That the exaggerations of the pulpit repel thousands from the truth. Moderation of statement is a rare excellence. A deep spiritual insight enables a religious teacher to shade his meanings where it is required. Deep piety is genius for the pulpit. Mediocrity in native endowments, conjoined with spiritual stolidity in the pulpit, does more harm than all the open apostles of infidelity combined. They take the divinity out of religion and kill the faith of those who hear them. None but inspired men should stand in the pulpit. Religion is not in the intellect merely. The world by wisdom cannot know God. The attempt to find out God by the intellect has always been, and always must be, the completest of failures. Religion is the sphere of the supernatural, and stands not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. It has often happened that men of the first order of talent and the highest culture have been converted by the preaching of men of weak intellect and limited education, but who were directly taught of God, and had drunk deep from the fount of living truth in personal experience of the blessed power of Christian faith. It was through the intellect that the devil seduced the first pair. When we rest in the intellect only, we miss God. With the heart only can man believe unto righteousness. The evidence that satisfies is based on consciousness. Consciousness is the satisfying demonstration.
“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit. They can be revealed in no other way.”
Here was the secret he had learned, and that had brought a new joy and glory into his life as it neared the sunset. The great change dated from a dark and rainy night as he walked home in Sacramento City. Not more tangible to Saul of Tarsus was the vision, or more distinctly audible the voice that spoke to him on the way to Damascus, than was the revelation of Jesus Christ to this lawyer of penetrating intellect, large and varied reading, and sharp perception of human folly and weakness. It was a case of conversion in the fullest and divinest sense. He never fell from the wonder-world of grace to which he had been lifted. His youth seemed to be renewed, and his life had rebloomed, and its winter was turned into spring, under the touch of Him who maketh all things new. He was a new man, and he lived in a new world. He never failed to attend the class-meetings, and in his talks there the flashes of his genius set religious truths in new lights, and the little band of Methodists were treated to bursts of fervid eloquence, such as might kindle the listening thousands of metropolitan churches into admiration, or melt them into tears. On such occasions I could not help regretting anew that the world had lost what this man might have wrought had his path in life taken a different direction at the start. He died suddenly, and when in the city of Los Angeles I read the telegram announcing his death, I felt, mingled with the pain at the loss of a friend, exultation that before there was any reaction in his religious life his mighty soul had found a congenial home amid the supernal glories and sublime joys of the world of spirits. The moral of this man’s life will be seen by him for whom this imperfect Sketch has been penciled.
Ah Lee.
He was the sunniest of Mongolians. The Chinaman, under favorable conditions, is not without a sly sense of humor of his peculiar sort; but to American eyes there is nothing very pleasant in his angular and smileless features. The manner of his contact with many Californians is not calculated to evoke mirthfulness. The brickbat may be a good political argument in the hands of a hoodlum, but it does not make its target playful. To the Chinaman in America the situation is new and grave, and he looks sober and holds his peace. Even the funny-looking, be-cued little Chinese children wear a look of solemn inquisitiveness, as they toddle along the streets of San Francisco by the side of their queer-looking mothers. In his own land, overpopulated and misgoverned, the Chinaman has a hard fight for existence. In these United States his advent is regarded somewhat in the same spirit as that of the seventeen year locusts, or the cotton-worm. The history of a people may be read in their physiognomy. The monotony of Chinese life during these thousands of years is reflected in the dull, monotonous faces of Chinamen.
Ah Lee was an exception. His skin was almost fair, his features almost Caucasian in their regularity; his dark eye lighted up with a peculiar brightness, and there was a remarkable buoyancy and glow about him every way. He was about twenty years old. How long he had been in California I know not. When he came into my office to see me the first time, he rushed forward and impulsively grasped my hand, saying:
“My name Ah Lee–you Doctor Plitzjellie?”
That was the way my name sounded as he spoke it. I was glad to see him, and told him so.
“You makee Christian newspaper? You talkee Jesus? Mr. Taylor tellee me. Me Christian–me love Jesus.”
Yes, Ah Lee was a Christian; there could be no doubt about that. I have seen many happy converts, but none happier than he. He was not merely happy–he was ecstatic.
The story of the mighty change was a simple one, but thrilling. Near Vacaville, the former seat of the Pacific Methodist College, in Solano county, lived the Rev. Iry Taylor, a member of the Pacific Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Mr. Taylor was a praying man, and he had a praying wife. Ah Lee was employed as a domestic in the family. His curiosity was first excited in regard to family prayers. He wanted to know what it all meant. The Taylor’s explained. The old, old story took hold of Ah Lee. He was put to thinking and then to praying. The idea of the forgiveness of sins filled him with wonder and longing. He hung with breathless interest upon the word of the Lord, opening to him a world of new thought. The tide of feeling bore him on, and at the foot of the cross he found what he sought.
Ah Lee was converted–converted as Paul, as Augustine, as Wesley, were converted. He was born into a new life that was as real to him as his consciousness was real. This psychological change will be understood by some of my readers; others may regard it as they do any other inexplicable phenomenon in that mysterious inner world of the human soul, in which are lived the real lives of us all. In Ah Lee’s heathen soul was wrought the gracious wonder that makes joy among the angels of God.
The young Chinese disciple, it is to be feared, got little sympathy outside the Taylor household and a few others. The right-hand of Christian fellowship was withheld by many, or extended in a cold, half-reluctant way. But it mattered not to Ah Lee; he had his own heaven. Coldness was wasted on him. The light within him brightened every thing without.
Ah Lee became a frequent visitor to our cottage on the hill. He always came and went rejoicing. The Gospel of John was his daily study and delight. To his ardent and receptive nature it was a diamond mine. Two things he wanted to do. He had a strong desire to translate his favorite Gospel into Chinese, and to lead his parents to Christ. When he spoke of his father and mother his voice would soften, his eyes moisten with tenderness.
“I go back to China and tellee my fader and mudder allee good news,” he said, with beaming face.
This peculiar development of filial reverence and affection among the Chinese is a hopeful feature of their national life. It furnishes a solid basis for a strong Christian nation. The weakening of this sentiment weakens religious susceptibility; its destruction is spiritual death. The worship of ancestors is idolatry, but it is that form of it nearest akin to the worship of the Heavenly Father. The honoring of the father and mother on earth is the commandment with promise, and it is the promise of this life and of life everlasting.
There is an inter blending of human and divine loves; earth and heaven are unitary in companionship and destiny. The golden ladder rests on the earth and reaches up into the heavens.
About twice a week Ah Lee came to see us at North Beach. These visits subjected our courtesy and tact to a severe test. He loved little children, and at each visit he would bring with him a gayly-painted box filled with Chinese sweetmeats. Such sweetmeats! They were to strong for the palates of even young Californians. What cannot be relished and digested by a healthy California boy must be formidable indeed. Those sweetmeats were–but I give it up, they were indescribable! The boxes were pretty, and, after being emptied of their contents, they were kept.
Ah Lee’s joy in his new experience did not abate. Under the touch of the Holy Spirit, his spiritual nature had suddenly blossomed into tropical luxuriance. To look at him made me think of the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. If I had had any lingering doubts of the transforming power of the gospel upon all human hearts, this conversion of Ah Lee would have settled the question forever. The bitter feeling against the Chinese that just then found expression in California, through so many channels, did not seem to affect him in the least. He had his Christianity warm from the heart of the Son of God, and no caricature of its features or perversion of its spirit could bewilder him for a moment. He knew whom he had believed. None of these things moved him. O blessed mystery of God’s mercy, that turns the night of heathen darkness into day, and makes the desert soul bloom with the flowers of paradise! O cross of the Crucified! Lifted up, it shall draw all men to their Saviour! And O blind and slow of heart to believe! why could we not discern that this young Chinaman’s conversion was our Lord’s gracious challenge to our faith, and the pledge of success to the Church that will go into all the world with the news of salvation?
Ah Lee has vanished from my observation, but I have a persuasion that is like a burning prophecy that he will be heard from again. To me he types the blessedness of old China newborn in the life of the Lord, and in his luminous face I read the prophecy of the redemption of the millions who have so long bowed before the Great Red Dragon, but who now wait for the coming of the Deliverer.
The Climate of California.
Had Shakespeare lived in California, he would not have written of the “winter of our discontent,” but would most probably have found in the summer of that then undiscovered country a more fitting symbol of the troublous times referred to; for, with the fogs, winds, and dust, that accompany the summer, or the “dry season,” as it is more appropriately called in California, it is emphatically a season of discontent. In the mountains of the State only are these conditions not found. True, you will find dust even there as the natural consequence of the lack of rain; but that is not, of course, so bad in the mountains; and with no persistent, nagging wind to pick it up and fling it spitefully at you, you soon get not to mind it at all. But of summer in the coast country it is hard to speak tolerantly. The perfect flower of its unloveliness flourishes in San Francisco, and, more or less hardily, all along the coast. From the time the rains cease–generally some time in May –through the six-months’ period of their cessation, the programme for the day is, with but few exceptions, unvaried. Fog in the morning –chilling, penetrating fog, which obscures the rays of the morning sun completely, and, dank and “clinging like cerements,” swathes every thing with its soft, gray folds. On the bay it hangs, heavy and chill, blotting out everything but the nearest objects, and at a little distance hardly distinguishable from the water itself. At such times is heard the warning-cry of the foghorns at Fort Point, Goat Island, and elsewhere–a sound which probably is more like that popularly supposed to be produced by an expiring cow in her last agony than any thing else, but which is not like that or any thing in the world but a foghorn. The fog of the morning, however, gives way to the wind of the afternoon, which, complete master of the situation by three o’clock P.M., holds stormy sway till sunset. No gentle zephyr this, to softly sway the delicate flower or just lift the fringe on the maiden’s brow, but what seamen call a “spanking breeze,” that does not hesitate to knock off the hat that is not fastened tightly both fore and aft to the underlying head, or to fling sand and dust into any exposed eye, and which dances around generally among skirts and coat-tails with untiring energy and persistency. To venture out on the streets of San Francisco at such times is really no trifling matter; and to one not accustomed to it, or to one of a non-combative disposition, the performance is not a pleasant one. Still the streets are always full of hurrying passengers; for, whether attributable to the extra amount of vitality and vim that this bracing climate imparts to its children, or to a more direct and obvious cause, the desire to get indoors again as soon as possible, the fact remains the same–that the people of California walk faster than do those of almost any other country. Not only men either, who with their coats buttoned up to their chins, and hats jammed tightly over their half-shut eyes, present a tolerably secure surface to the attacks of the wind, but their fairer sisters too can be seen, with their fresh cheeks and bright eyes protected by jaunty veils, scudding along in the face or the track of the wind, as the case may he, with wonderful skill and grace, looking as trim and secure as to rigging as the lightest schooner in full sail on their own bay.
But it is after the sun has gone down from the cloudless sky, and the sea has recalled its breezes to slumber for the night, that the fulfillment of the law of compensation is made evident in this matter. The nights are of silver, if the days be not of gold. And all over the State this blessing of cool, comfortable nights is spread. At any season, one can draw a pair of blankets over him upon retiring, sure of sound, refreshing slumber, unless assailed by mental or physical troubles to which even this glorious climate of California cannot minister.
