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When I reached Uxbridge, and was once more in the bosom of my little family, I felt that the trial had come. I could not at once disclose my plans to my wife, and was saved that painful interview by the suspicions of Mr. Taft, who told her that he believed I was going to be a clergyman! She laughed at him; but she saw a change in my deportment, and began to suspect it herself. I told her all. She went to her chamber and wept for a long time. But she came down, subdued indeed, but placid as a lamb, and simply said, 'It is all over now; I am ready.' Oh, how kindly has God watched over me! It seems as though the promise was fulfilled, 'Return unto thy country and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee.' Some day or two before we left Uxbridge, Mr. Taft said to me, 'Brother Spring, I have a case before Justice Adams this morning; you are still a lawyer, and I want you to go and argue it with me.' The thought struck me pleasantly, and I resolved to go; but instead of assisting him, without his knowledge I engaged myself to what I thought the weaker party; and my last effort at the bar was in battling with my sister's husband, and in the place of my father's nativity.
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Newark is again highly favored, writes the minister to his parents:
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My people appear solemn; they were so at the lecture on Thursday evening.
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I preached on Monday to a very solemn audience at my own house.
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The state of things in the congregation, notwithstanding the war, is looking up. Our public meetings and our social gatherings are more full and more solemn. He visits Paris, and there passes an evening with a small party of his countrymen:
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We could not refrain from weeping during the whole time we were together. The quantity of tears shed in the course of the book is positively appalling. Of course there is nothing that remotely resembles the gift of tears with which Almighty God sometimes rewards and consoles his saints. It is merely a perpetual gush of mawkish sentimentality, and we defy anybody to read these
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Reminiscences without having before him an image of the whole Brick church with chronic redness of the eyes. A member of the congregation went to the doctor once with a request that he would baptize a child. He was not one of the weepers, or, as Dr. Spring expresses it,
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The opportunity was too good to be lost. The doctor labored with him, preached at him, probably wept at him, tried to impress him with the solemnity and privilege of the transaction, did not baptize his child, but finally prayed with him and urged him to come again. The result of the exhortation is a good commentary upon the whole system of sentimental spasmodic religion:
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He went away, says Dr. Spring,
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We suppose that the child was not baptized; but that, according to Dr. Spring, and in spite of the Bible, makes very little difference. It was his rule
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--that is to say, a member of the church; and except in one instance he has never varied from this strict practice.
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That, he says,