The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 — John Shaqi
The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886Various
History
The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886
Various
New England -- Periodicals
President Cheney says of Mr. Prince "he may be justly characterized as
one of our great men;" but he deplored that he sometimes devoted so much
attention to minute and trifling circumstances of things, and gave too
great credit to surprising stories. This, no doubt, may at times have
been unnecessary, and would certainly be a failing at the present time,
when writing on all subjects is so universal; but in Mr. Prince's case
it took the form of an advantage to posterity, as this love of detail
caused him to hand down to all generations the most life-like
descriptions of daily life and conversation of his own and remote times.
Although he saw a particular providence in every act, every word, every
wind that blew, and every storm that arose, yet Mr. Sewall said of him,
"that the great truths and doctrines of the Gospel were his chosen
subjects. He spake as the oracles of God, as one that felt the Divine
Excellence. Some of his discourses even have received impressions in
England."
The great tenderness of his nature was particularly prominent in his
family relations. He trained his children in the paths of knowledge, his
well-disciplined mind making him a safe and wise teacher; while, like
him, they were pious from their youth. His only son graduated with honor
from his own college, and had just started on a literary career with
flattering success, when consumption caused his death, in his
twenty-fourth year. Two daughters, also, at the early ages of twenty and
twenty-two, were taken from the household, and in their old age one
daughter only was left to these parents. Mr. Prince's contemporaries
speak of his wonderful resignation at these repeated afflictions. His
sermon on the death of his daughter Deborah gives the religious
experience of a young girl who, in those rigorous Calvinistic days, had
her sweet young life overshadowed by the terror of God's wrath for what
she considered her unbelief. A few extracts will give a good idea of Mr.
Prince's impassioned, pathetic, and even dramatic style, and his
apparently "trifling details" add vividness to the picture. His son
besought him to dispense with the custom of a funeral oration in his
case; but the feelings of the father were sacrificed to what he
considered his duty to the youth of his congregation on the occasion of
his daughter's death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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