Again, in the following extract from a letter to his teacher, Mr. James Tappan, about two years before Mr. Webster's death, he writes:—
You have, indeed, lived a checkered life. I hope you have been able to bear prosperity with meekness, and adversity with patience. These things are all ordered for us far better than we could order them for ourselves. We may pray for our daily bread; we may pray for forgiveness of sins; we may pray to be kept from temptation, and that the kingdom of God may come in us, and in all men, and His will everywhere be done. Beyond this we hardly know for what good to supplicate the Divine Mercy. Our Heavenly Father knoweth what we have need of better than we know ourselves, and we are assured that His eye and His loving kindness are upon us and around us every moment.
How entirely in harmony are these religious views of Mr. Webster with similar utterances on several public occasions, to which allusion has already been made; and especially with that extraordinary dramatic scene so vividly described by his biographer, Mr. Harvey, who was an eye-witness and participator in it, when, in the solitary farm-house of John Colby,[D] in New Hampshire, Mr. Webster, at the request of Mr. Colby, led in prayer. Whatever else of unfriendly criticism has been made on the character of Mr. Webster, he has never been charged with hypocrisy, or of parading his religious opinions; least of all in that remote hamlet of John Colby, whither he had gone to visit him for the first time in twenty-five years, because he had heard of Mr. Colby's remarkable conversion late in life. Can there be the remotest suspicion that other than the most pure and noble of all motives could have governed him, as he then sought communion with God in prayer? And, as Mr. Harvey remarked to the writer, "It was indeed a prayer."
About one year before the death of Mr. Webster I casually met Professor Stuart, of Andover, on his return from a visit to Mr. Webster, at Marshfield, when, in the course of conversation relating to his religious habits, the professor remarked, "Mr. Webster has arrived at that period in life when he feels more than ever his moral accountability;" and added, "He has resumed family worship." I inquired, "What evidence have you of this?" He answered, "Clergymen who have recently visited in his family have so informed me." This, of course, implied that family worship had once been his custom, but that it had been temporarily suspended,—perhaps attributable to unusual pressure on his time by reason of his always arduous public duties.
I am glad to have the opportunity, in these columns, of repeating such testimony as I am able to offer, and to which much more might be added, as to the worth and private character of America's greatest statesman, whose record of distinguished public service will adorn the pages of his country's history with unfading lustre long after the unjust aspersions on his character shall have passed into oblivion forever.
FOOTNOTES:
[B] The Atlantic Monthly.
[C] Speech at Dartmouth Webster Centennial Dinner, Boston, 1882.
[D] John Colby was the husband of Mr. Webster's eldest sister, who died many years before the visit here referred to. He was known as a great sceptic in religious matters in early life, and hence Mr. Webster's earnest desire to visit him soon after he heard of Mr. Colby's conversion.