A Sketch of the Life and Character of the REV. David Caldwell, D. D. Near Sixty Years Pastor of the Churches of Buffalo and Alamance. Including Two of His Sermons

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: THE LIFE OF DAVID CALDWELL, D.D. Of the parentage and early life of David Caldwell, the subject of this sketch, but little is known; and that little, though of a favorable kind, is not calculated to awaken in the reader any unusual interest, except from its connexion with those events which have deprived us of a more full and satisfactory account. Some of these events were of a public, and others of a private or domestic kind; and while the former, together with the general privations and sufferings then experienced throughout the length and breadth of the land, and from the same cause, have been long since followed by results in which we all rejoice, and which we hope will continue with undiminished lustre to the latest generation, the design and ultimate effects of the latter are probably better understood now, at least by himself and by those most deeply concerned, since they have exchanged the darkness and miseries of time for the light and blessedness of eternity. The British army, when encamped on his plantation in the spring of 1781, with a virulence and recklessness more becoming barbarians than a civilized people, burned his library and all his papers of every description that could be found, not sparing even the Family Bible which contained the record of his age, and also the ages of all the members of his family. Thus by one ruthless and wanton act, his books, his manuscript sermons, his academical and college exercises, and his epistolary correspondence were all consigned to the flames. As he generally wrote out his sermons Avith care, so far as his other avocations permitted, he must have had a considerable quantity, and they were probably valuable, but his correspondence, whether more important or not, was no doubt more interesting; for it is known that he ...