had taken Mr. Bliss at the very time the speaker was writing out the notices of Bliss' appearance to-day. He and his wife were snatched from life. But they were ready. They might have suffered for a few minutes, maybe for an hour, but when they reached heaven there was none in all the celestial choir that sang sweeter or played better on his golden harp than P. P. Bliss.

He would rather have been on that train and taken that awful leap, and died like P. P. Bliss and his wife, than had them go as they did. And every man would feel so who knew God and was ready to die. Oh! might they profit by the calamity.

Mr. Moody prayed long and earnestly for the unsaved souls, and invoked the richest outpourings of mercy on the obstinate hearts. At times during the prayer he stopped for some minutes, utterly unable to control his emotions.

Then came a silent prayer, during which about two dozen arose on invitation, to be remembered in the invocation.

"Rock of Ages," sung by the congregation, closed the services.

The morning services on the same day, at the Chicago Avenue Church-widely and popularly known as "Mr. Moody's Church "— were conducted by Messrs. Moody and Sankey. Mr. Sankey sang several of his Gospel solos, one, "When Jesus Comes," a favorite of Mr. Bliss, creating a profound impression on the audience. The whole service-hymns, prayers, and sermon-had reference to the sad end of Mr. Bliss and the dreadful railroad accident of Friday.

Prior to the sermon Mr. Moody offered up a fervent prayer for Divine help to sustain them in the sad bereavement which had come upon them.

During the sermon which followed, Mr. Moody said:

This being the last day of the year, I had been looking forward to it as one of the most solemn days of the year, and I had prepared some thoughts to bring out on this occasion. But little did I think it was going to be as solemn as it is. My thoughts have been drifted into another channel entirely. A text came into my mind when I heard of the sudden death of Mr. Bliss and his family. He was coming to the city to fill his appointment here to-day. He was to have been with us this morning, and it seems almost as if I am standing in the place of the dead. It is always solemn to stand between the living and the dead, as a preacher does; but it is a great deal more solemn to step into a dead man's shoes, as I feel to have done to-day. The text that occurred to me is in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew and the forty-fourth verse: "Therefore be ye also ready." Death often took us by surprise, but it did not find Mr. Bliss

MEMORIAL SERVICES IN CHICAGO.

347

unprepared. He and his wife had been ripening for heaven for years, and I have been thinking of that family before the throne this morning singing the sweetest song they had ever sung. We should profit by this awful calamity. God is coming very near this city; there was never before such an inquiring after God as there is now; and this last stroke of Providence ought to be a warning to every one to get in readiness to meet the Lord. If you do not take this warning I do not know what would move your hearts. There are three things every man and woman ought to be ready for-life, death, and judgment. Life is uncertain; no man can tell at what hour or in what manner Death may visit him. Accidents like the one which occurred Friday are by no means uncommon, and may strike down any one of us. It therefore behooves every man to place his trust in Christ, so that he might be prepared to meet Him at any moment.

On the evening of the 5th of January, an additional service was held at the Tabernacle. Inside the building there were at least 8,000 people; outside there were 4,000. The exercises were to be more than ordinarily interesting, for it was to be a song-service in memory of Mr. Bliss. Early in the evening the crowd assembled to pay their last tribute, anxious to assist in the rites. The Tabernacle was filled. The doors were locked. Those inside patiently awaited the exercises. Outside, the unfortunates pulled and pushed and crowded against the building and begged and implored the inexorable doors to open unto them. It was of no avail. Until the service was ended the disappointed held possession of the sidewalks, hoping to hear through the open windows, even if they could not participate.

The whole service was musical, with a brief introduction to the hymns by Mr. Moody and short prayers.

Hallelujah! 'tis done, I believe on the Son,

I am saved by the blood of the Crucified One,

and the congregation took up the chorus. "Hold the Fort" came next, the children singing the fourth verse and the choir the refrain. There were hundreds of young voices and they sang with a will. Mr. Moody related the circumstances under which the hymn was written.

"Beneath the Cross of Jesus," a hymn not so well known apparently as the rest, was sung exquisitely by Mr. Sankey. Then Mr. Moody prefaced "Roll on, Oh! Billow of Fire," with an anecdote of its basis. To the children again was committed the twenty-third hymn, "I am so glad that Jesus loves me." They sang sweetly, and

at the conclusion there was a rattle of applause in the audience. "Whosoever will may come," brought the congregation to their feet.

"At one of the Expositions," said Mr. Moody, "a common invitation was, 'Meet me at the Fountain,' and upon this Mr. Bliss wrote the hymn, 'Will you meet me at the Fountain ?"" Mr. Sankey sang it.

