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 CLOSING SCENES IN THE LIEE OE 
 
 Rey. George B, Little. 
 
 " Since thou hast died. — the pure, the just, - 
 I take my homeward way in trust." 
 
 Lyra Germanica. 
 
 B S T X : 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE MASS. SABBATH SCHOOL SOCIETY, 
 
 X o . 13 Corn hill. 
 1865. 
 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by 
 
 M. H. SARGENT, Treasurer of the Mass. S. S. Society, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 
 
 Xj 30 V 
 
 (EamfcritJjje $iress. 
 
CO^TE^TS. 
 
 Introductory Sketch of Mr. Little ... 5 
 His Treatment of Sceptical Errors ... 29 
 His Interest in National Affairs . . . .59 
 Close of his Ministry in Bangor . . . 85 
 Last Year at West Newtom . . . . . 96 
 Voyage to France, and Return .... 139 
 
 His Love of Music 175 
 
 Last Weeks of his Life 183 
 
 Funeral Services 258 
 
 (3) 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH. 
 
 George Barker Little was born in 
 Castine, Maine, December 21, 1821. 
 He was the youngest of the ten children 
 of Otis and Dorothy P. Little. 
 
 His first instruction was received at 
 the school in his native town, where for 
 a time he was taught by one who, in 
 after years, became a member of his con- 
 gregation at Bangor, and who recalls 
 with pleasure his proficiency and promise. 
 
 Mr. Little was in boyhood the subject 
 of deep religious impressions. He was 
 much affected by the death of two older 
 brothers. Charles, a youth of eighteen 
 
6 MEMORIAL. 
 
 years, was lost overboard in March, 1828, 
 on the passage from New Orleans to 
 Liverpool, — his first voyage. The other, 
 William Avery Little, when about to 
 enter the medical profession, was arrested 
 by repeated attacks of hemorrhage from 
 the lungs. After a lonely exile in Cuba, 
 he came home to die. His end was has- 
 tened by the sudden removal of Charles. 
 He died in August, the same year, at 
 the age of twenty-two, with a meek and 
 trembling hope of salvation through the 
 Redeemer. Before his death, he took 
 the hand of his brother George, and be- 
 sought him to prepare for heaven. 
 
 A few years after these bereavements, 
 Mr. Little became a Christian. His re- 
 ligious change had a great influence in 
 persuading his father to embrace evangel- 
 ical views. Both the father and son 
 made their profession of religion at Cas- 
 tine, on the same day, March 20, 1836 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH. 7 
 
 Having pursued his academical course 
 at Leicester, Mass.. Mr. Little entered 
 Bowdoin College in September, 1839, 
 and was graduated in 1843. 
 
 Rev. G. M. Adams, of Conway, Mass., 
 who was one of his companions at Cas- 
 tine, as well as a friend in college and 
 in later years, writes as follows : — 
 
 " My recollections of Mr. Little, from 
 early youth, are of one who in all circles 
 drew to himself the admiration and af- 
 fection of his associates. In college he 
 was the pride and favorite of his class. 
 No one envied him the honors which 
 easily flowed to him. His scholarship 
 was thorough and accurate. He exhib- 
 ited special fondness for classical, indeed 
 for all linguistic studies, which he mas- 
 tered with unusual ease. His rare felic- 
 ity in the use of language, and the fasci- 
 nating conversational power, with which 
 the friends of his later years are familiar, 
 were indicated indeed from the first, but 
 
8 MEMORIAL. 
 
 were largely developed by these careful 
 studies. He did not relinquish such pur- 
 suits after entering upon professional 
 life. As long as the state of his health 
 permitted, he was in the habit of reading 
 the classical authors as a diversion." 
 
 Rev. J. O. Means, of Roxbury, Mass., 
 also a friend and classmate, says : — 
 
 " From first to last, his religious char- 
 acter was decided. He enjoyed the great 
 advantage of having for a long time 
 aimed to enter the Christian ministry. 
 After leaving college, Mr. Little taught 
 in a classical school at Alexandria, Va. 
 Here he translated and analyzed the 
 most celebrated discourses of the French 
 preachers. He made abstracts from 
 them, and thus gained somewhat of the 
 vivacity which characterized his own ser- 
 mons. 
 
 " He entered the Theological Institu- 
 tion at Andover in 1846, and left it in 
 1849. These three years of his seminary 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH. 9 
 
 life were the happiest which he had ever 
 passed. They were also the most fruit- 
 ful of good." 
 
 In his letter, already quoted, Mr. Adams 
 says : — 
 
 " Mr. Little shunned rather than sought 
 prominence in the public eye. His es- 
 timate of his own gifts and attainments 
 was very modest. Looking forward to 
 the ministry, he said, in a familiar letter : 
 6 1 trust my prevailing and supreme desire 
 is, to live and act where I can accomplish 
 the most for God and the church. But I 
 have a great horror of getting into some 
 place not mine ; and it seems to me 
 that some retired situation, like what I 
 have alluded to, would most accord with 
 both my taste and powers.' " 
 
 On hearing of his decease, Rev. Pro- 
 fessor Putnam, of Dartmouth College, 
 who was in the same class with Mr. 
 
10 MEMORIAL. 
 
 Little at Andover, published the follow- 
 ing record : — 
 
 " Mr. Little was a man of refined and 
 delicate culture, and a most tasteful and 
 appreciating scholarship. Sensitive and 
 sympathetic in his nature, he drew his 
 friends closely to him, and was affec- 
 tionately admired and loved as a pastor. 
 He was by temperament somewhat re- 
 served ; sometimes self-distrustful ; some- 
 times, especially under the pressure of 
 ill health, despondent; ever shrinking in- 
 stinctively from the harsh contact of 
 colder and more obtrusive natures. Yet 
 he was thoroughly earnest and resolute 
 in the expression of his cherished beliefs, 
 and took strong hold of all who came 
 within his circle by the intellectual 
 warmth and vitality of his discourse and 
 his quiet yet fine enthusiasm. No one 
 who has known him in private, or heard 
 him in public, can forget the subdued 
 intensity with which he would emphasize, 
 in rapid and compressed and eager utter- 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH. 11 
 
 ance, the truths he loved and wanted to 
 enforce, yet always with a most genial 
 and loving appreciation of all that was 
 heartily said or felt by others. 
 
 " Not a few must be the minds that 
 he has instructed and impressed and 
 quickened by his rich and various 
 thought; not a few the hearts around 
 which he has twined himself, and drawn 
 them toward, or won them into, the 
 Christian life. His seminary classmates 
 will hear with sadness of the early death 
 of one whom they loved and honored 
 as the choicest of their number. Those 
 among them who used to follow his an- 
 imating lead in the chapel choir, will 
 mourn that his voice is henceforth silent 
 here, though only to 
 
 4 Sing more sweet, more loud/ 
 
 in that better service of the upper tem- 
 ple." 
 
 Professor Park, one of his teachers at 
 Andover, says : — 
 
12 MEMORIAL. 
 
 "I first saw Mr. Little in Oct., 1846, 
 at Belfast, Me. I was at once inter- 
 ested in his modest address and de- 
 meanor. Six weeks afterward I exam- 
 ined him for admission to the Seminary, 
 and was delighted with the precise words 
 which he used in translating a few pas- 
 sages of Virgil and Cicero. At all his 
 subsequent recitations he exhibited the 
 truth in a definite outline. Nor was 
 he less comprehensive than exact. His 
 aim was to compass the entire science 
 of theology, and to free himself from all 
 narrow and narrowing prejudice. I feel 
 grateful at every remembrance of his la- 
 borious researches, and of the stimulus 
 which his example gave to his associates 
 in study. He enunciated his ideas with 
 rare distinctness, and gave a fine spec- 
 imen of that elocution which Dr. Porter 
 loved to commend, and which consists 
 in sending out every word as if it were 
 a ball of bright silver. When he closed 
 his theological course, I was affected by 
 the lowly estimate which he placed upon 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH. 13 
 
 his past attainments, and by the humble 
 words which he uttered in view of his 
 future progress. Many other men, with 
 his acquisitions, would have been too 
 self-confident ; he might, perhaps, have 
 enjoyed a longer life if he had not been 
 too self-distrustful." 
 
 Rev. Dr. Dwight of Portland, Me., has 
 written : — 
 
 " I first saw Mr. Little when he was 
 graduated at Bowdoin, and heard him 
 deliver an oration marked by his vigor 
 of thought and fine taste in composition. 
 When he was completing his course at 
 Andover, I saw and heard him again, 
 and to the same advantage. Afterward 
 I became personally acquainted with him, 
 and have been ever forming the same 
 high estimate of him as from the begin- 
 ning, as of one whom the world could 
 not willingly part with." 
 
 September 18, 1850, Mr. Little married 
 
14 MEMORIAL. 
 
 Sarah Edwards, daughter of the late 
 Rev. Eli as Cornelius. In the preceding 
 year, 1849, October 11, he had been or- 
 dained pastor of the First Congrega- 
 tional Church in Bangor, Me. 
 
 Of his ministerial life in that city, 
 Rev. S. L. Caldwell, who was then pas- 
 tor of the First Baptist Church in the 
 same place, writes : — 
 
 " His ministry in Bangor was well 
 known to me. I welcomed its begin- 
 ning, and, by the privilege of per- 
 sonal friendship rather than of eccle- 
 siastical connection, was intrusted with 
 the unwelcome announcement, to a 
 sorrowing people, of its close. It was 
 a ministry necessarily crippled, as it 
 was shortened, by the infirmities of the 
 body ; but it was sustained to the end 
 with power, with usefulness, with the 
 growing and admiring love of his people. 
 Mr. Little was a scholar in tastes and 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH. 15 
 
 in attainments. He impressed a person, 
 or a congregation, at once, as a culti- 
 vated man ; and yet his culture did not 
 overlay and dull his native sharpness. 
 His mind was singularly keen, elastic, 
 vigorous. He carried himself in the pul- 
 pit and in all public places with ease 
 and self-possession, and delivered him- 
 self with a graceful and peculiarly 
 awakening oratory. His preaching, while 
 sufficiently doctrinal and practical, shot 
 out into quickening allusions and illus- 
 trations on every side. 
 
 " There was a vast affection in the man, 
 unknown to many, but which drew back 
 upon himself attachments of great ardor. 
 He died laden with unusual love. He 
 was generous. His aptness and sharp- 
 ness of wit was tempered by a genial 
 spirit, which made him a most stimulat- 
 ing and enjoyable companion. He was 
 of a most positive character . In his 
 convictions he was earnest and strong, 
 and they imparted strength and consist- 
 ency to his piety. That asserted itself 
 
16 MEMORIAL. 
 
 always, and in his last days lifted his 
 soul ' quite to the verge of heaven.' " 
 
 Mr. Adams thus concludes his letter 
 respecting Mr. Little : — 
 
 " I find special pleasure in recalling 
 the last considerable interview I enjoyed 
 with him. It was between one and two 
 years before his death. We spent a 
 week or more together in the rough life 
 of the backwoods of New York. The 
 Sabbath found us at an isolated public- 
 house, the rendezvous of the hunters and 
 boatmen of the vicinity. Toward night, 
 the household, to the number of twenty 
 or thirty, came together, and Mr. Little 
 spoke to them of the Saviour, and their 
 personal need of an interest in his 
 atoning death. I thought I had known 
 Mr. Little before. But in the melting 
 earnestness and directness of his appeal 
 to those rough men, I gained a deeper 
 respect, both for the versatility of his 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH. 17 
 
 mind and the heartiness of his love to 
 Christ. 
 
 " Those who knew Mr. Little best, see 
 most reason to mourn his early death. 
 Up to the time when disease interrupted 
 his plans, he had been steadily growing 
 in effectiveness as a Christian minister. 
 He had made himself familiar with what 
 is most valuable in English, French, and 
 German literature. His style, always 
 genial and graphic, had gained terseness 
 and logical force in the growing earnest- 
 ness of his ministerial life. Experience 
 had deepened his attachment to the vital 
 truths of the Christian faith ; the doctrine 
 of the Atonement, especially, he held 
 with unusual fervor of confidence. That 
 rare and graceful culture, that tempered 
 keenness and polish of mind and manner, 
 the quick discernment both of truth and 
 of character, the refined taste, the delicate 
 sympathy, the winning address, we were 
 hoping the Master had prepared for ser- 
 vices yet more eminent than any our 
 friend had already fulfilled. He was fit- 
 
18 MEMOKIAL. 
 
 ted, as few men in the church are fitted, 
 to win persons of liberal culture to his 
 own clear and joyful views of Christ, 
 But there was a plan more comprehen- 
 sive than ours. ' Even so, Father, for so 
 it seemed good in thy sight.' " 
 
 Rev. Professor D. S. Talcott, of Ban- 
 gor Theological Seminary, writes : — 
 
 " There was in him a frankness of de- 
 meanor which at once awakened interest 
 and inspired confidence. His heart 
 looked out of his eyes, and the most or- 
 dinary discernment might read there the 
 absence of whatever is base and selfish, 
 and the habitual prevalence of sympathies 
 deep, ardent, and comprehensive. A 
 very brief intercourse with him was suf- 
 ficient to disclose an imagination of un- 
 usual brilliancy and suggestiveness ; an 
 intellect clear, vigorous, penetrating, alert ; 
 a delicate and highly cultivated taste ; 
 the possession and command of a wide 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH. 19 
 
 extent of knowledge, and a rare capacity 
 
 for conveying it For those 
 
 who were upon terms of intimacy with 
 him, to express themselves without re- 
 serve respecting his character as a friend, 
 would be to incur the suspicion that they 
 were using the language of extravagant 
 panegyric. There are not a few who 
 can say that he had their heartiest trust, 
 and that their trust in him was never 
 disappointed. There are not a few who 
 will always esteem it a ground of thank- 
 fulness to have been permitted to enjoy 
 his friendship, who will carry to the 
 grave among their choicest mental treas- 
 ures the remembrance of the hours they 
 spent in his society, and to whom it is 
 among the attractions of the heavenly 
 world that they hope to be reunited with 
 him there. 
 
 " Nowhere did Mr. Little's religious char- 
 acler appear to so much advantage as in 
 the most private and confidential inter- 
 course, where he felt that he could freely 
 unbosom himself without the least ap- 
 
20 MEMORIAL. 
 
 pearance of display. His intense abhor- 
 rence of everything of this sort, especially 
 in regard to one's own religious emotions, 
 appeared to lay him under a restraint, 
 which could hardly have been otherwise 
 than painful to one who was so ardent 
 in his feelings, and who was ordinarily 
 so open in the expression of them. In 
 this way there is reason to believe that 
 many whose acquaintance with him was 
 only an external one, were led to regard 
 his piety as marked by an undue pre- 
 dominance of the intellectual element 
 over the emotional. But there were oc- 
 casions when all reserve was banished, 
 when the full heart demanded the relief 
 of utterance, and the ear of private 
 friendship was thrilled by outbursts of 
 grateful and adoring love to the Redeem- 
 er, which might well have sprung from 
 the rapt and fervid spirit of a Kempis or 
 
 Bernard 
 
 " Without ever appearing to make the 
 study of individual men a matter of par- 
 ticular attention, Mr. Little was well 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH. 21 
 
 versed in human nature. Not many of 
 his age were better acquainted with man- 
 kind in the gross. Not many could dis- 
 tinguish more accurately, in theory, 
 varieties of character, or more successful- 
 ly accommodate themselves in social 
 intercourse to an extensive range of 
 them, without any sacrifice of individ- 
 uality or compromise of principle. 
 
 " Mr. Little was not one who had 
 reason to apprehend the woe denounced 
 against those of whom all men speak 
 well. His advocacy of whatever he 
 looked upon as the true and the right 
 was open, earnest, and unyielding. 
 Whatever appeared to him wrong or 
 dishonorable awakened within him an 
 abhorrence which he took no pains to 
 conceal. He possessed, too, a power of 
 sarcasm which, though wontedly kept 
 under singular restraint by the force of 
 that charity which hopeth and endureth 
 all things, yet made itself sometimes 
 felt by those who were impervious to 
 every other weapon ; and it was a thing 
 very likely to be remembered. 
 
22 MEMORIAL. 
 
 " To all who had any degree of inti- 
 mate acquaintance with Mr. Little, there 
 was manifest on all occasions a profound 
 dissatisfaction with his own performance 
 of the duties pertaining to the sacred 
 
 function In accounting for 
 
 this peculiarity [whatever place may be 
 given to other considerations], no small 
 prominence should be assigned to the 
 clearness with which the truths he dealt 
 with presented themselves to his mind, 
 the force with which he grasped them, 
 and the vast importance with which he 
 apprehended them to be invested. The 
 conceptions which he formed, in earnest 
 meditation upon those great themes, 
 were such as even his own command 
 of the resources of expression, ample 
 as it appeared to be to others, utterly 
 failed to do justice to. It was his to 
 comprehend, as few could do, the im- 
 mense disproportion there must always 
 be between eternal realities and the 
 most expressive forms with which they 
 ever can be clothed in language. And 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH. 23 
 
 it was but natural that this dispropor- 
 tion should never appear to him so 
 great as when he had concentrated his 
 full power of thought upon the con- 
 templation of a single point, and had 
 then endeavored to convey to others 
 the views of it which he had himself 
 
 attained 
 
 " The wisdom and the love, which de- 
 vised and ordered all his trials, and which 
 he never seemed to stand in doubt of 
 here, are now fully disclosed to him in 
 the light of those purposes accomplished, 
 which they all along contemplated. And 
 with w^hat new and strange delight may 
 we imagine him to be now bearing his 
 part in the work assigned to the glori- 
 fied above, no longer doubtful as to the 
 service which he best can render, no 
 longer distrustful of his capacities, or un- 
 easy under the sense of their imperfect 
 action, but receiving commands directly 
 from the lips of the King of saints himself, 
 and hastening to fulfil them in serene 
 consciousness of the unrestrained and tire- 
 
24 MEMORIAL. 
 
 less exertion of an immortal vigor, with 
 every affection of his being in the live- 
 liest and purest exercise, and his will 
 henceforth and forever fixed immutably 
 in harmony with the will of the Su- 
 preme." 
 
 To illustrate the impression which Mr. 
 Little made upon scholars who had not 
 been acquainted with him in his early 
 youth, we quote the following letter from 
 Rev. Professor Harris, also of Bangor 
 Seminary: — 
 
 " My acquaintance with Mr. Little com- 
 menced on my removal to this city in the 
 fall of 1855. As he left us two years 
 afterward, my intercourse with him was 
 limited. But there was something in him 
 which drew me to him at once ; and, 
 short as had been our acquaintance when 
 he left, I .keenly felt that I had lost 
 from our circle here an endeared Mend 
 and a trusted helper. 
 
 u His mind was characterized by keen 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH. 25 
 
 perception, penetration, and discrimina- 
 tion. His attainments in scholarship were 
 unusual ; they were especially remarka- 
 ble, when it is considered that the weak- 
 ness of his eyes had for years hindered, 
 and at times entirely suspended, his 
 studies. His scholarship procured for him 
 a proposal to occupy a professorship in 
 Amherst College ; but the weakness of 
 his eyes compelled him to decline an 
 election. As a preacher he was thought- 
 ful, perspicuous, definite, and bold. Peo- 
 ple knew what he meant, and knew that 
 he was in earnest. His power was felt 
 and acknowledged throughout the city. 
 He had in a remarkable degree the love 
 of his own congregation, until ill health 
 obliged him to dissolve his happy con- 
 nection with them, and seek a less labo- 
 rious position. Their love followed him 
 to the last. He is remembered by the 
 population generally with high esteem. 
 u I shall not attempt an analysis of 
 his character. Indeed, I have never at- 
 tempted to define to my own mind what 
 
26 MEMORIAL. 
 
 it was in him which attracted me so strong- 
 ly. All who knew him recognized warm 
 and generous impulses, remarkably com- 
 bined with clearness of thought, definite- 
 ness, promptness, decision, and steadfast- 
 ness of purpose. His domestic virtues 
 made him lovely and happy at home. Wit, 
 intelligence, vivacity, and sympathy made 
 him genial in social intercourse. His Chris- 
 tian faith and love will be manifest to all 
 who read his memorial. He has gone 
 before us to our Lord. May God make 
 this memorial of his peaceful departure a 
 comfort to the many who loved him." 
 
 From a published letter of Rev. Profes- 
 sor Shepard, of Bangor, we make the 
 following extracts : — 
 
 " Mr. Little was eight years pastor in 
 this city, loved and cherished while he re- 
 mained, and profoundly regretted by him 
 and the people was the necessity which 
 took him to another field. His removal 
 from here was about three years since ; less 
 than a year since the Master called him to 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH. 27 
 
 the higher presence and service. Mr. Little 
 had all the accomplishments of the rarest 
 culture ; he showed a taste of the most 
 tremulous sensitiveness, and yet he was 
 direct, strong, penetrating in address. His 
 sermons were chaste, terse, often powerful. 
 They honored the gospel, being replete 
 with its truths, bearing forth to others its 
 exhaustless riches ; and when he turned 
 his argument against the rationalistic as- 
 sailants or underminers of Christian doc- 
 trines, as he sometimes did, it was with an 
 exposing and even demolishing efficacy. 
 His blade used in these encounters was of 
 the finest metal and the keenest edge. A 
 thorough German scholar, and of extensive 
 German reading, when his eyes served him, 
 he understood the subtleties and the falla- 
 cies of these unsettling philosophies. The 
 entire man in the pulpit constituted a per- 
 fect congruity : the style, manner, every 
 motion and look and tone thereof were in 
 absolute keeping ; all concurring in the end 
 he was striving to gain. It was this coa- 
 lescence of quali:ies which woke the inter- 
 
28 MEMORIAL. 
 
 est and deepened the impression. Sad 
 the thought that we shall see him, hear 
 him no more. Mr. Little's experiences and 
 utterances in his sickness, and in the near 
 approach of death, were such as to shed 
 an added ray upon the dark and mysteri- 
 ous path. He entered upon it with doubts 
 and fears and misgivings. He traversed 
 it, especially toward the end, with firm and 
 triumphant step. He went down into the 
 vale characteristically; his expressions took 
 the type of his own mind and heart, — 
 everything was the man lifted higher in 
 Christ, and under the Providence that was 
 upon him. 
 
 " The description of a scene like that, 
 where everything was so deep and fresh, so 
 marked by the decisive traits of the suf- 
 ferer, so savoring of the divine presence 
 and support, cannot fail to be useful and 
 consolatory wherever it may go. It honors 
 the Master, and gives strength to the dis- 
 ciples." 
 
35is tatinrat of Irrptirnl £rrnrs> 
 
 It has been said of Mr. Little : — 
 
 " For every form of doubt he had a kind 
 and tender sympathy, save that form only 
 which is intolerant of any exercise by 
 others of a calm and reposing faith. Such 
 a faith he appeared habitually to have in 
 exercise himself. Having felt his way 
 down to the solid foundations upon which 
 the assurance of the Christian must ulti- 
 mately rest, he had come to the conclusion 
 that there were no difficulties in reli- 
 gion to be compared with the difficulties 
 of unbelief. Thus judging, and familiar 
 with what the largest and most subtle in- 
 tellects of all ages had done and had failed 
 to do in speculating on the deep things of 
 God, he occupied himself less with the 
 mysteries and difficulties of religion than 
 might perhaps have been expected from a 
 
 (29) 
 
30 MEMOEIAL. 
 
 disposition so inquisitive and a mental 
 power so keen." 
 
 On the same topic a friend has thus 
 written : — 
 
 " Mr. Little felt a peculiar interest in 
 persons troubled with doubts and difficul- 
 ties respecting the divine authority of the 
 Bible and the truth of evangelical doctrines. 
 This appeared in his Seminary course ; one 
 of his earliest sermons, written while study- 
 ing at Andover, is on ' The Importance of a 
 Correct Religious Belief.' The same inter- 
 est continued through his whole ministry. 
 In one of his last journeys, he turned aside 
 from his route and delayed a day, on pur- 
 pose to have one more conversation on 
 religion with a sceptical acquaintance. 
 Even in his last illness he showed the 
 same concern for friends who held what he 
 regarded as essential errors ; and with fee- 
 ble but tender tones, which showed at once 
 his wasted strength and his unwasted affec- 
 tion and earnestness, he endeavored to lead 
 them to the truth. A little while before he 
 
 
TREATMENT OF SCEPTICAL ERRORS. 31 
 
 died, he was conversing respecting the 
 views of Theodore Parker with a young 
 person whom he wished to guard against 
 those errors. His eye lighted up, and he 
 spoke with surprising animation and ener- 
 gy. At the conclusion he spoke of Mr. 
 Parker's views of Christ, and expressed his 
 astonishment that a man could hold such 
 opinions in fhe extremity of death. Then 
 he exclaimed with tremulous tones, ' Oh, 
 if it were not for Christ and him crucified, 
 I am sure I do not know what I should do 
 now ! ' 
 
 " Mr. Little's own belief of evangelical 
 doctrines was definite and decided, but it 
 was not a cast-iron dogmatism, incapable 
 of returning warmth or tenderness to the 
 touch of a doubter. It was a living faith, 
 which had met the wants and exigencies 
 of his own soul and nourished his own 
 spiritual growth, and thus had grown up 
 in his own experience and become organ- 
 ically incorporated into his spiritual life. 
 His own vigorous belief, therefore, had 
 the sensibility of life. He did not repel 
 
32 MEMORIAL. 
 
 doubt as a sin. Wherever an honest de- 
 sire to know the truth appeared, he felt 
 compassion for the inquirer in his per- 
 plexities, and with hearty sympathy strove 
 to help him to see the truth which had been 
 light and life to his own soul. He would 
 carefully study the ground on which the 
 doubt rested, and its origin, whether in 
 the head or in the heart ; would ascertain 
 what truths the inquirer already admit- 
 ted, that they might be the stepping- 
 stones of further progress ; and by conver- 
 sation, by letters, by giving suitable books, 
 would patiently labor on so long as any 
 hope of doing good remained. His in- 
 terest in studying and treating such a 
 case was like that of a physician in 
 studying and treating a difficult case in 
 his practice. His persistence was the ex- 
 pression at once of his own interest and 
 sympathy, and of his confidence in the 
 sincerity and honesty of the inquirer. 
 
 " But against disbelievers, no longer in- 
 quiring for truth, but in the face of light, 
 diligent in undermining Christianity and in 
 
TREATMENT OF SCEPTICAL ERRORS. 33 
 
 propagating infidelity, he hesitated not to 
 use his keen sarcasm. So Chaucer de- 
 scribes his parson: 
 
 " * And though he holy were and virtuous, 
 He was to sinful men not dispitous ; 
 But if, were any person obstinate, 
 What so he were of high or low estate, 
 Him would he snibben l sharply for the nonce.' " 
 
 " Mr. Little's letters on these subjects are 
 mostly lost or inaccessible. A single one 
 is given, from the first draft of it, written 
 with a pencil and found among his papers. 
 It has no date, and it is not known to 
 whom it was addressed. 
 
 " 4 From an expression occurring at the 
 close of your letter, I am encouraged to 
 say a few more words to you on religious 
 topics. I reciprocate fully your feeling of 
 sympathy w T ith all who are honestly seek- 
 ing for light and truth. Even the diffi- 
 culties and doubts of honest inquirers 
 should be met with respect, or, at the 
 very worst, with compassion. I cannot 
 agree with you, however, when you in- 
 
 i Rebuke. 
 3 
 
34 MEMORIAL. 
 
 timate that we are not responsible for our 
 belief or our scepticism, or, as you more 
 exactly say, wholly responsible. That 
 we are not responsible for that organiza- 
 tion which we receive at birth, and for 
 many, though we are for some, of the sur- 
 rounding circumstances, which with the 
 organization tend, as you say, " to pro- 
 duce certain results," is undeniably true. 
 But are we not responsible in the matter 
 of resisting or yielding to that tendency ? 
 It is surely not a safe position to take, 
 that we are to yield to every tendency 
 which may be the product of organization 
 and circumstances. To say that we are 
 not responsible for our opinions and be- 
 lief, and that a native tendency to infidel- 
 ity is an excuse for infidelity, will cer- 
 tainly prove too much ; for if this be valid 
 reasoning in such a case, why not valid in 
 respect to conduct and morals, and what 
 shall prevent a man from urging as an ex- 
 cuse for his intemperance, that he was born 
 with an appetite for drink? And so in 
 numerous other cases. If it be said that a 
 
TREATMENT OF SCEPTICAL ERRORS. 35 
 
 man cannot believe without evidence, we 
 may say in reply that this is not required. 
 But let it be remembered, that the man 
 just as really and inexcusably violates a 
 law of his being and of reason, who with- 
 holds his assent in the presence of evi- 
 dence, as in refusing his assent in the 
 absence of it. And let it farther be re- 
 membered, that the exact point where our 
 responsibility lies in regard to truth, is not 
 to create evidence but to discover it. And 
 sometimes, though the evidence may 
 abound, we do not discover it without 
 searching for it. This is God's law, or, 
 if you please, Nature's law, in regard to 
 gold and gems ; why should it not be in 
 regard to truth ? If, therefore, a man shall 
 miss of any important truth because he 
 wilfully neglects to search for it with 
 proper diligence and a right spirit, he 
 cannot justly be held excused. And if it 
 be a truth of morals and religion, and con- 
 nected as most truth is with conduct, the 
 results of his mistake may be disastrous to 
 himself and to others. It is only on this 
 
36 MEMORIAL. 
 
 principle that we can rightly judge of 
 conscientious errors. The fault of such 
 errors lies not in following conscience, not 
 in acting — to use words of your own 
 — according to our sense of right and 
 wrong, but in not using all the means in 
 our power to have an enlightened and true 
 conscience, and an accurate sense of right 
 and wrong. It was on this principle that 
 the apostle Paul censured himself for per- 
 secuting the Christian church, though he 
 did it conscientiously. It is on the same 
 principle that papal and other persecutions 
 are to be condemned. Conscience is in- 
 deed our guide ; but she will guide us ac- 
 cording to the light she has, and will judge 
 according to the evidence. It is our busi- 
 ness to supply the evidence and let in the 
 light. 
 
 u i This leads me to speak of the Bible as 
 the great repository of knowledge and light 
 in religion. Pardon me for expressing my 
 surprise and regret that you say nothing of 
 it in your letter. In my view, an inquirer 
 after religious truth who does not give his 
 
TREATMENT OF SCEPTICAL ERRORS. 37 
 
 days and nights to a reverent and childlike 
 study of the Bible, is like a mariner, in mid- 
 ocean, who would find his way without 
 chart or compass. It is not a blind, tradi- 
 tional reverence for a mere book, that I am 
 recommending ; it is reverence for that 
 which can, I fully believe, substantiate its 
 claims to be a divine record. The Bible 
 shrinks not from the severest scrutiny. I 
 commend it not to your superstitious ven- 
 eration, but to your reason as well as to 
 your heart. From its wonderful history, as 
 also from its contents, the evidence that 
 it is the divine revelation, is so over- 
 whelming that nothing is more irration- 
 al than to reject or neglect it. No other 
 book and no other system can furnish 
 such resources of comfort, or supply such 
 incentives to a Christian life. It is, indeed, 
 a contradiction to talk of a Christian life 
 apart from Christ ; and there is no Christ 
 apart from the Christ of the New Testa- 
 ment. Study then, I beg of you, the New 
 Testament. It is not the doctrine of any 
 established church that I commend to 
 
38 MEMORIAL. 
 
 you, but Christ and his gospel. He is the 
 only Way, the only Truth, the only Life. 
 May he become your Guide, your Friend, 
 your Saviour." 
 
