My Dear Friend: In
the hope that you are permitted to receive letters from those who have known
and esteemed you in other years, I desire to send you a few lines to assure you
that I hold your name in pleasant remembrance among the associations of early
life. I know you have not forgotten the winter of 1816-17, when yourself and
your brother Salmon and Orson M. Oviatt, all then from Hudson, Ohio, were
pupils in Morris Academy, Litchfield South Farms, under the care of Rev.
William R. Weeks, I also being assistant teacher in the same institution; how
you boarded at General Woodruff's, since deceased; and how we had meetings for
religious conference and prayers, in which your own voice was often heard. Why,
I remember all these things as though they were the times and scenes of
yesterday. I remember, also, meeting you about ten years ago in Springfield,
Massachusetts, and how we then had a long talk regarding the events and mutual
experiences of the by-gone years; also an interchange of opinions relating to
the truth as it is in Jesus. Excuse me for adverting to these times, so unlike
those through which you have since passed. I am an old man of sixty-five, have
myself gone through a pilgrimage of some light and many shades; and now, I
somehow love to thankfully dwell on the light and bright spots of the past. And
of my Present — what? An invalid unable to labor, except a very little, and
here in my native town awaiting my Master's call into the Future and Unseen.
You too, — a Torringtonborn boy, nephew of Deacon John of New Hartford, (they
say;) he was my friend, — now in heaven, and awaiting your translation thither.
He was as sound a piece of theological "heading timber" as ever grew
on earth, and a consistent and practical Christian too. Be assured, my dear
afflicted brother, that good people, here, in Goshen and Torrington and
Winchester, and all about, do most cordially sympathize with you in all your
sorrows, and remember you most devoutly in their supplications unto God. Yes,
truly; whatever be their views as to the wisdom or otherwise of your plans and
proceedings, their hearts go up to the High and Holy Throne in your behalf. You
do not expect a release from prison, such as Peter had while sleeping between
two soldiers bound with two chains," but the prayer "made without
ceasing of the Church unto God" for you; and your own faith and trust in
Him may avail for a better and more glorious deliverance by the gate of death
and through the gate of life into the city of our Lord on high. Rhoda may not
be there to hearken, (see Acts xi. 13,) but angels will. God grant you, through
the merits of his Son, an abundant entrance into his everlasting kingdom. If
all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the
Called according to His purpose," as you and I know they do, how comes it
that some of His dear children die by a violent death? For the same divine
reason and by the same divine appointment, that other Christians die in their
beds. Our Heavenly Father has a great many ways by which He calls His children
home, and whether by consumption or fever, or the flood or the flame, or by any
other mode. His love to them is still the same.
Be of good cheer,
then, my brother; and, living or dying, all will be well. I have written more,
it may be, than I ought; but hope there is nothing here which you may not
safely see; nothing which will do injury to yourself or any one. If I might be
permitted a line from you before you leave, I would esteem it as a special
favor; but, in any case, "the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and
give thee peace;" and so, till we meet in the world to come, Farewell.
Yours most
affectionately and truly,
* See John Brown's
reply, "Public Life," pp. 354 and 355,
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