Sermons...

Preface

Mr. Perkins published a good deal, first and last, in the form of pamphlets, reports, articles in periodicals, sermons, etc. ; but none of them are republished in this volume, with the exception of the sermon on " Popular Fallacies."

The close of his sermons was usually extemporaneous, and hence as written, they sometimes appear incomplete. But, as he left them, they are commended to his friends and the people of his three parishes, for whom chiefly they have been prepared.

A book thus selected from papers never designed for publication, will, whatever its faults, show something of the man; at least to those who knew him.

The Sermons have been selected and the Memoir edited bv different hands.

LO

C ONTENTS.

Skrmox Paob

I. — "Voice op the Dead, 3

II. — Gospel Preaching, 30

III. — Popular Fallacies examined, ...... 45

IV. — Long Suffering op God, 59

V. — Bblieting a Lie, 73

VI. — Self-Control, . . .87

VII. — Means of Grace, 101

VIII. — Shadrach and his Friends, lit

IX.— The Family, 131

X— The Family, 146

XL— Hope, * 160

XII. — A True Reyiyal, 113

XIII. — Hezekiah — the Man of Prayer, 193

XIV. — Hezekiah — Efficacy of Prayer, 210

XV. — Hezekiah— the Eight Kind of Prayer, . . . 223

XVI.— Trinity, 236

XVII. — Personal Character of Christ, 250

XVIII. — Personal Character of Christ, (Conclusion.) . . . 263

XIX.— The Higher State, 275

XX; — Harmony of the Diyine and Human Will, . . .288

XXI. — Assurance of Faith, 302

XXII.— The Peace of God, .... ... 311

MEMOIR.

George William Perkins was born in Hartford, Ct., February 22d, 180tk He was the youngest of seven children ; four sisters and two brothers still survive him.

His father was Enoch Perkins, a lawyer of Hartford, a man of sound judgment and extensive reading, and universally respected for his integrity and strength of principle.

His mother was Anna Pitkin, a daughter of Eev. Timothy Pitkin, of Farmington, Ct.

Both were descended from a line of Puritan ancestors, and through a long life most worthily represented the stock from whence they sprung. His paternal grandmother dated her religious character from the preaching of Whitefield, during one of his visits to this country, and to extreme old age was noted for her consistency and faithful discharge of duty.

The great grandfather of Mr. Perkins, on the mother's side, was the Rev. Thomas Clap, for twenty-seven years President of Yale College ; many of whose strong points of character this descendant of his seemed to inherit.

From his earliest childhood he was remarkable for untiring activity, great fixedness of purpose and power of accomplishing his plans, and whether intent on work or play, entered into it with his whole heart.

In 1820, when sixteen years of age, be entered Yale College. Here, in his first term, he injured his eyes by overtasking them, and through his whole course, and many years after, was greatly hindered in his studies, and suffered much from them.

To most young men, this would have been a complete discouragement, and turned them to different pursuits ; but it only invigorated young Perkins to use more earnestly the opportunities that remained to him. A friend remembers hearing him say at this time that his hours of " hardest study " were when he sat during the evening in his room alone and in the dark, and fixed his mind on some one subject, holding it there, and reining in his roving thoughts as one would manage an unruly and fiery horse. This was no ordinary self-control for a boy of sixteen.

During his junior year in College he joined the College Church, then under the ministry of the Rev. Eleazar T. Fitch.

He took a high rank as a scholar, was among the five or six best, and when he graduated, received the appointment of an oration.

After taking his degree in Sept. 1824, not having fully decided on his future profession, he went to Cambridge, Mass., to take charge of a school. Among his pupils was Margaret Fuller Ossoli.

Oct. 4th, 1824, he writes :

" Here I am in the midst of my domains^ haying just dismissed my little flock after our morning's labor. By dint of patience and skill I have brought my pupils to a much better degree of order than they once were in, and so far as I can discover, my instructions give satisfaction to my employers. Habit has now made the business much easier to me than it was at first, and I do not think it wears upon me more than my college studies did. One of the most pleasant circumstances of my situation is the possession of freedom, the power of regulating my own actions, of forming my own character, and the necessity of relying on my own exertions.

" I do not attempt to study much but mankind, and for this I have the most ample means. I am with the yoftng and the old, ministers and laymen, Unitarians and orthodox, city and country folks, lawyers, merchants, mechanics, and scholars, girls, ladies, and old women, and the study is one into which I enter with a good deal of relish."

