Thomas Shepard, Pilgrim Father and Founder of Harvard

2-8 HERE is natural religion and there
is revealed religion, and there is
national religion and there is
family religion, and they are all
good so far as they go. But the
only soul-saving religion is the religion of a
personal and a spiritual experience.

Thomas Shepard has been one of my favourite authors ever since the year 1861 when my honoured friend Dr. Williamson of Huntly wrote my name on his own copy of the Parable of the Ten Virgins. I think I must have read Shepard quite as often as Spurgeon had read Bunyan; quite as often at any rate as Jowett had read Boswell. And I am still reading Shepard as if I had never read him before. As a proof of that take this little confidence of mine. The week before my last short holiday I had read Professor Churton Collins’s delightful paper on The Tempest that appeared in the Contemporary Review for the month of January

last. And so impressed was I with the learned

Professor’s paper that I took to the country with me Dr. Furness’s variorum and monumental edition of that exquisite work, promising myself a great revel over the great text and over the rich mass of explanatory and illustrative notes. But would you believe it? with such a temptation lying on my table all the time I never once opened the seductive volume. For as God would have it, as John Bunyan was wont to say, I had taken Thomas Shepard also with me and I read the Parable, and the Sound Believer, and the Sincere Convert, and the Saint’s Jewel, and the Select Cases, and the Spiritual Experiences over and over again; execrable English and all. And instead of repenting myself for my neglect of Shakespeare and his monumental editor, I came home thanking God again for His notable servant Shepard. And more than that, I came home more settled and resolved than ever to do all I can to make you know something of Shepard’s matchlessly pungent lessons in spiritual and experimental religion. And I took out of my desk and read again to reassure me a postcard bearing the Aberdeen postmark, which I received some years ago and which runs thus: ‘A thousand thanks for pressing Thomas Shepard on our attention. After long looking for it, I have at last got a copy of the Parable, and I can scarcely lay it down. It is proving itself a very book of life to me. This is the preaching that our day needs. — A Free Cuurcu Minister.’

I daresay you will remember that I was always besieging you to buy and to read and to read all your days, as also to distribute, the Pzlgrim’s Progress and the Grace Abounding. But you will have perfect peace of mind concerning Thomas Shepard and his works. For I shall never ask one of you to spend one penny on Shepard, such is his atrocious English. Bunyan and Shepard are at one in the deepest things, but they stand at opposite poles in the matter of their English style. Shepard at his very best wrote an all but unrecognisable English. But after the New England printers and then the Aberdeen printers had put Shepard’s best book through their hands, if hands they could be called, Shepard came forth absolutely unreadable, unless to a few resolved and relentless and irresistible readers, such as Mrs. Black of Dunnikier Manse, and Dr. Foote of Brechin, and Dr. Williamson, and myself. Much as I respect William Greenhill’s judgment, I cannot follow him when he says of Shepard that ‘here is a cornfield without cockle or thorns or thistles.’ I know what Greenhill means when he says all that, and I wholly subscribe to his deep meaning. But if I were to repeat his words without some warning, you might be led into advertising for the old book which you would no sooner open than you would throw it down in disgust and in indignation both at Shepard and at Greenhill and at me. ‘ Polybius,’ says Dr. Butcher, ‘ pays the penalty attaching to neglect of form; he is read by few.” At the same time I will say this.

As we find Principal Rendall quite frankly acknowledging the heavy cramped vocabulary, and the deadness of expression, and the formless monotony of clause that all combine to weigh down the First Book of Marcus Aurelius: while at the same time he stands up against Matthew Arnold when that critic says that the Emperor’s style lacks distinction and physiognomy, so will I stand up for Shepard’s distinction and for his physiognomy. The truth is while repeating and exaggerating all the stoic Emperor’s faults of style, Shepard’s mental countenance is even more unmistakable to me than is that of the royal author of the immortal Thoughts. There is no possibility of our ever mistaking a page or a paragraph or even a sentence of Thomas Shepard’s. Not only because of its unparalleled shapelessness but much more because of its Paul-like hands and feet. For Shepard, once he has got on your track, will follow hard after you all your days. And once he gets a real hold of you, you will never be able for long to shake him off again. But when all is said that can be said about Shepard’s sluggard’s-garden of a style, if you will go with me into the resolved study of this great Puritan I will promise you many a sweet and fragrant flower out of his crannied and crumbling walls, and many a medicinal herb out of his stoniest places, and many a cup of wine well refined out of his most gnarled or crabbed vinestocks. Just gird up your loins and come with me and see if it is not so. And as the saintly David Brainerd says, ‘we shall see what passed for soul-saving religion with that so excellent and so venerable Pilgrim Father ‘Thomas Shepard, the author of the Sownd Convert, the Spiritual Experiences, and the Parable Unfolded.’

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