the university of Connecticut libraries 5 VJ1 NO I O SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES Memories Here and There of John Williams, D.D., LL. D. FOURTH BISHOP OF CONNECTICUT GARNERED BY WILLIAM FORD NICHOLS, D. D. Bishop of California Publication No. 134 Quarterly, Price $1.00 April 1924 Church Missions Publishing Company 45 Church Street, Hartford, Conn. Acceptance for mailins at special rate* of postage provided for in section 1 103 Act of October 3, 1917, Authorized January 12, 1924. Bishop John Williams About 1870 'Vos estis Catholicae Legis protectores, Sal terrae, lux hominum, ovium pastores, Mnri domus Israel, morum correctores, Vigiles Ecclesiae, gentium doctores." SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES Memories Here and There of John Williams, D.D., LL. D. FOURTH BISHOP OF CONNECTICUT NINTH PRESIDING BISHOP 1887-1899 GARNERED BY WILLIAM FORD NICHOLS, D. D. Bishop of California Publication No. 134 Quarterly April 1924 Church Missions Publishing Company 45 Church Street, Hartford, Conn. Acceptance for mailing at special rates of postage provided for in section 1 103 Act of October 3. 1917, Authorized January 12, 1924. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Boyhood and Early Manhood. II. President of Trinity College and Bishop of Connecticut III. Symmetry and Strength in Episcopate. IV. Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School, Scholar and Connecticut Churchman. V. Visit to England and Scotland in 1884. VI. Later Years and Last Days. MEMORIES, HERE AND THERE OF BISHOP JOHN WILLIAMS, D. D., LL. D. I. BOYHOOD AND EARLY MANHOOD Years ago in one of Bishop Williams' "visitation homes," on a vine-clad hill, where his memory is ever kept fragrant, there was a somewhat unique interpretation of the possibilities of a "sketch." An artist-guest with a piece of chalk, a piece of char- coal, and as an eraser a piece of bread, outlined on a bit of cardboard, for the evening circle the successive typical features of the stages of a long lifetime. He practically made a man grow up before our eyes with a few deft transitional touches transform- ing the infant to the boy, the boy to the youth and so on, by decades let us say, until we saw the child face evolved in its persistence of personality into its characteristic pose and expression of a dignified old age. As a sketch it covered progressively a ripened record. It gave an impression of four score years in about thirty minutes. As a miniature sketch of a full manhood that impression was a "compression" without sacrificing expression. Therein was the genius of the true artist. Now one of the most life-like portraits of Bishop John WilHams is what has been called his "Rembrandt photograph" with its chiaroscuro of light and shadow. In_ effect it seems an appeal to the imagination with its impalpable shadowing, a plea for lack of doing full justice to the noble countenance in what has been called the background of "a sense of impossibility." Some such qualifications of real art would be essential for any sketch however lightly drawn which could at all satisfy those who knew and valued the greatness of the fourth Bishop of Connecticut. And the writer of this dwells on the matter at the outset because it would simply be his despair to attempt anything of the kind. All he can hope to do in his loyal wish to accede to the request 4 SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES which has come to him from the Church Missions PubHshing Company is to gather up memories here and there out of others' association with the Bishop as well as his own, with the aim to identify and preserve some of the memorable traits so fondly cherished by us all. The Bishop was proof against the repeated solicitation which came to him to dower the Church with his autobiography and indeed his destruction of correspondence and his instruction to his executors to destroy every letter, sermon, etc., that might be found among his effects, all were in the line of forestalling any adequate preparation of his Biography — which failing his Auto- biography — would have undoubtedly illuminated the chapters of our Church History in the making of which he had so marked, if modest, a part. There are not wanting, however, reminiscences as well as memorabilia of him upon which we can draw, and, in order to give them their "sketch" limning for following out con- tours, we shall be guided a good deal by the principle of selecting those bearing upon the progressive periods of his life from his childhood on. And we can venture upon that believing that he would submit to our hope for his allowing it with the same genial resignation with which he permitted his photograph to be taken for pleading admirers. John Williams was born of a distinguished Puritan ancestry in Deerfield, Massachusetts, August 30, 1817. His father was Ephraim Williams, well known among contemporaries as a high minded jurist and his mother was Emily Trowbidge Williams, whose stately presence in the Bishop's home in Middletown until her death in 1872 some of us well remember. Given such antece- dents, it would seem not to have been difficult to read a horoscope over the boy of his coming distinction. There was a New England heredity of intellectual promise, a home life to foster warm qualities of heart, back to which those who were privileged to know it in that Middletown home could trace his close filial devotion to his aged mother. From the first we can surmise that symmetry of character and training from a fine blend and due proportioning of vigor of mind and heart which all after years developed as the real hiding of his power. And indeed to try to catch that vraisemblance of him as his life distinction, seems to afford the motif in the freehand outlining of this sketch. Prepared BISHOP JOHN WILLIAMS 5 for Harvard in Academies at Deerfield and Northfield, Massachu- setts, he entered the College in 1831 at the end of his fourteenth year. His own memories of those early home days he sometimes dwelt upon as precious in themselves and as illustrative of a type of the old time New England family and home life. He liked to recall hours around the hearthstone of the family thrown upon its own resource for passing long winter evenings; with tales of the days of Indian incursions in which his own ancestry had suffered; with paternal readings of installments of Scott's novels as they came before the days of our many periodicals, creating in the boy a love for them which to the end of his life often presented that familiar scene in his habitual corner of his Drawing Room as he sought relaxation from busy days in one of those well-worn Waverly volumes; with the storm-staid emphasis of cosiness around the blazing logs which always gave to him such a joy in Whittier's "Snow Bound" in his later years. "Shut in from all the world without We sat the clean-winged hearth about." The very boy in him sometimes seemed to find a new glee in a snowstorm as he would look out of a window, quoting, "As zigzag wavering to and fro Crossed and re-crossed the winged snow," and say "See how true that is — the flakes never seem to light anywhere." The wholesome atmosphere of that home supplies to the imagination its contribution to the daily rounding and develop- ing of a natural strength of character, where detail of routine is lacking. One episode, however, for which the Bishop himself was the authority is too suggestive of what might be called "meeting house atmosphere" of the time to be omitted here. "Many a long Sunday hour he spent in one of the old-time square pews" of the Unitarian church, for — as we shall see later — his boyhood was not in the communion of his after choice, "sitting through the old-time discourse, before which it is to be feared sometimes the hour glass had about the only signs of real 'following'." It so happened that directly in front of the boy John Wilhams sat a worthy magnate of that congregation, whose queue so adjusted itself to that gentleman's habitual slumbers in sermon time that, as his head slipped down on the back of the pew, the queue took 6 SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES an angle upward and projected over into the pew of the WilHams family with a sort of weekly challenge to the boy, not so absorbed in the current sermon as to be oblivious of the fact. Sunday after Sunday the temptation came, and was resisted; but it finally became too much for the boy nature; and in a moment when, both in his own and the adjoining pew, somnolence seemed to reign, the challenge was met; the queue was firmly clutched and tweaked, with an