Affection's fondest glance. "Twas then his eye This was love! Love even unto death. REMINISCENCES OF THE LATE REV. LEMUEL HAYNES. BY A FRIEND.* My acquaintance with this extraordinary man commenced in the autumn of 1819. He was then the minister of the Congregational church in Manchester, Vermont, and about sixty-four years of age. I had heard much of his eccentricities for many years, and his celebrity, as the successful antagonist of Ballou (the champion of universalism), had awakened my curiosity to see him. Being called to minister to a neighbouring congregation, my curiosity was no sooner gratified than it began to be lost in the intimacies of a Christian friendship, which continued without interruption, excepting by our removal to more distant fields of labour, during the remainder of his days. For several years he was my neighbour, my friend, and one of the most esteemed and venerated counsellors of my youth in the ministry. My recollections of him are, of course, mingled with a feeling of affectionate respect for his character as a whole, which merges the prejudices of taste, and throws an air of comeliness over the person even of my departed and venerated friend. I feel incompetent to do justice to his rare and varied excellences. Yet the existing social disabilities of the African race in this country are such, that it seems especially incumbent on us to hold up, as encouragements to the depressed and neglected, the example of those few indi * Rev. Dr. Peters, of New York. viduals who, by the force of native talent and the grace of God, have been enabled to overcome all the embarrassments of their condition, and to attain to a degree of intellectual and moral culture, which places them in the highest circles of respectability and usefulness. Such examples are doubly interesting to the philanthropist and the Christian. They cast their radiance onward, like the dawn of the morning, and indicate the coming of that day when, in answer to the prayers of the church, and the patient endeavours of the benevolent, all "the oppressed shall go free," and 'Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands unto God." He was cheerful and amiable in his intercourse; and though often, and most naturally facetious, he was manifestly guarded by a disciplined conscience against excessive indulgence in mirth, and possessed the rare talent of mingling with his wit and repartee the solemn admonitions of principle. His facetiousness, indeed, seemed a near neighbour to his piety; and while the former was chastened by the latter, itself was, in return, rendered more attractive by its association with the former. His conversation, therefore, seldom failed to be instructive and profitable, as well as amusing. His manners, though respectful, were free, and usually unembarrassed. They were also plain and antiquated, the relics of a former age, but slightly modified by the refinements of the present; and the style of his thinking and of his remarks, both in conversation and in writing, would often remind one of the days of Cotton Mather and the "Magn lia Americana." His memory was remarkably tenacious of what he had seen, heard, and read; and having had access to but * few books, he seemed to have devoured them all, and to have stored his mind with the whole of what they contained. He had studied the Latin, and was apt and ready in quotations from the authors he had read in this language. He was also familiar with the Greek of the New Testament; and by the study of such commentaries as he was able to procure, he had enriched the storehouse of his memory with much of the learning of Pool, Henry, and others. He had read Edwards, and Bellamy, and Hopkins, and was familiar with their leading views, though not able to possess their works. Having indeed, as we have already intimated, but few books upon his shelf, his memory was his library, stored with a rich variety of knowledge, not arranged with much apparent system, yet each portion of it, familiar to himself, was ever ready at his call when occasions demanded its use. His mind also was active and fruitful in invention, and in the combinations of thought he was eminently original. Limited in his reading to a narrow range, he was accustomed, in his preparations for the pulpit, to depend especially upon the study of the Bible, with which he had cultivated a familiarity equalled by few, and surpassed by no one whom I have ever known. His theology was accordingly in a high degree biblical; and, as a consequence of this, both his piety and his teaching were simple and unencumbered. He studied his sermons with care, but seldom wrote them. His notes for the desk were a brief skeleton of what he intended to say. In the filling up of this outline, he felt and exhibited the entire freedom of an extemporaneous * His library consisted of between three and four hundred select books. speaker, and turned with readiness and rapidity to the numerous passages of Scripture with which the many parts of his discourse were at once linked together and rendered replete with divine instruction. As a preacher, therefore, he commanded attention, and was always heard with interest. The topics of his discourses were strictly evangelical, and less various than they probably would have been under a different training; but his illustrations of truth were ever-changing, novel, and striking, while his replies to the objections of infidelity and the cavils of skepticism were often pointed and polished with the keenest irony and the most felicitous wit. His discussions were thus rendered no less entertaining than instructive, and, though he seldom held a congregation long without producing a smile, either by the quaintness of his manner or the piquancy of his remarks, the predominant influence of his preaching was to produce solemnity of feeling and deep conviction of truth. His eccentricities would have been faults in any other man, but in him they were so inherent and essential to his character, and his wit was so spontaneous, and came, as it were, without his bidding, that they neither interrupted the current of his own piety, nor often weakened the religious influence of his discourses upon others. It is apparent, then, that Mr. Haynes was at once a most eccentric and interesting man. Born under the embarrassments of illegitimacy, having been, in the most condemning sense of that penitential expression of the Psalmist, "shapen in iniquity," he was nevertheless endowed by his Maker with talents of a high order, and was early made a subject of that grace which redeems from all sin, and translates its trophies from the power of Satan unto God. Thus redeemed and regenerated, |