 " Mr. Little was not in the habit of 
 preaching on the ' Evidences of Christiani- 
 ty.' He has not left one sermon formally 
 proving the divine authority of the Bible. 
 He aimed rather at the clear and forcible 
 presentation of the realities of the spiritual 
 world, the facts of God's government and 
 redemption, believing that there is that in 
 man's moral and spiritual being which 
 would respond to them. He aimed to 
 quicken men to the sense of spiritual needs, 
 to arouse the conscience, to touch the 
 heart, knowing that ' with the heart man 
 believeth unto rightousness.' Argument 
 addressed to the intellect alone cannot give 
 the evidences of Christianity in their full 
 force. But he was in the habit of direct- 
 ing attention to the confirmation of Chris- 
 tianity which incidentally opened from the 
 discussion of any topic. He was not in 
 
TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY DESIRABLE. 39 
 
 the habit of formally refuting infidel ob- 
 jections. But he unsparingly exposed the 
 covert infidelity of the day in its practical 
 working, as it appeared in popular litera- 
 ture, and as, in political theories, in social 
 reforms and philanthropic enterprises, it 
 penetrated the thinking of the people with- 
 out being recognized in its true character." 
 
 A few extracts are given from Mr. Lit- 
 tle's sermons on these topics : — 
 
 THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY DESIRABLE. 
 
 " Of all men in the world, the sceptic 
 should be troubled, anxious and diligent. 
 He should go to an examination of the 
 Bible with a serious desire that it may 
 prove true. It is altogether for his interest, 
 and the best interest of his friends and of 
 the race, that it may be proved true. For 
 it is the only source of light and encour- 
 agement and hope to a sinful world. Woe 
 to the world, if it be found false ! We do 
 not need the Bible to prove that men are 
 sinners, and therefore under a curse ; but 
 
40 MEMORIAL. 
 
 we need the Bible to declare to us definite- 
 ly how we may be cleansed from sin and 
 escape the curse. We do not need the 
 Bible to prove the existence of hell, — for 
 the evidence of that we may gain from our 
 own consciousness ; but we do need that 
 book to reveal to us a heaven, and how 
 we may reach it. Scepticism, therefore, 
 in reference to the truth of the Bible, will 
 be, to an honest man, one of the worst ca- 
 lamities that can befall him. While he 
 doubts in so important a matter, he cannot 
 remain easy and satisfied. A book con- 
 taining the only answer to questions relat- 
 ing so intimately to his eternal life, he will 
 ardently desire to find worthy of his cordial 
 belief. He will, therefore, be willing to 
 turn his eyes toward the broad light of 
 positive testimony. He will not choose to 
 doubt ; least of all will he take pleasure in 
 doubting, and in gloating over the difficul- 
 ties and apparent discrepancies of Scrip- 
 ture, as some sceptics do. The state of 
 mind that has not gone beyond doubting, 
 that can do no more than state objections 
 
TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY DESIRABLE. 41 
 
 and suggest difficulties, is the very last to 
 afford satisfaction. Until a man can say 
 honestly and boldly, that he knows the Bible 
 to be a collection of fables, and the Chris- 
 tian religion a delusion, and the prayers and 
 struggles of Christians to be time and labor 
 lost, — until then he cannot rationally take 
 a release from solicitude in the matter. 
 If he cannot say this, he has no excuse 
 for apathy, and, above all, none for flippan- 
 cy and trifling." 
 
 THE BIBLE NOT THE SOURCE OF RELIGIOUS 
 FEARS. 
 
 After quoting from the Bible several pas- 
 sages declaring the terribleness of God to 
 sinners, he says : — 
 
 . • . . " I will not pronounce on the 
 precise meaning of these passages. Exer- 
 cise your critical ingenuity on them as you 
 please. Prune them, dilute them, restrict 
 their application, call them Jewish, figura- 
 tive, hyperbolical, — do what you will with 
 them, — but after you have done all, tell 
 
42 MEMORIAL. 
 
 me if they are not terrible. Tell me if it is 
 weakness to be afraid of the displeasure of 
 such a God, and to tremble at the thought 
 of disobeying him. 
 
 " But whether it is considered a weak- 
 ness or not, the fact remains the same, — 
 this fear does exist. Infidel preachers try 
 to laugh men out of it ; but it is not so 
 easily laid to rest. You may rail at it, 
 and call it puerile, mean, cowardly, pusil- 
 lanimous ; you may argue that it ought 
 not to exist, that it shall not and does not 
 exist. But there it is. Nor is it so easily 
 quieted, as some suppose, by a change of 
 religious views. It is found to vex the 
 souls of men who have never been guilty 
 of a leaning toward Calvinism. You 
 may think it somehow connected with the 
 Bible ; and that, if you can break loose 
 from the tyranny of that book, all will be 
 well. But I fear that, if you try the exper- 
 iment, you will not succeed in quelling all 
 ghostly fears and securing an unruffled 
 bosom. Go visit those countries where 
 the Bible has never intruded ; and the 
 
THE SOURCE OF RELIGIOUS FEARS. 43 
 
 reeking altars, the bloody rites, the foul 
 superstitions will convince you that relig- 
 ious terrors, the dread of a hereafter, the 
 fear of a Divinity, are not created by the 
 Bible. Happy will you be, if convinced by 
 this time that the Bible reveals the method 
 of emancipation from these fears. 
 
 " The fear, then, is universal. And the 
 ground of it is, that God has put within 
 the breast of every man a witness for him- 
 self, which will, in the long run, show itself 
 stronger than scepticism, and the avenger 
 of faith. This faculty has a marvellous 
 power of bringing face to face the two 
 ideas of sin and accountability, the con- 
 fronting of which is sure to produce dis- 
 turbance in the guilty soul. Thus, so long 
 as conscience lives in the bosom of a sin- 
 ner, he is compelled to have some notion 
 of an overruling Power that will reckon 
 with him for his sins. It is wonderful 
 that these two things, conscience and sin, 
 should live together. Yet here they are, 
 coexisting in the same breast, and appar- 
 ently to exist there forever, and without an 
 
44 MEMORIAL. 
 
 adjustment ; for man cannot rid himself 
 of his conscience on the one hand, nor of 
 his guilt on the other. The judge is seat- 
 ed forever on the throne ; the prisoner is 
 forever at the bar ; and there is no end of 
 the assize. You do not escape this by- 
 rejecting any particular system of Chris- 
 tian doctrine, nor by rejecting the Bible 
 itself. To flee from the Bible is to fall 
 into the arms of natural religion. You do 
 not escape the consciousness of guilt, nor 
 remove God from the throne of right- 
 eous government. You gain* nothing but 
 vagueness and uncertainty, — a spectral 
 uncertainty, which will bring your soul 
 into captivity to a fear less intelligent, but 
 not less distressing. Besides, — and this 
 is the gloomiest fact of all, — by forsaking 
 the Bible, you turn your back on the only 
 door of escape from fear, and reject the 
 only antidote and remedy for sin." 
 
 HUMAN RIGHTS. 
 
 , . . . " It is not what man is, nor 
 what he may grow to be, which gives us 
 
HUMAN RIGHTS. 45 
 
 our loftiest conception of his value and his 
 claim to consideration on the part of his 
 fellows. It is rather what God has done 
 for him ; and that not so much the 
 divine energy and skill shown in his cre- 
 ation, nor the beauty and excellence of the 
 product, nor the providential care of him, 
 but especially and preeminently what God 
 has done for his redemption. It is here, 
 my hearers, depend on it, that we have the 
 most impressive declaration that man's 
 soul is of priceless value, the most deci- 
 sive proof of the sacredness of humanity. 
 About the cross it is that we gather the 
 mightiest arguments for charity and broth- 
 erly love. Does not Paul teach us this ? 
 When he would urge the Christians at 
 Rome to deny themselves for the sake of 
 others, it is just this argument that he 
 uses : < If thy brother be grieved with thy 
 meat, now walkest thou not charitably. 
 Destroy not him with thy meat for whom 
 Christ died.'' 
 
 " The argument is simple, intelligible, 
 and cogent. If God so loved the world as 
 
46 MEMORIAL. 
 
 to give his Son to die for it ; if the divine 
 Son so loved and pitied men, that he was 
 willing to exchange the glories of his Fa- 
 ther's house for poverty, contradiction, an- 
 guish, and death, that he might save them ; 
 then shame on him who shall ever think it 
 beneath him to turn an eye of pity and to 
 extend a hand of mercy to the most 
 wretched or the most wicked of the human 
 family. And if the infinite God set such 
 a value on man that he was fain to pay 
 such a price for his redemption, then woe 
 to him who shall, for sordid gain, oppress 
 his fellow-men, for whom Christ died. 
 
 " Does it not follow that the gospel of 
 Christ is the best charter of human rights ? 
 And, furthermore, it must be the whole 
 gospel, and not the gospel shorn of its 
 central fact, the doctrine of the cross. 
 On the ground of philanthropy and human 
 rights, the progress and triumph of liberal 
 principles, we should carefully guard our 
 gospel from mutilation. It is an undeniable 
 historical fact, — such men as Brougham 
 and Bancroft being judges, — that no 
 
IIUMAN RIGHTS. 47 
 
 system of religion has supplied at once 
 such a stimulus and bulwark to freedom 
 and the rights of man as the system called 
 — and sometimes opprobriously called — 
 Calvinism. 
 
 " What, now, does infidelity propose as 
 its basis of human rights, its standard of 
 • man's valuation ? Nature, — nothing but 
 nature. Infidelity prates about progress, 
 human rights, the worth of man, and uni- 
 versal brotherhood ; it claims to be the 
 sole depository of philanthropy, and treats 
 the claims of religion with contempt. But 
 it is no injustice to say that infidelity can- 
 not be thoroughly merciful or philanthropic 
 except at the expense of consistency. 
 There is a type of infidelity which makes 
 God's desertion of man as prominent as 
 the gospel makes God's care of man. Man 
 came into being, we know not how or 
 when ; opened his eyes, a poor, weak, beg- 
 garly brute of a thing ; was left to grope 
 and crawl his way from the pitiable primal 
 state, through his subsequent career of nat- 
 ural and necessary development. By 
 
48 MEMORIAL. 
 
 stumbling he learned to walk. Wisdom, 
 dexterity, and skill he acquired by frequent 
 mistakes. Sin is an incident to man's na- 
 ture, — a misfortune, perhaps ; yet the nec- 
 essary process of his development. Re- 
 demption is a mere fancy, a myth. And 
 so the race will go on in this course of self- 
 evolution, according to necessary laws, to- 
 ward perfection, until there shall be a relig- 
 ion of humanity as much in advance of 
 the religion of Christ, as that was in ad- 
 vance of the religions that preceded it. 
 
 " The peculiarity which I wish you to 
 notice is the distance, the absence, the de- 
 sertion of God. Man is everything. God is 
 practically nothing. And if this is so, — 
 if God deserts us for lack of interest in us, 
 — what shall hinder that I shall follow his 
 example and desert my neighbor from 
 want of love to him, and be deserted by 
 him in return ? I do not say that all the 
 disciples of this school actually reason 
 thus, and carry their philosophy to its legit- 
 imate consequences. I cheerfully concede 
 to many of them benevolent and generous 
 
HUMAN BIGHTS. 49 
 
 instincts and the frequent utterance of no- 
 ble pleas for justice, innocence, and right. 
 But I repeat that they do this at the ex- 
 pense of their consistency. The men are 
 better than their principles. If they were 
 all simple and frank enough, they would 
 subscribe to the creed of one of their num- 
 ber, the brilliant, cultivated, and transcen- 
 dental Pagan sage, not of twenty centuries 
 ago and in Rome or Athens, but of to-day 
 and in Concord. ' Do not tell me,' he 
 says, c as a good man did to-day, of my 
 obligation to put all men in good situa- 
 tions. Are they my poor ? I tell thee, 
 thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge 
 the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such 
 men as do not belong to me, and to whom 
 I do not belong." l Put this sentiment by 
 the side of the gospel of Christ ; put it 
 by the side of the parable of the Good 
 Samaritan ; put it by the side of Calvin- 
 ism ; and tell me which is the more favor- 
 able to human happiness and rights." 
 
 1 Essays by R. W. Emerson, vol. i. p. 43. 
 4 
 
50 MEMORIAL. 
 
 THE LAW OF PROGRESS. 
 
 . . . . " There is a philosophy ex- 
 tant, if it may be called such, which docs 
 not recognize the necessity of any extraor- 
 dinary and divinely interposed plan of 
 remedy for the sins and woes of men. 
 And if not necessary, then the inference is 
 easy and proper too, that there is no such 
 plan. The men whose opinion and judg- 
 ments and predictions are tinged by the 
 coloring of such a philosophy cannot shut 
 their eyes to the manifold and tremendous 
 evils rampant in the earth, the diseases 
 that are preying upon the heart of society, 
 and the world's life. They acknowledge 
 all this. They cannot help it, for the thing 
 is too visible and indubitable ; and yet, 
 with the strangest and most unwarrantable 
 commingling and confusion of evils, phys- 
 ical, social, and moral, they resolve all 
 into a blind necessity, or a figment which 
 is called the nature of the case, or perhaps 
 a law of human life. Together with all 
 this imperfection, and these disorders, there 
 
THE LAW OF PROGRESS. 51 
 
 is, they seem to think, in the individual 
 soul, and in the race considered as a great 
 organism, a native redeeming principle, 
 an inherent, vis medicatrix, that is sure 
 eventually to cure all. They are firm be- 
 lievers in progress. They are decided 
 optimists. The race is advancing they be- 
 lieve unto perfection, and the good time is 
 coming when it shall be healed of all its 
 disorders, and be instated in complete 
 soundness and harmony. But this they 
 expect, so far as appears from their lan- 
 guage, will be the result of the natural and 
 even necessary development of an inward 
 principle of life, a self-regulating and self- 
 correcting force. The patient will eventu- 
 ally recover, and flourish in the bloom of 
 health and the proud consciousness of 
 mature strength, not from the interposed 
 skill of a matchless physician, and the 
 potent influence of his balm, bat because 
 he has so good a constitution. It is enough 
 to let nature have her own way, and, how- 
 ever desperate the case may now appear, 
 nature will assert her power, and sooner or 
 
52 MEMORIAL. 
 
 later will expel the disorder. This philos- 
 ophy of which I speak, — which in effect 
 leaves the race to work out its own re- 
 demption by the blind action of an organic 
 law, — this philosophy, I say, is not neces- 
 sarily anti-religious. It wears the badges 
 and titles of Christianity. It by no means 
 denies the historical Christ. The man of 
 Nazareth, according to it, falls into his 
 proper place in humanity along with Con- 
 fucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, and other ear- 
 nest souls, great and heroic, prophets, 
 teachers, and martyrs, who have all con- 
 tributed their share, and Christ perhaps 
 chiefest among them, to the discovery and 
 establishment of great principles, to the 
 evolution of a higher life, and to the prog- 
 ress of the race toward that golden era 
 of finished perfection. 
 
 " Now I will venture to say that such a 
 philosophy of human development is utter- 
 ly false, because based upon a false as- 
 sumption, namely, the idea that salvation is 
 coming to the race from within and not 
 from without ; that there is in the human 
 
 
THE LAW OF PROGRESS. 53 
 
 race an organic law of progress toward 
 moral perfection or improvement, a certain 
 inherent medicinal power that will of itself 
 prevail, an interior self-acting principle of 
 conservation and redemption. If this were 
 indeed so, then might we easily dispense 
 with any foreign superhuman hero who 
 might offer to tread the wine-press for us, 
 and by his toil, and wrestle, and blood, 
 purchase our redemption ; whether it be 
 Krishnu of Indian mythology, or Oschan- 
 dubega of the Persians, or Hercules of the 
 Greeks, or Jesus of the Christians. 
 
 u The assumption which is the basis of 
 this philosophy, is contradicted by the facts 
 of history, and by the testimony of Scrip- 
 ture. Time will not permit a thorough 
 examination of this part of the subject. I 
 can only refer you to a few facts. What, 
 for example, was the operation of the law 
 of progress in antediluvian history ? Did 
 not men fall away from the knowledge of 
 the true God, and develop into a gigantic 
 measure of wickedness, until it was past 
 endurance, and the earth was purged of 
 
54 MEMORIAL. 
 
 its vile inhabitants by a flood of waters ? 
 And when again the human race was cra- 
 dled in the household of Noah, and from 
 that centre men again radiated and started 
 on their respective lines of progress, was 
 it not in a short time that the knowledge 
 and worship of the true God was dropped 
 and lost from many of the branches of that 
 original stock? Is it not true that that 
 knowledge and that pure worship was 
 confined almost exclusively to one people 
 until the coming of the Messiah, while 
 other nations, though sometimes gilded 
 with a material magnificence, and wield- 
 ing an imposing material force, were really 
 smitten with a leprosy, enervated with 
 luxury, superstition, and vice, and rotting 
 to their incurable decay ? And what was 
 it that kept the Jewish people for forty 
 centuries from this universal degeneracy ? 
 Were they indebted for this exemption to 
 any national peculiarity ? Was there a 
 different force at work in their historic 
 development ? Yea, truly there was ; but 
 what was it? Was it anything native 
 
THE LAW OF PROGRESS. 55 
 
 and inherent to themselves, — a conserva- 
 tive power springing up and developing 
 from within ? By no means ; but rather the 
 imposing insignia and rituals of the The- 
 ocracy ; the visible and flaming symbols of 
 the awful Shekinah ; the perpetual and 
 supernatural converse and correspondence 
 of the great God himself with this chosen 
 people. Ask the student of Jewish history, 
 What advantage then hath the Jew ? And 
 he will tell you, though he have never 
 heard of Paul, i Chiefly, because that unto 
 them were committed the oracles of God ; ' 
 a revelation made from without, given by 
 Jehovah himself, with august pomp and 
 ceremony. These exterior and mighty 
 influences it was, interposed by special di- 
 vine acts, which saved them as a people 
 from complete apostasy. 
 
 " Now, from these historical examples, 
 not to seek for more, although more are 
 easily accessible, may we not fairly gen- 
 eralize, and state it as a truth for all times 
 and for #ie whole race, that, so far from 
 there being any organic law in society by 
 
56 MEMORIAL. 
 
 the undisturbed action of which, progress 
 toward the pure, the noble, and the good 
 is made certain, precisely the reverse is 
 true, namely, that but for a restraining and 
 redeeming influence from without, and 
 that too, in the shape of a heaven-sent 
 system of religion, progress will invariably 
 be toward degradation and ruin. The re- 
 ligions that have been fabricated by men 
 in their corruption, unaided by extraor- 
 dinary divine revelation, have been uni- 
 formly cruel, destructive, suicidal, — whether 
 it be the Fetichism of Africa, or the Poly- 
 theism of the Sandwich Islands, or the 
 Atheism of France in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. Some form of religion, however 
 defective and false, is better than none ; 
 for although the wiser and better instructed 
 of the people may despise it, nevertheless 
 its gods, its sanctions, its future, though 
 dim and uncertain, and deformed, will 
 serve as a restraint upon the masses, will 
 interpose some barrier against a rampant 
 wickedness, and thus retard the approach 
 of ruin and extinction. But so deep-seated 
 
THE LAW OF PROGRESS. 57 
 
 and virulent is the corruption of human 
 nature, so headlong are the passions and 
 lower instincts of men, that there is no 
 security, I had almost said no moral 
 possibility, for the true progress of any peo- 
 ple, or for the race, except in the possession 
 of Jehovah's oracles, reverence for his au- 
 thority, delight in his worship, and his 
 interposed guidance. Suppose all knowl- 
 edge and memory of the Christian system, 
 its doctrine, its ethics, its promises, and its 
 institutions, were blotted to-day from the 
 leading nations of Christendom, and, with 
 all the pride and glory of Western civiliza- 
 tion, what other force can you think of, 
 either organic, sympathetic, or accidental, 
 that could long save those nations from 
 lapsing at least into the paganism of 
 Greece and Rome, with its foul deities, 
 and corrupting religious festivals of which 
 it were a shame to speak ! 
 
 " May we not safely say, then, that the 
 evidence is irresistible to show that if 
 restoration and salvation come at all to 
 our fallen race, it must come from without, 
 
58 
 
 MEMORIAL. 
 
 from above? It is not the flowering or 
 fruit of any germ within the organism of 
 the race, destined to swell and develop 
 itself by the force of an inherent life-princi- 
 ple. The method of man's deliverance, 
 while it is not contrary to nature, is yet 
 above nature. It is transcendent, it is 
 divine." 
 
lis 3ittat in Jktunutl Mutrs. 
 
 Respecting Mr. Little's interest in na- 
 tional affairs, a friend has written : — 
 
 " Mr. Little's ministry occupied that 
 momentous period in our national history 
 when the long conflict of ideas on the 
 subject of slavery was hastening to its 
 crisis, and about to burst into the conflict 
 of arms. Already argument had been 
 silenced at the South in the forcible sup- 
 pression of freedom of speech. Slavery 
 had begun to be advocated as a divine 
 institution, entitled to indefinite extension 
 and perpetuation. The attempt by politi- 
 cal action to smother the Constitution in 
 its own processes, and thus to suffocate 
 the American idea of equal rights, was 
 apparently advancing by mighty strides, 
 like the repeal of the Missouri Compro- 
 
 (59 
 
60 MEMORIAL. 
 
 * 
 
 mise and the Dred Scott decision, to suc- 
 cess. On the other hand, the people of 
 the free States were discovering the real 
 character and tendency of these move- 
 ments, and preparing for that decisive 
 exercise of their political power which 
 obstructed the plans of slave-holders, and 
 maddened them to appeal to arms as the 
 surest and shortest way to accomplish 
 their designs. 
 
 " With the prophetic insight character- 
 izing a soul habitually in communion with 
 truth, obedient to principle, and believing 
 in the progress of Christ's kingdom, Mr. 
 Little penetrated the significance of that 
 period, and clearly saw, what subsequent 
 events have demonstrated to all, that it 
 was one of the grander epochs in the 
 progress of Christian civilization. There- 
 fore, tremulously alive as he was to all 
 that concerns Christ's kingdom and hu- 
 man welfare, he could not but feel an 
 absorbing interest in the great issues af- 
 fecting Christianity and humanity which 
 were involved in the political contests of 
 
INTEREST IN NATIONAL AFFAIRS. 61 
 
 his day. He studied carefully the subject 
 of slavery, and the political history of his 
 own country. He observed closely the 
 course of political measures and of popu- 
 lar feeling, and the schemes of ambitious 
 leaders. He had a rare power of pene- 
 trating through disguises to the core of a 
 man's character. During his lifetime the 
 leaders of the rebellion enjoyed the confi- 
 dence of their political party and of the 
 people generally ; yet his friends remember 
 in what strong terms he used to express 
 his estimate of some of them ; an esti- 
 mate which, however harsh it seemed 
 then, has been fully verified. But severity 
 did not predominate in his feelings. He 
 mourned for the national sins with the 
 tenderness and humility of a Christian 
 heart. These sins often, as a grievous 
 burden, bowed his spirit and led him to 
 make confessions and supplications like 
 Daniel's. 
 
 " Mr. Little, like the early Puritans, was 
 a diligent student of the Old Testament, 
 and applied its teachings to his own times. 
 
62 MEMORIAL. 
 
 Though in peace and prosperity the Old 
 Testament is often neglected, and seems 
 to lose its pertinence, it is a noticeable 
 fact in history, that in times of persecution 
 or public commotion, when wickedness 
 lifts the iron hand of violence against the 
 kingdom of Christ, then the church re- 
 turns with a new zest to the Old Testa- 
 ment, and discovers in it a wonderful 
 significance and appositeness ; traces with 
 delight, in God's dealings with his chosen 
 people and their powerful enemies, the 
 divine philosophy of human history, the 
 subordination of everything in the admin- 
 istration of God's providence to the ad- 
 vancement of his kingdom. Mr. Little 
 was particularly attracted to Jeremiah, 
 and in his Bible he had marked many pas- 
 sages applicable to our own times. He 
 used to say there never was any political 
 preaching so tremendous as Jeremiah's ; 
 and that it was no wonder the priests and 
 false prophets cried out, ' This man is wor- 
 thy to die, for he hath prophesied against 
 this city, as ye have heard with your ears.' 
 
INTEREST IN NATIONAL AFFAIRS. 63 
 
 " He considered presidential and state 
 elections as periods of great solemnity. 
 At the weekly prayer-meeting preceding 
 the presidential election of 1856, — the last 
 which he ever witnessed, — he read the 
 twentieth chapter of second Chronicles. 
 Says one who was present : ' His utterance 
 in reading was so impressive that I could 
 never forget it. His words, his animated 
 countenance, his tones of voice, and his 
 manner were an eloquent commentary on 
 that chapter. He made a thrilling appeal, 
 exhorting to trust in God, and expressing 
 the belief that the contest was the most 
 momentous that had occurred in our na- 
 tional history; because, as he said, there 
 never was a contest in which were involved 
 so many of the principles that lie at the 
 foundation of Christianity.' .... 
 
 " With these views of the epochal im- 
 portance of passing events, Mr. Little 
 could not be silent in the pulpit respecting 
 them. Clear in his convictions and ear- 
 nest in maintaining them ; compelled by 
 his own nature to frank, definite, and bold 
 
64 MEMORIAL. 
 
 utterance ; regarding truth as a sacred trust 
 committed to him, which, as a preacher 
 called by God, it was his life-work to 
 teach, vindicate, and make effective ; he 
 w x ould have regarded himself unfaithful to 
 his calling, had he failed in his preaching 
 to make pointed application of the princi- 
 ples of the gospel to the political action 
 of his times. He did not preach politics. 
 He was never identified with a political 
 party, and never had the slightest personal 
 interest dependent on a party triumph. 
 Even in that higher sphere of politi- 
 cal thought which rises above all parties, 
 he had nothing to say in the pulpit. He 
 believed that a minister had no right to 
 discuss in the pulpit whether any measure 
 was or was not constitutional, or accord- 
 ing to sound principles of finance or of 
 statesmanship. But he considered him- 
 self bound, as a minister, to expound the 
 Bible, and to apply its teachings to slavery 
 and all other public questions. When 
 any action of an individual, a party, or 
 the government; when any course of 
 
INTEREST IN NATIONAL AFFAIRS. 65 
 
 measures, or any existing institution over- 
 rides God's law, debauches the public 
 conscience, justifies wrong-doing, upholds 
 oppression, then the minister must pro- 
 claim the principles of God's eternal truth 
 against such action or institution. 
 
 " When slavery shall have ceased, future 
 and more Christian generations will read 
 with astonishment, that it was regarded by 
 some as a desecration of his sacred office 
 for a minister to declare in prayer or ser- 
 mon, that American slavery was contrary 
 to the gospel ; and that, since the rebellion, 
 some would not hear a minister pray for 
 the success of the government in suppress- 
 ing ^ 
 
 " Mr. Little believed that his great work 
 as a minister was to unveil the spiritual, 
 and make its realities a power in human 
 life ; to make men know God, and them- 
 selves as sinners, and Christ as their Re- 
 deemer, and to come to him in penitence 
 and faith. But he believed also that the 
 man when converted, needs to be instruct- 
 ed as to the ideal of the Christian life and 
 
66 MEMORIAL. 
 
 of the kingdom of God on earth, in order 
 that, quickened by these new motives and 
 this new love, he may use his influence for 
 the realization in society of the righteous- 
 ness and love which characterize Christ's 
 kingdom. He was not content that his 
 words should be 
 
 ' Like blossoms, breathing perishable sweets,' 
 
 but a fire and a hammer that break eth 
 the rock in pieces. 
 
 " The influence of Mr. Little's preaching 
 on these subjects was powerful in the com- 
 munity in which he lived, and he was 
 sometimes publicly maligned by those who 
 felt and feared his power. But the im- 
 pression that he was always or often 
 preaching on these topics was erroneous. 
 His sermons were usually of a different 
 character, unfolding and applying the va- 
 ried spiritual truths and motives of the 
 gospel. His preaching was not, as some 
 not accustomed to hearing him imagined, 
 intellectual but dry. While he was pre- 
 eminently intellectual in his preaching, 
 
INTEREST IN NATIONAL AFFAIRS. 67 
 
 clear, direct, thoughtful, there was a pre- 
 vailing tenderness, and often a pathos that 
 touched the deepest springs of emotion. 
 
