Letters While Pastor of the Fifth Avenue Church, New York, 1851–1857

Princeton, October 18, 1851.

I WRITE more to stay my mind during hours of waiting than to communicate much. My father seems to grow weaker. He believes himself to be on his death-bed, and this more than any symptoms of a grave character makes us apprehend the same. I think his perception and judgment greater than in any moment of his life. An endless train of minute arrangements have occupied his mind, each of which he has settled in the most summary way. He says his views are what they have always been; that he has never feared to die; that he has never seen so proper a time to die; that all his prayers have been answered; that he has no ecstasy but assured belief; and that no one should pray for his recovery. He says his views of God’s goodness are expressed by “How MARVELLOUS is thy loving-kindness, &c.” Every one of us, even my dear mother, feels most calm when nearest to the scene of suffering. The affairs of the Church employ far more of my father’s words than any family concerns. He talked an hour with me on the prospects of the truth in Scotland. The whole tone of his discourse is free from what John Livingston calls “shows,” being precisely what it always was — passing with childlike ease from the settling of a bill to the grace and glory of the gospel. He said, “I have this morning been reviewing the plan of salvation, and assuring myself of my acceptance of it. I am in peace. The transition from this world to another, so utterly unknown, is certainly awful, and would be destructive, were it not guarded by Christ; I know he will do all well.”

My father, with an authority which no one could parley with, forbade the calling in of any city physician, declaring his view of his case, and his perfect satisfaction at what “was done. In every sentence, there is a surprising conciseness, clearness, and weight of command, unlike his manner in latter years; and when he has given orders, he adds,” Enough for that point; let me speak of another.” And then, “I have done; you must leave me.” There is not a trifle respecting coal, supplies, &c., which he has not settled. He yesterday ordered a ten-dollar library to be sent to a minister in the West. My father’s last publication, we suppose, is” A Disciple n in the November American Messenger. I am naturally led to think of unseen things, and am strangely beset with mercies, chastenings, and lessons.

NEW YORK, November 26, 1851.

We have got into our new house, (22 West Nineteenth street,) but are not yet in any order. What they will do at Princeton I know not. Whatever changes may supervene, I earnestly hope there will be none to lower the general standard of our theological training. There is a view of it in which one minister might teach every thing; but if we would maintain that high ground which I solemnly believe American ministers now have in com parison with those of other countries, we must have at least one well-sustained Seminary. This was my father’s great desire, which gained strength in his more sober hours, and formed part of his dying conversations with me. I am troubled in my mind at the sort of church I am coming to. I certainly should never have accepted the call if I had dreamt of such outlay. I fear the total exclusion of the poor, and the insufficiency of my voice. As I had no hand in it, and know myself to be crossed rather than gratified by it, I hope God will turn it to some good. On Sunday I urged the destitutions of New York, and proposed the erection of a free church down town. On Monday a man whom I never knew before came and offered me $1,000 towards it. We cannot hope to get even into our lecture-room before May.8 Even since I went over the water the changes here are surprising. Sabbath-traffic and grog-drinking have increased. The whole talk now is about Kossuth. The newpaper, the “Times,” is going full sail. It already has 16,000 subscribers in two months. Greeley [“Tribune”] writes powerfully, when he lays himself out. His late articles on Hughes are

1 Dr. A. Alexander lingered until the 22d day of the month.

2 While the church was building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Nineteenth Street, the congregation worshipped in the chapel of the University. The first sermon of the pastor, after his return from Europe, was preached there on the 26th October.

tremendous batteries. But he goes full-length with the Chapman-Foxton-Westminster Review party. His book on Europe

is worth reading, though sour. P sends me the proofs

of an embryo book on Charity. It is raised to the nth

power; abuse of clergy; abuse of churches; abuse of theology; everybody wrong but moi; sneers at societies, creeds, catechisms, &c., &c.; yet, after all, a book that no one can read without deep and anxious reflection. The mixture of truth is great and suggestive, and the style is tip-top, sometimes as keen as Pascal.

Note any thing you can remember or hear, about my father’s Philadelphia labours. Do try to see any old people who know. Could not you find old Mr. Nassau 1 Addison and I, or one of us, will, Deo adjuvante, write a life. The MS. autobiography is voluminous, but only for material. How strangely we mis judge often. Dr. Miller left not one line of diary!

NEW YORK, December 2, 1851.

Surely there are divine uses of pain which we cannot fully understand. Nor can we reason much about the rules of its mission to individuals. The amount of suffering such persons

as and have endured often amazes and puzzles me.

Yet in ’s case the spiritual joy resulting is almost as specific

as of a medicine. I have thought much of this as a point in divinity. The Papists have missed the right doctrine of pain; but have we made enough of it? Some day we shall see what it was sent on good people for. I have known moments whon it has seemed to me a great boon to have the will broken, and self-pleasing mortified.

We are among a good many open lots and much rubbish; and to feeling, as far from the New York I knew, as if in another city. I find a good smart walk from here to Trinity Church quite tonical. My mind works incessantly on such themes as these: — the abounding misery; the unreached masses; the waste of church energy on the rich; its small operation on the poor; emigrant wretchedness; our boy-population; our hopeless prostitutes; our 4,000 grog-shops; the absence of poor from Presbyterian churches; the farce of our church-alms; confinement of our church-efforts to pew-holders; the do-nothing life of our Christian professors, in regard to the masses; our copying the Priest and Levite in the parable; our need of a Christian Lord Bacon, to produce a Novum Organon of philanthropy; our dread of innovation; our luxury and pride. I

1 “New Themes for the Protestant Clergy.” Philadelphia: Lippincott &Co.

preached twice on some of these things; but I work at the lever very feebly. Since I saw the drinking-customs of Britain, I am almost a tee-totaller, and half-disposed to go for a Maine law against venders of drink.

After settling a little from the shocks of late events, and looking back on my tour, I find my judgment of differences among Christians somewhat modified. Surely our battle is too momentous, to leave much time or zeal to spend on niceties of old school and new. Ah! how I daily feel “I have lost my adviser!” How often, “I must tell this to my father,” and then I awake to the reality. But there is no bitterness in the reflection. If it please God to touch our sons, our work will seem more clearly less needed here.

NEW YORK, December 20, 1851.

This morning, being on an errand, I saw a black-garbed whitenecked procession going into the Irving House. It was the “Evangelical Clergy.” I followed, and saw Kossuth again. He looked commoner and worn. Spencer sermonized him, with specs and MS. The following is a correct report of the Governor’s speech, as I heard it: “m — m — m — (sh — sh — sh — ) ‘.country ’ (sh — sh) c the most free country,’ — (sh,) ‘Gentlemen,’ — (sh) m — m — m — .”

I heard every word of Spencer’s. I believe K. was saying he could not make a harangue, but would answer in writing. He declares himself a Lutheran. I greatly admire his frankness. He loses no chance of showing it. He is getting to think him self a messenger of God. Some of his expressions smack of the Hegel doctrine of God’s voice being the voice of humanity. Colwell, in his episcopo-mastix, [” New Themes,”] seems to be in favour of a plan which shall dissolve all churches, charities, and associations, and solve the great social problem by this formula, “Let every man be perfectly good.” This is the avowed conclusion of his strange book. The reason why people go to Cardinal Hughes is, I think, to be found in one character of the Church of Rome, its matchless organization. Me judice, we shall as little counteract it by the dissolving plan, as we should benefit warfare by disbanding troops, and setting each warrior on his own hook. B comes out quite a war-man; so suddenly do the movement-people change to any tune which will make the mob dance. Furnaces, gas, and Croton pipes have almost literally employed every day since our “flitting,” with amendments. Pipes frozen, gasometer ditto. My rent is $900, in a very narrow, tawdry, shelly, ambitious, half-done house. The neighbourhood, how ever, is as quiet as a country village.

NEW YORK, December 31, 1851.

Christmas Day saw mo in nine churches, St. Francis Xavier’s, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, St. Joseph’s, St. Vincent cle Paul, St. somebody’s, (German,) Bellows’s, Grace Church, Calvary, and Muhlenberg’s little Gothic free-seat chapel, where there was at 7 and 8 communion, and at 9 a baptism. I never heard a Unitarian sermon before in English. B said the Unitarians were endeavouring to resume the “feasts and fasts.” He is a scholarly writer, and a theatrical though Yankee speaker. Progress, no matter what Jesus held; theology rising; let every man believe as much as he can; inspiration untenable; all men are Christians; Jesus the Head of the Church, i. e. of humanity; the great matter is the truth, which is not dogma, but being conscientious, kind, fond of freedom. All Christians in three classes, church-men, creeds-men, and life-men. All through he essayed a sort of mysticism, and wrought himself into a factitious peroration-heat about coming days, fight of freedom, martyr spirit, &c. It was fearful to see genteel and moneyed sons of New England trying to take in his Emersonian rhetoric and ultra-liberality. There was nothing redeeming but the style, which was elegant, novel, startling, and a little affected. Voice very rich in low notes; but he plays with it, and lapses when earnest into a Yankee tune. I feel a great admiration of Kossuth, especially since reading Madame Pulsky’s Memoirs, and History of the War. But the tide already ebbs here. Stocks would fall if the Hungarian tricolour should rise; and our canny capitalists go by that. Young men and workies take on the natural enthusiasm. The ministers who preached against the, slave-law, preach for Kossuth. As you will see by my “Travels,” I was quite prepared to hear of the coup d’etat. The great quality which it needs is yet to be revealed — military genius; this made Caesar, Cromwell, and “mon oncle.” I do not believe any true news gets to us yet by newspapers. The Canada brings three days later, but no change.

NEW YORK, January 19, 1852.

My young men are about to employ a man who speaks the Irish, and has laboured twenty years in Connaught, to look up the “strangers scattered abroad” in this city. My late church is occupied by several hundred emigrant families. What a pathos there is in every thing connected with Mr. Clay’s last days! There seems to be some good reason to view him as a converted man. At no time have we had a greater concurrence of good news from our Foreign Missions: accessions of converts in almost all. The China men are an extraordinary corps, and their work is going on with great energy. We to-day appropriated $1,000 for another chapel at Ningpo; and had notice of an equal gift from an individual for the same purpose. After years of defeat our Foreign Board is at length incorporated, under the recent law of this State. Broadway is a carnival of sleighs. The noise, glee, turn-outs, and throngs are quite a Russian spectacle. SchafF has a vehement and very able article against Kossuth’s notions. Dr. Spring told me he lately sat at his sermon-desk from 9 A. M. to 7 P. M. without dinner; but felt worse for it. His morning services are over-crowded, which can be said of no other Presbyterian assembly here. One can’t help feeling an admiration for Louis Napoleon’s quiet force in his coup d’etat. Several priests said to me in Paris, that the only hope for religion was the putting down of the rouges, (sc. rogues.) They talked of this much as we should have done, but I dare say with an eye to their own power. -Father Delual, once principal of St. Mary’s College, Baltimore, but now retired at the great College de St. Sulpice, [page 146,] spoke to me in his nice little chamber with high admiration of Sibour, the archbishop of Paris, who was also a Sulpician, and his coeval. The adhesion of Louis Napoleon to a church very much in the ascendant in France gives a basis to his power which was wanting to “mon oncle” at the eighteenth Brumaire. M reports

the Popish churches as unfrequented. I spent much of my days in them at Paris, and saw a very different sight. Not women only, but men in great numbers. I was particularly struck with the great numbers of children and youth under drill, often hundreds together, preparing the motions, &c., for processions. At Dijon, I was present at a catechizing, in an ancient church; the cure sat, and was lecturing a host of boys on a point of Christian morals. I spent my time on the pictures, but Maj. Preston heard it for some time and pronounced it very sound. When we consider that France was all but atheistic, we must regard even the acquisitions of Popery as conversions to a sort of Christianity. I find it very hard to swallow the tenet, that the existing church of Rome is incapable of being improved, and is to be looked at only as for hell-fire. My prophetic specs are very dim. When Louis XVIII. was restored, Bernadotte said to him at a dinner of the sovereigns: “Faites-vous craindre, Sire, et ils vous aimeront: sauvez seulement avcc eux 1’honneur et les apparences: ayez un gant de velours sur une main de fer.” He knew the French, and Louis Napoleon seems to adopt his maxim.

1 While this is in the printer’s hands, “the eldest son of the Church” is giving a now exemplification of the velvet glove on the iron hand, in his policy with the Pope.

I am pleased that our collections are increased, notwithstanding church-building. I never had so many volunteer offerings for poor. One man has offered $1,000 now, and $500 a year towards a Ragged School, and another $1,000 towards a free church. Another promises to keep me in books for the poor as long as I live. The Irvingite Prayer Book is very good, being compiled with much taste from the ancient liturgies. They have “seven churches in London,” as headquarters, with their respective angels. But there are angels in other churches. The twelve “apostles” are for great countries. Ours is Woodhouse, who

is not here at present. We are served by F and M,

probably prophet and angel. It is a consistent Puseyism. The Advent is not made so prominent as unity, real presence, prayer for dead and extraordinary xapiopiaTa. They profess great peaceableness, and ask no one to their meetings. Daily prayers at 6 and 5. Several University men are among their speakers. They have ample vestments, and no metrical psalmody. Their Psalter has some odd things, e. g.:

“He that doeth these things
Sha... II never be moved.” — “My li.. .ps shall praise thee” Et sic passim.

NEW YORK, February 13, 1852.

I don’t know whether it is so elsewhere, but here the Valentines have become a plague. As the day approaches, whole rows of shops of every sort fill their windows with valentines, from a penny up, which from having been amatory have become cynical and opprobrious, affording boobies and snobs an opportunity of venting cheap gall on a neighbour. For the first I find some tending to ir religion. You have seen the account of the perfectionism and promiscuous abomination. How few cards after all the devil has in his pack; this is only the “Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit” over again. It more than fulfils predictions made by Nettleton, which at the time I thought absurd.

A youth died the other day, at 19, who said he had used every day for eleven years a prayer I gave him on a card, when my catechumen.

I am getting to think professing religion much less presumptive of grace, than once I did. Nor do I see that any strictness at the door helps the matter. Have we not added to the New Testament notion of communicating in the Lord’s Supper? The anabaptist essays at a church of pure regenerate

1 Public assemblies held in Broadway of the advocates of “Free Love” — eventually suppressed by the police.

VOL. II. — 8 believers have not worked well. I used the word “catechumen” in the vulgar sense; but the Karou/Aeros was as such unbaptized — under schooling — long watched — slowly indoctrinated. The Church as a school has declined; hence the Sunday School has been built up alongside.

NEW YORK, February 25, 1852.

The meeting for prayer this morning at St. George’s [Episcopal church] is one of the most hopeful things I have seen foi a long time. Dr. Spring made an address and a prayer such as few but he can utter. Dr. Potts was in a tender melting frame, and prayed so as to carry a large assembly up with him. I had not heard of Mrs. L.’s death. Brooklyn is, as to any visits, about as far as Trenton. I was this very day meditating a journey thither to see her; but daily visits of three to four hours have by no means allowed me to “overtake” my pressing parochialia. I agree anent Webster, and was going to write so. Moreover, his estimates of Livy, &c., are equal to the Sophomore class. His comparison of Sallust to Dr. Johnson is absurd. 1 don’t yet believe in the Maine law. The radical principles of the whole scheme are rotten. 1. The Bible speaks well of wine, even as cxhilarant. 2. Christ chose, for a sempiternal ordinance, that thing, which of all others is (according to Maine) what ought to be everlastingly absent. 3. Islam (according to Maine) is ahead of Christianity. 4. The Decalogue is defective, for the first command ought to be, “Thou shalt not drink.” 5. If what they say is true, pledging is not the way; else, why not pledge never to touch that, the love of which is a root of all evil 1 or never to lie? 6. It is questionable whether the true ethical principle is to remove all material of sin. 7. We have too many laws already which can’t be enforced.

I can’t help seeing that the apostolic preaching could never have been conformable to prophecies in John xiv.-xvii., unless greatly different from our Lord’s. Progress and development mark all the teachings through his and theirs to the end. I look on a system as a mere report of progress in understanding Scripture, at a given point in history. Our preached system differs from the Confession of Faith, both by addition and subtraction.

I have heard [R. W. ] Emerson. There is a singular fascination in his delivery of his sentences. These end in a surprise, almost always, and he artfully stammers and halts, so as to make expectation extreme. No gesture. No outlay of voice. Yet he keeps you intensely anxious to hear his soft, hesitating

1 The allusion is to Mr. Webster’s unfortunate selection of a classical subject for a discourse before the New York Historical Society.

1851 — 1857. ITl

tones. A disjointed series of “good things.” Audiences not large; apparently New England residents, ladies, uppish clerks, &c.

Carlyle’s Life of Sterling is a dreadful book, to popularize Pantheism, warm up the swelling germs of doubt in young minds, and prepare the soil for every extreme. I nowhere find in English, except in Th. Parker, such dark menaces. It is evident C. converted S. from a mere nominal Christian into a black despairing skeptic. The Irvingites have a great proportion of persons out of the most indoctrinated circles; most of their prophets, &c., having Episcopal orders, and several privates known to me being Presbyterian, and even Seceder-bred. Six scribes take down the dicta of the prophets. Judge Story was a great man; but as to enthusiasm in professional studies, I have no doubt a hundred American clergymen have as much. In this one point I do not see him to surpass Stuart, Robinson, Hodge, or Barnes. In extra-professional literature he seems to me inferior to any one of these. I admit that our period is singularly barren of great divines and great preachers. - Yet the average working talent, I apprehend, was never greater. As to what is called pulpit eloquence, I grow in disbelief of its importance. The gaping multitudes who fill churches are little reached, as to the main matter. Worship is certainly overshadowed by our sermons. How few quoters of our Directory ever quote p. 497, where the sermon is compared with “the more important duties of prayer and praise.” — Quere: Whether we do not err in ciphering so much about the time, men, and money it will take to convert the world? Whether God’s plan is not to work upon, in, and by a peculiar people, elect and called; e/cAeKTot? Whether his plan may not be doing well, even though in a “little flock” 1 Whether the other world is not the great collection of saints? Whether God is not taking out of this world a constant select addition to that? And whether, consequently, both hopes and fears do not mislead us, as to the extensiveness of visible success?

Absurd as it sounds, the spiritual-knocking business is like to be really alarming. If Satan ever interferes, one might think it would be in such mesmeric and analogous delusions. I am told there are scores of distinct and stated meetings in town, for these spiritual investigations. Miss Martineau, in her late book, avows high-mesmerism and utter atheism.

NEW YORK, April 3, 1852.

I attended the funeral of M. R., on the 1st inst., cet. 13. She had been of my catechizing class, and was, I trust, a renewed child. I am expecting soon to go to the grave of M. S., who is sinking fast, but with the loveliest aspect I ever saw death put on. Her sayings are as worthy of record, as those of any woman I have read of. Her mother and sister, who both died of consumption, had just such blessings in their decline. Mr. Lowrie is going to visit our Western Indians. The death of Dr. Win. S. Potts, of St. Louis, is truly a solemn event. He had attained great eminence and influence, without the employment of any arts, or the perpetration of oddities.

Grote’s Greece is a wonderful book. He is a hot radical, but a great scholar and historian. His style is true English; no balance, rhythm, or expected cadence; his mind is John Bull-ish, as much as Gifford’s, (they say Jlfford in England,) and there is no flummery or fog of any sort. You read his account of debates at Athens, with the same matter-o’-fact feeling, as when you read about a debate in Parliament. All is made to uphold democracy.

New Orleans seems to be the small end of Kossuth’s horn. What a pity, to see the noblest fellow living kill himself by “power of slack-jaw,” as Yellowplush has it. What extremity of asinine folly, to prefer a Parisian education! Except for the name of it, French is of no more use to women than Cherokee.

I think with all its airiness and sweetness the up-town is less agreeable to me than the old parts. I feel more at home among the noise and kennels. A wealthy, zealous Norwegian, is here; he lent the American Bible Society $50,000, unasked, without security, for their new edifice. We are near the moving season. A number of my people are coming up. I think not five families of my old charge are below.

