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 .JUN 9 1961 
 
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 WEST CHURCH 
 
 ITS MINISTERS. 
 
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 ORDINATION OF CHARLES LOWELL, D.D. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY, 
 
 111, Washington Street. 
 
 1856. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by 
 
 FREDEKICK CROSBY, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 printed by john wilson and son, 
 
 22, School Street. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Votes by the Standing Committee iv 
 
 Proceedings of the Parish in Reference to a Cele- 
 bration OF the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ordi- 
 nation of Charles Lowell, D.D., as Pastor of the 
 
 West Church 3 
 
 Services of the Occasion 19 
 
 Address of Dr. Lowell 27 
 
 Introduction to the Commemorative and Historical 
 
 Discourses 33 
 
 Anniversary Discourse 41 
 
 Discourse on "William Hooper 63 
 
 Appendix to Discourse on William Hooper .... 72 
 
 Discourse on Dr. Mayhew 81 
 
 Discourse on Dr. Howard 133 
 
 Appendix to Discourse on Dr. Howard 159 
 
 Theological and Ecclesiastical Position of the West 
 
 Church 169 
 
 Appendix to the Discourses 205 
 
 Account of the Sunday School of the West-Boston 
 
 Society, by Charles G. Loring 213 
 
 List of Superintendents and Teachers of the Sunday 
 
 School 235 
 
 Appendix to the "Proceedings of the Parish" . . . 241 
 
IN STANDING COMMITTEE; 
 
 Voted, That the Chairman of the Committee be instructed to request of Rev. 
 Dr. Lowell and Rev. Mr. Bartol copies of the Address and Sermon delivered 
 on the day of the Commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ordination 
 of Dr. Lowell, — and the Sermons subsequently delivered by Mr. Bartol, illus- 
 trative of the lives and characters of the former Pastors of this Society, and of 
 its history, — for publication. 
 
 Voted, That Charles G. Loring, Joseph Willard, Alexander Wadsworth, 
 and Thomas Gaffield, be requested to act as a Committee of Publication, to 
 prepare and cause to be published the Proceedings of the Society in reference 
 to said Commemoration, and the Address and Sermons above mentioned, and the 
 Hymns sung on that occasion, and such other matter as they may think proper 
 for the interest of the Society. 
 
 Voted, That the Publishing Committee be authorized to print as many copies 
 as they may deem expedient. 
 
 Boston, Feb. 13, 1856. 
 
 [A true copy.] 
 
 A. E. JOHONNOT, 
 Clerk of the West-Boston Society. 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARISH. 
 
frocccMngs at i\)t $nris^ 
 
 IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 A CELEBRATION OF THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OF THE ORDINATION OF 
 
 CHARLES LOWELL, D.D., 
 
 as pastor of t^c CZHtst Cfjurcfj. 
 
 In accordance with notice previously given, a meet- 
 ing of the Proprietors of Pews was held in the 
 Church, on Sunday, Dec. 9, 1855, after the morning 
 services. 
 
 Richard Soule, Esq., was chosen Chairman. 
 Alexander AVadsworth, Esq., stated the object of 
 the meeting to be the consideration of the suitable 
 observance of the approaching Fiftieth Anniversary 
 of the ordination of the Senior Pastor of this Church 
 and Society, and moved that a large Committee be 
 appointed to make the necessary arrangements, and 
 to report at an adjourned meeting, to be held in the 
 Church on the next Sunday, after the morning ser- 
 vices. 
 
4: PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARISH. 
 
 The following gentlemen were appointed by 
 nomination at large to constitute the Committee : 
 Charles G. Loring, Oliver Holman, Andrew Cun- 
 ningham, John Rayner, William B. Callender, Rich- 
 ard Soule, Sewell Kendall, Emmons Raymond, 
 Charles W. Lovett, Joseph "Willard, "William D. 
 Coolidge, John T. Heard, Alexander Wadsworth, 
 Amos Baker, Levi Brigham, George Dannie, Charles 
 Faulkner, Joseph Mackay, George W. Otis, Elias 
 Haskell, Andrew E. Johonnot, Thomas Gaffield, and 
 Ebenezer Johnson. 
 
 No other business being presented, the meeting 
 adjourned as above. 
 
 A. E. Johonnot, 
 
 Boston, Dec. 9, 1855. Clerk of the West-Boston Society. 
 
 [A true copy.] 
 
 An adjourned meeting of the proprietors was held 
 in the Church, on Sunday, Dec. 16, 1855, imme- 
 diately after the morning services. Richard Soule, 
 Esq., presided. 
 
 Charles G. Loring, Esq., the Chairman of the 
 Committee appointed at the last meeting, submitted 
 the following — 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARISH. 
 
 PREAMBLE AND RESOLUTIONS. 
 
 The Committee appointed to prepare and submit 
 for the consideration of this meeting an arrangement 
 for the observance of the approaching Fiftieth Anni- 
 versary of the ordination of the Senior Pastor of this 
 Church and Society, having ascei'tained it to be his 
 desire that any commemoration which may be thought 
 proper shoukl take place upon the first Sunday, ra- 
 ther than upon the first day, of the new year, and 
 be of a nature as private and unostentatious as the 
 end proposed may allow ; and being of opinion, that, 
 under existing circumstances, an expression of the 
 feelings of the Society towards him, and such re- 
 sponse as he may be pleased to make, with an occa- 
 sional discourse by the Junior Pastor, and the simple 
 forms of religious worship to which we are accus- 
 tomed, embracing any devotional hymns that may 
 be furnished, would constitute the most appropriate 
 celebration of this interesting event, — respectfully 
 recommend the adoption of the following preamble 
 and resolutions : — 
 
 Preamble. — It having pleased God to continue 
 to us the life of our revered and beloved Senior 
 Pastor for the period of half a century from the 
 
 1* 
 
b PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARISH. 
 
 time of his ordination over us in the Christian mini- 
 stry, the approach of the Fiftieth Anniversary of that 
 event leads us to feel that it is due, alike to him and 
 ourselves, unitedly to express and place upon record 
 the declaration of our grateful appreciation of his 
 invaluable services, of our profound affection and 
 respect, of our sympathy in his privations and suf- 
 ferings, and of our gratitude to our heavenly Fa- 
 ther for the blessing conferred in his ministry, and 
 so long vouchsafed to us. But few now remain to 
 tell of the zealous joy with which he was welcomed, 
 in the freshness of his youth, as the Pastor of this 
 Church and people, and of their enthusiastic attach- 
 ment to him in the vigor of his manhood, induced 
 not less by the fervor and beauty of his pulpit exer- 
 cises, than the disinterested self-devotion which led 
 him to sacrifice every thing for the advancement of 
 their spiritual welfare, and the relief of those whose 
 grief or want had summoned him to their doors ; 
 though a multitude, as we may well believe now in 
 heaven, are there to bear witness to his fidelity to 
 his trust, and to welcome him, as one who had lighted 
 their path thither, when,, he shall be summoned to 
 the reward of his labors. It may well be questioned, 
 whether a more .cordial and affectionate relation of 
 pastor and people ever existed in the Christian church 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARISH. 7 
 
 than that which has sanctified his ministry while 
 engaged in its activie duties, and has shed its benign 
 influences upon the hearts of both. 
 
 Immediately upon his settlement, the Society, 
 which then consisted of only about forty families, 
 increased to about three hundred, requiring the 
 substitution of this house of worship, which, accord- 
 ing to the taste then prevailing, was considered as of 
 great architectural beauty, instead of the compa- 
 ratively very small and humble wooden structure 
 whose site it occupies, but which was of peculiar 
 interest and glory, in view of the characters and 
 labors of the eminent and pious men who had filled 
 its pulpit, and worshipped within its walls. 
 
 This Society, so far as its history is known, and 
 certainly from the " time when the memory of man 
 runneth not to the contrary," as some of us live to 
 bear witness, has been eminently united and har- 
 monious. No root of bitterness has been permitted 
 to spring up among us, to shed its poisonous influ- 
 ence upon our religious assemblings, or to distract 
 our affections from the promotion of its true interests 
 or to generate the seeds of contention within or 
 without these walls. If differences of opinion have 
 existed upon matters of moment, — as they always 
 must, in greater or less degree, among men who 
 
8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARISH. 
 
 think for themselves, and act under a sense of per- 
 sonal responsibility, — the minority has always, with 
 true magnanimity, yielded to the wishes of the ma- 
 jority ; and the temporary ruffling of the sea has 
 only served to show the seaworthiness of our little 
 ship, and how readily oil upon troubled waters may 
 flow from honest and loving hearts. But, while 
 rejoicing in this great blessing, we would not be un- 
 mindful that we are indebted for it, in great degree, 
 to the able, wise, and good men who have presided, 
 and now preside, over it as pastors ; who have sought 
 to inculcate the love of God and of man, as enjoined 
 in the Scriptures, upon the broad platform of Chris- 
 tian faith in God as the Father of us all, and in Jesus 
 Christ as sent to reveal his will, untainted with sec- 
 tarian bigotry or dogmatic presumption ; and thus 
 helping us to avoid uncharitable depreciation of our 
 neighbors, and cultivating the spirit of peace and 
 disinterested good-will among ourselves. 
 
 But it is not for the inestimable services which the 
 Senior Pastor has rendered to us collectively, as a 
 religious society, that we would alone express our 
 grateful acknowledgments to him, and thankfulness 
 to God. "We feel that we are drawn towards him by 
 still closer ties of affection and sympathy, and owe to 
 him a still deeper debt as individuals, in whose most 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARISH. 9 
 
 sacred joys and griefs he has largely shared, and 
 which in themselves are more fitting themes for 
 private meditation and prayer than for the public 
 assembly. 
 
 He has baptized many of us, or our children ; he 
 has united some of us in the most sacred and dearest 
 of earthly relations ; he has aided and cheered us in 
 the chamber of sickness, and in the hours of grief 
 and disappointment ; he has stood with us by the 
 'bed of the dying, has wept with us over the un- 
 buried dead, and lifted us upon the wings of prayer 
 from the darkness of the grave to the light of 
 heaven. 
 
 But his service to us has not ended there. It is 
 not only at the altar, and in the exercise of these, 
 the active offices of his station, that he has ministered 
 to us in holy things, to prepare us for the duties 
 and struggles of life, and fit us for heaven ; but he 
 has been called upon, in the providence of God, to 
 fulfil the still more arduous and sublime mission of 
 those who, in helplessness, pain, and grief, are com- 
 missioned to " stand and wait." 
 
 Sickness and infirmity have stricken him down in 
 the midst of his usefulness and honors ; unceasing 
 pain, from which sleep affords scarcely a temporary 
 refuge, has racked his aching head ; deafness, ren- 
 
10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARISH. 
 
 dering verbal intercourse extremely difficult, has 
 shut him out from most of the endearing communi- 
 cations of the social circle and domestic hearth, and 
 the soothing and cheering sounds of nature, in which 
 so much of the loveliness of life is found ; disastrous 
 losses of his moderate inheritance, and bereavement 
 following close upon bereavement, desolating his 
 family circle and his fireside, — now taking the staff 
 upon which he leaned, and now the rising hope of 
 his age, and now the beautiful buds just blossoming 
 around his hearth, — have followed in quick succes- 
 sion, and, to the unbelieving heart, might seem sent 
 as tests of his faith and patience, and of his belief in 
 the doctrines he had taught. But all have been 
 received as messengers of grace and mercy ; and all 
 have been converted into manifestations of the glory 
 of Him whom he worships, and in whom he trusts. 
 For what greater glory can God receive from hum- 
 ble man, than such exhibition of spiritual elevation 
 above the severest of human sufferings, founded in 
 such unshaken faith in his fatherly care and protec- 
 tion, and of the rewards that await meek resignation 
 to his holy will? And thus, while his strength has 
 been paralyzed, and his voice could be no longer 
 heard in our assembly, he has been silently indeed, 
 but most emphatically, preaching to us the ever- 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARISH. 11 
 
 lasting truths of his Christian mission, in language 
 even more solemn and impressive than ever came 
 from his warm heart and eloquent lips. 
 
 Truly indeed may it be said of him, that, — 
 
 " As some tall cliff that lifts its awful fonn, 
 Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 
 Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
 Eternal sunshine settles on its head." 
 
 Thankful to Almighty God that the blessing of 
 such a ministry, so full of instruction by precept 
 and example, has been vouchsafed to us, and con- 
 tinued to us so long, and grateful to him who 
 has served us so faithfully and so well, we rejoice 
 that this fitting occasion has been allowed to us for 
 a united expression of our gratitude, sympathy, and 
 afiection, and for thus adding our humble tribute to 
 the happiness of his declining day ; and wc desire to 
 record the expression of our feelings in the following 
 resolutions : — 
 
 1. Resolved, That we deem it a cause of fervent 
 gratitude to Almighty God, that in his kind provi- 
 dence he saw fit to establish the pastoral relation 
 between our revered Senior Pastor and this Church 
 and Society, and to continue it to the present day. 
 
 2. Resolved, That we gratefully acknowledge, and 
 shall ever hold in fond remembrance, his entire 
 
12 PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARISH. 
 
 fidelity, untiring zeal, and eminent success in the 
 discharge of his pastoral duties ; his generous and 
 hearty friendship, his ever-ready sympathy, and 
 devotion to our highest interests collectively and 
 individually. 
 
 3. Resolved, That, from our inmost hearts, we 
 sympathize with him in the sicknesses, afflictions, 
 and bereavements with which he has been visited ; 
 and humbly pray that they may be sanctified, to us 
 as well as to himself, by the example of Christian 
 meekness, faith, and patience, with which they are 
 sustained. 
 
 4. Resolved, That we gratefully acknowledge the 
 goodness of God, and his guardian care over us, in 
 the establishment of our beloved J-unior Pastor as 
 our minister in Christ, whose zeal and fidelity in 
 the cause of his Master have entitled him to our 
 warmest affection and profound respect. 
 
 5. Resolved, That we rejoice in the peace and 
 harmony that have always attended our union with 
 them, and with each other ; by means whereof our 
 individual happiness, and the welfare of our Society, 
 have been signally promoted, and its energies and 
 resources have been successfully called forth, on 
 every occasion justifying an appeal to its sympathy 
 or liberality, and for which, under Divine Provi- 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARISH. 13 
 
 dence, we are greatly indebted to the piety, wisdom. 
 Christian liberality, and personal disinterestedness, 
 which have uniformly characterized the pastors of 
 this Society, and none more than those whom it is 
 our happiness to have over us at this time. 
 
 6. Resolved, That, in view of these considerations, 
 we contemplate the approaching Fiftieth Anniversary 
 of the ordination of our Senior Pastor with deep 
 interest, and desire that it may be suitably comme- 
 morated, upon the first Sunday of the new year, 
 by religious services adapted to the occasion. 
 
 That he be informed, by the Chairman of this 
 meeting, of this design, and requested to make such 
 communication as his inclination may prompt and 
 his health permit. 
 
 That the Junior Pastor be requested to deliver a 
 discourse upon such topics as he shall think appro- 
 priate ; and that these, together with the usual 
 religious services of the Sunday, and with such 
 occasional hymns as may be offered, shall constitute 
 the proceedings of the day, — subject, however, to 
 any alteration or addition which the Standing Com- 
 mittee may see fit to introduce. 
 
 7. Resolved, That a copy of the aforegoing Pre- 
 amble and Resolutions be sent by the Chairman to 
 our revered Senior Pastor, and entered at large upon 
 
 2 
 
14 PKOCEEDINGS OF THE PARISH. 
 
 the records of the Society, with any written reply 
 thereto which may be received from him. 
 
 8. Resolved, That the Standing Committee be re- 
 quested to take any other measures which they may 
 deem expedient for the observance of the day. 
 
 Respectfully submitted by the Committee, 
 
 Charles G. Loring, 
 
 Chakman. 
 
 Joseph Willard, Esq., after some impressive and 
 appropriate remarks, moved the acceptance of the 
 Report ; which motion was seconded by Dea. Alex- 
 ander Wadsworth, and passed by a unanimous 
 vote. 
 
 A. E. JOHONNOT, 
 
 [A true cop}'.] Clerk of the West-Boston Society. 
 
 The following reply to the above Preamble and 
 Resolutions was received from Rev. Dr. Lowell, by 
 the Chairman of the Standing Committee : — 
 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PARISH. 15 
 
 " Richard Soule, Esq. 
 
 " My dear Friend, — I thank you for the affection- 
 ate manner in which you have communicated the 
 beautiful, and to me very affecting. Report of the 
 Committee of the Parish, in reference to the Fiftieth 
 Anniversary of my ordination, and the information 
 that it has been unanimously adopted by the parish 
 with which I have been so long connected, and which 
 fills so large a place in my heart. 
 
 " I should deem it proper to express my deep 
 sense of these proceedings in this acknowledgment 
 of your communication ; but I had already prepared 
 an address to the parish, to be communicated. Provi- 
 dence permitting, on the first Sunday in January. 
 
 " Very affectionately, 
 
 " Charles Lowell. 
 
 "Elmwood, Dec. 19, 1855." 
 
 A. E. JOHONNOT, 
 
 [A true copy.] Clerk of the West-Boston Society. 
 
SERVICES OF THE OCCASION. 
 
 2* 
 
SERVICES OF THE OCCASION. 
 
 According to the contemplated arrangement, the 
 anniversaiy of Dr. Lowell's ordination was to have 
 taken place on Sunday, Jan. 6, 1856 ; but, on that 
 and the preceding day, one of the most violent snow- 
 storms for several years prevailed, blocking up all 
 the railroads and avenues to the city. The Commit- 
 tee were unable to obtain a carriage to go to Cam- 
 bridge; and the services of the anniversary were 
 postponed until the following week. 
 
 On Sunday, Jan. 13, notwithstanding a driving 
 storm of snow and rain, a deputation from the Com- 
 mittee of Arrangements (Levi Brigham, Esq., and 
 Deacon Alexander Wads worth) proceeded to the 
 reside»ce of the Senior Pastor in Cambridge, and 
 accompanied him, in a close carriage, to the Church. 
 The Church was well filled ; but many more would 
 have been present, had the weather been propitious. 
 
20 SERVICES OF THE OCCASION. ^ 
 
 and had it not been supposed that the services would 
 again be postponed. 
 
 The venerable Senior Pastor, leaning on the arm 
 of Rev. C. A. Bartol, the Junior Pastor, was con- 
 ducted to the pulpit, which, by reason of feeble 
 health, he had not occupied for some years. The 
 services were commenced by the singing of the 
 following original hymn, written for the occasion 
 by Mr. Bartol : — 
 
 THE JUBILEE. 
 
 O Israel ! at the trumpet turn ; 
 
 From toil set every household free ; 
 While priests with people meet, and burn 
 
 To share the long-hoped jubilee ! 
 
 Let royal psalms all ranks rejoice, 
 Each alien take his ancient ground, 
 
 The loosened bondmen lift their voice, 
 The lowliest Hebrew head be crowned ! 
 
 Through fifty overarching years, 
 Their sorrows are a fleeting shade : 
 
 Fall now like far-off" rain their tears ; 
 In mercy's light their miseries fade. 
 
 A Christian jubilee we sing : 
 
 Guided in gloom, in grief consoled, 
 
 Through half a century's crowded ring 
 Our countless flock yet seeks one fold. 
 
SERVICES OF THE OCCASION. 21 
 
 The church and shepherd, joined by God, 
 
 A golden wedding celebrate, 
 With joy that flowers upon his rod, 
 
 And peace outblooming earthly date. 
 
 Fast by your heritage still stand. 
 
 Ye cliildren ! — for the past give praise : 
 
 Our younger with the elder band 
 Breathe vows of love to endless days. 
 
 A short prayer followed by Mr. Bartol, during 
 which the Senior Pastor stood by his side. Dr. 
 Lowell then read the following hymn : — 
 
 While thee I seek, protecting Power ! 
 
 Be my vain -wishes stilled ; 
 And may this consecrated hour 
 
 With better hopes be filled ! 
 
 Thy love the powers of thought bestowed ; 
 
 To thee my thoughts would soar ; 
 Thy mercy o'er my life has flowed, — 
 
 That mercy I adore. 
 
 In each event of life, how clear 
 
 Thy ruling hand I see ! 
 Each blessing to my soul more dear. 
 
 Because conferred by thee. 
 
 In every joy that crowns my days. 
 
 In every pain I bear, 
 My heart shall find delight in praise, 
 
 Or seek relief in prayer. 
 
A^' SERVICES OF THE OCCASION. 
 
 When gladness wings my favored hour, 
 
 Thy love my thoughts shall fill ; 
 Resigned, when storms of sorrow lower, 
 
 My soul shall meet thy will. 
 
 My lifted eye without a tear 
 
 The gathering storm shall see ; 
 My steadfast heart shall know no fear ; 
 
 That heart shall rest on thee. 
 
 The Junior Pastor then read the twenty-third 
 Psalm. Prayer was offered by the Junior Pastor; 
 after which, the following original hymn, written by 
 Miss Horatia S. Ware, was sung : — 
 
 Behold, the years, the conquering years, 
 
 Run out man's little life ! 
 Furrows and fi'osts and pains and tears 
 
 Proclaim the unequal strife. 
 
 Behold the soul, serene and strong, 
 
 Beneath its patriarch day ! 
 Its morning beauty plays along 
 
 Its evening's glorious way. 
 
 So shines the day of him who wrought, 
 
 O church of Chiist ! for you ; 
 Your homes and graves and hearts have taught 
 
 How faithful and how true. 
 
 His way of duty girdled round 
 
 Your every varied lot ; 
 To God's deep providences boimd. 
 
 And to himself forgot. 
 
ser\t:ces of the occasion. 23 
 
 Time's shadows fall ; he rests him now : 
 
 O grace of God ! descend ; 
 Infold his heart, and bless his brow, 
 
 And own him as thy friend. 
 
 The Anniversary Discourse, contained in the sub- 
 sequent pages of this book, was then delivered by the 
 Junior Pastor. At the conclusion of Mr. Bartol's dis- 
 course, Dr. Lowell delivered the Address, which will 
 be found in its appropriate place. 
 
 The following hymn, written for the jubilee by 
 Mrs. C. W. Richards, was then sung : — 
 
 Great God ! to thee all praise ascribing 
 
 For the teachings of this day. 
 May thy love, with all abiding, 
 Be the sunlight of om- way ! 
 Christ illume us, 
 Christ illume us, 
 "While, as chilcben, we obey. 
 
 Help us now, whilst, all imploring, 
 
 Joyous memories m us move, 
 " Light of other days " restoring, 
 Fifty years of peace and love ! 
 Still prepare us, 
 Still prepare us, 
 For eternal joys above. 
 
 The interesting services were closed with a bene- 
 diction by the Junior Pastor. 
 
24 SERVICES OF THE OCCASION. 
 
 The teachers and pupils of the Sunday school, 
 desirous of manifesting their interest in the occasion, 
 presented their token in the form of some most 
 beautiful and fragrant bouquets, with which the 
 communion-table and baptismal-font were tastefully 
 decorated by a committee of their number. At the 
 conclusion of the public services, a bouquet was 
 presented to each of the pastors ; and some time 
 was spent in the exchange of salutations between the 
 Senior Pastor and the old, the middle-aged, and the 
 young of the flock, who thronged the aisle to take 
 the hand and receive the affectionate greetings of 
 their venerable friend. 
 
 Dr. Lowell, who seemed to be very happy on the 
 occasion, and deeply to enjoy the welcome of his 
 friends, after bidding them an affectionate farewell, 
 was accompanied to his home by the same Commit- 
 tee by whom he was attended in the morning. 
 
 In the afternoon, Eev. Mr. Bartol preached a dis- 
 course upon the life and character of Rev. Mr. 
 Hooper. The other discourses were delivered on 
 the succeeding sabbaths. 
 
ADDRESS OF DR. LOWELL. 
 
ADDRESS OF DR. LOWELL. 
 
 On the first day of a new year, a council was assem- 
 bled in Boston for the purpose of introducing a 
 minister to the pastoral care of the West Church. 
 
 It was a beautiful day ; a day, — as was remarked 
 in the service of the ordination, — " without a 
 cloud." The sky was clear and serene ; there was 
 no strife in the elements ; all was calm. The 
 transactions of that day were in unison with the 
 harmony of nature : there was entire unanimity in 
 the call of the parish to their new minister ; there 
 was entire unanimity in the vote of the council to 
 proceed to his ordination. 
 
 All this was considered as the harbinger of a 
 peaceful and happy union. Half a century has 
 passed away, and the augury is as yet fulfilled. 
 
 He who, fifty years ago, was inducted to this 
 charge, and who now addresses you, is able, as it 
 regards the connection an(i intercourse between 
 
28 ADDKESS OF DR. LOWELL. 
 
 minister and people, to say, " It has been a ministry 
 without a cloud." Nothing has occurred to disturb 
 its tranquillity, — nothing to bring even a shade of 
 darkness over it. 
 
 I have been with you, not only " without fear," 
 but in intimate and confidential affection ; as a father 
 with his children, and a brother with brothers. 
 
 You have told me your joys and your sorrows, 
 your doubts and anxieties, your forebodings of evil, 
 and your anticipations of future happiness on earth 
 and in heaven ; and I have largely shared with you 
 in all. Who has rejoiced, and I have not rejoiced ? 
 Who has been sorrowful, and I have not mourned ? 
 " Who has been weak, and I have not been weak ? 
 Who has been offended, and I burned not ? " 
 
 But how abundantly have you repaid me with 
 good ! My joys have been your joys, and my sorrows 
 your sorrows. In health and sickness, in prosperity 
 and adversity, I have had your constant and earnest 
 sympathy. 
 
 I have kept back nothing that I thought would 
 be profitable to you -, and you have not deemed me 
 "your enemy because I told you the truth." If you 
 have spoken evil of me, I have not heard of it ; if 
 you have thought evil of me, it has not been known 
 to me. In the long period in which I have been so 
 
ADDRESS OF DR. LOWELL. 29 
 
 closely connected with you, not an unkind word or 
 an averted look have I had from any one of you. All 
 our intercourse has been uninterruptedly governed 
 by the law of kindness and love. 
 
 But it is not only of those of you who are as yet 
 on earth that I thus speak. To generation after 
 generation I have ministered ; and I speak, too, of 
 those who have entered " within the vail." Yes, 
 spirits of the beloved departed ! standing on the 
 confines of that eternity on which you have entered, 
 I speak also of you. In deep humility of soul, I 
 would fain believe that you remember me without 
 reproach, and that your voices will be lifted up in 
 my behalf on the day of final retribution. 
 
 I was a young man, my beloved friends, — but 
 a little past my majority, — when I entered on this 
 ministry. They were youthful arms which were 
 then extended to assist in bearing up, under God, 
 this ark of the Lord. It was a youthful heart that 
 beat responsive to the earnest call that was made 
 upon it for its sympathy and affection. I am now 
 old, and enfeebled by disease ; but my heart is still 
 warm, and will still beat with affection towards you 
 till it ceases to beat at all. 
 
 It is known only to Him who knoweth all things, 
 how much longer I shall be with you, or how often, 
 
 3* 
 
30 ADDRESS OF DR. LOWELL. 
 
 if at all, I shall be permitted to meet you in this 
 place of our solemnities, or in the intercourse of 
 private life. It is my fervent wish and prayer, 
 " that, whether I come and see you, or else am ab- 
 sent, I may hear of your affairs, that you stand fast in 
 one spirit, striving for the faith of the gospel," and 
 that, when all earthly connections are dissolved, we 
 may dwell together in a world where the day is 
 " without a cloud," and " our sun will no more go 
 down." 
 
INTRODUCTION TO MR. BARTOL'S DISCOURSES. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 COMMEMORATIVE AND HISTORICAL DISCOURSES, 
 PREACHED BY C. A. BARTOL. 
 
 The present volume will probably reach few or none 
 who may not already have heard of the interesting occa- 
 sion of the Semi-centennial Anniversary of Dr. Lowell's 
 pastoral relation with the West Church. As respects that 
 portion of the book, in the following discourses, for which 
 the writer here is responsible, he must explain that his 
 original design was to include whatever he should say of 
 his predecessors in the pulpit in the single eiFort of that 
 occasion ; but he soon found that the slightest attempt 
 at an execution of that design would break the plan of 
 any sermon, and carry him altogether beyond the limits 
 of a public religious service. The materials were accord- 
 ingly shaped into successive addresses, which only com- 
 plete the idea of the first, and ai-e now put forth at the 
 request of the parish, for whose benefit they were com- 
 posed. The motive of their appearance is in no personal 
 wish of the author, but in the judgment expressed among 
 the people to whom he ministers, that they might serve 
 a permanently good purpose for the Society itself, and 
 
34 INTRODUCTION TO THE DISCOURSES. 
 
 possibly for some wider circle of readers ; otherwise the 
 inclination to confine these thoughts to the attention of 
 our own Christian family would have prevailed. It is 
 hoped that the public, so far as its eye may be won 
 to these pages, may not miss of being interested and 
 edified by their perusal. Yet a sufficient reward will be 
 gained for the labor of their preparation, if those, to whom 
 what they contain was a spoken word, shall, from some 
 further study of them, grow in that common consciousness, 
 that feeling of unity and fraternity, by which they are 
 already characterized and known. 
 
 As it pertains to the true character of an individual, 
 that he should be fully aware of all his relations, and 
 acquainted with the antecedents which define or modify 
 his particular duties, till a just self-respect shall always 
 with him come in aid of his virtue ; so it deeply concerns 
 a religious society not to be self-ignorant, but, in its age, 
 to return with fond memory to its childhood and youth ; 
 to identify itself with foregoing and following generations ; 
 from its oldest to the youngest members, to be stirred 
 with warm and holy emulation, especially of any great 
 and good characters that have graced its annals ; to be 
 inspired, not with pride, but with a becoming dignity at 
 the recollection of whatever has been worthy in its origin 
 or noble in its career, and to incorporate what may be 
 called an historic consciousness with the ever-acting per- 
 sonal and purely spiritual incentives to well-doing. To 
 such an end is cheerfully offered this little contribution. 
 Whatever power may come from this printed preaching 
 will be less in the writer's part than in the memorials of 
 others which he cites. The past, whenever it speaks its 
 meaning, becomes a preacher, more affecting and jjersua- 
 sive to the soul than any of those who stand in pulpits, as 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE DISCOURSES. 35 
 
 it has a voice, only the inward ear can listen to, akin to 
 the internal whisper and silent word of God. 
 
 Let the readers of this book be advised, that whatever 
 may seem slight in the present work must be charitably 
 construed, in view of the fact that the brief sketches in- 
 tended drew out their own at first miniature lines into broad 
 biographical pictures, till the delineator was himself sur- 
 prised with the attempt at coloring, nowise anticipated, 
 which became the substitute for his at first meagre sugges- 
 tions of light and shade. If, at the beginning, a proper his- 
 tory had been proposed, its range would, of course, have 
 been more extensive still, and would have had such an ac- 
 companiment of notes and documents as might be neces- 
 sary to verify the judgments expressed and the statements 
 made ; yet it is questionable whether in this case oppor- 
 tunity would have been found to do a work of really 
 greater value. He that labors in a matter out of his 
 accustomed track, or his real tendency, feels that he is 
 laboring as with his left hand. What, therefore, is ac- 
 complished is, according to the small historic faculty 
 employed, and the limited leisure of a busy professional 
 life, continually exhausting every day's measure of phy- 
 sical strength for tasks of intense intellectual and sym- 
 pathetic labor. Yet, though there has not been written, as 
 there was not ability to write, a regular history of the 
 parish, it may be said that much time and careful reflec- 
 tion have been bestowed on the reading of whatever could 
 be found bearing on the various points of the general 
 theme. Large tomes of chronicles have been consulted, 
 and smaller volumes of tracts searched; manuscript let- 
 ters have been perused ; and recollections of those whose 
 characters are portrayed, awakened in minds inscribed 
 with fond records or actual types of the departed. Some 
 
36 INTRODUCTION TO THE DISCOURSES. 
 
 threads of tradition have been caught, not to lead to a 
 repetition of old incidents and unimportant details, but 
 as clews to decided traits of character. A debt is owed 
 to the Historical Society of Boston, for opening some of 
 its treasures ; to the Athenseum, for an examination of its 
 rich collection of Tracts ; to Bradford's Memoir of May- 
 hew ; to Dr. Lowell, for the information contained in his 
 historical discourses, with their copious and very interest- 
 ing notes ; to " Memories of Youth and Manhood," by Sid- 
 ney Willard, for interesting reminiscences and allusions ; 
 to George E. Ellis, and to Richard L. Pease, Esq., for some 
 valuable hints ; and to Joseph "Willard, Esq., our esteemed 
 parishioner, for the loan of an unpublished Sermon, de- 
 livered by his father, the President of Harvard College, 
 at the funeral of Dr. Howard. From this cordial and 
 conscientious tribute of the worthy and distinguished 
 official head, in his day, of American literature, to his 
 dearly cherished friend, liberty has been taken to draw 
 largely for the account of Dr. Howard, whose character- 
 istics it is peculiarly suitable that one of his own contem- 
 poraries should define. The broad and clear impression 
 made by Dr. Mayhew on his age leaves in doubt no one 
 who would follow the grand march of his mind. The 
 consequences, in after-times, of his action, co-operative with 
 that of other prominent spirits, make an inexhaustible 
 mine, every fresh working of which yields new riches. 
 The distance of Hooper from our own day, and his retire- 
 ment from his charge, are perhaps among the causes of 
 the imperfect register left us of his life. Those still 
 among us, who have, by reason of a former relationship 
 by marriage, a kind of hereditary interest in him, are 
 possessed of no papers that throw special light on his 
 course. Perhaps the whole result of this investigation 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE DISCOURSES. 37 
 
 may stand for a while in place of some better and larger 
 report of the foregoing administration of our affairs, and 
 may afford mateinals of fact or thought to a hand more 
 competent to this sort of writing, and less tired from the 
 pressure of other toih At least, let there be place for the 
 prayer that our feeble work may not be wholly worthless 
 to men, or cast out by the true judgment of God. 
 
ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 
 
ANNIVERSAHY DISCOURSE. 
 
 Zech. vii. 7: "Should ye not hear the words which the Lord 
 
 HATH CRIED BY THE FORMER PROPHETS?" 
 
 On an occasion like this so very rare celebration 
 of a Fifty Years' Christian ministry, in a single 
 place, by one towards whom, in the minds of his 
 friends, love and veneration strive to be each the 
 foremost sentiment ; one whose presence is a me- 
 morial of the past; whose life is the link for us of 
 departed generations of preachers and worshippers ; 
 who looks round, and sees few of his contemporaries 
 here or elsewhere alive ; who feels that his main 
 work has been done with those M'e ignorantly call 
 dead, who live for ever ; and yet that he also once 
 stood young in a line of laborers in an ancient vine- 
 yard, striving to catch the spirit of his predecessors, 
 which he still manifests abundantly now that he is 
 old, — his junior in this charge may be permitted to 
 
 4* 
 
42 ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 associate the departed forerunners with the honored 
 senior, who is at once of the saints and in the flesh, 
 standing long with the face holy cheerfulness gives 
 to patience, one foot as in heaven, and the other 
 upon earth. 
 
 As this our ministerial office will thus be brought 
 to view in the light of some of its purest illustra- 
 tions, I desire to say, beforehand, that I am not of 
 those who would claim regard for men merely on 
 account of the office with which they are clothed. 
 The modern Reverend, as appropriated to a special 
 function, I cannot like, any more than Jesus taught 
 the first teachers of his religion to like or be called 
 by the ancient Rabbi. The useful classes in the 
 community, be they what they may ; the servants of 
 the state ; the ministers of justice and health ; the 
 factors of commerce ; the votaries of art, representing 
 their select gift and lofty love in any of the forms 
 of beauty ; the students, faithful lovers and proclaim- 
 ers of any truth ; and the myriad swarming children 
 of industry, who people the planet, and put their 
 shoulders to the heavy wheels of this solid world, — 
 all to me are alike reverend, so far as their motive, 
 each in his divinely appointed sphere, is to do God's 
 will, and bless their fellow-creatures. But the time 
 asks of us now a tribute to the faithful and devoted 
 
ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 43 
 
 teacher of religion, as that style of manhood has 
 been borne, by our forerunners and our venerable 
 friend, on the very spot which finds here its centre. 
 
 I do not propose, however, even in this design of 
 my discourse, to draw the character of my colleague 
 and elder : death has given no one leave to do that. 
 Were it possible I should be the painter, the time 
 has not come for the portrait, save as the real inner 
 likeness is with such vivid sincerity sketched in the 
 outward countenance, of which it may be the privi- 
 lege of canvas or stone to have some copy, but which 
 we carry more truly in our sight, or in that memory 
 and imagination which are the eyes of the soul. 
 
 With such vision, alone indeed, as a congregation, 
 have we of late years beheld him. It has been a 
 solicitous inquiry, whether we should see him other- 
 wise even to-day. By the mercy of God, he is 
 present with us. But when not present in the 
 body, yet from this pulpit, and yonder doorway and 
 vestry, and little sanctuary below of the Sunday 
 school, can he to our thoughts ever be absent ? 
 After the sun has set, he sends often a glory through 
 the sky, more touching and beautiful than his mid-day 
 splendor. Such glory do vanished faces leave behind 
 them in the rooms where, with a light that was love, 
 they shone upon us. '* Thou art not gone, being 
 
44 ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 gone,^^ we may say to every friend on earth or in 
 heaven who has stirred the better soul in us. We 
 are not separated from our pastor by a little space 
 that may be between us and him ; we have ever in 
 our eye his aspect, with its deep dints of decision 
 and flowing lines of benignity ; we note the flush of 
 a warm temperament, through which beams a peace 
 from within that transpierces with mild lustre the 
 keen eye, and seems to lay the whitening locks ever 
 more smooth and even on his placid brow ; we feel 
 the atmosphere of ancient hymns and prayers that 
 hangs round him, and is often vocal on his tongue ; 
 we hear the ring of his voice, in which an iron 
 strength melts into cordial sweetness ; we observe 
 the earnest will which, in every gesture, is turned 
 to motions of unaffected- sympathy. 
 
 But our friend lives, and is here. I restrain my- 
 self to this merely outward and superficial suggestion 
 of his wonted look : I enter into no explanation of 
 the inner being, sacred to God, sacred to man. 
 Far from me be the presumption of praising him, of 
 substituting my description for your knowledge, or 
 of anticipating the honorable duties, which many a 
 one will by and by be so glad to perform, of his bio- 
 grapher and eulogist. For, however I might please 
 you or myself, I could count only on offending him. 
 
AXNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 45 
 
 as any generous soul would have a right to be of- 
 fended, by my so doing ; and this assembly has 
 come up hither for no curious gratification of its 
 own, but that we might altogether, from our joint 
 hands, tender a cup of holy joy to him whose season 
 of delight and gratitude this day, that looks back 
 over nearly two generations, and forward into the 
 endless heavenly cycle, peculiarly is. The time is 
 his. God grant that whatever is said or done from 
 first to last in it may make him happy ! 
 
 But though I shall not describe, I may for myself, 
 and in your name, at least greet him. — My Elder, and 
 long ray companion, God has heard, God has crowned, 
 your and our fond wishes and prayers, in sparing 
 you to this hour ! God has given you one draught 
 of plentiful and overflowing satisfaction in the 
 midst of much suffering. God has permitted to us 
 the old and dear irradiation of this temple with your 
 familiar presence and look, of which disease cannot 
 take away the charm, dim though it may the color, 
 and waste as it must the fulness of the material 
 shrine. Even at the distant coming of this day, 
 we have been glad to see " hope elevate, and joy 
 brighten your crest," and, as it drew near, a fresh 
 inspiration light up your eye, kindle your foculties, 
 and urge the warm and generous blood more quickly 
 through your veins. 
 
46 ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 And no'^v, " our father in God," by no formal 
 title or ecclesiastical appointment, but by the sen- 
 timent of your people, we will gladly solemnize 
 the season. Your friends are around you. For 
 how many years they have stood by you ! Your 
 fidelity to them they have well answered by their 
 faithfulness to you. Their votes and actions re- 
 specting, you are an accurate transcript, like the 
 true copy and pattern of heavenly things made for 
 God's ancient church, of your affections and pray- 
 ers for them. Some of them have come from the 
 places, whither time and change have scattered 
 them afar, to observe and magnify your jubilee. 
 Your own flock, at your wonted signal, crowd after 
 their shepherd into the fold. Like the flocks in the 
 East, they have always followed you, and been 
 drawn, not driven ; and no friendly voice uttered, 
 or pleasant pipe blown afar by the keepers of the 
 sheep on Syrian plains, has been less strange or 
 more welcome to the ears that heard it than your 
 tones have been to them. Many of them you have 
 joined in the bands of marriage. Many of them in 
 infancy were received into your, next after their 
 fathers' and mothers', arms. With many of them 
 you have prayed at the bed of their sickness, or 
 stood, with support and assurance in your look, over 
 
ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 47 
 
 the coffins containing the forms they could no longer 
 clasp to their bosoms. On many of the brows, now 
 expanding to shadow forth all manly and womanly 
 thought and feeling, when they were soft and spot- 
 less, (oh, to any Christian pastor, thrilling sight and 
 experience, which in some measure I share with 
 you !) your hand has left the emblem of Christian 
 purity in the waters of baptism ; and the bread and 
 wine, which are the tokens of a Saviour's love, you 
 have broken and poured, for all you could gather to 
 his table, with much love of your own. All this 
 you have done, till the locks of your own youth- 
 ful strength have grown hoary in the doing of 
 it. For some years, this pastoral activity has inevi- 
 tably diminished ; and there is a not inconsiderable 
 part of our host here with whom you have had little 
 or no intercourse. But those of our number, not a 
 few, whom we have welcomed to these seats since 
 the interruption of your active service, now conspire 
 cordially with us in offerings to you of respect. 
 
 For myself, long associated with you in a most 
 tender and trying relation, without one ungentle 
 word or gloomy cloud coming between us, in a har- 
 mony which seemed to have about it a character and 
 spell of necessity, so impossible has it been for any 
 circumstance to have power to turn it into discord. 
 
48 ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 or any change to bring it to a close ; feeling that 
 you can have heard or seen nothing of wilful defi- 
 ciency, on my part, to the vows I have assumed, 
 and shall fulfil to the end, — I am happy to be, 
 to-day, their organ of expression. You may im- 
 perfectly hear my speech, and indistinctly see 
 throughout the gathering of this assembly ; but 
 the outward seeing and hearing could not, by any 
 means, embrace the whole significance for you of 
 this occasion. Though you could hear and see per- 
 fectly all that is here said and done, other voices 
 than mine are in your ear ; other sights than of this 
 congregation are in your eye. Lo ! at this instant 
 the past rushes back upon you. Lo ! through this 
 sound the past echoes out upon you. Fifty years of 
 ministerial labor! It is like an age in the history 
 of the race. How many thousands, young and old, 
 have, during a period so vast, been counselled, 
 warned, guided, and saved ! What successive troops 
 of children have been taken by the hand, how many 
 aged have received the last earthly farewells ! A 
 veteran spiritual adviser, gazing back over the course, 
 lined as . with alternate cradles and graves, and 
 brightened with the growth and strewn with the 
 decay of all that is most strong and lovely in life, 
 along which he has travelled, must feel that he has 
 
ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 49 
 
 seen whatever can occur, tasted of all that is sweet 
 or bitter in existence, spanned in his own term the 
 entire compass of humanity, been contemporary 
 with many generations, and lived a full round 
 indeed of mortal life through no very insignificant 
 part of the duration of the world, 
 
 I have stood upon a hill-top, commanding almost 
 a complete circle of the sea, and beheld countless 
 ships, on their ceaseless voyages, holding their way 
 over its mighty deep, — some disappearing, as thou- 
 sands had done before, over the horizon's misty 
 edge, some just coming with spotless sail and slen- 
 der figure into sight, some in full and fine career 
 midway along the line of vision. So you stand on 
 your eminence of years and acquisitions, and mark 
 the sailors, in tiny boats or majestic barks, in their 
 course over the solemn ocean of life. What mul- 
 titudes, once before you, have disajipeared from your 
 vision ! But all in the compass of your present ob- 
 servation salute you as they go ; and calls and beck- 
 onings of arrived and glorified ones, I doubt not, 
 are well nigh perceptible to your mind. The coming 
 of human beings into the world, their departure out 
 of the world, their most momentous connection in 
 the world, their bu'ths, their marriages, and their 
 deaths, those commonplace headings of the daily 
 
 5 
 
50 ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 advertisement, yet most blessed or solemn occasions 
 of mortal existence, the sources of the deepest emo- 
 tions of human sorrow or joy, the subjects of all 
 history and inspired poetry, the beginnings of the 
 great eras in our earthly life, and the dates to which 
 eternity itself will look back, — these primary events 
 of our being are all intimately related to the duty 
 and spiritual experience of the Christian minister. 
 The entries upon his book are also the most impor- 
 tant facts in the page of the civil register ; the notice 
 of the public press, or the short but significant lines 
 in the private journal, or blank leaf of the Bible, con- 
 taining the domestic record. After the parent's own, 
 no eyes look a warmer welcome than the minister's to 
 the babe he takes as a lamb into his charge. After 
 the incomparable sympathies of conjugal love and 
 joy, no heart rejoices more in fit unions between man 
 and wife than that of the minister who is called to 
 unite them. After the weeping of the bereaved 
 kindred, no tears fall so warm and free over the pale, 
 still corpse, as the minister's. There is no bond in 
 the world more pure and beautiful than his, as it is 
 woven into all the other great bonds that hold 
 human creatures or immortal spirits in one. 
 
 Towards the immortal our elder pastor now pe- 
 culiarly looks. In many a forward, upward line of 
 
ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 51 
 
 thought and expectation, -we, that are younger and 
 less experienced than he is, and have not known 
 those with whom he has been acquainted, may not 
 be able to travel with him ; but into the history of 
 this religious Society, that stretches back of him and 
 us all alike, we may by the path of the record go 
 together. 
 
 My friendly hearers, the brief limits of pulpit 
 discourse will allow me to do no more, by way of 
 the historic recollection I have proposed, than faintly 
 to sketch the characters of those who have gone 
 before the present ministers in the duties of the 
 Christian ministry to this religious body. As, on 
 great occasions of solemn commemoration, or ovation 
 and triumph, among the nations of the Old World, 
 the images of heroes were borne in procession, and 
 are by the magic of art, in some of its finest re- 
 mains, preserved to us, painted or sculptured in the 
 rock as in actual motion, so I shall barely attempt to 
 make the faces of our worthies pass and flash for a 
 moment into view. As the great reason why a na- 
 tion should rejoice that it has a history, and rejoice 
 in recounting that history, is that it may be stimu- 
 lated to new achievements of dignity as it breathes 
 over again the spirit of its fathers and founders ; so 
 for the same reason should a church be glad to 
 
 t 
 
52 ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 revive its annals, and deepen the inscription of its 
 mighty names, that they may last in the hearts, and 
 inspire the worthy eiForts, of men when gravestones 
 can hold them no longer. The glorious history of 
 your Society was named in my letter, nineteen years 
 ago, as among the motives inclining me to accept 
 your invitation, as I began, somewhat curiously in 
 my service among you, almost precisely the second 
 century of that history. Let the poor delineations, 
 to which alone my pen is equal, do something for 
 our common advantage in a fresh feeling of the 
 bonds that bind us together, to explain the meaning 
 of that motive. *' One generation passeth away, and 
 another generation cometh ; but the earth abideth for 
 ever," saith the preacher. So a religious society, the 
 most glorious thing on this earth, constitutes in all 
 time, long as it endures, a grand — shall I not say in- 
 comparably grand ? — unity. He that properly speaks 
 of it, or to it, has in mind not only its present mem- 
 bers, but the past and future, — its whole life and 
 heritage on earth and in heaven. I have read assi- 
 duously in the general chronicles of the times, and I 
 have explored carefully the publications of the pas- 
 tors of the West Church, for this purpose of comme- 
 moration ; but I shall have little room for referring 
 to authorities, verifying dates, and making quota- 
 
ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE 5o 
 
 tions of biographical details, save simply to extract 
 from them the coloring matter for the portraits I 
 would present. I shall pay my respect to the facts, 
 not by being what is called a man of facts, heaping 
 them on paper together, useful and indispensable 
 office as that may sometimes be, and greatly as I 
 myself respect it ; but only in the spirit and essence 
 I can, by my attentive perusal, press out of their 
 accumulation : for it is the actors I would call up ; 
 not all their words or actions, but only such incidents 
 and expressions as may denote them truly what 
 manner of men they were. As it has been thought 
 there was some mysterious art by which the Prophet 
 Samuel re-appeared to Saul ; so we may spiritually 
 try, by an art beyond all ancient or modern magic, 
 to see our former prophets. I may be able to restore 
 only the shadow, not the substance, — " the smallest 
 part and least proportion of humanity." For one at 
 least I shall have to present, of whom — 
 
 " I tell you, were the whole frame here, 
 It is of such a spacious, lofty pitch. 
 Your roof were not sufficient to contain it' 
 
 I believe, that, without panegyric, I state the simple, 
 unexaggerated fact, when I say that all the mini- 
 sters of this Society, of whom I shall speak, have 
 
 6* 
 
54 ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 been distinguished for certain grand common traits, 
 seldom perfectly united in the same character, for 
 independence and liberality, for bold dissent from 
 prevailing opinions, ■v^rith complete charity, and for 
 manly assertion of the la"^s of reason, with child- 
 like openness to the inspirations of faith. 
 
 Little, therefore; in this service, remains for me 
 to say, as I have declined the task, however in other 
 circumstances necessary as well as honorable, of 
 analyzing the mind, or describing the character, of 
 my senior in this associated ministry. The events 
 indeed, in the parish, that have transpired during 
 the last fifty years, in all that has been done and 
 suffered by the now wearied laborer, with the mem- 
 bers of his charge or with his compeers in the field, 
 might furnish some tempting topics to a pen which 
 no scrupulous sensibility should check, no sober 
 thought lift from the sheet on which it wrote. But, 
 be it from a just instinct, or a too fearful restraint, 
 some of these events I cannot deem yet a fit subject 
 of public history, — cherish as we should, in all 
 modest ways, their memorials. Nor, sustaining the 
 same relation to you with my sire in wisdom as in 
 years, does it become me to advert to that, in the 
 way of opening at any length my particular under- 
 standing of its obligations, which, in reference to 
 
ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 55 
 
 his own interpretation of them, he has with a se- 
 rious simplicity and constancy discharged. 
 
 But, to the greeting I have already, in your name, 
 given him, I may be permitted, in closing, to add 
 some expression of the love for him you have enter- 
 tained. You have so often in private, and in your 
 joint action as a Society, declared and proved this 
 love, that it would be the most needless of super- 
 erogations, and to him most unacceptable of offices, 
 for me, on my part, to undertake in any way to com- 
 municate to him of it any information. But as it 
 is possible that even my poor words at this time may 
 be remembered or quoted, so as to come into some 
 general report beyond the limits of these parochial 
 precincts, I may be allowed to stand here a public 
 witness of the affection which this Christian body 
 has cherished for its elder pastor. From the pecu- 
 liar position I have held here among you, no one I 
 humbly conceive, can be a better, more unsuspicious 
 witness of it than myself. For nearly twenty years 
 I have been spectator of the close sympathy, and 
 auditor of the long account of charity, between you 
 and him. May I not without offence say that I 
 have, with such little strength for hard work as God 
 has given me, even assisted in a transmission of the 
 tributes you have rendered him, and, upon the com- 
 
56 ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 
 
 mon hearthstone of our great family, have been busy 
 in tending the fire of ardent feeling that has bright- 
 ened his countenance, while it has warmed and 
 cheered you all ? I have accepted it as my place 
 to be forward only to second his exertiojis; to toil 
 for you where he could not ; to take the services his 
 failing energies left ; and, when the visitation of God 
 touched with sickness as well as infirmity his outward 
 frame, I have had it for my care to stand wherever 
 you pleased in his place, and answer your innume- 
 rable inquiries after his welfare, esteeming it a hap- 
 piness of my own to carry kindly messages between 
 his chamber and your homes. I therefore know, 
 and may not unworthily offer testimony of the fact, 
 that the great heart of this West Church has beat 
 high with good-will towards him. Whoever, at a 
 post such as that it is my privilege to occupy, may 
 have found the old pastoral tie weakened, the com- 
 pany of worshippers alienated, and longing for change, 
 I for one, at my coming, on the contrary, met only 
 with pre-engaged affections and pre-occupied hearts ; 
 and I have often thought that the bond between our 
 great Head and the whole church, of which holy 
 writ discovers a type in that between a husband 
 and his wife, was, by the contract between the two 
 parties here, realized through the strong absorbing 
 
ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 57 
 
 personal sentiment in which they both have so much 
 lived, even to the hour of this golden wedding. 
 
 If one throb of my own heart may mix with the 
 swelling joy of this occasion, I can only thank God 
 that a people, so embraced and provided for, has 
 looked not unkindly or jealously upon another, 
 called to do the same ministerial work, according 
 to his poor faculty, after a manner in some respects 
 widely diverse, yet in a connection itself so sacred 
 and pure as to exclude no number of fellow-workers 
 who can join hands in peace and mingle voices in 
 harmony. My friends, I can utter to you no words, 
 of course, or have aught to do with any hollowness, 
 that may ever be supposed to attach to public and 
 formal expressions or resolutions. The truth, that 
 holds the honor of the man, binds the conscience 
 of the preacher ; and, truly, I declare the union of 
 pastors here to have been not unblessed. A col- 
 leagueship in the ministry has sometimes, on account 
 of the peculiar and unparalleled delicacy of the rela- 
 tion, and the position more laborious than any lonely 
 one for him that assumes it, been styled an evil 
 invention. Such, in this case, I am sure it has not 
 been, but, as I resolved, nothing other than an 
 assistance to him who was your shepherd before I 
 was born ; and whatever hardship or discipline may 
 
58 ANNIVEKSARY DISCOUESE. 
 
 have arisen in my own lot, because some of the 
 privileges or confidences, which are the natural 
 rewards and encouragements of ministerial labor, 
 belonged inalienably to another, I do not regret, but 
 believe to have been wisely, as well as necessarily, 
 appointed for my own defence and well-being. 
 With my senior in this ministry, and with any 
 responsive soul in these seats filled from yonder 
 dwellings, having exercised among you a ministry 
 than which few can have been harder or happier, I 
 will therefore, in fine, unite to extol the tie itself 
 between pastor and people, involve whatever pains 
 and privations it may, — and pains and privations 
 enter into every relation of life, — as among the 
 grandest and most gracious that human beings can 
 own. I devoutly thank God for the precious and 
 holy friendships to which it has introduced me. 
 Sooner would I part with the apple of my eye, and 
 the hearing of my ear, and the breath of my life, 
 than surrender them. I thrill with joy to feel their 
 everlasting cords, with double hold, drawing me 
 towards heaven, while they steady my little restless 
 bark on the waves of time. Your minister's un- 
 ceasing efforts are encouraged by friendly words, 
 which the spirit continues to hear long after they 
 are uttered, and by sympathetic looks, whose mean 
 
ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE. 59 
 
 ing is returned to you out of his own deepest pul- 
 sations. His appearances before you will have 
 whatever liffht vour countenances have for him. 
 His solitude is made social with images from your 
 dwellings, and with the vision of many faces which 
 eyes of flesh can nevermore see ; and, as they 
 cannot see, we may be glad to exchange eyes of 
 flesh for the higher vision of the spiritual body. 
 While we love each other, birth and death shall 
 show us only Jacob's ladder, with angels ascending 
 and descendinc?. 
 
DISCOURSE ON WILLIAM HOOPER. 
 
DISCOURSE ON WILLIAM HOOPER. 
 
 Psalm xl. 9 : "I have preached righteousness in the 
 
 GREAT CONGREGATION." 
 
 I TAKE these words, so expressive of the mind and 
 spirit of a great and honest herald of moral truth to 
 the people, as a description substantially true of the 
 first minister of West Boston, for whom this church 
 was gathered, or who was himself the instrument of 
 gathering it, in 1737, — just one hundred and nine- 
 teen years ago. If I may judge from the notices of 
 him I have seen, and still more from his published 
 writings which I have read, he was a man of natural 
 nobility of spirit and vigor of mind, joining cleai- 
 method of thought to fine eloquence of diction. 
 
 After a nine-years' ministry, to the surprise and 
 grief of his people. Hooper suddenly sundered 
 his relation with them, and entered the Episcopal 
 
64 DISCOURSE ON WILLIAM HOOPER. 
 
 church. How far he may have been attracted by 
 the ecclesiastical form and order of the English 
 communion which he adopted, I cannot say ; but 
 probably not much, if at all : for, as he appears not 
 to have been a Calvinist, but an Arminian, and at 
 one time to have given offence to some of the Con- 
 gregational ministers by the want of orthodoxy in a 
 sermon he preached at the Thursday Lecture, giving 
 rise to a correspondence between them and himself, 
 he may have retired to escape from that narrow court 
 of sectarian intolerance, whose arbitrary indictments 
 and severe judgments are offensive to none so much 
 as to men of native faculty, with the power and love 
 of free thought, like himself. This correspondence, 
 which is in the possession of the Historical Society 
 in this city, I have thoroughly examined, and copied 
 for the Appendix to this Discourse a letter of 
 Hooper. From the whole tone of the correspond- 
 ence, I should judge, that, though it did not of itself 
 produce any permanent alienation of feeling, it yet 
 did indicate a spiritual atmosphere not congenial to 
 a man of a spirit so fine, an independence so instinc- 
 tive, as that of Hooper, and from which, therefore, 
 afterwards he may have chosen to withdraw. His 
 offence lay in his assertion of a more liberal idea of 
 the divine attributes than then prevailed ; implying. 
 
DISCOURSE ON WILLIAM HOOPER. 65 
 
 as his brethren were sensitive to conclude, that, 
 in their doctrines of the Divine Holiness and Grace, 
 they had represented God as being of a severe 
 and revengeful disposition. In breadth of ideas, and 
 magnanimity of temper, I think he was far before 
 them ; and the letters written on their part expressly 
 give him credit for education and ability, equal, if 
 not superior, to those of any of his associates ; though 
 they insinuate that he was too much of a free- 
 thinker, and had been a too copious reader of 
 the books put forth by the free thought of the 
 times. 
 
 It makes one gravely smile and sigh in the same 
 moment to look back and see, while the strides of 
 man's improvement have been revolutions of the 
 world, what pains and tears the slightest steps of his 
 progress have cost. Every hair-breadth forward has 
 been in the agony of some soul ; and our humanity 
 has reached blessing after blessing of all its vast 
 achievement of good with bleeding feet. I claim not 
 Hooper, indeed, as one of the great reformers, who 
 are voices in the wilderness of successive ages, and 
 leaders of vast and endless populations of men ; but 
 I do rank him in the class of intellectual and reli- 
 gious pioneers. Though he seemed to go back when 
 he joined the establishment, he really went forwai'd ; 
 
 6* 
 
66 DISCOURSE ON WILLIAM HOOPER. 
 
 as the apparent retrogradation of a planet is an 
 actual speeding, with undiminished velocity, on 
 its way. 
 
 We need to be always warned against unduly 
 exalting our favorites, or indecently depressing their 
 opponents ; and justice to the dead is a duty of the 
 more peculiar moment and incomparable obligation, 
 as the dead do not appear to reply to our allegations. 
 I therefore will not let the least shadow of unfair- 
 ness fall from my pen upon those who, in the matter 
 I have referred to, called my predecessor to account. 
 In applauding the venturesome spirits who would 
 cheer or spur mankind onward to better regions, 
 which their solitary thought as the only traveller has 
 visited, we must not too hotly blame those who have 
 served as a perhaps safe and necessary drag on the 
 world's motion. The advance of the race on earth 
 is always, and was, no doubt, providentially intended 
 to be, a resultant of conflicting forces, as every star 
 in heaven gets on from the strife of centripetal with 
 centrifugal tendencies. Or, if I may risk a more 
 humble illustration, of which I am oftener reminded, 
 the many human agents, moving each in his own 
 way towards the providential end, resemble the lines 
 of the mathematician's problem upon the board to 
 his scholars, which, representing forces that run in 
 
DISCOURSE ON WILLIAM HOOPER. 67 
 
 many directions, are yet to be resolved into one 
 power, and concentrated upon a single result. So is 
 it in the mighty world of matter ; so is it in the 
 mightier world of mind. And, while I sympathize 
 and accord with Hooper alone, I must honestly say 
 that the correspondence with him on the part of 
 those who had waited upon him for conversation or 
 admonition, though severe in its insinuations, was 
 carried on with as much kindness, so far as I can 
 see, as their actual, though it may be not perfectly 
 enlightened, moral sense would allow. 
 
 Whether in the theoretical creed of the new en- 
 closure he found a refuge or not, he no doubt found 
 a larger accommodation of practical liberty in a 
 church whose ritual genius is to include as many 
 as possible ; unlike the dogmatic genius of the old, 
 stern. Puritanic faith, which came to winnow the 
 world, whose fan was always in its hand, and which, 
 in the business of purifying and separating, has at 
 times inadvertently thrown away some of the largest 
 kernels of the wheat. Like the son, whose clear 
 signature is found on the American declaration of 
 political independence, William Hooper, the father, 
 probably by his act virtually meant to assert in his 
 person the religious rights of the mind ; and his 
 declaration of a grander independence came first. 
 
68 DISCOURSE ON WILLIAM HOOPER 
 
 I fancy he went, according to an old motto, always 
 for things, not words ; and it mattered not to him 
 that the Congregationalists stoutly affirmed, nay, 
 generally vindicated and rescued, Freedom, if in any 
 instance they violated her spirit and law. From 
 earlier and later doings, we have learned that the 
 brethren may be as tyrannical as the bishops, and 
 one be sentenced by his peers no less unmercifully 
 than by his lords. Hooper's own church would, no 
 doubt, have sustained and kept him : but a local 
 church then was more entangled with and subjected 
 to others around it than, thank God, it is now, or ever 
 can be again ; and I can well conceive the lofty 
 motion of a generous spirit with which our first 
 pastor departed, rather than expose his friends to 
 inconvenience on his account, though tears were 
 doubtless in his eyes, as well as theirs, upon his 
 going. He very likely had no taste for the " con- 
 scientious contention " which a great man has reck- 
 oned as existing among the nobler characteristics of 
 our theological forefathers, and could not abide a 
 too rigid and uncompromising inquisition, as I am 
 very glad he could not, into his private opinions. 
 Certainly I find touches of this large and magni- 
 ficent temper in his compositions, which, for all our 
 boasted progress, in their broad stroke exceed many 
 
DISCOURSE ON WILLIAM HOOPER. 69 
 
 of the most lauded and popular discourses of the 
 present day. 
 
 On the whole. Hooper appears to have been 
 marked by qualities uncommonly individual and 
 sincere. In him, in an age of dogmatism and 
 harsh judgment, the Christian was not lost in the 
 sectarian; and, at a time when the distinctions of 
 scholastic faith often confounded the instincts of the 
 heart, the theologian did not overpower the man. 
 His very hand-writing, much bolder and more 
 legible than the small and interlined epistles of half- 
 inquiry and half-arraignment addressed to him, 
 which I confess I find it somewhat difficult to 
 make out, is emblematic of the large character of 
 reason and humanity in the moral sentences tran- 
 scribed from his mind. I find something, perhaps, 
 characteristic of him in general, in a curious mixture 
 of strong humor with holy indignation, in his writing, 
 in an epistle to a brother minister who was about to 
 admit to the communion-table a woman of whose 
 ill-desert Hooper was cognizant, that it would he more 
 proper to take her to the whipping-post. If he had 
 faults, of which the register does not appear, though 
 some may think his desertion of his people implied 
 them, I am confident they were not those of hypo- 
 crisy or double-dealing in any form ; and his sum- 
 
70 DISCOURSE ON WILLIAM HOOPER. 
 
 mary leave-taking of his charge perhaps only indicated 
 a nature whose first necessity, like that of all great 
 natures, was conformity between its action and its 
 thought. 
 
 The alienation of men from each other, on account 
 of different convictions of truth, is strangely com- 
 plicated with difierences of early association, intel- 
 lectual training, and personal temperament ; and all 
 these causes, no doubt, had their full share of in- 
 fluence in causing Hooper to diverge from the 
 fellowship of the Boston fraternity, of which, for a 
 time, he formed a part. In the slight portraiture I 
 have made of him from the meagre hints left us, as 
 a few pen-marks sometimes succeed in giving a 
 tolerable likeness, I have watched carefully against 
 exaggeration, knowing how easily we clothe those 
 we discourse about, and are connected with, and so 
 inclined to commend, with a plumage of moral 
 beauty, finer and softer than before the eyes of men 
 they actually wore. On the whole, I do not think 
 I have ascribed to my first predecessor more than 
 his fair deserts : to do as much as this, I have con- 
 sidered to be my providential duty at this time. It 
 is our special call to do justice to those who belong 
 to us,, and to provide for the proper and worthy 
 fame of our own household of faith and worship, as 
 
DISCOURSE ON WILLIAM HOOPER. 71 
 
 well as for the mortal sustenance of the inmates of 
 our dwelling. Who will mete out to them the 
 equitable judgment if we do not ? In this hurrying 
 world, but for our pious care, their names, in some 
 cases, would be no more retraced or recollected than 
 their deep-sunk bones and ashes would be disturbed. 
 The chisel, I think, has as worthy a use, in sharp- 
 ening some old worn or moss-grown inscription, 
 as in finishing the last and most showy invention of 
 the day. Pardon me, if, with something more than 
 a cold office of local or professional obligation, yea, 
 even with a zeal and labor of love, I regard it as my 
 business to revive the memory of those who have 
 toiled and endured and died in the service of this 
 church ; doing for your spiritual ancestors, as they 
 frequented their houses or stood forth in the sanc- 
 tuary, what their successors have humbly striven to 
 do for you. A willing instrument, indeed, I am for 
 their honor ; but you will believe that to their 
 honor my conscience is bound to render the not un- 
 measured, but scrupulous, award. If their exalted 
 spirits attend to our sayings, as I not seldom feel 
 they overhear us, may they be not unpleased ! 
 Above all, may the Great and Good Spirit, that 
 surely sees and hears, approve and bless ! 
 
