Letters While Pastor of Duane Street Church, New York, 1844–1849

NEW YORK, October 4, 1844.

I WAS licensed just nineteen years ago, this day. Last evening I was installed. My father preached. Dr. Potts gave me a good charge, very kind, but somewhat laudatorial. Dr. Krebs charge to the people. Mr. Greenleaf presided. Dr. Spring made the last prayer, in a very memorable manner; it was a prayer of great pathos. The house was full. The presentation to the people was long, wearisome, exciting, but accompanied with such circumstances as cheer and humble me. I slept little and am tremulous with a cup of unwonted coffee. Till advised, address J. W. A., “Care Hugh Auchincloss & Sons, 49 Beaver Street.” l

NEW YORK, October 10, 1844.

Where shall I begin about this Babel 1 I ought to begin by expressing my thanks to benignant Providence for the pleasantness of every thing, and especially the warm reception I have had. We are not yet admitted to our new house, but remain with our good friends [the late Mr. Hugh Auchincloss] in Bar clay St. We hope to set up our tent this week. I have the back room, 2d story, for my study, which I regard as the chief room in a parson’s house. Ours is only a two-story house. From my window I have a constant view of the “Tombs.”

1 Dr. Alexander preached his first sermon, after the instalment, October Gth, from Psalm li. 12; and in the afternoon from Matthew xi. 16-19.

I preached all day, on Sunday; and Monthly Concert on Monday. Attendance good, but nothing which need cause any resort to the police, as yet. As for myself, the worst I have experienced is bodily fatigue. Running all day, and dead sleep all night. Yesterday I attended my first funeral, and my first clinical case. In the evening, Mr. Auchincloss took a raft of us to the Tabernacle, to see and hear the Campanologians. They are really Tyrol ese, and in costume. It passes belief. They are seven, and the music is as exact as a Geneva box. I wished for Dr. Ewing. Inter alia, they gave the overture to Fra Diavolo, with every rapid and every chromatic passage perfectly, and all the varieties of pianissimo and fortissimo. The bells, on a rough count, are 30 — 40. Each man has a cluster before him. But they do not stick to this arrangement, but snatch up one another’s bells with the rapidity of lightning. At a distance, exactly like common table or hand-bells, the largest about three pints measure. On examination, the handles are leathern, stiff and elastic, and within are cushions so that no shake but in a certain plane will give a sound. I presume the vibration is checked by a slight twirl of the wrist, such as throws the clapper against the cushion. The audience about 4,000. I saw the Rev. Symmes C. Henry and daughter there. My sexton is a treasure; both intelligent and pious, and withal as humble and “bid-able” as a Helot. His name is Peter Tarlsen, from Mandel, near Christiansand, in Norway. Of course his vernacular is Danish; but he has twelve years’ worth of English. He is my man Friday, and does all manner of chores for me, being this moment toting my books from the basement. We have the Croton, but no bath room. Indeed, New York is immeasurably behind Philadelphia in all that concerns neatness &c. E. g. we have no back alley; nor has one house in a thousand. I told you I have the house where Dr. Romeyn once was. I have found out a number of very agreeable neighbours. We have every thing near. Centre Market is about three Philadelphia squares off; Broadway, seven doors; the Harlaem railway-route, about two squares. The market folk send every thing home for you, and all sorts of trades-people come to one’s house, on receiving a note through the Despatch-post. The thing which most strikes me, is the loss of time by the immense distances. For instance, Presbytery met at Chelsea, three miles from the Battery. One hundred guns this afternoon in the park. These are days of general muster. Presented one bag of coffee and one box black tea; one barrel flour, one do. sugar; item, one rocking chair, and one arm ditto. Stolen, one pile of boards from the “stoop.” I wish you to say to my Trenton friends, especially in your street, that, in the extraordinary hurry of departure, having one house dismantled, and the other unfurnished, I was barely able to say adieu to my Princeton friends; nay, one or two of them I had to leave ungreeted. The processional politics of New York amounts to a furor. Thousands must be spent on banners and music alone, not to speak of drink and time. I think I have spent half a dollar a day on omnibuses. The weather has been delightful. Unless I err, there is a great desire for real pastoral attention, and for Christian profit.

NEW YORK, October 23, 1844.

I verily believe the exchange is against Trenton; but, for an ensample, I write. Last night, or this morning, was allotted [by the “Millerites “] for the day of doom. Some went out and encamped at Harlaem. On Monday evening I heard the Rev. Mrs. Bishop, of the True Israelites persuasion, at the Tabernacle; which is now “a house of merchandise.” Her delivery, grammar, Scripture-citation, &c., excellent. Her main point was the exaltation of woman. This day has been one of great hubbub: the Young Whigs’ celebration. A live eagle; three live coons; procession of trades; cavalcade of some thousands; bands and banners sans number. Nothing gratified my eyes so much as the Boston delegation, amounting to hundreds: fine fellows all. Willis has started a daily; and for New York gossip and idle, but witty badinage, it deserves well. Kirk called yesterday. I have, in my flock, Mrs. Renwick; the “Jane” of Burns: she knew the poet well. The New Yorkers mean to have a new paper: both new and old synods have jumped together in this, and in assaulting the American Tract Society, about Merle’s book. I find myself in a very central situation for my charge. The church and lecture room are easy to speak in. Mr. Andrew and two daughters, of my parish, have just arrived from England. Capt. Auchincloss is every day expected from Rio. My friends here have attended very properly to my wants in the grocery line. The fair of the American Institute is worth seeing. Serious talk of a railway in Broadway, to exclude the omnibuses, which peril life every moment. A member of our congregation was killed by an omnibus, some months since. Leeser called on me, on Sunday; he had been supplying the pulpit of Rabbi Lyon in Crosby Street. Rabbi Isaacs lives just round a corner from me; and two synagogues are near. The omnibuses of the better sort are lined with velvet or plush, spring cushions, some

1 Dr. Merle d’Aubigne’s History of the Reformation, -which had been slightly altered in the republication.

of them having mahogany arms dividing seat from seat. Wainwright and Richmond’s edition of the Potts controversy is mean beyond common meanness. The annotator is bold in billingsgate. Our door bell hardly ceases to vibrate. I have laid my people under an injunction to furnish me in writing, with their respective names and number of house. Dr. Potts has not yet elected elders. I hope you will come on very soon; bed and all ready; the “Tombs” in the rear; I am in the “bloody Sixth Ward.”

Yours most interruptedly.

NEW YORK, October 30, 1844.

, Last night, after my return from lecture, who should come in but Packard, on his way to Boston. On Saturday night I heard the guns announcing the Great Western; these big things are now quite punctual. Smyth [of Charleston] came in the Western, bringing $1,500 worth of books with him. He was called up, impromptu, in the Farewell Missionary meeting, on Sunday, and made an admirable address. Brown (for China) sailed yesterday. Mr. Masters [an elder of Duane street] is ill with fever. Mr. Auchincloss had a touch of illness on the 28th. Mr. Hinsdale has left us for Brooklyn. Mr. Beers, our only remaining elder, is up the river. On Monday evening I heard Major Mordecai Manasseh Noah, on the Restoration of Israel; an hour and a half: rain, but full house. Doctrine: the Jews are to be restored to their own land. Inference: Christians should aid, by procuring for Israelites a secure tenure of land in Palestine. He proposed to the Society for Conversion of Jews, to deliver several lectures under their auspices. The outcry against Merle’s History as altered by the Tract Society is very absurd. The book is exactly what it was, to all intents and purposes: and its influence is rendered a hundredfold greater by the Society taking it up. I have carefully collated all the passages in question; and while I think the alterations needless, I would not give one cent for the difference. Certain New School men are bent on awakening a New School sectarism, as against all Union Societies. They mean to have a Publication Board. These jealousies are horrid. I do not wonder that some pastors feel themselves at length constrained to do all their works within their own parish. I cannot but think that spiritual religion is at a low ebb in our churches in this city. Never have I heard, in the same amount of visiting, so little savoury discourse. I believe Puseyism triumphs, (not because Presbyterians fight so little, brag so little, and stickle so little; so saith -,) but because our actual state, in Presbyterian churches, has so little to awaken and fill the affections. Old spiritualism (Pollockism) [i. 199] is no more. Revivalism is no more. The only activity visible is a mere business bustle in regard to organisms and agencies. Must we not go deeper than we have gone 1 I am deeply affected with a sense of this. But how to begin 1 At home, we need most of all. I have shut up books, and live in the streets and houses, all the available hours of the day. Bush is out with his anti-resurrection book. ^jjF* Expect him to turn Swedenborgian. [This took place.]

- and family in the Great Western, from third visit abroad. He says he saw much of Carlyle. C. and Tennyson had a night with him just before he left London. Pipe-smoking, with wash-basin on table for spittoon. Carlyle is in talk as in his books; only “more so.” As Addison is printing [Isaiah] with Wiley & Putnam, I have the entree there, and enjoy a grand gloat on the arrival of each steamer. The English books are reaching a sumptuosity which constitutes a branch of luxe quite, new in the world; e. g. Murray’s 4to edition of Byron. While I write, the grand Whig procession is advancing:

Vanitas vanitatum. “The under-current of religious activity in this city strikes me with unexpected force, as strong and branch ing into a vast number of charities. I did not conceive that so much was effected in regard to seamen, tract distribution, and care of poor. The increase of foreigners is amazing: I perceive it in the increase of foreign newspapers in New York, signs of stores, and lingos in shop and market. Liveries are all the go again: everywhere coachmen with white neckcloths, of true dissenting cut. I am just called down to talk with a man from Rome (N. Y.) who heard me preach on Sunday, and is under great distress of mind.

YORK, November 18, 1844. Mr. Masters was buried on Thursday. The body was brought to our church, contrary to New York usage. Dr. Potts, and Dr. Cummins of Florida, an old friend, assisted. I spoke from John xvii. 24. Large assembly, including some of the chief merchants of New York. We have lost the leading mind in our church. In the use of his pen, Mr. Masters took rank with scholars. As a merchant, he was sagacious to a remarkable degree. I have’ now but two elders; and old Mr. Beers [since deceased] is out of town nine-tenths of the time. I catechize every Saturday from nine to ten. My lecture is on Tuesday ‘” evening, half-past seven, in the basement. Last Thursday (which

VOL. II. - 1* is our prayer-meeting) we had the Rev. John Macnaughton of Paisley. You may remember the long debate in the Free Assembly of ’48, which resulted in refusing to translate him to N. Leith, on account of the resistance of his flock. He has been on a special mission to Canada, and sailed on the 16th in the Hibernia. He has preached much oftener than once a day, in America; on several Sabbaths four times. Young, ruddy, hand some, uncommonly plain in dress, and a most eloquent preacher. He never uses a note, and says “reading sermons is almost exploded in the Free Church.” None of the Scotchmen come near him for unction, elegance of diction, and Summerfieldian soaring of imagination. In the Native American procession, among abundance of Bibles and Bible-banners, I read, with my own eyes, the following, on a large canvas, and most prominent place: “By the eternal, we must and shall” — I presume the last word was “rule.” I regard the outcry against the Tract Society’s edition of Merle d’Aubigne as factious and wicked. For all the ends, the mutilated book is not one stiver worse than the other. The New School men are intent on having a sectarian Board of Publication. They are angry with the Tract Society for being so old-fashioned in doctrine. In two years, the Society would have had 100,000 copies all over the land. Now they are paralyzed, not only in regard to this, but all their operations. All this, while I think the alterations should have been first submitted to Merle. I fully agree with you about Polk; he never fought a duel; that is something: Ezek. xxii. 6. A visit from you will be truly acceptable. If at any time you find us full, your kin will receive you; here are the names and residences, in full, viz.: [Here a list of “Halls” from the Directory.]

My prospects of a full house are certainly not less than I expected. All our down-stairs pews are sold, but there are seats onvred to let. Gallery -pews are not sought. I have not visited

, lest I should seem to be canvassing; the name has not

been given to me, as among our hearers, and my time is unequal to the search for such as are. Several cases of awakening are known to me. It is generally believed that no church in New York has so many young men. They have a monthly association, which I have attended. Kidder has put out a valuable translation from the Portuguese, on Celibacy: see this week’s Observer. I have met him twice. Me judice, the Methodists are doing more than all of us, in evangelizing this Sodom. The monthly visits of the City Tract Society’s distributors, is the most wonderful and blessed agency; the half had not been told me. Burns has determined to settle at Toronto. A visiter told me this of which follows: He was presented to the Governor of

New Brunswick. After he had blathered away, as he is wont, for about an hour, the Governor rose and said: “As I find no opportunity to say any thing, I will take my leave.” The Scotch Publication scheme is grand; they will have no lofts filled with unsold books. It is this: No books are in market, nor any printed, but for subscribers. All the money goes to cheapen the books. Each subscriber, who at first received two bound vols. per annum for 4s. sterling, now receives four bound vols. for the same. Subscribers now, 40,000. This ensures their being read, and they are cheaper than our “cheap literature.” In all our operations here, I am afraid much of the water runs beside the mill-wheel; e. g. the millions of “winged messengers” which fly into waste-paper-deposit. But let’s not croak: for croaking is already hindering half we attempt. I wish Willis was not so incorrigibly and laboriously frivolous. His “Mirror,” now daily, gives the best daguerreotype of this

frivolous city. is to be the editor of the New School

paper, “and to party give up, what was meant for mankind.” My people will not stand up in prayer. Some pastors have used pains to introduce what Dr. Cox calls a “sedentary reclinature.” I hope they will not introduce berths, for repose in devotion.

NEW YORK, December 2, 1844.

Your thoughts about the Sabbath Convention show how well you have succeeded in picking up my views, probably from my old parishioners. Beware how you use “my thunder.” Our ponderous fire-bell is telling of fire. Though we hear the tocsin at least daily, I have never seen an engine, nor met with that sort of hubbub which agitates all Philadelphia at once, on such occasions. The reason perhaps is, that the law forbids engines to go out of their own district, unless a special call be made for more help. I have a choking new cold; yet I preached twice yesterday, and was at a funeral to-day: Dr. Milnor, Dr. Snodgrass and I. Fourteen white scarfs, of fine twined linen. Burial in vault in Trinity-yard, where Milnor officiated, after my ser vice at the house. The old Doctor is right hale for 72. [He died April 8, 1845.] He tells me he practised law, actively, twenty years. Morse, after long silence, is editorializing about Merle’s history. The life of McCheyne humbles me. What zeal and faith! what a proof that Old Calvinism is not insusceptible of being used as an arousing instrument! Macnaughton seems to be of the same school. The book is open to an objection, conveyed in an anecdote told me by a nice Scotswoman, the other day. Dr. Chalmers said of Burns jr., McCheyne, McDonald, &c.: “These young brethren are doing a good work; but I wish they would have done with their nursery endearments.” Noah is repeating his lecture this evening. Potts has been challenged by Richmond, to discuss prelacy in an oral way. This, you remember, was Potts’ proposal to Wainwright. “And,” Richmond adds, “as you are well prepared, let us begin to-morrow.” The November number of the “North British Review” is good. Leading article by Chalmers. One on Davy, by Carlyle; one on America, by Cunningham; admirable. One on somebody’s telescope, by Brewster. The best is on Backhouse (quaker)’s missionary visit to Africa; developing the principle of a book called “Good — Better — Best.” Among all my catechumens, I find but two who know the whole Shorter Catechism. I find it my pleasantest hour in the week. Much talk in Princeton of the amazing genius of a young poet. He belongs to the set which may be said to constitute the “New America.” They go for metaphysie, Coleridge, almost for Spinoza. They laugh at Locke, Reid, Stewart, &c. They undervalue Newton and Bacon. They applaud Plato. They care less, than they once did, for prayer-meetings, missions, &c. Keep your eye on this. How much we need to stick by the plain declarations of the written word! Reading McCheyne makes rne feel how defective we ministers are, in helping one another in the main point. It is a great thing to have one to go to in a soul-trouble. Bustle, bustle. It was temperance — it is now the Sabbath. I am trying to fall in with a good little Moravian, named Bigler, who is said to preach the old gospel with much unction. Some of the Methodists preach delightfully; and when they all sing together, it leaves the orchestral style far behind. I am anxiously concerned about new elders, having only Messrs. Auchincloss and Beers. I have never had any one to pay a visit of introduction with me; still I am getting on. I lecture on Hebrews, and wish I could do nothing but expound. I read one sermon a week; with a growing persuasion, that written sermons have undoubted points of superiority; but that these are all worldly. I more and more believe (my practice belies it) that (1) constant Bible-study, using Scripture to explain itself, and (2) culture of the heart, by prayer, &c., are the great preparation for the pulpit. O for a generation of the old sort of preachers! Matt. Henry, Newton, Cecil, &c. We are dying of Moderatism. Listen to the talk of our divinity -students; it is of

Coleridge, Emerson, &c. In New York, the result of the former exciting revivals is seen, even in good men, in the making all religion consist in evangelical effort. Some are very busy saving souls, with all the dialect and levity and coarseness of Maj. Downing. I feel my own defects. I desire to be a parish-minister, wholly, and with all my soul.

NEW YORK, December 9, 1844.

I think wre are at cross-purposes about the “old sort of preachers.” I meant such Presbyterian pastors and preachers as were known to our fathers. I would not demand that any of us should adopt those peculiarities which belonged to the age and fashion of the Puritans; their “pun-divinity,” as Charles Lamb called it. Nor do I deny that they sometimes introduced inconvenient niceties of distinction. Yet even in respect to these, I believe it may be taken as universally true, that every distinction arises from some new error to be opposed. The Apostles’ creed sufficed, till Arianism arose. Sabellius made other distinctions necessary, and so on to the end of the chapter. Some of the distinctions of the, Reformed Theology, and even of our Confession, have become obsolete, but new ones have taken their place, and the number does not seem to be lessened. But the technical formulas of these nonconformists and Scotch Presbyterians are not the things I would imitate. One good characteristic, however, of this whole class, I do wish we had in greater measure; they not only held Scripture truth, but they associated it with Scripture language. f Their writings teem with Bible phrase and Bible figure; a necessary result, in any age, of affectionate devotion to the book. For this I love them; and, in my best moods, in this I feel myself sliding into imitation of them. 1 do not, I own it, think even the Puritan writers, as a body, chargeable with overlaying the truth, or complicating its simplicity. True, they pursue doctrines into minute ramifications; the necessary consequence of their dwelling so profoundly on them. The general statement of a doctrine is, I know, true; it is, also, more intelligible, and more fit for a beginner; but the fault of modern divinity is that it too seldom gets beyond these generalities. Jay represents such a truth as this, “Christ died to save us,” in a thousand ways, and each of them coloured with some Scriptural phrase, figure, or example. Some of us, if we taught the same, wrould scrupulously avoid every such vehicle, and would translate the Bible-diction into that of philosophic elegance. The former I think most luminous, most interesting to common minds, and most safe. It is a great merit of this way, that it is prized by our Stuarts, Pollocks, and Woodruffs, [humble parishioners.] It is the way which made them just what they arc. If all our youth were bred in this way, all our old folks would relish it, as the Scotch peasantry actually do. The reverse method, though simpler, and less liable to the charge of cant, has never produced as desirable fruit. And we must not take as our model the way which pleases such as are, by the supposition, uninstructed. We must interpose some long words in the child’s lesson, or he will never know any but the short ones. And I cannot help thinking it one of the chief faults of the New School or revival era, that its plan of teaching had respect too exclusively to the initiation of new converts. One thing I more and more feel, the excellency of figures and illustrations and examples drawn from the text of the Word. To aim at either simplicity or elegance, by avoiding these, leads either to vagueness or dryness. Hence I never could get along with this rule

of Dr.:” if you have a figurative text, explain the figure,

and then dismiss it” It is the secret of the good Doctor’s tameness. By this rule, all sermons on Faith will be the same ser mon. I will send you shortly two numbers of “Punch.” Though the old Adam in me relishes his passes, yet I agree in what a very poor editor lately said of him, that it is bad, week after week, to undermine the veneration of a people. We are too fond of laughing at every thing. On the 4th I was at a

soiree, at. He is a McElroyalist; and is eldest of eight

sons of a late clergyman of Glasgow. One of the ablest laytalkers on theological matters. I met there Hugh Maxwell, Esq. Our host had that same day entertained Dr. McLean, husband of Miss Landon, L. E. L.; and Governor of Cape-Coast-Castle; said castle covers, several acres. Said governor is autocrat; and has condemned as many as eleven to death; he also buries and baptizes. A parishioner of mine spent some time in Madeira. He knows good Dr. Kalley. I have before me two of his letters; date 1840. Facts from them: He was bent on China, to join Dr. Parker, as an M. D. Wife’s health prevented, and took him to Madeira, October 1838. In 1839 he went home and was ordained; independently, though a Scotch Calvinist. The London Missionary Society would not, however, take Madeira as a station. The Continental (now the European) Society also refused. He began as M. D., gave medicine gratis, prescribed. “During the last twenty-five days, I have come into contact with 112 individuals as patients; and during the last eight days, forty-five besides patients have had opportunity to hear more or less of the word of God.” “When the room is filled, I take the Bible and read a few verses,” &c.7 &c. He mentions in detail different classes during each week. “One of the most regular attendants. is a schoolmistress, who has 130 scholars.” “One old woman has a family of six, but till lately has had nothing of the Scripture of God in her house. I gave her a Testament. Next day she returned, inquiring about the reward people receive, who love to pray that they may be seen of men, and various other questions about prayer. She said she had spent many hours in saying rezas, but never felt as if speaking to God; and asked very earnestly what it is to pray. Another day she complained that, though she felt a toca di Dios (touch of God) in her heart, while she prayed, it went away when she got home to her family and fazenda; and wished to know if that were sin.” He mentions numerous cases of persons dying in lively faith.

Tuesday 10. — This morning I married two of my Sunday School teachers; this evening another couple. The savour of the old old-schoolism is not good here. Many have never seen old-schoolism allied to any zeal, and have all their early associations connected with new measures. Such a character as McCheyne would be to them as out of nature as a Centaur, a Sphynx, or a Griffin. The new school of Scotland, predominant in the Free Church, gives some occasion to Chalmers’s censure of their “nursery-endearments of style.” They have also much to learn about the evils of unseasonable meetings, outcries, &c. But they are in earnest, and they exalt Christ. I am convinced you are right about the place ministers seek to occupy in society. One loses nothing, either, by being behind the fashion. Paul, or Luther, or Swartz, would perhaps have been poor Mentors about a visiting card, or a sack-coat. Their tea-service was perhaps humbler than a Methodist’s. If we had more men, we ought to have more and smaller churches, and smaller stipends. I have seriously proposed to our clergy, as we have no night-meetings for the young and strangers, that the Presbyterians of New York buy the Broadway Tabernacle, and have first-rate preaching Sunday evenings all the year round. It holds 3,000, and has always 2,000, whoever preaches. The site is incomparable.

NEW YORK, December 18, 1844.

I expect to be here all the holidays. The custom is for the congregation, one and all, to call on the pastor on New Year’s Day, to eat a morsel, &c.: I must of course be in place; and I shall be glad to have you to do some of the pump-handling for me. You will be particularly welcome. If the worst comes to the worst, and company from Princeton should be here, I know my deacon and deaconess will give you a chamber in ditto [Chambers] Street, and I can answer for their pie: probatum est.

16 WHILE PASTOR OF DUAlSrE ST. CHUKCIIj NEW TOEK.

A sermon in your pocket will celebrate Tuesday evening, if they have a meeting. I regret to say that my attic-room has but a dormouse-window, but otherwise it is as good as any we have. Any how, come on. The “Tombs” I now see, as I write; admission free, and company sociable. My mother went this morning. I write merely to tell you to come, wherefore adieu, and love to all, and all friends, with “Merrie Christmasse.”

NEW YORK, January 10, 1845.

Van Rensselaer is working here, [for endowment of Princeton Seminary.] He will have to work hard to get the $40,000 he has assessed on our island. Dr. Phillips’s church has given him $13,000. AVhen the new railway to Boston, via New Haven, is done, it will be a great thing. They say already that its terminus will be where the Brick Church stands. To-day I attended the funeral of the only surviving child of a new-comer. I was trying to light a lamp at an expiring fire, when it breathed its last. This evening I preached a preparatory lecture, from Cant. iv. 16. Seven on profession, twelve on certificate. The apostles have sold the copyright of the trial, [of B. T. Onderdorik,] which is sub prelo. Berrian has a manual, “Enter into thy Closet,” from the prayer-book, and “ancient litanies:” some beautiful prayers in it. I always admired the Latin collects of the Catholics. The lapse of ages has given some of these old prayers a polish, and rotundity, and denseness, such as pebbles get in a river-bed. The rhythm of the almost metrical Latin is exquisite, and untranslatable. Most of them, however, are idolatrous. Dr. Hawes has published a very simple, touching sermon, on the death of his missionary daughter, Mrs. Van Lennep. Williamsburg has 8,000 inhabitants; and Paul Stevenson, late of Staunton, is gathering a first Presbyterian church there. I am appalled at the extent to which our city churches have become machines for raising money. Every month a stated collection, and almost weekly calls between-whiles. Now, aside from any selfish feelings, is this right? Is it the ideal of a true gospel state 1 Is not most of these sums given by worldlings? Is not the pecuniary association kept rankling, to the hurt of piety 1 These are questions more easily asked than answered. Ecclesiastico-politieo-economy wants an Adam Smith. More equalization is certainly one thing we ought to aim at.

It is rumoured that the Episcopalians are meditating a revolt against the Episcopal degradation of Onderdonkj but que faire?

