the first time a 
 credible system of truth. 
 
 The waves of spiritual awakening which during 
 those years rolled over the interior and western 
 counties of New York, were interpreted by him as 
 being philosophically the natural re-action from a 
 fatalistic type of Calvinism to one more con- 
 sistent with the Scriptures and with the necessary 
 beliefs of men. The biography of Dr. Finney 
 gives ample evidence of the correctness of this 
 view. Gross distortions of the Calvinistic the- 
 ology had got possession of the popular faith 
 throughout large sections of the central and west- 
 ern counties. Errors they were, which nobody — 
 Old School, or New, or neither — ever preached. 
 
28 My Portfolio, 
 
 They illustrated the principle which justifies even 
 a fastidious care for soundness in the faith, — that 
 the popular theology is sure to reduce to carica- 
 ture the plausible error of him who teaches it. 
 That which in him is only a moderate foreshorten- 
 ing of perspective becomes in it a grotesque mon- 
 strosity. He puts together golden treasures in 
 the effort to create a god, and there comes out a 
 calf. Human nature everywhere has a Pagan 
 propensity to fetichism. It had full swing in the 
 popular forms of Calvinism in Western New York, 
 previous to the great awakening under Dr. Finney. 
 It would be a libel upon any school of divinity 
 to hold it responsible for those enormous freaks 
 of fatalism which Dr. Finney and his coadjutors 
 had to encounter. Buried beneath that mass of 
 rubbish, there lay a vast amount of pure truth in 
 the popular convictions. It had been planted 
 there by earnest and godly men of the Old School. 
 The elements of a religious revival were all there : 
 they needed only the men endued with the revi- 
 val temperament, and possessed of a scriptural 
 and rational theology, and blessed of God as he 
 is wont to bless such men when called to his 
 work, to set the whole heavens in a glow with the 
 reflection of light from enkindled altars. It was 
 my father's privilege to be one of the chosen in- 
 struments in that work. Evangelists achieved a 
 wider reputation than his ; but few pastors of his 
 generation, or of ours, have been so signally re- 
 warded. 
 
A Pastor of the Last Generation, 29 
 
 It was in those days a question vital to the 
 character of a minister, How does he stand af- 
 fected towards the institution of slavery? My 
 father, by natural temperament, was not a conser- 
 vative, and he was not a radical. On almost all 
 subjects he saw two sides of things. But, if the 
 course of events compelled him to appear to side 
 with either extreme, he was apt to drift towards 
 the side of the radical. He refused his pulpit to 
 an abolitionist lecturer of the long hau-ed and 
 bearded school, because, he said, his people had 
 rights there which he was bound to respect ; but, 
 if a fugitive slave applied to him for food and a 
 hiding-place, he fell back on first principles, and 
 bade his fellow-man welcome to both. He would 
 not go out of his way as a Christian minister to 
 hunt up an " underground railroad." He said that 
 God had not ordained him to that business. But, 
 if the " underground railroad " passed by his door, 
 he used it without clerical or political scruple. 
 Several fugitives owed their liberty to his aid. He 
 would not take the platform with Mr. Garrison, 
 because he revered the Scriptures and the church 
 of Christ more than he did anybody's civil free- 
 dom. But, whenever he encountered antislavery 
 free from infidel adjuncts, he gave it the hand of 
 fellowship with all his heart. He never advised 
 black men to go to Liberia. The Colonization 
 Society was to his view organized folly : he used 
 to say, that, as a political scheme, it was a fraud, 
 and, as a missionary scheme, a farce. With the 
 
30 My Portfolio. 
 
 exception of this distrust of African colonization, 
 he represented fairly the general antislavery policy 
 of the Northern clergy of his day. It is a libel 
 upon them to portray them otherwise. 
 
 He once employed for several months a run- 
 away negro as a laborer. One morning the rumor 
 came that John's master was at the hotel, within 
 a pistol-shot of the parsonage, that he had ob- 
 tained a warrant for the arrest of his chattel, and 
 that he had a leash of dogs on hand for the hunt. 
 Geneva attracted slave-hunters at that time ; be- 
 cause, besides being near the border-line of Canada, 
 it was the seat of a negro colony of some three 
 hundred, nearly all the adults being runaways. I 
 suppose it would have cost the pastor his pulpit, 
 if the deed of that day had been known. The 
 United-States marshal of the district was one of 
 his parishioners. It is sufficient token of the 
 dominant politics of that period, that it was on 
 the eve of the election of Martin Van Buren, a 
 favorite son of New York, to the presidency. 
 Among the pastor's flock were magnates to whom 
 the " Union and the Constitution " were second 
 only to the oracles of God. 
 
 But the shield was turned now in his vision; 
 and John appeared to have rights, which, pulpit 
 or no pulpit, must not be ignored by a minister of 
 Christ. He resolved that John should have fair 
 pla3\ He asked him if he wanted to go back to 
 Maryland. John thought not. But had he not 
 left a wife in Maryland ? Yes ; but he had 
 
A Pastor of the Last Generation. 31 
 
 "anoder one" in Geneva. She was "black but 
 comely," and had borne him two children. His 
 Maryland master had not taught him very clear 
 notions of the marriage-tie. On the Avhole, he 
 thought " he'd sooner die than leave the picka- 
 ninnies." "If he went back, his master would 
 sell him South." " He'd rather go to hell." " He 
 reckoned he wouldn't be took alive." " He'd take 
 his chance with the hounds." 
 
 As the market stood in those days, he was worth 
 taking alive, if the hounds could be kept off from 
 the jugular vein. He was a stout " six-footer," in 
 the prime of manhood; a bright mulatto, with 
 white brains, sound in wind and limb ; his teeth 
 would bear counting on the auction-block, and he 
 was a trained mechanic withal : in return for 
 some teaching which I gave him, he had taught 
 me how to shingle a barn. The master's title, too, 
 was beyond a doubt: his broad back was branded 
 very legibly. My father told him he hoped nobody 
 would have to die ; but he added some advice, in 
 tones too low for me to hear, but with a compres- 
 sion of the mouth which was well understood in 
 the discipline of the family. He then told John 
 to take to a certain piece of woods, and wait there, 
 while he himself went to the hotel to reconnoiter. 
 
 John crept around the barn of the hotel to a 
 little cabin, where " the pickaninnies " were rolling 
 in the dirt, and was soon ranging the woods. A 
 few hours after, the pastor returned, with lips more 
 sternly compressed than ever, and proceeded to 
 
32 3Iy Fortfolio. 
 
 make up a basket of food for John. He brought 
 it to me, and told me to go with it, and find him. 
 My father's eye silently answered mine when I 
 observed that the knife was not the mate of the 
 fork, that it was too large to be covered in the 
 basket, that, in short, it was the largest carver in 
 the house, — the one with which John had not 
 long before slaughtered a pig. It was as nearly a 
 facsimile of a bowie-knife as the credit of the par- 
 sonage ought to bear. I found John. His eye, 
 too, alighted first on the familiar knife. The grim 
 smile of his savage ancestors gleamed around his 
 white teeth. He played with the food, but treas- 
 ured the knife in his bosom. Said he, as I took 
 his hand at parting, " Tell your fader that he is a 
 Christian and a gemman, ebery inch of him." 
 His ideas of what Christianity is may have been 
 rather mixed (he had learned them at the whip- 
 ping-post) ; but his half-savage intuitions of what 
 Christianity ought to do for a hunted man were 
 not far wrong. So, at least, the pastor thought. 
 It was well for dog and master that they did not 
 find John's trail. Indeed, I suspect the dogs were 
 left at the hotel. Even Martin Van Buren's con- 
 stituents in a livery-stable would hardly have 
 winked at that business on the soil of New York. 
 Human nature has an innate reverence for the 
 jugular vein. 
 
 My father's prayer with us that night was 
 unusually solemn. He remembered both the slave 
 and the slave-hunter. In no other event of his 
 
A Pastor of the Last Generation. 33 
 
 life known to me did the old blood of England's 
 Ironsides leap to view so vividly as in that deed 
 and that praj^er of loyalty to human liberty. Yes, 
 Ms Christianity was of that sort. Yet nineteen- 
 twentieths of the Northern clergy of his generation 
 would have done the same, although some of those 
 very men — not a great many of them — after- 
 wards preached in defense of the fugitive slave- 
 law. It is one thing to sermonize in one's study 
 by candle-light, and with feet incased in warm 
 slippers : it is quite another thing to set dogs on 
 the trail of a panting man in the woods in broad 
 day. Blessed be the inconsistencies of good men ! 
 Ah, how far back in the middle ages those days 
 seem now ! Were beasts ever brought from Mary- 
 land to hunt men on the banks of silvery Lake 
 Seneca, within sight of the tower of Hobart Col- 
 lege? Did living man ever think to set blood- 
 hounds on the track of a woman, where their 
 baying would be answered by vesper-bells from 
 the belfry of a Christian church ? 
 
 My father's pastoral preaching was terminated 
 suddenly. An attack of the Asiatic cholera, the 
 infection of which he caught in the course of his 
 pastoral duty, brought him to death's door. He 
 was given up by his physicians, and was supposed 
 to be in the stage of speechless collapse, when he 
 suddenly spoke, and prescribed for himself the 
 means of cure. He believed ever afterwards that 
 he was divinely guided in the extremity to the 
 saving of his life. To the physician it was only 
 
34 3Iy Portfolio. 
 
 one of the mysterious instances in which nature 
 springs upon disease from ambuscade, and con- 
 quers. 
 
 But the caustic remedies which had been before 
 employed shattered his nervous system, so that 
 he never again felt able to resume the labors of a 
 settled pastor. He resigned his charge at Geneva, 
 and in 1836 removed to Philadelphia, to take 
 the secretaryship of the American Education So- 
 ciety there, and afterwards at New York also. 
 He labored in the usual routine of those offices 
 till advancing years obliged him to retire from all 
 continuous public service. 
 
 As my main object is to portray his pastoral 
 life, in which, in my judgment, his chief usefulness 
 was achieved, I will not here detail his work as a 
 counselor, and one of the executives, always in 
 the interest of union, in the controversy which 
 sundered the Presbyterian Church. Suffice it to 
 say, that he was the supporter and personal friend 
 and parishioner of the Rev. Albert Barnes ; if I 
 remember rightly, was a member of the General 
 Assembly which acquitted Mr. Barnes of the 
 charge of heresy ; was for two years the anony- 
 mous editor of " The Christian Observer," the 
 organ of the New School men of Philadelphia; 
 and was one of the New School Assembly which 
 formed itself, when, after the exscinding acts of 
 1837, Mr. Barnes, Dr. Beman, Dr. Cox, Dr. Beech- 
 er, and others, were, like himself, refused seats in 
 the Assembly of 1838. 
 
A Pastor of the Last Greneration. 35 
 
 He did not enjoy that controversial work. His 
 heart was elsewhere. He entered the Presbyte- 
 rian Church in that spirit of fraternal comity which 
 then united it, in sympathy with the Congrega- 
 tional churches of New England, under the " Plan 
 of Union," and the loss of which has been of no 
 benefit to either. He labored for Presbyterian 
 interests in good faith, as long as his official con- 
 nections bound him in honor to them ; but he was 
 always at heart a Congregationalist. His expe- 
 rience in the Presbyterian " camp," as he used to 
 call it, intensified his attachment to the polity of 
 his fathers. It was his favorite theory, that the 
 male adult members of a Presbyterian church 
 ought all of them to be elected to the eldership. 
 His Scotch brethren in the presbytery never took 
 the joke. 
 
 It was after his retirement from public life that 
 he became interested in Spiritualism. It would 
 be more truthful to say that it became interested 
 in him; for it came upon him without his seek- 
 ing, suddenly invading his .household, and making 
 a pandemonium of it for seven months, and then 
 departing as suddenly as it came. The phenome- 
 na resembled those which for many years afflicted 
 the Wesley family, and those which at one time 
 attended the person of Oberlin. They were an 
 almost literal repetition of some of the records 
 left by Cotton Mather. Had my father lived in 
 1650 instead of 1850, he and his family would 
 have lived in history with the victims on Tower 
 
36 My Portfolio. 
 
 Hill in Salem. That the facts were real, a thou- 
 sand witnesses testified. An eminent judge in 
 the State of New York said that he had pro- 
 nounced sentence of death on many a criminal on 
 a tithe of the evidence which supported those 
 facts. That they were inexplicable by any known 
 principles of science was equally clear to all who 
 saw and heard them, who were qualified to judge. 
 Experts in science went to Stratford in trium- 
 phant expectation, and came away in dogged 
 silence, convinced of nothing, yet solving nothing. 
 If modern science had nothing to show more 
 worthy of respect than its solutions of Spiritual- 
 ism, alchemy would be its equal, and astrology 
 infinitely its superior. It will never do to con- 
 sign a delusion so seductive to the ignorant, and 
 so welcome to the skeptic, to the limbo of " an if," 
 and leave it there. 
 
 To my father the whole thing was a visitation 
 from God. He bowed to the affliction in sorrow 
 and in prayer. He never gave credence to it as a 
 revelation of religious truth for an hour. The 
 only point in which it affected his interpretation 
 of the Scriptures was that of the biblical demon- 
 ology. When science failed to give him an ex- 
 planation which deserved respect, he fell back 
 upon the historic faith of the Christian Church in 
 the personality and activity of angels, good and 
 evil. He held the scriptural demonology as a 
 tentative explanation of Spiritualism until science 
 could furnish something better. But long before 
 
A Pastor of the Last Creneration, 37 
 
 his decease he had lost his interest in it; and 
 during the last two years of his life it had proba- 
 bly faded from his memory. When thanksgiving 
 for the "precious blood of Christ" was often 
 heard from his chamber, he was sometimes prompt 
 to deny that the mysteries of Stratford had ever 
 existed, so little impression had they left upon 
 him as the origin of any thing in his religious 
 faith. 
 
 The closing years of his life were years of hal- 
 lowed peace. With the exception of a treacherous 
 memory, he retained his mental faculties till the 
 last half-year. His forecast of the world's future 
 was youthful in its hopefulness. It had always 
 been so. Great and good things he had witnessed 
 in his day, but greater and better were looming in 
 the eastern horizon. Young ministers it was his 
 wont to congratulate on their privilege of living 
 in the coming age. I never but once heard from 
 him a word which indicated that he would not 
 gladly live his life over again. To spend a half- 
 hour with him was itself a benediction. His 
 youthful pastor at Weehawken " counted it as the 
 chief blessing of his ministry that it gave him 
 the privilege of communion with the old prophet 
 on the eve of his translation." 
 
 Of the final scene of still and painless ascension, 
 what shall I say? — "My father, my father, the 
 chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof." 
 
THE EIGHTS OP BELIEVEES IN" ANCIENT OKEEDS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 The integrity of assent to venerable creeds is 
 sometimes questioned, and scruples respecting it 
 are sometimes felt through the ignoring of certain 
 vital principles. 
 
 1. The professed believer in such a creed is en- 
 titled to a recognition of the inevitable changes which 
 time brings about in the meayiing of language. 
 Words are not eternal. No precision of science 
 can make them so. The history of lexicography 
 shows that words may slide down the scale of 
 departure from their original sense till they reach 
 its flat contradiction. 
 
 Dr. Barrow sa3^s that "men ought to cherish a 
 fit resentment towards God." The word "resent- 
 ment " once signified the return of grateful af- 
 fection for favor received. It signifies just the 
 opposite now. 
 
 In some theological systems, and not very dis- 
 tant either, the words "guilt " and " punishment " 
 had meanings which no popular usage now affixes 
 to them, if popular use ever did accept them. 
 
 38 
 
The Rights of Believers in Ancient Creeds. 39 
 
 " Guilt " meant exposure to the consequences of 
 sin; " punishment," the suffering of those conse- 
 quences. In such dialect, innocence might be 
 "guilty," saints might suffer "punishment," our 
 blessed Lord might bear the punishment of a 
 world's transgressions. Men have, therefore, been 
 pronounced guilty of Adam's sin, and threat- 
 ened with punishment for that sin, by divines who 
 never meant to teach that which would now be 
 understood by such language. They meant only 
 that men are exposed to, and do suffer, the conse- 
 quences of Adam's sin. They no more meant that 
 men are ill deserving for the sin of Adam than 
 that the son of a thief deserves the penitentiary 
 for the father's crime. 
 
 We are horrified when a venerable father of the 
 Church declares that Christ was guilty of the sins 
 of the elect, and that he suffered punisliment in 
 their stead. But many who have used such phra- 
 seology never understood by it what it seems to 
 say to modern ears. A modern believer of such 
 a creed, then, is not to be censured, if he interprets 
 it, not by the modern lexicon, but by the ancient 
 and technical theological usage. 
 
 2. He has also the right to interpret a creeds in 
 'part^ hy the history of its formation. All the great 
 confessions of the Church are historic monuments : 
 so are some of the creeds of our ancient local 
 churches. They are landmarks of Christian opin- 
 ion. They grew up in crises : they grew out of 
 periods of agitation. New dangers threatened the 
 
40 My Portfolio, 
 
 faith of the Church, or new inspiration enlight- 
 ened and expanded it; and hence a new creed 
 was born to express the new intellectual and 
 spiritual life. Internal conflicts of opinion, or 
 conflicts with infidelity outside, have usually been 
 the immediate cause of the creation of standards 
 of Christian faith. 
 
 That precedent and contemporaneous history 
 could not fail to color the significance of the con- 
 fession of faith to which it gave birth. Like cause, 
 like effect. Local exigencies, national crises, the 
 convulsions of an age, gave peculiar senses to 
 terms; they emphasized favorite phrases; they 
 loaded old words with new forces; they often 
 wrenched words out of popular into technical 
 usage. Some words they shelved in the archives 
 of scholastic thought, and left them there to die. 
 Not one of the standard creeds of the Church is 
 a perfectly fair, calm, equipoised compendium of 
 revealed truth, unbiased by the temper of the 
 times, by the infirmities of blinded science, and 
 specially by the crudities of philosophical schools. 
 Not one of them has the serene beauty of inspired 
 proportions. They are all standards of the mili- 
 tant church. They are symbols of opinion boiling 
 in the crucible of conflicting and often intemper- 
 ate thought. They have, therefore, a belligerent 
 outlook, — one this way, another that. They ex- 
 alt some truths unduly, and depress others. Like 
 the valleys and mountains of the globe, they are 
 the product of volcanic cataclysms. Some of them 
 
The Rights of Believers in Ancient Creeds. 41 
 
 contain gorges like those of Gondo and the Via 
 Mala. Spots there are in them on which the sun 
 never shone. 
 
 The history of such a creed is essential to its 
 interpretation. The modern believer has the right 
 to go back, and unearth that buried record. He 
 must do so in order to know what the authors of 
 that creed really meant. Its language he has the 
 right often to interpret by what they meant, rather 
 than by what to modern ears they seem to have 
 said. He is not to be held to account, but ap- 
 plauded rather, if he lets in the light of other days 
 upon the obscure inscription. In adopting it as 
 his own, he may honestly give to it a meaning 
 somewhat other than that seen by the cursory 
 reader of to-day. 
 
 In the creed of the Andover Seminary it is 
 declared that man has " corporeal strength to do 
 all that God requires of him." To one not well 
 read in the theological controversies of New Eng- 
 land, this seems very odd, if not absurd, phrase- 
 ology. What can it mean? Have grave and 
 learned men met in conclave to bind the instruct- 
 ors of the clergy through all time to teach that 
 men have power of blood and bones and sinews 
 and muscles to do God's bidding? Wise men 
 have debated the power of angels to dance on the 
 point of a needle, and have essayed to count them 
 in their sport. But when did ever theological 
 wisdom muddle itself with such a crotchet of " hu- 
 man ability " as this ? 
 
42 My Portfolio. 
 
 Bat a little fragment of history solves the rid- 
 dle. Among the founders of the Andover Semi- 
 nary, two schools of theology were represented. 
 Two seminaries were, in fact, in embrj^o, before 
 the friends of either knew of the conception of 
 the other. It was of great moment that the 
 strength of the New-England churches, then de- 
 pleted severely by the Unitarian departure, should 
 not be wasted in the support of antagonist schools 
 of divinity. The founders of the one held stoutly 
 to what was then called the " natural ability " of 
 man to do all that God required of him. The 
 founders of the other as stoutly denied this. The 
 very phrase had become odious to them. It ex- 
 pressed a pestilent heresy. The Presbyterian 
 Church, thirty years later, was exploded into 
 halves by it. 
 
 How to bring the two embryo schools into one 
 was the problem. For a long time it was a vexed 
 one. Mr. Phillips's farms at Andover, and Mr. 
 Norris's keg of silver dollars over which he prayed 
 for the divine acceptance, were waiting for their 
 reverend pastors and teachers to agree upon a 
 creed which should bear the test of all coming 
 time. It would not do for Dr. Spring and his 
 associates to insist on the technical yet most obvi- 
 ous language of the New School, by saying that 
 men have "natural ability." Dr. Morse and his 
 friends of the Old School would have flung them- 
 selves off in a tangent from such a heresy. Ovei 
 one of the points of controversy between them. 
 
The Rights of Believers in Ancient Creeds. 43 
 
 said one of the leaders, " We will see the seminary 
 sunk in the sea, before we will set our hands to 
 such a dogma." Therefore the creed of the 
 united body, in which all came together harmless 
 as doves, if not wise as serpents, was made to read 
 that man has "corporeal strength to do all that 
 God requires." 
 
 A poor substitute this for " natural ability," as 
 read by the rhetoric of to-day ; but any thing was 
 better than eternal war over two words. Thus 
 Massachusetts escaped the subsequent theological 
 history of Connecticut. In the light of such an 
 episode of history the modern subscriber to the 
 creed has a right mentally to restore, if he pleases, 
 the more accurate phrase, "natural ability," in 
 place of the crude substitute. " Natural ability " 
 was what they all meant, if they had but known 
 it. It is right for their modern successors to 
 say so. 
 
 3. The foregoing piece of history suggests also 
 that the signer of an ancient creed has a right to 
 recognize and reason from well-known compromises 
 contained in the creed. All the great symbols of 
 the Church's faith are compromises. From the 
 nature of the case they must be such. They must 
 have been such in the intent of their originators. 
 No political platform of a great party is possible 
 in other shape than that of compromise. The 
 same is true of the Confession of any great section 
 of the Church. In no other way can the accord- 
 ant faith of a multitude of earnest and wide- 
 
44 My Portfolio. 
 
 awake minds be expressed in language. In every 
 such body of thinkers the Left yields something 
 to the Right, and the Right yields something to 
 the Left, and the Centre gives way somewhat 
 to both. Probably no creed was ever formed, or 
 can be, to be the standard of a large body of 
 believers, which any one of its original framers 
 could accept as the exact and sufficient symbol of 
 his own belief, without abatement and without 
 supplement. Every man of them had his own 
 gloss to put upon that or this : all had an appen- 
 dix of memoranda and errata in their own minds. 
 
 The Westminster Catechism was such a compro- 
 mise ; so was the Augsburg Confession ; so, too, 
 the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, 
 and the Confession of Dort. To an ear wonted 
 to the clang of theological debate, the silver ring 
 of compromise is audible in them all. 
 
 This fact of historic compromise is often a very 
 pregnant one to a modern believer in defining the 
 sense of the words he accepts. He is entitled to 
 the full benefit of it : nay, he is bound in honor 
 not to ignore it. He has the right to say that a 
 certain extreme of theological dogma which some 
 may find in the creed, and would force upon him, 
 is not there, because it is contradictory to the 
 spirit of the compromise in which the creed was 
 framed. 
 
 We have been told, for instance, that the New- 
 England theology can not be honestly held in the 
 terms of the Westminster Catechism, and there- 
 
The Rights of Believers in Ancient Creeds. 45 
 
 fore that the New-England theologian can not 
 honorably subscribe that Confession. We deny 
 it, partly on the ground of what the Catechism 
 expressly affirms, but partly, also, on the ground 
 of the compromise which historically it represents. 
 There were men in the Westminster Assembly 
 who held the essential points of the New-School 
 theology of our day; not in modern phrase in- 
 deed: they did not hold any thing in modern 
 phrase. But in language of their own, equally 
 significant, they held to the freedom of the human 
 will and its inevitable corollaries. They never 
 would have given their names to a creed designed, 
 as they understood it, to deny that necessary be- 
 lief of the human mind. 
 
 Under cover of their wing, all other New-School 
 believers to the end of time may honestly sub- 
 scribe that Confession as teaching, and meant to 
 teach, the essentials of their own theology. What- 
 ever some phrases of the Catechism, without his- 
 toric note or comment, may seem to say, the docu- 
 ment as a whole can not have been designed to 
 teach a fatalistic type of Calvinism, because of the 
 historic fact of compromise between those who 
 held that type and those who denied it. Men 
 were there, and they signed their names to the 
 work of the Assembly, who never would have 
 done so, if, in their own judgment or that of 
 their associates, that act held them to the dogma 
 of unmitigated fatalism. 
 
 Even the Confession of Dort, adopted by per- 
 
46 My Portfolio, 
 
 haps the most rigidly Calvinistic body of di\dnes 
 ever convened in equal numbers, can not properly 
 be so interpreted that a New-School theologian 
 may not honestly accept it with his interpretation ; 
 for the spirit of compromise was there also. 
 Marks of it are visible in certain paragraphs which 
 could have no other purpose. 
 
 Said one of the leaders of that famous conclave, 
 in the course of their discussions, quoting, proba- 
 bly, from a similar utterance in the Council of 
 Trent, " I believe in both the decrees of God and 
 the responsibility of man, because I believe in cer- 
 tainty with power to the contrary T There was the 
 central principle of the New-England theology. 
 The Rev. Dr. Taylor of New Haven, and the Rev. 
 Albert Barnes of Philadelphia, its latest repre- 
 sentatives, and the defenders of it in its final 
 fruitage, never got beyond that principle. No man 
 who held it could have set his hand to a creed 
 which was, as those of Dort and Westminster are 
 often claimed to be, fatalistic through and through. 
 
V. 
 
 THE EIGHTS OF BELIEVEES DT ANCIENT CREEDS. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 4. The compromises of ecclesiastical standards, 
 to which allusion has been made, suggest a fourth 
 principle, which should in equity regulate the 
 modern indorsement of them. It is, that the 
 believer has a right to his own method of recon- 
 ciling the contradictions of a creed. 
 
 Where is the historic creed, which, strictly inter- 
 preted, does not involve self-contradictions? So 
 many and so profound are the opposites in truth, 
 that human speech can scarcely utter them vigor- 
 ously, except in forms of statement which crowd 
 opposites into contraries. Of course they are not 
 contraries, but vivid statement makes them ap- 
 pear such. The best conceptions of them by 
 earnest thinkers seem irreconcilable. The think- 
 ing of an age which forces a great creed into 
 being will express its standard formulae in no 
 wary or diplomatic shape. These come forth 
 rather in weighted if not impassioned language. 
 They leap, full-grown, into stalwart frame, like 
 the mail-clad warriors of the age in which they 
 
 47 
 
48 My Portfolio, 
 
 are born. They seem as if heralded by challenge 
 to battle to all comers. 
 
 These opposites, of which all deepest truth is 
 full, the authors of the great Confessions have 
 commonly chosen to express, as the Duke of 
 Wellington said all contradictions should be 
 " reconciled," — " Never explain contradictions, 
 but assert both extremes vehemently." So the 
 contradictions of historic creeds are not loaded 
 with philosophic adjustments in nice and trembling 
 balance, but with unqualified assertions rather of 
 both belligerents. There is more of sound phi- 
 losophy than appears at the first blush in this ap- 
 parent ignoring of philosophy. Such truths as 
 election and ability, decrees and prayer, regenera- 
 tion and repentance, the deity of our Lord and 
 his humanity, the peril of apostasy and the per- 
 severance of the saints, can not well be so for- 
 mulated as either to awaken an earnest faith, or 
 to express it, except in language, which, to say 
 the least, borders hard upon downright contrariety. 
 The deepest thinking must evolve them in such 
 militant shape, or fail to reach by them the deepest 
 feeling. " Deep calleth unto deep." The collision 
 is but the mingling of mighty waters. 
 
 The existence of such seeming contradictions 
 in the standard Confessions of Christendom must 
 be conceded. Then, to each believer must be 
 granted the independent right to his own way of 
 reconciling them. Each must be allowed to have 
 his own philosophy. It is his right to dovetail 
 
The Rights of Believers in Ancient Creeds, 49 
 
 things by his own mechanism. Wide asunder as 
 the poles the philosophies may be : that matters 
 not. Sufficient is it, if the resulting faith, as a 
 whole, is held fast, and honest hands clasp each 
 other. My philosophy may be the mumbling of 
 idiocy to you, and yours may be the raving of 
 mania to me ; yet we may both be honest men, 
 true believers, and as clear-headed as the average 
 of men in accepting the same form of sound words. 
 Your perspective of truth may bring to the fore- 
 ground a doctrine which mine would thrust to the 
 rear; yours may lay bare to the tropic sunlight 
 a truth which mine would veil in a lunar twilight ; 
 yours may exalt God, and mine may arouse man ; 
 you may preach sovereignty, and I may preach 
 duty ; you may bow reverently before our Lord's 
 divinity, and I may cling tremblingly to his human- 
 ity. What matters it ? Each must say, " This is 
 my infirmity." Let us be glad, if, even inconsist- 
 ently, we join hands after all. 
 
 Our grandest creeds — those which have done 
 best service to the Church, and have gathered to 
 themselves the wealth of the ages in the reverent 
 affection of believers — are meant to embrace such 
 diversities of temperament, and of mental idiosyn- 
 crasy, and of national tastes, and of the bias of 
 race, yet to bind them all in the unity of the 
 spirit and the bond of peace. So must we be 
 content to receive them. It is my right to inter- 
 pret your favorite dogma by the balancing oppo- 
 site in mine. We must not peck at each other's 
 
60 3Iy Portfolio. 
 
 eyeballs, because each prefers to look out from 
 his favorite eyry. We both see through a glass 
 darkly. We must not pry too curiously into each 
 other's methods of deliverance from self-contradic- 
 tion. We are neither of us hypocrites for not 
 petting each other's philosophies. 
 
 5. The believer of an ancient Confession is 
 entitled also, within certain limits, to a help, which, 
 for the want of a better definition, I will call. The 
 logic of the drift of a creed. Great symbols of 
 the life of the Church mean often more than they 
 say. They are symbols not only of a fixed faith, 
 never of a perfectly finished faith, but of a blind 
 reaching after unknown discovery. They are 
 landmarks of a line of march, of which the final 
 fortress is not yet reached. 
 
 John Robinson's imperial message, " God has 
 y more truth yet to break forth from his Holy 
 Word," is hinted at in a certain leaning-for- 
 ward of our best Confessions into the thought of 
 subsequent ages. They read like prophecies. 
 We interpret them by their fulfillment in the 
 work of later thinkers. Their reverent authors 
 seem as if hearkening for the voice of new 
 revelations. They evidently believed more than 
 they have recorded for our instruction. They 
 were men of progress. They had unspoken 
 visions. Had they lived to our times, they 
 would have seen more truth, and proclaimed it 
 authoritatively. They would have proportioned 
 and balanced and shaded Christian doctrines 
 
The Rights of Believers in Ancient Creeds. 51 
 
 more architecturally. They would have heard 
 more distinctly the music of the spheres. We 
 can not help seeing, in what they did declare, the 
 signs of what they would have taught, and where 
 their convictions would have ranked them among 
 the theologians of to-day. The drift of their 
 teachings necessitates the admission of more 
 truth, like the discovery of Neptune through 
 Leverrier's foresight. 
 
 This logic of the drift of a great system of 
 theology it is the right of a modern believer to 
 recognize, and, within certain limits^ to use as a 
 help to its intepretation. He is at liberty to read 
 between the lines. He may, for instance, qualify 
 extremes by the hints of their unspoken opposites. 
 In short, he may interpret the system as a whole 
 by its obvious and indubitable though bungling 
 sympathy with the discoveries of later times. 
 
 '' Within certain limits," I repeat. True, this 
 is a perilous principle. It can be easily abused. 
 So may all the vital principles which govern 
 speech. But it is a true principle, and valuable, 
 nevertheless. In the thinking of a reverent and 
 ingenuous mind it may serve to relieve a creed 
 from downright absurdities. 
 
 This principle is of special value in the inter- 
 pretation of those portions of the creeds which 
 concern the freedom of the human will, and its 
 theological corollaries.^ On this subject, truth 
 
 1 One or two paragraphs in this connection have appeared in 
 another volume by the author. 
 
52 My Portfolio, 
 
 has been of slow and toilsome growth. She has 
 crept and limped up the great highway of human 
 opinion. With a great sum obtained we this 
 freedom. Pagan theology everywhere was and is 
 saturated to the point of stupor with fatalism. 
 The early Christian thought was drugged with 
 the same poison. The clear enunciation of the 
 liberty of the human will, and the consistent 
 teaching of the consequent truth of man's abili- 
 ty, has been, in the main, the product of the 
 Christian thinking of the last two hundred years. 
 We owe it largely to the political and civil history 
 of the Netherlands. 
 
 Some of the historic creeds of Christendom, 
 therefore, are wofully disproportioned on this 
 class of doctrines. They qualify to death what 
 they have affirmed, and raise from the dead what 
 they have disowned. They emphasize the sover- 
 eignty of God, and blur the responsibility of man. 
 They thunder the doctrine of decrees, and whisper 
 or stammer the truth of man's ability. In all that 
 renders God august and terrible, their sound is the 
 blast of a trumpet. In all that should quicken 
 man's consciousness of moral dignity and duty, 
 their voice is but the reverberation of a distant 
 and doubtful echo. Sometimes man's ability to 
 do his duty is taught by inference only. Yet in 
 them all are to be found hints of it and of its 
 kindred doctrines. Implications of them abound. 
 Leanings-forward and outstretched hands are visi- 
 ble towards the more absolute forms of them in 
 our modern theology. 
 
The Rights of Believers in Ancient Creeds, 53 
 
 It is right, therefore, to read such creeds in the 
 light of their obvious drift in this respect. Pre- 
 monitions of later discoveries in theologic science 
 are as much a part of the creeds as their plain 
 record of the earlier theologic beliefs. We must 
 admit and trust those premonitions. In no other 
 way can we come at the whole mind of the ven- 
 erable authors of our standards. Not otherwise, 
 it may be, can we save a revered symbol of our 
 faith from absolute hostility to modern beliefs, 
 and a revolt of the sympathies of our own times. 
 Not otherwise can we preserve to our theologic 
 formulse the support of historic prestige, for the 
 want of which we labor at such disadvantage in 
 the controversy with the Church of Rome. As 
 the world grows older, the prestige of age becomes 
 more and more valuable in the standards which 
 claim its religious faith. Other things being equal, 
 those will sway the future who bring to its con- 
 quest the heaviest forces and swiftest momentum 
 of the past. 
 
 6. The believer in an ancient Confession of 
 Faith has the right to subscribe it as a whole, with- 
 out being held to indorsement of its every detail. 
 Literalists may sneer as they will at the phrase 
 " for substance of doctrine ; " but the use of it 
 is a sheer necessity to the adoption of any creed in 
 any age by any multitude of thinking men. 
 
 Still more necessary is it in the profession of a 
 creed inherited from ancestral standards. Water, 
 even iron, may be made to run in grooves : not so 
 
54 My Portfolio. 
 
 thought. In the great essentials of a great faith, 
 independent minds in innumerable hosts may 
 accord for ever; but in the minutise of incident 
 and of diction, and sj)ecially of shading and pro- 
 portion, never, even in dozens and for an hour. 
 They never have done it. They never will. 
 The Architect of mind has not so made mind. 
 Only in profoundest ignorance and brutish vacu- 
 ity of thought can literal uniformity of faith exist. 
 Only under the hoof of ecclesiastical tyranny will 
 the enforcement of it be attempted. 
 
 The examiners of a candidate for one of the 
 chairs in the Andover Seminary once sounded him 
 upon his reading of the Westminster Confession. 
 He assented to it "for substance of doctrine." 
 One of the reverend fathers demurred. Another, 
 the late Rev. Dr. Humphrey of Amherst College, 
 whom none will accuse of theological vagaries, 
 replied, " No mortal man with a mind of his own 
 ever accepted the Westminster Catechism with- 
 out qualifications of his own." He was right. 
 The same is true of any Confession, unless it be 
 some brief compendium of historic /ac^ rather than 
 of doctrine^ like the Apostles' Creed. He must not, 
 then, be held to account as a trickster who signs 
 reverently our elaborate and ancient standards 
 "for substance of doctrine." Nor should the con- 
 science of any believer be goaded by condemning 
 scruples for doing the same thing in accepting the 
 creed of the local church. It is his right. In 
 doing it he is only doing that which its very 
 
The Rights of Believers in Ancient Creeds, bb 
 
 authors did when it expressed their freshest 
 thought. Such qualification of assent is a neces- 
 sity to all consensus of many minds to an instru- 
 ment constructed by a distant generation, and 
 elaborated by the ablest thinking of its age. 
 
 7. The foregoing principles need to be qualified 
 by one other, to prevent abuse. It is, that the sub- 
 scriber to one of the ancient creeds has no right 
 to mutilate hy his interpretation the great structural 
 ele77ie7its of that creed ivhich make it what it is, and 
 which, in one form or another, all the great historic 
 Confessions affirm. I refer here to those Confes- 
 sions only which may fairly be taken as expressing 
 the matured and complete faith of the Church, dat- 
 ing from the Athanasian Creed downward ; not 
 those which represent its mfantile attempts at 
 systematic belief, nor those constructed chiefly to 
 counteract partial errors. 
 
 These historic creeds, expressing the present 
 faith of Christendom, are attempts to do what the 
 Scriptures do not profess to do, — to reduce the 
 Christian faith to system. Infirml}^ yet intelligi- 
 bly they have done this. They all contain a cer- 
 tain rounded structure, in which certain doctrines 
 fit in to each other, and are emphasized as essen- 
 tials. Respecting those central and essential 
 truths, the authors of the great Confessions never 
 meant to compromise. They felt no need of com- 
 promise. So far, they saw eye to eye. The evolu- 
 tion of belief through ages of discussion has 
 tended not to obscure or to qualify those grand 
 
56 My Portfolio, 
 
 essentials, but to define and enforce them as the 
 faith delivered to the saints. 
 
 We commonly designate these truths as " The 
 Doctrines of Grace." The being and sovereignty 
 of God, the inspiration of the Bible, the depravity 
 of man, the necessity of regeneration, the trini- 
 ty of the Godhead, the atonement of Christ, the 
 eternity of future rewards and punishments, — 
 these are the essentials of the system. They fall 
 naturally into accord with each other. They in- 
 tensify and buttress each other. They are not 
 matters of philosophy, much as we may philoso- 
 phize about them. They are revealed facts. If 
 one of them is compromised or denied, they all 
 sooner or later suffer. It is a vital point in the 
 argument for any one of them, that it is needed 
 for the self-consistency and the intensity of the 
 system as a whole. Abstract any one of them, 
 and all the rest collapse somewhat from the full- 
 ness of their meaning. The main object, therefore, 
 of systematic creeds, has been to protect them one 
 and all, and one as much as another. 
 
 A believer in one of these matured and standard 
 denominational creeds of the Church, therefore, 
 has no right so to use the liberty of individual 
 interpretation as to throw out, or to obscure, any 
 one of these structural elements. He has no right 
 to claim that he accepts the creed '' for substance 
 of doctrine," if he rejects any one of them. He 
 has no authority to say that one of them is not 
 essential to the system of truth which the creeds 
 
The Rights of Believers in Ancient Creeds. 57 
 
 are meant to define. The overwhelming consensus 
 of the Church has declared that every one of them 
 is essential. The assemblies which framed the 
 creeds in expression of that faith have pronounced 
 them essential. 
 
 If, then, I have a later revelation which assures 
 me otherwise, so be it. The Church has no right 
 to molest me in my right to believe or to deny. 
 To God I stand or fall, not to man. But the 
 Church has the right to say that I shall not shelter 
 my denial under cover of her creeds, and claim 
 therefor her fellowship and indorsement. The 
 consensus of the Church Universal to the few cen- 
 tral facts of the system of grace lifts them out 
 of the range of individual liberty in interpreting 
 the creeds which contain them. I have no right 
 to use my liberty of interpretation to their de- 
 struction. There they stand, stamped with the 
 impress of ages of Christian belief. There they 
 must stand for ever to all who would use those 
 creeds as the expression of their faith, and their 
 passport as religious teachers to the confidence 
 of mankind. 
 
TI. 
 
 THE BIBLICAL DOOTEINE OP EETEIBUTION. 
 
 It is needful, at times, to take our theologic 
 bearings anew, that we may know whither we are 
 advancing. Such a necessity seems to exist at 
 present respecting the doctrine of retribution. 
 Three elements in it appear to demand emphasis. 
 
 1. It is essential to the doctrine of retribution 
 that it should be held with an intensity of concep- 
 tion which shall justify the use of the biblical em- 
 blems of the future pmiishment of sin. This sug- 
 gests one point at which a perfectly honest mind 
 may unconsciously let in a flood of error. As 
 pictured rather than defined by the biblical sym- 
 bols, the doctrine has an intense severity which is 
 abhorrent to some of the profoundest instincts of 
 our nature. The glare of it scorches the natural 
 eye. We instinctively turn from it with conster- 
 nation. We ask. Is there not something unreal, 
 Oriental, hyperbolic, in these fearful emblems? 
 Were they not designed for a bygone age ? May 
 not our Occidental and modern civilization treat 
 them as obsolete ? or, if not obsolete to the modern 
 pulpit, should they not be restricted to preach- 
 
 58 
 
The Biblical Doctrine of Retribution, 59 
 
 ing addressed to natures exceptionally sensuous 
 and depraved ? 
 
 President Edwards's extreme and extra-biblical 
 painting of the future woe has been sometimes 
 defended on the ground that he was preaching to 
 savages. To their notions of penal justice, fire 
 was a familiar element. They used it in their own 
 administration of savage law, and they bore it 
 without flinching. Their torpid sensibilities could 
 not be quickened into fear of God or man by any 
 thing less terrific. May not the whole scenery of 
 the retributive life hereafter, as depicted in the 
 Scriptures, be in a similar way restricted, and to 
 us made void of meaning ? Down the sloping 
 plane indicated by these queries, entirely honest 
 and reverent inquiry on the subject may be in 
 danger of sliding, to its own hurt. The danger 
 grows with the growth of educated sensibilities. 
 
 Yet, when we turn to the word of God, there 
 these emblems of eternal woe stand, as real and as 
 lurid as when they were first painted. What they 
 meant then, they mean now. Whatever was the 
 range of their application then, it is now. Fire, 
 the lake of fire, the flame of brimstone, the undy- 
 ing worm, the gnashing of teeth, the bottomless 
 pit, the place prepared for the devil and his angels, 
 — these are all as if written yesterday on a flaming 
 scroll in the sky. They were uttered by One who 
 came to express to the world the ultimate thoughts 
 of God. No hint appears that they belong to an 
 obsolescent theology. No promise is given of any 
 
60 My Portfolio, 
 
 alleviation of their terrors in the coming ages. 
 They were originated also by Him who came to 
 represent, above all other teachings, the love of 
 God. Yet not a hint is uttered that they need 
 any glossary to explain them into consistency with 
 the divine benevolence. The very Person of 
 divine love utters them as calmly as if they were 
 the picture of a summer's morning. He has left 
 us no intimation that they need any reticent treat- 
 ment, or that, in any golden age to come, they ever 
 will need it, to vindicate the ways of God to men. 
 The scroll is unrolled before our startled vision, 
 and left there, think what we may of it, and do 
 what we will with it. 
 
