They little knew him. The man who at twenty-five had torn himself from the associations and friendships of his youth, and, moved solely by love of truth, had imperilled all his worldly hopes by joining himself to a small religious body, despised and hated as heretics by most of those whom he had been trained to love and respect, was not the man at fifty to blanch from the expression of any honest conviction; and, to sum up all in one word, he held his views upon this subject, as upon all others, bravely and honestly, and stated them clearly and positively, when he felt it his duty to speak, although evasion or silence would have been the more comfortable alternative. "I doubt," says Mr. Chadwick,[129] "if Garrison or Parker had a keener sense than his of the enormity of human slavery. Before the first Abolitionist Society had been organized, he was one of the organizers of a committee for the discussion and advancement of emancipation. I have read all of his principal writings upon slavery, and it would be hard to find more terrible indictments of its wickedness. He stated its defence in terms that Foote and Yancey might have made their own, only to sweep it all away with the blazing ubiquity that the negro was a man and an immortal soul. Yet when the miserable days of fugitive-slave rendition were upon us, he was with Gannett in the sad conviction that the law must be obeyed. We could not see it then; but we can see to-day that it was possible for men as good and true as any men alive to take this stand. And nothing else brings out the nobleness of Dewey into such bold relief as the fact, that the immeasurable torrent of abuse that greeted his expressed opinion did not in any least degree avail to make him one of the pro-slavery faction. The concession of 1850 was one which he would not have made, and it must be the last. Welcome to him the iron flail of war, whose tribulation saved the immortal wheat of justice and purged away the chaff of wrong to perish in unquenchable fire!"
His feelings retained their early sensitiveness
[FN The Rev. John W. Chadwick, of Brooklyn, N. Y., In a sermon preached after Dr. Dewey's death.]
[130] in a somewhat remarkable degree. In a letter written when he was near seventy he says, "I do believe there never was a man into whose manhood and later life so much of his foolish boyhood flowed as into mine. I am as anxious to go home, I shall be all the way to-morrow as eager and restless, and all the while thinking of the end of my journey, as if I were a boy going from school, or a young lover six weeks after his wedding-day. Shall I ever learn to be an old man?"
But it was this very simplicity and tenderness that gave such a charm to his personal intercourse. His emotions, like his thoughts, had a plain directness about them which assured you of their honesty. With a profound love of justice, he had an eminently judicial mind, and could not be content without viewing a subject from every side, and casting light upon all its points. The light was simple sunshine, untinged by artificial mixtures; the views were direct and straightforward, with no subtle slants of odd or recondite position; and in his feelings, also, there was the same large and natural simplicity. You felt the ground-swell of humanity in them, and it was this breadth and genuineness which laid the foundation of his power as a preacher, making him strike unerringly those master chords that are common and universal in every audience. Gifts of oratory he had, both natural and acquired,—a full, melodious voice, so sympathetic in modulation and so attuned to [131] reverence that I have heard more than one person say that his first few words in the pulpit did more towards lifting them to a truly religious frame of mind than the whole service from any other lips,—a fine dramatic power, enough to have given him distinction as an actor, had that been the profession of his choice,—a striking dignity of presence, and an easy and appropriate gesticulation. But these, as well as his strong common sense, that balance-wheel of character, were brought into the service of his earnest convictions. What he had to say, he put into the simplest form; and if his love of art and beauty, and his imaginative faculty, gave wealth and ornament to his style, he never sacrificed a particle of direct force for any rhetorical advantage. His function in life—he felt it to his inmost soul—was to present to human hearts and minds the essential verities of their existence in such a manner that they could not choose but believe in them. His strength was in his reverent perception of the majesty of Right as accordant with the Divine and Eternal Will; his power over men was in the sublimity of his appeal to an answering faith in themselves.
He was greatest as a preacher, and it is as a preacher that he will be best remembered by the public. The printed page, though far inferior to the fervid eloquence of the same words when spoken, will corroborate by its beauty, its pathos, and its logical force, the traditions that still linger [132] of his deep impressiveness in the pulpit. In making the following selections from his letters, I have been influenced by the desire to let them show him in his daily and familiar life, with the easy gayety and love of humor which was as natural to him as the deep and solemn meditations which absorbed the larger part of his mind. They are very far from elaborate compositions, being rather relaxations from labor, and he thought very slightly of them himself; yet I think they will present the real man as nothing but such careless and conversational writing can.
No letters of his boyhood have been preserved, and very few of his youth. This, to Dr. Channing, was probably written at Plymouth, while there on an exchange of pulpits, soon after his ordination at New Bedford:—
To Rev. William Ellery Charming, D.D.
PLYMOUTH, Dec. 27, 1823.
DEAR SIR,—I was scarcely disappointed at your not coming to my ordination, and indeed I have felt all along that, if you could not preach, I had much rather see you at a more quiet and leisurely time. I thank you for the hope you have given me of this in the suggestion you made to Mr. Tuckerman. When the warm season comes, I pray you to give Mrs. Dewey and me the pleasure of trying what we can do to promote your comfort and health, and of enjoying your society for a week. [133] Our ordination was indeed very pleasant, and our prospects are becoming every day more encouraging. The services of that occasion were attended with the most gratifying and useful impression. Our friend, Mr. Tuckerman, preached more powerfully, and produced a neater effect, than I had supposed he ever did. I must remind you, however, that his sermon, like every good sermon, had its day when it was delivered. We cannot print the pathos, nor you read the fervor, with which it was spoken.