The country here during this rainless season does not seem to the Eastern visitor enough like what he has known as country in the summer to warrant any outlay in getting there. He must, however, understand that here people go to the country for precisely opposite reasons to those which influence Eastern tourists to leave the city and betake themselves to rural districts. In the East, one leaves the crowded streets and heated atmosphere of the great city to seek coolness in some sylvan retreat. Here, we leave the chilling winds and fogs of the city to try to get warm where they cannot penetrate. Warm it may be; but the country at this season is not at its best as to looks. The flowers and the grass have disappeared with the rains, the latter, however, keeping in its dry, brown roots, that the sun scorches daily, the germ of all next winter’s green. Of the trees, the live-oak alone keeps to the summer livery of Eastern forests. Farther up in the mountain counties it is very different. No fairer summer could be wished for than that which reigns cloudless here; and with the sparkling champagne of that clear, dry air in his nostrils, our Eastern visitor forgets even to sigh for a summer shower to lay the dreadful dust. And even in the valleys and around the bay, we must confess that some advantages arise from the no-rain-for-six-months policy. Picnickers can set forth any day, with no fear of the fun of the occasion being wet-blanketed by an unlooked-for shower; and farmers can dispose of their crops according to convenience, often leaving their wheat piled up in the field, with no fear of danger from the elements.
Still we do get very tired of this long, strange summer, and the first rains are eagerly looked for and joyously welcomed. The fall of the first showers after such a long season of bareness and brownness is almost as immediate in its effects as the waving of a fairy’s magic wand over Cinderella, sitting ragged in the ashes and cinders. The change thus wrought is well described by a poet of the soil in a few picturesque lines:
Week by week the near hills whitened, In their dusty leather cloaks;
Week by week the far hills darkened, From the fringing plain of oaks;
Till the rains came, and far breaking, On the fierce south-wester tost,
Dashed the whole long coast with color, And then vanished and were lost.
With these rains the grass springs up, the trees put out, and the winds disappear, leaving in the air a wonderful softness. In a month or two the flowers appear, and the hills are covered with a mantle of glory. Bluebells, lupins, buttercups, and hosts of other blossoms, spring up in profusion; and, illuminating every thing, the wild California poppy lifts its flaming torch, typifying well, in its dazzling and glowing color, the brilliant minds and passionate hearts of the people of this land. All these bloom on through the winter, for this is a winter but in name. With no frost, ice, or snow, it is more like an Eastern spring, but for the absence of that feeling of languor and debility which is so often felt in that season. True it rains a good deal, but by no means constantly, more often in the night; and it is this season of smiles and tears, this winter of flowers and budding trees, in which the glory of the California climate lies. Certainly nothing could be more perfect than a bright winter day in that State. Still, after all I could say in its praise, you would not know its full charm till you had felt its delicious breath on your own brow; for the peculiar freshness and exhilaration of the air are indescribable.
Sometimes in March, the dwellers on the bay are treated to a blow or two from the north, which is about as serious weather as the inhabitant of that favored clime ever experiences. After a night whose sleep has been broken by shrieks of the wind and the rattling of doors and windows, I wake with a dullness of head and sensitiveness of nerve that alone would be sufficient to tell me that the north wind had risen like a thief in the night, and had not, according to the manner of that class, stolen away before morning. On the contrary, he seems to be rushing around with an energy that betokens a day of it. I dress, and look out of my window. The bay is a mass of foaming, tossing waves, which, as they break on the beach just below, cast their spray twenty feet in air. All the little vessels have come into port, and only a few of the largest ships still ride heavily at their anchors. The hue separating the shallow water near the shore from the deeper waters beyond is much farther out than usual, and is more distinct. Within its boundary, the predominant white is mixed with a dark, reddish brown; without, the spots of color are darkest green. The shy has been swept of every particle of cloud and moisture, and is almost painfully blue. Against it, Mounts Tamalpais and Diablo stand outlined with startling clearness. The hills and islands round the bay look as cold and uncomfortable in their robes of bright green as a young lady who has put on her spring-dress too soon. The streets and walks are swept bare, but still the air is filled with flying sand that cuts my face like needles, when, later, overcoated and gloved to the utmost, I proceed downtown. Such days are Nature’s cleaning days, very necessary to future health and comfort, but, like all cleaning-days, very unpleasant to go through with. With her mightiest besom does the old lady sweep all the cobwebs from the sky, all the dirt and germs of disease from the ground, and remove all specks and impurities from her air-windows. One or two such “northers” finish up the season, effectually scaring away all the clouds, thus clearing the stage for the next act in this annual drama of two acts.
This climate of California is perfectly epitomized in a stanza of the same poem before quoted:
So each year the season shifted, Wet and warm, and drear and dry,
Half a year-of cloud and flowers, Half a year of dust and sky.
After the Storm.
(Penciled in the bay-window above the Golden Gate, North Beach, San Francisco, February 20, 1873.)
All day the winds the sea had lashed, The fretted waves in anger dashed Against the rocks in tumult wild Above the surges roughly piled–No blue above, no peace below, The waves still rage, the winds still blow.
Dull and muffled the sunset gun Tells that the dreary day is done; The sea-birds fly with drooping wing–Chill and shadow on every thing–No blue above, no peace below, The waves still rage, the winds still blow.
The clouds dispart; the sapphire dye In beauty spreads o’er the western sky, Cloud-fires blaze o’er the Gate of Gold, Gleaming and glowing, fold on fold–All blue above, all peace below, Nor waves now rage, nor winds now blow.
Souls that are lashed by storms of pain, Eyes that drip with sorrow’s rain; Hearts that burn with passion strong, Bruised and torn, and weary of wrong–No light above, no peace within, Battling with self, and torn by sin–
Hope on, hold on, the clouds will lift; God’s peace will come as his own sweet gift, The light will shine at evening-time, The reflected beams of the sunlit clime, The blessed goal of the soul’s long quest, Where storms ne’er beat, and all are blest.
Bishop Kavanaugh in California.
He came first in 1856. The Californians “took to” him at once. It was almost as good as a visit to the old home to see and hear this rosy-faced, benignant, and solid Kentuckian. His power and pathos in the pulpit were equaled by his humor and magnetic charm in the social circle. Many consciences were stirred. All hearts were won by him, and he holds them unto this day. We may hope too that many souls were won that will be stars in his crown of rejoicing in the day of Jesus Christ.
At San Jose, his quality as a preacher was developed by an incident that excited no little popular interest. The (Northern) Methodist Conference was in session at that place, the venerable and saintly Bishop Scott presiding. Bishop Kavanaugh was invited to preach, and it so happened that he was to do so on the night following an appointment for Bishop Scott. The matter was talked of in the town, and not unnaturally a spirit of friendly rivalry was excited with regard to the approaching pulpit performances by the Northern and Southern Bishops respectively. One enthusiastic but not pious Kentuckian offered to bet a hundred dollars that Kavanaugh would preach the better sermon. Of course the two venerable men were unconscious of all this, and nothing of the kind was in their hearts. The church was thronged to hear Bishop Scott, and his humility, strong sense, deep earnestness, and holy emotion, made a profound and happy impression on all present. The church was again crowded the next night. Among the audience was a considerable number of Southerners–wild fellows, who were not often seen in such places, among them the enthusiastic Kentuckian already alluded to. Kavanaugh, after going through with the preliminary services, announced his text, and began his discourse. He seemed not to be in a good preaching mood. His wheels drove heavily. Skirmishing around and around, he seemed to be reconnoitering his subject, finding no salient point for attack. The look of eager expectation in the faces of the people gave way to one of puzzled and painful solicitude. The heads of the expectant Southerners drooped a little, and the betting Kentuckian betrayed his feelings by a lowering of the under-jaw and sundry nervous twitchings of the muscles of his face. The good Bishop kept talking, but the wheels revolved slowly. It was a solemn and “trying time” to at least a portion of the audience, as the Bishop, with head bent over the Bible and his broad chest stooped, kept trying to coax a response from that obstinate text. It seemed a lost battle. At last a sudden flash of thought seemed to strike the speaker, irradiating his face and lifting his form as he gave it utterance, with a characteristic throwing back of his shoulders and upward sweep of his arms. Those present will never forget what followed. The afflatus of the true orator had at last fallen upon him; the mighty ship was launched, and swept out to sea under full canvas. Old Kentucky was on her feet that night in San Jose. It was indescribable. Flashes of spiritual illumination, explosive bursts of eloquent declamation, sparkles of chastened wit, appeals of overwhelming intensity, followed like the thunder and lightning of a Southern storm. The church seemed literally to rock. “Amens” burst from the electrified Methodists of all sorts; these were followed by “hallelujahs” on all sides; and when the sermon ended with a rapturous flight of imagination, half the congregation were on their feet, shaking hands, embracing one another, and shouting. In the tremendous religious impression made, criticism was not thought of. Even the betting Kentuckian showed by his heaving breast and tearful eyes how far he was borne out of the ordinary channels of his thought and feeling.
He came to Sonora, where I was pastor, to preach to the miners. It was our second year in California, and the paternal element in his nature fell on us like a benediction. He preached three noble sermons to full houses in the little church on the red hillside, but his best discourses were spoken to the young preacher in the tiny parsonage. Catching the fire of the old polemics that led to the battles of the giants in the West, he went over the points of difference between the Arminiau and Calvinistic schools of theology in a way that left a permanent deposit in a mind which was just then in its most receptive state. We felt very lonesome after he had left. It was like a touch of home to have him with us then, and in his presence we have had the feeling ever since. What a home will heaven be where all such men will be gathered in one company!
It was a warm day when he went down to take the stage for Mariposa. The vehicle seemed to be already full of passengers, mostly Mexicans and Chinamen. When the portly Bishop presented himself, and essayed to enter, there were frowns and expressions of dissatisfaction.
“Mucho malo!” exclaimed a dark-skinned Senorita, with flashing black eyes.
“Make room in there–he’s got to go,” ordered the bluff stage-driver, in a peremptory tone.
There were already eight passengers inside, and the top of the coach was covered as thick as robins on a sumac-bush. The Bishop mounted the step and surveyed the situation. The seat assigned him was between two Mexican women, and as he sunk into the apparently insufficient space there was a look of consternation in their faces–and I was not surprised at it. But scrouging in, the newcomer smiled, and addressed first one and then another of his fellow-passengers with so much friendly pleasantness of manner that the frowns cleared away from their faces, even the stolid, phlegmatic Chinamen brightening up with the contagious good humor of the “big Mellican man.” When the driver cracked his whip, and the spirited mustangs struck off in the California gallop –the early Californians scorned any slower gait–everybody was smiling. Staging in California in those days was often an exciting business. There were “opposition” lines on most of the thoroughfares, and the driving was furious and reckless in the extreme. Accidents were strangely seldom when we consider the rate of speed, the nature of the roads, and the quantity of bad whisky consumed by most of the drivers. Many of these drivers made it a practice to drink at every stopping-place. Seventeen drinks were counted in one forenoon ride by one of these thirsty Jehus. The racing between the rival stages was exciting enough. Lashing the wiry little horses to full speed, there was but one thought, and that was, to “get in ahead.” A driver named White upset his stage between Montezuma and Knight’s Ferry on the Stanislaus, breaking his right-leg above the knee. Fortunately none of the passengers were seriously hurt, though some of them were a little bruised and frightened. The stage was righted, White resumed the reins, whipped his horses into a run, and, with his broken limb hanging loose, ran into town ten minutes ahead of his rival, fainting as he was lifted from the seat.
