The Atlantic Monthly/Volume 1/Number 4/New England Ministers
NEW ENGLAND MINISTERS.
Dr. Sprague, of Albany, has added to the literature of our country two large octavo volumes, containing biographical accounts of the Congregational clergy of New England, from its earliest settlement until the year 1841. The book has been for the most part compiled from letters furnished by different individuals, who, either through personal knowledge or through tradition, had the most intimate acquaintance with the subjects of which they wrote.
The characters here sketched, though perfectly individual, are in so great a degree the result of peculiar political influences, that it would be difficult to suppose their existence elsewhere than in New England. We have therefore chosen this book as a kind of standpoint from which to take a glance at the New England clergy and pulpit.
The earliest constitution of government in New England was a theocracy; it was the realization of Arnold’s idea of the identity of Church and State. Under it the clergy had peculiar powers and privileges, which, it is but fair to say, they turned to the advantage of the Commonwealth more than has generally been the case with any privileged order.
A time, however, came when the democratic element, which these men themselves had fostered, worked out its logical results, by depriving them of all special immunities, and leaving them, like any other citizens, to make their way by pure force of character, and to be rated, like other men, simply for what they were and what they could do.
It is creditable to the intelligence and shrewdness of this body of men that the more far-sighted among them received this change with satisfaction; that they were such uncommonly fair logicians as to be willing to accept the direct inference from principles which they had been foremost to inculcate, and, like men of strong mind and clear conscience, were not afraid to rest their claim to influence and deference on the manfulness with which they should strive to deserve them.
Dr. Sprague's book contains pictures of life under both the old régime and the new. The following extract from the venerable Josiah Quincy's recollections of the Rev. Mr. French, of Andover, is interesting, as an illustration of the olden times.
"Mrs. Dowse, my maternal aunt, has often related to me her pride and delight at visiting at the Rev. Sir. Phillips', her paternal grandfather's house, when a child; which was interesting as a statement of the manners of those early times in Massachusetts, before the sceptre of worldly power, which the first settlers of the Colony had placed in the hands of the clergy, had been broken. The period was about between 1760 and the Revolution. The parsonage at Andover was situated about two or three hundred rods from the meetinghouse, which was three stories high, of immense dimensions, far greater, I should think, than those of any meeting-houses in these anti-church-going, degenerate times. It was on a hill, slightly elevated above the parsonage, so that all the flock could see the pastor as he issued from it.
"Before the time of service, the congregation gradually assembled in early season, coming on foot or on horseback, the ladies behind their lords or brothers or one another, on pillions, so that before the time of service the whole space before the meeting-house was filled with a waiting, respectful, and expecting multitude. At the moment of service the pastor issued from his mansion with Bible and manuscript sermon under his arm, with his wife leaning on one arm, flanked by his negro man on his side, as his wife was by her negro woman, the little negroes being distributed according to their sex by the side of their respective parents. Then followed every other member of the family according to age and rank, making often, with family visitants, somewhat of a formidable procession. As soon as it appeared, the congregation, as if moved by one spirit, began to move towards the door of the church; and before the procession reached it, all were in their places.
"As soon as the pastor entered the church, the whole congregation rose and stood until the pastor was in the pulpit and his family seated,—until which was done the whole assembly continued standing. At the close of the service the congregation stood until he and his family had left the church, before any one moved towards the door.
"Forenoon and afternoon the same course of proceeding was had, expressive of the reverential relation in which the people acknowledged that they stood towards their clergyman.
"Such was the account given me by Mrs. Dowse in relation to times previous to my birth, and which I relate as her narrative, and not as part of my recollections. The procession from the parsonage, the disappearance of the people on the appearance of the procession, and that their pastor was received with every mark of decorum and respect, I well remember, but of their rising at his entrance and standing after the service until he had departed, I have no recollection; my time was almost twenty years after that narrated by Mrs. Dowse. During that period the Revolution had commenced."
Some might think it an advantage, if more of the decorum and reverence of such a state of society had been preserved to our day; for this respect paid to the minister was but part of a general and all-pervading system. Children were more reverential to their parents, scholars to their teachers, the people to their magistrates. A want of reverence threatens now to become the besetting sin of America, whether young or old.
The clergy of New England have, as a body, been distinguished for a rare union of the speculative and the practical. In both points they have been so remarkable, that in observing the great development of either of these qualities by itself one would naturally suppose that there was no room for the other.
