“P.S.—I rejoice to hear so well of Mr. Ashworth: I hope my lady and I have set him up with commentators, for which he has given us both thanks. I trust I shall shortly see your third volume of the ‘Family Expositor.’”
Watts’ life was uniform; we can scarcely point to a period and say the man woke into life and being then and there; but Doddridge reached his period of interior life and labour when he became pastor and tutor at Northampton, and it would almost seem as if disappointment in love made a man of him.
The work accomplished by Doddridge in the academy of which he was tutor was enormous, and it exhibits the thoroughness of the training in the small unostentatious academy where the Dissenting ministers of that day gathered their stores of knowledge, and received their education for the ministry.
And he was great as a preacher—the peasants of the neighbourhood thought so—his usefulness among them was eminent; and Akenside, the poet, thought so. The variety of his correspondence is an amazing characteristic too; various, not only as to the personages with whom he corresponded, but the subjects upon which he corresponded with them. Like Watts, his sweet and gentle nature charmed the most obdurate—he had not even a Bradbury to ruffle the equanimity of his spirit—even the rough and savage Warburton became kind to him; he reviewed the “Divine Legation,” in the “Works of the Learned,” a review of that day; and it was to the English Bishop who quarrelled with everybody, the gentle Nonconformist was indebted for obtaining that easy passage in the sailing vessel, in which the captain gave up his cabin to him, that he might journey to the warm airs of Lisbon to lay aside his labours and to die. Doddridge is known by many of his works. His “Family Expositor” a long time held a place in the family and in the study; but a far more extensive fame has followed the authorship of “The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul.” This work, as its dedication to Dr. Watts shows, owes also its existence to him; two letters exhibit, on either side, the sentiments these admirable men entertain for each other; the first is the dedication to which reference has been made:
“Rev. and dear Sir,
“With the most affectionate gratitude and respect I beg leave to present you a book, which owes its existence to your request, its copiousness to your plan, and much of its perspicuity to your review, and to the use I made of your remarks on that part of it which your health and leisure would permit you to examine. I address it to you, not to beg your patronage to it, for of that I am already well assured, and much less from any ambition of attempting your character, for which, if I were more equal to the subject, I should think this a very improper place, but chiefly from a secret delight which I find in the thought of being known to those whom this may reach as one whom you have honoured, not only with your friendship, but with so much of your esteem and approbation too, as must substantially appear in your committing a work to me, which you had yourself projected, as one of the most considerable services of your life.
“I have long thought the love of popular applause a meanness which a philosophy far inferior to that of our Divine Master, might have us to conquer. But to be esteemed by eminently great and good men, to whom we are intimately known, appears to me not only one of the most solid attestations of some real worth, but, next to the approbation of God and our own consciences, one of its most valuable rewards. It will, I doubt not, be found so in that world to which spirits like yours are tending, and for which, through Divine grace, you have obtained so uncommon a degree of ripeness. And permit me, sir, while I write this, to refresh myself with the hope that when that union of hearts which has so long subsisted between us shall arrive to its full maturity and endearment there, it will be matter of mutual delight to recollect that you have assigned me, and that I have, in some degree, executed a task which may, perhaps, under the blessing of God, awaken and improve religious sentiments in the minds of those we leave behind us, and of others that may arise after us in this vain, transitory, and ensnaring world.
“Such is the improvement you have made of capacities for service that I am fully persuaded heaven has received very few in these latter ages who have done so much to serve its interests here below; few who have laboured in this best of causes with equal zeal and success; and therefore I cannot but join with all who wish well to the Christian interest among us, in acknowledging the goodness of Providence to you, and to the Church of Christ, in prolonging a life, at once so valuable and so tender, to such an advanced period. With them, sir, I rejoice that God has given you to possess in so extraordinary a degree, not only the consciousness of intending great benefit to the world, but the satisfaction of having effected it, and seeing such an harvest already springing up, I hope, as an earnest of a more copious increase from thence. With multitudes more I bless God that you are not in the evening of so afflicted and so laborious a day rendered entirely incapable of serving the public from the press and from the pulpit, and that, amidst the pain your active spirit feels when these pleasing services suffer long interruption from bodily weakness, it may be so singularly refreshed by reflecting on that sphere of extensive usefulness in which by your writings you continually move.
