Sketch of the life and writings of A. B. Brown

Front matter

SKETCH

LIFE AND WRITINGS

OF

Chapter I. Those That Went Before

GO deeply rooted in the human mind is the con- ^ viction that talent is transmitted, that the presence of it in an individual is at once the signal for a search for its origin, in his ancestry.

Abram Burwell Brown was the eldest son of Martin Brown and Belinda Seay.

Of the genealogy of his father, little is known. Sufficient information has been gotten, however, to establish the fact that, for generations, the Browns have been noted for their intellectual ability and love of learning.

The grandfather, Jeremiah Brown, was a Revolutionary soldier, of English descent ; was born in Stafford, lived in Culpeper and Fauquier Counties, till the beginning of this century, when he moved

10 LIFE OF A. B. BROWX, DD. LLD.

to Amherst, where he resided till his death, in 1846, having attained to the age of ninety years. He was twice married. His first wife was named Jane Kirk ; and their children were named Willis, Thomas Fielding, Elizabeth, Joseph and Martin, the fiither of A. B. Brown.

Jeremiah Brown, and all of his children w^ere apt and eager to learn, and distinguished for their retentive memories. Elizabeth won for herself the soubriquet of Macaulay, on account of her wonderful memory, and power of delineating character. Joseph was a gentleman of scholarly habits — devoted to reading and a charming conversationalist. He was a popular citizen and an earnest Baptist. Martin was perhaps the most gifted of this family.

On the maternal side, A. B. Brown was descended from tlie Huguenots. His great-greatgrandfather, Abram Seay, for whom he was named, was born in France, went to England to escape the persecution of the Catholics, and afterwards emigrated to Virginia.

In order to trace, with minuteness, the influences of heredity, it seems fitting that we look for a moment, at the religious and political condition of the country, from which this ancestor sprang.

THOSE THAT WENT BEFORE. 11

The middle of the sixteenth century witnessed the beginning of religious toleration in Europe. Prior to this, barring the revolt of Henry YIII., the supremacy of the Pope had been absolute and unlimited. But the clarion notes of Luther had rung throughout Germany, and echoed through the other countries, till converts to the reform faith were numbered, from "Finland to the Alps, and Iceland to the Pyrenees." The long-suppressed desire for freedom of conscience had voiced itself, in the valiant defenders of the new faith, till the whole country threatened to be Protestant.

The Pope, realizing the decay of his power, called on the crowned heads, to suppress the religious reformers. Everywhere was confusion, disorder, and often violence. Under the wise rulings of Elizabeth, in England, the opposing parties were kept in abeyance, and for a long while afterwards it was a safe asylum for Protestant exiles. In France, where Calvin had been busy propagating the new doctrines, great numbers became converts, among them, many of the nobility. Here was the scene of the direst conflicts. Religious controversy culminated in civil war — the Protestants being the Huguenots, and the Catholics the Guises. Here the wicked

Catharine de Medicis — the queen-mother, the mention of whose name sullies the pen that records it, as it blanches the cheek of modern womanhood — resolved to exterminate the Protestants at one blow, and having summoned them to Paris to attend a wedding feast, had the tocsin sounded, that was the signal for the general massacre, which sent seventy thousand souls into eternity in one night; and all this under the guise of religion.

Not very long after, there went out from France to Protestant England a young man, Abram Seay, a Huguenot, a scion of nobility, of culture and means.

Notwithstanding the general upheaval caused by the Reformation, literature had steadily advanced in England, and to come within her borders was to feel her quickening touch.

After the turbulent passions of the Protestants and Catholics subsided, differences as to mode of worshij) sprung up between the Protestants themselves, which led to the formation of the jDarty called Puritans, or those who desired to be purer and simpler. Rather than submit to forced regulations of worship against their convictions, they set out on the high seas, for a home in the great West, where they might enjoy perfect liberty of conscience.

THOSE THAT WENT BEFOEE. 13

Abram Seay and his wife, formerly a Miss Wilson, with their three sons, Abram, Isaac and Jacob, with thousands of others who during those years flocked to these shores, sailed for the land named in honor of the Virgin Queen. A trustworthy tradition informs us that this high-spirited old Huguenot, out of his ample means, purchased homes for his three sons near the James River. The home of Abram, the eldest of the sons, was in Nelson County, Virginia, and was known as the Cove. He married a Miss Loving.