“Old man Holden told me to go in ahead or smash everything, and I made it!” exclaimed White, with professional pride.
The Bishop was fortunate enough to escape with unbroken bones as he dashed from point to point over the California hills and valleys, though that heavy body of his was mightily shaken up on many occasions.
He came to California on his second visit, in 1863, when the war was raging. An incident occurred that gave him a very emphatic reminder that those were troublous times.
He was at a camp-meeting in the San Joaquin Valley, near Linden–a place famous for gatherings of this sort. The Bishop was to preach at eleven o’clock, and a great crowd was there, full of high expectation. A stranger drove up just before the hour of service–a broad shouldered man in blue clothes, and wearing a glazed cap. He asked to see Bishop Kavanaugh privately for a few moments.
They retired to “the preachers’ tent,” and the stranger said:
“My name is Jackson–Colonel Jackson, of the United States Army. I have a disagreeable duty to perform. By order of General McDowell, I am to place you under arrest, and take you to San Francisco.”
“Can you wait until I preach my sermon?” asked the Bishop, good-naturedly; “the people expect it, and I don’t want to disappoint them if it can be helped.”
“How long will it take you?”
“Well, I am a little uncertain when I get started, but I will try not to be too long.”
“Very well; go on with your sermon, and if you have no objection I will be one of your hearers.”
The secret was known only to the Bishop and his captor. The sermon was one of his best–the vast crowd of people were mightily moved, and the Colonel’s eyes were not dry when it closed. After a prayer, and a song, and a collection, the Bishop stood up again before the people, and said:
“I have just received a message which makes it necessary for me to return to San Francisco immediately. I am sorry that I cannot remain longer, and participate with you in the hallowed enjoyments of the occasion. The blessing of God be with you, my brethren and sisters.”
His manner was so bland, and his tone so serene, that nobody had the faintest suspicion as to what it was that called him away so suddenly. When he drove off with the stranger, the popular surmise was that it was a wedding or a funeral that called for such haste. These are two events in human life that admit of no delays: people must be buried, and they will be married.
The Bishop reported to General Mason, Provost-marshal General, and was told to hold himself as in duress until further orders, and to be ready to appear at headquarters at short notice when called for. He was put on parole, as it were. He came down to San Jose and stirred my congregation with several of his powerful discourses. In the meantime the arrest had gotten into the newspapers. Nothing that happens escapes the California journalists, and they have even been known to get hold of things that never happened at all. It seems that someone in the shape of a man had made an affidavit that Bishop Kavanaugh had come to the Pacific Coast as a secret agent of the Southern Confederacy, to intrigue and recruit in its interest! Five minutes’ inquiry would have satisfied General McDowell of the silliness of such a charge–but it was in war times, and he did not stop to make the inquiry. In Kentucky the good old Bishop had the freedom of the whole land, coming and going without hinderance; but the fact was, he had not been within the Confederate lines since the war began. To make such an accusation against him was the climax of absurdity.
About three weeks after the date of his arrest, I was with the Bishop one morning on our way to Judge Moore’s beautiful country-seat, near San Jose, situated on the far-famed Alameda. The carriage was driven by a black man named Henry. Passing the post-office, I found, addressed to the Bishop in my care, a huge document bearing the official stamp of the provost-marshal’s office, San Francisco. He opened and read it as we drove slowly along, and as he did so he brightened up, and turning to Henry, said:
“Henry, were you ever a slave?”
“Yes, sah; in Mizzoory,” said Henry, showing his white teeth.
“Did you ever get your free-papers?”
“Yes, sah–got ’em now.”
“Well, I have got mine–let’s shake hands.”
And the Bishop and Henry had quite a handshaking over this mutual experience. Henry enjoyed it greatly, as his frequent chucklings evinced while the Judge’s fine bays were trotting along the Alameda.
(I linger on the word Alameda as I write it. It is at least one beneficent trace of the early Jesuit Fathers who founded the San Jose and Santa Clara missions a hundred years ago. They planted an avenue of willows the entire three miles, and in that rich, moist soil the trees have grown until their trunks are of enormous size, and their branches, overarching the highway with their dense shade, make a drive of unequaled beauty and pleasantness. The horse-cars have now taken away much of its romance, but in the early days it was famous for moonlight drives and their concomitants and consequences. A long-limbed four-year-old California colt gave me a romantic touch of a different sort, nearly the last time I was on the Alameda, by running away with the buggy, and breaking it and me–almost–to pieces. I am reminded of it by the pain in my crippled right-shoulder as I write these lines in July, 1881. But still I say, Blessings on the memory of the Fathers who planted the willows on the Alameda!)
An intimation was given the Bishop that if he wanted the name of the false-swearer who had caused him to be arrested he could have it.
“No, I don’t want to know his name,” said he; “it will do me no good to know it. May God pardon his sin, as I do most heartily!”
A really strong preacher preaches a great many sermons, each of which the hearers claim to be the greatest sermon of his life. I have heard of at least a half dozen “greatest” sermons by Bascom and Pierce, and other noted pulpit orators. But I heard one sermon by Kavanaugh that was probably indeed his master-effort. It had a history. When the Bishop started to Oregon, in 1863, I placed in his hands Bascom’s Lectures, which, strange to say, he had never read. Of these Lectures the elder Dr. Bond said “they would be the colossal pillars of Bascom’s fame when his printed sermons were forgotten.” Those Lectures wonderfully anticipated the changing phases of the materialistic infidelity developed since his day, and applied to them the reductio ad absurdum with relentless and resistless power. On his return from Oregon, Kavanaugh met and presided over the Annual Conference at San Jose. One of his old friends, who was troubled with skeptical thoughts of the materialistic sort, requested him to preach a sermon for his special benefit. This request, and the previous reading of the Lectures, directed his mind to the topic suggested with intense earnestness. The result was, as I shall always think, the sermon of a lifetime. The text was, There is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. (Job xxxii. 8.) That mighty discourse was a demonstration of the truth of the affirmation of the text. I will not attempt to reproduce it here, though many of its passages are still vivid in my memory. It tore to shreds the sophistries by which it was sought to sink immortal man to the level of the brutes that perish; it appealed to the consciousness of his hearers in red-hot logic that burned its way to the inmost depths of the coldest and hardest hearts; it scintillated now and then sparkles of wit like the illuminated edges of an advancing thundercloud; borne, on the wings of his imagination, whose mighty sweep took him beyond the bounds of earth, through whirling worlds and burning suns, he found the culmination of human destiny, in the bosom of eternity, infinity, and God. The peroration was indescribable. The rapt audience reeled under it. Inspiration! the man of God was himself its demonstration, for the power of his word was not his own.
“O I thank God that be sent me here this day to hear that sermon! I never heard any thing like it, and I shall never forget it, or cease to be thankful that I heard it,” said the Rev. Dr. Charles Wadsworth, of Philadelphia, the great Presbyterian preacher–a man of genius, and a true prose-poet, as any one will concede after reading his published sermons. As he spoke, the tears were in his eyes, the muscles of his face quivering, and his chest heaving with irrepressible emotion. Nobody who heard that discourse will accuse me of too high coloring in this brief description of it.
“Don’t you wish you were a Kentuckian?” was the enthusiastic exclamation of a lady who brought from Kentucky a matchless wit and the culture of Science Hill Academy, which has blessed and brightened so many homes from the Ohio to the Sacramento.
I think the Bishop was present on another occasion when the compliment he received was a left-handed one. It was at the Stone Church in Suisun Valley. The Bishop and a number of the most prominent ministers of the Pacific Conference were present at a Saturday-morning preaching appointment. They had all been engaged in protracted labors, and, beginning with the Bishop, one after another declined to preach. The lot fell at last upon a boyish-looking brother of very small stature, who labored under the double disadvantage of being a very young preacher, and of having been reared in the immediate vicinity. The people were disappointed and indignant when they saw the little fellow go into the pulpit. None showed their displeasure more plainly than Uncle Ben Brown, a somewhat eccentric old brother, who was one of the founders of that Society, and one of its best official members. He sat as usual on a front seat, his thick eyebrows fiercely knit, and his face wearing a heavy frown. He had expected to hear the Bishop, and this was what it had come to! He drew his shoulders sullenly down, and, with his eyes bent upon the floor, nursed his wrath. The little preacher began his sermon, and soon astonished everybody by the energy with which he spoke. As he proceeded, the frown on Uncle Ben’s face relaxed a little; at length he lifted his eyes and glanced at the speaker in surprise. He did not think it was in him. With abnormal fluency and force, the little preacher went on with the increasing sympathy of his audience, who were feeling the effects of a generous reaction in his favor. Uncle Ben, touched a little with honest obstinacy as he was, gradually relaxed in the sternness of his looks, straightening up by degrees until he sat upright facing the speaker in a sort of half-reluctant, pleased wonder. Just at the close of a specially vigorous burst of declamation, the old man exclaimed, in a loud voice:
“Bless God! he uses the weak things of this world to confound the mighty!” casting around a triumphant glance at the Bishop and other preachers.
This impromptu remark was more amusing to the hearers than helpful to the preacher, I fear; but it was away the dear old brother had of speaking out in meeting.
I must end this Sketch. I have dipped my pen in my heart in writing it. The subject of it has been friend, brother, father, to me since the day he looked in upon us in the little cabin on the hill in Sonora, in 1855. When I greet him on the hills of heaven, he will not be sorry to be told that among the many in the far West to whom he was helpful was the writer of this too imperfect Sketch.
Sanders.
He belonged to the Church militant. In looks he was a cross between a grenadier and a Trappist. But there was more soldier than monk in his nature. He was over six feet high, thin as a bolster, and straight as a long-leaf pine. His anatomy was strongly conspicuous. He was the boniest of men. There were as many angles as inches in the lines of his face. His hair disdained the persuasions of comb or brush, and rose in tangled masses above a head that would have driven a phrenologist mad. It was a long head in every sense. His features were strong and stern, his nose one that would have delighted the great Napoleon–it was a grand organ. You said at once, on looking at him, Here is a man that fears neither man nor devil. The face was an honest face. When you looked into those keen, dark eyes, and read the lines of that stormy countenance, you felt that it would be equally impossible for him to tell a lie or to fear the face of man.
This was John Sanders, one of the early California Methodist preachers. He went among the first to preach the gospel to the gold-hunters. He got a hearing where some failed. His sincerity and brainpower commanded attention, and his pluck enforced respect. In one case it seemed to be needed.
