3.Z//0 5. 
 
 ^ 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. ^ 
 
 
 
 Presented bT^ro-^ • LJOr\r\ X^^S \J \J \-VV 
 BX 9225 .H788 M5 1883 
 
 ,-s^. 
 
 _ 
 
 Memorial sketch 
 
 
 1 
 
 •■■-.- .^f-nt. 
 
 
* • * 
 
 . » ,# 
 
 .• f 
 
 « ..^ 
 
/w> >^^ 
 
 Jt. ?/^ Jht: 
 
 •ft 
 
Zephaniah Moore Humphrey. 
 
Memorial Sketch 
 
 // 
 
 y'.-' 
 ZEPHANIAH MOORE HUMPHREY 
 
 AND 
 
 FIVE SELECTED SERMONS. 
 
 rt)(3^Vic] \o\ tf.- y 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 
 1883. 
 
Lippincott's Press, Philadelphia. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 '' I ^HE Rev. Dr. Humphrey, who is the subject 
 ^ of the following Memorial Sketch, was pastor, 
 honored and loved, in four different cities succes- 
 sively, and Professor of Church History in still an- 
 other; three of the five being among the chief cities 
 of the land. 
 
 A great number of his parishioners and other 
 friends have known him only, or mainly, during one 
 or another of these periods of his life ; and now 
 that he is gone from them all, they will welcome 
 some connected account of him, which will not only 
 match itself to their clearest and fondest memories, 
 but will inform them also concerning those periods 
 of his life during which they were separated from 
 him, including that of his childhood and youth, by 
 the formative influences of which all his subsequent 
 history was shaped. 
 
 Others have been related to him bv ties which 
 local changes have not disturbed. These are the 
 members of his own household and his kindred, 
 
 5 
 
6 Prefatory Note. 
 
 nearer or more remote of nearly his own age, and 
 the children and grandchildren of his brothers and 
 sisters, som.e of whom are so young that they have 
 barely caught the sound of his honored name and 
 the fragrance of his sweet reputation, and will yearn 
 as they grow older to know more of him. 
 
 For all these classes of persons, and any besides 
 who would fain get fresh courage and strength from 
 reading the simple story of a noble and beautiful 
 and almost faultless life, this brief history, at the re- 
 quest of Dr. Humphrey's family friends, has been 
 lovingly prepared by one who knew him intimately 
 and with ever-increasing affection from the time of 
 his entering college until he finished his course on 
 earth and entered into rest. 
 
 The five sermons which are printed in the latter 
 part of this volume were selected with difficulty, 
 simply because there were so many others that 
 seemed to plead for publication. These, however, 
 are fairly representative sermons, and constitute a fit 
 culmination of this brief biography. 
 
 D. T. 
 
 Cazenovia, May, 1883. 
 
MEMORIAL SKETCH 
 
 OF 
 
 ZEPHANIAH MOORE HUMPHREY. 
 
 I. 
 
 PERHAPS the time has arrived when those who 
 were most closely related to Rev. Dr. Z. M. 
 Humphrey can read, with feelings more tranquil and 
 through tears less blinding than at an earlier date, some 
 connected biography of the dear man who was snatched 
 so quickly from us a little more than a year ago, and 
 in whose sudden departure we have only been able to 
 acquiesce as we have heard the voice of his Lord and 
 ours saying, " I will have him to be with me where I 
 am, that he may behold my glory." 
 
 Excellent and appropriate tributes to his character 
 and memory have already been published. The lov- 
 ing and appreciative addresses given at Cincinnati and 
 Chicago, before the grave received the treasure of his 
 dust; the affectionate and discriminating memorial 
 
 7 
 
8 ZcplianialL Moore Hionplirey. 
 
 discourses by the pastors of the churches of which, 
 successively, he had himself been pastor ; the carefullx'- 
 prepared and comprehensive memorial discourse de- 
 livered at Lane Seminary, in accordance with the 
 appointment of the board of trustees, by Dr. R. W. 
 Patterson, so long his co-presbyter and ecclesiastical 
 associate, and a very large number of editorial articles 
 in both religious and secular papers filled with his 
 praise and warm with an affectionate admiration of 
 him, — all these have been published and have been 
 gratefully welcomed by his friends. 
 
 Indeed, the beautiful similitude employed by Dr. 
 Dickey, who is Dr. Humphrey's immediate successor 
 as pastor of Calvary Church in Philadelphia, was as 
 truthful as it was rhetorically fine, in which he rep- 
 resented that, as the greatness of a falling tree is 
 betokened by the multitude of the echoes that rever- 
 berate through the forest in connection with its fall, 
 so the high estimation in which Dr. Humphrey was 
 held, and the eminent importance attached to his life 
 and work, have been abundantly attested by the almost 
 numberless expressions of sorrow and of affectionate 
 admiration that have echoed through the land in con- 
 nection with his death. 
 
 But as these echoes are dying away into silence, 
 there is a want felt that the sweet strains of them be 
 reproduced and combined with other and harmonious 
 
Mr. Humphrey s BirtJi. 9 
 
 strains into a symphony, which may sound with a 
 more connected and comprehensive completeness the 
 rhythm and melody of his life, and take its humble 
 place in the great anthem by which God is being con- 
 tinuously praised in the lives and characters of them 
 that are his. 
 
 For the writer of this to attempt the composing 
 of such a symphony would be quite presumptuous, 
 except that the melody is in the material furnished 
 to his hands, which exists in harmonious proportions, 
 and readily sets itself to music. His work will be 
 lovingly to transcribe the rhythmic cadences of a life 
 in which mortal ears could discern no discords, and 
 to put them in their proper place and order. 
 
 II. 
 
 ZEPHANIAH MOORE HUMPHREY was born 
 at Amherst, Massachusetts, on the 30th day of 
 August, 1824. His father was at the time president 
 of Amherst College, and the infant son was named in 
 honor of Dr. Zephaniah Moore, the previous and 
 only preceding president of the college. 
 
 It will be noticed, therefore, that Zephaniah's birth 
 occurred just at the time when a new era, not only for 
 our own country, but for the whole civilized world, 
 was marshalling its forces and bringing them to bear 
 
10 Zephaiiiah Moore HmnpJirey. 
 
 upon the formation of individual character, and thus 
 upon the social progress of the race. It was the 
 modern era of great inventions, and of the rapid 
 spread and popular utilization of scientific knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 Within a year after Mr. Humphrey's birth the will 
 of the Earl of Bridgewater was executed, bequeath- 
 ing eight thousand pounds sterling to be paid to the 
 author of the best treatise "On the Power, Wisdom, 
 and Goodness of God in Creation," resulting in the 
 famous and fruitful " Bridgewater Treatises." 
 
 It was also during the year after Mr. Humphrey's 
 birth that the Erie Canal was completed, connecting 
 the Great Lakes of the West with the Hudson River, 
 and thus with the ocean, and only six years earlier the 
 first steam vessel, the "Savannah," had crossed the 
 Atlantic from New York to Liverpool and St. Peters- 
 burg, and returned safely, though it was several years 
 later when the first regular trips began to be made by 
 the " Sirius" and " Great Western." 
 
 Seven years after his birth Morse's electric tele- 
 graph was invented, and patented a few years later. 
 
 Still earlier than this, when Mr. Humphrey was only 
 five years old, Joseph Smithson, an English lover of 
 knowledge and of mankind, bequeathed a hundred 
 thousand pounds sterling " to the United States of 
 America, to be devoted to the increase of knowledge 
 
The Spirit of the Times. 1 1 
 
 among men," resulting in the " Smithsonian Institute" 
 at Washington. 
 
 About this time, and onward from it, there was a 
 vast increase of periodical hterature in England, 
 France, Germany, and America. All these things, 
 and others of kindred nature and influence, were in- 
 struments of great social changes, inaugurating the 
 new era above spoken of, the beginning of which was 
 so nearly contemporaneous with that of the life we 
 are to study and trace. 
 
 It will be interesting to notice, as we proceed, how 
 the spirit of the new age influenced and modified the 
 life of Mr. Humphrey, how unlike it made him in 
 his manner and methods to his own father, to whom 
 he was so like in all the fundamental principles of his 
 character, and in all the general aims and purposes of 
 his life. 
 
 For the strongest and most independent of men do 
 not escape the moulding and controlling influence of 
 the vital forces of their own period. Both consciously 
 and unconsciously they are affected by them. Mr. 
 Humphrey himself has very finely set forth the nature 
 of this influence. 
 
 In an article on Albert Barnes, in the Presbyterian 
 Reviezv of July, 1871, he wrote as follows: "One of 
 the most powerful of the mysterious forces by which 
 human acts are controlled is scarcely thought of by 
 
12 Zeplianiah Moore HumpJircy. 
 
 the majority of men. It is so subtile that we can 
 hardly define it. For want of a better term thinkers 
 have styled it ilic spirit of the times. It is a reigning 
 power so pervasive that none can escape it, so strong 
 that resistance to it is seldom successful, yet it defies 
 analysis. It is distinct from the power of an individual 
 earthly will. If a man of decided character influences 
 us, we refer our movements to him as we refer effects 
 to causes. But the spirit of the times a.fifects us when 
 we are addressed by no personal appeal. . . . Great 
 bodies of men are often found to agree in opinions at 
 which they have arrived by no logical process." 
 
 Not far from the same time he wrote of his own 
 father as follows: "The life of Heman Humphrey 
 may be considered as a representative life. It covered 
 a period of transition. It began when society in New 
 England bore the type of Puritan culture. It ended 
 when that type had almost disappeared in the Amer- 
 ican culture of to-day." 
 
 Putting these two things together, we are prepared 
 to say that the life of the son, Zephaniah, was also a 
 representative life, and in accord with the spirit of Jiis 
 times. But they were vastly different " times" from 
 the other, and they demanded and produced a vastly 
 different man, in respect to the methods and instru- 
 mentalities by which he acted upon his generation 
 and wrought out the work of his life. 
 
Father and Son. 13 
 
 During those wonderful years following Zepha- 
 niah's birth, say from 1824 to 1840, those years of 
 great inventions, quickly succeeding one another, 
 and of the rapid popularizing of scientific and general 
 knowledge, the sturdy father, made of Puritan metal, 
 and formed in Puritan mould, was piloting Amherst 
 College " out of a crooked harbor into an open sea," 
 while the scholarly and no less sturdy son was storing 
 his mind with the knowledge which he made so effec- 
 tive in days when science and inventions had advanced 
 from being little more than matters of accomplishment 
 and interest to being the mighty practical powers of 
 these times, when our best scientists have devoted 
 themselves to the ingenious application of general 
 laws to particular uses for the world's comfort. 
 
 If the sire was bugle and battle-axe 4o his genera- 
 tion, it may be said of the son that to his generation 
 
 " His steps were like rain 
 To the summer-vexed farmer." 
 
 As we review his life, we shall see that every ac- 
 quirement he made not only helped to round his own 
 character, but gave another point of contact and sym- 
 pathy with those about him, adding a new wire along 
 which ran " the electric fire of thought and feeling," 
 exciting in others the desire to know more of the 
 man and his master. 
 
14 Zcplianiali Moore HitDipJirey. 
 
 Dr. Phillips Brooks says, "A man who lives like 
 an inspiration for honesty and purity and charity in a 
 community may be only the candle in whose obedi- 
 ent life burns still the fire of another stronsf, true man 
 who was his father, and who passed out of men's 
 sight a score of years ago. Men call the father dead, 
 but he is no more dead than the torch has gone out 
 which lighted the beacon that is blazing on the 
 hill." 
 
 How many lives are candles, lighted by the fires of 
 both sire and son, is known only to Him who " light- 
 eth every man that cometh into the world." 
 
 HI. 
 
 MR. EMERSON, in speaking of the influences 
 that early contributed to give shape to his 
 own life and character, says that "a person cannot 
 get away from his ancestors." This is true in so far 
 as it means that a person cannot avoid feeling the 
 influence of hereditary tendencies ; but that those 
 tendencies can be yielded to on the one hand, or re- 
 sisted on the other, is quite obvious. 
 
 Such a man as Aaron Burr, for example, was abun- 
 dantly successful in getting away from his ancestors. 
 
 Inheritance of good character is not a mere physi- 
 cal and matter of course process. It implies the vol- 
 
Hereditary Tendency. — Tlic Hinnphrcy Line. 15 
 
 untary and virtuous personal appropriation by the 
 heir of the spirit and principles of those from 
 whom he inherits. And it must always be to a per- 
 son's credit and praise if, in the freedom of his vol- 
 untary and chosen career, he does not get away from 
 that which was good in his progenitors, but repro- 
 duces and magnifies and perfects it in his own char- 
 acter and attainments. 
 
 Perhaps it will plainly appear that it was so with 
 him of whom we are to speak. 
 
 On his father's side, Dr. Humphrey was descended 
 from two excellent New England families, — the Hum- 
 phreys and the Browns. 
 
 The Humphrey line is traced directly from Michael 
 Humphrey, who came from England to this country 
 some time previous to 1643, and among whose de- 
 scendants were one Governor of the Colony of Mas- 
 sachusetts, and one Governor of the New Haven 
 Colony, and it is said that "piety and integrity were 
 general characteristics of those in this line of descent 
 whose names never became famous." 
 
 Zephaniah's grandmother Humphrey was Hannah 
 Brown, a direct descendant of Peter Brown, whose 
 name is in the list of passengers of the " Mayflower," 
 which landed at Plymouth in 1620. 
 
 She was sister of Captain John Brown, of West 
 Simsbury, Connecticut, and he was father of John 
 
1 6 Zeplianiali Moore HunipJircy. 
 
 Brown of Ossawatamie, so that Zephaniah's father 
 was own cousin to John Brown of Ossawatamie. 
 
 While the latter was in the Virginia prison, under 
 sentence of death and awaiting his execution, Presi- 
 dent Humphrey wrote him a letter of fraternal counsel 
 and kindly compassion. He addressed him as his 
 cousin, and received a frank and affectionate reply, 
 which contained a calm argument in defence of his 
 conduct, and an expression of peaceful acquiescence 
 in its results, with no bitterness toward anybody, and 
 revealing such a spirit of mingled sweetness and firm- 
 ness as must convince any reader that the soul of the 
 man (which is "marching on") was a soul of love, — 
 love to God, love of righteousness, love of humanity, 
 with malice toward none, and hatred only of what he 
 regarded as injustice and wrong. 
 
 Indeed, the Virginians who were brought most 
 closely into contact with him, officially or otherwise, 
 at the time of his trial and execution, were constrained 
 to recognize the noble unselfishness and purity of his 
 character, and to admire the wonderful gentleness and 
 benevolence of spirit which blended with the obsti- 
 nate confidence and invincible courage of his convic- 
 tions. 
 
 This peculiar combination of unlike qualities has 
 always been one of the fruits of a type of theology 
 which utterly humbles and subdues self and exalts 
 
TJic Broivn Fatnily. 17 
 
 God, as at once a God of justice and of grace. It 
 led St. Paul to say, " When I am weak then am I 
 strong." It led to the strange fact that the gentle and 
 loving disciple John was one of the two disciples of 
 Jesus who by their Divine Master were surnamed 
 " Boanerges, which is Sons of Thunder" (Mark iii. 17). 
 The lion was lying down with the lamb, and a little 
 child was leading them. It made a person all tender- 
 ness on the side of the sensibilities and affections, but 
 all strength on the side of the conscience and the con- 
 victions, and when there was conflict between the con- 
 science and the sensibilities, the triumph of the latter 
 was instant and supreme. 
 
 This characteristic was illustrated in the case of 
 another John Brown,* of Scotland, the father of John 
 Brown of Edinburgh, author of " Rab and His 
 Friends," who, in his incomparable memoir of that 
 same father, relates that when he was a boy, he and his 
 
 *Of course nothing is claimed from the coincidence of names here, 
 but much from the prevalence of certain characteristics in certain fam- 
 ilies who happen, in this case, to be largely made up of John Browns. 
 Indeed, what is said by Thomas Hughes, in the introductory chapter 
 of " Tom Brown at Rugby," concerning the " Brown family" in Eng- 
 land, in which case, probably, the name is entirely assumed, there being 
 no such family of that name, yet much that he says about the fine 
 and sturdy characteristics of the nominal Brown family in England 
 might be truly said about the real Brown families in Scotland and 
 America. 
 
 2 
 
1 8 ZephaniaJi Moore HiunpJtrcy. 
 
 little brother, in their bed one night, were startled by 
 a sharp cry of pain from their father in another room. 
 They were at the same instant summoned to that 
 room by a servant, and found that their mother, who 
 had long been feeble, had suddenly ceased to breathe, 
 and was lying dead on a sofa. Their father, after the 
 one sharp cry, was standing in silent agony, grasping 
 his head between his hands, and pale as the dead. 
 But as soon as they entered the room he withdrew his 
 hands from his head, instantly controlling his emotions, 
 and said, slowly and gently, " Let us give thanks," and 
 turned with them toward the sofa, — " his supreme 
 will," says the filial biographer, " his supreme will 
 making himself and his household give thanks in 
 the midst of such a desolation — and for it." 
 
 A very similar thing occurred in the life of Presi- 
 dent Humphrey. In July, 1840, while he was president 
 of the college at Amherst, his son Henry (next older 
 than Zephaniah), then a member of the sophomore 
 class, a young man of fascinating beauty and brilliant 
 promise, was seized suddenly, in the midst of robust 
 healthfulness, with an acute inflammatory disease, and 
 died in a few hours. 
 
 The next morning we were all surprised to see the 
 president in his accustomed place at morning prayers 
 in the college chapel. His face was pale, and he had a 
 worn and exhausted appearance. But he arose as the 
 
Mastery of Faith over Feeling. 19 
 
 college bell ceased its ringing, and calmly, sweetly 
 read, not any wail of lamentation and anguish from 
 Jeremiah or elsewhere, but the cheering words of the 
 103d Psalm : " Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that 
 is ivithin me, bless His holy name'' and so on to the 
 impressive words, " He hath not dealt with us after our 
 sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities,'' etc., 
 closing with the words, " Praise ye the Lord." Then 
 he offered such a prayer as would be likely to follow 
 such a Scripture, read under such circumstances, — a 
 prayer that was full of tenderness, but triumphantly 
 trustful, instead of being sorrowful. Of course there 
 was nothing of stoicism or assumed want of emotion 
 in the service, but there was a quiet mastery of faith 
 over feeling by a strength that was borrowed from 
 the Unseen and Eternal. 
 
 These incidents present one aspect of that many- 
 sided trait of character which comes from a combina- 
 tion of deep and tender sensibilities with a supreme 
 and controlling devotion to the principles of truth 
 and righteousness. The combination develops a 
 very comprehensive character, and then inspires the 
 whole of it, showing itself in all sweetest and gentlest, 
 and also in all boldest and most heroic deeds. It un- 
 derlies and helps to explain the divine promise that 
 "the meek shall inherit the earth," which implies that 
 meekness is not weakness, but it is humility and gen- 
 
20 Zephaniah Moore Humphrey. 
 
 tleness combined with, wedded to, the unconquerable 
 strength of truth and goodness. 
 
 It seems manifest, therefore, that some augmenta- 
 tion of this element of character came into the 
 Humphrey family through Zephaniah's grandmother, 
 whose maiden name was Brown. It gave additional 
 fire and energy to natures that had already a large 
 provision of substantial excellence and strength. 
 
 It revealed itself in her distinguished son. President 
 Humphrey, by many utterances that were like trum- 
 pet-blasts, and deeds that were like pitched battles at 
 various critical periods of his own career and of the 
 country's history, of which suitable mention is made 
 in a brief biography of him published soon after his 
 death. 
 
 It revealed itself in her grandson, Zephaniah, the 
 subject of these memoirs, not only, as we shall see, in 
 certain characteristics of his ordinary life, but especi- 
 ally at certain extraordinary and critical emergencies, 
 when it was made to appear that he possessed a mar- 
 vellous reserve of physical strength and courage, 
 which might have qualified him to be the inspirer of 
 an army, or the successful leader of a forlorn hope at 
 the crisis of a battle. 
 
 Dr. Patterson, in his memorial discourse, just hints 
 at this characteristic when he says that " Dr. Hum- 
 phrey's physical courage was in some emergencies 
 
Struggle ivith a Burglar. 21 
 
 displayed by a measure of daring that amazed his 
 friends." One of these emergencies may be spoken 
 of here so fully that none of them will need to be re- 
 ferred to again. 
 
 In the midst of one of the nights of his residence 
 at Chicago, Dr. Humphrey was awakened by his wife 
 from a sound sleep to find a burglar creeping about 
 the room. He sprang from his bed and grappled with 
 the man in the darkness, and held him by so firm a 
 grasp that he could not release himself 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs. Humphrey had started a light in 
 the room, and became an eye-witness to the scene. 
 The burglar had drawn a knife, and was saying that 
 all he wanted now was to get away, that he did not 
 wish to injure Mr. Humphrey, if he were allowed to 
 escape, but he would not be captured. 
 
 Still Mr. Humphrey clung to him ; together they 
 struggled, the burglar backing toward the hall and 
 stairway. When this was reached, by a sudden wrench 
 the thief liberated himself from Mr. Humphrey's grasp 
 and ran, followed by Mr. Humphrey ; but when he was 
 half-way down the stairs the burglar turned and struck 
 Mr. Humphrey with his knife, saying, with an oath, 
 " I will not be followed." Pausing long enough to 
 see that the blood which had started from elbow to 
 wrist was from a very slight wound, Mr. Humphrey 
 again pursued the thief, but could not catch him, as he 
 
22 Zcplianiah Moore HiimpJircy. 
 
 quickly escaped through a basement window which, 
 at the time of his stealthy entrance, he had left open 
 for that purpose. 
 
 Here was the man of peace, the quiet, delicate, 
 sedentary, fine-fibred gentleman, not only exhibiting 
 a marvellous degree of muscular strength, but a meas- 
 ure and quality of cool self-possession and deliberate 
 and sustained purpose and energy of courage which 
 must have been rooted in the deepest and strongest 
 elements of his nature. Something of the sturdy 
 John Brown blood was flowing in those veins. 
 
 This was only a marked exhibition of a quality of 
 character which often revealed itself in Mr. Hum- 
 phrey amid the ordinary events and achievements of 
 his life. It seems apparent, therefore, that there be- 
 longed to the child Zephaniah, from his parental pre- 
 decessors, the possibility and something of the pro- 
 mise of a natural gentleness and affectionateness of 
 spirit and disposition, combined with such resoluteness 
 of conscience and courage of conviction and energy 
 of will as might, if not fully balanced, manifest them- 
 selves in the excesses of obstinacy and fanaticism. 
 
 But they were fully balanced. The Humphrey 
 character was thoroughly regulated by a dominating 
 good judgment. Zephaniah's father was a wise man. 
 He had much of the fire and force of which we have 
 been speaking. Dr. R. D. Hitchcock, of Union Theo- 
 
Wisdom Combined with Energy. 2 3 
 
 logical Seminary, who was for six years student and 
 tutor at Amherst during Dr. Humphrey's presidency, 
 says of him that " he was a man of great natural 
 eloquence." And great eloquence implies several 
 energetic and forcible qualities of character. 
 
 Professor Tyler, in his " History of Amherst Col- 
 lege," gives the following comprehensive list of Pres- 
 ident Humphrey's characteristics as a man and an 
 orator: "Strong common sense, practical wisdom, 
 sharp, clear Saxon style, vigor of thought, fervor of 
 passion and boldness, coupled sometimes with mar- 
 vellous felicity of expression, and a healthy, hearty, 
 robust tone of body and spirit." 
 
 The stirring influence of President Humphrey's 
 energy and power was felt throughout New England 
 and beyond. But he was as well and widely known 
 to be a judicious and trusted counsellor, and as fa- 
 mous for his discreetness and wisdom as for his valor 
 and energy. 
 
 But let us look for a few moments at the other line 
 of Zephaniah's descent. 
 
 On his mother's side he was equally happy in his 
 ancestral antecedents. His mother's maiden name 
 was Sophia Porter. Her father, Noah Porter, of 
 Farmington, Connecticut, belonged to an excellent 
 family there, which had already had its abode in the 
 Farmington Valley, generation after generation, for 
 
24 Zcphaniah Moore HumpJirey. 
 
 more than one hundred and thirty years at the time 
 Sophia was born in 1785. 
 
 Sophia had three brothers. The oldest was Rob- 
 ert, who was missionary preacher and teacher in 
 Central New York as early as 1801, when Central 
 New York was mostly a wilderness, before there was 
 any Utica or Syracuse. He was associated there with 
 the heroic and consecrated KIRKLAND, who had 
 been missionary among the Oneida Indians, and he 
 (Robert) was principal of the Oneida Academy at 
 Clinton, out of which Hamilton College grew. 
 
 The second brother was Edward, who was preacher 
 and teacher in Connecticut, and from whom Dr. Ed- 
 ward Humphrey, of Louisville, Zephaniah's oldest 
 brother, derived his name. And the third brother 
 was No.'\H, who was pastor at Farmington, his native 
 town, honored and influential, from the time of his 
 ordination, for more than sixty years. 
 
 Of the children of this latter, his son Noah is a 
 distinguished metaphysician, and for some years now 
 president of Yale College, while his daughter, Sarah 
 Porter, proprietor and principal of the Farmington 
 School for young ladies, has been recognized for 
 more than thirty years by many of the most fastidious 
 and discriminating parents in the land as quite unsur- 
 passed in those qualities of mental and moral and re- 
 ligious and social and literary and esthetic culture. 
 
Tlic Porter Line of Descent. 25 
 
 under the influence of which they have desired their 
 daughters to be placed. 
 
 These simple statements of fact indicate quite 
 clearly the general character of the influences that 
 flowed into President Humphrey's family from the 
 Porter side. 
 
 The /;rm^ character of those influences, or of their 
 aggregate and combined import, is quite indescrib- 
 able. 
 
 In Zephaniah's mother and her immediate kindred, 
 such as have been mentioned, there was grafted into, 
 and interwoven with, a solid substratum of piety and 
 integrity and vigorous mental capacity and physical 
 soundness and eminent good sense, a breadth and 
 fineness of general and particular culture, the fruit of 
 which is a certain completeness and choiceness of 
 character which cannot be represented by pencil of 
 artist or pen of analyst, but is best understood 
 through the general terms just now employed. What 
 we most esteem and admire in such characters is a 
 certain comprehension and .symmetrical excellence, 
 which helps us to apprehend what our humanity was 
 designed to be and is destined to become. 
 
 If there can be any doubt about appropriating to 
 Zephaniah, beforehand, this heritage of hereditary 
 characteristics or tendencies, that doubt will be re- 
 moved by noticing that these very qualities have been 
 
26 Zcplianiali Hloorc Hnuiplircy. 
 
 manifested, in their combination and in marked de- 
 gree, by all his brothers and sisters. 
 
 It is so well and widely known that it barely needs 
 to be stated here that the oldest brother, Dr. Edward 
 P. Humphrey, of Louisville, still "bringing forth fruit 
 in his old age," has been for forty years one of the 
 strong leaders of that great national Presbyterian 
 Church in which only very strong men can be leaders ; 
 that amid the severe conflicts of doctrine and church 
 polity he has been one of the foremost of those 
 whose " necks have been clothed with thunder," and 
 yet from first to last showing himself to be one of the 
 mildest, gentlest, tenderest of men, so that when at 
 great meetings there has been need of setting forth 
 the melting and winning aspects of gospel truth, and 
 showing that " the Lord is very pitiful and of tender 
 mercy," few men would be sooner selected than he 
 to do it. 
 
 But, not to speak of this only surviving brother, 
 nor of the only surviving sister, Sarah, the youngest 
 of the family, not to speak of these because they are 
 surviving, let it be said, almost in a word, that the 
 four who lived to mature life, and yet departed all 
 too early, as it seems to us, to that world where 
 strength and goodness are perfectly one, and where 
 the most exalted powers are but the energies of 
 love, these four, — James, who was a lawyer in Brook- 
 
The Brotlicrs and Sisters. 27 
 
 lyn, and felt to be a man of power there, at one time 
 elected to Congress by the spontaneous votes of the 
 best elements of the city, and yet recognized always 
 as the very embodiment of kindness and benevolence, 
 and as approaching nearer than almost any other man 
 to the ideal of a cultured and complete Christian gen- 
 tleman ; John, the pastor at Binghamton, the stalwart 
 as well as elegant preacher, grappling fearlessly with 
 the living issues of the time, and yet familiarly desig- 
 nated far and wide as " The Beloved Disciple," on 
 account of his likeness to St. John, and beloved by 
 his people then and yet almost to idolatry ; and Lucy, 
 the pastor's wife at Lenox and Detroit, securing the 
 admiration of the most discriminating and distin- 
 guished persons by the singular comprehension in 
 her of wisdom and strength with supreme gentleness 
 and an almost timid modesty ; and Mary, the pastor's 
 wife at Delhi and Ithaca and Ann Arbor, the black- 
 eyed and brilliant Mary, who was so sprightly and 
 yet so serious, so capable and yet so self-distrustful, 
 so energetic and yet so mild, that one of her hus- 
 band's parishioners at Ithaca used to say that " her 
 life was a constant speech of power and goodness in 
 the parish." Each and all these possessed an almost 
 ideal sweetness and delicacy and grace and charm- 
 ing loveliness, and so combined these with strength 
 and energy and resoluteness, that" they are conspicu- 
 
28 Zeplianiah Moore Humplircy. 
 
 ously remembered as persons of exceptionally beau- 
 tiful and varied excellences of character in the com- 
 munities from which they were snatched away a score 
 of years ago, — persons whom to see was to admire, 
 and whom to know, for a few hours even, was to re- 
 member forever. And we are the more willing to 
 say and print these words because, if they should 
 come to the eyes of all who would heartily indorse 
 them, they would bring a sweet pleasure to thou- 
 sands of persons, who would testify that these words 
 are but feeble praise of those strong and radiant 
 souls. 
 
 And now, if any apology is needed for saying 
 so much concerning hereditary characteristics, the 
 apology will be found in the fact that they furnish a 
 key by which to interpret the life into which they 
 enter. 
 
 While the actual life, by regressive inference, re- 
 veals the primitive traits of character, these in turn, 
 by predictive suggestion, assist the clearer compre- 
 hension of the spirit and meaning of the actual life. 
 We shall then more easily understand the full signifi- 
 cance of a person's words and deeds when we have a 
 previous acquaintance with the elemental tendencies 
 and formative influences of his character, for then we 
 read the record of personal endeavor and achieve- 
 ments in the light of the principles from which they 
 
Tlie Fruit Knoivn by the Tree. 29 
 
 sprang. We know the quality of the fruit more 
 quickly and confidently when we know the quality 
 of the scions which were grafted upon the root of the 
 tree on which it grew. 
 
 And in this particular case of Dr. Humphrey there 
 will be need of these predictive suggestions, lest it 
 should seem that too much is claimed for him in 
 some things that will be stated in these pages con- 
 cerning him. But the validity of the claims, together 
 with the true significance of the statements, will be 
 manifest in the light of the fact that these hereditary 
 tendencies and influences of which we have been 
 speaking were among the chosen factors and constit- 
 uent elements of his life and character. 
 
 For, marked as are the hereditary qualities that were 
 bequeathed to Dr. Humphrey, we are not to conceive 
 of his character as made up of them. They became 
 his, but they did not constitute him. He was himself 
 the separate personality by whom these tendencies 
 were voluntarily appropriated and these influences ac- 
 cepted and nourished. His character was, as we shall 
 see, unique and individual. But we shall most justly 
 comprehend that character if we recognize the rich 
 and varied treasures of the " goodly heritage" that was 
 left him, at the same time that we recognize the per- 
 sonal wisdonf and virtue which led him, through the 
 grace of God, to make so noble a use of those treas- 
 
30 Zcplianiah Moore Hinnplirey. 
 
 ures, combining them with all other good influences 
 in the vital texture and substance of his character, and 
 thus constructing the beautiful life which, from the 
 vantage ground of these reflections, we may now pro- 
 ceed more directly and closely to contemplate. 
 
 IV. 
 
 '' I ^HE years of Dr. Humphrey's childhood were 
 
 ^ passed at Amherst. 
 
 The natural beauties of the Connecticut Valley at 
 that point, wnth the rounded, wooded hills at the north, 
 and the varied expanse of grove and field and village 
 and hamlet on the broad slopes at the east and west, 
 and the majestic, broken wall of mountain closing in 
 the view at the south, with just one opening to let the 
 winding and waiting river through ; all this panorama 
 of natural loveliness and beauty, scarcely surpassed in 
 the world, was a perpetual and keen delight to the boy, 
 in whom the susceptibilities of an artist were early 
 manifested. The educating influence of such surround- 
 ings upon such a child need only be thus hinted at. 
 
