CHAPTER V.

A

AT WORTHINGTON WITH BISHOP CHASE.

GAIN I ask the reader to refer to that note in the Appendix which is given to the history of the Cornish Chases. Having once more glanced through that, one will be better able to appreciate what follows.

Bishop Chase, like Adam Clarke, had the not altogether foolish fancy, that one may avoid offensive egotism by speaking of himself in the third person. Of the latter's funny manner of discoursing of himself I knew not till informed of it by Dr. Elder,' the genial biographer of Dr. Kane.

But he was no vainer than had been before him Cicero, and Erskine, and so many other worthies, prominent among them the aforesaid Adam Clarke. Charles Hammond and Timothy Walker of Ohio set a good example when they said I when they meant I. But though our hero's bishop-uncle was a vain man and a proud one, he, too, was a real worthy. Franklin was less proud, but quite as vain. John Adams was as proud, and vainer. Alexander Hamilton was alike vainer and prouder. Gouverneur Morris-but why lengthen such a list?

No one is ready for the study of biography who does not know that vanity and pride may be quite prominent in a true worthy, even in a bishop.

Bishop Chase, for all his pride and vanity, was very clearly one of the best men that ever lived.

He relates of himself that he had, as a boy, a decided preference for an agricultural and pastoral life. His father, like the patriarchs of old, had, with his children round him, fed his flocks in

1 "Dr. Elder," wrote Chief Justice Chase, in 1865, “needs no commendation of mine He is reckoned among the best speakers of our country by all who have heard him, and among its best writers by all who have read him."-To H. W. Shepard, Esq.

green pastures by the side of living waters for many years, till he was now old and gray headed. The most of these children had left him to settle in life; and should the . . . . youngest ever think of leaving him atso? The very idea of such a separation seemed maddening to his youthful and filial mind, and for a time he was indulged in the pleasing dream of being the favored one who should occupy the home farm, and minister to the wants and wishes of his parents in their declining years.1

But his parents felt otherwise, and it was otherwise ordered.

"At Bethel, when visiting his sister, he cut with an axe his foot transversely nearly through in the middle. When, in the course of a year and more this was healed, he had the misfortune, as it was called, while in the pursuit of his duty in preparing a field for wheat, in Cornish, to break his leg, and otherwise bruise his limb."2

Philander went to Dartmouth College after not quite a year of hard preparatory study.

"In the year of our Lord 1793-94, while he was a member of the sophomore and junior classes, he became acquainted with the Common Prayer-Book of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America. This circumstance formed an important era in his life and that of his venerable parents and beloved relatives in Cornish, New Hampshire, and in Bethel, Vermont, where they resided. Hitherto they had all been Congregationalists."3

"As such," says the bishop, "these parents and relatives had much ignorance and many prejudices to overcome in conforming to the worship of God as set forth in that primitive liturgy."

He adds:

"The more, however, it was examined and compared with the Word of God, the more forcibly did its beauties strike their minds.”

He then proceeds to set forth what appeared to him "the principal reasons which induced so many of his relations to conform to the Protestant Episcopal Church, and instead of repairing the meetinghouse, where both his grandfather and father had officiated as Congregational deacons, inclined them to pull it down and erect on its spot an Episcopal Church. This, he relates, was effected in great harmony; not a voice was raised against the measure throughout the neighborhood.*

1 Reminiscences, vol. 1, p. 16.

2 Ibid.

3 Reminiscences, vol. 1, p. 18.

4 Ibid.

He says that he was ardently desirous of entering, when he could suppose himself qualified, into the ministry. Wherefore, the question, who had the divine power and authority to ordain him, and thereby give him an apostolic commission to preach and administer the sacraments, became to him, he says, a matter of the utmost consequence, affecting his conscience. How that question seemed to him well settled, is related in the Reminiscences at length.

He was graduated in the degree of A. B., 1795. He taught school in Albany, New York, soon afterward. On the 10th of May, 1798, in St. George's Chapel, New York, he was ordained deacon. Thereupon he was appointed an itinerant missionary in the northern and western parts of New York. From that time forward his life was almost nomadic, his wanderings extending even to Europe.

He was ordained priest in St. Paul's Church, New York, November 10, 1799. For a short time he was rector of Christ Church, Poughkeepsie, where he preached a rather partial discourse on the death of Alexander Hamilton, on the 2d of July, 1804.

In the year 1803 or 4, he taught the academy in the same place, about half of his pupils being well advanced youths, and the other half boys of seven or nine years of age. He went to New Orleans in 1805, and there organized Christ Church, the pioneer Episcopalian Church of the Crescent City. At New Orleans, also, he was a school-teacher as well as a pastor.