 2. Equally essential to the integrity of the doc- 
 trine of retribution is the element of its endless 
 duration. Unbiased readers of the Scriptures are 
 substantially a unit in the belief, that, interpreted 
 as a whole, they teach this beyond reasonable 
 doubt. Whatever be the sense of the crucial 
 word on which this phase of the doctrine rests in 
 certain proof-texts, it does not rest on that word 
 alone, or in chief. The implications of the Bible 
 are an invincible cordon of proof in its defense. 
 As a system, the biblical theology necessitates it. 
 That theology is fatally enervated, if deprived of 
 this element of eternity in the threatening of penal 
 justice. By the absence of it, the moral govern- 
 ment of God in its penal administration is revolu- 
 tionized. 
 
 It will never do, then, for a man to say, " I be- 
 
The Biblical Doctrine of Retribution, 61 
 
 lieve in retribution, in a future retribution, in a 
 fearful retribution, in a retribution the magni- 
 tude of which reaches to the limit of human 
 thought ; I believe in all that our Lord meant by 
 his intensest utterances : but of the element of 
 time I affirm not ; that is not essential to the inner 
 sense of the divine word." The answer is prompt 
 and clear : The Scriptures do affirm of the ele- 
 ment of time. They employ language which means 
 that, if it means any thing. They disclose a sys- 
 tem of correlated truths which are built together 
 like an arch, of which not one stone can be 
 spared ; and, of that system of faith, the endless- 
 ness of conscious life in the suffering of penal woe 
 is an element most vital to all the rest. So the 
 consensus of the ages has read the record : so the 
 great historic creeds of the Church have inter- 
 preted and re-affirmed it. To deny it is to deny 
 the authority of the common sense of men in the 
 interpretation of that of which it is amply compe- 
 tent to speak. 
 
 The truth on this point may be reflected from 
 another mirror. If the " time-element " is not es- 
 sential to the fullness of the doctrine, why care for 
 it on the side of limitation more than on that of 
 eternity ? If time indefinite and time endless are 
 practically the same in the intensity which they 
 kindle in the doctrine, why not accept the time 
 endless as the equivalent of both? Why not 
 thus gain the advantage, in popular discourse at 
 least, of making the Scriptures mean that which 
 
62 My Portfolio, 
 
 to the popular mind they seem to mean? Why 
 change the ancient conception, if the change 
 means nothing ? The fact most vital to the argu- 
 ment is, that the change does mean something. 
 The two conceptions, of infinite duration and in- 
 definite duration, are not the same to the common 
 sense of men. When affirmed of retributive woe, 
 the change from endlessness to indefiniteness does 
 diminish the fearful intensity of the truth. It in- 
 troduces untold possibilities of relief. It does lift 
 off that which, to the majority of minds, is the 
 chief weight, from the intolerable burden of the 
 " wrath of God." This is the reason w^hy our af- 
 frighted and tortured sensibilities shrink from the 
 ancient faith, and seek this cloud-land. It is be- 
 cause here eternity is veiled by something which 
 is less than eternity. This does encroach upon the 
 very substance of the faith. Otherwise, men 
 would not crave it, as they do, in their search after 
 God's meaning. 
 
 3. The present trend of inquiry on the subject 
 gives special prominence to another element in the 
 doctrine of retribution. It is that of the decision 
 of the retributive destiny by the experience of the 
 present life. On this point, also, it will not do for 
 a religious teacher to say, " I do not know." He 
 ought to know. Inspired instructors assume that 
 they do know. If any one thing is made clear by 
 the whole drift and structure of revelation, it is 
 this, that probation begins and ends with this life. 
 Our Lord's teachings suggest neither doubt of 
 
The Biblical Doctrine of Retribution. 63 
 
 this fact nor exception to it. Apostolic instruc- 
 tions suggest neither. This is not a subject on 
 which it is reasonable to believe that a revelation 
 from heaven has taught nothing. The when and 
 the where of probation enter into the very fact of 
 probation. The Scriptures furnish as much evi- 
 dence that our probation began in a former world, 
 as that it will be continued or supplemented in 
 a world to come. Kegenerate character started 
 into being here may be improved, developed, fin- 
 ished, in a future life which is not the perfected 
 heavenly life. But this is education, and educa- 
 tion is not probation. It is probation which de- 
 termines the great moral distinction of character 
 as right or wrong ; and this the Bible everywhere 
 assumes to be the work of one life and one only. 
 On the deeds done in the body the retributive ex- 
 perience depends. 
 
 Nor is it safe to say that this is not an essential 
 truth. What truth can be, in some relations of 
 it, more essential? Is it non-essential to a dying 
 man whether or not he is about to enter another 
 world of probationary opportunity? To a mind 
 awakened to the realities of eternity, and asking, 
 " What must I do to be saved ? " is it of no moment 
 that all chances of salvation end here ? Could a 
 revival of religion ever have existed, if the pulpit 
 had been shorn of this element of its power ? 
 Could St. Paul have preached the gospel success- 
 fully without it ? Look at its bearing on the whole 
 theory of missions to the heathen. Would it not 
 
\ 
 
 64 My Portfolio, 
 
 seem to many minds to be a work of dubious be- 
 nevolence to impose on lieatlien tribes the intense 
 tests of cliaracter which Christianity creates, if 
 without them the heathen soul might find its pro- 
 bation in another world ? When Alexander Duff 
 fired the heart of Scotland on the subject of mis- 
 sions to India, the new departure was opposed by 
 the " Moderates " in the General Assembly, as 
 " tending to disturb the moral chances of happy 
 and contented Pagans." One part of the argu- 
 ment was, that, as they had little chance here, they 
 might, if they were let alone, have another else- 
 where. The sequence is inevitable from even the 
 conjecture of probation in another world : '' If 
 another, surely a better world than this ; let us 
 wait for it ! " So the mind instinctively reasons. 
 The validity of these views is not affected un- 
 favorably by the fact that the Scriptures nowhere 
 expressly affirm the non-existence of probation in 
 the life to come. It is not the usage of inspiration 
 to affirm negatives. Besides, the absence of such 
 affirmation is rather a sign of the confidence of 
 the inspired mind in the truth concerned. There 
 is a class of truths, of which the presumptive and 
 implied evidences are so conclusive, that to load 
 them down with further proof would weaken 
 them. Of one such truth our Lord said, " If it 
 were not so, I would have told you." So of the 
 doctrine now before us : if it were not true that 
 probation is limited to this mundane life, a revela- 
 tion from God would surely have told us. On 
 
The Biblical Doctrine of Retribution. Q^ 
 
 such a point we need to know the truth and the 
 whole truth. A message from heaven would have 
 been singularly defective and delusive, if it had 
 professed to teach us the way of salvation, and yet 
 had been so framed as to leave such a truth in 
 doubt. The assumptions and implications of the 
 Bible, all pointing one way, leave us not a shadow 
 of a reason for even the conjecture of a doubt. 
 
 The three elements of the doctrine of retribu- 
 tion here affirmed can not, then, be safely held in 
 abeyance by a Christian preacher. Commonly it 
 is true that a conscientious inquirer believes more 
 than he thinks he does. He may tread reverently 
 along the heights and in the depths of the truth 
 of God. For this he should not be suspected of 
 unbelief, though his reverent spirit may express 
 itself in the forms of doubt. But, when it comes 
 to such solid essentials of truth as those here con- 
 sidered, doubt ceases to be pertinent. One who 
 would assume the office of a preacher, and who 
 seeks, therefore, the indorsement of the Church, 
 should know what he knows. He should be able to 
 declare it with full and bold assertion. One posi- 
 tive word is worth a dozen points of interrogation. 
 
YII. 
 
 THE PUEITAir THEORY OP AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 The Christian theory of amusements is under- 
 going revision. In the process, the Puritan char- 
 acter is liable to suffer some foreshortening. A 
 few historic facts may help to keep it in its true 
 perspective. 
 
 1. One is the fact that the Puritan's theory of 
 amusements was interwoven with his struggle for 
 religious liberty. The famous " Book of Sports " 
 was one of his crying grievances. No matter 
 what was the character of such a book in itself 
 considered, be it as harmless as a baby's rattle, 
 it was an offense to the Puritans as an interfer- 
 ence of the government with their religious con- 
 victions and the instructions of their religious 
 teachers. 
 
 Human nature does not vary much under such 
 grievances. We all resent the interloping of the 
 State in religious matters, unless the State plants 
 itself on "the right side." The more petty the 
 object, the more fierce the resistance. So thought 
 the Puritans. It was an offense to them that the 
 king should interfere at all on such a matter. 
 
 66 
 
The Puritan Theory of Amusements. 67 
 
 Still more did they object to being denounced as 
 recusants, becciuse they would not dance around 
 a Maypole. When did ever a Christian govern- 
 ment, on such a subject, refuse to let alone the 
 consciences of full-grown matrons and bearded 
 men? 
 
 Under such irritation it was inevitable that the 
 Puritan conscience should grow fanatical. Con- 
 science is elastic in more ways than one. Put it 
 under pressure of law repellent to its convictions, 
 and it will bulge into moral tumors. Tell me that 
 I must do a thing of which my conscience doubts, 
 and conscience vaults over instantly into rebel- 
 lion. I find a score of reasons against that thing, 
 which I never thought of before. A hundred 
 texts begin to bombard it, which were Quaker 
 guns till now. 
 
 Such is human nature. The Puritans did not 
 rise above manhood. They reasoned and believed 
 and acted, probably about as well as you or I 
 should do if the governor of the Commonwealth 
 should issue a proclamation enjoining it upon our 
 clergy, on pain of imprisonment, to invite and 
 urge us to attend an exhibition of Punch and 
 Judy on Boston Common. 
 
 2. The Puritan theory of amusements was also, 
 by stress of similar circumstances, wrought into 
 their theory of the Lord's Day. 
 
 The Puritans were Christians of the Hebrew 
 type. Right or wrong, they held to the Jewish 
 ideal of the sabbath. They read it in the word of 
 
68 My Portfolio, 
 
 God; and to read was to believe. The spiritual 
 and devotional spectacle of a Parisian or a Roman 
 Sunday did not convince them. They did not see 
 how much more intelligent and pure and devout 
 such a Sunday would make a Christian people ! 
 
 In those days German beer-gardens were not. 
 The Puritans did not hanker after Spanish bull- 
 fights. Yet they must do something on Sunday ; 
 and they had no chance to see how much more 
 refining and sanctifying such recreations are to 
 the character of a people than the services of 
 Christian churches ! Even the Maypole and the 
 Morris dance did not satisfy them as means of 
 grace. So, for the want of something better, they 
 took to the churches. 
 
 Right or wrong, I repeat, they preferred to bull- 
 fights and bear-baitings and May-games the old 
 Mosaic sabbath, and the psalms and hymns which 
 had rung through a thousand years of Christian 
 song. Yet the laws of the realm struck right 
 across their conscience in this thing. Grave states- 
 men and reverend bishops advised, and the king 
 decreed, that the odious " Book of Sports " should 
 be announced to his subjects from every pulj)it in 
 the kingdom on Sunday, and the sports therein 
 recorded should be practiced in the afternoon, after 
 the church service. 
 
 How reasonable would anybody's theory of 
 amusements be likely to be, if back of it, and 
 inextricably intertwined with it, there lay such a 
 flagrant outrage upon religious liberty and the 
 
The Puritan Theory of Amusements, 69 
 
 sense of religious propriety ? The surest way to 
 set a man's conscience to inventing reasons against 
 a harmless thing is to back it up by tyrannical 
 auxiliaries. Under such friction, conscience de 
 velops a sharp polarity. Tell me that I must^ on 
 pain of the pillory, invite the Park-street Church 
 of Boston to unite with me in a game of football 
 on Sunday afternoon, at four o'clock, and exhila- 
 rating to the religious emotions as that game may 
 be for aught that I know, the chances are ten to 
 one, that, within a week, my conscience will declare 
 with the solemnity of a revelation from heaven, 
 that football is a sin. That is human nature. The 
 Puritans were men. 
 
 HoAV often would the Rev. Dr. Manning and the 
 Rev. Phillips Brooks read a proclamation from 
 the governor, inviting their congregations, after 
 the sacrament of the Lord's Supper on a Sunday 
 afternoon, to go out and dance around a pole on 
 Beacon Hill ? Would not their congregations be 
 likely to hear some " godly and painful sermons," 
 as the Puritan critics used to describe good preach- 
 ing, on the claims of the dance upon a Christian 
 people ? Would not hearers be apt to follow up 
 the painstaking blast of the preacher by some- 
 thing more substantial than a sermon ? I would 
 not insure the conscience of St. Paul against 
 some morbid extremes of faith, if hawked at by 
 such beaks of petty tyranny. 
 
 3. The Puritan theory of amusements was iden- 
 tified with what they believed to be the Christian 
 
70 My Portfolio, 
 
 theory of life. They never thought of the thing 
 as apart by itself. Whether dancing was a sin, 
 or card-playing was a sin, or play-going was a sin, 
 per se, they cared not one whit. They had little 
 to say or do about "sins per se. They were the 
 most practical men that ever lived. They were 
 a race of Benjamin Franklins. They sifted every 
 thing as a matter of real life. They did this in 
 dead earnest. 
 
 This question of amusements, therefore, was to 
 them a representative question, in which was in- 
 volved the whole spirit of Christian living. They 
 brought to its discussion the whole force of their 
 intense religious nature. In their very make they 
 were intense men. They were anthracite on fire. 
 Without flame or crackle or smoke, theirs was 
 solid heat, burning stilly day and night. Such 
 intensity of moral being they brought to all ques- 
 tions of practical life. 
 
 Such men felt no need of amusements. How 
 could they? They were not born, as some men 
 appear to be, at hap-hazard, without an aim in 
 living, and with no power to create one. Their 
 happiness did not depend on cat's-cradle and push- 
 pin. They did not know the meaning of the word 
 " ennui.^'' They came into this world as apostles. 
 They came because they were sent. The echo of 
 the voice which created them always sounded in 
 their ears, and heralded their steps. Theirs was a 
 great mission. Their souls were straitened till it 
 was accomplished. When invited, urged, bribed, 
 
The Puritan Theory of Amusements, 71 
 
 cajoled, commanded, threatened, browbeaten, to 
 induce them to dance around a Maypole on the 
 village green, they calmly said, " Wist ye not that 
 I must be about my Father's business ? " 
 
 That which seemed to weaker natures a harm- 
 less or needful recreation seemed to them frivolity. 
 When charged with excessive precision, said one 
 of them for answer, " I have a precise God to deal 
 with." They saw no record that Christ danced 
 around poles, or amused himself with a jack-of- 
 spades, or laughed at clowns and harlequins, or 
 figured at masquerade balls. As they read liis 
 life, they saw him seeking relief from life's burdens 
 in the companionship of brothers and sisters, in 
 the homes of Bethany, in the society of angels, 
 in communion with God. They saw that to him 
 midnight prayer took the place of midnight revels. 
 They honestly tried to live as Christ lived. Why 
 should they not ? 
 
 Right or wrong, they believed this to be the 
 true theory of life ; and, what is more, they in 
 good measure lived it. They enjoyed it. As a 
 class, they were the happiest of mortals. If ever 
 in this world men enjoyed life, they did, whenever 
 tyranny would let them alone. And, when it 
 would not, they entertained each other with songs 
 in prisons, and broke out with doxologies at the 
 stake. 
 
 It may be well enough to revise their theory of 
 amusements for later times and new generations. 
 The constitutions of States rarely last a century 
 
72 My Portfolio. 
 
 without change : still less should a popular theory 
 of recreations. We may wisely let up somewhat 
 of the Puritan pressure upon the modern con- 
 science. We may bid God-speed to anybody who 
 thinks he can improve in this respect the usages 
 of a Christian people. By all means, let us give 
 him a hearing. Specially may we extend the law 
 of Christian liberty in this thing. We may trust- 
 fully leave it to every man's conscience to say 
 what recreations, in themselves innocent (as almost 
 all recreations are), will be a help to him in godly 
 living. 
 
 But, after all, who can fail to see that the spirit 
 of the Puritans on this subject was the Christian 
 spirit ? Who can help seeing that improvement, 
 if it comes, must come from the same spirit? 
 Theirs was the spirit of a live conscience. It was 
 the spirit of humble inquiry : it sought wisdom 
 from God. It was the conservative spirit : it 
 leaned to the safe side of moral questions. It 
 was the profound spirit : it sought happiness in 
 duties, rather than in rights. 
 
 It is very easy to fling at the Puritans in this 
 matter, but it is very weak. Every dog must have 
 his bay at the moon, but healthy men sleep 
 through it. So disparagement of the Puritans 
 does not disturb sound thinkers. The world has 
 outlived the wit of it. The libel of the " Blue 
 Laws " has ceased to be amusing. If we could 
 stay long enough to answer such disparagement, 
 our answer would be to point to the men whom 
 
The Puritan Theory of Amusements. 73 
 
 the Puritan theories of life created. Not till the 
 improved theories give us better men and better 
 women, can we wisely believe that they are im- 
 provements. Not till children trained under such 
 improvements turn out to be more Christlike men 
 and women, more prayerful, more self-denying, 
 more useful, happier, too, in the profound sense 
 of spiritual joy, can we safely admit that their 
 fathers are wiser than our fathers. For that proof 
 the world must wait a while, — must wait long 
 enough for us to do some things which the world 
 is in more pressing need of than of an increase of 
 amusements and of idle time. 
 
YIII. 
 
 THE OHEISTIAN THEOEY OF AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 Certain incidental principles are essential to a 
 working theory. 
 
 1. It must be a theory which can be made to 
 seem reasonable to youthful inquiry. 
 
 There is a period of transition from youth to 
 manhood, in which authority must take reason 
 into partnership. That is the period at which the 
 question of amusements is the most practical and 
 yet most critical. Fathers and mothers find that 
 their parental authority is no adequate answer to 
 filial questionings. Youth investigates de novo the 
 family traditions. The ethics of the fathers un- 
 dergo revision. The query often sends a Christian 
 parent to his closet, How shall the usage of a 
 Christian family hold its own against the usage of 
 the world ? 
 
 At that period, the Christian use or disuse of 
 amusements must be sustained by reasons which 
 are reasons. They must be obvious and conclu- 
 sive. So far as they are prohibitory, they must 
 leave no open questions ; still less must they be 
 involved in refinements of casuistry. 
 
 74 
 
The Christian Theory of Amusements. 75 
 
 To illustrate by a case in point. Are not 
 Christian fathers often sensible, in their argument 
 with growing sons, that the traditionary objections 
 to carcl-playing are not conclusive ? Does not the 
 stereotyped argument in the negative seem weak 
 to ingenuous minds? Are not the distinctions 
 often made between that and other games falla- 
 cious? I suspect that there is not a little of 
 secret practice of forbidden games, not because of 
 willful sin, but by reason of unsatisfactory argu- 
 ment against them. We have not carried the 
 conscience of our sons and daughters with us, 
 because we have not carried their common sense. 
 
 This is an evil under the sun. When a time- 
 honored feature of Christian practice is thus non- 
 suited in the court of youthful investigation, it 
 needs to be reconsidered. Either the argument 
 for it must be re-enforced, or its claims should 
 be abandoned. Better the surrender than the 
 enforcement by conservative authority alone. 
 
 2. We must have a theory of amusements which 
 requires no concealments in our practice. 
 
 If any weakness is more fatal than another to a 
 principle of morals, it is the admission of secret 
 practices under it. Right has no love for the 
 dark. Light is sown for the righteous. That I 
 may indulge myself in amusements behind lock 
 and key which I may not enjoy with open win- 
 dows ; that I may do in a strange city that which 
 I must not do in my home ; that I may seek enter- 
 tainments privately to which I would not invite 
 
76 My Portfolio, 
 
 my wife and daughter ; that I may attend recrea- 
 tions in Naples which I denounce in New York ; 
 that I may do where I am known only as a lay- 
 man what I must not do where I am known as a 
 clergyman ; or that I may do as a man what I 
 must not do as a churchman, — all these things 
 are offenses to sound morals. 
 
 That any theory of amusements requires or 
 admits of such secret licenses as these is 'prima 
 facie evidence against it. Blunt men of the world 
 will denounce such ethics as the ethics of a sneak. 
 If any thing will bear the light in this world, it is 
 Christian living. That needs no apologies, and 
 seeks no cover. The very meanest form of phari- 
 saism is that which is ascetic in public and epi- 
 curean in private. The very worst use a man 
 can make of his conscience is to lay prohibitory 
 restrictions on other men which he declines to 
 accept himself. Our Saviour gave a title to such 
 men which is akin to the rattlesnake. 
 
 Yet is not Christian example on the subject of 
 amusements often fatally invalidated by inconsis- 
 tencies of this kind ? The most senseless advice 
 I ever heard of was that given by a Christian 
 father to his son : " I do not say pro or con about 
 card-playing, but it must not be practiced in my 
 house." It is not surprising that that boy has 
 gone to sea. 
 
 A sermon has been preached against the thea- 
 ters of New York, which the preacher could not 
 have known enough to deliver if he had not at- 
 
The Chynstian Theory of Amuscinents. 77 
 
 tended the theaters of London. The usefuhiess 
 of such sermons was never worth their cost. In 
 Christian living we must first, and above all things 
 else, be men. We must live above ground, and 
 not burrow. 
 
 3. We must have a theory which admits of no 
 suspense of conscience in practice ; that is to 
 say, positive decisions of conscience must cover 
 the whole ground of our practice. It is a fatal 
 weakness in any theory of morals, if it leaves con- 
 duct to swing loose in some things for the want 
 of an opinion. To be obliged to say, " I do not 
 know," when my conduct is all the while assum- 
 ing that I ought to know, is a fraud upon princi- 
 ple as well as upon example. No man's example 
 can have authority, because no man's principle 
 deserves it, if it is thus cramped in its range by 
 suspense of conscience. 
 
 Yet is not this the weak point in the practice of 
 some Christians respecting amusements ? We do 
 not mean to be disloyal to conscience ; but certain 
 indulgences we do not bring into the court of 
 conscience, or, if we do, we have never pressed 
 for a verdict. We therefore do things on which 
 we have no theory of right and wrong. It is much 
 easier to obey a public opinion than it is to create 
 one. This we do, when we accept worldly usage 
 as our law with a silent conscience. The rudder 
 swings loose, and the ship drifts. 
 
 Such was not the way of Christ. When did he 
 ever act with a speechless conscience ? What one 
 
78 My Portfolio. 
 
 thing did he ever do on which he had no opinion, 
 and could giye no reason? When did he ever 
 permit the world's usage to become a law to him, 
 for the want of a conscience quick and positive ? 
 " The world was not his friend, nor the world's 
 law." Neither are they ours. He never yielded 
 to it a matter of conscience by default. Why 
 should we ? 
 
 4. We must have a theor}^ which, in its practi- 
 cal working, will not alienate from us the sympa- 
 thies of the great majority of God's people. 
 
 The Christian Church being what it is, no man, 
 on any question of practical morals, can afford 
 to stand alone. This is specially true respecting 
 things of secondary importance, like the amuse- 
 ments of a people. No man can for such a cause 
 isolate himself from the great body of spiritual 
 Christians, without loss. If we achieve all that 
 we claim, we get but a minor good : if we sacrifice 
 to it our affiliation with God's people, or theirs 
 with us, we suffer an immeasurable evil. 
 
 Oblivion of this truth is apparent, often, in the 
 spirit in which the Christian law of amusements 
 is discussed. It is debated too warmly as a ques- 
 tion of individual liberty. But as such is it worth 
 debating? Liberty in such matters is not worth 
 its cost, if we gain it at the expense of Christian 
 fellowship. 
 
 There is more than loss of influence in such 
 isolation : there is loss of certain fine elements of 
 character which no man or woman should be will- 
 
The Christian Theory of Amusements, 79 
 
 ing to part with. There is loss of a wise Chris- 
 tian modesty. It is possible, but not probable, 
 that the individual is right in his dissent from the 
 instinct of the Christian Church. He 7nay be in- 
 spired above his peers, but such is not the usual 
 method of divine revelations. His self-conceit 
 feeds upon his modesty, if he believes himself thus 
 exalted. 
 
 There is a loss of fraternal affection also. It is 
 a selfish thing in me to stand up against the cur- 
 rent of Christian feeling for ray right to attend a 
 theater or a masquerade. My combative nature 
 ought not to be roused against good men and 
 praying women for a mask and a farce. They can 
 afford it ; but can I? Sooner or later I must come 
 to myself, and grieve over my irreparable loss. 
 
 Is there not food for reflection in this view, 
 which a certain class of Christians need for their 
 own healthy digestion of the Christian law of 
 recreations ? 
 
IX. 
 
 IS OARD-PLATING A OHEISTIAN AMUSEMENT? 
 
 Is it right ? Is it expedient ? Something must 
 in fairness be conceded to the affirmative. It 
 must be admitted, so far as Puritan authority 
 bears upon the question, that the Puritan casuis- 
 try was infected with Judaism, to the detriment of 
 Christian liberty, in making religion consist so 
 largely as it did in obedience to prohibitions. Our 
 Puritan fathers were not emancipated to the ex- 
 tent of apostolic liberty from the judaizing spirit. 
 That a change is in progress in Christian senti- 
 ment on the subject can not be denied. 
 
 The advocates of Christian card-playing are cor- 
 rect, also, in claiming that the distinction which 
 it has been common to make between games with 
 cards and other games of chance is fallacious. 
 Any father who has attempted to argue with a 
 quick-witted son in college on that theory must 
 have felt misgivings, to say the least, as to the 
 soundness of his reasoning. For one, I must give 
 it up. The principle that it is a sin to make a 
 frivolous appeal to Providence by the throw of 
 dice is a fair subject of debate. But, if claimed 
 
 80 
 
Is Card-Playi7ig a Christian Amusement? 81 
 
 in one game, it must be conceded in all. On that 
 principle, to toss up a penny is a sin. 
 
 The argument from association fares scarcely 
 better against the modern card-playing for amuse- 
 ment. " Cards are the instruments of the gam- 
 bling-hell. Touch not a thing so saturated with 
 the fumes of the pit." The Puritans made much 
 of this. In later times it has not been easy to 
 answer it with a Christian conscience. It was 
 one of the singular anomalies in casuistry, that 
 the very same public opinion which authorized 
 the Rev. Dr. Nott, sixty years ago, to obtain a 
 half-million of dollars for Union College by a lot- 
 tery, upheld laws forbidding card-playing. 
 
 But now we are told by those who are learned 
 in the devices of Satan, that cards have ceased to 
 occupy that guilty pre-eminence ; that whist es- 
 pecially is rarely used by gamesters ; that their 
 vice has monopolized the roulette-table, the game 
 of billiards, and even the old-fashioned children's 
 game of dominos, which in our childhood we 
 were taught to consider as innocent as cherry- 
 stones. The argument from ungodly association, 
 therefore, if pleaded, must expel dominos from 
 our nurseries, rather than cards from our parlors. 
 
 It must, in fairness, be conceded, also, that 
 games of chance, cards included, may be inno- 
 cently used as a sanitary/ expedient. In asylums 
 for the insane they are relied upon as among 
 the staple means of occupjdng lightly a diseased 
 brain. One excellent officer of a church within 
 
82 My Portfolio, 
 
 my knowledge died insane, whose reason and life 
 might, in the judgment of his physicians, perhaps 
 have been saved, if his conscience had permitted 
 him to while away the weary hours of convales- 
 cence with whist and backgammon. 
 
 The philosophy of the sanitary effect of games 
 of chance is not obscure. The disease of a con- 
 gested brain is a deluge of thinking. Serious 
 thinking is logic. Its continuity is its bane. It 
 is a chain of iron. The sleepless spirit falls under 
 a bondag^e to it more bitter than fetters to hand 
 or foot. The train of thought, as we call it, be- 
 comes to the burning brain worse than the folds 
 of the serpents to the limbs of Laocoon. Power 
 of will can not break it. Sleep becomes impossible. 
 The victim is in the condition of the Chinese 
 criminal, doomed to the torture of enforced in- 
 somnia by the beating of a bell thrown over his 
 head, till raving mania ends the scene. Any 
 thing gives hope which can break up logical con- 
 tinuity of brain- work. This the game of chance 
 will often do ; and, the more abundant the element 
 of chance, the better. The fortuitous complica- 
 tions of whist reduce hT^in-work to brain-pZ«y/ ; 
 and that is just what the raging nervous centers 
 crave. Hence the universal use of chance-games 
 in insane-asylums. 
 
 Why may they not be as useful in some Chris- 
 tian homes ? Two Christian friends once met at 
 a sanitarium. Both were suffering from over- 
 worked brains. Both were threatened with in- 
 
Is Card-Playing a Christian Amusement? 83 
 
 sanity. One of tliem has since died of the disease 
 which then oppressed him. Both had been 
 directed by their physicians to relieve the tedium 
 of their useless hours by whist. They debated 
 the matter as friends of Christ, and members of 
 Christ's church. Deliberately and prayerfully 
 they revived the little they had known of the 
 game in their youth, and spent many evenings in 
 that amusement. They did it without a ripple of 
 condemning conscience. They used to go from 
 the weekly prayer-meeting under the same roof, 
 to the private room of one or the other, and played 
 whist an hour or two before retiring for the night. 
 It was their most effective and harmless soporific. 
 Was whist, under those conditions, a sin ? 
 
 The apology for card-playing is fairly entitled 
 to whatever of support it may derive from these 
 concessions, and some others of less moment. 
 Two other considerations, however, it seems to 
 me, should, except in cases of mental disease or 
 its premonitions, decide Christian practice in the 
 negative. 
 
 One of these is the deference which is due 
 to the Christian judgment of a very large and emi- 
 nently spiritual portion of the Christian Church. 
 It is a serious thing to dissent from the church of 
 Christ upon any matter of importance affecting 
 public morals. No reverent and thoughtful Chris- 
 tian will do it heedlessly or defiantly. There is a 
 religious JBohcmianism which prides itself on its 
 flings of dissent at the " bigotry " and the '' nar- 
 
84 My Portfolio, 
 
 rowness" of the Church, which is not worthy 
 either of a Christian, or a man. It is below the 
 respect of either. Even if the abstract liberty be 
 with the individual, the law of Christian fellow- 
 ship demands the waiving of an individual right 
 in things non-essential, as all mere amusements 
 are, if the overwhelming voice of the Christian 
 body be against it. 
 
 How, then, stands the judgment of the Church 
 upon the question in hand ? In the Catholic and 
 Episcopal, and perhaps Lutheran churches, the 
 innocence of this amusement is not often ques- 
 tioned. In considerable fragments of the Presby- 
 terian, the Reformed, and the Congregational 
 churches, the practice of it has of late years been 
 gaining ground. 
 
 But, with these exceptions, it must be said that 
 the voice of the great bulk of Evangelical churches 
 is at present in the negative. In the rural 
 churches especially, the sentiment of the olden 
 time remains intact. A bishop of the Methodist 
 Church has recently testified that that branch of 
 the Church is almost a unit against card-playing. 
 Probably the same is true, outside of cities cer- 
 tainly, of the Baptist Church. A large majority 
 of the Presbyterian, the Reformed, and the Con- 
 gregational churches, also, hold fast the traditions 
 of the fathers. 
 
 This makes up a volume of weighty testimony. 
 The fact is notewo-rthy, that it is emphasized in 
 times of religious revival. Right or wrong in 
 
Is Card-Playing a Christian Amusement? 85 
 
 theory, it deserves deference in practice. Any 
 man will respect it who retains enough of Chris- 
 tian dignity to respect any thing which outweighs 
 his own opinion. True, the degree of deserved 
 deference to the Christian judgment of others is 
 a variable quantity. When a single, and we must 
 think an idle, Methodist conference in Ohio pro- 
 nounces by solemn vote against the rural game of 
 croquet, intelligent Christian opinion everywhere 
 else reasonably demurs. Such a vote is provincial. 
 It carries with it none of the authority of the 
 Church Universal. 
 
 When the revered Dr. Finney of Oberlin sol- 
 emnly and publicly reproves the mirth of the hard- 
 worked clergy of the Congregational Church, 
 assembled for an hour's recreation at a banquet in 
 Brooklyn, we reasonably withstand our reverend 
 father to his face : " No, sir : in this thing you are 
 ascetic and monastic. ' The Son of man came eat- 
 ing and drinking, and ye say he hath a devil.' " 
 
 When a bowling-alley was first appended to the 
 gymnasium of the Andover Seminary, I received a 
 long and very solemn letter of remonstrance from 
 an excellent Christian woman. She probably died 
 in the belief that the Spirit of God departed from 
 Andover at the advent of that snare of Satan. 
 The reverend and honorable Board of Trustees did 
 not revoke their action at such a call. What 
 would my friend have said to the profligacy of 
 the trustees of Princeton College in introducing 
 a billiard-table ? 
 
86 My Portfolio, 
 
 These cases are clear. But the case is very 
 different with the judgment of an overwhehning 
 majority of the Evangelical Church on a subject 
 on which, till recent years, the Evangelical body 
 was almost unanimous in the same direction. 
 Such a witness is worthy of respect. Such a 
 body of believers have a right to ask that we 
 should not so practice our individual liberty as to 
 wound their feelings by doing that which is only 
 an amusement to us, but which to them seems an 
 infliction of a wound upon the Lord himself. A 
 believer who has a tender sense of Christian fel- 
 lowship, it should seem, would not do that thing. 
 Nevertheless, to the Master he standeth or falleth, 
 not to you or me. 
 
 The other consideration is that of the danger of 
 the example to those to whose consciences games 
 of chance are not matters of indifference. Many 
 such there are, the children of Christian families, 
 who have been trained in the earlier schoo^ of 
 casuistry on the subject. In their present state of 
 religious culture they can not play a game of cards 
 innocently. Multitudes there are, also, of the 
 world outside, whose inherited conscience on the 
 subject condemns this amusement, even though 
 they practice it. To them it is a symbol of un- 
 godliness and a badge of Satan. They feel it to 
 be unworthy of one making profession of Christ. 
 It is one of the snares of the world, which, if 
 they should become Christians, they would feel 
 bound in conscience to put away. They may join 
 
Is Card-Playing a Christian Amusement^ 87 
 
 a Cliristian card-player to liis face, and berate him 
 roundly as a hj^pocrite behind bis back. From no 
 tribunal do professing Christians receive severer 
 judgment than from those with whom they unite 
 in pleasures which the conscience of the world 
 condemns. 
 
 Here applies St. Paul's principle respecting the 
 meats ojffered to idols : " Take heed, lest this 
 liberty of yours become a stumbling-block. If 
 any see thee, shall not the conscience of him be 
 emboldened? Through thy knowledge shall the 
 weak brother perish for whom Christ died? If 
 meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no 
 meat while the world standeth." 
 
 Is not this good sense, as well as sound Chris- 
 tianity ? And is it not pat to the purpose ? Free 
 as we may feel in individual conscience, and much 
 as we may desire that all should come into our 
 Christian liberty in this thing, yet is it worth to 
 us the sacrifice of one iota of Christian fellowship ? 
 Still more, is it worth to us the imperiling of an 
 unsaved brother's soul ? Abstinence seems in this 
 thing, as in reference to the drinking customs of 
 society, to be the true law of Christian fraternity 
 and of common philanthropy. 
 
X. 
 
 THE QUESTION OF SUNDAY OAES. 
 
 Rey. Dk. Humphrey, when president of Am- 
 herst College, used to preach frequently in the 
 adjoining towns. To do this, he often crossed the 
 Connecticut River on Sunday morning in a ferry- 
 boat, and returned by the same conveyance in the 
 evening. In accordance with the pious usage of 
 those times, he endeavored to " improve his oppor- 
 tunities," in imitation of Him who sat and talked 
 by the well of Samaria. He unexpectedly met 
 his match one morning in the quick-witted ferry- 
 man. " Oh, yes ! " said the latter, " I want to 
 save my soul. I believe all you say; but the 
 fact is, I have no time for such things. On week- 
 days I have to work my farm while the boy works 
 the ferry, till, when the nights come, I am too 
 sleepy to know whether I have a soul. Then, 
 when Sunday comes, I have to be here to carry 
 you parsons across the river. I haven't had a 
 passenger this morning, except parsons." So, in 
 substance, the story ran, as Dr. Humphrey related 
 it to a friend. He went home and revised his 
 observance of the Lord's Day, and the ferryman 
 lost a Sunday customer. 
 
The Question of Sunday Cars. 89 
 
 We pass on about thirty years, and a tall, grave 
 man, over sixty years of age, whose look reminds 
 one of " that disciple Avhom Jesus loved," is seen 
 walking from the west bank of the River Schuyl- 
 kill at Philadelphia, on a Sunday morning, and 
 after preaching twice, and presiding at a third ser- 
 vice in the evening, walking back to his country- 
 home, while horse-cars, a score or more, are pass- 
 ing him back and forth. The distance is over 
 three miles each way. It is the Rev. Albert 
 Barnes, who thus endeavors to honor his faith in 
 the Christian sabbath, which he devoutly believes 
 to be violated by the running of the street-cars on 
 that day. He has lately led his brethren and the 
 good people of Philadelphia in a protest against 
 the innovation, and his Sunday walks are his indi- 
 vidual tribute to the same end. 
 
 We pass on fifteen years more. The scene is 
 shifted, we will suppose, to an academic town not 
 a thousand miles from either the Connecticut or 
 the Schuylkill River. The steam-cars run to and 
 from the neighboring metropolis, not as fre- 
 quently, but as regularly, on the Lord's Day as 
 on any other. Conductors, brakemen, engineers, 
 oilmen, and other adjuncts of a railway train, — 
 and we are told that a well-manned train requires 
 the service, on the average, of about twenty men, 
 — are employed as on a week-day. They know 
 no difference between secular and holy time. Life 
 to them is one long treadmill of secularities. If 
 they should chance to be moved, by a tract given 
 
90 My Portfolio. 
 
 to tliem by a Sunday traveler, to petition that 
 their right to the Lord's Day and its refreshing 
 liberties should be restored to them, they would 
 probably be told that railway trains can not run 
 on scruples ; that they require a steel conscience 
 as well as steel rails ; and that, if the petitioners 
 do not think so, their services are no longer 
 wanted. A hundred hungry men to each one 
 of them stand ready to take their places. Wife 
 and children at home must have bread ; and, if the 
 petitioners try to reason the matter with their 
 superiors, they probably end with pocketing their 
 wages — and their scruples. The train runs as 
 before, and twenty men have no sabbath ; and the 
 consciences of twenty men are indurated, it may 
 be, for a lifetime. 
 
 On the line of that railroad some two or three 
 hundred preachers, more or less, live ; and many 
 of them, not a large minority perhaps, but an 
 increasing one, use the cars as freely on Sunday 
 as on Monday. Anomalies easily grow to usages 
 in such things. Distance appears to have little 
 concern with the license which these itinerant 
 ministers take with sacred time. They ride any 
 distance which can be traveled in season for the 
 morning service, and nobody audibly questions 
 it. Nevertheless, it is questioned. The traveling 
 ministers on the Lord's Day are surrounded by a 
 great cloud of witnesses in more worlds than one. 
 Approving angels, we trust, hear their faithful 
 sermons and devout intercessions, — approving, 
 
The Question of Sunday Cars, 91 
 
 that is, the sermon and the prayer ; but three or 
 four hundred young students in the academic town 
 listen also, thinking, the while, not so much of 
 prayer and sermon as of that which went before. 
 They ask each other, and ask their instructors, 
 " Is it right for these ministers to go and come in 
 the Sunday trains? If right for them, why not 
 for us?" Next Sunday they ask leave to go to 
 Boston to attend a " sacred concert " on the Com- 
 mon, — one of the improvements of these latter 
 days for the spiritual culture of that goodly city 
 and its suburbs. And when they receive a nega- 
 tive, and are required to attend church and hear 
 the ministers instead, they do not quite see the 
 reasons of things. Is anybody else wiser ? 
 
 Dr. Humphrey, Mr. Barnes, and these later itin- 
 erant divines, have all, doubtless, agreed in one 
 thing. They have all lauded with unmeasured 
 respect that act of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 
 1620, in which they bore witness to their rever- 
 ence for the Christian sabbath by remaining, with 
 their sick ones and little children, another day in \ 
 the cabins of their leaky ship, after a tedious and 
 unhealthy passage, that they might not use unwor- 
 thily the Lord's time. 
 
 Which of these reverend, and, we would will- 
 ingly believe, equally conscientious men, have been 
 right about this thing? If the query admits of 
 doubt, which have chosen the safer side ? Have 
 the Pilgrims probably discovered, in a more tonic 
 atmosphere than that of Plymouth Bay, that they 
 
92 My Portfolio. 
 
 bore ascetic penance in "The Mayflower" and 
 " The Speedwell " for a sickly scruple ? In the 
 deed which we recall so reverently on Forefathers' 
 Day, was their tribute to history to the end of 
 time, only a freak of superstition, — the thing, 
 which, above all others, they abhorred ? Did Dr. 
 Humj)hrey and Mr. Barnes, in their modest imita- 
 tion of the fathers, expose to the world's contempt 
 the fussiness of a pettifogging conscience ? Ought 
 we to place all these reverend men, in our esti- 
 mate of character, by the side of George Fox, 
 in his praying over the cut of his Quaker coat 
 and the width of the rim of his Quaker hat ? If 
 so, it is time that we all see it thus, and see the 
 reason why. Such feeble brethren as Dr. Hum- 
 phrey and Mr. Barnes let us shield in compassion- 
 ate silence. On Forefathers' Day let us frankly 
 place the scrupulous delay of the landing at 
 Plymouth alongside of Tower Hill in Salem. Let 
 us teach our children that both represent obsolete 
 blunders of a conscience not illumined by the 
 dawn of these better days. Then, for ourselves, 
 let us endeavor to mount the spiritual heights of 
 the " sacred concerts " on Boston Common, in 
 which the Metropolitan Band shall lead our de- 
 votions in (we quote from the advertisements) 
 the "concert-waltzes of Strauss," and "La Som- 
 nambula of Cavallini." 
 
 An eminent Boston merchant, a man not given 
 to narrow Sabbatarianism, puts this whole ques- 
 tion of the observance of the Lord's Day in a 
 
The Question of Sunday Cars. 93 
 
 nutshell, in words which suburban ministers may 
 wisely take in admonition to themselves. He 
 says, in a letter which lies before me, " The wedge 
 once entered, there is no resisting its progress. 
 We bid fair to have a Parisian sabbath here before 
 long, unless Christian people are willing to deny 
 themselves^ and do nothing which may give their 
 neighbor an excuse for taking another step." The 
 suburbans of a large city are, to a great extent, 
 responsible for its moral decline. They help to 
 fill its theaters; they patronize its "sacred con- 
 certs," which are a burlesque on the name; they 
 fill large spaces in its Sunday trains. Cut off the 
 suburban patronage, and could one of these sources 
 of detriment to public morals be supported? 
 Doubtful. 
 
XI. 
 
 WOMAN-SUFPEAGE AS JUDGED BY THE WOEKING 
 OP NEGEO-SUPPEAGE 
 
 A FALSE principle wrought into real life always 
 works itself out in disaster. Nemesis watches it. 
 Its malign nature will out relentlessly. Its work- 
 ing is like that of demoniacal possession : the dis- 
 possession comes with outcry and convulsions. 
 
 Such is the naked fact in the issue of our ex- 
 periment in giving the ballot to the negro of the 
 plantation. We put the most delicate blossom of 
 civilization into the hands of a herd of ignorance 
 and brutishness. We uplifted men to the ulti- 
 mate height of republican freedom, whose donkeys 
 knew nearly as much of its responsibilities as they 
 did. We drew from the rice-fields to the polls 
 men who in some instances deposited there circus- 
 bills, hotel dinner-bills, and copies of the Lord's 
 Prayer. We threw open halls of legislation which 
 the finished culture of the land had graced, to 
 men who not onl}^ could neither read nor write, 
 but whose guffaws in derision of parliamentary 
 order, as they sat with feet higher than their 
 heads, betrayed scarcely more of intelligence than 
 
 94 
 
Woman-Suffrage judged hy Negro-Suffrage. 95 
 
 the bray of an ass. The Rhetts and Legares, and 
 Hamptons and Calhouns of a great State, have 
 been succeeded m part by Sambo and Pompey, 
 and Csesar and Jerusalem. 
 
 The issue, to the most sanguine believers in the 
 necessity of the experiment, must seem to be a 
 dead failure. Not only has it breeded bad legis- 
 lation, and repudiated debts, but the fundamental 
 law of representative government — that by which 
 majorities rule — has been abrogated by force. 
 The process has been so revolutionary, that we 
 have had to coin a new word to express it. "Bull- 
 doze " will live long in our language in token of 
 the wretched business. 
 
 Political partisans may gloss it over as they 
 please ; yet few non-partisans in the land doubt 
 that minorities rule to-day in South Carolina and 
 Louisiana, and probably in three other Southern 
 States. Govs. Chamberlain and Packard are de 
 jure chief magistrates of their respective Com- 
 monwealths. They have the sympathy of thou- 
 sands who feel compelled, by a necessity which 
 knows not law, to support the policy which dis- 
 owns them. Their rivals govern only by the 
 right of a usurpation, which, in theory, has sup- 
 planted republican government by a tj^ranny. 
 The same revolution extended through the coun- 
 try would make every State government a despot- 
 ism, and the form of representative rule a farce. 
 
 Yet we yield to it as a necessity. A necessity 
 which is above law is the issue of the first false 
 
96 My Portfolio. 
 
 move which gave the franchise to men who were 
 neither fitted for it, nor able even to understand 
 it. Through no fault of theirs — poor souls ! — 
 they were lifted to an eminence which they had 
 never known enough even to ask for. The sym- 
 pathies of the best minds of the nation must be 
 with them, rather than with their lordly superi- 
 ors. They have done as well, in their unnatural 
 elevation, as anybody could have been expected 
 to do, if suddenly and volcanically tossed into 
 responsibilities so vastly above their education 
 and their history. 
 
 But it is no kindness to them to suffer our com- 
 passion to blind us to the facts of their condition, 
 which both they and we must now face together. 
 The facts of the situation have driven our theo- 
 ries out of sight. We can not help seeing that 
 there are things in the administration of States 
 which are more potent than numbers. We have 
 to coynt other things than heads, white or black. 
 We must confess that intelligence, culture, knowl- 
 edge of the art of government, the habit of rule, 
 pride of ancestry and historic prestige, have more 
 real power in ruling a great State than the brute 
 force of hands. The "bayonets" which "think" 
 beat back thrice the number of those which do 
 not think. Upset society to-day by plunging these 
 thinking forces underneath, and heaving ignorance 
 and inherited debasement, and the traditions of 
 slavery, to the top, and the first thing we learn is 
 that society will not stay thus upset. It inevi- 
 
Woman-Suffrage judged by Negro-Suffrage, 97 
 
 tably turns over again into its natural condition, 
 stands on its natural feet, and erects again its 
 natural head, let the majority of the bits of paper, 
 in or out of the ballot-box, count for whom they 
 may. The head comes uppermost, let the hands 
 do what they will. 
 
 Color and hair, and nose and lips, have nothing 
 to do with such a revolution and counter-revolu- 
 tion. Any race in South Carolina, fresh from the 
 auction-block and the lash of the rice-field, could 
 no more govern an intelligent and cultured mi- 
 nority, heirs to the history of South Carolina, than 
 a herd of buffaloes could govern Minnesota. To 
 this fact of political science our whole theory of 
 government by majorities has been forced to suc- 
 cumb in a day. Think what we may of it, the 
 fact is there, and our theory is nowhere. Such 
 is the exorcism of the body politic, by which it 
 rids itself of a tampering with the franchise which 
 was against nature. The hopeless despotism under 
 which New York is drifting towards bankruptcy 
 is only another fruit of the same reckless exten- 
 sion of suffrage at the North. Such silent revolu- 
 tions are mightiest issues of apparently smallest 
 forces. They resemble that in which an ounce of 
 water in midwinter may rend asunder a ton's 
 weight of granite in a night. 
 
 Where, now, is the parallel between negro-suf- 
 frage at the South and the proposed suffrage of 
 woman? In respect to intelligence and culture, 
 and their prerogatives, it does not exist at all. 
 
98 My Portfolio. 
 
 Whether it exists in respect to the instinct and 
 capacity of government, may be an open question. 
 But the parallel is clear in this, which is the ulti- 
 mate fact in both cases, that the ballot is given, 
 or supposed to be given, not to exceptional classes, 
 few in number, but to the half of the population 
 which has no physical power to defend it. They 
 can neither take it by force, nor hold it if assailed 
 by force. 
 
 " Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.'* 
 
 A principle of political destiny is expressed in 
 these words, than which gravitation is not more 
 sure. Liberty, such as is involved in the gift of 
 suffrage, is impossible, on any large scale, to a 
 race, or nation, or tribe, or class, which has not 
 power to take the right, if it is a right, and to 
 hold it against all aggressors. This is the secret, 
 back of all other causes, of the failure of negro- 
 suifrage at the South. Excess of numbers by a 
 few thousands or tens of thousands is of no ac- 
 count, where the cultured brain, the heirloom of 
 centuries, is all on the side of the minority. The 
 negro majority, in receiving the ballot, received 
 an elephant. They did not know what to do with 
 it ; and, in the very first real conflict about it, they 
 could not defend it by force of arms. Such a ma- 
 jority is not fitted for the ballot ; nor is it their 
 right, in any sense which implies a blessing in it, 
 till they reach a stage of civilization in which 
 they can not be " bulldozed " out of it. 
 
Woman Suffrage judged hy Negro-Suffrage. 99 
 
 Before tlie war, when servile insurrection was 
 threatened, the Southern planter used to smile, 
 saying, " One gentleman is a match for three ne- 
 groes." So he was, so long as the traditions of a 
 free race backed him up, and the traditions of 
 a slave race weighted the negro down. Why did 
 Gov. Chamberlain call on the National Govern- 
 ment for troops to execute the will of the legal 
 majority of South Carolina ? With twenty thou- 
 sand able-bodied majority at his beck, why did 
 he not summon them to execute their own will 
 in the defense of their own rights and his ? Gov. 
 Rice would have done that in Massachusetts. 
 Gov. Robinson would have done it in New York. 
 The Governor of Ohio proclaimed the natural 
 law of State government, when he was impor- 
 tuned, in the midst of the late labor strikes, to 
 telegraph to Washington for troops, and replied, 
 " I will not ask for one bayonet from the Presi- 
 dent till every loyal citizen of Ohio is whipped." 
 Why did not Govs. Chamberlain and Packard act 
 on the same theory? 
 
 They dared not do it. As wise statesmen and 
 humane men, they could not do it. They knew 
 that that would mean a war of races. They knew, 
 that, in such a war, the weaker race must go down. 
 They knew that numbers, unless overwhelming 
 beyond the facts of any black majority in the 
 South, was the least important factor in the prob- 
 lem. The citizens of Liberia show only a prudent 
 estimate of the relative strength of the two races, 
 
100 My Portfolio, 
 
 by their law that no white man shall own a rood 
 of land within the bounds of the republic. Ha}^- 
 tiens, in their revolt against the French in the 
 time of Toussaint L'Ouverture, showed the same 
 shrewd foresight in the motto of one of the insur- 
 gent banners : " One white man too much for St. 
 Domingo." The white race in either of the revo- 
 lutionized States of the South, in such a war of 
 races, if let alone by the North, would have been 
 the conqueror in a month. No surer way could 
 have been devised to remand the black race to 
 slavery under laws of peonage, than to have ini- 
 tiated the war of races just then and there, at the 
 close of a political campaign which had convulsed 
 the nation, and ended with a disputed succession. 
 
 No : there was no hope for the negro ; and in 
 mercy to us all Gov. Chamberlain held still, 
 though it was in his power to plunge the conti- 
 nent into civil war. Laws of nature had been dis- 
 regarded in giving the franchise to majorities who 
 were unfit for it, with no checks conservative of 
 the ascendency of intelligence and of property; 
 and, at the very first real trial of the principle, 
 the retribution came. He was the true statesman 
 who bowed in silence to the inevitable. 
 
 Is it said, in reply, that this assumes that right 
 depends on might? I answer. Some rights do de- 
 pend on might. The right of revolution does. 
 Besides, the objection begs the question. Suf- 
 frage, abstractly considered, is nobody's "right." 
 No " Bill of Rights " ever read that " all men are 
 
Woman-Suffrage judged by Negro- Suffrage, 101 
 
 entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
 ness — and the elective franchise." Suffrage is 
 primarily a responsibility^ and a fearful one. The 
 " right " to it is an aftergrowth, depending on 
 many things, of which one is the power to defend 
 it. It is no kindness, but a fearful wrong rather, 
 to lay it upon a crowd of beings who must fling 
 it away in a panic at the first call to protect it by 
 resort to arms. 
 
 Here, then, lies the parallel between the suf- 
 frage of the negro and the proposed gift of it to 
 women. Unlike in every other point vital to the 
 argument, the two are alike in this, except that 
 the disadvantage of woman is fourfold that of the 
 negro, — that the distribution of physical power 
 renders the gift neither a right nor a blessing. 
 That which was unnatural, because untimely, to 
 the negro, must be for ever unnatural to woman. 
 She could never defend it if contested by man. 
 She could never enforce laws enacted by majori- 
 ties of female voters, in opposition to men. A 
 war of races would be a tragedy. A war of sexes 
 would be a farce. 
 
 Moreover, legislative hostility of the sexes is 
 no bugbear. It is not all improbable. Take but 
 a single case. Suppose a declaration of war by 
 a majority of female legislators, sustained by a 
 majority of female voters. War is declared, sup- 
 plies are voted, taxation is decreed, and conscrip- 
 tion ordered, by the major voice of woman. Her 
 natural aversion to bloodshed goes for nothing in 
 
102 My Portfolio, 
 
 the hypothesis. History shows that war and its 
 pageantry are popular with the female sex. Its 
 weaknesses in that direction are quite equal to 
 man's. Once in a fight, woman is a more unrea- 
 soning animal than man. No other mobs equal 
 those of women in ferocity. Witness the Fau- 
 bourg St. Antoine. 
 
 Our late civil war was largely the work of 
 women. Intelligent Southerners say that the so- 
 cial impulse which drove their section into rebel- 
 lion was the furor of its women. I have been 
 told by one well informed of the facts, that even 
 South Carolina probably, and Georgia certainly, 
 would never have seceded, but for the mordant 
 sarcasm of their refined and cultured ladies, which 
 made it impossible for chivalrous young men to 
 resist the current. Few little incidents of the 
 war so impressed upon our soldiers the intensity 
 of Southern attachment to the "lost cause," as 
 that of the Mississippi maiden, who, in defiance of 
 her triumphant foes, sang "Dixie," with unbroken 
 voice and flashing eye, while the home of her 
 childhood was burning to the ground under their 
 torches. 
 
 So, too, since the conflict of arms has ceased, we 
 are told that the conflict of opinion and of feeling 
 is kept up most bitterly by Southern women. No 
 other class of Southern society is so difficult of 
 "reconstruction" as its intelligent and high-born 
 ladies. Planters, merchants, lawyers, physicians, 
 journalists, of the South, accept the situation with 
 
Woman-Suffrage judged hy Negro-Suffrage, 103 
 
 equanimity, and her soldiers with generosity, when 
 their wives and daughters will not permit so much 
 as the hem of their garments to touch in the street 
 those of their Northern sisters. When Gen. Butler 
 was in command at New Orleans, it was the high- 
 bred ladies of the city who spat in the faces of 
 officers of the Federal army. Could one Southern 
 man have been found who would have done that ? 
 
 The opposition of woman to man in the prose- 
 cution of war and its collateral measures, then, is 
 not impossible. Let that hostility express itself in 
 legislation, and who is to execute its will ? Who 
 shall carry on the war ? Who is to enforce the legis- 
 lative will of woman in any thing^ if man opposes 
 it ? The popular parody on " Woman's Will " may 
 do for the ball-room. It is not argument : it is a 
 wretched libel upon woman, which has neither wit 
 nor wisdom. 
 
 In sober earnest, woman with the gift of suffrage 
 would be just where any other half of society 
 would be if destitute of resources to defend the 
 gift. A majority of women, like the majority of 
 negroes, must forego the gift whenever the frenzy 
 or the trickery of political passions deprives them 
 of it. In both cases, there is no power behind to 
 protect it. In both cases, the gift of it is legislation 
 against nature^ though for very different reasons. 
 Such legislation must be expected to work dis- 
 aster in a hundred ways which no human wisdom 
 can foresee. Fight with gravitation, and you are 
 sure to be worsted in catastrophes which gravita- 
 
104 My Portfolio, 
 
 tion never would have developed if it had not 
 been resisted. Dam up the Mississippi, and con- 
 test its passage to the Gulf, and you must reckon 
 upon floods and inundations away back to the 
 gorges of the Kocky Mountains. So long as water 
 runs down hill, so long will Nature have her way 
 in the affairs of States as well, in defiance of en- 
 actments of law, and voices of majorities. 
 
XII. 
 
 EEPOEM m THE POLITICAL STATUS OF WOMEIf. 
 
 The unsoundness of a social or political reform 
 is sometimes indicated by a certain animus which 
 runs through the reasoning of its advocates, quite 
 as clearly as by the inconclusiveness of the reason- 
 ing itself. With some honorable and able excep- 
 tions, this appears to be the rule in the advocacy 
 of the reform of which the extension of the suf- 
 frage to women is the initial measure. 
 
 1. A reverent believer in the Scriptures can 
 not but detect evidence of this distorted animus 
 in the coolness with which the biblical argument 
 in the negative is ignored by the most positive ad- 
 vocates of the reform. For distinction's sake, and 
 in justice to a different class of its advocates, they 
 may be called " the left wing " of the reform. One 
 is reminded of the fling which used to be thrown 
 at the Bible by the corresponding wing of the 
 old antislavery reformers, whose answer to the 
 objection that the Bible tolerated slavery was, 
 " So much the worse for the Bible, then ! " 
 
 If the Scriptures are clear and positive on any 
 subject relating to the organization of society, they 
 
 105 
 
106 My Portfolio, 
 
 are so on this, of the position of woman in the 
 order of nature. St. Paul defines it beyond the 
 reach of cavil. He reasons upon it, not as an 
 Oriental, but as a cosmopolitan. He pronounces 
 judgment upon it, not as a priest, but as a philoso- 
 pher. He goes back to the beginning of things. 
 He finds his reason for the subordination of woman 
 in the very act of her creation. He could not well 
 have put the case in a way more flatly antagonistic 
 to the opposite extreme of our day. What the 
 inspired teacher meant to say on the subject admits 
 of no reasonable doubt. If fire is fire, the apostle's 
 theory of the social economy under which God 
 placed the two sexes at the beginning, and which 
 Christianity leaves as it finds it, makes man the 
 head, and woman something other than the head ; 
 man the power of government., and woman not that. 
 Yet, notwithstanding the indubitable force of 
 the inspired reasoning, it is scarcely ever heard 
 of among those who chiefly give character to this 
 modern revolution. They often ignore the bibli- 
 cal argument with the flippancy with which one 
 might dismiss the law of the Koran on the subject. 
 Inspiration goes for nothing. St. Paul is no more 
 to the purpose than the author of the Book of 
 Mormon. We are afraid of a reform which starts 
 with such an animus towards the word of God. 
 It is not a philosophical treatment of a great au- 
 thority. It is not a judicial treatment of great 
 precedents. It is not a Christian treatment of a 
 revelation from heaven. 
 
Reform in the Political Status of Woman. 107 
 
 2. A similar defect in the animus of its reason- 
 ings is found in the antagonism which the reform 
 seems to foster between the sexes. Is not this 
 the first time in the history of the race that such 
 antagonism has assumed the dignity of a great 
 humanitarian revolution ? " The Subjection of 
 Woman " is the mildest title which Mr. Mill could 
 invent even for his philosophic and able essay on 
 the subject, and the latest synonym is "The White 
 Male Dynasty." The sexes are made to appear 
 as master and servant, as usurper and victim, as 
 tyrant and slave. Woman, as the reform will have 
 it, lies under the hoof of man. Maidenhood and 
 marriage are only different phases of the vassalage 
 to which the sex is born. Law, the creature of 
 man's will, admits no other destiny. So far as the 
 reform works out its normal results, it tends to 
 mutual suspicion and alienation. It is infusing an 
 element of mutual defiance into our legislation on 
 the interests of the sexes. The drift of it is to 
 leave absolutely nothing which law can reach to 
 their mutual confidence and affection. Its aim 
 seems to be to barricade the sexes against each 
 other. Our statute-books already bristle with de- 
 fenses of woman against man. Marriage, therefore, 
 as it looks in legislation, is but a truce to chronic 
 war ; and we are told that this is but the begin- 
 ning of things. 
 
 Evidence is not distant that the legitimate fruit 
 of all this is ripening in many families. Women 
 whose gentle and trustful natures would never 
 
108 My Portfolio. 
 
 dream of a sense of servitude in tlieir lot are told 
 of " chimeras dire " in the very construction of the 
 old English marriage-vow, under which duchesses 
 and queens have " lived and loved and died " for 
 centuries. Unsuspecting wives are tempted to 
 believe there must be some fire where so much 
 smoke is puffed into their faces. The relation of 
 elder sisters to younger brothers — in some re- 
 spects the most beautiful, and at the same time 
 powerful, phase of domestic life — is often poisoned 
 by this infection. The saddest histories in this 
 world are unwritten. If those of certain families 
 could be known, it would be found that the last 
 twenty years have wrought a mournful change in 
 many homes. The change is due chiefly to the 
 silent repulsions produced by the agitation of this 
 reform and by the extreme legislation which it 
 has created. Profound instincts in both sexes are 
 chafed into morbid remonstrance. Without a 
 shadow of reason, wives have grown suspicious of 
 husbands, and husbands have retaliated in kind. 
 The ancient unity of interests has been broken up. 
 Extreme and morbid individualism has been fos- 
 tered just where it ought never to have been heard 
 of. Persons of gentle birth and refined culture, 
 who never would have created such a state of 
 things, accept it, unconscious of what they do. 
 They breathe malaria in the social atmosphere, 
 and can not help being diseased by it. As a con- 
 sequence, married life, to many innocent parties, 
 becomes one long disappointment of the dreams 
 of vouth. 
 
Reform in the Political Status of Woman. 109 
 
 In other cases, young mothers chafe under the 
 indignity of household cares. Daughters unmar- 
 ried become discontented with the care of aged 
 and infirm parents, and sigh for a " mission " in 
 some loftier " sphere," which means, in plain lan- 
 guage, a more public sphere. They ask, " Why 
 should we, rather than our brothers, do this drudg- 
 ery ? Why are we, rather than they, doomed to 
 this uncongenial and obscure toil ? Why should 
 the pulpit, the bar, and the senate be open to 
 them, and to us the nursery and the hospital? 
 Some feel that there was good reason for the old 
 Jewish prayer, " Lord, I thank thee that I was I 
 not born a woman ! " Such is the drift of this / 
 innovation where the spirit of " the left wing " 
 has full sway. 
 
 To what more probable cause than this can be 
 attributed the ominous increase in the number of 
 divorces, in the last two decades, in the most staid 
 and conservative of our New-England States? 
 The statistics published by Dr. Allen of Lowell, 
 the Rev. Mr. Dike of Vermont, and others, threat- 
 en the rapid incoming of the most morbific of 
 all social corruptions. Nothing else is so pesti- . 
 lent to public virtue as legal immorality. Teach 
 woman that marriage under existing conditions is 
 vassalage, and then divorce for "incompatibility 
 of temper," or any other " skeleton in the house," 
 becomes another of her " natural rights." The 
 same teaching so adulterates public sentiment 
 that it will sustain courts in rulings in which 
 
110 3Iy Portfolio. 
 
 communism exults, and of which Mormonism 
 says, " Have we not told you so ? " 
 
 Is the picture overdrawn ? It is to be hoped so. 
 But thus far the worst working of this reform is 
 secret. It is history unwritten. It is pent up in 
 silent and sullen homes. This is one of the revolu- 
 
 ' tions which come "in noiseless slippers." But its 
 tread is none the less malign. It is like the tread 
 
 I of Attila the Hun, who, as the legend reads, left 
 never a blade of grass behind. Who does not 
 know of homes within the circle of his acquaint- 
 ance in which the beginnings of this — if I may 
 use a word of rare authority — denaturalizing pro- 
 cess are visible ? 
 
 3. The same passionate reasoning is seen in 
 the recklessness with which the dignity of mater- 
 nity is often flouted in the service of this social 
 revolution. To this there are doubtless many 
 considerate exceptions. It could not well be 
 otherwise. Human nature, it should seem, can 
 not often wallow so deep in its own degradation 
 that men and women shall degrade their mothers 
 in their theories of life. But this reform drifts 
 towards that. Much is blurted out in angry de- 
 fense of it which implies that. It is the inevitable 
 sequence of any theory of life which assumes that 
 woman has, or can have, or can discover, in the 
 wide world, a " mission " more exalted than that 
 of a mother in her nursery. Once fill a young 
 woman's mind with the notion that it is a grander 
 thing to be a speaker on the platform than to be a 
 
Reform in the Political Status of Woman. Ill 
 
 wife in a Christian home, that it is a nobler dis- 
 tinction to be a successful author than to be the ^ 
 happy mother of children, that it is more honora- 
 ble to head a half-score of " committees " for pub- 
 lic service than it is to be a loving daughter in a 
 father's house, the model of refinement to younger 
 brothers and sisters, and you can no longer find 
 a place of honor in her thoughts for the mission 
 of either daughter, wife, or mother. These rela- 
 tionships become lost ideas. They must be super- 
 latives or nothing. The duties they involve are 
 either honors to be proud of, or drudgeries to be 
 got rid of. The law of nature which imposes 
 them on woman is either the voice of God, or the 
 voice of tyranny. In this view is seen the massive 
 volume of argument against this reform in the 
 title of Dr. Bushnell's book, " The Reform against 
 Nature." Never before was so much of solid logic 
 packed into four words as we find in this invinci- 
 ble thesis. When and where has it ever been 
 answered ? One might as easily answer a Minid- 
 bullet. 
 
 4. The same absence of dispassionate argu- 
 ment is seen in the frequent ignoring of certain 
 objections to the reform, which seem to its oppo- 
 nents to involve it in absurdity. Few organic 
 changes affecting so radically the interests of 
 modern life seem to us to have so few positive 
 and relevant ideas as this has in that extreme 
 which is now under consideration. For the most 
 part, it revolves around two, as in the groove of 
 
112 My Portfolio. 
 
 an ellipse, and those two are assumptions. They 
 are the intrinsic rectitude of the reform, and its 
 " manifest destiny." 
 
 To the common judgment of men, for instance, 
 it seems a nan sequitur so bald that it has the 
 look of absurdity, that suffrage should be extended 
 to women because it is a " natural right." Natu- 
 ral to what ? natural to whom ? natural why and 
 wherefore? the average mind questions incredu- 
 lously. It finds in itself no affirmative intuitions. 
 Has the world revolved through these thousands 
 of years of progress without finding out till now 
 so remarkable a discovery ? Yet what " Bill of 
 Rights " ever included it ? What " Declaration 
 of Independence," in great revolutions, ever as- 
 serted it ? What " Magna Charta " ever demanded 
 it with mailed hand ? Wise men have founded 
 empires and republics on advanced theories of lib- 
 erty and equality. Yet when has statesmanship 
 the wisest ever built republic or empire on this 
 as its corner-stone : " All men and women are by 
 nature equal, and are entitled to life, liberty, the 
 pursuit of happiness — and the ballot"? So the 
 "Declaration" of 1776 ought to have read, if the 
 claim in question is true. Why did not the revo- 
 lutionary statesmen of our heroic age, delving as 
 they did deep down among the roots of things, 
 happen to see so obvious a right as this, if it is a 
 right in the very nature of things ? Natural rights, 
 it is to be presumed, are not far to seek, nor hard 
 to find. They lie near the surface, patent to the 
 
Reform in the Political Status of Woman. 113 
 
 common sense of men. Yet somehow the common 
 sense of men, even under the favormg conditions 
 of an age stimulated by a revolutionary atmos- 
 phere, does not discern this right in the nature 
 of the human mind. We charge that the claim 
 has the look of absurdity ; and all the answer we 
 get is that it is a right, and has a manifest destiny. 
 So of other things involved in this reform, which, 
 but for the gravity of the interests at stake, we 
 should" smile at, so unnatural do they look, at the 
 first assertion, to the average of men. The ab- 
 surdity of thrusting upon one-half of the human 
 race a privilege which they have never asked for, 
 and their desire of which is a thing not proved ; 
 the absurdity of imposing upon one-half of the 
 race a duty the gravest that organized society 
 creates, but which they have no power to defend 
 in an emergency ; the absurdity of holding woman 
 to military service, as she must be held if she is 
 to stand on any fair terms of equality Avith man 
 in the possession of this " natural right ; " the ab- 
 surdity of the intermingling of the gravest duties 
 of the court-room and the senate-chamber with 
 those of the nursery, — these, and other like things 
 involved in the proposed revolution and its se- 
 quences, we claim have the look of absurdity to 
 the average sense of mankind. Yet they are com- 
 monly treated either flippantly or passionately in 
 the attempt at rejoinder ; and once and again we 
 are told the revolution is right because it is right, 
 and it must succeed because it will succeed. 
 
114 My Portfolio, 
 
 If any thing more specific than this is urged in 
 repl}^, we still find a want of relevance which 
 reminds us of the popular fling, which we would 
 gladly forget, at a " woman's reason " for things. 
 We ask, for example, for a plain answer to the 
 argument from the biblical order of creation, in 
 which man was first, and woman was ordained to 
 be his helpmeet, and we are told that men beat 
 their wives. We ask for a reverent answer to 
 St. Paul's reasoning, and we are informed that 
 St. Paul was a bachelor. We ask what to do with 
 the apostle's inspired command to wives, so marked 
 in its distinction from his commands to husbands, 
 and we are reminded that the apostle was a Jew. 
 We urge the impossibility of woman's defending 
 the ballot by force of arms, and we are answered 
 that woman is a slave. We argue the incongruity 
 of the duties of maternity with those of the jury- 
 box and the bar, and we are instructed gravely 
 that men are tyrants, usurpers, brutes. We speak 
 of the dignity of marriage and the sacredness of 
 motherhood, and we are met with the discovery 
 that woman has a "mission." So the changes 
 ring on a few ideas, of which we fail to see the 
 logical relevance to the point. 
 
 We can not help knowing that great revolutions 
 carry with them great complications. The whole 
 order of society is involved in them. They never 
 end where they begin. They never do away with 
 one institution, one usage, one abuse, and stop 
 there. They have a course which they must run, 
 
Reform m the Political Status of Woman. 115 
 
 intricate and inevitable. They shake the world 
 under the tramp of their progress. Sooner or 
 later, armed men arc apt to spring up in their 
 wake. Such must be the destiny of this one, if it 
 succeeds. Not a single interest of society can 
 escape it. The ballot is but the first of its de- 
 mands. The whole sweep of the relation of the 
 sexes, and all the duties and rights of both, must 
 come under revision. Natural foundations on 
 which organized society has been built from the 
 beginning of time, and without which it is a thing 
 not proved that organized society can exist at all, 
 must be torn up, if this reform is carried consis- 
 tently to its maturity. Nothing else like it exists 
 in history. No other theory of life has ever cut 
 every thing loose from the experience of the race, 
 and put every thing at hazard on an unproved 
 and untried hj'pothesis. If such a reform is even 
 to be talked of in the seclusion of universities 
 and libraries, every step in its inception should 
 be calmly measured, every principle involved 
 should be dispassionately studied, every argu- 
 ment for and against it should be weighed judi- 
 cially. If it does not start right, it can end, even 
 as a theory, only in chaos. Specially should the 
 animus which controls it be reverent to the word 
 of God, and respectful to the common sense of 
 men. 
 
 There is a '' right wing " of this reform which 
 may command the trust of conservative and Chris- 
 tian men. Such men have already supported it ; 
 
116 My Portfolio. 
 
 they were pioneers in it before the " left " extreme 
 was developed. It covers especially four things ; 
 viz., the higher education of women, the exten- 
 sion of the range of their employments without 
 loss of caste, their protection from swindlers in 
 their tenure of property, and the extension of 
 their usefulness in organized charities. My space 
 forbids the discussion of these any further than 
 to say of them two things. One is, that they are 
 yet very largely on trial ; and no right-minded man 
 will do other than to welcome any results which 
 fair and full experiment shall prove. The other 
 is, that every true interest of woman in the experi- 
 ment can be gained without complicating it with 
 the question of suffrage, and the more wisely and 
 quickly gained by its deliverance from the unnatu- 
 ral suspicions and alienations which political agi- 
 tation inevitably creates. Organic improvements 
 in social life are always most healthfully advanced 
 when they are made to take the type, not of re- 
 form, but of development, not of revolution, but 
 of growth. 
 
XIII. 
 
 THE LENGTH OF SEKMOITS. 
 
 A STEAW may show which way the wind blows. 
 So the drift of opinion respecting the length of 
 sermons indicates, as it seems to me, certain perils 
 which we shall do well to ponder. 
 
 1. It indicates the danger of a disuse of doctri- 
 nal preaching. Any one who knows the interior 
 of sermonizing knows that thorough discussion of 
 any thing which deserves it requires time. No 
 intelligent preacher ever did or ever will discuss 
 the standard doctrines of our faith in sermons of 
 a half-hour's length. Doctrinal preaching must 
 become obsolete, is now obsolescent, under the 
 imperious demand of the popular taste for brevity. 
 
 The surest way to make such preaching inani- 
 mate is to crowd its massive themes into thirty 
 minutes. I once heard in the city of Boston a dis- 
 course on the nature, the necessity, the methods, 
 the author, and the evidences of regeneration, all 
 within thirty-five minutes. It was dryer than the 
 chips of the ark. A chapter from the table of 
 contents of " Knapp's Theology " would have been 
 as impressive, and more instructive. It fell upon 
 
 117 
 
118 My Portfolio, 
 
 a restless audience like lead, and by no means 
 molten lead at that. 
 
 Say what we may of the power of compression, 
 we must not demand of a preacher impossibilities. 
 We do not demand them of other public speakers. 
 Mr. Evarts spoke four days, and Mr. Beach as 
 many more, on the trial of Mr. Beecher. Edmund 
 Burke spoke nine days on the impeachment of 
 "Warren Hastings. Rufus Choate once spoke four 
 hours in prosecution for a stolen turkey. It was 
 the speech which first made him famous. Lawyers 
 who gain their cases wear no strait-jackets of 
 thirty minutes. 
 
 Why do we demand of a preacher limitations 
 which we never impose on other men who have 
 a business of real life on hand ? Is it not because, 
 for the time being, we do not feel that theirs is 
 a business of real life? There is the rub. Be 
 it so, or not, the conclusion is foregone, that you 
 can not have masterly discussion of the doctrines 
 of our faith in harangues of half an hour. Under 
 such a policy we shall eventually have a Liliputian 
 ministry. The themes and methods of the pulpit 
 must degenerate into claptrap. The half-hour for 
 this generation means fifteen minutes for the next. 
 
 2. A second peril is, that our theological faith 
 itself will become obsolete. In this matter the 
 pew is dependent on the pulpit. The taste of the 
 hearer will be formed by the practice of the preach- 
 er. Silence of doctrine in the pulpit means igno- 
 rance, and at last unbelief, in the pew. 
 
The Length of Sermons. 119 
 
 The result does not come in the form of a catas- 
 trophe. No moral convulsion scatters the faith of 
 centuries in a night. The end comes insidiously. 
 A single doctrine of the system grows dim ; the 
 people can not give a reason for their faith in it ; a 
 23hosphorescent skepticism throws odium upon it ; 
 fellowship with unbelievers in it becomes an open 
 question, and then the end of it is not far off. 
 Yet it is more than the end of that doctrine. The 
 faith we hold is a system. No mind can self-con- 
 sistently, and no thoughtful mind will, surrender 
 one element of it without putting in pawn its faith 
 in all the rest. 
 
 Do we not see signs of such theological degen- 
 eracy in our own times ? Is not the taste for theo- 
 logical inquiry declining in our churches ? Thirty 
 years ago I once heard the pastor of a church in 
 Boston say that there were laymen in his church 
 who had read more theology than he had. Are 
 there such laymen in any church in Boston now ? 
 Who of our laymen now store their libraries with 
 the standards of theological science ? Who, out- 
 side of the clergy, reads now the works of Presi- 
 dent Edwards ? Yet I have in my library a copy 
 of those works, well worn by the thoughtful and 
 devout study of the senior deacon of the Pine- 
 street Church of Boston in 1845. His sabbath 
 recreation he used to find in reading Edwards on 
 " God's End in Creation." 
 
 I may be wrong (I surely do not mean to croak); 
 but, to my view, one of the most formidable signs 
 
120 My Portfolio. 
 
 of a decline of theological taste among us is this 
 clamor of the people for sermons of thirty minutes, 
 and their chuckling Avith delight, like children ten 
 years of age, if the com2olaisant preacher is con- 
 tent with twenty. Yet they are not so far wrong 
 as he is. A preacher whose subjects and trains 
 of thought can he commonly discussed in twenty 
 minutes gets all that he deserves if he be tolerated 
 so long as that. 
 
 3. One other peril follows, as a matter of course. 
 It is that our Congregational churches will deteri- 
 orate in character by a radical change of stock. 
 From their beginning, these churches have appealed 
 to the most thoughtful classes of the people. They 
 have been built up from a thinking stock. We 
 have always demanded an educated clergy in our 
 pulpits. We have esteemed as above all price a 
 high-toned theological literature. Wherever New- 
 England Congregationalism goes, one of the first 
 signs of its existence is a college. We build col- 
 leges before we build bridges. 
 
 Hence our denominational strength is in our 
 pulpits. Our forms of worship are needlessly and 
 perilously bare. Our ministry are not a priest- 
 hood, and our communion-tables are not altars. 
 Our architectural taste is not fascinating. Our 
 antiquity is nothing burdensome. Our strength 
 is in our pulpits, or nowhere. In this respect we 
 but represent the stalwart character of our theol- 
 ogy. It is yet to be proved that we can change 
 our record in these things, without alienating from 
 
The Length of Sermons. 121 
 
 us the thoughtful and conservative classes, on 
 whose support Congregationalism has lived, and 
 whose religious sympathies it represents. It is a 
 dangerous experiment to tamper with the old 
 stock. 
 
 Specially is any thing a peril to us which un- 
 dermines our pulpit. Ours must be a reasoning 
 pulpit. It must penetrate things, prove things, 
 build deep, and build high. To do this, it must 
 discuss great themes in great ways. It must 
 handle strong doctrines, elemental truths, the 
 landmarks of Christian thought, which centuries 
 have elaborated. It can never live on evangelistic 
 labors, nor on what is now understood by "re- 
 vival-preaching." 
 
 That is a far-reaching and may be a fatal error, 
 therefore, which would stifle our preachers by the 
 gag of fifteen minutes, or throttle them with the 
 garotte of the half-hour. The danger is, that 
 the result will be to hand over to wiser build- 
 ers the natural stock of Congregational churches, 
 and leave us to — the east wind. 
 
 We will not, then, say, as the Rev. Thomas H. 
 Skinner, D.D., of New York used to say, and as 
 he could afford to say, " If my people will not 
 hear me an hour, they may stay away." But we 
 beg our thoughtful laymen, who can and who 
 ought to give character to the public taste in this 
 thing, that they will reconsider their apparent 
 verdict thus far expressed. 
 
 Encourage a thinking ministry. Cultivate stu- 
 
122 My Portfolio. 
 
 clious hearing. Welcome doctrinal discussions. 
 And, that these things may be done, give the 
 preachers time to say their best wisdom, their 
 richest experience, their profoundest teachings of 
 the Holy Spirit. Do not make the tastes of your 
 little children the rule of your pulpits. Are ye 
 not men ? 
 
 A good sermon is worth a hearing of three- 
 quarters of an hour : that will do for the general 
 average. But for the best sermons, on the most 
 profound of themes, give us the full hour. We 
 are but men. We can not preach by telegraph. 
 The lightning does not play upon our tongue. 
 Some of us are slow of speech. The bees did not 
 drop honey on our lips in our cradles. Bear with 
 our infirmity, and do not double it by requiring 
 of us what apostles never did, and could not 
 have done if they would. 
 
XIY. 
 
 THE OALYINISTIO THEOET OF PEEAOHIKG. 
 
 There is something sublime in the audacity 
 with which a certain class of journalists insist 
 upon the decadence of that type of theology which 
 has for three centuries been dominant in the reli- 
 gious thought of Christendom. When an eminent 
 teacher of that theology retires from his profes- 
 sional chair, to gather up the fruits of forty years 
 in which he has reconstructed the forms of the 
 old faith, giving to it improved statements and 
 definitions, and adding unequaled brilliancy to 
 its defenses, he is politely bowed out of sight by 
 the fling that his is a defunct belief. It is not 
 only obsolescent, but obsolete. It is dead, dead, 
 dead, never to be revived in the religious thinking 
 of the world. One erudite critic even goes so 
 far as to affirm that the reason for the learned 
 professor's retirement is that the theology he has 
 taught is dead. Not the secret reason only, held 
 in mortified silence, but the avowed and official 
 reason, as the critic will have it, is, that the the- 
 ology of the venerable teacher is dead. He retires 
 with melancholy confession of a wasted life. His 
 
 123 
 
124 My Portfolio, 
 
 life's work can no more be tolerated by a dis- 
 gusted and indignant world. Like the superin- 
 tendent of a bankrupt factory, he is dismissed as 
 one whose services are no longer wanted. 
 
 Well, so be it, if so it must be. Learned pro- 
 fessors can take care of themselves. But, before 
 bidding a long farewell to this faith of our fathers, 
 it is worth while to give one backward look upon 
 it, for the sake of seeing what it has been and 
 has done for the generations it has held in bondage. 
 
 One representation of it is found in the Calvin- 
 istic puli^it of some half-score of religious denom- 
 inations. Indeed, in one aspect of it, its most 
 brilliant history is in the pulpit. Our greatest 
 theologians have, as a rule, been our greatest 
 preachers. The distinctive glory of their faith is 
 that it can be preached. It has given to the 
 Church an ideal of Christian preaching which is 
 unique. That ideal is built on strong thought 
 from biblical resources. It has created the most 
 solidly intellectual and biblical pulpit known in 
 Christian history. The ablest clergy of the world 
 have preached this " defunct " theology. Litera- 
 ture has received from them almost all the literary 
 standards which have had their origin in the pul- 
 pit. Everywhere their pulpit has found affinities 
 with the most intellectual elements in Christian 
 communities. It has commanded the docile hear- 
 ing of a larger proportion of men than any other, 
 and has held them in reverent attendance on 
 public worship in ages of unbelief. It has at- 
 
 i 
 
The Calvinistic Theory of Preaching. 125 
 
 tracted more powerfully than any other, men of 
 the liberal professions. Senator Hoar has but 
 recently acknowledged the obligations of the bar 
 to the training of the pulpit. And it needs 
 hardly to be said, that the pulpit which has trained 
 the leading minds in the history of the American 
 bar has been chiefly the Calvinistic pulpit. Under 
 various denominational titles, the Calvinistic ideal 
 of preaching has been the one from which the 
 most eminent jurists of our land have derived 
 inspiration. From Samuel Adams downward, 
 they have learned from the pulpit how to reason 
 upon the most profound problems and principles 
 of civil government. From discussions of the 
 divine government they have learned what human 
 government ought to be. Even Thomas Jefferson 
 confessed that his first clear conception of a re- 
 public came from the polity of an obscure Baptist 
 church in Virginia. 
 
 That large class of minds, also, from the middle 
 ranks of society, which represents the culture 
 of mind as distinct from the culture of man- 
 ners, has come under the teaching of the Cal- 
 vinistic pulpit more largely than under that of 
 any other. Our pulpit has met the demand 
 of thinking men for a thinking clergy, for preach- 
 ers who are at home in libraries. It has created 
 preachers who could stand the draft which the 
 pulpit makes on a permanent ministrj^ Service 
 of forty and fifty years has not exhausted their 
 resources. In the most powerful religious awa- 
 
126 My Portfolio, 
 
 kenings of the recent ages this style of preaching 
 has held in hand the emotive surges of large audi- 
 ences, and kept them safe from fanatical vagaries, 
 as no other theory of preaching has done or could 
 have done. In the most cultivated periods of 
 history, and the most agitated periods, in which 
 men have run wild with unbelief, it has com- 
 manded the conservative forces of society. Thus 
 it has furnished solid bottom on which to anchor 
 popuhir inquiry. Centuries of discussion have 
 accumulated improvements which the ruder forms 
 of its faith needed. Thus improved and rounded, 
 that faith lives to-day, the most virile repre- 
 sentative of Christian thought which the world 
 contains, in the form of popular belief. It is 
 pre-eminently the people's faith. They believe 
 it. Their hearts respond to it. So far as any 
 thing of human origin can receive the divine 
 sanction in history, this high-toned intellectual 
 ideal of a Christian pulpit has received it. It 
 speaks for itself in no uncertain strains. A cen- 
 tury of retrograde movement and consequent dis- 
 aster could not blot out the record of what it has 
 been and has done for the redemption of man- 
 kind. Die it may, if die it must; but, as Daniel 
 Webster said of the heroic age of our Kepublic, 
 ' " the past at least is secure." 
 
 To cull but a few illustrious names here and 
 there from the roll of this Calvinistic ministry, 
 mark the pulpit of Calvin himself at Geneva, that 
 of John Knox in Glasgow, that of Dr. South in 
 
The Calvinistic Theory of Preaching. 127 
 
 London, that of Chalmers in Edinburgh, and of 
 his successor, Dr. Candlish, that of Edwards in 
 Northampton, that of Hopkins in Newport, that 
 of Davies in Virginia, those of Spring and Alex- 
 ander in New York, that of Albert Barnes in 
 Philadelphia, those of Dr. Griffin and Dr. Beecher 
 in Boston, and that of President Finney in Ober- 
 lin. These pulpits have passed into history. 
 They were filled by men of the Pauline stamp 
 of intellectual coin. The majority of them were 
 productive of profound religious awakenings, 
 which, but for them, would have run into mael- 
 stroms of fanaticism. They created, and, what 
 is more, controlled such awakenings in the inter- 
 est of a thoughtful piety. This they did by their 
 union of a rousing eloquence with a solid think- 
 ing power. They illustrate magnificently the 
 practicability of uniting great hearts with great 
 intellects, deep feeling with deep thinking, intel- 
 lectual conquest with the baptism of the Holy 
 Ghost. Such commingling of elements in the 
 world's leaders constitutes the power which God 
 honors in great crises of history. In the stillness 
 of its working he makes his voice heard. 
 