Dec. 30th, 1824. — " Last week I had a vacation of a few days, and went to Andover, where I enjoyed a most delightful visit. You may imagine how heartily and joyfully I greeted my old college acquaintance — how many sleeping associations were revived, what glorious times we had in talking over past matters ! The two days I spent there seemed shorter than any five minutes I have spent in my school.

" But now I have returned home, and to-morrow must again go to work, to animate dullness, to spur forward stupidity, to chasten perverseness, to fill up vacuity, and to extract thought from the reluctant school-boy. But ' labor omnia vincit,' as my old master used to tell us, or, as one of my boys translated it, ' work binds all men,' and however much he differed from the original, he yet got at something that was true."

June 26th. — " I have lately been obliged to take charge of a Sabbath-school. Some ladies of this place wished to establish one, but were about giving it up, because they could not find a single person, not even the deacons of the church, willing to superintend it. They applied to me, and I could not refuse, for I thought I might do good. Most of the teachers are older than myself, and the school assembles in the church ; and there I am obliged to stand and pray, so frightened at the sound of my own voice, so agitated, that frequently I do not recover from it the whole day.

" Beside doing this, I have the charge of a class, as well as of the whole school, so impossible is it to find persons willing to engage in the employment. There are about seventy scholars, and on the whole, considering the discouragements, of which you can form little idea, we succeed very well."

In the autumn of 1825 Mr. Perkins left his school for the purpose of studying in New-York, having chosen the law as his profession.

Nov. 1st, 1825, he writes :

"After travelling about the country for several weeks, I have now settled myself in this great city, for the winter at least, perhaps for life. My situation and prospects are as good as I could expect ; my health very good, my eyes in such a state that I can easily use them all day. The office has as many advantages for study and improvement as any in the city, and I like the study of law."

Again he says :

"The great danger to which lam exposed I conceive to be this, that associated as I necessarily am with irreligious persons, I may insensibly adopt their principles and feelings, and hardly be sensible of the change."

Feb. 20th, 1826, he writes :

" For the last three months I have often asked myself, If I were in the path of life I ought to be pursuing — if I were doing all the good in the world which I might do ? This subject has engaged a large portion of my thoughts, and has been made the topic of very frequent and serious and prayerful reflection. "When I considered my own circumstances and the situation of the religious world, that there were men enough ready to perform the active business of life, and few comparatively willing to devote their lives to the promotion of religion, and that to do good is really the great end of existence, I began to think that I should more certainly subserve this object by entering a profession whose whole duties are devoted to that purpose.

" After the best attention which I have been able to bestow, the conviction on my mind is strong that such is my duty, and upon this belief I intend to act."

Thus deliberately and conscientiously did this young man, not yet twenty-two, with worldly influences about him and bright earthly prospects before him, weigh and decide this great question. And it should be here mentioned/ that when he stated to the lawyer in whose office he was, his change of purpose, the gentleman remarked with great surprise : " Why, Mr. Perkins, your habits of study and capacity for business are worth to you ten thousand dollars a year."

But after he had thus put his hand to the plough, he was never known to look back.

In a letter, dated Hartford, Aug. 15th, 1826, he says :

"Among other reasons for not visiting you this summer, I am engaged in the African Sunday-school, and were I to leave it for a few weeks, my class would be broken up, and perhaps I might lose the opportunity of being useful.

" There is, moreover, at the present time, a very considerable attention to religion in Mr. Hawes' society. The opportunity thus given me to gain information and interest on every subject connected with revivals of religion is very important to me, and ought not to be neglected without very special reasons.

" Probably I shall never again be placed in circumstances so favorable for observation and instruction in things of this nature ; and you are well aware that a minister of this country and of this age can neither safely nor innocently remain ignorant respecting them.

" I am also very loth to give up the delight and profit which this state of things is calculated to produce upon my own personal religion. There are, I know, some persons who affect to doubt the reality or desirableness of such special influences of the Spirit, because, forsooth, the depravity of man will either counterfeit or abuse them.

"But, for my own part, I might as well doubt my own existence, as to doubt the reality of what I have felt in my own soul, and seen in the conduct of others. And I might as well refuse all food, because the ignorance of man has taken poison instead of nourishment, as to deprecate a season of revival, because some men make it an opportunity for exhibiting their folly or wickedness.

" Moreover, I am engaged in a course of study, and have found a constant intercourse with serious and eternal things extremely pleasant. To many persons they seem clothed in repulsive gloom, but the fault is in the eye, not the object. There is a solidity, a reality, a firmness in these things, which nothing else possesses. On them I can place my foot and stand secure, and feel that I am neither placed on a tottering foundation, nor toiling after vanities.