 "Equally erroneous was the idea that 
 these were his favorite subjects, and that 
 he took pleasure in severe and sarcastic 
 denunciation. Mr. Little had a keen wit 
 and the power of sarcasm ; and it would be 
 strange if, with so dangerous a weapon 
 always at command, he did not sometimes 
 use it when it might better have been un- 
 employed. This entire class of sermons 
 had no special attraction for him. Except 
 for the conviction of duty, he would gladly 
 have avoided them. He was naturally of 
 a retiring and self-depreciating disposition, 
 shrinking sensitively from collision with his 
 fellow-men, and craving sympathy ; but 
 duty made him bold. His interest in Jere- 
 miah has been mentioned. He resembled 
 this tender-hearted, but bold patriot. 
 Once, when speaking of the prophet's re- 
 pugnance to being ; a man of strife,' he 
 said he felt a great sympathy for Jere- 
 miah. 
 
68 MEMORIAL. 
 
 " The Puritan churches from the begin- 
 ning have recognized the obligation of 
 ministers to use the principles of Chris- 
 tianity in vindicating human rights. The 
 Puritan ministry have performed this duty ; 
 and history acknowledges that their influ- 
 ence has been prominent in the advance- 
 ment of English and American liberty. 
 Mr. Little's preaching was accordant with 
 the tone of Puritan preaching from the 
 first ; contrary only to that partial apostasy 
 from the lofty spirit and practice of the 
 fathers which has been showing itself in this 
 generation. Nor was he singular in this ; 
 but rather, an example of the New Eng- 
 land ministry The charge has been 
 
 made that the ministers caused the war. 
 If so, it could only have been by indoctri- 
 nating the public mind with the principles 
 of justice and human rights, universal 
 brotherhood and love. It could have been 
 only by teaching the great Puritan ideas 
 which have been the vitality of our nation- 
 al life. If this is the meaning of the charge, 
 it is an honor to the ministry. Deep 
 
INTEREST IN NATIONAL AFFAIRS. 69 
 
 would be the shame, if history, in record- 
 ing this great struggle against slavery, 
 should be obliged to record that the Chris- 
 tian ministry lifted no voice to plead for 
 the oppressed, and to vindicate the rights 
 of man. It is to the honor of Mr. Little 
 that, though he died before the crisis came, 
 he saw with prophetic insight the signifi- 
 cance of the contest, and anticipated its 
 issue ; and that all his influence, as a man 
 and as a minister, was given, in a time of 
 darkness and discouragement, to uphold 
 the right and to plead for the oppressed." 
 
 The following extracts will exemplify 
 Mr. Little's manner of preaching on these 
 subjects : — 
 
 From a sermon preached Dec, 19, 1850. 
 
 " Psalm ii. 11. — Serve the Lord with fear, and re- 
 joice with trembling. 
 
 " Before leaving this part of the subject, 
 I must turn again to the dark shades of it, 
 and refer to certain conflicting elements in 
 
70 MEMORIAL. 
 
 our body politic which threaten convul- 
 sions, and which perhaps neither our con- 
 stitution, nor any human instrument what- 
 soever, can avail to heal and reconcile. 
 These warring elements are working be- 
 tween the North and the South, and upon 
 the subject of Slavery. The questions re- 
 lating to this subject are incomparably 
 more vital to the safety of our Union and 
 government, than any which relate to cur- 
 rency, banks, or tariffs. They will be ag- 
 itated, and agitated with more and more 
 determination, until the cause of them is 
 removed, — until American slavery, so far 
 as the general government has anything to 
 do with it, and consequently so far as we 
 have any responsibility in the matter, is be- 
 yond the reach of our consciences. For 
 as sure and as long as the obstinate pride 
 and the selfish interests of the South meet 
 the conscience of the North on this sub- 
 ject of Slavery, just so sure and just so 
 long will there be collision and eruption. 
 If neither will yield, there must inevitably 
 be a fight to the death, the fair fabric of 
 
INTEREST IN NATIONAL AFFAIRS. 71 
 
 our Union shivered into fragments, suc- 
 ceeded very likely by the horrors of civil 
 war. And it is a serious truth, moreover, 
 that the conscience of the North will never 
 yield." 
 
 From a sermon preached July 4, 1852. 
 
 " John viii. 36. — If the Son, therefore, shall make 
 you free, ye shall be free indeed. 
 
 " Let me direct your thought to the practi- 
 cal instruction for ourselves, to be found in 
 the rise, and growth, and decay of empires. 
 In spite of the vicissitudes of the past, in 
 full view of the graves of buried cities and 
 extinguished nationalities, we believe our- 
 selves insured against a fate so dismal ; we 
 promise for our beloved and ascendant 
 country a future ever brightening. But 
 others have thought so. So thought 
 Palmyra, Thebes, Memphis, Nineveh and 
 Babylon, Tyre and Carthage, and old 
 Rome. But where are they? Decayed, 
 dead, buried ! And yet we speak of our 
 future with proud security. It is well to 
 
72 MEMORIAL. 
 
 consider on what we build this hope of 
 exemption from so common a lot. What 
 element of strength, stability, and duration 
 have we, which they had not ? Is our su- 
 periority to be found in any of the forms 
 of material prosperity ? Are we rich ? 
 So were they. Have we an extended and 
 gainful trade and commerce? So had 
 some of them. Have we knowledge and 
 letters ? So had they. The writers of 
 Greece and Rome in the times of Pericles 
 and Augustus are still our masters. Are 
 we possessed of many and curious arts ? 
 So were they. They attained a skill and 
 facility unknown to us in the use of me-* 
 chanical forces, the results of which pro- 
 voke the wonder of our time. Have we 
 free institutions ? So had they. Are we 
 democrats ? So were some of them. Re- 
 publicans? So were they. Greece had 
 her democracy and her republics. Rome 
 had her republic. The word republic is 
 not a new word, a modern word. No ; 
 time was, as we are told, when republics 
 were the order of the day, not on the 
 
INTEREST IN NATIONAL AFFAIRS. 73 
 
 Western, but on the Eastern continent ; 
 not in Europe only, but in Asia Minor, 
 and in Africa even ; when, to see a mon- 
 archy and a king, men had to travel as far 
 to the East as Persia. There is no magic 
 in the word republic, to charm off decay 
 from a nation. 
 
 " If, therefore, our hopes and prophecies 
 in relation to our own country's permanent 
 prosperity are to be fulfilled, it will be for 
 some other reason than that we have now 
 the common signs and conditions of na- 
 tional health. If the story of extinct em- 
 pires is not to be told over again at the 
 grave of our country, it will be because of 
 the action in the midst of us of some 
 mighty conservative principle, which was 
 wanting to them. This principle, thanks 
 be to God ! we do have ; an agent salutary 
 and powerful. It is Christianity, the only 
 sure guaranty of the prosperity and per- 
 manence of any nation. Nothing but 
 Christianity, the principles of the gospel 
 of Jesus, made actual in the lives and in- 
 tercourse of men, can oppose to the evil 
 
74 MEMORIAL. 
 
 tendencies of degenerate human nature an 
 efficient check and antidote. The instabil- 
 ity of the national weal without true re- 
 ligion, has received ample confirmation in 
 the lapse of past ages. We have yet to 
 see a fair exhibition, a complete illus- 
 tration, of what Christianity can do for 
 national welfare and renown. 
 
 " Do we not see here, my friends, the 
 connection between religion and patriot- 
 ism? Love of country will prompt to 
 such courses as will best promote that coun- 
 try's good, and tend most to promote its 
 permanent prosperity. The truest pledge 
 and proof of such prosperity is to be found 
 in the virtue of the people, high and low, 
 rich and poor, — a virtue springing from the 
 basis of the gospel, having the life and 
 doctrine of Christ for its measure and law. 
 How plainly, then, is it the duty of every 
 good citizen to honor the Christian relig- 
 ion, and do everything in his power to 
 propagate its distinctive principles ! And 
 how can he do that so well as by receiving 
 that religion into his heart, as the ruling 
 
INTEREST IN NATIONAL AFFAIRS. 75 
 
 impulse of his life? Christianity cannot 
 pervade the masses so as to produce its 
 benign effects upon society, except through 
 the hearts of men. For Christianity is 
 not so much a dogma as a life, — not so 
 much a collection of propositions to be be- 
 lieved intellectually, as a body of vital 
 principles sunk deep in the heart, to give 
 life and energy to its impulses, to be prop- 
 agated by example, by the power of sym- 
 pathy, and the inbreathing of the Spirit of 
 God. Christianity, therefore, cannot do 
 its office, and exert its purifying and con- 
 servative influence, except by men's be- 
 coming Christians. And oh, what an ar- 
 gument this, to persuade men of all ranks, 
 who love their country, w T ho acknowledge 
 the power and the beneficence of the Chris- 
 tian religion, to open not the intellect alone 
 to its theory, but the heart to its spirit and 
 life ! » 
 
 From a sermon preached July 16, 
 1854. 
 
 "Prov. xxi. 1. — The king's heart is in the hand 
 
76 MEMORIAL. 
 
 of the Lord, as the rivers of water : he turneth it 
 whithersoever he will. 
 
 " The crumbling and ruin of this ' im- 
 perial republic,' as Sir James Mackintosh 
 called it, the overthrow and wreck of the 
 present frame of things, may be essential to 
 the accomplishment of God's plans, to the 
 greatest good of his kingdom, — nay, the 
 greatest good of coming generations. It 
 is a cheap and easy thing to predict for 
 our country an immortal progress. But to 
 do this in the face of history, with a 
 knowledge of our growing luxury and slav- 
 ery, and greedy ambition for power, is fool- 
 hardy, is puerile to the last degree. We 
 do not despair yet of our country. But it 
 cannot be that all the laws of God and 
 nature are to be reversed for our benefit, 
 just to allow Anglo-Saxon America to 
 spread itself, and extend over this conti- 
 nent the area of its equivocal, its lying 
 freedom. The early history of our coun- 
 try is a proud one, and God's hand is con- 
 spicuous in it. We of New England, at 
 
INTEREST IN NATIONAL AFFAIRS. 77 
 
 least, thank God for a pious ancestry, and 
 count it our joy to build up our body poli- 
 tic on foundations laid in prayer and in the 
 fear of God. But there is no such virtue 
 in the prayers and good living of a re- 
 mote ancestry, as to avert the lightning of 
 Heaven from us, if we will repudiate the 
 divine law, pervert justice, commit the 
 work of our legislation to profane, drunken 
 duellists, and suffer them to legalize in- 
 iquity, and nationalize the worst forms of 
 oppression. That bolt will come, will 
 shiver, will break in pieces, if this wicked- 
 ness continues. And what shall we do ? 
 Where shall we look for succor ? To pop- 
 ular sovereignty, forsooth ? Are not we, 
 the people, sovereigns'? If so, then are 
 we, the people, responsible for the foul 
 legislation of later years, and the disease 
 is too deep and wide-spread to admit of 
 much hope. But if popular sovereignty, 
 which is our peculiar boast, be not an 
 empty vaunt, then let the people rise ; and 
 if they have virtue enough to deserve 
 anything better than the Nebraska type 
 
78 MEMORIAL. 
 
 of legislation, let them hurl from their 
 seats those corrupt men who now defile 
 the national capitol, and replace them with 
 men who fear God, who will do justly. 
 . . . But unless God shall come and 
 help us, I confess my heart will sink, my 
 hope must die." 
 
 From a sermon preached Nov. 26, 1854, 
 after the attack upon Hon. Charles Sum- 
 ner. 
 
 " Matt. x. 34. — Think not that I am come to 
 send peace on earth : I came not to send peace, but a 
 sword. 
 
 " We need not wonder nor be alarmed 
 at the commotions and fermentations 
 in the world, at the desperate struggles 
 of wicked men, at the threats and fury 
 of slavery propagandists, and their un- 
 blushing avowal and actual execution of 
 the most atrocious designs. These men 
 are exasperated by opposition, and it is an 
 omen of good that they are opposed. It is 
 hopeful that there are men who will pro- 
 
INTEREST IN NATIONAL AFFAIRS. 79 
 
 test, at least, against their designs, — yea, 
 who will resist even unto blood, striving 
 against then ruffianly endeavors. Let no 
 one wonder at the rage into which the 
 wicked lash themselves. When truth is 
 brought in contact with error, and justice 
 with oppression, and a spirit of self-denial 
 and humility with a lordly spirit of selfish- 
 ness, we have just the state of things which 
 Jesus predicted in the text. And however 
 much we may grieve at sharp and angry 
 discussions, party animosities, and sec- 
 tional estrangements, yet, until stagnation 
 is better than life, — until the peace that has 
 its basis in the undisputed sway of wrong 
 is better than the war that springs from 
 the aspirations of a defrauded humanity, — 
 we will neither wonder at nor much lament 
 the tumults of this world. 
 
 " Bad men, who are oppressing their fel- 
 lows and preying upon society, if they are 
 opposed or reasoned with, generally re- 
 quest to be let alone, promising that if 
 pretended philanthropists and reformers 
 will mind their own business and leave 
 
80 MEMORIAL. 
 
 them to theirs, there will be no trouble ; 
 but if not, there will be something very 
 alarming, — some street riot, some Union 
 dissolved, the responsibility of which will 
 rest on the shoulders of the fanatics who 
 presumed to disturb the wild beasts. ' Let 
 us alone ; what have we to do with thee, 
 Jesus thou Son of God ? ' So cried the two 
 demoniacs who met our Saviour in the 
 country of the Gergesenes. So cry all 
 men who are possessed with devils, and 
 who are willing to have it so. . . . 
 
 " The question when right shall triumph 
 in our own land, after how many more 
 experiments and failures, is not easy to 
 decide. It may not come until long after 
 we are in our graves, and the stain of time 
 and growth of moss have hidden our 
 names from him who stops to read. It 
 may not come till after our country has 
 been made to drink the cup and tread the 
 winepress of God's indignation ; till we 
 are broken by dismemberment, — till our 
 boasted institutions are in ruins, — till civil 
 war rages at our vitals, and blood, blood 
 
INTEREST IN NATIONAL AFFAIRS. 81 
 
 rises to the horse-bridles ! From such hor- 
 rors we will all pray, in an agony will we 
 pray, Good Lord, deliver us ! But no 
 man can say that it is impossible, that we 
 are not tending toward such calamities. 
 And no one will deny that we deserve to 
 fall upon such times, if we will not do 
 what we can to avert them. What means 
 can we use? What measures must we 
 take ? We can pray ; and let prayer with- 
 out ceasing be put up to that God who 
 hates iniquity, who loves mercy and truth, 
 and who can bring to confusion the most 
 elaborate schemes of wickedness. With- 
 out Him we cannot conquer, and if we 
 could, the victory would not be worth a 
 single shout of gratulation. 
 
 " But as faith without works is dead, so 
 prayer without the work of the hands, 
 when such work is possible, is an insult 
 to Him who ordained both. We have 
 tongues and pens, and above all, at this 
 crisis of our country ? s shame, we have the 
 elective franchise. Shame upon us, woe 
 be to us, if we do not use all these aright ! 
 
82 MEMORIAL. 
 
 If there was ever a time, it is now, when 
 the slowest tongue will leap into the fer- 
 vors of an unwonted eloquence, when the 
 coldest pen will be tipped with fire. If 
 there was ever a time, it is now, when the 
 ballot-box is invested with real sacredness, 
 and we should regard our privilege of elec- 
 tive franchise as a most religious duty. 
 For through that engine of power, the 
 traitors in high places who have betrayed 
 us, betrayed humanity, betrayed innocent 
 blood, shall be hurled from the seats they 
 have disgraced by the scathing sirocco 
 of popular indignation. A few months 
 hence, and the question will be settled, 
 w r hether the voters in the free States de- 
 serve to be freemen or slaves. 
 
 " I do not say, for I do not believe, that 
 slavery is the only foe to our country's 
 honor and stability. We are not like 
 Achilles, vulnerable in the heel only. We 
 may be slain by ambition, by wealth, by 
 luxury, by pride, by Romanism, by athe- 
 istic materialism. But I do believe that 
 by far the most urgent question just now 
 
INTEREST IN NATIONAL AFFAIRS. 83 
 
 relates to the extension of slavery over 
 new territories, and the triumph of South- 
 ern ruffianism. 
 
 " Who is responsible for that dark red 
 stain that has burned itself deep into the 
 floor of that august chamber of the capitol 
 at Washington ? — a stain which all the 
 waters of the Potomac cannot wash out. 
 Who is responsible for that foul and brutal 
 outrage which has sent the fierce blood of 
 every Northerner, who is not himself a 
 brute and a slave, tingling through his 
 veins ? Responsible ? Why, Charles Sum- 
 ner, to be sure, and his confederates, the 
 black Republicans in Congress. Who laid 
 upon them a necessity to provoke the 
 chivalric Southrons ? Did not they know 
 the temper of these gallant men, and their 
 attachment to that darling institution of 
 the South, and their indignant repudiation 
 of the sentiment that this institution of 
 chattel slavery should be sectional, and not 
 national ? 
 
 " I believe that we are environed with a 
 peril, — even now it is at the door ; a peril to 
 
84 MEMORIAL. 
 
 the honor and dearest institutions of our 
 country ; a peril to our Western civiliza- 
 tion ; a peril to our common Christianity, 
 of far greater magnitude than the bom- 
 bardment of a hundred cities. Oh, is it 
 not a question upon which Christianity 
 has something to say, and much to de- 
 mand of you and me, whether a policy 
 which was begun in treachery, and has 
 been pushed forward in fraud, violence, 
 and murder, shall or shall not be rebuked? 
 Whether that fair territory of Kansas, the 
 key to this continent morally, now still 
 more geographically, shall unlock a future 
 of brilliant progress in the pathway of free 
 institutions and a Christian civilization, or 
 a future of deepening degradation, barba- 
 rism and shame ? Let every man be seri- 
 ous with himself, and inquire if he has 
 taken the place he means to occupy 
 through the whole of this contest. Look 
 well to yourselves and see if your place be 
 in the hosts of the Lord, or in the army of 
 God's great adversary." 
 
Clnst nf 311r. jCittk'fi 3Wini.stri[ in Songft. 
 
 During the summer of 1857, after a 
 residence of nearly eight years in Ban- 
 gor, ]\Ir. Little became convinced that 
 he was physically unequal to the care of 
 so large a church and congregation. A 
 disease of the eyes, from which he had 
 suffered four years, was, he thought, mak- 
 ing rapid progress, and, with other symp- 
 toms of failing health, constrained him to 
 seek relief by change of situation. 
 
 Before making any public announce- 
 ment of his purpose, he often spoke in 
 his family of the pain and perplexity he 
 felt in view of withdrawing from a re- 
 lation which had been to him so dear 
 and sacred. He knew not how to com- 
 
 f85) 
 
86 MEMORIAL. 
 
 municate with his people upon the sub- 
 ject. " No," he said, sometimes ; " I shall 
 never have the courage to do it, — never" 
 
 In September he was invited to become 
 the pastor of the Congregational Church 
 in West Newton, Mass. The compara- 
 tive rest which he would find in a rural 
 parish, and the pleasant impressions he 
 had already received of this place, inclined 
 him to regard the proposition with favor. 
 It seemed that the providence of God made 
 his path plain, and with much prayer 
 he followed the indication. 
 
 His people listened with sorrow to 
 his letter of resignation, and accepted it 
 with unfeigned reluctance. It was with 
 a generous disinterestedness that they 
 yielded to his request. 
 
 To a friend he wrote, after all was 
 over : — 
 
 " You may well speculate in perplexi- 
 
MINISTRY IN BANGOR. 87 
 
 ty about my leaving Bangor. It is a 
 long and painful story ; painful, not be- 
 cause it tells of alienation, but of the 
 sundering of ties which were increasingly 
 strong and tender to the last, and which 
 will doubtless remain so to the end of 
 time. Never could a people have treated 
 me more generously than they, while I 
 was with them ; and never could a peo- 
 ple have parted with their pastor more 
 nobly and gracefully." 
 
 On Sabbath, October 18, Mr. Little 
 delivered a farewell discourse, from Isai- 
 ah liii : 1. — " Who hath believed our 
 report ? and to whom is the arm of 
 the Lord revealed ? " In conclusion, he 
 said • — 
 
 " I feel my ministerial inefficiency and 
 unfaithfulness more then ever, as I stand 
 to-day at the close of eight years' pro- 
 fessional labor among you. This chapter 
 thus sealed, can never be -altered, never 
 be blotted out. Whatever in it is good 
 
88 MEMORIAL. 
 
 and desirable will forever remain, and 
 will forever illustrate the goodness and 
 the grace of Him in whom are all our 
 springs, and from whom all holy desires, 
 all good counsels, and all just works do 
 proceed. Whatever marks of imperfec- 
 tion, mistake, unfaithfulness, are to be 
 found in this completed chapter, will 
 always mar and disfigure it. We cannot 
 erase those blots. For my own part, as 
 they now stare me in the face in my 
 backward reading, I can only find com- 
 fort in the penitence of an humbled heart, 
 and the earnest cry for forgiveness, and 
 the remembrance of that merciful assur- 
 ance that ' where sin hath abounded, 
 grace shall much more abound.' 
 
 " I cannot dwell — I have not the nerve 
 — upon the pain of sundering such a rela- 
 tion as mine has been with you. The an- 
 ticipation of it kept me long wavering and 
 vacillating, even after my judgment was 
 convinced that God was by his providence 
 calling me away. 
 
 " To those of you who have been ac- 
 
MINISTRY IN BANGOR. 89 
 
 quainted with the fluctuations of my health 
 for the last year, my decision cannot seem 
 sudden. Never did I give to a subject so 
 careful, thorough, and prayerful deliberation, 
 and never was I so conscious through the 
 whole of desiring to do only that which 
 my Master in heaven could approve. 
 
 " Whether I shall acomplish my object 
 by the change, I cannot, of course, be in- 
 fallibly sure. I confess that my hope is 
 not very confident, nor are my expectations 
 sanguine. • God may be leading me into 
 peril and conflict, rather than rest and 
 safety ; but that he is leading me, I have a 
 strong persuasion ; and I am sure that 
 wherever he leads, it is both wise and safe 
 courageously to follow. 
 
 " I must tell you how grateful I have 
 always felt to you, and how I am more 
 deeply and tenderly impressed now than 
 ever with the kindness which in many ways 
 I have experienced at your hands. When 
 I stood in this pulpit, eight years ago, timid 
 and trembling, crude and inexperienced as 
 I was, just from my quiet nest in the Sem- 
 
90 MEMORIAL. 
 
 inary, and preached the first sermon after 
 my ordination, I said, * Were it not for my 
 confidence in the officers of this church, — 
 were it not for my confidence in the gener- 
 osity of this people, — I never could have 
 ventured on the step I have taken.' I now 
 say gladly, and without the least reser- 
 vation, that the confidence in the officers of 
 this church, expressed eight years ago, was 
 not misplaced. Great reason have I to 
 thank them, as I now do publicly, for that 
 singular deference and affection which 
 they have uniformly shown toward me. 
 May they long be spared to the service of 
 religion here ! 
 
 " The same testimony I can honestly, 
 and do cheerfuly, render to the considerate 
 and friendly treatment which I have ever 
 received from you all. Very few ministers, 
 I am persuaded, can look back upon eight 
 years of such uninterrupted harmony, and 
 such a delightful pastoral relation. 
 
 "It is not by numerical statistics that we 
 learn the power and value of such inter- 
 course as mine has been with you. The 
 
MINISTRY IN BANGOR. 91 
 
 silent, subtle influence, favorable or other- 
 wise, upon your opinions, tastes, character, 
 and destiny, proceeding not only from my 
 public appeals, but also from your contact 
 with me in the various walks of private 
 and social life, — in scenes of joy and sor- 
 row, at the bridal and at the burial ; this 
 influence, though possibly not consciously 
 great at any one time, will work for good 
 or ill not only in you, but in others over 
 whom you have power, and that forever. 
 Such results of any minister's labors are 
 for God alone to estimate. Eternity will 
 be the measure of them. 
 
 " The scenes which I shall remember 
 longest, and with the most tender interest, 
 will be those of affliction and sorrow, in 
 which I have borne a part since I became 
 your pastor : the chambers of disease and 
 death which have been gilded with the 
 brightness of an anticipated heavenly glory. 
 
 " And here, too, I have reaped the fairest 
 rewards of my professional life ; not in the 
 pulpit, but in the chamber of the sick and 
 dying, and from their greetings ; from the 
 
92 MEMORIAL. 
 
 smile that has sometimes irradiated their 
 pale faces as I approached the bedside, — 
 the attenuated hand extended to grasp mine, 
 
 — the manifest satisfaction with which they 
 would lay hold upon some sweet word 
 of the blessed gospel which I repeated, 
 
 — the unaffected request that I would 
 call often. In my introductory sermon I 
 find these words : l It will be well for a 
 minister, and a crown of glory to him, 
 if his presence in the chamber of sick- 
 ness be hailed with delight ; if the words 
 of his prayer and of his counsel shall 
 give strength and courage to the spirit that 
 is passing away from its earthly tenement.' 
 What I then wrote as the dictate of my 
 judgment, I now repeat with emphasis — 
 devoutly will I bless God for it ! — as a 
 part of my own experience. Next to the 
 approving smile of my Lord above, this is 
 what my soul has craved ; this is what will 
 ever be one of the sweetest pledges that 
 my ministerial life has not been quite in 
 vain. 
 
 " And now, as I look round about upon 
 
MINISTRY IN BANGOR. 93 
 
 you all, and forward to the possibilities of 
 the next eight years, I see that some of the 
 places you now occupy — how many I know 
 not, but some of them — will surely be va- 
 cant And I need to run my eyes but a 
 few years beyond that, to find all our 
 places vacant. For Death, how insatiable 
 and how busy he is ! All the partings, all 
 the changes in this life, are but the pre- 
 lude, as they ought to be, to the prepara- 
 tion for that final separation ; a separation 
 which is at the same time a reunion with 
 the dear ones who have died in the Lord 
 and gone before us, — gone before to herald 
 our approach, and to lay up for us a treas- 
 ure in the heavenly world. 
 
 " It is a solemn, it is a mysterious thing 
 to die. It is an experience with which no 
 living man intermeddles. The loneliness, 
 the isolation, the strict and absolute indi- 
 viduality of that experience is, to me, a 
 most impressive fact. ' It is a very differ- 
 ent thing/ said a dying friend to me not 
 long ago, ' to see another approaching the 
 grave, step by step, from what it is to be 
 
94 MEMORIAL. 
 
 conscious that it is you yourself.' Each 
 man dies as truly for himself, and alone, 
 as if no great army had gone before him, 
 and as if the gateway to the spirit-world 
 were not every day rilled with a crowd 
 thronging through together. But whatever 
 it may be to die, how easy or how hard 
 soever, we shall soon know just what it is. 
 And when I think how gladly I would be 
 of service to you all, living or dying, I can- 
 not help asking, who will be with you 
 when you die ? Some kind physician, no 
 doubt ; some man of God, if you wish, 
 to help you with his teachings and his 
 prayers ; dear kindred and friends to soothe 
 you with a thousand kind offices, and with 
 the sympathy of breaking hearts and weep- 
 ing eyes. God grant that the circumstances 
 of your departure may afford all those 
 comforts ! But who else will be there ? 
 Will you need no one else ? Will you 
 not turn your imploring eyes hither and 
 thither for some one else ? I think so. I 
 am sure it will be so with me. Oh, if in 
 that hour I cannot find Him, the blessed, 
 
 
MINISTRY IN BANGOR. 95 
 
 the almighty Jesus, not only in my dying 
 chamber, but in my heart ; if I cannot 
 persuade myself — and ah! what is more 
 important, have reason to persuade myself 
 — that he is mine, and I am his, it will be 
 dreadful, it will be appalling, to die. And 
 as I have ever testified to you, so will I re- 
 peat it as my maturest conviction, growing 
 stronger to this hour, that the only good 
 ground for hope and joy in death is a heart 
 and life devoted to Christ. 
 
 " I can only, in conclusion, exhort you 
 not to lose heart, but to be courageous and 
 hopeful, trusting ever in that God who has 
 hitherto helped you, and who will not de- 
 sert you now. I implore you to cultivate 
 still, and now more than ever, that spirit 
 of harmonious cooperation, which has al- 
 ways characterized you as a society. 
 
 " Of this I am sure, that 4 the Lord is 
 with you, while ye be with him ; and if ye 
 seek him, he will be found of you ; but if 
 ye forsake Mm, he will forsake you.' n 
 
tm\ tpr at fflid fctmt. 
 
 Mr. Little had been installed at West 
 Newton, November 12, 1857. The hope 
 which he had cherished of regaining his 
 health was disappointed. During the 
 spring and summer of 1859, he suffered 
 from increasing feebleness. The affection 
 of his eyes, which had now continued 
 nearly six years, appeared like a confirmed 
 malady, and in other respects his health 
 declined. 
 
 " This mysterious debility," he said ; M it 
 seems as if it would consume my very ex- 
 istence." " I think I begin 
 
 to understand what God is preparing for 
 me. I have thought I must wait for 
 health, before I could serve God ; but I 
 
 (96) 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 97 
 
 have concluded that what I have to do 
 is to devote to the Lord what strength I 
 have." 
 
 The time of some member of the family 
 was always at Mr. Little's disposal for 
 reading ; yet he often preferred to spend 
 hours in silence. He once remarked : — 
 
 " This condition of my eyes is very de- 
 pressing ; but it is a good time for me to 
 look at the things which are unseen and 
 
 eternal I am finding out that there 
 
 are other and better teachers than books." 
 
 His frequent petition at the family altar 
 was : — 
 
 " May we be prepared for the days 
 of darkness and evil which are surely com- 
 ing, the days of weakness and decay, — for 
 any cup which our heavenly Father may 
 be mingling for us." 
 
