Life and selected writings of Francis Dana Hemenway

Front matter

LIFE AND SELECTED WRITINGS

OF

Francis Dana Hemenway,

Chapter I. The Home among the Hills, 9

" II. The School-house and Church at the Corners, 14

" III. Early Religious Life, 23

" IV. School-days at Newbury and Concord, . . 35

" V. Pastorate at Montpelier, 49

VI. New Fields at the West 60

VII. At Evanston, 73

" VIII. In Labors More Abundant, 89

IX. In Memoriam— 1884, 102

Part II— STUDIES IN HYMNOLOGY

edited by rev. c. m. stuart, b. d.

Chapter I. Hymns and Lyric Poetry in General, .... 141

II. Hymns of the Ancient Church, 155

" , III. Earlier Medieval Hymns, 170

" IV. Later Medieval Hymns, 185

V. Hymns from German Authors, 202

VI. Earlier English Hymns, 227

" VII. Hymns of Isaac Watts, 240

" VIII. Hymns of the Wesleys, 256

Notes, 278

CONTENTS.

Part III— LECTURES AND SERMONS

EDITED BY REV. A. W. PATTEN, D. D.

PAGE.

I. Special Qualifications Needed for a Methodist Pastor, 291

II. Ritualism in the Methodist Episcopal Church, . . . 306

III. Outlook of Methodism, 315

IV. God's Requirements; or, the Trinity of Spiritual

Character, 324

V. The Vicariousness of Human Life, 339

VI. The Character of a True Life, 354

• VII. The Christian Minister, 370

VIII. Fidelity to Truth, 391

Biographical Sfcebct)

PROFESSOR C. F. BRADLEY, D .

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

CHAPTER I.

THE HOME AMONG THE HILLS.

THE country east of the center of Vermont is marked by huge ridges of hills running north and south. In a pleasant valley between two of these, through which flows the First Branch of White River, nestles the village of Chelsea. Up to the present day no railroad train has disturbed its. rural quiet. A yellow coach drawn by four horses brings mail and passengers once a day from South . Royalton, thirteen miles down the valley. West of the village green rises the noble West Hill, whose highest point is not less than seventeen hundred feet above the sea-level. A mountain road, starting from the north end of the village street, climbs up this ridge. There are dense woods on the left, and glimpses of vale and hill on the right as one ascends, until higher ranges of hills, with intervening valleys, are attained. After about two miles, an abrupt turn to the right and another half mile bring the visitor to the Hemenway homestead. It is a small but comfortable house, surrounded by the ordinary buildings of a New England farm. Behind is a wooded hill, and in front a meadow with its brook. Undulating hills and a blue peak in the distance complete the pleasing picture.

2 9

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In this farm-house, on the tenth day of November, 1830, Francis Dana Hemenway was born.

The father, Jonathan Wilder Hemenway, was born in Barre, Massachusetts, in 1784, and came to Chelsea in 1810. His first wife bore him three sons and four daughters. The mother of Alpheus and Francis was the second wife, Sarah Hebard. As is so often the case when a distinguished son comes from an otherwise unknown family, the boy inherited from the mother his marked mental and moral traits. She is described by those who remember her as above the medium height, with large, dark and expressive eyes. Her manner was quiet and sedate. Though not a church member, she was a religious woman, and, having a sweet voice, sang in the church choir. The whole family felt the inspiration of her intelligence and character. Her mother, Sarah Davison, was also a woman of superior mind and manners. She is said to have been a Congregationalism Such glimpses, slight but gratifying, we get of " the grandmother Lois and the mother Eunice. "

Given a New England stock, a simple New England country home, and the influences of New England village life, and what will be the result? As well might we ask what carbon will become in Nature's laboratory. The Vermont and New Hampshire farmers' boys in those days had possibilities. Webster, Marsh, Chase, and many others, prove that. The humbler Puritan stock had the strength of granite, and contained here and there veins of gold-bearing quartz. The district schools and the rural academies discovered the gold, and the country colleges gave it

