Incidents and anecdotes of Rev. Edward T. Taylor, for over forty years pastor of the Seaman's Bethel, Boston

Front matter

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^f rjVrHER- TA"YT.0"|

THE SAILOR PREACHER.

CHAPTER I. PAGB CHAPTER n

To THE Great Change 20

CHAPTER nr.

To the PtJLPiT .....84

CHAPTER IV.

To the Cercdix • , . 68

CHAPTER V.

His Wife 68

CHAPTER VI.

To Boston 82

CHAPTER Vn.

The Bethel Enterprise 102

CHAPTER Vni.

In the Bethei. 128

CHAPTER IX.

In the Bethel Prater-Meeting 153

CHAPTER X.

Some Dethel Sermons 168

8 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XI. PAGE

CHAPTER Xn.

In Conference 200

CHAPTER Xni.

In Camp-Meeting 222

CHAPTER XIV.

In the Preachers' Meeting 234

CHAPTER XV.

In Reforms 246

CHAPTER XVI.

On Special Occasions 271

CHAPTER XVn.

Out of the Bethel 299

CHAPTER XVm.

At Home 326

CHAPTER XLX.

"What the "Writers wrote , , . 343

CHAPTER XX.

Mother Taylor 368

CHAPTER XXI.

To the Harbor 391

CHAPTER XXn.

The Burial 408

CHAPTER XXm.

The Epitaph 419

THE BEGINNING.

THE rise of one from before the mast to a position of honor is an event not unknown in the naval world. Sailors, not a few, have gone from the lowest to the highest stations by virtue of their genius and their opportunity: but these examples are confined to one line of promotion ; they have simply grown on their own soil, been developed out of their own conditions. Far rarer have been the examples of those who have abandoned the sea, and yet wrought their fame from it ; who have done that deed declared impossible, — seen the sea from the shore^ and the shore from the sea, at the same time. (T^® sailor-songs of '^Dibdin^' though written by one who was always an actor, never a sailor, yet brought sea and -land together in ringing rhymes, that delighted sailors, and strengthened, like ocean breezes, the enervated landsmen. ^or the first time, the ennuyes of the club and the drawing-room tasted a saltness in the air of literature ; for the first time, they learned to feel as a sailor the nearness of Providence and the childlikeness of trust. As they heard that word of confidence,

'(There's a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, To keep watch for the life of poor Jack,"

or that tender tribute to Tom Bowling, —

"^Tiose body is under hatches, But his soul is gone aloft,"

they were brought to the rolling deep as those born unto it, and felt that their home was in this homeless haunt of Nature.

(Many have written of the sea ; but, like Lucretius, they have gazed on it from the safe protection of the shore. Robinson Crusoe is far more a tale of land-hfe than sea -life. In a few stanzas only of his multitude, Byron rocks on the rolling deep. Marryatt, Smollett, and Cooper describe life on ship-board : but all of them wrote as landsmen for landsmen : two of them only having really tasted the brine, and they as gentlemen and officers, not as common sailors. The stories of voyages such, as Cook's, Magellan's, Parry's, adventures in the Arctic and Pacific by buccaneers and discoverers, have always held a large place in the literature of youth ; but these have never developed in pirate or pioneer a reputation on the shore and among men.

y ohn Newton is one of the few men of the irreligious and almost piratical sort, who commenced life a common sailor, but acquired eminence afterwards in another profession. He was one of the worst and most active of those engaged in tlie slavetrade. Brought to Christ, he escaped at once from his sins and the sea. But, though a popular and faithful minister of the Lord Jesus, he was not directly connected with the sea, either in his labors or his style. He preached ashore and to landsmen with no breath of his ocean-life blowing through his words. He dwelt so far inland in his thoughts and relations, that the earlier life never sent its salt winds across his speech. He seemed only to remember his sins on the great deep, which were themselves a great deep. Even those he sought to hide from his memory. All the varied and vigorous life of the ocean was forgotten ; perhaps was never lived. So vile had been his trade, he could only remember its iniquities: he may not have known the inspirations of the storm or calm, of arctic and torrid climes. Intent on his criminal work, the features of the sea were unnoticed. As the vile panders to human sins in dens of vice and lawlessness never note the glory of midnight upon which studious eyes are reverentlj^ turned, never regard the movements of society about them, but, like Mammon, have their eyes fixed on the pavement of their own passions: so he, in that early career, only saw the victims of his covetousness, as, chained and scourged, they were packed away in the choking hold of his tossing craft, and debarked, what were left of them, on the West Indian shores, and changed to gold in his corrupted palm. Surely he would not wish to recall, if he could, the calm heavens, frowning wrath, even from their cloudless depths, on his accursed work and *«oul.

