01.01. Introductory Letter

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct, 1860. MY DEAR MR. TOMPKINS:

I have just received your note, asking me to furnish a short preface to the volume of selections from the writings of Dr. Chapin, which you are about to publish. In order to fulfil your request, I must write a few lines without delay, and hurry them off by Pony Express to Boston; so that if these words reach you, and are accepted, you must give thanks, not to the plodding mail stage, nor to the circuitous steamers, but to the flying courier who, down snowy slopes of the Sierras, across desolate plains, at the risk of rifle-shot or deadly arrow from the Indians, and over passes of the Rocky Mountains, takes a direct line for the queen city of the Mississippi, and connects us by letter with the coast of Massachusetts, in fourteen days. A great distance to send for an introductory word! But our affections, thank Heaven, are not cooled by thousands of miles of space. You could easily have found some one nearer home who would have written a more fitting preface; but you could not, I am sure, find one who would prize more highly the privilege of connecting his name with a volume destined to such wide service; and I know that it would be difficult for you to find one who would write with heartier friendship for the publisher, or with more cordial admiration for the genius of Dr. Chapin.

There are some men through whom the Spirit pours " a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind." I have been moved by Dr. Chapin, in recent years, as many thousands have been, in the midst of great assemblies,. when the cloven tongue of fire sat upon aia soul, and the divine afflatus moved through his nature, as a gust through an organ. All that his conscious thought did was to touch the keys. The volume, and swell, and sweep of the music were of the Holy Ghost, flowing now in a wild surge through his passionate imagination, and waking the noblest chords of the religious nature in his hearers to devout joy, now in a simple passage of melody from his heart, plaintive and tender, that persuaded tears from the sternest eye. He has seemed to me, then, to be not a single nature, but the substance of a hundred souls compacted into one, to be used as an inspiring instrument in the service of the loftiest truth. And yet it is not in recognition simply of his eloquent genius that I rejoice here to associate for a moment my name with these thoughts of his; nor is it to confess the delight of his friendship, through the years of my ministry; nor to pay tribute to his fidelity, through various lines of reading, in enriching and enlarging his powers for the service of Christ. I am glad, rather, to confess indebtedness to him as my earlier friend; to utter feelings warmer than admiration to my pastor in youth; and to acknowledge with gratitude that I have brought something substantial from him with me to this distant field; since the fervor, the splendor, the pathos, and the spiritual simplicity of his preaching, twenty years ago, are not memories merely, but influences, permanent lights and forces of the inner life, for which, granted through, him by Providence, I must stand responsible.

Each new volume by Dr. Chapin has borne testimony to advancing and ripening power. This one, doubtless, will show more potently than any other which the public has seen the breadth and vigor of the intellectual gifts which he has so faithfully dedicated. Books of this character are peculiarly adapted to our American hurry and impatience of elaborate and artistic address. Very often the best thing in a sermon or speech the only original paragraph or passage is an illustration or an aphorism, or a sudden gleam of imagination, -which condenses the meaning of the discourse, or sets an old truth at an angle where it glows like a gem. Whoever masters this one passage holds the value of the whole effort. The richest minds of the pulpit are those which sprinkle their pages most freely with these seed-thoughts, or from whose extempore utterance can be caught the most of the sentences which are lenses for the rays of Christian truth. Diffuseness is especially the vice of pulpit-speech. The formula which Carlyle stated as to books is peculiarly true of sermons: "Given a cubic inch of respectable Castile soap, to lather it up in water, so as to fill one puncheon, wine-measure." Volumes like Mr. Beecher’s "Life Thoughts" save for us the solid matter, and give us what is vital in the preacher, disengaged from what is mechanical. There are comparatively few who can bear this test of husking off the accessories, and selecting only the original germpassages which are quickened by the preacher’s own insight and experience. The poverty of many a fair-looking discourse is patent when this process is tried upon it. The volume of selections from Dr. Chapin’s sermons and writings will show, I am sure, that his mind is one of the richest, as well as that his heart is one of the most fervent and simplest that is now in communion, as a preacher, with our American life. He is a thinker, as well as a prophet. The " word of wisdom " is granted to him by the same Spirit that has given him "faith;" and the volujaae will be of large usefulness, I am confident, in our country. It will be welcomed heartily and widely in this new State. In the mining regions, among the fort-hills of the Sierras, in huts amid the rocky grandeurs of the Yo-Semite, I have heard men speak in gratitude of sermons heard, years ago, in New York, from Dr. Chapin. They will be glad to be able to get so close to his mind and heart as the book for which I am writing these lines will conduct them; and it will help them and all of us that read it to appreciate the simplicity and strength of the Christian faith. For it will fulfil the purpose which Sir Thomas Browne desired, when he said, "Since instructions are so many, we should hold close unto those whereon the rest depend; so we may have all in a few, and the law and the prophets in a rule; the Sacred Writ in stenography, and the Scripture in a nutshell." With strong desire to see the volume, and the fervent wish that it may address as many readers as its merits will deserve, a wish which, if fulfilled, would satisfy any publisher, I remain Your distant friend,

T. S. KING.