Joseph Seay, a grandson of Abram, the Huguenot, owned a handsome property on the James, near Tye River. He married a Miss Annie Harvey — an English lady who, so far as can be known, was the first Baptist in the large circle of the Seay family. It is worth while here to say that her Baptist convictions were very strong, and she sought to win the family to their adoption. While unsuccessful in making Baptists of her own children, she has a reward for her fidelity, in the magnificent Baptist character of her grandchildren. One of the daughters of Joseph Seay, was Belinda. She was the mother of A. B. Brown, and he honored her memory, by bestowing the same name on his eldest daughter.

Abram Seay, having brought with him, to this country, the native refinements in which he had been reared, and the intellectual quickening he received in England, instilled in his posterity high aims and aspirations.

The discerning reader, will not fail to perceive in the descendant of this Frenchman, as his characteristics will be delineated, the high-strung, nervous temperament, the hot blood, the high gentlemanly instincts peculiar to the real French nobleman.

The descendants of Abram Seay, are scattered through the counties of Nelson, Amherst and Fluvanna, and form a part of the honored yeomanry of the land — respected for their thrift, intelligence and piety.

Joseph Seay, the grandfather of A. B. Brown, was a man of talents and culture. He was a teacher, the most of his life. He educated his children and many of his grandchildren. He and his wife outlived several of their children, and took two sets of grandchildren, to train and to educate. He fought in the War of 1812, and died in 1845, having reached the age of seventy-eight years.

Chapter II. His Childhood Home

rpHE eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains -*- in Virginia, embracing the counties of Nelson, Amherst and Bedford, has been regarded for generations, as the most fertile spot for the birth of Baptist preachers. The simple habits, honest purposes and pure lives of the inhabitants, together with the inspiration that comes from the beholding of the sublime in nature, conspire to produce this result. The belief that the grandeur of natural phenomena tends to the elevation and expansion of the powers of man, is not simply a poetic idea, but an established truth. A soul brought into habitual communion with God in nature — who has the spiritual discernment to interpret Him — will be, in the language of

another,

^^ Haunted forever by the Divine mind,'^

and so cannot be utterly debased in life.

In a farm-house on the mountain-side, near a dashing stream called Allen's Creek, the subject of this memoir was born. He was the eldest of a family of five children. A look within the walls of that quiet country home reveals to us first the father, Martin Brow^n, and his wife, Belinda, n^e Seay, and five children, viz., Abram, Joseph, James, Margaret and Thomas.

The father, Martin Brown, w^as a man of limited education, but of good talents, ambitious spirit and pure life. He was specially gifted in lively' wit and brilliant repartee. His devotion to his children was very marked, and he struggled hard, in the face of untoward circumstances, to elevate them. He was a great lover of reading, and succeeded in exciting in his children a love of study that made all of them attain to some degree of intellectual excellence.

In one of his addresses Dr. Brown said, " My father loved learning and he loved me, and so he made many sacrifices to give me educational advantages." The schools accessible were few and poor. This country, so young and untried, had not long laid aside its swaddling clothes. The early colonists, having secured their release from English rule, had begun to build up an independency worthy of their best endeavors ; but the process was slow. Material interests had to precede intellectual, forests had to be felled, houses built and mechanical interests encouraged, before much

HIS CHILDHOOD HOME. 17

impetus could be given to literary pursuits. By many, a common English education was all that was deemed necessary for one who did not expect to teach, and so high intellectual advancement was exceptional.

In the quiet country home, there were no child's books ; only the weekly newspapers, which were like the Acta Diurna of earlier days. It is said that Abram, at a very early age, loved to read the newspapers and the political addresses of the day. His reading was better suited to mature minds. He was often sent for, to read the papers to the neighboring farmers. He once said to a friend that in his boyhood, he got a better idea of the condition of the country by reading the advertisements in the papers, than in any other way — that from them, he learned both the demands and the supplies of the people. With such a thirst for knowledge as he possessed, it was an easy matter to extract it from surroundings.

Although his mother died when he was so young, yet she lived long enough to make an ineffaceable impression on her first-born. It is said that the knowledge that a child gains in the first seven or eight years of his life is far in excess of that gained in all the after-life. Cowley, in speaking of the influences of early life on the heart and mind of the child, says, " It is like carving your name on a young tree, which widens as the tree grows." The mother is the first teacher, and if she does well her duty, there is no power on earth that can blot out the memory of it. The mother of A. B. Brow^n w^as said to be one of the most beautiful women of her day. She w^as also intelligent and pious. All through life he could seldom speak of her without tears. He ever reverenced her memory and spoke of her with peculiar pleasure. The influence of a good and wise mother is illimitable. Some learned man has described a good mother as nature's cliefcToeavre. John Randolph, of Roanoke, said he would have been an atheist but for the remembrance of his mother's teaching him the Lord's Prayer. What might not Byron have been, wath his splendid powers under the tutelage of a good and wise mother? Could the son of a woman who died in a fit of anger at an upholsterer's bill do otherwise than give loose rein to passions as she did.