We have not the least stir in our congregation; but at no time have I known so many persons under a deep religious concern. I have perceived something unusual in the manner of hearers, for some weeks. The proportion of non-professors in our assembly is small. In every place where I have been, I have observed that I never have marked increase of hearers, but always a striking adhesiveness in those who come. We are suffering greatly for want of a good place for meeting; it is most obvious in our weekly lecture. A lady came to me under great convictions, produced by the funeral services of E. B.

Think of 3,000 Chinese in California! One of our Canton missionaries writes, that there were forty vessels in that port preparing for California. I am looking to the printing of a few hymns in Hungarian, for a little congregation of Mr. Acs, (pronounced something like our old school-phrase Ouch /) More

1 There is a memoir of Dr. Potts in Dr. Sprague’s Annals, vol. 4.

than $20,000 have been raised here within a few weeks, towards the endowment of the still unendowed chair at Princeton.

My health has not been improving lately. Constant pastoral visits and anxieties, and mental work without relaxation, have run me down exceedingly, so that I am sleepless in a good many nights, and quite nervous by day.

I have my father’s little book on Moral Philosophy very near publication. I suppose I shall have to throw in a Preface. It will rank with his Evidences, but will awaken more opposition. He wrote nothing more simple, clear, or convincing. It is the only work which he left ready. Among his papers, the only diaries are a few, (chiefly in cipher,) of which the earliest goes back to set. 17.

Does any one properly estimate the approaching certain influence of the Germans, as a power in our country 1 I often hear as much German as English in my day’s walk. Of all the Protestant portion, nine-tenths are infidel. All I meet with are radical. Most of the German newspapers are infidel, and some blasphemous. A friend of mine heard some talking yesterday; one said, “Our grand error in Germany was not using the guillotine; let them employ it freely, and let them begin with the Pietisten” The second Psalm comes to my mind as affording the only hope.

NEW YORK, May 4, 1852.

I almost envy you your chance of going to Charleston. I have always wanted to see that proudest specimen of sumptuous slaveholding hospitality. Try to see Dr. Smyth’s library.3 Perhaps I will enclose a letter to my classmate, W. P. Finley, President of the Charleston College.

When elected Moderator, the properest speech may be from these heads: “Unexpected — seldom in the chair — most will depend on members — good intention will atone for inexperience — will know no section or party,” &c.

I wish I could see my way clear to promise you pulpit aid. But I am so sure to have to flee myself, when it grows hot, that appearances demand pretty full labor from me as long as I can. Something may indeed turn up to make the thing practicable; and it would be very pleasant to me. Yesterday it was a French minister seeking a place, to-day it is an Irish one. These Irish think “vacancies” are gaping for them as soon as they disembark. They have no drawings towards the bush. I ob-

1 Where the General Assembly was to hold its meeting. a Now the property of the Theological Seminary at Columbia, South Carolina.

serve an absence of all “onction” in all Irish Presbyterian preachers. It is very different with the modern Scotch school. Guthrie of Edinburgh talks of coming hither for a jaunt. Guthrie draws more crowds than anybody since Chalmers. He has both poetry and wit, with plenty of fire. I hope to receive next Sunday about twenty on certificate, and seven on examination. I hope you mean to go by sea. The change is so entire, and so breaks the home-thread, that I know nothing like it. Don’t forget summer clothes. Verify the rumour, that the common Charlestonians say wen for when, wail for whale, peer for pear, fare for fear, and steers for stairs. Find out whether South Carolina extempore preaching is the best a-going. I wish for you that protection and happiness, which were vouchsafed to me so largely by sea and land.

1 1 throw into the margin a piece of playful satire on style and sentiment which he addressed to me at this time.

HAKD SHELL BOTTOM, S. C., Hay 3, 1852.

REV. DEAR BROTHER, — On yesterday I was first aware of your being a commissioner to the General Assembly. Sentimentally accordant with you, though differing perhaps in my verbage, I would have defined my position in regard to true blue Presbyterianism, if I hadn’t have gotten an impression that you were tinctured with Princetonism. I didn’t have any test, till going to dinner yesterday evening, I received a statement tantamount to a denial of the above. No unreliableness of my informant will prevent my approbating his sentiments on the issue about to be made, since a crisis has arrived in the affairs of our beloved Church. Talented men in our Southern country think I would have done better if I would have consented to have given you my views on Boards. If we do not return to the basis of Scotch testimony, we will go to the gulf of Erastianism, and we will become a byeword in the camp of the Philistines. It is mighty easy to talk of the Boards of the Church as doing a great work. Unless arrested in their nefarious derelictions, they will stultify us, by bringing in a class of ministers who are merely literary men, ready to fall a prey to the demons of choirs and organs. It is high time to testify against carpets in churches; a rag of the scarlet woman which has been privily brought in. As I lately said to brother Mc-Rouse, “show me the pattern of the carpet which Paul and Silas were on, at Philippi, and I will use it in the Hard Shell Church.” Note-books are against the second commandment, and also the fourth. They were unknown to the primitive age. Sol, fa, me, &c., are clearly from the man of sin, and are nearly as bad as cruciform churches, being taken by a rank massmonger, Guido Aretini, from an idolatrous hymn,

“Ut queant Zaxis resonare fibris,” &c.

The practice of tokens and of lining hymns went out when reading supplanted preaching. Who knows but our sons may see the day -when the paternoster may be used in public prayer!

Rev. dear Brother, contend for the faith against all new light and Northern innovations. I am yours in bonds, &c.

DUNCAN MCKILLIKRANKIE.

NEW YORK, May 24, 1852.

Ask President Finley, with my regards, after any of our college friends. I have my father’s little “Outlines of Moral Philosophy” in press, as well as an 8vo of my own, intituled “Consolation,” &c.; a rifaccimento of about eighteen sermons. Do any thing you deem discreet, even by placard or advertisement, to get letters of my father; this is like to be the desideratum; especially letters before 1812. “Use a little (port) wine for thy stomach’s sake” while in the tropics, and follow the instinct of all hot countries, by increasing your spicery. A rumbling betokens new troubles with Mexico. Have we not whipped them enough 1 Wicked as it is, I believe the manifest destiny will annex Cuba, and, as Punch says, promote free trade to Japan by opening our ports on the Japanese. God reigns, even in wars, and truth has made its way very often through the breaches opened by conquest. M.’s new book is very little talked about, while 50,000 copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin are sold, and 100,000 will be. Yet the nigger-talk of the book is often pure Yankee. Dogwoods and lilacs are the blossoms which denote our time of year. This day last year I embarked. Time was when I would have attempted to give you some public news, but newspapers and telegraphing have taken this pleasure clean away from us poor epistlers. M.’s case is not yet decided in court, though it can go only in his favours (as the Scots say;) they also say sever als. Not one descendant of Scotchmen in a hundred ever gets his shoulds right. Dr. C. would be sure to say, “I would think he ought to accept,” or even, “if the mail would come,” &c. No Englishman or New Englandman ever goes wrong here. Hence the prevalence of the woulds among southern Presbyterians. S. is one of the few who more Anfflica.no writes, “The Assembly, if should seem, has a modera tor.” Here endeth the first lesson in subjunctives. American lawyers are much honoured in Westminster Hall. I see what I said as my hearing confirmed by an English paper, which speaks of My luds and my lud as universal at the bar. I heard Earl Derby say so repeatedly in the House of Lords. And every Englishmen I heard said cort for court, and morning for mourning, &c. The only Walkerian pronunciation I heard was from Irishmen, gyard, kyarnal, skyie, kyined, &c.

The Directors in Princeton joined Polemic to Didactic Theology again, but did nothing anent the vacant chair. They rescinded their former recommendation about a fifth chair.

You are now in the focus of light and heat, while I have nothing to say. I am glad you like Charleston; the city and people, I am led to think, have as much a character of their own, as Philadelphia and Boston once had, and as New York never will have.

If any one’s thoughts turn toward the Germans in America, do give it a serious consideration. 1. The immigration thence is enormous. 2. Famine, &c., will increase it. 3. They will soon be “a power” in State and Church. 4. The Protestant part (a full moiety) is largely infidel. 5. The existing German Christians in the United States are either poor, or devoid of missionary zeal and tact. Nothing is to be hoped from them. 6. The German Be formed Church is mad after a delusive transcendentalism, and has endorsed it. 7. The call on us is greater than that of any white portion of the world.

A common man said to-day down-town: “The New School Men do not discover that the secret of Old School efficiency and increase lies in tenacity of doctrine, and liberality of sentiment”

NEW YORK, June 21, 1852.

I am in a very false position as to my edifice, [its costliness ;] while I never saw a congregation so suited to me. They are all drawn around me, by partiality for my explanatory and uncoloured ministrations. For years I have seen people who want to hear oratory, &c., come once or twice, and then depart. Elderly and afflicted persons, of the plainer sort, are chiefly those who drop in. Once I scuffled to be other than I am; now I see a providence in it, and even rejoice. I look back, and see that I have often erred by trying to be (1) more original than I am, (2) more animated; especially No. 2. No man can be any body else. Don’t you, as you go on, feel increasing complacency

in variety of gifts 1 We could not miss a, or a, little

as you or I fancy them. I was pleased, when a friend of McNeiie’s said: “He is a teacher” That we can all be. If tears break out — well; but the teaching is effective, sans halloo and spasm. I have lately had unusual comfort in my lectures, by omitting my little notes of one or two pages; and, after hard study of the context and more of the words, going on without any sort of MS. The briefest notes ripple and detain the current. This method I seldom venture on, on Sundays; for in the morning I read every word — usually. The past winter has been one of too unremitted labour; I am conscious of having had a pride which made me do double duty, to prepare for the incapacities of summer. The consequence is, that my nervous system is very much shattered. I do not feel it inter loquendum, but afterwards and in any excitement which unmans me. God rules — but I have serious apprehensions about being able to

1851 — 1857. ITT

bear up. I find my four-mile heat, walking to the University, quite disabling.

The German singing-bands from all parts, are to be here in tremendous force. They do the thing German-fashion, for several days, with garlands, torch-processions, picnics, choruses, and wine. I was at a German (Presbyterian) meeting t’other night, where about 150 made as much hymn-noise, as any ten of our assemblies. I think to go to Newport about the 2d.

NEWPORT, July 3], 1852.

After four weeks at the Bellevue, I came to lodging in Broad street, where we have a good table and good rooms. Nothing delights me more in Newport than the oldrfess of its old parts. I know nothing so English; the narrow streets and trottoirs, street-gables, overhanging eaves and even stories, square casements, vines, &c., every thing but the material of the houses. Generally the temperature has been such, that any more coolness would have been unpleasant. I was out fifteen hours in a sail boat; having two calms, and a small gale. These waters are singularly varied and beautiful. The healthiness of Newport is vouched by the extraordinary number of very old people. The boys and girls play in the streets of the old parts, almost as freely as in France. The talk among squads at the corners is not horse-talk, as with us, but always sea-talk. I have not developed any taste for fishing, of the kind here practised. I should almost as soon think of taking a day at butchering. Neither do I admire the sea-fish as food. My boys have, how ever, made up in both ways for any delinquencies of mine. What a charming writer Hawthorne is! I greatly prefer him to Irving. His sea-side descriptions (in “Twice told Tales “) smack of the very beach and surf. I have been to Bristol, which is just a smaller Newport; on a very beautiful bay, not far from Mt. Hope, the home of King Philip. I have read two lives of Roger Williams, here among his haunts, with great admiration of that eccentric old hero. In respect to mere bathing, I do not consider Newport namable along side of Cape May or even Long Branch. Unless you walk, every dip costs 37£ cents. The times for bathing without dress, are much restricted; and every thing goes by hours, not by tides. But the air is incomparable; indeed I should wax extravagant, if I said all I think of it. This is the Shiloh of New England quakerism. The orthodox preponderate. In our part of town one sees the sweet young plain qiwkeresses, passim, more antiguo. The Maine law works no visible change in hotels, but produces a

VOL. II. 8* dreadful exasperation. I think the moral influence plainly deleterious.

NEWPORT, August 2G, 1S52.

I do not find my health much benefited, except by the repose. Within a fortnight I have had a bad turn of disabling rheumatism. Fishing is said to be the favourite clerical sport. I am an exception. The sailing is delightful. I can imagine the delicate play of fly-fishing to have a charm; but this dead pulling up of sea-fish is merely a nasty trade. Yesterday I caught a shark, about four feet long, having pulled to the surface two others, one apparently seven feet long. But it is a useless and horrid butchery, and I would as soon stick a hog or a calf. I have been twice qjit sailing with Dr. Boardman. The Newport men say he ventures beyond his sea-knowledge. Their boats have a peculiar rig, and great alacrity in sinking. [Rev. Mr.] Thayer is a Triton; I have seen him row across Bristol harbour in quite a gale, and he often rows himself out to vessels, during pretty rough winter weather, to visit their crews. M. has a gay sloop of eight or ten tons, which has luxurious accommodations; I have tried it twice. You may judge of his zeal, when I add he keeps a man, whose sole employment is to gather crabs for bait. I have seen a letter of Berkeley, wherein he says, in 1730, that Newport has 6,000 inhabitants, and is the chief place for trade in America. The house which he built, (Whitehall,) two or three miles off, is much visited. I found in it a family that goes to no church, with a young man dying of consumption.

Revolutionary memorandums and reminiscences are sufficiently frequent here, but it is mortifying to see how little has been preserved of their earlier archaeology. The earliest grave-mark 1 have actually seen is 1648, and this is a late stone. More Indian traditions and names remain, than is usual. For example many of the names of fish are plainly Indian, as Squid, Squeteek, Scup or Scuppang [p°rgy]j Choxy, Menhaden [mossbunker], Totang [blackfish]. The more I see of Narraganset Bay, the more I admire it. Among its numerous islands, there are spots where the views of coves, villages, and remote uplands, are equal to any thing of the flat sort.

I hope to resume labours on the first Sunday of September.

NEW YORK, September 23, 1852.

I have this day brought home my little flock from Newport; UianHng God that we have been kept in life, and that some of the number have derived such benefit. Our church still lingers.

1 The intermission of his preaching in New York was only from July 18 to August 29.

1851 — 1857. 1Y9

The pews are in, but not the pulpit. I am less and less elated with the magnificence of .this pile. I feel, however, a growing desire to spend what is left of me, in plainer, simpler, more instructive preaching. I am in low spirits about the condition of the New England churches. The whole feeling, in their assemblies, is different from that of ours — bad as we are. The choirs carry matters clear away from the congregation, who in very numerous instances stand during singing, gazing up into the singers’ gallery. The sermons are never expository; and those which are reputed the best are extensively on general topics of national law, ethics, and philanthropy. A sort of cold revival is superinduced in many of them, which adds communicants, but does not help the matter much. An ordinary laying open of a large context, especially with any stress laid on particular pregnant expressions, would, I am sure, be received with surprise in most places. They admit themselves, that the new generation of preachers is giving all its zeal to the construction of rhetorical specimens.

I am glad you are willing to do the service in Princeton. Young men need and desire the very plainest directions how to go about their work. Religious biographies will furnish many suggestions. Dr. Waugh’s life contains some grand things about city work. I have not, for many years, seen a little volume by Innes, a Baptist of Edinburgh or Glasgow, which struck me as containing some of the best results of pastoral observation I ever read; the title escapes me. My father used to go largely into ministerial life and ways, marriage, economy, choice of a field, principles about settlement and removal, and a great deal concerning preaching, that is commonly left to Homiletics, or, more properly speaking, omitted. I mean all that considers preaching in regard to the private religion, &c., of the minister. I know he also lectured fully and frankly on revivals; on missions; on call to foreign work. Be advised not to withhold facts and deductions from your own ministry.

I am prepared to pronounce Newport the most delightful climate (to the feelings) in America. It is singularly like what I found Ireland to be, at the same season.

NEW YORK, October 25, 1852.

Our Synod sat from Monday till Tuesday night. Our

judicatories here are more churchly than religious; too formal

and perfunctory. We have no very great men left now, and

seem not to need them.2 John Bell [of Tennessee] seems to

1 A temporary supply of the chair of Pastoral Theology. 3 Mr. Webster died October 24.

me one of our soundest trunks of the old forest. I begin to think military skill is more of a trade than I once thought, and involves less mental greatness. As to France, I am heretic enough to think it has made a happy escape from infidelity and socialism. Walsh’s letters, in the Journal of Commerce, promote this judgment, I dare say.

I have not had a marriage for six months. So they have a professor of Mohammedan literature in Amherst College. I am out of heart about the delay of our church. There is no reasonable prospect of entrance before December. And if the acoustics should prove bad, as my fears predict, from the immense vaulting and needless recess, I suppose I shall have to look for another house.

The Moral Science sells well, and is much lauded by some sound judges. It is indeed the only work which enters largely into elementary morals. W.’s piety has loomed up wonderfully since his demise. Our preachers find it a fruitful theme. A French wine-house has this sign:

Rendezvous

des
Sons Amis.

FKIENDS’
MEETING.

Commend it to your Quaker neighbours. A famous mourningstore in Broadway, has for its sign: Maison de J)euil, which imperfect scholars may interpret variously. I have a book in hand, partly new and partly sermons, addressed to “the suffering people of God,” [” Consolation.”] Dr. Rice (set. 70) looks as firm as ever; not gray; indeed not changed. He is a truly affectionate old man. He is now at Addison’s. Mr. Talbot Olyphant of my church is going to China for the fourth time. His brothers have also been several times, and his father spent ten years in China. They are all deeply interested in our missions. They speak confidently of the railway to San Francisco, as a thing that must be, and that speedily. The present route to China is shortened to sixty days. Accessions at last communion eighteen on certificate, six on examination. Collections: for Church Extension $1,106; for Bible Society $990. My eye sight is failing me very rapidly.

NEW YORK, EYE OF THANKSGIVING, )
November 24, 1852. J

You make believe I owe you a sheet, so here goes. On your overhasty departure, I perceived that you had left a book, &c., on my table. I have not spoken of these little lapses uf mem-. ory, they are to be expected. Do you not find the events of your middle life more easily remembered than the occurrences of yesterday? A spectacle-case is also lying on my’table — did you leave that also 1 So Napoleon III. is at length enthroned. Strange that both he and Louis Philippe should have had such adventures in America. Add Joseph Bonaparte and the Murats. What a pity saints’ days and anniversary festivals should be so dangerous! Governor’s appointments lack the prestige and the legends and the traditions and the games and the flowers in season. I saw in Europe some things to show that thousands on thousands may keep a fete without the least disorder. The modicum of religious association tends to prevent this. We get over boyish hilarity too soon. Far up in the Alps of Savoy, 1 came upon a group of men, in the highway in a circle, hand in hand, singing Swiss songs, with every coloured ribbons in their broad hats. With us, they would have been stupefying them selves with adulterate brandy at some hogsty of a corner gross-cry. In Paris, on Corpus-Christi Day, which they call the Fete de fleurs, I reckoned that there were in the Madeleine not less than 5,000 bouquets, of which the great ones wrould have sold at our florists for $10 a piece. I happened to be at Cologne on St. Martin’s day. The whole parish of St. Martin’s, pro more, turned out in procession on a great place around the church. There were hundreds of girls and women, and thousands of men, all very orderly. The natural tendency to anniversaries breaks out among us in such holidays as New Year’s, Thanksgiving, Forefathers’ Day, Evacuation Day, &c. The degree of excess and abuse which occur on set days, will be in proportion to the decay of religious feeling among a people; but I am by no means sure that these are greatly increased by set days. Yet as a good son of Mother Church, 1 subside into the tenet, that all such feasts are against the second commandment. I wonder the homoeopathists have not taken Elijah as their patron saint, who was the first o/xotoTraflr/s; James v. 17. The nexus between one

credulity and another is seen in the fact, that, our prime homceopath, is prominent in the convention of spiritual rappers and mediums. I wish you a happy family meeting. My text is, Psalm ii. 11, last words.

NEW YORK, December 24, 1852.

