lfcC T«f 
 
 [1—072.] 
 HBEAET OIE 1 TIHIZE 
 
 UNITED STATES BUREAU OF EDUCATION. 
 Division __•_ 
 
 iSAej/ jtv.SL&L 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 £-Z/ \ Q 
 
 Glass_ 
 
 Book ^NlS^. 
 
 EODEUT BCALL, 
 
 (OKSELLER AND STATIONER, 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 The Library of Congress 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/recentpastfromso01wilm 
 
^ 
 
 
 ^z 
 
 "7- 
 
THE RECENT PAST 
 
 y/ 
 
 FROM A SOUTHERN STANDPOINT. 
 
 Reminiscences of a Grandfather. 
 
 "FORSAN ET H/EC OLIM MEMINISSE JUVABIT. 1 
 
 5 RICHARD H. WILMER, 
 
 BISHOP OF ALABAMA. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER, 
 
 2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE. 
 I8S7. 
 
Copyright, 1887, 
 By THOMAS WHITTAKER. 
 
 Inexeh, 
 P, of C. Pitb. Ub. 
 
 10 
 
 RAND AVERY COMPANY, 
 
 ELECTROTYPERS AND PRINTERS, 
 
 BOSTON. 
 
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED TO 
 
 ftfje CTanse of Erutfj, &iflt>t, antj $eace, 
 
 IN LOVING MEMORY OF 
 
 ALL WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR ITS MAINTENANCE; 
 
 AND IN BROTHERLY RECOGNITION OF ALL 
 
 WHO LIVE TO VINDICATE AND 
 
 DEFEND IT. 
 
 "The wisdom which cometh from above is first pure, then peaceable. 
 
TITLE. 
 
 When I had concluded to give public expression 
 to the thoughts contained herein, I found it difficult to 
 determine upon a title for the volume. Publishers told 
 me that the country was flooded with " Reminiscences," 
 and that the people took no interest in them, and that 
 " there is every thing in the name." 
 
 I first thought I would call it " Old Mortality ; " for- 
 getting, for the moment, that that name had been illumi- 
 nated and immortalized by the genius of Scott. So I had 
 to abandon that idea. Yet it will be found that in these 
 " Reminiscences," I have plied the same vocation with 
 " Old Mortality." As was his wont, I have been going 
 lovingly and reverently among the graves of our heroic 
 and sainted dead. It has been a grateful task for me to 
 pluck a nettle here, and plant a flower instead; with 
 sharp incision to freshen up some fading inscription ; to 
 remove the moss and lichen with which time was in- 
 crusting them, and cause the very gravestones once 
 
 5 
 
6 TITLE. 
 
 more — In Memoriam — to speak aloud the names and 
 deeds of those who, in our hearts and memories, should 
 never die. 
 
 Let this my purpose incline the youth of this genera- 
 tion to dwell fondly upon "Reminiscences" dedicated 
 to "the Cause and Maintenance of Truth, Right, and 
 Peace." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preliminary 9 
 
 LOYALTY 
 
 Citizenship 2 ° 
 
 The Constitution 2 4 
 
 War of the States 27 
 
 Domestic Slavery 37 
 
 "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 4* 
 
 The Church Question • • 49 
 
 Church in England S 2 
 
 Church in America 57 
 
 How the Church was planted in America .... 59 
 
 John Stewart of Virginia 6 7 
 
 Different Religious Bodies in the United States . S3 
 
 Roman, or Latin, Church 8 7 
 
 The Presbyterian Communion 93 
 
 Baptist Friends 99 
 
 The Methodists UI 
 
 Conclusion of Matters pertaining to Religious 
 
 Organizations "4 
 
 Scepticism, Rationalism, and Scientism "8 
 
 Post-Bellum Reminiscences x 39 
 
 Intrusion of the Military Power J 39 
 
 Re-union of the Churches North and South ... 147 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Reply to Bishop Hopkins's Circular Letter to 
 
 the Southern Bishops, by One of their Number . 153 
 
 Note by Bishop Green 166 
 
 Rev. William H. Wilmer, D.D 166 
 
 Reminiscences of Right Rev. J. P. B. Wilmer, D.D., 
 
 LL.D., Late Bishop of Louisiana 180 
 
 The Late Bishop Elliott of Georgia ...... 201 
 
 Reminiscences of the Right Rev. Nicholas Hamner 
 
 Cobbs, D.D 242 
 
 Conclusion 271 
 
 Appendix 278 
 
REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER 
 
 PRELIMINARY. 
 
 "Now the days of King David drew nigh that he should die; and 
 he charged Solomon his son, saying, I go the way of all the earth: be 
 thou strong therefore, and shew thyself a man ; and keep the charge of 
 the Lord thy God, to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, and His 
 commandments, and His judgments, and His testimonies, as it is writ- 
 ten in the law of Moses, that thou mayest prosper in all that thou doest, 
 and whithersoever thou turnest thyself." 
 
 Man, as the things of time recede from sight, 
 and he is preparing to depart for his long home, 
 would fain stamp immortality upon something. 
 The thought of annihilation is fearful. If his own 
 life has been a failure, he will hope that his pos- 
 terity may make amends for his own misdoings : 
 if his life has yielded any good fruit, he may hope 
 that they will bring it to perfection. 
 
 With some such feelings I have jotted down, 
 from time to time, the incidents and reflections 
 contained in these "Reminiscences." At the 
 time of writing them, I had no view to publica- 
 tion, as will appear from their personal character 
 
 9 
 
10 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 and familiar style. I thought, that, after I had 
 gone the way of all the earth, my children and 
 children's children would derive pleasure and 
 profit from knowing the thoughts of one whose 
 memory they cherished, and who had lived a long 
 life during an eventful period of the country's 
 history. 
 
 But some friends, — partial friends, perhaps, — 
 who have run their eyes over the manuscript, 
 warmly urge its publication, saying that no exist- 
 ing book covers exactly the same ground with 
 these " Reminiscences." Yielding to their wishes, 
 I send the volume forth, to add a drop more to the 
 flood of publications which is sweeping on to swift 
 and sure oblivion. 
 
 There is one word which I must say at the out- 
 set, in order that my language and position may 
 be clearly understood and fairly interpreted. 
 
 I speak plainly of matters political, sectional, 
 social, and ecclesiastical — of Northern and South- 
 ern men, etc. The spurious charity of these lat- 
 ter days demands from me a degree of reticence, 
 caution, and suppression which I have not exer- 
 cised in these pages, and which I deem utterly 
 inconsistent with that divine charity which "re- 
 joiceth in the truth." Men are not candid enough 
 with each other. They will attack each other in 
 secret, but they will not talk face to face. This 
 
PRELIMINARY. II 
 
 may beget a sort of love, and pass for charity, but 
 it is not the love which is "without dissimulation." 
 In my judgment, many errors abound, and acquire 
 a sort of respectability because they are not can- 
 didly and charitably exposed. Truth is not so 
 hard to find as men think. Error is founded in 
 ignorance, prejudice, pride, and passion. Let 
 "knowledge with fervent charity" prevail, and 
 men will be drawn nearer together in heart and 
 mind. All else will fail save charity. Temporary 
 fraternizations, — such as those among the denomi- 
 nations, — where all consent to suppress some con- 
 viction by way of a truce, discard the very element 
 of love which " rejoiceth in the truth." Aggre- 
 gations of men bound together by mechanical ap- 
 pliances only, fall to pieces for the want of that 
 cement of love which is " the very bond of peace 
 and of all virtues." 
 
 Judged by the modern ideas of charity, I trust 
 that I shall be condemned as an uncharitable man, 
 for I enjoy the ill judgment of some people ; but, 
 judged by a higher standard, I hope to stand ac- 
 quitted before God, even as I am in all conscience, 
 for "rejoicing in the truth." 
 
 When, then, in these pages I speak of the North 
 and Northern men, I have not in my eye that large 
 body of people whose culture, refinement, and 
 large-hearted generosity challenge my admiration, 
 
12 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 and has oftentimes elicited my personal gratitude. 
 " 0, si sic omnes ! " But I speak of that fanatical, 
 and at times dominant, element, which having 
 waged a destructive war (and for that it becomes 
 me to make no moan), and after having destroyed 
 our wealth, and laid waste our territory, and revo- 
 lutionized our domestic and political life, persist- 
 ently aims at our humiliation, still plies us with 
 ignominious epithets, and, to use a vulgar current 
 phrase, "still waves the bloody shirt." 
 
 I was written to some years ago by an editor of 
 the North, who wished to know the reason for the 
 solidarity of the South, and whether I, in my posi- 
 tion, could not write or do something to dissolve 
 it. He must have been "an innocent," or thought 
 me one. The weather at the time was cold be- 
 yond precedent, and our waters were frozen over. 
 I replied to him in one sentence : " The solidarity 
 of the South is due to the same cause that just 
 now makes our water solid, — unfriendly breezes 
 from the North." 
 
 Again, when I speak of "denominational bodies 
 of Christians," I have not in view that noble 
 army of learned, devout, and zealous Christians of 
 nearly all names, whom I feel all too unworthy to 
 call brethren ; for I would love to sit at the feet of 
 some of those men, and learn from them how to be 
 more like our common Lord and Saviour, by Whose 
 
PRELIMINARY. 1 3 
 
 blood we were all redeemed, and of Whose life, I 
 trust, I am partaker with them. No ! I have not 
 such men in my eye ; they are of the " Brother- 
 hood," whom I am glad to love ; and my very love 
 for them causes me to contend for, and rejoice in, 
 the truth, which would bring us all together, and 
 make us one in Christ Jesus, even as He and the 
 Father are One. Then we should not, as un- 
 happily we are now doing, "live apart" but 
 " dwell togctlicr" in unity. 
 
 No! I am speaking of communities — humanly 
 organized, as they appear to my eye — which, 
 without adequate cause or warranty, have created 
 sects and divisions in Christendom, thereby 
 breaking the line of the Church Militant, and 
 enfeebling its power of resisting the combined 
 power of Satan and his hosts. His kingdom is 
 not divided. The divided Church feels now the 
 force of the shock from his concentrated assaults. 
 I speak earnestly and in unmistakable language 
 on this point. We cannot promote unity by 
 thinking or speaking lightly of divisions among 
 Christians. No malignant evil was ever remedied 
 by treating it as a matter of no consequence. If 
 there be ever any real movement towards Chris- 
 tian unity, it must be preceded by some clear and 
 distinct conviction of the nature, causes, and guilt 
 of schism. 
 
14 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 Meanwhile "this Church" of ours, recognizing 
 every baptized man as a member of Christ, offers 
 to meet Christendom on the broad platform of the 
 Holy Scriptures, the ancient Creeds, the divinely 
 ordered Sacraments, and the Apostolical ministry. 
 Rome would meet us there to-day by discarding 
 her new doctrines, and becoming catholic, as she 
 once was. But I am somewhat anticipating. 
 
 One chief reason for giving these reminiscences 
 to the public, is that I may help to keep sacred in 
 the memory of the rising generation the traditions 
 of their fathers. A new generation ordinarily 
 little cares for, and little acquaints itself with, the 
 past. This results in part from the fact that 
 ordinarily parents concern themselves too little 
 with the opinions of their children on matters 
 past, present, or to come. I do not share this 
 indifference. I have a special fear that our young 
 people, as they recede farther and farther from our 
 times, will gather their views of the recent past 
 from partisan histories rather than from sacredly 
 preserved traditions. The school-books and his- 
 tories of our times are, as a general rule, from 
 Northern sources : their authors naturally look 
 at all these matters with other eyes than ours. 
 I cannot endure to think that any descendant of 
 mine shall open, say, a catechism, and find Benedict 
 Arnold, Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee chosen 
 
PRELIMINARY. 1 5 
 
 out to exemplify Treason and Rebellion. It was 
 bruited abroad that there was such a catechism, 
 but I can hardly believe without ocular demon- 
 stration. I want our young people to know what I 
 know, — that the two men last named in the list of 
 " traitors " were men who exemplified through life 
 every trait of honor and loyalty. 
 
 Nor can I endure to think that my grandsons 
 shall be set down to read histories which tell 
 them that their ancestors were " tyrants to their 
 servants," "rebels against their government," and 
 "traitors to their country." So far as in me lies, 
 this shall never be ; and shame to every man who 
 loves not to pluck the nettles from the graves of 
 his sires, and strew them with flowers ! 
 
 As it regards myself, I have saved much time 
 and correspondence by putting these thoughts 
 in print. To every-day letters -and inquiries, I 
 shall be enabled to say, "Here in this volume is 
 what I think upon such matters." We have in 
 our midst many earnest and ingenuous young men, 
 who respect the memory of their fathers, some 
 of whom, alas ! are buried on unknown battle- 
 fields. They come to me, and say, " My father is, 
 stigmatized in these books and newspapers as a 
 'rebel' and a 'traitor:' how is this?" — "Well, 
 my son," say I, "if your father was a rebel, I was 
 one, and so was every cultured man of the Far 
 
1 6 -REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 South, almost without exception. Here in these 
 ' Reminiscences ' is our view of this matter." 
 
 I suppose that few will read these pages, save 
 those who sympathize with my views. To such 
 persons I am enabled to say, if you wish your 
 children to understand and reverence the tradi- 
 tions of our people, you may possibly find in this 
 volume some thoughts that may help to keep 
 green in their memories the days of " Auld Lang 
 Syne," and warm and sacred in their hearts recol- 
 lections of " The Old Folks at Home." 
 
 LOYALTY. 
 
 The thoughts, which I now submit for considera- 
 tion in the following pages, were written for your 
 eyes alone, and not with any idea of publication. 
 Whilst writing my will, and leaving some few in- 
 junctions to you, the question came across my 
 mind, Why should not a father tell his children 
 more of his opinions of the times in which he 
 lived, and thus enable them to gather his views 
 upon questions of deep concernment to all genera- 
 tions ? Following out this thought, I have herein 
 set down for your consideration the conclusions 
 which I, in common with men of my class and 
 position, have reached upon matters — some of 
 them, at least — of enduring interest. You are 
 now reading, and will continue to read, the his- 
 
LOYALTY. 17 
 
 tories of the past and present day ; but you can- 
 not gather with satisfaction the tone and temper 
 of an age from any general history. We glean 
 from some works of fiction — say Scott's novels 
 — clearer ideas of the times of which they are 
 written, than you can possibly do from any gen- 
 eral history of the same era. It is quite notable 
 that Scott's novels are hardly fictions, and his 
 history of Napoleon is almost a falsehood. Scott's 
 genius has illuminated his native land through his 
 novels. 
 
 It is commonly said that one generation can 
 only bequeath knowledge and treasure to that suc- 
 ceeding it. This is, in the main, true. Wisdom is 
 to be won in the battle of life, each gaining it for 
 himself. Knowledge is cumulative ; so is wealth. 
 But when children ponder lovingly the thoughts 
 of their forefathers, there must be some small 
 residuum of zvisdom deposited besides the knowl- 
 edge gained. At all events, I have given you these 
 reminiscences in the hope that I may — not fetter 
 the minds of my descendants, for they should be 
 wiser than he who writes these lines, but — keep 
 them on the right track of thought, and hold them 
 true and loyal to the traditions of their forefathers. 
 This sentiment of loyalty is a necessary part of 
 an integral character, as is conscience, although, 
 like conscience, liable to be ill instructed, mis- 
 
1 8 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 guided, and even perverted. One cannot be a 
 whole man, who is without loyalty. It is the 
 cement of home, the bond of society, the defence 
 of states, — yea ! the essence of piety. To cherish 
 it, and guide it, and instruct it, is a large part of 
 education. 
 
 Loyalty does not hold one slavishly and unques- 
 tioningly to the traditions of one's family and 
 country, for then men could never change and 
 never improve. And there is, necessarily, no vio- 
 lation of loyalty in departing from transmitted 
 and hereditary ideas. For if one changes the 
 opinions which he received by inheritance, be- 
 cause convinced that his ideas were not well 
 founded in truth, and takes hold of those things 
 which he believes to be true, howsoever at vari- 
 ance with inherited convictions, such a one is, in 
 the highest sense, loyal — loyal to Him who is 
 Truth. The lower gives way to the higher ; the 
 less gives place to the greater ; the reverence for 
 the earthly merges in the reverence due the heav- 
 enly — as the moon and stars become invisible 
 when the sun rules the day. Therefore I like it 
 not when I hear it said, " I will not go back upon 
 my father's or my mother's opinions or creed." 
 The sentiment which inspires such declarations is 
 most praiseworthy; but if the parents unfortu- 
 nately were in error (and the best parents, as all 
 
LOYALTY. 19 
 
 admit, are liable to err), it binds one to error, 
 which is disloyalty to truth. Thus, a misguided 
 loyalty may end in actual treason. Better to say, 
 " My parents, with the light they had, held such 
 and such an opinion. With the light before me, 
 I cannot hold the same opinion. With my light, 
 they would, in all probability, have come to a dif- 
 ferent opinion. I cannot go back upon them, but 
 I must go forward from them, and move with the 
 ever-moving world nearer the ' Father of Lights,' 
 with Whom, and Whom alone, there is no 'varia- 
 bleness or shadow of turning.'" I write this 
 much that my children may not misunderstand me 
 in what I shall hereinafter advise them. I shall 
 give them my counsel, and I know that they will 
 weigh it well ; and this is all that I can properly 
 claim at their hands. I only wish them to be 
 clear in this; viz., "Follow truth and right 
 always." That means to follow Him Who is the 
 Truth. That is the meaning of that mighty 
 declaration, "Whosoever shall love any thing — 
 houses, lands, father and mother, wife and chil- 
 dren — more than Me, is not worthy of Me." 
 The world might exist without the light of the 
 planets, but how without the light of the life- 
 giving sun ? He who most loves the truth 
 and the right, will most honor his parents, for 
 honor and reverence to parents is a part of the 
 
20 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 truth. The whole of the truth is very vast 
 indeed. Draw near to it, my children, embrace it, 
 cleave steadfastly unto it ; let its arms be around 
 thy neck, its kiss upon thy forehead ; plant thy 
 feet upon it, and let it be a crown of glory to thy 
 head. As thou art true, so shalt thou be. 
 
 CITIZENSHIP. 
 Let us look around about us. Perhaps I should 
 begin more properly with the individual, and talk 
 to you about the man, his body, soul, and spirit. 
 If I live to complete this letter, I may, perhaps, 
 touch all these several points. But just now I 
 feel more disposed to treat and get rid of cer- 
 tain matters of a more general description, hoping 
 that as I get nearer the end of life, and get more 
 of the light that streams from the "Delectable 
 Mountains," I may have more to tell you of that 
 other country for which we are all bound, and on 
 the confines of which I know that I am now 
 standing. Of this, more anon. I want now to 
 say something about your earthly citizenship. No 
 man liveth to himself. He is a member of society, 
 and under government. The books of history 
 and geography which you may read will give you 
 all that you need to know in a general way 
 about the several continents and countries, etc. 
 I let all that pass, only observing that histories, as 
 
CITIZENSHIP. 2 1 
 
 a general rule, arc one-sided, partisan, and partial, 
 recording the facts from many various and con- 
 flicting stand-points, insomuch that we are often 
 compelled, with Pilate, to exclaim, "What is 
 truth ? " To go into this matter (at any sufficient 
 length to make it profitable), I find impracticable. 
 Let it suffice for me to say this much : The his- 
 tory of one age is pretty much the history of all 
 ages ; that which hath been, is now, and until 
 something, as yet unknown to history, shall inter- 
 vene, will most likely continue to be ; and there 
 is, so far as human nature is concerned, " nothing 
 new under the sun." 
 
 There is one matter about which I feel especially 
 solicitous that you should be rightly informed ; and 
 that is, the political history of your own country, 
 and section of country. We have passed through, 
 during the last twenty-five years, a mighty revolu- 
 tion. That revolution effected a mighty change 
 in the character of our government and institu- 
 tions. It is most important for you to understand 
 the merits of that conflict of ideas which con- 
 vulsed the minds of the people, North and South, 
 and finally culminated in a sectional war, which 
 turned a million of men to ashes, and covered the 
 whole land with mourning. Even at this present 
 moment, as I write, we seem to walk on molten 
 lava, whose surface is scarcely cooled. Your 
 

 22 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 father, who is writing these lines, was deeply 
 and passionately involved on the side of his State 
 and section ; ready, if his ministerial calling had 
 not forbidden, to have shouldered his musket, and 
 entered the fight. As it was, under a temporary 
 access of passion, he became captain of a home- 
 guard, and drilled daily, while yet rector of a 
 church near Richmond, Va. I mention this to 
 give you an idea of the intensity of the excitement. 
 Your grand-uncle, the Rev. Lemuel Wilmer, who 
 was, as he viewed it, an ardent patriot, wrote me 
 after the war was over, that, when Maryland was 
 invaded, he went to Washington with musket on 
 his shoulder, and took his place in the trenches. 
 He was then an old man, and had been rector of 
 Port Tobacco Parish for half a century. I refer 
 to this incident to show you that some of our 
 blood still live up to the motto on the family coat- 
 of-arms, — " Facit quod suscipit" A little reflec- 
 tion served to cool the heat of my fever, and 
 turned my attention to a more legitimate sphere 
 of action. Besides, I read that the " Son of man " 
 — whose servant I was — "came, not to destroy 
 men's lives, but to save them;" and I read also, 
 that " the servant must be as his lord." While the 
 war lasted, I did what I could for the wounded 
 and the sick, and blew the trumpet to excite men 
 to action in the field ; taking as my warranty for 
 
CITIZENSHIP. 23 
 
 doing this much, the permission given to the Jew- 
 ish Priesthood, "to blow the silver trumpets in 
 case of a war of invasion." You will have read, 
 and will continue to read, as they are published, 
 many histories of that conflict. I do not wish to 
 so bias your minds as that they shall not take a 
 calmer, and perhaps clearer, view of that conflict 
 of ideas and of arms than I, from my position, 
 could be expected to do. Your own views on 
 this matter will, and must, depend, in great meas- 
 ure, upon the description of books that you are 
 likely to read. Owing to the fact that the North 
 does most of the publishing of books, — and es- 
 pecially of school-books, — you will most likely at 
 school be in a situation to imbibe Northern ideas 
 of the origin, causes, etc., of the whole revolution; 
 to hear many whose names have stood high for 
 learning, character, and for all that makes up true 
 nobility, characterized as "rebels," "traitors," 
 and the like ; and a great, though ineffectual, 
 struggle for right and compact denounced as 
 "The Great Rebellion." Well, if all this was as 
 our enemies allege, I have no wish to so forestall 
 your minds with opinions to the contrary as to 
 close them to the entrance of the truth. For 
 truth, like the King's messenger, has authority to 
 enter the mind and the heart " in the name of the 
 King" Our only privilege is, to inquire whether 
 

 24 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 it is the King's messenger. To guide you in 
 such an inquiry, and to dictate not at all, is the 
 object of this writing. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION. 
 When we look back to the early history of the 
 United States, we find that certain colonies, 
 peopled from the British Isles, for the most part, 
 were stretched along the Atlantic coast. Disaf- 
 fection sprang up among the colonists, principally 
 because of taxes laid upon the people, without 
 privilege of representation. By little and little, 
 they came at last to war. The conflict was waged 
 with varying fortunes for some years. Epithets 
 of "rebels" and "traitors," etc., were as freely 
 applied to our forefathers on the part of the 
 Mother Country, as by the North to ourselves in 
 our so-called "Rebellion." The issue, as you 
 know, was decided in favor of the revolting colo- 
 nies, whose "Declaration of Independence" was 
 made good by the arbitrament of war. These 
 colonies, thus set free to govern themselves (their 
 independence as separate States having been ac- 
 knowledged by Great Britain), soon began to cast 
 about for an alliance among themselves closer 
 than that of the " Articles of Confederation " 
 which they had adopted. The materials to be 
 united were in some respects heterogeneous, their 
 
THE COXSTITUTIOX. 25 
 
 interests somewhat conflicting, and their ideas of 
 the government to be formed widely variant. 
 However, after much debate, they finally united 
 under the "Constitution of the United States," 
 — the same instrument that now exists, except 
 (besides some amendments made soon after its 
 adoption) the important and radical changes which 
 resulted from the war between the States. I do' 
 not purpose going into a minute history of the 
 events which led to this consummation, nor to 
 touch upon the original differences of opinion 
 which required to be harmonized and adjusted 
 before the Constitution found general acceptance 
 and adoption. Two quite equally divided parties 
 struggled for the mastery, — the one contended 
 for a strong central government, the other for a 
 more decided recognition of the sovereignty of 
 the several States. The result was a Constitution 
 which aimed to embody both features, and it re- 
 quired a bloody war to settle the meaning of the 
 Constitution. In other words, the party which 
 could bring the greatest number of soldiers into 
 the field had their own way in interpreting the 
 meaning of the Constitution, and thus, practically, 
 the question concerning the power to secede was 
 for the time determined ; the question of original 
 right under the Constitution not being, by gun- 
 powder, determinable. 
 
26 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 Let me digress for a moment at this point, to 
 pay my willing tribute to the genius of Alexander 
 Hamilton, in my judgment, the largest-minded 
 statesman that this continent has produced. Ham- 
 ilton was the leader of the Federal party, and con- 
 tended for a government with such centripetal 
 power that it could not fly to pieces in the revolu- 
 tion of affairs. Had his principles fully obtained, 
 and been ingrafted in the Constitution, — or, rather, 
 had been made the framework of the same, — 
 questions of secession could not have well arisen, 
 or at least could not have arisen upon an interpre- 
 tation of the Constitution. His broad views of 
 human affairs, and his far-seeing sagacity, taught 
 him that all confederated sovereignties tended to 
 consolidation. His views, if they had to the full 
 prevailed, would have rendered impossible the 
 agitation of secession, as a right under the Con- 
 stitution. Consolidation has taken place, but by 
 war. He wanted it to take place, and to hold 
 its place, by original formation. His ounce of 
 prevention would have saved many pounds of 
 cure. The history of nations, without exception, 
 goes to show that there is no longevity in con- 
 federated or united sovereignties, — in proof, the 
 Saxon Heptarchy, the principalities of Germany, 
 the republics of Italy, the Dukedoms of France, 
 etc. But Hamilton's views did not wholly pre- 
 
WAR OF THE STATES. 27 
 
 vail. All such differences as existed between 
 him and the opposite party were settled by the 
 adoption of a compromise Constitution, recog- 
 nizing enough of State sovereignty to keep up 
 the idea of separate and independent action on 
 the part of the several States, and, at the same 
 time, absorbing so much power, denned or implied 
 in the Federal Government, as to cripple the 
 States, and render them helpless in an hour when 
 they might attempt to redress a wrong, or, if that 
 seemed hopeless, to fly for safety— secede was 
 the word used to express the idea. Whether the 
 original Constitution was the best that could have 
 been framed, is one question ; how it was really 
 made, is quite another. Had the idea of the Fed- 
 eralists prevailed fully, the question of right to 
 secede could never have arisen. But it did not 
 fully prevail. Thus, antagonistic views existed as 
 germs in the very Constitution itself, and bayo- 
 nets were called in to skewer the people together. 
 An examination of the present Constitution as 
 amended by war has somewhat of a post-mortem 
 
 character. 
 
 WAR OF THE STATES. 
 
 But how came the Southern States to secede, 
 
 and which section of the country must bear the 
 
 responsibility of the work of its consequent 
 
 horrors ? A vast question indeed, and one upon 
 
28 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 which libraries will be written before new events 
 shall have buried this question among other dead 
 issues. 
 
 The ablest and fairest exposition of this ques- 
 tion, in my judgment, is from the pen of Jefferson 
 Davis, President of the Confederate States while 
 they lasted. It is a calm and statesmanlike re- 
 view of the whole subject-matter. Davis will be 
 pilloried in Northern histories as an " arch-rebel," 
 and traitorous to the core. So much for the 
 truth of partisan history ! While, on the con- 
 trary, his whole history will show that he was a 
 calm, clear-headed, and large-hearted man, chosen 
 in the hour of need for his known merits, and on 
 the strength of his history, which was not obscure 
 nor ignoble. That he failed, was not extraordi- 
 nary ; that he held out so long, was the marvel. 
 I write from much knowledge of the man. If 
 you would understand him and the history of his 
 times, read his book, " The Rise and Fall of the 
 Southern Confederacy," — unanswered and unan- 
 swerable, as we of the South think. 
 
 But there was a feature in the history of the 
 Southern struggle for independence which you 
 must understand in order to do justice to your 
 ancestors in regard to the part which they felt 
 constrained by their interest, by their sense of 
 personal self-respect, and by their loyalty, to main- 
 tain to the end. 
 
WAR OF THE STATES. 29 
 
 Slavery existed in the United States at an 
 early day. It was not confined to the Southern 
 section. Northern vessels brought the slaves 
 from Africa, and they were held in bondage when- 
 ever it was found profitable to hold them. The 
 climate of the South best suited the native Afri- 
 can, and his labor was found more profitable upon 
 a Southern soil. Consequently, the larger popu- 
 lation of slaves were gathered in the Southern 
 section of this country. They constituted the 
 greater part of the wealth of the Southern States. 
 Their status must be provided for in the Constitu- 
 tion, and thus a guaranty be afforded that the 
 Southern States should be protected in the pos- 
 session of their property. For a while things 
 went on smoothly ; but, very soon, strong and 
 fanatical ideas began to take possession of North- 
 ern minds. It manifested itself in every possible 
 way, — in efforts to legislate slavery out of the 
 District of Columbia ; in efforts to circumscribe 
 the area of slavery by excluding it from the Terri- 
 tories, the common home and property of the 
 peoples of all the States ; in incendiary pam- 
 phlets ; in books of fiction ; in books for the school- 
 room ; in organizations for kidnapping slaves, and 
 helping them to their freedom ; in fierce debates 
 upon the floors of Congress, and at last in an inva- 
 sion by armed men of the soil of Virginia, with 
 
30 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 implements of war to arm the emancipated slave. 
 This last event occurred in October, 1859. And 
 there are living men who enroll the leader of that 
 murderous band in the noble Army of Martyrs. 
 God help them ! Up to this time the General 
 Government had committed itself to no act which 
 could be construed as offensive and aggressive 
 towards the South. But events rapidly progressed. 
 The abolition spirit had grown with great rapidity 
 and intensity. It soon became a political power, 
 then a political party, and finally succeeded in 
 electing a President upon a platform of principles 
 which was undisguisedly hostile to Southern insti- 
 tutions and property. With the more violent 
 members of the " Republican " party, — for such 
 was their name, — the " Constitution " of the coun- 
 try (a solemn compact between the States, and 
 the sole guaranty under which the Southern 
 States held their institutions) was denounced as 
 a " Covenant with Hell" because it protected the 
 South in their property. In some instances State 
 legislation obstructed by penal laws the restora- 
 tion of slaves, a right to which had been secured 
 in the Constitution. The question now arose, — 
 and it was a question so large, and involving so 
 much that was dear and valuable, that it stirred 
 every heart, — " What shall we do ? Hitherto we 
 have been able to appeal to the General Govern- 
 
WAR OF THE STATES. 3 1 
 
 ment. That Government will soon be in the 
 hands of men, the most violent of whom will 
 without scruple invade our rights." "Shall we 
 secede, and live to ourselves?" said the believers 
 in the right of secession. " Shall we wait, and 
 see whether the incendiary will apply his torch ? " 
 said the more timid and cautious. " Shall we go 
 out from the Union as separate States, or shall 
 we act with others ? " said the more wary co-oper- 
 ant. " Shall we wait until we receive the blow, 
 or shall we give it ourselves ? " said the multitude. 
 Such were the questions that agitated every 
 family circle throughout the country. Peojole 
 answered this question, as people always do, ac- 
 cording to their kind — each after his own order. 
 Some thoughtful and far-seeing men saw at a 
 glance that if a movement were to be made, it 
 should be made at once. They argued, that, if 
 you saw a man about to enter your premises with 
 harsh and dangerous intent, it would not be wise 
 to wait until he had struck you down before you 
 took measures of self-defence ; and they con- 
 tended that the attitude of the Republican party, 
 now for the first time in power, with all their past 
 history and utterances to interpret their intended 
 deeds, was hostile, and would be aggressive, and 
 that the Constitution of the country would no 
 longer be a shield and defence to them. But, on 
 
32 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 the other hand, there were other men, equally- 
 sincere, who loved the Union with a deep devo- 
 tion (such men as Bishop Meade and General 
 Lee), and who were willing to sacrifice all, save 
 honor, to their country's cause. In a word, some 
 were for going out at once, some for waiting, some 
 for temporizing, some few for yielding. Mean- 
 while, events moved fast. State after State se- 
 ceded. The believers in State sovereignty 
 esteemed it loyalty to follow the action of their 
 respective States. Following the logical sequence, 
 they scrupled not to seize upon the fortresses at 
 the mouths of their harbors. They argued, and 
 with reason, that these fortresses were erected 
 for the defence of the cities which they protected ; 
 they were builded in part with the money of the 
 people whose interests they were designed to 
 guard, and were the common property of the 
 States which they respectively defended. Now, 
 it looked as if the General Government was about 
 to use these forts to injure the Southern States. 
 They were proceeding to garrison and provision 
 them for war. — notably, the Fortress of Sum- 
 ter, which protected the city of Charleston, and 
 also commanded the city with its guns. The 
 Federal Government manoeuvred so as to make 
 the South seem to take the initiative in the con- 
 flict. By an attempt to re-enforce Fort Sumter, 
 
WAR OF THE STATES. 33 
 
 which, in effect, meant to batter clown Charleston, 
 they compelled the Southern troops to fire the 
 first gun, and thus secured the prestige which, on 
 the surface, made the South appear to be the 
 aggressive party. This fired the whole North, 
 brought out a proclamation for troops by the 
 President of the United States, and thus was 
 fired in turn the heart of the South ; and the 
 whole country was plunged into a sectional war 
 with an intensity of passion which has seldom, if 
 ever, had its parallel in history. All thought of 
 continued Union vanished from the mildest and 
 most conservative men. Henceforth the Union 
 man in the South was reckoned to be traitorous, 
 and was so branded. In the Far South, with the 
 exception of a very few, every Southern man of 
 honor and character and standing ranged himself 
 under the banner of his own State. The whole 
 country was in arms, and very soon, as the his- 
 tories of the time will show, in mourning. The 
 war was fierce, bloody, and protracted. The 
 issue, although at times looking favorable to 
 the South, was not long doubtful. The North 
 had population, arms, and access to the world. 
 The Southern ports were blockaded, powder had 
 to be made or smuggled, and she was shut out 
 from the world to her own resources. Besides, 
 her population, originally smaller than that of the 
 
34 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 North, was divided. Nearly all of the Southern 
 border States furnished men to the Federal Gov- 
 ernment ; and, in the progress of the war, the 
 negroes by tens of thousands were enlisted by 
 their emancipators. Thus, a small remnant fought 
 nearly the whole nation. In the progress of the 
 war, the North refused to exchange prisoners ; 
 and, inasmuch as they had the most men, the 
 South suffered most from this barbarous policy, 
 compelling us to keep a large number of prison- 
 ers when we had hard work to feed our own men, 
 and then, forsooth, making the prisoners, whom 
 they held, responsible for the alleged privations of 
 the prisoners for whom they would not exchange. 
 The policy was to swap down on the part of the 
 strongest side. But this is a long story, and con- 
 temporary history is full of mutual criminations 
 and recriminations. The fact is, however, that 
 the records show more deaths proportionately 
 among the prisoners in Northern hands than 
 among those in our hands ; and this is a sufficient 
 answer in the large to the charges of cruelty to 
 prisoners, which you will read of in Northern his- 
 tories. But I must not dwell longer on this mat- 
 ter. A word, however, upon two points before 
 leaving this subject. 
 
 I spoke of the firing on Fort Sumter. North- 
 ern history expatiates on that fact, and iterates 
 
WAR OF THE STATES. 35 
 
 and reiterates the words, "The South fired the 
 first gun." It sounds as if it had some meaning ; 
 but it is all sound, and signifies nothing. "Who 
 was the aggressor ? Who compelled the first gun 
 to be fired ? Who imperilled first the solemn 
 compact between the States ? " The whole ante- 
 cedent history will fasten the blame elsewhere. 
 If a man attacks me with gun in hand, and I 
 shoot quicker than he does, it is true that I fired 
 first ; but, if he had not made the aggressive move- 
 ment, there would have been no gun fired at all. 
 The approach of the fleet to re-enforce Sumter 
 ignited the match that fired the first gun. An- 
 other illustration. A boy puts a chip on his head, 
 and dares another to knock it off. Instead of 
 knocking the chip, suppose he knocks the head, 
 which, if fighting be allowable, is the wisest pol- 
 icy. After the fight, the boy with the chip can 
 say truly that the other hit the first blow. It is 
 true ; but, if he had hit the chip first, he would 
 have received the first blow. But, when men are 
 angry, nothing but fight will cool their blood ; and 
 fight they did, most lustily. History records no 
 more gallant struggle under more gallant leaders 
 than the South made. The issue being against 
 us, multitudes changed their opinions, and said, 
 " They must have been striving against right, or 
 God would have given them the victory." But 
 
36 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 such reasoning cannot hold. It proves too much. 
 Right, in the end and long future, will get its re- 
 ward, but in ways and modes of God's own ordi- 
 nation, and not after man's measurements or 
 upon men's small balances, which are not equal to 
 judge and weigh such magnitudes as are involved 
 in the divine plan with nations. I attempt to 
 rescue a child that has fallen into the sea. I 
 struggle manfully to save it, but I am drowned in 
 making the attempt. It does not follow at all 
 that I did wrong in making the effort to save the 
 child. I would have failed much in duty if I had 
 not made the effort. This is very plain, when 
 applied to a small and familiar matter. It is 
 equally true, if not equally plain, in the greatest 
 matters. We fail to see it in great matters, be- 
 cause we cannot see far enough, and, particularly, 
 because we estimate success by pitifully small 
 standards. A man often saves his whole life by 
 losing his physical, his present, life. Life must 
 be estimated, not only by its extent, but by its 
 intent ; not only by its length, but by its breadth 
 and depth. He who gives his life unselfishly for 
 another, or for right or truth or honor, in the true 
 sense of that word, has not lost, but has saved, 
 his life. On the other hand, he who can look on, 
 and see right and truth, or even a human life, 
 threatened and imperilled, and make no effort to 
 
DOMESTIC SLAVERY. 37 
 
 help, may, in a sense, have saved his life ; but he 
 has, in the deepest sense, lost it. He has already 
 lived too long for his own good. This, now, my 
 children, is an illustration, in the small, of great and 
 eternal principles. Never measure duty or right 
 by worldly and utilitarian standards. Some day, 
 I hope, you will rejoice if you shall have to give 
 your life a sacrifice to duty and truth. The life 
 of our dear Lord was a great failure, tried by the 
 worldly standards of His day. But where was 
 there ever such a life, even upon principles of 
 utility, when viewed in the large ? When I think 
 of the pure and noble-minded men who died on 
 fields of battle for the South (and I withhold not 
 my meed of recognition of like-minded men who 
 were ranged on the other side), — men whom I 
 knew and loved — Christian men, who gave them- 
 selves, life, and all, for what they deemed to be 
 duty, — I cannot hope for any better portion than 
 to be permitted to range myself by their side "on 
 the other banks of the river." 
 
 DOMESTIC SLAVERY. 
 Now, a word about another matter that I briefly 
 touched in a former page, — Domestic Slavery! 
 It was the occasion of the war in a certain way, 
 and it was done away with as one of the results of 
 the war. The time will probably come when my 
 
38 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 descendants will look back, and wonder how their 
 grandfathers could have held human beings in 
 bondage. 1 I am concerned that they who come 
 after me shall have some idea of the institution 
 of slavery as it existed in Virginia ; for I was 
 more conversant with its character as displayed 
 in the older States, where it was more patri- 
 archal, less profitable, and in all respects milder, 
 than in the South-western States, where absen- 
 
 1 If it shall be regarded as an unpardonable offence to have held 
 human beings in bondage, let it be borne in mind that it was an offence 
 shared originally by all the United States. 
 
 There lies before me, as I write, a little newspaper (about eight 
 by twelve inches in size) entitled 
 
 "THE NEW ENGLAND WEEKLY JOURNAL." 
 " Monday, April 8th, 1728." 
 
 In the column of advertisements of sermons, tracts, etc., I see the 
 following : — 
 
 " SUP" A very likely Negro Woman, who can do Household work, and 
 is fit Either for Town or Country Service, about 22 Years of Age, to 
 be sold. Inquire of the Printer hereof." 
 
 "SIP" A Very Likely Negro Girl, about 13 or 14 Years of Age, 
 speaks good English, has been in the Country some Years, to be sold. 
 Inquire of the Printer hereof." 
 
 (Spelling and capitalization as in the paper.) 
 
 I have inserted the foregoing advertisements with the hope that they 
 may serve as " conductors " to convey some of the lightning wrath of. our 
 Northern unfriends quietly and harmlessly to the ground. The Southern 
 States would never have received cargoes of slaves but for Northern ves- 
 sels, and Northern people kept them in bondage as long as it was profit- 
 ab/e so to keep them. The philanthropy which sweeps away at a breath 
 the wealth of other people, involves a very easy and cheap humanity. 
 
DOMESTIC SLAVERY. 39 
 
 teeism, that curse to the laborer, was more 
 common. If you will read the allegations from 
 the Northern side, and at all believe them as 
 truly descriptive of slavery as it existed in the 
 large, you will believe — to draw it mildly — a 
 very large lie. That there were cases of oppres- 
 sion and violence and grievous wrong, is not to 
 be doubted ; for some men, in all countries and 
 all ages, will be violent and oppressive — even to 
 their wives and children. But because there 
 have been cases where slaveholders have inflicted 
 cruelty and wrong upon their slaves, it no more 
 proves that cruelty was the characteristic of slave- 
 holders, than it proves that men in the Northern 
 States habitually maltreat their families, because, 
 every now and then, some brute kicks to death 
 a wife or child. People will be to their families — 
 to their wives, children, and servants — what they 
 are themselves. If kind and just in character, 
 they will be just and kind to all around them. 
 Then, superadd to this consideration the fact that 
 men in the large consult their interests, and that 
 it was greatly to their interest to treat their 
 slaves well, and you have, besides the charac- 
 ter of the owner, his clearest interest to treat 
 well all his dependants. Slavery — like matri- 
 mony from the husband — takes its character from 
 the master. If he be just and kind, his rule will 
 
40 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 partake of those characteristics. So with the 
 father in his family, etc. As an illustration of a 
 certain class of Northern ideas on this subject, 
 
 — shortly after the war, I met with an honest- 
 hearted man from the North. We fell, naturally, 
 into conversation on the subject of domestic 
 slavery. He asked me, " Is it true that in the 
 South you were accustomed to hitch your negroes 
 to the plough, and drive them?" He asked the 
 question seriously. I asked him, "How many 
 negroes would it take to draw a plough to any 
 purpose ?" — "Eight or ten, I calculate," said he. 
 "Well," said I, "how much is a mule worth?" 
 
 — " One hundred dollars," said he. " How much 
 was a negro?" — "One thousand dollars," said he. 
 "Well," said I, "do you think — to say nothing 
 of our kind feelings towards our negroes — that 
 we had no more sense than to use ten negroes, 
 which were worth ten thousand dollars, to do a 
 work which a mule, costing one hundred dollars, 
 would do better?" — "Why," said he, "I never 
 thought of that." — "Of course you didn't," I 
 said : " there are many things of which you never 
 thought on the same subject." The above is a 
 pretty fair specimen of the notions of some igno- 
 rant and fanatical minds, many of which were 
 wider still from the truth. 
 