 Are such pulpits dying out of the world's 
 thought? Is the faith they have taught deca- 
 dent ? Is the system of agencies which they have 
 transmitted to thousands of living pulpits sinking 
 into popular contempt? AVhere are the signs of 
 it? They vary in vital vigor: sometimes for a 
 decade they will seem less powerful than before. 
 
128 My Portfolio. 
 
 No great system of agencies is always equal to its 
 history. But, all things considered, we do not 
 see in the Calvinistic pulpits of America any per- 
 vasive signs of decay, such as must be seen when 
 the life-blood of the faith they teach runs low to 
 the death. Somehow these pulpits still gather 
 under their sway docile and believing audiences 
 every Lord's Day, in numbers unequaled by any 
 other weekly gatherings at the bidding of the 
 same voice. What other social forces are takincr 
 the place of these ? What other names of popu- 
 lar repute are supplanting those which this Cal- 
 vinistic pulpit has made venerable in our history ? 
 It requires but very few words from unbelieving 
 lips to consign verbally to oblivion a great truth, 
 a great book, a great system, a great man ; but 
 to sweep out of being the work which these have 
 done in the world, — that is a different affair. 
 Early in the autumn I have heard three or four 
 / crickets under the hearthstone serenading each 
 other in voices sharp and shrill, which seemed as 
 if they were a thousand strong. They made the 
 whole house ring. But the solid earth moved on 
 its way, the autumn passed into winter, the crick- 
 ets died, and were no more heard. Such a passing 
 racket are the harpings of a few skeptical minds 
 upon this everlasting claim that our faith is de- 
 funct, our theology obsolete, our pulpit dead. As 
 to any real force in these flings at the old theol- 
 ogy, either in giving it its death-blow or express- 
 ing its history, they remind me of Robert Southey's 
 
The Calvinistic Theory of Preaching. 129 
 
 answer to a flippant critic, who declared that 
 " The Edinburgh Review " had crushed Words- 
 worth's " Excursion." " Crush the Excursion ! " 
 said the brother-poet, pointing up to the moun- 
 tain back of Wordsworth's home : " you might 
 as well try to crush Skiddaw ! " So say we to 
 these dapper critics of the theology and of the 
 pulpit which are built into our history: "as 
 easily crush Skiddaw ! " Yes, " the strength of 
 the hills is His also." 
 
XV. 
 
 THE THEOLOGY OP "THE MAEBLE FAUN." 
 
 This masterpiece of Hawthorne presents a mar- 
 velous picture of the Christian theology on the 
 nature of sin, and its workings in the human soul. 
 An epitome of the story, familiar as it is, is neces- 
 sary to illustrate the point in question. 
 
 Miriam, a passionate young artist, is betrothed 
 in her youth to a man who becomes a monster in 
 iniquity. She flees to Rome to escape the bond- 
 age, but not without incurring sus]3icion of her 
 own innocence. There she hopes to outlive and 
 bury the past, which hangs like a pall over her 
 memory and her character. Her hated paramour, 
 if such he was, finds his way also to Rome, and 
 suddenly confronts her in her rambles in the Cat- 
 acombs, as a monk. He persecutes her with his 
 marital claims and threats of exposure. Mean- 
 while, she has made the acquaintance of Hilda, a 
 singularly pure and high-souled sister-artist, and 
 of Donatello, a young Italian who is the personifi- 
 cation of infantile joyousness and moral weakness. 
 Between him and Miriam there springs up the 
 inevitable love-tie of romance. 
 
 130 
 
The Theology of " The llarhle Faunr 131 
 
 At length it is the fate of those two to encoun- 
 ter the wretch, who dogs the steps of the unfortu- 
 nate girl, on the brow of the old Tarpeian Ilock. 
 There the tragedy of the story is perpetrated. 
 Donatello, in a paroxysm of jealous rage, springs 
 upon him, throttles him, and lifts him over the 
 edge of the precipice. Just then, casting his eyes 
 around inquiringly, he catches Miriam's answering 
 looh of approval, and he dashes the lost man to 
 the bottom, where he lies a mangled corpse. Her 
 friend Hilda, at a little distance, hears the mufQed 
 sound of struggle, and, turning, reads with her 
 keen artistic sense that fatal look in the face of 
 ]\Iiriam. The deed is done, witnessed by the 
 shocked eye of innocence, and the friends go on 
 their way. 
 
 Out of these materials, and others of secondary 
 meaning, is wrought a most vivid reproduction 
 of the biblical doctrine of sin as an experience 
 flaming in human souls. Among a multitude of 
 points in which a Christian reader detects the re- 
 semblance, the following are the most vivid : — 
 
 1. The spiritual and subtle nature of sin. A 
 single look of the eye was all of Miriam's partici- 
 pation in the deed ; yet when it is done, and the 
 blackness of it begins to cloud over the lost inno- 
 cence of Donatello, he says, " ' I did what your 
 eyes bade me do, when I asked them with mine, 
 as I held the wretch over the precipice.' These 
 last words struck Miriam like a bullet. Could it 
 be so ? Had her eyes assented to the deed ? She 
 
132 My Portfolio, 
 
 had not known it. But alas ! looking back into 
 the turmoil and frenzy of the scene just acted, she 
 could not deny — she was not sure w^hether it 
 might be so or no — that a wild joy had flamed up 
 in her heart when she beheld her persecutor in 
 mortal peril. Was it horror, or ecstasy, or both 
 in one? Be the emotion what it might, it had 
 blazed up more madly when Donatello flung his 
 victim off the cliff, and more and more while his 
 shriek went quivering downward. With the dead 
 thump on the stones below had come an unuttera- 
 ble horror. 
 
 " ' And my eyes bade you do it,' repeated she. 
 ' Yes, you have killed him, Donatello ! He is quite 
 dead, stone dead ! Would I were so too ! Yes, 
 Donatello, you speak the truth. My heart con- 
 sented to what you did. We two slew yonder 
 wretch.' " 
 
 2. With equal vividness he paints the despair 
 of unpardonable guilt. 
 
 Says Miriam to Donatello, " ' You are shaking as 
 with the cold fit of a Roman fever.' 
 
 " ' Yes,' " says Donatello, " ' my heart shivers.' 
 
 " ' My sweet friend, what can I say to comfort 
 you?' 
 
 " ' Nothing. Nothing will ever comfort me. I 
 have a great weight here, Happy ? Ah, never 
 again — never again ! Ah, that terrible face — do 
 you call that unreal ? ' " 
 
 Again, after years of unavailing remorse, the 
 horror-stricken man thus pictures to an unsuspect- 
 
The Theology of '' The Marble Faunr 133 
 
 ing stranger the scene of a death by being flung off 
 a precipice. " ' Imagine a fellow-creature, breath- 
 ing now and looking you in the face, and now 
 tumbling down, down, down, with a long shriek 
 wavering after him all the way. He does not 
 leave his life in the air. No ; but it stays in him 
 till he thumps against the stones. Then he lies 
 there, frightfully quiet, a dead heap of bruised 
 flesh and broken bones ! A quiver runs through 
 the crushed mass, and no more movement after 
 that — no, not if you would give your life to make 
 him stir a finger. Ah ! terrible, terrible I Yes, 
 I would fain fling myself down for the very dread 
 of it; that I might endure it once for all, and 
 dream of it no more. ' " 
 
 3. There is a profound insight into the expe- 
 rience of real life in the author's picture of the 
 recoil of guilt from the services of religion. 
 
 Speaking of the monster monk, he writes, 
 " There was something in this man's memory which 
 made it awful for him to think of prayer. Nor 
 would any torture be more intolerable than to 
 be reminded of such divine comfort and succor as 
 await pious souls merely for the asking. The 
 torment was perhaps the token of a temperament 
 deeply susceptible of religious impressions, but 
 which had been wronged, violated, and debased, 
 till at length it was capable only of terror from 
 the sources that were intended for our purest 
 and loftiest consolation." 
 
 4. One can not but think of the day of judg- 
 
134 BIij Portfolio. 
 
 ment in reading Hawthorne's conception of tlie 
 inrvitahle exclusioyi of the guilty from the iimocent. 
 Miriam, reflecting on tlie change which crime 
 had wrought in her relations to her friend Hilda, 
 feels in her soul the unnaturalness of a friendship 
 between such angelic innocence as Hilda's and 
 such guilt as her own. She soliloquizes, " ' I will 
 never permit her sweet touch again. ]\Iy lips, my 
 hand, shall never meet Hilda's more.' " Soon they 
 stand face to face. " Miriam at once felt a great 
 chasm opening between them two. They might 
 gaze at one another from the opposite side, but 
 without the possibility of ever meeting more ; or 
 at least, since the chasm could never be bridged 
 over, they must tread the whole round of eterni- 
 ty, to meet on the other side. There was even a 
 terror in the thought of their meeting again. It 
 was as if Hilda and Miriam were dead, and could 
 no longer hold intercourse witliout violating a spir- 
 itual law. ' Hilda, jo\xv very look seems to put 
 me beyond the limits of human kind.' " 
 
 5. With the same terrible truthfulness to life, 
 he represents the overwhelming recoil of innocence 
 from guilt. Hilda, on meeting Miriam, puts out 
 her hand with an involuntary repellent gesture. 
 When Miriam, forgetful cf her resolutions, pleads 
 with her by the sacredness of their common woman- 
 hood, to befriend her as if her guilt were nought, 
 Plilda exclaims, " ' Do not bewilder me thus, Mir- 
 iam. If I were one of God's angels, with a nature 
 incapable of stain, and garments that could never 
 
The Theology of '' The Marble Faunr 135 
 
 be spotted, I would keep ever at your side, and try 
 to lead you upward. But I am a poor, lonely girl, 
 whom God has set here in an evil world, and 
 given her only a white robe, and bid her wear it 
 back to him as white as when she put it on. 
 Your powerful magnetism would be too much for 
 me. Therefore, Miriam, before it is too late, I 
 mean to put faith in this awful heart-quake, which 
 warns me henceforth to avoid you. God forgive 
 me if I have said a needlessly cruel word.' " 
 
 6. Inspired thought is scarcely more real in de- 
 claring the curse of the very knowledge of sin to 
 innocent beings. Says Hilda, " ' It is very dread- 
 ful ! Ah, now I understand how the sins of gen- 
 erations past have created an atmosphere of sin 
 for those that follow. While there is a single 
 guilty person m the universe, each innocent one 
 must feel his innocence tortured by that guilt. 
 Your deed, Miriam, has darkened the whole sky. 
 Every crime destroys more Edens than our own.' " 
 
 7. The novelist becomes more truthful than the 
 painter in portraying the terrific nature of conflict 
 with sin. Miriam, reasoning from her own deathly 
 consciousness of the evil of sin, thus criticises 
 Guido's painting of Michael and the Dragon: 
 " ' The archangel now, how fair he looks, with his 
 unrufQed wings, with his unbacked sword, and 
 that exquisitely fitting sky-blue tunic, cut in the 
 latest paradisiacal mode ! AVhat a dainty air of 
 the first celestial society ! With what half-scorn- 
 ful delicacy he sets his prettily sandaled foot on 
 the head of his prostrate foe ! 
 
136 My Portfolio. 
 
 " ' But is it thus that Virtue looks the moment 
 after his death-struggle with Evil ? No, no ! I could 
 have told Guido better. A full third of the arch- 
 angel's feathers should have been torn from his 
 wings, the rest all ruffled till they looked like 
 Satan's own. His sword should be streaming with 
 blood, perhaps broken halfway to the hilt. His 
 armor crushed, his robes rent, his breast gory, a 
 bleeding gash on his brow, cutting right across 
 the stern scowl of battle. He should press his 
 foot hard down upon the old serpent, as if his 
 very soul depended on it; feeling him squirm 
 mightily, and doubting whether the battle were 
 half over yet, and how the victory might turn. 
 The battle was never such a child's play as Guido's 
 dapper archangel seems to have found it.' " 
 
 8. Milton's conception of the horrible affinity 
 between sin and death is recalled by Hawthorne's 
 conception of the loathsome brotherhood of sin. 
 Over against the solitude of sin, in its seclusion 
 from innocence, lies the equally truthful fact of 
 the fraternity of all guilty beings with each other. 
 " Their deed had wreathed itself, as she had said, 
 like a serpent, in inextricable links, about both 
 their souls, and drew them into one by its terrible 
 contractile power. It was closer than a marriage- 
 bond." 
 
 " ' O friend ! ' cried Miriam, ' are you conscious, 
 as I am, of this companionship that knits our 
 heart-strings together ? ' 
 
 "'I feel it, Miriam: we draw one breath, we 
 live one life. Cemented with his blood.' 
 
The Theology of '^ The Marble Faunr 137 
 
 " The young man started at the word which he 
 himself had spoken. It may be that it brought 
 home to the simplicity of his imagination Avhat he 
 had not before dreamed of, — the ever increasing 
 loathsomeness of a union that consists in guilt, 
 cemented with blood, which would corrupt and 
 grow more noisome for ever and for ever, but bind 
 them none the less strictly for that. 
 
 '' They turned aside for the sake of treading 
 loftily past the old site of Pompey's forum. 
 
 " ' There was a great deed done here,' she said, 
 — "a deed of blood like ours. Who knows but 
 we may meet the high and ever sad fraternity of 
 Csesar's murderers ? ' 
 
 " 'Are they our brethren now? ' said Donatello. 
 
 " ' Yes, all of them,' said Miriam, ' and many 
 another, whom the world little dreams of, has been 
 made our brother and our sister by what we have 
 done within this hour.' 
 
 "At the thought she shivered. Was it true, 
 that whatever hand had a blood-stain on it, or had 
 poured out poison, or strangled a babe at its birth, 
 or clutched a grandsire's throat, he sleeping, and 
 robbed him of his few last breaths, had now the 
 right to offer itself in fellowship with their two 
 hands? Too certainly that right existed. It is 
 a terrible thought that an individual wrong-doing 
 melts into the great mass of human crime, and 
 makes us — who dreamed only of our own little 
 separate sin — makes us guilty of the whole ! Thus 
 Miriam and her lover were not an insulated pair. 
 
138 My Portfolio. 
 
 but members of an innumerable confraternity of 
 guilty ones, all shuddering at each other." 
 
 These are but few of the master-touches with 
 which genius pictures sin, as disclosed in the 
 experience of human souls. Dramatic tragedy, 
 from JEschylus to Shakspeare, employs the same 
 solemn problems of destiny and decree which 
 give to the Calvinistic theology its deathless sway 
 over the human mind. Dr. Holmes, in the story 
 of " Elsie Venner," finds it necessary to the truth- 
 fulness of fiction to interweave unmistakable 
 hints of the old doctrine of " original sin," or, as 
 we prefer to call it, of " inherited depravity," in all 
 its fearfulness. Not otherwise can genius keep 
 literature true to the facts of life. So Hawthorne, 
 in " The Marble Faun," with no theological intent, 
 but aiming only to paint the real life of guilt, as 
 seen and felt in the depths of souls, puts on the 
 canvas with like vividness the biblical and Cal- 
 vinistic idea of the nature of sin and its wrathful 
 workings. George Eliot, in " Middlemarch," does 
 the same, and the firmament of criticism is ablaze 
 with admiration. 
 
 Such, then, is sin, as genius finds it in the living 
 world of men and women. Is it a reality, or a 
 dream ? If a reality, then is it a dream that sin 
 deserves the eternal anger of God, and that the 
 human conscience is commissioned of God to say 
 that? If a reality, then is it a dream that undy- 
 ing guilt must become an " undying worm " ? If 
 a reality, then is it a dream that sin needs for its 
 
The Theology of " The Marble Faun:' 139 
 
 extinction in the soul the regenerating power of 
 the Holy Ghost? If a reality, then is it a dream 
 that sin needs for its forgiveness an atonement by 
 the eternal Son of God ? If a reality, then is 
 that whole system a dream which men have de- 
 nounced as the " Blood Theology " ? Great truths 
 stand or fall together. The whole Calvinistic sys- 
 tem starts with, and is built on, the facts of sin. 
 What that is, and how that works, give character 
 to all the rest. Which of us, then, are the wak- 
 ing ones, and which the dreamers ? 
 
 Hawthorne stands confessedly at the head of 
 our American literature as an original painter of 
 real life. The most accomplished of American 
 critics, one whose word gives law to our literary 
 judgments, ranks Hawthorne's name among the 
 first five on the roll of the whole literature of our 
 language. Which horn of the dilemma, then, 
 shall we be tossed on? Is the biblical notion of 
 sin which genius finds deep in the experience of 
 souls, and paints in such lines of lurid fire, the 
 true one? Or is genius itself a liar, and its work 
 a cheat for fools to be scared at, and for wise men 
 to laugh at ? Which shall it be ? 
 
XYI. 
 
 THE DEBT OF THE NATION TO NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 It is comparatively well known that M. De 
 Tocqueville, in his study of the philosophy of our 
 government, found, as he judged, the germinal 
 idea of the whole structure in the town-meeting 
 of New England. He pronounced it the corner- 
 stone of our liberties. That principle of the demo- 
 cratic town-meeting dates back to the very infancy 
 of the New-England Colonies. It was the first 
 experiment of common sense to organize govern- 
 ment for the common weal. 
 
 It is not so generally known that the country 
 owes to New England another principle, quite as 
 vital as that of the town-meeting, and which has 
 become a part of the organic law of the Federal 
 Government, and of every State Government in 
 the Union. It is the principle of the duality of 
 our system of legislation. The plan of commit- 
 ting legislative authority to two bodies, instead of 
 one, each co-ordinate with the other, and each 
 having the power of veto over the other, is, in the 
 American form of it, of American origin. Tlie 
 English houses of Lords and Commons are not 
 
 140 
 
The Debt of the Nation to New England. 141 
 
 paxallel, because one represents hereditary author- 
 ity, and neither is fully representative of popular 
 choice. We have extended over the whole land a 
 network of dual legislation, emanating from the 
 popular will. The principle is a most profound 
 one in theory, and vital to national existence in 
 its working. More than one republic has perished 
 for the want of it. More than once has the con- 
 servative balance which it creates saved our own 
 government from anarchy in crises of peril. It 
 creates a movable weight which can be thrown 
 into either scale, — that of Democracy, or that 
 of Federalism ; that of popular rights, or that of 
 central power, — as the exigency of the time may 
 require. Many times, probably, has the national 
 Senate saved the country from demagogism in 
 the House of Representatives. It was believed by 
 wise men at Washington, in the time of President 
 Polk, that we should have had war with England, 
 over the north-western boundary, but for the 
 conservative check of the Senate upon the hot 
 legislation of the House. Through all the great 
 North-western States the war-cry ran like a prai- 
 rie-fire : " Fifty-four, forty — or fight ! " 
 
 This principle of duality, like that of the town- 
 meeting, dates also far back to the very birthday 
 of government in colonial history. The occasion 
 which gave rise to it would appear, but for the 
 gravity of the results, comically diminutive. 
 " There fell out a great business," writes Gov. 
 Winthrop, "upon a very small occasion." It il- 
 
142 My Portfolio, 
 
 lustrates signally the ways of Divine Providence 
 in using small things for great issues, and things 
 despised, for ends to be held in honor through all 
 time. A very striking feature in the character of 
 the Puritans was their cjuickness to accept the 
 divine interpretation of small things. No man 
 was more far-sighted in this respect than Gov. 
 Winthrop. His was the guiding hand which led 
 the colonists to the adoption of the dual govern- 
 ment. Yet it had so lowly an origin as a suc- 
 cession' of pettifogging lawsuits and churchly 
 investigations about the ownership of a stray pig. 
 The story runs thus : one widow Sherman lost 
 a valuable sow in Boston, which found its way 
 upon the premises of a Capt. Keajuie. The cap- 
 tain was a man of property and social standing, 
 but in somewhat ill repute as a hard man in his 
 dealings. He summoned the town-crier to cry 
 the pig in what is now the thronged thoroughfare 
 of Boston commerce. The town-crier cried tlie 
 pig in vain. No claimant appeared for nearly a 
 year. Meanwhile the captain, as he affirmed, 
 slaughtered a pig of his own, which had been 
 domiciled with the stray sow. By and by the 
 widow Sherman came to see the stray one. But 
 the tests of the personal identity of swine are not 
 very sure ; the General Court had not passed judg- 
 ment upon them, and the widow was puzzled. 
 Pigs have a way of marvelous change in a few 
 months of growth. She could not swear to the 
 countenance of the runaway as the one which she 
 
The Debt of the Nation to New England. 143 
 
 had known in its infancy. That which had been 
 "a thing of beauty" was such no more. The 
 conscientious widow would not take oath that it 
 was her lost pet. But the captain could not lay 
 claim to more than one pig ; and she hit upon a 
 second thought which was ingenious, if not in- 
 genuous. She declared, through some clairvoyant 
 intuition of her own, that the captain's slaugh- 
 tered pig, which she had never seen, was hers. She 
 professed to believe that the butcher had "stuck" 
 the wrong victim. 
 
 Things were becoming mixed. The dispute was 
 brought, after the manner of those times, before 
 the reverend elders of the First Church of Boston 
 for adjudication. Each party appeared, and told 
 his or her own story. The elders, after due 
 deliberation, decided that the widow's claim was 
 " not proven," and advised her to go about her 
 household cares. The captain was exonerated, 
 and the happy possessor of two pigs, or their 
 equivalent, one of which was confessedly not his. 
 When was ever the owner of lost pig content 
 under such conditions ? Widow Sherman at any 
 rate was not to be thus appeased. She brought 
 her case to trial before a jury. But they agreed 
 with the elders, and, moreover, were so ungallant 
 as to vote three pounds damages to the captain, 
 "to pay his costs." Thus encouraged, he turned 
 upon the widow with a suit for defamation of 
 character; she having, in the greatness of her 
 wrath, come down upon him with the charge of 
 
144 My Portfolio. 
 
 theft. " He stole the pig, and away he ran," said 
 she. She was worsted in the second suit. The 
 plaintiff recovered damages to the tune of forty 
 pounds, — a sum, perhaps, not much less in value 
 than five hundred dollars of our liquid currency. 
 When did suitor for the recovery of a stolen pig 
 sit down content under such injustice ? She ap- 
 pealed to the Great and General Court. Things 
 were becoming interesting. Five hundred dollars 
 for a runaway sow, and the honorable Legislature 
 of Massachusetts for a court of final appeal ! 
 
 This brings the story to its more dignified chap- 
 ters. Up to that time the Legislature was a single 
 body, consisting of the magistrates, who, by offi- 
 cial rank, constituted a class by themselves, and 
 the deputies, who were the chosen representa- 
 tives of the people ; but both sat together in one 
 chamber, and voted as one body. The illustrious 
 pig gave occasion to a grave division of opinion. 
 Capt. Keayne was, for the times, a rich man. Mrs. 
 Sherman was comparatively poor, and a widow 
 withal. The local prejudices against the captain 
 as a hard man came into play also. The irrepres- 
 sible conflict between the rich and the poor raged 
 through the Colony, and aggravated the causes of 
 dissension. The majority of the magistrates sided 
 with the captain, and the majority of the deputies 
 with the widow, seven not voting. If a full vote 
 could have been had, the widow would have had 
 the best of it. 
 
 Under these conditions the magistrates, as they 
 
The Debt of the Nation to New England. 145 
 
 had the legal right to do, interposed their nega- 
 tive upon further proceedings ; so that the case as 
 it stood legally was " not determined." But this 
 left the uncomforted widow under the mulct im- 
 posed by the jury, — of forty pounds to be paid to 
 the exultant captain. He had the equivalent of 
 two pigs besides, and the widow none. " Much 
 contention and earnestness there was," writes the 
 calm, conservative governor, and well there might 
 be. The losing party, involving through sym- 
 pathy, by this time, a very respectable following 
 of the widow, charged that the poor had been 
 oppressed out of deference to the rich. Many 
 "spoke unreverently of the court." Especially 
 did the magistrates come in for their full share of 
 opprobrium, because it was their negative which 
 had left the widow under damages in her suit. It 
 was charged that they had " turned aside the poor 
 in the gate." Seven days were consumed in debate, 
 and the case came again before the elders of the 
 church, who found no relief for widow Sherman, 
 but sustained the magistrates in their negative. 
 It was an obvious case of conflict between the 
 clear-headed intelligence on the one side and the 
 heated sympathies and prejudices of the people on 
 the other. 
 
 The consequence was, that all parties began to 
 revise tlieir opinions as to the fundamental struc- 
 ture of the Legislature, especially as it concerned 
 the relations of the two classes in it to each other. 
 Gov. Winthrop, whose remarkable wisdom piloted 
 
146 My Portfolio. 
 
 the infant Colony through graver troubles than 
 this, interposed his private counsel to Capt. 
 Keayne, and persuaded him to return to widow 
 Sherman a part of the forty pounds which she 
 had paid him under stress of law. With this she 
 was compelled to be content, and the famous pig 
 retired from the history of the world. Not so, 
 however, the grave question which had been 
 started about the construction of the legislative 
 body. The people saw, or thought they saw, that 
 the negative of the magistrates gave to a few 
 individuals a power dangerous to Republican lib- 
 erty. Gov. Winthrop saw the gravity of the issue, 
 and improved wisely the opportunity to bring 
 about a change in the organic law of legislative 
 authority. He procured a reference of the ques- 
 tion to the reverend elders for advice to the next 
 General Court. This was a ruse to gain time, 
 ''that so the people's heat might be abated; for 
 then he knew that they would hear reason." 
 Time passed on, the " people's heat " was abated ; 
 and when the court assembled, and heard the re- 
 port of the elders, the people " did hear reason." 
 Before the court adjourned, the upshot of the 
 matter was, that two legislative bodies were organ- 
 ized, — the magistrates on the one side, and the 
 deputies on the other. To each was assigned a 
 chamber of its own. Each received the power of 
 negative over the action of the other ; that is, 
 the action of two bodies was made necessary to 
 legal legislation. That was the beginning of our 
 
The Debt of the Nation to New England. 147 
 
 present State Senate and House of Representa- 
 tives. It was the first experiment of dual legisla- 
 tion on this continent. 
 
 JNIore than a century later, in the great debates 
 on the formation of the Federal Union, John Adams 
 took a leaf from the earl}^ history of Massachusetts. 
 He defended the dual principle of legislation 
 against the reasonings of Turgot, which were ad- 
 vanced and approved by Dr. Franklin. Adams 
 was successful. He secured the introduction of 
 the principle into the organic law of the United- 
 States government, from thence it has been ex- 
 tended to every one of these States in the structure 
 of its State Legislature. " Tall oaks from little 
 acorns grow." The loss of a screw-driver delayed 
 the arrival of a part of Gen. Pakenham's artillery I 
 at the battle of New Orleans in 1814, and in conse- 
 quence he lost the battle and his life. A greater 
 issue was impending in the loss of widow Sher- 
 man's pig. A secret providence guided the actors 
 in this episode of colonial history, till their dimin- 
 utive plans encompassed the liberties of a nation. 
 It is not the first time that God has employed the 
 pig-headedness of both man and beast to bring 
 about incalculable designs of his own. 
 
 The story illustrates, also, another principle in 
 the ways of God. It is, that the costs of great 
 things to the instruments employed are to be esti- 
 mated, not in view of the littleness of causes and 
 occasions, but in view of the magnitude of results. 
 It seems ludicrously disproportionate, that a stray 
 
148 My Portfolio. 
 
 pig should convulse a colony of grave and earnest 
 men who were here for a great destiny. It makes 
 one laugh at dignified governors and sedate depu- 
 ties, and reverend divines, to see them contending 
 for months, and debating seven days at a stretch, 
 and interspersing solemn prayer, to settle a petty 
 quarrel of the farmyard. Had they crossed the 
 ocean, and braved the wilderness and the savage, 
 for no better business than this? But turn the 
 story end for end. Read it backward. Look at 
 the immensity of the results to come from it. See 
 a great nation set upon the trail of a grand politi- 
 cal discovery ; the evolution of a principle which 
 was to consolidate a nation's freedom ; fifty sover- 
 eign States awaiting, before coming to their birth, 
 their security from anarchic revolutions ; a federal 
 union to be made possible over a continent which 
 was to become the home of unborn millions; 
 and all the glowing possibilities of good to the 
 tribes of the whole earth contingent on the suc- 
 cess of one ! 
 
 Under that law of providence by which great 
 good always involves great costs, it was fitting 
 that such results as these should come about with 
 costs of vexation and struggle, and great ado, to 
 the actors and instruments stationed back at the 
 beginning of things. It was becoming that grave 
 legislators should sit in troubled conclave, and 
 that reverend ministers should join in solemn 
 prayer, and that the whole body politic should be 
 stirred up in wrathful debate, when such a grand 
 
The Debt of the Nation to New England. 149 
 
 morning was about to dawn on the world. So is 
 it with all the more fearful costs of great things in 
 toil and suffering, and throes of death. They are 
 to be estimated by the magnitude of God's ends, 
 not by the pettiness of man's beginnings. We 
 have asked in dumb horror for the reason why one 
 bullet, from the hand of the one most despicable 
 of mankind, should be permitted to end a great life 
 in agony, and plunge a nation into grief. Wait 
 and watch. The end is not yet. We shall by and 
 by see some good coming from the event which 
 shall be commensurate with such cost ; some great 
 blessing gained, or some great tragedy escaped, 
 which shall seem to be worth even the loss of such 
 a life by such a death. There never was and 
 never will be an hour of wasted suffering in this 
 world. 
 
XYII. 
 
 OUGHT THE PULPIT TO IGNOKE SPIEITUALISM ? 
 
 No, and for the following reasons ; viz., — 
 1. It is an extensive and still growing delusion. 
 This is not so obvious in Eastern cities as in 
 the country towns and at the West. Up among the 
 hills of New Hampshire and Vermont, and in the 
 interior counties of Maine, it is found sometimes 
 in such strength as to be a very positive drawback 
 to churchly influence and the growth of general 
 culture. Where the resources of social excitement 
 are few, the home of a clairvoyant often attracts 
 more interest than the lyceum lecture or the ser- 
 mon. Where churches are declining through de- 
 crease of population, there spiritualism is often 
 rife. It seems to be german both to a decaying 
 and an unorganized state of society. Wherever, 
 for any reason, more healthy causes of excitement 
 do not exist, this diseased and effeminate develop- 
 ment of popular credulity takes their place. Home 
 missionaries find it one of the most insolent forms 
 of infidelity in the North-western States and on 
 the frontiers of civilization. In some towns it 
 claims to be the only form of religious faith that 
 
 150 
 
Ought the Pulpit to ignore Spiritualism ? 151 
 
 has organic life. Wherever French and German 
 communism takes root, the same soil gives nutri- 
 ment to this opposite, but not contrary, super- 
 naturalism. The old story is often repeated in 
 coalitions of opposite schools of infidelity against 
 the church of Christ, — Herod and Pilate are 
 made friends together. 
 
 True, the claims of spiritualists as to the growth 
 of the sect must be taken with large allowance. 
 They have a comfortable way of laying claim to 
 all those who admit the historic reality of the phe- 
 nomena on which their faith is founded, and even 
 all who inquire into them for the entertainment of 
 idle hours. Thus, Gen. Banks, the Hon. Stephen 
 A. Douglas, President Lincoln, Lord Brougham, 
 Queen Victoria, Napoleon HI., and, as one spirit- 
 ualist expressed it, " half the crowned heads in 
 Europe," have been claimed as " believers." Dr. 
 Nichols of Haverhill understands them to claim 
 three millions in this country and six millions in 
 Europe. Nine millions for a sect which has yet 
 to celebrate its first semi-centennial ! Where is 
 Gen. Walker of the Census Bureau ? Such elas- 
 ticity of reckoning is of course preposterous. But, 
 making heavy deductions from it, the residuum 
 is still painfully large. A single fact gives, per- 
 haps, the most accurate hint of the reality : it is, 
 that the leading organ of the sect in this country 
 is said to have a circulation of a hundred thousand 
 copies ; and, .so far as I know, the claim is not dis- 
 
152 My Portfolio. 
 
 2. It is a seductive form of error to several 
 classes of minds in all communities. Idle minds — 
 an increasing class in prosperous times — find in 
 it entertainment when time hangs heavy. Those 
 who are fond of the marvelous, and who crave a 
 glimpse of the unseen world, find a feast at the 
 spiritualistic seance. The same causes which lead 
 the ignorant, and many, also, who would resent 
 that epithet, to the gypsy-camp or the hut of an 
 Indian fortune-teller, give to the clairvoyant phe- 
 nomena a lurid interest which captivates many, to 
 their lifelong hurt. The naturally credulous and 
 superstitious are a large proportion of any commu- 
 nity. Those who have been bereaved of friends, 
 also, in their mental weakness welcome any thing 
 that promises to them communion with the de- 
 parted. It is marvelous on what scanty evidence 
 these will yield tearful faith to the revelations of 
 the spiritualistic seer. Proof on which they would 
 not risk the ownership of a horse is accepted as 
 adequate evidence that the world of spirits is wide 
 open to their gaze, and even that they join hands 
 again consciously and palpably with the loved and 
 lost. 
 
 The fact deserves notice, also, that, in modern 
 and Western nations, this depraved type of super- 
 naturalism is almost all that Christian civilization 
 has left intact that can take the place of Oriental 
 magic and European astrology in ministering to 
 certain tastes which are deep-seated and perma- 
 nent in human nature. The old allurements to 
 
Ought the Pulpit to ignore Spiritualism ? 153 
 
 those tastes have disappeared ; but the tastes 
 themselves remain, and will have something to 
 feed upon. In all the past ages they have dis- 
 closed a grim tendency to demonism, even to the 
 extreme of devil-worship. Why should we not 
 expect them to thrive upon the food which spir- 
 itualism generates, specially in its swampy and 
 malarial low grounds ? 
 
 Another large class whom this error allures 
 consists of those who have long starved their moral 
 sensibilities by one form or another of religious 
 negations. These often spring, with a rebound, 
 to an}^ form of supernaturalism which the age fur- 
 nishes. The supernatural in some form the human 
 mind will have. Human nature craves it as the 
 normal food of its sensibilities. Those who have 
 most stoutly resisted faith in biblical miracles, and 
 Hebrew prophecies, and apostolic inspiration, are 
 often the first to succumb to this modern necro- 
 mancy. They sometimes mingle in a strange 
 medley the spiritualistic vagaries with some sort 
 of reproduction of the biblical teachings. 
 
 The late Professor Hare of the University of 
 Pennsylvania lived through the best years of his 
 life an atheist. Of the human soul and its immor- 
 tality he used to say, " I know man : I have had 
 him in my laboratory full grown ; and I have re- 
 duced all there is of him to a gas. I know that 
 that is all. I have the evidence of my own eyes 
 for it. If carbonic acid gas is immortal, man is 
 immortal." But no sooner did he carry his hide- 
 
154 My Portfolio. 
 
 ous faith to the sSance of a " medium " than the 
 atheism of a lifetime gave way, and he affirmed, 
 with equal confidence, "I hioiv there is another 
 life than this: I know there is a soul which is 
 not a gas. I have talked with my father, my 
 mother, my sister, in another world : I have the 
 evidence of my own ears for it." So, between the 
 learned chemist's eyes and ears, it should seem 
 that a change for the better, so far as it went, 
 had taken place. But did his mind admit, in con- 
 sequence of its clairvoyant enlightenment, any 
 healthy faith in the Christian religion? Not at 
 all. It was only the rebound of a starving mind 
 from the grossest materialism to the grossest super- 
 naturalism. He once grasped the electrical ma- 
 chine in the office of a clairvoyant, and, jerking it 
 back and forth, angrily demanded that Jesus Christ 
 should come in person to instruct him respect- 
 ing the unseen world and his own destiny there. 
 Even the necromancer shrunk back, appalled at 
 the profaneness of the converted atheist. So, said 
 one like-minded, of a former age, " If thou be the 
 Christ, save thyself and us." Dr. Hare represents 
 a class of minds whose natural but stifled cravings 
 for the supernatural drive them to almost any and 
 every form of it which does not lay upon them 
 the restraints of a spiritual religion. 
 
 3. The popular faith in the supernaturalism of 
 the Bible is passing through a transition which 
 exposes it to special peril from such a type of error 
 as that of spiritualism. This is saying only that 
 
Ought the Pulpit to ignore Spiritualism? 155 
 
 whicli is known and read of all men. We live in 
 an age of silent revolution : it is trying severely 
 the Christian faith of many. Skepticism is tric- 
 kling down through crevices, from the heights of 
 literary and scientific culture, to the social strata 
 below. The people who compose our churches 
 are not so well indoctrinated as their fathers were 
 in the fundamentals of their faith. Fewer Chris- 
 tian men and women than formerly can give a 
 reason for the faith that is in them. I remember 
 hearing the Rev. William M. Rogers, then pastor 
 of the Central Church, Boston, say, thirty years 
 ago, that there were men and women in his church 
 who had read more theology than he had. Proba- 
 bly it was true. Could a similar statement be 
 truthfully made now respecting that church and 
 its pastor ? Many most excellent Christians, the 
 superiors, it may be, in some other respects, to 
 their fathers, in this respect of theologic knowl- 
 edge are living largely upon their heritage from 
 a more stalwart age. Their faith is not so well 
 defined as that of the fathers : it is held with 
 vague hints of drawbacks and qualifications which 
 are the more hurtful for their vagueness. Their 
 shadows loom up large in the twilight. 
 
 The inspiration of the Scriptures, for example, 
 was once held in the bald and simple form of 
 " verbal " dictation. Whatever were the defects 
 of that type of belief, it had this merit, — that it 
 was definite. It was easily expressed, and easily 
 applied ; and its authority was unquestioned. 
 
156 My Portfolio. 
 
 Theological science has changed all that. But, if 
 wiser forms of faith in inspiration have sprung up, 
 they have not yet taken possession of the popular 
 mind with any tiling like the vigorous grasp with 
 which the theory of verbal inspiration held the 
 unquestioning faith of a former generation. This 
 period of transition may end in a firmer, because 
 a more enlightened and self-consistent, belief; but, 
 while the transition lasts, it is a period of peril to 
 the faith of multitudes. Many are not qualified 
 to say wherein lies the difference between the vis- 
 ion of St. Paul, when he was " caught up to the 
 third heaven," and the vision of the spiritual seer 
 of to-day, who claims the same illumination from 
 the same altitude. Who shall instruct the people 
 in this thing if the pulpit does not ? 
 
 4. The failure of natural science to give a 
 prompt and thorough solution of the mysteries of 
 spiritualism lays a special responsibility on the 
 pulpit. Some disturbances of the popular faith 
 may now be safely let alone, because popular sci- 
 ence has so satisfactorily restored the broken 
 equipoise. Science has solved whatever of mys- 
 tery there was about them, and all men of average 
 intelligence know the fact. Time was, when the 
 faith of many trembled at the discovery that the 
 earth is more than six thousand years old, though 
 the Scriptures, as read for ages by the learned and 
 ignorant alike, had declared the contrary. Philo- 
 logical science has joined hands with natural sci- 
 ence in explaining that contradiction so that 
 
Ought the Pulpit to ignore Spiritualism ? 157 
 
 nobody's faith is disturbed by it now. But the 
 like is not true of the phenomena of spiritualism. 
 Nothing else in scientific histor}^ has so perplexed 
 scientific authorities as this has done. Even the 
 simple form of it called "planchette" has been 
 well denominated the " despair of science." The 
 notion of secret wires and invisible hairs, by which 
 wise men once thought to explain these phe- 
 nomena, will not do now. Men of sense know 
 better. They know what they see with their own 
 eyes, and hear with their own ears. To the com- 
 mon sense of common men, " unconscious cerebra- 
 tion " is not much better. " Psychic force " shares 
 the same fate. These are but names of things 
 which remain as profound mysteries as before. 
 Science has only given us high-sounding titles 
 for them. They are too ethereal to explain to 
 the average intelligence the facts witnessed by a 
 thousand eyes. After all the deductions from the 
 phenomena which collusion and jugglery and elec- 
 tricity, and " nervous fluid," and " psychic force," 
 and " unconscious cerebration," — even admitting 
 these last to be more than names, — can account 
 for, there remains a residuum which nothing ac- 
 counts for on any principle of science which can 
 be made clear to popular comprehension. Honest 
 scientists admit this. When confronted with this 
 residuum of unexplained myster}^, they are dumb, 
 or they say frankly, " We do not know." 
 
 This inability of science to answer popular 
 inquiry on the subject in any way which com- 
 
158 My Portfolio. 
 
 mends itself to the common sense of men, is a fact 
 of great significance to the pulpit. It suggests the 
 query, Who shall give answer to the popular in- 
 quiry ? As a mere matter of science, it can await 
 the wisdom of the future ; but, as a question 
 affecting the religious faith of many, it can not 
 wait. The people find this nondescript thing in 
 the midst of them, and they reasonbly ask solemn 
 questions about it. It profanely puts on the sem- 
 blance of religion. Men and women are trusting 
 to it their hopes of heaven. It tries to take them 
 by the hand, and give them comforting words in 
 affliction. With one hand it seems to lay hold on 
 the nether world, and to let loose vapors that 
 smell of fire and brimstone ; and with the other 
 it seems to open wide the gates of heaven, on 
 more than " golden hinges turning." The people's 
 faith is set agape by its vagaries. They reasona- 
 bly ask, " What shall we believe ? What not 
 believe? And why?" Because science is mute, 
 they turn to their religious teachers ; and to whom 
 else can they turn ? 
 
 5. Once more : the fact that the Scriptures are 
 not silent on the subject of necromancy is a fact 
 of some significance to the pulpit. The people 
 find in the Old Testament perplexing texts about 
 witchcraft, about those who have "familiar spir- 
 its," about "wizards that peep and mutter." 
 Their children read the story of the witch of 
 Endor; and bright ones among them do not fail 
 to recognize in the raising of Samuel an occur- 
 
Ought the Pulpit to ignore Spiritualism ? 159 
 
 rence very like to what they have heard around 
 the fireside, with large eyes and bated breath, of 
 the doings of clairvoyants ; and they ask their 
 fathers, and the fathers ask their ministers, what 
 it all means. They want to know whether there 
 is any difference between the ancient and the 
 modern mystery. Inquiry on the subject seems 
 to have the biblical sanction. To name the 
 Salem witchcraft, with its uncanny associations, 
 does not now put an end to the inquiry. Tower 
 Hill rather complicates the matter in the modern 
 thought. 
 
 Turning, then, to the New Testament, the peo- 
 ple read of demoniacal possessions, and of minis- 
 tering spirits, and of guardian angels, and the 
 prophecy that in the last days there shall be signs 
 and wonders of evil purport, which shall, if pos- 
 sible, deceive God's elect. They ask what these 
 things mean, and the question is not unreasonable. 
 When spiritualistic lecturers boldly claim that 
 apostolic inspiration was no more than one form 
 of clairvoyance, and that ministering spirits are 
 departed souls from this world, and that Jesus 
 Christ was only the Prince of mediums, the peo- 
 ple can not say nay, and give a good reason for it. 
 
 There is, and there has been through all history, 
 a world of the marvelous, bordering hard on the 
 world of spirits, which the Bible does not ignore. 
 It has somewhat to say of that world in limbo, 
 almost from its earliest to its latest revelations. 
 Inspiration does not retire it to the cloud-land of 
 
160 My Portfolio. 
 
 an "if," and leave it there. When people find 
 in their homes and neighborhoods things which 
 inevitably i^emind them of these biblical scraps of 
 mysterious history and prophecy, and specially 
 when they find their inherited faith in miracles 
 and in inspiration muddled by the modern necro- 
 mantic marvels, it is natural, it is reasonable, that 
 they should ask, " What do these things mean ? " 
 And, so long as popular science says never a word, 
 who shall give to the people the necessary satis- 
 faction, if the pulpit does not ? Has not this thing 
 been let alone long enough ? Is it not time that 
 the clergy should have opinions about it, which, as 
 theologians, they are willing to be responsible for, 
 and opinions which shall commend themselves to 
 the good sense and the biblical faith of their 
 hearers ? It can never be beneath the dignity 
 of the pulpit to answer any inquiries touching 
 religious faith which an honest and sensible peo- 
 ple are moved to ask. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 HOW SHALL THE PULPIT TKEAT SPIKITUALISM ? 
 