I wish you and yours a merry Christmas. The week has been an exciting one, in regard to our new church. Our treasurer has just been in, and says (though he has not had time to foot up the items) that the debt is cancelled — the sale of pews equalling the entire cost of ground and building. All tho very high-priced pews are taken. About ninety-five remain unsold. It is my wish that sales should now stop, and that the remaining pews should be rented, at low rates. Now that the immense cost is met, the future annual expenses on pews need not be greater than if the house had been built for a small sum. The assessment on pews is eight per cent. Since Monday the treasurer has actually collected $85,000. We had a very full house on Sunday; benches and chairs brought in till all was crammed. Drs. Potts and Plumer preached. I have been again reading Erasmus’s Colloquies, in the old full edition, with great delight. Old Cass gains on me, by his magnanimity towards opponents. Old Benton in the House will be almost as racy as J. R. of Roanoke. Peter Cooper is building an Institution just below the new Bible House, for which he has appropriated $300,000. 1 These two buildings will beautify and improve a very ugly part of town. That neighbourhood already has St. Mark’s, St. Anne’s, the Baptist Tabernacle, Opera House, and Astor Library; and very near are Lafayette St. Church and St. Bartholomew’s. A Mr. Milne has been here about two months, begging for a church at Cannobie. I am unable to see the propriety of such a course. Churches are probably thick-set all around the place, where they demand a Free Kirk. In 2 Cor. xi. 28, eVio-vo-rarns has a force not commonly observed, i. e. “the being run down by so many people.” In 2 Cor. iii. 6, our version fails. The free version would be, (to keep up the play of words,) “But our ability is of God, who has given us whatever ability we possess as ministers.” I wish you and yours facile digestion of the mince-pies, and kindly resignation to the drums, accordeons, &c., of the season.

NEW YORK, December 27, 1852.

Thinking you might ‘be pleased to learn something authen tically about our church, I proceed to report progress. We had $13,000 from the old building. Last week we sold pews enough, added to the above, to clear us of all debt, that is, to equal the whole cost of the ground and edifice; which we reckon at $105,- 000. This left us seventy-seven pews on hand, which we determined to rent. To-day all these have been rented, except seven below, and three in the gallery. The whole number, 1 think I told you, is 204. My concern is now of a very novel kind; viz., where there is to be room for any increase. Indeed, I fear some of our worthy slow people will have found themselves without seats.

So poor old Mr. Steel is gone.2 He was a good friend of my childhood. Often have I partaken of good buttered bread spread

1 The cost reached to more than twice this sum, and was wholly a gift.

2 Mr. John Steel, of Philadelphia, a member of the Third (Pine Street) Church.

thickly with sugar, from the hand of Betty, in that little dark back parlour no longer to be found, unless in England. John was perhaps happiest, when he was a linen draper bold, in the New Market. He could read the “Aurora,” and go out to the Republican meetings, with little risk. I remember Betty’s mother, old Mrs. Blair, and how helpless she was with rheumatism. Did I mention to you, that the assessments on our pews are less than in Duane Street 1 They have to-day been reduced to 7& per cent. I wish I could turn out about twenty pews of rich folks and fill them with poor. But this is one of those dreams not to be realized. I never was stronger in my opinion, that all church-sittings ought to be free. Yet we can’t reach this without establishments, endowment, and all that. Even in the popish churches in Paris, 1 calculated that at one sous a chair, the common price, people of regular attendance would pay $2 a year, which is just the price of a cheap sitting in our church.

NEW YORK, December 31, 1852.

Here is my last letter of the old year, with my best wishes for you and yours, for the new. This has been a period of events and mercies for me. Some of the things, which I dare say people think tend to elate me, have a quite contrary effect; especially the worldly increase of my cure. Seldom, if ever, have I had any private exercise more solemn, than in the whole progress of this matter. And I never more felt the necessity of dealing plainly with my people. My congregation is fearfully large. Every pew which was not sold, is rented, except about two and a half. One of my responsibilities is that of begging and dispensing large alms. Yesterday I had to raise some money for poor members of a German congregation. I went nowhere for this purpose, but mentioned it in calls, and received $68. On the first Sunday we collect for our Foreign Missions, and I hope we shall do better than ever.

The question of riding in our street cars on Sunday, is agitating our community. I have not been able to decide it. The poor go in cars; the rich in coaches. The number of horses and men employed is less than if there were no cars. It is a query whether as many cars as these would not be demanded by those (among half a million) who have lawful occasion to journey. If so, the question of duty would be reduced to one of individual vocation to this amount of locomotion. The whole matter of the Christian Sabbath is a little perplexed in my mind. 1. All that

1 The collection p»oved to be more than $3,300. In the next month, for Domestic Missions, $3,7f>0.

our Lord says on it, is prima facie on the side of relaxation. 2. The apostles, who enforce, and as it were re-enact every other command of the ten, never advert to this. 3. Even to Gentile converts, they lay no stress on this, which might be expected to come first, among externals. 4. According to the letter, Paul teaches the Colossians (ii. 16) not to be scrupulous about Sabbaths. I am not therefore surprised, that Calvin had doubts on this subject. The very strict views of the Sabbath have prevailed in no part of Christendom unconnected with the British Isles. I must wait for more light. I admit the fact, that spiritual religion has most flourished where the strict opinions have prevailed. My good father used to say: “Be very strict yourself; be very lenient in judging your neighbour.” I have always taken milk, without scruple; which is an offence to hundreds of good people among us. Some began to have qualms about Sunday gas; but on inquiry they found that the labour which produced it fell on Thursday or Friday. As I always give my people a motto for the year, and preach on it, I have chosen “My Grace is sufficient for thee.”

Cakes are imported by our confectioners from Paris. Our restaurateurs advertise daily beef, mutton, partridges, and hares, from England.

NEW YORK, March 9, 1853.

With more than two hundred pew-holders, I find my circuit wide enough. In regard to visiting, I am forced to seek how to please God and not man. Cases of illness, &c., break in very much on what I have heard called a “routine of rounds.” The pleasure of having our big boys at home must soon end; a fore warning of partings yet more serious. O that grace might “apprehend” them! Bickersteth’s life [by Birks] is a plain book, but O how full of healthy, ardent piety! I think him one of the loveliest ministerial models.

Mr. Beers’s death is a loss indeed. He was every thing I could ask, as to prompt and willing help. Mr. Auchincloss [another Elder] is sinking apace. I shall try for a considerable enlargement of the session, but Jear I shall not be successful.

Chalmers’s “Life” [by Hanna] contains an extraordinary amount of trifling matter. The plan seems to have been to publish all that could be raked and scraped. It is, however, a wonderful monument to his frankness of nature. Amos Lawrence, though called a Unitarian, delighted in such books as McCheyne, Haldane’s Life, &c., and bought them largely for dis-

1 Mr. Beers, one of his elders and most esteemed friends, died in February.

tribution. There is a somewhat singular case of activity in my congregation. A young man, who took first honour at Princeton, and then studied law, devotes his whole time to the distribution of the Bible. He has boarded every foreign vessel in this port, for four or five years. He argues, exhorts, battles, and generally succeeds. Our congregations are full to a degree which oppresses me. I believe only half a pew is unlet. Our collection for Education Board, on Sunday, was $3,510. Our weekly lecture is crowded. With much external attention there is little proportionable coming out by profession. Next Sunday we shall admit about twenty on certificate, and six on examination. Of the whole twenty-six, about twenty are made up of husband and wife. I am very soberly apprehensive of failing under my burden, and that before long. I generally lose my rest on Sunday night, and on the last had the addition of a vomiting. In no winter have I had more of nervous tremor. But I try to disregard these symptoms, as I see no way out of my present duties. The translation of a French book “the Preacher and the King,” which is really a treatise on homiletics, is a capital book. I have Bunsen’s “Hippolytus,” a book about every thing, (4 vols.,) but of which the real intent is to give an exact portraiture of Christianity about A. D. 225, as to the creed, liturgy, and manners; and for this portraiture the material afforded by the chevalier is very rich. It includes a complete series of the very earliest liturgies, in the original. Antipuseyite, anticalvinist, antipedobaptist, antirationalist, transcendental, mystical, poetical, erudite, interesting, bold, with occasionally pickings of a very suggestive kind. His facts and quotations are a great basis for thought. His central point is the JSucharist, in the view expressed by that word. He proves very clearly that the ancient church made this the great thing, and that all the liturgies grew out of a simple communion service. It is to him the Christian sacrifice, not in the popish sense, but as expressing in common what he regards as the great central feeling of religion, viz., the unselfish offering-up of the whole man, thankfully to God, as Christ once offered up himself. He thinks this idea pretty much lost in the modern, church. He is as little of a Trinitarian as Neander Schleiermacher, or Bushnell,

NEW YORK, April 8, 1853.

Mr. C., a Scot, gives striking accounts of the surplus of labour in Scotland. There are about 400 probationers, and about thirty annual vacancies. Twenty missionaries are wanted for Australia, and they can drum up only six. He is familiar with labour among the poor in Edinburgh. Spoke of their district

186 WHILE PASTOR OF FIFi’H AVENUE CHURCH.

methods. Two or three ladies have about twenty houses allotted to them, for visits, &c. But these small cantons are sometimes visited by three different sets, one Free Church, one Establishment, &c. He is en route for Cincinnati, but I almost wished to detain him here. There is such a spirit of work about these real working Scotchmen. Mr. C. has lately traversed those parts of Ireland where the conversions from Popery have taken place, and confirms the most favourable accounts. Thousands have become intelligent Protestants. The beginning has always been by schools. He represents the Bible knowledge obtained in these as wonderful. There are about forty Presbyterian schools. Dr. Duff has taken this matter in hand with great zeal. In our city-work, the great lack is not of money, but of men. I am astonished when I consider the supineness of our young ministers. There are half a dozen licentiates hanging about here, waiting for vacancies, who might instantly have their hands full of work. Any man of the least energy could, in a school-room or loft, soon gather a houseful of hearers. I even think our young laymen are not backward in their part. But we want a revival of zeal among preachers. I am increasing my eldership, and minded to increase it more: Joseph Hyde, James M. Halsted, Thomas U. Smith, and Jeremiah J. Greenough. It does not often happen to me to discover four new cases of religious inquiry in two days; but such is the event of this week.

The only error I see in the Brick Church movement is, that they did not move fifteen years ago, when they might have made a better bargain. The supporters of the church have long been up town. Free churches must be established for the class remaining below. The position of that church has long been intolerable, from the noise of cars and newspaper steam-presses, next door. The year has added to our church 109, of whom only twenty on examination. We are just about opening a mission Sunday School, in 20th Street near 7th Avenue. We have plenty of teachers, and a room capacious of 250, in a neighbourhood filled with poor; the streets toward the North River being thronged. I have completed that part of the memoir [of his father] which precedes Princeton, and in that whole period have not one letter. When I think of the new generation in Princeton, I feel quite old — Dod, Green, Cattells, Hope, Duffield. C.’s case reminds me of a frequent saying of my father, that he never knew a poor man go crazy for fear of starvation.

For some months I have been studying Galatians, with a

1 They were ordained April 10, 1853.

1851 — 185T. 1ST

feeling of increased understanding. Poor Byers’s wife embarked at Shanghae the day after lying-in, and so came five months with a newborn child, and a dying husband. A week ago wo attended his funeral, in the same church where he was ordained a year since. Coulter, our missionary printer, is just reported dead at Ning Po. The Hippodrome is rising near us, like magic; they say to contain 8,000. The Crystal Palace is not merely less than the original, but is ill placed, and diminished to the eye, by the contiguity of the great massive Reservoir. One of the prettiest little electrical experiments I know, has been repeatedly performed in my parlour by James and his comrades. If new to you, it will be surprising. It is the lighting of gas by the finger. One person, in old slippers or the like, shuffles about on a thick rug for five minutes, until the body collects a sufficiency of the electric fluid. He then suddenly applies his finger to the vent, (held open a moment before, by another person,) and the flame instantly breaks forth. I can at any time produce a spark, but have not succeeded in kindling the gas. I am not a believer in Gavazzi. I heard him in Glasgow, and thought him eloquent; but there was no religious ingredient, and little but a Mazzini-like damnation of the pope. Dr. De Witt lately preached a sermon for me, extempore, more like my father’s best, than I have heard.

Having exchanged with Krebs on Sunday, I walked home through Avenue A. My way lay for above a mile through the German quarter — all the signs in German — children talking German. It was not only not like Sunday, but was like a 4th of July, or exactly like a Sunday in Cologne or Heidelberg. Every fourth house was a drinking-place. Some of these were large, with numerous tables, and filled with as many women as men. There are half a dozen Romish chapels within a few hundred yards of Tompkins Square; one of these, (Holy Redeemer,) a tawdry thing, is said to be larger and higher than Trinity church. I think there is more stir among our good people than I ever knew, about the condition of the poor, ragged boys, &c. I cannot get any other churches to agree with me in a favourite scheme, to have a great and inviting building erected, far down town, with a striking preacher, seats free, and no proximate regard to what is called a church-organization. Our folks are nearly ripe for a mission church; but I do not mean it shall be down town. The churches left in that quarter are nearly empty, as for example the spacious North Dutch. Soon every thing below will be warehouses, &c. The teeming population of the upper wards are falling a prey to the Catholics. O that our sect-divisions did not make territorial operation impracticable! How much more we could do, if we could only mark off nine squares, as our own field — for schools church, charity, care of poor, &c. I sometimes scruple whether a uniformity, like Sweden, properly worked, would not overbalance the advantages of our ultra free inquiry and individual judgment.

YORK, April 28, 1853. Yours is “to hand,” a beautiful Americanism, which electrifies one at every telegraph. Another is, Howel’s “Print;” which I observe on the imprint of a sermon. Addison will sail in the “Asia,” 18th prox. We spent hours in Presybtery, upon city destitution and church extension. I came away with a heavy heart, persuaded that as a Presbytery we shall do nothing. Whatever is effected must be done congregationally. Just think — our great and wealthy Presbytery has not one preachingstation for the poor and wicked. As it is, the only work that is doing, is by the irresponsible City Tract Society, under A. R. Wetmore. The plea of some is, that the only mode is to set off colonies from large churches. But how can we get our members to leave us 1 And the worst necessities are just where self-supporting churches can never exist. I would rejoice from the bottom of my heart if the twenty best families in my charge would leave me to found a new church. But this would by no means reach the layer of population that I have in view. We opened a mission-school last Sunday; five in the morning, twenty-two in the afternoon. Gavazzi continues to draw enormous houses. His histrionic powers are unequalled. The purlieus of the Palace are growing up into a young San Francisco, of tawdry shells, saloons, grog and oyster holes, mountebank stalls, &c.; very unlike the boundless lawns and groves of Hyde Park, which begirt the English one. The building itself is beginning to look well. Dr. Muhlenberg’s church, which is a free-seat one, has parsonage on one side and school on the other, and employs a doctor and an apothecary, to serve all attendants gratis. I suppose none but the poor apply. We go to Sharon springs on Wednesday.

SHARON SPRINGS, N. Y., June 24, 1853.

Ink-privileges are scanty here, though brimstone and water abound.2 The season has rot fairly begun. There are about a hundred here in all. We are the only visiters at a farm-house about a mile from the springs: real country; a sweet, quiet,

1 By medical advice for the benefit of one of his children.

2 The letter was written in pencil.

pastoral farm of a hundred and forty acres. The fare is abundant and wholesome, and the sights and sounds very composing after being “in populous city pent.” I sit out of doors all hours that the heat will permit. Yesterday the boys caught a ground-squirrel, here called by its Indian name, chipmunk. Innumerable birds are in the trees; the young just taking wing. Ten quarts of strawberries at the last picking. We churned twice yesterday. Mrs. Swift gets about fourteen pails of milk daily. To vary the routine, the bees swarmed just now, and you will be pleased to learn that the outgoing hive was saved.

The water is of two kinds, in one of which magnesia prevails. It is surprisingly crystalline, and deliciously cool, but the taste is that of hard-boiled eggs raised to the nth power. It does not tell its story with the promptness of the Saratoga, but is very potent on the system, and in rheumatic cases works wonders. There is a settlement of Canadian Indians (Abenaqui) here, who make the most beautiful and various basket-work I ever saw. There is no church here. About a mile off there is a building which is occupied in turn by Lutherans and Methodists every Sunday morning, and by Universalists in the afternoon. It wrould be difficult to find a more beautiful country. The surface rolls perpetually: there are some high hills; no end to streams, often running through dark ravines, tumbling water-falls, and mountain springs. There is an appearance of great fertility. The county is Scoharie, and is about seven miles from Cherry Valley. I feel refreshed and rested by being here, but not well. I shall try to get away on the 28th. I have not found the least diminution of heat, though the sweetness of June air in the country is very refreshing. I had no idea of the thousands of emigrants filling the trains westward, until my late trips. Thirteen hundred left Albany in one day. Two of them died in the cars from excessive heat. The tract distributors are active among them. The chief house here is the Pavilion, on an eminence which commands a truly mountain view. The farm on which we are is in the lap or valley just below it, at the foot of a green, smooth, rounded descent.

NEWPORT, July 26, 1853.

I received with much emotion your intelligence of the death of your brother Charles. Every thing is gained when the soul is safe; and I am not surprised to hear good tidings in this respect, knowing how lively an interest he always took in the means of grace. Yet it seems strange to think of him as carried away by disease. He was always a favourite of mine, from very childhood, for his cheerfulness, frankness, and cordiality. May

Heaven protect and bless his bereaved little family! How rapidly the associations of our youth are growing dim! Perhaps the most wonderful thing of all is, that we ourselves survive; unless it be this, that we still cling so closely to the earth.

I received your previous letter while I was yet in New York; where I passed a dull and solitary time, my family being in Sharoti. I then resorted thither, and spent some days with them. It is a delightful resort. The scenery is romantic, and the air dry and elastic. We had no feeling of oppressive heat, but a sort of mountain freshness. The waters seem very efficacious in a large class of diseases. We were on a large farm, less than a mile from the spring, with an unbounded range for the children. I was almost sorry to come away, though the air of Newport is, after another fashion, very refreshing. We came in two days, by way of Albany, Springfield, Worcester, and Providence, a very pleasing route. Springfield is a charming town, and the trip from Worcester to Providence is through a very novel series of grazing valleys, meandering streams, and beautiful factory-villages. On the Sunday of our arrival Henry came in from hunting and fishing in Sullivan County, up the Delaware. He took lots of trout, and slept two nights out of doors. I shall give him as much boating and sea-fishing as his vacation allows. I was very poorly, with choleroid affections, in New York, but have rallied. My church is kept open. When last heard of, Addison was stepping from Dover to Calais. In the face of much foregoing prejudice, he thinks Candlish immeasurably above any preacher he ever heard. He had heard McNeile, Hamilton, Gumming, Mclvill, and Blornfield.

NEW YORK, September 17, 1853.

I am under a very strong impression that I answered your penult letter from Newport. Though I returned to my own pulpit on the 1st of this month, I did not bring back my familiars till to-day. Willy, who had been very ill, has been mercifully recovered. James has gained a good deal of strength, by maritime pursuits, winding up by falling into Narraganset Bay on Wednesday. We spent the night in a small and over-crowded boat, and got here about ten. Both going and coming I had

agreeable chat with Dr., once Captain V of U. S. A., and

Grace Church, Brooklyn. He is a great fisherman. He and a party this summer killed fifty sharks in thirty-six hours; one

which Dr. V hooked measured eleven feet. I spent some

days on Cape Cod, among a primitive and homogeneous people, as much like the old Puritans, I suppose, as any living. The chief places were Sandwich, Yarmouth, South Yarmouth, Barnstable,

South Dennis, North Dennis, and Harwich. There are no negroes, no Irishmen, and no foreigners. In the houses I visited I saw nothing like domestic servants; yet surprising comfort, great improvement of mind, and apparent religion. The men are all seafarers, and generally captains. Our congregation were in a very fair way of raising $18,000, to buy an old church in which we already have a mission-school; when the matter was quashed by a reclamation of another people building in that quarter, who thought that our setting up a chapel would affect them. So we are looking round for a new scheme. Few of my flock have returned. Church pretty full all summer, but mainly from other congregations. I have gained nothing during the summer.