It is therefore a novelty for a life of fame to be wrought out by a common sailor, from the sea and the profession he had left, on the land, and among all classes of men. If, then, we were merely seeking for a subject that had the piquancy needful to awaken a dulled palate, this career had the requisite elements. It stands alone in literature and life. Seamen turned preachers have been common; seamen who served the sailors as preachers on the shore are frequent: but a seaman who shone in the forehead of the finest society for almost half a century as its brightest wit and orator, of most genial and generous soul, and still kept up the closest intimacy with the sailors and the sea, preaching to the one and of the other, is a rarity among geniuses that deserves especial and perpetual memory.

But not for this remarkable quality do we prepare this memorial. The mere contemplation of a novel character and career, with no higher end, is as valueless for good as the gazing on a gem of strange lustre and color. There is a deeper reason for this biography.

(The subject of it was a striking exhibition of the power of the renewing grace of God. With all his peculiarities and exceptional features, the central truth stands out like Teneriffe above the ridgy seas that toss about it. He was a converted man. He had been born again. He was changed by the Holy Ghost from a child of wrath to an heir of heaven.

He stands forth in an age that disputes this divine declaration of the Scriptures, both as to its need and its possibility, a living witness of both truths, — the sad and the glad, the depravity and the regeneration. He entered into a community that had largely lost the testimony of redemption, had forgotten whether there be any Holy Ghost, had covered the Cross with a cloud of speculation, and discarded the Blood of sacrifice and salvation as an unholy thing, and outshone its brilliancy with a superior brightness, made its wit dull, its eloquence tame, its fervor cold, its pohsh rude, with his untutored culture of manners, and shinings of genius ; and all this without awakening condemnation of his doctrines, or hostility to his experience. It is not too much to say that Father Taylor was, for a generation, almost the only representative of evangelical faith who had the entree to those of the cultivated classes of his adopted city who had abandoned this fundamental faith of their fathers and of the Church. It would seem as if to these wise men of the East had arisen the strange star, and led them, all unwillingly, to the cradle of their Lord and Redeemer. They rejoiced in the star ; they followed its wanderings ; they came by its guidance to the place where their Lord lay.

(Other great divines, in some respects greater, arose and shone in the same city at the same period ; but none of them was allowed to illuminate these souls. Dr. Beecher uttered his burning entreaties and weighty arguments to their deaf ear. Dr. Wayland poured forth his full heart and brain in a stream that rarely flooded their social summits. Dr. Griffin made thousands listen to his strong cries and tears, but was an outcast among the old Puritan families that had built and still ruled the Puritan city. Methodist preachers, such as Fisk, Hedding, Stevens, and others, far above their brother in letters, and hardly below him in pulpit attractions, rarely saw a chief citizen in their pews, never saw themselves in his parlors. But to him it was given at once to draw all social influence to his humble conventicle, and to go from his obscure associates into their select society.

iHere, too, he shone in the lustre of a simple faith. All his gifts and graces were but the setting for the living faith in the Lord Jesus. He knew whom he had believed. He delighted to testify to the fulness and joyfulness of that redemption. It gleamed and shone in every flash of his loving, lightning ej^e, in every beaming word of wit and wisdom ; it was soul of his soul ; in it he lived, and moved, and had his being. Wherever he went, with whomsoever he associated, this new life burst forth like spring flowers, in gladness and beauty, spontaneous aiid abundant.

