Thomas Shepard

There are kindred disasters over which the angels weep.

I have just been reading Dr. Alexander White's 20th lecture on Thomas Shepard, the founder of Harvard.

The lecture is based on Shepard's confession that his mind is a bucket without a bottom.

As I read the lecture, it occurred to me that a bucket without a bottom is the exact counterpart of a pocket like Bridger's.

Till at last, absolutely wearied and worn out with such hearers, he put them into those terrible parables that are preserved to us in the thirteenth of Matthew.

In which parables he told them that all the time he was preaching, he saw the wicked ones stealing up to the seat where they were sitting and catching away the good seed as fast as he could sow it.

As Thomas Shepard has it, the devil himself came and knocked the bottom out of those hearers' minds.

And still, Sabbath after Sabbath, they brought their bottomless buckets to our Lord's well, till the good angels wept over them until the angels of the wicked one laughed at them, and the whole of the bottomless pit resounded with their laughter every Sabbath day, just as it resounds still.

Her mother, Elizabeth Quincy, was the granddaughter of the Reverend John Norton, long the pastor of a church of the same denomination in the neighboring town of Hingham, and the nephew of John Norton, well known in the annals of the colony.

Her maternal grandfather, John Quincy, was the grandson of Thomas Shepard, minister of Charlestown, distinguished in his day, and the son of the more distinguished Thomas Shepard of Cambridge, whose name still lives in one of the churches of that town.

These are persons whose merits may be found fully recorded in the pages of Mather and of Neal.

They were among the most noted of the most reputed class of their day.

There are kindred disasters over which the angels weep.

I have just been reading Dr. Alexander Whyte's twentieth lecture on Thomas Shepard, the founder of Harvard.

The lecture is based on Shepard's confession that his mind is a bucket without a bottom.

As I read the lecture, it occurred to me that a bucket without a bottom is the exact counterpart of a pocket like Bridger's.

Dr. Whyte says that Shepard's bucket without a bottom reminds him of our Lord's own hearers.

They came, he says, and they sat till he was done with his sermon, and they came back again next Sabbath and sat till he was done, and then that they rose up and went away as they came, till at last, absolutely wearied and worn out with such hearers, he put them into those terrible parables that are preserved to us in the thirteenth of Matthew, in which parables he told them that all the time he was preaching, he saw the wicked one stealing up to the seat where they were sitting and catching away the good seed as fast as he could sow it.

As Thomas Shepard has it, the devil himself came and knocked the bottom out of those hearers' minds.

And still, Sabbath after Sabbath, they brought their bottomless buckets to our Lord's well, till the good angels wept over them and till the angels of the wicked one laughed at them, and the whole of the bottomless pit resounded with their laughter every Sabbath day, just as it resounds still.

There are kindred disasters over which the angels weep.

I have just been reading Dr. Alexander White's twentieth lecture on Thomas Shepard, the founder of Harvard.

The lecture is based on Shepard's confession that his mind is a bucket without a bottom.

As I read the lecture, it occurred to me that a bucket without a bottom is the exact counterpart of a pocket like Bridger's.

Till at last, absolutely wearied and worn out with such hearers, he put them into those terrible parables that are preserved to us in the thirteenth of Matthew.

In which parables he told them that all the time he was preaching, he saw the wicked ones stealing up to the seat where they were sitting and catching away the good seed as fast as he could sow it.

As Thomas Shepard has it, the devil himself came and knocked the bottom out of those hearers' minds.

And still, Sabbath after Sabbath, they brought their bottomless buckets to our Lord's well, till the good angels wept over them and till the angels of the wicked one laughed at them, and the whole of the bottomless pit resounded with their laughter every Sabbath day, just as it resounds still.

There are kindred disasters over which the angels weep.

I have just been reading Dr. Alexander White's 20th lecture on Thomas Shepard, the founder of Harvard.

The lecture is based on Shepard's confession that his mind is a bucket without a bottom.

As I read the lecture, it occurred to me that a bucket without a bottom is the exact counterpart of a pocket like Bridger's.

Till at last, absolutely wearied and worn out with such hearers, he put them into those terrible parables that are preserved to us in the 13th of Matthew.

In which parables he told them that all the time he was preaching, he saw the wicked ones stealing up to the seat where they were sitting and catching away the good seed as fast as he could sow it.

As Thomas Shepard has it, the devil himself came and knocked the bottom out of those hearers' minds.

And still, Sabbath after Sabbath, they brought their bottomless buckets to our Lord's well, till the good angels wept over them until the angels of the wicked one laughed at them, and the whole of the bottomless pit resounded with their laughter every Sabbath day, just as it resounds still.

Since none can see thy face and live, for me to die is best.

Through Jordan's streams, who would not dive to land at Canaan's rest? To these songs of praise is appended another series called Penitential Cries by the Reverend Thomas Shepard, who for a short time, a clergyman at Buckinghamshire, became the minister of the Congregational Church at Northampton, afterwards under the care of Doddridge.

Although he was an imitator of Mason, some of his hymns are admirable.

The following, I think, one of the best.