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. HENRY B. SOULE was of Dover, Duchess Co., N. Y. He was another
instance of "the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties" in his
youthful days. He was determined to educate himself, and through much
anxiousness and privation and toiling he found his way in 1835 to
Clinton Liberal Institute in New York, where he was afterwards a
tutor. The next year he was encouraged to prepare for the ministry by
his kind and honored friend, Rev. S. R. Smith. His first work as a
pastor was at Fort Plain, N. Y. He was subsequently at Troy, Utica,
and in 1844 removed to Boston and became assistant pastor with Rev.
Hosea Ballou. Here he proved himself adequate to his position. His
sermons were forcible, well arranged, and calculated to convince the
understanding and enlist the affections. A year's pastorate in
Gloucester was a happy one. Then he was minister in Hartford, Conn.,
where his first sermon was preached to forty-one, his second to
sixty-four hearers, and his last to a crowded house. In 1852 his
ministry in Lyons, N. Y., commenced. At the end of its first month he
had suddenly departed,--a victim of that fearful disease, small-pox.
But his bright life shed its radiance back upon many souls who had
been blest by his ministries, and his name has since been an honored
one in our churches. His widow, who survived him, has won an honorable
reputation in our church by her literary publications, and by her
devotion to our missionary interests under the auspices of the Woman's
Centenary Association, of which she was the first president, and in
whose employ she has for three years labored faithfully as a
missionary in Scotland. An interesting biography of her husband was
prepared by her and given to the public in 1852.
Rev. OBADIAH H. TILLOTSON, of New Hampshire, was an active worker in
the ministry; a successful pastor in Worcester, Mass., Hartford,
Conn., Northfield, Vt., and in other places. He departed this life in
1863. He was a ready speaker, and was ardent and resolute in his
ministerial work. "His ability," writes a friend, "as a public debater
was signally shown in a protracted discussion (in Worcester) with a
religious opposer who was put forward to defeat him if possible. Four
nights the contest went on, and the result was a complete success. He
more than met the expectations of his friends, and the opponent
afterwards acknowledged that of all his contests (and he was a
gladiator) Mr. Tillotson was the strongest opponent he had ever met.
There was much of sunshine in his soul, and it beamed out upon others
in his social life. For a time he studied and practised law, but his
old love for the ministry returning, he entered it again with renewed
zeal, and continued earnest and faithful in its work unto the end."
CHAPTER XV.
SKETCHES OF MINISTERS--_continued_.
"Thus bravely live heroic men,
A consecrated band;
Life is to them a battle-field,
Their hearts a holy-land."
TUCKERMAN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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