THE HOME AMONG THE HILLS.

a stamp which made it current in the markets of the world. It is interesting to note the contrast between the conditions of the country-boy of unusual talent, born in an undistinguished home, and the son of a family of the New England " Brahmin caste. " The latter had great odds in his favor; inherited talents, culture from the cradle, a literary atmosphere for daily breathing, family influences — which were often in themselves a liberal education — the best schools and colleges, the stimulus of family pride, and often foreign travel and study to widen the horizon and finish the training. Yet the country lad would often win in the long race. He had his peculiar advantages. The simpler state offered fewer temptations. The out-ofdoor life favored freer development of mind and body, and furnished solitude for thought and intimacy with Nature. There was less conventionality, and more chance for maturing individuality. The New England farm and village life was the mold of some of our greatest and best Americans.

Fortunately we have some descriptions of life on the West Hill of Chelsea during the boyhood of Francis Hemenway in his own words. Its circle embraced the farm-house, the school, the neighborhood and village society, and the church. Its main features may be quickly sketched. There was a simplicity about it which might seem to us to involve hardship. This embraced cold bedrooms in winter, early rising, plain fare, hard work, meager expression of affection, few holidays, and few papers and books. Yet there were lofty ideals connected with this plain living. There were strict integrity, high devotion to duty, deep though unde-

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monstrative family affection, Puritan morality, high intelligence and practical good sense, and noble types of manhood and womanhood, such as have ever lifted the poorest of our New England native homes immeasurably above the cottage of the ordinary European peasant. The Hemenway home lacked only family religion to make it typical of the best New England family life. Even this lack was to a large extent supplied by the mother, who taught her children to pray and read the Bible. Her death, when Francis was nine years old, left him deeply bereaved, but permanently benefited by her teachings and example.

Francis developed rapidly in body and mind until his fourteenth year. He was then a robust and merry boy, large for his age, and with a growing reputation as a precocious scholar, fond both of fun and of his books. One old neighbor, now eighty-three years of age, remembers him as "a first-rate boy — an extra boy ; bound to make his mark. " A proof of this recognized precocity is the tradition, cherished in the family, though not fully vouched for, that when seven years old he read the whole New Testament in a week. Certain it is, that before he was eight, he had read the entire Bible through.

A severe illness in his fourteenth year marks a crisis in his life. The nature of the disease is not certainly known. He himself, in his later life, regarded the improper treatment of an ignorant physician as more serious than the disease. Some years of ill-health followed. He could do little work or hard study. Yet this serious check, which seems to have

THE HOME AMONG THE HILLS.

put a ball and chain henceforth upon his physical strength, and which doubtless shortened his life, brought blessings too. Relieved from the necessity of working on the farm, he had leisure for study. His life became more solitary and introspective, and habits of religious meditation and prayer were formed, which gave wings to his spirit. The depth and originality of his spiritual life owed much, no doubt, to the quiet hours he spent in the woods and in the little chamber with its one south window, which is still cherished as " Francis' room. "

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Chapter II. The School-house And Church At The Corners

" 'T^HE Corners," which formed the center of social and religious life for the neighborhood, were about a mile and a half south-west of the Hemenway farm. They could boast neither post-office nor store, and but few dwellings. The plain, typical Vermont district school-house, which stood at the cross-roads, had no comeliness of form or feature; but that its surroundings and influence were held in grateful remembrance by this man whose boyhood was blessed by them, we know from the following sketch, written in the early days of his last illness :

"There it stood, turning its homely but honest face toward me, as I made my weary journey of a mile and a half from my childhood home to this scene and center of my early toils and triumphs. There was no paint on the walls, either outside or inside ; no inclosing fence ; no friendly shade of trees ; and no shrubbery of any kind, except that on one side the original underbrush had never been fully cleared away. Fortunately, however, the woods were not far away, and here were found inexhaustible resources in climbing the trees, getting spruce-gum, and hunting the squirrels and rabbits. Indeed, they were to us boys a veritable Arcadia. I have heard a good deal about ' classic groves ' and ' scholarly retreats,' and have seen some of the most famous of these on both sides of the sea, but have found nothing that has brought to me more exhilaration, or a more delicious sense of freedom and wealth, than came to me in that oft-frequented forest. Our play-