(He was not of a cynical nature. He did not carry a snarling temper. He was fall of mirth. The hallelujah psalm was his daily creed. He overflowed in joyfulness of soul. It was a new revelation to many whom he met, this joy in the Holy Ghost. They had never seen it after this fashion. In their idea, orthodoxy was sour, disputatious, devoted to the dark points in the system of God, dwelling in the caves of the Holy Land of the gospel. He was on the green plains and sunny hills ; delighting in the figs and grapes and pomegranates ; resting under palms ; full of exhilaration and exultation ; not boisterous and obtrusive, not exceptional and occasional, but interfused as an atmosphere, that "rolls through all things." A smile that was irradiant with grace, a jest that Avas seasoned with salt, a joy that was unspeakable, and full of glory, — such was the novel and sudden change from the Puritan darkness of decrees and limitations into the full-orbed shining of the gospel sun.

IHe was no simperer. With all his overflowing charity, there was a great firmness in the faith. With his large and liberal circle of friends, — the broadest enjoyed by any man in Boston for a third of a century, — there was no yielding of any essential point in his own doctrinal views. Rarely did there seem an exception ; and then it was only seeming.

When conversing with a distinguished divine on Christian perfection, he was asked by him if there had been any as perfect as Christ.

He answered, " Millions." This looked as if he had answered in a way that annihilated his own view of the Saviour. But, as the conversation was on Christian perfection, the answer simply referred to the lo\'e of •Christ, which he might fairly say had been fullj^ reproduced, after their measure, in millions of his devoted disciples, who could say as the repentant, and more than before affectionate Peter, " Lord, thou knowest all things : thou knowest that I love thee."

(He defended the truth of regenerating grace through Christ faithfully, everywhere. Never a word that questioned the great salvation fell from his lips. Never a questioner was allowed to go unrebuked. He carried this heart of his heart on his sleeve, not for daws to peck at, but for all those who saw him to see. It was his perpetual breastplate, his Urim and Thummim, his lights and truths. It broke forth at every table, in ever}^ circle, on every platform, where the Word was questioned, or where his experience was admissible. He was loyal to his Master in all hours and homes.

(But a yet greater cause for this record is his labors among his own people. Ornaments are trifling and perishable. To outshine wit with brighter wit, to cut with the flashing sword of a novel, brilliant thought the knot of subtle disputations, to set the golden candlestick of the sanctuary with its beaten oil and pure flame on unaccustomed altars, to charm all classes by sacred gladness to Him who made the feast His favorite place for genial rebuke and aptest utterance, — this is all well, and worthy ; but to go from the quarterdeck to the forecastle, to never forget nor despise the hole of the pit whence he was digged, to seek strenuously for fifty years to lift these brothers of the deep out of the lower depths of their sins and sufferings, to meet them always as his best beloved brethren, to compel all lordly landsmen in his presence to give them precedence, to labor for their salvation, and to rejoice over it, — this gave him, not pre-eminence alone with men, but with God. This showed the breadth and solidity of his nature. It was not wild and whimsical. However high it shot up in needles, it was ever based on the deep and wide foundations of faith and humanity. It kept him steadfast and strong for half a century. Like the sun, he blazed ; but, like the sun, he was more a firm-set, solid globe than a shooting atmosphere of light.

^he last reason for preparing these memorials is not his society, nor his service : it is his originality. Multitudes have been equally honored and faithful, who die, and make no sign. Genius alone seems to have the prerogative of the present and the future : it rules the generation in which it lives, and all the generations that follow. The rays it sends forth never cease their shining. Incidents in such lives, remarks they uttered, are devoured greedily ages after they are dust. This man without letters, without birth, without original position, carried his adopted city on the end of his lance for a generation, simply from the freshness of his genius.

