being then a Unitarian, or dreaming of the great change
that was to follow within two or three years,—and
was a regular attendant under the preaching of Mr.
Everett up to the last. On his removal to Baltimore,
he swung round again toward Orthodoxy,—that
Orthodoxy which has been so wittily defined as
my
doxy, while heterodoxy is
your doxy,—and
sat for three years under the preaching of Dr. Ingals,
the highly gifted gentleman to whom he dedicated his
poem—
in blank—when it
first appeared, being perhaps a little afraid of committing
himself in advance; and then, at the very first gathering
of the Baltimore Unitarians in a large auction-room,
which led to the organization of a church within a
few months, the erection of a beautiful building, and
to the settlement of our friend, the late Dr. Jared
Sparks, he came out fair and square upon the great
question, and led, or helped lead, the exercises.
The result of which was, that in due time, after his
failure in business, he became a student of theology
at Cambridge, and within a year was called to the
ministry of reconciliation over Hollis Street Church,
as a successor to Mr. Holly, at that time a most captivating
preacher, with a congregation and church eminently
fastidious and exacting, and not easily satisfied;
yet Mr. Pierpont labored with them and for them over
twenty-five years, with an earnestness, a comprehensiveness,
and a faithfulness, for which some of them have not
forgiven him to this day. He entered upon the
ministry there in April, 1819, and resigned in 1845;
when he became the first pastor of a Unitarian church
in Troy, remained there four years, and then took
charge of a church in Medford; where he was living
when the Rebellion broke out, and he entered the army
as chaplain, under an express stipulation that the
regiment was
not to go round Baltimore.
But I am fully justified in saying that, when I first
knew him in Boston, he did not know himself.
He had entirely mistaken his vocation, and was about
the last man in the world to enter into trade, though
pre-eminently fitted for business, if he had been properly
encouraged,—the business of law certainly,
and the business of statesmanship. He saw nothing
of what was before him,—nothing of the
field he was to occupy till the Master came,—nothing
of the influence, nothing of the authority, he was
to exercise over the minds and hearts of men,—and
nothing of that huge oriflamme which was coming up
slowly, to be sure, but certainly, over the distant
verge of an ever-widening horizon. He was utterly
discouraged as a lawyer; he knew nothing of business;
he had no capital; and what on earth was he good for?
Whither should he go? What undertake?
And yet he bore up manfully through all this discouragement,
and no word of complaint or murmuring ever escaped
his lips. On the whole, he was one of the most
truly conscientious men I ever knew,—and
why not one of the most truly religious, notwithstanding
his obnoxious faith?—so even-tempered that
I never saw him disturbed more than once or twice in
all my life, and so patient under wrong that one could
hardly believe in his withering sarcasm, and scorching
indignation when he took the field as a reformer,
“in golden panoply complete.”