Besides other means of recreation, Carleton was happy in having been from childhood a lover of music. In earlier life he sang in the church choir, under the training of masters of increasing grades of skill, in his native village, at Malden, and in Boston. He early learned to play upon keyed instruments, the melodion, the piano, and the organ, the latter being his favorite. From this great encyclopædia of tones, he loved to bring out grand harmonies. He used this instrument of many potencies, for enjoyment, as a means of culture, for the soothing of his spirits, and the resting of his brain. When wearied with the monotony of work with his pen, he would leave his study, as I remember, when living in Boston, and, having a private key to Shawmut Church, and dependent on no assistance except that of the water-motor, he would, for a half hour ormore, and sometimes for hours, delight and refresh himself with this organ,—grandest of all but one, in Boston, the city of good organs and organ-makers. Many times throughout the war, in churches deserted or occupied, alone or in the public service, in the soldier's camp-church or meeting in the open air, wherever there was an instrument with keys, Carleton was a valued participant and aid in worship.
Religious music was his favorite, but he delighted in all sweet melodies. He loved the Boston Symphony concerts and the grand opera. Among his best pieces of writing were the accounts of Wagner's Parsifal at Bayreuth, and the great Peace Jubilee after our civil war. At most of the great musical events in Boston, he was present.
Shawmut Church had for many years one of the very best quartette choirs in the city, supported at the instrument by such organists as Dudley Buck, George Harris, Samuel Carr, H. E. Parkhurst, and Henry M. Dunham. In Carleton, both voice and instrument found so appreciative a hearer, and one who so often personally commended or appraised their renderings of a great composer's thought, or aheart-touching song, that "as well the singers as the players on instruments" were always glad to know how he received their art and work. In Europe, this lover of sweet sound enjoyed hearing the greatest vocalists, and those mightiest of the masses of harmony known on earth, and possible only in European capitals. Before going to some noble feast for ear and soul, as, for example, Wagner's rendition of his operas at Bayreuth, Carleton would study carefully the literary history, the ideas sought to be expressed in sound, and the score of the composer. In his grand description and interpretation of Parsifal, he likened it among operas to the Jungfrau amid the Bernese Alps. "In its sweep of vision, beauty, greatness, whiteness, glory, and grandeur, it stands alone ... to show the greatness, the ideal of Wagner, including the conflict of all time,—the upbuilding of individual character,—and reaching on to eternity."
Carleton, being a real Christian, necessarily believed in, and heartily supported, foreign missionary work. He saw in his Master, Christ, the greatest of all missionaries, and in the twelve missionaries, whom he chose tocarry on his work, the true order and line of the kingdom. "Apostolical" succession is, literally, and in Christ's intent, missionary succession. He read in Paul's account of the organization of the Christian Church, that, among its orders and dignities, its officers and personnel, were "first missionaries." To him the only "orders" and "succession" were those which propagated the Gospel. He had seen the work of the modern apostles, sent forth by American Christians, west of the Alleghanies first, west of the Mississippi. He had later beheld the true apostles at work, in India, China, and Japan. It was on account of his seeing that he became a still more enthusiastic upholder of missionary, or apostolic, work. He gave many addresses and lectures in New England, in loyalty to the mind of the Master. As he had been a friend of the black man, slave or free, so also was he ever a faithful defender of the Asiatic stranger within our gates. Against the bill which practically excluded the Chinamen from the United States, in defiance of the spirit and letter of the Burlingame treaty, Carleton spoke vigorously, at the meeting held in Tremont Temple, inBoston, to protest against the infamous Exclusion bill, which committed the nation to perjury. Carleton could never see the justice of stealing black men from Africa to enslave them, of murdering red men in order to steal their hunting-grounds, or of inviting yellow men across the sea to do our work, and then kicking them out when they were no longer needed.
Carleton was instrumental in giving impetus to the movement to found that mission in Japan which has since borne fruit in the creation of the largest and most influential body of Christian churches, and the great Doshisha University, in Kioto. These churches are called Kumi-ai, or associated independent churches, and out of them have come, in remarkable numbers, preachers, pastors, editors, authors, political leaders, and influential men in every department of the new modern life in Japan. It was at the meeting of the American Board, held in Pittsburg, in the Third Presbyterian Church edifice, October 7-8, 1869, that the mission to Japan was proposed. A paper by Secretary Treat was read, and reported on favorably, andRev.David Greene, who hadvolunteered to be the apostle to the Sunrise Empire, made an address. The speech of Carleton, who had just returned from Dai Nippon, capped the climax of enthusiasm, and the meeting closed by singing the hymn, "Nearer, my God, to Thee."
At one of the later meetings of the Board, at Rutland, Vermont, the Japanese student Neesima pleaded effectually that a university be founded, the history of which, under the name of the One Endeavor, or Doshisha, is well known. In the same year that Neesima was graduated from Amherst College, Carleton received from this institution the honorary degree of Master of Arts.
Carleton could turn his nimble pen to rhyme, when his friends required verses, and best when his own emotions struggled for utterance in poetry. Several very creditable hymns were composed for anniversary occasions and for the Easter Festivals of Shawmut Church.
Indeed, the first money ever paid him by a publisher was for a poem,—"The Old Man's Meditations," which was copied into "Littell's Living Age." The pre-natal life, birth, andgrowth of this first-born child of Carleton's brain and heart, which inherited a "double portion," in both fame and pelf, is worth noting. In 1852, an aged uncle of Mrs. Coffin, who dwelt in thoughts that had not yet become the commonplace property of our day, being at home in the immensities of geology and the infinities of astronomy, made a visit to the home in Boscawen, spending some days. Carleton was richly fed in spirit, and, conceiving the idea of the poem, on going out to plough, put paper and pencil in his pocket. As he thought out line upon line, or stanza by stanza, he penned each in open air. At the end of the furrow, or even in the middle of it, he would stop his team, lay the paper on the back of the oxen, and write down the thought or line. Finished at home in the evenings, the poem was read to a friend, who persuaded the author to test its editorial and mercantile value.