He was sent to preach in Placerville, popularly called in the old days, “Hangtown.” It was then a lively and populous place. The mines were rich, and gold-dust was abundant as good behavior was scarce. The one church in the town was a “union church,” and it was occupied by Sanders and a preacher of another sect on alternate Sundays. All went well for many months, and if there were no sinners converted in that camp, the few saints were at peace. It so happened that Sanders was called away for a week or two, and on his return he found that a new preacher had been sent to the place, and that he had made an appointment to preach on his (Sanders’s) regular day. Having no notion of yielding his rights, Sanders also inserted a notice in the papers of the town that he would preach at the same time and place. The thing was talked about in the town and vicinity, and there was a buzz of excitement. The miners, always ready for a sensation, became interested, and when Sunday came the church could not hold the crowd. The strange preacher arrived first, entered the pulpit, knelt a few moments in silent devotion, according to custom, and then sat and surveyed the audience which was surveying him with curious interest. He was a tall, fine-looking man, almost the equal of Sanders in height, and superior to him in height. He was a Kentuckian originally, but went from Ohio to California, and was a full-grown man, of the best Western physical type. In a little while Sanders entered the church, made his way through the dense crowd, ascended the pulpit, cast a sharp glance at the intruder, and sat down. There was a dead silence. The two preachers gazed at the congregation; the congregation gazed at the preachers. A pin might have been heard to fall. Sanders was as imperturbable as a statue, but his lips were pressed together tightly, and there was a blaze in his eyes. The strange preacher showed signs of nervousness, moving his hands and feet, and turning this way and that in his seat. It was within five minutes of the time for opening the service. The stranger rose, and was in the act of taking hold of the Bible that lay on the cushion in front of him, when Sanders rose to his full height, stepped in front of him, and darting lightning from his eyes as he looked him full in the face, said:
“I preach here today, sir!”
That settled it. There was no mistaking that look or tone. The tall stranger muttered an inarticulate protest and subsided. Sanders proceeded with the service, making no allusion to the difficulty until it was ended. Then he proposed a meeting of the citizens the next evening to adjudicate the case. The proposal was acceded to. The church was again crowded; and though ecclesiastically Sanders was in the minority, with the genuine love for fair-play which is a trait of Anglo-Saxon character, he was sustained by an overwhelming majority. It is likely, too, that his plucky bearing the, day before made him some votes. A preacher who would fight for his rights suited those wild fellows better than one who would assert a claim that he would not enforce. Sanders preached to larger audiences after this episode in his “Hangtown” pastorate.
It was after this that he went out one day to stake off a lot on which he proposed to build a house of worship. It was near the Roman Catholic Church. A zealous Irishman, who was a little more than half drunk, was standing by. Evidently he did not like any such heretical movements, and, after Sanders had placed the stake in the earth, the Hibernian stepped forward and pulled it up.
“I put the stake back in its place. He pulled it up again. I put it back. He pulled it up again. I put it back once more. He got fiery mad by this time, and started at me with an ax in his hand. I had an ax in my hand, and as its handle was longer than his, I cut him down.”
The poor fellow had waked up the fighting preacher, and fell before the sweep of Sanders’s ax. He dodged as the weapon descended, and saved his life by doing so. He got an ugly wound on the shoulder, and kept his bed for many weeks. When he rose from his bed he had a profound regard for Sanders, whose grit excited his admiration. There was not a particle of resentment in his generous Irish heart. He became a sober man, and it was afterward a current pleasantry among the “boys” that he was converted by the use of the carnal weapon wielded by that spunky parson. Nobody blamed Sanders for his part in the matter. It was a fair fight, and he had the right on his side. Had he shown the white feather, that would have damaged him with a community in whose estimation courage as the cardinal virtue. Sanders was popular with all classes, and Placerville remembers him to this day. He was no rose-water divine, but thundered the terrors of the law into the ears of those wild fellows with the boldness of a John the Baptist. Many a sinner quaked under his stern logic and fiery appeals, and some repented.
I shall never forget a sermon he preached at San Jose. He was in bad health, and his mind was morbid and gloomy. His text was, Who hath hardened himself against him, and hath prospered? (Job ix. 4.) The thought that ran through the discourse was the certainty that retribution would overtake the guilty. God’s law will be upheld. It protects the righteous, but must crush the disobedient. He swept away the sophisms by which men persuade themselves that they can escape the penalty of violated law; and it seemed as if we could almost hear the crash of the tumbling wrecks of hopes built on false foundations. God Almighty was visible on the throne of his power, armed with the even thunders of his wrath.
“Who hath defied God and escaped?” he demanded, with flashing eyes and trumpet voice. And then he recited the histories of nations and men that had made the fatal experiment, and the doom that had whelmed them in utter ruin.
“And yet you hope to escape!” he thundered to the silent and awestruck men and women before him. “You expect that God will abrogate his law to please you; that he will tear down the pillars of his moral government that you may be saved in your sins! O fools, fools, fools! there is no place but hell for such a folly as this!”
His haggard face, the stern solemnity of his voice, the sweep of his long arms, the gleam of his deep-set eyes, and the vigor of his inexorable logic, drove that sermon home to the listeners.
He was the keenest of critics, and often merciless. He was present at a camp-meeting near San Jose, but too feeble to preach. I was there, and disabled from, the effects of the California poison-oak. That deceitful shrub! Its pink leaves smile at you as pleasantly as sin, and, like sin, it leaves its sting. The “preachers’ tent” was immediately in the rear of “the stand,” and Sanders and I lay inside and listened to the sermons. He was in one of his caustic moods, and his comments were racy enough, though not helpful to devotion.
“There! he yelled, clapped his hands, stamped, and–said nothing!”
The criticism was just: the brother in the stand was making a great noise, but there was not much meaning in what he said.
“He made one point only–a pretty good apology for Lazarus’s poverty.”
This was said at the close of an elaborate discourse on “The Rich Man and Lazarus,” by a brother who sometimes got “in the brush.”
“He isn’t touching his text–he knows no more theology than a guinea-pig. Words, words, words!”
This last criticism was directed against a timid young divine, who was badly frightened, but who has since shown that there was good metal in him. If he had known what was going on just behind him, he would have collapsed entirely in that tentative effort at preaching the gospel.
Sanders kept up this running fire of criticism at every service, cutting to the bone, at every blow, and giving me new light on homiletics, if he did not promote my enjoyment of the preaching. He had read largely and thought deeply, and his incisive intellect had no patience with what was feeble or pointless.
Disease settled upon his lungs, and he rapidly declined. His strong frame grew thinner and thinner, and his mind alternated between moods of morbid bitterness and transient buoyancy. As the end approached, his bitter moods were less frequent, and an unwonted tenderness came into his words and tones. He went to the Lokonoma Springs, in the hills of Napa county, and in their solitudes he adjusted himself to the great change that was drawing near. The capacious blue sky that arched above him, the sighing of the gentle breeze through the solemn pines, the repose of the encircling mountains, bright with sunrise, or purpling in the twilight, distilled the soothing influences of nature into his spirit, and there was a great calm within. Beyond those California hills the hills of God rose in their supernal beauty before the vision of his faith, and when the summons came for him one midnight, his soul leaped to meet it in a ready and joyous response. On a white marble slab, at the “Stone Church,” in Suisun Valley, is this inscription:
Rev. John Sanders.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.
The spring flowers were blooming on the grave when I saw it last.
A Day.
Ah, that blessed, blessed day! I had gone to the White Sulphur Springs, in Napa County, to get relief from the effects of the California poison-oak. Gay deceiver! With its tender green and pink leaves, it looks as innocent and smiling as sin when it woos youth and ignorance. Like sin, it is found everywhere in that beautiful land. Many antidotes are used, but the only sure way of dealing with it is to keep away from it. Again, there is an analogy: it is easier to keep out of sin than to get out when caught. These soft, pure white sulphur waters work miracles of healing, and attract all sorts of people. The weary and broken down man of business comes here to sleep, and eat, and rest; the woman of fashion, to dress and flirt; the loudly-dressed and heavily-bejeweled gambler, to ply his trade; happy bridal couples, to have the world to themselves; successful and unsuccessful politicians, to plan future triumphs or brood over defeats; pale and trembling invalids, to seek healing or a brief respite from the grave; families escaping from the wind and fog of the bay, to spend a few weeks where they can find sunshine and quiet–it is a little world in itself. The spot is every way beautiful, but its chief charm is its isolation. Though within a few hours’ ride of San Francisco, and only two miles from a railroad-station, you feel as if you were in the very heart of nature –and so you are. Winding along the banks of a sparkling stream, the mountains–great masses of leafy green–rise abruptly on either hand; the road bends this way and that until a sudden turn brings you to a little valley hemmed in all around by the giant hills. A bold, rocky projection just above the main hotel gives a touch of ruggedness and grandeur to the scene. How delicious the feeling of rest that comes over you at once!–the world shut out, the hills around, and the sky above.
It was in 1863, when the civil war was at its white heat. Circumstances had given me undesired notoriety in that connection. I had been thrust into the very vortex of its passion, and my name made the rallying-cry of opposing elements in California. The guns of Manassas, Cedar Mountain, and the Chickahominy, were echoed in the foothills of the Sierras, and in the peaceful valleys of the far-away Pacific Coast. The good sense of a practical, people prevented any flagrant outbreak on a large scale, but here and there a too ardent Southerner said or did something that gave him a few weeks’ or months’ duress at Fort Alcatraz, and the honors of a bloodless martyrdom. I was then living at North Beach, in full sight of that fortress. It was kindly suggested by several of my brother editors that it would be a good place for me. When, as my eye swept over the bay in the early morning, the first sight that met my gaze was its rocky ramparts and bristling guns, the poet’s line would come to mind: “‘T is distance lends enchantment to the view.” I was just as close as I wanted to be. “I have good quarters for you,” said the brave and courteous Captain McDougall, who was in command at the fort; “and knowing your penchant, I will let you have the freedom of a sunny corner of the island for fishing in good weather.” The true soldier is sometimes a true gentleman.
The name and image of another Federal officer rise before me as I write. It is that of the heroic soldier, General Wright, who went down with the “Brother Jonathan,” on the Oregon coast, in 1865. He was in command of the Department of the Pacific during this stormy period of which I am speaking. I had never seen him, and I had no special desire to make his acquaintance. Somehow Fort Alcatraz had become associated with his name for reasons already intimated. But, though unsought by me, an interview did take place.
“It has come at last!” was my exclamation as I read the note left by an orderly in uniform notifying me that I was expected to report at the quarters of the commanding-general the next day at ten o’clock. Conscious of my innocence of treason or any other crime against the Government or society, my pugnacity was roused by this summons. Before the hour set for my appearance at the military headquarters, I was ready for martyrdom or any thing else except Alcatraz. I didn’t like that. The island was too small, and too foggy and windy, for my taste. I thought it best to obey the order I had received, and so, punctually at the hour, I repaired to the headquarters on Washington Street, and ascending the steps with a firm tread and defiant feeling, I entered the room. General Mason, provost-marshal, a scholar and polished gentleman, politely offered me a seat.
“No; I prefer to stand,” I said stiffly.
