Just this was the complaint of an old farmer who used to delight to drop into my study in northern New York, and have, as he called it, “a talk with the parson.” He was himself a relic of a past generation, a man of marked face and peculiar manner. He had been a school teacher in his earlier days, and quite a man of letters among his associates of that time, and was very fond of describing in a quaint way that was not without discrimination, the life of his youth. While fully admitting the greater advantages and easier times of the present, he would always add: “But everybody is getting to be just like everybody else now-a-days. Why, when I came into this valley every man on all these farms had something peculiar about him, some way of standing, or talking, or dressing, by which I could have described him so that you would have known him the first time you met him. I don’t know,” he would add, “but you may think it an improvement, but the men are all alike now, and I miss the differences.” And looking at the old man, and feeling that he served as a connecting link, a survival of the past into the present, I was ready to believe that what he said was true; the older men had more marked peculiarities than those of to-day.
Let us look now more particularly at some of the types which were distinctive features of the life of a half century ago, but whose successors have lost much of that prominence to-day by means of that gradual tendency toward uniformity which has since then been working.
First among these and foremost, as distinctive and distinguished, stands the “Country Parson” of fifty or more years ago.
No such men are seen to-day; for although the ministry continue, and are always to continue, constituting a distinct class in the community, they are now in no such ways singular and distinctive as then. Dressed always in his clerical black, and in earlier times in the clerical bands also, he was known on the street and saluted with reverence as a man by himself, set apart from the rest of the community, higher and holier than they. His position was unequaled, unapproached even by any other person. He was looked up to by all, honored by all, and feared, if not by all, by all the children at least. His opinions on matters local and civil, personal, social, philosophical and religious had almost the weight of absolute and supreme wisdom, which no one might gainsay.
See him enter the plain white “meeting-house” and ascend the lofty pulpit, and you recognize the height of his exaltation. In many places all the congregation were wont to rise when he came in, and remain standing till he had taken his seat; and still more commonly, not one of the congregation ever moved from place till he and his family had passed out of the church.
Listen to one of his long sermons, as the hour-glass at his side is turned possibly for the second time, and in the way the congregation give attention, you see evidence of his authority and of his hold upon them. He discourses on high themes, abstruse doctrines, and obscure points of faith. He discusses his text and subject in a logical and philosophical way; defines the doctrine, first by what it is not, and then by what it is; divides and sub-divides, and divides again, illustrates with analysis and analogies, intersperses with other passages from the Bible, and perhaps with occasional Greek or Latin quotations, draws to the “conclusion,” adds the “improvement,” goes on as though taking a fresh start to his “finally,” and then ends with his “and now last of all.” For a full hour, or perhaps two, the congregation have listened, counting it a precious privilege so to do; and that which he has advanced will be remembered, repeated, talked over, and discussed among them all the week.
Those early clergymen are not by any means to be spoken of slightingly. Some of us may know more of science, and be better informed in matters of natural history and of the contemporaneous condition of other lands; but few of us know as much Hebrew and Greek, few of us are as deeply versed in metaphysics, few of us are more vigorous in argument, and none of us certainly have such influence in our communities, or could hold our congregations for so long services. Those country parsons were men of mark; deep theologians; strong in the doctrines; prone, men may think to-day, to a narrow and iron-clad theology; but they were veritable giants also, and in fast, thanksgiving, and election day sermons did not hesitate to handle national themes, point out very specifically and with square condemnation, popular sins, and to discuss, and if necessary, pass open judgment on the courses and actions of public men.
It is often remarked that the fathers builded first the church and then, next and near by, the school-house; and so next to the minister a marked man in those older days was the “Village Schoolmaster.”
Occasionally the schoolmaster and the minister were one. Sometimes he was a minister who, from the too prevalent affliction of throat disease—a judgment, possibly, on account of the long sermons—had exchanged preaching for teaching. Oftenest he was a man by himself; and no teacher in any public school of to-day quite perpetuates his likeness.
I can not do better in attempting to describe him than to quote from Prof. McMaster, in his admirable “History of the People of the United States:”