The Holocaust
- Worcester, MA: Augustine Caldwell, [n.d.; ca 1890]
Worcester, MA: Augustine Caldwell, [n.d.; ca 1890]. First Edition. First printing. 16mo (15cm). Cover title; 80pp pamphlet. Fine.
Unrecorded account of a crisis of faith and its renewal, ending with a quotation from Habakkuk 2:20. Augustine Caldwell was a minister, antiquarian, and an early mentor to painter Arthur Wesley Dow. He was also an independent printer: he edited and himself printed the Ipswich Antiquarian Papers, with illustrations by Arthur Wesley Dow; the Hamatt Papers; tracts with excerpts from the writings of French mystic Madame Guyon; and miscellaneous local items (Johnson 9-11).
"Caldwell was, in his spiritual life, quite outside of the New England tradition. His spiritual living revolted against the scarlet emotionalism of current Methodism and at the same time the fading greyness of current Congregationalism. He looked not to Calvin and Wesley but to the Quietists of France and found in Madame Guyon that attitude toward the religious life which satisfied his soul's hunger" (10-11). This pamphlet provides a first-person account, possibly composed by one of Caldwell's parishioners, of a crisis of faith and its mystical resolution, fitting in with Caldwell's contemplative attitudes.
See Arthur Warren Johnson, Arthur Wesley Dow: Historian, Artist, Teacher (Publications of the Ipswich Historial Society XXVIII, 1934). We have been unable to positively identify Mrs. Annie E. Bennett. We have found little information about Mrs. Bennett, except that October 8, 1887 Fall River Daily Evening News notes the death of "Howard Westcott, son of A. J. and Annie E. Bennett, 13" years of age. In describing her crisis of faith, Bennett notes that her "case seemed almost a duplicate of that of Abraham's who...was told to bring a sacrifice" (3). (She also refers to a climactic moment in 1867--a typo for 1887?) This, then, appears to be an account of Bennett's despair and subsequent renewal of faith following the loss of her child.
Caldwell's religious tastes ran towards the mystical.
Unrecorded account of a crisis of faith and its renewal, ending with a quotation from Habakkuk 2:20. Augustine Caldwell was a minister, antiquarian, and an early mentor to painter Arthur Wesley Dow. He was also an independent printer: he edited and himself printed the Ipswich Antiquarian Papers, with illustrations by Arthur Wesley Dow; the Hamatt Papers; tracts with excerpts from the writings of French mystic Madame Guyon; and miscellaneous local items (Johnson 9-11).
"Caldwell was, in his spiritual life, quite outside of the New England tradition. His spiritual living revolted against the scarlet emotionalism of current Methodism and at the same time the fading greyness of current Congregationalism. He looked not to Calvin and Wesley but to the Quietists of France and found in Madame Guyon that attitude toward the religious life which satisfied his soul's hunger" (10-11). This pamphlet provides a first-person account, possibly composed by one of Caldwell's parishioners, of a crisis of faith and its mystical resolution, fitting in with Caldwell's contemplative attitudes.
See Arthur Warren Johnson, Arthur Wesley Dow: Historian, Artist, Teacher (Publications of the Ipswich Historial Society XXVIII, 1934). We have been unable to positively identify Mrs. Annie E. Bennett. We have found little information about Mrs. Bennett, except that October 8, 1887 Fall River Daily Evening News notes the death of "Howard Westcott, son of A. J. and Annie E. Bennett, 13" years of age. In describing her crisis of faith, Bennett notes that her "case seemed almost a duplicate of that of Abraham's who...was told to bring a sacrifice" (3). (She also refers to a climactic moment in 1867--a typo for 1887?) This, then, appears to be an account of Bennett's despair and subsequent renewal of faith following the loss of her child.
Caldwell's religious tastes ran towards the mystical.