"More than half a century ago, in March, 1832, I went to New Bedford, and, for nearly a year, was a constant attendant at Mr. Dewey's church. During that year he preached most of the sermons contained in the first volume that he published. As we read them, they are among the ablest and most impressive sermons in the language. But when read now they give only a slight idea of what they were as they came to us then, all [147] glowing and alive with the emotions of the preacher. When he walked through the church to the pulpit, his head swaying backward and forward as if too heavily freighted, his whole bearing was that of one weighed down by the thoughts in which he was absorbed and the solemn message which he had come to deliver. The old prophetic 'burden of the Lord' had evidently been laid upon him. Some hymn marked by its depth of religious feeling was read. This was followed by a prayer, which was not the spontaneous, easy outflowing of calmly reverential feelings, but the labored utterance of a soul overawed and overburdened by emotions too strong for utterance. There was sometimes an appearance almost of distress in this exercise, so utterly inadequate, as it seemed to him, were any words of his to express what lay deepest in his mind, when thus brought face to face with God. 'I do not shrink,' he said, 'from speaking to man.' But, except in his rarest and best moments, he was oppressed by a sense of the poverty of any language of thanksgiving or supplication that he could use in his intercourse with God."
"His manner in preaching was marked by great depth and strength of feeling, but always subdued. He spoke on great subjects. He entered profoundly into them, and treated them with extraordinary intellectual ability and clearness. They who were seeking for light found it in his preaching. But more than any intellectual precision or clearness of thought was to be gained from him in his treatment of the momentous questions which present themselves, sooner or later, to every thoughtful mind. Behind these questions, more important than any one or all of them intellectually considered, was the realm of thought, emotion, aspiration, out of which [148] religious ideas are formed, and in which the highest faculties of our nature are to find their appropriate nourishment and exercise. He spoke to us as one who belonged to this higher world. The realm in which he lived, and which seemed never absent from his mind, impressed itself as he spoke, and gave a deeper solemnity and attractiveness to his words than could be given by any specific and clearly-defined ideas. A sense of mystery and awe pervaded his teachings, and infused into his utterances a sentiment of divine sacredness and authority. He preached as I never, before or since, have heard any one else, on human nature, on retribution, on the power of kindness, on life and death, in their relations to man and to what is divine. He stood before us compassed about by a religious atmosphere which penetrated his inmost nature, and gave its tone and coloring to all he said. For he spoke as one who saw rising visibly before him the issues of life and of death."
"He was gifted with a rare dramatic talent. But it was a gift, not an art, and showed itself in voice and gesture as by the natural impulse of a great nature profoundly moved, and in its extremest manifestations so subdued as to leave the impression of a vast underlying reserved force. His action, so full of meaning and so effective, was no studied or superficial movement of hand and voice, but the action of the whole man, body and soul, all powerfully quickened and moved from within by the living thoughts and emotions to which he was giving utterance."
"I have heard many of the greatest orators of our time. But, with the exception of Daniel Webster and Dr. Channing in their highest moments, Mr. Dewey was the most [149] eloquent man among them all, and that not once or twice, on great occasions, but Sunday after Sunday, forenoon and afternoon, for months together."
"Some allowance should perhaps be made for the state of mind and the period of life in which I heard him. I had just come from college, where the intellect had been cultivated in advance of the moral and religious faculties. The equilibrium which belongs to a perfectly healthy and harmonious nature was disturbed, and, as a necessary consequence of this unbalanced and distempered condition, there was a deep inward unrest, and a craving for something,—the greatest of all,—which had not yet been attained. Mr. Dewey's preaching came in just at this critical time, and it was to me the opening into a new world. The hymn, the prayer, the Scripture reading, usually brought me into a reverent and plastic state of mind, ready to receive and be moulded by the deepest and loftiest Christian truths. From the beginning to the end of the sermon I was under the spell which he had thrown over me, and unconscious of everything else. Very seldom during my life, and then only for a few minutes at a time, has any one, by his eloquence, exercised this absorbing and commanding influence over me. Once or twice in hearing Dr. Channing I felt as I suppose the prophet may have felt when he heard 'the still small voice,' at which 'he wrapped his face in his mantle,' and listened as to the voice of God. A few such experiences I have had with other men; but with Mr. Dewey more than with all others. And when the benediction was pronounced, I wished to go away and be by myself in the new world of spiritual ideas and emotions into which I had been drawn. Those were to me great experiences, [150] inwrought into the inmost fibres of my nature, and always associated in my mind with Mr. Dewey's preaching."