1844 — 1849. IT

Do you know that Sue’s “Wandering Jew” is aimed at the Jesuits? It is an awful book, and its principles are clearly antichristian. Hordes of scavengers do not remove the ordure and smell of our streets. We have none of the great sewers of Philadelphia.

I see a new book on the Ruling-Elder, by King, of Scotland. He seems to adopt the view of a bench of Presbyters, some of whom preach. Thornwell is out with a volume against the Apocrypha; it looks very learned, and is no doubt able. He has certainly touched the right string. The Jews are evidently very uneasy. Witness Leeser’s “Occident,” and others summoning them to defensive efforts; Noah’s Lecture; the reforms in Germany; the prevailing and admitted rationalism; the forsaking by many of their belief for ages in a personal Messiah.

I want to preach a sermon on this subject, viz., Men of Business live in a perpetual hurry, scarcely taking time to refresh nature. This keeps out thoughts of God. This spell must be broken. For such men, stated inviolable periods of devotion are therefore necessary. Apply to closet-prayer, family-worship, and especially the Sabbath. I feel the evil as I never did before.

Broadway is a spectacle these sunny mornings. I sat by,

[a fashionable author,] in an omnibus, to-day; black, shaggy sack, plaid pants, gaiter-boots, blue and red neckcloth, crookdangling curls like a Miss, face of a vinous character. I have always felt serious concern at the evident repugnance of a friend of ours to the Tract Society. It is unfortunate, for the principle of compromise in the two charities is identical. And the only privilege of the S. S. Union in the event of disaster, will be that of “being devoured last.” I am loth to say it; but to this I apprehend it will come. Even the New School, who spread wide their no-sect flag in ’37, are now moving every thing to be as sectarian as possible — newspaper, Board of Publication, complaint about suppression of Calvinism, &c. A great protraction of meetings and revival reported at Sag Harbor, L. I., (Old School.).

NEW YORK, January 30, 1845.

I have just returned from my weekly prayer-meeting. Prayer-meetings are like Jeremiah’s figs. Where gifts are rare, and graces are small, the edification, and certainly the comfort, are accordingly. One of our men is ill, I fear dying. It is a case in which severe remedies afford the only hope; but he has two Homoeopathists. Contrary to every principle avowed, and all their denunciation of “Allopathic” means, they are now, when he is moribund, giving strong medicines. The more I see of them, the more am I confirmed in my belief, that their pretensions are those of systematized charlatanry. Bush is going over fast to the New Jerusalem, [Swedenborgian.] In the Tribune, he challenges all the world to prove the resurrection. He has a book coming out on the “Soul.” He practises Mesmerism. He told me of a lady who can read any one’s character by feeling a paper on which he has written: and read me a copy of his own character thus deduced. His talk is mild, self-complacent, learned, and fascinating. He has a man translating the German account of the famous Clairvoyants of Prevorst. You can imagine nothing of the sort too big for his swallow. The coalition between Mesmer and Swedenborg is becoming patent: both affect to see things beyond the vulgar ken. You have read the account of young Dr. Bodenier’s extirpation of a glandular parotid tumour, from a woman, during magnetic sleep, in presence of Mott, Rodgers, Doane, Delafield, &c. Come on and be mesmerized. I am strangely obtuse, for I can’t wake up enough to see these things in the favourable light. That they can put people asleep, I believe: but so can I. McCartee is called to the Canal Street church. You see that Texas is all but annexed, and the “area of freedom” widened: N. B. area is the Latin for “threshing-floor.” 1 am heretic enough to believe, in very earnest, that this very enormity will be overruled to the good of the negro. It will drain Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee of their slaves. It will push the slave-mass towards the tropics. There they may physically thrive; there they are always happiest. There they will outgrow their white holders. There they will be in the region which is exempt from the real hinderance to their freedom, the prejudice of colour and caste. In Mexico, Central America, and Colombia, black is almost as good as white. Half the Mexican officers of the two steamers, whom I saw, were one-half or two-thirds Africans. Amalgamation, say what they please, can go on, does go on, and will go on. The longer we put off the national break, the greater will be the Free America. All this, I think, leaves the emancipation question just where it was. But leave this out of view, and what becomes of our negroes, slave or free? Those called by mockery free people, are a race of Helots or Yahoos, in our estimation. We do not give them our dinners, or our daughters; we debar them from pulpits, pews, and omnibuses; we deny them actual citizenship. We smell their rancid odours, and hustle them off our streets more vehemently now that they are free, than when they were slaves. Educate them, and this prejudice makes them miserable. Look at, a sensible, travelled, pious woman

yet hanging between the two races.

NEW YORK, February 10, 1845.

Your letter of 8th to-day. When the House of Representatives assents to the new and reasonable postage, [it was then ten cents a sheet,] we can write more fully. I lament with you our friend’s troubles, and feel sure you have traced them to their true source: only physical derangement is usually the cause of the depression. I also agree with you as to what would be best. A southern or a foreign trip would probably cure. Such cares cannot be thrown off at home: every domestic association forbids it. Travelling is beyond all things the best remedy. Nolens volens, the patient becomes filled with new objects. I wish you would tell me when and how I could render any aid, in a case where I am so truly interested. Good old Mr. Fenton! [a pious bookseller in Trenton,] I doubt not he rests in peace. We have a letter telling us of Mrs. Le Grand’s death. I suppose I had no better friend on earth. Mrs. Le Grand has been an extraordinary woman. Her views of her own religious state were always dark: on every other point, no one could be less morbid, or more clear of sight. Her conscience and intrepidity exceeded all I ever read in books. I do not believe the human being lived to whom she durst not speak her mind. Her beneficence, for sixty years, has been, so far as I know, unexampled. Like most planters she had little ready money; but she has been a perennial fountain of good works. She has washed the saints’ feet. Her notions of plainness were extreme. Her personal attire was little above that of her servants, in expense. She loved all, of every sect, who loved religion; and such as did not, she exhorted and warned, in a way which shames me when I write. She was distressingly exercised about slavery. But what could she do 1 She often asked me, but I was dumb. She had as many as possible taught to read, and this up to the present time. A large number of her slaves are real Christians, not to speak of perhaps a hundred who have gone to heaven. I fully believe that more of them have secured eternal life, than would have been the case in any freedom conceivable. And surely, if eternity is more than time, this is a consideration to be pondered. But she saw no escape; individual opinion was inert. She greatly opposed the acts of ’37, in the church, and was therefore called New School, but adhered to the church. Several fires last night; and they are serious things, now that the streets are so filled with snow. It is scarcely safe to cross Broadway. Every thing on runners; six pair of horses in some cases; and such a din of bells, and bellowing of drivers, and mad rush of cut ters and horses, as confounds one. The Moravians had their last ayaTTYi an(l service, yesterday, in their meek little chapel in Fulton street, before migrating up-town. Arnold’s Life is a bonne-bouche. Latitudinary, but O, how fresh, original, vigorous, increasingly Christian, Catholic, anti-puseyite, scholarlike! * Our travelled merchants say our new Post Office is the best in the world. You find yourself in a well- warmed colonnade, and see into the interior hall and proceedings. I do not know the number of private boxes, but the number I saw was somewhere about 3,000. The exterior is squat and Dutch. One of our clergymen, a paralytic, goes about the room, but is said to be a speechless infant, though comfortable. I can never forget seeing another minister in the same case: “And Swift expires, a driveller and a show.” Not only “I would not live alway,” but I would humbly pray not to live thus. Yet let us say, fiat Voluntas Tua. I see a desert place within; but I think eternity is oftener in my mind than it was. For pleasant views, one must look at some thing more organized than this world.

NEW YORK, February 17, 1845.

Speaking of Plutarch, I think him the best story-teller out of Scripture. His universal popularity shows this. Our English translations are vile and paraphrastic. G. Long, Prof. &c., of London, has just issued, as one of “Knight’s Weekly Volumes” a shilling volume of Roman Lives from Plutarch. The version is literal, strong, vivacious; and the book delightful. It is good for a boy. Two-thirds of all we believe about the Roman Commonwealth is out of Plutarch, including all our famous anecdotes. Forgive what is egotistic in the following incident, for the sake of the little romance about it, a quality not rife in New York. This morning I was at the Sunday School Depository in Nassau Street, when a little old woman, cleanly, but poor, came in, and in German-English asked for half a dollar’s worth of my Infant Library. I found they knew her, and was surprised to learn that she was in the habit of giving them away. I talked with her in such German as I could produce, and found her a warm-hearted, overflowing Christian — a Lutheran — worshipping in Columbia street. But the thing

1 Stanley’s Life of Dr. Arnold, reviewed by him in Repertory, April, which struck me was, that she pointed out to me her aged blind husband, at the door, holding a harp, on which he plays for his livelihood, while she leads him about. They play chiefly in families. The husband, before his blindness, was a man of some education. My young people have agreed to support an Evangelist in France, $250. The snow is rapidly going from our broadways. Omnibuses on wheels to-day, for the first. We have no further news from Charlotte, [Mrs. Le Grand’s death.] The more I reflect on it, the more I feel the solemnity of our good friend’s departure. My father lived under her roof several years; so did I, thirty years after. My first interview with my wife was there. There also was my first ministry. A longer course of good doing (evn-oita, Heb. xiii.) I never knew. The executive part of Christianity seemed almost perfect in her. Frugal and self-denying, laborious, constant, independent, fearless, tender, and sympathizing. Yet I have to add this remarkable fact: during all her life, she knew nothing of comfortable frames. She was always panic-struck, in view of the standard she had set up; and so she judged others. Her mind was always under the stress of obligation. Yet a more operative religion could scarcely be pictured. She was always the same — always taking the religious view of things — sober, vigilant, looking to the judgment. No man seemed to have left such an impress on her as her old pastor, John Blair Smith; and he was a John the Baptist; opposite, in all but eloquence, to his brother S. Stanhope Smith. This grave, somewhat hard and unforbearing type of religion, appears in all the fruits of the great Revival, which founded our church in that part of Virginia. Plainness in dress, expenditure, and manner, was indispensable to the Christian character.

NEW YORK, February 27, 1845.

My boys are both in bed with the measles. The younger has a very bad cough. In these circumstances I am a nursing father, and have risen from a bed of small slumbers. This always depresses my animal powers. Some things in my labours are encouraging. Three are propounded for communion, on profession of faith. A few are under concern of mind. Seven female Sunday School teachers, who meet for prayers, seem well exercised. One of them, besides regular Sunday School duty, has all her class, two hours, every

1 Among other legacies Mrs. Le Grand bequeathed $2,000 to the Union Theological Seminary of Virginia, and $1,000 to Mr. Alexander.

Saturday, for instruction. For five years she has taught a class of six poor girls, from 9 — 12, five days in the week, at her own house. On my proposing that our young men and young women should sustain an Evangelist in France, she raised $164 in a week.

I have lectured to Heb. iv. 11. The next passage is a crux

interpretum. I spent a pleasant evening with Bro., the

Moravian. About 37; healthy, ruddy, vivacious, with that happy “no manner,” which is common to Moravians and noblesse, and that absence of sanctimony which is uncommon among Puritan Christians; more marked by quickness and hilarity, than tenderness or pensive gravity. He was a missionary in Antigua. One of our pastors tells me that he does not pretend to visit any but emergent cases. I see more and more how naturally and necessarily a man comes to this. I have been engaged, late and early, every day, and have not yet effected a thorough visitation, though I have, for this, sacrificed almost all writing of new sermons. One of our ministers avows the opinion, that, in such a society as ours, the pulpit is the great engine. Accordingly, he spends every day from 8 — 3 in his study, not answering knocks before 1. Most of this time he is sermonizing. He whites one fresh sermon every week, and says he has not failed to have it done by noon, on Saturday, once in ten years. He has a series of sermons, on the system of doctrines, which he has delivered three times. He is always catering for a sermon; all his conversation is on the topic he is about, and it is therefore stimulating and instructive. He has had an unparalleled hold on his people, and influence over them. They visit him a good deal in his study. He is the airiest, youngest man, of his years, 1 know anywhere. Another pastor always goes out (when well) on Mon day, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On these days he has no fire in his study. The remaining days he sees no one; gives himself to study; but never writes any. Did I tell you that I was copulpited with good Mr. [the late Dr. John] Johnston, who preached the installation sermon? It was read, every word, 40 minutes, and filled just |f of a sheet like this! S — — is a grand fellow, good sense, gravity, suavity, independence, honesty, kindness, every thing but animation. Consternation in our church, by reason of a base-vile, last Sabbath. O that we could chant the psalms, in a selection, as they are! Jacobus [Brooklyn] does it, at times. C. S. Stewart is very active. As many as 100 converts among sailors reported this winter. Good text, 1 John iv. 5.

18M — 1849. 23

YORK, March 10, 1845. How do you feel this morning, after the unrest of the Sabbath? I own to a little megrim, for yesterday was our Communion. Three on confession, of whom one, a painter, and the other a lithographer; both born in England, as was the third also. The book-cheapening business is poor here. I miss two of my old pleasures, (1) shops like Redman’s, [a second-handbook shop in Philadelphia,] and (2) rows of old standard books. The auctions have revived the first, and the two weekly steamers the other. Ask for such a book as Witsius, and the answer is: “No, but we will take your order, and have it in a month.” Kernott (Wiley’s factotum, a Pater Noster man) says: “We try to have all fresh works, but to keep none.” After twenty years, I say decidedly, “No comment, no lexicon, like a Greek concordance;” i. e. if you ponder the contexts. Take such a word as ptravoia, or /AVO-TTJ/DIOV; and how the conventional meanings fly away! How odd that we learn to write English from Scotchmen; viz., Kaimes, Campbell, and Blair. After teaching them ten years, I am just learning how they have betrayed me. Fear of provincialisms drives them (as us Americans) into prudery; just as parvenus dare not dress plain. Think of Blair’s nonsense about the evil of ending a sentence with a particle! E contra, read Shakspeare’s “ills that flesh is heir to” or the sentence cited by Lord J. Russell, “Shall there be a God to swear by, and none to pray to?” Pascal had the courage to break through the French rules of his day. He says, (golden words!) “Masquer la nature, et la deguiser: plus de ’ roi,’ de ’ pape,’ d’eveques, mais auguste monarque, etc. II y a des lieux ou il faut appeler Paris, Paris; et d’autres ou il le faut appcler capitale de royaume.” And better still, about having the same words over again: “Quand, dans un discours se trouvent des mots repetes, et qu’essayant de les corriger, on les trouve si propres qu’on gaterait le discours, il les faut laisser” Macaulay has found this out. Johnson and Gibbon ruined us about this. After all the thousand disputes about 2 Pet. i. 20, I think all difficulty removed, by translating iSt’as literally: “no Scripture-prophecy is of its own interpretation;” i. e. it does not explain itself. And see how exactly this suitbthe context: “FOB prophecy came not by mail’s will (as if the prophet so originated it, as to give us means of exposition in his words) but by GocTs will — by the Holy Ghost.” Even the Vulgate has “propria interpretatione.” Apropos of which, the collation of the Vulgate is useful, to show us traditional errors in our interpretation. I find no common error more growing among our young people, than that men are not responsible for what they

24: WHILE PASTOK OF DUANE ST. CHURCH, NEW YOKK.

believe. This is the dogma of Brougham, Mackintosh, and Bailey. We should preach against it: Prov. xiv. 12. If Lalor lives, give him my love, and please to read John xvii., or a part, to him, as my best message. Also, in regard to his being cut off from expected earthly service, dwell on the word “serve,” in Rev. xxii. 3. A Unitarian pair have been offended, and walk no more with us. Qu. Up to what age should we baptize children of parents coming into the church? The usage of this church answers, To seven years. Potts and I exchanged on the 2d. His church to be done inside in May. It is a beautiful interior. Capt. Auchincloss sails on the 12th for Tarragona. Our clerical meeting goes on; a Question and skeleton each time. Thus far, Spring, Snodgrass, Potts, Lowrie, Krebs, Jacobus, and Stevenson.

YORK, March 19, 1845. I have been at a wedding; but do not ascribe any subsequent brilliancy to the potations, for the lemonade was very thin, They waited for me to give the signal; so we sat a good hour; I thinking every creaking of the door would bring in the pallid pair. At length one of the children of the bridechamber set me right, and I summoned the parties. As you anathematize - ’s wrappings, while you wear gum shoes yourself, so I detest his a-the-ism, while I repudiate coffee most virtuously. I hope you will button up till you get quit of your cold, for the March is searching. The rise of Pennsylvania-fives has killed Sidney Smith. * Buxton is no more. Wellington has lost his brother Mornington. Smyth’s book against Confirmation is nearly out; with an Appendix, almost as long as the book, defending the public aisle-profession, and. anxious-stand, of new-communicants. I have thought, for a good while, that any Christians might law fully celebrate the Communion; though, as a municipal regulation, a restriction like ours seems needful, to repress bold spirits and promote discipline. I thought you would like Arnold. The account of his death is graphic. I long to read his histories. He has shown how great a study history may be made. If he had lived a little longer, I think he would have got better. His portrait is noble. My lectures on Hebrews give me more and more comfort; and 1 am pleased to observe an increased attendance of men. Looking back — for I have now passed the XL — I lament many things in my preaching; and among these that I have not from the beginning aimed at the greatest subjects. Two

1 Jeremiah D. Lalor, a candidate for the ministry. He had died in Trenton two days before this message was written.

things keep us from this: 1, a diffidence about treating them, because they are great; 2, a dislike to topics which seem so familiar. By the great topics, I mean, not the outworks of Christianity, but the citadel; the Fall, the Atonement, Faith, Judgment. The same remark applies to the famous parts of Scripture, the Crucifixion, the Good Samaritan, the Ten Virgins, &c. We are in danger, from neglect of this, of passing our short lives in frittering away at the appendages of the Gospel. I am much delighted with old John Brown’s Explanation of the Catechism. My catechetical class delights me moro and more. I wish I could hope as much from my sermons. When I compare professor with professor, what a difference between those who were taught early, and those who were not! I am much touched at reading in Socrates’s Ecc. History, the old story, remembered from my childhood, of Origen’s father, who used to uncover the bosom of his sleeping boy, and kissing it, say, “It is a temple of the Holy Ghost.” Insert in your Almanac, (for May and onwards,) about this time expect a display of gown — and — bands. The Church of the Pilgrims, at Brooklyn, is to have (on dit) a series of painted windows, representing the “gests” of the paint-hating pilgrims. Day by day do I quakerize about these things, priesthood, paraphernalia, pomps. But riches begets ceremony, as surely as dung begets weeds, and blue flowers among the wheat. Would the apostles know their own children? Would that by some turn of the wh<|pl wre could sec a Puritanism without sanctimony, without stickling, without fierceness, and without bigotry! I sometimes think, with Arnold, that Christ will throw all our exciting church-forms into the crucible, to produce a new form out of the molten mass. Before I got your rescript, I had baptized the girl (ost. 13|) against the immemorial usage of St. Duane; especially moved to it, as the child had been withheld from her right lyy the pressing of a false scruple, a scruple inconsistent, I think, with our hypothesis of household baptism. But O how we neglect that ordinance! treating children, in the church, just as if they were out of it. Ought we not daily to say (in its spirit) to our children, “You are Christian children, you are Christ’s, you ought to think and feel and act as such!” And, on this plan, carried out, might we not expect more early fruit of grace, than by keeping them always looking forward to a point of time at which they shall have new hearts and join the church? I am distressed with longharboured misgivings on this point. Read our Directory, chap. ix. § 1, what a dead letter! I fear thousands perish, indirectly, from within the communion, from our and their overrating the church-judgment of their piety; and from confounding full corn-VOL. II 2 munion with experience of renewing grace. All the epistles X seem written to the church; yet how full of searching tests, as to personal piety. When a preacher addresses (1) saints and (2) sinners, all of the former is commonly taken by professors, as such. There seems really to be a great revival of the old seed, in Holland. Ferris told me some pleasant things about this. I had a present to-day of a share in the Society Library, where, a few steps off, I can see all the periodicals, home and foreign, and a tolerable collection of books. Take care of your cold, and believe me yours, JAMES DUANE.

YORK, April 2, 1845. I have had a turn of vertigo, which would not have deserved mention, if it had not seized me in the pulpit. I was myself again for the afternoon, and am much as usual; though I think I have run rather too long without considering the need of a breathing-spell. Your argument against systematizing I do not admit; I mean that from the truth that all the Bible runs up into two great principles: for it is the glory of all systems to admit this; and it is as true of astronomy, and other sciences; and it proves too much, for it would not only destroy systems, but sermons and the Bible itself. I have at last been reading “Fronde’s Remains.” He is the true leader of the Newman ites; but one thing explains all, he had no glimpse of true religion. His whole diary contains no allusion to Christ! Newman, the Editor, admits this; and expains it in some transcendental way. Bush has preached for Bellows; his name will consort with the other fuel — Greenwood, Sparks, Bitmap, Furness, &c., [all Unitarian preachers.] He leans most, however, to the New Jerusalem. Cheever begins to coruscate in the Evangelist; he will not join against the Tract Society, with Cox, Patton, McLean, Eddy & Co. I am about to get Carter to print McCheyne’s scheme for reading through the Old Testament once, and the New Testament twice in the year. It includes family worship as well as private reading, and the table will do to hang up, or paste in a book; though as he issued it, it is a pamphlet, with remarks. Way land has, you know, had a controversy on slavery, with Dr. Fuller of S. C. It is out in a brochure, and is very readable. We have had many rebuffs, in seeking new members of session. It will probably stand thus: Elders — Mr. Walker, Mr. Jennings, and Dr. McLean; Deacons — Mr. T. I’. Smith, Mr. Burchard, and Mr. Greenough. Having gone over all the accessible members of my charge, in visiting, I have a residuum of 30 — 40, concerning whom I can scarcely get any information. Every week brings in some new family, or individual to increase the task. At my lecture, the number of men greatly preponderates; young men chiefly. My catechizing class holds at about 50. Our collections are encouraging, but not a tithe of what is due. Since I came, we have received about

$900 for foreign missions. is our chief-giver; he is a

broker, and knows how to let money go out gracefully. I have not met five undeniable Quakers among the world of people in my walks; one would think Philadelphia visitors would furnish more than this. I am an desespoir about psalmody. The best I ever heard was in a German church, hard by, wlicre every man, woman, and child joined con fuoco. I am in favour of chanting prose-psalmody, without repeats; they do it at Jacobus’s. Also, I am more in the notion of a plain, unartificial, somewhat slow, chant-like music. Even the best choirs I hear, affect me thus: my mind is too much attracted to the individual, or insulated performance. Seriously, I hope for nothing in our day. What they call fine music here, is orchestral. The Methodists sing all, but then I am put out with the jiggish melodies. I wish we had the Apostles’ Creed in our Liturgy, as we have it (though nobody seems to know it) in our Confession, &c. Dr. Wilson once lectured on it; and, if he lives, another Doctor probably will. I also wish the Lord’s Prayer reinstated. I am also for a vestry, but not for vestments; I am also for the old table in the communion. What a blessing it would be if we could have more preachers, smaller churches, and, of course, more of them! With grief and anxiety I see that, if I do any study whatever, my utmost parochial visiting amounts to little. Our ministers must be more active in concerted plans for increasing the efficiency of church-measures, by new methods within each parish. The crying evil is, strength in the laity is not brought out; we are an army in which all the battle is done by the commissioned officers. We are tolerably well, and send salutatories. Greet the friends by name.

NEW YORK, April 17, 1845.