"I shall never forget," wrote Mrs. Coffin, October 13, 1896, "with what joy he came to me and showed me the poetry in the magazine, and a check for $5.00."
The last three stanzas are:
"He sails once more the sea of yearsSo wide and vast and deep!He lives anew old hopes and fears—Sweet tales of love again he hears,While flow afresh the scalding tears,For one long since asleep."He sees the wrecks upon the shore,And everything is drear;The rolling waves around him roar,The angry clouds their torrents pour,His friends are gone forevermore,And he alone is here."Yet through the gloom of gathering night,A glory from afarStreams ever on his fading sight,With Orient beams that grow more bright,The dawn of heaven's supernal lightFrom Bethlehem's radiant star."
"He sails once more the sea of yearsSo wide and vast and deep!He lives anew old hopes and fears—Sweet tales of love again he hears,While flow afresh the scalding tears,For one long since asleep.
"He sees the wrecks upon the shore,And everything is drear;The rolling waves around him roar,The angry clouds their torrents pour,His friends are gone forevermore,And he alone is here.
"Yet through the gloom of gathering night,A glory from afarStreams ever on his fading sight,With Orient beams that grow more bright,The dawn of heaven's supernal lightFrom Bethlehem's radiant star."
During the evenings of 1892, Carleton guided a Reading Club of young ladies who met at his house. I remember, one evening, with what effect he read Lowell's "Biglow Papers," his eyes twinkling with the fun which none enjoyed more than he. On another evening, after reading from Longfellow's "The Poet's Tale," "Lady Wentworth," and otherpoems, Carleton, before retiring, wrote a "Sequel to Lady Wentworth." It is full of drollery, suggesting also what might possibly have ensued if "the judge" had married "Maud Müller." Carleton's poem tells of the risks and dangers to marital happiness which the old magistrate runs who weds a gay young girl.
Carleton was ever a lover and student of poetry, and among poets, Whittier was from the first his favorite. As a boy he committed to memory many of the Quaker poet's trumpet-like calls to duty. As a man he always turned for inspiration to this sweet singer of freedom. What attracted Carleton was not only the intense moral earnestness of the Friend, his beautiful images and grand simplicity, but the seer's perfect familiarity with the New Hampshire landscape, its mountains, its watercourses, the ways and customs of the people, the local legends and poetical associations, the sympathy with the Indian, and the seraphic delight which he took in the play of light upon the New Hampshire hills. Not more did Daniel Webster study with eager eyes the glowing and the paling of the light on the hilltops, no morerapturously did Rembrandt unweave the mazes of darkness, conjure the shadows, and win by study the mysteries of light and shade, than did Whittier. To Carleton, a true son of New Hampshire, who had himself so often in boyhood watched and discriminated the mystery-play of light in its variant forms at dawn, midday, and sunset, by moon and star and zodiac, at the equinoxes and solstices, the imagery of his favorite poet was a perennial delight.
As he ripened in years, Carleton loved poetry more and more. He delighted in Lowell, and enjoyed the mysticism of Emerson. He had read Tennyson earlier in life without much pleasure, but in ripened years, and with refined tastes, his soul of music responded to the English bard's marvellous numbers. He became unspeakably happy over the tender melody of Tennyson's smaller pieces, and the grand harmony of "In Memoriam," which he thought the greatest poem ever written, and the high-water mark of intellect in the nineteenth century. Carleton was not only a lover of music, but a composer. When some especially tender sentiment in ahymn impressed him, or the re-reading of an old sacred song kindled his imagination by its thought, or moved his sensibilities by its smooth rhythm, then Carleton was not likely to rest until he had made a tune of his own with which to express his feelings. Of the scores which he composed and sang at home, or had sung in the churches, a number were printed, and have had happy use.
To the end of his life, he seemed to present, in his carriage and person, some of that New Hampshire ruggedness, and even rustic simplicity, that attracted and lured, while it foiled and disgusted those hunters of human prey who, in every large city, wait to take in the wayfaring man, whether he be fool or wise. Because he wore comfortable shoes, and cared next to nothing about conformity to the last new freak of fashion, the bunco man was very apt to make a fool of himself, and find that he, and not the stranger, was the victim. In Boston, which of late years has been so far captured by the Irishman that evenSt.Patrick's is celebrated under the guise of "Evacuation Day," matters were not very different from those in New York. Carleton, while oftenconducting parties of young friends around Copp's Hill, and the more interesting historical, but now uncanny houses of the North End, was often remarked. Occasionally he was recognized by the policeman, who would inform suspicious or inquiring fellow foreigners or adopted sons of the Commonwealth, that "the old fellow was only a countryman in town, and wouldn't do any harm."
