Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader Part 5

=_Martin John Spaulding,[11] 1810-1872._=

From "Sketches of the Early Catholic Missions in Kentucky."

=_35._= LIFE IN THE NEW SETTLEMENTS.

The early Catholic emigrants to Kentucky, in common with their brethren of other denominations, had to endure many privations and hards.h.i.+ps.

As we may well conceive, there were few luxuries to be found in the wilderness, in the midst of which they had fixed their new habitations.

They often suffered even for the most indispensable necessaries of life.

To obtain salt, they had to travel many miles to the licks, through a country infested with savages; and they were often obliged to remain there for several days, until they could procure a supply.

There were then no regular roads in Kentucky. The forests were filled with a luxuriant undergrowth, thickly interspersed with the cane, and the whole closely interlaced with the wild pea-vine. These circ.u.mstances rendered them nearly impa.s.sable; and almost the only chance of effecting a pa.s.sage through this vegetable wilderness, was by following the paths or traces made by the herds of buffalo and other wild beasts. Luckily these traces were numerous, especially in the vicinity of the licks, which the buffalo were in the habit of frequenting, to drink the salt water, or lick the earth impregnated with salt.

The new colonists resided in log-cabins, rudely constructed, with no gla.s.s in the windows, with floors of dirt, or, in the better sort of dwellings, of puncheons of split timber, roughly hewed with the axe.

After they had worn out the clothing brought with them from the old settlements, both men and women were under the necessity of wearing buckskin or homespun apparel. Such a thing as a store was not known in Kentucky for many years: and the names of broadcloth, ginghams and calicoes, were never even so much as breathed. Moccasins made of buckskin, supplied the place of our modern shoes, blankets thrown over the shoulder, answered the purpose of our present fas.h.i.+onable coats and cloaks; and handkerchiefs tied around the head served instead of hats and bonnets. A modern fas.h.i.+onable bonnet would have been a matter of real wonderment in those days of unaffected simplicity.

The furniture of the cabins was of the same primitive character. Stools were used instead of chairs: the table was made of slabs of timber, rudely put together. Wooden vessels and platters supplied the place of our modern plates and china-ware; and a "tin cup was an article of delicate furniture, almost as rare as an iron-fork[12]," The beds were either placed on the floor, or on bedsteads of puncheons, supported by forked pieces of timber, driven into the ground, or resting on pins let into auger-holes in the sides of the cabin. Blankets, and bear and buffalo-skins, const.i.tuted often the princ.i.p.al bed-covering.

One of the chief resources for food was the chase. All kinds of game were then very abundant; and when the hunter chanced, to have a goodly supply of ammunition, his fortune was made for the year. The game was plainly dressed, and served up on wooden platters, with corn-bread, and the Indian dish-the well known _hominy_. The corn was ground with great difficulty, on the laborious hand-mills; for mills of other descriptions were then, and for many years afterwards, unknown in Kentucky.

Such was the simple manner of life led by our "pilgrim fathers." They had fewer luxuries, but perhaps were, withal, more happy than their more fastidious descendants. Hospitality was not then an empty name; every log-cabin was freely thrown open to all who chose to share in the best cheer its inmates could afford. The early settlers of Kentucky were bound together by the strong ties of common hards.h.i.+ps and dangers--to say nothing of other bonds of union--and they clung together with great tenacity. On the slightest alarm of Indian invasion, they all made common cause, and flew together to the rescue. There was less selfishness, and more generous chivalry; less bickering, and more cordial charity, then, than at present; notwithstanding all our boasted refinement.

[Footnote 11: Born in Kentucky, and long eminent as a controversial writer and a Prelate of the Roman Catholic church. His "sketches" give much interesting information respecting the early history of that church at the West.]

[Footnote 12: Marshall--History of Kentucky.]

=_James Henry Thornwell,[13] 1811-1862._=

From the "Discourses on Truth."

=_36._= EVIL TENDENCIES OF AN ACT OF SIN.