I do not know that I have ever been in a busier week. Besides more patients than common, and usual parish cares, we have had the presbytery these three days; have talked the ordinary twaddle on points of order, and have licensed nine probationers. Last evening, I took tea with Mr. Griffin, and met Mr. Bremmer, (?) late Mayor of Boston, and Mrs. Sigourney, who is sojourning with the Griffins. She is free from any the least pretension, and shines in my eye far more in private than in her books. I have never talked with a more sensible or a more unassuming woman. Benj. Richards is here with two daughters of Gov. McDowell of Virginia. Item Dr. Sprague, item Kirk, item Mahon, item two Hammills, item Miss Reid of Va., (chez nous,) item Mr. Lacy, (chez nous,) item Miss Rice, (chez nous.) Cheever has yet to show, whether a fine essayist is necessarily a good editor. Paragraphing is an art by itself: his rhetorical circuits are, I judge, not the thing: non tempus eget, &c., &c.

reappears, plenished with new layers of adipose matter. Old Mr. Johnston avers that, in Scotland, it is universally the case that a minister who demits his pastoral charge ipso facto loses his “status” in the Presbytery. The new Congregational Church of “the Pilgrims” in Brooklyn, is a noble, massive affair, with wealthy, aspiring people: it will be a great chance for somebody. The oftener I go to Brooklyn, the more I admire the site. The view from the “Heights” is, I am sure, more than Neapolitan, and the air is freshness itself. It is quiet and cool, like the country, and nearer to New York business than Bond Street, to say nothing of University Place. Therefore, name your price, abjure presbytery, take the palmer’s gown and scallop shell of a pilgrim, show your descent from Jack Robinson, affect cod-fish and baked beans, keep Saturday evening, and prepare for having read to you, through spectacles, an eloquent “right-hand-of-fellowship.” Bacon preached on Tuesday, in the Tabernacle, at Thomson’s installation. I have been several times to see [David] Abeel, who is in the precincts of heaven, in regard to his feelings. His lungs are almost gone. Our commissioners [to General Assembly] are Goldsmith and Krebs,

Platt and Baldwin. is just fitting out his eldest boy for

a mercantile post in China. He is a faithful minister, and a most worthy companion; unaffected, unpretending, well-informed, and judicious. I made some “improvement” of Dr. Milnor’s death, and of the loss of the Swallow. Kidder is nearly out with his two volumes on Brazil. My honoured father is 73 this day. Should I say this, without adding that I know how ungrateful my habitual state of mind is, for such a favour as the preserved life of my parents, until now? I have adopted the plan of writing a monthly letter to my associated Young Men. Should I see next year, I propose to print a little monthly sheet, to be put in the pews, containing such statements as may bear

on our missions, church condition, collections. &c., the

poet, has a volume in the press; I have not seen any of it. It

is underwritten by,, &c., &c. Whether he will

alight on Zion or Parnassus, may depend on the market he finds. Bush is in the straw, with an answer to Skinner, and a work on the Soul. He has now got Bellows to blow him up. There is no great preacher here among the Episcopalians. The last “Punch” pictures Pusey and the Pope, in a most loving hug. The “Pictorial Times” gives serious likenesses of Pusey, Ward, &c. The Infidels are becoming bold, and have summoned an Infidel Convention, under that name. They seem to think the new Geology upsets Moses. Tayler Lewis is coming out with “Plato contra Atheos,” with dissertations. I suppose he is as

much steeped in the Greeks, as any man living. So poor

has had to go. Why did he not stick to his Episcopal see at

1 Will not have a sort of “proximus-Ucalegonardet” feeling about it? What — what is the matter 1 some thing is surely wrong with us. Is it that we are all too stiff, unreal, formal, routine-ish, in our ministry 1 Is it that we copy others? that we do not copy primitive ways 1 that we do not act out our Bible-persuasions? that we are cowardly about the world 1 that we seek the subordinate church and congregational ends, instead of the principal ones? Whatever it be, our churches are in a heavy, slow state; wheels deep in ruts and mud. ‘Our preaching, 1 feel it, is too little like earnest talking; we are too unlike, in and out of the “sacred desk.” Old Dr. Wilson, with “a gill of lightning into him,” would be the thing for the pulpit, and Commodore Eastburn [the Mariners’ Minister] out of it.

NEW YORK, April 28, 1845.

Monday is an ill day for letter-writing. I have no chance to say any thing. I praught for Read [Pearl Street Church] yesterday; a good quiet congregation. Thompson has immense audiences in the Tabernacle; he is said to be a good preacher, but of New Haven divinity.

There is some small-pox in town; ten cases mortal last week.

The Bowery-burning [theatre] was superb; we had a fine view of the pillar of fire, domus- )

The Anni- vefsaries are on the approach. I will freely

caput- )

say, their original interest, for me, is gone. They feel this; and sermons are reviving again. But even sermons, like Samsons, lose their strength. Religious showmanism is the order of the day; a church, an organ, a poll of hair, a neat stock, a ditto hand, a gown; these are thy gods, O Israel!

I am in some thought of gathering a few of the remnant of Quakerism, to form a new society. The succession may be secured through Gurney, quite as well as Abp. Parker’s, at the Nag’s head.

lectures on Babylon on Friday; a good selection; he will speak all the tongues, with a little original confusion of his own babble. Visitors knock and ring “frae morn till e’en.” Addison says I should practise self-denial — at the door. Yours almost in the cab.

WHITE STREET, May 3, 1845.

My epistolary hours must be snatches. I am glad you have with you. I hope she will open her eye wide to all the

gracious goodness that is the very life and soul of the new dispensation. You say right about praying for earthly good. That is a great verse, Matthew vi. 32. Heading a book of prayers, (a kind of book, by-the-bye, which I find I much need, at certain moods,) by one Hardman, and admiring the same very much, I was struck with this in his Preface: “Should any persons think them too spiritual, or experimental, they are requested, first, to consider, that temporal blessings can never be asked for, but conditionally, and secondarily to spiritual,” &c. The article on Pascal in the April Repertory is Addison’s.

I am more and more persuaded, that a man who walks “in the Spirit,” must often seem to himself and others to walk alone. I mean he must follow leadings towards paths of feeling and conduct, remote from the precedent and fashion even of good people. Don’t we find things, in Christ’s teachings, which, if all our books, and human patterns, and diaries were forgotten, would lead us further and in other directions than we have gone? and is not this accompanied with an inward feeling, that what is thus indicated is true, and right, and sanctifying? In regard to the care of souls, I am constrained, after trial, to give over wearing other men’s clothes, however much better than my own. I have found pain and barrenness in every attempt to do things by the approved methods for getting up “an interest,” &c. Truths, found in Scripture, and affecting my own mind, freshly, strongly, and as it were newly, I mean coming to me, after frequent perusals, as living words of God, verifying themselves in my experience, are those which, when simply spoken or preached, seem to reach other people. Suppose the result is not the awakening of A B, or of anybody on the spot; suppose no revival ensues: my growing judgment is, that the utterance of such truths will accomplish God’s end on his elect: “for they know His voice.” Surely, in our craving for effect, we lose the value of such remarkable passages as John x. 27; 2 Cor. iv. 2, 3; 2 Thess. ii. 10. Simplicity, in following Christ as a teacher, is worthy of our consideration.

I am led to think I have erred, in the direction of ultra-protestantism, in regard to fasting; when I look out the connexions of the word and thing in the New Testament. A favourite notion of mine is that a church is a school. As you may not have Owen, let me extract a passage on Hebrews v. 11-15, which pleased me the more from coming from a source whence I did not expect it: “Our hearers do not look upon it as their duty to learn to be Teachers. They think it enough for them, if at best they can hear with some profit to themselves. But this was not the state of things in primitive times. Every church was then a Seminary, wherein provision and preparation was made, not only for the continuation of the preaching of the gospel in itself, but for the calling, gathering, and teaching of other churches also. When therefore a church was first planted by the ministry of the apostles, it was for a time continued under their own immediate care and inspection, and then usually committed by them unto the ministry of some evangelists.” Then overseers, “Upon their decease, others were to be called and chosen from among themselves to the same work by the church.” “And men in those days did not only learn in the church, that they might be able afterwards to teach in the same, but also that they might be instrumental in the work of the gospel in other places. For out of these churches went those who were made use of in the propagation of the gospel ordinarily” — “wherefore hearers in the church were not only taught those things which might be sufficient unto their own edification, but every thing also that was necessary to the edification of others; an ability for whose instruction was their duty to aim it.” (Owen on Heb. c. v., verse 12.) All our missionary gifts will fall short, unless people come to give their own selves first unto the Lord; in some such sense. Monday 5. — Holy Week [Anniversaries] has begun. White cravats swarm; chiefly from New England, of which this is the capital. The Biblical Repository for, May contains a racy McClelland-like article on South, by Withington. Henry’s Calvin, which I gutted for the Repertory years ago, is made much of in a similar article in the Repository as bran new. Ditto of Zuingle’s works, p. 402, which I long since reviewed. So little known is labour, out of the Land of Promise. Give me some hints towards a prayer-book for the Navy and Marine.

NEW YORK, May 23, 1845.

After rain and thunder in the night, we have very good weather. My parents have been a week with us. To see my

1 He prepared for the Presbyterian Board of Publication “A Manual of Devotion for Soldiers and Sailors,” comprising Prayers, compeiid of Bible Truth, Shorter Catechism, and Hymns.

father so brisk and happy, at 73, is matter of thankful acknowledgment. But what is this to old Mrs. Lindsay, whom I visited to-day, jet. 97! She is a native, and has lived near a century in Liberty Street, (next to the one you enter by, from the ferry,) which was a rural suburban hill in her youth. She remembers the rector and curate of the “English church,” in which ,she was bred. She sits in her chair, a venerable and still fine-looking woman, almost in full use of her mind, and full of Christian knowledge and piety. She gave me two fine folios of Erskine’s works, for the Seminary; and bade me observe that the shortest sermon in the book was the means of awakening Dr. John Mason, the father of Dr. J. M. Mason: this she had from the lips of the former. She lives with Mrs. Lowndes, (who is the wife of her nephew,) and one of the Crow ells of Pine Street; umquhile numbered among the green-bench catechumens, ou vous savez, [the aisle of Pine Street church, Philadelphia.] Dr. McElroy visits this ancient woman once a week. I felt a peculiar reverence in her presence. My election as Tract-committee-man [American Tract Society] was unexpected. I know not how to act. I am overladen. It is giving away time I owe to our own schemes. Yet it is something to have a voice in selecting religious books for so many thousands, and standing in the gap against error. A Neapolitan gun-ship is here. Bp. Hughes made most of the crew give up Bibles which had been given them. They are fine fellows, swarthy, but blooming, clean and trim, and with a jovial but temperate look. Wm. E. Schenck has begun at Hammond Street. The smallpox prevails fearfully in some parts of the city. Making every allowance for exaggeration, it is formidable. The list of the General Assembly furnishes only a few whom one could think of for speech or action, and these all young. Of Seminarists, I note these: Keeve, Frame, Krebs, Goldsmith, Imbrie, Davidson, Perkins, Curran, Olmstead, Corss, Jones, Hope, Harrison, Williamson, McMaster, Smith, Weed, Rice, Wood, Alexander, Crowre, Montfort, Goodrich, Cowan, Dickson, Bard, Cunningham, Edgar, Bowman, Pratt, Morrow, Weatherby, Twitchell: no doubt others not recognized by me. In expectation of taking the chair in ’46, prepare yourself with a good Indian speech, and wampum, for Je-ehah-tu-guck-click-hoh, (Walk-in-prairie-grass,) Chief of the Flat-noses, who may greet you as “father.” As the Assembly gave “six barrels of provisions” to “No-heart-offear,” it is likely we shall have a numerous council in the Xth church-wig wram, [Philadelphia.] “Church of Trenton City, seventeen barrels of jerked meat.”

Our summer-birds are on the wing. Last Tuesday, my father lectured. Among the hearers was the Rev. Mr. Arnott, with wife, sent to Canada for three months by the Free Church. They had not yet slept in America; and seemed melted by a service, so exactly (as they said) like their own. Lord’s poems are out. Kidder’s book also, [Brazil ;] good style, beautiful illus tation, and grand reading. I mean to give an article (D. v.) in Repertorio, [July 1845.] I hope the abolitionists are ready to support all the superannuated negroes, called slaves, who are living snugly in warm comfort over Jersey. How little relief has followed all their thousands yet expended! Herschell is a good speaker, and though slow yet pathetic, full of unction, and abundant in apt Scripture citation such as none but a Hebrew of the Hebrews ever employs. He had several thousands at the Tabernacle of Witness, or House of David, (Hale.) Dr. Adams found twenty-three young Americans at Rome, in preparation for the tonsure. Our streets are cloacine, mephitic, stercoraceous, Augsean, fmious, and infamous.

NEW YORK, June 11, 1845.

When I examine myself, for being somewhat slack in my letter-writing, I seem to find my excuse in the thermometer. Sunday, Monday, and part of yesterday were equatorial. Mr. Hotchkin, one of my people, late from Java says he did not suffer as much there; but this he attributes in part to their houses and their habits. I have been an hour on the battery this evening; by sunset and moonlight. A thousand people, but mostly canaille. Fashion does not acknowledge this lordly park. Wherever I saw a knot of gentlefolk I heard French, or more often Spanish. The 74 near by, the ships in the distance, the scores of small craft under gentle sail, the hundreds of small boats, the blue shores, the water, the delicious breeze, the lights among the shipping, the fine trees, the half-seen groups — end the period, according to the rule in that case made and provided. Dr. Potts’s church is to be dedicated to-morrow. I would rather preach Christ, by such a history as Merle d’Aubigne’s, than by many sermons; yet men judge differently, from going by names instead of things. Herschell is a fine preacher; I mean he is a good one: full of uncommon Scriptures, of unction, of force, and of Christ. He feels our climate very much. Monod and Merle have both been at Edinburgh. Dr. Phillips has a noble session-house, separate, back from street, but fronting full on the cross street. I have always considered June our healthiest month: it is so here now. Yet I cannot describe what I see in my walks in certain streets: dunghills, nakedness, dead dogs

VOL. II. 2* and cats, offal, garbage, leprous folk, lazars, magdalens. The stench, in some quarters, is rnephitic. The single element of water (nota bene, not Croton) flows, and floods, and smells in o manner unmentionable. Cloacina herself must preside in and about the park and its purlieus. Nobody ever cares about this or any thing similar, for it is characteristic of a New Yorker to feel like a stranger within his gates: no esprit de corps, no responsibility. I think Unitarianism flourishes here; also its ally Swedenborgianism. The vast body of young New Englanders who are here, affect the easy young-lady philosophy of these teachers. I think there is a great deal in Hazlitt’s Table Talk M-hich would please you; scoffer as he sometimes is. The pews in the beautiful Jersey City Church are almost all taken. Their steeple is commanding, and is said to be the first object, on entering the Narrows. I have some hopes of erasing my pulpit scenery, [painted in perspective.] Sometimes I dream of resuming my old plan of a Comment on the New Testament, simple notes. Surely it is wanted. I can’t feel easy under this deliverance [in General Assembly] anent Popish baptism, [as invalid.] Perhaps it is right: but to me it savours of Succession, Braminical orders, Puseyism, &c. Our “erring sister” is naughty enough, but I choke a little about “Antichrist,” the “Son of Perdition,” &c. Alas! I feel my own indecision, and know my own mistiness, on points which other men see as plain as Polus’s sky-dragon: qu. didst ever read “Polus,” in Erasmus’s Colloquies 1 Every day I have to go to the pure New Testament, especially Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; as one goes to the hydrant, after coffee, tea, lemonade, beer, wine, brandy, and physic; in all which, rfathelcss, are some true aqueous particles: /?Ac7ro/Jtci, yap a/art 81 tv atvty/xart. I am yours and yours’s.

NEW YORK, July 14, 1845.

The hot weather makes the page so dripping, that epistolation is more onerous than common. Besides, we sat ten solid days in Presbytery; on one of these fourteen hours; on another I was in the room from 3 till 10 P. M., after a morning session.

I am tired of my correspondence with the “Northern Warder,” * and now propose to you to take it; which, by agreement, I have a right to do. Terms, a column (about) a month, by the steamer, or oftener on emergency. I will send you my files, so that you can follow in the footsteps of your illustrious predecessor. I confidently expect your acceptance by next advices.

1 A religious newspaper published in Dundee, Scotland, for which Dr. Alexander wrote as its American correspondent, a monthly letter.

Say nothing about the thermometer. I sat up much of Sunday night in Georgia summer costume. Generally towards evening there is a breeze, especially grateful down town, but it has failed us. It was our communion, and our church is very warm, and pulpit at the south end.

My mind is led a good deal more than formerly to consider the topic of gnat-filtering and camel-bolting. With all our talk about our “Pilgrim-fathers,” some of the said fathers’ pills are a little too grim for me. It seems to have been an indigestion of the age in England, and bred Quakerism as well as Puritanism. It rejected mince pies and the word “Sunday” as violently as crosses and bishops. Have you lighted on some “Sketches of Newburyport,” &c. 1 In 1752 one Bartlett was “dealt with” for refusing communion with the pastor, because the latter wore a “wigg.” In Judge Sewall’s diary, these entries: “1685, Sept. 13th. Three admitted to the church. Two wore periwigs.” “1697. Mr. Noyes of Salem wrote a treatise on periwigs, &c.” “1708. Aug. 20. Mr. Cheever died. The welfare of the province was much upon his heart. He abominated periwigs.’” John Eliot, the Indian apostle, attributed King Philip’s war to a judgment on periwigs. My father remembers the birth of a calf in Rockbridge,’ with an extraordinary tuft or top-knot: it was voted by the good people to be a monition of heaven against a prevailing mode of dressing women’s hair. A Ruling Elder, being at Saratoga, set his face very sourly against the playing of nine-pins for exercise: the camel which he swallowed was some thing more robust.

Clirehugh, hairdresser, is a character. I never saw a man with a more decided gentlemanly air, quiet, dignified, easy, deferential. He is a collector of coins, has a volume made of all the Tartans of the different Highland clans and families, has all the Scotch music ever issued, gives lectures on Burns, with songs, and has a world of old engravings. He cuts one’s hair with the gravity of an inquisitor, and talks literature and vertu.

The modern schools are all humbugs. Teach a boy Latin and Greek; the rest will come of course. But fritter up his time on a dozen branches, and he misses the lingoes: and if he misses a fair grounding in them from 10 to 13, he never gets it. In hundreds of pupils whom I have examined and taught, I never knew an exception.

NEWARK, August 30, 1845.

For a time I did not know of your return, and then I was jaunting about in regions where for the most part writing facilities are not easy to get. My journeys afford no journals. The

36 WHILE PASTOR OF DTJANE ST. CHURCH, NEW YOItK.

whole thing was somewhat dull, especially as the burning drought, up the North River, has been universal. They are longer about our church [painting, &c.] than I had thought, and I propose to charter the cellar [basement] after to-morrow. We have made a clean riddance of the fresco painting, which had become a Nehushtan, [2 Kings, xviii. 4,] with some of the mothers in our corner of the vineyard. I traversed the Great Britain, a wonderful piece of hardware. The British steamers are intensely filthy compared with ours; and I learn that the observation is true of all their shipping. She has twenty-four fire-places, and burns 100 tons of coal per diem. When the last touch is put on, she will have cost $600,000. I am informed by one who pretends to know, that Cogswell is going on laboriously, making out the catalogue of the great Library, which Astor is to found; after which he is to go to Europe and realize the plan. We hope to re-open our house about the 12th prox. This is a beautiful town, and, near as it is to New York, is remarkable for quiet and honesty. I am at the house of three maiden ladies, at a corner, in a thinly -built part of the town; yet they have never had any fastening to their windows, or their side-door. I have not rallied as much as I need to do. to encounter another campaign. My New York experiment is by no means tried: but as I never did any thing with more wish to do right, so I now endeavour to cast myself on the Master, for the result. Yesterday I came from Staten Island. Every time I visit that delightful isle, I perceive it to be unequalled as a summer retreat; such variety of coast and prospects, such numerous drives on roads almost uniformly shaded with rows of trees, such graceful ups and downs, and green recesses, and such a feeling of remoteness from the world, though you are but an hour from the city, that I should like of all things to have a house there, and go to town every day in summer. This is done by several scores of New York merchants, &c. I saw the coffer-dam, at Caldwell’s, which they are making around Capt. Kidd’s vessel; $60,000 have been expended already. I saw the ruins of Anthony’s Nose; they have blown the nose so hardly, that no rhinoplastic means can ever restore it.

NEWARK, September 1, 1845.

I fear my letter of this morning was “as vinegar upon nitre;” for, five minutes after mailing it, I heard the news of your sister’s death, and tried to get it out of the office, but in vain. Had I learnt the melancholy tidings earlier, I should certainly have hastened to the funeral: as it is, 1 have searched the papers in vain for the date. O what a change in your mother’s household, and what a shade over her hearth! Your brothers have really lost a guardian angel, at least from this world. Anna’s qualities come very freshly before me. She was certainly a marked character. I do think I never knew any person of more honesty, truth, self denial, charity, or liberality. Her standard was high, and she judged fellow-Christians severely; but she judged justly in this, and condemned herself in full measure. I forbear to say what you have lost, or to indulge in ordinary condolence. God grant that this renewed call on your family may be blessed to those who remain, especially to your mother.

These gathering shades on our path, as we go onward, tell us that “the night cometh.” I look back to the days of Sixth street, [his earlier visits to Philadelphia,] and my eyes fill with unaccustomed tears. What manner of persons ought we to be, &c.? How many of our cares and anxieties are very vain, when seen in the light of coming things! Under a gracious influence, our character is no doubt formed by successive dispensations of this kind. It is a new immersion, and we come out with a graver tinge. I feel unusually serious under this sudden news; and as yet know no particulars.

NEW YORK, September 25, 1845.

I should feel better and stronger, if I had taken some bona-fide distant jaunts, which the state of my family did not allow. The Boston people have the good sense to put their ministers’ vacation into the call as a matter of claim. In many of our congregations there is enough of the croaking sort to grudge even that recreation to a minister, which a humane drayman would give to his horse. I have a presentation copy of [Rev. Mr.] Lewis’s [of Scotland] Impressions of the American churches. He censures right and left. Our preaching, in particular, he describes as characterized by want of animation and earnestness. He is very severe on slavery and democracy. In fine, very little pleases him. There is, throughout, a very offensive air of self-sufficiency and patronage. Dr. thinks there never was

among our churches so general an indifference; that ministers give undue value to learning, and less than is due to piety; that such men as Payson and Nettleton were of a generation, of whom we have not one left. Lewis speaks of the total desuetude into which pastoral visiting has fallen. Cheap literature blasts religious reading. I seldom see a young professor with a spiritual book. Church extension goes on coldly. We are not quite as far behindhand, as to new churches, as Philadelphia, but we add them by threes and fours, when we should by twenties and thirties. Vacant ministers swarm in our cities, beseeching one for places, instead of rushing into the wild West and South, as was done by the McKennies, Henrys, Blairs, Todds, Grahams, and Davieses, who founded our church. I feel the justice of Lewis’s remarks on this topic, when contrasting our lethargy with the actual state of the Scotch churches. I don’t wonder at the sympathy he felt with the Methodists.

NEW YORE, October 3, 1845.

Heavy rains. I have seen specimens of words and sentences, printed by the new magnetic telegraph; it works by keys, like a piano. Music is well off here; Ole Bull, Templeton, and de Meyer. One of our missionaries in India is succeeding well in teaching Hindoo boys to read the Hebrew. Its connexion with Arabic renders it both easy and desirable. Rankin, our most valuable missionary there, will have to come back; he is almost dead. Austin Dickinson thinks he has such arrangements with news-editors, as to ensure the publication of any religious paragraph, in 40,000 copies of secular prints. This is worth considering. He is very avid of scraps. Send me for him a bit of a sermon, and you may do good. I am just from Monthly Concert. 1 think our average of collection at it slowly rises. Bush goes the whole Swedenborgian figure. Some of his revelations are not so very fascinating; as of people’s being conscious in their coffins, thinking themselves on earth, while they are in heaven.

One of the great Christian problems of the age seems to me to be how to carry the gospel to the thousands, in cities, who will not enter any church. Pews are high. Or they are not dressed well enough. An effort is making to establish minor religious meetings, for such purposes, here and there, all over the city. It is a fine scheme, though not a new one, being that of the old Evangelical Society of our boyhood. But its simplicity and homeliness gives it a Bible-look. When shall we come down from our stilts, and be in earnest with a perishing world? Decorum and conservatism do not rank as the most needed virtues just now. Lewis justly charges our church with want of aggressive power in the cities. We have lost much by stiffness. A covenanter minister said to me, last week, and I had thought it myself, “If your church had only allowed the ‘Old Psalms’ and a few such things, to old-country people, on their coming here, our church would by this time have had no existence here.” I did not hear Wines’s Lectures, but he was very well patronized.

1 Described in Life of Dr. Archibald Alexander, chap. xii. Dr. J. W. Alexander gave some thoughts on “Poverty and Crime in Cities,” in the Repertory, October, 1845.

Dr. Spring has a very good plan for a preachers’ library here. It could be easily accomplished. There is frequently a call to consult volumes, which are not to be found at all. A building is all that stands much in the way. Look out for a “Christian- Alliance man,” with the cry of the daughters of the horse-leech. Could not some Christian Newton arise with advantage, and simplify our methods, indicate some gravitation, or what not? We have a wonderful diversity of methods, whereby to reach the same ends. Thus, take the one object of European popery; I have been solicited to open our doors to (1) this Christian Alliance; (2) to Herman Norton, well known in Trenton, but now more familiar with Trent, agent for the Protestant Association; (3) The Foreign Evangelical Society; while I prefer (4) The Presbyterian Board which we are endeavouring to aid, in this very field, by sustaining an Evangelist in France.

NEW YORK, October 7, 1845. The late Free Church Assembly at Inverness fills two of the

large Scotch papers pretty full. slips by the whole in two

or three sentences, without a word of extract, and yet I have seldom read any proceedings more full of interest and edification. It is “life in earnest.” This extra meeting was all in a glow. Day after day, in the absence of all ordinary business, they warmed one another up, in regard to their “schemes.” That church seems to me all in one great revival. Where could one hundred and twenty ministers be found among us to engage each for a month’s Missionary itinerancy1? Their “pavilion” had four thousand worshippers, thrice a day. In man says Chalmers was very charming, while sitting for his portrait, [for a gentleman in New York.] He used to go to breakfast, and family worship. He says Macaulay spoke of the American clipping of words in pronunciation: to which I rejoined, every Englishman says “111 thenk ye for thet het.” In man is a great artist, and a fine talker. Have you seen Bailey’s “Festus,” a poem? A bold, irregular, but gigantic genius. Some things equal any thing I ever read. But the extravagance is wonderful, and the great aim is to enforce Restorationism. Bush is to establish Swedenborg’s divine mission next Sunday. Dr. Gumming, an educated Scotchman, says, that having re-visited Scotland after the disruption, he could scarce believe the change; a spirit breathed into every thing; even drowsy country ministers roused up and elevated by zeal for a great cause. Dr. Potts’s church is certainly very beautiful. As a work of art it is exquisite. They have very nobly resolved to leave no debt on the congregation. The cost is at least $80,000. One pew-sale has come off. I understand half the down-stairs pews were sold. The highest price was $1,008. I am told the purchases equal $35,000. On the 1st day of the 7th month, Tisri, or New Year’s day, I attended synagogue, and saw men in their shrouds, (an old usage,) heard the ram’s horns blown, &c. Saturday is the day of Atonement. I also saw the Levites pour water from a silver pitcher on the hands of the Cohens; and the latter ascend, shoeless, and bless the people, according to the trine benediction in Deuteronomy. There are now nine synagogues in this city. Neander is working away among the Jews. I saw Abeel yesterday; alive, but scarcely more; full of faith and love; going to Savannah.