"UNCLE TOM'S CABIN." 4 1 
 
 "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN." 
 There was a book, written by Mrs. Stowc, — 
 a sister of the celebrated Henry Ward Beecher, — 
 which had an immense circulation, and exerted 
 a powerful influence. It was a work of fiction, 
 entitled "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It was written 
 with considerable ability, and was, in some re- 
 spects, a most attractive and thrilling narrative. 
 It collected together many incidents illustrative 
 of the cruelty with which slaves were said to be 
 treated in the South. They may have been true, 
 or not true. You can find similar incidents in all 
 the relations of life, in all ages, and among all 
 people. Yet — strange to say — the book, if care- 
 fully analyzed, speaks volumes in favor of that 
 which it was written to condemn. It was, essen- 
 tially, a specimen of feminine logic. But let me 
 explain. Shortly after the war I was in New 
 York, and met with an old acc^iaintance. The 
 conversation turned upon domestic slavery. I 
 asked him how it was that the Northern mind 
 had become so thoroughly abolitionized ; telling 
 him, that when I was a youth, pursuing my studies 
 at old Yale, the abolitionists were few in number, 
 and not of much social standing. He replied, 
 that, in his judgment, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" — 
 the book above referred to — had as much to do 
 
42 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 with the growth of a bitter feeling against slavery 
 as any other agency, and asked me if I had ever 
 read the book. " Of course I have," said I : 
 "we all read it, and in some respects admire it — 
 chiefly, its power as a work of fiction. If it pre- 
 tends to describe slavery as it generally existed, 
 it is pretty much a work of falsehood." "But 
 yet," I continued to say, "very few have ever 
 pondered that book, and extracted its truest and 
 deepest meaning." — "As how?" said he. "In 
 this way," I answered. "Tell me who was the 
 most striking character in that book for honesty, 
 fidelity, and piety ? " — " Why, ' Uncle Tom,' of 
 course," he said, — " one of the finest characters 
 I ever read of!" — "Yes," I said, "he was; but 
 who was Uncle Tom ? Was he not a slave ? and 
 does not the book go to show, that, if you want 
 to find the best specimen of honesty and piety 
 among servants, you must seek him among the 
 slaves ? Africa did not produce him, does not now 
 produce him. We think that domestic slavery 
 tended to the production of just such a charac- 
 ter ; fostering the instinct of obedience, from 
 which spring reverence and faith. Be this as 
 it may, I can say this much without contradiction, 
 — that, according to Mrs. Stowe's book, slavery is 
 not incompatible with the highest development of 
 honesty and piety in the slave." He pondered my 
 
"UNCLE TOM'S CABIN." 43 
 
 remark for a moment, and said, "Of course, I must 
 admit that much : it is so written in the book." 
 
 — "Well, again," said I, "who was the most 
 attractive character in the book?" — "Eva," he 
 said, " one of the most lovely of her sex, gentle 
 and refined, — a beautiful character indeed." — 
 " Who was Eva ? was she not a slaveholder ? " — 
 "Yes, she was." — "Then," I replied, "in so far 
 forth as that book is concerned, if you want to 
 find a specimen of a peculiarly gentle and refined 
 young woman " (Eva was the young lady of the 
 house in which Uncle Tom served), "you must 
 seek for her among slaveholders. We have an 
 idea that the relation between those two parties 
 
 — the young mistress and the old servant — 
 tended naturally to the production of the qualities 
 described in them both. At any rate, you must 
 admit, that, according to Mrs. Stowe, refinement 
 in the woman is not incompatible with the posi- 
 tion of ownership in slaves." — "Yes," he said, 
 " I cannot but admit that much : it is so set down 
 in Mrs. Stowe's book." — "And now, once more," 
 I continued, "who was the worst character in the 
 book?" — "Why, Legree," he answered, — "a 
 vile and cruel man." — "Who was Legree? was he 
 not a Northern man who came South, trafficked 
 in slaves, and maltreated them?" — "That is all 
 so," he answered. I then wound up the conver- 
 
44 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 sation by saying to my friend, " Then, the gist 
 of the book is this : if you want a good, honest, 
 and religious servant, seek him among the slaves 
 — find an Uncle Tom ; if you want to see a 
 glorious specimen of womanly loveliness, seek her 
 among the slaveholders — find an Eva: and keep 
 every Down-Easter from having any power over 
 the poor creatures. Mrs. Stowe's book must be 
 held responsible for this conclusion." A profound 
 silence ensued, and a profound silence should 
 reign for a while among the chatterers on this 
 subject. For all that was beautiful in that con- 
 dition of society has passed away. And there 
 was something beautiful in the relation between 
 the parties — especially in the care taken of the 
 young and the old. Beautiful and just and benig- 
 nant was the patriarchal condition of slavery in 
 the "Old Dominion." All gone, or going — the 
 honest and loving-hearted Uncle Tom, the lovable 
 Eva; fast going — the faithful old mammy, the 
 decent and comely maid-servant, reverence, obedi- 
 ence, faithful service, and Uncle Tom piety — 
 all vanishing into space ; and what have we in- 
 stead ? Conflicts of races, animosity and distrust, 
 jealousy of capital, suffrage without sense, reli- 
 gion without morals, service without reverence — 
 Gog and Magog — the old war between oppres- 
 sive capital and discontented labor — he that runs 
 
"UNCLE TOM'S CABIN." 45 
 
 may read ! I say this, without fear of just contra- 
 diction, that slavery, as it existed in my time, in 
 the State of Virginia, — I say Virginia, for I was 
 born and reared in that State, — presented the 
 justest and fairest condition of society that I 
 have ever seen or read of. The same was true, 
 I doubt not, in other Southern States. Compare 
 the condition of the slave laborer with that of any 
 class of people in similar employment in other 
 lands. Read of the condition of the manufacturing 
 and laboring classes anywhere. The condition of 
 the slave in the Old Dominion showed a larger 
 remuneration for labor, and a kinder treatment, 
 with a comfortable provision for old age. Alas ! 
 poor old black man now ! I think I can say, with 
 entire truth, that the large majority of slaves at 
 Christmas Eve were well housed, well fed, well 
 clothed, with something extra in the pocket. 
 There were exceptions, of course, but inapprecia- 
 ble in a large view. Where is the parallel, in any 
 country, among white laborers of same condition ? 
 But when the issues of the war emancipated 
 the black, and Republicanism clothed him with 
 the rights of American citizenship, including that 
 of suffrage, the South handed over to the coun- 
 try millions of people of African descent, pre- 
 pared, in the judgment of a majority of the 
 people of this country, to exercise the duties 
 
46 REMINISCENCES OF A GRAND FA THER. 
 
 and enjoy the privileges of said citizenship. 
 These were the "down-trodden slaves," so-called! 
 What Christian mission has ever accomplished 
 the same result on the coast of Africa ? How 
 is it with the Indians ? If there be any truth 
 in the coming histories of this country, such 
 facts as these will not long be silent, but will 
 speak in tones most eloquent of the benignant 
 and civilizing power of domestic slavery. My 
 heart warms even now as I recall the past, and 
 there come up before me the memories of my 
 childhood and early manhood ; of the dear old 
 mammy who took me into her arms, and made me 
 sit in her lap, and eat of the buttermilk and the 
 ash cake with apples in it, which with loving 
 hands she had made ready for her "young master " 
 when he came back from college. You, my chil- 
 dren, who shall spend your lives in the Southern 
 States, and shall take part in the effort to adjust 
 the social and domestic life to this new order of 
 things, will some day, I fear, be forced to appre- 
 ciate what I have said of the past, and anticipate 
 for the future. As yet, while I write these lines, 
 we have some few of the old folks left. They 
 have all of our love and respect. These have not 
 yet learned to look distrustfully upon the friends 
 of their childhood. Fond memories still bind 
 them to their white friends. As to the young fry, 
 
"UNCLE TOM'S CABIN." 47 
 
 who arc not taught reverence and subordination, 
 what is their destiny ? I shudder to think of it. 
 I hope that I may be mistaken. God knows that 
 I am doing all in my power to avert the impend- 
 ing danger. But what can you hope for in the 
 large, from a people, who, by their own confes- 
 sion, know little of the virtues of chastity and 
 honesty ? Would they come under the influence 
 of a religion which makes "things which are 
 true," "things which are honest," "things which 
 are just," the foundation of their religious charac- 
 ter, then we might hope to see a superstructure 
 of "those things which are lovely and of good 
 report." 
 
 But, alas ! thrown off to themselves, — espe- 
 cially in our rural districts, where they outnumber 
 the whites, — their religion oft becomes a cari- 
 cature, not far short of the Fetichism of their 
 native Africa. 
 
 The Church could help them, and is now put- 
 ting forth more energy on their behalf; but 
 alas ! they cling to their own devices, and will 
 have none of her ways. 
 
 We read and hear — usque ad nauseam — of 
 the brutalizing and debasing effect of slavery upon 
 the character of this people. All their degrada- 
 tion is referred to this relationship. Orators and 
 pamphleteers expatiate upon the theme, until 
 
48 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 some people actually begin to believe there is 
 something in it. But whence, and when, and 
 through what period of time, came their present 
 comparative advancement ? It was not in Africa, 
 nor from Africa, that the influence came which 
 elevated him from the savage state. The white 
 man goes to Africa, and has to write out a 
 language for the natives. As a people, they 
 have little inventive power. They seem to make 
 slow, if any, advancement in their native land. 
 Even under civilizing influences in their own 
 country, they develop slowly and doubtfully. Yet, 
 under the auspices of servitude in the Southern 
 States, millions have been raised to American 
 citizenship, which is denied to the ever-free Indian. 
 If they were not fitted for it, what a shame to 
 have given them power to dominate the white 
 race, as they did in some localities ! If they were 
 so fitted, what a tribute to the elevating influences 
 of Southern slavery! 
 
 And their citizenship was accomplished by a 
 vote of a majority of the people of the United 
 States ! 
 
 I say nothing in vindication of slavery in its 
 origin. It was a foul wrong, shared alike by 
 North and South, and to be repented of by both 
 sections with works meet for repentance. It was 
 a foul wrong to sell Joseph into Egypt, and after- 
 
 
THE CHURCH QUESTION: 49 
 
 wards to enslave his descendants there. Yet out 
 of this wrong the wonder-working providence of 
 God wrought good unto Israel. So may it be in 
 the case of Africa in America ! I say nothing 
 regretfully of the fact — not the manner — of the 
 negro's emancipation. I am doing, as I have always 
 done, all in my power to help him in every man- 
 ner. I am alike a debtor to the bond and the 
 free. But I do maintain, and that without fear of 
 reasonable contradiction, that the negro's present 
 civilized condition and capability is due to this 
 cause, — that he was brought closely into relations 
 with the white men — and the best white men — 
 in his state of servitude. -The closer the relation, 
 — as in the family, — the more marked the ad- 
 vancement ! Here is a fact which should be 
 deeply pondered by those who love and seek the 
 truth ; viz., that the slaveholding population of 
 the Southern States were, for the most part, men 
 of standing and culture, imbued oftentimes with 
 a chivalry of spirit which forbade unkindness to 
 the slave who lived under his roof, who ate of 
 his bread, and hearkened unto his voice. A true 
 Southern man will not be unjust to his dog. 
 
 THE CHURCH QUESTION. 
 But I have to jot down some thoughts upon 
 higher and more enduring themes. The king- 
 
50 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 doms of men come to an end : vast empires, that 
 once swayed the destinies of the world, are known 
 only on the pages of history. They rise, fall, and 
 utterly come to naught. They are of the things 
 of time, and perish with time. You, my children, 
 will have a high duty to perform in being good 
 citizens, in upholding law and the administration 
 of law. It is a part of one's religion, as well as 
 loyalty, to be law-abiding citizens. Our country, 
 now peaceful after a bloody war, may continue so 
 for years ; but there are existing elements of con- 
 flict which will become explosive whenever the 
 population becomes dense enough for ignition. 
 The Old World is pouring in its tide of popula- 
 tion — peoples of all religions and no religions — 
 all jumbled in a mighty mass. What will come of 
 it all, who can tell ? One thing seems most cer- 
 tain, — that human affairs move forward, and not 
 backward. The state of the world, at this writ- 
 ing, is doubtless better, on the whole, than at any 
 former period of time, and there is no good reason 
 for supposing that it will take a retrograde move- 
 ment. You will have to adjust yourselves to the 
 era in which you live, keeping a true manhood, 
 whatever the issue. That will bring a man peace 
 at the last : that makes the man. 
 
 But I must pass to the consideration of God's 
 Kingdom — the Church of God. " Of that king- 
 
THE CHURCH QUESTH 5 I 
 
 dom" — as you have been taught to rehearse in 
 the Nicene Creed, — "there shall be no end!" 
 My great desire is that my children should have 
 an inheritance in that Kingdom, and ever be 
 associated with it as I and my fathers were. The 
 whole matter, as you may easily suppose, has 
 been my lifelong study, and I want you to have 
 the benefit of my thoughts and conclusions there- 
 upon. You will find the religious world much 
 divided. I cannot speak of all the existing organi- 
 zations, — for their name is Legion, — but I desire 
 to put before you in a general way the attitude of 
 that branch of the Church in which I have been 
 reared, and of which you have been made members 
 by baptism — the attitude, I say, of this Church 
 towards the rest of Christendom. Its name is 
 "The Protestant Episcopal Church," and it may 
 be interesting to you to learn that this appellation 
 was suggested by one of your ancestors. The 
 name is not a felicitous one, but has a noble record 
 and a roll of great men. This Church, as all your 
 reading will show, is an offshoot of the Established 
 Church in England, deriving its orders from that 
 Church, also its Liturgy and usages. We must 
 go a little back to inquire into the history of the 
 Mother Church, before proceeding to outline the 
 particular relation of her daughter to the religious 
 world around it in this country. 
 
52 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 
 
 The Church of Christ was planted in England 
 at a very early day — most probably by one of the 
 apostles of our Lord. This you will find in any 
 early history of the English Church. Represen- 
 tatives from the British Church were present at 
 the councils of the Church at a very early day 
 (A.D. 325), long before the unhappy division took 
 place which separated the Eastern from the 
 Western Church. 
 
 Rome, being the controlling power of the world 
 for a long period of time, became, naturally, the 
 centre of other influences, religious as well as 
 political. The bishop of Rome, sustained by the 
 civil and military power, had no great difficulty in 
 obtaining ultimate recognition as the supreme 
 ecclesiastical power in the west of Europe. Eng- 
 land held out against her jurisdiction as long as 
 possible, but finally acknowledged the supremacy 
 of the bishop of Rome in things spiritual. Au- 
 gustine, a missionary under Rome, went to Eng- 
 land, and found the southern part of the king- 
 dom — inhabited by the Saxon race — without the 
 Christian faith. The British Church already ex- 
 isted when he put his foot on the coast of England. 
 Little by little, in the course of time, the Church 
 in England came under the domination of the 
 
CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 53 
 
 Pope. It went sorely against the spirit and tem- 
 per of our English forefathers to acknowledge 
 fealty to any foreign power, civil or ecclesiastical. 
 They fought against it as long as possible, but 
 had at last to yield. It was this spirit of jealousy 
 against the intrusion of a foreign power, which 
 made it so easy at a subsequent period to throw 
 off the yoke which was to so many, even Roman- 
 ists in doctrinal matters, a galling servitude. But 
 a new era dawned. Books became multiplied, and 
 knowledge was more generally diffused. The 
 " Great Reformation " took place. 
 
 I must say a word about that great movement, 
 of which all history of that age is so full. Henry 
 VIII., the king of England at the time, was far 
 from being a pattern of good morals. He was im- 
 perious and lustful. A decision of the reigning 
 Pope of Rome crossed his purposes, and Henry 
 asserted — as he had the right to do — the inde- 
 pendence of the Church in England. The claim 
 of the bishop of Rome, to exercise jurisdiction in 
 England, had no divine, but simply a human, sanc- 
 tion. The yoke, therefore, was thrown off — as it 
 had been put on — by human hands. It was a 
 right and lawful thing done, although done by 
 a bad man. This often happens. The wrath and 
 the lust of men are often overruled to work out 
 most gracious purposes. We are often twitted with 
 
54 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 the taunt that Henry VIII. was the founder of the 
 English Church ; whilst the fact is, that it existed 
 centuries before Henry's day, and has existed 
 centuries since. The same bishops exercised 
 jurisdiction in England before and after the Ref- 
 ormation. There was no break in the line of 
 Bishops whatever. The Church in England did 
 not cease to be catholic because she then cast 
 off many uncatholic doctrines and usages which 
 had become incrusted upon her. Henry VIII. 
 was ever a Roman Catholic in heart and doctrine. 
 No prevailing doctrine was changed or modified 
 during his reign. In fact, he won his title of 
 "Defender of the Faith," for fighting Reformed 
 Doctrines. God made use of his imperiousness 
 and impatience of will to throw off a foreign yoke, 
 which had been wrongly imposed and reluctantly 
 worn by the great mass of English people. This 
 emancipation set free the minds of men, and 
 Henry's successors to the throne favored the 
 mighty change which was being wrought in the 
 religious mind ; and thus it was, by little and little, 
 as light and knowledge were vouchsafed, that the 
 Church in England came out of the wilderness of 
 superstition, cleansed from many corruptions, and 
 stood forth, and now stands forth, the zealous 
 maintainer of the Faith and Discipline "once de- 
 livered to the saints." Wherever her influence 
 
CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 5 5 
 
 extends, light and knowledge are diffused, peoples 
 are elevated, freedom is proclaimed, law is admin- 
 istered, and righteousness prevails. Take the map 
 of the world. Look at the nations under Romish 
 rule — Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Ireland, and 
 Mexico. What keeps these people in the back- 
 ground ? What makes the difference in Ireland 
 between Romanists and Protestants ? Spain was 
 ahead of England at the era of the Reformation. 
 Englishmen studied in her schools of learning. 
 But Spain extinguished the dawning light of the 
 Reformation in the lurid glare of the Inquisition, 
 and Spain has decayed from that day. The spirit 
 of the Roman Church is calculated to undervalue 
 the exercise of reason, and to arrest the spirit of 
 inquiry, which has so stimulated scientific investi- 
 gation, and made this age so fruitful in knowledge. 
 Of course, this spirit may be carried too far, and 
 may lead to mere rationalism. But what may not 
 be carried too far ? You cannot fertilize a spot of 
 land without stimulating the growth of weeds, 
 but you also cannot make the best kind of grain 
 without fertilization. So, of the printing-press — 
 it brings many bad thoughts to the mind, but it 
 also brings the best thoughts out. It is a bad 
 sign when any system or man avoids the light. 
 " Let there be light," was the herald-cry in chaos, 
 and chaos departed when the light came. The 
 
56 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 best test of the truth of any system, when you 
 can make a large enough induction, is that fur- 
 nished by our Lord, — " By their fruits ye shall 
 know them." As a church influencing laws, liter- 
 ature, and morals, we do not fear to challenge 
 Christendom. England is what she is, mainly 
 through the Church in England ; and, to this hour, 
 she exerts a more enlightening and benignant in- 
 fluence upon the world than any other Nation. 
 It will not do to turn from a large survey of her 
 influence, and taunt her with being reformed by 
 such a man as Henry VIII. She was deformed 
 by that monarch. He was the foul spot that dis- 
 figured that era ; but, as the rust, he ate away the 
 chain that bound the Church to the court of 
 Rome, and let her go free for her glorious mission 
 of evangelization and civilization to the remotest 
 islands of the sea. Flings at Henry, and twittings 
 about his part in the Reformation, come with a 
 bad grace from the Roman Church, which has 
 preferred men to honor and to the highest places 
 in her gift, — even the so-called chair of St. Peter 
 (when it is doubtful whether the holy apostle ever 
 sat in it), — men, I say, in comparison with whom 
 Henry might be canonized as a saint. Read any 
 history of the Popes (e.g., Ranke), and you will 
 return to the pages of Henry's life with a sense 
 of relief, bad as that life was. When you sum 
 
CHURCH IN AMERICA. 57 
 
 up all that the Church of England has done, 
 in literature, in science, in learning, in works of 
 beneficence, in sacredly preserving the word of 
 God, in translating it for the peoples of the world, 
 in disseminating the righteous principles of law 
 and equity, in diffusing a spirit of freedom, and, 
 with it, the needful checks and balances of gov- 
 ernment, we may well thank God for our English 
 blood and traditions, and cherish them all as the 
 priceless inheritance from our fathers, and at the 
 same time, next to that imposed by the knowledge 
 of salvation, the weightiest responsibility that rests 
 upon us. 
 
 CHURCH IN AMERICA. 
 
 Let us come down a little in our review to the 
 planting of the American colonies : chiefly from 
 Great Britain they were planted. We see some- 
 times a spirit of rivalry and jealousy on the part 
 of some American people towards the mother 
 country, — a sentiment always unwholesome and 
 ungracious, but peculiarly so when directed 
 against our motherland. Our ancestors found 
 nothing precious on these shores, save the land 
 and the riches beneath it. That was a divine 
 gift, and demands unspeakable gratitude. What 
 else did they find ? They brought with them 
 their blood, lineage, language, laws, literature, and 
 thousand-fold traditions, all of which moulded 
 
58 REMINISCENCE'S OF A GRANDFATHER, 
 
 for them the new life and institutions in their 
 newly found country. The wigwam of the Indian 
 did not furnish forth the equipment with which 
 our forefathers began the battle of life on the 
 American continent. The principles of liberty 
 and the knowledge of religion were not found here, 
 but were brought here. The battle which settled 
 the rights of men was fought on British soil, and 
 won by our British ancestors. The particular 
 form of government established here, after inde- 
 pendence was secured, was the outgrowth of cir- 
 cumstances in large part ; but the foundations 
 and principles of our government were laid by 
 statesmen who had drank deep at English foun- 
 tains, and were trained in the traditions of Eng- 
 lish sires. Let it never be forgotten by my 
 children, that the sons of Englishmen and of Eng- 
 lish churchmen were the great men — the giants 
 — who fought the war of the Revolution, and 
 laid the foundations of the American Republic. 
 Time would fail me to enumerate them. Glance 
 at the names of a few in the honored list, — 
 Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Marshall, and a 
 host of others — " clara et venerabilia nominal So 
 it was in the unsuccessful conflict for Southern 
 independence, — Davis, Lee, Johnston (Joseph E. 
 and Albert Sidney), and an innumerable host of 
 greater or lesser lights. Nor is this at all acci- 
 
CHURCH IN AMERICA. 59 
 
 dental. It comes by operation of a law, — the 
 law of elective affinity. There- is something of 
 combined grandeur and simplicity in the spirit 
 and services of the Church, which irresistibly, and 
 oft unconsciously, draws to it such men (not 
 raised in the Church) as Clay and Webster, for 
 example. Besides, the training in the Church 
 tends to the production of such men. The great 
 men among the Methodists (such as Wesley and 
 Whitefield, etc.) had Church mothers, and were 
 early taught in the Church catechism, and baptized, 
 confirmed, educated, and ordained in the Church. 
 
 HOW THE CHURCH WAS PLANTED IN AMERICA. 
 The Church of England clergy (there being at 
 that time no Bishops this side of the water) were 
 ordained in England, and were under the jurisdic- 
 tion of the English Church until the close of the 
 Revolutionary war. You will find a full account 
 of the whole matter in " Bishop White's (the first 
 bishop of Pennsylvania) Memoirs." Bishop Sea- 
 bury was consecrated Bishop of Connecticut by 
 the bishops of the Church in Scotland. Bishop 
 White of Pennsylvania, Madison of Virginia, and 
 Provoost of New York, were consecrated by the 
 bishops of the Church of England (the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury acting as consecrator in his 
 chapel at Lambeth). Thus the Apostolic succes- 
 
60 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 sion was derived by this Church. Dioceses have 
 sprung up through the whole land. Several of 
 the States each comprehend at this writing, two 
 or more Dioceses, the State of New York at this 
 time five. 
 
 It is often asked, " How is it that this Church, 
 claiming, as it does, the elements of a pure 
 catholicity, should have failed to have gotten a 
 stronger hold upon the great body of the people 
 in this country ? " The question is an important 
 one, and demands a fuller answer than these 
 " Reminiscences " seem to call for. If the failure 
 referred to were the result of any want of adapta- 
 tion on the part of this Church to meet the needs 
 of the great mass of the people, it were a fatal 
 defect. But it is not so. In the mother country, 
 the poor equally with the rich meet at her altars. 
 In the rural districts, prince and peasant receive 
 together her teachings, and unite in her liturgy. 
 The manufacturing-towns are the homes of Dis- 
 sent. There the social jealousy and the impa- 
 tience of subordination and the spirit of vulgar 
 self-assertion most abound, and there Dissent is 
 rife. The Roman Church has but little hold 
 upon the native masses in this country, and she 
 imports her poor. I refer to this fact because we 
 are constantly taunted with the reproach of hav- 
 ing no poor in our churches, and shallow people 
 
CHURCH IX AMERICA. 6 1 
 
 — and most people are shallow — are made to 
 think that the Church careth not for the poor. 
 There is another view. Should the Church have 
 so many poor ? Should she not enlighten and 
 elevate them ? Should not the hovels of our 
 laborers be made more comfortable, even if our 
 churches were less gorgeous ? Our system en- 
 courages giving to, and not taking from, the poor. 
 Would not "our Father," who "careth for the 
 poor," have it so? 
 
 I cannot suppress a very instructive incident. 
 Passing once up the Alabama River, I fell into 
 conversation with a gentleman of the Romish per- 
 suasion. After some talk, slightly sprinkled with 
 controversy, he observed, " I do not think, sir, 
 you can doubt that our Priests are more assiduous 
 in the discharge of their duties than Protestant 
 ministers are." — "I have not been struck with 
 the fact, if it be a fact," I replied. "Now," said 
 he, taking up a newspaper which he had been 
 reading, "here is an account of a man who was 
 hung near Philadelphia the other day. Who was 
 on the scaffold with him, and giving him spiritual 
 direction ? None of your Protestant preachers, 
 sir, — a priest, a Catholic priest." — "That's 
 exactly where he ought to have been," I sug- 
 gested. "Why, sir?" — "Because it was one of 
 his flock that was to be hung. I have never 
 
62 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 myself refused to attend one of my flock to the 
 scaffold, because I have not been called upon. 
 The Church should save her sheep from such an 
 ending." Let Peter pay pence to Ireland, and 
 Ireland may not have to seek succor from 
 America. 1 Protestant Irish seem to be thrifty. 
 They cultivate potatoes rather than politics. 
 
 The situation of the Church in these United 
 States is peculiar. Many of the old families — 
 notably in New York, Maryland, and Virginia — 
 were, as a matter of course, almost always (except in 
 Maryland, where the Roman Catholic element was 
 unusually large) Church families. In the wild set- 
 tlements, there is always an undue jealousy of social 
 distinctions on the part of the laboring class ; 
 and they prefer to congregate among those of 
 their own order, where their means of living, mode 
 of life, style of dress, and topics of thought and 
 conversation, are more alike. As an instance : 
 My first parish was along the banks of the James 
 River, beginning about thirty miles above Rich- 
 mond, and extending some fifty miles towards 
 Lynchburg. The families attending my services 
 at the beginning of my ministrations were almost 
 exclusively from the class of wealthy planters. 
 In the vicinity of my churches were Baptist and 
 Methodist houses of worship, and there congre- 
 gated the overseers and small farmers from the 
 
 1 See note on page 294. 
 
CHURCH IX AMERICA. 63 
 
 hill country. These people knew nothing of 
 Church doctrine or order, but they wanted to asso- 
 ciate with folk of their own condition and pur- 
 suits. The men wanted to gossip with their 
 fellows, and their wives and daughters wanted 
 their bonnets and gowns to be as good as their 
 neighbors'. The effect of democratic institutions 
 and the extension of suffrage and the abolish- 
 ment of privileged orders was wonderfully rapid 
 among the people of this country. 
 
 There is much discussion nowadays as to the 
 question, "How to get hold of the masses." You 
 can't do it at all by any system of operations of a 
 mechanical character. There is a repulsion on 
 their part, and produced by the very spirit of envy 
 and jealousy and self-assertion which the Church 
 tries to put down and eradicate. It can only result 
 from a larger measure of that Divine influence 
 which eradicates self, and inspires a thirst for truth. 
 A minister, who himself is deeply imbued with 
 the Divine gift, and has power and tact, can work 
 wonders with this repelling prejudice, as he can 
 with the other powers of darkness. And that is 
 our only hope just now, — a faint one, I must con- 
 fess. But, besides this indwelling spirit of social 
 jealousy with its attendant ills, there were pecul- 
 iar difficulties with which this Church had to con- 
 tend in her earlier history in this country, — 
 
64 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 difficulties which laid the foundation of sectism 
 deep and broad. The clergy of this Church were, 
 as a general rule, Englishmen. The Church itself 
 went by the appellation of " The English Church" 
 We had no bishops and no seminaries — every 
 thing was English. War with England filled the 
 whole country with animosity against every thing 
 " English " — church and state. A tide of odium 
 and unreasonable hate went like a wave over the 
 whole country, and threatened to ingulf all sacred 
 memories that commonly attach men to the land 
 of their forefathers. The Church suffered griev- 
 ously for a long time, and has not to this day ral- 
 lied from the shock received. The Clergy, many 
 of whom were Englishmen by birth, returned to 
 their native land, thus leaving many parishes 
 vacant. Many of those who remained during the 
 continuance of the Revolutionary war were incom- 
 petent, and, as is the case oftentimes with colo- 
 nial ministers, were men of little character. A 
 long interval ensued before bishops were set apart 
 for America. The consequences of all this were 
 disastrous in the extreme. Parishes went rapidly 
 to decay ; legislation confiscated church property, 
 the gift of the crown or of English land-owners ; 
 popular prejudice ran fiercely against her institu- 
 tions because they were stigmatized as "English." 
 The masses of people became alienated. Method- 
 
CHURCH IN AMERICA. 6$ 
 
 ism, then vigorous and aggressive, strongly ap- 
 pealed to the passions of the people. The landed 
 gentry of the country still clung to the Church as 
 the church of their fathers. They had intelli- 
 gence sufficient to enable them to distinguish 
 between the Church and the action of the British 
 Government, which was so hateful to the colo- 
 nists. But the zeal of the few remaining adher- 
 ents to the Church was languid. They were 
 uninstructed from Sunday to Sunday : they were 
 rather disposed to fight for the Church than to 
 live for it. With some few and striking excep- 
 tions, the state of things was as given here. You 
 may judge of the low condition into which the 
 Church had fallen from this fact, which I had from 
 Bishop Meade of Virginia : He, in connection 
 with my father (William H. Wilmer, D.D., after- 
 ward president of William and Mary), and one or 
 two other earnest men, made united effort to 
 revive the Church in Virginia. They first united 
 in calling Bishop Moore to be their bishop. They 
 took steps, also, to raise an endowment for a theo- 
 logical seminary, and carried it through. The 
 theological seminary near Alexandria, Va., is the 
 result of the effort then inaugurated, the instruc- 
 tion of students being first given in my father's 
 house in Alexandria. Whilst going through Vir- 
 ginia soliciting funds for this object, Bishop 
 
66 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 Meade (who was then a young man) applied, 
 among others, to Judge Marshall (Chief Justice 
 of the United States Supreme Court) for aid. 
 The judge replied that of course he would not 
 withhold his contribution. It was his church, 
 and that of his forefathers, but he thought the 
 idea of resuscitating it in Virginia was hopeless ; 
 and he expressed himself as full of regret that 
 a young man of family and talent, as Bishop 
 Meade was, should throw away his life in so 
 quixotic an undertaking. " The Old Chief " (as 
 Judge Marshall was familiarly called among his 
 intimates) did not live to see the glorious future 
 which has opened for the Church in Virginia 
 from the dark and apparently hopeless condi- 
 tion in which he knew it. The clergy of Vir- 
 ginia can now be found in all countries of the 
 world nearly. One of her sons is bishop of 
 Japan : another was a bishop of Africa, and he 
 succeeded a Virginian in that bishopric. Seven- 
 teen of her sons, born on her soil, are, or have 
 been, bishops of dioceses in the United States. 
 
 But I have digressed. I started with the view of 
 showing how it was that the Church in this coun- 
 try had so slender a hold of the masses. I said 
 that it was not due to any lack of adaptation on 
 her part to the needs of the more ignorant, but 
 that it was occasioned by influences of another 
 
> 
 
 C-v~v.«_ 
 
 t>- 
 
JOIIX STEWART OF VIRGINIA. 67 
 
 kind, over which the Church had no control, and 
 which she had no power to resist. In England, as 
 I have said, the poor in the rural districts are de- 
 voted to the Church. I have seen them sitting in 
 crowds, even upon the steps of the pulpit in rural 
 churches. The fact is, that, the more ignorant 
 a people are, the more they need the appliances 
 for instruction which the Church affords. The lit- 
 urgy, with its fulness and simplicity, and its rich 
 provision of scriptural knowledge, is, if a luxury 
 to the learned, a deep necessity to the unlearned. 
 But all this the ignorant do not know ; and they 
 are so filled with prejudices by some of their 
 teachers, who feed their pride and social jealousy, 
 that they are almost inaccessible to the clergy of 
 the Church. I have myself had some experience 
 in this matter. My last work in Virginia was 
 among the poor in the vicinity of Richmond. I 
 was induced to take hold of the work by an inti- 
 mate friend, — 
 
 JOHN STEWART OF VIRGINIA. 
 He was a big-hearted and big-brained man, 
 a native of Rothesay, Scotland, — a man of 
 wealth, acquired by his own intelligence and 
 sagacity. We had been long intimate. In 1858' 
 I received a letter from him in reference to the 
 
 1 See Appendix for Letters. 
 
68 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 poor in his neighborhood. He said that God had 
 given him wealth, and he felt his responsibility 
 for the right use of it ; that it pained him to see 
 his neighbors living in practical atheism ; that, as 
 for himself, he could go to Richmond to church, 
 but these neighbors could not, or would not. He 
 then proposed to me to undertake the work of a 
 missionary among them, — offered to support me 
 whilst thus engaged, also to build a church and 
 all things properly appertaining thereto, etc. I 
 did not at first take to the plan proposed. My 
 ministerial life had been up to this time pretty 
 much that of a missionary. I felt like settling 
 down to the duties of an organized parish. I 
 found no one scarcely who did not regard the 
 scheme as chimerical. The outlook was not a 
 cheerful one at all. But, to make a long story 
 short, after thinking over the matter for some 
 time (Mr. Stewart had asked me to ponder it, 
 and, to use his own characteristic words, to 
 "spread it, as King Hezekiah did, before the 
 Lord "), I concluded at last to accept the offer, 
 — he to pay and pray; I to teach and preach, 
 not without prayer, I trust. Nobly did he re- 
 deem his every promise. I preached, and went 
 from house to house. He prayed as I preached. 
 I shall ever believe that his prayers were the 
 prevailing power. As it was with the centu- 
 
JOII.V STEWART OF VIRGINIA. 69 
 
 rion of old, " his prayers and his alms went up 
 for a memorial, and were had in remembrance 
 before the Lord." I can see him now, with up- 
 lifted eye, moist with tears, praying as I preached. 
 Rich blessings came down from above on our 
 work. We began services in a schoolroom, the 
 use of which we shared with the ministers of 
 various communions. By little and little we 
 gained the hearts of the people. They were 
 gathered, high and low, to the altars of the Church. 
 Very soon a church was built, nominally and to 
 an inappreciable extent, by the people of the con- 
 gregation, but really by Mr. Stewart and- his 
 brother Daniel, a worthy brother of his brother 
 John. Then a parsonage was built, etc. At the 
 conclusion of three years, or within a few weeks 
 of that time, we had a full and earnest congrega- 
 tion. At that time (and I had consented to give 
 at least three years to the work) I was elected 
 Bishop of the Diocese of Alabama. I have jotted 
 down these reminiscences for several reasons, — 
 first, because it was an interesting and suggestive 
 period of my life ; second, because it records the 
 piety and zealous conduct of a layman, showing 
 what an earnest man can do, if he has the heart 
 to work ; thirdly, to show how the poor can be 
 reached, and brought into the Church ; and, lastly 
 and chiefly, to pay my tribute to the truth and 
 
JO REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 faithfulness of the Divine promise to answer 
 prayer, and to bestow blessings whenever and 
 wherever "prayers and alms" come up before 
 God for a memorial. This, in my judgment, is 
 the true way to reach the masses, ever to "con- 
 sider tJiepoor." That means much more than to 
 give a needy man an occasional alms. We must 
 " condescend to men of low estate," and none of us 
 are so high as to have to stoop very much to find 
 ourselves on a level with the very poorest. I ad- 
 mitted a very poor man to the Church by baptism 
 whilst I was minister of " Emmanuel Church," 
 — the church which had been built by the Messrs. 
 Stewart. When the poor fellow sought me out, 
 I asked him what his motive was, and how he 
 came to seek admission. He replied that he was 
 very ignorant, and could not read, and did not 
 know much about " church matters," as he called 
 them; "but," said he, "I have noticed a great 
 deal, and have always seen the ladies of your 
 church caring for the poor, visiting the sick and 
 afflicted, and teaching the children," etc. ; " and I 
 concluded that where such good fruit grew, the 
 tree must be a good one." God bless our faithful 
 women ! 
 
 Well, I have brought you down to my period of 
 middle life in my " Reminiscences," to the time 
 
JOILY STEWART OF VIRGINIA. J\ 
 
 when I was elected Bishop of Alabama. Before 
 passing on, I will only remark that I have every 
 reason to believe that my having taken what was 
 thought to be a lowly position, turned out in the 
 end to my advancement. I doubt very much 
 whether I would ever have been thought of for 
 the bishopric of Alabama, if I had not taken 
 that position. The success of the undertaking, 
 in answer to the prayers of my friend Stewart, 
 was so marked as to draw attention to myself as 
 the visible working-power. So it often is. A 
 man rises by stooping. He seems to rise with a 
 spring. Only do your duty, my children, as the 
 leadings of Providence may indicate, and He will 
 direct your paths. I learned that lesson first 
 from my mother, and my whole life abounds with 
 illustrations of its truth. 
 
 I must add something more to what I have 
 written of my friend, John Stewart. I called him 
 a "big-brained" and "big-hearted man." What 
 I have written of him will show what a big heart 
 he had ; and if all the people whom he has helped 
 with his charities were to subscribe to the publi- 
 cation of this memoir, it would cost the author 
 nothing to publish it. His munificent gifts ex- 
 tended not only to kindred, friends, and neighbors 
 in this country, but went back in a continuous ref- 
 luent wave to his native land, Rothesay, Scotland. 
 
72 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 I heard in the most incidental way — for he had 
 the characteristic reticence of his countrymen in 
 a marked degree — that he sent regular remit- 
 tances to his superannuated pastor in Scotland, 
 for the reason that the old man had taught him 
 his catechism in childhood. More than this, he 
 and his brothers, Daniel and Bryce Stewart, built 
 at Rothesay, Scotland, " The Norman Stewart 
 Institute for the Moral and Intellectual Advance- 
 ment of Workingmen," and endowed it for all time. 
 This Institute was named after the uncle of the 
 brothers Stewart, who had left them property, a 
 part of which was thus consecrated to a work of 
 charity, thus bringing to completion a design for 
 which their uncle Norman had made a partial 
 provision in his will. In this way the works of 
 large-hearted men do follow them through all time, 
 and thus may men become "like their Father 
 in heaven," and cause " their very paths to drop 
 fatness." His large heart and mind find beautiful 
 expression in his last will and testament. I had 
 always expected that he would leave some consid- 
 erable amount, either to found or sustain some 
 benevolent or religious institution. When I as- 
 certained that he had not done so, I felt some 
 surprise and disappointment. But he had larger 
 views than I had ever attained unto, and gave me 
 an idea altogether new. One of the chief pleas- 
 
JOHN STEWART OF VIRGINIA. 73 
 
 ures of his life had been to bless others with his 
 wealth. He wished his wife and children to en- 
 joy the same pleasure with himself, and he knew 
 them well enough to know that what had been 
 his pleasure would be theirs also. In this spirit 
 he framed his will, an extract from which brings 
 out his whole thought, as exquisitely beautiful as 
 it is original. I bring it out here to illustrate the 
 man and to perpetuate the sentiment. 
 
 Extract from John Stewart's will : — 
 
 " I have made no bequests to charitable or re- 
 ligious institutions, partly because what I might 
 thus give would belong to my wife and children, 
 but chiefly because I wish to impress on their 
 minds the duty, the privilege, and the sweetness, 
 of their giving from right motives, — that is, for 
 Christ's sake, while they are yet alive." 
 
 Most nobly have they justified his faith in them. 
 
 I have seen a great many people who were 
 "willing to communicate:" he exemplified the 
 rare instance of one who was "glad to distribute." 
 More than once, when we were building together 
 a house for the Lord, and I would come to him 
 for help in succoring the distressed, — he had 
 asked me to be his almoner, — has he handed me 
 the amount needed with his eyes moistened with 
 tears, and the words, " I thank you for giving me 
 this opportunity." What luxuries the rich deprive 
 
74 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 themselves of by not blessing others, and how 
 poor they are amid all their extravagance ! The 
 inmate of an almshouse need not envy the mil- 
 lionnaire who is "rich toward himself, and poor 
 toward God." 
 
 St. Xavier has left on record a marvellous state- 
 ment, — "I have had" — I think he stated more 
 than a million — " many people resort to me for 
 confession. The confession of every sin that I 
 have ever known or heard of, and of sins so foul 
 that I never dreamed of, has been poured into my 
 ear, but no one person has ever confessed to me 
 the sin of covetousness ! " 
 
 Yet this sin is the " root of all evil " in the 
 sight of Heaven. I can give almost the same 
 experience with St. Xavier. One man only has 
 ever expressed to me the fear lest he should be- 
 come covetous ; and it is a suggestive fact, that he 
 was the most generous man that I have ever 
 known, — John Stewart. We used to talk this 
 matter over frequently. He would say, " I have 
 noticed that covetousness is the prevailing disease 
 of old people ; I fear it for myself as I get older ; 
 and I know of but one remedy, — giving ! giving ! 
 giving ! " He had hit both the diagnosis and the 
 treatment of the disease. The spring will become 
 stagnant unless its waters flow freely : the em- 
 bankments of the dam will give way unless there 
 
JOHN STEWART OF VIRGINIA. ?$ 
 
 is a "waste" to carry off the excess of water. 
 Is it not a suggestive fact, that the most liberal 
 are the most fearful of selfishness ? It is natural 
 that it should be so. The most learned feel most 
 their ignorance ; the most humble their pride ; 
 the most pure their uncleanness ; and for the 
 same reason, the most generous their selfishness. 
 He who habitually walks in the " light of God's 
 countenance " sees all the little motes and atoms 
 of remaining imperfection, from which he would 
 fain cleanse himself. The concentrated light of 
 the sun through the solar microscope discloses to 
 view, in the seemingly pure drop of water, most 
 horrid forms of living beings. It is not cant, then, 
 but a clear vision and an humbled spirit, that 
 brings out from the holiest saints confessions of 
 sin, and cries for cleansing. 
 
 I have written of the heart of my friend : a 
 word now about his mind, which was as broad and 
 all-embracing as his heart. I cared not to read 
 books much, when we were in daily intercourse. 
 His book was the Word of God ; and for his 
 knowledge of that Word, I pay high honor to 
 his Scotch Presbyterian training. The Bible was 
 his daily companion and his daily food. No sub- 
 ject could be brought up that he did not illumi- 
 nate and illustrate by Scripture quotations and 
 allusions. He was not a great talker, but always 
 
y6 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 spoke to the purpose when he did talk. In com- 
 pany, after a subject had been pretty much talked 
 out, he would, usually, in some one or two preg- 
 nant sentences, settle the matter by a generaliza- 
 tion which brought out the principles of the whole 
 subject under discussion. This power of generali- 
 zation is the attribute of a great intellect. To 
 such a mind, there is no isolated fact : it takes its 
 place in the great system of phenomena as the 
 example and illustration of a general principle 
 or law. John Stewart talked very much as Lord 
 Bacon wrote. 
 
 We were together every day, and many hours 
 in the day, whilst the war of the States was 
 brewing. Living within a few miles of Richmond, 
 and going to the city daily in his company, I had 
 the benefit of his large and comprehensive views, 
 especially upon the financial aspect of the whole 
 question. What all men now see, he saw then, 
 and with perfect distinctness. His prophecy has 
 become literal history. What perplexed others, 
 was as plain as the day to his mind. 
 
 Withal, there was in the play of his mind, as is 
 common with such minds, a delicate humor and 
 wit, which, when argument had not convinced, 
 would end the whole discussion. I wish now that 
 I had treasured up some of his sayings which 
 were at that time so current among his intimates, 
 
JOHN STEWART OF VIRGINIA. J J 
 
 but they have faded from my memory. There 
 was not only point in them, but, usually, a deep 
 moral. One only comes into my mind at this 
 time, and it is but one of thousands of like char- 
 acter. "Stewart," said a Richmond friend, " I 
 am coming out to dine with you some Sunday: 
 it's the only day that I have to myself." — " That's 
 unfortunate," was the reply, "for that is the only 
 day that is not mine own. I have had given me 
 six days in the week all to myself, to ' do what 
 I have to do : ' the clay you mention is the Lord's 
 day. My great desire is to dedicate its hours to 
 Him whose day it is." 
 
