University of Virginia Library

8. PART VIII
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT

58. CHAPTER LVIII
EARLY IMPRESSIONS—1832-1851

WHEN the colonists from New England came into central and western New York, at the end of the eighteenth century, they wrote their main ideas large upon the towns they founded. Especially was this evident at my birthplace on the head waters of the Susquehanna. In the heart of the little village they laid out, largely and liberally, "the Green''; across the middle of this there gradually rose a line of wooden structures as stately as they knew how to make them,—the orthodox Congregational church standing at the center; close beside this church stood the "academy''; and then, on either side, the churches of the Baptists, Methodists, and Episcopalians. Thus were represented religion, education, and church equality.

The Episcopal church, as belonging to the least numerous congregation, was at the extreme left, and the smallest building of all. It was easily recognized. All the others were in a sort of quasi-Italian style of the seventeenth century, like those commonly found in New England; but this was in a kind of "carpenter's Gothic'' which had grown out of vague recollections of the mother-country. To this building I was taken for baptism, and with it are connected my first recollections of public worship. My parents were very devoted members of the Protestant Episcopal Church. With a small number of others of like mind, they had taken refuge in it from the storms of fanaticism which swept through western New York during

the early years of the nineteenth century. For that was the time of great "revivals.'' The tremendous assertions of Jonathan Edwards regarding the tyranny of God, having been taken up by a multitude of men who were infinitely Edwards's inferiors in everything save lung-power, were spread with much din through many churches: pictures of an angry Moloch holding over the infernal fires the creatures whom he had predestined to rebel, and the statement that "hell is filled with infants not a span long,'' were among the choice oratorical outgrowths of this period. With these loud and lurid utterances went strivings after sacerdotal rule. The presbyter—"old priest writ large''—took high ground in all these villages: the simplest and most harmless amusements were denounced, and church members guilty of taking part in them were obliged to stand in the broad aisle and be publicly reprimanded from the pulpit.

My mother was thoughtful, gentle, and kindly; in the midst of all this froth and fury some one lent her a prayer-book; this led her to join in the devotions of a little knot of people who had been brought up to use it; and among these she found peace. My father, who was a man of great energy and vigor, was attracted to this little company; and not long afterward rose the little church on the Green, served at first by such clergymen as chanced to be in that part of the State.

Among these was a recent graduate of the Episcopal College at Geneva on Seneca Lake—Henry Gregory. His seemed to be a soul which by some mistake had escaped out of the thirteenth century into the nineteenth. He was slight in build, delicate in health, and ascetic in habits, his one interest in the world being the upbuilding of the kingdom of God—as he understood it. It was the time when Pusey, Newman, Keble, and their compeers were reviving mediæval Christianity; their ideas took strong hold upon many earnest men in the western world, and among these no one absorbed them more fully than

this young missionary. He was honest, fearless, self-sacrificing, and these qualities soon gave him a strong hold upon his flock,—the hold of a mediæval saint upon pilgrims seeking refuge from a world cruel and perverse.

Seeing this, sundry clergymen and influential laymen of what were known as the "evangelical denominations'' attempted to refute his arguments and discredit his practices. That was the very thing which he and his congregation most needed: under this opposition his fervor deepened, his mediæval characteristics developed, his little band of the faithful increased, and more and more they adored him; but this adoration did not in the least injure him: he remained the same gentle, fearless, narrow, uncompromising man throughout his long life

My first recollections of religious worship in the little old church take me back to my fourth year; and I can remember well, at the age of five, standing between my father and mother, reading the Psalter with them as best I could, joining in the chants and looking with great awe on the service as it went on before my admiring eyes. So much did it impress me that from my sixth to my twelfth year I always looked forward to Sunday morning with longing. The prayers, the chants, the hymns, all had a great attraction for me,—and this although I was somewhat severely held to the proper observance of worship. I remember well that at the age of six years, if I faltered in the public reading of the Psalter, a gentle rap on the side of my head from my father's knuckles reminded me of my duty.

At various times since I have been present at the most gorgeous services of the Anglican, Latin, Russian, and Oriental churches; have heard the Pope, surrounded by his cardinals, sing mass at the high altar of St. Peter's; have seen the Metropolitan Archbishop of Moscow, surrounded by prelates of the Russian Empire, conduct the burial of a czar; have seen the highest Lutheran dignitaries solemnize the marriage of a German kaiser; have sat under the ministrations of sundry archbishops

of Canterbury; have been present at high mass performed by the Archbishop of Athens under the shadow of Mars Hill and the Parthenon; and, though I am singularly susceptible to the influence of such pageants, especially if they are accompanied by noble music, no one of these has ever made so great an impression upon me as that simple Anglo-American service performed by a surpliced clergyman with a country choir and devout assemblage in this little village church. Curiously enough, one custom, which high-churchmen long ago discarded as beneath the proper dignity of the service, was perhaps the thing which impressed me most, and I have since learned that it generally thus impressed new-comers to the Episcopal Church: this was the retirement of the clergyman, at the close of the regular morning prayer, to the vestry, where he left his surplice, and whence he emerged in a black Geneva gown, in which he then preached the sermon. This simple feature in the ceremonial greatly impressed me, and led me to ask the reason for it: at which answer was made that the clergyman wore his white surplice as long as he was using God's words, but that he wore his black gown whenever he used his own.

Though comparatively little was said by Episcopalians regarding religious experiences or pious states of mind, there was an atmosphere of orderly decency during the whole service which could hardly fail to make an impression on all thinking children brought into it. I remember that when, on one or two occasions, I was taken to the Congregational church by my grandmother, I was much shocked at what seemed to me the unfit dress and conduct of the clergyman,—in a cutaway coat, lounging upon a sofa,—and at the irreverent ways of the sturdy farmers, who made ready to leave the church during the final prayer, and even while they should have been receiving the benediction.

I thus became a devotee. Of the sermons I retained little, except a few striking assertions or large words;

one of my amusements, on returning home, was conducting a sort of service, on my own account, with those of the household who were willing to take part in it; and, from some traditions preserved in the family regarding my utterances on such occasions, a droll sort of service it must have been.

In my seventh year the family removed to Syracuse, the "Central City'' of the State, already beginning a wonderful career, although at that time of less than six thousand inhabitants. My experience in the new city was prefaced by an excursion, with my father and mother and younger brother, to Buffalo and Niagara; and as the railways through central New York were then unfinished,—and, indeed, but few of them begun,—we made the journey almost entirely on a canal-packet. Perhaps my most vivid remembrance of this voyage is that of the fervid prayers I then put up against shipwreck.

At Syracuse was a much larger and more influential Protestant Episcopal church than that which we had left,—next, indeed, in importance to the Presbyterian body. That church—St. Paul's—has since become the mother of a large number of others, and has been made the cathedral of a new diocese. In this my father, by virtue of his vigor in everything he undertook, was soon made a vestryman, and finally senior warden; and, the rectorate happening to fall vacant, he recommended for the place our former clergyman, Henry Gregory. He came, and his work in the new place was soon even more effective than in the old.

His first influence made me a most determined little bigot, and I remember well my battles in behalf of high-church ideas with various Presbyterian boys, and especially with the son of the Presbyterian pastor. In those days went on a famous controversy provoked by a speech at a New England dinner in the city of New York which had set by the ears two eminent divines—the Rev. Dr. Wainwright, Episcopalian, and the Rev. Dr. Potts; Presbyterian. Dr. Potts had insisted that the Puritans

had founded a "church without a bishop and a state without a king''; Dr. Wainwright insisted that there could be no church without a bishop; and on this the two champions joined issue. Armed with the weapons furnished me in the church catechism, in sundry sermons, and in pious reading, I took up the cudgels, and the battles then waged were many and severe.

One little outgrowth of my religious intolerance was quickly nipped in the bud. As I was returning home one evening with a group of scampish boys, one of them pointed out the "Jew store,''—in those days a new thing,—and reminded us that the proprietor worshiped on Saturday and, doubtless, committed other abominations. At this, with one accord, we did what we could to mete out the Old Testament punishment for blasphemy—we threw stones at his door. My father, hearing of this, dealt with me sharply and shortly, and taught me most effectually to leave dealing with the Jewish religion to the Almighty. I have never since been tempted to join in any anti-Semitic movement whatever.

Meanwhile Mr. Gregory—or, as he afterward became, Dr. Gregory—was fighting the battles of the church in many ways, and some of his sermons made a great impression upon me. Of these one was entitled "The Church not a Sect,'' the text being, "For as to this sect, we know that it is everywhere spoken against.'' Another sermon showed, especially, his uncompromising spirit and took yet stronger hold upon me; it was given on an occasion when Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists were drawn in large numbers to his church; but, disdaining all efforts to propitiate them, he took as his subject "The Sin of Korah,'' who set himself up against the regularly ordained priesthood, and was, with all his adherents, fearfully punished. The conclusion was easily drawn by all the "dissenters'' present. On another occasion of the same sort, when his church was filled with people from other congregations, he took as his subject the story of Naaman the Syrian, his text being, "Are not Abana and

Pharphar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the rivers of Israel? May I not wash in them and be clean?'' The good rector's answer was, in effect, "No, you may not The Almighty designated the river Jordan as the means for securing health and safety; and so in these times he has designated for a similar purpose the church—which is the Protestant Episcopal Church: outside of that—as the one appointed by him—you have no hope.''

But gradually there came in my mind a reaction, and curiously, it started from my love for my grandmother—my mother's mother. Among all the women whom I remember in my early life, she was the kindest and most lovely. She had been brought as a young girl, by her parents, from Old Guilford in Connecticut; and in her later life she often told me cheerily of the days of privation and toil, of wolves howling about the cottages of the little New York settlement in winter, of journeys twenty miles to church, of riding on horseback from early morning until late in the evening, through the forests, to bring flour from the mill. She was quietly religious, reading every day from her New Testament, but remaining in the old Congregational Church which my mother had left. I remember once asking her why she did not go with the rest of us to the Episcopal Church. Her answer was, "Well, dear child, the Episcopal Church is Just the church for your father and mother and for you children; you are all young and active, but I am getting old and rather stout, and there is a little too much getting up and sitting down in your church for me.'' To the harsh Calvinism of her creed she seemed to pay no attention, and, if hard pressed by me, used to say, "Well, sonny, there is, of course, some merciful way out of it all.'' Her religion took every kindly form. She loved every person worth loving,—and some not worth loving,—and her benefactions were extended to people of every creed; especially was she a sort of Providence to the poor Catholic Irish of the lower part of the town. To us children she was especially devoted—reconciling us in our quarrels,

soothing us in our sorrows, comforting us in our disappointments, and carrying us through our sicknesses. She used great common sense in her care of us; kindly and gentle to the last degree, there was one thing she would never allow, and this was that the children, even when they became quite large, should be out of the house, in the streets or public places, after dark, without an elderly and trusty companion. Though my brother and I used to regard this as her one fault, it was really a great service to us; for, as soon as dusk came on, if we were tempted to linger in the streets or in public places, we returned home, since we knew that if we did not we should soon see her coming to remind us, and this was, of course, a serious blow to our pride.

When, then, I sat in church and heard our mediæval saint preach with ardor and unction, Sunday after Sunday, that the promises were made to the church alone; that those outside it had virtually no part in God's goodness; that they were probably lost,—I thought of this dear, sweet old lady, and my heart rose in rebellion. She was certainly the best Christian I knew, and the idea that she should be punished for saying her prayers in the Presbyterian Church was abhorrent to me. I made up my mind that, if she was to be lost, I would be lost with her; and soon, under the influence of thoughts like these, I became a religious rebel.