 Professor William S. Tyler, now the Nestor of the 
 Amherst College faculty, and who was already a pro- 
 fessor there when Zephaniah was a child, says of him, — 
 
 " From his childhood he was remarkably lovely and 
 beloved ; among other boys, not the greatest and 
 
Childhood. 3 1 
 
 strongest, but the brightest and best, the most lOvely 
 and sunny." 
 
 " An exemplary pupil in the common school, if there 
 Iiad been a prize given to the ' model student,' Zcph 
 aniah Humphrey would have received it. He was a 
 general favorite with teachers and pupils." 
 
 A schoolmate of his boyhood, and afterwards college 
 classmate and life-long friend, Rev. Thaddeus Wilson, 
 now of Shrewsbury, N. J., writes of him thus, — 
 
 " Zeph and I were in the same school, and were 
 friends as well as companions from the first. We 
 were a great deal together, went skating, nutting, 
 hunting, and fishing in company. He was a pleasant 
 companion, exceedingly mild and agreeable in his 
 temper. I cannot remember that I ever saw liim 
 angry with any one, or involved in the least quarrel. 
 
 " He was an active boy, with a keen eye and a 
 steady hand ; had a hearty enjoyment of all boyish 
 sports, and a genuine love for nature, which sur- 
 rounded us in the most charming forms. 
 
 "His treatment by his parents must have been 
 most judicious, for while the atmosphere of truth 
 and piety was ever about him, he was not crowded. 
 He was allowed to grow, and he grew like a tree in 
 the garden of the Lord. 
 
 " He was witty, fond of jokes and pleasantry ; but 
 he was pure of heart and speech. His whole nature, 
 
32 Zephaniali Moore Hiimplirey. 
 
 even then, was under control. As a boy he was never 
 carried away by the exuberance of animal spirits. 
 
 " From childhood there was something pensive 
 about him. I do not mean gloomy or depressed, 
 but thoughtful. The obligations of the grand old 
 Puritan theology made themselves felt as a constrain- 
 ing power before he was conscious of it." 
 
 These statements reveal the fact that even thus 
 early Zephaniali was voluntarily, if not consciously, 
 choosing not to get away from his ancestors. They 
 were holding to him, and he to them. If he had 
 quite understood the situation, he might have said of 
 them as the Christian believer says of the cross, 
 " Tenco et teneorT 
 
 And it is only a somewhat enlarged statement of 
 the same thing to say that he was thus early eschew- 
 ing all that was evil, and laying hold of all that was 
 good. Yes, all! For even now is it manifest that it is 
 not his way to strike out in any special and selected 
 lines of excellence and superiority, but to covet and 
 cultivate every quality of excellence that is accessible 
 to him in these years of his boyhood. This he 
 seemed evidently to have been doing, for it was no 
 accident of his young life that " his whole nature was 
 held under control," and that amid all the exuber- 
 ance of his bright and eager boyhood he maintained 
 a thoughtful but cheerful submission to the " re- 
 
Entering College. 33 
 
 straints of truth and piety," and was " pure of heart 
 and speech." It was doubtless the result of moral 
 struggles such as a boy could wage, and moral victo- 
 ries such as a boy could win, and of \vhich there 
 was no human witness, unless his wise and watchful 
 mother sometimes shared them with him. 
 
 V. 
 
 "DEFORE Zephaniah was fairly out of his boyhood 
 ^—^ — some years before he was out of his " teens" 
 — he entered college, and as this event was without 
 change of place, so was it without any marked change 
 of feeling or purpose. 
 
 Having spent all his days under the eaves of the 
 college, and attended church in its chapel, the transi- 
 tion to membership in it had not the same impulsive 
 force for him that it has for those young men who go 
 far from home and possibly see a college for the first 
 time as they are entering it. With him it was only a 
 step forward in the same path he had been steadily 
 pursuing and amid the same surroundings. 
 
 He soon came to be recognized and esteemed for 
 his quiet fidelity and industry, and to attract attention 
 by his varied and brilliant capabilities.* 
 
 * The verbatim likeness of some of these paragraphs to an early 
 part of Dr. Patterson's Memorial Address is explained by the fact 
 
 3 
 
34 Zephaniah Moore Humphrey. 
 
 His scholarship, as measured by his recitations, 
 and his rank, as indicated by the faculty's markings, 
 placed him well up among the first third of his class 
 through most of his course and at the end of it. But 
 his discriminating associates early discovered that in 
 him which led them to expect quite as much from him 
 as from any other in the class. On the whole, he 
 was unsurpassed in the recognized excellence of his 
 character and attainments and achievements. 
 
 Professor Tyler says, " He was a good scholar in all 
 the departments, excelling, however, in the classics, 
 rhetoric, and belles-lettres, and at his graduation de- 
 livered an ' oration,' which was an appointment next 
 in rank to the three or four ' honors,' and he showed 
 the practical tendencies of his mind by taking for the 
 subject of his oration, * The Dangers Resulting to 
 our Confederacy from its too Rapid Enlargement by 
 Immigration.' " 
 
 Dr. R. D. Hitchcock, of Union Theological Semi- 
 nary, who knew him in his boyhood and was his 
 tutor in college, in a recent private letter, says of him 
 among other things this : " He distinguished himself 
 in English composition. This was in the blood ; his 
 
 that the writer of these pages is one of the " friends" of Dr. Humph- 
 rey to whom Dr. Patterson there refers, and Rev. Mr. Wilson is the 
 other. 
 
His Character. 35 
 
 father was a man of great natural eloquence, and 
 Edward, James, John, Henry, and Zephaniah all took 
 after him in this regard." 
 
 "But," adds Dr. Hitchcock, "my supreme recollec- 
 tion of Zephaniah was in the line of character ; he 
 always carried himself with dignity, gentleness, and 
 rare good sense,". 
 
 His friend Wilson writes of him, with reference to 
 this period, that "there were tendencies in his charac- 
 ter which might be counted as a prediction of all that 
 he became. These were not obvious to a careless ob- 
 server, but were sure as to their growth and outcome." 
 
 " He was not quick," adds Mr. Wilson, " in form- 
 ing friendships, but when he had given his affections 
 or taken his purpose, he was to be depended on." 
 
 He had a pleasant reputation in college as a hu- 
 morist, for he was often overflowing with spontaneous 
 sprightliness, and. was famous for the quickest and 
 brightest of witty rejoinders, as, for example, when 
 a friend wanted to borrow his gun, and sent a boy to 
 him with a note, saying, — 
 
 " Dear Zeph : 
 
 " Please lend me your Pauca Vide. 
 
 "Sam. 
 
 "Amherst, Saturday Morn." 
 
 He sent the boy back at once with the gun and 
 this answer. — 
 
36 Zephaniah Moore Humphrey. 
 
 " Dear Sam : 
 
 " I herewith send you my Foedans pax. 
 
 " Zeph. 
 
 " Amherst, Saturday Morning." 
 
 We have thus seen enough of young Humphrey 
 in college to assure us that he was ambitious, but 
 not for conspicuousness. He was working, not for 
 " honors" or prizes, but for substantial growth, 
 growth in every direction, including the physical ; 
 for he was active in the games of the campus, and was 
 accustomed to long and vigorous rambles in the ad- 
 jacent country with gun and fishing-rod, and he 
 knew every nook and corner of field and grove, and 
 every ripple and pool of brook and stream for miles 
 around. 
 
 As a Christian in college he was not conspicuous, 
 but thoroughly consistent ; not as active and demon- 
 strative as some, but diligent in using the means of 
 spiritual growth, and thus rooting and ripening him- 
 self for subsequent activity and usefulness. 
 
 But the most important characteristic of him was 
 that which began to show itself, as we have seen, in 
 his boyhood, viz., the cultivation of every excellence. 
 He seems to have consciously or unconsciously, but 
 conscientiously at least, adopted the motto of the 
 Latin moralist, to the effect that nothing that is good 
 is foreign to man, — i.e., that every element of excel- 
 
HigJi Rule of Life. — Teaching. 37 
 
 lence and goodness should be appropriated by each 
 person as his proper heritage. 
 
 Or, better still, he had adopted the inspired thought 
 of St. Paul (Phil. iv. 8), " Whatsoever things are true, 
 honorable, pure, just, lovely, and of good report, 
 think on these things." And not only should every 
 person think on and cultivate all these, but besides 
 these, continues the apostle, " If there be any virtue, 
 and if there be any praise," — i.e., if there be any pos- 
 sible good or praiseworthy thing not enumerated in 
 the above list, take possession of that also, — i.e., se- 
 cure and nourish every good quality of character and 
 life. 
 
 This seems to have been the chosen and steady 
 rule of Humphrey's life while in college, and that it 
 continued ever afterward to be so will be clearly ap- 
 parent as we proceed to accompany him on his way, 
 
 VI. 
 
 IT was one of President Humphrey's rules, in the 
 care and culture of his family, that each of his 
 sons, as they left college, should have a year or 
 two of the discipline that comes from teaching. It 
 was doubtless a wise rule. And in those days, plen- 
 tiful as the " discipline" in the school was for the 
 pupils, it was no less so for the teacher. 
 
38 ZepJianiali Moo7'e Humphrey. 
 
 Zephaniah's time for teaching had now come, in 
 the autumn of 1843, just after his graduation at col- 
 lege at the age of nineteen years. 
 
 It was providentially ordered for him that he should 
 still remain under his father's roof and amid the fa- 
 miliar scenes of Amherst ; for, whether in response 
 to his application or without it, the school directors 
 of the village appointed him to be teacher there for 
 the winter. 
 
 There were some unexpected consequences. A very 
 natural and somewhat chronic popular jealousy ex- 
 isted in the village toward the imagined intellectual 
 and social aristocracy of the college, and to have a 
 scion of that aristocracy appointed to the mastery of 
 the public school, and over the head of a representa- 
 tive of the people who wanted the position, was more 
 than could be endured by those sons and daughters 
 of Massachusetts. The result was a tempest in the 
 Amherst tea-pot, the vehemence of which it is difficult 
 to apprehend at this distance of time and place. Some 
 prominent persons were known to declare that this 
 " boy teacher" should not be master of the boys and 
 girls of his own town. But the directors were ex- 
 citedly firm, and Zephaniah was quietly firm, and went 
 about his work and accomplished it as calmly as though 
 he did not know there was any storm. 
 
 But the thing is worth mentioning as indicative of 
 
Teaching in Virginia. 39 
 
 the circumstances amid which young Humphrey had 
 his first experience of public life. And we can easily 
 believe that, notwithstanding his outward serenity, he 
 experienced during that winter quite as much of" dis- 
 cipline" as the teaching theory contemplated, and that 
 not one feather's weight of it was without benefit to 
 him. 
 
 But now comes a call that takes him away from 
 home. In the spring of 1844 he was invited to take 
 the charge of a small select school at Crednal, a quiet 
 little place in Loudon County, Virginia, and he ar- 
 rived there on the 6th day of May in that year. 
 
 This proved a pleasant and very improving engage- 
 ment to him. He had a home with a cultivated Vir- 
 ginia family, in a fine roomy mansion, where there 
 were plenty of " servants," and though he rebelled at 
 first, in his feelings at least, against having every slight- 
 est thing done for him from the time he opened his 
 eyes in the morning until he went to sleep again at 
 night, yet he knew that the servants that did it for him 
 would have nothing but mischief to do otherwise, and 
 he learned not only to acquiesce in it, but to like it 
 better than he was aware. 
 
 He became heartily interested in the boys of the 
 school, and abundant evidence incidentally reveals 
 itself that the parents and employers were more than 
 satisfied with the teacher of their boys. Indeed, they 
 
40 Zephaniah Moore Humphrey. 
 
 became very fond of him, and more and more appre- 
 ciative of his rare good judgment and excellent spirit 
 and remarkable versatility of gifts and accomplish- 
 ments. 
 
 But the specially important fact about this last year 
 of his teaching period is that he kept a journal through 
 the whole of it. 
 
 It was in the form of a continuous communication 
 to his sister Mary, next younger than himself, of whom 
 he was tenderly fond, and who had the closest possible 
 sympathy with him, not only having a warm sisterly 
 interest in whatever he was doing, but a peculiarly 
 keen appreciation of any either weighty or witty things 
 he might say. This fact, that it was all for her eye, 
 helped to impart a charming ease and naturalness to 
 the daily record of his observations and experiences 
 and reflections. 
 
 One of the best things about this journal is the 
 vigorous and manly continuance of it. He did not 
 grow weary of his purpose, or weak in respect to carry- 
 ing it through. It not only occupies hwt fills two folio 
 volumes of one hundred and sixty pages each, and a 
 vigorous mental activity energises the whole of it. 
 None but a resolute and persevering young man would 
 have done this, and none but a person of superior gifts 
 and rare qualities of mind and heart co2ild have done it. 
 
 This journal is almost equally divided as between 
 
Glimpses into Ids jfouynal. 41 
 
 the sprightly parts and the pensive or thoughtful parts, 
 divided, however, only to the mind of the reader, 
 not separated to the eye, for the two parts mingle to- 
 gether and flow into each other like different parts of 
 the same current. The sprightly parts are often brim- 
 ming with thoughtfulness, and the thoughtful sparkling 
 with sprightliness. 
 
 The journal gossips about events after the manner 
 of a skilful observer, and about persons after the 
 manner of a keen discerner of character. 
 
 It tells of the ludicrous sometimes, as when " W 
 
 the other day spoke of an uncxploded country. Was 
 it one which had happily escaped as yet an earth- 
 quake?" 
 
 There was a camp-meeting so near by that its sing- 
 ing reached him through the open door of his room, 
 and he watched it with a candid but careful eye 
 through the several days of its continuance, attending 
 most of its services, and he gives it full credit for the 
 good it accomplished, but cannot avoid the conclusion 
 that the unintended evil predominates over the accom- 
 plished good. 
 
 He heard then and at other times some " excel- 
 lent sermons" from the Methodist preachers of the 
 region, one or two that seemed to him " truly eloquent 
 and powerful," but many of the other kind, and 
 sometimes very vigorous violations of taste, as when 
 
42 Zephaniali Mooir Humphrey. 
 
 Mr. W said, " Now, sinners, if the Lord will only 
 
 give us a good hold of the gospel club we'll bruise 
 your heads for you." And Mr. R gives the solil- 
 oquy of the Prodigal Son thus : " Here I am among 
 these hogs, bad companions and worse fare." 
 
 In other and serious passages the journal reveals 
 his tender side and the strength and depth of his 
 affections. 
 
 For example, he has been writing to his brother 
 John, and has " really made himself weep in thinking 
 and writing of our dear mother." He did not know 
 *' how much he loved her till he was separated from 
 her." When he remembers " her tears and her beam- 
 ing look of love, he cannot prevent his own tears from 
 falling, and would not if he could, for they are the 
 manliest of tears." " God grant the dear, dear 
 mother to live until the wheel be worn out at the 
 cistern, and the pitcher be ready to crumble at the 
 fountain." 
 
 And he " dreams of his poor dear Henry," and 
 has blessed interviews with him that " seem like real 
 life, and are a great joy to him till he wakes and the 
 grief returns afresh," the whole, however, leaving a 
 sort of conviction that " the spirit of the brother 
 hovers about his pillow and pathway." 
 
 And he " loves the grand old mountains about 
 Amherst, and visits them in his thoughts, and then 
 
Love of Home. — Feeling His Way. 43 
 
 his spirit comes down from the mountains and enters 
 through i^rick walls (as such substances can) into a 
 certain parlor. Yes, there they are, — mother ! Mary ! 
 What is that you have in your hands, mother? Ah, 
 sewing, as usual, I see. And Mary, why are you not 
 writing to your brother ? And here comes father, 
 with his whalebone cane." 
 
 And he is " never home-sick," but wants it under- 
 stood, nevertheless, that " there is no waking hour 
 of day or night when he is not longing for home." 
 
 VII. 
 
 T)UT the special value of this journal is in that 
 ^^ which is largely under the lines, feelings and 
 purposes that are implied rather than expressed, and 
 that reveal the workings of the writer's mind at this 
 choosing period of his life, when he was by uncon- 
 scious processes selecting and preparing himself for 
 the special work of his maturer years. 
 
 It may be said of such a journal, as of a person's 
 unrecorded conversation and thinking, that, 
 
 " Below the surface-stream, shallow and light. 
 Of what we say we feel ; below the stream. 
 As light, of what we think we feel, there flows, 
 With noiseless current, strong, obscure, and deep. 
 The ceaseless stream of what we feel indeed." 
 
44 ZepJianiaJi Moore HiinipJwey. 
 
 This is the stream by which a person is actually 
 borne on to his destiny. This that he feels indeed 
 is the voice and hand of God leading him forward to 
 what he shall be, and to what, at the same time, he 
 chooses to be. 
 
 Humphrey, like other young men coming out of 
 college, found himself in a wide world with various 
 paths attracting him, and he had not yet decided 
 which he should choose. It was not like him to de- 
 cide quickly ; it was not necessary that he should. 
 " Non cito, sed bene',' was his method. He goes on 
 with his teaching, and says little or nothing about 
 his future profession. Even his private journal is 
 silent on that subject. 
 
 But as the months pass it becomes apparent which 
 way he is tending, and that he is seriously weighing 
 the considerations that ought to influence him. 
 
 The pursuits of an artist would have been very 
 congenial to his tastes, and he had the gifts that 
 would have distinguished him in that sphere. He 
 found great delight in cultivating these gifts, and his 
 early portfolio contains fine sketches of views in the 
 valley of the Connecticut and in Virginia, and in 
 Delaware County, New York, where, at Delhi, he 
 used to visit his sister Mary. 
 
 But he consciously discerned that, after all, 
 " Truest truth is fairest beauty," 
 
Attractiveness of Duty. 45 
 
 that the highest art is that which fashions human 
 souls and helps them toward the fulfilment of the 
 prayer, " Let the beauty of the Lord our God be 
 upon us." And though he might have dreamed of 
 painting Madonnas, yet he would have been wakened 
 from his dream by hearing the Master say, "Who- 
 soever doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven, 
 the same is my brother and sister and mother," — i.e., 
 the gospel ministry attracted him to the highest realm 
 of art, and nearest to the very soul and goal of the 
 beautiful, and gave promise of the most abiding mas- 
 ter-pieces. 
 
 It is known that such considerations influenced 
 him, and similarly conclusive and winning considera- 
 tions in respect to the ministry, as compared with still 
 other pursuits, so that the selecting of that profession 
 came to be as clearly a matter of choice and supreme 
 preference as it was a matter of clear Christian duty 
 with him. 
 
 Indeed, duty and beauty were more alike to him 
 in their nature than the words are in their sound. 
 He used to speak warmly of the practical help he re- 
 ceived from the ideas of Wordsworth's " Ode to 
 Duty," such as, — 
 
 "Stern Ivawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
 The Godhead's most benignant grace, 
 
4^ Zeplianiah Moore Humphrey. 
 
 Nor know we anything so fair 
 
 As is the smile upon thy face ; 
 Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads." 
 
 Thus the vision of duty was a vision of beauty to 
 him. Her voice was " liberty" as well as " law" to 
 him. 
 
 It always seemed true of him that the claims of 
 moral and religious obligation were not burdensome 
 but welcome. Obedience was a delight, and 
 
 "Joy its own security." 
 
 And in nothing was this more manifest than in his 
 choice of the Christian ministry as the work of his 
 life. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 '' I ''HERE are some pages of original poetry in this 
 -*- journal, and in connection with them some 
 very suggestive statements, that are important to us 
 as indicating how strongly at times he was drawn in 
 that direction. 
 
 Thus, on Dec. 14, 1844, he says, "After my labors 
 pedagogic to-day I went down to Welburn to dine, 
 and after returning finished that piece of poetry 
 which I spoke of yesterday, and which I promised to 
 insert." 
 
Poetic Inclinations. 
 
 47 
 
 Then follows a poem of a dozen stanzas, entitled 
 " La Vallee," concerning a picturesque vale near by, 
 which was flanked by towering mountains, and the 
 verses were " inscribed to the generous hearts" of 
 the people dwelling in the valley. The poetic gift 
 manifests itself in every stanza, closing with, — 
 
 "And when, in future years, life's storms 
 Shall rend my swollen sail, 
 I'll not forget a haven lies 
 Within this happy vale." 
 
 But on the 15th (the very next day) we find him 
 saying, " I hardly thought my poetic fervor would 
 last me more than a day or two, and even to-night 
 I did not think of writing any more, but reading 
 Coleridge has set me into a Christmas Ode, and I 
 have written three stanzas of seven lines each But 
 it is verging toward two o'clock, and I must asfain 
 dismiss the muses, begging their pardon for detain- 
 ing them to such an unseasonable hour." 
 
 The poetic fervor still remained, it seems, for on the 
 next evening he says, " I have finished my ' Christmas 
 Ode,' which I commenced last night." 
 
 So the muses would not stay dismissed, it seems. 
 Let us read three or four of the nine stanzas they 
 brought him, each muse bringing one in this case, it 
 would seem, to show that they were all wooing him : 
 
48 ZepJianiah Moore Humphrey. 
 
 " The aged year is pei-ishing 
 By slow but sad degrees, 
 The wind e'en now begins to sing 
 His death-dirge in the trees. 
 With an ice-sickle beard on his withered chin, 
 And the white frost strewn on his temples thin, 
 The poor old year is dying. 
 
 " But a day we'll give to comfort him, 
 He shall not cheerless go ; 
 We'll bind a wreath of evergreen 
 Above his wreath of snow. 
 Let us honor him when his life's on the wane, 
 For the sake of the hours which brightened liis reign. 
 For the sake of ' auld lang syne.' " 
 
 " Heap the branch on the festal hearth, 
 Until the dancing flame 
 Mirrors its flashes in bright eyes 
 That flash them back again. 
 To life's importunate cares we'll turn a deaf ear. 
 And cheer up the heart of the perishing year 
 While his last sand is falling." 
 
 Then follows the especially Christmas part of the 
 ode, in four stanzas of twelve lines each, and in en- 
 tirely a different measure from the others, and the 
 whole closes thus, — 
 
 " From off thy altar, first, my heart. 
 Let grateful incense rise, 
 To blend with tliat wliich angel bands 
 Are offering in the skies. 
 
Pocvis on the Old Year and the New. 49 
 
 Then mayst thou well lend both a smile and a tear 
 To cheer up the heart of the perishing year 
 While his last sand is falling." 
 
 Only a few days pass, and the end of the year 
 comes indeed, and he closes his journal for 1844 with 
 " a few lines which have been suggested to me during 
 the last moments of the year." We cannot forbear 
 copying a part of them, — 
 
 " I turn my glance upon the past, 
 And o'er the dim expanse 
 Methinks I see a motley crowd 
 Of shadowy forms advance. 
 
 " Onward they come ! And nearer now 
 And more distinct they seem, 
 Tho' still they're glancing here and there. 
 Like phantoms in a dream, — 
 
 •'Old Wishes which, a year ago, 
 A yearning heart sent forth ; 
 Desires which have been unmet since 
 The spirit gave them birth ; 
 
 " Hopes which have thrown upon the heart 
 Full oft a soft'ning ray, 
 And warmed it as the sunshine warms 
 The springing soil of May ; 
 
 " And Fears, in sombre mantle dressed, 
 Approached with mournful tread, 
 4 
 
50 Zephaniali Moore Hiimphrey. 
 
 Shedding around the same deep gloom 
 Which months ago they shed. 
 
 " On, on they come, those shadowy forms ! 
 And each, as it draws nigh, 
 Towards the future seems to point, 
 And future-wards glides by. 
 
 " And as I cross the narrow line 
 
 Which separates two years, 
 
 I see them beck'ning unto me. 
 
 Those Hopes, Desires, and Fears." 
 
 As a further illustration of the poetic gift that was 
 in him, and remained in him, and also of the fine 
 humor which was so natural to him, and of which 
 more will be said by and by, we will record here 
 some lines he sent to a couple of very dear friends on 
 the fifteenth anniversary of their marriage. They are 
 worthy of notice for their combination of humor with 
 the utmost tenderness and beauty of poetic thought 
 and feeling. 
 
 It needs only to be premised by way of explana- 
 tion that the husband was connected with the grain 
 business in Chicago, and that the entire family had 
 spent a couple of years in Europe, and that a pitcher 
 of Venetian glass was sent by express as a compan- 
 ion offering of friendship and affection with the fol- 
 lowincf lines : 
 
Poem for a Wedding Anniversary. 5 1 
 
 " Fifteen years of marriage ! Tell us, O Poet, 
 
 To what shall we liken them. 
 
 To beads Venetian, may be, strung on a thread of silver. 
 
 Each year, before vanishing, has come to put its bead on the string: 
 
 'tis a rosary. 
 The first bead is white, mainly, so it becometh the year of the bridal. 
 
 Specks in it, are there ? No ; there is nothing but dust on the 
 
 surface. 
 The other beads are of mixed and varied color, — gold-dust sprinkled 
 
 in here and there, blue streaks now and then, rose colors also, 
 
 crimson, brown, mauve London smoke for aught I know. 
 One bead has the name of Robbie on it, another Fanny, and so on, 
 
 time fails me to mention. 
 Two beads have colors Helvetian, Italian, Parisian, and what not ; 
 
 They flame, they cool, they glow like Jiingfrau at sunset. 
 Some of them look as if wheat-grains were stuck in here and there, 
 
 or corn may be, or barley. 
 On the whole a goodly rosary. 
 
 " These years are fifteen crystal goblets. 
 
 The first is filled with honey caught from the dripping moon, 
 
 The next with the self-same article of manufacture domestic, — no- 
 body stung in the process. 
 
 Then the rest are filled with — perhaps you think honey is getting mo- 
 notonous? — well, we'll say wine, milk, nectar. No; not ice- 
 water I I thank you : the mixtures are all generous. 
 
 Pleasant, likewise, are they to the taste and smell, even if there be 
 now and then a trace of paregoric and Munn's Elixir or such 
 like. 
 
 Confidentially, it is said none of these fluids ever fermented, or be- 
 came otherwise such that one would be willing to smash any of 
 the goblets. 
 
52 Zephaniah Moore Hiunphrey. 
 
 " These years are fifteen crystal vases. 
 
 White flowers in the first one. No; not camellias, waxen images, 
 
 expressionless, without even an eye like a violet's ; roses rather, 
 
 jasmines, flowers that breathe and make love-songs out of the 
 
 octaves of fragrance. 
 Forget-me-nots, now and then, in the other vases, blooming there 
 
 while the ' gude mon' is absent, — ^just as if ihey were needed. 
 Is that an ' Eidehveiss ?' I suspect so : it is the flower of the 
 
 lover. 
 Thistles ! Avaunt, thou bachelor, with nothing but bachelor's buttons, 
 
 withered at that, in thy vases. 
 
 " After all, what is better to signalize these years than a pitcher ? 
 
 That is a unit, and these years are one. 
 
 A pitcher you can fill when you wish to, — 
 
 Put recollections, loves, thoughts on art, music, Daniel Deronda, and 
 
 all sorts of things into the pitcher of comfort and pour them out 
 
 in liquid speech. 
 Put what you please in the Venetian pitcher consigned to the care of 
 
 the express company. 
 Write the fifteen years' history on fifteen separate sheets of paper, if 
 
 that suit you, 
 Then burn them, incinerate, reduce them by cremation ; 
 First embalm them in the spicery of affection, then stand solemn by 
 
 as they go the way of the Barre de Palm. 
 Gather them when naught is left but ashes, all that is not solid sub- 
 stance gone off in smoke ; 
 Commit them to the pitcher, and thou shalt have a memento. 
 The ink shall still be on the ashes, the history shall be there. 
 None but thou can read it. Look in, now and then, and smile and 
 
 weep ; 
 For histoiy is real, though the page be burnt as the soul is, though 
 
 what held it once be ashes." 
 
jfoiirnal of Religious Thoughts. 5 3 
 
 The.se lines, early and late, indicate that Mr. Hum- 
 phrey might have made himself at home in the realm 
 of poetry and gracefully worn the " singing robes" 
 had he so chosen. They reveal to us that the poet 
 was " born'' sure enough, but the preacher was born 
 at the same time, — not twins, but a duality. It only 
 needed, in the direction of poetry, the patient indus- 
 try out of which greatness comes, and for which 
 there was abundant disposition in him, and with 
 which there would have been no lack of inspiration, 
 it only needed this and the poet would have been 
 viadc as well as born, for poeta nascitur ct fit is as 
 true 2lS poeta nascitur non fit. 
 
 IX. 
 
 BUT Mr. Humphrey wrote another book while he 
 was teaching at Crednal. This he commenced 
 almost immediately on his arrival there, a few days 
 before he commenced his journal. In this were 
 recorded such religious thoughts and studies of the 
 Bible as might not of themselves furnish any indica- 
 tion that he expected to be a minister. They might 
 have been thus recorded by any Christian young 
 man with equal thoughtfulness and eagerness for 
 mental and spiritual improvement. 
 
 But as the year passes on these studies assume 
 
54 Zephaniali Moore Humphrey. 
 
 more and more the character of profound and search- 
 ing theological dissertations, some of which are ex- 
 haustive and masterly. 
 
 He deals meditatively with such subjects as " Com- 
 munion with God," and " Christian Brotherhood," 
 and " Christian Consecration," and such texts of 
 Scripture as " Faith worketh by love," " He that is 
 not for me is against me," " What things were gain 
 to me, those I counted loss for Christ," and such 
 like, and nowhere is the treatment shallow or care- 
 less, but it everywhere reveals patient reflection and 
 honest application, whereby the theme is brought 
 into vigorous relations to his own spiritual life. 
 
 But, first or last, he grapples with many of the 
 most important and difficult problems of theology, 
 with reference to both its scriptural and its psycho- 
 logical basis, — " The Nature of the Soul and its 
 Immortality," " The Doctrines of Providence" (very 
 fully and ably discussed), " The Relations of God's 
 Sovereignty and Man's Freedom" (of course), " The 
 Genuineness and Authenticity of the Scriptures," 
 and so on. Not only did he grapple with these and 
 such like themes, but he discussed them with such 
 vigorous thought and such careful study, and with 
 such a sustained glow of interest, and recorded his 
 ideas in so fine a style of expression, that we are 
 at no loss for the reason that when he began to 
 
Maturity of his Early PrcacJiing. 55 
 
 preach there was such a conspicuous absence of the 
 quahty of youngness in the sermons of the young 
 preacher ; so that Dr. Corwin, of Racine, says of 
 him that, " such was the thoroughness of his col- 
 legiate and theological training, and such withal was 
 the balance and maturity of his manhood, that the 
 want of experience was little, if any, impediment to 
 his success." 
 
 In reading these essays one is surprised to find 
 so much of the breadth of intelligence, and insight 
 of human nature, and penetration of thought, and 
 brightness of imagination, and wealth of illustration, 
 and peculiar skill of expression which characterized 
 his maturer years ; so that a person who has known 
 and heard Mr. Humphrey only during the last years 
 of his ministry would at once recognize the charac- 
 teristics of his style, both of thought and expression, 
 in reading these records of his " religious thoughts," 
 which were commenced at Crednal before he was 
 twenty years old, and finished before he was twenty- 
 one. 
 
 Most persons who should read these records 
 would say, " This man has no need of a course of 
 theological study, he is prepared now to enter upon 
 the work of his ministry." 
 
 But a practiced student would perceive that, ad- 
 mirable and mature as many of these essays are, yet 
 
56 Zephaniali Moore Humphrey. 
 
 the subjects are taken up almost at random, and, col- 
 lectively, there is not in them, and does not, of course, 
 pretend to be, any of the completeness and compre- 
 hensiveness of a theological system. Nothing was 
 further from his thoughts than that he had finished, 
 or even commenced, his "theological studies," — he 
 was diligently preparing for them. 
 
 Occasionally in this book a very fine separate 
 thought records itself in a modest parenthesis or foot- 
 note, as when he says, by way of corollary to some 
 vivid conceptions of the soul's immortality, — 
 
 " The soul may be compared to a lamp which, as 
 soon as it is lighted, is placed in a dark lantern. It 
 sends a few struggling rays, perhaps, through chink 
 and crevice, but break the la-ntern and it bursts out 
 in all its original and native brilliancy." 
 
 These books make it evident that Mr. Humphrey's 
 apparent fidelity to his own mental training in college 
 had been real and to the last degree thorough. 
 
