Rev. Henry A. Eaton came into the ministry after having been a devoted and faithful member of the Universalist Sunday-school in Malden, Mass., during the pastorate of Rev. J. G. Adams. He was born in South Reading (now Wakefield), Mass., Nov. 27, 1825, the youngest of seven children, and lost his mother at an early age. He was an apt scholar, but at sixteen was compelled to earn his livelihood, which he did by serving in a store for two years, and afterwards by setting up for himself in Newburyport. Resolving to enter the ministry, he left his secular employment, and spent some time in Dr. T. J. Sawyer's Theological Class in Clinton, N. Y., and studied also with his brother, Rev. E. A. Eaton, until he preached his first sermon. He first settled in Hanson, Mass., afterwards at East Bridgewater, Milford, East Cambridge, and Waltham, Mass., and in Meriden, Conn. Overworking and injured health compelled most of these changes, for in each place he was much esteemed for his labors and beloved by many friends. The illness and decease of his worthy wife, at East Cambridge, and his devoted attention to her night and day, exhausted his vital powers, and bronchitis, followed by hæmorrhage from the lungs, finally compelled him to abandon the ministry. He retired to Worcester, and engaged in business for the support of himself and children, struggling manfully with various difficulties. Having provided for his children, and arranged all his affairs, he calmly met death, cheered and strengthened by the unfailing hope of the Gospel, May 26, 1861, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. He was a man of deep consecration, of most attractive social qualities, whose memory will be sacredly cherished by those who best knew him. His only son, Rev. Charles H. Eaton, is the successor of Rev. Dr. Chapin in the ministry of the Fourth Universalist Church in New York city.
Rev. W. A. P. Dillingham was a son of Maine, and a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School. He had pastoral settlements in Augusta, Waterville, Dover, and Norridgewock, Me., and Portsmouth, N. H. For a time he became interested in the Swedenborgian Church, and entered its ministry, but without changing his views as to the final destiny of men. While in this connection, he writes: "I never preached the eternity of the hells, nor any doctrine inconsistent with the divine benevolence, and I never heard Universalism or Universalists attacked or spoken of in derogatory terms as to their moral influence by some church people, without putting in a square defence of those whom I knew only to respect, and who had treated me with a consideration beyond my deserts." In due time he returned to his own church, with the honest confession that he had found no better, more conscientious, spiritual, intellectual, or tolerant people than those he had left. While in Waterville, he represented the town for two years, and was chosen Speaker of the House of Representatives the second year. Other positions of public trust were held by him, all of which he honored. He was active in business, "fervent in spirit," and devoutly religious. Few men had better qualities for a public speaker. With a tall, dignified, imposing presence, and a voice of extraordinary compass, richness, and power, his speech was impressive and effective. He was suddenly stricken down with acute pneumonia, and died in 1871, aged forty-six.
A comparatively brief but very active ministry was that of John Glass Bartholomew, D. D. He was born in Pompey, Onondaga Co., N. Y., Feb. 28, 1834. He had the benefit of a good common school and academical education, was a lover of books and of intellectual effort. His parents being Universalists, he was sent to the Clinton Liberal Institute, and after a time prepared himself for the ministry. He first preached in his native town in 1853 to great acceptance, those who heard him being quite convinced that he had not mistaken his calling. After preaching for a few years in Upper Lisle, Broome Co., in Oxford, Chenango Co., N. Y., and in the city of Aurora, Ill., he became pastor of the Universalist Society in Roxbury, Mass., where his ministry continued from July, 1860, to January, 1866. During this pastorate the parish was carried prosperously through a season of peculiar trial, and the membership of both the church and society considerably increased. In the year last named he accepted the invitation of the Greene Avenue Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., to become their minister. The expectations of those who had called him were high, and his pulpit efforts fully met them, but adverse circumstances prevented that prosperity all were desiring. The church building was inadequate to the occasion, and a failure to unite with a remnant of the old "Church of the Restoration" so disheartened the minister that he turned to a new field of work to which he had been invited in Auburn, N. Y. His ministry here was highly successful. His influence reached beyond the city in which he labored, rendering his work peculiarly attractive. He subsequently removed to Syracuse, where for some months he highly enjoyed his pastorate. His biographer, Dr. I. M. Atwood, writes of him: "Crowds flocked to his ministrations, and he seemed animated by extraordinary energies. But gradually he became aware of some insidious malady repeating its attacks on his vigorous constitution." He sought various means to master it, but in vain. Once or twice he rallied, under new treatment and diet, and came up surprisingly. He made a visit of two weeks to his old friends in Roxbury and Boston, but was all the time failing, and with difficulty reached his home in Newark, N. J., where he departed for the better life, April 14, 1874. His mind was on his work to the last, but the unfailing hope cheered and sustained him. He was a preacher of remarkably magnetic power.