\To gather up a few — alas, how few ! — of these rays, is the object of this memorial. If we only had the bright thoughts that Socrates dropped so often in his strolls about Athens, the pickings of Plato would be forgotten. So if we could only give the bon-mots that flashed from Taylor's lips at the prea(^.hers' meetings, at camp-meetings, in his pulpit, and prayer-*

2* meetings, around social tables, in tlie street, in a chance meeting, these gathered pebbles would appear as worthless dust. No man ever lived who more constantly talked in tropes; whose figures were as original as an Oriental's, and as brisk as a Frenchman's ; who was equal master of repartee and simile ; who was affluent as South Afric fields in uncounted, ungathered diamonds. Not a sermon that had not sentences in it, which

" Had suffered a sea change Into something rich and strange."

Not a colloquy, hardly a greeting, that did not turn up a gem. Such profusion, like that of most unlettered men, made the sayings not always hammered to a perfect hardness, or polished to their possible shapehness and lustre. They lacked uniform excellence of finish. Yet they were often richer than all possible finish of the lapidary's. Many sprang forth of purest ray serene, cut and complete from their birth.

The few we have been able to obtain will give a faint conception, to those who knew him not, of the originality and choiceness of his endowments: they may help the many that knew him, to retain in their loving memories the full-length portrait of their friend and father; and they may help to perpetuate beyond the brief moment of his earthly stay the knowledge and the characteristics of one of the most celebrated of the preachers of America, who, wherever he went, and upon whomsoever he shone, shed forth the sacred light of consecrated genius, the illuminations upon his own soul of the countenance of his Saviour and his God.

n.

TO THE GREAT CHANGE.

The New Birth often the Real Birth. — The Ruling Passion Strong in Youth. — His Escape . — Boston Sixty Tears Since. — Hears Dr. Griflan. — Drifts into Bromfield Street. — Elijah Hedding the Preacher. — Thomas W. Tucker leads him to the Altar. — His Conversion and Q-reat Joy. — His Testimony to Bishop Hedding at his Funeral.

THE beginning of Father Taylor's life was when he was converted. If ever a second birth was a first birth, it was in this instance. It is oftener thus than many suppose. A few men of genius struggle into light without the regenerating power of the Holy Ghost. But most remain " mute and inglorious " unless touched with this life divine. The Church has been the field that above all others has yielded abundant fruit to the thought of the world^ Christ has been the chief husbandman of genius. Where would Bunyan have been but for the Holy Spirit ? That wit so keen, that fancy so delicate, that imagination so rare, would have been lost in the orgies of bear-baiting, beer-drinking, and profanity, fiugustine's genius was drowned in dreams and dissipation, until it was lifted out of its horrible pit by the grace of Christ.

^outh, Jeremy Taylor, Ward Beecher, Gough, Rowland Hill, Spurgeon, Hugh Miller, Robert Hall —

TO THE GEEAT CHANGE. 21

• these lights of the church and the world were without light but for the illuminations of the Holy Ghost. Milton had been songless, and Cowper and Herbert ; Fuller had been witless, and Sir Thomas Browne and Bishop Hall and Erasmus, save for renewing grace. Luther's flame was kindled at the altar. The genius that wrought the cathedrals, statues, and pictures of mediaeval times was wrought upon by the spirit of faith, and but for that re-creation would have been dead while it lived.

^his law was strikingly illustrated in Father Taylor. He was undoubtedly a wit on ship-board. He could not have roamed the seas for ten years and over, associated with sailors and landsmen in many ports, without revealing some signs of the talent which afterwards drew so many to his feet. But all that period is a blank. No hint of such a life stirs the chaos of tho^e youthful years. His first remembered deeds and words associated with his life as a sailor are after his conversion and in connection with it. Nothing especially dissolute is recorded of those earlier days. He is described as a handsome fellow, as trim and taut as any of his tribe ; much beloved by his shipmates, and deserving their love. But they give no memories of his talent. It was much to say of him, that he passed those perilous years from boyhood to manhood in the most perilous of callings without especial stain on his character.

