We should do injustice to our subject, if we did not add a testimony to
the peculiarly religious character and influence of the men of whom we
speak. Shrewd, practical, capable, as they were, in the affairs of this
life, perfectly natural and human as were their characters, still they
were in the best sense unworldly men. Religion was the deep underlying
stratum on which their whole life was built. Like the granite framework
of the earth, it sunk below all and rose above all else in their life.
No _Acta Sanctorum_ contain more pathetic pictures of simple and
all-absorbing godliness than were displayed by the subjects of these
sketches. However they may have differed among themselves as to the
metaphysical adjustment of the Calvinistic system, all agreed in so
presenting it as to make God all in all.
Doctor Arnold says it is necessary for the highest development of
the soul that it should have somewhere an object of entire reverence
enthroned above all possibility of doubt or criticism. Now a radically
democratic system, like that of New England, at once sweeps all
factitious reliances of this kind from the soul. No crown, no court,
no nobility, no ritual, no hierarchy,--the beautiful principles of
reverence and loyalty might have died out of the American heart, had not
these men by their religious teachings upborne it as on eagles' wings to
the footstool of the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible.
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