selves on the streams and rivers, along the lines of railway, or are drained off to feed the enormous growth of cities. Silence and stagnation have crept over many old towns that were once places of great importance. They wear now a broken-down and discouraged aspect. Guilford for many years shared to some extent in this process of decay, though not in the same degree as many other places. But its position on the Sound, its relations to New Haven and New York, and its present railway facilities are giving it again an upward tendency. Here, in the year 1814, the subject of this sketch was born, and here he passed all the early years of his life until his entrance into college. Dr. Bacon, who was intimately acquainted with his father's family, speaking of his early education says: "His Christian discipline began almost with his birth. He was born into a household where this discipline was administered in love, where a mother, gentle, firm, and intelligent, was the guardian angel of her children, and the light and joy of her husband. He was carefully taught, and carefully restrained and guided. He breathed an atmosphere of intelligence and devotion, as well as love. He saw at home what the work of a minister was, and by the visits of other clergymen, learned from their conver sation what their lives and trials were. He grew up an active, generous, courageous boy, sometimes given to mischievousness, but never to any but of a harmless nature. was the best wrestler on the village green, and was always the champion of the weak."1 He Those who have known Mr. Dutton in the days of his youth and manhood can well understand that his childhood must have been overflowing with life. He was never characterized by what Shakespeare calls a "modest stillness and humility." There was in him a large exuberance of animal feeling, and 1 Funeral Sermon. he must have impressed almost every one who ever met him, that the sum total of what we call life was greater in him than in most persons. Hence we can easily believe all that he himself used to tell, and all that others have told, of the boundless activity and sports of his childhood. In the circle of his brothers and sisters there was no lack of stir and excitement when he was present. Among the children of his own age in the town he was a distinct personality. Whoever else might be forgotten in after years, he was not likely to fade away from the recollection of any of his early companions. A bright scholar, quick to learn, and obedient in the school-room, he had the liveliest appreciation of those great outside interests, running, wrestling, jumping, swimming, hunting, etc., etc., - which in the eyes of boys are of such vast importance. Ambitious of standing well with his teachers as a scholar, he was equally ambitious of holding the first place in all these athletic sports and exercises. A boy like this, with such a superabundance of life, is in his early years a far greater source of care and anxiety to parents, than one of a more quiet and retiring disposition. But if these energies can be shaped and regulated, can be brought under the control of fixed moral principle, they are in themselves a treasure to be coveted. They bear a man easily and triumphantly over difficulties at which he might otherwise stand appalled. This boy found in his home the needed tempering and controlling influence. There was a mother, gentle and firm, of rare intelligence, quiet in her deportment, but fixed in her principles, who knew how wisely to mold and shape the forming characters of her children. A humble and sincere piety was mingled with all her discipline, and formed indeed the most essential element in it. In the training of her household she was a most wor thy helpmeet of her husband, and indeed the chief burden of this responsibility fell, as is common, upon her. An incident is related of this early period of his life which is not only interesting in itself, as illustrating the wide-awake and stirring character of the boy, but which, as it afterward proved, was a kind of foreshadowing of his future life. His father and mother, having a desire to visit their kindred in Watertown, and not feeling easy to leave their little flock behind, decided to take the children with them. Having made the needed provision, the whole family set out for Watertown, a distance of some forty miles from Guilford. The first stage of the journey brought them to New Haven, and while they were resting there, the interval was employed in visiting the new meeting-house of the North Church, which had just been completed, and which in those times was regarded somewhat as an architectural wonder, Once inside the building, the children scattered in various directions. Some of them went into the gallery. The father and mother were quietly taking in the tout ensemble of the wonderful structure, when suddenly a piping voice was heard from the pulpit. Samuel had mounted the desk, and drawing his inspiration from Webster's Spelling Book, into the mysteries of which he had just begun to be initiated, proceeded to orate as follows: "No man may put off the law of God." And so, at this early age, he preached his first sermon from the very desk which he afterwards occupied, as a Christian minister, for twenty-eight years. In a minister's family of that day, and especially one of so much character and prominence as that of Rev. Mr. Dutton, of Guilford, there was a large opportunity for a quick-minded boy to pick up ideas, and