(Still the genius lay folded in its napkin. He was only a common sailor, untaught in letters, untrained in manners, unelevated in rank, without hope or thought of advancement, like multitudes who accept the fate they are born to, and —

" Live and die unheard, With a most voiceless thought sheathing it as a sword."

{He was born in Richmond, Va., Dec. 25, 1793. He had little knowledge of his parents. He remembered a love for preaching in that early boyhood, and especially for a sort that afterwards attracted him, and in which he was always successful. He used to preach funeral-sermons over dead chickens and kittens. He would gather the negro boys and girls about him, and discourse in most pathetic and forcible language on the life and death of the departed. If he could not bring them to tears by his oratory, he failed not to avail himself of the whip, and lashed them to appropriate grief over his chickens and his sermon. This way of making mourners and sympathetic listeners was afterwards maintained and continued in the whip his tongue so often applied to those who did not suitably respond to his persuasive efforts.

This love of preaching and of responsive auditories was no proof of his spiritual fitness for his subsequent life-work. It showed a passion for pulpit-oratory, but no call to it. That call slumbered for many years.

^e was brought up on a place near the city, by a lady to whom he had been given in charge. One day when he was about seven years old, he was picking up chips for his foster-mother, when a sea-captain passed by, and asked him if he did not wish to be a sailor. He jumped at the offer, never finished pick-

TO THE GEEAT CHANGE. 23

ing up his chips, nor returned into the house to bid his friends "good-by," but gave himself to the stranger without fear or thought.

Thus began a life which continued for ten years, through every variety of that stormy experience. He seldom spoke of this period of his life, and hardly a memory of it remains. It was a blank.

(when a bronzed youth of seventeen, he entered the port of Boston. Whether he had previously visited this city or not, we cannot learn. Perhaps he had become familiar with its features ; perhaps he was strolling through it for the first time, when he was captured by his heavenly Master, and rescued from the Evil One, who drags so many of his calling down to destruction.

^oston was then a lively little sea-port, of only about thirty thousand inhabitants. Its business centre was Dock Square, the crowded market-place, whose little size, irregular, triangular shape, and dingy dropdown buildings, made it closely resemble the marketplaces of old European towns.

(Hanover Street, and Cornhill, now Washington Street, were its chief thoroughfares. Tremont Street was lined with residences hidden in gardens, as those of oldest Cambridge are to-day, but are fast ceasing to be. Old South was well up town ; Summer Street was a haunt of retired gentlemen and retiring lovers, who did their soft whisperings and languishing promenades under its green shadows. The rest of the town was a semi-wilderness. The Common was a cow-pasture : a few houses fronted it on the north and east ; and tlie negro-quarters were thrust away behind these Beacon-hill lords, in dirt and infamy.

The streets, with one or two exceptions, were paveless lanes and alleys, choked with traffic and dust. The whole city was a narrow belt stretching along the shore, and going back only a few rods from the yet unwalled sea. Two long wharves were thrust out over the mud left bare by the ebbi ng tide ; a new and stately brick block covered one of these, while crafts of all seas and flags hugged their sides, and made them livelier even than they are to-day.

/!^djoining one of these wharves lay an unknown vessel, with its unknown captain, cargo, and port of departure, that had among its unknown sailors one that has since become so well known. The brown, tough, wiry lad, then already —

" Known to every star and every wind that blows,"

but utterly unknown of men, and seemingly unknown almost of his parents and his God, left his craft in his sailor-costume, and strolled through the streets of the small but active commercial metropolis of his country, on a pleasant evening in the autumn of 1811. On what thoughts he was intent we have no knowledge ; probably on the usual thoughtless errands of sabbath-wandering youth. He passed by Park-street Church, where Dr. Griffin was then preaching, and whose sermon he afterwards described, and turned down the lane just north of it on the right

TO THE GREAT CHANGE. 25

of the street. The Methodist chapel was located in that alley. Both of these churches had been built but a few years. The Methodists were offered the site of the Park-street Church, then unoccupied, a position far more eligible than the one they purchased ; but they felt too poor to erect a structure suitable to such a location, or, as they put it, they could not put up a church with three sides of finished brick ; and so retreated to the humbler quarters near at hand.

