METHODIST REVIEW.

MARCH, 1885.

ART. I.— BISHOP THOMSON.

"BISHOP THOMSON is a man of yesterday," said a prince in Israel to the writer. So is Arnold of Rugby. So the gifted and lovely Switzer, Lavater. So Chrysostom and St. John. Each graced his age, and though of yesterday, he belongs to to day and to-morrow.

Edward Thomson was called to his place in the middle of the nineteenth century, and fitted to it with singular felicity. We of to-day owe something to his "yesterday." He passed in succession to various places of distinction: Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of Divinity, Doctor of Laws, Bishop-adding luster to each. But as a jewel is a jewel still, no matter what incasings its worth calls round it, so was he superior to scalpel, bema, and miter. The simple name Edward Thomson points to that for which he was most remarkable, the worth of his own rare nature.

In person he was under size, never weighing over 125. pounds; so in body, as in mind, there was nothing superfluous. His form, though delicate, was erect and vital. In walking his carriage was elegant, modest, manly. To see him pass up the aisle to the rostrum, meekly as if the humblest of all his brethren, yet erect and grand as if consciously an embassador from heaven, was in itself part of a liberal education. The poise of that perfect head above erect shoulders gave a striking air of symmetry. The head was large, but so filled out and curved in outline as to seem neither round nor unduly long. There were no crags nor crannies for the hiding of over-developed faculties or the brewing of tempestuous passion-a head to

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contain what we call genius, but wherein genius must never misbehave itself. Into his fine face were set a pair of sensitive nostrils the play of which was always a little prophetic of the flashes of thought that at times seemed to leap from the entire man. The eye was a bright gray, bordering on blue, sometimes hinting of brown-a vast, deep eye. It held a latent flame, which, when kindled and turned upon any hapless rogue of a student who deserved detection, was like a search-warrant, and when lit in the hour of mental excitement flashed and swept with a far reach, like the eagle's when turned toward the sun. The lines of the mouth, not small nor large, curved into that fine shape suggestive of an eagle's wings, and which is never the gate-way for the utterances of a small soul. His voice was light but fine, and of great flexibility; less a tenor than that of Simpson, less metallic than that of Wendell Phillips, but more musical than either.

When this small man stood before a throng-the more select the more complete his control-sweeping over it the forces of his mighty spirit, men would bow before him as trees in a storm, or rise from their seats by a common impulse, an event that occurred in several notable instances. Then would his small stature seem transfigured to the towering dimensions of his soul, and he stood ranking with such as Watts, Wesley, Knox, and Paul, his brotherhood of gigantic spirits in petit forms.

He

Thomson's life was given mainly to his Church, but his nature was larger than a denomination's lines. As Payson was wider than Congregationalism, Edwards than Presbyterianism, Stanley than English Churchism, so Thomson's nature reached the communion of saints and the brotherhood of man. died fourteen years ago. A singular tardiness has held the pen of the biographer, an unaccountable silence has hung over his tomb. Meager, indeed, are the records of his worth. The great Cyclopedia bearing the name of his illustrious compeer M’Clintock devotes to him but a very brief space, scarcely worthy the fame of many an exhorter! Does it not reflect upon the men he educated and the Church he ornamented that this silence has hung over his name and the riches of his unpublished writings more than a dozen years? Perhaps a timid sense of inadequacy for so rare a task has held others back, as the writer has found himself held from even this humble attempt. Men

are slow to undertake the embodiment of ideals too fine to be cut in marble or thrown on canvas, and when partially delineated, too rare to be seen by a world too distant or dim-eyed to catch the vision. Those who knew Thomson best are sure he cannot be reported.

Years ago Judge Nott, now of Colorado, said to the writer:

Why not prepare a lecture for the inspiration of young men, on Edward Thomson? I saw him but once he came to M'Kendree College to lecture on Hugh Latimer. He also talked to us in chapel. As a boy I was strangely overcome. He was to me

a new sort of man.

This furnished the germ. Afterward Dr. Whedon wrote me : I am glad to know you are doing something to honor the memory of our late beloved Bishop Thomson. The lovely spirit and brilliant genius of that memorable man should be kept fresh in the memory of the Church.

Rev. Mr. Daniels says, in his "History of Methodism: "

There were doubtless weak places in him, since he was a mortal man; but neither his pupils, his parishioners, nor his subordinates in the ministry seem to have been able to discover them.

Dr. Townsend, of Boston Theological Seminary, writes me: I regard him as one of the purest minds in the history of the Church, and one of its strongest and clearest thinkers. For loftiness and clearness of conception, and for purity and simplicity of expression, Bishop Thomson has had no superior, if equal, in the Methodist Connection.

A deliberate statement from very high authority.

Dr. Warren, president of the same University, also writes, in a private letter concerning a course of lectures:

In those days Boston was favored with an unusual number of lecture courses on moral and religious subjects, but it would be hard to instance a single one which, in combined sweetness and strength, in force of argument and in beauty, clearness, and pregnancy of style, could be considered the equal of Bishop Thomson's. A memorial of his life, character, and work should long ago have been given to the world.

President Eliot, of Harvard, having attended those lectures, remarked that he "knew of no man who used the English language more faultlessly than Bishop Thomson." A notable concession from one so little in sympathy with the trend of the lectures.

William Morley Punshon, with his power to penetrate character and his genius for lofty and accurate utterances, in eulogy on our dead before the General Conference of 1872, exclaimed:

Thomson, the Chrysostom of your Church, of golden speech and golden value; whose large, child-like spirit could not harbor a thought of guile, and who seemed ever as if detained on earth by slight and trembling tendrils!

Carlyle says, in sarcasm on fashionable biography: "Your true hero must have no features, but must be a white, stainless, impersonal ghost-hero." Then adds, of true biography: "They that crowd about bonfires may get their beards singed. It is the price of illumination." Alas for Carlyle's beard at Froude's bonfire, made of private letters from the garret !

We might shrink from illuminating Edward Thomson with pine knots, whose smoke makes shadows, but in the presence of these, among the very head-lights of the times, there is no risk to him. Turn on the electric light! Bring your solar microscope! The stronger the light the better shows the man. Few places in the world furnish a severer ordeal than the keen intellects and moral sensitiveness of such literary centers as Delaware. But nowhere else would we more gladly challenge admiration than where he spent fourteen years of splendid, transparent life.

But he was early appreciated outside of Ohio. In his 26th year he was pastor in Detroit. One describing his ministry

says:

He drew many of the most influential families, and among them Governor Cass. The audience was frequently entranced by the magic of that indefinable power we call eloquence, and in a few instances they were lifted quite beyond the regions of sense, and with them the speaker was carried by an uncontrollable inspiration out of himself, and seemed only the passive instrument through which a higher-a divine-power was pouring words and thoughts and feelings and bursts of electric sympathies, till speaker and audience together, spell-bound in each other's embrace, seemed sweeping upward to the highest heavens.

On one occasion, during a temperance agitation, when the debates of the Legislature were carried round among the churches of Detroit, and both sides were publicly advocated, Thomson was speaking. Unexpectedly the whole audience rose to their feet.