and are
not in these later days unworthy of their high calling. They have worked
hard for small earthly compensation. They have been the most learned men
the country had to show, when learning was a scarce commodity. Called
by their consciences to self-denying labors, living simply, often
half-supported by the toil of their own hands, they have let the light,
such light as shone for them, into the minds of our communities as the
settler's axe let the sunshine into their log-huts and farm-houses.

Their work has not been confined to their professional duties, as a few
instances will illustrate. Often, as was just said, they toiled like
day-laborers, teasing lean harvests out of their small inclosures of
land, for the New England soil is not one that "laughs when tickled with
a hoe," but rather one that sulks when appealed to with that persuasive
implement. The father of the eminent Boston physician whose recent loss
is so deeply regretted, the Reverend Pitt Clarke, forty-two years pastor
of the small fold in the town of Norton, Massachusetts, was a typical
example of this union of the two callings, and it would be hard to
find a story of a more wholesome and useful life, within a limited and
isolated circle, than that which the pious care of one of his children
commemorated. Sometimes the New England minister, like worthy Mr. Ward
of Stratford-on-Avon, in old England, joined the practice of medicine
to the offices of his holy profession. Michael Wigglesworth, the poet of
"The Day of Doom," and Charles Chauncy, the second president of Harvard
College, were instances of this twofold service. In politics their
influence has always been felt, and in many cases their drums
ecclesiastic have beaten the reveille as vigorously, and to as good
purpose, as it ever sounded in the slumbering camp. Samuel Cooper sat
in council with the leaders of the Revolution in Boston. The three
Northampton-born brothers Allen, Thomas, Moses, and Solomon, lifted
their voices, and, when needed, their armed hands, in the cause of
liberty. In later days, Elijah Parish and David Osgood carried politics
into their pulpits as boldly as their antislavery successors have done
in times still more recent.

The learning, the personal character, the sacredness of their office,
tended, to give the New England clergy of past generations a kind of
aristocratic dignity, a personal grandeur, much more felt in the
days when class distinctions were recognized less