The sense of religion comes to men under different aspects; that is, where it may be said to come; where it is not imbibed, as it ought to be, in early and unconscious childhood, like knowledge, like social affection, like the common wisdom of life. To some, it comes as the consoler of grief; to others, as the deliverer from terror and wrath To me it came as filling an infinite void, as the supply of a boundless want, and ultimately as the enhancement of all joy. I had been somewhat sad and sombre in the secret moods of my mind, read Kirke White and knew him by heart; communed with Young's "Night Thoughts," and with his prose writings also; and with all their bad taste and false ideas of religion, I think they awaken in the soul the sense of its greatness and its need. I nursed all this, something like a moody secret in my heart, with a kind of pride and sadness; I had indeed the full measure of the New England boy's reserve in my early experience, and did not care whether others understood me or not. And for a time something of all this flowed into my religion. I was among the strictest of my religious companions. I was constant to all our religious exercises, and endeavored to carry a sort of Carthusian silence into my Sundays. I even tried, absurdly enough, to pass that day without a smile upon my countenance. It was on the ascetic side only that I [36] had any Calvinism in my religious views, for in doctrine I immediately took other ground. I maintained, among my companions, that whatever God commanded us to do or to be, that we had power to do and be. And I remember one day rather impertinently saying to a somewhat distinguished Calvinistic Doctor of Divinity: "You hold that sin is an infinite evil?" "Yes." "And that the atonement is infinite?" "Yes." "Suppose, then, that the first sinner comes to have his sins cancelled; will he not require the whole, and nothing will be left?" "Infinites! infinites!" he exclaimed; "we can't reason about infinites!"
In connection with the religious ideas and impressions of which I have been speaking, comes before me one of the most remarkable persons that I knew in my youth, Paul Dewey, Uncle Paul, we always called him. He was my father's cousin, and married my mother's half-sister. His religion was marked by strong dissent from the prevailing views; indeed, he was commonly regarded as an infidel. But I never heard him express any disbelief of Christianity. It was against the Church construction of it, against the Orthodox creed, and the ways and methods of the religious people about him, that he was accustomed to speak, and that in no doubtful language. I was a good deal with him during the year before I went to college, for he taught me the mathematics; and one day he said to me, "Orville, you are going to college, and you will [37] be converted there." I said, "Uncle, how can you speak in that way to me?" "Nay," he replied, "I am perfectly serious; you will be converted, and when you are, write to me about it, for I shall believe what you say." When that happened which he predicted—when something had taken place in my experience, of which neither he, nor I then, had any definite idea, I wrote to him a long letter, in which I frankly and fully expressed all my feelings, and told him that what he had thus spoken of, whether idly or sincerely, had become to me the most serious reality. I learned from his family afterwards that my letter seemed to make a good deal of impression on him. He was true to what he had said; he did take my testimony into account, and from that time after, spoke with less warmth and bitterness upon such subjects. Doubtless his large sagacity saw an explanation of my experience, different from that which I then put upon it. But he saw that it was at least sincere, and respected it accordingly. Certainly it did not change his views of the religious ministrations of the Church. He declined them when they were offered to him upon his death-bed, saying plainly that he did not wish for them. He was cross with Church people even then, and said to one of them who called, as he thought obtrusively, to talk and pray with him, "Sir, I desire neither your conversation nor your prayers." All this while, it is to be remembered that he was a man, not only of [38] great sense, but of incorruptible integrity, of irreproachable habits, and of great tenderness in his domestic relations. Whatever be the religious judgments formed of such men, mine is one of mingled respect and regret. It reminds me of an anecdote related of old Dr. Bellamy, of Connecticut, the celebrated Hopkinsian divine, who was called into court to testify concerning one of his parishioners, against whom it was sought to be proved that he was a very irascible, violent, and profane man; and as this man was, in regard to religion, what was called in those days "a great opposer," it was expected that the Doctor's testimony would be very convincing and overwhelming. "Well," said Bellamy, "Mr. X is a rough, passionate, swearing man—I am sorry to say it; but I do believe," he said, hardly repressing the tears that started, "that there is more of the milk of human kindness in his heart than in all my parish put together!"
I may observe, in passing, that I heard, in those days, a great deal of dissent expressed from the popular theology, beside my uncle's. I heard it often from my father and his friends. It was a frequent topic in our house, especially after a sermon on the decrees, or election, or the sinner's total inability to comply with the conditions on which salvation was offered to him. The dislike of these doctrines increased and spread here, till it became a revolt of nearly half the town, I think, against them; and thirty years ago a Liberal [39] society might have been built up in Sheffield, and ought to have been. I very well remember my father's coming home from the General Court [The Massachusetts Legislative Assembly is so called.—M. E. D.], of which he was a member, and expressing the warmest admiration of the preaching of Channing. The feeling, however, of hostility to the Orthodox faith, in his time, was limited to a few; but somebody in New York, who was acquainted with it—I don't know who—sent up some infidel books. One of them was lying about in our house, and I remember seeing my mother one day take it and put it into the fire. It was a pretty resolute act for one of the gentlest beings that I ever knew, and decisively showed where she stood. She did not sympathize with my father in his views of religion, but meekly, and I well remember how earnestly, she sought and humbly found the blessed way, such as was open to her mind.
As my whole view of religion was changed from indifference or aversion to a profound interest in it, a change very naturally followed in my plan for future life, that is, in my choice of a profession—very naturally, at least then; I do not say that it would be so now. I expected to be a lawyer; and I have sometimes been inclined to regret that I was not; for courts of law always have had, and have still, a strange fascination for me, and I see now that a lawyer's or physician's life may be [40] actuated by as lofty principles, and may be as noble and holy, as a clergyman's. But I did not think so then. Then, I felt as if the life of a minister of religion were the only sacred, the only religious life; as, in regard to the special objects with which it is engaged, it is. But what especially moved me to embrace it, I will confess, was a desire to vindicate for religion its rightful claim and place in the world, to roll off the cloud and darkness that lay upon it, and to show it in its true light. It had been dark to me; it had been something strange and repulsive, and even unreal—something conjured up by fear and superstition. I came to see it as the divinest, the sublimest, and the loveliest reality, and I burned with a desire that others should see it.
This "divine call" I had, whether or not it answers to what is commonly meant by that phrase, and I am glad that I obeyed it.
But now, how was I to prosecute this design? how carry on the preparatory studies,