We should do injustice to our subject, if we did not add a testimony to the peculiarly religious character and influence of the men of whom we speak.  Shrewd, practical, capable, as they were, in the affairs of this life, perfectly natural and human as were their characters, still they were in the best sense unworldly men.  Religion was the deep underlying stratum on which their whole life was built.  Like the granite framework of the earth, it sunk below all and rose above all else in their life.  No Acta Sanctorum contain more pathetic pictures of simple and all-absorbing godliness than were displayed by the subjects of these sketches.  However they may have differed among themselves as to the metaphysical adjustment of the Calvinistic system, all agreed in so presenting it as to make God all in all.

Doctor Arnold says it is necessary for the highest development of the soul that it should have somewhere an object of entire reverence enthroned above all possibility of doubt or criticism.  Now a radically democratic system, like that of New England, at once sweeps all factitious reliances of this kind from the soul.  No crown, no court, no nobility, no ritual, no hierarchy,—­the beautiful principles of reverence and loyalty might have died out of the American heart, had not these men by their religious teachings upborne it as on eagles’ wings to the footstool of the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible.  Hence we see why what was commonly called among them the “Doctrine of Divine Sovereignty” acquired so prominent a place in their preaching and their hearts.  They were men of deep reverence and profound loyalty of nature, from whom every lower object for the repose of these qualities had been torn away,—­who concentrated on God alone those sentiments of faith and fealty which in other lands are divided with Church and King.  Hence, more than that of any other clergy, their preaching contemplated God as King and Ruler.  Submission to him without condition, without limit, they both preached and practised. Unconditional submission was as constantly on their lips God-ward as it was sparingly uttered man-ward.

No picture of the “good parson” that was ever drawn could exceed in beauty that of the Rev. Jeremiah Hallock, whose life and manners had that indescribable beauty, completeness, and sacredness, which religion sometimes gives when shining out through a peculiarly congenial natural temperament,—­yet we must confess we are as much interested and impressed with its effects in those wilder and more erratic temperaments, such as Bellamy, Backus, and Moody, where genius and passion were so combined as to lead to many inconsistencies.  This book is a record of how manfully many such men battled with themselves, repairing the faults of their hasty and passionate hours by the true and honest humility of their better ones, so that, as one has said of our Pilgrim Fathers, we feel that they may have been endeared to God even by their faults.