to obtain knowledge of what was going forward in the afterwards. No one His acquaintance with public men in Church and State was large and intimate, and his talk not only contributed to the amusement of young and old, but it largely increased their stock of valuable information. The visits of Dr. McEwen to this Guilford home were always welcomed by the children, and remembered with joy afterwards. We instance this case in particular, because we have so often heard reference made to it among those who were then the children of this household. It seemed to be marked out and settled, in the plans of this family, that all the sons should receive a collegiate education. Three of them afterwards graduated, and of the other two, one and one died during his college course, while preparing for college. The daughters also were thoroughly instructed, while the eldest received such an education that she was able to assist in the preparation of her brothers for college, as she has since assisted in the intellectual, moral, and religious training of many young ladies now widely scattered through the land, the orna ments of many a household. From his early years, therefore, Samuel was set upon his course of study. He was fitted for college by his father and sister, and entered Yale in the summer of 1829, at the age of fifteen, years. and he was among the youngest members. After leaving college, he was engaged for a year in teaching in Baltimore, when he was elected principal of the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven. We have heard one who was then a pupil in the Hopkins School relate the impression made. upon himself and the other boys when the new principal first made his appearance. Young, florid, rotund and handsome, playful in his every look and action, not having yet reached his own majority, the boys measured the new teacher and speculated upon him, and could not exactly make out, at first, what manner of man he was. But they soon learned to love him and obey him, though he went freely into their out-door games and sports. Soon after he entered upon these duties, in a faculty meeting at Yale, one of the professors, with an ominous shake of the head, related what he had heard, — that the new principal of the Hopkins School had so let down his dignity as the to place himself on the door-steps of But the school building, and challenge all the boys by their united efforts to pull him off. "Well," said Professor Silliman, "did they do it?" It was confessed that they did not. "I'll venture him, then," was the reply. In 1836 he was elected tutor in the college, and though greatly beloved by the classes that came under his instruction, his free and easy manner about the college buildings often shocked some of his more circumspect associates. It was quite as much in his way to jump over a fence as to go through a gate. There was a bounding health and vigor about him We will not linger upon the details of his college life, except to say that in the winter of 1831, 2, when the Spirit of God was poured out so largely upon the colleges and congregations of the land, he was numbered among the converts to Christ at Yale College, and soon after made profession of his faith in his father's church at Guilford. Could a catalogue be made of all ministers and missionaries who date their conversion from the great revival of 1831, 2, we should gain some conception of what resources God stores up for his church on earth in one of these great outpourings of the Spirit. They are like the free and copious rains that fall upon a land long parched and dry. They are refreshing and joy-giving even while they are passing. "The little hills rejoice on every side, pastures are clothed with flocks." these rains drop also "upon the pastures of the wilderness." They are poured out full and free on the rough hills and lofty mountain ranges. They feed the deep and hidden springs. They lose themselves for a time in their silent and unseen progress. But their effects are seen long afterwards, when the rain itself is forgotten, in the full inland lake, and the freely flowing river. Such a rain of righteousness, we may believe, is on the land this very year. "Thou visitest the earth and waterest it, thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water," and we can not doubt that God is again laying up resources for the toils and triumphs of his church in the years of the future. Mr. Dutton graduated with distinction, in due course, in 1819. His class numbered at graduation eighty-seven, a joyousness of spirit that found relief in many unusual ways. He seemed to have no dignity to nurse and take care of. The class which graduated in 1840 came more under his direction and tuition than any other, and the members of that class have always retained a living affection for him. In these years, while principal of the Hopkins School and tutor in the college, he was pursuing his theological studies in the Seminary. At that time Dr. Taylor was in the full vigor of his strength, and those who have never known him except by hearsay, can hardly conceive what that strength was. There was a magnetic power about the man such as few teachers ever possessed. His whole soul was alive with the great themes pertaining to Man and Redemption. In the fullness of his heart he seemed often to have uttered Milton's great prayer: "What in me is dark, Illumine; what is low, raise and support, That to the hight of this great argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men." Through all his life, Mr. Dutton was ever ready freely to confess that he was more indebted to Dr. Taylor for his intellectual culture, and for his conceptions of truth, than to any other man. In his theological studies he was patient and severe, and it has often been remarked that no man ever comprehended Dr. Taylor's system of dogmatic theology more perfectly and entirely than he. Dr. Bacon, in his funeral sermon, said, "Of Dr. Taylor's pupils none received his system of teaching with more exactness than this one." And though in after life he thought he saw occasion in one or two points, and especially in matters pertaining to the doctrine of self-love, to modify his opinions, the great and essential features of the theological system which he then and there received he held not only with pertinacity, but with a loving confidence and joy. In the year 1838 he received and accepted a call from the North Church in New Haven to become their pastor, and he was ordained for the work of the gospel ministry, June 5th, 1838. This was the church over which Dr. Jonathan Edwards, junior, that illus trious son of a still more illustrious father, had been pastor from 1769 to 1795. Mr. Dutton entered upon his ministry here under happy auspices. Only twenty-four years of age, radiant with health and hope, with a people cordially united in him as their pastor, with a strong and able congregation intellectually and financially, in the city, which of all other places he loved, life opened before him with the most inviting prospects. On the 12th of September following his ordination, he was united in marriage to Miss Harriet Waters, daughter of Asa Waters, Esq., of Millbury, Mass. The wise man has said, that "a prudent wife is from the Lord," and thousands who have known Mrs. Dutton in her hospitable home in New Haven, will gladly bear testimony, that the young pastor was most wisely and divinely guided in the choice of a companion. He might have searched long and far before he would have found another more eminently fitted to grace and dignify the station to which she was called. For not only did she possess in a high degree the gentler graces and excellences, - feminine taste and ease and delicacy,—not only was she conscientiously exact in all matters of right and wrong, but she had also that rare intellectual power and grasp, by which she pierced through the externals of a subject to the substance of it. There was no lack of topics for conversation in her presence, and though she had her share of interest in the current events of the day, and in all the goings on of society about her, it was ever easy for her to turn aside into the calmer realms of scholarship and philosophy, and discourse of books and systems of thought. She was herself a thinker, and she delighted to hold converse with real thinkers. She had the magnetic faculty to awaken in those with whom she was conversing their best powers, eliciting from them thoughts of which they had This faculty, Mrs. Dutton possessed in "I need not tell you that her counsel, and her silent influence, more powerful than spoken counsel, always moved me toward what is right and good-to integrity, to Christian industry, to prayerfulness, to humanity, to self-denying benevolence, to pious fidelity. Indeed, if I had a difficult subject to think out, there was no one to whom I had access from whose conversation I could receive so much aid as from her. In the power of insight into moral and religious truth, and the power to discern its bearings on life and conduct, I have for years, reverently regarded her as my superior. I thank God for her helpfulness to me in my ministry for twenty-six years." At her funeral, Rev. S. G. Buckingham, of Springfield, her pastor at Millbury at the time of her marriage, said in his address: "Of her life and influence here, where for twenty-five years she has walked before you in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless; where you have been daily witnesses to her conscientiousness and fidelity to every duty; her humility before God, and kindness to every human creature; to her discretion and prudence; to her prayerfulness and heavenly-mindedness; to her helpfulness to her husband in all the duties of his sacred office; to her unwavering attach ment to you, and untiring devotion to your welfare, no stranger can tell you, as you know it for yourselves." And on the same occasion, Dr. Ba con, who had known her well through all these years, gave the following as his testimony: "For these five and twenty years she has been his most intimate and constant adviser. His habits of thought have been modified by hers. Her feminine tact and intuition have aided his judgment. He has seen through her eyes as well as through his own. Her loving criticism has encouraged and guided his public labors. The books which he has studied, the questions of doctrine or of duty which he has considered, the movements of Christian enterprise in which he has had a part, have interested her, and without her influence, his entire activity and influence in the ministry would have differed from what it has been." We have dwelt the more at length upon this point, because here was an element at work in Mr. Dutton's private and public life, which no one, acquainted with this household, can neglect or leave out of the account. Our narrative has brought Mr. Dutton forward to his entrance upon the public work of his profession, and we |