NEW YORK, October 20, 1845.

Dr. [Kearney] Eodgers, about ten days ago, performed an operation, for aneurism, which is considered unique: the tying of the left subclavian artery. Sir Astley Cooper attempted it once, and failed. The man is thus far doing well. Mott, Ste vens, Cheeseman, and three hundred spectators, were present.

Thus far I had written on Friday, the 19th; now, on 20th, I add that Baynard R. Hall is here, and is to preach for me to morrow. A new book on Tobacco, dedicated by S. H. Cox, D.D., to the “Right Honorable” (sic) John Quincy Adams. The New School Synod are at work to-day, hammer-and-tongs, settling the mutilations of the Tract Society. Wines is here on the Hebrew Commonwealth. J). X. Junkiri, in press, on the Oath. Bush has great audiences and is making converts. Bellows [Unitarian] has got into his new house. It has two conspicuous crosses in alto relievo, in front: lucus a non, &c. J. F. Clark, formerly of Flemington, has got into hot water (strange ‘to say) at Cold Spring, by circulating some Douay Bibles among Romanists, who would receive no others. The Hydrarchos Sillimani is said to be artificial. The Mastodon is in full feather. Templeton and de Meyer are convulsing the musical world. I wish some new Whitefield or even Summerfield could rise, to carry the crowd a little that way. I believe more than I did in the need of some radical, revolutionary, aggressive action, in our Christianity. Our present method does well enough to keep what we have got. I am about to make a small Hymn Book, to contain none but unaltered Hymns, about two hundred and fifty.

Bickersteth on the Prophecies, though a 1000-narian book, is in a lovely Christian spirit, and is very delightful. All the delegates from the Established Church of Scotland have been here; some of them more than once. I do not know of their preaching anywhere.

NEW YORK, November 17, 1845.

Yesterday I compassed three services, a thing I have not done for some years. For two successive Sabbaths I have had in church, Peter R. Livingston, brother of Mrs. Armstrong, [of Trenton,] also Maturin Livingston; and, on the 9th, the former partook of the Lord’s Supper, in our church, a very pleasing sight to me. One of the most agreeable hours I spend in the week, contrary to all my expectations, is on Monday morning at the Foreign Missionary Executive Board. Dr. [J. J.] Janeway, who comes more than thirty miles, is our most punctual member. We have adopted as a missionary to Africa, Ellis, the learned blacksmith, of Alabama. Two synods have bought him and his for $2,500. His attainments (without a teacher) in Latin and Greek are certified to us as extraordinary. A late German has the following scheme, which is certainly ingenious. Christian doctrine has four grand epochs: 1. Theology, proper; Trept TOV ®cov. The Trinity, &c., settled in the early age; doctrine not moved since; this was done by the Greeks. 2. Anthropology: Doctrine of fall and grace; the Pelagian controversy: this was done by the Latins. 3. Soterology: Doctrine of the way of salvation; Justification controversy: this by the Germans. 4. Ecclesiology: Doctrine of the Church. In this era we now are. There is, to me, a beautiful vraisemblance in this. No. 4 is undoubtedly true of our times. Some notions have lately struck me more than ever before; such as these: In proportion as cheap publication goes on, books become more and more like conversation and the attributes and laws of the latter belong to the former: this admits of being carried out to wonderful particulars. Again, the more we are flooded with bad books, the more should we read the Bible — I mean the simple text; even of ministers, few do what they ought of this. Lest you should be overburdened, I spare you the remaining aphorisms; which shall appear in my “Novissimum Organon, vol. iii. § ccccxcviii. De libris supprimendis” I heard de Meyer, [pianist ;] it was with astonishment and almost fright, but I was not touched. I have gone through seven chapters of Hebrews, [in weekly lectures.1] What a wonderful abandon in the style of Hamilton’s “Life in Earnest!”

NEW YORK, December 2, 1845.

I lament over your provincialism, in using the word “freshet” [for fresh] as you do, in letter of October 17. Perhaps you have not met with “The New Methodist Pocket Hymn Book:” the following is from it:

1 The series of lectures on the Hebrews extended from October 29, 1844, to February 23, 1847.

“When I was blind, I could not see,
The Calvinists deceived me;
They, by the Scripture, strive to show,
That sinners nothing had to do:
At length I heard another preach,

L Who ways of righteousness did teach:

He warned me of the Calvinist,
And how God’s word they would resist.”

P. 113.

I have this day had a most painful interview with a man of some note in the world of art. I talked earnestly with him about his soul. (He is, I fear, on his death-bed.) He received it well, considered as kindness; but considered as gospel, I think he did not receive it at all. After my most serious endeavours, he very calmly changed the whole subject, and talked about his last picture, and a bas-relief for the tomb of a friend.

I believe all the pews not sold, in the lower part of Dr. Potts’s church, are rented. Old Dr. Milled oler preached at the Installation: he made a prayer which I shall certainly long remember; it was exalted, scriptural, childlike, tender, and moving. The man who can so pray, (and even so preach, as he did,) is a man I should like to know better; and I mean to seek his acquaintance, at the first opportunity.

NEW YORK, December 9, 1845.

Your hints about mission-efforts around our city- (you may add town-) churches are good: so much so, that I have been harping on that same string ever since I came here, and have preached one sermon very directly to that point. Our city is not altogether behind, in the matter, even now; we have twenty city missionaries, and more than a hundred weekly meetings of the sort you mean. But this does not reach my notion, and I am not going to rest until, as a congregation, we have a preaching-place and missionary in regular operation. This, with God’s blessing, I hope to set agoing, before the season is over. We already support two missionaries in the West, and one in France; and I have this moment had a note, saying that our young women have assumed the whole charge of the last, leaving the young men (formerly associated) to give their money another direction. I am recommending the coloured people to their care.

I do not see any great exaggeration in regard to Dod. It is my deliberate opinion that I never saw his superior in extent of knowledge, in exactness in certain branches, in capacity to teach, in power of colloquial argument, in generous enthusiasm.

1 Professor Albert B. Dod died at Princeton, Nov. 20, 1845.

Just at this time, I am doubtless disposed to look at the bright side of his character, and to consider his death a very significant blow to the college. There is something very pleasing to me, in the almost universal expression of sorrow among all classes in New Jersey, and especially among his pupils. His dying exercises strike me as truly gracious.

I forgot to talk to you about ’s preposterous elocution.

When warmed, he thoroughly forgets it; but he read a passage in a way which, may be thus represented: “Praise ye tho LoTM; praise ye the name of the Lofid; praise him, O ye Servants of the LoJSd.” The effect was great, and the click of the articulating wheel-work almost drove me out of the pulpit.

I spent two charming hours to-day at the Protestant Half-Orphan Asylum, where I speechified; 175 children. Wetmore, who conducts the City mission, &c., is an extraordinary man. He is ten hours every day at ironmongery, yet labours beyond every body else in religious matters, and is withal as gentleman like a man as you will find in a summer’s day. What a mean, nasty, anti-analogical word “reliable “is. Fanny Kemble laughs at “‘Bakery; “what would she say of” Bindery,” and “Paintcry,” which I see passim. In due time, a church may be called a ‘’ preachery.”

I am now in the 8th chapter of Hebrews. I have never had an exercise more acceptable. To myself, I trust, it has been useful, as leading me to dwell much on the very marrow and riches of gospel grace. One thing, to my mind, above all others, grows in centrality (ut ita dicam) among converting doctrines; the infinite, sovereign, freeness of grace, through the death of Christ. Within a few days I have been directed to several persons, who, I think, are savingly exercised.

NEW YORK, December 23, 1845.

I have never yet felt the argument to be demonstrative which would keep a poor bedridden creature from ever partaking of the Lord’s Supper. I preached on War, at great length, a fortnight agone. Elders and Trustees were for printing it; but I was wiser than all that. South, in his sermons, constantly uses “shew” for the perfect tense of “show,” (blow, blew, grow, grew, &c.;) but Sorin and Ball’s edition (Phila.) constantly makes it “show,” supposing it a various spelling of “show.” I never have read as keen a writer as South; nor one me judice of better style.

Jones has made a valuable and most entertaining book. I

1 Dr. Joseph H. Jones’s “Influence of Physical Causes on Religious Experience,” enlarged in I860 in his volume entitled “Man Moral and Physical.”

44: WHILE PASTOK OF DTJANE ST. CHURCH, NEW YOKK.

trust you will apply the principles anent reporting, exemplified in the “slips” of your lecture, to the newspaper report of my sermon on Dod. The Observer makes me say at least ten things which I did not say, and leaves out every one of the qualifications on which I laid much stress, and my earnest attempt to withdraw notice from D.’s metaphysics to the simplicities of his dying hour.

makes a prayer which one feels and remembers: I think

this is a point which I observe more than formerly. The Offer tory [Christinas] is promising; one turkey, two barrels apples, one do. flour, half do. sugar, one wrapper. I have preached, this evening, on Eph. vi. 19, 20; look at it. I used to see a number of things from Germany, at Princeton, which I miss now. It reminds me of what Lamb says, about missing the stationery of the India House: “When Adam laid out his first penny upon non pareils in Mesopotamia, I think it went hard with him, reflecting on his old goodly orchard, where he had so many for nothing.” I hope to have my father and mother here, on New Year’s, when we desire our boy to be baptized. The absence of Quakers in New York is wonderful. I have never seen one in full rig, and do not meet any kind of perceivable ones more than once in a month. But we have an Armenian store, with “Notions” from Stamboul. Our confectioners and toymen are in high feather. Wild turkeys and venison abound. Gentlemen wear “shawls,” London-wise, also a very thick-soled, sensible English shoe. Our Executive Committee have, for months, been anxiously endeavouring, by correspondence with our missionaries, and with other societies, to mature a plan for the education of mission aries’ children. It is a painful and delicate subject. On Monday we were two hours upon it.

Sunday School Meetings are ’ common here on Christmas. My sexton, who is here just now, says he has a brother named Ole, and that Christmas in Danish is Yule. The words of my good father become more and more precious to me, like the books of the Tarquinian Sibyl; I therefore copy what follows from his last letter:

“As to the effects of the truth preached, never doubt that every faithful sermon will produce its effect; it will not return void. Give it efficacy by prayer. If you have any persons in the church who are mighty in prayer, engage them to pray for the success of the gospel. Payson instituted little circles, called ‘Aaron-and-Hur-societies,’ the sole object of which was to pray every Sunday morning for the success of the word preached.”

NEW YORK, January 16, 1846.

Knowing your dislike to thin paper, I have now provided some, which I know will suit you to a nicety. I have been sitting for my “effigies,” as Cromwell calls it; a mean business. Prof. Henry thinks the late discovery of the late Michael Fara- day, of the relation of electro-magnetism to light, the greatest x made in our day. He has also examined the talking-machine, [an automaton,] and pronounces it valid and wonderful.

For some time I have not had access to Inman’s chamber. To-day I was sent for with a message that he was dying. He had just (vix et ne vix quidcm) finished a portrait of Harper. Certainly he is great in that line. Perhaps you have seen his $1,000 full length of Bishop White. His Chalmers, Words worth, and Macaulay, are great. There are, I think, no services in which we need a prescribed schedule, more than those which come often, as for example, sacramental preparations: they are apt to be the same thing over and over. For many months I have been going over our Lord’s own preparatory words and acts, in the Gospels. Last Sabbath four on examination, and fifteen on certificate. Three hundred dollars anonymously for Theological Seminary. In preaching on Home Missions, on “Sabbath first,” I shall touch a little on War again; text, “Righteousness exalteth,” &c. Mr. [E. F.] Cooley might have gone back much further with his [edition of the New England] primer: I wait for a chance to send you an exact reprint of that of 1777; some of the lectiones are fine; e. g.:

C. “Christ crucify’d For sinners dy’d.”

D. “The Deluge drown’d The Earth around.”

E. “Elijah hid By Ravens fed.”

F. “The Judgment made Felix afraid.”

L. “Lot fled to Zoar, Saw fiery Shower, On Sodom pour.”

T. “Young Timothy Learnt sin to fly.” v

Dr. Potts has one hundred at his catechizing, and sixty ladies at his Dorcas Society. I am glad S. has shown the pole-bags to be means of grace, for they have hitherto lacked due reverence of me. What a euphonious title, that of his Oglethorpe University Address: “Denominational Education.” I have a young merchant, in ample business, who studies the Greek Testament, with lexicon and commentaries. The abolitionists seem to have adopted a motto from Julius Caesar:” Help, Cassius, [Clay,] or

I sink!” The [a religious paper] is obviously improving.

Do I err in detecting your hand in the item on” Preparing

1 la the times of “Pine St. Church,” the usual Sunday “collections” were taken with velvet bags at the end of long handles.

Potatoes for Stock?” Who contributes the piece, in the same on “Save your Salt Barrels “? I have sought for an anagogical or mystical meaning in this last. How touching the allusion to “glanders, grease, mange, blindness, coughs, and broken wind “! What is your judgment of crib-biting 1 The very violent attempts at visible Unity, as in the Liverpool Convention, savour of an unworthy suspicion that there is no Gospel Union but in protocols, and platform accolades. The unity (ni fallor) which the Bible enjoins, is no such thing, and is consistent with great diversity. Push a ritualist, and how little he can show for real unity. A Dominican and a Jesuit are far more asunder than Kidder [Methodist] and I, in dress, in creed, and in service. Who authorizes them to say that unity resides in swearing by one and the same pope 1

NEW YORK, January 26, 1846.

The evils of indiscriminate reading, even of religious books, has so weighed with me, that on Sunday I devoted both sermons to “Christian -Reading.” Inter alia, I gave a list of books, under these heads: 1. Explanatory of the Bible; 2. Awakening and Inviting; 3. Experimental Religion; 4. Theology; 5. History; 6. Biography; 7. Poetry; 8. Miscellaneous, including Periodical. Our collection for Domestic Missions =$520; add $100 by an individual, and $300 by Young Men =$920. I was vaccinated last spring, and had a perfect pustule; so my Doctor says. My father’s book on Colonization is out. I have preached three times on three Sabbaths this winter; but I find it too much. Don’t fail to read the articles from the “Times,” on the Polk-Message, in the “Warder.” I feel ashamed of our American bluster. But how plain is it, that the British dread a war far more than we! They know better what it means. I have a letter from Abeel, in Savannah; low in body, but triumphant in mind; as he has been ever since I knew him. The sleighing has been a perfect intoxication, till the thaw came. Such a display of costly vehicles, furs, &c., is seen nowhere south of this: some had fourteen and even twenty horses. It would have been worth a visit to see the omnibus-sleighs, carrying forty, fifty, and sixty, and bedizened with all manner of pictures, &c. We have two hundred and fifty omnibuses constantly running in New York.

Talk of railway in Hudson street. continues prolific; but

how unreadable! a swill-tub of citations. Though given to quotation myself, I think it below the highest method. There is more in a man who spins all out e propriis viscerilus. This has often struck me in my good father, — no scraps, no pretty “phrases,” no poetry, no Latin sentences. The other way is a p

sign of weakness: habeas confitentem reum. Yet still more am I convinced that a man must be himself, and that he gains by fol lowing his bent. I have read Carlyle’s Cromwell, and believe he was a converted man.

YORK, February 19, 1846.

If my little sister Mary Ann had lived, she would have been thirty-five years old yesterday. This makes me think of the flight of time, and of the mercy of God, in that long interval, to my father’s house. Mr. Lowrie authorizes me to say, that, though the knowledge of Wilson’s wants did not all come through himself, they have long since been supplied, as far as could be done here. His troubles, mutatis mutandis, are those of all missionaries, and such as occupy our Monday mornings, all the year. You might properly say to Wilson, that in every case he should make known his wants directly to the Board: the reasons are obvious. I am glad of your contempt of weariness, [on Mondays ;] I cannot brag of the like, but still belong to the paradoxical class who find the day of greatest lassitude immediately after the day of greatest labour. The Tabernacle [Broad way] is filled every Sunday night, no matter who preaches. My church-mission-project is in abeyance, until I see how the Presbytery’s plan (for the same end) turns out. I have no idea, how ever, of doing our work through the - Presbytery: it is a slow work. After all the outcry of the Synod of Philadelphia for a “separate organization,” whereby to give their benefactions to domestic missions, — just look at their amount of contributions!

One of the unreasonable demands on a pastor is, that he should like and dislike the people whom A, B, and C dislike. I try hard to let no prejudices or bickerings affect me. But oh! v what a disposition, in ourselves and others, to be censorious; to see faults before excellencies in our neighbours; to applaud ourselves tacitly, by criticizing others openly, as to the points where we feel less vulnerable! I know no Scripture precept harder than that, “Let each esteem other better,” &c. Sometimes I am painfully affected with the consciousness that this or that duty, which I have performed, would certainly have been neglected or deferred, if no human being were to have known it. I wish I felt more the force of the phrase, “the praise which cometh from God.” Protracted Meetings seem to me absolutely indifferent; I I to be used, if there be cause, but not as a crack-measure to get - up excitement. Where there is a hearing ear, it seems reasona-

1 Thomas Wilson, a coloured man, who went to Africa under the Board

4:8 WHILE PASTOK OF DUANE ST. CHURCH, NEW TOKK.

ble to multiply instructions. Perhaps Edwards (on Revivals) goes a little too far; but his general views strike me as just.

I reluctantly break my rule again sst lecturing, in order to mendicate in that way for the Princeton church. For three weeks I have had cold and sore throat. I have lost, however, only one exercise by-it, which was in the week. Kidder and I have been exchanging calls for fourteen months, but have never met in a house. The St. Valentine’s day is so serious a thing here, that the city post is interrupted for three or four days; they put on extra carriers, and have a special chest in the Post Office. There are Valentines offered at $200 a-piece; being ingenious pictured integuments of gold watches, pins, brooches, &c.

NEW YORK, March 16, 1846.

It was only at a late hour this evening, on my brother Henry’s return from Princeton, that I heard of your recent anxiety. And now I do sincerely hope that all cause of serious apprehension is removed, and that you will feel at ease to write me soon that you are giving thanks for great deliverance. I say this with the more feeling, as for a few days we have been in much fear, by reason of the sudden and severe illness of our second child. He has had a fever; and, though still confined to his bed, is greatly mended. Let the God of our salvation be exalted.

How much, in time of sickening fears, we are made to feel our need of a direct and immediate Divine influence; and how gracious is the hand which so often gives it to us! Our reasonings, even on the basis of the word, do not reach the case in such a time.

The healings, and manifold compassionate acts of our Lord, while on earth, as given in the simple narrative of the gospels, have been an unspeakable comfort to me, in days of despondency. “When my foot slipped, thy mercy, O Lord, held me up.”

NEW YORK, March 24, 1846.

The Gospel is not attractive enough for people now-a-days. Ministers must bait their trap with something else. The old-fashioned topics are seldom heard. This diminishes one’s wonder at the small progress made in spirituals. The following is taken, just as it stands, from the Journal of Commerce. A

1 Here followed a few advertisements of sermons on “the Holy “Week at Rome,” u Washington the Friend of Peace,” “The Influence of Calvin,” “Signs of Stability and Decay in the Government of our Country,” &c.; but the custom has become so familiar since the date above, and the incongruous subjects so multiplied, that the notices pasted in the letter would not now seem curious.

sermon which I preached on the 15th, seems to have been graciously owned to the awakening of two persons. It is a sermon above all I have, remarkable for two faults: first, it is common-place; secondly, it is flowery. Mr. Begg, of Edinburgh, is to preach for us next Sunday evening. He is a very warm, interesting preacher. Like all the Scotch, he interweaves Scripture passages, out of the common line, in a way to surprise and charm. My Presbyterian folio, for the Blind, is published by the Board. It contains, 1, Prayers; 2, Hymns; 3, The Catechism; 4, A Compen d of Doctrine, by my father. I have not, since McCheyne’s, had such a treat as in “Housman’s Life,” just published by Carter. I am just about to have my favourite tract “Poor Joseph,” printed in large type, with covers, for the aged and for poor readers. We collected $600 in February for Education, and about the same in March, for the Bible Society. Dr. S. has come over to our views, against public aisle-covenant, at communions, after practising thirty years the other way. Addison’s first volume [Isaiah] is all “in hands,” and daily expected. A stranger lately gave me $250 for colportage. Walsh’s letters, in the National Intelligencer, are equal to his best days. Don’t fail to read every extract in the “Warder,” from the Examiner. I never saw such a sustained wit, as in the leaders of that paper. Savage Land or is said to write many of them. A Chinaman, with tails, &c., parades our streets. First fruits of our mission at Amoy, are reported. Abeel is expected here every day. In our chief churches here, the praise of God is now performed by committee, and sometimes by a very small one. In some tunes, I am sure, not more than six constitute the acting-worshippers. Why not one? Instrumental Worship would be a good title for an Essay. Begg says it wras overwhelming, at Inverness, to hear 15,000 voices, all joining, sub dio, in the old psalms. O to hear it!

NEW YORK, April 8, 1846.

The lowest down-town church is the North Dutch, then Vandewater St., (Free Episcopal,) then Dr. Spring’s, then ours, I manage somehow to have a third service almost every Sunday, My article in the Repertory [“Metaphysical Theology of the Schoolmen”] has some brilliant typographic variations, as “hired for hindered.” It is worth coming to New York to see the power-presses in the Bible House. One of the most learned Jews is become a Christian; to my knowledge. He does not wish it bruited till he has prepared a treatise, in German and English. He tried Unitarianism, to avoid the grand “offence”; but it would not do; he has come out a thorough trinitarian, VOL. IT. — 3

More of this anon. Swedenborgianism grows. Dr. Potts is the star of our pulpit-sky. Cheever is gathering a Congregational congregation at Union Square. The interior of Trinity Church is grand. The pulpit is crawled up to, around one of the pillars, as it were in a corner. A pupil of mine heard /Bellows the other night, and said the substance was: “Be good; “*• and if you can’t be good, be as good as you can.” I this day corrected the title-page of Addison’s book. Mr. Read has a revival. I cannot dismiss the conviction, that the thing to be aimed at is a warmth which may be continued; numbers always inquiring; additions each communion; so necessitating no breach of routine in preaching. On Sunday mornings I always preach straight on in the catechism, except when my monthly collections come. I have had much hope from the effect of my last four, on “Adoption,” “Assurance,” “Peace,” and “Joy!” The new missionary map of the world, (Colton’s,) 14 feet by 8, is worth having. Y.’s piece takes no “account of the distinction between Assurance of faith and of hope and hence he charges confusion on our theologians which does not exist. This is the eighteenth letter or note (some of them long) I have had to write, within twenty-four hours. If I may judge in such a case, my best effusions [in the Sunday School Journal] have been as “An Old Contributor.” My weekly catechizing continues to be delightful to me. Several of the young people are very seriously inquiring. We have averaged sixty from the beginning. There is immense need of an Explanation of the Catechism, not to exceed 100 pages, and with these qualities: 1. Simplicity. 2. The breaking of the matter into short — very short questions and answers. 3. Avoiding unnecessary accumulation of texts. 4. Absence of school-divinity. A member of my church gave $1,400 to repair a country church, and has given $200 a year, several years, to the minister’s salary. Another member does as much for the Thomsonville church. Would it not be a good rule, in visiting, to contrive to repeat a few verses of the Bible at every place? How much precious matter it would give the pastor, for his meditations. Again, might not a man, properly, make a point, in every prayer he offers in houses, to have a sentence or two specially bearing on his own pastoral and individual wants? By these two methods, what we lose from private culture might in a good degree be made up, I have resorted to the old plan, of carrying select tracts, &c. One who has free use of one’s pen, may gain much by little notes, even to persons who are shy, unapproachable, and unfeeling. I have had more calls to converse with people on religion, lately, than ever before,

NEW YORK, May 11, 1846.

Your letter reveals to me that you are not altogether relieved from your anxieties. I lately preached on Mark ix. 19; a subject which I felt a good deal myself, in reference to some former domestic experiences, and which seemed to affect my people more than usual. Direct bringing of our cares to Christ, is a duty or privilege less practised than is thought. If we ventured more on Him, (unless the very term savours of unbelief,) we should doubtless have more to praise for. See Psalm xxxiv. 4 — 6. Is not our Christianity derived too much from report, from a sort of average, from common experience of those about us, and not from the simple Word? You will find some sweet, useful things in the “Mount of Olives,” a pendant to “Life in Earnest.”

Yesterday was our Communion; seventeen on certificate, and eight on examination. A Free Church minister, Mr. Stevenson, was with us, but did not partake. Another, Dr. Willis, of Glasgow, has been here. They adhere boldly to their plan of sending over settled pastors of some note, on missions of three months, to Canada. This strikes me as a noble plan, fitted to do great good, at least to the deputies themselves.