 And during this year at Crednal, what with his 
 daily teaching and his accustomed amount of rec- 
 reation and exercise, which consisted in hunting and 
 fishing and riding on horseback (of which he was very 
 fond, and in which he indulged in leaping fences some- 
 times), and something almost every day of cheerful, 
 social intercourse with friends, how diligently must 
 many of his best hours have been employed in this 
 
Diligent Self -Training. 57 
 
 high work of mental and spiritual and theological 
 culture ! How patiently and rigidly must he have 
 held himself to this voluntary intellectual industry ! 
 How completely must he have learned to abstract 
 himself and fix his thoughts on the subjects of his 
 study ! He seems to have had an intuitive knowledge 
 that the secret of high success is not in gifts, but in 
 the patient and diligent use and cultivation of gitts. 
 His admirable powers of thinking and feeling, and 
 of illustrating and expressing thought and feeling 
 were not given to him, but acquired by the patient 
 and sometimes severe appliances of mental discipline 
 and industry. Sir Isaac Newton, being congratulated 
 on his great intellectual achievements, said, with char- 
 acteristic modesty, and yet with genuine sincerity, 
 " It is owing more to patient attention than to any 
 other talent ;" and Sir William Hamilton quotes 
 Helvetius as saying that " genius is nothing but con- 
 tinued attention" {line attention S2iivie). 
 
 Consciously or unconsciously, Mr. Humphrey was 
 acting in accordance with this idea during his long 
 year (almost fourteen months) at Crednal, and acting 
 with remarkable strength of purpose and vigor of 
 industry. It is difficult to estimate too highly the 
 virtue or the value of this year's work. 
 
 The acquaintance which these two manuscript 
 books imparts to us with the workings of his mind 
 
58 Zephaniah Moore Humplirey. 
 
 during that year, is the more to be prized by us for 
 the reason that we have not the means of following 
 him with any closeness through the three following 
 years of his theological seminary course. How he 
 would be likely to improve his opportunities during 
 that time, with the great and chosen work of his life 
 fully fixed in his purpose, can be readily inferred from 
 what we know of his course during the previous year, 
 ^when his purpose was less decided, and when other 
 duties were sharing the occupancy of his time and 
 strength. 
 
 However, we find another manuscript book, com- 
 menced during his first year at Andover, which is en- 
 tirely aside from his notes on the seminary lectures, 
 and which consists of independent treatises of his own 
 on " The Origin of Evil," " The Fall of Man and its 
 Consequences," "Justification," etc., showing a com- 
 prehensive and laborious study of these and such like 
 themes in the order and sequence of a philosophical 
 system ; so that we are left in no doubt that he con- 
 tinued to depend for success in the high purpose of 
 his life not upon gifts, but upon patient, severe work, 
 upon the diligent and persevering use and cultivation 
 of his gifts. 
 
Takes Ids Way Westward. 59 
 
 X. 
 
 '' I ^HE " Macedonian cry" from the West entered 
 J- into his ear and received his attention. He was 
 not without solicitude (nor were his friends for him) 
 lest the character of his tastes and methods might not 
 be adapted to the rough, frontier work to which he 
 regarded himself as summoned. Nevertheless he de- 
 cided to obey the indefinite call, and though it was 
 not without some feeling of loneliness, yet it was with 
 unfaltering purpose and bounding joy that he turned 
 his face in that direction, and " went out not knowing 
 whither he went." 
 
 But we are in no need of explanations of this move- 
 ment. There would have been more need of finding 
 reasons for his staying nearer home, if he had done 
 that. It was almost as sure as a law of nature at that 
 time that the rising sun of the life of a strong, earnest, 
 and untrammelled young minister should move toward 
 the West. And whatever might have been his per- 
 sonal timidity and self-distrust, yet, in the light of 
 what we know of his superior preparations and his 
 eager purposes, and the deliberate but fervent hearti- 
 ness with which he had married himself to his chosen 
 work, we can only think of him as going forth " like 
 
6o Zeplianiali Moore HjinipJirey. 
 
 a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoicing 
 as a strong man to run a race." 
 
 The young State of Wisconsin was then a part of 
 the " West," and we find Mr. Humphrey, in the 
 autumn of 1850, already the chosen pastor of a thriv- 
 ing church in the city of Racine. 
 
 This was a charming city, " beautiful for situation," 
 on a fine bluff, between Lake Michigan on the one 
 "hand, out of which the sun rose in the morning, and 
 a vast stretch of rich prairie on the other, behind the 
 western edge of which he was seen to go down, often 
 amid gorgeous accompaniments, at evening. 
 
 These visions were a source of constant delight to 
 the young minister, who appropriated them with a 
 sort of surprised gratitude as a part of the " goodly 
 heritage" that had so quickly come to him in his new 
 home, and he used to speak in his letters with thank- 
 ful enthusiasm of the " pleasant places" in which the 
 lines had fallen to him. 
 
 Albeit he remembered with longing, though with 
 no discontent, the other and different charms of the 
 hilly East. In one of his letters to Delhi, after 
 speaking of the outlook from his windows, he said, 
 " Nevertheless, it seems to me, I would give a thou- 
 sand square miles of prairie for the wooded hill back 
 of Judge Hathaway's house at Delhi, and the whole of 
 Lake Michigan for the series of cascades at Fall Creek." 
 
Fields of Work — Larger and Smaller. 6i 
 
 But the best of his " goodly heritage" was his field 
 of work, embracing not only his own parish, but the 
 rapidly-developing country stretching across and up 
 and down the State. He was interested in, and could 
 have something to do for, the whole of it. This left 
 him no thought of Eastward longings He enlarged 
 himself toward the greatness and breadth of this field, 
 and soon his was found to be among the efficient 
 hands that were touching the springs of Christian 
 organization and activity which extended through 
 the State and beyond, and were helping to shape the 
 institutions and the social character of the Northwest. 
 He had a clear discernment of the best methods of 
 church work, and a persuasive way of advocating 
 them. His face was familiar and his voice welcome 
 in the religious State Conventions, and those who 
 have the closest acquaintance with the early history 
 of that region will be quickest to testify that impres- 
 sions received from his wise and earnest words were 
 carried everywhere, as fruitful seeds of good influence, 
 over the whole field of what was then the Northwest. 
 
 In respect to the more limited field of his parish at 
 Racine, it is entirely prudent, nay, it is but the begin- 
 ning of the truth to say that his success was marked 
 and genuine from the first. He was the first pastor 
 of the church, and the two adopted each other with 
 all the ardor and mutual confidence of a young bride 
 
6z Zcphaniali Moore Humphrey. 
 
 and groom. Every interest of the church prospered. 
 The congregation was steadily enlarged and strength- 
 ened. They were soon enabled to build a substantial 
 and stately church, which avails and satisfies them yet. 
 This large edifice was soon filled with regular adhe- 
 rents to the parish, and was kept filled year after year. 
 
 The spiritual prosperity of the church was equally 
 marked. The increase of membership and the growth 
 of spiritual strength were not spasmodic, but steady 
 and continuous. The success was equally among the 
 cultured and uncultured people, but largely among 
 the strong and substantial elements of the community. 
 
 Let us look at the causes of this success, first of all 
 recognizing, as he constantly and emphatically did, 
 the dependence of the whole of it upon the divine 
 favor and blessing ; but the Lord works by means, 
 and by means that are adapted to their ends. 
 
 He was ordained and installed in October, 1850. 
 In November we find him commencing private books 
 again, such as are appropriate to his changed circum- 
 stances. 
 
 First, a book on " Funeral Thoughts." November 
 13th, funeral of a child; no text, but a carefully-pre- 
 pared address, tender, soothing, instructive, explan- 
 atory of the sad mysteries of Providence. 
 
 November 19th, funeral of a pious mother; no 
 text, but an appropriate address, with exquisitely 
 
Fidelity in his Preparations. 63 
 
 delicate illustrations of the abiding results of quiet 
 godliness in the family and in society. 
 
 February 22d, funeral of a public man at the 
 place of public worship, with a strong sermon on the 
 text, " No man dieth to himself" 
 
 The second book is one of " Sacramental Thoughts," 
 commencing January 5, 185 1, with the suggestions 
 again of a familiar and vivacious but instructive ad- 
 dress, not of mere words, but of thoughts ; and so 
 on from one communion season to another. 
 
 These books are just indexes of his diligence and 
 industry, his faithful endeavor to do everything well, 
 to make every service accomplish its object, and every 
 address appropriate to, and worthy of, its occasion. 
 
 XL 
 
 MR. HUMPHREY'S sermons, which spoke for 
 Christ and His truth, during those years at 
 Racine, remain to speak for themselves and for him 
 who made them. They were elaborated, not into 
 heaviness and dryness and obscurity, but into simplic- 
 ity and clearness and beauty. They were scriptural 
 sermons and orthodox sermons, and sometimes Cal- 
 vinistic sermons, but they were always Mr. Hum- 
 phrey's sermons, and were meant for his hearers, and 
 adapted to the very time of their date and delivery. 
 
64 Zcplianiah Moore Humplirey. 
 
 They were richly adorned with illustrations, and their 
 rhetorical finish was fine, but with a solid substance 
 always of honest and vigorous thought, and a sober 
 lesson always of important practical truth. They 
 charmed his people, while also they stimulated, in- 
 structed, and enriched them. 
 
 " From no single discourse," says Dr. Corwin, " were 
 men likely to go away without the feeling that they 
 had been intellectually instructed and religiously fed." 
 
 These sermons were far, however, from being satis- 
 factory to himself He judged them always by his 
 ideals, which of course they could only approximate. 
 Therefore his estimate of his own sermons was habitu- 
 ally and genuinely modest. Not even to those with 
 whom he was most confidential did he express or 
 manifest any delighted complacency in his own ser- 
 mons, considered as his productions. This was true 
 of him throughout his ministry. The only known 
 exception was in the case of the last sermon of his 
 life, of which we shall have occasion to speak again. 
 It was preached away from home, by appointment, at 
 a meeting of his Synod. On his return to his home, 
 the person who knew more of his private thoughts 
 than any other said to him, " How did your sermon 
 go ?" " Go !" he said, with an eager and happy smile, 
 " for once I have made a ten-strike !" This was the 
 nearest approach to boasting that even that person 
 
Adaptedness of his Preaching. 65 
 
 ever knew him to make, and this was the very last 
 of his preaching. Happy result ! that he who had so 
 long and constantly delighted others should be per- 
 mitted in the end to delight himself. 
 
 But during those years at Racine, Mr. Humphrey's 
 preaching was a source of continual joy and profit and 
 pride to the people who were permitted to call him 
 pastor. A chief reason of this was that his preaching 
 was skilfully and studiously adapted to the conditions 
 and needs of his people, of which he had a keen and 
 wise discernment. 
 
 Let it be remembered, however, that in all we say 
 about his adapting himself to his people there is no 
 reference to that kind of adaptation in which the 
 preacher seems to say, " Now, my friends, I shall try 
 to get down to your level." There was nothing of 
 that in Mr. Humphrey. It was not any intellectual 
 inferiority of his people, but a careful discernment of 
 their spiritual needs and cravings, to which he sought 
 to adapt himself 
 
 These varied needs were not merely recognized by 
 a few words here and there in a sermon, but they were 
 thoroughly and exhaustively met by entire sermons, 
 so explaining each essejitial phase of the religious 
 life, in its relations to other essential phases, that its 
 place and value would never be forgotten. 
 
 For example, he found that many persons were dis- 
 5 
 
66 Zephaniah Moore Humphrey. 
 
 couraged about their religious life because they had 
 not so much of inward spiritual experience and re- 
 ligious meditation as others whom they read about in 
 books or heard from in the conference meetings, so 
 he early preached a sermon about Mary and Martha, 
 setting forth the distinction between the " contempla- 
 tive" and the " active" types of personal piety so 
 clearly that the difficulty in the minds of those 
 troubled persons was entirely and once for all re- 
 moved, and they remembered that sermon and were 
 helped by it, and by the confirmatory truth that be- 
 came, from time to time, associated with it, during 
 all their subsequent years. 
 
 This was one of the best characteristics of his 
 preaching from first to last, that his people, regarding 
 themselves, while listening to him, as simply inter- 
 ested and instructed, would find afterwards, often 
 to their surprise, that a vitalizing idea, an organic 
 thought, a living and seminal principle of truth had 
 been planted in them, and had so taken root in their 
 natures as to abide with and influence them forever. 
 
 His preaching not only had this characteristic, but 
 had it in peculiar degree and more and more remark- 
 ably as he ripened in his work, so that hundreds of 
 his people arc distinctly conscious that at particular 
 times seed-thoughts were wafted almost impercepti- 
 bly into their minds by the very breath of Mr. Hum- 
 
Seminal Pozver of his Preaching. 67 
 
 phrey's preaching, and so quietly and penetratingly 
 deposited there that they have been ever afterwards 
 among the moulding and formative influences of their 
 lives. 
 
 It is the same characteristic, that of so presenting 
 truth as to impress it upon the mind and give it a 
 vital hold there, which shows itself in the broader 
 realm of philosophic and speculative thought, as rec- 
 ognized, for example, by Rev. John M. Bishop, of 
 Covington, Indiana, in an article in one of the re- 
 ligious papers since Dr. Humphrey's death. He says, 
 " I am indebted to Dr. Z. M. Humphrey, the lovely 
 and lamented, for my best and most lasting impres- 
 sion of the idea of organic church life. In one of 
 his earlier articles he so beautifully presented the 
 thought that it had to me the air of originality. It 
 was original in the highest and best sense. I ought 
 to have been impressed with so fundamental a prin- 
 ciple before I met with Dr. Humphrey's presentation 
 of it," and so on. 
 
 Many persons who came in contact with Mr. Hum- 
 phrey, through his preaching, often felt that they 
 ought to have known before some principle or truth 
 which seemed so clear after he had explained it, and 
 which, thus impressed upon them, became a perma- 
 nent part of their intellectual and spiritual furniture. 
 So when, at Racine, he illustrated the never to be 
 
68 Zepkaniah Moore Humphrey. 
 
 explained harmony of human freedom with divine 
 decrees by the rock at Gibraltar, — " divided above, but 
 forever one below, out of sight," — he left a life-long 
 impression in some minds, amounting to an inde- 
 structible conviction, that, however mysterious and in- 
 explicable it may be, the harmony exists, and forever 
 has its place, among the " deep things of God." 
 
 Among the causes of this peculiarly felicitous way 
 of presenting truth so as to print it on the mind, or, 
 if it were practical truth, to plant it in the soil of the 
 soul, were, first, his habit of industrious and thorough 
 study of every principle of which he would assume to 
 be a teacher ; and then, secondly, his careful and acute 
 discernment of what was necessary in order to adapt 
 his presentation of the thought to the spiritual re- 
 ceptivity of the learner. Thus there was a perfect in- 
 terior adjustment of the mind of the teacher to that 
 of the taught. They were en rapport with each other. 
 There was no apparent effort on the part of the 
 speaker to assail and take possession of the hearer, 
 and no feeling on the part of the hearer that he 
 was being assailed and taken possession of, but the 
 thought flowed or glided from the one mind to the 
 other, and was the same vital thing in the latter place 
 that it had been in the former. 
 
 This was one of the secrets of his quiet power as a 
 preacher from first to last, a power that was often 
 
Unconscious Leadership. — The Son of Mini. 69 
 
 irresistible because, at the time of its application, it 
 was unperceived and therefore unresisted. Some one 
 has said that a person must choose between leading 
 and seeming to lead. Mr. Humphrey never seemed 
 to lead, never seemed conscious of his own leader- 
 ship, never tried to lead for the sake of leading, and 
 partly for that very reason he never failed to be a 
 leader. 
 
 We were noticing that he adapted his earliest 
 preaching to the need; and conditions of his people 
 at Racine, — not to their superficial needs merely, but 
 to those undiscovered by themselves until revealed 
 to them through his profound and comprehensive 
 discernment. 
 
 Besides the " Mary and Martha" sermon, he early 
 saw the need of preaching a clearing-up sermon on 
 the manifoldness or many-sidedness of the nature of 
 Christ, and his consequent competency to be the 
 Christ and Saviour of all varieties of persons, so that 
 the most peculiarly constituted and isolated believer 
 could still have a Christ of his own (speaking rever- 
 ently), a Saviour who could understand ////// and 
 sympathize with and help him. This sermon on 
 Christ as " The Son of Man" has been a message of 
 light and comfort and strength to thousands. It was 
 rewritten and perfected and repeatedly preached until 
 the voice of the preacher ceased to be heard by the 
 
70 Zephaniah Moore Humphrey. 
 
 ears of mortals, and is now printed in a later part of 
 this volume, that through the eye its helpful truth 
 may find its way to the hearts of thousands more. 
 
 Another of his early sermons (both early and late), 
 which may also be found farther on in this volume, 
 was on " The Centrality of the Cross." In this it is 
 shown that Christ crucified is not only the central 
 theme of all Christian preaching, and the central doc- 
 trine of Christian theology, but the central object of 
 all history. Whosoever reads may judge. 
 
 The idea of this sermon had an organizing influence 
 upon his theological thinking and conclusions, so that 
 when, near the end of his life, he came to write an 
 elaborate article for the Presbyterian Review (July, 
 i88i) on "the Theology of Professor H. B. Smith," 
 he was prepared to do the work with peculiar and 
 affectionate delight, because it was the specially 
 characteristic fact about Professor Smith's theology 
 that he made the doctrine of the cross to be the start- 
 ing-point and central principle of his system, and this 
 was in precise accord with Dr. Humphrey's early 
 preaching and his life-long tendencies and habits of 
 thought. 
 
 The idea of this sermon on " the Centrality of the 
 Cross" also gave law as well as liberty, shape and yet 
 limitless breadth to his preaching. He could say 
 with St. Paul, " I determined to know nothing among 
 
Ccntrality of the Cross. 71 
 
 you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." But this 
 not only allowed, it encouraged and secured an end- 
 less variety and continuous freshness in his preaching, 
 because all the truths of history, and all the truths of 
 nature and philosophy and literature and civil gov- 
 ernment would be found to converge towards Christ, 
 in accordance with that established doctrine of the 
 " Centrality of the Cross." Hence the kaleidoscopic 
 beauty and variety of his preaching. A thousand 
 themes, and yet Christ always the theme ! Ten thou- 
 sand melodious strains, and yet Christ the perpetual 
 undertone of them all ! It is like the variations of 
 some sweet and familiar air in music, — like the varia- 
 tions of" Home, Sweet Home," for example, by Thal- 
 berg, in which he carries you through many strains 
 of sweet and varied harmony, amid all of which some- 
 thing of the spirit of the central theme breathes 
 itself, though the actual notes of that tune are quite 
 unheard, except that now and then, amid the con- 
 tinuous flow of sweet sounds, the familiar strains of 
 "Sweet Home" salute the ear for a moment, only to 
 be lost again as the movement widens out into other 
 and still other variations, showing how much of the 
 soul of music must be embodied in that one simple 
 tune that it can spread itself out into such rich and 
 continuous and varied and abundant melodies. 
 
 So with the continuous stream of Mr. Humphrey's 
 
72 Zephaniali Moore Humphrey. 
 
 preaching for thirty years, — it was like a prolonged 
 anthem of varied harmonies, drawing the material for 
 the illustration and effectual rendering of its themes 
 from " the heavens above and the earth beneath and 
 the waters under the earth," from mountains and 
 plains and woods and gardens, from history and 
 poetry and art and the minds and hearts of common 
 men, and yet all the parts of the anthem were sym- 
 phonious, harmonized with each other by their com- 
 mon accord with the one underlying and central 
 theme, the familiar tones of which were made audible 
 with perpetual frequency to the most careless listener, 
 and almost constantly recognized by the ears of the 
 thoughtful ones. Of course that one theme was the 
 Divine Redeemer, the Jesus of the gospels. And 
 why should not everything be made to speak of Him, 
 since " all things were made by Him, and without Him 
 was not anything made that was made" ? Why should 
 not the lives and deeds and writings of common and 
 of uncommon men be made to speak of Him of whom 
 it is said, " In Him was life, and the life was the light 
 of men ?" 
 
 No person who heard Mr. Humphrey in either of 
 his parishes, no person who reads the k\^ sermons at 
 the end of this volume, especially no person who 
 should read the hundreds of sermons that are pre- 
 served in neatly-written manuscripts, could fail to 
 
Unity and Variety in Preaching. 73 
 
 perceive that amid the ceaseless and marvellous va- 
 riety of special topics and helpful expositions and vivid 
 illustrations, in which nothing is too grand and noth- 
 ing too minute for his appropriation, and nothing in 
 nature or history or literature or art seems to be 
 overlooked, yet there is the constant presence of the 
 crucified and risen and teaching Christ. 
 
 Mr. Humphrey's preaching was spoken of above, 
 almost unconsciously, as a continuous stream of 
 preaching for more than thirty years. It was a 
 stream that broadened and deepened as it flowed, and 
 left a constantly increasing fruitfulness along its banks ; 
 and the waters of that stream flow^ed from the rock 
 that was typified at Marah, and that rock was 
 ubiquitous along the line of Mr. Humphrey's preach- 
 ing. His people " drank of that spiritual rock that 
 followed them, and that rock was Christ." (Ex. xvii. 
 6, and i Cor. x. 4.) Therefore his preaching had life 
 and power as well as variety and freshness, and when 
 withal it was directed and shaped, under the guidance 
 of the Holy Spirit, by a peculiarly keen and careful 
 discernment of the actual conditions and needs of his 
 people, we may not wonder at its quiet and steady but 
 rich and abundant fruitfulness, a fruitfulness the value 
 of which can only be measured when its quality as 
 well as its quantity is taken into account. 
 
 In this consideration of the characteristics of Mr. 
 
74 Zephaniah Moore Hiimplircy. 
 
 Humphrey's preaching we can hardly overestimate, 
 even by repetition, the importance of his peculiarly 
 felicitous method of so presenting the gospel as to 
 infuse it, so to speak, into the minds and hearts of his 
 hearers. It was the gospel of Christ always that he 
 preached, not the totality of the gospel every time, 
 but " rightly dividing the word of truth and giving to 
 each a portion in due season." 
 
 His own expressed idea of originality in preaching 
 was not to invent or discover new truth for his hearers, 
 but to melt the old truth in the crucible of his own 
 thoughts and feelings, and then administer it for the 
 spiritual healing and nourishment of those who heard 
 him. He did not dilute the truth, but he solved \t, 
 made a solution of the very substance of it, so that it 
 could flow, and did flow, like a healing stream of the 
 water of life into the thirsty spirits of his people. He 
 did not hurl theology at them in solid and heavy 
 chunks, but he analyzed and aerified it within his own 
 industrious and fervent soul, and then breathed it upon 
 them, so that they were surrounded by it as by an 
 atmosphere, and inhaled it as the very breath of the 
 Spirit of God, which indeed it was, coming through 
 him as the Spirit's instrument. This was a process 
 which was symbolized by the Saviour when he 
 breathed upon his disciples and said, " Receive the 
 Holy Spirit," and which he expounded unto them 
 
Minishy at Racine. 75 
 
 when he said, " It is the spirit that quickeneth. The 
 words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they 
 are hfe." 
 
 The influence of this kind of preaching was pene- 
 trating and persuasive, and could not easily be re- 
 sisted. It was difficult for the most captious to an- 
 tagonize it, and strong men would find that it had 
 taken hold of them without their knowing it, and 
 they had yielded to it unawares. Their spirits had 
 inhaled the needed truth as unconsciously as their 
 lungs had inhaled the needed air. 
 
 However, this atmosphere that was breathed from 
 Mr. Humphrey's preaching was not always of the 
 soothing and zephyr-like kind. There was generally 
 present in it the ozone of a vigorous spiritual tonic, 
 and sometimes it stirred the assembly as perceptibly as 
 a gale stirs the sea, and sometimes, though not often, it 
 was like the breath of the divine wrath, and came with 
 an infliction of pain to the undefended soul as the 
 breath of a Wisconsin " blizzard" does to the unpro- 
 tected cheek or brow. But it was never a manufac- 
 tured storm, gotten up for stage eflect. It came by its 
 own propulsion from the calm and passionless depths 
 of changeless goodness and infinite reason, and it was 
 as useless to quarrel with it as to fight against God 
 and the truth. It was never the needless severity of 
 the preacher's passion, but always the necessary se- 
 
"j^ Zeplianiah Moore Hinnplirey. 
 
 verity of righteousness and love, so that, though he 
 was searching and severe enough at times, he was 
 never abusive of " sinners." He used that word very 
 sparingly, and never indiscriminately or flippantly. 
 He had respect for the rational and moral faculties, 
 and reverence for the souls even of wicked men, and 
 they knew it, and he held their attention and seldom 
 offended them, and often convinced and persuaded 
 and transformed them. As when he was a boy, with 
 as positive a nature as any other boy, he was never 
 known to quarrel with any, so when he became a 
 preacher, with as positive a doctrine and teaching as 
 any other, he aroused no quarrels. The severe things 
 he uttered were so manifestly the voice of God and 
 reason and goodness, speaking through him, that 
 even bad men could not quarrel with liiin, even if 
 they did with the truth. 
 
 There was a man living at Racine at that time, a 
 strong, sensible, shrewd man of business, a cautious, 
 discriminating, critical, merciless judge of character, 
 not appreciative of refinement or nice culture, or 
 caring to be, but attaching supreme value to clear, 
 honest, hard common sense, and utterly intolerant, if 
 not denunciatory, of any absence of it ; and it is a re- 
 markable testimony to the sturdy, plain, practical side 
 of Dr. Humphrey's ministry at Racine that this man, 
 who attended upon the whole of it, not only became 
 
Pastoral Work at Racine. 77 
 
 a steadfast admirer, but to this day warms up with 
 enthusiasm at the very mention of his name, through 
 sheer admiration of Dr. Humphrey's unvarying prac- 
 tical wisdom and genuine, infallible good sense. 
 
 The theology of Dr. Humphrey's preaching was 
 Calvinistic in the spirit rather than in the letter. 
 That is to say, he preached the doctrines of that sys- 
 tem without making much use of its technical terms. 
 He took his nomenclature from the vocabulary of the 
 Bible rather than from that of the catechism. He 
 was grounded from his youth in the Westminster 
 standards, and he retained to the end of his life an 
 honest adherence to them, not in the " ipsissima 
 verba'' sense, but for ''substance of doctrine. '' 
 
 Mr. Wilson very justly and appreciatively says of 
 him, " He had mental courage, but he was no adven- 
 turer in the world of thought. He was awake to 
 what was new and kindly disposed toward it, but he 
 was not a man to lift up the axe upon the carved 
 work of the sanctuary. He was restrained by a holy 
 conservatism from touching lightly anything whereby 
 God "had made himself known." 
 
 Much might be said about his pastoral work, but 
 little need be said, because so much is implied and can 
 readily be inferred from what has been said concern- 
 ing the adaptation of his preaching to the needs and 
 conditions of his people. This could only be done 
 
78 Zcplianiah Moore HuDiphrey. 
 
 by his knowing them ; and he did know them indi- 
 vidually, had a photograph of each on his mind, and 
 was thus able to adapt himself to all their varieties 
 of character and condition. 
 
 He was much among them, in their houses and at 
 their places of business, and manifested a personal in- 
 terest in all that pertained to their welfare. His habits 
 of study were so systematic, and his work in study 
 hours so prompt and economical of time, that his 
 pastoral work was a semi-recreation, furnishing va- 
 riety and comparative rest, and never seemed to 
 crowd him. 
 
 He had no selfish objects to accomplish, but lived 
 and breathed and thought and studied and worked 
 for his people, and they knew it. They knew also 
 that he was a good man, honest and true, from the 
 centre of his heart to the very finger-ends of his life, 
 and they trusted and believed in him, and he had 
 great personal influence and power with them. 
 
 The present pastor of that church. Rev. Dr. Cor- 
 win, says, " Perhaps more than any other man. Dr. 
 Humphrey has left the impress of his personal excel- 
 lence and his broad, scholarly culture alike upon the 
 religious and educational interests of this city." 
 
His Marriage 
 
 79 
 
 XII. 
 
 TT was during Mr. Humphrey's third year at Racine 
 -■- that he became acquainted with Miss Harriette 
 L. Sykes, who had come from her home in Westfield, 
 New York, to spend the winter with some friends in 
 that city, and in 1853 (April 20th), she became his wife. 
 While we are not permitted to say anything as 
 directly concerning her, we owe it to him — it is a 
 necessary part of our record of his life — to say that he 
 regarded her as an equal part of it. He honored her, 
 even as she honored him, and more than this on the 
 part of either would have been idolatry. She entered 
 into all his studies and all his schemes for Christian 
 teaching and Christian usefulness, and was a co-effi- 
 cient factor in the carrying out of those plans. And 
 in all that is said in these pages concerning the 
 beauty and efficiency of his work, he would have us 
 recognize between the lines the unwritten name of 
 one who was as present with him in his intellectual 
 and spiritual as in his outward and visible life, one 
 who studied with him, thought with him, planned 
 with him, worked with him, and in every possible 
 way cheered and strengthened and helped him. 
 
 The harmony and happiness of their married life 
 was complete, and during its twenty-eight years seven 
 children were given to them, six daughters and one 
 
8o 
 
 ZcphaniaJi Aloore Hnmplirey. 
 
 son. Four of these, including the son, went before 
 in their childhood, and are now with the father, con- 
 stituting that part of the family which is in heaven. 
 The other three remain to be a comfort and treasure 
 to their widowed mother, the oldest having married 
 Professor Edward P. Morris, now at Drury College, 
 Springfield (Missouri) ; the second, matured in her 
 young womanhood, and able to be a help as well as a 
 comfort by her mother's side; and the youngest, who, 
 with the femininized name of the father, was called 
 Zephine, is still young enough to be a sweet and 
 blessed care, as well as a comfort and treasure to the 
 mother. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 '^T^HE representation that has been given of Mr. 
 -*- Humphrey as preacher and pastor at Racine 
 will serve equally well in connection with his other 
 parishes, except that he was constantly growing. 
 There was no other noticeable change in him, except 
 as an increased mastery of his methods and his mate- 
 rial led to an enlargement and increased excellence of 
 his work. His acquaintance with his great text-book, 
 the Bible, became more profound and extensive and 
 varied, and thus the treasury of his tlionglits was en- 
 larged, from which he could " bring forth things new 
 and old," 
 
Gois to Mihvaitkcc. 
 
 8i 
 
 His diligent study of nature and of history in- 
 creased his power of ready and vnvid illustratioii. His 
 growing knowledge of men and of the philosophy 
 of mind augmented his success in the varied and dis- 
 criminating application of truth to the conditions and 
 dispositions of his hearers. 
 
 Continued and abundant experience perfected the 
 skill and beauty of his already felicitous and charming 
 style of expressing his thoughts. 
 
 So that he was simply advancing and improving 
 upon himself, and was able to adapt himself to the 
 larger demands of the larger parishes to which he 
 was called. Carrying with him the same habits of in- 
 dustry, and the same spirit of devotion to his work, 
 and the same excellencies of disposition and charac- 
 ter, he thus carried the elements of sure success 
 with him, and he was equally prospered and useful 
 wherever he went. 
 
 He left Racine for Milwaukee, because the interests 
 of the church at large seemed to demand his presence 
 at the more important centre of influence and power. 
 
 Dr. Patterson says that " in less than three years 
 
 he became, it is probable, the leading minister in the 
 
 State, in point of quiet strength and commanding 
 
 power. To those of us who knew his unobtrusive 
 
 manner and modest demeanor, alike in the pulpit and 
 
 out of it, it seemed a marvel that amid the bustling 
 
 6 
 
82 Zephaniah Moore Humphrey. 
 
 activity of a rapidly-growing city at the West such a 
 man should so speedily have gained a position among 
 the very first of his brethren, and be deemed worthy 
 of any pulpit far or near. During this period, as be- 
 fore, Dr. Humphrey was never suspected of ambition 
 for notoriety, or a desire to occupy any position that 
 might be deemed honorable to himself for such a rea- 
 son. When a leader in the church, as in earlier 
 years, it seemed to be his simple aim to become more 
 and more fitted for useful labors, and to do the work 
 set before him in the best manner, embracing every 
 department of Christian activity and influence for 
 good." 
 
 This is a golden record, made by one who knows 
 what is golden. It is a generous testimony to the re- 
 markable combination in Mr. Humphrey of quietness 
 with energy, and humility with conspicuous leader- 
 ship and princely prominence. 
 
 But another unsought-for promotion awaited him. 
 At Dr. Patterson's suggestion, the First Presbyterian 
 Church in Chicago gave him a call to its pastorate. 
 The suggestion was prompted by kindness to both 
 the church and the man, as well as by the accus- 
 tomed wisdom of the suggestor. 
 
 It was publicly supposed that Mr. Humphrey would 
 not be willing to remove, or allowed by his church to 
 remove, from his position in Milwaukee. But Dr. 
 
Accepts a Call to Chicago. 
 
 83 
 
 Patterson knew privately a reason for believing the 
 contrary. That reason is very delicately given in Dr. 
 Patterson's address, page 9. 
 