Lest some might get a false idea, I need only state that Mr. Coffin was a man of dignified dress, and scrupulously neat. He was a gentleman whose engaging presence might suggest the older and more altruistic, rather than the newer and perhaps brusquer style of manners. His was a "mild and magnificent" blue eye in which so many, who loved him so, liked to dwell, and he had no need to wear glasses. The only sign of ornament about him was his gold watch-chain and cross-bar in his black vest buttonhole.[Back to Content]
Shawmut Church, in Boston, stands at the corner of Tremont and Brookline Streets. Its history is one of unique interest. Its very name connects the old and new world together. A Saxon monk, named Botolph, after completing his Christian studies in Germany, founded,A. D.654, a monastery in Lincolnshire, on the Witham, near the sea, and made it a centre of holy light and knowledge. He was the friend of sailors and boat-folk. The houses which grew up around the monastery became Botolph's Town, or Boston. "Botolph" is itself but another form of boat-help, and the famous tower of this English parish church, finer than many cathedrals, is crowned by an octagon lantern, nearly three hundred feet above the ground. It serves as a beacon-light, being visible forty miles distant, and, as of old, is the boat-help of Saint Botolph'sTown. This ecclesiastical lighthouse is familiarly called "Boston Stump," and overlooks Lincolnshire, the cradle of Massachusetts history. At Scrooby, a few miles to the west, lived and worshipped the Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers. From this shire, also, came the English people who settled at Shawmut on the 17th of September, 1630.
The Indian name, Shawmut, was that of the "place near the neck,"[1]probably the present Haymarket Square. The three-hilled peninsula called Tremont, or Boston, by the white settlers, was connected with the main land at Roxbury by a long, narrow neck or causeway. The future "South End" was then under the waves. After about two centuries of use as a wagon road, this narrow strip between Boston and Roxbury—so narrow that, at high tide, boys were able to leap from the foam of the South Bay to the spray of the waters of the Charles River—was widened. Suffolk Street, which was one of the first highways west of Washington Street to be made into hard ground, was named Shawmut Avenue. About themiddle of the nineteenth century, much land was reclaimed from the salt mud and marshes and made ready for the pile-driver, mason, and builder. Two splendid districts, the first called the "South End," and the second the "Back Bay," were created. Where, in the Revolutionary War, British frigates lay at anchor, are now Beacon Street and Commonwealth and Massachusetts Avenues. Where the redcoats stepped into their boats for disembarkation at the foot of Bunker Hill, stretch the lovely Public Gardens. The streets running east and west in the new districts, beginning with Dover and ending with Lenox, are named after towns in the Bay State. About midway among these, as to order and distance, are Brookline and Canton Streets.
On a chance space of hard soil around Canton and Dedham Streets, in this marshy region, a suburban village of frame houses had gathered, and here a Sunday school was started as early as 1836. In January, 1842, a weekly prayer-meeting began at the house of Mr. Samuel C. Wilkins. On November 20, 1845, a church was formed, with fifty members. In the newly filled up land, the pile-driver wasalready busy in planting forests of full-grown trees head downward. All around were rising blocks of elegant houses, with promise of imposing civic and ecclesiastical edifices of various kinds. In the wider streets were gardens, parks, or ample strips of flower-beds. This was the land of promise, and into it pressed married couples by the hundreds, creating lovely homes, rearing families, and making this the choicest part of the young city. For, though "Boston town" is as old as Mother Goose's rhymes, the municipality of Boston was, in 1852, but thirty years old. The congregation of Christian people which, on April 14, 1849, took the name, as parish, of The Shawmut Congregational Society, and, as a church, one month later, the name of the Shawmut Congregational Church, occupied as a meeting-house first a hall, then a frame building, and finally a handsome edifice of brick, which was dedicated on the 18th of November, 1852. This building is now occupied by the Every Day Church, of the Universalist denomination. The tide of prosperity kept steadily rising. The throng of worshippers increased, until, in the very midst of the great Civil War,it was necessary to have more room. The present grand edifice on Tremont Street was erected and dedicated February 11, 1864; theRev.Edwin Bonaparte Webb, who had been called from Augusta, Maine, being the popular and successful pastor.
Boston was not then noted, as she certainly is now, for grandeur or loveliness in church edifices. Neither excellence nor taste in ecclesiastical architecture was, before the war, a striking trait of the city or the people. To-day her church spires and towers are not only numerous, but are famed for their variety and beauty.
Fortunately for the future of Boston, the people of Shawmut Church found a good architect, who led the van of improvement in church architecture. The new edifice was the first one in the city on the early Lombardy style of architecture, and did much to educate the taste of the people of the newer and the older town, and especially those in the fraternity of churches called Congregational.
Both its architecture and decoration have been imitated and improved upon in the city wherein it was a pioneer of beauty and the herald of a new order of church architecture.It is a noble vehicle of the faith and feelings of devout worshippers.
The equipment of Shawmut Church edifice made it a very homelike place of worship, and here, for a generation or more of Carleton's life, a noble company of Christians worshipped. The Shawmut people were noted for their enterprise, sociability, generosity, and unity of purpose. In this "South End" of Boston was reared a large proportion of the generation which to-day furnishes the brain and social and religious force of the city and suburbs. In Shawmut Church, gathered, week by week, hundreds of those who, in the glow of prosperity, held common ambitions, interests, and hopes. They were proud of their city, their neighborhood, and their church, yet were ever ready to extend their well-laden hands in gifts to the needy at home, and to send to those far off, within our own borders, and in lands beyond sea.
The great fire in Boston, of which Carleton wrote so brilliant a description, which, beginning November 9, 1872, within a few hours burned over sixty-five acres and reduced seventy-five millions of property to smoke andashes, gave the first great blow to the material prosperity of Shawmut Church. Later came the filling up, the reclamation, and building of the Back Bay district. About 1878, the tide of movement set to the westward, progressing so rapidly and steadily as to almost entirely change, within a decade, the character of the South End, from a region of homes to one largely of business and boarding houses. Still later, about 1890, with the marvellous development of the electric motor and trolley cars, making horse traction by rail obsolete, the suburbs of Boston became one great garden and a semicircle of homes. Then Brookline, Newton, and Dorchester churches flourished at the expense of the city congregations. Shawmut Church, having graduated hundreds of families, had, in 1893, to be reorganized.