72 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 DISCOURSE ON WILLIAM HOOPER. 
 
 It had been my design, by the kind permission of the 
 officers of the Historical Society, to copy the entire cor- 
 respondence, so far as preserved, with Mr. Hooper, 
 relating to his supposed heresy, or reflection upon the 
 superstition of other preachers, regarding the attributes 
 of God ; but, after a careful examination, I do not see 
 that there would be any object accomplished important 
 enough to compensate for the labor and space required in 
 transferring to these pages so much matter. The points 
 in debate are stated, and the inquisition into his views 
 sufficiently implied, in his own letter. I have another 
 reason, — that while Hooper's words, clear and bold as his 
 thoughts, are entirely legible, so that he who runs can 
 read them, I have been quite unable to decipher several 
 of the expressions in the fine chirography of the epistles — 
 sometimes interlined, and with paragraphs crossed out, as 
 though they were composed with much calculation and 
 painstaking revision — addressed to him. As I do not copy 
 these letters, let me do them the justice of saying they 
 
APPENDIX TO DISCOURSE ON WM. HOOPER. 73 
 
 appear to me to have originatedJtrom just and candid 
 motives, though, as I think, exaggerating the impor- 
 tance of theological agreement, in words and dogmas, 
 among ministers, and seeming to assume a kind of 
 censorship, whose benevolent and well-wishing tone can- 
 not make it wholly acceptable to any one who feels that 
 he has formed his opinions conscientiously in the fear 
 of, and with willing responsibility to, God. 
 
 Whether I am right in the belief that the disagreeable- 
 ness of this doctrinal congregational inspection so wrought 
 in Hooper's mind as to cause his leaving the whole cleri- 
 cal body he had been associated with, as he could only 
 do by leaving his own church, I leave others to make up 
 their minds as freely as I have my own. There seems 
 to be something in the story, as we read it, objectionable 
 in the manner of Hooper's departure ; but I am persuaded 
 the charitable is the true construction of his inducements 
 to a step so sudden, and which to us appears so secret. 
 Those who might be able to explain his conduct to our 
 perfect understanding and satisfaction, are, on earth, dead 
 like himself. Let us hope those of his own flock who 
 might have been hurt at his going, which was to them so 
 great a loss, are now alive and reconciled with him in 
 heaven. Possibly he left quietly as he did to avoid the 
 trouble and public discord that might have arisen from 
 publicity in the trial, with all its circumstances, of his 
 case ; while it may be that the exigencies, not uncommon, 
 of a vessel that is to set sail, may have hastened, beyond 
 his own anticipations, his voyage. We certainly cannot 
 suppose he would, like some voyagers, wish to leave, as he 
 did, on the Lord's Day. I feel confident he would act 
 honorably to those from whom he separated, as well as to 
 those with whom he was afterwards connected. 
 
 7 
 
74 APPENDIX TO 
 
 From a Letter of Mr. Hooper to Mr. Colman. 
 
 " I am very sorry that my sermon gave uneasiness to 
 you and the ministers, or even to the least Christian ; for I 
 remember the words of our blessed Saviour, ' Woe to him 
 that ofFendeth one of these little ones ! ' and, I assure you, 
 I was far from designing to trouble anybody. My con- 
 science bears me witness that my great and only view was 
 to vindicate the divine character from the false and mean 
 imputations of superstitious men ; and did it appear to me 
 that any thing I said was unjust to the adorable name of 
 God, and served to lead men astray in their notions or 
 worship of him, I should be the first to condemn myself; 
 for upon right conceptions of the Supreme Being depend 
 all religion and morality, all the peace and happiness of 
 mankind. But, upon a serious review of my notes, I must 
 say that I think I have been misunderstood ; for nothing 
 appears to me deserving the displeasure of an attentive and 
 candid hearer. As to the impropriety of some words I may 
 have used in speaking of God, or the mean composure of 
 the discourse, I am ready to confess that both my lan- 
 guage and manner of prosecuting a subject are far from 
 being able to bear the examination of but an indifferent 
 judge ; but, as to the thoughts I delivered, I think they 
 are agreeable to Sacred Scripture, and to the opinions 
 of the greatest, and even of such as are generally es- 
 teemed Orthodox, divines. Particularly, I do not find the 
 least in any one part of my sermon that the doctrines of 
 grace and holiness, as preached in this country, serve to lead 
 the people into apprehensions of God as a peevish, vin- 
 dictive, or revengeful Being. I do not mention one word 
 of the way of preaching here ; and I assure you, sir, it 
 was not in my thoughts, either at the composing or de- 
 
DISCOURSE ON WILLIAM HOOPER. 75 
 
 livering of the discourse. I have heard gentlemen here 
 preach of the grace and holiness of God in a manner 
 very agreeable to me ; and particularly I am pleased with 
 what I have heard Mr. Colman preach upon these sub- 
 jects, and with what you write in your letter now before 
 me. As to the behavior of some, when any thing ex- 
 traordinary comes to pass in the course of nature or in the 
 government of the world, I say that some men are so 
 weak and ignorant as to think that upon such occasions 
 God is in a terrible anger, and so are induced to fear 
 him : but they fear him not as a just and righteous Judge, 
 but as a cruel, powerful Being ; not so as to be deterred 
 from their evil courses, but so as to make amends for a 
 debauched and vicious life by idle, external observances. 
 But there is not the smallest insinuation that wicked men 
 ought not to be afraid of the divine judgments, or that 
 the best of men ought not upon such occasions to reflect 
 upon and examine their lives, in order to see whether or 
 not they may have had a hand in bringing these calami- 
 ties upon the world. And I think Pharaoh and his 
 people, and all wicked men, should tremble at the judg- 
 ments of God, and be induced thereby to fly to his mercy 
 through Christ, and cry for pardon. But what I call 
 superstition is their praying to God for salvation, at the 
 same time that they have no resolution nor heart to for- 
 sake their sins ; and that there are such people, I believe 
 nobody doubts. As for Moses, his trembling at the foot 
 of Sinai, with submission, sir, I know not if it is men- 
 tioned to his honor. I have not time to examine the 
 justness of the thought. It is thought a pious and noble 
 sentiment of the Psalmist, ' Though the mountains 
 should be moved, and the hills cast into the midst of 
 the sea,' &c. 
 
76 APPENDIX TO 
 
 " I read with great satisfaction what you wrote upon 
 the righteousness and mercy of God ; and indulge me 
 in saying that I think I am of the same opinion with 
 yourself with respect to these grand points. God is a 
 Being of infinite mercy ; but, at the same time, he never 
 pardons or passes by sin without full satisfaction to his 
 rectoral holiness, as you express it. A God that forgives 
 sin in such a manner as not to discourage it, or without 
 regard to the honor or glory of his wisdom, righteousness, 
 or justice, is not the God of the Scriptures, or even of 
 natural reason. God is abundant in mercy, and jealous 
 of his righteousness. These two, I think, are the sum of 
 his moral character ; and they render him sovereignly 
 adorable, and sovereignly amiable ; and I cannot see 
 any thing in my sermon inconsistent with this notion of 
 God. When I say that some men think of him as a 
 vindictive and revengeful Being, I take these words in 
 the sense in which they are used when applied to men, — 
 revenge for revenge' sake, vengeance for vengeance' sake, 
 without the restraint of law or rule. And I think this 
 my meaning is so plain, that I wonder any uneasiness 
 should have arisen about it. And I declare to you again, 
 sir, that I think Scripture, reason, fact, all unite in pro- 
 claiming the justice as well as goodness of God ; that 
 his justice must be satisfied, as his goodness gratified, 
 when he pardons sinners. 
 
 "I do not think there is any material change in my 
 principles from what they were when I entered into the 
 ministry here, and from what I professed them to be. 
 Why some people think there is, is the different way of 
 expressing myself, which arises from my having been 
 educated in a manner different from the education of this 
 country, and from my having dealt in the reading of other 
 
DISCOURSE ON WILLIAM HOOPER. 77 
 
 books than what are commonly read at the university 
 here. As to accommodating myself to pious persons and 
 families, I am sorry there should be any complaint in this 
 respect, and will do all I can through Divine Grace to 
 please them, so far as truth and religion will allow me. 
 The cause of our divine Redeemer, and many particular 
 reasons, oblige me to do all in my power to serve the 
 people of this town ; and it is my daily prayer to God 
 that I may faithfully discharge my office, and do good 
 to this people as they have shown kindness to me. If 
 I have not removed your uneasiness by what I have 
 written in a hurry, I hope I shall be able to do it ef- 
 fectually when I shall have the honor of conversing 
 with you. There is no difference at all, I think, between 
 your sentiments and mine ; or, if there is, I am apt to 
 think you'll be able to convince me of the justness of 
 your thoughts, you having weighed things with more 
 judgment than I have done. As to some that are hard 
 and uncharitable in their censures, I pray God may for- 
 give them, and help me to do so too. Meantime, I 
 earnestly beg your prayers for me at the throne of Di- 
 vine Grace ; for I want wisdom and all other graces 
 becoming my condition and office. 
 
 "I am, 
 
 " Very reverend sir, 
 " Your most obliged and most humble servant, 
 
 " "Will. Hooper. 
 
 ^' Boston, Feb. 13th, 172g." 
 
 7* 
 
NOTE TO PAGE 67. 
 
 Since -writing the above Discourse upon Hooper, I have met with 
 a sentence of Macaulay, which strikingly confirms the tenor of my 
 remarks : " The truth is, that, from the time of James the First, 
 that great party which has been peculiarly zealous for the Anglican 
 polity, and the Anglican ritual, has always leaned strongly towards 
 Arminianism, and has, therefore, never been much attached to a 
 confession of faith framed by reformers who, on questions of meta- 
 physical divinity, generally agreed with Calvin," — Macaulay' s 
 History of Englatid, vol. iii. p. 85, American edition. 
 
 Let me also here say, that some further references, besides those 
 contained in the Discourses upon Hooper and Mayhew, wiU be 
 made to them, in another connection, in the Discourse relating to 
 the chxu-ch itself. 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 John V. 35: "He was a burning and a siriNiNG light.' 
 
 I CAN think of no words better than these, expres- 
 sive of the warmth and illumination which are the 
 great agencies in the material world, to shadow forth 
 the clear thought and fervent spirit of that man for 
 whom this church seems to have waited, to eman- 
 cipate itself into perfect independent energy for wide 
 influence, and to make its pulpit his place where to 
 stand, and shake all the despotism in the country 
 and the world. I mean Jonathan Mayhew, settled 
 in this ministry in the year 1747. 
 
 I have often wistfully perused his features in the 
 engraving which, it is said, his friend the noble 
 Hollis, of England, had made of him, to see how 
 far I could detect in it the lineaments of his mind. 
 If I did not know from what livinsr orisrinal it was 
 
82 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 taken, I think it would yet appear to me the por- 
 trait of a capacious intellect, a Avarm and open soul, 
 a heart earnest to give and take sympathy, and a 
 spirit eager to assert its own convictions, and main- 
 tain the principles of all truth. The mitre, which, 
 holding a broken crosier wreathed by a serpent, 
 is cast down under him, bespeaks the champion 
 of the private conscience ; but the venerable ivy- 
 grown walls, the gray old stones, on which, as a 
 background, the print of the countenance is im- 
 pressed, indicate his abiding by the most ancient 
 temple and faith of God and Christ, and wishing to 
 overthrow nothing old that was true and good, but 
 only the corruptions that had encumbered the divine 
 glory. The likeness, once seen, like those of all 
 the heroes and saints, makes its individual mark, 
 stands distinct in our sj^iritual gallery of portraits, 
 and can no more be forgotten or mistaken than that 
 of Washington or Luther. As the artist sometimes 
 seems to succeed in representing moving things, I 
 think I can almost discern a forward, impulsive 
 motion, symbolic of his perpetually active life, even 
 in its cold, still lines. 
 
 We are curious to know something of the family 
 of those who have distinguished themselves in life. 
 But a truly great man always appears to us in the 
 
DISCOUKSE ON DK. MAYIIEW. 83 
 
 depth of history, as wc look back upon him, to stand 
 alone. His soul is "like a star, and dwells apart." 
 In the blaze of his intellect, hereditary traces, that we 
 commonly see, disappear. Like King Melchisedec, 
 as it is told in Scripture, he appears to be without 
 father, mother, descent, beginning of days, or end of 
 life. Genius ha's no parent or child : no hereditary 
 transmission and no earthly record can account for 
 its appearance, and the roots of no genealogical tree 
 show the secret of the splendid flower. It comes 
 and is gone, like that vessel Peter speaks of, de- 
 scending from heaven, and drawn up again, without 
 antecedents or consequents. Jonathan Mayhew was, 
 however, the son of a truly good and fiuthful man, — 
 Experience Mayhew, a minister of the gospel. A 
 highly religious strain of character runs tlu'ough all 
 his ancestry ; and his great-grandfather was, before 
 the Apostle Eliot, of Roxbury, missionary to the 
 Indians in what we know by the name of Martha's 
 "\lneyard. It is said, when this ancestor of May- 
 hew left his charge to sail for England, the Indians 
 came in large numbers to meet and bid him fare- 
 well, and that the spot of their interview was 
 marked by a cairn, or heap of stones, upon which 
 every Indian as he passed threw another stone, to 
 increase the monument of their reverence and love. 
 
84 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 Upon that inconsiderable island of Martha's Vineyard 
 was born Jonathan Mayhew, the man who was to move 
 both continents with the breath of his mouth. He 
 came into the world in the year 1720, — just a cen- 
 tury after the landing of the Pilgrims ; and I doubt 
 not, in the eye of Him in whose hands are all our times, 
 of living or dying ; who orders events, and sends 
 his rational agents, as he does the lightnings and the 
 winds, to do his will, — the birth of Mayhew was a 
 i>ood centennial celebration of that epoch, whose 
 meaning in his after-years he did so much to fulfil. 
 Like a flaw in the most splendid work of nature or 
 art, some mean vice will not unfrequently cross and 
 stain the intellectual glory of the most famous men, 
 so seldom does God grant to us any thing like per- 
 fection in this world. But, under his father's pious 
 care, the childhood and youth of Mayhew appear to 
 have been as spotless, as the manhood, that so strug- 
 gled with or against others, was irreproachable by 
 his foes. 
 
 After a full and long and calm survey of his 
 career, I must unhesitatingly, for grandeur of aim, 
 and mighty will to bring to pass his purposes, put 
 him in the first rank of human spirits. I trust it is 
 not any fondness of my subject that makes me think 
 of him as, on the whole, among many sons of honor in 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 85 
 
 the depai'tment of religion in this country, the great 
 American Divine. Others doubtless have excelled 
 him in particular points ; as Edwards in metaphysical 
 talent, and Hopkins in application to theological 
 studies ; Channing in extent of moral reflection, and 
 Buckminster in peculiar charms of speech : but, in 
 broad relation to the public vrelfare, in power to 
 unseal the fountains of influence into rivers which, 
 like mountain-streams, determine the very shape 
 and fashion of a country, he conspicuously trans- 
 cended them all. 
 
 Cicero intimates, that to have praise from men 
 who are themselves the objects of praise, is the 
 choicest of all fame ; and, humbly as it is necessary 
 for me to speak, I need not hesitate to proclaim con- 
 fidently so lofty an estimate of one whom the lead- 
 ing spirits of the time joyfully welcomed as their 
 peer, and their greatest successors have quoted as 
 one of the high equals, in power and operative virtue, 
 that have adorned our whole history. I can but 
 refer in an instance or two to their eulogies. John 
 Adams, second President of the United States, speaks 
 of him with unqualified admiration. Judge Paine, 
 in almost an ecstasy of panegyric, declared him the 
 father of civil and religious liberty in Massachusetts 
 and America. His hand, and that of his great asso- 
 
86 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW, 
 
 ciates in this Commonwealth, was felt at the helm of 
 our bewildered vessel of state, before the voice of 
 Patrick Henry, in Virginia, was heard rising above 
 the storm. 
 
 He had a truly public soul, an ability in action, a 
 genius for affairs, which made him the worthy com- 
 peer of all the civil authors of our national free- 
 dom and fundamental institutions ; nor does the 
 figure of the elder Samuel Adams or Otis, to the 
 retrospective imagination, stand out in more distinct 
 relief, on the canvas that shows the sublime forms of 
 our political sires, than does that of this religious 
 preacher of the gospel on the hallowed and ever- 
 precious spot where we now stand. 
 
 He was great, because he was predestined and 
 commanded to be great. His spiritual intuitions 
 furnished and urged upon him the uncorruptible 
 substance for his resistless logic to shape and wield. 
 Intuitions, I say ; for it is not intellect, or pleasing 
 sentiment, or fine rhetoric, wondrous as may be 
 their displays of ingenuity and eloquence, that can 
 make the great man : it is rather the soul beholding 
 principles, and ready to stand on the principles it 
 beholds, at whatsoever cost, and though it alone in all 
 the world take the position, and God alone of all the 
 witnesses in the world comprehend the act. So the 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 87 
 
 soul of Jonathan May hew was great. Indeed, so 
 large was his way of thinking, so piercing his 
 insight into original truths, so wide his hearty in- 
 terest in the Commonwealth, and so ardent his pa- 
 triotic zeal to deliver the land of his birth from all 
 injustice, and break every rod of oppression, that, 
 ordained and set apart as he solemnly was to a par- 
 ticular calling, and that calling one of hereditary 
 choice and reverence in his mind, he yet could not be 
 confined to any peculiar so-called sacred function, or 
 to any narrow exercise of his own office, even with 
 the ministerial robes upon him, but would advance 
 the cause of his fellow-citizens in all possible ways. 
 
 His was, in truth, one of the large natures, only 
 occasionally appearing in the world, which can 
 never quite submit to* any understood lines drawn 
 by the hand of man, or any professional or customary 
 circumscription. He was ready to strike a blow for 
 truth or freedom, wherever at the time it might be 
 required, in Church or State. Though not a pietist, 
 he was, however, profoundly and ardently religious. 
 Though not a canonical saint, he was from the begin- 
 ning blamelessly pure, and, as one expresses it, " sanc- 
 tified from his birth." One imagines easily that his 
 thought or heart, feet or hands, would have been 
 equally ready for any service to his fellow-creatures j 
 
88 DISCOUESE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 that, where he moved at all, it would certainly be not 
 lukewarmly, but with zeal, doing with his might 
 what he found to do ; and that he would have burned 
 with the flame of every great emergency. In spirit, 
 though in no literal way, he was a knight-templar ; 
 and there seems to be a clangor of arms in his very 
 words. An imperial guard always lay in his soul, 
 ready for a crisis in the battle. 
 
 From this earthly stage of time most of the actors 
 retire, no more remembered after they cease to be 
 seen ; but the great performers, as mighty shadows 
 and ghosts that will not down, keep their footing, 
 with visionary pace, up and down on the broad floor 
 of this sublunary theatre, before the eyes of long 
 generations of men. The parts they play are so 
 great and solemn, that the personations last for ages. 
 They stalk the earth, not as perturbed but glorified 
 spirits, for centuries after, in the body, they are dust. 
 Jonathan Mayhew, the second pastor of the West 
 Church, I must claim for one of those that have this 
 majestic tvead. The condition, not alone of this 
 Christian society, but of this community and whole 
 land, is different and better because of what he did 
 and said, whom some in his time called a fanatic. 
 Truly, it requires no Old Mortality, no antiquarian 
 genius, groping dimly among the relics of the past. 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 89 
 
 to make his spirit return : verily, his spirit is here, 
 and never went away. The currents are still flowing, 
 and may never cease to flow, whose tide he increased 
 and propelled. One of the masters, I call him, 
 who, as in the poetic celebration of the castinc^ of 
 the bell that should ring for religion, freedom, and 
 every occasion of solemnity and human joy, stood 
 by, and gave the wise and grand directions when the 
 elements were all molten around, and men's souls 
 were everywhere tried as the national existence was 
 to take its actual mould. He was great, because he 
 did what the exigency required, — stood in the pass 
 where the battle must be fought, and the hosts of 
 liberty at length march through. One timely blow 
 is worth a thousand ; one fitting word weightier 
 than whole debates. 
 
 To some of his writings I shall, before I conclude, 
 have occasion to refer. I can only, in passing, now 
 say, that in them he discussed the momentous 
 themes of the times, with a wit, energy, and effi- 
 ciency unrivalled by the pens of any of his theo- 
 logical brethren, unsurpassed by the finest and bold- 
 est utterances even of the political forum. Such 
 subjects as the right of private judgment, the amena- 
 bleness of the soul to God alone for its honest 
 opinions, the question of passive obedience and non- 
 
 8* 
 
90 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 resistance, and of the responsibleness of rulers to 
 the common welfare, were moved by him in a way 
 to excite the unbounded joy of sympathizers, and 
 unstop countless vials of to him impotent wrath 
 from his foes. I confess I cannot read his political 
 discourses at this day without a thrill atin to the 
 tingling of the nerves, and hurrying of the blood, 
 with which they were heard ninety years ago. 
 
 The chief trait of his mind was, no doubt, that 
 burning love of liberty, civil liberty and soul 
 liberty, which always makes a man great, and, 
 whenever for his agency is given any scope, shows 
 him great as he is. He was one of the quickest 
 and earliest to catch the spirit that brooded over the 
 face of the waters .when the fountains of the great 
 political deep among us were about to be broken up ; 
 and in every extremity in this country's colonial 
 affairs, while he lived, no man was more courageous 
 in speech, or more resolute and unflinching in pro- 
 cedure. 
 
 There was nothing hesitating or tardy in his in- 
 fluence ; but it was always in season, and, as it were, 
 from one who had risen before the break of day. 
 Weak men are slow ; never slow was he. In the 
 year 1775, nine years after Mayhew's death, it is 
 related that the British troops, suspecting that the 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 91 
 
 handsome steeple of the West Church, in Lynde 
 Street, had been used for the purpose of giving sig- 
 nals to the Continental troops, then in Cambridge, 
 razed it to the ground, to prevent such communi- 
 cation from being any longer had. It was certainly 
 not strange, for some reasons of old association as well 
 as convenient locality, that this particular steeple 
 should have been so employed. But, alas for them ! 
 the enemies of the country were in this too late : the 
 precaution, as in some other cases, was taken after 
 the misfortune had occurred ; the rebellious mischief 
 had been done already inside the church, from a 
 watch-tower loftier and more conspicuous than the 
 belfry of the building ; and, however those patriotic 
 signals may have been concerted or held forth, 
 whether by the waving of flags or by warning strokes 
 of the bell, other more effectual signals had been 
 given, in the eloquent mien of May hew, and the 
 brave words of his lips, that did not vanish, like 
 streaming banners, from the eyes of men, or die away, 
 like other tones, from their hearing, upon the air. 
 
 Nearly ten years before that shrewd measure of 
 British safety was adopted, like so many others, on 
 the principle that prevention is better than cure, — 
 namely, in 1756, on a Lord's-day morning in June, 
 only a few weeks before his death, — Mayhew wrote 
 
92 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 to Otis, that as he had lain in his bed, thinking of 
 the communion of the churches, " the great use 
 and importance of a communion of the colonies " 
 appeared to him in a strong light, and he was 
 accordingly led to transmit the suggestion at once 
 to this champion and co-laborer in the great cause 
 of freedom. His was, no doubt, the first mind upon 
 which the idea in this shape had dawned ; though 
 that necessity of co-operation must have begun to 
 force itself upon all, which appeared in a shape of 
 such solemn beauty from heaven to him. 
 
 Surely it was a grand and fruitful hint, containing 
 the germ of endless expansion ; but what is most 
 interesting in it, as respects the character of Mayhew, 
 is the light of religious principle under which every 
 political object appeared to his thoughts. The con- 
 ception, moreover, only does justice to the fact of 
 the lofty ground upon which our liberties were 
 asserted and achieved, and to which the success of 
 our own, as well as of an earlier English revolution, 
 is to be so much attributed. An inspiration from 
 God among iis prompted the blow that was struck 
 for man. Religion was the parent of our pure and 
 sublime policy, and the church rather the begetter 
 than the partner of the state. From the table of 
 the Lord came the strength that nerved men, not 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. US 
 
 only for the ordinary trials of life, but to do and 
 suffer for the deliverance of humanity from throned 
 tyranny ; and to this very place where "we are assem- 
 bled belongs the glory of the genius that gave per- 
 fect expression to the great law of our national life 
 and prosperity. Indeed, if burning ideas, as well 
 as the heroic deeds they prompt, can bestow a local 
 dignity, then the preacher's desk, we here succeed 
 to, must share the renown of the soldier's battle- 
 field. Ay, this little green eminence, now shaven 
 and smoothed, decoratetl fitly with fountain and 
 trees, site of our former and present temple, found, 
 I will say, even in the clash of arms on Bunker 
 Hill, but some echo to its own worthy fame, as, 
 to apply once more a familiar quotation, " deep 
 calleth unto deep, with the noise of his water- 
 spouts." 
 
 ''The communion of churches, — the communion 
 of colonies ! " One feels irresistibly moved to repeat 
 the comprehensive apothegm for a present applica- 
 tion. The churches have remained, and multiplied 
 as such ; the colonies have become states, multi- 
 plying also without end: but the importance of 
 their communion in the spirit of liberty has not 
 ceased, though it is less against external foes than 
 internal dangers that the bond of brotherly fellow- 
 
94 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 ship is now required. Never, indeed, was it more 
 desirable than now to re-affirm the twofold doctrine, 
 of independence of arbitrary rule, and love of equal 
 rights for all men as children of God, as constitut- 
 ing that braided and irrefragable bond. God grant 
 that our ship of state, having weathered successive 
 storms of foreign hostility, may not rot in her 
 stout timbers on the quiet waters of peace ; may not 
 break bulk in the very harbor to which she has 
 brought home her treasures of policy and wealth ; 
 may not have the beams 6f her strength cut and 
 wrenched away by any mutineers among her crew 
 unfaithful to the free and liberal ends of her voyage ; 
 may not be disunited, abandoned, and made by 
 zealots a premature sacrifice to any single idea ; 
 and may not have her movements brought to a dead 
 pause by divided partisan wills and factious counsels, 
 in the government or out of it ; but that the double 
 union of faith in heaven and humanity on earth, 
 which Mayhew urged and prayed for, may be our 
 everlasting distinction ; and all infidelity, sectional 
 strife, and slavery, finally, peacefully, pass away 
 before it ! 
 
 Dr. Mayhew died on the 9th of July, 1766, 
 having reached only into the forty-sixth year of his 
 age, — as, in the expressive description accompanying 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 95 
 
 his likeness, we are told, " overplied by public 
 energies." The nervous fever that he died of 
 seems to have in itself some propriety as the close 
 of a course of action so earnest, vital, sleepless, 
 and indomitable throughout. His life seems a won- 
 derfully short one, compared with the figure he 
 makes among his fellows. But it was long, if not 
 in its years, yet truly in its aims. It was long in 
 the prophetic confidence and foresight of him, who 
 was as earnestly stirred in spirit for his brethren 
 and countrymen as Moses was for the Hebrews in 
 Egypt. It was very long in the redeeming conse- 
 quences that flowed from it, in conjunction with 
 other emulous and noble lives, to the fettered bodies 
 and oppressed souls of men. So measured, it is not 
 even yet at an end ; nor can we say when in the lapse 
 of time it will be, though ten annual seasons more will 
 complete an earthly century since the dust, once so 
 marvellously animated, was quiet in the grave, and 
 the soul ascended to higher circles of light and love, 
 for fit companionship in heaven. 
 
 If, as has been said, no death is so sad as an un- 
 lamented one, and the degree of sorrow at one's 
 departure is a measure of the importance of his life, 
 Dr. Mayhew's warmest admirers may well be satis- 
 fied with the irrepressible testimonies to his worth 
 
96 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 that waited at his sick-bed, and were paid to his 
 memory. Throughout the region, his early, and as 
 it seemed untimely, decease, was deplored by the 
 friends of civil and spiritual freedom ; and their grief 
 became contagious, and .ran over into a general 
 sorrow. His correspondents in England, of whom 
 the benevolent HoUis, the great benefactor of our 
 college, and made such very much through Mayhew's 
 influence, was chief, caught the affliction in all its 
 severity across the sea. While his fate was yet in 
 suspense, some of the clergy of his own neighbor- 
 hood, who had suspected him of theological heresy, 
 held express prayer ; and Episcopalian ministers, 
 whom he had especially offended, composed collects 
 for this eager, spontaneous, and, if I may so call him, 
 extemporary man's recovery. One reverend doc- 
 tor, commissioned from the church to interrogate 
 him respecting his views of the Trinity, upon calling, 
 like certain officers spoken of in Scripture, either 
 forgot, or thought it not proper to fulfil, his errand, 
 and reported thus his conviction : " I believe he 
 loves the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, sin- 
 cerely." And when it was known he must die, 
 another, inquiring of him if he still held to the tenets 
 he had maintained, received for answer, with a faint, 
 difficult, loving, as it were expiring, pressure of the 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 97 
 
 hand, " My integrity I hold fast, and will not let it 
 go." Sublime reply, which it were well could every 
 dying man adopt ; better than any creed the wit of 
 man ever devised, or pen of system-maker wrote, or 
 synod imposed ; and which may God give us grace 
 in the last moment, in humble dependence on him 
 and trust in our Lord and Master, to utter ! 
 
 It is proper, speaking in general concerning the 
 religious views of Mayhew, to say that he renounced 
 the system of Calvin, which from the first has never 
 been taught in this church ; that he vindicated on all 
 occasions the claims of individual conviction ; re- 
 sisted all contradiction of reason, though coming in 
 the name of God, whom he worshipped as the 
 inspirer of reason ; interpreted the Scriptures with a 
 judgment unchained from prescriptive dogmas ; and 
 preached a purity and liberality of doctrine, bv 
 which those Mho have grown up in the last genera- 
 tion may well be gladly amazed, as they find the prin- 
 ciples, for which they had looked to later celebrated 
 authors, perhaps of their own day, really derived 
 from fountains higher up, substantially published a 
 century ago, and preceding the great revolutions, in 
 theology as well as politics, which they did so much 
 to produce ; so that one may be thus reminded of 
 the poet's quaint lines beginning, '' Out of the old 
 • 9 
 
98 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 fields Cometh all this corn." The venerated deceased 
 Dr. Freeman, formerly of this city, who has some- 
 times been considered the first public advocate 
 among ns of the strict unity of God, expressly ren- 
 ders to Mayhew, so long his predecessor, the credit 
 of a position for which, with its afiiliated beliefs, they 
 both were willing to do and sufier so much. 
 
 The character of Mayhew, if I may dwell a mo- 
 ment longer upon it, — and it clings the closer to 
 every ingenuous mind the longer it is contemplated, 
 — appears conspicuously in the qualities of his style. 
 What perhaps strikes us most in his composition, 
 is its wonderful directness. Repeatedly I have no- 
 ticed in his printed sentences, that, when he comes 
 to an end of his meaning, or so far that the rest of 
 it is easily suggested, he thinks it not worth while 
 to go any farther, but throws away the grammatical 
 period, and terminates the sentence with a dash of 
 his pen, quite significant of the man, as though he 
 said, like his Master to the disciples. It is enough ; 
 you understand me ; I need not say any more. His 
 paragraphs go straight as arrows to their object ; and 
 I may add, that something of the whiz of the string, 
 in his pungent satire upon the arrogance or folly he 
 attacks, accompanies their fatal execution. He plainly 
 tells the Mr. Cleveland, who had presumed, with no 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 99 
 
 <|aalification, either of ability or candor, to be his the- 
 ological adversary, and who could but weakly and 
 unfairly pervert his meaning, that his purpose in no- 
 ticing his strictures at all was not to reply to, but to 
 chastise, him. The most racy and original expres- 
 sions abound on his pages, in pamphlets or practical 
 sermons ; so that I could fill a discourse with pithy 
 quotations from his quaint and piercing lines. The 
 naturalness of a child in his phrase and idiom is 
 combined with an herculean grasp of the strength of 
 the strongest of men. Not unfrequently his tone 
 rises into a sort of sublimity, in which the most so- 
 lemn persuasions of his mind mingle with tender and 
 pathetic gushings from one of the most affectionate 
 as well as resolute hearts that ever beat. 
 