" I used to think that I knew as much about religion and the Bible as it was worth while to know ; but the more I study them, the more vast, and inviting, and exhaustless do they appear.

" If they are not positively new, they certainly are so in relation to my mode of receiving them. Those same truths, which seemed to have been repeated till they had lost all power to interest or affect, now branch out into relations, applications, and utility, of which I never before had any conception. And what is best of all, this is but the beginning of this knowledge : my whole life, and perhaps my eternity, may be directed to the same end."

His three years of theological study (1826-1829) were spent at Andover and New-Haven — two thirds, or more, of the time at Andover. From his letters at this period, room is found for a few extracts only :

Andover, Nov. 9th, 1826. — " About one year since, I wrote to you from the banks of the Hudson ; the year before, from my Cambridge school-room ; and now, from Andover. I should not be surprised if my letters in November, 1827, should be dated from the banks of the Ganges, or the islands of the sea. However, there is one comfort in all these changes, that in five minutes I feel myself at home in any place. I had not been in Andover twenty-four hours, when I found a room, hired it, had it prepared and moved in, and went to studying on the books I had partly finished at Hartford, as if I had only suffered an ordinary interruption. From my window I can see mountains stretching beyond mountains, until they become too obscure to be distinguished from the clouds, with which they seem to mingle. The stillness of death broods over the place, and it is that kind of oppressive stillness which sometimes communicates its own oppression to the mind."

January 26th, 1827. — " In the Seminary we go on as quietly as possible ; there is no breaking of windows, no quarrels with the faculty. We go to prayers, meetings, lectures and recitations, regularly as the days return. "We occasionally go to the reading-room to look at the world through the loop-holes ; but the intrigues at Washington, the war of Greece, the tumults cf Europe, affect us not, except as affording matter for moral reflection, or as they bear on the religious welfare of the nations. You would be surprised, if you were here, to observe what a large share of attention missions occupy among us."

Mr. Perkins went to Montreal, in the autumn of 1829, well furnished for his opening life of labor and usefulness. The church, over which he was ordained after a few months, and with which he continued to be connected for nearly ten years, was composed of American Congregationalists, with an intermixture of Scotch, English, and Irish Dissenters, and some others, all united under the name of the American Presbyterian Church of Montreal. Besides this church, there were four other and older Protestant churches : two of the Church of Scotland, one of the Church of England, and one Methodist. Nearly three fourths of the population were Roman Catholics, mostly of French origin, and speaking the French language. The five Protestant churches stood aloof from each other, almost as much as the Protestants and Catholics. This distance and hostility he labored to overcome, and with some little success.

In June, 1832, the cholera crossed the Atlantic, and made its first appearance in Quebec and Montreal, with sudden and terrific mortality. In various ways he made himself useful. He says:

July 2, 1832. — " I am going about with some of the physicians to become acquainted with the disease, its nature and treatment, for the purpose of being useful in advising my poor people. Perhaps, too, if God spares my life, I shall be in Hartford about the time it reaches you, and then be useful by the information I collect. But I seem to myself daringly presumptuous in even supposing that I shall ever see you again in this world."

July 13th. — " We begin to breathe freely once more. We have had a few days sufficient to unman the stoutest heart. I recollect one day particularly ; it was the afternoon after the death of Mr. D . Exhausted with fatigue, watching, and weeping, my system in that state most favorable to an attack, pain and feebleness in my bowels, I crawled out to visit one of my people who was sick, I took my course through one of our most thronged and busy streets ; it was silent as the grave ; one or two solitary passengers alone met my eye ; taverns were forsaken, trades and buildings stopped; the dead-carts alone gave a horrible animation to the scene. Through this street I painfully took my way, with every probability that by the next day I should be dead and buried."

During the first six years of his ministry no less than six new Protestant churches were established in Montreal. The jostling and competition of churches gave him trouble, as appears in the following :

Montreal, Nov. 2d, 1835. — " I seem to be now getting into a situation which, of all others, I have dreaded. We have now eleven churches to a Protestant population of about ten thousand. Of course, you will see we are more crowded than New- York, with one hundred and twenty churches to a population of 250,000. The natural consequence follows. The petty and hateful rivalship of spiritual competition rises up, and each is contending for existence and numbers. The interest of each clashes with all the rest, and of course there is collision and ill-will. What ought a man to do ? If he descends to such dirty business, he degrades himself and his cause ; if he does not, he just allows any body who is impudent and unprincipled to pull down himself and his church. Really, my mind is more perplexed with this than with the long-agitated question of the origin of evil, or the insoluble problem of reconciling decrees and free agency. A man must either become a mere sectarian, or else retire from the ministry, or go on a foreign ?nission. Nay, this is so in what we call ' desolations.' Take any backwoods township in Canada, and by the time a man has become

seated, along comes a or a , or some other sectarian, to

revile and undermine ; and he has got either to meet the fellow on his own ground, or preach to a handful of hearers, or decamp. Again I say, what shall we do?"

