Chapter II: At School

Weak eyes compelled him to leave the Latin School for a farm in Michigan. Not gaining all the relief desired, he then went for a year into a store, and thence proceeded to finish his preparation for college at a military school; from which he wrote, “You can’t do me a greater favor than to write me on religious topics. I have no religious society here, and, strange as it may seem, my interest in religion has increased daily since I came. My confidence in Christ is becoming stronger and stronger. I was firmly convinced, before I came here, that he would deliver me from evil, and I am more and more persuaded of it. I can’t tell you how much religious happiness I have got from the very worldliness of the school influences. Place a plant in a hot-house till it has had the opportunity to become delicate; then expose it to the chilling winds of heaven: and if it can straighten up and resist them, you know that there is a real healthy, independent life in it. That is the feeling I have had here. I am getting on nicely, and like the school better every day, and have come to the conclusion that they are a very nice set of fellows, after all. It takes a great while to get acquainted though; I find that I have been on trial all this time. They have now about concluded to trust me; so I find them much more agreeable. You would be surprised to hear several of the hardest fellows in school, who scarcely ever stop swearing, tell me that they would be glad to change places with me. Several have said so, and that entirely of their own accord, introducing the subject themselves. My chum told me that ‘I had a great many advantages;’--in having taken a decided stand as a Christian, he meant. He told me that he had sat up in our room, with his legs out of the window, looking down to the ground, and thinking, to use his own language, ‘how soon he would be in hell if he dropped out.’ He added, that once, in a skirmish in Western Virginia, the bullets were flying pretty thick, and he thought that he was going to die, and that he would recognize his Maker in death, if he had not in life; and he ran over ‘Now I lay me,’ in his mind. I have heard him confess that he did not know the Lord’s Prayer. Think what a life he must have led since he was twelve years old, when he ran away from home, and went down the Mississippi as far as New Orleans in the position of assistant bar-keeper. ‘But then,’ said he, ‘you know I hate to be called pious.’ I wonder how many souls have been lost through that fear!

“‘You think I’m a pretty hard case--don’t you, fellows?’ said another, to a little collection of boys yesterday morning. ‘I might be reformed, now, I tell you.’ They asked me whether I thought it was necessary for a man to be religious? I said I thought we were made for religion, and felt unsatisfied all the time without it.

“‘Now that’s so,’ said one; ‘I feel that way all the time myself.’ And another said, ‘Not all the time;’ which implied some assent. And yet they were all of them, perhaps, swearing away as much as ever in three minutes.

“All this only proves that a good many are walking into the net with their eyes open.

“I have felt since I have been here that I should be proud to give my life to the spreading of Christ’s kingdom, even as a missionary, or in whatever way he might see fit. I never read my Bible with half the interest I now feel in it. Nor did I know how it was adapted to every possible situation. I don’t know at all what is before me in life, but I have no doubt that if God intends me to grow up to man’s estate, he will give me some situation in which I may honor him, and love and benefit my fellow-men. I have conned your letter over carefully, and feel it in my bones. I am convinced, as grandfather wrote me, that the Christian gentleman ‘is the highest style of man, notwithstanding the sneers of the profane and the ungodly.’ I hope that I could never be happy living without some worthy object; and I can conceive of nothing, as an object in life, more glorious and desirable than ‘conducting timid pilgrims through the perils of the wilderness to the promised land.’ You quote a couplet which is often in my mind:

‘The love of Jesus--what it is
None but his loved ones know.’”

A classmate writes of him as follows:

“My heart is too full for utterance, and yet I feel I must let you know what he was to me, and how he was everywhere a blessing. I first knew him at the military school. I had been there a year longer than he, and the first day he came I met him. Cheerful, frank, and sincere, the hearts of all went out to him at once, and there in school, the only Christian, the only unprofane man, he was universally esteemed and respected. And yet among scoffers he was never afraid of the offense of the cross. Boldly and manfully he upheld it all alone. Speaking to others on the subject of religion was a thing which, as he often told me, came hard to him, and yet for that reason he was all the more active in doing it. He set out to speak with every individual member of the school on the subject of his soul’s salvation; and I believe he accomplished it. I know that he set many to thinking as they had never thought before, and, I have no doubt, sowed much seed which will hereafter spring up and bear fruit to the honor and glory of that Master he was so diligent in serving. Among the many, I was as openly a scoffer as any. One day, however, I can never forget; for from it I date the beginning of a new and higher life. It was the last Wednesday in May, 1862. He asked me to walk with him, as we had often done on holidays before. We had gone some little distance and turned a corner on the road; he turned to me abruptly, and asked, ‘B., why are you not a Christian?’ My mouth was stopped. I tried to make excuses; but no, nothing could I say. I had pious parents, who had brought me up to fear God, who had prayed for me night and morning, and who had often pointed out to me the way of salvation and my duty. Yet how far was I from God! What excuses could I make? James gave me no rest until I would promise him to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and follow him for life. After a long struggle, I did promise him; and he prayed with me then, and often afterward; fixing it upon my mind that the Bible and prayer were the only helps I should use. During the vacation that followed, before we went to college, he wrote, encouraging me to hold on in the course which I had begun. We roomed together, you know, at college. It was a different atmosphere from that at the school; but James was always the same,--the most active in prayer-meetings, and ever ready to talk with and advise the hesitating. During the winter there was a revival in our class, and I could mention the names of several whom he was instrumental in turning from darkness to light. Ever on the watch for opportunities of doing good, of speaking a word in season, he never lost one. As a room-mate, he was the best of friends,--always willing to do, in the kindest way, that hardest of Christian duties: he would point out faults in me, and tell me where I came short of doing right; and this in no spirit of _fault-finding_, but from pure Christian love. Had he lived a long life, I could never half repay him for the good he has done me in this way. He made friends everywhere. He loved every one, and how could they help loving him? I assisted him in maintaining some prayer-meetings among the poor of the place; and he won their hearts completely. Every Sabbath noon he went to read and pray with them, and after he left they were never tired of hearing about him. The Bible was almost his only book at some periods, when his eyes were very weak: I never saw a more diligent student of the Holy Book. It was in truth a lamp to his feet and a light to his path. Amid the bustle and turmoil of school, he alone found time and opportunity to read it. No one who has not been at the military school can understand the difficulties in the way of private devotion there. And yet he overcame them all; and many, _many_ a time has he spoken in our class prayer-meetings of the necessity of strict devotion to our Bibles and closets,--duties which students are apt to neglect. Last September I spent a few days with him at Hadley; and a little card he gave me then has been my constant companion since. Many a time have I taken comfort from it, and hope to many times yet. On it was printed, ‘If you want to be miserable, look within. If you want to be distracted, look around. If you want to be happy, look to Christ.’ How faithfully did he look to Christ! And Christ has now taken him to live with Him.”