Noonday. He mused with it, gathered admirers about it and discovered that it entered into partnership with other streams as men and women enter into the partnerships of life. He listened to its whispered songs by day and sought its harmonies by night, he sympathized with its fault-finding because of the impurities which flowed into it from cities and villages, admired it when it became a broad expanse, and enforced the lesson of man’s journey through life.
Evening. Standing on the shore of the ocean, the tide receding, he gazed far out toward the horizon, and in descriptive beauty I cannot reproduce, saw the river meet and mingle with the sea, losing its identity; saw the streets of shining gold, the great white throne and the crown for those who are faithful unto death.
The outline of one other of Father Kellogg’s great sermons still lingers in my mind and attracts my thought. Paragraphs from it are discoverable in the stories he wrote late in life. It was prepared for the purpose of presenting the cause of the Seaman’s Friend Society before a great convention in the Boston Music Hall. He was to speak to a cultured audience of men and women from all parts of the state, and in the presence of some of the best scholars and thinkers in his own profession. He felt that he would be criticised in comparison with other speakers, and was therefore determined to do himself and his alma mater credit, and withal present his cause, so as to reach the hearts and pocketbooks of his hearers. I did not hear the sermon at its original delivery, but later he used it for the same purpose in the churches. I heard it at Park Street, and was so attracted and impressed by its beauty of language and eloquence when spoken by him that I went to the Mount Vernon Church when he delivered it there. This gives the impression it left upon my mind.
Through the career of one sailor, learn of many. He pictured the child in the cradle, the love and hope of a doting mother; followed him to school, saw him develop in mind and muscle; sailed cat-boats, set lobster-traps, and dug clams with him. He talked and dreamed with him about other lands and climes beyond the boundary of their vision, and entered into his hopes and ambition to become the master of a ship. Passing briefly over his coasting voyages, he portrayed him in port surrounded by sharks and bad women, and in the whirl, where if he listens and yields to the tempter, he becomes lost to himself and a sorrow to the mother who bore him. He spoke of his needs, of the associations that should environ him, the necessity for a snug harbor home in every port, and then, when an able seaman, he accompanied him on a voyage to a foreign land.
Then he presented, in vivid colors, beautiful, weird, and awful pictures of the sea such as no man who has not witnessed them may discover in the storehouse of his knowledge. The vessel drifts to-day in a calm; there is little to do on shipboard, and so, half homesick, the sailor looks upon the glassy deep as in a mirror, and sees faces and forms of those he loves. Meantime, there are omens that indicate a coming storm, and anxiety is depicted on every face. Night and the storm! Then the awful picture of the raging deep; the vessel climbing mountain waves and anon pitching into the trough of the sea; the dark and ominous clouds, the angry winds, the mingled prayers and supplications of the crew; the promises of a better life if spared to reach land, the wreck, the rescue,—all in vividness, in rapid and burning oratory that held a landsman as in a vice, moved him to tears, and blotted from his mind all else save the speaker and his theme. Into port, far from home and kindred, and the old story of forgetfulness of promises when in the presence of temptations, and, in conclusion, a masterly plea for pecuniary aid from those who had it in their hearts to better the sailor’s environments.
During the war of the rebellion, Father Kellogg’s patriotism and zeal for the cause of his country was of the most pronounced type. Whenever a regiment from Maine was due to march through the streets of Boston, whether outward or homeward bound, his affection for the old home and the boys of his state, excited him beyond self-control. He met the command, if informed of its coming, at the railroad station, crossed the city with it, remained close to the ranks and at every halt talked with and cheered the boys. He made speeches to several regiments, when reviewed on the Common, and on one occasion—I was present to greet a cousin in the ranks—he broke down completely, and wept like a child. It was pretty safe to say after the departure of a regiment from Maine that Mr. Kellogg had not a “penny to his name.” He made speeches and offered prayers at the unfurling of the flag, and spoke parting words of affection and advice to seamen of his congregation and young men of his Sunday evening meetings, many of whom “died with their wounds in front.”
The last of my several visits with Father Kellogg at his home at North Harpswell was on August 5, 1899. On my journey thither, I talked freely with the driver of the hired carriage—G. W. Holden, a brother of the mystic tie—and said to him: “I should think the people of such an up-to-date place as this would demand a younger preacher, more of a society man than Mr. Kellogg.” He became enthusiastic at once and replied: “Why, bless you, brother, the people of this place are all of one mind in this matter. Like myself they had rather hear Mr. Kellogg say ’amen,’ than the finest sermon any younger minister could possibly preach. Why, people come from far and near to hear him, and every now and then he has a request from some of them to deliver his discourse on the ’Prodigal Son.’ It is a most remarkable sermon. I could hear it twice a year, and hunger for a third.”
But here we were at the end of our pilgrimage, at the very door of his residence. It was nine miles from the boat-landing, half a mile from the main highway through a strip of woods, and in a romantic and secluded spot; an old-fashioned, unpainted farm-house of the fathers, with large, high-studded rooms, and furnishings after the fashion of the city. Everything bespoke comfort.
Mr. Kellogg met me at the door with warm greeting, and when he made out my identity through the mists of years, embraced me with the enthusiasm of a child, put his arms about my neck and kissed me upon the cheek. It was the same warmth and affection with which he greeted the old Park Street Church crowd of young people in good old times. “Come in! come in!” and then our tongues were loosed and it was a race for life, for my visit was necessarily to be brief, to see who could do the most talking. I think—mind you, reader, I am not positive about it—that he did the most of it; at any rate he conjured with names of old-time companions and friends whom I had forgotten, but whose faces and forms were instantly upon the screen before me, and spoke with tenderest affection of boys and girls, old men and matrons, whom we had known and loved, and who have long since paid the debt of nature. Oh, that the living of the good old times could have joined me on that pilgrimage!
He told me it was his purpose to proclaim“glad tidings” to men while life lasted; that he had engaged to preach the next year; that he expected to officiate on Sunday at Bowdoin College, and that his health was such—deafness being his only apparent infirmity—he had reasonable hope of becoming a centenarian. He recalled incidents innumerable with which I am familiar, and related with manifest pleasure that the deacons of Park Street undertook to put a stop to the “running away” of their young people on Sunday nights, and, with merriest twinkle of the eye, said, “their lectures fell on stony ground. Some of the young people replied that they were born in the Bethel, others that they were looking for a chance to sing, and there were a few—and I fear you were one of the number—who always turned up where the girls were. Anyhow, I had the crowd, and I loved every one in it as though he were my own.”