 Starting on the most general and assured 
 ground of belief respecting this delusion, may not 
 much be accomplished by simply exposing the irre- 
 ligious drift of it as seen in its oivn records ? Some- 
 thing is gained, if we can show to the satisfaction 
 of thinking men that this thing is not religion. 
 Whatever else it is, it is nothing that commends 
 itself to the religious instincts of men. It has 
 neither the self-consistency, nor the dignity, of a 
 revelation from Heaven. The profaneness of 
 many of its teachings is patent on a very brief 
 examination of its organs. Granted that it says 
 many true things and good, it has no more of 
 these than a religious delusion must have to be 
 attractive to believers. 
 
 " Oftentimes, to win us to our harm, 
 The instruments of darkness tell us truths." 
 
 Meanwhile, the vile things and false which are 
 its practical outcome are sufficient to discredit 
 the whole as a system of religion. God does not 
 thus contradict himself. 
 
 161 
 
162 My Portfolio. 
 
 No matter what we may believe, if any thing, 
 about the origin of these phenomena, the drift 
 of the whole is wrong morally. This can be made 
 obvious to the Christian conscience. As a se- 
 quence, Christian people can be convinced that 
 they should have no part nor lot in the matter. 
 If their Christian faith is true, spiritualism as a 
 religion is false. The necromantic seance, then, 
 is no place for a professed friend of Christ. Tam- 
 pering with the thing from motives of curiosity 
 is not only an evil, it is a sin. The curiosity 
 itself which leads men to seek from such sources 
 a knowledge of the invisible world, is itself a sin. 
 The delicacy of a Christian conscience can not but 
 be blurred by such communion. " This genera- 
 tion seeketh after a sign," said the Master to " a 
 generation of vipers." 
 
 The pulpit achieves much, if it teaches this 
 effectually. Much to the purpose is gained, if we 
 can cut this evil adrift from Christian support. 
 No other support of it can give it a respectable 
 prestige among the religions of the age. Make 
 the Church a unit against it, and it can live only 
 as one of the religious monstrosities of the times, 
 which, like Mormonism, do not carry weight 
 enough to make them respectable. No body of 
 men can long hold up in broad daylight a thing 
 which the judgment of the Christian Church has 
 put under ban. That thing must become offensive 
 to the moral sense of men. It must rot. 
 
 In the days of the old antislavery controversy, 
 
How shall the Pulpit treat Spiritualism ? 1C3 
 
 Albert Barnes used to say to the representatives 
 of three millions of slave-property in the broad 
 aisle of his church, "Rid the American Church 
 of all complicity with American slavery, and the 
 thing is doomed." The representatives of the 
 three millions knew it to be true, and they were 
 silent. The principle is more forcibly true of any 
 thing which assumes to be a revelation from 
 Heaven, and yet from which the moral sense of 
 the Church revolts. Christianity has gained such 
 dominion over public sentiment, that no other 
 religion^ at least, can stand against it. May we 
 not, then, preach so much as is here indicated, even 
 without knowing much, or believing much, respect- 
 ing the power which works the spiritualistic mar- 
 vels ? 
 
 May not still more be accomplished by a thor- 
 ough re-discussion in the pulpit of the teachings of 
 the Bible on the subject of ancient magic? Here is 
 a point, I think, at which we have slipped. The 
 popular recoil from the Salem witchcraft, and 
 from the tragedies to which it led, and from the 
 diathesis of the age which made those tragedies 
 j)ossible, has thrown us all back a long way behind 
 the plain teachings of the Scriptures on the whole 
 class of subjects to which this belongs. We have 
 come to think of them as things to be put down 
 with a laugh, or ignored with a smile of contempt. 
 But they do not go down at such bidding. Every 
 age resuscitates them in one form or another. So 
 has it been from the beginjiing. Heathen history 
 
164 My Portfolio, 
 
 is full of them. Such is the craving of the human 
 mincl for the supernatural, that, if you laugh it 
 out of faith in one form, it will gravely slide into 
 another form, with only difference enough to dis- 
 guise its identity. Live it will, even though it 
 beg its way into a herd of swine. 
 
 I attribute the growth of spiritualism largely to 
 a re-action of this kind. Tower Hill in Salem has 
 frightened men out of their mental equipose about 
 these things. Not content with denying false 
 things, we have swung over to the extreme of 
 denying every thing. We have denied facts 
 supported by human testimony of such weight 
 that it would send the best of us to the scaffold, 
 if arrayed against us in a trial for murder. We 
 have taught the world, or allowed it to be taught, 
 that, if any thing presumes to be done by super- 
 human agency, that presumption stamps it as a 
 cheat. Have we not, on this class of topics, unwit- 
 tingly committed the very error which we charge 
 upon the skeptic who affirms that a miracle is per 
 se an absurdity ? The natural re-action from this 
 policy of faithlessness in the superhuman is this 
 wretched travesty of the supernatural which spir- 
 itualism would substitute for Christianity. 
 
 What, then, shall we do to remedy the mistake ? 
 I answer, for one thing, acknowledge the mistake. 
 Then, go back to the biblical methods of treating 
 necromancy. Learn what those methods are, and 
 teach them to the people. The Bible does not 
 dismiss the heathen magic with a laugh or a sneer. 
 
How shall the Pulpit treat Spiritualism ? 1G5 
 
 It does not ignore the thing as too insignificant or 
 too low for the dignity of inspiration. It does not 
 leave it enveloped in the cloud-land of hypothesis. 
 On the contrary, the Scriptures treat it as a fact 
 in human history. They discuss it as a significant 
 development of idolatry. They forbid dalliance 
 with it as a sin. The practice of it the Mosaic 
 law punished as a capital crime. The great reli- 
 gious reformations on record in the Old Testament 
 began with ridding the land of those who dealt 
 with familiar spirits. All down the ages, from 
 Moses to St. Paul, the Bible thunders with denun- 
 ciations of it as a form of devil-worship. When 
 aged Christians of the last generation in the Sand- 
 wich Islands first heard of American spiritualism, 
 they detected instantly its identity with their own 
 former worship of evil spirits. They marveled 
 that American Christians could tamper with it 
 in the face of the biblical warnings against it. 
 I repeat, therefore, teach the people the biblical 
 treatment of necromancy. Show them the points 
 of resemblance between its ancient and its mod- 
 ern forms. We may reasonably look for the same 
 recoil of the Christian conscience from it that 
 was witnessed in the churches of the Hawaiian 
 Islands. Very much is gained if we can thus 
 bring the thing under fire from the battery of 
 biblical history. 
 
 May we not wisely advance our mine still farther 
 and deeper under the foundations of the delusion 
 by resuscitating the popular faith in the biblical 
 
166 My Portfolio, 
 
 demonology ? Here, again, I must believe that we 
 are suffering from an extreme re-action. Because 
 our fathers, at one end of the pendulum's swing, 
 believed that Satan was everywhere, we at the 
 other end believe that he is nowhere. Because 
 they attributed almost every evil thing to his 
 agency, we attribute nothing to it. That is to 
 say, this is the drift of popular opinion. To our 
 fathers the Devil was a real, a personal, an impe- 
 rial power. He was the sovereign of a malignant 
 empire, which interpenetrated and put in peril all 
 human destinies. To them sin was bondage to 
 the Devil. They often wrote even the pronouns 
 of which his name was the antecedent beginning 
 with a capital. The very thought of him moved 
 them to defensive prayer. The grand old Litany 
 of England's saints reads, "From the crafts and 
 the assaults of the Devil, good Lord, deliver us ! " 
 Three times does the Litany break forth into sup- 
 plication against his malign enchantments. Li 
 their artless faith they prayed against malignant 
 spirits almost in the same breath in which they 
 souo^ht deliverance from "battle and murder and 
 sudden death." Then, as if it were the climax 
 of divine blessing, they pray the Lord ^^ finally to 
 beat down Satan under our feet." In dead ear- 
 nest they put their whole Saxon souls into the 
 wrestle with the unseen adversary. Have we 
 grown any wiser in " changing all that " ? Are 
 we nearer to the solemn teachings of God's word 
 when we use the Devil to point an epigram, or 
 
How shall the Pulpit treat Spiritualism ? 16T 
 
 raise a laugh ? Because our fathers went to one 
 extreme, if it was an extreme, are we wiser than 
 they in going to the other ? Yet is not this to a 
 large extent the condition of the popular faith 
 to-clay ? And has not the velvet theology of the 
 pulpit in part produced it? 
 
 What is the effect of the change on the history 
 of spiritualism? Just this: we have lost faith — 
 an operative, living faith, I mean — in the only 
 'thing which can at present explain this modern 
 necromancy biblically and philosophically. It 
 finds us all dumfoundered. Restore the popular 
 faith in the fact of a satanic kingdom on earth, 
 and put into that faith the biblical vividness of 
 belief, and my conviction is, that, with such a 
 leverage as that faith would give, the popular 
 mind would make very quick work with spiritual- 
 ism, and every thing of that ilk. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. I do not forget 
 the conquests of science in our times over the 
 occult things of nature. I am not unmindful of 
 the possibility that scientists may yet explain that 
 residuum of mystery which thus far they have 
 simply handed over to the police, and which the 
 police have sagely handed back again. Specially, 
 I do not ignore that wise conservatism of faith 
 which would fain reduce the supernatural in hu- 
 man affairs to the minimum. This is as it should 
 be. And, when science advances our knowledge 
 to the long-desired discovery, it will be our duty 
 to welcome it, and to adjust our faith to proved 
 
168 My Portfolio, 
 
 facts. We will not cling to faith in will-o'-the- 
 wisps, after the laboratory has manufactured phos- 
 phorus. But do we not, as religious teachers, 
 encounter a grave difficulty, which it is our prov- 
 ince to remedy if we can, in the fact, that, at pres- 
 ent, science is impotent to help us to the discovery, 
 and that the mystery does not seem to lie in the 
 domain of physical science alone, but partly in 
 our spiritual nature ? There is miiid in it : there 
 is the rub. There is a certain remnant, to say 
 the least, of necromantic intelligence, before which 
 science is dumb. It knows no more than we do. 
 It talks to us learnedly of " unconscious cerebra- 
 tion," and "psychic force," and such like things; 
 and, when we try to put them into Saxon for the 
 instruction of the people, they do not know what 
 we mean. Do we ourselves know ? As practical 
 men in a practical emergency, can we afford to 
 wait for science to relieve us by that kind of verbal 
 wisdom ? 
 
 Do we not need for present use some simple yet 
 philosophical explanation, which shall commend 
 itself to the common sense of men and to the bib- 
 lical prepossessions of the people, even if our 
 respect for science compels us to hold it as only a 
 probable hypothesis ? And do we not find that 
 explanation in the plain teachings of the Bible 
 respecting the malign realm of the " Prince of the 
 power of the air " ? We might not venture to 
 create such a solution on our own authority ; but 
 finding it, as we do, ready to our hand, may we 
 
Holo shall the Pulpit treat Spiritualism ? 169 
 
 not use it as a tentative and probable hypothesis, 
 till science shall extend our knowledge, if it can, 
 to something more satisfactory ? Make this king- 
 dom of Satan a reality to the common mind, as it 
 was two centuries ago to the ablest of the jurists 
 and scientists of England, and then the common 
 mind has a plain biblical response at hand, when 
 tempted to receive the revelations of spiritualism 
 as either an antidote or a supplement to the Chris- 
 tian Scriptures. The response is as philosophical 
 as it is biblical, " Get thee behind me, Satan." 
 
 Speaking to the same purpose in detail, I would 
 say. Vivify the people's faith in the personality of 
 Satan. Teach them that he is a power in the 
 universe, whom God condescends to treat as a 
 belligerent. Bring back the conception which the 
 fathers had of him, as the head of an aristocratic 
 empire, supported by a multitude of subordinates 
 and auxiliaries. Revive the ancient faith in the 
 intimacy of their converse with the minds of men, 
 to the extent, possibly, of demoniacal possession. 
 The Scriptures nowhere represent that infliction 
 — be it disease, or sin, or both — as obsolete. 
 Make it a reality to the popular imagination, that 
 we wrestle, not with flesh and blood, but against 
 principalities and powers. Instruct men to fear 
 the craft, rather than the force, of malign tempt- 
 ers. Picture their power to charm men with fas- 
 cinating revelations. Paint them as angels fallen, 
 beings once of light and beauty ; their sovereign, 
 Lucifer, the light-bearer, son of the morning. He- 
 
170 My Portfolio. 
 
 produce with biblical intensity the great conflict 
 of right with wrong in the universe, as a conflict 
 between God and Satan. Open men's eyes to the 
 vision of this earth as the battle-ground of in- 
 visible combatants : make them feel that the very 
 air is tremulous with the march of spiritual bat- 
 talions. 
 
 This, in fragmentary outline, is the " restoration 
 of belief " which the people need to equip them 
 well to meet this latest form of the old heathen 
 magic. Intrenched in such a faith, they could not 
 readily be beguiled by the delusion. The poison- 
 ous exotic could not take thrifty root in such 
 a soil. Is it not for the want of such a soil in 
 the antecedent faith of the people, that the delu- 
 sion has taken foot so widely and so disastrously ? 
 And, if so, what better thing can we do than to 
 restore the old faith, shorn of its excrescences? 
 What better than to lift back into place the dis- 
 located teachings of the Bible ? 
 
 With such a faith antecedently fixed. Christian 
 men would inevitably attribute such things as spir- 
 ituidism to Satanic wiles. These would appear 
 to them to be, and would he^ the most philosoph- 
 ical explanation of those phenomena, of which, as 
 now, science and the police should confess their 
 ignorance. If the biblical demonology is a fact 
 in the divine organization of the universe, and if 
 demoniac craft is a fact in the divinely permitted 
 economy of probation, what else should seem more 
 natural than these marvels over which science 
 
How shall the Pulpit treat Spiritualism ? 171 
 
 despairs ? What else is the demoniac world more 
 likely to be engaged in? If it may be that sin, 
 matured and aged, tends to reduce the grade of 
 guilty intellect, what else is more probable than 
 those frivolities and platitudes which make up 
 much of the spiritualistic revelations? On the 
 other hand, what else than the marvels bordering 
 on miracle, which this modern theurgy offers to 
 gaping curiosit}^, are more likely to be the " signs 
 and wonders " which in the last times are, if pos- 
 sible, to deceive God's elect ? Are we not in dan- 
 ger of believing and teaching too little, rather 
 than too much, on a theme so dismal ? 
 
 We are in no danger of restoring faith in the 
 tragedies of Tower Hill. Such things as those, 
 once lived through in the jurisprudence of nations, 
 are never lived over again. They must needs have 
 been, to prepare the way for the calmer faith to 
 follow. The worst use possible to make of them 
 is to allow them to frighten us out of all faith. 
 Better exhume Cotton Mather than that. 
 
XIX. 
 
 POEEIGN MISSIONS AND HOME MISSIONS AS SEEN 
 BY CANDIDATES TOR THE MINISTET. 
 
 The dearth of candidates for foreign missions 
 is surely an afflictive, and, in some aspects, an 
 alarming fact. That single statement once made 
 on the platform of the American Board, " that in 
 all our seminaries not one man stood pledged to 
 their service," was the blast of a trumpet like 
 that by which the warder of the old mediaeval 
 castle used to summon the men-at-arms to the 
 rescue. Every man in the seminaries should heed 
 it, and, if he does not respond in person, should be 
 able to show cause. Why the deep and prolonged 
 interest in the subject which almost always pre- 
 vails in theological seminaries does not result in 
 a large and immediate influx of candidates to the 
 foreign service is too complicated an inquiry to 
 be briefly answered ; yet there is one fact which 
 goes far towards an answer to it intelligibly and 
 reasonably. 
 
 Turning to the missionary history of theologi- 
 cal schools, we find that the revivals of the foreign 
 missionary esprit commonly alternate with similar 
 
 172 
 
Foreign Missions and Home Missions. 173 
 
 waves of special interest in home missions and in 
 other departments of the home-work. I mean by 
 this, not merely, that, when men do not go abroad, 
 they stay at home, but that in the intervals be- 
 tween the awakenings to the wants of the heathen 
 world have occurred as marked revivals of special 
 prayer and solicitude and self-consecration for the 
 salvation of this country. The evidences of such 
 awakenings are such as in an ordinary church 
 would prove the existence of a revival of interest 
 in the conversion of the surrounding population. 
 Call them what we may, they are upliftings of the 
 level of Christian feeling to an unusual height, 
 but specially concerned with the work at home 
 more than with the work abroad. 
 
 We can not always anticipate what turn to prac- 
 tical life the inner spirit of a body of Christians 
 will take. Nor can we always explain why it 
 should take the turn it does. We may even find 
 difficulty in vindicating its estimate of the relative 
 worth of things. Still we can not wisely rebuke 
 it, nor strive to change its drift. Still less can we 
 bind it to the test of any one development. 
 
 There was a time wiien, in Germany, the spirit 
 of evangelical revival declared itself in a special 
 interest in the founding and support of orphan- 
 asylums. The Orphan House at Halle, founded 
 by Hermann Francke, was the representative, for 
 many years, of one of the most valuable evangeli- 
 cal awakenings in German history. In the middle 
 ages a literal obedience to our Lord's command. 
 
174 3Iy Portfolio. 
 
 " Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor," was 
 the form in which many a profound revival of re- 
 ligious life expressed itself. Hence, in part, arose 
 a multitude of the hospitals, asylums, and retreats 
 which are scattered over Europe. The Holy 
 Spirit in man looks many ways. The " wheels " 
 in Ezekiel's vision of the spirit of life were " full 
 of eyes." Such is the spirit of life in the Church. 
 
 Such, in character, are genuine revivals of mis- 
 sionary zeal in a seminary. They are one in spirit 
 and in power ; but sometimes they drift eastward, 
 and sometimes westward, and sometimes they do 
 not drift at all. Now they concentrate attention 
 upon China, India, Japan, and then upon Dakota, 
 Oregon, ^'alifornia ; and again, with every ap- 
 pearance of the sa ne missionary consecration, the 
 young men choose the little church in the Green 
 Mountains, or the metropolitan pulpit, or the mis- 
 sion church under its shadow. 
 
 One illustration of the westward drifting of 
 such a missionary revival is the fo^'iiation at 
 Andover of the well-known Iowa Band. In that 
 more than Holy League eleven men allied them- 
 selves to go to that then desolate territory. Their 
 success is some evidence that they were not mis- 
 taken in their choice. A very intelligent layman 
 of that State has expressed the opinion, that that 
 Band from Andover (reduced to nine before 
 reaching the field) achieved more than any other 
 human agency to save the whole State from 
 infidelity. 
 
Foreign Missions and Home 3Iissions. 175 
 
 Later was formed the smaller but equally illus- 
 trious Kansas Band. Its members went to that 
 State when it was in the death-struggle with 
 slavery. Their usefulness in laying religious 
 foundations deep and strong is immeasurable. 
 Not only churches and Sunday schools, and the 
 establishment of a sabbath, but colleges, libraries, 
 the local press, the whole school system of the 
 State, and the introduction of the same institu- 
 tions into Nebraska and "the regions beyond," 
 have felt the influence of their plastic hand. 
 They have done their work, too, at the peril of 
 limb and life. One of them escaped, by only the 
 protection of a rail fence, the infamous Quantrell 
 Massacre. Few clergymen live to-day who have 
 so much to show for twenty years of work as those 
 Kansas pioneers. And they have as many years 
 more to labor before '' the grasshopper " will " be- 
 come a burden." 
 
 Both of those companies of Western volunteers, 
 and scores of others of the same guild, were the 
 very men, who, if the Lord had not directed them, 
 as they believed, to the frontier of our own land, 
 would have been very likely to be found to-day in 
 the foreign service. When they went westward, 
 great disappointment was felt that they did not 
 go eastward. Yet who will now venture to say 
 that they mis-heard the Master's voice ? Would 
 any one of us venture to undo all that they have 
 achieved, and veto all that they give promise of 
 achieving, in their chosen field, for the sake of 
 
176 My Portfolio. 
 
 even the magnificent work which they doubtless 
 would have accomplished in India or Japan ? 
 
 It is also specially to be remembered that the 
 relative claims of the home and the foreign fields 
 have not been for the last fifteen years what they 
 were before the war. The home-work has ex- 
 panded immeasurably in its practicable extent, and 
 been intensified unspeakably in its urgency. Are 
 we not all trembling before it to-day ? Is not our 
 priceless inheritance from our fathers trembling 
 in the balance, for the want of a calm, scholarly, 
 Christian leadership for the countless hosts of 
 ignorance and depravity into whose hands we 
 have put, not the spelling-book and the Testa- 
 ment, but ballots and muskets? Is not the weight 
 of the destiny of this land often intolerable to 
 those who feel called of God to stand under and 
 lift it? Do we not feel impelled to hasten the 
 work of redemption? Can we afford delay? 
 What means the increase of the annual income of 
 the American Missionary Association from forty 
 thousand dollars before the war to three hun- 
 dred thousand now? Does not a profound alarm 
 among the Christians in this country express itself 
 in this fact ? 
 
 When Gen. Grant was before Petersburg, at a 
 critical moment of the siege, his only word of 
 command was, "Pour in the men, pour in the 
 men!'' So do we not all of us judge and feel, 
 through all the broken deeps of our souls, that 
 the only thing which can save this land for Christ 
 
Foreign 3Iissions and Home 3Iissions. 177 
 
 is to pour in the men, and to do it notv ? West, 
 South, North-west, South-west, the whole frontier, 
 and strategic keys from the Lakes to the Gulf, 
 must be carried soon, or not at all, as it seems to 
 all human foresight. 
 
 The protection of our Lord's Day, the salvation 
 of our youth from infidelity, the preservation of 
 our school system, the planting of even the rudi- 
 mental institutions of Christianity in the new 
 States, the crushing of Mormonism, the uplifting 
 of the negro from the awful slough of ignorance 
 and corruption in which freedom has surprised 
 him, the not less imperative need of the civiliza- 
 tion of the Southern white men, the rescue of 
 both races in the Southern half of the land from 
 the clutch of Romanism, the recovery of the whole 
 Southern conscience from the obtuseness which 
 slavery has inflicted, the substitution of the civili- 
 zation of the alphabet for that of the bowie-knife, 
 and the christianizing of the American Chinese, 
 — these are but the pioneer work of the gospel on 
 this continent. The maturity of Christian civiliza- 
 tion lies far away beyond them. 
 
 Does not the exigency which is upon us fairly 
 open the question, whether a far-seeing policy does 
 not dictate a suspension of advance in the foreign 
 work, allowing it simply to hold its own, if this is 
 necessary to the speedy achievements of certain 
 preliminary conquests in this country? Can not 
 the world, as a whole, better afford that China and 
 Japan should wait twenty years longer for the 
 
178 My Portfolio. 
 
 gospel than that Nebraska, Colorado, Texas, and 
 the Carolinas should wait? Is it not a less evil 
 that Africa in the East should wait than that our 
 own Africa in the South should ? 
 
 Look at those pitiable colored churches ! What 
 are the elements of many of them ? — consciences 
 poisoned by fetich-worship yet lurking in the 
 blood, corrupted by the degradations which none 
 but a slave knows, and these made putrid by the 
 more degrading example of the master. In how 
 many of them are falsehood, theft, concubinage, 
 adultery, a bar to church-membership ? If rumor 
 be true, how much above them are some of the 
 white churches ? Can we venture, is it good policy 
 to venture, farther into the heart of heathendom, 
 leaving such rotting monstrosities of our Christi- 
 anity behind us ? 
 
 The conflict is one, — fought on one field, under 
 one strategic Mind, for one grand conquest. 
 While the loyal forces are so few, and, relatively 
 to the enemy, so feeble, it may not be wise poli- 
 cy to "advance all along the line." Said the 
 commander of the French forces, witnessing the 
 famous "ride upon death" of the six hundred Eng- 
 lish cavalry at Balaklava, " It is magnificent, but 
 it is not war." So the resolve of the Christian 
 Church to evangelize the world in this generation 
 might be the sublime of heroism, and yet not wise. 
 If, then, there must be a halt anywhere, does not 
 the millennial reign require that that halt should 
 7iot be on this Western Continent? Is there 
 
Foreign Missions and Home 3Iissions. 179 
 
 another country on the globe whose immediate 
 evangelizing is so vital to the world's redemption 
 as that of our own ? 
 
 Far be it from me to answer these questions 
 authoritatively. None but an infinite Mind can 
 do that. Still less would I answer them, or ask 
 them, to the discouragement of foreign missions. 
 Nor is the necessity supposed, by any means to be 
 yet conceded. But my sole object in asking these 
 questions is to state the case fairly, as it has stated 
 itself to young candidates for the ministry, spe- 
 cially during the last fifteen years. The question 
 of their life's work has come before them under 
 an alternative so complicated as to perplex the 
 wisest, and so fearful as to appall the boldest. 
 
 To them the cause of Christ in this land seems 
 to be in an unprecedented strait. The element 
 of speed appears to be a more potent factor in 
 the problem of its salvation than in that of any 
 other portion of the globe. Every thing seems 
 to depend on quick marches. The Napoleonic 
 policy, of rapid movement of great forces to great 
 conquests, appears to them the only one that 
 promises ultimate success. If there is anywhere 
 under Christian banners an Imperial Guard, which 
 " dies, but never surrenders," but whose presence 
 insures victory, they feel that its prestige and 
 power are needed here. They explore the West 
 and the South, and come back awestruck at the 
 impending conflict. They listen to foreign mis- 
 sionaries and home missionaries, fresh from their 
 
180 My Portfolio, 
 
 fields of honor, side by side ; and to the majority 
 of them the home-work appears to be in the most 
 appalling danger from delay. Results good and 
 evil, which elsewhere will accumulate arith- 
 metically, must here accumulate geometrically. 
 Though inferior vastly in present numbers, this 
 land seems to them to be " the key of the posi- 
 tion " which must command the field. The power 
 which holds it makes conquest of the world. To 
 the older continents it is what the chateau of 
 Hougomont and the farm of La Haye Sainte were 
 to the field of Waterloo. It must be taken and 
 held for Christ, or we must say, as Napoleon did 
 when the Old Guard broke : " All is lost ! " 
 
 Such is the outlook upon that " field " which " is 
 the world," as these young men see it, when they 
 ponder the question where to take their places in 
 the ranks. Yet, setting aside all these facts, which 
 plead so potently for advance quick and strong in 
 the home-work, the secretaries of the American 
 Home Missionary Society tell them, that for the 
 work of that organization alone — if it should make 
 no advance, but simply hold its own for twenty 
 years to come — not less than fifty new men must 
 be furnished every year. If the young men see 
 in this condition of things the call of God to them, 
 who will venture to dispute their vision ? Who 
 of us, in the face of his own life's record, will 
 take it upon himself to say that they are deciding 
 the question of their life's work with either a 
 blind or a self-indulgent judgment ? 
 
XX. 
 
 POKEiaN MISSIONS, THEIR EANGE OP APPEAL POR 
 MISSIONARIES LIMITED. 
 
 " We are three millions, one-fifth fighting men," 
 are the words which Webster puts into the mouth 
 of the elder Adams of Revolutionary fame. The 
 proportion of the young men in our seminaries 
 who can go into the foreign field is restricted 
 somewhat, as is the proportion of " fighting men " 
 in the population of a country. The two propor- 
 tions are not equally low perhaps ; but that of the 
 possible foreign missionaries rarely if ever exceeds 
 one-third of the whole number on a seminary cata- 
 logue, and often falls as low as one-fourth. 
 
 Does this seem to be a low estimate ? Look at 
 the facts. A large section of these young men 
 are excluded from the reckoning by considerations 
 of health. Their own health, or, as probably, that 
 of their chosen companions for life, settles the 
 question imperatively and adversely. The ques- 
 tion often is not from the Board to the student, 
 ^' Will you go ? " but from the student to the Board, 
 "May I go?" And the answer is, "No : the treas- 
 ury can not take the risk of your infirm health." 
 
 181 
 
182 My Portfolio, 
 
 Another fragment, of variable size, must be 
 struck from the list, for special infirmity in lin- 
 guistic acquisition. One devoted missionary, after 
 twenty years of service, could not preach intelli- 
 gibly to the natives, and was obliged to return 
 home. The churches ought not to afford many 
 such experiments. Yet not all students have the 
 "gift of tongues." If some of them should be 
 sent abroad, some brother Aaron of whom it can 
 be said, " I know that he can speak well in Arabic 
 or Chinese," must be sent with each to do the 
 preaching for him. 
 
 A further fraction must be set aside, for the 
 possession of some rare gift or taste which has 
 fore-ordained them to some special department of 
 service at home. When I go into a student's 
 room, and find him reading La Place's " Mecha- 
 nique Celeste " for recreation, and discover upon 
 his shelf a novel chronometer of his own inven- 
 tion and manufacture, and learn that he is the 
 only man in Massachusetts who has calculated 
 the date of a coming eclipse, I strongly suspect 
 that He who created him did not intend that he 
 should be a street-preacher in Canton, but predes- 
 tined him to be a professor of natural philosophy 
 in a Western college ; and my zeal for missions 
 is not offended by his drifting into that position 
 for his life's work. 
 
 When the late Professor Putnam of Dartmouth 
 College, one of the most accomplished Greek 
 scholars of the country, stood on the platform at 
 
Foreign Missions, 183 
 
 his graduation at Andover, more than one of his 
 hearers, taking their cue from his oration, pro- 
 nounced him " the young Grecian ; " thus confirm- 
 ing the judgment of his collegiate and theological 
 instructors, that the God of nature had made him 
 to be a professor of the Greek language and lit- 
 erature. Unfortunately for the missionary aspira- 
 tions of such men, the demand for professors of 
 natural philosophy and of Greek literature among 
 the Zulus is not oppressive. 
 
 My friend Professor Churchill will pardon me 
 for saying, that, when his rare elocutionary and 
 histrionic gifts developed themselves at Harvard 
 College and in the seminary, there was but one 
 voice among sagacious educators as to the reason 
 of his creation. But the need of American pro- 
 fessors of elocution among the Arabs is not over- 
 whelming. 
 
 Only once in my life have I ventured to advise 
 a young man to sacrifice a remarkable natural 
 genius for mechanical invention to a study for the 
 ministry. Unfortunately, he followed my counsel. 
 His glib tongue led me to trust that he had been 
 "made upright." But he "sought out many in- 
 ventions." One of them was of such astounding 
 originality for a country parson, that it has raised 
 him to the distinction of being the only one of 
 the more than three thousand students of Ando- 
 ver Seminary whose services the Commonwealth 
 has found it expedient for its own safety to em- 
 ploy in the State Prison. "All is vanity and 
 vexation of spirit." 
 
184 My Portfolio. 
 
 Certain natural tastes and gifts are God's hints 
 of revelation. They cannot be safely crossed. 
 Mischief comes of it. Yet they divert some men 
 from foreign missions, and ought to withhold some 
 from the ministry altogether. The best work done 
 in this world is joyous work. And joyous work 
 must command a man's whole being, free from the 
 friction of misplaced powers and the gasping of 
 stifled tastes. 
 
 Still another small section, but an appreciable 
 one, must be omitted, for the want of adequate 
 natural force for the foreign work. Time was, 
 when, of an inferior preacher, the proverb ran, 
 " He may do for a missionary." We are wiser than 
 that now. Foreign missions demand our ablest 
 men. They must stand before kings. They must 
 confound learned and adroit sophists, demolish 
 ancient systems of philosophy, uproot religions 
 which have stood a thousand years. They are to 
 be constructors of new institutions, the founders 
 of churches, of colleges, of professional schools, 
 of national school systems, the creators of written 
 languages from their very alphabet, the origina- 
 tors of a Christian literature in tongues which lack 
 words for Christian thought, the pioneers, defend- 
 ers, teachers, and fathers of Christian civilization 
 among nations which make gods of their heathen 
 ancestry. Who is sufficient for these things ? A 
 young man may be very useful as the pope of a 
 mountain town in New England, — yes, he may 
 grace one of our metropolitan pulpits, — who could 
 
Foreign Missions. 185 
 
 not be trusted to master the Tamil language, de- 
 bate in it with erudite Brahmins, and build the 
 foundations of christianized society in Ceylon. 
 
 Yet another reduction of the list is made by 
 the misfortune of a few young men in having been 
 born to luxury and wealth — their misfortune, not 
 their fault. With rare exceptions, so rare that 
 they always excite commendatory remark, those 
 are restricted in their range of place and service, 
 who have been reared amidst the refinements and 
 delicacies of an affluent metropolitan home. They 
 can not " endure hardness." The cost of the en- 
 durance, beyond the brief stimulus of an emer- 
 gency, is very apt to be the destruction of health,. 
 
 In the first year of the civil war, when a regi- 
 ment from Lowell encamped near Washington by 
 the side of the New- York Seventh, famed for its 
 enlistments from the wealthiest families of the me- 
 tropolis, the factory operatives and farmer's sons 
 volunteered to the work of the trenches, or some- 
 thing similar, saying to the metropolitans, " You 
 are not made for such work as this." It was true, 
 and no crime of theirs : they were not made for 
 it. With mutual and rare generosity, each sup- 
 plemented the other, every man doing what he 
 was made for. 
 
 So in the allotments of ministerial service, with 
 just exceptions enough to prove the rule, the sons 
 of luxury and wealth can not be depended upon 
 for rough work. Generally speaking, we do not 
 look to them for recruits for foreign missionary 
 
186 My Portfolio. 
 
 service. Other service they can do, and have done 
 nobly. All honor to the J^oung man, who, like the 
 late Dr. Codman of Dorchester, with no necessity 
 of labor for his livelihood, enters the ministry, and 
 remains in it as the loved work of his life ! But 
 Dr. Codman could not have done equal service as 
 a missionary, even in Constantinople. 
 
 Yet again : the candidates for the foreign service 
 are reduced by considerations of domestic duty 
 and pecuniary liability. One young man has a 
 widowed mother or an invalid sister dependent 
 upon him for society and support. Another is the 
 eldest son of a large and fatherless family. A 
 third, left an orphan in his infancy, has been nur- 
 tured and educated by foster-parents, who now in 
 their old age are dependent upon him. A fourth 
 rej)resents dozens, who have debts incurred for 
 their education. They can not honestly leave the 
 country till these debts are paid. Such debts 
 overhang our pastors at home, for ten, even twen- 
 ty years. One professor in a New-England insti- 
 tution has been paying such a debt in driblets for 
 thirty years. True, parsonages at home are not 
 mines of gold, any more than missionary homes 
 at Beirut ; but young men may more reasonably 
 hope to liquidate debts in some way here than 
 abroad. 
 
 Once more : students are withheld from the for- 
 eign work by the strenuous opposition of family 
 and friends. A father interposes objections, with 
 a power behind which gives them the force of a 
 
Foreign Missions, 187 
 
 veto. A mother objects with strong crj'ing and 
 tears, which a son can not resist. The best of these 
 young men are but men at best. Through college 
 and seminary one has waited seven years for a 
 certain Rachel, '' beautiful and well favored," and 
 " they seem to him but a few days for the love he 
 has to her." But she, at the last moment, draws 
 back from the unknown perils of exile in a foreign 
 land. Unlike her namesake, she does not say, 
 " Whatsoever God hath said unto thee, do." Or, 
 more probably, her mother objects, who, unfortu- 
 nately, does not live in Padan-aram. She breaks 
 down her daughter's courage by a tearful reminder 
 of the fate of Harriet Newell ; and the two Niobes 
 together make our young missionary feel that he is 
 a monster. Professor Stuart was an early and life- 
 long friend of missions, and not a man of mawkish 
 sensibilities ; yet he never could bring himself to 
 advise a young man to ask, for the sake of the mis- 
 sionary service, release from the marriage-engage- 
 ment of his youth. Whether such obstacles as these 
 ought to exist or not, they do exist : young men 
 can not control them. They are often the decisive 
 weight thrown into the perhaps trembling scales. 
 
 Foreign missions, therefore, when they apply at 
 the doors of a theological seminary for men, are 
 compelled to pass by these various fragments of a 
 graduating class. What, then, is the result? These 
 fractions swell, in the aggregate, into a majority. 
 The result is, that the range of choice for foreign 
 missions is narrowed down to not more than one- 
 
188 My Portfolio. 
 
 third, and often to one-fourth, of the whole num- 
 ber of candidates for the ministry. Those who can 
 go, those to whom the question is an equal one, 
 those to whom it is even an open question, are but 
 these few. So much the more urgent, then, is the 
 appeal to them. So much the more impressive is 
 the magnitude of their responsibility. So much 
 the more exalted is their privilege. They are the 
 few chosen ones, whose opportunity is world-wide. 
 
 Said one of England's great statesmen, in a 
 crisis of the nation's history, and with proud con- 
 sciousness of a great opportunity, " I am the only 
 man in England who can save this country ; and 
 I can do it." May not this group of youthful 
 preachers who labor under no local limitations of 
 Christian service say with humbler but more rea- 
 sonable exultation, " We are the only preachers of 
 Christ who can carry the gospel to the heathen, 
 and we can do it " ? If this limited fraction, con- 
 sisting of those who can^ would volunteer to the 
 work from which their less favored brethren are 
 excluded, our foreign missions would at least be 
 saved from retrogression and disaster. Again ; he 
 that hath an ear to hear, let him hear. 
 
 But this conflict of duties to the home and the 
 foreign work suggests another phase of the experi- 
 ence of the young men in seminaries. It is, that 
 in view of the ujiiversal cry for re-enforcements, 
 and perhaps weary of the doubts of a hesitating 
 conscience, they often come to the conclusion at 
 last, that it can make but little difference where 
 
Foreign Missions, 189 
 
 they go. Go where they may, they are but a drop 
 in a maelstrom. Go where they may, they plunge 
 into exigencies beyond their strength. Go where 
 they may, they go under the high pressure of an 
 intense conscience. Neither to the work nor them- 
 selves does it seem to matter much which way 
 they turn their steps. 
 
 Said Gen. Howard at Gettysburg, to a squad of 
 stragglers who were scrupulously hunting for their 
 regimental colors, " Fall in, boys, fall in under the 
 first flag you come to: there's the enemy: you 
 can't go wrong." So, in the turmoil of this great 
 morarconflict, this little squad of young men some- 
 times lose sight of "departments" and "fields," 
 of east and west and south. The "here" and 
 "there" become insignificant. They are apt at 
 last to settle the question in the mood of feeling, 
 that, if they "fall in" anywhere, they "can't go 
 wrong." Yet "the first flag they come to " means, 
 perhaps, the vacant pulpit of the church whose 
 spire is visible from their study-windows. 
 
 Is not the conclusion of the whole matter, then, 
 the policy of increasing the numbers of candidates 
 for the ministry, and of those especially who seek 
 the ministry, not for its metropolitan and suburb- 
 an service, but for the sake of its missionary privi- 
 leges? Let us go to the colleges and the churches 
 for missionary candidates. Let men be drawn from 
 the church to the college, and from the college ^ to 
 the seminary, for the sole purpose of preaching 
 Christ as missionaries only, and they will be the 
 more likely to stick to their first choice. 
 
190 My Portfolio, 
 
 Such men make the best missionaries too. The 
 very best are those who never had other ambi- 
 tions. The charm of David Scudder's brief mis- 
 sionary life was due to the fact that he was born 
 to it. He never had another choice of his life's 
 work. He had no youthful aspirations to surren- 
 der. In after-life he had no regretful memories. 
 His whole history was cumulative towards one end. 
 Hence the concentration of his aim. Hence his 
 joy in his work. Hence, too, the fascination of his 
 sway over others and the resplendent promise of 
 his manhood. Such men are the missionary powers, 
 wherever they are, — in the home, in the church, 
 in the college, in the seminary, in the field. Let 
 us multiply such young men, and the future of 
 missions at home and abroad will be progressive 
 and triumphant. 
 
XXI. 
 
 OONaEEaATIOlTALISTS AND PEESBYTEEIANS : A 
 PLEA POR UNION. 
 
 CoNGREGATiONALzsm and Presbyterianism are 
 natural foes, but Congregationalists and Presby- 
 terians are naturally one. Such is the difference 
 between isms and the men and women who work 
 them in real life. Has not the time come around 
 again in the cycle of history, when the unity of 
 these two great bodies of Christians should be 
 expressed more palpably to the world's vision? 
 Perhaps not by the resumption of abrogated 
 "plans of union," certainly not by the resurrec- 
 tion of any thing resonant with the echoes of 
 ancient warfare. But in modes congruous with 
 existing modes of thought, and with no loss to 
 the individuality of either, may not these two 
 wings of the Lord's hosts cross over to each other, 
 and march abreast ? 
 
 Thet/ are one in their history. The early evan- 
 gelizing of this country scarcely knew a difference 
 between them. They professed the same standards 
 of belief; they revered the same great names in 
 the history of the old countries; they inherited 
 
 191 
 
192 My Portfolio. 
 
 the same traditions from the Reformation. In this 
 country, President Edwards represents a class of 
 leaders in both churches, who to this day are as 
 venerable to one as to the other. So late as the 
 time of the founding of Andover Seminary, its 
 charter decreed that its professors for ever should 
 be ministers in either the Congregational or the 
 Presbyterian communion. That provision was a 
 faithful exponent of the Congregationalism of that 
 day. Our Congregational fathers never dreamed 
 of the time w^hen their successors could not cross 
 the border into the Presbyterian fold, and when 
 Presbyterians could not reciprocate the fellowship, 
 without a stigma upon their loyalty. The divid- 
 ing line was practically as invisible as the equator. 
 
 Hence grew up that grand union of these two 
 bodies in missionary and benevolent activity, 
 which has been the glory of our time. When the 
 seminary at Princeton was founded, it was be- 
 lieved to be, and it was, only an extension of the 
 work begun at Andover. Antagonism between 
 the two was never broached. It has required a 
 half-century of denominational discipline to con- 
 vince the rank and file of the two churches that 
 they need any other almoner of their foreign mis- 
 sionary bounty than the American Board. Some 
 of them are not yet convinced. Many look back 
 with longing to the ancient brotherhood. Is it 
 decreed that those days have departed never to 
 return ? 
 
 The two churches are still one in their doctrinal 
 
Congregationalists and Presbyterians. 193 
 
 faith. Since the re-union of the two branches of 
 the Presbyterian body (disrupted in 1837), and 
 since the re-affirmation of the Westminster Con- 
 fession by the National Council of Congregation- 
 alists at Plymouth, it may be fairly presumed that 
 theological diversities need never again alienate 
 these denominations from each other. Their faith 
 is one. The orthodoxy of Presbyterians has never 
 been questioned in New England ; and the New- 
 England theology, once suspected and denounced, 
 has been substantially indorsed by the Presbj^te- 
 rian Church. By a " thirty-years ' war" it has es- 
 tablished its right to he under the Presbyterian 
 banner. No man will ever again be arraigned 
 before the Presbyterian courts for holding the 
 theology of Albert Barnes and Lyman Beecher. 
 That question was settled when Albert Barnes 
 was welcomed back into the re-united Presbyte- 
 rian Church without a retraction of any word he 
 ever preached or published. With that question 
 was settled, also, the theological soundness of the 
 Congregational clergy as judged by Presbyterian 
 standards ; for the Westminster Confession is a 
 common standard to both. The faith of the two, 
 I repeat, is one. No theological grounds remain 
 for alienation between them. No doctrinal reasons 
 exist why the clergy of the two denominations 
 should not cross and re cross the border, in the 
 interchange of pastorates, as freely as in the days 
 of Dr. Griffin and Dr. Skinner. 
 
