CHAPTER XIII.
PEACEABLE FRUIT. 1873-1874.
I.
Effect of spiritual Conflict upon her religious Life. Overflowing
Affections. Her Husband called to Union Theological Seminary. Baptism of
Suffering. The Character of her Friendships. No perfect Life. Prayer.
"Only God can satisfy a Woman." Why human Friendship is a Snare.
Letters.
The trouble which had so long weighed upon her heart, crossed with her the threshold of 1873, but long before the close of the year it had in large measure passed away. Such suffering, however, always leaves its marks behind; and when complicated with ill-health or bodily weakness, often lingers on after its main cause has been removed. It was so in her case; she was, perhaps, never again conscious of that constant spiritual delight which she had once enjoyed. But if less full of sunshine, her religious life was all the time growing deeper and more fruitful, was centering itself more entirely in Christ and rising faster heavenward. Its sympathies also became, if possible, still more tender and loving. Her whole being, indeed, seemed to gather new light and sweetness from the sharp discipline she had been passing through. Even when most tried and tempted, as has been said, she had kept her trouble to herself; few of her most intimate friends knew of its existence; to the world she appeared a little more thoughtful and somewhat careworn, but otherwise as bright as ever. But now, at length, the old vivacity and playfulness and merry laugh began to come back again. Never did her heart glow with fresher, more ardent affections. In a letter to a young cousin, who was moving about from place to place, she says:
I shall feel more free to write often, if you can tell me that the postmaster at C. forwards your letters from the office at no expense to you, as he ought to do. It is very silly in me to mind your paying three cents for one of my love-letters, but it's a Payson trait, and I can't help it, though I should be provoked enough if you did mind paying a dollar apiece for them. There's consistency for you! Well, I know, and I'm awfully proud of it, that you'll get very few letters from as loving a fountain as my heart is. I've got enough to drown a small army—and sometimes when you're homesick, and cousin-Lizzy-sick, and friend-sick, I shall come to you, done up in a sheet of paper, and set you all in a breeze.
Her letters during the first half of this year were few, and relate chiefly to those aspects of the Christian life with which her own experience was still making her so familiar. "God's plan with most of us," she wrote to Mrs. Humphrey, "appears to be a design to make us flexible, twisting us this way and that, now giving, now taking; but always at work for and in us. Almost every friend we have is going through some peculiar discipline. I fancy there is no period in our history when we do not need and get the sharp rod of correction. The thing is to grow strong under it, and yet to walk softly." "I do not care how much I suffer," she wrote to a friend, "if God will purge and purify me and fit me for greater usefulness. What are trials but angels to beckon us nearer to Him! And I do hope that mine are to be a blessing to some other soul, or souls, in the future. I can't think suffering is meant to be wasted, if fragments of bread created miraculously, were not." She studied about this time with great interest the teaching of Scripture concerning the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The work of the Spirit had not before specially occupied her thoughts. In her earlier writings she had laid but little stress upon it—not because she doubted its reality or its necessity, but because her mind had not been led in that direction. Stepping Heavenward is full of God and of Christ, but there is in it little express mention of the Spirit and His peculiar office in the life of faith. When this fact was brought to her notice she herself appeared to be surprised at it, and would gladly have supplied the omission. To be sure, there is no mention at all of the Holy Spirit in several of the Epistles of the New Testament; but a carefully-drawn picture of Christian life and progress, like Stepping Heavenward, would, certainly, have been rendered more complete and attractive by fuller reference to the Blessed Comforter and His inspiring influences.
To a young Friend, New York, Jan. 8, 1873.
I feel very sorry for you that you are under temptation. I have been led, for some time, to pray specially for the tempted, for I have learned to pity them as greater sufferers than those afflicted in any other way. For, in proportion to our love to Christ, will be the agony of terror lest we should sin and fall, and so grieve and weary Him. "One sinful wish could make a hell of heaven"; strong language, but not too strong, to my mind. I can only say, suffer, but do not yield. Sometimes I think that silent, submissive patience is better than struggle. It is sweet to be in the sunshine of the Master's smile, but I believe our souls need winter as well as summer, night as well as day. Perhaps not to the end; I have not come to that yet, and so do not know; I speak from my own experience, as far as it goes. Temptation has this one good side to it: it keeps us down; we are ashamed of ourselves, we see we have nothing to boast of. I told you, you will perhaps remember, that you were going to enter the valley of humiliation in which I have dwelt so long, but I trust we are only taking it in our way to the land of Beulah. And how we "pant to be there"! What a curious friendship ours has been! and it is one that can never sever—unless, indeed, we fall away from Christ, which may He in mercy forbid!… I do pray for you twice every day, and hope you pray for me. I do long so to know the truth and to enter into it. Certainly I have got some new light during the last year, in the midst of my trials, both within and without.
To another young friend she writes a few days later:
I remember when I was, religiously, at your age I was longing for holiness, but my faith staggered at some of the conditions for it. I had no conception, much as Christ was to me, what He was going to become. But I wish I could make you a birth-day present of my experience since then, and you could have Him now, instead of learning, as I had to learn Him, in much tribulation.
To Mrs. Condict, Jan. 15, 1873.
I have been meaning, for some days, to write you about the Professorship. [1] It is a new one, and is called "the Skinner and McAlpine" chair, and Mr. Prentiss says there could not be a more agreeable field of usefulness. It is most likely that he will feel it to be his duty to accept. As to myself, I am about apathetic on the subject. My will has been broken over the Master's knee, if I may use such an expression, by so much suffering, that I look with indifference on such outward changes. We can be made willing to be burnt alive, if need be. For four or five years to come I shall not be obliged to leave the church I love so dearly; if the Seminary is moved out to Harlem, it will be different; but it is not worth while to think of that now. It seems to me that Mr. P. has reached an age when, never being very strong, a change like this may be salutary. February 3d.—You will be sorry to hear that dear Mrs. C. is quite sick. Her daughters are all worn out with the care of her. I was there all day Saturday, but I can do nothing in the way of night watching; nor much at any time. A very little over-exertion knocks me up this winter. It is just as much as I can do to keep my head above water…. Sometimes I think that the dreadful experience I have been passing through is God's way of baptizing me; some have to be baptized with suffering. Certainly He has been sitting as the Refiner, bringing down my pride, emptying me of this and that, and not leaving me a foot to stand on. If it all ends in sanctification I don't care what I suffer. Though cast down, I am not in despair.