 This brings me to speak of his piety. That 
 was his crowning and all-covering grace. He 
 never mentioned the name of Deity save with 
 hushed utterance. A holy awe seemed to come 
 over his face, and tremble in his voice, when the 
 Divine Majesty was named by him. I seemed to 
 feel the Divine Presence when he mentioned that 
 Holy Name. Then, too, his faith was so childlike. 
 All great men have such faith. I remember when 
 Judge John Cochran of Eufaula, Ala., came to 
 talk with me about his own confirmation, I could 
 not but contrast his speech with that of some 
 very smart men who have talked with me on 
 the same subject. I asked him about his "faith," 
 which he would have to profess in confirmation. 
 
fS REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 I can never forget his childlike look when he an- 
 swered, " I have implicit faith in God's holy 
 Word as summed up in the Catholic Creed : I 
 never try my reason in matters beyond its grasp. 
 My Father has spoken to me through His Son : 
 I believe." Cochran had the largest mind that I 
 have yet met with in Alabama. The first time 
 I ever saw him was made notable by an incident 
 quite characteristic of the man. We met on the 
 road — I going to his house, and he going to see 
 me. As we met, a friend, who was driving my 
 carriage, called out, "Judge, this is the bishop." 
 The judge was absorbed in a large book, and in- 
 continently sprang from his seat into the road, 
 tumbling the book into the sand, and warmly 
 welcoming me to the neighborhood. The book 
 was Shakspeare. That and the Bible were his 
 constant study. There was no danger of being 
 sceptical with such daily companionship. Great 
 minds are never sceptical. Dear Judge, you, too, 
 have passed away, and one light more has gone 
 out from my life. 
 
 But I have strayed from my subject. I could 
 not let that dear friend Cochran be left out of my 
 " Reminiscences." 
 
 I was speaking of my friend Stewart's piety and 
 reverence. I cannot take the veil from his family 
 circle, and show him there as he was, husband, 
 
JOHN STEWART OF VIRGINIA. 79 
 
 father, brother, and friend. He is still there, 
 sanctified with all holy memories ; and the mem- 
 ory of his words and life still keep burning the 
 sacred fire. 
 
 I said he was brought up in Scotland. He 
 was, therefore, as was to be expected, baptized in 
 the Church of Scotland. For that Church he 
 never lost his love and reverence. I should have 
 esteemed him less if he had. But his deepest 
 religious impressions were received during that 
 wonderful revival — that zvas indeed a revival — 
 that went like the breath of heaven over Virginia 
 nearly fifty years ago, when he received confirma- 
 tion. There was a wonderful attraction for his 
 mind and heart in the grand liturgy of the 
 Church, that same liturgy for which some of the 
 best minds of the Presbyterian Church in Scot- 
 land and America do now yearn ; and no son of 
 the Church ever appreciated her holy services 
 more than he did. He often said to me that " the 
 ways of the Episcopal Church in this country were 
 more like those of the ' Free Church ' of Scotland 
 than any other, and he felt more at home in her 
 services." 
 
 I used to banter him about his "Churchman- 
 ship," etc., although he was worth a score of our 
 ordinary Churchmen, and tell him that I did not 
 expect to make much of a Churchman out of such 
 
80 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 Scotch material as he was made of, but that I was 
 thankful to have him just as he was. I remember 
 now sending him a published sermon of mine on 
 "The Church of the Living God, the Pillar and 
 Ground of the Truth," saying to him that I did 
 not expect him to fall in with some of the views 
 expressed. His reply was quite characteristic, 
 and has ever since been suggestive. Many of our 
 Churchmen might ponder it to advantage. " You 
 cannot put the Church too high for me, if you 
 always keep the Head above the body." That is a 
 fair sample of his manner of speech' and writing. 
 
 Many friends who have sojourned at " Brook 
 Hill," Mr. Stewart's residence near Richmond, 
 and have been privileged to worship at the family 
 altar, a sacred shrine in that household, have told 
 me of the singular impressiveness of the whole 
 scene at family prayer. I have always regretted 
 that I could not have enjoyed that privilege, my 
 ministerial office calling upon me to officiate my- 
 self when present. They have told me that an 
 inexpressible solemnity attended those services. 
 The deep utterance of the father's voice, and pro- 
 found awe, the simple and grand language of ad- 
 dress before the throne, all made them feel that 
 God was in the midst of them. 
 
 I named a son after him, John Stewart Wilmer, 
 a dear, blue-eyed little feilow, who was soon taken 
 
JOHX STEWART OF VIRGINIA. 8 1 
 
 home. What remains of him on earth lies hard 
 by the walls of dear "Emmanuel," the church 
 which his godfather Stewart and I had together 
 builded. Near by — and I love to think that to- 
 gether they will rise at the last day — lies what 
 was mortal of his namesake. "Emmanuel" (God 
 with us) Church seems to guard the precious spot. 
 
 I have named for him now a grandson, John 
 Stewart Jones, another blue-eyed boy. I ask no 
 more for him from Heaven than that he may have 
 a portion of the mind and heart that dwelt in his 
 namesake, John Stewart. 
 
 In the sketch here given of my dear friend 
 Stewart, I may, perhaps, have left an impression 
 that he was a stern man. He was a stern man, 
 — stern as granite in his convictions of truth and 
 duty. Neither fear, favor, nor affection could 
 move him a hair-breadth in such matters ; for he 
 lived habitually in the light of the Divine Pres- 
 ence, and the judgment of man had no weight 
 when his conscience had decided. His character 
 in this respect is strikingly brought out in the 
 inscription upon his tombstone, " Blessed is the 
 man whose strength is in Thee, in whose heart 
 are Thy ways." 
 
 To the casual acquaintance he ordinarily ap- 
 peared to be a very grave man ; and friends whom 
 I have introduced to him have often asked me, 
 
82 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 "Is not your friend Mr. Stewart a very austere 
 man ? " a question which always amused me, who 
 knew him in his family privacy and inner life. Ah, 
 how genial and bright he was here in his home- 
 circle and among his intimates, where the warm 
 beams of his loving nature, and the bright spar- 
 klings of his refined humor and wit, made a very 
 sunshine in his dwelling ! 
 
 His heart was as full of thanksgiving as of sup- 
 plication. More than almost any one I ever knew, 
 he illustrated in his every-day life the injunction 
 of the holy apostle to " be careful for nothing, but 
 in every thing, by prayer and supplication with 
 thanksgiving, let your requests be made known 
 unto God," etc. Hence came the habitual peace 
 which pervaded his heart, and irradiated his 
 dwelling. 
 
 As a father, he was so loving, so tender, so 
 considerate, so mindful of human infirmity, that 
 his dear children will ever be able to reproduce 
 from the remembrance of the earthly father re- 
 freshing and comforting views of the Divine 
 Father. Thus did he let his light so shine in his 
 household that all around him — children, ser- 
 vants, and friends — saw his good works, and 
 glorified their Father which is in heaven. 
 
 He has passed out of mortal sight ; but long 
 will the radiance of his bright and holy life shine 
 
RELIGIOUS BODIES IN UNITED STATES. 83 
 
 upon his dwelling-place, even as the light of part- 
 ing day lingers upon the horizon long after the 
 sun has gone down. 
 
 He made unto himself " friends of the mam- 
 mon of unrighteousness." He builded God a 
 house. Shall he not enter into everlasting habita- 
 tions ? May my end be like his, and my habita- 
 tion with him forevermore ! 
 
 DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS BODIES IN THE 
 UNITED STATES. 
 
 Now I desire to say something about the differ- 
 ent religious bodies with which you will come in 
 contact, and to point out their characteristics 
 and claims, and to show you your relation to 
 them. It is most important that you understand 
 these things, — first, that you may give an intelli- 
 gent reason for your own position in Christendom, 
 and also be prepared to instruct others in matters 
 of so great concernment. That there should be 
 divisions among Christian people, is much to be 
 deplored for every reason. Division runs counter 
 to- the mind of our Lord, whose prayer ever was, 
 " Father, that they may be one as We are one." 
 Again, it breeds unholy contention and emulation ; 
 divides forces, and wastes energies ; practically, it 
 divides to a certain extent (and it is to that extent 
 injurious) the Kingdom of God against itself. The 
 
84 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 divided state of Christendom is gloried over in a 
 certain kind of flash oratory, which describes the 
 varied hues of a divided Christianity as a beauti- 
 ful kaleidoscopic picture, where are displayed 
 all the prismatic hues of light — forgetting that 
 where the colors of the prism are exhibited, it 
 is in consequence of refraction, and does not 
 present the pure light as it comes from heaven. 
 Or, as some others delight to view it, they 
 describe the various denominations as regiments 
 or divisions of the grand army, fighting under one 
 Captain, — the great Captain of salvation. All 
 this sounds very pretty, and is sufficiently capti- 
 vating to a certain sort of mind ; but the lament- 
 able fact is, that these several regiments or 
 divisions — call them what you will — are spend- 
 ing a large part of their strength and time in 
 fighting and firing into each other. They have 
 to keep three or four ministers in a little village 
 (where the services of one good man would be 
 sufficient), to watch each other, and keep the bal- 
 ance of power even. At this moment two-thirds 
 of the ministers in the villages might be sent to 
 the heathen, to the great advantage of Christen- 
 dom. Time would fail me to enter into all the 
 evils of schism. Yet we find good and true men 
 among all the great denominations. We must not 
 ignore that fact, nor that other great fact, — that 
 
RELIGIOUS BODIES IN UNITED STATES. 85 
 
 this goodness which we sec is the fruit of the 
 Divine Spirit, and the outcome of union with 
 Christ. They could not else manifest, as they do 
 often, the fruits of the Spirit. These are the 
 actual phenomena with which we have to deal, — 
 to deal fairly and honestly. Hence we are called 
 upon to distinguish between men and their sys- 
 tems and organizations. The latter may be a 
 mistake, a wrong, an injury ; and yet, through 
 the frailty of sinful men, good men may be ear- 
 nestly, however mistakenly, working under them. 
 With some men it is a lust of power, an ambitious 
 spirit, a desire to exalt self. Divisions ordinarily 
 spring from unruled lusts of ambitious men, good 
 men, too, it may be, but not good enough to kill 
 their ambition. With some other men, their 
 denominational connections are the result of igno- 
 rance and shallowness : they really think they are 
 promoting the purity of the Church by a whole- 
 some rivalry. With the great mass of men, it is 
 a matter of accident or of pure indifference. They 
 don't care or think much about the matter. Now, 
 I hold — and have ever taught, both publicly and 
 privately — that the divided state of Christendom 
 is an evil of incalculable magnitude, and that it 
 becomes every Christian man to do what in him 
 lies to heal the breach. He cannot do it, in my 
 judgment, by treating the evil lightly, nor by 
 
86 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 contention and strife. The evil comes from the 
 Evil One : the counteracting good must come 
 from the Author and Giver of all goodness. All 
 work for whatever good end, if not done in the 
 spirit of Christ, intensifies the evil sought to be 
 remedied. It adds fuel to the fire : it feeds, in- 
 stead of quenching, the flame. I hold — and have 
 ever taught and preached it — that each Chris- 
 tian man should, so far as his intelligence goes, 
 seek to know what is the truth in all this matter 
 of a divided Christendom. The very spirit and 
 desire to find out the truth is a good beginning, 
 and will not end there in any earnest mind. The 
 difficulty would not long exist were men earnestly 
 to go to work to find out the truth, with the love 
 of the truth to inspire their search. One has no 
 business to talk about any truth in any other 
 spirit, no more than he would have a right to 
 talk about the properties of angles, etc., unless 
 he had learned something of geometry. The good 
 in an evil thing is often only apparent on the 
 surface : the evil often poisons and corrupts the 
 whole system. 
 
 But I am dwelling too long upon these generali- 
 ties. I must come to a nearer and more tangible 
 view of the subject, only observing, at the outset, 
 that every man, and every body of men, should 
 give an account of themselves, when they came 
 
ROMAN, OR LATIN, CHURCH. %J 
 
 into being, and what good purpose they are sub- 
 serving by continuance in being ; in a word, the 
 "raison d'etre." I take up, first, the 
 
 ROMAN, OR LATIN, CHURCH. 
 
 I take this Church first, because she is the 
 largest Christian organization in the world ; and, 
 furthermore, she claims to be the only legitimate, 
 divinely appointed communion of Christians on 
 earth. You will meet the claims of Rome every- 
 where, in books, newspapers, schools, colleges, etc. 
 A wonderful piece of mechanism it is, a vast, com- 
 plex, flexible and inflexible power, suited to all 
 temperaments, adjusting itself to all idiosyncrasies, 
 and, as it regards the great "Society of Jesus" 
 especially, politic, daring, or submissive, as the 
 case may call for, to the last degree — alas ! in 
 what painful contrast with the simplicity of " the 
 truth as it is in Jesus." Rome is to-day pretty 
 much what Jesuitism is ; because Jesuitism, after 
 having fought the world, and even the Bishops of 
 Rome sometimes, and after having been expelled in 
 turn from nearly all the countries of Europe, has 
 achieved its present commanding position, gives 
 counsel to popes, causes doctrines to be promul- 
 gated, — new doctrines upon the same platform 
 with the ancient Creeds. Rome clai)>is to be exclu- 
 sively "the Catholic Church." The Church in 
 
88 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 England, as I have before written, was at one 
 time under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome; 
 so were all the churches of Western Europe. The 
 Church in England is not now ; but Rome, none the 
 less, asserts her claim, and promulgates decrees and 
 dogmas as by divine warranty. Within my mem- 
 ory, she has taken a private opinion of individuals, 
 and elevated it to the dignity of a fundamental 
 dogma, — " the immaculate conception of the Blessed 
 Virgin." Later still, and in my day, she has pro- 
 mulgated the dogma of the "infallibility of the 
 Pope" — has done it formally; and her adherents, 
 some of them reluctant, and some recalcitrant for 
 a while, have either formally given in, or preserve a 
 still silence. Strange — and yet not strange — it is, 
 that the promulgation of infallibility synchronized 
 exactly with the passing away of all her temporal 
 dominion. This fact is exquisitely brought out by 
 Mozley in his " University Sermons." I cannot for- 
 bear a single extract. He is speaking of the proc- 
 lamation of infallibility by the Pope at the moment 
 of his stepping down from the throne of temporal 
 dominion. " Is this not," says Mozley, "the act of 
 a dispossessed monarch, who, upon the eve of the 
 crisis, collects all his greatness about him, and pre- 
 pares to quit his throne with a rigorous statement of 
 his rights first put forth ? . . . The claim represents 
 former possession. Rome issues out of her own 
 
ROMAN, OR LATIN, CHURCH. 89 
 
 gates, taking her history with her ; she collects 
 her prestige, she gathers up the past, she calls in 
 all the antecedents of her temporal greatness ; she 
 stereotypes memory in decrees ; she condenses 
 history into dogmas ; she surrounds herself sym- 
 bolically with all the insignia of her secular glory. 
 ... A thousand banners and escutcheons are hid 
 in one of those sentences which makes the state- 
 ment of her dominion, in order to serve as a sup- 
 port to her in the loss of the fact. . . . All in 
 vain ! The earth must roll back on its axis before 
 the moral sense of society recants on these ques- 
 tions. . . . Never again, never, though ages pass 
 away, never any more under the heavens, shall 
 be seen forms and fabrics and structures and com- 
 binations that we have seen. They have taken 
 their place among departed shapes and organisms, 
 deposited in that vast mausoleum which receives, 
 sooner or later, all human creations. The mould 
 in which they were made is broken, and their suc- 
 cessors will be casts from a new mould. The 
 world is evidently at the end of one era, and is 
 entering upon another ; but there will remain the 
 Christian creed and the Christian Church, to en- 
 lighten ignorance, to fight with sin, and to con- 
 duct man to eternity" (pp. 22-24 of Mozley's 
 " University Sermons " ). 
 
 Upon what grounds, you may well ask, does 
 
90 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 Rome build her vast pretensions ? Chiefly upon a 
 declaration of our Lord to St. Peter : " Upon this 
 rock I will build My church," etc. If the words 
 mean what the Romanists affirm they do mean, 
 there is no declaration that they confer any special 
 authority or privilege upon the Bishops of Rome. 
 For, in the first place, it is a mooted point whether 
 St. Peter was ever Bishop of Rome. St. Paul 
 certainly was there, and also wrote the " Epistle 
 to the Romans." But, besides, you must interpret 
 the meaning of our Lord's declaration in the light 
 of subsequent history. Is there any evidence to 
 show that St. Peter claimed the pre-eminence said 
 to have been conferred upon him in these quoted 
 words, or that it was ever conceded to him by 
 the other Apostles ? The contrary is the fact. 
 Rome is not the "mother" of churches. Jeru- 
 salem, where the Christian dispensation of the 
 Church was inaugurated, is the mother church. 
 And you will observe 2hat at the meeting of the 
 first council of the Church (Acts xv.), St. James, 
 the first Bishop of Jerusalem, was the presiding 
 Bishop ; St. Peter merely giving his opinion as a 
 member of the council. St. Peter gave his opin- 
 ion, whereas St. James concluded the deliberations 
 of the council by saying, " Wherefore my sentence 
 is," thus announcing the judgment of that body. 
 How can such a state of things be accounted 
 
ROM AX, OR LATIN, CHURCH. 9 1 
 
 for from the Romanists' position in regard to 
 the so-called successors of St. Peter ? It was 
 many years before a Bishop of Rome claimed 
 any thing like supremacy ; and her claim was never 
 recognized by the Church Universal. The Ori- 
 ental churches never fell under the power of the 
 Bishop of Rome. They exist to-day, and have ex- 
 isted from the beginning, apart from the sway of 
 the Bishop of Rome. It is the most shameless 
 and groundless assumption, that of the claim 
 of the Pope to universal supremacy and — as a 
 corollary therefrom — to infallibility. When you 
 read, as you will, in history of the counter-decisions 
 of bishops of Rome, and of the profligate lives of 
 many of them (history records no worse characters 
 than some of them), it is almost amusing, were the 
 consequences less serious, to hear such announce- 
 ments as are made of the power of the Pope. 
 Flings at the English Church, because of Henry 
 VIIVs character, come with a bad grace from men 
 who now, as a matter of salvation, must believe in 
 the infallibility of a Borgia ! Then, too, when 
 you come to the matter of doctrine, — that of 
 transubstantiation, the worship of the Blessed 
 Virgin, the Romish purgatory, etc., — you, who 
 have been instructed in the word of God, can 
 hardly be drawn away from the ancient faith into 
 the mazes of Romish error. The best antidote 
 
92 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 against all uncatholic doctrine is a thorough ac- 
 quaintance with the Word of God, as interpreted 
 and accepted by the Universal Church. It is a 
 two-edged sword, that guards in all directions the 
 tree of life. Make it, my children, your book of 
 counsel, the guide for time and eternity, health for 
 body and soul. Yet, think not that I join in the 
 popular and undiscriminating tirade against Rome. 
 She has the faith, though sadly disfigured, and en- 
 rolls among her children a goodly fellowship of 
 saints and a noble army of martyrs, — not, indeed, 
 because of her errors, but in spite of them. In 
 many things, we might imitate the zeal and spirit of 
 self-sacrifice so wonderfully illustrated in her com- 
 munion. Roman-Catholicism, in so far as it is true 
 to the catholic faith, is one thing, and worthy of all 
 admiration. But Romanism, as corrupted by new 
 doctrines, and perverted by Jesuitism, which just 
 now is in the ascendent, and dictates, as is thought, 
 the policy of that Church, is quite another thing. 
 Against all these uncatholic features of the Roman 
 Church, this Church of ours enters her solemn pro- 
 test. Hence, she is called the "Protestant" Church, 
 because she is so truly catholic. Her Protestant- 
 ism constitutes really the negative side of her 
 Catholicity. We do not believe in " The Protest- 
 ant Episcopal Church." And why ? Because our 
 faith cannot properly rest in any one branch of the 
 
THE PRESBYTERIAN COMMUNION. 93 
 
 Church. Any particular church may err in the 
 faith. Rome assuredly has ; she has erred by 
 unwarranted additions to the faith ; she imposes 
 uncatholic conditions of communion and fellowship. 
 We cannot fraternize with her, without accepting 
 as true what is not true. Besides, she has excom- 
 municated us : we have never excommunicated her. 
 The schism between us is not of our making. 
 We are ready to meet her, and all the historical 
 churches (by this I mean all churches tracing an 
 Apostolic succession of the ministry), upon the basis 
 of catholic truth, — that which always was every- 
 where, and held by all, — our faith being in the 
 Holy Catholic Church, and only using the appella- 
 tion of "Protestant Episcopal" byway of designat- 
 ing a branch of the Church, and because it has a 
 well-known doctrinal and historical significance ; 
 just as we designate continents and oceans and 
 bays and rivers, to localize and designate them, but 
 not to deny or lose sight of the fact that all these 
 several divisions make up the great land and sea. 
 " Pray for the peace of Jerusalem" 
 
 THE PRESBYTERIAN COMMUNION 
 Is a select, learned, and most respectable com- 
 munion of Christian people. Why is it called Pres- 
 byterian ? To indicate the fact that their ministers 
 are presbyters merely, and that they recognize no 
 
94 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 office in the Church like that of our Bishops. 
 That Denomination has precedence in Scotland, 
 an existence in England and Ireland, in France 
 and the United States, besides scattered congrega- 
 tions on the Continent, and missions among the 
 heathen. Its history dates back no farther than 
 the Reformation. There is no satisfactory record 
 of a church up to that era which was not ruled by 
 Bishops. They claim that their ministerial gov- 
 ernment was instituted by the Apostles, but admit 
 that it soon merged into the Episcopal form. It 
 will strike any one as very strange that the Apos- 
 tolic form of government (supposing, for the sake 
 of argument, that such was Presbyterian) should 
 have lasted so short a time. There must have 
 been a strong tendency to Episcopacy in early 
 Presbyterianism. During the apostolic era, the 
 Church was without controversy, governed by the 
 Apostles. The first clear intimations of subsequent 
 history give us Episcopal churches everywhere. 
 If any change ever took place from Presbyterian to 
 Episcopal polity, as they allege, history does not 
 record the fact nor the time. The truth is, that all 
 this talk is purely conjectural, imaginary, and hardly 
 reasonable. If there is any truth in it, the burden 
 of proof (positive) rests upon themselves. The 
 whole stream of history is against the assertion. 
 The analogy of nature, in its manifold headship, 
 
THE riiESBYTERIAN COMMUNION. 95 
 
 is against it. It is an afterthought altogether. 
 Some of the most learned of their reformers — 
 notably, Calvin — acknowledged the fact of primi- 
 tive Episcopacy, and he would have ingrafted the 
 feature upon his system had it been practicable. 
 The history of Puritanism in England is a most 
 suggestive one. It originated in a certain school 
 of divines in the Church in England who were 
 enamoured of a more simple ritual than that of 
 the Church, and held stronger views of the doc- 
 trines of predestination and election, etc., than 
 "The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion" justified. 
 The body of divines holding said views, at last, 
 after many attempts had been made to pacify 
 and harmonize them, went to themselves, estab- 
 lished their standard, — "The Confession of Faith" 
 — and thus took a determinate departure from 
 the historical Church in England and other 
 countries. They seemed to run counter to every 
 distinctive feature of the Church: — we kneeled, 
 they stood, in prayer ; we kneeled at the Holy 
 Eucharist, they sat and partook ; they objected 
 to the use of the surplice, to the sign of the 
 cross in baptism, to the wedding-ring, etc. So 
 trivial were the grounds of their dissent, as you 
 will see in any history of the times. But times 
 are changed ; and they have changed, as we 
 all have changed, with the times. No more do 
 
96 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 we hear of the peculiar doctrines of Presbyterian- 
 ism. The great Fatherhood of God, loving all 
 His children, and shining like the sun on all His 
 creatures, has relegated to the tombs all those 
 narrow, harsh, repelling, and appalling views of 
 the Deity which came once from Presbyterian 
 pulpits. They still sing, "Hark from the tombs," 
 but the voice of the Easter-tide will drown that 
 doleful cry after a while. Some of their best 
 men are beginning to cry aloud for a liturgical 
 worship. After a while they will demand it. 
 Their sabbaths (Judaical as theirs have been) will 
 give way to the "Lord's Day;" and they will 
 sing Te Deums and Glorias, as other Christian 
 people have done and will continue to do. Why 
 they keep up their distinctive organization, it 
 would be hard to say. What great truth they 
 maintain distinctively, cannot be pointed out. 
 What special attraction there is in their mode of 
 worship, does not appear. They hold a great 
 deal that is good, but they do not specially hold 
 any thing good that the historical Episcopal 
 Church does not also hold. You may say indeed, 
 with truth, that distinctive Presbyterianism no 
 longer exists, save in its ministerial polity ; and 
 that cannot stand the test of history. Chilling- 
 worth (in his " Apostolical Institution of Episco- 
 pacy Demonstrated " ) puts the allegation, on the 
 
THE TRESBYTERIAN COMMUX/OAT. 97 
 
 part of the Presbyterians, that " Prcsbytcrianism 
 was ancient and Apostolic, but had run into Episco- 
 pacy " in a helpless condition. He says (p. 509), 
 " When I shall see, therefore, all the fables in the 
 'Metamorphoses' acted, and prove true stories; 
 when I shall see all the Democracies and Aristoc- 
 racies in the world lie down and sleep, and awake 
 into Monarchies, — then will I begin to believe that 
 Presbyterial government, having continued in the 
 Church during the apostles' times, should presently 
 after (against the apostles' doctrine and the will 
 of Christ) be whirled about like a scene in a mask, 
 and transformed into Episcopacy. In the mean 
 time, while things remain thus incredible, and in 
 human reason impossible, I hope I shall have 
 leave to conclude thus : ' Episcopal government is 
 acknowledged to have been universally received 
 in the Church presently after the Apostles' times.' 
 'Between the Apostles' and this "presently after," 
 there was not time enough for, nor possibility of, 
 so great an alteration.' 
 
 "And, therefore, there was no such alteration 
 as is pretended. And therefore Episcopacy, be- 
 ing confessed to be so ancient and catholic, must 
 be granted also to be Apostolic. Quod crat de- 
 monstrandum." 
 
 The fact is, that Romanism and Presbyterian- 
 ism, in some of their distinctive characteristics, 
 
98 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 are both uncatholic. They have more things 
 in common than would be supposed at a first 
 glance. They both ignore and undervalue patris- 
 tic learning and authority. Presbyterian min- 
 isters, although well educated in the general, 
 are proverbially deficient in patristic lore. They 
 find no comfort in reading the " Fathers," for they 
 ever find Episcopacy, and Episcopacy is most un- 
 savory to them. The Romanists, likewise, run 
 away from the Fathers nowadays. They are 
 always seeking for proofs of the Pope's suprem- 
 acy, and the Fathers did not know any thing about 
 so novel a doctrine. The English Church with 
 her weighty artillery has driven the Romish con- 
 troversialists out of their old intrenchments, and 
 they are now seeking a new position of defence 
 in the doctrine of "development," which, as practi- 
 cally interpreted by them, means, not development 
 of truth revealed, but revelation of new truth. 
 Newman and Manning have both helped them on 
 this new line. The only safety is in Catholic 
 truth, and in the Apostolical order of the Church, 
 which comes to us with the same universality of 
 evidence that the Holy Scriptures themselves do, 
 — catholic consent. And he who disparages the 
 idea of catholic consent, disparages the very founda- 
 tion upon which the Canon of Holy Scripture rests 
 for its authenticity. 
 
BAPTIST FRIENDS. 99 
 
 But the vital matter for men to know amid 
 all these controversies is this, — that spiritual 
 life comes from the indwelling of the Divine 
 Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life. He dwells 
 in men, despite many opposing infirmities, errors, 
 and sins, else would He not dwell in any one 
 of us. How far a man may go in error or sin 
 without quenching the life of the soul, is not re- 
 vealed. We may not expect in this our earthly 
 pilgrimage to live without these clogging errors 
 and faults, but let it be our aim really to live. It 
 matters little what a dead man believes, — there is 
 not much difference in dead things : they are all 
 putting on corruption. But there is, on the con- 
 trary, a vast difference in living things. The 
 nearer one lives in the truth and to the truth, the 
 more of a man is he, and the higher his possible 
 usefulness and destiny. Therefore, my children, 
 strive to walk in the truth, and with boundless 
 compassion for the ignorant and erring — not dif- 
 ficult for any one to do who fully realizes his own 
 frailty and fallibility. 
 
 But we must say a few words about our 
 
 BAPTIST FRIENDS. 
 They are a very large denomination in this 
 country, but do not exercise the same power with 
 the Methodists, because they lack compactness 
 
100 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 and unity in their organization. They sprang up 
 about the time of the Lutheran Reformation ; and 
 in some places they were turbulent and very heady, 
 as Luther testified. In their Polity, they are In- 
 dependents and Congregationalists ; each con- 
 gregation containing within itself governmental 
 powers — each congregation an autonomy. They 
 form among themselves what they style "Associ- 
 ations ;" but these are purely voluntary, and are 
 clothed with very limited powers. 
 
 Their boast is, that they possess "no written 
 creed : " they do not baptize children, and they re- 
 gard immersion as the only valid baptism, — in- 
 deed, as alone baptism. They ignore the question 
 of the ministry pretty much, and attach a supreme 
 importance to two things, — no children baptized, 
 and adult believers alone to be baptized, and by 
 immersion. They have among them some quite 
 distinguished and learned men ; but as a denomi- 
 nation, viewed in the large, their preachers and 
 people are much less informed than the majority 
 of the other sects. Of late they are earnest pro- 
 moters of education. They are exclusive, — would 
 be called very High Church among us, — but by 
 their fraternizations with other Christian people 
 in preachings, etc., they get credit among the un- 
 thinking for a liberality which is not deserved ; 
 for they will not commune with their fellow- 
 
BAPTIST FRIENDS. \Q\ 
 
 Christians, and they will repel them from their 
 communion-tables. The Holy Scriptures they 
 profess to take as their sole guide, and ignore all 
 idea of the Catholic Church as an interpreter of 
 divine truth. Hence, they have no written creed, 
 and glory in the fact, although they hold certain 
 opinions as unquestionably true ; and it is hard 
 for any one to see what is the difference between 
 a spoken and a written creed. The creed of every 
 man is what he believes to be true ; and whether 
 he writes it down, or lets it float in speech, it is 
 none the less a creed, although, being unwritten 
 and unrehearsed, it is liable to easy change. What 
 idea can you form of one's faith, when he says, 
 " I believe in the Holy Scriptures " ? The argu- 
 ments of the Baptists are plausible to a certain 
 extent among the ignorant; and they beguile — 
 not to deny much knowledge among their learned 
 men — a great multitude of ignorant and really 
 good people. 
 
 I cannot pretend to go at length into the matters 
 of difference between us and them. There are a 
 great many good and satisfactory books, which, if 
 you should ever happen to need, you can consult. 
 Among them I name one, written by Dr. Hodges, 
 an old friend of mine, entitled, " Baptism, tested by 
 Scripture and History," an argument, in my judg- 
 ment, unanswerable. I merely touch a few points. 
 
102 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 They reject infant baptism, alleging two princi- 
 pal objections : (a) the Scriptures do not in so 
 many words command children to be baptized, 
 and (b) that children are incapable of receiving 
 any benefit therefrom. Whereas, on the contrary 
 (as you will see more at length in the book re- 
 ferred to), children are always treated of in Scrip- 
 ture as belonging to the Church. They were 
 circumcised into it under the Jewish dispensation ; 
 and when families and households were brought 
 into the Christian fold, they were baptized as 
 " households." Furthermore, our Lord gave it as 
 a reason why His disciples should not bar the 
 approach of children to Himself, that "of such is 
 the Kingdom of God," which is the Church of 
 God ; and we know no way of becoming members 
 of the Kingdom of God, save by baptism. Be- 
 sides, the comparative silence of Scripture (if 
 Scripture can be truly said to be silent) in regard 
 to this matter is very significant. We do not 
 commonly say much about settled and indispu- 
 table facts. The relation of the children to the 
 Church was so universally recognized as a fact, a 
 fact not disputed, that there was little occasion 
 to refer to it in the Gospels and Acts of the 
 Apostles. Yet there is just the mention of it, 
 
INFANT BAPTISM. 103 
 
 and the implication of its existence that we should 
 expect to find, — the Shepherd's tender care of 
 the little ones of His fold, His taking them in 
 His arms, His declaring them "blessed," His 
 provision for their nurture in His parting in- 
 junctions to His disciple, "Feed My lambs." 
 In addition to this weighty testimony of Holy 
 Scripture, we have the universal custom of the 
 Church, not seriously disputed for centuries, — 
 a fact of deep significance to every one who 
 understands that he receives the Holy Scriptures 
 themselves upon the same testimony. 
 
 Think of a flock of sheep without any lambs in 
 it. It would be absolutely ludicrous, were it not 
 at the same time so painful. The gospel did little 
 for the Jews, if it took the men and the women into 
 the Church, and left the children out ; and that, 
 too, when the Lord of the Kingdom says that "of 
 such is the Kingdom." Really, to one acquainted 
 with all the grounds of, and reasons for, infant 
 baptism, as appearing from the Scripture alone, it 
 is difficult to understand how a thinking and 
 learned man can be a Baptist. Yet there are such 
 men who are conscientious Baptists. Then, when 
 you add to this the whole force of catholic con- 
 sent through ages, it becomes a wonder greater 
 still. 
 
 But, the main difficulty in the mind of a Baptist 
 
104 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 is in the thought that " children can receive 
 no benefit from baptism." This difficulty arises, 
 altogether, out of a misconception of the nature 
 of baptism. The Baptist regards the sacrament 
 as involving too exclusively what man has to do in 
 the matter. We, on the contrary, regard it chiefly 
 as something that God does for man. It is not 
 simply a profession of one's faith, but a reception 
 into the Kingdom, into the family of Heaven. Our 
 birth of the flesh is our entrance into creation : it 
 puts us among God's creatures, in the great king- 
 dom of Nature. Whereas, our baptism is our intro- 
 duction into God's family, therefore properly and 
 significantly styled the " Kingdom of the Father," 
 which involves the idea of our regeneration, our 
 new birth, our second birth, our adoption and incor- 
 poration into the mystical body of the dear Lord. 
 Now, we all admit that children can become 
 citizens of another kingdom than that in which 
 they were born. They can be made partakers of 
 all the privileges of citizenship, in so far as minors 
 can exercise them, or they can be exercised in 
 their behalf. They can receive the benefit of all 
 properties given, and they can have the protec- 
 tion of the law, and the right of having guard- 
 ianship, etc. ; in a word, they can have all the 
 substantial benefits of citizenship, whilst yet they 
 are all unconscious. What man would reject an 
 
INFANT BATTISM. 105 
 
 inheritance for his child because the child could 
 not understand the value of the gift ? Further- 
 more, when they shall have reached years of dis- 
 cretion, they can say whether they will confirm 
 and ratify the deed of their parents, and confirm 
 the citizenship given them by their parents, or 
 choose another for themselves, and thus give a 
 deep significance to their confirmation. All this 
 the Baptist ignores, — honestly, I doubt not, but 
 still actually. He took up his Bible, and went to 
 work to make out a scheme of church polity for 
 himself anew, never sufficiently considering that 
 a Church already existed, — a Church that had 
 brought to him the very Scriptures which he was 
 using as if a new revelation, not only separating 
 himself from its government and guidance, but 
 from its communion, and the church-members 
 from communion with himself. He thus created 
 a schism in the body, and established a sect in its 
 very idea schismatical. If the Baptist idea of the 
 Church be well founded, then for centuries Christ 
 had no Church on earth ; and then, of course, the 
 Church had failed ; and yet, of that Kingdom, there 
 was to be no end. 
 
 Such are the conclusions necessarily and actually 
 involved in the position of the Baptist. He does 
 not sufficiently consider (and in this he is not 
 alone) that the Church antedates the written word 
 
106 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 of the New Testament ; that those Scriptures 
 were written to meet the wants of an existing 
 Church. The Epistles were addressed to the 
 various churches. The Gospels are histories of 
 our Lord's deeds and words, and were written 
 after the events which they record ; and therefore 
 it is, that we have to go to the Catholic Church to 
 find out what is the Word of God. These are very- 
 simple facts, but unknown to, and unweighed by, 
 great numbers of men, who, in some other respects, 
 are quite intelligent, and well informed. 
 
 The ultimate fate of the Baptist, as it regards 
 the preservation of " the faith," it would be hard 
 to predict. His want of a fixed Creed and Liturgy 
 deprives him of a great security against error. 
 His congregational character bereaves him of a 
 great deal of good and restraint and guidance, that 
 come from mutual helpfulness. His extravagant 
 reliance upon individual interpretations of Scrip- 
 ture opens the way to an unlimited number of 
 sects, between whom there exists only the one tie, 
 — of immersion in water, and infants rejected. 
 The name of the Baptist sects is becoming Legion. 
 The " Campbellites" (or "Disciples" they claim to 
 be called) is one of their most prominent off-shoots, 
 as yet but little known in the world at large, but 
 numerous and aggressive wherever they have 
 made a lodgement. Individualism bursts into full 
 
TNFANT BAPTISM. 107 
 
 bloom under their favoring auspices. Every man 
 can be a preacher, and every woman if she claims 
 the privilege. With no established creed, and 
 unlicensed power to interpret Scripture, there 
 must be as many actual creeds as there are diver- 
 gent opinions, with no protection, that appears, 
 from the most fatal heresy. The atmosphere 
 around them in some localities will keep them 
 orthodox longer than their system would warrant. 
 My children, adhere steadfastly to a communion 
 which holds a fixed faith, and breathes it in every 
 note of prayer and praise. 
 
 Perhaps I ought to say a word about what the 
 Baptists claim for " immersion." I feel that I am 
 touching what is a matter of small moment in it- 
 self ; but yet I must recognize it as having impor- 
 tance, because so much is made of it, to the 
 prejudice of many tender consciences and weak 
 minds. To a Churchman, it can hardly become a 
 practical question, for his first concern would be 
 to know if the minister proposing to baptize him 
 had any commission thereto. The Baptists are 
 always arguing the point of "how to baptize;" 
 leaving out of view the question, " Who is em- 
 powered to baptize ? " Yet the matter of immersion 
 troubles some people, and huge volumes of immense 
 research have been evoked by the water contro- 
 versy. To me it appears like the question, "How 
 
108 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 much wax is to be put upon your seal in order to 
 give validity to its impress ? " It tends, moreover, 
 to withdraw the mind from the sacramental idea 
 to the material one. It is a small matter, it would 
 seem, whether the water goes over the subject, or 
 the subject goes under the water. It makes one 
 sick to think how men can wrangle over such 
 questions. They surely have never divined the 
 true idea of a Sacrament, which is "the outward 
 and visible sign of an inward and spiritual thing." 
 One may as well contend that one must eat a full 
 meal in order to receive the Lord's Supper, as to 
 argue that you must be drenched in order to be 
 baptized. 
 
 Without entering at large into the question, 
 which would take me quite beyond my limits, I 
 content myself with saying that the quantity of 
 water is quite an immaterial part of the Sacra- 
 ment (the Church manifests her characteristic 
 wisdom and benignity in allowing both modes) ; 
 that the practice of affusion seems to have been, 
 as I fully believe it was, the primitive mode ; 
 that there are accounts in Scripture of baptisms 
 where immersion was scarcely possible ; that af- 
 fusion can be practised everywhere, among all 
 nations, in all climes and localities ; that immer- 
 sion in some climes and localities and seasons is 
 impracticable, and that, therefore, it is more 
 
INFANT BAPTISM. ICX) 
 
 reasonable to suppose that where an ordinance 
 
 was to be of universal obligation, the mode of its 
 administration would properly be one of universal 
 practicability ; it being in accord with the analogy 
 of God's dealings, to accommodate the Divine 
 requirements to human necessities ; that baptism 
 being made (equally with the Sabbath) "for man," 
 the mode thereof would likewise be adapted with 
 the same wise and benignant accommodation 
 to all men, in all clime's, and under all circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Looking at the whole matter from this larger 
 view-point, the insisting upon a special mode of 
 receiving men into Christ's Kingdom, — which is 
 never exactly decorous, as in the case of woman ; 
 sometimes harsh, as amid the rigors of winter ; 
 sometimes impracticable, as in countries where 
 little water is to be found, — is not a reasonable 
 thing, and is not in harmony with the genius of 
 the Gospel of our Lord. Strange it is that some 
 good, and reputed great, men take quite the oppo- 
 site view. They see nothing in the Scripture ac- 
 counts but immersion, immersion : whether in 
 the crowded streets of Jerusalem, where thousands 
 were unexpectedly baptized, or in the jail at Phi- 
 lippi at midnight, they always imagine full foun- 
 tains, and overflowing streams. Even in the 
 people's flocking to Enon, near to Salim, " where 
 
110 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 much water was," the practicability of immersing 
 is the first moving cause to these brethren, who 
 seem to look at all these accounts with a water- 
 lens. They never stop to ask, how little water 
 would suffice to baptize many men? — a good- 
 sized baptistery would suffice — and how much 
 water would be required to quench the thirst of a 
 thousand camels upon which the people went to 
 "Enon"? — ten camels requiring more for their 
 satisfaction, than a thousand men for baptism by 
 immersion. 
 
 The Baptist theory of essential immersion, 
 stands out in the whole scheme of Redemption, 
 not grand indeed to my vision, but solitary and 
 peculiar, often harsh, and in some instances im- 
 practicable. Happily, it has made itself exclu- 
 sive. The worst thing about it is, that it 
 oftentimes becomes the "fetich" to the ignorant 
 white and black man. It satisfies his senses 
 to the full. He is all over a Christian when 
 dipped. In a great number of cases, it ends the 
 whole matter. His teachers do not believe or 
 tell him any such thing, I am well assured ; but 
 the extravagant stress which they put upon the 
 "dipping," — a process which separates him from 
 all other Christians, and all other Christians from 
 him, — naturally produces the result in weak and 
 ignorant people. 
 
THE METHODISTS. Ill 
 
 THE METHODISTS. 
 The Methodists constitute a very large and in- 
 fluential body in the United States, and exist as a 
 denomination in Great Britain and her dependen- 
 cies, and have missions in foreign lands. Their 
 government is Episcopal, made so by the assump- 
 tion of the Episcopal functions on the part of two 
 of their presbyters, who had been sent out to the 
 American Colonies by John Wesley, the founder 
 of the sect. Much controversy has arisen as to 
 the intentions of John Wesley. There is evidence 
 enough to show that he did not intend to form a 
 sect in England, apart from the Church of Eng- 
 land, where there was a national Church estab- 
 lished ; and yet, there is also evidence to show 
 that he did contemplate the organization of a dis- 
 tinct sect in the American Colonies, although he 
 disapproved of the assumption of the Episcopate 
 by Coke and Asbury, his superintendents in the 
 Colonies, and held it up — as it deserved to be — 
 to ridicule : " Call me a knave, dear Franky [Dr. 
 Francis Asbury], but not a Bishop." Wesley had 
 the sense and churchmanship to know that he, a 
 Presbyter, could not make a Bishop. But Wesley's 
 intentions, whatever they may be claimed to be, 
 or proved to be, are of no moment ; for the ques- 
 tion is one of authority > not of Wesley's intention. 
 
112 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 The founders of Methodism were men of zeal, 
 earnestness, and power. They preached with 
 unction some of the great truths of the gospel, 
 and encouraged the emotional element to a great 
 and enthusiastic degree. The low condition of 
 piety in the Church of England at the time 
 greatly favored the growth of the sect. Had the 
 English Church acted with the wisdom and fore- 
 cast which have marked her more recent adminis- 
 tration, Methodism might have been utilized and 
 controlled. The Church of England greatly needed 
 a stimulus. But unwise counsels prevailed ; and 
 the Methodists, especially in the United States, 
 took a determinate movement away from the 
 Apostolic Church. Wesley himself never left the 
 ministry of the Church. 
 