How can I pray for a blessing on our fight with Mexico! Poor creatures, they have done as little against us as we could have expected. As a Christian nation, we should have sent them the Gospel; but now, unless God interpose wonderfully, we shall rob and invade them. Who knows but that we may find ourselves engaged with a stronger than they 1

I am more and more of opinion, that the great Missionary work of America should be among the two races which we have most injured, viz., the black and the red. I have misgivings whenever we send men to Northern India, (British ground,) and neglect the perfectly open field among our Indians. The government yields every facility for the prosecution of this work. To-day I heard a letter read, in which the Superintendent of Indian Affairs offers to accompany our Secretary, in a tour among all the Western Tribes. We all feel that this work presses on us more than heretofore. The intercourse of a year

with, has led me to set him down as one of the best men

living; for honesty, generosity, self-denial, greatness of love, good sense, and zeal for God. He seems to me to have the heart of a father, towards every one of the missionaries; and when he engages in the harassing labour of purchasing for China, Africa, or the Indians, does it as for dear children. Old-fashioned pastors are about as common as knee-breeches. Literary clergymen abound. Europe is like to have a full representation this summer. The question will soon be, “Who has not been in Europe?” I confess I should like to spend three months in the Free Church, to try and find out the secret of their ardour. Beyond this, the longing for Europe, which haunted me for years, is all gone.

NEW YORK, May 28, 1846.

I am occasionally struck with the force of a phrase in the Greek, which is lost in our own version: ex. gr. Romans xvi. 25, o-ccnyry/xevoi. That chapter is a great trap for orthoepists. Urbane ought to be Urban, as it is in the old English version, being a man’s name. Andronicus, Aristobulus, and Epenetus, are seldom hit right. Next Sunday I hope to preach a Sunday School sermon. The cause needs lifting among us. My little report on Parochial schools has made a breeze in our Assembly, which I was unprepared for.3 The resolutions appear to me milk-and-water enough for anybody. Yet I feel no zeal for them, beyond this, that I should like the skirt of the Assembly to be cast over those who are attempting church-schools. I see no proof that Onesimus ever ran away, in the technical sense, at all. I can go a peg higher than you about slavery, and fail to see the scripturalness of much that is postulated now-a-days, respecting the popular idol, liberty. As existing, slavery is fraught with moral evil; the want of marriage, and of the Bible, and the separation of families, &c., &c., are crying sins; but I am totally unable to see the relation to be necessarily unjust. The moral questions are so various from the circumstances, that each must be decided apart, e. #., “Is A justifiable in holding B to service 1 “Our church, I am clear, ought to protest against the laws about reading, &c. As clear am I, that our States should regard slavery as a transition-state, to be terminated as soon as possible, and that they should enact laws about the post-nati. That the most miserable portion, physically and morally, of the black race in the United States, is the portion which is free, 1 am as well assured as I can be of any similar proposition. That immediate emancipation would be a crime, I have no doubt; and therefore believe there are cases in which there is neither injustice nor inhumanity in holding. I have had but eleven weddings in New York, and only half-adozen in my own charge. Dr. Cox once met my good Puritan brother, Greenleaf, and as his wont is, saluted him in Latin, to which G. replied,” Let him that speaketh in an unknown tongue

1 In our version “kept secret;” in Wiclif’s, “holden still.”

2 The General Assembly of 1844 appointed a committee to consider the expediency of establishing Presbyterian Parochial Schools. Of this committee Dr. Alexander, though not in the Assembly, was chairman. The report was not ready until the Assembly of 1846, when it was, after some debate, ad opted and ordered to be printed in the Appendix to the Minutes of that year.

pray that he may interpret.” Cox is fond of tinkering about the top of his house and sheds. Greenleaf, seeing him thus aloft, gave him this text to expound: “What aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up to the house-tops?”

NEW YORK, June 15, 1846.

My father spent last week with us. Gen. Scott, of soupmemory, is now called Marshal Tureen. We have set up Cornish in a coloured congregation — Potts and I becoming responsible for the rent of the room. My congregation is perceptibly thinning. Our lieut.-governor, Gardiner, of Rochester, worships with us when he is in town. He is a pious man, and a zealous Sunday School teacher. If this treaty with England really goes into effect, we shall have occasion for heartfelt thanks. As to Mexico, I fear their defiles and sierras will give them opportunity to protract the war, much beyond present expectations. Five members of one family in our church are in Paris, or on the way. The Central Church committee [seeking a pastor] called here on Wednesday, on their way to Troy, as fond and avid as ever the Greeks were after Helen. Seekers of vacancies are as abundant as crows in a cornfield. I believe I am solicitor for a dozen at this moment. All make for the cities. Young probationers all hover about home. Quere: whether, in the present destitution of the West, every candidate for orders should not be compelled to do two years of missionary service 1 It would be a good test. I wish I had means to draw up a schedule of the licentiates of the last five years, and where they are. Among persons who desire vacancies are four or five settled ministers. Van Rensselaer is full of a new magazine. [“Presbyterian Magazine,” began in 1851.] I think I should like to write bits for such a thing, sometimes; so would you. Though I did not doubt that Taylor would be nominated for President, I did not surmise that Trenton and Tucker would have the honour of taking the initiative. I saw a gold-headed cane, to-day, made of wood from the first Presbyterian Church in America, the old McKemie church of Accomac, Va. It was in the hands of Mr. Locke, a minister of Northampton, Va. It is marked “1690.” Trinity Church is open at 9£ and 4 for prayers, daily. This I like, Pusey or no Pusey. Yet it never comes to aught in practice. Have you read the “Fox and the Geese “? It lacks all probability, and is in my opinion a sheer invention, to be added to the fictitious literature of the day, concerning which see “American Messenger,” passim. It encourages expectations which can never be realized, of seeing elephants keeping shop, and using their trunks for dry -goods. It is erroneous in point of natural history. The goose (anas anser, Linn.) is not endowed with the faculty of speech, like some of the genus Psittacus; and to represent it as thatching its house, is absurd. But the ridiculous falsity of the book may be considered as au comble, when the common fox (vulpes callida, Linn.) is represented as carrying a torch. This in a religious age, and in the nineteenth century! *

NEW YORK, June 29, 1846.

Dr. Rice came in this evening from his mission to the Massachusetts General Association at Pepperell. He says the Congregationalists are blowing up the sectarian flame very hard, and labouring to propagate their “distinctive” principles. Congregational Puseyism is funny enough. I wish you would read Schaffs famous book; [” Historical Development” ?] Cry out as we may, he tells us some plain truths, and reveals things which none but a transatlantic eye could discern. It is a most exciting and suggestive volume, with a figment for the hypothesis, but great genius, learning, and truth in many of the details. I have always felt the force of what he says about the .Puritans having cut to the quick, in regard to externals; about the charity we should have for Papists; and about the evils of innumerable sects. But he goes fearfully far, about visible unity. The dread of Millenarianism has sealed the mouths of too many of us, I think, in respect to the Second Coming. There is a great deal about it in the New Testament. If others teach a false second-advent, why should not we, all the more earnestly, enforce the true? I have no recollection of having ever heard any brother preach on it. We have (Potts and I) at length got our Old School coloured church a-going. I have thus far failed entirely to get a room for our Duane St. Mission-Church. ,But there seems to be a readiness among our people. Waterbury has accepted the call to St. Bowdoin’s, (I merely transpose the “St.”) A very large proportion of my flock is now in rustication; their place is very much filled by travellers. The constant presence of such, governs my preparations more than it did. Some very encouraging things have occurred, from

1 This ironical notice of the objections to fables and fictions reminds one of the lines of Cowper, which the letter-writer quoted in a graver article on the same subject long before this, (Sunday School Journal, January 9, 1833.)

“I shall not ask Joan Jacques Eousseau

If birds confabulate or no;

‘Tis clear that they were always able

To hold discourse — at least in fable;

And e’en the child who knows no better,

Than to interpret by the letter

A story of a cock and bull,

Must have a most uncommon skull.”

time to time, in regard to such drawings of the bow at a venture. I beheld the other day about 500 new army-recruits, for Mexico, a most sorry collection of ragamuffins. My proximity to the arsenal gives me plenty of this playing at soldiers. Another Free Church minister was here to-day, from Canada, where he has been preaching, almost daily, for several months in Gaelic. His name is MacTavish, from Inverness-shire: a plain, honest, warm fellow. Williamson, who preaches here in one of the French Protestant churches, is a native of London, yet speaks broken English, having been “raised” in France. He is an evangelical Episcopalian.

PRINCETON, July 22, 1846.

Addison is in my place in New York; but for no reason but that of a more perfect seclusion, in order to complete his work. He has finished to the end of the 57th chap., since the first volume was published. He is almost overwhelmed by it, and I do not wonder he escapes all engagements wrhen he can. I feel no sympathy with your Quaker propensities. There is, indeed, something good in Gurney, videlicet, the very part which is not Quaker, and for which his tribe are ready to abjure him. When I consider their anilities about coats, days, and grammar, and the fruits they have borne, I feel no regret that they are so near dissolution. Their way of treating death and eternal things, and their opiates to all conscience, except that of mint, anise, and cummin, make their influence a most irreligious one wherever I have met them.

NEW YORK, August 25, 1846.

I will not inquire how you were affected by a sight of the “Falls,” [Niagara.] I remember the great object, with a sort of religious awe. None of our Heavenly Father’s works seems more expressive of his sublime, incomprehensible greatness. Yet, I dare say, so for as pleasure in concerned, you more value the moment in which you met with your children. There is a depth of joy in such affections, which no external objects can produce.

I am writing in my solitary house; having returned to the city without my family. We were afraid to bring our infant back too suddenly from the purer air of the country. Of my season of holidays I spent ten days at Saratoga, with much advantage, and four or five at Long Branch, with none at all: for I took a cold and cough, under which I am still labouring.

The place of our daily duties, with all its cares, is, after all,

1 This letter was addressed to one of the family of the editor of the correspondence.

the place where we are usually most happy. This I feel very sensibly on my return to New York. Though almost overwhelmed with the press of matters which have been waiting for me, I am nevertheless rejoiced to be at home.

Let us be instructed by the many mercies which we receive, to trust our God and Saviour more implicitly, and to yield ourselves to his service with more entire resignation of all that we have and are. To write and to say such things is easy, but we need special grace to enable us in any degree to realize such a character of mind and life. A cheerful reliance on God, and a firm hope in his promises, are great part of our duty; and these tempers should be encouraged in us, by every new instance of Divine compassion.

You will understand me when I say, that home is not home without my children. I am more dependent than most men, for personal comfort, on the presence of my immediate familycircle. I pray for the hour when, by God’s favour, we may be gathered once more.

NEW YORK, September 1, 1846.

The summer is, by no means, over; and I am not sure that I do not feel the heat more than in July; we have, however, a very perceptible sea-breeze towards evening, and the nights are not at all oppressive. Addison finished his second volume, including a large introduction. I communicated your strictures to him. He says his own private wish always was to make a commentary of the popular sort, and that he was overruled by his friends and advisers.

Those of my people who pretend to pass the summer in the country, are still abroad. Yet our congregations have been full; in part from other churches, in part from the hotels. I never saw the latter more overflowing. Mr. Wetmore, our indefatigable Tract-and-City-mission-man, not long since said at a meeting: “New York Christians appear to think that souls cannot be converted in the month of August.” Gospel-efforts, i like Oysters, are for the months which have an R in them. I have been reading John Foster’s life, with more pain than pleasure. A great, original genius, but too radical, too censorious, too contenptuous of his brethren, too prone to see good only in his own ways. I greatly prefer Hall, or even Jay.

NEW YORK, September 28, 1846.

I have been somewhat occupied in getting my family home, which is one reason why I have not written. Our police now constitute a strong body, being visible at numerous stations,

1 He had reviewed Foster’s Essays in the Repertory, October, 1844.

well understood, with conspicuous badges. Two fire-companies have been disbanded, since I came here, for fighting; the only instances of disorder in the corps. Our fires are very silent affairs. Niblo’s garden and theatre were burnt down, without any cry in the streets. Stewart’s new store is considered, and I dare say justly, the greatest dry-goods shop in the world. The sales, on three days, were $30,000. A withered old apple-woman used to sit on the step of his old store. Stewart, on removing, sent his porter for the old body’s basket, and she now graces his marble threshold. Of the returned members from the Holy [Evangelical] Alliance, I have chatted with Forsyth and De Witt. Both were chiefly impressed by Baptist Noel. De Witt says it is worth a voyage to look at him, and that he made the speech, par excellence. They also talk with admiration of Adolphe Monod and Tholuck. De Witt reports a few hopeful things about the churches of Holland. Elliott Cresson sent the Autocrat [Emperor of Russia] a copy of my father’s Colonization Book. The oldest lawyers in New York (Matthews of Rochester) and New Jersey (Smith Scudder) have died within a few weeks of each other.

I am very busy in looking up my people. In this longstreet-city it is no short job. This morning I had an affecting conversation with a lady, of Quaker education, who has long been feeling her way in the dark towards religion. Probably it was the first conversation she ever had on the subject. Such instances, I fear, are very numerous. It was pleasing to preach the news of a free gospel to one who had not been hardened to its phrases. The Free Church people of Scotland are amazed at our Assembly’s decision on Romish baptism. I have just been down to chat with Mr. Leckie, a Scotch parishioner of mine. His father, a secession minister of Peebles, raised a family of ten sons and three daughters, on a stipend of £120, educated five of them at the University, and died without owing a penny. Bp. Howley, now Archbishop, on hearing the circumstances, gave the widow £10. I have lately obtained the copy of Milton which my mother’s father had read to him during his blindness. You have no idea what a place New York is for musquitoes (moschettoes.) But the natives tell you it is nothing. It is remarkable how generally these Scotch merchants have hafl a liberal education. This is fine weather for all sorts of people, and I hope you are all in good health. Adieu.

NEW YORK, October 12, 1846. The passage is in the Punica of Silius Italicus, (vii. 41.) It

1 Supposed to illustrate the yoke of Matthew xi. 29. VOL. II. 3* occurs in a speech of one Cilnius to the Poem, when about to deal with the famous procrastinator Fabius. Speaking of the latter, he says:

“Xosces Fabios certamine ab uno.
Veientum populi violata pace negabant
Acceptare jugum, ac vicino Marte furebat
Ad portas bellum, consulque ciebat ad arma.”

There is nothing further in the context, to clear the matter. The passage in Livy (xxxvi. 37) relates to the campaign of L. Cornelius Scipio against Antiochus, about B. C. 190. The words are in a reply of S. to the ambassador of A., who had offered S. “auri pondus ingens.” They concern certain offers of surrendering cities, &c. Scipio says,” Concesso vero in

* Asiam transitu, et non solum frenis, sed etiam jugo accepto, quse disceptatio ex sequo, quum imperium patiendum sit,relicta est?” The sense I take to be: “If you once let us into Asia, and thus submit not only to restraint, but subjugation, it is vain for you to talk of treating on terms of equality, since the controversy is for sovereignty.” Dr. Win. Smith, in Diet. Class. Antiq., says: “By another figure, the yoke meant slavery, or the condition in which men were compelled, against their will, like oxen or horses, to labour for others. Hence to express symbolically the subjugation of conquered nations, the Romans made their captives pass under a yoke,” &c., i. e. a spear upon two other spears placed upright.

My measure of experience teaches me, that it is God’s method never to leave me long in a season of such freedom from anxiety

; as shall make me forget my dependence. You know something of what it is to preach under such burdens, and to go home afraid to open the door. At such times, one thought pre dominates: my sin. Is not this one chief end of trials? I sometimes sink, but, I think, I do not rebel. God is just, and he is good. We, who teach others, need a peculiar discipline. I am thankful that my domestic trials, on the review, seem all right. Yet I confess to you, my anxieties are almost always inordinate; nor do I grow any wiser. It is, no doubt, wisely ordered, that we suffer in those we love. I did not intend a sermon; but I have thought more of your trials, amidst my own. Is here not a lesson in this also 1 When we pray for a more useful ministry, God answers us by stripes which we did not expect; but they fall from a gracious hand. I have to preach before Presbytery, and to lecture on Tuesday. The “Great Britain” is anxiously looked for. People seem to have misgivings about these steamers; but it seems to me that nothing saved the “Great Western,” under God, but its engine, which never stopped, or went awry. Some time since, being in a pulpit with Mr. Johnstone, of Jersey City, I observed him read from a paper, half this sheet in size. The fourth page was but a quarter covered. He declared to -me that he had read every word, and he spoke forty minutes. It was a stenography, which he has used forty years; his father a still longer time. This would save paper, ink, pens, chest, and time.

October 14. — Thus far I had previously written. Our Presbytery is meeting. I gladly abdicate in favour of W. E. Schenck. The “Great Britain” is not reported yet. An eastern storm is beginning. Dr. Beecher is on the arena; giving the echoes of the Alliance. The Monterey affair gives me little but pain. O the lightness with which hundreds of men are sent into eternity! There is a peculiar use of the word PEACE, in the Bible, which gives it great emphasis.

YORK, November 23, 1846. Yours of the 2d lies unanswered. The period has been one of much pastoral anxiety. Inter, alia, one of my hearers has been lying ill, with a rapid consumption, at Brunswick. I never before wrote a letter to a dying man. I suppose he is dead. Mr. Nathaniel B. Boyd, a bachelor, member of our church, was at our lecture on Tuesday, and went home well, and spoke with interest of the exposition. In the night he was smitten with apoplexy; and died on the 21st. I have had for months a case of mental anguish beyond all I ever saw described, unless it be Bunyan’s man in the cage, or Cowper’s latter days. Our Philadelphia friends fear our endeavours towards a City-Mission; but we cannot live without it. Our collection yesterday for Domestic Missions (the general cause) was $512.30. I am not convinced that any Episcopal element would help our church. I am least of all convinced by the progress of Episcopalians. What have they done, except in towns 1 They had the whole South once, and where is it now 1 I am not convinced by the Methodists, for the Baptists have increased as much as they. And their episcopate is but nominal. It is their itinerancy and lay-labour, which has pushed them on. Two of the most learned German Jews (from Rotterdam) are studying Addison’s Isaiah.

NEW YORK, November 30, 1846.

I have just returned from Dr. [Wm. J.] Armstrong’s funeral,

and write sooner than I meant to do, in remembrance of his con-

nexion with your church, and to give you some accounts” in

advance of the mail.” Dr. A. was accustomed to go to Boston, the

last week of every month, to confer with the Prudential Committee.

He had accomplished his business, and was on his return in the steamboat Atlantic. It seems the storm had begun before he left Boston; and his friends urged him not to leave them; but he earnestly desired to be with his little family, on Thanksgiving Day. You know the general course of the events. When, on Thursday, it appeared that the danger was imminent, and that no vessel could near them, Dr. A. got permission of the captain to have religious services. He gathered all the passengers below, read the Scripture, prayed, called on two other gentlemen to pray; and invited all present to spend a few moments in silent devotion, which they did. From various accounts, it appears that he was much engaged in comforting and corroborating the minds of those around him. “While he was praying, a lieutenant in the United States Navy thought he recognized the voice, and on going to him, remembered him as the pastor of his infancy in Richmond. This gentleman’s mother was also on board, but has perished. Her son was in church to-day. Dr. A. put on the life-preserver with which his poor wife had supplied him, and with others, at the instance of Lieut. M., tore slips of blanket and bound about the head. What a sight it must have been! They already expected to go to pieces at sunset; but they did not till 4 A. M. All night in the howling storm, the fires all out, the cold insufferable, a few biscuits, but no drink, and the bell tolling all the while. The last time Dr. A. is reported to have been seen, he was standing above, surveying the scene, perfectly calm; he then uttered these words (I think) to a hearer of mine: “I entertain hDpe that we may reach the shore; but if not, my confidence is firm in that God who doeth all things well, in wisdom and in love!” Surely no man in the serenity of a dying chamber could be better employed. Young C. S. Stewart (United States Engineer) who was saved, stayed by the vessel till the timbers parted, in company with Capt. Cullum and Lieut. Norton. At length, his hair and eyelashes being frozen, his hands were so benumbed, that he thought they would become useless, unless he let himself down at once, which he did. Aftei struggling in the surf, he gained footing. Shortly after he heard Capt. Cullum’s voice. Norton was lost. Charles S. was much bruised, and so exhausted as to fall down three times before reaching the house; of which they had previously endeavoured, by day-light, to fix the locality in their minds. After ten hours he reached New London, whence he had set out; he is there engaged on the new fortification. Dr. Armstrong was struck on the head a violent blow by the falling. timber, which probably killed him instantly. His body .was taken to Norwich, but was not recognized for some time, as the pockets had been

1844 — 1849. Gl

cut and rifled of every thing. The funeral services were attended, at 1 1 this morning, in the Broome St. church, which was crowded, in every standing-place; hundreds could not gain entrance. The hymn, “Unvail thy bosom faithful tomb,” was sung. Dr. Adams delivered a simple, touching, and admirable address; in which he did justice to the excellent character of the deceased, and applied to him with much force those words, as eminently characterizing him, “In simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world,” 2 Cor. i. 12. The choir sang, “Hear what the voice from heaven proclaims.” The pulpit was occupied by Drs. Skinner, Adams, De Witt, and Cox. Dr. De Witt offered a prayer of great earnestness and impression. The clergy of our city were very generally there, and deep emotion was manifested.

Dr. Armstrong has left a wife and five children, one a young infant. The remains are gone, to be laid by those of his venerable father, the Rev. Dr. Amzi Armstrong, of New Jersey.

You will find that our departed brother is remembered with respect in Trenton. He was an upright, believing man, and a solemn, and often pathetic preacher. Those who have often been warned and entreated by him should remember the voice of God by him.

NEW YORK, December 31, 1846.

Monday, which is always a day of many interruptions, has this day been busier than usual. One Mission-committee, one Seamen’s-committee, one Church-extension-committee, and one prayer-meeting of ministers. The last I could not attend. Letters from China tell us that the anxiety, in consequence of the riots, is very great. I saw in my church yesterday a Dane, a Swede, and a Chinese. We have recently gained a Jew, who is a candidate for baptism. Count Zinzendorf, on one occasion, (as I find by his Life,) extemporized six hymns, during one meeting; it was his frequent practice. Most of the Moravian hymns are by him, and these are very beautiful in German, however ludicrous in the wretched English version. The fine gold has become dim. If ever there was true religion, since primitive days, it was among the Bohemian and Moravian confessors. Two of my young men have interrupted me, and taken up two hours. Yet I am not sorry. What little strength I have here, lies in this. How humiliating it is to find that I am pained, when I learn that M or N does not like my preaching, yet am so calm, when all the alphabet, for years, reject my Master’s message! Our theory of a church-session is grand; but O what a practice! It is made for a church in a high spiritual state, and this I think is in its favour. One of my elders makes up to every man, woman, and child, who frequent the church. He visits as much as I do; knows every church-member; talks to every inquirer; goes often to every house; and, when I point out any place, is sure to be there within twenty-four hours. This leads me to two practical reflections: 1. How important to have a number of young men in training for such offices. 2. How desirable for a pastor so to labour, as to leave the church in the best possible state for his successor; in regard particularly to the children, youth, family-habits, &c. My latest texts have been such as have much interested me: 2 Tim. i. 19, John xiii. 36, Eph. v. 2, Matt. vi. ult., Dent, xxxiii. 1, Ps. cxix. 9, Rom. viii. 34, Matt. xxv. 10, Luke xii. 57, John xvi. 12, 13, Matt. v. 6, Heb. ii. 4, Rom. viii. 1. What we seem to want here, is not polish or literature’ in sermons, but something earnest, real, and affectionate; something to make the people hear as if some truth of transcendent present interest was set forth. Never was I more convinced that in order to this there is nothing so necessary as a direct and specific influence from on High. Rhetorical interest is impotent. There was great interest under the Finneyitish revivals, but it was not evangelical, and I am working among its bitter fruits every day. There is a wonderful vitality and permanency in experience which is built on the preaching of Christ. The style of sermons in the Scottish Free Church seems to be the thing. When the new-divinityconverts grow cold, they are colder than ice, nothing but a biting censoriousness. I had no idea, even in Jersey, of the modifications wrought in the religion of this city, by the overwrought revivalism of past years. Some, even of those who were once fiery, have degenerated into pulpit-metaphysicians, subtile and elegant. Vanity-Fair is beginning. New Year’s day is a very carnival hereabouts. I am in despair about church-music. The nearest approach to my ideal is in the German church near me, where every creature sings, where the tunes are all slow, making up in volume for the lack of twiddle-diddle, and where they never have a new tune. In some churches here, the choir is about a pew-full, and the people use a purely vicarious psalmody. I sometimes feel a tune, in our lecture-room; in our church, never. Do we employ psalms and hymns sufficiently, as a means of grace, in our families 1 A poor Irishman has found, I trust, the true foundation,

in his sick-room. Last night he sat up, with his popish host, till they had read over twelve or fourteen chapters of the Bible. He has been faithfully followed up by a most assiduous young man of ours. This young man spends part of every day among the poor. I fear our “Whig Congress men are going to use no general exertion for peace. I honour Calhoun for his manful resistance to both the war-measures. I am astonished at the greatness of the evangelical movement among the Papists of France, as detailed in the late French reports; whole villages reformed, assemblies of several thousands, &c. I wish you, beforehand, a happy New Year. Let us seek to have one of simpler walk, and higher usefulness.

NEW YORK, January 9, 1847.

