No one can form an adequate conception of what Dr. Payson was from any of the productions of his pen. Admirable as his written sermons are, his extempore prayers and the gushings of his heart in familiar talk were altogether higher and more touching than anything he wrote. It was my custom to close my eyes when he began to pray, and it was always a letting down, a sort of rude fall, to open them again, when he had concluded, and find myself still on the earth. His prayers always took my spirit into the immediate presence of Christ, amid the glories of the spiritual world; and to look round again on this familiar and comparatively misty earth was almost painful. At every prayer I heard him offer, during the seven years in which he was my spiritual guide, I never ceased to feel new astonishment, at the wonderful variety and depth and richness and even novelty of feeling and expression which were poured forth. This was a feeling with which every hearer sympathised, and it is a fact well-known, that Christians trained under his influence were generally remarkable for their devotional habits. [6]
Dr. Payson possessed rare conversational powers and loved to wield them in the service of his Master. When in a genial mood—and the mild excitement of social intercourse generally put him in such a mood—his familiar talk was equally delightful and instructive. He was, in truth, an improvisatore. Quick perception, an almost intuitive insight into character, an inexhaustible fund of fresh, original thought and incident, the happiest illustrations, and a memory that never faltered in recalling what he had once read or seen, easy self-control, and ardent sympathies, all conspired to give him this preeminence. Without effort or any appearance of incongruity he could in turn be grave and gay, playful and serious. This came of the utter sincerity and genuineness of his character. There was nothing artificial about him; nature and grace had full play and, so to say, constantly ran into each other. A keen observer, who knew him well, both in private and in public, testifies: "His facetiousness indeed was ever a near neighbor to his piety, if it was not a part of it; and his most cheerful conversations, so far from putting his mind out of tune for acts of religious worship, seemed but a happy preparation for the exercise of devotional feelings." [7] This coexistence of serious with playful elements is often found in natures of unusual depth and richness, just as tragic and comic powers sometimes co-exist in a great poet.
The same qualities that rendered him such a master of conversation, lent a potent charm to his familiar religious talks in the prayer-meeting, at the fireside, or in the social circle. Always eager to speak for his Master, he knew how to do it with a wise skill and a tenderness of feeling that disarmed prejudice and sometimes won the most determined foe. Even in administering reproof or rebuke there was the happiest union of tact and gentleness. "What makes you blush so?" said a reckless fellow in the stage, to a plain country girl, who was receiving the mail-bag at a post office from the hand of the driver. "What makes you blush so, my dear?" "Perhaps," said Dr. Payson, who sat near him and was unobserved till now, "Perhaps it is because some one spoke rudely to her when the stage was along here the last time."
Edward Payson was graduated at Harvard College in the class of 1803. In the autumn of that year he took charge of an academy then recently established in Portland. Resigning this position in 1806, he returned home and devoted himself to the study of divinity under his father's care. He was licensed to preach in May, 1807, and a few months later received a unanimous call to Portland, where he was ordained in December of the same year. On the 8th of May, 1811, he was married to Ann Louisa Shipman, of New Haven, Conn. An extract from a manly letter to Miss Shipman, written a few weeks after their engagement, will show the spirit which inspired him both as a lover and a husband:
When I wrote my first letter after my late visit, I felt almost angry with you and quite so with myself. And why angry with you? Because I began to fear you would prove a dangerous rival to my Lord and Master, and draw away my heart from His service. My Louisa, should this be the case, I should certainly hate you. I am Christ's; I must be Christ's; He has purchased me dearly, and I should hate the mother who bore me, if she proved even the innocent occasion of drawing me from Him. I feared that you would do this. For a little time the conflict of my feelings was dreadful beyond description. For a few moments I wished I had never seen you. Had you been a right hand, or a right eye, had you been the life-blood in my veins (and you are dear to me as either) I must have given you up, had I continued to feel as I did. But blessed be God, He has shown me my weakness only to strengthen me. I now feel very differently. I still love you dearly as ever, but my love leads me to Christ and not from Him.
Dr. Payson received repeated invitations to important churches in Boston and New York, but declining them all, continued in the Portland pastorate until his death, which occurred October 22, 1827, in the forty-fifth year of his age. The closing months of his life were rendered memorable by an extraordinary triumph of Christian faith and patience, as well as of the power of mind over matter. His bodily suffering and agonies were indescribable, but, like one of the old martyrs in the midst of the flames, he seemed to forget them all in the greatness of his spiritual joy. In a letter written shortly after his death, Mrs. Payson gives a touching account of the tender and thoughtful concern for her happiness which marked his last illness. Knowing, for example, that she would be compelled to part with her house, he was anxious to have a smaller one purchased and occupied at once, so that his presence in it for a little while might make it seem more home-like to her and to her children after he was gone. "To tell you (she adds) what he was the last six memorable weeks would be altogether beyond my skill. All who beheld him called his countenance angelic." She then repeats some of his farewell words to her. Begging that, she would "not dwell upon his poor, shattered frame, but follow his blessed spirit to the realms of glory," he burst forth into an exultant song of delight, as if already he saw the King in His beauty! The well-known letter to his sister Eliza, dated a few weeks before his departure, breathes the same spirit. Here is an extract from it:
Were I to adopt the figurative language of Bunyan, I might date this letter from the land of Beulah, of which I have been for some weeks a happy inhabitant. The celestial city is full in my view. Its glories beam upon me, its breezes fan me, its odors are wafted to me, its sounds strike upon my ear, and its spirit is breathed into my heart. Nothing separates me from it but the river of death, which now appears but as an insignificant rill, that may be crossed at a single step, whenever God shall give permission. The Sun of Righteousness has been gradually drawing nearer and nearer, appearing larger and brighter as He approached, and now He fills the whole hemisphere, pouring forth a flood of glory, in which I seem to float like an insect in the beams of the sun, exulting yet almost trembling while I gaze on this excessive brightness, and wondering, with unutterable wonder, why God should deign thus to shine upon a sinful worm. A single heart and a single tongue seem altogether inadequate to my wants; I want a whole heart for every separate emotion, and a whole tongue to express that emotion. But why do I speak thus of myself and my feelings? why not speak only of our God and Redeemer? It is because I know not what to say—when I would speak of them my words are all swallowed up.
And thus, gazing already upon the Beatific Vision, he passed on into glory. What is written concerning his Lord and Master might with almost literal truth have been inscribed over his grave: The zeal of Thy house hath eaten me up.
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