“The General will see you in a few minutes,” said he, resuming his work, while I stood nursing my indignation and sense of wrong.
In a little while General Wright entered–a tall and striking figure, silver-haired, blue-eyed, ruddy faced, with a mixture of the dash of the soldier and the benignity of a bishop.
Declining also his cordial invitation to be seated, I stood and looked at him, still nursing defiance, and getting ready to wear a martyr’s crown. The General spoke:
“Did you know, sir, that I am perhaps the most attentive reader of your paper to be found in California?”
“No; I was not aware that I had the honor of numbering the commanding-general of this department among my readers.” (This was spoken with severe dignity.)
“A lot of hotheads have for sometime been urging me to have you arrested on the ground that you are editing and publishing a disloyal newspaper. Not wishing to do any injustice to a fellowman, I have taken means every week to obtain a copy of your paper, the Pacific Methodist; and allow me to say, sir, that no paper has ever come into my family which is such a favorite with all of us.”
I bowed, feeling that the spirit of martyrdom was cooling within me. The General continued:
“I have sent for you, sir, that I might say to you, Go on in your present prudent and manly course, and while I command this department you are as safe as I am.”
There I stood, a whipped man, my pugnacity all gone, and the martyr’s crown away out of my reach. I walked softly downstairs, after bidding the General an adieu in a manner in marked contrast to that in which I had greeted him at the beginning of the interview. Now that it is all over, and the ocean winds have wailed their dirges for him so many long years, I would pay a humble tribute to the memory of as brave and knightly a man as ever wore epaulettes or fought under the stars and stripes. He was of the type of Sidney Johnston, who fell at Shiloh, and of McPherson, who fell at Kennesaw–all Californians; all Americans, true soldiers, who had a sword for the foe in fair fight in the open field, and a shield for woman, and for the noncombatant, the aged, the defenseless. They fought on different sides to settle forever a quarrel that was bequeathed to their generation, but their fame is the common inheritance of the American people. The reader is beginning to think I am digressing, but he will better understand what is to come after getting this glimpse of those stormy days in the sixties.
The guests at the Springs were about equally divided in their sectional sympathies. The gentlemen were inclined to avoid all exciting discussions, but the ladies kept up a fire of small arms. When the mails came in, and the latest news was read, comments were made with flashing eyes and flushed cheeks.
The Sabbath morning dawned without a cloud. I awoke with the earliest song of the birds, and was out before the first rays of the sun had touched the mountaintops. The coolness was delicious, and the air was filled with the sweet odors of aromatic shrubs and flowers, with a hint of the pine-forests and balsam-thickets from the higher altitudes. Taking a breakfast solus, pocket-bible in hand I bent my steps up the gorge, often crossing the brook that wound its way among the thickets or sung its song at the foot of the great overhanging cliffs. A shining trout would now and then flash like a silver bar for a moment above the shaded pools. With light step a doe descending the mountain came upon me, and, gazing at me a moment or two with its soft eyes, tripped away. In a narrow pass where the stream rippled over the pebbles between two great walls of rock, a spotted snake crossed my path, hurrying its movement in fright. Fear not, humble ophidian. The war declared between thee and me in the fifteenth verse of the third chapter of Genesis is suspended for this one day. Let no creature die today but by the act of God. Here is the lake. How beautiful! how still! A landslide had dammed the stream where it flowed between steep, lofty banks, backing the waters over a little valley three or four acres in extent, shut in on all sides by the wooded hills, the highest of which rose from its northern margin. Here is my sanctuary, pulpit, choir, and altar. A gigantic pine had fallen into the lake, and its larger branches served to keep the trunk above the water as it lay parallel with the shore. Seated on its trunk, and shaded by some friendly willows that stretch their graceful branches above, the hours pass in a sort of subdued ecstasy of enjoyment. It is peace, the peace of God. No echo of the world’s discords reaches me. The only sound I hear is the cooing of a turtledove away off in a distant gorge of the mountain. It floats down to me on the Sabbath air with a pathos as if it voiced the pity of Heaven for the sorrows of a world of sin, and pain, and death. The shadows of the pines are reflected in the pellucid depths, and ever and anon the faintest hint of a breeze sighs among their branches overhead. The lake lies without a ripple below, except when from time to time a gleaming trout throws himself out of the water, and, falling with a splash, disturbs the glassy surface, the concentric circles showing where he went down. Sport on, ye shiny denizens of the deep; no angler shall cast his deceitful hook into your quiet haunts this day. Through the foliage of the overhanging boughs the blue sky is spread, a thin, fleecy cloud at times floating slowly along like a watching angel, and casting a momentary shadow upon the watery mirror below. That sky, so deep and so solemn, woos me–lifts my thought till it touches the Eternal. What mysteries of being lie beyond that sapphire sea? What wonders shall burst upon the vision when this mortal shall put on immortality? I open the Book and read. Isaiah’s burning song makes new music to my soul attuned. David’s harp sounds a sweeter note. The words of Jesus stir to diviner depths. And when I read in the twenty-first chapter of Revelation the Apocalyptic promise of the new heavens and the new earth, and of the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, a new glory seems to rest upon sky, mountain forest, and lake, and my soul is flooded with a mighty joy. I am swimming in the Infinite Ocean. Not beyond that vast blue canopy is heaven; it is within my own ravished heart! Thus the hours pass, but I keep no note of their flight, and the evening shadows are on the water before I come back to myself and the world. O hallowed day! O hallowed spot! foretaste and prophecy to the weary and burden-bowed soul of the new heavens and the new earth where its blessed ideal shall be a more blessed reality!
It is nearly dark when I get back to the hotel. Supper is over, but I am not hungry–I have feasted on the bread of angels.
“Did you know there was quite a quarrel about you this morning?” asks one of the guests.
The words jar. In answer to my look of inquiry, he proceeds:
“There was a dispute about your holding a religious service at the picnic grounds. They made it a political matter–one party threatened to leave if you did preach, the other threatened to leave if you did not preach. There was quite an excitement about it until it was found that you were gone, and then everybody quieted down.”
There is a silence. I break it by telling them how I spent the day, and then they are very quiet.
The next Sabbath every soul at the place united in a request for a religious service, the list headed by a high-spirited and brilliant Pennsylvania lady who had led the opposing forces the previous Sunday.
Winter-Blossomed.
I think I saw him the first Sunday I preached in San Jose, in 1856. He was a notable-looking man. I felt attracted toward him by that indefinable sympathy that draws together two souls born to be friends. I believe in friendship at first sight. Who that ever had a real friend does not? Love at first sight is a different thing–it may be divine and eternal, or it may be a whim or a passing fancy. Passion blurs and blinds in the region of sexual love: friendship is revealed in its own white light.
I was introduced after the service to the stranger who had attracted my attention, and who had given the youthful preacher such a kind and courteous hearing.
“This is Major McCoy.”
He was a full head higher than anybody else as he stood in the aisle. He bowed with courtly grace as he took my hand, and his face lighted with a smile that had in it something more than a conventional civility. I felt that there was a soul beneath that dignified and courtly exterior. His head displayed great elevation of the cranium, and unusual breadth of forehead. It was what is called an intellectual head; and the lines around the eyes showed the traces of thought, and, as it seemed to me, a tinge of that sadness that nearly always lends its charm to the best faces.
“I have met a man that I know I shall like,” was my gratified exclamation to the mistress of the parsonage, as I entered.
And so it turned out. He became one of the select circle to whom I applied the word friend in the sacredest sense. This inner circle can never be large. If you unduly enlarge it you dilute the quality of this wine of life. We are limited. There is only One Heart large enough to hold all humanity in its inmost depths.
My new friend lived out among the sycamores on the New Almaden Road, a mile from the city, and the cottage in which he lived with his cultured and loving household was one of the social paradises of that beautiful valley in which the breezes are always cool, and the flowers never fade.
My friend interested me more and more. He had been a soldier, and in the Mexican war won distinction by his skill and valor. He was with Joe Lane and his gallant Indianians at Juamantla, and his name was specially mentioned among those whose fiery onsets had broken the lines of the swarthy foe, and won against such heavy odds the bloody field. He was seldom absent from church on Sunday morning, and now and then his inquiring, thoughtful face would be seen in my smaller audience at night. One unwelcome fact about him pained me, while it deepened my interest in him.
He was a skeptic. Bred to the profession of medicine and surgery, he became bogged in the depths of materialistic doubt. The microscope drew his thoughts downward until he could not see beyond second causes. The soul, the seat of which the scalpel could not find, he feared did not exist. The action of the brain, like that of the heart and lungs, seemed to him to be functional; and when the organ perished did not its function cease forever? He doubted the fact of immortality, but did not deny it. This doubt clouded his life. He wanted to believe. His heart rebelled against the negations of materialism, but his intellect was entangled in its meshes. The Great Question was ever in his thought, and the shadow was ever on his path. He read much on both sides, and was always ready to talk with any from whom he had reason to hope for new light or a helpful suggestion. Did he also pray? We took many long rides and had many long talks together. Pausing under the shade of a tree on the highway, the hours would slip away while we talked of life and death, and weighed the pros and cons of the mighty hope that we might live again, until the sun would be sinking into the sea behind the Santa Cruz Mountains, whose shadows were creeping over the valley. He believed in a First Cause. The marks of design in Nature left in his mind no room to doubt that there was a Designer.
“The structure and adaptations of the horse harnessed to the buggy in which we sit, exhibit the infinite skill of a Creator.”
On this basis I reasoned with him in behalf of all that is precious to Christian faith and hope, trying to show (what I earnestly believe) that, admitting the existence of God, it is illogical to stop short of a belief in revelation and immortality.
The rudest workman would not fling The fragments of his work away, If every useless bit of clay He trod on were a sentient thing.
And does the Wisest Worker take Quick human hearts, instead of stone, And hew and carve them one by one, Nor heed the pangs with which they break?
And more: if but creation’s waste, Would he have given us sense to yearn For the perfection none can earn, And hope the fuller life to taste?
I think, if we most cease to be, It is cruelty refined To make the instincts of our mind Stretch out toward eternity.
Wherefore I welcome Nature’s cry, As earnest of a life again, Where thought shall never be in vain, And doubt before the light shall fly.
My talks with him were helpful to me if not to him. In trying to remove his doubts my own faith was confirmed, and my range of thought enlarged. His reverent spirit left its impress upon mine.
“McCoy is a more religious man than either you or I, Doctor,” said Tod Robinson to me one day in reply to a remark in which I had given expression to my solicitude for my doubting friend.
Yes, strange as it may seem, this man who wrestled with doubts that wrung his soul with intense agony, and walked in darkness under the veil of unbelief; had a healthful influence upon me because the attitude of his soul was that of a reverent inquirer, not that of a scoffer.
The admirable little treatise of Bishop McIlvaine, on the “Evidences of Christianity,” cleared away some of his difficulties. A sermon of Bishop Kavanaugh, preached at his request, was a help to him. (That wonderful discourse is spoken of elsewhere in this volume.)