 One of the last discourses which he was 
 able to write was from James iv. 14, — 
 
 " Ye know not what shall be on the mor- 
 
 x 
 
98 MEMORIAL. 
 
 row." The following are extracts from 
 this sermon : — 
 
 " Almost every day brings with it some 
 illustration of the truth of the text. Con- 
 sider the changes, startling and unexpected, 
 which a few short hours will sometimes 
 effect ; some friend talking with you to-day, 
 in all the elation of health and hope, — his 
 mind teeming with plans for the future, — 
 to-morrow in his coffin ; a battle issuing in 
 the death of thousands of brave men in full 
 life, and a change in the political destiny 
 of a whole continent; a bright and gay 
 family suddenly overcast with gloom, the 
 sound of the viol exchanged for wailing, 
 from some calamity which an hour has 
 brought forth. In these, and a thousand 
 other forms, God is impressively illustrat- 
 ing before our eyes the shortness of our 
 sight. * Ye know not what shall be on the 
 morrow.' " . . . . " It is a mercy that we 
 do not know the future ; and this whether 
 it is to be prosperous or adverse. For if 
 prosperous, the knowledge of it would have 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 99 
 
 a tendency to elate the mind, and throw it 
 from a healthy balance, lead to a neglect 
 of those means and conditions on which 
 prosperity is ordinarily suspended, and 
 thus, if possible, frustrate the very purpose 
 
 of God 
 
 " Again, and preeminently, it is a mercy 
 that we do not know the future, if it is to 
 bring for us adversity, trial, and sorrow. 
 1 Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' 
 How often is it the case, when a man has 
 labored to the end of some great achieve- 
 ment, that we hear him say, as he looks 
 back upon the painful way through which 
 he has travelled, ' If I had known what 
 was before me, when I undertook that 
 work, I never should have had the courage 
 for it.' It was a mercy to himself, it was 
 a blessing to the world, that it was hidden 
 from him. How r greatly the world would 
 be the loser, if men always knew what 
 was in reserve for them ! How such knowl- 
 edge would cool enthusiasm, quench cour- 
 age, and relax the hand of enterprise ! 
 And how it would precipitate coming 
 
100 MEMORIAL. 
 
 sorrows, and ripen our griefs before the 
 time, and multiply our pangs, and smite 
 the soul with a very paralysis of terror, if 
 we had ever before our eyes the vision of 
 that suffering which the future will very 
 likely make actual to us. Oh, who would 
 rend the veil, and gaze upon the reality ? 
 Who would pry open the lids of the sealed 
 book ? Who would by anticipation taste 
 beforehand the cup which is preparing for 
 us in the hand of God, and which is to be 
 put to our lips at the appointed hour ? 
 We will labor and pray to be prepared for 
 the cup, with whatever bitter ingredients it 
 may be mingled, and strengthened for the 
 appointed baptism, though it be as if all 
 the billows were rolling over us. 
 
 " It is an unspeakable comfort that God 
 knows the future, and appoints it. Noth- 
 ing can take him by surprise. He foresees 
 everything, orders everything. How dismal 
 if it were not so ; if we were forced to think 
 ourselves the sport of blind chance, or help- 
 lessly bound to the iron car of cold unintel- 
 ligent laws ! What a blessed comfort, on 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 101 
 
 the contrary, to know that the actual ruling 
 Intelligence is the God of our Bible and 
 our Christianity; a Being by whom all 
 prosperity is skilfully adjusted to the best 
 interests of the whole, and — what is more 
 to our purpose — a Being by whom all ad- 
 versity is not only adjusted to the best in- 
 terests of the whole, including the sufferer 
 himself, but tenderly adjusted to that 
 sufferer's weakness. ' He knoweth our 
 frame ; he remembereth that we are dust.' 
 And what I want you to think of now is, 
 that he always knew it ; and to feel what 
 a sweetness there is in this reflection, that 
 whatever burden is now pressing heavily 
 upon you, or whatever trial is in store for 
 you, has been from all eternity a matter of 
 deliberation in God's mind, and lying 
 through all those ages upon his kind, pa- 
 ternal heart. And if there is something 
 solemn, almost fearful, in this deliberate 
 eternal purpose, there is great comfort in it 
 too ; for a policy so long considered by a 
 Being of such infinite wisdom must be a 
 wise, must be the best policy 
 
102 MEMORIAL. 
 
 He who loveth his children with an un- 
 speakable tenderness knows all their trials, 
 and has always known them ; for he or- 
 dered them, and has had all that time to 
 adjust the keenness of the blast to the 
 
 weakness of the lamb 
 
 " Our ignorance of the future should 
 teach us our dependence upon God. . . . 
 It is right, it is eminently wise, to form 
 plans reaching far into the future, and re- 
 quiring many years for their fulfilment, — 
 provided they have a reference to the will 
 and honor of God, and to the good of our 
 fellow-men. The man who, in the forma- 
 tion and execution of his plans of life, is 
 seeking to conspire with the will of God, 
 is sure to succeed. His expectations will 
 not perish, for the will of the Lord is sure 
 to be accomplished. Full success may 
 not come during his brief lifetime. But 
 the plans of such a man stretch beyond 
 this life ; and when he dies he bequeaths 
 them to those of like spirit, and these labor 
 upon them, and carry them still farther 
 toward completion. Indeed, the plans of 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 103 
 
 such a man are, by the very supposition, 
 
 not his plans, but God's 
 
 . . . . " There are great truths in re- 
 spect to which to-morrow shall be as to-day. 
 God is the same yesterday, to-day, and for- 
 ever Sin is the same hateful thing to-day 
 as when it was first conceived ; it will al- 
 ways be hateful. God's hostility to sin will 
 ever be the same, — never diminished. Yes, 
 my hearers, from to-day on through the 
 future, even to the day of judgment, these 
 things are the same, and we may know 
 them. Happy are we, if we rightly im- 
 prove this knowledge. Then may we 
 know and be persuaded, that He whom 
 we love and serve will keep our souls unto 
 that day, and crown us with eternal glory 
 in heaven." 
 
 In August, he was suddenly and severely 
 ill. He said : " I am certain that I have 
 some serious internal disease. My life is 
 nearly gone. I have seen my best days, 
 and shall soon be in my grave." He ex- 
 
104 MEMORIAL. 
 
 pressed earnest desires for life. " I should 
 like to live if the Lord has more work for 
 me to do." 
 
 Rev. Levi Field, an intimate friend of 
 Mr. Little, and his classmate at Andover 
 Theological Seminary, died in October, 
 1859. It was the first death in that class. 
 
 In a letter dated December 3, 1859, Mr. 
 Little says to a mutual friend, also a class- 
 mate : — 
 
 u Which of our little band will go 
 next ? I confess I think of Field almost 
 with a feeling of envy ; partly, I suppose, 
 from the effects of ill-health, but partly 
 too, I hope, from the working of the good 
 Spirit of God. I contemplate with more 
 and more satisfaction the fulfilment of 
 that sweet promise of our Lord, John xiv. 
 3, and follow with hearty congratulations 
 those who die in the faith. To be clean 
 escaped from the corruptions and weari- 
 some crucial experiences of this world, — to 
 be present with the Lord and like him, 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 105 
 
 with such companions and such employ- 
 ments as heaven will furnish, — is it not 
 to be longed for ? 
 
 ' Oh, glorious hour ! oh, blest abode ! ' 
 
 But it is good to labor, and suffer, and 
 strive to honor the Master here below, and 
 to persuade men to be reconciled to God." 
 
 December 17, he wrote : — 
 
 " Oh for twenty years of robust health, 
 a distinct, God-commissioned work, and a 
 springing, tireless enthusiasm! And yet, 
 what would the world, or the church, or the 
 cause of truth gain by it ? This is the ques- 
 tion which often brings me to my bearings, 
 and quells the tumult of my desire for health. 
 My health, or my life, appears to me less 
 and less important as affecting the current 
 of the world's affairs and the great cause 
 of the Redeemer. God, I hope, does 
 sometimes hear my prayers and cries, and 
 has given me something better than health, 
 — the sweet inward pledge, if I am not 
 
106 MEMORIAL. 
 
 deceived, that I am his child. My heavenly 
 Father has faithfully done his part toward 
 thoroughly teaching me the religious uses 
 and advantages of disappointment." 
 
 Again he said : — 
 
 " My earthly future is unpromising and 
 cheerless enough to a man of any literary 
 taste, or scholarly aspiration, or ambition 
 for efficiency and achievement. If, as seems 
 probable, I must only ' stand and wait,' and 
 if so I can serve my God and honor him 
 whom I adore above every other name, I 
 trust through grace I shall be content." 
 
 Throughout this period, Mr. Little's con- 
 versation indicated a frequent contempla- 
 tion of things above. " My thoughts," he 
 said, " are much upon going to my heav- 
 enly home." Incidents, not much noticed 
 at the time, are remembered now, which 
 show this tendency of his mind. One 
 day, when a friend, who was ever thought- 
 ful in attentions to his pastor, had done 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 107 
 
 him a kindness, Mr. Little said, in his own 
 pleasant way, " We'll talk of it when we 
 get to heaven." 
 
 On the last Sabbath evening in August^ 
 as he sat near the window and watched 
 the going down of the sun, he proposed 
 that we should sing the hymn, — 
 
 "Nearer, my God, to thee. 1 ' * 
 
 As we were about commencing the last 
 verse, he said, " Sing faster now ; " and 
 then, with energy of expression, his voice, 
 before weak and tremulous, rose into a 
 clear, sweet tenor, as we sang the inspir- 
 ing words : — 
 
 "Or, if on joyful wing, 
 
 Cleaving the sky, 
 Sun, moon, and stars forgot, 
 
 Upward I fly, 
 Still all my song shall be, 
 Nearer, my God, to thee, 
 
 Nearer to thee." 
 
 * " Sabbath Hymn Book," hymn 90S. 
 
108 MEMORIAL. 
 
 The Sabbath Hymn Book became the 
 constant companion of his devotions. He 
 often sat in his arm-chair in the study, 
 with the volume open before him, and his 
 eyes closed. Some months after, he said, 
 " This book has been the means of great 
 good to me." 
 
 Alluding to his recent illness, he wrote 
 thus, November 11, 1859 : — 
 
 " In the worst stage of my bodily health, 
 I was not unhappy ; but, on the contrary, 
 was never less agitated about myself ; never 
 more willing, I think, to lie quietly in the 
 hands of God ; never had a livelier sense of 
 the reality and sweetness of the personal rela- 
 tion that subsists between Jesus and his dis- 
 ciples. It is more and more my aim to repro- 
 duce in my own religious history that kind 
 of intercourse with the blessed Lord Jesus 
 which the evangelists have so beautifully re- 
 corded, and which I believe to be no less our 
 privilege than that of the first disciples, — 
 simple, childlike, unconstrained, and yet 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 109 
 
 most certainly meek and reverential. I con- 
 fess that, for myself, I know of no more ex- 
 cellent way by which a Christian may gain 
 the utmost of comfort, strength, and purity." 
 
 As the winter advanced, Mr. Little be- 
 came extremely sensitive to the cold. He 
 was always hoarse after preaching, and 
 sometimes coughed. He one day put his 
 hand upon his chest, saying, " I think I 
 shall have consumption. I believe there 
 are indications that my lungs are diseased." 
 
 He was advised to travel in Europe ; and 
 his mind was much engaged upon plans 
 which for years he had entertained, in hope 
 of making such a tour. 
 
 On Friday evening, December 30, he 
 preached the sermon preparatory to the sa- 
 crament of the Lord's Supper, which was 
 to be administered on the next Sabbath. 
 His discourse was from Colossians iii. 1, 2, 
 — " If ye then be risen with Christ, seek 
 those things which are above, where Christ 
 
110 MEMORIAL. 
 
 sitteth on the right hand of God. Set 
 your affection on things above, not on 
 things on the earth. " 
 
 This sermon was mostly extemporane- 
 ous. His animation of manner and voice 
 in speaking of "the society of heaven" 
 as one of " those things " to be sought 
 " above, " and the delight with which he 
 uttered his own anticipations of it, cannot 
 fail to be remembered by those who listened 
 to his words. He repeated impressively 
 the sublime passage in the twelfth chapter 
 of Hebrews : — 
 
 " But ye are come unto Mount Si on, and 
 unto the city of the living God, the heaven- 
 ly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable com- 
 pany of angels. 
 
 " To the general assembly and church of 
 the first-born, which are written in heaven, 
 and to God the Judge of all, and to the 
 spirits of just men made perfect, 
 
 " And to Jesus, the mediator of the new 
 covenant." 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. Ill 
 
 In concluding, he said : — 
 
 " The instinct of the renewed soul is to 
 seek those things which are above. Such a 
 disposition is fitted to keep the soul always 
 tranquil, hopeful, courageous. There is no 
 such foundation for courage as this. It is 
 more than all the world against us. Disap- 
 pointment is impossible. Whatever we lose, 
 there is always something left which far 
 outweighs that which is gone. We can- 
 not be impoverished. And, what is more, 
 it will increase our moral power as Chris- 
 tians. 
 
 " But if we will not set our affections 
 on heavenly things in time of prosperity, — 
 if we will not heed the calls of God in the 
 Scriptures, the many declarations of the 
 emptiness of this world, — then, unless he 
 will give us up to be filled with the fruit 
 of our own devices, he will try another 
 method. If we cannot or will not adjust 
 the relations of both the heavenly and the 
 earthly, then he will take away from us the 
 earthly, that w T e may by stress of circum- 
 
112 MEMORIAL. 
 
 stances, by the very necessity of the soul's 
 having something to love and lean upon, 
 seek as we ought the heavenly. Alas, 
 that we should ever put God, our heavenly 
 Father, to this alternative ! But when we 
 do, blessed be his name that he will be 
 faithful with us, and true to his covenant ; 
 that he will smite, and will not stay his 
 hand for our much crying. 
 
 " As we are so soon to commence a new 
 year, shall we not inquire whether, as the 
 months and years roll on, we are conscious 
 that the world is conquering us, or whether 
 we are gaining greater and greater ascen- 
 dency over the world ? — whether we are 
 becoming more heavenly-minded? God 
 grant that this may be true of us all ; for 
 then, when He who is our life shall ap- 
 pear, and we appear with him in glory, those 
 things that have animated, strengthened, 
 and delighted us here, though apprehended 
 only by faith, shall be the themes of our 
 eternal meditation and song." 
 
 The following Sabbath was the first day 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 113 
 
 of the year 1860. In the forenoon Mr. 
 Little preached from Matthew xi. 15, — 
 " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." 
 
 Referring to the ways by which God 
 speaks to men, he said : — 
 
 " My hearers, let no event of your life, 
 no unforeseen change in your fortunes, be 
 considered commonplace, meaningless, or 
 limited to itself in importance. It has a 
 deep and wide-reaching significancy. It 
 is solemn, for God is in it. He speaks to 
 you through it. 
 
 " It invests the life and destiny of every 
 man with an awful seriousness, to think 
 that he is the object of a divine care and 
 solicitude, — that the great God is ever near 
 him, ever surrounding him with his person- 
 al presence, ever in communication with 
 him. And do you think that such a truth 
 harmonizes well with an indifferent or friv- 
 olous habit ? Is it not probable that God 
 is speaking to us, through some event of 
 our life, or inner experience of the soul, far 
 oftener than we think ? And if he speaks 
 
1 14 MEMORIAL. 
 
 to you, my friends, and you do not hear, 
 if it be not your crime, it will be your 
 calamity. If he speaks, it is always with 
 a design, for he doeth nothing in vain. . . 
 
 " How kind, then, and seasonable, are 
 those admonitions of God, which are fitted 
 to arouse men, and constrain them to 
 attend to their dearest and most lasting 
 interests ! . . . . 
 
 " Such an admonition as that of the text 
 is timely, because of the mode in which 
 God oftenest speaks to men. It is not in 
 a tone of thunder. It is oftener in a voice 
 so small that a little inattention will miss 
 it. 
 
 " Finally, let me say that the time for 
 hearing to any good purpose will soon be 
 over. And does not this add urgency to 
 the command of the text, and make it 
 worth your while to regard and obey it ? 
 In every mode of his communication with 
 you, God calls you first of all to repent- 
 ance, to a rational and godly life. Have 
 you ever recognized this appeal ? Have 
 you ever with all the heart responded to 
 
LAST TEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 115 
 
 it ? If not, be warned in season. God 
 still calls with gracious and fatherly accent. 
 How long he will bear with you, if you 
 refuse to hear, I know not. But this I 
 know, for God hath so declared, that if 
 men will not hear the words of admonition 
 and the invitations of grace, they must 
 hear the thunders of judgment and con- 
 demnation." 
 
 In the afternoon Mr. Little preached 
 from Romans vi. 1, 2, — " What shall we 
 say then ? Shall we continue in sin, that 
 grace may abound ? God forbid : how 
 shall we, that are dead to sin, live any 
 longer therein ? " 
 
 In conclusion, he said : — 
 
 " We rejoice, my brethren, — do we 
 not ? — in the doctrines of grace. And 
 well we may. We do well to glory in 
 this : that God does not require us to 
 make expiation for our own sins, but has 
 laid that awful burden upon another, 
 
116 MEMORIAL. 
 
 even upon Jesus, the Son of his love. On 
 this great central truth of all right theology 
 we rest our souls. In hours of our trouble 
 and anguish, we turn confidingly to this 
 mighty Saviour, believing that if his love 
 for us was equal to the willing endurance 
 of the bitter cross, then will he be compas- 
 sionate, and forward to deliver us from 
 minor evils, or at least he will temper them 
 with a sweet comfort. Thus does this 
 view of God's method of grace cheer and 
 strengthen us in life, and we expect that it 
 will refresh our souls in death, giving us 
 then a quiet peace, if not rapture and tri- 
 umph. Oh, what shall we render unto 
 God for his unspeakable gift ! and what 
 tongue is competent to recount the num- 
 ber, or express the richness, of those bless- 
 ings which flow to us from that sacrifice ? " 
 
 These were Mr. Little's last words from 
 the pulpit. 
 
 He returned to his study exhausted, and, 
 after a long silence, remarked : " I have an 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 117 
 
 impression that this will be an eventful 
 year for us. I think that I shall either be 
 in Europe or in heaven." 
 
 But in the course of a few days he ap- 
 peared to be in better health than for a 
 long time previous. There was in all his 
 movements an unwonted elasticity ; his 
 mind acted with more than its ordinary 
 alacrity, and his countenance was bright 
 with the hope of returning vigor. 
 
 Friday, January 6, was intensely cold ; 
 yet he spent most of the day in walks 
 about his parish, and visits to some afflict- 
 ed persons. 
 
 In the evening he attended the weekly 
 prayer-meeting, and made remarks upon 
 the first ten verses of the tenth chapter of 
 Romans. He spoke of the utter hopeless- 
 ness of the sinner's state if perfect obedi- 
 ence should be the condition of salvation, 
 and dwelt with joyful earnestness upon 
 the freeness of the pardon granted to those 
 
118 MEMORIAL. 
 
 who believe in Jesus. His appearance 
 throughout was unusually animated. 
 
 As he was about to close his eyes in 
 sleep that night, he coughed violently, and 
 a stream of blood poured from his mouth. 
 He was entirely tranquil. As soon as he 
 could speak, he said : — 
 
 " I do not feel the least alarm. Once 
 this would have filled me with agitation. 
 This blood is from my lungs. I feel it; 
 it comes from deep down, I have long 
 been preparing for this." At intervals 
 he said, " I have anticipated some sud- 
 den, fatal development. It is good to 
 be always ready. I shall never preach 
 again, I think. You remember what I 
 said to you last Sabbath afternoon, that 
 I should this year be either in Europe or 
 in heaven." 
 
 It was proposed to send a neighbor for 
 a physician ; but he replied, " No ; wait 
 till morning;" at the same time express- 
 ing his unwillingness to disturb others. 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 119 
 
 He was awake most of the night, but sel- 
 dom spoke. Once he exclaimed, the tears 
 rolling down his cheeks, " The dear chil- 
 dren ! " And again, " My poor sisters ! 
 this will be dreadful to them." After a 
 pause, he added, " My people will be ut- 
 terly discouraged, to have had two pastors 
 prostrated by the same disease." * 
 
 Early in the morning, he said, " I want 
 to see the dear children." As they stood 
 weeping beside him, he kissed them, and 
 told them that he was very sick, that per- 
 
 * Kev. Joseph P. Drunimond was ordained over the church 
 in West Newton, January 2, 1856. In less than a year the 
 encroachments of a pulmonary disease compelled him to re- 
 move to a milder climate. After one winter's residence in 
 Aiken, S. C, he returned in the summer of 1857, to spend 
 only a few months preliminary to his final departure. He 
 died in the place of his nativity, Bristol, Me., November 23, 
 1857, at the age of thirty-three. 
 
 Mr. Drunimond and Mr. Little were classmates in college, 
 and were together at Andover during a part of their theolog- 
 ical course. 
 
120 MEMORIAL. 
 
 haps he should die, and added, " You 
 must love Jesus a great deal." 
 
 His condition appeared so critical, that 
 he was advised to refrain from conversa- 
 tion, and not to speak above a whisper. 
 He did not suffer pain, and often alluded 
 to the goodness of God in permitting him 
 to be so comfortable. " I have nothing to 
 do," he said, " but to bless the Lord. Our 
 trials are nothing at all compared with 
 those of many persons." 
 
 The comforts which Mr. Little enjoyed 
 in his sickness quickened that delicate ap- 
 preciation of the privations and sorrows 
 of others for which he had always been 
 remarkable. His ready sympathy, his 
 cheering words, and generous aid, had ever 
 made him a welcome visitor in the homes 
 of the needy. To those who toiled in sol- 
 itude for their daily bread, to the sick and 
 afflicted, the aged especially, he had been 
 a valued friend ; and now that he was 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 121 
 
 himself upon the bed of languishing, he re- 
 ceived the blessing promised to him that 
 considereth the poor. 
 
 Sabbath morning, January 8, the hem- 
 orrhage returned. He asked to have the 
 one hundred and thirtieth Psalm read, re- 
 marking, " That's my Psalm." 
 
 It was said to him, " It is sad to see you 
 so feeble." 
 
 " But this is life," he replied. " You 
 must remember, ' that the trial of your 
 faith, being much more precious than of 
 gold that perisheth, though it be tried with 
 fire, might be found unto praise, and honor 
 and glory, at the appearing of Jesus 
 Christ.' Perhaps this is the best way in 
 which I can glorify God. If it is, I am 
 willing to have \i so. This sickness has 
 given me great courage. I have wanted 
 some new test in my own case of the 
 power of religion to sustain ; and now I am 
 satisfied." 
 
122 MEMORIAL. 
 
 When told that one of his favorite 
 hymns had been sung by the congregation 
 that day, his face lighted up as he said, 
 " I wonder if they sang it well ; M and he 
 was gratified on being assured that the 
 singing would have been pleasant to him. 
 
 He expressed a wish to write a few lines 
 to " the dear Bangor friends." 
 
 " But you are too weak ; some one else 
 will do it for you." 
 
 " No ; bring me a pencil and paper. I 
 must write that note myself." 
 
 With a trembling hand he wrote these 
 words : — 
 
 " I am strangely tranquil. I hope it is 
 my religion that makes me so. I think it 
 is. Christ is all and in all to me, not only 
 theoretically, but I think also experiment- 
 ally and consciously. 
 
 " Please remember me in your prayers, 
 and ask the dear brethren of that church 
 we love so well to pray that, living or 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 12o 
 
 dying, I may be prepared the more effect- 
 ually to glorify God." 
 
 Every morning he greeted his friends 
 with a bright smile and affectionate words. 
 
 January 9, he held the following conver- 
 sation with one of his family : " I think I 
 shall die in one of these attacks of bleed- 
 ing. I have a feeling of suffocation. You 
 may as well prepare for the worst." 
 
 " You will think of us if you should go 
 first." 
 
 " Yes, indeed, — and the dear children ! 
 I believe they will be converted. We 
 shall all soon be in eternity. The time 
 will be short at the longest." 
 
 " What trials you have had, and how 
 patient you are ! " 
 
 " Oh, don't ! I have had very little to 
 tiy my patience as yet. The margin has 
 not begun to be filled up. I can bear this 
 very well for a few days, but I fear that I 
 
124 MEMORIAL. 
 
 shall grow impatient. I do not think I 
 shall get well, because I think God sees 
 that I should forget him if restored to 
 health. But it is a very different thing to 
 die one's self from what it is to see other 
 people die." 
 
 Some passages of Scripture were read 
 to him. When he heard the words, " Who 
 shall change our vile body, that it may be 
 fashioned like unto his glorious body," he 
 exclaimed, " Yes, that is a precious text. 
 Will you read to me Baxter's beautiful 
 hymn ? " 
 
 "Lord, it belongs not to my care 
 Whether I die or live ; 
 To love and serve thee is my share, 
 And this thy grace must give. 
 
 " If life be long, I will be glad 
 That I may long obey ; 
 If short, yet why should I be sad 
 To soar to endless day ? 
 
 " Christ leads me through no darker rooms 
 Than he went through before ; 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 125 
 
 He that into God's kingdom conies, 
 Must enter by this door. 
 
 " Come, Lord, when grace hath made me meet 
 Thy blessed face to see ; 
 For, if thy work on earth be sweet, 
 What will thy glory be ! 
 
 " Then shall I end my sad complaints, 
 And weary, sinful days, 
 And join with all triumphant saints 
 Who sing Jehovah's praise. 
 
 " My knowledge of that life is small ; 
 The eye of faith is dim ; 
 But 't is enough that Christ knows all, 
 And I shall be with him." 
 
 " That is a sweet hymn," he said ; " my 
 hymn. The last verse is very sweet." 
 
 In the evening he whispered : " Blessed, 
 blessed hope ! Blessed Saviour ! He will 
 save us ; there is no reason to doubt it, — 
 not the least. What condescension he 
 showed to the poor Magdalene ! " 
 
 January 12, in the latter part of the 
 day, his symptoms indicated a return of 
 bleeding. He lay quietly with closed eyes. 
 
126 MEMORIAL. 
 
 At length he was heard to whisper : 
 " O precious, glorious gospel ! — That 
 great cloud of witnesses ! — How blessed 
 a thing to be in full sympathy with them ! 
 — a most animating thought." 
 
 " They have all passed through the same 
 struggle." 
 
 " Yes, — most comforting thought ! " 
 
 Soon he said, " I wish you would write 
 to C for me." 
 
 "What shall I say ? " 
 
 " Give my love to dear C . Tell 
 
 him I have felt for him in his affliction ; 
 and I trust he finds abundant consolation 
 in the Saviour's love, which in my trial I 
 find more precious than ever." 
 
 He then asked to hear the hymn : — 
 
 " The pangs of death are near, 
 Amid the joys of life: " * 
 
 and also the one beginning, 
 
 1 " Sabbath Hymn Book," hymn 1203. 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON 127 
 
 u Oh, speak to me of Jesus ! — other names 
 Have lost for me their interest now." l 
 
 January 17, he said : " I wish I could 
 tell you my thoughts about Christ." And 
 again : " This has been a blessed sickness 
 to me. I think the Lord is preparing me, 
 either for increased usefulness, for great 
 trouble, or for death. I think God may 
 have something more for me to do here ; 
 and, if so, I shall be very glad to do it. 
 Oh, would it not be a glorious work of 
 divine grace, if I could have a good heart 
 in a sound body ? " 
 
 " I remember, 95 says one, recently, " how 
 beautifully he spoke in that illness, in 
 January, of his mental conflicts, and of 
 his confidence that God was 'preparing 
 him for something, we did not know 
 what.' " 
 
 He often wished to hear the following 
 
 1 " Sabbath Hymn Book," hymn 434. 
 
128 MEMORIAL. 
 
 hymn, from the a Lyra Germanica," Second 
 Series : — 
 
 " Lord Jesus Christ, my life, my light, — 
 My strength by day, my trust by night, — 
 On earth I'm but a passing guest, 
 And sorely with my sins oppressed. 
 
 "Far off I see my fatherland, 
 Where through thy grace I hope to stand ; 
 But ere I reach that Paradise, 
 A weary way before me lies. 
 
 " My heart sinks at the journey's length ; 
 My wasted flesh has little strength ; 
 Only my soul still cries in me, 
 Lord, fetch me home, take me to thee ! 
 
 " Oh, let thy sufferings give me power 
 To meet the last and darkest hour ; 
 Thy prayer refresh and comfort me ; 
 Thy bonds and fetters set me free ! 
 
 " That thirst and bitter draught of thine 
 Help me to bear with patience mine ; 
 Thy piercing cry avail my soul 
 When floods of anguish o'er me roll ! 
 
 " And when my lips grow white and chill, 
 Thy Spirit cry within me still, 
 And help my soul thy heaven to find 
 When these poor eyes grow dark and blind! 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 129 
 
 " And when the spirit flies away, 
 Thy parting words shall be my stay, — 
 Thy cross the staff whereon I lean, 
 My couch the grave where thou hast been. 
 
 " Since thou hast died, the Pure, the Just, 
 I take my homeward way in trust ; 
 The gates of heaven, Lord, open wide, 
 "When here I may no more abide. 
 
 " And when the last great day is come, 
 And thou, our Judge, shalt speak the doom, 
 Let me with joy behold the light, 
 And set me then upon thy right. 
 
 " Renew this wasted flesh of mine, 
 That like the sun it there may shine 
 Among the angels pure and bright, — 
 Yea, like thyself, in glorious light. 
 
 " Ah, then I have my heart's desire 
 When singing with the angels' choir, 
 Among the ransomed of thy grace, 
 Forever I behold thv face ! " 
 
 This hymn he committed to memory, 
 and always spoke of it as " my German 
 hymn," or " my dear old German hymn." 
 