 His followers very early took ground against 
 domestic slavery ; and the pressure of this question 
 had divided the body into " Methodists North," and 
 " Methodists South," before the breaking out of the 
 civil war. So great was the mutual repulsion on 
 the part of the two bodies thus divided, that they 
 have never yet been able to come together in legis- 
 lative union, notwithstanding the fact that slavery 
 — the original cause of the division — no longer 
 exists. Unhappily, the Methodists have become in 
 the Northern States too much of a political power, 
 and candidates for the Presidency find it to their 
 
THE METHODISTS. 113 
 
 interest to play into their hands. As they have 
 gained in political power, they seem to have de- 
 clined in piety and religious zeal (I refer now to 
 the Methodist Church North), and are gradually 
 losing some of their strictest notions of certain 
 matters pertaining to dress, amusements, and the 
 like, — the ultimate fate of all Puritanism. Their 
 organization is one of great power; and through 
 their varied functionaries, they manage to move 
 the whole body of the Communion by the will of 
 a few leaders. Two of their Conferences thanked 
 Congress for impeaching President Andrew John- 
 son before his trial took place. In some particu- 
 lars, they are more like the Church of England 
 and her daughter in America, than any of. the 
 Denominations. They still retain a considerable 
 portion of the Book of Common Prayer, in a muti- 
 lated form, and they use it at funerals, marriages, 
 baptisms, and celebrations of the Lord's Supper ; 
 thus showing, that, when they wish to draw es- 
 pecially near unto God, they resort to the use of 
 a form. But yet, at the same time, it is the 
 fashion of some of their preachers to declaim 
 vehemently against the use of forms in worship. 
 Such is man's inconsistency. They cannot be 
 said to have any "distinctive denominational 
 principles," — as do the Baptists, — but owe their 
 growth and extension to their zeal and diligence, 
 
114 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 which I have ever admired in them, and am glad 
 to recognize at all times. Their founders — Wes- 
 ley, Whitefield, etc. — were men of power ; and 
 they were all brought up in the Church of Eng- 
 land, and taught by Church mothers in the Church 
 catechism, baptized, confirmed, and ordained by 
 the ministry of the Church of England. Some 
 years ago, a party rose up among them who pro- 
 tested against having Bishops, and claimed that 
 laymen should have a voice in their legislative 
 bodies. It is surprising, that, with the last-named 
 popular claim to public favor, the Protestant 
 Methodists — for such was their name — should 
 not have had a larger following ; but they have 
 never become a large body ; and now that the 
 Episcopal Methodists have admitted to some ex- 
 tent lay representation, they appear to have lost 
 much of their original prestige, and will probably 
 die out. 
 
 CONCLUSION OF MATTERS PERTAINING TO 
 RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 
 A word more just here in regard to the Protes- 
 tant Episcopal Church, — the Church of my fore- 
 fathers, so far as any records go. My descendants 
 will find, as I have found, that the Church of their 
 forefathers presents to them all that man needs 
 to enable him to live a religious life, and at the 
 
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION 115 
 
 same time to maintain that individuality and free- 
 dom of thought without which religion can have 
 no charm and no enduring power. She gives us 
 the ministry in unbroken line from Apostolic days, 
 and the Catholic Creeds, and none other, as the 
 doctrinal conditions of communion. She gives us 
 for our rule of life, the commandments of God 
 and the precepts of Christ. She leaves it to 
 "societies " to add to the faith and the law. She 
 provides a mode of worship, simple, majestic, and 
 reverential, where all men's needs are provided 
 for, and the great and good God is worshipped "in 
 the beauty of holiness." In her legislative action, 
 there is guaranteed, as far as human sagacity can 
 guarantee any thing, safety and protection for all 
 who come within the reach of her authority. The 
 constitution and canons of the Protestant Epis- 
 copal Church in the United States are, in my 
 judgment, and that of wiser men than I am, the 
 justest and most conservative body of laws and 
 canons that have ever been framed by men. 
 Every order and estate of men in the Church is 
 cared for. Class legislation is impossible under 
 her system. Her whole history has been marked 
 by so much wisdom, moderation, and conserva- 
 tism, that wise, moderate, and conservative men 
 have been drawn to her by elective affinity. 
 What a record is the roll of her children ! Her 
 
Il6 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 teachings are specially adapted to enlighten the 
 ignorant, to raise up the lowly, and keep down the 
 proud. Hence, the multitude love to go where 
 they can be exalted. I desire no higher honor 
 than to have my name registered in her roll. I 
 ask no greater security for my children than that 
 they may be found in her ranks. I have no higher 
 ambition than to be found at the last day among 
 her true followers. For my brethren and compan- 
 ions' sake, I wish her prosperity. Above my chief 
 joy, I prefer her — Jerusalem, my mother! 
 
 Let me say a word just here. There are some 
 few in our communion, who manifest an undisguised 
 aversion to the Protestant character of our Church. 
 The desire to drop the name of " Protestant " is 
 with some, I fear, the indication of this aversion. 
 If I thought that this was the underlying animus 
 of all who favored the change, I should retain the 
 name at all hazards ; because the conflict then 
 would be for principle, and the name would be the 
 flag around which every true son of the Church 
 should rally. 
 
 There are some in our midst who decry the 
 Reformation, and disparage the great reformers. 
 I have only one word for them. As I view the 
 matter, they are not honest to their vow, "to 
 preach the gospel " "as Christ hath commanded and 
 this Church hath received the same." We have a 
 
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS CONCLUDED. WJ 
 
 pure and majestic ritual: let us not ape any other 
 system. Some scientists think that men ascended 
 from the monkey. I have not witnessed that phe- 
 nomenon, but every now and then I am satisfied 
 that I have seen a man descend to the monkey. 
 I heard the Bishop of Sodor and Man make a 
 speech at Wolverhampton, England, some twenty 
 years ago. He concluded by saying, " Finally, my 
 Brethren, beware of monks and monkeys." For 
 my part, I had rather see a man a monk than a 
 monkey; and I occasionally suggest to some 
 youthful specimens of the latter species, " If you 
 don't like the 'Reformed Church,' the 'unre- 
 formed ' Church has its doors open to receive you. 
 Go home! In the name of truth, sincerity, and 
 decency, so far as in you lies, be what you purport 
 to be. Use the language of the Bible and of 
 your mother, the Church, and speak not in dubious 
 and long since discarded phraseology of ' masses,' " 
 etc. Sometimes, when I hear of a certain kind 
 of priests bewailing the Reformation, and using 
 such phrases as "wretched Latimer," etc., the 
 doubt will rise in my mind whether such men 
 would not prefer to have piled additional fagots 
 about the stake, rather than to have gone up 
 with those glorious martyrs in chariots of fire 
 to Paradise. 
 
Il8 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM, AND SCIENTISM. 
 
 I have thrown these three together for conven- 
 ient handling, and not at all to ignore or confound 
 the distinctions between them. Just now they 
 seem to be playing into each other's hands ; and, 
 by their " nocking together," they seem to be in 
 some sort "birds of a feather." The rampant 
 spirit of rationalism in common life, in the public 
 press, and, sad to say, in the pulpit and at the 
 altar, allies itself with a vaunting scientism, and 
 together they have engendered a spirit of scep- 
 ticism, which threatens the very existence of faith 
 itself. Where do you find the spirit of a Newton 
 and Bacon, accepting alike, with a childlike mind, 
 — the only safe mind, — the teachings of Revela- 
 tion and the conclusions of a stern inductive phi- 
 losophy ? Bacon truly and grandly said that the 
 entrance into the Kingdom of God and into the 
 realms of science demanded the selfsame spirit, — 
 that of the child. 
 
 I wish, above all else, for my children, that they 
 shall believe in Christ. If there is no reality in 
 Christ, then our life goes out in darkness: — I 
 leave my children without the sun, and I take my 
 leap in the dark. But you will perhaps say, "What 
 must I believe ? there is so much diversity of opin- 
 ion : what is truth ? " I answer, Christ is " The 
 
SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM, SCIENTISM. I 19 
 
 Truth;" "Christianity" — a term not known to 
 Revelation — is but vague and uncertain ; " Christ " 
 is one and the same, "yesterday, to-day, and 
 forever: " — of this more anon. 
 
 If you take a superficial view of the distracted 
 condition of Christendom, you will be tempted at 
 times to think that there must be some serious 
 cause for uncertainty where there is so much 
 diversity of opinion. Not so : a deeper view will 
 bring you to a sounder conclusion. Let me illus- 
 trate my meaning. Suppose, by way of illustra- 
 tion, that a dozen men are called to the witness- 
 stand, to testify in a given case. They all differ 
 in their testimony upon certain points of evidence ; 
 but upon certain other points, vital and fundamen- 
 tal, as all confess, they all agree. What conclu- 
 sion would you come to ? Naturally and reason- 
 ably, I think, to this conclusion ; viz., that the 
 matters upon which they are all agreed are fully 
 proven, and not less fully proven because of their 
 diversity of statement of certain other particulars ; 
 indeed, more satisfactorily proven because of that 
 diversity, — the diversity going to show that there 
 is no collusion among the witnesses. 
 
 Now, apply this illustration. Nearly all Christian 
 people, of whatever name, are agreed upon the mat- 
 ters of faith set forth in the Creeds of the Church. 
 (The exceptions are so small as to be inappreciable 
 
120 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 in a large and comprehensive view of Christendom.) 
 Now, these Creeds contain the vital facts of the 
 Christian faith, — the Fatherhood of God, the In- 
 carnation and Atonement of Christ, and the Person- 
 ality of the Holy Spirit, the Life-Giver, Sanctifier, 
 and Comforter. The truths set forth in these 
 Creeds are so vital and all-pervading, that a belief 
 in them entitles such believer (so far as his faith 
 is concerned) to baptism and membership in 
 Christ. The Christian peoples affirming this faith 
 are divided among themselves in many points, — 
 points of religious opinion, ritual, polity, and 
 usages, — but they are one in " the faith." Chris- 
 tendom thus, indeed, presents from this point 
 of view an undivided front. The main line of 
 the Church Militant is unbroken, notwithstand- 
 ing a few divisions have been routed and scattered 
 or captured. What, then, becomes of the argu- 
 ments used by infidels and scoffers, that they 
 know not what to believe in view of the divided 
 condition of Christianity ? If they will accept 
 only the faith in which Christendom is united, and 
 accept it as rational beings should accept such a 
 faith, they will be good Christians. 
 
 Moreover, as it regards morals, all Christians are 
 united in accepting the law of God, interpreted by 
 Christ, as the rule of a Christian man's life. Let 
 any man live up to those precepts of Christ, which 
 
SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM, SCIENTISM. 121 
 
 all Christendom accepts, and he will live a godly 
 and Christian life. How strong, then, and hitherto 
 unassailable, is the line held by the Church Mil- 
 itant, — " the blessed company of all faithful peo- 
 ple." I might pause here to note how weak, 
 lamentable, foolish, and wicked a thing it is for 
 any Christian man to do any thing to weaken the 
 strength of this line by needless and ambitious 
 divisions, but this is aside from my present pur- 
 pose. 
 
 Infidelity, in every age of the world, has 
 planted itself for the overthrow of Christianity — 
 as yet, without any serious break of the line of 
 Christian truth. Every argument that the wit 
 of man and the malice of the Adversary could 
 devise has been levelled against it, so far without 
 success. Every new discovery in science has 
 been peered into to find a weapon with which to 
 attack the intrenchments. The heavens have 
 been scaled, the ocean sounded, the bowels of the 
 earth have been ransacked, with this same hos- 
 tile intent. Jews, Turks, infidels, heretics, and 
 scientists have made common cause against that 
 system which will yield to none, and would fain 
 save all. Yet the faith still survives and triumphs. 
 A wonderful and sublime spectacle it is indeed, 
 inspiring and strengthening the faith of all who 
 declare that of "this Kingdom there shall be no 
 
122 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 end." Modern scientism, with the same intent, 
 has gone to work, with a diligence, eloquence, and 
 research worthy of a better cause, to batter down 
 the walls hitherto impregnable. Its highest 
 achievements, were it to accomplish its purpose, 
 would be to deprive man of God's Fatherhood, 
 quench the light of revealed truth, destroy all 
 hope of immortality, and range the race of men 
 among the brute creation, — an animal only of a 
 higher order. 
 
 It is a matter of profound interest to inquire 
 whence this spirit was evoked which would bring 
 such a blight upon the fair creation. If it were 
 the necessary conclusion of science, which it is 
 not, one would think it would be reached at least 
 with a sigh or a moan. But there are men who 
 can render the whole world Fatherless without a 
 sigh ; extinguish every hope beyond the grave 
 without a pang ; and dissolve the faith of cen- 
 turies without a tear, alas ! I have no quarrel 
 with science. Christianity has none. Her sphere 
 never traverses the orbit in which science has its 
 being. Science, truly so called, is the handmaid 
 of revealed truth. It is the opposition of science, 
 falsely so called, which we have to encounter. 
 Where science stops, having reached its uttermost 
 verge, and finds forces and powers which elude 
 investigation, and baffle all inquiry, there revela- 
 
SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM, SCIENTISM. I 23 
 
 tion begins, and discloses to faith the Divine 
 Fatherhood in the Great Creator, in Whom all 
 things live, move, and have their being. The 
 present favorite theory of what are called advanced 
 scientists, is that of evolution, not development, 
 which latter is always in manifest working. Under 
 this theory of evolution, not only the lower crea- 
 tion, but man himself, mind and all, is the product 
 of endless series of growth from an original germ 
 — they call it "Protoplasm." There would be no 
 serious objection to this theory, if it had any 
 adequate proof to sustain it ; but so far, it is 
 announced and heralded without sufficient creden- 
 tials. No scientific theory can claim our accept- 
 ance until it has received what we may call 
 "catholic consent." The same rule, you will ob- 
 serve, holds in regard to scientific truth as to 
 revealed truth. The theory of evolution has not 
 received universal acceptance, even among scien- 
 tific men. Astronomy is a science, — has its fixed 
 laws, and prevails by catholic consent. It is not 
 yet so with evolution : it is still under trial and 
 investigation. The scientist, as does the secta- 
 rian, flies off from the catholic system, and attaches 
 himself to a "school" of thought. Like the sect- 
 ist, he parades his individuality, and founds a sect 
 in philosophy. Meanwhile, you can afford to wait 
 for the conclusions of science. Receive them as 
 
124 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 true, and adjust yourselves to their logical re- 
 quirements. If the theory were true, they have 
 only removed the difficulty a step farther back. 
 They have not quit themselves of the necessity of 
 an original creator. For whether the Creator, by 
 virtue of His omnipotent power, created all things 
 after the genera in which they now exist, or cre- 
 ated the original material, out of which all things 
 were successively evolved, there is equally a 
 necessity for an original creative act. Therefore, 
 evolution, if it were true as a theory, and proved 
 to be true by induction, could not affect the truth 
 of the being of a God, — the first truth in natural 
 as in revealed religion. Therefore, in so far forth 
 as the existence of a God is concerned, they, the 
 theorists, may safely go on with their theories ; 
 but they will ever find, and find it pretty soon, a 
 force, a life, or whatever they may choose to call 
 it, permeating all things, explaining all things, — 
 itself inexplicable. They call it "the 'unknow- 
 able?" They have reached the end of their line : 
 it has run itself out, but they have not touched 
 bottom. Yet they vaunt themselves upon having 
 found the unknowable. One would think they 
 would be touched with something of humility and 
 reverence, but I have failed to see that spirit ; 
 rather that of vanity — strange that man's vanity 
 should be inflated by the discovery of his igno- 
 
SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM, SCIENTISM. 1 25 
 
 ranee ! Practically, however, the theories of the 
 modern scientist have tended, in a great many 
 minds, to obliterate the sense of a God, and to 
 diminish faith in all Divine revelation. This is its 
 practical outcome among great numbers, showing, 
 I think, how easily people will become credulous 
 when they have no faith : having not the truth, 
 they will clutch at its caricature. I have read 
 much of the writings of these men. They seem 
 to be what we would call smart men : they do 
 not strike me as profound men. They do not im- 
 press me as Plato and Aristotle and Shakspeare 
 and Bacon impress me. They seem, in compari- 
 son, to theorize and chatter. I have great sympa- 
 thy with a modern writer who is reported to have 
 said, " I am content to find my ancestors in the 
 Garden of Eden. Let those who prefer otherwise, 
 seek theirs in the ' Zoological Gardens.' " But one 
 thing they do ; and for that, all good and true men 
 must hold them accountable, if at no other bar, 
 at the bar of decorum and reason. Their influ- 
 ence goes to destroy alike the sense of God, and 
 to lower the dignity and responsibility of man. 
 The revealed Word — which I cannot throw away 
 for the sake of an unproven theory — the revealed 
 Word, I say, proclaims that at creation, God made 
 man, and made him as He made nothing else; 
 did not evolve him by gradual processes from 
 
126 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 lowest germs, but made him after His own image, 
 and endowed him after His own likeness. I can- 
 not throw away that truth, with all that it involves 
 of human dignity and possible immortality, for an 
 undemonstrated theory. Surely, what St. Paul 
 said of the heathen of his day, is true of the hea- 
 then now in the midst of Christianity: "they did 
 not like to retain God in their knowledge." O 
 my children ! Come not ye into their assembly ; 
 unite not your honor to such as these! These 
 men are not blessing their race by any moral 
 earnestness. They are not founding your homes 
 for the destitute, the widow, and the fatherless. 
 They are prating ; — " ever learning, and never 
 able to come to a knowledge of the truth." Learn 
 the principles of science (as Newton and Bacon 
 taught them), and you will never be beguiled by 
 the fallacies of scientism. 
 
 Evolutionists of the most advanced school tell 
 us that man, starting from the simplest forms of 
 matter, — mind itself being but "a mode of brain- 
 motion," — and evolving by gradual processes, is 
 moving on to perfection ; that thus, finally, all 
 evils will be rectified, all disorders adjusted, all 
 rights recognized, and the regeneration of society 
 fully accomplished. The antagonisms and discon- 
 tent of the laboring classes, the struggles of woman 
 for what she claims as her rightful co-ordination in 
 
SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM, SCIENTISM. \2J 
 
 human affairs, etc., — all these are triumphantly 
 pointed to as indications of the progress of society 
 to its perfect consummation. In all such prognos- 
 tications, the influence of the Christian religion is 
 by some disparaged, by some ignored, and by 
 others utterly repudiated as a superstition, barring 
 the way to a more rapid progress. These men 
 glory in the fact that they have nothing to do 
 with any thing save "phenomena;" and by that 
 expression, they mean the phenomena of the 
 material world, counting nothing real save that 
 which is material. 
 
 Yet there are phenomena in the world of mind 
 which cannot rationally be ignored, and which 
 must be considered, classified, and explained. 
 There are questions which force themselves upon 
 the mind, and which must be answered in some 
 way. They demand an answer. Such a question 
 is this, for example, " What think ye of Christ ? 
 whose Son is He ? " It will not do to say that 
 this question is irrelevant to the scientific mind. 
 He stands face to face with this undeniable and 
 pregnant fact, that, only in those parts of the 
 earth where the Christian religion prevails, is 
 there any marked advancement, even in science 
 and in the industries and arts of life ; and that the 
 only heathen nations which are now manifesting 
 signs of awakening life — as China and Japan — are 
 
128 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 those which have felt the quickening influences of 
 contact with Christian peoples. This question, 
 and other questions of similar import, cannot be 
 contemptuously thrust aside, and relegated to the 
 "domain of metaphysical investigation." They 
 are matters of fact — as much so as any in the 
 domain of physics ; and are quite as worthy of 
 observation as the anatomy and habits of bugs 
 and reptiles. The indifference of some so-called 
 wise men to the study of " final causes " is to me 
 an astounding phenomenon, and causes one often 
 to doubt whether every man is indeed a truly 
 rational being. I met with a disciple of this 
 school some time ago. Such men abound nowa- 
 days ; — smart indeed, but not very profound ; 
 dealing with the surface of questions, and con- 
 temptuously ignoring all consideration of the final 
 causes of things visible or invisible. We fell 
 into discourse upon religious matters. I urged 
 upon him the importance of considering such 
 matters : he replied that he " had no faith what- 
 ever in Christianity ; that he had read volume upon 
 volume on Christian evidences, but they had made 
 no impression on his mind ; " and concluded by 
 saying " that it was not worth while for us to 
 argue the matter, because there was no common 
 ground from which we could start." I then 
 asked him "if he did not think it the duty of 
 
SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM, SCIENTISM. 1 29 
 
 every man to try to bring himself, by culture 
 and labor, to his highest possible perfection ? " — 
 "Unquestionably," he replied. "Well, then," said 
 I, " here is a ground we can both start from. 
 Now, in the effort to bring your character to its 
 highest perfection, must you not have some rule, 
 standard, or model by which to work ? The 
 artist who wishes to make a representation of 
 some object in nature, say a tree, or horse, 
 seeks out the best specimen of such object, and 
 aims to reproduce it, does he not ? " — "Yes," he 
 said, "assuredly." — "Then," I urged, "in trying 
 to bring yourself up to your highest capability, 
 would you not, for like reason, cast about you for 
 the best specimen of human character, in order 
 that you might have the advantage of a model to 
 work by ? You would not reasonably look within 
 yourself for the ideal man. The effort to make 
 yourself a better man implies, that, as yet, you 
 know yourself to be an imperfect one : in making 
 yourself the ideal, you would be only repeating 
 and reproducing yourself, would you not ? " — 
 "No," said he, "I would not look to myself. I 
 would take some better specimen than myself for 
 a model : I would properly take the best man 
 that I knew, and try to imitate his virtues." — 
 "Now," I urged, "who is the best man that 
 ever lived ? " — "I know of but one man without 
 
130 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 sin," he very reverently said. "Who was that 
 man?" — "Jesus Christ." — "Then, does it not 
 follow from what you have admitted, that, in the 
 effort to perfect your character, you should set 
 before you for imitation Jesus Christ ? " — "I see 
 no way of evading the conclusion," he admitted ; 
 " but I did not anticipate reaching such a con- 
 clusion." There is no way by which the above 
 conclusion can be evaded, save by denying the 
 supreme excellence of Christ; and to this depth 
 the dreariest infidelity has rarely fallen. Surely, 
 the man of science, the sociologist, the philan- 
 thropist, can join in with the devout believer, in 
 his most exalted mood, and all with one acclaim 
 crown Him the Christ, Chief of all, "the One 
 among ten thousand, the One altogether lovely." 
 
 In this connection, let me further press the 
 point, viz., that the scientists, even from their 
 stand-point, are bound to meet the great question 
 of questions, " What think ye of Christ ? whose 
 Son is He ? " For if it be true, as they affirm, 
 that man has been evolved from lowest forms of 
 matter, and is to ascend, by continued evolution, 
 to his highest perfection, how did it happen that 
 the most perfect specimen of manhood appeared 
 at the beginning of the Christian era ? — assuredly 
 not the most advanced era in history. According 
 to the accepted system of the philosophers of this 
 
SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM, SCIENTISM. 131 
 
 school, Christ should have appeared at the cul- 
 minating point in evolution, and not at the in- 
 auguration of His era. How came He to antedate 
 the final consummation ? He has certainly done 
 so. Every advancement in morals and social order 
 at the present day is but an approximation — as yet, 
 faint indeed — to the style of human life which He 
 set forth in His teachings, and exemplified in per- 
 son. All the beneficence of this, the most benefi- 
 cent age of the world, in its care for the diseased, 
 the destitute, and the outcast, finds its spirit and 
 impersonation in Him Who "went about doing 
 good." He is the luminous point in all history. 
 His influence is the greatest known. His birth 
 constituted a new era in time. All that man in 
 the times before Him knew of the rights and 
 humanities of life was in Christ renewed, enlarged, 
 illuminated ; with much added that they knew not 
 of. All that man has truly taught since, and is now 
 truly teaching, of the relative duties of life, can be 
 found in His precepts, and exemplified in His 
 sublime life. The observance by all men of the 
 Christian rule of life would bring about confess- 
 edly a millennial age. Prophets converge in 
 Him. Apostles radiate from Him. At this hour, 
 the better part of the world, as it moves on 
 and forward, looks back to Him for guidance, 
 as oarsmen, propelling the boat, ever look back, 
 
132 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 as they row, to their helmsman. When human 
 nature shall have reached its possible perfection, 
 it will be because it has been more and more 
 imbued with the spirit of Christ. Wars be- 
 tween capital and labor, jealousies of caste, social 
 antagonisms, and all wrongs, will cease when men 
 shall be like Christ, when the laws of trade shall 
 be superseded by the law of love, and every man 
 shall "love his neighbor as himself." "Love 
 worketh no ill; therefore love is the fulfilling 
 of the law." Now let the men of science answer 
 the question concerning Christ, " Whose Son is 
 He ? " They cannot answer it from their stand- 
 point. Their doctrine of heredity furnishes no 
 clew to His parentage. From what they know, 
 they must let that question rest in still silence. 
 
 But take the Christian view, — that, not by 
 natural generation, but by a supernatural incarna- 
 tion — the Word of God becoming flesh — He, the 
 Son of God — that is His heredity — came among 
 men, — then all these questions, which cannot 
 otherwise be explained, are fully answered. St. 
 Philip said to the Master, " Lord, show us the 
 Father, and it sufftceth." Yes, it sufficeth, — 
 it covers the whole area of human need. The 
 cry of Philip is the cry of suffering humanity, 
 "Show us the Father." The answer which came 
 from Christ responsive to this cry, is the crown- 
 
SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM, SCIENTISM. 1 33 
 
 ing knowledge to poor, struggling, and weary 
 men. " Have I been so long time with you, and 
 yet hast thou not known Me, Philip ? " " He 
 that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father." 
 Would you, my children, become acquainted with 
 God, your Father, and be at peace ? then study 
 Him, not only in the realm of nature, where He 
 so gloriously manifests His power and wisdom, 
 but seek to know Him as mirrored in His only 
 begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ — the 
 "Brightness of the Father's glory — the express 
 Image of His Person." 
 
 Let nothing shake your faith in this foundation, 
 which is elect and precious, — which has stayed 
 the hopes of millions in past ages, and affords 
 the only refuge and footing for the generations 
 to come. 
 
 "Let no man deceive you with vain words." 
 Let no pretensions to profoundness in the smart 
 men of the age for a moment beguile you. I have 
 ever found profound men to be men of faith. 
 They see deep enough to know that behind and 
 below all physical phenomena, there is a great, 
 first, and intelligent Cause, in whom all things 
 live, move, and have their being. " He that 
 formed the eye, shall not He see ? " Such men, 
 instead of staggering at the mysteries of Revela- 
 tion, accept them, in childlike faith, as the crown- 
 
134 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 ing proof of the exceeding love and graciousness 
 of the Father, Who did not create a world in which 
 He could not send His Word to His children — 
 ay, more, send Him to take upon Himself their 
 nature, to talk with them, and tell them of duty 
 and danger, how to live and how to die, and thus 
 how at last to find their way home to the Father's 
 house, that they might dwell with Him forever. 
 What a contemptible and dreary conception of 
 the great and good Creator must they have, who 
 cannot reckon it possible that He can guide and 
 bless His children, hear their prayers when they 
 cry unto Him ! A wise man would not make a 
 machine which he could not guide and control 
 according to his will. But I must close this long 
 letter to you, my dear children. You will read 
 these lines when I shall have passed away from 
 your companionship, and shall have solved for 
 myself the mystery of life and death. I end with 
 an extract from my last will and testament, written 
 before these lines were written. Speaking of my 
 children and grandchildren, I write, — 
 
 " I leave them my love and benediction. I ask 
 of our Father for them no earthly honors or emolu- 
 ments. He will give them 'food and raiment,' and 
 ' godliness with contentment,' if they ' seek first 
 His kingdom and His righteousness;' but I do, 
 with all my heart and soul, desire that they may 
 
SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM, SCIENTISM. 135 
 
 have a good and well-grounded interest in the 
 Divine love and favor covenanted to them in 
 Christ Jesus, our most blessed Lord and Saviour. 
 I exhort them to reverence, and to cling to the 
 traditions of their house, and to be ever loyal to 
 that branch of the Church of Christ in which 
 they received their baptism and nurture. I feel 
 assured, that, though absent from them in the 
 body, I shall be ever near them to the latest 
 generations. I love them, and desire their wel- 
 fare beyond all power of expression. ' Fear God, 
 and keep His commandments ; for this is the 
 whole duty of man.' 
 
 " Avoid debt, my children, for debt brings with 
 it a multitude of ills. ' Owe no man any thing, 
 but to love ; ' and this debt of love, which we 
 must owe to our fellow-men, is a most precious 
 obligation, and the constant recognition of it in 
 deeds of kindness gives a flavor to the whole 
 life. 
 
 "It is not necessary to live luxuriously, nor 
 even to live comfortably ; but there is a deep 
 necessity that you should live honestly. 
 
 "The Lord of life gives us the true philosophy 
 of life. 'A man's life consisteth not in the 
 abundance of things which he possesseth.' One 
 of His chief Apostles, who had learned from the 
 Master this lesson of life, has left behind him this 
 
I36 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 record of himself — and what a record it is of the 
 battle of life well fought and gloriously won ! — 
 ' I have learned, in whatsoever state I am> there- 
 with to be content.' 
 
 " I would rather be assured of your having 
 gained this height of self-abnegation and faith, 
 than to know that you would outrank in wealth 
 the millionnaires of this generation. Worldly 
 wealth is of time, and passes away with time. 
 ' Godliness, with contentment, is great gain : ' it 
 is treasure laid up in heaven, beyond the reach of 
 time, chance, or change. 
 
 " You will hear ofttimes that this or that pas- 
 sion is the root of all evil. The divine Word, with 
 which a large view of life always tallies, declares 
 that 'the love of money is the root of all [forms 
 or descriptions of] evil.' It is pre-eminently the 
 root of present existing evil. Now, whilst I am 
 writing these lines, our people are in a craze. 
 The spirit of speculation has made some wise 
 men mad. Some will become rich ; many more 
 poor ; the great mass of both rich and poor 
 demoralized. This speculative spirit not only 
 runs counter to the Christian code, it is in the 
 long-run disastrous in a prudential point of view. 
 The difference between legitimate, wholesome 
 business and speculative trade is essentially this : 
 in the one, all are profited, — the producer, the 
 
SCEPTICISM, RATIONALISM, SCIEXTISM. 1 37 
 
 intermediary, and the consumer; in the other, the 
 success of one is at the loss of his neighbor. 
 This state of things is not only irreligious, but 
 unwholesome. It is of the essence of gambling. 
 Under its baleful influence, I see men all around 
 me going down with a run, — ' erring from the 
 faith,' ' falling into snares,' and ' piercing them- 
 selves through with many sorrows.' 
 
 "'Thou, O man of God, flee these things, and 
 follow after righteousness. So shalt thou find 
 peace at the last ! ' One approving look of 
 the dear Lord, one gracious word of His, is of 
 more value than all the honors and riches of the 
 universe. As I stand at this moment on the 
 border, and look back and forward, these truths, 
 taught me in childhood, and impressed upon me 
 by all my observation and experience of life, as- 
 sume great distinctness. That only will survive 
 all change and decay which links one in with eter- 
 nity, and is as imperishable as the soul, — even 
 the 'faith in Christ which worketh by love, which 
 purifieth the heart, which giveth peace with God 
 through Jesus Christ our Lord.' 
 
 " My father gave his life to the sacred ministry. 
 Of course, he left no money to his children. He 
 left, however, an unsullied name, and the record 
 of a useful and honorable life, — a priceless heri- 
 tage indeed. He left for the guidance of his chil- 
 
I38 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 dren, among a thousand-fold suggestions, three 
 special admonitions. I have tried to heed them, 
 and I transmit them now for your guidance : — 
 
 " 'Owe no man any thing, but to love.' 
 
 " 'Be indifferent to the judgment of man : seek 
 only to do what is right, and let your life speak 
 for itself.' 
 
 " ' Be careful not to make issues : but, having 
 made them, maintain them at all hazard to the 
 end.' 
 
 " Now unto the gracious mercy and protection 
 of the good and great Creator, the God and Father 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, I commend you, my 
 children, now and evermore. Amen." 
 
 
INTRUSION OF THE MILITARY POWER. 1 39 
 
 POST-BELLUM REMINISCENCES. 
 
 It has occurred to me that the incidents re- 
 corded below might afford my children some valu- 
 able information and entertainment. They throw 
 some light on this part of our country's history, 
 and, I think, should see the light. 
 
 INTRUSION OF THE MILITARY POWER. 
 
 Just after the civil war, which reduced the 
 State of Alabama to the condition of a military 
 province, your grandfather became the object of 
 a military order which closed the churches of his 
 diocese, and subjected him to a notoriety which he 
 neither desired nor anticipated. It is a long story, 
 with which I will not burden these pages. You 
 will find in the journals of my diocese a very full 
 statement of the whole matter. You will also 
 find a brief synoptical view in the " Centennial 
 History of the Church in America." Let it suf- 
 fice for me to say, that even at this hour, as I 
 stand upon the border of time, there is not a word 
 put down in the history of those events which I 
 regret or would recall. I have in this matter the 
 answer of a good conscience towards God and 
 man. 
 
 I give you here the briefest outline. When 
 
140 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 the war ended, I found the civil government of the 
 State subverted, her constitution abrogated, her 
 governor deposed, and held under duress, her 
 whole civil power annihilated, the drumhead the 
 only tribunal of justice. 
 
 The first practical question that pressed upon 
 me for decision was that relating to the use of 
 the " Prayer for all those in Civil Authority," as 
 formulated in the Book of Common Prayer. I 
 looked around, and found no vestige of any such 
 authority. I was under no ecclesiastical obliga- 
 tion to use the prayer as it stood in the prayer- 
 book ; for when I was consecrated a bishop, I had 
 made a ''Declaration of Conformity" to the Con- 
 stitution of the Church in the Confederate States. 
 
 Some of the generals of the Federal army were 
 kind enough to step forward, and attempt to 
 solve all my doubts upon the question ; but they 
 did not succeed in settling my difficulty. Prayer 
 ought to be a very real and sincere thing ; and I 
 could not find it in my heart to send up a prayer 
 to Heaven for a blessing on what had no exist- 
 ence, nor could I make up my mind to pray under 
 dictation. But I was bound by a higher obliga- 
 tion than any which man can impose, to pray 
 for our rulers of whatever sort. The fact that 
 they were holding us in slavish subjection did not 
 release us from that obligation. Nor did we de- 
 
INTRUSION OF THE .MILITARY POWER. 141 
 
 sire any such release. The fact that they had 
 abrogated all the sanctions of our former legisla- 
 tive, judicial, and executive government, only in- 
 creased the necessity for more earnest prayers 
 unto God that He would give grace to these sol- 
 diers who held us under the bayonet, to " execute 
 justice, and maintain truth." But when it came 
 to ask the Almighty to give "health, prosperity, 
 and long life " to the commander-in-chief of this 
 body of men, who had settled down upon our 
 whole country, and when officers with swords at 
 their sides came to demand it, I, for one, had no 
 doubt or misgiving as to what course I should pur- 
 sue. I wish that some of my brethren who will 
 not consent to catholicize our prayers — the 
 prayer for the President is the one uncatholic spot 
 in our regular liturgy — could have seen the ne- 
 cessity as I then saw it. The wording of this 
 prayer will have to be changed. The troubles in 
 this country have not ended. We will have to go 
 through all the diseases incident to a nation's 
 childhood. We will have — we have already 
 nearly had — rival Presidents-elect. It may be we 
 shall have a President of Knights of Labor, with 
 men of brawn and muscle to make good their 
 pretensions. Then will come the strain; then 
 timid people will palter with the Almighty in a 
 double sense ; then feeble brethren, at the nod of 
 
142 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 a soldier, will wing heavenward their extorted little 
 prayers (which are insults to Heaven), with pro- 
 tests attached to them. I have known that to be 
 done, and it may happen again. 
 
 He studies history to little purpose who does 
 not now provide for all the contingencies likely to 
 arise in the course of events. What endless 
 troubles came upon the people of England during 
 the usurpation of Cromwell. The loyal men of 
 the realm felt bound in conscience to pray for the 
 king ; and the powers that were forbade it, and 
 sent the offenders to prison or into exile. A state 
 of things may exist in this country, when a rude 
 soldier shall step up to the officiating minister, and 
 demand to know which President of the United 
 States he refers to in his prayer ; and it may even 
 happen that one clergyman may be praying in one 
 church for one President, and another in a neigh- 
 boring church may be invoking long life and pros- 
 perity upon another claimant to the office. He 
 has read history very superficially who does not 
 recognize the possibility of all that I have sup- 
 posed. 
 
 Situated as I was after the war of the States, 
 with no existing civil authority over me, I was vir- 
 tually ordered to "pray for the dead" with but 
 slight hope of any present resurrection. They 
 who mean nothing by their prayers can easily 
 
INTRUSION OF THE MILITARY POWER. 1 43 
 
 pray for any thing or nothing. " Why do you 
 curse so ? " said an acquaintance : "you offend me 
 by your profanity." — " Ah, well ! " was the reply, 
 "you pray a good deal, and I curse a good deal, 
 but the Lord knows that neither of us means any 
 thing by it." 
 
 But this is aside. In the state of things above 
 described, I issued a pastoral letter to my clergy, 
 and told them that "the prayer for all those in 
 civil authority" was out of place and utterly in- 
 congruous under the present state of affairs ; that, 
 whilst bound ever to pray for our rulers, there was 
 a manifest incongruity in the prayer-book form of 
 prayer for rulers which made it inapplicable to 
 our people in their then condition ; that it was 
 not a question of loyalty, but of congruity, and a 
 question to be settled by none but an ecclesiasti- 
 cal authority. The clergy fell into line to a man. 
 
 Hearing that there were troubles brewing in 
 Mobile, — I had refugeed in Greensborough, — I 
 went there at once. I had been in the city but a 
 few hours, when a servant came to my room, and 
 told me that an officer had called to see me. Upon 
 going to the parlor, a general of the Federal 
 army introduced himself to me as an officer on 
 the staff of the General commanding, and said 
 that he had called by direction of said officer, to 
 know when I meant to use the prayer for the 
 
144 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 President of the United States. I told him that 
 that was a question the General had no right to 
 ask, and that I answered no such questions if put 
 in a tone of authority ; that the Church had her 
 sphere of action, and could not permit any intru- 
 sion. The officer was thrown aback, talked a 
 good deal about the absoluteness of military power, 
 and intimated, not obscurely, that I would have to 
 succumb. I told him that he would see for him- 
 self the issue. After a considerable talk on his 
 part, — I preserving entire silence, — he proposed 
 that we should talk the matter over as " between 
 man and man." I told him that I had no senti- 
 ment that was not open to the world, but none 
 that could be extorted. 
 
 He then in a very familiar way put the ques- 
 tion anew under the programme of, as " between 
 man and man." — "When do you think you will 
 use the prayer-book prayer for the President ? " 
 
 I answered, "When you all get away from 
 here." This particular prayer was for a govern- 
 ment of the people's choice and affection, — the 
 loyal prayer of the Church of England, rather 
 servilely continued in our liturgy. " The fact is, 
 sir, that the government, as it is over us now, 
 and impersonated in the President, is a govern- 
 ment for which I desire the least ' length of life ' 
 and the ' least prosperity ' that is consistent 
 
INTRUSION OF THE MILITARY TOWER. 145 
 
 with the permissive will of God;" that we did 
 ardently pray that he who held these reins of 
 absolute power might have "grace" to execute 
 judgment, and to maintain truth, etc., and hoped 
 that our prayers would be answered. I then said 
 to the officer, " Suppose our positions reversed ; 
 suppose we had conquered you, and, amid all your 
 desolation and sadness and humiliation, command- 
 ed you to fall down upon your knees, and ask God 
 to grant long life, health, and prosperity to our 
 commanding officer, — would you do it ? " I can- 
 not quote his reply, for his excitement threw him 
 off his balance ; and he intimated in strong but 
 profane terms, that he would be — something very 
 dreadful — if he would. "Well," I said, "I am 
 not disposed to use your phraseology; but, if 
 I do that thing that you come to order me to do, 
 — addressing the Almighty with my lips, when 
 my heart is not in my prayer, —I run great 
 danger of meeting the doom that you have hypo- 
 thetical^ invoked upon your own head." He then 
 
 left. 
 
 In the course of a few days, there came out 
 "general orders," shutting up all our churches, 
 and "suspending" me from all my functions. 
 These orders were, on the part of the general 
 commanding the military district, accompanied 
 with a shower of bad language that could only 
 
146 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 fall with its foul savor on the head of him who 
 gave vent to it. 
 
 Meanwhile, the churches were nearly all closed, 
 and soldiers stationed at the doors to prevent en- 
 trance. Yet it is a great mercy that even military 
 rule cannot entirely close our communications with 
 Heaven. We worshipped in private houses ; and 
 I confirmed in churches which were not guarded 
 by soldiers, issued Pastorals, etc., much to the 
 indignation of the general who had suspended 
 me from my functions. 
 
 After a while, the Council of the Church in the 
 Confederate States held its regular triennial ses- 
 sion at Augusta, Ga. There the whole question 
 of " the prayer for those in authority " was settled 
 by the adoption of the old form in the Prayer- 
 Book. Coupled with this action, however, was a 
 "resolution" that each bishop should exercise his 
 own discretion as to the time for its introduction. 
 Upon this modification, I had absolutely insisted. 
 
 By this action of the Council, it was competent 
 for me at once to order the use of the prayer ; 
 but as the military intrusion still existed, I de- 
 layed the matter until the order should be with- 
 drawn. It went hard with the General to do it ; 
 but he was compelled by a higher power, and 
 poured out his wrath in language that could only 
 defile the lips from which it issued. 
 
RE-UNION OF THE CHURCHES. 1 47 
 
 If I cannot say with the Apostle, " I have, after 
 the manner of men, fought with beasts at Ephe- 
 sus," I can truly say that there was poured upon 
 my head a very flood of abuse and obloquy. I 
 received it in all complacency. I do not know 
 whether I most enjoy the plaudits of my friends 
 or the abuse of my unfriends. It is grateful 
 " laudari a laudato viro." The abuse of some 
 men is a crown of glory. 
 
 Now, I have made a long story very short. 
 The whole narration might prove wearisome. 
 
 RE-UNION OF THE CHURCHES NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 I have dwelt at length upon this matter in 
 the Memorial Sermon of Bishop Elliott, and it 
 needs to say but little more. As I have before 
 said, my own position was quite anomalous, 
 because of my having been consecrated during 
 the civil war. As a matter of course, the matter 
 of Church re-union was among Church people 
 the all-absorbing theme. The Southern Bishops 
 looked at the matter from different stand-points, 
 and came to different conclusions. Some of 
 them took the ground, that, as the necessity 
 for the formation of a Church South had ceased, 
 the Council thereof should dissolve of itself, 
 and the Bishops and dioceses, through their 
 representatives, should appear in General Conven- 
 
148 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 tion at Philadelphia, as if no separation had taken 
 place. 
 
 Others took a different view, and thought it 
 best and most expedient to keep up the Southern 
 organization until the animus of the General Con- 
 vention should have been made manifest. With- 
 out going into the matter any farther, and without 
 questioning for a moment the sincerity and con- 
 scientiousness of any one, it will suffice to say 
 that the legislative re-union — for there had been 
 no breach of unity — took place without serious 
 difficulty, and that all was settled harmoniously, 
 to the great comfort of all who love and " pray for 
 the peace of Jerusalem." 
 
 I feel bound, however, to suggest one thought 
 in this connection. Bishops Atkinson and Lay, 
 two of our most able and revered Bishops, did 
 appear and take their places in the " General Con- 
 vention," which met in Philadelphia, in October, 
 1865, and did not appear at the meeting of the 
 '•' General Council " of the Southern Church, 
 which met in Augusta, Ga., in November follow- 
 ing. Their course in this respect was entirely 
 consistent with their view of the situation, and it 
 must be said to their honor that they did not take 
 their seats in the House of Bishops in Philadelphia 
 until they were entirely satisfied that every interest 
 with which they suffered themselves put in charge 
 
RE- UNI ON OF THE CHURCHES. 1 49 
 
 had been fully protected. In making my recogni- 
 tion as Bishop of Alabama, a condition precedent 
 to their action, they deserved my thanks, because 
 their intention was kind ; but I feel it incumbent 
 upon me to say that their interposition was never 
 sought or expected by me. I knew that my posi- 
 tion was peculiar, from the fact that I had been 
 consecrated during the war, and no consent 
 asked from the ecclesiastical authorities North. 
 I had, therefore, fully determined to resign my 
 jurisdiction, if my case constituted a bar to 
 re-union. 
 
 Much credit attaches to the course pursued by 
 Bishops Atkinson and Lay in proceeding at once 
 to Philadelphia, and it is generally said that their 
 presence there tended more than any thing else 
 to the promotion of re-union. Doubtless, their 
 action had such influence ; and I would not write 
 a word in disparagement of the course pursued by 
 them. I must say, however, that there was an- 
 other influence brought to bear upon the spirit of 
 re-union, — the absence of such men as Bishops 
 Elliott and Davis. It meant a great deal. There 
 is no divine sanction in the legislative union of 
 dioceses ; and their absence meant, " Let us 
 wait, and see what it will be best for us to 
 do." 
 
 Dear brethren, all of them. They have passed 
 
150 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 into a higher realm, and how infinitely small must 
 appear to them now the little perturbations of their 
 mortal state ! 
 
