Lemuel Haynes Would Like Your Attention

Lemuel Haynes was not one to mince words. That was written in 1776 and he still had over a half century of rhetorical fusillades ahead of him. By the time he died in 1833, he had preached around 5500 sermons, and presumably a healthy number of non-sermons as well. Middlebury College gave him an honorary degree in 1804. Not bad for a guy who started out as an indentured servant.

Selected Sermons, a collection of four of Haynes’ sermons, includes a remarkably telling anecdote in the editor Jared Wilson’s foreword:

An oft-told anecdote about Haynes concerns a scene of family devotions at the Rose household where he was indentured. Given his adeptness at reading and his deep concern for spiritual matters, the Rose family would often ask Haynes to read a portion of Scripture or a published sermon. One night, Haynes read a homily of his own without credit (apparently the sermon on John 3:3 included in this volume). At the end, members of the family remarked at its quality and wondered, “Was that a Whitefield?” “No,” Haynes is said to have replied, “it was a Haynes.”

Later, Haynes joined the war against Britain right after the battles of Lexington and Concord and was eventually ordained in Connecticut in 1785 when he was 32 years old.

Ordained ministers were not exactly uncommon in New England at the time. How does Haynes compare? Wilson, in a marvelous formulation: “The few sermons we have of Lemuel Haynes prove him to be an exceptional expositor in the Puritan tradition, similar to Edwards or Whitefield though simpler than the former and more substantive than the latter.”

Haynes’ place in the pantheon of American preachers was solidified when the Library of America included one of his works (“Universal Salvation,” also included in this volume) in their volume American Sermons. He does indeed have a style that anyone who appreciates the genre will certainly enjoy reading.

All of this makes Haynes someone worthy of getting to know better, but there is one more tidbit which cements his place not just in a catalogue of early American sermonizers, but in early American history more broadly. Lemuel Haynes was the first ordained minister in America who was black.

The quotation at the outset of this review is from “Liberty Further Extended” which in true 18^th century style has a lengthy subtitle (and the Superfluous Capitalization beloved by This Reviewer): “Or Free Thoughts on the Illegality of Slave Keeping, Wherein Those Arguments that Are Used in its Vindication Are Plainly Confuted, Together with a Humble Address to Such As Are Concerned in the Practice.” The word “Humble” in that subtitle should probably have been omitted; it’s hard to read this sort of thing as something humbly spoken:

Can you wash your hands and say “I am clean from this sin”? Perhaps you will dare to say it before men; but dare you say it before whom we must all, in a few precarious moments, appear?

“Liberty Further Extended” begins with a now famous epigraph: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” At the time Haynes wrote this sermon, though, it was not nearly as famous as it is now; in fact, this sermon was the first time in history that passage from the Declaration was quoted. Two hundred years later, Martin Luther King, Jr. would use exactly that same passage from the Declaration to make exactly the same argument that Haynes was making. Haynes was a pioneer in making the Christian argument against slavery; William Wilberforce had not even converted to Christianity when Haynes was making this argument. It is a gripping sermon made even more enthralling by its originality.

But, Haynes should not be reduced to an early abolitionist. The first sermon in this collection is a polemical marvel, wonderful to read. “Universal Salvation” was a response given immediately after hearing Hosea Ballou preach a sermon advocating the idea of Universal Salvation, the doctrine that all people are saved. Haynes, a Puritan’s Puritan, eviscerates Ballou.

He begins by talking about the wonders of living in Eden.

Happy were the human pair amidst this delightful paradise until a certain preacher, in his journey, came that way and disturbed their peace and tranquility be endeavoring to reverse the prohibition of the Almighty—as in our text, “Ye shall not surely die.”

That is simply brilliant. To label the serpent in the garden a preacher, a preacher who is travelling about no less—rhetorical genius. I don’t know of any record which indicates whether Ballou was in the audience when Haynes began his talk, but you can just imagine the steam coming out of his ears at this remarkably sly way of being called the Devil Himself. The talk just keeps going with allusive remarks like that, all to show that “Universal Salvation is no newfangled scheme but can boast of great antiquity.”

“Go ahead,” you can hear Haynes saying in sentence after sentence, “listen to the words of Mr. Ballou and his assertions that you need not fear damnation. You won’t be the first to listen to Mr. Ballou. Adam and Eve listened to Mr. Ballou when he told them that they need have no fear of death. Go ahead and join them if you want. Of course Mr. Ballou sounds good; he is not called a silver tongued devil without reason.”

The volume also contains the aforementioned sermon on John 3:3, explaining the necessity of being born again and a sermon on what is expected of preachers (“The Character and Work of a Spiritual Watchman described”). It’s hard to know how representative the limited number of sermons which survive are of the thousands of sermons Haynes preached, but if these are any example, he would indeed have been the type of preacher you would love to hear. Crisp and focused with some rather nice turns of phrase throughout.

But, as Haynes would be quick to note, we should not give him too much credit:

We infer that ministers should not be proud of their preaching. If they preach the true gospel, they only, in substance, repeat Christ’s sermons; if they preach “Ye shall not surely die,” he only make use of the devil’s old notes that he delivered almost six thousand years ago.

(While on the subject of the devil, he is, as Christ noted, “the father of lies,” and so rest assured, Dear Reader, that I am not attempting to emulate the Great Deceiver in this here blog post. Everything I wrote above is (shockingly) what I actually think! I need to note this because the US Federal Government is rather concerned that I might be deceiving you because Crossway, the publisher of this volume, sent me a free copy of the book so I could read it and write about it. The government requires me to tell you that. Aren’t you glad the government is protecting you in this manner? Now if you click the picture of the book cover above and buy this volume, you can’t say I deceived you!)

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