Book -Aff- , 
 
/ 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 OF 
 
 Josiah Gilbert Holland 
 
 DISCOURSES AND TRIBUTES 
 
 Called Forth by His Death, October 12, 1881 
 
 /JJJ- 
 
 3^ 
 
 Jhrintetr, not fltoblisheo 
 

 .(A 
 
 The Concluding Sentences of Dr. Holland's Will. 
 
 "3 am thankful for pairing enjotjeb tl)e flriuileges of labor 
 anb influence, thankful for urife anb cl)ilbreu, thankful for all 
 tntj successes. 1 l)at)e intentionally anb consciously rorongeb 
 no man, arib if % know mtj Ijeart 1 t)at?e forginen all mp. 
 enemies, ifar tl)e great hereafter, S trust in tl)e Infinite Cone, 
 as it is e*aresseb to tne in tl)e life anb beatl) of tug Corb anb 
 6 amour, Jesus €l)rist." 
 
 
 hj 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 The death of Dr. Holland occurred suddenly, at his 
 own house, on the morning of Wednesday, October 12, 
 1 88 1. In accordance with his often expressed wishes, 
 the funeral services at his house in New York, on the 
 Friday following-, consisted simply of the reading of the 
 Scriptures and of prayer. They were conducted by 
 Professor J. O. Murray, D.D., of Princeton, a former 
 pastor, and by the Rev. Llewellyn D. Bevan, D.D., the 
 present pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in New 
 York, of which Dr. Holland was a member at the time 
 of his death. 
 
 The burial, in Springfield, Mass., on Saturday, Octo- 
 ber 15th, was from the house of his brother-in-law, Mr. 
 Charles O. Chapin, where brief religious services, of the 
 same simple character, were conducted by the Rev. S. 
 G. Buckingham, D.D., of the South Church, and the 
 Rev. W. T. Eustis, D.D., of the Memorial Church, both 
 of them formerly pastors of Dr. Holland. The bene- 
 diction at the grave was pronounced by Dr. Bevan. 
 
 In the evening of the following day — Sunday, Octo- 
 ber 1 6th — a service in his memory was held in the 
 Memorial Church of Springfield, a church which owes 
 
iv Introductory Note. 
 
 its existence largely to Dr. Holland's enterprise and 
 benevolence. Many of the churches in the city sus- 
 pended their usual worship in order to participate, and 
 the large edifice was crowded with a sympathetic con- 
 gregation. The report of the meeting which follows is 
 borrowed from the Springfield Republican. 
 
 On the morning of the same day a memorial dis- 
 course was preached in the North Church, Springfield, 
 by the pastor, the Rev. Washington Gladden. The 
 anthem and the hymn tunes used in the service were 
 all favorites of Dr. Holland, and had frequently been 
 sung by him when he was the leader of the choir in this 
 church. 
 
 At Alexandria Bay, N. Y., which has been Dr. 
 Holland's summer home for many years, and where he 
 was greatly honored and beloved, united religious ser- 
 vices were also held on Sunday morning, October 23d, 
 in the Reformed Church, whose worship he attended, 
 whose pastor was his friend, and in whose work he was 
 a generous helper. The sermon was preached by the 
 Rev. Henry DeVries, the pastor of the Reformed 
 Church, the Rev. W. H. Hall, of the Methodist Church 
 in the village, assisting in the service. 
 
 The memorial sermon of the Rev. Dr. Bevan was 
 preached in the Brick Church, New York, on Sunday 
 evening, October 30th. 
 
Introductory Note. v 
 
 At Belchertown, Mass., Dr. Holland's birthplace, a 
 commemorative address was delivered on Sunday, 
 October 16, 1881, in the Congregational Church, by 
 the pastor, the Rev. Payson W. Lyman. This address 
 has since been printed, and portions of it are copied in 
 this memorial. 
 
 President Porter, of Yale College, once the pastor 
 of Dr. Holland, contributed to The Independent of No- 
 vember 10th a biographical sketch, the use of which is 
 courteously permitted by the publisher of that journal. 
 
 The sermon preached in Grace Church, New York, 
 by the Rev. Henry C. Potter, D.D., the rector, on the 
 Sunday following the death of Dr. Holland, contained 
 a passage referring to him, which is also here included. 
 
 The poetical tributes at the end were published in 
 The Century for December, 1881. 
 
THE MEMORIAL MEETING 
 
 AT SPRINGFIELD 
 
" There is something very like mockery in the perma?ient youth of 
 Nature and its frictionless routine of change. We only, who are 
 capable of observing and measuring the phenomena around us, are con- 
 scious of the wear and tear of life. We count our own heart-beats, and 
 note their faltering rhythm, until they cease. We feel the subsidence 
 of vitality ; helplessly we watch the gathering wrinkles on cheek a?id 
 brow ; we know that we are to die. Within the space of a single 
 year, a revolution is wrought within us which places us in new rela- 
 tions to the past, the future, the material world, mankind, and even 
 God himself. We consciously drive on and on, through permutations 
 and tra7is formations which leave our personal identity a thing hard to 
 realize, and make self-knowledge impossible. But of one fact we are 
 always certain — we are growing old. We know that the house we 
 build will outlast us, and that any good book which we may write will 
 pass about, bearing benedictions to alien firesides when the eyes that 
 looked into ours with love have missed us for many a year, or have 
 themselves turned to dust." — "Nicholas Minturn." 
 
THE MEMORIAL MEETING 
 
 AT SPRINGFIELD. 
 
 A meeting was held in the Memorial Church at 
 Springfield, Mass., on Sunday evening, October 16, 
 1 88 1, the day after the funeral, to do honor to the 
 memory of Dr. Holland. The Rev. Dr. Eustis, pastor 
 of the church, conducted the services, and was assisted 
 in the religious exercises by the Rev. Dr. Terhune, the 
 Rev. J. W. Harding, and the Rev. Dr. Gladden. A 
 letter of regret from the Rev. Dr. R. H. Seeley, of 
 Haverhill, and a telegram from President Porter, of 
 Yale, both former pastors of Dr. Holland, were read. 
 Among the hymns sung was the thanksgiving hymn 
 from "Bitter-Sweet," to the tune of Duke Street. Dr. 
 Eustis said that Dr. Holland was a remarkably suc- 
 cessful man ; that during his life he had accomplished 
 nearly every desire of his heart. But there was one 
 desire that was not gratified, namely, that he might 
 write a hymn which should be sung in all the churches. 
 He thought that, if the congregation would sing this 
 hymn at this time, it would be proved to be one worthy 
 of such use. 
 
 " For Summer's bloom and Autumn's blight, 
 For bending wheat and blasted maize, 
 For health and sickness, Lord of light 
 And Lord of darkness, hear our praise ! 
 
io yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 " We trace to Thee our joys and woes — 
 To Thee of causes still the cause : 
 We thank Thee that Thy hand bestows ; 
 We bless Thee that Thy love withdraws. 
 
 " We bring no sorrows to Thy throne ; 
 We come to Thee with no complaint ; 
 In Providence Thy will is done, 
 And that is sacred to the saint." 
 
 THE REV. DR. BUCKINGHAM'S ADDRESS. 
 
 In speaking of Dr. Holland's relations to the 
 churches of this city, I will say that when I came here, 
 in 1847, I found him a member of my church. He was 
 a young physician trying to get into practice. I remem- 
 ber he came to my study one day, and said he had an 
 invitation to go to Vicksburg to superintend the city's 
 schools. I expressed my surprise that he should be 
 willing to go to a city with such a bad reputation, and 
 his reply was that it was a matter of necessity — that he 
 was obliged to renounce his profession and devote him- 
 self to something else. At the end of two years he 
 returned, and found the way opened for him to become 
 connected with the Republican, a paper which had just 
 been founded, and which I have always regarded as one 
 of the two remarkable productions of this small inland 
 town — this paper and Webster's Dictionary. Had it 
 been some wonderful machinery, it would not have been 
 surprising, for such skill is what we cultivate. But this 
 was a literary production, and all the more remarkable 
 because started here in the smallness of the town, and 
 with so little to encourage an enterprise of such a nature. 
 
 We all, as Christians, regard every man's life as 
 planned for him by God. Dr. Holland was unfitted to 
 
The Memorial Meeting. 1 1 
 
 be a physician ; God had made him to be a journalist, 
 and he could not change that plan — -just as Dr. Bushnell 
 undertook to be a journalist when God had made him 
 and ordained him, if anybody ever was in these later 
 days, to preach the Gospel ; and, as he used to say, it 
 was the weight of a wafer that turned him from journal- 
 ism to the ministry. And so circumstances, providen- 
 tially arranged, prepared the way for Dr. Holland to 
 become connected with the Republican. 
 
 [Passing from the story of Mr. Bowles's engagement 
 of Dr. Holland on the Republican, Dr. Buckingham 
 told of his relations with the Springfield churches.] 
 
 After his return from Vicksburg he became con- 
 nected with the North Church, in accordance with my 
 advice, for he said it w T as a church that he could help, 
 and where I thought he would find a freer and better 
 development than in the older church. In addition to 
 his faithful work here in the social and religious life of 
 the church, he made himself especially valuable as the 
 leader of the choir. You should have seen him sing, 
 as well as heard him, to understand what he meant by 
 the service of song in the house of the Lord ! His no- 
 ble mien, his reverent and exultant manner, as he car- 
 ried the praises of the congregation up to heaven ! The 
 picture of the choir-boys is a pleasant one, but common- 
 place in comparison with this magnificent specimen of 
 manhood and Christian service. 
 
 But we come now to his connection with this 
 church. There was no church of any denomination in 
 this part of the city. He, with a few others, conceived 
 the idea of having one that, while it was evangelical, 
 should be undenominational. He found no sympathy, 
 
12 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 I am ashamed to say, among some of our church mem- 
 bers and ministers, for obstacles were thrown in his 
 way, and he was needlessly perplexed ; and if he had 
 not loved the cause of Christ more than most, he never 
 would have sacrificed his peace of mind, and continued 
 to push on to success as he did this enterprise. 
 
 And here let me give you an idea of Dr. Holland's 
 cast of mind, to explain his mode of thinking upon reli- 
 gious subjects. He once said to me : " Christianity, in 
 the form of abstract statement and in the shape of a 
 creed, has not any particular interest nor very much 
 meaning. I have to test things through my heart and 
 best feelings. If they seem good and true and like 
 Christ, it satisfies me, and nothing else does." This 
 will explain the little regard he had in his writings for 
 formal orthodoxy. He followed the dictates of his 
 heart rather than the teachings of any theological 
 school, and, keeping his heart warm with love to God 
 and love to man, and drinking in continually the spirit 
 of Christ, he never was guilty of heresy. But he was 
 all his life having a richer and more abundant experi- 
 ence of divine grace in his own soul, and it was con- 
 veyed, through his writings and through his personal 
 intercourse, to the hearts of others. It is a striking 
 fact in this connection, as his friend Mr. E^eleston will 
 
 ' o o 
 
 tell you, perhaps, that while he was so jealous of the 
 religious liberty of others, and championed their claims 
 so manfully, he never needed indulgence for heresy of 
 his own. He believed in the Bible, and he adored and 
 trusted in Jesus Christ as the only Saviour of men, and 
 he was always true to such a Christianity, whether in 
 his Sunday-school teachings, or daily newspaper, or 
 monthly periodical, or in his novels or poems. He was 
 a pure-minded, conscientious, and useful church mem- 
 
The Memorial Meeting. 13 
 
 ber, and all who have ever been associated with him in 
 such relations can bear the freest testimony in this 
 respect to his singular simplicity, to his tender piety, to 
 his conscientious fidelity and generous liberality in all 
 the relations he sustained to these churches and to reli- 
 gious efforts in this city. 
 
 MR. GEORGE S. MERRIAM'S ADDRESS. 
 
 Dr. Holland was essentially a preacher. He was 
 ordained by natural endowment, and by steady, en- 
 thusiastic purpose, to the ministry of moral guidance 
 and inspiration. So long as a man's highest business 
 is to shape his life to the noblest ends, and so long as 
 some men can, out of their own larger experience and 
 proficiency, throw light on the path of others, giving 
 them wisdom and heart for the great work, so long the 
 preacher's vocation will endure. 
 
 That vocation has hitherto been largely exercised 
 by personal speech from pulpit or platform, and largely 
 through the instrumentality of the Church. Dr. Hol- 
 land was an able and successful speaker. His relation 
 to the Church was one of loyalty and friendship ; but 
 his life fell at a time when a new engine of influence 
 was largely supplementing the old. While those who 
 speak from the pulpit are glad to number their hearers 
 by the hundreds, the daily editor counts his by tens of 
 thousands. While the Church is anxiously debating 
 how it can reach and hold the people, every man looks 
 on his door-step for his morning paper before he goes 
 to his breakfast. It is the newspaper that, beyond any 
 other influence, now comes home to men's business 
 and bosoms. The limitation upon that influence is 
 that it too often lacks that clearness and emphasis of 
 
14 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 moral purpose which has largely characterized, with 
 whatever defects and drawbacks, the ministry of the 
 pulpit. It was the especial distinction of Dr. Holland 
 that he used the newspaper's power to serve the preach- 
 er's purpose. As a moral teacher, he found a weapon 
 superior to the old as a rifle is superior to a cross-bow, 
 or a locomotive to a stage-coach. No less did he en- 
 large and ennoble the function of journalism, by putting 
 it to a new and higher use. He showed that a news- 
 paper might do something more than tell the news ; 
 something besides discuss what is doing at Washing- 
 ton ; something more, even, than to act as guide and 
 judge in literature, and art, and public affairs. He used 
 the daily or the monthly journal to purify and sweeten 
 the fountains of personal and family life. He spoke 
 continually the word that should inspire young men to 
 be pure, and women to be strong* ; the word that shed 
 poetry over the home life ; the word that threw on 
 every interest the light of conscience and the warmth 
 of moral feeling-. 
 
 I do not mean, of course, that Dr. Holland was 
 the first or the only one to direct the power of the 
 press to the conduct of personal life. Nor, probably, 
 did it come to him at first as a distinct and deliberate 
 plan. Said Cromwell, "A man never rises so high as 
 when he knows not whither he is gfoingf." It was with- 
 out premeditation that Dr. Holland began the series of 
 writings in which was his first great success as a popu- 
 lar moralist. He had written on local history and light 
 social satires when, one morning, Mr. Bowles suggest- 
 ed to him that he should write a series of letters in a 
 familiar and popular style. On that hint, and before 
 leaving the office, he wrote the first of the Timothy 
 Titcomb letters. It was his good fortune to be allied 
 
The Memorial Meeting. 15 
 
 with a man, Samuel Bowles, who won the unique dis- 
 tinction of creating- in a provincial town a newspaper of 
 the first class, and whose enlarging- conception of jour- 
 nalism welcomed and incorporated that specific function 
 of personal moral teaching which Dr. Holland intro- 
 duced. So, in his later career, he was fortunate in 
 being associated with men skilful and strong to unite 
 with his talents the other requisites for building up a 
 great periodical. So he accomplished his work, not by 
 conceiving and creating a career, but, so to speak, by 
 meeting the hand of Providence half way. He was 
 faithful to the light that was in him ; he was open-eyed 
 and sensitive to the conditions of the time ; he met the 
 opportunity as it offered ; and thus he did the work 
 that was given him to do. He did a work large in it- 
 self; large in the impress it left on two great periodi- 
 cals ; large as an omen of the nobler work to be done 
 by the press, an instance of the new and greater chan- 
 nels through which God fulfils his purposes. 
 
