Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D Part 25

And again I say, when trying to reckon up the account with myself before I sink into unconsciousness, thinking of this bodily frame, with its million harmonious agencies, and the mind more wonderful still; or when I sit down in my daily walk, and sink into the bosom of nature, with light and life and beauty all around me,--surely the author of all this is good. It would be monstrous fatuity to question it, utter blindness not to see it.

And yet again, I say, there are relations between the finite and the Infinite, between my mind and the Infinite mind, between my weakness and the Infinite power. And why should conscious Omnipresence in our conception localize it? Presence is not limited to contact. I am present here in my room; I am present in the field where I sit down. Why, with the whole universe, should not the Infinite Being thus be present?

What a wonderful chapter is the twenty-third of Job! There are many things in that book which touch upon our modern experience. "Oh! that I knew where I might find him, that I might come near even to his seat.

I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive him; on the left hand where he cloth work, but I cannot behold him; for he hideth himself on the right hand that I cannot see him." But I come with undoubting faith to Job's conclusion: "But he knoweth the way that I take; when he hath tried me I shall come forth as gold." There are deep trials, at times, in the approach to G.o.d, in lifting the weak thoughts of our minds to the [328] Infinite One; there are struggles and tears which none may ever witness; but still I say, "0 G.o.d, thou art my G.o.d, early will I seek thee,"--ever will I seek thee. Let him who will, or must, walk out from this fair, bright, glowing world, thrilling all the world in us with joy, upon the cold and dreary waste of atheism; I will not. I should turn rebel to all the great instincts within me, and all the great behests of nature and life around me, if I did. Ah! the confounding, ever-troubling difficulty is not to believe, but to feel the great Presence all the day long. This is what I think of, and long have, with questioning and pain. What beings should we become--what to one another--under that living and loving sense of the all-good, the all-beautiful and divine within us and around us! And, for ourselves, what a perfect joy it is to feel that, in this seemingly disturbed universe, all is order, all is right, all is well, all is the best possible!

Yours ever,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

From a Note-Book.

THE pain of erring,--the bitterest in the world,--is it not strange that it should be so bitter? Is it not strange that growth must be attained on such hard terms? Nay, but is it not simply applying the sharpest instrument to the cutting and carving of the finest and grandest form of things on earth,--a n.o.ble character?

The work is but begun on earth. Man is the only being in this world whose nature is not half developed, whose powers are in their infancy; the ideal in whose const.i.tution is not yet, and never on earth, realized. The animal arrives at animal perfection here,--becomes all [329] that it was made to be. The beetle, the dragon-fly, the eagle, is as perfect as it can be. But man comes far short of the ideal that presided over his formation. Any way it would be unaccountable, not to say incredible, that G.o.d's highest work on earth should fail of its end, fail of realizing its ideal, fail of being what it was made for. But when the process, unlike that in animals, which is all facility and pleasure, is full of difficulty and pain, then for the unfinished work to be dropped would be, not as if a sculptor should go on blocking out marble statues only to throw them away half finished, but as if he should take the living human frame for his subject, and should cut and gash and torture it for years, only to fling it into the ditch.

To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.

ST. DAVID'S, Dec. 22, 1874.

THANK you, my friend, and three times over, for Allibone's volumes. I did want and never expected to have them. But I had no idea Allibone was such a big thing. All the bigger are my thanks. What an ocean of drowned authors it is,--only here and there one with masts up and the flags flying!

My little oracular, pro-Indians admonition was correctly printed, and the changes you made were good.

Do you know that to-day sol stat? I don't believe that you mind it in the city as we do in the country. To-day the glorious...o...b..pauses and rests a little, to turn back and march up and along the mountain top,-about a mile and a half a month on the same,--and bring us summer.

And there is cheer and comfort in [330] that, though the proverb about the cold strengthening holds for a couple of months.

With our Merry Christmas to you all, I am, all days of the year,

Yours heartily,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.

ST. DAVID'S, May 9, 1875.

MY DEAR FELLOW (of the Royal Society, I mean),--I have had it upon my mind these two or three weeks past to write to you; and I really believe that what most hindered me was that I had so many things to say. And yet, I solemnly declare that I cannot remember now what they were. They were things of evanescent meditation, phases of the Great Questions; but for a week or two I have been saying, I will not weary myself so much with them. So you have escaped this time. One thing, however, I do recall, though not of those questions; and that is, reading the Psalms through for my pillow-book. And it is with a kind of astonishment that I have read them. Did you ever look into them with the thought of comparing them with the old Hindoo and Persian or Mohammedan or Greek utterances of devotion? How cold and formal these are, compared with the earnestness, the entreaty, the tenderness of David and Asaph,-the swallowing up of their whole souls into love, trust, and thankfulness!

What is this, whence came it, and what does it mean? This phenomenon in Judaa, how are you to explain it, without supposing a special inspiration breathed into the souls of men from the source of all spiritual life and light? The Jewish nature was not [331] more keen than the Greek, or perhaps the Arabians, yet all their religious utterances are but apothegms in presence of the Jewish vitality and experience.

I do not deny their grandeur and beauty; but the Bible brings me into another world of thought and feeling,--into a new creation. And when we take into the account the Gospels, we seem to be brought alike out of the old philosophy and the new,--out both from the old formalism and the vast inane and unknown, which the science of to-day conceives of, into new and living relations with the Infinite Love and Goodness. In this, for my part, I rest.

To the Same.