It is an encouragement to hear Mahan compare states of the soul to house-cleaning time. [2] It is just so with me. Every chair and table, every broom and brush is out of place, topsy-turvy…. But I can't believe God has been wasting the last two years on me; I can't help hoping that He is answering my prayer, my cry for holiness—only in a strange way. Dr. and Mrs. Abbot spent Sunday and Monday with us a week ago, and I read to them Dr. Steele's three tracts and lent them Mahan. They were much interested, but I do not know how much struck. I can not smile, as some do, at Dr. Steele's testimony. I believe in it fully and heartily. If I do not know what it is to "find God real," I do not know anything. Never was my faith in the strongest doctrines of Christianity stronger than it is now.
Feb. 13th.—I spent part of yesterday in reading Stepping Heavenward! You will think that very strange till I add that it was in German; and, as the translator has all my books, I wanted to know whether she had done this work satisfactorily before authorising her to proceed with the rest. She has omitted so much, that it is rather an abridgment than a translation; otherwise it is well done. But she has so purged it of vivacity, that I am afraid it will plod on leaden feet, if it plods at all, heavenward. And now I must hurry off to my sewing-circle.
To a young Friend, April 4, 1873.
I want to correct any mistaken impression I have made on you in conversation. The utmost I meant to say was, that I had got new light intellectually, or theologically, on the subject of the working of the Spirit. In the sense in which I use the words "baptism of the Holy Ghost," I certainly do not consider that I have received it. I think it means perfect consecration…. Thus far, no matter what people profess, I have never come into close contact with any life that I did not find more or less imperfect. I find, in other words, the best human beings fallible, and very fallible. The best I can say of myself is, that I see the need of immense advances in the divine life. I find it hard to be patient with myself when I see how far I am from reaching even my own poor standard; but if I do not love Christ and long to please Him, I do not love anybody or anything. And if I have talked less to you on these sacred subjects this winter, it has been partly owing to my seeing less of you, and an impalpable but real barrier between us which I have not known how to account for, but which made me cautious in pushing religion on you. Young people usually have their ups and downs and fluctuations of feeling before they settle down on to fixed principles, paying no regard to feeling, and older Christians should bear with them, make allowance for this, and never obtrude their own views or experiences. I think you will come out all right. Satan will fight hard for you, and perhaps for a time get the upper hand; but I believe the Lord and Master will prevail. Perhaps we are never dearer to Him than when the wings on which we once flew to Him, hang drooping and broken at our side, and we have to make our weary way on foot.
I am always thankful to have my heart stirred and warmed by Christian letters or conversation; always glad to see any signs of the presence of the Holy Spirit at work in a human soul. But never force yourself to write or talk of spiritual things; try rather to get so full of Christ that mention of Him shall be natural and spontaneous.
To the Same, April 15, 1873.
I have just been reading the sermon of Dr. Hopkins on prayer you sent me. It sounds just like him. I think his brother and mine (by marriage) would have treated the subject just as logically and far more practically; still, under the circumstances, that was not desirable. As to myself, I would rather have the simple testimony of some unknown praying woman, who is in the habit of "waiting" on God, than all the theological discussions in the world. The subject, as you know, is one of deep interest to me.
I have not answered your letter, because I was not quite sure what it was best to say. During the winter I was not sure what had come between us, and thought it best to let time show; and I have been harassed and perplexed by certain anxieties, with which it did not seem necessary to trouble you, to a degree that may have given me a preoccupied manner. There have been points where I wanted a divine illumination which I did not get. I wanted to hear, "This is the way, walk in it"; but that word has not come yet, and almost all my spiritual life has been running in that one line, keeping me, necessarily, out of sympathy with everybody. As far as this has been a fault, it has reacted upon you, to whom I ought to have been more of a help. But I can say that it delights me to see you even trying to take a step onward, and to know that while still young, and with the temptations of youth about you, you have set your face heavenward. Your temptations, like mine, are through the affections. "Only God can satisfy a woman"; and yet we try, every now and then, to see if we can't find somebody else worth leaning on. We never shall, and it is a great pity we can not always realise it. I never deliberately make this attempt now, but am still liable to fall into the temptation. I am sure that I can never be really happy and at rest out of or far from Christ, nor do I want to be. Getting new and warm friends is all very well, but I emerge from this snare into a deepening conviction that I must learn to say, "None but Christ."… Now, dear ——, it is a dreadful thing to be cold towards our best Friend'; a calamity if it comes upon us through Satan; a sin and folly if it is the result of any fault or omission of our own. There is but one refuge from it, and that is in just going to Him and telling Him all about it. We can not force ourselves to love Him, but we can ask Him to give us the love, and sooner or later He will. He may seem not to hear, the answer may come gradually and imperceptibly, but it will come. He has given you one friend at least who prays for your spiritual advance every day. I hope you pray thus for me. Friendship that does not do that is not worth the name. April 17th.—Of course, I'll take the will for the deed and consider myself covered with "orange blossoms," like a babe in the wood. And it is equally of course that I was married with lots of them among my lovely auburn locks, and wore a veil in point lace twenty feet long.
I have had several titles given me in Dorset—among others, a "child of nature"—and last night I was shown a letter in which (I hope it is not wicked to quote it in such a connexion) I am styled "a Princess in Christ's Kingdom." Can you cap this climax?
