In the broadest sense of the word Mr. Savage is not a man of scholarly attainments or tastes; not many are. He is nevertheless a highly cultivated man. Whether he addresses us through the faculties of speech or through his written compositions, we always feel the independence of his intellect, his delicate and discriminating moral sense, and his love of truth. His sermons, his public utterances, and his devout invocations exhibit a maturity of mind and a range of culture which enable him to impress other minds with whatever has possession of his own. In the pulpit, in authorship, in every mode of religious activity, we meet the cultivated, sincere, and reverent man. We feel the influence of his sympathetic mind and singular chasteness of spirit in hearty and symmetrical development. A culture like this, combined with a nature deeply religious, brings one into possession more or less completely of truths which make a direct appeal to the understanding. It has enabled Mr. Savage to enjoy a certain lordship in the realm of mind and mental life. He is an example of the dictum, that he who would think truly on spiritual things must first be spiritually minded. In both his acted and his written life he seems to comprehend and to realize the truth, to have reached the loftiest heights of fellowship with eternal wisdom. Judging from his own serene, unclouded, and practical vision of the truth, one is driven to the conclusion that he is proclaiming and formulating the ultimate gospel of mankind.
Some may sneer and scoff at his “deadly notions” and “perverted thoughts,” but in his demand for personal life, development of conscience, and attainment in righteousness, his ministry is potent; its inspiration is constant. He believes and preaches only those truths which are possible to rational belief. With that exquisite instinct which characterizes all his thinking, he places, as if he were in apostolic succession, man’s greatest need in coming to himself and in making religion inseparable from personal thought and character. Mr. Savage holds this forth as man’s paramount task, to refuse which is alone to be faithless and hopeless and unforgiven. His idea of religion consists in nothing external or formal; nothing can avail with him but the culture of the soul and the quiet discharge of duty. It is his superlative merit that he enables one to feel his own capacity of thought as a positive and independent efficacy, and to rest upon the authority of his own conscience as the hope of glory and as a coördinating power with Holy Writ. He makes a broad survey of human nature, and commands men to traverse the whole range of their being and to call themselves to rigid account until the germs of moral debility are cast out of the heart. Man is not to waste his energies in grasping the immense and misty proportions of the beliefs of this or that traditionist or minute systems to which souls are often bent in unwilling conformity. The object of his ministry is to summon men to reckon with themselves every day, and to regenerate themselves by right thinking and by deeds of piety. In his opinion each person is a spiritual agency, a marvellous display of divine power and goodness, not only in the majesty of the truth which he apprehends, but in the dignity of the life which he may live. Temptation may open its alluring paths, evil may solicit us, sin may lead us astray, sorrow may drag us down; yet they need not. His public ministry is devoted to the infusion of this better sentiment,—that man is not the mere victim of circumstances, the necessary prey of temptation, or the helpless subject of wrong; that he need not contemplate life in indolent despair, but may check the dominion of sin and impurity, rise above not only intemperate indulgence, but every intemperate desire and impulse, and form dispositions of peculiar excellence, of original strength and beauty.
Mr. Savage’s ministry, then, is full of truth and power. It is strongly personal and ethical. There is no abler advocate of this important truth and master-word of the Gospel and of religion. It is a divine truth ever working in him, breaking into utterances, and giving to his beliefs and his life the highest dignity. With him it is a persistent and overwhelming duty to give to his ministry this practical content, this ethical intensity. In this he is evangelical.
The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments assert or imply that without our personal agency, and without the truth in the substance and texture of our characters, there can be no spiritual elevation or final perfection. In the terms of the Scriptures the divine resources are infinite; but instead of overwhelming our personal agency or responsibility they make a stupendous demand upon us. The truth must be received with unhesitating acceptance and assimilated to our individual being.
To teach such consummate truths the Rev. Minot J. Savage, D. D., strong in every fibre of intellectual and religious faith, has devoted his talents, his strength, and his life, and for that reason he stands before the American people as one of their most noted preachers.
THE CIVIC OUTLOOK.
BY HENRY RANDALL WAITE, PH. D.