ST. DAVID'S, Jury 24, 1875.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--Thank you for one of your good, long, thoughtful letters. My thoughts in these days run in other directions. I cannot tell you what they are; no language can; at least, I never used any that did. Almost all human experience has been described; but what are the thoughts and feelings of a man who says with himself as he walks along upon the familiar path, "A few more steps and I shall be gone;--what and where shall I be then?" No mortal speech can tell. Meditations come, you may imagine, at such a crisis in one's being, too vast, too trying for utterance. Wearied and weighed down by them, I sometimes say, "I will think no more about it; all my thinking will alter nothing that is to be; what can I do but lay myself on the bosom of that Infinite Goodness, in which, without doubting, I believe? What would I have other than what G.o.d appoints?" [332] Yet, after all, I am far from losing my interest in the world I am leaving. I am much struck with what you say about the press,--the money interest involved, and the direction which that interest is likely to give it. I wish there were a distinct education for editors.h.i.+p, as there is for preaching, or for the lawyer or physician. There is an article of Greg's in the last "Contemporary Review," following out his "Rocks Ahead," that it has distressed me to read. The great danger now is the rise of the lower and laboring cla.s.ses against capital and intelligence. And nothing will save the world, but for the higher cla.s.ses to rouse themselves to do their duty,--in politics, in education, and in consideration and care for the lower.

Have you seen the pamphlet of Miss Octavia Hill, of England? That is the spirit, and one kind of work that is wanted. O women! instead of clamoring for your rights, come up to this!

This is the most beautiful summer that I remember. I am glad to hear of your enjoying it, and of the bevy of young people around you. Such I see every day in the street and the grounds, as if Sheffield were the very paradise of the young and gay.

To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.

ST. DAVID'S, Dec. 30, 1875.

DEAR FRIEND,--. . . I am glad to have your opinion of Emerson's and Whittier's verse Collections, and especially your good opinion of Cranch's translation, 'or I am much interested in him. . . .

My own reading runs very much in another direction, among those who "reason of" the highest things. Especially I have been interested in what those old [333] atheists, Lucretius and Omar Khayyam, say. Have you seen the "Rubaiyat" of the latter? And, by the bye, have you an English translation of Lucretius's "De Rerurn Natura"? It must be a small volume, only six books; and if it is not too precious an edition, I pray you to lend and send it to me by mail.

What atheism was to the minds of these two men amazes me. Lucretius was an Epicurean in life, perhaps, as well as philosophy, but I want to understand him better. I want to see whether he anywhere laments over the desolation of his system. That a man of his power and genius should have accepted it calmly and indifferently, is what I cannot understand.

As for Omar, he seems to turn it all into sport. "Don't think at all,"

is what he says; "drown all thought in wine." But he writes very deftly, and I cannot but think that his resort is something like the drunkard's,--to escape the great misery.

To Rev. Henry W Bellows, D.D.

ST. DAVID'S, Jan. 11, 1876.

. . . IT is n't everybody that can turn within, and ask such questions as you do. But though I laughed at the exaggeration, I admire the tendency.

I suppose n.o.body ever did much, or advanced far, without more or less of it. But your appreciation of others beats your depreciation of yourself.

For me, I am so poor in fact and in my own opinion, that,--what do you suppose I am going to say?--that I utterly reject and cast away the kind things you say of me? No, I don't; that is, I won't. I am determined to make the most of them. For, to be serious, I have poured out my mind and [334] heart into my preaching. I have written with tears in my eyes and thrills through my frame, and why shall I say, it is nothing? Nay, though I have never been famed as a preacher, I do believe that what I have preached has told upon the hearts of my hearers as deeply, perhaps, as what is commonly called eloquence. But when you speak of my work as "put beyond cavil and beyond forgetfulness," I cover my face with my hands, with confusion.

But enough of personalities, except to say that I think you exaggerate and fear too much the trials that old age, if it come, will bring upon you. Not to say that your temperament is more cheerful and hopeful than mine, you are embosomed in interests and friends.h.i.+ps that will cling about you as long as you live. I am comparatively alone. . . .

But after all, the burden of old age lies not in such questions as these. It is a solemn crisis in our being, of which I cannot write now, and probably never shall.

"Wait the great teacher, Death, and G.o.d adore."

That is all I can do, except reasonably to enjoy all the good I have and all the happiness I see. Of the latter, I count A.'s being "better," and of the former, your friends.h.i.+p as among the most prized and dear.

With utmost love to you all,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To William Cullen Bryant, Esq.

ST. DAVID'S, March 14, 1876.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I have begun to look upon myself as an old man. I never did before. I have felt so [335] young, so much at least as I always have done, that I could n't fairly take in the idea. The giftie has n't been gi'ed me to see myself as others see me. Even yet, when they get up to offer me the great chair, I can't understand it. But at length I have so far come into their views as seriously to ask myself what it is fit for an old man to do, or to undertake. And I have come to the conclusion that the best thing for me is to be quiet, to keep, at least, to my quiet and customary method of living,-in other words, to be at home.

My wife is decidedly of that opinion for herself, and, by parity of reasoning, for me; and I am inclined to think she is right.

This parity, however, does not apply to you. You are six months younger than I am, by calendar, and six years in activity; you go back and forth like Cicero to his country villas; pray stop at my door some day, and let me see you.

You see where all this points. I decide not to go to New York at present, notwithstanding all the attractions which you hold out to me.

I don't feel like leaving home while this bl.u.s.tering March is roaring about the house. And from the mild winter we have had, I expect it to grow more like a lion at the end.

With love to J. and Miss F.,

Your timid old friend,