The Catholic World Volume Iii Part 20

When he graduated his father came to hear him speak, and at the close of the exercises gave him his blessing and told him to s.h.i.+ft for himself. So, there he was, twenty years old, with four dollars in his pocket and a profession yet to be acquired. He borrowed two hundred and fifty dollars from a generous friend, obtained a situation as precentor in a church, opened a singing school, and applied himself zealously to the study of law. Before long he married a young lady as poor as himself, and went with her in 1806 to Bermuda, where he taught school for some time very successfully; but rumors of war between this country and Great Britain drove him back to the United States, and in his twenty-fourth year he entered upon the practice of the law at New Haven.

In the meanwhile those uneasy feelings of the soul, which he seems unable to a.n.a.lyze (though we warrant a good confessor would quickly have solved his perplexities) had not left him at peace. He writes to his father from Bermuda upon the state of his interior man:

"I should wish to go to heaven, because I should be pleased, with its employment. Were all my sins mortified and I rendered perfectly holy, I think I should the happy... . . Sometimes I can say, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. .... I am avaricious; and in the present state of my family, make money my G.o.d. I strain honesty _as far as I can_ to gain a little."

This was certainly not a satisfactory condition of things. The l.u.s.t for mammon seems strong enough, but the aspirations for heaven might well have been rather more ardent. He goes to church and sings and weeps, and the minister and elders crowd around him to see what is the matter. He goes to prayer-meeting at last in New Haven, and there the conversion--such as it is--is effected: "As the exercises closed and the crowded wors.h.i.+ppers rose to sing the doxology, I felt that I could 'praise G.o.d from whom all blessings flow.' Praise! praise! It was delightful to praise him! On the 24th of April following, I united with the visible church under Mr. Stuart's pastorate, and began to be an active Christian."

We must say that this seems to be a very simple and easy process of getting out of the power of the devil. Conversion, according to Dr.

Spring's idea, is simply an emotion of the mind, a spasm of sentiment.

It includes neither satisfaction for the past, nor the performance of any definite religious duty in the present or the future. Any one who can excite himself into the belief that he is regenerate, or tickle his mind into the pleasant state indicated by the man who, when asked, "How it felt to get religion?" replied that "it was just like having warm water poured down your back"--any such one, we say, may rest a.s.sured of his eternal safety. Dr. Spring is no more exacting with other candidates for conversion than he was with himself. To a sick man who inquires "what he shall do?" he answers: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."

{131}

"But will you not tell me _how_ I shall go to him?"

"Yes, I can tell you; you must not go in your own strength; for your strength is weakness. You must not go in your own righteousness, for you have none. You must feel your need of Christ, and see that he is just the Saviour adapted to your wants. You must adore, and love, and trust him... . . Commit to him your entire salvation, and in all holy 'obedience live devoted to his service.'" Now in all this there is just one practical suggestion, namely, to "live devoted to G.o.d's service"--and that the man could not follow because he was dying. Let our readers contrast Dr. Spring's death-bed ministrations with what a Catholic priest would have said and done in similar circ.u.mstances. The priest would have given definite instruction and divine sacraments; the preacher has nothing better to offer than a few commonplace generalities from his last Sunday's sermon.

But we must return to the reverend doctor's biography. Close upon the heels of his conversion came the resolution to be a minister. The pecuniary difficulties in the way of this change of profession were soon obviated by the generosity of a rich widow of Salem. There was another obstacle, however, of a more serious nature. This was Mrs.

Spring. She was "not a professed Christian." She was "a worldly woman." She sought the honors of the world. She did not want to be a minister's wife. The doctor had a great respect for her. He was afraid to tell her of his resolution. We must let him describe in his own words how he got out of the difficulty:

"I then began a course of conduct which I have ever since pursued, and that was, in all cases where my own duty was plain, and my resolution formed, quietly to carry my resolution into effect, and meet the storm afterward. I did so in the present instance, though there was no other storm than a plentiful shower of tears. I said nothing to my wife; nothing to any one except Mr. Evarts. I sent my wife on a visit to my only sister, the wife of the Hon. Bezaleel Taft, at Uxbridge, the native place of my father, where I engaged in a few weeks to meet her, and make a further visit to Newburyport.

She had no suspicion of my views, and left me with the confident expectation that she would return to New Haven.