 It was essentially this, that Mr. Humphrey could 
 not bring himself into complete accord with the Con- 
 gregationalism of his church at Milwaukee, and was 
 unwilling to antagonize it. He had become con- 
 vinced that the organic structure of that Congregation- 
 alism was neither scriptural nor expedient. He had no 
 conflict with the church, nor they with him. Their 
 mutual relations were pleasant and peaceful from first 
 to last, so that it was not the experience of pressure, 
 as in the case of President Edwards at Northampton, 
 a hundred years earlier, but the pressure of experi- 
 ence that led him to prefer the Presbyterian to the 
 Congregational Church polity, and he distinctly de- 
 clared at the time that he could not and would not 
 have left Milwaukee except for the conscientious 
 and therefore insurmountable conviction that the 
 line of his duty led him into the Presbyterian Church. 
 Therefore the call to the First Church in Chicago 
 was opportune and open to him, and he accepted 
 it. 
 
 Here he entered upon a still larger and more invit- 
 ing field of labor. Again the generous testimony of 
 his co-presbyter and near neighbor, Dr. Patterson, 
 comes to our aid, and with a grateful appreciation of 
 
84 Zeplianiah Moore HitnipJirey. 
 
 both its justness and its generosity, we quote it from 
 his memorial address, pp. 9 and 10 : 
 
 " Here, as elsewhere, his labors were quietly but 
 arduously performed. ' Careful progress in all direc- 
 tions' was his motto. He created no great sensation 
 as a preacher, but steadily gained the increasing 
 respect of his congregation and of the whole com- 
 munity as a clear, attractive, and forcible expounder 
 of divine truth in its practical applications. . . . 
 
 " He only needed to be known in our great and 
 stirring community to be honored as a finished and 
 impressive preacher of the gospel and a Christian 
 gentleman of rare accomplishments. I well remem- 
 ber with what respect and admiration he was spoken 
 of by the educated young men of our city beyond 
 the pale of his own congregation, and the high esteem 
 in which he was held by his ministerial brethren of all 
 denominations. Perhaps the best part of all the good 
 work he did in Chicago consisted in the remarkably 
 fine organhatioji of his people, younger and older, for 
 systematic beneficence and for Christian efficiency in 
 Sunday-school and mission enterprises. . . . 
 
 " From that day onward the social, moral, and spir- 
 itual forces of that church have been gaining strength, 
 until it has visibly assumed a position of commanding 
 influence such as few other churches in the West now 
 occupy. It is worth more than nine years of even 
 
Quality of his Chicago Congregation. 85 
 
 such a life to have contributed in such large measure 
 to the permanent character of such a Christian organ- 
 ization in such a centre of commercial, social, politi- 
 cal, and religious power, in the midst of the prospec- 
 tive millions and scores of millions of the Northwest." 
 Mr. Humphrey was greatly favored in respect to 
 the kinds of men that he drew around him at Chicago, 
 and around whom he threw the silken cords of his 
 influence, — active business men in the very prime of 
 their lives, some men of highest education and finest 
 culture, some men of large enterprise and prominent 
 influence, men of sterling worth and judicial prudence, 
 men of conspicuous and persevering energy, generous 
 and whole-souled men, and throngs of younger men 
 just entering upon lives of activity and influence in 
 the great and growing city. Over all these and others 
 undescribed, the men and women and children of his 
 congregation, he not only gained a strong influence, 
 but the manifold excellencies of his ministry, to which 
 no good quality seemed to be wanting, so touched all 
 classes of them, and touched each individual of them 
 at so many points, that he had their peculiar and un- 
 bounded affection. He and the nameless one by his 
 side were beloved, admired, honored by all and sin- 
 gular of this large parish to such degree as seldom 
 falls to the lot of minister or any other mortal man. 
 Nothing was ever more genuine and legitimate than 
 
86 
 
 Zcphaniah Moore Humphrey. 
 
 this unanimous and almost supreme affection of this 
 people for Mr. and Mrs. Humphrey, and yet it is too 
 sacred and tender a thing to be spoken of more par- 
 ticularly, and we will only add that when the General 
 Assembly of the Presbyterian Church met with this 
 First Church in Chicago in 1870, some years after he 
 had left it, although the movement for making him 
 moderator originated in Philadelphia, and was strong 
 from the first by reason of his acknowledged ability 
 and fitness for the position, yet a manifest desire both 
 to gratify and endorse this undiminished affection and 
 admiration of Mr. Humphrey's Chicago people for 
 him showed itself in his election to the moderator- 
 ship, which high and difficult position he filled as 
 creditably to himself and as satisfactorily to all con- 
 cerned as he did each and every other position that 
 he ever occupied. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 "DUT, notwithstanding Mr. Humphrey's continued 
 -'^ usefulness at Chicago, and the peculiarly strong 
 mutual affection between him and his people, there 
 comes another change of place to be accounted for. 
 
 He had been repeatedly crippled and Mrs. Humph- 
 rey several times alarmingly prostrated by the severe 
 climate of Chicago, in connection with their consum- 
 ing devotion to their work. 
 
Invited to Pliiladelpliia. 
 
 87 
 
 In 1868, at the end of summer, they returned from 
 their Hberal vacation not recruited. At their tea-table, 
 in the presence of a brother minister, this matter of 
 health was the subject of conversation. Mr. Humph- 
 rey said to his wife, " You initst leave Chicago." She 
 replied, across the table, " You must leave Chicago." 
 
 The brother minister said nothing, but on going to 
 his study wrote a few lines that very evening to a 
 friend in Philadelphia, saying, " It is a settled thing 
 that Dr. Humphrey, for health's sake, must leave 
 Chicago. Perhaps Calvary Church will be interested 
 to know it." 
 
 A few days later Dr. Humphrey was surprised by 
 the receipt of a letter from Calvary Church in Philadel- 
 phia, saying, " We are told that you must leave Chi- 
 cago. Will you consider a call from us ?" And before 
 he could get an answer to them the call itself came. 
 
 His family physician, one of his warmest admirers, 
 had the courage and fidelity to tell him frankly that 
 it was his duty to go. And when his people remon- 
 strated, and offered to wait for him during several 
 years of rest, and signifying their desire to do any- 
 thing that might be needful to bring him back to 
 them and keep him and Mrs. Humphrey among 
 them, his constant and only answer, given amid his 
 tears sometimes, was, " All that does not remove the 
 difficulty : we cannot live in Chicago." 
 
88 ZepJianiaJi Moore Hiiniplirey. 
 
 And so the separation was accomplished, amid uni- 
 versal regrets and many tears. 
 
 The story of this great trial to pastor and people, 
 and of the noble spirit of submission to the divine 
 will with which they bore it, is told in a pamphlet 
 printed at the time by order of the congregation. 
 This pamphlet contains Dr. Humphrey's letter of 
 resignation, in which he sets forth the one cause 
 which necessitates his going, and the predominant 
 spirit of the communication is, as it needs to be, a 
 ^spirit of resignation indeed. 
 
 The pamphlet next contains the resolutions of 
 response, adopted amid deepest emotion by the con- 
 gregation, which should also be designated as resolu- 
 tions of resignation. 
 
 And then comes, finally, the "Farewell Sermon" by 
 Dr. Humphrey, from the text (Acts xxi. 14), "And 
 xvJien lie zvoiild not be persuaded they ceased, saying. The 
 will of the Lord be doneT This sermon was written 
 and uttered, as the text indicates, not for himself, but 
 for his people and from their stand-point, and in order 
 to help tJiem to resign. 
 
 From the above-mentioned resolutions of the con- 
 gregation, the following is a brief extract : 
 
 " In taking leave of our pastor, he has from us that 
 deep sense of gratitude and obligation, which nothing 
 but faithful and untiring devotion to duty and truth 
 
Farezvell and Removal. 
 
 89 
 
 can evoke, and which comes alone from honest hearts 
 in the hour of separation. He has given us nine 
 years of the work-time and summer of his life. We 
 hoped to have travelled on with him well into the 
 autumn, but we shall all treasure up and carry with 
 us to our journey's end the much that, with his learn- 
 ing and devotion to truth, he has taught us of the 
 Christian life and hope." 
 
 This is but saying, under feeling so strong and full 
 as evidently to embarrass utterance, what, in its es- 
 sential purport, each of the congregations to which 
 he ministered would heartily endorse. 
 
 XV. 
 
 nr^HE seven years of Dr. Humphrey's pastorate in 
 -*- the serene and cultured city of Philadelphia 
 had a peculiar relation to the full maturity of his life 
 as preacher and pastor. They were years of contin- 
 ued and unrelaxed industry. The common atmos- 
 phere of business and society, as of nature and climate, 
 was less stimulating there than at Chicago, yet /^t' was 
 never more stimulated. As he had always seemed 
 calm and judicially deliberate amid the eager excite- 
 ments of the West, which were intensified at Chicago, 
 so was he always animated and energetic amid his 
 quieter surroundings in Philadelphia. The strong 
 
90 Zcplianiali Moore Hinnplirey. 
 
 and evenly-balanced elements of his inner life were 
 adequate to both these results. 
 
 There seemed to be nothing wanting to him at 
 Chicago, and yet evidently much was made up to 
 him at Philadelphia. He was in more direct and close 
 connection with the centres of organization for the 
 world-wide work of the church. In these organiza- 
 tions, and outside of them, he was brought in contact 
 and co-operation with a larger number of the wisest 
 and strongest and most richly endowed men of the 
 church and of the nation, men older and riper than 
 he. He had some of them in his session. He 
 preached to them in his congregation. He sat with 
 them at the meetings of permanent committees, where 
 large enterprises of Christian beneficence and of public 
 improvement were under consideration. He met them 
 also in social life. All this was healthfully stimulating 
 to him. It broadened his horizons and thus enlarged 
 him. It drew from the deepest fountains of his intel- 
 lectual and moral nature, and thus not only ripened 
 him in directions where there was an imperceptible 
 unripeness before, but gave a richer bloom and a finer 
 flavor in directions where there was ripeness before. 
 
 In his earlier ministry he had a favorite sermon on 
 a part of one of the verses of the 104th Psalm, where, 
 leaving out the needless and weakening Italics, he finds 
 for his text the words, " The trees of the Lord are full" 
 
" TJie Trees of the Lord!' 
 
 91 
 
 This was a very suggestive and uplifting sermon in the 
 direction of fulness of Christian growth and fruitful- 
 ness, securable from the fulness of the divine provisions. 
 
 " The trees of the Lord," — i.e., those trees which the 
 Lord has chosen to make complete, — the ideal trees 
 (Ez. xxxi. 3-9), are not only full of the sap and juice 
 of an abundant vitality, but they strike their roots 
 deep into the fertility of the soils and sub-soils, and 
 they develop upward and outward in vastness and 
 fulness and symmetry, and if they are fruit-trees, they 
 load themselves with rich and thrifty fruit, and as they 
 mature the nourishment drawn from the deepest soils 
 and the aromas inhaled from the purest air and the 
 fullest sunshine show themselves in the choicest and 
 handsomest and most finely flavored fruit on the very 
 topmost branches." That is the " tree of the Lord" 
 when it is "full." 
 
 Mr. Humphrey did not know when he wrote that 
 sermon how accurately he was prophesying. But 
 much of its highest significance was spiritually real- 
 ized in himself, in the attainments of those culminat- 
 ing years of his life, as preacher and pastor, which 
 were passed at Philadelphia. The deepest elements 
 of his nature were quickened by the influences that 
 surrounded him and the claims that were made upon 
 his mind and heart, and the highest qualities of his 
 character assumed a special bloom and beauty. 
 
92 Zcplianiali Moore HnmpJwey. 
 
 It was while he was at Philadelphia that the long- 
 coveted privilege of a trip to Europe was granted 
 him. He spent a few busy, happy, fruitful months 
 with his family in Great Britain and on the Conti- 
 nent. 
 
 He felt himself greatly profited by that voyage and 
 journey. It could not be otherwise but that he would 
 be quickened and enriched by it in mind and heart. 
 Not only a lover, but a very priest of nature, who 
 more than he would find grand and inspiring views 
 of nature and of nature's God everywhere, — on the 
 sea, amid the lakes of England, where the poetry of 
 a peaceful religion has so many shrines ; amid the 
 Highlands of Scotland, where the wild and craggy 
 scenery is in such perfect consonance with the turbu- 
 lent events and heroic deeds that are historically asso- 
 ciated with it; and among the mountains of Switzer- 
 land ? 
 
 A lover and a connoisseur of art, who more than he, 
 with his quick eye and appreciative discernment, 
 would catch almost at a glance in the cathedrals and 
 ruined abbeys of Great Britain and in the galleries of 
 Italy and Paris what long-continued study would not 
 give to the ordinary traveller ? 
 
Professorship at Latic Seminary. 
 
 93 
 
 XVI. 
 
 TN the spring of 1875, Dr. Humphrey was elected 
 -'- to the chair of " Ecclesiastical History^ and 
 Church Polity" in Lane Theological Seminary at 
 Cincinnati, which appointment, after careful consider- 
 ation, he deemed it both a duty and a privilege to 
 accept. He entered upon the duties of that profes- 
 sorship in September, 1875, at the beginning of the 
 seminary year. 
 
 His ability to adapt himself to his new work was 
 made manifest at the outset by his " Inaugural Ad- 
 dress," the subject of which was " History as a Record 
 of Thought,'' — not a record of events merely, but of the 
 thoughts, ideas, intelligent purposes and plans which 
 are sure to be found underlying the events ; human 
 thoughts and purposes lying nearer the surface, but 
 always God's thoughts and purposes ultimately and 
 at the bottom. Even as the devout Kepler, after the 
 assured discovery of the great law of the planetary 
 system, bowed his knees and reverently said, " O 
 God ! I am but thinking thy thoughts after thee !" 
 
 But the history of human events is a record of 
 God's thoughts and purposes, revealing themselves 
 in and through men's thoughts and purposes. This 
 is Dr. Humphrey's idea, and he illustrates it thus : 
 
94 ZcpJianiah Moore HiinipJircy. 
 
 " It is common to speak of a tree, a flower, a bit of 
 moss as revealing God's thought in their construc- 
 tion, but they reveal it equally in their uses, as 
 adapted to promote the well-being of man. When a 
 tree is used for a ship's mast, a flower for the healing 
 of a disease, a tuft of moss for a cushion, a new reve- 
 lation is made of the thoughts of God as well as of 
 the thoughts of man ; for God made these things 
 with reference to these uses, and then constituted the 
 mind of man so that it should discover the uses and 
 apply them." 
 
 Thus a so;// is put into history. It is no more a 
 dead catalogue of facts and names and figures, but 
 spirit and life are imparted to all its records, and a 
 meaning and importance given to the study of it 
 which can but awaken the interest and enthusiasm of 
 every susceptible student. Dr. Humphrey gives his 
 own expression of this idea, near the close of his 
 address, when he says, " Here, then, is disclosed the 
 place which is held by ecclesiastical history in the 
 curriculum of a seminary whose object is the training 
 of young men for the gospel ministry. Were its 
 study that of facts alone, irrespective of what they 
 teach, it would have but a minor importance. Were 
 its end served by filling the mind with names and 
 dates, — names of no more significance than those cut 
 on the tombstones of a cemetery, dates telling 
 
History as a Record of Thought. 95 
 
 nothing more than the figures on the milestones of a 
 deserted road, — the end would scarcely authorize the 
 beginning of the study. Those who, in pursuing 
 their theological course, have regarded the history of 
 the church as only this, or chiefly, have failed to un- 
 derstand the lowest of its uses. They have found it 
 duller than a graveyard, and drier than the dust which 
 is nothing to them though it be the dust of dead 
 heroes. It is not strange. But if one rightly appre- 
 hends at the outset what this study is, and what it can 
 do for him, he will pursue it with all the interest and 
 enthusiasm of which his nature is capable." 
 
 He entered with his characteristically quiet eager- 
 ness upon the duties of his professorship, and such 
 were the breadth and comprehensiveness of his at- 
 tainments, that he seemed to all but himself as well 
 qualified for it as though he had devoted years of 
 his previous life to studies pertaining to this very de- 
 partment. His system of instruction took mature 
 shape and character almost at once, and from the first 
 he was ready for his classes with the most and the 
 best that it was possible for them to receive. 
 
 Possibly he was, in one respect, a better teacher for 
 them than he would be after years of experience in 
 that particular chair, because he was a fellow-learner 
 with them, and less likely to overlook any helpful 
 hints they might need, more likely to lead them step 
 
96 Zcpliaiiiali Moore Humphrey. 
 
 by step, instead of springing with them across broad 
 intervals which would be familiar to him, but unknown 
 ground to them. 
 
 At all events he was completely successful from the 
 first, so far as the stimulation and guidance and in- 
 struction of his classes was concerned, albeit during 
 those five years the whole subject of history, as the 
 record of divine and human thoughts, — of history as 
 connected with the " Centrality of the Cross," or with 
 God's plan of redemption, — was opening itself so 
 grandly to his investigations, and organizing itself so 
 clearly under the presentative and representative facul- 
 ties of his mind, that his associates in the seminary 
 could not adequately express their sense of loss in the 
 sudden interruption and termination of his work. 
 
 But, aside from his success in his own particular 
 department of instruction, his influence in the semi- 
 nary as a man was felt to be of incalculable value. A 
 man of genial and sprightly conversation, of pure mo- 
 tives, of almost infallible good judgment, of cheering 
 courage and hopefulness, of genuine but unconscious 
 greatness, of beautiful completeness and symmetry of 
 character, his presence was a constant blessing to the 
 students, and they received only good from him on 
 whatever side and at whatever points they touched him. 
 
 However, liis usefulness in the seminary, outside 
 of his own special department, was not all of this 
 
MoDiiiig Lectures. 97 
 
 unconscious and unlaborious kind. He has left an- 
 other manuscript book, which reveals the most indus- 
 trious and skilful preparation on his part to instruct 
 and fortify the young men in every possible direction 
 of prospective usefulness. 
 
 For example, there were certain weeks during which 
 he would have all the classes together each morning 
 for an hour, in connection with morning prayers in 
 the seminary chapel. He would have a carefully- 
 digested plan of instruction on some important sub- 
 ject for all the mornings of each of his weeks, — i.e., 
 the general theme would extend through the entire 
 week, with a special subordinate theme or topic for 
 each of the six mornings. The students would con- 
 duct the devotional service, each in his turn, morning 
 by morning, and then would come this lecture or 
 practical study. 
 
 One of these weeks, e.g., was that preceding the 
 Presidential election in 1880. He occupied them with 
 appropriate topics as follows : 
 
 Monday — God's Control of the Nations. 
 
 Tuesday — Relations of the Gospel to Liberty. 
 
 Wednesday — Toleration in Political Opinion. 
 
 Thursday — Godliness as a Political Force. 
 
 PViday — Education of the Political Conscience. 
 
 Saturday — Duty of Prayer for Voters and Rulers. 
 
 Can anything be conceived more wise and thorou^h- 
 7 
 
98 ZcplianiaJi JMoore HinupJiny. 
 
 going on the part of an instructor, or more healthfully 
 and comprehensively educating for young men who 
 are soon to be pastors and teachers in republican 
 communities ? Can anything be conceived more com- 
 plete than a system of instruction which embraces 
 such particulars ? 
 
 The successive mornings of another week are occu- 
 pied with " Motives in Life" as a general theme. See 
 what wealth of instruction is prepared for the young 
 men when the first morning embraces this, — 
 
 Monday — Pozver of Motive : 
 
 1. Life must have its motive in order to be tolerable. 
 
 2. Still more in order to be significant. 
 
 3. A ruling motive gives its character to the life. 
 
 4. When ruling motive is good, it gives even a com- 
 mon life power. 
 
 All this for Monday morning. Then for the other 
 five mornings of that week the various conceivable 
 ruling motives of life, worthy and unworthy, such as 
 " Pleasure," " Wealth," " Personal Power," " Love," 
 and " God's Glory," are compared and discussed 
 throughout the week. 
 
 Another week was occupied, morning by morning, 
 with the '^Mystery of Godlinessy (i Peter iii. 16.) 
 And the general theme for still another was the 
 " Precious things of Peter!' 
 
 One of the most interesting of these subjects, and 
 
Mornins: Lectures. 
 
 99 
 
 most suggestive of the comprehensiveness and value 
 of the series, was this, — " Action of Christianity upon 
 the surfaces of our individual life : " 
 
 1, This action may be from without only, which 
 would produce a hollow character. 
 
 2. It should be from within outward. Then it is 
 character striking through, — the external is repre- 
 sentative of the internal. It is the bloom and fra- 
 grance of real fruit rather than paint on the waxen 
 counterfeit. 
 
 The importance of this particular series of medita- 
 tions is very obvious, inasmuch as it would reveal to 
 the students how, as ministers and as men, they will 
 be judged, and will have to be judged, by appearances. 
 What they appear on the surface will represent what 
 they are at heart. Therefore the importance of 
 having all their superficial manners and habits made 
 pure and comely and pleasing by being the out- 
 shining and expression of pure principles and good 
 character within, — " Let your light so shine," etc. 
 
 Still another week is occupied with "The Minis- 
 terial Office," with such topics, from morning to 
 morning, as " The Nature of the Office," " The Dig- 
 nity of the Office," and so on till Saturday. 
 
 Out of this last week's meditations grew the ser- 
 mon already referred to, with which he made his " ten- 
 strike," and concerning which his friend Wilson says, 
 
100 Zephaniah Moore Humphrey. 
 
 " No riper or sweeter discourse have I ever read from 
 any one. It smells like the clean linen which has been 
 laid away in lavender by the old-fashioned people, or 
 impresses one like a sweet song from tlie heavenly 
 world, about which there is no discord." 
 
 This was the last sermon of his life. It is well 
 worthy of notice how it grew out of careful, conscien- 
 tious study, each several topic being closely consid- 
 ered as itself a subject for a lecture ; and, moreover, 
 how it grew out of a keen discernment of the actual 
 "needs of his hearers, for it was originally given on 
 " The Ministerial Office" to actual candidates /or 
 that office. 
 
 No wonder his most intimate associate in the 
 faculty, Rev. Dr. Morris, should say of him, after he 
 was gone, " With great care and conscientiousness 
 he took up his particular duties, prosecuting each in- 
 quiry diligently, carefully summing up the results of 
 every fresh investigation, increasing steadily both in 
 the amount of his instruction and in his capacity to 
 stimulate and enrich the minds committed to his 
 training." 
 
 No wonder the faculty should unite in saying, " In 
 the department of history, he caused his own spirit 
 to give unwonted interest to the facts and philosophy 
 and theology he brought into the class-room. 
 
 " In his more general relations with us, his personal 
 
Private Character. 
 
 lOI 
 
 power was a constant charm, while his ready faciHty 
 and wide and varied knowledge made every exercise 
 in which he took part to be attractive and useful. 
 
 " He was an admirable teacher, and a true and cul- 
 tured and delightful man. We are much indebted to 
 him. We are thankful that he lived and wrought 
 with us so long, and we cherish his memory with a 
 deep and abiding conviction that few men who are 
 eulogized after their death were so worthy of the 
 words that praise them as was he who had won so 
 warm a place in our .hearts." 
 
 XVII. 
 
 T N these chapters we have been tracing Mr. Hum- 
 -"- phrey's footsteps as those of a public man, 
 preacher and pastor and professor. 
 
 Yet he was so void of pretence and mere seeming, 
 what he did was so directly the result of what he was, 
 his public strength was so manifestly rooted in the 
 excellences of his private character, that the consider- 
 ation of his professional life has been a constant dis- 
 closure of his private traits. Indeed, he may be justly 
 said not to have had any professional life. It was so 
 absorbed into his personal life that he really did 
 nothing in a perfunctory or professional way. 
 
 In like manner, if we should proceed to notice more 
 
I02 
 
 ZepJianiali Moore HuinpJirey, 
 
 closely some of his personal characteristics, which 
 might seem to pertain only to his private life, we shall 
 not fail to perceive again that they are among the 
 sources of his public strength and usefulness, and thus 
 we shall still be indirectly considering him, and more 
 fully revealing him as a public man. 
 
 One of Mr. Humphrey's personal characteristics, 
 known only to those who knew him privately, was a 
 remarkable capacity for affairs, a genius for prag- 
 matics. 
 
 Almost any kind of business trust or superintend- 
 ency could have been confided to his judgment and 
 skill. He had a ready acquaintance with the pro- 
 cesses and details of the useful arts and a talent for 
 mechanism, so that he would have quickly learned to 
 manage a farm or a factory, or to perform the duties 
 of an engineer or machinist, or to plan a house, either 
 with reference to the tout ensemble of its architecture, 
 or to the arrangement and finishing and furnishing of 
 the rooms, or to the minutest details of practical con- 
 venience from cellar to garret. 
 
 He had an instinctive skill in the use of tools, so 
 that there was scarcely anything he could not do or 
 make. If there was a hitch in the family sewing- 
 machine, or a hidden screw loose in any of the physi- 
 cal domestic machinery, he knew how to find it and 
 to fix it. 
 
Personal C/uvactcristics 103 
 
 Nothing; of a practical or useful nature escaped his 
 observation or eluded his knowledge. He was obser- 
 vant of bodily ailments and their remedies. He could, 
 if need be, select a dress pattern or scarf or shawl for 
 his wife or daughters with as discriminating a judg- 
 ment as to quality and economy, and as nice an ad- 
 justment to their several requirements and tastes as 
 could be done by themselves. He was skilful in the 
 use of the fishing-rod, and could manufacture his own 
 flies, and paddle his own canoe if need be, whether 
 literally or figuratively. 
 
 This characteristic was far more useful to him in his 
 public life than would at first be supposed, because 
 there went out from it a thousand invisible threads of 
 sympathy between him and all the various classes of 
 his people, and enabled him to understand them and 
 to make himself understood by them in numberless 
 little touches of instruction and influence, which are 
 especially effective because they are so delicate and 
 penetrating. 
 
 He had an excellent telescope, and spent many an 
 evening and night hour in observing the heavenly 
 bodies and showing them to others. 
 
 He also made himself the owner of a superior 
 microscope, and became expert in the use of it. In 
 his short rambles southward at Chicago, in the direc- 
 tion of Hyde Park, he was able, without the use of 
 
I04 ZcpliaiiiaJi Moore Huviphrcy. 
 
 the latter instrument, to find marshy places, and he 
 would take little vials with him, and in them would 
 bring home concealed worlds o? life and beauty, which 
 he would cause his microscope to reveal to himself 
 and others. 
 
 And all this, of course, from above and from be- 
 neath, was accumulated capital for him with which to 
 understand and illustrate truth concerning Him who 
 is at once the God of nature and of grace. His 
 telescope declared the glory of God, and his micro- 
 scope revealed Him who numbers the very hairs of 
 our heads. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 SOME allusion has been made to Mr. Humphrey's 
 sprightliness and humor. They were exuberant 
 in him, and made his life from boyhood through a 
 bright and sunny life. They made him invariably 
 one of the most genial and agreeable and entertaining 
 of companions. 
 
 But his sprightliness and humor, exuberant as they 
 were, never led to anybody's saying or feeling that he 
 was frivolous. The bright bubbles of his fun were 
 not blown from empty tubes, but they floated upon 
 the surface of an habitual thoughtfulness. His jokes 
 were sharp without being cutting, pointed but never 
 with a sting ; they were genuine " pleasantries," and 
 
Witticisms. 105 
 
 a flavor of benevolence was usually manifest in them. 
 It was always a ''good humor" that flowed from him. 
 
 The quickness of his intellect was constantly re- 
 vealing itself by the promptness of his witticisms. 
 
 At one time, when he visited his nephew's home at 
 Chicago after months of separation, a patent meat- 
 chopper had been introduced into the house which 
 made noise enough for a patent reaper. It happened 
 that, just as Mr. Humphrey had entered the house, 
 almost before the mutual salutations were exchanged, 
 the machine started up in the kitchen, and the noise 
 was startlingly noticeable. " Music, you perceive," 
 said the nephew. " Yes, Chopin," was the instant 
 reply. 
 
 On a week's trouting expedition on the Beaver 
 Kill, we were riding, a dozen of us, including five or 
 six ministers, toward our wilderness camping-ground 
 in two large open wagons. In the forward wagon, 
 where Mr. Humphrey was, a lively discussion had 
 been in progress for an hour or two as they rode. 
 Some one of us, who were in the rear wagon, became 
 suspicious that a pot of angle-worms, which would be 
 very needful all the week for those not expert in the 
 use of the fly, had been left behind. So we hurried 
 up our horses till we overtook the forward wagon 
 and hailed our comrades in it, and as soon as they 
 stopped, so that they could hear us, we called out. 
 
Io6 ZcpJianiali Moore Hujnphrey. 
 
 " Are the worms in your wagon ?" Instantly Mr. 
 Humphrey rose from his seat and cried, " We have 
 debate here all the way : I am not sure about the 
 worms." However, the worms were found, and the 
 party and debate went on. 
 
 A lady, who was a relative of Mr. Humphrey, was 
 greatly annoyed by the stupidities or worse of one 
 of her servants, and the question, asked in Mr. Humph- 
 rey's presence, "What shall I do with this J?7/'(^/.<^" 
 brought the instant reply, "Punch her!" 
 
 A volume of sparkling fragments of humor might 
 be collected from his racy letters to his familiar 
 friends. 
 
 The above-mentioned nephew writes him a humor- 
 ous account of an experience he had, together with a 
 camping party of gentlemen and ladies ; the gentle- 
 men occupying one tent and the ladies another. A 
 storm of rain and wind came upon them at night, and 
 they were obliged to turn into wet beds, and the gusts 
 of wind and rain would not permit them to lie quietly 
 even in them. 
 
 Mr. Humphrey says, in reply, "Your letter is 
 justly chargeable with having disturbed the gravity 
 of this household. What a drenching you must have 
 had ! What a chance for conundrums in your moist 
 experience ! For example, take this, ' Caesar, which 
 am de wust time for' a gentleman to retire ? Gib it up ? 
 
Humorous Extracts. 107 
 
 Well, when he retires in disgust." Or this, ' When 
 is a man most unwilling to be disturbed ? Answer, 
 When he is intent.' Or this, for No. 3, ' Why ought 
 women to vote ? Answer, Because they can manage 
 their own share of a canvass in the stormiest times.' " 
 
 A friend, who was very fond of the family and 
 much beloved by them all, had sent a box of Christ- 
 mas gifts, containing a picture of Japanese life and a 
 go-bang board, and including among other things two 
 or three hundred shells or cartridges for Mr. Humph- 
 rey's breech-loader. Mr. Humphrey acknowledges 
 the receipt of the gifts in a bright letter, of the con- 
 tents of which the following are samples : 
 
 " We are more deeply in sympathy than ever with 
 the heathen of Japan, if the representative you have 
 sent is clad with the ordinary robes of the country. 
 It is shocking to contemplate the condition of a 
 people who have nothing at all next their skins but 
 such coats as they happen to have on. Civilization 
 in its rudest forms demands at least a flannel under- 
 garment. Zephine has just learned that the earth is 
 round, and her anxiety now is, whenever she wakes 
 or is going to sleep, to know what they are doing in 
 China. We shall now be able to show her Jioiv they 
 do in Japan, and %vhat they do without. 
 
 " Bessie is delighted with the go-bang. Lottie is 
 the only one of the daughters who, as to her hair, has 
 
io8 Zephaniah Moore Hmnplircy. 
 
 gone bang already. I hope to so confine Bessie's 
 attention to the game you have sent her that she 
 will go bang only on the board. I shall go bang 
 with my gun till the three or four hundred shells are 
 exhausted." 
 
 At the golden wedding of the aged father and 
 mother at Pittsfield in 1858, when all the children 
 were assembled, and some informal speeches were 
 made by the sons, the older brothers, Edward and 
 James, were disposed playfully to contrast the sub- 
 stantial plainness and ruggedness of the manner in 
 which tlicy had been reared in tlich- childhood with 
 the more elegant and indulgent and, as they alleged, 
 effeminate manner in which the younger children had 
 been reared, and the contrast was typified in the fact 
 that the older were rocked in a " bread-trough" cradle, 
 and the younger in a mahogany cradle. When Zepha- 
 niah's chance came to reply on behalf of the younger 
 members of the family, he gracefully accepted the 
 situation, with the remark that the " mahogany cradle 
 had a greater durability, as well as a higher polish, 
 than the ' bread-trough cradle.' " 
 
 Mr. Humphrey's graceful skill in the way of pleas- 
 ant and significant contrivances for special occasions 
 was beautifully manifested at this golden wedding. 
 
 His gift to the father (nearly eighty years old) was 
 a gold-headed cane with the inscription, " Hodie 
 
Happy Devices. 109 
 
 baciilum, eras corona'' {" To-day a staff, to-morrow a 
 crown"). 
 
