Letter from Elizur Timothy Washburn, Hartford, [Connecticut], to Amos Augustus Phelps, 1829 Jan[uar]y 21

Elizur Timothy Washburn writes to Amos A. Phelps about his duties concerning the advisability of entering the ministry. He doesn't believe he is capable of it--he writes "it us undoubted that I have neither strength of lungs or constitution for it, i.e. the performance of all the laborious duties of a fautherful pastor" and asks Phelps "Would you apply your remarks to every man of collegiate education that is engaged in the business of instruction, I mean the pious ones?" He discusses the colonization plans that Phelps wrote to him about, and asks "Why do you not immediately take measures to have the subject brought before every association & consociation of ministers in New England, & every Presbytery of the MIddle States? Gain to your cause the Boston Recorder & the New England Observer & do you yourselves make them ring on this subject as they have on the Sabbath question." He speaks of a revival in Farmington, and discusses his attention to personal devotion.
Courtesy of Boston Public Library