NEW YORK, November 11, 1853.

We are in an odd state as to music. Lowell Mason is our leader; but since his return from Europe he is so bent on severe, plain tunes, and congregational singing, that while I am tickled amazingly, the people are disappointed. His success in making the people sing has been marvellous. I enter no house where so many join. But I fear we cannot hold it against such odds. We are planning to build or buy a house for our Mission Sunday School.

My father’s eldest sister, Mrs. Graham, is dead. She wras a woman of strong mind and solid piety, with whom my father kept up a correspondence for sixty years. The interruptions of a city pastor are sometimes the occasions of his chief usefulness. I have had three to-day, all beyond my church pale. I preached [November 6] at overture of Dr. Parker’s lecture-room. A Presbyterian church in Rochester, known from the patron as “Mr. Ward’s Church,” [St. Peter’s,] has the commandments and creed, &c., on tablets, and is to have responses, &c. The article

1 In a note to the editor of this correspondence Mr. Mason says: “During the four years or more that I had the privilege of leading the singing exercises in Dr. Alexander’s church, he often spoke to me on the subject. In deed, I did not often meet him when this was not a leading topic of remark. He always spoke with great decision, and once certainly he told me, when it was suggested that there might be danger of a return to choir-singing, that he would not remain pastor of a church, where the singing was exclusively in the hands of a choir. He often spoke to me after the public ser vice, of the gratification he experienced from the psalmody, and I well remember on one occasion he told me he had never before enjoyed so much the exercise of song in the house of the Lord. He spoke to me also of the growing importance of the singing service in his own estimation. He used to attend our little preparatory meetings, often making remarks, suggesting topics, &c., and always closing with prayer.”

in the October Edinburgh, on Church Parties, gives the most readable account I have ever seen of the peculiarities and relative force of the great divisions of Anglicans, with many important facts and explanations entirely new to me. The “Christian Remembrancer” (Puseyite) notices Fanny Fern’s book, and says, “What a language in America, where a young lady can call trousers ’ pants!” I observed the word pantaloons was not used by London tailors, [always trousers.]

What a change the sculptures of the Exhibition [Crystal Palace in New York] will make in our popular estimate of nudities. Shop-windows and parlours show the revolution. Paris can scarcely equal some of our Broadway solicitations. Such an autumn as we have had I suppose no one remembers. People love to predict a hard winter. Coal is high, and the “stringency” will throw thousands of operatives out of work. There is but one point in which I ever feel drawn toward the millenarians; their belief, namely, that Christ will visit and renew his church ex abrupto, by a sudden burst. This often seems likely to me. Our whole system of modern means works slowly, and seems often to work backward. And yet, as to the influence on the world at large, it has not been ever greater, in my opinion, since the Reformation, than at this moment. I do not see that Christianity was ever more enlarging itself. By-the-bye, I think the talk about supporting the ministry is good and indispensable; I can say so as suffering no personal need. Nothing seems more prominent or more plain to me in the New Testament; I often wonder, indeed, that it is alluded to so much, as it is plain that primitive Christians did not neglect that duty. I do not, however, agree with those who ascribe the fewness of candidates to this. Having lived much among such, I never knew a youth who seemed to me to be held back by this reason; and he who should be so had better stay out.

I find this great change in my pastoral experience: I am more concerned about the quality of religion in my flock, than when I was young. Sometimes I am almost as glad to observe a ripening, as once to observe a conversion. A few instances, very striking, have come under my knowledge. Doubtless from some grand defect in my preaching its influence has been most on professors; this beyond any hopes of mine. Awakenings are rare with me. My father long ago pointed out this evil in my sermons, and it has caused me many a pang. The invitatory part, I am always free to hold forth; but in every instance when I have tried the alarming and more pungent, I have been like David in Saul’s harness. I am often depressed beyond expression at the apparent waste of my exertions. Private addresses and expository lectures have done most of the little good that appears. Sad, sad, to think how nearly the glass is run out!

NEW YORK, December 4, 1853.

The modern German rule, of sticking firmly to grammarlaws, helps some passages. E. g. Acts xix. 3: ^/covo-a/uev can mean only, “We did not hear of any Holy Ghost;” i. e. we were not baptized with the formula, including that name: v. 5, “When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus;” so their previous baptism had not been in his

name either. Dr. C is here, as accompanying a minister

from Wisconsin, who solicits for a college. This fungus of college-building on our Education Board is like to eat out all the vitals thereof. I have had a tea-visit from Rev. R. Steel and Dr. Gray. Steel has been thirty-four years at Abingdon. Addison preached a grand sermon for me yesterday; he is very unequal. 1 have arrived at the last Feast of Tabernacles, in lecturing on the Life of Christ. It has been by far the most delightful homiletical exercise I ever tried. Holmes is delighting audiences with his brilliant and witty lectures. Our City Tract Society has twenty-six missionaries and eleven hundred distributors.

NEW YORK, January 4, 1854.

I wish you and yours a happy New Year. The last has been to us a year of mercies. As years roll on, the most despondent thought I have is a fear of never being much better in this world; I am glad there is another. I used to make resolutions at the new year; but now I am disheartened. The same habits, the same tendencies, the same selfishness, the same “old man,” and warring <rap£. My people lately agitated the question of raising my salary to $5,000. When they met, a letter of mine was read, earnestly requesting that it might not be done. They nevertheless voted it unanimously, in such a way as not to raise the pew-tax. After deliberating a few days, and in opposition to every adviser, I wrote positively declining. To this, after a week, I have jio reply, Our church-collection for Foreign Mis-. sions on Sunday was $5,189 63. Add $1,000 for China Mission about a month ago. Our Mission-school goes on well; we have more than two hundred of the ragged sort. I expect to go to press this week. No one knows the anxiety I have had in preparing this work, chiefly from the absence of diaries and letters for the last forty years. I think 1 have been benefited, however,

1 Upon his declining the additional salary, the congregation made an equivalent provision, which enured to his family at his decease.

VOL. II. 9 by conversing with so many of my father’s best thoughts. 1 have been reading a Unitarian book, intituled “Regeneration,” by Sears. It is wonderful how he uses all our evangelical language, and tries to gain all the spirit and warmth of gospel grace. Hollow as it is, I consider it sincere, and in the light of a confession of the nakedness of their own system. Osgood, of this city, preaches in the same strain; a sort of revulsion from Parker and young Channing. Poor old Mr. Comfort [of Kingston, N. J.] had an easy end; the clock quietly ran down. Of what are called anecdotes, my memoir will be singularly destitute; also of smart sayings. I wish I had even two or three. Gavazzi still holds forth. Achilli is claimed by Bush as a New-churchman. My New Year’s text was eVSe, Philip, iii. 13.

I humbly thank God for his mercy to II; though now I

am almost as anxious that he should be the right sort of Christian as I was that he should be converted.

Daily do I grow more opposed to pews. I honour Popery and Puseyism for this point. Free churches are unanimously voted a nuisance by New York Christians; but my mind is unchanged. They have, with us, always been undertaken by poor preachers. If such Chrysostoms as you and I wot of were to open a free church, it would tell another story; and I am persuaded the only way to effect it will be for individual preachers to lead the way. I have not the spirit of a reformer, or I know what I would do. My Tuesday lecture is the only service in which I feel at all apostolical. Addison preached here once on Sunday for McAuley-’s young men. A new school of Evangelicals in Germany has broached a doctrine about the church which would solte some enigmas about the broken condition of visible Christianity. It is this: 1. God founded and organized a Jewish church. 2. This wras the only organization. 3. It is in suspensiori and abeyance since the Advent. 4. There is no explicit founding of a Christian church. 5. The Israelitish church will be restored, with a spiritualizing of its forms, &c. The Irvingites agree with this in part. At our communion we had twelve on certificate, and five on examination. Almost all the catechumens I personally taught in 1844, have come in. One of such revealed his case to me this evening after lecture. I should feel the mysteries multiplied by supposing Christ not to have been God before his baptism. It would then be “The flesh became Word,” and not “The Word became flesh.” Nor do I see any gain as to the “body prepared,” which is equally true of the moment of conception, and which does not necessarily imply a jore-paration. On every point respecting the Trinity and Incarnation the Catholic (I may say Tridentinc) doctrines seem to me most fully to meet all objection; having been gradually worn into shape by the collision of short-lived heresies.

Prince Albert seems to be threatened with evil days. The queen must come in for her share. There seems to be something very vacillating in the recent policy of England. No hand at the helm bears strong. Who knows but Providence means Constantinople to fall again as in’ 1453? There is a long account to settle with the Turk. In some unknown way the Greek church, not near so corrupt as many think, may be made to countervail Rome, and perhaps to be herself reformed. I lately got a Greek prayer-book, and among much rubbish find an extraordinary amount of long, beautiful, pathetic, evangelical confession and prayer. Two of the Chinese insurrectionists, leading men, lately visited Shang-hae incog., and talked with Culbertson. Though they had never seen a New Testament, they seemed to’ be Christian and converted men. Happer’s letters in the Presbyterian are evidently on the unfavourable extreme. It has not been mentioned that the dynasties now threatened in both wars, Chinese and Turkish, are both Tartarian. The Gog and Magogish aspect of this ought to be nuts for our prophet-mongers.

NEW YORK, March 14, 1854.

A Scotch Presbyterian of my acquaintance lately gave his son $300 for reading through Pool’s Annotations on the Old and New Testament. My sermon on the prayers of the unconverted was not so pleasing to one hearer, who sent me eight pages of confutations — said she uttered the “voice of God,” that she hardly refrained “from rising in the church and uttering the true doctrine,” &c. More young persons are serious among us than I have known before. Our Mission-school does well. We have set up another dowrn town, in which is a class of adult Germans. I think the “Household Words” contains some of Dickens’s best writing. Now and then there is a sneaking dab at evangelical religion. The Astor Library is a-going; but no library I have ever seen, not even the Bodleian, has left such traces on my imagination as the Old Philadelphia, which I want to see again. I hardly ever buy a book, and latterly have read few. I have almost to say, “Quand je veux des livres, j’en fais.” Yesterday I put the last sentence to the Memoir. Without my planning so, this fell on the day of my completing my half-century. The occasion wras celebrated as much as my modesty would allow. The President of your Senate [his brother, W. C. A.] appeared at breakfast, and accompanied me out of the house. The steamship Knoxville conveyed me out to Sandy Hook and back, with about five hundred invited guests. It was really beyond my wish that the Asia, which we spoke, should have fired two guns In the evening about one hundred gentlemen, chiefly of the cloth, attended at the house of Mr. Stuart. I was handsomely received. The speech was much applauded; it was by Dr. Duff of Calcutta. The band of music, nearly opposite, played till the conclusion of the 13th. I have every reason to be satisfied.

It is really delightful to hear Duff, and to see him. His awkwardness and lobstering defy description. He seems to have a bet that he will get the collar of his coat above his left ear once in every sentence. His accent is the pleasantest Scotch. There is to me great music in his intonations. What commands me is his wonderful sense. His humour is native, and bursts out everywhere. At times he is sharply sarcastic. I feel that he is eminently a spiritual man. I hope they will not kill him. He spoke two hours and twenty minutes at the Tabernacle. From his schools at Calcutta there have come 20,000 Hindoo pupils. A plain but pious man of our church lately made a suggestion to me, which indicates Christian labour in a right direction. He is a clothier, employing five hundred hands. Pie is impressed with the fact that in our efforts to do good the relation of employer and employed is ignored. He proposes that every Christian employer should seek the benefit of his employes. He points out methods. He suggests associations of employers for mutual illumination and incitement, and to accomplish jointly through visiters, Bible-readers, &c., what cannot be done so well singly. He has a number warmly engaged with him. The scheme contemplates the Germans chiefly. He astonished me by saying that the calculated number of hands engaged by wholesale clothiers in New York is 25,000, of whom two-thirds are Germans. There is so much real working-spirit among these pious clothiers, that I can’t help hoping it is of God. At our sacrament six on examination, and two on certificate. About seven are ready in my judgment. One of my Sunday School women sees almost every one of her pupils brought into the church. I hope our Mission-school and chapel-edifice will go up after all. Within three weeks we have collected for it $15,500.

NEW YORK, May, 1854.

At no time in my ministry have so many been coming to me to talk of their souls. These are not known to one another. One interesting case is of a young lady from Central America, who did not know a word of English four years ago, but now seems to be an instructed and converted person. A refugee

1 This mock celebration of his birth-day is made up of a trial trip of a new vessel, and of a soiree in honor of Dr. Duff.

Italian painter is a constant attendant, and professes to have embraced Protestantism.

The noblest Gothic church of modern London is that of the Irvingites. The millenarian pamphlet entitled “The Coming Struggle,” which has had so prodigious a run, on account of several happy prophetic hits, has already falsified itself; as it boldly declares that England is to stand aloof, and have no part in the contest with Russia.

I had no proper idea of Dr. Duff’s eloquence until I heard him before the Bible Society. His personal religion shone out very much in his later speeches. He has a marvellous command of a sort of long-winded but most expressive diction, and his adjectives are generally substantives, and not epithets.

Dr. Proudfit has, in his new Review,1 fully demonstrated against Schaff, that none of the Fathers made Peter to be the Rock; nor any one else before the Middle Ages. I never had any doubt about Christ’s naming himself by petra, any more than himself by [Destroy] “this temple;” but I did not suppose that all the Fathers held so too, against all their doctrinal prepossessions. There continues to be much quiet seriousness among my hearers. Yesterday I heard of five cases unknown to me before; but this concurrence is very extraordinary. My lecture is very full and very serious. I have arrived, in the Life of Christ, at the last passover. The Nebraska bill has passed. I have never opposed it, but feel very sad at the prospect of increased slavery. As to what would be the fact, I suppose this rests on causes which will not be affected one way or the other by this bill. The marshalling of South against North is more open and violent than I remember. My “Consolation” is out in 12mo.a I see great defects in my “Memoir;” but this plan of stereotyping every thing is very unfavourable to the perfectionating of one’s works. My quondam chum, Waterbury, has gone to Europe, his eyesight being threatened; he is one of the best and kindest of men. I have just sold a tract of land in Virginia; the names of the creeks amused me: Little Pedlcr, Sinking Swamp, Enchanted, and Love-lady. The avails are

$111 05. L M said to me t’other day:” I have been

an organist all my life; yet if a congregation should say to me, ‘Shall we have an organ 1 ‘I should scarcely dare to reply * Yes.’ “Old Mr. Scott said in 1849, “We fare well in our church; last Sabbath we had Kittle and Potts; to-day Krebs (pronounced by him crabs) and Eells” Such was literally the fact.

I have often tended to your opinion on the fugitive business; but these things make me pause, viz.: if the slaves are not 1 “The New Brunswick Review.” 2 The first edition was in octavo.

sent back, the peril of their escape and their other sufferings will be much increased: again, we shall be flooded with runaways, .and our free negroes are burden enough already: lastly, I don’t see how such a state of things can continue long, without war ad internecionem upon the borders. Yet I believe that the Fugitive Slave Law will be repealed, and that the Union will be dissolved on this question, sooner or later. The second Psalm is my chief comfort in politics.

Though not quite a millenarian, I was struck with these words of Chalmers to Bickersteth: “But without slacking in the least our obligation to keep forward this great (missionary) cause, I look for its conclusive establishment through a widening passage of desolating judgments, with the utter demolition of our present civil and ecclesiastical structures.” I find no meeting so hard to conduct as the Monthly Concert, so called. Now and then I have some keen chagrins at finding, from ‘imperfect lists, &c., that I have neglected some worthy family for several years. Such things plague me more than greater trials, and not always in a warrantable way. Houses about here are so near together as to be almost a Fourierite phalanstery, and now that windows are up we have sometimes two or three sets of piano-twangle and opera-squalls at once. A hundred Chinese have been found in New York; of whom thirty-five last week attended instruction in Chinese from a missionary, Mr. Syle.

NEW YORK, July 4, 1854.

Thermometer 85° in my study at 11 A. M. I went to Albany yesterday, and returned the same day, having six hours in Albany. In going there was no oppression of heat, but the return was distress equal to any thing of the torrid sort I ever felt, and this is par excellence my weak point. I took a warm bath and two cups of tea, and was quite restored; but the pandemoniacal squibs and crackers prevented the sleep I hoped for. Some good chat with Sprague. Says his correspondence is from five to ten letters per diem, and that he despatches these before breakfast — that he regularly goes round his flock in visits twice every year — that he writes two sermons every week — that he has not preached an old sermon for seven years. His communicants are more than 700. He visits each family of his charge twice a year, spending on this the hours from 11 to 2. My congregation is thin indeed — though more than half present are strangers. We shall again keep open this year; but I expect to take my family to Newport on the llth. Our church was entered last week, and the pulpit Bible abstracted. A fire was also made under the stairs, with a bundle of combustibles, but it “burned out, leaving a pile of cinders and ashes on the floor. I have had donations of port-wine from two quarters, during the heats; showing a remarkable discrimination in my worthy parishioners. One of the parcels purports to be real Old London Dock, imported to order.

Scribner is gone to England. My book on Consolation is about to be put out by Nelson of Edinburgh. Cholera is plainly increasing among us, but without that feeling of panic which commonly accompanies pestilences. The papers pretend that rain-water keeps off cholera; but it has never been worse than at such islands as St. Thomas, where they drink no other.

NEWPORT, July 31, 1854.

Ink runs in these latitudes. Thayer is as agreeable and instructive a preacher as ever. He is much beloved by his people, and does good among all classes. Stanhope Prevost, a frandson of President Smith, and an old playmate of mine, is ere, from Lima. His Spanish wife and children speak no English. The current is setting in New England so much in favour of congregational singing, that at the commencement at Andover, next week, they are to disuse their choir-display, and sing old-fashioned psalmody. Prof. Stowe has been preaching some weeks to the students on the Millennium. I have been studying Maurice’s book, [the Boyle Lectures.] He is all fog; belonging to that class of minds who are great at starting objections, and taking the side of adversaries, but impotent in the work of upbuilding. I am now upon Candlish’s answer; a work of some strength, and sufficiently confutative of M., (no great task,) but hasty and often obscure. Maurice really surrenders the Trinity, Atonement, Inspiration, Resurrection, and Future Punishment.

NEWPORT, August 21, 1854.

Your letter, in its closing part, so entirely removed all expectation of our seeing K., that I was really surprised when she called on us to-day. She is looking exceedingly well, and is full of that happiness among new scenes, which sits so well on youth, and which it is one of the peculiar pleasures of old folks to contemplate without envy. I am glad to see how thoroughly she has escaped all affectations, even those conventional ones which one looks for in young ladies; it is a negative charm worth a thousand et ceteras. There have been some cases of cholera here, but it is said they are abating; and there is no evacuation of the hotels. I hope there is no harm in going to a boat-race, as I did on the 12th. I was in a yacht, and went out some miles to sea. The-sight was beautiful. Besides the racers, the harbour and outer bays were covered with hundreds of beautiful craft. Last week, John Auchincloss took a shark twelve feet long. The drought is oppressive here, but the air is temperate and agreeable. I took my twenty-fifth bath to-day. I am the only clerical loafer here; last year there were many. My intercourse with T. continues to be very pleasant; he strangely unites the philosophical preacher with the laborious and affable pastor, and is uncommonly zealous in looking after the lower classes. Mary Williams’s “comfortable boarding-house “is still fraught with goodly broadbrims. Congregational singing is unknown here. At Dr. Choules’s, psalmody is the, act of staring at the gallery, with all backs to the pulpit. We have here Bancroft, Simmer, Archer of Virginia, Curtis, and Gen. Almonte with coach and four. B. has purchased, or will purchase, a house here; he is a candidate for our little Rhode Island mitre. He has the proper size, and preaches evangelically. The orthodox Quakers have an immense barn here, in which the New England yearly meeting assembles; but they talk of taking it to Lynn. There is a secession of” Wilburites,” led by John W. of this State, whom I suppose to be like the Hicksites. The Baptists are very strong; they dip in the salt water. Several churches are open-communion. The early (Roger Williams) Baptists disused singing at worship, as having no Scripture precedent. The traditions of the slave-trade of Newport and Bristol are curious. I know no town which has such a proportion of blacks and yellows, as this. With no disposition to judge harshly, but all the reverse, I am led to think that wrhat we regard as experimental piety is at a low ebb in New England. The revival day has gone by. I hear of no savoury old-time Christians. Of Unitarians, I find many more than I expected. The absence of a spirit of worship, in assemblies, is very striking. Communion-seasons are brief and perfunctory, and the ordinance is just an addition, as when we baptize a child. The New England clergy seem to me a highly cultivated class; but “the elegant or ingenious essay-style gains ground in sermons. Expository preaching is absolutely unknown, so far as I

can learn. I have seen a number of young preachers.