 The sentiments respecting him, quoted from his 
 intimate friends, that he was " endowed with sin- 
 gular greatness of mind, and fortitude of spirit ; 
 with softness and benevolence of temper ; was most 
 amiable in all the relations of life ; exceeding in acts 
 of liberality and kindness ; a man of zeal, piety, and 
 true devotion ; an upright, sincere disciple of Christ," 
 — I could accept on the evidence given of their truth 
 in all his compositions, as well as actions. Not un- 
 frequently he reaches to a strain wholly beyond the 
 creative reach of common men. There are passages 
 
100 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 in his volumes which, for grandeur of conception 
 and a chastened magnificence of language, are truly 
 Miltonic, and which I should be willing to place 
 side by side with the noblest strains of that great 
 elder brother of free and generous souls in all times, 
 from whose name this suggestive epithet comes, and 
 in whose " Apology for his Early Life and Writ- 
 ings " is a passage I would recite as applicable to 
 none since the days of the British Commonwealth 
 more than to Mayhew himself I mean that where 
 the poet, who could never keep his inspiration out 
 of his prose, speaking of and defending various 
 natural qualities of human character, among the 
 rest describes '' the invincible warrior Zeal, who, 
 shaking loosely the slack reins, drives over the heads 
 of scarlet prelates, and such as are insolent to main- 
 tain traditions., bruising their stiff necks under his 
 flaming wheels." 
 
 As I contemplate Mayhew in his whole figure, 
 one of my strongest feelings is that here is a man 
 that belongs altogether to our country, to America. 
 He was no European at all. Growing up in child- 
 hood in the midst of savage nature and savage men, 
 to fall in after-years on perilous times, he was a pure 
 production of the circumstances, necessities, the pe- 
 culiar spirit, and providential destiny, of the Western 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 101 
 
 World ; and as the earliest growths in the material 
 world, if somewhat rude, are the most gigantic, so 
 was it with his mind. His deeds and words savor 
 of the rocks and trees familiar to his childhood, and 
 sound of the ocean that was neighbor to his home. 
 Refinement is a good thing as well as strength ; but 
 strength without refinement is much better than 
 refinement without strength. Yet there was in his 
 mind no lack of the native sense of courtesy, and 
 consciousness of what was due to all ; and no man 
 has lived who more profoundly revered the supreme 
 law of justice, — as the ancient sage says, the same 
 at Rome and Athens, the same in heaven as upon 
 earth, — from which all sweetness and courtesy come. 
 After an artist has endeavored to produce a ge- 
 neral likeness, he makes a survey of his work, and 
 then proceeds with the conscientious painstaking of 
 a slower labor ; going over his whole ground, from 
 the first stroke to the last, to add nicer touches, 
 hoping through minute finish to bring out, from 
 what may be but a rude sketch, a more perfect 
 resemblance. In the lines that have almost spon- 
 taneously, and without much conscious plan, sug- 
 gested themselves, I feel that I have but roughly 
 indicated the countenance I ought, before stopping, 
 more carefully to depict. "Were there in existence 
 
 9* 
 
102 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 any at once full and concise delineation of Mayhew, 
 I should hesitate in attempting to draw so great a 
 subject at all ; but as it seems a task providentially 
 devolved upon me to hold forth his image, at least 
 to the members of this congregation, I beg leave to 
 conclude my hasty portraiture with some character- 
 istic incidents in the doings of his life or the expres- 
 sions of his thought. The brevity to which I am 
 compelled may be an advantage in making the 
 likeness, if I may so say, more convenient and 
 intellectually portable. 
 
 The very ordination of Mayhew in this church 
 was but the opening scene of that mighty part of 
 independence, of which, as of the resistless destiny 
 in some Greek tragedy, he was at once, as I have 
 already explained, both the instrument and actor. As 
 much in religion as in politics he was prominent, 
 and left his mark and ineffaceable signature on his 
 age, the token and harbinger of opinions and a 
 spirit to prevail widely long after he was dead. 
 Like the Lucifer, in Guido's picture of the Aurora, 
 he was divinely chosen to bear a torch before the 
 coming of the sun ; and darkness worse than that of 
 the night receded before him. Of all the bold 
 spirits among, the clergy of his time, who either 
 slighted or renounced particularly the Calvinistic 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. lOo 
 
 system of theology, he, fitted by nature to be the 
 champion and leader of whatever cause he espoused, 
 was the most forward and uncompromising. Ac- 
 cordingly, on the day appointed for his induction 
 into office, of the invited ministers, already oflfended, 
 or suspicious of a savor and taint of heresy in the 
 air, only two, and not one of those from Boston, 
 deigned to attend the council. On a second ap- 
 pointed day, without any evidence of concessions 
 from Mayhew, — which it was not in INIayhew, from 
 any timidity or regard to expediency, to make, — but 
 very probably as a tribute to his undeniable power 
 and worth, several churches were represented ; so 
 that the services were regularly performed, and he 
 became the pastor of a church, which, to its real 
 and great honor be it spoken, never wavered in its 
 costly but well-rewarded attachment to him, — as it 
 has never been found wanting to any of its pastors, 
 — but, through good report and evil report, became 
 for his trials only the more devoted to its lofty- 
 minded spiritual guide, atoning for all obloquy or 
 desertion in other quarters by its strong-siding 
 support and unquenchable love. The heretical or 
 unsafe man never became a member of the Boston 
 Association of Congregational Ministers, that had 
 no liking for new and dangerous things, and was in 
 
104 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 some respects a quite different body indeed from 
 what it is now. And so he never had any turn in 
 the ecclesiastical privilege of preaching the great 
 Thursday Lecture ; but he had weekly lectures in 
 his own church, most of which were afterwards 
 published, and probably exceeded in their influence 
 all the conventional and customary fruits of the 
 regular institution. 
 
 It is not strange that the theologians, set for the 
 defence, not only of the gospel, but of foregone and 
 dogmatic conclusions respecting it, should have been 
 alarmed at the aspect and speech of Mayhew. For 
 the spirit of liberty, both civil and religious, did not 
 seem to be so much a growth in his mind as an 
 inspiration, — a genius full-born and consummate in 
 the first moment of its existence. This appears 
 from the fact, that perhaps the most remarkable was 
 one of the earliest of his discourses upon the anni- 
 versary of the death of Charles I., in January, 1750, 
 several years before Otis wrote on the " Rights of 
 the Colonies," or that collision began, between the 
 governors and the patriots of Massachusetts, which 
 ended in the Revolutionary war. This was the first 
 peal on the trumpet of freedom in this "Western "World, 
 blown clear and loud enough to be heard over land 
 and water far and wide. It announced the down- 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 105 
 
 fall of the city of oppression, as clearly as the rude 
 blast of old was ominous of the downfall of Jericho. I 
 confess I cannot read the sentences, that come like suc- 
 cessive lightnings, in that discourse, without amaze- 
 ment at the intellectual and moral audacity that could 
 hurl such hot and blazing things right into the face of 
 arbitrary power. What an astonishment and distress 
 the sudden flash and report must have been to all 
 the authorities then in vogue ! 
 
 No wonder the greatest republican souls of the 
 day admired and quoted him, praised the " tran- 
 scendent genius " that " threw all the weight of his 
 great fame into the scale of his country," and felt 
 that he was a peer among masters in all time that 
 had ever striven to indoctrinate mankind into the 
 principles of genuine liberty. The thought of Sid- 
 ney or Hampden was no clearer than his upon 
 the nature of political right or duty. The eye of 
 Cromwell gazed no more steady and undazzled than 
 his upon the pomp of courts and the glitter of 
 royalty. Nor did Cromwell's mind, flushed with 
 military success on many a desperate, hard-fought 
 field, conceive of a grander protectorate than was 
 present to that of the lowly minister of West 
 Boston. No man, whose whole business was to 
 conduct by the pen or the sword a quarrel with 
 
106 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 arbitrary power, ever showed more decided bent and 
 ability for rough and masculine controversy. No 
 hater of despotic rule, from the first Greek to the 
 last South American or Chinese rising against the 
 hand and heel of oppression, ever swung a weapon 
 of more terribly righteous Demosthenic invective. 
 Certainly the English tongue has never in any use 
 of it exceeded Mayhew's force of expression for the 
 purpose he had in view. Upon the dogma of passive 
 obedience and non-resistance to tyranny he heaps 
 unmeasured scorn ; and the notion of King Charles's 
 martyrdom and sainthood in particular draws down 
 a thunder and sharpness of irony, which it might 
 almost be thought would shame and cleanse away 
 the sins it rebuked, and prove itself the very pur- 
 gatory for transgressors which the old church so 
 authoritatively proclaimed, and moved its mightiest 
 poet awfully to build, neighboring to the amphi- 
 theatric descending circles of hell, in the vast and 
 gloomy architecture of his verse. 
 
 Mayhew thinks it a hard case to have " a saintship 
 without sanctity," and that " a church must be but 
 poorly stocked with saints and martyrs which is 
 forced to adopt such enormous sinners into her 
 calendar in order to swell the numbers ; " though 
 he admits "it may be said that such things are 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 107 
 
 mysteries, wliicli lay-understandings cannot compre- 
 hend, nor indeed any others, except they have taken 
 a trip across the Atlantic to obtain Episcopal ordi- 
 nation, and who are inwardly moved by the Holy 
 Ghost ; " ridiculing thus not the reality, but the 
 exclusive and canting pretence, of proud men to that 
 inward and blessed motion. He complains that 
 there had been an " impious bargain struck up, be- 
 tween the sceptre and the surplice, for enslaving both 
 the bodies and souls of men ; " that " not Christ, but 
 Charles, Avas generally preached to the people ; " and 
 that he was " called a saint, not because he was a 
 good man, but a good Churchman ; not because he 
 was a lover of holiness, but of the hierarchy ; not 
 because he was a friend to Christ, but to the craft. 
 And he was a martyr in his death, not because he 
 suffered death in the cause of truth and righteous- 
 ness, but because he was an enemy to liberty and 
 the rights of conscience ; not because he was an 
 enemy to sin, but to the Dissenters." 
 
 Such words justify certainly all that may be said 
 of his power of expression ; and it is not strange 
 that very decided sentiments of hostility as well as 
 friendship should be excited against a man who 
 could utter himself thus. But he had warm sympa- 
 thizers and encomiasts on both sides of the sea ; and 
 
108 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 George Benson writes to him, from London, that 
 " the name of Dr. Mayhew may be precious in New 
 England when he is in his grave, and the names of 
 his bigoted opposers are buried in obhvion." Surely 
 there would be no query about the inspiration and 
 authority of any prediction that should be as well 
 fulfilled as that. Of his political, Mayhew might 
 well have said as he did of certain religious, practical 
 discourses which he had put forth, that, "if there 
 are any dangerous errors in them, they are not 
 disguised by any kind of artifice ; do not just 
 peep through the mask of studied, equivocal, and 
 ambiguous phrases ; nor skulk in the dark, as it 
 were, from a consciousness of what they are, and a 
 fear of being detected." Surely, if the virtue of 
 frankness ever clothed a man, it was the transparent 
 garb of his mind and manner ; and he was no less 
 courageous than he was frank. If I may name 
 what will appear perhaps as significant to some as 
 it may look trifling to others, the peculiarly clear 
 and large characters in which he writes his name 
 seem to express his undisguised nature, and to chal- 
 lenge attention to every word that falls from his pen, 
 as if he feared not the whole world's scrutiny of 
 whatever he indited or subscribed. He says, " There 
 is a difference between a man's being scolded at and 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 109 
 
 refuted." And " I must now declare, once for all, 
 that I will not be even religiously scolded, nor pitied, 
 nor whipped out of any principles or doctrines which 
 I believe on the authority of Scripture, in the exer- 
 cise of that small share of reason which God has 
 given me ; nor will I postpone this authority to that 
 of all the good fathers of the church, even with that 
 of the good mothers added to it." Probably a 
 stroke of satire more trenchant through all possible 
 wards and shields was never delivered than that 
 where, describing the various methods of the anta- 
 gonists of his friends to refute their arguments, he 
 says, that, finding other means unsuccessful, they 
 had discovered one way which would be quite effi- 
 cient ; namely, to throw stones, and knock out the 
 brains of the reasoners. He shows his wonted fear- 
 lessness in searching even into the recognized canon 
 of the books of Scripture; and says he knows not 
 why the Song of Solomon should be included among 
 the sacred books, and the Wisdom of Solomon left 
 out, but that men love songs better than wisdom. 
 
 But I must not consume in details the space that 
 should be devoted to larger characterization. The 
 Discourse of Mayhew on the repeal of the Stamp 
 Act, which was one of the last, as that on the anni- 
 versary of King Charles's death was one of the 
 
 10 
 
110 DISCOUKSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 first, grand demonstrations of his power, to the mag- 
 nificent beginning formed truly a sublime and well- 
 proportioned close. To a great work of art, unity, 
 as we know, is essential. But is not a human life 
 the greatest work of art we can conceive ? Surely, 
 to the greatness of a man, unity of principle and 
 action running through his whole life is an indis- 
 pensable requisite. Many have had bursts of enthu- 
 siasm on one point or another, which they did not 
 sustain and carry out. Many have made splendid 
 speeches and orations ; but their speeches and orations 
 stood not, if I may say so, in orderly and consistent 
 array, in one line of battle against the errors and 
 sins of the world ; and, therefore, with their shifting 
 brilliancy accomplished nothing, and were at best 
 only as the harmless evolutions and impotent glitter 
 of a sham-fight. Some men live for amusement, 
 and some in sober earnest ; and, to change my 
 figure, they illustrate the difference between a 
 kaleidoscope and a cannon. We know well how it 
 was with Mayhew. His last grand utterance was 
 the peroration of one uniform life-long discourse, 
 that broke forth as in successive sentences and on 
 many occasions, but ran like a single effort through 
 his whole public career. It was like the last note 
 in a great bui'st of martial music, whose continuation 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. Ill 
 
 was but the perfect sustaining of its pregnant and 
 ominous prelude ; for this man's speech, true to the 
 image I have here chanced upon, however loud, ter- 
 rible, and arousing, still was music. It was no harsh, 
 jangling discord, as of one who can only rave and scold 
 and rend the ears that listen, betokening a sour, an- 
 gry, and contradictory nature as its source. True, it 
 was not at any time very soft, gentle, and Arcadian 
 music. It was no pastoral pipe, that he blew merely 
 to call the listless and idle sheep together, but a 
 piercing trumpet, with reverberating alarum through 
 the wilds of the pasture to scare off the wolves, and 
 send terror into the hearts of those that would 
 devour the flock. 
 
 Yet, in this last discourse, with the re-assertion 
 of the principles for which he had contended and 
 would have been willing to die, there is, especially 
 in the Introduction, an overflowing joy, so simple 
 and pure that the man's heart of oak seems to be 
 but a child's heart of flesh after all. His expres- 
 sions are such that one doubts a little if he knew 
 well whether to write upon the occasion, or, like 
 jubilant King David when the ark of the Lord had 
 been brought to Zion, to dance before the Lord with 
 all his might. He, however, had set his face as flint 
 against all the riotous proceedings of unsanctified 
 
112 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAIHEW. 
 
 men, even in opposition to the hated Act which was 
 now to his delight rescinded ; nor was Luther him- 
 self more hostile to any Anabaptist excesses of fury, 
 than he always was to deeds of lawless and passionate 
 violence. Wonderful composure and dignity, as well 
 as animation and impetuosity, this man knows very 
 well how to have. A conscious nobility of nature 
 unites with the dignity of an unflinching devotion 
 to freedom, to raise him to a level with the greatest 
 spirits. He addresses William Pitt, the friend and 
 promoter of American liberties, in a strain of pene- 
 trating sentiment and simple grandeur, which makes 
 Mayhew look back there upon the platform that 
 included England and America, with the rolling sea 
 between, like the fitting mate of the great orator and 
 statesman himself, as though he indeed walked in 
 company with him, in equal height of stature and 
 with unlowered head, down that vista of time towards 
 future ages of fame. Even the pagan doubters of 
 human immortality thought, that, while the mass of 
 men perished, great souls might survive the tomb. 
 What greetings and courtesies, magnificent beyond 
 our poor imagination, far from this shadowy land, 
 these great souls must give each other as they meet ! 
 and what, following upon their former earthly inter- 
 course, must be the grandeur of the celestial fellow- 
 ship and deep counsels they hold ! 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 113 
 
 In the great lists of the time, either in sympathy 
 or repugnance, it seemed to be Mayhew's lot to 
 measure himself with superior men, and to be some- 
 times opposed to potentates with a soul more kingly 
 than their own. A strife, that arose between him 
 and Governor Bernard, brought out, perhaps as 
 vividly as did any situation of his life, his peculiar 
 personal traits. Mayhew had mentioned to one or 
 two of his most confidential associates and parishion- 
 ers a story, told by an Indian who had come to 
 present a petition to the governor, offering therewith 
 some money, which, as the Indian said, the governor 
 freely accepted and put into his pocket ; an act 
 which, if it indeed took place, was unusual and 
 very discreditable. Bernard, both on account of his 
 royalist principles and his ecclesiastical prejudices, 
 was already in a position of vehement antagonism 
 to Mayhew, who had distinguished himself for his 
 formidable criticisms upon all arbitrary authority in 
 church or state. Mayhew's purely private remark, 
 which was nothing but a simple, blameless relation 
 of the Indian's story, through the careless and un- 
 retentive trust of some one who heard it, unfortu- 
 nately got abroad. It needed only this perfectly 
 innocent drop from Mayhew's mind to make the 
 gubernatorial wrath, which had already swollen like 
 10* 
 
114 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 dammed-up channels among the hills, overflow. The 
 ruler summons the preacher, — as the German monk, 
 that Mayhew much resembles, was summoned, — 
 with the hottest irritation brands him as a libeller in 
 being the repeater of a lie, and threatens him with 
 prosecution for defamatory words. Mayhew takes 
 the rudeness with a patience as noble as any heroism 
 in his active conduct ; but, after some time had 
 elapsed, addresses to his excellency a letter, which, 
 telling Bernard that not a line of it had been com- 
 municated to any other person, he consigns to the 
 pleasure of his disposal. No wonder, to any one 
 who now reads it, that the governor never saw fit to 
 answer, to publish, or probably even to show it to 
 his intimate friends, and that the world should be 
 indebted for its preservation to a blotted and inter- 
 lined copy found among Mayhew's own papers ! 
 Bernard must have been inclined to hurry it out of 
 existence as soon as possible ; for he was not told, 
 as persons receiving a communication sometimes are, 
 to burn it, but to use it as he listed; which he no 
 doubt did. The best use he could make of it was, 
 no doubt, to let it sleep ; for, among all epistolary 
 productions, replies or rejoinders, ancient or modern, 
 which it has been my fortune to read, I have never 
 met with one more conclusive, or leaving less curi- 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 115 
 
 osity as to what could be said or sent back on the 
 other side. I have been told, that, when the cele- 
 brated Albert Gallatin was asked why he would not 
 answer a speech made by John Marshall, he replied, 
 " Because it is unanswerable." So I think was 
 Mayhew's letter. The plainest candor and the sub- 
 tlest irony ; the most unaffected courtesy and terrific 
 severity ; a humility that claims nothing, and a piety 
 that soars above all princedoms ; a perfect obeisance 
 to just law, with an absolute renunciation of tyran- 
 nical sway ; a soul of rock no menace could subdue, 
 with a heart flowing, like the rock, into exhaustless 
 streams of gentleness, — all mingle in its lines; to 
 every one of which, as we go on, we respond, Well 
 done ! — and which altogether prove the author to 
 be truly, for marvellous combination of qualities, 
 himself a king and governor among men. 
 
 But perhaps the most remarkable specimens of 
 his genius for discussion are to be found in his 
 ** Observations on the Character and Conduct of 
 the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign 
 Parts." The funds of this society, which were 
 created for the purpose of converting the heathen 
 to Christianity, had been used for the unnecessary 
 introduction of Episcopal societies where the pri- 
 vileges of the gospel were already enjoyed, with a 
 
116 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 design, as Mayhew believed, of subjecting the entire 
 population, if possible, to the authority of the church, 
 as well as of the sceptre, of England. He stoutly 
 resists the approach of the engine with which, as he 
 grandly expressed it, it was intended to '^ shake this 
 part of the earth." Whoever admires sharpness of 
 wit and cogency of logic will enjoy a perusal of his 
 several tracts, in which he manages his case with 
 consummate skill against the best adversaries that 
 could be aroused upon the contrary side ; having, 
 among others, no less a personage than the Primate 
 of England, as " a foeman worthy of his steel." 
 
 In the course of the controversy, being by Seeker, 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom this anony- 
 mous writer that replied to him is understood to 
 have been, reproached as " a poor man," he replies 
 thus : " I am indeed ' a poor man,' as this gentle- 
 man calls me ; but, through the goodness of God 
 and the generosity of his people, I have a comfort- 
 able subsistence and contentment ; which, if attended 
 with integrity and godliness, is all the gain my soul 
 aspires after in this world. In this respect I have 
 been publicly upbraided, — in another sense, as I 
 suppose. Nor has the irreproachable memory of 
 my father escaped insult from some of my oppo- 
 nents. But I had rather be the poor son of a good 
 
DISCOURSE OX DR. MAYHEW. 117 
 
 man, who spent a long life in the laborious and 
 apostolic employment of preaching the unsearchable 
 riches of Christ to poor Indians, than the rich son 
 and heir of one who, by temporizing in religion 
 and tampering with politics, by flattering the great 
 and prostituting his conscience, has made his way 
 to a bishopric and the worldly dignity of a peer." 
 One, who could withstand assault and repel insult 
 in this way, was not likely to be frequently by the 
 same person attacked. When, in the humbler sphere 
 of the animal kingdom, the safety of the callow 
 brood is disturbed, any one, who observes nature at 
 all, will have noticed what fiery indignation and 
 what soft protection become as one and the same 
 thing in the parental attitude and heart ! So May- 
 hew lifts his voice and spreads the feathers of his 
 wings at the same time to repel assaults, and cover 
 the young and tender growth, in this transatlantic 
 province, of spiritual freedom. The pitying and 
 pathetic guardianship is equally notable with the 
 indignant and effectual repulse. Inquiring once of 
 an ear-witness respecting the speech of a great 
 orator, I was told it had about it no display of 
 rhetoric or gesture', but moved towards his opponent 
 in the case as with the calm, assured, inevitable 
 destruction of fate. Such annihilation is in the 
 
118 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 course of Mayhew's argument. I cannot refrain 
 from quoting the close of one passage of sublime 
 eloquence : — 
 
 ''Will they never let us rest in peace, except 
 where all the weary are at rest ? Is it not enough 
 that they persecuted us out of the Old World ? 
 Will they pursue us into the New to convert us 
 here, compassing sea and land to make us prose- 
 lytes, while they neglect the heathen and heathenish 
 plantations ? What other New World remains as a 
 sanctuary for us from their oppressions, in case of 
 need ? Where is the Columbus to explore one for 
 and pilot us to it, before we are consumed by the 
 flames or deluged in a flood of episcopacy ? For 
 my own part, I can hardly ever think of our being 
 pursued thus from Britain into the wilds of Ame- 
 rica, and from world to world, without calling to 
 mind, though without applying, that passage in the 
 Revelation of St. John : ' And to the woman were 
 given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly 
 into the wilderness, into her place, where she is 
 nourished, from the face of the serpent. And the 
 serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after 
 the woman, that he might cause her to be carried 
 away of the flood.' " Need one hesitate to compare 
 such periods with Milton's own ? 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 119 
 
 Such is the tremendous swing of the M-eapons he 
 uses. Yet this man did not love strife, and says he 
 would gladly have been excused from such encoun- 
 ters. It is beautiful to notice the fine contention of 
 opposite qualities in his mind, — tenderness strug- 
 gling with strength, courtesy with plain-speaking, 
 openness with ironical humor, and quick perceptions 
 with sudden impulses that almost overmaster and 
 bear him away ; so that once he says, of an outbreak 
 of ardor in the pulpit, that he knows not how to ac- 
 count for this " odd excursion." Evidently he had no 
 mere will of his own in the matter that moved him. 
 The cause, the exigency, was omnipotent in his mind. 
 This is a chief chai'acteristic of all truly great men, 
 that not caprice or ingenuity seems to determine 
 them, but a divine call, a heavenly decree, — the 
 divine call, the heavenly decree, that always makes 
 the great man. As the word of the Lord comes to 
 some Jeremiah or Micah, a burden they must roll 
 off upon the world, and as necessity is laid upon 
 the great apostle to preacli, so is it with all God's 
 servants. 
 
 Dr. Mayhew has sometimes been blamed, in his 
 latter days he was somewhat disposed to blame him- 
 self, for the extremely satirical language he occa- 
 sionally employed, the most conspicuous example of 
 
120 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 which is probably found in his letter to the Mr. 
 Cleveland whom I have already named. If the 
 question be, whether there can ever be Christian 
 occasion for the use of indignation and scorn, it 
 may be soon settled ; for these sentiments are 
 undoubtedly in the Bible ascribed to God, and 
 sometimes exercised by our merciful Lord Jesus 
 Christ. Such noble men as Milton and Luther also 
 certainly felt they had sometimes righteous occasion 
 to call them into play in the most free and unspar- 
 ing manner. Indeed, whose scorn and indignation 
 should equal those of a holy man against all the 
 meanness and iniquity in the world ? The only real 
 question is, whether they are applied in lit season 
 and measure, and in proper subserviency to the pur- 
 poses of a moral equity and a truly Christian love, 
 for those who are made the objects of them. 
 
 I have no anxiety to prove Mayhew a paragon 
 of infallible judgment or spotless virtue. He has 
 merit enough to bear much exception or detraction. 
 He, alone of all men, did not come to be " that 
 faultless monster which the world ne'er saw ; " 
 though, when I consider the extent of his provo- 
 cation, and the urgency of his cause, if there be 
 aught in his temper or expression to be regretted, 
 I am not convinced of any especial or extraordinary 
 error in the particular direction named. 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYIIEW. 121 
 
 Feeling, however, myself some concern upon this 
 point, I inquired, of a learned and candid and very 
 reverend man, his judgment upon Mayhew's severity 
 of speech. He answered, that he had no fault to 
 iind with him on that score ; and that it might often 
 be very well seen, when a sharp thing was said, it 
 was in reply to a sharper one said before, that could 
 not well be met and disposed of with very soft and 
 tame language. Something fiery seems always to 
 go along with, and in part to constitute, great contro- 
 versial power, as the red-hot furnace, the source of 
 strength, lies beneath the locomotive engine ; and 
 certainly, when the question discussed passed from 
 other hands into those of Mayhew, it was as when 
 the tired and panting horses upon the railway resign 
 the train to the more potent and fierce yet well- 
 tempered draught of the iron steed. 
 
 It ought not, in any summary, however brief, of 
 Mayhew's cai'eer, to be forgotten that he was an 
 advocate not only of political and religious freedom, 
 but also of sound learning, and manifested a warm 
 friendship, that brought forth, as I have already 
 intimated, most substantial fruits for what was then 
 the very seat and only hope of literature, — Harvard 
 College. The benefactions it received from Hollis 
 flowed in the channel of that benevolent man's pe- 
 ll 
 
122 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 culiar love for Mayhew, who rejoiced to turn the 
 current of favor, not to his private satisfaction alone, 
 but in all ways towards the cherished institution. 
 He was its great defender also against the attempt 
 to set up against it a rival seminary ; and his fame 
 should always be held dear within the precincts he 
 did so much to preserve, enrich, and adorn. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say with what ardor he 
 inveighed against the Popish idolatry, which was 
 the subject of his Dudleian Lecture in 1765 : for 
 superstition in every form was his peculiar hatred ; 
 and he seemed born to extinguish or drive it out 
 everywhere from his sphere. 
 
 Always he goes for reality, and abhors all 
 deceit. He hates what he calls " face-religion." 
 He would have nought to do with the austerity 
 that created artificial vices, for reputed saints to 
 have a holy horror about ; and so diminished the 
 baseness of real sins of fraud and hypocrisy. He 
 would not let fraud and hypocrisy hide their huge and 
 aggravated baseness behind conventional sins. It is 
 matter even of amazement to see how superior he 
 was to all ecclesiastical prepossessions, and how ac- 
 curately he drew the line between the asceticism 
 of the rigid party in religion and the excessive 
 self-indulgence of the worldlings. Preaching upon 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 123 
 
 " Sinful Diversions or Recreations," he yet coura- 
 geously, against the understood notions of church- 
 holiness, maintains the propriety, among other 
 amusements, of dancing, under proper attendant 
 circumstances, and within due limits of decorum ; 
 and he himself indulged in the sports of the field, 
 living at a time when they might present a stronger 
 . and closer allurement than now, when weapons were 
 more familiar to such hands as his than they are at 
 present, and when such pursuits agreed well with 
 the general call to do whatever might contribute to 
 the reign of order, civilization, and plenty, in a 
 region still a desert, rather than the Cultivated gar- 
 den Ave know it to be. 
 
 Were I called upon to decide, in general, what 
 was the marked and most singular gift in Mayhew's 
 mind, I should say it was that for the pure processes 
 of the practical reason, appearing clearly as they did 
 to him in his thought, and expressed mightily with 
 his pen. Accordingly, earnest as his nature was, 
 lie was yet more of a writer than of an orator or 
 speaker. He himself says, " Though I am sensible 
 that writing is what I have a poor talent for, yet 
 even that is of the two, perhaps, rather better than 
 my talent at speaking ; in which latter I often find 
 it difficult for me to express my meaning, even on 
 
124 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 common occasions, on things familiar to me." It 
 is said that, in fact, " he often appeared at a loss for 
 words, and hesitated much in conversation." But 
 I think this statement need not surprise us ; for I 
 suspect it might be found that some of the greatest 
 men have not been distinguished for fluency of 
 tongue, or the smoothest and most agreeable de- 
 livery, in speech, of their meditations. Superficial 
 things, that are on everybody's lips and v/ithin 
 reach of everybody's immediate understanding, are, 
 more often than the deep things of God or of the 
 human heart, the staple and substance of free and 
 pleasing, and* everywhere current, though cheap, 
 oratory. Much and profound thinking seems to 
 crowd the passages of the mind, so as to get for 
 itself but a poor and troubled exit from them into 
 the world ; as, to use Dean's Swift's figure, a very 
 full church empties itself confusedly. The absorb- 
 ing contemplation of spiritual things, moreover, 
 makes one abstract and absent-minded ; so that the 
 voice that should reach others may die away, dis- 
 tinctly audible, perhaps, only in the speaker's own 
 ear. The style of the Apostle Paul, clogged with 
 abundance and parenthetical interruption, at least 
 plainly indicates how worldly and shallow hearers 
 might consider, as they did, his " speech contempt- 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 125 
 
 ible." Surely he was no elocutionist, and would 
 hardly attain to the glory of being a popular preach- 
 er at the present day. Socrates — the admired, 
 dreaded, interrogative Socrates, chief moral inqui- 
 sitor of all time — among the ancients, and Burke 
 among the moderns, are instances to show that deep 
 reflection and sharp discrimination are not favorable 
 to the most entrancing eloquence at the moment, 
 though the periods whose weight these qualities 
 forge may resound in the ears of a distant pos- 
 terity. 
 
 Mayhew certainly often interested his audience 
 greatly at the instant, but perhaps not in full pro- 
 portion to the reach of his meaning. There is an 
 eloquence of the moment merely, and there is an 
 eloquence of the years. One, who had listened to 
 a distinguished preacher, likened his sentences to 
 successive crashes of electricity in the sky. That 
 with Mayhew there were such outbursts, we are well 
 advised ; and the soul can seem still to hear the dis- 
 charges out of our great preacher's silent and time- 
 stained page. The nature of Mayhew's sentiments, 
 however inartificial the voice in which they were 
 uttered, woke indeed a thousand echoes all round 
 the horizon : but there was a more than Attic salt 
 in his persuasions, and a solidity in his ideas, which 
 
 11* 
 
126 DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW, 
 
 have kept them unworn and incorruptible ; and 
 scarcely any writings contemporary with his own, 
 for their spirit and meaning, are more worthy of 
 being read at the present day. 
 
 The two great sentiments that burned in May- 
 hew's breast were patriotism and religious devotion. 
 The circumstances in which he lived, as you well 
 know, especially signalized his love for his country ; 
 but, great as that indeed was, still greater, I must 
 say, in conclusion, was his reverence for the eternal 
 statutes, and his love of God. Never, certainly, was 
 any similar paper graced with a sentiment of more 
 holy felicity than that in his Dedication, to the 
 Young Men of his Parish, of his Sermons on Chris- 
 tian Sobriety : " If any of you, after hearing and 
 requesting the publication of these Discourses, should 
 conduct yourselves unsoberly, unrighteously, and 
 ungodly in the world, these very sermons, and 
 your own written, signed request, will be as swift 
 witnesses against you. You will be judged out of 
 your own mouths, like wicked servants, and con- 
 demned, as it were, under your own hands and 
 seals." 
 