There is a double tendency in every voluntary determination, one to propagate itself, the other to weaken or support, according to its own moral quality, the general principle of virtue. Every sin, therefore, imparts a proclivity to other acts of the same sort, and disturbs and deranges, at the same time, the whole moral const.i.tution, it tends to the formation of special habits, and to the superinducing of a general debility of principle, which lays a man open to defeat from every species of temptation. The extent to which a single act shall produce this double effect, depends upon its intensity, its intensity depends upon the fullness and energy of will which will enter into it, and the energy of will depends upon the strength of the motives resisted. An act, therefore, which concludes an earnest and protracted conflict, which has not been reached without a stormy debate in the soul, which marks the victory of evil over the love of character, sensibility to shame, the authority of conscience and the fear of G.o.d, an act of this sort concentrates in itself the essence of all the single determinations which preceded it, and possesses power to generate a habit and to derange the const.i.tution, equal to that which the whole series of resistances to duty, considered as so many individual instances of transgression, is fitted to impart. By one such act a man is impelled with an amazing momentum in the path of evil. He lives years of sin in a day or an hour. It is always a solemn crisis when the first step is to be taken in a career of guilt, against which nature and education, or any other strong influences protest. The results are unspeakably perilous when a man has to fight his way into crime. The victory creates an epoch in his life. He is from that hour, without a miracle of grace, a lost man. The earth is strewed with wrecks of character which were occasioned by one fatal determination at a critical point in life, when the will stood face to face with duty, and had to make its decision deliberately and intensely for evil.

[Footnote 13: A Presbyterian divine, and professor of Theology, in South Carolina, his native state: a distinguished theological writer of the South.]

=_Charles P. McIlvaine,[14] 1799-1873._=

From a Sermon on the Resurrection of Christ.

=_37._=. ATTESTATIONS OF THE RESURRECTION.

Here we remark, in general, that his resurrection was the great sign and crowning miracle to which our Lord, all the way of his ministry, to the day of his crucifixion, referred both friends and opposers, for the final confirmation of all his claims and doctrines. He staked all on the promise that he would rise from death. The Jews asked of him a sign, that they might believe. He answered, "There shall no sign be given, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. For as Jonas was three days and nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Thus on that single; event, the resurrection of Christ, the whole of Christianity, as it all centres in, and depends on him, was made to hinge. Redemption waited the evidence of resurrection. Nothing was to be accounted as sealed and finally certified, till Jesus should deliver himself from the power of death.

All of the gospel, all the hopes it brings to us, all the promises with which it comforts us, were taken for their final verdict, as true or false, sufficient or worthless, to the door of that jealously-guarded and stone-sealed sepulchre, waiting the settlement of the question, _will he rise?_

But an event so momentous was not left to but one cla.s.s of evidences.

There was a way by which thousands at once were made to receive as powerful a.s.surance that Christ was risen, as if they had seen him in his risen body. Jesus, before his death, had made a great promise to his disciples, to be fulfilled by him only after his death and resurrection; a promise impossible to be fulfilled if his resurrection failed; because then, not only would he be under the power of death, but all his claim to divine power would be brought to nought. It was the promise of the Holy Ghost. "When the Comforter is come whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me, he shall glorify me."

It was after he had "shown himself alive after his pa.s.sion, by many infallible proofs, being seen of his disciples forty days, and speaking to them of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of G.o.d," that the day for the accomplishment of that promise came. The day was that which commemorated the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. It was now to witness the going forth of the gospel from Jerusalem. I need not relate to you the wonderful events of that day of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Ghost with the "sound as of a rus.h.i.+ng mighty wind" that "filled all the house;" the cloven tongues "like as of fire," which sat on each of the disciples; the evidence that it was the Spirit of G.o.d which had then come, given in the sudden and astonis.h.i.+ng change which immediately came over the apostles, transforming them from weak and timid men to the boldest and strongest; in the change which suddenly came upon the power of their ministry, converting it from the weak agent it had previously been in contact with all the unbelief and wickedness of men into an instrument so mighty that out of a congregation of Jews of all nations, many of whom had probably partaken in the crucifixion of Christ, three thousand that day were bowed down to repentance and subdued to his obedience.

Thus was the day of Pentecost, a great day of testimony to the life and divine power, and consequently the resurrection of Christ. Each of those who heard the divers tongues of the ministry of that day, each of the three thousand, was a witness of the same.

[Footnote 14: A native of New Jersey; in early life Chaplain and Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Military Academy at West Point and long time Bishop of Ohio in the Protestant Episcopal Church. His Treatise on the Evidences of Christianity has great merit, and his theological and controversial writings are in high esteem: greatly venerated for his truly evangelical character.]

=_George W. Bethune, 1805-1862._= (Manual, p. 487.)

From the "Expository Lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism."