"Precious promise God hath given," and Mr. Moody read the twenty-third psalm, and Mr. Sankey sang, "There's a Light in the Valley for Me." "Weary Gleaner, Whence Cometh Thou?" Mr. Moody spoke of the Gospel meetings in New York, where the service had been entirely of song. He thought such meetings profitable. From a friend he had learned that the last seen of Mr. Bliss he had a Bible in his hand and was composing a song never to be heard on earth, only to swell the waves of music that roll across the Heavens. "Only an Armor-bearer Proudly I Stand," sang Mr. Sankey, the congregation joining in the chorus. "Fading Away like the Stars in the Morning," a rich, beautiful hymn, was exquisitely rendered by Mrs. Johnson, and Mr. Sankey followed with "Waiting and Watching," the most pathetic of all Bliss' music.

"Rock of Ages," to the music composed by Mrs. Bliss, and "Hold the Fort," were sung by the congregation as they dispersed.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MEMORIAL SERVICES AT SOUTH BEND, ST. PAUL, LOUISVILLE, NASHVILLE, KALAMAZOO AND PEORIA.

O widely was Mr. Bliss known, and so warmly was he beloved,

was

that the grief at his death was well-nigh universal among all professing the faith of Jesus. Not alone at Rome and Chicago, but at numerous other places, memorial services were held in honor of the dead singer. We have culled largely from the newspaper reports of these services, and present them here in connected form, as a part of the record this book was designed to perpetuate.

On the evening of January 21, a large congregation assembled at the Reformed Church in South Bend, Indiana, to attend the services held there in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Bliss, which were conducted by the pastor, Rev. N. D. Williamson. The songs sung were of Mr. Bliss' own composition, and were very effectively rendered by the choir and congregation. Two-" Eternity " and " Almost Persuaded " -were sung as solos by Miss Maud Wellman. The pastor enjoyed the personal acquaintance of Mr. Bliss, and the affectionate regard which he entertained for him was evident in the deep feeling betrayed by the tones of his voice in discoursing of his unspeakably sad fate. Many of the congregation also knew Mr. and Mrs. Bliss, and more than one gave evidence of tears to the manner in which their hearts were touched by the dreadful story. At the close of the sermon, Prof. J. Sydenham Duer read with tender effect the lines written on Mr. Bliss' death by Rev. Dr. Pierson, of Detroit, entitled "The Silent Harp." Hon. Schuyler Colfax had intended to be present and pay a tribute to the memory of Mr. Bliss, in lieu of which he sent a tender and beautiful letter, which was read by the pastor. Our limits forbid our giving it space.

Mr. Williamson selected as his text Revelation xiv. 13: "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord-that they may rest from their

labors, and their works do follow them." We copy the greater portion of his discourse :

To" die in the Lord" is indeed blessed. But to die in the Lord it is not needful that you die in your bed, at the close of a wasting sickness, attended by skillful physicians, surrounded by tearful friends, and bearing witness with your dying breath to the mercy of the Lord. To die in the Lord it is not necessary to have your body garnitured by all the taste and skill that loving friends and experienced undertakers can furnish, nor to have it followed by a long train of relatives and friends, nor to have it deposited in the grave or the tomb amid the sobbing of the multitude, nor to have the spot visited by admiring friends during the years and centuries that follow.

To those who die in the Lord, death may come on the highway with thundering crash, with shrieks and moans, and suffocated breath, and mangled limbs, and frost, and fire, and storm-winds; and it may turn the body into undistinguished ashes, mingled with the snows and waters, so that no friend who seeks them with the intensest gaze of agony, that he may bear them to their sepulture, and no admirer who would beautify the earth that covers them with garlands of gratitude, can tell where they are.

For even amid the tornado crash, the rending earthquake, and the consuming fire, the God of the elements and the God of grace can enwrap their souls in His everlasting arms of peace, and bear them with swifter than lightning wing into the realms of the painless and the glorified. And He can keep watch and guard over the ashes of their physical decay, until the dawning of the resurrection morn, when the power that made the God-like Adam out of the dust of the earth will restore them in Christ like forms of excellence and glory! And the emphasis that such a departure gives to the faith and labors of a godly life, may carry the praises of the Lord, through the instrumentality of that life, infinitely farther on the broad world and down the reaches of time than a thousand peaceful death-bed utterances possibly could do. Yes! those whose memories we honor to-night-who went into eternity on the sad evening of the 29th of December, from the Ashtabula bridge, amid the terrors and horrors of that carnival of death and destruction, without any premonition of the approach of the grim monster in his most hideous mien, and whose physical forms disappeared from human view in that valley of death as completely as that of Moses did on Mount Nebo when the Lord buried him-died in the Lord, and of them the "voice from heaven" is "heard saying unto me, write, blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them."

Professor Bliss and his wife went to Rome, Bradford county, Pa., to spend the holidays, preparatory to entering with Major Whipple on the labors of succeeding the brethren Moody and Sankey in the tabernacle work in Chicago. Their last visit in Rome was passed not wholly in tarrying with their relatives and friends, but in assisting in a series of religious meetings during the last week of the year. The last night Professor Bliss was in Rome, which was Wed nesday night, December 27th, he sang a sacred song, the music of his own com