 Noble, free, loving, dear, and devout soul ! may 
 thy words, by young or old of this generation, be 
 not less heeded than in thy own ! — for, in thy 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHtW. 127 
 
 appointed time, thou didst speak for all times to 
 come. Truly living in thy brief career, when 
 Death approached to lay on thee his all-withering 
 hand, only thy flesh dissolved at his bidding ; and 
 only thy mortal shadow, before his unreal, phantom- 
 power, passed away. The brightness of thy glory, a 
 beam from heaven, remains with us, as stars shine 
 to earth while they make lustrous the heavens ; and 
 thy name, here as on high, liveth evermore. 
 
128 
 
 NOTE TO PAGE 83. 
 
 The following extracts, from a private letter, I thankfully avail 
 myself of the writer's kind permission to publish : — 
 
 " Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard, March 14, 1856. 
 
 " In reply to your request for genealogical facts, I take pleasure 
 to give what follows, of which make any use you please : — 
 
 Thomas Mathew died 1682, ae. 90. 
 
 Rev. Thomas Mathew, jun 1657, ae. 37. 
 
 Rev. John Mathew 1689, ae. 37. 
 
 Rev. Experience Mathew 1758, ae. 85. 
 
 Rev. Jonathan Mathew 1766, se. 4G. 
 
 Dr. Mayhew was, therefore, the great-grandson of Apostle Mayhew. 
 
 " Since the call I made you, and which has pleasant recollec- 
 tions for me, from the kindness and virbanity with which I was 
 received, I have collected many additional facts of interest to me as 
 a Vineyarder ; among others, that it is correctly claimed for May- 
 hew that he preceded Eliot in his Indian labors. By the most 
 reliable authorities, I find that the latter commenced his labors in 
 1646 ; but we know, from a letter of Mayhew, that he (Thomas 
 Mayhew) began his first attempts with the Indians, in imparting 
 religious instruction, in 1643. Some writers, willing to claim every 
 thing for Eliot, say that he commenced about the same time to labor 
 among the Indians. 
 
 " As to that cairn of stones you allude to. I^^ying by the side of 
 the highway, some five miles from Edgartown, westerly, is a heap 
 of many small stones, — say of the size of a child's head, larger 
 and smaller, — which, tradition says, was placed to mark tlie spot 
 
NOTES TO DISCOURSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 129 
 
 where Thomas Mayhew, the apostle to the Indians on Martha's 
 Vineyard, preached his hvst discourse to the Indians, and took his 
 leave of them, to sec them, as it proved, no more. 
 
 " It was a tearful parting ; for they were strongly attached to 
 their teacher, and, years afterwards, rarely mentioned his name 
 without strong emotions of love and respect. They had accompa- 
 Jiicd him, for nearly twenty miles, from Gay Head ; and sorrowfully 
 returned, after the parting was over, to their own homes. Mr. 
 Mayhew was then bound to England; but the vessel was never 
 heard from after leaving port. Thus perished at an early age, in 
 the midst of his useful labors, this devoted missionary, whose praise 
 has long been in the churches. The Indians for a long time, a.s 
 they passed the spot spoken of, would add a stone to the pile that 
 marked the spot whore la'^t they heard the sound of their teacher's 
 voice. 
 
 " Respectfully yours, 
 
 " Richard L. Peask." 
 
 NOTE TO PAGE 98. 
 
 To one point. I feel it ray duty to quote from a letter of the 
 •laughter of Dr. Mayhew, Mrs. Wainwright : — 
 
 " Respecting my father, there is no doubt that the clearest evi- 
 dence may be given of his having asserted the unity of God. in the 
 most unequivocal and plain manner, as early as the year 17.53. I 
 have many sermons, from which it appears to me ko one could 
 for a moment question his belief. I have a set from the text 
 ' Prince of Peace.' In the first head, he inquires how Christ came 
 by this title. He sjicaks of independent and derived authority, and 
 sajj. 'The former belongs to God alone, who exists necessarily 
 and independently. The Son of God, and all beings who derive 
 fhcir existence from another, can have onlv a derived authoritv ' 
 
130 NOTES TO DISCOTT.RSE ON DR. MAYHEW. 
 
 After speaking of varioiis sources and kinds of authority, lie says, 
 ' Lastly, another source of authority is the positive will and appoint- 
 ment of God Almighty, the supreme Lord and Governor of the 
 world ; and this is indisputably the source of all that authority our 
 Saviour is clothed with : his designation to royal power, and exalta- 
 tion to the throne, was from his God and Father.' I can quote 
 many, very many, passages expressive of the same sentiment; so 
 that I have not the shadow of a doubt that my father was full and 
 explicit in his avowal of this opinion from 1753 ; and perhaps I 
 may gtt positive i^roof from an earlier date. I will continue my 
 search, and shall with pleasure supply you with any proof in my 
 power of the faith he was happy enough to enjoy, and courageous 
 enough to avow at the risk of his temporal comfort." 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 
 
 .Luke ii. 29,30: "Lord, now lkttest thou thy skkvant dei-art 
 
 IN PEACE, ACCOHDING TO THY W0UT> ; 1 OI: MINE EYES HAVE 
 SEEN THY SALVATION." 
 
 It certainly is not with any conceit of synonymous 
 expression or a verbal felicity, but because I know 
 of no Scripture passage more appropriate for a text 
 to the character and history of Simeon Howard, 
 that I choose these words of the good prophet, liv- 
 ing so many centuries ago, for whom he was named. 
 The calm and peaceful man, succeeding the fiery, 
 restless, ever-contending soul of Mayhew, seems like 
 the quiet Solomon, after David, the mighty soldier, 
 coming to do the careful and deliberate work of 
 rearing the temple, which God would not trust to 
 the hands of the striving and warlike king, who had 
 yet broken and cleared the ground for its foundation. 
 Mayhew, indeed, resembled more those builders 
 among the Jews who had a tool in one hand, and a 
 weapon in the other ; and we sometimes question 
 
 12 
 
134 DISCOUKSE ON DK. HOWARD. 
 
 whether he, priest of the Lord, when he opens his 
 mouth, does it to blow the gospel-trumpet, or to 
 give a call to battle. If he was the Paul of our 
 ecclesiastic dispensation, Howard was the John, as 
 his Master's beloved disciple, meek, gentle, and 
 lowly ; one whom we cannot imagine, so easily as 
 we can his predecessor, as coloring quick with indig- 
 nation, greatly stirred within himself, and rising im- 
 petuously, while he protected the injured, to drive 
 back the foe ; but as a mild, considerate, forbearing 
 soul, steadfast and sincere, yet serenely maintaining 
 his ground, and kindly expressing his convictions. 
 
 I must, however, confess that the decided im- 
 pression which I have always had of Howard's 
 purely soft and genial temperament is somewhat 
 modified as I read some sentences in his sermons 
 which express the most unyielding opposition to all 
 tyranny, and maintain the civil and religious rights 
 of men to the uttermost line of principle, and with an 
 absolute tone of demand, which he would even call 
 in the sword to defend from every unworthy con- 
 cession, and which reminds us of his predecessor's 
 own spirit. His meekness never degenerated into 
 cowardice ; his caution could not wear the livery 
 of fear. Still, he himself would have had no appe- 
 tite for the fray of words or of blows. As some are 
 
DISCOURSE OX DU. HOWARD. 135 
 
 said to be born poets, he was born a priest, — one of 
 those in the Commonwealth to be preciously defended, 
 rather than to " strive or cry, and let their voice be 
 heard in tlie street," for others' defence ; and this 
 energy of his, to which I have referred, was that 
 to which a naturally benignant and gracious dispo- 
 sition was by urgent occasion wrought up, like what 
 . Scripture calls " the wrath of the lamb." Ordinarily, 
 none of those lightnings which at any time only 
 slept in Mayhew's unfathomable mien, that could be 
 so overcast and cloudy, played around him; but only 
 bland and gracious sunshine fell from his counte- 
 nance. He was no son of thunder, — though, at the 
 beginning of his career, this name was given to 
 John himself, — but of consolation. 
 
 Yet this man of inward sobriety and natural re- 
 pose had a strangely checkered life, and a story in 
 its incidents more romantic than Mayhew's own. 
 He was indeed, in 1767, settled here in the mini- 
 stry very peacefully, with favor far larger among the 
 theologians than greeted Mayhew ; for it brought 
 together all the invited churches but one, " which 
 was unavoidably prevented." His own catholic tem- 
 per may have conciliated towards him the general 
 good-will ; for he too, at his settlement, was re- 
 garded by several of the clergy as heretical, being 
 
lo6 DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 
 
 reputed both an Arian and an Arminian, — a believer 
 neither in the Trinity, nor in the divine predestina- 
 tion of total depravity, and necessary ruin to any 
 human soul ; though it is said that President Wil- 
 lard, not long before Howard's death, remarked, 
 "He is now as orthodox as other ministers of his 
 denomination," — implying a change, not in him, 
 but in them. 
 
 But the conflict of speculative opinions, going on 
 at the time of Howard's ordination, was soon dis- 
 turbed and interrupted by the tokens of a louder 
 tumult ; for not many years after, our very chil- 
 dren being familiar with the oft-repeated dates, came 
 on the rough and bloody times of the great Ameri- 
 can Revolution. The whirlwind Mayhew foresaw, 
 and did so much to raise, fell upon the town, and 
 dispersed the people. The British troops, in armed 
 occupation of the city, made of the West-Boston 
 Church a barrack. It is a strange commentary on 
 the spirit and immediate effects of war, that it 
 should turn the walls of Zion into the towers of a 
 castle and the ramparts of a fort ; that places of wor- 
 ship should so often, at its outbreak, have been se- 
 lected to resound with the clash of arms, or the 
 indecency of soldiers' jests and oaths, as the enclo- 
 sure on this spot once resounded, instead of the 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 137 
 
 tones of prayer and the praises of God. Thus shut 
 out of the fold, the flock were scattered, and part of 
 them, with their shepherd, took refuge in Nova Scotia ; 
 although the character of Howard, as a patriot and 
 advocate of his country's independence, was so well 
 known, that he was hardly suffered to depart. We 
 are informed he had, when a candidate for the 
 ministry, been invited to preach in that northerly 
 region, and received a call to settle with them, 
 which he declined. Afterwards, at a request ot 
 the society in Annapolis there, he had provided 
 them with a minister, whose health had before very 
 long obliged him to leave his post. In the distress 
 and perplexity of the West-Boston Church, at the 
 military invasion of their sanctuary and their homes, 
 these circumstances suggested to their leader's mind 
 the region, for which he had religiously cared, as a 
 city of refuge. The idea was adopted. Pastor and 
 people, save those necessarily kept behind, em- 
 barked. Wearisomely for a month they tossed upon 
 the waves ; it taking them three times as long to 
 cross the Bay as it now takes, with the foaming 
 and fiery-breathed leviathan of art we have con- 
 structed, — 
 
 " Ilufrost tliiit swims the ocean-stroam," — 
 
 to measure the whole breadth of the Atlantic Sea. 
 
 12« 
 
138 DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 
 
 How picturesque to the retrospective imagination, 
 how trying in reality, their situation ! In this un- 
 molested shelter of our growth, we can ill conceive 
 a condition so sadly different of the Christian body 
 which we in our day and generation form. A 
 society upon the waters, like a floating Bethel of 
 prayer; a temple at sea, driven of every shifting 
 wind ; a modern exodus from the oppressor, not 
 over dry land, from which the billows had, at God's 
 bidding, fled away for his servants' passage, but upon 
 the billows themselves, made God's messengers to 
 bear them to a haven of peace ! What were their 
 thoughts, in this at once forced alienation and volun- 
 tary exile, upon their voyage, or on the foreign coast 
 to which they were borne ? Not, I think, those of 
 the Israelites, that they could not " sing the songs 
 of the Lord in a strange land ; " but rather the 
 Psalmist's own sentiment was theirs : " Thy statutes 
 have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage." 
 Repeating, on a lesser scale indeed of outward cir- 
 cumstances, the very experience of their and our 
 forefathers, they sought a place where they could 
 worship God, without contradiction or fear, accord- 
 ing to their own consciences. We are apt, for sub- 
 jects of peculiar or entrancing interest, to look far 
 away, as though distance and foreign adventure were 
 
DISCOURSE OX DR. HOWARD. 139 
 
 to them essential. "When, for example, we read of 
 the Missionary Judson, sick and worn out with long 
 exposure on the heaving of Oriental gulfs, our hearts 
 are moved, because our wonder and imagination are 
 excited. But materials for the deepest concern and 
 most sublime agitation of our nature ai'e unawares 
 at our very door, touching those to whom we are 
 most familiarly or intimately related. A band of 
 families driven from their dwellings, a church in 
 motion, and, like the dove, finding no rest for the 
 sole of its foot, can make, I think, the Bay of Fundy 
 a scene as great and pure in the eyes of God or man 
 as ever was the Indian Ocean or the Red Sea. 
 
 They arrived at their destination, to be saluted 
 from the shore with cries of beggary for bread, — a 
 destitution of which had arisen from the closing of 
 the Provinces, — yet, as they landed, to be very kindly 
 and comfortably entertained. But Mr. Howard, on 
 the ground of the first refusal to allow him to leave 
 Boston, and before the news of a subsequent per- 
 mission had reached the Governor of Halifax, — it 
 being feared, from an intimation in Gen. Gage's 
 letter, that he might privately escape, and so poli- 
 tical consequences ensue unfavorable to the crown, 
 — was arrested, and taken to Halifax. Upon a 
 second letter of explanation from the general, he 
 
140 DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 
 
 was at once set at liberty. Before this, however, 
 an offer had been made for his rescue, and passage 
 to Machias ; but it was declined for him by his 
 noble-minded wife, who was doubtless sympatheti- 
 cally aware what would be her husband's feeling in 
 regard to any such covert and illegal transaction, — 
 who knew his consciousness of innocence, and was 
 as unwilling as he himself could be that any one 
 should be exposed to danger on his account. The 
 people of the territory itself, where he was, ap- 
 peared to him to be in the most inflammable con- 
 dition ; but, as he saw no prospect of their aflfairs 
 being mended by any rebellious proceedings, the 
 unrevengeful man labored not to excite, but to com- 
 fort them in their troubles, and to act the part, most 
 congenial indeed with his temper, of a religious 
 teacher and adviser. They became, for his work of 
 godly simplicity and love, greatly attached to him ; 
 and, although it was but for fifteen months that he 
 discharged among them the pastoral office, they 
 parted from him with a grief which was the unam- 
 biguous measure of their cordial affection. 
 
 An anecdote, told of something occurring during 
 his residence among them, shows the mingled sin- 
 cerity and suavity of the man. Seeing one day 
 some young men putting into the bundles of hay, 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 141 
 
 which they were screwing for the troops in- Boston, 
 stones to increase the weight, he, not believing it 
 was right to defraud even the enemies of his coun- 
 try by such dishonesty in their supplies, — though 
 this would have been according to the laws of war 
 as practised in all ages, — so benignantly remon- 
 strated with 'the young men as to dissuade them 
 from the act ; and it is thought he thus banished 
 for ever after the iniquitous custom from that whole 
 neighborhood. 
 
 Returning, as opportunity allowed, to the New- 
 England capital, he found his society so enfeebled 
 by death, emigration, and other causes of waste, 
 that it was doubtful whether even the remnant could 
 be preserved ; and those indeed who still survived, 
 and adhered to the church, expressed to him their 
 judgment that it was best to surrender their post, 
 and dissolve. Had he agreed with tliem, and this 
 course in the crisis been taken, what a change 
 in those destinies of that worshipping body, which 
 finally in their long reach have so involved us ; 
 which, under Howard's earnest and faithful mi- 
 nistry, transformed weakness, ready to die, into 
 a strength that never declined again ; which by the 
 will of God hold and bring together, for all the 
 l)urposes of religious fellowship and Christian pro- 
 
142 DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 
 
 cedure, this large and flourishing assembly ; and 
 which, we trust, will continue its strong existence a 
 blessing to the community for thousands of years 
 after we are in our graves, — even to the '' last 
 syllable of recorded time " ! 
 
 But however we may speculate upon the diverse 
 consequences of opposite decisions, and see the 
 world itself hanging as upon threads, or rather, as 
 it does, upon the invisible and airy thoughts of the 
 mind, it was not Howard's sentiment or will that 
 the society so dear to him, reduced and desolated as 
 it was, should be broken up. The matter of decision 
 'lay in his own hands ; for one principal reason, that 
 was Avorking in their thoughts to this conclusion of 
 ecclesiastical decease, was the inability of the peo- 
 ple, so impoverished as they were, to support their 
 minister. To this he responded, that " he would 
 receive whatever compensation they would give him, 
 and would continue with them while three families 
 remained." He told them he would accept such 
 contribution, as might from time to time be made, 
 in full remuneration for his services ; utterly relin- 
 quishing the claim of any agreement the Society 
 might have made to pay him more. Afterwards he 
 proposed to cancel outright a considerable sum due 
 him : but to this they would not consent ; and sub- 
 
DISCOURSE OX DR. HOWARD. 143 
 
 sequently, in more prosperous times, all was paid, 
 with compound interest. 
 
 I well remember the enthusiasm with which an 
 honored parishioner, now deceased, referred to this 
 magnanimity of Howard. Thus was the church 
 here saved, as every thing great and good in this 
 world is and must be saved, by personal disinterest- 
 edness and self-sacrifice. Had the minister wished 
 to receive, as men often do, more than belonged to 
 him ; had he even insisted upon having, as men 
 often stoutly declare they must have, what seemed 
 to be his honest due, — the Society Avould have been 
 destroyed. But he Avas, on the contrary, determi- 
 nately bent on receiving less, or receiving nothing, 
 if, like the debtor in Scripture, they had nothing 
 to pay ; and himself continuing to bestow the full 
 labor of his body and soul, though but a handful of 
 them should stay. Surely there was some masterlv 
 strength of will and authentic quality of goodness 
 in the soul that could plant itself thus. But the 
 triumphs always of moral principle, of Christian 
 goodness, exceed all the achievements of vainglory 
 and selfish aims. 
 
 The recuperated Society proved indeed that it 
 would not be outdone in generosity. On either 
 hand, a more admirable explanation than any com- 
 
144 DISCOURSE ON DK. HOWARD. 
 
 mentator ever gave was had in real life of the 
 Scripture texts : " Owe no man any thing, but to 
 love one another ; " and, " Let us consider one 
 another to provoke unto love and good works." 
 Finally, Mr. Howard received one of the largest 
 salaries from one of the most thriving societies in 
 town. This result of success, rather than of pecu- 
 niary compensation, for which he had shown that 
 he cared nothing, was indeed a fitting reward for 
 so much patience, fortitude, and disinterested devo- 
 tion, as he had displayed under circumstances of 
 trial, in which no man could have combined more 
 that wisdom, which in the Apocrypha is called 
 " a loving spirit," with the achievements of courage. 
 A good captain he was here of the Lord's elect. 
 In a truly seaworthy manner he breasted the 
 changeful gales, and steered straight through the 
 stormy political weather, and brought his good ship's 
 company with him safe into harbor. 
 
 For a number of years, it was indeed a mournful 
 state of things for all the churches, and for religion 
 itself, in the colony that was, with such pains of 
 growth, transmuting itself into a nation. But the 
 Pilgrims, that had found their way over the sea 
 to Plymouth Rock, were not doomed utterly to 
 perish or to lose themselves in the wilderness 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 145 
 
 of the material and moral world to which that 
 boundary-rock, though their wished-for bourn of 
 safety, was, moreover, but their rough and dark 
 entrance. From every blast that blew upon them, 
 like the little vessel in which they had been brought, 
 they rose to pursue their course with renewed cou- 
 rage. This Society, in its distresses, was but an 
 example and illustration of the general lot. Its 
 temporary sinking from before the blaze of strife 
 that always puts out the fires of religion, but reminds 
 one of travellers in the Arabian desert, who pros- 
 trate themselves under the hot simoom, and can only 
 lie still and helpless till the scorching hurricane be 
 overpast. So was it with the travellers towards a 
 better country that once on this very spot went up 
 to the house of God in company. They bowed for 
 the season that it was given to the Satan of persecu- 
 tion and arbitrary power to rule and rage, and then 
 lifted their heads undismayed, and went bravely 
 forward. " Among arms, laws are silent," was a 
 motto in the Roman state. Our forefathers found 
 that among arms the voice even of prayer, the 
 higher law of Heaven, — for such a law, above all 
 human conventions and statutes, there is, — could 
 not be well publicly heard. But, thank God ! — that 
 hey might not falter in the hour of tribulation, — 
 
 13 
 
146 DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 
 
 it had been heard before to nerve them for endurance 
 and heroism ; and it broke forth afterward in strains 
 of eloquence and jubilant thanksgiving and good- 
 cheer, all the more mightily for having been tem- 
 porarily interrupted and cruelly choked; while in 
 no pulpit was the inspiring and grateful note sounded 
 out more cordially and clearly than in that erected 
 on this very ground of our present worship. 
 
 No doubt Howard found the even tenor of pas- 
 toral duty, to which he was restored, much more 
 suited to his constitutional temper than were the 
 surprising events and exciting times through which 
 he had passed. I need not describe that round of 
 benedictions in a faithful minister's life, which, ac- 
 cording to abundant and never-contradicted testi- 
 monies, none trod more steadfastly and happily than 
 he, dispensing all the sacred ordinances and consola- 
 tions of our religion to whosoever would accept or 
 craved them in their sore need ; and — whatever in 
 human life, from age to age, may be those changes 
 we so much magnify — finding sick-beds, chambers 
 of sorrow, and graveyards, to be essentially the same 
 things as they are to us. 
 
 When we read of the occurrences, assemblages, 
 speeches and celebrations, or of the lives and deaths, 
 of men, in a long-past period of the world, we are apt 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 147 
 
 to have a marvelling notion of something more ro- 
 mantic, adventurous, or spiritual, than the common 
 existence "we lead, the perils we meet, or the jubi- 
 lees we solemnize. Yet human nature is the same ; 
 and, for all mankind, it is essentially one career they 
 pursue, and one concern they tremble with, in this 
 mortal span. 
 
 Howard bore his trials patiently, and did his duty 
 faithfully, as all good Christian men would desire to 
 suffer and act. His preaching Avas sober, practical, 
 addressed to the highest sentiments, and having 
 always behind it, to give it power and penetrating 
 pathos, a man, — even the man of God. He was 
 in high repute among others, as well as with his 
 ordinary hearers ; and his services were sought on 
 great and important occasions, — the word for all of 
 which, in the varying demand made for versatile 
 talent, he spoke with such satisfaction, that what 
 had been uttered with the lips was again and again 
 earnestly solicited for the press. I have read these 
 published discourses, with an opinion of his ability 
 rising with every performance I have successively 
 perused, till I was obliged to accord to him a far 
 higher rank for talents and resources, in the treat- 
 ment even of profound themes, than his great mo- 
 desty and moderation would be willing to own, or 
 
148 DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 
 
 beforehand seem to suggest. All quiet men, that, 
 in this eager, scrambling world, do not assert them- 
 selves, are, in the general esteem, apt to have injus- 
 tice done to their faculties, as compared with the 
 loud-voiced and forth-putting children of confidence 
 and self-love, who take for themselves a high seat in 
 the synagogue, walk boldly, pressing or pushing 
 doors open into the centre of our hearts, and keep 
 their place against all comers if they can. I must, 
 with some shame, confess that the retiring character 
 of Howard had, by a sort of hereditary transmission, 
 if I may not improperly call it so, of his unpre- 
 tending temper to the cognizance of my own mind, 
 induced in me an undervaluation of his intellectual 
 merits, which actual study of his works has tended 
 greatly to raise and correct. Yet, mild and lowly 
 as he was, he never shrank back from any call upon 
 him to take a bold and manly stand. He was one 
 of the warmest aspirants for the independence of 
 his country; and his sentiments were freely, almost 
 audaciously, expressed. The feelings of his forerun- 
 ner certainly did not stop for want of a channel in 
 his soul to flow by ; but there was an apostolic 
 succession to him of the love of liberty, in church 
 and state. With the pulpit of Mayhew, he had, I 
 may be allowed to say, also an inheritance of price- 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 149 
 
 less worth in Mayhew's surviving partner, a woman 
 of whose worth, as a lofty and heroic counsellor, an 
 indication has already been cited, and in whom, I 
 may be permitted to say, outward attractiveness and 
 inward noble-mindedness were so joined as to be, 
 what in rare instances of personal and spiritual 
 beauty we may notice they sometimes are, almost 
 one and the same thing. His funeral discourse 
 after her decease shows how precious he esteemed 
 the treasure that had thus descended, and was with 
 the keenest sorrow in his bleeding heart transported 
 before him into the skies. But the work in which 
 he had enjoyed Heaven's choice blessing indeed, of 
 a partner having inclinations so accordant with his 
 own, did not for her departure slacken in his hands. 
 Rather, as he tells his people, he hoped to be " more 
 serviceable to them in the work of the ministry ; 
 particularly better qualified to sympathize with and 
 to comfort them that are in sorrow ; which I should 
 esteem as one valuable effect of my affliction." Cer- 
 tainly there could not well be a less fallacious evi- 
 dence of sincere consecration to his ordained work, 
 than his disposition to make such use of a grief, 
 that rent away his prop and hope in the prime of 
 his own life, and pierced with its anguish and deso- 
 lation to the very foundations of his soul. 
 13» 
 
150 DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 
 
 There is reason to believe he was a shepherd that 
 
 always abundantly fed the flock. That his services 
 
 could have been of no low or ordinary tone, I have 
 
 indeed one proof to bring of the most unsuspicious 
 
 character. In a conversation, which it was my 
 
 privilege to have, with the venerable John Quincy 
 
 Adams, not many months before his death, he told 
 
 me, with evident delight of recollection, and his 
 
 strong face of severe integrity mantling with smiles, 
 
 in such a countenance of peculiar fascination, how 
 
 much pleased and edified in the former years he 
 
 had been in listening to the discourses of Howard. 
 
 Great men are not easily instructed : a superior 
 
 mind is the most terrible of earthly tribunals a 
 
 speaker can face ; for no mere show of rhetorical 
 
 gifts, or arts of speech, can deceive his judgment. 
 
 Whatever really reached the seat of influence in 
 
 such a nature as that of Adams, must have had the 
 
 two CLualities at least of genuineness and strength ; 
 
 and I prized his tribute, as that of a discerning and 
 
 sincere witness for one whom God had made an 
 
 ingenuous and able minister of that New Testament, 
 
 which to the humble pastor and to the great civilian, 
 
 that so well presided over the afiau's of this people, 
 
 was equally dear. 
 
 From a careful reading, I am struck at once with 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 151 
 
 the resemblance between Mayhew and Howard in 
 their general views both in politics and religion, 
 and with the fact that they belonged to different 
 types both of intellect and temperament. Mayhew 
 was a man of impassioned genius ; Howard, of sober 
 understanding. Mayhew, no doubt, would some- 
 times hurry, when Howard would hold, undisturbed, 
 his way, whatever wind might blow. Howard's 
 influence was like a steady domestic warmth, diffus- 
 ing itself equally at all points through the house : 
 Mayhew's was the white heat of the furnace, in 
 which massive bars of iron are thrust to be prepared 
 for the anvil's forge, and from which keen sparkles 
 may dart, burning and blinding, into the face of one 
 who draws nigh. Admiration exalted into amaze- 
 ment, and honor running into pride, may have been 
 sentiments that could not help mingling with the 
 ardent attachment felt by the church for Mayhew : 
 love and veneration kept Howard calmly folded for 
 ever in the arms of their cordial and constant em- 
 brace. It is sometimes said, with truth, of men who 
 have lifted themselves to distinction far above their 
 fellows, that, with multitudes of followers, they have 
 no personal friends. This could be said of neither 
 Howard nor his predecessor. But while the part 
 that Mayhew took, and the flaming zeal with which 
 
152 DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 
 
 he espoused and vindicated it, raised up adversaries 
 not a few to hate and oppose him, as well as earnest 
 advocates in his defence ; it could scarcely, I think, 
 be in the heart of any one, who knew Howard, to be 
 other than his friend ; and the " eminently wise and 
 good " was the universally beloved man, as well as 
 the endeared shepherd of the flock. 
 
 Dr. Willard, President of Harvard College, one 
 of whose sons it is our happiness to number among 
 the members of this church, while in his funeral 
 sermon he celebrates the fine scholarship which 
 Howard had displayed, as a youth, in his own col- 
 legiate course, discourses fondly of his fidelity for 
 a long term as an overseer and fellow of the cor- 
 poration, — thus, as one of its governors, repaying 
 the benefits he had received as a pupil ; commends 
 his singular devotedness to the duties of his pa- 
 rochial charge ; and extols the patriotism with which 
 he bore his country, as well as his flock and family, 
 ever in his heart. He also dwells upon the warm 
 and precious friendship whose deep and holy joy 
 Howard imparted and received, and a peculiar and 
 most intimate bond of which seems to have united 
 him and Dr. Willard himself together, — a senti- 
 ment undying on earth, immortal in heaven. On 
 one occasion, in 1798, President Willard being ex- 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 153 
 
 tremely ill. Dr. Howard, as senior clergyman in the 
 corporation, presided in his place at the public exer- 
 cises of commencement, and announced the degrees ; 
 thus happily uniting a friendly service with an offi- 
 cial duty. 
 
 Dr. Howard died, in 1804, in the seventy-second 
 year of his age ; and " devout men carried " him " to 
 his burial, and made great lamentation over him." 
 The record of the day informs us that every token of 
 Christian sorrow, reverence, and love, from his parish- 
 ioners and acquaintances who gathered in the church, 
 was witnessed over his remains, and rendered to his 
 memory. A portrait now in my possession, a gift to 
 his son's family from an old friend and parishioner, 
 who has long since followed his cherished minister to 
 the heavenly world, — though, in extreme old age, 
 he sat for quite a number of years within the sound of 
 my own voice, — expresses the meek, lowly, benign 
 disposition of him whose actual countenance there are 
 those still living to remember in the verity of its ac- 
 tual traits. A great and venerable servant of God and 
 Christ once said, he was not anxious that his face, 
 on the painter's canvas, should shine with a look of 
 superior intellect or genius ; but he did desire it 
 should beam with a light of kindness and love upon 
 his fellow-creatures. That which Channing wished. 
 
154 DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 
 
 and indeed had, was fulfilled before for Howard, who 
 ended his earthly ministry just as Channing was 
 beginning his. For benevolence, the moving spirit 
 of the West-Boston pastor's life, could not fail to 
 speak in any delineation at all like the original ; and 
 my eye has rested to-day, for the thousandth time, 
 upon the resemblance of his features, only to observe 
 once more, in the cold colors and dimmed lines, some 
 shadowing forth of the charity which once in him 
 walked and breathed, spoke and acted, among men, 
 and which of all things moves and triumphs longest 
 in this world, as it shall without ceasing in the world 
 to .come. 
 
 " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, 
 according to thy word ; for mine eyes have seen thy 
 salvation." So indeed might it have been said by 
 one, in whom, when the peace of God came to his 
 heart, it found an abode naturally framed, and well 
 and largely fitted, for its residence, and yet who 
 had reached only through outward storms of afflic- 
 tion and calamity that peace in his house and in the 
 temple of worship which he must always have en- 
 joyed in his own bosom. Truly he had seen the 
 salvation of the Lord for himself, for the people of 
 his charge, for the institution of worship in this 
 place committed to his careful and laborious stew- 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 155 
 
 ardship iu the line of spiritual workmen after the 
 great Master and Head of the whole church ; and we, 
 coming up in the long succession as ministers or 
 people, have but entered into the salvation he not 
 only himself so richly tasted, but was so effectual, 
 though humble, an instrument to secure. 
 
 I feel that, as a religious Society, we are united by 
 a tie of peculiar and inestimable indebtedness to Dr. 
 Howard. As we own a special obligation to the 
 physician who has carried a friend safely through 
 the crisis of a dangerous illness, so should we to him 
 who was the instrument of our preservation in the 
 only doubtful and perilous hour of our corporate 
 existence. Nay, more : by all we enjoy or profit 
 through the connection in which we are here held ; 
 by all the instruction or consolation we in our time 
 have from these ordinances received ; by all the lio-ht 
 and preparation for heaven in which those dear to us 
 participated before they passed on ; by all the readi- 
 ness of willing souls to folloAv after them which we 
 may hope yet to acquire ; and all the edification, for 
 earthly duty or immortal glory, of which our chil- 
 dren to the latest posterity may find here the means, 
 
 while we hold in grateful respect for his individual 
 qualities our last-deceased pastor, we are bound to 
 see in his providential agency one medium of our 
 
156 DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 
 
 fervent and continual thanksgivings above all mortal 
 agencies to God. 
 