I compliment you on the termination of y-our church-debt; we are making an effort towards ending our own “pious fraud.” I hope both parsons may soon have .their respective parsonages. The immigration to this port alone, last year, was 115,000; or more than 315 per diem. An effort. is making to get decent Temperance-ism out of the gutter, and on its legs again. It has been sadly drugged yreabouts, and is in a state of titubation. Falstaff’s regiment could not have exceeded our recruits for Mexico. My congregation is a receiving-ship for up-town. I am just setting up a converted popish book-pedler, with a basket of books for the wharfs, sloops, and grog-shops. I saw to-day a Californian paper, (Colton’s,) Spanish and English. My text for the year was, “We are the Lord’s.” I have since seen it in a “copy of verses” penes me, and engraved on a (phylactery) gold-ring. As I used to remark in Trenton an endemic pronunciation, in the female choristers, of “mide” for “made,” “tyke”

1 31

for “take,” &c.; so here I find in the same class, “fa-er” for

t i

“fire,” “ta-em” for “time.” I perceive little or nothing like congregational devotion in psalmody, often scarcely attention. I have a trifling book in hands of Sunday School Union, which I have written out of pity for town-boys.

NEW YORK, January 25, 1847.

1 had to-day the offer of a ticket to the grand concert, 13th prox., for the Popish orphans. It is to surpass all ever heard “on this side.” Except the operatic corps, amateurs are to do the thing. The “lady patronesses” are all Protestants. The Presbyterians make so much of a call from a congregation, and in theory are so much opposed to ordination sine titulo, that I lately made a search of the whole New Testament in quest of authority. I find none. I find no minister undeniably marked out as the pastor of

1 “Frank Harper; or, the Country Boy in Town.”

64: WHILE PASTOK OF DUANE ST. CHUKCH, NEW YORK.

any single flock. I have copious notes of the results. Mondays are much alike with me; first our Foreign Committee, which I always meet with pleasure, and then a round of visits till three. Yesterday our Bible collection was made; $374. We add about $180 by female association. One young lady in my flock does a work which is very unusual and pleasing. She devotes about three hours a day to teaching poor girls. Almost every one of those who have left her class, perhaps twelve, is well educated, and truly pious. I can almost pick out her pupils in the gallery by their looks. She also teaches in Sunday School; is a leading Dorcas, and collects annually $250 for a French evangelist. What a change, if each of us had even six such: and does not this suggest the importance of separate and deliberate efforts to train individual helpers’? I am unspeakably blessed in several of my young men. A, a schoolmaster, superintendent of Sunday School, is a model of modest, able, indefatigable service. B, a dry-goods man, Sunday School teacher, is the most of a Harlan Page I ever saw; shrewd, original, humorous, always among the poor, courageous, and prudent. I could hardly wish him other than he is. C, teller in bank, Sunday School teacher, well-read, gentle, orthodox, punctual, liberal, looked up to by the others. D, more reserved, but valuable, and always in his place, a ship-chandler. E, lawyer, accomplished, active, a good collector, and real aid. F, a bookseller, graduate of Princeton, ditto, ditto. All, except the last, are New Englanders; all are unfailing at prayer meetings, &c. Their influence on young men coming in among us is great. Nothing is more remarkable in all these, than their readiness to do any thing I propose. It is my chief comfort. I sensibly feel what you say about reports of sermons. Some months ngo I was shocked at the inane stupidity of a report of one of mine. A few days after, a poor mantuamaker, not of my parish, read it in the newspaper, and found something in it the means of bringing her to Christ, after two years bondage. I wonder whether our meanest sermons are not our best. Loughridge’s death made me say to myself:” How seldom, now-a-days, does a minister die among his own people! From this time our Board of Foreign Missions will have the annual distribution of some of the government money, for Indian Schools. Our Choctaw Academy is quite a college; Ramsey is a noble fellow.

NEW YORK, January 26, 1847.

I follow one letter with another thus soon, because I omitted what I meant to say in my last on a point of interest. Some time ago you mentioned, in passing, a desire to have an occasional 1 Pastor of the Fourth Church, Philadelphia.

German discourse in Trenton. There is a man here well fitted for such a work, to whom a few dollars would be a great help; if some of your people would bestow it. For a trifle more than expenses, I think, he would go on, once a month, or perhaps a fortnight. He has been taken under our Presbytery, though Lutheran by ordination. A Jew, but very long under the best Christian and University training. A learned man. As far as can be judged, warmly pious. He has preached repeatedly in the German pulpits here, and is said to be highly acceptable. He preaches every Sunday in the Almshouse, gratuitously, to the seven hundred Germans who are there. I know not what could be done in Trenton, in this regard; but if any thing is needed, you could scarcely alight on a better person for an occasional sermon and an experiment. I hope before long to get him some permanent preaching-post here; but things do not mature as last as I could wish. He speaks poor English, but can talk French and Latin.

NEW YORK, February 22, 184Y.

The snow has set in (like some preachers) with a codicil, after the conclusion. Broadway is beginning to ring and swarm. I can’t help thinking how much better off the Southern slaves are, physically and morally, than the Irish. Who ever heard of slaves starving until the master starved? I see no trace of the modern dogmas about absolute freedom in the Bible. The wretchedest portion, by far, of the black race, is the free portion. Our New York negroes are lower than savages in many respects. I believe slavery will be abolished; and will be abolished in Mexican lands, and parts adjacent, where the climate suits, and where the taint of colour is less felt; and that all attempts to wall slavery within its present bounds, only hurts the negro and procrastinates the grand result. I am more and more convinced that our endeavours to do at a blow, what Providence does by degrees, is disastrous to those whom we would benefit. To give the gospel to the slaves, is a duty pressing above all others; and my painful and mortifying endeavours for two years to build up a black church here, and my previous preaching for six years to free people in Jersey, convince me that it is easier to give the gospel to the slaves. I am looking for a house. That in which I live has been a perpetual mortification to me: no spare room to which I may ask a friend without chagrin. I am forced to live down town; and here there are no new houses. I have inspected many houses. Scarcely five have had Croton water, and only one a bath-room. I was pleased with one in Barclay street, two * stories and a half: the rent was $950. I heard Gough the other night. I never willingly miss him. His pathos and his humour and acting are beyond any thing I know of just now. What a nasty mean little squabbling your Trenton papers keep up. I have taken the Newark Daily for ten years, and have never seen a line which would apprise me of the existence of the rival print. In regard to correspondents, you are the only regular one I .have in the world. Did you ever meet with an expression of Jane Taylor’s, “Preserve me from off rentable people “?

YORK, March 5, 1847. I am a little disturbed about our epistolary debits and credits, — so here goes. The military funeral to-day of sundry officers slain in Mexico, is holden to have been a failure. The mud and mire was such, that the “municipalities” would not “walk.” The canaille were out in force, by tens of thousands. I felt it to be a bathetic affair, and no honour to the poor victims. Our church-collection, chiefly for Scotland, is a little short of $700: individual subscriptions among our people, in addition, about $1,000. Mr. G. last night, gave some of his views, as a lawyer, of the evidences of Christianity. Take the following mems: “Every regeneration is a miracle — answers all the definitions. Most Christians, at some time or other, are sure they have been subjects of it. Suppose the affidavits of these, taken on dying-beds, were collected, (say 300,000,000,) how far ought this to go, with an honest sceptic, as testimony?” “Hume, &c., say a miracle cannot be made credible. But if so extraordinary a thing as a revelation could be proved, it might be credible that for this even a miracle might be wrought. I would, therefore, seek to prove a revelation on separate grounds. Thus: the human race is not eternal. They were created. They could not have continued in existence without some Divine instruction. This is a revelation” Dr. Boardman has spent a week here. He sails for Europe proximo. Greeley said, in a speech, that this city has already made twenty-five millions by the scarcity in Europe. How our good brother - removes the claws and horns from autocrats! Having done that office for Nicholas, and shown that he never wronged the Poles, he has now presented the Grand Turk in the same amiable gutee. Would that he had seen the Pope! I have finished my exposition of the Hebrews; in sixty-two lectures: I trust to my own instruction at least. L -, who has just uttered a volume on the Apocalypse, (moderately millenarian,) is a retired merchant; the same who some years ago mauled the New Havenites so unmercifully, in his periodical pamphlets, entitled “Views in Theology.” He is very acute, cool, perspicuous, consistent, and erudite; and I suppose has guessed about as near as the rest. Our streets are at the acme of filth and putrescence. The new planet, I hear, is to be called Neptune, and its sign ^. Dr. Cox is lecturing on it. The next should be Vulcan; for steam, ocean, and iron, are in the astrological ascendant. My congregation sends a captain and a lieutenant in the new regiment of regulars.

NEW YORK, April 5, 1847.

Your kind letter of the 2d was received on the 4th, and you will accept my thanks. Our little one was a very lovely object in our eyes; and our remembrance of him is peculiarly free from all that could give pain. He faded away exactly like a slowlydying flower. Partly to avoid funeral mockeries, and partly to have the three little graves together, for the moral influence on my other children, I removed the remains to Princeton, to “the plot of ground” where I shall probably lie myself.

I have this morning been furnishing New Testaments (they cannot carry large-print Bibles) to a company of the 10th regiment. I have been stimulated by the war to prepare a manual of devotions for sailors and soldiers, which is now complete. Bunsen is getting out the most magnificent work on Rome, pictorial and antiquarian, which has ever been made. The American Messenger (of American Tract Society) is expected this year to rise to a circulation of 100,000. One should write for such a paper, however slim it is, and to make it less so. I dreamed that I heard Dr. Yeomans say these words, on hearing a Presbyterial lecture, or the like: “Yes, it is only nonsense: but nothing is more damning than nonsense; especially when it purports to be the Word of God, in exposition.” 1 have recovered my father’s trial sermon, preached fifty-six years ago, set. 19. He was very boyish, and the text was Jer. i. 7. The style is exactly that of his present writing.

118 CHAMBERS STREET, May 8, 1847.

I am writing on a most shoemaking sort of paper, which please ascribe to my study-less condition; my work-place being the back-parlour. Coming into a house which has been “improved” by a defaulting boarding-house keeper, we find horrid filth, damage, and dilapidation, and are amidst a gang of glaziers, whitewashers, plumbers, and joiners. I have gone up one story, leaving the first-floor-back (Anglice) for distinguished clergymen. Your patronage is solicited. The military display to-day was

1 Published by the Board of Publication in 1847. In the same year, his “Thoughts on Family Worship” was published by that Board. The latter work was republished in Edinburgh in 1853.

OF very grand: once it would have pleased me: it did not: and the illumination, which is about to begin in a few moments, I do not expect to see. I feel like preaching on “Charity .... rejoiceth not in iniquity — vaunteth not itself.” Dr. Burns of Toronto left town this evening, after a sojourn of two or three days. He goes to Halifax about a new theological school there. I think he has more exactness and extent of knowledge, and a greater outpouring of it in vehement and often affectionate discourse, than any man I ever met; unless I except Chancellor Kent, whom he resembles in his contempt of all conventionalities. Our communion is coming on, without one addition on examination. This causes “searchings of heart.” I feel no disposition to look at other parties’ share of the blame. From my soul 1 say, confitentem habes reum! On an examination of my preaching, I do not see any thing in doctrine, topics, or application, (notwithstanding grievous defects in zeal and faith,) which I condemn myself in: yet I am not “hereby justified.” This day of festivity has found me very sad, at times, in the survey of every sort of temper almost or quite as bad as years ago. Few things -rHStartle me more than this permanency of one’s inward features: the same man, the same nature, in a degree. If it were not for other, and sometimes countervailing tendencies, I might well doubt whether any new nature exists. If I have any experience it fully agrees with that exegesis which ascribes Romans vii. to a believer, who “delights in the law of God after the inner man.” Durbin’s Travels in the East are full of good matter for a preacher; he has a knack at painting the scene to your imagination. We cannot be too well versed in the physique of the Holy Land. Dr. Jenks’s Explanatory Atlas is the best geographical help for a pastor I have seen. Robinson’s book will be a great one. The Conference of the American Branch of the Evangelical Alliance have been fighting several days about slavery, &c., and do not seem to know what the aforesaid Alliance is for. A man of prudence may be pardoned for not securing a berth until he knows whither the ship is bound. From the pugnacity of the crew, the “sign” would seem to be “Castor and Pollux.” They will probably succeed in creating a new an ti -slavery sect. One speaker said, if they went wrong about slavery, a new Alliance would certainly be formed. Perhaps it would be as well to have enough new ones to suit us all. Murray’s Letters to Hughes are producing a great sensation; far beyond any thing I can account for. They are read with avidity in kitchens, and will sell by thousands among the Irish. The Irish abolitionists are agitating, with tremendous fury, because the Dublin Committee

1 For the victories of General Taylor in Mexico.

did not “send back the money” of the slave-holding States. So great is their compassion for Cuffee, that Paddy may die of starvation. Poor Lichtenstein lies very low, with a fever which he probably caught from the infected air of the almshouse. His religion shines in this affliction. Dr. Burns’s son, set. 20, is just settled in Kingston, in one of the chief posts in Canada. An elder son is in the ministry in Scotland. Mrs. Burns is a cousingerman of Bonar, who accompanied McCheyne and wrote his life: (the Latins would have avoided that ambiguity, “et hujus scripsit vitam.”)

NEW YORK, May 13, 1847.

I thank you for reminding me of the date of our correspondence. I feel it somewhat tenderly in connexion with the kindness you intend for us, in the naming of your boy. My tears (I seldom shed tears) flow profusely while I think that in a sort he takes the place of our sweet translated child. Forgive this burst (unusual in our long correspondence, and proving, perhaps, that I grow weaker as I grow older,) and accept my prayers for the little one’s eternal good.

Our anniversaries are as much thronged as usual, but less and less by New Yorkers. I also perceive that the old, staid societies, e. g. Bible and Tract, are forsaken by the more fiery persons. At the Bible Society to-day, the prime thing was a glorious speech from the delegate of the British and Foreign Bible Society, a Londoner, Mr. Corderoy, a youngish, soldierlylooking layman. Fine delivery, noble elocution, and that tact and pathos which I have never found in our American cut-anddried speeches. Hundreds of pocket-handkerchiefs were moistened, and the enormous auditory, usually impatient, would not let him stop. I will try to send you a report, but perhaps it was all in his manner, pronunciation, tone and. feeling. I sat between Vermilye and Pres. Hopkins (both cool men) and both weeping. You will see nothing in the words to account for this. Lewis Green made an. eloquent speech yesterday at the American Tract Society. Fred. Douglass is a black Demosthenes. For the mere quality of strength I never heard his superior. He has a diabolical smile, from ear to ear, which contrasts with his ferocious, lowering brow, in an indescribable manner. It was Catilinarian and treasonable. He said, up and down, that he despised and hated the country and the Constitution, and invoked the aid of England. The Millerites, the Fourierites, and other Bedlamites, have protracted agonisms. The Evangelical Alliance has been sweetly pugnacious, like Gen. Scott, bent on “conquering a peace.” Like the dear Baptist brethren, they open their arms to all Christendom, free-gratis, full admission, to the broad union-platform; only with proviso, that no one enters the door who mispronounces the Shibboleth. In their chagrin at their smallness, they anathematize all who have not sued for entrance. Is Christendom really more united than before, by such means? I trow not.

If there is such a thing as the duty of warring, I think a Mexican might assert it. Who can deny them the credit of bravery? Military martinets here, as I happen to know, are now glorifying Scott at Taylor’s expense: they say Scott’s way of killing Mexicans is selon les regies. Certainly it effuses less of our own blood. I loathe and fear this war. We shall be readier for another. Yet perhaps Popery may lose its secular hold on Mexico.

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, May 27, 1847.

Having done the job for which I came to Richmond,1 1 proceeded to another matter of very great moment, which has brought me here. The Assembly looks young. Scarcely any gray heads. The fathers are Dr. Janeway and Mr. Smylie. Great array of sunburnt, broad-brimmed southern and western Chorepiscopi. Some sons of Anak, noble specimens of manly beauty from the wTest. Thornwell is the great man of the south, and I do not think his learning or powers of mind have been overrated. His speech on taking the chair was a chef d’ceuvre. His sermon (not the popery one) was ill-delivered, but natheless a model of what is rare, viz., burning-hot argument, logic in ignition, and glowing more and more to the end; it was memoriter, and with terrific “contentio laterum.” The spring was very late; consequently the sudden outburst just before we came clothed every thing with beauty. The mountains are green to the very tops. Albemarle is the crack county of Virginia; and the state of the grainmarket has thrown much tobacco-land into wheat. I passed numerous wheat-fields in full ear, not one of which was less than one hundred acres. The education of the gentry here has led to a brisk competition in scientific tillage; observable around the seats of such men as Mr. Rives, Col. Randolph, Gen. Gordon, Dr. Merriwether. The foreground is all arable land, one sea of grass, blossoming-clover, and wheat, slowly rising, without any visible fences or artificial demarcations to injure the landscape, and the background a chain of wooded or cultivated heights (S. W. Mountain) unequalled by any I know. I have seen hills, and I have seen farming; but I never saw them so blended. After going westward for some miles to this place, crossing a lap of

1 He preached the annual sermon on Missions, before the General Assembly, in Richmond, May 25. The text was Phil. ii. 11.

this ridge, and skirting the Rivanna, which has craggy and precipitous banks, full of rhododendron, honeysuckle, &c., we come to the side of Moriticello, and then into this valley, over which the long chain of the Blue Ridge begins to tower in the North west. Jefferson knew how to select one of the finest plateaus in the land for this college. His antichristian plans have been singularly thwarted every way. For example, here is a chapel, (since I was here last;) three professors communicants, besides Dr. McGuffey, who is a Presbyterian minister; and a proctor and treasurer who are Presbyterian communicants. McGuffey is a West Pennsylvanian, and is second to no man in Virginia for fame as a lecturer and public speaker. He does not preach here, but often in other places. I shall not be surprised if, before ten years, this rich and central institution should have on its very grounds a Presbyterian theological school; as the law founding the University gives leave to any Christian sect to build, and to have a theological professor, with freedom of library, apparatus, &c. Schele, professor of Modern languages, is a Prussian, and a pious Lutheran. The chaplain for next year is Gillette, a Baptist of Philadelphia, [now of New York.] I have met with all the Professors here; they are remarkable for their courtesy to strangers. Dr. Cabell is just closing his year of presidentship, with some eclat. I see he is nominated in the Richmond Enquirer to succeed Dr. Warner in the Surgical Chair. Emery tells me their edifice (Medical College of Hampden Sydney) is the finest in the city. I think I observe more prevalence of religious warmth here than with us. I lodged with Mr. Beadle of New Orleans, four years Missionary in Syria; he is fluent in Arabic. To-morrow, Deo volente, I go to Gordonsville, to visit the house of my birth, which I have not been in for forty-two years: this will consume one day. I hope to reach home by Thursday or Friday night. The Charleston and Columbia folks have a refinement of manners which has always struck me. They do not depend on Northern cities, but get their books and fashions direct from London* and Paris. It is something new under the sun, for Virginia daily-prints to report doings of a General Assembly. There is preaching every morning, and service every evening. Dr. Empie, formerly President of William and Mary, (Episcopal,) opens his church, St. James’s, all Sunday and thrice during the week, for the Presbyterians. So do all the Baptists and Methodists. Fleming James gave a great soiree in his palatial house, to sundry of our brethren; among whom I was present. We are revelling on strawberries, with floods of bona-fide cream; and ice-cream is what its name imports.

NEW YORK, June 15, 1847.

I have been waiting for time to fill a sheet, but cannot any longer hope for it. Till my Princeton Discourse J it is utterly out of my power to do any thing out of New York and Princeton, great or small. This must be my reply to your invitation, which I fully estimate, to baptize your child. There is, how ever, another thing: though not often moved, I am sometimes very weak, and I do not think I could, publicly in Trenton, pronounce the name you have given your boy 2 without a degree of pain, which I am perfectly sure you would not allow me to incur, even for the pleasure which the solemn service, thus administered, might afford your friendly minds.

LONG BRANCH, July 28, 1847.

I ran away from your capital, much disordered, reached New York about two yesterday; visited Junk. The Chinamen look very much like Malays; but I saw one of them writing Chinese characters. Embarked at seven this morning; cool, but fine passage; but in the outer bay a great prevalence of cascading. Found all well here. At this present I am in my pigeon-hole; our children’s shakedown on the floor; voices of female and male singing on the piazza. A glorious full red moon rose out of the ocean. Bathing is cold work. I saw one of the Junk-men drunk with opium. Addison has engaged for another month at Dr. Boardman’s. More than five hundred obits in New York last week: more than eighteen hundred emigrants in one day.

Love to the young and rising generation, not forgetting my godson Johanniculus, as Luther often calls his young Hans.

What a useless pest capital letters are: the ancients had none, or rather they had none other; nor were they bothered with punctuation. How I envy them. A capital plagues me so, that I foresee it with apprehension, as one foresees a mudhole in driving. i am your friend,

j. w. alexander.

NEW YORK, September 3, 1847.

We got home on the 1st, and are in the hubbub of fixation, and the heats of our second edition of summer. Choir and organ business, everywhere, seems fruitful of ills. Lowell Mason has now come out against choirs, but, I fancy, not against organs. My idea of psalmodic service is, that it should be: (1) universal; (2) vocal; (3) slow, (in general;) (4) without complication

1 At the Centenary of the College, June 29, 1847.

a John Alexander, the name of one of his deceased children.

of parts; (5) simple; (6) little varied; i. e. a few tunes well learnt; (7) with no prominence of individual voices, (duets or solos;) (8) without fugue; (9) without frequent repetition of words; (10) depending on volume of many voices, rather than brilliant execution of one or two. It is plain as ABC, that whole masses cannot sing, unless the tunes be familiar to a high degree. This ideal I never expect to see realized. The nearest approach is in the large Lutheran congregations, barring their harshness; but better the harshness, than the feeble warble of twenty per cent, in vacuo. Much illness about; chiefly dysentery. Every day some case of sorrow in my large flock attracts my feeble help. My topic for Sunday is “Sorrow is better than Laughter.”

This is my fifth letter, at one sitting. The Mexicans seem to me plainly below our free blacks; except a corps of desperate military leaders, whose trade and hope have been War, nothing but war ever since they broke with Spain. Taylor’s election, I judge, would be a national vote for peace.

NEW YORK, Sept. 20, 1847.

Elizabeth Fry’s life (the large one, vol. 1) will make many quakeresses: a lovelier woman I never read of or heard of; humility, meekness, love, and sense. The “meek and quiet spirit” in such a case, looks, as it is, TroXvreXes. Dictionaries and id genus being my chief helps for exposition, I have added Kitto’s Biblical Cyclopedia, and find it the best thing yet, in its line: it is rationalistic and Andover-like, in many places. One of the missionaries lately sent out by A. B. C. F. M., before his going, being then at New Haven, told a friend of mine, approv ingly, that Dr. Taylor said in his lectures, in regard to David’s expression, (Psalm 51,) “In sin did my mother,” &c.; that they are to be interpreted as exaggerations like that of the sailor, [who in prayer spoke of himself in a phrase of vulgar slang.] Three services yesterday. I addressed my young men and women. The city is vile with common sewers. Nathan Rice’s book against Popery is good: only about two pages can 1 except to. Why do you not have a Reading-room in Trenton? The Newarkers have laid the corner of a grand Library. I was invited to lay it, but pleaded un-Masonic dispositions.

NEW YORK, Sept. 28, 1847.

Yesterday we had the O’Connell obsequies. It speaks well for the good nature of our people, that so immense a procession should have marched for miles, with effigies of the pope, &cf, VOL. n. — 4

&c., yet without a word or gesture of interruption. Apropos of which, the recent site of Niblo’s is occupied by the “Great Tent” of the Millerites, with a lofty flag, bearing, “Thy Kingdom come!” Preachments, concourse, &c. Failures have occurred here, and more are looked for. Addison’s popularity in Philadelphia surprises me the more, as his last summer’s work here seemed to draw scarcely anybody. The sphere, I admit, is very different: a people engaged solely in trade affords small intellectual ability. I think I am not censorious, nor chagrined, in i judging that religion in New York runs very much towards externals. Fine churches, pews, and music, fine sermons, fine * enterprises,’ viewed in the same light as stock-company concerns, fine collections; such are the stimulating ideas. “Moderatism” is the terminus ad quern. So far as my researches go, Presbyterianism has never and nowhere made striking advances, except when the body of preachers and people has been animated with a zeal for truth and saving souls, such as at the very time has been a little too strong, methodistical, pietistical, enthusiastical, in the eyes even of many sound, good sort of brethren. When we substitute for this secular stimulants, wealth, apparatus, ritual, decorum, letters, or oratory, we find that these (at least in the apprehension of the million) exist in greater force among the Episcopalians. Nor do we mend the matter by fighting these last, on questions of difference. Our real aggression has always been by warm pushing of our evangelical tenets. Right or wrong, this has become more and more my theory: I would I could show some corresponding practice: negatively I think I can.

NEW YORK, October 5, 1847.