 There was one infelicity only attending the 
 whole matter. The House of Bishops, in con- 
 senting to my exercising jurisdiction in Alabama, 
 coupled with their action an expression of "fra- 
 ternal regrets " on account of my Pastoral in rela- 
 tion to the use of the prayer for the President of 
 the United States. I did not like it, but I passed 
 it by. I made many allowances for that action. 
 It was to some a hard matter to swallow, and the 
 opportunity of flinging a passing regret seemed to 
 make it less unpalatable. In relation to this par- 
 ticular point, I merely observed — in my history of 
 the whole affair, which is contained in my address 
 to the Diocese of Alabama — as follows : " It 
 would seem, that, in restoring old relations, the 
 expression of ' regrets ' is in order ; and it may 
 not be amiss in me to state, that, after careful 
 review of the various pastorals put forth in the 
 last unhappy years, there are very few in which 
 we, who look at all that has taken place from a 
 different stand-point, have not found occasion for 
 'regrets,' to which we can give no adequate ex- 
 pression." 
 
 It is inexpressibly sweet and refreshing to one 
 who for truth's sake and a good conscience has 
 
RE-UNION OF THE CHURCHES. I 5 I 
 
 been misrepresented abroad, to come home and 
 stand among his, own people, and hear from 
 their lips the " well clone " of a universal appro- 
 bation. 
 
 I summed up to my diocese a history of my 
 whole course, and closed in these words : — 
 
 "Thus happily, as I think, the Church in Ala- 
 bama has been able, through God's grace and 
 kind Providence, to do her full duty, and to main- 
 tain her dignity and propriety, and, looking alone 
 to the weal of the whole body of Christ, to pur- 
 sue a steady and consistent course. Hencefor- 
 ward, guided by the same spirit which has thus 
 far led us and governed all our deliberations, let 
 us more than ever strive for those things which 
 concern the glory of God and the good of His 
 Church. 
 
 "The indications are, that there is a glorious 
 future for this branch of Christ's Universal 
 Church. We are able to show to the world that 
 we are not a sect, much less a sectional sect ; that 
 the catholic spirit of the Southern dioceses 
 has met a like response in the catholic spirit 
 of the Northern dioceses, — deep calling unto 
 deep, — giving us confidence that henceforth, as 
 ever before, no political differences shall prevail to 
 break the bonds of catholic unity and heaven-born 
 charity." 
 
152 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 The whole address, with all its details, was re- 
 ferred by the Council to a committee, which made 
 the following report in the form of resolutions 
 that were adopted without dissent : — 
 
 "Resolved, 1st, That the firm, dignified, and 
 Christian manner in which the independence and 
 dignity of the Church in this Diocese have been 
 maintained by its Bishop, the Right Rev. Richard 
 H. Wilmer, D.D., during the trying ordeal of the 
 last year, has elicited our admiration, and deserves 
 our cordial thanks. 
 
 " Resolved, 2d, That the explanation and defence 
 of his course, as set forth in the address to this 
 Council, place his conduct on ground that must 
 challenge the assent and approbation of all just 
 and thoughtful men. 
 
 "Resolved, 3d, That the Bishop be requested to 
 furnish a copy of his address, for publication. 
 
 "These resolutions, on motion, were considered 
 seriatim, and unanimously adopted." (Journal of 
 Council for 1866.) 
 
 In connection with the foregoing reminiscences, 
 and forming a part of the whole subject, I give 
 you below a copy of a letter which I wrote Bishop 
 Hopkins of Vermont immediately after the close 
 of the war of the States. 
 
A REPLY TO BISHOP HOPKINS'S LETTER. 1 53 
 
 The good Bishop — and the Church in the 
 United States has furnished no finer specimen 
 of a learned, brave, and independent Bishop — ad- 
 dressed a circular to the Southern dioceses, urging 
 them to return without delay, and as a matter of 
 course, to their old relations with the Church in 
 the United States. Our wounds were still bleed- 
 ing, and a little time was needed to heal them 
 over. But the letter will best explain itself. 
 
 A REPLY TO BISHOP HOPKINS' CIRCULAR LETTER 
 TO THE SOUTHERN BISHOPS, BY ONE OF THEIR 
 NUMBER. 
 
 Mobile, Ala., Aug. i, 1S65. 
 
 Right Rev. and dear Sir, — I have just re- 
 ceived a printed circular, addressed by you, as 
 senior Bishop, to the Bishops of the Southern 
 dioceses. 
 
 The tone of the circular is such as we might 
 have expected from one who is never unmindful 
 of the rights and feelings of his brethren. 
 
 There is one point, however, in reference to 
 which you will pardon me for saying a few words ; 
 and I need not assure you that I do so with the 
 utmost deference. 
 
 In your pamphlet addressed to the Southern 
 Church, in the year 1861, and in your recent cir- 
 cular letter, you take the ground that the exist- 
 
154 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 ence of a separate legislative organization in the 
 Southern States "would be clearly schismatical." 
 In your letter you say, " and no theologian denies 
 that a wilful and needless separation from the 
 Church would be clearly schismatical." 
 
 True, no theologian denies this proposition ; but 
 there are many who will deny that the main- 
 tenance of a separate legislative organization 
 amounts, of itself, to a "separation from tht 
 Church." The minor in the syllogism is here as- 
 sumed, and constitutes the very point in debate. 
 
 Is the Church in the United States "separated" 
 from the Church in England? Yet they main- 
 tain distinct legislative organizations. Can any 
 two branches of the Church of Christ be properly 
 said to be in a schismatical position — the one to 
 the other — whilst they have a common doctrine 
 and discipline, and maintain an unbroken recogni- 
 tion and intercommunion ? Schism, as denned 
 by the standard authorities, has reference prima- 
 rily to the rending of communion, and cannot be 
 truly predicated of branches of the Church of 
 Christ which maintain intercommunion. 
 
 No well-ordered mind can doubt that it is, for 
 obvious reasons, highly expedient and desirable 
 to have one ecclesiastical organization in one 
 Nationality. 
 
 Nay, more, it would seem to be desirable, if 
 
A REPLY TO PI SHOP IIOPKIXS'S LETTER. 1 55 
 
 practicable, to have only one such body, with 
 powers so extensive, in Christendom. 
 
 But there is a condition of things which may 
 render it still more desirable, and indeed essential, 
 to have national organizations ; and circumstances 
 may arise which will render it expedient to have 
 distinct organizations within the boundaries of the 
 same civil government — as, for example, in the 
 case of the Episcopal Churches in England and 
 Scotland. 
 
 You say, in the sentence already quoted, 
 a " wilful and needless separation," etc. You 
 therein seem to take the ground, that a failure 
 on the part of the Southern dioceses to come into 
 legislative union with the General Convention 
 would amount to a "wilful and needless separa- 
 tion," etc. Permit me to say that the separation 
 was not originally wilful, nor, in our judgment, 
 needless. Whether a continued separation be 
 wilful and needless will depend upon circum- 
 stances not yet foreseen. It is, therefore, if you 
 will pardon me for so saying, premature to pass 
 judgment upon that point at the present time. 
 
 We of the South have not, at this moment, 
 sufficient data upon which to found a deliberate 
 and well-advised action. We do not know what 
 concessions and admissions may be required at 
 our hands. We have no concessions or admis- 
 
156 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 sions to make ; and, therefore, there are some of 
 the Bishops and their dioceses which will main- 
 tain the organization of the " General Council," 
 in order to be prepared for all contingencies 
 whatsoever. 
 
 Were all men, good Bishop, like-minded with 
 yourself, we might have no hesitation in this 
 matter ; but certain painful things are brought 
 to our ears. 
 
 One party proposes "to keep the Southern 
 Churchmen for a while in the cold ; " "to put 
 the rebels upon stools of repentance," etc. We 
 see in the Journal of 1862, certain resolutions 
 proposed, pronouncing certain worthy Bishops 
 " schismatical," and proclaiming the jurisdiction 
 of another Bishop "null and void." True, the 
 resolutions were not adopted, but they indicate 
 the temper of a part of that body ; and we have 
 no means of ascertaining the complexion of the 
 next " General Convention." Fanaticism grows 
 fast in the hour of triumph. 
 
 Again, a well-accredited rumor reaches us that 
 the Pastoral prepared by yourself did not suit the 
 temper of the House of Bishops, and that it was 
 supplanted by one which gave the Church utter- 
 ance in matters political. 
 
 Now, suppose that the ensuing General Con- 
 vention should decree that every deputy from a 
 
A REPLY TO BIS nor HOTKIXS'S LETTER. 1 57 
 
 Southern diocese should, as a preliminary to tak- 
 ing his seat, be required to purge himself, — to 
 admit that the secession of the Southern States 
 was a " rebellion," and that the organization of 
 the General Council was a "schism," — in what 
 a position would the deputies from the South 
 be placed ? This is not an impossible, nor an 
 improbable, supposition in view of the present 
 pressure of the reigning fanaticism. The Pres- 
 byterians and the Methodists appear disposed to 
 take this attitude towards their membership in 
 the South. We have indications, on all hands, 
 that the Church has absorbed the sectarian ele- 
 ment much more rapidly than she has assimilated 
 it to her spirit. There is another feature of this 
 subject not to be overlooked, and one which you 
 cannot perhaps, to the full, appreciate. 
 
 It is commonly remarked that the restoration 
 of the union between the Churches, North and 
 South, is a "mere question of time" and that, 
 therefore, it is best to do at once what must, 
 sooner or later, be accomplished. But there is 
 something due to sentiment in this matter, and 
 the healing influences of time must be permitted 
 to have play. In questions which involve senti- 
 ment, "the time" is an important element, and 
 the logic which excludes it will greatly mislead. 
 In some matters, the time of aetiou is every thing. 
 
158 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 There is nothing illegal in a second marriage, 
 and it is generally a " mere question of time " with 
 men when they shall marry again ; but, " The 
 funeral baked meats do coldly furnish forth the 
 marriage tables." 
 
 The best men of the South are now under the 
 ban. I cannot now recall the name of a single 
 man, of those who have been ordinarily selected 
 to represent the Southern dioceses in General 
 Convention, who is not, in the estimation of 
 public opinion at the North, "a rebel and traitor." 
 But, more than this, they are classed under the 
 President's proclamation as " unpardoned rebels 
 and traitors." And this for obvious reasons. 
 The prominent men of the South in the army at- 
 tained a grade which now excludes them from 
 the general amnesty ; the highest legal talent 
 was placed in judicial positions, the occupancy of 
 which renders them liable to the extremest penal- 
 ties of the law ; the best talent in commercial 
 and agricultural life has been so unfortunate as 
 to accumulate property above twenty thousand 
 dollars in amount. 
 
 Now, from these classes of men, — men who have 
 achieved position, — the Church would naturally 
 select her deputies to the General Convention. 
 It is a most significant fact (and one which must 
 be understood, in all its bearings, by the Northern 
 
A HE PLY TO BISHOP HOPKINS'S LETTER. I 59 
 
 mind, before deputies from all sections of the 
 country can meet together in becoming harmony, 
 and needful mutual respect), that the men whom, 
 from our stand-point, we regard as the most truly 
 loyal, and in all respects trustworthy, are precisely 
 those who are stigmatized by the people of your 
 section, and by your Bishops in their Pastorals, as 
 "rebels and traitors." It is surely not unreason- 
 able to assume that your people are honest in 
 their opinions, and that they will be consistent 
 in their actions. Treason is surely a dreadful 
 crime. It may, therefore, reasonably be expected 
 that they who denounced their Southern brethren 
 as " traitors," will question the propriety of allow- 
 ing them to take part in the deliberations of a 
 "loyal Church." For aught we know, there may 
 be a majority of the next General Convention who 
 will be disposed to take this ground ; and I, for 
 one, shall respect their consistency, whilst I can- 
 not but lament their bigotry. 
 
 Moreover, the Southern deputies themselves 
 may very naturally be supposed to have some 
 sentiment in this matter. Their sons and broth- 
 ers lie in bloody graves ; their lands are deso- 
 late, and strangers devour it in their presence; 
 their emancipated slaves garrison their cities ; 
 they live themselves, as yet, under the ban ; their 
 representative man, no guiltier than themselves, 
 
l6o REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 is in bonds, and may have to die an ignominious 
 death. The whole Southern people, therefore, 
 are at this moment awaiting trial in the person of 
 their representative head : they are denounced as 
 felons, and a shackled press is forbidden to speak 
 a word of vindication or remonstrance. Your own 
 heart, good Bishop, will tell you that men in such 
 a condition are in no mood to join in jttbilates 
 over a restoration which is sealed by their degra- 
 dation. The peace, for which Te Deums will be 
 chanted, is purchased by the loss of their inherit-, 
 ance, and they are now sitting in the deep valley of 
 humiliation. The men of the South have no de- 
 sire to prolong the hopeless conflict. They accept 
 the failure of their effort as a fact, and, as Chris- 
 tian men, will render a faithful allegiance to "the 
 powers that be," for God's sake ; but it is asking 
 too much of them that they shall swell the pageant 
 which celebrates their subjugation. Some time, 
 Bishop, must be given to the heart to school 
 itself. Our people are in no mood for joyous con- 
 gratulations. They are not yet out of mourning 
 for their dead. It is easy for you to come together, 
 and to join heartily in laudates for peace and re- 
 union. Yours is the victorious section. It is 
 easy for him who triumphs, to forgive ; and from 
 your stand-point, you can thank God with a full 
 heart. We are trying to forgive and to forget ; 
 
A REPLY TO BISHOP HOPKINS'S LETTER. l6l 
 
 and, lifting up our hearts unto God from the dust, 
 we arc trying to say, " Thy will be done." You do 
 not know, dear Bishop, what we have to endure ; 
 and your people "love to have it so." You will 
 doubtless say, that the Church of God is " not of 
 this world," and that, as Churchmen, we should 
 take no note of these things. But, alas ! the whole 
 Journal, Pastoral, etc., of the Church North, savor 
 of these things. The next General Convention will 
 beyond peradventure, discuss these things. The 
 delegations from the various dioceses are even now 
 marshalling for the conflict. Loyalty is now at a 
 high premium, and the various religious bodies of 
 the country will vie with each other in the struggle 
 for popular favor. The Union sentiment, just 
 now is uppermost in the public mind, and there 
 are those who will train the legislation of the 
 Church to catch the propitious breeze. That 
 religious body will come just now into most favor, 
 which renders itself most demonstratively loyal. 
 We shall have, before long, tracts and books dedi- 
 cated to the popular idol ; and the strongest 
 "Reason why I am a Churchman" will be, not 
 only that the Church is truly "Republican," — 
 that has long since been sufficiently proven, — but 
 that she is thoroughly "loyal." 
 
 Excuse some of us, Bishop, for preferring just 
 now to stand aloof from the discussion of these 
 
l62 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 subjects. Our own wounds are too recent to bear 
 rough handling. We have no heart for them. 
 We have no wish to discuss them, for there can 
 be no free discussion. Nor can we, by our silent 
 presence, be faithless to the memory of our dead, 
 nor consent to stand by whilst others inscribe 
 "traitor" on their gravestones. It is urged that 
 we should act together and at once, lest the 
 Roman Church should, by her united front, win 
 the prestige of the hour. We all comprehend 
 the reason of Rome's indifference to this Ameri- 
 can conflict. She is not native born. Let the 
 recent agitations of Italy, let her history for 
 twelve centuries, testify as to whether the Church 
 of Rome does always stand so serenely aloof from 
 the political excitements of the day. Rome is 
 not the mother of this child. She cares not 
 whether it be divided or not. The judgment of a 
 Solomon, therefore, is not required in disclosing 
 the secret of her present indifference. 
 
 We have a great work before us in this country, 
 — to maintain Church supremacy within her 
 sphere, and to thrust politics out of doors. In 
 order to this, we shall be compelled to catholicize 
 our prayers. The Church has suffered, and is 
 now suffering, incalculably, from one local and 
 political prayer. Scenes of violence have dese- 
 crated her sanctuaries, the clergy have been 
 
A REPLY TO BIS HOT //OTA'EYS'S LETTER. 1 63 
 
 driven from their flocks, and the sheep scattered. 
 Sadder than all, the Priests of God have suc- 
 cumbed before His altars at the beck of military- 
 dictators. 
 
 Should the animus of the next General Conven- 
 tion be such as to commend itself to the heart 
 and mind of the South, there will, I think, after a 
 while, be no general disposition to keep up a sepa- 
 rate organization. The General Council will be 
 held, according to adjournment, at Mobile in 
 November next. Its action, as a matter of course, 
 must be somewhat affected by the animus exhib- 
 ited in the General Convention. This animus 
 we cannot, from the nature of the case, very 
 clearly foresee ; and we are not in a position to 
 exercise any control over it. We shall act, as the 
 Church in the South has hitherto acted, dispas- 
 sionately, and in view of the best interests of the 
 Church. We cannot, however, be frightened from 
 our propriety, nor can we be deterred from the 
 adoption of any measures that may seem to us best 
 and most expedient by the cry of " Schism !" 
 
 Whilst having all the elements of a perfect 
 branch of the Church of Christ, — the Word, the 
 Ministry, and the Sacraments, — and being, in so 
 far as our will can effect it, in perfect unit}' — 
 both organic and subjective — with the Catholic 
 Church, we can still pray from a full heart, " From 
 
164 REMINISCENCES OF A -GRANDFATHER. 
 
 all schism, good Lord, deliver us," and think not, 
 no, not for a moment, that we violate catholic unity, 
 although we may not be represented in the General 
 Convention of the Church in the United States. 
 
 I sent you some time since a copy of the Pas- 
 toral which I issued to the Diocese of Alabama 
 at the close of the war. This Pastoral related to 
 matters upon which we in the South have not 
 altogether agreed among ourselves. I could not 
 come satisfactorily to any other conclusion than 
 that presented in the Pastoral. There should be 
 reality in prayer, if nowhere else. The duty of 
 the Church is, unquestionably, to pray for all in 
 authority, of what kind soever. This she does in 
 her litany and elsewhere. But the particular 
 prayer in the liturgy, as its history proves, was 
 conceived and worded with a special and very 
 marked reference to the subject of the prayer, — 
 "Civil Authority." In her Articles the Church 
 declares the duty of obedience on the part of her 
 members to "civil authority, legitimately and 
 regularly constituted." It is this description of 
 authority that the Church prays for in the prayer 
 headed, "For all in civil authority." For this 
 she cordially entreats a long continuance and 
 prosperity. At this time measures are in prog- 
 ress which look to the restoration of "legitimate 
 and regularly constituted civil authority" in the 
 
A REPLY TO BISHOP HOPKINS'S LETTER. 1 65 
 
 State of Alabama. When such authority is re- 
 stored, the clergy of Alabama are required to 
 resume the use of the " prayer for the President 
 of the United States and all in civil authority." 
 
 The above is substantially the letter which I 
 wrote privately to you upon the receipt of your 
 printed circular. I think it due to myself that 
 this letter should go forth to the Bishops of the 
 Church, in order to define my position, and to 
 show that, in declining your invitation to be pres- 
 ent at the General Convention, I am not acting 
 without, at least, some show of reason. 
 
 Depend upon it, dear Bishop, that any restora- 
 tion of our ancient relations, which looks to the 
 establishment of lasting harmony in the Church, 
 must be based upon a good mutual understanding, 
 and upon a due regard for the rights and feelings 
 of all concerned. 
 
 And now, clear Bishop, allow me to say that I 
 have for many years regarded with veneration 
 your faithful, consistent, and impartial mainten- 
 ance of the truth, and to express the hope that 
 you may long be spared to bless the Church of 
 God by your counsels and by your example. 
 
 Yours faithfully in Christ and in the Ministry of 
 
 His Church, 
 
 RICHARD H. WILMER, 
 
 Bishop of the Diocese of Alabama. 
 
 Rt. Rev. J. II. IIorKlNS, D.D., Bishop of the Diocese of Vermont. 
 
1 66 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 NOTE BY BISHOP GREEN. 
 
 Bishop Wilmer has read to me the above letter ; 
 and I so fully concur in its sentiments, that I 
 adopt it as my answer to your circular letter, ad- 
 dressed to the Bishops of the Church in the 
 
 South. 
 
 WM. M. GREEN, 
 
 Bishop of the Diocese of Mississippi. 
 
 REV. WILLIAM H. WILMER, D.D., 
 
 President of the University of William and Mary. Departed this Life 1827. 
 
 Having finished my personal reminiscences, I 
 give you a sketch of my father. I was too young 
 to be able to speak of him from my personal 
 knowledge. 
 
 I scarcely know how to express my gratitude to 
 the Rev. Philip Slaughter, D.D., of the Diocese 
 of Virginia, for putting it in my power to hand 
 down to you the following sketch of your great- 
 grandfather. 
 
 Dr. Slaughter still lives, and bears fruit in his 
 old age. He is the historiographer of the Church 
 in Virginia. Although now of extreme age, he 
 still revives the past, and, as our " Old Mortality," 
 keeps from oblivion the memory of noble deeds 
 and noble men. 
 
REV. WILLIAM II. WILMER, D.D. 1 67 
 
 REV. WILLIAM H. WILMER, D.D. 
 
 The following is a sketch of Dr. Wilmcr in Mr. 
 Slaughter's speech at the late jubilee of the The- 
 ological Seminary. The subject is comparatively 
 new, and is exhibited from new points of view 
 with new illustrations. The Episcopal Church in 
 Virginia is so much indebted to this clergyman, 
 that we are sure Dr. Slaughter's brief history of 
 him will be read with deep interest, and, we trust, 
 with profit. Some of our younger readers may 
 need to be told that Dr. Wilmer was the father of 
 Bishop Wilmer of Alabama, and of Rev. Dr. 
 George Wilmer of Williamsburg, — at this writ- 
 ing, Professor of Divinity at Sewanee, — and the 
 uncle of Bishop Wilmer of Louisiana, and that he 
 was also one of three brothers, all of whom were 
 clergymen of the Church. 
 
 William H. Wilmer was born 1782, in Kent 
 County, Aid. In his boyhood he received deep 
 religious impressions from a pious aunt, which 
 were confirmed during a severe illness, when, he 
 says, he felt himself to be lying in the arms of a 
 loving Father, Who looked upon him with a recon- 
 ciled countenance, and he felt the "peace that 
 passeth all understanding." 
 
 He was educated at Washington College, Kent 
 County, Md.; and his religious principles and de- 
 
1 68 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 meanor became subjects of mockery to the boys, 
 who reproached him with a want of manliness in 
 not joining them in swearing and gambling. He 
 was overcome by the pressure for a time, and 
 joined the boys in their wicked sports. But his 
 conscience became so clamorous that he could not 
 silence its voice, and he concluded it was better 
 to endure the mockery of the boys than " to be in 
 hell amid everlasting burnings." 
 
 He resolutely refused to go again to a mill 
 which was the scene of their sports. So they 
 turned him over, as they said, to the Methodists, 
 as serious people were called in those days. 
 
 But (as he told one of his parishioners after- 
 wards) he did not care what they called him, since 
 the best man that ever lived deserved no better 
 monument than this, "A sinner saved by grace." 
 He told a daughter of Professor Campbell that he 
 was about seventeen years old when "he took 
 hold of the covenant for himself." "I felt that 
 the precious gift of faith was given to me, that I 
 was justified freely for Jesus' sake, and, being 
 born again, the love of God was shed abroad in 
 my soul by the Holy Ghost given to me." "As 
 soon," he continued, "as I felt that I was accepted 
 by God as His son, the thought flashed upon 
 me, What church shall I join ? My heart re- 
 sponded, The dear old neglected Episcopal 
 
REV. WILLIAM II. WILMER, D.D. 1 69 
 
 Church ; and under her banner will I fight the 
 good fight against the world, the flesh, and the 
 Devil." 
 
 He was ordained by Bishop Claggett in 1808, 
 and for several years had charge of his native par- 
 ish of Chestertown, Md. In 1812 he came to 
 Virginia (Dr. Henshaw says, "at the instance of 
 Mr. Meade "), and as rector of St. Paul's Church, 
 Alexandria. The most cursory inspection of our 
 journals of convention will show the prominent 
 part which he played in the drama of the restora- 
 tion of the Church and the foundation of the 
 seminary. He was chosen by ballot to preside 
 over the convention of 18 14, and preached the 
 convention sermon, — a sermon which for felicity 
 of style, soundness of doctrine, force of argu- 
 ment, and power of appeal, is unmatched in the 
 Virginia Church-literature of that day. In this 
 sermon he says, — 
 
 "When the sons of Judah escaped from the 
 house of their prison, and returned again to build 
 the temple, the foundation could only be laid by 
 removing the splendid ruins of the desolated sanc- 
 tuary : then came the remembrance of its former 
 glories to mind, and they wept aloud. 
 
 "Have we not equal cause for sorrow in the 
 view which the desolated sanctuaries of the Most 
 High in this State present ? As we hope, then, to 
 
170 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 repair the desolations of many generations, as we 
 hope to preserve the virtue and happiness of our 
 nation, as we hope to transmit to posterity the 
 valuable inheritance of a form of sound words, as 
 we hope to obtain that honorable and valuable 
 eulogium, ' Well done, good and faithful servant,' 
 let us seize the present moment to strengthen the 
 things that remain, that they die not. This mor- 
 bid insensibility which has crept upon the Church 
 is, perhaps, not the sleep of death. It may be 
 the crisis of her disease. We will yet hope that the 
 system retains sufficient stamina for its resuscita- 
 tion. Her doctrines and liturgy are yet unim- 
 paired : and she furnishes in the principles and 
 early prepossessions of the present generation a 
 just foundation of hope, that, if her energies were 
 directed by a proper administration, she would yet 
 ' arise from the dust, and put on her beautiful gar- 
 ments ; ' that she would yet come forth from her 
 exile ' clear as the moon, bright as the sun, and 
 terrible as an army with banners.' 
 
 " Let us arise, and redeem our honor, and that of 
 our venerable Church. The eyes of Virginia are 
 fixed upon us. To us the thousands who perish 
 for lack of knowledge stretch forth their hands. 
 From us they demand their portion of that inher- 
 itance under the New Testament, of which we are 
 the trustees and administrators. To us the Church 
 
REV. WILLIAM //. WILMER, D.D. 171 
 
 looks for the confirmation of her best hopes. 
 Leaders of the armies of the living God, to us is 
 offered this first of honors, to us it is given to 
 fight, if in the post of trial, also in the post of 
 honor ; to us it is given to be covered with stars 
 and laurels and honorable wounds, and to have a 
 memorial more grateful than to be embalmed with 
 a nation's tears." 
 
 After this sermon the ballotings proceeded ; 
 and Bishop Moore was elected Bishop of Virginia, 
 — the old man eloquent, whose heart was a deep 
 well of sanctified emotion, overflowing in tears 
 from his eyes, falling in musical cadences from his 
 lips, and streaming like electric sparks from his 
 gray hairs, and from his trembling hands, and 
 producing a sensation the like of which had not 
 been seen in our Church since the era of Dev- 
 ereux Jarratt, the morning star of the Virginia 
 Reformation, whose mantle Bishop Moore so 
 touchingly invoked the first time he entered Old 
 Sapony. Dr. Wilmer was always President of the 
 Standing Committee, and often of that on the State 
 of the Church, and the author of many of their 
 reports. He was always at the head of the dele- 
 gation to the General Convention, and presided 
 with distinguished ability over the House of 
 Clerical and Lay Deputies for four successive 
 sessions. He was an active member of the Com- 
 
172 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 mittee on Canons and of the Prayer-Book Society, 
 and indeed of other committees, of whose reports 
 he was generally the draughtsman. He, with Mr. 
 Oliver Norris, according to Bishop Meade, im- 
 ported the Canon on Clerical Discipline from the 
 Maryland code. In 181 8 he recommended that 
 the clergy be requested to take students for the 
 ministry into their families, and that they might be 
 licensed as lay-readers. The Education Society, 
 which was the true mother of the Seminary, — 
 whoever may have been its father, — was a reali- 
 zation of these views, and was organized the same 
 year, he being its President so long as he remained 
 in Alexandria. The "Repertory" contains stir- 
 ring addresses from this Society, of which he was 
 the author. In 18 19 he, with Mr. Hawley and 
 others, established the " Theological Repertory," 
 which was the organ of the society, and the loud 
 champion of the Seminary in every emergency, 
 and from whose pages a discerning critic might 
 extract a volume of theological literature of no 
 small merit from his pen. In 1820 he recom- 
 mended the project of Dr. Smith for a Theologi- 
 cal Professorship in Williamsburg, and in 1821 he 
 advocated its establishment and the appointment 
 of trustees, all of which was done. He made the 
 first report from the trustees of the Seminary ; 
 peculiar circumstances, he said, making it neces- 
 
REV. WILLIAM //. WILMER, D.D. 1 73 
 
 sary to cherish such an institution in the South. 
 In 1822, the Convention of Maryland having re- 
 solved to establish a Theological Seminary in that 
 diocese, Dr. Wilmer was elected President of 
 the Faculty. Bishop Kemp laid his hand upon 
 this scheme, and crushed it ; and thus by an act of 
 Providence, the friends and funds of that institu- 
 tion were transferred to our Seminary in its time 
 of need, adding material and moral support to our 
 infant institution. In 1823, Bishop Moore having 
 been detained by business from the Convention, 
 Dr. Wilmer was elected its President. 
 
 Professors being wanting in the Seminary at 
 Alexandria to aid Dr. Keith, Dr. Wilmer gener- 
 ously consented to take charge of the departments 
 of Systematic Divinity, Ecclesiastical History, and 
 Church Polity, without fee or reward, in addition 
 to his heavy duties as rector of St. Paul's Church, 
 Alexandria, which had been built in 18 18 to ac- 
 commodate the large congregation which had over- 
 flowed the old church. 
 
 In 1824 he called upon the families in Virginia 
 who had spare books, to send them to Dr. Keith, 
 as the nucleus of a library for the Seminary. 
 He was also the author of several addresses in 
 behalf of the " Episcopal fund ; " and, in response 
 to Judge Washington, President of the Coloniza- 
 tion Society, he prepared a paper in which he 
 
174 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 condensed the merits of that institution within a 
 small compass. 
 
 Dr. Clemson, of the class of 1825, in a letter 
 to me, giving pleasant memory of his Professor, 
 says, " Dr. Wilmer was a bland, cheerful, com- 
 panionable man : the students found him very 
 affectionate and accessible — his manner inviting 
 confidence. He was a very popular pastor. He 
 and Mr. Norris had services in the evenings of 
 the week which were of a social character, and in 
 which the students were invited to exercise their 
 gifts. All the Professors were men who honored 
 their calling as Ministers and teachers. I revere 
 their memory, and revert with sad pleasure to 
 those happy days. The opening years of the 
 Seminary were very auspicious. They were wise 
 and true men who made a choice of such fit in- 
 struments for laying the foundation on which has 
 been reared so grand a superstructure to the 
 glory of God. Dr. Wilmer received and declined 
 an invitation to be the first rector of St. John's, 
 in Washington, and another to be assistant to 
 Bishop Moore in the Monumental Church, in 
 Richmond, because his friends thought his pres- 
 ence necessary to the Seminary. But in 1826 he 
 thought he heard a call from heaven to the Presi- 
 dency of William and Mary College, with the care 
 of Benton parish, Williamsburg; and he obeyed 
 
REV. WILLIAM II. WILMER, D.D. 1 75 
 
 the call. His career in Williamsburg, according 
 to Rev. Mr. Charles Mann and other contempo- 
 raries, was attended with a perfect ovation. In 
 the language of some of the old citizens, he took 
 possession of the town. He visited from house 
 to house, without regard to denominational dis- 
 tinctions : and one old resident, still living, says, 
 that, during his first winter there, the people 
 seemed to forget their customary dancing-parties ; 
 and prayer-meetings, and social singing of psalms 
 and hymns, took the place of popular amusements. 
 His colloquial powers and his wonderful tact were 
 illustrated in many social scenes. At a wedding, 
 the musicians were about to be summoned to 
 inaugurate the dance; but the host would not 
 allow them to enter until the Doctor's consent 
 was had, and a young lady was commissioned to 
 sound him. He replied, "This is not my house; 
 but, as I am commanded not to conform to this 
 world, I can retire to the hinder part of the ship, 
 and go to sleep." — " But, Doctor," she said, 
 " when you were a child, did you not love to 
 dance ? " He replied, " Yes ; but when I became 
 a man, I put away childish things. You, Miss, 
 are no longer a child ; and it is high time that 
 you should put away childish things, and live 
 for more important ends." The conversation con- 
 tinued ; and, one by one, the company came within 
 
176 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 the charmed circle, fascinated by his felicity of 
 speech, until the dance was forgotten, and the 
 entertainment ended with a word of exhortation, 
 singing hymns, and prayer. The remark was 
 heard on all sides, " What a delightful evening we 
 have had ! " When Dr. Wilmer first went to Wil- 
 liamsburg, many of the students were indignant. 
 One of them was heard apostrophizing the col- 
 lege-walls, and saying, "Old William and Mary, 
 thy glory is departed : a long farewell to all thy 
 greatness, since a Priest has come to be thy 
 governor." This young man being very rude 
 to the Doctor, the latter inquired of my informant 
 the reason of such conduct. She explained ; and the 
 doctor replied, " I will overcome his evil with 
 good ; " and with such address did he manage the 
 case, that the young man was soon heard to say, 
 "What a fine man he is ! so fearless in doing his 
 duty, and yet so kind ! " I could multiply these 
 illustrations, but time and space forbid. I may 
 group them in some other form, and give them to 
 the public. Bishop Meade says, in his article on 
 "Benton Parish," "Never before had the experi- 
 ment of reviving religion, and of converting young 
 men, been so earnestly employed." Prayer-meet- 
 ings were held twice a week in private houses, 
 and the first-fruits of a genuine revival of religion 
 in college and town had appeared. 
 
REV. WILLIAM If. WILMER, D.D. 1 77 
 
 But Providence had other designs. Being about 
 to leave Williamsburg on a journey, and being 
 anxious to have all the children baptized, he rode 
 around the parish in a heavy rain, begging those 
 whose children were unbaptized to bring them to 
 the Saviour for a blessing, offering, where no fit 
 sponsor could be had, to act as suO'.h himself. 
 His exposure brought on a chill, which ended in 
 death on the 23d of July, 1827. He said while he 
 was conscious, " I know that I shall die. The 
 Lord's will be done." 
 
 The last thing he said was, when hearing the 
 voices of his family praying, and being told on 
 inquiry what it was, he said fervently, his counte- 
 nance lighting up for a moment, " It is right, 
 very right ; " and fell asleep in Jesus. On the 
 occasion of his death, the people rose up, as one 
 man, to do honor to his memory. He was buried 
 beneath the floor of the church ; and members of 
 the various denominations united in placing a 
 tablet on the wall, and defraying the funeral ex- 
 penses. 
 
 Bishop Meade, on behalf of the trustees of the 
 Seminary, said, — 
 
 "We have to record the heavy loss sustained 
 by the Board in the death of the lamented Wil- 
 mer. In this, and every other department of 
 usefulness, he ever displayed a judgment, zeal, 
 
178 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 and activity seldom united in one man. The em- 
 blems of mourning, which now designate the 
 members of this convention, evince the high es- 
 teem in which his services were held by the whole 
 Church." 
 
 Bishop Moore said, — 
 
 " It is impossible for me to find language to 
 express my sense of loss by the death of our be- 
 loved Wilmer. He was one of those who first 
 called my attention to this diocese. Of these, but 
 one survives ; and he, I trust, will be spared to 
 assist you with his counsels when my head shall 
 be slumbering in the dust. He was a man of 
 business and piety. As a preacher, he was faith- 
 ful, energetic, and eloquent. He was the friend 
 of evangelical religion, and considered that the 
 strictest regard to the order of the Church was 
 perfectly compatible with the most animated 
 social worship in the houses of his parishioners. 
 His private meetings, in his opinion, were the 
 nursery of his Church. Like St. Paul, he not 
 only taught his people publicly, but went from 
 house to house, exhorting them to prepare to 
 meet their God. His fidelity met my earnest 
 approbation ; and, if it is the wish of the clergy 
 to give an account of their stewardship with 
 joy, oh, let me entreat them to go and do like- 
 wise ! " 
 
REV. WILLIAM II. WILMER, D.D. 1 79 
 
 Such is an outline of the life of this gifted man 
 of God. It is not a full-faced and full-length like- 
 ness. I have the ideal and the material, but not 
 the time, nor perhaps the skill, to realize it in a 
 lifelike picture, — adjusting the lights, and mak- 
 ing the mind breathe from the face, and the " elo- 
 quent blood mount into the cheek, and almost 
 speak." Dr. Wilmer had an uncommon combina- 
 tion of physical, intellectual, and moral energy, 
 which was the secret of the incredible amount of 
 work he did in the parish, in the press, in the pul- 
 pit, in letters, and in untiring visiting the sick and 
 the poor and the afflicted, fatherless children and 
 widows, and pursuing the sinner through all the 
 mazes of his madness, until he was caught, 
 clothed, and in his right mind. There are fruit- 
 ful fields of illustration, at which I have only 
 glanced in passing. Among these are his mis- 
 sionary excursions through Virginia with Bishops 
 Moore and Meade and Allen and McGuire and 
 others, in which he was eminently successful in 
 rekindling loyalty to the Church, in erecting many 
 a family altar, and in warming many a heart that 
 had grown cold. He left his mark all along the 
 wayside, — the passing traveller, the laborers in 
 the fields, and, indeed, all classes, from the old, 
 powdered and ruffled aristocracy to the servant 
 who held his horse, who received from him a 
 
l8o REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 smile, a word of counsel, and a blessing. Finally, 
 if ever a monument is reared to the restorers of 
 the Church in Virginia and the founders of the 
 Theological Seminary, the truth of history demands 
 that William H. Wilmer should have a high niche 
 in it. 
 
 Note. — I am under obligations to Rev. George A. Smith 
 and others for some of the interesting illustrations of Dr. 
 Wilmer's life. Mr. Smith was a loving pupil of Dr. Wilmer, 
 and is one of the few living depositories of valuable Church 
 traditions. 
 
 REMINISCENCES OF RIGHT REV. J. P. B. WILMER, 
 D.D., L.L.D., LATE BISHOP OF LOUISIANA. 
 
 I cannot refrain from placing in close connec- 
 tion with my own reminiscences some few words 
 which will serve to convey to my children an idea 
 of a good and great Bishop of the Church, who 
 bore our family name, and gave lustre to it, not 
 only in the United States, but in the Anglican 
 Church throughout the world. He took a con- 
 spicuous part in the Lambeth Conferences of 
 1867 and 1878. 
 
 He deserves to be handed down to posterity in 
 a volume rather than in these few pages ; and I 
 should have undertaken the grateful task long 
 ago, if I had thought myself able to do this glo- 
 rious man the justice due to him. I cannot even 
 
m& 
 
REMINISCENCES RT. REV. J. P. B. WILMER. l8l 
 
 attempt to give his likeness in miniature, he was 
 so unlike all other men I have known, — so strong, 
 and yet so gentle ; so grand, and yet so approach- 
 able ; so majestic in thought and diction, and yet 
 so childlike in his familiar utterances. Bishops 
 and peers would crowd to hear his mellifluous and 
 golden words, and babes would reach out for shel- 
 ter in his arms. 
 
 Men called him, rightly, the Chrysostom of the 
 Church in America. 
 
 His father and mine were brothers, and both of 
 them clergymen of the Church. His father, Rev. 
 Simon Wilmer, was a grand old Roman. We 
 grew up together as children, and loved each other 
 with something more than a brother's love. My 
 heart overflows even now when I think of him. I 
 always want to see him. He seems about my bed, 
 and about my path, and yet I cannot get speech of 
 him. All his peculiarities, his absence of mind, 
 his forgetfulness, instead of detracting from his in- 
 fluence, imparted a special charm to the whole man : 
 we would not have had him changed, — " dear cousin 
 Joseph ! " as we all called him. I do not know any 
 one whose life, if it could be drawn out in full, 
 would so enrich our Church literature. The older 
 he grew, the wiser he grew, the more profound 
 in his generalizations, the more epigrammatic 
 in speech, the stronger for truth, the sterner 
 
1 82 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 against error, the tenderer to the helpless and 
 fallen. 
 
 In his best moods he talked as an inspired ora- 
 cle, and with such wealth of language that the 
 strength of his thoughts was almost buried in the 
 beauty of his imagery, as a strong pillar of stone 
 overgrown with flowers. 
 
 He always desired a sudden — he could never 
 have experienced an unprepared — death. He 
 wanted to spare others the anguish of the parting 
 scene. He had his wish. In a moment, in the 
 twinkling of an eye, he passed from the toil and 
 perplexities and disappointments of life into the rest 
 of paradise. I never have realized that he was dead. 
 I never think of him as dead, but as being with 
 the Prophets and Apostles, some of whom in many 
 things he resembled, — Isaiah, St. John, St. Paul, 
 and the like. He now holds high converse with 
 those blessed ones, I doubt not. What grand 
 themes, what lofty speech, what exalted hearts, 
 as they cast their crowns down together, and adore 
 the Lamb that was slain, and yet ever liveth to 
 receive honor and adoration from His redeemed 
 people ! 
 
 I give you herewith an extract from the annual 
 address which I delivered to the council of my 
 diocese at its first session after his death : — 
 
 "The whole Church has been called upon to 
 
REMINISCENCES RT. REV. J. P. B. WILMER. 1 83 
 
 lament the loss of my near and dearly beloved rel- 
 ative, the late Bishop of Louisiana. I cannot trust 
 myself to speak at any length of this dear Bishop. 
 The loss to me personally is irreparable. I feel as 
 if I had lost part of myself. I know not that we had 
 a divergent thought. For more than sixty years 
 we had grown together in sympathy and affection. 
 
 " To those who knew him well, any description 
 would fall far short of the living reality. To 
 those who knew him not, a true portraiture would 
 seem to be extravagant. 
 
 "There was in him that wonderful dualness of 
 character which we find in all complete and fully 
 developed natures, and which found its fullest and 
 most perfect manifestation in Him 'Who was 
 made man.' There was in him a wonderful 
 blending of exquisite tenderness and sensibility 
 with holy resentment of wrong ; patient endur- 
 ance of personal injury, coupled with burning in- 
 dignation against injustice to others. This was 
 the spirit that flamed in St. John, who, at one 
 time, would fain have called down fire from 
 heaven to consume those who treated his dear 
 Lord with indignity, and at another would calm 
 his fevered brow by resting it upon his Lord's 
 bosom ; the same spirit that made St. Paul at one 
 time willing to be 'accursed for his people,' and, 
 at another, forced him to hurl his 'Anathema, 
 
1 84 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 Maranatha,' against any man who loved not the 
 Lord Jesus Christ ; the spirit which reached its 
 absolute perfection in our dear Lord, 'Who for 
 us men and for our salvation came down from 
 heaven and became man ; ' Who, at one time, 
 ' like a lamb, was dumb before His shearers,' and 
 at another, like a lion, drove the profaners of His 
 Father's house from the temple with a whip of 
 cords. All large and well-rounded natures — 
 ' teres atque rotundus ' — manifest this dualness of 
 nature — the nature both of a man and woman — 
 in a spirit which melts over the sufferings of a 
 child, and yet can stand undaunted before rulers 
 and Presidents, and to their face denounce their 
 injustice and wrong. So near akin to holy jeal- 
 ousy is an ardent love. 
 
 " I would that some one could be found to give 
 us a complete and faithful likeness of the dear 
 Bishop of Louisiana. I cannot trust myself to 
 attempt it. I make my own the eloquent words 
 of one who knew him well, and loved him well, — 
 one who had capacity to weigh magnitudes, him- 
 self a man of weight (Right Rev. Hugh Miller 
 Thompson, D.D., then rector of Trinity Church, 
 New Orleans, and now bishop of the Diocese of 
 Mississippi). I had urged him to preach the 
 bishop's memorial sermon. In reply, he writes, 
 ' I am here by one drawing — the personal magne- 
 
RE.V/Ar/SCEsVCES RT. REV. J. P. B. WILMER. 1 85 
 
 tism of a man whose soul was like a calm, deep, 
 summer lake ; whose presence stilled the warring 
 of my own heart, its unrest and rebellion, and 
 even doubt, I confess it ; and in the light of whose 
 transfigured face I found God's peace. He is 
 gone, and that is gone out of my life which can 
 never come again. 
 
 ' Another beacon-light blown out above me ; 
 Another buoy-bell stilled upon the sea.' 
 
 " The deeps, calm and profound, into which de- 
 scended, and from which were reflected, all the 
 starry lights of heaven, in that magnificent soul, 
 were all I ever saw, and the memory of it all that 
 remains unto me now. I don't know whether he 
 was 'learned,' or 'able,' or 'eloquent,' or any thing 
 else. I only know that his speech to me was like 
 the chiming of the bells in the towers of heaven. 
 I only know the personal presence of the man put 
 me in harmony with the everlasting cadences. I 
 want only to sit alone with a memory that ought 
 to sanctify my life. The regal glory of that ma- 
 jestic face as I looked upon it for the last time in 
 the coffin, can never fail from my remembrance. 
 He looked, dead in his robes, a Prince of God ; 
 and the dead look was but a faint transcript of 
 the living presence. I might clasp your hand, 
 
1 86 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 who knew him, kinsman, brother of the same 
 blood, and say nothing but what the heart might 
 say, but I could do no more. 
 