 The published writings of Dr. Howard are far 
 less voluminous than those of Dr. Mayhew. In one 
 of his sermons, on " not being ashamed of the gos- 
 pel of Christ," in referring to the fact of his prede- 
 cessor's subscribing to the truth of Christianity as 
 among the evidences of the religion itself, he fur- 
 nishes what may be a proof to you that I have not, 
 in my earnest celebration on last Sunday, overrated 
 the abilities of Mayhew himself 
 
 Being called to preach on important occasions, 
 Howard frequently sounds the note of warning 
 or encouragement for the liberties of the country, 
 and does not forget to show the connection of true 
 liberty with sound learning ; presenting the claim of 
 the College to " the patronage and assistance of the 
 State, in return for the able men with which she has 
 furnished the public," — an argument whose vali- 
 dity, let me say, has only increased continually with 
 the lapse of time. He chastises the love of his 
 countrymen and countrywomen for " show and use- 
 less ornaments," as unbecoming the circumstances 
 in which they were then placed. He insists on the 
 importance of a fair example of piety and virtue in 
 magistrates, saying, " The manners of a court are pe- 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 157 
 
 culiavly catching, and, like blood in the heart, quickly 
 flow to the most distant members of the body ; " 
 and that " the spirit of infidelity, selfishness, luxury, 
 and dissipation, is more formidable than all the arms 
 of our enemies." On preaching an Artillery Ser- 
 mon in 1773, he anticipates the time "when we 
 must either submit to slavery, or defend our liberties 
 by our own sword." Yet he hopes " the people 
 will never, of choice, keep among them a standing 
 army in times of peace : virtue, domestic peace, the 
 insulted walls of our State House, and even the once 
 crimsoned stones of the street, all loudly cry out 
 against this measure." But the topics he evidently 
 is most pleased to treat are those of brotherly love 
 and charity ; on which he dwelt so pathetically before 
 the Society of Masons in his day, that his discourse 
 was printed at their unanimous request. 
 
 Dr. Howard served his fellow-citizens and fellow- 
 men in many ways. But, speaking in this place, 
 what I feel called upon to single out and emphasize 
 in your hearing, is that legacy of the spirit of con- 
 cord and union which he left to this religious Society. 
 Certainly the word that sounds from his mouth 
 down through all the ages, to all the members of 
 the West Church, is for them to keep together ; to 
 stand by one another ; not to give up the vessel of 
 
 14 
 
158 DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 
 
 common safety, in which they sail the floods of time ; 
 not to be separated under any circumstances, or 
 allow the bond, that as a strong cable binds them, to 
 be broken in the darkest and most distressing hour. 
 My friends, let me indulge what, I trust, is the not 
 unworthy pride of saying, that into possession of the 
 legacy he left, this Society has, in fact, entered. It 
 was a substantial and most honorable bequest from 
 him, not of words, but deeds. May we not only 
 from our sires, to whom he ministered, receive it as 
 we do, but hand it down, a blessed inheritance, to our 
 sons and latest successors, identical as it is with that 
 inalienable and infinitely precious property of peace 
 the dying Jesus himself left to his disciples ! Then 
 our fellowship with Jesus will be perfect in the spi- 
 ritual ties that keep together whomsoever they draw 
 to him, and in that service of communion, the sim- 
 ple and expressively beautiful language of such ties, 
 which we speak and celebrate this day. 
 
159 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 
 
 Extracts from President Willard's Sermon at Dr. Howard's 
 Funeral, from Rev. ii. 10: "Be thou faithful unto death, 
 and i will give thee a crown of life." 
 
 ... I doubt not, my hearers, you have applied these 
 observations to the excellent man whose funeral obsequies 
 we are now attending ; whose death excites general sorrow 
 in this town and neighborhood ; and which penetrates the 
 hearts of the members of his flock, and more especially of 
 his most intimate friends and nearest connections, with 
 pungent grief. And to whom could the character we have 
 described, more properly belong than to this servant of 
 God, who was faithful in all his house ? To no one, must 
 they reply in their hearts who have intimately known his 
 worth, and for a long course of years have witnessed his 
 virtues. 
 
 Dr. Howard, after the previous preparatory studies, 
 was, at mature age, admitted into Harvard College in the 
 year 1754. Heaven had endowed him with a good under- 
 standing and inquisitive mind; and he had formed indus- 
 
160 APPENDIX TO 
 
 trious and methodical habits. With such talents and such 
 habits, he could not fail to make solid and valuable acqui- 
 sitions in literature and science. I find by authentic 
 documents that he was a respondent at the commencement, 
 when he received his degree of Master of Arts ; and it 
 is probable that he had the same appointment when he 
 commenced Bachelor of Arts. After leaving the College, 
 he was an instructor of youth for several years ; in which 
 time he studied divinity, and prepared himself for the 
 desk. After preaching in several vacant parishes in this 
 then Province, he had an invitation to preach in the 
 Province of Nova Scotia. He went to that province ; 
 was there about a year ; and received an invitation, from 
 the people among whom he officiated, to settle with them 
 in the work of the ministry ; but, after mature considera- 
 tion, he thought it proper to decline their invitation. 
 
 After returning to his native province, in the summer 
 of the year 1765, he took a chamber at College, and 
 became a resident graduate at the time when I received 
 my first degree. As I continued at the College, I soon had 
 the happiness of becoming acquainted with him, and of 
 forming those habits of intimacy which have continued 
 without interruption to the day of his death. At that 
 period the resident graduates were numerous, and our 
 intercourse with each other frequent ; and I recollect with 
 pleasure, that, in our social intercourse, the company of Mr. 
 Howard always gave us the sincerest satisfaction. May I 
 here be permitted to remark, that there are those whose 
 abilities, acquirements, and real worth, attract our esteem 
 and respect, but to whom we cannot feel an affectionate 
 attachment ? With regard to our feelings towards Howard, 
 it was not so : while we respected his talents, and highly 
 esteemed him, there was in him something so amiable, 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 161 
 
 benevolent, kind, and good, that it was impossible to be 
 acquainted with him and not to love him. 
 
 About a year after Dr. Howard became a resident 
 graduate, he and the present speaker were elected into 
 the office of Tutor. This gave me a new opportunity of 
 appreciating his worth. The duties of this office he dis- 
 charged with great fidelity and acceptance. But he con- 
 tinued in that office but for the short term of nine months. 
 West-Boston Church and Society being destitute of a 
 pastor by the lamented death of the learned, distinguished, 
 and excellent Dr. Mayhew, Mr. Howard, while a Tutor, was 
 invited to preach to that Society. They soon discovered 
 his talents and worth. Trained up not to be captivated 
 with mere sound and tinsel ornaments, but to regard solid 
 sense, and discourses abounding with sentiments useful and 
 edifying, they judged him to be the man worthy to succeed 
 their deceased pastor ; and, by their invitation, he took the 
 oversight of the flock, in May, 1767. Of this choice they 
 have at no time had reason to repent ; for he has never 
 deceived their expectations. "While they have loved him 
 as a man and a friend, they have highly esteemed and 
 valued him as a wise, judicious, and faithful minister. 
 Indeed, this man of God did not undertake the sacred 
 office with a superficial and indigested knowledge of divi- 
 nity ; but he was a well-studied and thorough divine ; and 
 this his discourses clearly evinced. His conscientious 
 regard to duty, joined with his studious habits, would 
 never suffer him to bring to his people crude and super- 
 ficial discourses, and such as cost him nothing ; but they 
 were always methodical, clear, full of good matter, calcu- 
 lated to inform the understanding and better the heart. 
 None could hear his discourses atid not be edified, unless 
 such as preferred doubtful disputations, and strifes about 
 14« 
 
162 APPENDIX TO 
 
 words, to wholesome doctrines clearly to be understood, 
 and those precepts of Christianity which none can miscon- 
 strue, and which inculcate a good life. "While he preached 
 repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, as the great foundation of the sinner's hope, he 
 inculcated holiness of heart and life, without which no 
 man can see the Lord ; and exhorted all who have believed 
 in God to be careful to maintain good works, and to be 
 eminent for practical godliness. 
 
 Candor and charity were conspicuous traits in his cha- 
 racter. While he was firm in the belief of that system 
 which, after duly searching the Scriptures, he thought was 
 contained therein, he was far from condemning those who 
 could not in all points agree with him ; and he embraced in 
 his affections all good men. Though far from thinking 
 that all religious opinions are equally favorable to Chris- 
 tianity, yet he was fully persuaded that unity of sentiment 
 is not necessary to brotherly love and friendship ; for, 
 were it the case, the best men, in this state of imperfection, 
 would often be alienated one from another. 
 
 In the discharge of parochial duties out of the desk, he 
 was conscientious and faithful. To this his flock can wit- 
 ness, every one of whom he was ready to serve at all 
 times to the utmost of his power. "With the sick, the 
 sorrowful, the afflicted, the distressed, he heartily sympa- 
 thized, and was to all such a son of consolation. He was 
 an example to his flock in following after righteousness, 
 godliness, faith, love, patience, and meekness ; and in all 
 his conversation and conduct he appeared to be an Israelite 
 indeed, in whom there was no guile. We have reason to 
 think that ail those virtues which he exhibited were the 
 fruits of a heart right with God, which had been sanctified 
 by the influences of the Holy Spirit. 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 163 
 
 The University feels a deep wound in the death of this 
 excellent man. For a long course of years has he been 
 one of its Governors, as an Overseer, and as a Fellow of 
 the Corporation ; and with great fidelity has he attended 
 to its interests, which ever lay near his heart. For almost 
 twenty-three years have I been witness to his important 
 services in both Boards, and have always found him ready 
 to devote his time and labors to promote its well-being. 
 The business of the College causes meetings of the Cor- 
 poration to be much more frequent than those of the other 
 Board. Seldom has he been absent when called to attend, 
 and never without good reasons. His judgment has al- 
 ways been highly regarded ; and his loss must be most 
 sensibly felt by all who belong to that body. 
 
 May I be indulged for one moment, on this mournful 
 occasion, to mention my own personal grief? Connected 
 by intimate friendship with Dr. Howard for many years, 
 I now find one strong cord broken which has bound me 
 to earth. Faithful has been his friendship to me under all 
 circumstances ; and I am persuaded that all who have 
 been favored with his friendship can say the same as 
 it respects themselves : for unsteadiness and caprice were 
 no parts of his character. In him I could safely confide 
 at all times ; to him I could unbosom myself with freedom : 
 for he was sincere, and could never deceive. Alas, my 
 brother ! thou wast very dear to me ; and how can I say 
 thou art no more ? 
 
 Permit me to say a few words concerning the character 
 of Dr. Howard as it respected politics ; for politics are not 
 alien from the profession of divinity. Ministers are citi- 
 zens as well as other orders of men, and ought to be 
 concerned for the welfare of their country. This neces- 
 sarily in some measure involves them in its political 
 
164 APPENDIX TO 
 
 concerns. Dr. Howard was a true patriot. He was an 
 early assertor of the liberties of his country, and, when 
 our rights were invaded, was strenuously opposed to yield- 
 ing them up. He heartily engaged in promoting the 
 American Revolution, and rejoiced at the emancipation of 
 the United States, and the acknowledgment of their inde- 
 pendence. But, while he has been a firm supporter of 
 true Uberty, he has, of consequence, been warmly opposed 
 to that false liberty which directly tends to licentiousness, 
 and which sooner or later ends in despotism. 
 
 Finally, Dr. Howard has been faithful to every trust, 
 whether of a private or public nature. He has been the 
 Treasurer of several societies instituted for humane and 
 benevolent purposes ; and he has taken the best care of 
 the interests of those societies, and has conducted himself 
 to the entire satisfaction of the members. 
 
 In exhibiting the character of this good man, my hear- 
 ers, my intention has by no means been to offer the incense 
 of fulsome adulation to his memory, but whatever has 
 been uttered has been from the sincerity of my heart ; 
 and I am persuaded that those who intimately knew him, 
 of whom there are many present, will not charge me with 
 attributing to him valuable qualities which he did not 
 possess, or exaggerating his virtues. Indeed, I have said 
 nothing respecting any failings: but failings he doubtless 
 had ; for these are the lot of humanity ; and the best men 
 in this state of imperfection are not free from them, 
 because they are sanctified but in part. But, whatever 
 his failings may have been, they were so few as to be 
 almost swallowed up or covered by that assemblage of 
 virtues which he possessed, and which were apparent in 
 his life. Dr. Howard was confined but a few days with 
 the disorder which terminated his life, and he had but 
 
DISCOURSE ON DR. HOWARD. 165 
 
 a short warning of his dissolution. But we trust that 
 preparation for a better world was not put off till this last 
 sickness, but that he had for a long time lived in an habi- 
 tual readiness for his great change ; so that Death, which is 
 called the king of terrors, was no terror to him. "We trust 
 that, when his soul left the body, it ascended to his Lord, 
 and that he pronounced upon him this eulogy : " Well done, 
 good and faithful servant ! enter thou into the joy of thy 
 Lord. Thou hast been faithful unto death ; and I now 
 give thee the crown of life." 
 
 To the Association to which the deceased servant of 
 God belonged, and of which he was the senior, I know 
 that this stroke must be peculiarly grievous. You had a 
 very affectionate regard for him while living ; and I am 
 persuaded you will long cherish the remembrance of him 
 in your bosoms. I pretend not to be your monitor ; but I 
 am persuaded that this solemn memento will excite you to 
 renewed diligence and zeal in the service. May you con- 
 tinue to be faithful to God and to the souls of men, and 
 may he crown your labors with abundant success ! and 
 may you hnally receive a crown of glory which shall never 
 fade away ! 
 
 A DiscouKSE upon the character of Dr. Howard was also preached 
 by the truly excellent and venerable Dr. Freeman, who pays to his 
 brother a tribute so simple, cordial, and beautiful, that I have to 
 resist a strong temptation in refraining to transcribe it. But, as it 
 is among Dr. Freeman's published WTitings, it may undoubtedly 
 be found by any who may be interested to read it ; although copies 
 of the works of the wise and lowly, bold and beloved, minister of 
 King's Chapel, are, I suppose, becoming somewhat rare. 
 
THEOLOGICAI. AND ECCLESIASTICAL TOSITION OF 
 THE WEST CHURCH. 
 
THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL POSITION 
 OF THE AVEST CHURCH. 
 
 Gal. V. 1 : " Stand fast, therefore, in the libertt wherewith 
 Christ H/Vtu made us free, and be not entangled aoaut 
 with the yoke of bondage." 
 
 In my previous Discourses, I have held forth the 
 figures of individuals, ministers of this church. I 
 should fail of strict justice, and but partially accoin- 
 plish my object, of reviving the spirit of the foregoing 
 times, if I did not in a more than incidental way 
 give you some picture of the church itself. It the 
 more becomes me to do this, because the republican 
 doctrine, that the community makes the great men, 
 not great men the community, was never more re- 
 markably verified than on these shores. The laity 
 here, indeed, constituted the church : the clergy were 
 their organs, representatives, their courageous lead- 
 ers, yet rejoicing to be but so many units from among 
 themselves. 
 
 16 
 
170 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 The Christian liberty announced in our text, is, in 
 one brief phrase, the very chronicle of this land, and 
 peculiarly, I must say, of this Christian body. If I 
 begin with what any of you may think general 
 views, let it be considered that never before in the 
 world's annals was a people established so much 
 upon principles ; and, if I seem to go back of our 
 own direct origin as a Society, let it be remembered 
 that a child, born in the first generation after the 
 landing of the Pilgrims, might have been seen as 
 an old man by the child that should grow up to be 
 himself among the founders of this very church ; 
 and that the gulf stream of the original influence, 
 which brought our fathers hither, must have been ope- 
 rating with a scarcely diminished pressure on the 
 minds of those predecessors of ourselves, whose 
 faces may have been seen by the old men whose 
 bodies we have but just laid to rest in the grave. 
 I go back in the story ; for the whole story is short. 
 
 In attempting to sketch the religious history of 
 this Society, which in a few years will be a century 
 and a quarter old, I must therefore necessarily search 
 a little into the ancient root from which it is but 
 one of a multitude of the flowers that have grown. 
 Religious history it may well be called ; for never 
 since the beginning of the world was the character of 
 
THE WEST CHURCH. 171 
 
 any land shaped and determined by religion more than 
 that of New England. Mighty, and as yet I trust un- 
 spent, was the influx of piety, of the feeling for God, 
 which flnce swept through these borders. This was 
 not only a New England, but a new Canaan. Nor 
 did the Hebrews themselves, whose language our 
 fathers were so fond of quoting, when following the 
 pillar of cloud and fire, more sensibly than our 
 progenitors realize the presence and support of the 
 Almighty. In both cases, it was suffering that opened 
 the springs of devotion. The rod of Jehovah, in- 
 deed, as the Psalmist says, comforted them ; for it 
 was light and merciful after the causeless and malig- 
 nant blows of the oppressor. Let God chasten us, 
 they looked up and cried, and no human tyranny ! 
 Let the severities of Providence, in storm and dis- 
 aster, be our discipline, not the cruelties of perse- 
 cuting man ! Even in all they endured, there was a 
 fitness for what they were called to do. A time of 
 trouble, however arising, is always the occasion of a 
 new sense of Deity, and of a sublime leaning on the 
 eternal arm. So the anguishes of our Pilgrim sires 
 were sanctified to them and to us. In their dis- 
 tresses they cried unto the Lord. No wonder they 
 dropped the formularies and rubrics and canons of 
 the old church, in the time of their calamity. Men 
 
172 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 must, like sinking Peter, make some spontaneous, 
 unprescribed, unprinted prayers, in their sharp grief 
 and misfortune. " Thou hast thrust sore at me ; but 
 the Lord is become my salvation." Such, wlten their 
 souls went for solace to the Bible, was their song in 
 the wilderness of waters, and the cold barren desert 
 of the land. 
 
 "Woe unto us, if our happy fortunes make us un- 
 mindful of their devotions ! If, in these our easy 
 and sunny days of prosperity and earthly power ; in 
 the swelling of' our gains on one side, to issue in 
 streams of luxury at the other ; if, in our individual 
 aggrandizement or the extension of our public ter- 
 ritory, we become irreligious, sceptical, and worldly- 
 minded, — it will be an instance of as gross and 
 grievous ingratitude as ever existed in the annals of 
 mankind. To forget the rock from which we were 
 hewn, would show the very sublimity of a profane 
 thanklessness to amaze the earth, and be an asto- 
 nishment in the light of heaven. 
 
 We are told that, in some past geological age, a 
 vast deluge rolled athwart this northerly region of 
 our abode, — as it passed, like an avalanche of nature, 
 moulding the hills and valleys, sharpening the inland 
 peaks, and indenting the Atlantic shore ; and that 
 on the primeval granite, where it is laid bare, the 
 
THE WEST CHURCH. 173 
 
 deep scratches of this broad and tremendous slide 
 are yet clearly disclosed. Hardly less decisive, or, 
 let us hope, less enduring, than this outward irrup- 
 tion, was the descent here of the Puritan soul, the 
 current of Puritan conscience and devotion, through 
 the moral world. The inheritor of an estate holds 
 of some previous owner. Whether we will or no, 
 we hold of the Puritans, as much as Paul was a 
 Hebrew of the Hebrews. Sometimes we hear, even 
 among ourselves, aversion expressed to the character 
 of those stern testators, of whom we, in all that 
 makes the distinctive moral type of this whole ter- 
 ritory, or spreads that type to the southern cross or 
 the setting sun, are the offspring. But it will never 
 do for a man to decry his origin. "VVc bear not the 
 root, but the root us. We must take our hereditary 
 fortune, with whatever there may be in it of good 
 or ill ; and we have reason to be content with the 
 excess of good in the spiritual homestead that has 
 come down to us. I am not, indeed, anxious to deny 
 that the Puritans had faults as well as virtues ; and 
 in that land, whose arbitrary power in matters of faith 
 and worship the Puritans could not abide, and there- 
 fore forsook, — as the historian tells us the greatest 
 reformers England ever saw, who afterwards revolu- 
 tionized that country, were on the point of forsaking 
 16* 
 
174 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 it, — the public journals have not yet ceased to stig- 
 matize the Puritans for the errors of intolerance and 
 superstition into which, in the very name of a purer 
 religion, they so lamentably fell. Those errors, 
 traced in some sad marks in our own authentic 
 chronicles, I have no wish to deny or cover up. 
 Let us confess them freely, and be sorry for them, — 
 we who belong to a race in all its doings so imper- 
 fect, that, even in its best services, there is something 
 of which to be ashamed. But we very well know 
 that, in the comparison of individual characters, there 
 are some men from whose excellences we may sub- 
 tract their faults, and leave a mass of virtue exceeding 
 all the worth, discoverable by the nicest microscopic 
 examination, in other uncriticized and most respect- 
 able persons. So, take away the Puritan mistakes, 
 and you have still remaining a sum of integrity, 
 which outweighs the deserts of all their enemies and 
 censors. We love our fathers for a certain huge 
 substantial excellence. They were giants in their 
 days ; and we admire the giants for their solid 
 merits, whatever be the deduction of their faults, 
 more than we can feeble men who may be at once 
 blameless and worthless. The first demand we make 
 of a fellow-creature is that he be sincerely some- 
 thing ; the second, that he be something good. 
 
THE WEST CHURCH. 175 
 
 There is, no doubt, a Puritanism, so called, which 
 has the harshness, with none of the grandeur, of the 
 original stock. There have been persons, not a few, 
 stunted and bitter specimens of the Pilgrims, proud 
 of their ancestry, and professing to continue the line, 
 which they prove to be but degenerate and poor. 
 But when the old sins of prejudice and bigotry, that, 
 like mosses on the primeval woods, infested noble 
 and gigantic minds, are ingrafted on or eat into a 
 narrow nature, and we have living specimens of the 
 Puritan vices, without the Puritan virtues ; when 
 the exclusiveness, into which our forerunners were 
 tempted in sore extremities of their peril and woe, — 
 while, because of strange and new heresies, they be- 
 held all at stake in the commonwealth of freedom and 
 religion they had come so far to set up, — re-appears 
 now in a prosperous sect, and the sour dogmatists, 
 that would make for themselves and their friends 
 alone a little door into heaven, mock the awful forms 
 that once strode ghostly over the earth to avenge the 
 sins and alter the fortunes of mankind ; when, in 
 short, Puritanism, in those who count themselves the 
 saints and elect favorites of Heaven, becomes a sickly, 
 self-conscious thing, instead of a grand and solemn 
 consecration of the soul to God, — it is a mournful 
 spectacle, for which, I think, the Puritans have not 
 
176 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 been held accountable at the bar of God, and should 
 not be summoned to answer at any tribunal on earth ; 
 for it is a result not begotten by the whole spirit of 
 our sires, but born of a mother of modern iniquity. 
 There are trees, which, when they cease to bear the 
 fruit that may have been generous and sweet, are 
 found to have nothing but an acrid quality in their 
 bark and leaf. The virtues of the Puritans were 
 from God their own ; their faults bore the universal 
 stamp and superscription of their age. If any one 
 say their faults were great, I reply. The virtues 
 which those faults deformed were immense, with 
 proportions which no near and narrow look can 
 comprehend. One standing close to a mountain may 
 discern only some rocky chasm or frightful seam 
 that disfigures it, and not the magnificent and pei'- 
 fect shape shining through the perspective, blue and 
 beautiful as the dome of heaven to the justly distant 
 beholder. The peculiar form of the Puritan man- 
 hood has passed away, and can never be precisely 
 imitated or reproduced. No more have the Papal 
 thunders, once launched at loftiest heads from the 
 arm of Hildebrand, lowered their tone in the Romish 
 see of our day, than the theological authority the 
 Puritans wielded has sunk to a whisper in the mouth 
 of any present sect, however dominant. 
 
THE WEST CHURCH. 177 
 
 It may, perhaps, be counted the good fortune of 
 our Society, that, being old, it is yet no okler than it 
 is. It grew up after the ascetic temper of religion 
 in the land had somewhat purged itself, and the 
 demons of superstition and persecution, that haunted 
 the dwellings and possessed the souls of some of our 
 forefathers, had been well nigh cast out. Exile and 
 fines and whipping and hanging, for opinion's sake, 
 were looking odious, as they really were, in the eyes 
 of all good men ; the punishments inflicted on the 
 Quakers, and other of the Dissenters of Dissent, were 
 incurring only shame ; while in saintly vision some 
 rays of glory were gathering as a halo round the 
 martyi'-heads of the punished. For more than fifty 
 years, those called heretics had remained in the 
 Colony unmolested. Roger Williams had, just a cen- 
 tury before, though by flight to another State, main- 
 tained the extreme and almost intolerant rights of 
 the individual conscience. The delusions of witch- 
 craft had passed away ; and many would gladly, if 
 they could, have washed away with tears the stains 
 from the statute-book, and the sometimes dark records 
 of civil judgment. In a period thus comparatively 
 free from religious extravagance, yet when the 
 strength of the religious sentiment had not abated, 
 was planted this branch of the vine, to grow up and 
 
178 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 flourish for a while, then to be trodden under foot of 
 foes, but to revive again, and, as we trust, be hence- 
 forth fruitful for ever. 
 
 An ancient record, lent me by one of my friends 
 now worshipping here, of the building of our pre- 
 sent meetiug-house, though almost purely a business 
 document, to a reader interested in its subject is yet 
 full of historic significance. It shows how impor- 
 tant then was the rearing of such an edifice, in the 
 emphasis in its entries laid upon every trifling cir- 
 cumstance relating to the structure, to the individuals 
 who took part in it with their hands or means, to the 
 occupants of pews in the former house, and the 
 distribution of seats in the new, with memorials of 
 every person's particular agency, in nearly all cases 
 most creditable ; while, in regard to some, stands a 
 note of reminiscence, so keenly worded that the yel- 
 low-papered volume seems to turn into a book of 
 judgment in one's hand, or to have received some 
 transcript strangely from the eternal register on 
 high. 
 
 It would be a pleasant task, were it one which my 
 limits allowed and to which my mind was compe- 
 tent, to present this church as it stood in association 
 with other churches, and to portray the many able 
 and pious men in the ministry who shed a lustre 
 
THE WEST CHURCH. 179 
 
 upon the nation's youth in the early period of our 
 still dependent existence. But I cannot give even 
 the names of pastors or churches ; nor need I repeat 
 the tributes -which have been candidly rendered to 
 not a few of them by others. I can only say this 
 was one of the churches shaped after the pattern of 
 Independency in England and Holland, and called 
 Congregational churches, because, while not subject 
 to each other's control, they called each other into 
 congregation for aid and counsel in time of need ; 
 although the word congregational, in our use of it, 
 seems to indicate rather the freedom of each par- 
 ticular Christian body, and of all the members by 
 which it is constituted. 
 
 I need not say that the theology of our fathers 
 was of a very grave and sober tint ; yet it does not 
 appear that the darkest doctrines respecting God's 
 disposition or human nature were ever preached in 
 the space enclosed by these walls. The great Gene- 
 van was never installed as absolute authority in the 
 West Church, llather the ancient principles of inde- 
 pendence and liberality made the basis of the Society, 
 as the stones of the everlasting rock did of their 
 building. Yet, in rejoicing to disown for our fore- 
 runners or for ourselves the gloomy faith of Calvin- 
 ism, it were unjust and thankless did we fail to note 
 
180 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 how mucli of power and glory for this land have 
 moved forth out of that deep shadow. If, as is some- 
 times said of a cold and stormy country, it be a good 
 faith to leave, such is human nature, that it may 
 have also been a good one for many to have had 
 in it their birth and nurture. 
 
 This church was called the West Church, or West 
 Boston, because, when it was founded, it composed, 
 and seemed identical with, this whole part of the 
 town. Beneath the eaves of this one sanctuary 
 lived a population occupying, with their scanty ha- 
 bitations, a territory now densely crowded with the 
 dwellings and industrial pursuits of fifty thousand 
 persons, — a territory Avhich, in the multiplication 
 of human activity, has pushed itself into the 
 sea, driving back its waters, and continuing itself 
 by bridging them in all directions for countless 
 vehicles, and carriages of fire. The little part of 
 our ancient domain, whose circle a stone's throw 
 would reach, includes perhaps a score of churches 
 of almost every various denomination and name. 
 By a much better title than any pastor or clergyman 
 can now be called the bishop of a state, this entire 
 side of the settlement was our providential bishop- 
 ric. The present Senior Minister of this church 
 has, even in his time, discharged substantially the 
 
THE WEST CHUKCH. 181 
 
 office of a minister at large to the neglected and poor 
 in this whole region. We wish well to all the new- 
 comers that have divided among them our diocese ; 
 and trust, whatever new light they may have obtained, 
 they will not be wanting in the respect due to a 
 decent age, whether of individual men or of good 
 institutions. 
 
 This church, as one shelter of those that came out 
 from the Old World's bondage, has been exceeded, I 
 believe, by no other church, in its assertion and main- 
 tenance, from the first, of the liberty wheretviih Christ 
 had made it free. How grandly, from the other side 
 of the world and through the long vista of ages, that 
 old sentence rings on our ears ! Such liberty was 
 indeed no easy reconquest or slight achievement. 
 To say nothing of the political despotism for the 
 private conscience or the public assembly, which our 
 fathers banished themselves from their homes to 
 throw off, there were two other yokes, the ecclesi- 
 astical and the theological, in which the necks of 
 men were held. What I have already told of the 
 preceding spiritual advisers and leaders of this reli- 
 gious host, has well informed you how little content 
 it has ever been to bear either. What I mean by 
 the yoke ecclesiastical, is the assumption of authority 
 on the part of any royal pope, or aristocratic board 
 
 16 
 
182 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 or council, in the name of the church at large, or of 
 any section of it, to decree either the mode of con- 
 stituting a particular church, or the precise form 
 and order of administering its service. Our fathers 
 disowned the right of any ecclesiastical authority, 
 however time-hallowed or widely adopted, to deter- 
 mine the external modes of worshipping God. Im- 
 pious and inhuman postulate indeed it is, not only 
 to prescribe, but enforce, under civil pains or inqui- 
 sitorial penalties, the outward motions of the body, 
 and fixed shapes in the air, with which the free 
 souls of men shall adore their Author ! Superstitious 
 and slavish obeisance, at any absolute earthly bid- 
 ding, to be shut up to certain conventional robes and 
 gestures, or to an unalterable style of furniture, in- 
 struments, and sacred utensils, with which to express 
 things in their nature so unconfinable as love, ho- 
 mage, fellowship with what has no emblem to us 
 but the boundless blowing of the invisible wind, — 
 'even the Spirit of the Almighty One! 
 
 We came of those who would not abide such a 
 pretension, — no, not for an hour, — but indignantly 
 broke the priestly fetters from their minds. By 
 Hooper, while he staid here, as well as by Mayhew 
 and Howard, was this ecclesiastical liberty exercised 
 and affirmed. Whatever may have been the reasons 
 
THE WEST CHURCH. 183 
 
 of the first minister's unceremonious farewell to his 
 flock, and adoption of a stricter and authoritative 
 style of service, — of his inducements to which only 
 a probable judgment can now be made ; M'hatever 
 charms a more rigid custom may have had for him, 
 — and for such a nature as his I think those charms 
 in themselves must have been small and few ; or 
 whether, as I incline to think, it was the uncom- 
 fortableness of the surrounding theological atmo- 
 sphere — as we know uncomfortable it was — that 
 repelled him on the one side, rather than any -pve- 
 latical pomp that allured him on the other, — he 
 was no doubt well aware that the church would not 
 go with him in any ecclesiastical change, but would 
 stand, as it did, by its ancient liberty. 
 
 As respects the Christian body itself, it has always 
 been a vital part of the Congregational system here 
 set up, that the church is not built upon the mini- 
 stry, but the ministry upon the church. The minister 
 is, or sliould be, no lord over God's heritage, but 
 only an ensamplc to the flock. This minister is 
 but one of the brethren, who, moved by some divine 
 call and qualified by peculiar studies, discharges the 
 oflicc of religious teacher, counsellor, and friend, 
 lie has here no more arbitrary authority than any 
 other of the fraternity. He has no authority at all 
 
184 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 but what Heaven may give him in his spiritual fitness 
 for his work. The church is not his property ; nor 
 is the pulpit, save for his Christian prayers or in- 
 structive speech. The ordinances are his onlj^ in his 
 common privilege to enjoy them for himself, while 
 he dispenses them to others. The invitations to 
 share in these ordinances he has no right to issue, 
 but only to extend ^to all who accept them. " I 
 thank you for the freedom you give me," said 
 one lately to me, upon my explaining this open 
 nature of every branch of our worship. " It is 
 your freedom : I do not give it you," was my reply. 
 Certainly I thank God, however it may have been 
 elsewhere or in other times, or however anywhere 
 it may be now, it is here, not the privation, but the 
 privilege, of a minister to be no mere functionary, 
 but a religious friend. 
 
 I know how many are ready to suggest inconve- 
 niences in this broad ecclesiastical liberty. I can 
 only say, we have not encountered them ; and trust 
 we confess more the Master's mighty and lawful 
 authority for not owning that of any assuming 
 fellow-disciple or number of disciples. I know how 
 many will declare it a loose and licentious system. 
 I must rejoin, we have experienced no harmful 
 laxity ; and, further, that we feel in it the more safe. 
 