 His gift to the mother, at the same time, was a 
 brooch or breastpin of hair-work. The body of 
 the brooch was a vine, made of the blended hair 
 of the father and mother, and gracefully tied into 
 a knot with several bows. The ends of the vine 
 were finished with plates of gold, inscribed with the 
 initials of the names of the parents. On this vine 
 were scattered ten grapes, each made of the hair of 
 one of the children, and each grape tipped with gold, 
 on which was engraved the initial of the name of the 
 child. 
 
 Kindred to this was a bright and sweet way he had 
 of designating persons and places, as when he called 
 his beautiful study at Cincinnati his " den" with an 
 " E" before it. 
 
 At one time, at Chicago, he awakened the keen 
 curiosity of all his children by telling them in the 
 morning that they should have a whole cow for din- 
 ner. When they came to the dinner-table, with their 
 expectations as eager as their appetites, the secret was 
 found to be that some pats of butter had been ob- 
 tained, each of which had the print of a cow on it, 
 and care was taken in the distribution of the butter 
 that each child should have a piece of the cow, till all 
 was divided among them, and whole dollars' worth of 
 
I TO ZephaniaJi Moore Hmnphrey. 
 
 happiness was extracted from the pat by the watchful 
 and benevolent humor of the father. 
 
 Thus he was perpetually carrying sunshine with 
 him into his own house, and into every group of 
 friends or acquaintances with whom he met, by means 
 of these pleasantries, paranomasias, little enigmas, 
 which bubbled up as easily from the fountain of his 
 humor as the little laughing jets of water do from the 
 hillside spring. And these were the more gratifying 
 to those about him for the reason that they were never 
 merely frivolous. They generally brought with them 
 some quickening of the intellect and some stimulation 
 of thought, as well as some gratification of the hu- 
 morous susceptibilities. Seldom was there a day of 
 his life in which some of these genial pleasantries did 
 not flow from him to enliven and cheer the pathway 
 of those who were journeying by his side. 
 
 Moreover, these jets of humor were ordinarily ac- 
 companied by a peculiarly bright and pleasing twinkle 
 of the eye and relaxation of the lips, which at the 
 same time were indescribably blended with a deeper 
 expression of sweet seriousness and profound good 
 will, showing that it was only on the surface that he 
 was joking, and that he was as ready, if need were, to 
 suffer for you as to smile for you. This background 
 of seriousness did not detract at all from the fun, but 
 enhanced it by the contrast, and enriched it by show- 
 
 -■J 
 
Camping in the Woods. 1 1 1 
 
 ing that it sparkled up from a deep and earnest nature. 
 So real was this connection of the serious with the 
 jovial in him, that some persons who have known 
 him for years have the settled feeling that he was a 
 sad man, and that he carried a sad and careworn face. 
 It is difficult to account for such a misinterpretation 
 of a man who was looked upon by those most inti- 
 mate with him, notw^ithstanding the sober earnestness 
 of his life, as one of the brightest and sunniest of 
 men, and as wearing an habitually serious indeed, but 
 uniformly happy and cheering face. 
 
 In the summer vacations we were repeatedly in the 
 " woods," camping and fishing. In each instance 
 there were young men with us who were previously 
 strangers to Mr. Humphrey, — different young men 
 from different places at the different times. He was 
 always the brightest and wittiest person in the party, 
 and the centre of social attraction, though very quiet 
 about it, and always refined and decorous, and the 
 fact could never be lost sight of that he was a Chris- 
 tian gentleman and a Christian minister, and that amid 
 all his recreative fishing he was, first and last, '' piscator 
 homininn.'" The young men would come home, some 
 of them graduates of colleges and belonging to cul- 
 tured families, and some of them irreligious young 
 men, would come home and tell their parents that it 
 seemed like the best part of their education to be with 
 
112 Zephaniah Moore Humphrey. 
 
 such a man as Mr. Humphrey, that they felt them- 
 selves lifted up by it to a higher level of social 
 feeling and moral motive, and to clearer views of what 
 life ought to be. 
 
 At one time we had a long discussion, at evening 
 in camp, on the subject of predestination and the 
 practical bearings of that doctrine, leaving the minds 
 of the young men in the state of confusion that 
 is usual after such discussions. But the time of our 
 evening prayers came, and it was Mr. Humphrey's 
 turn to lead in the service. He read a few appropri- 
 ate verses of Scripture, and explained them and the 
 subject we had been discussing in such a way that all 
 were satisfied, and some of those young men remem- 
 ber the event to this day, with the feeling that if they 
 do get befogged on that class of subjects, they will 
 have no need to surrender the doctrines which they 
 cannot fully understand. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 /^^NE of the greatest of the unconscious achieve- 
 ^^ ments of Dr. Humphrey's life was this: He 
 demonstrated that, even in the busy and driving 
 West, the highest culture is the mightiest forae for 
 moving men in the right direction. The mild might 
 
Pozver of Refinement and Culture. 113 
 
 is strongest, the gentlest strength is the conquering 
 strength. 
 
 It is commonly thought to be otherwise. It is 
 claimed that the more rough and abrupt methods are 
 the more effective in the pulpit and in the parish, 
 while the refined and polished methods are feeble and 
 comparatively fruitless. 
 
 This impression is assisted by the fact that so many 
 persons come from our colleges and seminaries into 
 our pulpits and parishes with a superficial culture and 
 an affectation of refinement and learning, the shallow- 
 ness of which is soon discovered, and then the con- 
 clusion is adopted that ministers are spoiled for 
 effectiveness by the higher degrees of culture and 
 refinement. 
 
 But here comes a man whose delicacy and gentle- 
 ness are like those of a woman. His culture and re- 
 finement are wellnigh supreme. And yet, from first 
 to last, his ministry is characterized by effectiveiiess, — 
 prompt, palpable, permanent, pervading effectiveness. 
 Why ? Because his fineness is not a mere polish on 
 the surface, but it is a fineness of substance all the 
 way through, like that of the Damascus blade. As 
 Dr. Johnson says in the funeral address, " Mr. Hum- 
 phrey was marked by great fineness of structure 
 everywhere : he was a fine spirit in a fine body 
 livinsf a fine life." 
 
114 Zephaniah Moore Hinnphrey. 
 
 It is not a refinement and delicacy of manner merely 
 but of the entire nature, in which no coarseness is, and 
 •from which, therefore, no coarseness can come. He 
 has a cultured speech because it is the expression of 
 a cultured soul. His sermons are beautifully written, 
 but it is the thought that beautifies the style, not the 
 style that beautifies the thought, just as the skilful 
 cutting of a diamond reveals the beauties of the gem, 
 does not make them. If the diamond-cutter attempts 
 to manufacture beauties on the surface of the gem, 
 he is sure to mar what he seeks to mend. It is 
 simply needful that he have a diamond and reveal it, 
 and it will furnish the flashes of splendor. So it was 
 Mr. Humphrey's way to have a thought and reveal 
 as clearly as possible its various phases, and the 
 beauties of his style are the legitimate result. His 
 felicitous illustrations are not for ornamentation but 
 for expression, otherwise they would not be felici- 
 tous. The beauty as well as the power are intrinsi- 
 cally in the thought, and only in the style as it ex- 
 presses the thought, and the expression is, after all, 
 inferior to the thought by as much as language is 
 at best an imperfect instrument of the mind and soul. 
 Speech can only approximate the completeness of 
 thinking and feeling and knowing. And so one of 
 Mr. Humphrey's friends, who had heard him, per- 
 haps, a thousand times, says, " In his preaching the 
 
Strcn^^tli out of Sweetness. 1 1 5 
 
 expression was enough below the strength and com- 
 pleteness of the thought to make the real power an 
 after-effect, rather than the felt power of the mo- 
 ment." 
 
 Another of his friends, a finely-educated man of 
 stalwart intellect, who was one of Mr. Humphrey's 
 strongest men and strongest admirers at Chicago, ex- 
 pressed the fear at one time that the charming beau- 
 ties of Dr. Humphrey's preaching would give the 
 impression of a lack of strength in it. The fear was 
 groundless, or at least, if such an impression were 
 given, it was short-lived, and was sure in due time to 
 correct itself The strength of his thought, of which 
 the beauties of his style were the bright epiphany, 
 was sure to make itself felt in its time. 
 
 So we find that while " beauty of spirit," "loveliness 
 of character," " refined sensibilities," " gentleness," 
 " urbanity," " courtesy," " sweetness," " elegance," 
 etc., are the expressions by which Mr. Humphrey was 
 characterized by persons fresh from his presence or 
 just out from under the sound of his voice, yet after 
 a while, when his preaching and influence had had 
 time to produce their fuller results, " strength," 
 "vigor," " quiet power," " great effectiveness" are the 
 terms used to describe the man and the character of 
 his work. 
 
 As Dr. Noyes says, "This quiet, cultured Christian 
 
ii6 Zeplianiah Moore Hiiniplircy. 
 
 man, of fine fibre and exquisite taste, so impregnated 
 with his ideas each community in which he lived, 
 West or East, that now, after from five to thirty years, 
 they are living ideas, and he \sfclt and loved more, if 
 possible, than when he was an every-day presence." 
 
 And when Dr. Corwin, of Racine, who only knew 
 Mr. Humphrey through his ripened reputation in that 
 city and throughout the Northwest, and only saw him 
 in the light of the ultimate judgment of those who 
 had known him for thirty years, w^hen he came to 
 preach about him, in his old church and before his 
 old people, he did not take for his text, " How beau- 
 tiful are the feet of him that bringeth glad tidings," 
 but his text was, "A strojig man, if wise, is a power in- 
 deed.'' And in the course of his sermon he testifies 
 that Mr. Humphrey, more perhaps than any other 
 man, has left the impress of his influence upon the 
 life of that city. And all this at the West, where a 
 person's value is measured so largely by the degree 
 of his force and effectiveness. 
 
 Mr. Whittier was right when he said, — 
 
 " The graven flowers that wreath the sword 
 Make not the blade less strong." 
 
 Dr. Johnson was more profoundly right when he 
 said, not that Mr. Humphrey's sweetness did not 
 detract at all from his strength, but that " Mr. Humph- 
 
Fulness of Development. WJ 
 
 rey's sweetness was his strength." We were right 
 when we said above that the mild might is strongest, 
 the gentle strength is the conquering strength. It is 
 not necessary to be rough and rugged in order to be 
 effective, either at the West or the East ; but, in the 
 long run, the highest and finest culture is the 
 strongest force for good in any community, — "the 
 meek shall inherit the earth." 
 
 And if, in view of the fit failure that so often comes 
 upon a superficial culture, a mere veneering of refine- 
 ment, any persons are tempted to assent to the too 
 common notion that the highest mental cultivation 
 and highest religious refinement do not count for 
 much in the way of strong and useful success, let 
 them take notice and remember that Mr. Humphrey's 
 sweet and charming character, and the quiet and abid- 
 ing effectiveness of his gentle and winning methods 
 in the very focal cities of the West, have answered 
 that cavil. 
 
 XX. 
 
 T T ARDLY now can we hesitate as to the ultimate 
 ■^ -■- conviction that tJic characterizing thing about 
 
 Dr. Humphrey is the simple but grand fulness and 
 
 universality of his development. 
 
 It was noticed that when he was in college, already 
 
 the chosen law of his life seemed to be to cultivate 
 
1 1 8 Zephaniah Moore Hiimplirey. 
 
 every excellence and grow in every good direction. 
 According to this law he lived even to the end, as we 
 have seen, and the result was a remarkable fulness 
 and completeness of character and being. It might be 
 called many-sidedness, even as the many-sidedness of 
 a regular polygon, by the law of mathematical infinity, 
 approximates perfect sphericity, and a sphere is but a 
 polygon with an infinite number of sides. 
 
 From the fixed centre of the law already referred 
 to, and contained in Phil. iv. 8, and with a liberal 
 diameter of natural and spiritual endowments and 
 aspirations, he worked out to his periphery, and in a 
 remarkable degree rounded his life in every direction. 
 A close observation does, indeed, reveal some en- 
 largement of the equatorial, i.e., the warmer or more 
 affectional zones of his nature, and a corresponding 
 repression of the cooler or strictly intellectual zones. 
 But the intellectual axis of his life was far-reaching 
 and firm, and the fast-rolling tropical belts of his affec- 
 tional and emotional nature obeyed their centripetal 
 force, and were never carried beyond their legitimate 
 sphere. 
 
 There were observable also on the surface of his 
 life ranges of happy elevation, gleaming in the sun- 
 light, when some unusual inspiration or emergency 
 lifted his thought and speech above the common level. 
 But between these, and far more extensive, were the 
 
Versatility of CJiaractcr. 119 
 
 broad plains of patient and fruitful industry, though 
 these were bordered or crossed sometimes by the 
 shadowy depressions of physical prostration or provi- 
 dential bereavement and trouble. But all these served 
 to vary rather than to destroy the regularity and 
 roundness of his life. There were no dark chasms 
 of morbid discouragement or melancholy. His life 
 was void of excesses and extremes. For so large a 
 life its tenor was remarkably even, without startling 
 achievements on the one hand or failures on the other. 
 
 Indeed, as Dr. Patterson says, the chief difficulty in 
 describing him results from the absence of salient 
 points. He was so equally full and complete in every 
 direction that he stood in his own light, like the parts 
 of a great cathedral, one part hiding another, and the 
 vast aggregate belittling the particulars, and thus be- 
 littling itself, and producing the impression that it is 
 not a very large thing after all, while any part, meas- 
 ured by itself, is seen to be a part of something great. 
 
 He was student, artist, poet, scientist, naturalist, 
 sportsman, mechanic, preacher, pastor, teacher, coun- 
 sellor, friend, husband, father, citizen, saint; all these, 
 and more, blended in that one unassuming man ! 
 
 Yes, unassuming he was, never suspecting, appar- 
 ently, that there was anything of greatness in him, 
 still with sufficient trust in God and confidence in his 
 own capabilities to accept any position to which the 
 
I20 ZephaniaJi Moore Hitmphrey. ■ 
 
 church called him. He seemed to have no special 
 adaptation to the professorship of ecclesiastical his- 
 tory, and yet he Avas phenomenally successful in it, as 
 he would have been in either of the other departments, 
 or in almost any professorship in any of our colleges. 
 
 He did not aim at greatness, or think of it appar- 
 ently, but he aimed to make the most and best of 
 what there was in him and for him. He seemed to 
 fashion himself as Phidias did the marble statues with 
 wliich he adorned the pediments of the Parthenon, 
 He finished the statues carefully and finely on every 
 side, and being asked why he was so careful with 
 every part of his marbles, when they would be placed 
 so high up on the temple's front that the fine finish 
 could not be seen, and portions of them would be 
 entirely and forever out of sight, he is said to have 
 replied, " The gods will see them on every side, and 
 they must be satisfied." 
 
 So Mr. Humphrey fashioned himself not to be seen 
 of men, but for the observation of Him who, as the 
 Psalmist says, " is acquainted with all our ways," from 
 whom our " substance" is not hidden, and who " un- 
 derstandeth our thought afar off." He " lived as 
 seeing Him who is invisible." 
 
 And as those statues of Phidias, after standing for 
 ages in their high places, were taken down and placed 
 in the museums of Europe, so that millions of men 
 
The Beauty of the Lord our God. 1 2 1 
 
 have walked about them and viewed them on every 
 side and in every h'ght, so as to mark the excellences 
 which were designed only for the eyes of the gods, 
 so we are permitted to contemplate and admire the 
 fulness of beauty and excellence which the grace and 
 goodness of God have enabled one of his servants to 
 combine and embody in a character that was moulded 
 and shaped not for the human but for the divine eye. 
 And as with the statues that are finished with the 
 most delicate and loving touches of the master-artist, 
 so here in this character the more closely we scruti- 
 nize it the more we find of unexpected degrees of 
 sweetness and beauty and surprising manifestations 
 of energy and power. 
 
 It was a favorite prayer of Dr. Humphrey, so much 
 so that he made it part of a formula which was used 
 every morning in connection with the family worship 
 at his house in Chicago, " Search me, O God, and 
 knozv my heart ; try me aud knoiu my ivays, and see if 
 there be any ivicked ivay in me, and lead me in the tvay 
 everlasting.'' 
 
 And if we may reasonably presume that he had 
 much in his heart, if not on his lips, that other prayer 
 of the Psalmist, " Let the beauty of the Lord our God 
 be upon us, and establish thou the ivork of our hands 
 upon us, yea, the zvork of our 1 lands establish thou it,'' 
 we are sure that both parts of the prayer were largely 
 
122 ZepJianiaJi Moore Hinnplircy. 
 
 answered to him during his lifetime, and that both 
 parts will be more and more fulfilled as he rests from 
 his labors, and his works do follow him. And if we 
 could hear him as he sings the " new song" among 
 the choirs of the redeemed, we are sure that not one 
 of the ten thousand times ten thousand voices would 
 be more distinctly saying, " Not unto us, Lord, not 
 unto us, Init unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy and 
 thy truth's sake!' 
 
 And then, when our raptured thoughts return to 
 consider what he was when he was with us, and why 
 he was so much to us, we get less satisfaction in the 
 analysis of his life and character than in the subse- 
 quent synthesis, and thus 
 
 " We most of all remember the divine 
 Something that shone in him and made us see 
 The archetypal man, and what might be 
 The amplitude of nature's first design." 
 
 XXI. 
 
 IT was in the midst of a seminary term, with his 
 harness on and every thong drawn taut in the 
 quiet joy of vigorous work, that Mr. Humphrey was 
 attacked by a violent cold, which developed into 
 pneumonia, and the lecture-room was exchanged for 
 the couch, and soon the couch for the bed, and it be- 
 
Last Sickness. 123 
 
 came more and more doubtful, day by day, and thus 
 by degrees certain, that from that bed there would be 
 no return to the couch and the lecture-room. 
 
 Mrs. Humphrey could not hide from herself the 
 danger, and messages were sent to those of nearest 
 kin. Alarmed love brought them speedily to his 
 side, — the married daughter, Lottie, from her home 
 in Missouri ; the only brother, Edward, from Louis- 
 ville ; the only sister, Sarah, from Brooklyn ; two 
 beloved nephews, sons of his brother John, from Chi- 
 cago and New York, and a very dear " cousin" by 
 affectionate adoption, Mrs. Hamill, from Chicago. 
 These, together with the wife and the two younger 
 daughters, were permitted to watch and weep to- 
 gether for two or three days and nights, and minister 
 as they could to the dear man's body and spirit, as 
 the outward man was perishing and the inward man 
 was being renewed day by day and hour by hour. 
 
 In his dying he was, as in his living, humble, pa- 
 tient, sweet-spirited, calm in his hope, happy in his 
 love, strong in his convictions, and energetic in his 
 faith, with no fears and no ecstasies, no wailings be- 
 cause he must die from the earth, and no raptures in 
 view of entering heaven. Such raptures he looked 
 forward to, but their time was not yet. 
 
 Some of us remember that the death-bed expe- 
 riences of Dr. Humphrey's father, and also of his 
 
124 ZeplianiaJi Moare HitnipJirey. 
 
 brother John, were Hke his own. Their lives had 
 been so saintly that it seemed as though their deaths 
 would surely be ecstatic. But it was not so. Some 
 very exalted and rapturous thoughts of God's holi- 
 ness and glory they had, but no raptures concerning 
 themselves. This was from no failure or flaw in their 
 Christian hope, but from an absorbing interest in 
 their present relations to divine truth and the divine 
 glory. 
 
 Even so was it with our Mr. Humphrey in the last 
 days of his life. He was occupied with a solemn ad- 
 justment of himself to this unexpected transition, 
 with an intelligent gathering into his consciousness 
 of the divine truth provided for him in this emer- 
 gency, with a trustful commitment of his family, his 
 pupils, his work, and his own spirit to the care and 
 grace of God. He was less thoughtful of his own 
 future bliss than that Christ should be honored, and 
 those about him comforted and strengthened by a 
 clear recognition of those vital truths by which he 
 was now sustained. In calm and full conversations 
 with his wife, their divinely-appointed separation for 
 the present was painfully but tranquilly considered, 
 and everything understood, dear memories recalled, 
 and clear arrangements made with reference to things 
 temporal and things eternal. 
 
 In the presence of the other friends who sat for 
 
Falling Asleep. 125 
 
 many hours, first and last, about his bed, much of the 
 time was spent in reading and repeating passages 
 of Scripture, sometimes as prompted by their memo- 
 ries, and sometimes as the passages were selected 
 and suggested by himself, as when he asked for the 
 " precious things of Peter," and his eye would 
 brighten and his pale countenance beam as he lis- 
 tened and recognized the " precious faith," and the 
 "precious /r/rt/ of faith," and the "precious promises," 
 and the "precious blood," and, comprehending all, 
 the precious Christ himself, " to you that believe He 
 is precious." 
 
 In such communings with the heavenly world were 
 they all engaged on that Sabbath evening, November 
 13, 1 88 1, when he ceased to breathe, and the daughter, 
 stepping to her mother, who sat with closed eyes and 
 had not witnessed the expiring breath, and putting 
 her arm around her neck, calmly said, " Now, dear 
 mother, you have nothing more in this world to 
 dread." So it is : the greater and dearer the treasure 
 the greater the loss when it is taken away ; the past 
 seems all gone and void. But no ! How filled it is 
 with blessed and majestic memories ! These cannot 
 be taken from us. Nothing now can mar the more 
 than golden worth of these treasures of memory. 
 
 The language of our mourning and remonstrating 
 hearts is, — 
 
126 Zephaniali Moore Humphrey. 
 
 " Oh, what hadst thou to do with cruel Death, 
 Thou who wast so full of life, or Death with thee, 
 That thou shouldst die before thou hadst grown old !" 
 
 But the answer of our faith is, " Very little hadst 
 thou to do with Death, or Death with thee." " Ab- 
 sent /rout tJie body, present xvitJi the Lord." " In a mo- 
 ment, in the tzvinkling of an eye," is the transition 
 made, and " mortality is sivalloived up of life." " 
 Death, where is thy sting ? The sting of death is sin, 
 the strength of sin is the law. Thanks be to God, zvlio 
 giyeth us the victory through our Lord jfesus Christ f 
 
 " O Death ! how sweet the thought 
 That this world's strife is ended, 
 That all we feared and all we sought 
 In one deep sleep are blended. 
 
 " O Death ! how dear the hope 
 
 That through the thickest shade, 
 Beyond the steep and senseless slope. 
 Our treasured store is laid. 
 
 "The loved, the mourned, the honored dead 
 That lonely path have trod, 
 And that same path we too must tread 
 To be with them and God. 
 
 "O Life ! thou too art sweet ; 
 
 Thou breathest the fragrant breath 
 Of those whom even the hope to meet 
 Can cheer the gate of death. 
 
Life and Death. 1 27 
 
 " Life is the scene their presence lighted ; 
 Its every hour and place 
 Is with dear thought of them united, 
 Irradiate with their grace. 
 
 " There lie the duties, small and great, 
 Which we from them inherit ; 
 There spring the aims that lead us straight 
 To their celestial spirit. 
 
 "All glorious things, or seen or heard, 
 For love or justice done. 
 The helpful deeds, the ennobling word, 
 By this poor life are won. 
 
 "0 Life and Death, like Day and Night, 
 Your guardian task combine ; 
 Pillar of darkness and of light. 
 Lead through earth's gloom till l^right 
 Heaven's dawn shall shine !" 
 
SERMONS. 
 
 129 
 
THE CENTRALITY OF THE CROSS. 
 
 "That in the dispensation of the fulness of limes He might gather 
 together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and 
 which are on earth, even in Him." — Ephestans i. io. 
 
 '' I ^HIS passage is generally understood as declara- 
 -■■ tive of the purpose of God to make heaven 
 and earth tributary to Christ. Some suppose it to 
 refer only to the redemptive work of the Saviour, as 
 gathering about himself all who may be drawn to 
 Him on earth and introduced by Him into heaven. 
 Some, dissatisfied with this narrow view, suppose it 
 to refer to the general reign of Christ to be established 
 over all earthly and heavenly intelligences, angels 
 and men, so that Christ shall be the centre of one 
 vast kingdom, all of whose honors and glories are 
 gathered in Him. Others, taking a yet broader view, 
 interpret the passage as indicating that to the Cross 
 all tilings, as well as all beings, are to be tributary; 
 that the crucifixion is, in the eternal purpose of God, 
 to be the central event of time ; the Cross is to be the 
 rallying-point of the world, the focal centre towards 
 which all the interests of heaven and earth are to 
 
 131 
 
132 Sermons. 
 
 converge. This is certainly the grander and, on that 
 account, the more probable view. It is worthy of 
 notice as sustaining it that in specifying what will 
 centre in Christ the neuter is used, all tilings, as if 
 the most comprehensive statement were designed. 
 The idea presented is that of God arranging all His 
 purposes in the far-distant past, so as to bring the 
 utmost honor to Christ ; giving all events a Cross- 
 ward direction ; controlling all human energies, so 
 that they shall add to the triumphs of the Cross, while 
 above it are to gather the rejoicing hosts of heaven, 
 " Saying, with a loud voice, ' Worthy is the Lamb 
 that was slain to receive power and riches, and wisdom 
 and strength, and honor and glory and blessing!' " 
 
 This idea is unquestionably sanctioned by other 
 portions of the Scriptures. We shall therefore adopt 
 this meaning, and seek to unfold it in presenting for 
 your contemplation The Centrality of the Cross. 
 
 We will therefore show, first, how the Cross is 
 central to hiiinan Jiistory. 
 
 This were not difficult were we to confine our ob- 
 servation to the earlier historical records. The Old 
 Testament is manifestly the introduction to the New. 
 The line of events is direct from the murder of Abel 
 to the crucifixion of Christ. The Old dispensation 
 prefigured the New. Its whole ritual declared that 
 without the sheddingf of blood there is no remission 
 
The Centrality of tlie Cross. 133 
 
 of sin. Judaism was Christianity in the bud. The Cross 
 and the nails were in the heart of the passion-liower 
 before it had opened. Hence it seems not unnatural 
 to speak of the Cross as central to the history of the 
 Jewish nation. But when we look at uninspired history 
 we find but few pages of it given to the " feeble folk," 
 whose empire at the best spread over the narrow limits 
 of Palestine. Even the sacred records speak of streams 
 as far back as the dispersion from the foot of Babel di- 
 verging from the Jewish current, some of them soon 
 gaining a greater breadth and volume than the original, 
 and none of them appearing to flow towards the Cross. 
 So that while the Jews have room enough in Palestine, 
 there are vast heathen empires in Europe, in Asia, and 
 in Africa, while millions obey the Incas in America, 
 or worship the sun about the teocallis in Mexico. 
 
 On a closer inspection, however, we see that the 
 history of many of these heathen empires is closely 
 related to the Cross. A Romish historian, tracing the 
 fortunes and recording the battles of his proud gen- 
 erals, might have smiled were Paul to have assured 
 him that all these contests had a reference to the 
 death of a poor Nazarene, who a few years before 
 had been crucified for sedition in a remote and insisf- 
 nificant province. Yet it was by the spread of the 
 Romish Empire that the world was made ready for 
 the feet of those who were commanded to go teach 
 
1 34 Sermons. 
 
 all nations. And so far as the history of the subju- 
 gated realms formed a part of that of Rome, so far it 
 had reference to the Cross of Christ. It may be that 
 the lines of history appear to bear away from the 
 Cross in most of the earlier ages ; but when we follow 
 them patiently they are found at length to converge, 
 sometimes by the most unexpected turns. The more 
 careful our investigation the more clearly shall we 
 see how all history is related to the same event. 
 With ray present light I may not see what the con- 
 struction of the Pyramids had to do with it, yet I 
 know that at their bases the sinews of the Jewish 
 nation were hardened. I may not know what place 
 the history of the mound-builders of our own conti- 
 nent, a mysterious and forgotten race, had in the his- 
 tory of Redemption ; but I can well believe that it 
 has such a place. We know that already all history 
 has run into this one stream; therefore the junction 
 of this tributary must be somewhere in the unex- 
 plored regions. The history of the world to-day has 
 become that of Christianity. Christian nations con- 
 trol the globe ; Christian light touches every shore. 
 The Christian student understands some of the 
 darkest pages of history when he sees how Clive, 
 washing the soil of India with blood, or the slave- 
 trader cursing the shores of Africa with his barra- 
 coons, prepares the way for the gospel. That the 
 
Tlie Centrality of the Cross. 135 
 
 Cross may be central to human history it is not 
 necessary that every war should be a crusade, or that 
 Christ should be the recognized hero of every histo- 
 rian. It is only essential that we should be able to 
 find in all human events some preparation for or some 
 triumph of the gospel. 
 
 By this point, thus imperfectly developed, is sug- 
 gested a 
 
 Second. That the Cross is central to all that is val- 
 uable in human progress. Science and art have, in 
 general, labored more diligently in the service of 
 Satan than in that of Christ; but by as much as their 
 labors have aided in the civilization of the globe, by 
 as much as they have furnished facilities for the 
 spread of the gospel, by so much have they been 
 made tributary to the Cross. When Tubal Cain be- 
 gan to work in iron he was beginning that long series 
 of experiments by which we have at last the railway, 
 covering with its network the continents, and the 
 steamship, ploughing and reploughing the wave. 
 When Jubal first contrived the simple reed, he was 
 insensibly heralding the majestic organ, by whose 
 assistance we lift the sacred strains of Old Coronation. 
 The rude altar of Abel was the type of the cathedral. 
 The shepherd's distaff was the precursor of the looms, 
 whose flying shuttles afford king's clothing to the 
 poor. The bow of the warrior was a herald of the 
 
136 Sermons. 
 
 ponderous engines by which liberty is vindicated, and 
 behind which the world marches on towards the mil- 
 lennial day, when sin will no more require the chastise- 
 ment of force, and when God shall cease to make the 
 wrath of man to praise Him. 
 
 It is easy to see how every real advance in science 
 and art may be made to minister to the glory of the 
 kingdom of Christ in the earth. The diffusion of in- 
 telligence, the increased facilities for education, the 
 accessories of social refinement, and even the prog- 
 ress of physical comfort and the relief of* physical 
 labor may add glory to that kingdom. Whatever 
 improves us as men should improve us as Christians, 
 and will when the power of sin is broken. There- 
 fore, confining ourselves strictly to the thought that 
 Christ's kingdom is spiritual, we can see how science 
 and art shall contribute to it when every printing- 
 press and railway and telegraph is subjugated to the 
 cause of truth, when music stimulates no longer the 
 unholy passions, and when the pencil borrows its 
 ideas, if not its colors, from heaven. 
 
 But some anticipate a physical millennium as confi- 
 dently as they do a spiritual one. They believe that 
 both are to dawn at once, and that one is to embrace 
 the glory of the other; that, in the march of science, 
 disease is to be conquered by the application of reme- 
 dies, while the tendency to it is to be lessened by 
 
TJic Centrality of the Cross. 137 
 
 purity of life ; that labor is to be lightened by laying 
 its burdens on muscles of steel, while the call for 
 labor is diminished by the diminution of sin ; that 
 the enjoyments of both sense and soul are to be 
 largely increased by new inventions and discoveries, 
 while the suffering which comes from the reactions 
 of sinful pleasure is to disappear as the sinful indul- 
 gence ceases. There is room .for such a belief In- 
 deed, we can hardly avoid cherishing it. But if this 
 be true, then every present advance in science and art 
 is a preparation for the millennium, and so centres in 
 the Cross. It does not conflict with this view that 
 many, the most of these advances, are directly in 
 the interest of sin. They will still remain as the 
 heritages of the world when sin has been driven out. 
 When the inventions of an enemy are captured, they 
 may be used against the enemy as they were once 
 used by him, and though Satan zvere to suggest 
 every invention, as tradition says he suggested the 
 art of printing, the invention would in the end be 
 turned against him, and then made to enhance the 
 glory of the conquering Christ. 
 
 Having thus touched upon some of the more out- 
 ward signs of God's purpose to make all things centre 
 in the Cross, we shall not fail to discover traces of 
 the same purpose when we examine the principles by 
 which both His action and ours are to be resfulated. 
 
138 Sermons. 
 
 Let us examine the principles by which God's 
 action respecting man is shaped. So doing we shall 
 see — 
 
 Thirdly. How the Cross is central to God's scheme 
 for the government of mankind. 
 
 In one of the suggestive books of the times atten- 
 tion has been called to two great classes of facts in 
 the government of God which stand in seeming con- 
 troversy. On the one hand we observe arrangements 
 made with the most scrupulous care for the preserva- 
 tion of order. All the forces of nature are balanced 
 and controlled so as to work with evenness and regu- 
 larity. The seasons come and go, rain follows sun- 
 shine and sunshine rain, so that the earth is neither 
 parched into a desert nor drowned by a deluge; 
 changes occur, but they are mostly like the revolu- 
 tion of a wheel, points of which vanish only to re- 
 appear. Decay 'goes on, but life springs out of de- 
 cay. No particles of matter are wasted : they seem 
 to vanish in flame, but fire only distributes them ; 
 they seem to be destroyed in food, but they are 
 found in the blood, and when, after performing their 
 vital office, they are exhaled through the skin, they 
 reappear again in some new form of life. The mind 
 works by law as well as the body. Everywhere are 
 nice adjustments, which show that " order is heaven's 
 first law." 
 