Of this church Charles Carleton Coffin, though not one of the founders, was certainly one of the makers. As a member, a hearer, a worshipper, a teacher, an officer, a counsellor, a giver of money, power, and influence, his name is inseparably associated with the life of Shawmut Church.
When Carleton's seat was vacant, the chiefservant of the church knew that his faithful ally was serving his Master elsewhere. After one of his trips to Europe, out West, or down South over the old battle-fields, to refresh his memory, or to make notes and photographs for his books, the welcome given to him, on his return, was always warm and lively.
First of all, Mr. Coffin was a good listener. This man, so fluent in speech, so ready with his pen, so richly furnished by long and wide reading, and by habitual meditation and deep thinking, by unique experience of times that tried men's souls, knew also the moments when silence, that is golden, was better than speech, even though silvern. These were not as the "brilliant flashes of silence," such as Sidney Smith noted as delightful improvements in his friend "Tom" Macaulay; for Carleton was never a monopolist in conversation. Rather, with the prompting of a generous nature, and as studied courtesy made into fine art, he could listen even to a child. If Carleton was present, the preacher had an audience. His face, while beaming with encouragement, was one of singular responsiveness. His patience, the patience of one towhom concealment of feeling was as difficult as for a crystal to shut out light, rarely failed.
In Japan there are temples, builtin memoriamto heroes fallen in war. These are named Shrines for the Welcome of Spirits. They are lighted at sunset. Like one of these that I remember, called the Soul-beckoning Rest, was this listener, Carleton, who begat eloquence by his kindly gaze. Nor was this power to lift up and cheer—this winged help of a great soul, like that of a mother bird under her fledgling making first trial of the air—given only to the professional speaker in the pulpit. This ten-talent layman was ever kindly helpful, with ear and tongue, to his fellow holder-in-trust of the one, or of the five, talents; yes, even to the little children in Christ's kingdom.
The young people loved Carleton because he heard and loved them. To have his great, kindly eyes fixed on some poor soldier, or neighbor in distress, was in itself a lightening of the load of trouble. Unlike those professional or volunteer comforters, who overwhelm by dumping a whole cart-load of condolence upon the sufferer, who is unable to resist orreply, Carleton was often great in his power of encouraging silence, and of gentle sympathy.
Bacon, as no other Englishman, has compressed in very few words a recipe for making a "full," a "ready," and an "exact" man. Carleton was all these in one. He was ever full. In the Shawmut prayer-meeting, his deep, rich voice was the admirable vehicle of his strong and helpful thoughts. Being a man of intense conviction, there was earnestness in every tone. A stalwart in faith, he was necessarily optimistic. A prophet, he was always sure that out of present darkness was to break forth grander light than former days knew. This world is governed by our Father, and God makes no mistakes.
That rhetorical instrument, the historical present, which makes the pages of his books tell such vivid stories, he often used with admirable effect in the prayer-room, impressing and thrilling all hearts. No little one ever believed more confidently the promises of its parent than did this little child in humility who was yet a man in understanding. Yet his was not blind credulity. He always faced the facts. He was willing to get to the bottom of reality,even though it might cause much drilling of the strata, with revelation of things at first unpleasant to know. I never knew a man whose piety rested less on traditions, institutions, persons, things, or reputations taken for granted. To keen intuitions, he was able to add the riches of experience, and his experience ever wrought hope. Hence the tonic of his thought and words. He dwelt on the mountain-top of vision, and yet he had that combination, so rare, yet so indispensable in the prophet,—vision and patience, even the patience of service.
Naturally his themes and his illustrations, so pertinent and illuminating, were taken largely from history. It is because he saw so far and so clearly down the perspective of the past, that he read the future so surely. "That which hath been, is that which shall be,"—but more. "God fulfils himself in many ways." To our friend, history, of which the cross of Christ was the centre, was the Heavenly Father's fullest revelation. Many are the ways of theophany,—"at sundry times, and in divers manners,"—to one the burning bush, to another the Urim and Thummin, to another the dew on the fleece, to one this, to another that. Toour man of the Spirit, as to the sage of Patmos, human history, because moved from above, was the visible presence of God.
The war, which dissolved the old world of slavery, sectional bigotry, and narrow ideals, and out of the mother liquid of a new chaos shot forth fresh axes of moral reconstruction, furnished this soldier of righteousness with endless themes, incidents, illustrations, and suggestions. Yet the emphasis, both as to light and shading, was put upon things Christian and Godlike, the phenomena of spiritual courage and enterprise, rather than upon details of blood or slaughter. Neither years nor distance seemed to dim our fellow patriot's gratitude to the brave men who sacrificed limb and life for their country. The soldierly virtues, so vital to the Christian, were brought home to heart and conscience. He showed the incarnation of truth and life to be possible even in the camp and field.
Having been a skilled traveller in the Holy Land, Carleton frequently opened this "Fifth Gospel" to delighted listeners. There hung on the wall of the "vestry," or social prayer-room, above the leader's chair, a steel-plate picture of modern Jerusalem, showing especiallythe walls, gates, and roadways leading out from the city. Carleton often declared that this print was "an inspiration" to him. It recalled not only personal experiences of his own journeys, but also the stirring incidents in Scripture, especially of the life of Christ. Having studied on the soil of Syria, the background of the parables, and possessing a genius for topography, he was able to unshackle our minds from too close bondage to the English phrase or letter, from childhood's imperfect imaginations, and from our crude Occidental fancies. Many a passage of Scripture, long held in our minds as the hand holds an unlighted lantern, was often turned into an immediately helpful lamp to our path by one touch of his light-giving torch.
For many years, Carleton was a Bible-class teacher, excelling in understanding, insight, explanation, and application of the divine Word. Many to-day remember his teaching powers and their enjoyment at Malden; but it was in Boston, at Shawmut Church, that Mr. Coffin gave to this work the fullness of his strength and the ripeness of his powers.