They are scholarly, but somehow impress me as totally devoid

of ministerial zeal. The intellectual and tasteful in appears

to have a forming influence on all the new race of preachers. I own my survey has been somewhat narrow, but I should have expected an exception here and there.

NEW YORK, September 21, 1854.

Yours of the 5th was backwarded to me from Newport to-day. I have read Gurney with much pleasure and some admiration. As in the case of Mrs. Fry and William Allen, I was deeply impressed with the truth, that whatsoever in him is good, is independent of Quakerism. One is ready to blush, to read the petty arguments of such a mind, for the hat and the plain language, lie was a good man; but I am unable to see wherein he even approaches, either in spirituality or self-denial, most of the good missionaries and ministers whose biography is written. I read Judson’s Life about the same time; and while I differ as much from J. as from G., I see in him a hundred-fold more Christian greatness. Who can imagine that the travelling sermons of Gurney did much good? whereas Judson was instrumental in giving a noble version of the Scriptures to a great empire, and of converting thousands of Burmese. I heard two of Gurney’s sermons; they were good for a Quaker, but no whit above the average of our plain preachers. I ran up to Newton, Sussex. Though I had been there once, many years ago, I really had forgotten how lovely a country it is. With out being Alpine, it is most picturesquely mountainous, and the air is as good at Newton, as at Schooley’s Mountain. Their railway will soon complete the remaining twelve miles; and then you could get there via Newark, in a few hours. Never have I passed a summer with so little gastric trouble. The only death in my charge has been a consumptive, set. 80. Mr. IT. has been talked of, in reference to a new (or revived) “enterprise” at the beautiful village of Oyster Bay, L. I., which is fast becoming a summer resort. On your authority, I spoke well of him to one of the chief men. I hope he would not object to be ostracized.2

NEW YORK, October 21, 1854.

This is the fourteenth day of my illness, and I am still in my room, though dressed and sitting up a good deal. My disease has been obscure. It has given me more severe pain than all my previous sicknesses put together; but it has been clean pain, without nausea or depletory processes. It has been a series of dreadful paroxysms, averaging about eight hours each; of these

1 Memoirs of Joseph John Gurney. Edited by Joseph B. Braithwaite.

2 In the early part of October of this year Dr. Alexander was prostrated by an excruciating and alarming disease, the progress of which will appear iii the letters. On the 14th October he informed me by an amanuensis that he had been laid up for seven days. He was not able to preach after October 8 until November 10.

I have had about five. In their acme, the pain was all but intolerable. One night I took what would equal 480 drops of laudanum, without effect. My doctor (Delafield) is a very Napoleon in decision; but his methods are mild, and he exactly resembles Dr. Belleville [vol. i., 125] in his expectant practice. I have from the beginning supposed that the root of the evil was calculus. Spasmodic colic co-exists. In the intervals I am wonderfully smart. I ought to say that Divine considerations have been of great support to me, especially when I was almost gone with pain.

NEW YORK, October 29, 1854.

Since the 20th I have been free from the peculiar pain, the very remembrance of which makes me shudder. At present I am suffering chiefly from the impression on my nervous system of so much severe pain. I have appetite, take a glass of port and gentian bitters, drive out for an hour, and walk fifteen to twenty minutes. You may imagine I have a great feeling of worthlessness. I ought ever to be thankful, that in my most painful moments, the great truths, which I trust I have believed, were not less clear or less precious than usual, but unspeakably more so. I wish to make record of this. I did not find that intense and wasting pain took away the power of thinking, but all the other way. While it is fresh I wish to write down, that in, with, and under all the very poignant distress, there was an under-current of peace and religious satisfaction, which now comes up associated with the pain — but more abiding in rny mind than the pain. These are new experiences for me. In former illnesses, my head was always cloudy; in this, I had pure, unadulterate pain.

Dreadful, dreadful war! [Crimea.] Bootless carnage, and for what? I have been skimming Alison’s new series of volumes, and have not had my love of the Turk or his allies increased, by reading of the Greek revolution, Scio, Navarino, the former campaigns of the Pruth and Balkan, Diebitsch, &c. While an uncontrolled sway of the Czar over all the east of Europe would seem bad, 1 own I am struck with three considerations: 1. The Turk is antichristian, fanatical, faithless, bloody, and doomed. 2. The Czar is the natural counterpoise of the Pope; and it is significant that most of the Romish powers are against Russia. 3. Russia is the only European power from whom America could hope for much, in case these same allies should direct their forces against the United States. Well, “He that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they.”

Did you know that the Free Church people publish a hand some quarterly at Edinburgh, almost entirely made up of articles from American reviews? l

NEW YORK, November 3, 1854.

I learn that the late diplomatic congress at Ostend has settled that Cuba is immediately to be ours — I suppose bloodlessly. [A prominent politician] said the other night: “If I were President, I would declare war against England in two days; so as to be beforehand with them.” I did not hear the casus belli. It does not seem to me that the Bible House is a bit larger or grander than it ought to be; especially as it has been a source of revenue, and was built by special subscription of friends. The moral impression of such a structure gives me pleasure every time I pass.2 It is said that one of the passengers became perfectly gray during the night of the Arctic.3 I have a sermon which I preached on board that vessel, [May 25, 1851,] on the text, “And the sea gave up the dead,” &c.; in which is a description of just such a mode of death. It was much censured at the time, as alarming and unseasonable. The crimes of our city are horrid, but they are committed chiefly by foreigners. Of the 1,500 who daily land here from Europe, the worst, for various reasons, never get beyond New York, except to go to the State’s Prison. Balloons go up every few days in our neighbourhood; one to-day with four inmates. I have a little handbook for young communicants in the press.4

I have expressly consigned to Adams & Co. the parcel of books. If you have not been familiar with Bengel, [Gnomon,] you will be struck with his pith, and the unexpectedness of his remarks. I was so delighted with Dacosta as a man, that I read his volume with great pleasure.6 You will, amidst his enthusiasm, find some new remarks on the comparison of the gospels. Being now near the end of a long course on the Life of Christ, I

1 “The British and Foreign Evangelical Review.” In the successive volumes of this work many of Dr. Alexander’s articles in the Repertory were reprinted.

2 This was said in reply to an opinion his correspondent had expressed the other way.

3 This steamship was wrecked on her trip to America, September 27, 1854.

4 “Plain Words to a Young Communicant:” published by Randolph, 1854. Pp. 113. His only contributions to the Repertory of 1854 were — 1. “Curiosities of German University Life.” 2. “Sketches of the Pulpit in Ancient and in Modern Times.”

6 His meeting with Dr. Isaac Dacosta, of Amsterdam, is mentioned in Chap. IX. of this volume. The work alluded to is “The Four Witnesses: a Harmony of the Gospels on a new principle.”

am more averse than ever to the method of a Diatessaron, except when used as a mere tabular help for collation. One could endure no other history, made up thus. I agree with you about Jay. It is servile and does him injustice. Never put off your reminiscences till you are past 80. I remember how different his “Life of Winter,” which ought to be reprinted. The new edition of Bickersteth’s Works, 16 vols.- 18mo, $10, is a cheap book. Even when I cannot see with him as to the prophecies, I always feel that I am conversing with an eminently holy man. This impression is made on me especially by the “Signs of the Times,” one of his last works. The little prize-essay of Winthrop is not to be despised.3 It really seems to me that Lord starts right.3 His way of finding what a symbol means, must be the true one. It is some merit, where all was do/xia, to digest some laws. But his results are often odd enough, and sometimes bathetic. His conception about the seven kine and seven ears, is funny enough. I like an expression of Trench, in his book on Bible synonymes: “to awaken in our scholars an enthusiasm for the grammar and lexicon.” This has been my great “Help to Preaching,” and more and more so. Nothing has so suggested not only meanings, but parallels, illustrations, divisions, and inferences. As I twice declined the augmentation of stipend, our trustees have insured my life; payable to relict. It is indeed a Godsend, to one who never would lay up, if his salary were $20,000. As we are cutting ourselves off more and more from the old world, and likely to carry out the Monroe doctrine, it seems to me that Christians in the United States are proportionally more bound to devise means of sending the gospel to Spanish America. Brazil is quite open, and New Grenada nearly so. It seems to me that this, along with the black and red men, falls more justly to our share, than Hindoos, Nestorians, Druzes, Arabs, or Turks. If I could have one sufficient ex tempore prayer in each diet, I should be glad to have a prescribed form for those things which we ought always to pray for: e. g. government, general thanksgiving, &c. I would have the Lord’s Prayer, Creed, Te Deum, Gloria in Excelsis, and a few more ancient portions. Our church singing is of the very plainest sort, and the people join pretty .generally. This has been the result of (1) a limited list

1 The Autobiography of the Rev. William Jay, edited by Dr. Bedford and Rev. J. A. James.

3 “The Premium Essay on the Characteristics and Laws of Prophetic Symbols. By the Rev. Edward Winthrop.” New York: F. Knight, 1854.

3 Editor o”f the Theological and Literary Journal, who offered the premium.

of tunes, and (2) these very easy, with no repeats, and scarcely any slurs or dividing of syllables. But the protest of our young people has been formidable.

YORK, January 23, 1855.

The trembling of my hand, which I inherit from mother and grandfather, makes me try first one hand-(writing) and then another — as I can go steadiest. I answer two of yours in one; and accept your apology for poor paper, as valid for the whole ream. I wish I knew Mrs. Gurney. I once saw her at David Clark’s before her marriage; it was in J. J. G.’s company that I went there. I wish she would put the life of Anna Backhouse into the shops. Just before opening your letter, I opened one from a young lady, in deep affliction, thanking me for the copy of A. B.’s life, (which I received from Mrs. G.,) lent her by me. Anna is one of my saints.

Most that doctors do with success seems to be opening an alley for nature to have fair play, and elbow room, to carry the disorder out of doors. This accounts for the seeming success of homoeopathies. I doubt not that poor S.’s case was greatly aggravated by doctoring; I talked much with him while the medication was proceeding. Our communion was a week earlier than yours; nine on examination, and three on certificate. Several of the cases were very interesting. I think if I could support myself j I would leave my charge any day, and begin down town; I ought to add — if I had any prospect of life. This is not a new “spirit;” I never, in all our correspondence, said any thing more seriously. I perfectly long to preach daily in our now finished new chapel.

I have read Muhlenberg’s pamphlet with great delight, and rank it very high as a literary production.2 It has led me to fall in his way, with increase of satisfaction. He tells me his Sisters of Mercy, four in number, have relieved 1,200 cases of distress since New Year’s. E. has been amongst us.3 To save

1 The widow of Joseph John Gnrney, the eminent preacher and author of the Society of Friends, was of New Jersey. Her Memoir of his daughter was printed at Burlington, in 1852, for the use of the family and friends.

8 “An Exposition of the Memorial of Sundry Presbyters of the Protestant Episcopal Church, presented to the House of Bishops during the General Convention of said Church, 1853. By one of the Memorialists.” The object of the Memorial was to obtain some modifications of the “modes of public worship, and traditional customs and usages” in the Episcopal Church.

3 The reputed author of a volume (” Charity and the Clergy”) sustaining the strictures of “New Themes” on the want of active charity in the Christian Church.

my credit, he attended one meeting at which our people pledged $400 a year for our down town mission-school, and another at which he learned that we had just raised $600 for poor of this ward. In reference to this last matter, I attended two meetings of clergy of the Eighteenth Ward, last week, at which remarks were made by Tyng, Adams, Cheever, Hawks, Muhlenberg, Bellows, Van Nest, and Alexander.

The gratuitousness of the preaching, to which I alluded, [page 205,] would presuppose a fund or collection for a Free Church. If I were ten years younger, I would have a building erected to hold 2,000, and would preach to free seats; not that I think the existing plan ought to be abandoned, but because I think we ought to have several, yea many plans, yea many sorts of preachers, “unlearned deacons” and all.

I find no girls decently educated except at home, or in the country. I have lately examined several eminent scholars of the highest establishment. Except French and drawing, thoy have nothing accurately, though pretending to have ever so much German, Latin — ologies, &c. I have a Spanish book from a Cuban ex-professor, and very fine old man, inscribed thus: “Al Senr Dr Don J. W. Alexander, D. D., en memoria del Editor.” My good friend and excellent sexton Peter Tarlsen is dead. We buried him from the church. The captain who first brought him to America was there. Our landlord has raised our rent from $900 to $1,200; we shall therefore move, again.

NEW YORK, March 14, 1855.

I am truly glad that the old college bell is not lost; its sound is sweet in my ears. The Palmerston ministry seems hard to fix. Sebastopol is taken less easily than was at first supposed. The Irvingites number 30,000. They now have an Evangelist here, preaching; only on these occasions do they invite any hearers. We are about to lower our organ loft, and get an organ, and perhaps change the pulpit: we shall expect you after the high places are removed. I visited a bon vivant very ill, whose only tie to church or religion seems to be the memory of a little boy who was several years in our Sunday school. The father repeated whole hymns which his boy used to say at night; the child’s portrait hanging all the while in sight by the bed. The intensity of paternal affection led me to dwell on that particular view of God’s love in Scripture. Only two join our church on examination; one a boy of fifteen, the

1 The main edifice of Nassau Hall was burnt March 10.

other a man of fifty. On Sunday I preached twice and spoke something at three other meetings. Secretary [J. L.] Wilson gave us a truly awakening account of the India missions the other night.

The life of the Rev. Andrew Broaddus has interested me highly. In my young days he was the star of the Baptist pulpit in Virginia. He was a great and good man, and a preacher of singular fascination. Dr. Jeter’s “Campbellism Examined” is a most able book on that subject. I accord with you in missing the society of sons, but this is not so grieving as to suffer the same in regard of daughters. All these things tell us that the <rx?7/xa passeth away.

April 3. — The dealings of God with Ahab make me believe that the great outward piety of Nicholas will not go unre warded. His death was not an unchristian one.

I expect to leave here for Virginia on the 9th inst., and to go first to Charlottesville, and then to Charlotte. We open our chapel for preaching next Sunday. Dr. A. D. Smith has more than 1,400 Sunday scholars.

Give profound salvos to all inquiriturient and amicable vicinities, from your observant orator, who will ever pray, &c.

INGLESIDE, VIRGINIA, April 20, 1855.

The spring no longer coquets, but embraces with oriental voluptuousness. Yesterday wrould have done for Florida. In a north porch, in shade, the glass stood at 95° all the afternoon. This morning it is less burning, but still hot. When 1 arrived in Virginia, the spring was still behind, but for two days we have almost seen it growing. All the ten million blossomings of this wide plantation are out together — peach, apricot, cherry, plum, crab, and apple, the last being sweetest; also lilach, straw berry, almond, corcoras, hyacinth, pyrus japonica, &c. The whcatfields, often of a hundred acres each, are suddenly green. Before breakfast I counted fourteen species of birds known to me, and two unknown. There are about fifty mocking-birds in and about this lawn, and forty robins were counted on the grass at once. Herds and flocks on a large scale variegate the prospect. This estate joins Retirement, where I lived, and which is more in sight than once, from cutting of woods away. The house or houses are ruinous, but the noble oaks stand. The place is to be at once improved by Henry A. Carrington, to whom his father has given it. It was twenty-nine years on Monday, since I preached my first sermon at Charlotte C. H.

The Czar died March 2,

OP

There is now a plank-road of about six miles from the C. H. to Drake’s Branch; a line which is about bisected by a plantation-road of one mile, striking it from this spot. This place has very much improved by the growth of trees, and the horticultural improvements. In all this country there is no sign or suspicion of any suffering. I have renewed my acquaintance with a large number of the old blacks, and have been struck with the ease of their life. The old coachman of Mrs. Le Grand, Uncle Billy, now aged 84, is really a handsome old man. I have earnestly laboured with him among the flowers, which he is gently tilling; and have read and preached to him — for he is still an unbelieving old creature. I have felt bound to seize every occasion to exhort these servants, in consequence of the weight which the words derive from my former residence here. Some of them seem to me as good and as experienced Christians as any white people of the labouring class. There is plainly an important increase everywhere in labours for their instruction and conversion. The political rage about Know Nothingism is such as could hardly be “realized” in the North. The high prices of wheat give great internal prosperity to planters. I found at the University of Virginia a signal change. Almost all the professors pious: large voluntary assemblies of students; one hundred attending Sunday prayer-meeting, and a goodly number daily morning ditto. Cabell is most instructive and striking on all the questions of ethnology, races of men, &c. He dissents totally from Agassiz, and agrees with Maury, Hewcs, and Bache. He showed me some stupendous microscopic things concerning the circulation of the blood, &c.

217 FIFTH ATENUE, NEW YORK, June 13, Our organ is to be put behind the pulpit, and the choir reduced to one or more male voices beside the pulpit, thus giving us seventy-five sittings aloft. Nothing tends to reconcile me any more to pew-property. If Papists did not falsify their theory by their practice, their method of free churches would be noble. Then one could be complacent in a costly church, if thereby “the brother of low degree” (James i.) “is exalted.” The sustentation of the preacher is as clear as the gospel-message itself, but the rich should pay so as to lighten the burden of the poor. I have long been an admirer of some things in Madame Guy on. Up-

1 In 1859 was published the first edition of Dr. Cabell’s “Testimony of Modern Science to the Unity of Mankind;” with an Introductory Notice by Dr. Alexander.

2 In the absence of his family in Virginia he was dwelling with M». Thomas U. Smith, one of the elders of his church.

ham makes her far better than she was, and has left out a thou sand of her gross blandishments and nursery endearments. 1 think the best thing in the book is the annihilation of her theory by Bossuet. Fenelon, though her pupil, has wonderfully exalted and spiritualized her system, in the “Maximes,” and “Lettres Spirituelles.” But it is all given better in Kempis. I have not read (since Gil Bias) a merrier narrative than Mons. Hue’s Travels through China. Quere. Suppose every Popish priest now extant were a true spiritual Christian, how far would the existing machine of hierarchy (influence and all) be compatible with true churchship? Item. In such case, might not certain conceivable reforms be expected, such as should place the Catholic body short of damnation? A ship-load of immigrant Mor mons, seven hundred souls. Hardly any were Papists; most from England. If the Eutaxian Liturgy2 come into actuality, the only result will be to train people for the “Common Prayer.” If I must pray other people’s prayers, I prefer the venerable grace of Anglicanism to any thing A, B, and C will concoct.

Adams’s steeple is going- to be the great ornament of up-town New York; I see it wThile I write, slowly growing, day by day, above the houses in Twenty-sixth street, over wrhich I look southward. The church will stand them in not less than $160,000. Even St. John’s Church, as Dr. Berrian tells me, is nearly deserted of worshippers; though, when he was at its consecration, it was thought in the suburbs. Mrs. C and my

brood will make for the Red Sweet Springs,3 near the Sweet Springs, Alleghany County, about 16th prox. The Board man and Thornwell debate [on Church Extension] was of that dignified sort, that we have latterly missed in our Assembly; I wished for a fuller report. I am now about five or six lectures deep in the Acts. I also have a Bible-class on Romans. Strawberries, though slow, are as fine as I ever saw. This year will be memorable among cits for its incomparable weather in May and early June. I had made all preparations for a reduced $1 25 edition of the Life of my father, leaving out nothing material, when Trow’s printing-house was burnt. Though I am thankful to say our plates in the vault escaped, all the paper for this new

1 “Life, Religious Opinions, and Experience of Madame de la Mothe Guyon. By Thomas C. Upham.” 1847.

