CHAPTER VI.

BISHOP; PASTOR; TEACHER; THEOLOGIAN; FRIEND; HOST; POET; PATRIOT. LETTERS; PERSONAL POINTS.

Ir was a great point in the character of my Father, as a Bishop, that he was called to the office, in the freshness of his youth. It was another greater point, that from his soul and heart and mind, almost from his whole self, in spite of the bent shoulders and the silvered head, the dew of youth was never dried away. Both in the planning of his work and in its execution, he laid out largely, as young men do, with years before them, and conscious strength within them, to bring it to its fulfilment. He began and ended with intense energy, with perfect fearlessness, with fresh heart, with no thought of policy, or expediency, or the favour of man, with the endurance of strong faith and great hope, with elasticity of spirits, that rose higher, than they had fallen low; with a capacity for sympathy, given, by his experience, to men of his own age; and by his fresh-heartedness and untiring energies, to the enthusiasm and sanguineness of boys. His strong and deep sense, of the responsibility of his office, gave him a strong sense of its authority. To the people, he was essentially the shepherd whose voice, the natural relationship would lead them instinctively to follow. To the Clergy, he was entirely the Father, expecting the natural and necessary obedience of sons. Little people, that looked superficially and made up their minds before they looked, mistook his shepherd's staff, for a tyrant's sceptre; and talked about tyranny and arrogance. But the sheep gladly obeyed the voice, that was so brave and strong in danger, so deep and earnest in its love, so cheery in all trials. And his sons, even if obedience was sometimes hard, so often found his will, the wisest, and shared the shelter of his Father's love, that they yielded gladly to an authority, whose exercise was oftener for their comfort, than for their compulsion. The consistency that magnified his office, was the complement of

the humility that made little of the man. Strong in the conviction of his views and principles, he was earnest and untiring in their avowal and assertion. That this became sometimes severity, is true; that it seemed sometimes personal, is true. But the severity was their doing, who made it necessary, and the personality, was in their view, who would not make the distinction, between his office and himself. His devotion to his diocese no one can doubt. Understood or misunderstood, left as he always was, with no remuneration for his labours, hampered and hindered by want of faith and selfishness and misunderstanding; he clung to it, and loved it, with the most utter and absorbing affection to the last.

What a Bishop he was, for work. The last Sunday of his work, had crowded in it, three full services, a celebration of the Holy Communion, three sermons, two catechisings and two confirmations; with many miles of driving between them. And this is but a specimen of it all. His immense correspondence, which he attended to in the evening, kept him up late at night. And he rose early, for the service or the start. And yet these visitation months were his holidays; for the rest of the year was full of the pressure of parochial and academic labour. He always wore out the Clergy who were with him, at such times, and yet there was no tire, in his last sermon or in the next morning's service. That it wore him out before his time, they know, who kneel in tears beside his early grave. But the power of his will, the strength of his body, the pressure of his work, the sense of his responsibility urged him ever on, to work, which he could not bear to have others undertake. How touchingly, in his last Spring's Charge he speaks of this.

A WORKING CHURCH MUST HAVE A WORKING CLERGY: Working Bishops, Working Priests, Working Deacons. It is not for me, to deal with any Bishop, but myself. But, when I read of Paul, the scholar of Gamaliel, the leader of the leaders of the Jews, and, "facile princeps," among the master minds of every age, going down from Athens, where he had confounded their philosophy, by his revelation, to them, of "The Unknown God," to work at Corinth, as a tentmaker, that he might preach the Gospel, without charge, to any man: when I listen to him, at Miletus, while his big heart breaks, with the pang of parting from his loved ones, when he goes "bound in the Spirit, to Jerusalem,' 'not knowing the things, that shall befall him there; save that, in every city, bonds and afflictions abide" him; "but none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the grace of God:" when I behold that wondrous photograph of his eventful life, which his indignant zeal flashed in, upon that old Corinthian page," in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of rob

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bers, in perils by my own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness, and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness; ""of the Jews, five times received I forty stripes, save one; thrice was I beaten with rods; once was I stoned; thrice I suffered shipwreck; a night and a day have I been in the deep; ""in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft;' "besides those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the Churches," when I contemplate these "signs of an Apostle;" and consider how little I have suffered for the same Cross, how little I have done and am doing for the same suffering Lord, I sigh myself into insignificance, and feel that I am not worthy to be called a Bishop: and humbly pray, that He, the servant of whose servants I desire to be, would enable me, and dispose me to serve Him better, and make my service more promotive of the honour of His kingdom, and the glory of His Cross.

In the eyes of those who only saw results, my Father's powers as a worker, were always most amazing. They were no less so, to those who saw the means, by which they were obtained. With the most perfect readiness for every sort and phase of work, he had unfailing perseverance and untiring patience. The vigour of his mind was set in a vigorous body. Night after night, he could be almost without sleep, day after day, he could work without intermission. After a day's hard work, an hour's sleep on the sofa freshened him to write all night. In any presence, with conversation, debate, examination, no matter what, going on about him, he would abstract his mind, for thought; and with wonderful elasticity and promptness, he turned from one thing to the most opposite: from a child's composition, to his next day's sermon, from a letter, to the closest and most severe argument. In the examinations at the schools he always wrote, and when one thought him absorbed, he would look up, for the correction of a false quantity, or the suggestion of a better translation, or a clue to a puzzling problem, scarcely stopping his pen. It was so in the most important bodies; even in the house of Bishops; in the middle of a letter home, he would put down his glasses, and get up, to pick to shreds a speech, whose every weak point and false logic, he had noted in his mind as he wrote. And this interchange of labour was his only rest. His whole mind went into the conversation, with which he threw off care and weariness. And changing ever the current of his thoughts, in the direction of his labours, he kept them all and always fresh. At work, he always was, "until the evening."*

