Elijah Kellogg, the Man and His Work / Chapters from His Life and Selections from His Writings

by Unknown

AS SEEN THROUGH A BOY’S EYES

William Oliver Clough

When and under what circumstances I made the acquaintance of the Rev. Elijah Kellogg I do not now recall. The place, however, was Boston, and I persuade myself that the time was the winter of 1856-1857, during what was mentioned in the newspapers of that day as the “Finney revival.” I was then an errand boy in a jewelry store, a member of the Park Street Church Sunday-school and congregation, and spent many of my evenings out—for I slept in the store—at the rooms of the Young Men’s Christian Association, then in Tremont Temple. It was probably at the last-mentioned place that Mr. Kellogg came into my life, and now, looking back over the years that have passed, I acknowledge that I have cause for gratitude that I did not resist the love and friendship that he generously bestowed upon me.

Those of us, his friends and admirers, who recall the dignified manners and solemn utterances of the good old clergyman of our grandfathers’ days—on whose approach to the old homestead we fled like a brood of frightened chickens—do not find in him a counterpart. He was like yet unlike them, and it was the unlikeness that attracted young people to him and compelled them whether they would or no to follow where he led. It was that he had been a boy—the old school clergyman never gave evidence of such weakness—and that it seemed no condescension on his part to be a boy again with boys, when by so being he could keep them out of mischief and as he was wont to say “headed up the stream.” More than this he knew how to “get at boys.” He had a purpose in it all. Many boys did not in my boyhood days—and I assume that they are the same in all generations—take kindly to being told that unless they turned over a new leaf and joined the church they would surely go to the devil. Mr. Kellogg knew this and was ever on the watch to discover their plans and ambitions, and, apart from sermons,—for he could get them in in the proper place,—encourage them to strive for success, while incidentally warning them of the pitfalls in their path. In a word, he had an intuitive knowledge of the character of the person upon whom he would impress the better way of life, and knew just how much religious talk he would stand and still come to him with his burdens and for advice. His attitude always seemed to be that religion—as men profess it—was in a large degree dependent upon education in honesty and sincerity of purpose in the things that are nearest at hand, in the affairs of everyday life, that if the twig were but rightly bent, thus the tree would incline. He was indeed a reverend schoolmaster.

Hardly a week passed between the date I have tried to fix and the time I left Boston in 1870, when, if Mr. Kellogg was in the city, I did not meet him somewhere in his wanderings. I do not recall that I ever attended services at the Mariners’ Church on Summer Street, over which he was for many years pastor, on a Sunday morning or afternoon. Sunday evening was the time. It was then that the larger half of the Park Street Church boys and girls ran away, as the annoyed deacons put it, and went to Mr. Kellogg’s meeting. No matter what the weather happened to be or what the attractions were at home, the young people into whose lives Mr. Kellogg had forged his way went where he was to be found. They had done their duty by their own church, and they must do their duty by Father Kellogg; and so it happened that year after year the Seaman’s Bethel was crowded to overflowing on Sunday night, the middle of the house being reserved for Jack, and the wall pews for the boys and girls. Incidentally, and always in the right place, the preacher gave us the advice that was withheld in social and friendly intercourse. In an up-to-date way of expressing it, he “got it all in.”

Father Kellogg, having followed the sea in his youth, had a good many odd ways of saying things that were pleasing to us. Here are some that I now recall:—

The writer said to him one day: “The deacons at Park Street are greatly offended because you take us away from them on Sunday night, and have expostulated with us.” “That reminds me of an old couple in our state” (“our” is accounted for by the fact that the writer is a native of Gray), he replied. “The wife was a strapping woman of more than two hundred pounds and the husband was a little fellow of not much over one hundred pounds. She abused him past the endurance of a block. Her tongue was forever going. She gave him no rest, no peace. Some one said to him, ’Why don’t you turn about and give her as good as she sends?’ and he replied, ’Oh, but it amuses her and it doesn’t hurt me any!’ And that is how it is with the deacons and me. The boys and girls will come to the Bethel just the same.” He was right about it.

Father Kellogg was standing in his accustomed place one night in front of the pulpit, watching the ushers and showing anxiety through fear that sittings would not be found for all comers, when, after looking about, he pointed to one of the pews, and this is what he said:— “Six persons may be comfortably seated in those wall pews. There are only five in that pew. Why won’t you take another reef in your mainsails, ladies, and accommodate one more?” The ladies blushed and reefed.