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ir, ground was, to appearance, rather restricted ; for, in the good old utilitarian times, no heresy could have been more radical than that of actually providing a play- ground for the children. But human nature is wiser than puritanical rules, and stronger than the barriers which the unthoughtfulness and poverty of our parents had thrown about us ; for we took, as our rightful domain, 'all out-doors,' finding our only limits in the length of the nooning or recess. ... Of course each day of the winter's school began by the building of the fire by the boy whose turn it was, for we were our own janitors. The young hero had to make an early start ; had to do all his own chores at home — feed the horses, milk the cows, feed the cattle, clear the stables, eat his breakfast, put up the doughnuts and apples for his dinner — take his walk of half a mile, or mile, or mile and a half, and get a rousing fire started by half-past eight o'clock. At nine the work began. The staple of the work for the first hour of each session was reading. The first class, made up of all the full-grown boys and girls, read in the ' American First Class Book,' compiled by John Pierpont. This exercise consisted in calling upon each individual in turn to stand up at his seat and read a paragraph, which, with the aid of the teacher's prompting, he would generally be able to do. The second class would be distinguished by being called out to sit together on a front seat to repeat substantially the same programme as the first, except that a different reading-book was used, which, for many years, was ' Emerson's Second Class Reader.' The days of the 'Scott's Lessons,' the 'English Reader,' and the ' Art of Reading,' had gone by, and the above avant- couriers of the comfng multitude had taken their places. The other classes were called up into the floor, and had to stand with their toes exactly to the crack in the floor, while they went through the same original and exciting exercise. Then came the time for the master to go round to each one who 1 ciphered,' and ask him if he had any difficulty in doing the 'sums,' and when any one was pointed out, he was expected to take slate and pencil, and work out the example for the benefit of the lazy dunce. And now there is a lull. The master seems to be getting through, and the boys are all awake and under a common spell. Suddenly the word is

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spoken, 'Boys may go out,' and upon the instant the door flies open, and with an explosion like a bottle of pop, the school-house discharges one-half of its contents into the street. Had a pound of dynamite been exploded under the seat of each individual boy, the movement would hardly have been more prompt. But when, after five minutes, the rapping of the master's ruler upon the rattling window-sash called us again to duty, the effervescence had all departed, and we came back with exemplary sedateness.

" We had little apparatus in the old school-house. I well remember when our first blackboard put in an appearance — a rather diminutive specimen, about two feet by three — and we had to wait a year or two before anybody could find a use to put it to. As for a globe, or outline maps, we had never seen them, and had no idea of any purpose they could serve. Even a call-bell w T as an unnecessary refinement; there was more character, and more ominous suggestiveness, in the birch ruler. The only absolutely indispensable article of apparatus was this same ruler. Whatever else the teacher had, or did not have, it would not do for him to be without this. You might as well have a mason without a trowel, a barber without a razor, or a policeman without his club. At all events, I have a pretty distinct memory that, in my days, this particular article of school apparatus was put to constant and faithful service.

"What did we do in that old school-house? Just about every thing. If there was any thing we did not do, it was because it had not been invented. We strained every nerve, exercised every muscle, practiced every sense; took all the studies from the alphabet to algebra, geometry, rhetoric, chemistry, and 'Watts on the Mind;' carved in the soft basswood desks all possible grotesqueness in form; upset the benches; experienced about every form of penalty which pedagogic ingenuity could invent, from 'ferrilling' to standing on the floor, or sitting among the girls. In the evenings we had debates, spelling-schools, and exhibitions.