"In the meantime, after she left me, I was busily employed in arranging my affairs for my removal to Andover. I announced my purpose to the church at the next prayer-meeting, and received a fresh impulse from their prayers and benedictions. Mr. Evarts took my office and my business, and closed up my unsettled accounts with his accustomed accuracy, and my ledger now records them. Mr. Smith, my old teacher, laughed at me; Judge Daggett was silent. Judge Rossiter said to me, 'Mr. Spring, the pulpit is your place; you were formed for the pulpit rather than the bar.' My business in New Haven was closed; my debts paid; my household furniture, small as it was, was carefully stowed away; my law library, worth about four hundred dollars, was disposed of, and I was on my way to Uxbridge, Newburyport, Salem, and Andover.

"When I reached Uxbridge, and was once more in the bosom of my little family, I felt that the trial had come. I could not at once disclose my plans to my wife, and was saved that painful interview by the suspicions of Mr. Taft, who told her that he believed I was going to be a clergyman! She laughed at him; but she saw a change in my deportment, and began to suspect it herself. I told her all. She went to her chamber and wept for a long time. But she came down, subdued indeed, but placid as a lamb, and simply said, 'It is all over now; I am ready.' Oh, how kindly has G.o.d watched over me! It seems as though the promise was fulfilled, 'Return unto thy country and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee.' Some day or two before we left Uxbridge, Mr. Taft said to me, 'Brother Spring, I have a case before Justice Adams this morning; you are still a lawyer, and I want you to go and argue it with me.' The thought struck me pleasantly, and I resolved to go; but instead of a.s.sisting him, without his knowledge I engaged myself to what I thought the weaker party; and my last effort at the bar was in battling with my sister's husband, and in the place of my father's nativity."

{132}

After eight months devoted to the study of theology at the Andover seminary, Mr. Spring was licensed to preach and received a call from the Brick church in New York. As a preliminary to his ordination, it was necessary for him to preach a trial sermon before the presbytery, and to submit to an examination as to his orthodoxy. In this latter test he did not give unqualified satisfaction, nevertheless they pa.s.sed him, and he was duly ordained to the pastors.h.i.+p. As a salve, we suppose, for their consciences, the presbytery deputed the Rev. Dr.

Milledollar, one of their number, to talk with the young minister, and try to reason him out of certain heterodox opinions which he entertained upon the subject of human ability. The result of the interview was that, in Dr. Milledollar's judgment, "the best way of curing a man of such views was to dip his head in cold water."

It was but a dismal religion of which he now became the minister.

Tears, gloom, discomfort, and brokenness of heart were the characteristics of the spiritual life, and peace of mind was an alarming symptom of the dominion of the devil. "Newark is again highly favored," writes the minister to his parents: "there are not less than five hundred persons _very solemn_." "My people appear solemn; they were so at the lecture on Thursday evening." "I preached on Monday to a very solemn audience at my own house." "The state of things in the congregation, notwithstanding the war, is looking up. Our public meetings and our social gatherings are more full and more solemn." He visits Paris, and there pa.s.ses an evening with a small party of his countrymen: "We could not refrain from weeping during the whole time we were together." The quant.i.ty of tears shed in the course of the book is positively appalling. Of course there is nothing that remotely resembles the gift of tears with which Almighty G.o.d sometimes rewards and consoles his saints. It is merely a perpetual gush of mawkish sentimentality, and we defy anybody to read these "Reminiscences"

without having before him an image of the whole Brick church with chronic redness of the eyes. A member of the congregation went to the doctor once with a request that he would baptize a child. He was not one of the weepers, or, as Dr. Spring expresses it, "not a religious man." The opportunity was too good to be lost. The doctor labored with him, preached at him, probably wept at him, tried to impress him with the solemnity and privilege of the transaction, did not baptize his child, but finally prayed with him and urged him to come again. The result of the exhortation is a good commentary upon the whole system of sentimental spasmodic religion: "He went away," says Dr. Spring, "and being requested by his wife to have another interview with me, replied, 'No; _you will not catch me there again_.'" We suppose that the child was not baptized; but that, according to Dr. Spring, and in spite of the Bible, makes very little difference. It was his rule "to baptize only those children, one of whose parents was a professed Christian"--that is to say, a member of the church; and except in one instance he has never varied from this strict practice. "That," he says, "was in the case of a sick and dying grandchild, whose father was a man of prayer, but not a communicant, and I myself professed to stand _in loco parentis_, I now look upon the whole transaction as wrong."