 Mr. Little was urgently advised to seek 
 a change of climate, as the most hopeful 
 
130 MEMORIAL. 
 
 means of regaining health. Notwithstand- 
 ing all the premonitions of long-continued 
 illness which he had while prostrated by 
 the first indications of disease in his lungs, 
 he did not escape the illusive influence of 
 that disease. As he began to regain a 
 degree of elasticity, he was disposed to 
 think that he should soon be able to de- 
 rive benefit from a sojourn in the south 
 of Europe. For a time he allowed him- 
 self to form plans for making this tour in 
 company with Mrs. Little, or, if not with 
 her, with an intimate friend. But his 
 own wishes and those of his family were 
 mysteriously overruled. Circumstances, 
 which need not be here detailed, com 
 pelled him to the conclusion that, if he 
 went, he must go unattended. The words 
 of a consulting physician in Boston, 
 " Better go alone than not to go at all," 
 and " I do not consider it necessary that 
 Mr. Little should have a travelling-corn- 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 131 
 
 panion," had, as it now seems, undue in- 
 fluence, and his decision was taken. 
 
 Early in February he wrote to a friend : — 
 
 " On Saturday, for the first time in four 
 weeks, I sat down to dinner with the fam- 
 ily: a blessed privilege, for which we 
 heartily thanked God, and ate our meat 
 with special gladness. At the same time 
 I have many a feeling that all is not 
 right, and that the silver cord may be 
 snapped at any moment. ... I do 
 not wonder that you wonder how I am 
 going to Europe. As to a companion, 
 my wife's going is entirely out of the 
 question. It is most likely, from present 
 appearances, that for a companion I shall 
 have to content myself with One who 
 said, ' Lo, I am with you alway, even unto 
 the end of the world.' .... Were 
 it not for that sweet promise, and such 
 precious words as Psalm cxxxix. 9, 10, — 
 6 If I take the wings of the morning and 
 dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ; 
 
132 MEMORIAL. 
 
 even there shall thy hand lead me, and 
 thy right hand shall hold me,' — were it 
 not for the hope which my physicians 
 encourage me to entertain, that I may 
 come back with a strength to which I 
 have long been a stranger, — a strength 
 which I am sure I mean to consecrate to 
 my Saviour, — I could not, I would not, 
 take a step in this direction." 
 
 In the same letter he thus alludes to 
 the bereavement of a mutual friend : — 
 
 " I commend her to that adorable, ten- 
 der, and almighty Lord, who is more will- 
 ing to bind up than to bruise. These 
 trials, deaths, bereavements, are among 
 the methods by which God will make 
 our release easy, increasing the attractions 
 of heaven, and loosing the earth's hold 
 upon us." 
 
 To a member of his church, who was 
 afflicted by the death of a brother, Mr. 
 Little wrote, February 8 : — 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 133 
 
 " Be assured I have not forgotten you in 
 these days of your trial. It has been a real 
 grief to me that I could not offer you the ser- 
 vices which, if I were well, you could so rea- 
 sonably have expected from me, and which 
 I should have been so glad to render. 
 In this disappointment, my chief comfort 
 has been the same which I doubt not has 
 been and will be your consolation and 
 support, — the assurance that our trials are 
 the appointment of One who is infinitely 
 wise and infinitely compassionate.. How 
 much better to have our affairs managed 
 by such a Father in heaven, than to have 
 the responsibility placed upon our own 
 shoulders ! If God were to offer to give 
 up the control of our destiny to our short 
 sight and poor wisdom, who would not 
 quickly give it back into his hands ? I 
 am sure I would. Steadily and kindly 
 and wisely is he preparing us for our 
 transfer from his kingdom on earth to his 
 kingdom and our everlasting home in 
 heaven. One of his methods of securing 
 this preparation is by removing to that 
 
134 MEMORIAL. 
 
 heavenly home those we have loved here, 
 with whom the hope of being reunited 
 will make our own death the easier 
 May we so live as to be abundantly 
 fitted for a blessed reunion with all the 
 elect, who, with robes made white in the 
 blood of the Lamb, shall sing and shine 
 in the presence of God forever. Hoping 
 soon to be able to see you, believe me 
 your sincere friend." 
 
 February 10, he wrote to one whose 
 constant efforts to cheer him had touched 
 his heart : — 
 
 " God bless you for your last letter. 
 You do not know what a comfort it was 
 to me, and what a burden it took from my 
 poor, weak, faithless spirit. I am ' a fool 
 and slow of heart to believe ' that, if God 
 bring one to the borders of the Red Sea, 
 he will make a safe passage through. 
 Your friendship for me is a constant mar- 
 vel. I shall not worry myself, however, 
 with efforts to explain it. As with the 
 
LAST YEAR IN WEST NEWTON. 135 
 
 mysteries of our blessed religion, I am 
 content with an assurance of the fact. I 
 hope you know that I not only prize your 
 love, but heartily reciprocate it." 
 
 To a friend in New York he wrote, 
 February 14 : — 
 
 " God has dealt rigorously with me, and 
 yet I believe I can truly say that for 
 nothing do I thank him more heartily than 
 for his chastisements. ... I have not 
 been without literary ambition. To de- 
 serve and gain a respectable place among 
 the ' goodly fellowship ' of scholars was the 
 dear hope of my youth. But my plans for 
 study God has repeatedly shivered into 
 fragments, and given me the tears of dis- 
 appointment for my meat day and night. 
 It is humiliating to think that my per- 
 verse and wicked heart needed such a 
 trial. It will be more humiliating if I fail 
 to heed and improve it." 
 
 Mr. Little was unwilling to leave his 
 
136 MEMORIAL. 
 
 people at West Newton exposed to the 
 disadvantages which they might experi- 
 ence from the long absence of a pastor, 
 and he felt it incumbent on him to resign 
 his office. This he did in a letter which was 
 presented to his church and society on the 
 third Sabbath in February. He was, how- 
 ever, induced to withdraw the resignation. 
 A clergyman who called upon Mr. Lit- 
 tle, February 23, wrote to a mutual 
 friend : — 
 
 " I cannot tell you how he seems, except 
 that he seems both weak and strong. The 
 old fire is there, but it burns low. His spirit 
 will not have to brook that confinement 
 many years, I fully believe." 
 
 To a sister Mr. Little wrote, February 
 24: — 
 
 " It is an unspeakable comfort to me 
 that I am in God's hands, and that he will 
 order my steps. After a few years more 
 
VOYAGE TO FRANCE, AND RETURN. 137 
 
 of this troubled and mysterious life, the 
 blessed Saviour will come for us. Till then 
 let it be our aim to serve him faithfully. 
 Beyond this we need have no anxiety." 
 
 Mr. Little was to sail from New York 
 on Saturday, March 3, in the steamer Ara- 
 go, for Havre. The morning of Thursday, 
 the day when he was to leave West New- 
 ton, was made cheerless by a cold storm. 
 As he took his seat at the breakfast-table, 
 
 he said, with a smile, " Well, M , dear, 
 
 the Lord reigns." To a question from one 
 of his children, he replied, " Just as God 
 pleases, dear." During the family devo- 
 tions he w T as deeply moved. Intense feel- 
 ing made him paler than usual. He asked 
 to have the ninety-first Psalm read, and 
 then breathed forth a childlike surrender 
 of himself, his family, and people into the 
 hands of God. His last care at West 
 Newton was to finish some letters to indi- 
 viduals in his parish, for whose religious 
 
138 MEMORIAL. 
 
 welfare he felt an especial solicitude. To 
 one of them, who was by his influence led 
 to the Saviour, Mr. Little said : — 
 
 " I have not strength to write much. I 
 may never speak to you, nor see you again 
 on earth. It will not be long before we are 
 all sleeping in our graves. Then will come 
 the great test and judgment. Then it will 
 clearly appear who have been wise, and 
 
 who foolish. Suffer me, dear E , to 
 
 warn and entreat you to live for that day 
 and for eternity, and let nothing rob you 
 of the life everlasting." 
 
 As his trunk was about to be closed, he 
 was asked if he wished to take the Sabbath 
 Hymn Book. " Yes," he replied ; " I can- 
 not do without that." Before he drove 
 away from the house, a friend uttered the 
 exclamation, " How can I endure to have 
 you go to Europe alone ? " " But," he 
 replied, " I shall not go alone. You know 
 who said, ' Lo, I am with you alway.' ?: 
 
IfrnjirgB in /raittt, writ Etta. 
 
 The first day of his journey Mr. Little 
 "went as far as Springfield, and remained 
 there until the noon of Friday. In the 
 morning he spent some hours with Rev. 
 James Drummond, the brother of his 
 immediate predecessor at West Newton. 
 This gentleman writes of the interview : — 
 
 " We talked but little directly of religious 
 matters, and yet I recall many sweet ex- 
 pressions of submission to the will of the 
 great Master. Those hours are among 
 my precious memories. It was only a 
 rich, affectionate, and tender nature that 
 could so strongly affect me in so brief a 
 time." 
 
 Mr. Little reached New York on Friday 
 
 (139) 
 
140 MEMORIAL. 
 
 afternoon. " How well I have borne this 
 journey ! " he said. " It is because the Lord 
 has helped me. I am sure it is God's grace 
 alone which supports me." After his re- 
 turn from France, he remarked, " How 
 wonderfully I was sustained and cheered 
 in that journey to New York ! " 
 
 In the morning, after a sad and wakeful 
 night, he said, " Please read to me the 
 fourteenth chapter of John." He then of- 
 fered prayer. When he prayed for his 
 children, his voice became choked with 
 sobs, and for some moments he could not 
 speak. Afterward he prayed for himself : 
 " Be with thy servant, who goes forth alone 
 into this exile. Sustain him in this bitter 
 separation. Fulfil unto him, blessed Sav- 
 iour, thine own promise, ' Lo, I am with 
 you alway, even unto the end of the 
 world.' " 
 
 Before going on board the steamer, he 
 said, " My going to Europe is like entering 
 
141 
 
 the kingdom of heaven, — ' through much 
 tribulation.' I little thought that such an 
 experience was the way in which Provi- 
 dence would open the door. 5 ' 
 
 To a relative he remarked : " My long- 
 cherished desire is about to be accom- 
 plished; but I have been brought to it 
 
 through great sufferings I have 
 
 been near the gates of death, but I have 
 been kept in perfect peace." 
 
 In his only letter written on board the 
 Arago, he says : — 
 
 w When we were fairly adrift, I began 
 to feel the loneliness of my situation. Al- 
 most every one but myself seemed to have 
 some companion. I was not long, how- 
 ever, in recollecting that a dearer than 
 any earthly friend was nearer to me at 
 that moment than any other being could 
 be." 
 
 Of his first Sabbath at sea he wrote : — 
 
142 MEMORIAL. 
 
 " I spent most of the day in my room, 
 reading in my precious copy of the Testa- 
 ment and Psalms, and in 4 The Young 
 Cottager ; ' thinking of the dear ones at 
 home, and committing myself and them to 
 our dear Saviour. My Testament lies on 
 the same little shelf with the pictures. 
 They will all grow more precious to me 
 
 every day during my absence Oh, 
 
 the sweet influences and precious associa- 
 tions of a Christian home ! Thank God for 
 mine ! May I again know its blessedness." 
 
 In his diary he wrote : — 
 
 " March 7. — My great solace is to think 
 of my dear family whom I have left be- 
 hind me, and of my blessed Saviour. 
 
 " March 11. Sabbath. — ' This is the 
 day the Lord hath made.' May he help 
 me to ' rejoice in it and be glad.' My heart 
 aches for the poor people on board, who 
 are living with such low and inadequate 
 aims I had some refreshing con- 
 versation this evening with Mr. L , as 
 
VOYAGE TO FRANCE, AKD RETURN. 143 
 
 we sat on deck watching the waters bril- 
 liant with phosphorescence 
 
 u March 17. — Arrived off Havre near 
 daybreak. 
 
 " March 19. — Paris. 
 
 "March 25. Sabbath. — I fear I shall 
 not get to the American Chapel. I long 
 to hear the blessed gospel in my dear na- 
 tive tongue. 
 
 " March 26. — I went to the church of 
 St. Roch this morning, and to Notre Dame 
 this noon. It was the festival of the An- 
 nunciation. I heard Mozart's Mass per- 
 formed by four hundred artists, vocal and 
 instrumental. The mass was preceded by 
 a religious march, with an accompaniment 
 of harps. It was delicious.*' 
 
 March 27, Mr. Little wrote to friends at 
 home : — 
 
 " I have been very desolate since I 
 reached Paris. The weather has been 
 wretched, sunshine and rain alternating 
 suddenly. I have indulged moderately m 
 
144 MEMORIAL. 
 
 sight-seeing, yet what I have done has 
 been too much for my poor strength. 
 
 " Oh, I cannot tell you what I have suf- 
 fered the past week ! At times I have been 
 ready to throw myself down in despair, 
 and to cry, My God, my God ! why hast 
 thou forsaken me? On the whole, how- 
 ever, I believe I have not positively mur- 
 mured, nor lost outright my hold on God's 
 precious covenant." 
 
 The overwhelming sense of loneliness 
 from which he suffered at this time in- 
 duced him to make some exertions beyond 
 his strength. He one day accepted an 
 invitation to take a ride for the purpose of 
 witnessing a military review. The scene 
 is described in the following letter : — 
 
 " April 4. — Although I am far from 
 being strong, and in a condition to see and 
 improve the thousand attractive things 
 that lie temptingly around me, I feel 
 
145 
 
 already better acquainted with this city 
 than I do with New York. 
 
 " On Saturday I went with Mr. P— — 
 to witness a review of cavalry by the em- 
 peror. The field where they went through 
 their evolutions is called Longchamps, and 
 is at the further extremity of the beautiful 
 Bois de Boulogne. It was a division 
 of cavalry belonging to the first corps 
 cParmee, and under the command of Gen- 
 eral d'Allonville. We did not reach the 
 gound in season to witness the arrival of 
 the emperor ; but I had the good fortune 
 to see him quite near, just before he left 
 for the city at the close of the review. It 
 was a most animating and imposing spec- 
 tacle, and one which I had always desired 
 to see. True, the number of the troops 
 was a mere handful compared with the 
 number sometimes reviewed in the Champ 
 de Mars. But they were all cavalry, finely 
 mounted, richly caparisoned and uniformed. 
 As they stood in long lines, or moved ma- 
 jestically in dense columns, or wheeled at 
 
 full gallop in their various evolutions, with 
 
 10 
 
146 MEMORIAL. 
 
 the shouting of the officers, and cries of 
 vive VEmpereur ! — it was magnificent 
 and thrilling. Besides, I knew they were 
 no holiday troops, but were fellows who 
 had smelt gunpowder, and were likely to 
 again. If the day had been bright and 
 sunny, the sight would have been brilliant 
 beyond description. 
 
 " There were three court carriages with- 
 in the lines ; one containing the empress 
 and a lady attendant, one the little prince 
 imperial with nurse and governess, and 
 the third containing two ladies whose 
 names and rank I could not learn. We 
 soon discovered the empress. At the mo- 
 ment we edged our way in front of her car- 
 riage, General Fleury came up, probably 
 with some message from the emperor, and 
 chatted awhile with her imperial ladyship. 
 This gave me a good opportunity to see 
 her face in movement, as well as in repose. 
 She is very pretty, and looks much young- 
 er than I had expected; indeed, almost 
 girlish. 
 
 " Our attention was soon attracted to 
 
VOYAGE TO FRANCE, AND RETURN. 147 
 
 that part of the field in which we knew 
 the emperor to be. A large number of 
 officers rode toward the imperial carriages. 
 One of them, in a marshal's uniform, and 
 mounted on a sorrel horse, advanced to 
 the carriage of the empress, leaned over 
 and spoke a few gracious words to her, his 
 head all the while covered. It was the em- 
 peror. A moment after and he had wheeled 
 away, and was galloping with his suite 
 and escort toward the city. His ordinary 
 expression is somewhat dull, sleepy, ab- 
 stracted ; but I saw him wdth a smile upon 
 his face." 
 
 In closing this letter, Mr. Little wrote : — 
 
 " The Lord is trying my faith as never 
 before. I hope it may not fail. Truly, 
 his ways are past finding out. Did he not 
 bring me here ? What will he do with 
 me ? My future never seemed more 
 shrouded than now in mystery and dark- 
 ness. But my future is a thing of compar- 
 atively little importance. We are sure that 
 
148 MEMORIAL. 
 
 God will be honored, his purposes will be 
 accomplished, and the kingdom will come. 
 
 " Our blessed heavenly Father has led 
 me into the orbit of some excellent people 
 who are very kind to me. God is good to 
 me even now and here in this strange 
 land. I will not forget that; and withal, 
 he gives me the sweet hope of a blessed 
 and eternal reunion in the home prepared 
 for all disciples." 
 
 We find in his diary a few more brief 
 pencillings : — 
 
 " April 8. — Comforted this morning by 
 Psalms xliii. — xlvi., and by my precious 
 hymn, ' Lord Jesus Christ, my Life, my 
 Light.' I found strength in committing 
 my way unto the Lord. 
 
 " April 9. — About midnight I coughed 
 and raised blood. 
 
 " April 12. — ' With God all things are 
 possible.' Oh for grace to leave my poor 
 self altogether and forever in his hands ! 
 
 " April 13. — About eleven o'clock this 
 
VOYAGE TO FRANCE, AND RETURN. 149 
 
 morning a column of troops passed, — 
 some four or five hundred foot, and one 
 hundred horse in rear. The band not 
 large, but playing superbly. Last night I 
 was more comfortable. God be praised 
 for every mercy. 
 
 " April 14. — I have been tempted to 
 distrust God and look no more to him. 
 He seemed to have deserted me. 
 
 " April 18. — I am trying resolutely to 
 be hopeful. God can do all things ; and 
 sometimes his doing is marvellous in our 
 eyes. 
 
 " April 19. — I raised blood again last 
 evening. Oh, how I need the blessed 
 Saviour ! I do hope he is near me, and 
 that he feels my pains. Oh for that suffi- 
 cient grace which will enable me always 
 to say, ' Thy will be done V 
 
 " April 20. — I am considerably better 
 to-day. I have no great hopes and no 
 very anxious fears. I have committed 
 my case to the great Physician. 
 
 " April 21. — Dr. has examined me 
 
 thoroughly. He says that < all is well and 
 
150 MEMORIAL. 
 
 natural.' He also prescribed for me. Oh, 
 if God will add his blessing ! 
 
 " April 25. — I do not see my blessed 
 Saviour as I would like, nor feel his sweet 
 presence. I hope it is the effect of my dis- 
 ease. God help me to believe and trust 
 where I cannot see. 
 
 " April 26. — God pity and help me ! 
 
 "April 27. — The blessed Lord God 
 whom I serve will order everything for the 
 best. Oh for grace and strength equal to 
 the demands of each of these trying days 
 and nights ! Lord, help or I sink ! " 
 
 April 28, Mr. Little wrote to a friend 
 then in Italy : — 
 
 " I have had a strange experience since 
 you left Paris, — growing weaker and 
 weaker. It is my chief comfort that God 
 has ordered it ; and ' as for God, his way 
 is perfect.' " 
 
 In a letter dated April 29, the irregular 
 writing of which betrays a trembling hand, 
 the lonely sufferer says : — 
 

 AND RETURN. 151 
 
 " Do I not need the arm of the Lord 
 Jesus underneath me, and the strength and 
 solace of the blessed gospel ? I trust I 
 have gained new and invaluable proofs of 
 its preciousness. As I have lain in my 
 bed, feeble and alone, denied so complete- 
 ly the enjoyments of foreign travel, and 
 have looked out upon the magnificent 
 palace of the Louvre, I have been sure of 
 gaining one advantage : the persuasion, so 
 deep that no sophistry will ever remove it, 
 that, as compared with some single verse 
 of the blessed Bible, all that stateliness of 
 architecture, with the treasures of art with- 
 in its walls, and the political power which 
 it symbolizes, is a mockery to the soul in 
 its greatest exigencies. 
 
 " I should like to tell you more of my 
 thoughts during these wearisome days and 
 nights and weeks. But I cannot. You 
 must tell all who may be expecting letters 
 from me, that I cannot write to them yet. 
 I send my affectionate and Christian salu- 
 tations to the dear people at "West New- 
 ton. Tell them that I am cast down, but 
 
152 MEMORIAL. 
 
 not destroyed ; able, I hope, to rejoice even 
 in tribulation, and glorying more and more 
 in the cross of Jesus Christ, and only in 
 that. It is a sweet reflection to me, in my 
 suffering, that they are praying for me. I 
 send much love to Bangor friends. Their 
 kindness touches my heart. 
 
 " The darling children ! My eyes are 
 
 full every time I think of them 
 
 Give my love to dear and . It 
 
 sometimes thrills me with a joy unspeaka- 
 ble, to think that so many of us are bound 
 up together in the everlasting covenant, 
 sure of a blessed home at last, eternal in 
 the heavens." 
 
 " April 30. — The P family left to- 
 
 day for Havre, on their return to America. 
 The Lord bless and keep them ! .... I 
 have had sweet thoughts, for several days, 
 of the covenant love of God in chastis- 
 ing his children. I never saw so clearly the 
 force and beauty of Hebrews xii. 5 - 11." 
 
 A member of the family, to whom Mr. 
 Little alludes above, writes : — 
 
VOYAGE TO FRANCE, AND RETURN. 153 
 
 H As I went into his room one day, he 
 said : ' It is a strange Providence that 
 brought me here. I have been in Paris six 
 weeks, and it has been the most miserable 
 six weeks of my life. The twelfth chapter 
 of Hebrews has had of late a new mean- 
 ing to me.' He repeated from the fourth 
 to the twelfth verse, dwelling particularly 
 on the sixth, seventh, and eighth verses. 
 He added : ' My Father sees there is dross 
 in my character, which it is necessary 
 should be purged ; and therefore it is that 
 I am thus disciplined.' 
 
 " Mr. Little seemed to regret that he had 
 come, especially that he had come alone ; 
 and yet he was apparently cheerful. One 
 of the first times he came to dine with us 
 he brought the likenesses of his family, 
 and looked at and talked of them. In his 
 own room he kept these pictures upon the 
 table beside him, and whenever he ate his 
 meals they were opened and placed around 
 the table. 
 
 " I hope I have not given you a sad im- 
 pression of his appearance at this time. 
 
154 MEMORIAL. 
 
 He recognized the hand of a kind Father 
 in his affliction, and I never heard him 
 utter a hasty or complaining word." 
 
 Rev. A. H. Clapp, of Providence, R. L, 
 
 writes : — 
 
 " It was most touching and impressive 
 to hear his expressions of attachment to 
 his Bible and Sabbath Hymn Book, — 
 always by his pillow. In these and in 
 prayer he said he had found new comfort 
 and delight, much as he supposed he had 
 before understood and appreciated them. 
 
 " He was sad at the thought of having 
 effected * so little, — nothing for Christ.' 
 But at our last interview he seemed much 
 more willing to leave his work and his 
 family ; indeed, in every way more recon- 
 ciled to what he now felt to be the divine 
 purpose concerning him." 
 
 May 4, Mr. Little marked in the one 
 hundred and second Psalm the following 
 passages : — 
 
VOYAGE TO FRANCE, AND RETURN. 155 
 
 " Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my 
 cry come unto thee. 
 
 " Hide not thy face from me in the day 
 when I am in trouble ; incline thine ear 
 unto me : in the day when I call, answer 
 me speedily. 
 
 u For my days are consumed like smoke, 
 and my bones are burned as an hearth. 
 
 " My heart is smitten, and withered 
 like grass ; so that I forget to eat my 
 bread. 
 
 " By reason of the voice of my groan- 
 ing, my bones cleave to my skin. 
 
 " I am like a pelican of the wilderness : 
 I am like an owl of the desert. 
 
 " I watch, and am as a sparrow alone 
 upon the house-top 
 
 " For I have eaten ashes like bread, 
 and mingled my drink with weeping. 
 
 " Because of thine indignation and thy 
 wrath : for thou hast lifted me up, and 
 cast me down." 
 
 " My days are like a shadow that de- 
 clineth ; and I am withered like grass. 
 
 " But thou, O Lord, shalt endure for- 
 
156 MEMORIAL. 
 
 ever ; and thy remembrance unto all gen- 
 erations. 
 
 " He weakened my strength in the way ; 
 he shortened my days. 
 
 " I said, O my God, take me not away 
 in the midst of my days : thy years are 
 throughout all generations." 
 
 And the following in the one hundred 
 and third Psalm : — 
 
 " For as the heaven is high above the 
 earth, so great is his mercy toward them 
 that fear him. 
 
 " As far as the east is from the west, so 
 far hath he removed our transgressions 
 from us. 
 
 " Like as a father pitieth his children, so 
 the Lord pitieth them that fear him. 
 
 " For he knoweth our frame ; he remem- 
 bereth that we are dust. 
 
 " As for man, his days are as grass : as 
 a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. 
 
 " For the wind passeth over it, and it is 
 gone ; and the place thereof shall know it 
 no more. 
 
VOYAGE TO FRANCE, AND RETURN. 157 
 
 " But the mercy of the Lord is from 
 everlasting to everlasting upon them that 
 fear him, and his righteousness unto chil- 
 dren's children ; 
 
 " To such as keep his covenant 3 and to 
 those that remember his commandments to 
 do them." 
 
 Mrs. Little reached Paris May 5. Mr. 
 Little was found lying upon a lounge be- 
 fore the open fire, his countenance and 
 form much changed by disease. In the 
 course of that evening he said : — 
 
 " I have been distressed with fears that 
 something might prevent you from coming. 
 When I was ill with those attacks of bleed- 
 ing, and thought I might die soon, I felt 
 that it would be so sweet to have you here 
 to close my eyes. But God has been very 
 gracious in raising up friends for me w r ho 
 have been an inexpressible comfort. I 
 cannot begin to tell you of all their kind- 
 nesses. ... I cannot give you any idea 
 of what I have endured ; and I am glad 
 
158 MEMORIAL. 
 
 that I cannot. I have wept rivers of tears 
 since I came to Paris. . . . You did not 
 expect to find me so very feeble ; but I 
 think I shall soon be well enough to go to 
 Switzerland." 
 
 Monday, May 7, Mr. Little went to 
 apartments in the vicinity of the Champs 
 Elysees. He hoped to be often in the 
 open air, but the weather was most of the 
 time unfavorable. Nearly every morning 
 came with clouds and rain, or, if the day 
 promised to be sunny, the invalid was dis- 
 heartened by its quick overshadowing. 
 
 A few times he walked a short distance 
 with the feeble step of an aged person. 
 Twice only was he able to reach the grand 
 avenue near by. His walks became con- 
 stantly shorter, until they were given up 
 altogether. In compliance with the in- 
 junction of his physicians, he rode fre- 
 quently ; but his rides were often made 
 dreary by the rain, and the motion of the 
 carriage distressed him. 
 
159 
 
 Incessant noise in the street deprived 
 him of the quiet which he desired. Still, 
 he never spoke complainingly of this trial. 
 The continuance of it upon the Sabbath 
 was a grief to him. He said : " There is 
 no Sabbath here. The best Christian in 
 the world cannot live in Paris without feel- 
 ing the evil effects of this dreadful des- 
 ecration." 
 
 Sabbath, May 13, he said : " Get the 
 precious Bible and read to me." After- 
 ward he wished to have hymns read from 
 the Sabbath Hymn Book. Then, too 
 weak to kneel, he prayed for " strength to 
 suffer ; " for " recovery, if it should please 
 God," and a return to his " dear country 
 and friends." He closed his petitions by 
 rendering hearty thanks to God for the 
 mercies he had received in a foreign land. 
 
 His sleep was always disturbed, but he 
 said : " It is such a relief that I am not 
 now obliged to go through these nights 
 
160 MEMORIAL. 
 
 alone." He seldom retired until a late 
 hour. When urged to go sooner, he would 
 reply : " No ; the night will be quite long 
 enough." He often asked to have the 
 Bible read to him in his wakeful hours. 
 Many passages from Isaiah were very 
 soothing to him. Some of them are the 
 following : — 
 
 " Thine eyes shall see the King in his 
 beauty : they shall behold the land that is 
 very far off. . . . The inhabitant shall 
 not say I am sick : the people that dwell 
 therein shall be forgiven their iniquity." 
 
 " Say to them that are of a fearful heart, 
 Be strong, fear not." 
 
 " He giveth power to the faint, and to 
 them that have no might he increaseth 
 strength." 
 
 " I am the Lord thy God, which teach- 
 eth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by 
 the way that thou shouldest go." 
 
 " Surely he hath borne our griefs, and 
 carried our sorrows." 
 
 •■ O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, 
 
VOYAGE TO FRANCE, AND RETURN. 161 
 
 and not comforted ! behold, I will lay thy 
 stones with fair colors, and lay thy founda- 
 tions with sapphires." 
 
 u Behold, for p'eace I had great bitter- 
 ness : but thou hast in love to my soul 
 delivered it from the pit of corruption : for 
 thou hast cast all my sins behind thy 
 back." * 
 
 The last clause of this verse he often 
 asked to have repeated to him several 
 times. He said : " It is so expressive of 
 God's entire forgiveness." He was deeply 
 impressed with the passage : " As one 
 whom his mother comforteth, so will I 
 comfort you, and ye shall be comforted in 
 Jerusalem." He would say : " That is 
 sweet, — that is precious, — that is very 
 beautiful. The Scriptures seem to exhaust 
 language to express the tenderness of 
 God's love." 
 
 Shut up as Mr. Little was, most of the 
 
 11 
 
162 MEMORIAL. 
 
 day, within doors, unable to hear much 
 reading, and conscious of the advancement 
 of disease, it was not strange that his de- 
 jection increased. " Yes," he said, with 
 emotion, " I am fast preparing for my 
 grave." And again : " I am glad my dear 
 mother is safe in heaven ; this^would have 
 broken her heart." He spoke with tears 
 of the mysterious disappointment of his 
 plans. " I have been permitted to make 
 the worst possible mistakes. Oh, these 
 mistakes ! How large a part of the bitter- 
 ness of this bitter life do they constitute. . 
 . . . The Lord is scourging me and scourg- 
 ing me. I am afraid I despise the chast- 
 ening of the Lord. I wish I could feel as 
 I did in that sickness in January. That 
 was a blessed sickness." In the midst of 
 these lamentations, however, the Bible 
 always gave him relief. 
 
