James M. Newell, Family Files

Submitted by Natalie Schutz [natalie.schutz@sbcglobal.net] July 24, 2009


Life Story of RevLife Story of Rev. James M. Newell, D.D. 
An Autobiography 
Born November 21, 1840
Died June 25, 1932 
Edited by Margy Henry 1977 
Published by Margy Henry
Escondido, California 92025 
  
An autobiography written for his children, Grandchildren and 
great-grand-children In July 1931 in his ninety-first year. 


CHOOSING A PROFESSION 

When I entered the army I gave up all thought of any future business, but 
finding myself still alive I was forced to think about something to do. When it 
became evident that the Union Army would win, my friends and myself in the army 
discussed over and over again and at great length what we would undertake in 
civil life.  We made great plans and abandoned them all, and here I stood with 
nothing in view. If I entered a profession I must finish my education and 
prepare for it. I thought it out the best I could and made my decision. I 
decided to be a minister, and entered on a course of study the best I could to 
fit myself for that profession. 
  
This is a little personal story and not a treatise on religion, but it seems to 
me I should give a reason for the choice I made for my life work, and I cannot 
do that without a word on the subject of religion. The simplest explanation of 
religion, as I see it, is best illustrated by comparing the relation of children 
to older people with the relation of people to God. The relation of the little 
child to the grown person is, at first, related on the child’s side, almost 
entirely to his emotional nature. The intellect appears very little until later. 
The child’s life at the beginning soon exhibits love, joy, curiosity, etc. and 
only gradually does his mind get seriously to work. 
  
The emotional nature in the child differs of course from the emotional nature in 
the man, but the man has his emotional nature as surely as does the child. If it 
had been left to man to find God through intellect alone he would never have 
achieved the task. The emotional nature must first introduce the child to the 
parent. If man had never found God through love and faith and hope and 
imagination and joy and such experimental experiences he would never in any true 
sense have found Him at all. He would have gone on striving and experimenting 
with his intellect but never would he have become downright assured of God, or 
if he did in an intellectual way, the God he found would not be worth the 
search.   
  
It is a fundamental thing for the little child to find the grown person by 
loving, rejoicing, wondering and desiring. It is a wonderful thing for the grown 
man to find God by such experiences. If the child could not experience his 
elders he could not know them in any valuable way. If man cannot experience God 
he can never know God in any true or valuable way. It needs no argument to show 
that if it is possible for man to know God by experience, it is a knowledge of 
infinite importance, and to be without that knowledge is a loss infinitely 
great.  
  
Here then is my reason for entering the ministry. I believed then and all my 
experience since has confirmed my belief, that it is the privilege of man to 
know God, not perfectly through his intellectual nature but with the deepest 
assurance through his emotional nature; and knowing God and enjoying God his 
intellect is more and more enabled to comprehend God. Just as the child’s 
intellect as he grows older more and more comprehends older people. If I was 
right in that conviction I could not avoid the further conviction that for us 
mortals to come to know God is the one infinite good held out to us and to fail 
to know God is an infinite loss. A minister it seemed to me was one who gave 
himself to the business of helping people to know God. If one is really able to 
do this, there is no other business can be compared with this in importance. So 
I believed and so believing I became a minister. 
  
After making up as best I could my education that had been much spoiled by the 
war, I graduated from the Theological Seminary in 1868 — was one of six chosen 
to make addresses at the graduating service, got my diploma, was ordained and 
considered a full fledged preacher. 
  
I confess I had my doubts about my fitness for the great business. That could 
only be found out by trying. I received a call to a church in Ohio and was very 
much urged to go, but I declined it. A request came from California for a 
graduate to go there, and undertake an important work. The president of the 
seminary asked me to go. Without a word or without knowing why or what kind of 
work it was I said, ‘I will go.’ 


This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit 
or presentation by other organizations. Persons or organizations 
desiring to use this material for non-commercial purposes, MUST obtain 
the written consent of the contributor, OR the legal representative of 
the submitter. All persons donating to this site retain the rights to 
their own work.