 " Our ' memorials ' and our talks about him are 
 idle enough, God knows, and, to some moods of 
 mine, are even shocking. I cannot talk about him. 
 The surface-babble about his absence of mind, 
 and personal peculiarities and the rest, are infi- 
 nitely disgusting to me. I ask for myself to be 
 allowed to bear in my heart, as one of the treas- 
 ures, and, God help me, one of the responsibilities, 
 of my life, the fact that for three years I knew, 
 associated with, and loved this man, crowned on 
 earth one of the peerage and senate of heaven." 
 
 I add here some verses written to me by my 
 sister, your aunt Marion. They were written at a 
 time of deep depression in the State of Louisi- 
 ana. A cloud of vultures had come down upon 
 the battle-field, to prey upon the dead and nearly 
 dying. Strangers held the reins of power, aliens 
 sat in the halls of justice, and publicans gathered 
 the tithes of cotton. I use plain language because 
 I speak of a foul wrong done our people. Think of 
 a set of people inimical to us, just out of a terri- 
 ble war, leaguing with a dominating race of newly 
 emancipated slaves, and exercising all functions, 
 legislative, judicial, and executive — a humiliation 
 such as in modern times was never inflicted by one 
 
REMINISCENCES RT. REV. J. P. B. WILMER. 1 8 J 
 
 civilized people upon another. At this time, the 
 indignation of the people of Louisiana — for the 
 pressure was then chiefly there — had reached such 
 a pitch, that the noblest, bravest, and most loyal 
 citizens had come to the solemn resolution that 
 they might die, but would not longer live in this con- 
 dition. I speak of what I know, and it strains the 
 heart now to recall it. A single step farther, and 
 the streets of New Orleans would have run blood. 
 And yet this was the hour when it was proposed 
 to me to hold a united "Te Deum service." The 
 good friend who made the proposition suggested 
 that we were all now under one flag, and a " Te 
 Deum service " would be in good form. I replied 
 that it was true that we were under one flag, but 
 that the flag had a twofold aspect : it had its stars 
 and its stripes ; but the stars shone upon him, and 
 the stripes alone were still upon us, and that just 
 now we might sing "De Profundis," and even 
 "Nunc Dimittis," but not "Te Deums," unless 
 men could sing the same anthem under stars and 
 stripes alike. I recall these things because I am 
 writing reminiscences, and want my posterity to 
 know the past, and how to interpret the deeds of 
 their fathers. 
 
 This state of things which I am now describ- 
 ing will show how little the good people of the 
 North — and for them I feel a warm admiration 
 
1 88 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 and regard — knew of the actual state of affairs 
 in the South during this period. Their fathers 
 groaned under a tax upon tea laid without privi- 
 lege of representation. The sons of those men 
 should comprehend the intolerable weight that 
 the men of the South bore all those years. I 
 asked a highly intelligent gentleman in New York 
 how he would like his State Legislature to be com- 
 posed of one-third of whites — many of them 
 were not to the manor born — and two-thirds of 
 newly emancipated slaves, and told him that such 
 had been the constituency of the South Carolina 
 Legislature. He said "it could not be possi- 
 ble." The fact is, that a full history has not yet 
 appeared ; but we must all appear at the bar of 
 judgment in time and eternity. 
 
 At this crisis, the Bishop of Louisiana came 
 forward — man of peace as he was. His whole 
 soul boiled with a holy indignation — it was holy 
 because righteous. He went to Washington City, 
 and laid the case before President Grant. A 
 word from the Commander of the army would 
 have precipitated the collision. He told him so, 
 and told him that he (the President) was respon- 
 sible before God for the blood that would be shed, 
 for the people were oppressed by a tyranny that 
 they could not and would not longer stand. That 
 famed General never faced a more dauntless eye 
 
REMINISCENCES RT. REV. J. P. B. WILMER. 1 89 
 
 than that which now looked into his. The Bishop 
 laid the whole case before the President, and told 
 him of the resolve of his people, and that they had 
 yielded as far as human nature could endure. The 
 President, as became the man, gave him a hearing, 
 told him that he himself was going out of power, 
 but would give him letters to his incoming suc- 
 cessor. He did so, and the Bishop presented them 
 in person to the President-elect at his home in the 
 West. I had the details from the Bishop's own 
 lips ; and the sequel showed his instrumentality in 
 lifting the load from the hearts of his people, and 
 bringing to them relief from the tyranny that op- 
 pressed them. But all this strain upon heart and 
 mind told upon him, as it had done upon Bishop 
 Elliott of Georgia. The springs of life gave way 
 under the heavy pressure. 
 
 I give these few details in order that you may 
 understand some allusions in the lines which fol- 
 low, and the withering sarcasms uttered by the 
 Bishop himself in the extract following. 
 
 " Louisiana ! matron fair, with bosom bleeding, 
 List to the funeral wail, all other woes unheeding ; 
 Trail all thy banners low, abase thy queenly head ; 
 Think not of traitors now, forget thy blood was shed ; 
 Cry low on bended knee, « Our Wilmer's dead ! ' 
 
 Queen of the South ! methinks I see thee kneeling, 
 Discrowned in dust and shame, while tears are stealing 
 
I90 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 From eyes now dulled with grief, and memories of shame • 
 Wrought by adopted sons ; but yet there is a name, 
 Crowned with celestial light, worthy thy fame. 
 
 Empress of States ! is it not worth the telling ? 
 Thou hadst one son — a Prince — whose voice now swelling 
 The antiphone of heaven, erst in his manhood's prime, 
 Nursing his royal heart at fountains pure, sublime, 
 Poured out his kingly soul for thee, like generous wine. 
 
 Mother of many creeds and nations ! thou who barest 
 Scars of a conflict on thy regal brow, — thy best and bravest 
 Into the quiet grave hath passed forevermore. 
 The sweet persuasion of his wondrous tongue no more 
 Shall claim a boon for thee : his battle's o'er. 
 
 Louisiana ! Mother ! Queen ! thou heedest not thy losing ; 
 The fray is sharp, the conflict lengthens ; and the closing 
 Of warrior hosts in battle shock hath stunned thine ears ; 
 A fell disease has fouled the sweetness of thy perfumed 
 
 airs, 
 But more than this is lost to thee, — a good man's prayers ! 
 
 And thou, O Church of God ! while sadly breathing 
 Funereal orisons, receive his mantle, and, his sword un- 
 sheathing, 
 Fill up the breach, when thou a man dost find 
 Refreshed with childhood's grace, a warrior brave, yet 
 
 kind, 
 A lion, yet a lamb, a minister to men, a man of mark and 
 mind." 
 
 But let the good Bishop speak himself, as he 
 did to his church in council assembled. It was 
 
REMINISCENCES RT. REV. J. P. />'. WILMER. 191 
 
 rarely that he thus spoke, but it was when the 
 very stones should have cried out. He was 
 speaking of that class of men who had come to 
 his State for plunder, who, being disturbed at 
 their unholy work, had invoked the aid of the 
 General Government, saying that they were in- 
 terfered with in their roguery, and that the 
 Southern people were not yet subdued. 
 
 The Bishop writes, — 
 
 " If you listen to their complaints, no cause 
 ever had so many martyrs. Martyrs ! History 
 portrays the victims of persecution, in all ages, 
 hiding themselves from public view, and seeking 
 refuge in the wilderness, or in dens and caves 
 of the earth. It has been reserved for these 
 Southern martyrs to be clothed with political 
 power, and to command for themselves and their 
 adherents the highest offices of profit and dignity. 
 Behold them ostracized from their homes to be- 
 come representatives in the Legislature ; pilgrims 
 and wanderers, traversing their judicial circuits 
 quietly and leisurely to administer justice ; driven 
 by the sharp edge of persecution to occupy lordly 
 mansions, and to sit down at sumptuous tables, 
 — men who had never riches, and, some of them, 
 never homes, before ! 
 
 " Persecution is not very sharp which is thus 
 displayed. Of one thing these people complain, 
 
192 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 and have a right to complain, — ' that the people 
 under their rule are not satisfied.' No, they are 
 not satisfied. Bereft of power in the land of 
 their inheritance, the voice of their complaint 
 cannot be hushed in a moment. Beholding the 
 sad breach made in many communities and house- 
 holds, the deep sigh will escape from their lips, 
 ' This is not the necessary result of emancipation.' 
 
 " For this restlessness and loud complaint, they 
 are abused for disloyalty, and disobedience to 
 authority. ' The South was never more proud and 
 defiant before the war,' are the words which fell 
 from the lips of ruling statesmen in Congress. 
 ' Protection ' is demanded from this great wrong ! 
 ' Protection ! ' — for those in power from those 
 out of power. ' Protection ! ' — for scorpions who 
 have stolen the dove's nest, that they shall not 
 be obliged to hear the plaintive cries of the 
 mother bereft of her young. ' Protection ! ' — for 
 the soft slumbers of the wolf gorged with his prey, 
 that he shall not be disturbed by the bleating of 
 the sheep-fold upon the midnight air ! 
 
 " I am bold to make this charge — not against 
 the chief magistrate of this nation, who is often 
 in our prayers, never in our animadversions ; nor 
 against the chief ruler of this State, to whom we 
 are equally bound to render honor — but against 
 the power which is stronger than both, and which 
 
REMINISCENCES RT. REV. J. P. B. IVILMER. 1 93 
 
 is holding this State under its inexorable sway, 
 I am bold to make this charge. Modern history 
 has no example of a power so hard to propitiate, 
 perhaps no example of equal patience under such 
 misfortunes. 
 
 " Was it a mute prophecy of our coming fate, 
 which is expressed in the emblem upon our na- 
 tional escutcheon, — the eagle with one talon 
 holding forth the olive-branch of peace to all na- 
 tions, and with the other grasping the arrows of 
 death pointed to its own breast — friendly to all 
 others, intolerant and cruel only to its own ? " 
 
 There is nothing in the "Letters of Junius" 
 finer and more withering than this sarcasm. 
 
 But read from him on another theme, —the 
 coming final retribution. It is a very suggestive 
 fact that the words which follow came heated with 
 intense faith from the soul of the gentlest and 
 sweetest nature, — one who would turn aside from 
 crushing a worm. Yet there are no words which 
 approach in plainness and terribleness the lan- 
 guage used by our Lord Himself. When will 
 Christian people turn from the streams fouled by 
 their own imaginings, and drink the water of life 
 fresh from the spring-head, — " The Truth " ? 
 
 There is no mawkish sentimentality in Nature 
 or Revelation, but there are in both these volumes 
 life and death. 
 
194 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 Eut let the good Bishop speak. I quote from 
 one of his addresses to his council. 
 
 I met him shortly after this address had been 
 published, and said to him, " You write as if you 
 had a personal animosity against the Devil." 
 Assuming that peculiar look of his when sud- 
 denly solemnized, he said, " Yes, I have, sir. He 
 is the greatest enemy I have. He has done me a 
 world of mischief. I hate him, sir." 
 
 If he so did hate, it was the only being he did 
 hate, and that because the Adversary opposed the 
 goodness of the good God. There was a grand 
 piety in such hate. I wish I could give you all 
 his words : they are much needed in this genera- 
 tion, which is in a condition of violent re-action 
 from puritanic ideas of the Deity. He writes, — 
 
 " So we learn from Revelation to define the 
 power of that malicious spirit, whose personality 
 involves the fate of the Bible and humanity. To 
 dispute this truth is to endanger the whole gospel. 
 The fastidious clemency which would cover from 
 human sight the terrors of hell and the infernal 
 malice of Satan and his legions, had no place in 
 His teaching. He knew, as no human teacher 
 »can know, what was the mystery of the second 
 death, and what dark, infernal agencies crowd the 
 avenues which lead to it ; and He made it known 
 in words which burn like fire. Three times, in as 
 
REMINISCENCES RT. REV. J. P. B. WILMER. 1 95 
 
 many consecutive sentences, He spoke to the 
 multitude of the torment of damned spirits, — 
 'where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not 
 quenched.' 
 
 " To contradict this testimony, or to dilute it, 
 is to deprive religion of its august power. Man- 
 kind are not to be converted to hate sin by extin- 
 guishing its penalties. Hell is not less a reality 
 than Heaven, is not less vividly depicted, is not 
 less enduring, and eternal in its duration. Reve- 
 lation will not be accused of exaggeration in the 
 description which is given of the blessedness of 
 the heavenly Jerusalem. None are willing to be- 
 lieve that its streets of gold, its white robes, its 
 applauding hymns of joy, express more than is 
 true of the felicity of the saints in light. You 
 can no more evacuate hell of its terrors than 
 Heaven of its beatitudes. You can no more ex- 
 tract the pungency from the torments of the 
 damned than you can silence the Seraphim's song. 
 There will nothing be left for faith, if you can 
 wrest the Scripture to prove that torment does 
 not mean torment, and everlasting does not mean 
 everlasting." 
 
 Towards the close of the address, he writes, — 
 " I have arrived at the close of a painful demon- 
 stration, which I did not undertake without re- 
 pugnance. If it shocks your sensibilities, do not 
 
I96 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 think it a subject of congratulation, or any proof 
 of superior intelligence, virtue, or refinement. 
 Good men are sometimes betrayed into compla- 
 cency with flippant allusions to this august mys- 
 tery. It may silence this raillery to reflect that 
 they are in alliance with the most degraded of 
 their race. You are not alone, ye men of wit and 
 levity, in dashing from your lips the ' cup of trem- 
 bling.' Multitudes are convinced by your argu- 
 ments. The murderer, the spoiler of innocence, 
 the base miscreant, sunk in ignorance, clotted 
 with vice and infamy, — their voices are in unison 
 with yours in disowning- the doctrine of eternal 
 punishment. Your scepticism is greeted with a 
 glad welcome in every retreat of crime, and is only 
 strange and foreign to the innocent breast of 
 childhood, and to the faith of holy men and mar- 
 tyrs in the Church of God. You may refuse to 
 believe in hell ; but, with such grim followers, you 
 have no cause to be proud of your discernment, 
 arching your brow contemptuously upon the igno- 
 rance and credulity of believers. . . . 
 
 " I will speak more feelingly. Until this doc- 
 trine is received and felt by you, as God reveals 
 it in His Word, notwithstanding your professions, 
 you are ignorant of the mystery of redemption. 
 You are not saved, for you were never lost. The 
 blessings of redemption will never be yours until 
 
REMINISCENCES RT. REV. J. P. B. WILMER. 1 97 
 
 you beseech God to break in pieces your pride, by 
 giving you a profound view of your own misery, a 
 lively conviction of the hatefulness and malignity 
 of sin, and an implacable hatred of yourselves as 
 sin has made you, so that your words may be 
 true words, and not words of mockery, when you 
 pray, ' From everlasting damnation, good Lord, 
 deliver us.' 
 
 . . . "There is no danger that the Church of 
 which we are members will not grow and increase 
 in power with the progress of education in this 
 country. There is no danger that a large share 
 of the intelligence, refinement, sober morality of 
 this land, will not be well represented in our 
 sanctuaries. But, is there not danger that the 
 independence and fidelity of our priesthood may 
 be overawed by the redundance of worldly wealth, 
 or the fastidiousness of public taste, enfeebling 
 the tone of the pulpit ? Our strength will die out 
 when we hear no more the stern expostulations to 
 sinners to ' flee from the wrath to come.' 
 
 "This Church has need of iron in its blood. It 
 has need of fire in its veins, and majesty in its 
 voice to make men feel and tremble, who are now 
 buried in carnal sloth and security. It is quite 
 clear that the words which go forth from our pul- 
 pits on future punishment have not the sober 
 reality, or the vivid flash and power, to silence 
 
I98 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 criticism and rebuke. No man smiles at lightning 
 when it leaps from the clouds, and shakes its 
 glittering spear above his head. It may not pro- 
 duce repentance, but it is too awful for derision. 
 May not the fault be in our preaching, rather than 
 in the Revelation itself, that the torments of the 
 damned evoke words of carping criticism instead 
 of solemn awe and trepidation ? We do not stand 
 before the people with the awe upon us of this 
 great mystery. 
 
 " Come, ye tongues of fire which rested on the 
 early messengers of the gospel, and burn this 
 awful truth into the minds of ministers and people ! 
 He, Who cannot deceive, asserts it, — that the 
 unbelievers, the profane, the careless, who are 
 lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, are 
 exposed to the unknown pangs of the second 
 death. Calmly we stand in the presence of those 
 whose end, disguise it as we may, is eternal exclu- 
 sion from the presence of God. 
 
 "The conversion of sinners, the salvation of 
 souls, it is no enthusiasm to say, is the great 
 work which God has delegated to His people. He 
 might have chosen agencies more worthy, but He 
 has not done so. The sublime task of spoiling 
 Satan of his power, and gathering repentant sin- 
 ners from threatened punishment to people the 
 abodes of the blessed, is your work and mine ; and, 
 
REMINISCENCES RT. REV. J. P. B. WILMER. 1 99 
 
 if not done by us, it will be left undone. Heaven 
 throws wide its gates to animate our labors ; ran- 
 somed saints are waiting to authenticate our faith ; 
 imperishable crowns to reward our fidelity. 
 
 "Alas ! for that cold, mocking incredulity, which 
 would exchange this sure inheritance of glory, 
 pledged to every true believer, for a doubtful and 
 precarious fate ; which concerns itself rather to 
 snatch a gleam of comfort from God's judgments, 
 than to find safety in His promises ; more intent 
 to deprive the kingdom of darkness of its woes, 
 than to gain an abundant entrance into 'The 
 Everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour, 
 Jesus Christ' " 
 
 But I feel that I am not doing justice to the 
 good Bishop by taking detached sentences from 
 his writings. I merely wanted you to see the 
 spirit of the man. I wish I could picture him as 
 I see him. Some day I hope that some one will 
 be found to gather up his choicest sermons and 
 addresses for the enrichment of our Church-litera- 
 ture. 
 
 I will only add in conclusion, that, to all his 
 other graces and attractions, there was an unspeak- 
 able purity and delicate refinement of nature, 
 which permeated his whole life, and covered him 
 as a garment. I had the sense of talking with a 
 refined woman when holding discourse with him. 
 
200 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 He had it from a child, and by heredity, from his 
 father and mother. He had the most delicate 
 appreciation of genuine wit and humor, and was 
 full of it himself, but turned with loathing from all 
 discourse that bordered on the vulgar, as every 
 Christian gentleman should do — especially a 
 clergyman. He should be unfrocked — I care 
 not what his learning and office may be — who in- 
 dulges in obscene and vulgar allusions. 
 
 Your cousin was upon one occasion at a large 
 dining-party. After the first glass of wine, the 
 ladies, as is their wont, left the dining-room for 
 the parlor. The gentlemen rose, as a matter of 
 course, until the ladies had passed out. As they 
 settled themselves to the table again, one of the 
 company said, " Now I can give you the anecdote 
 which I could not do whilst the ladies were 
 present." The bishop looked gravely upon him, 
 and said, " Will you be so kind as to consider me 
 a lady, sir ? " Ladies might have been safely 
 present the rest of that evening. Alas ! alas ! 
 that so much greatness and goodness and sweet- 
 ness have passed out of this ungodly and impure 
 world. 
 
//^/<rfr\ S7£j£* 
 
 -<"/ c^ 
 
 <* 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 201 
 
 THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 
 En fHcmariam. 
 
 I don't know that I can give my children a 
 more complete idea of a typical Southern gentle- 
 man and Christian Bishop, than by adding to 
 these reminiscences a portraiture which — in 
 1867, shortly after the war of the States — I drew 
 of Bishop Elliott of Georgia. 
 
 He was a Southern man, a slaveholder, and a 
 Southern patriot of the first water. When men 
 of the South realize, as they should, that some 
 of the finest specimens of refined Christian char- 
 acter are to be found in the ranks of the Republi- 
 can party in the North, and when men of the 
 North realize, as they should, that men of like 
 refined Christian character in the South defended, 
 and still do defend, the original right to secede 
 under the then existing Constitution, then may 
 we indulge the hope that the late conflict of ideas 
 and principles may — not be buried and forgotten, 
 — for it was too earnest and sincere a conflict to 
 be forgotten, — but understood. Then men will 
 respect each other, and cease stigmatizing each 
 other by opprobrious epithets. I never allow any 
 man to call me a "rebel," nor do I allow him to 
 speak in my presence, unrebuked, of a war for 
 Constitutional right as a " Rebellion." 
 
202 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 When one sees such men as Bishops Lee of 
 Delaware, and Potter of Pennsylvania, on one 
 side of a great question, and such men as Bishops 
 Meade, Elliott, and Davis, on the opposite side, 
 they should cease from "calling people names," 
 as the children well designate it, and calmly con- 
 sider the great lessons of the hour. One great 
 lesson may assuredly be gleaned, — that the whole 
 truth is many-sided ; that no one man, however 
 great and good, can see all its sides. He alone, 
 who is " The Truth," can never err. 
 
 In the memorial sermon which follows, I have 
 aimed to view the recent conflict of ideas from 
 the stand-point of a Bishop of the Church, born 
 and reared in the South, and, therefore, from the 
 Southern view of the whole question. We have 
 no apologies to make, but feel bound by that 
 charity which "rejoiceth in the truth," to throw 
 whatever of light may have been vouchsafed to 
 us upon a subject which to some minds appears 
 dark and mysterious. 
 
 fUUmorfal Sermon. 
 
 " Even so, Fatlier : for so it seemed good in Thy sight" — St. 
 Matthew xi. 26. 
 
 Dearly beloved, a great sorrow has brought 
 us together this day. It has devolved upon me — 
 a stranger to almost all before me — to speak of 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 203 
 
 the life and labors of your dear, departed Bishop. 
 But yet, in the church and diocese of my brother 
 of Georgia, and surrounded by so many hearts 
 which beat quickly at the mention of his name, I 
 cannot feel that I, who loved as you loved, and sor- 
 rowed when you sorrowed, can be regarded as an 
 utter stranger. When it was suddenly announced 
 to me that the Bishop of Georgia had died, I felt 
 once again as I had felt in childhood, when it was 
 told me my father was no more. 
 
 Bishop Elliott was one of the three revered 
 Bishops who had set me apart, by the imposition 
 of hands, to the office and work of a Bishop. He 
 had presided as senior Bishop of the " General 
 Council " of the Southern dioceses. His experi- 
 ence in the office of a Bishop had extended over 
 a quarter of a century, and constituted him, by 
 general acclaim, our acknowledged, as he was our 
 official, head. He was, too, by birth, talents, and 
 culture, our representative man — the impersona- 
 tion of many cherished sentiments. All through 
 life he had been their champion, and we looked 
 to him to be long their vindicator and defender. 
 
 You have invited me here to deliver a dis- 
 course commemorative of his life and labors. I 
 held the request as sacred, and yet I regretted 
 that the duty had not devolved upon another. 
 The task requires — besides other gifts to which 
 
204 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 I make no pretension — a degree of acquaintance 
 with the early and inner life of the good Bishop 
 which I was not privileged to enjoy. One cannot 
 speak of another, as your Bishop should be spoken 
 of, unless he can speak "that which he knows, 
 and testify to that which he has seen." 
 
 It will be the grateful task of some intimate 
 friend of the bishop of Georgia to gather together 
 the reminiscences of his boyhood — those precious 
 treasures which mothers are wont to lay up in 
 their hearts. 
 
 A life so bright as his must needs have had 
 an auspicious morning. It will be the duty of 
 another to tell the Church of his early struggles, 
 when, turning from all the dreams of youth and 
 the blandishments of life, he gave himself, a living 
 sacrifice, to God, and laid upon His altar the 
 homage of his heart and all the wealth of his 
 nature. A bright earthly future stood before the 
 young aspirant ; fond expectations were cherished 
 of his early fame ; but he turned from them all. 
 Their light was quenched in that brighter light 
 which met him on the way, melted his soul in 
 penitence, and resolved for him the great ques- 
 tion of life, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to 
 do ? " 
 
 An account of what he was in the earlier 
 years of his ministry we have now no longer to 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 205 
 
 look for. The Alumni of his Alma Mater have 
 given to us in that memoir, adopted and recently 
 published by them, the most exquisite and truth- 
 ful delineation of the man, the chaplain, and the 
 professor. No more affectionate and graceful 
 tribute will ever be paid to his memory. 
 
 It is, then, much to be desired that some master- 
 hand shall take the different views presented of 
 this great man, shall group them, and give to the 
 Church a full-size portrait of the first Bishop of 
 Georgia. Let this be done by no inferior hand. 
 It should be such a portraiture as will go down 
 to posterity with those of our other Bishops, that 
 our children may learn to know and reverence the 
 men who lived and labored in the early days of 
 the Church in America. 
 
 I have proposed to myself to-day the grateful 
 though melancholy task of speaking of the de- 
 ceased as a Bishop of the Church, and, particu- 
 larly, in his relations to the great subjects which 
 have agitated this country during the few last 
 eventful years. 
 
 When consecrated to the episcopate of Georgia, ' 
 in 1 84 1, Bishop Elliott, although young in years 
 and in office, very soon took high rank among his 
 brethren. He possessed in an eminent degree 
 many of the qualities which fit men to be leaders 
 and commanders among the people. His form, 
 
206 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 was beautiful and manly, and his whole presence 
 majestic and imposing. His manners were re- 
 fined and dignified, yet kind and conciliating. 
 His intellect was large and highly cultivated, and 
 his views elevated and comprehensive. His dis- 
 position was ingenuous and affectionate, and cal- 
 culated to win upon the affections of others. His 
 knowledge of his fellow-men was intuitive and 
 profound, and his forbearance with their infirmi- 
 ties almost exhaustless. To a disposition ever 
 ready to give way in matters of trifling impor- 
 tance, he united a strength of conviction and a 
 firmness of purpose which would not yield one 
 iota of principle ; and when roused to vindicate 
 his convictions, he would at times assert them 
 with a vehemence that was well-nigh overwhelm- 
 ing. So noble were his instincts, that you always 
 knew where to find him, — if not agreed with 
 others, yet agreeing and consistent with himself. 
 A steady, brave, and true man he was, and so pre- 
 cious to the Church that he was loved and is 
 mourned by all who seek her peace and prosper- 
 ity. All these qualities marked him out as a 
 leader among men. But yet he could never have 
 been the leader of a party, for he sought the truth 
 rather than victory. His views were so large that 
 they embraced the truths held by both parties of 
 the Church ; and he was found acting with the one 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 207 
 
 or the other, indifferently, as in their movements 
 they came within the sphere of his convictions. 
 He could not have organized a party, but he could 
 have led a nation. He could not have drilled a 
 .caucus, but he electrified a people. Some of his 
 thoughts, to which he knew how to give such 
 grand expression, will never be forgotten by the 
 men of this generation ; and to this hour our 
 hearts thrill at their recollection. His experience 
 in the early years of his episcopate differs in no 
 material respect from that of other Bishops in new 
 dioceses. He found in Georgia a handful of cler- 
 gymen, and some few scattered members of the 
 Church, — not so many as he left at the time of his 
 death in the single congregation of Christ Church, 
 Savannah. About seven clergymen and three 
 hundred communicants constituted the strength of 
 the Church in Georgia, — a State embracing an 
 area of fifty-eight thousand square miles. Over 
 this extended tract of country he had the oversight 
 and jurisdiction. The task was one calculated to 
 test the most sanguine temperament. Besides 
 the hindrances which all meet with who preach 
 the gospel of Christ, — the innate depravity 
 and the carnal mind, — he was called upon to 
 commend the usages of the Church to a people 
 who viewed with impatience, if not with sternness, 
 every thing that savored of ceremonial observance. 
 
208 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 The decent and comely robes of office, the 
 gravity and solemnity of the ritual, the due sub- 
 ordination and reverent demeanor, were all mat- 
 ters of derision to a people accustomed to the free 
 and easy mode of extemporaneous performances. 
 At this day, when the tastes of people are set- 
 ting, perhaps, too indiscriminately in an opposite 
 direction, it will be difficult to conceive of the in- 
 tense opposition to the usages of the Church at 
 the time to which I refer. 
 
 The plan of operations which Bishop Elliott 
 proposed to himself, in view of the magnitude of 
 the work in hand, was to begin by establishing 
 strong central points in every quarter of the dio- 
 cese, and in course of time to work out from these 
 centres into the surrounding rural districts. In 
 addition to his episcopal labors, he took upon him- 
 self the charge of a church in Savannah, thus 
 adding the cares of a pastor to the laborious work 
 of a Bishop — an experiment, I hope, not to be re- 
 peated. At an early day, however, he turned his 
 attention to the education of the young, and gave 
 up his charge at Savannah to take charge of the 
 Female Institute at Montpelier. It will be the 
 pleasing task of the future biographer to trace out 
 in detail the particulars of Bishop Elliott's con- 
 nection with the Institute at Montpelier. I make 
 the declaration, however, — and his biography will 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 209 
 
 supply the proof, — that his whole course in con- 
 nection with the Institute at Montpelier was dic- 
 tated by a spirit so noble and self-sacrificing that 
 he placed himself above the comprehension of or- 
 dinary minds. Men cannot well conceive of the 
 existence of motives so much raised above the 
 ordinary level. Bishop Elliott took hold of that 
 enterprise, and invited upon himself the full re- 
 sponsibility of all its load of debt, with much the 
 same spirit that one would volunteer to embark 
 upon, and take command of, a sinking ship. 
 Through what trial and suffering, and clouds of 
 misapprehension, he was called to pass, few know, 
 — only God, who knoweth all things, and the true 
 woman whose heart shared all his solicitudes. He 
 was not bound to undertake the responsibility by 
 any legal obligation whatsoever. The debts con- 
 tracted before his connection with the Institute 
 were in no way binding upon him, but he felt that 
 the honor of the Church might in some way be in- 
 volved ; and he determined, that, sink or swim, he 
 would venture all upon it. And all was ventured, 
 and all was lost save honor and the consciousness 
 of duty attempted. According to the rules of 
 arithmetic, it was but a sorry venture : viewed in 
 the light of the motives which inspired him, it ap- 
 proached the sphere of martyrdom. Had he been 
 less self-sacrificing, he would have obtained more 
 
2IO REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 credit from the world, which always looks for mo- 
 tives on its own level. Men could not understand 
 how one could risk so much without some motive 
 of ultimate gain. When that history shall have 
 been written, and the amount of sacrifice made 
 known, the people of Georgia will, with new sur- 
 prise, understand who and what the Bishop was 
 who taught them the great lesson of self-sacrifice. 
 In all his intercourse with his fellow-man, he illus- 
 trated the idea of honor so delicately drawn by 
 the hand of a master : — 
 
 " Say, what is Honor ? 'Tis the finest sense 
 Of justice which the human mind can frame, 
 Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim, 
 And guard the way of life from all offence 
 . Suffered or done." 
 
 But the scheme did not turn out as he had 
 hoped and willed. Few came to his aid ; and he 
 turned, with a heart almost broken with disap- 
 pointment, to his remaining duties. It is pleasing 
 now to learn that one of his latest acts was to lay 
 the corner-stone of a chapel at the Montpelier 
 Institute. The rock which supplied the material 
 was gathered together by himself some twenty 
 years before. It was a source of peculiar pleasure 
 to him to witness the revival and prosperity of 
 jiis much-loved school ; and his face was seen to 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 211 
 
 beam once more, as of old, with the light of hope 
 and pleasure. Thus have we seen the clouds 
 lift at sunset, and open to us a glimpse of parting 
 day. 
 
 We come now to trace the course of the Bishop 
 of Georgia through a stormy period in the history 
 of this country. It becomes necessary to refer to 
 this period, not with the view of reviving the re- 
 membrance of a past conflict, but to rescue from 
 unmerited reproach the memory of a Bishop of 
 the Church, whose highest aim had ever been to 
 set forth peace and quietness among all people, 
 and to know nothing among men save Jesus 
 Christ and Him crucified. If he ever breathed 
 words which savored of strife, it was that a sure 
 and lasting peace might thereby be established, 
 and good will more certainly prevail. Certain 
 fanatical ideas had assumed a dangerous and 
 threatening attitude toward the institutions of 
 the South. Casting aside the traditions of the 
 past, the teachings of statesmen, philosophers, 
 and fathers, — to say nothing of the sanctions of 
 a solemn political compact, — this pestilent heresy 
 dared even to lay its hand upon the Ark of the 
 Covenant, and to deny the supreme authority of 
 the Word of God in the last appeal. It was this 
 moral and religious feature of the movement in 
 question which called into active opposition the 
 
212 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 clergy of the South, and forced them to become 
 prominent in the conflict which soon ensued. 
 They were called upon, not only to clear them- 
 selves from the imputation of a grievous crime, 
 but — and this more deeply concerned them — to 
 maintain the supremacy of the Word of God, and 
 the teachings of universal tradition. Whenever 
 there is a conflict of principles, the men will 
 always be found who are raised up for the crisis, 
 — prophets who discern the coming evil, and men 
 of nerve and will to vindicate and defend the 
 right. 
 
 Bishop Elliott stood out prominently in his 
 sphere, and with all the ardor of his nature (as 
 did Bishop Meade of Virginia) addressed himself 
 to the discharge of his full duty. At an early 
 day he had discerned the signs of the times, and 
 foresaw, with extraordinary distinctness, the ulti- 
 mate tendencies of the whole movement. It was 
 at first a conflict of ideas, and ideas could only be 
 met by ideas. The Bishops of the Southern dio- 
 ceses, Bishop Polk taking the lead, together with 
 divers of the clergy and laity, set themselves to 
 the establishment of a seat of learning, to be 
 called the " University of the South," which, it 
 was hoped, in time, might take rank with the 
 universities of the Old World, and become the 
 great educator of Southern youth. It was a vital 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 213 
 
 part of the plan, that this University should be 
 placed nnder the entire guardianship of this our 
 pure branch of the Catholic Church, whose faith- 
 ful allegiance to God's Holy Word, and traditional 
 reverence for catholic truth, might lend the sanc- 
 tit.es of a sound faith to sweeten the sources of 
 knowledge, and give a right direction to all its 
 power. 
 
 The whole scheme was projected upon a scale 
 commensurate with the grandeur of the design 
 The good Bishop and his equally zealous coadjV 
 tors have been blamed by some for the magnitude 
 of their aims, and plan of operations, but, I think 
 most unjustly. Why is it that the interests of 
 knowledge and religion do not justify the same 
 generous expenditure that is lavished upon objects 
 of merely material importance ? Millions will be 
 subscribed to establish, and even to shorten, lines 
 of communication and travel. The projectors of 
 such schemes are hailed with ovations as the bene- 
 factors of their race. It is, for the most part, only 
 when enterprises are started which look to the 
 interests of men's hearts and minds, that their 
 advocates are regarded as visionary and extrava- 
 gant. Is it that the worthy Bishop and his coad- 
 jutors were too grand in their aims, or that his 
 critics were too grovelling? The truth is, the 
 man of whom I speak to-day was a man of large 
 
214 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 proportions : he was made upon a large scale. 
 The traditions of his house and his personal cul- 
 ture rendered him dissatisfied with whatever was 
 inelegant and incomplete. Whatsoever he did, 
 even in matters of comparatively small importance, 
 he did with a certain nameless grace and elegance. 
 There was in his dress and conversation, and in 
 his correspondence, — even to the penmanship and 
 paper, — a finish which was quite characteristic. 
 This elegance, amounting perhaps to fastidious- 
 ness of taste, may have disqualified him for certain 
 rough details of duty, but it eminently fitted him 
 to take the lead in every thing that was grand and 
 beautiful ; and it is the ordination of Providence 
 that each man shall serve in his own lot and after 
 his own order. Never was an enterprise com- 
 menced under better auspices, and attended with 
 more encouraging tokens of success, than the 
 University of the South. It promised to supply a 
 great want, and appealed to the deepest sympa- 
 thies of all who could take in the magnitude of 
 the interests involved. Bishops Polk and Elliott 
 — twin-brothers in life, and in death not long 
 divided — gave themselves to the personal task 
 of canvassing the Southern States. The South- 
 ern people met their appeals for endowments with 
 a generous response. The site was procured, the 
 grounds were marked out, and the foundation of 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 215 
 
 the building was laid. The Bishop of Vermont 
 (Hopkins) — clarum et venerabile nomen — gave 
 his invaluable counsel and presence in the prelimi- 
 nary work. 
 
 Such was the attitude of things when the storm, 
 which had been so long brewing, burst forth, and 
 the thick cloud of war settled down upon the land. 
 The interests of this cherished University suffered 
 peculiar loss. The fortunes which had been 
 pledged to its erection and support were swept 
 away ; and its munificent patrons are now either 
 exiles from their native land, or are struggling 
 under unkindly influences for their daily bread. 
 Even the foundation-stone, which had been laid in 
 faith and prayer, was rudely torn from its bed, and 
 despoiled of its sacred treasures. The object of 
 this institution was distinct and widely known, — 
 to educate in harmony with Southern ideas, — and 
 upon its devoted head came the full force of the 
 opposing element ; as when the lightning consumes 
 the shaft which vainly aims to avert its fury, and 
 conduct it harmlessly to the ground. 
 
 Inscrutable is the will of God, that so many of 
 man's noblest efforts should seem to be in vain, and 
 wickedness and violence be permitted a temporary 
 triumph. Impenetrable mysteries are these, which 
 baffle the highest reason. Priceless blessings will 
 they be, if they teach us to say in faith, " Even 
 
2l6 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 so, Father: for so it seemed good in Thy 
 sight." 
 
 Into that mighty conflict which ensued, Bishop 
 Elliott threw himself with all the enthusiasm of 
 his soul ; and he never disavowed his deeds, and 
 never repented of them. 
 
 " Fortuna non mutat genus." 
 
 In this presence, and by the recent grave which 
 should enclose, if possible, all painful and unavail- 
 ing memories, it does not become me, nor have I 
 the desire, to speak of the past in its political and 
 sectional aspects. But it does become me, and I 
 hold it to be my sacred duty, — a duty which he 
 would have faithfully performed for me, — to see 
 that no nettles shall be planted on his grave. We 
 bury our dead, but they are not forgotten, nor 
 shall their tombs be dishonored. 
 
 We can recall — shall we ever forget it ? — 
 those memorable discourses of the Bishop, which 
 spoke with trumpet-tongue through this land, re- 
 viving the hearts of the fearful and desponding, 
 reminding the people of God's wonders in the 
 olden time, telling them how that "out of the 
 eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came 
 forth sweetness." Those glowing prophecies, 
 conceived in as sublime faith as ever inspired the 
 seers of old, were not fulfilled in the form in which 
 they appeared to his own rapt vision. Far-seeing 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 217 
 
 as man may be, God sees farther still. Great and 
 far-reaching as may be the plans of man, they fall 
 short of the Divine plan. God alone is great and 
 wise and good. Poor, narrow, short-sighted man ! 
 
 — he lives in his little world, of which he and his 
 loved ideas constitute the centre. Is it wonderful, 
 then, that man, the wisest man, should be doomed 
 to perpetual mistakes and disappointments ? We 
 propose for ourselves : God disposes for others 
 also. We plan for a part : He arranges for the 
 whole. The universe is the theatre of the Divine 
 plan, and eternity alone shall give scope to the 
 fulfilment of the vision. 
 
 Truth shall ultimately prevail, and wrong shall 
 be put down, and justice shall be vindicated, but 
 
 — and here is our common mistake — not accord- 
 ing to our desires and judgments and purposes. 
 Not in the forms which we have fashioned for 
 them, but in more glorious and abiding beauty 
 shall our buried hopes attain unto their resurrec- 
 tion. We believe in the resurrection of the dead, 
 but that body which we sow is not that body that 
 shall be; but God giveth it a body as it hath 
 pleased Him, and to every seed his own body. It 
 may be " sown in dishonor, it shall be raised in 
 glory." 
 
 These are the revelations from Heaven which 
 come to us as we stand by the graves of our loved 
 
2l8 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 ones, and bid us look up from the dust and dis- 
 honor, as it goes to earth and corruption, to those 
 glorious forms in which we shall greet them on 
 the morning of their resurrection. 
 
 It has been charged upon Bishop Elliott and 
 upon others, that they have at times over-stepped 
 the limits of their calling, and have brought into 
 the pulpit, themes other than those which are 
 given them in trust by their Master. It may be 
 so. I am not here to speak of my brother, or any 
 other sinful man, as faultless. One of the curses 
 of this day and generation is the fulsome and in- 
 discriminate eulogy which is poured forth in obit- 
 uaries and funeral discourses. No wonder that 
 the world looks upon our humbling confessions of 
 guilt and unworthiness as cant and hypocrisy, 
 when so much of perfection is claimed for the 
 living and the dead. Bishops are fashioned out 
 of men. Earthen vessels are they, to whom a 
 heavenly treasure is intrusted. More than human 
 would they have been, if under that tremendous 
 pressure of feeling, the recollection of which, even 
 now at times, causes a tightening of the chest, their 
 thoughts had not sometimes overflowed in strong 
 and resistless expression. The good Bishop was 
 not more than human. Indeed, it was his human- 
 ness that constituted his peculiar charm, and at- 
 tracted to him all our hearts. 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 219 
 
 There is a something, less than human, which 
 will never offend after this manner. There is a 
 cold-blooded indifference, which cannot be roused 
 in holy indignation, and it may pass for great 
 moderation ; there is a time-serving timidity which 
 shrinks from the consequences of a deed of daring, 
 and it may pass for great prudence ; there is a 
 calculating policy which gauges all questions by 
 the standard of profit and loss, and it will pass for 
 great sagacity. Men of this stamp can go through 
 the fire unharmed, because there is no material in 
 them to be kindled. These are the less than 
 human. . 
 
 Bishop Elliott was not a man of a timid and 
 calculating nature. He had been reared in the 
 school of honor, whose teachings, when subli- 
 mated by the grace of God, impel men to dare all 
 consequences in the assertion and maintenance of 
 the right. He bad not been his father's son, he 
 had been recreant to his whole race, if, in a ques- 
 tion of sentiment and principle, he had paused to 
 calculate the consequences by any standard of 
 earthly profit. It is this spirit — travestied in 
 the code of worldly honor — which inspired the 
 noble army of martyrs, and made them to rejoice 
 that they were counted worthy to suffer shame 
 and death for a cause which they honored and 
 espoused. 
 
220 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 When men such as these fall into error, it is 
 after their own manner, and in the line of their 
 own nature. They are incapable of meanness, 
 cowardice, and treachery ; but when their indigna- 
 tion is aroused, they are prone to overflow the 
 bounds of moderation. Errors of this kind are 
 wont to be found in connection with generous 
 and impassioned temperaments. These are the 
 infirmities which God knoweth, and, as a Father, 
 pitieth ; and, blessed be His holy name, when re- 
 pented of, are, with sins of a deeper dye, washed 
 away in the most precious blood of Christ, and 
 remembered no more forever. 
 
 But there is something more that must be said 
 in this connection. It happens, oftentimes, that 
 questions of morals and religion are so closely 
 interwoven with political ideas and events, that 
 it is very difficult, if not quite impossible, to 
 handle the one without touching the other. Es- 
 pecially is this the case when moral ideas seize 
 upon the reins of power, and become aggressive 
 and coercive. 
 
 Bishop Elliott had imbibed strong and distinct 
 political ideas. They were a portion of his in- 
 heritance ; they were the traditions of his race 
 and of his house ; they mingled in his nurture, 
 and he held them with all the strength of his 
 strong nature. Of these I shall not further 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 221 
 
 speak : they belong not to this occasion, nor to 
 the purpose of this discourse. But there was an 
 element mingled with the recent conflict, not 
 only of a political and social character, but one 
 involving a great question of morals, and possess- 
 ing a deep philanthropic and religious interest. 
 
 In these Southern States, there was to be found 
 a race of people distinct in color and in social 
 position from the ruling race. This amiable and 
 docile people grew up with us in our houses, were 
 our playmates in childhood, and became, in after- 
 life, our trusted friends and dependants. 
 
 Into the secret of that tender bond, which 
 united the two races, a stranger cannot enter. 
 This people became gradually Christianized. 
 Their habits of subordination to their earthly 
 master inclined them to an easier submission to 
 the will of God. Their obedience, once inwrought, 
 naturally went forth to every object of reverence 
 and authority. It would be difficult for any one 
 to recall the instance of an infidel among them, 
 and their submission to the will of Heaven was 
 proverbial. All this sprang naturally from 
 
 " The ingrained instinct of old reverence, 
 The holy habit of obediency." 
 
