Phong Nguyen - Benjamin Franklin, Clergyman lyrics

REVEREND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706–1790), American preacher, theologian, and longtime Presbyterian minister of the Ma**achusetts Bay Colony, was born into humble circumstances. As the child of Josiah Franklin, a tithingman in the Presbyterian Church, Benjamin was an ideal candidate to fill the increasingly populist function of pastor to Boston's ministry during the Great Awakening. Cotton Mather, the famous Ma**achusetts minister and barrister during the Salem witch trials, personally cultivated Benjamin Franklin and brought him into the ranks of Harvard College, seeking through his budding brilliance to oppose and unseat President Leverett and his liberal policies from the College. His father, Increase Mather, had been president of Harvard a generation earlier, and both men exerted an influence over the board of the College disproportionate to their minor official duties. Mather's collected writings, excerpted here, include a lengthy defense of Franklin and his role in the controversial early years of his development as a clergyman, and as a divinity student at Harvard College. ----- Reverend Franklin was ordained at Holden Chapel in a modest ceremony surrounded by his cla**mates. Following as it did the commencement of his cla**, the sun had already downed, and tallow candles were lit throughout the nave, as though we were gathered to honor the dead. As I began the prayer, lowering the anointing oil to Franklin's brow, he winced, fleetingly, as though the touch about to be bestowed upon him were not of God, but of hellfire. It was only a flutter of the eyelid, but the implications were deep. Years before, when he entered school at age fifteen, Ben Franklin was not the youngest, smartest, or most pious boy at Harvard College, but he was, by his own admission, the most obnoxious. And it must be said that at Harvard he faced much competition for the title. Yet I saw early on that the boy's innate talent, and his habit of self-discipline, made his constant and restless activity tolerable. He would soon, I anticipated, become the brand with which the hand of God would set Harvard College aflame. In 1720, Benjamin's mother and father were persuaded to part with him, with the understanding that, as the top student at the Boston Latin School, he would be offered a stipend for living expenses. Their concern had been that Ben showed none of the temperament of a clergyman, and though they desired most ardently for him to join the clergy, were uncertain of the value of the ministry upon such a wasted soul. We a**ured them that we had made devout Christians out of harder men than Ben Franklin. In fact, young Ben's training in piety was softer than most. His restlessness and curiosity ensured that we could not depend on the forceful hand of a father, but must coax him into God's grace as a mother into a loving embrace, meeting his skeptical nature at every turn with a gentle disposition and kind entreaties. For, though history has made a legacy of my obstinancy in the defense of God, and a marginal role in a trial against a bevy of wicked children, since my Salem days I have had fifteen children of my own, and by the time I met young Franklin I was painfully experienced in the iron will of adolescence, and the futility of beating thereon. ~ The first image I had of Ben Franklin the Harvard divinity student encapsulated, for me, his very nature. His best clothes had not yet arrived, and so he travelled in his working clothes, dirty at the knees and elbows, his pockets full to bursting with extra undergarments. On his way, he had stopped by the baker's and, not taking into account the price difference, asked for a three-penny loaf, of which they had none. Asking then for any quantity of bread that a three-penny piece would purchase, he was handed a single morsel of biscuit, which he handled delicately as he strode into the Yard, as though it weighed a stone. I caught sight of him from the window of Harvard Hall, which contained the library, and, looking up from my French translation of Calvin's Secret Providence, I saw in Franklin a young man so intent on relishing his tiny morsel of bread, he might have been a papist altar boy who had gone without breakfast, taking his communion wafer. When his baggage arrived from the other side of the Charles, and his considerable personal library moved into his dormitory, Franklin could be seen running to and fro across the green, heaving piles of books in a wheelbarrow, like a farm hand gathering wood for a fire. So that his industry stood on display for the entire school, and the picture so solidified him for his peers, that the image of Ben Franklin towing a wheelbarrow full of books became symbolic shorthand for the speed and efficiency with which he rose to the top of his cla**, and to a position of influence within the College in a single year. At the time, young Ben would often speak wistfully about his favorite fantasy—forging his own path, becoming a self-made man in some distant town, and disappearing from Harvard for good. I had known students to toss up their hands and go back to their lives as laborers, or as children of good name, but never one who excelled as effortlessly as did Franklin. It was as though he secretly sought, not escape from the ministry, but some alternative society that existed only in his imagination—some dream that he followed like a candle in the darkness, though when he drew too near, it scalded him. ~ That winter there was a fire in Harvard Hall. A log fire, left overnight from a meeting of the General Court, spread to the floor beams of the library, and was driven by the wind to the curtains; in a matter of minutes, it was consuming all in a great inferno. We—council members, faculty, students alike—stood around the Yard contemplating the hellish light it cast on the dark winter morning. Yet, for the pragmatist in our ranks, the