Chapter I: WAS born in Sheffield, Mass., on the 28th of March, 1794. My (2)

But more serious matters claim attention in connection with Andover. I was to form some judgment upon questions in theology. I certainly was desirous of finding the Orthodox system true. But the more I studied it, the more I doubted. My doubts sprung, first, from a more critical study of the New Testament. In Professor Stuart's crucible, many a solid text evaporated, and left no residuum of proof. I was startled at the small number of texts, for instance, which his criticism left to support the doctrine of "the personality of the Holy Spirit." I remember saying to him in the class one day, when he had removed another prop,--another proof-text: "But this is one of the two or three passages that are left to establish the doctrine." His answer was: "Is not one declaration of God enough? Is it not as strong as a thousand?" It silenced, but it did not satisfy me. In the next place, I found difficulties in our theology from looking at it in a point of view which I had not before considered, and that was the difference between words and ideas, between the terms we used and the actual conceptions we entertained, or between the abstract thesis and the living sense of the matter. Thus with regard to the latter point, I found that the more I believed in the doctrine of literally eternal punishments, the more [45] I doubted it. As the living sense of it pressed more and more upon my mind, it became too awful to be endured; it darkened the day and the very world around me. At length I could not see a happy company or a gay multitude without falling into a sadness that marred and blighted everything. All joyous life, seen in the light of this doctrine, seemed to me but a horrible mockery. It is evident that John Forster's doubts sprung from the same cause. And then, I had been accustomed to use the terms "Unity" and "Trinity" as in some vague sense compatible; but when I came to consider what my actual conceptions were, I found that the Three were as distinct as any three personalities of which I could conceive. The service which Dr. Channing's celebrated sermon at the ordination of Mr. Sparks in Baltimore did me, was to make that clear to me. With such doubts, demanding further examination, I left the Seminary at Andover.

We parted, we classmates, many of us in this world never to meet again. Some went to the Sandwich Islands, one to Ceylon, one to the Choctaw Indians; most remained at home, some to hold high positions in our churches and colleges, Wheeler, President of the Vermont University, a liberal-minded and accomplished man; Torrey, Professor in the same, a man of rare scholarship and culture; Wayland, President of Brown University, in Rhode Island, well and widely [46] known; and Haddock, Professor in Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and recently our charge d'affaires in Portugal. Haddock, I thought, had the clearest head among us. Our relations were very friendly, though I was a little afraid of him, and with him I first visited his uncle, Daniel Webster, in Boston. I was struck with what Mr. Webster said of him, many years after, considering that the great statesman was speaking of a comparatively retired and studious man: "Haddock I should like to have always with me; he is full of knowledge, of the knowledge that I want, pure-minded, agreeable, pious," I use his very words, "and if I could afford it, and he would consent, I would take him to myself, to be my constant companion."

I left Andover, then, in the summer of 1819, and in a state of mind that did not permit me to be a candidate for settlement in any of the churches. I therefore accepted an invitation from the American Education Society to preach in behalf of its objects, in the churches generally, through the State, and was thus occupied for about eight months.

Some time in the spring, I think, of 1820, I went down to Gloucester to preach in the old Congregational Church, and was invited to become its pastor. I replied that I was too unsettled in my opinions to be settled anywhere. The congregation then proposed to me to come and preach [47] a year to them, postponing the decision, both on their part and mine, to the end of it. I was very glad to accept this proposition, for a year of retired and quiet study was precisely what I wanted. I spent that year in examining the questions that had arisen in my mind, especially with regard to the Trinity. I read Emlyn's "Humble Inquiry," Yates and Wardlaw, Channing and Worcester, besides other books; but especially I made the most thorough examination I was able, of all the texts in both Testaments that appeared to bear upon the subject. The result was an undoubting rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity. The grounds for this, and other modifications of theological opinion, I need not give here; they are sufficiently stated in what I have written and published.

And here let me say that, although I had my anxieties, I had none about my personal hold upon heart-sustaining truth. It was emphatically a year of prayer, if I may without presumption or indelicacy say so. Humbly and earnestly I sought to the God of wisdom and light to guide me; and I never felt for a moment that I was perilling my salvation. I had a foundation of repose, stronger than mere theology can give, deep and sure beneath me. I had indeed my anxieties. I felt as if I were putting in peril all my worldly welfare. All the props which a man builds up around him in his early studies, all the props of church relationship and religious friendship, seemed to be suddenly falling away, and I was [48] about to take my stand on the threshold of life, alone, unsupported, and unfriended.

