He carried the medicine of medicine with him in his heart, which was that of hope and cheer. Whatever other doctors might say, he often said: “I have seen sicker men than you recover; you may get well if you only look up; it is the spiritual that heals, and the Lord is good to all.”
He always asserted that the unspiritual perishes; that that truth was not only the Bible and the sermon, but that it was law. He had charity for all men, and he made it the first condition of healing that one should repent of his sins. So he prayed with the sick, and the sick people whom he visited often found a new nature rising up within them. The sick poor always remembered the prescriptions of Brother Jonathan.
He was an astronomer and made his own almanacs. If any one was in doubt as to what the weather was likely to be, he went to Brother Jonathan.
The cattlemen and sheep-raisers came to him for advice. Did a poor cow fall sick, she too found a friend in Brother Jonathan.
He would have given away his hat off his head had it not been a cocked one, had he found a poor man with his head uncovered.
He gave his fire to those who needed it on cold days.
There had been established a school in Lebanon for the education of Indian children for missionaries. His heart went into it; of course it did. When he was yet rich—a merchant worth nearly $100,000 (£18,000)—he made a subscription to schools; but when ship after ship was lost by the stress of war and other causes, and he became poor, he hardly knew how to pay his school subscriptions, so he mortgaged two of his farms.
“I will pay my debts,” he said, “if it takes a lifetime.” And none doubted the word of Brother Jonathan.
The people all pitied him when he lost his property, and came to say that they were sorry for him when he partly failed, and their hearts showed him a new world, and made him love every one more than before.
Great thanksgivings they used to have in his perpendicular house among the green cedars, and the stories that were told by Madam Trumbull and her friends expressed the very heart of old New England days.