2 “Eutaxia; or, the Presbyterian Liturgies: Historical Sketches. By a Minister of the Presbyterian “Church.” New York: 1855. This was followed in 1859 by “A Book of Public Prayer, compiled from the authorized formularies of worship of the Presbyterian Church, as prepared by the Reformers Calvin, Knox, Bucer, and others. With supplementary forms.”

3 The first mention of the spot in Virginia, where the writer closed his earthly course.

impression was consumed. It has been a great disappointment to us that Mr. E. T. Williams, who had come on as preacher in our Mission-chapel, was forced to go instantly away, on account of his wife’s ill-health. Father Otterson is preaching temporarily, but there is no flock as yet; our chief hope is from the school.

RED SWEET SPRINGS, ALLEGHANY )
Co., VIRGINIA, July 28, 1855. J

The drive to the Warm Springs, though short by measurement, was, I think, the severest I ever took. We got in about half-past nine. The place is delightful. A former tasteful owner has done much landscape gardening. The view from top of the Warm Spring -Mountain is worth going a hundred miles to see. The servants are the best I know, having that oriental deference and tact which belong to old family menials. We rested a day. Twelve passengers on the coach on Thursday. The squeeze was annoying, but the road pleasant. In crossing the Alleghany we encountered two tfyunder-storms, and rode four hours in heavy rain. I omitted that we found no chance direct to this place, and so had to come via White Sulphur. At Callaghan’s, where we dined, two deer had been brought in; man says sometimes five in a day: six cents a pound. At a watering-house, two rattlesnakes had been slain during the day. I recognized the import of the moment, when, after an easy ascent, I found the waters tending towards the Gulf of Mexico. Lodged wretchedly at the noblest place I ever saw, the White Sulphur Springs. No reporter had prepared me for such Eden-like variety of lawn and landscape, within the proper bounds, such expanse, and such a town of rural cots, &c. Next morning up at four. Course south-east. Except about four miles of the sixteen, the drive was transcendently beautiful. We recrossed the Alleghany. I think our whole road was along the bedside of two foaming, tumbling, roaring little rivers, up one, and down the other, with a slight hiatus on the water-shed. The second was Dunlap’s Creek. Compared with the country around the Rock Alum, [Rockbridge County,] this region is noted for immense timber, cascades, and torrents, rapid changes of hill and vale, and exuberant productive power in every vegetable way. We broke fast ten miles from the Warm Spring, at Col. Crow’s, on the side of Dunlap’s Creek, which we crossed many times; and just under the broad shadow of the Sweet Spring Mountain. Good breakfast and fine venison. The colonel is a jovial Boniface, full of hunting-stories; and this is a famous place for deer-shooting.

1 The smaller copy was afterwards published.

Here about’ nine. The place = 1,700 acres. The capabilities for landscape improvement are unlimited. I look straight over a broad green lawn ten times as big as yours,1 and up a hillside to a knoll beautifully crested by trees and grazed over by both herd and flock. The Springs are in a dark glen, with rustic seats, two fine natural cascades, and a grove of irregular ancient trees; a spot for nymphs. The bath is (say) 40 X 20 feet, and deep enough for swimming. At the Warm Spring the bath is 98°, and 38 feet diameter. The “Sweet Springs” are a mile from us. The Cabell party are here, and the calm retirement is very taking.

About sixty here, and about seventy at the Sweet. They have four hundred and fifty at the White Sulphur.

KED SWEET, August 6, 1855.

Our company is yet small, but we shall be overflowed when the “White” is empty. Our number about seventy-five. Table good, though not sumptuous as at the Old Sweet. We have printed bill of fare, entrees of French cookery, always soup, &c. Absence of drinks striking. We have a PoJish count, two Episcopal ministers, and one Methodist. The walks and drives around here in every direction are delightful. We go almost daily to the Sweet. Can walk to a cascade of forty to sixty feet. Frequently ascend neighbouring mountains. Dr. Cabell is daily pushing his microscopical observations which brings me some entertainment. The swimming here is worth all the journey. The tepid chalybeate is mawkish enough.

RED SWEET, August 11, 1855.

The disheartening dampness continues. Our number is two hundred, and many are daily rejected. Rooms for some fifty to eighty are finishing. I j ust saw a deer brought in of a hundred and nineteen pounds; yesterday one of one hundred and twenty-six pounds. The Sweet Springs have one hundred and fifty. The fashion chiefly there. Here we have a hop every night. Rev. Castleman was upset near Bell’s, on way here. Next day he drove from three A. M. till daylight, because the driver could not keep awake five minutes at a time. I weary of the mode of life.

RED SWEET SPRINGS, August 14, 1855.

If this crosses yours, please make all right by considering yourself as the debtor. Though we have rain daily, there is

1 The Rockbridge Alum Springs, where the two correspondents had met the week before. We continued at different Springs during the time indicated by the Virginia dates.

more dry air. I am thankful to say that our indispositions abate. Mrs. T. of Baltimore, the R. K. of my youthful days, is here with her husband. I last spoke with her in 1820; she is now a grandmother. Judge Potts [of Trenton] is at the Sweet. He is thin as ever, but seems very fresh, alert, and well, and is an addition to our society. We have Edward Rufljn, the celebrated agricultural philosopher of Virginia. I preached here and also at the Sweet Springs on Sunday; here I had a large assembly. Our small evangelical library of books and tracts is in free circulation; and religious talk is easier here than with us; while religious people allow themselves more liberties. The over-dressing and over-jewelling of the women are indescribable. Have they not mistaken the caricatures in Harper for the fashion-plates? Great numbers here from the lower Mississippi. One Methodist, who sustains “a supernumerary relation,” and one Episcopal schoolmaster in orders, constitute, with thy servant, the chaplaincy. John. Van Buren is at the White. Dysentery of a fatal type prevails among the mountaineers. In one house, a mile oil’, three deaths have occurred. Henry saw five deer on the 12th. The Red Sweet water is doing wonders with some cases of chronic diarrhoea. A. A. Hodge goes to Eredericksburg vice McPhaill.

RED SWEET, August 21, 1855.

Yours of 15th is “to hand;” I was not “to home” when it came, but no further off than the Old Sweet, where I go daily and sometimes twice. This morning I called on Wm. Collins, of Baltimore, a classmate in college, now a lawyer in Maryland, and son-in-law of Gov. Jas. Barbour. Kirk, another classmate, is there. He preached a powerful sermon here last

Sunday. The most interesting converser here, is. his

knowledge and diction are extraordinary. Ultra States-rights — man. He says of Dr. Adams, (” South Side “:) “After reasoning from certain exceptional cases, to show that slave-holders live for nothing but to make their slaves happy — an absurd assertion — and after making slavery to be a most happy condition, he avows his wish gradually to put an end to this state of felicity.” Cabell perseveres in regular morning lectures on Natural Philosophy and Natural History. We have about 400 at each Spring.

Thompson, of the Independent, writing from Maine, says, (in substance,) “Though Southerners hate .the Yankees, yet they will every year come among them, so long as the North has the monopoly of mountains, springs, &c.” Mulattoes decrease in Virginia. The air is now dry, but cold; almost every one has fires. I have at no moment been so well as my average in New York; rheumatism and headache pursue me.

RED SWEET SPRINGS, August 24, 1855.

Yours of 18th to-day, simul with one from Princeton, of 20th. When the mails do so, it is best not to delay exchange of notes for the usual diplomatic period. Littell’s Nos. 586 and 587, [” Living Age “] are great; but why does our old friend grudge the price of all proof-reading? Your proximity to the Hot and Warm will make the Lukewarm [” Healing Springs “] very much livelier than the Cold, [Alum.] Our number is about 280. The weather, for a few days, has been warm and agreeable. Several cases of illness in the neighbourhood. It is a copious hemorrhage of the bowels, and intractable. The indigenous women and children in these wet valleys, look tallowy and anemic. The fewness of Northerners is remarkable. My read ing has from necessity been in Cabell’s books; so I have learnt some Comparative Anatomy, and Zoology.

Mrs. A. feels very “poly,” (such is the expression,) and William is still “delicate.” You have probably learnt that “trifling” means “worthless.” We hafce a very “respectable crowd” at these Springs. Mrs. C. is “mighty weak,” but is “fattening.” Willy talks of a sig-yah (segar) and of “wawtah.” If it comes at all in your way to visit Lexington, do not hesitate an instant to go with your folks to R.’s, and stay as long as you choose. The truth is, “comfort,” in Virginia, is not at public, but private houses; the case being reversed in Northern cities.

RED SWEET SPRINGS, September 1, 1855.

What you say is certainly just; your path of duty is very clearly marked out, and you are left in the best hands; 2 Sam. xxiv. 14. Whatever thoughts may supervene about your congregation, you are obviously in your right place; and if any censorious saints should class you among absentee “city-ministers,” you will feel inwardly right before God, 1 Cor. iv. 3,4.

Your Jews are probably negro-traders. That business in Virginia has fallen almost entirely into the hands of the Circumcision, and Mr. G. tells me they have greatly humanized it; so that where negroes have to be sold, they prefer it should be to the Hebrews.

We are very full — the running over of the White Sulphur. No Philadelphians, or New Yorkers, and but half a dozen Northerners. I shall wait till the llth, when we can fill a coach for

Lexington, making stops. I am advised we cannot possibly have entry to our church before October 1, as the carpenters have us on the hip. Our house, 30 West 18th Street, is pretty much (or Yankice “about “) done. Peaches in New York are late and unpromising; in lower Virginia fine and abundant; here none. Delightful Indian plums of three varieties, are in our woods here, and probably in yours, [Bath County.] I occasionally overhear some hellish cursing and swearing, horribly sticking in my memory from its perverse ingenuity; it is from certain sporting gentry.

NEW YORK, October 2, 1855.

We arrived at Princeton on Thursday. Our journey was without “evil occurrent.” On return, I find my flock still ungathered, and church still incomplete. For the twelve new pews, for 60 persons, we have twice that number of applicants. We preached in our Chapel of Ease, which was full, but mostly of strangers. No death, but of an infant, has taken place in my proper flock.

The Renewed bustle of moving awaits us; but we are thankful for a new, convenient, and clean house. We cannot have full delivery of the same much before the 15th.

To-day Mr. Smith took us to our new house, No. 30 West 18th St.; where we had the surprise of finding the chief trouble of removing removed, by the downputtmg of new carpets, and the in putting of furniture and books. Yesterday we entered again our remodelled church. My feelings are complex in regard to it. Some things are beyond my hopes: 1, the acoustical trouble seems thoroughly cured: I could not wish it better for speaking and hearing; 2, the lowering of the west gallery is altogether pleasing; 3, the singing led by a precentor, and no consolidated choir or band, pleases me; the people joined heartily. On the other hand, my pride suffers at being made, with my pulpit, sermon, &c., a mere appendage to a great big organ. A savage, on entering, would certainly take the instrument for the divinity of the shrine. My head spins with the numerous conflicting businesses now competing for notice. I have an edition of Memoir (abridged) to oversee, a book to finish, a preface to write, a Presbytery to attend, two sermons to prepare, a house to fit and inhabit, a boy to school, “help” to hire, &c.

YORK, October 26, 1855. I am expecting, besides my own service, to preach for Dr. T.’s folks, after their communion. He is a much more earnest man than most of us, breathing some of the good Free

Church spirit, as I observed it in Scotland. He tells me that. a number of families of his charge have it for a custom, before leaving home for church, to unite in prayer for a blessing on the Word which they expect to hear.

Bible instances show us that God is concerned in our private sorrows. The Psalms especially appear more divine to me every day. What a body of experience! How they have formed the character and devotions of the Church! How remarkable, to have issued from such a land and age!

In regard to the future state, continual, earnest, and I believe reverent reading of God’s Word, has produced in me some persuasions and hopes, which I should not like to be called on to prove in mood and figure. It is my belief, that many things are made true to us, and from Scripture too, for which we cannot cite a particular proof-text. The general result is, that I look on the world of disembodied saints as nearer to us than is usually held, and on the future glory as less unlike the good things of the militant church, than many teach. Holiness here is found not in abstractions, but in the concrete feelings, words, and acts of human creatures. Some good people talk of holiness in heaven, as if they must secure it from carnality by making it vague, dreamy, and metaphysical. Though “equal to angels,” Luke xx. 36, the blessed are not dehumanized. All New Testament allusions show them as ours still.

The anxiety I feel for my children, oppresses me at times very much. It is hardly at all about their temporal advancement — even their learning; but I am deeply solicitous that they should be truly religious, and more painfully alive to their perils in this respect than once I was.

We are hardly yet arranged in our habitation. It is eminently commodious, clean, and spacious. Church continues surprisingly full; with very little token of awakening. I fear I entertain rather than impress my hearers; this has long been a sore place within me. Yet when sometimes I have for a little attempted the pungent method, it has been Saul’s armour to me, and I have been fain to come back to my natural way.

NEW YORK, November 12, 1855.

Yesterday was Communion. One on examination, and twelve on certificate. Dr. Duff’s speech, [Scotch General Assembly,] though abundantly self-exhibitory, has some daring flights of old-fashioned eloquence, such as our fastidious, carping age and people do not willingly hear. Th. Dwight translated a book on ‘New Grenada, by Gen. Mosquera, late President thereof, who now lives with his son Gen. He ran, just back of us. It is instructive, and gives one a new view of the capabilities of that wonderful country of mountains and paramos, a word which means high, cold, uninhabitable plateaux. The way is perfectly open at Carthagena for the gospel. I know no experience which has grown on me more, within a few years, than the impression of nearness of the other world. I have not a corresponding temper; but I certainly realize this as never before. Concerning the future, I do not see things so distinctly and definitely as some; for example, Baxter, in the “Saints’ Rest.” Howe’s “Blessedness of the Righteous,” comes nearer my views. But my persuasions of this seem natural, rather than religious. They do often, how* ever, furnish me a motive. Poor unlettered saints (I am now caring for one on his death-bed) unquestionably have more comfort of their faith than we. Books, disquisition, analysis, habits of objection, looking at difficulties, hearkening to latitudinary talk, all tend to break the charm of childlike faith. Would we were more like children!

NEW YORK, November 14, 1855.

If univocality were all, we have, I think, fully attained the end of making our people sing. I have never heard a louder chorus out of a German church. As to melody and harmony, your deponent saith not.

How gravely things look in our families, when we project our thoughts into the future! My yearnings about my household are sometimes very affecting. “The fondness of a creature’s love,” &e. To have these affections sanctified is greatly desirable, but how little realized! Some parents seem to be cheered with a continual confidence in regard to the salvation of their offspring; and I own this comes over me too, in my best hours. Happy, happy are they who are safely landed on Canaan’s shore. Some of the most serious reflections I ever have, are connected with the lapse of time and nearness of eternity, as viewed along with my small attainments hitherto; especially with the thought that these are not likely to be greater. I am deeply sensible that these and the like thoughts give a sombre cast to my manner, of late, which is by no means fitted to make religion attractive. The normal or ideal sort of Christianity would be beautifully cheerful. Mr. Williams, our mission-chaplain, returns to Africa in the spring. Poor Dr. Hare’s lecture had a craziness beyond what the reporters give, in the perfectly bedlam character of the costly apparatus which he exhibited. I have been part of the day with a dying woman, who has neglected religion, and is in

1 The late Dr. Robert Hare, of Philadelphia, had lectured on “Spiritualism,” with mechanical illustrations.

terror of death. Such cases (I mean the terror) are less common than I expected to meet when I began my ministry.

The military were out in force to-day; a beautiful sight. But all the trappings do not hide the bloodiness of War. How loose and perfunctory are the notices of books in the religious papers! I have often remarked it. E. g. Whately is commended, without a hint of his rationalism about Inspiration, Future Punishment, &c.; while a breath against limited Atonement or Imputation would bring down their wrath. I heard Milburn, the blind preacher, at a Bible Society to-night. His voice and manner are very lovely, and sometimes Summerfieldian. He is also a genius; but like all the crack of the

Young America, is over-learned — full of Bacon, Des Cartes, Frederick Strauss, Auguste Comte, aesthetics, &c., &c. A. also made a fine address in his way. More than any man but Todd, and in a better way, his mind strings innumerable fine stories, phrases, allusions, and verses altogether; and he sacrifices every thing to the entertainment and arrest of the hearer’s mind. His manner, too, is good, and he has much pathos. But you carry away no one deep impression, as from Chalmers, Edwards, or Nettleton. Love to all yours, whom we remember in prayers.

NEW YORK, December 25, 1855.

We dined to-day on a white-fish from Michilimacinac. Dr. Muhlenberg always has a Christmas-tree for his charity-children at his church. We had, notwithstanding the rain, 350 urchins and urchinesses at our cake-and-candy fete at the Mission Chapel. Our two Industrial schools promise well. The lower one, at Duane Street, (where we also have mission-preaching,) already numbers 200. We talk of going in largely toward the purchase of a building for a coloured congregation.

Every day sickens me more and more with Congress. Just consider what sort of work they carry on under the pretence of voting for Speaker; the debates running on matters of mere party-name, such as did not use to be mentioned. I am fully persuaded, that if all parties would be patient, would drop the naked question of slavery, and would bend all powers towards abating the abuses of slavery, it would result in the speedy emancipation of all who should be fit to enjoy freedom. In this way history shows us that slavery has heretofore ceased and determined. Hush the angry quarrels, and appease the natural pride of slave-holders, and thousands among them would

* This scene was re-exhibited in the House of Representatives of 1859-’60.

VOL. II. 10 go even for legislative reform, in the matters of marriage, property, separation of households, reading the Bible, and so forth. This, I think, will take place anyhow; but in a less favourable way, so long as Northern violence retards the measures. Huidekoper, of Meadville, sent me his treatise on the Underworld, or Hades of the Fathers. He proves pretty conclusively that the “descended into hell” of the Creed originated after the unscriptural fiction of an underworld arose in the church. He impugns the candour of Christians who now try to swallow it, with other meanings.

For the coming year I have fixed on the year-word, “God with us.” This method of year-motto I have pursued now for about fifteen years, with much comfort to my own heart, and I believe to others; especially as I have preached on the text whenever I had a congregation.

NEW YORK, January 14, 1856.

The Repertory makes me say “apostacy,” 1 which I wrote not; and sundry other things. Another article has “forceably.” I was Q&gre to find out your article in which you write “meagre” for “meager.” A divine writes to me about “schollar-ships,” several times thus spelt. Unless Providence interpose frequent frosts our formidable force of snow-banks will furnish a fresh. Torrents entered our Church yesterday. It was our Communion. Dr. Carrington, just from Charlotte, says the snow is deeper there. The lowest mark by my thermometer was — 5°. Dr. E wing’s plan is an excellent one, I wish he would carry it out; the technical name for such a word-book is a “glossary.” 2 You probably had Hall forbears in the Siege of Derry, as I had Alexanders and Reids; so you will read third Macaulay with peculiar zest. In parts, the new portion is almost a Church history. I am deeply convinced that a majority of the South will one day come to the point of mitigating slavery so far as to make it a sort of feudal apprenticeship; and that it will be abolished. Every year — even in the face of Northern rebuke — hundreds of new voices are raised in behalf of marriage, integrity of families, and license to read. To a practical mind it is striking that Abolitionism has abolished no slavery. I have been seldom more provoked [than by a newspaper notice laudatory of the

1 A very common misprint. His articles in the Repertory for 1856 were: 1. Quesnel and the Jansenists. 2. Memoir of Dr. John M. Mason. 3. Waldegrave on Millenarianism.