The following sketch was found among Dr. Brown's papers :

" I was born in Amherst County, Virginia, on October 20th, 1821. My father, quite poor at tlie time of my

HIS CHILDHOOD HOME. 19

birth, slowly accumulated property, most of which, however, he lost by reverses before the education of his family was completed. He was sober and industrious, of sparkling wit, eminently genial and companionable, and more selfsacrificingly devoted to the preferment of his children than any other man I ever knew. My mother was thrifty and of that dexterity and skill in household arts in which the partiality of her children could discover the marks of genius. Seated by her side, I learned to count and learned my letters.''

The death of his mother, occurring when he was eleven years old, caused a breaking up, of the once happy but short-lived home circle. All the children, except Abram, went to live at the home of their grandfather, Joseph Seay, and the members of that household were never united again under the paternal roof. The grandfather Seay, who was a teacher of considerable ability, taught the little ones who had come into his home, while Abram staid at the old place, the sole companion of his father, and went to school to the best teachers in the neighborhood. Without the companionship of brothers and sister in his home life, he had recourse to reading works of high order of merit, that he found on the shelves of the family library. His father, discerning in him the marks of genius, and being so ambitious for him to improve his talents, kept him at school till he was 17 years of age, when he began to teach. It is believed that he never did any work on the farm. His physical constitution, in consequence of his want of exercise in the open air, did not develop and keep pace with his mental.

The father, so devoted to learning, and with no mean qualifications himself, kept his children constantly at school. All of them were gifted, and inherited or imbibed the father's love of books. James Brown, who was thought by some to have equal talent with Abram, and might have been equally distinguished if he had had the same tastes, was a physician and a county treasurer in Bedford. A few years ago he moved West, and died soon after reaching his new home, with disease of the lungs. Margaret, the only sister, died at the age of 18 years. Joseph distinguished himself as a student at the University of Virginia, and Thomas, who lives now near the old home, is a farmer of decided literary taste and ability. It is said that in after-life, when the brothers would visit each other, they would spend the time together discussing books and theses to the exclusion of common-place topics. It would be difficult to find a family with as much literary taste.

Chapter III. The Mountain Boy

TN the old mountain home^ young Brown had no sister or mother to care for him. He felt sadly the need of them. An aunt kindly looked after his wearing apparel, and kept it in order for him. He used to say that he was very happy when he begun to make money for himself, so that he could buy his own clothes; that those made for him were always too large — made " so that he could grow to them ; " and, as he would tell of it, and laugh in his characteristic way, he would continue the story, saying, " but I never grew to them." His separation from society gave him the opportunity for fostering those habits of reflection, which drew out to their highest, the powers of his soul. With the majestic old mountains around him, filling his soul with emotions of grandeur and with love for the Maker, his spirit, quickened and elevated, reveled in mental and spiritual delights.

He next tells of his teachers :

" In my eighth year I was sent to school. Most of the teachers of my boyhood and youth were intelhgent and conscientious, but immature young men. Yet I was much more indebted to these than to one or two of greater experien(;e. James B. Davidson, then himself a mere tyro, afterwards a very successful teacher in Southwest Virginia, so taught me spelling and reading in one year that any improvement since made has been without conscious effort. The next year he imbedded Murray's grammar in my memory for future uses. Edwin T. Ellett, in teaching me Latin in my twelfth year, incidentally utilized my previous acquirements in English, and made me as good a grammarian as I ever became till I was introduced, in middle life, to the more rational and logical methods of Kiihner, Greene and Mulligan. This able and efficient teacher, in two years, so thoroughly grounded me in the Latin forms and syntax, and so carefully trained me in translation, that subsequent improvement was the easy result of continued practice and increasing mental development."

It is said by his family that he never studied arithmetic at school more than a few months — having ciphered through Pike's Arithmetic when he was ten years old. Being foremost in all his classes at school, he was frequently called on by the boys to w^ork their examples for them. If he declined, they would taunt him by saying : '' It is just because you don't know how; you can't do it." And at that he would yield to their wishes, and solve their examples for them, lest he might be accused of incapacity. He was a sort of assistant teacher. He contracted a fondness for teaching then, that grew with his years. He always managed to have some one near to instruct. He frequently made allusions to the fact quoted above, that he committed to memory what he didn't understand. In questioning the wisdom of such teaching, he would say, " but when afterwards I became old enough to comprehend the meaning of the text, it was right there in my mind for use."