I soon had practical demonstration of this, not only in the coldness and the withdrawal of friends, all natural enough, I suppose, and conscientious, no doubt, but in the summons of the Presbytery of the city of New York, from which I had taken out my license to preach, to appear before it and answer to the charge of heresy. The summons was made in terms at war, I thought, with Christian liberty, and I refused to obey it. The terms may have been in consonance with the Presbyterian discipline, and perhaps I ought not to have refused. What I felt was, and this, substantially, I believe, was what I said, that, if "the Presbytery propose to examine me simply to ascertain whether my opinions admit of my standing in the Presbyterian Church, I have no objection; I neither expect nor wish to remain with it; but it appears to me to assume a right and authority over my opinions to which I cannot submit."

At the end of the year passed in Gloucester, it appeared that the congregation was about equally divided on the question of retaining me as pastor; at any rate, the circumstances did not permit me to think of it, and I went up to Boston to assist Dr. Channing in his duties as pastor of the Federal Street Church.

But I must not pass over, yet cannot comment upon, the great event of my year at Gloucester, the greatest and happiest of my life, my [49] marriage. {4} It took place in Boston, on the 26th day of December, 1820, the Rev. Dr. Jarvis officiating as clergyman, my wife's family being then in attendance upon his church. As in the annals of nations it is commonly said that, while calamities and disasters crowd the page, the happy seasons are passed over in silence and have no record, so let it be here.

My going up to Boston, to be acquainted with Channing, and to preach in his church, excited in me no small expectation and anxiety. I approached both the church and the man with something of trembling. Of Channing, of his character, of his conversation, and the great impression it made upon me, as upon everybody that approached him, I have already publicly spoken, in a sermon {5} which I delivered on my return from Europe after his death, and in a letter to be inserted in Dr. Sprague's "Annals of the American Pulpit." In entering the pulpit of Dr. Channing, as his assistant for a season, I felt that I was committing myself to an altogether new ordeal, I had been educated in the Orthodox Church; I knew little or nothing about the style and way of preaching in the Unitarian churches; I knew only the pre-eminent place which Dr.

{FN 4: To Louisa Farnham, daughter of William Farnham, of
Boston. M. E. D.}

{FN 5: This sermon, a noble, tender, and discriminating tribute
to Dr. Channing, was reprinted in 1831, on the occasion of the
Channing Centennial Celebration at Newport, R. I.--M. E. D.}

[50] Channing occupied, both as writer and preacher, and I naturally felt some anxiety about my reception. I will only say that it was kind beyond my expectation. After some months Dr. Channing went abroad, and I occupied his pulpit till he returned. In all, I was in his pulpit about two years. On my taking leave of it, the congregation presented me with a thousand dollars to buy a library. It was a most timely and welcome gift.

During my residence in Boston, I made my first appearance, but anonymously, in print, in an essay entitled "Hints to Unitarians." How ready this body of Christians has always been to accept sincere and honest criticism, was evinced by the reception of my adventurous essay. My gratification, it may be believed, was not small on learning that it had been quoted with approbation in the English Unitarian pulpits; and Miss Martineau told me, when she was in this country, then learning that I was the author, that she, with a friend of hers, had caused it to be printed as a tract for circulation. She would say now that it was in her nonage that she did it.

The most remarkable man, next to Channing, that I became acquainted with during this residence of two years in Boston, was Jonathan Phillips. He was a merchant by profession, but inherited a large fortune, and was never, that I know, engaged much in active business. He led, when I knew him, a contemplative life, was an assiduous reader, and a deeper thinker. He had [51] a splendid library, and spent much of his time among his books. If he had had the proper training for it, I always thought he would have made a great metaphysician. His conversation was often profound, and always original, always drawn from the workings of his own mind, and was always occupied with great philosophical and religious themes. It was born of struggle, more, I think, than any man's I ever talked with. For he had a great moral nature, and great difficulties within, arising partly from his religious education, but yet more from the contact with actual life of a very sensitive temperament and much ill health. He had worked his way out independently from the former, and stood on firm ground; and when some of his family friends charged Channing with having drawn him away from Orthodoxy, Channing replied, "No; he has influenced me more than I have influenced him."