The Centrality of the Cross. \ 39 
 
 On the other hand we see everywhere marks of 
 disorder. Tempests and earthquakes break the re- 
 pose of nature ; pestilence shakes its deadly wings 
 over healthful countries ; floods waste the fields, and 
 frost cuts oft the harvests ; man, too, grows lawless ; 
 wars rage ; terrors affright the peaceful ; hatred over- 
 powers good will ; passion burns both the breast in 
 which it rages and the victim on whom it blazes. 
 
 On the one hand we notice abundant tokens of the 
 most lavish kindness on the part of God, as if, with 
 all the fondness of a parent, He would pour the 
 whole wealth of His love upon us; yet, on the other, 
 we cannot but feel the severity of some of His exac- 
 tions. Now, in observing one class of facts. He seems 
 all tenderness, and stoops over us with a smile and a 
 caress ; but, when turning to another, He appears sud- 
 denly to have assumed a frown and to have snatched 
 up a scourge. On the one side we see indications 
 that He would have us free as air, — He gives absolute 
 liberty to the will, to the thoughts, to the limbs ; yet 
 on the other, our movements are often interfered 
 with, we are checked and hindered. We enter a 
 clear path, when, lo ! suddenly a wall. I act, another 
 counteracts. I sin, and the penalty comes, as if from 
 some invisible being who has been ever watching me. 
 
 Again, there is that in the soul of man which 
 draws it towards God. There are aspirations after 
 
140 Sermons. 
 
 goodness, longings for communion with the Infinite, 
 impulses to worship ; yet there is a something which 
 keeps the soul back from God. On your birthday 
 you feel ashamed of much in your past life, and 
 solemnly resolve that you will hereafter avoid the 
 follies and make up for the deficiencies of the past ; 
 but on exposure to temptation you find yourself al- 
 most as weak as ever. On some quiet Sabbath, when 
 the still air and the sacred associations of the day 
 combine to turn your thoughts away from the noisy 
 world towards God, your heart goes out in longing 
 for a heavenly fellowship. Your impulse is to cast 
 yourself upon your knees before God, all unaccus- 
 tomed as you are to prayer; but when you come to 
 the act of prostration the impulse dies away, and the 
 haughty knee remains unbent. It is not strange that 
 thinking men should have been puzzled by these 
 phenomena, and it could never become clear to the 
 unassisted mind how these conflicting facts are to be 
 reconciled. It would seem as though God must al- 
 ways continue to hold man in this suspense between 
 good and evil ; as if the world could never be so recon- 
 ciled to God that He could lay aside His severity and 
 take His creatures lovingly to His heart. But a 
 glance at the Cross relieves us. Here the whole 
 difficulty disappears. The Cross stands, if I may so 
 express it, at the zone of calms. The conflicting 
 
The Centrality of the Cross. 141 
 
 currents meet over it and blend, as the winds rushing 
 from either pole meet near the equator and expire. 
 It is by means of the Cross that God becomes morally 
 able to overcome the disorder with which sin has in- 
 terrupted the order of His government, to lavish His 
 kindness without stint upon those who have passed 
 beyond the need of discipline, to introduce mankind 
 into a heavenly sphere where he can have freedom 
 without penalties and restraints, and to overpower the 
 feeling in the soul of man which holds him back from 
 God and makes him hate the being whom he wishes 
 to love. 
 
 It should be noticed, too; that in the midst of all 
 this apparent contrariety in the government of God 
 there is a constant reference to the Cross. The re- 
 straints He lays upon evil, and the acts by which He 
 overrules it, are in part designed to further the great 
 object for which the atonement was made. Good is 
 the constant result of what may seem to us unpleasant 
 and evil. Having ordained the Cross as the central 
 point in His government, God's object is to gather all 
 around it. Therefore it is that He frowns as well as 
 smiles, and cripples us in the very moment of giving 
 us freedom, and chastens us with trial in the days of 
 prosperity. Were there no Saviour it might be more 
 difficult for you to comprehend why you should be 
 subjected to the fire by a loving God ; but when you 
 
142 Sermons. 
 
 have been led through the fire to the Saviour, and 
 looking back see that there was no other approach 
 for you, you understand it, and you thank God that 
 His providences respecting you have been such as to 
 bring you to a neglected Christ. 
 
 Going a little further in our study of principles we 
 discover, — 
 
 Fourthly. That the Cross is central to the scriptural 
 circle of doctrinal truth. 
 
 It may be admitted that some points in this circle 
 may be studied long and thoughtfully without refer- 
 ence to the Cross. The attributes of God, e.g., may be 
 contemplated as revealed in other works than that of 
 redemption. His natural attributes — wisdom, power, 
 omnipresence, unchangeableness, eternity — have am- 
 ple illustrations in that which may be daily observed. 
 There is enough in a bit of chalk, or a drop of vine- 
 gar, or in a little dust brushed from the wing of a 
 butterfly to convince us of more than one of these. 
 Had Christ never appeared we might yet have arrived 
 at a belief in all of them, together, perhaps, with what 
 are called His moral attributes, such as love, justice, 
 mercy. Yet they all centre upon Christ, for in their 
 exercise perpetual reference is had to Him, even when 
 they are called forth in laying the foundations of the 
 world, or in decorating that globe which was made for 
 Hiui. Then, too, the noblest illustrations of those 
 
The Cculrality of tJic Cross. 143 
 
 attributes are furnished by the Cross, What but an 
 infinite wisdom could have ever devised the plan of 
 redemption ? What else can ever secure its execu- 
 tion ? To make a world is to order mechanical 
 forces ; to renew a soul is to control a will whose 
 freedom must not be disturbed while it is wholly sub- 
 dued. To set a planet in its orbit is a matter of sim- 
 ple adjustment; to bring a soul into allegiance is to 
 calculate what man would call uncertain forces. It is 
 to lay the most complicated plans, the threads of 
 which are to run through all the ages, and to be made 
 firm and strong where all seems fortuitous. You can 
 calculate a transit of Venus centuries before the time ; 
 you cannot calculate upon the will of a man to-mor- 
 row. What wisdom is necessary to arrange for the 
 crucifixion by guilty yet instrumental hands, and 
 then to secure the prevalence of truth where it will 
 be hated and despised ! What po'vcr is necessary to 
 effect all this! Power is made more evident in deli- 
 cate operations than in ponderous blows. The shock 
 of an avalanche is not to me so significant a .symbol 
 of power as the crystallization of one of the snow- 
 flakes which has helped to form the avalanche, when 
 it fell white and still, like a many-rayed blossom from 
 the trees bearing twelve manner of fruits. So is the 
 renewal of a soul a greater evidence of power than 
 any natural symbol of it. The withholding of the 
 
144 Sermons. 
 
 Father's face in the hour of crucifixion, when we 
 should have supposed it were impossible to veil it, 
 was more impressive than the clouding of the sun or 
 the opening of the graves. 
 
 The omnipresence of God is demonstrated by the 
 work of redemption, for without a constant presence 
 in all parts of the world such a work could never be 
 completed, — there are no zones for the operations of 
 the Spirit. 
 
 So of the hmmitability of God. Do you not see 
 how inflexible He is to His purposes when He will 
 not interfere to take the cup from the reluctant lips in 
 Gethsemane? Who is changeless if not He, who, 
 though the heavens fall, will not permit one jot or 
 tittle of His law to fail ? 
 
 So, too, the eternity of God is illustrated by the 
 Cross, as we see how far His purposes concerning it 
 reach every way. 
 
 But if the natural attributes of God centre in the 
 Cross, much more do His moral attributes. The 
 heavens may be grand, and the earth full of wonders ; 
 we may find God everywhere, whether we ascend or 
 descend; but nowhere shall we find Him so just yet 
 so loving, so great yet so condescending, as at the 
 Cross. A thoughtful man could find rest in the idea 
 that Providence in its works is infinitely minute as 
 well as awfully vast. "I think," says he, "the dis- 
 
The Ceiitrality of the Cross. 145 
 
 coveries of the telescope would have been dreadful 
 but for the microscope. God's throne has risen above 
 the earth inconceivably high, but another way the 
 divine condescension is to be seen reaching unex- 
 pectedly and infinitely low. In a field, or on the side 
 of a brook, when I see a forget-me-not, I think, ' He 
 has not forgotten even thee !' " We may find a richer 
 illustration of the more beautiful attributes of God, 
 and feel a yet more comforting assurance that God 
 has not forgotten even us, when we look upon an 
 expiring Saviour. 
 
 Turning now to what are called distinctively gospel 
 doctrines, we find them all grouped about that of the 
 atonement, fixed in it as by radii running to one 
 centre. Regeneration is but the accomplishment of a 
 change which could not be possible without the 
 atonement. Sanctification, which but for that could 
 never have been begun, could never have been car- 
 ried out but for a Christ in whom the believer lives, 
 by union with whom he bears his fruit. Eternal life 
 could have been offered to none but for the shedding 
 of the blood of the Lamb. The decree of election 
 was indissolubly associated with the decree by which 
 the safety of the elect was provided for. The perse- 
 veraiice of saints would never have been talked of 
 had there been no saints to persevere. Paul would 
 
 never have preached the irsurrectioji had not Christ 
 
 10 
 
146 Sermons. 
 
 become the first fruits of them that sleep. Repentance 
 and faith both have a direct reference to the work of 
 Christ and are promoted by it. Without an atone- 
 ment the idea o( Justification would never have oc- 
 curred to the apostle to the Gentiles, who, indeed, 
 never would have been an apostle. Adoption into the 
 family of the redeemed never could have been antici- 
 pated had there been no elder brother to redeem us, 
 and to teach us nozv to gather about the Throne and 
 say, " Our Father, who art in heaven." Depravity is 
 a solemn fact which at first appears to stand by itself; 
 true notwithstanding the Cross, yet it was to coun- 
 teract it that the Cross was planted. Prayer, love, 
 obedience are duties irrespective of Christ, yet it is 
 through Him that prayer is made effective, and that 
 love and obedience become easy. The Cross, as it 
 were, gathers all truth about itself If one ignorant 
 of the atonement should ask you to explain it, you 
 could not shut out of view any doctrine, — to explain 
 the keystone you must describe the arch ; you must 
 talk of the planets in talking of the sun. 
 
 The full meaning of the text is not yet exhausted. 
 It is therein declared that it was God's purpose to 
 gather in one all things, " both which are in heaven 
 and which are in earthy We are therefore to 
 notice, — 
 
 Fifthly. That the Cross is central to the united in- 
 
TJie Ccntrality of the Cross. 147 
 
 terests of heaven and earth. The idea is that heaven 
 and earth have a certain relationship, the interests 
 of one being- in a manner identical with those of the 
 other, and it is by the Cross that those interests are 
 cemented. In the first chapter of Colossians the 
 apostle speaks of God as " having made peace through 
 the blood of the Cross, by Him to reconcile all things 
 to Himself, — by Him, I say, whether they be things 
 in earth or things in heaven," — that is, to bring earth 
 and heaven into harmony, and to perfect His purposes 
 concerning them. 
 
 In this whole discourse it has indirectly appeared 
 that the interests and the hopes of this world are cen- 
 tred in the Cross. For these many thousand years 
 the world has risen on the scale of progress just in 
 proportion as it has honored God and His dear Son. 
 For these many thousand years every swing of the 
 pendulum or every drop of the clepsydra, every 
 movement of the shadow on the dial, has marked the 
 flight of a soul which were lost but for Christ. But 
 for the Cross there were no substantial relief for an 
 accusing conscience or a burdened heart ; but for 
 that life were a curse and death an unmitigated terror. 
 But now we come to the thought that it was impor- 
 tant for the angels that Christ should die. Heaven 
 and earth, saints and angels were never meant to be 
 kept apart. Similar in feeling, dwelling upon the 
 
148 Sermons. 
 
 same subjectsof thought, possessed of the same purity 
 and holiness, worshipping the same God, there are yet 
 differences between them which must conduce in a 
 high degree to the pleasure and benefits of their mu- 
 tual companionship. The one class has experienced 
 sin, the other only beheld its ravages. The one class 
 has reached heaven by a rough and sorrowful road, 
 the other has always dwelt in light and joy. Angels 
 are spirits disembodied ; saints have had physical 
 experiences, and will have sensations corresponding to 
 these in their spiritual bodies. Angels may teach the 
 saints; saints may teach the angels. Both may gain, 
 while together, new views of God, and see new cause 
 to glory in the Saviour. This is enough to suggest 
 that heaven without saints were not complete, and to 
 show how it was that God gathered all things in 
 heaven, as well as on earth, into one, even Christ. 
 It is enough to show that there was something more 
 than sympathy with the lost, and adoration of the 
 love which was expending itself to restore them, ex- 
 pressed in the angelic song which burst from the 
 skies with the light of Bethlehem's star. Something 
 inore than this enters into their rejoicing over each 
 sinner who repenteth. Gladly would the angels have 
 ministered to Christ in any circumstances, and would 
 have deemed themselves honored by the privilege ; 
 but they, as well as the world, were to be benefitted 
 
The Centrality of the Cross. 149 
 
 by His mission. He died for them in part, if not to 
 save them. Fondly would they hover about our 
 pathway, out of mere pity, were they to see us no 
 more after death should snatch us from their guar- 
 dianship ; but they are ministering to their own inter- 
 ests while ministering to the heirs of salvation. 
 
 The theme is tempting enough to excuse a further 
 delay, but we will linger upon it now only to suggest 
 a few of the thoughts it inspires, the first of which is. 
 How grand a theme for study is presented in the 
 Cross of Christ ! It has ever been a favorite subject 
 of contemplation by the mystic and the enthusiast, 
 and by the calmest lover of Jesus as well. But we 
 have seen that the intellect, as well as the heart, may 
 be exercised to the utmost upon it. Around it sweep 
 the ages, and he who would understand the course 
 of history, of science, and of art must sit at the feet 
 of Jesus. God's government is explained by it, and 
 therefore the jurist who would possess himself of the 
 principles of human law must read by its light. Time 
 and eternity are joined by it. The Cross may be seen 
 through the dreamy systems of the Asiatic, but it 
 furnishes the iron for Paul's reasoning, and for that 
 of some of the greatest thinkers of all times. Spir- 
 itual discernment is more than a vivid conception of 
 Christ, and a beautiful vision of heaven. It is also a 
 clear view of principles and of their -relations to 
 
150 Sermons. 
 
 Christ. It is one of the wonders of the Cross that it 
 meets the demands of every cast of mind and of 
 every stage of discipline. To one whose range of 
 thought in connection with the Cross is narrow it 
 may seem strange that so much can be said of it, and 
 so well said, without repetition or weariness, even 
 when it is kept distinctly in view. There have been 
 preachers, of whose instructions the people never 
 tired, who made Christ the visible centre of every 
 sermon. If we may judge by his letters, Rutherford 
 was one of these. The name of Christ is on every 
 page, and as you turn over leaf after leaf, your won- 
 der increases that he should find so much that seems 
 fresh to say. The " holy Herbert" could find more 
 than one meaning in the simple name of Jesus: 
 every letter had its value, — 
 
 " Jesu is in my heart ; His sacred name 
 Is deeply carved there. But the other week 
 A great affliction broke the Httle frame 
 Even all to pieces, which I went to seek, 
 And first I found the corner where was i, 
 After where ES, and next where U was graved. 
 When I had got these parcels, instantly 
 I sat me down to spell them, and perceived 
 That to my broken heart he was I ease you, 
 And to my -lohole is yesu.'''' 
 
 What, then, must be the Cross when we sweep the 
 
Tlie Ccntrality of the Cross. 151 
 
 whole range of its topics, reaching indefinitely over 
 the deeper experiences of the heart and over the 
 vaster problems of the reason ? 
 
 But we are already on the verge of a second 
 thought, which is that our subject affords a reason 
 why the Cross has always been such an object of 
 veneration since Christ has rescued it from shame. 
 We can almost excuse the relic-worshipper, though 
 we pity him, when he regards with the profoundest 
 veneration a bit of wood which he believes to have 
 constituted a part of the " accursed tree." We honor 
 the Crusader who blazoned this emblem on his shield, 
 and the architect who gave this form to the sanc- 
 tuary. Even to us, who employ- no symbols, the 
 sight of the Cross is affecting. Of all sacred moun- 
 tains there is none which we would so long to see as 
 Calvary. Carmel has its interest, and we would climb 
 its rocky side with eagerness that we might stand 
 where the prophet bowed himself toward the sea and 
 waited for rain after he had called down the rain. 
 Piseah and Horeb we should love to visit. Sinai, 
 once shrouded by vapors girding about the ychovali, 
 and trembling at the sound of His voice, the mount 
 on which Moses kneeled to receive the law, we 
 should explore it with enthusiasm. But on Calvary 
 our hearts would burn and our eyes grow dim. Here 
 is the great altar of the world ; here bled the Lamb, 
 
152 Sermons^ 
 
 here were borne our sins, here were carried our sor- 
 rows. The death of Christ has made you, my bro- 
 ther, more of a man than you could have been with- 
 out it. My sister, it has secured for you the most 
 priceless consolations. To all of us it has brought 
 our best gifts, and made possible our richest attain- 
 ments. No wonder that around the word Calvary 
 gather the holiest associations, no wonder that to 
 those who reject all symbols as superstitious there is 
 yet the sweetest sound, in that word, the Cross. 
 
 We see also, and finally, the glory of a life devoted 
 to Christ. If in Him all things centre, it is an honor 
 to be counted His willing tributaries. Whatever we 
 do for Christ, however humble our sphere, is some- 
 thing done toward the grandest of all objects of ex- 
 ertion, — it is something done for eternity. The greater 
 part of the aspirations with which men enter the 
 period of active life are destined to be unrealized. 
 Wealth, power, pleasure will not, in general, be ac- 
 quired in that abundance which hope promises. 
 Pleasure gained will often prove a flower shedding its 
 petals as it is plucked from the stalk. Ambition's 
 crown, when gained, will often lacerate the brow it 
 adorns. Men may safely glory in the Cross, and feel 
 sure that their lives are not wasted in shedding glory 
 upon it. 
 
 Nay, it is to their own eternal disadvantage if they 
 
TIic Centrality of the Cross. 153 
 
 will not both glory in and seek to honor it. We 
 must consent to be used in some way for the final 
 exaltation of our Saviour against our wills if we do 
 not consent to a free and glad allegiance ; for Christ 
 shall be unwillingly honored even by those who reject 
 Him, and they having served their purpose in the 
 overruling providence of God, shall be flung aside to 
 perish. How much better to take the humblest place 
 in His train, and, identifying ourselves with Christ on 
 earth, be identified with Him in glory. 
 
II. 
 
 CHRIST THE SON OF MAN. 
 
 " Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his 
 brethren." — Hebrews ii. 17. 
 
 "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, 
 there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." — 
 Galatians iii. 28. 
 
 THESE passages have a profounder significance 
 than one might at first perceive. They reveal, 
 indeed, the fact that Christ was thoroughly human, — 
 He must have been that if made in all points like 
 unto His brethren, — but they also reveal the fact that 
 Christ's humanity was of a more perfect type than 
 that possessed by any of us ; that it was so broad, so 
 deep, so full that He is not so much a specimen of 
 humanity as the embodiment of humanity. He is 
 made in all points not like one of his brethren, but 
 like each of them. He, in whom we are all one, is 
 neither a perfect Jew, nor a perfect Greek. Jew and 
 Greek, bond and free, male and female, all have such 
 a unity in Him that He is everything to each. In 
 short, He is not merely a perfect man, — that is, a being 
 with a human soul and with all the faculties of a man, — 
 154 
 
CJirist the Son of Man. 1 5 5 
 
 but also He has in Himself all the elements of a pure 
 human character in their perfection. He is not a man, 
 but iJic man in whom all human excellences and 
 peculiarities are combined, — not one-sided as we are, 
 not many-sided, but <:r//-sided. 
 
 To explain this more fully, let me fix your thought 
 for a moment on what is commonly understood as 
 individuality . We are all alike in many particulars, 
 yet each of us is cast in a mould which is in some 
 respects peculiar. The elements of our characters 
 are in some respects peculiarly combined. Some 
 traits are stronger in one and weaker in another. 
 Our individuality comes from the combination of 
 qualities which go to make us what we are. Our 
 strongest traits are generally styled our characteris- 
 tics. When we say that a man is intensely indi- 
 vidual, we commonly mean that some of his traits are 
 unusually developed ; and it is these traits to which 
 we especially refer in describing him. 
 
 A and B, for example, are alike in this, — each is a 
 man possessed of mind, heart, will, and every one of 
 the long catalogue of distinctively human qualities; 
 yet they are very unlike. A is a poet of delicate 
 organization and of fiery impulses. B is a mechanic 
 of cool and inventive genius. They move in entirely 
 different planes, live almost totally different lives. 
 Such is their individuality. Now it is conceivable 
 
156 Sermons. 
 
 that a man might be formed and so organized as to 
 constitute a Hnk between these two, having the prom- 
 inent qualities of each so well developed in himself 
 that, being both poet and artisan, he might form a fit 
 companion for either. And so it is conceivable that 
 a human being might be so constituted as to have in 
 himself all that distinguishes three, four, a hundred 
 individuals. If God should have reason for creat- 
 ing a human being in whom should be combined 
 all that distinguishes every man from his neighbor, 
 there is no difficulty in supposing that He might pro- 
 duce so wonderful a creation. That would be depart- 
 ing from His usual rule, but it would be as easy to 
 Omnipotence as the creation of one-sided souls. He 
 creates us as we are for wise and loving reasons. He 
 does it because by such diversities the great ends of 
 our combination in a race are thereby best secured. 
 A is a better poet because he is only that ; his nature 
 has fitted him only for the realm of feeling and of 
 imagination. He could not be prince there if, by 
 other tastes, he were constantly drawn out of that 
 realm. B is a better mechanic because he sees only 
 a water-power in Niagara, and a silken scarf in a rain- 
 bow. The world has in both a good poet and a good 
 mechanic, whereas were each brought to the same 
 intellectual and physical level it would probably have 
 two equally good in verse and in mechanics, and in 
 
Christ the Son of Man. 157 
 
 neither distinguished. God creates us unlike that the 
 race, as a whole, may be most efficient. But if, for 
 once, and for wise reasons, He were to so vary His 
 plan as to produce a perfect man, — that is, one in 
 whom all that is possible in humanity should be 
 brought to perfection, — we should have one fitted for 
 every sphere and equally good in all. Whatever he 
 might attempt he might be always successful and 
 always grand, — grand even among bales and boxes, 
 even among looms and spindles. 
 
 Such a man, as to his humanity, we suppose Christ 
 to have been. We know that He had all the feeling 
 of the artist : He shows it in the grouping of His para- 
 bles, and in the bits of color which attracted His eye 
 and adorned His words. He had all the feelings of 
 the poet: His utterances are sometimes almost rhyth- 
 mical, as if they fell of themselves into unconscious 
 verse; and all the power of the orator: the common 
 people heard Him gladly, — never man spake like this 
 man ; and all the wisdom of the statesman : His course 
 toward the civil government was surpassingly pru- 
 dent; and had all the sagacity of the merchant: His 
 illustrations from commercial exchanges show how 
 well He understood them. He was neither of these, 
 but He might have been either. 
 
 Having in view the ideas just expressed respecting 
 individuality, this might seem to destroy the individ- 
 
158 Sermons. 
 
 uality of Christ, since an absolute perfection is incon- 
 sistent with an excessive development of a marked 
 characteristic. On the contrary, the individuality of 
 Christ is the more marked because of His perfection. 
 He is the singular man of all the race and all the 
 ages. His character stands out alone, as a perfect 
 and polished sphere contrasts with the imperfect and 
 half-polished blocks which surround it. We have 
 really two forms of individuality, one of which is far 
 superior to the other. Some of the most perfect 
 works of architecture consist of an almost endless 
 combination of materials and forms. Many kinds of 
 stone are used in the building. The quarries of Ab- 
 erdeen furnish the columns of the door-ways. The 
 marbles of Tennessee, of Vermont, of Carrara sup- 
 port the arches within. Here is one tint in the fa- 
 gade, here another. Here is one form of capital, here 
 a second, here a third. Here is one kind of wood, 
 and not far away another. Here are bolts of iron, 
 here are leaves of gold. There are tessellated squares 
 in the pavement, and the light which falls upon them 
 is colored by the pictured windows through which it 
 streams. Now, if we resolve each of these substances 
 into its elementary particles we find them alike. 
 They are differently combined so as to produce indi- 
 viduality in all the varied parts, yet all together 
 they go to form one grand whole. The building is 
 
Christ the Son of Man. 159 
 
 more complete than any of its parts, and is more in- 
 dividual because combining all the inferior individu- 
 alities of its material. Somewhat thus it is with our 
 perfect Saviour, in whom all the materials of His 
 church, " fitly framed together, groweth into a holy 
 temple in the Lord." 
 
 Having regarded this perfection of Christ's human- 
 ity as a fact, we may now regard it as a necessity. 
 "Wherefore in all things it behooved Him to be made 
 like unto His brethren." Why ? The record goes 
 on to- say, "That He might be a merciful and faithful 
 High Priest, in things pertaining to God, to make 
 reconciliation for the sins of the people ; for, in that 
 He Himself hath suffered, being tempted, He is able 
 to succor them that are tempted." 
 
 You see the point. The apostle does not here 
 state that for the discharge of His official duties 
 Christ must have all mental qualities in their fullest 
 development, but he certainly implies it; for it is 
 difficult to understand how He could make reconcilia- 
 tion for the sins of everybody except as He is fitted 
 to stand in place of everybody. His death is accepted 
 by the Father in place of that of all who believe on 
 Him. His atonement is as satisfactory for the sins of 
 A, the poet, whose errors grow out of his sensibilities, 
 as for the sins of B, the mechanic, whose errors grow 
 out of his differing habits and associations. It is im- 
 
i6o Sermons. 
 
 possible to see how He is able to succor all who are 
 tempted except as He is fitted to appreciate their 
 temptations by some likeness to each in His all inclu- 
 sive nature. If Christ has not the mental character- 
 istics of all, He cannot as a man comprehend their 
 nioral states, for the moral states are closely allied to 
 the mental. But if He has them, is He fitted to be 
 our High Priest indeed. If He has them, zvlioever 
 sins may feel, when he comes with penitence to God, 
 that his case will be fully understood by Him, that He 
 will urge the suit as if it were His own, and that when 
 the atonement is plead, the Father will consider that 
 it was personal and ample for the suppliant, whatever 
 the peculiar sins which have come from his peculiar 
 organization. No one struggling with his besetting 
 sins need fear that he will not have just the sympathy 
 and just the help he needs from this all-sided Christ, 
 who can exactly understand him, because created in 
 all points like unto himself Jesus, the perfect, is one 
 friend in whom all the imperfect may find their help, 
 their hope, their rest. The Jew, the Greek, the bond, 
 the free are all satisfied from Him in whom they are 
 all one. 
 
 Having this completeness of human nature, Christ 
 becomes to us the best example of all that is strongest 
 and gentlest. Looking at Him we see that a char- 
 acter at once vigorous and graceful is not impossible. 
 
Christ the Sou of Man. i6i 
 
 We learn to glory in our strength, and not to be 
 ashamed of our sensibilities. The life of Christ is 
 worthy to be studied by one who aspires to be a hero, 
 or by one who would know how to be beloved. The 
 personal offices of Christ are for all. As a friend, He 
 could be chief among ten thousand to Luther, the 
 great reformer; and to Madame Guyon, who, like Mary, 
 sat at Jesus' feet. There is enough in Him, though He 
 wielded no sword, to stir a warrior's blood. There is 
 that in Him which so draws out the timid maiden's 
 heart, that she will whisper to Him what is too sacred 
 for any other ear. 
 
 So, then, this blessed and comforting truth is estab- 
 lished, — that each of us may have a personal Saviour ; 
 to speak with reverence, a Christ of his own ; one who 
 shall be to each just as perfect, just as satisfying as 
 if created for him alone. No man nor woman may 
 need to appropriate all there is in Christ, but every 
 one can appropriate what is wanted. One may want 
 a grand and noble Christ. Resorting to Him, he will 
 find all the grand and noble qualities he seeks. An- 
 other may require a gentle and loving Christ. Re- 
 sorting to Him, the qualities which the former did not 
 specially perceive, because he did not look for them, 
 come out warm and glowing. Were each to describe 
 the Christ he has found, the portraiture would be so 
 different that, looking on the delineation of both, you 
 
1 62 Sermons. 
 
 would say, These are two Christs. No ! They are 
 partial sketches of the same Christ. Each has the 
 same Christ, yet each has a Christ of his own. 
 
 In this connection I have thought it providential 
 that there is no authentic likeness of Christ in ex- 
 istence. It is strange that there should be none, 
 strange that one who was so prominent and so much 
 revered should never have been painted or outlined 
 in some way by pencil or chisel. St. Luke is said 
 to have been a painter. Strange that not even an 
 authorized description of his personal appearance 
 should be given us. So completely uninformed are 
 we in this particular, that it is disputed whether 
 He was fair as the rose of Sharon, or, like a root out 
 of a dry ground, without form or comeliness. There 
 is an old intaglio cut on a seal-ring which has been 
 claimed as a likeness, but proved a forgery. The 
 face on Veronica's handkerchief is but the fancy of a 
 legend. The description attributed to a letter of 
 Publius Lentulus is without credit. How unfortunate! 
 No ; it is better that we have no such temptation to 
 picture-worship as an authentic likeness of Christ 
 would furnish. It x^far better that we should have 
 no such fixed form to disturb the ideal which each 
 of us is now at liberty to form for himself. If, when 
 you have found your Christ, you choose to associate 
 Him with form and feature, you may invest your ideal 
 
Christ the Son of Man. 163 
 
 of Him with such form and feature as befit Him, If 
 you cherish some dear conception of what He is in 
 your soul, no one can now bid you correct it. No 
 one can overlay the picture which satisfies you with 
 another, which, if reasonably true, might not so satisfy 
 you. Let another cherish a different ideal, if he will. 
 It may be better for him than mine, but let him not 
 take mine from me. The truth is, no artist could have 
 ever painted Christ, and I am thankful that it was so 
 ordered that no artist ever tried. 
 
 Christ is to me what I need, and as my circum- 
 stances change or my spiritual wants increase, I still 
 find in Him an exhaustless Christ. In the earlier 
 days of my experience, while life is unclouded and 
 young, I am charmed by the conversation of my 
 Christ at the marriage feast or by the well of Sa- 
 maria. Then, by and by, when I am in Genessaret, 
 in night and storm, I discover that my Christ can 
 walk on the waves and call to the tempest-tossed, " It 
 is I, be not afraid !" I find my Christ at the fireside, 
 blessing my children ; and then, after a time, at the 
 tomb, weeping in sympathy with my grief I go out 
 to the hill-sides, and there my Christ instructs me 
 from meadow and from pasture, from harvest-field 
 and from vineyard ; and when, some dismal night, I 
 go into Gethsemane to pray, " If it be possible, let 
 this cup pass from me," I find my Christ kneeling 
 
164 Sermons. 
 
 there, and He teaches me to say, " Nevertheless, not 
 as I will, but as Thou wilt." 
 
 It is no wonder that to the Apostle Paul Christ 
 was the centre and the inspiration of his spiritual life. 
 No wonder that to him Christ was the embodiment 
 of all that is distinguishing in Christianity, the sum 
 of all that can satisfy the heart of man. He probably 
 saw more in Christ than any of us have ever found ; 
 his experiences were more varied and profound than 
 ours. But it is instructive to notice that he was ever 
 finding something new in Him. He discovered one 
 quality only to see that there was another behind it. 
 From the day when Christ appeared to him in majesty 
 before Damascus, with blinding flash and rebuking 
 voice, to the day when He came to him in Jerusalem 
 to cheer him, when enemies sought his life, He was a 
 perpetual learner of the fulness of Christ's nature. 
 So intimate, at last, did the relations of Christ become 
 to him, that at times the apostle was entirely lost in 
 the Saviour. He was crucified with Christ; he lived, 
 and yet it was not he that lived, but Christ that lived 
 in him. Yet, so conscious was he that there was 
 more in Christ than he had ever found, that, while 
 urging others to know His love, he confessed that 
 that love passeth knowledge. You will say at once 
 that, in this respect, St. Paul is no example for us; 
 tliat he was inspired, that he was personally chosen 
 
Christ the Son of Man. 165 
 
 as an apostle, and so brought into the most intimate 
 spiritual fellowship with Christ; Christ revealed Him- 
 self to him as He never will reveal Himself to us. 
 But if that be so, does it not prove all that I have 
 said as to the boundless perfections of Christ ? If 
 Christ was more than enough to His inspired apostle, 
 may He not be more than enough to you and to me ? 
 Does not the apostle labor to show that what Christ 
 was to him. He may be relatively to all ? The truth 
 is we are contented with far less spiritual fellowship 
 with Christ than He desires that we should enjoy. 
 