The next extract from his letters gives some idea of the external things which were helping to form his mind and character; but we give it, chiefly, for the subjective view it presents :

June 28, 1836. — "The abolition seed scattered by , in has sprung up, and an Anti-Slavery Society has been formed. At Hartford there is nothing new, except that every man's mouth is full of the fortunes that have been made, or are to be made, by speculations in land. They are attempting to increase their wealth by the raising of silk-worms, and the manufacture of silk. In New- York, the book of Maria Monk, who declares she has been a nun in the Hotel Dieu at Montreal, is producing an excitement. The Synod of Philadelphia condemned and silenced Mr. Barnes [for heresy]. Slavery is discussed every where — in Congress, in the pulpit : the public mind is coming round.

To be a useful minister, is the summit of ambition and of happiness. I can repose my cares on Him who careth for me, much better than I once could. I long to be among the better society of heaven. Yet I am afraid to die. The possibility of mistake in one's hopes is unquestionable ; the consequences of mistake are so terrible and remediless, that I am afraid. My soul shrinks, as from some fearful leap in the dark. I am sometimes ready to think, that losing the fear of death is in all cases hardihood, not faith."

The above, and a multitude of other expressions scattered through a correspondence of many years, show that his theological point of view was . essentially orthodox and evangelical, though he belonged to that wing of JSTew- England orthodoxy which is most liberal.

During this and the next year his name became associated with the notorious Maria Monk affair, to his no small annoyance at the time. September 6, 1836, he says :

" I have taken the liberty to believe my eyes, and evidence, rather than a harlot's testimony; and for this, the Protestant Vindicator has been for weeks pouring out the vilest torrent of abuse, slander, and scurrility against me, which the annals of newspaper outrage can supply. It has galled me considerably. "

The increase of Romanism in the United States had, a

few years before, begun to arrest attention, as was very 9-::-

18 MEM OIK. ,

natural. Many of our wisest men looked to the future with alarm. At that time, Montreal was regarded as the very citadel of Romanism in North-America. Maria's "Awful Disclosures" afforded excellent material for a grand assault upon this stronghold of the enemy. " Immense editions of the work were sold in rapid succession, and gained, to an astonishing degree, belief among all classes of readers. Even intelligent and candid men began to receive her fictions as authentic details of fact." When, therefore, Mr. Perkins, who, from his position on the spot, was expected to be foremost among the Protestant leaders against the common enemy, actually came out as a defender of the Catholics, the vials of Protestant wrath were poured out upon his innocent head overwhelmingly. It was the hottest of the anti-Catholic war. A weaker man might have been injured, or even crushed. He went bravely through the fire, and came out at last with honor. In the Quarterly Christian Spectator of June, 1837, is an article of twenty pages from his pen, in which the history of this remarkable imposture is clearly and powerfully given. We commend the article to all readers as a very interesting chapter in the religious history of the country. We quote from it a few sentences :

" If the natural history of ' gullibility' is ever written, the imposture of Maria Monk must hold a prominent place in its pages. That a miserable and well-known prostitute in the city of Montreal should invent a tale of monstrous and self-evident absurdities, and by means thereof gain immense sums of money to herself, and universal credit to her story ; that she who is, on her own confession, a murderer, a fornicator, and a liar of the most depraved character, should gain credit among well-informed and intelligent men, and should be received and caressed in good society in the city of New York ; that all who venture to doubt, or even to examine the truth of her story, should be denounced as the panders of Popery and aids to the devil : all this is most wonderful, and deserves to be recorded among the phenomena of the age.

" She found a few minds possessed with a monomania on the subject of Popery, to whom her tale furnished just the means necessary to produce the excitement they wished. They were perfectly rabid from the dread of Popery, and anticipating from it the speedy destruction of our free institutions, determined to crush it. It is to be feared they were not always fastidious in the selection of their instruments. Indeed, one who professed to be a partial believer in the works of Maria, was heard to declare : ' No matter if the Disclosures are false — the priests are bad enough, and the lie will do good.' With such Protestants we have no communion."