=_38._= ASPIRATIONS TOWARDS HEAVEN.

Our Christian life is a course through, this world, which we are to run looking unto Jesus, at the right hand of the throne of G.o.d. The mark of the prize of the high calling is in heaven. Nay, it is the hope of heaven which keeps our souls surely and steadfastly. No matter what other proofs of his being a Christian, a man may think that he has--what moral virtue, what present zeal, what reverence for G.o.d and sacred things, what kindness and faithfulness to his fellow-men,--if he have not this longing thirst for heaven, he should doubt his Christianity.

The regenerate soul can be satisfied with nothing short of awaking with the divine likeness. We cannot pray aright without hoping for heaven, for there only will the askings of a pious heart be fully granted. We cannot give thanks aright without hoping for heaven, for there are the consummate blessings of the Redeemer's purchase. We cannot serve G.o.d aright without hoping for heaven, for there only is our faithfulness to be acknowledged, and our wages paid. Our hopes should be submissive, and our longing patient; we should be willing to remain so long as G.o.d has work for us here, but ever with a yearning sense that to depart and be with Christ is far better. Grace in the heart is an ascensive power, ever lifting its desires upward and upward, and so above the temptations of time and earth. We can never drive this world out of our hearts, but by bringing heaven into them. And heaven meets our affections when they ascend, as it met Jesus; and he who so walks, climbing the arduous way from the Valley of Baca to the temple on the mount (for we must walk until we get our wings of angelic strength), will so approach the heavenly threshold, as, like holy Enoch, he can cross it at a step.

Oh, dear friends, what an advantage have they whose Jesus is in heaven, over those first disciples when they had him with them personally on earth. They were for building tabernacles on Tabor, looking for a temporal kingdom, walking by sight and not by faith; but our Lord now above, draws up to a better, higher, holier home, our aims, our desires, and our love.

From "A Lecture:" Philadelphia, 1840.

=_39._= THE PROSPECTS OF ART IN THE UNITED STATES.

It is well for those who have sufficient wealth, to bring among us good works of foreign or ancient masters, especially if they allow free access to them for students and copyists. The true gems are, however, rare, and very costly. A single masterpiece would swallow up the whole sum which even the richest of our countrymen would be willing to devote in the way of paintings. I hope, however, soon to see the day when there shall be a fondness for making collections of works by _American artists_, or those resident among us. Such collections, judiciously made, would supply the best history of the rise and progress of the arts in the United States. They would, more than any other means, stimulate artists to a generous emulation. They would reflect high honor upon their possessors, as men who love Art for its own sake, and are willing to serve and encourage it. They would highly gratify the foreigner of taste who comes curious to observe the working of our inst.i.tutions and our habits of life. He does not cross the sea to find Vand.y.k.es and Murillos. He can enjoy them at home; but he wishes to discover what the children of the West can do in following or excelling European example.

The expense of such a collection could not be very great. A few thousands of dollars, less than is often lavished upon the French plate gla.s.s and l.u.s.tres, damask hangings, and Turkey carpets of a pair of parlors (more than which few of our houses can boast), would cover their walls with good specimens of American art, and do far more credit to the taste and heart of the owner.

=_William R. Williams,[15] 1804._= (Manual, p. 480.)

From "The Lectures on the Lord's Prayer."

=_40._= LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION.

We are warranted in praying to be brought through, temptation, when it is not of our own seeking, but of _G.o.d's sending_. If we walk without care and without vigilance, if we acknowledge not G.o.d in our ways, and take counsel at Ekron, and not at Zion,--leaving the Bible unread, and the closet unvisited,--if the sanctuary and the Sabbath lose their ancient hold upon us, and we then go on frowardly in the way of our own eyes, and after the counsel of our own heart, we have reason to tremble.

A conscience quick and sensitive, under the presence of the indwelling Spirit, is like the safety-lamp of the miner, a ready witness and a mysterious guardian against the deathful damps, that unseen, but fatal, cl.u.s.ter around our darkling way. To neglect prayer and watching, is to lay aside that lamp, and then, though the eye see no danger and the ear hear no warning, spiritual death may be gathering around us her invisible vapors, stored with ruin, and rife for a sudden explosion. We are _tempting G.o.d_, and shall _we_ be delivered?

And if this be so with, the negligent professor of religion, is it not applicable also to the openly careless, who never acknowledged Christ's claims to the heart and the life?