A friend of his lay dying at Redwood City. This friend, like himself; was a skeptic, and his doubts darkened his way as he neared the border of the undiscovered country. McCoy went to see him. The sick man, in the freedom of long friendship, opened his mind to him. The arguments of the good Bishop were yet fresh in McCoy’s mind, and the echoes of his mighty appeals were still sounding in his heart. Seated by the dying man, he forgot his own misgivings, and with intense earnestness pointed the struggling soul to the Saviour of sinners.
“I did not intend it, but I was impelled by a feeling I could not resist. I was surprised and strangely thrilled at my own words as I unfolded to my friend the proofs of the truth of Christianity, culminating in the incarnation, death, and resurrection, of Jesus Christ. He seemed to have grasped the truths as presented, a great calm came over him, and he died a believer. No incident of my life has given me a purer pleasure than this; but it was a strange thing! Nobody could have had access to him as I had–I, a doubter and a stumbler all my life; it looks like the hand of God!”
His voice was low, and his eyes were wet as he finished the narration.
Yes, the hand of God was in it–it is in every good thing that takes place on earth. By the bedside of a dying friend, the undercurrent of faith in his warily and noble heart swept away for the time the obstructions that were in his thought, and bore him to the feet of the blessed, pitying Christ, who never breaks a bruised reed. I think he had more light, and felt stronger ever after.
Death twice entered his home-circle–once to convey a budding flower from the earth-home to the skies, and again like a lightning-stroke laying young manhood low in a moment. The instinct within him, stronger than doubt, turned his thought in those dark hours toward God. The ashes of the earthly hopes that had perished in the fire of fierce calamity, and the tears of a grief unspeakable, fertilized and watered the seed of faith which was surely in his heart. The hot furnace-fire did not harden this finely-tempered soul. But still he walked in darkness, doubting, doubting, doubting all he most wished to believe. It was the infirmity of his constitution, and the result of his surroundings. He went into large business enterprises with mingled success and disappointment. He went into politics, and though he bore himself nobly and gallantly, it need not be said that that vortex does not usually draw those who are within its whirl heavenward. He won some of the prizes that were fought for in that arena where the noblest are in danger of being soiled, and where the baser metal sinks surely to the bottom by the inevitable force of moral gravitation.
From time to time we were thrown together, and I was glad to know that the Great Question was still in his thought, and the hunger for truth was still in his heart. Ill health sometimes made him irritable and morbid, but the drift of his inner nature was unchanged. His mind was enveloped in mists, and sometimes tempests of despair raged within him; but his heart still thirsted for the water of life.
A painful and almost fatal railway accident befell him. He was taken to his ranch among the quiet hills of Shasta County. This was the final crisis in his life. Shut out from the world, and shut in with his own thoughts and with God, he reviewed his life and the argument that had so long been going on in his mind. He was now quiet enough to hear distinctly the Still Small Voice whose tones he could only half discern amid the clamors of the world when he was a busy actor on its stage. Nature spoke to him among the hills, and her voice is God’s. The great primal instincts of the soul, repressed in the crowd or driven into the background by the mob of petty cares and wants, now had free play in the nature of this man whose soul had so long cried out of the depths for the living God. He prayed the simple prayer of trust at which the gate flies open for the believing soul to enter into the peace of God. He was born into the new life. The flower that had put forth its abortive buds for so many seasons, burst into full bloom at last. With the mighty joy in his heart, and the light of the immortal hope beaming upon him, he passed into the World of Certainties.
A Virginian in California.
“Hard at it, are you, uncle?”
“No, sah–I’s workin’ by de day, an’ I an’t a-hurtin’ myself.”
This answer was given with a jolly laugh as the old man leaned on his pick and looked at me.
“You looked so much like home-folks that I felt like speaking to you. Where are you from?”
“From Virginny, sah!” (pulling himself up to his full height as he spoke). “Where’s you from, Massa?”
“I was brought up partly in Virginia too?”
“Wbar’bouts, in Virginny?”
“Mostly in Lynchburg.”
“Lynchburg! dat’s whar I was fotched up. I belonged to de Widder Tate, dat lived on de New London Road. Gib me yer han’, Massa!”
He rushed up to the buggy, and taking my extended hand in his huge fist he shook it heartily, grinning with delight.
This was Uncle Joe, a perfect specimen of the old Virginia “Uncle,” who had found his way to California in the early days. Yes, he was a perfect specimen–black as night, his lower limbs crooked, arms long, hands and feet very large. His mouth was his most striking feature. It was the orator’s mouth in size, being larger than that of Henry Clay–in fact, it ran almost literally from ear to ear. When he opened it fully, it was like lifting the lid of a box.
Uncle Joe and I became good friends at once. He honored my ministry with his presence on Sundays. There was a touch of dandyism in him that then and there came out. Clad in a blue broadcloth dress-coat of the olden cut, vest to match, tight-fitting pantaloons, stove-pipe hat, and yellow kid gloves, he was a gorgeous object to behold. He knew it, and there was a pleasant self-consciousness in the way he bore himself in the sanctuary.
Uncle Joe was the heartiest laugher I ever knew. He was always as full of happy life as a frisky colt or a plump pig. When he entered a knot of idlers on the streets, it was the signal or a humorous uproar. His quaint sayings, witty repartee, and contagious laughter, never failed. He was as agile as a monkey, and his dancing was a marvel. For a dime he would “cut the pigeon wing,” or give a “double-shuffle” or “breakdown” in a way that made the beholder dizzy.
What was Uncle Joe’s age nobody could guess–he had passed the line of probable surmising. His own version of the matter on a certain occasion was curious. We had a colored female servant–an old-fashioned aunty from Mississippi–who, with a bandanna handkerchief on her head, went about the house singing the old Methodist choruses so naturally that it gave us a home-feeling to have her about us. Uncle Joe and Aunt Tishy became good friends, and he got into the habit of dropping in at the parsonage on Sunday evenings to escort her to church. On this particular occasion I was in the little study adjoining the dining-room where Aunt Tishy was engaged in cleaning away the dishes after tea. I was not eavesdropping, but could not help hearing what they said. My name was mentioned.
“O yes,” said Uncle Joe; “I knowed Massa Fitchjarals back dar in Virginny. I use ter hear ‘im preach dar when I was a boy.”
There was a silence. Aunt Tishy couldn’t swallow that. Uncle Joe’s statement, if true, would have made me more than a hundred years old, or brought him down to less than forty. The latter was his object; he wanted to impress Aunt Tishy with the idea that he was young-enough to be an eligible gallant to any lady. But it failed. That unfortunate remark ruined Uncle Joe’s prospects: Aunt Tishy positively refused to go with him to church, and just as soon as he had left she went into the sitting-room in high disgust, saying:
“What made dat nigger tell me a lie like dat? Tut, tut, tut!”
She cut him ever after, saying she would n’t keep company with a liar, “even if he was from de Souf.” Aunt Tishy was a good woman, and had some old-time notions. As a cook, she was discounted a little by the fact that she used tobacco, and when it got into the gravy it was not improving to its flavor.
Uncle Joe was in his glory at a dinner-party, where he could wait on the guests, give droll answers to the remarks made to call him out, and enliven the feast by his inimitable and “catching” laugh. In a certain circle no occasion of the sort was considered complete without his presence There was no such thing as dullness when he was about. His peculiar wit or his simplicity was brought out at a dinner-party one day at Dr. Bascom’s. There was a large gathering of the leading families of San Jose and vicinity, and Uncle Joe was there in his jolliest mood. Mrs. Bascom, whose wit was then the quickest and keenest in all California, presided, and enough good things were said to have made a reputation for Sidney Smith or Douglas Jerrold. Mrs. Bascom, herself a Virginian by extraction, had engaged in a laughing colloquy with Uncle Joe, who stood near the head of the table waving a bunch of peacock’s feathers to keep off the flies.
“Missus, who is yer kinfolks back dar in Virginny, any way?”
The names of several were mentioned.
“Why, dem’s big folks,” said Uncle Joe.
“Yes,” said she, laughingly; “I belong to the first families of Virginia.”
“I don’t know ’bout dat, Missus. I was dar ‘fore you was, an’ I don’t ‘long to de fus’ families!”
He looked at it from a chronological rather than a genealogical standpoint, and, strange to say, the familiar phrase had never been heard by him before.
Uncle Joe joined the Church. He was sincere in his profession. The proof was found in the fact that he quit dancing. No more “pigeon wings,” “double-shuffles,” or “breakdowns,” for him–he was a “perfessor.” He was often tempted by the offer of coin, but he stood firm.
“No, sah; I’s done dancin’, an’ don’t want to be discommunicated from de Church,” he would say, good-naturedly, as he shied off, taking himself away from temptation.
A very high degree of spirituality could hardly be expected from Uncle Joe at that late day; but he was a Christian after a pattern of his own –kind-hearted, grateful, simple-minded, and full of good humor. His strength gradually declined, and he was taken to the county hospital, where his patience and cheerfulness conciliated and elicited kind treatment from everybody. His memories went back to old Virginia, and his hopes looked up to the heaven of which his notions were as simple as those of a little child. In the simplicity of a child’s faith he had come to Jesus, and I doubt not was numbered among his little ones. Among the innumerable company that shall be gathered on Mount Zion from every kindred, tribe, and tongue, I hope to meet my humble friend, Uncle Joe.
At the End.
Among my acquaintances at San Jose, in 1863, was a young Kentuckian who had come down from the mines in bad health. The exposure of mining-life had been too severe for him. It took iron constitutions to stand all day in almost ice-cold water up to the waist with a hot sun pouring down its burning rays upon the head and upper part of the body. Many a poor fellow sunk under it at once, and after a few days of fever and delirium was taken to the top of an adjacent hill and laid to rest by the hands of strangers. Others, crippled by rheumatic and neuralgic troubles, drifted into the hospitals of San Francisco, or turned their faces sadly toward the old homes which they had left with buoyant hopes and elastic footsteps. Others still, like this young Kentuckian, came down into the valleys with the hacking cough and hectic flush to make a vain struggle against the destroyer that had fastened upon their vitals, nursing often a vain hope of recovery to the very last. Ah, remorseless flatterer! as I write these lines, the images of your victims crowd before my vision: the strong men that grew weak, and pale, and thin, but fought to the last inch for life; the noble youths who were blighted just as they began to bloom; the beautiful maidens etherealized into almost more than mortal beauty by the breath of the death-angel, as autumn leaves, touched by the breath of winter, blush with the beauty of decay. My young friend indulged no false hopes. He knew he was doomed to early death, and did not shrink from the thought. One day, as we were conversing in a store uptown, he said:
“I know that I have at most but a few months to live, and I want to spend them in making preparation to die. You will oblige me by advising me what books to read. I want to get clear views of what I am to do, and then do it.”
It need scarcely be said that I most readily complied with his request, and that first and chiefly I advised him to consult the Bible, as the light to his path and the lamp to his feet. Other books were suggested, and a word with regard to prayerful reading was given, and kindly received.
One day I went over to see my friend. Entering his room, I found him sitting by the fire with it table by his side, on which was lying a Bible. There was an unusual flush in his face, and his eye burned with unusual brightness.
