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CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FROM . 
 The ^state of G.L.Burr 
 
The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029347378 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
PHOTOGRAPHED BV J. W, BLACK & CO. 
 
 ENGRAVED BY T. JOHN 
 
 BY PERUIBSION OF THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 EDWARD THOMPSON TAYLOR. 
 "Father Taylor." 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 ROBERT COLLYER 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 
 
 1906 
 
Copyright 1906 
 American Unitarian Association 
 
 Published October, igo6 
 
''^*teiiil3y,l?.r,.MtM,,.B9bert.Co!lyer. 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 347 378 
 
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FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 I still remember on a May morning many 
 years ago, going to a prayer meeting 
 at the West Church in Boston in our An- 
 niversary Week, where I saw Father Taylor, 
 the seaman's chaplain, for the first time 
 in my life. The meetings in those days 
 were usually held in the HoUis Street 
 Church, where I had gone the year before 
 to wonder over our usage, so different from 
 that of my mother church — ^the Methodist — 
 which I had then but lately left. For there 
 we would pray as the spirit moved us, or 
 as we were moved by the leader when the 
 tides of the spirit ran low; but in ours no 
 one would pray except the Leader of the 
 meeting and then the brethren would rise 
 here and yonder and talk about prayer, 
 so that in some moments I would wonder 
 what was the use if this was "the conclu- 
 sion of the whole matter." 
 
 Dr. Bartol had charge of the meeting 
 in his own church and after the opening 
 
 [1] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 services there was silence for a space, and 
 then he spoke to a man well on in years 
 who was sitting near him and who rose 
 at once to his feet, when there was the 
 rustle in the meeting of an eager expecta- 
 tion in those who were near me, while 
 something like the breath which touches 
 the leaves in a garden touched all the faces 
 I could glance at. So I bent forward to 
 listen when he began to speak in low, soft 
 tones for some moments — as I caught his 
 words — about Doves. He had seen them 
 that morning as he came to the meeting, 
 crowding to a window to be fed by a neigh- 
 bor, and the sight had reminded him of 
 the words of the prophet: "Who are these 
 that fly as doves to the window ?" And as he 
 warmed to his theme his voice grew clear 
 and presently the old church seemed to 
 be full of doves. They came crowding in 
 from the New England woods and the 
 dovecotes at the North End, — doves of the 
 prophets' time, and doves with the dew of 
 that May morning on their wings, white 
 [2] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 and purple and golden, out of the heavens 
 and into the heavens, — and then somehow 
 we were doves, come at the Father's call 
 that morning to be fed from his hand, or 
 longing to plume our wings to fly away 
 and be at rest. 
 
 It was the enchantment to me of pure 
 genius, — ^the speU cast over me by one who 
 was spellbound in his vision — ^the prayer 
 meeting of a lifetime — ^the pentecost of 
 flying doves. 
 
 Dr. Bartol asked me to speak, I remem- 
 ber, after the man with the vision sat down. 
 So I said some words that sounded like 
 an echo many times removed. And I wist 
 not who he was who had wrought the won- 
 der, so I asked a man who sat near me and 
 he answered, "Why, that's Father Taylor," 
 with the wonder in his tone that any man in 
 Boston should ask such a question. Then 
 Dr. Bartol said he wanted to introduce me 
 to him, and when this was done I held out my 
 hand rather shyly, I guess, but he did not 
 offer his in return: he opened his arms 
 [3] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 wide and gave me a great brotherly hug. 
 He also kissed me on the cheek, — 
 quite a new experience. I had never been 
 kissed by a man before, not even by my 
 own father within my memory. And so 
 it came to pass that we were fast friends 
 from that morning to the end of his life 
 on the earth. It made no difference that 
 I was no longer a member of our mother 
 church. I was a Unitarian, graft, he would 
 say, on the Methodist stock, and this was 
 a good variety when we ripened well. 
 
 This was Father Taylor, the waif, 
 when we first hear of him, mothered by a 
 poor woman in Richmond, Virginia. A 
 cabin boy and man before the mast, a 
 farm laborer for a spell, and shoemaker 
 or, it may be, only a cobbler, a tin 
 pedler, and a Methodist local preacher, 
 then a preacher in full orders, and finally 
 seamen's chaplain in the city of Boston. 
 "Jeremy Taylor in butternut," Harriet 
 Martineau said, and the only man this 
 side the sea Charles Dickens went to hear 
 [4] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 on his first visit to these states; the man 
 who delighted Jenny Lind also, and Miss 
 Bremer and Mrs. Jameson, among those 
 who heard him from the old world; the 
 man in whose large, sunny heart John A. 
 Andrew loved to sun himself to the last, 
 and whose face was so radiant in his home 
 that his small daughter made up her mind 
 this was what made the flowers open in 
 their living-room. 
 
 Shall I try to touch his likeness as he 
 stood in the West Church that May morn- 
 ing.? A broad, thickset man, you could 
 easily see he had been in his prime a man 
 you would trace back to the lion if you were 
 taken by the humor of seeing him through 
 Darwin's glass. A man, with a great 
 mane and gray eyes — ^the prophet's gray — 
 with, I suspect, a gleam of red fire in them 
 when his blood boiled, as it was rather 
 apt to do, but always for good reason. A 
 brow wide and ample, that knotted rather 
 than knitted under the pressure of intense 
 thought or overmastering emotion. A grand 
 [5] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 jaw well set and well corded, and a mouth 
 large and limber, equal to every demand 
 in speech or sermon. 
 
 This was the lion, but then there was a 
 lamb also that made good to you the 
 prophet's vision of the good time coming 
 when they shall lie down together, for, 
 hot in his anger, he was gentle also as 
 mothers are with their little children. 
 Indeed he could be a mother in some 
 sweet human sense, for once when he must 
 take the services at a funeral in a poor 
 home where the mother was left with a 
 family of small children to fend for and 
 he stood by the dust to pray, he was silent 
 for some moments and then he moaned, 
 "O God, we are a widow." I could not 
 learn what words he said beside, and in- 
 deed these tell the story of the Christ-like 
 heart which made the mother's sorrow his 
 sorrow and her life his life. It is also told 
 of him that when in some meeting a brother 
 asked him to make a prayer he said, "I 
 cannot make a prayer." Well, this I 
 [6] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 think was not made by him, but through 
 him. 
 