* * * * *
II.
Goes to Dorset. Christian Example. At Work among her Flowers. Dangerous
Illness. Her Feeling about Dying. Death an "Invitation" from Christ.
"The Under-current bears Home." "More Love, More love!" A Trait of
Character. Special Mercies. What makes a sweet Home. Letters.
Early in June, accompanied by the three younger children, she went to Dorset. This change always put her into a glow of pleasurable emotion. Once out of the city, she was like a bird let loose from its cage. In a letter to her husband, dated "Somewhere on the road, five o'clock P.M.," she wrote: "M. is laughing at me because, Paddy-like, I proposed informing you in a P. S. that we had reached Dorset; as if the fact of mailing a letter there could not prove it. So I will take her advice and close this now. I feel that our cup of mercies is running over. We ought to be ever so good! And I am ever so loving!" "We are all as gay as larks," she wrote a few days later; and in spite of heat, drought, over-work and sickness, she continued in this mood most of the summer. But while "gay as a lark," she was also grave and thoughtful. Her delight in nature seemed only to increase her interest in divine things and her longing to be like Christ. In a letter to one of her young friends, having spoken of prayer as "the greatest favor one friend can render another," she adds:
But perhaps I may put one beyond it—Christian example. I ought to be so saintly, so consecrated, that you could not be with me and not catch the very spirit of heaven; never get a letter from me that did not quicken your steps in the divine life. But while I believe the principle of love to Christ is entrenched in the depths of my soul, the emotion of love is hot always in that full play I want it to be. No doubt He judges us by the principle He sees to exist in us, but we can't help judging ourselves, in spite of ourselves, by our feelings. At church this morning my mind kept wandering to and fro; I thought of you about twenty times; thought about my flowers; thought of 501 other things; and then got up and sang
"I love Thy kingdom, Lord,"
as if I cared for that and nothing else. What He has to put up with in me! But I believe in Him, I love Him, I hate everything in my soul and in my life that is unlike Him. I hope the confession of my shortcomings won't discourage you; it is no proof that at my age you will not be far beyond such weakness and folly as often carry me away captive…. As far as earthly blessings go I am as near perfect happiness as a human being can be; everything is heaped on me. What I want is more of Christ, and that is what I hope you pray that I may have.
To another young friend she writes, June 12th:
We have varied experiences, sick or well, and the discipline of a heart not perfectly satisfied with what it gets from God, often alternates with the peace of which you speak as just now yours. What a blessed thing this "very peace of God" is! There is no earthly joy to be compared with it. But to go patiently on without it, when it is not given, is, I think, a great achievement; for instance, if I held no communication with you for a year, would it not be a wonderful proof of your love to and faith in me, if you kept on writing me and telling me your joys and trials? To go back—I have been a good deal confused by the contradictory testimony of different Christians, and am driven more and more to a conviction that human beings, at the best, are very fallible. We must get our light directly from on high. At the same time we influence each other for right or for wrong, and one who is thoroughly upright and true, will, unconsciously, influence and help those about him…. I am enjoying, as I always do, having the three younger children close about me here, and all sleeping on my floor. We are really like four children, continually frolicking together. We are all crowded now into my den, and I wish you were here with us to be the "fifth kitten." Did you ever read that story?
To Mrs. Catherine G. Leeds, Dorset, July 12, 1873.
It was ever so kind in you to let us share in your relief and pleasure, and we unite in affectionate congratulations to you all. I do hope this new and precious treasure will be spared to his dear mother, and grow up to be her stay and staff years hence. It is the nicest thing in the world to have a baby. What marvels they are in every respect, but especially in their royal power over us!
In spite of the dry weather we have had a pleasant summer, so far. Just before we entirely burned up and turned to tinder, showers came to our relief, and our gardens are putting on some faint smiles and making some promises. I did not allow a drop of water to be wasted for weeks; dish-water, soap-suds, dairy water, everything went to my flower-beds, and each night, after Mr. Prentiss came, a barrel-full was carted up from the pond for me; how many the rest used I don't know. Disposing of such a load has not been blessed to my health, and I have had to draw in my horns a little, but M. and I work generally like two day-laborers for the wages we get, and those wages are flowers here, there and everywhere, to say nothing of ferns, brakes, mosses, scarlet berries, and the like. And when flowers fail we fall back on different shades of green; the German ivy being relieved by a background of dark foliage, or light grasses against grave ones; and when we hit on any new combination, each summons the other to be lost in admiration. And when we are too sore and stiff from weeding, grass-shearing or watering, we fall to framing little pictures, or to darning stockings, which she does so beautifully that it has become a fine art with her, or I betake myself to the sewing-machine and stitch for legs that seem to grow long by the minute.
What the rest of the family are about meanwhile, I can not exactly say. Mr. Prentiss sits in a chair with an umbrella over his head, and pulls up a weed now and then, and then strolls off with a straw in his mouth; he also drives off sometimes on foraging expeditions, and comes back with butter, eggs, etc., and on hot days takes a bath where a stream of cold water dashes over him; "splendid" he says, and "horrid" I say. The boys are up to everything; they are carpenters, and plumbers, and trouters, and harnessers, and drivers; H. has just learned to solder, and saves me no little trouble and expense by stopping leakages; heretofore every holey vessel had to be sent out of town. Both boys have gardens and sell vegetables to their father at extraordinary prices, and they are now filling up a deep ditch 500 feet long at a "York shilling" an hour—men get a "long shilling" and do the work no better. With the money thus made they buy tools of all sorts, seeds and fruit trees, but no nonsense. Three happier children than these three can not be found….