Some time in 1811, he returned to Vermont, chiefly to educate his sons at the North, as he explains. These sons, George and Philander, were then at school in Randolph, Vermont, under the care and roof of their uncle Dudley.

In the fall of 1811, he became rector of Christ Church, Hartford, and continued to reside in that city about six years.

March 2, 1817, he left Hartford on his way to Ohio, and on the 16th of the same month preached at Coneaut Creek, then a few log houses, now a considerable village, called Salem. When he reached his destination at Worthington, near Columbus, I am not able to state, but it was before the 8th of May, 1817.

At Worthington he was made principal of the academy.

On the 3rd of June, 1818, Philander Chase was elected bishop of Ohio. Setting off for Philadelphia to receive consecration, he learned at Baltimore of opposition, and at Philadelphia he found it even so. The opposition, we learn, imperfectly however, raised objections "affecting his moral character." Standing committees

investigated the whole matter; inquiries were made wherever he had lived; all was found satisfactory to the committee; and Bishop White, at the close of the investigation, having attended every meeting of the board, was heard to say that he was fully satisfied, and that the gentlemen who had opposed the consecrating of the bishop elect of Ohio, would do well to consider, if, on a similar trial, their own lives would bear like investigation.

Bishop Chase was consecrated February 11, 1819, in Philadelphia. On the 3rd of the next month, he arrived at his home, near Worthington.

In the fall of 1821, he went to Cincinnati to take charge of the college in that city.

On the 26th of February, 1828, the bishop's religious temper found this expression in a letter to his wife:

"The solemnities of the ordination of the Rev. Mr. Johns to priest's orders were performed, I hope, duly-certainly very sincerely and humbly-by one whom you sincerely love, and whom, it is hoped, God pities through Jesus Christ. I wish Aunt Cranch could have been there, but it rained too hard.

"The sermon was preached by the Rev. Mr. Hawley, and prayers were read by the Rev. Mr. E. Allen. The sermon was on episcopacy, on the subject of the three orders in the ministry, and was more high-church than I had thought would have come from Mr. H. It was full up to the highest pretensions on that subject usually entertained. President Adams was present.

"After church, I went and dined with Judge B., who is now in the enjoyment of a good, fat living of $1000 per year, as clerk in the Navy Department. Mrs. B. looks younger than ever. Poor Junius, her son, died about a year ago; the Romanists got hold of him, and, after molding him in their machinery, have given him a good place in purgatory.'"

The last sentence is not creditable. I never was a Romanist, and I know, now, that I was not a Roman Catholic when I thought I was; but I find such language far from creditable to our hero's uncle. Bishop Chase was rather bigoted, but, after all, he was a noble character. Here is an extract which appears to me a truer indication of his faith in God:

"Man's life is man's trial, and the evil is as essential as the good. The days of his life, whether few or many, are directed by a wise Providence, so that all things may, by his grace, work together for the benefit of his soul."2

1 Reminiscences, vol. 2, pages 592-3.

2 Reminiscences, vol. 2, page 586.

We shall discover that like faith in Providence marked the whole life of Salmon Portland Chase. We shall see it in his answer to my birthday letter. We shall see it in many other letters, in his diaries, and in other emanations from his pen. He was a worthy nephew of a worthy uncle-nay, of worthy uncles, as he was the worthy son of worthy parents.

Our good bishop rather loved the English aristocracy. Writing at Worthington, February 9, 1828, he said to Mrs. Chase:

"MY DEAR WIFE: -I dined yesterday at the table of President Adams. I was permitted to sit alongside of the queen, and had much conversation with her. She has been much in Europe, and speaks very justly of the English nobility. She observed that their character was much misunderstood in this country, and that some of her most-esteemed friends were to be found among them." "

Yet this man was not ashamed to face his honorable poverty. In a letter written at Washington, February 6, 1828, he said to his wife:

"Tell my son, Dudley, that his uncle loves him, and commands him to be a good and industrious boy. Indeed, dear wife, don't fail to impress constantly on the minds of our children the truth of our poverty, and that they have nothing to look for, and none to look to, when we die, but God and their own endeavors for a subsistence. Do read this letter to Dudley, and talk seriously with him."3

The next paragraph of the same letter is equally significant. It is as follows:

"If Mr. on account of his depressed circumstances, be obliged to put his boys, as he says he must, to a trade, what shall our poor children do? Tell Dudley and Henry they must strive and learn, and store their heads with knowledge, as a source of a future means of subsistence, or they will be vagabonds."

February 15th, of the same year, the writer of that letter says:

"The committee on lands, to whom my petition was referred,

1 Post.

2 Vol. 2, page 589.

3 Reminiscences, page 588.