2 The suggestion of our friend, -which he did not live to undertake him self, was a vocabulary of the English Bible, giving the changes of meaning that have taken place since the translation, singing in his church.] Earnest endeavour on my part to make worship supersede music is disturbed by these newsmakers. Amidst much that is mortifying at Washington, there is some thing favourable to observance of rule, in the substantial quiet of so many weeks, on the eve of a great national quarrel. From the same number of the “Clerical Journal” come the following paragraphs:

“Religious Libels”

“After many other remarks, the speaker says, as reported in the British Banner:” If I were a Churchman, furthermore, I might go into my pulpit every Sunday and read a homily, and by so doing should discharge all the obligations which I took upon me by my ordination vows. But you, young men, who go forth from this college, must not take homilies into the pulpit nor other people’s sermons, but you must take your own.” Now here is a serious charge, conveyed in the presence of a miscellaneous audience and of young men about to be trained for the ministry among Dissenters.”

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Guthrie (” The Gospel in Ezekiel “) is more florid than Hamilton, but also more evangelical. His figures glow as much as W.’s, but he has some sense. Macaulay does justice to George Fox and the Quaker Sham. If there was any thing left to attack, his paragraphs might be published as a tract.

We are about to lose Mr. Williams from our missionchapel, (thus Macaulay prints all such compounds,) as he returns to

Africa. He has done us good service. I preached there on a late Sunday evening. Juvenile hearers are far the most numerous. Other families increasing, but only where they have been visited. Besides the missionary, we have an Irish Reader drum ming up hearers. I wish I could find such a Scotch — or Irishman, as I have occasionally met, for this work. There are men to whom it would be delightful, and it is very promising.

NEW YORK, February 7, 1856.

I write with a thumb which is wounded in the very place where the pen goes. The 40th day of sleighing has increase of slipping by reason of rain that freezes as it falls. The sufferings of in-coming ships have been very great. One known to me, has been off our -Atlantic coast for a month. Henry B. Pratt, of the Seminary, from Georgia, is here preparing to go to New Granada. I hope the Gospel will go into Central America, at the hole made by the filibusteros. The outlay on furs this winter, is enough to remind one of the Roman luxury in Gibbon and Montesquieu — $2,000 for a sable cape is frequently given. The white-and-yellow furs from the neck of sables, for carriages and sleighs, though less valuable are of monstrous price from their size. The prevalence of cold at the South is unexampled. The marked decrease of emigration to our port has been evident in the less pressing necessities of the poor this month, as compared with the corresponding portion of last year. The arrivals are about one-fourth for the last reported week. The stream of German emigration is showing a disposition to seek Spanish America; this is true especially of the Catholic part. I see both Peru and Mexico are holding out special inducements to Catholic German settlers; and as in both countries this is synchronous with renewed struggles of the clergy for political power, it looks somewhat like a concerted scheme to forestall the protestantizing of the South. Lieut. Gilliss, of the U. S. Astronomical Survey, after several years in Chile, (so he writes it,) gives the worst account of popish misrule I ever saw. The peons (which by an Americanism means hirelings) are very far below Southern slaves. He declares flatly, that most of the births are illegitimate and a frightful proportion incestuous.

In your life of Washington Irving, mention that he is a homoeopathist, and that he still rides young horses. He is very smart and kidglovish, but with a sunken manner and anile voice. I have never known any one who came to the truth so regularly as old Mr. C., just deceased. He was a highly educated man, both in America and Europe, and Jefferson’s ami prochain. He said: “I was a victim of Mr. Jefferson’s infidelity.” Many years ago, he attacked the subject by regular approaches — reading all the works which are famous on the Evidences. It was his method in other things. He would talk with every one on these points, just as on the Tariff, &c. He satisfied himself of the authenticity of the books. He went as deliberately about the question of Inspiration, with like results. He cautiously went through all the doctrines, and settled on what we maintain as evangelical. Thus far was headwork. But Grace was carrying on heartwork also; and on his dying-bed he recounted all this, and much more, as the process of years, and partook of the sacrament with clear avowal, good confession, and a most edifying joy.

About 1824, there was hardly a more irreligious familyconnexion anywhere than -. Now the religious members amount to scores. And every day we hear of the work going on. Of a truth, we make too little of such silent ramification of the true Vine.

I am now at Acts ix. It is really my Bible-class, though I have another, so called, of young men. My heart sickens at the prospect of war,1 and for what? For ill-minded party-men. T have no fears of any one’s dwelling unduly on Christ as a Saviour, and know none who have the fault you seem to apprehend.2 The other extreme, viz., propounding him chiefly as a Master arid Lawgiver, is that of all the Ecks, the Blairs and Robertsons, and Channings. Every orthodox preacher I ever heard, gives prominence to Christ as Prophet and King.

YORK, March 4, 1856.

Yesterday was twenty-nine years since my dear affectionate uncle Rice preached my ordination sermon from Col. iv. 17, an admirable text.3 The only articulate words after he was carried away were, “I should like to preach again — but the will of the Lord be done!”

Yesterday Dr. Nott, set. 85, married a couple in our church. His father died of disease at 62; his brother, a sedentary minister of Connecticut, died of an accident, in his hundredth year. Everett’s oration is the great event. The immense assembly fondled the orator, and almost chaired as well as cheered

J The Central American question between the United States and Great Britain.

2 The suggestion referred to was that in preaching, Christ is not held forth in his Divine authority as Lord, in due proportion with his gracious office as Saviour.

3 Dr. Benjamin H. Rice was attacked with paralysis in his pulpit, (Hampden Sydney, Virginia,) January 17, 1856, and died on the 24th of February.

W. Irving. The argument was that Washington was great, be cause he was good.

The streets of New York have now reached a degree of flood, ferment, feculence, filth, and fragrancy, at which they become curious and almost sublime. There is a wall of block ice-muck in the middle of Broadway, from three to six feet high, for a inile; and this after more than §40,000 spent on that single object.

I agree with you in the importance of varying one’s position.

Dr. had decided symptoms of stone from a constant use

of one posture, and this in a rocking-chair. Et sic de similibus. As a specimen of what the transcendentalists call the Philosophy of History, one of them lately said to me: “Judaism is the divinest fact which God could make out of the materials he then had.” Addison is printing on Acts. Wiley frequently imports English copies of his large Isaiah, which cannot be “gotten” here, as the Southerners still say. So many around me are mad with Gumming, that I have lately been examining his prophetical volumes, four or five in number. He has a great charm of clear, beautiful, picturesque language; beyond this, he

is a cross of on; * superior to either, but as conceited,

as shallow, as uncharitable, and as one-sided. Of real original proof — nothing. As to prophecy, he merely hashes up Elliott. His interspersed pious addresses are good.

NEW YORK, March 26, 1856.

I forgot to say that I am falling into the very same tremolo which you detected in S., and find my voice materially altered in preaching. The religious romance of early Methodism interests me more than Macaulay, and I think John Wesley’s English better than Swift’s or Cobbett’s. I remember going to Dr. Mayer’s to an Easter Communion, with my father, forty odd years ago.3 On Maundy Thursday I assisted at mass at St. Ann’s, and on Good Friday was at the doors of three chapels; not however in forma pauperis; numbers attended to that function. The proceedings of the priest with his acolytes profanely reminded me of a juggler and his aids.

There is something distressing in the uniform decay and transitoriness of the free blacks. .The few exceptions are like feeble exotics reared at great cost. W. himself is a good man, but even he is far below the smallest sort of village minister.

1 Popular Anti-Romanists.

2 Dr. Philip F. Mayer, Pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church, Philadelphia, commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of his pastorate, October 5, 1856. He died in 1858.

I am unfeignedly humbled, though not a whit surprised, that people are not converted under my teaching; and it is always far from me to lay the blame on “the church,” and scold my communicants for the default. I should wonder if any good number should ever be awakened by me; and as a personal matter, own with abasement that I accept unfruitful ministry as an intelligible chastening for sin. Let me add — none of these things give me any freedom to press measures. I have no doubt, either joli or I could get up a stir in one week, which would fill a column of tabulated statistics. Ah me! I am sadly and increasingly unfit to work in the conventional traces. I utterly reject the entire pew-system — I speak of cities — as against the spirit of Christianity. But all my opinions are held too tremblingly for me ever to be a reformer. So I quietly and sorrowfully go on expounding those things I am sure about.

NEW YORK, April 17, 1856.

I shall not be surprised if you hear there is some awakening among my people. And so there unquestionably is — but only in one corner. The “Church,” to use the Yankee phrase, is not awakened at all. There are, all since I last wrote to you, appearances of converting influence in about seventeen persons. These have all been gradually led on for months, and some for years. Except where they are in the same households, they are almost all unknown to one another. I have not had any inquiry-meeting. Once I have met “those willing to be guided about seeking their salvation,” (writing down this form of notice, and reading it,) and thus have drawn to my house yesterday more than forty. With these I had no private talk, then, but expounded a Chapter. I am troubled as to whether I shall repeat even this. I have no additional meeting, as yet, and have not departed from my routine of lectures on Acts. It is a remarkable coincidence, that the meeting of Presbytery was almost a Bochim, and from beginning to end exhibited tenderness, humility, and affection on the part of ministers. I am dreading, beyond expression, the rise of a fanatical breeze among my church-members, and shall humbly endeavour to suppress rather than arouse human passions. You will understand me, better than anybody, when I say, I will, as at present advised, continue private address, but use no precipitating means. I even deprecate them. And so I feel about the whole affair. The way I am taking would be deemed a quenching of the spirit by sundry of my brethren. But I distrust every thing in revivalism, which is not common to it with the stated, continued, persistent presentation of the gospel.

224: WHILE PASTOK OF FIFTH AVENUE CHUECH.

NEW YORK, April 23, 1856.

I have nothing to change my opinion, that the inquiry among our people is lately discovered, but not lately produced. It was not an inquiry-meeting I held — but an exposition, and I had no private talk. I never met with the misapprehension you surmise. On that ground, we should never have a Bible Class, or a Young Men’s Meeting. Above all, the objection would lie against your taking a child into your study for advice and prayer, which would yet more suggest the esoteric scruple. Though I have no “inquiry -meeting,” I should make the having one a simple question of degree. If a “pastor cannot conveniently see them apart, 1 think it would be prudery not to see them together. As an instrument of excitement I have always feared them. I add but a few to the cases first known. But a very large proportion of my flock appears in the very state you mention, “in the place of the bringing forth of children.” All this winter I have preached doctrinally — in a disguised series — and chiefly about conviction, conversion, faith, &c. I generally conclude, after inter-. views, that this reluctancy (in truly serious persons) arises from dim views of doctrine, feeble grasp of the truth, legal notions of the preparation which they must see in themselves. New-measure people undertake to use instruments, and often kill the child. In spiritual as in natural travail, I suppose there must be much waiting. I hope we shall, May 11, add some sixteen.2

A Spaniard, a civilian from Madrid, is here, on Bible Society business; a thorough Protestant; says there are many such in Spain; considers the country on the verge of religious freedom; brings a liberal work of his own in sheets; explains the late vote in the Cortes very clearly, &c. I never before saw beauty in the pantomime of feature and hands. He speaks French fluently. “We parsons are often and justly rallied for being taken in; but every few days I find the same happening to sharp worldlings. A. wealthy merchant told me last night this anecdote: He had a large and costly set of china fraudulently taken from him by a woman. Not long after, this very woman got $100 from him for a charity, since exploded; at the very moment his suit against her was in progress.

1 “The trouble I have about the private meetings is the apparent admission that all the directions for ’ guiding those that are seeking salvation,’ are not given in the pulpit, and so countenancing the notion of some that there are esoteric instructions which they must get in some other than the ordinary way. Would it not be well to hold the inquiry-meet ing in the church? I mean, to make the regular services take the direction of the simplest colloquial advice.”

3 On that day 17 were admitted on examination; 7 on certificate.

NEW YORK, May 29, 1856.

The Assembly was dissolved last night, with exercises of a most touching character. It is the unusual opinion that no G. A. has been so edifying. From beginning to end there was no squabble, nor was one sarcasm uttered. No decision of the Chair was appealed from, and only one was questioned. All this, under God, was owing to the good sense and affectionate piety of Dr. McFarland, [the Moderator,] who has carried away both reverence and love. There was an absence of stars; but the average talent was uncommon. Probably no Assembly has had so many valuable laymen. The men most listened to were Thornwell, Rice, Peck, Marshall, D. Lord, Johns, Judge Leavitt, Judge Allen, Humphrey, Harrison. Welch, in Committees, and once on the floor, made his remarkable powers of mind known, and will be remembered as much as any one. The feeling of satisfaction, as to the way they have been treated, is very warmly and generally expressed. I never felt more complacent as to my church, and am grateful that a meeting for which I entertained such fears has turned out so much to the honour of religion and the satisfaction of all. The ablest speech, and one of the ablest I ever heard, for argument, adroitness, tact, style, elocution, and modest power, was Humphrey’s, on the Danville Seminary.

NEW YORK, June 10, 1856.

I own our desert of national judgments, and that the signs are alarming. Yet I think the present concussion is a temporary thing. The affair in Kansas 1 trust has reached its acme. A minister from the heart of the troubles has just left me; he is hopeful. The exaggerations of the journals are horrible. Such questions should never have been left to be settled by a border mob. Whatever Democracy may be in settled States, it is only strong government which can rule frontiers. Dr. Hodge has most admirably stated the slavery doctrine, in his Ephesians. Inter alia: “It is just as great a sin to deprive a slave of the just recompense for his labour, or to keep him in ignorance, or to take from him his wife or child, as it is to act thus towards a free man;” p. 369. How nobly this clear enunciation of a scriptural principle towers above all the extravagancies of both sides!

NEW YORK, June 21, 1^56.

I made my first acquaintance with Bridgeport (Connecticut) this week, having gone there to preach, and converse, and pray with Mrs. H.2 I dare not say it is the most beautiful place I

1 Aslibel Welch, Elder of Lambertsville, N. J.

2 He preached in Bridgeport, June 19; also June 27, July 10, and August 24.

VOL. II. — 10* ever saw, but I dare as little say the reverse. The railway passes far away from its surpassing rural villas. Mrs. H. is a wonder of knowledge, wisdom, humility, faith; every thing, in a word, which can glorify religion. I never had what seemed to me a holier sojourn. I propose to take part of my family to Bridgeport on the 27th to board for a week — maybe longer. Cases of awakening still drop in. Two new cases awaited my return yesterday.

No public route gives any idea of the English beauties of New England. The villages grow so into one another, in the south part of Connecticut, that men confidently predict a row of lamps a hundred miles east of our city, as they now are eight miles to Harlem.

NEWPORT, July 28, 1856.

I am to be addressed at “Cliff House, care Ch. T. Hazard.” There are thirty-six Mrs. Hazards in Newport. We are on the very beach or bank, only a broad field intervening between our yard and the cliffs, at whose base the sea breaks. Looking across a horse-shoe cove, on the left or north of which is the bathing beach, I see three points or capes, between which are two coves with their respective beaches. Beyond all, the village of Little Compton glitters in the sun. The waves are gently swaying without breaking, and the scene is very calm. In the sun it has been pretty warm to-day, but there is a breeze, and when ever we drive out in the evening we need an overcoat. The hot Friday, when New York and Philadelphia thermometers marked 1 00°, it was 74° all day on the Point, south of us. In the town, however, there is a good deal of glowing heat. The place at which we are is part of a tract, which Hazard has just lost by a decree in Chancery. The house in which I stay, was once rented by Longfellow and his friends. I have news of our Henry to within a week, by Mr. J. Auchincloss, who unexpectedly saw him on board of a propeller in Lake Superior. He and his companion have nearly disposed of the six boxes of Presbyterian books which they took on. The chief buyers have been the Cornishmen in the mines. He is in the land of the Dakotah, of Indian lodges, dog-trains, and snow shoes. Their journeys on foot, wth sacks on their backs, have been numerous. The time I spent in Bridgeport was very agreeable. It is a beautiful place, with pleasant drives around it. Stratford, Fairfield, and Greenfield Hill, are very charming. In no part of rural Connecticut do I see any of those marks of a degraded white population, which Southern orators say must appear where there is no servile class. On the contrary, I am more and more struck with the thrift and equalized comfort of the small yeomanry of Puritan New England. In this I do not include Rhode Island.

Several rather extraordinary instances of good done by simple reading of the Bible with inquirers have lately turned up in my ministry. Addison is writing on Acts, in my study, and printing also. A new Presbyterian Church is about to be organized at Deep River, (Say brook town,) Connecticut, under Mr. Connitt. I have nothing but what the papers will give you, concerning the terrible disaster to the “Empire State” near us on the 26th. Mr. Thayer preached an original and grand sermon yesterday on Self-conceit.

August 4. — The thermometer keeps about 76° on our Cliff, but it’ is pretty hot in town. People are very proud of thermometers which go higher and lower than their neighbours’. Thayer and Cheever yesterday. The latter strangely and uncouthly original and fascinating. He reached me deeply. Thayer’s sermon was great on “take heed how ye hear.” On or about August 14th, we go to Bristol, R. L, for a week; thence, perhaps, by a short detour to Bridgeport. The absence of common piety and religious feeling in society, is much more manifest here [New England] than with us. The spirit as well of hearing as of worship, seems gone. Politics, Abstinence, and Slavery, usurp the “sacred desk.”

NEW YORK, August 23, 1856.

I came here yesterday from Bridgeport, where I left my wife and child, and write from my own house, where, however, I do not expect my folks till September. I have some preaching yet to do in Connecticut, by which I may contribute somewhat to hold up the hands of the Presbyterian brethren. Through what we call an accident, there met at Henry’s table last night in 27th street all our brotherhood, except Archibald, making, with my Henry, six. When are we likely so to meet again! I trust your mother will rally, but every year brings its painful warnings at such an age. God grant her a blessed evening!

How ridiculously American is the scuffle of the Scientific Association at Albany about Constitution and By-laws!

The German Fremonters make infidelity and drink figure largely on their banners. In New England I found no Democrats, but sundry Fill more men. There is a feeling that he would conciliate.

I spent some days in Bristol, R. I.; from which place I think I wrote to your worship. It is a thorough wreck; grass every-

1 He preached in the Presbyterian Church of Hartford, August 31.

where literally growing in its broad, beautifully shaded Philadelphian streets. Numerous Cubans of wealth summer there. The harbour and surroundings are enchanting. They kept up slaving as late as 1816. A negro ghetto of Bristol is still named Goree. The aspect of interior New England is pleasing; from the total absence of any patent squalor. Mechanics everywhere live in houses a hundred per cent, above the same class in Pennsylvania or New Jersey. I wish our Calhounites could see that the small farmers of Connecticut have more comforts of civilization than many wealthy planters. The remaining of certain old Puritan habitudes is striking; such as a noon bell and curfew.

YORK, September 5, 1856.

I should have gladly kept my wife and boy a little longer in rural air; but we were made uncomfortable at Bridgeport, whither we came from Bristol, by overcrowding in the house, so we returned yesterday. There is no place like home. My pulpit has been very well occupied by the Rev. Mr. Myers, of St. Augustine. Congregations fair — though very few of our own people.

There is no harm in repeating, what I said in my last, how seriously 1 feel the tidings you give respecting your mother. It brings my own warmly before me. Not only were they mutual friends, but they were lovely “persons, long permitted to escape the uncomely accidents of old age, and carrying much of the sweet natural interest of girlhood into later years. Where shall we ever find such sympathy with us — especially in the minor trials of life 1 Who will ever so understand the little weaknesses of our character 1 If I go on much in this strain, I shall lose my composure; especially if I touch on other associations, more equal, and as strong. Let us bless God for such relations and affections. From what you say, I am prepared to hear something grave concerning your mother’s case. If it should ever be proper to do so, assure her of my love and prayers.

It is wonderful that the yellow-fever has moved so slowly. The ravages at Fort Hamilton and Governor’s Island have been great, in proportion to the subjects. At the former, two men fell yesterday at battalion-drill. Maj. Morris, the Commandant, married a Ritchie (nee Alexander) of the Delaware Fairfield family. He and his were in the midst of it before, at Tampico. It is too much to expect that it should not alight and spread in our Water-streets. If reports are true, there have been some

1 Water-street — a narrow, confined street, on the Delaware front of Philadelphia.

cases to-day. What a remarkable respite from cholera this year, all over the country!

