rality. He was a
Methodist; but no sect could hold him. He often came to our Unitarian
meetings and spoke in them. In addressing one of our autumnal
conventions in New York, I recollect his congratulating us on our
freedom from all trammels of prescription, creed, and church order, and
exhorting us to a corresponding wide and generous activity in the cause
of religion. He was always ready with an illustration, and for his
purpose used this: "We have just had a visit in Boston," he said, "from
an Indian chief and some of his people. They were invited to the house
of Mr. Abbot Lawrence. As Mr. Lawrence received them in his splendid
parlor, the chief, looking around upon it, said, It is very good; it
is beautiful; but I--I walk large; I go through the woods and
hunting-grounds one day, and I rise up in the morning and go through
them the next,--I walk large. "Brethren," said the speaker, "walk
large."

Taylor's great heart was not chilled by bigotry; neither was it by
theology, nor by philosophy. His prayer was the breathing of a child's
heart to an infinitely loving father; it was strangely free and
confiding. I remember being in one of the early morning prayer-meetings
of an anniversary week in Boston, and Taylor was there. As I rose to
offer a prayer, I spoke a few words upon the kind of approach which we
might make to the Infinite Being. Something like this I said,--that as
we were taught to believe that we were made in the image of God,
and were his children, emanations from the Infinite Perfection,
[315]partakers of the divine nature; as the Infinite One had sent forth
a portion of His own nature to dwell in these forms of frail mortality
and imperfection, and no darkness, no sorrow, nor erring of ours could
reach to Him; might we not think,--God knows, I said, that I would be
guilty of no irreverence or presumption,-but might we not think that
with infinite consideration and pity he looks down upon us struggling
with our load; upon our weakness and trouble, upon our penitence and
aspiration?

As the congregation was retiring, and I was passing in the aisle, I saw
Father Taylor sitting by the pulpit, and he beckoned me aside. "Brother
Dewey," he said, in his emphatic way, "did you ever know any one to say
what you have been saying this morning?"-"Why," I replied, "does not
every one say it?"--"No," he answered; "I have talked with a thousand
ministers, and no one of them ever said that."

To William Cullen Bryant