“How are you today?” I asked.
“I am annoyed, sir–I am indignant,” he said.
“What is the matter?”
“Mr. —-, the–preacher, has just left me. He told me that my soul cannot be saved unless I perform two miracles: I must, he said, think of nothing but religion, and be baptized by immersion. I am very weak, and cannot fully control my mental action–my thoughts will wander in spite of myself. As to being put under the water, that would be immediate death; it would bring on a hemorrhage of the lungs, and kill me.”
He leaned his head on the table and panted for breath, his thin chest heaving. I answered:
“Mr.–is a good man, but narrow. He meant kindly in the foolish words he spoke to you. No man, sick or well, can so control the action of his mind as to force his thoughts wholly into one channel. I cannot do it, neither can any other man. God requires no such absurdity of you or anybody else. As to being immersed, that seems to be a physical impossibility, and he surely does not demand what is impossible. My friend, it really makes little difference what Mr.–says,or what I say, concerning this matter. What does God say? Let us see.”
I took up the Bible, and he turned a face upon me expressing the most eager interest. The blessed Book seemed to open of itself to the very words that were wanted. “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” “He knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust.” “Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come to the waters.”
Glancing at him as I read, I was struck with the intensity of his look as he drank in every word. A traveler dying of thirst in the desert could not clutch a cup of cold water more eagerly than he grasped these tender words of the pitying Father in heaven.
I read the words of Jesus: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” “Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise east out.”
“This is what God says to you, and these are the only conditions of acceptance. Nothing is said about any thing but the desire of your heart and the purpose of your soul. O my friend, these words are for you!”
The great truth flashed upon his mind, and flooded it with light. He bent his head and wept. We knelt and prayed together, and when we rose from our knees he said softly, as the tears stole, down his face:
“It is all right now–I see it clearly; I see it clearly!”
We quietly clasped hands, and sat in silent sympathy. There was no need for any words from me; God had spoken, and that was enough. Our hearts were singing together the song without words.
“You have found peace at the cross–let nothing disturb it,” I said, as he pressed my hand at the door as we left.
It never was disturbed. The days that had dragged so wearily and anxiously during the long, long months, were now full of brightness. A subdued joy shone in his face, and his voice was low and tender as he spoke of the blessed change that had passed upon him. The Book whose words had been light and life to him was often in his hand, or lay open on the little table in his room. He never lost his hold upon the great truth he had grasped, nor abated in the fullness of his joy. I was with him the night he died. He knew the end was at hand, and the thought filled him with solemn joy. His eyes kindled, and his wasted features fairly blazed with rapture as he said, holding my hand with both of his:
“I am glad it will all soon, be over. My peace has been unbroken since that morning when God sent you to me. I feel a strange, solemn joy a the thought that I shall soon know all.”
Before daybreak the great mystery was disclosed to him, and as he lay in his coffin next day, the smile that lingered on his lips suggested the thought that he had caught a hint of the secret while yet in the body.
Among the casual hearers that now and then dropped in to hear a sermon in Sonora, in the early days of my ministry there, was a man who interested me particularly. He was at that time editing one of the papers of the town, which sparkled with the flashes of his versatile genius. He was a true Bohemian, who had seen many countries, and knew life in almost all its phases. He had written a book of adventure which found many readers and admirers. An avowed skeptic, he was yet respectful in his allusions to sacred things, and I am sure his editorial notices of the pulpit efforts of a certain young preacher who had much to learn were more than just. He was a brilliant talker, with a vein of enthusiasm that was very delightful. His spirit was generous and frank, and I never heard from his lips an unkind word concerning any human being. Even his partisan editorials were free from the least tinge of asperity–and this is a supreme test of a sweet and courteous nature. In our talks he studiously evaded the one subject most interesting to me. With gentle and delicate skill he parried all my attempts to introduce the subject of religion in our conversations.
“I can’t agree with you on that subject, and we will let it pass” he would say, with a smile, and then he would start some other topic, and rattle on delightfully in his easy, rapid way.
He could not stay long at a place, being a confirmed wanderer. He left Sonora, and I lost sight of him. Retaining. a very kindly feeling for this gentle-spirited and pleasant adventurer, I was loth thus to lose all trace of him. Meeting a friend one day, on J Street, in the city of Sacramento, he said:
“Your old friend D–is at the Golden Eagle hotel. You ought to go and see him.”
I went at once. Ascending to the third story, I found his room, and, knocking at the door, a feeble voice bade me enter. I was shocked at the spectacle that met my gaze. Propped in an armchair in the middle of the room, wasted to a skeleton, and of a ghastly pallor, sat the unhappy man. His eyes gleamed with an unnatural brightness, and his features wore a look of intense suffering.
“You have come too late, sir,” he said, before I had time to say a word. “You can do me no good now. I have been sitting in this chair three weeks. I could not live a minute in any other position, Hell could not be worse than the tortures I have suffered! I thank you for coming to see me, but you can do me no good–none, none!”
He paused, panting for breath; and then he continued, in a soliloquizing way:
“I played the fool, making a joke of what was no joking matter. It is too late. I can neither think nor pray, if praying would do any good. I can only suffer, suffer, suffer!”
The painful interview soon ended. To every cheerful or hopeful suggestion which I made he gave but the one reply:
“Too late!”
The unspeakable anguish of his look, as his eyes followed me to the door, haunted me for many a day, and the echo of his words, “Too late!” lingered sadly upon my ear. When I saw the announcement of his death, a few days afterward, I asked myself the solemn question, Whether I had dealt faithfully with this lighthearted, gifted man when he was within my reach. His last rook is before me now, as I pencil these lines.
“John A–is dying over on the Portrero, and his family wants you to go over and see him.”
It was while I was pastor in San Francisco. A–was a member of my Church, and lived on what was called the Portrero, in the southern part of the city, beyond the Long Bridge. It was after night when I reached the little cottage on the slope above the bay.
“He is dying and delirious,” said a member of the family, as I entered the room where the sick man lay. His wife, a woman of peculiar traits and great religious fervor, and a large number of children and grandchildren, were gathered in the dying man’s chamber and the adjoining rooms. The sick man–a man of large and powerful frame–was restlessly tossing and roving his limbs, muttering incoherent words, with now and then a burst of uncanny laughter. When shaken, he would open his eyes for an instant, make some meaningless ejaculation, and then they would close again. The wife was very anxious that he should have a lucid interval while I was there.
“O I cannot bear to have him die without a word of farewell and comfort!” she said, weeping.
The hours wore on, and the dying man’s pulse showed that he was sinking steadily. Still he lay unconscious, moaning and gibbering, tossing from side to side as far as his failing strength permitted. His wife would stand and gaze at him a few moments, and then walk the floor in agony.
“He can’t last much longer,” said a visitor, who felt his pulse and found it almost gone, while his breathing became more labored. We waited in silence. A thought seemed to strike the wife. Without saying a word, she climbed upon the bed, took her dying husband’s head upon her lap, and, bending close above his face, began to sing. It was a melody I had never heard before–low, and sweet, and quaint. The effect was weird and thrilling as the notes fell tremulous from the singer’s lips in the hush of that dead hour of the night. Presently the dying man became more quiet, and before the song was finished he opened his eyes as a smile swept over his face, and as his glance fell on me I saw that he knew me. He called my name, and looked up in the face that bent above his own, and kissed it.
“Thank God!” his wife exclaimed, her hot tears falling on his face, that wore a look of strange serenity. Then she half whispered to me, her face beaming with a softened light:
“That old song was one we used to sing together when we were first married in Baltimore.”
On the stream of music and memory he had floated back to consciousness, called by the love whose instinct is deeper and truer than all the science and philosophy in the world.
At dawn he died, his mind clear, and the voice of prayer in his ears, and a look of rapture in his face.
Dan W–, whom I had known in the mines in the early days, had come to San Jose about the time my pastorate in the place began. He kept a meat-market, and was a most genial, accommodating, and good-natured fellow. Everybody liked him, and he seemed to like everybody. His animal spirits were unfailing, and his face never revealed the least trace of worry or care. He “took things easy,” and never quarreled with his luck. Such men are always popular, and Dan was a general favorite, as the generous and honest fellow deserved to be. Hearing that he was very sick, I went to see him. I found him very low, but he greeted me with a smile.
“How are you today, Dan?” I asked, in the offhand way of the old times.
“It is all up with me, I guess,” he replied, pausing to get breath between the words; “the doctor says I can’t get out of this–I must leave in a day or two.”
He spoke in a matter-of-fact way, indicating that he intended to take death, as he had taken life, easy.
“How do you feel about changing worlds, my old friend?”
“I have no say in the matter. I have got to go, and that is all there is of it.”
That was all I ever got out of him. He told me he had not been to church for ten years, as “it was not in his line.” He did not understand matters of that sort, he said, as his business was running a meat-market. He intended no disrespect to me or to sacred things–this was his way of putting the matter in his simple-heartedness.
“Shall I kneel here and pray with you?” I asked.
“No; you needn’t take the trouble, parson,” he said, gently; “you see I’ve got to go, and that’s all there is of it. I don’t understand that sort of thing–it’s not in my, line, you see. I’ve been in the meat business.”
“Excuse me, my old friend, if I ask if you do not, as a dying man, have some thoughts about God and eternity?”
“That’s not in my line, and I couldn’t do much thinking now any way. It’s all right, parson–I’ve got to go, and Old Master will do right about it.”
Thus he died without a prayer, and without a fear, and his case is left to the theologians who can understand it, and to the “Old Master” who will do right.
I was called to see a lady who was dying at North Beach, San Francisco. Her history was a singularly sad one, illustrating the ups and downs of California life in a startling manner. From opulence to poverty, and from poverty to sorrow, and from sorrow to death–these were the acts in the drama, and the curtain was about to fall on the last. On a previous visit I had pointed the poor sufferer to the Lamb of God, and prayed at her bedside, leaving her calm and tearful. Her only daughter, a sweet, fresh girl of eighteen, had two years ago betrothed herself to a young man from Oregon, who had come to San Francisco to study a profession. The dying mother had expressed a desire to see them married before her death, and I had been sent for to perform the ceremony.
“She is unconscious, poor thing!” said a lady who was in attendance, “and she will fail of her dearest wish.”
The dying mother lay with a flushed face, breathing painfully, with closed eyes, and moaning piteously. Suddenly her eyes opened, and she glanced inquiringly around the room. They understood her. The daughter and her betrothed were sent for. The mother’s face brightened as they entered, and she turned to me and said, in a faint voice:
“Go on with the ceremony, or it will be too late for me. God bless you, darling!” she added as the daughter bent down sobbing, and kissed her.
The bridal couple kneeled together by the bed of death, and the assembled friends stood around in solemn silence, while the beautiful formula of the Church was repeated, the dying mother’s eyes resting upon the kneeling daughter with an expression of unutterable tenderness. When the vows were taken that made them one, and their hands were clasped in token of plighted faith, she drew them both to her in a long embrace, and then almost instantly closed her eyes with a look of infinite restfulness, and never opened them again.