Generally speaking, they were rural pastors,—living on salaries so small as to afford hardly a nominal support; and in order to bring up their families and give their sons a college education, it was necessary to understand fully the practical savoir faire. Accordingly, they farmed and gardened, and often took young people into their families to educate, and in these ways eked out a subsistence. It is related of the venerable Moses Hallock, that he educated in his own family, during his ministerial lifetime, three hundred young people, of whom thirty were females. One hundred and thirty-two of these he fitted for college; fifty became ministers, and six foreign missionaries.
Some of the clergy gained such an acquaintance with the practice of medicine as to be able sometimes to unite the offices of physician of the body and of the soul; and not unfrequently a general knowledge of law enabled the pastor to be the worldly as well as the spiritual counsellor of his people. A striking case in point is that of the venerable Parson Eaton, who resided in a lonely seafaring district on the coast of Maine, and preached to a congregation who lived the amphibious life of farmers and fishermen. The town of Harpswell, where he ministered,—
"is a narrow projection of ten miles southward into Casco Bay, on both sides of which it comprises within its incorporated limits several islands, some of them of considerable size and well inhabited. In his pastoral visits and labors, the clergyman was often obliged to ride several miles, and then cross the inlets of the sea, to preach a lecture or to minister comfort or aid to some sick or suffering parishioner. In addition to his clerical duties, Mr. Eaton, having experience and discernment in the more common forms of disease, was generally applied to in sickness; and he usually carried with him a lancet and the more common and simple medicines. If a case was likely to baffle his skill, he advised his patient to send for a regular physician. His admirable sense, moreover, and his education fitted him to render aid and counsel in matters of controversy; so that he often acted as an umpire, and very often to the settling of disputes. Seldom did his people consult a lawyer; and it is even said, that, at the time of his death, most of the wills in the town were in his handwriting."
It is a singular thing, that the preaching and the bent of mind of a set of men so intensely practical should have been at the same time intensely speculative. Nowhere in the world, unless perhaps in Scotland, have merely speculative questions excited the strong and engrossing interest among" the common people that they have in New England. Every man, woman, and child was more or less a theologian. The minister, while he ground his scythe or sharpened his axe or laid stone-fence, was inwardly grinding and hammering on those problems of existence which are as old as man, and which Christian and heathen have alike pondered. The Germans call the whole New England theology rationalistic, in distinction from traditional.
There are minds which are capable of receiving certain series of theological propositions without even an effort at comparison,—without a perception of contradiction or inconsequency,—without an effort at harmonizing. Such, however, were not the New England ministers. With them predestination must be made to harmonize with freewill; the Divine entire efficiency with human freedom; the existence of sin with the Divine benevolence;—and at it they went with stout hearts, as men work who are not in the habit of being balked in their undertakings. Hence the Edwardses, the Hopkinses, the Emmonses, with all their various schools and followers, who, leviathan-like, have made the theological deep of New England to boil like a pot, and the agitation of whose course remains to this day.
It is a mark of a shallow mind to scorn these theological wrestlings and surgings; they have had in them something even sublime. They were always bounded and steadied by the most profound reverence for God and his word; and they have constituted in New England the strong mental discipline needed by a people who were an absolute democracy. The Sabbath teaching of New England has been a regular intellectual drill as well as a devotional exercise; and if one does not see the advantage of this, let him live awhile in France or Italy, and see the reason why, with all their aspirations after liberty, there is no capability of self-government in the masses; put the tiller of the Campagna, or the vinedresser of France, beside the theologically trained, keen, thoughtful New England farmer, and see which is best fitted to administer a government.
Another leading characteristic of the New England clergy was their great freedom of original development. The volumes before us are full of indications of the most racy individuality. There was no such thing as a clerical mould or pattern; but each minister, particularly in the rural districts, grew and flourished as freely and unconventionally as the appletrees in his own orchard, and was considered none the worse for that, so long as he bore good fruit of the right sort. Thus we find among them all stamps and kinds of men,—men of decorum and ceremony, like Dr. Emmons and President Edwards, and men who, aiming after the real, despised the form, kept no order, and revered no ceremony; yet all flourished in peace, and were allowed to do their work in their own way.
We find here and there records of pleasant little encounters of humor among them on these points. Parson Deane, of Portland, was a precise man, and always appeared in the clerical regalia of the times, with powdered wig, cocked hat, gown, bands. Parson Hemmenway went about with just such clothes as he happened to find convenient, without the least regard to the conventional order.
Being together on a council, Dr. Deane playfully remarked,—
"The ferryman, Brother Hemmenway, as we came over, hadn't the least idea you were a clergyman. Now I am particular always to appear with my wig on."