 I do not attempt to speak of the elements of his 
 intellectual power — to dwell on his observation, his 
 reading of human nature, his sympathy, imagination, 
 eloquence. But one element of his success and merit 
 is to be noted — he could think the thoughts and speak 
 the speech of the common people. He represented 
 that democratic quality in literature which our social 
 conditions demand and are only beginning to get. 
 Take from your shelf at random a standard author 
 other than a novelist, and read a page to the first man 
 you chance to meet. Ten to one he listens with a sort 
 of uncomprehending look ; the voice comes to him 
 muffled, as of some one speaking in the next room. 
 For most authors write out of a mental habit and equip- 
 ment which is unfamiliar to the common people ; they 
 
1 6 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 use a literary dialect — the dialect of a class, as much as 
 is the dialect of science or theology. But, take almost 
 any book of Dr. Holland, and read from it to any man or 
 woman of common intelligence : the eye responds ; they 
 understand what he means; they agree or deny; they 
 comprehend, they are moved, influenced. He was a man 
 of the people, and the common people heard him gladly. 
 It is fit that we should honor his memory as we 
 are doing. But already his monument is built — built, 
 as must be every monument that is worth anything, by 
 his own life. He has that memorial which we all desire 
 beyond any other — the love of a few hearts, in which he 
 will never become a memory, but live in that nobler, 
 tenderer, more sacred relation which death brings. He 
 has that distinction, given to the fortunate few, to be re- 
 membered by thousands with a warmer emotion than 
 admiration — with personal gratitude for some high im- 
 pulse given when perhaps the will was faltering, some 
 clear light shed when the path was dark. His influence 
 remains, invisible but powerful, upon the newspaper and 
 the magazine that owed so much to him — the influence 
 of a generous humanity, a regard for moral ends. In a 
 hundred thousand homes his books are lying — not dust- 
 covered, but in familiar use ; and in each home he is a 
 companion, counsellor, friend. A great and sacred gift 
 was intrusted to him. He used it faithfully, reverently, 
 gratefully. The story has reached a worthy end ; the 
 poem is finished ; and we thank the Creator and Giver. \ 
 
 DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON'S ADDRESS. 
 
 Dr. Eggleston traced the connection between the 
 later growth of Dr. Holland and the vicissitudes of his 
 early life, saying, with the poet Herder, " My whole 
 
The Memorial Meeting. 17 
 
 life has been but the interpretation of the oracles of my 
 childhood." When Dr. Holland went to a wider field 
 in the metropolis and founded the leading magazine of 
 America, he went with his character already moulded 
 by his life in this community. He had despairingly 
 thought, in his young manhood, that the world had no 
 place for him ; he had tried several things and failed — 
 like many a young man passing through similar strug- 
 gles to-day who is destined to play an important part 
 in the world. People afterward wonder they have not 
 recognized such men before. It is always perfectly 
 safe to be kind and not to snub a young and ambitious 
 man. We should make a little smoother and a little 
 sweeter and better, if we can, the pathway of a strug- 
 gling, ambitious, and sensitive young man such as Dr. 
 Holland was in those earlier years. The trials of this 
 period, however, only served to strengthen and de- 
 velop the man. 
 
 MR. ROSWELL SMITH'S ADDRESS. 
 
 Mr. Roswell Smith, Dr. Holland's business associ- 
 ate since the foundation of the magazine, said that he 
 was not here to pronounce a eulogy upon Dr. Holland, 
 but to give some expression to the affection in which 
 he was held by his associates. He told in brief the 
 story of his acquaintance with the Doctor, and of the 
 foundation of the magazine. Dr. Holland, he said, was 
 a man who decided the most important questions with 
 almost lightning rapidity ; he never saw a man whose 
 decisions upon important questions were so instanta- 
 neous. He used to say that he put his confidence in 
 men rather than in things. 
 
 Dr. Holland knew that he had been often charged 
 
1 8 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 with a want of orthodoxy. The speaker had heard 
 him repeat with zest the story of a clergyman of Spring- 
 field who, when absent from home, was asked by some 
 one what were Dr. Holland's religious opinions. He 
 replied: " Have you read Dr. Holland's books, and 
 can you not learn his beliefs there?" The answer 
 was : " Yes, I have read his books ; but first I come 
 across something which makes me think he is a Unita- 
 rian, and then I read on and find something which 
 leads me to think that he is a 'Christian'!" His or- 
 thodoxy was of the type of the apostle James, rather 
 than that of Paul ; but his writings sometimes reminded 
 one of the story of the young minister who preached 
 to the students of Union College. The venerable Dr. 
 Nott complimented him very much on his sermon, say- 
 ing, " The first half was pure Calvinism, and the last 
 half pure Arminianism, and I liked it, for that is just 
 the way it is in the Bible." Dr. Holland appreciated 
 the fact that he was a misunderstood man, and that he 
 was credited with the holding of sentiments and the 
 advocating of views which he thoroughly abhorred ; 
 and one motive, he said, in starting a literary magazine, 
 was that he might set himself right on the record. 
 Furthermore, he wished to " round out," as he ex- 
 pressed it, his literary life. 
 
 No man held the clerical profession in higher es- 
 teem than Dr. Holland. Indeed, his estimate of it was 
 so high, and his desire that it should attain the highest 
 usefulness was such, that it led him to be impatient 
 with its defects ; and the same is true of his love for 
 the Church and his respect for the prayer-meeting. 
 He felt that these were the hope of the world, and he 
 could not tolerate stupidity or intolerance in either the 
 one or the other. Ministers had no truer friend than 
 
The Memorial Meeting. 19 
 
 he, and very many of them recognized it and held him 
 in the highest regard. No minister ever came to him 
 to consult him about leaving his chosen profession and 
 going into literature, or into any other pursuit, but Dr. 
 Holland turned him back and exhorted him, with the 
 greatest earnestness, to stick to the preaching of the 
 Gospel as the highest earthly calling. 
 
 The whole generation of men of the age of Dr. 
 Gladden, Dr. Eggleston, and myself, who were ten 
 years younger than Dr. Holland, read his earlier works 
 with the greatest interest, and we feel that we owe to 
 him a debt of gratitude which we can never repay, for 
 the influence he exercised upon our lives. 
 
 You have heard here to-night how Dr. Holland 
 was interested in the work of, and had helped to build 
 up, three churches in this city. His love for this Me- 
 morial Church is well known to this audience. In 
 New York he united with the Brick Church. And 
 now, during the last summer of his life, he has been 
 engaged in the work of enlarging and almost rebuild- 
 ing the church at Alexandria Bay, on the St. Lawrence, 
 originally built by Rev. Dr. Bethune. 
 
 [The speaker then read a statement by one of the 
 editors of the magazine, describing Dr. Holland's last 
 day at his office, which was the last day of his life.] 
 
 " Dr. Holland was at his post till the very last. 
 His last day was a busy one, and one full of interest 
 and pleasure. He was writing his editorials ; he was 
 talking over new projects ; he had time to go out to 
 see some beautiful stained-glass windows, whose rich 
 and exquisite tones gave him the greatest delight ; but 
 especially the day was devoted by him to thoughts of 
 
20 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 our late President, whom he knew personally. The 
 first thing he said in the morning when he came in was 
 something about Garfield ; he burst out with an ejacu- 
 lation of ' What a magnificent man the President was ! 
 — what a knight-errant!' He went on to describe his 
 appearance in the House of Representatives, the hush 
 that went over the House when he arose to speak, and 
 the ease and courtliness of his bearing. 
 
 " Dr. Holland was engaged that day in writing an 
 editorial (which remains unfinished) on poverty as a 
 means of developing character ; and his illustrations 
 were taken from the lives of Lincoln and Garfield. 
 While writing this a book was handed to him, enti- 
 tled ' Garfield's Words.' For an hour or so he pored 
 over its pages, reading aloud to one of his associates 
 the passages that struck him as most telling. He 
 laughed his approval at one bit after another of sen- 
 tentious humor ; his voice trembled at every passage 
 made pathetic by the President's tragic fate. Among 
 the quotations he was greatly pleased to find one pe- 
 culiarly appropriate to the subject of which he was at 
 that very moment treating. 
 
 "The last poem that was submitted to him as edi- 
 tor, and accepted by him, was a poem on Garfield, 
 written by one of the younger members of the edito- 
 rial staff; and the last words that he himself wrote, in 
 the unfinished editorial, were about the President, and 
 might almost be used as his own epitaph." 
 
A FAITHFUL MINISTRY 
 
 SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IN THE NORTH CHURCH, SPRINGFIELD, MASS. 
 
 Sunday Morning, October 16, 1881 
 
 By the Rev. WASHINGTON GLADDEN 
 
 PASTOR OF THE CHURCH 
 
I am among you as he that serveth.— Luke xxii. 27, 
 
SERMON. 
 
 It is both just and becoming that the pulpit of this 
 church should record the passing of a good man, whose 
 life was largely identified with its earlier years ; whose 
 name is often written on its records ; to whom the Church 
 owes a large debt for wise direction, and hearty im- 
 pulse, and faithful work ; who owed something, per- 
 haps, to the Church for moral quickening and inspiration 
 received in its communion ; who went out from you 
 with your blessing, to be one of the leaders of a suc- 
 cessful religious organization in another part of the city, 
 and who, finally, going forth from this city, where the 
 foundations of his fame had been securely laid, entered 
 upon an ampler ministry as friend and teacher and 
 leader of men. 
 
 The relation of Dr. Holland to this church is worthy 
 of being recalled to-day, because it shows how active a 
 part a busy man can take in the work of a religious so- 
 ciety to which he belongs, and because it helps to illus- 
 trate his character. 
 
 Dr. Holland and Mrs. Holland were admitted to 
 this church by letter from the South Congregational 
 Church of this city, September 3, 1854. The Rev. 
 Raymond H. Seeley was then pastor, and the church 
 was just nine years old. So far as the records show, 
 he was not conspicuous in the work of the Church for a 
 year or more. In the autumn of 1856 he was placed 
 on an important committee, to which certain sugges- 
 tions of the County Conference were referred. When 
 
24 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 the pastor, Mr. Seeley, resigned, he was made a mem- 
 ber of the Committee of Supply ; and it was through his 
 agency that the Rev. James Drummond was introduced 
 to this church. The records show that a report was 
 read to the church by him, recommending Mr. Drum- 
 mond, who was chosen pastor. From this time onward 
 his activity in church affairs became more marked ; his 
 name often appears in the minutes, and it is evident 
 that he is by no means one of the honorary members. 
 In January, 1859, he is made a member of the Standing 
 Committee of the church. At the date November 14, 
 1 86 1, we find his name signed as one of a committee to a 
 tender and beautiful letter, adopted by the church at the 
 Thursday evening meeting, and addressed to Mr. Drum- 
 mond, the pastor, then seriously ill, testifying, in language 
 which to the sick man must have been very grateful, of 
 the love of his people and their desire for his recovery. 
 Dr. Holland was always a loyal friend of his pastors, 
 as every one of them will testify, but there was some- 
 thing especially close and sympathetic in his relation to 
 Mr. Drummond ; and in studying the influences that 
 helped to shape his character, I think we shall be led 
 to put much emphasis upon the ministrations of this 
 true servant of God. Mr. Drummond was a minister 
 quite out of the common. He was a seer, a poet, a 
 teacher of lofty inspiration, a liberal man in the best 
 sense of that word. Brave, open-minded, full of enthu- 
 siasm, the sermons that he has left show what manner 
 of man he was. Now, Dr. Holland had always been a 
 good writer, skilful and happy in his way of putting 
 things ; but it was not until Mr. Drummond became his 
 pastor and friend that his writing began to assume that 
 lofty quality, that prophetic tone, which was the secret of 
 his power. The " Titcomb Letters " were written in the 
 
A Faithful Ministry. 25 
 
 autumn of 1858. Mr. Drummond's pastorate began in 
 June of that year. Of course this element was in the man, 
 but I am sure that the fire of Mr. Drummond's inspired 
 enthusiasm helped to bring it out ; and I shall always be- 
 lieve that through this short ministry of James Drum- 
 mond in the North Church a great moral quickening was 
 given to Dr. Holland, and through him to the world. 
 
 During Mr. Drummond's pastorate he was chosen — 
 April 16, i860 — a member of the Parish Committee. 
 This was after the " Titcomb Letters," " Bitter-Sweet," 
 and " Gold Foil " had been published, and just as he 
 was issuing " Miss Gilbert's Career." As a lecturer he 
 was in great demand. What with his newspaper work, 
 his book work, and his lecturing, he must have been 
 heavily laden ; yet for the next five years — probably the 
 busiest years of his life — he remained on the Parish 
 Committee of this society, and labored with such zeal 
 and devotion in that difficult and often thankless posi- 
 tion, that when he resigned, in July, 1865, to go with 
 the colony of fifty-five members that formed the Memo- 
 rial Church, the cordial thanks of the parish were voted 
 to him and to Mr. Atwater, always associated with him, 
 for their arduous and faithful services during the whole 
 period of their membership on that committee. During 
 all this time he was also the leader of the choir. I do 
 not know precisely when he took that position ; I know 
 that I heard his pure tenor voice in the gallery of the 
 old North Church in January, 1859. I shall always re- 
 member him, as he stood there, with his hymn-book 
 held level with his eyes, singing the hymn — 
 
 " Jesus, lover of my soul," 
 
 to a beautiful selection. It was quite evident to one 
 who saw and heard him singing, that it was something 
 
26 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 more than a performance — that it was worship. His 
 services in connection with this choir, his faithfulness in 
 making long journeys, when on his lecturing tours, to 
 be at his post every Sunday, have been referred to in 
 the journals ; and the circumstance was characteristic 
 of the man. It should also be noted that this was 
 wholly a labor of love on his part ; the parish made an 
 appropriation for music — two-thirds of what it now ap- 
 propriates — but he took none of it ; what he did was 
 done heartily, as unto the Lord. 
 
 Comparatively few of you were with him in this fel- 
 lowship, but there are some who remember him well. 
 It was sixteen years ago that his connection with this 
 church ceased ; it is ten years ago that he removed 
 from this city, but Springfield has always cherished his 
 name among the most honored names of its local his- 
 tory, and our people have felt a just pride in his well- 
 earned success. 
 
 It is not necessary that I should enter to-day upon 
 any biographical sketch of Dr. Holland's life. The 
 newspapers have covered that field. I will only endea- 
 vor to assist you, as I may be able, in forming some 
 clear estimate of Dr. Holland's character as a man and 
 of his work as a writer. 
 
 Dr. Holland's life, as has been said, was that of a 
 typical American. He began to work out its tough 
 problems where so many of the successful men of our 
 country have begun, in a farming district in New Eng- 
 land. His parents were humble, but godly and honest 
 folk ; the picture of his father that he has given us in that 
 homely ballad of " Daniel Gray " shows us a genuine 
 Yankee saint, of sturdy morality, of austere but unfal- 
 tering faith, of reticent emotion. In such a home, where 
 religion was always the principal thing, and where 
 
A Faithful Ministry. 27 
 
 honest toil never kept very far in the van of pursuing 
 want, our friend's childhood was spent ; and whatever 
 else he failed to get from its rustic culture, he went forth 
 from it with a hearty respect for the great values of 
 character, a chivalric reverence for woman, a great love 
 for home and its ministries, and an unfailing faith in 
 God. 
 
 His early life was a series of unsuccessful attempts 
 to whittle something out of life in Yankee fashion. He 
 knew that he had something in him, but just what it 
 was it took him some time to find out. Perhaps he 
 would have found out sooner if the surroundings of his 
 early years had been more bookish. But repeated fail- 
 ures did not dishearten him. Some of the changes of 
 calling must not, indeed, be classed as failures ; they 
 were only the expedients of a shifty Yankee who could 
 " turn his hand " from one trade to another if need were. 
 Penmanship, daguerreotypy, medicine, pedagogy, were 
 one after another taken up and laid aside, and at length, 
 at the age of thirty, he found the tool that he had been 
 looking for, with which to carve out fame and fortune, 
 and behold, it was a pen ! 
 
 All this checkered experience shows sound principle 
 and steadfast purpose. He never lowered himself in 
 the days of need ; his hands were never soiled with dis- 
 honesty nor with mercenary work ; through all the nar- 
 row paths of exigent circumstance he bore himself like 
 a gentleman. And although he was sensitive and must 
 have been rather dubious in spirit sometimes, yet he 
 kept on, with honest patience and perseverance, until he 
 struck the trail that led him out of the wilderness. 
 