THE WEST CHURCH. 185 
 
 because we read in our Lord's own words that his 
 yoke is easy, and his burden light ; that we per- 
 ceive not whose right it is to impose any other ; and 
 that, because we find his service a blessed and rea- 
 sonable one, we do not therefore conclude that we 
 are under no yoke at all, but pray God we may ever 
 be free from all the galling ones of human construc- 
 tion, while we willingly and joyfully bear that which 
 the meek and lowly One brought from heaven. Yea, 
 we adopt in its full extent the old Pilgrims' asserted 
 prerogative, which they made their sublime duty as 
 well as imperative claim, to be all kings and priests 
 unto God. Our democratic phrase, that we ai'e all 
 sovereigns in this country, may be uttered in a spirit 
 of vanity or jesting and superficial folly ; but truly 
 every soul, in the last resort, in its own conscience 
 and reason and inspiring thought, is sovereign only 
 under God. 
 
 Having, therefore, attempted to give you some 
 biographic portraitures of your deceased ministers, I 
 should feel myself wanting in my duty to the Society 
 they have served, if I did not add this statement of 
 the unquestionable theory and position of historic 
 verity which belong to the Society and Church itself. 
 From this ground, ministry and people together have 
 sprung. They are rooted together in one common 
 
 16* 
 
186 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 soil. Of the people themselves, the ministry have 
 been but the outgrowth and representation ; and, to 
 vindicate the people in their position, the ministry, 
 as the voice of this place, thus lie under a special 
 bond. 
 
 Besides, however, the yoke ecclesiastical, there is 
 a yoke theological, of humanly devised dogmas, of 
 concerted articles in a creed which men may be sum- 
 moned to endure. It would be indeed wonderful 
 had our fathers been able to cast off both these 
 yokes together ; and there are evidences that the 
 theological yoke 'pressed heavily with them, as it 
 always has on the minds of men. It certainly is 
 with no wish to arrogate any thing to ourselves, but 
 with a judgment amenable to the simple dictate of 
 truth, that I declare my persuasion, that nowhere, 
 even from this yoke, was obtained relief earlier or 
 greater than in the West Church. Hooper, its first 
 minister, as we have seen, came into conflict with 
 his clerical brethren on account of his criticizing the 
 severe ideas, commonly held forth, of the divine 
 wrath and vengeance, and advocating an idea of the 
 attributes of God more liberal and generous than in 
 many quarters prevails even at the present day ; and 
 his people sustained him. If either party was want- 
 ing to the other, it was not the people that failed 
 
THE WEST CHURCH. 187 
 
 Hooper, but Hooper that afterwards fell away from 
 them ; but he did not, so far as we know, fall away 
 from them on grounds of theological difference with 
 the members of his own Society. The kindly, and I 
 think just, construction of the reasons of his depart- 
 ure, would refer them, not to any Avilful disloyalty 
 to his friends, but to Avhat probably became an 
 annoying and false theological relationship with the 
 whole Congregational, which was then the ruling, 
 body. 
 
 I have confessed to you already the but slight 
 means in my possession for making out a perfect 
 likeness of our first minister. My delineation may 
 accordingly be considered, to some extent, conjec- 
 tural. As, from scattered portions of an animal 
 structure, the physiologist undertakes to give the 
 kind, and restore the complete size and shape, of 
 the creature that lived in the history of the world 
 long ago, so from but a few memorials we have 
 sometimes to reconstruct the features and magnitude 
 of a human soul. Of the accuracy of my general 
 conception of Hooper, and of the fairness of my 
 interpretation of his conduct, I have no serious 
 doubt. Without some particular cause, such as I 
 have suggested, impelling him, it would seem the 
 more difficult to account for his unceremonious 
 
188 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 departure from the people of his charge, as he seems 
 to have had among them, beyond even his succes- 
 sors, an extraordinary popularity as a preacher, and 
 to have been much cherished as a man among those 
 for whom he himself cared as a pastor. Moreover,- 
 the tradition would inform us of a sorrow at his 
 going, which, had his separation been a wholly un- 
 justifiable desertion, would scarcely have been felt. 
 I therefore leave the general explanation, which I 
 have already given, of his act, with expressing the 
 hope that he meant to step from the ranks of the 
 clergy, rather than from the heart of his flock ; and, 
 though he dealt not openly with the Society, that he 
 may have taken counsel with some of his friends 
 here before concluding to forsake his charge ; that 
 at least his own conscience was satisfied with the 
 decision he made, even if few others were privy to 
 it ; and that, if we knew more of the circumstances, 
 so singular and sudden a procedure on his part would 
 seem to us more satisfactory and clear. 
 
 But thus much must be said, in regard to Hooper, 
 that the contest which he began with false or super- 
 stitious doctrines in the Congregational body he 
 did not continue. The brave soldier, fighting, like 
 Paul, the good fight of faith, for some reason did 
 not choose to remain and fight it out. Yet, so far 
 
THE AVEST CHURCH. ' 189 
 
 as the church or the ministry of the church was 
 conceriiecl, this did not much matter, as a truly un- 
 daunted and never-yielding combatant was about to 
 appear in the field, and plant himself in the free 
 pulpit of the West Church, in the person of Jona- 
 than May hew. 
 
 I have spoken of the boldness of Mayhew and 
 Howard in exploding the prevalent Calvinism of 
 their day. But they must certainly share the credit 
 of their independence with the Society, which, with- 
 out sign of faltering, still adhered to them, whose 
 own forward opinions they may have to a great 
 degree expressed, and without whose defence they 
 would have had no point from which to act on the 
 community, but would have been as generals with- 
 out an army. The independence and liberality 
 which they showed, I must claim as traits of the 
 worshipping band to which in holy things they 
 ministered, and which, instead of dismissing or 
 suffering any excommunication from abroad to touch 
 them in their place, guarded and cherished them for 
 what they indeed were, — the apple of its eye, the 
 very organ of its sight, and inlet of all satisfiiction 
 to its soul. It is a great deal, even for a society, in 
 times of general distrust and hostility, to defend its 
 minister. It is like what soldiers sometimes do, — 
 
190 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 at peril of their own lives, rescuing an endangered 
 officer in the hottest of the fray. 
 
 I must therefore assert, that the position and 
 entire historic tendency of this church have been 
 towards no inculcation of any recognized dogmatic 
 creed outside the Bible as essential to salvation, and 
 no injunction of forced oaths, by which one is made 
 to swear to the commentaries and confessions of 
 other minds before reaching the table of the Lord 
 on earth, or the kingdom of God in heaven. 
 
 To one man, indeed, of transcendent prowess, the 
 church is for all time deeply in debt. As we read 
 of some mighty warrior, who, in the boundless ra- 
 ging and pale dismay of the battle, with his resistless 
 arm makes a clear space around himself and his 
 followers for freedom of motion, so Mayhew particu- 
 larly opened the ground on which we stand. To 
 use a peaceful illustration, this was one of the first 
 spots cleared and cultivated in the great Western 
 territory of religious thought, while the forests of 
 ancient superstition hung darkly over the land, and 
 the thorny thickets of scholastic distinctions tangled 
 the traveller's feet, and the continent at large must 
 wait yet many long years for the bringing forth of 
 the fruits of a rational faith. 
 
 I need not say hoAv this standard, both of libe- 
 
THE WEST CHURCH. 191 
 
 rallty and independence, has been received and 
 borne up by the honored pastor who, as in our late 
 jubilee it has been noted, succeeded to Howard now 
 more than half a century ago. The church has not 
 been moved from its old foundation in any direction 
 of denominational strife, because there has been no 
 occasion for it to move. Like the ark of the Lord, 
 which, saved from the enemy, holy hands bore up 
 of old, it has only been carried steadily and unhurt 
 for ever forward. The doors into it were made 
 large at the first ; nor have they since, by the hands 
 of any theological carpenter, been made smaller. 
 We have not, because of the sects that have followed 
 upon or fought with each other upon speculative 
 doctrines and points of doubtful disputation, required 
 any alteration in the architecture of our principles, 
 or in the simple and decent order of our modes, 
 which are held perfectly at our own varying dis- 
 cretion. There has, of course, been change, and, 
 we may trust, improvement, in the ways of think- 
 ing upon many subjects even here, else Time, 
 God's great instructor to man, would have taught 
 us no lessons ; but the fundamentals of faith and 
 practice were anciently laid so broad, that no neces- 
 sity has ever arisen of their being, in their great 
 proportions, disturbed, or anywhere taken up. The 
 
192 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 church, stands where the okl church did: its prin- 
 ciples are the same. We have received, and do 
 receive, to our communion, persons of various opi- 
 nions respecting the articles about which an ever- 
 lasting war has sundered the church, yet has not 
 convinced us that Christ himself need by them be 
 divided, but that he is divided only by the pride, 
 the party-spirit, and every unworthy passion, of his 
 nominal followers. We are consistent in this catho- 
 lic ground, because we do not look to be saved by our 
 understanding at all, and cannot even conceive of 
 such salvation by any theoretical construction of 
 terms in the sharp and busy brain, much as the 
 metaphysical brain has tried to substitute itself as a 
 saviour for Christ ; but by the Spirit and the Son of 
 God in our hearts. The Scriptures, it has well been 
 said, tell us little of theology or of religion, but 
 much of God and Christ. 
 
 Accordingly, we assume no sectarian name. This 
 church has never, by any act of itself or of its 
 pastors, taken sides with any one of the divisions 
 into which the Congregational body in New Eng- 
 land has been unhappily rent. Like some unallotted 
 piece of Christ's vesture, that may have from the 
 soldiers' hands dropped unnoticed to the ground, 
 and so was not fought for, it has remained unappro- 
 
THE WEST CHURCH. 193 
 
 priated by any one of the quarrelling parties. The 
 clergy of all denominations, who would listen to 
 its invitation, have been welcomed into its pulpit ; 
 though thus far, I must distinctly in all justice say, 
 to the Unitarian preachers alone must be awai'ded 
 the credit of a general willingness, by exchanges, 
 to hold fellowship with those, who, as a corporate 
 body, have declined to unite themselves with any 
 theological organization, or commit themselves to the 
 lead of any modern Paul or Cephas or Apollos, 
 whom they might think guides not so good even as 
 the ancient ones. By those actually committed, they 
 have sometimes been sneered at for this independent 
 stand ; as though some arrogance or policy were 
 suspected in a position occupied with Christian hu- 
 mility and unquestionable courage, perhaps before its 
 critic's or censor's ecclesiastical parents were born. 
 
 Probably without any design to wrong it, the 
 church has been called by a particular name, on 
 account of the undoubted sentiment of a majority of 
 its members ; yet a name which the church or its 
 ministry has never adopted, by however many of 
 those members it may be cheerfully borne. There 
 being, to decide the matter of a mere name, no 
 clerical or lay authority beyond the simple declara- 
 tion of the facts, every one, in or out of the church, 
 
 17 
 
194 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 who undertakes to speak of or denominate it, must 
 be thrown, of course, upon his honest feeling of re- 
 sponsibility to the truth. For my own part, I aver 
 my humble understanding of that unsectarian cha- 
 racter in the church, which but corresponds to my 
 unborrowed conviction and independent attitude be- 
 fore I had with it any relation ; and you are well 
 aware, from his many and earnest affirmations, how 
 uniformly the venerated Senior Pastor has stood in 
 the same view. We do not come together here on the 
 ground of any recognized denominational theology. 
 Let me add, that, allowing every man's right to give 
 his own thought of us according to his own judg- 
 ment, I am neither able nor disposed, after full 
 notice and warning always in private and public 
 respecting this our untrammelled posture, to correct 
 every mistake that may be made in calling us names, 
 as I have no anxiety to repel misnomers applied to 
 myself. It would be an unreasonable demand that 
 a man should spend his time in rectifying, or em- 
 ploy his thoughts in lamenting, erroneous statements 
 and groundless rumors on such a subject ; especial- 
 ly when the slightest reflection may teach us that 
 the important point is, not by what names we are 
 called, but what in reality we are. We shall not 
 stand by the appellations we give ourselves, nor be 
 
THE WEST CHURCH. 195 
 
 blown over by the breath of appellations -which 
 others may give us. As individuals and as a society, 
 we shall exert our influence, not according to the 
 designations men apply, but according to our actual 
 characters. Let us look to them; let us pray God 
 for their reform, through his regenerating power ; 
 let us feel a twofold concern for the purity and 
 loving devotion of our souls ; because in our dispo- 
 sitions is not only involved our individual fate, but 
 wrapped up also the honor of an association with one 
 another, that should be unspeakably dear. 
 
 I am very sensible how many, upon such a theo- 
 logical and ecclesiastical position as I have now 
 explained, will bring a charge rung through the 
 harsh gamut of the catch-words, — that bigotry ever 
 delights itself to sing, — of looseness, uncertainty, 
 compromise ; sitting upon the fence between opposite 
 parties, or halting long between two opinions. I 
 can only, for answer, appeal first to the listeners in 
 this assembly, whether there is any want of distinct- 
 ness and candor in the sentiments expressed in their 
 hearing or cherished in their minds. I reply, next, 
 that, if the church be true and firm at its own post, 
 we have no regret to express or feel at its situation, 
 however it may be caricatured as a solitary wanderer 
 between orderly rows of other churches, instead of 
 
196 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 being assorted or identified with any one class. "We 
 are sensible of no disgust at its being considered 
 even a bridge of passage from one ground to ano- 
 ther, or like a stepping-stone in the torrent, enabling 
 those disposed on either hand to tread and pass 
 safely over ; though we do not regard it as between 
 sects, but aside from or above them all. "We are 
 no believers in merely rigid and unbroken lines of 
 controversy, like the adverse fronts of hostile armies, 
 or the fiery faces that flash from besiegers to be- 
 sieged. On the contrary, let us rejoice in a church 
 useful, not in being neutral, or belonging to a third 
 party or a no-party party, but by being superior 
 to all parties whatsoever ; like a strong and pros- 
 perous nation, that looks calmly on, and presents to 
 the angry belligerents of a whole hemisphere an 
 example of what can be done by peaceful industry. 
 If anybody will say. You must, in religion, take 
 sides one way or another with the allied hosts, or 
 the single power by which they are resisted, a politi- 
 cal case is certainly not far off to show how needless, 
 and perhaps injurious, might be such a partisan reli- 
 gious movement. As to the perilous looseness of such 
 a position, I add, it is indeed loose, if there are no 
 celestial bonds to hold that from which earthly cords 
 are thus sundered or unwound. 
 
THE WEST CHURCH. 197 
 
 But if thei'e be invisible attractions from powers 
 of the world to come, in which our souls are well 
 fastened, we may well say to the terrestrial chains 
 men would put on us, " Off, you Icndings ! " 
 Those who once thought the earth itself had a 
 material basis, or that the crystal cope rested upon 
 a boundless plain, might have trembled with terror 
 at a sudden revelation to them of the round world 
 swinging loose, and apparently unsupported, in the 
 unpillared, measureless firmament. Yet further 
 knowledge would persuade them that the gravita- 
 tion of the boundless heavens is a support for this 
 planetary dwelling, stronger and more secure than 
 any foundations below or columns above. So we 
 can dispense with deriving from earthly standards 
 the tendencies of our belief, and with ordering, at 
 any human word of command, the motions of our 
 reason and conscience which we keep spiritually 
 connected with the inspiring Mind that made us, 
 and humbly subject to the everlasting law of God. 
 
 In thus interpreting the stand we take, it is not 
 my design to denounce religious denominations, nor 
 even to regret their existence. I believe they have a 
 truly providential purpose, and, in the human mind, 
 an unquestionable necessity. Nay, but for the suc- 
 cessive attempts, which they have embodied, to define 
 
 17» 
 
198 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 the religion they have all professed; but for the 
 interest in the gospel which their very controversies 
 have awakened, kept alive, and perpetuated, — I be- 
 lieve that, through the ignorance and unspirituality 
 of mankind, the religion would have long ago been 
 in its grave, probably not surviving the first century 
 of its birth. But, however necessary and useful may 
 have been the denominations, it is not necessary that 
 every man, every minister, or every church, should 
 belong to one or another of them. Denominations 
 have their place, but must not claim and monopo- 
 lize the whole world. The man, the minister, the 
 church, may have a conviction of all the great reali- 
 ties of religion, without partisanship ; as the states- 
 man may — and the great statesman always will — 
 pursue the welfare of his country, and not identify 
 himself with any one of its political factions. It is far 
 more important for us to be practical Christians than 
 to be profound theologians. 
 
 But no reflecting man, none but the most super- 
 ficial thinker, can feel any inclination to despise 
 theology. It would be to despise the noblest of all 
 the sciences, and to cast a slight upon knowledge 
 itself, in disesteeming the most sovereign and endur- 
 ing sort of knowledge ; it would be to forget, that, 
 in the first and great commandment, God requires 
 
THE WEST CHURCH. 199 
 
 US to love him with all our mind, as well as all our 
 soul. We must have some understanding of reli- 
 gion. It must not be all mystery or all feeling. 
 Without understanding, the feeling of religion dies 
 away into a formal repetition, a lifeless phrase on 
 the tongue, or a solemn but tedious reiteration from 
 the memory, which, however it may satisfy the weak 
 and simple-minded, disgusts active and thoughtful 
 spirits. Theology is religion in the head ; and thus 
 it has its rightful place, because religion should be 
 in the head. But it is of still more consequence it 
 should be in the heart, where it is not theology, but 
 love ; in the conscience, where it is not theology, 
 but duty ; and in the life, where it is not theology, 
 but all excellence, beautiful goodness, and integrity. 
 Be it not, however, forgotten, that the head and heart 
 and life of a man are all connected together in one 
 vital system, to be alike cared for, as we would for 
 the great essential and mutually related organs of the 
 body. 
 
 I therefore contend not against those who, as in- 
 dividuals or as societies, feel called upon to devote 
 themselves to securing this adjustment : I only ex- 
 plain our own position. And I cannot omit subjoining, 
 to confirm our independent and catholic attitude as a 
 church, that the great ideas of religion, which make 
 
200 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 the grand and comprehensive theology of the church 
 universal, are all above the petty dogmas of parti- 
 cular sects ; and that in them contending sects 
 might, as we may hope they one day with a larger 
 vision will, be reconciled, and the warmest disputants 
 brought together. Recognizing here no foes ; sel- 
 dom in our preaching or hearing having at all in 
 mind the dissensions that rage outside our harbor of 
 peace; deriving our themes — you will bear me 
 witness, my friends — from sources above the angry 
 surge ; and clinging to the conception of the church, 
 in all climes, under all names, and through all ages, 
 as one, — we never, as it is styled, dismiss a member 
 from our company, though by removal he may be 
 withdrawn from our sight, or by death carried into 
 another world ; and we ask of no one a dismission 
 from any other company of believers, in order to 
 his finding admission and cordial entertainment in 
 ours. 
 
 I wish, as nearly as possible, to state what our 
 position is, rather than any private notion of my own 
 what it should be. If it be a position in any respect 
 indefinite, we may trust it is in all respects charitable. 
 In dealing with truths that are infinite, and a spirit 
 that is vast and incomprehensible, it may be doubted 
 if a very severe definiteness, consistently with the 
 
THE WEST CHURCH. 201 
 
 love of God and man, is possible as a true bond, 
 even were it desirable. Moreover, it often does not 
 exist -where it is most pretended. When men are 
 named to us under denominational designations, — 
 Orthodox or Liberal, Churchmen or Dissenters, — 
 we feel that they are described but rudely, if at all ; 
 that opposite characters are embraced in the same no- 
 menclature ; and that we have no accurate perceptions, 
 after all, till we know the men themselves. Even 
 the terms Unitarian and Trinitarian are inexpres- 
 sive till we are apprised how far they refer to two 
 different tenets in creeds, or two opposite parties of 
 men, with their whole conflicting systems of beliefs 
 and measures. 
 
 We would fain therefore, as a Society, if we might, 
 belong to that already great and ever-growing host 
 of those who cannot easily be described under any 
 terms of the logic of ancient or modern schools ; 
 who refuse classification, not because they are no- 
 thinif, or disposed to lurk prudently in the vague 
 twilight of cowardly indecision, but because at least 
 they aspire to be so much, as lovers of God and 
 man ; striving to mend their own life and thought, 
 while doing something to reform the world ; glory- 
 'ng to commune with invisible perfection, that ever 
 lures them to a higher point for a wider prospect ; 
 
202 THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF 
 
 seeking and saving that whicli was lost. This is a 
 worthy position, that will show itself more and more 
 alike unambiguous and unavoidable. As no phi- 
 losophy ever held in its grasp the outward universe, 
 however it might trace a little way some of its cir- 
 cles and pierce a little way into some of its depths, 
 so the fellowship of God's children and Christ's 
 disciples cannot submit to be embraced by any 
 exclusive terminology. Of such terminology they 
 are always somewhat ashamed ; in fact, they do not 
 respect the sharp landmarks set up, but must pass 
 freely through the whole territory. They are, 
 according to Christ's benediction, inheritors of the 
 earth and occupants of the world, while aspirants 
 after another world of immortality. Let us not, 
 indeed, be so vain as to say we are of this noble 
 brotherhood. But we will say we are of no other. 
 We desire to be of this. At least, let us stand fast 
 in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, 
 and not be entangled again with the yoke of 
 bondage. 
 
 May it please the church, as it is now embodied, 
 to accept the portraiture I have tried to make faith- 
 fully according to its actual qualities and its ideal 
 aim ! There were, indeed, only presumption in the 
 attempt of any individual to sketch the character of 
 
THE WEST CHURCH. 203 
 
 a great united body, but that it must be done by an 
 individual, or not at all. May the present church 
 not disown the justness of the likeness ; may the 
 church translated, and now in glory, feel itself not 
 unfairly dealt with ; and may the future church, yet to 
 come on earth, accept these lines as some rude index 
 to signify the direction in which we in our day and 
 generation are travelling ! Faint and poor, however, 
 as may be the portraiture, let a benediction from the 
 earnest prayers and sacred wishes of many years, 
 from deep sympathy with the sorrows and joys of 
 multitudes made dear, from the thought of many 
 graves, and a spiritual beholding of many long-since 
 or lately occupied seats in heaven, here be spoken 
 to the West Church ! 
 
205 
 
 APPENDIX TO THE DISCOURSES. 
 
 In the Discourse upon Jonathan Mayhew, whose name is 
 one of the glories alike of this country and of the Ameri- 
 can Church, as well as of the particular Society to which 
 he ministered, I have spoken of him as the first openly 
 to proclaim on these shores the sublime doctrine of the 
 strict and undivided unity of God. The very fact of the 
 independence of all theological parties, which this parish 
 has maintained, but renders it the more my duty to affirm, 
 that no other doctrine is understood ever to have prevailed 
 among the worshippers, or been preached or implied by 
 any of the pastors, since Mayhew's day. Dr. Howard 
 and Dr. Lowell — of the latter of whom, as well as the 
 former, as he is nowise cognizant beforehand of the 
 friendly notices of him in this volume, I may say, that he 
 has been exceeded by no one in the comprehensiveness of 
 his Christian liberality — have, in regard to this grand 
 tenet of theology, occupied, with IMayhew and the religious 
 body to whicli they have all ministered, the same ground. 
 They have, indeed, uniformly put the spirit and practical 
 life of Christianity, in importance, before all points of 
 doctrine whatsoever; have avoided, as far as possible, 
 
 18 
 
206 APPENDIX TO THE DISCOURSES. 
 
 controversial discussions of every kind ; have sought for 
 points of union, and not division, with other behevers ; and 
 never been disposed to make any speculative dogma an 
 indispensable condition of religious fellowship. Trinita- 
 rians are as welcome as Unitarians to our assembly and 
 our communion. The teachers of the congregation, from 
 the pulpit and through the press, have spoken, each for 
 himself, with all plainness and kindness, the truth that lay 
 near their hearts. But, in a volume intended to do justice 
 to people as well as clergy, I could not answer for omit- 
 ting distinctly to say, that the great majoi*ity, if not all, of 
 the hearers, while wholly unsectarian in their inclination, 
 are quite agreed, with those chosen for their servants in 
 holy things, in regard to this faith in the simple unity of 
 God. I am glad to record in this, as in respect to the 
 primal obligation of Christian charity, their loyal adher- 
 ence to the stand taken by the lofty mind and courageous 
 soul of him who is the foremost champion in this land of 
 all united in the like judgment of sacred things; and the 
 particularity of my statement may be attributed, among 
 other and greater motives, to an earnest desire to claim 
 and vindicate the historic honor of both our church, 
 and of our noble predecessor and spiritual adviser in this 
 place. It is believed, however, that the ministers and the 
 church have always equally sympathized in the view of 
 that unspeakable oneness of the Son with the Father, 
 into which Christ, not monopolizing or appropriating it 
 to himself, would, by the grace of his prayer, humility, 
 and love, baptize and bring all his disciples. But it is 
 needless to say how consistent this is with the great, fun- 
 damental, never-abrogated article of Jewish and Christian 
 faith. 
 
 It is proper to remark, that, while the writer of this 
 
APPENDIX TO THE DISCOURSES. 207 
 
 note is persuadeil of the accordance in these sentiments of 
 those with whom he is connected, he here publishes them 
 on his own responsibility, without other authority or right 
 than may be supposed to be derived from a common 
 consciousness and understanding with his parishioners 
 and friends. Those who speak and meditate and pray 
 together for a long course of years, may all become sub- 
 stantially fair reporters of the present and chroniclers of 
 the past in their condition ; so that we may each Aie 
 bear witness of what is and has been, and declare our 
 confidence that the pulpit, which was the first on this side 
 the water to proclaim the pure unity of God, will be 
 the last to renounce it ; nay, that it will here never be 
 renounced. 
 
 That this exposition may be without any possible dis- 
 guise, lacking no element of frankness or thoroughness, 
 let it be added, that the doctrine of the Divine Unity among 
 us is held in the exact sense of one unequalled, incom- 
 municable, and infinite Personality. However dillicult to 
 the human mind it may be to unite in a single thought 
 the two ideas of immensity and personality, yet, while 
 this is the uniform representation of Scripture, the difli- 
 culty is surely but increased by multiplying the persons: 
 for, let it be considered, the addition of the element of 
 number to the persons as more than one, unavoidably 
 makes personality finite, which there is no philosophical 
 necessity that unipcrsonalily should be; as that j)rinciple 
 of will, activity, power, which forn\s in our notion the 
 essence of person, agrees as well with an absolute as with 
 a dependent being: it may be a boundless will, activity, 
 power, not included in space, but comprehending space 
 and the universe. But severalty of persons in the God- 
 head robs it of its unbounded, and so truly adorable, being 
 
208 APPENDIX TO THE DISCOURSES. 
 
 and glory. Further : the sentiments of worship and love 
 which we owe to our Maker demand for ever one only- 
 object on whom, in their own simplicity and for their free 
 and joyful exercise, they may be supremely fixed. He, 
 the first and last attribute of whose nature is its immea- 
 surableness by our minds, certainly comes nearer to being 
 distinctly apprehended as an Eternal Unity than under any 
 hard mode or perpetual variation of a confusing Trinity. 
 T^ one observing widely the religious history of mankind, 
 the suspicion indeed must be irresistibly suggested, that 
 the doctrine of the tri personality of the Godhead is but 
 the last relic of the Polytheism which so long sundered 
 the great Divinity into more persons than we can count. 
 Nor let it be forgotten, as a reason for the greatest ex- 
 plicitness, that, while the Polytheism that so long clung to 
 the unspiritualized mind of our race has for us mostly 
 gone by, now, in place of the multiform idolatry of the 
 Old "World, modern times have witnessed the opening of 
 a more fatal superstition in the boundless gulf of Pan- 
 theism, into which the Trinitarianism, so offensive to 
 philosophic minds, like a rushing, ofFshooting torrent, ter- 
 ribly plays, and from which nothing but a simple faith 
 in the unity of God can hold us back. The reader of 
 history will remember, that, when several emperors at once 
 swayed the Roman realm, the sovereignty was degraded 
 by being shared. So the supremacy of the creation loses 
 dignity when conceived as reposed in distinct hands. In 
 the poetry of our praise, we indeed personify the Holy 
 Spirit, but without meaning that it is a real person, or 
 other than an influence, direct from God or breathing 
 through his Son, as we personify any grace from heaven 
 or holy virtue; and we address Jesus, pouring out our 
 affection to him, or giving to him in our doxologies glory 
 
APPENDIX TO THE DISCOURSES. 209 
 
 in liis church, without ever designing to pay to him — what 
 he would utterly refuse from us — our supreme worship. 
 Indeed, it confirms this whole reasoning upon the divine 
 personality, that, while the "person" of the Father is 
 mentioned in the New Testament, Christ is declared to be 
 the " image " of that " person," but nowhere called an- 
 other equal person in the Godhead. 
 
 Loath as I am to extend further a note already far tran- 
 scending its anticipated limits, the last words here must 
 signify our wish to live in peace and communion with all 
 denominations. Verily we are convinced peace on earth 
 is to come. Even in the multiplication of parties, we 
 would see, not more separation, but rather an approach 
 by just gradations to the healthy union of all sincere be- 
 lievers. The musical symphony arises from a thousand 
 combinations of not only near, but also distant, notes ; the 
 garb of humanity is no soldier's uniform, but for every 
 one a becoming dress ; true painting is no mechanical 
 Chinese copying after a few unvarying types, but a ren- 
 dering of expressions from every various shade and color, 
 as the countenance of Nature herself is glorious from the 
 infinity of her traits. So the day is even now at hand 
 when the spiritual harmony, beauty, and order of the 
 world will be seen to arise from the utmost intellectual 
 freedom, joined to the deepest cordiality ; when the bond of 
 conformity shall be outworn, and charity and truth kiss 
 each other. Then no party dogma shall at once cut the 
 vital connections of Holy Writ and the bonds of believers, 
 but the name of the Father and of the Son and of the 
 Holy Spirit be the immortal union of us all. 
 
 18» 
 
ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
ACCOUNT 
 
 SUNDAY SCHOOL OF THE WEST-BOSTON SOCIETY. 
 
 Tins school — which has for mauy years constituted 
 an interesting and important part of the agency of 
 the "West-Boston Society in the religious culture 
 of the young, and in extending and strengthening 
 the bonds of Christian sympathy among many of its 
 members, as pupils and teachers, who might not 
 otherwise have enjoyed opportunity for friendly and 
 familiar intercourse — having been instituted under 
 the ministry of the Senior Pastor, and grown up 
 under his fostering care, and become one of the 
 crowns of his rejoicing in the retrospect of his mis- 
 sion to the people of his charge, a brief sketch of its 
 
 • For information of many of the facts stated in this brief historical 
 sketch, and particularly for those of early date, the author is indebted 
 to Mr. Thomas Gaffield, the Secretary, and one of the most devoted and 
 successful teachers. 
 
214 ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 origin, progress, and character seems a not inappro- 
 priate addition to a volume intended to be illustrative 
 of the history of that Society. 
 
 Like many other benevolent institutions for the 
 relief of suffering and for the spiritual elevation of 
 humanity, offering no rewards of gain or fame, this 
 school had its origin in very humble beginnings, 
 and owes its establishment, and gradual introduction 
 into the hearts of parents and children, mainly to 
 the disinterested and earnest spirit of a few ladies 
 of the Society, — the sex " last at the cross, and 
 first at the sepulchre," and ever to be the first in 
 enterprises calling for humility and self-sacrifice, 
 with no other reward than the consciousness of duty 
 faithfully attempted. Nor may its brief story be 
 without interest, as illustrative of the wide- spreading, 
 beneficent, and permanent influences of the seem- 
 ingly humblest efforts in the service of the Master, 
 and of the faithfulness of the assurance that bread 
 cast upon the waters shall be found after many 
 days. For some time prior to the year 1811, a 
 society of young ladies had been formed, under the 
 name of the " Gleaning Circle," for the purposes of 
 mutual entertainment and improvement by literary 
 exercises, and of contributing, by their needles and 
 otherwise, to the relief of the poor, consisting of 
 
ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 215 
 
 members from various religious societies, but chiefly 
 from that under Dr. Lowell's pastoral charge, who 
 was accustomed occasionally to attend their meetings, 
 and to aid in the ministration of their charities. 
 
 Early in that year, the Rev. John Bartlett, after- 
 wards settled at Marblehead, was chaplain of the 
 almshouse in Leverett Street ; and being a man of 
 active and wise benevolence, and perceiving the 
 destitution of all means of education for the very 
 young children of the poor to prepare them for 
 entering the public schools, he established by sub- 
 scription two charity-schools — one at the North 
 End, and one at the western part of the town — for 
 that purpose, and also for the instruction of the 
 female children in sewing, there being then no pri- 
 mary schools ; of which admirable institution, now 
 so prized, and so indispensable in our system of 
 public education, these were perhaps the germs. 
 
 The one last named, of course, soon attracted the 
 attention and interest of Dr. Lowell, whose zeal 
 in the se. 'ice of his Master, not limited to the 
 bounds of parochial duty, had already made him 
 the minister at large to the poor and afflicted and 
 erring in that portion of the town, and who com- 
 mended it to the benevolence of the " Gleaning 
 Circle." 
 