 In administrative policy, also, the two churches are 
 
194 My Portfolio, 
 
 essentially the same. If one is a trifle more con- 
 servative than the other, and the other is a trifle 
 more radical than the one, the difference is not 
 repellent : it is only sufficient to render each the 
 natural complement of the other. Each would be 
 more efficient in union with the other. Both are 
 progressive conservatives ; both are conservative 
 reformers. The two ideal foci of all healthy 
 growth represented by the words " conservatism " 
 and "progress" shine as luminously in the one 
 ellipse as in the other. Presbyterians are not 
 Bourbons: Congregationalists are not Jacobins. 
 Both are Girondists. He must be the common 
 enemy of both who would guillotine either. 
 
 Even their forms of church polity, so divergent 
 in theory, are not schismatically asunder in prac- 
 tice. Any form of church government is what 
 the spirit is which energizes it. I know a Congre- 
 gational church in Boston — who does not? — in 
 which affairs are as presbj^terially administered 
 as they ever were in the First Presbyterian Church 
 of Baltimore under the trenchant sway of Dr. 
 Breckinridge. The First Presbyterian Church of 
 Philadelphia, under Albert Barnes, was as congre- 
 gationally governed in spirit as any one of a hun- 
 dred churches, taken at random, in Massachusetts. 
 
 The two systems of church polity have been 
 modifying each other, the one consolidating and 
 the other liquefying, for two hundred years. In 
 the result, both are developed, in the spirit of the 
 New Testament and of common sense, more sym- 
 
Congregationalists and Presbyterians. 195 
 
 metrically than if they had not been historically 
 intermingled. The drift towards union of the two 
 denominations is so powerful from other causes, 
 that church polity alone can not keep them long 
 asunder, except in times when denominational 
 blood is at fever-heat. Even then, the hot blood 
 inflames the few, not all. The neighings of eccle- 
 siastical war-horses who scent the battle from afar 
 must not be mistaken for the equal breathings of 
 Christian aspiration by the men and women who 
 make up these hosts of God's elect. TJieir thought 
 of each other is always and profoundly fraternal. 
 
 The two denominations are one, also, m respect to 
 the class of minds to which they appeal successfully 
 for su2:)p)07^t. All the great denominations of 
 Christendom are founded upon certain radical 
 diversities of mental structure. They have not 
 sprung up at hap-hazard. They are not the fated 
 outgrowths of history. They have grown out of 
 the same differences of human nature which make 
 history. Shrewd observers of character often 
 think they can detect in a good man's countenance 
 the expression of the religious sect to which he 
 ought to belong. Do we not all practice thus a 
 physiognomy which is not all guess-work ? 
 
 Among these diversities of mental structure 
 there is one, which, for the want of a better title 
 adapted to the present purpose, may be termed 
 the Calvinistic order of mind. That is to say, it 
 takes naturally to the Calvinistic class of creeds 
 and methods of working. There are Calvinistic 
 
196 My Portfolio, 
 
 natures, and there are Arminian natures. Under 
 circumstances evenly favorable to both these de- 
 velopments of thought, a very large class of men 
 will choose one, and eschew the other, by an in- 
 stinct as certain as that which induces bees to 
 swarm, and beavers to build dams. 
 
 The Calvinistic order of mind is inclined to pro- 
 found views of truth. It is contemplative before 
 it is active in its religious tastes. It is equable in 
 religious emotion, reverent and calm in its modes 
 of worship, given to looking before and after, to 
 asking for and seeing the reasons of things, yet 
 imbued with a strong element of faith, which is 
 not staggered by beliefs which border hard on 
 contradictions. Withal, it is a constructive order 
 of mind. It works in dead earnest, and works out 
 systems of things. It builds for permanence, and 
 looks a long way ahead for results. If you want 
 to make any thing eternal in human affairs, you 
 must build into it, and especially under it, a very 
 large proportion of the Calvinistic elements. 
 
 To this order of mind, several Christian denom- 
 inations appeal chiefly for support, of which the 
 two most eminent in English and American his- 
 tory are the Presbyterian and the Congregational. 
 This single point of unity between them is a more 
 imperial power over them both than all their dif- 
 ferences put together. Start the two contempora- 
 neously in a new community, as is now so often 
 done on our Western frontier, and they must live, 
 if at all, upon precisely the same elements of so- 
 
Congregationalists and Presbyterians. 197 
 
 ciety. Tliey must compete for the same families ; 
 they must invite the same leadership ; and in the 
 result they must develop in that community the 
 same kind of religious forces. 
 
 That law of our religious history by which Con- 
 gregationalists migrating into Presbyterian com- 
 munities have so largely fallen into the Presbyterian 
 ranks, lies very deep in the natural affinities of the 
 two sects. It is no sign of disloyalty. It is illib- 
 eral to question their right to do it, or to censure 
 them for doing it. They obey a law of religious 
 similitude which is more potent and valuable to 
 Christian character than any attachment to church 
 polity can be or ought to be. My father, in New 
 England, lived in a wooden house painted white, 
 with green blinds, as his father did before him. 
 Shall I, therefore, be held untrue to his memory, 
 and faithless to his home, if, when I remove into a 
 clay country, destitute of timber land, I choose to 
 live in a brick or stone house not painted at all ? 
 
 With so many and so strong lines of gravitation 
 between two great powers of Christendom, why 
 should not the policy of both invite union rather 
 than schism ? Does not the new spirit of union 
 among all evangelical denominations, and the new 
 pressure from without which is crowding them 
 together, demand this policy specially between 
 these two? With what consistency can we cry 
 aloud and spare not, as we are doing to our Epis- 
 copal and Baptist brethren, who constitute the 
 most impregnable fortresses — the Ehrenbreitstein 
 
198 3Iy Portfolio. 
 
 and Strasbourg — of religious seclusion, if we will 
 not ourselves embrace each other, when we have 
 so little in our fundamental convictions to sepa- 
 rate us ? 
 
XXII. 
 
 OONGKEGATIONALISTS AND PEESBYTEEIANS : 
 METHODS OP UNION. 
 
 How can the policy of these two denominations 
 towards each other be liberalized without sacrifice 
 of principles sacred to either? I answer briefly, 
 in the following ways, if in no other. 
 
 1. In establishing new churches in the Western 
 frontier States, let us more generously yield to 
 the law of majorities. Abandon the wretched 
 policy of building two churches for Presbyterian 
 and Congregational weaklings to starve in and to 
 snarl in at each other because both are starving. 
 Build the one church, and let the majority have 
 it; the minority giving a cordial support. A 
 Union Church, under such circumstances, does 
 not meet the case. Indeed, a Union Church is a 
 misnomer anywhere. There is something comical 
 in the innocence with which a Congregational 
 deacon should say, as no respectable deacon ever 
 did say, to a Presbyterian elder, " Come now, let 
 us have no presbytery and no council, but let us 
 come together and manage our own affairs in our 
 own way, in a Union Church." We must not 
 
 199 
 
200 My Portfolio. 
 
 expect our Presbyterian friends to be so conven- 
 iently short-sighted as not to see that that is Con- 
 gregationalism distilled to the very " proof-spirit " 
 of independency. Nobody wants that, unless it 
 be the Plymouth Church of Brooklyn. No, not 
 that for us. Let us fairly give in to the law of 
 majorities. 
 
 2. Why not encourage, rather than resist, the 
 mutual transfer of the ministry between Congre- 
 gational and Presbyterian pulpits? The Old 
 Brick Church of New York has seldom had a 
 pastor not trained in Andover Seminary. Three 
 times in succession, within twenty years, it has 
 invited to its pastorship men trained in Congre- 
 gational schools, and thorough-bred in Congrega- 
 tional traditions. At one time every professor in 
 the Union Theological Seminary of New York, 
 save possibly one, was a man of Congregational 
 birth or training ; all but two had been students 
 in Andover Seminary ; and three of them were 
 once Congregational pastors. Princeton College 
 and Seminary, too, have men, once Congregational 
 pastors, among their professors. Why is not this as 
 it should be ? 
 
 When, on the other hand, the Central Church 
 of Boston and the Broadway Tabernacle of New 
 York invite Presbyterians to become their pastors, 
 when the American Board calls Dr. Treat from a 
 Presbyterian church to be its secretary, and when 
 Andover Seminary invites the Presbyterian Dr. 
 Skinner to its rhetorical chair, why is not this as 
 
Congregationalists and Presbyterians. 201 
 
 well? Why not break down and bury all iron 
 barriers between the two sects? Let the separa- 
 tion be but by a willow network. More even : let 
 it be but an invisible line, which the ministry on 
 either side may cross and recross as unconsciously 
 as they would cross the line of the meridian in a 
 Cunard steamer. What if the result should be 
 that Congregationalism would give more than it 
 would receive? What does that signify, except 
 that it has more to give of such materials as the 
 church universal wants ? The most creative and 
 self-diffusive good that is done in this world is 
 that of which the doers do not get the credit to 
 themselves, but in the doing of which they are 
 buried under other names. Is not just that the 
 history of Congregationalism, indeed, of New- 
 England institutions generally ? And is it not 
 the glory of any good thing, that such should be 
 its mission for the present ? The resurrection is 
 to come by and by. 
 
 3. Why not apply to church-extension by these 
 two denominations in old communities the same 
 law of comity which foreign missionary boards 
 recognize in their treatment of each other ? They 
 hold themselves bound in honor not to interfere 
 with each other, not to build on each other's 
 foundation, not to disturb in the heathen mind 
 each other's prestige. When the ritualists of Eng- 
 land sent a bishop, gorgeous with ecclesiastical 
 regalia, to tempt the Hawaiians from their alle- 
 giance to their Presbyterian and Congregational 
 
202 My Portfolio, 
 
 fathers, the American Board protested against it as 
 an outrage ; and all liberal Episcopalians in Eng- 
 land and America seconded the protest. This was 
 as it should have been. The great missionary or- 
 ganizations recognize each other, not as rivals, but 
 as friends ; not as competitors, but as co-workers. 
 Each leaves to another its chosen field. Neither 
 insults another by presuming that its work needs 
 to be done over again ; but all rejoice in the suc- 
 cess of each as being the success of every other. 
 This has become the recognized law of missionary 
 comity, as well established as any law of nations. 
 Why, then, is not the principle just as sound 
 and wise when applied to church extension by 
 Presbyterians and Congregationalists in the older 
 States, where both have here and there a history 
 of success, and a prestige, which it is an evil to 
 disturb ? Why should a Presbyterian church ever 
 have existed in New England? Why should a 
 Congregational church have ever been planted in 
 Pennsylvania ? Nothing has been gained by either 
 which could not have been more economically 
 gained by the dominant denomination first in pos- 
 session of the field and of the hearts of the people. 
 There is always more or less of needless waste of 
 religious forces, when a denomination must work 
 with few and feeble and unknown churches, b}^ 
 the side of another rich and great and compact, 
 and with a splendid history behind it, and yet so 
 nearly like its feeble competitor, that the world 
 can see no valid reason for the competition. Na- 
 
Oongregationalists and Presbyterians. 203 
 
 tional traditions, pride of ancestry, attachment to 
 early reminiscences, are not sufficient reasons for 
 starting counter-currents of religious sympathy. 
 Said Napoleon to the French Directory, when 
 they talked of sending another general into Italy 
 to co-operate with him in the command, " Do not 
 disturb the imity of military power in Italy. One 
 bad general is better than two good ones." The 
 event proved that he was right. When will the 
 Church be as wise in its policy of denominational 
 extension ? Is it to be never till Romish unity 
 by its terrific conquests drives us to it? 
 
 I know very well that much may be said on 
 the more narrowly and intensely sectarian side of 
 these questions. But the drift of the public mind 
 runs deep and strong towards the submerging of 
 minor diversities among Christians who are essen- 
 tially one. God has a meaning in this imperative 
 demand for union. It is his work that the world 
 wearies of Christian alienations. It is a hint of 
 his will that men of the world shrug their shoul- 
 ders at the whole idea of competition among 
 Christian churches. 
 
 If I do not misread the page of Providence, 
 Christian union must be served chiefly in two 
 ways. In the first place, those sects, which, like 
 the Episcopal and the Baptist, have intrenched 
 themselves behind the walls of one or two dogmas 
 which the rest of the church universal can not ac- 
 cept, have a work of simple surrender before them. 
 Those two non-essentials — close communion and 
 
204 My Portfolio, 
 
 apostolical succession — must be given up. They 
 are foredoomed. Those two denominations, be it 
 said in all kindness, can never do much for the 
 cause of Christian unity, till the doom of those 
 two dogmas is seen and accepted. In the second 
 place, other sects, like the two discussed in these 
 pages, which in faith, in policy, in history, and 
 in character, are so nearly one that a century has 
 scarcely taught the world the difference between 
 them, must become one in every thing that can 
 excite in them the sense of alienation, or that can 
 make the world sensible of the spectacle of com- 
 petition. Are we not called upon therefore, by a 
 voice which we may not ignore with impunity, to 
 reconsider questions which our sectarian wisdom, 
 as we have thought, had settled for ever ? Such 
 union as is here contemplated between these two 
 great branches of the Church would inevitably be 
 the precursor of other and grander advances to- 
 ward the fulfillment of our Lord's prayer, " that 
 they all may be one." 
 
XXIII. 
 
 THE PEEAOHINa OF ALBERT BAENES. 
 
 The effects of his early preaching resembled 
 those of the later preaching of Chalmers at Kil- 
 many. He was thoroughly possessed with the 
 spirit of the early revivals of New England. His 
 preaching was always expectant of revivals. Yet 
 he worked and lived at the antipodes from every 
 thing like ranting excitement. He relied largely 
 on doctrinal preaching for the instrumental forces 
 of such awakenings. One of the most fruitful 
 revivals that blessed his ministry followed a series 
 of discourses on the doctrine of divine decrees. 
 The sermon for which he was first arraigned for 
 heresy was a doctrinal epitome of the whole sys- 
 tem of grace. It was entitled " The Way of 
 Salvation," and was afterwards expanded into a 
 volume of thirty-six discourses bearing the same 
 title. He preached it for the instruction of a 
 large class of recent converts. Yet it never seemed 
 to occur to his prosecutors that there was any 
 thing incongruous in calling him down from a 
 powerful work of the grace of God to answer to 
 their Book of Discipline. 
 
 205 
 
206 My Portfolio, 
 
 At Philadelphia, whither he removed from his 
 brief pastorate at Morristown, the same scenes 
 were repeated. The whoop of " Heresy ! " was 
 redoubled, and again responded to by the outpour- 
 ing of the Holy Spirit. " The Lord answered Job 
 out of the whirlwind." There was something 
 electric in the current of his early ministrations 
 in Philadelphia. They produced a silent upheaval 
 of the elements in that venerable church. Pro- 
 fessing Christians of long standing gave up their 
 religious hopes, under the searching and sifting 
 ministry of the 3^oung pastor. His three published 
 sermons, entitled "Enemies of the Cross of Christ," 
 I know to have been prei3ared and preached under 
 the conviction that certain well-known members 
 of his church were unregenerate men, for whose 
 souls he must give account. He preached to 
 such hearers in the style of " Edwards on the 
 Affections." 
 
 Some of his eminent parishioners left the church, 
 and sought repose elsewhere from his severe fidel- 
 ity. , One, a lawyer, sought refuge in the Episcopal 
 Church, avowing as his reason, " I must go where 
 I can enjoy my religion : Mr. Barnes makes me feel 
 that I haven't any." In another instance, a mem- 
 ber of the church, after years had elapsed, thus 
 described the effect of Mr. Barnes's early sermons 
 upon him, as I recall it, substantially : '' I was 
 convicted of sin as I had never been before. I 
 saw that my old hope was a false one ; and oh, 
 how I hated the man for so breaking up my peace ! 
 
The Preacldng of Albert Barnes. 207 
 
 If I had had any doubt of my lost state, the 
 enmity of my heart to him was enough to unde- 
 ceive me. I would have dismissed him in a week 
 if I could ; but I dared not say a word, the people 
 loved him so. And so I fumed and raged, carry- 
 ing hell within me, till the grace of God broke me 
 down. I owe my soul to Albert Barnes." This 
 gentleman expressed his belief that there were 
 others in the church whose religious character 
 underwent a similar change. I have some reason 
 to think that Mr. Barnes's views of the evidences 
 of conversion underwent some modification subse- 
 quently ; but he always spoke with great respect 
 of " Edwards on the Affections," and his preach- 
 ing to Christians was often in the heart-searching 
 vein of that book. 
 
 If I were to sum up in brief the resources of 
 his power in the pulpit, I should say that they 
 were centered in good sense, good will, and good 
 courage. He was not a genius in any of the com- 
 mon acceptations of that word. He had neither 
 the brilliancy nor the eccentricity of genius in 
 his preacliing. His pulpit was burdened by no 
 self-contradictions, no flings at creeds, no ranting 
 about character as opposed to orthodoxy, and no 
 fogs which muddle hearers as to what he did 
 believe. He did not love the pyrotechnic school 
 of pulpit eloquence. Both in matter and manner 
 he was one of the calmest men I ever heard. He 
 stood in the pulpit like a statue, rarely moving 
 any thing but his lips and his e^'elids; yet for 
 
208 My Portfolio. 
 
 power to feel his way inward to the heart-strings 
 of hearers, and play upon them at will "to the 
 Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders," I have 
 never heard his equal. His sermons furnished an 
 admirable illustration of his own classification of 
 the theologies : that " there is a theology which 
 can, and a theology which can not, he preaehed^ 
 He tested all systems by the pulpit. Like the 
 greatest theologians of all ages, and the truest, in- 
 spired and uninspired, he was first a preacher, then 
 a theologian. His was therefore emphatically the 
 theology which can he preached, — a sensible, self- 
 consistent, well-poised, and large-hearted theology : 
 biblical in its proportions as well as in its princi- 
 ples, and therefore consonant with the necessary 
 beliefs of men. It had all the elements of a work- 
 ing theology ; and he built it up, and buttressed it 
 and adorned it with an inexhaustible fund of 
 biblical thought. He preached it with inimitable 
 candor and loveliness of spirit, yet with a still 
 courage which feared the face of no mortal man. 
 
 I never knew another man who could pack so 
 much thought into a sermon, and yet popularize 
 it all so thoroughly that all classes of intellect 
 could understand it, and all hearts feel it. I have 
 never heard another preacher who could say such 
 severe things without a word of splenetic censure. 
 He resembled John Foster in his power of " pump- 
 ing," as Foster used to call it, profound thought 
 up to the surface of popular speech ; yet he did 
 not, like Foster, drive his audience out of doors 
 
The Preaching of Albert Barnes. 209 
 
 in the doing of it. He would preach a sacramen- 
 tal sermon to his church in the morning, an ex- 
 temporaneous sermon to his sabbath school in the 
 afternoon, and a sermon to medical students in 
 the evening of the same day ; and all three dis' 
 courses seemed strung on the same thread of phi- 
 losophical and biblical suggestion, yet all equally 
 intelligible and interesting to the hearers. His 
 doctrinal sermons, of which students in theology 
 took notes, as of lectures in systematic divinity, — 
 they were so clear, so logical, so compact, and 
 so exhaustive, — were borrowed and copied by in- 
 valid ladies for the strength and good cheer they 
 gave in the sick-room. His versatility of adapta- 
 tion was something wonderful. To a looker-on it 
 became a study, like the secret marvels of vegeta- 
 tion, which astonishes us by its power to do so 
 many things so well ; and like that, also, was his 
 working in its stillness. 
 
 His courage was of the unconscious sort. It 
 was no exultant foresight of victory, but the art- 
 less boldness of a child. Blustering men were 
 apt to mistake his silence for timidity, because it 
 was his way to let such men have their soliloquy 
 to themselves. His book on American slavery 
 was a thesaurus to the abolitionists for twenty 
 years ; yet their unchristian bravado repelled him 
 from co-operation with them. He often said, " If 
 a good cause could be killed, antislavery would 
 be so, by the intemperance of its friends." But 
 he preached the substance of his book to his peo- 
 
210 My Portfolio. 
 
 pie at a time when millions of property sat along 
 the aisles of his church, coined out of slave-labor 
 on cotton and rice plantations. He did it with 
 the air of one who did not for a moment conceive 
 it possible to do any thing else. He was a prophet 
 of the Lord, sent to give that message, and he gave 
 it. That was the revealed duty of the hour, and 
 he did it. His more timid friends trembled for 
 the result, but not he ; and I doubt whether any- 
 body ever ventured to suggest the fear to him. 
 Nobody dared to organize an opposition to him on 
 that ground ; yet I often heard the wish expressed 
 that he would keep his antislavery to his books, 
 and not speak it in the pulpit. He was not the 
 man to hoodwink his conscience in that way. In 
 those days I never heard a sermon from him on 
 the doctrine of the atonement, which he did not 
 mould into a hot shot against slavery. 
 
 I shall never forget one occasion on which he 
 thus turned the battery of doctrinal theology 
 against what he did not scruple to denounce as 
 " the accursed system," on which " Heaven could 
 never smile." Be it remembered that his hearers 
 were soundly orthodox believers in the West- 
 minster Confession, and specially in the central 
 truth of the atonement ; yet among them were old 
 slaveholders, as hearty believers in the necessity 
 of " the evil " by which their property had been 
 amassed, and the houses of their children had been 
 built, and beautified with all that money could 
 purchase, and culture could desire. It was at a 
 
The Preaching of Albert Barnes. 211 
 
 time — in those days Philadelphia scarcely ever 
 knew any different time — when the fight waxed 
 hot between the friends and the foes of slavehold- 
 ing. The pulpits were not few in which silence 
 reigned on the whole subject. It is now believed 
 that the "irrepressible conflict" had more to do 
 than any thing else with the rupture of the Pres- 
 byterian Church. Some preachers of high repute 
 had words of censure for the abolitionists only. 
 Mobs were rampant against free speech and " free 
 niggers " alike. William Lloyd Garrison's life was 
 not safe in Pennsylvania Hall. The firemen were 
 forbidden to play upon that hall when it was in 
 flames. The provost of the university apologized 
 blandly for the murderers of Lovejoy at Alton. 
 Probably no other Northern city contained so 
 many emigrant slaveholders from the South, and 
 so many runaway slaves ; and no other was, there- 
 fore, so difficult a spot in which to stand up and 
 speak for the slave to a " respectable audience." 
 But it was precisely the spot, and those were, 
 above all others, the surroundings, in which Mr. 
 Barnes could do no otherwise than put to hazard 
 his reputation and his influence in words of truth 
 and soberness. His theme on the occasion re- 
 ferred to was, " The love of God in the gift of 
 a Saviour." 
 
 He first showed that salvation originated in 
 the love of God ; then, that it was the grandest 
 expression of love of which a finite mind could 
 conceive ; and, finally, that it was planned and 
 
212 My Portfolio. 
 
 executed for the world. In the first two-thirds 
 of the discourse, he interwove argument and 
 illustration, and emotive appeal, and most tender 
 soliloquy, till the whole house was hushed, and 
 many eyes were swimming at the thought of the 
 love of an Infinite Heart for a lost soul. The 
 inherited faith, and the matured convictions, and 
 the personal experiences, of his hearers, were all 
 committed to swell the current of sympathy with 
 the preacher, which evidently held the assembly 
 fast. Every eye was fixed upon him ; every breath 
 was mute ; the very children looked up, awed by 
 the presence of an unseen power, as his melliflu- 
 ous voice rolled out like the vibrations of a bell 
 his sonorous and welling periods. Then, when 
 the still excitement, wliich nothing else produces 
 like the preaching of the gospel, seemed to be 
 at its height, — as if human feeling could rise no 
 higher, and could bear no more, — he lifted up 
 his eyes, and glancing around till every corner of 
 the house seemed as if penetrated by the light of 
 God's countenance, and summoned to hear God's 
 words, with the single sharp perpendicular blow 
 of the right hand (one of the only two ges- 
 tures he ever used) he said, " And I love to feel, 
 and will feel — it makes me love the gospel 
 more, and the Saviour more — that for the black 
 man of Africa he died, whether sunk in debase- 
 ment on his native shore ... or whether borne 
 a captive across the ocean, and bound down by 
 ignorance and toil in Christian lands. He is a 
 
The Preaching of Albert Barnes. 213 
 
 man, an immortal man, a redeemed man, and not 
 a chattel or a thing. Christ died not for chattels 
 and for things : he died for souls, for men, for im- 
 mortal minds, for those who may yet burst every 
 shackle and every bond, and range the world of 
 glory as immortal freemen. . . . He who makes 
 an arrangement by which any class of men is ex- 
 cluded from the gospel invades the prerogative of 
 God, prohibits what he commands, and exposes 
 himself to the wrath of the Almighty. Any sys- 
 tem of things on earth which prevents the fair 
 promulgation of the gospel is a violation of the 
 arrangements of Heaven, and will sooner or later 
 meet the curse of the Most High." 
 
 The effect was of a singular sort, such as I have 
 never witnessed before or since in a magnetized 
 assembly. It was not startling. There was no 
 outcry, no springing to the feet, no speaking, and 
 responses of admiring eyes. But the stillness sud- 
 denly deepened like the silence of the elements 
 which precedes an earthquake ; while a weight 
 like that of an Atlantic tidal wave seemed to roll 
 in, as if ingulfing every man, woman, and child 
 under the dread anathema. For a moment we 
 all seemed to lie there, buried " deeper than ever 
 plummet sounded." Then came a positive physi- 
 cal relief to eyes and ears and lungs and heart, 
 as if we rose again into our native air, when the 
 preacher fell back into his beautiful colloquial 
 style and tones, like the gentle pattering of the 
 farewell shower when the storm is over. I have 
 
214 My Portfolio, 
 
 heard many sermons on the atonement since that 
 day, and many diatribes against oppression, but 
 never any thing like that. That has always been 
 my heau ideal of doctrinal preaching. Many times 
 during the war of the rebellion that prophet's 
 voice sounded again in my ears : " Sooner or 
 later, the curse of the Most High ! Sooner or later, 
 the curse of the Most High ! " 
 
 It was difficult for an appreciative listener to 
 Mr. Barnes to be sensible, at the time, of any fault 
 in his preaching, such was his winning magnetism 
 over a hearer, and so nearly faultless seemed the 
 personal character of the man. The power of per- 
 son was supreme among the factors of his influ- 
 ence in the pulpit. I doubt whether any idolized 
 pastor was ever more hallowed than he in the 
 judgment of his parishioners, after his dominion 
 among them had had time to consolidate itself. 
 " I have known him now for twelve years," said 
 one of his elders, " and I never detected in him 
 a sin or a folly." Such was the general feeling 
 at the time of which I write ; and this reverent 
 affection for the man reduplicated the power of 
 his pulpit. 
 
 But there were two things, which, it seems to 
 me, were evils in their bearing upon his preaching. 
 One was his own infidel experience in his early 
 manhood. He made no secret of this. He often 
 spoke of it with modest sadness, deprecating its 
 effect upon his Christian character ; and it was a 
 favorite effort with him to make his own life in 
 
The Preaching of Albert Barnes. 215 
 
 that respect a warning to other young men. He 
 used to say, " After twenty years of, as I hope, 
 Christian life, my mind is not yet clear of infidel 
 habits of thinking and feeling." No one else 
 would have suspected this, if he had not disclosed 
 it ; but the effect of that passage in his life which 
 was perceptible to others, though not to him, was 
 that it inclined him to make excessive conces- 
 sions to infidelity, and to preach disproportion- 
 ately upon subjects bearing upon the phases of 
 the infidel argument. His candor to opponents 
 sometimes made more impression than his argu- 
 ment against them. In his eagerness to concede 
 every thing that could be fairly claimed, he some- 
 times granted more than could be proved, and 
 the after-process of building up his faith did not 
 always undo the evil. At times, also, the pro- 
 portions of his preaching were more largely in 
 the line of Christian polemics than the experience 
 of his hearers needed. He built upward less 
 than he laid the foundations for. 
 
 The other thing which sometimes affected his 
 preaching unfortunately was a peculiarity of his 
 temperament, which I have not seen noticed in 
 any of the published comments upon his life and 
 works. It was a morbid sensitiveness to suffering. 
 The spectacle of this in others keenly wounded 
 and depressed him ; and the thought of it, as per- 
 vading so largely this world and another in God's 
 universe, often appalled him. Hence his remark- 
 able " Confessions," in his sermon entitled " God 
 
216 My Portfolio. 
 
 worthy of Confidence," which have made Univer- 
 salists and infidels exultant over his theology. " I 
 confess," he says, " when I look upon a world 
 of sinners and of sufferers, upon death-beds and 
 graveyards, upon the world of woe filled with 
 hosts to suffer for ever . . . and when I feel that 
 God only can save them, and yet that he does 
 not do it, I am struck dumb. It is all dark, 
 dark, dark, to my soul, and I can not disguise it. 
 In the distress and anguish of my own spirit I 
 confess that I see no light whatever. I have 
 never seen a particle of light thrown on these 
 subjects that has given a moment's ease to my 
 tortured mind." 
 
 These are appalling words from a Christian 
 pulpit. One can not wonder that infidelity takes 
 advantage of them to the discredit of the faith 
 which nurtured them. But to understand them 
 we must give large room to the deep and gentle 
 sensibilities of the preacher. Suffering was a more 
 profound and portentous reality to his soul than 
 to the average of men. The world of despair was 
 a ghastly anomaly in God's universe. He preached 
 it without flinching ; but those sermons were sub- 
 dued and plaintive in their tone, — the wail of an 
 agonized spirit. He had none of the hardness of 
 an athlete in his make, but the gentleness of a 
 woman, rather, whom " the winds of heaven " had 
 never been permitted to " visit roughly." When 
 his life-long friend, Matthias Baldwin, lay upon his 
 death-bed, Mr. Barnes threw his arms around his 
 
The Preaching of Albert Barnes, 217 
 
 n-eck, and wept aloud. His loving nature recoiled 
 from a Draconian theory of retribution. He was 
 once exhausted almost to fainting by the preach- 
 ing of a sermon upon future punishment. I never 
 saw him shed a tear ; but I have no doubt that 
 he did weep, often and bitterly, over this world's 
 anguish and the lost world's horrors. 
 
 This sensitiveness to suffering disclosed itself 
 in many minor ways. He could take no pleasure 
 in the recreations of sportsmen. He shrunk from 
 angling, and doubted the moral rectitude of it as 
 an amusement. He felt at times a mortal aver- 
 sion to the sea : to him it was an immense burial- 
 place. He thought of it as the maelstrom of 
 wrecked and burning ships, with their helpless 
 freight of men and women and children and babes. 
 When his physician advised a voyage for his sal- 
 vation from threatened blindness, he encountered 
 the perils of the Atlantic with extreme reluc- 
 tance. Before embarking, he discussed with his 
 friends the point of casuistry, — whether a man 
 might rightly seek death by drowning to escape 
 death by fire. It is a token of the genial rela- 
 tions existing between him and his friend Dr. 
 Brainerd, that the latter tried to amuse his de- 
 jected spirits by telling him that he need not fear 
 either ; for " a man who was born to be hanged 
 would never be drowned." 
 
 While this peculiarity of his temperament did 
 not amount to any thing unmanly in the common 
 vocations of life, I think it did sometimes affect 
 
218 My Portfolio. 
 
 the fiber of his faith, and the tone of his preach- 
 ing, on divine retribution. He could not preach 
 it exultingly. The argument from reason in de- 
 fense of it made no impression on him whatever. 
 He accepted it solely as a revelation from God. 
 It was to him a profound and insoluble mystery, 
 into the philosophy of which he had no heart to 
 inquire. 
 
 These defects, however, if they must be called 
 such, were but spots on the sun. As a whole, 
 his pulpit was a burning and shining light to the 
 Church of God. But few such illumine her his- 
 tory. For myself, I esteem it a privilege to place 
 on record my own grateful sense of obligation to 
 him, such as I owe to no other man but one. 
 
XXIY. 
 
 A VACATION WITH DE. BUSHNELL. 
 
 Some years ago it was my privilege to spend 
 the major part of a summer vacation with this 
 rare man in the Green Mountains. Some impres- 
 sions which I received of his mental structure, 
 and of his theology, and of his religious charac- 
 ter, deserve recording. 
 
 He was visibly worn out by disease. His coun- 
 tenance bore the look of distant yet fast-coming 
 dissolution, which but one malady gives to the 
 human eye. Yet he was as full of courage, as full 
 of life and of his life's work, as he could have 
 been when thirty years yoimger. Few men have 
 ever impressed me as being so electric with vital- 
 ity at all points as he was. He was an enthusiast 
 in his love of rural sights and sounds and sports, 
 in little things as brimful as in great things. He 
 seemed the heau ideal of a live man. The su- 
 premacy of mind over body was something won- 
 derful. One could not but feel a new assurance 
 of the soul's immortality in witnessing the easy 
 and unconscious power with which his spirit 
 swayed the physical frame which was secretly 
 
 219 
 
220 My Portfolio. 
 
 enticing him down to the grave. For seventeen 
 3'ears he had kept death at bay : and, at the time 
 I speak of, medical diagnosis revealed that but 
 one lung supported his remnant of life ; yet that 
 semi-form of life seemed equal to the prime of 
 many a hale man. The abandon of his recrea- 
 tions in the bowling-alley, where he was a boy 
 again, and his theological talks of a Sunday even- 
 ing, told the same story. " Dying, and behold we 
 live," recurred once and again in listening to 
 the conversations in which he was sure to be the 
 center and the seer. 
 
 I have never heard from any other man, in the 
 same length of time, so much of original remark. 
 There is but little original thought in this world, 
 at the best. The most learned of us have often 
 the least of it. At forty-five men are apt to find 
 this world, as the author of Ecclesiastes did, very 
 stale. " The thing which hath been, it is that 
 which shall be." Only now and then a thinker 
 comes along, like Coleridge or Isaac Taylor, so 
 full of originality that he creates an atmosphere 
 laden with the spices of other worlds around him ; 
 and for that the wise men of the East call him 
 " eccentric." They bring incense to him from afar, 
 nevertheless. Prophets and apostles are always 
 eccentric men. Doubtless we shall find Gabriel an 
 eccentric spirit, if we ever get within sight and 
 hearing of him. Somebody must do the work of 
 the wise men ; but for spurring us out of our jog- 
 trot, and for revealing our wings to our own con- 
 
A Vacation with Dr. BushnelL 221 
 
 sciousness, and for teaching us our first flights, 
 give us more of the eccentric men. Rev. Dr. 
 Kirk once told me that the most stimulating 
 books to him were almost all heresy. 
 
 One of the eccentric but winged spirits was Dr. 
 BushnelL It was not his way to talk for the sake 
 of colloquial courtesy. He never made conver- 
 sation. He would not assent to your say out of 
 conventional politeness. From no courtly presence 
 on earth could he ever have backed out with meek 
 obeisance. Nothing was more natural to him than 
 to write letters of advice to popes. His common 
 talks were varied by similar quaint ways. If you 
 said a silly thing or a dull one, you must carry it : 
 he would not help you out of it. If he had him- 
 self nothing worth saying to utter, he kept silent. 
 He could make silence mean more than the speech 
 of other men. Awkward pauses would sometimes 
 happen. But, when he spoke, all ears were alert 
 with the assurance that they should hear some- 
 thing which they would not willingly lose. The 
 cloud in the western sky, the shadow on Bread 
 Loaf Mountain, the song of the oriole in the 
 apple-tree, the trout in the brook, the clover in 
 the fields, the habits of the mountain-ash, were 
 all hints to his mind of something different from 
 their suggestions to other observers. Language, 
 too, in his talk, as in his books, he used often not 
 as other men. 
 
 One could not long discourse with him, even on 
 the common things and in the undress of life, 
 
222 My Portfolio. 
 
 without discovering the secret of his solitude in 
 the theological world. That solitude was not in 
 him, as it is in some men, an affectation of inde- 
 pendence : it was in the original make of the man. 
 He was by nature a solitaire in his thinking. Noth- 
 ing struck him as it did the average of men. He 
 was not one of the average. He took in all things, 
 and reflected back all things, at angles of his own. 
 He never could have been a partisan. With many 
 of the tastes of leadership, he could never have led 
 a party, or founded a school : still less could he 
 have been a follower of other leaders. It was not 
 in him to herd with his kind. He recalled to one's 
 thoughts Wordsworth's apostrophe to Milton ; — 
 
 " Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." 
 
 At the time I mention, he was preparing for the 
 press the last edition of his work on the " Atone- 
 ment." Several times he spoke of it as the only 
 thing for which he desired to live. He brought 
 the unfinished sheets from his sick-room to the 
 mountains, hoping to gain " force enough " to 
 "round out" his views by his latest "insight." 
 Other subjects of theological controversy he would 
 have been glad to undertake, for on them all he 
 believed that he had conceptions which no other 
 man had ; but he would say of them, " There isn't 
 force enough left in me to express myself upon 
 them." 
 
 It was obvious that his own ideal of his life's 
 work was that of discovery. If he had nothing to 
 
A Vacation with Dr. BushnelL 223 
 
 say to the world which was fresh to his own mind, 
 he had nothing worth his saying or the world's 
 hearing. Some men spend the closing years of 
 their lives in gathering up and labelling, and 
 storing in the world's libraries, the fruit of labors 
 long past, and which to themselves have become 
 old. Dr. Bushnell seemed not to regard exhumed 
 accumulations of literature as worth reviving. A 
 thought once buried did not deserve resuscitation. 
 That which he should say to his fellow-men should 
 be as new to himself as to them. When he had 
 exhausted his power of discovery, — his " insight," 
 as he was fond of calling it, — he had lost some of 
 the prime qualities of power in communication. 
 
 There is some truth in this. The fresh mind is 
 the magnetic mind. " The immortals are always 
 young." The new truth is the fire and the ham- 
 mer. The soul which is aflame with latest discov- 
 ery is the light which the world waits for. To the 
 world of the future all other powers knock for 
 admission in vain, if they do not come making 
 obeisance to this one. Even great thinkers have 
 sometimes outlived their life's work. Their book 
 has come too late for a docile reading. 
 
 The mercurial thinker of Hartford held and 
 acted upon some such theory. He was a looker 
 on and up to the firmament of truth, and what- 
 soever he saw there he proclaimed to the waiting 
 multitudes below, or to the few who trusted his 
 vision. When the vision ended, he was silent. Of 
 errors in his published opinions he spoke as freely 
 
224 3Iy Portfolio, 
 
 as if they had never been his. " If I see men as 
 trees walking, I do not know that it is my fault." 
 Not till the superlative vision was vouchsafed to 
 him was it his mission to tell that. The vital 
 thing was the latest discovery. "The prophet 
 that hath a dream let him tell a dream." He was 
 em^Dhatically a seer, not a reasoner. The last and 
 least thing that concerned him was the consis- 
 tency of his present with his past opinions, or of 
 either with the revelation of to-morrow. 
 
 He cherished a profound disrespect for over- 
 grown libraries. He would have assented to the 
 judgment of those who have thought that the burn- 
 ing of the Alexandrian Library was probably no 
 loss to the world, and that perhaps a large part of 
 the libraries of the British Museum and of Paris 
 could not be worth their storage. Psychologi- 
 cally, his mind was such as the Grecian mythol- 
 ogy represented in the sibyls, and such as a purer 
 revelation might naturally elect as its prophet. 
 If he had been a pupil of Socrates, he would have 
 had absolute faith in the " Demon." In this pro- 
 phetic and intuitive working of his mind, though 
 in other respects no two men could be more 
 unlike, he reminded me strongly of Professor 
 Stuart. 
 
 " What does Dr. Bushnell mean? " was the title 
 of one of the earliest and best criticisms of his 
 theology, by Dr. Goodrich of New Haven. The 
 inquiry, in substance, has been the first on the lips 
 of his critics ever since. It was central in my very 
 
A Vacation with Dr. Buslinell. 225 
 
 few theological talks with him. He was one of 
 the men, like Hegel, whose misfortune and whose 
 fault it is never to be understood to their liking. 
 
 He honestly believed, that, in his divergence 
 from the popular theology upon the philosophy of 
 the atonement, he retained all that is essential to a 
 saving faith. Not only this, but he believed that 
 he retained more of the truth than his critics did. 
 His divergence was no divergence, but only a deep- 
 ening of the old faith. It was a delving into a 
 vein of underlying gold. More even than this : 
 he thought he was nearer to the fountain-head 
 of the very doctrine which his critics were trying 
 to conserve than they were themselves. In their 
 imagined conflict with himself, he thought, that, to 
 a large extent, they battled with men of straw of 
 their own creating. What they meant by " vica- 
 rious sacrifice " he meant, and a great deal more : 
 so much more, that his meaning outgrew and wore 
 out the ancient phrase. He could afford, there- 
 fore, to speak very genially of his opponents. 
 They were, in his view, unconscious co-workers 
 with him, so far as they knew. The difference 
 between them and him was only that he knew 
 much more. His drill had penetrated a deeper 
 vein of purer treasure. He had "entered into 
 the springs of the sea." He had discovered " the 
 way where light dwelleth." They preached Christ, 
 but he more profoundly. " What then ? Not- 
 withstanding, every way, Christ is preached, and 
 I rejoice." Such was his apostolic mood. 
 
226 My Portfolio. 
 
 He spoke of the first edition of " The Vicarious 
 Sacrifice " as erroneous, in the sense of being but 
 a partial vision, yet true enough so far as it went. 
 Of the revision of it, on which he was then en- 
 gaged, he spoke as likely to be regarded by his 
 readers as a return towards the current evangeli- 
 cal faith, so far, at least, as it should be understood 
 by them. It was amusing to see the simplicity 
 with which he distinguished between his real faith 
 and that eidolon of it which words could convey to 
 readers. Language was to him, at the best, but a 
 wretched make-shift for the conveyance of thought. 
 He probably would have agreed with those who 
 conjecture that perhaps, in heaven, pure music 
 will be a medium of expressing thought, superior 
 to the most perfect of human dialects. 
 
 On the whole, he made upon me the impression 
 of a mind still in movement on the central theme of 
 the Christian faith ; not doubtful, so far as he had 
 discovered, yet not resting in ultimate convictions. 
 More than once, his explanations and qualifications, 
 and quaint uses of language, suggested to me the 
 conjecture, that, if he could have years more of 
 study and of disciplinary experience, he might 
 come around, through paths and by-paths of his 
 own, to faith in the very dogmas which he was 
 then combating. It is not always the truth which 
 an inquirer disbelieves, but the angles and refrac- 
 tions through which minds differently constituted 
 have come at the truth. Give him time, and do 
 not badger him with hard names, and he will often 
 
A Vacation with Dr. Bushnell. 227 
 
 discover truth through lenses and prisms of his 
 own making. 
 
 At any rate, Dr. Bushnell claimed to be a be- 
 liever, if an eccentric one, in the faith of the 
 fathers. He held himself to be substantially at 
 one with the great body of the Church in all that 
 they really believed of the "faith in Christ." Yet 
 whether lie was so or not concerned him little. 
 Truth lay between him and God, not between 
 him and the Church. He v.^as simply one of God's 
 seers. He was commissioned to paint the vision 
 precisely as he saw it in the mount. The recep- 
 tion of it by other minds was their affair, not his. 
 Such, as nearly as I could gather it from our few 
 and fragmentary conversations, was his theory of 
 the true work of a theologian, rather of his work 
 as a theologian ; for he was very gentle in his 
 criticisms of the work of other men. He had his 
 own telescope, and they had theirs : that the in- 
 struments differed was no evidence that both might 
 not be true : the field of vision was very broad. I 
 am confident that he has gone from us with no 
 such idea of his own dissent from the faith of his 
 brethren as they have. 
 
