O LIFE OF REV. HOSEA BALLOU; WITH ACCOUNTS OF HIS WRITINGS, AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF HIS SENIORS AND EARLY CONTEM- BY THOMAS WHITTEMORE. "I AM NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST."-Rom. 1: 16. 4)334-31 US13565.9.5 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Stereotyped by NEW ENGLAND TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY, BOSTON. PREFACE TO VOLUME FOURTH. I CANNOT send out this fourth and last volume of the biography of Hosea Ballou, without offering up a deep and heartfelt thanksgiving to my Heavenly Father, for permitting me to bring it to a close. To his mercy am I indebted for all I have enjoyed of health and earthly good, and for what I have been able to accomplish for the truth throughout my days. My great object in this work has been to give a succinct and accurate biography of the man: a history of his rise and standing in the denomination of Universalists; the position he held with his contemporaries, among whom must be included many of the fathers as well as the later preachers; the influence he exerted on the denomination and the country at large; a fair account of his opinions and his manner of defending them; with a just view of his amiable, honorable, Christian life. I have not sought to praise him, but to tell the truth; yet, in describing the character of a good man, it is difficult to avoid the form of praise. I have sought to make the work as much as possible an autobiography. I would not intimate that I have ever had the slightest sketch of an autobiography of the man placed in my hands. What I intend to say is, that I had been in the habit, for more than thirty years before he died, of almost daily intercourse with him; I had recorded and preserved all the scraps and fragments I had heard him utter, from time to time, in re |