Perhaps he drifted into Park Street on this very occasion, as he used to relate this incident.

"(l was walking along Tremont Street, and the bell of Park-street Church was tolling. I put in ; and, going to the door, I saw the port was full. I up helm, unfurled topsail, and made for the gallery ; entered safely, doffed cap or pennant, and scud under bare poles to the corner pew. There I hove to, and came to anchor. The old man. Dr. Griffin, was just naming his text, which was, 'But he hed unto him.;"

'\'As he went on, and stated item after item, — how the devil lied to men, and how his imps led them into sin, — I said a hearty ' Amen ; ' for I knew all about it. I had seen and felt the whole of it.

"(Pretty soon he unfurled the mainsail, raised the topsail, run up the pennants to free breeze ; and I tell you, the old ship Gospel never sailed more prosperously. The salt spray flew in every direction ; but more especially did it run down my cheeks. I was melted. Every one in the house wept. Satan had to strike sail ; his guns were dismounted or spiked ; his various light crafts, by which he led sinners captive, were all beached; and the Captain of the Lord's host rode forth conquering and to conquer. I was young then. I said, ' Why can't I preach so ? I'll try it.' "

This event probably happened after his conversion ; for he was not in a mood before to appreciate a sermon.

It might have been a providential leading, when this poor youth turned away from the elegant church, then the handsomest in the city, — and not far from that rank to-day, — probably because its elegance too sharply contrasted with his appearance, and entered the lowlier conventicle. He had possibly never been brought to Christ if this door had not been opened.

Even this chapel was too ornate for him, — at least its entrance. He climbed in at a window. Whether the crowd was so great that he could find no other mode of entrance, or whether his outcast state and feelings led him to " hang round " the window through which the subsequent power of the Spirit of God drew him, we have never heard. Possibly both : for the church in those days was crowded ; and the poor, shy sailor, without a home or friends, felt himself an alien, and took his place where this feeling prompted. An outcast was properly outside the sacred walls.

Who brought him to Christ ? It took a man to save such a man. The preacher that night was Rev. Elijah Hedding. He was stationed for the first time

TO THE GEEAT CHANGE. 27

in the chief church of his denomination in the chief city of the East. He was afterwards twice stationed there. He was a powerful preacher, of the solid and earnest type, full of matter, full of fire. A large man, with large head, sober ways, borne down by the greatness of his mission, he was already marked out by the church of this section as its favorite leader. He was then thirty-one years old, in the juicy vigor of his manhood. He was born in Duchess County, New York ; born again in Vermont when sixteen years old ; became immediately a great circuit-rider and a greater revivalist, and at this early age had been brought to Boston for a few months only, probably to tide the new enterprise over its first embarrassments. His style of preaching was strong, clear, simple, earnest, devout : common-sense on fire was its truest characteristic.

^t is noticeable that two such famous preachers as Dr. Grif&n and Bisjiop Hedding should have been brought together the only time in their history, around the conversion of Father Taylor, though that conjunction was merely nominal. He passed by the one, and drew near the other, as if only such fishers of men could catch such a man. He always spoke admiringly of Dr. Griffin, though Bishop Hedding was the idol of his heart. It may have been that only such a man of power could affect such a man of power. The homoeopathic axiom might be modified to this case, and the Similia similia cur ant ^ " Like cures like," be the appropriate motto for this event in his history. Appropriate if one found it necessary to regard exclusively the human instruments God employs in the work of conversion. The Holy Ghost in this service shows how indifferent He is sometimes to all channels of His divine impulses. It was shown in this instance also. For the preaching of Mr. Hedding was only one of the causes of his conversion. After the discourse the usual invitation was given for mourners to come forward. The sailor had been drawn through the window by the preacher, but had got no farther. The young people then, as now, responded to the entreaties of the preacher by their own direct effort, and, as soon as the invitation was given, started from their seats to solicit personally the unconverted to come forward for prayers.