If these rumours of new horrors in Mexico are true, what an account will our country, and we, as claiming to be self-g’overnors, have to render to God! I am much impressed by Webster’s speech at Springfield. It is a war of pretexts. None of the alleged causes existed. It has gone from small skirmishing beginnings to the most hideous atrocities. Never have I so much feared the judgments of God on us as a nation. Yet I am not quite clear as to the duty of individuals; or what means are best for stopping further carnage. Who knows but our judgment will be, that our people, having tasted blood, and grown proud of their undoubted prowess, will become, as Rome be came, a people with war for a trade? Military lust for conquest is manifestly on the rise. All Mexico would not (on worldly grounds even) repay us for the American lives which have been lost. A Chinese youth, named Khur, was here to see me to-day; on his third voyage to America, from Amoy: wishes to go to school here. He speaks a most funny mixture of English, Portuguese, and Chinese, an almost unintelligible baby -talk. But-he is acute and bright-faced. The Millerite tent, Chinese Junk, and Fair of American Institute, are all in full force. Powers’s Greek Slave is only a beautiful piece of licentious nudity. Mons. Niel, a reformed French popish priest, has appeared. Old, Mr. Gallatin still receives company, and takes lively interest in philological inquiries. It is a wonderful fact, that the characters on the famous stone, found at Grave Creek Mound, on the Ohio, (Virginia,) are fully proved to be ancient Libyan. It is the very first documentary link between the red men and the old world. No doubt of the above fact remains with our knowing ones. I am pleased that you like Simeon: 1 his influence was owing, perhaps, in no small degree, to his amazing colloquial flow, chirping oddity, and irrepressible vivacity: hence his soirees, which nobody else could reproduce. As to his dread of systems, I do not share in it; unless said systems be false; and even then I prefer methodized to immethodized statements. His own system was clear enough, though he chose not to own it. In regard to his plan of preaching both sides of questions, on which the Scriptures seem to speak both ways, no man ever did it, except on two or three picked topics. Every man’s common sense teaches him that he must aim at conciliation of apparent discrepancies, or abandon inspiration. No man ever preached e. g. that the planet is eternal, though Scripture seems to say so. They have a noble copy of his Skeletons, twenty odd volumes, in the Seminary Library at Princeton, the gift of Wilberforce. On Sunday night I had a soiree under our church, where I chatted to fifty of our young men. I saw Addison’s big congregation in pretty full review. The steamers to Bremen are quite an epoch: I hope you saw traveller Stephens’s account of the jolli fication at arrival in Bremen. George P. Marsh (M. C.) of Vt., speaks French like a Frenchman, and Swedish like a Swede, and is thorough in Danish, German, and Spanish; yet he has never been abroad. He is associated with Gallatin, Robinson, Turner, Gibbs, Salisbury, &c., in the Ethnological Society. The modern books of note on Arithmetic, such as Davies’s, adopt the French billion, which makes the whole series go homogeneously by threes, (000 000 000 000.) A six-story house in my daily walks seventy-five feet long, which had been completed to cornice, has just been taken down brick by brick to the very ground from fault in the foundation: it filled me with thoughts every day as I passed.

1 Life of Rev. Charles Simeon, of Cambridge.

NEW YORK, October 27, 1847.

When the demission business was sent down to the presby* teries some years ago, I voted against it. Since then I have doubted. The demission takes place all over the land, de facto: the question seems to be, how to legalize what we already allow, and avoid the evils of our “anomalous condition.” But curia vult avisare. Before I look for your extension-table, let me say an experience of one of the crack (not cracked) ones is unfavourable. Madame says the old way, of annexing a common table, in case of clerical invasions, is better. Our extension-table is too heavy, on the floor, as a fixture; hurts carpets, and is hurt by hoofs of youth, &c. If one is used, the one we have qua extensio, is admirable. It is, however, paying for a daily encumbrance, in view of an occasional need. I went to Astoria yesterday, to see my landlady and parishioner, who is dying with consumption; a fine specimen of old-fashioned Presbyterian religion; all the doctrines turned into experience; full of calm hope and

wisdom; a lesson for life. is homceopathically cured of a

fever. What cured was, however, by no means accordant with homoeopathic peculiarities; it was cold shower-bath, when the fever was hottest: this looks like reason; but it is not” similia

similibus curantur,” the great maxim of Hahnemann. is

getting well of a fever, on the old plan. A bachelor presents me Butter’s New Testament in twelve languages, (1699.) I am at 1 Thess. ii. 9 in exposition. Look at the untranslated force of cavTrjs 1 Thess. ii. 7, and at the exquisite tenderness of the whole verse. Jacobus is coming out with notes on Matthew. I know not what to say about the flocks of candidates who frequent every even the smallest vacancy. Strangers come to me .every week, as if I kept a “vacancy intelligence office.” Want of missionary zeal seems to be the cause, not want of room. Cheever’s church [Union Square] opens on Sabbath first. Henry

Beecher is the Brooklyn star; being the comet. Our

synod did nothing about the war. The details of Chapultepec are equal to any thing military I remember.

NEW YORK, November 16, 1847.

I owe you for yours of the 4th. How time flies! I should have said it was not a week old. Perhaps this is the way the market women make such anachronisms about their eggs. I heartily rejoice in Governor Haines’s election, not only because he is my classmate, but because I think he fears God. Good Mr. F. seemed to join in my expression of the same opinion. How the last-named good man is embushel-ed in this our uni-

1844 — 1849. YT

versity! Had he abode in Jersey, his light would have been like that of Sandy Hook. He tells me he has been to see old Chancellor Kent, at Chatham; who is sinking. All our young men are ravening for good places; and erring as to what constitutes a good place. There is a congestion of candidates about our cities, while at the extremities and frontiers, all is chill and suffering. Unless we all get awakened, in some extraordinary degree, I don’t sec how we are to fail sinking into Moderatism. Some people absurdly ascribe the diminished zeal of ministers to Seminaries. This is much as if I should ascribe our poor beef to the change of market-house. Those who never saw a college or seminary are as low as we. It lies deeper, and affects the whole church, I verily believe. It means just this, want of zeal for the salvation of souls. Though you mentioned Mr. - ’s “losing his eyesight,” I imagined him to be out of town, till I saw he was dead. Oh how my conscience pierces me that, though he was my occasional hearer, I never urged this matter on him in private! How, how shall we meet people at judgment! Addison’s popularity in Philadelphia is quite extraordinary. I arn pleased to think that it urges him to regard more and more the great end of preaching. Last week I saw a new painting (small) by Leslie, “the Pharisee and the Publican;” it begat a sermon in me. Item, a copy of the first Bible ever printed — the Mazarin Bible — of which only nine other copies are known of. It is perfect; two vols. folio; Mentz, 1450-1455; illuminated, incomparably noble for paper, ink, and press-work; printer Guttenbery. This was the copy of Mr. Hibbert. Other copies are (so far as I remember) 1, Bodleian; 2, Mazarin lib. Paris; 3, George III.’s lib. British Museum; 4, Advocates’ lib. Edinburgh; 5, late Duke of Sussex’s lib.; 0, Duke of Devonshire; 7, Estate of late Richard Heber, Esq. On beholding it, my emotion was altogether a religious one; thinking of the effects of the printed Scriptures.

YORK, December 14, 1847. You see [Chancellor] Kent is dead. Mr. F. tells me he lately talked with him, and found him much troubled about the “new birth,” &c. He has been a constant defender of religion. IT., in his new book, several times has the pleasant adverb “illy,” which does not sound altogether “welly.” Pope-stock rises. See how most papers take the Jesuit side in regard to Switzerland. See the avatar of romish prelates in England,

1 He was supplying the pulpit of the Tenth Church during the absence of the pastor, Dr. Boardman.

with legal titles. I wish I had a copy of the last North British, to send you a review of (Arnold’s friend) Bunsen’s book on the Church. I have seldom been more moved than by some passages there. Do try to get hold of it. It opens a vista into an absolutely new forest of opinions on the great question of the age — the Church. For high churchism to be rebuked from such a height as the cabinet of the greatest king alive, is like thunder from mid heaven. And yet Bunsen’s is a kind of Catholicism: only it makes Puseyism look very mean and toy-shop like; like a snug China mandarin beside a Jupiter tonans. For the relief of the red appearance on Hale’s church,1” !£fc. pap. Kirwan, 3 iij.

Van Renss. scrupuli xxxiij.

Fiat haustus.”

Unless penance be your object, I see no rational cause of lament at the freezing off of your bath; for all health-purposes indoor water is cold enough. Did you ever read the story of Diogenes, embracing the brazen statue, in winter? Stand in a good big tub, with a good big spunge, and give yourself a swashing of water every morning; that is Sir Astley Cooper’s recipe.

NEW YORK, January 4, 1848.

I am a little belated with my New Year wishes; but they are none the less sincere in behalf of you and your family, and church. Dr. Spring very truly said yesterday, at our cleric prayer-meeting, that ministers sinned when they did not care about the edification of their neighbours’ churches. He also said this: “I am almost tempted at this late day to prepare myself to preach without notes; the day a man Who reads his sermons puts on spectacles, he is shorn of half his strength.” I do not know when I have begun a year with more serious feelings 5 even the hurly-burly of New Year’s day did not remove the impression. My verse for the year is Heb. xiii. 8: “Jesus Christ, &c.” It would “convene” me very much (as an agent said to me in a note) if you would come on, and give me a sermon; why not next Sunday evening 1 I have, for some time, had three services; though doubtful about my duty as to health. I have no extras to lop off; never having made a platformharangue here; exhortations are not extras. Your eclaircissement with H.a is characteristic. Nobody ever knows whose

1 When the scaffolding of the new church at Pennington, N. J., was taken down, it was discovered that the workmen had disposed some red slates among the black, so as to form a huge cross on each side of the high roof.

a A hearer who falsely suspected a political object in a sermon.

face a “double-header” will fly into. It has already taught you what something like it taught me. Hardly any thing so raises my pride and indignation, as when ministerial independence is assaulted in my person; but I continue to have difficulty in knowing how the line lies between the man and the minister. In regard to the latter, we are authorized to take high ground. I am much reflected on by a few in my congregation, for my expressed opposition to the war. My Henry will feel thankful for the coins you send, when they shall have arrived; it is, how ever, not unfrequently the case, in this island, that expected coin fails to arrive. You do not mention whether sovereigns, rupees, or louis d’or. If you have the Missionary Chronicle for 1843, see how near [the Rev. Walter M.] Lowrie was to death by drowning in 1842, (page 134.) Then it was that he was prepared for an event which occurred five years later, [August, 1847.] What a mercy that he leaves no wife. I am beginning the year with a weight of 145 Ibs. Julius Hare (now Archdeacon of Lewes) has a volume of parish sermons I should like to lend you; they surpass the other [Augustus William] Hare’s (who died abroad) whose you excerpted from, I think, for the Journal. The Archdeaon’s are as plain, but more racy. Which of us would say as follows: “What, I ask, have you been doing during the whole of this year 1833 1 Eating and drinking, sleeping and waking, working for your wages, and receiving your wages, and spending your wages. Well! and of all this, what fruit have ye now? Nothing. All this has brought you forward in the journey of life, just as much as a horse gets forward that keeps going round and round in a mill. How will you ever get to heaven in the end? And if you do not get to heaven, where will «you be? When this world is swept away, there will be only two places; and he who is not at the gate of heaven, when he dies, will find himself at one of the gates of hell, for hell has a thousand gates, yawning around us on every side, and ready to close upon us and shut us in; whereas heaven has only one gate, even our Lord Jesus Christ.” ’

1 With the saddening associations of January, 1860, I find on one of the pages of the letters of that month in 1848, the following characteristic specimen of the humour of his brother Addison:

“NEW YORK, Tth day, 1st Month 18, 1S4S.

“ESTEEMED FRIEND, — Not knowing that thy mouth had been opened in meeting, nor even that thy principles were friendly, I was greatly tendered to learn that thou has had a concern to review the Life of Elizabeth Fry, and has had to give up to it. I trust thy piece was written after the necessary preparatory baptisms, and under a very solemn covering; and also that thou will follow the opening in which thou has been led to stand up. “Thy friend, DEBORAH DARBY.”

CHAMBERS ST., March 1, 1848.

The day that a child says “I will” or “I won’t” a second time, is a bad day for parent and child. It is just the point where our American license begins and where parental capacity is tried. Probably several thousand children under fourteen, in this city, own no allegiance whatever, but are sui juris.

Mr. G. of the State Department dined with us yesterday; amazing as a talker, a historian, and a polyglott. His memory of places, maps, dates, and facts, is beyond all I ever thought possible. He is at home in all the southern languages. Though he spent some years in Italy, he thinks Mexico a far more interesting country. There lies on my table a letter, dated Puebla, January 1. I will crib a few sentences: “I am still in Puebla, living under the shade of the glorious Popocatapetl; what a mountain! The very sight of it would pay for a visit to Mexico. One of the greatest curiosities in this city is the library and picture-gallery of the late Bishop. The library is the finest private one I have ever seen. Among the pictures are some of great value. He was a man of great erudition, cultivated manners, and elegant tastes, and appears to have been beloved by all classes of people. He died on the llth of October last, at the ancient city of Cholula, set. 80. This library, the. pictures, and various articles of virtu, were bequeathed to the poor.” “I have been reading Prescott; and you may judge of the pleasure of such pages, on the very soil immortalized by the achievements of the ‘Conqueror.’” “I am reading Clavigero, one of the best historians of ancient Mexico; to whom Prescott is much indebted for his elegant work.” “The [theatrical] pieces called pastor ellas are a mixture of the ludicrous and the religious; the infant Saviour, Joseph, Mary, the manger, the ass, being, introduced on the stage, the piece winding up with la Polka.” Mr. G. says the constant impression made on him, all over Mexico, was, that the people are an Indian race; the white and the black blood secondary. The new treaty will give us “little but deserts;” but better we should have these (for the Mexicans) than they; it will more effectually keep our fellows off their border. O how desirous one feels that the Gospel might pour in through these channels! What a glorious thing if the ambition of war could only be emulated by any analogous zeal for the introduction of the Gospel! I do not perceive why these poor, simple, brave, perfidious, paganized people might not be plied by thousands of books and tracts. They are not more hopeless than were the boors of Bohemia and Germany, when the tracts of Wiclif and the Lollards came among them, or ttfan the Swiss mountaineers when the writings of Zuingle and Calvin roused them. Further, I soberly think some daring young ministers (if any such are, left in these days of literary clerical petit-maitres) ought to dash into Vera Cruz, Perote, Puebla, and Mexico, and blow at least a long loud blast of defiance, where Satan’s seat is. In 1555, men were found to go to torrid Brazil, from Geneva; and several died martyrs there. I have expressed this opinion in my official capacity; but my brethren think me flighty. Would God my boys might preach Christ in that, or any other foreign land; so only they be faithful! Amen.

NEW YORK, March 28, 1848.

Gurley, the auctioneer, who has just died of erysipelas, will be regretted. He was a wonderful bibliographer, and a man of remarkable tact and courtesy, as well as honesty. I never heard him make an extravagant remark, in selling. The news by the “Caledonia” surprises people. That the [French] Republic should slip on the rails, as by a mere turning of the switch, with no friction and loss of life, is wonderful. The editor of the “Sclmell Post,” a German radical, was off in the “Cambria,” as soon as the first news came, to take part in the revolution that is to be in Germany. Two of his comrades sang the Marseillaise to him, from the wharf. The horrible treachery of Louis Philippe, in regard to the Protestants, and especially the Spanish marriages, is now visited on him; as well as the blood of French men and Arabs shed for nothing in Algeria. Algeria declared part of the French Republic! We have authorized a new mission under the Equator, near J. L. Wilson, and at his instance. None of the return-missionaries have instructed me more than he. History has often made much of less daring than his. The practice of funeral sermons months post mortem is common in Virginia; I think the more common way in rural places. I lament to hear such painful things of your kind old aunt; my mind reverts to antediluvian banquets, of steaming coffee, cakes and sausage. May the world never want a race of affectionate old-fashioned people, who shall so spread their bounties as to make them remembered for a whole generation! I wish her a safe and gentle descent dowrn the slippery foot of the hill. By reason of preaching twice on Sunday, as I ought not, on top of a sore throat, I have made myself (” war-horse” as a plain man translated) hors de combat. I believe I make less of [ecclesiastical] differences than I did. Though a reunion with the New School body, just as it is, would be unedifying, and a signal for unprecedented squabbles and disciplines, I think there are many among them with whom we ought to maintain the most brotherly 82 WHILE PASTOR OF DUANE ST. CHURCH, NEW YORK.

correspondence. Nevin [Mercersburg] holds unimaginable doctrines; e. g. that Christ is now incarnate in the church; (progressively;) that whoso denies this, is an anti-christ; that we eat Christ’s body, and derive our life from it, so that our life is the very life (theanthropic life) which Christ has; that we are justified by the transfusion of Christ’s righteousness, as head, to us as members; (the popish doctrine;) that all other Presbyterians in America are a set of Puritans, who have apostatized from Calvin.

NEW Yonrf, May 11, 1848.

Dr. Neander’s Life of Jesus is about as bad a book, for us, as could be furnished by Germany. It will keep in countenance those numerous persons who are half ready to give up all inspiration. The book of the day is the Life of Pollok, by Scott. Take a few sentences: “Scotland gave him birth, and England donated him a tomb;” p. 350. “His hair dark, and his countenance touched with the olivaster shade;” p. 360. “His thoughts, imagery, logomachy, style, and plan are his own, and most appropriate for the great psalm which he indited;” p. 362. If you ever see it in a shop, read the first sentence, which is too big and rotten to bear transportation. Dr. Schroeder’s people have bought the Eighth Street church. There had been a little squinting towards it among our folks, but they got no countenance from me.

At no time have things looked duller in my charge. Additions very few, and a general fluctuation, which makes me doubt whether our church, like so many others, will not be swept away before the surge of commerce. About twelve families leave us. Of nine persons dismissed by us since last communion, all but one were dismissed to us within five years. If my powers were of the arousing sort, I might hope for more in a mission-church, but all the little I can attempt is in the way of gradual training; and this requires people to stay with you. Our Sunday services are as full as ever, but our other indications are all bad. When I look at home, I no longer marvel it should be so. There is some likelihood that I shall take boarding for my family at Astoria, for about six weeks in summer; it is an hour by coach, and half an hour by steamboat; and is right on the strait and violent channel between the East River and the Sound: “Hurlgate.”

Accept for self and co. our loves, and allow me to subscribe myself, in the mode which threatens to become the laconism of American epistles,

“Respectfully, &c.”

NEW YORK, May 30, 1848.

In yours of the 16th, you speak of “chirography” vice “penmanship;” it would be a good exercise in a school or college, or even for ourselves, to make out a list of cases in which the lean kine have thus eaten up the fat: e. g. “commence” for “begin,” “truthful” for “true,” (though it -has a meaning of its own;) “indebtedness” for “debt;” “stand point” for “point of view;” &c. This month is turning into a Pluviose. I see numbers of waistcoats a la Robespierre; white, with high turn-over lappels. The “cafe des 1,000 colonlies” has come out fresh as “cafe de la Republique.” Mr. Bridel has large congregations in French; on these occasions he confines himself to the simple gospel. Four prayers and two entire chapters in the service; opening prayer read, and apostolical benediction at beginning, as in France. I have just read the Augsburg Confession, for the first time; it is not a dry list of points, but a beautiful and stirring argument and protest. I fear from hints in papers, that the General Assembly are going to apply the knife of frugality to the very life of our Boards; perhaps I mistake. At a moment when the world, in its very selfishness, sees the importance of giving full salaries, &c., in every bank and insurance- office, what a cowardly concession to

misers and Nabals, to complain that such a man as, gets

his $1,500 or $1,800. Mr. Sosnosky (I need not say whence) is colporting here, among French, as Mr. Rauschenbusch among Germans. On the 28th and 29th the emigrants landed at our Quarantine, for the two days, =10,030; mostly Germans, and no disease but small-pox. Are any of us at all awake to what this influx means? I propose D. v. to take my family out of this noise about the middle of June, to some quiet riverside, near enough for me to do duty. After that, I will make an exchange with you, or will go to you without exchange, as circumstances may admit. I see, beyond denial, that my congregation is suffering from its site. Though we have tens of thousands down town, they are mission folks, and increasingly foreigners, if not papists. The talent they require is not mine. I say truly, when I add, that I have not even a momentary hankering for uptown: my leading members feel otherwise; so should I, were I they. We have sent away about fifteen families this spring, thither and out of town.

ASTORIA, June 22, 1848.

We have six passages a day, from here to town, by steamboat, besides omnibus and railway on crossing the ferry — the latter every hour. Price sixpence. This is a beautiful cove on the end of Long Island, formerly called Ilallet’s Cove, and just opposite the upper end of Blackwell’s Island. From the upper windows of this house we can see across to the North River. All the navigation of the Sound passes directly at our feet; for the house (Mr. Henry Mulligan’s) is on a terraced bank, at the bottom of which, separated only by a road, is the East River. I think it an unspeakable mercy to be permitted to bring my family here, as cannot bear a longer trip, and we have a down stairs room, two piazzas, a fine garden, and a lawn like a noble man’s. To me it is almost like being in town. Next lot is Mr. George Douglass; next Dr. Alexander Stevens; next Thorburn’s nursery, &c. Mr. Walker (elder) and Mr. Jas. Soutter are out here. The sea-air is very perceptible. Last night a quite thick blanket was in order. I saw old Mr. [Albert] Gallatin yesterday; a wonderful, wonderful man! I am always struck with the fact, that the whole of his conversation is on important topics, always in choice language, and always novel. He gave me the best account I ever had of the respective systems of Boodh, Brahma, and Confucius; of the Chinese language and of the Polynesian languages. He showed me the latest Genevese version of the Bible in 3 vols. 8vo, and laughingly said it was “very orthodox.” He showed me a book on Geneva, by Golifle, and complained that he was very unfair to Calvin, whom Mr. G. regards as one of the greatest mortals. On a former occasion he drew a comparison between Calvin and the Puritans, on the subject of witchcraft, &c., very unfavourable to the latter. He has just completed a volume, of some hundreds of pages, on the Aboriginal languages of America. His ethical and theistical feelings are very correct and profound; I cannot find out what he thinks of Christ. He is minutely acquainted with all the nice points of Calvinistic controversy.

ALBANY, July 28, 1848.

You will hardly believe me when I say that I went to Saratoga reluctantly; nothing but a desire to gratify my good mother, who needed the water and a companion, took rne thither. We remained just a week. It is a most unagreeable place to me, unspeakably less agreeable than the seashore. We left there yesterday, and made the trip to this place in a heavy rain and thunder-storm. I propose to preach at home on Sunday.

I am at the Delavan House, which I continue to think, of taverns, the best house I ever stopped at. When we came up in the boat last week, we had the Van Burens, father and son, with us; Martin looks hale, and had a fresh cabbage-leaf inside of his hat; reason unknown. To one who passes up the East River, Dr. Tyng’s church is the most conspicuous building in upper New York, and yet it wants the two steeple-towers, which are to be 250 — 300 feet high. The church is to seat 2,000, and to cost, they say, $200,000. There is a vestry-discussion as to which of the two houses shall be St. George’s church, and which St. George’s chapel.

After some hot, steaming days, this is one of the pleasantest of the season. I have been giving my mother and sister a drive around the city; and am much surprised to find so many improvements, beautiful buildings, sweet gardens, &c. The upper part is to be very charming.

NEW YORK, August 21, 1848.

This is my first literary act, on returning home, after an absence of 58 days. Seldom have I been gladder to get back, for I have scarcely had a week without illness. The Hellgate end of Long Island is almost as much broken into ups and downs, as a mountain-ridge. My second sojourn was with my elder Walker. From his house I could see, not only Astoria, the East River, and the west side of the North River, but Staten Island, and a fine view of New York in the distance. Astoria is a place of villas. The sea-breeze is fresh, but I opine they will have agues. Nearly 100 embark on the little steamers for New York every morning. My first visiter, on return, was Mr. Bridel, a very lovely little man. There has been great prevalence of dysentery on Long Island, and in other country-places about here. New York has also approximated, this year, towards Philadelphia, in respect to cholera infantum. I observe by the bills, however, that febrile disorders decrease, in the ratio that bowel-disorders increase; e. g. last week but one, of all fevers, 14; of all bowel-ills, 114; last week, of former 26, of latter 126. Good old Dr. Miller said to me, the other day: “When the semi-centenary of my ministry came round, I was glad to let it pass in silence, as I was ashamed of my ministerial performances.” When Dr. Emmons was dying, he said to Dr. Hawes: “I shall soon be on the other side, but O how ashamed I shall feel, to be there!” I lately saw, in German, a history of the world, in many volumes, all biographical; i. e. a chain of individuals, from Adam down, each comprising the age he lived in: it struck me that a Biblical History, on a similar plan, might fill a series of lectures. It is remarkable how much this is the plan of the Bible itself. Addison is here, on his way to orate at East Windsor.

NEW YORK, September 7, 1848.

The rumours of yellow-fever die away. The Board of Health ceases to report any at the Currentine — such is the current pronunciation — and no cases are believed to exist on this island.

Dr., of Glasgow, was in my church on Sunday. Like

almost all these Scotsmen, he seems to have a mighty good conceit of himself, and a superciliousness towards every thing American; this incenses me, because there is so little pretence of foundation for it. I could perhaps bear it in an Oxonian or Cantab dignitary; but in a snuffy Sawney, speaking the horriblest dialect that ever came from the mouth of a Briton, I can’t stand it. People are beginning to come back to their quarters; and, after all, there is nothing like one’s own home.

I do not think the Sunday School Journal can ever occupy that place in public notice which its redaction merits; its title is so narrow, and its period of revolution in its orbit so long and irregular: I would as soon calculate the moon’s motion, as tell when it is coming. We have again essayed a ministers’ prayer-meeting; I don’t know how it will go. Text last Sunday after noon, Ecc. iv. 9, 10. A clergyman, known to me, publicly read .in a service, a chapter in the Apocrypha, and never found it out. I have been reperusing Herodotus, in English. Several things strike me: 1. It is a series of grand old stories; as entertaining as the Arabian Nights. 2. The extraordinary advance of the world, since then, in science. What hideous incredibilities! 3. The equal advance (under Christianity) of humanity. You can scarcely read ten pages anywhere in Herodotus, without lighting on some atrocity. 4. A delightful book might be made, by stringing together the best ancient narratives, cutting off superfluities, and taking any liberties with language, and entitling, Stories from the Old Historians. In a month, one might from Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, make one of the best and most saleable volumes of the day. It should have many maps, titles, notes, and Christian comments, and should be well printed. It would necessarily comprise the most famous events of olden time, such as people are constantly alluding to, without exact knowledge. Plutarch is an inexhaustible magazine himself.