instantaneous effect upon several staid family pews in that immediate vicinity; and the boy never forgot it! The Bishop laconically remarked that it was impressed upon him by its conse- quences to him from a paternal source as well as by the experience itself! While at Harvard he was under the administration of President Josiah Quincy of whom he had a fund of anecdotes attesting the human in that sedate dignitary, but the notable feature of his life there was the evidence of a depth and working of conviction rare in one only fifteen or sixteen. Dr. Samuel Hart says of it "While at Harvard, largely owing to the influence of the Reverend Benjamin Davis Winslow, after much discussion and study he became in his convictions a Churchman." Bishop Henry Potter in his Sketch of Bishop Williams from which I quote freely, says "there was in the youth an intellectual element which he never outgrew." He went from Harvard to Trinity College, Hartford, in which he was to be in time "tutor, professor, trustee, president and Chancellor" and graduated there in the class of 1835. His classmate and roommate, James Roosevelt Bayley, afterwards became the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore. And another classmate, Robert Tomes, in a book of voluble reminiscences reflected the high regard of the fellow students for John Williams in the tribute he paid to him. Becoming a Candidate for Orders he entered the General Theological Seminary but his continuance was interrupted by the illness of his Father and his theological training was received from the Rev. Dr. Samuel Farmer Jarvis, who has been called "the most learned scholar among the Churchmen of his day," becoming Dr. Jarvis' assistant at the then Christ Church, Middletown, Connecticut, after his ordination to the Diaconate by Bishop Brownell, September 2, 1838. He was advanced to the Priesthood in the same church September 26, 1841. We can read "between the lines" of those primary years of his ministry in Middletown BISHOP JOHN WILLIAMS 7 that the application of the scholar to his opportunities signalized his use of the time allowed him by his simple routine of parochial duty, the curate then not being the morning to night "institutional- ist" so much the vogue today. And the later founding of the Berkeley Divinity School with the provision of the old home of Dr. Jarvis as the Bishop's Kfe-long residence, had a sentiment with him that was itself a fond tie with his Middletown Diaconate. Not long after he was ordained to the Priesthood he accepted the call to St. George's Church, Schenectady, extended to him May 24, 1842, being instituted as Rector July 29, 1842. In Vestryman Mr. Willis T. Hanson, Jr.'s fine History of St. George's Church of 1919, he says "Among the regular attendants of St. George's Church there are still to be numbered those who remember well the handsome, dignified figure, the earnest words of counsel, always met with marked attention; and who still cherish as their fondest memory the recollection of their association with Mr. Williams, continuing active in many cases for years after his removal from Schenectady." Such memories of Mr, Williams' years in parish life are especially choice when we appreciate how comparatively small part of his ministry was that of a parish deacon and priest, — only some nine years out of sixty-one; and how naturally we think of him more in his career as Academic Head and Bishop than parish priest. Not much in detail to be sure has been preserved of his parish routine and Mr. Hanson regrets that in the Vestry Records of St. George's there is "Httle worthy of com- ment" of the parish activities during the rectorship of Mr. Williams and that the minutes "reflect to no degree the noteworthy success which really attended the ministrations of Mr. Williams. They suggest in no way the reason for his success, — the personality of the man himself. It is the aim of this sketch, where fullness of treatments fails, to show by intimation the effect of the gifts of mind and heart in their happy combination, upon the folk of his congregations, brief as was that stage of his ministry. The history of St. George's has with meticulous care preserved the record of baptisms, marriages and burials (and even of births from 1767 to 1788) and for Mr. Williams' rectorship — he was first made a Doctor of Divinity by Union College in 1847 — there are some seven large pages of recorded baptisms, two pages of marriages and four pages of burials in a little more 8 SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES than six years. Among the adult baptisms is the name of Eliza Tibbs whom many will remember as the Bishop's faithful house- keeper for many years. There is also the name of Abraham New- kirk Littlejohn, afterwards Bishop of Long Island and Emily Williams — could that have been the Bishop's mother, formerly a Unitarian? — both "hypothetically baptized." As a rector he not only won the "united affection and ardent attachment" of his people as they expressed it to him when he declined his first call but in his frequent after references to those years there was the manifest mark they had made upon his life as a true joy of his ministry. He formed lifetime intimacies with members of the Faculty of Union College and with neighboring clergy, including such men as President Eliphalet Nott, Prof. Alonzo Potter, after- wards Bishop of Pennsylvania, and his brother, Horatio Potter, then Rector of St. Peter's, Albany, afterwards Bishop of New York, and he had many anecdotes of their comradeship. While at St. George's in 1844 Mr. Williams issued a small volume of Ancient Hymns oj Holy Church in one of which Mr. Hanson calls attention to an expression in which the rector indicated a wish that "he might sleep his last sleep" in the Churchyard shadowed by the St. George's he loved — where he would be content to serve all his days. And again that early essay of sacred, verse incidentally discloses the characteristic play of fine sentiment in and around his parts of mind and heart that were so rapidly arresting the notice of the Church. But in what Bishop Henry Potter quotes as "the curious ripeness of his youth" his Alma Mater sought him for its Head, II. PRESIDENT OF TRINITY COLLEGE AND BISHOP OF CONNECTICUT In 1848 when only thirty-one years of age, he became President of Trinity College bringing to it "qualities of vision and prudence rarely found except as the notes of middle life or advanced age." In the meantime in 1846 Mr. Williams had deliv- ered the first address before the Convocation of the College with the foreshadowing title The Christian Scholar: his position, his dangers and his duties. Out of its eloquent pages we may quote BISHOP JOHN WILLIAMS 9 one paragraph which singularly suggests his own life accomplish- ment as well as his ideal of a "practical scholar": "He is the man who when he comes in contact with another mind, has power to give that mind a bent, an impulse, a lofty tone, a high direc- tion, an earnest ardor, and to impart to it deeper, fuller, truer life." Could the multitudes who felt his influence or came under his immediate training more felicitously express what he was to them? Then in his inaugural as President with the opportune subject Academic Studies dehvered on Commencement Day, 1849, as he outlined the Prospectus for his policy he treats of the field of Study under the three heads. "1. The laws of nature," "2. Of Ancient and Modern Languages and literature," and "3. Of our- selves," discussing in his masterly survey "the proportion in which they are to be com.bined" in the changes of the ages, while the elements of instruction remain the same. Much of that address of the mid-nineteenth century conditions would with all our academic changes be worthy of utterance by any University President today in its vision and scope. We can only cite a point of its summary: "It will not do to give the young man the impression that his college life is as it were, but a parenthesis in his existence, isolated and separated, unconnected with either what precedes or follows it. Not so. It gathers up the acquirements, the powers, the faculties of earlier days; it directs and gives a tone to these same things as they stretch onward to maturer life. It gives the keys of knowledge, it teaches how to use them; and if they who hold them will not then unlock the vast and glorious treasure house, the fault is all their own." As President of Trinity all available information goes to show that Dr. Williams was truly the Scholar in action on the very lines quoted from him above. A man of affairs as an Executive, an expert for