In London, in 1833, I met Mr. Phillips with Dr. Tuckerman, well known as the pioneer in the "Ministry to the Poor in Cities," about to take the tour on the Continent. He invited me to join them, and we travelled together on the Rhine and in Switzerland. It was on this journey that I became acquainted with the sad effect produced upon him by great and depressing indisposition. His case was very singular, and explains things in him that surprised his acquaintances very much, and, in fact, did him much wrong with them. It was a scrofulous condition of the stomach, and [52] when developed by taking cold, it was something dreadful to hear him describe. The effect was to make entirely another man of him. He who was affluent in means and disposition became suddenly not only depressed and melancholy, but anxious about expenses, sharp with the courier upon that point, and not at all agreeable as a travelling companion. But when the fit passed off, which seemed for the time to be a kind of insanity, his spirits rose, and his released faculties burst out in actual splendor. He became gay; he enjoyed everything, and especially the scenery around him. I never knew before that his aesthetic nature was so fine. He said so many admirable things while we were going over Switzerland, that I was sorry afterwards that I had not noted them down at the time, and written a sheet or two of Phillipsiana. His countenance changed as much as his conversation, and its expression became actually beautiful. There was a miniature likeness taken of him in London. I went to see it; and when I expressed to the artist my warm approval of it, he said: "I am glad to have you say that; for I wanted to draw out all the sweetness of that man's face." {6}

One of the most distinguished persons in Dr. Channing's congregation was Josiah Quincy, who, during his life, occupied high positions in the country, and of a very dissimilar character,--

{FN 6: the point in this is that Mr. Phillips' features were
of singular and almost repellent homeliness till irradiated by
thought or emotion. M. E. D.}

[53] Member of Congress, Mayor of Boston, and President of Harvard University, all of which posts he filled with credit and ability; always conscientious, energetic, devoted to his office, high-toned, and disinterested. He was a model of pure and unselfish citizenship, and deserves for that a statue in Boston.

When Mr. Quincy was a very old man, I asked him one day how he had come to live so long, and in such health and vigor. He answered: "For forty years I have taken no wine; and every morning, before dressing myself, I have spent a quarter of an hour in gymnastic exercises." I adopted the practice, and have found it of great benefit, both as exercise, and inuring against colds. It is really as much exercise as a mile or two of walking. President Felton said: "After that, I can let the daily exercise take care of itself, without going doggedly about it." I find that a good many studious men are doing the same thing. I asked Bryant how much time he gave, and he said, "Three quarters of an hour." After that, at least in his summer home, he is upon his feet almost as much as a cat, and about as nimbly. With his thin and wiry frame, and simple habits, he is likely to live to a greater age than anybody I know. [Mr. Bryant and my father were about of an age. They had known each other almost from boyhood, and their friendship had matured with time. The sudden death of the poet in 1878, from causes that seemed almost accidental, was a great and unexpected blow to the survivor, then himself in feeble health. M. E. D.]

[54] I shall add a word about the healthfulness of these exercises, since it is partly my design in this sketch to give the fruits of my experience. It is true one cannot argue for everybody from his own case. Nevertheless, I am persuaded that this morning exercise and the inuring would greatly promote the general health. "Catching cold" is a serious item in the lives of many people. One, two, or three months of every year they have a cold. For thirty years I have bathed in cold water and taken the air-bath every morning; and in all that time, I think, I have had but three colds, and I know where and how I got these, and that they might have been avoided.

But I have wandered far from my ground, Boston, and my first residence there. I was Dr. Channing's guest for the first month or two, and then and afterwards knew all his family, consisting of three brothers and two sisters. They were not people of wealth or show, but something much better. Henry lived in retirement in the country, not having an aptitude for business, but a sensible person in other respects. George was an auctioneer, but left business and became a very ardent missionary preacher; and Walter was a respectable physician. William was placed in easy circumstances by his marriage. Their sister Lucy, Mrs. Russel of New York, told me that she was very much amused one day by something that her brother William said to Walter. "Walter," he said, "I think we are a very [55] prosperous family. There is Henry, he is a very excellent man. And George, why, George has come out a great spiritual man. And you, you know how you are getting along. And as for me, I do what I can. I think we are a very prosperous family."

Mrs. Russel was a person of great sense, of strong, quiet thought and feeling; and some of her friends used to say that, with the same advantages and opportunities her brother had, she would have been his equal.

On a day's visit which Henry once made me in New Bedford, I remember we had a long conversation on hunting and fishing, in which he condemned them, and I defended. Pushed by his arguments, at length I said, "for I went a-fishing myself sometimes with a boat on the Acushnet; yes, and barely escaped once being carried out to sea by the ebb tide," I said, "My fishing is not a reckless destruction of life; somebody must take fish, and bring them to us for food, and those I catch come to my table." "Now," said he, "that is as if you said to your butcher, You have to slay a certain number of cattle, calves, and sheep, and turkeys, and fowls for my table; let me have the pleasure of coming and killing them myself."