 Nine years of strenuous editorial work had trained 
 his powers of literary expression, which had also ranged 
 somewhat in wider fields — the excellent History of 
 
28 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 Massachusetts, and the local novel "The Bay Path," 
 being the fruits of this period, when his Titcomb's 
 " Letters to Young People" were begun in the Repub- 
 lican and gave him wide and immediate fame. He was 
 at once in request as a lecturer, and his letters, gathered 
 into a volume, found a great multitude of readers and 
 made him friends in every part of the country. It is 
 from the publication of this volume that his success as 
 an author dates ; and his career since that time has 
 been one of unexampled prosperity. I do not think 
 that any other American author, by purely literary work, 
 has achieved so great a fortune. 
 
 The success of his " Letters to Young People" was 
 a great and inspiring recompense to a man who had 
 worked hard and waited patiently. The motive of this 
 work had been the highest — the desire to guide young 
 people into wise and safe ways of living, to share with 
 them the lessons of his own experience, to inspire them 
 with his own lofty purpose ; he had taken his readers 
 into his confidence, and had talked with them, in a 
 wholesome and cheery way, without a chip of cant or a 
 suggestion of snivel, about the great duties and choices 
 of every-day life, that never can be commonplace, no 
 matter how common they may be ; and the response 
 which the generation of readers, then young, made 
 to his earnest words, came to him like a benediction. 
 And when, a year later, he gave to the world his second 
 volume of essays, bearing the title " Gold Foil," he 
 opened his heart to his friends in this frank confession : 
 
 " A few months ago the pen that traces these lines 
 commenced a series of letters to the young. The letters 
 accumulated and grew into a book ; and this book, with 
 honest aims and modest pretensions, has a place to-day 
 in many thousand homes, while it has been read by 
 
A Faithful Ministry 29 
 
 hundreds and thousands of men and women in every 
 part of the country. More and better than this, it has 
 become an inspiring, moving, and directing power in a 
 great aggregate of young life. I say this with that kind 
 of gladness and gratitude which admits of little pride. I 
 say it because it has been said to me — revealed to me 
 in letters brimming with thankfulness and overflowing 
 with friendliness ; expressed to me in silent pressures 
 of the hand — pressures so full of meaning that I in- 
 voluntarily looked at my palm to see if a jewel had not 
 been left in it ; uttered to me by eyes full of interest 
 and pleasure ; told to me in plain and homely words 
 in the presence of tears that came unbidden .... 
 to vouch for their honesty. To say that all this makes 
 me happy would not be to say all that I feel. I ac- 
 count the honor of occupying a pure place in the popular 
 heart, of being welcomed in God 's name into the affec- 
 tionate confidence of those for whom life has high mean- 
 ings and high issues, of being recognized as among the 
 beneficent forces of society — the greatest honor to be 
 worked for and won under the stars." 
 
 That shows you the core of the heart of Josiah Gil- 
 bert Holland. There is no affectation about it ; it is the 
 sincere, simple, manly truth. I know that the tears fell 
 on the paper whereon these words were written. Other 
 men would have been more reticent about it, but, being 
 so, they would not have been Dr. Holland ; nor could 
 they, perhaps, without this very frankness, even though 
 gifted with keener insight and more delicate critical 
 taste, ever have won the confidence and affection that 
 called forth this outburst of gratitude and aspiration. 
 But the central aim, the ruling purpose of the man, are 
 set forth in these unstinted words more perfectly than 
 any one else could hope to utter them. To be partner 
 
30 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 with " those for whom life has high meanings and great 
 issues," to be "recognized as among the beneficent 
 forces of society," this was indeed his high calling — a 
 calling that he never forgot, and never forsook until the 
 day of his death. To this first love of his authorhood 
 he was always faithful ; this impulse thrills on all the 
 pages that he ever wrote. 
 
 When I first met him, here in Springfield, he was 
 correcting the proofs of one of these chapters in " Gold 
 Foil." The essays were then appearing weekly in the 
 Saturday Republican, under the heading "Preachings 
 from Popular Proverbs." You remember that this is 
 the constructive idea of the series ; they are a group of 
 homilies based on proverbs more or less common. As 
 he put the proof-slips into my hands, he said, jocosely : 
 " My good mother has never been quite reconciled to 
 my failure to become a minister — that was the calling 
 she had chosen for me ; and I tell her that now at 
 length her ambition must be satisfied." Preacher, in- 
 deed, he always was. It mattered little what form his 
 writing might take — essay, editorial, poem, novel — 
 there was always something of the sermon in it. The 
 critics who make this an accusation against him need 
 not be disputed ; it is true. If art, as Taine affirms, 
 can have no moral purpose, then certainly Dr. Holland 
 was not distinctively an artist; but then, with equal cer- 
 tainty, there is something higher than art. If the poem 
 or the novel that sets forth the ideals of high morality, 
 and urges men toward them, is in bad literary form 
 then Dr. Holland's work must be pronounced defective 
 froin the standpoint of criticism. I do not choose here 
 to discuss that question. It is enough to say that Dr. 
 Holland had his own theory of literary art — a theory 
 which is carefully worked out in his poem "Kathrina/ ' 
 
A Faithful Ministry. 31 
 
 and that it is very different from that of Taine. It was, 
 in short, that art is not for pleasure, but for ministry — 
 that it is degraded and accursed when it finds no end 
 beyond itself. The words of Kathrina, spoken to her 
 husband, express the author's deliberate judgment on 
 this point : 
 
 " Every gift 
 That God bestows on men holds in itself 
 The secret of its office, like the rake 
 The gardener wields. The rake was made to till — 
 Was fashioned, head and handle, for just that ; 
 And if, by grace of God, you hold a gift 
 So fashioned and adapted, that it stands 
 In like relation of supremest use 
 To life of men, the office of your gift 
 Has perfect definition. Gift like this 
 Is yours, my husband. In your facile hands 
 God placed it for the service of himself, 
 In service of your kind. Taking this gift, 
 And using it for God and for the world, 
 In your own way, and in your own best way ; 
 Seeking for light and knowledge everywhere 
 To guide your careful hand, and opening wide 
 To spiritual influx all your soul, 
 That so your Master may breathe into you, 
 And breathe His great life through you, in such forms 
 Of pure presentment as he gives you skill 
 To build withal — that's all of art — for you. 
 Art is an instrument, and not an end — 
 A servant, not a master, nor a god 
 To be bowed down to." 
 
 That is Dr. Holland's theory of literary art, and, 
 whatever else you may say about him, you cannot deny 
 that his methods were intelligently chosen and consist- 
 ently followed. Of course, there is nothing original in 
 all this. This notion of what gifts are for is borrowed 
 
32 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 from a very old book ; it is the application to the work 
 of the writer of the words of the Master — of Him whom 
 Dr. Holland owned as Master : " I came not to be min- 
 istered unto, but to minister; " " I am among- you as He 
 that serveth." It is the Christian law and the Chris- 
 tian motive extended into the world of letters. To the 
 paganism that now exalts itself in much of our litera- 
 ture it seems foolishness, but there are still a few left 
 who believe that it is the power of God and the wisdom 
 of God. 
 
 " The habit of Dr. Holland's mind," as was said of 
 him while he was yet alive, " is peculiarly ethical. It is 
 impossible for him not to think of the moral questions 
 that underlie all social phenomena. To look upon life 
 merely as a spectacle, and simply to make a picture of 
 it, however accurate, would seem to him an unworthy 
 task. He looks upon society as the school in which 
 character is formed, and if the school is badly managed 
 he will say so," because this product of character is the 
 thing in which his supreme interest centres. 
 
 We may as well admit then, for good and all, that 
 Dr. Holland was essentially a preacher. If that is any 
 discredit to him, his memory must bear it. It is, per- 
 haps, superfluous for me to say in this place that I do 
 not count it any discredit to him — that I do not admit 
 that there is any calling higher than the calling of the 
 preacher, nor any work that calls for larger endowment 
 or wider culture than the preacher's work demands. 
 
 "Dr. Holland's methods of preaching were various 
 and well chosen. Upon the platform, so long as he 
 had strength for such service, he lifted up his voice in be- 
 half of truth and righteousness; and if the lyceum had 
 kept to such straightforward and wholesome talk as he 
 always dealt in, the lyceum would not have ceased to be 
 
A Faithful Ministry. 33 
 
 a power in the land. When it demitted the function of 
 teaching and went into the show business — exhibiting 
 for an admission fee all sorts of literary and unliterary 
 monstrosities — then its days were numbered. But Dr. 
 Holland's lyceum lectures, gathered into two snug vol- 
 umes,' are all instinct with sound morality and whole- 
 some common sense, and all aglow with the author's 
 hearty purpose to help his hearers into cleaner and 
 brighter and larger living. He was a pleasant speaker, 
 too, as we remember him — dignified, direct, convincing ; 
 with the living voice he was no mean preacher. 
 
 His earlier essays, those in the " Titcomb Letters," 
 in " Gold Foil/' in " Lessons in Life," in " Letters to the 
 Joneses," as well as his later editorials, were, of course, 
 in great part ethical or religious in their character. In 
 those earlier volumes, such titles as " Providence," 
 " Alms-Giving," " Does Sensuality Pay ? " " The Sins of 
 Our Neighbors," " The Canonization of the Vicious," 
 " The Food of Life," " Unnecessary Burdens," " Faith 
 in Humanity," " Truth and Truthfulness," show the 
 bent of the author's mind ; and all recent readers of 
 his magazine know how often the " Topics of the Time " 
 are topics of the very highest human concernment — 
 themes with which the pulpit is appointed to deal. I 
 think that the service rendered by Dr. Holland to pub- 
 lic morality by his editorial discussions in Scribner s 
 Monthly, by his hot indignation against the rascalities 
 of politics, by his trenchant assaults upon the vices of 
 the time, by his hearty advocacy of the old-fashioned 
 virtues of temperance and thrift and self-help, by his 
 unfaltering assertion of the supremacy of the values of 
 character above the values of art, has been worth to this 
 generation more than the generation will ever know till 
 it measures the harvests of time in the garners of eternity. 
 
34 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 Of Dr. Holland's novels substantially the same 
 thing may be said. Most, if not all of them, were novels 
 with a purpose. It was not merely for the sake of telling 
 a pleasant story, not merely for the sake of describing 
 real life, that he wrote, but also with the ulterior pur- 
 pose of exposing and redressing some wrongs, of help- 
 ing forward some good causes, of making social life 
 better than it is. There are those who say that this is 
 not good art. The fact is that there are not a few 
 people nowadays without a purpose, and these are 
 not apt to take kindly to novels with a purpose. But 
 when they set up their standard of purposelessness, and 
 call on the world to conform to them, we must beg to 
 demur. The history of literary art does not warrant 
 their canons. The classics of fiction comprise many 
 tales whose conscious end was service. Shall we say 
 that Brooke's " Fool of Quality," and Goldsmith's 
 " Vicar of Wakefield," and George Eliot's " Felix Holt," 
 and Charles Kingsley's " Alton Locke," and Dickens's 
 " Nicholas Nickleby " and " Bleak House," and Mrs. 
 Stowe's " Uncle Tom's Cabin," and Charles Reade's 
 "Put Yourself in His Place," are not legitimate fiction, 
 because they try to do a little good while they give a 
 little pleasure ? Dr. Holland had thought this matter 
 all over early in his career, as he shows us in " Kath- 
 rina," and his judgment upon it never wavered. An 
 editorial of his, in a late number of his magazine, deals 
 with it vigorously. He speaks of this doctrine, that art 
 has no higher end than pleasure, with strong dissent. 
 "We claim for the novel," he says, "the very broadest 
 field. It may illustrate history, like the novels of Wal- 
 ter Scott ; or philosophy, like those of George Eliot ; 
 or religion, like those of George MacDonald ; or do- 
 mestic and political economy, like those of the late Mrs. 
 
 
A Faithful Ministry. 35 
 
 Sedgwick ; or it may represent the ludicrous side of 
 human nature and human society, like many of those of 
 Dickens and Thackeray ; or it may present the lighter 
 social topics and types, like those of James and Howells ; 
 or it may revel in the ingenuities of intricate plots, like 
 those of Collins and Reade. Every novel and every sort 
 of novel is legitimate if it be well written." I .think that 
 this doctrine of art is vastly higher and more catholic 
 than that which he is confuting. And when he goes on to 
 say, in good round words, " The man who denies to art 
 any kind of service to humanity which it can perform is 
 either a fool or a trifler," I confess that he carries with 
 him my sympathy. 
 
 At any rate, it is enough to say that he understood 
 what he was about when he wrote novels with a pur- 
 pose. And it must be admitted by everybody that his 
 purposes were high and pure ; that the blows he struck 
 with this good weapon of fiction were telling blows. 
 
 The same thing is true of his poems. All of his 
 principal poems take hold of great themes, deal with the 
 great interests of character and the great spiritual laws. 
 We may not agree with him in all the lessons that he 
 seeks to teach in these poems — I own that I do not; but 
 we cannot deny the lofty purpose and the earnest 
 thought that pulsate through them all. Whatever we 
 may say of their philosophy, the spirit that animates 
 them is large and free. 
 
 When I thus exalt the moral and religious element 
 that characterizes all that Dr. Holland wrote, I would 
 not wish to be understood as denying to his stories and 
 poems that quality which the pagan critics insist upon — • 
 the power of giving pleasure : not only in the felicitous 
 and picturesque rhetoric and the stirring music of his 
 words, but also in his quick insight into character, and 
 
36 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 his happy delineations of men and manners, he has de- 
 lighted a great multitude of readers. In his stones 
 especially, while he has always aimed at some high pur- 
 pose, he has succeeded in imparting a great deal of 
 pleasure, not only to those who read for the plot, but 
 also to those who enjoy the unfolding of character and 
 the representation of life. It was never Dr. Holland's 
 doctrine that one who would do men good must study 
 to displease them. Quite otherwise. And he has hon- 
 estly striven, and not without success, not only to leave 
 the world better than he found it, but also to leave it 
 happier. 
 
 Such, then, was the kind of work to which our friend 
 gave his life. To serve the present age, and if to please, 
 to please that he might serve — this was his calling, as 
 he understood it ; this was the calling that he faithfully 
 followed. He was a man of letters who believed that 
 his art as well as his property, his powers as well as 
 his emotions, ought to be consecrated to the service of 
 God and humanity. 
 
 He sprang from a lowly origin, he reached wealth, 
 and fame, and high station ; but he never lost his sym- 
 pathy with the humbler classes ; he never ceased to 
 honor all men. True democrat was he to the core, to 
 the day of his death. 
 
 He had a quick and sure intuition of the conscious- 
 ness of his time. He knew what men were thinking 
 about. He discerned the difficulties of the average 
 thinker, the problems with which he was struggling, 
 and he knew how, with deft and homely phrase, to put 
 him on the track of a right solution. This was one 
 great secret of his success as a writer, and especially 
 as an editor. He was thoroughly en rapport with his 
 contemporaries ; not with the few foremost of them, but 
 
A Faithful Ministry. 37 
 
 with the great mass of them. All his writings are full 
 of " topics of the time." People of coming generations 
 who wish to learn what the intellectual life of the aver- 
 age American has been through the last quarter of a 
 century, will find it as fairly outlined for them in the 
 writings of Dr. Holland as they will find it anywhere. 
 
 To all these problems he brought not only a shrewd 
 common sense, but an uncompromising idealism. " Ide- 
 als," he says himself, "are the world's masters. . . . 
 That which is godlike in men goes ahead of them 
 into some form of their own choosing, to beckon them 
 toward perfection and to lead them toward God." Cer- 
 tainly this was true of him. His ideals of right, and 
 truth, and purity, ruled all his thinking, shaped all his 
 teaching. He never descended in his journalism to the 
 level of the corner-grocery moralist ; he never trailed 
 his standards in the dirt; he was always calling men 
 up higher. 
 
 He was a true and generous friend. With quick 
 sympathies and warm enthusiasms, he was always ready 
 to bear the burdens of others, and his hearty words and 
 painstaking services have lightened many a heart. 
 
