HARVARD Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year of our Lord 1846, BY HYDE, LORD & DUREN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Maine. Stereotyped and Printed by Portland, Maine. INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. THE essential principle, the life-giving point of Christianity, is JESUS CHRIST. As to spiritual religion, the religion of the heart, "Christ is all and in all." COL. III. 11. The power which the Christian religion exerts, is the power of a personal affection-personal affection for an object the most elevated and admirable, "the chief among ten thousand, the one altogether lovely." There is no power on earth to be compared, in its absorbing and transforming influences, with the power of personal affection, as we see in the attachment between husband and wife and the mutual love of parent and child. Take away or diminish by any means this personal affection and veneration for Christ, and the transforming efficacy of the gospel is gone. The object of the Christian religion is to reproduce, in men, "the same mind which was also in Christ Jesus," on a smaller scale indeed, but with every lineament distinctly developed, and all in due proportion; and this transformation is produced in concurrence with the actings of a personal affection, by the steady contemplating and admiring of the moral glory of Christ. "We all with open (unveiled) face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." 2 Cor. III. 18. The Christians of whom we read in the New Testament, were able to live the Christian life, amid all the bitter trials and cruel persecutions to which they were subjected, mainly by the personal influence of Jesus Christ over them. They "considered him who endured such contradictions of sinners against himself, lest they should become weary and faint in their minds." HEB. XII. 3. In discouragement they remembered the miracles, the trans figuration, the ascension; in sorrow and suffering they called to mind Gethsemane and Gabbatha and Calvary; in sharp conflicts and wrestlings they re flected on the scene in which Jesus said: "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But for this cause came I unto this hour-Father glorify thy name." JOHN XII. 27, 28. And thus were they able to endure. His absence from earth did not in the least diminish the power of his personal influence over them. Says the apostle who once denied him, "Whom having not seen ye love, in whom though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory; receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls." 1 PETER I. 8, 9. And says the other apostle who never left his side but stood by him to the last: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life; -declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with usand -that your joy may be full." 1 JOHN I. 1-4. Christ himself assured them that his personal influence, so far from being diminished by his absence, would actually be increased by it. "Nevertheless I tell you the truth, it is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. He shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you." JOHN XVI. 7, 14. These assurances are not confined to the apostles; they are intended for all believers. "If any man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." JOHN XIV. 23, compare XVII. 20, 21 and REV. III. 20. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day and forever." HEB. XIII. 8; and if these promises were ever realized, they can be realized now-if they are phantoms now, they were always phantoms, and Christ was a deluder when he said, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you," JOHN xiv. 27. If it was ever the duty and privilege of Christians to live in a state of joyous, uninterrupted confidence in Christ and conscious personal affection towards him, it is their duty and privilege to do so now; and if professors of religion generally are far away from this state of mind, it is only because they are generally far away from Christ their Saviour. DR. EDWARD PAYSON had a living consciousness of these truths beyond what is common even to Christian ministers. In his preaching, in his conversation, and above all, in his prayers, there was a glowing, ardent, allabsorbing personal sympathy with Christ, such as broke forth with so splendid imagery in the last words of his dying testimony. No one can form an adequate conception of what he was from any of the productions of his pen. Admirable as his written sermons are, his extempore prayers and the gushings of his heart in familiar talk were altogether higher and more touching than any thing he ever wrote. It was my custom to close my eyes when he began to pray, and it was always a letting down, a sort of rude fall, to open them again when he had concluded, and find myself still on the earth. His prayers always took my spirit into the immediate presence of Christ, amid the glories of the spiritual world; and to look round again on this familiar and comparatively misty earth, was almost painful. At every prayer I heard him offer, during the seven years in which he was my spiritual guide, I never ceased to feel new astonishment, at the wonderful variety and depth and richness and even novelty of feeling and expression which were poured forth. This was a feeling with which every hearer sympathized, and it is a fact well known, that Christians trained under his influence were generally remarkable for their devotional