Of the notable men I met in the mines in the early days, there was one who piqued and puzzled my curiosity. He had the face of a saint with the habits of a debauchee. His pale and student-like features were of the most classic mold, and their expression singularly winning, save when at times a cynical sneer would suddenly flash over them like a cloud-shadow over a quiet landscape. He was a lawyer, and stood at the head of the bar. He was an orator whose silver voice and magnetic qualities often kindled the largest audiences into the wildest enthusiasm. Nature had denied him no gift of body or mind requisite to success in life; but there was a fatal weakness in his moral constitution. He was an inveterate gambler, his large professional earnings going into the coffers of the faro and monte dealers. His violations of good morals in other respects were flagrant. He worked hard by day, and gave himself up to his vices at night. Public opinion was not very exacting in those days, and his failings were condoned by a people who respected force and pluck, and made no close inquiries into a man’s private life, because it would have been no easy thing to find one who, on the score of innocence, was entitled to cast the first stone. Thus he lived from year to year, increasing his reputation as a lawyer of marked ability, and as a politician whose eloquence in every campaign was a tower of strength to his party. His fame spread until it filled the State, and his money still fed his vices. He never drank, and that cool, keen intellect never lost its balance, or failed him in any encounter on the hustings on at the bar. I often met him in public, but he never was known to go inside a church. Once, when in a street conversation I casually made some reference to religion, a look of displeasure passed over his face, and he abruptly left me. I was agreeably surprised when, on more than one occasion, he sent me a substantial token of goodwill, but I was never able to analyze the motive that prompted him to do so. This remembrance softens the feelings with which these lines are penciled. He went to San Francisco, but there was no change in his life.
“It is the old story,” said an acquaintance of whom I made inquiry concerning him: “he has a large and lucrative practice, and the gamblers get all he makes. He is getting gray, and he is failing a little. He is a strange being.”
It happened afterward that his office and mine were in the same building and on the same floor. As we met on the stairs, he would nod to me and pass on. I noticed that he was indeed “failing.” He looked-weary and sad, and the cold or defiant gleam in his steel-gray eyes, was changed into a wistful and painful expression that was very pathetic. I did not dare to invade his reserve with any tender of sympathy. Joyless and hopeless as he might be, I felt instinctively that he would play out his drama alone. Perhaps this was a mistake on my part: he may have been hungry for the word I did not speak. God knows. I was not lacking in proper interest in his well-being, but I have since thought in such cases it is safest to speak.
“What has become of B–?” said my landlord one day as we met in the hall. “I have been here to see him several times, and found his door locked, and his letters and newspapers have not been touched. There is something the matter, I fear.”
Instantly I felt somehow that there was a tragedy in the air, and I had a strange feeling of awe as I passed the door of B–‘s room.,
A policeman was brought, the lock forced, and we went in. A sickening odor of chloroform filled the room. The sight that met our gaze made us shudder. Across the bed was lying the form of a man partly dressed, his head thrown back, his eyes staring upward, his limbs hanging loosely over the bedside.
“Is he dead?” was asked in a whisper.
“No,” said the officer, with his finger on B–‘s wrist; “he is not dead yet, but he will never wake out of this. He has been lying thus two or three days.”
A physician was sent for, and all possible efforts made to rouse him, but in vain. About sunset the pulse ceased to beat, and it was only a lump of lifeless clay that lay there so still and stark. This was his death–the mystery of his life went back beyond my knowledge of him, and will only be known at the judgment-day.
One of the gayest and brightest of all the young people gathered at a May-day picnic, just across the bay from San Francisco, was Ada D–. The only daughter of a wealthy citizen, living in one of the lovely valleys beyond the coast-range of mountains, beautiful in person and sunny in temper, she was a favorite in all the circle of her associations. Though a petted child of fortune, she was not spoiled, Envy itself was changed into affection in the presence of a spirit so gentle, unassuming, and loving. She had recently been graduated from one of the best schools, and her graces of character matched the brilliance of her pecuniary fortune.
A few days after the May-day festival, as I was sitting in my office, a little before sunset, there was a knock at the door, and before I could answer the messenger entered hastily, saying:
“I want you to go with me at once to Amador Valley. Ada D–is dying, and wishes to be baptized. We just have time for the six o’clock boat to take us across the bay, where the carriage and horses are waiting for us. The distance is thirty miles, and we must run a race against death.”
We started at once: no minister of Jesus Christ hesitates to obey a summons like that. We reached the boat while the last taps of the last bell were being given, and were soon at the landing on the opposite side of the bay. Springing ashore, we entered the vehicle which was in readiness. Grasping the reins, my companion touched up the spirited team, and we struck across the valley. My driver was an old Californian, skilled in all horse craft and road-craft. He spoke no word, putting his soul and body into his work, determined, as he had said, to make the thirty miles by nine o’clock. There was no abatement of speed after we struck the hills: what was lost in going up was regained in going down. The mettle of those California-bred horses was wonderful; the quick beating of their hoofs upon the graveled road was as regular as the motion of machinery, steam-driven. It was an exciting ride, and there was a weirdness in the sound of the night-breeze floating by us, and ghostly, shapes seemed looking at us from above and below, as we wound our way through the hills, while the bright stars shone like funeral-tapers over a world of death. Death! how vivid and awful was its reality to me as I looked up at those shining worlds on high, and then upon the earth wrapped in darkness below! Death! his sable coursers are swift, and we may be too late! The driver shared my thoughts, and lashed the panting horses to yet greater speed. My pulses beat rapidly as I counted the moments.
“Here we are!” he exclaimed, as we dashed down the hill and brought up at the gate. “It is eight minutes to nine,” he added, glancing at his watch by the light of a lamp shining through the window.
“She is alive, but speechless, and going fast,” said the father, in a broken voice, as I entered the house.
He led me to the chamber of the dying girl; The seal of death was upon her. I bent above her, and a look of recognition came into her eyes. Not a moment was to be lost.
“If you know me, my child, and can enter the meaning of what I say, indicate the fact if you can.”
There was a faint smile and a slight but significant inclination of the fair head as it lay enveloped with its wealth of chestnut curls. With her hands folded on her breast, and her eyes turned upward, the dying girl lay in listening attitude, while in a few words I explained the meaning of the sacred rite and pointed her to the Lamb of God as the one sacrifice for sin. The family stood round the bed in awed and tearful silence. As the crystal sacramental drops fell upon her brow a smile flashed quickly over the pale face, there was a slight movement of the head–and she was gone! The upward look continued, and the smile never left the fair, sweet face. We fell upon our knees, and the prayer that followed was not for her, but for the bleeding hearts around the couch where she lay smiling in death.
Dave Douglass was one of that circle of Tennesseans who took prominent parts in the early history of California. He belonged to the Sumner County Douglasses, of Tennessee, and had the family warmth of heart, impulsiveness, and courage, that nothing could daunt. In all the political contests of the early days he took an active part, and was regarded as an unflinching and unselfish partisan by his own party, and as an openhearted and generous antagonist by the other. He was elected Secretary of State, and served the people with fidelity and efficiency. He was a man of a powerful physical frame, deep-chested, ruddy-, faced, blue-eyed, with just enough shagginess of eyebrows and heaviness of the under-jaw to indicate the indomitable pluck which was so strong an element in his character. He was a true Douglass, as brave and true as any of the name that ever wore the kilt or swung a claymore in the land of Bruce. His was a famous Methodist family in Tennessee, and though he knew more of politics than piety, he was a good friend to the Church, and had regular preaching in the schoolhouse near his farm on the Calaveras River. All the itinerants that traveled that circuit knew “Douglass’s Schoolhouse” as an appointment, and shared liberally in the hospitality and purse of the General–(that was his title).
“Never give up the fight!” he said to me, with flashing eye, the last time I met him in Stockton, pressing my hand with a warm clasp. It was while I was engaged in the effort to build a church in that place, and I had been telling him of the difficulties I had met in the work. That word and handclasp helped me.
He was taken sick soon after. The disease had taken too strong a grasp upon him to be broken. He fought bravely a losing battle for several days. Sunday morning came, a bright, balmy day. It was in the early summer. The cloudless sky was deep-blue, the sunbeams sparkled on the bosom of the Calaveras, the birds were singing in the trees, and the perfume of the flowers filled the air and floated in through the open window to where the strong man lay dying. He had been affected with the delirium of fever during most of his sickness, but that was past, and he was facing death with an unclouded mind.
“I think I am dying,” he said, half inquiringly.
“Yes–is there any thing we can do for you?”
His eyes closed for a few moments, and his lips moved as if in mental prayer. Opening his eyes, he said:
“Sing one of the old camp-meeting songs.”
A preacher present struck up the hymn, “Show pity, Lord, O Lord Forgive.”
The dying man, composed to rest, lay with folded hands and listened with shortening breath and a rapt face, and thus he died, the words and the melody that had touched his boyish heart among the far-off hills of Tennessee being the last sounds that fell upon his dying ear. We may hope that on that old camp-meeting song was wafted the prayer and trust of a penitent soul receiving the kingdom of heaven as a little child.
During my pastorate at Santa Rosa, one of my occasional hearers was John I–. He was deputy-sheriff of Sonoma County, and was noted for his quiet and determined courage. He was a man of few words, but the most reckless desperado knew that he could not be trifled with. When there was an arrest to be made that involved special peril, this reticent, low-voiced man was usually intrusted with the undertaking. He was of the good old Primitive Baptist stock from Caswell County, North Carolina, and had a lingering fondness for the peculiar views of that people. He had a weakness for strong drink that gave him trouble at times, but nobody doubted his integrity any more than they doubted his courage. His wife was an earnest Methodist, one of a family of sisters remarkable for their excellent sense and strong religious characters. Meeting him one day, just before my return to San Francisco, he said, with a warmth of manner not common with him:
“I am sorry you are going to leave Santa Rosa. You understand me, and if anybody can do me any good, you are the man.”
There was a tremor in his voice as he spoke, and he held my hand in a lingering grasp.
Yes, I knew him. I had seen him at church on more than one occasion with compressed lips struggling to conceal the strong emotion he felt, sometimes hastily wiping away an unbidden tear. The preacher, when his own soul is aglow and his sympathies all awakened and drawn out toward his hearers, is almost clairvoyant at times in his perception of their inner thoughts. I understood this man, though no disclosure had been made to me in words. I read his eye, and marked the wishful and anxious look that came over his face when his conscience was touched and his heart moved. Yes, I knew him, for my sympathy had made me responsive, and his words, spoken sadly, thrilled me, and rolled upon my spirit the burden of a soul. His health, which had been broken by hardships and careless living, began to decline more rapidly. I heard that he had expressed a desire to see me, and made no delay in going to see him. I found him in bed, and much wasted.
“I am glad you have come. I have been wanting to see you,” he said, taking my hand. “I have been thinking of my duty to God for a good while, and have felt more than anybody has suspected. I want to do what I can and ought to do. You have made this matter a study, and you ought to understand it. I want you to help me.”
We had many interviews, and I did what I could to guide a penitent sinner to the sinner’s Friend. He was indeed a penitent sinner–shut out from the world and shut in with God, the merciful Father was