 Edward Taylor was born on Christmas 
 day, 1793, at Richmond in Virginia, and 
 into a forlorn world, for he could barely 
 remember his father or mother; there was 
 no tender care for his advent, or gold, frank- 
 incense, and myrrh from wise men who saw 
 the star shining over the stable and the 
 manger. This woman whose name we do 
 not find gave him a home and raised him 
 in some fashion in the earliest years, while 
 one tradition remains to cast a curious 
 gleam on the man and his election to the 
 eminence he attained as "one called to be 
 an apostle separated unto the gospel of 
 God." For it was remembered how he 
 would hold a funeral service when the 
 opportunity came over a chicken he had 
 killed with a stone, but having only negro 
 children for mourners who would roll over 
 and over in ecstacies of delight and laughter, 
 he would trounce them to bring real tears 
 and have a proper funeral. 
 [7] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 But when he was about seven years old, 
 as he was picking up chips one day for the 
 woman who mothered him, the captain of 
 a vessel passing by on the street said to 
 him, "Come along with me, boy, and be 
 a sailor." What he said beside we do not 
 know: only that the boy let the chips 
 drop he had gathered, ran to the woman 
 who housed him and shouted, " Good- 
 bye, mother, I am going to be a sailor." 
 So he went to sea as a cabin boy, no 
 doubt, to toss about on the great and 
 wide ocean for ten years, enduring hard- 
 ness as a good sailor; and then he comes 
 into the light again in Boston and to a 
 pregnant crisis and turning point in his 
 life when he was seventeen years of age. 
 
 And this was the crisis. Wandering 
 about the city on a Sunday morning he 
 dropped by mere chance, as we are apt to 
 say — where there is no chance in matters 
 so momentous — into the Park Street Church, 
 and was so taken by the sermon from Dr. 
 Griffin we may presume that the hunger 
 [8] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 touched him to be able some day to preach 
 a sermon like that from the lips of the 
 great divine. 
 
 On another Sunday he went to a Metho- 
 dist meeting and heard Elijah Hedding, 
 who afterward became an eminent bishop, 
 — a man of a sunnier heart and a larger 
 and sweeter gospel than that he heard in 
 the Park Street Church. So while the first 
 only went to the lad's head the second went 
 to his heart, and then, before he left the 
 meeting-house, something was done for 
 him my mother church does best always 
 when the pews work kindly with the pul- 
 pit, — one of the brethren spoke to him 
 kindly, gave him his hand, and asked him 
 to come again. The boy wanted human 
 sympathy and here it was, warm from the 
 good man's heart. It was probably the 
 first tender word that had ever been said 
 to him in his rough seaman's life. He 
 asked him about his soul, — it is probable 
 he was not aware until then that he had one. 
 So he was converted in the good old Metho- 
 [9] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 dist fashion of knowing you are converted. 
 Methodism was his nursing mother and he 
 loved her to the end of his life. And once 
 when one of our ministers said some sour 
 words about her ministry he rose in wrath 
 and defied us to equal them, set foot to 
 foot with ours, with a Bible in their hands, 
 and a wilderness of human souls to save. 
 
 In the war with England in 1812 he went 
 to sea on the Black Hawk, privateer. She 
 was captured very soon by the enemy and 
 her crew were sent prisoners to Halifax, 
 Nova Scotia. Our young convert had at- 
 tended a prayer meeting steadily after his 
 conversion, when he came ashore, held in the 
 house of a poor woman who had mothered 
 the youth and cared for him in many ways; 
 but she had lost her husband now and had 
 gone to live in Halifax, where, having pity 
 on our prisoners, she would go to help them 
 by all the means in her power. So it fell 
 out one day that going on her good errand, 
 as she was passing a window, some one cried 
 through the bars, "Mother, oh. Mother!" 
 [10] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 It was Edward, her Boston boy, and she 
 was to him as a mother indeed. 
 
 Then it came to pass that our sea dogs 
 who were laid there by the heels broke out 
 in rank rebellion against the prison chap- 
 lain, who would and must read the prayers 
 to them for King George and the whole 
 royal family to their great disgust, so 
 they would not hear him. But finding 
 young Taylor was "a praying man," they 
 gave him orders to take the chaplain's place 
 at the praying. He was quite ready to do 
 this, and after some time it dawned on them 
 that a fellow who was such a master hand 
 at the praying would be just as good at the 
 preaching, for they said it was only the 
 difference between being on your knees 
 or your feet. But here, as we say, they 
 struck a snag: he did not know even his 
 alphabet, so how could he find a text, and 
 without a text how could he preach a ser- 
 mon.? The problem was solved easily. 
 One man was a master hand at reading, 
 so they found a Bible and he went to work 
 [11] 
 
FATHER TAY LOR 
 
 reading texts at haphazard, we may pre- 
 sume; and upon his reading the words, 
 "A good and wise child is better than an 
 old and foolish king," Taylor said, "That 
 will do for a sermon," launched out into 
 the story of our glorious Revolution, set 
 them all afire, and came down heavily 
 to their vast delight on the old and foolish 
 king. So from this time he was their 
 chaplain on a prisoner's ration while the 
 other man drew the pay. 
 
 Coming home when the prison doors were 
 opened, of course the young apostle could 
 not hide the light and fire in him under 
 a bushel, for that would have burnt the 
 bushel; so he would speak in meet'n' and 
 they began to hear of this strange creature 
 who was stirring up the gift which was 
 in him because he could not be silent, — 
 this cross between a sailor and a saint, — 
 and determined to give him a license as a 
 local preacher if certain wise elders they 
 sent to hear him should bring a good report. 
 The tradition was that he must not be told 
 [12] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 of their presence, but had been told by a 
 friend they would be there and took for 
 the text of his exhortation: "By the life 
 of Pharaoh ye are spies." 
 
 Be this as it may, he was licensed to preach 
 at nothing a year and find yourself, — ^the 
 terms on which I preached through eleven 
 happy years in my old mother church. And 
 to find himself he hired out to a ped- 
 ler in Ann street, Boston, who in his way 
 became a co-worker together with the 
 Most High by sending him down the coast 
 with a load of tin notions. He struck 
 Saugus in his journey, sold out his wares 
 there, and then was moved to preach, — 
 sold his tins, mark you, before he began 
 to preach, not after, — and so won the heart 
 of a fine old lady there that she offered him 
 a home to work on her farm, and taught 
 him to read the Bible so now there was 
 no need to spell painfully or make a wild 
 guess at the hard words, for it seems he had 
 advanced so far already. 
 
 It fell out in due time that Amos Binney, 
 [13] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 a rich and generous man in Boston, heard 
 the young evangelist and determined that 
 he should have a proper education for the 
 ministry in the only school of the prophets 
 Methodism possessed in those days. So 
 he went in all good will, but only stayed in 
 the school about six weeks. He wist not 
 "what was the matter, but the truth is he 
 was one of the men who make good the 
 poet's lines 
 
 " The spirit which from God is made 
 The noblest of its kind 
 Asks not the help of rules that serve 
 To guide the feebler mind." 
 
 And here was one of these spirits in posses- 
 sion of Edward Taylor. 
 