216 ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 Several of its members immediately took the 
 school under their patronage ; became themselves, 
 and afterwards procured others to become, contri- 
 butors for its support ; and assisted in the instruction 
 of the children, and in the clothing of those the 
 most destitute. In a short time, it fell entirely 
 into the hands of the ladies of the "West-Boston 
 Society, including many besides the members of the 
 Circle, and was wholly maintained and managed by 
 them. In the year 1813, while Miss Lydia Adams 
 was the matron of the school, she, being on a visit 
 in Beverly, saw the children of the Society then 
 under the charge of Rev. Dr. Abbot, and now under 
 that of the Rev. Mr. Thayer, assembled after ser- 
 vice for religious instruction by members of the 
 Society ; thus constituting, as is believed, the first 
 Sunday school in America. Being greatly im- 
 pressed with the utility and effect of such a school 
 as there exhibited, upon her return she communi- 
 cated her views to the ladies then in charge of her 
 school, who, uniting in sentiment with her, imme- 
 diately made arrangements for the religious instruc- 
 tion of the children under her care, on Sunday, by 
 the attendance of two of them, in regular rotation, 
 for that service. 
 
 At that time, there were about fifteen children in 
 
ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 217 
 
 the school, all of whom were girls, and who at- 
 tended church, and were seated together in the 
 gallery. The number, however, was gradually in- 
 creased by the accession of children of members 
 of the Society, who had become sensible of its 
 great utility ; and the name was changed, from 
 being the " West-Boston Charity School," to that 
 of the " West-Parish Sewing School." 
 
 It continued to flourish until the establishment of 
 the public primary schools for the same ends en- 
 tirely superseded its necessity, when it was given 
 up. But so faithfully and successfully had its pa- 
 trons and benefactors fulfilled their duties, and so 
 popular had it become with the benevolent women 
 of the Society, that, at its dissolution, a fund of 
 about seventeen hundred dollars had been accumu- 
 lated from subscriptions and donations for its sup- 
 port, which is now under the management and 
 dispensation of a board of managers, composed of 
 ladies of the parish, by whom it is administered for 
 objects akin to those for which it was originally 
 designed. 
 
 But the great good accomplished for the Httle 
 ones who attended the school during its continuance, 
 (and who would now venture to compute ■ its ex- 
 tent ?) and the advantages derived by those who, in 
 
 19 
 
218 ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 thus aiding to save and to elevate the lowly, were 
 unconsciously raising themselves nearer to heaven, 
 and this permanent charitable fund, are not the 
 only memorials of this humble institution, nor 
 those, great though they be, which chiefly entitle 
 its name and usefulness to be held in affectionate 
 and respectful remembrance. It was the parent 
 of the Sunday school of the West-Boston Society, 
 the first established in Boston, and whose beneficent 
 influences in the religious training of the young, 
 in affording opportunities of association and con- 
 fiding intercourse between pastor and people, in 
 multiplying and extending the bonds of Christian 
 sympathy and aflfection among those engaged in its 
 instruction, and in the formation of the holiest 
 friendships between teachers and pupils, never to 
 cease on earth or in heaven, will ever entitle it 
 to reverential and fond regard in the minds of a 
 multitude who have already enjoyed them, and, it 
 may be hoped, will be continued so long as the 
 Society shall exist. The ladies who had thus under- 
 taken the religious instruction of the children on 
 Sunday became so deeply interested in their work, 
 and rendered their ministrations so attractive, that 
 other children, not connected with the school, were 
 induced to partake of the benefit of them, until the 
 
ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 219 
 
 number, at the time of Its dissolution, amounted 
 to about fifty, Avith a complement of about eight 
 teachers, who were accustomed to assemble, in mild 
 weather, in the room under the belfry, and, in win- 
 ter, in the galleries, and subsequently, as the school 
 increased, at the Derne-street Schoolhouse. And 
 thus was formed the first of those institutions in 
 this city, which arc now esteemed an essential de- 
 partment in most of the religious societies through- 
 out the United States. 
 
 The Sunday school for girls having become thus 
 firmly established in tlie hearts of the teachers and 
 pupils, and its happy influences upon both being 
 deeply felt, the ladies having it in charge, desirous 
 of extending the like blessing to the boys, exerted 
 themselves to convince some of the gentlemen of 
 the Society of its value, and thus induced the esta- 
 blishment of the boys' school early in the year 
 
 IftOQ 
 
 Some difficulties were at first encountered in both 
 schools in inducing the wealthier portion of the 
 Society to send their children, — a Sunday school 
 being then generally associated with the idea of a 
 charity-schogl for elementary teaching, as well as for 
 religious instruction ; and also because of a widely 
 prevailing impression, that such attendance would 
 
220 ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 interfere with and supersede parental teaching at 
 home. The example, however, of a few, -who had 
 more correct knowledge of the real character of 
 the school, and their conviction, which gradually 
 diffused itself, that Sunday-school instruction, so 
 far from interfering with, was found to be a very 
 efficient auxiliary, by engaging both parents and 
 children in researches before unthought of, and by 
 exciting a deeper sympathetic interest in religious 
 study and thought, soon overcame these difficulties ; 
 and both schools, for the ensuing ten years, were 
 gradually gaining upon the confidence and affections 
 of parents and children, and increasing in numbers, 
 until the aggregate of 'pupils exceeded an hundred 
 and fifty, each school having a correspondingly large 
 and efficient corps of teachers earnestly devoted to 
 their interesting charge. 
 
 The mutual sympathy naturally existing between 
 them, and the conviction that a union of them would 
 be attended with manifest advantage to both, and 
 lead to still more extended and faithful exertion, 
 had for several years made it a subject of conver- 
 sation and deep interest ; but the want of a suitable 
 room seemed to be an insuperable obstacle to any 
 satisfactory and efficient arrangement for that pur- 
 pose. As, however, every year added to the beHef 
 
ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 221 
 
 of its importance, and strengthened the interest of 
 all in its accomplishment, it was finally determined 
 to appeal to the Society for the construction and 
 equipment of a schoolroom in the basement of the 
 church. It was made, and responded to as instantly 
 as made, with the liberality which has always distin- 
 guished the Society whenever any object worthy of 
 its bounty has been presented for its favor ; and the 
 use of the basement was granted, and a sum ex- 
 ceeding twelve hundred dollars was immediately 
 raised by subscription, for building and furnishing 
 a room, which was subsequently, and by an almost 
 equal subscription, enlarged and improved into the 
 spacious and commodious one now thus occupied. 
 
 The two schools met there together, and were 
 thus united, in the mouth of February, in the year 
 1832. 
 
 Until the establishment of the boys' school. Dr. 
 Lowell had been accustomed to assemble the children 
 for catechetic instruction, — the girls in the after- 
 noon of Sunday, and the boys in that of Wednesday. 
 But, as the two schools contained all of those who 
 were wont to attend those exercises, and pursued a 
 somewhat similar mode as a part of their system, 
 and he attended and supervised them, the necessity 
 of that anaugcmeut ceased. And it may well be 
 19* 
 
ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 accounted among the felicities of the Sunday school, 
 that it affords this weekly opportunity for the pastor 
 thus to meet the children of his flock, and a large 
 portion of its junior members, engaged in an active 
 course of religious training, as means of strength- 
 ening a parental interest towards them, and exciting 
 a more immediate filial love and respect on their 
 part towards him. And such opportunity has been 
 most faithfully improved by both the pastors of the 
 Society, and, as is believed, has been made highly 
 conducive to the happiness of all. 
 
 The course of instruction which had been adopted 
 until the union of the schools, was substantially the 
 same in both. Before that event, each had a super- 
 intendent, whose duty it was to preside, and arrange 
 the pupils into classes, and designate the instructors 
 for each, and provide for the teaching of any whose 
 instructor might be absent, and to exercise a general 
 supervision ; to conduct the religious exercises at 
 the opening of the school, by reading a liturgy 
 and lesson for the day from the admirable compend 
 compiled for that purpose by Dr. Follen, and to 
 give a general lesson, or brief address, to the whole 
 school at the close, or to arrange for the giving of 
 one by some one of the instructors, unless one were 
 given by the pastor or some visitor, as was not 
 
ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 223 
 
 infrequently the case. The teachers of the several 
 classes exercised their own discretion in the selection 
 of manuals and books from Avhich to instruct the 
 children ; subject, of course, to any ol)jection that 
 might be made by the pastor or superintendent, 
 though none is known ever to have been so made. 
 They were left also to adopt the mode of instruction 
 most congenial to their own minds and hearts and 
 abilities, and the capacities and peculiarities of their 
 pupils ; but the principal and almost universal mode 
 was rather conversational, and in the exchange of 
 thought and inquiry upon the subject to which the 
 lesson related ; memoriter recitations, excepting of 
 very short lessons preparatory for such conversation, 
 not being generally in favor. 
 
 The pupils were advised, but not required, to 
 write at home their remembrance of the lesson given 
 by their teacher, or of the general lesson, or of one 
 of the sermons of the day, to be exhibited to their 
 teachers and the superintendent on the following 
 Sunday, — a most admirable exercise for cultivating 
 the habit of attention to spoken discourse, for disci- 
 plining the memory, for attaining to habits of accu- 
 rate statement, and familiarizing the mind and heart 
 with religious thought. 
 
 In the first institution of both schools, a system 
 
22'i ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 of rewards for good conduct had been introduced, — 
 consisting of monthly certificates, and quarterly pre- 
 sents of useful books, — as incentives to exertion ; 
 but it was soon found, in both, that the interest 
 excited by the emulation inseparable from any mode 
 of effective teaching, — and which, under proper 
 direction, is one of God's appointed means of stimu- 
 lating the youthful mind, and may be, in its exhi- 
 bitions, one of the most important and interesting 
 subjects of training, — and the fondness of the pupils 
 for their teachers, and desire to please them, and 
 their interest in the themes to which their attention 
 was directed, — rendered all such artificial aid need- 
 less ; and it was soon abandoned. 
 
 In the boys' school, however, a system had been 
 adopted for securing punctuality by the use of 
 tickets, first introduced by Mr. Nathaniel A. Haven, 
 then superintendent of the school in Portsmouth, — 
 a gentleman eminent alike for his scholarship and 
 devotional spirit. There was one for each Sunday 
 in the quarter, numbered from one to thirteen, each 
 having upon it reference to a practical text of Scrip- 
 ture, which the pupil was to learn and repeat to the 
 teacher upon its delivery ; and as one was surren- 
 dered, and the next number taken, whenever the 
 pupil came punctually, the number on that surren- 
 
ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 225 
 
 (lered on the last Sunday of the quarter designated 
 the number of times of punctual attendance, and the 
 pupil Avould have learned and repeated a corre- 
 sponding number of impressive passages of Scrip- 
 ture. This was found a very effective arrangement. 
 After the schools were united, the same system was 
 substantially pursued. A general superintendent of 
 both schools was appointed, with one for the girls' 
 school. At five minutes after the hour for assem- 
 bling, the doors were closed, and the devotional ser- 
 vice was read. The doors were then opened, and 
 those who had arrived in season for prayers delivered 
 and exchanged their tickets, repeating the verse re- 
 ferred to on that surrendered. Each class M-as then 
 left to the care of its particular teacher until the time 
 arrived for the general lesson, about fifteen minutes 
 being allowed for it. In the mean time, those who 
 had prepared written exercises delivered them to 
 the superintendent, who made a list of them, and 
 read as many as time would allow, makiivg occa- 
 sional annotations of correction and encouragement. 
 The names of those who had presented them were 
 read aloud to the school ; and the exercises were 
 returned to them when it was dismissed. 
 
 Before the giving of the general lesson, a brief 
 examination upon that of the preceding Sunday was 
 
226 ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 had, in which answers to questions were usually 
 volunteered, but sometimes called for. The be- 
 witching simplicity, manly confidence, modest diffi- 
 dence, and sometimes startling fulness of spiritual 
 apprehension, with which these answers were often 
 given, made it the most interesting exercise of the 
 day, and generally excited intense interest among 
 the children, and perhaps not less in the hearts 
 of the teachers. 
 
 Then followed the general lesson, by the pastor 
 or superintendent, or one of the teachers, or some 
 visitor ; after which, the services were closed by 
 the singing of a hymn, in which all united, stand- 
 ing. 
 
 So great was the impulse given to the schools by 
 the labors of those engaged in them prior to their 
 union, and by the animating influences of that event, 
 that the number of pupils soon afterwards amounted 
 to about one hundred and eighty ; and it was not 
 unusual to have from thirty to fifty written exer- 
 cises given in, many of them containing an almost 
 entire record of the whole lesson. 
 
 Many of the gentlemen who taught in the school 
 joined in giving general lessons, dividing among 
 themselves the subjects of interest, upon which each 
 prepared himself with much care, — one taking the 
 
ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 227 
 
 geography and climate and pi-oductlons of Palestine ; 
 another, the modes of life and structure of dwellings 
 there in the times of the Saviour ; another, scriptural 
 archaeology ; another, natural theology ; another, the 
 miracles in the New Testament ; and others, the most 
 interesting of the events and teachings in the life 
 of Christ. And these lessons were very carefully 
 adapted to the capacities of the children, though not 
 infrequently highly instructive to all present. 
 
 A valuable and constantly increasing library, ob- 
 tained by donations, and contributions by the Society 
 (made annually upon the Sunday preceding Fast 
 Day), is attached to the school, from which the 
 children are permitted to take books, and which is 
 very freely used by them. 
 
 In reverting to the history of the school, as yet 
 fresh in the memories of many^ from its earliest be- 
 ginnings, the names of numbers among its teachers 
 and pupils, both living and dead, arise in grateful 
 remembrance, who have shed light and happiness 
 and spiritual beauty upon its path, and the value of 
 whose influences can only be told when the history 
 of all hearts shall be revealed. Many now living 
 can number a score or more of years passed as its 
 pupils or instructors, or as both, who count the 
 hours spent in receiving or giving instruction there 
 
228 ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 among the most blessed of their lives, and some of 
 whom still continue this interesting labor of love 
 with unabated zeal and fidelity. Many parents 
 love to speak in grateful recognition of its agency 
 in precious influences upon themselves and their 
 children ; and many a heart glows with affectionate 
 friendships formed there, which they trust to find 
 perpetuated in heaven. 
 
 It would be a delightful office to give utterance 
 to the gratitude due to them all. We may not thus 
 honor the living ; but it may be allowed to pay the 
 tribute of grateful and affectionate remembrance at 
 the graves of those who have left us. Distinguished 
 among these was John Lowell, jun., the wise and 
 beneficent founder of the Lowell Institute ; a man 
 whom a wise foresight, a profound love of his race, 
 and a devotional spirit, pi-epared to become one of 
 the most eminent benefactors of his times, and 
 whose generosity in the bestowment of his great 
 wealth for the moral and intellectual advancement 
 of his fellow-citizens will perpetuate his name in 
 grateful and honored remembrance so long as this 
 city shall endure. He was for some time an assist- 
 ant superintendent and teacher, and afterwards took 
 charge of a Bible-class in the vestry, as an appendage 
 to the school for those of more mature age, and fre- 
 
ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 229 
 
 quently gave the general lesson, his theme being 
 usually natural theology ; and many remember the 
 great interest which he enjoyed and communicated 
 in his teachings. 
 
 Another, no less respected and beloved, was 
 John Clarke, a merchant, then resident in Boston, 
 but who subsequently removed to Salem ; a gentle- 
 man who enjoyed iu an eminent degree the con- 
 fidence and respect of the community. He was 
 distinguished by a peculiar manly frankness, a 
 highly cultivated intellect, and earnest interest in 
 every thing promotive of the welfare of those around 
 him. He was long the revered instructor of the 
 senior class, and among the most eflfective teachers. 
 He also gave a course of very interesting general 
 lessons upon the geography, climate, and produc- 
 tions of Palestine. 
 
 Dr. Amos Binney also, for several years, devoted 
 his strong and cultivated mind to this service, as 
 much as his then impaired health would permit. 
 
 Mr. Samuel Hunt also was, from the beginning, 
 and for many successive years, an assiduous and 
 devoted teacher, and at one time an active superin- 
 tendent, who had the interest of the school deeply 
 at heart. 
 
 Orlando Pitts is remembered by many with pecu- 
 20 
 
230 ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 liar interest and aiFection, as for many years one of 
 the most affectionate, faithful, and intelligent pupils, 
 whose example was of great influence, and who 
 subsequently became a very efficient teacher, and 
 served also as librarian and secretary. He was a 
 youth of rare qualities of heart and mind, of an 
 affectionate and deeply religious disposition and 
 winning manners, with industry and practical talent, 
 which were rapidly raising him to exalted position in 
 society. So attractive were his manners and disposi- 
 tion, that it is related of him that little children were 
 wont to await at his door in the morning for his 
 coming out, that they might join him in his walk ; 
 and so widely and dearly was he beloved and re- 
 spected, that, upon his decease, his numerous friends 
 contributed to raise a cenotaph to his memory, at 
 Mount Auburn, with the following inscription from 
 the heart and pen of his beloved pastor : — 
 
 OKLANDO PITTS, 
 
 BornDec. 18, 1822; 
 
 Deceased Nov. 27, 1846, 
 
 Perishing in the wreck of the Steamer Atlantic. 
 
 He was early prepared for useful life or sudden death. 
 
 His friends, 
 
 Moved by love for his ingenuous virtues and grief for their loss, 
 
 Raise to him this monument. 
 
 His praise is of God; his memorial, in heaven. 
 
ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 231 
 
 Among the teachers in the girls' school, ^liss 
 Helen C. Loring was one of the earliest and most 
 devoted, until illness, terminating in death, pre- 
 vented her further attendance. 
 
 Of the nature and influences of her teaching, and 
 of their effect upon her pupils and upon the wel- 
 fare of the school, while she lived, and, since her 
 death, in the agencies of those whom she had in- 
 structed, and more especially of her character, it 
 may not become the author of this sketch to speak, 
 though it might be only to lay upon a sister's grave 
 a humble tribute of gratitude for blessings of which 
 he was a partaker. But it may be permitted to 
 suffer others to speak of her in this connection. In 
 a letter by Dr. Channing to a mutual friend, upon 
 her decease, he thus writes : " She seemed to be one 
 of the brightest expressions of the spirit of Jesus 
 Christ, and of the power of his religion in the trials 
 of life. She has seemed designed to show how 
 possible it is to live in heaven Avhilst sojourning 
 here ; to show the union of spirituality with com- 
 mon affairs ; to show how an heroic energy may be 
 blended with the greatest sweetness, tenderness, and 
 delicacy of soul and manner." 
 
 Nor will the utterance of another friend upon that 
 occasion, of no less authority, here be out of place : — 
 
2S2 ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 "And she has displayed in its perfect beauty the 
 Christian triumph in death. "With perfect willing- 
 ness, without a fear, and in the purest animation of 
 hope, with faith like vision she passed ; and the 
 impression that she still lives is as natural as that 
 the ship which has just sunk below the horizon still 
 holds on her way." 
 
 She died in July, 1838.* 
 
 Another of those whose mission it was to illus- 
 trate the beauty of holiness, and self-devotion to the 
 good of others, was Miss Elizabeth R. Norwood, 
 whose brief but lovely and effective ministrations in 
 the Sunday school were terminated, by early death, 
 in 1845. She came a stranger into the circle of 
 teachers and worshippers of the West Church, but 
 soon won her way into the deep affection of all who 
 were privileged to know her, and derived and com- 
 municated a spiritual happiness, in communion with 
 her pastors and fellow-teachers and the children of 
 her class, which could flow only from a full heart 
 and cultivated mind. Her chamber, during a long, 
 protracted illness, was a fountain from which her 
 
 * It was a lovely summer morning; and, as the day dawned, she re- 
 quested that the window by her bedside might be raised; and, looking 
 up into the sky, she said, " A beautiful morning ! I am going: good-by, 
 dear aunt! " And, with a gentle pressure of the hand and a heavenly 
 smile upon her lips, she passed away. 
 
ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 233 
 
 friends and dearly loved pupils drank deep of the 
 beauty of Christian faith and hope ; and she is 
 remembered as another star in heaven, to attract 
 their eyes upward as they journey here. 
 
 The name of Abigail W. Wilder, another teacher 
 who was early taken to the home in heaven, — to 
 which, by instruction and example, she sought to 
 lead the children committed to her care in the 
 school, — will long be held, by them and her com- 
 panions in the good work, in fond remembrance. 
 
 In this brief statement of the history and orga- 
 nization of this school, enough appears to evince 
 how great may be the agency of one in the welfare 
 of a religious society, not only in the culture of 
 the young, but also in promoting a closer union 
 between the pastor and his people than can other- 
 wise exist, especially in a city congregation ; in 
 the cultivation of friendships and mutual confi- 
 dence among its members, and between the elder 
 and younger portions of them, by which its Chris- 
 tian sympathies and efficiency may be advanced and 
 extended. 
 
 This school has been the object of great care and 
 solicitude on the part of the pastors, and many of the 
 Society, as may be seen by the schedule of teachers 
 appended. The Senior Pastor has for several years 
 
 20* 
 
234 ACCOUNT OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 been prevented by bodily infirmity from bestowing 
 his accustomed invaluable attention to it ; but it has 
 been most sedulously watched over and cared for by 
 the Junior Pastor, who not only has performed the 
 ordinary services of general visitation and encourage- 
 ment, but has for some time past taken upon him- 
 self the office of superintendent, giving general 
 lessons, and performing the other duties pertaining 
 to that office ; besides holding monthly meetings of 
 teachers at his house, which are attended with great 
 interest, and seeking by his influence and efforts, in 
 season and out of season, to promote and extend its 
 usefulness. 
 
 It is now in a flourishing condition, with an in- 
 creasing number of pupils ; but assistance in the 
 boys' department is much needed, and it is hoped 
 will not longer be withheld. 
 
L I S T 
 
 SUPERINTENDENTS AND TEACHERS OF THE 
 SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 MESIBERS OF THE GLEANING CIRCLE, AND OF THE WEST-BOSTON 
 
 SOCIETY, WHO WERE ENCAGED IN THE SUNDAY-TEACmNG 
 
 OF THE CHARITY SCHOOL. 
 
 Those marked with an asterisk (•) are deceased. 
 
 *Mi.ss Susan W. Seavcr. 
 
 Miss Sophia Dennie. 
 
 Miss Caroline Dennie. 
 •Miss Mary Gore. 
 *Miss Rebecca Gore. 
 *Miss Eliza Gore. 
 
 •Miss Eliza Cheever Davis. 
 •Miss Mary Ann Loring, 
 
 Miss Eliza D. Williams. 
 
 Miss Mary Goddard. 
 
 Miss Miranda Goddard. 
 
 LADIES WHO ARE OR HAVE BEEN TEACHERS IN THE SUNDAY 
 SCHOOL OF THE WEST-BOSTON SOCIETY. 
 
 Baldwin, Eliza W. 
 •Barry, Esther. 
 
 Belknap, Anna B. 
 
 Binney, Maria L. 
 
 Choate, Sarah C. 
 
 Choatc, Martha II. 
 
 Collins, Sarah. 
 
 Cunningham, Anna B. 
 •Cordis, Eliza. 
 
 Coolidge, Caroline M. 
 Dennie, Caroline. 
 Dennie, Eliza M. 
 Dennie, Sarah B. 
 Dennie, Sarah Bryant. 
 Dorr, Mrs. Elizabeth C. 
 Eaton, Eliza. 
 Eaton, Louisa B. 
 Eaton, Margaret D. 
 
236 
 
 SUPERINTENDENTS AND TEACHERS OF 
 
 Fairfield, Lucia G. 
 
 Fairfield, Mary E. H. 
 
 Fairfield, Martha H. 
 
 Faulkner, Elizabeth C. 
 
 Faulkner, Elizabeth. 
 
 Goodwin, Mrs. Lucy N. 
 
 Gaffield, Caroline A. 
 
 Gerry, M. Augusta. 
 *Gerry, Emma. 
 * Gerry, Mary Ann. 
 
 Hartshorn, Harriet. 
 
 Heath, Emeline A. 
 
 Howard, Catharine H. 
 
 Howard, Elizabeth. 
 
 Howard, Hepsy C. S. 
 
 Healey, Caroline W. 
 
 Hurlbert, Caroline T. 
 
 Hastings, Caroline. 
 
 Hastings, Charlotte B. 
 *Hastings, Eliza. 
 
 Hallett, Georgianna. 
 
 Hunt, Helen S. 
 
 Holman, Mrs. Charlotte R. 
 
 Hersey, Lucretia M. 
 
 Hersey, Caroline F. 
 
 Hooton, Mrs. Mary E. 
 
 Johnson, Emily. 
 
 Jones, Maria L. 
 
 Kuhn, Ann. 
 
 Kuhn, Caroline M. 
 
 Kendall, Judith P. 
 
 Kendall, Sarah W. 
 
 Kendall, Hannah W. 
 
 Kendall, Mrs. Cordelia E,. 
 
 Knight, Sophia. 
 
 Little, Elizabeth H. 
 
 Little, Harriet S. 
 
 Locke, Mary F. 
 *Loring, Helen C. 
 
 Loring, Jane L. 
 
 Loring, Susan M. 
 
 Lothrop, Sarah J. 
 
 Lowell, Rebecca R. 
 *Lowell, Mrs. John, jun. 
 
 McClure, Nancy J. 
 
 Munroe, Mehitable C. 
 
 Munroe, Jane C. 
 
 Newman, Anna B. 
 
 Newman, Mary. 
 
 Newman, Susan D. 
 
 Newman, Margaret. 
 
 Newman, Caroline. 
 ♦Norwood, Elizabeth R. 
 
 Otis, Mary. 
 
 Otis, Sarah T. 
 
 Otis, Caroline W. 
 
 Parker, Emily T. 
 
 Parker, Martha W. 
 *Prentiss, Eliza. 
 
 Perkins, Mary T. 
 
 Perkins, Ann T. 
 
 Ridgway, Susanna S. 
 
 Ridgway, Mary Ann. 
 
 Robinson, Mary S. 
 
 Russell, Louisa. 
 
 Russell, Mary A. P. 
 
 Stoddard, Polly E. L. 
 *Thwing, Ruth. 
 *Thwing, Martha. 
 
 Thayer, Mrs. Mary B. 
 
 Tracy, Mrs. Sophia D. 
 
 Train, Adeline D. 
 
 Ware, Horatio S. 
 *Wilder, Abigail W. 
 
 Wiswell, Ann M. 
 
 Willard, Theodora. 
 *Wells, Mrs. Seth. 
 « Wells, Adelaide. 
 
 Woods, Maria A. 
 
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 
 
 237 
 
 GENTLEMEN WHO ARE OR HAVE BEEN SUPERINTENDENTS OR 
 
 TEACUERS IN TUE SUNDAY SCUOOL OF THE 
 
 \VE?T-BOSTON SOCIETY. 
 
 •Andrews, Cakb. 
 
 Baker, Amos. 
 ♦Baldwin, S. Purkraan. 
 
 Badger, Willard. 
 
 Bartol, Cyrus A. 
 
 Bartol, George M. 
 •Binncy, Amos. 
 
 Binney, Amos, jun. 
 
 Binney, William G. 
 
 Binney, William C. 
 
 Binncy, Charles J. F. 
 
 Brown, John, jun. 
 
 Bragg, Alfred. 
 
 Bullard, William S. 
 
 Clarke, Henry W. 
 ♦Clarke, John. 
 
 Clark, George D. 
 
 Coolidgc, William D. 
 
 Canterbury, Charles. 
 
 Cunningham, C. Loring 
 
 Cormcrais, John. 
 
 Darling, F. D. 
 
 Dennie, Thomas, jun. 
 
 Dcnnie, James, jun. 
 
 Draper, I^orenzo. 
 
 Domett, Henry W. 
 
 Eaton, Charles F. 
 •Fairfield, John Oliver. 
 
 Fiskc, Augustus II. 
 
 Fi>h, Moses W. 
 
 Fisher, James T. 
 
 Gaffield, Thomas. 
 ♦Gaffield, James. 
 
 Gould, John M. 
 
 Gould, Samuel. 
 
 Gould, Thoniius R. 
 
 Gray, William. 
 
 Hardy, Thomas. 
 
 Hartshorn, Charles. 
 
 Haskell, Levi B. 
 
 Hastings, George R. 
 ♦Hunt, Samuel. 
 
 Ilolman, Oliver. 
 ♦Kendall, Joseph S. 
 
 Knight, Manasseh. 
 
 Loring, Charles G. 
 
 Loring, C. William. 
 
 Loring, Charles G., jun. 
 ♦Lowell, John, jun. 
 
 Miles, Henry T. 
 
 Moors, Joseph B. 
 ♦Paige, David W. 
 ♦Perkins, John S. 
 ♦Pitts, Orlando. 
 
 Pojx", Augustus R. 
 
 Parks, Luther, jun. 
 
 Poor, Arthur II. 
 •Poor, Geiirge F. 
 
 Richards, Reuben A. 
 
 Richards, William B. 
 
 Ridgway, John, jun. 
 ♦Russell, James. 
 
238 
 
 SUPERINTENDENTS AND TEACHERS. 
 
 Shattuck, George C, jun. 
 Sherwin, Thomas. 
 *Terry. John S. 
 Tracy, Frederic U. 
 Wadsworth, Alexander. 
 
 Ware, Loammi G. 
 Whiting, James. 
 Willard, Joseph. 
 Willard, Sydney. 
 *Withington, Oliver W. 
 
 *** Any mistakes or imperfections in the above List will be excused by our 
 readers, as the unfortunate loss of valuable early records of the school rendered 
 perfect accuracy impossible. 
 
239 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The members of the West Church will understand perfectly how 
 the various parts of this little work have arisen, and how tliey join 
 together to form a real and natural whole. Readers beyond the 
 parish-circle will excuse what may seem the inartificial, miscella- 
 neous, and unique character of its composition, when they remem- 
 ber how entirely it is a product of providential circumstances and 
 successive suggestions. For the closing portion, relating to our 
 Sunday school, it were an injustice to withhold especial thanks to 
 the author, whose zeal has found, amid the press of many avo- 
 cations, timoto commemorate the institution which was for many 
 years his own peculiar and beloved charge ; which owes much of 
 its prosi^crity to his earnest and never-remitted instruction and 
 care; but whose devotion to it has been so disinterested and single- 
 hearted, that he would refuse even this simple tribute of our grati- 
 tude, were it not, as out of oiur common heart, given altogether 
 without his own knowledge. 
 
241 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 PB^CEEDINGS OF THE PARISH. 
 
 It can hardly fail trf appear to all readers of this volume, as it 
 does to those having charge of its publication, honorable to the 
 ancient and respected Association that passed the following resolu- 
 tions, no less than just to him on whose account they were framed, 
 that they should have in these pages a distinct place. They are 
 therefore here subjoined. 
 
 At a meeting of the Boston Association of Congrega- 
 tional Ministers held this day (Dec. 24, 1855), the follow- 
 ing resolutions were adopted : — 
 
 Resolved, That the Association, having learned that it is 
 the intention of the West Church to celebrate the Fiftieth 
 Anniversary of its Senior Pastor, Rev. Dr. Lowell, on 
 the first Sunday of the new year, feel, and wish in some 
 simple way to express, their deep interest in the occasion 
 of that ceremony. 
 
 Resolved, That, although the younger portion of this 
 body must speak rather from tradition than from expe- 
 rience, we look back with emotion to the days when our 
 revered and beloved brother was accustomed to take his 
 
 21 
 
242 APPENDIX TO THE "PROCEEDINGS." 
 
 seat among us, and to share and exchange with us the 
 laborious joy of the Christian pulpit, and to the later 
 time when we were compelled to relinquish the animation 
 of his presence, the wisdom of his counsel, and the strong 
 advantage of his aid. 
 
 Resolved, That we bless the Divine Providence which 
 has dealt so kindly with him in his invalid but honored 
 retirement, and has so kept with him the hearts of his 
 people, that the pastoral tie which bound him to them 
 half a century ago retains still its early ten(ierness and 
 strength. 
 
 Resolved, That, though our Sunday duties will so occupy 
 us that we cannot personally attend the solemnities of 
 that jubilee, our hearts will be there in the remembrances 
 that are awakened and cherished, in the thanks that are 
 returned, aqd in the prayers that are offered up on behalf 
 of the aged pastor, who can now scarcely serve but with 
 his heart, and speak but from his privacy ; and on behalf 
 of the younger minister, who still stands fully girt for his 
 work ; and for the prosperity of the church which so 
 endearingly connects their names. 
 
 Resolved, That the foregoing resolutions be transmitted 
 by the scribe through the Junior to the Senior Pastor of 
 the "West Church. 
 
 [Signed] Rufus Ellis, 
 
 Scribe of the Boston Association of 
 Congregational Ministers. 
 
AYS 
 
 -ged for ead 
 
BX9834 .B7W5 .A3 
 The West Church; 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
 and its ministers 
 
 Wmmm\