The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss Part 38

After services at the house, we walked to the church, which we entered through a double file of uncovered students. One of the most touching things about the service was the sight of four students standing in charge of the remains, two at the head and two at the foot of the coffin. His poor folks came in crowds, with their hands full of flowers to be cast into his grave. My brother said he never saw so many men shed tears at a funeral, and I am sure I never did; some sobbing as convulsively as women. I could not help asking myself when my heart was swelling so with pain, whether love _paid_. Love is sweet when all goes well, but oh how fearfully exacting it is when separation comes! How many t.i.thes it takes of all we have and are!

A worthy young woman in our church has been driven into hysterics by reading "Holiness through Faith." I went to see her as soon as I got home from W. yesterday, but she was asleep under the influence of an opiate. There is no doubt that too much self-scrutiny is pernicious, especially to weak-minded, ignorant young people. It was said of Prof.

Hopkins that he would have been a mystic but for his love to souls, and I am afraid these new doctrines tend too much to the seeking for peace and joy, too little to seeking the salvation of the careless and worldly. But I hesitate to criticise any cla.s.s of good people, feeling that those who live in most habitual communion with G.o.d receive light directly and constantly from on high; and of that communion we can not seek too much. [10]

IV.

Christian Parents to expect Piety in their Children. Perfection. "People make too much Parade of their Troubles." "Higher Life" Doctrines. Letter to Mrs. Washburn. Last Visit to Williamstown.

Early in June she went to Dorset. The summer, like that of 1871, was shadowed by anxiety and inward conflict; but her care-worn thoughts were greatly soothed by her rural occupations, by visits from young friends, and by the ever-fresh charms of nature around her.

_To a Christian Friend, Dorset, June 9, 1872._

I was obliged to give up my much-desired visit to you. We went on to the funeral of Prof. Hopkins, and that took three days out of the busy time just before coming here. I particularly wanted you to know _at the time_ that my three younger children united with the church on Sunday last, but had not a moment in which to write you. It was a touching sight to our people. Mr. P. looked down on his children so lovingly, and kissed them when the covenant had been read. He said ---'s face was so full of soul that he could not help it, and his heart yearned over them all.

Someone said there was not a dry eye in the house. I felt not elated, not cast down, but at peace. I think it plain that Christian parents are to _expect_ piety in their children, and expect it early. In mine it is indeed "first the blade," and they will, no doubt, have their trials and temptations. But it seems to me I must leave them in G.o.d's hands and let Him lead them as He will. It was very sweet to have the elements pa.s.sed to me by their young hands. Offer one earnest prayer for them at least, that they may prove true soldiers and servants of Jesus Christ. No doubt your two little sainted ones looked on and loved the children of their mother's friend.

The following testimony of one of President Garfield's cla.s.smates and intimate friends may fitly be added here:

"For him there was but one Mark Hopkins in all the world; but for Professor Albert Hopkins also, or 'Prof. Al.,' as he was called in those days, the General--not only while at college, but all through life-- entertained the highest regard, both as a man and a scholar. His intellectual attainments were thought by Gen. G. to be of an unusually fine order, rivalling those of his brother, and often eliciting the admiration not only of himself, but of all the other students. In speaking of his Williamstown life, Gen. Garfield always referred to Prof. Hopkins in the most affectionate manner; and, both from his own statements and my personal observation, I know that their mutual college relations were of the pleasantest nature possible."

On the subject of perfection, you say I am looking for angelic perfection. I see no difference in kind. Perfection is perfection to my mind, and I have always thought it a dangerous thing for a soul to fancy it had attained it. Yet, in her last letters to me, Miss ---- virtually professes to have become free from sin. She says self and sin are the same thing, and that she is entirely dead to self. What is this but complete sanctification? What can an angel say more? I feel painfully bewildered amid conflicting testimonies, and sometimes long to flee away from everybody. Miss ----'s last letter saddened me, I will own.

You say, "I am in danger of becoming morbid, or stupid, or wild, or something I ought not." Why in danger? According to your own doctrine you are safe; being "entirely sanctified from moment to moment." At any rate I can say nothing "to quicken" you, for I _am_ morbid and stupid, though just now not wild. Those sharp temptations have ceased, though perhaps only for a season; but I have been physically weakened by them, and have got to take care of myself, go to bed early, and vegetate all I can--and this when I ought to be hard at work ministering to other souls. The fact is, I don't know anything and don't do anything, but just get through the day somehow, wondering what all this strange, unfamiliar state of things will end in. Poor M---- has gone crazy on "Holiness through Faith," and will probably have to go to an asylum....