Of Dr. Channing himself, I should, of course, have much to say here, if, as I have just said, I had not already expressed my thoughts of him in print. His conversation struck me most; more [56] even than any of his writings ever did. He was an invalid, and kept much at home and indoors, and he talked hour after hour, day after day, and sometimes for a week, upon the same subject, without ever letting it grow distasteful or wearisome. Edward Everett said, he had just returned from Europe, where doubtless he had seen eminent persons, "I have never met with anybody to whom it was so interesting to listen, and so hard to talk when my turn came." There was, indeed, a grand and surprising superiority in Channing's talk, both in the topics and the treatment of them. There was no repartee in it, and not much of give and take, in any way. People used to come to him, his clerical brethren, I remember Henry Ware and others speaking of it, they came, listened to him, said nothing themselves, and went away. In fact, Channing talked for his own sake, generally. His topic was often that on which he was preparing to write. It was curious to see him, from time to time, as he talked, dash down a note or two on a bit of paper, and throw it into a pigeon-hole, which eventually became quite full.

It would appear from all this that Channing was not a genial person, and he was not. He was too intent upon the subjects that occupied his mind for that varied and sportive talk, that abandon, that sympathetic adjustment of his thoughts to the moods of people around him, which makes the agreeable person. His thoughts [57] moved in solid battalions, but they carried keen weapons. It would have been better for him if he had had more variety, ease, and joyousness in society, and he felt it himself. He was not genial either in his conversation or letters. I doubt if one gay or sportive letter can be found among them all. His habitual style of address, out of his own family, was "My dear Sir," never "My dear Tom," or "My dear Phillips," scarcely, "My dear Friend." Once he says, "Dear Eliza," to Miss Cabot, who married that noble-minded man, Dr. Follen, and in them both he always felt the strongest interest. Let any one compare Channing's letters with those of Lord Jeffrey, for instance. The ease and freedom of Jeffrey's letters, their mingled sense and playfulness, but especially the hearty grasp of affection and familiarity in them, make one feel as if he were introduced into some new and more charming society. Jeffrey begins one of his letters to Tom Moore thus: "My dear Sir damn Sir My dear Moore." Whether there is not, among us, a certain democratic reserve in this matter, I do not know; but I suspect it. Reserve is the natural defence set up against the claims of universal equality.

In the autumn of 1823, on Dr. Channing's return to his pulpit, I went to New Bedford to preach in the Congregational Church, formerly Dr. (commonly called Pater) West's, was invited to be its pastor, and was ordained to that charge [58] on the 17th of December, Dr. Tuckerman giving the sermon. An incident occurred at the ordination which showed me that I had fallen into a new latitude of religious thought and feeling. After the sermon, and in the silence that followed, suddenly we heard the voice of prayer from the midst of the congregation. At first we were not a little disturbed by the irregularity, and the clergymen who leaned over the pulpit to listen looked as if they would have said, "This must be put a stop to"; but the prayer, which was short, went on, so simple, so sincere, so evidently unostentatious and indeed beautiful, so in hearty sympathy with the occasion, and in desire for a blessing on it, that when it closed, all said, "Amen! Amen!" It was a pretty remarkable conquest over prejudice and usage, achieved by simple and self-forgetting earnestness. Indeed, it seemed to have a certain before unthought-of fitness, as a response from the congregation, which is not given in our usual ordination services. The ten years' happy, and, I hope, not unprofitable ministration on my part that followed, and of fidelity on the part of the people, were perhaps some humble fulfilment and answer to the good petitions that it offered, and to all the brotherly exhortations and supplications of that hour.

The congregation was small when I became its pastor, but it grew; a considerable number of families from the Society of Friends connected [59] themselves with it, and it soon rose, as it continues still, to be one of the wealthiest and most liberal societies in the country.

My duties were very arduous. There was no clergyman with whom I could exchange within thirty miles; {7} relief from this quarter, therefore, was rare, not more than four or five Sundays in the year. I was most of the time in my own pulpit, sometimes for ten months in succession. In addition to this, I became a constant contributor to the "Christian Examiner," for some years, I think as often as to every other number. It was not wise. The duties of the young clergyman are enough for him. The lawyer, the physician, advances slowly to full practice; the whole weight falls upon the clergyman's young strength at once. Mine sunk under it. I brought on a certain nervous disorder of the brain, from which I have never since been free. Of course it interfered seriously with my mental work. How many days hundreds and hundreds did one hour's study in the morning paralyze and prostrate me as completely as if I had been knocked on the head, and lay me, for hours after, helpless on my sofa! After the Sunday's preaching, the effect of which upon me was perhaps singular, making my back and bones ache, and my sinews as if they had been stretched on the rack, making me [60] feel as if I wanted to lie on the floor or on a hard board, if any one knows what that means, after all this, it would be sometimes the middle of the week, sometimes Thursday or Friday, before I could begin to work again, and prepare for the next Sunday. My professional life was a constant struggle; and yet I look back upon it, not with pain, but with pleasure.