The matter was little helped when our good rector preached upon retribution for sin. He held the most extreme views regarding future punishment; and the more he developed them, the more my mind rejected the idea that so many good people about me, especially the one whom I loved so much, could be subjected to such tortures,—and the more my heart rebelled against the Moloch who had established and was administering so horrible a system. I must have been about twelve years old when it thus occurred to me to question the whole sacred theory; and this questioning was started into vigorous life after visiting, with some other school-boys, the Presbyterian

church when a "revival'' was going on. As I entered, a very unspiritual-looking preacher was laying down the most severe doctrines of divine retribution. In front of him were several of our neighbors' daughters, many of them my schoolmates, whom I regarded as thoroughly sweet and good; and they were in tears, apparently broken-hearted under the storm of wrath which poured over them from the mouth of the revival preacher. At this I revolted entirely, and from that moment I disbelieved in the whole doctrine, utterly and totally. I felt that these kindly girls, to whom I had looked with so much admiration in the classes at school and in our various little gatherings, were infinitely more worthy of the divine favor than was the big, fleshly creature storming and raging and claiming to announce a divine message.

Some influence on my youthful thinking had also been exercised by sundry occurrences in our own parish. Our good rector was especially fond of preaching upon "baptismal regeneration''; taking the extreme high-church view and thereby driving out some of the best "evangelicals'' from his congregation. One of these I remember especially—a serene, dignified old man, Mr. John Durnford. After he left our church he took his place among the Presbyterians, and I remember, despite my broad-church tendencies, thinking that he was incurring serious danger by such apostasy; but as I noted him, year after year, devoting himself to the newly founded orphan-asylum, giving all his spare time to the care of the children gathered there, even going into the market and thence bearing provisions to them in a basket, I began to feel that perhaps his soul was safe, after all. I bethought myself that, with all my reading of the Bible, I had never found any text which required a man to believe in the doctrines of the Protestant Episcopal Church; but that I had found, in the words of Jesus himself, as well as in the text of St James regarding "pure religion and undefiled,'' declarations which seemed to commend, especially, labors for the poor, fatherless, and afflicted, like those of Mr. Durnford.

But still more marked was the influence on my thinking of a painful clash in the parish. It came on this wise. Our rector was one day called to attend the funeral of a little child but a few weeks old, the daughter of neighbors of ours. The father was a big-bodied, big-hearted, big-voiced, successful man of business, well liked for his bluff cordiality and generosity, who went to church because his wife went. The mother was a sweet, kindly, delicate woman, the daughter of a clergyman, and devoted to the church.

It happened that, for various reasons, and more especially on account of the absence of the father from home on business, the baptism of the child had been delayed until its sudden death prevented the rite forever.

The family and neighbors being assembled at the house, and the service about to begin, an old maiden lady, who had deeply absorbed the teachings of Dr. Gregory and wished to impress them on those present, said to the father, audibly and with a groan, "Oh, Mr. —, what a pity that the baby was not baptized!'' to which the rector responded, with a deep sigh and in a most plaintive voice, "Yes!'' Thereupon the mother of the child burst into loud and passionate weeping, and at this the father, big and impulsive as he was, lost all control of himself. Rising from his chair, he strode to the side of the rector and said, "That is a slander on the Almighty; none but a devil could, for my negligence, punish this lovely little child by ages of torture. Take it back—take it back, sir; or, by the God that made us, I will take you by the neck and throw you into the street!'' At this the gentle rector faltered out that he did not presume to limit the mercy of God, and after a time the service went on; but sermons on baptismal regeneration from our pulpit were never afterward frequent or cogent.

Startled as I was at this scene, I felt that the doctrine had not stood the test. More and more there was developed in me that feeling which Lord Bacon expressed so

profoundly and pithily, in his essay on "Superstition,'' when he said:

It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion as is unworthy of Him; for if the one is unbelief, the other is contumely: and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose: "Surely, I had rather a great deal that men should say there was no such man at all as Plutarch, than that they should say that Plutarch ate his children as soon as they were born;''—as the poets speak of Saturn: and as the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater towards men.

The "danger'' of which Bacon speaks has been noted by me often, both before and since I read his essays. Once, indeed, when a very orthodox lady had declared to me her conviction that every disbeliever in the divinity of the second person in the Trinity must be lost, I warned her of this danger and said, "We lately had President Grant here on the university grounds. Suppose your little girl, having met the President, and having been told that he was the great general of the war and President of the United States, should assert her disbelief, basing it on the fact that she had formed the idea of a much more showy and gorgeous person than this quiet, modest little man; and suppose that General Grant, on hearing of the child's mistake, should cruelly punish her for it; what would you think of him? and what would he think of you, were he to know that you asserted that he could be so contemptibly unjust and cruel? The child's utterance would not in the slightest offend him, but your imputation to him of such vileness would most certainly anger him.''

A contribution to my religious development came also from a very different quarter. Our kitchen Bridget, one of the best of her kind, lent me her book of devotion—the "Ursuline Manual.'' It interested me much until I found in it the reasons very cogently given why salvation was confined to the Roman Catholic Church. This disgusted

me. According to this, even our good rector had no more chance of salvation than a Presbyterian or Baptist or Methodist minister. But this serious view of the case was disturbed by a humorous analogy. There were then fighting vigorously through the advertisement columns of the newspapers two rival doctors, each claiming to produce the only salutary "sarsaparilla,'' and each named Townsend. At first one claimed to be "the Dr. Townsend,'' then the other claimed to be "the Dr. Townsend''; the first rejoined that he was "Dr. Jacob Townsend,'' whereupon the other insisted that he was "Dr. Jacob Townsend''; to this the first answered that he was "the original Dr. Jacob Townsend,'' and the other then declared that he was "the original Dr. Jacob Townsend''; and so on, through issue after issue, each supplying statements, certificates, arguments, rejoinders ad nauseam. More and more, then, the various divines insisting on the exclusive possession of the only remedy for sin reminded me of these eminent sarsaparilla-makers,—each declaring his own concoction genuine and all others spurious, each glorifying himself as possessing the original recipe and denouncing his rivals as pretenders.

Another contribution to my thought was made one day in the Sunday-school. While reading in the New Testament I had noticed the difficulties involved in the two genealogies of Jesus of Nazareth—that in Matthew and that in Luke. On my asking the Sunday-school teacher for an explanation, he gave the offhand answer that one was the genealogy of Joseph and the other of Mary. Of course it did not take me long to find this answer inadequate; and, as a consequence, Sunday-school teaching lost much of its effect upon me.

But there was still one powerful influence left in behalf of the old creed. From time to time came the visitation by the bishop, Dr. DeLancey. He was the most impressive man I have ever seen. I have stood in the presence of many prelates in my day, from Pope Pius IX down; but no one of them has ever so awed me as this Bishop of

Western New York. His entry into a church chancel was an event; no music could be finer than his reading of the service; his confirmation prayer still dwells in my memory as the most perfect petition I have ever heard; and his simple, earnest sermons took strong hold of me. His personal influence was also great. Goldsmith's lines in the "Deserted Village,''

accurately pictured the feelings of many of us as we lingered after service to see him greet our fathers and mothers.

As to my biblical studies, they were continued, though not perhaps as systematically as they might well have been. The Protestant Episcopal Church has for a youth at least one advantage in this respect,—that the services including Introits, Canticles, Psalter, Lessons, Epistles Gospels, and various quotations, familiarize him with the noblest utterances in our sacred books. My mother had received instruction in Bible class and prized Scripture reading; therefore it was that, when I was allowed to stay at home from church on Sunday afternoons, it was always on condition that I should read a certain number of chapters in the Bible and prove to her upon her return that I had read them carefully,—and this was not without its uses.

Here I am reminded of a somewhat curious event. One afternoon, when I had been permitted to remain at home, on the usual conditions, my mother, returning from service, said to me that by staying away from church I had missed something very interesting: that there was a good sermon well given, that the preacher was of fine appearance, dignified,—and an Indian; but that she would never have suspected him to be an Indian were it not for his words at the conclusion of his sermon, which were as follows: "And now, my brethren, I leave you. We shall probably never meet again in this world, and doubtless

most of you will forget all the counsels I have given you and remember nothing save that you have to-day heard a sermon from an Indian.'' The point of interest really was that this preacher, Eleazar Williams, though he gave no hint of it on this occasion, believed himself, and was believed by many, to be the lost Dauphin of France, Louis XVII, and that decidedly skilful arguments in favor of his claims were published by the Rev. Mr. Hanson and others. One of the most intelligent women I have ever known believes to this hour that Eleazar Williams, generally known as a half-breed Indian born in Canada, was the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and that his portly form and Bourbon face were convincing additions to other more cogent testimonies.

At various times I sought light from new sources, and, finding on the family shelves a series of books called the "Evangelical Family Library,'' I read sundry replies to Hume, Gibbon, and other deists; but the arguments of Hume and Gibbon and those who thought with them seemed to me, to say the least, quite as forcible as those in answer to them. These replies simply strengthened my tendency to doubt, and what I heard at church rather increased the difficulty; for the favorite subjects of sermons in the Episcopal Church of those days, after the "Apostolical Succession'' and "Baptismal Regeneration,'' were the perfections of the church order, the beauty of its services, and the almost divine character of the Prayer-book. These topics were developed in all the moods and tenses; the beauties of our own service were constantly contrasted with the crudities and absurdities of the worship practised by others; and although, since those days, left to my own observation, I have found much truth in these comparisons, they produced upon me at that time anything but a good effect. It was like a beautiful woman coming into an assemblage; calling attention to the perfections of her own face, form, and garments; claiming loudly to be the most beautiful person in the room; and so, finally, becoming the least attractive person present.

This state of mind was deepened by my first experiences at college. I had, from my early boyhood, wished to go to Yale; but, under pressure from the bishop, I was sent to the little church college at Geneva in western New York There were excellent men among its professors—men whom I came to love and admire; but its faculty, its endowment, its equipment, were insufficient, and for fear of driving away the sons of its wealthy and influential patrons it could not afford to insist either on high scholarship or good discipline, so that the work done was most unsatisfactory. And here I may mention that the especial claim put forth by this college, as by so many others like it throughout the country, was that, with so small a body of students directly under church control, both the intellectual and religious interests of the students would be better guarded than they could be in the larger and comparatively unsectarian institutions. The very contrary was then true; and various experiences have shown me that, as a rule, little sectarian colleges, if too feeble to exercise strong discipline or insist on thorough work, are the more dangerous. As it was, I felt that in this particular case a wrong had been done me and charged that wrong against the church system.

I have been glad to learn of late years that the college just referred to has, since my student days, shared the upward progress of its sister institutions and that with more means and better appliances a succession of superior instructors have been able to bring its students into steady good work and under excellent discipline.