"Precisely," said Dr. Hemmenway; "I know it is well to bestow more abundant honor on the part that lacketh."
It is a curious illustration of the times and people to see how quietly the personal eccentricities of a good minister were received.
One Mr. Moody, who flourished in the State of Maine, was one of those born oddities whose growth of mind rejects every outward rule. Brilliant, original, restless, he found it impossible to bring his thoughts to march in the regular platoon and file of a properly written sermon. It is told of him, that, moved by the admiration of his people for the calm and orderly performances of one of his neighboring brethren of the name of Emerson, he resolved to write a sermon in the same style. After the usual introductory services, he began to read his performance, but soon grew weary, stumbled disconsolately, and at last stopped, exclaiming,— "Emerson must be Emerson, and Moody must be Moody! I feel as if I had my head in a bag ! You call Moody a rambling preacher;—it is true enough; but his preaching will do to catch rambling sinners, and you are all runaways from the Lord."
His clerical brethren at a meeting of the Association once undertook to call him to account for his odd expressions and back-handed strokes. He stepped into his study and produced a record of some twenty or thirty cases of conversions which had resulted from some of his exceptional sayings. As he read them over with the dates, they looked at each other with surprise, and one of them very sensibly remarked, "If the Lord owns Father Moody’s oddities, we must let him take his own way."
His son, Joseph Moody, furnished the original incident which Hawthorne has so exquisitely worked up in his story of "The Minister’s Black Veil." Being of a singularly nervous and melancholic temperament, he actually for many years shrouded his face with a black handkerchief. When reading a sermon he would lift this, but stood with his back to the audience so that his face was concealed,—all which appears to have been accepted by his people with sacred simplicity. He was known in the neighborhood by the name of Handkerchief Moody.
It is recorded also of the venerable and eccentric Father Mills, of Torringford, that, on the death of his much beloved wife, be was greatly exercised as to how a minister who always dressed in black could sufficiently express his devotion and respect for the departed by any outward change of dress. At last he settled the question to his own satisfaction, by substituting for his white wig a black silk pocket-handkerchief, with which head-dress he officiated in all simplicity during the usual term of mourning.
We think it one result of their great freedom from any strait-laced conventional ideas, that no point of character is more frequently noticed in the subjects of these sketches than wit and humor. New England ministers never held it a sin to laugh; if they did, some of them had a great deal to answer for; for they could scarce open their months without dropping some provocation to a smile. An ecclesiastical meeting was always a merry season; for there never were wanting quaint images, humorous anecdotes, and sharp flashes of wit, and even the driest and most metaphysical points of doctrine were often lit up and illuminated by these corruscations.
A panel taken out of the house of the Rev. John Lowell, of Newbury, is still preserved, representing the common style of an ecclesiastical meeting in those days. The divines, each in full wig and gown, are seated around a table, smoking their pipes, and above is the well-known inscription: In necessariis, Unitas: in non necessariis, Libertas: in utrisque Charitas.
In that delightfully naïve and simple journal of the Rev. Thomas Smith, the first minister settled in Portland, Maine, in the year 1725, we find the following entries.
"July 4, 1763. Mr. Brooks was ordained. A multitude of people from my parish. A decent solemnity."
"January 16, 1765. Mr. Foxcroft was ordained at New Gloucester. We had a pleasant journey home. Mr. L. was alert and kept us all merry. A jolly ordination. We lost sight of decorum."
This Mr. L., by the by, who was so alert on this occasion, it appears by a note, was Stephen Longfellow, the great-grandfather of the poet. Those who enjoy the poet's acquaintance will probably testify that the property of social alertness has not evaporated from the family in the lapse of so many years.
It is recorded of Dr. Griffin, that, when President of the Andover Theological Seminary, he convened the students at his room one evening, and told them he had observed that they were all growing thin and dyspeptical from a neglect of the exercise of Christian laughter, and he insisted upon it that they should go through a company-drill in it then and there. The Doctor was an immense man,—over six feet in height, with great amplitude of chest and most magisterial manners. "Here," said he to the first, "you must practise; now hear me!" and bursting out into a sonorous laugh, he fairly obliged his pupils, one by one, to join, till the whole were almost convulsed. "That will do for once," said the Doctor, "and now mind you keep in practice!"