You may be interested, too, to know what are the famous works of art we are framing, as above referred to. Well, photographs of our kindred and friends for one thing: my brothers, my husband's mother and other relatives of his, Prof. and Mrs. Smith, Mr. and Mrs. B. B., and so on, a good deal as it has happened, for everybody hasn't been photographed; and some bodies have not given us their pictures—you, for instance, and if you want to be hung as high as Haman in my den, nine feet square, where I write, why, you can. Last summer I had a mania for illuminating, and made about a cord of texts and mottoes; I can't paint, so I cut letters out of red, blue and black paper, and deceived thereby the very elect, for even Mrs. Washburn was taken in, and said they were painted nicely.
Your little note has drawn large interest, hasn't it? Well, it deserved its fate.
Hardly had she finished this letter when she was taken very ill. For a while it seemed as if the time of her departure had come. At her request the children were called to her bedside, and she gave them in turn her dying counsels, bade them live for Christ as the only true, abiding good, and then kissed each of them good-bye. She was much disappointed on finding that her sickness, after all, was not an "invitation" from the Master. "You don't get away this time," said her husband to her, half playfully, half exultingly, referring to her eagerness to go.
And here it may not be amiss to say a word as to her state of mind respecting death. After her release her husband thus described it to a friend:
Her feeling about dying seemed to me to be almost unique. In all my pastoral experience, at least, I do not recall another case quite like it. Her faith in a better world, that is, a heavenly, was quite as strong as her faith in God and in Christ; she regarded it as the true home of the soul; and the tendency of a good deal of modern culture to put this world in its place as man's highest sphere and end, struck her as a mockery of the holiest instincts at once of humanity and religion. Death was associated in her mind with the instant realisation of all her sweetest and most precious hopes. She viewed it as an invitation from the King of Glory to come and be with Him. During the more than three-and-thirty years of our married life I doubt if there was ever a time when the summons would have found her unwilling to go; rarely, if ever, a time when she would not have welcomed it with great joy. On putting to her the question, "Would you be ready to go now?" she would answer, "Why, yes," in a tone of calm assurance, rather of visible delight, which I can never forget. And during all her later years her answer to such a question would imply a sort of astonishment, that anybody could ask it. So strong, indeed, was her own feeling about death as a real boon to the Christian, that she was scarcely able, I think, fully to sympathise with those who regarded it with misgiving or terror. The point may be illustrated, perhaps, by referring to her perfect fearlessness and repose in the midst of the most terrific thunder-storm. No matter how vivid the lightning's flashes or how near and loud the claps that followed, they affected her nerves as little as any summer breeze—scarcely ever awaking her if asleep, or hindering her from going to sleep if awake. And so it was with regard to the terrors of death. But not merely was there an absence of all apparent dread of death, but an exulting joy in the thought of it. There is a passage in The Home at Greylock, which was evidently inspired by her own experience. It is where old Mary, when her first wild burst of grief was over, said:
Sure she's got her wish and died sudden. She was always ready to go, and now she's gone. Often's the time I've heard her talk about dying, and I mind a time when she thought she was going, and there was a light in her eye, and "What d'ye think of that?" says she. I declare it was just as she looked when she says to me, "Mary, I'm going to be married, and what d'ye think of that?" says she.
This feeling about death is the more noteworthy in her case because of her very deep, poignant sense of sin and of her own unworthiness.
To a Friend, Dorset, July 27, 1873.
This is my third Sunday home from church. I have been confined to my bed only about a week, but it took me some days to run down to that point, and now it is taking some to run me up again. I had two or three very suffering days and nights, and the doctor was here nearly all of one day and night, but was very kind, understood my case and managed it admirably. He is from Manchester and is son of a missionary. [3]
You speak in your letter of being oppressed by the heat, and wearied by visitors, and say that prayer is little more than uttering the name of Jesus. I have asked myself a great many times this summer how much that means.
"All I can utter sometimes is Thy name!"
This line expresses my state for a good while. Of course getting out of one house into another and coming up here, all in the space of one month, was a great tax on time and strength, and all my regular habits had to be broken up. Then before the ram was put in I over-exerted myself, unconsciously, carrying too heavy pails of water to my flower-beds, and so broke down. For some hours the end looked very near, but I do not know whether it was stupidity or faith that made me so content to go. I am afraid that a good deal of what passes for the one is really the other. Fortunately for us, our faith does not entitle us to heaven any more than our stupidity shuts us out of it; when we get there it will be through Him who loved us. But if I may judge by the experience of this little illness, our hearts are not so tied to or in love with this world as we fear. We make the most of it as long as we must stay in it; but the under-current bears home.
The following extract from a letter to a young relative, dated Sept. 23d, furnishes at once a key to several marked traits of her character and a practical comment upon her own hymn, "More love to Thee, O Christ!"
I had no right to leave my friend undefended. I prayed to do it aright. If I did not I am not ashamed to say I am sorry for it, and ask you to forgive me. And if I were twice as old as I am, and you twice as young, I would do it. I will not tolerate anything wrong in myself. I hate, I hate sin against my God and Saviour, and sin against the earthly friends whom I love with such a passionate intensity that they are able to wring my heart out, and always will be, if I live to be a hundred…. People who feel strongly express themselves strongly; vehemence is one of my faults. Let us pray for each other. We have great capacities for enjoyment, but we suffer more keenly than many of our race. I have been an intense sufferer in many ways; the story would pain you; nobody can go through this world with a heart and a soul, and jog along smoothly long at a time…. I do not remember ever having a discussion on paper with my husband; we should not dare to run the risk. But I know I said something once in a letter, I forget what, that made him snatch the first train and rush to set things right, though it cost him a two days' journey. We are tremendous lovers still. Write and tell me we've kissed and made up! We both mean well; we don't want to hurt each other; but each has one million points that are very vulnerable. And neither can know these points in the other by intuition; a cry of pain will often be the first intimation that the one can hurt the other just there. We must touch each other with the tips of our fingers…. To love Christ more—this is the deepest need, the constant cry of my soul. Down in the bowling-alley, and out in the woods, and on my bed, and out driving, when I am happy and busy, and when I am sad and idle, the whisper keeps going up for more love, more love, more love!
