82 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



Your affectionate parental and instructive letter I have 

 perused again and again. I wish, indeed, that I could give 

 you an account of my religious concerns sufficiently pleasing 

 to repay your exertions and to satisfy my own anxious feel- 

 ings. I can say with truth that this great subject dwells 

 in my mind when I am at liberty to think, " but shadows, 

 clouds, and darkness rest upon it." Not that I doubt, but 

 that I do not feel, although I readily assent to the propo- 

 sition that these things are so. When I read that one of 

 our frigates has fought a severe battle with a ship of supe- 

 rior force, I feel it at once. I trace every circumstance 

 in my mind, and fancy that I hear the roaring cannon, the 

 shouts of victory, and the groans of the dying. But 

 whether it is owing to some fatal cause, or merely to the 

 triteness of the subject, I know not when the awful 

 truths of Christianity are announced from the desk, I do 

 not always feel that interest which the subject ought to 

 command. But I will reserve this subject until I see 

 you 



His letters to his brother at this time betray a like 

 solicitude. 



TO MR. G. S. SILLIMAN. 



NEW HAVEN, Mny 14, 1800. 



..... WHY is it, since no fact not already accomplished 

 is .so clearly demonstrated as human mortality, and nothing 

 is so uncertain as the time and manner of that event, that 

 mankind treat the subject as an idle tale, the dream of 

 superstition, and the bugbear of timorous minds ? My dear 

 brother, as we regard our eternal salvation, let us daily 

 strive to run the Christian race, that in the end we may 

 obtain a crown of glory which fadeth not away 



In 1802, during the last year of Mr. Silliman's 

 tutorship, a remarkable attentiveness to religion 



