Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D.

“Reveals wit, playfulness, good humor, love of anecdote, merriment even, to a degree hardly to be expected from the grave and serious character of his ordinary writings.” -The Andover Review, Volume 1, January, 1884 “This autobiography will interest all who sympathize with humanity, patriotism and personal devotion to conviction. Dr. Dewey was born in 1794 and died in 1882, and in his long life was interested in every question that has occupied and inspired great thinkers. For thirteen years he occupied the pulpit of the church of the Messiah, now filled by Dr. Robert Collyer.” -Trübner's American and Oriental Literary Record, Issues 195-236, January, 1884 “Dr. Orville Dewey stood prominently among the clergymen and scholars of the last generation, and there is many an elder who still says when the great orators of the pulpit of the present generation are praised, ‘Oh but you should have heard Dr. Dewey in his prime.’ However great or small Dr. Orville Dewey may have been compared with the leading lights of the pulpit of the day, there can be no doubt that his life was singularly rich, wholesome, well rounded, and fertile in good influences. As high as was his reputation as a pulpit orator, it was the man behind the voice which gave such dignity and weight to his utterances….His sermons had the burning poignancy and directness, that freshness of method and treatment which made one of his fellow clergymen say that Dr. Dewey wrote ‘as if nobody ever wrote sermons before.’ Will give pleasure, we have no doubt, to thousands who knew and loved him living; and it will keep worthily alive the fame of a great preacher, and a good man.” -The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, Volume 39; Volume 102, January, 1844 “The record of a widely useful, lovely, and blameless life, full of warm sympathy, faith, and helpfulness. He was endowed beyond most men with the joy of religion, and to teach this and to help others to the comfort of it was his inspiration….A pleasing and interesting memorial of an excellent and highly-gifted man.” -Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 33, January, 1884 “He was a most deep-feeling man. He loved his friends in and out of the profession, with a loyal, hearty, obliging, warm, and even tender emotion, expressing itself in word and deed. It was overflowing, not in any sentimental manner, but in a manly, sincere way. He was a man of infinite good-will, of a quite boundless kindness. His voice, his expression of face, his smile, the grasp of his hand—all gave sign of it. He felt things keenly; his sensibilities were most acute; even his thoughts were suffused with emotion.” -O. B. Frothingham