Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 8
1838-10-07
Heavy rain, clearing away cold. Divine service as usual all day with reading and evening at the Mansion.
I continued Milman’s History of the Jews which I keep for my Sunday reading. His account of the period of the Judges is brief and yet embraces as I suppose all that can be said upon it.
Mr. Whitney preached in the morning from Revelation 2. 10. “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” Mr. Whitney considers the crown of life to mean a future state in which our sensation is to be far extended beyond its present limits. His sermons are however too much blanks to my mind. Mr. Angier of Milton preached in the afternoon from Luke
Read a discourse from the English Preacher taken from Job 34. 22. “There is no darkness, nor shadow of death, where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves.” By the Revd. John Holland. An extremely ordinary exposition of the omniscience of the deity with quotations from the Scriptures which make the only good portion of the production. Read also much of Mr. S. Hovey’s book upon Slavery in the West Indies, a far more natural and agreeable work than that of Thome and Kimball while it in substance confirms the truth of all their statements.1
In the evening at the Mansion. Mr. Jos. Angier was there and we fell into conversation about Mr. Emerson’s late productions. Much criticism elicited of an interesting kind.2
The two works are Sylvester Hovey, Letters from the West Indies, and James A. Thome and J. Horace Kimball, Emancipation in the West Indies, both published at N.Y. in 1838; a presentation copy of the latter given by Sarah Grimké to JQA and LCA is in MQA.
JQA identified the Emerson works being discussed as the “crazy Address and oration” (Diary, 7 Oct.), by which, presumably, he was referring to the 1838 Divinity School Address and the 1837 ΦBK Oration, “The American Scholar.”