A more positive and thorough expositor of the doctrine of Universalism could not be heard from the pulpit than Dr. Chapin. This has been acknowledged on all hands by those who were most constant and attentive listeners to him. But the great aim of his ministry was to make men know and feel the power of the inner life of the Gospel. He distinctly states this in the first published volume of his discourses:-- "The great end of preaching is to reform the life, to reconcile man to duty and to God. The great principle to be propagated and established in the souls of men is not this or that particular _ism_, but the spirit of Christ. Without this no denomination can be right, no society can flourish, no soul can live." Mr. Chapin was a poet as well as an orator. Some of his hymns, long used in our church services, are of great merit, having the beauty of Moore with the spiritual fervor of Charles Wesley. The writer takes pleasure in transcribing one of them for these pages, which was written from a sense of duty, and at the close of a very hot day in July, when we had been very diligently at work on the new Hymn Book, compiled by us jointly for Mr. Abel Tompkins, publisher, in 1845. We were about to make up the last package of matter for the press. The writer had prepared one or two hymns expressly for the book, while such of Mr. Chapin's as had a place in it, were selected from papers and church service programmes of the time. He was urged to write one then wanted for the miscellaneous department of the book, the subject to be, "During or After a Destructive Storm." Wearied as he was, he consented, and standing at the desk, wholly absorbed in his theme, soon brought out the following, which speaks for itself:-- "Amid surrounding gloom and waste, From nature's face we flee, And in our fear and wonder haste, O nature's Life, to thee! Thy ways are in the mighty deep, In tempests as they blow; In floods that o'er our treasures sweep; The lightning and the snow. "Though earth upon its axis reels, And heaven is veiled in wrath, Not one of nature's million wheels Breaks its appointed path. Fixed in thy grasp, the sources meet Of beauty and of awe; In storm or calm, all pulses beat True to the central law. "Thou art that law, whose will thus done, In seeming wreck and blight, Sends the calm planets round the sun, And pours the moon's soft light. We trust thy love; thou best dost know The universal peace, How long the stormy force should blow, And when the flood should cease. "And though around our path some form Of mystery ever lies, And life is like the calm and storm That checker earth and skies,-- Through all its mingling joy and dread, Permit us, Holy One, By faith to see the golden thread Of thy great purpose run."