In July, 1881, I was visiting Stockholm, and was invited to go on an excursion to the University of Upsala with Dr. Samuel F. Smith. I had never before met my celebrated countryman about whom his Harvard classmate, Oliver Wendell Holmes, once wrote:
"And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith—
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith;
But he shouted a song for the brave and the free—
Just read on his medal—'My Country—of Thee'"
The song he thus shouted was written for the Fourth of July celebration, in Park Street Church, Boston, in 1832, and has become our national hymn. When I met the genial old man in Sweden, and travelled with him for several days, he was on his way home from a missionary tour in India and Burmah. He told me that he had heard the Burmese and Telugus sing in their native tongue his grand missionary hymn, "The Morning Light is Breaking." He was a native Bostonian, and was born a few days before Ray Palmer. He was a Baptist pastor, editor, college professor, and spent the tranquil summer evening of his life at Newton, Mass.; and at a railway station in Boston, by sudden heart failure, he was translated to his heavenly home. He illustrated his own sweet evening hymn, "Softly Fades the Twilight Ray."
Among the elect-ladies who have produced great uplifting hymns that "were not born to die" was Mrs. Elizabeth Payson Prentiss, the daughter of the saintly Dr. Edward Payson, of Portland, Maine. Her prose works were very popular, and "Stepping Heavenward" had found its way into thousands of hearts. But one day she—in a few hours—won her immortality by writing a hymn, beginning with the lines,
"More love to Thee, O Christ,
More love to Thee"
It was printed on a fly-sheet, for a few friends, then found its way into a hymn-book, edited by my well-beloved friend, Dr. Edwin F. Hatfield, and then it took wing and flew over the world into many foreign languages. I often met Mrs. Prentiss at the home of her husband, Dr. George L. Prentiss, an eminent professor in the Union Theological Seminary. She was a very bright-eyed little woman, with a keen sense of humor, who cared more to shine in her own happy household than in a wide circle of society. Her absolutely perfect hymn—for such it truly is—was born of her own deep longings for a fuller inflow of that love that casteth out all fear. This has been the genesis of all the soul-songs that devout disciples of our Lord chant into the ears of their Master in their hours of sweetest and closest fellowship. Mrs. Prentiss has put a new song into the mouths of a multitude of those who are "stepping heavenward."
CHAPTER V
THE TEMPERANCE REFORM AND MY CO-WORKERS
As stated in the first chapter of this book, I became a teetotaler when I was a child, and I also stated that the first public address I ever delivered was in behalf of temperance. When I made my first visit to Edinburgh in 1842 I learned that a temperance society of that city was about to go over to Glasgow to greet the celebrated Father Theobald Mathew, who was making his first visit to Scotland. I joined my Edinburgh friends, and on arriving in Glasgow we found a multitude of over fifty thousand people assembled on the green. In an open barouche, drawn by four horses, stood a short, stout Irishman, with a handsome, benevolent countenance, and attired in a long black coat with a silver medal hanging upon his breast. After the procession, headed by his carriage, had forced its way through the densely thronged street, it halted in a small open square. Father Mathew dismounted, and began to administer the pledge of abstinence to those who were willing to receive it. They kneeled on the ground in platoons; the pledge was read aloud to them; Father Mathew laid his hands upon them and pronounced a benediction. From the necks of many a small medal attached to a cord was suspended. In this rapid manner the pledge was administered to many hundreds of persons within an hour, and fresh crowds continually came forward.
When I was introduced to the good man as an American, he spoke a few kind words and gave me an "apostolic kiss" upon my cheek. As I was about to make the first public speech of my life, I suppose that I may regard that act of the great Irish apostle as a sort of ordination to the ministry of preaching the Gospel of total abstinence. The administration of the pledge was followed by a grand meeting of welcome in the city hall. Father Mathew spoke with modest simplicity and deep emotion, attributing all his wonderful success to the direct blessings of God upon his efforts to persuade his fellow-men to throw off the despotism of the bottle. After delivering my maiden speech I hastened back to Edinburgh with the deputation from "Auld Reekie," and I never saw Father Mathew again. He was, unquestionably, the most remarkable temperance reformer who has yet appeared. While a Catholic priest in Cork, a Quaker friend, Mr. Martin, who met him in an almshouse, said to him, "Father Theobald, why not give thyself to the work of saving men from the drink?" Father Mathew immediately commenced his enterprise. It spread over Ireland like wildfire. It is computed that no less than five millions of people took the pledge of total abstinence from intoxicating poisons by his influence. The revolution wrought in his day, in his own time and country, was marvellous, and, to this day, his influence is perpetuated in the vast number of Father Mathew Benevolent Temperance Societies.