Much was made in those days of the "Christian evidences,'' and one statement then put forth, regarding the miraculous, produced a temporary effect upon me. This statement was that the claims of the religions opposed to Christianity did not rest upon miracles; that there was, at any rate, no real testimony to any except Christian miracles; and that, as a rule, other religions did not pretend to exhibit any. But when I, shortly afterward, read the life of Mohammed, and saw what a great

part was played by his miracle at the battle of Beder, during which, on his throwing dust into the air, there came to his rescue legions of angels, who were seen and testified to by many on the field,—both by his friends and by his enemies; and when I found that miraculous testimonies play a leading part in all religions, even in favor of doctrines the most cruel and absurd, I felt that the "evidences'' must be weak which brought forward an argument so ill grounded. Moreover, in my varied reading I came across multitudes of miracles attributed to saints of the Roman Catholic Church,—miracles for which myriads of good men and women were ready to lay down their lives in attestation of their belief,—and if we must accept one class of miracles, I could not see why we should not accept the other.

At the close of this first year, for reasons given elsewhere, I broke away from this little college and went to Yale.

59. CHAPTER LIX
IN THE NEW ENGLAND ATMOSPHERE—1851-1853

AT Yale I found myself in the midst of New England Congregationalism; but I cannot say that it helped me much religiously. It, indeed, broadened my view, since I was associated with professors and students of various forms of Christianity, and came to respect them, not for what they professed, but for what they really were.

There also I read under an excellent professor—my dear friend the late President Porter—Butler's "Analogy''; but, though it impressed me, it left on my mind the effect of a strong piece of special pleading,—of a series of arguments equally valuable for any religion which had once "got itself established.''

Here, too, a repellent influence was exercised upon me by a "revival.'' What was called a "religious interest'' began to be shown in sundry student meetings, and soon it came in with a full tide. I was induced to go into one or two of these assemblies, and was somewhat impressed by the penitence shown and the pledges given by some of my college friends. But within a year the whole thing was dead. Several of the men who had been loudest in their expressions of penitence and determination to accept Christianity became worse than ever: they were like logs stranded high and dry after a freshet.

But this religious revival in college was infinitely better than one which ran its course in the immediate neighborhood. Just at the corner of the college grounds was a Methodist Episcopal church, the principal one in New

Haven, and, a professional revivalist having begun his work there, the church was soon thronged. Blasphemy and ribaldry were the preacher's great attractions. One of the prayers attributed to him ran as follows: "Come down among us, O Lord! Come straight through the roof; I 'll pay for the shingles!'' Night after night the galleries were crowded with students laughing at this impious farce; and among them, one evening, came "Charley'' Chotard of Mississippi. Chotard was a very handsome fellow: slender, well formed, six feet three inches tall, and in any crowd a man of mark, like King Saul. In the midst of the proceedings, at some grotesque utterance of the revivalist, the students in the galleries burst into laughter. The preacher, angrily turning his eyes upon the offenders, saw, first of all, Chotard, and called out to him: "You lightning-rod of hell, you flag-staff of damnation, come down from there!'' Of course no such grotesque scenes were ever allowed in the college chapel: the services there, though simple, were always dignified; yet even in these there sometimes appeared incongruous features.

According to tradition in my time, an aged divine, greatly and justly beloved, from a neighboring city, had been asked to preach before the students. It was at the time when the whole English-speaking world had been thrilled by the story of the relief of Lucknow, and the cry of the Scotch lassie who heard the defiant slogan and heart-stirring pibroch of the Highlanders coming to the relief of the besieged had echoed across all the oceans. Toward the close of his sermon the dear old doctor became very impressive. He recited the story of Lucknow, and then spoke in substance as follows: "So to-day, my young friends, I sound in your ears the slo-o-o-broch of salvation.'' The alliteration evidently pleased him, and he repeated it with more and more emphasis in his peroration. When he sat down another clergyman who was with him at the sacred desk reminded him of his mistake, whereupon the good old doctor rose and addressed the

students as follows: "My young friends, you doubtless noticed a mistake in my final remarks. I said `slo-o-o-o-broch'; of course I meant `pi-i-g-a-a-an.' ''

Then, too, it must be confessed that some of the weekday prayers made by lay professors lent themselves rather too easily to parody. One of my classmates—since known as a grave and respected judge—was especially gifted in imitating these petitions, with the very intonations of their authors, and these parodies were in great demand on festive occasions. The pet phrases, the choice rhetoric, and the impressive oratory of these prayers were thus made so familiar to us in caricatures that the originals were little conducive to devotion.

The influence at Yale of men like Goodrich, Taylor, Woolsey, and Porter, whom I saw in their professors' chairs, was indeed strong upon me. I respected and admired them; but their purely religious teaching took but little hold on me; I can remember clearly but two or three sermons which I heard preached in Yale chapel. One was at the setting up of the chapel organ, when Horace Bushnell of Hartford preached upon music; and another was when President Woolsey preached a baccalaureate sermon upon "Righteous Anger.'' The first of these sermons was very beautiful, but the second was powerful. It has had an influence—and, I think, a good influence—on my thoughts from that day to this; and it ought to be preached in every pulpit in our country, at least once a year, as an antidote to our sickly, mawkish lenity to crime and wrong.

In those days conformity to religious ideas was carried very far at Yale. On week-days we had early prayers at about six in the morning, and evening prayers at about the same hour in the afternoon; but on Sundays we had not only morning and evening prayers in the chapel, but morning and afternoon service at church. I attended St. Paul's Episcopal church, sitting in one of the gallery pews assigned to undergraduates; but cannot say that anything that I heard during this period of my life elevated me especially.

I joined in the reading of the Psalter, in the singing of the chants and hymns, and, occasionally, in reciting part of the creeds, though more and more this last exercise became peculiarly distasteful to me.

Time has but confirmed the opinion, which I then began to hold, that, of all mistaken usages in a church service, the most unfortunate is this demand which confronts a man who would gladly unite with Christians in Christian work, and, in a spirit of loyalty to the Blessed Founder of Christianity, would cheerfully become a member of the church and receive the benefit of its ministrations;—the demand that such a man stand and deliver a creed made no one knows where or by whom, and of which no human being can adjust the meanings to modern knowledge, or indeed to human comprehension.

My sympathies, tastes, and aims led me to desire to enter fully into the church in which I was born; there was no other part of the service in which I could not do my part; but to stand up and recite the creeds in all their clauses, honestly, I could not. I had come to know on what slender foundations rested, for example, the descent into hell; and, as to the virgin birth, my reading showed me so weak a basis for it in the New Testament taken as a whole, and so many similar claims made in behalf of divine founders of religions, that when I reflected upon the reasons for holding the doctrine to be an aftergrowth upon the original legend, it was impossible for me to go on loudly proclaiming my belief in it. Sometimes I have refrained from reciting any part of the creed; but often, in my reverence for what I admire in the service, in my love for those whom I have heard so devoutly take part in it in days gone by, and in my sympathy with those about me, I have been wont to do what I could,—have joined in repeating parts of it, leaving out other parts which I, at least, ought not to repeat.

Various things combined to increase my distrust for the prevailing orthodoxy. I had a passion for historical reading,—indeed, at that time had probably read more and

thought more upon my reading than had most men of my age in college,—and the more I thus read and thought, the more evident it became to me that, while the simple religion of the Blessed Founder of Christianity has gone on through the ages producing the noblest growths of faith, hope, and charity, many of the beliefs insisted upon within the church as necessary to salvation were survivals of primeval superstition, or evolved in obedience to pagan environment or Jewish habits of thought or Greek metaphysics or mediæval interpolations in our sacred books; that most of the frightful systems and events in modern history have arisen from theological dogmatism; that the long reign of hideous cruelty in the administration of the penal law, with its torture-chambers, its burnings of heretics and witches, its cruelties of every sort, its repression of so much of sane human instinct and noble human thought, arose from this source, directly or indirectly; and that even such ghastly scenes as those of the French Revolution were provoked by a natural reaction in the minds of a people whom the church, by its theory of divine retribution, had educated for ages to be cruel.

But what impressed me most directly as regards the whole orthodox part of the church was its virtual support of slavery in the crisis then rapidly approaching. Excellent divines, like Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, the Rev. Dr Parker of New Jersey, and others holding high positions in various sects throughout the country, having based elaborate defenses of slavery upon Scripture, the church as a whole had acquiesced in this view. I had become bitterly opposed, first to the encroachments of the slave power in the new Territories of the United States, and finally to slavery itself; and this alliance between it and orthodoxy deepened my distrust of what was known about me as religion. As the struggle between slavery and freedom deepened, this feeling of mine increased. During my first year at college the fugitive-slave law was passed, and this seemed to me the acme of abominations. There were, it is true, a few religious men who took high

ground against slavery; but these were generally New England Unitarians or members of other bodies rejected by the orthodox, and this fact increased my distrust of the dominant religion.

Some years before this, while yet a boy preparing for college, I had met for the first time a clergyman of this sort—the Rev. Samuel Joseph May, pastor of the Unitarian church in Syracuse; and he had attracted me from the first moment that I saw him. There was about him something very genial and kindly, which won a way to all hearts. Though I knew him during many years, he never made the slightest effort to proselyte me. To every good work in the community, and especially to all who were down-trodden or oppressed, he was steadfastly devoted; the Onondaga Indians of central New York found in him a stanch ally against the encroachments of their scheming white neighbors; fugitive slaves knew him as their best friend, ready to risk his own safety in their behalf.

Although he was the son of an honored Massachusetts family, a graduate of Harvard, a disciple of Channing, a man of sincere character and elegant manners, he was evidently dreaded by the great majority of the orthodox Christians about him. I remember speaking to him once of a clergyman who had recently arrived in Syracuse, and who was an excellent scholar. Said Mr. May to me, "I should like to know him, if that were possible.'' I asked, "Why not call upon him?'' He answered, "I would gladly do so, but do you suppose he would return my call?'' "Of course he would,'' I replied; "he is a gentleman.'' "Yes,'' said Mr. May, "no doubt he is, and so are the other clergymen; yet I have called on them as they have come, and only two or three of them all have ever entered my house since.'' Orthodox fanatics came to remonstrate and pray with him, but these he generally overcame with his sweet and kindly manner. To slavery he was an uncompromising foe, being closely associated with Garrison, Phillips, and the leaders of the antislavery movement; and so I came to see that there was a side to

Christianity not necessarily friendly to slavery: but I also saw that it was a side not welcomed by the churches in general, and especially distrusted in my own family. I remember taking to him once an old friend of mine, a man of most severe orthodoxy; and after we had left Mr. May's house I asked my friend what he thought of the kindly heretic. He answered, "Those of us who shall be so fortunate as to reach heaven are to be greatly surprised at some of the people we are to meet there.''

As a Yale student I found an additional advantage in the fact that I could now frequently hear distinguished clergymen who were more or less outside the orthodox pale. Of these were the liberal Congregationalists of New York, Brooklyn, and Boston, and, above all, Henry Ward Beecher, Edwin Chapin, and Theodore Parker. At various times during my college course I visited Boston, and was taken by my classmate and old friend George Washburn Smalley to hear Parker. He drew immense crowds of thoughtful people. The music-hall, where he spoke, contained about four thousand seats, and at each visit of mine every seat, so far as I could see, was filled. Both Parker's prayers and sermons were inspiring. He was a deeply religious man; probably the most thorough American scholar, orthodox or unorthodox, of his time; devoted to the public good and an intense hater of slavery. His influence over my thinking was, I believe, excellent; his books, and those of Channing which I read at this time, did me great good by checking all inclination to cynicism and scoffing; more than any other person he strengthened my theistic ideas and stopped any tendency to atheism; the intense conviction with which men like Channing, Parker, and May spoke of a God in the universe gave a direction to my thinking which has never been lost.