fire did not conjure lofty musings of the Divine will, but began stirring up thoughts of a different sort—of “forming a company for the more ready extinguishing of fires, and mutual a**istance in removing and securing the goods when in danger” for the College. Later, he foreshortened the name to simply “an Engine Company.” Soon, Franklin's zeal for an Engine Company itself took on the consumptive power of a conflagration. He wrote in the Gazette about the need for such a service, both in his editor's column, and in letters from a dozen different voices, using characters of his own invention. He recruited nearly all the students in his cla** as volunteers, and even involved members of the community. Not content with bringing together the first Company for the purpose of extinguishing fires, Franklin decided that, in place of the private library of Harvard Hall, what the College needed was a subscription library to which the public contributed, and of which the public could also be beneficiaries. Many of the faithful have asked me why, at this point, I did not openly oppose the liberalizing influence of Franklin on campus, so in chorus with the empty secularizing of its President Leverett. The truth is that, having brought Franklin in under my auspices, I saw his notoriety as adding to my cause, and I saw the growing civic movement as yet another audience prone to our divine influence. It has been my error, I am often told, to rely on the credulity of the crowd. But I had always known men in the midst of a herd to be pliable, and why should I have thought that the followers of Franklin were any different? ~ Though as a student of religion Franklin was mediocre, his tendency to lead others into action made him an ally against evil. Even as he faltered in his efforts to penetrate the tower of Christian theology, he continued to dwell in the houses of labor. His presence uplifted the College; his sense of duty was infectious. My work was to steer his industry toward God's path. I began where I saw the greatest need: unseating the secular President Leverett. In my conversations with Franklin, I warned him against Leverett, defining him as someone who speaks the opposite of what he means, and who can never be trusted, for he is a skeptic who doubts God's word. Franklin came face-to-face with Leverett once, though I heard about it only afterwards. The boy had, I am told, constructed what he called a “battery”—a vessel that stored latent energy in physical form—and in a mood of mischief, lined up his cla**mates and had them touch it, sending a stimulating shock through the row. An older boy, embarra**ed to have been a part of the spectacle, accused Franklin of bewitching him, and brought his activities to the attention of President Leverett. But the President was not compelled to act against Franklin until, months later, he received a letter from Abbé Nollet describing the boy's experiments with a steel rod, which sought to redirect lightning away from the steeple, out of his dormitory window. Nollet's complaint was that Franklin sought to control God's fury and devastation, and to conceal His glory. The letter claimed that “the lightning rod was an offense to God.” It was to this charge, and its intimations of scandal, for which Franklin finally had to answer. Young Franklin sat waiting, so I presume, in Leverett's office, unattended. The chairs, the desk, the floors were all an even tone of darkness. Bits of light from the afternoon glinted between the shadows cast from the window. He would have made the boy wait for what seemed like an hour, with no gla** of water, nothing to read. Then the president, John Leverett, would have entered from a side door, to show the student that he had been in his office all along, but merely occupied with matters more pressing than a boy's misbehavior. “What's this I hear about Abbé Nollet?” he said simply. “Something about experiments with a lightning rod?” “The Abbé speaks as though it is presumption in man to propose guarding himself against the thunders of Heaven!” Franklin said emphatically. “Surely the thunder of Heaven is no more supernatural than the rain, hail or sunshine of Heaven, against the inconvenience of which we guard by roofs and shades without scruple.” “I wish you'd told me before that you were conducting experiments.” The President's tone was neutral, so that Franklin could only guess at the implication. “I hadn't known that you possessed a keen scientific sense.” “You don't disapprove?” Franklin asked cautiously. “To have raised the ire of a French monk, and in your second year of study, a boy of barely sixteen years—this is a rare achievement.” Franklin paused in surprise, expecting anything but flattery. “My research so far is inconclusive,” he began, “though the great and holy Reverend Cotton Mather has translated my preliminary findings into French and distributed them widely.” “Yes,” Leverett said, “the great and holy Reverend is good at disseminating ideas.” I can only speculate, at that point, that President Leverett began to speak ill of me, and my influence upon the College, because Franklin insisted that the President's words did not bear repeating. But the conclusion was that Franklin began to study under Leverett's protégé, John Winthrop. The very name roils my stomach and raises my bile. Whereas his grandfather and namesake had been the very torch of Christian piety, young John Winthrop had become so “science-minded” that he had come to represent the next generation of cold secularization, molded after the example of impious men such as John Leverett. ~ God's work for me was clear. I arranged a debate between Winthrop and Franklin upon an issue for which I knew them to be in opposition: the use of spectral evidence. Franklin the pragmatist had at first been stubbornly against the use of visions and divine insight as evidence in a court, but after I had painted a vivid picture for him of the hellish