Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 5

Saturday. 6th.

Monday. 8th.

Sunday. 7th. CFA

1833-04-07

Sunday. 7th. CFA
Sunday. 7th.

Morning delightful. But the East Wind set in cold and harsh at Noon. I read part of the Account of Pompeii before attending divine service. Mr. Frothingham preached all day. Job. 5. 26. “Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his season.” A funeral Sermon upon Mr. Morril late a Deacon in the Church who died last week at an advanced age.1 It was on the whole happily done, for the subject was one of those whose services to the world are not of a noisy character, and who pass through life satisfied with the performance of the honest but limited duties of their sphere. A good man is as the world goes, as fair a spectacle as it can present, but there is no great room for the vehemence of rhetorical eulogy, nor 64for the exercise of any extensive philosophical reflection. Mr. Frothingham did every thing that was possible. He alluded to his long life and his death as a uniform Christian and to the performance of his duties social and moral. The afternoons was a discourse commemorative of the day, Easter. John 20. 20. “Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.”

I read a Sermon of Massillon’s from the same text as last Sunday’s, the subject was the proper disposition for a holy life, exemplified in the text through 1. the spirit of self devotion or sacrifice in the Saviour 2. in the spirit of fidelity of Mary. The first branch included a view of the Atonement which I do not meddle with as it is one of the knotty points of doctrinal theology. A short walk with my Wife who is suffering from a cold. Evening at home. Read Pompeii.

1.

James Morrill had been an officer and deacon of the First Church from 1789 to his death on 3 April. A lengthy extract from Mr. Frothingham’s funeral sermon, together with a likeness of Morrill, is printed in Richard D. Pierce, ed., The Records of the First Church in Boston 1630–1868, Col. Soc. Mass., Pubns ., 40 (1961):724–727.