treating the very human genus of the undergraduate, the commanding personality we are trying to trace in every stage of this sketch, his widening recognition in the Republic of Letters, and the turning to him as having leadership for the Church, all were outstanding even in the few years of his tenure of the College Presidency before his Call to the Episcopate finally withdrew him from the office. And here we must deplore the lack of his corres- pondence both during his Presidency and his whole episcopate in which with its characteristic elan all these features would speak 10 SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES for themselves. His letters would have made possible the larger Biography. Their loss and that deprecation of any biographical enterprise which sometimes led him to cite experiences of public men of an older generation in the propensity of a certain scribe to "write them up" as "having added a new terror to death!" must even in a sketch leave much space to be filled in by inference. But fortunately Bishop Henry Potter in his Reminiscences of Bishops and Archbishops secured for his Article on Bishop Wil- liams, data of the period of his Presidency from one who v/as then an undergraduate of Trinity, the late Rev. Dr. Horace B. Hitchings, selections from which may well constitute some of the memories "here and there." With his genial and appreciative pen Dr. Hitchings among other memorabilia tells us of his first meet- ing with President Williams when as a freshman a rap came to his door and he thought his time had come for Sophomore exploitation he opened it to find none other than Dr. Williams to give him a kindly greeting and relieve his loneliness. "Those kind words warmed my heart and filled me with a love that made college life a delight and has caused it ever since to be a memory most sweet to look upon." Then he says truly: The President "never forgot that he once had been a boy. That, I believe, was the secret of his successful management of the college; and of his extraordinary influence over young men, even in his advancing years." The following out of several "undergraduate episodes" given by Dr. Hitchings is illustrative of the kind of President he was: "On one occasion the president told me he was sitting at his window during a heavy thunder-storm. The rain came down in torrents. Great was his surprise to see a student, one of the model students at that, bareheaded and in his dressing-gown and slippers, running across the campus with a water pitcher in his hand. What can the boy be up to? he thought. He watched, and saw him climb to the top of a low building near by, empty his watch pitcher, and run back again. What did it all mean? After the storm was over Professor B., who was making observa- tions of the fall of rain for the United States Weather Bureau, came to the president's room and reported the greatest fall of water of which he had ever heard. 'I have searched the records for years back. There was nothing ever like it. So many inches BISHOP JOHN WILLIAMS 11 of water in so many minutes.' The secret of the student's water pitcher was out; but the president kept his counsel. 'Professor, I think I would not make an official report of this storm until I had looked into the matter more thoroughly. There must be some mistake about it. Are you sure there is no leakage from the roof or elsewhere that would affect the water guage?' The president sent for the student to come to his room. 'John, you are neither a duck nor a goose, so don't go out in the rain again with a pitcher of water. You might seriously interfere with the calculations of the United States Weather Bureau.' John after- wards became a distinguished bishop in the Church, but, so far as heard from, was never known either to deny, or affirm, the truth of the story." But his old Diocese of New York in which Schenectady then was, coveted the leadership which they had discovered in him and when it became necessary to hold an episcopal election there the clergy voted for him as their Bishop and the laity came near making it an election. It was said that some of the latter objected to his Churchmanship, passing it around that he was a "Puseyite." We shall note something of his real relation to the "Oxford Movement" later but the writer of this was assured years ago by an old and leading Presbyter who participated in that election that Dr. Williams in his judgment would undoubtedly have been chosen for the episcopate of New York at an adjourned Conven- tion. He furthermore stated that he was one of a Committee to visit Church leaders in Connecticut, having had an inkling of the probability that the President of Trinity would be elected Assistant Bishop of Connecticut, in order to try to dissuade them in the interest of his choice for New York. But the Connecticut Convention met before the New Yqrk adjourned Convention and on St. Barnabas' Day, June 11, 1851, in St. John's Church, Water- bury, Dr. Williams by 73 out of 88 votes of the clergy concurred in by 87 out of 101 of the laity was elected Assistant Bishop of Connecticut and was consecrated in St. John's Church, Hartford, on Wednesday, October 29th, 1851. From his letter of accept- ance dated June 16, 1851, the following extracts reveal the spirit with which he faced the new responsibilities: "To be associated with the clergy of Connecticut and her laity, is an honor which I feel most deeply. I am most willing, too, to devote my life to 12 SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES the service of a Diocese in which I was confirmed and received both my orders; in whose principles I was educated; to which I am warmly attached; and whose spotless history I reverence and love. * * * And yet with all this, I tremble at the thought of how much this decision involves, for all of us in time, for me in eternity — Were I not conscious that this designation has come to me unsought, and did I not, therefore, feel that I might rest on the promise of the Church's Head I should indeed despair." In the first weeks after his consecration apparently he accompanied Bishop Brownell on visitations and preached and addressed the Candidates. It may be a matter of interest to preserve here a facsimile page of what he later gave his Secretary as his first confirmation address, written out in full in his then clear hand and noted by him as having been delivered twice on each of the Sundays, November 9, 16, 23 and 30, 1851. Early in his episco- pate he was taken down with a severe illness which seems to have left him with an impression indicated from time to time in his Convention addresses that he would not have a long life. And a threatened lack of robustness still earlier seemed to lead him to deprecate betimes any exaggerated stressing of the merely physical qualifications for usefulness in the ministry, which his own eighty-two years certainly sustained. Of that episcopate lacking only one year of a half-century, as Assistant Bishop, Bishop and Presiding Bishop it must be a most conscious defect of this sketch to be unable to give an adequate idea. How it left its mark in preaching and teaching on unnumbered lives; how it added new and determining chapters to the welfare and progress of the Diocese of Connecticut; how it influenced leaders and policies of the National Church; how it impressed intellectual contemporaries, — one of whom himself of high repute said: "Had the Bishop become a lawyer instead of a clergyman, he would have been one of the ablest lawyers and judges the country has ever seen; logical and convincing in argu- ment, just, and discerning truth from error in conclusions." An extended editorial in the Hartford Courant on the occasion of the Jubilee of the Bishop's ordination to the Diaconate, the fiftieth anniversary being September 2, 1888, speaks of him as "one who occupies the highest position in an influential religious body, and is also in a very true sense the foremost citizen of our state. For Emily Trowbridge Williams, the Bishop's Mother o U < H CO W K H K H PQ w X H BISHOP JOHN WILLIAMS 13 while Bishop Williams is officially at the head of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, he is, in the respect and affection in which he is held, the Bishop of all Connecticut" and again "Facile Princeps in the American Church as a leader of men as well as first as Presiding Bishop, — an adviser of Bishops, a quasi supreme court judge in canon law, a teacher of theologians as well as of theology, an administrator whose course is as signally marked by the peacemakers' blessings as it is by untiring, self-forgetting work, by