TO THE

FIRST CONGREGATIONAL SOCIETY OF CINCINNATI,

AND

TO THE CIRCLE OF OUR FRIENDS,

THIS MEMOIR OF

JAMES H. PERKINS

IS DEDICATED, WITH AFFECTIONATE RESPECT,

BY

WILLIAM H. CHANNING.

SEPTEMBER 21, 1850.

TO THE

FRIENDS OF JAMES H. PERKINS.

OUR friend was a man so free from pretension, that informal sketches of his life seem alone to befit his character; and all that I have here attempted is to give an off-hand outline of his genius and growth as I observed them, filled up with extracts from his writings, and memorials supplied by others. But so interesting has it proved to trace his spiritual progress, that these notices have become too personal, minute, and lengthened out for the public eye. I have neither leisure nor inclination, however, to mend my work; and must ask you, pardoning its imperfections, to accept this memoir as a faithful portrait for the home circle. May its contemplation at once elevate and humble us, renew our aspirations, quicken our watchfulness, and rouse us to good works. Biographies should rarely be attempted; but if written at all, they should be TRUE. Otherwise they are living lies, and do but spread by contagion the deathin-life of self-deceit and hypocrisy. So far as I have gone, I have declared the simple truth; and yet with reverent affection have I passed by in silence our friend's

deepest struggles, for only he could so have told them as to leave a full impression of the truth. The clew to their explanation is to be found in the inheritance of a morbid temperament. How nobly, after all, did the spirit triumph! Death is the great emancipator for the really earnest; and on what ever-widening spheres of usefulness has this fellow-mortal and fellow-immortal assuredly entered! May we meet him there! God bless him! God bless us all!

"Do we indeed desire the dead

Should still be near us at our side?
Is there no baseness we would hide?
No inner vileness that we dread?

"Shall he for whose applause we strove,
We had such reverence for his blame,
See with clear eye some hidden shame,
And we be lessened in his love?

"We wrong the grave with fears untrue:

Shall love be blamed for want of faith?
There must be wisdom with great Death;
The dead shall see us through and through.

"Be near us when we climb or fall :

Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours
With larger, other eyes than ours,

To make allowance for us all."*

* Tennyson's "In Memoriam.”

W. H. C.