Carpenter, Hugh Smith. Here and Beyond: The New Man, The True Man. New York: Mason Brothers, 1859. First Edition.
Black publisher's cloth, titles in gilt to spine, boards bordered in blind, 5 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches, edges and ends worn, tight. Several owner's signatures on the front end papers, including one in ink dated 1991. 345 clean pp., tight. Good. Hardcover. [5257]
"These thoughts relate to the symmetry of soul development. There has prevailed a current notion, that a life swayed by supernatural forces must be an unnatural life. And among those who dreaded such an influence upon themselves, a converse notion has found credence, that manliness and a genial virtue can thrive, in the lack of sacred faith...Nothing so strengthens scoffing, nothing so expands it range, as the spectacle of a crude, unshapely, and incongruous pietism...In this way it has come about, that there is less genuine religion accredited in the world than is really found there, scant and fragmentary as the actual amount may be...It is time to show men, quietly, that sanctity and sanctimony are not alike in fact, because to the ignorant or to the foreigner the syllables have somewhat the same sound. There is a vast difference between 'the form of sound words,' so often referred to, and the formal sound of words, which mere religionists would put in their place." - from the Preface.
"This is a unique book, and not to be judged of by any of the common tests. It is an attempt to remove false impressions of Christianity, and to relieve modern piety of many of its excrescences and distortions. It contains twenty-three short chapters, with suggestive but unusual titles, each chapter being an independent essay. It abound in imagery, which is sometimes homely and pertinent, and often bold and striking. Its tone is oracular, after the Carlyle and Emerson pattern, but its spirit uniformly devout and Christian." - The Christian Review, volume 24.
"Few books received warmer and stronger commendations from the highest sources of literary criticism, than did 'Here and Beyond,' at the time of its publication." - The Homiletic Review.
Hugh Smith Carpenter (1824 -1899), educated at New York University and Princeton Theological Seminary, graduating from there in 1845. He was the minister of the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, N.Y., from 1857 to 1870. Previous to that he was pastor of churches in New York City and at Portland, Maine (Congregational); subsequent to the ministry in Brooklyn we served churches in San Francisco and at Washington, DC.
"Rev. Hugh Smith Carpenter, D. D., of San Francisco, Cal., is to preach next Sunday morning at 10:30 o'clock a tthe Dutch Reformed Church near the Court-house, Brooklyn. Mr. Carpenter is a preacher of great power, and a large number of his Brooklyn and New-York friends will, no doubt, be glad to hear him." - announcement in the April, 30, 1873 edition of The New York Times.