Our little home looks and is very pleasant. I take some comfort in it, and try to realise the goodness that gives me such a luxury. But a soul that has known what it is to live to Christ can be _happy_ only in Him.

May He be all in all to you, and consciously so to me in His own good time.

_To Miss Woolsey, Dorset, June 23, 1872._

I wish you could come and take a look at us this quiet afternoon. Not a soul is to be seen or heard; the mountains are covered with the soft haze that says the day is warm but not oppressive, and here and there a brilliantly colored bird flies by, setting "Tweedle Dum," our taciturn canary, into tune. M. and I have driven at our out-door work like a pair of steam-engines, and you can imagine how dignified I am from the fact that an old fuddy-duddy who does occasional jobs for me, summons me to my window by a "Hullo!" beneath it, while G. says to us, "Where are you girls going to sit this afternoon?"

Your sister's allusion to Watts and Select Hymns reminds me of ages long past, when I used to sing the whole book through as I marched night after night through my room, carrying a colicky baby up and down for fifteen months, till I became a living skeleton. We do contrive to live through queer experiences.

_To a young Friend, Dorset, Aug. 3, 1872._

The lines you kindly copied for me have the ring of the true metal and I like them exceedingly. People make too much parade of their troubles and too much fuss about them; the fact is we are all born to tribulation, as we also are to innumerable joys, and there is no sense in being too much depressed or elated by either. "The saddest birds a season find to sing." Few if any lives flow in unmingled currents. As to myself, my rural tastes are so strong, and I have so much to absorb and gratify me, that I _need_ a mixture of experience. Two roses that bloomed in my garden this morning, made my heart leap with delight, and when I get off in the woods with M., and we collect mosses and ferns and scarlet berries, I am conscious of great enjoyment in them. At the same time, if I thought it best to tell the other side of the story, I should want some very black ink with which to do it. We must take life as G.o.d gives it to us, without murmurings and disputings, and with the checks on our natural eagerness that keeps us mindful of Him.

You speak of the "Higher Life people." I still hold my judgment in suspense in regard to their doctrines, reading pretty much all they send me, and asking daily for light from on high. I have had some talks this summer with Dr. Stearns on these subjects, and he urges me to keep where I am, but I try not to be too much influenced for or against doctrines I do not, by experience, understand. Let us do the will of G.o.d (and suffer it) and we shall learn of the doctrine.

_To Mrs. Washburn, Kauinfels, Friday Evening, (September, 1872)._

I have done nothing but tear my hair ever since you left, to think I let you go. It would have been so easy to send you to Manchester to-morrow morning, after a night here, and an evening over our little wood-fire, but we were so glad to see you both, so bewildered by your sudden appearance, that neither of us thought of it till you were gone. And now you are still within reach, and we want you to reconsider your resolution to turn your backs upon us after such a long, fatiguing journey, and eating no salt with us. I did not urge your staying because I do so hate to be urged myself. But I want you to feel what a great pleasure it would be to us if you could make up your minds to stay at least over Sunday, or if to-morrow and Sunday are unpleasant, just a day or two more, to take our favorite drives with us, and give us what you may never have a chance to give us again. I declare I shall think you are crazy, if you don't stay a few days, now that you are here. We have been longing to have you come, and only waiting for our place to be a little less naked in order to lay violent hands on you; but now you have seen the nakedness of the land, we don't care, but want you to see more of it. This is the time, and _exactly_ the time, when we have nothing to do but to enjoy our visitors, and next year the house may be running over. And if you don't come now, you'll have the plague of having to come some other time, and it is a long, formidable journey.

Why _didn't_ we just take and lock you up when we had hold of you! Well, now I've torn out _all_ my hair, and people will be saying, "Go up, thou bald-head." Besides--you left them bunch-berries! and do you suppose you can go home without them? Why, it wouldn't be safe. You would be run off the track, and scalded by steam, and broken all to pieces, and caught on the cow-catcher, and get lost, and be run away with, and even struck by lightning, I shouldn't wonder. And now if you go in to-morrow's train you'll catch the small-pox and the measles and the scarlet fever and the yellow fever, and all the colors-in-the-rainbow fever, and go into a consumption and have the pleurisy, and the jaundice and the tooth-ache and the headache, and, above all, the conscience-ache. And you never ate any of our corn or our beans! You never so much as asked the receipt for our ironclads! You haven't seen our cow. You haven't been down cellar.