“I congratulate you, dear sir, while you are in a multitude of families and schools of the lower class, condescending to the humble yet important work of forming infant minds to the first rudiments of religious knowledge and devout impressions, by your various catechisms and divine songs, you are also daily reading lectures of logic and other useful branches of philosophy to studious youth; and this not only in private academies but in the most public and celebrated seats of learning, not merely in Scotland, and in our American colonies, where for some peculiar considerations it might be most naturally expected, but, through the amiable candour of some excellent men and accomplished tutors, in our English universities too. I congratulate you that you are teaching no doubt hundreds of ministers and private Christians by your sermons, and other theological tracts, so happily calculated to diffuse through their minds that light of knowledge, and through their hearts that fervour of piety, which God has been pleased to enkindle in your own. But above all I congratulate you that by your sacred poetry, especially by your psalms and your hymns, you are leading the worship, and, I trust also, animating the devotions of myriads in our public assemblies every Sabbath, and in their families and closets every day. This, sir, at least so far as it relates to the service of the sanctuary, is an unparalleled favour by which God hath been pleased to distinguish you, I may boldly say it, beyond any of His servants now upon earth. Well may it be esteemed a glorious equivalent, and, indeed, much more than an equivalent, for all those views of ecclesiastical preferment to which such talents, learning, virtues, and interests might have entitled you in an establishment; and I doubt not but you joyfully accept it as such.
“Nor is it easy to conceive in what circumstances you could, on any supposition, have been easier and happier than in that pious and truly honourable family in which, as I verily believe in special indulgence both to you and to it, Providence has been pleased to appoint that you should spend so considerable a part of your life. It is my earnest prayer that all the remainder of it may be serene, useful, and pleasant. And as, to my certain knowledge, your compositions have been the singular comfort of many excellent Christians—some of them numbered among my dearest friends—on their dying beds, for I have heard stanzas of them repeated from the lips of several who were doubtless in a few hours to begin the ‘Song of Moses and the Lamb,’ so I hope and trust that, when God shall call you to that salvation, for which your faith and patience have so long been waiting, He will shed around you the choicest beams of His favour, and gladden your heart with consolations, like those which you have been the happy instrument of administering to others. In the meantime, sir, be assured that I am not a little animated in the various labours to which Providence has called me, by reflecting that I have such a contemporary, and especially such a friend, whose single presence would be to me as that of a cloud of witnesses here below to awaken my alacrity in the race which is set before me. And I am persuaded that, while I say this, I speak the sentiment of many of my brethren, even of various denominations, a consideration which I hope will do something towards reconciling a heart so generous as yours, to a delay of that exceeding and eternal weight of glory which is now so nearly approaching. Yes, my honoured friend, you will, I hope, cheerfully endure a little longer continuance in life amidst all its infirmities from an assurance that, while God is pleased to maintain the exercise of your reason, it is hardly possible you should live in vain to the world or yourself. Every day and every trial is brightening your crown, and rendering you still more and more meet for an inheritance among the saints in light. Every word which you drop from the pulpit has now surely its peculiar weight. The eyes of many are on their ascending prophet, eagerly intent that they may catch, if not his mantle, at least some divine sentence from his lips, which may long guide their ways, and warm their hearts. This solicitude your friends bring in those happy moments when they are favoured with your converse in private, and, when you are retired from them, your prayers, I doubt not, largely contribute towards guarding your country, watering the Church, and blessing the world. Long may they continue to answer these great ends. And permit me, sir, to conclude with expressing my cheerful confidence that in these best moments you are often particularly mindful of one, who so highly esteems, so greatly needs, and so warmly returns that remembrance as,