"But how can I recount the histories which were made there? As my mind dwells upon it, I feel the flow of infinite numbers, and take warning from the inexhaustibleness of my theme to constrain myself into limits. That old house

THE SCHOOL-HOUSE AND CHURCH.

becomes, in my memory, a world peopled with innumerable forms of beauty and life. Never may I, this side of heaven, realize intenser experiences than in the days when my life revolved about this center. This old house represents one of the mightiest forces which have come into my own life. I have seen many good schools, and have taught some of them myself, I may say in all modesty, and yet I have never known any school that was more loyal to its own work, or one in which the lines of progress were more directly drawn. If I interrogate my own experience, I am constrained to the conclusion that some of my most important school-work was done in this old Vermont school-house before I was twelve years of age. The decisions which have determined the hue and coloring of my life, so far as I can now judge, were, in large measure, made in that early time."

Not far from the school-house stood the church, or, as it was then called, the " West Hill Meeting-house. " This was a unique institution, which served a variety of purposes, and was not the home of any one Christian organization. The Methodists of the neighborhood formed a class, which met in some private house, but held their membership in the Church at Chelsea village. Their pastor preached a certain number of Sundays in the West Hill Meeting-house, according to an arrangement described below. The following sketch, written by Dr. Hemenway for the Vermont Messenger , gives us a charming picture of this peculiar sanctuary :

" It was a union church ; such an one as a good old Episcopalian minister used to call a Pantheon — that is, a place where all the gods are worshiped. But this was by no means true of this dear old church. Many indeed, and various, were the 'performances' of which it was the scene and witness, striking every chord of human experience, from pathos to bathos.

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Funerals, weddings, sermons, lectures on temperance, lectures on phrenology, lectures on mesmerism, magic-lantern exhibitions, school exhibitions, revivals, prayer-meetings, Sundayschools, singing-schools, and lyceum debates, have all presented themselves in turn in this community kaleidoscope. Methodists, Congregationalists, ITniversalists, Adventists, Baptists — Freewill and Calvinistic — and Christians (with the first 'z' long), held places in the ecclesiastical procession. And yet the difference was mainly in the minister and the name ; the congregation, the choir, the hymn-books, and the order of service were, for the most part, the same. This can also be said of the subject-matter of the preaching, if one or two of the denominations be excepted. And it is my belief that, notwithstanding the various names and creeds represented in the services, the worship in that humble country church, as constantly and truly as in any church I have ever attended, was paid to the living and true God.

" It had just fifty-two pews, divided among fifty-one owners (except that one man, with a very large family, w T ent to the extravagance of owning two), one for each Sunday in the year. A most fortunate circumstance was this, for it furnished a ready and perfect solution of the problem of occupancy. At the beginning of the year, subscription papers were circulated among the pew-owners, and they, according to their denominational preferences, signed their Sundays to Baptists, Methodists, etc. ; the number of names on each paper indicating the number of Sundays that denomination might control the house that year. Generally, as already intimated, the same congregation would be present, whoever preached; though, as must be confessed, when the ITniversalists 'occupied,' the congregations were ' pretty slim.'

" Few spots on this green earth are to me as this old. church. I have sat on its hard benches (for never were seats constructed with a more sublime unconsciousness of the anatomy of the human frame) for many dismal hours, and ofttimes with a burning indignation against the minister for his bad faith, in that he had finally come to say 'once more,' and then, after thus raising my hopes, had rudely dashed them again by keeping on, as I thought, a good many times more.

THE SCHOOL-HOUSE AND CHURCH. 19

My most sacred and most cherished memories center here. Here I first became accustomed to the services of religion, for the voice of prayer and praise was not wont to be heard in my childhood home. Here I recited my first Sunday-school lesson; here I first knelt as a 'seeker' at the ' anxious seat;' here I stammered out my first words of Christian testimony; here I was baptized and licensed to exhort ; here I spoke my first words as a Christian minister; and here, too, I was married. Here, with an ineffable sense of desolation, a pitiable boy of nine, I last looked on the dear face of my mother; and fifteen years later, in the very same place, the words of religion were spoken at the funeral of my father. In the old burying-ground, in the rear, sleep my parents, my wife's parents, a sister of each of us, together with many a friend and playmate of our childhood years.