The teacher that he makes mention of, that taught him the languages, was a Frenchman, named Cruiseau, probably a connection of the family. We know that he taught at different times in Nelson and Amherst, and that Mr. Brown followed him up, studying under him while he taught. He was regarded as a fine linguist, and a better teacher than one could usually find in the rural districts. To this rudimentary knowledge of the languages of Latin, French and Greek, that he gained early in life, he was constantly adding. It has been said that a mind that has early been trained in the forms of the Latin and Greek evidences it ever afterwards in the complexion of its productions. He was no advocate for specialists. He pleaded for broad and deep foundations and massive structures above.

Below is a continuation of the autobiographical sketch :

^' Having added to my acquirements a little Greek, rather more French, a larger complement of geometry and a meagre scantling of other mathematics, I commenced teaching school early in my 18th year. Up to this time I had not known what it was to be a student ; but, ambitious to show myself competent to what I had undertaken, subjected my mind to intense effort. And it was better for me, perhaps, than for my pupils, that some of them were trying to learn Latin, Greek and French. Unfortunately, I divided my leisure hours between preparation for my classes and the study of law, — a study which was not indeed wholly thrown away, but a study for which I was poorly prepared, and which was little related to my future pursuits.^'

An incident is related by Rev. Mr. Wm. Tyree, who obtained it from his father, . the intimate friend of Dr. Brown, that illustrates his mental ability at this period of his life. He says, —

" When a mere boy he and a young companion (Mr. Wm. Tyree) walked to Lynchburgh to attend a meeting of the General Association. The two youths, who had not often been beyond the limits of their own county, were of course anxious to see all that could be seen. Walking down the street one evening, as they passed the Catholic Church, the door was open and in they walked. The priest happened to be in the church at the time preparing for some service. After looking around, Mr. Brown's eye was attracted to a picture under which there was a historical quotation. In a moment the thorough knowledge of history, which he acquired from various sources, enabled him, as he thought, to detect error in the quotation; so, una wed by the sanctified air of the priest, he walked up to him, and said the statement was false. The priest, judging him by his personal appearance, at first seemed to think him impertinent, as well as ignorant, to presume to question the correctness of such authority, even in the presence of his majesty; but he soon found that the lad, awkward and ignorant as he supposed, was more than his equal, not only in historical information, but in logic as well, and soon left him and resumed his official duties.'^

Those who were intimately associated with him at this period of his life, say that he gave evidence of great mental power. Yery modestly, he says of himself that he had not learned to study till he began to teach. He may not have been engaged in such close analytical and synthetical processes as he afterwards subjected himself to, in studying a subject, but he had read widely, and on deep and abstruse themes, such as a boy of his age would have passed by. At that time he read and committed to memory much of the poetry of standard authors. He hardly knew the time when he did not know " The Lady of the Lake," some verses of which, commencing,

'^ I Httle thought when first thy rein I slacked upon the banks of Seine, That highland eagle e'er should feed On thy fleet limbs, my matchless steed. Wo' worth tlie chase, wo' worth the day That cost thy life, my gallant gray,"

he loved frequently to repeat to his family around the hearth-stone.

He writes of his teaching, and of his hard studying w^iile a mere boy, and of his reading law. He did not write of his spiritual condition at this time, and perhaps it were as well to omit any account of it ; but for the sake of truth and honesty, and without any real damage to character, it must be recorded that he came near being an atheist. This is not remarkable when we consider that honest doubt is the vestibule to the house of faith ; that a state of uncertainty is often the condition and sign of investigation. One has often to look around to find the true path. He doubted for a while, but it was only the darkness before the dawning of the day-star of Hope. When it did appear, it Avas in all its effulgence — a real, glowing sun, and it never declined. What he gained by investigation, he held to as real truth.

He made a profession of religion while boarding in an Episcopal family, where he taught school. He joined their church, and took deacon's orders with a view to the ministry. His father and mother were both Methodists. He said he felt it to be his duty before preaching the peculiar doctrines of the church to examine into the scripturalness of them, and the result was he became a Baptist. If any book beside the Bible helped him to a change of faith, it was Dr. Carson's work on Baptism. He entertained such a high opinion of the work and man, that afterwards he named his first-born in honor of him. During the investigation of the subject, he had frequent interviews with Dr. Rice, a minister whom he loved and revered all through life, and who took a pleasing part in his ordination. It was a sad coincidence that Dr. Rice preceded him to the grave by only a few months, and at the time his last sickness commenced he was planning a biographical sketch of his old pastor.

