File:Frances (Appleton) Longfellow to Reverend Samuel Longfellow, 29 March 1859 (5eb0db93-09a9-4150-a00a-1e37f1b30f65).jpg

Manuscript letter

Archives Number: 1011/002.001-029#008

Cambridge March 29th / 59
Dear Sam,
Many thinks for your Vespers & Sermon. The first seems to me admirably arranged, simple & good & must make an interesting service. This will be a trouble, however, with any Liturgy for us that each clergyman prefers to combine his own, as already his hymn-book, & certainly one great charm of a Liturgy is the feeling that it is general & permanent, something one gets to love from communion & long association.
I like ours in the Chapel, but still I find that I have [p. 2] rather a strong [?? crossed out] Puritanic aversion to “prayer written in a book,” that is, if the clergyman only reads them, & I am not obliged, or tempted, to follow him by a book it is very well, tho’ I miss the fervor & natural emotion of an extemporized prayer, but the devotional feeling is put to flight by the [crossed out: external form but] necessity of following exact words tho’ I can fancy to some persons it is a help. The Litany is all I really care for in any prayer-book, & that has in its ejaculation “We beseech Thee to hear us good Lord” the natural cry of the soul. I confess the service gets soon to have a woodeny, mechanical sound to me, like a praying machine, & I long for some heart-felt outburst – fresh & magnetic.
[p. 3] Your sermon I have read carefully, & think you have expressed yourself with your usual clearness & thoroughness & unflinching sincerity, but I wish I could feel that your view does not tend to an extreme as much as Mr Beecher’s frank confession. I think in vindicating the Father nobly & justly you do not give the Son quite his high place as Son, that is next in holiness & love & every divine attribute, - for altho’ we may be considered capable of becoming his brothers in some happier sphere, &, in the end attain even his purity & power, certainly we are not here his equals; - he is at least an elder brother, taught heavenly things as we have never yet learned [p. 4] them except thro’ him, & now I come to what I consider the fundamental mistake of our claim to be naturally one with him here. We forget we have been steeped in the wonderful truths he was sent to give us, & think, because we have them, we can claim kindred with the almost divine, at least superhuman, messenger. The one difference of sinlessness, which the best here never dared to claim, shows that he is as much above us as God is probably above him, as he himself declares. Where have we got our Christianity but from him? Should we have invented it unaided? Did any other carpenter’s son come near conceiving of a heavenly Father, beyond even the dream of a Plato? It is hard to put these things into words, without overstating them one way or the other.
[p. 5] I conceive him, shortly, not God, not man, but the link between the two, what the ancients would call a demi-God, & intended to bridge that difference by elevating us to a diviner life, & possibly hereafter to his full stature. For this he has not necessarily anything to do with the personality of God, which is a Pantheistic idea I disrelish, but is simply his Son, as we are his children, tho’ in a lesser degree, at second remove as it were, like grandchildren, if any material scale can be applied to spiritual resemblance. There is something in your way of speaking of him which an instinct within me, for I do not know that I agree with any precise theology, revolts at, as when one we love is undervalued.
[p. 6] I agree with you that the Calvinist view of the Father is very low, & that the worship of the Son is as untrue as that of the Virgin by the Catholic, but why can we not give them their rightful reverence & throne? If, as you show, we can embrace the Father in our sympathy why need we fear that the Son will be too distant if we do not view him simply as a Jewish man?
The parting with my old church in Federal St was a sad funeral to me – I was much overcome, as the past swept over me in a tide, & I thought of my mother as I remembered her, sitting upon the very spot in the pew I occupied, with the gentle refinement of her features, her rose-shell complexion, & eyes full of holiest thoughts, [p. 7] her admiration of Dr Channing, tho’ herself an unyielding Calvinist, & her willingness to listen to his ministry many years; then of him I had a vision as he sat at the side of the pulpit, with his earnest, penetrating eyes, & hair-swept forehead, and the inspired fervor of his discourse, making the soul seem so out of proportion to the frail body – then his tender, touching eloquence to us children at the pulpit-foot, when we listened to him as to an angel – all this broke me completely down –
Poor Mr. Gannett faltered too in his farewell review of the past, & sobs broke his utterance. It is hard to have such sacred spots destroyed. I believe the pulpit is to be spared, but I have [p. 8] by me a cross, made out of a portion, which was sold at a Fair, held last week for sick and incurable women, (a charity proving we have an Irish Florence Nightingale among us), where they were in immense demand.
Our new Organ-case (we have not yet the soul) improves greatly the acoustics of our Chapel.
We had a grand Concert on the anniversary of Beethoven’s death, at the Music Hall. The music was sublime heavenly, bearing one up on mighty pinions. Willy & Harry we see often. The latter we fear finds in Annie Wadsworth a magnet which is drawing all the iron out of his ship, & is uncorking his College life. It is a pity she is here just now. I hope we shall see you in May. Yrs ever affly
Fanny L –
[p. 1 cross] A few specimens of an English Hiawatha illustrated, are very promising. There is much beauty in these & great freshness. Hiawatha in his boat, impelled only by his will, is a young Apollo, rippling the stream as he advances & with streaming hair – a type of divine energy and good will to men. He is a lovely child too rocked by old Nokomis - & full of expression thoughtful in the forest. Minnehaha is a fine contrast too with her old father, both dreaming by the tent.
[p. 6 cross] I have felt much the death of my good Aunt Dorothy –

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