There can be no doubt that some
sermons are pitched too high, and I remember many struggles with the
drowsy fiend in my youth.
sermons are pitched too high, and I remember many struggles with the
drowsy fiend in my youth.
James Russell Lowell
, 1862.
RESPECTED FRIENDS,--If I know myself,--and surely a man can hardly be
supposed to have overpassed the limit of fourscore years without
attaining to some proficiency in that most useful branch of learning (_e
coelo descendit_, says the pagan poet),--I have no great smack of that
weakness which would press upon the publick attention any matter
pertaining to my private affairs. But since the following letter of Mr.
Sawin contains not only a direct allusion to myself, but that in
connection with a topick of interest to all those engaged in the publick
ministrations of the sanctuary, I may be pardoned for touching briefly
thereupon. Mr. Sawin was never a stated attendant upon my
preaching,--never, as I believe, even an occasional one, since the
erection of the new house (where we now worship) in 1845. He did,
indeed, for a time, supply a not unacceptable bass in the choir; but,
whether on some umbrage (_omnibus hoc vitium est cantoribus_) taken
against the bass-viol, then, and till his decease in 1850 (_aet. _ 77,)
under the charge of Mr. Asaph Perley, or, as was reported by others, on
account of an imminent subscription for a new bell, he thenceforth
absented himself from all outward and visible communion. Yet he seems to
have preserved (_alta mente repostum_), as it were, in the pickle of a
mind soured by prejudice, a lasting _scunner_, as he would call it,
against our staid and decent form of worship; for I would rather in that
wise interpret his fling, than suppose that any chance tares sown by my
pulpit discourses should survive so long, while good seed too often
fails to root itself. I humbly trust that I have no personal feeling in
the matter; though I know that, if we sound any man deep enough, our
lead shall bring up the mud of human nature at last. The Bretons believe
in an evil spirit which they call _ar c'houskezik_, whose office it is
to make the congregation drowsy; and though I have never had reason to
think that he was specially busy among my flock, yet have I seen enough
to make me sometimes regret the hinged seats of the ancient
meeting-house, whose lively clatter, not unwillingly intensified by boys
beyond eyeshot of the tithing-man, served at intervals as a wholesome
_reveil_. It is true, I have numbered among my parishioners some who are
proof against the prophylactick fennel, nay, whose gift of somnolence
rivalled that of the Cretan Rip Van Winkle, Epimenides, and who,
nevertheless, complained not so much of the substance as of the length
of my (by them unheard) discourses. Some ingenious persons of a
philosophick turn have assured us that our pulpits were set too high,
and that the soporifick tendency increased with the ratio of the angle
in which the hearer's eye was constrained to seek the preacher. This
were a curious topick for investigation.
There can be no doubt that some
sermons are pitched too high, and I remember many struggles with the
drowsy fiend in my youth. Happy Saint Anthony of Padua, whose finny
acolytes, however they might profit, could never murmur! _Quare
fremuerunt gentes? _ Who is he that can twice a week be inspired, or has
eloquence (_ut ita dicam_) always on tap? A good man, and, next to
David, a sacred poet (himself, haply, not inexpert of evil in this
particular), has said,--
'The worst speak something good: if all want sense,
God takes a text and preacheth patience. '
There are one or two other points in Mr. Sawin's letter which I would
also briefly animadvert upon. And first, concerning the claim he sets up
to a certain superiority of blood and lineage in the people of our
Southern States, now unhappily in rebellion against lawful authority and
their own better interests. There is a sort of opinions, anachronisms at
once and anachorisms, foreign both to the age and the country, that
maintain a feeble and buzzing existence, scarce to be called life, like
winter flies, which in mild weather crawl out from obscure nooks and
crannies to expatiate in the sun, and sometimes acquire vigor enough to
disturb with their enforced familiarity the studious hours of the
scholar. One of the most stupid and pertinacious of these is the theory
that the Southern States were settled by a class of emigrants from the
Old World socially superior to those who founded the institutions of New
England. The Virginians especially lay claim to this generosity of
lineage, which were of no possible account, were it not for the fact
that such superstitions are sometimes not without their effect on the
course of human affairs. The early adventurers to Massachusetts at least
paid their passages; no felons were ever shipped thither; and though it
be true that many deboshed younger brothers of what are called good
families may have sought refuge in Virginia, it is equally certain that
a great part of the early deportations thither were the sweepings of the
London streets and the leavings of the London stews. It was this my Lord
Bacon had in mind when he wrote: 'It is a shameful and unblessed thing
to take the scum of people and wicked condemned men to be the people
with whom you plant. ' That certain names are found there is nothing to
the purpose, for, even had an _alias_ been beyond the invention of the
knaves of that generation, it is known that servants were often called
by their masters' names, as slaves are now. On what the heralds call the
spindle side, some, at least, of the oldest Virginian families are
descended from matrons who were exported and sold for so many hogsheads
of tobacco the head. So notorious was this, that it became one of the
jokes of contemporary playwrights, not only that men bankrupt in purse
and character were 'food for the Plantations' (and this before the
settlement of New England), but also that any drab would suffice to wive
such pitiful adventurers.