Counting it one of the noblest ambitions ofa man's life to be a good teacher, I used to admire Carleton's way of getting at the heart of the lesson. His talent lay in first drawing out the various views of the readers, and then of harmonizing them,—even as the lens draws all rays to a burning-point, making fire where before was only scattered heat. Carleton was one of those superb teachers who believe that education is not only putting in, but also drawing out. In his class were lawyers, physicians, doctors of divinity, principals of schools, heads of families, besides various specimens of average humanity. Somehow, he contrived, within the scant hour afforded him, often within a half hour, to bestow not only his own thought, but, by powerful spiritual induction, to kindle in others a transforming force. After the teaching had well begun, there set in an alternating current of intensity that wrought mightily for the destruction of dead prejudices, and the building up of character.
In his use of helps and commentaries he had a profound contempt of those peddlers of pedantry who try to make the words of eternal truth become merely the lingo of things local and temporary. He was fond of utilizing all thatthe spade has cast up and out from the earth, as well as of consulting what the pen of genius has made so plain. He believed heartily in that interpretive, or higher criticism, which has done so much in our days to open the riches of holy Scripture. From the very first, instead of fearing that truth might be injured by an examination of the dress in which it was clothed, or the packages in which it was wrapped, Carleton was in hearty sympathy with those scholars and investigators who, by the application of literary canons to the Hebrew and Greek writings, have put illuminating difference between traditions and the original message. He believed that, in the popular understanding of many portions of the Bible, there was much confusion, owing to the webs which have been spun over the text by men who lived centuries and ages after the original writers of the inspired word. Though he never called himself a scholar, he knew only too well that Flavius Josephus and John Milton were the makers of much popular tradition which ascribed to the Bible a good deal which it does not contain, and that there was often difficulty among the plain people in distinguishing between the ancienttreasure and the wrapping and strings within which it is now enclosed. Hence his diligent use of some of the strong books in his pastor's and other libraries.
Above all, however, was his own clear, penetrating, spiritual insight, which, joined with his rich experience, his literary instincts, and his own gift of expression, made him such a master in the art of communication. While his first use of the Bible was for spiritual benefit to himself and others, he held that its study as literature would scatter to the wind the serious objections of sceptics and unbelievers.[Back to Content]
Carleton was a typical free churchman. He was not only so by inheritance and environment, but because he was master of the New Testament. His penetrating acumen and power to read rightly historical documents enabled him to see what kind of churches they were which the apostles founded. With the open New Testament before him, he did not worry himself about the validity of the ordination of those who should preach to him or administer the sacraments, though there was no more loyal churchman and Christian. He believed in the kind of churches which were first formed at Jerusalem and in the Roman cities by the twelve whom Jesus chose, over which not even the apostles themselves ventured to exercise authority; but rather, on the other hand, submitted to the congregation, that is, the assembled believers. In the New Testament,Carleton read that the members of the churches were on the same level, all being equal before their great Head and risen Lord, no member having the smallest claim to any kind of authority over or among his fellow members. In such churches, organized to-day as closely as possible after the New Testament model, he believed, and to such churches he gave his heartiest support, while ever deeply sympathetic with his fellow Christians who associated themselves under other methods of government.
His strong faith in the essential right and truth held by independent churches in fraternity, never wavered; and this faith received even increasing strength because of his trust in human nature when moved from above. He believed in the constant presence of the Holy Spirit, as leading Christians unto the way of all truth. He thought the centuries to come would see a shedding off of many things dogmatic theologians consider to be vital to Christianity, and the closer apprehension by society of the meaning of Christ's life and words. He believed not only that God was, but that he is. Though reared in New England, he hadlittle of that provincial narrowness which so often mars and cramps the minds of those who otherwise are the most agreeable of all Americans,—the cultivated New Englanders. No sermon so moved Carleton, and so kindled responsive radiance in his face, as those which showed that God is to-day leading and guiding humanity and individuals as surely as in the age of the burning bush or the smoking altar. He believed that neither the ancient Jews nor the early Christians had any advantages over us for spiritual culture, or for the foundation and increase of their faith in God, but rather less. He heartily approved of whatever pierced sectarian shams and traditional hypocrisies and revealed reality.
Hence his coolness and impartiality in controversy, whatever might be his own strong personal liking. His profound knowledge of human nature in all its forms, not excepting the clerical, professional, and theological sort,—especially when in the fighting mood,—enabled him to measure accurately the personal equation in every problem, even when masked to the point of self-deception. His judicial balance and his power to see the real point ina controversy made him an admirable guide, philosopher, and friend. His vital rather than traditional view and use of the truth, and his sunny calm and poise, were especially manifested during that famous period of trouble which broke out in that noble but close corporation, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
Through all the subsidiary skirmishes connected with the prosecution of the Andover professors, and the great debates in the public meetings of the American Board, Carleton was in hearty sympathy with those opinions and convictions which have since prevailed. He was in favor of sending men and women into missionary fields who showed, by their physical, intellectual, and spiritual make-up, that they were fitted for their noble work, whether or not their theology stood the test of certain arbitrary standards in vogue with a faction in a close corporation.
Carleton was never averse to truth being tried on a fair field, whether of discussion, of controversy before courts, or, if necessary, at the rifle's muzzle. He was not one of those feeble souls who retreat from all agitation.He had once fronted "a lie in arms" and was accustomed to probe even an angel's professions. He knew that in the history of man there must often be a storm before truth is revealed in clearness. No one realized more fully than he that, among the evangelical churches holding the historic form of Christianity, the part ever played and perhaps yet to be played by Congregationalists, is that of pioneers. He knew that out of the bosom of this body of Christians had come very many of the great leaders of thought who have so profoundly modified Christian theology in America and Europe, and that by Congregationalists are written most of the books shaping the vanguard of thought in America, and he rejoiced in the fact.
In brief, Charles Carleton Coffin was neither a "mean Yankee," nor, in his general spirit, a narrow New Englander. He was not a local, but a genuinely national American and free churchman. He believed that the idea of the people ruling in the Church as well as in the State had a historical, but not absolutely necessary, connection with New England. In his view, the Congregational form of a churchgovernment was as appropriate to the Middle and Western States of our country, as to the six Eastern States. Ever ready to receive new light and to ponder a new proposition, he grew and developed, as the years went on, in his conception of the origin of Congregational Christianity in apostolic times, and of its re-birth after the release of the Bible from its coffin of dead Latin and Greek into the living tongues of Europe, among the so-called Anabaptists. Through his researches he had long suspected that those Christians, whom prelates and political churchmen had, besides murdering and attempting to exterminate, so vilified and misrepresented, were our spiritual ancestors and the true authors in modern time of church government through the congregation, and of freedom of the conscience in religion. He often spoke of that line of succession of thought and faith which he saw so clearly traced through the Lollards and the weavers of eastern England, the Dutch Anabaptists, the Brownists, and the Pilgrims. He gave his hearty adherence to what he believed to be the demonstration of the truth as set forth in an article inThe New World, by the writer, in thefollowing letter, written February 27, 1896, only four days before his sudden death and among the very last fruits of his pen. Like the editor who prints "letters from correspondents," the biographer is "not responsible for the opinions expressed."
Alwington, 9 Shailer Street, Brookline,Mass.DearDr.Griffis:—I have read your Anabaptist article,—once for my own meditation, and once for Mrs. Coffin's benefit. I am glad you have shown up Motley, and that toleration did not begin with Roger Williams. Your article historically will dethrone two saints,—Williams and Lord Baltimore. You have rendered an invaluable service to history. Our Baptist and Catholic brethren will not thank you, but the rest of the world will. It is becoming clearer every day that the motive force which was behind the foundations of this Republic came from the "Lollards" and the "Beggars." I hope you will give us more such articles.
Alwington, 9 Shailer Street, Brookline,Mass.
DearDr.Griffis:—I have read your Anabaptist article,—once for my own meditation, and once for Mrs. Coffin's benefit. I am glad you have shown up Motley, and that toleration did not begin with Roger Williams. Your article historically will dethrone two saints,—Williams and Lord Baltimore. You have rendered an invaluable service to history. Our Baptist and Catholic brethren will not thank you, but the rest of the world will. It is becoming clearer every day that the motive force which was behind the foundations of this Republic came from the "Lollards" and the "Beggars." I hope you will give us more such articles.
Having been for many years an active member of the Congregational Club, of Boston, Carleton was in 1890 elected president, and served during one year. This parent of the fifty or more Congregational Clubs scattered throughout the country was organized in 1869, and has had an eventful history of power and influence.Some of the topics discussed during his administration were "Relations of the Church to Politics," "Congregationalism in Boston," "Bible Class Study," and "How shall the Church adapt itself to modern needs?" It was under his presidency, also, that the Boston Congregational Club voted unanimously, February 24, 1890, to appoint a committee to obtain the necessary funds and erect a memorial at Delfshaven in honor of the Dutch Republicans and the Pilgrim Fathers,—both hosts and guests. When the suggestion to raise some such memorial, made by theHon.S. R. Thayer, American Minister at the Hague, was first read in the meeting of the Club in October, 1889, and a motion made to refer it to the Executive Committee, Carleton seconded and supported the motion with a speech in warm commendation. He was among the very first to make and pay a subscription in money. The enterprise still awaits the happy day of completion, and the responsibility of the enterprise lies, by its own vote, upon the Boston Congregational Club. The Forefathers' Day celebration of the Club was of uncommon interest during the year of Mr. Coffin's presidency.A leading feature was the display on a screen of views of Pilgrim shrines in England which Mr. Coffin had obtained on a visit two years before.
Except his membership in the various historical and learned societies and in religious organizations, Mr. Coffin was not connected with secret, benevolent, social, or mysterious brotherhoods. He did not believe in secret fraternities, but rather considered that these had much to do with weakening the Church of Christ, and with making men satisfied with a lower standard of ethics and human sociability than that taught by Jesus. He held that the brotherhood instituted of Christ, in an open chapter of twelve, and without secrets of any kind, was sufficient for him and for all men. More than once, when going abroad, or travelling in the various parts of his own country, which is nearly as large as all Europe, he was advised to join a lodge and unite himself with one or more of the best secret fraternities, for assistance and recognition while travelling. All these kind invitations he steadily declined. He was not even a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, though often invited to join a Post. He never became a member,for he did not see the necessity of secrecy, even for this organization, though he was very often an honored guest at their public meetings. The Church of Christ was to Carleton an all-sufficient society and power.[Back to Content]
One can hardly imagine a better school for the training of a good American citizen than that which Carleton enjoyed. By inheritance and birth in a New Hampshire village, he knew "the springs of empire." By actual experience of farming and surveying in a transition era between the old ages of manual labor and the new æon of inventions, he learned toil, its necessity, and how to abridge and guide it by mind. In the acquaintance, while upon a Boston newspaper, with public men, and all kinds of people, in the unique experiences as war correspondent, in wide travel and observation around the whole world, in detailed studies of new lands and life in the Northwest, in reading and research in great libraries, and in the constant discipline of his mind through reflection, his knowledge of man and nature, of society and history, was at first hand.
Intensely interested in politics from boyhood, Carleton sought no public office.
When, in his early manhood, he revolved in his mind the question of attempting this or that career, he may have thought of entering the alluring but thorny path of office-seeking and "practical" politics. It cannot be said that his desire for public emolument lasted very long. He deliberately decided against a political career. Even if the exigencies of the moment had not tended to forbid the flight of his ambition in this direction, there were other reasons against it.
He was a school commissioner in Malden, faithfully attending to the details of his duty during two years. The report of his work was given in a pamphlet. As we have seen, before the breaking out of the war, when in Washington, he sought for a little while government employment in one of the departments, but gave up the quest when the larger field of war correspondent invited him. He never sought an elective office, but when his fellow citizens in Boston found out how valuable a member of the Commonwealth he was, so rich in public spirit and so well equipped to be a legislator,he was made first, for several terms, a Representative, and afterwards, for one term, a Senator, in the Legislature of Massachusetts. Carleton sat under the golden codfish as Representative during the years 1884 and 1885, and under the gilded dome as Senator, in 1890.
Faithful to his calling as a maker of law, Carleton was abundant in labors during his three terms, interested in all that meant weal or woe to the Commonwealth; yet we have only room to speak of the two or three particular reforms which he inaugurated.
Until the year 1884, Boston was behind some of the other cities of the Union, notably Philadelphia, in requiring the children in the public schools to provide their own text-books. This caused the burden of taxation for education, which is "the chief defence of nations," to fall upon the men and women who reared families, instead of being levied with equal justice upon all citizens. Carleton prepared a bill for furnishing free text-books to the public schools of Boston, such as had been done in Philadelphia since 1819. Despite considerable opposition, some of it on the part of teachers who had severe notions,—bred chiefly by localBoston precedent, which had almost the force of religion,—Carleton had the happiness of seeing the bill passed.
The administration of municipal affairs in the "Hub of the Universe," during the seventies and early eighties of this proud century, was one not at all creditable to any party nor to the city that prides itself on being distinctive and foremost in fame. The development of political life in New England had been after the model of the town. Municipal organization was not looked upon with much favor until well into this century. While the population of the Middle States was advancing in the line of progress in government of cities, the people in the Eastern States still clung to the model of the town meeting as the perfection of political wisdom and practice. This was done in the case of Boston, even when several tens of thousands of citizens, dwelling as one political union, made the old system antiquated.
Before the opening of the 19th century, all the municipally incorporated cities of the Northern United States, excepting Albany, lay along a line between the boundaries of Manhattan Island and Philadelphia. It was not until1830 that "Boston town" became a city. For fifty years afterwards, the development of municipal enterprise was in the direction of superficial area, rather than according to foresight or genius. It is very certain that the fathers of that epoch did not have a very clear idea of, certainly did not plan very intelligently for, the vast growth of our half of the century. Added to this ultra conservatism, came the infusion, with attendant confusion, of Ireland's sons and daughters by myriads, a flood of Scotch-Irish and other nationalities from Canada, and the flocking of large numbers of native Americans from the rural districts of New England. Nearly all of the newcomers usually arrived poor and with intent to become rich as quickly as honesty would allow, while not a few were without limit of time or scruple of conscience to hinder their plans. The Americans of "culture and character" were usually too busy in making money and getting clothes, houses, and horses, to attend to "politics," while Patrick was only too glad and ready to develop his political abilities. So it came to pass that a ring of powerful political "bosses"—if we may degrade so good andhonest a Dutch word—was formed. Saloons, gambling-houses and dance-halls multiplied, while an oligarchy, ever grasping for more power, nullified the laws and trampled the statutes under its feet. The sins of drunkenness and bribery among policemen, who were simply the creatures for the most part of corrupt politicians, were too frequent to attract much notice. That conscientious wearer of the blue and the star who enforced the laws was either discharged or sent on some unimportant suburban beat. The relations between city saloons and politics were as close as hand and glove, palm and coin. The gambler, the saloon-keeper, the masters of houses of ill-fame, were all in favor of the kind of municipal government which Boston had had for a generation or more.
An American back is like the camel's,—able to bear mighty loads, but insurgent at the last feather. So, in Boston, the long-outraged moral sense of the people suddenly revolted. A Citizens' Law and Order League was formed, and Charles Carleton Coffin, elected to the House of Representatives for the session of 1885, was asked to be their banner bearer in reform. With the idea of destroying partisanshipand making the execution of the laws non-partisan, Carleton prepared a bill, which was intended to take the control of the police out of the hands of the Mayor and Common Council of the city, and to put it into the hands of the Governor of the Commonwealth.
When Mr. Coffin began this work, Boston had a population of 412,000 souls. From the "Boston bedrooms," that is, the suburban towns in five counties, one hundred thousand or more were emptied every day, making over half a million people. In this city there was an array of forces all massed against any legislation restricting their power, while eager and organized to extend it. These included 2,850 licensed liquor sellers, and 1,300 unlicensed places, besides 222 druggists; all of which, and whom, helped to make men drunk. To supply the thirsty there were within the city limits three distilleries and seventeen breweries. To show the nature of the oligarchy, we have only to state that there were twenty-five men who had their names as bondsmen on no fewer than 1,030 licenses, and that eight men signed the bonds of 610 licenses. These "bondsmen" of one sort controlled the votes of from15,000 to 20,000 bondsmen of a lower sort. The liquor business was then, as it is now, the great incentive to lawlessness, helping to make Boston a place of shame. Ten thousand persons and $75,000,000 capital were employed in work mostly useless and wicked.
"Boston's devil-fish was dragging her down." The Sunday laws were set at defiance. The clinking of glasses could not only be distinctly heard as one went by, but the streams of young men openly filed in. The laws, requiring a certain distance between the schoolhouse and the saloon, were persistently violated. Of two hundred saloons visited by Carleton, one hundred and twenty-eight had set the law at defiance. While six policemen were needed in one Salvation Army room, to keep the saints and sinners quiet, often there would be not one star or club in the saloons.
Carleton began by arming himself with the facts. He visited hundreds of the tapster's quarters in various parts of the city. In some cases he actually measured, with his own hands and a surveyor's chain, the distance between the schoolhouse and the home-destroyer. He talked with scores of policemen. He thenprepared his bill and reported it in the Judiciary Committee, the members of which, about that time, received a petition in favor of a non-partisan metropolitan board of police commissioners, in order to secure a much better enforcement of law. On this petition were scores of names, which the world will not willingly let die. Yet, after reading the petition, seven of the eleven members of the Committee were opposed to the bill, and so declared themselves. Carleton was therefore obliged to transfer the field of battle to the open House. When he counted noses in the Legislature, he found that in the double body there were but four men who were heartily in favor of the apparently unpopular reform. The bill lay dormant for many weeks. Almost as a matter of course, the Sunday newspapers were bitterly hostile to it. They informed their readers, more than once, that the reform was dead. By hostile politicians the bill was denounced as "infamous."
Nevertheless, the minority of four nailed their colors to the mast, "determined, if need be, to sink, but not to surrender." Behind them were the State constitution, the statutesof the General Court, and the whole history of Massachusetts, whose moral tonic has so often inspired the beginners of better times in American history. When the day came for discussion of the bill, in public, Mr. Coffin made a magnificent speech in its favor, March 17, 1885. Despite fierce opposition, the bill finally became law, creating a new era of hope and reform in the City on the Bay.
In a banquet given by the Citizens' Law and Order League, at the Hotel Vendome, to talk over the victory of law, about two hundred ladies and gentlemen were present. Among them were President Capen, of Tufts College, president of the League, and such grand citizens as Rufus Frost, Jonathan A. Lane, andDr.Henry Martin Dexter; the Honorable Frank M. Ames, Senator, and Charles Carleton Coffin, Representative, being guests of honor. Carleton, being called upon for an address, said, among other things:
"There are no compensations in life more delightful and soul-satisfying than those which come from service and sacrifice for the welfare of our fellow men.... It has never troubled me to be in the minority. If you want realgenuine pleasure in a battle, go in with the minority on some great principle affecting the welfare of society."
In his speech he had said: "The moral sense of this community is a growing quantity, and no political party that ignores or runs counter to the lofty ideal can long stand before us."
The Honorable Alanson M. Beard had already paid a merited tribute when he said that Carleton had "lifted up this question above the domain of party politics into the higher realm of morals, where it belonged."
No one who knew Carleton need be told that, during all these weeks of uncertainty of issue, he was in constant prayer to God for light, guidance, and success. From all over the Commonwealth came letters of cheer and sympathy, especially from the mothers whose sons in Boston were tempted beyond measure because of the non-enforcement of law. To these, and to the law-loving editors of the newspaper press, the statesman afterwards returned his hearty thanks.
Carleton was a man ever open to conviction. To him, truth had no stereotyped forms. His mind never became a petrifaction, but was evergrowing and vital. At first he was opposed to civil service reform; but after a study of the subject, he was convinced of its reasonableness and practicality, and became ever afterwards a hearty upholder of this method of selecting the servants of government, in the nation, the State, and the city.
He was a friend of woman suffrage. On the occasion of a presentation of a petition from twenty thousand Massachusetts women, though four thousand of them had petitioned against the proposed measure, he made a strong and earnest plea for granting the ballot to women. Among other things he said: "No fire ever yet was lighted that could reduce to ashes an eternal truth." He believed that women, as well as men, form society, and "the people, who were the true source, under God, of all authority on earth," were not made up wholly of one sex. He quoted from that pamphlet, "De Jure Regni," published by George Buchanan in 1556, which was burned by the hangman inSt.Paul's churchyard,—where so many Bibles and other good books have been burned,—which declared that "the will of the people is the only legitimate source of power."He declared that the "lofty ideal of republicanism is the Sermon on the Mount." Of women, he said, "Wherever they have walked, there has been less of hell and more of heaven."
After an ex-mayor, in his speech, had referred to Carleton's bill, which changed the appointing power of the police from the Mayor and Common Council, and, by putting it in the hands of the Governor and Executive Council, placed it on the same foundation as the judiciary, as "that infamous police law," Carleton said: "Make a note of it, statesmen of the future. Write it down in your memoranda, politicians who indulge the expectation that you can ride into power on the vices of society,—that moral forces are marshalling as never before in the history of the human race, and that the women of this country are beginning to wield them to shape legislation on all great moral questions. Refreshing as perfume-laden breezes from the celestial plains were the words of encouragement and sympathy that came to me from mothers in Berkshire, from the Cape, from all over the Commonwealth."
In 1890, in the Massachusetts Senate, there was an attempt made to divide the town ofBeverly. Into this, as into so many of the pleasant towns, villages, and rural districts around Boston, wealthy Bostonians had come and built luxurious houses upon the land which they had bought. Not content with being citizens in the place where they were newcomers,—thus securing release from heavier taxes in Boston, where they lived in winter,—they wished to separate themselves, in a most un-American and un-democratic manner, from the older inhabitants and "common" people, and to make a new settlement with a separate local government for those who formed a particular class living in luxury. Carleton, hostile to the sordid and unsocial spirit lurking in the bill, vigorously opposed the attempted mutilation of an old historic town, and the isolation of "Beverly Farms." He opposed it, because it would be a bad precedent, and one in favor of class separation and class distinction. His speech embodies a masterly historical sketch of the town form of government.[Back to Content]