 The memorandum-book which lay upon 
 his table in Paris contains this prayer : — 
 
VOYAGE TO FRANCE, AND RETURN. 163 
 
 " My God and Father ! Oh, strengthen 
 me, bless me, succor me in the dark hours 
 of my depression. Suffer me not to fall 
 away from Jesus in my dying day. Give 
 me patience and the submission of an obe- 
 dient child under all my sufferings ; and if 
 it cannot be that I recover, oh, enrich my 
 soul with that which is better than health, 
 — thy holy and blessed Spirit, All this I 
 humbly beg for Jesus' sake. Amen." 
 
 After returning to America, he remarked, 
 " When I was in Paris I longed for health 
 with an agony of desire." 
 
 The kindest expressions of sympathy 
 reached him from Americans in Paris, 
 some of whom he had never seen. Flow- 
 ers and fruit were sent to him by persons 
 who would give no name. Every such 
 attention cheered his heart and made his 
 face brighten with pleasure and gratitude. 
 " May the Lord reward them ! " was al- 
 ways his prayer. In his diary he wrote, 
 May 12, alluding to an unexpected kind- 
 
164 MEMORIAL. 
 
 ness from a stranger : " Verily, the Lord 
 has not forgotten me. May he forgive my 
 weak faith ! " 
 
 He continued to speak of his anticipated 
 tour, but was advised by his physicians to 
 return home. The plans so long medi- 
 tated and so carefully arranged were not 
 given up without a struggle. At first he 
 listened unwillingly to such advice. " No ; 
 I cannot do it." Yet, when told that his 
 friends feared he would never reach Amer- 
 ica, unless he should- go soon, he replied, 
 " Yes ; I have sometimes had such fears 
 myself." It was not long before he 
 yielded cheerfully to the judgment of 
 others. " I am now as impatient to go 
 home as I was desirous to remain here. 
 It would be dreadful to die here, but so 
 sweet to die at home." 
 
 Before daylight on the morning of May 
 15, after bleeding again, he said with com- 
 posure : " I have no idea that I shall 
 
VOYAGE TO FRANCE, AND RETURN. 165 
 
 recover, unless God work a miracle in my 
 case, which of course I cannot expect. I 
 hope I shall not die before I reach home." 
 In his diary he wrote : — 
 
 " May 16. — A comfortable day. I 
 thank the Lord for it, whatever may come. 
 
 " May 17. — I raised more blood this 
 morning. Truly, God is giving me repeat- 
 ed and loud calls to set my house in order. 
 
 " May 20. Sabbath. — This is my last 
 day, if it please God, in Paris. I rejoice 
 at the prospect of so soon escaping from 
 my long imprisonment." 
 
 " I shall never forget," says a ministerial 
 friend already alluded to, " the cheerful 
 glow of his countenance when I bade him 
 ' good-by,' and said, < I hope we shall meet 
 again at home.' ' If not, then in a better 
 home, 1 he promptly replied, with one of 
 his pleasant smiles." 
 
 Rev. Dr. G. L. Prentiss wrote, at a later 
 period : — 
 
166 MEMORIAL. 
 
 " In Paris I first saw Mr. Little, March 
 23, when he called at my house. I think 
 we had met but once before. I remem- 
 bered him, however, well enough to be 
 greatly shocked at his altered and sickly 
 appearance. He was extremely feeble, 
 and seemed to feel lonely and despondent. 
 His intention then was to proceed in a few 
 days to Montauban, in the south of 
 France, and, after having remained some 
 time there, to go to Switzerland, and so 
 pass north into Germany. Here he pro- 
 posed to spend the following autumn and 
 winter, visiting the principal universities, 
 and residing a month or two at each of 
 them. It was painful to hear him speak 
 of these plans ; for although his counte- 
 nance brightened with pleasurable antici- 
 pations, it was only too plain that he was 
 doomed to disappointment. At my en- 
 treaty, he gave up the journey to the south 
 of France, and decided to remain in Paris 
 until the warm season should arrive. 
 
 " I saw him almost every day at the 
 Hotel du Louvre, and he was often at my 
 
 
VOYAGE TO FRANCE, AND RETURN. 167 
 
 house. At times he was cheerful, and 
 talked with interest about the various relig- 
 ious, political, and literary questions of the 
 day. Sick as he was, he said many a 
 bright and pleasant thing. His sportive 
 humor not unfrequently showed itself, and 
 occasionally he would even break into a 
 hearty laugh. 
 
 " The fatal malady made such rapid 
 progress that he was soon compelled to 
 abandon all attempts at sight-seeing, and 
 confine himself chiefly to his chamber, 
 which opened upon a little balcony com- 
 manding a fine view of the Rue de Rivoli. 
 When the weather would permit, he de- 
 lighted to lean over this balcony, and 
 watch the vast tide flowing day and night 
 along that magnificent thoroughfare. He 
 was a keen observer of foreign customs, 
 and entered with singular z6st into the 
 novelties of this brilliant and wonderful 
 scene. 
 
 " He was able to read but very little. 
 The book which, after the Bible, seemed 
 to be dearer to him than any other, was 
 
168 MEMORIAL. 
 
 the Sabbath Hymn Book. It was always 
 at his side. If I remember rightly, there 
 were some lines on a blank leaf of this vol- 
 ume, which he spoke of as being very pre- 
 cious to him. 
 
 " While in Paris he suffered, as you 
 know, from severe religious depression. 
 There were, however, bright intervals when 
 he seemed to be lifted above the surround- 
 ing gloom ; when both his looks and his 
 words indicated inward peace and joy in 
 the Holy Ghost. 
 
 " After all his hopes had been dashed, 
 and the resolution taken to return home 
 immediately, he was still forming plans for 
 future study. Only a few days before 
 leaving Paris, he prepared a list of impor- 
 tant historical and philosophical works in 
 French, which he wished to purchase. He 
 had a fine scholarly spirit : and in my 
 intercourse with him it often manifested 
 itself in a striking and beautiful manner. 
 Once, when the probability that he would 
 nof be able to resume his studies was al- 
 luded to, he replied, in a tone of cheerful 
 
VOYAGE TO FRANCE, AND RETURN. 169 
 
 assurance : ' Yes ; but I have not a doubt 
 that I shall be engaged in studies far more 
 congenial and elevating.' I met few 
 Americans abroad who seemed to me so 
 well qualified to make a wise and effective 
 use of foreign travel. But he has gone 
 forth on a grander journey than that whose 
 sudden and sad conclusion was such a 
 sharp disappointment." 
 
 The lines on a blank leaf of the Sab- 
 bath Hymn Book, to which Dr. Prentiss 
 alludes, had often been repeated to Mr. 
 Little by his children on Sabbath-days 
 and are inserted below. In one of his 
 letters to friends at home, he said : " I 
 never before saw the beauty of that sweet 
 hymn, ' The Early Little Pilgrims,' which 
 
 S copied upon a blank leaf of my 
 
 Hymn Book. I did not discover it until 1 
 had been here sometime. I am impressed 
 with its appropriateness to all pilgrims." 
 One Sabbath morning in May he washed 
 
170 MEMORIAL. 
 
 to hear it, and said : " I can never read it 
 through without tears." 
 
 " The way to heaven is narrow, 
 
 And its blessed entrance strait; 
 But how safe the little pilgrims 
 Who get within the gate ! 
 
 " The sunbeams of the morning 
 Make the narrow path so fair ; 
 And these early little pilgrims 
 Find dewy blessings there. 
 
 " They pass o'er rugged mountains, 
 But they climb them with a song ; 
 For these early little pilgrims 
 Have sandals new and strong. 
 
 " They do not greatly tremble, 
 
 When the shadows night foretell ; 
 For these early little pilgrims 
 Have tried the path so well. 
 
 " They know it leads to heaven, 
 
 With its bright and open gates, 
 Where for happy little pilgrims 
 A Saviour's welcome waits." 
 
 Monday, May 21, dawned brightly. At 
 an early hour friends came to attend Mr. 
 Little to the railway station. The con- 
 
VOYAGE TO FRANCE, AND RETURN. 171 
 
 cierge, who had shown much sympathy, 
 followed the invalid to the carriage, and 
 looked after him with tearful eyes. Mr. 
 Little said, " The poor concierge really felt 
 sorry for me, I think." 
 
 Dr. Prentiss, who was to him as a broth- 
 er, accompanied him to Havre. The day 
 was cloudless, and Mr. Little enjoyed the 
 journey highly. In a recent letter, Dr. 
 Prentiss says : " That delightful day to 
 Havre seems, as I look back upon it, like 
 a gleam of paradise." 
 
 May 23, Mr. Little wrote in his diary : 
 
 " We leave Havre this morning, in the 
 Vanderbilt, for New York. God seems 
 plainly to indicate that this is our path. 
 May he lead and bless us in every step of 
 it." 
 
 -The first days of the homeward voyage 
 were mild, and the waters calm. " Yes," 
 he said ; " the Lord is bringing us on our 
 
172 MEMORIAL. 
 
 way gently, very gently. I ought to 
 be deeply grateful." Soon the weather 
 changed, and the sea became rough. A 
 few times Mr. Little ventured to go o* 
 deck, but cold winds compelled him to re 
 turn to his state-room. " This is such a 
 disappointment," he said. " I thought I 
 should be able to take the air a great deal." 
 Yet, when speaking of the perfect health 
 which those around him enjoyed, he added, 
 " I have something infinitely more precious 
 than health ; of that I am certain." 
 
 The discomforts, which it was hard for 
 a well person to endure patiently, made his 
 sufferings severe. " This dreadful voy- 
 age ! " was at length his distressed cry ; 
 " how long must it continue ? " 
 
 " But the days will pass away." 
 
 " I know it ; yet — 
 
 1 A weary way before me lies ; 
 My heart sinks at the journey's length, 
 
VOYAGE TO FRANCE, AND RETURN. 173 
 
 My wasted flesh has little strength ; 
 
 Only my soul still cries in me, 
 
 Lord, fetch me home, take me to Thee.' " 
 
 One day he was often in tears, but was 
 silent. In the afternoon he said : i; I am 
 afraid I am not a Christian, I cling so to 
 life. It seems to me I have much to live 
 for. But I think my disease must be 
 making rapid progress." When his brow 
 and burning hands were bathed in cold 
 water, he looked up, saying, " How refresh- 
 ing ! Oh, the washing of regeneration, and 
 renewing of the Holy Ghost ! n 
 
 Of those on board the steamer, who 
 seemed regardless of anything beyond this 
 world, he said : " It is a distressing 
 thought to me that thousands as thought- 
 less as they have suddenly gone down to 
 the bottom of the sea." 
 
 The Vanderbilt arrived at New York on 
 Sabbath morning, June 3. While riding 
 to a hotel, Mr. Little expressed great 
 
174 MEMORIAL. 
 
 thankfulness that he had reached his be- 
 loved native land, and added : " How de- 
 lightful it will be to hear the church-bells 
 again ! " The last words in his diary were 
 written on this day : " We arrived in New 
 York at five o'clock this morning, after a 
 passage to me most tedious and exhaust- 
 ing. God be praised for bringing us over 
 in safety." 
 
%% %m nf %mu. 
 
 Ox his voyage from Havre to New- 
 York, the weary hours which ]\Ir. Little 
 passed in his state-room were some- 
 times cheered by the singing of a gold- 
 finch in a cage near his door. The accu- 
 racy and sweetness with w^hich the little 
 creature went through the strains of some 
 plaintive air which he had been taught, 
 often brought a smile to the sad face of 
 the invalid. This is one of many inci- 
 dents illustrating his musical taste. 
 
 One of the gratifications which he en- 
 joyed at West Newton w^as frequent inter- 
 course with his friend, Rev. D. L. Furber, 
 of Newton Centre, a gentleman well known 
 for his interest in music, and one to whom 
 
 (175) 
 
176 MEMORIAL. 
 
 Mr. Little felt the stronger attachment for 
 the sympathy between them on this sub- 
 ject. We give the following reminis- 
 cences as they have been prepared by Mr. 
 Furber : — 
 
 " Mr. Little was from childhood an ar- 
 dent lover of music. When only three 
 years of age, he would follow a funeral 
 procession, that he might hear the singing 
 at the grave ; and while he listened to it, 
 would stand and weep. At the age of 
 twelve years he took his place in the vil- 
 lage choir, with other members of the 
 family, his father being the leader. He 
 was particularly fond of the flute, even 
 from boyhood. He sometimes went into 
 his father's yard and played upon it, when 
 he wished to call down the doves ; for he 
 had taught them to come at the sound. 
 He became in after years a skilful flutist. 
 
 " While at Andover he was leader of 
 the seminary choir and president of the 
 Lockhart Society. 
 
 " At his death, the Penobscot Musical 
 
HIS LOVE OF MUSIC. 177 
 
 Association adopted the following among 
 other minutes: 'Mr. Little was elected 
 president of this association at the session 
 of 1854, and held the office until 1856. 
 At the session of 1855, he delivered by re- 
 quest his very able and timely address 
 upon music, published in the minutes of 
 that year. Those who were present will 
 not forget the occasion or the address. 
 Mr. Little was very constant in his attend- 
 ance upon our rehearsals and concerts ; 
 and, being a man of more than ordinary 
 musical taste, he marked our progress with 
 pleasure.' In his removal, ' this associa- 
 tion has lost a firm friend, and the cause 
 of music an able and eloquent advocate.' 
 
 " While Mr. Little resided in West 
 Newton, he was a constant attendant 
 upon the Wednesday afternoon concerts 
 at the Music Hall in Boston. He always 
 preserved the programmes of these con- 
 certs, as an aid in recalling the musical 
 strains which he had heard. A compact 
 roll of these programmes was found among 
 his papers after his death. 
 
 12 
 
178 MEMOKIAL. 
 
 " He was a delighted listener to the 
 birds that filled the woods near his house 
 at West Newton. There he has been 
 known to spend hours listening to their 
 songs. Often he would search a long 
 time for some bird which he heard singing 
 at a distance. On returning home, he 
 sometimes wrote upon the scale the notes 
 of any bird-song which had especially in- 
 terested him. 
 
 " Mr. Little was the means of introduc- 
 ing congregational singing into both the 
 churches with which he was connected as 
 their pastor. The emotion with which he 
 spoke to his people at West Newton, after 
 their first attempt at congregational sing- 
 ing, is well remembered. He endeavored 
 to express his gratification at their suc- 
 cess, but was unable to give full utterance 
 to his feelings. He afterward said, that 
 'it seemed as much like true worship as 
 anything could be this side of heaven.' 
 He often joined his people in their weekly 
 meeting for practice, and sang with his 
 accustomed animation. On the Sabbath, 
 
HIS LOVE OF MUSIC. 179 
 
 well sustained and full as the chorus 
 usually was, Mr. Little's voice was always 
 distinguishable ; and, if he sat down to 
 rest before preaching, the absence of it 
 was at once felt. He could sing tenor or 
 bass with almost equal ease. His voice 
 was sweetest upon the tenor, richest upon 
 the bass. 
 
 " Such was his love of music, that, 
 whenever he sang, he sang with all his 
 heart. The charm of his singing consisted 
 very much in the strength of feeling which 
 he threw into it. One scarcely thought of 
 his artistic skill, and his consummate taste, 
 when he was singing anything that deeply 
 interested him. In singing favorite minor 
 tunes, it was a common thing for him to 
 be moved to tears. Having opportunity 
 on one occasion to sing an hour at the 
 piano with two or three clerical friends,* 
 
 *One of these gentlemen was Prof. J. X. Putnam, of Dart- 
 mouth College. In a letter to Mrs. Little, written on hearing 
 of her husband's death, he alludes incidentally to this inter- 
 view as follows : — " Little did I think when we met last 
 August at Mr. Furber's and sang and talked together, he 
 with all the old warmth and enthusiasm of our Andover 
 
180 MEMORIAL. 
 
 with whom he had musical sympathy, one 
 of the first tunes he called for was that ex- 
 quisite minor tune, ' Strand.' It was sung 
 in the hymn, ' Like sheep we went astray.' 
 He sang the treble of the tune, from the 
 beginning to the end of the hymn, without 
 pause, and with steadily increasing inten- 
 sity of feeling and strength of intonation. 
 Those who sang with him will not soon 
 forget the tide of enthusiasm by which 
 they were swept along. He then called 
 for the tune ' Brent,' another minor tune, 
 very simple in its structure, but fitly ex- 
 pressing the sentiment of a deeply peniten- 
 tial hymn, to which it is set in the Sab- 
 days, that less than a year would part us, — that I was see- 
 ing him for the last time. Although I had not been privi- 
 leged to meet him very often since our seminary life, yet ever 
 when we did meet was there the same freshness of spirit, 
 the same winning affectionateness, the same love of all things 
 good and beautiful and Christian. So that his rich and 
 cordial nature, his whole character of mind and heart, will be 
 to me a perpetual and most valued remembrance." 
 
 Mr. Putnam and Mr. Little were not long parted. Their 
 voices have already mingled, we doubt not, in the chorus of 
 the skies, " Where the anthems of rapture unceasingly roll," 
 and where the communion of Christian friends is not exposed 
 to the interruptions or subject to the limitations which re- 
 strict it on earth. 
 
HIS LOVE OF MUSIC. 181 
 
 bath Hymn and Tune Book. The hymn 
 is founded on the prayer of the publican, 
 4 God be merciful to me a sinner.' Mr. 
 Little sang the treble as before, his voice 
 breathing with all the tenderness of con- 
 trition, and his eyes suffused with tears. 
 This circumstance was remembered, and 
 the same tune was sung some months 
 afterward, at his funeral. 
 
 " On another occasion I called upon 
 him at West Newton, and found him con- 
 fined to his room by illness, and lying 
 upon his bed. After conversing for a 
 time, he arose, took the Sabbath Hymn 
 and Tune Book from the table, and said : 
 1 We must sing one tune before you go.' 
 He turned at once to the minor tune c Ag- 
 nol,' but his eyes were so weak that he 
 could sing only two stanzas before he was 
 obliged to close the book. It was a touch- 
 ing illustration of his love for singing, to 
 see him rise from his sick-bed for but two 
 verses of bare treble and bass, without the 
 help of any instrument. 
 
 " When anticipating his tour in Europe, 
 
182 MEMORIAL. 
 
 he counted much upon the summer-even- 
 ing music which he should hear in parks 
 and gardens and the usual places of public 
 resort. But this was denied him. Almost 
 the only pleasure of this kind, which he 
 was able to enjoy when in Paris was the 
 playing of a harp at evening in apartments 
 near his sick-room." 
 
 Mr. Little noticed with delight all the 
 allusions which his favorite authors made 
 to the voice of song. Only a few days 
 before the printing of this memorial was 
 commenced, his distinct pencil-mark was 
 found at the margin of the following lines 
 in Milton : — 
 
 " That undisturbed song of pure consent, 
 Ave sung before the sapphire-colored throne 
 To Him that sits thereon, 
 With saintly shout, and solemn jubilee; 
 Where the bright Seraphim in burning row, 
 Their loud, uplifted angel-trumpets blow; 
 And the cherubic host, in thousand choirs, 
 Touch their immortal harps of golden wires, 
 With those just Spirits that wear victorious palms, 
 Hymns devout and holy psalms 
 Singing everlastingly." 
 
tasA Wnh nf jjxs 3Cife. 
 
 " As tlie harp-strings only render 
 
 All their treasures of sweet sound, 
 All their music, glad or tender, 
 Firmly struck and tightly bound ; 
 
 " So the hearts of Christians owe 
 Each its deepest, sweetest strain 
 To the pressure firm of woe, 
 And the tension tight of pain. 
 
 " Spices crushed, their pungence yield, 
 Trodden scents their sweets respire; 
 Would you have its strength revealed ? 
 Cast the incense in the tire. 
 
 " Thus the crushed and broken frame 
 Oft doth sweetest graces yield; 
 From the martyr's keenest flame 
 Heavenly incense is distilled." 
 
 This Hymn of Consolation, written 
 by Adam of St. Victor in the twelfth 
 century, is one of the sacred poems in 
 which Mr, Little had an increasing pleas- 
 
 (183) 
 
184 MEMORIAL. 
 
 ure. When he left home for the last time, 
 he carried a copy of it in his pocket-diary. 
 There it was discovered after his death; 
 and it seemed to describe the effect of 
 suffering upon his own character. 
 
 On Monday afternoon, June 4, Mr. Lit- 
 tle left New York by steamboat for Fall 
 River. To a friend, who came to bid him 
 farewell, he spoke earnestly of the rest of 
 heaven, and of the pure and blessed com- 
 pany which he should meet there. To 
 another he said : " The Master knows best 
 whether he has anything more for me to 
 do here. As he wills I am content. I am 
 ready to do the Lord's bidding. My stay 
 in this world is no concern of mine." 
 
 The journey from Fall River to Boston 
 was one of extreme exhaustion to him. 
 He reached the house of a relative. Rev. 
 Dr. Peck, at Roxbury, on Tuesday morn- 
 ing. 
 
 For some days after his arrival he was 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 185 
 
 evidently suffering under a renewed mental 
 conflict. To give up life was still a great 
 effort. Often he spoke with intense feel- 
 ing of the disappointment of his hopes, 
 and the cutting off of his plans, — of the 
 mysterious course God was pursuing with 
 him. When reminded of the words of 
 Job, " Wilt thou break a leaf driven to 
 and fro, and wilt thou pursue the dry 
 stubble ? " he said ; " I thank you for that 
 verse ; I have been trying to recall it." 
 " God has laid me aside from my work. 
 He saw that I was not fit for it, and has 
 taken it out of my hands. I have longed 
 to live, that I might live better than I have 
 in time past. But it is too late now. 
 When the snow falls again I shall be in 
 my grave." — " How I have struggled 
 against disease ! But God meant to take 
 me away now." 
 
 It was not long, however, before he could 
 say with cheerful composure, " I have no 
 
186 MEMORIAL. 
 
 wish to live." The opinion of his physi- 
 cians coincided with Mr. Little's view of 
 his own case. " The moment I stepped my 
 foot into this room I felt that I had come 
 here to die." — " Well, I shall sink sweetly 
 into the arms of my blessed Saviour. I 
 have now an excellent opportunity to prac- 
 tise what I have preached." 
 
 At this stage of his disease his bodily 
 suffering was in some respects peculiarly 
 severe ; but it did not prevent him from 
 appreciating the favorable circumstances 
 of his situation. Many times he spoke of 
 the contrast between his condition in 
 Roxbury and in Paris, of " the change 
 from that steamer to this delightful room." 
 — " It is such a mercy to be surrounded 
 by my family friends, and to have the 
 comforts of home." — " That distressing 
 voyage stifled my religious feelings, but 
 now I enjoy a blessed peace." 
 
 Once he said : " My history during this 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 187 
 
 sickness illustrates remarkably the good- 
 ness and the severity of God. How many 
 alleviations there were of my condition in 
 Paris ! It was wonderful, the kindness I 
 received there. Yet the one thing I de- 
 sired of God, above all earthly blessings, 
 he denied me inexorably, — inexorably. 
 But I have no disposition to murmur." 
 
 He rode a short distance nearly every 
 day, and at times would walk into the 
 garden, or sit under the shade of the trees ; 
 but his strength failed rapidly. " These 
 nights," he said, " hurry me to my home." 
 
 June 10. Sabbath. — He expressed great 
 delight in some passages from the Litany. 
 As the reader began the Gloria in Excel- 
 sis, Mr. Little himself repeated, in a man- 
 ner most earnest and devout, the words, 
 " We praise thee, we bless thee, we wor- 
 ship thee, we glorify thee, we give thanks 
 to thee for thy great glory, O Lord God, 
 heavenly King, God the Father Almighty ? " 
 
1 88 MEMORIAL. 
 
 He wished afterward to hear a few 
 pages from the Pilgrim's Progress. The 
 narrative of Mr. Standfast's passing 
 through the river was read. Mr. Little 
 said, " No ; that will not do for me." 
 
 June 11. — He expressed painful appre- 
 hensions of the slow wasting away of the 
 body. " It is not death that I dread, but 
 this long, fearful conflict with disease. I 
 am growing weaker every day. I want 
 you to pray that I may have patience and 
 fortitude to bear this struggle. I want to 
 show the power of the gospel to sustain." 
 
 The words were repeated to him : 
 " Strengthened with all might, according 
 to his glorious power, unto all patience 
 and long-suffering with joyfulness." 
 
 u Yes," he responded ; " that is just what 
 I need." 
 
 No one could be with Mr. Little during 
 these days and nights, without fresh evi- 
 dence that the Creator of the soul is the 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 189 
 
 author of the Bible. In all the exigencies 
 for which human aid and .sympathy were 
 totally inadequate, the Word of God was 
 his unfailing source of help. And it 
 seemed that the Spirit of truth, the Com- 
 forter, did, according to the Saviour's 
 promise, bring to remembrance whatsoever 
 was needed to cheer and strengthen the 
 heart of the sufferer. 
 
 After listening to a hymn, he said : " It 
 is very sweet ; but there is nothing like the 
 Bible. It is a wonderful peculiarity of the 
 Bible that the whole gospel is often con- 
 tained in a single verse. It meets all the 
 wants of the soul. But what will those 
 who neglect it do, when they come to be 
 sick and die ? Whither will they turn ? 
 Oh, what awful desolation ! " 
 
 June 14. — At an early hour he asked for 
 his copy of the Testament and Psalms. 
 w I wish you would bring it to me every 
 morning. I intend now to give myself to 
 
1 90 MEMORIAL. 
 
 the literature of heaven. Oh, this precious 
 book ! How much I have read in it ; and 
 how I used to lie and press it to my breast 
 when I was in Paris ! " Soon he fell asleep 
 with it in this position. He could now 
 seldom talk of the Bible without tearful 
 emotion. 
 
 He alluded to a step he had taken some 
 years before, which had injured his health, 
 and spoke of it as " a great mistake." 
 
 " Perhaps you will not always think it a 
 mistake." 
 
 " Probably not. It will, I suppose, bring 
 me to heaven all the sooner." 
 
 Tune 16. — To a ministerial friend who 
 asked him if he did not wish he could en- 
 ter the pulpit again, he replied : " No. I 
 sometimes think of subjects upon which I 
 would like to talk with my people, but I 
 have still a great shrinking from the public- 
 ity of a ministerial life. Yet I am certain 
 that I glory more than ever in the gospel." 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 191 
 
 As he took the hand of another,* he said, 
 quoting the words of the dying President 
 Adams, " This is the last of earth.' 1 In 
 the course of the conversation which fol- 
 lowed, Mr. Little remarked : " I feel it to be 
 the greatest deficiency of my pastoral life 
 that I have not had more personal love to 
 Christ." The friend to whom this remark 
 was made, wrote afterward of Mr. Little : 
 " The doctrine of Christ crucified, and sal- 
 vation through him, rose before his mind 
 in enlarged grandeur and beauty as he 
 neared another world. He spoke with 
 ardor of its preciousness, and the glory of 
 preaching it." 
 
 " I wish," he said to one of his family, 
 " I wish I could know that I had ever 
 done any good. I wish I could have rea- 
 son to think that my preaching had done 
 others as much good as it has given me 
 pain." 
 
 *Rev. S.L.Caldwell. 
 
192 MEMORIAL. 
 
 He was told of an instance in which one 
 of his sermons had made a lasting impres- 
 sion. 
 
 " Is it possible ? " he replied ; " and I 
 was so dreadfully dejected when I preached 
 it ! I remember well what I suffered that 
 Sabbath-day. I never supposed that ser- 
 mon could impress anybody ; but what 
 you have told me is a relief." 
 
 " What a comfort your visits were to 
 
 u Yes; I believe they were." 
 
 He was reminded of other cases in 
 which he had cheered the sick and the 
 afflicted, and had instructed the dying. 
 
 " Yes, I ought to be thankful for this : I 
 have, I hope, helped to plant some feet 
 upon the Rock." 
 
 While awake in the night, he said, in 
 an undertone, as if to himself, " Yes, it 
 was cruel — cruel." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. ' 193 
 
 " Why, that I did not go to see S 
 
 when I returned from the West last 
 year." 
 
 " You were not well, and of course you 
 wished to get home." 
 
 " Ah, but it would have been so easy to 
 stop there for a few hours ! I could have 
 done it as well as not. I might perhaps 
 have said something to comfort her as she 
 was going down to the grave. It was my 
 last opportunity to help her. I can never 
 forgive myself — never ! " 
 
 " You can ask her to forgive you when 
 you meet in heaven." 
 
 " Yes — dear saint ! I shall ask her 
 forgiveness the very first thing." 
 
 June 17. Sabbath. — " Will you read 
 me the twentieth chapter of John? I want 
 it read to me every Sabbath morning while 
 I live." He remarked upon the fact that, 
 when Jesus was risen, he appeared first to 
 Mary Magdalene, and that Peter was es- 
 
 13 
 
194 MEMORIAL. 
 
 pecially remembered in the message to the 
 disciples. 
 
 In the afternoon, while sitting for a short 
 time downstairs, he said : " Please roll my 
 chair to that bookcase." He then took a 
 copy of the Sabbath Hymn and Tune 
 Book, and slowly turned over the leaves. 
 
 " Oh, I have so many sweet and sad as- 
 sociations with this book! I should like 
 to hear one of these hymns." 
 
 We sang : — 
 
 " Sweet is the work, Lord, 
 
 Thy glorious acts to sing." * 
 
 He was much affected by the last verse : — 
 
 11 To songs of praise and joy 
 Be every Sabbath given, 
 That such may be our blest employ 
 Eternally in heaven." 
 
 After he had been carried to his cham- 
 ber, a friend, observing the expression of 
 his countenance, inquired, " Do you wish 
 for anything ? " 
 
 * The Sabbath Hymn and Tunc Book, p. 22. 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 195 
 
 " I want my Saviour. This dreadful state 
 of my system, — 4 t hides my blessed Sav- 
 iour from me. I cannot perceive the pres- 
 ence of the Lord. Oh, I shall need his 
 hand!" 
 
 " But he is near you." 
 
 " Yes, I know it. Pray for me that I 
 may be gentle and patient." 
 