far-seeing judgment and by one continuous illustration of the text of one of his own most powerful sermons, 'It is required in stewards that a man be found faithful' — these and other as con- spicuous points of the half-century's record as priest, preacher and scholar might well draw to him in his official character, the homage of all as to a chief man in his generation." Bishop Henry Potter refers to one of his own sermons in which he "ventured to bracket him with Lincoln — the two so unlike in their traditions and training, so often alike in their unadorned and columnar directness and simplicity." III. SYMMETRY AND STRENGTH IN EPISCOPATE We have however from the Bishop himself, spoken at the burial service of another — Bishop John Henry Hopkins some- time of Vermont — words which go to the very heart of his own summary of a true episcopate and undoubtedly express for us better than any one else could an estimate of what he experienced as the epitome of his own. He said, "To one who looks from the outside at a Bishop's work, it. bears, of very necessity, an aspect of routine. And so men come to speak of it as mechanical, and of him as a machine. Nor can his brief Annual Report of 'Confirmations, sermons, ordinations, parishes visited, churches con- secrated' do much to undeceive them. But what a varied, solemn, blessed life there is to him under that dry and unattractive record. What hours and scenes in which he has mingled in life's highest joys and deepest tragedies does it bring back to him. From year to year, the written or spoken words which tell his round of labor are almost the same. But, for him at least, each has its back- 14 SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES ground of cherished memories which give it its distinct, peculiar life. Written it may be nowhere else, these memories are written in his heart; "they enter into the very most hidden portions of his being. Let this be remembered for our chief pastors when we stand beside their tombs, even if it be forgotten while they live." Add to this such a quotation as Bishop Williams made from another Bishop in definition of terms of co-operation of Bishop and Diocese "Neither will I act without you nor can you act without me" and also his application of the counsel of the Son of Sirach to Bishop Seabury's episcopate: "If thou be made the master lift not thyself up but be among them as one of the rest" and we can well take these as disclosing his own aim and his own record. This again suggests what a wealth of strong and loving character in a blend of great mind and heart and ideals for his episcopate could have been revealed in his own language, had his letters as so many sampled them been spread before us in all their characteristic illumination and charm, say in octavo volumes of an artistic Biographer instead of in these fugitive extracts from his public utterances. And his visitations were by no means without their constant contribution to his sense of humour. On one of the earliest of them when he did not know the roadways as thoroughly as he did later and was uncertain as to when to turn to reach a Church for an appointment and as it proved was really going away from rather than towards his destination, he asked a pedestrian the way. The man evidently misled by the youthful appearance of the bishop and his companion in the buggy said "No sir, I won't tell you the way. I don't intend to encourage you young rovers ridin' around this way Sunday afternoons." When the Bishop finally found the right road and entered the chancel for the service, whom should he see but this same censor of "Sabbath breaking" sitting in the front pew! And after service when the Bishop hurried out to enjoy with him the denouement, with equal alacrity the surprised censor was disappearing in the distance! Reminiscences of the Bishop were so rife through the Church that his episcopate had the rare distinction, like that of Bishop Samuel WMlberforce of England, of becoming a sort of "residuary legatee" of all episcopal experiences and good stories orphaned of other fathering, whether the Bishop had anything to o c w H O O o o o w M o h3 so Q H CO K o S w K H BISHOP JOHN WILLIAMS IS do with them or not. But there is a very "embarrassment of riches" in those that are well authenticated and altogether delight- ful as he would recount them. Such mots as "The Puritans first fell on their own knees and then on the aborigines" and his reply at a dinner to an inquisitive individual who was pressing him with some such question as "Has the Rev. Mr. said anything to you about ?" "Nothing to speak of, sir" have had wide currency. But out of many we can only sample two or three choice bits: On one of his visitations, the bishop found himself, in the time between breakfast and the Sunday morning service, alone with the rector's young hopeful in the study. Chummy relations were at once established, and the little four-year-old said: "Oh, Bishop, wouldn't you like to have me show you my picture-book?" "Of course I would," said the bishop. Thereupon the book was brought out and looked over in detail with full zest by both bishop and child. When the sitting was about to adjourn the little fellow intensely delighted the bishop by remarking: "Now, Bishop, don't tell papa about this, cause he won't let me look at this book on Sunday!" Another instance of child candor, "with a moral," was when, sitting on a verandah with the fond six-year-old of the Rectory on his knee, the Rector and his wife started off in a buggy to attend to some parish call. "There go the biggest pair of liars in this town," said the child, pointing to the receding vehicle. "Why, my boy," said the astonished Bishop, "do you say such a thing as that of your loving and good Father and Mother?" "Well," explained the little plaintiff, "they have promised me a good while that the next time they went riding in that buggy they would take me along, but they never do!" There are "various readings'' of another experience of the Bishop which in themselves indicate the "twinkle" and the vogue of the story. What happened was this: In those days of rural "spare rooms," refrigerator-Hke in winter and oven-like in the heat of summer, the Bishop and his Chaplain were spending a night. Before they retired they found the windows were all securely fastened down, and would not yield to any attempt upon them in the interest of fresh air. With a resignation to the stuffiness each could only find broken snatches of sleep. So in the middle of the night the Bishop said to the Chaplain: "I'm not going to 16 SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES suffocate, won't you get up and take one of your shoes and break a window pane to let in air." Fumbling around in the pitch dark- ness the Chaplain did so and bang went the crash of glass. Then the Bishop is reported to have turned over with a great sigh of relief and a prolonged respiration, remarking that fresh air had never felt so good and then to have slept the sleep of the just until morning. But it is left to the imagination of the reader, as it had been to theirs, to find in the daylight, the humble mirror badly smashed, every sunlit window pane still banning outside air! IV. DEAN OF THE BERKELEY DIVINITY SCHOOL, SCHOLAR AND CONNECTICUT CHURCHMAN The Bishop continued for two years after his consecration as President of Trinity, pending the provision of a successor, and then taking what was the start toward a theological department of the College and a group of students to Middletown, he founded the Berkeley Divinity School, — giving it the name of Berkeley in honor of that "minute philosopher" who had made large plans for a university in the New World, chartered "for the instruction of students in literature and theology," which failed to materialize but left its momentum of Christian education even at Yale College in the gift of a library, when he returned to the Old Country to become Bishop of Cloyne. It is noteworthy that the name Berkeley was also significantly chosen in 1860 for the townsite of the State University of California and as the Rev. Dr. Horace Bushnell, the Connecticut and New England Congregationalist Leader of thought on Berkeleian lines of Christian nurture, had some part in selecting that site, it is not improbable that he also had something to do with the choice of the name. The historic residence of the Rev. Dr. Jarvis with whom Bishop Williams had been associated in his diaconate had been given for the Divinity School and in that the Bishop took up his residence for the remainder of his life. The spacious building provided also for all