To a Christian Friend, Dorset, Oct. 3, 1873.
I do hope you will be in New York this winter and your mother, too. What a blessing to have a mother with whom one can hold Christian communion! You need some trials as a set-off to it. You say few live up to what light they have; it is true; I think we get light just as fast as we are ready for it. At the same time I must own that I have not all the light I need. I am still puzzled as to the true way to live; how far to cherish a spirit that makes one sit very lightly to all earthly things, when that spirit unfits one, to a great extent, to be an agreeable, thoroughly sympathising companion to one's children, for instance. My children have a real horror of Miss ——, because she thinks and talks on only one subject; of course it never would do for me to do as she does, as far as they are concerned. Perhaps the problem may be solved by a resort to the fact that we are not called to the same experience. And yet an experience of as perfect love and faith as is ever vouchsafed to a soul on earth, is what I long for. At times my heart dies within me when I realise how much I need. As you say, no doubt the mental strain I had been passing through prepared the way for my break-down in health; as I lay, as I thought, dying, I said so to myself. That strain is over; I am in a sense at rest; but not satisfied. I have been too near to Christ to be happy in anything else; I don't mean by that, however, that I never try to be happy in other things—alas, I do.
As to the minor trials, no life is without them. But what mercies we get every now and then! The other day three letters came to me by one mail, each of which was important, and came from exactly the quarter where I was troubled, and dispersed the trouble to a great degree. In fact I am overwhelmed with mercies, and dreadfully stupid and unthankful for them. I have had also some experiences of late of the smallness and meanness, of which you have had specimens. One has to betake oneself to prayer to get a sight of One, who is large-hearted and noble and good and true. Oh, how narrow human narrowness must look to Him! I don't know how many times I have smiled at your remark about Miss ——: "She seems to have such a hard time to learn her lessons." I feel sorry for her in one sense, but if she belongs to Christ, isn't He home enough for her? I think it always a very doubtful experiment to offer other people a home with you; and equally doubtful whether such an offer is wisely accepted. Being a saint does not, I am sorry to say, necessarily make one an agreeable addition to the family circle as God has formed it; if His hand sends this new element into the house, of course one may expect grace to bear it; but voluntarily to seek it argues either want of experience or an immense power of self-sacrifice. I should prefer Miss ——'s friends agreeing to give her an independent home, as far as a boarding-house can furnish a home. And if it provides a place in which to pray, as sweet a home may be found there as anywhere.
We go to town on the ninth of this month. Mr. Prentiss has been gone some time, and has entered upon his new duties with great delight. I must confess that if I were going to choose my work in life, I could think of nothing more congenial than to train young Christians. It has come over me lately that all those whom he now instructs, have more or less of the new life in them. I am sorry, however, to add that some young theological friends of mine deny this. They say that many young men preparing for the ministry give no other sign of piety. Young people judge hastily and severely. As soon as I get over my first hurry, after reaching home, I hope you will come and see me…. You speak of my experience on my sick-bed as a precious one. To tell you the truth, it does not seem so to me; I mean, nothing extraordinary. Not to want to go, if invited, would be a contradiction to most of my life. But as I was not invited I realise that I am needed here; and I am afraid it was selfish to be so delighted to go, horribly selfish.
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III.
Change of Home and Life in New York. A Book about Robbie. Her Sympathy with young People. "I have in me Two different Natures." What Dr. De Witt said at the Grave of his Wife. The Way to meet little Trials. Faults in Prayer-Meetings. How special Theories of the Christian Life are formed. Sudden Illness of Prof. Smith. Publication of Golden Hours. How it was received.
Her return from Dorset brought with it a new order of life. The transfer of her husband to a theological chair was almost as great a change to her as to him. In ceasing to be a pastor's wife she gave up a position, which for more than a quarter of a century had been to her a spring of constant joy, and which, notwithstanding its cares, she regarded as one of the most favored on earth. While in the parsonage, too, she was in the midst of her friends; the removal to Sixty-first street left the most of them at a distance; and distance in New York is no slight hindrance to the full enjoyment of social intimacy and fellowship. Several weeks after the return to town were devoted to the congenial task of fitting-up and adorning the new home. Then for the first time in many years she found herself at leisure; and one of its earliest fruits was a selection of stray religious verses for publication; which, however, soon gave way to a volume of her own. She was able also to give special attention to her favorite religious reading.
The sharp trials and suffering of the previous years showed their effect in deepened spiritual convictions, humility and tenderness of feeling, but not in repressing her natural playfulness. At times her spirits were still buoyant with fun and laughter. An extract from a letter to her youngest daughter, who with her sister was on a visit at Portland, will give a glimpse of this gay mood. Such mishaps as she recounts are liable to occur in the best-regulated households, especially on a change of servants; but they were rare in her experience and so the more amused her:
I undertook to get up a nice dinner for Dr. and Mrs. V——, about which I must now tell you. First I was to have raw oysters on the shell. Blunder 1st, small tea-plates laid for them. Ordered off, and big ones laid. Blunder 2d, five oysters to be laid on each plate, instead of which five were placed on platters at each end, making ten in all for the whole party! Ordered a change to the original order. Result, a terrific sound in the parlor of rushing feet and bombardment of oyster-shells. Dinner was announced from Dr. P., who asked, helplessly, where he should place Mrs. V——. Blunder 4th by Mrs. P., who remarked that she had got fifty pieces of shell in her mouth. Blunder 5th by Dr. P., who failed to perceive that the boiled chickens were garnished with a stunning wine-jelly and regarding it as gizzards, presented it only to the boys! Blunder 6th. Cranberry-jelly ordered. Cranberry as a dark, inky fluid instead; gazed upon suspiciously by the guests, and tasted sparingly by the family.—And now prepare for blunder No. 7, bearing in mind that it is the third course. Four prairie hens instead of two! The effect on the Rev. Mrs. E. Prentiss was a resort to her handkerchief, and suppression of tears on finding none in her pocket. Blunder 8th. Iauch's biscuit glacé stuffed with hideous orange-peel. Delight 1st, delicious dessert of farina smothered in custard and dear to the heart of Dr. V——. Blunder 9th. No hot milk for the coffee, delay in scalding it, and at last serving it in a huge cracked pitcher. Blunder 10th. Bananas, grapes, apples, and oranges forgotten at the right moment and passed after the coffee and of course declined. But hearing that Miss H. V. was fond of bananas, I seized the fruit-basket and poured its contents into one napkin, and a lot of chocolate-cake into another, and sent them to the young princesses in the parsonage, who are, no doubt, dying of indigestion, this morning. Give my love to C. and F., and a judicious portion to the old birds.