 And the sense of that dissent, I must confess, 
 grew dim in my own mind when I came near to 
 the inner spirit of the man. That was beautifully 
 and profoundly Christlike, if that of uninspired 
 man ever was. Be the forms of his belief what 
 they may have been, he was eminently a man of 
 God. Christ was a reality to him. Christ lived 
 
228 My Portfolio. 
 
 in liim to a degree realized only in the life of 
 devout believers. I had heard him criticised as 
 brusk in manner, even rude in his controversial 
 dissents. Scarcely a shade of that kind was per- 
 ceptible in him at that time. The gentleness of 
 womanhood breathed in his few and cautious 
 expressions of Christian feeling. Of the sure 
 coming of death he spoke reservedly, but \vith 
 unqualified trust. The charity of a large fraternal 
 heart characterized his judgments of men. His 
 whole bearing was that of one whom time and 
 suffering had advanced far on towards the closing 
 stages of earthly discipline. 
 
 Now and then a glimpse appeared of rougher 
 speech ; as when, objecting to the use of the Lord's 
 Prayer in public worship, he condensed the whole 
 argument against it by saying rather gruffly to an 
 Episcopal friend, "I don't want to say prayers, I 
 want to pray''' But his general bearing was that 
 of one whom life had chastened to the utmost, and 
 who was then walking thoughtfully far down the 
 valle}^ of gentle shadows. We discussed some of 
 his clerical critics, who have handled his opinions 
 without lenity, and I do not recall from him a 
 single caustic judgment of one of them. 
 
 Differing from him essentially, as I supposed, in 
 his theory of the atonement, I still could not but 
 see, that, in its effects upon his personal character, 
 that theory had been to him apparently just what 
 the faith of other believers in Christ is to them. 
 It was indeed no theory : it was a faith and a life. 
 
A Vacation ivith Dr. BushnelL 229 
 
 Few men have I known to whom Christ as a Sav- 
 iour seemed to be so profound a reality as to him. 
 Christ had been obviously the center of his think- 
 ing and believing for twoscore years. The results 
 had come to him in answer to the inquiries of a 
 struggling spirit. In no other answer could he 
 find rest ; but in that he did rest with a trust as 
 deep and calm as I have ever heard from the lips 
 of a believer. 
 
 His theory of the impotence of language was as 
 vividly illustrated in his expression of personal 
 faith in Christ as in that of any mystery of theol- 
 ogy. Some of his published utterances to that 
 effect take on a new significance to one whose 
 imagination can reproduce the melting eye and the 
 subdued pathos of love with which he repeated 
 them in the stillness of the evening and among 
 the shadows of the mountain. To the hope 
 which I once expressed, that, in his revision of 
 his volume, he would hold fast to the faith in a 
 divine sacrifice for sin, he replied with inimitable 
 emphasis, " I do hold it fast." 
 
 What shall we say of such men in our theo- 
 logical classifications? Where shall we locate 
 them in the schools ? It will never do to set them 
 aside as heretics, and leave them there. In char- 
 acter they are better than their infirm and eccen- 
 tric beliefs are. Let us find a place for them near 
 to our hearts, so far as they are near to Christ. 
 
XXY. 
 
 PEAYER VIEWED IN THE LIGHT OP THE OHEIS- 
 TIAN CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Norman McLeod records in his 
 journal this sentiment, " The poorest man who is 
 great in prayer is, perhaps, a greater man in 
 affecting the destmies of the world than the Em- 
 peror of Russia." This to thoughtful Christians 
 is a truth familiar on the verge of commonjDlace. 
 But it falls on the ears of an incredulous world. 
 Men ask what evidence we have to support such 
 astounding pretensions. We draw, in part, upon 
 the conscious experience of believers for an an- 
 swer. 
 
 1. The consciousness of praying men bears wit- 
 ness that the evidence of the jpoioer of prayer is all 
 that the case admits of. The world laughed at a 
 theologian, who, a few years ago, essayed to prove 
 the doctrine of the Trinity by the formulae of 
 trigonometry, and the freedom of the will by the 
 oscillations of a pendulum. 
 
 The principle here involved governs the evi- 
 dence of the reality of prayer. It is not mathe- 
 matically demonstrable. Triangles can not prove 
 
 230 
 
Christian Experience in Prayer. 231 
 
 it. The civil engineer can not estimate it. The 
 strength of it can not be tested as you would test 
 the strength of a suspension-bridge. The nature 
 of the things concerned rules out all that kind of 
 evidence. The Christian consciousness finds with- 
 in itself spiritual facts witnessing to spiritual 
 power. It trusts those facts. Why not? Why 
 is not your soul's vision of truth as credible as 
 the sight of your eyeball? Why must I accept 
 the testimony of my optic nerve, with which I 
 have often seen double, and reject my inner con- 
 sciousness of things of which I can take cogni- 
 zance in no other way ? Like witnesseth to like ; 
 matter to matter ; spirit to spirit. Tliis is the law 
 both of reason and of faith. God is not in the 
 wind, nor in the tempest, nor in the fire, but in 
 the still small voice. 
 
 2. The Christian consciousness confirms the fact, 
 which all prayer assumes, of direct communion be- 
 tween the human mind and the mind of God. Vary- 
 ing in degree of vividness, this witness of spirit to 
 spirit is, perhaps, the most uniform experience of 
 real prayer. The believer is conscious of exercises 
 which he can not attribute to any other cause than 
 the real and personal agency of God. 
 
 Tlioughts are often suggested which the believer 
 feels that he did not originate. Preachers have 
 told us of such mental illumination in prayer, by 
 which obscure texts of Scripture have been lighted 
 up, difficult plans of sermons have been opened to 
 them with an affluence of material, and a sudden- 
 
232 My Portfolio, 
 
 ness of development which impress them irresis- 
 tibly with the conviction, " This is the work of 
 God ; this is the teaching of the Holy Ghost ; this 
 is the fulfillment of the promise, ' It shall be given 
 you what ye shall say.' " The Rev. Dr. Finney 
 more than once cast aside the elaborated sermon 
 which he had brought to the pulpit, to make room 
 for another, on a new text and a different theme, 
 which seemed to be revealed to him in the preced- 
 ing prayer. 
 
 JEmotions often fill the praying soul which we 
 can not otherwise as rationally account for as by 
 the simple fact that the Infinite One is present, 
 drawing the suppliant to communion with himself. 
 " The Lord is in this place," said the awestruck 
 patriarch. That feeling in a believer's soul often 
 has the vividness of vision. A voice proclaiming 
 the fact from the heavens would not be more 
 convincing. 
 
 Revolutions of feeling often occur in prayer, of 
 which the most probable explanation is, that they 
 are the work of God. Hope takes the place of 
 despondency. Love displaces fear. Rest follows 
 self-conflict. Trust expels forebodings. Assur- 
 ance of pardon lifts off suddenly the leaden weight 
 of guilt. Remorse transformed to penitent faith 
 is one of the most revolutionary changes of which 
 the human spirit is susceptible. Poetry and ro- 
 mance discover nothing else like it in the history 
 of human passions. Yet this is one of the most 
 common experiences of believing prayer. 
 
Christian Experience in Prayer. 233 
 
 Conversion is often one of the facts of prayer. 
 A sinner kneels, oppressed by guilt, in fear of hell, 
 self-degraded beyond the reach of language to por- 
 tray, crushed by the accumulated wrath of God, 
 raging, it may be, with impotent resistance to 
 Almighty Will. Then a change comes over the 
 suffering and guilty spirit. Penitence rises; tears 
 flow ; hope dawns ; trust springs ; love, joy, peace, 
 well up from secret depths never before unsealed. 
 Something has stilled the storm. Some power has 
 said to the angry waters, '-'- Peace," and there is a 
 great calm. The man seems to himself to have 
 been a helpless recipient in the change. The 
 consciousness of God in it so overwhelms all 
 consciousness of self, that the soul thinks of and 
 feels none else than God. 
 
 Poiver of speech is often marvelously quickened 
 in prayer. Emotions which the soul has strug- 
 gled with long and painfully find sudden outlet in 
 language of which the praying one never con- 
 ceived before. Some men can habitually speak in 
 prayer as nowhere else. An unlettered Christian 
 was once summoned into court in a trial in which 
 he had much at stake. He was called upon to tell 
 his own story. He was flustered, he stammered, 
 he repeated and contradicted himself, and was in 
 danger of losing his case for want of the power of 
 utterance. He knew himself, and knew that there 
 was one act in which he could talk. He begged 
 of the judge liberty to pray. It was granted. 
 He knelt down, and with flowing tears poured out 
 
234 My Portfolio, 
 
 his case before the Lord in language clear, cohe- 
 rent, fluent, and convincing to the jury. Be this 
 story literally true or not, it illustrates a fact 
 well known to believers in the reality of prayer. 
 A man is known to me, who in common life 
 is an incorrigible stammerer : he can not say a 
 word without making it three. He is the butt of 
 mimics. But in prayer his utterance is Cicero- 
 nian. Few men can mimic him in that. One 
 prayer offered by the late Professor Stuart more 
 than forty years ago is still remembered, and 
 fragments of it rehearsed, as a most thrilling 
 approach to apostolic inspiration. 
 
 " The Spirit helpeth our infirmities." How 
 often does the promise come home to the strug- 
 gling suppliant, as a fact revealed ! Apostles had 
 no monopoly of it. Leaders in public worship to 
 whom the service is a cross and a terror, do you 
 know nothing of this unsealing of the dumb lips, 
 this inspiration of the silent tongue ? Has it not 
 sometimes been to you like a burst of sunlight 
 on a wintry sea ? Has not the outbreak of tri- 
 umphant song, in the hymn that followed, been 
 your own irrepressible offering of thanksgiving? 
 Youthful preachers know, or will know, what I 
 mean. 
 
 But can not these phenomena result from the 
 unaided working of the human mind ? Oh, yes ! 
 they ca7i. Sometimes, perhaps, they do. We can 
 afford large concessions. But the point to which 
 the Christian consciousness bears witness is, that 
 
Christian Uxperience in Prater. 235 
 
 commonly they are more naturally explained by 
 the li3^pothesis of the real presence and the direct 
 agency of God. 
 
 3. The Christian experience testifies also to the 
 fact that prayer is adequate to the achievement of 
 results in real life which are intrinsically marvel- 
 ous and improbable. The effects which follow 
 prayer seem often intrinsically impossible. They 
 are not to be accounted for, except on the suppo- 
 sition that prayer has set in motion occult forces 
 of immeasurable reach. 
 
 Christians very well understand that phenome- 
 non of mystery to statesmen, — that war is singu- 
 larly uncertain in its issues. Those most learned 
 in military science are most cautious in predicting 
 the effects of military causes. The issues of battles 
 are often strange and inscrutable. The battle is 
 not to the strong. The race is not to the swift. 
 It is not the way of fate to favor the strongest 
 battalions. So largely does this mystery compli- 
 cate the conflicts of arms, that men make great 
 account of what they call the fortunes of war. 
 Gen. Von Moltke names as one of the four great 
 essentials of a successful general "good luck." 
 Such is the world's way of recognizing the fact, 
 that there are unknown and undiscoverable pow- 
 ers in the universe which often defeat the cam- 
 paigns of great captains. Modern armies suffer 
 jmnics^ of which the most natural explanation is 
 the descent of invisible auxiliaries like those 
 whi(3h scattered the army of Sennacherib in a 
 night. 
 
236 My Portfolio, 
 
 Such facts fall in with Christian experience in 
 prayer. The Christian consciousness understands 
 and confirms them. They are of a piece with the 
 individual Christian life. That is full of things 
 similar on a smaller scale, — things which prayer 
 seems to have called down from that secret world 
 of spiritual causes. We believe it because we 
 can not help it. We know it to be just like God. 
 The sick are often restored to health in opposition 
 to the probable course of disease. The peril of 
 shipwreck is often averted against the probable 
 triumph of the storm. Professional successes are 
 often given in excess of all reasonable hopes. 
 Deliverance is often thrust in by an unseen Hand 
 from sudden and unlooked-for calamities. Ways 
 of usefulness are often opened, as if by invisible 
 allies, beyond even a young man's sanguine 
 expectations. These things happen in apparent 
 answer to persistent and believing prayer. No 
 other conceivable cause of them is adequate to 
 explain them. Christians would not be sensible 
 men if they should refuse to recognize this divine 
 intervention in response to prayer, as one of the 
 laws of real life. Their experience proceeds just 
 as z/the promise were a real one: "He shall give 
 his angels charge over thee to keep thee." 
 
 The speed of such responses to prayer is often 
 a fact which it is impossible to ignore. They 
 surprise us in the very act of prayer. Many a 
 believer might write his own experience, almost 
 in the very words of Daniel : " While I was yet 
 
Christian Experience in Prayer. 237 
 
 speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, being caused 
 to fly swiftly^ touched me." 
 
 The point which, again. Christian experience 
 would underscore, is, that the evidence of these 
 things is all that the case admits of. It appeals 
 to faith, as we should suppose it would do. The 
 want of uniformity in such experiences is no 
 greater, the failures of prayer are no more, 
 than in the nature of the things and agencies 
 involved we should anticipate. In number, in 
 degree, in kind, the evidences are all that could 
 be reasonably looked for, — no more, no less, no 
 other. 
 
 4. If my space would permit, the fact would 
 demand more extended notice, that the Christian 
 consciousness of prayer and its results leaves the 
 impression on devout minds that prayer has com- 
 mand of an immense reserve of yet undeveloped 
 resources. Thus far it has but peered over the 
 border of the undiscovered country. The Chris- 
 tian Church has but looked at it from the summit 
 of Pisgah. Prayer suggests the existence of in- 
 numerable hosts of agencies of unknown power. 
 Possibilities of achievement in the future seem 
 limitless. Mountains leaping into the sea are 
 none too strong an emblem of the realities of 
 coming ages. This unseen, noiseless power seems 
 not half developed, because not half used. Invis- 
 ible battalions seem hovering in the air, waiting 
 to do battle at its bidding. Occult agencies of 
 Nature seem but its servitors. The chief thing 
 
238 My Portfolio. 
 
 which makes the moral regeneration of this world 
 appear possible is the reality of this power with 
 God, to which he has revealed no end in time, 
 and no limit in the reach of its achievement. 
 
XXYI. 
 
 INTEEOESSOEY PEAYEE. 
 
 Is it a living power in Christian experience ? 
 The following fragment of religious history gives 
 answer. 
 
 A lady residing not a thousand miles from Rich- 
 mond, Va., has been for many years an invalid. 
 She is a woman of rare character, possessing more 
 than the usual culture of educated minds, keen in 
 her judgment, self-contained in her impulses, and 
 very far from being, either by nature or training, 
 a fanatic. 
 
 Being debarred by the state of her health from 
 some of the common forms of Christian service, 
 she has adopted the habit of silent intercessioii as 
 a means of usefulness. With a woman's faith in 
 God as the hearer of prayer, she has been wont to 
 pray for everybody who has come within her reach 
 with any special claim to her interest. Friends, 
 acquaintances, strangers, persons whom she meets 
 for an hour only, and has no prospect of meeting 
 again, she quietly presents before God in prayer 
 for whatever they seem to her to need most ur- 
 gently. A stranger with whom she converses for 
 
 239 
 
240 My Portfolio. 
 
 a half-hour at a social gathering, a guest whom 
 she entertains for a day, a person whose counte- 
 nance impresses her in the street, a traveler in the 
 cars whose conversation attracts her, — in brief, 
 anybody to whom, for any reason, her attention is 
 drawn with special regard, — she remembers in 
 special prayer. 
 
 Probably, without having ever defined a theory 
 about it to her own mind, she has the theory that 
 whatever interests her as a child of God interests 
 him as her Father. Prayer becomes, then, her 
 natural method of expressing that interest to God 
 daily, and often hourly. Communion with God 
 expresses it as artlessly as conversation would to 
 an earthly friend. Her daily life, therefore, is a 
 line of telegraphic correspondence between this 
 world and heaven, through her habit of devout 
 intercession. Such is the simplicity of her faith 
 in prayer as a specific power for specific effects, 
 that she accepts it as a method, and perhaps the 
 chief method, of her own usefulness. She trusts 
 it implicitly : she uses it expectantly. Does God, 
 then, disappoint her in the result? The follow- 
 ing is believed to be one of many incidents in her 
 experience which answers the question. 
 
 A few years ago two strangers entered the car 
 in which she was a traveler, and seated themselves 
 so near her that she could not avoid overhearing 
 their conversation. In the remarks of one of 
 them she soon became intensely interested. She 
 inferred from them that he was an impenitent 
 
Intercessory Prayer. 241 
 
 man, and for some reason supremely unhappy. 
 This was sufficient to enlist her prayerful desires 
 in his behalf. He became at once the subject of 
 her intercessory converse with God. When she 
 left the cars, that face, so full of the suffering of a 
 turbulent spirit, remained with her. For weeks 
 afterward something moved her to pray for that 
 stranger, that he might find peace in Christ. As 
 time passed on, her special interest in him gave 
 place to more recent objects of supplication, and 
 she thought no more about iiim. She had dropped 
 the tribute of her prayers into the troubled cur- 
 rent of his life, and left both it and him with God. 
 
 Some years afterward she visited, hundreds of 
 miles distant from her home, a friend who invited 
 her to go and hear a celebrated preacher who had 
 been laboring there with success. She went. 
 When the preacher rose in the pulpit, she instantly 
 recognized the face of the stranger who had years 
 before so deeply moved her sympathy in the cars, 
 — a face now no longer clouded by the disquiet 
 of an impenitent spirit, but radiant with the joy of 
 one who knew the peace of Christ, and was striv- 
 ing to impart it to other souls. 
 
 At the time of their first meeting he was, in- 
 deed, of all men one of the most miserable, — 
 crushed by affliction, but not subdued in heart; 
 quickened by the Spirit of God, yet resolute in 
 sin ; with eyes opened to his lost state, but blind 
 to the gift of a Saviour ; whirled in the great crisis 
 of his moral destiny, which comes but once to any 
 
242 My Portfolio. 
 
 man, jQt without God, and having no hope ; both 
 worlds shrouded by the very blackness of dark- 
 ness. Few men have ever needed prayer more 
 sorely than he did in that juncture. It was one 
 of those emergencies of moral conflict in which it 
 is like God to interpose with a singular rescue. 
 The appearance of the stranger now in a Chris- 
 tian pulpit tells the issue. His conversion had 
 followed within the year, his proximity to his 
 praying fellow-traveler in the cars. 
 
 This narrative illustrates the way in which God 
 often intertwines his own sovereign providence 
 with human sympathies and believing prayers, in 
 the network of instrumentalities for the conver- 
 sion of a soul. The death of a friend breaks down 
 the strong man in his career of worldly success. 
 The inherited faith of his youth, representing who 
 can say how many or how mighty prayers of a 
 godly ancestry, is set on fire in his heart by the 
 breath of God. Then follow months of impeni- 
 tent remorse ; and, when the conflict is deepening 
 into despair, there glides in among the spiritual 
 forces a gentle stranger, praying in the morning, 
 and at noonday, and at eventide, for she knows not 
 whom. 
 
 We can not say what precisely was the office as- 
 signed to that stranger's intercession in the plan 
 of God. We coolly pronounce the event a coin- 
 cidence. Yes ; but is that all ? Unwritten reli- 
 gious history is too full of such coincidences to 
 allow us to leave it there. Must we not believe 
 
Intercessory Prayer, 243 
 
 that woman's prayers to have been one link in the 
 chain of spiritual causes ? Why not a link as ne- 
 cessary as the bereavement to that soul's salvation? 
 Were not both the working-out of one purpose ? 
 He and she, unknown to each other, met for an 
 hour just then and there, and parted. No word 
 passed between* them ! How insignificant the 
 meeting. A hundred such occurred that same 
 hour on that same train of cars. The rumbling 
 of the wheels seems to have more meaning in it. 
 But the momentary junction of those two lives 
 inclosed God's hidden decree. They may never 
 be known to each other in this world. But who 
 shall say that it was not that woman's secret inter- 
 cession which turned the tide of conflict for that 
 soul's deliverance ? May it not have been her mis- 
 sion to stretch forth over that scene of spiritual 
 contest the scepter of a prince who had power 
 with God, and to beckon invisible forces to the 
 rescue ? 
 
 Ma}^ not thousands of unwritten Christian biog- 
 raphies at the last disclose such divine " coinci- 
 dences " ? Possibly such results may reveal the 
 chief reason why many an invalid life is prolonged. 
 Very useless, and worse than tliat to the sufferer's 
 view, such a life often appears. Yet it may be 
 privileged to do the work of angels. " Why art 
 thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou 
 disquieted within me ? " What if the whole visible 
 universe be closed to our slow feet and trembling 
 hands, if the invisible is open to wings of prayer ? 
 
XXVII. 
 
 HINTS AUXILIAET TO PAITH IN PEAYER. 
 
 The very magnitude of some truths breaks 
 down our faith in them as realities. '* Too good 
 to be true" is the proverbial expression of our 
 incredulity. Prayer stands at the head of those 
 powers which by their greatness cause faith to 
 reel before them. We need all the helps to faith 
 in it which truth will warrant. 
 
 1. Among other things, we need to realize the 
 fact that prayer is a spiritual force. It is not 
 subject to the laws which govern the material ele- 
 ments. Fire, water, wind, electricity, light, even 
 the most impalpable of material forces, bear no 
 comparison with it. It springs from the depths of 
 the human spirit ; it deals mainly with things of 
 the spirit ; it reaches to the Spirit of God. From 
 its inception to its result, it belongs to the spirit- 
 ual universe. It is subject, therefore, to none of 
 the drawbacks and limitations which restrict mate- 
 rial things. In its working there is nothing cor- 
 responding to friction in mechanic force, or to the 
 vis inertice in the movement of the planets. Even 
 what we call the " laws of nature " are subordi- 
 
Hints Auxiliary to Faith in Prayer, 245 
 
 nate to the laws of prayer. " Say unto this moun- 
 tain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into 
 the sea, and it shall be done." We loose our- 
 selves from heavy chains of unbelief, if we once 
 grasp and hold the full meaning of the fact that 
 prayer is a spiritual power. Among those subject 
 to the human will, it stands at the head of imma- 
 terial forces. 
 
 2. Specially does it assist our faith in the chronic 
 struggle with earth-bound senses, if we realize to 
 ourselves the fact that prayer is independent of the 
 limitations of space and time. 
 
 Modern discovery and invention have given to 
 the human mind new conceptions of the possibili- 
 ties of material forces, through their approach to 
 the annihilation of space and time. Steam, the 
 telegraph, the telephone, the telescope, have cre- 
 ated ideas of power which once the world would 
 have called supernaturah Men have probably 
 been hanged as witches for the discovery of the 
 germs of modern science. But prayer is a force 
 which surpasses all possibilities of science. 
 
 In a tempest at Cape Horn, when a captain, 
 with the aid of a speaking-trumpet, can not make 
 his crew hear his orders at a distance of ten feet, 
 prayer in a woman's whisper can be heard beyond 
 the stars. Space is as if it were not. Nature takes 
 countless ages to construct a vein of anthracite. 
 But, while a praying man is yet speaking, his 
 thought has gone up to the mind of God, has done 
 its mysterious mission there, and has returned 
 
246 My Portfolio. 
 
 again, and touched his lips with a live coal. Pray- 
 erful thought annihilates time more masterfully 
 than electricity. We gain something in the strug- 
 gle of faith with sense, if in any most homely ways 
 we can realize to ourselves the subjection of time 
 and space to this invisible and noiseless agent of 
 the unseen. Oceans have no place in its geog- 
 raphy. Centuries have no record in its history. 
 
 3. We find an auxiliary to faith in prayer, in 
 the fact, that, under God's direction, it commands 
 the resources of angelic agency to the help of man. 
 '' He shall give his angels charge over thee." 
 " Are they not all ministering sj)irits ? " They come 
 in response to prayer. No other power that we 
 know of reaches the innumerable hosts of angelic 
 ministers of God. Science yet Avonders whether 
 it can ever establish intelligible communication 
 with the nearest of the fixed stars. But what is 
 that in comparison with a power which enters 
 heaven, and brings legions of superhuman forces 
 to the aid and comfort of a praying woman ? In 
 Daniel's vision, Gabriel " flies swiftly ^^ at the bid- 
 ding of God, in answer to one human voice. A 
 hundred and eight3^-five thousand fighting men 
 were once slaughtered in a night, by an angel of 
 the Lord, for the deliverance of a Hebrew prince, 
 in answer to one prayer. Twelve legions of angels 
 were once to be had for the asking by a suffering 
 man. This command of prayer over superhuman 
 allies is one of the commonplaces of its history in 
 the biblical record of its achievements. Can we 
 
Hints Auxiliary to Faith in Prayer. 247 
 
 enter into the spirit of this phenomenon without a 
 deepened sense of the reality of our power with 
 God? 
 
 4. It helps us vastly to realize what prayer is, if 
 we admit to our faith its supremacy over Satan. 
 The Bible magnifies, more than we in our modern 
 thouglit do, the reality of a great and fearful 
 adversary of souls. He is a living and personal 
 being. He is the prince of this world. Tempted 
 souls are in mysterious bondage to him. The air 
 is full of his spiritual minions and allies. Their 
 name is "legion." Under conditions of conflict 
 with these invisible foes, human probation goes on. 
 
 Yet over against this league of satanic forces 
 there stands at every man's will the superior strat- 
 egy of prayer. This is the only human power 
 which equals that of Satan. This is the only one 
 which Satan fears. This shuts up the gates of 
 hell. The conquest of Guido's archangel over the 
 Dragon is repeated, the world over, in the voice- 
 less utterances of praying men and women. At 
 the bidding of a praying child this prince of the 
 power of the air stands aghast, and turns, and 
 flees away. 
 
 The assembled cabinet of a Spanish monarch 
 once fled in dismay from the council-chamber, 
 crossing themselves devoutly, in terror at a piece 
 of clock-work so ingenious and inexplicable in 
 its mechanism, that they thought it must be 
 the invention of the devil. When the proper- 
 ties of phosphorus were first discovered, many 
 
248 3Iy Portfolio. 
 
 wise men believed it to be a product of hell. 
 Superstition has not yet ceased to tremble at 
 things which it attributes to satanic devices. 
 But the real agencies of Satan are more fear- 
 ful than such things as these would indicate. 
 They are no superannuated fancies and exploded 
 dreams. They are among the revealed realities 
 of the spiritual universe. They take hold on 
 souls, and open the gates of everlasting despair. 
 And the only thing at the command of men which 
 can always and everywhere hold successful conflict 
 with them is the power of prayer. Nothing else 
 gives to tempted men and women the mastery over 
 demoniac foes. And this, in the mouth of a child, 
 can do that. At the bidding of a praying soul 
 Satan moves very quickly. He flees. Such is the 
 usual story of his defeat in the Scriptures. The 
 wings of the wind can not bear him swiftly enough 
 from the presence of a praying believer. '' I saw 
 Satan fall from heaven." Does it not uplift our 
 sense of the dignity of prayer as a power of con- 
 quest, when we admit to our faith the fact of its 
 overwhelming conquests of demoniac battalions ? 
 
 5. We find an ally to our faith in the reality of 
 prayer in the fact, that it is always seconded hy the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. No believer ever prays alone. 
 In the solitude of African wilds. Dr. Livingstone 
 had an infinite companion. In mid-ocean, no ship- 
 wrecked sailor ever prays without a Friend at 
 hand. We have an Advocate with the Father. 
 The only-beloved Son of God gives his indorse- 
 
Hints Auxiliary to Faith in Prayer. 249 
 
 ment to the petition of every friend who trusts 
 him. He to whom all power is given in heaven 
 and on earth re-enforces the appeal of his most 
 lowly follower. He by whom all things have been 
 created adds imperial authority to the words of 
 every suppliant in his name. " In His Name " was 
 the password of the Waldenses, by which they 
 recognized each other when all the rest of the 
 world were their enemies. It is the password at 
 which the gates of heaven open to believing sup- 
 pliants. Must it not invigorate our trust in prayer, 
 as an outcome of almighty power, if we can but 
 believe, that, when we pray, Christ prays? Our 
 thoughts are his thoughts. Our desires are his 
 desires. Our words are his words. They go up 
 to God clothed in the majesty of his decrees. Thus 
 he ever lives to intercede : what can we ask for 
 more? 
 
XXV ILL 
 
 THE VISION OF OHEIST. 
 
 Dankeckee, the German sculptor, occupied 
 eight years upon a marble statue of Christ. He 
 had previously exercised his genius upon sub- 
 jects taken from the Greek and Roman mythology, 
 and had won a great reputation. The celebrated 
 statue of Ariadne, in the garden of Herr Bethman 
 at FranMort, is his work. Critics of art have 
 given him rank with Michael Angelo and Canova. 
 
 When he had labored two years upon his statue 
 of Christ, the work was apparently finished. He 
 called into his studio a little girl, and, directing 
 her attention to the statue, asked her, "Who is 
 that?" She replied, "A great man." The artist 
 turned away disheartened. His artistic eye had 
 been deceived. He had failed, and his two years 
 of labor were thrown away. But he began anew ; 
 and, after another year or two had passed, he 
 again invited the child into his studio, and re- 
 peated the inquiry, "Who is that?" This time 
 he was not disappointed. After looking in silence 
 for a while, her curiosity deepened into awe and 
 thankfulness ; and, bursting into tears, she said in 
 
 250 
 
The Vision of Christ, 251 
 
 low and gentle tones, "Suffer little children to 
 come unto me." It was enough. The untutored 
 instinct of the child had divined his meaning, 
 and he knew that his work was a success. 
 
 He believed then, and ever afterward, that he 
 had been inspired of God to do that thing. He 
 thought that he had seen a vision of Christ in his 
 solitary vigils. He had but transferred to the mar- 
 ble the image which the Lord had shown to him. 
 His rising fame attracted the attention of Napo- 
 leon ; and he was requested to make a statue of 
 Venus, similar to the Ariadne, for the gallery of 
 the Louvre. He refused, saying, " A man who has 
 seen Christ would commit sacrilege if he should 
 employ his art in the carving of a Pagan goddess. 
 My art is henceforth a consecrated thing." 
 
 Is there not an experience of communion with 
 God in Christ, not uncommon to mature believers, 
 which is equivalent to a vision of the Lord, and 
 which renders life and life's work, even its hum- 
 blest occupations, sacred ? Italian and Spanish art 
 contains many works in painting and sculpture 
 on subjects derived from scriptural biography and 
 history, to which their authors have given years 
 of toil, and on which they labored in a state of 
 religious fervor. Some of them believed that their 
 artistic vision was illumined by the Holy Ghost. 
 The privilege of every Christian life is not less 
 exalted. The Scriptures seem to assure us of this. 
 " Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his 
 Son Jesus Christ." " Your life is hid with Christ 
 
252 My Portfolio. 
 
 in God." "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in 
 God, and God in liim." Such words, if they mean 
 any thing, mean something unutterably great. It 
 is no prerogative of an elect few. The lowliest 
 not less than the loftiest life may have this ele- 
 ment of an infinite dignity. A profoundly prayer- 
 ful life is by that single feature of it lifted into 
 sympathy with God. A mean thing can not be 
 made noble by it, but a small thing can be made 
 great. The work of a laundress or a bricklayer 
 may attract the respect of angels. 
 
 Hugh Miller, when working at his trade as a 
 stone-mason, used to say that his was a grand call- 
 ing, because the routine of it gave to a first-class 
 workman so much time and mental force for silent 
 communion with God. It was in such communion 
 that he laid the foundation of that dignity of char- 
 acter which afterward made him the companion 
 of philosophers and the instructor of princes. It 
 matters little what may be a man's employment 
 in life. The whole life is ennobled and adorned 
 by it if it is done as in a vision of Christ. " In 
 His Name " was the watchword of the Walden- 
 ses, and their form of salutation when they met 
 and when they parted. It expressed their supreme 
 idea of life, and of all that made it worth living. 
 They said it at their weddings, and repeated it 
 at their funerals. It was their formula in baptism 
 and at the Lord's Supper, and it lifted to the same 
 altitude of dignity their work in their fields and 
 vineyards. When have wise men ever discovered 
 
The Vision of Christ. 253 
 
 a theory of life more magnificent and inspiring ? 
 No being in the universe has a more exalted occa- 
 sion for self-respect than one who lives in a vision 
 of Christ. The apostle could find no more hon- 
 orable words in which to depict the life of Moses 
 than to say of it, "He endured, as seeing Him 
 who is invisible." 
 
XXIX. 
 
 THE CROSS IN THE DOOE. 
 
 PfiOBABLY it is not commonly known that we 
 all have in our dwellings a relic of mediaeval piety 
 which may stir the Puritan blood in the veins of 
 some of us. Our ancestors, if their attention had 
 been called to it, would, perhaps, have exorcised it 
 from every Puritan home, with stern ceremony of 
 prayer and practical reform, if not by the ordeal 
 of fire. 
 
 The upper half of the paneling of doors, till re- 
 cently universal in our domestic architecture, rep- 
 resents the form of a Roman cross. Remove the 
 panels, and the cross is there complete and in exact 
 proportions. Many have doubtless observed the 
 fact, and perhaps with a momentary chastening of 
 feeling at the thought suggested. Some, who have 
 more than the average degree of susceptibility to 
 the impressions of material symbols, have probably 
 been quite willing to recognize the undesigned 
 memento ; yet they might never have cared to 
 originate it. Has it not sometimes prompted ejac- 
 ulatory praj^-er ? 
 
 Such was, in fact, its original purpose. It was 
 
 254 
 
The Cross in the Door. 255 
 
 no fortuitous circumstance, or geometric conven- 
 ience, in domestic building. It had its origin in 
 the religious fervor of the crusades, which made 
 every thing that could be thus employed an em- 
 blem of the central truths and forms of Christian 
 worship. The same religious tastes which con- 
 structed the ancient cathedrals in the form of the 
 cross, and scattered crosses and the instruments of 
 our Lord's passion everywhere by the roadside, 
 gave structure to windows and doors. Windows 
 in mediaeval castles, and in the upper class of hum- 
 bler homes as well, were divided by the Roman 
 cross, the pillar running perpendicularly through 
 the center, and the cross-beam near the top ; so 
 that every eye that looked out upon the outside 
 world should look through the type of the central 
 thought of the Christian faith. Hence arose the 
 French word croisee^ used as the synonym of 
 fenetre^ " a window." With the same design, the 
 paneling of doors was so constructed as to form 
 the same device. 
 
 From that day to this, this usage of household 
 architecture has remained, — a silent witness to 
 the devotion of another age. To mediaeval piety 
 it must have been an impressive circumstance of 
 daily life, that, every time one passed through a 
 doorway, one faced the emblem of the great Chris- 
 tian tragedy. Entering the room where the daily 
 meals were served, or going to the chamber of 
 repose at night, every inmate of the home looked 
 upon the sign of the sacrifice on which the salva- 
 
256 My Portfolio, 
 
 tion of all depended ; and the same token was one 
 of the first images to greet the eye in the morning. 
 The Christian home, however lowly, if it rose to 
 the dignity of paneled doors and transom-win- 
 dows, was thus crowded with reproductions of the 
 symbol which the sensitive religious temperament 
 of the age made sacred to all, and which often 
 brought tears to the eyes of many. By such ex- 
 pedients did our fathers strive to make the great 
 thoughts of the Christian faith a pervasive pres- 
 ence with themselves and their children. 
 
 It is a singular fact, that this amiable relic of 
 those bygone times — one hesitates to call them 
 superstitious times — escaped entirely the icono- 
 clasm of the reformers. While Genevan and 
 Dutch and Scotch zealots, with hammer and broad- 
 axe and firebrand, were annihilating the cathedral 
 churches, stripping them of cross and crucifix and 
 saintly image, and were even exorcising from the 
 spires, as an invention of the Devil, the most 
 comely and pertinent symbol of their and our 
 theory of prayer, and, as if themselves outwitted 
 by the Devil, were substituting in place of the 
 cross those horrible satires on Protestant Chris- 
 tianity, the weather-vane and the cockerel, in 
 their own homes, scattered everywhere before their 
 very eyes, was the abhorred object of their fury 
 on every door and in every transom-window. It 
 still existed two years ago in the door of John 
 Knox's study in Edinburgh. The stern old man 
 could not help seeing it every time he raised his 
 
The Cross iji the Door. 257 
 
 eyes from the book before him. If he could but 
 have looked upon it oftener with suffused eyes, his 
 preaching, which the English ambassador said 
 "put into him more life than his six hundred 
 trumpets," might have derived from it some other 
 tones than those of trumpets, and tones which 
 that preaching greatly needed. 
 
 The crossbar of the window we have lost, except 
 as the modern revival of mediaeval architecture has 
 restored it ; but the beautiful symbol of our faith 
 remains intact in the door, almost everywhere, as 
 in the olden time. Who would have it otherwise ? , 
 Are we not all sufficiently open to religious impres- 
 sions through the eye, and far enough removed 
 from peril of superstition, to be pleasantly and 
 usefully reminded by this relic of Him who said, 
 " I am the Door : by me if any man enter in, he 
 shall be saved"? Our fathers of the middle age 
 may not have been more holy than we are ; but 
 were they not more natural in their pious love of 
 memorials of the life and death of our Lord ? It 
 surely can do us no harm to be, to the extent of 
 silent notice of the cross in the door, unconscious 
 ritualists. 
 
 The authority for the assertion as to the origin 
 of the cross in the paneled door is J. Fenimore 
 Cooper, the American novelist, whose well-known 
 antiquarian tastes are presumed to be a sufficient 
 guaranty of his accuracy in researches of this 
 kind. 
 
XXX. 
 
 THE PEEMATUEE CLOSING OP A LIPE'S ¥OEK. 
 
 "It is a great mystery. I have prayed for 
 that golden setting of life's sun which attends an- 
 old man's usefulness when prolonged to the very 
 grave. God denies my prayer. I am thrust aside 
 at the age of forty-two. I seem to myself like a 
 candle blown out by a puff of wind." Such was 
 the lamentation, to a friend, of one who was arrest- 
 ed in his life's work by incurable disease in middle 
 life. He was one of many whose discipline takes 
 this mysterious form. Are there any reasons for 
 it which can light up the darkness of the trial ? 
 
 1. We can see, that, in the lives of us all, phy- 
 sical laws are at work which predestine life's de- 
 cline and end, and which can not, in God's wise 
 planning of a man's destiny, be disregarded. 
 " Every man's life is a plan of God." But as such 
 it hangs upon other plans which have gone before 
 it. It includes inherited tendencies, and drifts of 
 disease which foredoom the body to its dissolution 
 at its appointed time. We live in grand lines of 
 inheritance. These run too far back, and involve 
 the action of too many progenitors, known and 
 
 258 
 
The Premature Closing of a Life'' 8 Work. 259 
 
 unknown, for us now to trace them to their origin, 
 and see their ultimate causes and reasons. The 
 breaking-up of a man's physical constitution may 
 be the execution of a decree which started on its 
 fatal way to the sufferer a thousand years ago. It 
 might be the extreme of caprice in God to arrest 
 that decree now. It is fixed in one of the great 
 grooves of the universe, and can not be dislodged, 
 perhaps, without giving a shock to the whole. It 
 must run its course, and do its work, as gravita- 
 tion does. Unknown reasons for it, involving a 
 thousand other lines of destiny, may have been 
 accumulating along its march from the begin- 
 ning. That it had a beginning necessitates just 
 the end it works out, and no other. 
 
 The premature ending of a good man's life, or 
 of his life's work, is, in this aspect of it, one of the 
 mysteries of which all that we can say is, " It is 
 law; it is law." The past having been what it 
 was, the present must be what it is. Infinite wis- 
 dom can plan no otherwise : as well seek to have 
 the courses of the planets reversed by suspend- 
 ing the law of gravitation, to save a child falling 
 from the house-top. And there we must leave 
 it. It plants itself deep, out of sight, in the un- 
 changeableness of God. The infinite and eternal 
 reason for it may be simply that God is God. A 
 life may be cut short without a solitary reason for 
 it which starts with the sufferer himself. The 
 reasons may all lie back of him, in the night of 
 ages which none but the eye of God can penetrate. 
 
260 My Portfolio, 
 
 It is something to be able to see an inexplicable 
 trial thus biding itself in the infinity of God. 
 
 2. It is noticeable also, that, in the experience of 
 some of these early doomed men, their wliole life 
 has been marked by prematurity. The end is but 
 the natural sequence of the beginning. They were 
 precocious children. They learned the alphabet at 
 a sitting. They could read the Bible when but 
 four years old. Their memory goes back to the 
 later half of their second year. One such read 
 " Edwards on the Will " at twelve years of age. 
 In college they led their seniors. They began 
 their public life, as William Pitt did, in their 
 minority. I have in mind one clergyman of this 
 class who died at sixty, and his friends lamented 
 his early end ; but he preached his first sermon 
 while yet a minor, and old men who heard it were 
 captivated by its eloquence. Forty solid years 
 measured his ministry. The late Dr. Joseph P. 
 Thompson was one of these early developed and 
 early crowned ones. 
 
 Now, it is in graceful keeping with such a career, 
 that it should end prematurely, for it began so. 
 The fruit which is early " set" ripens early, and 
 falls while another is yet green. Such men may 
 have done a long life's work at the age of sixty. 
 Forty years are a long service. What matters it 
 whether it ranges from the age of twenty to that 
 of sixty, or from that of thirty to that of three* 
 score and ten ? The real rounding of one's life, 
 and the " finishing " of one's " course " in sym- 
 
The Premature Closing of a Life's Work. 261 
 
 metrical proportion, like that in which St. Paul 
 exulted, may require the premature ending as the 
 only becoming sequel to the premature beginning 
 and the precocious growth. Such a man is not 
 wise in the ways of God if he says, " I am cut off 
 in the midst of my days." 
 
 3. I find in the lives of some good men hints of 
 some special reason for withholding them from the 
 execution of their plans of usefulness, correspond- 
 ing to that which forbade to King David the build- 
 ing of the temple. We may not know the reason ; 
 but the look of things is so singularly like that of 
 the experience of the Hebrew monarch, that we 
 can not but believe that there is one. 
 
 The reason assigned for that summary disap- 
 pointment of his hopes does not necessarily imply, 
 that in personal character he was unfit for the 
 work he aspu^ed to : on the contrary, in some 
 respects he was pre-eminently qualified for it. 
 Who more so? Human wisdom would have chosen 
 him for it before any other prince in Hebrew an- 
 nals. As a lyric poet he had composed the Psalms 
 of all the ages of the church of the future. What 
 more fitting, then, than that, as the chosen king 
 of God's people, and the founder of the royal 
 dynasty, he should have crowned his long and 
 splendid reign by the erection of the temple in 
 which that "service of song" should begin its 
 magnificent history? That was a grand aspira- 
 tion. It was an inspiration. It was worthy of a 
 royal mind. But no: God saw otherwise. For 
 
262 My Portfolio, 
 
 that tribute to a religion of peace and good will 
 to men he preferred an eminent civilian to an 
 eminent warrior. Military prestige is not in God's 
 plans what it is in the plans of men. 
 