{FN 7: This distance, which now seems so trifling, then
involved the hire of a horse and chaise for three days, and two
long days' driving through deep, sandy roads. M. E. D.}

Besides all this, subjects of great religious interest to me constantly pressed themselves upon my attention. I remember Dr. Lamson, of Dedham, a very learned and able man, asking me one day how I "found subjects to write upon;" and my answering, "I don't find subjects; they find me." I may say they pursued me. It may be owing to this that my sermons have possibly a somewhat peculiar character; what, I do not know, but I remember William Ware's saying, when my first volume of Discourses appeared, "that they were written as if nobody ever wrote sermons before," and something so they were written. I do not suppose there is much originality of thought in them, nor any curiosa felicitas of language, I could not attend to it; it was as much as I could do to disburden myself, but original in this they are, that they were wrought out in the bosom of my own meditation and experience. The pen was dipped in my heart, I do know that. With burning brain and bursting tears I wrote. Little fruit, perhaps, for so much struggle; be it so, though it could not be so [61] to me. But so we work, each one in his own way; and altogether something comes of it.

Early in my professional life, too, I met certain questions, which every thinking man meets sooner or later, and which were pressed upon my mind by the new element that came into our religious society. The Friends are trained up to reverence the inward light, and have the less respect for historical Christianity. The revelation in our nature, then, and the revelation in the Scriptures; the proper place of each in any just system of thought and theology; what importance is to be assigned to the primitive intuitions of right and wrong, and what to the supernaturalism, to the miracles of the New Testament, these were the questions, and I discussed them a good deal in the pulpit, as matters very practical to many of the minds with which I was dealing. I admitted the full, nay, the supreme value of the original intuitions, of the inward light, of the teachings of the Infinite Spirit in the human soul; without them we could have no religion; without them we could not understand the New Testament at all, and Christianity would be but as light to the blind; but I maintained that Christ's teaching and living and dying were the most powerful appeal and help and guidance to the inward nature, to the original religion of the soul, that it had ever received. And I believed and maintained that this help, at once most divine and most human, was commended to the world by miraculous [62] attestations. Not that the miracle, or the miracle-sanctioned Christianity, was intended to supersede or disparage the inward light; not that it made clearer the truth that benevolence is right, any more than it could make clearer the proposition that two and two make four; not that it lent a sanction to any intuitive truth, but that it was the seal of a mission, this was what I insisted on. And certainly a being who appeared before me, living a divine life, and assuring me of God's paternal care for me and of my own immortality, would impress me far more, if there were "works done by him" which no other man could do, which bore witness of him. And although it should appear, as in a late work on "The Progress of Religious Ideas" it has been made to appear, that in the old systems there were foreshadowings of that which I receive as the most true and divine; that the light had been shining on brighter and brighter through all ages, that would not make it any the less credible or interesting to me, that Jesus should be the consummation of all, the "true Light" that lighteth the steps of men; and that this Light should have come from God's especial illumination, and should be far above the common and natural light of this world's day. Nay, it would be more grateful to me to believe that all religions have had in them something supernaturally and directly from above, than that none have.

[63] But time went on, and work went on, reason as I might; though time would have lost its light and life, and work all cheer and comfort, if I had not believed. But work grew harder. I was obliged to take longer and longer vacations, one of them five months long at the home in Sheffield. After this I went back to my work, preaching almost exclusively in my own pulpit, seldom going away, unless it was now and then for an occasional sermon.

I went over to Providence in 1832, to preach the sermon at Dr. Hall's installation as pastor of the First Church. Arrived on the evening before, some of us of the council went to a caucus, preparatory to a Presidential election, General Jackson being candidate for the Presidency and Martin Van Buren for Vice-President. Finding the speaking rather dull, after an hour or more we rose to leave, when a gentleman touched my arm and said, "Now, if you will stay, you will hear something worth waiting for." We took our seats, and saw John Whipple rising to speak. I was exceedingly grateful for the interruption of our purpose, for I never heard an address to a popular assembly so powerful; close, compact, cogent, Demosthenic in simplicity and force, not a word misplaced, not a word too many, and fraught with that strange power over the feelings, lent by sadness and despondency, a state of mind, I think, most favorable to real eloquence, in which all verbiage is eschewed, and the burden [64] upon the heart is too heavy to allow the speaker to think of himself.