the first needs of dormitory, chapel, library, lecture-rooms, etc., for the Divinity School. And there, for nearly fifty years, even up to classes in his sick room in his last lingering illness, the BISHOP JOHN WILLIAMS 17 successive generations of students felt that factor back of all else in any curriculum, the spell and subtle discipling of his person- ality. It is safe to say that any one who in the course came under that personality, will understand why the objective chosen for this sketch was to show that outstanding symmetry of his power in its fine equilibrium of mind and heart, and grace of modesty and wit of his lectures, which was so well scaled to the big man. That spacious Middletown Library with its mahogany doors, and its Greek columns and its Etruscan ornament, and its well worn volumes, shelf on shelf, seeming to begrudge even window space; and those choice portraits and engravings clustering closely to- gether over and on the mantel, as if they were in danger of being "skyed," or crowded into corners, some near the ceiling, or clinging timidly to places inaccessible to the ever aggressive books, books, books; the big table desk in the centre, and the great capacious easy-chairs; and then that smaller desk, off by itself, and the revolving book case, and, sitting near it in long purple study-wrapper, — "The Bishop." How many will have all that come back to them! Cameras have taken the picture. Pen sketches have reproduced it — spectacles tossed up over the brow and all — but the generations of Berkeley Divinity School men who have sat there and listened to him, in lectures or in lighter vein, will carry the impressions through life as no artificial process can. Seated in that familiar corner by the window, gripping the attention of every one by his limpid English and arresting way of putting his points, with that "art of concealing art" in atmos- phering us in his logic and distinctions, occasionally pulling down those spectacles, which in seeing power seemed to symbolize the noble brow to which they were uplifted, in order to read some clinching quotation and withal a pertinent side remark to broaden our faces with a smile or a pat anecdote to send us into a gale of laughter — no there were no "dry bones" of theology, nor of any other one of his compendious subjects, rattling there! Even the skeletons of his Topics carefully prepared for our study and retention seemed to have a grin of vitality about them. Much might be cited in evidence of the great learning and ripe scholarship which he brought to his students. Dr. Hitchings says: "The Bishop's mind always impressed me as being an orderly arranged storehouse where every package of knowledge 18 SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES was labelled and could be taken down and used at will. His power of concentration of thought was remarkable." His balance of mind and heart was notably manifest in that not always possessed combination of wide learning with singular skill in imparting it. Those halcyon Divinity School days too had their own "lighter vein." All students there of a generation ago will remember "Tim," the faithful janitor, — so faithful that, when told to do anything, he showed a charming indifference to any after circum- stances which might be supposed to modify directions, — any "law of the conditioned," for Tim was no metaphysician. Now it so happened, one morning, when the Bishop was attending the chapel services that his good housekeeper, thinking he was in his library, asked Tim to get from him certain keys she wished to use. Tim obediently started out. Going to the library, and not finding the Bishop there, he soon learned of the chapel service, and proceeded forthwith to the principal chapel door, which is on the "Quad" side. Just as Tim opened the door, the epistoler had announced, "Here endeth the epistle." The Bishop was the gospeller, but before he could make the customary announcement, in that Divinity School chapel of punctilious rubrical propriety, was heard from the side door, in regardless, if unconscious innovation by our good Roman brother Tim, "If you please, sir. Miss T wants the keys." "Very well, you go into the house and get them. The is written in the " came back from the Bishop in his place with all unruffled rubrical order and readiness, and with that dignity that ever characterized Bishop Williams in service and out. And this glimpse of the Bishop in his early days in Middle- town from Some Reminiscences of him by one intimately connected with him for many years both as a personal friend honored with his confidence and affection, and as long-time Treasurer of the Divinity School and most enterprising and efficient in increasing its endowment, Mr. Charles E. Jackson, of Middletown, is signifi- cant of the Bishop's popular ways with town and gown. "Turning back to life in Middletown in the 60's and later, one may remem- ber frequently seeing Bishop Williams on the street and seldom alone. Sometimes amid a group of students or walking with two or three; sometimes with the clergy, of whom many were there — Dr. Goodwin, rector of the parish; Drs. Harwood, Coit, Fuller, BISHOP JOHN WILLIAMS 19 de Koven, Davies, Gardiner, Townsend, Binney and others; some- times stopping for a chat at the old rectory (standing on the present site of Holy Trinity Church) and often meeting his life- long friends of the lay famihes — Alsop, Johnson, Casey, Jackson, Russell, Glover, Hackstaff, Hubbard, Pelton and many others. Always a smile, a pleasant word, and a handshake, and whether he met Jew or Gentile, Catholic or Protestant, all knew Bishop Williams and called him friend, "In the earlier days of the school, when the learned and genial Dr. Thomas W. Coit lived in Troy, he would come in the spring and autumn to lecture to the students, and it was remarked by some witty person that we could always expect Dr. Coit, Connecticut River shad and Barnum's circus at the same time every spring. The Bishop's house was always a center, and its hospitality generous and abundant. During the days at home you would find him in his library working, writing or reading, and in the evening during his mother's life, and afterwards, sitting in a rocking chair in the southwest corner of the parlor smoking his cigar and reading or chatting." And Bishop William Stevens Perry says of him in his sketch in The Episcopate in America, "By his writings, his scholarship, his culture, his gifts as an orator, his wise judgment and inflexible fairness, he is in every sense the most pi-ominent prelate in America." But an extended study of him, both as a proponent and object lesson of that term, which used to be oftener heard than now, "Connecticut Churchmanship" would well interpret the Catholic mindedness conveyed in such Churchmanship in his own exhibition of its best type of Catholic mindedness. The symmetry of his greatness of mind and heart really featured a standard of personal poise of Catholic-mindedness. One need but read his three historical addresses in connection with the Centenary Cele- bration of the consecration of Bishop Seabury, delivered at the successive Conventions of the Diocese of Connecticut of 1883, 1884, and 1885 to discern "between the lines" his conception of "Connecticut Churchmanship," from its antecedents. For example, in tracing what he called "the true beginnings of what was to become the Diocese of Connecticut," he says "The old faith en- shrined in the historic creeds of the Prayer Book; the law and life of worship embodied in its formularies, all leading up to and 20 SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES centering in the highest act of Christian worship, the Holy Eucharist; its ideal of the Christian life taught in its catechism and carried out in all its offices from baptism to burial; on these foundations no broader and no narrower, was our Church here built up. God grant that on these foundations it may stand till time shall end." And two points of the perennial competence and local adaptation of that Churchmanship seem to be, first, its clearness, positiveness and tenacity of essential traditions and, second. Its flexibility for passing conditions. The willingness to spend and be spent under the non-juring phases of that inherited Cath- olicity as well as under its formidable opposition when brought to Connecticut by its first Bishop, showed how little mere oppor- tunism there was in it. Its "full orbed" availability like sunlight illuminating both heights and valleys of our Church expansion in this country since, on the Pacific as this writer has good reason to know, as