 Yet it does not appear that King Solomon was a 
 better man than his royal father. His wisdom 
 amazed the Queen of Sheba ; yet the man whom 
 God had called from the sheepfold to the throne 
 was the " man after God's own heart." Perhaps 
 all the reasons for preferring Solomon for that one 
 service are not known. Enough is it, that, for 
 reasons which satisfied God, he was preferred. It 
 is something, yes, much, to see signs of God's 
 sovereign election in such an unlooked-for, and, 
 as we should say, eccentric allotment of the man 
 to the work, and of the work to the man. 
 
 Do we not sometimes see similar tokens of sov- 
 ereignty in God's planning of the lives of other 
 good men? They are peremptorily stopped in 
 their career of usefulness. The work so dear to 
 them, never dearer than now, is passed over to the 
 hands of others. When every thing promises to 
 them prolonged success, and the winding-up of 
 their career by some achievement of signal value 
 to the world, they come suddenly against a wall 
 of adamant. They are shut in, can not take an- 
 other step onward. They are taken from a career 
 of splendid usefulness, and laid on a bed of lan- 
 guishing, from which they never rise to be the 
 men they were before. A pastor is taken from a 
 loved and loving people, to whom, it should seem 
 
The Premature Closing of a Life's Work. 263 
 
 tliat no other man could be so fit a leader, and is 
 sent, as the Rev. Dr. Bushnell was, to the other end 
 of the continent in the sad and oppressive search 
 for health. No wonder that Dr. Bushnell preached 
 on his return, upon " Spiritual Dislodgements and 
 Dislocations " as one of God's methods of disci- 
 pline. Such unlooked-for disappointments, which 
 no human wisdom would have planned, often come 
 violently. They seem like a buffet in the face. 
 They resemble the dislocation of one's very bones. 
 Yet how numerous are these sudden, and, as we 
 should say, unwise, transfers of a life's work and 
 its rewards to the hands of men other than those 
 who have planned them, and who seem to have 
 earned the right to them ! With one consent 
 they all say, " We never were so well prepared for 
 our work as now." These forbidden builders are 
 a great multitude. Others rear with songs the 
 superstructure of which they have laid the foun- 
 dation with tears. Their work is underground, 
 out of sight. Their more fortunate successors are 
 the men whom the world knows and honors. 
 They have gathered the gold and the cedar, and 
 the ships of transport, and the cunning workmen ; 
 but others have the glory of using these to the 
 grand purpose, and, what is vastly more, the jo}^ 
 of the doing of it. Look around : you find the 
 world full of these arrested, rebuffed, disappoint- 
 ed though willing — oh, how willing ! — Avorkers. 
 Successful discoverers often are not those who 
 have laid the trains, and planned the connections, 
 
264 My Portfolio. 
 
 and done the work preparatory to the success. I 
 read not long ago of an application to the State 
 for charity to the old age of the discoverer of gold 
 in California. The most successful preachers are 
 large debtors to their predecessors. An evangelist 
 whom worshiping converts throng is always a 
 reaper of the fruit of the toil of one or more hard- 
 worked, overworked, and, it may be, discouraged, 
 pastors. The one is famous from ocean to ocean : 
 the others — who are they? The world knows 
 not, and does not care to know. 
 
 This transmission of work and its reward is one 
 of the mysteries which human wisdom can not 
 pursue to its ultimate reasons. But it is some- 
 thing to see that one is not solitary in the disci- 
 pline. There is enough of the child left in us all 
 to make us glad that we are not alone in the dark. 
 It is more to see, that, in such a trial, one belongs 
 to a goodly company. One joins hands with great 
 and good men of whom the world is not worthy. 
 Kings, prophets, psalmists, apostles, martyrs, all 
 the illustrious classes of workers in God's esti- 
 mate of the universe, have among them men who 
 say, and perhaps not altogether sadly, " I have laid 
 the foundation, and others have built thereon." 
 Above all, it is superlatively cheering to be able 
 to follow such a mystery till it loses itself in the 
 fathomless depths of God's thought. If a thing 
 is so strange that nothing short of infinite wisdom 
 can explain it, there is joy in being the divinely 
 chosen subject of it. 
 
The Prematwre Closing of a Life's Work. 265 
 
 4. We find more tangible, if more limited, rea- 
 son for the discipline in question, in that divine 
 expediency which displaces old men for the sake 
 of calling young men to the front. Say what we 
 may of the usefulness of age, the value of ripest 
 experience, and the reverence due to aged good 
 men, this world's progress, after all, hangs upon 
 the vigor, the hopefulness, the confidence, and the 
 daring of young minds. Age is naturally con- 
 servative. Conservative tastes grow rank with 
 dechning years. They easily become overgrown. 
 When a man in public station begins to talk much 
 of the past, and to delight his soul with the 
 " pleasures of memory," it is time for him to look 
 out for the place he fills. When a preacher begins 
 to draw his illustrations of truth heavily from the 
 experience of his boyhood and the moral govern- 
 ment he found in his father's house, he may be 
 sure that a j^ounger man than he is treading hard 
 on his heels to displace him. Men of gray hairs 
 must make up their minds to this. It is well that 
 it is so. Men can not walk fast enough or straight 
 enough for the world's need, if they are walking 
 backward. The danger of toppling over is immi- 
 nent. The world needs, and must have, and 
 for ever will have, at the front, men who live in 
 the future, — men whose eyes are in their faces, 
 who look onward, and press onward, and do it 
 eagerly. From such men the world elects its 
 leaders. It is always so, and it always will be so. 
 
 The real usefulness of men seldom extends be- 
 
266 My Portfolio, 
 
 yond forty years of active service. After that 
 period, the tide of life ebbs: vitality runs low. 
 Then a man begins to be called " venerable." 
 The world reveres him for what he has been and 
 done : it does not hang upon him as a necessity to 
 its future. The aged good men are, with few 
 exceptions, emeritus. In public office, or out of it, 
 it makes little difference. Not a little evil often 
 offsets, in part, the good they do. How opinionated 
 we become as years multiply ! How wise we are 
 above younger men ! How loftily we look down 
 on the rising generation ! How sublimely we 
 patronize our juniors ! Or, worse than that, how 
 set we are against improvements which they origi- 
 nate ! and therefore how hard it often is for them to 
 get along with us ! They are tempted sometimes 
 to ask whether our places are not worth more than 
 we are. Is this humiliating to us ? Yes ; but we 
 had better see it as it is. The drift of old age is 
 in this direction. We had better know tliis lonor 
 before we come to the trial ; for then the chance 
 is that we shall refuse to know it. " To this com- 
 plexion we must come at last." It is easy to re- 
 solve against it in early manhood, as President 
 Edwards did, and as, perhaps, all thoughtful men 
 do ; but how few adhere to the resolution when 
 the strong current of life runs backward ! It runs 
 with reduplicated swiftness as the decline of life 
 approaches the last valley. 
 
 This and other almost inevitable infirmities of 
 age may be the reason why God sets aside old 
 
The Premature Closing of a Life's Work. 267 
 
 men, and some men before they are old, and says 
 to the younger men, " Come up hither." He often 
 seems to do it ruthlessly. The world is in too bad 
 a plight to afford to wait always for the slow ad- 
 justment of men's minds to such displacements. 
 Sharp turns, quick revolutions, sudden emergen- 
 cies, occur in the divine plan, which require the 
 quick summoning of new men to the leadership 
 of God's hosts. This implies no sin, no unworthi- 
 ness, but only infirmity, in the senior workers. 
 The Army of the Potomac had many able com- 
 manders. One after another was "relieved," with 
 complimentary acknowledgment of his soldierly 
 abilities. It was no reflection upon them that the 
 one man who alone could make his way to Appo- 
 mattox stood behind them, abiding his time. It 
 was no disgrace to the old chieftain who " never 
 lost a battle," when Gen. Scott retired to give 
 place to a younger, not a better, soldier. Was it 
 not time for him to give way when he fell asleep 
 in his chair at a council of war, while the enemy 
 was creeping upon the capital ? Yet the President 
 and the Vice-President, and honorable senators of 
 the Republic, and Supreme Court judges walked 
 in humble procession to his headquarters to bear 
 witness to the old man's glory; and the nation 
 said, as with one voice, " He deserves it." 
 
 Yes, it is a wise arrangement that the genera- 
 tions of mind on this earth do not live long 
 abreast with each other. The period of their 
 overlapping is brief. God wisely recalls the elder 
 
268 My Portfolio, 
 
 to himself, and gives to an imperiled world the 
 young life, because it needs that. Who are we that 
 we should presume to withstand or to cavil at so 
 benign an ordinance ? Let us rejoice rather that we 
 do not have the ordering of such things. Let us bid 
 God-speed to our successors, and say " All hail ! " 
 to the coming generations. Let us uplift our own 
 eye to that world where years are not counted. If 
 youth here is so glad a thing, what must the im- 
 mortal youth be ? What plans of service, what 
 untiring labors, what swift achievements, what 
 immeasurable successes, are awaiting us there ! 
 
 5. The mystery we are considering, in common 
 with all other dark things in God's administration 
 of affairs, suggests further, as one of its possible 
 reasons, the vast and complicated reticulation of 
 human with angelic interests and activities. Much 
 that is dark to us here may become luminous 
 when seen in the light of the interests of other 
 worlds. This is a great universe which God has 
 to care for. We are compassed about with a great 
 cloud of witnesses. There is enough in the life of 
 one redeemed sinner to attract a convoy of angels 
 in awe-struck study. May it not be for their sake, 
 in some way, that one man is taken and another 
 left ? Who can tell ? But who can tell that it is 
 not so ? Any other than the order of things which 
 God has chosen might jar upon the angelic sense 
 of wisdom, and awaken questions which could not 
 be answered, nor yet wisely left unanswered. Of 
 this we can say but little, because we know but 
 
The Premature Closing of a Life's Work. 269 
 
 little. Yet we can see that a vast region of 
 unknown research opens in that direction. The 
 discipline which buries us in oblivion or in the 
 grave may excite adoring song beyond the stars. 
 That " reason " which we long for when we ask 
 the question "why?" may be found in the planet 
 Jupiter. It may be among the " sweet influences 
 of Pleiades. " At any rate, we must become wise 
 enough to know that it is not so, before we can 
 wisely discredit God's dealings with us by a sad 
 countenance or a grieved spirit. Shall we pre- 
 sume to contend with the grand public opinion of 
 the universe respecting the wisdom of the divine 
 allotments of our destiny ? 
 
 6. Perhaps a more satisfying reason for the 
 premature withdrawal of good men from active 
 service may be sometimes found in the fact that 
 some men need, for their best preparation for 
 the heavenly life, a period of eartlily repose before 
 entering upon that life. Activity needs to be sus- 
 pended for a while. The soul needs time and self- 
 collection to look before and after. We all need 
 a chance to gather up broken and frayed threads 
 of character, and to interweave them deftly into 
 their neglected places. Some need this more than 
 others ; but do not all feel an instinctive desire for 
 it? Have not many sins and infirmities of temper- 
 ament been crowded out of view by the cares of 
 service ? In my boyhood, it astounded me to hear 
 one of the most illustrious of American preachers 
 say to his people that he had been compelled to 
 
270 My Portfolio, 
 
 neglect the spiritual nutrition of his own soul in 
 the intellectual struggle to provide food for theirs. 
 I understand it now. 
 
 Why is it that some good men must go down 
 life's last decade with the tottering limbs of a 
 second infancy ? Sad, unspeakably sad, is that com- 
 ment which we sometimes have to make upon 
 one whom the world has honored with its trust in 
 high places : " He has been a learned man, a wise 
 man, a great man ; but now " — So strange a 
 humiliation of a great mind and an heir of God 
 must have something to do with its preparation 
 for an immortal youth. " Except ye become as 
 little children." Some may not be able to become 
 that, except through the vale of second childhood. 
 That earthly silence may be the great opportunity 
 preparative to fitness for a service in the coming 
 life, compared with which the grandest service of 
 this life is but infantile. The sleep of the chrysa- 
 lis is the forerunner of golden glory. If one can 
 but believe that God's plan is made up of such 
 inspiring mysteries ! Yet why not ? " Eye hath 
 not seen, nor ear heard." Sin and its conse- 
 quences have no concern with that. They are 
 buried beneath the glory that is to be revealed. 
 Why should we not believe that God's reasons for 
 things are like him ? " It must be his doing," as 
 Charles Kingsley said, "because it is so strange 
 and so painful." None but an infinite mind could 
 plan some things as they are in the lives of us 
 all, and yet make them come out right in the end. 
 
XXXI. 
 
 WHAT DO WE KNOW OF THE HEAVENLY LIFE? 
 
 There are thousands of Christian men and 
 women whose life lies along the border-line be- 
 tween two worlds. By the decline of old age, 
 or by prolonged and incurable disease, they are 
 brought very near to eternity, and kept there. 
 They are irresistibly impelled to look over the 
 line inquiringly. " Does heaven begin at once ? " 
 was the query of a Christian captain in the late 
 war, as he lay on the field, with life oozing slowly 
 away. " I shall soon know all about it," he 
 added, and then fell asleep. 
 
 Such inquiries by those whom God brings thus 
 up close to the river's brink, and holds there for 
 months or years, are not unreasonable. Faith is 
 not in fault, if we try to answer them. Some 
 things about the redeemed life we do know. Not 
 with the knowledge of demonstration : very little 
 of our knowledge of any thing is that. But by 
 either the testimony of revelation, or by the proof 
 of strong natural probability, such as, for the 
 most part, we have to act upon in the practical 
 affairs of this life, we can say, of some things in 
 the future life of the redeemed, " we knoicT 
 
272 3Iy Portfolio, 
 
 1. That life will be emancipation from a dying^ 
 and, in its best state, a restrictive body. This is 
 certain. Whatever else takes place at death, we 
 shall surely leave this covered skeleton. We shall 
 no longer look out upon God's universe through 
 dying eyes, nor get the major part of our knowl- 
 edge of it through the discipline of pain. One of 
 Quarles's " Emblems of Life " is a child peering 
 sadly out between the ribs of a skeleton bare and 
 dead. That emblem we shall smile at as belong- 
 ing to a past world. To thousands of sufferers 
 this will be a glad escape. Think what it must 
 be to the blind, the deaf, the crippled, — to Laura 
 Bridgman ! " Let me pass out " were the signifi- 
 cant dying words of one believer, which I find 
 upon her tombstone. 
 
 The restrictions of sense will cease. We shall 
 exchange pain for ease, weariness for strength, 
 confinement for freedom. To those who have 
 long since forgotten what the sensations of health 
 are, this is a glad assurance. Said one of the 
 saints, who for years had not known a painless 
 hour, when asked what was his most vivid con- 
 ception of heaven, " Freedom from palpitation of 
 the heart." His whole being had been so long 
 absorbed in conflict with that form of suffering, 
 that to be rid of it was often all the heaven he 
 had strength to think of. Who of us, if at peace 
 with God, does not sometimes exult in this 
 thought : " One thing I know : whatever else is 
 before me, I am going out of this worn-out body, 
 to be shut up in it no more for ever " ? 
 
What do we hioiv of the Heavenly Life ? 273 
 
 2. As a consequence of freedom from the body, 
 we may reasonably be assured of an enlarged 
 range and an augumented intensity of mental powers, 
 A deeper insiglit into truth, riddance from pain- 
 ful doubts, the settlement of life-long inquiries, 
 more profound sensibilities to truth, a more per- 
 fectly balanced being through and through, and 
 crowned by a more imperial will, — these things, 
 it should seem, must, in the experience of the 
 redeemed, be the fruit of simply going out of this 
 prison-house in which we see darkly. "More 
 light I " was the dying exclamation of an illus- 
 trious philosopher. With profound joy and a 
 deeper meaning may a dying believer feel assured 
 of its coming. I have inquired of a distinguished 
 expert in natural science whether his studies had 
 given him any new hints, from the analogy of 
 Nature, respecting the intermediate state of souls. 
 "Only this," he replies, "that Nature, by her 
 organic changes in vegetable and animal being, 
 hints at improvement, not decline. As a rule, 
 organic change is for the better. Nature does not 
 deteriorate, and is not stationary in quality, in 
 her great transitions. Why should not the same 
 law of improvement govern the transition of the 
 soul to the coming life ? 
 
 I conceive that the exhilaration of perfect 
 health, which some feel on the mountains or at 
 the seashore, is probably some faint emblem of the 
 permanent state of the soul when either disem- 
 bodied, or clothed in spiritual form. Youth, in 
 
274 My Portfolio. 
 
 its most irrepressible and bounding overflow of 
 energies, is a more truthful emblem still. " The 
 immortals," said the old Greeks, "are always 
 young." With a surer faith may we believe this 
 of the condition of a redeemed spirit in the life 
 to come. We have no reason to mourn over de- 
 parted youth. That form of the world's elegiac 
 poetry is destined to become obsolete. Our real 
 youth is beyond the stars. 
 
 3. The evidence is not small, that, in a life free 
 from the limitations of sense, the souVs natural 
 dominion over material things will be grandly devel- 
 oped. Mind will probably be independent of the 
 veto of matter. Our Lord seems to have possessed 
 the power of passing through material obstruc- 
 tions without a rent or a break. Through closed 
 doors and dense walls he passed with the ease of 
 thought. Through angry crowds, whose every 
 eye was fixed upon him, he slipped away invisibly. 
 Was this miracle ? Even so, it may have been only 
 an anticipation of the natural sovereignty of soul 
 over matter. Angelic intelligences seem to have 
 the same supremacy over material forms, assuming 
 them and dropping them at will. All the biblical 
 hints of the life natural to spiritual being look to 
 this as one of its conditions. They suggest the 
 query, whether mind, after all, is not the only sub- 
 stance, and matter the shadow. This is at least less 
 improbable than the glum faith of materialism. 
 
 Trifling as this is as a matter of speculation 
 only, it is fraught Avith magnificent probabilities 
 
What do toe hioiv of the Heavenly Life ? 275 
 
 in respect to the range of activity, and the useful- 
 ness and the joy of redeemed spirits. The pre- 
 rogatives of spiritual being seem to be those of 
 royalty over the material universe. Movement 
 with the spring and the speed of thought is among 
 its possibilities. The most distant of the fixed 
 stars may not be beyond the limit of its travels. 
 Man's dominion over this earth in toil and sweat 
 and blood is but a faint symbol of his easy and 
 luxurious empire beyond its confines. 
 
 4. The probability amounts well-nigh to cer- 
 tainty, that the immortal life involves an intensified 
 consciousness of personal identity. And if of our 
 own identity, then of that of departed friends as 
 well. The experience of drowning men in the 
 quickening of memory is to the point here. The 
 very objects of probationary discipline should 
 seem to require this deepening of the sense of 
 individuality at the end. The doctrine of a day 
 of judicial reckoning, and of the revelation of 
 things hidden, looks to the same augmentation in 
 the soul's consciousness of being. Every biblical 
 hint of individuals living in the spiritual state is 
 of their exalted, not degraded, existence. God 
 is not the God of the dead, but of the living. So 
 far from truth is the foreboding of unconscious 
 sleep, or of ages of dream-life, or of absorption in 
 universal Being, that the scriptural glimpses of 
 that life hint at just the opposite, — an intensified 
 individuality. Revelation knows something of 
 Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, of Elijah, of Moses, 
 
276 My Portfolio. 
 
 but not a whisper of "the Oversoul," "the Soul 
 of the Universe," " the Spirit of the Whole," and 
 "the Ocean of Being," — whatever these may 
 mean. These did not put in an appearance on the 
 Mount of Transfiguration. Dives and Lazarus 
 made no such discoveries. We shall, in that life, 
 be more distinctly conscious of what we are, not 
 less so. Memory will be more truthfully historic. 
 Conscience will be more intensely self-revealing. 
 Friends must be outlined to our vision more 
 vividly, and therefore more lovingly. Stereo- 
 scopic sight is but a faint emblem of the vision 
 which souls will there have of each other and of 
 themselves. 
 
 Never was a more causeless doubt suggested 
 to plague afflicted ones than that concerning the 
 non-re CO 2["nition of friends in heaven. Few are 
 pestered with it who drink deep of the spirit of 
 the Bible. If the question had been asked of our 
 Lord by the loved disciple, — no, he would never 
 have asked it ; by Thomas, rather, — I fancy that 
 the Master would have answered, " If it were not 
 so, I would have told you." It is one of those 
 truths of which the spirit of his silence is, " That 
 is a thing of course : waste no thought upon a 
 doubt of it. It belongs to the alphabet of the 
 immortal life. So sure is it, so deep laid in the 
 nature of souls, that I have not thought it needful 
 to affirm it. You will one day smile at the igno- 
 rance which could question it." 
 
 5. As the fruit of such changed conditions of 
 
What do we know of the Heavenly Life ? 211 
 
 being, we must look for a new sense of the person- 
 ility^ the perfections^ and the friendship^ of God, 
 through new affinities with his character. This 
 must follow the change from faith to sight. It is 
 the legitimate sequence of growth from partial to 
 perfect sinlessness. The pure in heart shall see 
 God. "The glory of God" is no glittering gen- 
 erality. "I saw no temple there." We shall need 
 none. The struggling conceptions we form of 
 God here will give place to a resplendent and 
 beatific vision. " I knew a man . . . caught up 
 into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which 
 it is not lawful for a man to utter." " We shall 
 see as we are seen." 
 
 Our possible joy in God seems often very meager 
 here ; there it must be augmented in proportion 
 to our moral sympathy with God. Physical and 
 intellectual hinderances to it will be done away. 
 Liberty from the intermeddling of Satan will in- 
 tensify it. We shall delight in God in proportion 
 to our love of his being and the response of sym- 
 pathy to his character. God in Christ is a new 
 disclosure of God in the history of the universe. 
 Just how the divine indwelling in human form 
 achieves its end, we may not know ; but that it 
 will act as a magnifying lens to the soul's eye 
 can not be doubtful. It will realize to our con- 
 sciousness the fact of sinlessness. It will, there- 
 fore, calm our perturbations. The turbid sea of a 
 memory lashed by guilt will be at peace. It will 
 soften dread into love. It will give courage to 
 
278 My Portfolio. 
 
 awe-struck reverence. It will still an affrighted 
 conscience. All the retributive elements of the 
 soul will return to their original province, — that 
 of making sympathy with God possible, in waves 
 and billows of ecstatic emotion, of which we have 
 now no conception. Probably in no other way 
 than by this humanized discovery of God in Christ 
 could souls with a history of sin behind see God, 
 and live. 
 
 6. The occupations of that life. What are they? 
 If, in respect to the marriage relation, we shall be 
 " as the angels," why not like them in their busy 
 and tireless activities of benevolence ? Are they 
 not all ministering spirits ? What else can ex- 
 panded faculties, and deepened sensibilities, and 
 immortal youth, and conscious sinlessness, find to 
 do in a universe swayed by the mighty pulsations 
 of the love of God ? Sabbatic worship as pictured 
 in St. John's Apocalypse must surely be symbolic. 
 The heavenly choir must be an emblem, rather 
 than a literal picture. Life in heaven can be no 
 statuesque existence. Emblem of what? Of the 
 gladness, of the spontaneity, of the purity, and of 
 the dignity, of untiring and diversified service. 
 We shall mount up on wings, as eagles. ' In 
 proportion to our capacities of service, and our 
 sympathy with the great heart-throb of a loving 
 universe, we shall be employed as ministers of 
 God. Some of us will be swift messengers. Kings 
 and priests we shall be. We shall reign with 
 Christ. What this means we know not, except 
 
What do tve knoiv of the Heavenly Life f 279 
 
 tliat it must mean exalted and pure and benevo- 
 lent service in more than apostolic missions. 
 
 Such are a few only of the facts of the life to 
 come, of which we have the same kind and degree 
 of evidence that we have of many things in this 
 life on which we act with practical assurance. 
 Do such hints make heaven seem inviting to us ? 
 Is it home-like ? Does it seem " better to depart" ? 
 The answer may in some cases be a fair test of 
 readiness to depart. 
 
 Many of us can not reasonably anticipate any 
 new disclosures of heaven when death is at hand. 
 Those who expect visions in the closing hour will 
 probably be disappointed. The great majority of 
 djdng believers, and some of the best of them, have 
 none. It is not natural to their mental make. 
 They die with an apparent stolidity which gives 
 to some physicians food for skepticism as to the 
 soul's immortality. The mental constitution of 
 most men predisposes them to faith^ not to the 
 electric imagination which forestalls the discover- 
 ies of spiritual sight. The major number of us are 
 naturally believers, not poets. Many of us never 
 sing. The Rev. Dr. Candlish of Edinburgh said 
 on his death-bed, " I have no overpowering emo- 
 tions, but I have a great faith." Such an experi- 
 ence only, have most of us any reason to look for 
 when our time comes. 
 
 I have in mind a dying woman, whose life had 
 seemed to observers to be a foregleam of the purity 
 of heaven. She had also a poetic temperament. 
 
280 My Portfolio. 
 
 In prayer she often seemed inspired. Yet she 
 died silently. She succumbed to disease as an in- 
 fant does, as speechlessly and as trustfully. Most 
 of us must be content with this. We shall not, 
 probably, hear harps of angels, nor see shining 
 forms flitting across streets of gold and over walls 
 of sapphire. We are not likely to find on this side 
 of the river loved hands stretched out in welcome. 
 God will not, probably, work a miracle to improve 
 upon the constitutional make which he gave us 
 at our creation. Nor do we know that spiritual 
 sight before the time could be an improvement. 
 We have only to accept with contented faith the 
 knowledge which reason and revelation give us 
 of the unseen life, and ask ourselves, " Is it home- 
 like to us ? Does our present character fit in well 
 with its lofty and pure attractions ? " What we 
 are in our gracious sympathies and affinities is 
 more vital than what we know of things invisible. 
 
The Theory of Preaching, 
 
 OR 
 
 LECTURES ON HOMILETICS. 
 
 By Professor AUSTIN PHELPS, D.D. 
 
 One volume, 8vo, ----- $2.50 
 
 This work, now offered to the i/uMic, is the growth of 
 inore than thirty years' practical experience in teaching. 
 W^hile primarily designed for professional readers, it will be 
 found to contain much that will be of interest to thoughtful 
 laymen. The writings of a master of style of broad and 
 catholic mind are always fascinating; in the present case the 
 wealth of appropriate and pointed illustration renders this 
 doubly the case« 
 
 CRITIC A li NOTICES. 
 
 •' In the range of Protestant homiletical literature, we venture to affirm that its equal 
 cannot be found for a conscientious, scholarly, and exhaustive treatment of the theory 
 and practice of preaching. * * * To the treatment of his subject Dr. Phelps brings 
 such qualifications as very few men now living possess. His is one of those delicate and 
 sensitive natures which are instinctively critical, and yet full of what Matthew Arnold 
 happily calls sweet reasonableness. * * * To this characteristic graciousness of 
 nature Dr. Phelps adds a style which is preeminently adapted to his special work. It is 
 nervous, epigrammatic, and racy." — The Exatnitier and Chronicle. 
 
 " It is a wise, spirited, practical and devout treatise upon a topic of the utmost con- 
 sequence to pastors and people alike, and to the salvation of mankind. It is elaborate 
 but not redundant, rich in the fruits of experience, yet thoroughly timely and current, 
 and it easily takes the very first rank among volumes of its class. — 'Ihe Congrega- 
 tionalist. 
 
 "The layman will find it delightful reading, and ministers of all denominations and 
 of all degrees of experience will rejoice in it as a veritable mine of wisdom." — New York 
 Christian Adziocate. 
 
 "The volume is to be commended to young men as a superb example of the art in 
 which it aims to instruct them." — The Independent. 
 
 "The reading of it is a mental tonic. The preacher cannot but feel often his heart 
 burning withm him under its influence. We could wish it might be in the hands of every 
 theological student and of every pastor." — The IVatchman. 
 
 "Thirty-one years of experience as a professor of homiletics in a leading American 
 Theological Seminary by a man of genius, learning and power, are condensed into this 
 valuable volume."— CAr/j//a« Intelligencer. 
 
 " Our professional readers will make a great mistake if they suppose this volume is 
 simply a heavy, monotonous discussion, chiefly adapted to the class-room. It is a 
 delightful volume for general reading.'' — Boston Zion's Herald. 
 
 *4(.* For sale by all booksellers., or sent., post-paid., upon receipt of 
 price., by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York, 
 
NaHtral Science and Religion. 
 
 By Prof. ASA GRAY, LL.D. 
 
 One "Volume, Crown 8vo., .... $1.00. 
 
 These striking and earnest lectures, delivered by one of the leading 
 men of science of the country before one of its chief schools of theology, are 
 contributions of a most noteworthy sort to the literature of their subject. 
 The position of their author is a guarantee that they are not devoted to 
 any perfunctory attempt to reconcile opposing doctrines. They are a 
 remarkably strong and independent presentation of what a distinguished 
 scientific man, an acceptor of the theory of evolution and one of the most 
 famous of its students, has to say upon those recent discoveries — par- 
 ticularly in biology — which seem to affect religious belief. Both from its 
 point of view and from its matter, the book fills an entirely new place in 
 a most vitally important discussion. 
 
 CRITICAL NOTICIS. 
 
 " There is more religion, more science, and more common sense in 
 these discourses than may be found in any other recent discussion of this 
 difficult subject." — Chicago Times. 
 
 " The spirit of the lectures is thoroughly scientific, and also Cliristian; 
 and we heartily wish that every skeptical scientist would carefully read 
 and inwardly digest them." — JVezu York World. 
 
 "No one can rise from the perusal of these lectures without feeling 
 that he has gained a firmer footing than he had before. The style is deli- 
 ciously clear and attractive, the kind which charms while it convinces." — 
 San Francisco Eve. Bulletin. 
 
 "The lectures are very pleasantly written in a simple and attractive 
 style, though with careftil accuracy of thought and statement, and it will be 
 to the advantage, both of religion and of science, that they be widely read." 
 — Philadelphia Times. 
 
 " The best brief exposition we have seen of the relation between scientific 
 and religious thought. We heartily commend it to all who wish to be stirred 
 up to an intelligent consideration of this most important subject." — TV. V. 
 Jndepetident. 
 
 " Such an exposition as this of the real attitude and teaching of modern 
 science, so clear an explanation of the actual belief of scientific investi- 
 gators, and so fine a discrimination between the necessary inferences to be 
 drawn from the accepted doctrines of modern science and the inferences 
 actually drawn by particular philosophers, cannot fail to be an uncommonly 
 acceptable work. Aside from all this the little book will serve an excellent 
 purpose as the best and clearest explanation of what modern science is 
 in its essence, and of what its conclusions are, that is anywhere to be found 
 in brief compass by unscientific readers." — Evening Post. 
 
 *^.* For sale by all bookseUers, or sent, post-paid, upon receipt of 
 frice, by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
THE POETICAL WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 
 
 With a Portrait from a phot ^ graph by Saro?iy. 
 Engraved by Kruell. 
 
 1 vol., 8vo., pp. 512. Kichly printed and bound, full gilt, - $4.00. 
 
 CRITICAL NOTICES. 
 
 •'I\Ir. Stoddard is a veiy graceful writer: his fancy is delicate, but never offnds by 
 puerility, and ihe reader cannot look through the volume without- being struck by il-e 
 wide range of his muse." — The Christian at Work. 
 
 " In an examination of this large and superb volume, one remarks the uncommon 
 versatility of measure, which a careful readmg proves united with uniformity of ease an 1 
 harmony, the thought seeming to be poured out as musically in one form as another." — 
 The Literary World. 
 
 '•As we turn these clean pages, we read again some of the sweetest songs that have 
 been written in our time, songs of gaiety or of sadness, but songs always natural and 
 having in them the indefinable quality of genius. Whatever it is, the songs are gems cut 
 with an art nearly faultless and sparkling with an inborn {nstre." — Hart ford Courant. 
 
 "The quantity of poetical work Mr. Stoddard has done is no less remarkable than 
 its fine quality. He is never careless, never writes unless he has something to say, never 
 says it unless with genuine poetic taste and tenderness. His works amply deserve the 
 beautiful setting they have been vouchsafed in this volume." — Boston Saturday 
 Evening Gazette. 
 
 "The original power, deep sentiment, tragic pathos, and admirable artistic execution 
 of Mr. Stoddard's poems, give them the assurance of a long date in the higher literature 
 of his country. He may claim recognition among the supreme poets of the land without 
 challenge or doubt. His progress from the beginning has been as conspicuous as his 
 genius is exquisite and rare. His fame reposes on true excellence in the poetic art, which 
 is the most certain passport to perennial renown." — N. Y. Tribune. 
 
 " All this is only saying, in another way, that Mr. Stoddard is a poet by nature and 
 not by mere choice. His poems have been the spontaneous expressions of a deeply 
 poetic nature. They have been written because the poet has had need of poetic utterance, 
 because he has had something to say that was pi)etic in substance. The form of 
 the utterance, metre, the imagery, and the words, have been chosen simply for their 
 fitness to give adequate expression to the thought and mood of the poet, and without 
 care upon his part, apparently, for any little prettines»;s of their own. It is thus that a 
 strong man of rugged but tender nature writes poetry." — N. Y. Eveni?tg Post. 
 
 *j^ For sale by all booksellers, or se?tt, post-paid, upon receipl of 
 frice, by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
The Origin and Growth of Religion, as Illustrated br 
 
 THE RELIGION OF 
 
 ANCIENT EGYPT. 
 
 By P. LE PAGE RENOUF. 
 
 (The Hibbert Lectures for iSjg.J 
 
 One volume, 12mo, ------- $l.SO 
 
 M. Le Page Renouf's great reputation as an Egyptologist led to his 
 selection to deliver the second course of the already celebrated Hibbert 
 series. His lectures are the fit companions of Professor Muller's, both in 
 learning and in interest. The glimpses laboriously gained by the aid of 
 long undeciphered hieroglyphics into one of the most mystical and profound 
 of all the ancient beliefs, have always had a special fascination ; and the 
 time has now come when it is possible to join their results into a fairly 
 complete picture. Done as this is by M. Renouf, with a certain French 
 vividness and clearness, it has a very unusual, and, indeed, unique interest. 
 
 CRITICAL NOTICES. 
 
 "The narrative is so well put together, the chain of reasoning and 
 inference so obvious, and the illustration so apt, that the general reader 
 can go through it with unabated interest." — Hartford Post. 
 
 " No one can rise from reading this book, in which, by the way, the 
 author is careful about drawing his conclusions, without having increased 
 respect for the religion of ancient Egypt, and hardly less than admiration 
 for its ethical system." — The Churchman. 
 
 " These lectures are invaluable to students of Egyptology, and as the 
 religion of ancient Egypt stands alone and unconnected with other religions, 
 except those which have been modified by it, itself being apparently original 
 and underived, they should be highly interesting to all students of religious 
 history. . , . It is impossible in a brief notice to convey an adequate 
 idea of Professor Renouf s admirable lectures." — N. V. World. 
 
 " The present work forms a remarkably intelligent and acutely critical 
 contribution to the history of the origin and growth of religion, as illustrated 
 by the religion of ancient Egypt. As a specialist, Professor Renouf is able 
 to bring forth much information not ordinarily accessible to the general 
 reader, and this he does in such a carefully digested form as to make the 
 work entertaining and instructive in the highest degree." — Boston Courier. 
 
 *.55.* For sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, upon receipt of 
 price, by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
Men and Books; 
 
 OR, STUDIES IN HOMILETICS. 
 
 Lectures Introductory to the "Theory of Preaching." 
 By Professor AUSTIN PHELPS, D.D. 
 
 One Volume. Cro^A^n Svo. - - $2.00 
 
 Professor Phelps' second volume of lectures is more popular and gen- 
 eral in its application than " The Theory of Preaching." It is devoted to 
 a discussion of the sources of culture and power in the profession of the 
 pulpit, its power to absorb and appropriate to its ow^n uses the world of 
 real life in the present, and the world of the past, as it lives in books. 
 
 There is but little in the volume that is not just as valuable to all 
 students looking forward to a learned profession as to theological students, 
 and the charm of the style and the lofty tone of the book make it difficult 
 to lay it down when it is once taken up. 
 
 "It is a book obviously free from all paddins:. It is a Ih'e boolr, animated as well 
 as sound and instructive, in which conventionalities are brushed aside, and the author 
 goes straight to the marrow of the subject. No minister can read it without being waked 
 up to a higher conception of the possibilities of his caUing." 
 
 — Professor George P. Fisher. 
 
 *' It is one of the most helpful books in the interests of self-culture that has ever been 
 written. While specially nitcnde 1 for young clergymen, it is almost equally well adapted 
 for students in all the liberal professions." — Standard of the Cross. 
 
 "We are sure that no minister or candidate for the ministry can read it without profit. 
 It is a tonic for one's mind to read a book so laden with thought and suggestion, and 
 written in a style so fresh, strong and bracing." — Boston Watchman. 
 
 " Viewedin this light, for their orderly and wise and rich suggestiveness, the-^e lec- 
 ture- of .Professor Phelps are of simply incomparable merit. Every page is crowded with 
 observations and suggestions of striking pertinence and force, and of that kind of wisdom 
 which touclies the roots of a matter. Should one begin to make quotations illustrative of 
 this remark, there would be no end of them. While the book is meant spe<:ially for the 
 preacier, so rich is it in sase remark, in acute discernment, in penetrating observation of 
 how m-n are most apt to be influenced, and what are the most telling qualities in the va- 
 rious forms of literary expression, it must iiecome a favorite treatise with the best minds in 
 all the other professions. The author is, in a very high sense of the term, an artist, as for 
 a quarter of a century he has been one of the most skiilful instructors of young men in 
 that which is the noblest of all the arts." — Chicago Advance. 
 
 ^^ For sale by all booksellers, or sent., post-paid, upon receipt of 
 price, by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
The 
 
 Conflict of Christianity 
 
 WITH HEATHEf^lSM. 
 
 By DR. GERHARD UHLHORN. 
 
 TRA NSLA TED B Y 
 PROF. EGBERT C. SMYTH and REV. C. J. H. ROPES. 
 
 One Volume, Crown 8vo, $2.50. 
 
 This volume describes with extraordinary vividness and spirit the 
 religious and moral condition of the Pagan world, the rise and spiead 
 of Christianity, its conflict with heathenism, and its final victory. The^e 
 is no work that portrays the heroic age of the ancient church with equal 
 spirit, elegance, and incisive power. The author has made thorough and 
 independent study both of the early Christian literature and also of the 
 contemporary records of classic heathenism. 
 
 CRITBCAIi NOTICES. 
 
 " It is easy to see why this volume is so highly esteemed. It is 
 systematic, thorough, and concise. But its power is in the wide mental 
 vision and well-balanced imagination of the author, which enable him to 
 reconstruct the scenes of ancient history. An e.xceptional clearness and 
 force mark his style." — Boston Advertiser. 
 
 " One might read many books without obtaining more than a fraction 
 of the profitable information here conveyed ; and he might search a long 
 time before finding one which would so thoroughly fi.x his attention and 
 command his interest." — P/ii/. S. S. Times. 
 
 "Dr. Uhlhorn has described the great conflict with the power of a 
 master. His style is strong and attractive, his descriptions vivid and 
 graphic, his illustrations highly colored, and his presentation of the subject 
 earnest and effective," — Providence Journal. 
 
 " The work is marked for its broad humanitarian views, its learning;, 
 and the wide discretion in selecting from the great field the points of 
 deepest interest." — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 
 
 "This is one of those clear, strong, thorough-going books which are 
 a scholar's (lQ\\^i." —Hartford Religious Herald. 
 
 *.}{.* For sale by all booksellers, or sent post-paid upon receipt oj 
 ^rice^ by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
 
 Nos. 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
AUTHORIZED AMERICAN EDITION, 
 
 (^\m\m InxMWions : 
 
 ESSAYS ON ECCLESIASTICAL SUBJECTS. 
 By A. P. STANLEY, D.D., 
 
 Laie Dean of Westminster. 
 
 One vol.,cro'wn 8vo, Library Edition, $2.50; Students' Edition, 76c, 
 
 The work includes chapters upon Baptism , the Eucharist, the Euchar- 
 ist in the Early Church, Eucharistic Sacrifice, the Real Presence, the 
 Body and Blood of Christ, Absolution, Ecclesiastical Vestments, Basilicas, 
 the Pope, the Litany, and the Belief of the Early Christians. 
 
 *' They have all an antiquarian, historical, and practical interest, and 
 are treated in a very liberal and very attractive style. Dean Stanley is a 
 genius as well as a scholar, and has a rare power of word-painting. His 
 History of the Jewish Church and of the Eastern Chtirch are as inter- 
 esting and entertaining as a novel. He always seizes on the most salient 
 points, and gives them an artistic finish. He avoids all pedantry of learn- 
 ing, and all tedious details." — Dr. Schaff in The Critic. 
 
 DEAN STANLEY'S OTHEPi WORKS. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH 
 
 Church. With maps and plans. 
 
 Vol. I. FROM ABRAHAM TO 
 Samuel. Crown Svo, $2.50. 
 
 Vol. II FROM SAMUEL TO THE 
 Captivity. Crown Svo, $2.50. 
 
 Vol. III. FROM THE CAPTIVITY 
 to the Christian Era. With maps. 
 Crown Svo, $2.50. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH 
 of Scotland. Svo, I1.50. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE EAST- 
 
 ern Church. With an Introduction 
 on the study of Ecclesiastical History. 
 Crown Svo, $2.50. 
 
 WESTMINSTER EDITION OF 
 the History of the Jewish Church. 
 
 Handsomely printed on superfine paper, 
 and tastefully bound. Three vols., Svo. 
 (Sold in sets only.) $9.00. 
 
 THE LIFE AND CORRESPCND- 
 ence of Thomas Arnold, D.D., late 
 Head Master of Rugby School. 2 vols, 
 in one. Crown Svo, ^2.50. 
 
 ■TT 
 
 price, by 
 
 For sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid^ upon receipt oj 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publlshers, 
 
 743 AND 745 Bro.\dvvay, New York. 
 
'^A GREAT SOUL'S GREAT THOUGHTS,** 
 
 UNIFORM EDITION 
 
 OF THE SELECT WORKS OF 
 
 HORACE BUSHNELL, D.D. 
 
 Hiacb. X vol. ISnao, per vol. ^1.50, 
 
 COMPLETE IN ELEVEN VOLUMES. 
 
 Christian Nurture. 
 Sermons for the New Life. 
 Christ and his Salvation. 
 Sermons on Living Subjects. 
 Work and Play. 
 
 Vicarious Sacrifice. Vol. I. 
 Vicarious Sacrifice. Vol, H. 
 Nature and the Supernatural. 
 God in Christ. 
 Building Eras. 
 
 Moral Uses of Dark Things, 
 
 "The gathered writings of one of the most original and thoughtful 
 of the American divines of his generation, and one who has left as distinct 
 an impression of himself upon the minds, at least, of the present generation 
 of Congregational ministers as any other man of his day." — Zioii's Herald, 
 
 " His writings have attracted considerable attention from the bold and 
 original manner in which he has presented views of the doctrines of the 
 Calvinistic faith. No well-furnished library will be without them," 
 
 — Hartford Religions Herald. 
 
 "There is a vivacity and grace about everything he has written which 
 have secured him multitudes of readers even among those who do not, by 
 any means, accept his views." — Presbyterian Ba7iJier. 
 
 " This series occupies a place in theological literature that is filled by 
 no other. Dr. Bushnell's highest qualities as a thinker and writer are 
 nowhere better brought out." — The Advance. 
 
 *^* For sale by all booksellers^ or sent^ post-paid^ upon receipt of 
 price, by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 

 
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Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 
 
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