RESPECTED FRIENDS,--If I know myself,--and surely a man can hardly be
supposed to have overpassed the limit of fourscore years without
attaining to some proficiency in that most useful branch of learning (_e
coelo descendit_, says the pagan poet),--I have no great smack of that
weakness which would press upon the publick attention any matter
pertaining to my private affairs. But since the following letter of Mr.
Sawin contains not only a direct allusion to myself, but that in
connection with a topick of interest to all those engaged in the publick
ministrations of the sanctuary, I may be pardoned for touching briefly
thereupon. Mr. Sawin was never a stated attendant upon my
preaching,--never, as I believe, even an occasional one, since the
erection of the new house (where we now worship) in 1845. He did,
indeed, for a time, supply a not unacceptable bass in the choir; but,
whether on some umbrage (_omnibus hoc vitium est cantoribus_) taken
against the bass-viol, then, and till his decease in 1850 (_aet. _ 77,)
under the charge of Mr. Asaph Perley, or, as was reported by others, on
account of an imminent subscription for a new bell, he thenceforth
absented himself from all outward and visible communion. Yet he seems to
have preserved (_alta mente repostum_), as it were, in the pickle of a
mind soured by prejudice, a lasting _scunner_, as he would call it,
against our staid and decent form of worship; for I would rather in that
wise interpret his fling, than suppose that any chance tares sown by my
pulpit discourses should survive so long, while good seed too often
fails to root itself. I humbly trust that I have no personal feeling in
the matter; though I know that, if we sound any man deep enough, our
lead shall bring up the mud of human nature at last. The Bretons believe
in an evil spirit which they call _ar c'houskezik_, whose office it is
to make the congregation drowsy; and though I have never had reason to
think that he was specially busy among my flock, yet have I seen enough
to make me sometimes regret the hinged seats of the ancient
meeting-house, whose lively clatter, not unwillingly intensified by boys
beyond eyeshot of the tithing-man, served at intervals as a wholesome
_reveil_. It is true, I have numbered among my parishioners some who are
proof against the prophylactick fennel, nay, whose gift of somnolence
rivalled that of the Cretan Rip Van Winkle, Epimenides, and who,
nevertheless, complained not so much of the substance as of the length
of my (by them unheard) discourses. Some ingenious persons of a
philosophick turn have assured us that our pulpits were set too high,
and that the soporifick tendency increased with the ratio of the angle
in which the hearer's eye was constrained to seek the preacher. This
were a curious topick for investigation.
There can be no doubt that some
sermons are pitched too high, and I remember many struggles with the
drowsy fiend in my youth. Happy Saint Anthony of Padua, whose finny
acolytes, however they might profit, could never murmur! _Quare
fremuerunt gentes? _ Who is he that can twice a week be inspired, or has
eloquence (_ut ita dicam_) always on tap? A good man, and, next to
David, a sacred poet (himself, haply, not inexpert of evil in this
particular), has said,--
'The worst speak something good: if all want sense,
God takes a text and preacheth patience. '
There are one or two other points in Mr. Sawin's letter which I would
also briefly animadvert upon. And first, concerning the claim he sets up
to a certain superiority of blood and lineage in the people of our
Southern States, now unhappily in rebellion against lawful authority and
their own better interests. There is a sort of opinions, anachronisms at
once and anachorisms, foreign both to the age and the country, that
maintain a feeble and buzzing existence, scarce to be called life, like
winter flies, which in mild weather crawl out from obscure nooks and
crannies to expatiate in the sun, and sometimes acquire vigor enough to
disturb with their enforced familiarity the studious hours of the
scholar. One of the most stupid and pertinacious of these is the theory
that the Southern States were settled by a class of emigrants from the
Old World socially superior to those who founded the institutions of New
England. The Virginians especially lay claim to this generosity of
lineage, which were of no possible account, were it not for the fact
that such superstitions are sometimes not without their effect on the
course of human affairs. The early adventurers to Massachusetts at least
paid their passages; no felons were ever shipped thither; and though it
be true that many deboshed younger brothers of what are called good
families may have sought refuge in Virginia, it is equally certain that
a great part of the early deportations thither were the sweepings of the
London streets and the leavings of the London stews. It was this my Lord
Bacon had in mind when he wrote: 'It is a shameful and unblessed thing
to take the scum of people and wicked condemned men to be the people
with whom you plant. ' That certain names are found there is nothing to
the purpose, for, even had an _alias_ been beyond the invention of the
knaves of that generation, it is known that servants were often called
by their masters' names, as slaves are now. On what the heralds call the
spindle side, some, at least, of the oldest Virginian families are
descended from matrons who were exported and sold for so many hogsheads
of tobacco the head. So notorious was this, that it became one of the
jokes of contemporary playwrights, not only that men bankrupt in purse
and character were 'food for the Plantations' (and this before the
settlement of New England), but also that any drab would suffice to wive
such pitiful adventurers.