 As the influences of Christianity continued to 
 extend among the masters, the relation between 
 
222 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 them and their servants became less and less 
 mercenary, and more and more patriarchal. It 
 may be safely affirmed that there lived not upon 
 the face of the earth a class of people, occupying 
 the social position of our slaves, who were better 
 cared for, and better remunerated for their labor. 
 The Southern system had solved the most diffi- 
 cult question in political economy. To feed and 
 clothe well the laborer ; to take care of the chil- 
 dren, the aged, and the sick ; to prevent pauper- 
 ism ; to diminish blindness, muteness, and lunacy, 
 those sure indications of physical deterioration ; 
 and to insure the steady growth of population, — 
 has been a task too great for the political econo- 
 mist. It will not need to take the testimony of 
 Southern people upon this point. The dominant 
 party in this country do now declare — whether 
 rightly or not, I am not now considering — that 
 this race, just now emancipated, is not only en- 
 titled to all the privileges, but capable of dis- 
 charging all the duties, of American citizenship ; 
 and yet the ancestors of this people, a few years 
 ago, were heathen savages in the wilds of Africa. 
 What Christian mission, in the same space of 
 time, has accomplished the same results for any 
 heathen nation, that have been wrought out for 
 this people in their connection with Southern 
 influence, at Southern firesides ? 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 22$ 
 
 Bishop Elliott was the type of the best South- 
 ern men in all his relations to this unhappy 
 race. Understanding, as none but a Southern 
 man brought up with them can understand, their 
 childlike helplessness and dependence, and believ- 
 ing that the maintenance of existing relations 
 was necessary to their continued existence and 
 well-being as a people, for time and eternity, he 
 took his stand by their side, and strove with all 
 his might to avert what he deemed their ruin, 
 and became the impassioned advocate of their 
 cause. He who cannot understand what I am 
 now saying, cannot comprehend the man of whom 
 I am speaking. 
 
 I do not desire to be understood as now dis- 
 cussing the merits of this vexed question in any 
 form. It is practically settled, and it is to the 
 interest of all that it should not be disturbed. 
 But I am here to see that the memory of a great 
 and good Bishop is vindicated, and that his promi- 
 nence, in what appeared to him the cause of 
 humanity and religion, should never be con- 
 founded with the notoriety of those men who dis- 
 cuss party politics when they should preach Jesus 
 Christ. I do proclaim, and will forever maintain, 
 that the motives of Bishop Elliott and of kindred 
 spirits, in their efforts to perpetuate, at least for 
 a while, the relation of master and servant, were 
 
224 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 noble, patriotic, unselfish, and Christian. He 
 foresaw, or thought he foresaw, — which is the 
 same thing, so far as the motive is involved, — 
 that the sudden disruption of the bond between 
 him and the people he loved and cared for, would 
 surely tend to their gradual deterioration and to 
 their ultimate extinction. He felt that it would 
 be a frightful wrong ; and he rose up like a giant 
 in all his strength, and said, virtually, "This must 
 not be ; and, God being my helper, this shall not 
 be." He may have been mistaken, for it is human 
 to err. If he was, it was his infirmity, and not 
 his fault. His whole life presents a clear record 
 in regard to that people to whom he was bound 
 by a thousand ties of affection, and by the ten- 
 derest remembrances of mutual service. 
 
 He cared for them in every way, and sought to 
 bring to them all the elevating and consoling 
 truths of the Holy Gospel. His labors were 
 richly blessed. He saw them gathering by hun- 
 dreds under the wings of the Church, and becom- 
 ing partakers with him of the same altar ; and his 
 affectionate nature was gladdened by the specta- 
 cle. When the downfall came, he sorrowed most 
 of all for the poor, unhappy beings, who, suddenly 
 and by an unlooked-for providence, had been 
 bereft of their wonted guardianship, and con- 
 signed to what seemed a hopeless orphanage. 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 225 
 
 Even then he ceased not to love and care for 
 them. Hear how he speaks in his last address 
 to his sons of the clergy : " Love must go along 
 with it " (the work of the Church for them) ; 
 " gratitude for their past services ; memories of 
 our infancy and childhood ; thoughts of the glory 
 which will accrue to us, when we shall lead these 
 people, once our servants, but not now as ser- 
 vants, but above servants, as brethren beloved, 
 and present them to Christ as our offering of 
 repentance for what we may have failed to fulfil 
 in the past of our trust." 
 
 But Bishop Elliott's position was peculiarly 
 prominent in the ecclesiastical movements which 
 took place upon the outbreak of civil war. Hap- 
 pily, under the protection of God's good provi- 
 dence, our branch of the Church in the United 
 States had kept herself aloof from the agitation 
 of all sectional and political questions ; and her 
 legislation, the natural outgrowth of her spirit, 
 had been uniformly church-like and catholic. 
 The earthly alloy of political ideas, which had 
 disintegrated the various denominational bodies, 
 had never entered into her legislative halls. The 
 General Convention, which met in Richmond in 
 1859, w iU l° n £ b e remembered for the Christian 
 charity and harmony which marked all its deliber- 
 ations. It was composed of clergymen and lay- 
 
226 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 men from every section of the country ; and yet 
 when the first overt act of fanatical aggression 
 took place on the northern boundary of the State 
 of Virginia, in whose capital they were assembled, 
 the event, which shook the whole country to its 
 centre, did not stir a ripple upon the surface of 
 debate. The whole movement, therefore, of the 
 Southern dioceses, looking to a separate organiza- 
 tion, was the result of a sheer physical necessity, 
 as if an abyss had suddenly yawned between the 
 two sections. We mark the recognition of this 
 fact in the letter of the Bishops, which summoned 
 the Southern dioceses to meet, by their deputies, 
 in the city of Montgomery. This letter, signed 
 by Bishops Polk and Elliott, the senior bishops of 
 the then seceded States, distinctly states that 
 " this necessity (for a convention of the Southern 
 dioceses) does not arise out of any dissension 
 which has occurred within the Church itself, not 
 out of any dissatisfaction with either the doctrine 
 or discipline of the Church. We rejoice to record 
 the fact that we are to-day, as Churchmen, as truly 
 brethren as we have ever been, and that no deed 
 has been done, nor word uttered, which leaves a 
 single wound rankling in the breast. We are 
 still one in faith, in purpose, and in hope ; but 
 political changes, forced upon us by a stern neces- 
 sity, have occurred, which have placed our dio- 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 22*J 
 
 ceses in a position requiring consultation as to 
 our future ecclesiastical relations." 
 
 In pursuance of this call, deputies from some 
 of the Southern dioceses met together, first at 
 Montgomery, held an adjourned session in the en- 
 suing autumn at Columbia, and there framed the 
 constitution and canons which subsequently be- 
 came the laws of the " General Council of the 
 Church in the Southern States." In all the pre- 
 liminary proceedings, Bishop Elliott took a leading 
 part, and showed himself a master of assemblies. 
 It is pleasing now to recall the exquisite tact with 
 which he guided the deliberations of the house to 
 the end proposed ; how patient he was of opposi- 
 tion, how respectful he was to the opinions of 
 others, how easy to compromise in matters indif- 
 ferent, and how unbending and intensely in ear- 
 nest when asserting the truth and right. It is 
 difficult to conceive any thing finer than his whole 
 bearing. It has left upon the mind the impres- 
 sion that is left by a beautiful dream, — alas, too 
 soon vanished ! When we look at the results- of 
 this legislation, we see but little to mark the dif- 
 ference between the constitution and canons of 
 the General Convention and those of the General 
 Council. But this was the important end attained, 
 — that there was so little of change effected, 
 where the opportunity for change was so bound- 
 
228 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 less. The result is given by Bishop Elliott him- 
 self, with characteristic felicity, in the Pastoral of 
 the General Council. " The Constitution is the 
 same as that of the Church from which we have 
 been providentially separated, save that we have 
 introduced into it a germ of expansion which was 
 wanting in the old Constitution." "The Canon 
 law is the same moderate, just, and equal body of 
 ecclesiastical law by which the Church has been 
 governed on this continent since her reception 
 from the Church of England of the treasures of 
 an Apostolic ministry and a liturgical form of wor- 
 ship." Upon the death of Bishop Meade, — that 
 true and brave old Bishop, whose very name is a 
 tower of strength, — Bishop Elliott became the 
 senior Bishop of the "General Council." The 
 Pastoral set forth at the first session of that body 
 was the production of his pen, and (in the lan- 
 guage of "The Church Journal") "in elevation of 
 tone, in dignity, force, and beauty of style, has 
 been surpassed by no Pastoral ever issued in this 
 country." The spirit which pervaded this Coun- 
 cil was the self-same spirit which presided in the 
 councils of the blessed Apostles, and they who 
 were permitted to take part in its deliberations 
 will ever fondly recur to its sessions as privileged 
 beyond the ordinary assemblies of men. There 
 was a Bishop at its head unto whom utterance had 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 229 
 
 been given ; and he sent forth to the world those 
 words of peace and good will which then sounded 
 so sweet amid the din of war, and are now so 
 precious to us, who are gathering together these 
 mementos of his worth and excellence. In his 
 own glowing words, "Our first duty, therefore, as 
 the children of God, is to send forth from this 
 Council our greetings of love to the Churches of 
 God all the world over. We greet them in Christ, 
 and rejoice that they are partakers with us of all 
 grace which is treasured up in Him. We lay down 
 to-day before the altar of the Crucified all our bur- 
 dens of sin, and offer our prayers for the Church 
 Militant upon earth. Whatever may be their 
 aspect towards us politically, we cannot forget 
 that they rejoice with us in the one Lord, the one 
 faith, the one baptism, the one God and Father of 
 all ; and we wish them God-speed in all the sacred 
 ministries of the Church. Nothing but love is 
 consonant with the exhibition of Christ's love 
 which is manifested to His Church ; and any note 
 of man's bitterness, except against sin, would be a 
 sound of discord mingling with the sweet harmo- 
 nies of earth and Heaven. We rejoice in this 
 golden cord, which binds us together in Christ our 
 Redeemer ; and like the ladder which Jacob saw 
 in a vision, with the angels of God ascending and 
 descending upon it, may it ever be the channel 
 
230 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 along which shall flash the Christian greetings of 
 the children of God ! " 
 
 The General Council no longer has an exist- 
 ence. It had fully accomplished its temporary 
 mission in holding compactly together for a 
 while the Southern dioceses, and in affording 
 scope for their mutual helpfulness. When the 
 results of war had fused the contending sections 
 into one nationality, and after the General Con- 
 vention had met and renewedly illustrated its tra- 
 ditional spirit, the General Council came together, 
 released the several dioceses from their pledges of 
 union, declared them free in good faith to renew 
 old relations, and adjourned with the general un- 
 derstanding that there were no longer any suffi- 
 cient grounds upon which a Churchman should 
 desire to maintain a separate organization. I 
 doubt if there is in history a more striking exem- 
 plification of the working of the true Church spirit 
 than is to be found in the records of the two 
 ecclesiastical bodies which met at Philadelphia 
 and Augusta in the autumn of 1865. 
 
 I dwell at this time upon this period in the his- 
 tory of the Church, because the life of Bishop 
 Elliott occupies a conspicuous place in the history 
 of the whole movement, and because there are 
 many who have misconceived, and in some in- 
 stances have misrepresented, the motives by 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 23 1 
 
 which he was actuated. He was one of the two 
 Bishops who called together the Southern dioceses 
 in council ; and he it was, who, at a later period, 
 set forth most emphatically the terms deemed 
 essential to re-union. The General Council had 
 performed certain acts, and those acts, he said, 
 must be ratified. They were so ratified. There 
 were no concessions made on either side, and none 
 were asked. There was no occasion for the dis- 
 play of magnanimity, in the ordinary acceptation 
 of the term. The course pursued by both parties 
 was sensible, right, and churchlike. The wound, 
 if there was any, healed, as in all healthy bodies 
 it will, by first intention. I have spoken with 
 confidence of Bishop Elliott's course and motives 
 during this period of his life, because I know 
 whereof I affirm, and because it was during this 
 period that I first made his intimate acquaintance. 
 We felt and thought and acted together. To- 
 gether we resolved to meet our brethren in Gen- 
 eral Council, and to be governed as circumstances 
 might direct — if it should seem best — to undo 
 our work with the same deliberation with which it 
 had been done, and with what we deemed to be a 
 due regard to the interests of all concerned. And 
 I may mention here, as illustrative of the Bishop's 
 character, that when, having all things in readi- 
 ness to declare the accession of his diocese to the 
 
232 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 General Convention, he found that the sister dio* 
 cese of Alabama was suffering from a military- 
 intrusion, he took no step until advised that the 
 intrusion had been withdrawn, and that the dio- 
 cese was free to act in concert with his own. So 
 true to nobleness were all his instincts. Some 
 zealous and overheated minds have expressed sur- 
 prise that Bishop Elliott and some others should 
 have consented to a re-union of the Church. But 
 they neither comprehended the man nor the spirit 
 of the Church. It had been an easy task for him 
 to have led a separate party, and he might thereby 
 have gained a transient popularity. But he had 
 higher aims. He loved the Church of God ; ay, 
 above his chief joy, he sought her peace and pros- 
 perity ; and with that sweep of vision and that 
 largeness of soul with which he was so richly en- 
 dowed, he saw that the prestige and strength of 
 the Church could only be preserved by her re- 
 union ; and at the proper time he spoke the 
 emphatic word which practically settled the ques- 
 tion. I doubt much if the moment of his highest 
 exaltation as a man and a Churchman was not the 
 moment, when, repressing all of personal feeling, 
 and yet yielding no conviction, and compromising 
 no principle, he stood forth and said virtually, "The 
 Church must close up her ranks. We are one in 
 faith and hope — there must be no division in the 
 body." 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 233 
 
 In referring to this action of Bishop Elliott, a 
 writer in " The Southern Churchman " (Rev. Dr. 
 Slaughter) most truthfully and eloquently said, — 
 " The whole South joins in the dirge over one 
 of her most splendid products — her champion 
 and her child, every pulse of whose large heart 
 did beat in sympathy with her in her weal and 
 woe. The whole Church should honor the mem- 
 ory of the man who wore the mitre so becomingly ; 
 'who was so pure in his vocation that his vir- 
 tues did plead his cause' like angels trumpet- 
 tongued ; the man who, though born and ripened 
 under a Southern sun, with all the fervor of a 
 Southern man's affections, instincts, and preju- 
 dices, at a critical moment hushed them into 
 silence, and came forward, and laid them upon the 
 altar of a bleeding Church to heal her wounds." 
 
 I met with Bishop Elliott for the last time at 
 the General Council in the autumn of 1865. 
 Great changes had taken place. His fondest 
 earthly hopes had been crushed, and his most san- 
 guine predictions had been unfulfilled. He bore 
 it all as became him. Strength and greatness 
 never seem so attractive as when chastened by 
 heavy affliction. Sorrow gives that softness of 
 coloring which the painter is wont to use in his 
 last touches when toning down the picture. There 
 was the same winning smile, the same loving rec- 
 
234 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 ognition, but withal, there was an undertone of 
 indescribable tenderness which bespoke a great 
 sorrow encountered and endured. The thought 
 prominent in his mind was duty to the Church ; 
 and he it was, who, in his closing address to the 
 Council, — never written, and, alas ! now no longer 
 to be recalled, — gave expression to it. " We 
 should ask" — thus ran the tenor of his discourse 
 — " not what will gratify our pride, and please the 
 world, but what the interests of the Church de- 
 mand, and what Christ would have us to do." 
 This selfsame spirit pervaded the action of the 
 General Convention, which had closed its session a 
 few weeks before at Philadelphia. 
 
 The blessed Spirit of God, the Holy Com- 
 forter, in answer to the prayers of the faithful, 
 was moving upon the heart of the Church, — deep 
 calling unto deep under the impulse of His mys- 
 terious power, — and the waters flowed together 
 as do the waves of the sea which a passing vessel 
 has for the moment parted asunder. 
 
 There is nothing upon this earth so beautiful as 
 the spectacle of an heroic soul struggling man- 
 fully with adversity, yielding at last to manifest 
 destiny, and bowing to the divine will in unques- 
 tioning submission. There are faithful men in 
 these latter days, who have illustrated their faith 
 by sacrifices greater even than that which the pa- 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 235 
 
 triarch Abraham was preparing to make upon the 
 mount. There are some things dearer to a man 
 than the life of his. child, and when sacrificed at 
 the divine command, through faith, are most pre- 
 cious offerings in the sight of Heaven. 
 
 It was one of my first thoughts, when I real- 
 ized that all was over, " How does Bishop Elliott 
 bear all this?" so long and so thoroughly identi- 
 fied had he been with that cause for which we 
 were hoping and struggling. He bore it all most 
 beautifully, as the permissive will of God without 
 which not even a sparrow falleth to the ground. 
 The faith which had waxed so strong in the time 
 of action, rose to sublimity in the hour of submis- 
 sion. Most worthily did his demeanor illustrate 
 the motto upon his official seal : " In utrumque 
 paratus agere et pati." Mysterious indeed to all 
 of us were the providences of that hour, but what 
 room for faith, if sight and reason had not alto- 
 gether failed ! It should be our delight to lose 
 ourselves in the depths of the divine mysteries, 
 because in the darkness and cloud God dwelleth, 
 and there His children find Him. Thanks be to 
 God that we have a Father so wise that we can- 
 not always comprehend His ways, and so good that 
 we can never distrust His love. 
 
 " Here bring your wounded hearts ; here tell your anguish; 
 Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal." 
 
236 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 Not by the power of reason do we solve divine 
 mysteries, and turn all our sadness into rejoicing, 
 but by the application of faith. "Even so, 
 Father : for so it seemed good in Thy sight." 
 
 I little thought when I parted from the bishop, 
 that I should see his face no more. His appear- 
 ance gave promise of long-continued life. Time 
 and suffering seemed to have made no serious 
 impression on his vigorous frame, and there was 
 no apparent abatement of his mental powers. 
 But one is never the same after passing under a 
 great pressure. The spring of life, when not 
 broken, is always weakened by the strain. The 
 grief which is denied outward expression, will flow 
 back upon the heart, and in time will break it. 
 He went about his work quietly and submissively, 
 with the earnest purpose to do what yet remained 
 to be done, but it was under circumstances of 
 peculiar painfulness to a spirit like his. The rude 
 tempest of war had swept through the bounds of 
 his diocese, from the mountains to the seashore. 
 He could not travel without seeing the marks of 
 its violence, not only upon the devastated fields 
 and burned cities, but upon dismantled and dese- 
 crated churches, "the abomination of desolation 
 standing where it ought not." From every quar- 
 ter of his diocese, from vacated churches and im- 
 poverished people, there came to him the cry for 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 237 
 
 aid and counsel ; and there was everywhere, too, 
 
 to be heard that saddest lament of all, the cry of 
 
 the orphan and the widow. To what straits the 
 
 Southern Bishops have been driven in attempting 
 
 to heed these cries, God and themselves only 
 
 know. Is it any wonder that the pressure has 
 
 proved too great for brain and heart ? 
 
 It seems to us as if the death of our beloved 
 
 Bishop had been premature, and that the tale of 
 
 life had been cut short before it was all told, and 
 
 a pity, too, when it was so beautiful in the telling. 
 
 But we must learn to measure life, not so much 
 
 by its length of continuance, as by the amount of 
 
 work accomplished. Men who work hard will 
 
 compress into threescore years what might have 
 
 been, with less intensity, extended over the allotted 
 
 threescore years and ten. It was enough that 
 
 his Master was satisfied with his day's work, and 
 
 that he was called to rest before the sun went 
 
 down. ,.,, . , 
 
 " No ominous hour 
 
 Knocks at his door with tidings of mishap ; 
 
 Far off is he, above desire and fear ; 
 
 No more submitted to the change and chance 
 
 Of the unsteady planets. Oh, 'tis well 
 
 With him ! but who knows what the coming hour, 
 
 Veiled in thick darkness, brings for us ? " 
 
 Amid all his trials he had enjoyed a large share 
 of life's blessings. He had been permitted to 
 
238 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 preach the unsearchable riches of the great Re- 
 deemer in Whom he trusted. He had received 
 honor from all honorable men. Earth, and Heaven 
 upon earth, confers no greater honor upon man 
 than to clothe him with the office of an ambassador 
 for Christ in the highest ministry of the Church. 
 He had lived to see his diocese grow up under his 
 administration, and becoming strong in all the 
 great centres, where men most do congregate. 
 He was spared to see his children grown up 
 around him, and the promises of God fulfilled 
 towards them. This life had lost many of its at- 
 tractions, and the gladdening dreams of youth had 
 all fled from him. A new order of affairs, alien 
 from his sympathies, was in progress around him. 
 The present condition of things was dark, and in 
 the future no rift in the clouds was discernible. 
 The little flocks of his servants, which he had 
 tended with a shepherd's care, had been scattered, 
 and came not, as of old, to his familiar call. The 
 companions of his childhood had left him, and the 
 trusted friends of his early manhood had nearly 
 all preceded him, and in the place of departed 
 spirits were waiting to welcome him. Life was 
 not what it had been to him — the same divine 
 mission indeed, the same call to duty, the same 
 struggle ; but it was a lone struggle. Meade, 
 Cobbs, Otey, Polk, Rutledge, — all had left him ; 
 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 239 
 
 and the heart of a loving man feels sadly the need 
 of loving hearts around him. Is it to be wondered 
 at that he was weary, and ready, like a tired child, 
 to lie down and rest ? In his own words, delivered 
 at the burial of his brother Cobbs, the late bishop 
 of Alabama, he exclaimed, — and what a grateful 
 significance his words have for us now ! — " Oh, the 
 sweetness of that word ' rest ! ' To cease from all 
 the weariness of life ; to be done with its cares, 
 its perplexities, its sorrows, its miseries ; to have 
 fought the good fight of faith, and ended the strug- 
 gle ; to have finished the work which God has 
 given us to do, and now to lie down and be at 
 peace." 
 
 All ended as he would have ordered it. Before 
 the years had come wherein men find no pleas- 
 ure ; while yet the keepers of the house trembled 
 not, nor those that looked out of the windows 
 were darkened ; in the full possession of all his 
 powers ; in the bosom of his family ; spared the 
 lingering sickness and the painful parting, — he 
 gave up the ghost, and was gathered to his 
 fathers. Wife and children gather around the 
 closing scene : hosts of friends crowd the pro- 
 cession, and even the stranger is borne unwit- 
 tingly along by the swelling throng. The loving 
 arms of beloved servants, whom he had so long 
 and lovingly borne upon his heart, bore his pre- 
 
24O REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 cious remains to their resting-place. Amid the 
 scenes so dear to him, by the banks of the gentle 
 Savannah, and under the skies which had looked 
 down upon his nativity ; upon the holy festival of 
 Christmas Day, amid anthems of Glory to God, 
 and Peace upon Earth, — he was laid in his place 
 of rest. It is very sad to us who are left behind, 
 but we have no tears of bitterness to shed for 
 ourselves when the gain to him is so incalculable. 
 " Even so, Father : for so it seemed good in Thy 
 sight." And for all Thy goodness and mercy to 
 this our friend, brother, father, " We praise Thee, 
 we bless Thee, we worship Thee, we glorify Thee, 
 we give thanks to Thee for Thy great glory, O 
 Lord God, Heavenly King, God the Father 
 Almighty ! " 
 
 Since writing the above, and preparing it for 
 the press, I have heard an incident so characteris- 
 tic of Bishop Elliott's nobleness of soul, that I 
 cannot refrain from recording and perpetuating it 
 in these " Reminiscences." 
 
 It has passed into history that the chief man 
 of the "Confederacy" was captured, and im- 
 prisoned in the Fortress of Monroe to await trial 
 for treason. That prison-life of Mr. Davis, with 
 all its needless horrors and humiliations, has left 
 a foul blot upon the history of that day. Those 
 
THE LATE BISHOP ELLIOTT OF GEORGIA. 
 
 241 
 
 months of solitary imprisonment; his feeble 
 body loaded with chains; that eye of the jailer 
 ever fixed upon the prisoner's every motion, even 
 in his devotions to the Most High, -what a pic- 
 ture of wanton insult ! We, Southern people, are 
 a forgiving people, for every true Southern man 
 felt himself insulted in the person of his repre- 
 sentative head. , A man can be imprisoned, tried 
 convicted, and executed, and yet not insulted! 
 The treatment of Jefferson Davis was a foul 
 wrong and we all felt it as a personal dishonor. 
 While the unhappy, but unsubdued, captive sat 
 there m his lonely cell and chains, -for a long 
 time forbidden to see even his priest, - Bishop 
 Elliott importuned the authorities to be allowed to 
 share the imprisonment of his chief -volunteered 
 to partake of all its horrors. Glorious Elliott 1 
 such men redeem the character of the human 
 race. Nor was the good Bishop alone in this 
 sentiment. The vast Fortress of Monroe was 
 all too small to enclose the crowd which would 
 have sprung forward to emulate his spirit. If such 
 men be traitors, I can only say,— 
 
 " Sit mea anima cum illis." 
 
 We of the South have not yet been schooled 
 to enroll John Brown among " The noble army of 
 martyrs." The roll of the South records the 
 
242 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 names of quite other men. With these we have 
 lived, and with these we hope to share eternity. 
 For one, I have no higher aspiration ; for my 
 posterity I ask of Heaven no richer boon. 
 
 REMINISCENCES OF THE RIGHT REV. NICHOLAS 
 HAMNER COBBS, D.D., 
 
 The First Bishop of the Diocese of Alabama, the "George Herbert" of 
 the Church in America, 
 
 This volume would be most incomplete unless 
 it contained some remembrance of one who had 
 been my intimate friend for a long period of my 
 life, and also my immediate predecessor in the 
 bishopric of Alabama. 
 
 I hardly know how to describe Bishop Cobbs ; 
 for he was a man, in some respects, altogether 
 unlike all other men whom I have known in char- 
 acter, and in the exercise of his holy office. We 
 have had many distinguished, learned, and elo- 
 quent men in the American Episcopate, but only 
 one Bishop Cobbs. He was the very impersona- 
 tion of some of the most striking qualities of a 
 Bishop. He looked the representative of his Lord 
 in the sweetness, gentleness, and humility of his 
 bearing towards his fellow-men. It required the 
 exercise of no great imaginative power to picture 
 him leaning on his Master's breast, and finding 
 all his strength and solace there. He looked as if 
 
 
A, k, 6*4t, 
 
RT. REV. NICHOLAS HAMNER COBBS, D.D. 243 
 
 one of the Apostles whom Christ had chosen to 
 follow Him in His solitary sojourn upon earth. I 
 remember now a remark of a good Methodist 
 brother, who had had some worrying controver- 
 sies about the "Apostolical Succession." I intro- 
 duced him to Bishop Cobbs on one occasion ; and 
 when the Bishop left us, my good brother turned 
 to me, and said, " I have no doubts on my mind 
 now, for I have seen the ' Apostolic Succession.' " 
 Above all other men was he an humble man : 
 alone of all other men, he embodied the spirit of 
 meekness. I have mingled much with my fellow- 
 men, and have observed them with much atten- 
 tion ; and I record here what I have often 
 remarked, " that Bishop Cobbs was the only real 
 meek man I ever knew." I have seen earnest 
 men, pious men, self-sacrificing men, very humble 
 
 men ; but I have only seen one very meek man, 
 
 a man who could take a slight or offence from 
 his fellow-men without exhibiting passion or re- 
 sentment. This is the rarest gem in the diadem 
 of saints, and it shone serenely on his brow. 
 
 I remember just now a very characteristic inci- 
 dent, illustrative of his spirit of meekness. The 
 Bishop, then Mr. Cobbs, was, at the time referred 
 to, the chaplain of the University of Virginia, — 
 the first chaplain that had ever ministered within 
 its walls. It will be remembered that the Univer- 
 
244 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 sity of Virginia, at its inception, did not officially 
 recognize Christianity as one of the forces which 
 should enter into the work of education. Indeed, 
 there was an atmosphere of infidelity about the 
 "Old Dominion" at that period, which poisoned 
 even the sources of knowledge. The University 
 was equipped by the diligence of Jefferson with 
 ,a11 that was most advanced in the schools of 
 learning, but Christ was not acknowledged there in 
 the presence of any ambassador. Under a very 
 peculiar train of events, which are well known, 
 and need not to be repeated here, Mr. Cobbs was 
 chosen to be the first chaplain. His modest and 
 retiring manner, his low estimate of his own abil- 
 ity, in which no one agreed with him, all seemed 
 to unfit him to cope with the spirit that held sway 
 at the University. But how little can men judge 
 of the spiritual forces which a man of God, im- 
 bued with the love of Christ, can bring to bear 
 upon the hearts of his fellow-men. His very 
 presence disarmed all opposition, and his simple 
 telling of the wondrous old story of the love of 
 Christ won many hearts for his dear Master. 
 
 But to the incident. He was dining out on one 
 occasion in the vicinity of the University. At 
 the table was one of the students, who amused 
 himself, and thought he was amusing others, by 
 jokes upon the clerical profession. Mr. Cobbs said 
 
RT. REV. NICHOLAS HAMNER COBBS, D.D. 245 
 
 not a word, and showed no sign of displeasure. 
 As the company were about to rise from the 
 table, he' went up to the young man, and, taking 
 his hand in a friendly manner, said, " My young 
 friend, I am greatly obliged to you for your ad- 
 monitions. We of the clergy seldom have the 
 privilege of having our faults told us so plainly, 
 and I trust that I shall profit by your discourse." 
 You may imagine the discomfiture of the youth. 
 He yielded him his homage on the spot, and 
 became, as did all the students and professors, his 
 devoted friend and admirer. 
 
 Is not this one of the manifold ways in which 
 the beatitude to "the meek" is fulfilled — "they 
 shall inherit the earth " ? What is there on the 
 earth so precious as the love and esteem of the 
 good ? what accumulation of earthly treasure can 
 be placed in the scale with the wealth of affection 
 which the good man lays up ? Indeed, I know not 
 which one of the beatitudes the good Bishop did 
 not have a share in. He was "pure in heart;" 
 he was a "peacemaker;" he "hungered and 
 thirsted after righteousness." What fulness of 
 joy and blessedness await the dear man on that day 
 when his Lord from His throne shall issue His 
 invitation, " Come, ye blessed of My Father ! " 
 His humility was as conspicuous as his meekness. 
 He loved to preach on the text, " Be ye clothed 
 
246 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 with humility." After having announced his 
 text, he might have sat down, for the people 
 had the sermon exemplified in full view before 
 them. 
 
 Mr. Cobbs was succeeded in the chaplaincy by 
 a man of rare talent for oratory. I asked one 
 of the professors how he liked the new chaplain. 
 His reply was, "Mr. Cobbs's presence in the pul- 
 pit is more eloquent to me than all the flashings 
 of oratory." 
 
 His sagacity was very remarkable, his intuitive 
 knowledge of men was profound, and his mode of 
 dealing with all varieties of character inimitable. 
 We were thrown much together in the early part 
 of my ministry, and we often held "associations" 
 together. When I had a particularly hard case to 
 deal with, I always invoked his aid — never, I 
 think, without success. I loved to watch the play 
 of his conversation, like that of a skilful angler. It 
 was a beautiful study. Christ had indeed made him 
 a "fisher of men." As to the dear women, they 
 ran into his open net. Ah ! how many hearts in 
 old Bedford County, the place of his birth and 
 earliest ministry ; in Petersburg, where he gathered 
 such a harvest of souls ; in Alabama, where he car- 
 ried warmth and light into every nook and corner 
 of the State, — how many hearts in all these fields 
 of labor do still beat with love and gratitude at 
 
RT. REV. NICHOLAS HAMNER CO BBS, D.D. 247 
 
 the sound of his name ! Such men never die, and 
 thus, too, "inherit the earth." 
 
 His administration of his diocese was, of course, 
 in perfect keeping with the man : he was the ser- 
 vant of servants, as was his dear Master, and 
 ready to lay down — as indeed he did — his life for 
 the flock. He gathered to him by elective affin- 
 ity, a ministry like-minded with himself, and made 
 the diocese of Alabama — what I trust it will ever 
 be — a haven of repose for those who seek rest 
 from the strife of faction and party. 
 
 He was a Churchman all through and through. 
 It seemed to saturate him : it breathed in his 
 breath, it spoke in his speech, it lived in his life. 
 He loved his "mother," as he was wont to call her, 
 and he spoke of her with a filial unction which can- 
 not be described. The dear Bishop Lay, whose 
 voice, alas ! is no longer heard, and whose pen 
 writes no more, gathered his inspiration at the feet 
 of Bishop Cobbs. Their mutual love and admira^ 
 tion are indescribable ; and, oh ! often have I jour- 
 neyed with them, and enjoyed their discourse and 
 mutual love. 1 
 
 With all this high appreciation of the Church, 
 — and he loved the Church because she was 
 Christ's, — he had a kind word and a kind thought 
 
 1 After the death of Bishop Cobbs, Bishop Lay published in the 
 Church Review a highly appreciative sketch of hiin. 
 
248 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 for all that named the Sacred Name. Indeed, he 
 seemed incapable of aught but love. 
 
 My own relations to him were peculiar, and our 
 intimacy very close, notwithstanding our very dif- 
 ferent temperaments. He often told me that the 
 first man who came to him after his ordination as 
 deacon, and threw his arms around him, and bade 
 him be of good cheer, was my father, and that his 
 heart went forth to every one that bore the name 
 of " Wilmer." It was in part for this reason, I 
 suppose, that I was called to take his place in 
 every position that he ever held in the Church. 
 (I only succeeded him in Bedford and Alabama.) 
 Thus have I ever been in his path, and have 
 learned to know his footprints. They have ever 
 pointed in the direction of duty. God grant me 
 some of the grace that guided and sanctified his 
 life. 
 
 His death was marked by a striking coinci- 
 dence. He loved his country, as became his loyal 
 heart. He saw the gathering of the storm of war 
 at his very door. He had loved the Union with a 
 deep devotion, as did all men of his class ; and the 
 idea of its dissolution was more than his frame, 
 enfeebled by long disease, could bear. At the 
 booming of the cannon which announced the sep- 
 aration of his State from the Union, his gentle 
 spirit took its flight. His tender heart could not 
 
RT. REV. NICHOLAS HAMNER COBBS, D.D. 249 
 
 have borne the horrors of that dreadful war, and 
 he was taken in out of the storm. 
 
 I would have dwelt longer upon the public life 
 and administration of Bishop Cobbs, if I had the 
 time and materials at hand. Most happily, the 
 Rev. Dr. Cushman has preserved the memorial 
 sermon ("The Israelite without Guile"), which, by 
 request of the diocese of Alabama, he preached 
 after the Bishop's death. The selection of the 
 preacher for the occasion was a very wise one ; for 
 the Doctor was fitted by culture, and capability of 
 appreciation, and by his ardent affection, to give us 
 the likeness of the first Bishop of Alabama. I 
 give the following extracts, and end this reminis- 
 cence with the Bishop's "parting words." 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM THE SERMON OP THE REV. DR. CUSHMAN. 
 
 "When was a subject more worthy of a tribute 
 than the man of God whose life and death we 
 now commemorate, the Israelite without guile ? 
 when one to whom could better be applied the 
 testimonies of inspiration to the perfection of the 
 saints ? Did Abraham talk with God on the plains 
 of Mamre, did Enoch walk with Him ? What was 
 their life, but like his, a life of holiness and 
 prayer ? Did the dying Jacob gather himself up 
 in his bed, and, leaning upon the top of his staff, 
 bless his children ? Suffer us, a moment, to un- 
 

 250 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 veil the sacred secrets of yonder chamber of death. 
 There lay the aged father and Bishop, his frame 
 wasted, his strength exhausted, by months of 
 painful suffering and disease. Already had he 
 entered into the dark valley and shadow of death. 
 But he could not die without once more beholding 
 the children of his love : with them, and with the 
 wife of his youth, he must break the sacramental 
 bread. They are gathered from far, — his daugh- 
 ters, his sons, his sons-in-law, and their wives 
 with them. In a kind providence, no living child 
 was missing. Together they knelt around that 
 sacred bed, together they all partook of that last 
 sacrament, — all save one, whose tender years pre- 
 cluded ; and when, leaning upon his elbow, the 
 aged father raised his attenuated hand, and in- 
 voked the blessing of Heaven, the peace of God, 
 which passeth all understanding, fell sweetly 
 upon his own soul. He realized the truth of the 
 promise that the righteous should not be forsaken, 
 and that his seed should not in vain beg their 
 bread, — the bread of heaven ; and, with gushing 
 tears of thankful joy, he could exclaim, 'Behold, 
 Lord, here am I, and those that thou hast given 
 me.' It was a scene which might well remind us 
 of dying patriarchs. Not afar off did he resemble 
 those elder saints. Like David, a man after God's 
 own heart ; like Daniel, a man of prayer ; like 
 
RT. REV. NICHOLAS HAMNER COBBS, D.D. 25 1 
 
 Nathaniel, an Israelite without guile ; like St. 
 John, full of tenderness and love ; like St. Ste- 
 phen, a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost, 
 and of faith, he might well have feared the woe, 
 denounced by our Lord when all men speak well 
 of thee, had not, as in the case of the prophet, 
 occasion been taken to find fault with him con- 
 cerning the Lord his God. He contended val- 
 iantly for Christ, and won the universal meed of 
 praise. He contended no less for the Church, 
 the body of Christ ; and he, who never had in his 
 heart a thought of party enmity and strife, in- 
 curred partisan censure and reproach. 
 
 " He was a man of God from his youth ; and the 
 whole course of his life did but develop and ma- 
 ture those natural germs of character which were 
 made perfect by grace. As in the sainted Gris- 
 wold, it was difficult to say in him where nature 
 ended and where grace began, so happily were 
 they combined : and if he was thought ever to set 
 an undue value upon the baptism and catechetical 
 instruction of the Church, it was because he felt 
 himself so much their debtor ; because, like Tim- 
 othy, by his mother and grandmother he had 
 been early trained in wisdom's ways. The. seeds 
 were thus implanted which in after-years pro- 
 duced so abundant a harvest of good to himself 
 and the Church. Impressions were thus made 
 
252 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 which no adverse influences ever impaired or de- 
 stroyed. It was to these two facts, — his baptism 
 and his catechetical training, — that he himself 
 attributed, under God, his life as a Christian min- 
 ister and bishop. 
 
 " Bishop Cobbs was never a man to make a dis- 
 play of his reading and learning. His ambition 
 never ran in that direction ; but to his friends, to 
 those who were admitted to his familiar converse, 
 and to whom he brought out treasures new and 
 old, he appeared, as he truly was, not only a 
 Christian bishop, but a scholar and a learned 
 divine. His zeal and industry atoned for his want 
 of early opportunities ; and in the classics, in 
 English theology, in Church history, and in pa- 
 tristic lore, he was no mean proficient. Never 
 man rated higher the value of learning, no one 
 labored more to raise its drooping standard in our 
 land. If, in these later days, he was the earnest 
 and unfailing advocate of our own great Univer- 
 sity of the South, it was because he saw in it the 
 realization of his hopes and dreams ; because 
 there he believed the twin-sisters, Religion and 
 Learning, were to walk hand in hand, until they 
 attained such fulness of stature as the world had 
 not yet seen. 
 
 " It was amid such toil and such recreation, a 
 
 
RT. REV. NICHOLAS HAMNER COBBS, D.D. 2$$ 
 
 teacher by day, and a painful student by night, 
 that Bishop Cobbs passed his earliest years. 
 Soon he found pressing upon him the great ques- 
 tion of his vocation in life. From early youth, 
 influences alien to the Church had surrounded 
 him. The Church herself, in her depressed con- 
 dition, cast down, but not destroyed, could offer 
 but little inducement to a worldly mind : for am- 
 bition, she had no glittering prize. To share her 
 lot, to take part in her ministry, was to share her 
 poverty and reproach. To lead such a forlorn 
 hope required no little heroism. The question, 
 however, was soon settled. If there was ever a 
 doubt in his mind, which we neither affirm nor 
 deny, it was determined without long debate for 
 the faith in which he had been baptized, for the 
 Church in Virginia, which, however fallen and 
 decayed, was still the Church of Christ. In 1824 
 we find him at Staunton, applying to be admitted 
 to the holy order of deacons. He had yet to be 
 confirmed, and partake of his first communion : 
 but once before, we believe, had he witnessed the 
 service of the Church. Such, however, was his 
 spotless character, such the testimonials he bore 
 from neighbors and friends, such the necessities 
 of the Church in Virginia, — the very application 
 was the best proof of the sincere and self-denying 
 piety of the applicant, — that all technical consid- 
 
254 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 erations were overruled. He was ordained deacon 
 by the Right Rev. Bishop Moore, in Trinity Church, 
 Staunton, May 23, 1824, and the same day was 
 confirmed, and for the first time communed. 
 
 " It was during these laborious years of paro- 
 chial life that those conservative and sound views 
 of the Church, in the profession of which Bishop 
 Cobbs afterwards lived and died, were developed 
 and matured. He had imbibed them from the 
 fountain-head, from the great exponents of the 
 English Church, and from the Word of God. 
 The adverse influences which surrounded him 
 had, it may be, for a while kept them in abeyance ; 
 and it was not until the experience of parish life 
 had taught him that the truest practice can only 
 be combined with the truest theory, that they 
 assumed their normal place in his mind and heart. 
 To preach Christ was his first duty, as it was his 
 chief pleasure ; to preach the Church was a duty 
 no less. They were parts of one whole ; and the 
 question did not, could not, rise in his mind which 
 of the two he should forbear to press. His office 
 was to proclaim the whole counsel of God. It 
 was not only duty : even in Bedford, he believed 
 it policy. In the field of labor in which God 
 had placed him, amid the diversities of heresy 
 and schism, with multiplying sects on every 
 
RT. REV. NICHOLAS HAMNER CO BBS, D.D. 255 
 
 side, necessity constrained him to set forth plainly 
 and distinctly the Divine origin and Apostolic 
 claims of 'the sect everywhere spoken against.' 
 
 "The trumpet, we think, gives no uncertain 
 sound. These views so announced, his views 
 upon the sacraments, and especially upon baptis- 
 mal regeneration, in the belief of which he stood 
 side by side with Bishop Moore ; his thorough re- 
 ception of the doctrine of the Apostolic Succession ; 
 his later attempts at Petersburg to revive the long 
 disused holy days of the Church ; his acknowledged 
 teachings in the pulpit and in private, — furnish all 
 the proof we need, that, as a Churchman, he was 
 an Israelite without guile. Bishop Cobbs was 
 never one to stir up controversy and strife. In 
 his unaffected humility, in his gentleness, and love 
 of peace, he never, unnecessarily, obtruded ad- 
 verse opinions upon the attention of others. He 
 was not a man of positive assertions ; he rather 
 hinted than expressed a difference ; he dwelt in 
 social converse upon points of harmony and union. 
 To some, he might seem to waver and to yield, 
 when no rock was firmer. It was so in all things. 
 In all his intercourse with his clergy, in his Epis- 
 copal addresses, in converse with a vain student, 
 an aged servant, a brother Bishop, the same char- 
 acteristic appears, the same Christian modesty 
 
256 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 spake from his tongue. Dogmatism was no ele- 
 ment of his character. When other men affirmed, 
 he perhaps would speak by interrogation ; but his 
 question implied no less certainty than their sol- 
 emn oaths. He was not arrogant, opinionative, 
 positive ; but he was firm and decided. Let prin- 
 ciple be involved, and no appliances could move 
 him. We repeat, the trumpet gave no uncertain 
 sound. The views of the Church, and of her 
 doctrines, learned by painful study in the Word of 
 God and the Book of Prayer, and confirmed by 
 the experience of a parish priest, which had grad- 
 ually and surely matured in the earlier years of 
 his ministry, were the rule of his life, as they 
 were among his chief consolations in death. 
 
 "But the time had come when Bishop Cobbs 
 must bid farewell to his first, perhaps his best- 
 loved, field of labor. He must turn his back upon 
 those Peaks of Otter, in whose shadow, as he was 
 born, so he had hoped to live and die. There he 
 had passed his early years, there he had labored, 
 and seen the fruits of his labor : where once were 
 none, a hundred communicants now kneeled. He 
 had twined himself around the hearts of that peo- 
 ple with cords of love that no change of time or 
 circumstance could sunder. With spontaneous 
 affection, they loved him in word and deed ; and 
 
RT. REV. NICHOLAS HAMNER CO BBS, D.D. 257 
 
 a farm of two thousand dollars' value was, in 
 part, their thank-offering for the sacrifices he had 
 made. His very presence brought to them com- 
 fort and joy and protection, and they felt safer for 
 seeing the man of God pass daily by. It was the 
 Divine will they must give him up, but it could 
 only be with streaming eyes and breaking hearts. 
 Their love could know no diminution. Other 
 men might occupy : it was still his parish. To 
 them always the Bishop of Alabama was the 
 Priest of Bedford. What a scene was that when 
 he visited the home of his nativity, a Bishop in 
 the Church of God ; when he laid his hands, first 
 upon the eldest daughter of his heart and love, 
 now, we trust, a saint in heaven, and then upon 
 the aged father, who had waited thus long for the 
 consolation of Israel. It was a time of mingled 
 sorrow and joy. The young men wept ; the strong 
 men bowed themselves ; the mothers and daugh- 
 ters in Israel would have gladly given themselves 
 to him, who had sacrificed so much for them. 
 Our own eyes fill with tears, the pen falls from 
 our hand ; and we can only say, ' If he was much 
 worthy, Bedford loved much.' 
 
