Sarah Osborn's World

by Brekus, Catherine A.

  One of the distinctive features of the new evangelical movement was its commitment to doing good. As we have seen, evangelicals were ambivalent about the humanitarian movement because of their conviction that suffering could be redemptive, but they also absorbed its language of benevolence as their own. Although evangelicals refused to see human flourishing as the greatest good, they accepted the premise that Christians should strive to alleviate suffering and create a better world, and they had obvious affinities to a movement that echoed Jesus’s ethical command to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Holding two beliefs in tension, Sarah believed that God’s plan for the world included suffering, but she was also convinced that Christians were called to alleviate it. “If you have no Compassion, no Value of the bodies of Men,” George Whitefield warned, “you are not, indeed, my dear Brethren, Christians, nor true Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.”3

  When the word humanitarian was coined in the nineteenth century, it was virtually an antonym to evangelical: a humanitarian was a religious skeptic (perhaps even an atheist) who viewed happiness as the greatest good, while an evangelical was a fervent believer in Christ’s resurrection who wanted nothing more than to glorify God. Humanitarians wanted to abolish suffering; evangelicals thought suffering could be redemptive. Humanitarians believed that humans could make the world a better place; evangelicals insisted that progress was impossible without the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Humanitarians imagined humans as essentially good; evangelicals saw them as fallen and sinful.

  Yet despite these disagreements, there is no doubt that eighteenth-century evangelicals were influenced by the humanitarian currents of their age. As they created a new kind of Protestantism in dialogue with the Enlightenment, they sounded as fervent as humanitarians about creating a kinder, more compassionate world. Ultimately, though, they forged an understanding of benevolence that was uniquely their own. Convinced that there was no greater act of generosity than to save sinners from damnation, they placed more emphasis on evangelism than virtually any other group of Christians before them. Although they wanted to help the suffering body, they were even more concerned about the suffering soul. When the humanitarian command to “do good” collided with the Christian imperative to “preach the gospel,” the result was an explosion of missionary zeal. Sarah felt called to give money to the poor and care for the sick, but she was even more inspired to evangelize children, slaves, and anyone who had not yet been born again. “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity,” she quoted from Proverbs. “But a wounded spirit who can bear?”4

  Christians have always struggled to understand what Jesus meant when he commanded his followers, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” While some Christians have interpreted his words as a radical challenge to the social order, others have concentrated more on saving sinners than on demanding structural or institutional change. Because of their dark view of human sinfulness, eighteenth-century evangelicals tended to fall on the conservative side of this religious spectrum: they insisted that the only lasting solution to the world’s problems was conversion, and although they were willing to extend charity to individuals in need, they assumed that corporal punishment, torture, war, and slavery were an inevitable part of a fallen world. Sarah’s compassion for the needy made her one of the most admired women in Newport, and yet in her zeal to save sinners she sometimes turned a blind eye to the entrenched evils of her time, especially slavery.

  Blessed Is He That Considereth the Poor

  Sarah’s diary for the first few months of 1759 is missing, but based on a forlorn letter she wrote to Joseph Fish that May, it is clear that her decision to open a boarding school had saved her family from complete destitution. Writing at one o’clock in the morning, she confided, “All as to means that Holds up our Heads above water at all is a couple of boarders.” Many of her students had stayed home from school during the winter because of bad weather, and then an outbreak of measles had shut it down for several weeks. One of her boarders had pleurisy, perhaps caused by pneumonia, and Sarah seems to have been afraid that she would be forced to close her doors yet again. “Poverty as an armed man has been coming on us ever since we was with you Last,” she lamented, “but this Last winter it Has made swift Progress. . . . Our income Has not been Half equivalent to our unavoidable Expense that we sink Lower and Lower day by day and I can turn no way either to Lessen our charge or increase our income.” She had sixty day students and ten boarders, and though she paid an assistant teacher to help her, she still felt like “a poor over-Loaded weak animal crouching under its burden.” The weight pressing down on her shoulders was almost too much to bear.5