habits. For the satisfaction of those who were not personally acquainted with Dr. Payson, I will endeavor to indicate, in a few words, what appeared to me to be the original elements of his character. He had a spontaneous intellectual activity, so that his mind was always hard at work, and would no more be still than the engine when the steam is on. He could never rest satisfied with the passive reception of ideas that floated in from without, which make up almost the whole current of thought in ordinary men, but was continually forming them into new combinations of his own. Hence, though an acute and accurate observer of all that was passing around him and possessing in an unusual degree those sympathies which bind man to his fellow man,— he sometimes appeared abstracted and absent, because he was busied in working up the materials which lay before him; and sometimes he seemed cold and reserved, because his sympathies were absorbed in ideals, from which they could not be detached without rending. From this source also arose the melancholy which sometimes settled upon him. With a mind too inventive to be contented with common objects of thought, and with sensibilities too acute to cling to the world around him, unless engrossed by some great object of pursuit, his soul turned inward and preyed upon itself. This was the case in childhood and early youth, before his mind was absorbed by any prominent object; and it was so in after life, when exhausted by labor and during the transition from one intellectual effort to another. The same characteristic explains the rapidity with which he made acquisitions, the avidity with which he devoured books, the thorough knowledge which he seemed to possess, after a brief observation, of a man's character and intentions. Another original element of Dr. Payson's character was the liveliness and never failing exuberance of his fancy. There was no end to the illustrations and images which sparkled from him in the pulpit, and still more in the domestic circle; they were always appropriate and in good taste, and though strikingly original, they seldom had the appearance of oddness and grotesqueness. His powers of conversation were unrivalled; his thoughts flew from him in every variety of beauty and harmony, like birds from the aviary of Eden before the fall. As Ben Johnson said of Shakspeare: "He had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with such facility that sometimes it was necessary that he should be stopped!" A third original element of his character was a prodigious energy of feeling, which impelled him through every obstacle to the accomplishment of an important object. So strong were his feelings, that for the time they would give the vigour of a giant to a body prostrated by disease and lassitude; however great the difficulties which lay in his way, he would scarcely seem conscious of their existence till the work was done; and it was never till after the victory was gained, that he felt the wounds he had received in the conflict. It was this energy of feeling which nerved him to such astonishing pulpit exertions after a week of severe illness and total prostration; it was this that urged him to those constant efforts which at length deranged the "bvsical organization and occasioned him such terrible sufferings the latter part of his life. His affections were exceedingly deep and rich-his love was the love of an angel, and the glow of his dark piercing eye seemed sometimes to flash with the emotions of a soul that belonged to a higher order of beings, a soul with which Christ had so long been in communion, that he had transformed it to his own likeness, as the Persian rose imparts its fragrance to the humble plant which grows by its side. The principal errors of Dr. Payson's career, (for like all other men he had his failings) and even his early death may be ascribed mainly to his want of an appreciation of the influence of the physical organization upon the mind, and of the mind upon the physical organization. He knew it well enough in theory, but he did not sufficiently apply his knowledge to practice in his own case. Notwithstanding the good motives with which he acted, and his eminent devotedness and usefulness, God did not turn aside the laws of nature in his favour, but let them go on with crushing regularity. He told me on his death bed, that in this respect he had erred, in keeping his mind and feelings in constant tension, as if the mind were of no account in the struggle; and he hoped the next generation of ministers would be wiser in this than he had been. He never favored himself. Whatever he did, he did by "a dead lift ;" and he continued lifting all the while there was any thing to be lifted; as if he must never rest till he was in his grave. And the weights which he took upon himself and kept upon himself without relief, sunk him to the tomb before his time. Much if not all the spiritual darkness under which he occasionally suffered, was the physical action of a nervous system overworked; and the painful paralysis with which he died was the extreme exhaustion of a naturally strong body perpetually driven by a stronger mind which allowed it no repose. We can almost say, that he gave to his people his flesh to eat and his blood to drink, till it was all gone; and they in return gave back gratitude as warm, and mourning as poignant, as ever a dying pastor received from his surviving flock. Walnut Hills, Cincinnatti. C. E. STOWE. |