 But I shall sum up all, and explain all, when I say 
 that Dr. Holland was a Christian man. The sincere 
 and manly faith in God and in his son Jesus Christ, 
 which he was never ashamed to confess, was the plastic 
 force by which his character was formed and his pur- 
 poses were shaped. All that I have said about him is 
 but an expansion of this sentence. I have simply 
 shown you how Christianity expressed itself in his life 
 and work. He was a servant of the Master who went 
 about doing good. He was a Christian, moreover, to 
 whom life was supreme and dogma always subordinate. 
 If he hated anything with a hearty hatred, it was big- 
 
38 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 otry. With the people whose religion is nothing but 
 " orthodoxy," to whom the formularies of doctrine are 
 more than the fruits of character, he found it hard to 
 have patience. " A Christianity which consists only of 
 opinions," he said not long ago, " is a very shabby arti- 
 cle, and we do not pretend to believe in it. The Chris- 
 tianity which is a divine life, a divine inspiration, and a 
 divine hope, is so inexpressibly dear to so many people, 
 it is such a help to them in their struggles with their 
 grosser natures, it gives to life and death so stupendous 
 a meaning, it is such a comfort in trouble and sorrow 
 and burden-bearing, that we should need to be inhuman 
 not to regard the efforts aimed at its overthrow as 
 aimed at the dearest interests of the human race." It 
 was because he believed with such unconquerable faith 
 in Christianity as a life and an experience, that his wrath 
 was kindled against the men who sought to desiccate it 
 into formularies, and to cast out of the Church all holy 
 and saintly servants of Christ who cannot chew these 
 theological chips. For the ringing words that he has 
 uttered in defence of the liberty that always ought to be 
 where the Spirit of the Lord is, the Church of God re- 
 mains his debtor. 
 
 Suddenly, though not without warning, this servant 
 of God has been called home. One cannot help recall- 
 ing, when this word home is written, that poem of his 
 on the " Two Homes," that we first read only a few 
 months ago : 
 
 "I hasten homeward, through the gathering night, 
 Toward the dear ones who in expectance sweet 
 Await the coming of my weary feet, 
 With faces in the hearth-fire glowing bright, 
 And please my heart with many a lovely sight 
 
A Faithful Ministry. 39 
 
 Of way-worn neighbors, stepping from the street 
 
 Through doors thrown wide, and bursts of light that greet 
 
 Their entrance, painting all their path with white ; 
 
 And then I think, with a great thrill of bliss, 
 
 That all the world, and all of life it brings, 
 
 Tell me true tales of other realms than this, 
 
 As faithful types of spiritual things. 
 
 And so I know that home's rewarding kiss 
 
 Insures the hope of heaven that in me springs." 
 
 From the garnered sweetness of one of these homes 
 he has gone, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, 
 to the unknown glories of the other. But he did not 
 wait long upon that threshold for his welcome. A great 
 number of those whose purposes he has strengthened, 
 whose hearts he has comforted, were there before him, 
 and we can only imagine the greeting with which they 
 have received him into those everlasting habitations. 
 Farewell, old friend ! The world that thou hast left is 
 poorer because thou art not here ; but the world to 
 which thou hast gone has gained something of reality 
 and something of home-likeness since thou hast passed 
 within its portals. There, as well as here, is service 
 for thee ; and thou wilt have new truths to hearten us, 
 new tales to tell us, new songs to sing us when we see 
 thee again. Till then, farewell ! 
 
THE PERFECT MAN 
 
 SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IN THE REFORMED CHURCH AT ALEXANDRIA BAY, N. Y. 
 
 Sunday, October 23, 1881 
 
 By the Rev. HENRY DE VRIES 
 
 PASTOR OF THE CHURCH- 
 
Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of 
 that man is peace. — Psalms, xxxvii. 37. 
 
SERMON. 
 
 All men are followers. The inclination to imitate is 
 so strong that but few are really original. Conscious- 
 ly, or unconsciously, we follow some example. Paul 
 could say, " Be ye followers of me, even as I am of 
 Christ." Happy the man that has put a noble and 
 pure ideal before him ! 
 
 The Psalmist bids us " Mark the perfect man, and 
 behold the upright," and there is a peculiar pleasure 
 in looking upon a true man, a noble manhood. It is 
 our mournful pleasure, this morning, to obey this in- 
 junction to mark the perfect man and behold the up- 
 right who has lived among us, whose influence we all 
 have felt, whose nobility of soul we all have witnessed. 
 God, whose way is in the sanctuary, round about whom 
 are clouds and darkness, has taken him away from us, 
 and while we mourn the loss of a great man and a lov- 
 ing friend, we bow the head and say, in reverence and 
 godly fear, " Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in 
 thy sight." 
 
 In the light of our text we propose briefly to speak 
 of the character of Dr. Holland. 
 
 The word perfect does not mean complete. The 
 opening rosebud is perfect, the blooming rose is only 
 complete. There may be perfect conception, which is 
 the ideal, without complete execution, which is the real. 
 That stately structure, the Cathedral of Cologne, has 
 been incomplete for hundreds of years, yet the world 
 never doubted that it was a perfect piece of architec- 
 
44 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 ture. The superficial might look only upon the unfin- 
 ished towers and pinnacles, upon the scaffoldings and 
 busy workmen, the raw materials and clumsy tools, and 
 call it very imperfect ; but the educated eye would see 
 through all this and recognize the perfect ideal of 
 beauty and stateliness. Though still unfinished as a 
 whole, yet the foundations broad and massive, the walls 
 strong and solid, the lines and arches in perfect sym- 
 metry, the steeples and pinnacles towering upward, all 
 speak of perfection of conception and promise perfec- 
 tion in execution. 
 
 So is the perfect man, the temple of the Holy Ghost. 
 He is not yet complete ; there are still the weaknesses, 
 the imperfections, the besetting sins, that mar and often 
 hide the beauty of the inward temple that the heavenly 
 Workman is building. Yet the ideal, the plan is per- 
 fect, and is promise and pledge of the fullest completion. 
 
 Let us apply this to the perfect man. What is the 
 foundation upon which his perfectness is built ? Accord- 
 ing to the work of God, perfection which is acceptable 
 before God is that which is found in Christ Jesus, which 
 proceeds from the new life born of the Holy Ghost. In 
 other words, the only perfect man is he that is genu- 
 inely converted of God's spirit, and is a new creature 
 in Christ Jesus. Dr. Holland's whole noble manhood, 
 righteous and true and beautiful, was founded upon the 
 fact of his being a follower of Christ — that is, a Christian 
 in the truest sense of the word. I had the honor and 
 pleasure of his confidence. He told me that, when little 
 more than a boy, he felt it his duty to join the Church, 
 which he did. He had many doubts and struggles, 
 sometimes behaved in a manner not becoming a mem- 
 ber of the Church ; yet at communion seasons he felt it 
 was his right and his duty to partake of the Sacrament, 
 
The Perfect Man. 45 
 
 though many seemed to think he^had no right what- 
 ever. So he clung to the Church. At twenty-eight 
 years of age he left his home in Springfield for the 
 South, leaving his young wife also, because necessity 
 compelled him. In his adversity an inexpressible sad- 
 ness came over him. " I wept and prayed," he said, 
 " day and night, in the school and in the fields ; prayed 
 as I never prayed before — prayer which God heard, for 
 then his peace came upon me." This was the simple 
 story of his conversion. His subsequent life proved 
 the genuineness of his confession. Of that confession 
 he was never ashamed. He carried his religion with 
 him into all his relations of life. In all his writings, 
 earlier and later, in every place where he lived, on 
 every platform from which he spoke, his trumpet gave 
 no uncertain sound. It was this divine principle in his 
 life, this love of God to which he had opened his heart, 
 that formed the strong foundation of Dr. Holland's no- 
 ble manhood. 
 
 Of the superstructure we can hardly speak. That 
 character so beautifully rounded we cannot describe 
 adequately. There you found the stern qualities that 
 characterize the man blended with the gentler which 
 adorn the woman. David asks, " Lord, who shall abide 
 in thy tabernacle, who shall dwell on thy holy hill?" 
 and the answer comes, " He that walketh uprightly, 
 and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in 
 his heart." These are the walls, the main supports, the 
 buttresses of all character. No character is perfect ex- 
 cept the character strong in righteousness and truth. 
 Righteousness and judgment are the pillars of God's 
 throne ; and not only of God's throne, but of every 
 man's throne, which is his character. Dr. Holland was 
 true as steel, but transparent as crystal. Of him could 
 
46 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 be said what Christ said of Nathaniel, " Behold an Is- 
 raelite in whom there is no guile." When you looked 
 on that kingly countenance, into that clear, open eye, 
 you felt more than understood that that eye was the 
 mirror of a truthful soul ; that there was sincerity, sim- 
 plicity, complete guilelessness. He knew no mean- 
 ness ; all trickery was utterly foreign to him ; if nec- 
 essary, he would, as David has it, swear to his own 
 hurt, and change not. And that truth-loving soul 
 hated all kinds of falsehood and injustice. Though he 
 sought ever to save the sinner, yet he condemned his 
 sin. With what ardor and spirit did he speak and 
 write against all vice ! with what righteous indignation 
 did he lift up his voice against all hypocrisy and mean- 
 ness, and wrong and oppression ! He spared none ; 
 but, calling ugly things by their ugly names, he de- 
 nounced them wherever he found them. And yet 
 none could call him censorious or uncharitable. While 
 he was righteous and just, undaunted as true knight 
 with flashing eye and holy wrath, yet how gentle, how 
 meek, how loving a disposition was his ! During the 
 four years of my connection with Dr. Holland, I have 
 often likened him to John, the apostle of love. He 
 adorned the doctrine of Christ with all the gentler 
 graces. 
 
 How tenderly did he love his family — and he was 
 manly enough to show it. He was proud of his family 
 as they were of him. His home was his paradise, and 
 love was its atmosphere. Of his love to his friends we 
 all can speak ; how cheering, how encouraging, were 
 his words, how sound his advice, how generous his 
 help, whenever called upon ! 
 
 Of his love to human kind, his works speak more 
 eloquently than any praise of ours. One day he said 
 
The Perfect Man. 47 
 
 to me, " I have worked every day for forty years, and 
 worked hard." And what was the motive ? Love of 
 money ? Love of fame ? No ; love of men. Dr. Hol- 
 land was a preacher — a born preacher — a minister of 
 the gospel of peace and purity. That was his life- 
 work. That busy brain of his was always observing, 
 always taking in, actual life ; the street, the store, the 
 office, were his school ; and that busy pen of his hurried 
 over the paper to give lessons of wisdom to millions of 
 souls. He was the preacher of the people ; he wrote 
 for the people ; he did not ascend some lofty mountain- 
 peak to dream of unattainable things, but he descended 
 to the common level, and spoke as common people 
 speak of common things, of common follies, leading 
 common folks to the common Saviour. I once asked 
 him, " Doctor, would you not once preach for me ? " 
 He answered, " If I were well." I asked again, " Did 
 you ever preach ? " And with that significant smile of 
 his he said, " Often." 
 
 Often and eloquently did he preach sermons to 
 millions — sermons that must have saved lost sons and 
 lost daughters ; that taught mothers how to love their 
 children, fathers how to be fathers indeed, husbands what 
 the name of husband means. But where should I end 
 in speaking of the persons to whom he spoke, the sub- 
 jects of which he treated, all the Joneses whom he 
 addressed ? And to all he taught the true philosophy 
 of faith, the true way of life. 
 
 And all this because of his love of God. The love 
 of God was with him the beginning and the end. The 
 word of God was his book of life ; the house of God a 
 house of feasting ; the people of God his brothers and 
 sisters ; the day of the Lord a day of rest and gladness. 
 His presence in the sanctuary was an inspiration to his 
 
48 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 pastor and to all that could see him. To hear him 
 sing in that melodious tenor, so distinctly pronouncing 
 every word with that deep feeling and wonderful pathos, 
 was a delight to the ear, but more so to the soul. One 
 day, singing that beautiful hymn — 
 
 " Gentle Jesus, how I love thee ! " 
 
 I was struck with the pathos in his singing. The way 
 in which he sang it — the deep feeling, the tearful eye — 
 were a revelation of the Christ-loving soul within. 
 
 Dr. Holland also believed in the Church in the 
 family. I hardly know whether it is right for me to 
 speak of his domestic devotional exercises. I do so 
 because this is a sacred hour, sacred to his memory — 
 and because of the influence which such holy lives 
 should have for us who try to follow them. With his 
 family he read the Scriptures, he bent the knee, he 
 prayed and sang. His reading of the Scriptures was 
 very touching. He sometimes stopped and reflected, 
 sometimes his voice became thick with emotion. His 
 prayer was child-like, fervent, simple, beautiful. 
 
 Shall I speak of his generous nature, of his knowl- 
 edge of men and the hearts of men? The secret of 
 this astonishing knowledge lies partly in his keen ob- 
 servations, partly in his knowledge of his own heart. 
 Walking home from the church one Sunday morning, 
 affectionately speaking of Dr. Bevan, his city pastor, 
 and of his sermons, he remarked: " I must acknowl- 
 edge every day that I find every sin, at least the germ 
 of every sin, in my own heart." It requires close heart- 
 searching and genuine honesty, and deep self-knowledge 
 and the light of God's Spirit, to make such a confes- 
 sion. If we mark this perfect man so as to follow him, 
 wc must come to this confession also. 
 
The Perfect Man. 49 
 
 " Mark the perfect man and behold the upright, for 
 the end of that man is peace ! " The force of the 
 whole sentence is in the final clause. 
 
 This is true in its broadest sense of Dr. Holland. 
 His end was not the morning when he died ; it was 
 the four years of silent suffering, of imminent danger, 
 of certain approaching death. He knew that death 
 was coming — death was possible at any moment. Yet 
 he dreaded it not. Undauntedly he looked Death in 
 the face, for he feared him not. He wrote me: "I trust, 
 if the change comes, I may be ready for the change. 
 Life is so sweet and significant to me that, whenever I 
 go, I shall ' cast one loving, lingering look behind.' " 
 Life was sweet, was significant to him. He enjoyed 
 life, his life-work was yielding precious rewards, he 
 had all that life could give, and he had every faculty 
 unimpaired, keen, and healthy to enjoy it. Then there 
 came the messenger, saying, " Prepare thy house, for 
 thou shalt die ; " and his answer, not in so many words, 
 but in every action, was, (; Lord I am ready ; Thy time 
 is my time ; Thy will is my will." Active, preparing 
 for vigorous work, glad to work, yet always reminded 
 by that troubled heart of the coming change, peaceful 
 and calm — so he lived till he died. Awful in its sudden- 
 ness, yet his end was peace. He slept in Jesus. That 
 gentle spirit, sanctified by many sufferings, chastened by 
 many afflictions, matured by the discipline of sixty-two 
 years of intense activity, of faithful service of God and 
 men, is now in the presence of God, reunited to friends 
 long gone before him. There that character, which here 
 he built, goes with him ; the perfect man in Christ Jesus 
 here is perfect and complete in Christ Jesus there. We 
 only saw the promise ; its fulfilling we see not yet. If 
 the promise was so great, what must the reality be ? 
 
50 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 Dr. Holland is not lost for us ; he is not dead — he 
 liveth. We shall see him again, more beautiful, more 
 Christ-like than we knew him here. Heaven is the 
 garden where the choice plants of God's planting 
 attain full maturity. And I heard a voice from heaven 
 saying, " Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord 
 from henceforth : yea, saith the spirit, that they may 
 rest from their labors and their works do follow them." 
 
 And we ? My friends, we cannot but mourn. That 
 vacant pew, draped in black; our beautiful church, where 
 every tint, every color, every appointment speak of him 
 whom we shall see no more; that beautiful Sunday- 
 school room, where his generosity and thoughtfulness 
 and helpfulness appear ; yonder library in mourning ; 
 yonder home, his Bonniecastle, which he loved so well ; 
 our entire village, where his manly form was so often 
 seen, so well beloved — all speak of him, and we love 
 him better than ever before ; and we thank our God 
 that so noble a specimen of Christian manhood came to 
 us and took up his abode with us. 
 