Mr. Whipple was in the opposition, and his main charge against Van Buren especially, was, that it was he who had introduced into our politics the fatal principle of "the spoils to the victors," a principle which, as the orator maintained, with prophetic sagacity, threatened ruin to the Republic. Still there was no extravagance in his way of bringing the charge. I remember his saying, "Does Mr. Van Buren, then, wish for the ruin of his country? No; Caesar never wished for the glory of Rome more than when he desired her to be laid, as a bound victim, at his feet."

We have learned since more than we knew then of the direful influence of that party cry, "The spoils to the victors." It has made our elections scrambles for office, and our parties "rings." Mr. Whipple portrayed the consequences which we are now feeling, and powerfully urged that his State, small though it was, should do its utmost to ward them off. As he went on, and carried us higher and higher, I began to consider how he was to let us down. But the skilful orator is apt to have some clinching instance or anecdote in reserve, and Mr. Whipple's close was this:

"There sleep now, within the sound of my voice, the bones of a man who once stood up in the revolutionary battles for his country. In one of them, he told me, [65] when the little American army, ill armed, ill clad, and with bleeding feet, was drawn up in front of the disciplined troops of England, General Washington passed along our lines, and when he came before us, he stopped, and said, 'I place great confidence in this Rhode Island regiment.' And when I heard that," said he, "I clasped my musket to my breast, and said, Damn 'em; let 'em come!" "The immortal Chieftain" [said the orator] "is looking down upon us now; and he says, 'I place great confidence in this Rhode Island regiment.'"

And now, on the whole, what shall I say of my life in New Bedford? It was, in the main, very happy. I thought I was doing good there; I certainly was thoroughly interested in what I was doing. I found cultivated and interesting society there. I made friends, who are such to me still. In the pastoral relation, New Bedford was, and long continued to be, the very home of my heart; it was my first love.

In 1827 I was invited to go to New York. I did not wish to go, so I expressly told the church in New York (the Second Church); but I consented, in order to accomplish what they thought a great good, provided my congregation in New Bedford would give their consent. They would not give it; and I remained. I believe that I should have lived and died among them, if my health had not failed.

But it failed to that degree that I could no longer do the work, and I determined to go abroad and recruit, and recover it, if possible. [66] This was in 1833. The Messrs. Grinnell & Co., of New York, offered me a passage back and forth in their ships, one of the thousand kind and generous things that they were always doing, and I sailed from New York in the "George Washington" on the 8th of June. It was like death to me to go. I can compare it to nothing else, going, as I did, alone. In London I consulted Sir James Clarke, who told me that the disease was in the brain, and that I must pass three or four years abroad if I would recover from it. I believe I stared at his proposition, it seemed to me so monstrous, for he said, in fine: "Well, you may go home in a year, and think yourself well; but if you go about your studies, you will probably bring on the same trouble again; and if you do, in all probability you will never get rid of it." Alas! it all proved true. I came home in the spring of 1834, thinking myself well. I had had no consciousness of a brain for three months before I left Europe. I went to work as usual; in one month the whole trouble was upon me again, and it became evident that I must leave New Bedford. I could write no more sermons; I had preached every sermon I had, that was worth preaching, five times over, and I could not face another repetition. I retired with my family to the home in Sheffield, and expected to pass some years at least in the quiet of my native village. [67] I should like to record some New Bedford names here, so precious are they to me. Miss Mary Rotch is one, called by everybody "Aunt Mary," from mingled veneration and affection. It might seem a liberty to call her so; but it was not, in her case. She had so much dignity and strength in her character and bearing that it was impossible for any one to speak of her lightly. On our going to New Bedford, she immediately called upon us, and when she went out I could not help exclaiming, "Wife, were ever hearts taken by storm like that!" Storm, the word would be, according to the usage of the phrase; but it was the very contrary, a perfect simplicity and kindliness. But she was capable, too, of righteous wrath, as I had more than one occasion afterwards to see. Indeed, I was once the object of it myself. It was sometime after I left New Bedford, that, in writing a review of the admirable Life of Blanco White by the Rev. J. H. Thom, of Liverpool, while I spoke with warm appreciation of his character, I commented with regret upon his saying, toward the close of his life, that he did not care whether he should live hereafter; and I happened to use the phrase, "He died and made no sign," without thinking of the miserable Cardinal Beaufort, to whom Shakespeare applies it. Aunt Mary immediately came down upon me with a letter of towering indignation for my intolerance. I replied to her, saying that if ever I should be so [68] happy as to arrive at the blessed world where I believed that she and Blanco White would be, and they were not too far beyond me for me to have any communion with them, she would see that I was guilty of no such exclusiveness as she had ascribed to me. She was pacified, I think, and we went on, as good friends as ever. Her religious opinions were of the most catholic stamp, and in one respect they were peculiar. The Friends' idea of the "inward light" seemed to have become with her coincident with the idea of the Author of all light; and when speaking of the Supreme Being, she would never say "God," but "that Influence." That Influence was constantly with her; and she carried the idea so far as to believe that it prompted her daily action, and decided for her every question of duty.

