RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCES 437 recollect his ever reverting to any other. His parish was large, and he was extremely devoted to parish duties. He could not be called a student, in any sense of the word, except so far as writing sermons requires study. He wrote a large, a very large, number of sermons, and probably made some mental preparation for his extemporaneous addresses. But his library and study-table furnished none of the means, as his constant devotion to his parish left no leisure, for critical researches or learned investigation; and, in his letters to his daughter, he deprecates 'the pride of science and the wrangling of scholars,' and avows the English Bible sufficient for all purposes of the knowledge of God. The early years of his son were passed under all the influences of his father's faith, enforced and strengthened by the example of his father's devout and eminently pious life; and we have seen that his own genial nature was not susceptible of gloom or superstition, although he was at a very early age a thoughtful and deeply reflective youth. The religion that he learned from his father was associated with all his youthful feelings of devotion, and was probably very dear to his young affections. It must have been by gradual processes, as his understanding and reason developed and his inquiries advanced, that Calvinism lost its hold upon his affections, as it did upon his intellect. We have seen that he was well acquainted with the languages in which the Scriptures were written, and one of the most distinguished classical scholars that Harvard ever sent forth from its honored shades. It must have been from the love of truth, that he was led to investigate conscientiously, as he did, the original meaning of the words in which the Bible was written; to compare texts and commentators; to go back to the very fountain-head; to procure the earliest copies of the Scriptures, and to spend days, and weeks, and months, and years in efforts to restore the text to its original purity, with all the helps he could derive, not only from Biblical scholars, the ancient fathers, and the earliest teachers of the Church, but by the help also of learned commentators upon what are called the profane writers. He made the Greek language his study till the day of his death, in order to give its help to his conscientious inquiries; and although his principles of interpretation, and many of his reasonings, are not those of a large number of Biblical critics, his candor, and honesty, and sincerity have never been called in question. An extract from his journal will show that he made the daily duty of domestic worship a subsidiary aid to his own studies and researches. It is immediately after his settlement: 'I have commenced reading Doddridge's Family Expositor in the morning, before family prayers; I read the text and notes, with the improvement, before the domestics are called in to hear the prayer. After breakfast, I examine the difficult passages in other commentators, especially in Whitby, and read the original Greek, and Wakefield's or some other translation.' His library was dispersed, by public sale, after his death; but could some of the books that were his daily study have been preserved together, it would have been seen how faithful and exact was his reading. He read with pencil or pen in his hand, and CRITICAL STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 439 many of his books were interleaved for the purpose of making his own remarks or those of others as he read. An interleaved Grotius De Veritate is now in the possession of the writer, which shows his careful and faithful research. It will be seen in the Appendix that he was lavish in his expenditure to procure ancient copies of the Scriptures, and that his little fortune was spent in obtaining the books which he felt were requisite to enable him to come to a knowledge of the truth. His researches sent him back behind synods and councils; behind King James's translation of the Bible; behind Calvin and Luther, Athanasius and St. Augustine, to the simplicity of the primitive Church, to the faith of the Apostles and the teaching of Christ. That with all these aids, and this faithful study, the son's investigations resulted in a firm and decided faith in that form of Christianity which has since been called Unitarianism, and that it was painful to both father and son thus to differ, is equally honorable to both. Both were lovers of truth, both conscientious, and yet they differed toto cœlo in their speculative belief. Who shall say that the son was not as honest and sincere as the father? that conscience and honor did not enter as fully into his studies as into those of his father? that devotion to God, and love to man, were not as much the moving springs in his, as in his father's soul? The results to which each had come they both taught unreservedly, the son with as much openness as the father, but without giving himself a name; and perhaps it was the wish and hope of those who early departed from Calvinism to receive no sec tarian name, to belong to that anti-sectarian sect, 'whose religion,' according to Dr. Kirkland, 'consisted in being religious.' His preaching met the wants of the multitudes who thronged to hear him. Those who had found Calvinism insufficient for the wants of the soul, and were tempted, like the young person to whose letter he refers, 'to wish, that, if such representations of Christianity were a just picture of what should be a most beneficent religion, they would be glad to find it not true,' such persons were nourished and made better by his preaching. The truth, in relation to father and son, seemed to demand that the above remarks should be made, not because, in the humble view of the writer, Calvinism or Unitarianism are essential forms of Christianity, but in anticipation of that time, when religion will not be wholly concerned with speculative doctrines, but with the life of truth; and that life not manifested by the mere externals of particular forms or even of charities, but by the beauty of holiness,— the exhibition of the beauty of the perfect law, the life of God in the soul of man. CHAPTER XX. DEATH OF REV. MR. EMERSON. APPOINTMENT OF J. S. BUCKMINSTER AS LECTURER UPON THE DEXTER FOUNDATION IN HARVARD COLLEGE. STUDY OF GERMAN.-INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER AND HABITS. -LAST ILLNESS. ton. 1811. IN May of 1811 died the Rev. William Aged 27. Emerson, pastor of the First Church in BosThis church, and that in Brattle Street, had been associated together in the interchange of their sacramental lectures, each pastor preaching in the pulpit of the other in the afternoon of the Sabbath of the Lord's Supper. This was an endearing interchange of ministerial duties, and, to one as susceptible of all Christian charities as was the pastor of Brattle Street, it was sufficient to bind Mr. Emerson to him in tender relations. My brother preached the funeral sermon, and, in reverting to the circumstance that the pastors of the two churches had alternately officiated at each other's obsequies, a prophetic foreboding escaped him, that he should next follow his brother. A personal feeling of regretful resignation selected the words which he introduced towards the close of the sermon, 'O, 't is well With him! But who knows what the coming hour, |