condition of the Salem girl Betty Parris while in the throes of a spectre, his opinion changed, and he soon became the most eager convert to our cause. Franklin was, in the end, still a boy, and privy to the wisdom of his elders. The debate was held in Holden Chapel, with all the boys from Franklin's cla** in attendance and, as I made sure, only a few from Winthrop's. The dusty light warmed the stone floor, and the echoes of adolescent voices rang out from every wall, then was gradually silenced. The participants of the debate stood at opposite sides of the chapel, at wooden lecterns, and wore the robes and wigs of their respective Halls. Winthrop, speaking first, laid out his case with professional ease. Lifting his arms up incredulously, bringing them down on the lectern emphatically, gesturing open-handed toward the audience, posing rhetorical questions sneeringly in the direction of his opponent. When he finished, he had not only established that the use of spectral evidence in legal proceedings was inadmissable, but that it was reckless, and dangerous to the laws upon which the Empire was founded. Franklin, after a pause that might have been mistaken for speechlessness, stepped forward and said, “What happens to a society in which a legal authority cannot trust the testimony of its members?” He let the air settle for a moment. “If your neighbor speaks to you about a personal experience, will you declare him a liar simply because you have not had the same experience? No. And should the courts behave any differently from the good citizen? “We cannot deny our own sensory experience on the basis of probability, nor can we deny the sensory experience of others on such bases. We may seek an explanation, we may argue about its origins, but to preclude any spectral evidence whatsoever on the basis of its internal and unverifiable nature—we might as well prohibit expressions of opinion.” He did not address the question of the absolute truth of spectral evidence, nor the existence of the supernatural, but merely brushed the matter aside as irrelevant to proof, and said, in effect, “on to more important things.” Certainly I, who had been making a case for the admission of spectral evidence for years, did not expect such a coup. My own arguments came out of the vividness of the picture drawn, the complexity of the scenes, which in all their specificity and depth must conform to some external reality. But the brilliance, the audacity, of Franklin was that he could, expanding on my example, use reason to disprove the notion of truth itself. The debate proceeded thus: Winthrop would raise a point, subject it to logic, and in so doing, a**ert its proof; then Franklin would declare that point irrelevant, address the issue in the abstract, and cleverly a**ert the uncertainty of knowing either way for sure. He had come, at last, to his life's purpose: using the art of persuasion to return the faithful to God. I could not help myself—sitting up in the back of the chapel, I wept. Oh, Ben Franklin. God's Trojan horse at Harvard College! ~ What I perceived at first to be a resounding victory, however, sprung back upon us when President Leverett, who had sneaked in during the proceedings and sat in the rear pew, at the end walked up to the lectern beside Franklin and pronounced that he, as Harvard's new oratorical champion, would next month be travelling to the Collegiate School of Connecticut at Sayville (colloquially referred to as “Yale”) to debate its own star divinity student, Jonathan Edwards. The Sayville School had recently been founded in solidarity with our church's protest of the secularizing of Harvard College, and it promised to be an institution of faithfulness and devotion to God. I hesitated to send our most eloquent orator to challenge the piety of Mr. Edwards, especially given Franklin's tendency toward “free-thinking.” Furthermore, the subject of the debate was to be God's judgment, a topic on which I knew Franklin to be recalcitrant. The notion of a vengeful and jealous God did not catch with Franklin the pragmatist. This was our greatest point of contention. He was also hesitant to denounce false religions. Even the Quakers, whose many heresies brought about their exile from the colony, were, in Ben Franklin's view, also followers of Christ. He did not say as much to me, but I would not be surprised to learn that Ben Franklin did not believe in the devil at all. ~ It was our first blessing that the debate would be held in Sayville, far from the impressionable Bostonians who filled our pews, where it would not stain the reputation of Franklin in our own ministry. The journey by foot would take nearly a fortnight. By ship, it was two full days' travel. When we saw the modest wooden houses outlining the town, and the single wooden building of the college, sided with clapboard, and the abundance of trees, my sense of foreboding was diminished. Without scrutinizing my fellow traveller, I knew that, as he looked upon the sight, his mind turned to thoughts of how Yale could use the services of an Engine Company. Our next blessing came in the form of the rector of the Sayville School, Timothy Cutler, who had graduated Harvard College fifteen years earlier, and was formerly a member of my church, now a preacher himself. He greeted us warmly, and invited us to supper, on the night before the great debate. Though his impeccable courtesy was, all the evening, tainted by an attitude of smugness that suggested that he knew beforehand how the days ahead would all unfold. ~ On the floor of Yale's “college house” sat not only the students, but more than a few significant figures from the Connecticut Colony, including Governor Saltonstall and Governor Elihu Yale himself. It was as though, improbably, the college had prepared itself for their annual commencement ceremony, rather than the tired polemics of two snivelling, but well-trained, boys. They had great faith in their lion Jonathan