New England used to be full of traditions of the odd sayings of Dr. Bellamy, one of the most powerful theologians and preachers of his time. His humor, however, seems to have been wholly a social quality, requiring to he struck out by the collision of conversation; for nothing of the peculiar quaintness and wit ascribed to him appears in his writings, which are in singularly simple, clear English. One or two of his sayings circulated about us in our childhood. For example, when one had built a fire of green wood, he exclaimed, "Warm me here! I'd as soon try to warm me by star-light on the north side of a tombstone!" Speaking of the chapel-bell of Yale College, he said, "It was about as good a bell as a fur cap with a sheep’s tail in it."
A young minister, who had made himself conspicuous for a severe and denunciatory style of preaching, came to him one day to inquire why he did not have more success. "Why, man," said the Doctor, "can’t you take a lesson of the fisherman? How do you go to work, if you want to catch a trout? You get a little hook and a fine line, you bait it carefully and throw it in as gently as possible, and then you sit aud wait and humor your fish till you can get him ashore. Now you get a great cod-hook and rope-line, and thrash it into the water, and bawl out, "Bite or be damned!"
The Doctor himself gained such a reputation as an expert spiritual fisherman, that some of his parishioners, like experienced old trout, played shy of his hook, though never so skilfully baited.
"Why, Mr. A.," he said to an old farmer in his neighborhood, "they tell me you are an Atheist. Don’t you believe in the being of a God?"
"No!" said the man.
"But, Mr. A., let’s look into this. You believe that the world around us exists from some cause?"
"No, I don't!"
"Well, then, at any rate, you believe in your own existence?"
"No, I don't!"
"What! not believe that you exist yourself?"
"I tell you what, Doctor," said the man, "I a'n’t going to be twitched up by any of your syllogisms, and so I tell you I don't believe anything,—and I’m not going to believe anything!"
A collection of the table-talk of the clergy whose lives are sketched in Dr. Sprague’s volumes would be a rare fund of humor, shrewdness, genius, and originality. We must say, however, that as nothing is so difficult as to collect these sparkling emanations of conversation, the written record which this work presents falls far below that traditional one which floated about us in our earlier years. So much in wit and humor depends on the electric flash, the relation of the idea to the attendant circumstances, that people often remember only how they have laughed, and can no more reproduce, the expression than they can daguerreotype the heat-lightning of a July night.
The doctrine that a minister is to maintain some ethereal, unearthly station, where, wrapt in divine contemplation, he is to regard with indifference the actual straggles and realities of life, is a sickly species of sentimentalism, the growth of modern refinement, and altogether too moonshiny to have been comprehended by our stout-hearted and very practical fathers. With all their excellences, they had nothing sentimental about them; they were bent on reducing all things to practical, manageable realities. They would not hear of churches, but called them meeting-houses; they would not be called clergymen, but ministers or servants,—thereby signifying their calling to real, tangible work among real men and things.
As we have already said, in the beginnings of New England, the Church and State were identical, and the clergy ex officio the main counsellors and directors of the Commonwealth; and when this especial prerogative was relinquished, they naturally retained something of the bent it had given them.
An interesting portion of these sketches comprises the lives of ministers during our Revolutionary struggle, showing how ardently and manfully at that time the clergy headed the people. Many of them went into the army as chaplains; one or two, more zealous still, even took up temporal arms; while the greater number showered the enemy with sermons, tracts, and pamphlets.
Some of the more zealous politicians among them did not scruple to bring their sentiments even into the prayers of the church. We recollect an anecdote of a stout Whig minister of New Haven, who, during the occupation of the town by the British, was ordered to offer public prayers for the King, which he did as follows: "O Lord, bless thy servant, King George, and grant unto him wisdom; for thou knowest, O Lord, he needs it."
So afterwards, in the time of the Embargo, Parson Eaton, of Harpswell, a Federalist, is recorded to have introduced his prayer for the President in a formula which might be recommended at the present day for the use of the people of Kansas. "Forasmuch as thou hast commanded us to pray for our enemies, we pray for the President of these United States, that his heart may be turned to just counsels," etc.
This same Parson Eaton distinguished himself also for his patriotic enthusiasm in Revolutionary times. When the British had burned Falmouth, (Portland,) a messenger came to Harpswell to beat up for recruits to the Continental forces. Not succeeding to his mind, he went to Panson Eaton, one Sunday morning, and begged him to say something for him in the course of the day’s services. "It is my sacramental Sabbath," said the valiant Doctor, "and I cannot. But at the going down of the sun I will speak to my people." And accordingly, that very evening, Bible in hand, on the green before the meeting-house, Dr. Eaton addressed the people, denouncing the curse of Moroz on those who came not up to the help of the country, and recruits flowed in abundantly.