NEW YORK, October 11, 1848.

The loss of good Mrs. Rice,2 gives me many serious feelings.

1 His correspondent had anticipated this hint in a series of “Old Stories” from Herodotus: Sunday School Journal, September and October, 1839.

9 Of Trenton, see vol. i.f 186, 201.

The more I think of it, the more I believe, that such quiet and meekness of well-doing will be more prized in “that day,” than many brilliant qualities. How much better than the self-tormenting pride we have known in some families. I am glad your tour in the Pines has caused itinerancy to rise in your estimation; Presbyterianism owes almost its existence to it, in new settlements. Do you see that Nevin sets up the “Mercersburg Review” 1 I have been with my children to the Fair of the American Institute, in Castle Garden. There were thousands of things, but not much that I coveted, except the pears. They talk of building out the Battery further into the bay. A balloon and man went up to-day. A military band is going by, which reminds me how vastly that branch of art is improved since my boyish days; I am as much pleased with the sound as I ever was. The number of such bands is astonishing; great numbers of them are Germans. Surgeons see a very bloody side of war. I observe that Luther’s original Catechism omits the second commandment, and divides the tenth; just as the Papists do. On the first of this month, my father said it was the anniversary of his licensure, fifty-seven years ago; I have his trial-sermon, though he does not know it.

NEW YORK, October 29, 1848.

1 congratulate in regard to your North Church; it was time, and it will riot hurt the “old South.” The Repertory Article on Chalmers, is by my father, who seldom contributes now. Paul Delaroche’s great painting of Napoleon crossing the Alps, is in the new style — matter-of-fact; nothing ideal. You see the wear and tear of the breeches, and gray surtout; the mule is a common mule. In this respect, one is gratified. You remember David’s on the same subject, in the old Academy. I have just received notice that the Board [of Publication] would stereotype my “Family Worship.” Looking over Walsh’s “United States and England,” lately, I find it entirely free from those twists of diction, which characterize his later writings. It would surely be carrying coals to Newcastle, to give you any ana of Mr. [James F.j Armstrong, [of Trenton,] close as you are to head quarters. I remember the old gentleman very well; but he was past preaching. You know he had a fine library. Where are all his sermons 1 what becomes of sermons? He was very much the gentleman; cordial and benignant, even to children; disposed to fun. I have heard that he wras very animated and pathetic in his discourses, when in his prime. I suppose Mr. A. would have been called an old-side Presbyterian. He was of the Stanhope Smith school, and they were very intimate. Ask for the exact particulars of an incident, at the old parsonage, between Mr. A. and Dr. Witherspoon, when the Dr. came with coach-and-four, just after his marriage to a young wife. We are in expectation of the cholera soon in New York. I heard Gough the other night, and still think him a master of eloquence in his way. [David] Lord is really a genius. I don’t believe in his applications, but his main principles [of interpreting Prophecy] are the true ones, and are almost self-evident. He takes all the symbols which are explained in the Scriptures, and from these deduces rules.

YORK, November 16, 1848.

I have ministered at two instalments, within a week, and have taken a very annoying cold. I never was in the Jersey City church till yesterday; * you know it is the old Wall Street do.; it is a model of beauty to my eye. I know of no good models for cheaper edifices. Potts once named to me, as a great invention of a certain architect, a very economical plan, of so building that the church might at any future time be enlarged in either dimension. At Yorkville, where I was installing2 last week, Mr. Butts- has put up a very snug affair for $1,500; wood. A MS. history of Virginia has come to light, several years older than Capt. John Smith’s. It makes the bragging descendants of the princess Pocahontas flutter, as it shows that her highness had an Indian husband two years before she was married to Ptolfe,

My heart is thankful for the result of the election. Whatever Gen. Taylor may do, or not do, the reign of corrupt office holders is broken for a time. Old Mr. Johnstone showed me a whole sermon written on half such a sheet as this: he says his father, who was a clergyman, taught him it when he was a boy, and he has used it ever since to the saving of much eye and hand, ink, paper, and time. By a home-made scheme of small marks for the most commonly occurring words, (the, and, for, from, Gospel, church, proof, text,) it is surprising to one who has not made the calculation, how much work is abridged. By about fifty such marks, I think fully half would be saved. What a libel on Mary Magdalene, to name - after her; there is not a breath of proof that she was a profligate person; or even that she was the sinful woman of Simon’s house: there is every presumption that she was a lady of leisure, if not of wealth.

1 “When he preached at the ordination and instalment (as assistant pastor) of the Rev. Lewis II. Lee. a The Rev. Joshua Butts.

NEW YORK, December 14, 1848.

I can scarce think of a finer subject for a Philadelphian to write on, than “The first hundred years of Philadelphia.” The first fifty would be the chief. Men and manners, houses, antiquities, &c. How Watson [Annals] has murdered this in his Higgledy-piggledy! The gold fever is wondrous; thirty-one vessels now advertised for California. Mr. O. hired a ship to government; when arrived all hands deserted; could not get a raft manned; consequence, United States forfeits to Mr. O. $80 per diem, for every day the ship is detained beyond a certain time.

Dr. Dill [from Ireland] is a superior man; young, but canny, like Cunningham. He is tall and eloquent. A couple, former Finneyites, whipped their children, to make them submit; next became perfectionists; next rejected Old Testament, and now are wondering after Davis, the clairvoyant. I have just been buying my winter butter at 22 cents; but I reckon you can get it cheaper, as I know you can better. I have never, in a single instance, ta’sted New York butter equal to Philadelphia. Old Schoolism has no good chance in New York, where the warp is Dutch and the woof Yankee. See how little room between

DUTCH

Naturally enough all immigrant Yankees go to the Congregationalists. The Dutch churches here command my respect for their peacefulness and conservatism. The state of things in Austria and Prussia looks very threatening. It looks like another general war in Europe. Hengstenberg and his class denounce all this liberalism as Anti-christ itself; and these are the king’s advisers. Domestic Missions seems to be pointed out as our work. A letter of my grandfather Waddel has come to hand, dictated by him, in blindness, to my mother, and addressed to Dr. Hoge. It has one remarkable sentence: “There is a mini’ mum fed written on all the actions of my life.”

YORK, December 22, 1848.

Lately I sent two small articles to the “American Messenger.” They circulate 130,000. I suppose the snow which is coming down here is also coming down on you. The new Congregational Journal, the “Independent,” has taken in Joshua-Leavitt, as the real editor. They lead off with much spirit.

Another death of cholera in town yesterday. All the old disputes about contagion. Every case thus far is traceable to the crew of the “New York.” The rate of mortality here is formidable. Yesterday’s case was just from Pittsburg, but had communication with above passengers. Dr. Stevens, wrho, in last cholera, said “No contagion,” now talks otherwise. In look- ing at the history of the Puritans, I find very few of the things which they scrupled to be such as would hurt my conscience; though I might wish them altered. The tendencies of Independency in England have been very latitudinary and disorganizing.

I was at the New York Lying-in-Asylum, yesterday. What a blessed refuge for poor creatures in their extremity! Last year between two and three hundred confinements, and not one death, or unhappy result!

Carter has imported a very large stock of the Bibles printed at Coldstream, by Dr. Adam Thompson, who broke up the monopoly. As imported books, paying ten per cent., their cheapness is remarkable; and they are worth looking at, by one who loves linen-paper, British press-work, and immaculate typography. The small New Testaments are 12| cents, small Bibles 25, 50, &c. Large 4to Family Bible, with short notes, calf, $5. All have the Scotch Psalms; all are faulty in regard to size of paper.

I once mentioned to you the erroneous and deceptive retention of the e in Urbane. The same is true of clothes, which should be cloths, to be intelligible to modern readers. The Scotch Bibles all have “brasen, morter, caterpillar, jubile, throughly;” in this agreeing with the English. It seems odd to me, that - should praise A. Monod & Co. for sticking to a National church, which is Arian, and which, by synodal act, has refused to make either baptism or moral conduct a condition of church-membership.

To-day I went to see a sick parishioner. All shut. Dead. What solemn reflections should this produce!

A doctor from Bellevue almshouse tells me they have the ship-fever there horribly; it broke out in a room of eighty persons. Conscience, about such matters, is so dispersed, as to amount to nothing. The filth of our streets is absolutely mysterious. In the driest weather I have seen the crossings quite sloppy; this is chiefly from ordure and swill, squeezed up from between the paving-stones, by the heavy loads, &c. The Irish Deputation [Dill and Simpson] have netted more than $6,000 in this city. With all its faults New York is certainly a giving place. v My old chum, Waterbury, preached for me on Sunday. Princeton must have been very rank for doctorizing, not to be able to contain till Commencement; perhaps they were afraid the candidates would die. So Baptist Noel has come out of the Establishment. I doubt the wisdom of the method.

NEW YORK, January 8, 1849.

A Happy New Year! In what country but Scotland would 950 [Prize] essays on the Sabbath be sent in by labouring men? This even more strikes me than that the best should be written by a woman, [” The Pearl of Days.”] I think almost every body undervalues the actual good done by our Missions; say, among the Indians; which is the one I regard most. Just in their infancy, yet they affect the tribes through and through. Mr. Dougherty has twenty native communicants; at two other places there are sixteen; and among the Choctaws, the Presbyterian church (though under the A. B. C. F. M.) has 264 native members. Where is there more success, proportionally 1 Dickens’s Christmas story is paltry; though one of its puns showed me how the English pronounce “Ma; “though I might have inferred it from the concurrence of New England and Virginia. Pittsburg is unfortunate in fires, and New Orleans in pestilences. I hear every day of merchants and people of that class having died of the epidemic in New Orleans. The New Haven road is now open; passage in two hours, fine cars; next thing will be Albany. Already we go on rails (Erie Railway) about 200 miles. Our markets show it. Venison is a drug. For the cuisine recherchee, nothing will do but prairie-hens from Illinois, $2 a pair, which is as low as canvass-backs; as Juvenal says:” Instruit ergo focum provincial’ — Sat. v. I visit old Mr. Gallatin, in his bed. It is a treat to have his reminiscences of our greatest men, all of them. On such topics his powers are unbroken, and he is equal to anybody I ever heard, for never hesitating, and always hitting just the word, with a curiosa felicitas. He professes firm belief in Christianity, and I understand him now to admit the divinity of Christ. He thinks Madison the greatest argumentative parliamentarian we ever had; I have heard that Marshall had the same opinion. It just occurs to me, that in his earlier life Madison used to have family-worship. Afterwards his religion assumed a Washingtonian invisibility. My New Year’s text, and motto, is: “Hope thou in God.” The condition of our vicious poor is very dreadful. When I think of the hunger and nakedness of some, I cannot lie down in my warm bed, without a feeling akin to shame. Contrary to my expectations, a good many of my young men are away in winter, on commercial travels; it is the only season in which they dare traverse the Western States.

NEW YORK, February 1, 1849.

I saw an advertisement which says: “A quill-pen begins a letter like a pen, continues it like a pin, and ends it like a shaving-brush.” The respectability of the people going to California is very marked. Among those known to me, many are educated, and many are religious. One party of a hundred has included Sabbath observance in their indentures. One ship known to me is to have daily worship. Having. long believed colonies to be the best missions, I see in this a most hopeful means for spreading the gospel. California churches can send missions with ease to China, Japan, and Polynesia. ‘The great proportion of northern men going thither, will be favourable to the preserving of our Union. Miss Martineau comes out Pantheist, in her readable book on Palestine. The pull and vexation of these numerous charitable collections upon us is dreadful, and injurious, I feel sure, to the growth of our congregations. No other sect is so harassed, and no other ministers so “serve tables.” Look at an able article on Immigration (statistical) in the American Almanac for 1849. The “German Messenger” of the Tract Society is edited by an excellent German, Mr. Rauschenbusch. There is also here a Mr. Ungewitter, a friend of Ilcngstenberg, and some time editor of a loyalist journal in Berlin, but driven away by ih& Republican movement. The German method of singing is the true one, in these respects: 1. The harmony is confined to the organ. 2. The choir, which is small, sings the air. 3. They introduce no new tunes. 4. The chorals, which they sing, (Old Hundred being one,) are slow and familiar. 5. Consequently the people all sing; and all sing the air, except as individual fancy may vary to suit the voice.

I have read Miss s’ tale, and think it wonderful; but I

know, by previous trials, that our booksellers would do nothing with it. I was particularly struck with the knowledge of religion evinced, and with the absence of all turgid language. .Except “resurrection-morn,” in the last sentence, I do not remember a young-ladyism. Would that Bishop Doane could see it, before again he prints a sermon! I am surprised your Lutheran knows nothing of Old Hundred. I have it before me in two German collections, where it is referred to two other books, of date 1666 and 1772. The ascription of it to Luther is no doubt mythic. The more pious divines (pietists) in Wurtemburg, look on the democratic uproars as “Anti-Christ;” and expect a speedy intervention of God, by xapioyxara and miracle.

INAUGURATION-DAY OP ZACHARY TAYLOR, March 5, 1849.

There is something pleasing in the chase of a text through several versions. I have just been looking at that delightful but obscure one, Eph. iv. 1G. The phrase Sia Traces as rJJ? «ri- ^opyias, is thus given: 1. Eng. Auth. Vers., “by that which every joint supplieth.” 2. Geneva, “in every joynt, wherwith one ministreth to another.” 3. Tyndale, “in every ioynt wherwith one ministreth to another.” 4. Cranmer, “joynt wherwith one ministreth to another.” 5. Vulgate, “per omnem juncturamsubministrationis.” 6. Rheims, “by al Juncture of subministration.” 7. Wicklif, “bi cche ioynture of undir seruying.” (These last are just the Vulgate transferred.) Robinson, in Lexicon, renders, “by all the joints of supply.” This is just the force of the (8) Dutch, “door alle vsegselen der toebreuginge,” and (9) the old French, “par toutes les jointures du fournissement.” Luther (10) has “durch alle Gelenke; dadurch eins dem andern Handreichung thut,” (which is very like the English;) and (11) deWette, “durch allerlei Gelenke der Handreichung,” which is very exact, I think, namely, “by every-kind-of joint of (hand-reaching) supply-help.” I do not -think our version here maintains its usual superiority. Before leaving this matter, I must copy a sample of Wiclif ’s literal following of the Vulgate, in 2 Cor. i. 17 — 19:

“Ether the thingis that I thenke, T thenke aftir the fleische, that at me, be it is & it is not, but god is trewe, for our word that was at you is & is not, is not therinne, but is in it, for whi ihesus crist the sone of god, which is prechid among you bi us, by me & siluan and tymothe, ther was not in him is & is not: but is was in him,” &c.

All this arises from the singular fact that the Romans had no word for Yes, and had to use Est, Ita, Immo, Maxime. This perpetual moving is a plague to a family situated as mine is. The house I occupy has just been sold over my head, and the new landlord raises the rent from $700 to $800. My congregation is going down, by going up (town). We dismiss two for one we receive. Though the house continues full, it is of transient people; no pews are sold, though all are hired for short terms. About nine-tenths of the property -holders want to sell and go up town; they would do so in a moment if I should say the word; and with every probability of a new and full church there: but that word I dare not say, nor have ever given any countenance to the proposal. Two of my elders move up-

94: WHILE PASTOR OF DUANE ST. CHURCH, NEW YOKK.

town in May. If you want a colleague you had better strike while the iron is hot, and call me now. Addison has a Comment on the Psalms going through the press; popular; no strange tongues. I have not lately met with a remark more exactly suiting me than the following of W. S. Land or, respecting Southey: “no prose writer, except Cobbett and Sydney Smith, has written such pure English.” No week passes without some one going from our congregation to California, almost all very respectable persons. I am sorry to perceive that the cholera is increasing at New Orleans and on the plantations.

NEW YORK, March 19, 1849.

Addison is certainly printing on Psalms: I am glad of it, as no book is more needed. Poor Ebenezer Mason was buried yesterday, in a vault to which his father’s remains [Dr. John M. Mason] had been conveyed the day before. Violent sudden rheumatism. Duncan of Baltimore, on his way to the funeral, was paralyzed in a coach from our wharf, and lies ill, but better. My house is sold over my head, and also rented, and I am as yet houseless. The kind of house I need cannot be had, but for such sums as $800, $900, and even $1,000. Atkinson (when a lawyer) was a particular friend of mine; he was an uncommonly amiable man. I do not expect to lose fewer than twenty families from my church by the 1st of May. I went yesterday to see the man from whom my child took the varioloid; he has had the most dreadful form of confluent small-pox. The mask on his face was half-an-inch thick, so that he cut it off with a knife. I am glad to see the Bostonians have printed Macaulay without the “offense,” “chimist,” “traveler,” “highth,” and “luster.” There is a third impression for twenty-five cents. I continue to see Mr. Gallatin, and talk to him on divine things. Even at his almost hopeless age, he seems to make some progress; disavows deism; disavows Unitarianism; speaks of relying on the merits of Christ alone; on being saved by faith; and on the last occasion used these words, with tears in his eyes, “My love to my redeeming God.” But his mind loses its thread instantly if you oppose any thing he is saying. A pleasant boy of my church suffered amputation of the leg, last week, for the second time in six years: in the last instance he was entirely insensible, under chloroform.

YORK April 24, 1849. I thought you would be pleased with [Life of Dr.] Channing; The book did me much good. How refreshing to find a man

1 The Rev. William M. Atkinson, D.D., died February 24, 1849.

who is in earnest about something. I make great distinction between Charming and his biographer: who knows how far the suppressio has gone ‘? My taste increases for books which flow straight on, as from an inner source; little erudition, no quotation, no heads or divisions, growing, swelling, &c.: not the less, because I am individually of the opposite sort, and tend to mince things up, and put them into patty-pans, with numbers. I got a shove for weeks from reading “Foster’s Estimate of R. Hall, as a Preacher.” Don’t fail to read it, especially what he says about Hall’s faults. John Howe is the only Puritan writer of the sort I mean. Addison, in one or two of his best sermons, exemplifies my meaning. The year’s pew-letting (how 1 hate it!) has resulted in the taking of as many seats as at any time before: it is with peculiar pleasure that I see the galleries filling up. Coquerel has an answer to Strauss, which (Unitarian though he be) contains some fine suggestions about the life of Christ. Mr. Gallatin joins in the prayers, which I offer by his bed-side, with a fer- •vour and tenderness which fill me with wonder: I certainly never saw a human face more radiant with emotion. I wonder if every other Presbyterian minister in New York feels (in secret) the same want of brotherly support and communion that I do. Four distinct times I have essayed a weekly ministerial meeting, chiefly for prayer. All other sects but ours, I believe, maintain such a service here. The Dvisseldorf collection of paintings, by great modern Germans, strikes me as surpassing any collection 1 ever saw. Ensingmuller (?) has a picture in the Academy, “Christ and his Church,” from Solomon’s Song: but oh, the amatoriousness of it, when painted, is fearful! It is the most gorgeous, furnace-like piece of colouring I ever beheld, and yet has originality and merit. I am greatly struck with Ezek. xxxv. 10, as a text: “whereas Jehovah was there:” it had escaped me till now.

NEW YORK, May 8, 1849.

Our new house [10 Beach street] is an oddity. It is bulging in front, deep in the basement, and high like a tower. I cannot account for it, but I never was in a house from which you could look down on so many others. From our attic we can count most of the city steeples. From my study I behold Trinity, St. Paul’s, St. Gardiner’s, St. McLauren’s, St. Hardenburg’s, the Hospital; and from every front window St. John’s tower and dial. A tall liberty-pole, both front and rear, with conspicuous vane. Though not precisely on St. John’s Park, we are in view, and have sight of the jet d’eau. For the sake of having a bath-

1 A meeting of this kind was afterwards established.

room, with hot and cold, and shower, we have even consented to have plumbers and id genus in our kitchen for a week, and have not yet cooked a dinner at home. My study is in a chaotic state. Our yard is smaller than before. We have two good trees at the door, a wide street, free sweep of winds, no neighbour on the west, and exemption from all objects of nuisant aspect. It has been a soaking time for the anniverse, (qu.: “anyfuss-eries”1?) the Board of (foreign) Missions yesterday and to day: several hours of debate about appointing a general agent; postponed till June. I was glad to hear from the Rev. Dr.

J (indirectly) that you are the author of the” Letters to a

Young Minister.”1 They do you credit. Go on, my dear
brother, to rear the tender youth!

NEW YORK, May 21, 1849.

Dr. Spring goes to Assembly after all, by the illness of Greenleaf, (green leaves have generally followed Spring.) What a time of disasters! Crevasse at New Orleans; cholera and conflagration at St. Louis; loss of steamboat Empire; riots and cholera here. There is little disposition among us to turn this to a religious account, as our fathers used to do. The true state of the case as to our mob [Astor-Place Opera House] is, that it was crushed by one timely, though afflictive blow, instead of being left to dribble on year after year: it is the first streetdisturbance since I have been here. 1 saw and heard no sign of it; all my information being from the papers. Rauschenbusch (a rough but devoted and Luther-like man) is going back to the West. He says the revolutions have driven to America great numbers of royalists and religious scholars. The average number of sick Germans in the Staten Island Emigrant Hospital is seven hundred. For these there is no Protestant chaplaincy; while the Popish priests and Sisters of Charity are constantly there. A learned and pious German of Elberfeld, named Fliedener, has a seminary for Protestant deaconesses, to do the same work in hospitals that the Sceurs do. He has trained one hundred and fifty, some of wealth and rank. He is to be here in July, and I have the promise of being made acquainted with him. Whether feasible or not, the scheme is beautiful and gospel-like. New potatoes abound, from Charleston, at 37-Jcts. the half peck. The gold dollar is a pretty plaything; I can’t think it will live. I am trustee for three persons in the Savings Bank. One of them, a servant, has $200 deposited to-day. Our chambermaid

1 This was a series of articles written by himself, and published in “The Presbyterian.”

has $500 there. One of the officers says a few days ago a known prostitute deposited $1,000, and that they receive a great deal from strange women. At my communion last Sunday five on examination; one on certificate. I know of a few persons inquiring. Mr. Gallatin grows constantly more right-minded in religion; this is the more remarkable, as it includes points on which 1 never address him, and no other religious person has access to him.

NEW YORK, May 31, 1849.

Just at this time, as you may suppose, I am in much heaviness. Only a day or two had I any warning of what was impending, as it did not spring from my Princeton friends. At this moment I am absolutely void of all information except the telegraphic vote. The thing gives me unspeakable pain. To you I will say, believing you can understand it, that any little unction of flattery in the appointment is instantly more than absorbed by the greatness of the question, and the anguish of a separation from my charge, if I accept. They (with no syllable from me) seem to give up at once, and think I have no option. This I do not think: but, at the same time, the judgment of our highest court is very grave, in a case where all previous plans seemed to fail. There is no need of- saying so to the public, but to know that I might remain here would be a joy unspeakable. No dreams of mine respecting the social happiness of the pastoral relation have failed to be realized: in this I compare it to marriage. I have tried academic and Princeton life, and was less happy. Every thing makes me feel solemn, and I am (not metaphorically, but literally) sick. All my ministerial friends, to a man, say Go. Seldom have I more deeply felt my utter insignificance — the blindness of fellow-creatures, who from some view of outside think me of any value in such a matter — and the unimportance of the question, in all but a religious and eternal view. Life is very short: Dirigat Deus!

I have just purchased for the College a collection of ancient Greek and Roman medals, imitated perfectly in a composition of

1 In the General Assembly, at Pittsburg, May 21, 1849, the Report of the Directors of the Princeton Seminary was received, in which it was announced that the venerable Professor Miller, on account of bodily infirmities, wished to resign his office. The Assembly resolved to continue Dr. Miller’s connexion with the institution, under the title of Emeritus Professor, with its salary and all other rights during his life, and to elect a new professor for the active duties of instruction. On the 26th May, the Assembly proceeded to the election, and Dr. Alexander received a majority of the votes. The professorship was that of Ecclesiastical History and Church Government. Dr. Miller survived until January 7, 1850. VOL. II. 5 sulphur, as to colour, detrition, &c. They are chronologically arranged in twenty-two boxes, each having six cassettes. They number 6,089. They were made for Lord Vernon, by Odelli, of Rome. A few alumni of the College, being called on, raised the money immediately. You can hardly imagine the effect produced on the imagination by looking over such a series, so like reality; seeing the same emperor’s face, going through phases, and the legends in such Roman-looking Roman uncials. I have several things to tell you about Mr. Gallatin, but coram. I think he is renewed by direct spiritual agency. There is a something which looks more supernatural than what I ever observed. I want to propose to you an article, which you have facilities for preparing, in the State Library: a Digest of the Laws of the several States concerning Marriage, so far as they respect the officiating clergyman. It might lead to excellent results, and open way for kindred remarks, &c. In some States ministers are liable in heavy penalties, without any authority to take depositions, or any protection by license. In Virginia, most sensibly, all responsibility is on the county-clerk, who gives the license, after inquiry, oath, &C.

1 Within a few weeks after the date of this letter, Dr. Alexander declared his acceptance of the professorship, and removed to Princeton. Although he entered upon the duties of the office soon after the opening of the session of the Seminary, his inauguration did not take place until November 20, 1849.