Dr. Spring has done a great deal of theological fighting in his day; but his foes have been chiefly those of his own household. Now and then he has carried the war into foreign countries, as at the time of the famous School Question in New York, when he had a tilt with Bishop Hughes before the Common Council, and got decidedly the worst of it; but for the most part he has devoted himself to intestine feuds. The controversy between Hopkinsians {133} and Calvinists in the Presbyterian denomination; the disputes in the American Bible Society; the schism in the Young Men's Missionary Society of New York; the effort to create a division in the American Home Missionary Society; the controversies about the New Haven school of theology and the exscinding acts of the General a.s.sembly;--these and many other religious quarrels took up a great deal of the doctor's time, and he still writes about them with no little acrimony and personal feeling.

We subjoin a few extracts:

"The wrath of the Philadelphia Synod is praising the Lord. We shall have a battle in the spring, and lay a heavy hand upon that report.

I shall not hesitate to take my life in my hand if Providence allows me to go to the a.s.sembly."--_vol. i., p._70.

"The Rev. Ezra Stiles Ely had published his celebrated work, ent.i.tled 'The Contrast,' the object of which is to show the points of difference between the views of Hopkinsian and Calvinistic theology. It was addressed to prejudice and ignorance, and was aimed at the youthful pastor of the Brick church."--_Vol. i., p._ 129.

"I find my heart strangely _suspicious_. Sometimes I am resolved to withdraw from the Missionary and Education cause, because I foresee they will be scenes of contention. But then, again, I know they are exposed to evils, and the church is exposed to evils, through the mismanagement of these excellent inst.i.tutions, which perhaps I may prevent."--_Vol ii., p_. 78.

We doubt whether Dr. Spring's clerical brethren like the following pa.s.sage; but anyhow, there is a great deal of truth in it:

"There have been spurious revivals in my day, and the means of promoting them are the index of their character. In such seasons of excitement, great dependence is placed on the way and means of _getting them up_, and little of the impression [sic] that not a soul will be converted unless it be accomplished by the power of G.o.d. Whatever the words of the leaders may profess, their conduct proclaims, 'Mine own arm hath done this!' There is a familiarity, a boldness, an irreverence in their prayers, which ill becomes worms of the dust in approaching him before whom angels veil their faces.

A pious and poor woman, in coming out from a religious service thus conducted, once said, 'I cannot think what it is that makes our ministers _swear_ so in their prayers.' They count their converts, and when they survey their work, there is a triumph, a self-reliant exultation over it, which looks like the triumph of the pagan monarch, when he exclaimed, 'Is not this great Babylon which I have built!' And hence it is that so many of the subjects of such a work, after the excitement is over, find that their own hearts have deceived them, that they are no longer affected by solemn preaching and solemn prayers, that _their past emotions were nothing more than the operations of nature, and that when these natural causes have exhausted their power there is no religion left."--Vol. i., p_. 219.

Dr. Spring gives a curious ill.u.s.tration of the length to which excitement sometimes carries the poor victims of the revivalists, in the case of a Mrs. Pierson, "around whose lifeless body her husband a.s.sembled a company of _believers_, with the a.s.surance that if they prayed in faith, she would be restored to life. Their feelings were greatly excited, their impressions of their success peculiar and strong. They prayed and prayed again, and prayed _in faith_, but they were disappointed," vol. i., p. 229.

He is rather free sometimes in his criticisms upon his brother ministers. He listens to a sermon from the Rev. Mr. Finney, a noted revivalist, and says that there was nothing exceptionable in it "except a vulgarity that indicated a want of culture, and a coa.r.s.eness unbecoming the Christian pulpit." He hears a Mr. Broadway preach at sea, and thus records his impressions: "I must say he is a _John Bull_ of a preacher. What a pity that men who need to be taught what are the first principles of the oracles of G.o.d, should undertake to teach others!" We dare say Dr. Spring's judgment of both these gentlemen was sound; but we see no propriety in printing it.

He made several voyages to Europe, and travelled through France, Germany, and Great Britain. Respecting the state of Protestantism in France, he makes some significant admissions:

"Protestantism in France is not what I have been in the habit of considering it. {134} I knew it was in a measure corrupt, but not to the extent in which I actually find it. I do not think that the Romanists, as a body, have much confidence in the Roman religion.

But the mischief is that when thinking men throw off the bonds of Romanism, _they relapse into infidelity_... . .

True religion in France _finds its most bitter and unwearied enemies in Protestants themselves_. The Protestants of this country are high Arians, if not absolute Socinians. There are now [1835] three hundred and fifty-eight Protestant pastors in France, beside their few vacant churches. _But there are comparatively few among them all who love and obey the truth."--Vol, ii., pp._ 260, 361.