As to Beecher, nothing could exceed his bold brilliancy. He was a man of genius; even more a poet than an orator; in sympathy with every noble cause; and utterly without fear of the pew-holders inside his church or of the mob

outside. Heresy-hunters did not daunt him. Humor played over much of his sermonizing; wit coruscated through it; but there was at times a pathos which pervaded the deep places of the human heart. By virtue of his poetic insight he sounded depths of thought and feeling which no mere theological reasoning could ever reach. He was a man,—indeed, a great man,—but to the end of his life he retained the freshness of youth. General Grant, who greatly admired him, once said to me, "Beecher is a boy—a glorious boy.''

Beecher's love of nature was a passion. During one of his visits to Cornell University, I was driving through the woods with him, and he was in the full tide of brilliant discourse when, suddenly, he grasped my hand which held the reins and said peremptorily, "Stop!'' I obeyed, and all was still save the note of a bird in the neighboring thicket. Our stop and silence lasted perhaps five minutes, when he said, "Did you hear that bird? That is the — (giving a name I have forgotten). You are lucky to have him here; I would give a hundred dollars to have him nest as near me.''

During this visit of his to my house, I remember finding, one morning, that he had been out of doors since daylight; and on my expressing surprise at his rising so early after sitting up so late, he said, "I wanted to enjoy the squirrels in your trees.''

Wonderful, too, was his facility, not merely in preaching, but in thinking. When, on another visit, he stayed with me, he took no thought regarding his sermon at the university chapel, so far as one could see. Every waking moment was filled with things which apparently made preparation for preaching impossible. I became somewhat nervous over this neglect; for, so far as I could learn, he had nothing written, he never spoke from memory, and not only the students, but the people from the whole country round about, were crowding toward the chapel.

Up to the last moment before leaving my house for the

morning service, he discussed the best shrubs for planting throughout our groves and woods, and the best grasses to use in getting a good turf upon the university grounds. But, on leaving the house, he became silent and walked slowly, his eyes fixed steadily on the ground; and as I took it for granted that he was collecting his thoughts for his sermon, I was careful not to disturb him. As we reached the chapel porch, a vast crowd in waiting and the organ pealing, he suddenly stopped, turned round, lifted his eyes from the ground, and said, "I have been studying your lawn all the way down here; what you need is to sow Kentucky blue-grass.'' Then he entered the chapel, and shortly was in the midst of a sermon evidently suggested by the occasion, his whole manuscript being a few pencilings on a sheet or two of note-paper, all the rest being extemporized in his best vein, both as to matter and manner.

Chapin, too, was brilliant and gifted, but very different in every respect from Beecher. His way was to read from manuscript, and then, from time to time, to rise out of it and soar above it, speaking always forcibly and often eloquently. His gift of presenting figures of speech so that they became vivid realities to his audience was beyond that of any other preacher I ever heard. Giving once a temperance address, and answering the argument as to the loss of property involved in the confiscation of intoxicants, he suddenly pictured a balance let down from the hand of the Almighty, in one scale all the lucre lost, in the other all the crimes, the wrecks, the miseries, the sorrows, the griefs, the widows' groans and orphans' tears,—until we absolutely seemed to have the whole vast, terrific mass swaying in mid-air before us.

On another occasion, preaching from the text, "Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face,'' he presented the picture of a man in his last illness, seeing dimly, through a half-transparent medium, the faint, dim outline of the Divinity whom he was so rapidly nearing; and then, suddenly, death,—the shattering of the glass,—and the man, on the instant, standing before his Maker

and seeing him "face to face.'' It all seems poor when put upon paper; but, as he gave it, nothing could be more vivid. We seemed to hear the sudden crash of the translucent sheet, and to look full into the face of the Almighty looming up before us.

Chapin was a Universalist, and his most interesting parishioner was Horace Greeley, whose humanitarian ideas naturally inclined him to a very mild creed. As young men, strangers to the congregation, were usually shown to seats just in front of the pulpit, I could easily see Mr. Greeley in his pew on a side aisle, just behind the front row. He generally stalked in rather early, the pockets of his long white coat filled with newspapers, and, immediately on taking his seat, went to sleep. As soon as service began he awoke, looked first to see how many vacant places were in the pew, and then, without a word, put out his long arm into the aisle and with one or two vigorous scoops pulled in a sufficient number of strangers standing there to fill all the vacancies; then—he slept again. Indeed, he slept through most of the written parts of Dr. Chapin's sermons; but whenever there came anything eloquent or especially thoughtful, Greeley's eyes were wide open and fixed upon the preacher.

Greeley's humanitarianism was not always proof against the irritations of life. In his not infrequent outbursts of wrath he was very likely to consign people who vexed him to a region which, according to his creed, had no existence.

A story told of him in those days seemed to show that his creed did not entirely satisfy him; for one day, when he was trying, in spite of numberless interruptions, to write a "Tribune'' leader, he became aware that some one was standing behind his chair. Turning around suddenly, he saw a missionary well known in the city slums,—the Rev. Mr. Pease,—and asked in his highest, shrillest, most complaining falsetto, "Well, what do you want?'' Mr. Pease, a kindly, gentle, apologetic man, said deprecatingly, "Well, Mr. Greeley, I have come for a little help.

We are still trying to save souls in the Five Points.'' "Oh,'' said Mr. Greeley, "go along! go along! In my opinion, there ain't half so many men damned as there ought to be.''

But though Chapin's influence did not restrain Greeley at all times, it undoubtedly did much for him, and it did much for us of the younger generation; for it not only broadened our views, but did something to better our hearts and raise our aims.

In this mention of the forces which acted upon my religious feelings I ought to include one of a somewhat different sort. There was one clergyman whose orthodoxy, though not of an extreme type, was undoubted, and who exercised a good and powerful influence upon me. This was the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon, pastor of the First Congregational church in New Haven. He was a man of great intellectual power, a lover of right and hater of wrong, a born fighter on the side of every good cause, at times pungent, witty, sarcastic, but always deeply in earnest. There was a general feeling among his friends that, had he not gone into the church, he would have been eminent in political life; and that is my belief, for he was by far the most powerful debater of his time in the councils of his church, and his way of looking at great questions showed the characteristics of a really broad-minded statesman. His sermons on special occasions, as at Thanksgiving and on public anniversaries, were noted for their directness and power in dealing with the greater moral questions before the people. On the other hand, there was a saying then current, "Dull as Dr. Bacon when he's nothing but the Gospel to preach''; but this, like so many other smart sayings, was more epigrammatic than true: even when I heard him preach religious doctrines in which I did not at all believe, he seemed to me to show his full power.

Toward the end of my college course I was subjected to the influence of two very powerful men, outside of the university, who presented entirely new trains of thought to

me. The first of these was Dr. Alonzo Potter, Bishop of Pennsylvania, who had been the leading professor at Union College, Schenectady, before his elevation to the bishopric, and who, both as professor and as bishop, had exercised a very wide influence. He was physically, intellectually, and morally of a very large pattern. There was something very grand and impressive about him. He had happened to come to Syracuse during one of my vacations; on a Saturday evening he gave a lecture upon the tendencies to loose supernaturalism as shown in what were known as "spiritualistic'' phenomena; and on the following day he preached a simple, plain, straightforward sermon on Christian morals. Both these utterances impressed me and strengthened my conviction that every thinking young man and woman ought to maintain relations with some good form of religious organization just as long as possible.

Toward the end of my Yale course came an influence of a very different sort. It was at the consecration of a Roman Catholic church at Saratoga. The mass was sung by an Italian prelate, Bedini, who as governor and archbishop at Bologna had, a few years before, made himself detested throughout the length and breadth of Italy by the execution of the priest patriot Ugo Bassi; and he was now, as papal nuncio to Brazil, environed by all the pomp possible. The mass did not greatly impress me, but the sermon, by Archbishop Hughes of New York, I shall always remember. His subject was the doctrine of transubstantiation, and, standing upon the altar steps, he developed an argument most striking and persuasive. He spoke entirely without notes, in a straightforward way, and at times with eloquence, though never with any show of rhetoric: voice and bearing were perfect; and how any one accepting his premises could avoid his conclusions I could not see then and cannot see now. I was proof against his argument, for the simple reason that I felt the story of the temptation of Jesus by Satan, which he took for his text, to be simply a legend such as appears in various religions; still, the whole was wonderfully presented;

and, on my return to the hotel, my father was greatly encouraged as to my religious development when I gave to him a synopsis of the whole sermon from end to end.

Next day there resulted a curious episode. Notices were posted throughout Saratoga that Father Gavazzi, the Italian patriot and heretic, famous for his oratory, would hold a meeting in the grove back of Congress Hall Hotel, at three in the afternoon, and would answer the archbishop's argument. When the hour arrived an immense crowd was assembled, and among them many Catholics, some of whom I knew well,—one of them a young priest to whom I had become strongly attached at school. Soon appeared the orator. He was of most striking presence—tall, handsome, with piercing black eyes and black hair, and clad in a long semi-monastic cloak. His first line of argument was of little effect, though given with impassioned gestures and a most sympathetic voice; but soon he paused and spoke gently and simply as follows: "When I was a priest in Italy I daily took part in the mass. On festivals I often saw the fasting priest fill the chalice as full as he dared with strong wine; I saw him pronounce the sacred words and make the sacred sign over it; and I saw, as everybody standing round him clearly saw, before the end of the service, that it flushed his face, thickened his voice, and enlivened his manner. My fellow-Christians'' (and here his voice rang out like a trumpet), "who is the infidel, who is the blasphemer,—I who say that no change took place in the wine before the priest drank it, and that no miracle was performed, or the man who says that his fellow-man can be made drunk on the blood of the blessed Son of God?''

The effect was startling, even on Protestants: but on the Roman Catholics present it was most thrilling; and I remember that an old Irishwoman, seated on the steps of the platform as these words were uttered, clapped her hands to her ears and ran from the place screaming. I must confess that my sympathies were with her rather than with the iconoclast, despite his gifts and graces.

60. CHAPTER LX
IN THE EUROPEAN ATMOSPHERE—1853-1856

LEAVING Yale in 1853, I passed nearly three years in Europe; and observation of the effects resulting from the various orthodoxies in England, France, Germany, Russia, and Italy developed my opinions in various ways. I was deeply susceptible to religious architecture, music, and, indeed, to the nobler forms of ceremonial. I doubt whether any man ever entered Westminster Abbey and the various cathedrals of Great Britain—and I have visited every one of them of any note—with a more reverent feeling than that which animated me; but some features of the Anglican service as practised at that time repelled me; above all, I disliked the intoning of the prayers, as I then heard it for the first time. A manly, straightforward petition made by a man standing or kneeling before his Maker, in a natural, earnest voice, has always greatly impressed me; but the sort of whining, drawling, falsetto in which the Anglican prayers were then usually intoned simply drove out all religious thoughts from my mind. I had a feeling that the Almighty must turn with contempt from a man who presumed thus to address him. Some prayers in the church service had from a very early period taken a deep place in my heart: the prayer of St. Chrysostom in the morning service, the first prayer in the ante-communion service, the prayer "for the whole state of Christ's church militant,'' and some of the collects had become, as it were, part of me; so much the more

disappointed and disgusted was I, then, to hear prayer made in what seemed to me a sickly, unmanly whine.