 But is this all ? — simply memorial services in the 
 church which he honored with his presence and kind- 
 ness ; a rehearsal of his virtues ; a fleeting desire to 
 be like him, and no more ? God forbid ! When God 
 sends righteous men into villages and cities, that their 
 light may shine, then God has something to say to such 
 communities, some lesson to teach, some good example 
 to give, a new impulse to impart. God has something 
 to teach us. God's voice speaks in Dr. Holland's life 
 and in Dr. Holland's death, especially to us the people 
 and churches of Alexandria Bay. We needed such a 
 man — not so much because of his wealth and what his 
 name might do for the place, as for what his personality, 
 his bright example, might do for us, men and women, 
 
The Perfect Man. 51 
 
 in the place. We need the same foundation on which 
 he stood, to build our characters and our hopes upon. 
 We must do the same work, must make the same con- 
 fession, must live the same life. We may not possess 
 his talents, we may not reach his literary attainments ; 
 his Christian character we may have, we must have, or 
 it will not be well with us. Therefore let us build a 
 memorial in this place, not only of marble in this house, 
 but of Christian manhood in our hearts, in our homes, 
 in our churches, in our community ; and thus render 
 thanks unto God who gave, who hath taken away, 
 whose name be blessed for evermore. Amen. 
 
A CHRISTIAN MAN OF LETTERS 
 
 SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IN THE BRICK PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEW YORK 
 
 On Sunday Evening, October 30, 1881 
 
 By the Rev. LLEWELLYN D. BE VAN, D.D. 
 
 PASTOR OF THE CHURCH 
 
He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good ; and whoso 
 trusteth in the Lord, happy is he. — Proverbs xvi. 20. 
 
 A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver. 
 — Proverbs xxv. 11. 
 
SERMON. 
 
 I shall not easily forget the shock caused by the 
 announcement of the death of Dr. Holland. I knew, as 
 he himself and his nearer friends knew, that he had 
 been living for some time under the shadow of a verdict 
 which medical skill had pronounced ; and yet who was 
 there that did not hope that perhaps even the learned 
 physicians were mistaken, or that care and God's 
 mercy might yet remove the disease and permit our 
 friend to live on for many years in the strength and en- 
 joyment of a ripe and mature age ? 
 
 On the Sunday morning previous to his death he 
 took his place in the church, and there, just beneath the 
 pulpit, I saw the grave and earnest countenance, the 
 tender and responsive eyes. Perhaps a little graver 
 than usual was the face, and perhaps, as I now recall 
 the eyes, there was a shadow that thinly veiled the light 
 of his outlooking. And yet this may be only the fancy 
 born of our present knowledge that death was already 
 at his heels, and that the communion service at which 
 he was present on that last Sabbath morning was soon 
 to be followed by the summons to enter into the higher 
 communion of the saints in light. In the full strength 
 of his mental powers — with the one exception of those 
 attacks of pain which exertion brought on, all his bodily 
 activities unabated, having gained a place of wide repu- 
 tation and large significance, wielding the peculiar in- 
 fluence of a popular magazine, conceiving the plans of 
 new labor, to accomplish which he felt himself more 
 
56 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 able than at any time ; and yet, with work done and 
 rounded off with noteworthy completeness, the call 
 came, and in a moment he disappeared from the eyes of 
 love and comradeship, and the watch of fellow-toilers, and 
 has left behind a pure memory, a good record, a healthy 
 inspiration, a name of strength. It is useful as it is be- 
 coming to endeavor to understand something of such 
 a man's life, to hear the voice that speaks from the 
 story of character and achievement which a true man 
 leaves for us to read ; for you may be sure, brethren, 
 that God sends a message by each man's conduct and 
 being. The canon of the inspired word of good living 
 is never closed. And if men are wise who can read the 
 signs of the times, surely there is a wisdom which the 
 children of wisdom will justify in studying the truth 
 that God has made known and illustrated in these sacra- 
 ments and symbols of highest work — the lives of good 
 men. 
 
 The main facts of the life of our friend are pretty 
 well known to the public, but there are some points of 
 interest that will serve to illustrate the lessons which we 
 desire to gain to-day. Dr. Holland comes before our 
 memories in the three-fold character of man, writer, and 
 Christian. In each sphere of life he was noteworthy. 
 Filling each role he left a good example, and the world 
 is bettered for his living in it, and our hearts are richer 
 because they knew him, and heaven is closer to us be- 
 cause such a man lived and trusted and labored and 
 loved and died. He was a good gift of God, and we 
 rejoice and are thankful, even though the tear will start 
 and the heart feel a pang. 
 
 Our friend was the outgrowth of New England life ; 
 and though, perhaps, in some respects, he moved away 
 from what we understand in its absoluteness by the 
 
A Christian Man of Letters. 57 
 
 New England fashion of thought and living, still he 
 never ceased to smack of its soil, and the keen-eyed 
 observer might trace the elements of character native 
 to that part of our country beneath the broader spirit 
 of the man of letters, of affairs, and of the world. That 
 quick movement of the mind, that shrewd outlook upon 
 men and things, that sense of the infinite and the unseen, 
 that sometimes almost quaint combination of the spirit 
 which is at home in both worlds, that strong self-reli- 
 ance, that intense love of liberty, that chivalrous regard 
 for the weak and the oppressed, that confidence in the 
 life and future of America, that instinctive sense of the 
 moral meaning of all our life — these, among other 
 characteristics of the New Englander, were most dis- 
 tinctly manifest in our friend. 
 
 He was a native of Belchertown, one of a family of 
 seven, born into circumstances which might fairly have 
 kept him within the narrow limits of the little country 
 district that gave him birth, but out of which he escaped 
 by sheer force of determined pluck and courage, industry 
 and enterprise. For a long while, Dr. Holland, like others 
 of his countrymen, tried one path and another which 
 might lead him to his life-work. It is strange that he 
 never made any steps toward the ministry ; for I sup- 
 pose no one knew him well, no one has understood the 
 spirit of his writings, who has not recognized that he 
 was one of the men who were really called to preach, 
 and who felt that call, and never escaped the influence 
 of the preaching spirit, whether as journalist, lecturer, 
 novelist, or poet. But apparently the circumstances of 
 his career, and the peculiar history of his own mind, 
 prevented him. from entering upon a profession for which 
 he was eminently fitted, and in which he would have 
 been very successful. After various kinds of employ- 
 
58 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 ment had been tried and abandoned, he at length gave 
 himself to the study of medicine ; but, although finishing 
 his course of study and commencing practice, he never 
 liked the work, and soon retired from it. Journalism in 
 the growing city of Springfield seemed to furnish the 
 field for his literary instincts, and for a while he con- 
 ducted a small paper which he started, but from which 
 in six months he retired to take charge of a school at 
 Richmond, Va. This was hardly congenial work, even 
 though he was made superintendent of schools at Vicks- 
 burg ; and in the year 1849 he resigned his position 
 and returned to his old home in Springfield. 
 
 Here he was associated with Mr. Samuel Bowles, of 
 the Springfield Republican, and after awhile became an 
 editor and part publisher of that able and typical paper. 
 Dr. Holland at last had found his place. In the regu- 
 lar duties of editing and the extra labors of his special 
 work through the columns of the Republican, he com- 
 menced to gain the ear of the reading public, and be- 
 came especially popular by the papers on moral and 
 social and domestic subjects, which appeared from time 
 to time, and by which he was, and in some parts of the 
 country is still, chiefly known. In historical subjects his 
 "History of Western Massachusetts " is an authority. 
 His sketch of the life of Lincoln sold immensely. His 
 papers published as " Letters of Timothy Titcomb," 
 his " Gold Foil," " Lessons in Life," and " Letters to the 
 Joneses," had an almost unexampled popularity. His 
 novels, "The Bay Path," "Miss Gilbert's Career," 
 " Sevenoaks," "Arthur Bonniecastle," and "Nicholas 
 Minturn," gave him a more definite place in the litera- 
 ture of our time, while his poems, "Bitter Sweet," "Kath- 
 rina," "The Mistress of the Manse," and others in 
 scattered or gathered forms, have been more widely 
 
A Christian Man of Letters. 59 
 
 read than those of any other poetic author of the coun- 
 try, with perhaps the exception of Mr. Longfellow. 
 
 The last years of our friend's life have been employed 
 in the editorship of Scribner s Monthly, a literary ven- 
 ture which has gained unparalleled success, and has 
 taken its place among the foremost issues of its kind 
 belonging to the English-speaking people. To the 
 pages of this magazine his later works have been con- 
 tributed, and besides the general oversight from the 
 editor's chair, he steadily, and without break to the very 
 last, contributed the admirable and useful papers entitled 
 "Topics of the Time." The sheet was still wet with 
 the newly written words of one of these essays when 
 death rudely broke into it and left it unfinished upon 
 the editor's table. 
 
 But Dr. Holland's life, busy and absorbed as it was 
 in these labors of the writer, was by no means so oc- 
 cupied as to leave no place for those other duties, pri- 
 vate and social, which go to make up the fulness and the 
 completeness of our career. Into the privacy of the 
 domestic scene I will not intrude ; but many of you 
 know what a husband and father and friend this man 
 was. Nowhere did his fine form and countenance ap- 
 pear to better advantage than in dispensing the cour- 
 tesies of social life, and he ever loved to gather around 
 him, not only those who were admitted to the inner 
 sanctities of personal affection, but the circles which 
 represented all shades of opinion and all types of cul- 
 ture and activity. 
 
 Dr. Holland's religious life, moreover, was expressed 
 in forms of social and public significance. He was a 
 member of the Church, and had been from early days. 
 He never neglected the duties of public worship, and 
 bore his share of those Christian labors which sustain 
 
60 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 and develop the Church. He was a Sabbath-school 
 teacher of great efficiency, if I mistake not, and was 
 for some years the superintendent of a school at 
 Springfield. He was passionately fond of music, and 
 had a high ideal of the service of song in the house of 
 the Lord. He led the singing in the choir for several 
 years, and in the midst of his most pressing duties, 
 when engaged as a lecturer in various parts of the 
 country, I was told, by one of the clergymen of Spring- 
 field, he always managed to secure his return to his 
 home at the end of the week, and frequently took his 
 place in the choir of the church, singing there, not as 
 the mere professional, or even amateur, but with the 
 divine passion of the Christian priest who offered to the 
 Lord the sacrifice of his sublime and holy song. 
 
 And Dr. Holland's relation to the Church did not 
 become less intimate as he grew in influence and wealth. 
 Very often, men who in their early days are good 
 churchmen, when they achieve earthly success retire at 
 least from the more -manifest and practical service of 
 religion. For my part, I see no reason why a man who 
 has been a long time a Christian worker should with- 
 draw from that position while he is still able and strong, 
 simply because his business engagements become more 
 exacting. Surely the work of the Lord is not that 
 which should suffer at the hands of those whom the 
 Lord is blessing. And so, while our friend remained at 
 Springfield he was the firm and constant support of 
 the churches with which he was connected. It was 
 owing to him largely that the church to which he be- 
 longed did not entirely go down, and is now a strong 
 and vigorous institution. He was associated with an 
 excellent friend in that city in commencing and sup- 
 porting the Memorial Church, founded on a principle 
 
A Christian Man of Letters. 61 
 
 very dear to the departed — an enterprise, as one of the 
 clergymen in Springfield strongly said in some memo- 
 rial words spoken after the funeral, needing not a little 
 patience and Christian spirit. Obstacles and needless 
 perplexities were encountered, arising partly from the 
 lack of sympathy on the part of Christian people who 
 disapproved of the endeavor ; all of which were met 
 and surmounted with a firm and Christlike devoted- 
 ness which to-day none will be unwilling to recognize, 
 and which the Master himself approved in the success 
 which crowned the work. 
 
 It was thus our friend lived and labored. Always 
 a pure, true, brave man — always at his post — always 
 kindly, sympathetic, and helpful — he fell in the midst of 
 duty, and was mourned by all who loved because they 
 knew him, and with a fame and reputation which no man 
 might be unwilling to claim. 
 
 That Dr. Holland's course was one of success no 
 one will for a moment doubt. If a man's first business 
 in life is to provide things honest in the sight of all 
 men, both for himself and for his family, then certainly, 
 viewed from that point of human necessity, we can con- 
 gratulate our friend upon his achievement. It is not 
 often that the mere man of letters succeeds in secular 
 things with a much more marked success ; and when we 
 ask ourselves the cause of it, we find, apart from the 
 skill with which he did his work, the influence of those 
 protective and conserving virtues which are the security 
 and glory of life. Because a man is a genius, or even 
 because he has the semblance of genius — even if not 
 blessed with the diviner glow, often we have to pass by 
 with a gentle pity, forgetting the failure to keep those 
 first laws of life upon which welfare so largely depends. 
 When Oliver Goldsmith died, leaving debts of ,£2,000 
 
62 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 unpaid, his friend Dr." Johnson gently said, " Never was 
 poet so trusted." And it has come to be a sort of popu- 
 lar expectation that a man of letters shall be in some 
 way or other more or less of a Bohemian, and shall espe- 
 cially make wreck of health, and social virtue, and family 
 standing. Now, in truth (even as a matter of biograph- 
 ical history), this is a libel, although there are some 
 sad and notorious instances in the history of genius. 
 But our departed friend was emphatically a man of 
 affairs. He understood how to husband his means, and 
 he possessed all those guardian virtues which build up 
 character, and especially shine within the home. His 
 views about the use of intoxicating drinks were well 
 known, and he endured a kind of reproach and social 
 martyrdom from the very fact of his absolute total ab- 
 stinence. And yet who shall impugn his motives, or 
 lessen for a moment the esteem in which we regard 
 his social and hospitable qualities? None found him 
 less genial because he did not look upon the wine when 
 it was red, when it giveth its color in the cup. And how 
 many a famous name in letters and in song might have 
 been spared the shame and obloquy which tender affec- 
 tion has to hide, if the example of Holland had been 
 followed, and there had been the exercise of that self- 
 restraint by which he was preserved ! 
 
 And what might I not say, were this other than a 
 public occasion, as to the domestic relations of our 
 friend ? He had ambition ; he loved fame ; he de- 
 lighted in the honor which men gave him ; he enjoyed 
 the pleasant things which money could afford. But all 
 these were chiefly cared for that he might crown the 
 days and make bright the life of the woman he had 
 chosen in his youth, and the dear hearts God had given 
 to them in their union of confidence and love. He was 
 
A Christian Man of Letters. 63 
 
 a home-lover and a home-keeper. He knew the glory 
 and strength of a nation was in the fidelity of husband 
 and wife, and in the sweet joys of the fireside, where 
 children gather, and where the little circle of trusted 
 friends is sometimes allowed to press, but even that 
 must not be permitted to break down the more imme- 
 diate sanctities which belong to the husband and the 
 father. Read his books, peruse his essays, con his 
 songs, recall his conversations, and you will recognize 
 how the man was every whit of him a man of virtue, of 
 probity, of pureness and self-restraint, and there you 
 will find the secret of that success which not only 
 gained, but kept ; which was not only fame, but also 
 character ; which was built, not upon the shifting sands 
 of a fickle popularity, but upon the strong, firm founda- 
 tion of a personal and a domestic virtue. 
 
 Holland was a good man. That is the plain and 
 unvarnished statement. Nothing illustrated this more 
 than the spirit with which he dealt with certain forms of 
 life and letters as seen in our time or as recorded in the 
 past. He was large-hearted and broad in his views. 
 Some people have thought him latitudinarian, almost 
 too willing to allow a scope and liberty which might 
 become license and the absence of all law. Then, 
 again, he was loyal to his profession. Men of letters 
 were dear to him, and he repaid the insolent and big- 
 oted sectarianism of some schools of culture with a 
 generous, hearty brotherliness and camaraderie that 
 were almost sufficient to atone for the unpardonable 
 crime of a too great popularity, achieved by a man 
 who did not belong to a special order, and had not 
 graduated at the recognized schools of the prophets of 
 our generation. And yet he gave no indulgence to 
 licentious forms of art in any sort. In plain, nervous 
 
64 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 speech, with a directness and strength of diction which 
 has few equals among the current writers of our age, 
 he rebuked excesses and abuses of every kind. The 
 artist, in Holland's estimation, was always less than an 
 artist when he forgot the laws of morality and virtue. 
 In poetry, in painting, in prose, in sculpture, in politics, 
 in social life — everywhere he sought to purify and to 
 ennoble the aims of men. Sometimes his high sense of 
 goodness prevented him from fully appreciating the in- 
 tellectual force of some of the masters of human art. I 
 shall never forget the scorn and loathing with which he 
 criticised one of the great books of literature (which he 
 had never happened to read, until I had requested him 
 to do so), because of the horror with which he was in- 
 spired by its low moral tone in certain passages. The 
 pure fire of his virtuous nature shot its flames so high 
 that the mental vision could not calmly scan and survey 
 the intellectual force of the author ; and the very portion 
 which probably the majority of readers, especially of the 
 literary kind, pass by and find tame and uninteresting, 
 was to him the charm and salvation of the book from 
 absolute putrescence, by its sweet and profound deline- 
 ation of the religious history of a soul. I repeat it, Dr. 
 Holland was a good man, and this was the secret of his 
 success among the people who can recognize virtue, 
 and in the long run always believe in it and put them- 
 selves into its keeping. 
 