You haven't fished in our brook. You haven't been here at all, now I come to think of it. I dreamed you flew through, but it was nothing _but_ a dream. And the houses have a habit of burning down, and ours is going to do as the rest do, and then how'll you feel in your minds? And when folks set themselves up against us, and won't let us have our own way, why then "I tell my daughter

What _makes_ folks do as they'd oughter not, And why _don't_ they do as they'd oughter?"

And we all pine away and die like the babes in the woods, and n.o.body's left to cover us up with leaves. Send all these arguments home by telegram, and your folks will shoot you if you dare to go. I could write another sheet if it would do any good. Now do lay my words to heart, and come right back.

_To Miss Morse, Dorset, Oct. 7, 1872._

I sent home my servants a month ago, and they have been getting the parsonage to rights, while I have in their places two dear old souls who came to live with me twenty years ago. One stayed ten years and then got married, the other I parted with when my children died because I did not need her. It has been a green spot in the summer to have these affectionate, devoted creatures in the house. We have had only one slight frost, but the woods have been gradually changing, and are in spots very beautiful. We (you know what that word means) have been off gathering bright leaves for ourselves and the servants, who care for pretty things just as we do. Yet not a flower has gone; we have had a host of verbenas and gladioli, some j.a.panese lilies, and so on, and have been able to give some pleasure to those who have not time to cultivate them for themselves. It has been a dreadful season for sickness here, and flowers have been wanted in many a sick-room, and at some funerals.

Since I wrote you last "we" have been to Williamstown. I wanted to get possession of my sister's private papers. Everything pa.s.sed off nicely; I burned a large amount and brought away a trunk full, a part of which I have been reading with deep interest. Her journals date back to the age of fifteen, though to read the early ones you would never dream of her being less than twenty or thirty. She was a wonderful woman, and as I found such ample material for a memorial of her life, I felt half tempted to carry out her husband's wishes and complete one. But on the whole I do not think I shall. You can imagine how my soul has been stirred by the whole thing; the farewell to the familiar objects of my childhood, the sense of a new race taking possession of her conservatory, her sh.e.l.ls, her minerals, her pictures, her German, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Hebrew and Greek library--dear me! but I need not enlarge on it to you. And how stupid it is not to forget it all alongside of her ten years in heaven!

[1] "Especially after a time of some special seasons of grace, and some special new supplies of grace, received in such seasons, (as after the holy sacrament), then will he set on most eagerly, when he knows of the richest booty. The pirates that let the s.h.i.+ps pa.s.s as they go by empty, watch them well, when they return richly laden; so doth this great Pirate."--Archbishop Leighton, on I Peter, v. 8.

[2] "Cynegvius, a valiant Athenian, being in a great sea-fight against the Medes, espying a s.h.i.+p of the enemy's well manned, and fitted for service, when no other means would serve, he grasped it with his hands to maintain the fight; and when his right hand was cut off, he held close with his left; but both hands being taken off, he held it fast with his teeth."

[3] The following lines found on one of its blank pages were written perhaps at this time:

Precious companion! rendered dear By trial-hours of many a year, I love thee with a tenderness Which words have never yet defined.

When tired and sad and comfortless, With aching heart and weary mind, How oft thy words of promise stealing Like Gilead's balm-drops--soft and low.

Have touched the heart with power of healing, And soothed the sharpest hour of woe.

[4] A friend writing to Mrs. Prentiss, under date of September 24, 1872, refers to Lady Stanley's high praise of The Story Lizzie Told, and then adds: "You must be so accustomed to friendly 'notices'--so almost bored by them--that I hesitate to tell you of meeting another admirer of yours in the person of Mrs. ----, of Philadelphia, who was indebted to you for the return of a little text-book. She means to call on you some day, if she is ever in New York, to thank you in person for that act of kindness of yours, and for your 'Stepping Heavenward.' She is a daughter of the late Chief Justice of Pennsylvania. Her mother, a staunch old Scotch lady over 80, has just returned from Europe. Mrs. ---- is a very interesting woman, of warm religious feelings and very outspoken. She was the companion of the famous Mrs. H., of Philadelphia, all through the war,--as one of the independent workers, or perhaps in connection with the Christian Commission. She witnessed the battle of Chancellorsville--a part of it at Mary's Heights, and has told me a great deal that was thrilling--told as _she_ tells it--even at this late day. She has the profoundest belief in what is called the 'work of faith' by prayer and I don't believe she would shrink from accepting Prof. Tyndall's challenge."

[5] From the "Power of the Cross of Christ."

[6] "Briefe an eine Freundin," a remarkable little book, full of light and sweetness.

[7] Praying before others.