  In the midst of all these troubles, however, she and Henry took in another of John and Abigail’s children. They now had two grandchildren under their roof as well as Almey Greenman and the ten boarding students—thirteen children in all. Even with help, Sarah must have found it difficult to handle all the cooking and laundry, but whenever she thought about her grandchildren’s former experiences of hunger and want, she believed that she was doing God’s will. As she explained to Joseph Fish, “I can’t repent it, nor cast them off so Long as tis Possible for me to Grapple with them. When I Look on them I am most strengthened. Psalm 41 and 1st oft supports me.” (Her text was “Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.”) Even so, there were limits to what she could do. Disappointed by his failure at privateering, John had recently joined the army (probably because the colony had begun to offer large enlistment bonuses), but even though he left behind “a poor slothful wife and two more poor children as wretched as they can be,” Sarah could no longer help them. Not only was she dangerously in debt, but Abigail’s “sloth” in comparison to her own diligence seems to have angered her. “I don’t Pretend to do for them now,” she wrote in a rare expression of frustration. “I Have Given them up to shift for themselves. I can’t Hold out any Longer to do for them.” As she explained to Fish, she had “five to maintain wholly.” (She was probably referring to herself, Henry, her two grandchildren, and Almey.)6 John would have to find a way to support the rest of his family on his own.

  The fall of 1759 and winter of 1760 brought even greater troubles. In September, Sarah heard the terrible news that Elizabeth Vinal, one of her closest friends and the minister’s wife, had died in childbirth along with her newborn. The Reverend Vinal tried to “bear up with Christian Patience and Resignation to the divine will,” but as Sarah confided to Fish, “He seemed as though He would Have died with Her.” Susanna Anthony moved into Vinal’s house to cook and clean for him and his family, and Sarah offered to care for two of his daughters, Sarah and Becky, in her boarding school. (Little Sarah, who was five, may have been her namesake; when she was born in 1754, Sarah offered a prayer for both her and her mother, “dear Elisa,” in her diary.)7 Although Sarah could not afford to take the children for free, she charged only what they cost “out of Pocket,” meaning half of her usual tuition.8 Caring for two grief-stricken children added to her burdens, but she was determined to keep them “as long as Providence permits me.” She and Henry now had fifteen children under their care.

  A letter from Sarah Osborn to Joseph Fish, May 3, 1759. She wrote this desperate letter about her financial problems at one o’clock in the morning. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

  Then at the end of November another tragedy struck. News came that John, Henry’s last surviving child, had died in battle at Fort George in upstate New York. After years of praying for his salvation, Sarah and Henry had to accept that he, like his brother Edward two years earlier, had died without being converted. Sarah’s account of his death was brief, but her terse words suggest that Henry was grief-stricken. “The bonds of nature are strong,” Sarah reflected. “It was His all, and many sorrows attend such a Loss.”9 Years earlier, Sarah had hoped that all their children would experience the joy of being born again. Now she could not understand how she could have been so wrong. Once again, a
mysterious God had disappointed her hopes.

  Despite her earlier declaration that Abigail and her two youngest children would have to “shift for themselves,” Sarah did not have the heart to turn them away in their time of need. Having once been widowed herself, she knew the fear and anguish of losing a husband and being left to raise a child alone. Though fearful of being plunged into “difficulties too Great for me to Grapple with,” she believed that God would help her to scrape together enough money to keep Abigail and the grandchildren out of the almshouse. Besides emptying her own purse of its few shillings, she pleaded with friends and members of her church to be charitable. Anxieties in Newport were high because of an outbreak of smallpox and fears of a food shortage, but Sarah persuaded a Mrs. Tweedy, the mother of one of her former students, to give her forty shillings, and someone else to donate wood—a necessity in a bitterly cold winter with “snow upon snow.” (Wood prices were so exorbitant that many poor people could not keep their houses warm, and according to an irate writer in the Newport Mercury, wood sellers often shortchanged their customers by delivering less than had been paid for.)10 Captain David Moore, a member of Sarah’s church, gave forty shillings, and “the doctor’s Lady,” probably Mrs. Ebenezer Gray, another church member, contributed twenty shillings as well as “meat, sauce, sugar, tea & cheese.” Both Moore and Gray were among the wealthiest members of Sarah’s church (their pew assessments placed them in the top 1 percent), and Moore in particular was a good friend of Sarah and Henry’s who sometimes visited them at home.11

