Adin Ballou
and the Hopedale Community
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Works on Adin Ballou and Hopedale Links |
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The world worships success and despises failure. It judges of success and failure chiefly according to outward appearance - according to material manifestations and tangible results. It concerns itself little with causes, motives, preliminary conditions or noiseless agencies and operations. Its eyes are carnal not spiritual. It condemns the prophets of any given age while they are yet alive - perhaps crucifies, stones, or starves them - but builds the tombs and garnishes the sepulchers of those of a former age who have passed away, and whose testimonies and sufferings have immortalized their memories. So it has ever been; so it is still. Nothing else is to be expected. I have not been a man of much popular success, but in several respects of failure. Not because my intentions, principles, ideas, objects and plans were reprehensible and unworthy of success, but because they foreran the conditions and means indispensable to its acquisition. My hopes were too urgent and sanguine; my standard and aim were set too high for immediate realization. So have I been defeated in some of my noblest schemes; some of my most disinterested and earnest labors have been expended in vain, and my way has been overshadowed with disappointment and grief. The world has judged and will for some time longer judge of me and of my undertakings after its own ancient fashion, and I complain not. In the wisdom of God all is for the best, and nothing true and good is forever lost. The final verdict is not rendered yet, and my case and cause are adjourned to a more auspicious future. Times and generations are coming that will justly estimate me and my work, and assign both to their proper place in the providential plan for the progress and redemption of humanity. For them, as it has proved, have I lived and labored, rather than for my contemporaries. To them I appeal for vindication and approval; to them I bequeath whatever is valuable and worth preserving of my possessions - the fruits of my toil while yet a dweller in the tabernacles of earth and time. I have been repeatedly urged by some of my relatives and friends who seem to cherish for me a very earnest regard and to have great confidence in me, to write my biography. In my less buoyant moods I have shrunk from the task, feeling for the time being that I preferred to be forgotten, if possible, by posterity and to have all my seemingly illusory theories and abortive projects buried in oblivion. But in more lucid and thoughtful states of mind and heart, under cheering inspirations from the spiritual world which have always prevailed against impulsive and momentary despondency and gloom, I have been more inclined to undertake the task desired of me. Yielding to such inclination, I have at length set myself about the work involved, with a view of carrying it forward to completion as rapidly as possible without interfering with other duties to which I am pledged, making due allowance for hindrances and delays to which my position before the public and wide acquaintanceship expose me continually. I do this partly because I think that in this way I can still render some benefit to mankind; partly because no one else, moved to tell the story of my life after my decease, has at hand the data I can command for doing the subject justice; and partly because, if nothing more comes of it, the narrative will afford my surviving relatives and friends, to whom I owe a great debt of gratitude for all their kindness to me, something of personal satisfaction and delight. I have many memoranda preserved among my private papers and a carefully kept diary covering the greater part of my active life, as well as much private matter accumulated through a long term of editorial service, from which I can draw to aid my memory in giving definiteness and authenticity to the facts of which mention will be made. I shall proceed, therefore, in the preparation of a volume for the press, with an unwavering confidence in the accuracy of all the details essential to a trustworthy and desirable narrative. Adin Ballou |