The Streeter brothers are to be numbered in this "company of the preachers." Sebastian was for more than thirty years pastor of the First Universalist Church, on Hanover Street, Boston. He was a minister of marked character, light-framed, nervous, dark-eyed, of quick movement, clear and strong-minded, voluble in speech, affable, at home everywhere, especially in the pulpit.
Under many disadvantages, he laid for himself the foundation of a professional education. He intended to qualify himself for the law, but a superior wisdom and will called him to the Christian pulpit. At the age of eighteen, while a school-teacher in New Hampshire, he was a talented advocate of Christian Universalism. At twenty-two he preached his first discourse. He travelled extensively as a missionary in Maine, encountering the reproach which awaited the advocacy of his faith in those days in many parts of New England, and having the honor of being stoned once while preaching in a Christian house of worship, and by a zealous member of a church. With him, however, opposition was an incentive to new earnestness in his work. He was singularly gifted as a preacher. He despised all garishness and affectation, and was usually full of his theme. There was in him a latent fire of eloquence, which when kindled stirred his audience to the depths of their souls. The writer calls to mind occasions of his preaching: one, while the hearer was standing in the doorway of a church at a meeting of the General Convention in Vermont. The pulpit was between the doors that opened upon the faces of the congregation. The preacher was in the heat of his discoursing on the words of Jesus, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." There were no indifferent listeners, and but few dry eyes to be seen. The remembrance has often been an inspiration. The other was at the session of the Rockingham Association, in Nottingham, N. H., in 1833. Mr. Streeter delivered the occasional discourse, an able and a timely one. He was speaking of reforms and reformers, and was all aglow with his theme. He thus came to a climax:—
"We know of a revivalist and reformer infinitely superior in skill and power to those of all sects combined; one who will continue to move onward, 'conquering and to conquer,' till he has 'renewed a right spirit' in every heart, till he has reformed fully and forever the countless millions of our race. Yes, blessed be God, we know his name. It is Jesus of Nazareth; the Lion of the Tribe of Judah; the Son of God; the Saviour of the world!" ["Amen!" from a brother minister.][40] The preacher responded: "Hallelujah! Glory to God in the highest! Jesus will make all things new. Let heaven proclaim his honor; let earth echo and re-echo his praises; and let eternity respond them through the long and lofty roll of its interminable ages!"
Said Mr. Streeter to a friend, one Monday morning:—
"I had something tender to put into my sermon yesterday morning. As I was going to church, a poor woman came to me to borrow a dollar to get bread for her children, and, as I handed it to her, she offered me a small locket containing a braid of hair from the head of a little child she had buried a week ago. 'Take back the locket,' said I; 'it is too sacred for my hands; but keep the dollar, you are welcome to that. It does me more good to give it than you to receive it, and you can have more if you need.' Then she wept, and said she was a poor widow, living in such a street near by, and her poor children had not had a mouthful since yesterday noon, and she had nothing to buy them bread. I knew by her looks that she told me the truth, but to satisfy her I went and saw where she lived, and saw her children, and gave her more money, and told her I would look to her wants again to-morrow. Then I went into the pulpit, and put the incident into a sermon, and I haven't preached so well, nor enjoyed the service so much, for many a day."
His heart was often overflowing with such charities as this, through all his ministry.
He was the life of a conference meeting, and his Friday evening conferences in the Hanover Street vestry were never forgotten by those who attended them. As a pastor, he was always welcomed in the homes of his parishioners, sharing as he did their joys and sorrows with the sympathy of a brother and friend. As an officiating attendant at weddings, he was exceedingly popular, and his yearly marriage list, for a long time, exceeded in numbers that of any other clergyman in Boston. On funeral occasions, he was eminently a "son of consolation." There was such an unction in his usual manner of preaching—a manner so peculiarly adapted to the services of the Sabbath—that a brother minister who highly respected him, quaintly suggested that Sabbathstrain, rather than Sebastian, might properly be used as his name. As another has written of him: "He was an intensely magnetic man. It was not simply what he said, but the spiritual unction with which he uttered the truth, that won and held you."[41]
Mr. Streeter lived to the age of eighty-four. In his last days he suffered intensely from asthma, which had long afflicted him. He has left the example of a true and noble life to the churches.
Rev. Russell Streeter was a younger brother of Sebastian, and a man of much mental vigor,—sharp, witty, and logical. He had quite a number of ministerial settlements in New England, and in them all was noted for his ability as a preacher, for his peculiarities of character, and his good qualities as a neighbor and citizen. He was the first editor of the "Christian Intelligencer," a Universalist weekly paper, published at Portland, Me.; was minister in that city for some years, and afterwards, much later in life, went to pay the society a long pastorate visit of six and a half years, which proved very agreeable to pastor and people. He died at Woodstock, Vt., Feb. 15, 1880.
Mr. Streeter was a subject of impulses. When in the happy mood, no one, it seemed to us, could preach a more acceptable sermon than he. When not in this favorable frame of mind, he would not always do justice to himself. We can never forget a discourse (the closing one) at a Conference in Orford, N. H., from the text, "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." The sermons previously delivered were timely, and had been well received, and he was fully in the spirit of them all, and felt that he had the strong sympathies of his hearers. His words "dropped like the rain, and distilled as the dew." Doctrine, illustration, exhortation, application, all were excellent, and there was an unction in the whole discourse that left upon the audience impressions most highly favorable to the faith he was setting forth. On another occasion, at the closing of a session of the New Hampshire Convention, at Lebanon, he was the last preacher of the occasion. Very able and impressive discourses had been delivered by five other ministers. Mr. Streeter, in an apparently extemporaneous effort, took special notice of the matter and manner of them all, and of the characters of the speakers; and when he alluded to the sermon of the young and beloved Hanscom, as "an eloquent appeal from one whose hollow and sepulchral tones seemed to indicate that the youthful and faithful speaker was nearing the tomb," the effect was exceedingly impressive.