  Sarah also went to the Town Council to ask for John’s remaining salary, but to her disappointment she discovered that the family could expect only thirty-six pounds. It is not clear why Abigail did not go the council herself, but she seems to have been incapacitated in some way. Perhaps she was ill, or perhaps she was too dejected to attend to her responsibilities. Even before John’s death, Sarah had described her as chronically slothful, which raises the possibility that she may have been suffering from depression or, given the large number of taverns in Newport, alcoholism. She seems to have been incapable of caring for either herself or her children. Whatever the reason, the council treated Sarah as Abigail’s guardian, ordering her to pay Abigail’s rent, buy her some wood, and “Let her Have the rest as I see need.”12

  Sarah clearly disliked Abigail: although she sometimes referred to her in sympathetic terms as a “poor, distressed widow,” her descriptions were usually more critical—she was lazy, “obstinate,” guilty of “Misconduct,” and, worst of all, rearing her children to be little better than “heathens.”13 Yet even though Sarah did not see Abigail as either a good mother or a good Christian, she was committed to helping her. Besides being motivated by concern about her grandchildren, she believed it was her duty to help the poor regardless of whether they were Christian. She fed a beggar who several times knocked at her door even though he “plainly” told her that “He hates the ways of Holiness.” Irritated by the frequency of his visits, she turned him away one day, but then immediately reproached herself for not being kinder to the “poor creature.” Like George Whitefield, who argued that Christians must help others whether they were “friends or enemies,” Sarah thought that God had called her to help “any of his poor, or the poor widow and fatherless, whether they are by his special grace or not.” There was no such thing as the deserving or the undeserving poor, only people who needed help. Yearning to be as “Godlike and Christlike Here as tis Possible,” she tried to imitate Jesus’s generosity to the outcasts of his society. If he had treated “publicans and sinners” with compassion, then so would she.14

  Use Me in Thy Service for Others

  Given her belief that her poverty, her illness, and her sorrows had made her a better Christian, Sarah’s commitment to alleviating the suffering of others might seem surprising. Why did she spend so much time helping others if she assumed that God had ordained their afflictions for their own good? And why, if she believed that she could not earn her way into heaven by doing good works, did she become renowned in Newport for her charity? Praying to God, she wrote, “As I am through boundless grace your own, use me in thy service for others.”15

  The answer turned on a hinge of Calvinist theology that valued good works as a sign—rather than a cause—of salvation. Though a subtle distinction, it was a crucial one. Sarah denied that people could earn salvation by doing good deeds, but she still assumed that the born again would show their faith by their actions. As Jonathan Edwards explained, “All true Christian grace tends to holy practice.” Sarah had no doubt that “Eternal Life is the free Gift of God through Jesus Christ and not wages for our works,” but from reading the Bible she was also certain that true faith “Purifies the Heart, works by Love, and is Productive of Good works.”16 Indeed, a true Christian was rarely idle. Besides helping Abigail, Sarah fed the hungry, gave money to the poor, and visited the sick and dying. While she was collecting charity for Abigail, she risked her health by visiting an ill child who seems to have had smallpox. The girl died a few days later.17

  Historians have often noted that evangelicals had a stronger missionary and reforming impulse than earlier generations of Puritans. Puritans were committed to practicing “Christian charity,” but as they built new towns and churches, organized governments, and developed trading routes, they focused more on the needs of their own communities than the plight of outsiders. Although the original seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony included the image of a half-clothed Indian pleading “come over and help us,” Puritans did not begin evangelizing Native Americans until 1646, sixteen years after the colony was founded.