To a young Friend, Oct. 19,1873.
I am sorry that we played hide-and-go-seek with each other when you were in town. I have seen all my most intimate friends since I came home; I mean all who live here. There are just eight of them, but they fill my heart so that I should have said, at a guess, there were eighty! Try the experiment on yourself and tell me how many such friends you have. It is very curious.
I have just got hold of some leaves of a journal rescued from the flames by my (future) husband, written at the age of 22, in which I describe myself as "one great long sunbeam." It recalled the sweet life in Christ I was then leading, and made me feel that if I had got so far on as a girl, I ought to be infinitely farther on as a woman. Still, in spite of all shame and regrets, I had a long list of mercies to recount at the communion-table to-day. Among other things I feel that I know and love you better than heretofore, and it is pleasant to love. I must not forget to answer your little niece's questions. I remember her father's calling with your sister, but I don't remember any little girl as being with them, much less "kissing her because she liked the Susy books." As to writing more about Robbie, I can't do that till I get to heaven, where he has been ever so many years. Give my love to the wee maiden, and tell her I should love to kiss her.
No trait in Mrs. Prentiss was more striking than her sympathy with young people, especially with young girls, and her desire to be religiously helpful to them. But her interest in them was not confined to the spiritual life. She delighted to join them in their harmless amusements, and to take her part in their playful contests, whether of wit or knowledge. Her friend, Miss Morse, thus recalls this feature of her character:
In Mrs. Prentiss' life the wise man's saying, A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, was beautifully exemplified. Yet few were thoroughly acquainted with this phase of her character. Those who knew her only through her books, or her letters of Christian sympathy and counsel—many even who came into near and tender personal relations to her—failed to see the frolicsome side of her nature which made her an eager participant in the fun of young people—in a merry group of girls the merriest girl among them. In contests where playful rhymes were to be composed at command, on a moment's notice, she sharpened the wits of her companions by her own zest, but in most cases herself bore off the palm.
She always entered into such contests with an unmistakable desire to win. I remember one evening in her own home in Dorset, when four of us were engaged in a game of verbarium, two against two—the opposite party were gaining rapidly. She suddenly turned to her partner with a comical air of chagrin and exclaimed: "Why is it they are winning the game? You and I are a great deal brighter than they!"
The first time I ever saw Mrs. Prentiss was through an invitation to her home to meet about half a dozen young persons of my own age. She was in one of her merriest moods. Games of wit were played and she took part with genuine interest. She at once impressed me with the feeling that she was one of us, and that this arose from no effort to be sympathetic, but was simply part of her nature.
This brightness wonderfully attracted young people to her, and gave her an influence with them that she could not otherwise have exercised. She recognised it in herself as a power, and used it, as she did all her powers, for the service of her Master. Young Christians, seeing that her deeply religious life did not interfere with her keen enjoyment of all innocent pleasures, realised that there need be no gloominess for them, either, in a life consecrated to God.
Just as her line of thought would often lie absorbingly in some one direction for quite a period of time, so her fun ran "in streaks," as she would have been likely to express it. One winter she amused herself and her friends by a great number of charades and enigmas, many of which I copied and still possess. They were dashed off with an ease and rapidity quite remarkable. And I believe the same thing was true of most of her books. I have watched her when she was writing some funny piece of rhyme, and as her pen literally flew over the paper, I could hardly believe that she was actually composing as she wrote. One day two young girls were translating one of Heine's shorter poems. They had agreed to send their several versions to an absent friend, who on his part was to return his own to them. Mrs. Prentiss entered heartily into the plan and in an hour had written as many as a dozen translations, all in English rhyme and differing entirely one from the other. The stimulating effect on the genius of her companions was such that over thirty translations were produced in that one afternoon.
In thinking of the ease with which Mrs. Prentiss would suddenly turn from grave to gay and the reverse, I often recall her answer when I one day remarked on this trait in her.
"Yes, I have in me two very different natures. Did you ever hear the story of the dog, who by an accident was cut in two, and was joined together by a wonderful healing salve? Unfortunately, the pieces were not put together properly, so two of his legs stood up in the air. At first his master thought it a great misfortune, but he found that the dog, when a little accustomed to his strange new form, would run until tired on two legs, and then by turning himself over he would have a fresh unused pair to start with, and so he did double duty! I am like that dog. When I am tired of running on one nature, I can turn over and run on the other, and it rests me." [4]
I want to spend a few minutes of this my birthday in talking with you in reply to your letter.
To a Christian Friend, New York, Oct. 26, 1873.