Edwards, and for good reason. And they wished, perhaps, to bear witness to the fall of Harvard College, with the symbolic rise of their own constellation. My interest in this venture, as Leverett well knew, was split. I had no wish to see Franklin's religious tolerance take the day, but neither did I wish to watch my budding protégé fail. But most of all, I wished not to be a**ociated with the spectacle, and not to have my reputation sacrificed at the altar of Harvard College. The scene was reminiscent of a bout. Because of the tightness of the quarters, they stood nearly arm to arm, backlit by a large central window, so that, at every gesture, their shadows on the platform seemed to be colliding. Furthermore, Yale had not yet developed the sense of ceremony that pervaded Harvard College, so that neither speaker was expected nor desired to wear a wig or gown. Our final blessing, perhaps, was that our Benjamin Franklin was no match as an orator for Jonathan Edwards, the true firebrand. Edwards began in an almost incantatory whisper, so that the audience had to lean forward, then built up his voice into thunderous claps. The effect, in fact, was so visceral that members of the crowd began to hold their stomachs and rock back and forth, or fall upon the ground and weep. “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath toward you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful enormous serpent is in ours.” What, indeed, could Franklin say to this evocation of God's will? He spoke evenly and rationally about the God of good works—how we can know nothing of God absolutely, but can guess only at His wishes, and that we can say nothing with surety but that God has equipped man to value good works on earth. But the crowd was held in thrall by the inflamed words of their local hero. As Franklin spoke, they merely bided their time for another glorious a**ault upon their souls. “O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and [ . . . there is] nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.” Franklin's final sally was, to my surprise, and that of the entire crowd there arrayed, to simply shake his head and laugh, loud and unrestrained. The audience muttered indecisively, unsure whether the laughter was an indication of his obvious defeat, or of scorn. But instead of ceding the floor or digging in to his opponent, Franklin decried the institutions of learning which had created them both. He took aim, in particular, against the rich parents who, burdened with children, “send them to the Temple of Learning, where, for want of a suitable Genius, they learn little more than how to carry themselves handsomely, and enter a Room genteely (which might as well be acquired at a Dancing-School), and from whence they return, after abundance of trouble and Charges, as great Block-heads as ever, only more proud and self-conceited.” And, fortune of fortunes, the chorus erupted into laughter, and the laughter infected the gallery, and soon Edwards himself could not resist the wave of levity that crashed over the room. Franklin had somehow struck a nerve more powerful even than Edwards' fires of hell. His voice had become the calm and level stream that extinguished it. ~ Although in the end he had taken the wind out of Edwards' powerful oratorical advantage and recovered his dignity, on the road home Franklin was troubled. I consoled my student by reminding him that it was no one's expectation that he would actually win the debate, given the venue and the elder boy's greater experience. President Leverett had trapped him, tried to make a fool of him, but he had somehow salvaged his pride, and emerged the better contender. He should be proud of his performance, and unashamed in the face of his critics. But, Franklin said, looking up at me with changed eyes, it was not that he feared the loss to his earthly reputation, but that he had come to fear God's judgement. There in Yale's college house, a modest wooden building with small leaded windows, standing shoulder to shoulder with Edwards, Franklin had experienced a painful revelation. He could not efface the image of hell in his mind. He understood now that he was merely an insect held over a fire by an angry and whimsical god. The pit awaited him, unless he repent, and kneel, and renounce his skeptical and freethinking ways, and turn his thoughts forever upon God. The flame of heaven had caught Franklin by the cloth, and the fire was spreading. ----- Though the Reverend Benjamin Franklin helped further scientific knowledge and civic institutions in several different areas, he is notable most of all for his influence upon the culture as a whole. The effect of his extraordinary life is more elusive than that of a statesman or inventor, but also more pervasive and unmistakable. Benjamin Franklin has become the model for the American type: ascetic, pious, selfless, and modest to a fault. Without Benjamin Franklin's example, the Founding Fathers would have been less concerned with the obligations of man toward God, and more concerned with the inherent “rights” of man. Instead of a document establishing the duties of each citizen to the Almighty, there might have been a document detailing government's duties to the individual. We may have even followed the misguided doctrine of Roger Williams, and removed the role of a church in American government altogether. In fact it is not too vast a claim to make, in the instance of Benjamin Franklin, that he was the man most responsible for shaping the American character, and its status, forever, as a Christian nation. Suggestions for Cla** Discussion: It was not reason, but imagination, that persuaded Ben Franklin of the reality of hell; what does it say about logic, that it became a barrier between the Reverend Franklin and his great revelation? Even before his conversion, Benjamin Franklin believed in God; why was Cotton Mather so determined that he believe in the devil too?