My “heft,” as the Yankees say, has increased to 164 Ibs. At Hartford I visited with pleasure the only original portraits of Pres. Edwards and his saintly wife. They are in the Edwards family. I also saw the Charter-Oak lying in massive glory on the earth: “The Charter Oak,, it was the tree, that balked his sacred majesty.” I have never seen so much of the country and every day life of New England, as this summer, and it has been with increased respect. The average of domestic comfort and even refinement I believe to be unequalled in the world. We talk of Scotland, and justly; but Scotland has thousands of squalid peat-smoky hovels, where the best fare is oatmeal-porridge. There is nothing of this in Yankee-land, but by importation.

NEW YORK, September 17, 1856.

I am less surprised than pained by the tidings you give me. Requiescit in pace. My recollections go back with a sad pleasure to the old Sixth St. house. What friendly, long-continued, unvarying kindness to us and ours! What shadows flit along the back-ground — some friends and some only acquaintances — and how many gone!

It is a trial to me not to be able to go to the funeral of one of the truest friends I ever had. I have notice of an invalid passing through town, wrho makes an appointment with me for that very day; and the circumstances are important and delicate. You will now comprehend a feeling of family-headship, which comes heavily over one, upon the departure of a last surviving parent.

[I subjoin a letter written on the same afflicting event to a sister of my mother.]

NEW YORK, September 25, 1856.

It was impossible for me to hear of the departure of your beloved sister, without thinking very much of you. Few persons, even of the connexion, have been with her so constantly during her decline. Perhaps none on earth knew her better. Naturally, therefore, your sorrow must be great.

Among the consolatoins which you have so richly, one is the knowledge that our dear and valued friend was esteemed by so large a circle. No one of my whole acquaintance was ever more spared the deformities and disagreeable points of old age; in this resembling your father, whom I well remember, as the sweetest looking old gentleman I ever saw. Then you have the pleasing reflection for life, that it was placed in your power to minister with sisterly affection, in the dwelling and at the couch of one whom you loved. But, above all, we must be consoled by the bright hope which we entertain, concerning the present and future happiness of our deceased sister. Though a silent and humble, she was a sincere and a consistent Christian. Her trust was in the Divine Saviour of sinners, to the rejection of all self-righteous merits. This faith diffused serenity over her closing hours. Little as is revealed to us concerning the details of the eternal blessedness, we know that the souls of the righteous are with the Lord, and that those who are absent from the body are present with the Lord.

It is a source of great comfort to those of us who survive, that your sister was not content to cherish religious sentiments in her private thoughts, but spontaneously added herself to the Lord’s witnesses, by becoming a communicant in his Church.

How natural it is for our minds to go back to those who are gone! Where are our parents, and the religious teachers of our youth *? Where are our own companions 1 Well do I remem ber Mr. Hall, with that spare, and dignified, and gentle form which belonged to him. My dear friend, “The fashion of this world passeth away.” May we find grace to appear clad in the righteousness of Christ at his coming!

NEW YORK, September 30, 1856.

A letter of my father (1809) has turned up, in which he states that I had been at school a week. I remember it well; it was to “Madam Thomson,” in Lombard street, [Philadelphia.] A sort of self-pity always comes over me when I think of my days of childhood; I do not detect it so much in others. It seems to me I had more unuttered distresses than most children. How long a poor child will harbour an afflictive scruple about religion, which would have been instantly dissipated by disclosure!

Bush writes to me. He expatiates on the excellencies of Howe, Owen, and Burroughs, in precisely the terms which he would have used thirty years ago. My folks are coming in pretty fast, but many are yet absent. Mauch Chunk is looking for a pastor — not too young — man of experience; schedule of gifts — not this, not that. Webster lived and died on a stipend of $400. If it had not rained, a thousand carters were to have turned out last night for Fill more. Within a few weeks, I hear many more voices in this state (it is very hard to say “our state “) for Fillmore. Numerous private accounts speak well of Mr. Monsalvatge’s preaching and labours at Carthagena. He has a great body of young Granadans on his side. He has sent me several sermons, openly printed in the city newspapers. Mr.

Pratt, late of Princeton, writes encouragingly from Bogota. I forgot whether I wrote from Bristol about Mr. G., an accomplished Cuban gentleman, one of several persons of wealth who summer in Rhode Island. He was bred in Spain, and is an author. What is pleasing is, that he is a pious and courageous Protestant. Lecturing on .Acts xv. 1 — 35, I find it very tough to make that Council at Jerusalem a college of Bishops, or a General Assembly, or a Synod, or a Presbytery, or a Kirk-session, or an independent congregation. The common fiction of the Church having been organized on the plan of the Synagogue is “revolting” to me; incredulus odi. While the Apostles lived, they clearly had supreme authority, and they as clearly had no successors. Where they were not, Elders ordained by them had local and temporary rule. I have searched in vain for a single instance of one pastor tied to one congregation, or of the call of one congregation as necessary to orders. All the ministry, for what appears, was ministerium vagum, which the impugners of ordaining sine titulo do so eschew. My love to your environs. What a barbaric pomp about the crowning of the Czar!

P. S. October 2. — I retain the preceding in order to say that I will preserve the letters for you, and thank you for them. All these things carry one back — back! I like the allusion to the house in 6th street. The old Philadelphia carries a great charm in my recollections. I have the only severe cold I have had in three years, and do not see how I can do duty on Sunday. At my prompting Randolph gets out a book for Business Men. I chose the subject of Clerks, and what I have written on it will probably appear also as a little tractate.2 Your libretto and tract were received, and would have been reviewed by me but for the heavy pressure of the above, and of completing my MS. on Sunday Schools, which went to Philadelphia yesterday.3

1 Letters of his father.

2 “The Man of Business, considered in his various relations.” The contributors to this volume were Drs. Alexander, Sprague, Todd, Tyng, Ferris, and Stearns. Dr. Alexander’s subject is, “The Merchant’s Clerk Cheered and Counselled.” This chapter was afterwards reprinted by itself, and one person sold more than a thousand copies in the stores of New York, in about four weeks. In April, 1856, Randolph published McLaren’s Sermons on “Glorying in the Cross of Christ,” for which Dr. A. wrote an introduction.

3 “The American Sunday-School and its adjuncts. By James W. Alexander, D. D.;” published by” the American Sunday-School Union, 1856, 342 pages. In the preface he says:” More than forty years ago it was my lot .o sit on an humble form in one of the earliest Sunday-Schools set up in America. In process of time I became a teacher in similar institutions; and ever since my entrance upon the Gospel ministry I have counted it an honor to work collaterally in the same cause. In attempting to promote the same ends, I have constructed and launched from the presses which now

NEW YORK, November 19, 1856.

The young woman gives very good satisfaction, and appears to like her place. She went away for one day and night without my leave. She appears to be steady and industrious; good at mending and at washing up tea-things. My wife has said nothing about baking or ironing. It is our wish to keep her during the winter.

My sprained foot is not much better, though I go about. Thanksgiving sermon adds a somewhat to the week’s writing. I intend to touch on the importance of our being united in peace with all English-speaking people. My text is Deut. xxxii. 8, to word “Adam” inclusive. Sprague’s book2 is both valuable and entertaining. I like it all the better for the number and brevity of the articles. Some of them are quite in the manner of the late Joseph Miller, Esq. If you have not read Trench’s “English Past and Present,” it will give you a pleasant half-hour. What a wonderful fall we have had, for fine weather! Greatly do I feel the deprivation of walking freely, and more than ever do I sympathize with those who halt alway. Strange talk this in the papers, as if the Southern fire-eaters would not vote for Buchanan, unless after some ultra pledges on his part. I hope and pray he may give none. Dr. McCartee has come into our Presbytery, and taken the Westminster Church in 22d street. Some sermons, which I have on hand, (having preached about eight,) will perhaps grow into a book on Faith. Robinson’s [Palestine] new impression puts the former three into two volumes, and adds a new third. Stewart’s Brazil is not very lively, but full of information. Brazil must be a horrible country, as Portuguese is a horrible lingo. The Hungarian officer, who formerly appeared in Trenton, awakens my pity; he is now in abject mendicity — a handsome soldierly fellow too. It is a dreadful thing to be an exile in poverty. The thought is good for Thanksgiving Day.

NEW YORK, January 2, 1857. January 1st is a dies non with us, except in regard of calls,

produce the present work, more than thirty trifles, which, ’ for better for worse,’ have gone sailing out upon the ocean of print, some to be high and dry on the strand of oblivion, and some to be still floating on the wave, protected, like the paper-nautilus, by their very frailty.” The object of this work is to prove the necessity and duty of providing for general religious education, and to show how this end is promoted by Sunday-Schools and religious reading.

1 This pleasantry refers to a visit from one of his correspondent’s children.

3 “Annals of the American Pulpit,” vols. 1 and 2.

so I now wish for you and yours a happy New Year. We had 175 calls. I am told Dr. Spring sometimes has 300. Holten’s New Granada is a very entertaining book, in some places a little free. He lets you well into Granadan manners and customs. I

do not see that differs materially from Wright and Garrison,

save in decorum of language, when in his late book on Slavery he says: “Unless the Bible teaches my doctrine about slavery, it is not of God.” A member of my church has been spending A year in North Wales. He hired a furnished house, library, &c., of ample size, with about twenty acres of pleasure-ground, for £200. The whole stood within a walled park of 400 acres, as good as his, and well-kept. He had half-a-mile of wall, ten feet high, for wall-fruit, and had every sort of fruit in plenty. In consequence of the low rent, wages, &c., he calculates that he did not add a penny to his year’s expenses, though he includes the transportation, to and fro, of ten persons.

A soliciting missionary from Port Natal in South Africa, is here; a fairspoken Scot, named Campbell. Prof. Owen of this city is about to come out with a commentary on the Gospels. He is of the Free Academy.

I lately attended high mass for the soul of Father Andrade, and saw about ten priests officiating. The incense is scarcely more than nominal. In my day, we used to get a very tolerable sniff; and in Paris, I think, I saw a dozen censers going all in a row, with a dexterous perpendicular hoist, which it must take some time to learn. Our motto for 1857 is: “Rejoice ever more.” x

I have arrived at the 16th chapter of Acts in my exposition. Sometimes I wish no other sort of preaching had been invented. I wish I knew more about the Doverites, Derbyites, or Plymouth brethren. They seem to have made much progress among the French Protestants. An odd fish has applied to me for my life towards his “Eloquent Divines,” about to appear. I have refused and derided, but experiences teach that this is no protection. This is the seventh letter at this sitting, and some of them more lengthy; this, therefore, can only be strengthy, as is the regard of, Sir, your friend and subscriber.

1 His sermon on the year-text was usually preached at the afternoon ser vice of the first Sunday in the year. The morning service of that day had usually a reference to the annual collection made at that time for Foreign Missions. The collection on Jan. 2, 1857, amounted to $7,000. In the preceding month, the collection for Domestic Missions had been nearly $1,000. In February, 1857, the collection for the Board of Education was $!-,(>< po; in May, for Sunday-Schools, $1,300; in November, for the Bible Society, $2,600.

NEW YORK, March 9, 1857.

Louis Napoleon has introduced a new kind of state-paper, racy as a vaudeville; it is too witty. Addison calls my attention to flie remarkable revolution, which, under the Palmerston rule, is going on in the English sees, in favour of Evangelicalism. Both archbishops and the three leading bishops are now on that side. I find “grand-daughter” in Webster and Worcester; the only authorities I have.2 Mr. B., of Leavenworth, Kansas, writes to me that the new houses building there, are “hundreds.” He also says, if things go on so for two years, that the region 200 miles west of the east border will be the most thickly peopled portion of the Western States. Mr. M. bought $500 worth of land on the site of Milwaukee, thirteen years ago. Its sworn value now is $400,000. The Ferguson who wrote “America by Rail and Steam,” is a banker and a deacon of Dr. Hamilton’s. He has been here on a second visit.

There is something very striking in the prayer, with which St. Augustine commonly closed his sermons: “Conversi ad Dominum, Deum, £atrem omnipotentem, pure corde, Ei, quan tum potest parvitas nostra, maximas atque uberes gratias agamus: precantes toto animo singularem mansuetudinem ejus, ut preces nostras in beneplacito suo exaudire dignetur; inimicum quoque a nostris actibus et cogitationibus sua virtute expellat, nobis multiplicet fidem, mentem gubernet, spirituales cogitationesconcedat, et ad beatitudinem suam perducat: per Jesum Chris tum Filium suum, Dominum nostrum, qui cum eo vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus sancti Deus, per omnia ssecula sajculorum. Amen.” It is beautiful Latin, and much more fall of matter than “a Prayer of St. Chrysostom.” 3 Its first words, with an u &c.,” so often close the “Conciones,” that I presume he always used it. Augustine is the only father of whom I read much; and the more I read, the more I perceive that if you leave out predestination and justification by faith, his scheme, and that of the Catholic Church of his day, was just that which Pusey would restore. Nothing can be more garbled and misleading, than the centos given by Milner.4

1 I suppose the allusion is to the Emperor’s speech, at the opening of the Chambers in 1857. The “wit” must be in the sentence where, in reference to the inundations, it is said: “I make it a point of honor, that in France rivers, like revolutions, must return to their beds, or that they must not leave them.”

2 I had insisted that such a purist as he should follow the old standard dictionaries, which give but one d in this word.

3 In the u Book of Common Prayer.”

4 In the New York “Journal of Commerce,” of March 10, there is a free translation, with comments, from Horace, Ode 24, Book 3, in application to the vices of the age, which I think I cannot be mistaken in attributing to Dr. Alexander.

NEW YORK, April 27, 1857.

Addison preached for me yesterday, though I think I could have preached once myself. My chief annoyance is a difficulty of breathing, oppression, or strangling sensation, which comes on at times, and especially at night. While Hugh Miller’s new book2 contains lots of things which I do not believe, it has some — many — of the sublimest views respecting creation and redemption, that I ever met with. Some of his sweeps of high description are inimitable. Yet he always says ere for before, and mayhap for perhaps. The biographies by Macaulay, in several numbers of Harper, are worth reading; they are from the last (Sth) edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In a life of Sir II. Davy, by Rogers, it is said, (1812, &c.:)” A certain change (it must Mrith regret be owned) came over his state of mind, tarnished his serenity, and gradually, though imperceptibly, weakened his scientific zeal. It was to be ascribed solely, we believe, to the severe ordeal of exuberant but heartless popularity, which he underwent in London. The flatteries of fashionable life by

degrees attached Davy to the fashionable world, and loosened his ties to the laboratory, which had been to him the sole and fit scene of his triumphs.” We have a cold easterly drizzle — as et-more wind than rain. Addison visited his native house on is birthday, and ate an ice-cream in what was my father’s study. I distinctly remember the day J. A. A. was born.8

When Peter Cunningham shall have digested all Walpole’s Letters into one chronological series, with the promised notes, it will be the richest collection of gossip in the world. Some one of my congregation visits the Holy Land, every year, at least. Lord Napier is surveying our town.

I have seldom been more pained by a thing of the kind than by your account of S., [lost at sea.] Poor little S.! We remem ber him as coming into our sick chamber in Sth street [Philadelphia] to show his little fat leg. Poor mother! I earnestly hope she will have spiritual indemnity. Mrs. H. was buried yesterday. She was free from extreme suffering towards the last. Mr. J., a good friend of ours, has died of dreadful disease of the heart. How voluminous would be the list of the dead

1 On the 9th April he had written: “I am laboring under a very painful irritation of throat and fauces.” He was able to preach but twice in April, and four times in May. His cough had then become so threatening, that a voyage seemed to* be the only resort that promised permanent relief.

3 “The Testimony of the Rocks.”

3 The house was in Lombard street, Philadelphia; the date was April 24, 1309.

’
In
whom we have known; and how strangely some of them pass
out of mind!

Dr. B. used to read Voltaire as the best Christians read the Bible. Mrs. B. often said to me that the only comfort she had was in going to church, and that she looked forward to this all the week. I have often pondered on this and hoped it mi<iht prove to be the case with many whom we overlook in estimating the value of Divine service.

There is a certain point at which a man’s mishaps operate against him, much as if they were moral delinquencies.

NEW YORK, May 26, 1857.

To-morrow, it may be presumed, will be too busy for writing. I take to-day therefore for farewells to you and all your house.

My address is: W. A. and G. Maxwell & Co., Liverpool?

Every thing preparative has been ordered very favourably.

There is something serious in such separations, which I feel just now j in better moments we will remember one another.2

1 Dr. Alexander, accompanied by his wife and youngest child, embarked in the steamer Baltic, for Liverpool, May 27th.

2 The frequent allusions which have occurred in the letters of this and other chapters, to their writer’s interest in the American Tract Society, will make acceptable the following notice communicated to me by the Rev. Dr. Hallock, one of its Secretaries:

“The memory of Dr. James “W. Alexander is precious to the Executive Committee and officers of the American Tract Society. As his father, Dr. Archibald Alexander, was, from the formation of the Society in 1825 till his death in 1851, an unwavering friend, supporter, and counsellor, making valuable contributions to the list of its publications by his pen, and acting for three years as a member of its Publishing Committee, so the son, in similar relations and by almost all the same means, gave the Society his cordial and efficient co-operation.

“When, in 1842, a public deliberative meeting of the Society’s Board and friends was held for three days in the Broadway Tabernacle, Dr. James W. Alexander, who was then at Princeton, communicated an able document on a momentous topic, with the bearing of which his wide range of reading and observation made him familiar, ‘THE EVILS OF AN UNSANCTIFIED LITER ATURE.’ The document was read to the meeting by the Rev. Dr. Potts, and was published in a volume comprising ten other documents presented at that meeting, and a record of its proceedings.

“In 1845, when Dr. Archibald Alexander retired from his labours as a member of the Society’s Publishing Committee, Dr. James W. Alexander, who was then pastor in New York, was elected as his successor; and fulfilled the duties of the office for three years, when the pressure of his official duties in the ministry compelled him to retire, and the Rev. Dr. Magie succeeded him in that office.

“Dr. James W. Alexander, soon after the establishment of the American Messenger, in 1842, commenced writing for it valuable but anonymous articles, which were continued, from time to time, to the number of thirty or forty articles, all on great and momentous themes pertaining to the common salvation. In this way alone, addressing each month not far from two hundred thousand families, he conveyed messages of Christian love to millions of men quite beyond the reach of his preaching or other written works.

“The Society published in their series his excellent tract on Revivals of Religion; showing that by true revivals of religion God is glorified, the plan of redemption accomplished, the Church raised to its highest prosperity, and that such an extension of the Church is demanded by the present state of our nation; embodying, with singular discernment, a brief, comprehensive sketch of the history of revivals from Apostolic days.

“The Society also publish his volume of seventeen revival tracts, originally issued under the modest title of “Wayside Books,” in successive numbers during the progress of the revival of 1858, when, in his high position as pastor of the church in the Fifth Avenue, he wished not only to benefit his own people, but others, by bearing his testimony in favour of the good work, but to give individual souls in the various stages of awakening or quickening under Divine influence, the needed instruction, counsel, and guidance.

“The very titles of these seventeen tracts (one of them written by an intimate fellow-labourer in the ministry) show their high evangelical character and aim, and the wide range of usefulness to which they are adapted, and in which they will doubtless long continue to give what may be almost regarded as their author’s dying testimony to the truth and excellency of the gospel of Christ. They are: The Revival; Seek to Save Souls; Pray for the Spirit; The TJnawakened; Harden not your Heart; Varieties in Anxious Inquiry; Looking unto Jesus; God be. merciful to me a Sinner; 0 for more Feeling; Have I come to Christ? My Teacher, my Master; My Brother; Sing Praises; The Harvest of New York; Compel them to Come in; Help the Seaman; To Firemen.

“As counsellors in all questions of doubt and perplexity, Dr. James W. Alexander and his father were uncommon men — single-hearted, far-seeing, calm, practical, judicious — and favoured was the friend, the, benevolent institution, the congregation, the church, or the community, who could resort to them and receive their heaven-guided lessons of wisdom. Pleasant were they on earth, and it is a cheering anticipation that we may meet them with all the redeemed in the world above.”