The Golden Decade of a Favored Town

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF THE REV. F. CLOSE, AND OF HIS MINISTRY?CHIEFLY HERE OF THE SERVICE AT ST. MARYS. ' Thou who stealest fire, From the fountains of the past, To glorify the present; oh, haste, Visit my low desire Strengthen me, enlighten me I faint in this obscurity, Thou dewy dawn of...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF THE REV. F. CLOSE, AND OF HIS MINISTRY?CHIEFLY HERE OF THE SERVICE AT ST. MARYS. ' Thou who stealest fire, From the fountains of the past, To glorify the present; oh, haste, Visit my low desire Strengthen me, enlighten me I faint in this obscurity, Thou dewy dawn of memory.' Tennyson: Ode to Memory. During our golden decade, Francis Close was in the prime of his life and in the very zenith of his fame and power. It embraced those years of his life that lay between forty-six and fifty-six. Most vividly is his image, as he then was, stamped upon our memory, for we took more than a common interest in him, since under his interesting and impressive ministry within those years we ourselves were first awakened to a sense of the pre-eminent importance of things spiritual, and were first introduced into that blessed paradise in which we have found the highest joys of life ever since. We were then in the freshness of youth, and those were the days of first love to that Saviour to Whose beauty and glory we had been theretofore blind. It was then that the Sabbath first became a delight to us. It was a joy to look forward to it; it was a joy to look back to it; and there was then no sweeter music to us than the chimes of those well-remembered bells which rang out onthe Sunday morning from the old spire of St. Mary's, inviting us to come to what they seemed to feel was, and what we ourselves always expected it to be, a feast of good things. Although in the freshness of youth and youthful spirits, it was no burden to us?no task which we wished over?to go to church. Strange as such an avowal may appear to the mind of any modern youth who is above going to church and who affects to pity those who are not, and who possibly may languidly...