Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. | Page 4

will not." It is the
grand mystery of Providence that what is divinest and most beautiful
should be suffered to be so painfully, and, as it must seem at first view,
so injuriously misconstrued. But what is universal, must be a law; and
what is law, must be right,--must have good reasons for it. And
certainly so it is. Varying as the ages vary, yet the experience of the
individual is but a picture of the universal mind,--of the world's mind.
The steps are the same, ignorance, fear, superstition, implicit faith; then
doubt, questioning, struggling, long and anxious reasoning; then, at the
end, light, more or less, as the case may be. Can it, in the nature of
things, be otherwise? The fear of death, for instance, which I had,
which all children have, can childhood escape it? Far onward and
upward must be the victory over that fear. And the fear of God, and,
indeed, the whole idea of religion,--must it not, in like manner,
necessarily be imperfect? And are imperfection and error peculiar to
our religious conceptions? What mistaken ideas has the child of a man,
of his parent when correcting him, or of some distinguished stranger!
They are scarcely less erroneous than his ideas of God. What mistaken
notions of life, of the world, the great, gay, garish world, all full of
cloud-castles, ships laden with gold, pleasures endless and entrancing!
What mistaken impressions [18]about nature; about the material world
upon which childhood has alighted, and of which it must necessarily be

ignorant; about clouds and storms and tempests; and of the heavens
above, sun and moon and stars! I remember well when the fable of the
Happy Valley in Rasselas was a reality to me; when I thought the sun
rose and set for us alone, and how I pitied the glorious orb, as it sunk
behind the western mountain, to think that it must pass through a sort of
Hades, through a dark underworld, to come up in the east again. It is a
curious fact, that the Egyptians in the morning of the world had the
same ideas. Shall I blame Providence for this? Could it be otherwise? If
earthly things are so mistaken, is it strange that heavenly things are?
And especially shall I call in question this order of things,--this order,
whether of men's or of the world's progress, when I see that it is not
only inevitable, the necessary allotment for an experimenting and
improving nature, which is human nature, but when I see too that each
stage of progress has its own special advantages; that "everything is
beautiful in its time;" that fears, superstitions, errors, quicken
imagination and restrain passion as truly as doubts, reasonings,
strugglings, strengthen the judgment, mature the moral nature, and lead
to light?
I am dilating upon all this too much, perhaps. I let my pen run. Sitting
down here in the blessed [19]country home, with nothing else in
particular just now to do, at the age of sixty-three, I have time and am
disposed to look back into my early life and to reason upon it; and
although I have nothing uncommon to relate, yet what pertains to me
has its own interest and significance, just as if no other being had ever
existed, and therefore I set down my experience and my reflections
simply as they present themselves to me.
In casting back my eyes upon this earliest period of my life, there are
some things which I recall, which may amuse my grandchildren, if they
should ever be inclined to look over these pages, and some of which
they may find curious, as things of a bygone time.
Children now know nothing of what "'Lection" was in those days, the
annual period, that is, when the newly elected State government came
in. It was in the last week in May. How eager were we boys to have the
corn planted before that time! The playing could not be had till the

work was done. The sports and the entertainments were very simple.
Running about the village street, hither and thither, without much aim;
stands erected for the sale of gingerbread and beer,--home-made beer,
concocted of sassafras roots and wintergreen leaves, etc.; games of ball,
not base-ball, as now is the fashion, yet with wickets,--this was about
all, except that at the end there was always horse-racing.
Having witnessed this exciting sport in my [20] boyhood, without any
suspicion of its being wrong, and seen it abroad in later days, in
respectable company, I was led, very innocently, when I was a
clergyman in New York, into what was thought a great misdemeanor. I
was invited by some gentlemen, and went with them, to the races on
Long Island. I met on the boat, as we