The pages devoted to his European tours are remarkable exemplifications of the truth of the old adage, that _coelum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare currunt_. Wherever he goes, his breadth of vision seems bounded by his own pulpit. The venerable cathedrals of Europe, rich with the n.o.blest memories, and the great historic places haunted by the grandest a.s.sociations of the past, fill him with no thoughts more elevated than those awakened by the Brick church. He sees everything distorted through the medium of his own inveterate prejudices. If he visits a religious shrine, he can think of nothing but the abominations of the scarlet woman of Babylon. If he sees a convent, he tells us a c.o.c.k-and-bull story about subterranean pa.s.sages paved with the bones of infants. If he witnesses some grand and imposing ceremonial, he throws up his eyes, rushes out of the church, and, while he shakes the dust off his feet, groans over the wickedness of the Romish priests and their blasphemous mummeries, farcical shows, and hypocritical disguises. One Sunday, while at Paris, he went with the well-known missionary. Dr. Jonas King, and some other American friends, to visit a hill called Mont Calvaire, near the city, to which numbers of pilgrims were then resorting. They filled their pockets with tracts, which they distributed, right and left, among the thousands that were going up and down the mountain. They even interrupted kneeling wors.h.i.+ppers at their prayers to give them tracts.

These valuable gifts were received with avidity, for, as the narrator elsewhere explains, our respectable parsons were mistaken for Catholic missionaries. A few days afterward they made another excursion of the same sort to Mont Calvaire. We give the conclusion of the adventure in the words of Dr. King, from whose journal Dr. Spring copies it:

"Mr. and Mrs. Wilder, and Miss Bertau, and Mr. Storrow's children, had gone to Mount Calvary to distribute tracts and Testaments. Dr.

Spring and myself, having filled our pockets, and hats, and hands, with tracts and Testaments, set off with the hope to find them. Just as we began to ascend the mountain, we met them coming at a distance. On meeting them, they informed us that they had been stopped by the Commissary of the Police, and that a gendarme, by order of the missionaries (Rom. C. M.), had taken away their tracts and Testaments, and prohibited them in the name of the law to distribute any more on Mount Calvary. Mr. W. advised us not to proceed with the intention of distributing those which we had. We however, went, giving to every one we met, till we came in sight of the _gendarmes_, when we ceased giving, but occasionally let some fall from our pockets, which the wind, which was very high, scattered in all directions, and were gathered up by the crowd. At length we arrived at the top of the mountain, took our stand on the highest elevation near the cross, and there, in our own language, offered up, each of us, a prayer to the G.o.d of heaven for direction, and to have mercy on those tens of thousands that we saw around us, bowing before graven images. _I then felt in some degree strengthened to go on, and, taking a tract from my pocket, presented it to a lady who stood near me, and who appeared to be a lady of some distinction._ She received it with thanks, and I was not noticed by the _gendarmes_. Dr. S. let some fall from his pocket, and we made our way down to one of the stations. There he laid some on the charity-box, while I stood before him, to hide what he did.

We then went to another station, and I gave ten or twelve to a lady, whom I charged to distribute them."

The heroism of these Presbyterian missionaries, who go up and down hill, dropping divine truth from their coat-tails, reminds us of a crazy old lady {135}so in New York, whose will was lately contested before our courts. She had peculiar ideas of her own on the subject of politics and the war, and used to inscribe her thoughts on great paper kites, and give them to little boys to fly in the Central Park, in the belief that the words would somehow or another be disseminated through the city. Imagine St. Francis Xavier setting sail for the Indies with his hat, and pockets, and hands full of tracts, scattering them broad-cast along the inhospitable sh.o.r.es, or trusting them to the breezes, like those charitable Buddhists Father Huc tells of, who go up a high mountain on windy days, and throw into the air little paper horses, which being blown away are, as they believe, miraculously changed into real horses for the benefit of belated travellers.

Suppose Father Matthew, instead of preaching a crusade against drunkenness, had contented himself with sneaking into s.h.i.+beens and taverns, and, behind the friendly shelter of a companion's back, had deposited little bundles of temperance tracts on the top of every barrel of whiskey, as if he expected them to explode like a torpedo, and fill the air with virtue. Or what would Dr. Spring think if some Sunday, in the midst of his prayer, two or three Catholic priests should march into the Brick church and distribute Challoner's Catechisms up and down the aisles, making the "solemn" Presbyterians get up from their knees to receive them? It would not be a bit more outrageous than the doctor's behavior during the mission on Mont Calvaire.