well as on the Atlantic, expresses all just "modernism" while it never depresses vital fundamentals. What the Rev. Dr. Beardsley wrote over two score years ago might here and there find echo today even though other "movements" have often un- consciously absorbed its genius: "Travel East or West, North or South, go where you will over this broad land, speak aloud the name of "Connecticut Churchman" and if you do not find some one to claim it, you will find many to rise up and do it honor." Bishop Williams visiting England in his earlier life found many things in those years of the Oxford Movement and its leaders, congenial to this inherited Church tradition of his own. And curiously enough there has recently appeared in the English Church press a justification of his widely quoted saying to the effect that in bringing to the American Church the Scotch Communion office, as commended in the Concordat, Seabury gave us a greater boon even than in the succession in the episcopate. At the time of this writing when pressing questions of Prayer Book revision are rife in the Mother Country, the last copy at hand of The Church Times gives a pertinent account of a late Diocesan Conference at Oxford. It quotes a strong advocate for certain alterations in the English office for the Holy Communion and the Prayer of Consecration as appealing to the office Seabury brought over under the Concordat with the Scottish Church. The proposed changes, commented the speaker, "are almost exactly like what CONNECTICUT DELEGATION TO SEABURY CENTENARY 1884 Standing (left to right) — Rev. Messrs. Jarvis, Nichols, Hart. Sitting — Rev. Dr. Beardsley, Bishop Williams CHALICE AND PATEX Presented to the Scottish Church from Connecticut, 1884 BISPIOP JOHN WILLIAMS 21 the Church in America uses, and embody the same principle as the Scottish rite." Shade of Seabury! Connecticut Churchman- ship fairly voiced in a Diocesan Conference "Oxford Movement" of 1923! V. VISIT TO ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND IN 1884. When it was proposed by the Scottish Church to hold a worthy celebration of the centenary of Bishop Seabury's consecra- tion, the logical one to become a central figure in that celebration was the successor in the See of Seabury. The Diocese of Con- necticut became keenly interested in it and made it the occasion for preparatory measures and historical revival of the Seabury origins. A commemorative service of the election which took place on the Festival of the Annunciation in 1783 was held and in the Bishop's sermon and otherwise at the Diocesan Conventions of 1883, 1884, and 1885 much attention was given to the "Seabury Centenary." A full Report of all was published in America as well as one in Scotland, with a wealth of historical matter. Bishop Williams had brought the attention of the coming Anniversary to the Diocesan Convention of 1881 and steps were taken leading to the Connecticut celebration on the 14th of November, 1884, the actual anniversary. He accepted the invitation to attend the Aberdeen celebration, which for purpose of convenience was ap- pointed for the earlier dates, October 7 and 8. The Diocesan Convention of 1884 heard of this "with great satisfaction" and appointed "a representation to go with him, the Rev. Dr. E. E. Beardsley, the R.ev. Samuel F. Jarvis, the Rev. Samuel Hart and the Rev. WiHiam F. Nichols, the last named being his Chaplain and Secretary. The Bishop kept a Diary of jottings of his jour- neyings through England and Scotland, which enables us fortunately to have from his own pen some excerpts to include here, though only a few of the most characteristic can come within the confines of this sketch. The English itinerary was planned with a view to visiting the principal Cathedrals, and the Diary, like the Bishop's fuller verbal illumination of each historic spot, showed his extraordinary scope and facile use of his familiarity with English Church lore. 22 SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES Sometimes a question of the Cathedral interest addressed to the Verger unintentionally threw that voluble individual off the track of his droning monologue. The Diary calls attention at Chester Cathedral to an odd mistake, noted by the keen eye of the Bishop, in the inscription on the tomb of Bishop Pearson and in the very Creed of which he wrote, "resurrection of the dead" is substituted for "resurrection of the body." In Westminster Abbey Canon Westcott (afterwards Bishop of Durham), who took the party around, is noted as "the learned biblical scholar whose commentary on St. John's Epistles is the noblest I ever read. — He showed us, what in my boyhood I had longed to see, the hideous wax figures of Charles II, William and Mary, Anne, and, m.ore hideous than all, Elizabeth. One sight sufficed. — a kitten was sitting much at home on a seat under Andre's tomb and playing with everybody that came." At St. Paul's, August 3, he went to hear Liddon and wrote a brief synopsis of his sermon from Psalm 17:3, adding "there were passages of great eloquence and he held his audience in his hand." His sight-seeing carried him to the Tower, Madame Tussaud's "Waxworks" and other places on the "beaten path," but there were exceptional notes. "August 5. In the evening we got into the House of Commons and heard the debate in Committee on granting 300,000 pounds to Government to get General Gordon out of the scrape they had got him into. It was spicy enough. Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Labouchere, Sir Wilfrid Law- son, Mr. Foster, Sir Stafford Northcote, the Marquis of Harting- ton, Mr. Bourke and Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett (received with groans) spoke. And it was an exceptional chance." Friday, 8th. "We drove (Mr. Nichols and myself) to Addington Park. (Then a country seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury.) The Archbishop (Dr. Benson) was engaged at the moment and a young clergyman from Truro took us into the Park. The Archbishop joined us at luncheon and afterwards we sat under the great cedar of Lebanon and had a long, free, and even confidential talk about Church matters. Our conversation is not for record." From another's memorandum it may be of interest to add "The Archbishop took our Bishop and me to the Chapel and there he and Bishop Williams offered prayer for the Church of the two countries, first Archbishop Benson using the second and third Good Friday Collects, then the Collects for Unity, our Bishop using the Collect to the Holy BISHOP JOHN WILLIAMS 23 Ghost, adapting it "as for ourselves, so for the Churches we represent," the Collect for St. Simon and St. Jude, the Archbishop concluding with the Lord's Prayer and "The Lord bless us and keep us," etc. I shall never forget the quiet little service." Sun- day 10th — went to St. Peter's ad Vinctda in the Tower, where was a good service and a good sermon. It was no light thing to worship there." — "In the afternoon to the Abbey, where a 'Lord Dundreary' in a surplice intoned with an execrable drawl and lisp; the worst intoning I ever heard." — "Canon Westcott preached a noble sermon." August 15 — P. M. "To Bishopsbourne, dear old Hooker's Church; pulpit and communion table the same; church well restored." August 19 — "Went to Salisbury — spent an hour with the Bishop (Moberly.) He is very feeble and fail- ing; but we had a good deal of pleasant conversation." In Oxford for Sunday, August 24th. "Went to St. Mary's. When I was last there in 1840, Newman was Vicar and Pusey, Hawkins, Keble, Sam'l Wilberforce, R. I. Wilberforce, Isaac Williams, Sewall, Bloxam, J. B. Mozley and many more were either here or came here and all are now (1884) gone except Newman and Copeland and C. I hear is so broken up that I could not go to see him. — In the afternoon went to Christ Church Cathedral; the last time I was there I heard Dr. Pusey preach forty-four years ago; now I passed over his grave. Dean Liddell was in his stall but seemed an old man. — After service we went into Christ Church meadows, and then into Oriel Quadrangle, where I looked up at the windows of Newman's room: eheu! eheu! and at the old common roou. where I spent so many pleasant hours. How homelike and yei how strange Oxford seems! August 25th — To Trinity College; saw Copeland's old rooms where I had so many pleasant hours, the Chapel, the Hall, the Commou Room where I used to sit next to dear old Dr. Ingram, and the old lime tree walk. How pleasant and yet how sad it all was! — Well! do what they will, it is Oxford still, but not the Oxford I knew. August 26th, Tuesday. — To Littlemore which I