The pastors of New England were always in their sphere moral reformers. Profitable and popular sins, though countenanced by long-established custom, were fearlessly attacked. No sight could be more impressive than that of Dr. Hopkins—who with all his power of mind was never a popular preacher, and who knew he was not popular—rising up in Newport-pulpits to testify against the slavetrade, then as reputable and profitable a sin as slave-holding is now. He knew that Newport was the stronghold of the practice, and that the probable consequence of his faithfulness would be the loss of his pulpit and of his temporal support; but none the less plainly and faithfully did he testify. Fond as he was of doctrinal subtilties, keen as was his analysis of disinterested benevolence, he did not, like some in our day, confine himself to analyzing virtue in the abstract, but took upon himself the duty of practising it in the concrete without fear of consequences,—well knowing that there is no logic like that of consistent action.
We should do injustice to our subject, if we did not add a testimony to the peculiarly religious character and influence of the men of whom we speak. Shrewd, practical, capable, as they were, in the affairs of this life, perfectly natural and human as were their characters, still they were in the best sense unworldly men. Religion was the deep underlying stratum on which their whole life was built. Like the granite framework of the earth, it sunk below all and rose above all else in their life, No Acta Sanctorum contain more pathetic pictures of simple and all-absorbing godliness than were displayed by the subjects of these sketches. However they may have differed among themselves as to the metaphysical adjustment of the Calvinistic system, all agreed in so presenting it as to make God all in all.
Doctor Arnold says, it is necessary for the highest development of the soul that it should have somewhere an object of entire reverence enthroned above all possibility of doubt or criticism. Now a radically democratic system, like that of New England, at once sweeps all factitious reliances of this kind from the soul. No crown, no court, no nobility, no ritual, no hierarchy,—the beautiful principles of reverence and loyalty might have died out of the American heart, had not these men by their religious teachings upborne it as on eagles’ wings to the footstool of the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible. Hence we see why what was commonly called among them the "Doctrine of Divine Sovereignty" acquired so prominent a place in their preaching and their hearts. They were men of deep reverence and profound loyalty of nature, from whom every lower object for the repose of these qualities had been torn away,—who concentrated on God alone those sentiments of faith and fealty which in other lands are divided with Church and King. Hence, more than that of any other clergy, their preaching contemplated God as King and Ruler. Submission to him without condition, without limit, they both preached and practised. Unconditional submission was as constantly on their lips God-ward as it was sparingly uttered man-ward.
No picture of the "good parson" that was ever drawn could exceed in beauty that, of the Rev. Jeremiah Hallock, whose life and manners had that indescribable beauty, completeness, and sacredness, which religion sometimes gives when shining out through a peculiarly congenial natural temperament,—yet we must confess we are as much interested and impressed with its effects in those wilder and more erratic temperaments, such as Bellamy, Backus, and Moody, where genius and passion were so combined as to lead to many inconsistencies. This book is a record of how manfully many such men battled with themselves, repairing the faults of their hasty and passionate hours by the true and honest humility ot their better ones, so that, as one has said of our Pilgrim Fathers, we feel that they may have been endeared to God even by their faults.
The pastoral labors of these ministers were abounding. Two and sometimes three services on the Sabbath, and a weekly lecture, were only the beginning of their labors. Multitudes of them held circuit meetings, to the number of two or three a week, in the outskirts of their parishes; besides which they labored con vocationally from house to house with individuals.
Gradual, indefinite, insensible amelioration of character was not by any means the only or the highest aim of their preaching. They sought to make religion as definite and as real to men as their daily affairs, and to bring them, as respects their spiritual history, to crises as marked and decided as those to which men are brought in temporal matters. They must become Christians now, today; the change must be immediate, allpervading, thorough.
Such a style of preaching, from men of such power, could not be without corresponding results, especially as it was based always upon strong logical appeals to the understanding. From it resulted, from time to time, periods which are marked in these narratives as revivals of religion,—seasons in which the cumulative force of the instructions and power of the pastor, recognized by that gracious assistance on which he always depended, reached a point of outward development that affected the whole social atmosphere, and brought him into intimate and confidential knowledge of the spiritual struggles of his flock. The preaching of the pastor was then attuned and modified to these disclosures, and his metaphysical system shaped and adapted to what he perceived to be the real wants and weaknesses of the soul. Hence arose modifications of theology,—often interfering with received theory, just as a judicious physician's clinical practice varies from the book. Many of the theological disputes which have agitated New England have arisen in the honest effort to reconcile accepted forms of faith with the observed phenomena and real needs of the soul in its struggles heavenward.