 June 18. — " Please bring my Testament 
 and Psalms, and read to me that blessed 
 fourteenth of John. No one can tell what 
 that chapter has been to me." When the 
 twenty-third verse was read, — "If a man 
 love me, he will keep my words; and my 
 Father will love him, and we will come 
 unto him, and make our abode with him," 
 — he said, " That goes down to the very 
 bottom ; " but was too full of emotion to 
 say more. At another time he remarked 
 of the same verse, " What an idea that 
 gives of the security of a Christian ! " 
 
196 MEMORIAL. 
 
 " God's declaration that he will dwell 
 with the humble and contrite is very won- 
 derful. How wonderful, too, that passage : 
 ' But he, being full of compassion, forgave 
 their iniquity, and destroyed them not; 
 yea, many a time turned he his anger 
 away, and did not stir up all his wrath. 
 For he remembered that they were but 
 flesh ; a wind that passeth away, and 
 cometh not again.' " 
 
 This day he began to dictate a farewell 
 letter to his beloved people at West New- 
 ton, renewing his request for a dissolution 
 of his pastoral connection. His breath 
 was so short that he could utter only a few 
 words continuously. 
 
 " To the Congregational Church and Socie- 
 ty in West Neioton, Mass." 
 
 " Dear Brethren and Friends, — Grace 
 be unto you, and peace from God our 
 Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 " It is now almost six months since 1 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LI "TV 197 
 
 have preached to you, or performed among 
 
 you any pastoral labor ; and it is quite cer- 
 tain that I shall never preach to any peo- 
 ple on earth again. 
 
 " My trip to Europe, which I was en- 
 couraged to believe would be beneficial to 
 me, has proved as disastrous as it was 
 brief; and I have returned in a very broken 
 and precarious state of health. 
 
 " The only course remaining to me, 
 therefore, is to renew my request that the 
 connection subsisting between us as pastor 
 and people be dissolved. The responsibil- 
 ity, however it may be qualified and light- 
 ened, is too much for me. On the other 
 hand, I am unwilling to be living on your 
 bounty while doing you no service, and to 
 stand in the way of your taking measures 
 to obtain for yourselves a man who will do 
 the work as well as bear the name of pastor. 
 
 " In making this final communication, it 
 gives me great pleasure to renew my for- 
 mer expressions of gratitude for your in- 
 numerable acts of kindness, and tokens of 
 confidence and esteem. 
 
198 MEMORIAL. 
 
 " It is in my heart to dictate more, 
 much more, to you ; but my extreme fee- 
 bleness forbids. I cannot, however, omit 
 the opportunity to render again, and for 
 the last time, my testimony to the ever- 
 lasting importance of the truths of the 
 gospel, — truths which I have commended 
 to you so often, and which are now more 
 precious to me than my life. 
 
 " Suffer me, with a solemnity borrowed 
 from the grave and eternity, to beseech 
 you not to neglect so great salvation. 
 
 " The Lord bless you and keep you, and 
 cause his face to shine upon you, and give 
 you peace. 
 
 " Your affectionate friend and pastor, 
 " G. B. Little. 
 
 " Roxbury, June 21, 1860." 
 
 He was unable to dictate the whole of 
 this communication at once. It was be- 
 fore light, the morning of June 21, that he 
 said, " Please light the candle, and bring 
 your pencil and paper to the bedside. I 
 am ready to finish that letter." 
 
 i 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 199 
 
 On the same day he sent messages to 
 
 some absent friends. " Tell Mrs. that 
 
 our struggles with the infirmities of these 
 poor bodies will soon be over. Then, 
 through infinite grace in Christ Jesus, with- 
 out w r hich there is no ground of hope for any 
 sinner, we may hope to enter into the rest 
 and bliss and glory of the heavenly city. 
 
 " Tell — — that I think with pleasure of 
 the conversations we used to have upon 
 themes which wdll be our incessant and 
 delighted study forever." 
 
 He closed his eyes and said, " Now I 
 believe all is done, so far as this world is 
 concerned." 
 
 " I cannot endure it," said one at his 
 bedside, w to see you so feeble." 
 
 " Well, I shall soon be strong. We 
 must all become weak before we can be 
 glorified." 
 
 — " Please read me those verses you 
 used to read to me in Paris. That verse, 
 
200 MEMORIAL. 
 
 ' As one whom his mother comforteth,' I 
 remember. I wish I were able to commit 
 some others ; such as that one in which are 
 the words, ' For thou hast cast all my sins 
 behind thy back.' But I am so weak that 
 I do not think I can make the effort." 
 
 He was not yet wholly confined to his 
 bed, but occasionally walked about his 
 own room and into adjoining rooms. 
 
 Trembling at every step, and panting 
 for breath, he said : " This is hard work ; 
 but I suppose it is best for me to keep 
 about as long as I can." 
 
 June 22. — He mentioned an article of 
 food which he thought he should relish. 
 
 " You shall have it certainly." 
 
 " Oh, no ! It is nothing but a caprice. 
 I ought to take my thoughts off from 
 the meat that perisheth. I have meat to 
 eat that ye know not of. I have a sweet 
 consciousness of God's presence, and of 
 communion with him." 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 201 
 
 — "I believe that, as my disease pro- 
 gresses, grace will be given me patiently 
 and submissively to endure. It is a com- 
 fort to me that in these sufferings I have 
 fellowship with Christ. I have been think- 
 ing how glad I should be to pass through 
 great suffering, if in it I may glorify God. 
 It used to trouble me to think that I 
 might have much to suffer, but it does not 
 now ; all that has passed away." 
 
 " How little we can do for you." 
 
 " You can only pray for me. But ' the 
 sufferings of this present time are not 
 worthy to be compared with the glory 
 which shall be revealed in us.' " 
 
 His thankfulness for every comfort was 
 a beautiful trait. Often he spoken of 
 those who have not the ordinary means of 
 relief in sickness, and contrasted his own 
 condition with theirs. " Oh, what mercies 
 I have ! How many comforts. "What 
 blessed alleviations. I thank the Lord for 
 
202 MEMORIAL. 
 
 them." Sometimes, when he tasted fruit, 
 he would say feelingly, " One of God's 
 gifts ! " He seldom drank ice-water, upon 
 which more than anything else he depend- 
 ed for refreshment, without expressing his 
 gratitude to God for it. As he held the 
 small glass in his trembling hand, he would 
 look up with a smile, and say, u Oh, how 
 good ! — one of God's best gifts ; " or, 
 " Blessed be God for water, — this precious 
 gift!" 
 
 Alluding to his exemption from a form 
 of suffering he had anticipated, he said : 
 " What an alleviation ! I bless the Lord 
 for it. ' Surely goodness and mercy shall 
 follow me all the days of my life.' " 
 
 June 23. — As he rode slowly past some 
 of the most attractive residences in Rox- 
 bury, he remarked upon their beauty, and 
 the high culture of the adjacent grounds, 
 and then said, " ' In my Father's house are 
 many mansions.' " 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 203 
 
 Mr. Little's love of nature and its influ- 
 ence on his religious feelings was never 
 more noticeable than during this sickness. 
 When he entered his chamber on the morn- 
 ing of his arrival in Roxbury, and from the 
 window looked out upon the luxuriant 
 foliage around, he exclaimed, " How 
 beautiful this is ! The dear trees ! " 
 
 Fresh flowers were placed every day 
 where his eyes could easily rest upon them. 
 One morning they were not brought to his 
 room as usual. When he awoke, he asked, 
 K Where are the flowers ? " 
 
 " We thought you might be tired of 
 having them here." 
 
 " Not at all, not at all. I love to have 
 them." He expressed great pleasure in 
 them as tokens of the kindness of his 
 friends ; but most of all he loved to consid- 
 er them as the work of God. He would 
 ask to have them near him, and while 
 carefully looking them over, would speak 
 
204 MEMORIAL. 
 
 of the paradise above, or " the white robes " 
 of the redeemed. " That rose is like heav- 
 en." — " What a glorious Creator must he 
 be who formed these beautiful things ; and 
 if he so adorns a sinful world, what will 
 heaven be ! " Often, as he held them in 
 his hand, he would repeat the lines, — 
 
 There everlasting spring abides, 
 And never-withering flowers." 
 
 One of the last days of his life he said 
 of a bouquet which had just been sent to 
 him, " I should like to have those flowers 
 where I can see them till I die." 
 
 June 24. Sabbath. — Returning from his 
 short ride, he exclaimed : " Oh, what joy to 
 be admitted through those gates, and to 
 behold that face ! It must be the first de- 
 sire of every ransomed soul to approach 
 the throne and behold the Saviour. I shall 
 see Him as he is! " 
 
 He requested a friend to read from a 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 205 
 
 manuscript sermon by Rev. A. C. Thomp- 
 son, on Revelation xxii. 1, 2, — " And he 
 showed me a pure river of water of life, 
 clear as crystal, proceeding out of the 
 throne of God and of the Lamb. In the 
 midst of the street of it, and on either side 
 of the river, was there the tree of life, which 
 bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded 
 her fruit every month ; and the leaves of 
 the tree were for the healing of the na- 
 tions." 
 
 He listened with eager attention, and in 
 his conversation, during this day and on 
 succeeding days, frequently referred to 
 leading ideas of the discourse. 
 
 "How beautiful the description of the 
 river of water of life ! How rich the mean- 
 ing of that passage. ' The river of water 
 of life,' — denoting fulness, purity, and per- 
 manence ; ' the tree of life, bearing twelve 
 manner of fruits, and yielding her fruit 
 every month.' Oh, the rich, varied, and 
 
206 MEMORIAL. 
 
 inexhaustible nature of heavenly joys ! 
 Beautiful, — beautiful ! " 
 
 He also alluded to his " Sabbath-morn- 
 ing chapter," and repeated the fourteenth, 
 fifteenth, and sixteenth verses, speaking 
 with great expression the word " Mary," 
 and adding, " She knew that voice." 
 
 At noon he suddenly awaked from a 
 long sleep, and exclaimed in a strong 
 voice : " I was gazing at the throne of God 
 and of the Lamb, — the sublimest object 
 in that magnificent place ; and I shall al- 
 ways gaze upon it. Oh, it is wonder- 
 ful ! " 
 
 In the afternoon, struck with his increas- 
 ing feebleness, a friend repeated to him 
 the words, " My flesh and my heart 
 faileth ; " — " but God," he responded, " is 
 the strength of my heart, and my portion 
 forever." 
 
 June 25. — He took his last ride. After 
 he was placed upon the bed, on his return, 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 207 
 
 he said > " Oh, I shall be so glad when they 
 bring me upstairs for the last time ! " 
 
 Once, when weeping, he quickly wiped 
 away his tears, — " No, I will not weep, 
 — I will not." 
 
 " But Jesus ' offered up prayers, with 
 strong crying and tears.' ' Jesus wept ' at 
 the grave of Lazarus." 
 
 " I know it ; but Jesus had the immense 
 burden of the world's sins laid upon him." 
 
 " ' God shall wipe away all tears ' from 
 your eyes." 
 
 " What a beautiful expression of God's 
 minute and tender care that is ! " 
 
 As the attempt was made to do some- 
 thing for his relief, he said, his bosom 
 heaving with emotion, " And no man min- 
 istered unto Him." Again, when drinking 
 ice-water, he exclaimed, with a look of 
 distress, " ' And they gave Him vinegar to 
 drink mingled with gall ! ' Oh, what pains 
 the blessed Saviour must have endured! 
 
208 MEMORIAL. 
 
 Mine are nothing at all, — infinitely less 
 than I deserve." 
 
 June 26. — He broke a long silence, 
 saying : " Satan has been troubling me for 
 two or three days, with what you said 
 about my having done some good. I am 
 afraid I shall think too much of it, — so 
 much as to make the superabounding love 
 of God seem less." 
 
 He sat on the piazza, in an easy-chair. 
 The morning was sultry, and he soon be- 
 came faint. He threw his head back, and 
 struggled painfully for breath. As he 
 revived, he saw his friend, Mr. Furber, pass- 
 ing the house. " Please to call him in," 
 was his request, feebly spoken. 
 
 The same friend writes thus of the inter- 
 view : — 
 
 " 1 cannot easily forget the look he 
 gave me when I took his hand. His whole 
 heart seemed to be thrown into the ex- 
 pression of cordiality which beamed from 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 209 
 
 his face and trembled in his voice. I think 
 the first thing that he said, after giving me 
 his most emotional greeting, was, ' My 
 thoughts are all in heaven, where I expect 
 so soon to be.' He then abruptly, and 
 without a moment's pause, began to tell 
 me what dark and distressing views he 
 had had of his sins. In what he said of 
 this, he used great strength and energy of 
 expression. His ; whole horizon had been 
 black, without a ray of light from any quar- 
 ter of the heavens.' I asked him whether 
 his Christian hope had waned at all. He 
 replied, ' No ; Christ is a Saviour for the 
 chief of sinners, and is a sufficient Saviour 
 for such a sinner as I am.' I reminded 
 him that he had suffered a great deal. 
 ' No,' he said ; ' I have not suffered much, 
 but I expect to suffer. If so I can glorify 
 God, I hope I shall have grace to endure.' 
 I told him I could not understand why he 
 should be taken and I left. He replied, 
 ' If you knew what stuff I am made of, you 
 would not wonder.' " 
 
 This letter reminds us of a marked trait in 
 
 14 
 
210 MEMORIAL. 
 
 Mr. Little's religious experience. Although 
 he had been regarded from his childhood 
 as peculiarly correct in his outward life, he 
 had an ever-deepening sense of sin, and a 
 profound contrition on account of it. 
 Months before his last illness, we were one 
 day singing the hymn, 
 
 " With broken heart and contrite sigh, 
 A trembling sinner, Lord, I cry," 
 
 when he suddenly stopped, saying, " You 
 must not ask me to sing it ; I always break 
 down on that hymn." Others of similar 
 character affected him in the same way. 
 
 During the illness which followed his 
 first attack of bleeding, he was full of 
 peace, and with joy anticipated his depart- 
 ure, which he thought might take place at 
 any hour. Yet there were times when he 
 grieved over his sins. " Oh, I have led 
 such a miserable life ! " he more than once 
 exclaimed. 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 211 
 
 Now that he had given up all hope of 
 recovery, he seemed to review with a se- 
 vere search every period of his history, and 
 to regard himself as the chief of sinners. 
 " The days of my boyhood ! oh, I wish I 
 had spent them differently ! ' Remember 
 not the sins of my youth nor my transgres- 
 sions.' I have prayed that prayer a thou- 
 sand times." 
 
 " Oh, my sins are too great to be forgiv- 
 en. Yes, they are too great." 
 
 " No one knows what a sinner I am. 
 Sometimes the thought will come over me 
 with distressing power, that perhaps I have 
 not truly repented. I have suffered fear- 
 fully, terribly, on account of my sins." 
 
 M This is the law, — that I should be 
 taken nearly to the gate, and then be sent 
 back to continue the conflict with pain and 
 sin. The atonement provides for my free 
 forgiveness and complete deliverance ; but 
 sin is a dreadful thing, and a forgiven sin- 
 
212 MEMORIAL. 
 
 ner must be prepared for heaven by a 
 discipline of suffering." 
 
 " God has given me such views of my 
 sins ! All around has seemed like a dark, 
 tempestuous ocean, billow upon billow." 
 
 " That hymn says truly, — oh, how 
 truly ! — 
 
 1 Our dying day will come, 
 And call our crimes to mind.' 
 
 " I believe God will forgive me, but I 
 feel as if I could not say one word if he 
 should sink me in hell. Yet I do not 
 think he will. I do not think he ivillP 
 
 Repeatedly he wept over his sins while 
 passing a wakeful night. One day he 
 referred to Matt, xviii. 21, 22, — "Then 
 came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how 
 oft shall my brother sin against me, and I 
 forgive him? till seven times ? Jesus saith 
 unto him, I say not unto thee, until seven 
 times ; but, until seventy times seven/' 
 — and added, " That is a most encour- 
 
LAST WEEKS OF IIIS LIFE. 213 
 
 aging passage to me." He delighted to 
 repeat, or to hear others repeat, the verses : 
 " Though your sins be as scarlet, they 
 shall be as white as snow ; though they be 
 red like crimson, they shall be as wool." 
 " As far as the east is from the west, so far 
 hath he removed our transgressions from 
 us." In most expressive tones he would 
 say, " I know that I long to be holy," and 
 would speak of it as the consummation of 
 blessedness " to be presented faultless be- 
 fore the presence of His glory," — " with- 
 out spot or wrinkle, or any such thing." 
 
 Not less affecting than the sense of his 
 own sinfulness was his impression of " the 
 wonders of redeeming love," his delight in 
 "the affluence of the atonement," and his 
 simplicity of trust in the Saviour. In a 
 note-book which ]\Ir. Little used while a 
 student at Andover, we find this brief 
 record : — " 1846. — March 1, 2, 6 — Sun- 
 day, Monday, and Friday. — Memorable 
 
214 MEMORIAL. 
 
 days in my history as a sinner. c They 
 that be whole need not a physician, but 
 they that are sick. I am not come to call 
 the righteous, but sinners to repentance.' 
 4 This is a faithful saying, and worthy of 
 all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came 
 into the world to save sinners, of whom I 
 am chief.'' ' "Who gave himself for us, that 
 he might redeem us from all iniquity, and 
 purify unto himself a peculiar people zeal- 
 ous of good works.'' — ' Vouchsafe, O 
 Lord, to keep me this day without sin.' " 
 When lying awake at night, the words he 
 uttered were oftener upon " the love of 
 Christ, which passeth knowledge," than 
 upon any other theme. 
 
 " I have no comfort in myself, but I can 
 think of the dear Lord Jesus." 
 
 " You must not always think I am 
 unhappy when I weep. Some of my 
 happiest moments are when I am melted 
 into tears of penitence and love." 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 215 
 
 " On board the Vanderbilt, it seemed to 
 me that my sins carried me to the outmost 
 bounds ; but Christ's love seemed so won- 
 derful, that it reached me even there, and 
 there I rested." 
 
 " I am thinking of the love of Christ, 
 and the amazing love of God. ' God so 
 loved the world, that he gave his only 
 begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 
 him should not perish, but have everlasting 
 life.' — I have delightful views of redeem- 
 ing mercy." 
 
 " I am sure I shall be a trophy of the 
 Saviour's love." 
 
 " Read me the parable of the Prodigal 
 Son." After listening to it, he said : " Oh, 
 how wonderful ! It gives me comfort to 
 remember that Jesus is ' able to save unto 
 the uttermost,' - — to save the chief of 
 sinners, — that he is ' mighty to save.' It 
 is because of the very depth of our misery, 
 and the greatness of our sins, that the 
 
216 MEMORIAL. 
 
 atoning sacrifice was made ; and God is 
 honored in pardoning the greatest trans- 
 gressors." 
 
 Archbishop Leighton's words were quot- 
 ed : " Whatsoever sum my debts and past 
 offences may amount to, they are not too 
 great for such a king as Thou art to 
 forgive : they cannot rise above thy royal 
 goodness in Christ Jesus." — " Please re- 
 peat that again," Mr. Little said, earnestly. 
 For several days afterwards he would, at 
 intervals, look up inquiringly and whisper, 
 u Whatsoever sum," — and then listen with 
 eager attention to the remainder of the 
 passage. Once he said, " Let me repeat 
 that after you, until I can say it myself." 
 
 " As I have committed my soul a thou- 
 sand times to Him who is able to keep it, 
 I think I may leave it with Him." 
 
 " My mind is not clear; it is confused. 
 But I can trust Jesus, if it is confused. I 
 know my Saviour. Oh, I know Jesus, 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 217 
 
 and I think I shall always know Him. 
 Those are precious words, — our Lord's 
 words to Thomas, — 4 Blessed are they 
 that have not seen, and yet have believed.' 
 I do believe" 
 
 " I don't know as I have any thoughts ; 
 I rest in Jesus, — that is all." 
 
 June 27. — " The inexorable purpose of 
 God has been to take me away now ; but 
 he is doing it so gently. Oh, I ought to 
 be very thankful. Yes, it is his inexora- 
 ble purpose, notwithstanding the anguish, 
 — the anguish, — the anguish of my 
 prayers in Paris ! " 
 
 "But how much better for you to go 
 now, than to suffer longer here." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! infinitely better. I am going 
 to the city of glory, and I shall have the 
 longer time to spend there, because I leave 
 this world -so early." 
 
 In the afternoon he asked a friend to 
 read from the Sabbath Hymn Book. The 
 
218 MEMORIAL. 
 
 seven hundred and ninety-second hymn 
 was selected : — 
 
 " Oh, mean may seem this house of clay, — 
 Yet 't was the Lord's abode; 
 Our feet may mourn this thorny way, — 
 Yet here Immanuel trod. 
 
 " This fleshly robe the Lord did wear; 
 This watch the Lord did keep ; 
 These burdens sore the Lord did bear; 
 These tears the Lord did weep ! 
 
 " Our very frailty brings us near 
 Unto the Lord of heaven ; 
 To every grief, to every tear, 
 Such glory strange is given. 
 
 " But not this fleshly robe alone 
 Shall link us, Lord, to thee ; 
 Nor always in the tear and groan 
 Shall the dear kindred be. 
 
 " We shall be reckoned for thine own 
 Because thy heaven we share ; 
 Because we sing around thy throne, 
 And thy bright raiment wear." 
 
 He listened intently to the end, and 
 then said, " Beautiful — read it again." 
 It was repeated, and afterwards a few 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 219 
 
 lines were read from the seven hundred 
 and sixty-first hymn : — 
 
 11 And wilt thou now forsake me, Lord ? 
 I feel it cannot be ; 
 No earthly tongue can ever tell 
 What thou hast been to me. 
 
 " Through all the changing scenes of life, 
 Thy love hath sheltered me; 
 And wilt thou now forget thy child ? — 
 I feel it cannot be." 
 
 " Ah, that is for one who has been a 
 faithful Christian through a long life. It 
 will not do for me." 
 
 It was replied, " Here is one I often read 
 for myself, but I thought some other might 
 be more appropriate for you now.'' 
 
 "Jesus, the sinner's Friend, to thee, 
 Lost and undone, for aid I flee ; 
 
 Weary of earth, myself, and sin, 
 Open thine arms and take me in. 
 
 " Pity and save my ruined soul ; 
 'Tis thou alone canst make me whole; 
 Dark, till in me thine image shine. 
 And lost I am, till thou art mine. 
 
220 MEMORIAL. 
 
 " At last I own it cannot be 
 
 That I should fit myself for thee; 
 Here, then, to thee I all resign: 
 Thine is the work, and only thine. 
 
 " What can I say thy grace to move? 
 Lord, I am sin, — but thou art love: 
 I give up every plea beside, 
 Lord, I am lost, — but thou hast died ! " * 
 
 " Oh ! " he exclaimed, " how could you 
 think that was not the one for me ? It is 
 just the one." 
 
 June 28. — "I am almost gone. Blessed, 
 glorious Saviour ! Blessed, glorious God ! 
 I have sweet peace. ' The glorious gos- 
 pel of the blessed God!' '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.' " 
 
 The prayer of the Saviour, in the seven- 
 teenth chapter of John, was read to him. 
 
 "Oh, how wonderful! Read again 
 some of those last verses." 
 
 * " Sabbath Hymn Rook," hymn 727. 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 221 
 
 Then he said, " Please hold the book so 
 that I can read them myself." 
 
 In the afternoon, one who perceived that 
 he was suffering more than usual, said, 
 " There shall be no more pain." 
 
 " I wish," he replied, " you would read 
 me the whole of that chapter in the Rev- 
 elation." A few verses only were read, 
 lest he should become too weary. As the 
 book was closed, he raised his cheek from 
 his hand, upon which, as usual, it was 
 resting, and said, earnestly, " Go on, go 
 on : I want to hear the whole." He then 
 wished to hear also the concluding chapter. 
 
 It was said to him, " There will be a 
 large family to welcome you to heaven, of 
 our friends who have gone before us." 
 
 " Oh, yes! that's true; but Jesus first of 
 all, and the throne of God and of the 
 Lamb." 
 
 Some relatives from a distance came to 
 see him. As they entered Ins room, he 
 
222 MEMORIAL. 
 
 said : " Place their chairs so that they can 
 see the trees from the window, while they 
 sit beside me." He spoke to them of his 
 sufferings on his return voyage, of the pre- 
 ciousness of Christ to him now, and then 
 exclaimed: " Oh, the throne of God and 
 of the Lamb ! The most conspicuous ob- 
 ject in that sublime city ! It will, I think, 
 be the first that will meet our eyes on en- 
 tering the heavenly gates." 
 
 At another time he said : " The throne 
 of God and of the Lamb ! My thoughts 
 are more and more upon that; and I am 
 persuaded that it will be so to the last." 
 
 At evening a heavy thunder-shower 
 came up. " Is that thunder ? " he asked, 
 looking toward the window. " It is glori- 
 ous, sublime ! " As the storm increased, 
 his countenance brightened, and he said, 
 enthusiastically : " Oh, is not this magnifi- 
 cent ! "What an impression this gives one 
 of the power of God! 'He thundereth 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 223 
 
 marvellously with his voice.' ' The voice 
 of Thy thunder was in the heavens.' 
 1 The God of glory thundereth.' " 
 
 June 29. — Mr. Little had passed a rest- 
 less night, his mind often wandering. In 
 the forenoon, Dr. Brown, of West Newton, 
 came to see him. Mr. Little was sitting 
 up in his favorite position, opposite to the 
 window. Looking earnestly at Dr. Brown, 
 he said, " Doctor, do you think I shall live 
 through the month of July ? " 
 
 " No. I do not think it possible/.' 
 
 " Then I may go soon ? " 
 
 " Yes, it would not be strange if you 
 should." 
 
 Turning his face again toward the win- 
 dow, he said, " Come, Lord Jesus, come 
 quickly ! " 
 
 In the afternoon, he was seized with 
 severe pains, and his whole frame was 
 agitated. He passed his trembling hand 
 over his forehead, his eyes were raised up- 
 
224 MEMORIAL. 
 
 ward, his face became livid, and his voice 
 changed to a hollow tone. M I cannot de- 
 scribe it," he said. " It is a most peculiar 
 distress. — This is the way Jesus went 
 down, and we must all go the same way. 
 But I rest in Jesus. I want C to un- 
 derstand that. I am afraid I did not ex- 
 press it to him clearly enough." 
 
 Once during the day he expressed a 
 wish as to the manner in which he should 
 be dressed for his burial. With a look of 
 surprise and sorrow, he said to the friend 
 with whom he was conversing : u Why, — 
 why should the mention of that call forth 
 such a flood of tears ? " 
 
 He had already spoken of the place of 
 his interment, with a cheerfulness which 
 seemed an answer to the prayer he had for 
 years offered, that he might " dread the 
 grave as little as his bed." 
 
 " I wish," he said, " to be buried here." 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 225 
 
 u You prefer, then, not to be taken to 
 Castine, nor to West Newton ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I do not wish to be carried any- 
 where. The simplest way is the best." 
 
 It was proposed to secure a lot in the 
 cemetery of Forest Hills. 
 
 " Yes," he replied ; " I wish that some 
 of you would go and choose a place there." 
 
 When this request had been complied 
 with, he inquired, with interest, u How do 
 you like the spot ? " and listened with 
 evident pleasure to what was said of it 
 and of the w^hole cemetery. The next 
 morning, as a friend alluded to Abraham's 
 purchase of a burying-place, — " The field 
 and the cave that was therein, and all the 
 trees that icere in the field, that were in all 
 the borders round about, v^ere made sure 
 unto Abraham for a possession," he an- 
 swered with a beaming smile. 
 
 One day he said, " I should like to see 
 the place where I am to lie." 
 
 15 
 
226 MEMORIAL. 
 
 " Possibly you may be able to ride 
 there ? " 
 
 " No, I shall take but one more ride, — 
 that is to my grave." 
 
 Speaking of his funeral, he said, " I 
 wish to have all as simple as possible." 
 
 " You prefer not to have a sermon 
 preached ? " 
 
 u Sermon ? No, indeed! I suppose some 
 one may wish to make a few remarks, 
 but I don't want to have any sermon 
 preached." 
 
 " You would like to have singing? " 
 
 " Yes, if it is sure to be good." 
 
 " What hymns do you wish to have 
 sung ? Perhaps you would have Baxter's, 
 — ' Lord, it belongs not to my care.' " 
 
 " No ; that is a difficult hymn to sing. 
 I should like for one : — 
 
 1 What sinners value I resign ; 
 Lord, 't is enough that thou art mine.' 
 
 That hymn on the whole transcends all 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 227 
 
 others. It is for your sakes, dear ones, I 
 am anxious that all should be pleasantly 
 arranged. I shall be away." 
 
 A few days afterward he alluded again 
 to the hymn which he had chosen, and 
 said : " I have concluded that I do not 
 wish that hymn sung ; it is too jubilant. 
 One more modest, less confident, will be 
 more appropriate for me." He finally se- 
 lected for the service the seven hundred 
 and twenty-seventh and the three hundred 
 and thirty-third hymns of the Sabbath 
 Hymn Book. 
 
 He spoke of the inscription for his tomb- 
 stone : " You remember that last verse of 
 my German hymn ; if I have any verse I 
 should like that ; and if I have any passage 
 of Scripture, I wish it may be, ' This is a 
 faithful saying, and worthy of all accepta- 
 tion, that Christ Jesus came into the world 
 to save sinners ; of whom I am chief.' " 
 We were reminded of words he had 
 
228 MEMORIAL. 
 
 spoken before he entered the ministry: 
 " When we are dying, I am sure the only 
 thoughts that can refresh us to any good 
 purpose will be those garnered up in that 
 most evangelical announcement, — ' This 
 is a faithful saying, and worthy of all ac- 
 ceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the 
 world to save sinners.' " 
 
 June 30. — The name of a friend was 
 mentioned. Mr. Little was asked if he 
 wished to send a message to him. " Oh, 
 yes ; give my love to him. Tell him to 
 spare no pains to make himself acquainted 
 with the truth of God in the gospel of his 
 Son. It will be his refreshment when he 
 comes to die. Tell him, especially, to 
 cultivate a personal love for Jesus Christ ; 
 and this is best done by meditating on his 
 boundless love to us." This was spoken, 
 as he now always spoke, with frequent 
 pauses, and the peculiar emphasis which 
 results from difficult respiration. Not un- 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 229 
 
 frequently several moments would elapse 
 before he could have breath to finish a 
 sentence which he had commenced. His 
 looks and tones gave so much expression 
 to his words, that these, when written, 
 seem hardly to retain the meaning he 
 conveyed by them. 
 