remember so well. But the chapel has been enlarged by adding a chancel and a tower. Still, it had many memories for me. Then we went to see Newman's rooms, etc., especially his library, where he wrote his last things in the Church of England. — Dined in the evening at Dr. Hatch's. The company beside ourselves and the Doctor's two sons. Dr. Chase, 24 SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES Principal of St. Mary's Hall; Professor Sayce; Prof. Driver, Dr. Pusey's successor. A pleasant evening and a reminder of old Oxford days." The Diary notes stop at Cambridge (where the Bishop was much interested in rare documents in the Library of Corpus Christi and University Colleges and other Colleges), at Ely, Peterboro, Lincoln, York, Ripon, Fountains Abbey, Durham, Edinburgh, each eliciting characteristic notes of comment. When visiting Holyrood, September 8th, the Bishop writes, "I could not but remember how deeply my dear Mother was interested in it when we were there together in 1840. Eheu!" Saturday, Sep- tember 13th. — "Went with the Doanes and Eliots — to Dry- burgh, Abbotsford, Melrose, a dense fog in 'Auld Reekie,' but at Melrose a clear charming autumnal day without a cloud. What I specially desired to see this time at Abbotsford were the por- traits of Tom Purdie, Pete Matheson; the valet, J. Simpson, and William Laidlaw, and I found them. All else was unchanged from what I saw in 1840." Then to Dunfermline, Stirling and through the lake country, "the same journey I took with my Mother in 1840." Saturday, Sept. 20, "a memorable day, from beginning to end a dream of delight, and I hope of something better. lona! next to Jerusalem what I had longed to see" — then to Staff a, and Monday 22 from Oban through Loch Elive to Glencoe and Ballachulish. At Ballachulish "we reached St. John's Church, the Church of a parish made up of old hereditary Churchmen, descendants of the faithful 'Men of Appin.' I had determined before I left America to see them if I could and it was a great joy to me to carry out my wish." — "The incumbent gave us Gaelic Prayer Books and showed us the paten and chalice from which the 'men of Appin' received the Holy Communion before they went to Culloden" (battlefield.) He took us "to see some of the old men. They were most eager in their expressions of delight at a visit from a bishop 3,000 miles away. I heard they had had prayers for us the Sunday we were on the Atlantic." Thence by Caledonian Canal to Inverness with a trip to Culloden and Culloden House, to Elgin through Aberdeen, to Braemar, Perth, Dundee, Arbroath, St. Andrew's, Forfar, Glamis' Castle." At Inverness the Bishop preached — (as he did some Sundays on the journeyings elsewhere) and notes that he celebrated the Holy Communion "with the Scottish Rite," reaching Aberdeen for the BISHOP JOHN WILLIAMS 25 celebration Saturday, October 4. In that celebration he was nat- urally a central figure, preaching and making the addresses during the following week, the celebration proper covering October 7, 8, 9, with some eighteen bishops and two hundred clergy present, representing the Scottish, English, Irish, American and Colonial Churches, and vast congregations of the laity. Outstanding in the memorable program were the presentation of addresses from the American House of Bishops and Diocese of Connecticut with responses, presentation from the Church in Scotland of ornate pastoral staff to Bishop Williams, and of chalice and paten from Connecticut to the Scottish Church. Throughout it all the Bishop of Connecticut was recognized in the term used of him by Bishop Doane as a "Prince among prelates." His own brief modest notes are of the welcome "the hospitality is unbounded and of the heartiest kind." Of the great opening service at which he preached "It was a service never to be forgotten." — "A day of great en- joyment" was October 8th, "central day of the Centenary." Saturday, October 11, — "The overwhelming kindness lasted to the very end and I left feeling sad to part with so many I could never in this life see again and yet glad to set my face westward." The Diary after brief references to Carlisle, Furness Abbey, the English Lake Country — "Rydal where was Wordsworth's home: I remember well the coming there with the poet in 1840" — through which the returning party passed on his way to Liverpool, and to the sailing on the "Germanic," October 15th, and after a rough and uncomfortable voyage reaching New York. The 26th concludes with a characteristic reflection, "I am thankful to have gone on such an errand, tho' I always was oppressed with feeling how much better than I did another might have done, and I can never forget the occasion or the great kindness shown me — not as I well knew on my account but because I was Seabury's suc- cessor. It was an occasion greater than one supposed till one came to it: in its memories, in present gifts of God, in outlook for the future. For preservation and health all thro I owe all thanks to Him who has ever given me blessings in undeserved abundance." Could volumes of Biography portray the real humbleness of heart that rounded his greatness of mind more winningly than his own brief sketch in that soliloquy-like revelation of his private Diary? 26 SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES VI. LATER YEARS AND LAST DAYS. In 1887, Bishop Williams became the Senior and Presiding Bishop of the American Church, having previously been the first Chairman elected by the House of Bishops, bringing to him at three score and ten the no slight addition of responsibilities which weighed upon him. Visiting his life-long friend, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, of New York, somewhere about that time, he was shown by his host a private gymnasium room in which there was a "Punching Bag" for active exercise. While Mr. Morgan was ex- hibiting its use in vigorous wallops straight from the shoulder, the Bishop watched him intently and feelingly put in a word: "Pierpont, how I wish I had that to punch after reading my morning mail!" And how that mail reflected the multifarious demands upon his time and thought and heart, even in that part of his correspondence to which the Secretary had to be confidentially admitted! Parish and institutional and personal problems of course; Diocesan and national and international questions in a sort of quasi appeal to a Judge of supreme appeal; canonical and constitutional points; doctrinal beairings; Jiturgiological ulsages; nice shades of casuistry; perplexities of policy; local and general all found their way to him in an unceasing train. And many a solution carried relief and settlement over the face of the Church. And then in print of Church paper or Review, clearing up some passing confusion of thought with crystal insight brought him letters of devout thankfulness and changed convictions and careers. Permanent volumes from his pen like his Bedell Lectures, — The World's Witness to Jesus Christ, his Bishop Paddock Lectures on Studies on the English Reformation, his Studies in the Book of Acts and his syllabi for his Lectures on Theology, Church History, the Prayer Book and other topics of his fine scholarship strengthened the Apologetics and other teaching of the Church. Earlier came A Translation of Ancient Hymns, already noted above, and Thoughts on the Miracles. He had edited in 1849, Hawkstone, "a tale in two volumes," Browne's Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles and had written some Chapters of a novel left incomplete. Many a bit of verse, sometimes of tender sentiment and other times witty skits, will also be remembered of him. But his living BISHOP JOHN WILLIAMS 27 epistle was written far more widely and indelibly in the characters of those who came under his immediate influence than in any paged characters of the alphabet. His Secretaries had no mere monotony of dictation or of copy- ing — and they had no typewriters. He would sometimes while trying to decipher an indistinct script, like Dean Stanley's tenuous lines, say "Come here — see if you can make anything out of that sentence: the writer marks the letter as private and confidential but that is unnecessary; no earthly man can read it anyway!" Then in the days of autograph he with a twinkle in his eye said to the Secretary, "You answer this." Following orders the Secre- tary did so and received in biting sarcasm an effusive acknowledg- ment of his "highly valued autograph!" Of the Bishop's work as an administrator of the Diocese the Rev. Dr. Samuel Hart, in somq respects probably his most scholarly student, and a successor as Dean of the