Although the feelings thus aroused by religious observances in England and other parts of Europe were frequently unedifying, there was one happy exception to the rule. Both in the Church of England and in the Roman Catholic churches of the Continent I always greatly enjoyed the antiphonal chanting of the Psalter. To me this has always been—the imprecatory psalms excepted—by far the noblest feature in Christian worship as worship; for, coming down as it does from the Jewish Church through the whole history of the Christian Church, and being practised by all the great bodies of Jews and Christians, it had, and still has, to me a great significance, both religious and historic. In the cathedrals of the continent of Europe—and I have visited every one of note except those of Spain—I cared little for what Browning's bishop calls "the blessed mutter of the mass,'' but the chanting of the Psalter always attracted me. Many were the hours during which I sat at vespers in abbeys and cathedrals, listening to the Latin psalms until they became almost as familiar to me as the English Psalter. On the other hand, I was at times greatly repelled by perfunctory performances of the service, both Protestant and Catholic. The "Te Deum'' which I once heard recited by an Anglican clergyman in the chapel at the castle of Homburg dwells in my memory as one of the worst things of its kind I ever heard, and especially there remains a vivid remembrance of the invocation, which ran as follows:

"Ha-a-ow-ly, Ha-a-a-ow-ly, Ha-a-ow-ly: La-a-rd Gawd of Sabbith!''

But this was not the only thing of the kind, for I have heard utterances nearly, if not quite, as bad in various English cathedrals,—as bad, indeed, as the famous reading, "He that hath yeahs to yeah, let him yeah.''

As to more important religious influences, I had, during my first visit to Oxford in 1853, a chance to understand

something of the two currents of thought then showing themselves in the English Church. On a Sunday morning I went to Christ Church Cathedral to hear the regius professor of Hebrew, Dr. Jacobson, whom, years afterward, I saw enthroned as bishop in the cathedral at Chester. It is a church beautiful in itself, and consecrated not only by the relics of mediæval saints, but by the devotions of many generations of scholars, statesmen, and poets; and in front of the pulpit were a body of young men, the most promising in Great Britain; yet a more dull, mechanical discourse could not be imagined. The preacher maundered on like a Tartar praying-mill; every hearer clearly regarding his discourse as an Arab regards a sand-storm.

In the afternoon I went to St. Mary's, and heard the regular university sermon, before a similar audience, by Fraser, a fellow of Oriel College. It was not oratorical, but straightforward, earnest, and in a line of thought which enlisted my sympathies. The young preacher especially warned his audience that if the Church of England was to remain the Church of England, she must put forth greater efforts than any she had made for many years; and he went on to point out some of the lines on which these exertions should be made,—lines which, I am happy to say, have since been taken by great numbers of excellent men of the Anglican communion.

During the evening, in the dining-room of the Mitre Inn, I happened to be seated at table with an old country clergyman who had just entered his son at Oxford and was evidently a rural parson of the good old high-and-dry sort; but as I happened to speak of the sermons of the day, he burst out in a voice gruff with theological contempt and hot toddy: "Did you hear that young upstart this afternoon? Did you ever hear such nonsense? Why could n't he mind his own business, as Dr. Jacobson did?''

Nor did sermons from Anglican bishops which I heard at that period greatly move me. The primate of that day, Dr. Sumner, impressed me by his wig, but not otherwise.

He was, I think, the last archbishop of Canterbury who used this means of enhancing his dignity. Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, was far better; but, after all, though his preaching showed decided ability, it was not of the sort to impress one deeply, from either the religious or the intellectual point of view.

Then, and at various times since, I have obtained more from simpler forms of worship and less pretentious expositions of the Gospel.

As to religious influence in France, there was little. I lived in the family of a French professor, a devout Catholic, but Gallican in his ideas,—so much so that he often said that if he could wake up some morning and hear that the Pope had been dispossessed of his temporal power, it would be the happiest day of his life, since he was persuaded that nothing had so hampered the church—and, indeed, debased it—as the limits imposed upon the papacy by its sovereignty over the Roman states.

A happy impression was made upon me by the simple, philanthropic character of the Archbishop of Paris at that period—Sibour. Visiting a technical school which he had established for artisans in the Faubourg St. Antoine, I derived thence a great respect for him as a man who was really something more than a "solemnly constituted impostor''; but, like the archbishops of Paris who preceded and followed him, he met a violent death, and I have more than once visited and reflected over the simple tablet which marks the spot in the Church of St. étienne du Mont where a wretched, unfrocked priest assassinated this gentle, kindly, affectionate prelate, who, judging from his appearance and life, never cherished an unkind feeling toward any human being.

The touching monuments at Notre Dame to his predecessor, Affre, shot on the barricades in 1848 when imploring a cessation of bloodshed, and to his successor Darboy, shot by the Communards in the act of blessing his murderers, also became, at a later period, places of

pilgrimage for me, and did much to keep alive my faith that, despite all efforts to erect barriers of hatred between Christians, there is, already, "one fold and one shepherd.''

As to my life on the Continent in general, German Protestantism seemed to me simple and dignified; but its main influence upon me was exercised through its music, the "Gloria in Excelsis'' of the morning service at the Berlin Cathedral being the most beautiful music by a choir I had ever heard,—far superior, indeed, to the finest choirs of the Sistine or Pauline chapel at Rome; and a still deeper impression was made upon me by the congregational singing. Often, after the first notes given by the organ, I have heard a vast congregation, without book of any kind, joining in the choral, King Frederick William IV and his court standing and singing earnestly with the rest. It was a vast uprolling storm of sound. Standing in the midst of it, one understands the Lutheran Reformation.

The most impressive Roman Catholic ceremonies which I saw in Europe were in Germany, and they were impressive because simple and reverential; those most so being at Wurzburg and Fulda, where, in the great churches, large bodies of the peasantry joined simply and naturally in the singing at the mass and at vespers.

In Russia I had the opportunity to study a religion of a very different sort—the Russo-Greek Church. While this church no doubt contains many devoted Christian men and women, it is, on the whole, a fossilized system; the vast body of the people being brought up to rely mainly on fetishes of various sorts. The services were, many of them, magnificent, and the music most beautiful; but it was discouraging to reflect that the condition of the Russian peasantry, ignorant, besotted, and debased, was the outcome of so many centuries of complete control by this great branch of the Christian Church. It had for ages possessed the fullest power for developing the intellect, the morals, and the religion of the people,

and here was the result. Experience of Russian life is hardly calculated to increase, in any thinking man, confidence in its divine origin or guidance. One bears in mind at such times the words of the blessed Founder of Christianity himself, "By their fruits ye shall know them.''

But the most unfavorable impression was made upon me in Italy. It was the palmy period of reactionary despotism. Hapsburgs in the north, Neapolitan Bourbons in the south, petty tyrants scattered through the country, all practically doing their worst; and, in their midst, Pius IX, maintained in the temporal power by French bayonets. It was the time when the little Jewish child Mortara was taken from his parents, in spite of their agonizing appeals to all Europe; when the Madiai family were imprisoned for reading the Bible with their friends in their own house; when monks swarmed everywhere, gross and dirty; when, at the centers of power, the Jesuits had it all their own way,—as they generally do when the final exasperating impulse is needed to bring on a revolution. All old abuses of the church were at their highest flavor. So far as ceremonial was concerned, nothing could be more gorgeous than the services at St. Peter's as conducted by Pope Pius IX. For such duties no one could be better fitted; for he was handsome, kindly, and dignified, with a beautiful, ringing voice.

During Holy Week of 1856 I was present at various services in which he took the main part, in the Sistine Chapel and elsewhere; but most striking of all were his celebration of pontifical high mass beneath the dome of St. Peter's on Easter morning, and his appearance on the balcony in front of the cathedral afterward. The effect of the first ceremony was somewhat injured by the easy-going manners of some of the attendant cardinals. It was difficult to imagine that they believed really in the tremendous doctrine involved in the mass when one saw them taking snuff in the midst of the most solemn prayers, and going through the whole in the most perfunctory

fashion. At the close of the service, the Pope, being borne on his throne by Roman nobles, surrounded by cardinals and princes, and wearing the triple crown, gave his blessing to the city and to the world. There must have been over ten thousand of us in the piazza to receive it, and no one could have performed his part more perfectly. Arising from his throne, and stretching forth his hands with a striking gesture, he chanted a benediction heard by every one present, even to the remotest corners of the square. Many years afterward, Lord Odo Russell, British ambassador at Berlin, on my mentioning the splendor of this ceremony to him, said to me, "Yes, you are right; but it was on one of those occasions that I discovered that the Pope was mortal.'' On my asking him how it was, he said, "I had occasion, as the British diplomatic representative, to call on Pope Pius IX on Easter Monday, and, after finishing my business with him, told him that I had been present at the benediction in front of St. Peter's on the day before, and had been much impressed by the beauty of his voice; and I added, `Your Holiness must have been trained as a singer.' At this the Pope was evidently greatly pleased, and answered, `You are right, I was trained as a singer; but you ought to have heard me two or three years ago.' ''

But while these great services at St. Peter's in those halcyon days were perfect in their kind, the same could not be said of many others. The worst that I ever saw—one which especially dwells in my memory—was at Pisa. I had previously visited the place and knew it well, so that when, one Sunday morning, a Canadian clergyman at the hotel wished to go to the cathedral, I offered to guide him. He was evidently a man of deep sincerity, and, as was soon revealed by his conversation, of high-church and even ritualistic tendencies; but, to my great surprise, he remarked that he had never attended service in a Roman Catholic church. Arriving at the cathedral too late for the high celebration, we walked down the nave until we came to a side altar where a priest was

going through a low mass, with a small congregation of delayed worshipers, and we took our place back of these. The priest raced through the service at the highest possible speed. His motions were like those of an automaton: he kept turning quickly to and fro as if on a pivot; clasping his hands before his breast as if by machinery; bowing his head as if it moved by a spring in his neck; mumbling and rattling like wind in a chimney; the choir-boy who served the mass with him jingling his bell as irreverently as if he were conducting a green-grocer's cart. My Anglican companion immediately began to be unhappy, and was soon deeply distressed. He groaned again and again. He whispered, "Good heavens, is it like this? Is this the way they do it? This is fearful!'' As we came from the church he was very sorrowful, and I administered to him such comfort as I could, but nothing could remedy this most painful disenchantment.

And here I may say that I have never been able to understand how any Anglican churchman can feel any insufficiency in the Lord's Supper as administered in his own branch of the church. I have never taken part in it, but more than once I have lingered to see it, and even in its simplest form it has always greatly impressed me. It is a service which all can understand; its words have come down through the ages; its ceremonial is calm, comprehensible, touching; and the whole idea of communion in memory of the last scene in the Saviour's life, which brings the worshiper into loving relation not only with him, but with all the church, militant and triumphant, is, to my mind, infinitely nobler and more religious than all paraphernalia, genuflexions, and man-millinery. How any Protestant, however "high'' in his tendencies, can feel otherwise is incomprehensible to me.