"He gave himself to his work. No one ever yet accused him of sparing himself. Every thing that he had, his time, his talents, his thoughts, his personal

"Energy does not necessarily belong to high intellect. It is not a mental gift or operation. It belongs to the heart. Its spring is in the affections, or 'active powers,' according to the philosophers. Bishop Doane's energy was a fire never out. It is said that at the central depot at Bordentown, a reserve engine is always kept with fuel ignited, ready for the emergencies of the road. An ever ready locomotive in energetic activity was this Bishop; with large driving wheels, and to each wheel a panting cylinder. His will was of a higher power than steam; it generated energy in the soul."*

"The Bishop's well-known power of labour and endurance has been the leading theme of several discourses; especially of ease, his peace of mind, his home, nay, even life itself, he freely lavished upon the flock which the Good Shepherd had committed to his care. No other Bishop,

with a Diocese ten times the size of his, ever worked harder. He set out with the highest view of his office and responsibilities, and blessed with an energy and strength of constitution which few men possess, he laboured to fulfil it by day and by night, in sunshine and in storm. His visitations were made always two, and generally three, a day, each morning administering the Holy Communion, being assisted only in the distribution of the consecrated elements, and at every service catechizing the children, preaching, and confirming. And frequently have we known him, in the midst of such laborious visitations, to work nearly the whole night with Committees on some matter for the good of the Church, and yet to be the first up in the morning, in the house at which he was entertained. Ordinarily he would work twenty hours out of the twenty-four, and then take his rest in the remaining four, wherever he might chance to be, on a sofa, or in the cars, or even a common country wagon travelling from one point to another. Even in the earlier years of his Episcopate, when he had much less to do than later in life, he has been known to keep the printers in Burlington at work all night by paying double wages, and correct the proofs himself, as they were brought to his library, hour by hour. He would travel in an open wagon, or drive, as we knew him to do on one occasion, nearly fourteen miles in an hour, through the most violent storm, to catch a train of cars, that he might be where he was expected. No heat or cold ever detained him. Only let him see that some duty could be performed for the Church, and no privation or difficulty deterred him from the task. He has crossed the Delaware opposite his residence in an open boat, when even the stout-hearted ferryman tried to dissuade him from the attempt. When on a visitation in Monmouth County, intelligence was brought to him of the death of the Rev. Dr. Barry, his honoured teacher, just previous to the Evening Service, with the request that he would preach the sermon at the funeral in Jersey City, the next day, at 2 o'clock; though it involved his returning to Burlington for some papers which could furnish him with dates, he immediately promised to do it; and then, after the Evening Service, which had been appointed, he drove a number of miles to meet the night freight train, on the Camden and Amboy Railroad, rode in any empty freight car to Burlington, where he arrived at 2 A. M., wrote the Sermon, and left by the cars at 8 A. M., arriving in Jersey City in time to preach the Sermon; at the hour appointed, in the presence of a large gathering of the Clergy and Laity. And on his last Autumnal Visitation, he left the Board of Missions in Baltimore at 5 P. M., arriving in Elizabeth at 3 A. M., Friday, took but two hours' rest, then had three full services, catechizing, confirming, and preaching at each, and was up the following night writing until after 2 o'clock, though he had three Services, and twenty-five miles of driving arranged for each of the two succeeding days. Thus did he toil day after day, and month after month, crowding into a short Episcopate of twenty-six years, the work of three lives rather than of one.”—Church Review, October, 1859.

Dr. Van Rensselaer's Sermon.

the admirable sermons of Dr. Ogilby and Dr. Van Rensselaer, preached in Burlington the Sunday after the funeral, and since published. The former bears the testimony of a devoted and long tried friend; the latter that of an earnest, but generous antagonist, opposed to the Bishop on theological grounds, of a different communion, and at one time a sharer in the prejudices and misconceptions which were so industriously diffused against him. In speaking of the Bishop's working power, he compares it to a mighty locomotive dragging a heavy train of cars; a comparison that does justice to its might and facility, but hardly to its variety of application. To form a right conception of the latter, it must be remembered that Bishop Doane was not only in charge of a Diocese, a Parish, and two Institutions of learning, founded and sustained by his own efforts mainly, but was always ready for the overwhelming demands upon his time, to which the variety of his talents, and his well-known character as a friendly, hospitable, neighbourly, benevolent, public-spirited man continually exposed him. To meet all these claims he worked with prodigious rapidity, and required little sleep. He had the happy faculty of being able to put his work down or take it up, or to turn from one employment to another, at any moment."

And how startlingly he closes his last public admonition to his clergy:

My brethren of the Clergy, this is my twenty-fifth Convention. The Germans call their twenty-fifth, their "silver, wedding-day." I shall not see our "golden." I am fifty-eight to-day. But, however that may be, the one word for us all, is, WORK. Work, with our might. Work, together. Work, for God. Of the Clergy, who were with me, five-and-twenty years ago, but four are left. Which of us is next to go? Only, He knoweth. Whoever it may be, whenever it may be; may we be ready for the summons. "Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord, when He cometh, shall find watching." And what a Bishop he was, to his clergy.

It is so dread a thought, to be the teacher of the teachers: to look upon you, brethren, and see, in each of you, the steward of immortal souls; and then, myself, with all my sins upon my head, and all my doubts and fears within my heart, to undertake to deal with yours; to be the shepherd of the shepherds of the sheep, which the Son of God " bought with His own blood; to be "the savour of life unto life," or, else," the savour of death unto death," to souls, which have the care of souls! Brethren, dear reverend brethren, "who is sufficient for these things?"t

He knew them all. He sympathized with them. He supported them. He advised them, when they asked it, as they Eighth Triennial Charge.

* Dr. Mahan's Sermon.