Divinity School, in a worthy memorial sermon preached not long after the Bishop's death furnishes us a "memory" which we can well quote for this sketch, as follows: "He administered the Diocese through years of in- creased activity in some departments of Church work; a time of the erection and enlargement and decoration of Church edifices and of other buildings for parish purposes; a time in which much attention has been given to the appointments for worship and tu< accessories of divine service; a time of the strengthening of old educational institutions and the establishment of new ones; a time of quickened activity in diocesan and domestic and foreign missionary work; a time of adapting or devising forms in which the external life of the Church may be expressed and its benevolent work carried on; a time of historic anniversaries, and therefore of renewed interest in our origins and our principles. Look at the index of our (Connecticut) Journals, and you will see how much of all this was due to the suggestion of our Bishop." And Dr. Hart signalizes in the indefatigable visitations of the Diocese the work to be found "in the simple exhortations which for nearly half a century he gave to the 'young men and maidens, the old men and children' who came to receive from him God's blessing by and with the laying on of hands." With the Bishop's by no means always robust health he sought wise and enjoyable holidays, when he could at Lake George, the history of old Fort Ticonderoga 28 SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES and other points appealing to him, as well as the opportunity to emulate Isaak Walton, in which the Bishop was accredited as being the best fisherman on the Lake. There, too, his winsomeness made him many friends among the other holiday seekers and his faithful boatman was his welcome guest at Middletown. Bishop Doane, of Albany, whom Bishop Williams often ad- dresses in their frequent correspondence as Carissime, has given us this loving epitome of the man: "No one could see the gift of natural manhood of Bishop Williams without the sense of dignity and power and will and intellect they were stamped upon it. He was a spiritual prince from the great dome of his head in every lineament of his face, his keen eye, his firm lips, his strong chin, his over-arching brow, his finely moulded nose, his commanding presence, his firm tread. He was a man men turned to look at and staid to look up to, not merely for his height in inches but for the exaltation of his bearing." With his deep tenderness of sentiment ever in the background of his life, he never married and his mother had his earthly un- divided home affection and devotion. After her death he was heard to sigh in his sleep and say "there is now no one left to close my eyes" and undoubtedly had lonely years, though with a poise of reticence and outward cheer. Easter he once said meant more to him than Christmas in his hearthstone associations. Big- ness of heart had that demonstration earthward as well as in all the affectionate cast of his companionships and letters. And on the side towards God his whole life and ministry seemed an object lesson of that interpretation of the New Testament Gospel of love as a fruit of the Holy Spirit, which functions in steady-going char- acter back of any passing feelings. Bishop Butler's profound distinction between the active habit and the passive impression had evidently entered into the theory of his life as it did into his teaching of practical religion as against the New England traditions of revival and excitement, which the Reverend Dr. Horace Bushnell did so much to counteract. Indeed may it not have been partly the exhaustive study and illumination of the New Testament dis- tinction in using the different words for love that made him admire Westcott's St. John's Epistles as "the noblest I ever read" as noted in his Diary above when he met the Canon at Westminster Abbey! Such a statement as this from Westcott's Commentary From a Photograph Taken 1893 The Presiding Bishop 1887-1899 BISHOP JOHN WILLIAMS 29 would especially appeal to him as he was trying to live its illustra- tion: "From a consideration of (many) passages it will be seen that agapan, agape are an expression of character, determined, as we are forced to conceive of things, by will and not of spontaneous, natural emotion. In this sense 'love' is the willing communication to others of that which we have and are; and the exact opposite of that passion which is the desire of personal appropriation." Many will recall that quoted maxim of Bishop Williams, "Doe ye nexte Thynge" as the calm philosophy for the carry on of life. The free-hand lines of this sketch drawn from "Memories here and there" of others as well as of the writer will accomplish their purpose if they can at all "suggest a manhood and a ministry in which the strength of mind and of heart of Bishop Williams were blended in rare proportion and graciousness." It is no part of such a sketch to try to fill in with mezzotint effect shades of personal virtues or faults. Such outlines cannot and ought not to attempt to draw strokes of heart or brain anatomy. Those significant aspira- tions written in their Latin just before and just after the record of his consecration as the first entry beginning his official Journal "O God make haste to help me," "God be merciful" "tell," says Dr. Hart in quoting them "of earnest resolve, and of the conviction that only by divine grace could it be carried out: they tell of the sense of unworthiness and imperfection and how he felt the need of God's gracious pardon." In 1871 after submitting to the Con- vention summaries of Diocesan statistics to that date and making some comparisons with those of 1851, the year of his consecration, and saying that they "indicate a quiet but I think a steady and abiding growth" he adds, "No man can feel so strongly as I do how much greater that growth might probably have been, how much more progress might have been made, had another than myself been your Chief Pastor. Indeed that feeling, growing as it has with every year, is the heaviest burden of all I have to bear. God all merciful grant that my errors and shortcomings may be visited on myself alone and not on the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made me an overseer!" The average duration of an American Episcopate is I believe, fifteen years. I never could have wished, either for your sake or my own, that mine should form any exception to the rule. It has however been prolonged beyond the average line. But its 30 SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES end must now be nearer, probably much nearer than its beginning is. As I look back towards that beginning and recall the un- numbered kindnesses which have come to me from my clergy and people — whether living upon earth today, or sleeping in the Lord Jesus, — I find no words to express my gratitude, not to earthly friends alone but above all, to God, our Heavenly Father Who made the lines to fall 'unto me in pleasant places.' As I look forward to that nearer end I feel, beloved, how much I need your prayers to God the Holy Ghost that I may have a right judgment in all things;' how much we all need to join in earnest supplication for 'the peace of Jerusalem' and the preservation in its integrity and its purity, of the glorious heritage which has come to us from our fathers." The end of his episcopate proved to be a third father off than the beginning, but we may well see in this heart revelation his final nunc dimittis sentiment when he was taken to his rest after a prolonged confinement to his bed, on Tuesday, February 7, 1899, almost at the very time when the students of the Divinity School at Evensong in the Chapel were singing the Nunc Dimittis. What a devout consummation in that coincidence of student chant with passing soul! He had prescribed in "Directions for my Executors" a severe simplicity in all details for the final arrangements, among them 'I direct my grave stones to be in form, size and material, the same as those at the grave of my mother. On the headstone nothing to be placed but my name, John Williams, and the date of my death, on the footstone my initials, — J. W." The final services were notable for that same simplicity thronged as they were with his clergy and people and his earthly remains lie by the side of those of his mother awaiting in that beautiful Indian Hill Cemetery the appearing of the Chief Shepherd. His very grave, in accordance with his sentiments is placed for his facing in the East that "dawn of the Son of Righteousness."