 It would not become me in this place to enter into 
 any long criticism of Dr. Holland's literary work. As 
 to its external form, the make-up of his books, the plots 
 of his novels, the dramatic and lyric character of his 
 scenes, the style of his writing, the claim of his poetry, 
 the critics, if they please, can make their own estimate. 
 He is, at least, beyond their troubling. Praise and 
 
A Christian Man of Letters. 65 
 
 blame can little harm him now ; and surely he had 
 enough to satisfy the cravings of -an ambitious heart in 
 the harvest of honor and wealth which he reaped. 
 Whether Dr. Holland is to be reckoned among the great 
 poets and the great novelists, or the great essayists of 
 the world, is not for me here to inquire. But I do know 
 this : that he wielded a pen of consummate skill. I doubt 
 whether better English has issued from the contempo- 
 rary press of the last ten years than may be read in his 
 " Topics of the Time." I know that he managed to 
 hit the taste of a vast reading public, and, best of all, I 
 know that of all the lines he wrote there was not one 
 that he would have desired to blot. In that is the point 
 upon which, from the pulpit, I care to insist. The good- 
 ness and virtue of the man always appeared in his writ- 
 ing. I go farther than this : it was goodness and vir- 
 tue of an aggressive kind, which desires to make other 
 people good and virtuous. It was not merely the pas- 
 sive, the self-sustaining character, of which we can say it 
 did not break the laws of morality, that we detect in 
 our friend's work ; but it was that pushing, that expres 
 sive, that conquering and masterful virtue which, indeed, 
 drew down upon him some of the criticism which was 
 so contemptible and unjust. He was not only a good 
 man, but he wanted to make others good. He was 
 then more than an artist who only wants to please ; 
 he was more than a philosopher, even more than a 
 moralist, who only wants to understand and to judge ; 
 he was a reformer, he was a teacher ; he was, as we 
 have already said, a preacher ; and he never took the 
 pen in hand, even to write a poem, but he donned the 
 preacher's gown and ascended the preacher's pulpit, 
 and aimed at converting and saving and making men 
 better. 
 
66 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 And the real explanation of all this was the religious 
 nature which lay at the base of Dr. Holland's character. 
 He was a Christian man in the deepest sense of that 
 term. He had, of course, received the usual training 
 in Christian and dogmatic truth which a New England 
 youth was likely to find, and had experienced the force 
 of the religious sanctions upon his moral and spiritual 
 nature. But then he had gone through a very re- 
 markable experience. Christian teaching had not stiff- 
 ened with him into a hard dogma of inflexible belief, 
 to be used rather as a test of other people's opinions 
 and life than the inspiration of his own. Neither had 
 religious truth become for him a sort of social con- 
 science, a kind of historical, mental, and spiritual atmos- 
 phere, which a man was to take on without finding in 
 it much personal significance ; indeed, on the whole, 
 thinking it advisable not greatly to inquire, lest the 
 very elements and combinations of faith subjective, if 
 not objective, might be rudely disturbed. But religion 
 had been to him a sore disquietude. The truth of 
 Christ and His Gospel had been painfully questioned 
 by him at one time. He passed through a critical and 
 doubtful season, and this, let it be noted, with no light 
 heart. He did not think scepticism and questioning 
 and uncertainty a fine thing or a trifling matter. But 
 it was with tears and strong cries and deep misgivings 
 that he made his way through the dark valley, and 
 at last came into the light that was beyond. Historic 
 and parental and social and national religion thus 
 became personal with Dr. Holland, and hence it was a 
 fire that consumed him — a fountain within that must 
 have found its way and poured forth its stream. 
 
 It was this that caused some of Dr. Holland's words 
 to seem to some people to be dangerous and novel. 
 
A Christian Man of Letters. 67 
 
 Men who go through these crises of spiritual history 
 as he went through, will generally emerge with a few 
 truths clearly apprehended, vital, all inspiring ; and for 
 the rest they will have a respectful honor, but no very 
 passionate regard. Such men learn, if I may call it, the 
 perspective of religion. The system of doctrine is not 
 quite a wooden puzzle, the smallest peg of which is the 
 very key and binder of the whole. The panorama of 
 divine truth is not represented after the fashion of Chi- 
 nese art, where each object is painted as if the artist 
 were close to it and saw nothing else. But he had 
 allowed for himself many things to pass into a second- 
 ary place, and to be wholly subordinate to the grand 
 and central facts of God his Father and Jesus Christ 
 his Saviour. That he was orthodox with the ortho- 
 doxy of the schools I firmly believe, if you would allow 
 him to speak his orthodoxy with his own words and 
 tell his story in his own way. That he was devout, 
 a humble believer in Jesus Christ, accepting the Gospel 
 of the Crucified One as the only hope of the world, re- 
 sponding to the love and pity and grace of God with a 
 loyal and a trustful and a Christ-like heart, no man 
 who had preached to Dr. Holland for nearly five years, 
 had seen his face as the mysteries of the Kingdom 
 were proclaimed, and had drawn inspiration from that 
 rapturous countenance and those streaming eyes (would 
 to God that all preachers had such hearers multiplied ! ) 
 who had heard his prayers and had seen his life, could 
 for a moment doubt. 
 
 And it was this which moved and kindled ever 
 within the spirit of our friend. His religion was, as I 
 have said, so real to him, so practical, so effective, and 
 it seized him so firmly by that side of it which looks 
 and hastens to the conquest of the world, that he could 
 
68 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 not but express it, and use it as an instrument in his 
 labors. It could not but enter into and inform and 
 dominate everything that he did. 
 
 It is thus, my friends, that the well-rounded life and 
 character of the man we mourn stands before us. Were 
 we in the mood for moralizing and drawing lessons, we 
 might gain not a few ; for such a course is an inspira- 
 tion as it is an example to us all. We should see what 
 a man can do in compelling circumstances to his will, 
 and yet will not a devout heart recognize all through 
 his career the presence of that Divinity that shapes all 
 our ends, that Providence who leads and controls us, 
 and fashions for us all the way of our going ? Often 
 in his life the road seemed barred and blocked, and yet 
 when he came up to the barring the way opened and 
 he went straight on. But he was always ready for the 
 leading, always faithful to duty. He never sat down in 
 self-indulgence or despondency ; he rested neither for 
 ease nor for incertitude. 
 
 Then, too, was not his life spent in doing his work 
 heartily ? He was altogether in that to which he set 
 his hand. " This one thing I do ! " was the motto of 
 his life and the law of his endeavor. And it was thus 
 that honor and fame and success crowned his labor, and 
 that, when he was gathered by the swift sickle of death, 
 it was as a shock of full-ripe corn. 
 
 And energy and industry were all bound together 
 by the bond of goodness. Of the Master it was said 
 that " He went about doing good," and our friend fol- 
 lowed in the footsteps of his Lord, and his life was 
 spent in doing good. Indeed, as we have seen, he did 
 not simply work as a literary worker, but he used the 
 literary method in order that he might do good. This 
 is a lesson to all such toilers. " Art for art's sake ! " 
 
A Christian Man of Letters. 69 
 
 That is true ; but life is nobler than art, and character 
 and duty are more blessed, more divine, than even ge- 
 nius and culture. It would seem at least not easy to 
 avoid the introduction of moral considerations into the 
 artist's work ; and if you must fail upon one side or the 
 other, better fail with the good than go down into the 
 mire and the hell of the corrupt and the corrupting. 
 After all, the question is not whether a man has been 
 less an artist because he was more a man, but whether 
 the force of the ethical spirit and the moral impulse has 
 not really raised and quickened and inspired the artist. 
 Had Holland worked on the lower plane of careless 
 ethics, he would not have been the writer, the poet, the 
 novelist that he became. The divine artist Himself has 
 created a world infinitely more wonderful and fair, 
 because, beyond the material form, the intellectual fit- 
 ness, the natural beauty, there were ends of righteous- 
 ness and goodness that have lifted earth to heaven and 
 made man to become a son of God. Here the popular 
 heart and conscience have more insight than the critic. 
 The negative morality of the artist will sink him to the 
 narrow sphere of a school. The ethics of art will raise 
 it to be the religion of a race. 
 
 Brethren, I count myself happy to have known this 
 man. He has made life for me sweeter and more rich, 
 and though the sense of loss is deep and painful, the 
 memory of his friendship is an undying gain. For 
 those of you who have been the companions of his 
 work, and whom he has guided and directed in the 
 special form of labor, how dear will be the recollection 
 of his character and toil ! What a stimulus he was 
 to earnest work ! How he bettered life and filled it 
 with the pure, strong purposes of a true man ! Those 
 who were the intimates of his social circle, especially 
 
70 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 who gathered round about him in the family connec- 
 tion — to you what words could I speak that would be 
 fitting as setting forth his worthiness or representing 
 the measure of your loss ? But he himself would have 
 directed you to those sources of comfort from which he 
 had himself, in like circumstances, drawn. We know 
 not only in whom we have believed, but also in whom 
 the departed believed, and that He can keep that which 
 is committed unto Him until that day. It is on this we 
 rest. Dr. Holland served Christ, and Christ has called 
 him to Himself. And the Master said, " Let not your 
 hearts be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in 
 me. If I go away, I will come and receive you unto 
 myself, that where I am there ye may be also." And 
 when the Lord came our friend went, and he is now 
 with Christ. 
 
 And this is the lesson that we would gather from 
 all the life of our friend. If he was an ideal man, he 
 had found that ideal in the Christian life. If he was 
 a success, his faith did nothing to hinder, did every- 
 thing to aid, that success. His thoughts, his workings 
 were all inspired by his Christian life and character; 
 and to his profession, to his generation, to the young 
 who rise to take the places of the departed, to us 
 all, Dr. Holland is a bright example ; his death is a 
 solemn voice of warning that speaks " Be ready ; " his 
 faith, his character, a fresh testimony to the truth 
 and power of that Gospel which makes wise unto sal- 
 vation — that religion which has the promise of the life 
 that now is, and of that which is to come. 
 
SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES 
 
"And 7iow, my friends, farewell ! Life is before you — not earthly 
 life alone, but life — a thread running interminably through the warp 
 of eter?iity ; and while I wish you all manly and womanly joy, and all 
 healthful delight, I do not wish that no pain come o?i you, no care op- 
 press you, no toil weary you, no sorrow swim in your eyes, no tempta- 
 tions beset you ; but I wish that you may bear what God puts upon 
 your shoulders, and bear it well. I wish that it may not be neces- 
 sary to chasten you overmuch ; but you can hardly grow strong with- 
 out trouble, or sympathetic without sorrow. It was necessary that 
 the o?ily true human life ever lived should be made 'perfect through 
 suffering ; ' and it is strange presumption for you to think that you 
 can be made perfect without it. I wish you many years upon the 
 earth — as many as will minister to your growth and happiness — for 
 life is a sweet as well as a great and wonderful thing. I wish you 
 a family of precious children to fill your homes with music and enrich 
 your hearts with love. And when, in the evening of life, the golden 
 clouds rest sweetly and invitingly upon the golde?i mountains ^ and the 
 light of heaven streams down through the gathering mists of death, 
 I wish you a peaceful and abundant e?itra?ice into that world of 
 blessedness, where the great riddle of life, whose meaning I can only 
 hint at, will be unfolded to you in the quick consciousness of a soul 
 redee7?ied a?id purified." — Titcomb's Letters. 
 
SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES. 
 
 MR. LYMAN'S ADDRESS. 
 
 Sixty-two years previous to the 19th of July last, 
 near the northern boundary of this parish, there began 
 an earthly career which has just been suddenly closed, 
 rich with worthy honors and blessed with abundance of 
 "garnered sheaves." This town has not given to the 
 world a more distinguished man ; probably, I might 
 safely say, not another so distinguished. The lines 
 which encircle our national domain have not bounded 
 his fame and influence. These have extended also into 
 almost all parts of the British dominions, and have been 
 more or less felt wherever English is read. 
 
 From one of our plain, unpretentious homes — a home 
 where, if there was poverty, there was also piety and 
 something of an intellectual life — he went forth into the 
 world and took part in its affairs, until he had won a 
 permanent place in the literature of his native land ; 
 until more of his books had been sold than of those of 
 any other American author, and until he had won the 
 rare and precious opportunity of speaking, in his own 
 name, month by month, on the "topics of the time," to 
 more than 125,000 families in America and Great Brit- 
 ain. This was a grand opportunity, which he had in 
 no small part created, which he gladly embraced, and 
 in meeting which he spoke many a true and trenchant 
 word, that wrought energetically and healthfully on the 
 public life. 
 
74 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 When lately the circumstances called him to review 
 his connection with this, his latest and greatest enter- 
 prise, he closed with the expression of a hope, which 
 met a sympathetic response in the hearts of many thou- 
 sands among the thinking people of our land. He says : 
 " With the burden of business responsibility lifted from 
 my shoulders, I hope to find my hand more easily at 
 work with my pen ; and I trust that, for many years, I 
 may hold the relation to the great reading world which 
 this editorial position gives me." 
 
 But he knew that this hope hung by a slender thread. 
 Within a twelvemonth I had it from his own lips, that 
 he was in an incurably diseased condition, that any vio- 
 lent exertion — even a brisk walk of fivQ blocks — would 
 probably precipitate death, and that it was impossible 
 for him to walk, even slowly, up three flights of stairs 
 to his editorial rooms without stopping. In the con- 
 sciousness of this extreme liability, he has daily wrought 
 at his editorial and other tasks, and in this conscious- 
 ness the expression of that hope was sent to his 
 readers. 
 
 This is quite evident in the latest utterance which 
 has yet come to us from his pen. " It has been- a great 
 privilege to meet monthly a million men and women in 
 these pages, and to speak to them of morals, religion, 
 politics, literature, and life, and present to them some of 
 the choicest offerings of prose and verse that the coun- 
 try can produce. For many years we hope to meet 
 the readers of The Century in a constantly increasing 
 circle, with better gifts in our hands ; but we know that 
 the time must come when we must cease from labor, and 
 relinquish the work to other and younger hands. We 
 envy these coming men their great and interesting 
 future." 
 
Sketches and Tributes. 75 
 
 One of his books bore the title " Lessons in Life," 
 a title which would have applied equally well to several 
 of them. He aspired to be what he empathically be- 
 came, a teacher of morals. It was his desire and aim 
 to help men and women toward godly living. I seize 
 the present occasion to study some of the lessons of his 
 life, under the solemn impression which his sudden de- 
 parture produces. The fact of his birth within the 
 limits of this parish, and of the continued residence 
 among us of many of his family connections, makes him 
 somewhat more to us than simply the public man. I 
 desire that, through me, either in his own words, or in 
 the lessons of his life, he may speak to this congrega- 
 tion, within this sanctuary, where, sixty-eight years ago 
 on the 4th of April last, his father and mother, together 
 with many others, stood before the assembly, and pub- 
 licly entered into covenant with God and with this 
 branch of his visible Church. 
 
 That was a great day for this church, and that a 
 great year — one of the greatest in its history. It was 
 early in the ministry of Rev. Experience Porter, while 
 the venerable pastor, Justus Forward, was still alive, and 
 able to make the record of the Church's ingathering. 
 
