For patriotism and bravery wherever shown, Mr. Kellogg had the greatest admiration. Besides the large number of landsmen connected with his church who entered the service, over two hundred of the inmates of the Sailors’ Home joined the army and more than six hundred the navy during the war. With many of these, Mr. Kellogg kept in touch through frequent correspondence, and looked after their personal needs. He loved them all. He often sent necessities and delicacies to his“boys” at the front. In one of the early battles,[3] one of the young men of whom mention has been made as receiving arms at his hands in a Sunday evening prayer-meeting was wounded. He at once visited the hospital to which the young man had been taken, secured a furlough for him, provided him liberally with necessities, brought him to Boston, and sent him to his home in Maine for a visit to his father and mother.
[3] Here, again, the reference is to Mr. Kimball.—W. B. M.
The results of Mr. Kellogg’s great work for seamen were often not apparent. His sailor parishioners were scattered throughout the world. In speaking of this, he once said: “If a person on shore is converted, it immediately becomes known to a church of perhaps six hundred members; if he leads a devoted Christian life, his influence is felt by thousands. But these Harlan Pages of the ocean, who pray with messmates, speak good words to shipmates in the middle watch, maintain a Christian life on board frigates which have been compared to floating hells enlivened once in a while by a drowning—who writes their memoirs? What stone records their virtues? What periodical chronicles their death? They slip quietly to heaven unnoticed and unknown. Their bier is a plank across the lee gunwale, their mausoleum the ocean, their epitaph is written in water. And when the report circulates in the forecastles of different vessels, some old sailor, dashing a tear from his eye with his shirt-sleeve, exclaims to his shipmates, ‘Well, he has gone to heaven. He saved my soul, and he would have saved the whole ship’s company if they had listened to him.’”
The visible results of Mr. Kellogg’s work, however, were from the first encouraging. During the winter of 1858, the great revival was fully felt. Many were brought to Christ. The next year the interest continued, not only at the church and the Sailors’ Home, but at sea. At the Home 276 signed the temperance pledge and 95 were converted. Good work was also done at the hospital in Chelsea. That winter word was received that four members of the Mariners’ Church were holding prayer-meetings on board the Hartford, flagship of the squadron then in Chinese waters, and that a lieutenant, the fleet surgeon, a ship’s doctor, a gunner, two midshipmen, six petty officers, and twenty-five seamen had been converted. Prayer-meetings were then being held upon fifteen other men-of-war. The next year also showed good results. In 1861, Mr. Kellogg was able to report seventy-four conversions at the Sailors’ Home, fifty-five on the receiving-ship Ohio, twenty-eight at the hospital in Chelsea, thirty-seven at sea, and a number at the church. Statistics show the conversion of 725 during his ministry of eleven years.
The high esteem in which Mr. Kellogg was held by the other clergymen of Boston was well expressed in 1862 by Dr. Todd of the Central Church. Speaking at an annual meeting of the society from which Mr. Kellogg was forced to be absent by a serious attack of lung fever, Dr. Todd said:— “I regret exceedingly the absence to-day of one who is the life and soul of this work in this city, whose treasured experience, given in his racy way, is wont to enliven this anniversary. I regret exceedingly the cause of his detention. But I may take advantage of his absence to bear some slight testimony to the preciousness of the influence which he is exerting. Apart from his successes among seamen, for which he is eminently qualified by the characteristics of his nature, as well as the tastes of his heart, he is diffusing an untold influence in other spheres. I presume that there is not an evangelical clergyman in this city who cannot gratefully trace among his people, and especially among the young men of his congregation, the quickening and healthful influence of the pastor of the Mariners’ Church.”
A year later the decline in the merchant marine began to be seriously felt. It was said to be due to the sale of a large number of vessels to the English and the change in destination of others, many going to England and the Continent which formerly would have come to Boston and New York. This diversion of commerce was believed to be due to the prevailing high rates of exchange. Then, of course, a great many of the men who had manned our merchant vessels had been absorbed by the army and navy. Just before this decline began, a competent authority had estimated that throughout the world at least one hundred and forty thousand merchant vessels of all kinds were afloat, manned by a million men, and that one-third of these were under the flag of the United States.
These changes in our commerce and this falling off in American seamen greatly lessened the number of inmates at the Sailors’ Home, and seriously weakened the Mariners’ Church. Then, too, a new element had occupied Fort Hill and the adjacent streets. The growth of business was crowding people southward and westward, comfortable homes giving way to commercial establishments. These things, together with an intention which Mr. Kellogg had long cherished of entering upon a literary career, caused him to think seriously of resigning his position. During the summer of 1865 he did so, and was soon after succeeded by the Rev. J. M. H. Dow.
The foregoing is but a glimpse of Elijah Kellogg’s work in Boston. In its entirety, that work is known only to God and the Recording Angel. Its influence was widely felt upon sea and land. Thousands of sailors upon lonely waters were made happier by it, and up among the hills, under the trees, at many a farm-house window, sad faces that looked out and watched for their dear ones’ coming brightened at the remembrance that they had been led to Christ through the efforts of this seaman’s friend.
Mr. Kellogg was a saintly, lovable man, and but for his modesty, shunning, as he often did, the leading churches of the day, because of what he termed their “starch and formality,” he would have been named and known among the great preachers of his time.