 But the mother was wise touching her 
 strange son. So in no long time a full 
 license was given him with the proper or- 
 dination, and he was sent to Marblehead 
 to take charge of the infant church in that 
 town. And it was in Marblehead he found 
 [14] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 an angel to help and bless him through more 
 than forty years. Deborah was the name of 
 the maiden who was to sit, not under a palm- 
 tree, but under a pine, and hold in her heart 
 this nobler Barak. It was lovely beyond 
 my telling to find them in their home some 
 forty years after their wedding and to hear 
 the old man's voice calling for "Mother" 
 Mother from another room. It was a 
 wonderful voice even then, harsh in scorn 
 of meanness, but musical as Longfellow's 
 when he would call for or talk to " Mother." 
 And Deborah might well win and hold 
 such a man's love; she was "not like 
 in like but like in difference," for gentle- 
 ness was as heaven all about her and the 
 peace of God that passeth understanding 
 shone in her eyes. She was a woman all 
 good men would love to call "mother" 
 just for the beauty of the word and the 
 grace. And so it would have been of no 
 use Edward's saying on his part "for better 
 or worse" when he took her for his wife 
 and she took him for her husband, be- 
 [15] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 cause there was no worse or could be : it 
 was all and only for better. 
 
 And we may easily presume the only 
 real trouble that ever came of their wed- 
 ding was this, that when he was growing 
 old and feeble she had to leave him for 
 a little while, less I think than two years, 
 for the other home and room in the many 
 mansions in the Eternal City of God. 
 
 But we may be sure there were no cards 
 sent out as invitations to the wedding, or 
 orange blossoms, or whatever then might 
 be the fashion, or a wedding march on the 
 organ,— for indeed it might have been no 
 wedding in any wise. For one day our 
 young apostle, who was then abiding in 
 Hingham, being vastly in love, as he was 
 vastly every thing such a man may be, 
 climbed to a hill top to have a look 
 toward Marblehead across the gray waters 
 and to blow great sighs over toward the 
 granite cliffs. He had a telescope so that 
 his eyes might help his heart, as he lay at 
 length on the grass and talked to himself, 
 [16] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 as he was fond of doing, with as it seems 
 good reason. For when some one said to 
 him once, "Father Taylor, why do you 
 talk to yourself as you walk along the 
 streets?" he answered, "Because I like to 
 talk to a sensible man, sir." He was talk- 
 ing to himself when in a flash the thought 
 struck him and he leaped to his feet with 
 the cry, "Bless my heart, this is our wed- 
 ding day and I forgot all about it!" 
 
 He had forgotten, and there he was all 
 those miles away from Marblehead, where 
 Deborah and the wedding guests were 
 waiting. There was no telegraph or tele- 
 phone or railroad train in 1819, and if there 
 had been a wire he could hardly have sent 
 a message to tell Deborah that he had clean 
 forgotten this was their wedding day. But 
 I warrant you the maiden's quiet, stead- 
 fast heart was not greatly disturbed. She 
 would know if Edward ran he would 
 only run one way; yet we should love to 
 have a report of his journey next morning 
 to Marblehead and how his genius rose 
 [17] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 to the swift demand when he began to tell 
 them how it was. Still, I think we can 
 imagine how the man and maid foregath- 
 ered and can dispense with the report. 
 
 Soon after the wedding our young apostle 
 was sent to Duxbury to take charge of "the 
 cause" there, or start one. Our church 
 in Duxbury then was on the turn of the 
 tide between the ancient puritan faith 
 and the Unitarian. Dr. AUyn, who was 
 and had been for many years in charge 
 of our parish, was quite disposed to look 
 down in disdain on this young interloper 
 who had come to disturb the long-enduring 
 slumber of his fine old church. And meet- 
 ing him one day on the street he said : " So, 
 young man, ye have come to preach in 
 Duxbury, have je?" "Yes," the young 
 man answered, "the Lord bid us go forth 
 and preach the gospel to every creature." 
 "Yes, to be sure," the old man replied, "he 
 bid us preach the gospel to every creature, 
 but he never said every critter should preach 
 the gospel, sir," and went his way in wrath. 
 [18] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 His work down to 1828 lay close along 
 the coast from the Cape to Bristol and it 
 was done in his own way, man-fashion. 
 He would say in the after years, "Like an 
 Indian, I walk free, and he was neither 
 to hold nor bind." He would preach as 
 he was moved then as always, and when, 
 well on in life, a friend said to him, "What 
 are you going to preach about on Sunday, 
 Father Taylor.?" he answered promptly, 
 "Don't know, don't want to forestall God." 
 And as he preached, so he prayed. So it 
 was remembered how at Barnstable one 
 Sunday in the prayer he cried: "Lord, 
 bless meek Burr and proud Pratt and save 
 wicked old Alden." And when Parson 
 Thaxter, who had been a soldier in the 
 Revolution, was sadly put about because 
 the young apostle was drawing his people 
 away from the ancient church, told him a 
 piece of his mind and raised his cane to 
 strike him, but could not do it, the young 
 man next Sunday prayed that every hair on 
 the old man's venerable head might be hung 
 [19] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 with a jewel of the Lord. There was no 
 striking a man like young Taylor, — ^you 
 might as soon raise your cane to strike one 
 of Milton's angels. 
 
 Nor was it possible to have and hold him 
 down there on the Cape, because here was 
 a man who must find and fill his place in 
 Boston. So about 1828 the good Meth- 
 odists in the city felt a concern for those 
 "who go down to the sea in ships." Here 
 was a wilderness of souls no man seemed 
 to care for and Edward Taylor was their 
 chosen evangelist to do this momentous 
 work. But his advent in the great city 
 was not heralded by deftly pointed para- 
 graphs in the papers; it was heralded in 
 a way dear to the heart of the old Method- 
 ism by a flash from the inner heavens. 
 A man of some note in the city, who had 
 fallen on evil ways and was a scorner of 
 the Most High, dreamed of a stranger 
 who was coming to preach in Boston and 
 was told to go and hear him. I do not 
 make out that he was told where to go, but 
 [20] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 on a Sunday morning he stumbled into 
 the meeting-house in what was then Metho- 
 dist Alley, saw young Taylor in the pulpit, 
 and felt sure this was the man he was 
 bidden to hear. The preacher won his 
 heart, he came again and again, was finally 
 converted, and from that time for twenty 
 years lived a faithful and good life. 
 
 This was the advent of his work in Boston 
 through more than forty years. The chapel 
 presently became too small for him and was 
 in peril also of being sold for the mortgage. 
 But the Unitarians in the city had begun 
 to take note of the high worth of his work 
 among the sailors and turned in with a 
 will to help him. Nathaniel Barret, a 
 merchant in the city, wrote a hundred notes 
 to a hundred men mainly of our faith call- 
 ing them together, laid the matter before 
 them, and it was resolved that a new meet- 
 ing-house should be built for him, and this 
 was done. The Bethel was built that still 
 stands in North Square. And in her old 
 age Mother Taylor would tell you "the 
 [21] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 Unitarians were the best friends they had 
 through all the years, giving money by 
 thousands and thousands until the great 
 boarding-house as well as the Bethel was 
 entirely free from debt." 
 
 So this naturally drew Father Taylor into 
 a close and warm friendship with the Uni- 
 tarians in Boston, while to the end of his 
 life he was a free-hearted and free-spoken 
 Methodist. And it is down in the record 
 that once when a brother Methodist minis- 
 ter who was not pleased over the free af- 
 filiation said to him, "Father Taylor, 
 why do you fellowship so much with those 
 Unitarians ? If you need money we will give 
 you all you need," — ^he answered swiftly, 
 "I shall not break with those Unitarians 
 to please you, brother, or anybody; I can- 
 not get along without them, but I can get 
 along without you." He did not know 
 his man. It was not the money he needed 
 then, but the sweet and free fellowship 
 of men like Ezra Gannett and Cyrus Bartol, 
 James Freeman Clarke and many more I 
 [22] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 cannot name. And again, when Lyman 
 Beecher, the minister of the Park Street 
 Church, said to him one day, "Taylor, are 
 you cheating the Unitarians or are they 
 cheating you?" he answered promptly, 
 "Wrong, Doctor, on both counts. There 
 is a third party in Boston bound to do the 
 cheating, but I mention no names." The 
 truth was, as Dr. Bartol finely says, "he 
 walked at large and free." He knocked at 
 every door. Orthodox, Episcopal, Roman, 
 or Radical, and everywhere he was wel- 
 come. He had the freedom of the city. 
 
 He compared many of our religious 
 troubles to two bands of turtles as he had 
 watched them on the ship's deck when 
 they would march up toward each other 
 stretching out their necks, and the side that 
 could stretch its neck the highest compelled 
 the other party to retreat. His heart was 
 great enough to hold us all, but none could 
 own the head or heart of Father Taylor 
 and leave the good and true of any name 
 or denomination out in the cold. 
 [23] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 He loved to come to our gatherings now 
 and then, as he came on the morning when 
 I saw and heard him the first time — ^that 
 most memorable morning. But he would 
 draw his bow on us and let fly his arrows, 
 saying more than once that we might as 
 well try to heat a furnace with snow-balls 
 as to save men's souls in the way we went 
 about our work. There was some truth 
 in his criticism, but it was not the whole 
 truth or true in any wise touching many 
 men we can count in those far-away years. 
 Father Taylor was working in one way 
 and they in another, each good and essen- 
 tial, only the great hot heart in him could 
 not tolerate what seemed to him to be like 
 trying to grow wheat within, shall I say, 
 the Arctic Circle. But, loving us, he loved 
 us to the end. Men among our laymen 
 like Amos Binney, Nathaniel Barret, Al- 
 bert Fearing, and Governor Andrew, of 
 his own generous pattern, were to him as 
 sons and brothers. He had said to such 
 men when they turned in to lend a hand 
 [24] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 for his Bethel: "I do not want your arches 
 and draperies and Corinthian columns for 
 my Bethel; give me the shavings that drop 
 from the pillars and I will be content." 
 "Drop your gold into this ocean," he said 
 again, " and it will cast a wave on the shores 
 of Europe that will strike back to the islands 
 of the South Seas, rebound to the north- 
 west coast, make the circuit of the world, 
 and roll back to the port of Boston." They 
 heard and answered him with a good Amen, 
 gave him his seaman's Bethel for a temple 
 and a throne. But he was no petty kinglet 
 to be maintained on his throne by the 
 great guns of Boston. For when they would 
 crowd his Bethel on a Sunday so that his 
 sailor men could not find a seat, he would 
 say to some man: "You must stand, sir. 
 Jack must have a seat." So Jack saw the 
 point and sat on his dignity. Here was 
 the place where Jack was better than 
 his master. He knew what he was about 
 when he ran out the ancient chaplain of 
 the prison in Halifax who said the wrong 
 [25] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 prayers, and elected the young praying 
 man, saying to him, "If you can pray like 
 that you can preach too; it is only a ques- 
 tion of talking on your knees or your feet." 
 So the sailors loved him, honored and fol- 
 lowed him. The Bethel was his temple 
 and Father Taylor his supreme pontiflf. 
 The story is true in the spirit if we cannot 
 vouch for the letter, of two sailors who 
 wanted to find the temple one Sunday 
 morning, but, not sure of their bearings, 
 on their arrival there the one who could 
 read or perhaps spell saw the name of the 
 place over the door and slowly went through 
 his work: "'B-e-t,' that's beat; 'h-e-1,' 
 that's hell; all right, Jack, come along, 
 this is where the old man beats hell, let's 
 go right in." 
 
 And what a throne of power for good 
 it was! Writing no word of his sermon 
 as a rule, though he took good heed to his 
 preparation while still he must not fore- 
 stall God, the grand thoughts came flying 
 on the wings of the great moments. Yet 
 [26] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 there were times again when it was like 
 dropping buckets into empty wells. One 
 morning he touched the theme in his ser- 
 mon, always so near his heart, of a young 
 man coming to the great city from a sweet 
 country home and nurture, — a young man 
 full of noble resolutions and aspirations 
 falling away from one temptation into 
 another, but always down, down, down. 
 He paused when he had touched the pict- 
 ure with the last dark shadows, lifted his 
 hand, and whispered: "Hush-h-h-h, he is 
 cursing his mother — ^shut the windows of 
 heaven, shut the windows." 
 
 Jenny Lind went one Sunday morning 
 to hear him. I am not sure he knew she 
 was there. He was preaching on amuse- 
 ments and paid a glowing tribute to "the 
 sweetest singer that ever alighted on our 
 shores" and to her modesty and charity. 
 The sweet singer was leaning forward 
 listening in delight, when a very tall man 
 sitting on the pulpit stairs rose up slowly. 
 When Father Taylor had come to the close 
 [27] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 of his eulogy the stranger wanted to know 
 whether a person who died at one of Jenny 
 Lind's concerts would go to heaven. The 
 old man glared at him some moments — 
 not many — and then said: "A good man 
 will go to heaven, sir, die where he may, 
 and a fool will be a fool wherever he lives, 
 though he sits on my pulpit stairs." 
 
 And being the man he was. Father Taylor 
 could not take kindly to those who, being 
 as he insisted the Lord's stewards, kept 
 both the accounts and the income and said 
 it "would need more grace to save such 
 men than it would take skim milk to fat 
 an elephant." "Some people of this 
 brand," he said again, "may thiak they 
 are saints, but if they could see themselves 
 as the just in heaven see them they would 
 not dare to look a decent devil in the face." 
 
 The story is told of an eminent minister 
 in England that when his church presented 
 him with a fine sum of money, after many 
 years of good service, on the day of his golden 
 wedding, he turned to his wife and said: 
 [28] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 "My dear, that is yours, not mine. You 
 have taken care of the purse all these years, 
 and the home and the children and of me; 
 so you must take care of this also." This 
 was what Mother Taylor did through all 
 the years, and she had to care especially 
 for the home; and of the very soul of gener- 
 osity, the prodigal father, she had to be 
 watchful, wary, and wise, and even then 
 she was not always able to "make ends 
 meet." 
 