I want to tell you how I love you, because you "learn your lessons" so easily, and how thankful I am that in your great trials and afflictions you have been enabled to glorify God. How small trouble is when set over against that! Is not Christ enough for a human soul? Does it really need anything else for its happiness? You will remember that when Madame Guyon was not only homeless, but deprived of her liberty, she was perfectly happy. "A little bird am I." [5] It seems to me that when God takes away our earthly joys and props, He gives Himself most generously; and is there any joy on earth to be compared for a moment with such a gift?… My husband has just come in and described the scene at Mrs. De Witt's funeral, [6] when her husband said, Good-bye, dear wife, you have been my greatest blessing next to Christ; and he added, "and that I can say of you." This was very sweet to me, for I have faults of manner that often annoy him—I am so vehement, so positive, and lay down the law so! But I believe the grace of God can cure faults of all sorts, be they deep-seated or external. And I ought to be one of the best women in the world, if I am good in proportion to the gifts with which I am overwhelmed. I count it not the least of your and my mercies, that we have been permitted to add four little children to the happy company above. No wonder you miss your darling boy, but I am sure you would not call him back. Have you any choice religious verses not in any book, that you would like to put into one I am going to get up?
To the Same, Nov. 12th.
I want you and your mother to know what I am now busy about, hoping it may set you to praying over it. When I asked you for bits of poetry, I meant pieces gleaned from time to time from newspapers. My plan was to make a compilation, interspersing verses of my own anonymously. But Mr. Randolph has convinced me that it is my duty and privilege to have the little book all original, and to appear as mine; and in unexpected ways my will about it has been broken, and I have ceased from all morbid shyness about it, and am only too thankful that God is willing thus to use me for His own glory. Of course, I shall meet with a good deal of misapprehension and disgust from some quarters, but not from you or yours. It is a comfort, on the other hand, to think of once more ministering to longing or afflicted souls, as I hope to do in these lines, written for no human eye. You say Jesus is pained when His dear ones suffer. I hardly think that can be. Tender sympathy He no doubt feels, but not pain. If He did, He would be miserable all the time, the world is so full of misery.
When I look back over my own life, the precious times were generally seasons of great suffering; so much so, that the idea of discipline has become a hobby. But one can only learn all this by experience. Mrs. —— says she never sings the verse containing "E'en though it be a cross that raiseth me," and that little children never talk in that way to their mothers, and, therefore, we ought not to talk so to God! I did not argue with her about it, but I felt thankful that I could sing and say that line very earnestly, and had been taught to do so by the Spirit of God.
To a Friend in Texas, New York, Dec. 1, 1873.
I am glad you like Faber better on a closer acquaintance. He certainly has said some wonderful things among many weak and foolish ones. What you quote from him about thanksgiving is very true. Our gratitude bears no sort of comparison with our petitions or our sighs and groans. It is contemptible in us to be such thankless beggars. As to domestic cares, you know Mrs. Stowe has written a beautiful little tract on this subject—"Earthly Care a Heavenly Discipline." God never places us in any position in which we can not grow. We may fancy that He does. We may fear we are so impeded by fretting, petty cares that we are gaining nothing; but when we are not sending any branches upward, we may be sending roots downward. Perhaps in the time of our humiliation, when everything seems a failure, we are making the best kind of progress. God delights to try our faith by the conditions in which He places us. A plant set in the shade shows where its heart is by turning towards the sun, even when unable to reach it. We have so much to distract us in this world that we do not realise how truly and deeply, if not always warmly and consciously, we love Christ. But I believe that this love is the strongest principle in every regenerate soul. It may slumber for a time, it may falter, it may freeze nearly to death; but sooner or later it will declare itself as the ruling passion. You should regard all your discontent with yourself as negative devotion, for that it really is. Madame Guyon said boldly, but truly, "O mon Dieu, plutot pecheur que superbe," and that is the consoling word I feel like sending you to-day. I know all about these little domestic foxes that spoil the vines, and sympathise with you in yours. But if some other trial would serve God's purpose, He would substitute it.
To a young Friend, New York, Dec. 3, 1873. I was interested in what you wrote about Miss G. and of Dr. C.'s meeting. You say she spends her time in young works of benevolence. This shows that her piety is of the genuine sort. It is hard to have faith in mere talk. It is a great mystery to me, that, while we meet with negative faults in ordinary prayer-meetings, we find so many positive faults in more earnest ones. Perhaps there is less of self in those who conduct them than we imagine. I always regret to see talk to each other supplant address to God in such meetings—always. As to Miss —— and others making a "creed" as you say out of their experience, I think it may be accounted for in this way: They come suddenly into possession of thoughts and emotions to which others are led gradually; they are startled and overwhelmed by the novelty of the revelations, and at once form a theory on the subject; and, having formed the theory, they fall to so interpreting the Bible as to support it. Those who reach the point they have reached more slowly are not startled, and do not need to form theories or seek for unscriptural expressions with which to declare what they have learned. They are probably less self-conscious, because they have not been aiming to enter any school formed by man, but have been simply following after Christ; hardly knowing what they expect will be the result, but getting a great deal of sweet peace on the way. And they also acquire, gradually, a certain kind of heaven-taught wisdom, whose access comes not with observation; blessed truths revealed by the Holy Spirit, full of strength and consolation.
At any rate, this is as far as I have come to; there may be oceans of knowledge I have yet to acquire, which will modify or wholly change my range of thought. And, according to what light I have, I am inclined to advise you not to confuse yourself with trying to believe in or experience this or that because others do, but to get as close to Christ as you can every day of your life; feeling sure that if you do, He by His Spirit will teach you all you need to know. There has been to my mind, during the last few weeks, something awe-inspiring in the sense I have had of the way in which God instructs His ignorant, forgetful, stupid children. Such goodness, such patience, such love! And, on the other hand, our amazing coldness and ingratitude.
To Mrs. Smith, New York, Dec. 21, 1873.
