A UNITARIAN SAINT.

(DOROTHEA L. DIX.)

IF the conjunction of these two words, "Unitarian" and "saint," seem to any of you incongruous, it may possibly be because you have not rightly conceived the height and breadth of sainthood, or it may be that you have misconceived the spiritual possibilities of Unitarianism. It is, indeed, true that the word "saint" ordinarily has for us something of a mediæval flavor. It calls up before us other scenes and far-off times; and we are accustomed to think that we have outgrown the conditions that produced saints, precisely as we have outgrown that religious condition which flowered out in cathedrals. Saint, to our minds, suggests some one withdrawn from the world, calls up the image of a convent, or, possibly, we think of some one retired into a desert or wilderness, living in a cave apart from society, and not engaged in what we are accustomed to regard as all-important to-day, the service of man, but occupied rather in a selfish consideration of the welfare of the individual soul.

But what is a saint, and what have we a right to regard as covered by that term? If we look at the origin and etymology of the word, if we look at the custom and thought of the old religions, we shall find that it means some thing or some person - not always a person - set apart, consecrated. It may be precisely like that which would not have the word applied to it. There may be no change in its intrinsic nature or structure. The sainthood lies in the fact of its apartness, its consecration to some other than its common, secular, every-day use. If you go back to the early history of the

children of Israel, you will find that the altar, the implements with which the altar was served, even the candlesticks and the snuffers, were sainted, consecrated, spoken of as holy, set apart for this special, peculiar religious use.

And so, when we come to the condition of things in the early Church, we find that not those merely who were very eminent for piety were called saints, but all Christians, all church members, were spoken of as saints. In other words, they were supposed to have been chosen out of the world and set apart for a higher, holier purpose of life. There was no assumption of superior goodness on the part of the person who allowed himself to be called a saint in those days. He did not say, "I am better than this other man," but only, "I am set apart; I have been called out of the world; I am now to serve and follow God in some peculiar way." Of course it is perfectly plain, in the light of this idea, that the saint of one age may not necessarily be the saint of another. A man who sets himself apart, or who feels called to go apart from the ordinary works of life to do some grand, peculiar service for God or man, will be governed in the nature of his life by his thought of God, of what God wants him to do or be, of the peculiar need of the people of his time. We find Buddhist saints living a life of personal neglect that seems to us, to-day, simply filthy and repulsive; but they believed that in doing this they were rendering God and their fellow-men a service. We find Catholic saints, not only those set apart and consecrated, canonized by the fact that they had rendered grand, philanthropic service to their age, as is true indeed of many of them; but we find those like Saint Simeon Stylites, Simeon of the Pillar, who stood in mid-air year after year apart from his fellow-men, of no service to the world, of no service to God, and yet verily believing that he was doing God service, and so was consecrated for this unique devotion.

In our day one who wishes to be a saint, or one who cares to render a service that shall be regarded as winning the right to be called a saint, will not go apart into the wilder

ness, will not stand aloof upon a pillar, but must recognize that God is the governor of this world, and that his laws are not only in the distant planets, but are illustrated in the order and working and evolution of human society; and so, instead of leaving the world, he must plunge more grandly into it, and render some great needed service to his age.

Because the theme is every way grandly worthy, because for many reasons you ought to know the story, because she was a Unitarian, because her work was so unique, I wish to tell you the story of a life that I trust will soon be more familiar to many people, but which is little known by the great mass of the nineteenth century,- a life so distinguished that I think you will agree with me, when I am through, that never, in all the roll of names that the world has agreed to celebrate and admire, can there be found one that burns with a finer, truer, clearer lustre than her name. My friend, the Rev. Francis Tiffany, after having been engaged on it for three or four years, has recently completed "The Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix." She is our Unitarian saint. I wish to tell you something of the story of that life, not to preach about it, but to let it preach in a way grander than any words. of mine were ever able to do.

She was born on the 4th of April, 1802, in the little town of Hampden, Maine, a few miles down the Penobscot River. from the city of Bangor. Her father was a man of no special power or character, something of a wanderer, a man lacking concentration of purpose, a little flighty perhaps, and easily carried this way and that by ideas that were not permanent in their influence or meaning. It was because he was a man like this that he happened to be in this town of Hampden when the little child was born. He had gone there to render some service to his father, a man of distinguished character and power, a physician, and at that time much interested in the State of Maine. He had bought large tracts of land there; and his son had gone, as I have said, to render some service in the interests of his father, who was living in the city of Worcester in this State. The childhood of the little

girl was somewhat neglected, comparatively poor, and had very little in it of sunshine. Indeed, she used to say in after years that she had no childhood. At the age of twelve, so little congenial did she find the tasks assigned her and such was her ambition to become, if possible, a scholar, and to win a way for herself so that she might be able to superintend the training and care of her younger brother and make a way for him in the world,—so anxious was she on this subject, and so little did she find of cheer or hope at home, that she ran away to the city of Boston, to the home of her grandmother. Her grandfather was now dead. Here she was received by the loving and yet stern and severe Puritan old lady of that time.

By the time she is fourteen she is teaching school, making her dresses longer than would be worn by a child of that age, so that she may appear older and command the respect and obedience of her pupils. But her health is poor; and, as time goes by, she breaks down, and begins to wonder whether she will be able ever to render any service to herself or to others. Frail, weak, liable to frequent hæmorrhages, she hardly knows what her future destiny is to be; but at last she enters the home of Dr. Channing, becomes the teacher of his children, and with his family escapes the severe climate of Boston, spending one winter in the country in Rhode Island, at the doctor's country home, and another in the tropical island of St. Croix. She recovers her strength and renews her health under these favoring influences; and at last we find her again in Boston at about the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, founding a school in earnest in the old Dix mansion house of her grandmother, with the distinct and definite purpose of winning for herself a competence, so that she need not be obliged to look to any other for help and independence for herself or for her brother. She organizes a day and boarding school, then, and for several years devotes herself to it with assiduity, and is successful both as a teacher and financially. But this is not enough for the weak, comparatively frail woman; and, while she is carrying on this

school, she persuades her grandmother to allow her to organize another school, free for the poor and neglected children of the street, a school held in a room over the stable connected with the mansion house. And these two schools she carries on together for some time. But at last the burden is too heavy. She breaks down completely under the strain, and is obliged to go abroad. By this time her grandmother has died; and, with some savings, the reward of her own efforts, and a little money left her by her grandmother, she finds herself in a position of personal independence. She is not rich, but she is able hereafter to live her own life and follow her own impulses. She goes abroad, then, to find herself, when she lands in Liverpool, so completely broken down that she is not able to reach London. So, delivering a letter which Dr. Channing had given her to a prominent gentleman in Liverpool, she enters his home, and is there a long time, a helpless, hopeless invalid. But she recovers. Her strong will power dominated the flesh then, as it did through the long years that followed, when it compelled her to do things which another would not have undertaken even in health, perhaps; for all her life she was as much an invalid as are many of those who spend their time wandering over the world merely in search of health and recuperation.

On her return to this country,—and it is now about the year 1841,-what seemed like an accident reveals to her her life-work. Some of the students at the Divinity School in Cambridge have undertaken the work of giving Sunday-school instruction in the House of Correction at East Cambridge; and one of those students, feeling that some other hand than his ought to deal with the problems that he finds there, and that a woman's heart and consecrated purpose ought to be enlisted, at last goes to Miss Dix for advice and counsel, and her answer is, "I will be there next Sunday." She finds the condition of things in this asylum such that her heart is touched and stirred, and she feels that now at last the call has come from on high for her to accomplish a task which none other seems ready to undertake.