 Father Taylor had the habit a good 
 woman and housewife can never quite put 
 up with, of bringing any number of friends 
 home to take pot-luck, while for many a 
 year the pot was not full to overflowing 
 for chance and hungry guests of this sort. 
 One day among many such he rushed in 
 crying that so many men were coming to 
 dinner that day. It was quite a party of 
 ministers. So Mother gave him the money 
 to rush out again and get the provision. 
 He came back presently with a long face 
 and said, "Mother, you must go and buy 
 [29] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 the dinner. I met such a man, he was in 
 great distress, so I gave him the ten dollars." 
 On another day Mother sent him out to 
 pay a bill with fifty dollars in his keeping. 
 He came back after a while and said: 
 "Mother, I met such a man on the street; 
 he is a poor, old, broken-down minister, 
 you know. He did not beg, but I wanted 
 to help him and I could not for shame 
 ask him to change a bill for fifty dollars, 
 when he was not worth fifty cents, I am 
 sure; so I gave him the bill." 
 
 He greatly liked chicken prepared in 
 Mother's way, and with her own hands 
 she always made the dish and had it ready 
 when he came home from the watch-night 
 meeting on the turn of the new year's morn- 
 ing. And when they were far on in years, 
 on the watch-night she prepared the dish 
 ready for him and the friends he would 
 bring to the feast — a great and ample 
 preparation. But as he came home from 
 the meeting some one told him of a poor 
 family at the North End in great destitu- 
 [30] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 tion. "Where are they?" he cried, found 
 where they were housed, rushed home, 
 found the dear good dish of chicken ready 
 on the table for the supper, and took it in 
 his hands to the poor place. Some mem- 
 bers of his own household followed him 
 and when they arrived, there were the 
 famishing children dancing in wonder and 
 delight over the feast set on some apology 
 for a table. Mother had to get Father and 
 the friends another supper; but this was 
 no grief, — she knew her man and had long 
 ago turned her cross, if these things were 
 a cross, into a crown. 
 
 Father Taylor was in his fair, full prime 
 in the times I have glanced at and strong 
 both for fighting and fending. His life 
 and the work he must do lay mainly in 
 Boston in his Bethel and his Sailors' Home, 
 while he also made three journeys over sea 
 to the Old World. He went over the first 
 time when his Bethel was building, and 
 again in 1842 when he was quite worn out 
 with the intense labor of three services on 
 [31] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 the Sunday, no end of meetings in the 
 week, the oversight and care of his Sailors' 
 Home, and the perpetual calls of all kinds 
 he must answer that allowed him no rest. 
 He went to the Holy Land on his second 
 journey and told me once, with a vast 
 enjoyment of the humor, how in crossing 
 the desert they came one morning to a place 
 where they must halt for breakfast and 
 must leave their luggage in one tent by 
 order of the chief and take their breakfast 
 in another at some distance. But there 
 was an Englishman in the company who 
 did not want to leave his luggage at the 
 mercy of the Bedoween, and when the 
 company went forward he stayed by the 
 stuff to the wonder of the chief who had 
 charge of the escort and the stuff. He 
 stood for some moments wondering what 
 was the matter, and when the light broke 
 on his mind he said with a smile to the 
 man: "Do not be afraid, your things will 
 not be stolen, they are quite safe; there is 
 not a 'Christian' within fifteen leagues 
 [32] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 of the tent." So the Englishman went to 
 his breakfast in great content. 
 
 His last journey over sea was in the 
 Macedonian, the good ship sent from Bos- 
 ton to Ireland loaded with provision in the 
 black year of the potato famine. They 
 made him chaplain of the holy mission and 
 saw that he had quite a splendid personal 
 outfit; but when he returned home he had 
 barely the clothing to keep him decent 
 and warm. He had given all he had, piece 
 by piece, to the poor creatures, but they 
 had given him a fine bundle of canes — 
 blackthorns — and two Irish terriers. These 
 dogs, he said, were just what he wanted, 
 for Mother now would never be troubled 
 any more with rats. 
 
 These journeys, with another to the West 
 and South, are blended with the years I 
 have touched of his life in Boston. He 
 would say to his intimate friends in his 
 tired moments, "I do not wear out, I tear 
 out." So when I first met him he seemed 
 older than the account of the years. The 
 [33] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 hard work had told on him, but when the 
 holy fires burned they still burned white. 
 He said when he was well on in years 
 that he had never seen an unhappy day, 
 and when he went abroad on his last voy- 
 age and was parting with the hosts of friends 
 he said, " Laugh till I come back." Listen- 
 ing to a gloomy sermon one day he said: 
 "That man preaches as if he had killed 
 somebody." But as the years stole on 
 there were times when he did not take 
 kindly to the thought of dying, leaving his 
 home, his Bethel, and his boys, as he would 
 call the sailors. And one day in this dolor 
 a good sister of his faith, thinking to com- 
 fort him, said: "Bless the Lord, Father 
 Taylor, there is rest in heaven and you 
 will soon be there " ; but he growled in reply : 
 "Go there yourself if you want to, I want 
 to stay here." "But think of the angels 
 all waiting to welcome you," and he growled 
 again: "I don't want angels, I want folks." 
 And then in an instant the old radiance 
 flashed out and he said, "Angels are folks 
 [34] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 too." And this gave him comfort, as well 
 it might, for he wanted what I think we 
 all long for, a human heaven where the 
 angels are folks too and ours are among 
 them. 
 
 Yet now and then in his weakness and 
 pain they would hear him moan: "Lord, 
 what am I here for, — I am of no use. 
 The love of my friends will soon be gone, 
 and my love for them. Now, Lord, some 
 summer morning soon, snatch me home to 
 thyself." The last time I saw him in his 
 home he was on the far verge of time, but 
 was bright and cheery as a boy between the 
 spasms of labor and pain. And I still re- 
 member, after a strain that made the cords 
 start, when he recovered he whispered to 
 me, "The old hull's breaking up; it has 
 taken a good deal to break her, but she's 
 going. I feel her start through all her tim- 
 bers when these fits come on." Then some- 
 thing, — I do not quite remember, — some bit 
 of humor between ourselves, I think, caught 
 the old man and he shook all over with 
 [35] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 silent laughter. Father Taylor could laugh 
 louder and make no sound than most men 
 who make the welkin ring. It was laughter 
 incarnate. Then he kissed me good-bye 
 and I saw him in this world no more. 
 
 We hear of only one incident after this 
 that may be mentioned and must be. He 
 had fallen into the way when the tides ran 
 low of looking into the glass and talking 
 to his shadow there. He would tell it 
 he was an old sinner and would go to hell 
 after all. And one night when he was 
 very low the humor took him to have it 
 out with his double. A young minister 
 was with him, and to help the poor old man 
 in this dolor he began to pray for him as 
 he would for such a sinner who must repent 
 before it was too late. But when the young 
 brother rose from his knees the old lion 
 roared, — and I imagine his genius never 
 flamed out into a finer fire than in those 
 moments when he came back out of the 
 valley and shadow of death to reveal to 
 the young man what the deeper heart al- 
 [36] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 ways holds in sacred trust, that I can say 
 that about myself to the Most High which 
 I will permit no man to say about me even 
 on the far verge of life and time. 
 
 He died on the 6th of April, 1871, and 
 went out with the tide, as his sailor boys 
 loved to remember, — and I think the last 
 memory recorded is that he doubled his 
 fist, or tried to double it, at his nurse because 
 he insisted on dying in one position when 
 the nurse would fain have him lay more 
 
 Shall I turn now from this rapid glance 
 at Father Taylor's life to touch his rare 
 and unique genius? I think there can be 
 no mistake about this, first of all, that he 
 was the one man in all the world for 
 the place which he was called and elected 
 from on high to fill. Here was the port 
 of Boston swarming in those days with 
 sailors, simple almost as children in so 
 many ways, but with the pent-up passions 
 of strong men when they came ashore 
 [37] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 that exposed them to fearful temptations, 
 beset as they were then by evil men and 
 women who sought to devour them. 
 
 And here was a city full of churches to 
 overflowing and ministers of the first emi- 
 nence. Yet no man of the whole number 
 could take hold of the sailors man-fashion, 
 save them from the perils, and set them, 
 as we were used to say, with their faces 
 toward Zion. Dr. Channing was preach- 
 ing those wonderful sermons that are still 
 "the word of life," in the Federal Street 
 Church. He was and is stUl our great 
 apostle; but we may well doubt whether 
 any sermon from his lips ever reached one 
 man before the mast and won him to be 
 Christ's man. And the lurid fires kindled 
 by Lyman Beecher flamed up on Park 
 Street Corner, but Jack would grin if he 
 ever heard of them and go to a hell of his 
 own at the North End. 
 
 The great schools of the prophets also 
 were turning out ministers by scores or 
 hundreds, all told, but they might about 
 [38] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 as well have been trained in Mars for any 
 good they would be or do to Jack. And 
 I think a rude sailor man Father Taylor 
 came across in a foreign port on one of his 
 journeys over sea touched the quick heart 
 of the question from the sailor's stand- 
 point when he said to our chaplain: "You 
 seems to be a good old chap who knows 
 what's what; so I will tell you what I likes 
 along o' preachin'. When a man is a- 
 preachin' at me I want him to take somert 
 hot out of his heart and shove it into mine, 
 — ^that's what I calls preachin'." 
 
 Well, this was the one sure way to win 
 the sailors in the port of Boston and Father 
 Taylor was the one man to win them, be- 
 cause he had not alone something hot out 
 of his heart to win them, — ^he had the fire as 
 from the sun which gives life to all things 
 and, himself a sailor, he held the key to the 
 sailor's heart and knew the wards and wind- 
 ings. He was, as Edward Everett once 
 finely said, "a walking Bethel." In his 
 great moments he could make his sailors 
 [39] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 feel the ship alive under them as he stood 
 on his quarter deck, and the saltness of the 
 sea; could raise the storm and create such 
 peril by his magic that there were times 
 when the old salts would lose track of Sun- 
 day in the Bethel, shout "long boat, long 
 boat," and be ready to cast her loose. Then 
 he would turn his vision on the instant into 
 their souls' peril and cry out to them to be 
 saved. He could do this as no other man 
 could, whUe still he had the deep-hearted, 
 whole love for the men he would win, which 
 is the mother-milk of all true preaching. 
 He could say stern things to them when he 
 must, as a father may to his children, but 
 no other man must say them to his boys 
 in his presence and in his Bethel. So when 
 a man one day deplored their ignorance 
 he turned on him and said: "Jack knows 
 more than you do; he holds the whole 
 world in his hand as you hold an orange." 
 And when one of his boys in the meeting 
 once told them what trouble he had gone 
 through fighting the devil, he said: "All 
 [40] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 right, Jack, that shows you are worth 
 tempting or he would let you alone; he 
 does not care for chaff." A gentleman 
 from Beacon street made a speech one 
 Sunday in his meeting full of a fine con- 
 descension and told the sailors how grate- 
 ful they should be to the merchants of Bos- 
 ton in building the Bethel and much more 
 of the same tenor. When his eminence 
 sat down the old man rose in quite a temper 
 and cried, "Is there another old sinner from 
 uptown who wants to talk.? Now's his 
 chance, before we go on with the meeting." 
 He called them his boys, his sons, lumps 
 of amber saved from the ocean, and held 
 them fast to his Bethel and his heart. But 
 he was in what might have been in another 
 man a very bad temper when the Baptists 
 won away from him about thirty of his 
 boys. This was a sort of religious larceny 
 he could not abide. The Baptists, as the 
 report stands, baptized the new converts 
 forthwith; but it was bitter weather when 
 they were to be immersed and as they 
 [41] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 would not be immersed through the ice 
 Father Taylor heard they had warmed the 
 water to the temper required. He met one 
 of his estrays soon after the baptism and 
 said to him sternly: "Why did you leave 
 your Bethel, sir?" "Why, you see. 
 Father," the poor fellow answered with a 
 stammer, " I — didn't — ^feel — safe — unless I 
 went down — into — ^the Jordan." "Down 
 into the Jordan," Father Taylor growled, 
 "b'iled— Jordan, 6'iZerf/" 
 
 But it was not to be imagined by the 
 chaplain that these wUd men of the sea 
 would answer to such services and sermons 
 in the Bethel as were current then in Bos- 
 ton, even with Father Taylor for their 
 preacher. And here again the man's na- 
 tive genius, touched with the divine fire, 
 rose to the demand. For as a rule it was 
 not so much monologue as dialogue that 
 formed the staple of his ministry in most 
 of the meetings, and, captain of the Bethel 
 as he was always, he gave his hearers of 
 the sailor men the priceless privilege of 
 [42] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 talking in meeting, asking questions or 
 answering, as the mood might take them. 
 He commended, encouraged, or rebuked 
 them, holding them always in his heart. 
 So when one of the saUors shouted to his 
 fellows, "The devil told me I was good 
 enough, but I heaved him overboard stock 
 and fluke," he was delighted by the figure 
 and cried, "Well done. Jack, that's salva- 
 tion set to music." And when another 
 said, "I think faith is suth'n' like tinder: 
 shut it up and it will go out, but give it vent 
 and it will burn," he cried, "Well done, 
 Peter, the Bishop of England could do no 
 better than that." 
 