  Puritans began to pay greater attention to the poor outside their own churches in the late seventeenth century. In part they were motivated by necessity. After the Act of Toleration made it illegal to exile religious dissenters, they were forced to compete with other denominations, especially Anglicans and Quakers, for converts. By creating almshouses and reform societies where they mixed charitable relief with religious instruction, they not only fulfilled the moral obligation to “love thy neighbor as thyself” but also brought large numbers of people under their care and supervision. They also organized Indians into “praying towns” where they could be taught to live as Christians. In order to preserve their religious and political hegemony, the Puritans needed to find new ways to spread the gospel.

  Yet their altruism was motivated by more than a desire to shore up their own authority. Puritans had always believed in being charitable, but they had a limited sense of their ability to alleviate large-scale suffering. Beginning in the late seventeenth century, however, they gradually gained a new faith in their power to improve the world, an expanded sense of possibility about effecting change. Inspired by scientific discoveries, technological advances, greater consumer choices, and their growing political influence in local governments, they seem to have become more sanguine about their ability to create a more Christian world.

  Perhaps no one in New England was more influential in spreading humanitarian ideas than Cotton Mather, the illustrious pastor of Boston’s North Church. After Mather was exposed to humanitarianism through his contact with German Pietists, he urged Christians to create reform societies and spread the gospel through missions. “If men would set themselves to devise good,” he argued, “a world of good might be done, more than there is, in this present evil world.” Although scoffing at the idea that humans were innately compassionate, Mather still believed that Christians were called to heal the brokenness of the world: “There needs abundance to be done, that the miseries of the world may have remedies and abatements provided for them; and that miserable people may be relieved and comforted.” He founded societies to encourage piety, to combat “disorders” like drinking and prostitution, to help the poor, and to evangelize Indians. As he testified, “Plain men dwelling in tents, persons of a very ordinary character, may in a way of bright piety, prove persons of extraordinary usefulness.”18

  By the middle of
the eighteenth century, humanitarian ideas had become so widely accepted that evangelicals naturally incorporated them into their own fledgling movement. With a zeal that would have delighted Mather, they gave money to the poor, founded orphanages for needy children, and started schools for Native Americans and slaves. After visiting Georgia, George Whitefield founded an orphanage that he named Bethesda after the biblical house of mercy, and in Connecticut, Eleazar Wheelock founded Moor’s Charity School for Native Americans. Although some of these ventures failed (Wheelock’s school ended up catering to white students), they reflected the reforming zeal of the age.19 “Whatsoever thy Hand finds to do,” John Guyse preached, quoting from Ecclesiastes, “do it with thy might.” (After reading this sermon, Sarah Osborn wrote an impassioned diary entry promising to serve others.)20 By the early nineteenth century, evangelicals in New England had founded scores of reform and benevolent organizations, including temperance and Bible societies and maternal associations.

  In many ways, evangelicals would have bristled at the thought that they shared anything in common with the humanitarian movement. In contrast to philosophers like the third earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson, and David Hume, they argued that humans were too sinful to improve the world by their own efforts. Progress was impossible without the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit. (Writing about Isaac Newton, the Reverend Nicholas Gilman attributed his revolutionary discoveries solely to the will of “Heaven.”)21 Most important, evangelicals denied that people could be truly virtuous unless motivated by a desire to glorify God. Distinguishing between “common morality” and “true virtue,” Jonathan Edwards claimed that all people, even the worst of sinners, were capable of doing good deeds, but unless they were motivated by a pure, selfless love for God—“a supreme regard to God”—their works were worthless. “Nothing is of the nature of true virtue,” he wrote, “in which God is not the first and the last.”22