What glistening starry eyes, what dewy and rosy cheeks, what lovely faces dwelt inside of those bonnets! Even to-day in life's dusty pathway, sweet influences like the breath of a May morning come back with the happy memories of Sabbath days, that were as "the bridal of the earth and sky", with the trees in white blossoms standing as bridesmaids. In memory's glow the returning vision of youth make what the Deuteronomist calls "the days of heaven upon earth". It was in that wonderful training school on Broad street, that so many lovely maidens were taught how, by divine grace, to be noble wives and mothers, and useful women and workers for the coming of the kingdom of heaven, and from which so many alumni went forth, young men to preach the good news of God. On the missionary field, or at home, in bustling cities, or in quiet country charges, many there are who to-day amid monotony and toil, refresh their spirits at the fountains of memory, taking inspiration from the past and its great personality, thanking God and taking courage.
"The traveller owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
And pausing takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air."
They were not all sunny days for "the pastor", but rather many a "dark and cloudy day", for not all of the seed of the sower fell into good and honest hearts. Too many trusted in themselves and falling, wallowed in the mire. One favorite text and a very sincere utterance of both the Christ's first John and one of his latest disciples so named, was this: "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth". When, on the contrary, his quondam church members dishonored their Lord, then "the pastor's" heart was wrung—alas, too often—with anguish.
Among memory's dissolving views is one of a young man who had been brought into the church and for a time gave promise of manly piety and a fruitful Christian career, but, falling into habits of worldly pleasure he seemed to lose in girth of soul as he became larger in body. He once boasted to me of his finely developed muscle, ascribing his physical enlargement and, as he thought, improvement to "good liquor and good women," saying it without a blush, and in such a statement horribly abusing the English language as I knew and felt it. When the war broke out he became captain in a regiment which was made up chiefly of Roman Catholic Irish soldiers from Philadelphia, men as devout in one way as they were reckless in another. In leading them to the charge in their first battle, he noticed not only how their faces turned pale as the spirit conquered the flesh, but also how each man crossed himself, and how, as he described it, the advance of his company into the thick of the fight could be traced by the packs of cards which they threw away. They did not wish to lose their lives, but they relished even less the idea of being found dead with these instruments of pleasure and of evil in their knapsacks. The handsome young captain, after going to moral wreck, was mortally wounded in battle. When his body was brought home and laid in Laurel Hill, I remember the impressive final words of his saddened and disappointed pastor as he committed "to the care of the Resurrection and the Life" the relics of a once noble form:
"Alas! there are wrecks on humanity's sea
More awful than any on ocean can be".
Yet the preacher's burning denunciations of sin and his praise of holiness helped us all to keep step with the Infinite and hold to the right path. Whether in formal discourse or in the reading of a hymn he lost no opportunity to make sinners and false professors uncomfortable and to cheer well doers.