At that first of my many visits to Rome, there had come one experience which had greatly softened any of my inherited Protestant prejudices. Our party had been lumbering along all day on the road from Cività Vecchia,

when suddenly there dashed by us a fine traveling-coach drawn by four horses ridden by postilions. Hardly had it passed when there came a scream, and our carriage stopped. We at first took it for granted that it was an attack by bandits, but, on getting out and approaching the other coach, found that one of the postilions, a beautiful Italian boy of sixteen, in jaunty costume, had been thrown from his horse, had been run over by the wheels of the coach, and now lay at the roadside gasping his last. We stood about him, trying to ease his pain, when a young priest came running from a neighboring church. He showed no deference to the gorgeously dressed personages who had descended from the coach; he was regardless of all conventionalities, oblivious of all surroundings, his one thought being evidently of his duty to the poor sufferer stretched out before him. He knelt, tenderly kissed the boy, administered extreme unction, and repeated softly and earnestly the prayers for the dying, to which fervent responses came from the peasants kneeling about him. The whole scene did much to tone down the feelings which had been aroused the previous day by the filth and beggary at the papal port where we had landed, and to prepare me for a more charitable judgment of what I was to see in the papal city.

But an early experience in Rome showed a less beautiful manifestation of Christian zeal. We were a band of students, six in number, who had just closed a year of study at the University of Berlin; and the youngest, whom I will call Jack Smith, was a bright young fellow, son of a wealthy New England manufacturer. The evening after arriving in Rome, Jack, calling on an American aunt, was introduced to a priest who happened to be making her a visit. It was instantly evident that the priest, Father Cataldi, knew what Jack's worldly prospects were; for from the first he was excessively polite to the youth, and when the latter remarked that during his stay in Rome he would like to take Italian lessons, the priest volunteered to send him a teacher. Next day, at

the appointed hour, the teacher appeared, and in the person of the priest himself. Thenceforward he stuck to the young American like a brother, kept him away from the rest of us as much as possible, and served not only as his teacher, but as his cicerone.

Among various dignitaries to whom he presented the young American was his Eminence Cardinal Tosti; and when the cardinal extended his hand to be kissed, Jack grasped and cordially shook it. The two clerical gentlemen were evidently disconcerted; but the priest said to the cardinal, in an undertone, "é un principe Americano,'' whereupon the cardinal seemed relieved and shook hands heartily.

One day, when the priest was not with our companion, we all visited one of the basilicas, where some great function was going on, and, though we found a crowd at the doors, obtained a sight of the high altar,—and there, in magnificent attire, in the midst of the great prelates, was a person who bore a most striking resemblance to Jack's clerical guide. We were all struck by this curious coincidence, but concluded that in the distance and through the clouds of incense we had simply seen a chance resemblance, and in the multitude of matters we soon forgot it. A month afterward, as we were leaving Rome, Jack asked his new friend for his bill, whereupon the priest drew himself up with a superb gesture and, presenting his card, said: "You evidently do not know who I am.'' The card bore the inscription, "Monsignor Cataldi, Master of the Papal Ceremonies.'' The young American was quite confounded, but listened submissively while this dignitary expressed the hope that they might yet meet within the pale of that church which alone could give a claim to salvation.

The condition of Rome at that period was not such as to induce much respect for priestly government. Anything more dirty, slipshod, and wretched could hardly be imagined. No railways had yet been allowed; the Vatican monsignori feeling by instinct the truth stated

by Buckle, that railways promote the coming in of new ideas. Nor did the moral condition of the people seem to be any better.

Any one who visits Rome to-day, with the army of monks swept out of the place, with streets well cleaned, with the excavations scientifically conducted, with a government which, whatever its faults, is at any rate patriotic, finds it difficult to imagine the vileness of the city under the old régime.

But, bad as was Rome, Naples was worse. The wretched Bourbon then on the throne, "King Bomba,'' was the worst of his kind. Our minister of that period, Mr. Robert Dale Owen, gave me some accounts of the condition of things. He told me, as a matter of fact, that any young man showing earnest purpose of any sort was immediately suspected and discouraged, while worthless young debauchees were regarded as harmless, and therefore favored.

The most cherished counselor of the King was Apuzzo, Archbishop of Sorrento. In addition to what I have already said of Leopardi's political catechism, which the archbishop forced upon the people, I may note that this work took great pains to show that no education was needed save just enough to enable each man to accomplish his duties within the little sphere in which he was born, and that for the great body of the people education was a curse rather than a blessing. The result of this policy was evident: the number of persons unable to read or write, which was from forty to fifty per cent. in Piedmont, was from sixty to sixty-five per cent. in Rome, from eighty to eighty-five per cent. in the Papal States, and above eighty-five per cent. in Naples and Sicily.[1]

I also had the advantage of being present at the great religious function of Naples—the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, patron of the city. It was in the

gorgeous chapel of the saint which forms part of the Cathedral of Naples, and the place was filled with devout worshipers of every class, from the officials in court dress, representing the Bourbon king, down to the lowest lazzaroni. The reliquary of silver gilt, shaped like a large human head, and supposed to contain the skull of the saint, was first placed upon the altar; next, two vials, containing a dark substance said to be his blood, were also placed upon the altar, near the head. As the priests said prayers, they turned the vials from time to time; and, the liquefaction being somewhat delayed, the great crowd of people burst out into more and more impassioned expostulations and petitions to the saint. Just in front of the altar were the lazzaroni who claimed to be descendants of the saint's family, and these were especially importunate: at such times they beg, they scold, they even threaten; they have been known to abuse the saint roundly, and to tell him that, if he does not care to show his favor to the city by liquefying his blood, St. Cosmo and St. Damian are just as good saints as he, and will, no doubt, be very glad to have the city devote itself to them. At last, as we were beginning to be impatient, the priest, turning the vials suddenly, announced that the saint had performed the miracle, and instantly priests, people, choir, and organ burst forth into a great "Te Deum''; bells rang and cannon roared; a procession was formed, and the shrine containing the saint's relics was carried through the streets, the people prostrating themselves on both sides of the way and showering rose-leaves upon the shrine and upon the path before it. The contents of these precious vials are an interesting relic indeed, for they represent to us vividly that period when men who were willing to go to the stake for their religious opinions thought it not wrong to "save souls'' by pious mendacity and consecrated fraud. To the scientific eye this miracle is very simple: the vials contain, no doubt, one of those waxy mixtures fusing at low temperature, which, while kept in its place within the cold stone walls of the church, remains solid, but which, upon being brought out into the hot, crowded chapel and fondled by the warm hands of the priests, gradually softens and becomes liquid. It was curious to note, at the time above mentioned, that even the high functionaries representing the King looked at the miracle with awe: they evidently found "joy in believing,'' and one of them assured me that the only thing which could cause it was the direct exercise of miraculous power.

So, too, I had here an opportunity to study one of the fundamental ideas of the prevalent theology—namely, the doctrine of "intercession,'' which has played such a part not only in Catholic but in Protestant countries,—the idea that, just as in an earthly court back-stairs influence is necessary to secure favor, so it must be in the heavenly courts. I was much edified by the way in which this doctrine was presented in certain great pictures representing the intervention of the Almighty to save Naples from the plague. One of them, as I remember it, represented, on an enormous canvas, the whole transaction as follows: In the immediate foreground the people of Naples were represented on their knees before their magistrates, begging them to rescue the city from the pestilence; farther back the magistrates were represented as on their knees before the monks, begging for their prayers; the monks were on their knees before St. Januarius, begging him to intervene; St. Januarius was then represented as on his knees before the Blessed Virgin; the Blessed Virgin was then pictured as beseeching her divine Son; and he at last was represented as presenting the petition to a triangle in the heavens behind which appeared the lineaments of a venerable face.

One can understand, after seeing pictures of this kind, what Erasmus was thinking of, five hundred years ago, when he wrote his colloquy of "The Shipwreck,'' the most exquisite satire on mediæval doctrine ever made. After a most comical account of the petitions and promises made by the shipwrecked to various saints, Adolphus

says: "To which of the saints did you pray?'' Antony answers, "To not one of them all, I assure you. I don't like your way of bargaining with the saints: `Do this and I 'll do that. Here is so much for so much. Save me and I will give you a taper or go on a pilgrimage.' Just think of it! I should certainly have prayed to St. Peter, if to any saint; for he stands at the door of heaven, and so would be likeliest to hear. But before he could go to the Almighty and tell him my condition, I might be fifty fathoms under water.'' Adolphus: "What did you do then?'' Antony: "I went straight to God himself, and said my prayer to him; the saints neither hear so readily nor give so willingly.''

In the city itself were filth, blasphemy, and obscenity unspeakable. No stranger could take his seat at a café without having proposals openly made to him which would have disgraced Pompeii. Cheatery and lying prevailed on all sides. Outside the city was brigandage,—so much so that various parties going to Pæstum took pains to combine their forces and to bear arms.

This, then, was the outcome of fifteen hundred years of Christian civilization in a land which had been entirely in the hands of the church authorities ever since the downfall of the Roman Empire; a country in which education, intellectual, moral, and religious, had been from the first in the hands of a body, claiming infallibility in its teaching of faith and morals, which had molded rulers and people at its own will during all these centuries. This was the result! It seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, a reductio ad absurdum of the claims of any church to superintend the education of a people; and if it be insisted that there is anything exceptional in Italy, one may point for examples of the same results to Spain, the Spanish republics, Poland, and sundry other countries.

Before going to Italy, I had taken pains to read as much as possible of the history of the country, and, among other works, had waded through the ten octavo

volumes of Sismondi's "History of the Italian Republics,'' as well as Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire''; and this history had served to show me what any body of ecclesiastics, not responsible to sound lay opinion, may become. In looking over the past history and present condition of Italy, there constantly rang in my ears that great warning by Christ himself, "By their fruits ye shall know them.''

61. CHAPTER LXI
IN LATER YEARS—1856-1905

ON my return to America I remained for a short time as a resident graduate at New Haven, and there gained a friend who influenced me most happily. This was Professor George Park Fisher, at that time in charge of the university pulpit, an admirable scholar and historian. His religious nature, rooted in New England orthodoxy, had come to a broad and noble bloom and fruitage. Witty and humorous, while deeply thoughtful, his discussions were of great value to me, and our long walks together remain among the most pleasing recollections of my life. He had a genius for conversation; in fact, he was one of the two or three best conversationists I have ever known, and his influence on my thinking, both as regards religious and secular questions, was thoroughly good. While we did not by any means fully agree, I came to see more clearly than ever what a really enlightened Christianity can do for a man.

I had returned to America in the hope of influencing opinion from a professor's chair, and my dear old friend Professor—afterward President—Porter urged me to remain in New Haven, assuring me that the professorship of history for which I had been preparing myself abroad would be open to me there. A few years later a professorship at Yale was offered me, and in a way for which I shall always be grateful; but it was not the professorship of history: from that I was debarred by my religious views, and therefore it was that, having

been elected to a professorship in that department at the State University of Michigan, I immediately and gladly entered upon its duties.

Installed in this new position at Ann Arbor, I not only threw myself very heartily into my work, but became interested in church and other good work as it went on about me. From the force of old associations, and because my family had also been brought up in the Episcopal Church, I attended its services regularly; and, while it represented much that I could not accept, there were noble men in it who became my very dear friends, with whom I was glad to work.

It has always seemed to me rather an amusing episode in my life during this period that, in spite of grave doubts regarding my orthodoxy, my friends elected me vestryman of St. Andrew's Church at Ann Arbor, and gave me full power to select and call a rector for the parish at my next vacation excursion in the East. This in due time I proceeded to do. Attending the convention of the Episcopal Church in the diocese of Western New York, I consulted with various clerical friends, visited one or two places in order to hear sundry clergymen who were recommended to me, and at last called to our rectorate a man who proved to be not only a blessing to that parish, but to the State at large. In the annals of American charitable work his name is writ large, though probably there never lived a man more averse to publicity. He has since been made a bishop, and in that capacity has shown the same self-sacrifice and devotion to works of mercy which marked his career as pastor.