"Various, indeed, have been the 'gifts' which have been exercised in that pulpit. Sermons of the ' vealy ' type, sermons of the traditional ' hard-shell ' variety, and sermons as keen and resistless as one ever hears, would follow each other in close order. The holy tones of the 'Freewillers,' the 'roarations' of the ' Campaigners,' and the affectations of the college-bred ministers, were all familiar to the people who worshiped there. The singing ranged from such minor fugues as 'Complaint,' 'Eussia,' and 'New Durham' — any one of which was doleful enough to start tears from anybody who had tears to shed — to 'The Old Granite State,' which was made to carry such choice and devotional lines as —

' You will see your Lord a coming, You will see the dead arising, We '11 march up into the city, While a band of music, While a band of music, While a band of music, Will be sounding through the air.'

By way of an awful warning to all choristers and choirs, I must relate what once happened because of a fugue tune there.

" It was on a bright afternoon in midsummer that the minister, from his tub-shaped pulpit, which was just a little

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lower than the singers' gallery, gave out that most searching hymn of Joseph Hart:

' O, for a glance of heavenly day.'

The faithful chorister had already before him his list of tunes, and the moment the minister said 'long meter,' set to work looking up the tune. His choice was telegraphed to the various sections of the choir, and the singing began. The hymn was solemn, and the tune in keeping with it, while a fugue arrangement of the last line added to its expressiveness. But alas! little did we expect what was before us; for when we reached the third verse, it came upon us in this fearful fashion:

'Thy judgments, too, which devils fear, Amazing thought ! unmoved I hear ; Goodness and wrath in vain combine Bass— To stir this stu— Tenor— To stir this stu— Alto— To stir this stu— All.— To stir this stu-pid heart of mine.'

" But, after all, my main interest, as I look back to that old church, centers in the people who used to worship there. As I think of one after another who used to tread those aisles and sit in those pews, what an interesting, and ofttimes grotesque, panorama passes before me ! Here is Deacon H ,

who invariably came to meeting late, and marched up the aisle, hat in one hand and whip in the other, with his thoroughly dried calf-skin boots squeaking like a band of music. And

Deacon L , who, as the reward of long, faithful practice, had

come to that rare state of harmony between body and soul that he could sit bolt upright, and close his eyes at the beginning of the sermon, as if for divine communion, sleep soundly and sweetly as an infant in its mother's arms, and wake up promptly at the ' amen ' without any starts or false motions. Not so expert, however, was a son of another of the deacons — Deacon S . His name was John, and on one occasion, during sermon time, he leaned forward, resting his head on the back of the pew before him, in which unhealthy and uncomfortable position he fell asleep. Soon, however, the preacher having occasion to refer to the beloved disciple, called out in a clear

THE SCHOOL-HOUSE AND CHURCH.

and somewhat dramatic tone, 'John.' Our friend, being suddenly brought back to consciousness, and thinking his father was making his last and most peremptory call for him in the morning to get up and ' do the chores,' startled all about him by calling out : * I 'm coming, father !' It was not, however, in this church, but another, that the preacher, having become fairly discouraged and desperate at the universal stupor of the congregation, with a boldness (in expedients) to which we were not accustomed in our New England churches, suddenly stopped, and called upon the people to stand up and sing:

' My drowsy powers, why sleep ye so ? Awake, my sluggish soul. 1

But he must have experienced some laceration in his own breast, as he heard them calling out in the very words which he had put them to:

' Nothing hath half thy work to do, Yet nothing 's half so dull.'

" Blessings on the memory of the ministers who used to look down upon me from the pulpit of that old church ! The first Methodist preacher I ever heard — and that was too early for me to distinctly remember — was the Eev. James M. Fuller, who is still * doing good service as presiding elder of the most important district in the State of Michigan. What a throng of sacred memories cluster about the name of Elisha J. Scott! One of my most distinct and vivid recollections is of a baptismal scene in which he officiated. Twenty-eight young men and women marched from this church to the pond, which had been extemporized as a baptismal font, singing,

4 On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,'

and were all immersed.

