Through his past life-course Dr. Miner has been one of the most indefatigable of toilers. As a Christian minister and reformer he is widely known. His pulpit talents are of the highest order. His clear, strong, and readily modulated voice, his sharp logic, often "on fire," his good scholarship, his aptness not only in making his points, but in the elucidation of them; his thorough acquaintance with the evidences of his faith, and especially with the scriptural proofs of it; his directness in striking at the wrong, as he perceives it, with most telling blows, and his uncompromising adherence to what he considers the right, are sure to gain him a respectful and serious hearing wherever he comes before the public. His many published discourses evince his power as a theologian, and his little volume, "The Old Forts Taken," embodies a searching review of some of the over-confident statements of Rev. Joseph Cook on the religious signs of the times. It would have been well for Christian truth, and for some of the churches professing it, whose representatives so readily applauded many of the stirring and sensational words of Mr. Cook at the moment of their utterance in Boston, could they have listened also to a close and rigid questioning of them by Dr. Miner. The Universalist Church generally, we think, would be quite willing to abide by the presentation of its faith and the claims of it, by him. At a conversation circle, embracing members of the "Radical Club," held in Boston within a few years, where all shades of religious opinion were represented, the question "Is Christianity a Finality?" or, in substance, can any religion superior to it be given to man? was proposed for consideration. After various discussions on the subject from the purest orthodoxy to the most radical "liberalism," Dr. Miner, who had come in while the subject was under discussion, was invited by the chairman to speak. His statements were very readily made, viz. that the Christianity of the New Testament included the best religion conceivable by man, meeting his deepest spiritual wants, answering his highest aspirations after the purest life here, and his most anxious hopes respecting the future of himself and the race. All this is presented, and its complete fulfilment with all souls assured through Christ, the promise of whose mission is, that ultimately "God shall be all in all." If Christianity is true, therefore, it will have no successor. The discussion was at an end.
As a Christian reformer Dr. Miner has gained a deserved prominence. He has been outspoken on the subject of Capital Punishment, advocating its abolishment, and in the Anti-slavery war proved himself one of the veterans. It is in the Temperance reform, however, that he has taken a strong and marked interest. As an advocate of Prohibition he is one of the leaders in the land. The pamphlet on Prohibition, published in 1867, containing his arguments on the subject before the Massachusetts Legislative Committee in the Representatives' Hall, is one of the most readable documents of the times.[52] His ready answers to the questions proposed to him, and his telling questions pressed upon the advocates of liquor license laws, on that occasion, evinced a mastery of the situation not often realized. In temperance conventions and conferences he has often some searching criticisms on the city officials in their evasions of the laws respecting the liquor traffic; and on every available occasion when called to speak on the moral needs of the State and the moral responsibility of the people, he is quite sure to give a few ringing notes emphasizing the temperance reform. Dr. Miner has been for ten years past President of the Massachusetts Temperance Alliance.
As an educator Dr. Miner has done good work. He began it early, and has never lost interest in it. As president of the college, a member of the State Board of Education, and Chairman of the Board of Visitors of the Normal Art School, he has been true to it constantly.
His business talent is well known. He is a safe and far-seeing financier, to whom the interests of the busy movers "on 'change" are somewhat familiar. In all financial plans and operations demanding his action he is especially and effectively at home. He is President of the Universalist Publishing House, and is still one of the trustees of Tufts College. The degree of D. D. was conferred upon him by Harvard College, and that of LL. D. by Tufts soon after his resignation of the presidency of that institution. He was one of the "Hundred Boston Orators;" having been called to deliver the oration before the authorities and citizens of Boston, July 4, 1855.
The positiveness and persistence of Dr. Miner have sometimes had the effect to alienate rather than conciliate those who might conscientiously differ from him in their convictions of right and duty. It is to be lamented, however, that where we find one possessing his degree of positiveness in what he believes to be right, we are more or less "troubled on every side" by those who are only half-men because of the low policies and expediencies by which they are governed. His confidence in the right seems instinctive; as he says, "A mountain can be tunnelled; a principle never." A Boston secular journal just now speaks of him:—
"His honesty nobody has ever questioned. If he hit hard, he hit where he believed hard hitting was warranted and indispensable. It is fortunate for the world, perhaps, that he took a liberal side in theology. Had he been a Calvinist, he would have been as uncompromising as any one of those Puritan inflexibles who drove Baptists into Rhode Island and Quakers into eternity; had he embraced Catholicism, heretics would have fared the worse for it, and he could hardly have found his fitting place anywhere short of the college of cardinals, with its possibilities toward the chair of St. Peter. By the same qualities that make him a terror to his enemies, he binds his followers to him with hooks of steel."[53]
F. T. Stuart Boston.
Thomas J. Sawyer.
Rev. Thomas Jefferson Sawyer, D. D., was born in Reading, Windsor Co., Vt., Jan. 9, 1804. His father was one of the earliest settlers of the town, having removed with his father's family from Pomfret, Conn. The son enjoyed very good advantages for acquiring a common-school education, and at the age of eighteen had gained such a mastery of the branches then taught in such schools as to become a teacher, in which capacity he served three or four months every year until he entered his profession. He entered Middlebury College in the autumn of 1825, having completed his preparation after he was twenty-one, and graduated in 1829. As there were no theological schools to aid him, he went to study with Rev. William S. Balch, then at Winchester, N. H., who was soon called to Albany. Mr. S. remained in Winchester through the winter, preaching occasionally, reading the Iliad of Homer, and studying such theological works as he had opportunity to find.