As to my religious ideas in general, they were at that time influenced in various ways. I read much ecclesiastical history as given by leading authorities, Protestant and Catholic, and in various original treatises by thinkers eminent in the history of the church. A marked influence was exercised upon me by reading sundry lives of the mediæval saints: even the quaintest of these showed me how, in spite of childlike credulity, most noble

lives had been led, well worthy to be pondered over in these later centuries.

The general effect of this reading was to arouse in me admiration for the men who have taken leading parts in developing the great religions of the world, and especially Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant; but it also caused me to distrust, more and more, every sort of theological dogmatism. More and more clear it became that ecclesiastical dogmas are but steps in the evolution of various religions, and that, in view of the fact that the main underlying ideas are common to all, a beneficent evolution is to continue.

This latter idea was strengthened by my careful reading of Sale's translation of the Koran, which showed me that even Mohammedanism is not wholly the tissue of folly and imposture which in those days it was generally represented to be.

Influence was also exerted upon me by various other books, and especially by Fra Paolo Sarpi's "History of the Council of Trent,'' probably the most racy and pungent piece of ecclesiastical history ever written; and though I also read as antidotes the history of the Council by Pallavicini, and copious extracts from Bossuet, Archbishop Spalding, and Balmez, Father Paul taught me, as an Italian historian phrases it, "how the Holy Spirit conducts church councils.'' At a later period Dean Stanley made a similar revelation in his account of the Council of Nicæa.

The works of Buckle, Lecky, and Draper, which were then appearing, laid open much to me. All these authors showed me how temporary, in the sum of things, is any popular theology; and, finally, the dawn of the Darwinian hypothesis came to reveal a whole new orb of thought absolutely fatal to the claims of various churches, sects, and sacred books to contain the only or the final word of God to man. The old dogma of "the fall of man'' had soon fully disappeared, and in its place there rose more and more into view the idea of the rise of man.

But while my view was thus broadened, no hostility to religion found lodgment in my mind: of all the books which I read at that time, Stanley's life of Arnold exercised the greatest influence upon me. It showed that a man might cast aside much which churches regard as essential, and might strive for breadth and comprehension in Christianity, while yet remaining in healthful relations with the church. I also read with profit and pleasure the Rev. Thomas Beecher's book, "Our Seven Churches,'' which showed that each Christian sect in America has a certain work to do, and does it well; also, the sermons of Robertson, Phillips Brooks, and Theodore Munger, which revealed a beauty in Christianity before unknown to me.

Another influence was of a very different sort. From time to time I went on hunting excursions with the pastor of the Methodist Episcopal church at Ann Arbor; and though he made no parade of religion, there was in him a genial, manly piety which bettered me.

But I cannot say that this good influence was always exercised upon me by his coreligionists. There was especially one, who rose to be a "presiding elder,'' very narrow, very shrewd, and very bitter against the State University, yet constantly placing himself in comical dilemmas. On one occasion, when I asked him regarding his relations with clergymen of other religious bodies, he spoke of the Roman Catholics and said that he had made a determined effort to convert the Bishop of Detroit. On my asking for particulars, he answered that, calling upon the bishop, he had spoken very solemnly to him and told him that he was endangering his own salvation as well as that of his flock; that at first the bishop was evidently inclined to be harsh; but that, on finding that he—the Methodist brother—disliked the Presbyterian Dr. Duffield, who had recently attacked Catholic doctrine, as much as the bishop did, the relations between them grew better, so that they talked together very amicably.

At this point in our conversation a puzzled expression

overspread the elder's face and he said, "The most singular experience I ever had was with a French Catholic priest in Monroe. Being in that town and having a day or two of vacation, I felt it my duty to go and remonstrate with him. I found him very polite, especially after I had told him that his bishop had received me and discussed religious questions with me. Presently, wishing to make an impression on the priest, I fixed my eyes on him very earnestly and said as solemnly as I could, `Do you know that you are leading your flock straight down to hell?' To this the priest made a very singular answer—very singular, indeed. He said, Did you talk like that to the bishop?' I answered, `Yes, I did.' `Did n't he kick you out of his house?' `No, he did n't.' `Then,' said the priest, `I won't.' '' And the good elder, during the whole of this story, evidently thought that the point of it was, somehow, against the priest!

As a professor at the University of Michigan lecturing upon modern history, I, of course, showed my feelings in opposition to slavery, which was then completely dominant in the nation, and, to all appearance, intrenched in our institutions forever. From time to time I also said some things which made the more sensitive orthodox brethren uneasy; though, as I look back upon them now, they seem to me very mild indeed. In these days they could be said, and would be said, by great numbers of devoted members of all Christian churches. These expressions of mine favored toleration and dwelt upon the absurdity of distinctions between Christians on account of beliefs which individuals or communities have happened to inherit. Nothing like an attack upon Christianity itself, or upon anything vital to it, did I ever make; indeed, my inclinations were not in that direction: my greatest desire was to set men and women at thinking, for I felt sure that if they would really think, in the light of human history, they would more and more dwell on what is permanent in Christianity and less and less on what is transient; more and more on its universal truths,

less and less upon the creeds, forms, and observances in which these gems are set; more and more on what draws men together, less and less on that which keeps them apart.

I became convinced that what the world needed was more religion rather than less; more devotion to humanity and less preaching of dogmas. Whenever I spoke of religion, it was not to say a word against any existing form; but I especially referred, as my ideals of religious conduct, to the declaration of Micah, beginning with the words, "What doth the Lord require of thee?''; to the Sermon on the Mount; to the definition of "pure religion and undefiled'' given by St. James; and to some of the wonderful utterances of St. Paul. But even this alarmed two or three very good men; they were much exercised over what they called my "indifferentism''; and when I was chosen, somewhat later, to the presidency of Cornell University, I found that they had thought it their duty to write letters urging various trustees to prevent the election of so dangerous a heretic.

Scattered through the Michigan university town were a number of people who had broken from the old faith and were groping about to find a new one, but, as a rule, with such insufficient knowledge of the real basis of belief or skepticism that the religion they found seemed less valuable to them than the one they had left. Thiers, Voltairian though he was, has well said, "The only altars which are not ridiculous are the old altars.''

Some of the best of these people, having lost very dear children, had taken refuge in what was called "spiritualism''; and I was invited to witness some of the "manifestations from the spirit-land,'' and assured that they would leave no doubt in my mind as to their tremendous reality. Among those who thus invited me were a county judge of high standing, and his wife, one of the most lovely and accomplished of women. They had lost their only daughter, a beautiful creature just budding into womanhood, and they thought that "spiritualism'' had

given her back to them. As they told me wonderful things regarding the revelations made by sundry eminent mediums, I accepted their invitation to witness some of these, and went to the séances with a perfectly open and impartial mind. I saw nothing antecedently improbable in phenomena of that sort; indeed, it seemed to me that it might be a blessed thing if there were really something in it all; but examination showed me in this, as in all other cases where I have investigated so-called "spirit revelations,'' nothing save the worthlessness of human testimony to the miraculous. These miracles were the cheapest and poorest of jugglery, and the mediums were, without exception, of a type below contempt. There was, indeed, a revelation to me, not of a spirit-world beyond the grave, but of a spirit-world about me, peopled with the spirits of good and loving men and women who find "joy in believing'' what they wish to believe. Compared with this new worship, I felt that the old was infinitely more honest, substantial, and healthful; and never since have I desired to promote revolutionary changes in religion. Such changes, to be good, must be evolutionary, gradual, and in obedience to slowly increasing knowledge: such a change is now evidently going on, irresistibly, and quite as rapidly as is desirable.

There were other singular experiences. One day a student said to me that an old man living not far from the university grounds was very ill and wished to see me. I called at once, and found him stretched out on his bed and greatly emaciated with consumption. He was a Hicksite Quaker. As I entered the room he said, "Friend, I hear good things of thee: thou art telling the truth; let me bear my testimony before thee. I believe in God and in a future life, but in little else which the churches teach. I am dying. Within two or three days, at furthest, I shall be in my coffin. Yet I look on the future with no anxiety; I am in the hands of my loving Father, and have no more fear of passing through the gate of death into the future life than of passing through

yonder door into the next room.'' After kindly talk I left him, and next day learned that he had quietly passed away.

After about five years of duty in the University of Michigan, I was brought into the main charge of the newly established Cornell University; and in this new position, while no real change took place in my fundamental religious ideas, there were conflicting influences, sometimes unfortunate, but in the main happy. In other chapters of these reminiscences I have shown to what unjust attacks the new institution and all connected with it were subjected by the agents and votaries of various denominational colleges. At times this embittered me, but the ultimate result always was that it stirred me to new efforts. Whatever ill feelings arose from these onslaughts were more than made up after the establishment of the Sage Chapel pulpit. I have shown elsewhere how, at my instance, provision was made by a public-spirited man for calling the most distinguished preachers of all denominations, and how, the selection of these having been left to me, I chose them from the most eminent men in the various Christian bodies. My intercourse with these, as well as my hearing their discourses, broadened and deepened my religious feeling, and I regard this as among the especially happy things of my life.

Another feature of the university was not so helpful to me. I have spoken in another chapter regarding the establishment of Barnes Hall at Cornell as a center of work for the Christian Association and other religious organizations of the university, and of my pleasure in aiding the work there done and in noting its good results. At various times I attended the services of the Young Men's Christian Association; and while they often touched me, I cannot say that they always edified me. I am especially fond of the psalms attributed to David, which are, for me, the highest of poetry; and I am also very fond of the great and noble hymns of the church, Catholic and Protestant, and especially susceptible to the

best church music, from Bach and Händel to Mason and Neale: but the sort of revival hymns which are generally sung in Christian Associations, and which date mainly from the Moody and Sankey period, do not appeal to my best feelings in any respect. They seem to me very thin and gushy. This feeling of mine is not essentially unorthodox, for I once heard it expressed by an eminent orthodox clergyman in terms much stronger than any which I have ever used. Said he, "When I was young, congregations used to sing such psalms as this:

But now,'' he continued, "the congregation gets together and a lot of boys and girls sing:

There,'' said he, "is the difference between a religion which believes in a righteous sovereign Ruler of the universe, and a maudlin sentiment incapable of any real, continued, determined effort.''

I must confess that this view of my orthodox friend strikes me as just. It seems to me that one of the first

needs of large branches of the Christian Church is to weed out a great mass of sickly, sentimental worship of no one knows what, and to replace it with psalms and hymns which show a firm reliance upon the Lord God Almighty.

It is with this view that I promoted in the university chapel the simple antiphonal reading of the psalms by the whole congregation. Best of all would it be to chant the Psalter; the clergyman, with a portion of the choir, leading on one side, and the other section of the choir and the congregation at large chanting the responses. But this is, as regards most Protestant churches, a counsel of perfection.

Staying in London after the close of my university presidency, I was subject to another influence which has wrought with power upon some strong men. It was my wont to attend service in some one of the churches interesting from a historical point of view or holding out the prospect of a good sermon; but, probably, a combination which I occasionally made would not be approved by my more orthodox fellow-churchmen. For at times I found pleasure and profit in attending the service before sermon on Sunday afternoon at St. Paul's, and then going to the neighboring Positivist Conventicle in Fetter Lane to hear Frederic Harrison and others. Harrison's discourses were admirable, and one upon Roman civilization was most suggestive of fruitful thought. My tendency has always been strongly toward hero-worship, and this feature of the Positivist creed and practice especially attracted me; while the superb and ennobling music of St. Paul's kept me in a religious atmosphere during any discourse which succeeded it.

My favorite reading at this period was the "Bible for Learners,'' a book most thoughtfully edited by three of the foremost scholars of modern Europe—Hooykaas, Oort, and Kuenen. Simple as the book is, it made a deep impression upon me, rehabilitating the Bible in my mind, showing it to be a collection of literature and moral truths

unspeakably precious to all Christian nations and to every Christian man. At a later period, readings in the works of Renan, Pfleiderer, Cheyne, Harnack, Sayce, and others strengthened me in my liberal tendencies, without diminishing in the slightest my reverence for all that is noble in Christianity, past or present.

Another experience, while it did not perhaps set me in any new trains of thought, strengthened me in some of my earlier views. This was the revelation to me of Mohammedanism during my journey in the East. While Mohammedan fanaticism seems to me one of the great misfortunes of the world, Mohammedan worship, as I first saw it, made a deep impression on me. Our train was slowly moving into Cairo, and stopped for a time just outside the city; the Pyramids were visible in the distance, but my thoughts were turned from them by a picture in the foreground. Under a spreading palm-tree, a tall Egyptian suddenly arose to his full height, took off an outer covering from his shoulders, laid it upon the ground, and then solemnly prostrated himself and went through his prayers, addressing them in the direction of Mecca. He was utterly oblivious of the crowd about him, and the simplicity, directness, and reverence in his whole movement appealed to me strongly. At various other times, on the desert, in the bazaars, in the mosques, and on the Nile boats, I witnessed similar scenes, and my broad-churchmanship was thereby made broader. Nor was this general effect diminished by my visit to the howling and whirling dervishes. The manifestations of their zeal ranged themselves clearly in the same category with those evident in American campmeetings, and I now understood better than ever what the Rev. Dr. Bacon of New Haven meant when, after returning from the East, he alluded to certain Christian "revivalists'' as "howling dervishes.''

I must say, too, that while I loved and admired many Christian missionaries whom I saw in the East, and rejoiced in the work of their schools, the utter narrowness

of some of them was discouraging. Anything more cold, forbidding, and certain of extinction than the worship of the "United Presbyterians'' at the mission church at Cairo I have never seen, save possibly that of sundry Calvinists at Paris. Nor have I ever heard anything more defiant of sane thought and right reason than the utterances of some of these excellent men.

But the general effect of all these experiences, as I now think, was to aid in a healthful evolution of my religious ideas.

It may now be asked what is the summing up of my relation to religion, as looked upon in the last years of a long life, during which I have had many suggestions to thought upon it, many opportunities to hear eminent religionists of almost every creed discuss it, and many chances to observe its workings in the multitude of systems prevalent in various countries.

As a beginning, I would answer that, having for many years supplemented my earlier observations and studies by special researches into the relations between science and religion, my conviction has been strengthened that religion in its true sense—namely, the bringing of humanity into normal relations with that Power, not ourselves, in the universe, which makes for righteousness—is now, as it always has been, a need absolute, pressing, and increasing.

As to the character of such normal relations, I feel that they involve a sense of need for worship: for praise and prayer, public and private. If fine-spun theories are presented as to the necessary superfluity of praise to a perfect Being, and the necessary inutility of prayer in a world governed by laws, my answer is that law is as likely to obtain in the spiritual as in the natural world: that while it may not be in accordance with physical laws to pray for the annihilation of a cloud and the cessation of a rain-storm, it may well be in accordance with spiritual laws that communication take place between the Infinite

and finite minds; that helpful inspiration may be thus obtained,—greater power, clearer vision, higher aims.

As to the question between worship by man as an individual being, face to face with the Divine Power, and worship by human beings in common, as brethren moved to express common ideas, needs, hopes, efforts, aspirations, I attribute vast value to both.

As to the first. Each individual of us has perhaps an even more inadequate conception of "the God and father of us all'' than a plant has of a man; and yet the universal consciousness of our race obliges a human being under normal conditions to feel the need of betterment, of help, of thankfulness. It would seem best for every man to cultivate the thoughts, relations, and practices which he finds most accordant with such feelings and most satisfying to such needs.

As to the second. The universal normal consciousness of humanity seems to demand some form of worship in common with one's fellow-men. All forms adopted by men under normal conditions, whether in cathedrals, temples, mosques, or conventicles, clearly have uses and beauties of their own.

If it be said that all forms of belief or ceremonial obscure that worship, "in spirit and in truth,'' which aids high aspiration, my answer is that the incorporation, in beliefs and forms of worship, of what man needs for his spiritual sustenance seems to me analogous to the incorporation in his daily material food of what he needs for his physical sustenance. As a rule, the truths necessary for the sustenance and development of his higher nature would seem better assimilated when incorporated in forms of belief and worship, public or private, even though these beliefs and forms have imperfections or inadequacies. We do not support material life by consuming pure carbon, or nitrogen, or hydrogen: we take these in such admixtures as our experience shows to be best for

us. We do not live by breathing pure oxygen: we take it diluted with other gases, and mainly with one which, if taken by itself, is deadly.

This is but a poor and rough analogy, but it seems a legitimate illustration of a fact which we must take account of in the whole history of the human race, past, present, and future.

It will, in my opinion, be a sad day for this or for any people when there shall have come in them an atrophy of the religious nature; when they shall have suppressed the need of communication, no matter how vague, with a supreme power in the universe; when the ties which bind men of similar modes of thought in the various religious organizations shall be dissolved; when men, instead of meeting their fellow-men in assemblages for public worship which give them a sense of brotherhood, shall lounge at home or in clubs; when men and women, instead of bringing themselves at stated periods into an atmosphere of prayer, praise, and aspiration, to hear the discussion of higher spiritual themes, to be stirred by appeals to their nobler nature in behalf of faith, hope, and charity, and to be moved by a closer realization of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, shall stay at home and give their thoughts to the Sunday papers or to the conduct of their business or to the languid search for some refuge from boredom.

But thus recognizing the normal need of religious ideas, feelings, and observances, I see in the history of these an evolution which has slowly brought our race out of lower forms of religion into higher, and which still continues. Nowhere is this more clearly mirrored than in our own sacred books; nowhere more distinctly seen than in what is going on about us; and one finds in this evolution, just as in the development of our race in other fields, survivals of outworn beliefs and observances which remain as mile-stones to mark human progress.

Belief in a God who is physically, intellectually, and morally but an enlarged "average man''—unjust, whimsical,

revengeful, cruel, and so far from omnipotent that he has to make all sorts of interferences to rectify faults in his original scheme—is more and more fading away among the races controlling the world.

More and more the thinking and controlling races are developing the power of right reason; and more and more they are leaving to inferior and disappearing races the methods of theological dogmatism.

More and more, in all parts of the civilized world, is developing liberty of thought; and more and more is left behind the tyranny of formulas.

More and more is developing, in the leading nations, the conception of the world's sacred books as a literature in which, as in a mass of earthy material, the gems and gold of its religious thought are embedded; and more and more is left behind the belief in the literal, prosaic conformity to fact of all utterances in this literature.

To one who closely studies the history of humanity, evolution in religion is a certainty. Eddies there are,—counter-currents of passion, fanaticism, greed, hate, pride, folly, the unreason of mobs, the strife of parties, the dreams of mystics, the logic of dogmatists, and the lust for power of ecclesiastics,—but the great main tide is unmistakable.

What should be the attitude of thinking men, in view of all this? History, I think, teaches us that, just so far as is possible, the rule of our conduct should be to assist Evolution rather than Revolution. Religious revolution is at times inevitable, and at such times the rule of conduct should be to unite our efforts to the forces working for a new and better era; but religious revolutions are generally futile and always dangerous. As a rule, they have failed. Even when successful and beneficial, they have brought new evils. The Lutheran Church, resulting from the great religious revolution of the sixteenth century, became immediately after the death of Luther, and remained during generations, more inexcusably cruel and intolerant than Catholicism had ever been; the revolution

which enthroned Calvinism in large parts of the British Empire and elsewhere brought new forms of unreason, oppression, and unhappiness; the revolution in France substituted for the crudities and absurdities of the old religion a "purified worship of the Supreme Being'' under which came human sacrifices by thousands, followed by a reaction to an unreason more extreme than anything previously known. Goldwin Smith was right when he said, "Let us never glorify revolution.''

Christianity, though far short of what it ought to be and will be, is to-day purer and better, in all its branches, than it has ever before been; and the same may be said of Judaism. Any man born into either of these forms of religion should, it seems to me, before breaking away from it, try as long as possible to promote its better evolution; aiding to increase breadth of view, toleration, indifference to unessentials, coöperation with good men and true of every faith. Melanchthon, St. Francis Xavier, Grotius, Thomasius, George Fox, Fénelon, the Wesleys, Moses Mendelssohn, Schleiermacher, Dr. Arnold, Channing, Phillips Brooks, and their like may well be our exemplars, despite all their limitations and imperfections.

I grant that there are circumstances which may oblige a self-respecting man to withdraw from religious organizations and assemblages. There may be reactionary zeal of rabbis, priests, deacons, destructive to all healthful advance of thought; there may be a degeneration of worship into fetishism; there may be control by young Levites whose minds are only adequate to decide the colors of altar-cloths and the cut of man-millinery; there may be control by men of middle age who preach a gospel of "hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness''; there may be tyranny by old men who will allow no statements of belief save those which they learned as children.

From such evils, there are, in America at least, many places of refuge; and, in case these fail, there are the treasures of religious thought accumulated from the days of Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, and Thomas à Kempis

to such among us as Brooks, Gibbons, Munger, Henry Simmons, Rabbis Weinstock and Jacobs, and very many others. It may be allowed to a hard-worked man who has passed beyond the allotted threescore years and ten to say that he has found in general religious biography, Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant, and in the writings of men nobly inspired in all these fields, a help without which his life would have been poor indeed.

True, there will be at times need of strong resistance, and especially of resistance to all efforts by any clerical combination, whether of rabbis, priests, or ministers, no matter how excellent, to hamper scientific thought, to control public education, or to erect barriers and arouse hates between men. Both Religion and Science have suffered fearfully from unlimited clerical sway; but of the two, Religion has suffered most.

When one considers the outcome of national education entirely under the control of the church during over fifteen hundred years,—in France at the outbreak of the revolution of 1789, in Italy at the outbreak of the revolution of 1848, in the Spanish-American republics down to a very recent period, and in Spain, Poland, and elsewhere at this very hour,—one sees how delusive is the hope that a return to the ideas and methods of the "ages of faith'' is likely to cure the evils that still linger among us.

The best way of aiding in a healthful evolution would seem to consist in firmly but decisively resisting all ecclesiastical efforts to control or thwart the legitimate work of science and education; in letting the light of modern research and thought into the religious atmosphere; and in cultivating, each for himself, obedience to "the first and great commandment, and the second which is like unto it,'' as given by the Blessed Founder of Christianity.