 " I have had an interesting course of 
 thought with regard to my future. The 
 principles of God's government must be 
 the same in all worlds. If I love his 
 government here, shall I not love it in 
 eternity ? " 
 
 " Our ideas on the employments of 
 heaven are very crude. We do not know 
 how it will be. You remember those lines 
 of Baxter's : — 
 
 ' My knowledge of that life is small, — 
 
 The eye of faith is dim : 
 Butt is enough that Christ knows all, 
 And I shall be with him.' " 
 
 " You used to say that you would like 
 to lead a choir in heaven.'' 
 
230 MEMORIAL. 
 
 " So I should. You know that verse : — 
 
 ' Ah, then I have my heart's desire, 
 When singing with the angels' choir, 
 Among the ransomed of thy grace 
 Forever I behold thy face ! ' 
 
 Our Andover choir will be there too." * 
 
 To one who was weeping, he said : 
 " What do these tears mean ? I say to 
 you as you have said to me, ' Let not 
 your heart be troubled.' " 
 
 " You will remember us when you are 
 gone." 
 
 " Yes, indeed. Why do you ask such 
 a question ? " 
 
 " But it will seem as if you were far 
 away." 
 
 " Oh, no ! You must not feel so. We 
 have the same Saviour and the same 
 home. Heaven is very near to earth, and 
 it is our own fault if it does not always 
 seem to be. You must prepare for your 
 
 * See pp. 15, 96. 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 231 
 
 own departure. The Word of God and 
 the Spirit will do great things for you." 
 
 u We shall think more of heaven, since 
 you will be there." 
 
 " Yes, you will ; and I advise you to 
 make it a point to study all you can about 
 heaven." 
 
 This was a day of great suffering. In 
 one paroxysm he prayed : " O Lord, my 
 God, I pray thee, I beseech thee, help me 
 to bear it. Help me, — help me ! Let 
 this cup pass from me ; but nevertheless, 
 — oh, help me in truth and sincerity to 
 say, — ' nevertheless, not as I will, but as 
 thou wilt/ " 
 
 July 1. Sabbath. — He awoke at day- 
 break, and said to a young friend, who had 
 been with him during the night, " What 
 day is this ? " 
 
 " It is the Sabbath." 
 
 " Beautiful, delightful Sabbath morn- 
 ing! What a morning to die! C , 
 
232 MEMORIAL. 
 
 I want you to make me a promise that 
 you will read every Sabbath morning 
 the twentieth chapter of John." After a 
 few minutes he said : " No ; I will take 
 that back. I do not wish to exact a prom- 
 ise of you. But I w r ould recommend to 
 you to read it." 
 
 To one of his family he said, " Please 
 read to me the resurrection chapter." 
 
 "Do you wish to hear it so early?" 
 
 " Oh, yes. You know Mary Magdalene 
 came ' early, when it was yet dark, unto 
 the sepulchre.' " 
 
 At seven o'clock he said, " Bring me the 
 Testament and Psalms, and hold it up be- 
 fore me ; I wish to read in it." Feebly 
 moving his hand, he turned over the leaves 
 until he had found the eighth chapter of 
 Romans. He read to himself a few mo- 
 ments, and then, placing his finger upon 
 the thirty-seventh verse, said, " Read from 
 there through." 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 233 
 
 " Nay, in all these things we are more 
 than conquerors, through him that loved 
 us. 
 
 " For I am persuaded, that neither 
 death, nor life, nor angels, nor principali- 
 ties, nor powers, nor things present, nor 
 things to come, 
 
 " Nor height, nor depth, nor any other 
 creature shall be able to separate us from 
 the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus 
 our Lord." 
 
 He listened with deep attention, and 
 then said, " That is the most precious 
 passage in the whole book." 
 
 Several times within a few days he had 
 remarked that the Lord's Supper would 
 be celebrated on this Sabbath, and had 
 expressed the wish to partake of it once 
 more. But now he said: " I do not think 
 it will be best. I am so weak, — and I 
 shall so soon drink the new wine." 
 
 — " This is a beautiful Sabbath for wor- 
 shipping God." 
 
234 MEMORIAL. 
 
 " You have wished that you might be 
 taken to heaven to-day." 
 
 " Yes, it would be sweet to die on the 
 Sabbath. But, 'not as I will.' "— " How 
 God will loose the silver cord, I know not ; 
 yet I am sure that he will give it all due 
 care and attention." 
 
 " Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently 
 for him." 
 
 Mr. Little responded at once, with great 
 distinctness : " Commit thy way unto the 
 Lord, trust also in him, and he shall bring 
 it to pass." 
 
 Once he was asked, " Do you still rest 
 in Jesus ? " 
 
 Raising his eyes, as if surprised at the 
 question, he replied : " Constantly, that is 
 all I can do now. He is my hope, and al- 
 ways has been." 
 
 At sunset he turned toward the window, 
 and, his countenance expressing delight, 
 said : " What a beautiful morning this is ! " 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 235 
 
 u It is Sabbath evening." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; my sun is almost set." With 
 a significant smile he added, " I think I 
 shall sleep ivell to-night." 
 
 Soon he was nearly convulsed with dis- 
 tress for breath. We went to him, but he 
 motioned us away, saying, " More air, — 
 more air, — I am dying now." 
 
 The words were repeated, " When thou 
 passest through the waters, I will be with 
 thee" — 
 
 " That's enough, — that' s enough. One 
 passage is as much as a poor soul can 
 carry over Jordan." 
 
 At length he experienced relief, and 
 said : " Is it possible I have not gone, after 
 all?" 
 
 The night was passed painfully. As the 
 hours moved slowly on, he exclaimed : 
 " If I could be released to-night ! " Once 
 he said : " I have prayed my Saviour that 
 he would not spare me a single pang 
 
236 MEMORIAL. 
 
 which he sees needful, that I may glorify 
 him. Oh for patience to wait ! " 
 
 July 2. — He was reminded of the words 
 of a relative, who said, the day before she 
 died, " All will be well to-morrow." Mr. 
 Little looked up quickly and said : " All is 
 well to-day" 
 
 At noon he suddenly awoke from a long 
 sleep, and in a full tone, as if preaching, 
 exclaimed : — " Crucified ! crucified ! — Oh, 
 the most horrible death that could be 
 thought of ! — so horrible that it ought 
 never to be mentioned, as some writer has 
 said. And that agony in the garden of 
 Gethsemane. Oh, how inconceivably hein- 
 ous a sin to neglect him after he has suf- 
 fered so much for us ! " 
 
 In the afternoon he was seized with a 
 spasmodic distress which it seemed impos- 
 sible that he should survive. As relief 
 came once more, he said, with a voice and 
 look of affecting entreaty : " Can it be 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 237 
 
 that I am coming back again ? " — Oh, if 
 the Lord does not take me away to-day, 
 you must pray for me with all your might." 
 
 July 3. — Mr. Little had become so 
 much emaciated that it was not easy to 
 lift him, or in any way to alter his position, 
 without giving him pain. The friend un- 
 der whose roof he w x as performed this 
 kind office with carefulness and skill. 
 " Dear uncle," he would say, " I thank 
 you." "That was beautifully done;" — 
 or, " This is the cup of cold water which 
 shall not lose its reward." 
 
 His manner was marked by a childlike 
 simplicity and humility. The readiness 
 with which he acceded to whatever was 
 thought necessary seemed like the gentle 
 submission of an infant. " Yes," he would 
 say, " do as you please. You know best. 
 I have no wisdom." 
 
 He was as considerate of those around 
 him as he was grateful for all that was 
 
238 MEMORIAL. 
 
 done for himself. Very often during these 
 last weeks, and even the day before his 
 death, he expressed in a touching manner 
 his fears lest his friends should be worn 
 out with long-continued watchings. When 
 told of the sufferings of one from whom he 
 was receiving daily tokens of sympathy, 
 he said : " I can only pray for her. May 
 the Lord lift upon her the light of his 
 countenance." Of a friend in affliction: 
 " I wish you would treat her tenderly. 
 She has a great deal to endure." To one 
 who had attended upon him constantly: 
 " For all your assiduous care of me by 
 night and by day, I thank you. It has 
 been most soothing to me. Yes, a 
 very, very great comfort." 
 
 July 4. — He asked to see his children, 
 one at a time. With great tenderness he 
 said to each what he wished her to re- 
 member as his last words. After they had 
 left the room, he was silent for a while, 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 239 
 
 and then spoke : " Oh, if there is one direc- 
 tion more important than another for a 
 child, it is always to obey the first whis- 
 per of conscience : when conscience says, 
 This is the way, — to walk in it ; and 
 when conscience says, That is the wrong 
 way, — to avoid it." 
 
 July 5. — He was in great distress. As 
 attempts were made to relieve him, he ob- 
 served with disappointment the return of 
 warmth to his extremities, and entreated 
 that nothing should be done to detain him. 
 
 On awaking from a short slumber, he 
 * said, " I asked that the angels might 
 strengthen me — and I really — believe — 
 they have." 
 
 A friend came to watch with him. 
 
 " Good-evening, C . I am still in the 
 
 dying strife. Jesus has not yet taken me ; 
 but he says : ' If I go away, I will come 
 again, and receive you unto myself.' He 
 will come and take me in due time. ' AH 
 
240 MEMORIAL. 
 
 the days of my appointed time will I wait, 
 till my change come.'" 
 
 Jul// 6. — "I am afraid my faith and pa- 
 tience will not hold out. Will you leave 
 me alone for two or three minutes ? n On 
 returning, those who had left the room 
 found him in prayer, with his hands out- 
 stretched and clasped, and his eyes in- 
 tently gazing upwards. — " Oh, I beseech 
 thee, great God, to strengthen me ; and if 
 thou dost not suffer me to have the light 
 of thy countenance, may I still trust in 
 thee. O gracious God ! strengthen me, 
 strengthen me ! Is it too much to ask that 
 thou wouldst send thine angels to strength- 
 en me ? Are they not all ministering 
 spirits, sent forth to minister for them who 
 shall be heirs of salvation ? Oh, give me pa- 
 tience, submission, and fortitude and cour- 
 age and heroism, to endure and to overcome. 
 J think I have trusted in Thee. Let not my 
 faith fail in this time of my extremity." 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 241 
 
 July 8. Sabbath. — In the night, he had 
 asked, " When it is light enough, will you 
 read me the dear resurrection chapter ? " 
 Soon after the dawn, it was said to him, 
 " You are so weak that I will read but a 
 few verses." 
 
 "•Read to ' Touch me not.' " 
 
 As the book was closed, he said, " Go 
 on ; n and after hearing the words, ' Blessed 
 are they that have not seen and yet have 
 believed,' — " Now you may stop." 
 
 When the first bells rang, he was asked 
 if he heard them. 
 
 " Yes ; they sound sweetly ; I always 
 hear one bell that is far off beyond the 
 others." 
 
 " I think I hear it too." 
 
 He shook his head and smiled. 
 
 In the afternoon, as we stood silent at 
 his bedside while he appeared to be very 
 near death, he laid his hand upon his 
 breast, saying : " Peace, — peace. ' Not 
 
 16 
 
242 MEMORIAL. 
 
 as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let 
 not your heart be troubled, neither let it be 
 afraid.' " 
 
 After a brief repose, he said : " I have 
 had a sweet Sabbath ; I have had such 
 delightful views of the Saviour's love, and 
 of the throne of God and the Lamb." 
 Again, with a smile, " I have just seen the 
 white robes." 
 
 July 9. — " Come and sit down by me, 
 
 W . I want to talk with you about 
 
 the Saviour. You asked me if I could 
 testify to his power to sustain. I have 
 suffered a great deal, and can bear most 
 abundant testimony to the comfort and 
 support which he can give. I want you 
 to cultivate more personal love to the Sa- 
 viour. Think more of his love for us, 
 especially in dying' for us. Think much 
 of heaven. We miss it in not making 
 ourselves more familiar with heaven. 
 Read all you can about it. Some books 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 243 
 
 of little value have been written on this 
 subject, and some very excellent ones. 
 Above all, read your Bible daily and sys- 
 tematically." 
 
 One of the family sat near him with the 
 Bible in her hand. Mr. Little raised his 
 eyes, saying, " Please read." 
 
 " What shall I read ? " 
 
 " What you have been reading to your- 
 self." 
 
 " ' But I would not have you to be igno- 
 rant, brethren, concerning them which are 
 asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others 
 which have no hope. 
 
 " 4 For if we believe that Jesus died and 
 rose again, even so them also which sleep 
 in Jesus will God bring with him.' " 
 
 " Beautiful ! I wish now you would 
 read to me that hymn, 
 
 1 Thou dear Redeemer, dying Lamb, 
 I love to hear of thee.' " 
 
 After listening to it, he responded, " Oh, 
 
244 MEMORIAL. 
 
 how beautiful ! I always used to like that 
 hymn." 
 
 To a deacon of the church in West 
 Newton, he said: " I am almost home. I 
 am so weak that all I can do is to rest in 
 Jesus. — Christ is all. The anticipation of 
 the joys and glory of the heavenly city is 
 very precious to me, — very precious. I 
 try to wait patiently until Jesus shall 
 come and take me to himself. Remember 
 me to all your family. Tell them to love 
 Jesus more, to learn more of him, — to 
 cling to him." 
 
 To other friends from West Newton : 
 " Christ is all my strength and support. 
 He will support all who trust him and love 
 him. — None but the eminent Christian 
 will have ' an abundant entrance ' into the 
 kingdom of God. I am persuaded of this. 
 I am more and more convinced, that only 
 the eminent Christian will have an ' abun- 
 dant entrance.' n 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 245 
 
 " You have already had a glimpse of 
 Him who said, * Look unto me and be ye 
 saved.' " 
 
 With earnestness Mr. Little replied : 
 " Yes, I have had many a glimpse of Him. 
 The throne of God and of the Lamb is 
 my strength and comfort. — We must 
 trust in Christ, — we must trust him." 
 
 After seeming to be asleep, he said, 
 with a smile : " I have had some glimpses 
 of glory such as I had in the first of my 
 sickness/' And again, " Dear — precious 
 — Saviour" 
 
 Tidy 11. — Suddenly opening his eyes, 
 he said in a strong voice : " I rejoice in 
 God, and joy in the God of my salvation. 
 I rejoice that the Lord God omnipotent 
 reigneth. It must be dreadful to go into 
 the next world without the certainty of a 
 thorough acquiescence in God's govern- 
 ment. I cannot think of it without a thrill 
 of horror. It is the most fearful thing in 
 
246 MEMORIAL. 
 
 the world. Oh, what can they do who 
 come to this without God and Christ ? " 
 He was overcome with emotion. 
 
 " Do not be so grieved ; leave it with 
 God." 
 
 " Yes," he answered quietly, " leave it 
 with God. He will do what is right in all 
 such cases. He is infinitely more anxious 
 to treat such persons with justice than we 
 should be." 
 
 As the physician examined his feeble 
 pulse, Mr. Little inquired, " How do you 
 find it, doctor ? " 
 
 " I think it is no weaker than for several 
 days past." 
 
 Turning his head away sadly, the weary 
 sufferer said : " I am sorry for that. How- 
 ever, I have no choice about it." 
 
 " One reason why you linger is because 
 you are so calm. Many persons are 
 alarmed in prospect of death, and their 
 agitation hurries them out of the world." 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 247 
 
 Mr. Little did not reply, but, as the doc- 
 tor closed the door, turned to us with a 
 look of distress, saying, " Poor creatures ! " 
 
 In the latter part of the day it was said 
 to him, " The time is short now." He 
 replied: "I ask no questions. 'All the 
 days of my appointed time will I wait.' 
 I am eternally safe, for I love the character 
 of God, I love his government; and I 
 suppose that one who loves his govern- 
 ment is safe anywhere. I know that I 
 fear him, and ' the mercy of the Lord is 
 from everlasting to everlasting upon them 
 that fear him.' All the attributes of God 
 are pledged to bless such. My sufferings 
 are small compared with what many of 
 God's people have endured, — nothing to 
 what our Saviour endured. This is what 
 you must all pass through." 
 
 To a young relative he said : " I want 
 you to love the Saviour more and know 
 him better. I want you to study about 
 
248 MEMORIAL. 
 
 him in the New Testament, and have him 
 for your personal friend, and not let a day 
 pass without a personal address to him." 
 
 In a paroxysm of distress he prayed : 
 " O God, I hope this glorifies thee ! It is 
 all I ask. O Lamb of God, O Lamb of 
 God, — slain from the foundation of the 
 world ! " 
 
 July 12. — A friend from Bangor came 
 to see Mr. Little. When she approached 
 and took his hand, he said not a word ; 
 but, trembling with emotion, gazed upon 
 her, as if he felt that in her were repre- 
 sented the beloved people of his early 
 ministry. In a letter written soon after his 
 death she says : — 
 
 " To receive his earnest greeting once 
 was more than I had dared hope ; and 
 then to hear his emphatic tones, when 
 he had recalled his soul from its short 
 wandering back to the world and its old 
 affections, and had recovered from the 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 249 
 
 agitation thus occasioned. You remem- 
 ber, — do you not ? — and have treasured 
 among his precious words, — I shall never 
 forget it, — ' Christ and him crucified, 
 Christ and him crucified, Christ and him 
 crucified, is all my hope ! ' " 
 
 Mr. Little's mind was now not unfre- 
 quently disturbed by delirious fancies ; but 
 in the midst of them there were pleasant 
 tokens of the habit of his thoughts. " You 
 know I have been following the Pilgrim 
 family up the hill for some months.'' And 
 again, " Come, let us go to the Celestial 
 City. I will be Pilgrim, and you Chris- 
 tiana, and w T e'll take the two little children 
 and go." 
 
 " But Christian went first." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; that was the way ; but I will 
 come and meet you, when you pass over 
 the river." 
 
 Once, when lying with his eyes shut, he 
 was aroused, that he might take some 
 
250 MEMORIAL. 
 
 nourishment. " Oh, why was it necessary 
 to disturb me ? I was at Bethany." 
 
 His attendants were often reminded of 
 the hope he had expressed, that in his 
 wanderings he should be " kept from say- 
 ing anything which would dishonor God." 
 Even in his insanity he was permitted " to 
 show the power of the gospel to sustain." 
 A few words from the Scriptures, or some- 
 thing said to him of the Saviour, would 
 almost always quiet his agitation. Once 
 he awoke, sadly impressed with a dream 
 that he had entered another world, and 
 found himself alone in a desert. " But," 
 it was said to him, " do you think the 
 Lord Jesus has brought you thus far, to 
 forsake you now ? " " No," he replied, 
 "that cannot be : ' Because I live, ye shall 
 live also.' " When a painful vision was 
 dispelled, and he felt assured that it was 
 not a reality, he would say, " I bless the 
 Lord for that. ' Lord, now lettest thou 
 thy servant depart in peace.' " 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 251 
 
 Sometimes a few words of prayer gave 
 affecting testimony to his childlike submis- 
 sion and unwavering faith. — " Thou most 
 high and mighty God, we do not know 
 where the heavenly city is. If it please thee, 
 Jesus, take us out of this dust in which we 
 are lying. Nevertheless, not as I will, but 
 as thou wilt." 
 
 July 13. — In the forenoon, as he slept, 
 his deathly countenance was most express- 
 ive of solemnity, and sometimes of rever- 
 ential awe. Occasionally his lips moved, 
 and his face was lighted with a quickly 
 passing smile. He awoke, saying, with a 
 look of perplexity, " Have I not gone yet ? 
 How my dreams do cheat me ! " 
 
 As evening drew on, his aspect changed 
 from moment to moment. While we 
 intently watched him, he said, " Death 
 takes hold of every part of me." 
 
 " But Death has not the victory." 
 
 " No. ' Thanks be to God, which giveth 
 
252 MEMORIAL. 
 
 us the victory, through our Lord — Jesus 
 
 — Christ.' " 
 
 At an hour of great distress he gazed 
 upon us imploringly, exclaiming, in pathet- 
 ic tones, " You must not let me murmur, 
 
 — oh, you must not let me murmur!" 
 Then, more quietly, he said, " I am sacri- 
 ficed to Jesus." 
 
 July 15. Sabbath. — "I am too weak to 
 hear the chapter this morning, but please 
 read a few verses." 
 
 The heavenly city was spoken of. "You 
 know I have seen the throne of God and 
 of the Lamb," he responded. 
 
 When the bells rang, he said, with a 
 smile, " Those are the first bells." 
 
 Near the going down of the sun : " I 
 
 think little M will not have her wish, 
 
 that God would take me to heaven on the 
 Sabbath. I am afraid I derive little edifi- 
 cation from the Sabbath. I have very lit- 
 tle connected religious thought. But He 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 253 
 
 knoweth my frame, He remembereth that 
 J am dust." 
 
 July 18. — In the morning he was tran- 
 quil. At noon there were again indica- 
 tions that his release was near. — " The 
 Lord has come for me now, hasn't he ? 
 — ' Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.' " 
 There were convulsive movements, and 
 gaspings for the breath which seemed once 
 to have quite passed away. But yet the 
 spirit lingered. Supported in our arms, he 
 looked up and said, " Repeat." The words 
 were spoken, " Yea, though I walk through 
 the valley of the shadow of death, I will 
 fear no evil : for thou art with me ; thy rod 
 and thy staff they comfort me/' To this 
 and other passages he bowed his head in 
 assent. When a little relieved, he said, " I 
 glory in the cross of Christ, — I glory in 
 the cross of Christ ! — that's certain." 
 
 While we were endeavoring to make his 
 position more tolerable, he looked earnestly 
 at us, as if he wished to speak. 
 
254 MEMORIAL. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " I have had such a sweet thought of the 
 love of God and of Christ ; but I cannot 
 explain it." 
 
 July 19. — It is pleasant to remember 
 the hours of this morning. Mr. Little's 
 mind was clear, and his whole aspect ex- 
 pressive of repose. At the same time, his 
 animated countenance brought vividly to 
 mind the bright look he had when in com- 
 parative health. For a long time he ob- 
 served our movements, listened to our con- 
 versation, and regarded all with affection- 
 ate looks, but did not speak. It was said 
 to him, " You cannot talk with us, but it 
 is delightful to see you look so happy." 
 In tones full of meaning, he responded : 
 " God has so wonderfully interposed in our 
 behalf, during these last few weeks, — 
 and so answered our prayers, — how can I 
 help being — perfectly — happy ! " 
 
 In the afternoon, the cold dews of death 
 gathered upon his brow, and we knew that 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 255 
 
 his departure was at hand. When the 
 wanderings of his mind were suspended 
 for a few moments, he said : " I rejoice to 
 suffer for Jesus. I am glad the way is so 
 long to the Celestial City." 
 
 In the evening he said : " I am very 
 comfortable. I love to look at you all. I 
 have many kind friends. God is my 
 friend." To one of his family who was 
 obliged to leave him for a time : " May 
 God keep you under his wings. May he 
 save you and protect you. That is my 
 prayer for you." 
 
 Most of this night his reason was cloud- 
 ed. He was eager to converse ; but his 
 words could not often be understood. 
 Once we heard distinctly : " Blessed Jesus ! 
 — Precious Saviour ! — Thou art faithful 
 even unto the end." It was said, " He is 
 here with you." Laying his hand upon 
 his breast, the dying one whispered, — 
 " Perfectly satisfied" 
 
256 MEMORIAL. 
 
 July 20. — In the early morning he 
 looked upon those at his bedside as if he 
 had never seen them. Gradually his rea- 
 son returned, until he recognized us affec- 
 tion ately, and gave a pleased assent to 
 passages of Scripture which were repeated. 
 Soon after seven o'clock his breathing be- 
 came very laborious. His lips were pur- 
 ple, cold, and rigid. With great effort he 
 gave the last farewell to friends beside 
 him. At times he raised his eyes, and his 
 lips moved in prayer. He beckoned to us 
 and made endeavors to speak ; but only a 
 few words were intelligible. Once we dis- 
 tinguished clearly : " Heart at home — 
 heart at home. Heaven — part down here 
 — part up there." 
 
 " Is Jesus with you ? " 
 
 « Yes." 
 
 Averse from his favorite hymn was read : 
 
 "And when my lips grow white and chill, 
 Thy Spirit cry within me still, 
 
LAST WEEKS OF HIS LIFE. 257 
 
 And help my soul thy heaven to rind 
 When these poor eyes grow dark and blind/ 1 
 
 He smiled feebly. Another verse was 
 read : — 
 
 " Renew this wasted flesh of mine, 
 That like the sun it there may shine 
 Among the angels pure and bright, — 
 Yea, like thyself in glorious light." 
 
 He shook his head, as if to disclaim an 
 expression which he felt to be not in har- 
 mony with a lowly spirit The last words 
 he uttered were, " I shall soon be with 
 Christ" 
 
 His gaze became steadfast. He seemed 
 no more to look at us, or to be conscious 
 of our presence. We spoke his name ; 
 but there w 7 as no response. We pressed 
 his hand ; but the pressure was not re- 
 turned. He breathed more and more gen- 
 tly, until, with a long sigh, he fell asleep. 
 
fnuml mxmm. 
 
 The funeral was on Monday afternoon, 
 July 23. At two o'clock there were services 
 at the house, after which the casket bearing 
 the remains of the departed, and inscribed 
 with the words so often upon his lips, — 
 U I rest in Jesus," — was conveyed to the 
 Vine Street Church. 
 
 The first prayer was offered by Rev. Pro- 
 fessor H. B. Smith, of New York. Rev. J. 
 O. Means, pastor of the church, read from 
 the Scriptures. Rev. A. C. Thompson, of 
 the Eliot Church, addressed the assembly. 
 The services were closed with prayer and 
 the benediction by Rev. S. L. Caldwell, 
 of Providence, R. I. 
 
 The hymns sung had been selected by 
 
 (258) 
 
FUNERAL SERVICES. 259 
 
 Mr. Little for the occasion, from the Sab- 
 bath Hymn Book. They were the follow- 
 ing:— 
 
 " Jesus, the sinner's friend, to thee, 
 Lost and undone, for aid I flee ; 
 Weary of earth, myself, and sin, 
 Open thine arms and take me in. 
 
 " Pity and save my ruined soul; 
 'Tis thou alone canst make me whole; 
 . Dark, till in me thine image shine, 
 And lost I am, till thou art mine. 
 
 " At last I own it cannot be 
 That I should fit myself for thee : 
 Here, then, to thee I all resign; 
 Thine is the work, and only thine. 
 
 " What can I say thy grace to move ? 
 Lord, I am sin, — but thou art love : 
 I give up every plea beside, 
 Lord, I am lost, — but thou hast died ! n 
 
 " Thou dear Redeemer, dying Lamb, 
 I love to hear of thee ; 
 No music 's like thy charming name, 
 Nor half so sweet can be. 
 
 " Oh, may I ever hear thy voice 
 In mercy to me speak ; 
 In thee, my Priest, will I rejoice, 
 And thy salvation seek. 
 
260 MEMORIAL. 
 
 u My Jesus shall be still my theme, 
 
 While on this earth I stay ; 
 
 I'll sing my Jesus' lovely name, 
 
 When all things else decay. 
 
 " When I appear in yonder cloud, 
 With all his favored throng, 
 Then will I sing more sweet, more loud, 
 And Christ shall be my song." 
 
 A company of sorrowing friends followed 
 in the procession to Forest Hills Cemetery, 
 u and beheld the sepulchre and how the 
 body was laid." The casket was placed 
 beside the grave, and opened once more. 
 While we stood silent, the sunlight, partial- 
 ly broken by shadows of the trees near by, 
 shone upon the countenance of the dead. 
 It was said afterwards, by one who looked 
 upon the scene, " I could only think of 
 Stephen, — we ' saw his face as it had been 
 the face of angel. ' " 
 
 The peaceful sleeper was laid to rest. 
 Words of trust and hope were spoken by 
 Rev. Mr. Means : — 
 
FUNERAL SERVICES. 261 
 
 " In the name of the Father, and of the 
 Son, and of the Holy Ghost, we commit 
 the body of our dear brother to the ground ; 
 earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, 
 — in the assured hope of a glorious resurrec- 
 tion and blessed immortality through the 
 might of Jesus Christ our Lord, who hath 
 declared, ' I am the resurrection and the 
 life : he that believeth in me, though he 
 were dead, yet shall he live : and whosoever 
 liveth and believeth in me shall never die.' 
 
 " We sorrow not even as others which 
 have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus 
 died and rose again, even so them also 
 which sleep in Jesus will God bring with 
 him. Wherefore comfort one another with 
 these words. " 
 
 And by Rev. G. M. Adams : — 
 
 u Now is Christ risen from the dead, and 
 become the first-fruits of them that slept. 
 The hour is coming in the which all that 
 are in the graves shall hear his voice, 
 and shall come forth. For this corruptible 
 must put on incorruption, and this mortal 
 
262 MEMORIAL. 
 
 must put on immortality. Then shall be 
 brought to pass the saying that is written, 
 Death is swallowed up in victory. Thanks 
 be to God, which giveth us the victory 
 through our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 " Grace be unto us, and peace, from 
 Him which is, and which was, and which 
 is to come ; and from the seven Spirits 
 which are before his throne ; and from 
 Jesus Christ, who is the Faithful Witness, 
 and the First-begotten of the dead, and the 
 Prince of the kings of the earth. Unto Him 
 that loved us, and washed us from our sins 
 in his own blood, and hath made us kings 
 and priests unto God and his Father, to 
 him be glory and dominion forever and 
 ever. Amen." 
 
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