 When Father Taylor was preaching on 
 the parable of the wedding garment and 
 pictured the wedding guests crowding 
 to the supper in their brave attire beautiful 
 to see, while those who had no garments to 
 honor the feast were turned away, one poor 
 fellow in shirt sleeves, entranced by the 
 spell, and feeling that his chances at the 
 wedding supper were slipping away, started 
 [43] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 to his feet in great dolor and cried: "I 
 ain't to blame, don't leave me out, I lost 
 every thing I had in the wreck of my vessel 
 on the coast and had to come here with no 
 jacket." So perfect was the picture and 
 real to the "boys" that a score of jackets 
 were stripped in a score of seconds, while 
 they shouted, "Take mine, take mine, and 
 mine." And Father Taylor ran up to him 
 with the tears running doAvn his furrowed 
 face, put his arms about his boy, and cried, 
 "Why, Jack, I would not have left you out 
 for the world if I had known you had been 
 wrecked. You won't think hard of me, 
 will you ? " 
 
 When a Negro told his simple and 
 pathetic experience in one of these fellow- 
 ship meetings and touched the fount of 
 the old man's tears, he let them fall 
 freely, saying, "There's rain in that 
 cloud." And when one of his sailors with 
 a fine red head from Cape Cod related his 
 experience in words that went to the chap- 
 lain's heart, he remarked: "I did not know 
 [44] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 the soil down there on the Cape grew such 
 good red Cedar." But when another man 
 who could pump up tears in quantities rose 
 to his feet in the meeting and began to call 
 himself names and rain down the tears, 
 the chaplain, who knew him down to the 
 ground, said quietly, " Cry away, you white- 
 headed old sinner, summer showers soon 
 dry up; you'll forget all about it in half 
 an hour." 
 
 When sailor Wood, again, was talking 
 to no purpose except to damp down the 
 fires, he cried suddenly, " Lord, set a fire to 
 that Wood." And if one left the Bethel 
 in mid meeting he would say, "Jack has 
 got all he can take care of" or, "A light 
 craft floats quick." It is told that once 
 when he got tangled up in his speech he 
 cried, "I have lost the nominative case," — 
 or whatever it might be, — "but I'm on my 
 way to glory." One feels a little dubious 
 about this, however, because from all we 
 can learn his grammar was an instinct and 
 not of the schools — as John Bright's was. 
 [45] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 So if he lost a point he would make one, 
 and a better. He was impatient of all dul- 
 ness; that to his eager instinct meant dead- 
 ness. And when another lost his way in 
 an attempt to speak, but still went maunder- 
 ing on, he cried, "Lord, give him the point." 
 When another had taken great pains to 
 liken religion to a chest of medicines, but 
 was making no headway, he cried, "Do 
 get that chest open. Jack, and give us a 
 dose." 
 
 Still he was very tender and sweet toward 
 those who were trying to utter what lay in 
 their heart, to bud forth into speech, when 
 he felt they were sincere. One day a man 
 of foreign birth, a Jew, was moved to speak. 
 He took the Psalms when his speech was 
 ended and began to recite them in a poly- 
 glott of Hebrew and other tongues, at which 
 the sailors broke into loud laughter. But 
 the chaplain turned on them and said, 
 "That's pure Hebrew; don't you know 
 Hebrew?" And when a Portuguese sailor, 
 when the fervor had risen to white heat 
 [46] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 in one of the fellowship meetings, shouted, 
 "If a man tell me I don't love my Jesus I 
 hit dat man 'tween da eyes," he did not 
 rebuke the man, but shook with the silent 
 laughter. The poor fellow's sincerity in 
 the stress of the moment was so clear and 
 his meaning so good in despite of the pov- 
 erty of his speech that there was no room 
 for rebuke. 
 
 Father Taylor was the very primate of 
 wholesome laughter, but could not tolerate 
 the laughter of fools that is "as the crack- 
 ling of thorns under a pot." He would 
 turn on his boys then and ask them if they 
 thought they would laugh in hell. He did 
 not take stock in the Millerite craze when 
 it rose to fever heat in our older states 
 about sixty years ago. He saw the danger 
 at once and hoisted the signals. But the 
 believers gave him great trouble; they 
 would come to his meetings and insist on 
 the freedom of speech Father Taylor loved 
 to maintain. One day a fervent believer 
 came with the usual burden of the beasts 
 [47] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 and numbers. He was full of his gospel 
 and spoke with great fervor. When he sat 
 down Father Taylor did not speak, but one 
 of the sailors rose and said, "I've heeard a 
 many of you fellers, time and time, but 
 I only mind one who was as full of it as 
 you be, and he just cut his bootstraps and 
 went right up." That broke the old chap- 
 lain down. Once a man came to his meet- 
 ing and insisted on speaking out of his turn 
 and time. No man could do this. Father 
 Taylor was captain of his Bethel and would 
 keep order in his crew. But, still insist- 
 ing, the man said: "I must speak because 
 the Holy Ghost has sent, me." "Then go 
 back," the chaplain said, "and tell your 
 holy ghost I would not let you speak here 
 to-day at all." 
 
 "Lord, deliver us from stale bread," he 
 cried once, when a brother on his mission 
 came to the Bethel and told the sailors a lot 
 of dreary stories from the religious tracts 
 of that time. And when another in an ex- 
 hortation told them of a man who had led 
 [48] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 an evil life through many years, was blown 
 up in a powder-mill, came down with only 
 a moment to live, but in that moment gave 
 his heart to God, was saved, and went 
 right to heaven, Father Taylor was aroused 
 to a white heat and cried in his wrath: "I 
 don't want my men to hear such trash as 
 that in my Bethel. I tell you, boys, no 
 man can calculate on serving the devil all 
 his life and then cheating him with his last 
 breath. Don't burn the candle down to the 
 end in sin and then give God the snuflf. 
 Our brother has told you about a man in 
 the Bible who said, 'Let me die the death 
 of the righteous and let my last end be like 
 his': that was Balaam and he was about 
 the meanest man you can find there. Let's 
 hear no more about either Balaam or his 
 ass. Why, boys," he concluded finally, 
 "you cannot even calculate on being blown 
 up in a powder-mill, anyhow, — and then 
 where will you be?" 
 
 This in outline was Father Taylor, the 
 
 [49] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 seaman's chaplain, who could speak to 
 every man in his own tongue on the days 
 when the fire came down from heaven in 
 the likeness of a dove as in the day of the 
 Pentecost; who loved his "boys" with 
 a great devouring love, and having loved 
 them as the Scripture says, loved them to 
 the end; called them lumps of amber 
 thrown ashore in the storm, or pearls fished 
 from the ocean; who could compel them 
 to smiles and tears in a breath and yet 
 never seemed to know how it was done; 
 who could not tolerate a religion that made 
 you less a man on the dead watch or in a 
 mighty storm face to face and eye to eye 
 with death; who insisted that good steel 
 should strike fire when the need came, — 
 only and always it must be holy fire, — and 
 would tell us roundly, seamen or landsmen, 
 that putty was of no use in the man he 
 would win. And when he went to Niagara, 
 where of course they got him to make a 
 few remarks, he said: "Niagara is like the 
 Gospel I love: it never freezes up in the 
 [50] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 winter, never dries up in the dog-days, and 
 you never come to it for water and go away 
 with an empty bucket." 
 
