In the autumn of 1823, on Dr. Channing's return to his pulpit, I went to New Bedford to preach in the Congregational Church, formerly Dr. (commonly called Pater) West's, was invited to be its pastor, and was ordained to that charge [58] on the 17th of December, Dr. Tuckerman giving the sermon. An incident occurred at the ordination which showed me that I had fallen into a new latitude of religious thought and feeling. After the sermon, and in the silence that followed, suddenly we heard the voice of prayer from the midst of the congregation. At first we were not a little disturbed by the irregularity, and the clergymen who leaned over the pulpit to listen looked as if they would have said, "This must be put a stop to"; but the prayer, which was short, went on, so simple, so sincere, so evidently unostentatious and indeed beautiful, so in hearty sympathy with the occasion, and in desire for a blessing on it, that when it closed, all said, "Amen! Amen!" It was a pretty remarkable conquest over prejudice and usage, achieved by simple and self-forgetting earnestness. Indeed, it seemed to have a certain before unthought-of fitness, as a response from the congregation, which is not given in our usual ordination services. The ten years' happy, and, I hope, not unprofitable ministration on my part that followed, and of fidelity on the part of the people, were perhaps some humble fulfilment and answer to the good petitions that it offered, and to all the brotherly exhortations and supplications of that hour.
The congregation was small when I became its pastor, but it grew; a considerable number of families from the Society of Friends connected [59] themselves with it, and it soon rose, as it continues still, to be one of the wealthiest and most liberal societies in the country.
My duties were very arduous. There was no clergyman with whom I could exchange within thirty miles; [FN] relief from this quarter, therefore, was rare, not more than four or five Sundays in the year. I was most of the time in my own pulpit, sometimes for ten months in succession. In addition to this, I became a constant contributor to the "Christian Examiner," for some years, I think as often as to every other number. It was not wise. The duties of the young clergyman are enough for him. The lawyer, the physician, advances slowly to full practice; the whole weight falls upon the clergyman's young strength at once. Mine sunk under it. I brought on a certain nervous disorder of the brain, from which I have never since been free. Of course it interfered seriously with my mental work. How many days hundreds and hundreds did one hour's study in the morning paralyze and prostrate me as completely as if I had been knocked on the head, and lay me, for hours after, helpless on my sofa! After the Sunday's preaching, the effect of which upon me was perhaps singular, making my back and bones ache, and my sinews as if they had been stretched on the rack, making me [60] feel as if I wanted to lie on the floor or on a hard board, if any one knows what that means, after all this, it would be sometimes the middle of the week, sometimes Thursday or Friday, before I could begin to work again, and prepare for the next Sunday. My professional life was a constant struggle; and yet I look back upon it, not with pain, but with pleasure.
[FN: This distance, which now seems so trifling, then involved the hire of a horse and chaise for three days, and two long days' driving through deep, sandy roads. M. E. D.]
Besides all this, subjects of great religious interest to me constantly pressed themselves upon my attention. I remember Dr. Lamson, of Dedham, a very learned and able man, asking me one day how I "found subjects to write upon;" and my answering, "I don't find subjects; they find me." I may say they pursued me. It may be owing to this that my sermons have possibly a somewhat peculiar character; what, I do not know, but I remember William Ware's saying, when my first volume of Discourses appeared, "that they were written as if nobody ever wrote sermons before," and something so they were written. I do not suppose there is much originality of thought in them, nor any curiosa felicitas of language, I could not attend to it; it was as much as I could do to disburden myself, but original in this they are, that they were wrought out in the bosom of my own meditation and experience. The pen was dipped in my heart, I do know that. With burning brain and bursting tears I wrote. Little fruit, perhaps, for so much struggle; be it so, though it could not be so [61] to me. But so we work, each one in his own way; and altogether something comes of it.