"Nor were these experiences peculiar to any one person. The audience as a whole were affected in a similar manner. A deep solemnity pervaded the place. There was not merely silence, but the spell of absorbed attention that makes itself felt, and spreads itself as by a general sympathy through a congregation profoundly moved by great thoughts filled out and made alive by deep and uplifting emotions. The exercises in the church were often followed by lasting convictions. The Sunday's sermon was the topic, not of curious discussion or indiscriminate eulogy, but of serious conversation among the young, who looked forward to the coming Sunday as offering privileges which it would be a misfortune to lose. The services of the church were remembered and anticipated as the most interesting and important event of the week."
"I shall never cease to think with gratitude of Mr. Dewey's preaching. In common with other great preachers of our denomination,—Dr. Channing, for example, Dr. Nichols, and Dr. Walker,—he spoke as one standing within the all-encompassing and divine presence. He awakened in us a sense of that august and indefinable influence from which all that is holiest and best must come. He brought us into communication with that Light of life. He showed us how our lives, our thoughts, and even our every-day acts, may be sanctified and inspired by it, as every plant and tree is not only illuminated by the sun but vitally associated with it."
"If, in the light of later experience, I were to criticise [151] the preaching I then heard, I should say that it was too intense. The writing and the delivery of such sermons subjected the preacher to too severe a strain both of body and mind. No man could go on preaching in that way, from month to month, without breaking down in health. And it may be questioned whether a mind acting under so high a pressure is in the best condition to take just views, to preserve its proper equipoise, or to impart wise and healthful instruction. The stimulus given may be too strong for the best activity of those who receive it. They whose sensitive natures are most deeply affected by such an example may, under its influence, unconsciously form an ideal of intellectual attainments too exacting, and therefore to them a source of weakness rather than of strength."
"The danger lies in these directions. But Mr. Dewey's breadth of apprehension, his steadfast loyalty and devotion to the truth, the judicial impartiality with which he examined the whole field before making up his mind, saved him from one-sided or ill-balanced conclusions. And the intense action of all the faculties not only enables a man of extraordinary intellectual powers to impress his thought on others and infuse his very soul into theirs; but it also, as we see in the best work of Channing, Dewey, and Emerson, opens to them realms of thought which otherwise might never have been reached, and gives to them glimpses of a divine love and splendor never granted to a less earnest and passionate devotion."
In the autumn of 1835 Mr. Dewey was settled over the Second Unitarian Church in New York, trusting to his stock of already written discourses [152] to save him from a stress of intellectual labor too severe for his suffering brain, which was never again to allow him uninterrupted activity in study. When his life-work is viewed, it should always be remembered under what difficulties it was carried on. It was work that taxed every faculty to the uttermost, while the physical organ of thought had been so strained by over-exertion at the beginning of his professional career, owing to a general ignorance of the bodily laws even greater then than it is now, that the use of it during the rest of his life was like that which a man has of a sprained foot; causing pain in the present exercise, and threatening far worse consequences, if the effort is continued. Fortunately, his health in all other respects was excellent, and his spirits and courage seldom flagged. I remember him as lying much on the sofa in those days, and liking to have his head "scratched" by the hour together, with a sharp-pointed comb, to relieve by external irritation the distressing sensation's, which he compared to those made, sometimes by a tightening ring, sometimes by a leaden cap, and sometimes (but this was in later life) by a dull boring instrument. Yet he was the centre of the family life, and of its merriment as well; and his strong social instincts and lively animal spirits made him full of animation and vivacity in society, although he was soon tired, and with a nervous restlessness undoubtedly the effect of disease, never wanted to stay long in any company. [153] He preached a sermon after the great fire in New York, in December, 1835, which drew forth the following letter from Mr. Henry Ware:—