 Perhaps our views of Him are wrong. If we regard 
 Him as merely a man of exceptional purity and per- 
 fection. He may shine on us like a distant star, hang- 
 ing bright and warm in the horizon of history, but 
 He will never be personally ours. If we regard Him 
 as divine in such a sense that His human nature, pen- 
 etrated by His divinity, becomes a different human 
 nature from yours, you will not go to Him as you 
 may. Here is the danger with most of us. We 
 believe that Christ is at once God and man ; but 
 when we think of Him as man, He appears infinitely 
 above us as such. We can scarcely realize that it is 
 possible for Him to appreciate and to enter into sym- 
 pathy with our duller humanity, or that, if He could, 
 it would be worthy of Him to stoop so low. We may 
 go to Him in reverential prayer. We might touch 
 
1 66 Sermons. 
 
 His robes, if He were to admit us to audience. We 
 are not so presumptuous as to look for Him in our 
 homes, or to expect that He will walk with us 
 through the dusty streets. But why should we for- 
 get what He Himself has declared ? "I stand at the 
 door and knock',' " I will come in and sup with 
 him," " I will abide with him." " Lo, I am with 
 you alway." 
 
 Let us learn to regard Him as, by virtue of His 
 large humanity and His loving heart, our best and 
 most constant friend. Then we shall be glad that 
 our glorious guest and associate is also divine. Our 
 lives will be elevated and ennobled by His com- 
 panionship, made purer and more happy by His 
 presence and love. 
 
 Let those who are as yet unattracted to Christ, 
 because seeing in Him only an official Saviour and 
 final judge, behold in Him tlie one altogether lovely. 
 
 Let those who defer coming to Him as something 
 to be desired, yet for nameless reasons dreaded, see 
 that they are daily losing that which is noblest in 
 character, best in friendship, of most worth in all the 
 anxieties and joys of life. 
 
 Let those who think they are excusable for ne- 
 glecting Him, as if He did not care for them, hear 
 now His footsteps and His signal, " Behold, I stand 
 at the door and knock!" 
 
III. 
 
 "WHAT IS THAT TO THEE? FOLLOW THOU ME!" 
 
 "Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved 
 following ; which also leaned on His breast at supper, and said, Lord, 
 which is he that betrayeth Thee ? Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, 
 Lord, and what shall this man do ? Jesus saith imto him. If I will 
 that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou Me!" — 
 John xxi. 20, 21, 22. 
 
 LET US recall the connections of this somewhat 
 remarkable passage. Its place in the gospel 
 history is near the close of Christ's earthly ministry. 
 The scene of the story into which it is framed is the 
 shore of Tiberias. The time is the early morning. A 
 fire, burnt low, smokes and smoulders on the sand. 
 Two boats are drawn up on the beach, both laden 
 with miraculously-provided spoils of the sea. Seven 
 fishermen, disciples of Jesus, are gathered about their 
 Lord, each face marked by an expression of unusual 
 interest. Their leader, Peter, has been subjected to a 
 kind of trial, and has received what some would call 
 a sentence. The trial turned upon the question, 
 *' Lovest thou Me ?" It was pressed in triple form 
 
 of examination. Peter was his own witness. " Not 
 
 167 
 
1 68 Sermons. 
 
 guilty" was his plea. " Thou knowest that I love 
 Thee" was his sufficient appeal. The judge was sat- 
 isfied ; but, after putting the disciple upon practical 
 proof, He proceeded to announce the disciple's ap- 
 proaching martyrdom. " Verily, verily, I say unto 
 thee, when thou wast young thou girdedst thyself and 
 walkedst whither thou wouldst; but when thou 
 shalt be old thou shalt stretch forth thy hand, and 
 another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou 
 wouldst not." Then turning, as if to go, He gives 
 him the final charge, " Follow thou Me !" 
 
 This trial was not judicial, nor was the prediction 
 of martyrdom of the nature of punishment, — " This 
 spake He, signifying by what death he should glorify 
 God." Peter understood it, but both trial and proph- 
 ecy were calculated to stir him up from the depths of 
 his impulsive nature. He is ready. For himself, at that 
 moment, he shrinks from nothing ; but as he moves 
 away, in obedience to his Lord, his ear catches the 
 footsteps of John. He turns, and in an instant his 
 mind flies from his own fate to that of his companion, 
 and, impulsive as ever, he cries, " Lord, and what 
 shall this man do ?" or, leaving out the Italics, which 
 are the explanatory words of our translators, " What 
 this man ?" The purport of the question is, " What 
 shall happen to him ?" Very natural is the question. 
 Peter and John, though as different almost as sun- 
 
" Follozu thou Mc f 169 
 
 shine is from storm, were greatly attached to each 
 other, as persons of contrary natures often are. John 
 was at this moment following, as if to show his sym- 
 pathy, and it was not strange that Peter should wish 
 to know how his friend should fare. Characteristic 
 as is the question, not less characteristic is the Mas- 
 ter's reply, " If I will that he tarry till I come, what 
 is that to thee ? Follow thou Me !" 
 
 We have three points deserving of special study : 
 (i) an impulse of curiosity; (2) an enigmatical 
 reply; and (3) a practical command. 
 
 Curiosity is one of the strongest instincts of our 
 nature. I call it an instinct, for it is a craving as 
 truly as hunger. It is the longing for knowledge, 
 and is particularly excited by that which seems mys- 
 terious. We are often content to remain in ignorance 
 until our ignorance is challenged. Our attention is 
 called to the fact that something supposed to be 
 worth knowing is concealed, then we become im- 
 patient to learn. The world is full of secrets, and our 
 progress in knowledge is due, in great measure, to 
 the natural desire to get behind the veils which are 
 presumed to conceal something of interest. As the 
 child is curious to know the secret of his rattle, and 
 breaks it to ascertain, so the man is curious to know 
 the secret of eye and ear and touch and taste, and 
 falls to anatomical investigation. The man may have 
 
1 70 SennoJis. 
 
 a higher object than the child, but would have in- 
 terest enough to keep him busy in his investigations 
 were he simply desirous to know that which chal- 
 lenges his curiosity. Some of the acutest minds of 
 the day are busy in hunting for the secret of life. Its 
 discovery was announced long ago when the func- 
 tions of the heart were explained. Doubt was thrown 
 upon the discovery when the question arose, What 
 vitalizes the heart? An answer was found in the 
 nervous system. The secret was supposed to be 
 hunted down in the brain or the ganglia, until some 
 one asked, What gives the brain its activity ? Then 
 the whole system was taken to pieces, and vital 
 forces looked for in fluids and molecules. Here is 
 the secret, says one, — the brain is a battery. Here it 
 is, says another, — these particles have movement. 
 Then curiosity was roused again by the question. 
 Where do the supplies of the battery come from ? 
 What is the secret of life in the molecules ? The 
 same insatiable desire to knoiv urges on the mind in 
 all branches of inquiry, and is most useful in adding 
 to those stores of knowledge, already so vast, and in 
 disposing of those vast stores of error which have 
 yearly to be swept out of the world. 
 
 That man's curiosity should be exercised over the 
 mysteries of religion is therefore to be" expected. He 
 is as restless before the veils of revelation as he is 
 
" Fol/ozv thou Mc r 
 
 171 
 
 before those of nature. The Bible presents God to 
 the mind as a spirit. Curiosity at once inquires into 
 His attributes and His modes of being. The Bible 
 declares that He is infinite; but curiosity goes out 
 with its measuring line upon the infinite until it is 
 bewildered. The Bible speaks of God's purposes, and 
 curiosity prompts to the inquiry, What are they? 
 How were they formed ? What are the laws of their 
 execution ? The Bible declares certain facts as to sin 
 and its remedy. Curiosity demands the philosophy 
 of those facts. The process is ever the same : strip 
 off the husk to get at the kernel ; break the kernel 
 to reveal the germ ; dissect the germ to separate its 
 particles; interrogate the particles as to their origin 
 and vitality. 
 
 Doubtless the results of inquiry into the mysteries 
 of God's being, His revelation and His providences, 
 have been to a certain degree useful. The greatness 
 of God has been rendered more conspicuous by 
 human attempts to comprehend Him. The wide 
 reach of His justice, the bottomless depths of His 
 mercy, the grandeur of His authority, and the safe 
 enfolding of His fatherhood have all become more 
 certain facts to us in consequence of our study. So 
 His precepts have been traced to the principles which 
 underlie them. We have had glorious glimpses of 
 rhythmic laws in contemplating His providences. We 
 
1 72 ' Servions. 
 
 have been led to many a high and holy experience 
 whilst hovering about the darker places of His word, 
 and listening to the voices or receiving the quickening 
 forces which come out of the shadows impenetrable. 
 Theology is more of a science than astronomy, and 
 the Christian life is almost as carefully analyzed as the 
 life of the body. 
 
 But whilst we thus admit that curiosity has its office 
 both in nature and religion, we must call attention to 
 its necessary limitations. The curiosity of Peter 
 respecting the fate of his companion was both baffled 
 and rebuked by the enigmatical reply of the Master, 
 " If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to 
 ihee ?" There are some things which it is not for 
 man to know. Nature talks to us in riddles, as Christ 
 answered Peter. Revelation has its riddles in both 
 Testaments. Jehovah's self-assumed title is, ''Iain!' 
 His definition of self is, "/ am tJiat I avi!' Christ 
 often puzzled both enemy and friend by His sayings. 
 He even declared that the purpose of some of His 
 parables was that whilst to His disciples it might be 
 given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, 
 others " seeing might not understand." Some things 
 relating to the being of God cannot be comprehended, 
 however clearly they may be stated. We cannot 
 even comprehend the nature and the working of our 
 own souls. We know that we are able to perform 
 
*^ Folioio thou Me/" 173 
 
 distinct mental operations, and we give our mental 
 faculties names, as memory, fancy, reason ; but we 
 know little more of them than their manner of work- 
 ing. Take memory, e.g. Past events, past scenes 
 are reproduced to the mental vision ; we see them 
 though no picture is on the retina. Strains of music 
 go sounding through the soul though the ear is un- 
 disturbed. The face of a lost friend, the tones of his 
 voice, the light of his smile are all vivid, scarcely fad- 
 ing as the years go by. What is the secret of this 
 wonderful power? But memory is a comparatively 
 simple facult}-. If we cannot comprehend this, how 
 can we comprehend the varied processes of reason, 
 balancing, testing, linking thought? But if we can- 
 not understand ourselves, how can we hope to com- 
 prehend a memory which never forgets and a reason 
 which never loses a link, — a memory which is omnis- 
 cience, a reason which is intuition ? So as to the 
 operations of Providence. Here is an intricate ma- 
 chine. You study it for hours without fully under- 
 standing all its parts or movements ; yet that machine 
 was set up in the mind of the inventor before the least 
 of its parts was made. You do not comprehend how 
 that can be ; but every insect is a more wonderful 
 machine. That and every particular of all the multi- 
 tudinous parts of creation were in the mind of God 
 before chaos began to resolve itself into order. More 
 
174 Sermons. 
 
 wonderful still, all the events of history which should 
 take place in the movements of creation, and in the 
 action of the unfettered will of man, were clear to God 
 before Adam appeared in Paradise. Can you under- 
 stand it? 'If not, you can at least understand why the 
 utterances of revelation should sometimes be ob- 
 scure, diverting and rebuking the curiosity which 
 would be baffled in the end, however long and minute 
 the search to which it might prompt. 
 
 It is no objection to say that if God speaks to us in 
 riddles He may be misunderstood. Christ was mis- 
 understood in the case presented by our text. In 
 consequence of His saying, " If I will that he tarry 
 till I come, what is that to thee ?" the report went out 
 among the disciples that John would never die. And 
 so strong was this conviction that, after his decease, 
 tradition said that his tomb was often seen to tremble, 
 moved by the wavings of the breath of the buried 
 but still living apostle. God can afford to be misun- 
 derstood as to that which it is not for us to know. 
 He has taken infinite pains to be understood as to that 
 which it is important for us to know. His law is as 
 clear as were the characters in which it was engraved 
 on the tables of stone. His promises shine like the 
 stars. His statements of the way of salvation through 
 Christ are so plain that he who runs may read. His 
 encouragements to faith and zeal and love are as 
 
" Follozv thou Me r 175 
 
 simple as the words of a father to his child. If God 
 is niisunderstood as to what puzzles us in His being, 
 His providences, or His word, it is because curiosity 
 busies itself with the puzzle when our duty is to let it 
 alone, — " What is that to thee?" 
 
 Here then is our practical duty, — to let alone what 
 is not meant for us to know, and to follow Jesus. To 
 do either may require both resolution and discipline. 
 It is one of the singular marks of human pride that just 
 at the point where the deepest mystery is inevitable 
 the demand is loudest for clear vision. The mysteries 
 of revelation and of Providence are rejected by many 
 minds as if they were blots. Nothing can be accepted 
 in the words or the dealings of God except as made 
 comprehensible to the understanding. The statement 
 is made with great confidence. God would never 
 require us to believe what we cannot understand, or 
 to submit to what is unexplained. And what is the 
 result ? As to the word of God it is this, — the crit- 
 ical axe is taken into the beautiful forest of revelation. 
 As God has given the forest to us, it is full of life and 
 vigor. Some shadows there are in it, — shadow is 
 inseparable from sunlight. The shadows add to the 
 beauty of this forest and heighten its brighter tones. 
 There are whispers in the foliage which we do not 
 perfectly interpret ; but there would be no whispers 
 were it not for the living stems and leaves. By the 
 
I y^ Sermons. 
 
 critical axe every trunk is tested, girdled ; many a 
 trunk is overthrown. The work is done. Now revela- 
 tion is declared satisfactory; all is clear to the vision. 
 You can see every inch of the ground, every curve 
 of the branches ; all is definite ; but all is dead. 
 
 As to the providences of God, the result is this, — 
 history, as God has woven it in perfect fabric, is pulled 
 in pieces. Nothing is accepted as providential which 
 is not bright and fair. The silver threads and gold 
 threads are left in the warp ; the dark threads of 
 calamity and the crimson ones of war and the purple 
 ones of sorrow, unexplained, are all drawn out ; what 
 man is responsible for and what God, are carefully 
 separated, and when the fabric is submitted for our 
 approval, lo ! its figures are all gone. Great spaces 
 are left, where, to be sure, the light shines through. 
 The fabric is utterly .spoiled, and all candid minds are 
 ready to say, If that is God's weaving, it is time to 
 roll up the web and cut it from the loom. 
 
 As to the individual indulging sucii foolish pride, 
 the result is that he has no sooner accomplished his 
 work than he hastens to lay his pride in the dust by 
 declaring his belief in numberless facts of nature 
 which he cannot at all understand, and in admittingf 
 that calamity and war and personal sorrow have in 
 countless instances forwarded the interests of man- 
 kind and proved of inestimable benefit to the soul. 
 
'' Folloiv thou Mc f 177 
 
 It is perhaps harder for the most of us to refrain 
 from the indulgence of unwarranted curiosity in per- 
 sonal matters than in those which pertain to abstract 
 thought or principle. We may not be troubled at all 
 to accept the mystery of the Trinity, or of the incar- 
 nation, or of the life which is hid in God with Christ, 
 when we are sorely agitated by that which affects our 
 happiness as individuals subject to the inscrutable 
 dealings of our Heavenly Father. In this we come 
 into sympathy with Peter, who believed that Christ 
 was divine, and that in His death and resurrection 
 are life, but who could not refrain from asking what 
 seemed an almost trivial question respecting his com- 
 panion, " What shall this man do ?" It is very eas)- 
 to ask why, if one accepts all that the Bible says in 
 general, it should be difficult to apply its statements 
 to what concerns us as individuals ; why, if we believe 
 that the blood of Christ cleanses from all sin, we 
 should vex ourselves with the inquiry whether a par- 
 ticular sin of our own can be pardoned ; why, if we 
 believe that not a sparrow falls without our Father, 
 we should wonder whether He notices our distress ; 
 why, if we use for the benefit of others the promise, 
 " All things work together for good to them that love 
 Him," we should not rely upon it for ourselves. We 
 have no reply to make to such a question, but under 
 
 our silence the fact of our doubt and anxiety remains. 
 
 12 
 
178 Sermons. 
 
 The lips are mute, but the heart throbs fevered and 
 restless. We turn frorn the Scriptures to work away 
 at the problem of bread for our families, or of relief 
 from our business perplexities, or of sustaining exist- 
 ence in the absence of the love whose demonstrations 
 death has quenched, and of hopes which death has 
 extinguished. Sometimes we get into such distress 
 over these problems, especially such features of them 
 as cannot be affected by any action of our own, that 
 we could have no better answer to our prayers for 
 light than this, " What is that to thee ? Follow thou 
 Me !" God has His part to perform in our affairs ; 
 we have our own. We perform our part when, in 
 following Christ, we make use of our faculties as He 
 has directed. In the exercise of faith we are to leave 
 God's part to Him, not asking, " Is He going to do it ? 
 Hozv is He going to do it?" — What is that to thee? 
 
 Every man has his individual life to lead. In fol- 
 lowing Christ he is to make his own footprints, and 
 they will be characteristic of him if he follows natu- 
 rally and without hesitation, long or short, deep or 
 shallow, firm or light, as God has made him. We 
 shall escape a great deal of trouble in this world if we 
 are intent only on this, and we shall get, perhaps, 
 many things which we did not count upon. " Seek 
 first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and 
 all these things shall be added unto you." 
 
" Follolu thou Mer 
 
 1/9 
 
 Of all unprofitable exchanges that of "borrowing 
 trouble" is one of the most. One would think it 
 enough to have an ordinary amount of such capital. 
 The common impulse is to diminish it as fast as pos- 
 sible. Throw it away, scatter it, lock it up, bury it 
 out of sight if you cannot otherwise dispose of it. 
 That is the general advice. And it is curious enough 
 that those who do borrow trouble are as an.xious to 
 get rid of as they are ready to get it. They take it 
 often at a heavy interest, and then are desirous to dis- 
 pose of it on any terms. Discipline is indeed a good 
 thing, and God makes use of troubles we could not 
 avoid, or which we especially deserve, to promote 
 our good. To borrow trouble is a work of superero- 
 gation. It is like the hermit's borrowing sackcloth 
 and scourge when neither will be of any benefit to 
 him. It is like putting pebbles in your shoes when 
 the way is rough enough of itself If your heart ever 
 prompts you to such a transaction meet it with the 
 Saviour's rebuke, "What is that to thee?" 
 
 Our text likewise contains a rebuke for those who 
 are inclined to measure their individual experiences or 
 obligations by those of others. Peter very likely had 
 a lurking desire in his heart to know how the fate of 
 John would compare with his own. He was to perish 
 by violence ; would John die in his bed ? Perhaps, if 
 Christ had told him, he would have sighed a little at 
 
i8o Sermons. 
 
 the contrast. If our lives are individual our experi- 
 ences must be peculiar. God has this for you in fol- 
 lowing Christ, and that for me. Why should we 
 look at each other and say, " It is strange that there 
 should be such a difference?" We can scarcely find 
 it in our hearts to reprove a young man who has been 
 informed that an incurable malady is on him if he 
 thinks of some companion who has been with him in 
 all his boyhood's sports and studies, and who with 
 cheek yet ruddy is pressing on to the achievement 
 of life's ambitions, and wonders why the blight has 
 not come on him ? It is so natural that any of us 
 might do the same, but he would be happier if he 
 could wrest his thoughts away from that subject with 
 the exclamation, " What is that to me ?" Peter went 
 sooner than John to glory, and with the crown of the 
 martyr on his brow. So as to all the experiences of 
 joy or sorrow. The constant temptation is to turn 
 from self to another. " Does he know the touch of 
 this thrill or this pang? Is he exempt from what I 
 suffer? Has he any skeleton in his closet? What 
 are his prospects as compared with mine ? Is he 
 successful where I fail ? And Christ meets that 
 temptation when it threatens to disturb the disciple's 
 peace with "What is that to thee? Follow tlion 
 Me !" We should be content, even with our peculiar- 
 ities of religious experience, though we have not the 
 
" Follotv thou Me r i8i 
 
 steadiness of John on the one hand, or the blazing 
 impulse of Peter on the other, if in our own way, and 
 in accordance with the key to what God has sent us, 
 we do our duty in following Jesus. 
 
 The obligations, too, of another are not to be made 
 a test of our own. " What shall this man do ?" does 
 not so concern us that we are to allow ourselves to 
 neglect a duty because he neglects it. Perhaps it is 
 not his duty in the same sense that it is yours. Even 
 were it more his duty than your own, his neglect is 
 no excuse for yours. " Follow thou Me !" is the Sa- 
 viour's command, though in great crowds the world 
 drifts away in other paths than those of the Lord. It 
 may be something to us, as charged with the duty of 
 arousing others to comprehend and meet their obli- 
 gations, that they are recreant thereto. It may be 
 something to us, as commissioned to win souls to 
 Christ, yea, to pluck them as brands from the burn- 
 ing, that so many are indifferent to Him, enemies of 
 His Cross. It is nothing to us as excusing our halt- 
 ing footsteps in our Christian career. The command 
 is as particular as it is universal, " Follow Me !" 
 
 It may be very natural for those who have never 
 begun to follow Jesus to notice the feebleness or the 
 straying of those who, having begun, do not seem 
 to keep very close to Jesus, their leader. There are 
 too many cases for such observation. But, oh, thou 
 
1 82 Sermons. 
 
 whose duty is thine own, and not another's, " What 
 is that to thee ?" Though but one of a thousand 
 were close to the footsteps of our Lord, " What is 
 that to thee ?" I hear the call of the Master ; I see 
 His glance resting on thee. At this moment thou 
 art singled out from all the world, and the call un- 
 mistakably is, ''Follow thou Me r 
 
IV. 
 
 PAUL AND EPAPHRODITUS. 
 
 " For indeed he was sick nigh unto death : Ijut God had mercy on 
 him; and not on liim only, liut on me also, lest I should have sorrow 
 upon sorrow." — PuiLiPPlANS il. 27. 
 
 'TT^HE writer of this passage, as you will see on 
 ^ turning to it, was Paul. The person to whom 
 he alludes as having been " sick nigh unto death" was 
 Epaphroditus, whom Paul describes as his " brother 
 and companion in labor and fellow-soldier," a mes- 
 senger of the Philippian Church to the apostle, and he 
 that ministered to the apostle's wants. 
 
 In the light of this Scripture, Paul and Epaphro- 
 ditus stand out to view somewhat as a mountain and 
 one of its foot-hills, — both of similar formation and 
 alike, except that one is superior to the other, the 
 lesser seeming an attendant upon the greater. I 
 invite you to a few moments' study of the two in 
 their relations. We will get as near to them as we 
 can. You would scarcely notice Epaphroditus with- 
 out coming close to him. The apostle is so grand 
 in himself, and occupies so much space in New 
 
 Testament history, that you may survey him from a 
 
 1 8-. 
 
1 84 Sermons. 
 
 distance, as you look upon Mount Washington from 
 the northward, twenty miles away, scarcely noticing 
 the foot-hill at its base. Epaphroditus is so little 
 observed by casual readers of the New Testament 
 that many of them would say their attention has never 
 been attracted to him at all. 
 
 But I have another reason for bringing you close 
 to these characters of sacred history. Paul is himself 
 often regarded by people, looking at him from the 
 distance, as stern and solid, like some vast pile of rock. 
 His greatness is conceded, but they do not love him 
 much. To their view he is solemn, majestic, severe, 
 often cloud-capped by the mysteries in which he 
 deals, not unfrequently gathering thunder-storms in 
 his clefts. When you get close to a mountain you 
 are perhaps more than ever awed by its sublimity, 
 but you learn that it is not all sternness. It is man- 
 tled here and there with verdure, every twig and leaf 
 instinct with a warm and springing life. You find the 
 softest mosses in the secluded spots, and see the hare- 
 bells ringing their silent music from the roughest 
 edges of the cliffs. You see the most refreshing 
 streams breaking out from the most secret places and 
 at the most unexpected moments. So Paul was not 
 the less a man because he was an apostle ; nor was 
 he without the tenderest human sympathies because 
 he was the inspired revealer of some of the grandest 
 
Paul and Epaphvoditus. 185 
 
 truths of Christianity. God made it his duty to set 
 forth the divine sovereignty in such a way as to exalt 
 the great King of the universe, and human sinfulness 
 in such a way as to humiliate the best of men ; but 
 we do him great injustice if, when we have read what 
 he has to say on these points, we forget what else he 
 has to say, and associate him in our thoughts only 
 with what may seem, as we look at it, gloomy and for- 
 bidding. Come close to him ; see how full his heart 
 is of thoughts of beauty and of the springs of love, 
 and you will confess that you had not understood 
 him whilst you looked at him without wishing to 
 draw near. Listen to the text if you would see how 
 with all his lofty conceptions he was capable of just 
 such feeling and just such words as you might be 
 when full of grateful love at the restoration of a friend 
 whom you would not lose. " God had mercy on him, 
 and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should 
 have sorrow upon sorrow." 
 
 This, then, is our first lesson from this beautiful and 
 intensely human passage, — tJie consistency of tender- 
 ness %vit]i pozver — of Jiunian love tvith Christian heroism. 
 Paul, the apostle, seems capable of anything within 
 the limits of hunlan endurance. He had a loftier than 
 human boldness and courage. It was immaterial to 
 him in the discharge of duty whether he faced the 
 mob at Ephesus or the king on his throne. He was 
 
1 86 Sermons. 
 
 equally calm and strong in the dungeon at Philippi 
 and in the day and night of storm on the deep ; yet 
 at times he betrays the utmost sensitiveness of feeling. 
 He could stand up against the malice of his enemies 
 as if a corselet of triple steel were over his breast ; 
 but he could not bear even to be misunderstood by 
 his friends. He talks of perils as if it were unmanly 
 to shrink from them, and speaks of tears as if he 
 knew what they were and was not ashamed to shed 
 them. He says at one moment, " I told you before, 
 and foretell you as if I were present the second time, 
 that if I come again I will not spare ;" but at another, 
 in the same letter, " I beseech you by the meekness 
 and gentleness of Christ ;" " I will very gladly spend 
 and be spent for you, though the more abundantly I 
 love you, the less I be loved." The touching preface 
 to the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, of 
 which so many have complained as if it made God 
 worse than an iron fate, is, " I say the truth in Christ, 
 I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in 
 the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and con- 
 tinual sorrow in my heart ; for I could wish that 
 myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, 
 my kinsmen, according to the flesh." This whole 
 epistle, indeed, is as full of human tenderness and 
 sympathy as it is of truth, which, however unpalat- 
 able, is of the last importance to the soul. Epaphro- 
 
Paid and EpapJiroditus. 187 
 
 ditus was like the apostle in his spirit of heroic 
 self-sacrifice. The sickness from which God delivered 
 him was brought on by his Christian devotion; " be- 
 cause," says Paul, " for the work of Christ he was 
 nigh unto death, not regarding his life to supply your 
 lack of service towards me." Yet he too was so 
 tender in his love for those who had sent him to Paul, 
 that he could not be satisfied without going back to 
 them and assuring them by his presence that he was 
 himself again ; and Paul sent him, as he says, " the 
 more carefully that, when ye see him again, ye may 
 rejoice and I may be the less sorrowful." 
 
 No doubt grace had much to do with this develop- 
 ment of mingled tenderness and power in the two 
 disciples of the Lord. As a matter of temperament, 
 we often find such qualities of character dissociated. 
 The old Greeks married Vulcan and Venus, as if it 
 were impossible to unite what are called manly and 
 womanly qualities except as they are brought to- 
 gether in distinct personalities. Generally speaking, 
 we do not expect a man of strong nature to show the 
 more delicate sensibilities, or one of great natural 
 refinement to display much boldness, or strike as 
 Vulcan did when he had the thunderbolts of Jove on 
 his anvil. But Christianity favors the development 
 of these qualities in the same individual. They cer- 
 tainly co-existed in that faultless embodiment of 
 
1 88 Sermons. 
 
 Christian virtues, our blessed Lord, and we are en- 
 couraged to expect to find them, in various degrees, 
 in the character of the disciple. Tenderness is not 
 less godlike than is power. Consecration with faith 
 in it tends to make a man bold and strong in that 
 aggressive work to accomplish which he requires 
 heroism ; but consecration with love in it tends to 
 make a man sympathetic and kindly in all his rela- 
 tions to his fellows, valuing and responding to human 
 affection, as well as to that which has little of the 
 human in it. If Christianity does not make of you a 
 better earthly friend, it fails as truly as it does if it 
 does not make of you a more vigorous servant of 
 God. Christianity was meant for this life as much as 
 for the next life. I may say, indeed, that we are not 
 fitted for the next life except as we are what will ren- 
 der us happiest and most useful in earthly relations ; 
 for we are to carry human natures and human mem- 
 ories over into eternity. I cannot but think that 
 society in heaven corresponds to society on earth, 
 except so far as sin is here and only holiness there. 
 No sympathy is called for in heaven over human woe, 
 because such woe is sin's shadow ; but I cannot be- 
 lieve that in heaven there are no human fellowships, — 
 can you ? I cannot believe that in the heavenly city 
 there are no pleasant recognitions as the multitudes 
 move to and fro, — can you ? I cannot believe that in 
 
Paul and Epapliroditns. 189 
 
 heaven there are no quiet, nay, no rapturous com- 
 munings of hearts still human though there sin- 
 less, — can you ? I do not wonder that a mother who 
 had lost her child in infancy, and was told that be- 
 cause the child was never baptized it could not get to 
 heaven, replied, " Then I do not wish to go there : I 
 want my child." She spoke out of a mother's heart, 
 and as God had made her to speak. Human long- 
 ings, human loves, when not sinful, are eternal. In- 
 dulge them in the spirit of Christianity now, and you 
 shall be best fitted to indulge them hereafter. Earth 
 and heaven are like island and mainland. Crossing 
 the intervening sea does not destroy our identity. 
 Time is a circle drawn on the face of eternity. Get- 
 ting out of the circle is not getting out of ourselves. 
 Paul and Epaphroditus, I doubt not, are all the more 
 dear to each other in heaven because of their earthly 
 relations ; they are all the more beloved because on 
 earth they grew together in tenderness and power. 
 
 A second lesson, derived from what we know of 
 their earthly relations, is the consistency of submissioyi 
 to affliction and a desire to escape it. One would 
 almost think, to read some passages of Paul's writ- 
 ings, that he supposed a man ought never to resist 
 his trials, that he ought not to try to keep himself 
 out of the way of trouble. He speaks so frequently 
 of the benefits of sorrow, he hangs up before us such 
 
190 Sen no 71 s. 
 
 a mighty balance, in one scale of which are the dusky- 
 grains of trial, in the other the shining mass, the far 
 more exceeding and eternal weight of glory ; he says 
 so emphatically, " we glory in tribulations," that one 
 would suppose he never cared to escape from trouble, 
 but courted it rather. Yet here we find him appar- 
 ently just as anxious to avoid it as any one not 
 having such views of trial might be. He thanks 
 God as fervently for restoring Epaphroditus as if his 
 loss would only have been an unmitigated calamity. 
 " God had mercy on him, and not on him only, but 
 on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow." 
 Epaphroditus, too, rejoiced in his own restoration as 
 truly as if, had he died in his- illness, he would not 
 have departed to be forever with the Lord. Were 
 they inconsistent in this ? Not at all. To avoid trial, 
 to escape from trouble, to pray against it is human 
 instinct, and that instinct was given us by God ; that 
 instinct is equivalent to a law of God, in obedience to 
 which it is duty to guard ourselves from affliction in 
 every possible way. Submission to trials which we 
 cannot avoid is, if I may so express it, a secondary 
 law, a kind of law of limitation. God sees that it 
 is best for us sometimes to suffer, and in view of that 
 requires us to be submissive to what we cannot help. 
 Take an analogy out of your own household. You 
 teach your children to avoid all kinds of danger, to 
 
Paul and EpapJiroditiis. 191 
 
 keep out of harm's way, both physically and morally. 
 You blame them if they unnecessarily involve them- 
 selves in difficulty ; yet you sometimes put them into 
 difficulty for their good. You afflict them by with- 
 holding what they desire, or by taking away what 
 they have set their hearts on; you discipline them 
 by task or by stroke, and you expect them to be sub- 
 missive under such training. You never dream of 
 inconsistency in these methods, nor should you 
 dream of it over these contrasted yet harmonizing 
 laws of God. 
 