" But I may not call the roll of all the precious names which are inscribed on my memory and graven on my grateful heart. Again I say, blessings on the memory of the dead

*In . Dr. Fuller is now (1889) a superannuate of the Detroit

Conference, and lives in Detroit.

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and on the hearts and lives of the living! What would have been the history of that community without that humble church? What would I have been? My soul shudders with fear as I look down into the abyss of dark possibilities."

Among others who preached in this old church was the Rev. Amasa G. Button, of whom Dr. Hemenway wrote: "I heard him preach often, and under a great variety of circumstances — in the village church, in the little country meeting-house on the hill, in school-houses, and in private residences — and always with much satisfaction. I do not think it is often given to a minister to make a more distinct and permanent impression on a boy of twelve, than I have retained from those important years. He led the first Methodist class-meeting I ever attended."

EARLY RELIGIOUS LIFE.

Chapter III. Early Religious Life

O form a complete picture of the outward condi-

A tious of Francis Hemenway's early life, we need only add the additional features of the neighborhood and village society. The neighboring homes were substantially like his own, though in some of them there was a more positive religious and intellectual life. This was exemplified in the household of Mr. Ichabod Bixby, a man of excellent mind and marked religious character, and the class-leader for this neighborhood. His home was about three miles from the Hemenway farm. Besides the Sunday and week-day religious meetings and social gatherings, there were lyceum meetings and lectures, to bring the neighbors together. The village life, which formed the connecting link between the West Hill and the outside world, differed mainly in degree from that already described. Chelsea Green supported two churches, a court-house, a small academy, and a more compact community.

Amid the environments already described, began that inner life which gives to this biography its chief interest. Soon after his fifteenth birthday, Francis Hemenway commenced a journal, devoted almost exclusively to his religious states and feelings. This was continued, with slight interruptions, for about five

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years. Its set phrases for religious things contrast strangely with the terse and manly utterances of his later life, and are to be attributed to the books of devotion then in vogue, and to language then used in relating religious experience, which almost constituted a dialect. The journal tells us, in a sort of introduction, that the habit of reading the Bible and of daily prayer had been early fixed by the instructions of his mother. After her death, in his ninth year, he had many serious thoughts, and was convinced that he ought to become a Christian, but the fear of ridicule kept him from open confession. After describing this condition of mind, his journal says:

"Such was the state of my mind when a protracted meeting was commenced at this place in February, 1843 ; and while I was present one evening, an invitation was given to all who felt their need of a Savior to come forward for prayers. I immediately rose and went forward, and continued so to do for several successive evenings ; and, although I could not specify the precise time, place, or even day, yet I felt that in the course of the few days, dating from the time I first went forward for prayers until the termination of the meeting, a change had come over me. St. John says, ' We know we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren,' and I felt that such was my own case; but when I heard others relate the wondrous exercises of their mind, and the marvelous change instantaneously wrought in them, my mind would revert to my own case, to think how different had been my feelings, and a doubt as to my genuine conversion would sometimes arise ; but I could not see why the apostle spoke of knowing, because we love the brethren, if the feelings of all Christians were always thus clear. But my feeling towards Christians was not the only particular in which I observed a change. I felt that I loved religion ; I loved secret prayer ; I loved devotional books — those which perhaps would have been the most irk-

EARLY RELIGIOUS LIFE.

some to me before, I now delighted in; and, although I did not feel so clear in my mind as I wished, yet I felt warranted in concluding my conversion real. Yet I had some misgivings, lest the change I had noticed might be something short of genuine conversion ; and I would sometimes retire, and endeavor to examine myself, and see whether I were in the faith or not, and usually after a period of self-examination, I felt strengthened and confirmed, though not always fully satisfied."