Thomas Starr King, born in New York, Dec. 16, 1824; died in San Francisco, Cal., Mar. 4, 1864. His father was a Universalist minister in Charlestown, Mass. From 12 till 20 he labored first as clerk in a store, afterward as a teacher, preparing himself in leisure hours for the ministry. His first preaching was in Woburn, Mass., his first settlement in Charlestown, over his father’s parish. In 1848 he accepted a call to the Unitarian church in Hollis st., Boston, and remained there till the spring of 1860, when he went to California to take charge of the Unitarian church in San Francisco. The outbreak of the civil war roused all his remarkable powers as a writer, speaker, and man, and to his influence is ascribed the change of public opinion in the State from lukewarmness toward the Northern cause to devoted loyalty. Through his exertions the United States Sanitary Commission obtained the generous sums of money that enabled it to carry on its work at the critical period of the war. He contributed frequently to the Universalist Quarterly, but he published but one book, “The White Hills, their Legends, Landscapes, and Poetry.” A few of his papers were collected after his death—“Patriotism, and other Papers.”

Personal

  Was widely distinguished as an eloquent preacher and lecturer; but perhaps the affection and admiration which were attracted to him as a rare example of Christian manhood do more justice to his character than even these discourses can do to the intellect which was the offshot and expression of it. Nobody more quickly converted chance acquaintances into warm friends. To know him was to love him…. The funeral of Mr. King was a touching ceremony, for it expressed the genuine grief of a great city at the departure of its greatest citizen. There is always a tendency, in the public funeral of an eminent man, to convert the occasion into a mere imposing spectacle for crowds to gaze at; but in this instance the formalities were identical with the realities of sorrow. It was universally felt that a vital force, pledged to the cause of all that was noble, generous, and good, and which could not be replaced, had been withdrawn in the full sweep of its beneficent activity. To the throngs of persons who hastened to take a last look at the beloved pastor or friend, there was something indescribably pathetic in the placid smile on the dead face—the smile which was on the features when death approached, and which death itself had not power to efface. The flags at half-mast all over the city and in the shipping in the harbor; the tolling bells; the melancholy minute-guns fired by direction of the authorities at Washington; the crowd of citizens, which not only filled the church, but occupied in a dense mass every avenue to it,—all attested the grief of a community which really felt itself bereaved. That silent, respectful sorrow, hushing for the time the noise of traffic, and indicating that thousands of people who were utterly unknown to him mourned his death as though they had lost a personal friend, was the most fitting tribute that could have been rendered to Mr. King’s genius and virtues.

  I may safely say that no man in New England, since Edward Everett and Buckminster, won a general reputation for eloquence so young. He was hardly twenty-four years old when he was asked to become the minister of Hollis Street Church, and that connection began which continued so fortunately for him and for the church for nearly twelve years…. Absolutely well as I knew him,—and I believe I knew him as well as one man can know another,—I can say, and I ought to say, that I never heard him, under any circumstances, even of the most light-hearted recreation, say a word or do a thing which you were sorry to have had said by a living prophet of a living God. So it was that he never came into the room but you were delighted to see him.

General

  Having for ten years, in winter as well as summer, viewed its grace and glory, he embodies the result of his experience in a noble volume, entitled “The White Hills,—their Legends, Landscape, and Poetry.”… This production is far more than a description of the White Hills: its rich descriptions of every variety of landscape apply to all natural scenes, and bring out their inmost meaning. There is much of himself in this volume, of his rare spiritual insight,—much of what his cultured and reverent eye saw in the beauty and the grandeur that God is creating every day.

  The critical reader will feel that some paragraphs in these printed sermons are too perplexed and involved in their expression. The occasions, however, are few, where this criticism can be made. The unity of the central thought and the general strain of eloquence by which it is enforced will strike the critic more than the occasional deviations from a scrupulous rhetoric. King’s mode of composition led him into using long sentences. He seemed to have a special delight in lingering on dashes, commas, and semicolons, and to avoid as long as he decently could the pause of the period.

  The first impression made by these volumes upon a competent reader is the very opposite of that brilliant and seductive superficiality with which his name may have been associated by those who knew him least. Outside the essays of Emerson, we shall look in vain for volumes more remarkable for breadth of thought and loftiness of spiritual vision in our national literature. The very titles of these lectures and sermons are a challenge to the most generous thinking and the most profound insight into the most vital themes. Indeed, the one theme of all his conversation, discourse, and living was the spiritual life of man, his relations to Nature, to humanity, and God. Whether in the form of lecture, sermon, essay, stump speech, talk in the cars, or anniversary platform extravaganza, he instinctively drove at one topic and stuck to his text with a persistence that no temptation could shake. A most accomplished literary critic, he only spoke of books to light up their authors. Thoroughly at home in the whole range of ancient and modern philosophy, he never philosophized except to illustrate the nature, duties, and destiny of man.