Miss Eliza Rotch had come from her English home shortly before my going to New Bedford, and had brought, with her English education and sense, more than the ordinary English powers of conversation. She, like all her family, had been bred in the Friends' Society; and she came with many of them to my church. She was a most remarkable hearer. With her bright face, and her full, speaking eye, and interested especially, no doubt, in the new kind of ministration to which she was listening, she gave me her whole attention, often slightly nodding her assent, unconsciously to herself and unobserved by others. She married Professor John Farrar of Harvard, and [69] able mathematician, and one of the most genial and lovable men that ever lived.

Life, in our quiet little town, was more leisurely than it is in cities, and the consequence was an unusual development of amusing qualities. There was more fun, and I ventured sometimes to say, there was more wit, in New Bedford than there was in Boston. To be sure, we could not pretend to compare with Boston in culture and in high and fine conversation, least of all in music, which was at a very low ebb with us. I remember being at an Oratorio in one of our churches, where the trump of Judgment was represented by a horn not much louder than a penny-whistle, blown in an obscure corner of the building!

Charles H. Warren was the prince of humorists among us, and would have been so anywhere. Channing said to me one day, "I want to see your friend Warren; I want to see him as you do." I could not help replying, "That you never will; I should as soon expect to hear a man laugh in a cathedral." I never knew a man quite so full of the power to entertain others in conversation as he was. Lemuel Williams, his brother lawyer, had perhaps a subtler wit. But the way Warren would go on, for a whole evening, letting off bon-mots, repartees, and puns, made one think of a magazine of pyrotechnics. Yet he was a man of serious thought and fine intellectual powers. He was an able lawyer, and, placed upon the bench at an uncommonly, early [70] age, he sustained himself with honor. I used to lament that he would not study more, that he gave himself up so much to desultory reading; but he had no ambition. Yet, after all, I believe that the physical organization has more to do with every man's career than is commonly suspected. His was very delicate, his complexion fair, and his face, indeed, was fine and expressive in a rare degree. The sanguine-bilious, I think, is the temperament for deep intellectual power, like Daniel Webster's. It lends not only strength, but protection, to the workings of the mind within. It is not too sensitive to surrounding impressions. Concentration is force. Long, deep, undisturbed thinking, alone can bring out great results. I have been accustomed to criticise my own temperament in this respect, too easily drawn aside from study by circumstances, persons, or things around me, external interests or trifles, the wants and feelings of others, or their sports, a playing child or a crowing cock. My mind, such as it is, has had to struggle with this outward tendency, too much feeling and sentiment, and too little patient thinking, and I believe that I should have accomplished a great deal more if I had had, not the sanguine alone, but the sanguine-bilious temperament.

Manasseh Kempton had it. He was the deacon of my church. I used to think that nobody knew, or at least fairly appreciated, him as I did. Under that heavy brow, and phlegmatic aspect, [71] and reserved bearing, there was an amount of fire and passion and thought, and sometimes in conversation an eloquence, which showed me that, with proper advantages, he would have made a great man.

James Arnold was a person too remarkable to be passed over in this account of the New Bedford men. With great wealth, with the most beautiful situation in the town, and, yet more, with the aid of his wife, never mentioned or remembered but to be admired, his house was the acceptable resort of strangers, more than any other among us. Mr. Arnold was not only a man of unshaken integrity, but of strong thought; and if a liberal education had given him powers of utterance, the habit of marshalling his thoughts, equal to the powers of his mind, he would have been known as one of the remarkable men in the State.

One other figure rises to my recollection, which seems hardly to belong to the modern world, and that is Dr. Whittredge of Tiverton. In his religious faith he belonged to us, and occasionally came over to attend our church. I used, from time to time, to pay him visits of a day or two, always made pleasant by the placid and gentle presence of his wife, and by the brisk and eager conversation of the old gentleman. He was acquainted in his earlier days with my predecessor, of twenty-five years previous date, Dr. West, himself a remarkable man in his day, [72] and almost equally so, both for his eccentricity and his sense. An eccentric clergyman, by the by, is rarely seen now; but in former times it was a character as common as now it is rare. The commanding position of the clergy the freedom they felt to say and do what they pleased brought that trait out in high relief. The great democratic pressure has passed like a roller over society: everybody is afraid of everybody; everybody wants something, office, appointment, business, position, and he is to receive it, not from a high patron, but from the common vote or opinion.