Farther on in the paper, speaking of the Irish and German Catholics, then beginning to come over in considerable numbers, he thus proceeds :

" But how were the Catholics treated ? Like conspirators and enemies. Christians and politicians denounced them as the enemies of religion and liberty. Certain bloodhounds in the form of periodical writers were let loose to mangle them indiscriminately, as spirits from the pit. The whole community were taught to regard them with a kind of horror, as being, from the least to the greatest of them, the accredited agents of pandemonium."

This defense of the Catholics at that time, against Protestant bigotry, was all the more honorable to Mr. Perkins, from the fact that he had not a particle of sympathy with Romanism. Through life he agreed with the majority of Protestants in their very unfavorable opinion of Catholics ; but he believed in honesty, and at the risk of dishonor to himself, he came nobly forward to defend his enemies. Those who, ten years later, misunderstood and misrepresented him, when he again stood up in defense of an unpopular cause, should have remembered what heroic blood was in this just and honorable man.

~t MEMOIR.

Another trial, which had been goading him for years, is alluded to in the following :

December 16th, 183G. — M At the close of the year, I hare been taking a review of our state and history as a church. * * * The congregation continues in great harmony, and God has most signally defeated all the slanders and efforts of the Free Church, by which they endeavored to sow strife among us, and pull down our church. Probably, we never had fairer prospects than at this moment, when the devil has been using all his arts to destroy us. What a strange mass a congregation is ! a mere volcano. The elements of ruin are always there, though there may be beauty and fertility on the surface ; and let the pressure only be removed, and fire, desolation, and uproar are the consequences. I habitually feel like a man sitting on such a heated and explosive mass, and of course do not calculate upon a position very durable or easy or quiet."

Contrary to the opinion entertained by many respecting him, his habits of mind were conservative, and usually in the better sense of the word. He was somewhat deficient in the broad sympathies which enable a man to pass readily from one point of view to another, and to do full justice to all sides of a subject. When a question was under formal examination before him, he was patient and candid in his attention to evidence, but his mind once made up, there was afterward but a poor chance for new evidence that might arise. The opinion that was discarded was henceforth to be only opposed ; the opinion that was embraced was to be defended vigorously. He possessed, however, in considerable measure, the power acquired in various degrees by men of cultivated minds, of holding the mind in suspense over unexamined subjects, and parts of subjects. His mental habits can be pretty clearly traced in the extracts we make, and especially in the following :

Aug. 5m, 1837. — " I have lately been looking into ' Cudworth's Intellectual Svstem of the Universe.' On some accounts I have been much interested in it. His plan leads him to collect all which men of every age, sect, nation, and religion, have thought and said on the subject of Deity, his existence and attributes. As a repository of facts for a history of opinion on that subject it is invaluable, and as a portion of the history of the human mind, it is exceedingly curious. I have been startled by the statements (statements backed by quotations) of the sentiments of Zoroaster, the Magi, Plato, etc., on the subject of a triad. Traces of that doctrine are found in all the eastern systems of religion. Whence came they ? Or is the doctrine so evident, that philosophers in all ages who think much, must hit upon it ? Or did the fathers, tinctured with the Persian or Platonic system, so far forth paganize Christianity ? Certainly, on this last inquiry, a Unitarian might frame a more plausible argument against the Trinity, from the facts collected by Cudworth, than I have ever met. On one point, I am persuaded there is retained by many theologians the heathenish philosophy. Whoever reads what Plato and others have written about the generation of the logos or second God, will be at no loss to decide where the ancient fathers got their phraseology, and whence Dr. drew his

dogma of the eternal generation of the Son of God. M * * * *

" I think I have found the secret of happiness at last. A distinct apprehension of the truth that God reigns, with a willingness that he should reign. In that simple state of mind is wrapped up the wonderful mystery of happiness. I never knew for years what it was to evjoy myself. I had gleams of pleasure like the glare of the lightning — now my soul is like the landscape you see from our mountain on a beautiful summer's day, lying sweetly and serenely beneath a kindly sun."

Mr. Perkins had been a careful observer of the discussions, complaints, and asperities of Canadian politics. He believed there were grievances and abuses which the govern ment ought to remove ; his sympathies were with the reformers — he hoped for redress and reform without rebellion. But when the more rash and headstrong among the popular leaders appealed to physical force, and with plans and means very insufficient, he withdrew his sympathies. His course throughout, was that of strict and dignified neutrality, so that he secured the respect of both parties.

During the winter of 1837-8, lie and his family were surrounded by the excitements, alarms, and even terrors, of actual war. Fears were entertained that if the patriots succeeded, the Protestants of Montreal, at least those who were of the government party, would be slaughtered.