"His honesty nobody has ever questioned. If he hit hard, he hit where he believed hard hitting was warranted and indispensable. It is fortunate for the world, perhaps, that he took a liberal side in theology. Had he been a Calvinist, he would have been as uncompromising as any one of those Puritan inflexibles who drove Baptists into Rhode Island and Quakers into eternity; had he embraced Catholicism, heretics would have fared the worse for it, and he could hardly have found his fitting place anywhere short of the college of cardinals, with its possibilities toward the chair of St. Peter. By the same qualities that make him a terror to his enemies, he binds his followers to him with hooks of steel."[53] [Illustration: Thomas J. Sawyer. F. T. Stuart Boston.] Rev. THOMAS JEFFERSON SAWYER, D. D., was born in Reading, Windsor Co., Vt., Jan. 9, 1804. His father was one of the earliest settlers of the town, having removed with his father's family from Pomfret, Conn. The son enjoyed very good advantages for acquiring a common-school education, and at the age of eighteen had gained such a mastery of the branches then taught in such schools as to become a teacher, in which capacity he served three or four months every year until he entered his profession. He entered Middlebury College in the autumn of 1825, having completed his preparation after he was twenty-one, and graduated in 1829. As there were no theological schools to aid him, he went to study with Rev. William S. Balch, then at Winchester, N. H., who was soon called to Albany. Mr. S. remained in Winchester through the winter, preaching occasionally, reading the Iliad of Homer, and studying such theological works as he had opportunity to find. In April, 1830, he went to New York, and took charge of a small society there in Grand Street. The chapel in which he preached had been built and was for several years occupied as an Episcopal church. It was afterwards purchased by the Universalists.