Early in my professional life, too, I met certain questions, which every thinking man meets sooner or later, and which were pressed upon my mind by the new element that came into our religious society. The Friends are trained up to reverence the inward light, and have the less respect for historical Christianity. The revelation in our nature, then, and the revelation in the Scriptures; the proper place of each in any just system of thought and theology; what importance is to be assigned to the primitive intuitions of right and wrong, and what to the supernaturalism, to the miracles of the New Testament, these were the questions, and I discussed them a good deal in the pulpit, as matters very practical to many of the minds with which I was dealing. I admitted the full, nay, the supreme value of the original intuitions, of the inward light, of the teachings of the Infinite Spirit in the human soul; without them we could have no religion; without them we could not understand the New Testament at all, and Christianity would be but as light to the blind; but I maintained that Christ's teaching and living and dying were the most powerful appeal and help and guidance to the inward nature, to the original religion of the soul, that it had ever received. And I believed and maintained that this help, at once most divine and most human, was commended to the world by miraculous [62] attestations. Not that the miracle, or the miracle-sanctioned Christianity, was intended to supersede or disparage the inward light; not that it made clearer the truth that benevolence is right, any more than it could make clearer the proposition that two and two make four; not that it lent a sanction to any intuitive truth, but that it was the seal of a mission, this was what I insisted on. And certainly a being who appeared before me, living a divine life, and assuring me of God's paternal care for me and of my own immortality, would impress me far more, if there were "works done by him" which no other man could do, which bore witness of him. And although it should appear, as in a late work on "The Progress of Religious Ideas" it has been made to appear, that in the old systems there were foreshadowings of that which I receive as the most true and divine; that the light had been shining on brighter and brighter through all ages, that would not make it any the less credible or interesting to me, that Jesus should be the consummation of all, the "true Light" that lighteth the steps of men; and that this Light should have come from God's especial illumination, and should be far above the common and natural light of this world's day. Nay, it would be more grateful to me to believe that all religions have had in them something supernaturally and directly from above, than that none have.
[63] But time went on, and work went on, reason as I might; though time would have lost its light and life, and work all cheer and comfort, if I had not believed. But work grew harder. I was obliged to take longer and longer vacations, one of them five months long at the home in Sheffield. After this I went back to my work, preaching almost exclusively in my own pulpit, seldom going away, unless it was now and then for an occasional sermon.
I went over to Providence in 1832, to preach the sermon at Dr. Hall's installation as pastor of the First Church. Arrived on the evening before, some of us of the council went to a caucus, preparatory to a Presidential election, General Jackson being candidate for the Presidency and Martin Van Buren for Vice-President. Finding the speaking rather dull, after an hour or more we rose to leave, when a gentleman touched my arm and said, "Now, if you will stay, you will hear something worth waiting for." We took our seats, and saw John Whipple rising to speak. I was exceedingly grateful for the interruption of our purpose, for I never heard an address to a popular assembly so powerful; close, compact, cogent, Demosthenic in simplicity and force, not a word misplaced, not a word too many, and fraught with that strange power over the feelings, lent by sadness and despondency, a state of mind, I think, most favorable to real eloquence, in which all verbiage is eschewed, and the burden [64] upon the heart is too heavy to allow the speaker to think of himself.
Mr. Whipple was in the opposition, and his main charge against Van Buren especially, was, that it was he who had introduced into our politics the fatal principle of "the spoils to the victors," a principle which, as the orator maintained, with prophetic sagacity, threatened ruin to the Republic. Still there was no extravagance in his way of bringing the charge. I remember his saying, "Does Mr. Van Buren, then, wish for the ruin of his country? No; Caesar never wished for the glory of Rome more than when he desired her to be laid, as a bound victim, at his feet."
We have learned since more than we knew then of the direful influence of that party cry, "The spoils to the victors." It has made our elections scrambles for office, and our parties "rings." Mr. Whipple portrayed the consequences which we are now feeling, and powerfully urged that his State, small though it was, should do its utmost to ward them off. As he went on, and carried us higher and higher, I began to consider how he was to let us down. But the skilful orator is apt to have some clinching instance or anecdote in reserve, and Mr. Whipple's close was this: