Sarah Knowles Bolton

“ Bishop Brooks lived the frankness which he preached. "To keep clear of concealment," he said, "to keep clear of the need of concealment, to do nothing which he might not do out on the middle of Boston Common at noonday—I cannot say how more and more that seems to me to be the glory of a young man's life. It is an awful hour when the first necessity of hiding anything comes. The whole life is different thenceforth."
Phillips Brooks kept his warm heart through life. "Sentiment," he said, "is the finest essence of the human life. It is, like all the finest things, the easiest to spoil.... ”

“ Napoleon compared the reign of Christ with that of Cæsar, Alexander, Hannibal, and of himself; "My armies have forgotten me, even while living, as the Carthaginian army forgot Hannibal. Such is our power! A single battle lost crushes us, and adversity scatters our friends.... What an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal reign of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved, adored, and which is extended over all the earth! Is this to die? Is it not rather to live? ”

“ Phillips Brooks urged the joy which he always showed in his own life. "Joy, not sadness, is the characteristic fact of young humanity. To know this, to keep it as the truth to which the soul constantly returns,—that is the young man's salvation. Whatever young depression there is, there must be no young despair. In the morning, at least, it must seem a fine thing to live."
He loved his work better than all else on earth. He wrote a friend in England, "I have had a delightful life; and the last twenty years of it, which I have spent in Trinity Church, have been unbroken in their happiness." ”

“ To some of the editors in Memphis, Sherman said, "If I find the press of Memphis actuated by high principle and a sole devotion to their country, I will be their best friend; but if I find them personal, abusive, dealing in innuendoes and hints at a blind venture, and looking to their own selfish aggrandizement and fame, then they had better look out; for I regard such persons as greater enemies to their country and to mankind than the men who, from a mistaken sense of State pride, have taken up muskets, and fight us about as hard as we care about." ”

“ Of political preaching, Dr. Brooks said to the students, "I despise, and call upon you to despise, all the weak assertions that a minister must not preach politics because he will injure his influence if he does, or because it is unworthy of his sacred office.
"When some clear question of right and wrong presents itself, and men with some strong passion or sordid interest are going wrong, then your sermon is a poor, untimely thing if it deals only with the abstractions of eternity, and has no word to help the men who are dizzied with the whirl and blinded with the darkness of to-day." ”

“ CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON.
No one who has sat in the great London Tabernacle, with its six thousand or more eager listeners, and heard Spurgeon preach, natural, brotherly, earnest, and eloquent, can ever forget it. I have seen a whole congregation moved to tears, as he talked of the relationship between God and His children, from the words, "Abba, Father." To hear a man like this, is always to ask the secret of his power. What was the childhood and youth that ushered in this rare manhood? Did he have more talent, more grace, more learning, than other men? ”

“ When the slavery struggles had culminated in war, and the South had fired the first gun at Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861, Beecher's heart was aflame. In his pulpit he said, "Give me war redder than blood and fiercer than fire, if this terrific infliction is necessary that I may maintain my faith in God, in human liberty, my faith of the fathers in the instruments of liberty, my faith in this land as the appointed abode and chosen refuge of liberty for all the earth!" ”

“ As often as a ship surrendered, the men of the Victory cheered, and Nelson's dying face would light up with joy. Nothing could be done for the hero, but to fan him with paper and give him lemonade to quench his thirst. His thoughtfulness of others was strong even in his dying hour. A poor fellow near him was jarred or hurt by another in passing, and Nelson reproved the man for his carelessness.
He frequently asked for Captain Hardy, whom he loved; but Hardy was not able to leave his post till an hour and ten minutes after Nelson was wounded. ”

“ At once the young preacher established among the laborers a shoe-club, coal-club, loan-fund, and lending-library. A school for adults was held at the rectory three nights a week all through the winter; a class in music; a Sunday-school met there every Sunday morning and afternoon; and in the outlying districts weekly lectures were held at the cottages for the aged and feeble. None of the grown-up men and women among the laborers could read or write, and the minister became their devoted teacher. He taught them to love the nature he loved,—the flowers, trees, birds, and ever-changing sky. ”

“ Napoleon said, "I have fought thirty battles like that, but I have never seen so decisive a victory, or one where the chances were so unevenly balanced." The Russian and Austrian forces greatly outnumbered the French. To his soldiers Napoleon said, "I am satisfied with you; you have covered your eagles with undying glory."
To Josephine he wrote: "The battle of Austerlitz is the greatest I have won; forty-five flags, more than one hundred and fifty cannon, the standards of the Russian guards, twenty generals, more than twenty thousand killed,—a horrid sight! ”

“ Napoleon had said to Bourrienne, "It is the torment of my life not to have a child. I plainly perceive that my power will never be firmly established until I have one. If I die without an heir, not one of my brothers is capable of supplying my place. All is begun, but nothing is ended. God knows what will happen!"
Josephine had urged her young daughter Hortense into a marriage with Louis, the brother of Napoleon, Jan. 2, 1802, with the hope that their child might be the heir to the empire. Each loved another person before marriage, and their married life was one of constant misery. ”

“ Hannibal inherited a position royal in all but the name; Cæsar inherited an eminent position in a great empire. But Napoleon, who rose as high as any of them, began life as an obscure provincial, almost as a man without a country. It is this marvellousness which paralyzes our judgment. We seem to see at once a genius beyond all estimate, a unique character, and a fortune utterly unaccountable."
Thus wrote John Robert Seeley, Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, of the man whom he regarded as the greatest enemy England has ever known. ”

“ Take the broken hearts, the bereaved mothers, the infant wrung from the hands of its parents, the husband and wife torn asunder, every right trodden under foot, the blighted hopes, the imbruted souls, the darkened and degraded millions, sunk below the level of intellectual life, melted in sensuality, herded with beasts, who have walked over the burning marl of Southern slavery to their graves, and where is the battle-field, however ghastly, that is not white—white as an angel's wing—compared with the blackness of that darkness which has brooded over the Carolinas for two hundred years? ”

“ All France rejoiced when the firing of one hundred guns announced the event.
Josephine wrote at once, telling Napoleon, "More than any one in the world do I rejoice in your joy." Of Marie Louise she wrote, "She cannot be more tenderly devoted to you than I am, but she has been enabled to contribute more toward your happiness, by securing that of France.... Not till you have ceased to watch by her bed, not till you are weary of embracing your son, will you take your pen to converse with your best friend. I will wait." ”

“ Napier thought Napoleon "the greatest man of whom history makes mention." "Never," says Alison, "were talents of the highest, genius of the most exalted kind, more profusely bestowed upon a human being."
Napoleon worked incessantly. He saved every moment. He believed in himself. He had great courage, will, and energy. He said to Las Cases that he liked two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, which he had rarely met. ”

“ The ships reached France early in December. Never was there such a funeral in Paris. One hundred and fifty thousand soldiers and more than a million citizens assisted at the magnificent obsequies. The funeral car, its cenotaph rising fifty feet from the ground, was drawn by sixteen black horses, four abreast, covered with cloth of gold. The Emperor's war-horse was draped with a veil of purple crape, embroidered with bees. The remnants of the Old Guard were there—the hosts who idolized Napoleon and would have died for him ”

“ Samuel Eliot says, "A mother wrote, asking him to baptize her little boy, and he wrote back, 'What a glorious future before a child born at the close of our century!'"
"I don't want to be old," he used to say, "but I should like to live on this earth five hundred years."
"Believe in man with all your childhood's confidence," he wrote in "Visions and Tasks," "while you work for man with all a man's prudence and circumspection. Such union of energy and wisdom makes the completest character, and the most powerful life." ”

“ If ever there was a dog that was distressed to think that he could not talk, that dog is. I sit by him on the bank, of a summer evening, and I say, 'Tommy, I am sorry for you;' and he whines, as much as to say, 'So am I.' I say, 'Tommy, I should like to tell you a great many things that you are worthy of knowing;' and I do not know which is the most puzzled, he or I—I to get any idea into his head, or he to get any out of mine. ”

“ Napoleon said bitterly, "England wants war. She shall have it. Yes! yes! war to the death."
He immediately sent General Moreau with one hundred and thirty thousand men against the Austrian army on the Rhine, and took forty thousand himself to Italy, crossing the Alps over the Great St. Bernard. The carriages and wheels were slung on poles; the ammunition boxes were borne on mules; the cannon were carried in trees hollowed out, each dragged up the heights by a hundred men; the soldiers crept up the icy steeps each with sixty or seventy pounds upon his back. ”

“ Eliot, after speaking of Phillips Brooks's affection, playfulness of conversation with his friends, his humor, which rendered his companionship charming, his delight in children, his unconsciousness of all his distinctions and successes, the unchangeable simplicity of his habits, his manners, his opinions, says, "These are pleasant recollections to all who loved him.... They linger like the soft glow of a summer twilight, now that his day on earth is over....
"This great man was never greater than he was in the sight of those who knew him best. ”

“ If the day shall come in one year, in two years, or in ten years hence, when the old stars and stripes shall float over every State of America; if the day shall come when that which was the accursed cause of this dire and atrocious war—slavery—shall be done away with; if the day shall come when through all the Gulf States there shall be liberty of speech, as there never has been; when there shall be liberty of the press, as there never has been; when men shall have common schools to send their children to, which they have never had in the South ... ”

“ They were three sisters,—servants who had long ministered in the bishop's home, and whose devotion had been repaid by constant appreciation and kindness.
The world went back to its work, but we are never the same after a great life has touched our own. Phillips Brooks said in his sermon on "Withheld Completion of Life," "The ideal life is in our blood, and never will be still. We feel the thing we ought to be beating beneath the thing we are. Every time we see a man who has attained our human ideal a little more fully than we have, it awakens our languid blood and fills us with new longings." ”

“ First among the elements of power, Phillips Brooks puts "personal uprightness and purity." "No man permanently succeeds in the ministry who cannot make men believe that he is pure and devoted; and the only sure and lasting way to make men believe in one's devotion and purity is to be what one wishes to be believed to be." He said. "No man can do much for others who is not much himself.... The priest must be the most manly of all men."
The second element of power is "freedom from self-consciousness." "No man ever yet thought whether he was preaching well without weakening his sermon." ”

“ In the spring of 1842 about one hundred persons joined the church. One spring Mr. Beecher preached for seventy consecutive [Pg 235] nights. He loved to recall those days. He said, "Talk of a young mother's feelings over her first babe—what is that compared with the solemnity, the enthusiasm, the impetuosity of gratitude, of humility, of singing gladness, with which a young pastor greets the incoming of his first revival? He stands upon the shore to see the tide come in! It is the movement of the infinite, ethereal tide! It is from the other world! There is no color like heart color. ”

“ Early in May, France declared war against the Venetian Republic. The latter had been neutral, although both Austrians and French had crossed her territory. Her aristocracy had no sympathy with the French Republic, and preferred Austria. Perhaps to guard herself from both nations, she raised an army of sixty thousand men, and put herself in the attitude of armed neutrality. She refused to ally herself to France. "Be neutral, then," said Napoleon; "but remember, if you violate your neutrality, if you harass my troops, if you cut off my supplies, I will take ample vengeance.... ”

“ The first anniversary Sunday of the attack on Fort Sumter, Henry Ward Beecher said, "We will give every dollar that we are worth, every child that we have, and our own selves; we will bring all that we are and all that we have, and offer them up freely—but this country shall be one and undivided. ”