A Unitarian clergyman of Massachusetts, pastor of the Second Church in Boston, 1817–30, and Parkman professor at Harvard University, 1830–42. “The Vision of Liberty,” an ode; “Hints on Extemporaneous Speaking;” “Discourses on the Offices and Character of Christ;” “Sermons on Small Sins;” “On the Formation of Christian Character,” which has been very widely read; “Life of the Savior;” Lives of Priestley and Noah Worcester.

Personal

  Mr. Ware’s character is an excellent one, and I doubt not will abide severe scrutiny. He is so modest and unpretending, his talents so respectable and his application so steady, that he must command every one’s respect.

  The most noticeable characteristic of his intellect seems to have been that general equality of the different faculties,—that just proportion and balance of power among them,—which constitutes the most useful and available mind. It was the intellect of this description, sanctified, as it were, by the moral elements of his character, which gave him his strong hold on the love and confidence of men. Perhaps the most important of these elements was a perfect and entire sympathy with, and love of, mankind, under all circumstances and conditions, with all degrees of cultivation, and with every variety of moral character…. He could not therefore be called, in the common sense of the words, a hard student or an accomplished scholar, though he studied a great deal and read a great many books, and read them, so far as his objects in life were concerned, to great advantage…. He was very happy, during all the earlier portion of his life, in the possession of a certain tranquility of spirit, which prevented him from being disturbed in his occupations by the little, common interruptions, which are so annoying to most students.

  It was my good fortune to be in the Theological School two or three years, while it most fully enjoyed his services. I loved him as I have seldom loved a man heretofore, and perhaps shall never love another. He was not always equal—sometimes was absent, and seemed cold. But he drew my heart after him by the very tones of his voice, by his look and his kind way of speaking to a young man. He never flattered. He told truth, and did not wound, even though it was a painful truth. I can’t believe any student ever slighted any hint he gave. I treasured up his words as oracles—not Delphic, but Christian. His presence at our religious meetings was the presence of a saint; it was the fragrance of violets in a library; and we felt it. He tuned the most discordant strings. His lectures, I mean those delivered before the whole school, were not professedly religious; but they brought a man step by step to the throne of God, and before he knew it he knelt and prayed. His influence was wholly through his holiness. But that affected all he said and did…. Your brother began moderately, with no promise of a great soul-stirring sermon; but gradually he gained greatness of thought, and lovely images, and a sweetness and poetry of devotion and trust in God which charmed your heart away. And then his prayers! I have heard none such. I know nothing to compare them with, public or private, unless it be the music I have heard sometimes in a cathedral, when one little voice begins—like our own thrush in the mornings of May—and softly, gently sings out strains exquisitely tender; then comes another, different but accordant; and then another, and soon till every column, arch, altar-stone seems vibrating with the psalm. His arrow kindled as it rose, and disappeared a flame.

  His, indeed, was the work of an invalid, yet performed with such practical wisdom, such intensity of devotional feeling, such delicate sense of the capacities, needs, and sensibilities of individual students, and such intimacy of friendly relation with them, that they sustained no loss by infirmities which made his life a constant weariness, and brought it to its close in what would else have been its meridian. His appointment bears even date with my entering the Divinity School…. The senior and middle classes preached, each member in his turn, on Friday and Saturday evenings. Mr. Ware took our sermons home, and invited the preacher to breakfast on some specified morning shortly afterward. We had thus the privilege of participating in his family worship,—always both edifying and instructive,—and a half-hour with his lovely wife, whose rich endowments of mind were hardly transcended by her unsurpassed beauty of character, and her lifelong, in some instances grandly heroic, philanthropy. From the table we went into the professor’s study, where our sermons were literally taken to pieces and reconstructed…. We had, also, a great deal of informal intercourse with Mr. Ware. He sometimes called on us at our rooms; we were always welcome, and often invited visitors at his house; and I know not how adequately to express my sense of the educational value of a three-years’ intimacy with such a man, in preparation for the Christian ministry.

General

  As a poet, he seems to have aimed only to prove, by a few masterly attempts, his possession of the “vision and the faculty divine.”

  Had he done less, or wrought more carelessly, or with a less holy purpose, he would have been called a genius…. There are scattered through his works abundant indications that, had his avocations been more early and strictly scholastic, he might have been a subtle and cogent reasoner on metaphysical and moral subjects. Several of his lighter pieces evince the felicities of taste, thought, and style, which would have insured his success in any portion of that large and vague domain entitled general literature. Nor was even the comic vein wanting; for we have among the miscellanies before us two or three perfect gems of native wit and general humor, free from verbal conceit, and manifesting a prompt perception of incongruity and a rare faculty of grotesque combination. We suppose that Dr. Ware’s sermons will do less for his reputation, in an intellectual point of view, than his other writings.

  These varied compositions are all well sustained in their appropriate sphere. Dr. Ware thought and wrote with energy, tempered by the care and reserve of the scholar.