 " Bishop Cobbs had served for fifteen years in 
 the General Convention of the Church as one of 
 the clerical deputies from the Diocese of Virginia. 
 
258 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 In 1 841, members of the Church, emigrants to 
 Texas, then an independent republic, had applied 
 to the Church in the United States to send them 
 a Bishop. It was a post of very great responsi- 
 bility and importance. The House of Bishops, 
 zealous ever for the extension of the Church, were 
 forward to comply with the request ; and Bishop 
 Cobbs was by them nominated as a suitable per- 
 son to enter upon that great field. From motives 
 of policy and expediency, the House of Clerical 
 and Lay Deputies declined to unite in the prelimi- 
 nary action of the House of Bishops ; and, to his 
 great relief and joy, the name of Bishop Cobbs 
 was not sent down to them for confirmation. 
 Pending that matter, he underwent much trouble 
 and distress lest the stern mandate of duty should 
 call him, in the acceptance of that post, to the 
 .sacrifice, as it would then have been, of his native 
 land. His nomination was in every way honor- 
 able ; but such was his shrinking modesty and 
 self-abnegation, that to members of his own im- 
 mediate family, singular as it may seem, the 
 knowledge of it has only come from other sources 
 since his death. He was never the trumpeter of 
 his own fame. 
 
 "It was in 1843 tnat Mr. — now, by creation of 
 Hobart College, Geneva, N.Y., Dr. — Cobbs took 
 charge of St. Paul's Church, Cincinnati. He had 
 
RT. REV. NICHOLAS HAMNER CO BBS, D.D. 2$g 
 
 hardly entered upon his duties there, when the 
 Church in Indiana hastened to ratify the indorse- 
 ment of the House of Bishops of his suitableness 
 to be a Bishop in the Church of Christ. He was 
 elected to that office by the clergy, and only a 
 doubt of his acceptance of the position prevented 
 the concurrence of the laity. Thus, happily, he 
 was reserved for us ; and in May, 1844, at Greens- 
 borough, the Church in Alabama, by unanimous 
 vote of her clergy and laity, invited Dr. Cobbs to 
 her episcopate. 
 
 " He accepted the providential call, was conse- 
 crated in Philadelphia, Oct. 20, 1844, and in the 
 month of November had already entered upon 
 his work, his great venture of faith. 
 
 " We notice first and foremost the extraordinary 
 hold Bishop Cobbs had upon the affections of his 
 people ; the wonderful union and harmony which 
 characterized all orders and degrees of men under 
 his jurisdiction. As he went through his diocese, 
 everywhere preaching the gospel, as well by his 
 presence as his words, he won his way to all 
 hearts. He intuitively inspired, not only respect, 
 but confidence and love, as well out of as in the 
 Church. ' That is a good man, a sincere Chris- 
 tian man,' was the one, universal voice. In his 
 
260 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 presence, before his lowly piety, wickedness itself 
 stood abashed ; and those who feared not God, nor 
 regarded man, respected him. Without compro- 
 mising a principle, he acquired the good will of 
 all ; and when he approached, contentions for 
 modes of faith died away in silence. It was ever 
 in his mind that his mission was, if possible, to 
 live peaceably with all men. Ministers of an alien 
 faith were his friends in life ; they stood at his 
 bedside to learn how a Christian Bishop died ; they 
 paid to his lifeless remains the last offices of 
 friendship and love. Look to his writings, listen 
 to his words, and he spared not to proclaim what 
 he believed to be the counsel of God ; but he 
 made no enemies, either to the truth or to himself, 
 because he spake the truth in love. 
 
 " But it was in the Church that our Bishop found 
 the strongest, and to him the dearest, proofs of 
 love. In the sixteen years of his episcopate, con- 
 fidence in him never for a moment wavered, but 
 grew stronger and stronger until the day of his 
 death. His diocese stood around him as one man 
 and one heart. Never was a bishop who had a 
 stronger hold upon his clergy and laity, — it was 
 a revered father and loving children, — never was 
 a diocese more happily united. His will was ours : 
 his slightest wish was to us imperative as law. 
 His rule, which we never felt, was absolute, at the 
 
RT. REV. NICHOLAS HAMNER COBBS, D.D. 2 6l 
 
 very time we sighed, that he would not rule. 
 This, perhaps, was one of the secrets of his great 
 influence : what he would not seek was freely 
 given to him. Most remarkable was the proof of 
 our perfect trust in him, -a proof without prece- 
 dent in the whole history of our confederate 
 Church, -when two years ago, by a formal vote 
 of our Convention, as unanimous as his election 
 was, the entire control of our Diocesan Missions 
 was confided to his hands. It was a confidence 
 which the Church of the diocese nobly indorsed 
 the same year by doubling its contributions It 
 was then we passed the formal vote ; but that vote 
 was only the recorded expression of what had 
 been, from the beginning, our practice. It gave 
 him no powers which he had not, by general ap- 
 probation and consent, always exercised. 
 
 "Bishop Cobbs, in accepting the Episcopate of 
 Alabama, did not underrate the difficulties he 
 would have to encounter and overcome He 
 counted the cost before he began to build, and 
 realized that it was a venture of faith. In large 
 portions of the diocese, the Church was altogether 
 unknown ; in other parts, the strongest and most 
 unfounded prejudices existed against her. Her 
 doctrines were not understood : her practice was 
 misrepresented. She was, they said, a cold, for- 
 
262 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 mal, dead Church, having but a name to live, with 
 the form of godliness, but not the power. That 
 ignorance was to be enlightened : that prejudice 
 must be lived down, and overcome. Before the 
 Church in Alabama could have any real growth, 
 or acquire any real strength, it must prove its 
 claims to the respect of men. It must show by 
 living example, as well as by precept, that it was 
 possible for a Christian man to live within its pale. 
 Upon that one point, all her future depended. 
 How admirably Bishop Cobbs worked out that 
 theorem, — how, in his own person, he demon- 
 strated that truth, and so laid the foundation of 
 future success, — we all know. It was for him to 
 prepare the soil, and sow the seed : to him we owe 
 the harvest already reaped, and shall owe, in great 
 part at least, that which is still to come. Like 
 the Apostle, 'in journeyings often,' in protracted 
 absence from home, in wearisome waiting upon 
 our water-courses, in heat and cold, over roads to 
 which even courtesy could scarce give the name, 
 by labors that might well have exhausted more 
 rugged men, he penetrated into every part of his 
 large diocese, and carried with him the gospel and 
 the Church. Says Bishop Elliott, ' He was one of 
 the holiest men I ever met." He so wrought that 
 all Alabama met him, and indorsed the truth ; and 
 under its influence the diocese grew and flourished. 
 
RT. REV. NICHOLAS HAMNER COBBS, D.D. 263 
 
 " Bishop Cobbs was not what Latimer would 
 call 'an unpreaching prelate.' He magnified that 
 part of his office. It was to him an ordinance of 
 the gospel, and he was never so much at home as 
 when in the pulpit. After a weary journey, it 
 was rest to him, at night, to proclaim to a hand- 
 ful, or to a gathered multitude, the unsearchable 
 riches of Christ. His preaching was plain, simple, 
 and direct. He sought no aid of ornament, he 
 indulged in no flights of fancy, he made no vain dis- 
 play of learning. He preached Christ, not himself ; 
 and not himself preached Christ, but the Church 
 through him. No one knew this distinction better 
 than he, who was often heard to say, that the 
 preacher in the Church of Christ was no mere 
 man of thirty, or threescore, but a man hoary 
 with eighteen hundred years. With a plain, Saxon 
 style, which was all his own, — a style toned down 
 by severe discipline from that ornate exuberance 
 of metaphor and ornament which characterized 
 his earlier productions, when poetry and song 
 guided his pen, and warmed his heart, — with a 
 peculiar delivery, he never failed to arrest atten- 
 tion, and to reach the heart. There have been 
 few preachers more effective. If not an orator in 
 the popular sense, he had one of the best elements 
 of oratory. His sermons were realities : he be- 
 lieved what he said. Every word and tone and 
 
264 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 gesture bore the impress of sincerity. His ser- 
 mons were brief, confined generally to a single 
 point ; and at their close, — it is the truest test of 
 merit, — his hearers thought not of the speaker, 
 but of themselves and their sins. They turned 
 away, ever with the purpose of repentance and 
 amendment in their hearts, and with its expres- 
 sion upon their lips. He captivated, not their in- 
 tellects, but their hearts : and out of the stores of 
 his large experience the Christian was edified and 
 instructed, and the sinful persuaded, and eager 
 multitudes hung upon his words ; for he spake to 
 them with the eloquence of sincerity and truth, 
 and with the power of God. 
 
 "Bishop Cobbs was not a man ambitious of 
 authorship : he shrank from observation with a 
 woman's timidity. Apart from his episcopal ad- 
 dresses, his appearances before the public were 
 most rare :. some seven occasional sermons make 
 up the tale. In nearly every such case, his words 
 sank deep into the Christian heart, and in the 
 form of tracts have been widely circulated, some 
 of them in many editions. They were plain, 
 pointed, practical, the fruit of ripened wisdom 
 and long experience, and of that rare quality, 
 common sense, which he possessed in an eminent 
 degree. The same remark will apply to his ad- 
 dresses to his convention. There was not a word 
 
RT. REV. NICHOLAS HAMNER COBBS, D.D. 26$ 
 
 in them for display, no circumlocution, no sound- 
 ing phrase. He seldom travelled beyond the 
 record : he spake for Alabama, not for the world. 
 A brief detail of his official acts, — brief, the 
 better to conceal his immense amount of work, — 
 a few plain, practical suggestions touching the 
 interests of the diocese, and the analysis is com- 
 plete. There was no exordium, no peroration, 
 very seldom such a digression, as when his heart 
 broke out into that eloquent tribute to the mem- 
 ory of that 'great-hearted shepherd,' Bishop 
 Doane. But upon what concerned his diocese, 
 what would promote its interests, we had line 
 upon line : here he never wearied. His warnings 
 to his clergy against pseudo-catholicity, against 
 the errors of Rome and Geneva, against all inno- 
 vations upon the ancient usages of the Church ; 
 his exhortations to combine in our preaching 
 ' Evangelic truth with Apostolic order,' to set 
 forth, side by side, as cardinal truths, the doctrine 
 of justification by faith, and the importance of the 
 sacraments and offices of the Church — the body 
 and soul of Christ's religion, as he termed them 
 — to proclaim everywhere, and at all times, Christ 
 and His Church, — these still ring in our ears : 
 may their influence never die in our hearts ! Our 
 Diocesan Missions, the subject of his last as of 
 his first address to us ; our Diocesan School ; 
 
266 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 the Religious Instruction of Servants, which 
 had been the life-long subject of his interest; 
 the Catechetical Training of Children ; the Widow 
 and Orphan's Society ; the Endowment of the 
 Episcopate ; the due Support of the Clergy, — 
 these were the themes upon which he dwelt, 
 themes to him ever new, because ever interesting, 
 because upon them our growth as a Church and 
 diocese depended. 
 
 "No notice of Bishop Cobbs could do him jus- 
 tice that omitted the fact that he was a man given 
 to hospitality. In him, it was a virtue in excess. 
 There was ever a seat at his table for the stranger 
 and the friend : in his house, guests were never 
 wanting. It was thronged from all parts of the 
 diocese, we might say from all parts of the land. 
 He lived to make others happy, and was never 
 himself so happy as when his bounteous board 
 was crowded with many friends. With his genial 
 spirit and kindly heart, — for in his religion, 
 there was nothing forbidding or morose, — he 
 entered into their feelings, and especially of the 
 young, and made, as well as shared, their pleas- 
 ure ; and a day at the Bishop's was always a day 
 of joy. 
 
 " His charity was as unbounded as his hospital- 
 ity. It was not in his heart to resist any appeal of 
 distress ; and with the poor he would have shared 
 
RT. REV. NICHOLAS HAMMER COBBS, D.D. 267 
 
 his last penny, and his last morsel of bread. 
 There was but one measure to his generosity, — 
 the limit of his means and power. While the 
 barrel of meal wasted not, and the cruse of oil 
 did not fail, whole families of the poor lived upon 
 his bounty ; and if his resources were like to be 
 exhausted, he would quietly turn away the word 
 of caution from a friend with 'Jehovah Jireh,' 
 — the Lord will provide. 
 
 "The success of the administration of his dio- 
 cese by Bishop Cobbs was answerable to his great 
 qualities. He found it weak, a Church with no 
 popular prestige, an unsettled and rapidly chan- 
 ging clergy. In the Convention that elected him, 
 but eight clerical names appear on the roll as en- 
 titled to a vote and seat. He left it united, vigor- 
 ous, and growing rapidly in numbers and in 
 strength. An endowed episcopate ; a Widow 
 and Orphan's Society, whose vested funds will 
 compare favorably with those of like societies in 
 the older and wealthier dioceses ; a flourishing 
 Diocesan School ; the parishes more than doubled ; 
 the clergy and communicants quadrupled ; the alms 
 and oblations many-fold increased ; a vigorous sys- 
 tem of missions, — these are facts that make his 
 monument, and speak his praise. He was not 
 only a good, but a successful, Bishop, even as the 
 world counts success, by actual results. He was 
 
268 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 however, a pioneer : his time and labor were spent 
 in laying broad and deep foundations, and not 
 upon the visible walls of the temple. How he 
 labored, what success he achieved, is hidden still 
 in the womb of time ; but as long as the Church 
 in Alabama shall have any existence, she will reap 
 the fruit of the toils and prayers of her first-loved 
 Bishop, and her children's children shall rise up 
 to call him blessed." 
 
 THE FABEWELL MESSAGE TO THE CLERGY OP THE PROTESTANT 
 EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE DIOCESE OF ALABAMA. 
 
 "First of all, give to each and every one of 
 them, individually, my love and my blessing; 
 and tell them, that as during my whole episco- 
 pate it has been my earnest purpose and con- 
 stant endeavor to be, and to show myself to be, 
 the personal friend and helper of every clergy- 
 man in my diocese, so now I have them all still 
 in my heart. 
 
 " As to my religious belief, tell them, that, by 
 God's grace, I shall die in the faith in which I 
 have lived, and which I have endeavored to 
 preach. I have been called a 'Puseyite,' a 'High 
 Churchman,' and the like. Tell them I dislike 
 party names, and loathe party lines in the Church 
 of Christ ; but next to Christ, who is the Head, 
 I love the Church, which is His Body, with 
 
RT. REV. NICHOLAS HAMNER COBBS, D.D. 269 
 
 my whole heart. I have attached, and do still 
 attach, great importance to her offices and sacra- 
 ments ; and I believe in 'Baptismal Regenera- 
 tion,' and 'Apostolic Succession,' as firmly as 
 I do any of the fundamental doctrines of the 
 Gospel ; but I am not conscious that I have 
 ever preached any thing but ' Jesus Christ 
 and Him Crucified ; ' and now, in this solemn 
 hour, reviewing my ministry, I cannot recall a 
 single sentiment, either in my sermons or my 
 pastoral addresses, which I desire erased or 
 changed. 
 
 "As to my hope of justification with God, 
 tell them that 'This is a faithful saying, and 
 worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came 
 into the world to save sinners' I have been 
 called ' a good man,' ' a kind man,' from my youth 
 up. I do not say whether justly or otherwise. 
 I have tried to show kindness and sympathy to 
 all, especially to the poor, to the afflicted, and 
 to the bereaved ; and I am certain that I do 
 not now bear malice, or cherish unkind feelings, 
 towards anybody on the face of the whole earth. 
 But if I have done any kind deeds or any good 
 works, I am sure I make no merit of them, but 
 cast them all behind my back, and nauseate them, 
 and spit upon them ' as filthy rags ; ' and, count- 
 ing myself 'an unprofitable servant,' I look only 
 
270 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 ' unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith,' 
 and say, 
 
 ' In my hand no price I bring, 
 Simply to Thy cross I cling.' 
 
 " As to my present state of mind, tell them I 
 heartily thank God for this sickness. I know- 
 not yet what is to be the issue. I have no will 
 nor wish in the matter. 
 
 ' Nor life nor death I crave,' 
 
 but simply to do, to bear, to suffer, and to glorify 
 the will of God. This is my sentiment now, and 
 it is the sentiment with which I hope to die. 
 
 " And with my farewell blessing upon them, 
 upon their families, upon their parishes, and upon 
 my whole diocese, tell them that their dying 
 Bishop exhorts them to strive to be men of God : 
 — men of peace, men of brotherly-kindness, men 
 of charity ; self-denying men, men of purity, men 
 of prayer ; men striving to ' perfect holiness in 
 the fear of God,' and laboring and preaching with 
 an eye single to His glory and the salvation of 
 souls." 
 
CONCL US I ON. 2 7 1 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 If this book be read by any who hold opposite 
 opinions, it will, I doubt not, be the subject of 
 criticism, and I do not at all deprecate it. If 
 there be any view herein presented that is con- 
 trary to the truth, let it perish under rebuke. 
 
 By some it will be condemned as calculated to 
 stir up memories of events that should pass into 
 oblivion. Others will say that it does not become 
 an ambassador of the " Prince of Peace " to 
 awaken such memories. To all which, I give for 
 answer, that the proclamation of truth will always 
 arouse the opposition of error, and the enforce- 
 ment of right will always provoke the antagonism 
 of wrong. All history teaches that no truth has 
 ever gained footing in this evil world save by 
 putting down error, and no right has ever been 
 established save by combating and overthrowing 
 wrong. 
 
 This book is " dedicated to the Cause and Main- 
 tenance of Truth, Right, and Peace." Truth first, 
 then Peace. There is a peace which results from 
 the triumph of brute force. This is not the peace 
 
272 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 that should reign among the children of " our 
 Father." 
 
 If this, our country, shall ever be fully equipped 
 for her grand mission upon earth, it will only be 
 when mutual respect shall prevail, and when the 
 great principles upon which the late war was 
 waged shall be thoroughly studied, and clearly 
 understood. This cannot be unless every man in 
 his sphere, and from his own stand-point, shall 
 speak out fearlessly, and with more deference to 
 truth than to policy. A peace which is not 
 founded upon mutual respect is an insult on the 
 part of the one section of our country, and a dis- 
 honor to the other. 
 
 If I did not believe in my heart that the publi- 
 cation of these reminiscences and memoirs would 
 in the end — so far as they have any force — pro- 
 mote the interests of peace, by demonstration of 
 the truth, I would turn these pages into ashes. 
 
 It is not sufficient to say — as is commonly 
 said — that " the trouble is now all over, and the 
 country is one and undivided : let us bury in the 
 grave all disturbing memories." This is all very 
 well for the capitalist and the politician. Un- 
 happily, their vocations are not much disturbed 
 by sentiment. There were great moral questions 
 involved in the late conflict. Great men and 
 good men went into the contest with clear heads, 
 
CONCLUSION. 273 
 
 warm hearts, and tender consciences, and they 
 have come out of it with the same heads, hearts, 
 and consciences. Have we nothing to learn 
 from such a struggle ? Has no truth been estab- 
 lished ? Is there no moral to such a drama ? 
 Was it a fight among brute beasts, that must be 
 " clean forgotten and out of mind " ? 
 
 Yes, we have one undivided country. For one, 
 I thank God for it. I have never doubted that 
 the restoration of the Union was a great necessity 
 for the welfare of our country. Man plans for the 
 hour: the Almighty Creator plans for the ages. 
 But the recognition of this fact does not at all 
 affect the right or the wrong of the case, moral 
 or political, which is involved in this vast question 
 under review. It is only one of the innumerable 
 examples which history affords of the marvellous 
 wisdom and goodness of Divine Providence, which 
 is ever bringing good out of evil — causing even 
 the wrath of men and the malice of Satan to bring 
 blessings to the children of men. An enemy 
 may thrust me through with a sword, designing 
 my destruction. Instead of striking a vital point 
 in my body, he pierces, we will suppose, a malig- 
 nant tumor, which has long been an unknown 
 cause of pain and sickness. His thrust gives me 
 renewed life, but he intended my death. I thank 
 a kind Providence which brought good to me out 
 
274 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 of intended evil. I do not feel any special thank- 
 fulness to my enemy. Take an illustration on a 
 larger scale. It was a day of blessing to the 
 brethren of Joseph when, under the pinchings of 
 hunger, they found corn in the land of Egypt, 
 and their brother in the seat of authority. The 
 people of Israel were delivered out of much 
 tribulation. I do not suppose that the brethren 
 of Joseph laid claim to any great merit for having 
 sold him into captivity. Their iniquity, I take it, 
 was none the less for the mighty good which 
 Providence wrought out of their evil. These 
 familiar examples illustrate the great principle, 
 " Fortuna non mutat genus," which, freely trans- 
 lated, may read thus : " The fortunate issue 
 of an enterprise does not change its quality or 
 kind." But the great mass of people disturb 
 themselves very little about the morale of their 
 deeds, provided they are successful. 
 
 Then, again, as to the question of propriety and 
 decorum on the part of an ambassador of the 
 Prince of Peace in treating of themes which may 
 possibly excite debate and resentment, I have this 
 to answer, — that, personally, the judgment of man 
 has no weight with me. "He that judgeth me is 
 the Lord." Speaking for myself officially, as an 
 ambassador of the Prince of Peace, I have this to 
 say, — that, in all that I have written, I have not 
 
CONCLUSION. 275 
 
 been unmindful of the fact that I stand in this re- 
 lation both to man and the Chief Bishop. He, my 
 Chief, has given me the keynote to my " Reminis- 
 cences." I read His proclamation, " I came not to 
 send peace upon earth, but a sword." He who 
 does not know how to interpret this grand and far- 
 reaching truth may be a sincere Christian, and ear- 
 nest follower of his Lord, but I don't think that he 
 can carry the standard of his Prince into the con- 
 flict for great principles. For myself, I should be 
 unwilling to bring out a .book (and this is my first 
 and probably last book) which all men would ap- 
 prove, and none would antagonize. There are not 
 only questions of constitutional principle, but deep 
 questions of morals, involved in the matters treated 
 of herein. I was a slaveholder, and an ardent 
 patriot from the Southern point of view. As such, 
 I have nothing to repent of, and nothing to retract. 
 I tried to do my full duty in both of these rela- 
 tions. I have no quarrel with any man, who, from 
 his point of view, considers me, in one of these rela- 
 tions, a violator of pure morality, and, in the other, 
 a rebel against the government. But, whilst I 
 have no quarrel with such a one, I cannot under- 
 stand how he can pardon my sin without some 
 manifestation of penitence on my part. Treason 
 is a great crime, and a traitor should be hung. 
 How can any one who considers me a traitor fra- 
 
276 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 ternize with me, and condone such an offence ? 
 Does it not become an ambassador of Christ (and 
 because he represents Christ) to purge himself 
 from the charge of treason by showing justifica- 
 tion of his deeds and thoughts ? 
 
 These are the questions which justify me (speak- 
 ing as a minister of Christ, and for the ministry 
 of Christ in the South) in setting forth in unam- 
 biguous language what I believe in all conscience 
 to be the truth. Should the views expressed in 
 this volume tend in any measure to bring out the 
 truth and the right of the cause which I am vindi- 
 cating, then is my design accomplished, and I 
 shall hail the peace resulting therefrom as an hon- 
 orable and enduring peace, — a peace founded in 
 truth and righteousness. 
 
 And now, my children, for whose special behoof 
 I have penned these lines, I have but a word 
 more to say. I have treated of difficult and deli- 
 cate themes. I have used all my endeavors to 
 treat every point with entire candor and fidelity 
 to truth. I am a fallible man, and may possibly 
 have erred in many things treated of. Coming 
 generations must pass judgment upon all our pres- 
 ent decisions, and may reverse them all. Should 
 you, in a clearer light than has been vouchsafed to 
 me, reach a conclusion different from mine, then, 
 in the name of Truth, Right, and Peace, cling to 
 
conclusion: 277 
 
 your own convictions, ever looking up to the 
 Fountain of all Truth, "The Father of lights," 
 and asking for wisdom to perceive, and strength 
 to maintain, all that you ought to think and to do. 
 
 I have mused over this subject many years. 
 " Whilst musing, the fire has burned ; " and at the 
 last I have spoken — God grant — the truth. In 
 naught have I extenuated, nor have I set down 
 aught in malice. 
 
 And in full mindfulness of human frailty and 
 folly, I make mine own the language of St. 
 Augustine, — 
 
 " O Domine Dens, quczctmque dixi de Tuo, ag- 
 noscant, et Tui ; si qua de Meo, et Tu ignosce, et 
 Tuir 
 
278 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 MANLINESS. 
 
 At the commencement of this volume, I quoted 
 the words of King David to his son Solomon, 
 " Be thou strong therefore, and shew thyself a 
 man." 
 
 I do not know any closing words which would 
 be so apposite as those which tell you what it is 
 to be a man, and what it is to show one's self a man. 
 
 My publisher writes me that he is preparing for 
 a second edition of my "Reminiscences," and 
 informs me that I now have an opportunity of 
 adding to them. Since reading the book in print, 
 much has occurred to me which I would like to 
 add in the way of elaboration and illustration. A 
 press of other duties renders this impossible. I 
 cannot, however, forego the opportunity afforded, 
 of giving expression to some thoughts upon a 
 question of vast practical importance to the young 
 men of the coming generation, — " What consti- 
 tutes true manliness ? " 
 
 The ideal of manliness which each one forms to 
 himself, will depend upon the degree of intellect- 
 ual and moral elevation to which he may have 
 
MANLINESS. 279 
 
 attained. To the mind of the savage, the suc- 
 cessful hunter or the daring warrior presents the 
 highest type of manliness. He is the savage lord, 
 and rules his tribe by dint of a strong arm, and 
 takes leadership as a lion among lions. Hence 
 the names by which the savage chief is called, — 
 " The Lynx-Eyed," the " Swift of Foot," the 
 "Wolf of the Prairie," the "Sitting Bull," etc. 
 Such are the names which give expression to the 
 savage idea of manliness, — names which link him 
 in with the brute, whom he would fain emulate in 
 swiftness, fierceness, and force. 
 
 Now, take up your histories of people who have 
 emerged from a state of barbarism, and you meet 
 with names of leaders of men which give expres- 
 sion to higher ideas of greatness and excellence, — 
 " the Wise," " the Good," and " the Just." Always 
 you may mark the elevation of a people by the 
 titles of those to whom they pay highest honor. 
 There is an immense stride from the " Sitting 
 Bull " to Aristides "the Just." 
 
 If we come into what we call civilized life, and 
 begin our observation low down in the strata of 
 society, in the atmosphere of saloons and gaming- 
 tables, you will find the successful pugilist the 
 manliest in the ring : muscle, wind, and pluck 
 crown the victor, and encircle him with the girdle 
 of honor. Here, in such atmosphere, grow up the 
 
280 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 boys, who, with open-mouthed admiration, are 
 learning their lesson of manliness, — to " swear like 
 men," "fight like men," and "take their liquor 
 like men." 
 
 Now, come up from these dregs, which lie at 
 the bottom of all our social life, — where riot and 
 debauchery and brute force reign supreme, — and 
 look into a more advanced, but still unregener- 
 ate, condition of society. What, in popular esti- 
 mation, is it, to show one's self a man ? Is he 
 esteemed manliest, who, like his Maker, is long- 
 suffering, forbearing, and forgiving ? or is it he 
 who maintains the so-called point of honor to the 
 last extremity, who will sacrifice every law, human 
 and divine, to his heated passions, or the demands 
 of a vicious public opinion, and vindicate his man- 
 hood by trampling under foot the law of God ? 
 See how this spirit flames out in our children 
 scarcely fledged ! See how, in their childish 
 brawls, they foreshadow their ideas of a coming 
 manliness ! 
 
 We are not following the leadings of a sickly 
 sentimentalism in setting forth a standard of 
 higher manliness. Where must we look, to find 
 the most exalted type of humanity ? Who was the 
 noblest of the sons of men ? There is but One. 
 He stands alone, unapproachable and incompar- 
 able. In His presence the most unblushing infi- 
 
 
MANLINESS. 28 1 
 
 delity stands admiring, if not adoring — Him the 
 Incarnate Word, dwelling among men in the same 
 fleshly tabernacle, environed by the same atmos- 
 phere, and encompassed by the same temptations. 
 He who does not feel the supreme necessity of 
 the presence of such an one on earth, not only to 
 reveal God to men, but also to make manifest the 
 ideal man, has learned but little in regard to 
 perfecting his own nature, and comprehends but 
 little of man's greatest needs. I am not now 
 talking to you of theology and creeds. I am 
 speaking of the Man of history, the Man of every 
 age, — the Christ. 
 
 Take the greatest man of his era, — the Csesar 
 Augustus, who ruled the then known world. The 
 chief distinction of that illustrious emperor — all 
 that now survives of his memory — is the fact of 
 history, that, while he reigned, Christ was born. 
 His only fame now is that of the manger and vil- 
 lage of Bethlehem, — they indicating the place 
 where, he the time when, Christ was born. They 
 all — prince, village, and manger — serve alike but 
 as landmarks in the track of time, to indicate the 
 beginnings of that kingdom of which there shall 
 be no end. Without prestige of birth, and with 
 "nowhere to lay His head," of obscure life and 
 ignominious death, followed by disciples of no re- 
 pute, He yet gave birth to a new era in time ; and, 
 
282 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 among civilized peoples, the centuries do now date 
 from His nativity. We cannot discourse of men, 
 and leave out of view the Son of man. As well 
 speak of mountains, and fail to note that which 
 stands loftiest : as well speak of the solar system, 
 and take no note of the sun. 
 
 Men may say what they will of creeds and sys- 
 tems of theology and philosophy. They may 
 deny Deity, and deify matter ; but they cannot 
 blot out from history, nor dislodge from the hearts 
 of men, the Christ of history, — Him "the Son of 
 man ! " No wonder, that, at the inauguration 
 of His mission, the heavens were opened, and a 
 voice from the " Excellent Glory " proclaimed, 
 "This is My beloved Son." Had the heavens 
 been silent, the very stones must have cried 
 out. 
 
 There was a deep necessity for the advent of 
 such a Man. The Divine image in men had been 
 defaced, almost obliterated. There were still upon 
 earth the men strong to think, strong to work, 
 strong to fight ; but where could you look to find 
 the man who realized in his own life the Divine 
 Image, — the God-mirroring man ? 
 
 I cannot dwell at length upon that wonderful 
 life of Christ's on earth, and show, as I would love 
 to show, how strong He was to do good, and how 
 strong to resist evil ; how sublimely forgetful of 
 
MANLINESS. 283 
 
 self, and how self-sacrificing in His care for 
 others. I touch a single feature of that wondrous 
 character, — His forbearance under provocation 
 and reproach. I single out this particular feature 
 of the manliness of Christ, because it is just here 
 that His example stands out in most striking 
 contrast with the maxims of the world and the 
 passions of men. For, advanced as we may be in 
 morals and self-government, society is as yet at an 
 immeasurable distance from the precepts and ex- 
 ample of the Son of man. True it is that we do 
 not, except in our Territories and new settlements, 
 decide questions of title to land, etc., by the strong 
 hand ; but an unregulated public opinion still con- 
 dones, if it does not justify, the appeal to arms in 
 the duel or street-brawl. Still is it true to a 
 lamentable extent, that men are called upon to 
 " show themselves men," and vindicate their man- 
 liness, by the exhibition of brute force. 
 
 The duel is passing away before the advance of 
 Christian civilization, — chiefly, I fear, because of 
 the political disabilities which a participation in 
 it involves ; but there is springing up in its place 
 the street-brawl, in which men find satisfaction 
 for their angry passions. The daily record of 
 these bloody encounters is a blot upon the civili- 
 zation, not to say the Christianity, of the age. 
 The duel had a touch of chivalry, and originally 
 
284 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 of piety, in its character; for, in olden times, it 
 was an appeal to God "to show the right." The 
 modern street-brawl is an unmitigated shame. 
 The rules of ancient chivalry allowed that a com- 
 bat might honorably terminate by the presence, 
 on the field, of a lady, a priest, or the king, — the 
 presence of the latter representing the supremacy 
 of Law. Is the omnipresence of the King of 
 kings no reality to one who has sworn fealty to 
 that Sovereign ? 
 
 Whence comes that imperious law which holds 
 our men to such a fearful issue ; which compels 
 them, as I have often known, to stifle the best 
 feelings of their hearts, to insult the majesty of 
 human law, and to put their sacrilegious hands 
 upon that prerogative which God Himself pro- 
 claims, "is Mine" ? If I know whence it is, it 
 must be because men imagine that their honor — 
 their manliness — is involved. Is this indeed so? 
 Waive all consideration of the reason, the good- 
 citizenship, the piety of it, if possible, does manli- 
 ness require it ? By what rule shall we try this 
 question ? Which way shall we go to find it ? 
 Shall we go upward, and regard man after that 
 Divine likeness in which he was made ? or shall 
 we go downward, and seek in the resemblance 
 which he bears to the lower creation, the source 
 of that unruled passion which impels him, upon 
 
MANLINESS. 285 
 
 every provocation, to resort to brute force in 
 deadly combat ? 
 
 Here we find it, — low down in the unreasoning 
 passion and brute instinct which locks the beasts 
 of the field in deadly conflict ; in the venomous 
 reptile, which strikes its fang into whatever 
 crosses its path or purpose ; in the savage state, 
 where one's manliness is measured by his unre- 
 lenting hate to an enemy, and his manly prowess 
 by the number of scalps that hang on the walls of 
 his wigwam. 
 
 The young Arab — so the story goes — begins 
 to attain the stature of a man. At the accepted 
 time, his father taunts him with being "a woman." 
 The young savage understands too well that he is 
 now called upon to "show himself a man." All 
 the brute within him is stirred. He takes the 
 instrument of death, waits until the shades of 
 night have fallen, and prowls about the tent of 
 some hereditary foe. When his practised ear 
 catches the breathing of assured sleep, he leaps 
 the enclosure, puts his weapon to head or heart : 
 a sure thrust or firm pull makes him " a man ! " 
 Next morning his tribe greets him " a man ; " 
 woman will smile upon him now, and listen to his 
 vows (has she ceased even now to smile upon such 
 men ? ) ; and he takes his first degree in a savage 
 manliness. 
 
286 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 We have gone low down in the scale of crea- 
 tion : let us go upward, and see how this matter 
 looks from another and higher stand-point. 
 
 More than eighteen centuries ago, there was a 
 child born in an obscure village of the East. A 
 wonderful lineage was His — conceived by the 
 Holy Ghost, and born of a virgin mother. As He 
 grew in stature, He grew in wisdom, and in favor 
 with God and man. When He was anointed for 
 His holy mission, God the Father sealed Him. 
 The Divine Spirit descended upon Him in the 
 form of a dove. He came as the Prince of peace 
 to a world in revolt. Lest the symbol of the dove 
 should fail to herald His mission, there came a 
 voice from the "Excellent Glory," and made 
 proclamation, " This is My beloved Son, in whom 
 I am well pleased." 
 
 What was the manliness of Him who was thus 
 ushered into the world in the form and with the 
 nature of man ? Surely we may learn something 
 from One with whom the Heavenly Father was 
 "well pleased." When He was reviled, He re- 
 viled not again : when He suffered, He threatened 
 not. Any man can revile again, when reviled ; 
 but how sublime the forbearance which would 
 rather save than destroy an enemy ! 
 
 When He was at last hunted down by those 
 who would drown in death the voice they could 
 
MANLINESS. 28? 
 
 not answer, there was one act of private ven- 
 geance, — a follower of His smote a servant of the 
 high priest, and cut off his ear. The crowd 
 around thought, doubtless, that there was one 
 manly man among the disciples ; and yet this very 
 man, a few moments later, denied his Master at 
 the taunt of a girl. Christ bore it all ; told His 
 follower to put up his sword ; stretched forth His 
 hand, and healed the wounded servant ; lifted up 
 His voice in prayer for His murderers ; in His 
 sublime pity sought an argument for them, — 
 " Father, forgive them : they know not what they 
 do." 
 
 We gaze upon this sublime compassion as it 
 merges into the Infinite pity, and the conviction 
 becomes overwhelming that this Son of man was 
 no creation of men's imagining. The mind can- 
 not conceive of that which it has no experience, 
 and for which it has no analogy. The old mythol- 
 ogies create for us men and women like ourselves, 
 with all our little prides and passions. We greet 
 the Christ with an adoring wonder. At infinite 
 distance we strive to follow Him. We would 
 fain sit at His sacred feet, and strive, in our poor 
 way, to be like Him. He is the true man, " Ecce 
 Homo!" 
 
 Now go with me from the lowest grade of 
 human nature, — the savage in his war-paint, 
 
288 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 nursing his hate as a virtue ; having no word for 
 forgiveness, because not knowing what it is. 
 Trace this nature as it emerges from the barba- 
 rous into the Christian life (and there are men 
 who fear God, and love their fellow-men) : trace it 
 through all its gradations of excellence until you 
 reach the Son of man, the " lost Image " of God 
 the Father, and say, " What is it to show one's 
 self a man ?" 
 
 But men will plead — what will they plead ? 
 The necessity of self-defence ; the needful limita- 
 tions of forbearance, where it ceases to be a vir- 
 tue ; the weakness of resolve, and the irresistible 
 force of public opinion. Yes, I am not insensible 
 to the force of such appeals. I know too well 
 what human weakness, under strong temptation, 
 may allow a man to do. But, whatever may be 
 our imperfections, let us not lower the perfection 
 of the Christian standard. Plead, then, what- 
 ever you will, of human imperfection, for not 
 being as you ought to be in the way of forbear- 
 ance, but take care that you plead not manliness. 
 For the sake of Him, the manliest, — the Man that 
 would not hurt His fellow-men, but would die, and 
 did die, to do them good, — do not plead manliness ! 
 If I have wronged another, it is manly in me to 
 confess and repair the wrong. He is not a true 
 man who will not confess his fault. If another 
 
MANLINESS. 289 
 
 has wronged me, it is more than common manli- 
 ness — it is almost divine — to forgive. 
 
 The life of Christ was not a long life, — thirty- 
 years of household duty, three of public ministra- 
 tion. Learn, then, this great truth, — that the 
 value of life must be reckoned, not only by its 
 length, but by its depth and breadth ; as I have 
 before said, "not only by its extent, but by its 
 intent." 
 
 .He accumulated no earthly treasure, but He 
 has left us heirs of all things. 
 
 He gained no fame in His day, and yet 
 He founded a kingdom which shall know no 
 end. 
 
 His own people rejected Him, and yet gener- 
 ation after generation rise up and call Him 
 blessed. 
 
 No tongue, save that of a malefactor, confessed 
 Him when He died ; and yet now, myriads of all 
 tongues and climes and ages do bow at the men- 
 tion of His name. 
 
 The moral, then, of the whole, my children, — 
 and with this I close the volume, — is this : Give 
 not much heed to the opinions or judgments of 
 the present hour. A supreme tribunal will re- 
 view present decisions, and mayhap will reverse 
 them. 
 
 The moral of the whole is this : That is the 
 
29O REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 longest life which in its aims and achievements 
 reaches the farthest ; and that is the manliest life 
 which is the most self-sacrificing and unselfish. 
 
 That is the life of Christ, the Way, the Truth, 
 and the Life. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Letters of John Stewart referred to in the "Reminiscences." 
 
 " Richmond, Va., July 27, 1858. 
 
 "My dear Friend, — Have you accepted any place 
 yet? " (I had several invitations before me at the time.) 
 " I hope not, for I have a plan for your consideration and 
 prayer. It has been long in my head -, but I have waited 
 for the removal of obstacles, which Providence has now 
 done. It embraces country-life, farm-employment, plenty 
 of work in God's vineyard in building up a church, and a 
 support while it is going on in its infancy or weakness 
 — given in such a way as not to come in conflict with 
 your entire independence as a gentleman or a minister, 
 or to weaken your hold upon the affection of your con- 
 gregation. 
 
 " Details are for conference, not for a letter. All I can 
 say is, while I am conscious of some selfishness in wish- 
 ing you for my pastor, yet, as far as I know myself, my 
 main desire is to show my love and gratitude to Him 
 who has done so much for me by bringing His blessed 
 gospel to be preached to the poor black and white 
 around me. 
 
 " To insure any chance of success, it is necessary, that, 
 outwardly, I should not be too prominent, but, while you 
 
 291 
 
292 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER. 
 
 give yourself to your high and sacred duties, it would be 
 my business to see that your support was secured, and 
 secured in such a way that I would not be known in it, 
 and that I could not change it if I would. 
 
 "Think over this, and do not hastily throw it aside. 
 If after spreading it, like King Hezekiah, before the Lord, 
 asking and obtaining His counsel, you decide against 
 it, I shall bow to His decision, waiting upon Him to 
 make my path clear. 
 
 " I feel now, in every day of idleness or postponement, 
 as if I were one of those ' wicked and slothful servants ' 
 whose fate I wish to shun." 
 
 Again, under date of 30th of July, he writes 
 thus : — 
 
 " I have just had the pleasure of reading your letter 
 hurriedly in this place of business. I write that I was 
 necessarily vague as to details, for in their adjustment my 
 mind would be very elastic to suit all the circumstances 
 which might arise. 
 
 " The main thought is this, — that here am I in the 
 midst of a poor heathenized, or rapidly becoming so, pop- 
 ulation, white and black ; with material all around far more 
 promising to human eye for the formation of an endur- 
 ing church than in three-fourths of the recently formed 
 country-churches in Virginia; that the natural process 
 being for the gospel to leaven parts adjacent, radiating 
 from the towns as centres until finally it overspreads 
 the length and breadth of the land, why should it not do 
 
APPENDIX. 293 
 
 so, or begin to do so, in the neighborhood of Richmond ? 
 I see no reason why it should not be, that, with the 
 proper man, — that is, with love to Christ, and, with 
 Christ, for human souls, with energy, and what is called tact 
 and good sense, good feeling, and a good way of showing 
 all things, so as to draw and touch that strangely compli- 
 cated machine, the human heart, — we may not ask and 
 look for the blessing of God ; and with this, success is 
 certain. Not such as will make much stir or noise in 
 this world, — though, it may be, in heaven, where fame is 
 worth having. I am not blinded by personal attachment 
 when I say that I think you are that man." 
 
 And then, again, in his letter of date Dec. 13, 
 1858, he writes, — 
 
 "Yours of the 8th just reached me. While I held 
 it in my hand, before opening it, my heart was lifted 
 to Him 'from Whom cometh our help,' that, if it 
 was an acceptance, His blessing would rest upon His 
 own work, and cause it to prosper ; and if it was a rejec- 
 tion, that still His blessing would rest upon His own 
 work, and make my path plain before me what to do, 
 meanwhile waiting patiently for an opening or an indica- 
 tion of what He would have me to do. 
 
 " Your letter delivers me from all doubt. My views 
 have undergone no change. Whatever difficulty I may 
 have felt, or modesty in urging, was on your account ; for 
 I felt the truth of what you said, that ' your risk was the 
 greatest.' But now that you have decided, and, I be- 
 
294 REMINISCENCES OF A GRANDFATHER 
 
 lieve, have been led by God to decide, I have increased 
 faith and hope that, in spite of the dross which mingled 
 with my motives, He will for His name's sake give us 
 His blessing rich and durable ; though it may come, not 
 in the way flesh and blood would like at the beginning. 
 These crosses may be necessary to put out the ' wood, 
 hay, and stubble ' which may be mingled with my mo- 
 tives ; for, although I am not conscious of cherishing any, 
 yet He who searches the heart may see stubble where I 
 only see wheat." 
 
 Whoso is wise will ponder these things ; and 
 may God give him grace to go and do likewise ! 
 
 Note. — One striking difference, among many others, between 
 Christ and the so-called Vicar of Christ, the Bishop of Rome, 
 deserves to be noted. Christ ever fed the multitudes : it requires 
 multitudes to provide for the wants of His Vicar. 
 
«*X<>K*»X' 
 
 v .w$x. 
 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 434 545 9 
 
 Mm