 In this year, 181 2, a memorable revival began here, 
 became general throughout the town, and continued 
 about a year. The first great ingathering took place 
 April 4, 1813, and on this day Harrison Holland and 
 his wife Anna Gilbert united with the Church. Here 
 Dr. Holland's parents for years were accustomed to at- 
 tend divine service. Here they were married, Novem- 
 ber 5, 1 8 10, probably by the venerable Pastor Forward, 
 then approaching the end of his fifty-nine years' pas- 
 torate. Here, November 25, 18 13, was baptized their 
 son, Charles Gilbert, to whose early death Dr. Holland 
 
76 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 touchingly alludes in the inimitable poem, " Daniel 
 Gray." In his picture of " Old Daniel Gray," the poet 
 is generally supposed to have embodied his idea of his 
 own father. 
 
 " Honest and faithful, constant in his calling, 
 Strictly attendant on the means of grace, 
 Instant in prayer, and fearful most of falling, 
 Old Daniel Gray was always in his place. 
 
 " So, if I ever win the home in heaven 
 
 For whose sweet rest I humbly hope and pray, 
 In the great company of the forgiven 
 I shall be sure to find old Daniel Gray." 
 
 Into the autobiographical story, u Arthur Bonni- 
 castle," much of Dr. Holland's personal life is woven, 
 as must be apparent to one who knew him and his his- 
 tory. The father, in this story, is much such a man as 
 Daniel Gray. Arthur says : " My father was a plain, 
 ingenious, industrious craftsman, and a modest, thor- 
 oughly earnest Christian. He was an affectionate man. 
 His life seemed bound up in that of my mother ; yet he 
 never gave direct expression to this affection." This 
 was a failing of Daniel Gray. " I knew he could not 
 live without her, yet I never saw him kiss her, or give 
 her one caress. Indeed, I do not remember that he 
 ever kissed me or my sisters. We all grew up hungry, 
 missing something, and he, poor man, was hungriest of 
 all." 
 
 This " ingenious, industrious craftsman," this " mod- 
 est, thoroughly earnest Christian," lived in a little house, 
 lately burned, which stood on the right as you go to- 
 ward Amherst and descend into the meadow-basin, this 
 side of Dwight Station. Here he was not far from the 
 
Sketches and Tributes. 77 
 
 Gilbert homestead, where the mother of his children 
 grew to womanhood. Here he owned and run a card- 
 ing-machine. Here, for the most part of the time, he 
 lived till 1822, when he removed to Heath, from whence 
 he returned in 1834. Soon after he removed to South 
 Hadley, then to Granby, and then to Northampton. 
 During all these years it is said that he was interested 
 in various inventions, one or more of which proved suc- 
 cessful. 
 
 As I dwell upon the large and worthy success of 
 Dr. Holland's life, I wish all the young people who 
 hear me to think of him as a Belchertown boy, with no 
 advantages (except such as were within him) beyond 
 what are enjoyed by any of the young people on the 
 Belchertown farms to-day. 
 
 [After an extended biographical and critical sketch 
 of Dr. Holland's life and work, Mr. Lyman continued:] 
 
 His domestic life was singularly beautiful and affec- 
 tionate. His appreciation of all that is fine, and noble, 
 and holy, in the varied family relations, runs as a gold- 
 en vein through all his works. Into " Arthur Bonni- 
 castle," which he cast in autobiographical form, he wove 
 much of his own personal experience. Its closing chap- 
 ter is so tender and sweet that I wish I could read it 
 all in your hearing, especially as it, in his mind, must 
 have related to those whose lives some of you can re- 
 member. He had long been the only survivor of his 
 father's numerous family, to which fact, as we must sup- 
 pose, he alludes when he says: " They were all here 
 then — father, mother, brothers and sisters — and the fam- 
 ily life was at its fullest. Now they are all gone, and I 
 am alone. All the present relations of my life are those 
 
78 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 which have originated since. I have wife and children 
 and hosts of friends, yet still I am alone. No one can 
 go back with me into these reminiscences of my earliest 
 life, or give me sympathy in them." 
 
 How touchingly he sketches the death of his father, 
 and what a tribute he pays ! "I press his hand, and 
 hear him say : ' It is all well : take care of your mother.' 
 We all bend and kiss him. A few quick breaths, and 
 the dear old heart is still — a heart so true, so tender, 
 so pure, so faithful, so trusting, that no man could know 
 it without recognizing the Christian grace that made it 
 what it was, or finding in it infallible evidence of the 
 divinity of the religion by whose moulding hand it was 
 shaped, and from whose inspiration it had drawn its 
 life." 
 
 Here is a remembrance of his own home in its early 
 days : " It is resonant with little feet, and musical with 
 the voices of children. They climb my knees when I 
 return from the fatigues of the day. I walk in the gar- 
 den, with their little hands clinging to mine. I listen 
 to their prayers at their mother's knee. I watch over 
 them in sickness. I settle their petty disputes. I find 
 in them, and in their mother, all the solace and satis- 
 faction that I desire or need. Clubs cannot win me 
 from their society. Fame, honor, place, have no charms 
 that crowd them from my heart. My home is my rest, 
 my amusement, my consolation, my treasure-house, my 
 earthly heaven." How charmingly and tenderly this 
 tells what home should be ! " Ah, this taking to one's 
 arms a little group of souls fresh from the hand of God, 
 and living with them in loving companionship, is, or 
 ought to be, like living in heaven." Parents, are we 
 not too liable to forget the meaning, the dignity, the 
 privilege of this our high calling ? 
 
Sketches and Tributes. 79 
 
 But death invades his home, and he writes: " Broth- 
 ers, sisters, I am one with you. I weep with you ; I 
 trust with you; I belong to you." Is not this one of 
 God's purposes in causing us to suffer? Is it not to 
 make us sympathetic ? 
 
 " There is no fountain which the angel of healing 
 troubles with his restless, life-giving wings so con- 
 stantly as the fountain of tears; and only those, too 
 lame and bruised to bathe, miss the blessed influence." 
 And is not this another of God's purposes in allowing 
 us to be bereft ? 
 
 Yesterday I stood among the mourning friends and 
 acquaintances beside the casket which contained all 
 that was mortal of the essayist, poet, novelist, editor, 
 historian, orator. I looked upon the placid and noble 
 features, natural as though asleep. The fertile brain 
 had ceased to be the organ of the soul's thought. The 
 eye no longer kindled with affection and enthusiasm. 
 The heart which felt for even the lowliest — the heart 
 "so true, so tender, so pure, so faithful, so trusting" — 
 had suddenly ceased its pulsations. Over it lay the 
 nerveless hand which had wielded the facile pen with 
 such grand purpose and effect. My steadfast gaze met 
 not the slightest recognition. The soul, which once an- 
 imated and gave worth and meaning to the now lifeless 
 form, was not coffined and shrouded. It had escaped 
 into the higher air. Up yonder the soul still thinks, 
 and hopes, and trusts, and is still prepared and eager 
 for such service as may be committed to it. And down 
 here among men the life and writings will abide, and 
 will work on beneficently and effectively for years to 
 come more than we can tell. 
 
 In the end of " Arthur Bonnicastle" he wrote : " Life 
 has no significance to me, save as the theatre in which 
 
80 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 my powers are developed and disciplined for use, and 
 made fruitful in securing my own independence and the 
 good of those around me ; or as the scene in which I 
 am fitted for the work and worship of the world be- 
 yond." 
 
 This tells us how he regarded life. Let us see how 
 he regarded death. "The generations come and go 
 without significance, if there be not the confident hope 
 and expectation of something to follow, so grand, and 
 sweet, and beautiful, that we can look upon it without 
 misgiving or pain. Faith draws the poison from every 
 grief, takes the sting from every loss, and quenches the 
 fire of every pain ; and only faith can do it." 
 
 In his brief poem " Alone ! " Dr. Holland speaks of 
 the fact that his dearest friends cannot enter into his 
 deepest experiences. Notwithstanding their sympathy, 
 he is alone — 
 
 " In the valley of death all alone ; 
 The sighs and tears of my friends are in vain, 
 For mine is the passage and mine is the pain, 
 And mine the sad sinking of bosom and brain — 
 Still alone in the world, all alone. 
 
 "Not alone, never, never alone ; 
 There is one who is with me by day and by night, 
 Who sees and inspires all my visions of light, 
 And teaches my conscience its office aright — 
 Not alone in the world, not alone. 
 
 "Not alone, never, never alone ; 
 He sees all my weakness with pitying eyes, 
 He helps me to lift my faint heart to the skies, 
 And in my last passion he suffers and dies — 
 Not alone, never, never alone ! " 
 
Sketches and Tributes. 81 
 
 In frequent communion with this dearest heavenly 
 Friend he lived, and in the possession of His sweet 
 and sustaining companionship he went down into the 
 valley of the shadow of death, and so passed from our 
 sight. 
 
 Since he knew that the " silver cord " was most 
 tenuous, and was liable to part asunder at any moment, 
 he gave to the world that pathetic, yet hopeful poem, 
 " Threnody, " of which here is a part : 
 
 " O life ! why art thou so bright and boon ? 
 O breath ! why art thou so sweet ? 
 O friends ! how can you forget so soon, 
 The loved ones who lie at your feet ? 
 
 " The ways of men are busy and bright, 
 
 The eye of woman is kind. 
 It is sweet for the eyes to behold the light, 
 
 But the dying and dead are blind. 
 And the world goes round and round, 
 
 And the sun falls into the sea, 
 And whether I'm on or under the ground, 
 
 The world cares little for me. 
 
 " But, if life awake, and will never cease, 
 
 On the future, distant shore, 
 And the rose of love, and the lily of peace, 
 
 Shall bloom there for evermore, 
 Let the world go round and round, 
 
 And the sun sink into the sea, 
 For whether I'm on or under the ground, 
 
 Oh, what will it matter to me?" 
 
 The gifted and accomplished man has gone from 
 among us in the fulness of his power and of his fame. 
 He has stepped down suddenly from his position of 
 wide and beneficent influence, and we are left to de- 
 
82 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 plore, as. we cannot but deplore, that a man with such 
 faith in God, with such love for men, with such high 
 moral purpose in all his art, with such hatred of all the 
 wrongs which prevail in society, should be removed 
 from his position of honor and of power. Notwith- 
 standing, his work will abide and his life will prove an 
 inspiration to many. 
 
 PRESIDENT PORTER'S REMINISCENCES. 
 
 The tribute of honor and affection which I would 
 pay to the memory of the late Dr. J. G. Holland, is 
 founded on an intimate and affectionate friendship with 
 him during what was, perhaps, the most critical period 
 of his life — when he was as yet uncertain of his future, 
 and struggling under a variety of depressing circum- 
 stances. When he came to Springfield, in 1844, with 
 his newly gained diploma, to try his fortune as a physi- 
 cian, I was pastor of an infant church, which was also 
 struggling for growth, if not for life. He very soon was 
 attached to the congregation, and afterward was trans- 
 ferred by a letter to the church. The village and town 
 were swarming with physicians, the established and the 
 newly arrived — in these particulars like the population 
 — and both were in no bad sense largely adventurers, 
 with scanty means and no assured future, all looking 
 first and foremost to a sufficient income to meet their 
 immediate wants. There was stir and enterprise, but 
 an uncomfortable jostling between the old and the 
 new. The staid, respectable, dignified, aristocratic, 
 and sleepy river town, with its indolent exclusiveness, 
 had scarcely been waked from its old traditional ways 
 by the new people, that reminded it of the rush and 
 
Sketches and Tributes. 83 
 
 the ring of the locomotive engine that had done so 
 much to bring in these half-unwelcome strangers. As 
 has already been said, there were doctors in abun- 
 dance — twice as many as were wanted. Of this fact 
 Dr. Holland soon became sensible, and nearly as soon 
 that, in a community of strangers to one another, such 
 as was the parish and church to which he attached him- 
 self, it was likely to be a slow business for any physi- 
 cian to make even a modest living. To make the mat- 
 ter still more discouraging, the favorite physician of 
 many of the best families in the parish had a very 
 strong hold, on their confidence. 
 
 It was obvious at once that the Doctor was a self- 
 respecting gentleman, wearing from the first the same 
 winning and dignified manner, which subsequently be- 
 came a shade or two more positive. He was clearly 
 very intelligent. His conversation showed that he had 
 observed men and things closely and shrewdly, and was 
 gifted with insight into character. His language was 
 more than usually well chosen, and for his age, and cer- 
 tainly for his advantages, his opinions were manly and 
 discriminating. He was singularly mature in individu- 
 ality, manners, intelligence, and in a gentle, yet positive 
 character. What was more important, this character 
 was singularly truthful and upright, and for this reason 
 was both sweet and strong. He had not the culture 
 that comes from classical study, but he had read with 
 discrimination and love many of the leading poets of 
 England and America, and in his conversation and his 
 own writing always made a facile use of idiomatic and 
 pure English. It was evident that he was fond of liter- 
 ature, and at home in it, from his tastes and his facility 
 in production ; but what was he as a physician ? He 
 was well read and intelligent, sympathizing and faithful. 
 
84 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 More than this, he was ingenious and thoughtful. Had 
 he fallen into a homogeneous and well-established com- 
 munity, and found a place ready for him as the succes- 
 sor of one who had vacated it in a legitimate method, 
 there is no reason to doubt that his energy and enthu- 
 siasm would have insured him success and eminence. 
 But he was not the man to push himself into practice 
 by rough or ungracious ways in such a community as 
 that in which he found himself. He was very early dis- 
 couraged, and discouragement wore heavily upon him 
 for at least three years. But he was not inactive. He 
 made some literary essays of a trifling sort. The op- 
 portunities for publication in the local press were very 
 limited. The village papers were for the large village 
 only. The incitements in money and reputation were 
 inconsiderable. He had already made some essays as 
 a poet, and had cherished the hope and the ambition 
 of success. That he had promising facility in rhyming 
 and verse was obvious enough. That he had learned 
 that success could only come by culture was equally 
 clear to one with whom he conversed in a critical mood. 
 After a few essays, scarcely worth naming, he made for 
 himself a situation by persuading some one to start a 
 local weekly, with himself for an editor, primarily as a 
 temporary resource for a living, and incidentally that he 
 might gratify his strong impulse toward letters. In this 
 paper he not only found a place for his various literary 
 effusions in prose and verse, but also for some social 
 and ethical criticism, the tendency to which was very 
 noticeable from the first. 
 
 As I recall his conversation at this time, I distinctly 
 remember that he gave abundant evidence of being a 
 sharp observer and a keen critic of men. He had taught 
 school here and there, and tried his hand at debating, 
 
Sketches and Tributes. 85 
 
 and perhaps lecturing, and, though under severe limi- 
 tations, had seen in his way a good deal of the world, 
 even though the world to him had comprised only three 
 or four towns — country towns in Hampshire County ; 
 but any one who knows anything of the exhaustless 
 originality of the Yankee character in a town in New 
 England, where the school and meeting-house and train- 
 ing and election days, with manifold other educators, 
 have free play, will understand that a sharp-eyed Yan- 
 kee school-master may easily gather more knowledge 
 of mankind from such opportunities than many a highly 
 cultured exquisite, with limitations of another sort, often 
 acquires in a trip twice around the world by steam-ship 
 and railway. At all events, Dr. Holland had seen men, 
 and thought of what he had seen, and drawn his own in- 
 ferences, and formed his own judgments. These judg- 
 ments were critical, but amiable ; sharp, but kind. What 
 was of more importance, they were strongly and dis- 
 tinctively ethical. Meanness and wickedness of every 
 sort he seemed instinctively to abhor and condemn. 
 He was eminently hearty in his likes and dislikes of the 
 good and bad, and more than usually sharp in discrim- 
 inating the signs of good and evil. He made no spe- 
 cial pretensions to religious earnestness, and was not a 
 whit of a Pharisee in his bearing ; but was from the 
 first, as afterward, more than usually easy in his own 
 ways and manners. But he was a very sharp judge of 
 the consistency of men with the ethical and Christian 
 standards, which are so universally professed, and from 
 the first to the last made ethical considerations distinc- 
 tive and prominent. He wrote as if he had faith in 
 them and was not in the least ashamed of them, and as 
 if he knew that his readers believed that they were real 
 and sacred. Theologically he was neither exact nor 
 
86 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 profound. He knew that he was not, and, as in other 
 matters, did not care much for what he had never at- 
 tended to. I think when he was transferred to my 
 church he frankly owned to some theological difficul- 
 ties. I do not remember that he had much promi- 
 nence, if any, in the familiar meetings for devotion ; but 
 I do remember that the Christian character was the 
 ideal by which he judged himself and his fellow-men 
 with great strictness and fervor. 
 
