Fifty Notable Years: Views of the Ministry of Christian Universalism During the Last Half-Century; with Biographical SketchesAdams, John G. (John Greenleaf)
Religion
Fifty Notable Years: Views of the Ministry of Christian Universalism During the Last Half-Century; with Biographical Sketches
Adams, John G. (John Greenleaf)
Universalism; Universalist Church -- Biography; Universalists -- Biography; Universalists -- United States -- History
Rev. ABRAHAM NORWOOD began preaching in Annisquam, Mass., and was
ordained in 1833. He had been a student with Rev. Sylvanus Cobb, in
Malden. He was a member of the Congregationalist Church in early life;
but, finding himself dissatisfied and troubled with his theology, he
gave much attention to the study of the Bible, and became thereby a
firm believer in Christian Universalism. He had a clear and vigorous
intellect, and great aptness in setting forth his opinions. He was
settled in South Dennis and Marblehead, Mass., in Fiskville, R. I., in
Canton, Mass., and in Salisbury, from 1845 to 1855. He then went to
Meriden, Conn., and acted as State missionary, with rare fidelity, for
six years. He was widely known in Connecticut, and, after the close of
his regular ministerial labors, served the town of Meriden in several
positions of trust. He was warmly interested in education, and a
faithful and devoted laborer in the Temperance cause. Besides his work
as a preacher and pastor, he wrote and published two books,--"The Book
of Abraham," and "The Pilgrimage of a Pilgrim." While marked with the
quaintness of the author, they are direct and telling in their setting
forth of Christian truth.
Rev. CHARLES SPEAR was a remarkable man; a printer by trade, a
philanthropist by nature, a self-sacrificing Christian by divine
grace. He was quiet and unostentatious, but persistent as fate in his
work. He was a Massachusetts man. He commenced life in humble
condition, and his constant liberality to every object and form of
distress kept him poor. His high religious zeal and strong
philanthropy forced him into the ministry, and into ministrations
especially connected with human degradation and suffering: the
abandoned, the outcast, the down-trodden, the intemperate, and
especially the prisoner, were his parishioners. His absence of mind,
forgetfulness of self, and disregard of (if not inability in)
pecuniary matters, often subjected him to painful embarrassments when
from home; but that Providence on which he relied for aid as for
guidance, always provided friends and means to deliver him. Mr.
Spear's work on Capital Punishment, and his larger one on the "Titles
of Jesus," are readable and valuable books. Besides these, his
literary labors produced "Voices from Prison," and a periodical called
(like himself) "The Prisoner's Friend," extended through several
years. Had he belonged to almost any other denomination than the
Universalist, he would have been much more widely known and more
highly praised during life, and his death would have been announced
and his funeral attended with greater eulogy and higher honors.
Previous to his death he had been chaplain in the St. Elizabeth
Hospital in Washington, D. C., where he died in April, 1863. His wife
was a faithful helper in his hospital work. His funeral services in
Washington were attended by a Presbyterian (Dr. Sunderland). The body
was removed to Boston for burial.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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