[Footnote A:  By “the next month” the writer meant May.  It will be observed that his article was finally prepared for the press on the second of April.  It has not since been changed.  The references to Williamsburg, the Chickahominy, and the “neck between the rivers” are not “prophecies after the fact.”]

SUNTHIN’ IN THE PASTORAL LINE.

To the Editors of the ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

Jaalam, 17th May, 1862.

Gentlemen,—­At the special request of Mr. Biglow, I intended to inclose, together with his own contribution, (into which, at my suggestion, he has thrown a little more of pastoral sentiment than usual,) some passages from my sermon on the day of the National Fast, from the text, “Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them,” Heb. xiii. 3.  But I have not leisure sufficient at present for the copying of them, even were I altogether satisfied with the production as it stands.  I should prefer, I confess, to contribute the entire discourse to the pages of your respectable miscellany, if it should be found acceptable upon perusal, especially as I find the difficulty of selection of greater magnitude than I had anticipated.  What passes without challenge in the fervour of oral delivery cannot always stand the colder criticism of the closet.  I am not so great an enemy of Eloquence as my friend Mr. Biglow would appear to be from some passages in his contribution for the current month.  I would not, indeed, hastily suspect him of covertly glancing at myself in his somewhat caustick animadversions, albeit some of the phrases he girds at are not entire strangers to my lips.  I am a more hearty admirer of the Puritans than seems now to be the fashion, and believe, that, if they Hebraized a little too much in their speech, they showed remarkable practical sagacity as statesmen and founders.  But such phenomena as Puritanism are the results rather of great religious than merely social convulsions, and do not long survive them.  So soon as an earnest conviction has cooled into a phrase, its work is over, and the best that can be done with it is to bury it. Ite, missa est.  I am inclined to agree with Mr. Biglow that we cannot settle the great political questions which are now presenting themselves to the nation by the opinions of Jeremiah or Ezekiel as to the wants and duties of the Jews in their time, nor do I believe that an entire community with their feelings and views would be practicable or even agreeable at the present day.  At the same time I could wish that their habit of subordinating the actual to the moral, the flesh to the spirit, and this world to the other were more common.  They had found out, at least, the great military secret that soul weighs more than body.—­But I am suddenly called to a sick-bed in the household of a valued parishioner.

With esteem and respect.  Your ob’t serv’t HOMER WILBUR.