Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. | Page 9

petition till it is
thoroughly understood and felt had great wisdom in it. We read too
much. For the last thirty years I have read as much as I pleased, and
probably more than was good for me.
The disease in my eyes was in the optic nerve; there was no external

inflammation. Under the [33] best surgical advice I tried different
methods of cure,--cupping, leeches, a thimbleful of lunar caustic on the
back of the neck, applied by Dr. Warren, of Boston; and I remember
spending that very evening at a party, while the caustic was burning. So
hopeful was I of a cure, that the very pain was a pleasure. I said, "Bite,
and welcome!" But it was all in vain. At length I met with a person
whose eyes had been cured of the same disease, and who gave me this
advice: "Every evening, immediately before going to bed, dash on
water with your hands, from your wash-bowl, upon your closed eyes;
let the water be of about the temperature of spring-water; apply it till
there is some, but not severe, pain, say for half a minute; then, with a
towel at hand, wipe the eyes dry before opening them, and rub the parts
around smartly; after that do not read, or use your eyes in any way, or
have a light in the room." I faithfully tried it, and in eight months I
began to experience relief; in a year and a half I could read all day; in
two years, all night. Let any one lose the use of his eyes for five years,
to know what that means. Afterwards I neglected the practice, and my
eyes grew weaker; resumed it, and they grew stronger.
The other event to which I have referred as occurring in my college life
was of a far different character, and compared to which all this is
nothing. It is lamentable that it ever should be an event in any human
life. The sense of religion [34] should be breathed into our childhood,
into our youth, along with all its earliest and freshest inspirations; but it
was not so with me. Religion had never been a delight to me before;
now it became the highest. Doubtless the change in its form partook of
the popular character usually attendant upon such changes at the time,
but the form was not material. A new day rose upon me. It was as if
another sun had risen into the sky; the heavens were indescribably
brighter, and the earth fairer; and that day has gone on brightening to
the present hour. I have known the other joys of life, I suppose, as
much as most men; I have known art and beauty, music and gladness; I
have known friendship and love and family ties; but it is certain that till
we see GOD in the world--GOD in the bright and boundless universe
we never know the highest joy. It is far more than if one were translated
to a world a thousand times fairer than this; for that supreme and
central Light of Infinite Love and Wisdom, shining over this world and

all worlds, alone can show us how noble and beautiful, how fair and
glorious, they are. In saying this, I do not arrogate to myself any
unusual virtue, nor forget my defects; these are not the matters now in
question. Nor, least of all, do I forget the great Christian ministration of
light and wisdom, of hope and help to us. But the one thing that is
especially signalized in my experience is this, the Infinite Goodness
and Loveliness began to be [35] revealed to me, and this made for me
"a new heaven and a new earth."
The sense of religion comes to men under different aspects; that is,
where it may be said to come; where it is not imbibed, as it ought to be,
in early and unconscious childhood, like knowledge, like social
affection, like the common wisdom of life. To some, it comes as the
consoler of grief; to others, as the deliverer from terror and wrath To
me it came as filling an infinite void, as the supply of a boundless want,
and ultimately as the enhancement of all joy. I had been somewhat sad
and sombre in the secret moods of my mind, read Kirke White and
knew him by heart; communed with Young's "Night Thoughts," and
with his prose writings also; and with all their bad taste and false ideas
of religion, I think they awaken in the soul the sense of its greatness
and its need. I nursed all this, something like a moody secret in my
heart, with a kind of pride and sadness; I had indeed the full measure of
the New England boy's