Dr. West's eccentricity arose from absorption into his own thoughts, and forgetfulness of everything around him. He would pray in the family in the evening till everybody went to sleep, and in the morning till the breakfast was spoiled. He would preach upon some Scripture passage till some one went and moved his mark forward. He once paid a visit to the Governor in Boston, and, having got drenched in the rain, was supplied with a suit of his host's, which unconsciously, he wore home, and arrayed in which, he appeared in his pulpit on Sunday morning. At the same time he was a man of strong and independent thought. I have read a "Reply" of his to Edwards on the Will, in which the subject was ably discussed, but without the needful logical coherence, perhaps, to make its mark in the debate. [73] The conversations of West with his friend, Dr. Whittredge, as the latter told me, ran constantly into theological questions, upon which they differed. West was a frequent visitor at Tiverton, and, when the debate drew on towards midnight, Whittredge was obliged to say, "Well, I can't sit here talking with you all night; for I must sleep, that I may go and see my patients to-morrow." He was vexed, he said, that he should thus seem to "cry quarter" in the controversy again and again, and he resolved that the next time he met West, he would not stop, be they where they might. It so happened that their next meeting was at the head of Acushnet River, three miles above New Bedford, where Whittredge was visiting his patients, and West his parishioners. This done, they set out towards evening to walk to New Bedford. Whittredge throwing the bridle-rein over his arm, they walked on slowly, every now and then turning aside into some crook of the fence, the horse meantime getting his advantage in a bit of green grass, and thus they talked and walked, and walked and talked, till the day broke!

But the most remarkable thing about my venerable parishioner remains to be mentioned. Dr. Whittredge was an alchemist. He had a furnace, in a little building separate from his house, where he kept a fire for forty years, till he was more than eighty, visiting it every night, of summer and winter alike, to be sure of keeping it alive; [74] and melting down, as his family said, many a good guinea, and all to find the philosopher's stone, the mysterious metal that should turn all to gold. From delicacy I never alluded to the subject with him, I am sorry now that I did not. And he never adverted to it with me but once, and that was in a way which showed that he had no mean or selfish aims in his patient and mysterious search; and, indeed, no one could doubt that he was a most benevolent and kind-hearted man. The occasion was this: He had been to our church one day, indeed, it was his last attendance, and as we came down from the pulpit, where he always sat, the better to hear me, and as we were walking slowly through the broad aisle, he laid his hand upon my shoulder, and said, "Ah, sir, this is the true doctrine! But it wants money, it wants money, sir, to spread it, and I hope it will have it before long."

While in Europe I had kept a journal, and I low published it under the title of "The Old World and the New," and about the same time, I forget which was first, a volume of sermons entitled, "Discourses on Various Subjects." The idea of my book of travels, I think, was a good me, to survey the Old World from the experience of the New, and the New from the observation of the Old; but it was so ill carried out hat what I mainly proposed to myself on my second visit to Europe, ten years after, was to [75] fulfil, as far as I could, my original design. But my health did not allow of it. I made many notes, but brought nothing into shape for publication. I still believe that America has much to teach to Europe, especially in the energy, development, and progress lent to a people by the working of the free principle; and that Europe has much to teach to America, in the value of order, routine, thorough discipline, thorough education, division of labor, economy of means, adjustment of the means to living, etc. As to my first volume of sermons, if any one would see his thoughts laid out in a winding-sheet, let them be laid before him in printer's proofs; that which had been to me alive and glowing, and had had at least the life of earnest utterance, now, through this weary looking over of proof-sheets, seemed dead and shrouded for the grave. It did not seem to me possible that anybody would find it alive. I have hardly ever had a sadder feeling than that with which I dismissed this volume from my hands.

At the time of my retirement to Sheffield, the Second Congregational Church in New York, which had formerly invited me to its pulpit, was without a pastor, and I was asked to go down there and preach. I could preach, though I could not write; my sermons, with their five earmarks upon them in New Bedford, would be new in another pulpit, and I consented. I was soon [76] invited to take charge of the church, but declined it. It was even proposed to me to be established simply as preacher, and to be relieved from parochial visiting; but as the congregation was small, and could not support a pastor beside me, I declined that also. But I went on preaching, and after about a year, feeling myself stronger, I consented to be settled in the church with full charge, and was installed on the 8th November, 1835, Dr. Walker preaching the sermon.