 They loved him, I said, as few men have 
 been loved among the ministers in Boston 
 of any name, and flocked to his Bethel 
 from all the seas to hear his word and feel 
 the beat of his heart. And he drew his 
 own portrait when he said: "I am no man's 
 model, no man's copy, no man's agent; 
 I go on my own hook and say what I please." 
 We have heard what he said when he was 
 to leave his sailors for a time, but this was 
 not all. His heart was greatly moved and 
 much cast down as he prayed over his 
 sons, as he called them, in great dolor 
 for some time. But then the great heart 
 leaped up with a bound and he cried: 
 "What am I doing.? I am distrusting 
 heaven, I am not believing that our God 
 who gives the great whale a ton of herrings 
 for his breakfast can take care of my boys 
 while I am away." So the prayer ended 
 with a psalm that had opened with a dirge. 
 [51] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 Still more than this was demanded from 
 our man of pure religious genius dedicated 
 to the most high and planted in the very 
 centre of the intellectual, moral, and relig- 
 ious life of the nation all those years ago, 
 and that was Father Taylor's mission to 
 Boston as well as to the sailors. For, 
 strange as it may seem now, Boston needed 
 a man and missionary who would not and 
 could not be an echo of Channing or Lyman 
 Beecher, but could fight for his own hand 
 like Harry Wynd the smith in the great 
 story, and put the truth he would tell into 
 words that went right home like the 
 arrows from the bow of the Conqueror no 
 other man could draw. So he said to a 
 minister who had insisted in a sermon on 
 the fearful dogma of infant damnation: 
 "It's of no use, brother, preaching sermons 
 like that, because if what you say could be 
 true your God would be my Devil." And 
 to another who had insisted that the elect 
 alone can be saved while the non-elect, 
 no matter what they do, will be lost, he 
 [52] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 said: "To invite or exhort men to repent 
 on those terms is like inviting a lot of 
 gravestones home to dinner." And to 
 another who was preaching on the same 
 theme he said: "Brother, when did you 
 hear from Jesus Christ?" Again, when 
 the question was mooted in a conference 
 whether the children of those who did not 
 belong to any church should be baptized, 
 he took a little child in his arms and cried, 
 "Why, if the devil himself should bring 
 me a child like this to baptize I would do 
 it. I would say, 'Now, devil, you go where 
 you belong, and here, you angels, take the 
 baby, he belongs to you.'" "Creeds," he 
 said again, " are like Joseph's coat of many 
 colors. They are all made of patches. 
 No two of them are alike, and none of them 
 are like what they were when they were 
 made. No man shall make a creed for me 
 and I will make one for no man living." 
 
 He would have no doors on his pulpit, 
 as was then the fashion. And when a 
 brother one Sunday refused his invitation 
 [53] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 to enter his pulpit and sit there because 
 Henry Ware, an eminent minister of the 
 Unitarian faith had sat there the Sunday 
 before, he cried, "Lord, there are two 
 things we need to be delivered from in 
 Boston, — ^bad rum and bigotry. Which is 
 the worst Thou knowest, I don't. Amen." 
 He held on to one grand truth and cast it 
 into rhyme that rings like the rhymes of 
 old Bunyan. 
 
 "My soul can see no God in heaven above 
 Who does not show himself a God of love." 
 
 He shot his arrows right and left, but still 
 he loved good men and true of every name 
 and denomination. My own old friend Dr. 
 Neale the Baptist was his dear friend 
 also, and Father Haskin of the Catholics; 
 and he nourished more than a brother's 
 love for Dr. Bartol, in whose church I saw 
 and heard him for the first time on that 
 memorable May morning, the pentecost of 
 the doves. Emerson also was his lifelong 
 friend, who lived to see himself canonized, 
 [54] 
 
FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 but was far from this in the earlier years. 
 Father Taylor, dear friends as they were, 
 was greatly bewildered by the new transcen- 
 dentalism, so far away from his own genius 
 and yet shall we not say so near. But he 
 loved the man with a heart-whole love, 
 while he berated his teaching. He said: 
 *' Emerson, I think, is the sweetest soul 
 God ever made, but he knows no more about 
 theology than Balaam's ass knew about 
 Hebrew grammar." Still he held that if 
 the devil got him he would not know what 
 to do with him. " There seems to be a screw 
 loose in him somewhere," he said again, "but 
 I never could find it, and listen as I may 
 I can find no jar in the machinery." And 
 he struck the climax, I think, of his many 
 sayings when some one said in his hearing 
 that he feared Emerson would go to hell. 
 "Go there," he cried, shaking his mane. 
 "Why if he went there he would change the 
 climate and the tide of emigration would 
 turn that way." He once said to our great 
 apostle Channing: "When you die the 
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FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 angels will contend for the honor of carrying 
 you to heaven on their shoulders." 
 
 In his own city as a citizen Father Taylor 
 also swung free, courting no man's smile, 
 fearing no man's frown. In a prayer for 
 President Lincoln he cried: "Lord, save 
 him from those piercing, wriggling, slimy, 
 boring keel worms. Don't let them bore 
 through the sheathing of his integrity." 
 And once when he read the Proclamation 
 for the Thanksgiving and came to the prayer 
 'God save the Commonwealth of Massa- 
 chusetts,' he added, "He did that last 
 Tuesday." His love for Webster was like 
 worship. But when the great light paled 
 and gave forth only smoke in the last days, 
 he said: "Webster is too bad to trust with 
 any thing very good now, and too good to 
 throw away; he is the best bad man I ever 
 knew." 
 
 This was Father Taylor so far as I can 
 touch the story of his life and his genius 
 as it touched the heart of Boston, who 
 
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FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 adopted him as her beloved son. Other 
 men were greater in other ways, but I think 
 he had no equal in this winged wit that went 
 home, — this force as of a rifle-ball at short 
 range. He had his limitations, but was so 
 sincere and so right where the fastness of 
 all rightness dwells, — in a man's soul, — 
 and was Father Taylor 
 
 "who never sold the truth to serve the hour 
 Or paltered with Eternal God for power." 
 
 No life, when we consider his environ- 
 ments, could well be more perilous than 
 this of Father Taylor, or more desolate in 
 the earlier years. And when he came to 
 himself he not only used his noble gifts 
 nobly but gave himself with them a living 
 sacrifice for the men who go down to the 
 sea in ships first, and then to help all 
 around. He squandered nothing on Edward 
 Taylor and did not ask. What is pleasant 
 or. What will "pay," but, What shall I do 
 to work the work of Him that sent me. 
 He wanted nothing for himself and so all 
 things were given him his heart could 
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FATHER TAYLOR 
 
 desire, — honor, love, obedience, troops of 
 friends, — ^the sorrow of a great city and sor- 
 row on the sea when he died. 
 
 A waif in Virginia; a youth "roughing 
 it" on the ocean; the temptations of a young 
 sailor's life when he came ashore; unable to 
 read when he was eighteen; privateersman, 
 prisoner, and whatever he must be beside 
 in the years of his preparation; working 
 ahead always and never falling back, and 
 winning his way to this noble eminence, 
 not by his genius alone, for that might have 
 cursed him, but by his conduct and char- 
 acter and the help which is in us all if we 
 will use it to look higher than our mortal 
 eyes and listen for diviner words than ever 
 fall on our mortal ears, — ^make cenferstances 
 by the help of the Most High stronger than 
 circumstances, — ^make our life noble as he 
 did, and win the good * Well done.' 
 
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