[8] Since the warning we had the other day that we may be s.n.a.t.c.hed from our children, ought we not to try to form some plan for them in case of such an emergency? I can't account for it, that in those fearful moments I thought only of them. I should have said I ought to have had some thought of the world we seemed to be hurrying to. I suppose there was the instinctive yet blind sense that the preparation for the next life had been made for us by the Lord, and that, as far as that life was concerned, we had nothing to do but to enter it. I shudder when I think what a desolate home this might be to-day. Poor things! they've got everything before them, without one experience and discipline!--_From a letter to her husband, dated Dorset, Sept. 17, 1871._

[9] The Presence of Christ. Lectures on the XXIII. Psalm. By Anthony W.

Thorold, Lord Bishop of Rochester. A. D. F. Randolph & Co.

[10] Albert Hopkins was born in Stockbridge, Ma.s.s., July 14,1807. He was graduated at Williams College in the cla.s.s of 1826, and three years later became Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in the same inst.i.tution. Astronomy was afterward added to his chair. In 1834 he went abroad. In the summer of 1835 he organised and conducted a Natural History expedition to Nova Scotia, the first expedition of the kind in this country. Two years later he built at his own expense, and in part by the labor of his own hands, the astronomical observatory at Williamstown. In this also, it is said, in advance of all others erected exclusively for purposes of instruction. He was a devoted and profound student, as well as an accomplished teacher, of natural science. But he was still more distinguished for his piety and his religious influence in the college. Hundreds of students in successive cla.s.ses learned to love and revere him as a holy man of G.o.d--many of them as their spiritual father. The history of American colleges affords probably no instance of a happier, or more remarkable, union of true science with that personal holiness and zeal for G.o.d, by which hearts are won for Christ. Full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, he did the work of an evangelist for more than forty years--not in the college only, but all over the town. During the last six years of his life he devoted himself especially to the White Oaks--a district in the north-east part of Williamstown-which had long before excited his sympathy on account of the poverty, vice, and degradation which marked the neighborhood. He identified himself with the population by buying and carrying on a small farm among them. He also established a Sunday-school, and then he built with the aid of friends a tasteful chapel, which was dedicated in October, 1866. Later "the Church of Christ in the White Oaks" was organised, and here, as his failing strength allowed, he preached and labored the rest of his days.

Prof. Hopkins was an enthusiastic lover of nature. A few years before his death he organised a society called "The Alpine Club," composed chiefly of young ladies, with whom, as their chosen leader, he made excursions summer after summer--camping out often among the hills. He took them to many a picturesque nook and retreat, of which they had never heard, in the mountains near by. He also explored with them other interesting and remoter portions of northern Berks.h.i.+re, and interpreted to them on the spot the thoughts of G.o.d, as they appeared in the infinitely varied and beautiful details of His works. In these excursions he seemed as young as any of his young companions, with feelings as fresh and joyous as theirs. In earlier years he was a very grave man, with something of the old Puritan sternness in his looks and ways, and he bore still the aspect of a h.o.m.o gravis; but his gentleness, his tender devotion to the gay young companions who surrounded him, and the almost boyish delight with which he shared in their pleasures, took away all its sternness and lighted up his strongly-marked countenance with singular grace and beauty. In these closing years of his life he was, indeed, the ideal of a ripe and n.o.ble Christian manhood. His name is embalmed in the memory of a great company of his old pupils, now scattered far and wide, from the White House at Was.h.i.+ngton to the remotest corners of the earth.

P.S.--This was written soon after the inauguration of Gen. Garfield, to whom allusion is made. His high regard for the venerable ex-President of Williams College--the Rev. Dr. Mark Hopkins--he made known to the whole country, but the younger brother was also the object of his warmest esteem and love, and the feeling was heartily reciprocated. Nearly a score of years ago, when he was just emerging into public notice from the b.l.o.o.d.y field of Chickamauga, Prof. Hopkins spoke of him to the writer in terms so full of praise and so prophetic of his future career, that they seem in perfect harmony with the sentiment at once of admiration and poignant grief which to-day moves the heart of the whole American people--yea, one might almost say, which is inspiring all Christendom.--_Sat.u.r.day, Sept. 24, 1881._

CHAPTER XIII.

PEACEABLE FRUIT. 1873-1874.

I.

Effect of spiritual Conflict upon her religious Life. Overflowing Affections. Her Husband called to Union Theological Seminary. Baptism of Suffering. The Character of her Friends.h.i.+ps. No perfect Life. Prayer.

"Only G.o.d can satisfy a Woman." Why human Friends.h.i.+p is a Snare.