American travellers in Europe, especially of the fanatical sort, are but too apt to disgrace themselves and their country by their conduct in sacred places. Here is another extract from Dr. Spring's book which no respectable American can read without blus.h.i.+ng. The incident occurred in the famous cathedral of Rouen, built by William the Conqueror, and reckoned the finest specimen of Gothic architecture in France:

"A little circ.u.mstance occurred here that was somewhat amusing. [!]

Mr. Van Rensallear, in order to procure some little relic of the place, instead of gathering some flowers, broke off the _nose_ of one of the marble saints! He hoped to escape the detection of the guide, but unfortunately, on leaving the cathedral, we had to pa.s.s the mutilated statue, and were charged with the sacrilege. It was a lady saint whose sanct.i.ty our gallantry had thus violated, and we had to meet the most terrific volleys of abuse. A few glittering coins, however, obtained absolution for us, but neither entreaty nor cash could obtain the _nose_."

That must have been a funny scene one Sunday in crossing the ocean, when the doctor and his wife, and the rest of the pa.s.sengers, held service under difficulties:

"We a.s.sembled for praise and prayer. Susan was quite sea-sick, yet she came on deck. The day was cold, and she sat with _a hot potato in each hand to keep her warm_."

This is certainly the oddest preparation for approaching the throne of grace that we ever heard of.

Mrs. Spring is a prominent figure all through the book, giving her reverend husband advice and comfort, and helping him in the work of the ministry, especially with regard to the women of the flock. He laments in his introductory chapter that the death of his "beloved Mrs. Spring must leave a vacuum in these pages which nothing can fill." In the second volume he gives a long and detailed account of her sufferings in child-bed when she "became the mother of a lovely daughter." When she died in 1860, he wrote in his diary as follows:

"I have been her husband and she my wife for four-and-fifty years; our attachment has been mutual, and strong and sweet to the end. I had no friend on earth in whom I had such reliance; no counsellor so wise; no comforter so precious. For the last thirty years we have rarely differed in opinion; when we did, I generally found she was right and I was was wrong; and when I persevered in my {136} judgment she knew how to yield her wishes to mine, and would sometimes say with a smile, 'G.o.d has set the man above the woman.

You are _king_, my husband; but I am the queen!' In all my ministry, in sickness and in health, at home and abroad, by night and by day, I never knew her own convenience, comfort, or pleasure take the place of my duty to the people of my charge... . . I bless G.o.d that I had such a wife--that I had her at all, and that I had her so long... . My darling wife, I give you joy: but what shall I do without you?"

This last question is soon answered in an unexpected manner. Only eight pages further on, Dr. Spring, aged eighty, records the following pa.s.sage:

"_April 13th,_ 1865.--My sweet wife was too valuable a woman ever to be forgotten. The preceding sketch furnishes but the outline of her excellences, which I have presented more at large at the close of the sermon commemorative of one who was my first love. I never thought I could love another. But I was advanced beyond my threescore years and ten, partially blind, and needed a helper fitted to my age and condition; no one needs such a helper more than a man in my advanced years. I sought, and G.o.d gave me another wife.

A few days only more than a year after the death of Mrs. Spring, on the 14th of August, 1861, I was married to Abba Grosvenor Williams, the only surviving child of the late Elisha Williams, Esq., a distinguished member of the bar. She is the heiress of a large Property, and retains it in her own hands. She is intent on her duty as a wife, watchful of my wants, takes good care of me, is an excellent housekeeper, and instead of adding to the expenses of my household, shares them with her husband."--Vol. ii., pp. 91, 92.

With this extract, Dr. Spring may be left to the charity of our readers. We have said nothing of the vanity which allows him freely to quote the commendations of his friends on his efforts in the pulpit and his publications through the press; because, inconsistent as it may be with a very elevated piety, it is a weakness that might be pardoned in such an old man. But we cannot help remarking how on every page he gives evidence of the utter baselessness of the thing he calls religion; the unsubstantial, unsatisfying character of those human emotions which he perpetually mistakes for the operations of the Holy Ghost; and the strangely unreal, unsanctified nature of the fit of mental perturbation which he denotes conversion and labors so hard to produce. The conclusion to which every unprejudiced person must come, on closing the volumes, is that Dr. Spring has lived in vain.

{137}