 His days of depression were illumined by his mar- 
 riage in part only, for, while this event wondrously 
 sweetened and illuminated his life, it increased and 
 deepened his anxieties. And yet it is rare that mar- 
 riage has been a greater blessing to a man than was 
 his from the first. I well remember when he told me 
 of his engagement, and of his plans and hopes of suc- 
 cess within his profession, and how greatly his friends 
 blessed his choice and congratulated him on his prob- 
 able success. 
 
 I need not repeat the story of the change of his 
 pursuits and plans. All that I need say is, that for six 
 years he was in the discipline of struggle and uncer- 
 tainty, all the while meeting the cares and calls of the 
 day, and little more, and never anticipating more than 
 moderate success, either in letters or in life, yet all the 
 while finding in composition, and in his sunny disposi- 
 tion, satisfaction and hope. 
 
 When, at length, he began his work as an editor, 
 he entered upon a life of heavy toil, which required and 
 found in Mr. Bowles and himself the ardor and the ca- 
 pacity for the drudgery which were so signally reward- 
 ed to both. It is not for me to describe his share in 
 either. It is enough to say that but few men with his 
 training could have projected and achieved so laborious 
 
Sketches and Tributes. 87 
 
 and detailed a history of the towns in Western Massa- 
 chusetts for the columns of a newspaper, and have done 
 it so well in so short a time. It is more to my purpose 
 to observe that the high practical tone which character- 
 ized the man from my first knowledge of him became 
 more and more conspicuous in his editorial career. 
 Whether he or his associate contributed most largely 
 in this direction to the final character of the paper, I 
 have no means of deciding. That Dr. Holland could 
 not do otherwise than write with courage and fervor 
 where more moral questions were concerned, and in- 
 sensibly infuse aspirations after decency and truth, 
 would be conceded by all. 
 
 This brings us more definitely to the characteristic 
 work of his life — that of a lay preacher of what, to a 
 large extent, may be called the " minor morals " and the 
 decorous and graceful charities of life. Most of my 
 readers will remember that Joseph Dennis, distinguished 
 as one of the earliest of our good prose litterateurs, 
 wrote a series of papers called the " Lay Preacher," 
 and that Irving, in " Salmagundi," did not disdain the 
 office of ethical criticism, although his jokes were not 
 always very decent or elevating. Ezra Sampson's 
 " Brief Remarks" is another example. Dr. Holland 
 had none of these in mind, though he followed some- 
 what in their line when he wrote Timothy Titcomb's 
 " Letters to Young Men." The opportunity for good- 
 natured, but severe strictures and suggestions, with a 
 slight mixture of amiable satire, was certainly large 
 enough, and the success of the writer in meeting the 
 occasion was remarkable. It is not easy to give a com- 
 plete explanation of this popularity. The art of saying 
 plain and much-needed truth in such a manner as to 
 hold the attention and interest the feelings, of relieving 
 
88 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 the commonplace from dulness, and yet leaving it per- 
 fectly simple — this art is the admiration, if not the envy, 
 of those who do not possess it. This art Dr. Holland 
 had in an eminent degree, and he used it with a most 
 useful effect. He was not ashamed to seem common- 
 place. His critics might say that he could not be any- 
 thing else. His aim was to be useful, and, in order to 
 be useful, he must be effective ; and to this end he cer- 
 tainly made abundant use of the time-honored maxim : 
 "Look into thy own heart and write." It has been a 
 great blessing to the generation which he has served so 
 variously and so well, from 1848 to 1881, that he had 
 so generous and pure a heart, into which he might look, 
 and that he had the courage to express what he found 
 there, and that he also possessed the gift of expressing 
 what he found in a diction so facile and so clear, and 
 with illustrations and enforcements that were so attrac- 
 tive. How earnest an affair he made of this inner truth- 
 fulness and self-reliance, and how well he understood 
 himself and the secret of his own power, is well exem- 
 plified by a remark which he made to me, after the pub- 
 lication of " Bitter-Sweet." I had urged him to go to 
 Europe and reside, and study and observe, that he might 
 enlarge his knowledge of men and of ideas. To this he 
 replied that he was afraid that he should lose the hold 
 he had upon what he deemed his strength — viz., his 
 New England blood and his familiarity with the convic- 
 tions and manners and faith of his own people. These 
 he regarded as his capital. Here he felt that he was 
 strong, and he did not care to relax the energy of these 
 convictions, nor the tenacity of these associations. This 
 reply is significant, so far as it shows that he understood 
 himself and the secret of his power and popularity. 
 
 Doubtless he owed somewhat of this power and 
 
Sketches and Tributes. 89 
 
 popularity to his habit of lecturing. This brought him 
 in personal contact with multitudes, who were led to 
 read his books by having seen the man who impressed 
 them so pleasantly. This confirms our position, that 
 his books owe their popularity in great measure to the 
 fact that they contain so much of a living man, and a 
 man withal so manly in faith and sweetness and charity 
 and hope. 
 
 Of his merits and place as a poet I do not care to 
 express any opinion, except that in not a few passages 
 in " Bitter-Sweet" he shows rare felicity of diction, and 
 rises to strains of sentiment of which no real poet need 
 be ashamed. In other passages, as a whole, it is open 
 to severe criticism, while yet its daring and its individu- 
 ality lead us to respect the author. It is of little use to 
 insist that such a writer lacks genius till critics are better 
 agreed upon that in which genius consists. 
 
 As a novelist he always wrote for a purpose, and 
 confessedly. His tales are tendenz-stories without ques- 
 tion, and are fairly open to the criticism which such 
 stories must always receive. It seems idle to pretend 
 that they do not display manifold ability. 
 
 Dr. Holland undoubtedly, at one time in his life, felt 
 very keenly that a certain school of critics in this coun- 
 try were disposed to do him injustice, and seemed to 
 have combined to treat him with studious contempt. 
 He might have reasonably consoled himself with the re- 
 flection that preachers of all grades, inasmuch as there 
 is so much preaching required and used, are necessa- 
 rily tiresome, even if they are eloquent and powerful, 
 and that preaching in literature must follow this general 
 law. Notwithstanding, preachers have their place in 
 literature, and sometimes they are gifted with genius, 
 even if certain critics persuade themselves that genius 
 
90 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 is necessarily blasphemous, Agnostic, or Bohemian. 
 He might have bethought himself that Christian ideas 
 and Christian hopes will be likely to justify themselves 
 to other generations, even though a narrow or even a 
 large circle of professed illuminists should relegate them 
 among the outcasts of the Philistines. Whatever he 
 suffered unjustly was, however, more than made up by 
 the testimony of respect and honor which is now paid 
 to him from all quarters for his sweet and courageous 
 manhood, for the high aims of character which he ex- 
 emplified, for his genius for generous and noble acts, 
 and the consecration of his gifts to the ennobling and 
 sweetening of our American life. 
 
 He was, doubtless, pecuniarily, the most successful 
 of American writers. His best success, however, was 
 his success in the noble, loving manhood which he com- 
 mended in his writings and his own character. This 
 was more and more definitely and fervently nourished 
 by a positive and conscious Christian faith as he went 
 on in his life. As he went from one church to another, 
 he gathered new courage and new zeal, and gave more 
 and more of his heart to the life which is hid with Christ 
 in God. While he did not abate one jot from the in- 
 telligence and Christian independence of his theological 
 creed, he was more and more definitely fervent and 
 Christian in his affections and activity. 
 
 For years he lived in the anticipation of a speedy 
 and sudden death. His departure was both speedy and 
 sudden, but none the less a euthanasia. 
 
 It happened that the writer spent the last night with 
 him and his family, in his house at Brightwood, just as 
 they were about to leave for Europe. At his morning 
 worship the Doctor offered a singularly fervent and 
 characteristic prayer of thanksgiving and praise for the 
 
Sketches and Tributes. 91 
 
 blessings of his life in that house, in which he seemed 
 to pass that portion of his life in review, with most 
 heartfelt gratitude for the way, guidance, and blessing 
 of God. 
 
 When a man like Dr. Holland dies, it is not he alone 
 who has occasion to render thanks for the guidance of 
 his life. There are many others who are one with him 
 in such a service of gratitude and praise, whether it is 
 held in the present or the Immortal Life. 
 
 DOCTOR POTTER'S TRIBUTE. 
 
 " And here it is, in the light of these words of His 
 own, that we come to understand the meaning of the 
 cross of Christ. If love is to be the king of your life 
 and mine, my brothers— if with us here, with all the 
 strife and rivalry that make up our week-day world, the 
 voice that bids us love is to be regnant over all other 
 voices, somewhere or other there must be the spell that 
 compels us to do so. An apostle had found that spell 
 when he wrote, 'The love of Christ constraineth me,' 
 and other men than he — aye, a mighty multitude whom 
 no man can number — have looked also into the face 
 crowned with thorns, and have learned there how to 
 love ! 
 
 " More than any other, it is the lesson for which our 
 time is waiting. Oh, how clever, how persistent, how 
 aggressive we Americans are ! It is simply true that 
 there is no conceivable enterprise demanding capital, 
 courage, the sacrifice of time and strength, which would 
 not, if it were proposed to-morrow, find a host of in- 
 vestors and followers. But the quieter, larger courage 
 that, deep in the love of God and man, gives itself to 
 
92 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 brighten and enrich and purify the sum of human life — 
 that is not so common. The apostolic spirit that sent 
 men forth aflame with a love of souls that would not let 
 them rest — it is this that we need to have rekindled. 
 Not by capital, not by culture, not by conquest, does any 
 nation or any character become really noble or endur- 
 ingly great, but rather by alliance with His life who 
 gave the world anew the great commandment, and then 
 translated it by his cross. 
 
 " One such character I desire to mention here this 
 morning, just because, to so many of us, its influence 
 has, perhaps, been so little known and so imperfectly 
 appreciated. A man of letters died in this city during 
 the past week, who, though he came here ten years ago 
 from New England, was perhaps known personally to 
 but few of this congregation. I speak of the late Dr. 
 J. G. Holland, for some time the editor of a monthly 
 magazine in this city, and for the greater part of his 
 life an assiduous and prolific writer. 
 
 " He was a man of good gifts, consecrated by a great 
 motive. Of clear and vigorous intellect, he was, best 
 of all, like Noah of old, a preacher of righteousness, 
 and one of rare power and singular sweetness. Writing 
 of plain and homely themes, he never touched one of 
 them that he did not ennoble; and over all that he 
 wrote there breathed the spirit of one who loved God, 
 and who, therefore, like Ben Adhem, ' loved his fellow- 
 man.' His writings found an acceptance which has 
 often puzzled the critics, and confounded the literary 
 prophets. But their secret was not far to seek. They 
 helped men. They lifted them up. They rebuked mean- 
 ness. They encouraged all nobler aspirations. They 
 were always a word for ' God and the right/ spoken 
 with courage, but spoken most of all in a tone of manly 
 
Sketches and Tributes. 93 
 
 and brotherly sympathy that could not be misunder- 
 stood. In a word, this large influence (to which, for 
 one, I gladly own to having been a debtor) owed its 
 power for good — a power steadfast and wide-spreading 
 I believe, as yet beyond adequate estimate — to a char- 
 acter touched itself by the spell of a divine love, and 
 lifted by that spell into a throne of happy and wholesome 
 influence over the hearts and lives of other men." 
 
 THR LAST WORDS. 
 
 [Last words written by Dr. Holland, October n, 1881— referring to President Garfield.] 
 
 We may not choose ! Ah, if we might, how we 
 Should linger here, not ready to be dead, 
 Till one more loving thing were looked, or said — 
 Till some dear child's estate of joy should be 
 Complete — or we, triumphant, late, should see 
 Some great cause win for which our hearts had bled- 
 Some hope come true which all our lives had fed — 
 Some bitter sorrow fade away and flee, 
 Which we, rebellious, had too bitter thought ; 
 Or even — so our human hearts would cling, 
 If but they might, to this fair world inwrought 
 With heavenly beauty in each smallest thing — 
 We would refuse to die till we had sought 
 One violet more, heard one more robin sing ! 
 
94 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 ii. 
 
 We may not choose ; but if we did foreknow 
 
 The hour when we should pass from human sight, 
 
 What words were last that we should say, or write, 
 
 Could we pray fate a sweeter boon to show 
 
 Than bid our last words burn with loving glow 
 
 Of heart-felt praise, to lift, and make more bright 
 
 A great man's memory, set in clearer light ? 
 
 Ah yes ! Fate could one boon more sweet bestow : — 
 
 So frame those words that every heart which knew, 
 
 Should, sudden, awe-struck, weeping turn away 
 
 And cry : " His own hand his best wreath must lay ! 
 
 Of his own life his own last words are true — 
 
 So true, love's truth no truer thing can say — 
 
 1 By sympathy all hearts to him he drew.' " 
 
 October 12, 1881. H. H. 
 
 J. G. H. 
 
 " Multis tile bonis flebilis occidit." 
 
 — Hor., Carm., I. 24. 
 
 Who knew him, loved him. His the longing heart 
 For what his youth had missed, his manhood known — 
 The haunts of Song, the fellowship of Art — 
 And all their kin he strove to make his own. 
 
 But his the good, true heart not thus content : 
 The words that fireside groups at eA^e repeat 
 He spoke, or sang ; and far his sayings went, 
 And simple households found his music sweet. 
 
 So Heaven was kind and gave him naught to grieve. 
 Among his loved he woke at morn from rest — 
 One smile — one pang — and gained betimes his leave, 
 Ere strength had lost its use, or Life its zest. 
 
 Edmund Clarence Stedman. 
 
Sketches and Tributes. 95 
 
 JIAIL AND FAREWELL. 
 
 Mountain, that watchest down the vale 
 
 Most like a couchant lion — 
 Wide, winding river, whose fair breast 
 
 Soft south winds gently die on — 
 Lift up the head ; flow still and slow ; 
 
 Let no chill blast now chide you ; 
 For one who loved you long ago 
 
 Lies down to sleep beside you. 
 
 You nursed within his boyish heart 
 
 The springing love of beauty ; 
 You taught him, by your steadfast ways, 
 
 The deeper lore of duty ; 
 Your shade and shine about him lay 
 
 In life's abundant labor ; 
 And now the mound that holds his dust 
 
 Shall be your lowly neighbor. 
 
 A good, brave man, a blameless man, 
 
 He lived and wrought among us ; 
 The truth he taught, the tales he told, 
 
 The heart-songs that he sung us, 
 All shine with white sincerity, 
 
 All thrill with strong conviction ; 
 His words were seeds of honest deeds, 
 
 His life a benediction. 
 
 The art he loved was not the art 
 
 That finds its end in pleasing ; 
 He loved to help and serve and bless 
 
 With toil and care unceasing ; 
 No gift, he said, its fruit hath borne 
 
 Until with love 'tis mated ; 
 No art is high, no art is pure, 
 
 That is not consecrated. 
 
1 
 
 g6 yosiah Gilbert Holland. 
 
 And thus, with kindly souls who pass 
 
 Through Baca's vale of weeping, 
 Beside whose way the fountains play, 
 
 Joy-bringing, verdure-keeping, 
 From strength to strength this pilgrim went, 
 
 With grace that ne'er forsook him, 
 Till suddenly, at break of day, 
 
 He was not, for God took him. 
 
 We tell our loss, we bear our pain, 
 
 Still thankful hearts upraising, — 
 For life so large and fruit so fair 
 
 Our God the giver praising. 
 The heart must bleed, the tears must fall, 
 
 But smiles through tear-drops glitter ; 
 We drink the cup, and grateful find 
 
 The sweet within the bitter. 
 
 O mountain ! guard his precious dust ; 
 
 O river ! seaward flowing, 
 By night your softest dews bestow 
 
 To keep the grasses growing 
 That ever, with the bitter-sweet, 
 
 His sacred grave shall cover — 
 Servant of man and friend of God, 
 
 Brave thinker, steadfast lover. 
 
 October 16, 1881. Washington Gladden. 
 
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