One of the most noted of Christian ministers in the present century was Rev. Edwin Hubbell Chapin, D. D., LL. D., of the Universalist Church. He was born in Union Village, Washington County, N. Y., Dec. 29, 1814, and died Dec. 26, 1880, in the city of New York. In his childhood he became a resident, with his parents, of Vermont, where he received his academic course of studies in Bennington. His father, a rigid Calvinist, trained his son in the traditional theology of their ancestors; but the creed proved too narrow for him to be satisfied with it. In 1836, while with his father (an artist), who was on a professional visit to Utica, N. Y., he first had access to a collection of books teaching a more consistent interpretation of the Scriptures, which he read with avidity. He attended the church of our larger faith there, and in due time became convinced that Christian Universalism was the Gospel of the New Testament. After attending to the study of the law for a short time, he gave it up, and accepted the position of associate editor of the "Evangelical Magazine and Gospel Advocate." His powers as a speaker and thinker soon becoming evident, he was urged to enter the ministry, which after much serious and anxious reflection he concluded to do, and began his preparation accordingly. His first sermon was delivered in a barn at Litchfield, and he continued preaching in the vicinity until his ordination in 1837. In May, 1838, he became pastor of the "Independent Christian Church," composed of Universalists and Unitarians, in Richmond, Va.
In 1839, on his way to the meeting of the General Convention, Mr. Chapin attended the funeral of Rev. Thomas F. King, at the Universalist Church in Charlestown, Mass., where Mr. King had been pastor. Complying with an invitation to preach in the church in the evening, the result was an invitation for him to supply the pulpit for three months. In December, 1840, he was installed as pastor there. He was next invited to become colleague of the venerable Hosea Ballou, in the School Street Church, Boston, and was installed there Nov. 28, 1845. Finally, he became pastor of the Fourth New York Society, and remained so until his death. He first occupied the pulpit of the Murray Street Church, but this proving too small, the society moved to All Souls Church in Broadway, where it grew to such proportions that a new and costly edifice was erected at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-fifth Street, dedicated Dec. 2, 1866, and named the "Church of the Divine Paternity." During the years of his matured strength he ministered to his people, while thousands of every name and creed came from near and far to listen to his eloquent words. Here on Palm Sunday, March 21, 1880, he preached the last time on earth. And here on December 30 was gathered the most august assembly that ever sought to honor the memory of an American clergyman, every Christian sect of the city being represented at the altar by its ablest divines, while great numbers of men and women of all denominations turned away unable to gain admittance to his obsequies. In the other churches where he had been pastor, memorial services were held.
The public life of Dr. Chapin was one of incessant action. He was not merely a church preacher. As another has written of him:—
"His was a divided throne between the pulpit and the platform. For many years he was active in the temperance and other reforms, and his magnetic eloquence made him sought by all associations of the kind that desired the presence of a crowd and a stirring and persuasive appeal. Then for five-and-twenty years he was one of the most prominent of a long catalogue of lecturers whom every lyceum must hear."[47]
In his memorial address in Boston, Dr. Miner thus alluded to the aptness and force of his appeals:—
"I remember on one occasion, in the suburbs of Boston, when, after discussing in a somewhat general way the great waste occasioned by intemperance, he asked his auditory to reflect upon the waste that would be involved in gathering up the cereals of the Commonwealth, converting them into whiskey, taking the whiskey down to the end of Long Wharf, knocking in the heads of the barrels, and spilling the whole into the dock; and, said he, 'would it be any less a waste if you were to strain that whiskey through human stomachs, and spoil the strainer?' What more telling exhibition of the vital diabolism of the whole business of making and drinking whiskey than is involved in that simple illustration."
The address of Dr. Chapin before the Peace Congress at Frankfort-on-the-Main, in 1850, surpassing every other of the occasion in eloquence and power, made his name known through Europe, and placed him among the greatest orators in the world. His religious character was deep and strong, an embodiment of consecration to Christian principle.