It has not been easy to determine exactly at what point in his life Mr. Brown changed his church relationship. I incline to the opinion that it occurred alter his return Ironi Washington College. Concerning his connection with that institution, I find this graphic and comprehensive statement in his papers, —

" I entered Washington College at an advanced stage of the session of 1840 and 1841, prosecuted with great intensity Greek and INIathematics, and felt with perhaps equal benefit the quickening contact of ingenuous and gifted young minds/^

And this closes the only sketch of his life written by himself that can be found.

An honored friend and fellow-countyman, (Dr. C. Tyree), one who ranks among the foremost of Virginia's distinguished mmisters, furnishes us the following, which, beginning at this period of his life, gives some interesting facts :

"In the year 1840 the wa^iter of this sketch first became acquainted with A. B. Brown, while assisting Dr. Rice in a series of meetings at Mt. Moriah. Although raised in an adjoining neighborhood, it was not till these meetings, that this w^riter became acquainted wdtli him. While teaching school in the family of William M. Waller, a prominent and wealthy gentleman of Amherst, he had joined the Episcopal Church ; at the same time he was an attendant on the ministry of Dr. S. R. Rice, at Mt. Moriah Baptist Church. In this church there was a large number of intelligent men; among these were such as John W. Broaddus, Benjamin Taliaferro, Dr. Gibson and others. These Baptists were more the social and religious companions of young Brown, than the members of his own church, for the latter were few and far between. Hence, whether from intercourse with these intelligent and kind Baptists and their pastor. Dr. Rice, or from his own independent investigations, we know not — likely from both — Mr. Brown became a Baptist, and was, to the joy of the Baptist and disappointment of his Episcopal friends, baptized into the fellowship of Mt. Moriah Church by Dr. Rice.

" He was then regarded as one of the brightest and best young men in his county ; hence his accession to the Baptists was considered a triumph. In after years. Brother Brown gave interesting accounts of the argument that the Episcopal minister, Rev. Mr. Caldwell, would present to him for the scripturalness of infant baptism, and for sprinkling as a mode of baptism ; and how he and the clear-headed Rice would refute these specious pleas for these human innovations. It was, we think, after this noble young man became a Baptist, that he became a student at the University of Virginia. We do not know how long he remained in our great State college, nor what precise science he studied while there, but we do know that it was in this noble institution he mainly laid the foundation for his future eminence as a scholar, educator and preacher. It was here, more than elsewhere, he acquired his habit of strong, unique thinking.

" It was about this time, the Mt. Moriah Church licensed him to preach, after which he frequently preached to his own, and other surrounding Baptist Churches. His first pulpit efforts gave no very promising warrant of the eminence, to which he attained, as a preacher. His person was unattractive, his gestures awkward and inappropriate, his voice abrupt and inharmonious and his enunciation indistinct. The first acknowledged proof of his strength of mind, was an address on Foreign Missions, made before the church of which he was a member, and the more discerning of his brethren saw in his first sermons, intimations of his future greatness.

" In the estimation of all, his Christian character was of a high order. He was singularly free from vanity and over self-valuation. Other young preachers of less learning and intellect, arose at once to distinction, by the helpful adjuncts of good voices, pleasing manners, and self-possession. Abram Brown gradually attained to the highest distinction as a preacher, in the absence of these and other extraneous helps.

"His brilliant success, without so many adjunctive helps, proves that he possessed a :farely great mind and a noble heart ; and both were greatly enlarged by habits of study and habits of devotion.

" God never vouchsafes to any of his preachers all of the elements of preaching power. Robert Hall and George Whitefield were not powerful preachers in all respects. There are some regards in which even Spurgeon is not a model.

" He gave A. B. Brown but few constituents of the great preacher, but these few He gave him in such munificent measures as to make him, of his class, the peer of any preacher of his own, or any denomination in his State. His power lay in the quickness, richness and originality of his thoughts, the gushing depths of his emotions, with the rare facility of clothing his ideas in the fewest and best chosen words.

"He was, however, only the greatest of a certain class of preachers. It were not best for the world's religious betterment, that all or most preachers should be great after Dr. Brown's type. The sermons, that gave him his high character were too intellectual, to convert and edify the common hearer.

"He could, however, preach plain and practical sermons. We recall one he preached at Mount Moriah, during a protracted meeting, from the text ' Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,' etc., that was simple and thrilling to all ; but on the day before preached from the text, ' Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,' etc., a sermon grandly mysterious. It reminded one of the sun, behind a dark cloud, fringing its edges with golden light ; but did not break out in full-orbed plainness till near its close.

"Dr. Brown was, of his class, one of the greatest preachers of his day, and was in the truest sense a gospel preacher. His great intellect, learning and knowledge, never swerved him in the least from the simplicity of Christ, and while we say this much, say at the same time that he was not a safe model for our young preachers, in his most striking characteristics.