John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

34 Sunday 1. January 1837.

1. V. Sunday

Frye Thomas J

I commenced the year, after praise supplication and prayer to whom it was due by writing a short Letter to my Son. At the Presbyterian Church, morning service, I heard Mr Fowler, from Jeremiah 8:20. “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” There is great earnestness and sincerity in the discourses of this young man; and though very plain and unadorned, they command the deep attention of his auditory. His text was allusive to the close of one year, and the commencement of another, and he explained the order of events, as expressed in the text, by observing that in Judea, where the prophet wrote, the harvest, precedes the Summer— He very fervently urged upon us his hearers to make the application of his text to ourselves—to consider that our harvest was past; that our Summer was ended and that we were not saved—and he exhorted us most earnestly, while a remnant of time was left us, to provide for working out our own salvation— I heard him with a disposition and desire to profit by his instruction, and with the deepest conviction, that my Summer is ended and my harvest past—whether I am or shall be saved is all unknown to me— I know that I have been and am a sinner— Perhaps by the depravity of the human heart, an unreclaimable sinner—but I cannot if I would, divest myself of the belief that my maker is a being whose tender mercies are over all his works— That having the power to make me both will and do, however he may chastise, he will not cruelly punish thoughts which his pleasure may controul or deeds which however wrongful or imperfect, his power can turn to good— We are passive instruments in his hands— His will not suffer us to do evil, and then sentence us severely for what he has suffered us to do— My reason and my sense of Justice will not yield to any other creed than this; and therefore when a preacher tells me that I am not saved, I believe that he says that of which he knows as little as myself—perhaps less—perchance nothing at all— Mr Fowler’s Sermon therefore did not deeply distress me, nor depress my hopes of better things— After dinner, at St. John’s Church, Mr Hawley read the Evening service for the festival of the Circumcision; and his Sermon was from Philippians 4:12. [“]I know both how to be abased; and I know how to abound: every where, and in all things I am instructed, both to be full, and to be hungry, both to abound, and to suffer need.” The text seemed to have some allusion to the condition of the preacher himself, who does not abound, and whose congregation, are not practically zealous to save their Pastor from suffering need— But whatever might be the intentional hint of the text, there was no corresponding comment in the discourse— There was no complaint, direct or indirect—no reference at-all to himself.— Why he read the service of the Circumcision day, instead of that for the first Sunday after Christmas, I did not understand; nor do 35do I know why the Roman Catholic, and more particularly the English Episcopal Church keep as a festival the day of Christ’s circumcision—that being a jewish rite which the Christian dispensation was to abolish. Thomas J. Frye dined, and passed the Night here— I employed the Evening upon this diary, without bringing it up to the close of the year— There was rain, the former part of the day, and a heavy gale in the evening sweeping from the North-west.