I wanted to see you before you left, but it would have been cruel to add to the cares and distractions amid which you were hurrying off. [7] … I am reading, with great interest, the letters of Sara Coleridge. What strikes me most in her is, that knowing so much of her, one still feels what lots there is more to her one does not know. 22d.—Strangely enough, in writing you last evening, I forgot to tell you how much prayer is being offered for you and your husband, and what intense sympathy is expressed. Dr. Vincent said he could not bear to hear another word about his sufferings. Mrs. L—— said, "I do love that man." Mrs. D., herself all knotted up with rheumatism, would hardly speak of herself when she heard he was so ill; and this is only a specimen of the deep feeling expressed on all sides…. I am glad you find anything to like in my poor little book. I hear very little about it, but its publication has brought a blessing to my soul, which shows that I did right in thus making known my testimony for Christ. My will in the matter was quite overturned.
The "poor little book" appeared under the title of Religious Poems, afterwards changed to Golden Hours; Hymns and Songs of the Christian Life. In a letter of Mrs. Prentiss to a friend, written in 1870, occurs this passage:
Most of my verses are too much my own personal experience to be put in print now. After I am dead I hope they may serve as language for some other hearts. After I am dead! That means, oh ravishing thought! that I shall be in heaven one day.
Until the fall of 1873 her husband and two or three friends only knew of the existence of these verses, and their publication had not crossed her mind. But shortly after her return from Dorset she was persuaded to let Mr. Randolph read them. She soon received from him the following letter:
The poems must be printed, and at once! "We"—that is, the firm living at Yonkers—read aloud all the pieces, except those in the book, at one sitting, and would have gone on to the end but that the eyes gave out. Out of the lot three or four pieces were laid aside as not up to the standard of the others. The female member of the firm said that Mrs. Prentiss would do a wrong if she withheld the poems from the public. This member said he should give up writing, or trying to write, religious verses.
I am not joking. The book must be printed. We were charmed with the poems. Some of them have all the quaintness of Herbert, some the simple subjective fervor of the German hymns, and some the glow of Wesley. They are, as Mrs. R. said, out of the beaten way, and all true. So they differ from the conventional poetry. If published, there may be here and there some sentimental soul, or some soul without sentiment, or some critic who doats on Robt. Browning and don't understand him, or on Morris, or Rossetti, because they are high artists, who may snub the book. Very well; for compensation you will have the fact that the poems will win for you a living place in the hearts of thousands—in a sanctuary where few are permitted to enter.
A day or two later Mr. Randolph wrote in reply to her misgivings:
If I had the slightest thought that you would make even a slight mistake in publishing, I would say so. As I have already said, I am sure that the book would prove a blessing in ten thousand ways, and at the same time add to your reputation as a writer.
She could not resist this appeal. The assurance that the verses would prove a blessing to many souls disarmed her scruples and she consented to their publication. The most of them, unfortunately, bore no date. But all, or nearly all of them, belong to the previous twenty years, and they depict some of the deepest experiences of her Christian life during that period; they are her tears of joy or of sorrow, her cries of anguish, and her songs of love and triumph. Some of them were hastily written in pencil, upon torn scraps of paper, as if she were on a journey. Were they all accompanied with the exact time and circumstances of their composition, they would form, in connection with others unpublished, her spiritual autobiography from the death of Eddy and Bessie, in 1852, to the autumn of 1873. [8]
As she anticipated, the volume met in some quarters with anything but a cordial reception; the criticisms upon it were curt and depreciatory. Its representation of the Christian life was censured as gloomy and false. It was even intimated that in her expressions of pain and sorrow, there was more or less poetical affectation. Alluding to this in a letter to a friend, she writes:
I have spoken of the deepest, sorest pain; not of trials, but of sorrow, not of discomfort, but of suffering. And all I have spoken of, I have felt. Never could I have known Christ, had I not had large experience of Him as a chastiser…. You little know the long story of my life, nor is it necessary that you should; but you must take my word for it that if I do not know what suffering means, there is not a soul on earth that does. It has not been my habit to say much about this; it has been a matter between myself and my God; but the results I have told, that He may be glorified and that others may be led to Him as the Fountain of life and of light. I refer, of course, to the book of verses; I never called them poems. You may depend upon it the world is brimful of pain in some shape or other; it is a "hurt world." But no Christian should go about groaning and weeping; though sorrowing, he should be always rejoicing. During twenty years of my life my kind and wise Physician was preparing me, by many bitter remedies, for the work I was to do; I can never thank or love Him enough for His unflinching discipline.
Even the favorable notices of the volume, with two or three exceptions, evinced little sympathy with its spirit, or appreciation of its literary merits. [9] But while failing to make any public impression, the little book soon found its way into thousands of closets and sick-rooms and houses of mourning, carrying a blessing with it. Touching and grateful testimonies to this effect came from the East and the farthest West and from beyond the sea. The following is an extract from, a letter to Mr. Randolph, written by a lady of New York eminent for her social influence and Christian character:
The book of heart-hymns is wonderful, as I expected from the specimens which you read to me from the little scraps of paper from your desk. Do you know that I lived on them ("The School" and "My Expectation is from Thee") and was greedy to get the book that I might read them again and again. And behold, the volume is full of the things I have felt so often, expressed as no one ever expressed them before. I am overwhelmed every time I read it. Mr —— and the children have quite laughed at "Mamma's enthusiasm" over a book of poems, as I am considered very prosaic. I made C. read two or three of them and he surrenders. N. too, who is full of appreciation of poetry as well as of the best things, is equally delighted. I carried the volume to a sick friend and read to her out of it. I wish you could have seen how she was comforted! I do not know Mrs. Prentiss, but if you ever get a chance, I would like you to tell her what she has done for me.
A highly cultivated Swiss lady wrote from Geneva:
What a precious, precious book! and what mercy in God to enable us to understand, and say Amen from the heart to every line! It was He who caused you to send me a book I so much needed—and I thank Him as much as you.
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