Recollections and Impressions, 1822-1890

by Octavius Brooks Frothingham

He is alluding to Tyndall's statement that mind is evolved from the universe as a whole, not from inorganic matter. For himself, he says:

Ideas were not demonstrated, are not demonstrable. No data of observation can express their universal meaning.... What else can we say of ideas than that they are wondrous intimacies of the soul with the Infinite and Eternal, its contacts with universal forces, its prophetic ventures and master steps beyond any past!... The grand words, "I ought" refuse to be explained by dissolving the notion of right into individual calculation of consequences, or by expounding the sense of duty as the cumulative product of observed relation of succession.... How explain as a "greater happiness principle," or an inherited product of observed consequences, that sovereign and eternal law of mind whose imperial edict lifts all calculations and measures into functions of an infinite meaning? And how vain to accredit or ascribe to revelation, institution, or redemption, this necessary allegiance to the law of our being, which is liberty and loyalty in one?

This is absolute enough. It is plain that to this writer the notion of extracting intellect from form is ridiculous.

At the same time the method of evolution is the one adopted by the supreme Mind in its endeavor to awaken in man religious ideas. The exposition of the original faiths—Indian, Chinese, Persian—is a long and eloquent argument for this thesis. All criticism, all thinking, all analysis, all study of history, all investigation of phenomena, point in this direction. This is the rule of creation; this is the solution of the problem of the universe. The successive degrees of this divine ascent, he maintains, are distinctly traceable in the records left for our reading. The threads are fine, of course, but what have we eyes for? It is not necessary that everybody should see them, and the few who can are amply rewarded for the trouble they take in putting their fingers upon the very lines of the heavenly procedure. His peculiar strain of genius admirably qualified him for this delicate task. It was serious, critical, earnest, and aspiring. At one period of his life he was a mystic, wholly absorbed in God, and he always had that tendency towards the more passionate forms of idealism which led him to mystical speculations. The search for God was ever the animating purpose of his endeavor. The law of the blessed life was never absent from his thought. He, all the time, lived by faith, and was naturally disposed to see the gain in all losses. His mind had that penetrating quality which loved to follow hidden trails, and appreciated the subtlest kinds of influence. In a striking passage he speaks of the

great mystery in these influences which thoughtless people little dream of, and which common-sense, so called, cares nothing about. In the wonderful manner in which, through books, the spirits of other men, long since dead, enter into and inspire ours; in the eloquent language of eye and lip which without words, merely by expression, conveys deepest feelings; in the presence in our souls of strange presentiments, intuitions of higher knowledge than science or learning can give, voices which seem the presence of other spirits in ours, which make us feel often that death, so far from removing our dear friends from us, brings them nearer to our souls so that they cannot be lost;—in all these wonderful ways we see dimly the unveiling of holy mysteries which the future is to fully open to us, mysteries which we can even now, in our sublimer and holier secret moments, feel trying to disclose themselves to us.

This was written in a letter to his sister, on the occasion of a visit to the menagerie to see Herr Driesbach, the horse-tamer. A man who could spring into the empyrean from such ground may be trusted to behold Deity where others behold nothing but dirt; and they who submit to his guidance are pretty certain to come out full believers in the spiritual powers.

Johnson absolutely subordinated dogma to practice, holding fast to the idea involved in the declaration that he who doeth the will shall know the doctrine. He began with the ethics of the individual, the family, the social circle, seeing every principle incarnated there. How faithful he was in all domestic relations the world will never know, for there are details that cannot be divulged. But in all public affairs his constancy was perfect. Dr. Furness of Philadelphia used to say that the anti-slavery struggle in this country taught him more about the essential nature of the Gospel than he had learned in any other way. Samuel Johnson had the same conviction. In a private letter written in 1857 he says:

Everything in this crisis of American growth centres in the great conflict about this gigantic sin of slavery. That is the battle-field on which the questions are all to be fought out, of moral and spiritual and intellectual Freedom against the Absolutism of sect and party; of Love against Mammon; of Conscience against the State; of Man against Majorities; of Truth against Policy; of God against the Devil. It is really astonishing how everything that happens with us works directly into this fermenting conflict.

They who remember his addresses during the war will not need any confirmation of this announcement, and they who heard or have read his sermon on the character and services of Charles Sumner will have the fullest assurance of the cordial appreciation with which every phase of the struggle was entered into.

But though so ardent a follower of the doctrine that ideas lead the world, Johnson was not induced to go all lengths with the sentimentalists. While warmly espousing the cause of the workingman his papers on "Labor Reform" show how keenly critical he could be of measures proposed for his benefit. No one will accuse him of indifference to the claims of woman, but he spoke of "Woman's Opportunity" rather than of "Woman's Rights"; is inclined to think that it is not true that she is left out of political life from the present wish to do her injustice; that "on the whole, the feeling, if it were analyzed, would be found to be rather that of defending her right of exemption, relieving her from tasks she does not desire.... Among intelligent men at least, actual delay to wipe out the anomaly of the voting rule is not so much owing to a spirit of domination or contempt as is too apt to be assumed, as it is to a respect for what woman has made of the functions she has hitherto filled, and the belief that she holds herself entitled to be left free to work through them alone." He has nothing to say regarding the superiority of woman's nature; ventures no definition of her sphere; is not unconscious of feminine infirmities; doubts the efficacy of the ballot; confesses that the level of womanhood would be, at least temporarily, depressed by the larger area of practical diffusion; is by no means certain that women would necessarily act for their own good, and is deeply persuaded of the inferiority of outward to inward influence. This is the one thing he is sure of; this and the principle that "liberty knows—like faith and charity—neither male nor female." In the war between Russia and Turkey he took the part of Turkey, not only because he respected the rights of individual genius and resented invasion, but for the reason that he distrusted the civilizing tendencies of Russia, and thought the interests of Europe might be trusted to the Ottoman as confidently as to the Russian. In a discourse entitled "A Ministry in Free Religion," delivered on the occasion of his resigning the relation of pastor to the "Free Church at Lynn," June 26, 1870, he said: