There remained around
him only a select circle,--shrewd, hard thinkers, who delighted
in metaphysical subtilties,--deep-hearted, devoted natures, who
sympathized with the unworldly purity of his life, his active
philanthropy and untiring benevolence,--courageous men, who admired his
independence of thought and freedom in breasting received opinion,--and
those unperceiving, dull, good people who are content to go to church
anywhere as convenience and circumstance may drift them,--people who
serve, among the keen feeling and thinking portion of the world, much
the same purpose as adipose matter in the human system, as a soft
cushion between the nerves of feeling and the muscles of activity.
There was something affecting in the pertinacity with which the good
Doctor persevered in saying his say to his discouraging minority of
hearers. His salary was small; his meeting-house, damaged during the
Revolutionary struggle, was dilapidated and forlorn,--fireless in
winter, and in summer admitting a flood of sun and dust through those
great windows which formed so principal a feature in those first efforts
of Puritan architecture.
Still, grand in his humility, he preached on,--and as a soldier never
asks why, but stands at apparently the most useless post, so he went on
from Sunday to Sunday, comforting himself with the reflection that no
one could think more meanly of his ministrations than he did himself. "I
am like Moses only in not being eloquent," he said, in his simplicity.
Pages:
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216