 The truth is we are just as responsible for suffering 
 more than we need to as we are for murmuring when 
 we suffer what we cannot avoid. Paul's cheerino- 
 words for the sorrowful are intended for use when sor- 
 row must be borne. The very tribulations in which 
 he gloried he would not have assumed of himself 
 He had no right to glory in what it was not plainly 
 the will of God for him to bear. We are not to o-q 
 about the world looking for crosses, although the 
 cross may be the price of the crown. Get through 
 this life with as little sorrow as you can; study to 
 make it cheerful and happy. Turn round with the 
 globe from night to night, but keeping your back to 
 the shadows and your face to the sun. Not selfishly, 
 not sinfully, for if you are selfishly bent on ease and 
 happiness you will be untrue to God and man, and 
 
192 Sermo7is. 
 
 you will thereby only prepare for yourself a suffering 
 which will come by and by. Thank God when He 
 delivers you from troubles you have feared, and you 
 will be most likely to thank Him when He does not 
 see fit to deliver you. Escape what trouble you can, 
 and you will most clearly see the hand of God in that 
 which must be borne. 
 
 Herein also we have a rule for the regulation of 
 our sympathy with others in view of their troubles. 
 So far as these troubles are real and unavoidable, we 
 should look on them with pity and attempt to alle- 
 viate them by every consolation. So far as they are 
 imaginary or unnecessary, they do not call for sym- 
 pathy so much as for the cheerful word or the ready 
 hand which may banish them altogether. In one 
 sense everything which occurs is in the providence 
 of God ; but in another sense a distinction is to be 
 made between what Providence ordains and what 
 man brings to pass. If a person heedlessly squan- 
 ders what God has given him, and so comes to want; 
 if he ruins his constitution by self-indulgence, and so 
 becomes a hopeless invalid ; if he culpably neglects 
 to send for a physician when a member of his family 
 is sick, and so is whelmed in a grief he might have 
 forestalled, we may pity him, but our sympathy will 
 be somewhat different in its quality from that we feel 
 for those who, seeking to obey God's laws of preser- 
 
Paid and EpapJirodiUis. 193 
 
 vation, have yet learned that His will is superior to 
 that law. 
 
 Is not he a better friend who teaches a neighbor, 
 whose flocks the wolves have invaded, to mend the 
 gaps which have been carelessly left in the sheepfold 
 than he who tries to comfort him without alluding to 
 the gaps? I do not know that Epaphroditus did not 
 need a little wholesome chiding for his overwork. 
 Very likely he thought he was doing only what was 
 necessary when he regarded not his own life in his 
 devotion to the apostle. If so we can forgive his un- 
 conscious transgression and admire his self-sacrifice ; 
 but we would not quote his example in sustaining 
 those in disregard of the laws of health and life, who 
 have no such reason for the transgression. There is 
 many a man and woman in this land, and in the stim- 
 ulating atmosphere of American society, whose busy 
 hand I would stay if possible from what seems to me 
 the digging of an early grave, the weaving of a pre- 
 mature shroud. 
 
 Yet, accepting the self-sacrifice of Epaphroditus for 
 what it was doubtless meant to be, we come to an- 
 other lesson in our Scripture, an unselfish devotion as 
 a means of love. 
 
 It is beautiful to see what a network of affection 
 was woven between the hearts of Paul and Epaphro- 
 ditus. They were not ordinary friends. Their love 
 
194 Sermons. 
 
 for each other had stronger fibres in it than those of 
 admiration or esteem or of personal affinity. It was 
 a self-forgetting, self-sacrificing love. When Paul 
 came in to the bedside of his sick brother and com- 
 panion in labor, he thought how that feeble hand had 
 lost its strength in ministering to him ; how that help- 
 less figure was wasted by activities in behalf of the 
 church which were too impatient of rest. One day, 
 perhaps, the attendants said he was dying. Then we 
 may imagine how the heart of the apostle went out 
 in prayer that he whom he so greatly loved might be 
 spared. And when the pulse came again, fuller, softer, 
 slower, we may imagine the thanksgivings which 
 welled out in mingled words and tears. Human 
 friendships like this are sacred, for the words sacred 
 and sacrifice come from the same root. Two persons 
 sometimes love each other with a passion which is 
 like a fever. They wonder if such love ever burned 
 before ; yet after the passion is cooled they wonder 
 if they ever really loved each other at all. For the 
 highest kind of love self-devotion is necessary ; for 
 the very highest that self-devotion must be religious. 
 The affections may be sanctified by grace as well as 
 the will, and when thus sanctified they are not only 
 purer but also stronger. Then love is doubly sacred, — 
 it is devoted and it is holy. The love of Epaphrodi- 
 tus for the Philippians, as well as for Paul, was of this 
 
Paul and Epaphroditns. 195 
 
 sort. He went as their messenger to the apostle. He 
 went to represent them, to do their work. He knew 
 that they loved him for this, and whatever he did in 
 their behalf increased his love for them ; for self-de- 
 votion makes us love those whom we serve, whilst it 
 increases their love for us. This is the .Secret of the 
 homesickness for Philippi which set in as his physi- 
 cal illness was subdued. He longed after his friends 
 and was full of heaviness. How thoroughly human 
 this whole story, and how pleasant to see the readi- 
 ness with which Paul sent him home as soon as he 
 could travel, that his heart and theirs might be grati- 
 fied. We can fancy some cold critic objecting to this, 
 declaring that such weakness was unworthy of a con- 
 secrated man ; that if Epaphroditus was of such 
 value to Paul before this illness, he would be of just 
 as much service afterward ; that he ought to have 
 remained at Rome and stifled his homesickness by 
 hard work for Christ. I am glad Paul did not think 
 so. Religion seems more than ever, when I read this 
 passage, a thing for common life, taking man as he is. 
 I cannot believe that Epaphroditus was less useful or 
 less self-sacrificing during the remainder of his days 
 for going back to the Philippians; nor, though Paul 
 never saw his face again, can I believe that he loved 
 him less, or ceased to remember how he ministered 
 to him in his bonds. 
 
196 Sermons. 
 
 What a greeting the returning messenger must 
 have anticipated as he sailed on his homeward voy- 
 age ! Arriving at the port of Neapolis, he took his 
 way up the steep path which crosses the mountain 
 behind which the dear city lay. At the summit of 
 the pass he pauses to look upon the town below. 
 How much more beautiful its walls, how much more 
 smiling the surrounding plain, how much pleasanter 
 to him the sweep of the environing hills because of 
 the contrast they present to the Roman prison he has 
 left behind, and because of the high devotion which 
 has sanctified his protracted absence. What a greet- 
 ing he must have received as, entering the city, friends 
 and kinsmen gathered round him with demonstrations 
 of affection such as he can never have who gives up 
 nothing for love ! That first prayer-meeting of the 
 disciples at which he told his story must have been 
 worth attending. As he looked on beaming face and 
 tearful eye, as he heard the prayers and thanksgiv- 
 ings offered in view of his restoration and return, as, 
 when the meeting ended, he found himself the per- 
 sonal subject of every form of oriental salutation and 
 welcome, he must have felt that he had not paid too 
 much for what so few are privileged to have. 
 
 So few ! But that, after all, is because so few are 
 willing to make such sacrifices for love. Every one 
 can have in substance what he enjoyed, if not pre- 
 
Paul and Epapliroditns. 197 
 
 cisely in form. His mission was peculiar, but none 
 of us need be at a loss for a mission the results of 
 Avhich will be love received and love returned. What 
 we do in the spirit of self-devotion need not be con- 
 spicuous. Possibly some of those Philippian Chris- 
 tians, who saw what honors of the heart were lavished 
 upon Epaphroditus, half envied him and wished that 
 they could have had some great opportunity to be 
 identified as he was with the revered apostle and with 
 the work of Christ, without reflecting that if they 
 would be as devoted to the friends about them and to 
 the church in which they lived they would get a like 
 reward. What is the work of Christ if it be not 
 making the person next you happy, as well as by 
 helping some great man in bonds? What is it if it 
 be not surrendering time, money, self for the good 
 of souls close by, and for the strengthening of the 
 church where God in His providence has put you ? 
 If you wish to love and be loved with a sacred affec- 
 tion, go out of yourself rigJit here : you shall not be 
 disappointed. 
 
 For myself, I feel like drawing a mark in my Bible 
 against this paragraph, as one of those precious pas- 
 sages to which one loves again and again to turn. It 
 is not one of the grandest or of the most stirring, 
 but it gives a nameless charm to religion as a thing 
 for everyday duty and everyday wear. It teaches 
 
198 Sermons. 
 
 me to be tender as well as strong, to keep out of 
 trouble as well as bear it, to pay the price of love if 
 I would have its sweeter joys. It brings me closer 
 than ever to those by whom God has surrounded me 
 here, whom it is as much my privilege to love as it is 
 my duty to serve; whom I shall love all the more the 
 more I do for them, and who because of my devotion 
 will have an affection for me which is something 
 more than a sentiment. It makes heaven's glory 
 seem so much like common daylight that no one 
 need be afraid of it, superior as it is in purity and in 
 radiance. 
 
 Take in the spirit of this passage, my hearers, and 
 you will be content to live, content to die. Living or 
 dying you shall not want for love. Living, you shall 
 be cheerful, though not without trial ; dying, you 
 shall be happy in the conviction that sojiie at least 
 will not forget you, and will want to see you again. 
 
V. 
 
 UNDERTONES IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 
 
 " And they understood not the saying which He spake unto them." 
 — Luke ii. 50. 
 
 NO wonder ! For this was a strange child who 
 was found at the age of twelve " in the tem- 
 ple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing 
 them and asking them questions." The doctors 
 thought Him a strange boy, for they were " aston- 
 ished at His understanding and His answers," and 
 the most surprising thing He said was the last, when 
 Mary and Joseph reproved Him for lingering behind 
 after their caravan had started for home, — " How is 
 it that ye sought me ? Wist ye not that I must be 
 about my Father's business ?" This boy had a spir- 
 itual insight which puzzled the doctors, and a con- 
 sciousness of His mission which even those who 
 knew His supernatural origin could not comprehend. 
 This consciousness was enough of itself to set off the 
 then youthful Christ as different from any child 
 whom it would be possible to find in Judea. The 
 same consciousness was doubtless retained through 
 
 all the period of His growth in Nazareth, and was 
 
 199 
 
200 Sermons. 
 
 never for a moment obscured during the period of 
 His public ministry. It was one of those undertones 
 of His life which so often arrest our attention, and 
 which give so much significance to His whole his- 
 tory. 
 
 It is to the study of these undertones that I invite 
 your present attention. 
 
 The upper tones of Christ's life are those which 
 first attract notice, like the air in a piece of music, — 
 His works, His words. His travels from place to 
 place, all that ordinarily constitutes a biography. 
 The undertones are more obscure and more pro- 
 found, yet form the base on which the upper tones 
 play, and which harmonize and give the upper tones 
 their chief significance. In studying these we study 
 the nature and the character of Christ. We cannot 
 hope to understand them fully, but we may at least 
 obtain impressions of them which will enable us to 
 appreciate in some degree what Christ was, and what 
 He may be to us. 
 
 I. We may begin with what, for want of a better 
 word, I may term the natural undertones ; that is, 
 those which belonged to Him as a man, and which 
 may be at once detected, even if we do not think of 
 Him as the Son of God. 
 
 One of them is His deep sympathy with the natu- 
 ral world, — this world of form and color, of sky 
 
Undertones in the Life of Christ. 201 
 
 and water, of hills and valleys, of cornfields and pas- 
 tures. He was evidently a great lover of nature ; His 
 discourses were embroidered with figures drawn from 
 this source. His going into the mountains to pray, 
 His preaching on a hillside, or from a boat moored 
 to the shore, indicated His sympathy with Nature. 
 His selection of Gethsemane with its sombre shades 
 as the scene of His agony of soul showed the same 
 instinctive feeling. The spirit within appears to have 
 been attuned as never before to the world without. 
 
 Next we notice His sympathy with human life in 
 its moods and phases, the lighter as well as the 
 graver. He was a man of sorrows, but also of joys. 
 Even the passing gleams of human happiness were 
 reflected from His soul. He stopped when walking 
 through the market-place, the children at play, and 
 smiled, we may presume, as He heard the brighter 
 ones say to the duller, "We have piped unto you, 
 and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, 
 and ye have not lamented." He was jjleased when 
 He heard the children catch up and re-echo the ho- 
 sannas of the mature in the temple. He was always 
 tender to the little ones. He went to the marriage 
 feast in Cana of Galilee, as if to sanction human joys, 
 at the outset of His ministry. He went deeper into 
 the complications of human life when He discoursed 
 with the woman of Samaria at the well ; still deeper 
 
202 Sermons. 
 
 when, in the house of Simon the Pharisee, He set 
 the hollow courtesy of the host in contrast with the 
 sincere love of the sinful woman who washed His feet 
 with her tears ; deeper yet when he unmasked the 
 trickery of His enemies, and at the sam_e time de- 
 clared forgiveness to one whom they dragged to Him 
 as worthy of death by stoning. Not a chord could 
 be struck in the whole range of human experiences 
 to which He was not sensitive. It required a large, a 
 perfect nature to be capable of this ; but we must not 
 overlook the fact that it was characteristic of Christ, 
 if we would form a true conception of Him. 
 ■ Next, and closely associated with this, was an abso- 
 lute unselfishness, — not an occasional or a graduated, 
 but a perfect and constant unselfishness, which ren- 
 dered Him quick to enter into the moods of others, 
 that He might be of use to them. Selfishness pre- 
 vents our coming into thorough sympathy with others, 
 as much as it prevents our helping them when we 
 understand their wants. We are afraid to touch 
 people where the touch is most vital, lest they should 
 require too much of us ; or we are too much occupied 
 with our own concerns to trouble ourselves to come 
 very close to those who stand near by, waiting and 
 wanting. Christ never was. His heart was open on 
 all sides, and always ready for the necessary outgo. 
 A few of us have this unselfish love of others bv 
 
Undertones in the Life of Christ. 20- 
 
 nature, and more yet by grace,— this subtile capability 
 of harmonizing with the moods of others, and thu^ 
 helping them, first by sympathy, then by an appro- 
 priate ministry. Christ had it in perfection. We call 
 it a natural quality in Him only because His nature 
 was perfect. Would it not be better for the world if 
 we were to cultivate, so far as possible, this undertone 
 in our own lives ? Somebody wants something from 
 each one of us which, possibly, we may at this mo- 
 ment be too selfish to give. 
 
 n. Passing now to the moral undertones of Christ's 
 life, we notice first His wonderful conscience. 
 
 Conscience belongs to all moral beings, God in- 
 cluded. It is a faculty which discerns right and 
 wrong, discriminates between them, as day is dis- 
 criminated from night. When perfect it detects all 
 the shades of wrong, as the healthy eye detects the 
 graduations of shadow and marks the stages of 
 twilight. Conscience also approves the right and 
 condemns the wrong. In the conscience which is 
 spiritually sound the right is approved with positive 
 pleasure, the wrong is disapproved with positive ab- 
 horrence; hence it is by no means necessary that a 
 being should be sinful to have a conscience. On the 
 contrary, the more sinful a being is the more likely is 
 he to possess a conscience which is dim and unre- 
 liable. The voice of conscience gives an undertone 
 
204 Sermons. 
 
 to your life and to mine. In either case it is compar- 
 atively faint, because it is in some degree perverted 
 by sin. In Christ's life it was an undertone so deep 
 and unwavering that it was like a current in the sea. 
 Christ was never troubled, as we are, by a guilty con- 
 science. We must think of Him as only human if 
 we say He was sustained by a good conscience ; for 
 that word sustain implies weakness. Christ, as divine, 
 needed no sustaining; for, as such, He was never 
 weak; He needed no support. His conscience was 
 exercised mainly in view of right and wrong in other.*^, 
 or of right and wrong as the basis of a rule of action. 
 In this exercise His discriminations were wonderful. 
 Thus conscience gave tone to every precept He ut- 
 tered, to every act He performed, to every rebuke 
 which fell from His lips. Conscience underlies every 
 word of the Sermon on the Mount ; it regulated 
 Christ's conduct when His acts were condemned as 
 inconsistent with the Mosaic law, as, e.g., when He 
 rubbed out the ears of corn in His hand on the Sab- 
 bath ; it made His step firm when He went in to eat 
 with publicans and sinners ; it gave nerve to His arm 
 when He drove the traders from the temple; it thun- 
 dered in His words when He denounced the Phar- 
 isees and smote them with the flash of those seven 
 deserved woes. Yet, again, it distilled like the dew in 
 such commendations as He gave to the poor widow 
 
Undertojies in the Life of CJirist. 205 
 
 wlio dropped into the treasury the two mites which 
 make a farthing. If He was sometimes indignant, He 
 was never more so than right demanded ; if He often 
 incurred criticism for seemingly strange conduct, it 
 was because, if obedient to conscience, He could not 
 do otherwise. If He spoke in parables of great gulfs 
 and tormenting flames, it was because the claims of 
 justice suggested the picture. If he sketched the 
 house of many mansions, it was because that is the 
 fitting abode of the holy. Yes, that was a wonderful 
 conscience which made Christ everywhere and always 
 the exact representative of that which is right and true, 
 the unflinching enemy of that which is false and wrong. 
 Another of the moral undertones of His life was 
 confidence in His mission. He knew precisely what 
 that mission was. He properly estimated its signifi- 
 cance ; He was certain of its results. Hence of no 
 one could it ever be said as of Him, — 
 
 " Life is real ; life is earnest." 
 
 Having something to do, He was bent upon doing 
 it. The conviction of a mission always makes men 
 earnest.' The idea of a destiny believed in carried 
 Napoleon to Jena and to Austerlitz. The idea of a 
 mission made Mohammed a conqueror at Mecca and 
 the founder of a religion which, after these twelve 
 centuries, is one of the principal religions of the world. 
 
2o6 Sermojts. 
 
 Yet both Mohammed and Napoleon sometimes wav- 
 ered as if in doubt. Paul comes nearer the ideal 
 furnished us by Christ, for he never doubted his mis- 
 sion, and he was not mistaken concerning it. Nor 
 did he ever falter in it, even when Nero's dungeon 
 closed him in. Christ did not need this conscious- 
 ness of a mission to render Him earnest; but, having 
 it, its effects were constantly perceptible. It came out 
 now and then in words like these, " I am come to 
 send fire on the earth ; and what will I, if it be already 
 kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with, 
 and how am I straitened till it be accomplished ?" 
 It came out still oftener in the acts by which He 
 pressed on to the complete fulfilment of the Father's 
 will. Wavered, did He ? Yes, twice, in a momentary 
 shrinking of His human nature from an awful neces- 
 sity laid upon Him ; once in Gethsemane, and once, 
 " Father, save me from this hour." Never in His 
 conviction of what He had to do, or of what its results 
 should be. I thank God for the record of this weak- 
 ness of human nerve, for it comforts me when, for 
 the moment, those less steady shrink and quiver. It 
 is a guaranty that He who can never forget His own 
 Gethsemane will not forget us when God leads us 
 into ours. 
 
 Coupled with this confidence in His mission was a 
 fidelity to it which has by some been thought more 
 
Undertones in the Life of Christ. 207 
 
 worthy of celebration than any other trait in His 
 character. Here centres what some have to say of 
 the manliness of Christ, meaning thereby that moral 
 and spiritual courai^^e which never failed Him. True 
 manliness is something more than courage ; but this 
 is part of it. Christ was certainly the manliest of 
 men, in His tenderness as well as in His courage, in 
 His love as well as in His boldness, in His tears as 
 well as in His freedom from fear. But something 
 more than mere manliness is discovered in His fidelity 
 to His mission. We find in it the manliness of a man 
 and the patience and conscientiousness of a God. 
 
 HI. At this point we turn by a natural transition to 
 the spiritual undertones of Christ's life. 
 
 A simple reference to His divine nature is enough 
 to establish the conviction that these must have been 
 among the most pervasive and profound. And here 
 a multitude of interesting questions spring up as by 
 . magic. He came from Heaven : what memories of 
 it did He retain ? He was by nature omniscient : 
 how far was His omniscience limited by His earthly 
 conditions? Vain questions these, and all the rest 
 which tempt us to fruitless speculations. We never 
 could answer them ; this veil of mystery it is not 
 for us to lift. It is, however, for us to understand 
 that His heavenly relations gave a spiritual character 
 to His every thought, mood, habit, method, plan. 
 
2o8 Sermons. 
 
 Spiritual ideas were associated with all His acts. His 
 miracles were eloquent in spiritual instruction. He 
 taught the sin-blind how to see when He opened the 
 eyes of Bartimeus. He taught the captives of Satan 
 how to sit at His feet, clothed and in their right 
 mind, when He cast out devils. He showed the way 
 to life out of spiritual death when He raised the dead. 
 Ever since He walked upon the waves His voice has 
 cheered the spiritually storm-tossed with the assur- 
 ance, " It is I : be not afraid !" 
 
 - He constantly saw in those to whom He minis- 
 tered candidates for immortality, in peril when they 
 thought themselves safest, in poverty when they 
 thought themselves richest, in sin when they thought 
 themselves most religious. He measured human 
 life, in general, very little by a worldly standard. 
 He used our ordinary inch rules when He must needs 
 concern Himself only with the affairs of the day. 
 His characteristic measurements were by standards 
 of eternity. 
 
 Then, as to Himself, He undoubtedly possessed 
 the spiritual qualities, as a man moving among men, 
 which He sought to reproduce in others. He was a 
 man of love : He loved John, Mary, Peter with a 
 spiritual as well as with a strictly human affection. 
 He was a man of faith : God was His Father not the 
 less truly that He was Himself God. He taught the 
 
Undertones in the Life of Christ. 209 
 
 devil a lesson of faith when He refused to distrust 
 the Father by making bread out of stones, and when 
 He refused to trust God rashly by casting Himself 
 from the temple. He was a man of prayer : we have 
 numberless occasions for prayer where He had not 
 one, yet His soul was like an altar of incense, plumed 
 by a perpetual cloud. 
 
 Such undertones as these, the natural, the moral, 
 and the spiritual, will bear more thought than we 
 have time to give them now. The study of them may 
 be of great practical benefit, because revealing what 
 may be possible in a lower degree indeed, yet possi- 
 ble to any one who will thoroughly test the life which 
 is hid with Christ in God. 
 
 But our view would be incomplete did we not give 
 some careful attention to another class, occasioned by 
 His necessary association with imperfect mortals. 
 
 IV. This class I will term associational, for the 
 reason just given. 
 
 As explaining what I mean, let us suppose that it 
 is true, as even recent travellers conjecture, that in 
 the heart of Africa is a race of pigmies ; let us sup- 
 pose that this race is dwarfed in mind as well as in 
 body ; let us suppose that a man of highest intelli- 
 gence, of saintly spirituality, of keenest sensibilities 
 is sent to this race as a missionary. He masters 
 tiicir language, and then endeavors to communicate 
 
 14 
 
2 1 o Sermons. 
 
 to them his own conceptions of Christianity ; he 
 makes everything as simple as he can, but finds, 
 when he has made the most fluid dilution of truth, 
 the minds of these pigmies are so narrow that he can 
 get it into them only drop by drop. They do not 
 comprehend a great deal that he does say to them, 
 and he knows they could not understand a great deal 
 that he keeps back. They are prejudiced too, and 
 do not like all they do understand. It is hard to con- 
 vince them that a fetich which they can wear is not- 
 better than a God whom nobody can see. They mis- 
 understand as much as they fail to understand. They 
 misinterpret the acts and the motives of their teacher. 
 They construe his disinterested acts into selfish ones, 
 and often turn away from him when he turns most 
 longingly and lovingly towards them. Some posi- 
 tively hate him, and do what they can to drive him 
 away, or to defeat his mission ; and among these 
 people he is positively alone ! Would it be strange 
 if sometimes he should feel the solitariness of his 
 position? Would it be strange if the peculiar con- 
 ditions of his work should occasion a peculiar under- 
 tone in his life as a missionary, an associational 
 undertone, which could not be avoided, but not on 
 that account less serious ? 
 
 The analogy suggested is not very close, but it 
 opens our way. 
 
Undertones in the Life of Clirist. 2 1 1 
 
 It was a frequent experience with Christ that He 
 was not understood. Most of those with whom He 
 came in contact did not care to understand Him. 
 Those who did care frequently failed ; those often 
 failed who understood Him best. The text says, 
 Mary and Joseph " understood not the saying which 
 He spake unto them in the temple." Mary " kept all 
 these sayings in her heart" after she took Him back 
 to Nazareth. She thought them over and over, not 
 merely, we may presume, with a mother's pride, but 
 also with a mother's affectional insight. She turned 
 them often to the light in her thoughtful hours, 
 prayed over them doubtless, compared them with 
 other utterances of a similar kind drawn from her son 
 in the quiet intercourse of home. Very likely she 
 thought she understood Him perfectly when He 
 started fresh from His baptism on His ministry. Yet 
 when she tried to call Him out at the marriage in Cana 
 she fell back in confusion under His rebuke, only re- 
 covering herself far enough to say, " Whatsoever He 
 saith unto you, do it." He did more than she ex- 
 pected. But even this lesson was not enough to ena- 
 ble her to understand Him, for we find her, more than 
 a year afterward, at the head of the rest of her family, 
 seeking to interrupt Him in His work, under the im- 
 pression that He was far gone in fanaticism. Mark 
 makes this clear by this record, " And they" — i.e.. 
 
212 Sermons. 
 
 Jesus and the twelve — " went into an house, and the 
 multitude cometh together again, so that they could 
 not so much as eat bread ; and when His friends heard 
 of it, they went out to lay hold on Him; for they said, 
 He is beside Himself^ By and by it is reported to 
 Him by some one in the crowd that these friends, 
 now identified as His mother and His brethren, stand 
 without, seeking Him. His answer is at once a 
 rebuke and a revelation. He looked about over 
 the throng and said, " Behold ! my mother and my 
 brethren ; for whosoever shall do the will of God, 
 the same is my brother and my sister and my 
 mother." We can fancy His mother turning away 
 when she heard that, wondering whether this was 
 not a new proof that He was beside Himself indeed. 
 Did the crowd within understand Him ? Did His 
 own disciples ? We have evidence enough that they 
 did not understand much that He said to them, even 
 at the very close of His ministry. How solitary He 
 must have been made to feel by all this experience ! 
 
 But He was also misunderstood, and that was worse 
 when, in consequence. He was misjudged. His ene- 
 mies misunderstood Him habitually, and they did 
 what they could to make the people misunderstand 
 Him, as, e.g., when they tortured His words of 
 prophecy respecting His resurrection into an assault 
 upon the temple. " Tear it down, and in three days 
 
Undertones in the Life of Christ. 213 
 
 I will build it up again." He must have been con- 
 scious as He moved about, the wonder of the day, 
 that He was regarded by the majority as an impostor 
 as dangerous as He was bold, His motives miscon- 
 strued. His words twisted, His acts misjudged. But 
 this was not so hard to bear as the misunderstanding 
 of His friends and intimates. He grew up at Naza- 
 reth. There is no reason to suppose that He was not 
 respected as a blameless man so long as His neigh- 
 bors saw in Him only the carpenter's son. But when, 
 after the miracle at Cana, He came home with His 
 mother and assumed the character of a prophet in 
 the synagogue, they first failed to understand, then 
 misunderstood, then rose upon Him in a mob, and hur- 
 ried Him out of the town to cast Him headlong from 
 the brow of the hill on which the city was built. 
 Such pretension his old neighbors could not and 
 would not endure. We have already discovered how 
 His own mother misjudged Him as beside Himself. 
 But He had also to bear the misunderstanding of 
 those who knew Him better. He had to explain 
 Himself repeatedly to His disciples,— to James and 
 John when they wanted to call down fire from 
 heaven on the Samaritans, and when they asked for 
 seats on His right and left in His kingdom ; to Peter 
 when He knelt to wash that disciple's feet ; to all of 
 them sooner or later. He had to bear their expostu- 
 
214 Sermons. 
 
 lations when He proposed to go to Bethany to wake 
 the dead Lazarus, and to endure the reproof of Mary 
 and Martha, who had seemingly been wondering 
 three days whether He did love them as much as He 
 professed, because if He had come when they sent for 
 Him Lazarus need not have died. It would seem at 
 the last, when He was led out to be crucified, as if all 
 the world misunderstood Him, though a few faithful 
 ones ventured to come and stand weeping about the 
 Cross. 
 
 "Misunderstood! Well, what of it?" say some 
 of unsensitive nature. " Why should one trouble 
 himself about that if he understands himself and is 
 conscience-free?" But there are others to whom the 
 consciousness that they are both misunderstood and 
 misjudged is torture. They cannot help the jarring 
 of the sensitive nerve. Indeed, I think very few like 
 to be misunderstood by their friends, to have their 
 love doubted, to have the freezing look of to-day 
 take the place of yesterday's smile, to have the kiss 
 of duty delivered on the cheek where that of affec- 
 tion used to burn, all because of some misunder- 
 standing. I cannot believe that many are pleased to 
 think that they are solitary among their intimates 
 because misinterpreted, even when love is the cause 
 of the misunderstanding. Sure I am, however it may 
 be with some, that there are multitudes in this world 
 
Undertones in the Life of Christ. 215 
 
 who can understand how what I have called the asso- 
 ciational undertones in the life of our Lord may have 
 been among the most real and the most profound. 
 
 It needs but a word to suggest that all the under- 
 tones I have mentioned — the natural, the moral, the 
 spiritual, the associational — gave character and signifi- 
 cance to all the upper tones, and that together they 
 constituted the marvellous symphony of Christ's 
 earthly life. 
 
 With a few thoughts growing out of our present 
 study we will leave the subject. 
 
 First. One's real personality is within him. Figure, 
 face, attitude may represent a man. The soul may 
 express itself by characteristic signs ; but such ex- 
 pression is not infallible, it may be misread. Care- 
 less people do misread these signs and think they 
 know a person, when all they know is what their own 
 conception is. You have a high and prominent brow, 
 you are intellectual ; you have deep-set eyes, you are 
 deceitful ; your lips are thin and compressed, you are 
 cold and wilful ; the light comes and goes in your 
 eyes, you are sensitive; your attitude in church is de- 
 vout, you are a Christian. The verdicts rendered are 
 of varied value ; but no one can ever claim a personal 
 knowledge of you or of me who has nothing but 
 surface indications to judge by. Scarcely anybody 
 knew Christ well; no one but the Father knew Him 
 
2i6 Sermons. 
 
 thoroughly. In speaking of Mary's failures to under- 
 stand Him, I did not mean to blame her; I did not 
 mean to question her appreciation of Him, or to take 
 her down from the pedestal on which she has a right 
 to stand as singular among women, — the mother of 
 Jesus. I would only class her among other mortals 
 liable to misunderstand such a son, even though He 
 stepped out of her lap into boyhood, and out of her 
 home into His ministry. 
 
 So also, secondly, one's inner consciousness is 
 more real than his outer life. You are more real to 
 yourself than is anything you do. You perform an 
 act; that is something, but it is one thing only. 
 You know tvhen you do it, ivliy. It has come up out 
 of the depths of your nature like a bubble rising 
 through the sea. The sea is more real to you than 
 the bubble. You are capable at the moment of a 
 thousand other acts, and you know it. Any act per- 
 formed is evanescent, except in its effects; the na- 
 ture out of which it has come is permanent. So of 
 all the acts which may constitute the outer life, — the 
 self out of which they come is more real than all of 
 them put together. Your life has its undertones as 
 truly as Christ's life had. If you will listen you shall 
 detect their rise and fall when the upper tones are 
 still. 
 
 How important, then, that the inner consciousness 
 
Undertones in the Life of Christ. 217 
 
 should be under the power of grace. If bad I pity 
 you, if good I congratulate, for this is the real self 
 with which and in which you have to live forever. 
 
 Finally, life's trials, which when real must be 
 below the surface, where the real self is found, need 
 spiritual treatment. They are best borne and are 
 most useful when they are considered in their hea- 
 venly relations. Their best consolation is in spiritual 
 sympathy. This we can get in a measure from those 
 who have had such trials, and know by experience 
 how they were spiritually soothed. We can get it 
 from those who, if they have not had just such trials, 
 are accustomed to look for the significance of earthly 
 discipline in the future rather than in the present. 
 Above all, we can get it from Christ, who has Himself 
 sounded every depth into which we are called to de- 
 scend, and gone to every height which it is possible 
 for us to climb. Never think your trouble or your 
 joy is such as to make you solitary so long as you 
 can have the spiritual sympathy of one who perfectly 
 understands you, and by whom you can never be 
 misunderstood. " Come unto me, all ye that labor 
 and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
 
'^ hii^.